‘Attention to theory’ by Leon Trotsky – new translation!

We are extremely proud to publish here a brand new English translation of a short 1922 article by Leon Trotsky, Attention to theory. First published in the monthly magazine Under the banner of Marxism, this article met with Lenin’s full approval and is referred to in a piece he wrote for the third edition of the magazine, On the significance of militant materialism. We are republishing the latter alongside this article.

We recommend studying both of these short but highly instructive letters together. They show what fundamental importance both of the great leaders of the October Revolution placed on the struggle for Marxist theory. 

In his article, Lenin urges the journal on in its struggle against what he colourfully calls “the graduated flunkeys of clericalism” – that is, the learned bourgeois philosophy professors, who hide the most reactionary ideas behind the cloak of modern science.

It is highly significant that Lenin refers approvingly to Trotsky’s article, whilst also referring to the bureaucratic ineffectiveness of the Soviet state as a whole in carrying on a militant struggle for materialism. After Lenin’s death 100 years ago, the Stalinist bureaucracy would try to efface not only the real relationship between Lenin and Trotsky, which was one of the highest mutual respect, but also Lenin’s own struggle towards the end of his life against bureaucratism in every sphere.

Again, we recommend all readers give both texts the attention they deserve.

[The following text is translated from the Marxist Internet Archive version of the Russian edition of the works of L. Trotsky, Volume 21, published in Moscow and Leningrad in 1927.]

Attention to theory by Leon Trotsky

Dear comrades!

(Letter to the editorial board of the magazine Under the banner of Marxism)

The idea of publishing a magazine that would introduce advanced proletarian youth into the circle of a materialist world outlook seems to me highly valuable and fruitful. 

The older generation of communist workers, who are currently playing a leading role in the party and in the country, were awakening to conscious political life 10, 15, 20 and more years ago. Their thought was beginning its critical work with the policeman, the timekeeper and the foreman, rising to tsarism and capitalism, and later, most often in jail and exile, turning towards questions of philosophy, of history and the scientific understanding of the world. Thus, before the revolutionary proletarian reached the most important questions of the materialist explanation of historical development, he had already managed to accumulate a certain amount of ever-expanding generalisations, from the particular to the general, based on his own life’s combat experience. Today’s young worker is awakening in the atmosphere of the Soviet state, which itself is a living critique of the old world. Those general conclusions that were conquered in battle by the older generation, that were fixed in their minds with sturdy nails of personal experience, are now being obtained by the workers of the younger generation in a ready-made form, directly from the hands of the state they live in, from the hands of the party that rules that state. This represents, of course, a giant step forward in regards to the creation of conditions for further political and theoretical education of the workers. But at the same time, at this incomparably higher historical level achieved by the work of older generations, new tasks and new difficulties arise for the younger generations.

The Soviet state is a living negation of the old world, its social order, personal relations, its views and beliefs. At the same time, however, the Soviet state itself is still full of contradictions, gaps, discordance, nebulous ferment – in short, phenomena in which the legacy of the past is intertwined with the shoots of the future. In such a profoundly critical, unstable epoch as ours, the education of the proletarian vanguard requires serious and reliable theoretical foundations. In order that the greatest events, the powerful ebbs and flows, the rapid changes of tasks and methods of the party and the state do not disorganise the consciousness of the young worker and do not break his will even before the threshold of his independent responsible work, it is necessary to arm his thought, his will, with the method of a materialist worldview.

We say to arm the will and not only the thought, because in the epoch of the greatest world upheavals, more than ever before, we will not only prevent our will from breaking but will harden it only under the condition that it is based on a scientific understanding of the conditions and causes of historical development.

On the other hand, it is precisely in such a crucial era as ours, especially if it drags on, i.e. if the pace of revolutionary events in the West turns out to be slower than one might hope, that various idealist and semi-idealist sects and schools of thought will very likely attempt to seize the consciousness of the working youth. Caught off-guard by events, without the previous rich experience of practical class struggle, the thought of working-class youth may be unprotected against various doctrines of idealism, representing, in essence, the translation of religious dogmas into the language of sham philosophy. All these schools, despite the variety of their idealist, Kantian, empirio-critical and other designations, in the end agree that consciousness, thought, and knowledge preface matter, and not vice versa.

The task of the materialist education of working-class youth is to reveal to them the basic laws of historical development, and of these basic laws the most important and paramount, namely the law stating that human consciousness is not a free, independent psychological process, but a function of the material economic foundation, i.e. it is conditioned by it and serves it.

The dependence of consciousness on class interests and relationships, and of the latter on economic organisation, reveals itself most vividly, openly, and crudely in a revolutionary epoch. We must help the working-class youth consolidate the foundations of the Marxist method in its consciousness based on their own irreplaceable experience. But that is not enough. Human society, both in its historical roots and in its present-day economy, is embedded in the natural-historical world. We must see in the man of today one link of the whole process of development, a process that begins with the first organic cell, which, in turn, came out of nature’s laboratory, where the physical and chemical properties of matter operate. Those who have learned to look back with such a clear eye on the past of the whole world, including human society, the animal and plant kingdom, the solar system and the endless systems around it, will not search for the keys to grasping the mysteries of the universe in the ancient ‘sacred’ books, in these philosophical fairy tales of primitive childishness. And whoever does not recognise the existence of heavenly mystical forces capable of arbitrarily invading personal or public life and of directing it in one direction or another, whoever does not believe that need and suffering will meet some kind of supreme reward in other worlds, will securely and firmly plant his feet on our earth, will be bolder and more confident in seeking a foothold for his creative work in the material conditions of society. A materialist outlook not only opens a wide window onto the whole universe, but also strengthens the will. It alone makes the modern man human. It is true that he is still dependent on difficult material conditions, but he already knows how to overcome them, and consciously takes part in the construction of a new society, one based simultaneously on the highest technology and the highest solidarity. 

To give proletarian youth a materialist education is the greatest task. I sincerely wish success to your magazine, which wants to take part in this educational work.

Leon Trotsky

27 February 1922