Very much related:
'''"Still, the notion that a tiny group of ruthless dedicated revolutionaries accomplished a coup d’etat is not just a myth; there is a crucial grain of truth in it. When popular dissatisfaction grew and Lenin’s idea that there was a chance for the revolution was accepted, the majority of the Bolshevik party leaders were trying to organize a mass popular uprising; Trotsky, however, advocated a view which, to traditional Marxists, couldn’t but appear as “Blanquist”: a narrow well-trained elite should take power. After a short oscillation, Lenin defended Trotsky, specifying why Trotsky is not advocating Blanquism:
“In his letter of October 17, Lenin defended Trotsky’s tactics: ‘Trotsky is not playing with the ideas of Blanqui,’ he said. ‘A military conspiracy is a game of that sort only if it is not organized by the political party of a definite class of people and if the organizers disregard the general political situation and the international situation in particular. There is a great difference between a military conspiracy, which is deplorable from every point of view, and the art of armed insurrection.’”
In this precise sense, “Lenin was the ‘strategus,’ idealist, inspirer, the deus ex machina of the revolution, but the man who invented the technique of the Bolshevik coup d’etat was Trotsky.” Against the latter “Trotskyite” defenders of an (almost) “democratic” Trotsky who advocates authentic mass mobilization and grass-root democracy, one should emphasize that Trotsky was all too well aware of the inertia of the masses – the most one can expect of the “masses” is chaotic dissatisfaction. A narrow well-trained revolutionary striking force should use this chaos to strike at power and thereby open up the space where the masses can really organize themselves… Here, however, the crucial question arises: what does this narrow elite do? In what sense does it “take power”? The true novelty of Trotsky becomes visible here: the striking force does not “take power” in the traditional sense of a palace coup d’etat, occupying government offices and army headquarters; it does not focus on confronting police or army on the barricades. Let us quote some passages from Curzio Malaparte’s unique The Technique of Coup d’Etat (1931) to get the taste of it:
“Kerenski’s police and the military authorities were especially concerned with the defense of the State’s official and political organizations: the Government offices, the Maria Palace where the Republican council sat, the Tauride Palace, seat of the Duma, the Winter Palace, and General Headquarters. When Trotsky discovered this mistake he decided to attack only the technical branches of the national and municipal Government. Insurrection for him was only a question of technique. ‘In order to overthrow the modern State,’ he said, ‘you need a storming party, technical experts and gangs of armed men led by engineers.’”'''
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