Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism – Leon Trotsky, 11/1911

Our class enemies are in the habit of complaining about our terrorism. What they mean by this is rather
unclear. They would like to label all the activities of the proletariat directed against the class enemy’s
interests as terrorism. The strike, in their eyes, is the principal method of terrorism. The threat of a strike,
the organisation of strike pickets, an economic boycott of a slave-driving boss, a moral boycott of a traitor
from our own ranks—all this and much more they call terrorism. If terrorism is understood in this way as
any action inspiring fear in, or doing harm to, the enemy, then of course the entire class struggle is nothing
but terrorism. And the only question remaining is whether the bourgeois politicians have the right to pour
out their flood of moral indignation about proletarian terrorism when their entire state apparatus with its
laws, police and army is nothing but an apparatus for capitalist terror! However, it must be said that when
they reproach us with terrorism, they are trying—although not always consciously—to give the word a
narrower, less indirect meaning. The damaging of machines by workers, for example, is terrorism in this
strict sense of the word. The killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its
owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister—all these are
terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of
international Social Democracy ought to know that it has always opposed this kind of terrorism and
does so in the most irreconcilable way. Why? ‘Terrorising’ with the threat of a strike, or actually conducting
a strike is something only industrial workers can do. The social significance of a strike depends directly
upon first, the size of the enterprise or the branch of industry that it affects, and second, the degree to
which the workers taking part in it are organised, disciplined, and ready for action.

This is just as true of a political strike as it is for an economic one. It continues to be the method of struggle
that flows directly from the productive role of the proletariat in modern society. Belittles the role of the masses
In order to develop, the capitalist system needs a parliamentary superstructure. But because it cannot confine
the modern proletariat to a political ghetto, it must sooner or later allow the workers to participate in parliament.
In elections, the mass character of the proletariat and its level of political development—quantities which,
again, are determined by its social role, i.e. above all, its productive role—find their expression. As in a strike,
so in elections the method, aim, and result of the struggle always depend on the social role and strength of
the proletariat as a class. Only the workers can conduct a strike. Artisans ruined by the factory, peasants
whose water the factory is poisoning, or lumpen proletarians in search of plunder can smash machines, set
fire to a factory, or murder its owner. Only the conscious and organised working class can send a strong
representation into the halls of parliament to look out for proletarian interests. However, in order to murder
a prominent official you need not have the organised masses behind you. The recipe for explosives is accessible
to all, and a Browning can be obtained anywhere. In the first case, there is a social struggle, whose methods
and means flow necessarily from the nature of the prevailing social order; and in the second, a purely mechanical
reaction identical anywhere—in China as in France—very striking in its outward form (murder, explosions and
so forth) but absolutely harmless as far as the social system goes. A strike, even of modest size, has social
consequences: strengthening of the workers’ self-confidence, growth of the trade union, and not infrequently
even an improvement in productive technology. The murder of a factory owner produces effects of a police
nature only, or a change of proprietors devoid of any social significance. Whether a terrorist attempt, even
a ‘successful’ one throws the ruling class into confusion depends on the concrete political circumstances.

In any case the confusion can only be shortlived; the capitalist state does not base itself on government
ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new people; the
mechanism remains intact and continues to function. But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the
working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with
a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder
and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class
organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is
the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the
ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament? In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely
because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness,
and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and
accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want
about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations
and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact,
the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke
from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his
appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the
police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially
aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy. The efforts of reaction to put an end to strikes and
to the mass workers’ movement in general have always, everywhere, ended in failure.

Capitalist society needs an active, mobile and intelligent proletariat; it cannot, therefore, bind the proletariat hand
and foot for very long. On the other hand, the anarchist ‘propaganda of the deed’ has shown every time that the
state is much richer in the means of physical destruction and mechanical repression than are the terrorist groups.
If that is so, where does it leave the revolution? Is it rendered impossible by this state of affairs? Not at all. For
the revolution is not a simple aggregate of mechanical means. The revolution can arise only out of the sharpening
of the class struggle, and it can find a guarantee of victory only in the social functions of the proletariat. The mass
political strike, the armed insurrection, the conquest of state power—all this is determined by the degree to which
production has been developed, the alignment of class forces, the proletariat’s social weight, and finally, by the
social composition of the army, since the armed forces are the factor that in time of revolution determines the fate
of state power. Social Democracy is realistic enough not to try to avoid the revolution that is developing out of the
existing historical conditions; on the contrary, it is moving to meet the revolution with eyes wide open. But—contrary
to the anarchists and in direct struggle against them—Social Democracy rejects all methods and means that
have as their goal to artificially force the development of society and to substitute chemical preparations for
the insufficient revolutionary strength of the proletariat. Before it is elevated to the level of a method of political
struggle, terrorism makes its appearance in the form of individual acts of revenge. So it was in Russia, the
classic land of terrorism. The flogging of political prisoners impelled Vera Zasulich to give expression to the
general feeling of indignation by an assassination attempt on General Trepov. Her example was imitated in
the circles of the revolutionary intelligentsia, who lacked any mass support. What began as an act of unthinking
revenge was developed into an entire system in 1879-81. The outbreaks of anarchist assassination in Western
Europe and North America always come after some atrocity committed by the government—the shooting of
strikers or executions of political opponents. The most important psychological source of terrorism is always
the feeling of revenge in search of an outlet.

There is no need to belabour the point that Social Democracy has nothing in common with those bought-and
-paid-for moralists who, in response to any terrorist act, make solemn declarations about the ‘absolute value’
of human life. These are the same people who, on other occasions, in the name of other absolute values—for
example, the nation’s honour or the monarch’s prestige—are ready to shove millions of people into the hell
of war. Today their national hero is the minister who gives the sacred right of private property; and tomorrow,
when the desperate hand of the unemployed workers is clenched into a fist or picks upon a weapon, they
will start in with all sorts of nonsense about the inadmissibility of violence in any form. Whatever the eunuchs
and pharisees of morality may say, the feeling of revenge has its rights. It does the working class the greatest
moral credit that it does not look with vacant indifference upon what is going on in this best of all possible
worlds. Not to extinguish the proletariat’s unfulfilled feeling of revenge, but on the contrary to stir it up again
and again, to deepen it, and to direct it against the real causes of all injustice and human baseness—that
is the task of the Social Democracy. If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does
not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some
functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the
human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system,
in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system—that is the direction in which
the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.