# Terrorism and Communism - Author: [Leon Trotsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky.md) - Quotes: 21 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism ## Quotes > In a revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power, which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war. p. 55 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/in-a-revolutionary.md) > Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship. p. 153 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/repression-for-the.md) > It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages. p. 53 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/it-could-and.md) > If it is a question of seeking formal contradictions, then obviously we must do so on the side of the White Terror, which is the weapon of classes which consider themselves “Christian,” patronize idealist philosophy, and are firmly convinced that the individuality (their own) is an end-in-itself. As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the “sacredness of human life.” We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/if-it-is-a-question.md) > The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-dictatorship-is-necessary.md) > In times of peace, the capitalists used to guarantee their interests by means of the "peaceful" robbery of hired labor. During the war they served those same interests by means of the destruction of countless human lives. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/in-times-of-peace.md) > The Constituent Assembly placed itself across the path of the revolutionary movement, and was swept aside. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-constituent-assembly.md) > The bourgeoisie today is a falling class. ... By its imperialist methods of appropriation [it] is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds to power, and does not wish to abandon it. Thereby it threatens to drag after it into the abyss the whole of society. We are forced to tear it off, to chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish. If the White Terror can only retard the historical rise of the proletariat, the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie. p. 83 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-bourgeoisie-today.md) > The political worshipers of routine, incapable of surveying the historical process in its complexity, in its internal clashes and contradictions, imagined to themselves that history was preparing the way for the Socialist order simultaneously and systematically on all sides, so that concentration of production and the development of a Communist morality in the producer and the consumer mature simultaneously with the electric plough and a parliamentary majority. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-political-worshipers.md) > The balance of political power at any given moment is determined under the influences of fundamental and secondary factors of differing degrees of effectiveness, and only in its fundamental quality is it determined by the state of the development of production. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-balance-of-political.md) > During war all institutions and organs of the State and of public opinion become, directly or indirectly, weapons of warfare. This is particularly true of the Press. No government carrying on a serious war will allow publications to exist on its territory which, openly or indirectly support the enemy. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/during-war-all.md) > It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage, insurrections, or the calling in foreign troops. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/it-is-only.md) > 'Terror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/terror-can-be-very.md) > We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death struggle. The Press is a weapon not of an abstract society, but of two irreconcilable, armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press of the counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its stores, its communications and its intelligence system. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/we-are-fighting.md) > The people, in the shape of the most democratic elements, were in favor of extreme measures. The Republican Party had a decided majority in the North, and persons suspected of secessionism, i.e., of sympathizing with the rebellious Southern states, were subjected to violence. In some northern towns, and even in the states of New England, famous for their order, the people frequently burst into the offices of newspapers which supported the revolting slave-owners and smashed their printing presses. It occasionally happened that reactionary publishers were smeared with tar, decorated with feathers, and carried in such array through the public squares until they swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. The personality of a planter smeared in tar bore little resemblance to the “end-in-itself ;” so that the categorical imperative of Kautsky suffered in the civil war of the states a considerable blow. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-people-in-the.md) > The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state … Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. p. 177 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-road-to-socialism.md) > No one yet has learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study. p. 101 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/no-one-yet.md) > In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to execution. This is inhuman, but no one ever considered war a school of humanity. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/in-war-where.md) > Let us now turn to the revolution which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the country of “democracy” – in the United States of North America. Although the question was not the abolition of property altogether, but only of the abolition of property in Negroes, nevertheless, the institutions of democracy proved absolutely powerless to decide the argument in a peaceful way. The southern states, defeated at the presidential elections in 1860, decided by all possible means to regain the influence they had hitherto exerted in the question of slave-owning; and uttering, as was right, the proper sounding words about freedom and independence, rose in a slave-owners’ insurrection. Hence inevitably followed all the later consequences of civil war. At the very beginning of the struggle, the military government in Baltimore imprisoned in Fort MacHenry a few citizens, sympathizers with the slave-holding South, in spite of Habeas Corpus. The question of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of such action became the object of fierce disputes between so-called “high authorities.” The judge of the Supreme Court decided that the President had neither the right to arrest the operation of Habeas Corpus nor to give plenipotentiary powers to that end to the military authorities. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/let-us-now.md) > This book was written in 1920 in the car of a military train and amid the flames of the civil war. The circumstance the reader must keep before his eyes if he wishes rightly to understand not only the basic material of the book, but also its harsh allusion, and particularly the tone in which it is written. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/this-book-was.md) > The argument which is repeated again and again in criticisms of the Soviet system in Russia, and particularly in criticisms of revolutionary attempts to set up a similar structure in other countries, is the argument based on the balance of power. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/leon-trotsky/terrorism-and-communism/the-argument-which.md)