Surely every budding revolutionary has at least *the potential*to learn a thing or two from great revolutionary orators of the past like Robespierre, like Trotsky?.. And vis-a-vis the latter, well, try *this*, annexed from an extended-impression of the man from one of Trotskys Bolshevik contemporaries, Lunarchasky Why. how impressions like the one below do nothing but hammer home to you how oratory has almost become *veritably extinct* in this country after the passing of the heydays of even the great British parliamentary ones like Michael Foot (though no less fundamentally flawed by his reformist politics for it, of course), let alone the death of the great British revolutionary ones! All too, too true! So, in this context, surely, recollections like the following are not only a nice surprise, they are also a bonafide inspiring relief as to *just what* a mere single man or women can achieve with regards to any ambitious attempts at *effortlessly rabble-rousing with the aid of a mere podium*, or even with the aid of simply any kind of elevated piece of street bric-a-bac (soapboxes, quotidian-enough-benchs, conveniently-to-hand-steps etc ) So, comrades, I implore you to try, try to improve your skills in this particular arena---as in all the others, of course---of *revolutionary action*. One solution. Revolution. Indeed, ..Forward to the world proletariat revolution!..**1** **1** which, although, yes, is sadly not something than can realistically arise *tomorrow*, when speaking in the most literal sense, *it is certainly not by any means an inconceivable political prediction, to say that, however, in circa a decades time from now, such a scintillating political opportunity---a revolutionary situation---could quite foreseeable be upon us. And if this figure here is stretched out to the circa 20-years mark, then there can be absolutely no doubt that there is at least a very strong possibility of seeing just such revolutionary opportunities appear burningly graspable . (N.B also, please not that I am not in anyway *sycophantic* towards Trotsky (or anyone, for that mater.). No, but, in case such a question had just entered into the mind of anyone reading, let me clarify *why* I sometimes post things related to him, or actually written by him. Well, I am a revolutionary. And Trotsky was---in most peoples opinions---a revolutionary *par excellence*. That is why his life and works, deserve serious study, if you are any kind of serious anti-Stalinist revolutionary Marxist. Trotsky, of course, spent a lot of time studying & attempting to learn profoundly from great historical periods of unrest and ferment, such as the French revolutionary wave in late eighteenth century France. It helped *him* on the path to being as effective as he proved to be. So why cannot---as well as (to a slightly lesser degree, admittedly) revolutions like the aforesaid French---the Russian Revolution, and the most able of the Russian revolutionaries, teach the incendiary inclined an arresting amount of profound things, *today*? Im sorry to be blunt, but I simply dont think anyone is particularly likely to be able to produce a convincing answer to this question.) At any rate, *here* is the fairly inspiring analytical recollections on Trotskys sublime speech-making habits by Lunarchasky... >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I regard Trotsky as probably the greatest orator of our age. In my time I have heard all the greatest parliamentarians and popular tribunes of socialism and very many famous orators of the bourgeois world and I would find it difficult to name any of them, except Jaurès [17] (Bebel [18] I only heard when he was an old man), whom I could put in the same class as Trotsky. His impressive appearance, his handsome, sweeping gestures, the powerful rhythm of his speech, his loud but never fatiguing voice, the remarkable coherence and literary skill of his phrasing, the richness of imagery, scalding irony, his soaring pathos, his rigid logic, clear as polished steel – those are Trotsky’s virtues as a speaker. He can speak in lapidary phrases, or throw off a few unusually well-aimed shafts and he can give a magnificent set-piece political speech of the kind that previously I had only heard from Jaures. I have seen Trotsky speaking for two and a half to three hours in front of a totally silent, standing audience listening as though spellbound to his monumental political treatise. Most of what Trotsky had to say I knew already and naturally every politician often has to repeat the same ideas again and again in front of new crowds, yet every time Trotsky managed to clothe the same thought in a different form. I do not know whether Trotsky made so many speeches when he became War Minister of our great republic during the revolution and civil war: it is most probable that his organizational work and tireless journeying from end to end of the vast front left him little time for oratory, but even then Trotsky was above all a great political agitator. His articles and books are, as it were, frozen speech – he was literary in his oratory and an orator in literature.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 20:32:34 +0000
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