These schools regarded the causes of the disasters of the 20th century to lie with the Enlightenment, the pursuit of scientific knowledge of nature and society, and not to have been caused by the defeats of the working class resulting from the policies of the social democratic and Stalinist bureaucracies. The goal of science to identify objective truths was called “presumptuous.” The “boundless development and application of modern science and technology” to overcome poverty, disease, ignorance and social inequality was considered to be a “menace to society” and even the “basis for totalitarian dictatorships.” The claim that there was no alternative to Stalinism and that the socialist revolution of 1917 had led inevitably to Stalinist totalitarianism was linked to a rejection of critical historical study and to the conception that there was no such thing as objective reality or objective causal relationships. Thinkers of this school such as Hayden White described the scientific presentation of historical contexts to be a form of “myth.” Roger Chartier declared that history did not deal with an objective reality of social development, but only with subjective perceptions (representations) of history, with the sensations of its witnesses and the interpretations of later descendants. Jörg Baberowski, a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and spokesman of this subjectivist school in Germany, draws the conclusion: “The fact that we could learn from history is an illusion of days gone by… The claim (of the historian) to show how things actually were has been proved in reality to be an illusion. What the historian confronts in the sources is not the past… the past is a construction.” Elsewhere he writes: “Truth is what I and others hold to be true and confirm to each other as truth.... Therefore we must accept that there are multiple realities; that it depends on who talks to whom about what and with what arguments.” (2) This approach gave free rein to the ideologues of the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification, who twisted sources and documents, falsified or suppressed them according to their own needs. For Baberowski, even such a “construction of the past” is but “one of several realities” and only “true” as long as it is shared by other “historians.” In this climate of ignorance and contempt for historical truth, Robert Service felt secure that his diatribe against Leon Trotsky would be praised in the media and by other historians, if not enthusiastically welcomed, and that “his truth” would be accepted. In their arrogance, neither he nor his publisher felt it necessary to respond in any way to the extensive, carefully documented critique made by David North. But Service miscalculated. Post-structuralists, post-modernists and post-Soviet counterfeiters may prefer to deny the objectivity of history, but that will not stop history from catching up with them. What has happened since Service’s book was published in the UK and US in 2009, and in Spain in 2010, and received such uncritical praise? For the first time in decades, the revolution in Egypt at the beginning of 2011 once again brought the working masses onto the stage of history, intervening in the political process. All over the world this has encouraged young working class layers to protest and fortified them in the fight against social inequality. This has also injected a fresh wind into intellectual life. Leon Trotsky, the theoretician and leader of the world socialist revolution and leader of the revolutionary masses, can no longer be suppressed by historical falsifications, slanders and the stirring up of racist sentiments. https://wsws.org/en/articles/2011/12/lett-d31.html
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 08:38:14 +0000
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