If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
Leon TrotskyOnly when the kulak refused to deliver grain to the State did [Joseph] Stalin, under the pressure of the Left Opposition, accomplish a sharp turn. Being the empiricist that he is, he moved, to the opposite extreme, and set as a task for two or three years the collectivization of all the peasantry, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and the compression of the Five Year Plan into four years.
Leon TrotskyIn 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia.
Leon TrotskyAs long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the โsacredness of human lifeโ remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.
Leon TrotskySocialist economy cannot reject the huge advantages of the world division of labor: on the contrary, it will carry it to the highest development. But in practise, it is not a question of the future socialist society, with an established internal equilibrium, but of the given technically and culturally backward country which in the interests of industrialisation and collectivization is forced to export as much as possible in order to import as much as possible.
Leon Trotsky