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The Role of Trotskyism in Modern
Management
Trotskyism is normally associated with whingeing leftie luvvies, or the sad students that we see huddled together in small groups getting signatures for a petition to ban the hunting of women with dogs, or whatever. However, Management Studies is an open and eclectic discipline, and there is something to learn even from this highly unpromising source. Trotsky began life as a dangerous Bolshevik, of course, one of the key figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917. He had some considerable managerial talent as well, however, enough to claim him as a management guru, and did much to organise the Red Army in its ultimately successful struggle against the Whites. Apart from that, his writings actually offer little to the modern manager, except for one major concept -- permanent revolution. We also believe in permanent revolution, of course. We can't let the old structures ossify and become bureaucratic. Permanent change is our watchword, and we want to develop a mechanism to produce a constant flow of new initiatives, new acronyms, new procedures, new jargon, new missions, new measures, and new structures that will require a constant recruitment of managers. To that extent, we are all Trotskyites now! Trotskyism has another important role, or, rather, Trotskyites do. This may seem unlikely at first, but consider what Trotskyites actually do. Most of their activities are entirely harmless, of course, but they are occasionally very useful in organizing local struggles. The most common form of struggle that they have developed in universities is against elitism. They have done much to criticise and undermine the old elitism based on subject matter allegiances, expert knowledge, traditional subjects, and the recruitment of students from a narrow social base. They have made liberals everywhere feel guilty about the residual sexism and racism in their favourite texts. They have therefore become key agents of change, helping to undermine and demoralise some of the major centres of resistance to the new managerialism. They have done us a great service: we too are in favour of undermining the old elitism, debunking the claims to expert knowledge, destroying traditional subjects, and making sure that universities now operate on a mass recruitment basis. We can eliminate racism and sexism at a stroke, by writing an anti-discrimination policy and making sure it is circulated widely. Of course, actual Trotskyite alternatives are completely unrealistic, although they still have a nice sentimental appeal to the young. Our alternatives are much stronger, institutionally supported, and do not require mass consent. We can easily impose our policies and forms of organisation in the chaos and civil war that usually follows the best Trotskyite critiques. There is another bonus too. Trotskyism turns out to be sufficiently close to managerialism to supply a surprisingly large pool of potential managerial recruits from their ranks. Partly it is the old story about 'sod the revolution, I have a large mortgage', but Trotskyites seem to be able to follow the path that Trotsky himself trod (only in reverse), and switch from revolutionary opposition to managerial compliance. Many Trots have become managers, albeit in relatively minor roles. They are of great service here, using their former contacts to pass on intelligence about any residual troublemakers, and providing excellent sneering criticism of the old guard. Their tradition of revolutionary discipline provides them with a strong group loyalty, a taste for conspiracy and manipulative secret activity, and a contempt for any liberal freedoms or rights. Any manager who has to organise the redundancy of numbers of academic staff, especially those from the traditional disciplines, would do well to recruit a former Trot to help him. Make a friend of a Trot today! back to Paper World |