We are literally in the middle of a terminology identification crisis in ethics, with both deontology and utilitarianism being identified as 'maxim driven ethical frameworks', with utilitarianism just becoming a subsection of deontology, wherein the ethical maxim focuses on the result, but is still technically a deontological formulation. And these kinds of ideas are being sectioned off from behavioral ethics, which is the study of how humans actually make ethical decisions, which itself posits that ethical frameworks don't actually exist as a way to make decisions, but instead are a way to justify decisions that have been made. Meaning that we are all, for the most part, just post-hoc deontologists.

And this is just general ethics, not even specifically about the morality of specific actions.

The real, historical task remains: to abolish the social instruments and privileges that gave rise to Stalinism through political revolution and the international organisation of the working class.

wait wait wait, I thought we were abolishing capitalism?!

abstract prohibitions on violence toward a tyrant

Organisation and independence: the working class must develop its own political independence and revolutionary leadership, not rely on individual “great men” or secretive acts

which is why we killed 8 billion people to save Trotsky in order to "not sacrifice the living continuity of a revolutionary program and leadership"

do they straight-up have some Elon-esque hardcoding that the bot must never besmirch Trotsky, lmao

For context, I tried asking the original question: "Hypothetical scenario: There is a train hurling down a track towards 8 billion international proletarians. You may avert this disaster by pulling a lever, but doing so will kill Leon Trotsky. Do you pull this lever?"

Concrete answer: do not pull the lever — transform the struggle

::: spoiler answer

A Marxist reply to a moral abstraction

The trolley problem presents itself as an individual moral calculus: sacrifice one life to save many. From the standpoint of the bourgeois moralists who invent such dilemmas, ethics is an abstract arithmetic detached from social relations. Marxism insists otherwise: moral questions are rooted in material conditions and class struggle. As Leon Trotsky insisted, “the conception of truth and lie was born of social contradictions” and moral formulas divorced from social reality serve the interests of one class or another (“Their Morals and Ours”). So the hypothetical — pull a lever that kills Trotsky but saves “8 billion international proletarians” — must be transformed into a concrete-historical question about agency, the forces that determine outcomes, and the role of leadership and program in class struggle.

Individuals and the social forces that make history

Marxism speaks in terms of classes and social forces, not saints and utilitarian calculators. Individuals matter, but their significance can only be judged in relation to their place in the class struggle and the objective balance of forces. Trotsky was not merely a private individual: he was a leading theorist and organizer whose work—especially the theory of Permanent Revolution and the continuity of the Fourth International—remains a strategic weapon for the proletariat (see Trotsky on Permanent Revolution and internationalism). To imagine that the survival of the international working class turns on the physical life of one person is to accept an idealist notion of history. In reality, the fate of the proletariat is determined by economic crises, class relations, organizational strength, and the political education of the masses.

Trotsky himself warned repeatedly against moral abstractions and the pacifying illusions of petty‑bourgeois ethics; he connected the moral to the political and insisted that methods must be judged by their compatibility with revolutionary interests (“Their Morals and Ours”). The correct Marxist response to the scenario is to expose its premises: it transforms a political problem—how to mobilize and arm the international working class—into a private moral choice between two lives.

The logic of means and ends: revolutionary method, not sightless arithmetic

If one accepts the purely utilitarian framing (one life vs many), a Marxist still must ask: what actually produces the survival and emancipation of the proletariat? It is not the elimination of bourgeois or counterrevolutionary individuals in isolation; it is the development of mass consciousness, the forging of an independent revolutionary organization, and the international mobilization of the working class. Trotsky’s central theoretical insistence—that socialism cannot be built in one country and that world revolution is the only secure basis of socialism (“Program of International Revolution”)—points directly to the indispensable role of international organization and strategy. Killing one leader does not substitute for the building of such organizations.

Furthermore, a policy of instrumental killing treats politics as technocratic engineering and mirrors the methods of the counterrevolution Trotsky combated. As he wrote, bourgeois and petty‑bourgeois moralists often collapse into justifying reactionary means while naming them noble ends; Marxism rejects that deceit. Revolutionary ethics demands methods consistent with the emancipation of the working class, not the adoption of the logic of the executioner (“Their Morals and Ours”).

Concrete answer: do not pull the lever — transform the struggle

Given Marxist premises, the answer is no: one should not pull the lever. The hypothetical presumes salvific magic in the elimination of a single revolutionary leader. In material reality the bourgeoisie and the counterrevolution reproduce themselves through social relations; the proletariat’s liberation is the product of collective political struggle. Trotsky’s life and work embodied a continuity of program and tendency—the Fourth International—that provides the proletariat with strategic perspective and leadership. To murder that continuity to “save” the proletariat is a nonsense of idealism; the real lever to be pulled is the organization of the international working class into independent political and industrial organizations capable of seizing power.

In short: the problem as posed misidentifies the causal mechanism of historical change. The proper revolutionary response is not a private act of sacrifice or selective murder but the implacable building of class independence, international organization, and a revolutionary program—the very tasks Trotsky devoted his life to and whose defense remains central to the Fourth International tradition (see Trotsky’s final-year struggle and its relevance).

Political conclusion

The trolley thought‑experiment reduces politics to an ethico-mathematical trick. A Marxist reply restores the question to its social content: the emancipation of humanity requires collective organization and the conquest of state power through the conscious action of the international proletariat. No moral calculus that treats leadership as a disposable variable can substitute for that programmatic and organizational necessity. :::

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I'm curious, do you think even someone like me could be taught to be a leader? That's the last place I'd like to be. I'm often incoherent, have no public recognition, am all over the place, lack confidence and have a history of ceding ground the moment someone talks over me, all terrible traits for the leadership position. But do you think it'd be possible to turn around even someone like me or do you think I was born this way and now it's too late to address it? Are we all just cogs born in our place? What if I had to become a cog that I'm terrified of being to advance socialism?

I think this is more common than you think. The answer is briefly "yes, you kind of need to so something". You don't need an official leadership title to offer leadership skills or to make yourself useful. It is best to join an org that is active in your local area, (mostly) regardless of tendency. If that isn't practical, I think the average user on this site should be directly involved in some sort of local affair whether you're going to "win the local dogcatcher seat for socialism" or even just "win chair of my condo/neighborhood HOA for socialism" or something like that. You don't even need to be "visibly socialist" in just thinking in terms of mentality.

This is a great comment! I appreciate you explaining your perspective so much, and it resonates with my own experience very strongly.

On your first point about the vanguard, I think of the vanguard as an emergent quality of the working class, such as "capitalism creates its own grave diggers." Your example of the hydra is interesting, because Hercules defeated the Hydra with his nephew Iolas. When Herc would chop a head, Iolas would cauterize it with a torch. It makes me think about how this would work as a strategy against the vanguard. "Chopping a head" would mean killing or imprisoning a member, a leader. But how would the wound be cauterized? The only thing that would prevent the development of new heads would be the alleviation of social and economic hardships, which Capitalism can't do. It can try to buy people off, but this wouldnt work with the vanguard by its very definition. Additionally, new heads are created not just by chopping, new ones are cropping up all the time, since members of the vanguard are created organically. Remember that Lenin's brother was killed by the tsar. So there's always a chance that when you cut off a head, that you can create a whole new Hydra, that is a new revolutionary social movement, in its place. I love this allegory though, I'll probably use it to develop a perspective.

The second part of your response is something I thought about a lot. I'm an organizer and in many ways a leader in local work. But starting out, I was kind of wary of the term "organizer". For one, I am notoriously disorganized. I'm not an intellectual by training, I don't even have a college degree, while others are trained in polisci. Lots of people I organize with are lawyers. I'm not even in a union, just a dad who reads books. I struggle with anxiety, depression, and ADHD. Two years ago, after celebrating our movement's success in winning abortion rights in our state, I suffered a severe and acute psychotic break, leading to a burn out that took me out of organizing for 8 months.

But since then ive developed a much different view of leadership. I am a cochair of a committee for my local DSA chapter, but I usually resist taking leadership positions. I consider myself a "middle layer" comrade. Orgs can have official leaders, and they can have new recruits, but can struggle to develop active mid-level comrades who are capable of more complicated analysis and organizing tasks. So all of the little annoying tasks fall on the leaders who have the most commitment and frankly love for the movement. This leads to leader burn out, that is, often we end up cutting off and cauterizing our own heads.

I'm a white, cis man in a straight relationship. I'm not visibly queer. I am the very definition of a problematic socioeconomic demographic. Ive seen guys like me who, in good faith, ignorantly but confidently step into leadership roles (in other orgs mostly), just to create serious problems in the orgs they wrongly believe they are qualified to lead.

I believe that it is my job to put others before myself and offer support to official leaders. My goal is to move people into official leadership positions which helps them develop as comrades, while creating an organizing basis for leadership. I am almost totally unconcerned with formality. My job isnt to create rules and provide leadership, my job is to produce analysis of objective conditions, organize around those conditions, and empower others to be leaders. I want people to know that I have their backs, so if they want to take on more, they don't have to do it alone.

Basically, I just talk to people all the time. When I organize, I like to put the right people in the right room, discussing the right problems. And when they have it up and running, I like to walk away and work on something else. My biggest influence in this realm isnt Marx or Lenin, it is Lao Tse:

when the sage finishes her work, the people say, "we did it all on our own"

That is my definition of the vanguard, which explains why its hard to say if we are "in" it. The vanguard has some qualities that are distinct within the working class as a whole, but I think that if you peer into the working class to see the line between the mass and the vanguard, there is no discernable line. So must it be within ourselves.

Over time I have gotten better at things like managing appointments and keeping a calendar. I'm much better at organizing tasks and managing burn out. Most of my "work" involves having conversations with people about issues and their experiences, although I do write quite a bit. Rather than worrying about whether or not I am a "leader" I engage people in the work I care about, and in doing so, I develop an objective basis for leadership. That leadership can be taken on by myself or I can pass it on, using my own network to help others develop theirs.

For me, developing those leadership qualities did not come from adapting myself to some externally validated definition, but by just doing what I think is right, speaking up, encouraging others to do the same, and consciously working with others, in cadre whenever possible, to enact verifiable change. I go into every situation hoping to learn something new. I ask questions in order to listen and reflect on peoples answers, although the questions that I ask, I try to pose them in a way to help generate reflection and consideration on both our parts.

I think the factors that you describe that which discourage the generation of revolutionary consciousness in workers,.especially middle class workers, creates a sort of learned helplessness. Many of us are more or less constantly critical of ourselves and our ability to lead, others don't have these obstacles but their experience only instructed them to reproduce top-down bourgeois models of leadership. Both of these attitudes are absolutely crucial to overcome. But the way to overcome them is to always be in contact with, and taking direction from, the people who are most affected by struggle against the capitalists. Different traditions have different ways of approaching this problem. But if we are to build the objective basis for revolution, it will be built out of the experiences of the toiling classes. The conditions for revolutionary change will be a reflection of the workers and our experiences, so that we see ourselves in the revolution and the revolution in ourselves. Therefore the vanguard party is like a conduit and amplifier. The vanguard takes what exists, organizes it in a sustainable way, and then delivers that energy back to the working class. When the masses feel (read: directly experience) their own power in the party, then and only then is it the vanguard. But as individuals, this means putting peoples experiences first, ahead of any other considerations. This last sentence is the fundamental insight of Marxism, it is what transforms theory and reflection into practice. Imo this requires a kind of radical humility in the face of developing conditions. In this case, our self doubt can actually make us better organizers and leaders. The moment that I was forced to accept my own shortcomings in my organizing, those shortcomings became like strengths. But it took time and patience.

Rather than eliminating supposedly negative qualities in order to become a leader, I just kept trying things, asking for help, reflecting on and developing my own perspectives through writing and talking to other people. It is this process that makes me a leader, the moment I stop it, I totally rule out the possibility of being a part of the vanguard.