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.

A Marxist-materialist answer to a moral thought‑experiment

This trolley-style dilemma is a useful provocation because it forces us to confront two connected questions: (a) the ethics of individual violence against a tyrant, and (b) the political meaning of such an act in the context of class struggle. The Socialist Equality Party answers both questions from the standpoint of historical materialism: moral judgements must be subordinated to an analysis of social forces, objective consequences and the interests of the international proletariat.

The object of the action: who is “Stalin” in historical-materialist terms?

From the perspective of classical Marxism and Trotsky’s analysis, Joseph Stalin is not merely an evil individual; he was the pivotal representative and chief architect of a bureaucratic caste that usurped power from the working class, destroyed the Bolshevik party, executed and exiled revolutionaries, and forged the ideological basis for “socialism in one country” — a theory Trotsky showed to be a revisionist and reactionary departure from proletarian internationalism (see Trotsky’s critique of “socialism in one country” and his later account of the degeneration of the USSR in The Revolution Betrayed). The crimes of Stalin flowed from social and political conditions — the isolation of the Soviet state, Russia’s backwardness and the defeats of the European working class — and from the growth of a bureaucracy with its own material interests and privileges.

Therefore, “killing Stalin” cannot be treated as an abstract moral token that magically resolves the social form he embodied. The bureaucracy is a social formation supported by institutions, material privileges and layers of society that will seek to reproduce itself even if individual leaders are removed (Trotsky’s analysis of the bureaucracy’s social base and its role).

The human question: immediate consequences and the defense of humanity

If the hypothetical choice is literally between: (A) allowing a train to kill 8 billion proletarians, or (B) pulling a lever that results in Stalin’s death and thereby averts the deaths of humanity, a Marxist materialism places the historical interests of the working class and the preservation of human life above any abstract sanctity of an individual — even a monster. From this simple consequentialist register, preventing the mass slaughter is imperative.

But the question cannot end there. If the act of pulling the lever merely assassinates one man while leaving intact the social conditions, privileges and apparatus of the bureaucracy that produced him, the deeper danger remains: the social forces that produced Stalin will continue to exist and can reproduce counterrevolutionary outcomes. Trotsky warned repeatedly that individual purges or the removal of leaders do not dissolve the bureaucratic social formation; political revolution by the working class is required to abolish its material basis and privileges (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed; and related WSWS analyses).

Political method: what a revolutionary perspective requires

Immediate defence of the masses: if the only practicable act is to pull the lever and thereby save 8 billion lives, a revolutionary socialist would act to defend the proletariat. The defence of humanity and of working-class life is a material necessity that overrides abstract prohibitions on violence toward a tyrant.

Strategic clarity: we must not conflate individual tyrannicide with the political tasks of the proletariat. The decisive aim is not the personal elimination of a leader but the overthrow of the bureaucracy’s social and institutional power — through a political revolution that re-establishes soviet democracy and mobilizes the international working class. Trotsky insisted that the fate of the USSR could not be resolved by assassination alone; only the working class organized as an independent political force could reassert democratic control and prevent capitalist restoration (Trotsky’s programmatic warnings and demands).

Organisation and independence: the working class must develop its own political independence and revolutionary leadership, not rely on individual “great men” or secretive acts. The SEP’s program stresses building international, rank‑and‑file organisation to overthrow bureaucratic and capitalist rule — the permanent solution to the kind of catastrophe symbolised by your scenario.

En bil (a car, common)
En mand (a man, c)
En kvinde (a woman, c)
En hund (dog)
En kat (cat)
En hest (horse)
En svamp (fungus)
En flaske (bottle)
En lampe (lamp)
En stol (chair)

Et hus (a house, neuter)
Et bord (a table, n)
Et barn (a child, n)
Et træ (tree)