Why do people here really not like Trotskyists? Is it just because of his beef with Stalin and not an actual criticism of his views? Do people really not think a global movement would be superior for the betterment of all people?
Edit: Thank you to everyone who provided context and history, y’all are a wealth of knowledge.
Taimur Rahman - Why I am not a Trotskyist.
TL:DR, it’s eurocentric, rejected the revolutionary potential of the peasantry in a way that was proven 100% wrong by history, and rejection of socialism in one country expects every country to stay in a state of paralysis rather than build their own socialism. It’s also nearly defined entirely by it’s opposition to AES states, so it’s had quite an overlap with the US imperial project in helping tank communist movements esp in latin america, and that rabbit hole goes really deep.
But he’s right? Communism isn’t built by 2 guys building all the Legos it’s everyone in the whole world building all the Legos at once, and building just 1 and getting destroyed by the capitalist hegemony didn’t work??
If you have your legos and somebody hasn’t gotten their legos yet, you can’t wait until they get their legos to start yours. You could wait, if there wasn’t the urgency presented by the global lego-stealing superpower, but since we have to run an extremely tight schedule here, the best move is to build your legos ASAP and then help others with theirs once you have the knowledge and resources provided by building your own. You can combine them into one big lego world later when the heat is off, and you can also combine them partially as is expedient.
There’s a reason the West was scared of “Domino theory” and not simultaneous worldwide socialist revolution.
Building just one didn’t work for the USSR, but with careful building practices, it has been going alright for China, Vietnam, and the DPRK, with varying degrees of alright
The USSR’s overthrow is not evidence that proletarian states / fortresses aren’t the best vehicle to proceed towards socialism. The fact that the west had to devote so many resources to defeat it and so many other socialist attempts, but are still failing at stopping it’s growth in other states, and consider AES the greatest threat, is a testament to it’s correctness.
Not to mention the fact that the USSR still uplifted hundreds of millions of people out of hunger and poverty, something that certainly wouldn’t have been possible had they followed trotsky’s advice of “acheving communism through external and constant warfare” rather than building up your industrial base.
Trotsky’s alternative was essentially to make permanent war on Europe, since he was dogmatic about adhering to marx’s wrong prediction that, capitalism can only break in it’s birthplaces. Lenin corrected this by showing that capitalism breaks at the weakest links in the chain, and the feudal -> socialist transition was far more common than capitalist -> socialist in the 20th century.
I suggest watching the video I linked above.
My stance was more anti this reductive meme than anti what you’re talking about here
Yeah I’m not an expert on the Trotsky-stalin split (still reading about it) but that meme doesn’t seem like a fair characterization of either side.
The meme is even more charitable than the reality.
He genuinely thought that unless Europe specifically has a revolution, no other country’s attempt will be successful, and will degenerate. He advocated for an expansionist invasion of Europe at a time after the Russian civil war when the USSR was at it’s weakest and most devastated. Everybody thought this was incredibly stupid, and that it’d be better to rebuild it’s industrial base instead of making war on europe.
Yeah but his position (from my limited analysis) was an incredibly dogmatic Marxist position, which despite being wrong wasn’t exactly some random crazy idea, especially without the benefit of hindsight. Sacrifice everything for the European revolution because it was more industrially advanced than Russia.
If the Soviet Union had immediately fallen or been crushed by the Nazis (as Trotsky later seemingly wanted to happen???) the idea might have more merit in retrospect. But that didn’t happen so he’s anti-vindicated. And the like 700k to 7k vote against Trotsky demonstrates that it wasn’t supported at the time either.
I’m familiar with a fair amount of Trotsky bullshit but I haven’t seen this one. Can you share a source?
I’m at work so don’t have Trotsky’s books with me, but I doubt he explicitly said as much, more that one might be drawn to that conclusion from his words and actions. It’s the impression I get when reading about the sabotage and disinformation that continued to happen even when it was clear a Nazi invasion was imminent.
I do have the Losurdo book, so here’s what I can find with a quick skim:
Trotsky in 1939:
Losurdo quotes Volkogonov (anti-Stalin historian):
Also quotes Goebbels’ diary talking about the Third Reich working with Trotskyist radio stations, although that was after Trotsky’s assassination.
I agree, his position was proven wrong both by hindsight, and common-sense at the time.
Yes, but the point is wrong doesn’t mean insane or stupid, and it doesn’t serve any of us to engage with ideas with this kind of reddit-tier irony-poisoned otherizing.
Like I sincerely hope self-described leftists can think in more complex ways than soyjak and chad, but over the last few months I’ve come to doubt that’s universally true on this site.
I don’t think many of us are engaging with Trotskyism in a shallow way in this post. We’re critiquing his Eurocentrism, wrong view of the peasantry being a reactionary class, and opposition to AES.
I 100% agree that “dunk culture” and thought-terminating terms aren’t helpful, and we should elaborate why we think something is wrong.
Like I don’t think you’re wrong, I guess my problem is portraying disagreement as stupidity or insanity like this kind of meme does. People have reasons for things, and it’s better to investigate and understand those reasons than instantly dismiss. It’s ingroup/outgroup construction rather than development of ideas and strategies.
Reality is complex and often tactics are wrong in some contexts and right in others. People are going to present similar ideas and even if they’re wrong it serves us better to be able to coherently critique them rather than call them stupid because a meme told us bad person thought such.
Your meme makes a good point, but I like to think of it as using pieces from all the Lego sets you currently own to make a super cool one.
How does it oppose AES? In another thread someone said that is something self-proclaimed Trotskyists do, but is that really something Trotskyism advocates for?
Trotsky himself considered the USSR a “degenerated workers state”, and spent a good amount of his life advocating and working for itts overthrow, notably with the western powers. Trot groups followed this pattern.
They also hilariously think that lenin’s testament meant that trotsky should’ve become king, not realizing that he lost that crucial vote to Stalin, and communists don’t appoint successors like monarchs.
That’s why nearly trot groups end up being leader/domination/sex cults.
You’ll get good answers on the history of trotskyism over on lemmygrad.
Also watch that video. It’s from a pakistani communist and former trot, who has extensive organizing history with trotskyist parties.
I think you’re conflating Trotskyism, thought based on the works of Trotsky, with Trots. Regardless of what Trotsky wrote and believed, Trots generally oppose AES and are generally defined by that and bringing up Stalin and Stalinists to bash at every opportunity, even when it doesn’t have anything to do with the topic at hand.
EDIT: Also I swear to god they fucking read What is to Be Done and come to the conclusion “We gotta start a newspaper in 2024!”
The printing press is a compelling new technology that will let us spread our ideas to the people!
That just sounds like being a lib with extra steps
But yeah they sound pretty bad from the general consensus.
this is an incredible read of the IMT in England
idk, Trots seem to follow Trotsky’s example pretty well from what I know of the former: https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/trotsky.htm
Evergreen meme.
Also
I’m guessing you meant to say permanent revolution instead of socialism in one country.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: