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.
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
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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 removed. 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.
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I'm familiar with a fair amount of Trotsky bullshit but I haven't seen this one. Can you share a source?
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I agree, his position was proven wrong both by hindsight, and common-sense at the time.
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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.
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