It seems like people mostly use trotskyist as a stand in for "anti-communist leftism" or "ultra," but what are the actual thoughts he contributed? Is there anything that is useful today and can be separated from anti-communism and the legacy of trots?
No newspaper memes please. I genuinely want to know.
(Ice pick memes are acceptable)
Edit: thanks for the info everyone. I'm proud of you all.
There was debate of whether Russia, being agrarian and not having many industrial proles, could have communism. Peasants were the biggest class. Some said it needed to develop from feudalism first. Trotsky was one of those who thought peasants were counterrevolutionary because their livelihood is tied up with private property and smallholdings. But he said that's ok we can have revolution anyway because the few Russian proles will unite with a European proletarian revolution. So Trotskyism is very internationalist, against Socialism in One Country.
That's interesting. It seems really antithetical to Mao's view on the peasantry as the lifeblood of a revolution.
Was he against socialism in one country as a matter of principle or rather because he was observing a historical context at the time? For instance, if Russia had a larger proletariat population, would his view be different? Obviously, there's no way of really knowing that but... Still.
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I wonder if Trotsky was thinking more about smallholder peasants - someone who owns just enough land to feed themselves + a small surplus, versus in China where it sounds like the people who worked the land tended to have to rent from landlords, idk.
Could be. Mao did observe "rich peasants" as a distinct anti-revolutionary class, so they might actually agree on that front.