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.
I don't know much, but I know that after Lenin's death, Trotsky's left opposition pushed industrialisation, which Stalin opposed. Later the USSR adopted mass industrialisation (as we all know), and this may have weakened Trotsky's base.
I also know that Trotsky was a Menschevic and something of a socdem before the revolution, something he later admitted was a mistake.
As an ML, I personally have no issue with Trotsky pre-exile. Maybe even the purges were a bit much (I don't know enough about this tbh). My big gripe was him working with imperialists post exile, especially at the start of WW2.
I could be a disengenuous dick and mine Marxists.org for quotes from Lenin attacking Trotsky. Yes, they're there in his speeches and letters. The same can be said for Stalin. Revolution is difficult business, and imperfect people make mistakes.
Many of the purges did seem like personal vendetta or a power struggle, unless one believes that 90% of stalin’s and Lenin’s old comrades who formed the USSR were all agents of the west lol
deleted by creator
I love seeing alternative models of development like this that don't require ingratiating global capital.
People praise Deng's plan for development because it largely worked, but it has come at quite a cost. I always wonder what an alternative path could have looked like.