Named after Iskra, but not a single book by Lenin, 3 by Trotksy and even a couple anarchists. This is the trend among university "communists" over here. If a revolution was successful, it must've not been a real revolution, except for the aesthetics.
There's something of a conspiracy theory that US government started to specifically promote Trotskyism after the 1950's to preemptively defang the growing popularity of communism
It's not a conspiracy, the U.S. government circulated documents detailing their plans and support for Trotskyist parties.
Which parties and which documents? I remember figures like Shachtman and Burnham beeing reactionary.
I don't have them on hand, my apologies. I just remember reading pictures of the pamphlets.
yes, right after stalin passed away and khrushchov secret speech, the worst part is that it worked. communists parties all around enrolled in unproductive debates about stalin vs trotsky and the possibility of a better and idyllic socialism under trotsky ideas, oppose to the "stalinist war socialism"
Do you remember the name of their newspaper? Selling books from Trotsky and anarchist stuff is weird. Thats a contradiction and shows the theoretical confusion of that group
They didn't seem to have any other name, but it was some university kid thing. They love to pick random names and sell books (at gigantic prices) that are vaguely "left."
This sounds more like hucksters pretending to be Marxists and trying to oversell books. I'm really not a fan of books that are available for free on the internet being sold way too high. If they are translations, no problem. But offering "What is to be done" for 30€, as an example, would be absolutely usurious.
That's exactly the trend with the "lefty" book publishers over here, (badly) translated What is to be done, with lengthy prefaces and postfaces that say that "communism never works," costing R$ 60 (which is the standard price for brand new books).
The other day I read a whole book about the "economic history of " that spent half of the text dissing on Stalin, who probably never heard of the region, then the rest of the book citing (oddly recent) editions of Trotsky books, all while finding creative new ways to paraphrase "capitalism is a global system" to fill space. It never actually got to economics or that much history.
Written by an emeritus professor, and felt like it was trying to make communism sound boring intentionally.
I agree. I also observed that liberals will cite anything and everything to make their anti-communism valid. Starting with low level bullshit like, that Marx said he is not a marxist (Marxism debunked, you see), Luxemburg saying she doesnt like how the october revolution happened (Lenin debunked!), Trotsky disagreeing with the Soviet Union the way it wents (Soviet Union debunked) and so on. Also dont forget: Debunking Trotsky because of Kronstadt and Luxemburg is bad, because Thälmann wrote so. Sino-Soviet Split: China and Soviet Union debunked again.
Looking into the history of marxism, it is quite easy to find a ton of writings, letters and discussions. But, as an example, looking into the collected works of Lenin and making notes where Lenin disagreed with someone, is not how history as a science works. Taking Luxemburg and Lenin: She had critique, yes, but she supported the october revolution and wrote important books for marxist movement. But the most time you'll hear how they cherrypick something and ignore the rest.
They approach history the way a Catholic layperson approaches the theology, by taking every single (out of context) utterance in the text that agrees with their word as unquestionable Word of God.
If Luxemburg didn't like aspects of the October Revolution that obviously means it was bad, because they're not allowed to build critical opinions of their own. Same for Trots and other ultras.
