It's frankly a counter-revolutionary ideology with the distinguishing feature that it is LEFT IN FORM BUT RIGHT IN ESSENCE and since even Trotskys day has been a useful ideology by the intelligence services to turn revolutionaries against Actually Existing Socialism (and by this I mean the socialism built my men and women on this planet in this lifetime not in the perfect, unblemished realm of our beautiful dreams)
I spent a bit of time answering the question "What would happen if Trotsky came to power" cos it was fun which you can find here https://hexbear.net/post/44077/comment/391013
TROTSKY WAS A TROTSKYIST UNTIL LENINISM HAD PROVEN ITSELF SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT AT WHICH POINT HE WAS A BOLSHEVIK-LENINIST
In 1913 Trotsky called for destruction of Leninism. We see here how pathetic it is later for the Trotskyites to refer to themselves as "Bolshevik-Leninists" only when it became clear after the revolution that Lenin was held in such high esteem of the Communist movement
In a word, at this moment, all that Leninism consists of is based on lies and falsifications, and bears in itself the seeds of its own decay.
Two policies may now be applied: to destroy ideologically and organically the fractional walls which still exist, and thus destroy the very foundations of Leninism, which is incompatible with the organisation of workers into a political party, but which can perfectly grow on the manure of splits; or, on the contrary, to conduct a fractional selection of anti- Leninists (Mensheviks or liquidators) by a complete liquidation of the divergences on tactics.
Lenin was to characterise Trotsky in 1914 as the following (please note his assessment of PERMANENT REVOLUTION):
Trotsky, however, possesses no ideological and political definiteness, for his patent for “non-factionalism”, as we shall soon see in greater detail, is merely a patent to flit freely to and fro, from one group to another.
Trotsky does not explain, nor does he understand, the historical significance of the ideological disagreements among the various Marxist trends and groups, although these disagreements run through the twenty years’ history of Social Democracy and concern the fundamental questions of the present day (as we shall show later on);
Trotsky fails to understand that the main specific features of group-division are nominal recognition of unity and actual disunity;
Under cover of “non-factionalism” Trotsky is championing the interests of a group abroad which particularly lacks definite principles, and has no basis in the working-class movement in Russia.
All that glitters is not gold. There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky’s phrases, but they are meaningless.
Trotsky was an ardent Iskrist in 1901—03, and Ryazanov described his role at the Congress of 1903 as “Lenin’s cudgel”. At the end of 1903, Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i. e., he deserted from the Iskrists to the Economists. He said that “between the old Iskra and the new lies a gulf”. In 1904—05, he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now co-operating with Martynov (the Economist), now proclaiming his absurdly Left “permanent revolution” theory. In 1906—07, he approached the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1907 he declared that he was in agreement with Rosa Luxemburg.
In the period of disintegration, after long “non-factional” vacillation, he again went to the right, and in August 1912, he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas.
Such types are characteristic of the flotsam of past historical formations, of the time when the mass, working-class movement in Russia was still dormant, and when every group had “ample room” in which to pose as a trend, group or faction, in short, as a “power”, negotiating amalgamation with others.
The younger generation of workers should know exactly whom they are dealing with, when individuals come before them with incredibly pretentious claims, unwilling absolutely to reckon with either the Party decisions, which since 1908 have defined and established our attitude towards liquidationism, or with the experience of the present-day working-class movement in Russia, which has actually brought about the unity of the majority on the basis of full recognition of the aforesaid decisions.
(Ibid)
In May 1917 Trotsky was to declare, only a few months away from the Russian Revolution
I cannot be called a Bolshevik... We must not be demanded to recognise Bolshevism
-Trotsky, May 1917
Wasn’t Trotsky’s left opposition and criticism of Stalin correct?
I'm not sure why the Left Opposition would be correct. They put their platform to the Bolshevik party in 1927 and it was re-soundly rejected.
In 1927 the bloc of Trotskyites and Zinovievites were to put their platform of the opposition to the Bolshevik party at the 15th party congress. 724,000 members voted for the Central Committee and 4000 voted for Trotskys Opposition. I'm not sure how correct this can be if you can put your platform to the most well read and battle hardened communists and have them reject it?
Further this congress was the ruination of Trotskys political career as a bolshevik
At the Fifteenth Party Conference, Trotsky and Zinoviev finally destroyed themselves politically. Trotsky made a lengthy speech and had to ask repeatedly for more time. He was interrupted constantly by ridicule and laughter. Zinoviev grovelled and begged forgiveness for his errors. He, too, was heckled and ridiculed. Both had been arrogant in power and now they were humiliated and defeated. It was left to Bukharin to make the final savage attack on them; the delegates, thirsting for blood, applauded loudly.
The main discussion at the conference was not on the opposition, but on Stalin’s new theory of “socialism in one country.” It bore the stamp of his mind and outlook, and it marked the beginning of the Stalinist era. The Russian revolutionary drive had been losing momentum since the end of the Civil War and the process had accelerated after Lenin’s death. A new policy was needed that would inspire the Russian people to undertake the superhuman task of carrying their country on from the October Revolution towards socialism and communism. That policy was “socialism in one country.” Its emotional appeal was overwhelming. It aroused a new fervor in the party, and pride in the revolu tion spread beyond the party ranks. It was a declaration of independence from the West and of faith in the capacity of their country to forge ahead, creating its own future alone and unsupported. Backward Russia, for so long treated as lagging on the outskirts of Western civilization, would show herself to be advanced and at the center of civilization in the coming millennium.
-Ian Grey, Stalin p.215
PERMANENT REVOLUTION IS GARBAGE AND WOULD HAVE LED TO THE IMMEDIATE COLLAPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
Please see here https://hexbear.net/post/44077/comment/391412
In Revolution Betrayed he tells the world there's no difference between Stalin and Hitler and that the Soviet Union won't last a day if the Nazis invaded - giving a huge morale boost to the Nazi army and demoralising Communists inside the Soviet Union
In 1939 when Nazi Germany was carving up Europe left right and centre he calls for the Independence of Ukraine. This is despite knowing the following facts: Hitler had called for taking Ukraine in MeinKampf for the oil fields and that the only people wanting independence were Ukrainian Nazis whilst the Communists were pro-Stalin.
The Ukrainian Nazis would go on to collaborate with Nazis, setup their own SS divisions and murder jews, socialists and communists as well as fight alongside Nazi Germany
Unable to distinguish between who is and isn't their enemy trot groups have found themselves in the ridiculous situation of supporting "self determination" for South Vietnam. In case anyone has forgotten Vietnam was going to reunify but when the US saw that South Vietnam was going to vote for communism they then invaded. "South Vietnam" was a hated US puppet state
It is a distinguishing feature of Trotskyism to give out fulsome gushing Left phrases whilst supporting imperialism (Left in form, right in essence). 'In the below articles you can see exactly what I mean.
On surveying the upcoming destruction of Libya these "socialist parties" denounce Gadaffi as a "dictator" and urge the people to rise up and build socialism.
This act by Gadaffi would've lifted the African continent from its knees into a formidable united economic power bloc which would've weakened imperialism and strengthened those on the most hyper-exploited continent.
The poorest people right now - if Gadaffi had succeeded - would be lifted off their knees for the first time in maybe 500 years.
We see here what I mean "left in form, right in essence". They demand the immediate building of socialism with no communist forces. They demand the overthrow of a man that led Libya under his leadership to be the country on the Highest Human Development Index on the continent of Africa.
If they cannot be bothered to properly survey the class forces of a conflict they should shut their mouths
The only other reason they consistently come out with this is because of infiltration by intelligence services - but seeing as Trotsky had oppposed the Soviet Union with batshit ideas like independent Ukraine in 1939 it's not hard to see where they get their ideological wavering and confusion from
I mean you get the idea - somehow they are always justifying supporting imperialism but with "left" phraseology. In the terms of Gadaffi they literally are like "Gadaffi sucks the people should push for revolution!" Not understanding the protests were astroturfed by NATO seeking to ruin the country. Either the Trotskyists are too lazy to study each conflict in depth before coming to a conclusion they ask their members and supporters to support or they are deliberately aiding imperiailism - either way they serve reaction.
Taking payment from the Hearst press
William Randolph Hearst is the name of a multi-millionaire who sought to help the Nazis in their psychological warfare against the Soviet Union. Hearst was a well-known US newspaper proprietor known as the ‘father’ of the so-called ‘yellow press’, i.e., the sensationalist press. William Hearst began his career as a newspaper editor in 1885 when his father, George Hearst, a millionaire mining industrialist, Senator and newspaper proprietor himself, put him in charge of the San Francisco Daily Examiner
This was also the start of the Hearst newspaper empire, an empire which strongly influenced the lives and thinking of North Americans. After his father died, William Hearst sold all the mining industry shares he inherited and began to invest capital in the world of journalism. His first purchase was the New York Morning Journal, a traditional newspaper which Hearst completely transformed into a sensationalist rag. He bought his stories at any price, and when there were no atrocities or crimes to report, it behoved his journalists and photographers to ‘arrange’ matters. It is this which in fact characterises the ‘yellow press’: lies and ‘arranged’ atrocities served up as truth.
These lies of Hearst’s made him a millionaire and a very important personage in the newspaper world. In 1935 he was one of the richest men in the world, with a fortune estimated at $200 million. After his purchase of the Morning Journal, Hearst went on to buy and establish daily and weekly newspapers throughout the US. In the 1940s, William Hearst owned 25 daily newspapers, 24 weekly newspapers, 12 radio stations, 2 world news services, one business providing news items for films, the Cosmopolitan film company, and a lot of others. In 1948 he bought one of the US’s first TV stations, BWAL – TV in Baltimore. Hearst’s newspapers sold 13 million copies a day and had close to 40 million readers. Almost a third of the adult population of the US were reading Hearst newspapers every day. Furthermore, many millions of people throughout the world received information from the Hearst press via his news services, films and a series of newspapers that were translated and published in large quantities all over the world. The figures quoted above demonstrate how the Hearst empire was able to influence American politics, and indeed world politics, over very many years – on r issues which included opposition to the US entering the Second World War on the side of the Soviet Union and support for the McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.
William Hearst’s outlook was ultra-conservative, nationalist and anti-communist. His politics were the politics of the extreme right. In 1934 he travelled to Germany, where he was received by Hitler as a guest and friend. After this trip, Hearst’s newspapers became even more reactionary, always carrying articles against socialism, against the Soviet Union and especially against Stalin. Hearst also tried to use his newspapers for overt Nazi propaganda purposes, publishing a series of articles by Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man. The protests of many readers, however, forced him to stop publishing such items and to withdraw them from circulation.
After his visit to Hitler, Hearst’s sensationalist newspapers were filled with ‘revelations’ about the terrible happenings in the Soviet Union – murders, genocide, slavery, luxury for the rulers and starvation for the people, all these were the big news items almost every day. The material was provided to Hearst by the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s political police. On the front pages of the newspapers there often appeared caricatures and falsified pictures of the Soviet Union, with Stalin portrayed as a murderer holding a dagger in his hand. We should not forget that these articles were read each day by 40 million people in the US and millions of others worldwide!
The above is to give you an exposition of the Hearst Press. Imagine tabloids talking about Princess Diana and UFOs today except it's the Soviet Union and about a disfigured frog boy only allowed to eat meat. A lot of the Hearst presses lies still exist today used to attack the Soviet Union (and now Russia)
Upon Trotskys exile the Hearst Press - led by an actual nazi - starts championing Trotsky as the "true communist". Why on earth does the Hearst press champion Trotsky as the true communist? Well anyone with half a brain can see Hearst press has seen a rivet in the communist movement and is now sticking a crow bar into it
“He received $10,000 for his first articles for the Daily Express, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, and other newspapers. Soon he would receive an advance of $7,000 from an American publisher for his autobiography, and for a series of articles entitled ‘The History of the Russian Revolution’ the Saturday Evening Post paid him $45,000.”
-Volkogonov’s Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, page 323.
This is in money from the 1920s and 30s, of course, so $62,000 in 1935 is about $1,170,000 in 2020.
The Failure to produce a revolution in a century
If we are to understand revolution as a science then Trotskyism has existed for a long time now and we see the failure of the Trotskyists to produce a revolution. The fact they end up tailing social-democrats means they have basically become Social democrats
Too long didn't read?
It's frankly a counter-revolutionary ideology with the distinguishing feature that it is LEFT IN FORM BUT RIGHT IN ESSENCE and since even Trotskys day has been a useful ideology by the intelligence services to turn revolutionaries against Actually Existing Socialism (and by this I mean the socialism built my men and women on this planet in this lifetime not in the perfect, unblemished realm of our beautiful dreams)
I spent a bit of time answering the question "What would happen if Trotsky came to power" cos it was fun which you can find here https://hexbear.net/post/44077/comment/391013
TROTSKY WAS A TROTSKYIST UNTIL LENINISM HAD PROVEN ITSELF SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT AT WHICH POINT HE WAS A BOLSHEVIK-LENINIST
In 1913 Trotsky called for destruction of Leninism. We see here how pathetic it is later for the Trotskyites to refer to themselves as "Bolshevik-Leninists" only when it became clear after the revolution that Lenin was held in such high esteem of the Communist movement
Trotsky, 1913, Letter to Chkeidze
Lenin was to characterise Trotsky in 1914 as the following (please note his assessment of PERMANENT REVOLUTION):
Lenin, Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries for Unity
Further
(Ibid)
In May 1917 Trotsky was to declare, only a few months away from the Russian Revolution
-Trotsky, May 1917
I'm not sure why the Left Opposition would be correct. They put their platform to the Bolshevik party in 1927 and it was re-soundly rejected.
In 1927 the bloc of Trotskyites and Zinovievites were to put their platform of the opposition to the Bolshevik party at the 15th party congress. 724,000 members voted for the Central Committee and 4000 voted for Trotskys Opposition. I'm not sure how correct this can be if you can put your platform to the most well read and battle hardened communists and have them reject it?
Further this congress was the ruination of Trotskys political career as a bolshevik
-Ian Grey, Stalin p.215
PERMANENT REVOLUTION IS GARBAGE AND WOULD HAVE LED TO THE IMMEDIATE COLLAPSE OF THE REVOLUTION
Please see here https://hexbear.net/post/44077/comment/391412
Socialism In One Country was a masterpiece of foreign policy. Don't believe me though watch this short video of anticommunist conservative historian Stephen Kotkin explain how Trotsky lied about Socialism In One Country
DEFEATISM IN WORLD WAR 2
In Revolution Betrayed he tells the world there's no difference between Stalin and Hitler and that the Soviet Union won't last a day if the Nazis invaded - giving a huge morale boost to the Nazi army and demoralising Communists inside the Soviet Union
In 1939 when Nazi Germany was carving up Europe left right and centre he calls for the Independence of Ukraine. This is despite knowing the following facts: Hitler had called for taking Ukraine in MeinKampf for the oil fields and that the only people wanting independence were Ukrainian Nazis whilst the Communists were pro-Stalin.
The Ukrainian Nazis would go on to collaborate with Nazis, setup their own SS divisions and murder jews, socialists and communists as well as fight alongside Nazi Germany
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/ukraine.htm
Trotskyists are not anti-imperialists
The 20th Century battle ground was between actually existing socialism and imperialism.
With the rollbacks of the 1990s this has now shifted between Imperialism and the Right of nations to Self-Determination
Unable to distinguish between who is and isn't their enemy trot groups have found themselves in the ridiculous situation of supporting "self determination" for South Vietnam. In case anyone has forgotten Vietnam was going to reunify but when the US saw that South Vietnam was going to vote for communism they then invaded. "South Vietnam" was a hated US puppet state
It is a distinguishing feature of Trotskyism to give out fulsome gushing Left phrases whilst supporting imperialism (Left in form, right in essence). 'In the below articles you can see exactly what I mean.
On surveying the upcoming destruction of Libya these "socialist parties" denounce Gadaffi as a "dictator" and urge the people to rise up and build socialism.
The problem? The forces rising up against Gadaffi are astroturfed cia/mi5 sponsored jihadi terrorists who are being armed and funded by the West not so the Libyans can build socialism. But so Libya can be destroyed. Now why did the West want to destroy Gadaffi and Libya? Because Gadaffi was going to use the stock piles of Libyan gold to create a pan-African currency backed by Libyan gold.
This act by Gadaffi would've lifted the African continent from its knees into a formidable united economic power bloc which would've weakened imperialism and strengthened those on the most hyper-exploited continent.
The poorest people right now - if Gadaffi had succeeded - would be lifted off their knees for the first time in maybe 500 years.
We see here what I mean "left in form, right in essence". They demand the immediate building of socialism with no communist forces. They demand the overthrow of a man that led Libya under his leadership to be the country on the Highest Human Development Index on the continent of Africa.
If they cannot be bothered to properly survey the class forces of a conflict they should shut their mouths
The only other reason they consistently come out with this is because of infiltration by intelligence services - but seeing as Trotsky had oppposed the Soviet Union with batshit ideas like independent Ukraine in 1939 it's not hard to see where they get their ideological wavering and confusion from
Socialist Worker released an article attacking PSL for supporting Gadaffi (and another party) as Socialist Worker provided the ideological cover for imperialism to destroy Libya
Socialist Worker Party were shitting on Gadaffi as NATO ruined Libya
WSWS are providing the ideological cover for the fascist and neoliberal revolutioanries in Belarus right now
I mean you get the idea - somehow they are always justifying supporting imperialism but with "left" phraseology. In the terms of Gadaffi they literally are like "Gadaffi sucks the people should push for revolution!" Not understanding the protests were astroturfed by NATO seeking to ruin the country. Either the Trotskyists are too lazy to study each conflict in depth before coming to a conclusion they ask their members and supporters to support or they are deliberately aiding imperiailism - either way they serve reaction.
Taking payment from the Hearst press
-http://mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html
The above is to give you an exposition of the Hearst Press. Imagine tabloids talking about Princess Diana and UFOs today except it's the Soviet Union and about a disfigured frog boy only allowed to eat meat. A lot of the Hearst presses lies still exist today used to attack the Soviet Union (and now Russia)
Upon Trotskys exile the Hearst Press - led by an actual nazi - starts championing Trotsky as the "true communist". Why on earth does the Hearst press champion Trotsky as the true communist? Well anyone with half a brain can see Hearst press has seen a rivet in the communist movement and is now sticking a crow bar into it
-Volkogonov’s Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, page 323.
This is in money from the 1920s and 30s, of course, so $62,000 in 1935 is about $1,170,000 in 2020.
The Failure to produce a revolution in a century
If we are to understand revolution as a science then Trotskyism has existed for a long time now and we see the failure of the Trotskyists to produce a revolution. The fact they end up tailing social-democrats means they have basically become Social democrats
So do you actually organize among the working class or do you just post "umm ackshually" for daddy Stalin?
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