I'm not a Trotskyist, or really any -ist beyond a Marxist, but I do know people who were in ISO before it dissolved.
Part of it is that the online left has tendency to overrepresent ML lines that are either from
A former Trotskyist group that turned on all the other Trotskyists and so is fervently anti-Trotskyist now (WWP, and it's slightly better split PSL)
Remnants of old communist parties (that split just as badly as the Trotskyist parties did, and have the same problematic views of older Trotskyist groups like the people who run WSWS) which have historical baggage against Trotskyists (see Grover Furr twisting over every single thing published that somehow Trotsky was a Nazi collaborator which is in sync with some of the old british communist parties and the old CPUSA). This also gets discovered organically by people self radicalizing, because that literature and older Stalinist era anti-Trotskyist stuff will come up if you start googling and how are you a fledging leftist supposed to figure out if its accurate or not. For example I've seen people cite Trotsky the Traitor by Bittleman, which is a very old CPUSA publication written at the height of Stalinist influence and paranoia, and the author later repudiated all of it and was expelled from CPUSA for advocating reform.
Other non aligned left groups that mock Trotskyists for some of the more culty aspects of some of the sects (and this includes both ML and non ML groups), and turning the general anti Trotskyist rhetoric into speech where anything a group doesn't like immediately gets derided as Trotskyist (or Trotskyite as -ite just cuts deeper I guess. This also happens with things getting called Stalinist willy nilly), no matter the relation what was done had anything derivable from Trotsky or Trotskyist writers. That or they will take real issues with a group that identified as Trotskyist and then changed, see Max Shachtman or the Marcyites, and then apply that to all Trotskyists from all time when in reality Trotskyism has a lot of different positions from different groups, including ones that broke with Trotsky and a lot of other Trotskyists. The Marxist Humanists for example, who I think have a lot of good insights and are more of a position to take in another group than form a group around, are a split from Trotskyism and calling it Trotskyist doesn't make sense, and lumping it in with the cults makes even less.
Also, the Trotskyist tradition was always marginalized because of the conditions created by Stalinism, and so now it has a reputation of being marginal / sectarian / prone to splits etc. which is fair in some ways but it has nothing to do with anything inherent in the theoretical orientation itself and is entirely a product of the historical trajectory of socialist movements in the 20th century. and also overlooks some of the really important historical accomplishments of Trotskyists in the US like 1) the Minneapolis General Strike and 2) keeping the Marxist tradition alive in some sense at a time when it was all but dead in the U.S (International Socialist Review and later Haymarket books for example have proved indispensable for keeping socialist publishing going) . Abroad, Trotskyists due to opposition to the USSR found it very difficult to organize and were actively purged in certain countries but even then there were some large successes like in Bolivia in the 1950s or the Sri Lankan Lanka Sama Samaja Party which was instrumental in Sri Lanka getting its independence from Britain (though the party is today marginal, holding only 1 governorship).
Today, I don't think it makes much sense to identify as a Trotskyist in a super formal way, as it's a legacy of the USSR's birth and 20th century communist movement, and also steeped in a bunch of cold war rationality. This does not mean that Trotskyist authors or Trotsky himself do not have important insights, but as a political movement it does not make much sense to me to harp on it in any way. That's one reason why a lot of the remaining orgs seem culty, how else do you keep existing when there's no clear reason to, that's one reason ISO as one of the better orgs rightfully dissolved as it recognized its form of organization was not expedient anymore.
I also maintain that the 4th international logo looks like it's from an anime.
This all seems like a solid, comprehensible explanation, but didn't the ISO dissolve because it came out that the leadership had engaged in a systematic cover up of sexual assault by one of its own?
I mean kinda, I don't mean that the bad iso members who were covering up stuff joined, but a fair number of members did end up joining dsa instead of another Trotskyist group, which to me signals that they figured that the old stereotypical model of organizing wasn't working and they want to do something else. My own ydsa chapter we converted from an iso one, and it's flourishing now much better than it was before.
I am aware of a single instance of national leadership facing an assault accusation in 2017. While the process took longer than it should, the NPC member was removed, and DSA bylaws were changed at the following convention to make the process easier if it ever happened again. In single chapters the only one I'm aware of is Lawrence KA DSA, which was also resolved fairly quickl (by the chapter I think disbanding, not sure), and frankly also had a lot of other intra-chapter sectarian fighting stuff going on (including one member who had quit, joined PSL, and then been so obscene that they were kicked out of PSL, and some kansas city redguard chicanery).
Compare this to the ISO where the entire national leadership covered up an assault.
Oh okay then. I know that news of sexual assault coverups have really turned off my local YDSA chapter from working with the National org. This is a lot more context. Thanks for the good faith response
"Trotskyism" is only useful as a cynical way to alienate contemporary political dissent from any identification between attempts at creating proletarian states & anti-capitalist "theorizing" today
Yeah some groups definitely call everything they don't like Trotskyite, and it gets appropriated osmotically into other spaces (like Ben Norton using it as an insult in grayzone articles lol).
I'm not a Trotskyist, or really any -ist beyond a Marxist, but I do know people who were in ISO before it dissolved.
Part of it is that the online left has tendency to overrepresent ML lines that are either from
A former Trotskyist group that turned on all the other Trotskyists and so is fervently anti-Trotskyist now (WWP, and it's slightly better split PSL)
Remnants of old communist parties (that split just as badly as the Trotskyist parties did, and have the same problematic views of older Trotskyist groups like the people who run WSWS) which have historical baggage against Trotskyists (see Grover Furr twisting over every single thing published that somehow Trotsky was a Nazi collaborator which is in sync with some of the old british communist parties and the old CPUSA). This also gets discovered organically by people self radicalizing, because that literature and older Stalinist era anti-Trotskyist stuff will come up if you start googling and how are you a fledging leftist supposed to figure out if its accurate or not. For example I've seen people cite Trotsky the Traitor by Bittleman, which is a very old CPUSA publication written at the height of Stalinist influence and paranoia, and the author later repudiated all of it and was expelled from CPUSA for advocating reform.
Other non aligned left groups that mock Trotskyists for some of the more culty aspects of some of the sects (and this includes both ML and non ML groups), and turning the general anti Trotskyist rhetoric into speech where anything a group doesn't like immediately gets derided as Trotskyist (or Trotskyite as -ite just cuts deeper I guess. This also happens with things getting called Stalinist willy nilly), no matter the relation what was done had anything derivable from Trotsky or Trotskyist writers. That or they will take real issues with a group that identified as Trotskyist and then changed, see Max Shachtman or the Marcyites, and then apply that to all Trotskyists from all time when in reality Trotskyism has a lot of different positions from different groups, including ones that broke with Trotsky and a lot of other Trotskyists. The Marxist Humanists for example, who I think have a lot of good insights and are more of a position to take in another group than form a group around, are a split from Trotskyism and calling it Trotskyist doesn't make sense, and lumping it in with the cults makes even less.
Also, the Trotskyist tradition was always marginalized because of the conditions created by Stalinism, and so now it has a reputation of being marginal / sectarian / prone to splits etc. which is fair in some ways but it has nothing to do with anything inherent in the theoretical orientation itself and is entirely a product of the historical trajectory of socialist movements in the 20th century. and also overlooks some of the really important historical accomplishments of Trotskyists in the US like 1) the Minneapolis General Strike and 2) keeping the Marxist tradition alive in some sense at a time when it was all but dead in the U.S (International Socialist Review and later Haymarket books for example have proved indispensable for keeping socialist publishing going) . Abroad, Trotskyists due to opposition to the USSR found it very difficult to organize and were actively purged in certain countries but even then there were some large successes like in Bolivia in the 1950s or the Sri Lankan Lanka Sama Samaja Party which was instrumental in Sri Lanka getting its independence from Britain (though the party is today marginal, holding only 1 governorship).
Today, I don't think it makes much sense to identify as a Trotskyist in a super formal way, as it's a legacy of the USSR's birth and 20th century communist movement, and also steeped in a bunch of cold war rationality. This does not mean that Trotskyist authors or Trotsky himself do not have important insights, but as a political movement it does not make much sense to me to harp on it in any way. That's one reason why a lot of the remaining orgs seem culty, how else do you keep existing when there's no clear reason to, that's one reason ISO as one of the better orgs rightfully dissolved as it recognized its form of organization was not expedient anymore.
I also maintain that the 4th international logo looks like it's from an anime.
This all seems like a solid, comprehensible explanation, but didn't the ISO dissolve because it came out that the leadership had engaged in a systematic cover up of sexual assault by one of its own?
That was the straw that broke the camel's back, but there was talk of dissolving before that happened. Many of the ex ISO members have now joined DSA.
tailism the other way
Ok this part has to be a bit
I mean kinda, I don't mean that the bad iso members who were covering up stuff joined, but a fair number of members did end up joining dsa instead of another Trotskyist group, which to me signals that they figured that the old stereotypical model of organizing wasn't working and they want to do something else. My own ydsa chapter we converted from an iso one, and it's flourishing now much better than it was before.
I say this because DSA has a problem with covering up sexual harassment
I am aware of a single instance of national leadership facing an assault accusation in 2017. While the process took longer than it should, the NPC member was removed, and DSA bylaws were changed at the following convention to make the process easier if it ever happened again. In single chapters the only one I'm aware of is Lawrence KA DSA, which was also resolved fairly quickl (by the chapter I think disbanding, not sure), and frankly also had a lot of other intra-chapter sectarian fighting stuff going on (including one member who had quit, joined PSL, and then been so obscene that they were kicked out of PSL, and some kansas city redguard chicanery).
Compare this to the ISO where the entire national leadership covered up an assault.
Oh okay then. I know that news of sexual assault coverups have really turned off my local YDSA chapter from working with the National org. This is a lot more context. Thanks for the good faith response
"Trotskyism" is only useful as a cynical way to alienate contemporary political dissent from any identification between attempts at creating proletarian states & anti-capitalist "theorizing" today
Yeah some groups definitely call everything they don't like Trotskyite, and it gets appropriated osmotically into other spaces (like Ben Norton using it as an insult in grayzone articles lol).
i remember being called a "Kautskyite" by a much more staunch ML person on the sub and it made me do a double take.
I really think that's a better catch-all term hehe
Get back at them by saying that in fact Lenin was more of a Kautskyite than Kautsky (which is kinda true).
hehe, if r/CTH still existed, i would definitely try
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