I live in the UK and nearly every older Communist you meet is a Trot and all the protests that I've been to that have had communists at them were mostly Trot orgs but online everyone just seems to shit on them for no clear reason. Am I missing something? Or is it just regular leftist infighting
Almost all of the M-L’s you see on the internet are radicalized online and not part of any sort of IRL group or politics. The knee-jerk reaction against trots is basically in-group/out-group identity signaling based on, at best, a meme-level understanding of theoretical differences.
Basically none of the criticism online, as you can see in this thread, is based on anything resembling Marxist analysis. Take, for example, the point below blaming trotskyists for failing to support “AES.” Like we would raise the point that like Cuba as it exists now is in a transitional state, which means the possibility of sliding back into capitalism, especially without a large workers’ state like the USSR to fill in the gaps of its economy. The other way forward, under this analysis, is to spread and deepen the revolution, reinvolving the working masses in an active role, deepening workers control of the economy and democratic planning, etc.
This is a dialectical and materialist analysis of the situation, but internet stalinists would characterize this perspective, in itself, as a failure to support actually existing socialism.
How do you feel about Trotskyist organizations aligning themselves with US foreign policy, both historically and recently?
I feel like you probably have some gotcha quote pulled up from like Tony Cliff or someone, but fundamentally we oppose capitalism and US imperialism on a working class basis.
The long storied history of Trotskyists making shit up is alive and well.
No ML opposes this statement. The type of shit MLs oppose is:
Also, I don't love Trotskyists taking US-aligned intelligence reports as fact:
I think that the working class of Korea should have full control of their economy and society and I do think the leadership in the DPRK as it stands has an interest in repressing this process. You can “defend” the state against imperialism by signaling your support online or whatever, but the health of the workers’ state, the involvement of the masses in the revolutionary tasks, is going to be the outcome determinative factor whether or not you want to acknowledge it.
I said nothing about "defending" the DPRK lol
Trotskyists routinely and uncritically push far-right and imperialist lines on US-enemy states because they are desperate for their own political line to be validated.
In the case of IMT's articles on the DPRK, they quote at-length unnamed sources from a far-right news publication with known connections to the US. The same news publication which has published hits such as "Kim Jong-Un Executes Wife for Doing Porn" and "North Korean Diplomat Executed on a Whim by Kim Jong-Un", both obviously false.
The history of Trotskyism is a history of taking L's because they refuse to study and learn from revolutionary struggle. They just want to rehash 1924 until we all burn to death.
Edit: Also, claiming the DPRK developed nukes to protect itself from their workers is deranged. The US military is stationed on their southern border. There is a better explanation lmao
And the DPRK is such a transparent, shining beacon of light for the workers of the world that there is no shortage of reliable information on the conditions and consciousness of the working class there.
You distilled Trotskyism perfectly right here: "we only trust the far-right and imperialists when it comes to the DPRK."
I actually said that “ the DPRK is such a transparent, shining beacon of light for the workers of the world that there is no shortage of reliable information on the conditions and consciousness of the working class there.”
By that I meant, sarcastically, that the DPRK has conditions for its workers that are less-than-exemplary and therefore it can’t hold itself out as an alternative to the status quo for the workers of the region. Same reason why China can’t hold itself out as an alternative to the workers of Hong Kong.
It doesn’t mean I support US imperialism in Hong Kong, or in Korea, but it’s not me who is failing the working class there, and the quality of that working class leadership, whose deficiencies you defend, will be what makes or breaks the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
You are talking around the fact that every single Trotskyist publication relies heavily on myth-making from the far-right and imperialists. There are definitely valid criticisms of the DPRK. They are just never provided by Trotskyists because their understanding of the country comes from South Korean tabloids.
And I have not said one word defending the DPRK thus far. What would I be defending them from?
If you want to claim that Kim Jong-Un sent secret service members to crush a popular uprising in 2017, and use that Chosun Ilbo article as proof (as IMT did), I would defend the DPRK from that obvious imperialist lie.
Since you really want to see a defense of the DPRK, here's one: the Workers Party of Korea and the Chinese Communist Party have done more for their working people than any Trotskyist party in history. No Trotskyist is interested in learning from that history.
Post your group’s publication and we can all compare.
So maybe Trots and other left anticommunists should shut the fuck up when they dont have reliable information instead of following the imperialist line and therefore earning the title of left anticommunist?
So maybe M-L’s and other vulgar Marxists should shut the fuck up when they dont have reliable information instead of constantly staking out positions on the right of the working class movement and abandoning proletarian internationalism in favor of one-dimensional “anti-imperialist” positions.
love to be internationalist and fighting for the proletariat by not taking anti-imperialist positions.
Proletarian internationalism is when you conceive of yourself as a member of an international working class (“the workingmen have no nation”), and “in the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries” “point[ing] out and bring[ing] to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.” Internationalism on a proletarian basis is how imperialism is actually opposed in substance and not just aesthetic.
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I think there's a real split (heh) amongst trotskyist positions here. Many Trotskyists would reject eh "Deformed Workers State" analysis, and take the Cliffite view that China/Cuba/USSR were "State Capitalist" and should not be critically supported at all, and the dominance of that view in the UK/Aus has coloured the Trotskyist position as a whole.
You’re not wrong about the Cliffite deviation, but you literally contradict yourself within your own two-sentence comment with the lazy addendum that “the dominance of that view in the UK/Aus has coloured the Trotskyist position as a whole.”
Perhaps I should clarify, I mean the "public" (here meaning "weird politics nerds") perception of the Trotskyist position is widely seen as a State Capitalist one. So when someone says they're a Trotskyist they assume the next words are basically "China/USSR/Vietnam/Cuba/Laos Bad and not Socialist" rather than "Maybe the Nomenklatura wasn't a super great move"
Funny enough, I tend to associate the "X country is good/bad" categorical thinking with the M-L's online who are Marxist in aesthetic, but don't possess the ability conceive of anything dialectically.
Nah