Looks like Socialist Alternative is going to try to make DSA form a workers party by having some of it's members join DSA.
Current DSA by-laws allow for chapters to expel members for being in Democratic Centralist organizations but its not automatic. It also seems like SAlt isn't telling their members to join en-masse, just a few to push for a new workers party at meetings.
My DSA chapter isn't happy about this but it seems like most apprehension seems to be from their experience with individual SAlt members, first and the rudeness of the tactic, second. But there seems to be little consideration of their goals.
That's all just in the US in the years 1956-1975, which were years of internation crisis and splits in ML parties after the death of Stalin and Khreuchev's denunciation of Stalin, which created a huge legitimacy crisis which caused an upsurge in factionalism. Many countries with a strong party were able to weather the storm, but the CPUSA was not and pro-Stalin, ML members like Harry Haywood were purged and a lot of these people got caught up in the second red scare. Those that remained were left to pick up the pieces with no single big party to really orient themselves around, so they formed up into a bunch of tiny groups.
I mean that's the point about state power backing and demcent, without it you split. Why do all the trotskyist groups split, a fragile 4th international with no power and active persecution.
I don't think a single country whose communist party was not in control of the state and suppressed splits has not had at least one severe split.
Not to move the goalpost, but I think there is something to be said about the different kinds of splits. I won't try to argue this here, but I think when people view Trotskyists as "splitters" they're mostly trying to say that Trots will split over very minor things and are being sectarian. The verify the truth of such a claim would require a pretty robust understanding of many Trotskyist splits across time and space.
I see a lot of ML party splits to have been pretty necessary, such as the split between the CP of Great Britan and the CP of Britan or the CPUSA and PCUSA but that's just because I have a much better understanding of the history behind those parties than I do the Trotskyist parties. Maybe the Trotskyist splits are principled as well and this is just inevitable when the party isn't wielding state power, as you put it, but I think this is where MLs at least are coming at least. I hope this doesn't come off as sectarian, I have no beef with any present-day trotskyist parties lol
Yeah idk, you have to go track all the reasons. I'm mainly familiar with the new communist splits and the us trotskyist splits, of which this is a decent graph of their splits, those some groups are also dead now/do not refer to themselves as trotskyist anymore.
Yeah I've seem that map before, it's pretty neat especially how it tries to give some detail on the nature of the splits. If you have any resources on Trotskyism in the US and their splits I'd be pretty interested.
I do have one on Bolivia, Bolivia's Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in The Andes, as Bolivian Trotskyists were actually very important to the left movement of the country for a pretty long time.
There's also a satire novel about Trotskyists during the fall of the USSR by Tariq Ali that is very funny if you know the people it's alluding to. It's called Redemption.
Haymarket books has a good three volume series on the history of US Trotskyism .
thank you :chavez-salute: