So I know that trotskyites get a lot of heat from this community but I’ve been reading about trotsky and his opinions seem pretty good? He called himself a Bolshevik-Leninist which obviously isn’t great but the idea of international socialism seems better, IMO, that national or Stalinist type socialism. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here though so somebody tell me why I’m wrong.
The majority of this site leans ML / Dengist, so the major criticism of them are about his theory of permanent revolution and his opposition to the "degenarated workers state" of the USSR under Stalin. Also I've seen mentions of him allying with fascists against the USSR, I don't know if that's true. Also more broadly the foreign policy of Trotskyist organizations in the later years has earned many criticisms.
Anarchists generally seem to oppose him for being a Bolshevist and seizing state power, especially "betraying" the black army and slaughtering the Kronstadt uprising.
To leftcoms he (like everyone) is obviously an opportunist and didn't understand Marx.
And most importantly, it's a meme hating on Trots because everything they seem to do is splitting their parties and hating each other.
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There's no credible historical evidence that Trotsky (a Ukrainian Jew) allied himself with fascists against the USSR. If he really did collaborate with the Third Reich, there would be mountains of documented evidence of it within the captured Nazi archives. But in the decades of historians studying the Imperial Japanese, Nazi German, and Soviet archives there is nothing that credibly suggests that either Trotsky was collaborating with Fascists, or that there was a vast Trotskyist against Stalin, which justified the purges.
You also frequently see criticisms of Trotyskyist orgs used to criticize the man himself, as though he's responsibly for all that's done in his name long after death. That's absurd, particularly because there's plenty of purportedly "Marxist" parties which have supported Capitalism and Imperialism , but that shouldn't have any relevance to one's opinion of Marx himself.
Thanks, as I said, I didn't know the credibility.
I've gone back and looked where I saw this mentioned, and it was this comment: https://hexbear.net/post/54641/comment/525484 (the one by JoeySteel, for some reason I can't link directly to it). Basically Trotsky argued for an independent Ukraine in 1939, when Ukranian fascists also wanted independence, that's the accusation.
Thanks for the info, sorry for misrepresenting your point, it's only that many ML's (like Grover Furr) really do accuse Trotsky of working directly with Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan.
I just read Trotsky's article on Ukraine, and while his advocacy for a "A united, free and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine" is hardly a great take in the global context at the time, it's still a far cry from allying himself with Fascists. As he says in the article, he would never support the independence of Ukraine if it was done to establish a Bourgeois Democratic republic, much less a Fascist one.
Again, not a great take. But I'd hesitate to say that he's allying with Fascists.
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It sounds like it has less to do with the theory but the people who identify with it? Also that there’s a little bit in there for everybody to hate lol
factor in that capital reaction (Hearst, the CIA, etc.) pushed Trotsky hard among the western left as a wedge against the USSR