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 meat and potatos critique of Trotsky deals primarily with his theory of permanent revolution, which would have been next to impossible for the nascent socialist states to enact without having the full hammer of imperialism come crashing down with the combined might of every single imperialist, reactionary nation and their chickenshit puppets all at once. For the fledgeling Soviet republic, this would've been disastrous. They barely defeated the white armies and the token expeditionary forces of the imperialists; imagine what a full-on counter-attack would've looked like. Not to mention, Russia, having only very recently suffered the losses of WW1 being forced into yet another massive global conflict to establish socialism would've been idiotic. Finally, even if carried out with success, socialism relies on the will of the people to have any measure of success; imposition of socialism through violence and coersion is just imperialism with red flags.
Trotsky carries somewhat of a martyr-like reputation in the west as he was an obvious political opponent of Stalin, and with that, the Trots like to pursue the narrative that Trotsky should've been the actual successor to lead the USSR, carrying on the legacy and will of Lenin, instead of Stalin, the villainous cur that imposed a cult of personality and awful dictatorship, thus betraying the revolution. This is an ahistorical take on the USSR's succession of leadership, as Stalin did not just walk into the politburo one day and declare himself king of the USSR. However, this does serve to distance the trots from the "evils" of the USSR, creating a pointless dichotomy of trots=good commies; while USSR and, coincidentally, every non-western communist movement=bad commies.
That makes a lot of sense. As with most things it is much more complex than it appears. Have you read anything he’s written and is it worth reading?
Make no mistake, Trotsky was still a great statesman of his own, was instrumental in building the socialist movement prior and up to the revolution, and despite everything he proved to be a capable and ruthless leader in the following civil war. With that said, I've not read much of his work, so I've got nothing to recomment off the top of my head. Check out Marxists.org for his collected works.
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.
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.
Not the slightest compromise with imperialism, either fascist or democratic! Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist! No “People’s Fronts”! The complete independence of the proletarian party as the vanguard of the toilers!
Again, not a great take. But I'd hesitate to say that he's allying with Fascists.
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
"Socialism in one country" gets distorted. From 1917 to 1949, the USSR was effectively the only country socialist country on earth. A policy of isolationism was necessary to survive and build socialism where it stood a chance. In my experience, Trotskyists argue that the USSR was on the wrong side of history from the minute Lenin died: refusing to join a popular front against fascism, agreeing to non-aggression with Germany (after being rebuffed by the West), and then (most bewilderingly) for joining a popular front against fascism while Nazis were waging a war of extermination. The USSR came out of the war stronger, and the second war of imperialists against one another led to successful revolutions worldwide.
I personally think Trotsky is pretty cool. He's a talented writer and a certified badass who helped win the Revolution. A historical materialist analysis of the revolution suggests that history wouldn't be that different if Stalin were replaced by someone else. Social movements and material conditions matter a lot more than individuals. So Stalin wasn't some "diabolus ex machina" that ruined an otherwise perfectly good communist revolution. A lot of Trotskyism in the West bears the imprint of liberal squeamishness about the brutal reality of (anti-)imperialism and building up productive forces. As others in the thread have mentioned, Trotskyist sects are prone to infiltration, splits, and being co-opted by global capital. I will still call them comrades though: it's not like we have enough power yet for these academic differences to have any real meaning.
EDIT: Not to do a gratuitous idpol, but looking worldwide, "Stalinist" MLs tend to be a lot less white for historical reasons that should be obvious. Several prominent neocons started out as Trotskyists. Something, something, Western-chauvinist narratives.
EDIT2: Damn, I forgot about Yugoslavia and Albania when I said the USSR was the only socialist country. So from 1917-1941, at any rate.
EDIT: Not to do a gratuitous idpol, but looking worldwide, “Stalinist” MLs tend to be a lot less white for historical reasons that should be obvious. Several prominent neocons started out as Trotskyists. Something, something, Western-chauvinist narratives.
That also has to do with Trotskyists getting executed/snuffed out in order for those parties to get the USSR's support in their struggle. A few countries which never got much USSR support like Bolivia and Sri Lanka had large influential Trotskyist movements.
Flipside, there was a large number of Trotskyists in Vietnam in the 1930s. However starting in 1945 when the war was over, they were hunted down by the French on one side, and the Viet Minh on the other.
here are some links to time indexes in cushvlogs where he talks about Trotsky
Gremlins 3: The Nude Batch | CushVlog 08.19.2020 | Chapo Trap House: Matt answers "what's Trotsky's whole deal?"
Tubalcain in the Membrane | CushVlog 08.25.20 | Chapo Trap House
download the transcripts someone scraped off YouTube captions, and you can grep through it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcidMarxism/comments/iymgq8/all_cushvlog_transcripts_so_far/
someone also put them all in a ~2000 page PDF:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcidMarxism/comments/kc56d9/the_book_of_bomb_searchable_cushvlogs_dictation/
The trots are (and more importantly, were) antisoviet. They call themselves communist, yet oppose existing communist regimes in the real world.
Trotsky > Stalin, my boy lost and probably would've been a better leader for the USSR, still I don't feel the need to call myself a Trotskyist, ML is fine
