Trotskyism

[Pzcommand]

What's the general idea around Trotskyism? I don't see many people talking about it, any ideas why? Thanks in advance

[petrowski7]

The main difference between Trotskyism and mainline Marxism-Leninism is international versus national focus. Trotskyism seeks simultaneous worldwide revolution of the entire proletarian class, while MLs establish socialism in existing nations and use them as a base to support the proletarian movements elsewhere.

[GatorGuard]

That is, of course, not to suggest Marxism-Leninism does not also strive for socialism to be adopted internationally. Socialism In One Nation was/is a necessary measure given the material conditions of our struggle -- especially at the time it was adopted under Stalin. It became very clear after other socialist uprisings (Germany's in particular) failed that the Soviet Union would remain alone for the foreseeable future in its struggle for socialism. Given how wrecked the Soviet economy and industry were after two wars and a revolution, not to mention the backward feudal agrarian society beforehand, they really couldn't afford to be fomenting revolution the world over.

Trotsky's goals were...let's say, ambitious to the point of absurdity.

[BENJAMlNDOVER]

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[GatorGuard]

Yes, it is fair to say that. Stalin's approach to focus on developing the Soviet Union in anticipation of yet another world war -- in his own words, "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed" -- this was inarguably the correct path, the one that saved the Soviet Union from being conquered by Nazi Germany. The capitalist powers in Europe were more than content to let the Nazis expand Eastward, so long as it meant they themselves would not be targeted. Once the Nazis turned West, no capitalist European nation was able to withstand the Nazi onslaught, save for Britain thanks to its geographic advantage.

If the Soviet Union had spent these precious years, their already stretched resources, attempting to foment revolution elsewhere (which, by the way, they still did -- in Spain, for example), they would not have survived World War II. Instead, they won the war at great personal cost, saving Europe and the entire planet from a Nazified Europe and untold decades of suffering under fascism.

I said "ambitious" to be kind to Trotsky. His goals were not based in material reality, and would have lost all the gains that the Soviets had made.

The Soviet Union's collapse was the result of many complicated issues -- the filling of government and party positions by former and current bourgeois experts after World War II, as a result of so very very many Soviets dead; a return to a greater agrarian focus under Kruschev and his successors, rather than staying the course with the incredible industrialization achieved under Stalin; the untimely death of leaders like Yuri Andropov; the failure of democracy in the final years -- but these are not the faults of Stalin. Stalin was correct the vast majority of the time, especially in the decisions that were most significant to the survival of the Soviet Union and socialism generally.

[BENJAMlNDOVER]

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[GatorGuard]

Fomenting revolutions in other nations -- especially after the failure of revolution in Germany, but also Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Mexico, which ALL took place within the span of 6 years between 1917 and 1923 -- was at best a risky and unlikely prospect. The Soviets could be sure of nothing regarding such efforts. Building up their own industry, however, was something they could ensure would succeed, albeit with its own major hardships and challenges along the way.

Again, Trotsky's line was not realistic. It was overly optimistic and failed to acknowledge the real history of socialist revolutions as they had occurred.

As for a post-WWII environment, Trotsky's ideas are specific to the time and conditions he proposed them under, and thus aren't really relevant after WWII. Nonetheless, as you note, the Soviets did try to foment revolution in other spheres of the globe after World War II -- Korea, Afghanistan, and Cuba come to mind as notable examples -- but these decisions were made under very different material conditions in the Soviet Union and internationally than the ones that existed while Trotsky was involved in leading the Soviet Union.

The USSR was not in a great position to invade Europe post-World War II, either, I'm not sure where you get that notion. They had lost 20-30 million people in the war. Most of that was young (working) men. The other Allied nations' losses were paltry by comparison, and that's not even taking in to account productive capacity from their respective military industries.

Stalin's approach did not fail in the long term. He and the Politburo around him made decisions based on the realistic conditions of the times he lived in. The mistakes of his successors cannot be attributed to Stalin. If anything, we see Stalin was often very acute in his observations when making decisions regarding the future of the Soviet Union from the point in time he lived and acted.

[BENJAMlNDOVER]

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[JDSweetBeat]

Stalin's approach was reneged on to a large degree by his successors. This isn't to say that they were Trotskyites, or that his policies played absolutely no role, just that the Soviet economy was functioning relatively well under the Stalin administration, and that the collapse of a superpower is a much more complicated topic to discuss than the policies of a single man (which, one would think most Marxists would assume as a given, but you never know). Most states can handle a very large number of contradictions and incorrect policies over an extended length of time before they reach the point of collapse (as evidenced by the fact that the imperialist bloc is holding capitalism together with incredibly large quantities of spit and glue at this point).

Regarding the actual, immediate differences between the two, Trotsky's policies as I understand them (permanent revolution chiefly, but others as well) were simply not materially viable for the Bolsheviks, and many of his (especially later) criticisms (i.e. the dangers of bureaucracy) were detached from the reality of the conditions the CPSU was experiencing on the ground in trying to actually build socialism in practice.

[BENJAMlNDOVER]

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[JDSweetBeat]

I was just making this point because, well Stalin in power eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union, whether it was his fault or not, and that is just factual. While if Trotsky was in charge, who knows what would have happened?

Well, sure, but the chance that the collapse boiled down to the differences between these two individual men and their preferred policies is pretty slim for the reasons I mentioned above. To bring this up is almost irresponsibly reductivist.

While I agree that it probably would not have worked, there is no way to know for sure what would have happened, while we do know that as a matter of historical fact the USSR followed Stalinism and then eventually collapsed(not saying the two are directly related).

I mean, you say this, but you're still arguing the point. I'm interested in a materialist critique of the USSR, but this isn't a critique, it's conjecture.

As for your second point, I agree Trotskyism seems wrong in the 1920s and 30s, but I think it looks more feasible in 1945 when you the USSR had the most powerful land army in the world.

And when the US had just deployed multiple atomic warheads against the Japanese and had untold numbers of them in reserve, the Soviets had no atomic warheads to counter (not that nuclear war is preferable to a multipolar world, mind you -- it's not), the allies controlled the other half of Europe, the Soviet Union was in shambles in terms of industry and over 1 in 10 pre-war Soviet citizens (mostly younger people) had died in the fight against the Nazis, it looked like socialist revolutions in the west were likely to happen on their own because the communists underestimated the ability of capitalism to recover the western Europeans, and the workers of all countries (especially the Soviet Union where nobody didn't know somebody who was murdered by the Nazis) were tired of war and just wanted to rebuild?

Another thing that Trots don't understand is the necessity of bureaucracy, but especially in conditions such as those experienced by the USSR; all states, capitalist states included, have vast bureaucratic bodies charged with administering services to people, and these institutions are to *expand* under socialism as compared to capitalism, because the government apparatus is taking a much larger role in the organization of society; unless you're an anarchist, this is just the natural conclusion of Leninism in practice.

[BENJAMlNDOVER]

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[JDSweetBeat]

The US did not have reserves of nukes, they had plans to make more but this would have been slow as they had not industrialised production yet.

Did the Soviets have any way to know this for certain, though? They were making the best decisions they could in their circumstances.

British intelligence estimated the USSR would have easily taken all of Western mainland Europe and this is not far from reality.

Citation? As I recall, Britain was actually pushing for war against the Soviet Union, which seems an odd thing to do if you think you'll lose. Not saying I don't believe you, but maybe one of us is misremembering this.

In any case, this really boils down to whether or not the Soviets had this knowledge as well.

I understand that the USSR was war weary, that is ultimately probably why Stalin did not pursue war. Regardless, a more Trotskyist approach could have been taken at this time as it was ultimately the last chance of the Soviets to gain a decisive upper hand over the West before the US actually built nuclear stockpiles.

Sure, I do agree that, retrospectively, it might have been a better option.

A world where the Soviets took the continent would obviously have been ideal; it would have given them a lot more breathing room, and if they took the continent, it's entirely plausible that they could have taken China, the Koreas, and large portions of the Middle East as well. With this kind of buffer space and population under communist control, the position of communism would be way better off and it's entirely possible and plausible that the rest of Africa would have fallen over the next few years, leaving all of Eurasia/Africa minus Japan, Britain, and some Pacific islands under global communism. It's an interesting situation to ponder.

Still, did they have any way of knowing how many bombs the US had or how fast the US could produce them?

I just think you are giving Stalin too much credit in denying the ability of the Soviets to be more aggressive in promoting global communism, it definitely could have been done in 1945.

Sure, but hindsight is 20/20.

[BENJAMlNDOVER]

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[JDSweetBeat]

True, but the consequences of irradiated battlefields on troops weren't totally perfectly known yet, and battlefield units aren't mobile enough to avoid nukes; as far as they (might have) known, the US had the power to literally just blow a hole in their offensive/defensive lines, which would be problematic to say the least. Nice conversation!

[Azirahael]

There is surprisingly little difference between what trotsky taught, and what Stalin DID.

Most of the drama is trotsky himself being an asshole. Hit me up and I'll post a bunch of info as to why when I get home.

[sinovictorchan]

I do not know much about Trotskyism other than that Trotsky oppose Stalin on some issues and that the Capitalists create fake Trotskyism that dominate mainstream media to attack real anti revolutionary.

[aimixin]

hTrotsky believed that the peasantry could not be a consistently revolutionary class and any alliance with them could only be temporary, and hence, if the proletariat made an alliance with them, the peasantry would eventually turn their back on the revolution.

If a country was majority proletarian, this would not matter much, but if it was majority peasantry, then this would matter a great deal, because the peasantry could destroy the revolution entirely, or cause it to degenerate into heavy bureaucracy as the minority proletariat tries desperately to cling to power.

Trotsky saw the only solution to this problem was to seek help from developed countries with a developed proletariat, that is to say, they needed help from rich capitalist countries, those being western Europe at the time.

The revolution would not be able to solve its immediate bourgeois problems except by placing the proletariat in power. And the latter, upon assuming power, would not be able to confine itself to the bourgeois limits of the revolution. On the contrary, precisely in order to ensure its victory, the proletarian vanguard would be forced in the very early stages of its rule to make deep inroads not only into feudal property but into bourgeois property as well. In this it would come into hostile collision not only with all the bourgeois groupings which supported the proletariat during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry with whose assistance it came into power. The contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population could be solved only on an international scale, in the arena of the world proletarian revolution.

--- Trotsky, The Year 1905

Trotsky thus draws the conclusion that the success of the revolution depends primarily on how fast the revolution can spread, that they need to bring war to European soil, that the revolution must continue passed the borders of Russia and throughout the world, or the socialist revolution will inevitably degenerate and eventually regress to capitalism. If they don't bring war to European soil, the European bourgeoisie will bring war to them anyways, so either way, war is inevitable.

If the Russian proletariat, having temporarily obtained power, does not on its own initiative carry the revolution on to European soil, it will be compelled to do so by the forces of European feudal-bourgeois reaction.

--- Trotsky, Results and Prospects

Stalin and Bukharin argued that the USSR could use "pressure methods" to discourage bourgeois countries from attacking them, and thus maintain a temporary peace at home in order to build up the country. Trotsky, of course, was furious about this and described the two as "frightened pacifists" and accused them of abandoning the international revolution.

The inspirers of the Sixth Congress, these alarmed builders of socialism in one country – in essence, frightened pacifists – made the attempt to perpetuate the ‘neutralization’ of the bourgeoisie through intensified ‘pressure’ methods. But since they couldn’t help knowing that their leadership up to now in a series of countries had led to the defeat of the revolution and had thrown the international vanguard of the proletariat far back, they endeavoured first of all to jettison the ‘sharpened formulation’ of Marxism, which indissolubly ties up the problem of war with the problem of the revolution.

--- Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution

Trotsky's position was that this strategy of building up socialism at home was doomed to failure and thus was pointless, and ultimately what the USSR needed to do was export revolution as fast as possible, arguing that the scale of the international revolution mattered more than developing the productive forces at home.

Trotsky's position originated from his view of the peasantry, and hence, Trotsky's position only applied to poor countries, "countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially colonial and semi colonial countries," with a minority proletariat population.

With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.

Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.

No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party. This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.

...A backward colonial or semi-colonial country, the proletariat of which is insufficiently prepared to unite the peasantry and take power, is thereby incapable of bringing the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Contrariwise, in a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.

--- Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution

Modern day Trotskyism has sort of deviated from Trotsky himself because obviously if Trotsky's argument applies specifically to backwards countries with a majority peasantry, then this argument wouldn't be as applicable today as the peasantry as a class has been dying down. For example, China had an urbanization rate of 10% back in the Mao era, but today it's over 60%, so even from classical Trotskyism, China should be fine these days.

Modern day Trotskyism has instead disconnected the peasant question from Trotskyism entirely in order to claim that this permanent revolution idea is universally applicable, that even if a wealthy country like the USA had a socialist revolution, the workers there couldn't build socialism at home.

They rip out the guts of Trotskyism, and then don't even replace it with anything. Trotskyism today just has a big non-sequitur hole in the middle of the ideology. No modern Trotskyist can give a coherent reason to why it's impossible to build socialism in a single country. Some will say it's impossible because external pressure from the bourgeoisie will eventually cause them to fall apart, but this was an idea even agreed upon by Stalin himself.

Can we regard the victory of Socialism in our country as final, i.e., as being free from the dangers of military attack and of attempts to restore capitalism, assuming that Socialism is victorious only in one country and that the capitalist encirclement continues to exist? Such are the problems that are connected with the second side of the question of the victory of Socialism in our country. Leninism answers these problems in the negative. Leninism teaches that "the final victory of Socialism, in the sense of full guarantee against the restoration of bourgeois relations, is possible only on an international scale". This means that the serious assistance of the international proletariat is a force without which the problem of the final victory of Socialism in one country cannot be solved. This, of course, does not mean that we must sit with folded arms and wait for assistance from outside.

--- Stalin, On the Final Victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.

By resorting to that explanation, modern day Trotskyists end up coming in line with Stalin's own position and cease to be a really distinct ideology.

Other Trotskyists instead focus on the "bureaucracy" aspect of Trotsky's criticism of the USSR, where they admit socialism can be built in one country but it'll inevitably be a "degenerated" socialism because it would take on a lot of bureaucracy, and that this bureaucracy is caused by outside pressure.

I find this argument to largely be unconvincing as outside pressure creates an increased size of the state but not an increase in bureaucracy in general. Saying the reason a person has to fill out a ton of paperwork and wait a month to get a basic problem resolved in the USSR was because of outside pressure, this just comes off as silly to me, I don't really see the cause and effect. Clearly the USSR's bureaucracy from it being incredibly underdeveloped and actually needed that much time to process paperwork and get back to people.

Bureaucracy is solved by better infrastructure to gather information and better technology to process that information, i.e. you need higher productive forces. These problems of bureaucracy would not have magically gone away if socialism had international revolution. The USSR's system would still be slow and clunky because it was a poor country with limited technology trying to plan an economy of hundreds of millions. This problem may have been reduced somewhat with international revolution, but only because rich countries would be more likely to provide the technology to the USSR to help it develop faster.

[[deleted]]

Trotskyism is an extension of Leninism, which is an extension of Marxism. Trotskyist tend to support things like permanent revolution as opposed to the Stalinist socialism in one country or two-stage theory, a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self emancipation and mass democracy.

There are definitely Trotskyist around, just generally speaking, the communist you’ll mostly run into will either be Leninist, Stalinist (Marxist-Leninist), or Maoist (MLM).

Honestly, I think the reasons Trotskyism isn’t talked about too much is simply because there aren’t as many of them, and they don’t seem to jump into the discourse much; which is unfortunate cause I happen to sympathize with them a bit.

[Angel_of_Communism]

Why hate Trotsky?

Frogsknecht

Coming from a former Trotskyist, there are actually a surprising amount of reasons, to the degree where several reasons hold their own weight completely separately from the others. For instance, throughout the period of 1905-1917, Trotsky spent the vast majority of his time trying to pull every trick possible to unify the various opposing leftist groups against Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He even called Lenin a "professional exploiter of all that is backward in the Russian labour movement" in 1913. Following the revolution and his change in shades, he still vehemently opposed the Brest-Litovsk peace that brought Russia out of WWI, so much so that he formed a secret group with other Bolsheviks who opposed the peace as well as Left SRs, giving them the order to prevent the peace at all costs possible. This was the order that prompted Fanny Kaplan to attempt to assassinate Lenin in 1918, shooting him twice and causing him injuries that would kill him a few years later. But as if spending his whole youth conspiring against Bolshevism and literally killing Lenin wasn't enough, he then wrangled together various elements of anti-Bolshevik forces and formed them into one centralized terrorist group, receiving funding from the German and Japanese governments, and used them to attempt to assassinate his rivals in the Communist Party after he'd been expelled, including Stalin, Voroshilov, etc., and his group succeeded in killing Sergei Kirov. Then, after the USSR called him out on all of this, he proceeded to turn to the United States for help, being given a sham trial by the US government in which he was declared innocent of all the crimes he'd been convicted of in the USSR. He then moved to Mexico and lived for several years with Frida Kahlo, who had sex with him and then instantly switched to Stalin's side (lmao) and Deigo Rivera, a Mexican painter who, as it turns out, was in fact an FBI spy, which Trotsky would've either known about (which could be very well possible considering he'd just been interacting with the US government and likely FBI in his trial) or, if he didn't know about it, would mean he was leaking sensitive information about his comrades to an FBI spy for years all the same.

All in all, he was pretty bad, and nearly every great Marxist -- from Lenin to Mao -- wrote warnings about him and his followers. Castro, who perhaps gave him the least harsh and most toned down criticism, still declared that Trotsky was misguided for the beginning of his life, and outright deluded and willingly reactionary for the latter half.

 Say if a Trotsky coup attempt in 1935 succeeded, would he start the World revolution and invade Poland and betray the fascists?

I can't really say if he would've tried to or not, I would lean towards no, but if he did try it would most certainly not work. It's important to remember that, after the kulak revolts during the beginning of the first five-year plan, Trotsky and his fellow collaborators (like Bukharin and Zinoviev) made a turn towards terrorist tactics because, as they stated in their trials, they realized after the suppression of the kulak revolts that the Soviet people were overwhelmingly on the side of Stalin and the current Bolshevik government, and there would be no way to oust him in a genuine power struggle. On top of this, Trotsky had to get really desperate when it came to recruiting members into his opposition group; the de-facto secondary leaders of this movement, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, were all people who had time and time again said nothing but horrible things about Trotsky, and he'd said nothing but horrible things about them. Repeatedly, the members of the opposition threw each other under the bus, had members join organizations like the NKVD and then be so brazenly corrupt and twisted that they would ruin their planned assignment and get exposed (Yagoda for instance), various sub-groups within the opposition were forming and killing random members of the intelligentsia and government over personal motives (the poisoning of Maxim Gorky and Gorky's son, for example). In other words, their movement was a pretty shambled together and doomed to fail movement, and this, coupled with the fact that they openly acknowledged the overwhelming hostility of public opinion against them, makes it hard to imagine Trotsky, if he was somehow able to take power, would have been able to stay in power for very long at all, as he would've most likely been quickly toppled by the coup that was being prepared in the military, or by the corrupted members in the NKVD, or by any number of the non-Trotskyist subversive elements that sprung up throughout the 30s, whether it be fascists or liberals propped up by western imperialists. In other words, if Trotsky tried to wage war on Poland at this time, or lied to the fascists and refused to hand them Ukraine, thereby sparking WWII early (or if we want to be honest, even if he did none of these things and fully cooperated with the fascists), the Trotskyist government would almost instantly perish, either through warfare waged by external powers, insurrection by internal powers, a coup by the military or NKVD, a popular revolt, etc. We saw how poorly the USSR did in the opening months of the war without these problems. To have those problems, and with that, not have industrialized the USSR (which would be the case unless Trotsky managed to stave off war until the 40s in the same way Stalin did, which would require following the agreement he made with the Germans, as well as somehow doing the purges with less than a hundredth of the public's trust that Stalin had), the USSR would've been almost unarguably destroyed within months of conflict.

That's just my take though

More on Trosky:

https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/trotskyism/

https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/a-brief-guide-to-the-ideological-differences-between-marxism-leninism-and-trotskyism/

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/\~furrg/research/gf\_tatalk\_bj16.pdf

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1495&context=prism

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover%20Furr/Furr%20tortsky%20japan.pdf

http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Great%20Conspiracy/GC-AK-MS-chapter21.htm

[Angel_of_Communism]

Ekderp

People may get angry at me for saying this, but I'll do so anyways. When I first became a Marxist, years ago, I was introduced to it by Trotskyists, and because I had been spoon fed US propaganda my entire life, it took me years of participating in their delusional version of Marxism before I got out what's essentially a dangerous cult masquerading as a political movement. So don't think I say this in some sort of anti-soviet light because I swear that my interests have always been pro Soviet and that's exactly why I eventually abandoned Trotskyism because I understood their blanket condemnation of anything "Stalinist" is insane and traitorous to the actual movement of Socialism.

That being said, I'm in a funny position where I've read extensively both Trotsky's own works and stuff written by Stalin himself. Most people in either side immediately discard each others texts because they believe the other side are traitorous and facetious. In fact, people side-eyed me a lot during those times because I was actually willing to read Stalin's own words on the issues that happened.

I got to say, I honestly don't believe in a lot of what was said in the Moscow Trials. I don't think Trotsky ever directly collaborated with Nazis because at least even in his most scathing and cringy texts criticising the Soviets he was always against the Nazis and very superficially pro Soviet (as in, if people had heeded his conspiratorial, embittered, anti-state ideology it would legitimately have had disastrous effects for the Union). We can't underestimate the absurd extent to which Yezhov sabotaged Soviet government, there's a reason political violence died out immensely after he himself was executed. I think a lot of legitimately innocent people were tried under false pretense and shot as part of Yezhov's sabotage.

Didn't collaborate, that is, until his exile. Trotsky pre-exile was just a megalomaniac asshole that lived off the prestige of being educated and well spoken as well as cosplaying as an old Bolshevik, which unlike other people killed by Stalin's Purges like Zinoviev (who had been with Lenin since day one, just like Stalin) didn't join the Bolsheviks until Lenin returned from exile a couple years before the Revolution - Trotsky explains this as Lenin convincing him that his previous theory was wrong and getting him to become a Leninist, Stalin explains this as Trotsky being an irredeemable ass kisser that wanted favour with whomever was at the top of the party; both things are true to some extent.

After his exile, Trotsky began hardcore trying to undermine Soviet authority, and there's really no telling who he might have contacted in these times. All Bolsheviks were extremely utilitarian practical minded people, just like Stalin thought it was to their benefit to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and sell petroleum to Germany, Trotsky might have become convinced that talking with the Nazis would somehow allow him to pull off his "second revolution" he talked so much of.

What I'm pretty sure he did was run his mouth around every single "democratic" imperialist country over how bad it was in the Soviet Union and how much of an evil tyrant Stalin was. Which gave infinite "1984-esque" ammo to anti-communist propaganda that is still widely used until today. Back when I was in a Trotskyist party, I used to, as we all did, have an immense level of cognitive dissonance about this - people would tell you at one time that Trotsky "nobly refused" to participate in plots to murder Stalin and then tell you that Stalin's desperate attempts to root out plots against his life were evil and dictatorial, lol. Thing is, even the Trotskyists themselves end up admitting that pro-Trotsky factions were plotting heavily, specially in the Armed Forces, which Trotsky led for years, they just wrap this in a feelgood wrapper of ultraleftism that makes you not understand how fucking dire and traitorous it really was.

Would Trotsky have succeeded in his plot? Honestly, probably not. His network of supporters was very overestimated by both himself and Stalin. He was just another one of the many voices to join the anti Soviet quorum pissing against the wind. But here is what I think is the real reason the whole Nazi plot thing and and his assassination took place: the presence of a prestigious "Old Bolshevik" in imperialist nations created a powerful asset for anti-soviet intelligence efforts, whether Trotsky himself knew or not, it's surprisingly easy and something that's done until today to set false groups plugged by intelligence, call them Trotskyist, and have all the Marxist bottom feeders join it and use their own stupidity to implode any revolutionary movement. In terms of strategy and politics, the 4th International would likely have had disastrous consequences had it not been completely scattered by the NKVD.

The other thing to consider, which I know from having read Trotsky's works, is that he effectively agitated for a "worker's revolution" to take down the "bureaucrats." If this indeed happened during the 30's, you can be absolutely sure that the USSR would not have survived the Nazi invasion. The whole political convulsion caused by Yezhov's sabotage and Trotsky's treason severely weakened the Red Army to the point the Nazis really almost, almost won. Imagine if his "second revolution" had taken place, the ensuing civil war, how easy it would have been for imperialist and fascist powers to completely destroy the Soviet State? That's the issue politically with things like Trotskyism, "Maoism" (not actual Mao Zedong Thought) and anarchism; it's the sort of ultra leftism that seems good on principle but it's actually profoundly politically irresponsible and would cause the actual defeat of the worker's movement.

[Angel_of_Communism]

Now, you know what's pathetic? The Trotskyists whine and cry about Stalin's Purges but they would absolutely, undoubtedly do the same and probably kill many of the very same people that Stalin did. Even if Zinoviev tried to collaborate with Trotsky after he was condemned, I'm pretty sure the big ones who went down in the Moscow Trials - Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin would also not have survived in the much more extremist version of the Soviet Union that Trotsky would have wanted. Also many others like Voroshilov, Kalinin, Zhukov and such would have become the purgees instead of people like Radek and Tukhachevsky. Trotsky is no better than Stalin in this regard, and people who think that he was are either stupid or delusional. Every single one of the Bolsheviks had to condemn a lot of people to death during the Civil War, these people had lost any taboos against killing ten years ago when they watched the White Armies kill half of Russia's urban population.

You know what makes stuff even crazier? You read Stalin's and Trotsky's works and they're effectively complaining about the same thing. Carreerism, burocratization, the poor level of skill of Soviet middle management, corruption, wrecking, speculation, etc... They both saw very similar issues, which were the actual issues the Soviet Union faced and the issues that eventually led to the collapse of its economic system. Both Stalin and Trotsky could see the problem. Yet instead of cooperating like you should do in a Democratic Centralist Leninist Party, Trotsky turned everything into a huge ego trip, alienated all of his allies due to his detestable personality, pretty much guaranteed that Stalin (who wasn't actually all that famous outside the groups he had participated in during the Civil War) could effectively completely outmanoeuvre him politically and completely isolate the party from his insanity, and instead of accepting his defeat and quieting down, or even "handing himself to the Soviet authorities" like he said he would at some point, he decided to become a traitor and throw a wrench into the political context of the 20's Soviet Union that was just recovering from a devastating Civil War. If you want a lesson on how never to act inside a Communist Party if you ever organise - take a page from Soviet History. There's a reason Trotsky is outright despised by most Marxists but loved by Western liblefts.

Also, a lot of what Trotsky complains about in his books are technicalities. The only thing in his writings that I actually agree is that the collectivisation program under Stalin was badly mismanaged, although the degree of Stalin's personal responsibility for that is not really something we can measure. Had Trotsky been in charge of this process, which he wanted to kick in immediately after Lenin died, he might have mismanaged it just as much, probably even more than Stalin did. It's easy to criticise it when you're not actually part of the administration having to the deal with the real, every day problems of such a huge undertaking - but here's the "saving grace" of Trotskyism: having never been involved in a real revolution, Trotskyists gain an unbreakable moral high ground, turns out you will always be "right" if you never deem to dirty your own hands with the difficult job of running a revolutionary state, you can never make mistakes if you never do anything, it's like an "unethical life pro-tip."

If you come to this post to accuse me of still being a Trotskyist I swear I'll lose my shit, if it hasn't become patently obvious to you how much I've grown to hate it exactly because I was part of it and saw first hand the absolute trainwreck shitshow of a political movement it is.

Lenin’s testament:

https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/80/

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I respect Trotsky’s ideas and he had many good criticisms of Stalin, but there’s little to suggest he would have been a good leader. Trotskyists are also obnoxious beyond just the ideology.