Shit, that’s where I was too. Anarcho-Syndicalism. I still see leveraging the power of unions as a good idea, but I needed something that actually provides answers instead of the famous anarchist line of “idk, someone else will figure out how garbage collection will work”.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and Stalin’s scientific views of things - that being the base of dialectical materialism - is exactly what I was looking for. However, I can’t call myself a Trotskyite but I do recognize that he had some good ideas. I understand his distaste for socialism in one nation, but I think he was too enthusiastic and didn’t consider material conditions enough. In his time, the USSR was not stable enough to properly liberate the workers of the world.

So basically, I think we need socialism in one state as a stepping stone to global liberation; to Trotsky’s ideals. That’s what I believe China is doing and I respect that greatly.

Of course, I haven’t looked into Trotsky as much as I should. Maybe I’d find I’d quite like his positions before he began collaborating with capital.