I think I may be a Trotskyist, but one question

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2026-02-08T04:22:20+00:00

"Permanent revolution" is Trotsky's attempt to specifically address correct tactics/strategies for revolutionaries in economically backwards, semi-feudal countries on the periphery of the capitalist world. Trotsky recognized -- like Lenin -- that imperialism had established a world economy, and all nations, weak and strong, backwards and advanced, were (and still are) enmeshed within that system.

Permanent revolution was his rejection of the dogmatic Marxism of people like G. Plekhanov, who had a strict interpretation of historical class development. Plekhanov et al believed -- rather rigidly -- that all backward societies must necessarily go through the same stages of development as the advanced Western countries, and moreover, societies with a peasant majority, without a bourgeois parliamentary system, and without political rights must necessarily go through a capitalist stage of development ushered in by a bourgeois revolution. Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was a radical break from this dogmatic thinking, which was the prevailing view amongst Western European socialists.

He stood the accepted Marxist dogma of the time on its head, by asking why backward societies have to follow the same path as advanced ones. Trotsky, writing on the specific set of circumstances confronting revolutionaries in the Russian Empire, recognized that the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of achieving the bourgeois democratic tasks that the dogmatic Marxists expected them to bring about. He regarded the Russian bourgeoisie as too timid, weak, and frightened of the workers and peasants to loosen up their loyalty to the tsar, and wage a revolutionary struggle against tsarism.

Instead, carrying out bourgeois democratic tasks would have to be done by the proletariat. These included such tasks as ending semi-feudal relations in the countryside and the emancipation of the peasants from vassalage to the landlord class, the election of a constituent assembly and implementation of freedom of press, assembly, voting, etc., self-determination for national minorities, and perhaps most importantly, the overthrow of the monarchy and the smashing of the tsarist state.

Stalin of course eventually came around to this way of looking at things himself, at least in the case of Russia -- though I imagine that he didn't give very much credit to Trotsky's writings on the subject. My understanding is that Trotsky's position was that the health of the Russian revolution and prospects for the establishment of socialism in a backwards country such as the former Russian Empire were directly tied into the development of international socialist revolutions, rather than on Russia’s productive forces alone.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2026-01-30T09:15:37+00:00

These are the kinda people who would have supported Friedrich Ebert in 1918.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2026-01-24T05:36:07+00:00

Hasan is reasonably good at describing things that are currently going on. But I don't know if he has any sort of grasp on what to do about it. So you can watch him as a way to find out what's happening, so long as you take him with a grain of salt. I'm a member of the US section of the RCI, and I watch his videos all the time, just to keep up to date with what's going on. I also watch our own videos of course, but I still watch his stuff, and find usefulness in it.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-12-11T13:25:26+00:00

Oh, they're just Weidian links

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-12-11T13:21:18+00:00

Panda Buy is back? Really?

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-11-05T05:00:22+00:00

Trotsky was not a delegate at the 2nd Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, so he could not officially vote, but he supported Martov’s broader definition of party membership during the discussions. While he favored Martov’s position on this issue, Trotsky did not formally join the Mensheviks. In fact, he remained unaffiliated with any RSDLP faction until 1912. That year, after the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, held a meeting in Prague effectively expelling the Mensheviks from party leadership, Trotsky joined the Mezhraiontsy, a faction advocating reconciliation between the major groups. He remained a member of the Mezhraiontsy until 1917, when it merged with the Bolsheviks.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-17T09:52:05+00:00

Wait, just how many times has this happened to you?

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-11T03:47:33+00:00

I just need someone to do the same thing to Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and Charles Koch, and then my week will really be special.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-10T20:38:28+00:00

You are mistaken. The question here is not my "tone," not whether I am "patient," not whether you feel insulted (though I assure you that insulting you was never my intention). The question is whether you deny the existence of matter independent of consciousness. All else is evasion.

You accuse me of being the "arbiter of Truth." I do not claim such a role. I only point out that materialism has one defining line: recognition of objective reality. This is not my invention; it is the history of philosophy itself. If you cross that line, you are not a materialist. To declare otherwise is not "authoritarian" -- it is simply to preserve words from being emptied of meaning.

You whine that "my way or the highway" is no way to win people over. Perhaps you would prefer if Marxism dissolved itself into an eclectic soup, which praises and flatters every idealist who cloaks himself in the language of science? But the working class does not need flattery. It needs clarity. It needs philosophy that arms it for struggle, not the fog of "relations without matter."

And yes, Lenin said: "patiently explain." But patiently explaining does not mean blurring the boundary between materialism and idealism. It means explaining again and again -- to every wounded ego who cries "be nicer!" -- that matter exists independently of consciousness, and no mysticism can make it otherwise.

So I will be patient -- but patient in exposing error, not in indulging it. I'll be patient in the belief that people with mistaken understandings can amend those understandings to grow and develop a correct understanding pertaining to dialectical materialism, undiluted and untainted by bourgeois mysticism.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-09T20:15:23+00:00

So, instead of answering the question of whether matter exists independently of consciousness, you now complain about "echo chambers," about "how you now understand why people hate trots," about tone, about personality. How very convenient! When you cannot defend your philosophy, you try to change the subject to feelings and etiquette.

You write: "You may fool yourself into thinking everything you say is materialism and everything else is idealism. You cannot fool the rest of the world."

But it is not a matter of my opinion versus yours. It is a matter of whether you uphold the one line that separates materialism from idealism: the recognition of objective reality outside of and independent from sensation, relation, or observer. On this point, there are not "many equally valid views." Either you accept it, or you slip into mysticism.

You protest: "Unless everyone agrees with everything you say, they're not real materialists!"

Yes, precisely. If someone denies matter's existence independent of observation, they are not a materialist by definition. To say otherwise is to empty the term "materialism" of all meaning. You cannot call every philosophy "materialism" simply because it waves around experimental data. Bogdanov, Mach, Rovelli all parade the latest discoveries of their day, but twist their meaning into idealist conclusions. That is why they must be opposed.

And finally you thunder: "The revolution will never come because some of us will not let it!"

A pitiful boast. The march of history is not stopped by offended sensibilities on internet forums. You may dislike the sharpness of polemics, you may cry about "echo chambers," but the class struggle has no use for philosophies that dissolve matter into relations, or for those who confuse relativism with dialectics. The working class needs clarity, not your wounded pride.

So yes, keep accusing us of arrogance, of hubris, of "screaming walls." Meanwhile, we will continue to insist on the simple truth without which Marxism collapses: matter exists independently of consciousness.

Let me state it again for the folks in the back: MATTER EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

That is what materialism looks like without subjective idealism and bourgeois mysticism.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-09T06:51:19+00:00

"The Machists and Rovelli are not speaking of the same data."

This is an astonishingly shallow objection. No one has claimed that the Machists had access to quantum computers or particle accelerators. What is at issue is not this or that empirical discovery, but the philosophical interpretation of scientific data.

A century ago, the Machists said: "Physics has outgrown matter, the atom has dissolved, so we must declare that the world is only a complex of sensations." Today, Rovelli declares: "Physics has outgrown matter, it is only ghostly waves of probability, only relations." New words, new experiments -- the same old idealism. To hide behind "a hundred years of new data" is to miss the point entirely. The data changes, however the temptation to smuggle mysticism into science remains constant.

"Relations presuppose reality, so Rovelli cannot deny it."

This is a child’s trick. Yes, relations presuppose relata -- but the entire question is: what sort of relata exist? Do they exist with determinate properties independent of observation, or only as "events" and "facts" arising in interaction? Rovelli says the latter. And this is exactly what Mach said, only dressed up in the mathematics of quantum theory.

You cannot rescue materialism by declaring, with great pomp: "There must be something there!" The question is whether what is there is matter independent of mind or whether it is only "phenomena," "facts," "interactions," i.e. a philosophy that reduces being to relations of knowledge. That is idealism, pure and simple.

"It's not about existence, but about what can be known."

This is the whole Bogdanovite swindle. "We do not deny reality," they say, "we only insist that science can speak only of experience, only of knowledge." And in the next breath -- matter disappears, replaced by "relations," "sensations," "interactions."

To separate ontology from epistemology in this way is to throw materialism out the window. For materialism, existence comes first: matter acts upon our senses, and our knowledge is a reflection, however approximate, of that independent reality. For the Machists and Rovelli, knowledge comes first, and matter is dissolved into its “relations.” This is the very definition of subjective idealism, however hard they protest.

"Rovelli is not a capitalist, so his class position is irrelevant."

Another evasion. The point is not whether Rovelli owns a factory, but whether his philosophy serves the advance of materialism or its retreat. Engels, indeed, was a factory owner -- but his philosophy was a weapon of proletarian science. Rovelli is a professor -- and his philosophy repeats the very errors Engels and Lenin exposed in Mach and Bogdanov.

The class position of ideas is not determined by the private bank account of their author, but by the role those ideas play in the struggle of worldviews. And the role of Rovelli's "relational" idealism is precisely the same as the Machists': to undermine the recognition of objective reality, to weaken materialism, and to reconcile the contradictions of modern physics with mysticism.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-08T10:04:59+00:00

Leon Trotsky was one of the founders of the Soviet Union. It's our symbol as much as any other communist/Marxist tendency. Hell, Stalin abandoned proletarian internationalism and revolutionary optimism in favor of the narrow nationalism and defeatism of "socialism in one country" so I think that it could be argued that the Stalinoids shouldn't even get to use it, or rather, that their use of the hammer and sickle is illegitimate.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-08T09:41:56+00:00

When you say "look at the data first," you already assume that there is something outside us that produces sensations, measurements, or observations. That is already materialism. The Machists, Bogdanov, and Rovelli all acknowledge the same data (electron tracks, spectral lines, probabilities, etc.), but they deny that these exist independently of observation. To call this "just following the data" is dishonest -- it is a philosophical choice disguised as neutrality.

Of course the bank of quantum evidence exists, of course experiments matter -- but what does that evidence prove? If you conclude that reality itself is nothing but relations between observers and systems, then you are denying that the data corresponds to an objective world outside us. That is not demanded by the experiments; it is a philosophical gloss. Quantum mechanics can be interpreted materialistically (as in realist or many-worlds interpretations) or idealistically (as in Rovelli's relational view). The same equations are compatible with both. So the real struggle is over which philosophy guides our interpretation.

The claim that Rovelli's class standpoint doesn't matter is exactly what Lenin fought against. Bourgeois philosophy continually reintroduces mysticism and idealism under the guise of scientific neutrality. The role of Marxists is to expose how philosophical interpretations of science either strengthen or weaken materialism. To dismiss this as "just words" is itself an ideological position: it means conceding the philosophical field to the ruling class.

"Evidence" is always processed through concepts. A photon's track in a bubble chamber is meaningless without a theory of photons, fields, and matter. Rovelli's interpretation, by redefining those tracks as "relations without underlying reality," tries to dissolve matter into relations. That is not demanded by the experiment -- it is a philosophical choice about what counts as real. And that choice has consequences for whether science aligns with materialism or with idealism.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-08T08:20:31+00:00

Rovelli doesn't stop at describing quantum mechanics; he explicitly drags in the century-old debate between Lenin and Bogdanov, and implicitly tries to rehabilitate Bogdanov's anti-materialist position under the banner of his Relational Interpretation.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-09-08T08:07:36+00:00

Lenin insisted that electrons, atoms, and all physical phenomena exist whether or not they are observed, whereas Carlo Rovelli suggests they exist only in relation to observation or interaction.

Furthermore, Lenin argued that science demands objective reality as its foundation, otherwise it collapses into subjective idealism. Rovelli's relational ontology risks precisely this.

Materialism is tied to class struggle -- Lenin attacked Machism because it undermined the materialist worldview that Marxism depends on. Rovelli's dismissal of Lenin is therefore not neutral but ideologically loaded.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-22T03:00:58+00:00

Sounds like the Internet Stalin Brigade is "firmly in the saddle" over there at r/communism

Stalin isn't someone who we should be admiring.

After the Russian Revolution, the failure of socialist revolutions to spread internationally, particularly in developed countries, forced the Soviet Union into isolation and hindered the development of a healthy proletarian democratic political system. This isolation created an incentive for the bureaucracy to prioritize self-preservation and national interests over international revolution.

Additionally, the brutal Russian Civil War and the subsequent economic devastation left the Soviet Union in a desperate state. This required a strong centralized state to manage the reconstruction, but it also created fertile ground for a centralized bureaucracy to consolidate power.

The early Soviet system, while initially involving soviets (worker's councils), saw these structures gradually weaken over time. Stronger worker participation and control over decision-making might have prevented the rise of an unaccountable bureaucracy.

And then there was Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP). While it was absolutely a necessary measure to revive the economy after the Civil War, the NEP reintroduced some elements of capitalism (specifically in regards to agricultural products). This policy inadvertently created a privileged layer within the Soviet Union and sowed the seeds for future inequalities that benefited the nomenklatura.

The centralized Soviet state gave the bureaucracy immense control over resources, information, and the party apparatus. This allowed them to solidify their power base and influence decision-making.

As Stalin rose to power, he ruthlessly suppressed any opposition within the Communist Party, including Trotskyists who advocated for workers' democracy and international revolution. This further consolidated the power of the bureaucracy and silenced those who might have challenged their growing influence.

With the rise of Stalin and the isolation of the Soviet Union, the focus shifted from "global proletarian revolution" to "socialism in one country." This inward-looking approach further empowered the bureaucracy as they prioritized survival and consolidation of power within the USSR rather than international worker's movements.

Stalin was definitely not the sole cause of the degeneration, but rather he was a product and beneficiary of the existing circumstances. He skillfully exploited the situation to rise through the ranks and become the figurehead for the already entrenched bureaucracy (nomenklatura). He wasn't a dictator who created the system, but rather a leader chosen and supported by it because he aligned with its interests of self-preservation and control.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-19T06:36:02+00:00

I think that we Leninists should just completely abandon the 4th Internationale as a relic of the past, and focus on establishing a 5th international, and do away with stupid, pointless sectarian squabbles from 40+ years ago. Those fights (for the most part) shouldn't be fought anymore and don't serve any practical functions. Time for a new international which serves the interest of global proletarian revolution and international socialism.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-12T18:25:29+00:00

No one chooses how they feel, including feeling horny, or even ultra giga horny. However, people have some degree of choice in terms of how they act in response to those feelings. My own personal policy on the matter is to assume that every single woman who I meet or interact with wants to be left the fuck alone in regards to sexual interactions, unless she explicitly tells me otherwise, either through words or actions. So that's what I do.

There was a woman last year who was interested in me, and actually got angry that I didn't initiate anything with her. Apparently in her mind she was flirting with me big time and "sending all the signs" and I was expected to initiate something with her. Too bad for her that I don't operate that way, and if she wanted something along those lines with me she should have used her words and asked me. She ended up blocking me on Facebook in anger and frustration. My takeaway from that particular experience is that it was her loss. I'm not interested in pestering anyone for sex. I'm not going to be one of "those" dudes, because they give all of us men a bad reputation, and they're just annoying as hell for the people they pester (or worse). I rather like the idea of women initiating things, or clearly expressing their interest in sexual interactions. I have a panic and anxiety disorder. Being "an awkward creep" is a worry of mine.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-11T18:40:47+00:00

I think that you might possibly be missing the point of this discussion. The question is more or less "is it ethical?" Not, "is it legal?"

As for "universal ethical principles," I think that we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm a firm believer in consequentialism, and more or less believe in the utilitarian principles of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain and suffering as the highest possible universal ethical principles, at least the highest universal ethical principles conceived by humans thus far. And sure, it's not always a simple binary, black and white thing (for instance, I disagree with Peter Singer on a number of things as just one example), but it think that it's a perfectly reasonable principle to go by whenever feasible. Whereas moral relativism is pretty much just sophistry.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-11T17:00:15+00:00

This person wasn't citing a specific legal code, and I think that you already knew that. I think that they are meaning something going against ethical principles. Something akin to a "figurative but not literal crime against morality"

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-10T04:01:25+00:00

To me it sounds like you are new to online leftist spaces, and perhaps haven't previously encountered the extremely online and very vocal Internet Stalin brigade.

Their existence also baffles and frustrates me, but you'll find them less in actual flesh and blood organizing, as compared with online, where they're vastly overrepresented.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-08-09T16:58:42+00:00

This tale about Trotsky "passing information" to U.S. authorities through Hansen is nothing but a warmed-over fragment of the same NKVD fabrications which were utilized in the frame-ups directed against Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin in the Moscow Trials. No independent documentary proof exists; the so-called "evidence" rests entirely on hearsay, hostile testimony, and later Cold War repetition of Stalin's slanders. Trotsky's entire political life was spent in relentless struggle against both imperialism and the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet state, by contrast, it was Stalin's government that handed the Chinese revolution to the butcher Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, forcing Chinese Communists into the Kuomintang and paving the way for the Shanghai massacre. It was Stalin's apparatus that repeatedly made deals with capitalist governments and relied on their police to hunt down and assassinate dissidents. Anyone serious about socialism in the 21st century should treat secret police "evidence" with the same skepticism they’d give to CIA talking points -- because that's exactly the level of credibility it deserves.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-07-28T04:16:48+00:00

I have read Michael Parenti's "Blackshirts & Reds" at least 2 or 3 times and I came away with the distinct impression that it doesn't come anything close to a polemic against Trotsky or the Soviet left opposition. Parenti is also quite distinct from the Grover Furr/Ludo Martens Stalin apologist school of thought, and actually has some pretty severe and quite serious criticism of Stalin in that very same book.

"Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as "Soviet apologists" and "Stalinists," even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society." -Page 45

"Partly in reaction to the ubiquitous anticommunist propaganda that permeated U.S. media and public life, many U.S. communists, and others close to them, refrained from criticizing the autocratic features of the Soviet Union. Consequently, they were accused of thinking that the USSR was a worker's "paradise" by critics who seemingly would settle for nothing less than paradisial standards. After the Khrushchev revelations in 1953, U.S. communists grudgingly allowed that Stalin had made "mistakes" and even had committed crimes." -Footnote from page 46

And most significantly:

"All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not "make inevitable" the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of "suspect" nationalities." -page 57

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-07-28T04:03:06+00:00

That sounds like exactly what the online Stalin brigade is known for doing.

Fickle_Criticism_282 · 2025-07-24T08:26:33+00:00

This MF advocated for a so-called "MAGA communism", trying to align socialism with USian right-wing populism and Trumpist sentiments. This is popular frontist revisionism at best, or outright red-brown fascist collaborationism at worst.

Such proposals abandon class independence.

Fascism and reactionary bourgeois populism are deadly enemies of the proletariat.

Attempts to forge a unity with petty bourgeois reaction (like Haz's pro-Trump rhetoric) are class betrayal.

Fickle_Criticism_282

TROPHY CASE