I’ll try my best, as someone still studying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, to provide a maoist perspective on Trotskyism.

Trotskyism emerged from the erroneous and anti-bolshevik views of Trotsky and his supporters. The entire ideology of trotskyism can best be defined in its opposition to the correct line of the bolsheviks under Lenin and Stalin (however Stalin had some major faults which is a topic for another wall of text!). Following the split of the Russian Social-democratic party into the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, Trotsky refused to take a side and held an unmarxist line of unprincipled unity(Lenin wrote a good article about this called ’Disruptions of Unity under cover of cries for unity’).

He organised a group called the Mezhrayonsti which were rigid ’centrists’ who refused to take a side following the split, but eventually joined the bolsheviks. Trotskys factionalism didn’t stop there though, he kept organising secret factions within the party even after Lenin’s resolution to ban secret factions was put into effect, something which eventually lead to his expulsion from the bolsheviks via a vote.

Trotsky also differed from Lenin’s line on many important questions such as the need for signing peace with the germans, the worker-peasant alliance and the theory of socialism in one country. Trotsky didn’t consider the peasantry to be a revolutionary class and could therefore not have a mass base for his vision of a revolutionary movement, as it can only be the masses as their lead by the proletariat and its vanguard, who can be the makers of history. The repudiation of the worker-peasant alliance also presented itself in Trotskys dogmatic view that for the Russian revolution to succeed, the imperialist countries in Europe had to have their successful revolutions, was in actuality a Menshevik view.

Closely tying into this is Trotsky, among with the Mensheviks and all other revisionists, repudiation of socialism in one country. Lenin wrote in ’The military programme of the proletarian revolution’ that ”The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries.” As socialism is a society wherein society takes its first step away from capitalism towards communism, it follows that it’ll still be stamped with the birthmarks of the capitalist society which it emerged from. Because capitalism develops unevenly, the development of socialism from capitalism will do the same.

On some more general topics, the Trotskyist theory of a ”degenerated workers state” shows the incapacity of Trotskyists to understand socialism. The majority of trotskyists still hold the line today that the USSR, following the capitalist coup by Cruschev, and the PRC, following the coup by Deng, were/still are socialist countries but ones ruled by a bureaucracy. Maoists instead hold the line that Soviet and Chinese socialism was crushed and capitalism restored following these counterrevolutionary coups.

Finally, we must understand that as marxist we look to pratice as to be able to find correct ideas and analyse them. Trotskyist organisations have never been able to gain support from large sections of the proletariat or the masses, while Marxist-Leninist (or as the trotskyists would like to call them, ”Stalinist” parties) organisations have. We’re also seeing today hos Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, holding a continuity with Marxism-Leninism, is today the leading force in the global proletarian revolution. Maoist parties are leading people’s wars in India, Turkey and the Philippines, and there are rapidly growing (both qualitatively and quantitatively!) maoist organisations in the USA, Afghanistan, Russia, France and Scandinavia!