specterOfCommunism [comrade/them]Why are Trotsky and Trotskyism rejected?
ComradeRandyThis video is a good starting point: youtu.be/wqhc--SWIE8
Why Am I Not a Trotskyist?
TankieReplyBotI found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
It’s often a pipeline for “Western Marxism” ie being against actual existing socialist states (stemming from Trotsky being against the USSR, calling it a degenerate worker’s state/“stalinism”) which then they have to retcon into their political theory and bleeds into another form of liberalism just with “marxist jargon”.
It often ends up having a lot of the problems of Western Marxism (a political theory of Western intelligensia who unable to create a dictatorship of the proleteriat in the imperialist cores and therefore resolved to elevating their theories of superstructure over the base; ie ended up being intellectual naval gazing devoid of praxis, and denunciation of global south revolutionary efforts. This then tied in nicely with Western Hegemony so you had American intelligence services funding the likes of Frankfurt School. The latter is not needed for Western Marxists to be wrong, it’s just quite a common occurence of so-called leftists who do not engage with marxism as a science then being coopted by imperialism).
Please note individuals who identify as Trotskist may be right on certain issues but I could apply that to liberals too. It’s the trotkyism that’s the problem.
Book recommendation:
- Domenico Losurdo - Stalin, history and critique of a black legend
Article (16 min, Stalin and Stalinism in history): redsails.org/losurdo-contra-werth/
The Trotsky-Stalin struggle is not one between two different personalities. It’s a struggle between two different principles of legitimizing power.
My main disagreement with Trotskysts are related to their view of AES states and global south liberation struggles. They have a very narrow (and utopic, IMO) view of what a socialist transition should look like. Anything that deviates from that very narrow view is seen as the enemy and as a “Stalinist” degeneration.
This has been very problematic in many of the past liberation struggles, like in Vietnam, where they acted to sabotage or undermine socialist or workers’ parties aligned with the USSR. Or even in countries like Brazil today, they spend a lot of their energy trying to critique and undermine other socialist parties (including, surprisingly, other Trotskyst parties) instead of simply working together to build a workers’ movement.
So basically they are a bunch of people against everything and everyone, be them more advanced revolutionary parties, or more backward reformist parties. I could summarize the movement as a ultra left deviation of Marxism.
rainpizzaMaybe this book from Alexander Bittelman might answer your question: ucf.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/…/view
Link is broken
Hmm, it works for me still. Could you try this other link and then let me know if it works? -> marxists.org/…/Trotsky the Traitor - Bittleman.pd…