/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>Of all the important socialists of the twentieth century, it was Trotsky who recognized most clearly the main tendencies of development and the principal contradictions of the epoch, and it was Trotsky also who gave the clearest formulation to an appropriate emancipatory strategy for the international labour movement. His contribution to the history of this century was a predominantly political one and not, as some have maintained, purely sociological. 1 It was also an eminently practical one and not purely analytic-theoretical. He developed a concept or model of the differentiated processes of class struggle on a global scale and drew from this the necessary practical, strategic, tactical and organizational conclusions. These ideas, however, were rooted in a magnificent theoretical achievement, the discovery of the law of uneven and combined development, quite distinct from the law of uneven development familiar to all Marxists. 2 On the basis of a thoroughgoing application of the dialectical method to the analysis of the imperialist epoch, in particular to the period of its decline, Trotsky's theory brings to light the articulation of all the major elements (economic, political, class, psychological, ideological and organizational) of a historical mechanism at work:
>1. In the imperialist epoch, the Marxist evolutionary schema, according to which the advanced nations hold up to the more underdeveloped the image of their own future, is turned into its opposite. Imperialism blocks the radical modernization and industrialization of the underdeveloped countries.
>2. This leads, in the imperialist countries themselves, to a contradictory economic dynamic. The imperialist countries can grow organically only to the extent that there is space for expansion into the colonies and semi-colonies. But, with imperialism dominating the whole world, this underdevelopment which imperialism itself has consolidated in the colonies and semi-colonies becomes a hindrance toits own further growth. This will lead increasingly to inter-imperialist conflict. Once the expansion process of imperialism has come to an end, it is the struggle over the division of the world market that becomes decisive. At the same time, the system as a whole tends towards stagnation or decline in productive forces.
>3. This reversal of capitalism's economic advance and the onset of stagnation, accompanied by a sharpening of periodic economic crises, increases the susceptibility of the system to general social and economic crisis. What was an exception in the nineteenth century becomes the rule in the twentieth. This applies to the social and political relations within the underdeveloped as well as within the imperialist countries; it also applies to the relations among the imperialist states and between the latter and the Third World. The twentieth century will be the century of wars and civil wars, of revolutions and counter-revolutions.
>4. The combined effect of all these factors will lead to a strengthening of retrogressive movements in society, to a growing threat to the progressive gains of the bourgeois revolutions and to an increasing fusion of the 'old' pre-capitalist barbarism with 'new' forms of barbarism being created by capitalism's decline. Massive catastrophes threaten the human race. 4 The First World War is an example of such barbarism. There will be other examples, even worse than this one.
>5. The modern class of wage-earners is the only social force able to bring this series of social catastrophes to an end. This is a consequence of its key position in economic life as well as of its social and socio-psychological make-up. The individual wage-earners, because of their subordination and their material weakness in the economic process vis-a-vis the employers, can defend their immediate day-to-day imerests only by developing co-operation and solidarity with their fellow workers and by making this co-operation the driving force behind their social practice, rather than egoism and competition. 5 But this is precisely the kind of motivation and driving force that is essential for the reorganization of society as a whole, to lead society out of the dead end of capitalism and towards the only possible positive alternative, namely, socialism.
>6. Because of the system's increasing susceptibility to crisis, in the imperialist countries as well as in the Third World, the state, especially in periods of severe crisis, will become a violently repressive instrument of force in the hands of the ruling classes. Without the overthrow of this state, without the seizure of power by the working class, this class will not be able to fulfil its historic tasks of preventing the regression to barbarism. 6
>7. In the imperialist countries the main obstacle to the seizure of state power is the growing conservatism of the leadership of the organized labour movement, concomitant with ideological weaknesses in the working class itself.7 (Later, Trotsky was to provide a materialist explanation of this conservatism with his account of the development of a labour bureaucracy as a distinct social layer with its own special interests.) It would require time and new experiences in struggle before the working class of the industrialized countries would be able to overcome these ideological weaknesses.
>8. In some less developed countries 8 the working class can achieve a much higher level of class-consciousness, of unity and militancy than in the more developed countries. It is therefore possible, if not probable, that the working class in these countries will be able to seize state power before workers in the West.
>9. Self-activity and self-organization are the natural instruments for seizing as well as exercising state power. The soviets or councils are the form of proletarian power brought forward by history itself, in the industrialized as well as in the less developed countries. 9 Shortly after his imprisonment in 1906, Trotsky wrote his History of the Soviet, in which he summed up the role of the Petrograd Soviet: Urban Russia was too narrow a base for the struggle. The Soviet tried to wage the struggle on a national scale, but it remained above all a Petersburg institution … there is no doubt that in the next upsurge of revolution, such Councils of Workers, will be formed all over the country. An All-Russian Soviet of Workers, organized by a national congress … will assume the leadership: . . . with revolutionary co-operation between the army, the peasantry and the plebian parts of the middle classes … 10 This is exactly what happened in 1917.
>10. In the less developed countries, however, the working class constitutes only a minority of the population. Without an alliance with the working peasantry, the workers cannot win or maintain state power. The historic tasks of the revolution in these countries are those of the bourgeois or national-democratic revolution. In this respect Trotsky, like the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, was stating the position of classical Marxism. What was new in Trotsky's position, his strategy of permanent revolution, was his assertion that these historic tasks of the bourgeois revolution could only be achieved through the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the working peasantry. 11
>11. It is only through self-activity and self-organization that the working class can conquer state power. For this precise reason it is unrealistic to attempt to impose on the working class a self-limitation, whereby they restrict themselves, for historical-theoretical reasons, to achieving national-democratic goals (the classical tasks of the bourgeois revolution). A politically successful, self-activating, self-conscious, well-organized working class will not continue to allow itself to be commanded and exploited by the employers. 12 In a very practical way the working class, as soon as it has conquered state power, will begin to address the tasks of the socialist revolution. Without stages or interruptions, the revolution will combine the achievement of national-democratic goals with the beginning of the achievement of socialist goals. 13
>12. But precisely this same law of uneven and combined development, which made it possible for the working class in Russia to conquer state power before the workers in Germany, made it impossible for the workers in Russia alone to hold on to this power over a long period. (Trotsky later qualified this: what would be impossible in such circumstances would be the long-term direct exercise of state power by the workers.) The construction of socialism is dependent on the existence of material preconditions which can be ignored only at the price of severe disillusionment (we would add today: of severe excesses). On this point Trotsky was firmly within the tradition of Marx, who wrote in The German Ideology:
<This 'alienation', to use a term which the philosophers will understand, can be abolished only on the basis of two practical premisses. To become an 'intolerable' power, that is, a power against which men make a revolution, it must have made the great mass of humanity 'propertyless' and this at the same time in contradiction to an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which presuppose a great increase in productive power and a high degree of its development. On the other hand, this development of productive forces (which already implies the actual empirical existence of men on a world-historical rather than local scale) is an absolutely necessary practical premiss because, without it, want is merely made more general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old muck would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal commerce among men established which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of a 'propertyless' mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally replaces local individuals with world-historical, empirically universal individuals. Without this, (1) communism could only exist locally; (2) the forces of interaction themselves could not have developed as universal and thus intolerable powers, but would have remained homebred, superstitious 'conditions'; (3) any extension of interaction would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of dominant peoples 'all at once' and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive power and worldwide interaction linked with communism. Besides, the mass of propertyless workers - labour-power on a mass scale cut off from capital or even limited satisfaction, and hence no longer just temporarily deprived of work as a secure source of life - presupposes a world market through competition. The proletariat thus can only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a world-historical existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly bound up with world history. 14
>Today, this reads like a tragic anticipation of what has happened in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern Bloc since the 1950s, if not since the 1930s. The victory of the working class in underdeveloped Russia could only have been consolidated by means of an extension of the successful revolution to at least some of the leading industrial nations of the world. Isolated in a relatively backward country, the revolution was vulnerable to the growing pressure of the imperialist world market, not just militarily but also, and above all else, economically. 15
>13. This by no means implied that the victorious Russian revolution was confronted with the dilemma, either capitulate to capitalism or seek salvation in 'revolutionary war', in the artificial 'export of the revolution' . 16 Quite the contrary. In view of capitalist society's fundamental susceptibility to crisis on a world scale, the realistic alternative was the temporary consolidation of the achievements of the Russian revolution at an intermediate level (post-capitalist but not yet socialist), with political support for the communist parties outside Russia, in order to take advantage of the more favourable conditions that would exist when the workers fought for the conquest of state power in a number of different countries. This required mature and independent cadres and leaders in these parties as well as politically mature workers who were united and willing to engage in the struggle for power. Such an alternative would mean a radical rejection of the utopian attempt to construct socialism fully in a single country, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the attempt to subordinate the international movement, by means of manipulation, directives and adventures, to the (supposed and short-sighted) state interests and diplomatic manoeuvres of the 'besieged fortress'. This alternative presupposed an autonomous maturation process of the revolutionary movement and of the working-class parties of each country. It also presupposed, in the Soviet Union, an economic policy which was directed towards a gradual strengthening of the overall weight of the working class in society. This alternative strategy simply meant the extension of Trotsky's fundamental orientation of self-organization and self-liberation of the proletariat (an orientation he shared with Marx, Luxemburg and the Lenin of State and Revolution) to the global level of world politics.
>14. In the epoch that began with the First World War, reformist gradualism showed itself to be as much a reactionary utopianism as the attempt to construct socialism fully in a single country. 17 In a period of successive severe economic, social and political crises, bourgeois society is periodically forced to overturn previously established reforms, to avail itself of more repressive forms of rule, including that of a terrorist dictatorship. In such situations, to rely on the support of liberal currents or to trust the liberal traditions of middle-class society as a way of fighting against this danger is unrealistic. Only the forceful intervention of a united proletariat, in mass mobilizations and mass organizations, is capable of meeting this threat. To put a brake on this extra-parliamentary mass mobilization, because it would antagonize capital and push the liberals and the petty bourgeoisie into the camp of reaction, could only lead to a victory of reactionary forces. 18 Therefore, the conquest of state power by the working class will be periodically on the agenda in the imperialist countries just as it is in the less developed countries.
>15. The main obstacle to the development of an adequate strategy and tactics for the working class and mass movements in our century is the theory and practice (the practice came before the theory) of substitutionism, in other words, the replacement of the independent working class as the agent of social change and transformation by some other agency: party, state, government, parliament, and so on. These are all useful and, at times, indispensable instruments of working-class emancipation. But they must remain subordinate to the real movement of self-emancipation. Every attempt to reverse this means-end dialectic is doomed to fail eventually and it makes the process of working-class emancipation more difficult. This implies a rejection of both Stalinism and Social Democracy. No working class and no nation can be made happy against its own will. If a rejection of all forms of substitutionism means that the emancipation process takes longer than had been programmed by the bureaucrats, then this is certainly the lesser evil, especially in the light of the long-term disastrous consequences that follow from such substitutionist practices.
>16. Blocking the mass organizations of the working class from going beyond what they have already achieved corresponds not to the interests of the class itself but rather to those of its conservative leadership, the labour bureaucracy. In the capitalist countries, but particularly in the Soviet Union, this labour bureaucracy becomes an autonomous social layer with its own interests, which are quite different from those of both the working class and the bourgeoisie. It does not constitute a new class and is incapable of reproducing itself but, over a prolonged historical period, it is capable of maintaining and extending its power and privileges; in other words, it is capable of reaching a certain degree of historical autonomy. In the final analysis, this autonomy is a result of the relative passivity of the working class and the absence of the international revolution.
>17. To break out of this historical impasse, in which neither the international working class nor international capital is able to fight its way out of the crisis of civilization, the emergence once again of broad mass struggles, which is inevitable in any case, is not enough. The conquest of political power and the construction of socialism are tasks that can only be resolved consciously. A breakthrough in the direction of socialism will only occur when these periodically erupting mass struggles coincide with the existence of politically mature and tested working-class militants and working-class parties and a high level of consciousness in broad layers of workers. Marxism of the twentieth century will only succeed if it never loses sight of the subjective historical factor, in other words, if it rejects both mechanical-evolutionary fatalism and primitive voluntarism. Trotsky was well aware of the world-historical problem which lay at the root of this socio-political stalemate. In his report on the Third Congress of the Communist International, delivered at the Second Congress of the Communist Youth International in 1921, he made this clear:
<The bourgeoisie and the working class are thus located on a soil which renders our victory inescapable - not in the astronomical sense of course, not inescapable like the setting or rising of the sun, but inescapable in the historical sense, in the sense that unless we gain victory all society and all human culture is doomed. History teaches us this. It was thus that the ancient Roman civilization perished. The class of slave owners proved incapable of leading towards further development. It became transformed into an absolutely parasitic and decomposing class. There was no other class to supersede it and the ancient civilization perished … the possibility is not excluded that the bourgeoisie, armed with its state apparatus and its entire accumulated experience, may continue fighting the revolution until it has drained modern civilization of every atom of its vitality, until it has plunged modern mankind into a state of collapse and decay for a long time to come. By all the foregoing, I simply want to say that the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie which confronts the working class is not a mechanical one. It is a task which requires for its fulfilment: revolutionary energy, political sagacity, experience, broadness of vision, resoluteness, hot blood, but at the same time a sober head. 19
>Trotsky's overall assessment of the main tendencies of development in this century, which we have just summarized, was developed during the years between 1903 and 1923 and completed in the period 1930-33. He was also a political actor during this period, attempting to put into practice the political conclusions that flowed from this general world-view, initially in the Russian revolution of 1905, when he was leader of the Petrograd Soviet; in 1917 as leader of the Petrograd Soviet and organizer of the October Revolution; in the period 1918-20 as creator of the Red Army, which he then led to victory in the civil war; in 1923/24 as initiator of the Left Opposition against the Soviet bureaucracy and against the Stalin faction which represented it in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International; in the struggle for the united front of the German workers in the fight against fascism in the period 1930-33; in his efforts to promote the new upsurge of the international revolution in the years 1934-37. His significance in the history of the twentieth century cannot therefore be reduced to his role in the Russian Revolution between 1917 and 1920. If we look at his theoretical and practical achievements in the light of the actual course of events this century, we would also have to point to significant theoretical and practical errors of judgement. The most important of these was his continued acceptance of the theory, which stemmed more from Zinoviev, the young Bukharin and Rosa Luxemburg than it did from Lenin, according to which the growth of productive forces was impossible under imperialism. Although this thesis was by and large correct for the period 1914-45, it was definitely shown to be incorrect by the long post-war boom which lasted until the end of the 1960s or the early 1970s. This misjudgement on Trotsky's part becomes all the more remarkable when we realize that in 1921 he predicted quite an alternative scenario. In his report to the Third Congress of the Communist International on the world economic situation, this is how he described the possibility of a new capitalist revival: Here we approach the question of social equilibrium …. If we grant – and let us grant it for the moment - that the working class fails to rise in revolutionary struggle, but allows the bourgeoisie the opportunity to rule the world's destiny for a long number of years, say, two or three decades, then assuredly some sort of new equilibrium will be established. Europe will be thrown violently into reverse gear. Millions of European workers will die from unemployment and malnutrition. The United States will be compelled to re-orient itself on the world market, reconvert its industry and suffer curtailment for a considerable period. Afterwards, after a new world division of labour is thus established in agony for fifteen or twenty or twenty-five years, a new epoch of capitalist upswing might perhaps
occur. 20
>Twenty-five/thirty years after 1921 the post-war boom of 1948/49 began. Trotsky's prediction was uncannily correct. Closely linked to this misjudgement was a second. This was in the period just before the Second World War when Trotsky believed that a new decisive test of world-historical importance would, in a very short time, decide the fate of the Soviet Union and indeed the fate of the international working class. In an article, 'The USSR in War' (September 1939), Trotsky wrote:
<If this war provokes, as we firmly believe, a proletarian revolution, it must inevitably lead to the overthrow of the bureaucracy in the USSR and the regeneration of Soviet democracy on a far higher economic and cultural basis than in 1918. In that case the question as to whether the Stalinist bureaucracy was a 'class' or a growth on the workers' state will be automatically solved. To every single person it will become clear that in the process of development of the world revolution the Soviet bureaucracy was only an episodic relapse. If, however, it is conceded that the present war will provoke not revolution but a decline of the proletariat, then there remains another alternative: the further decay of monopoly capitalism, its further fusion with the state and the replacement of democracy wherever it still remained by a totalitarian regime …. This would be, according to all indications, a regime of decline, signalling the eclipse of civilization …. The historic alternative, carried to the end, is as follows: either the Stalin regime is an abhorrent relapse in the process of transforming bourgeois society into a socialist society, or the Stalin regime is the first stage of a new exploiting society. If the second prognosis proves to be correct, then, of course, the bureaucracy will become a new exploiting class. However onerous the second perspective may be, if the world proletariat should actually prove itself incapable of fulfilling the mission placed on it by the course of development, nothing else would remain except only to recognize that the socialist programme, based on the international contradictions of capitalist society, ended as a Utopia. 21
>This assessment flowed logically from the assumption that a new growth in productive forces would be impossible, thus blocking the preconditions for a successful breakthrough to socialism. Six months later, in his Manifesto of the Conference of the Fourth International, his real political testament, Trotsky corrected his earlier assessment of the time-scale involved:
It is not a question of a single uprising. It is a question of an entire revolutionary epoch…. It is necessary to prepare for long years, if not decades, of wars, uprisings, brief interludes of truces, new wars, and new uprisings …. The question of tempos and time intervals is of enormous importance; but it alters neither the general historical perspective nor the direction of our policy. The conclusion is a simple one: it is necessary to carry on the work of educating and organizing the proletarian vanguard with tenfold energy. 22
>Once this assumption about the impossibility of growth in productive forces under imperialism is seen to be wrong, then, at the same time, it becomes clear that the material and human preconditions for socialism in our epoch are not in decline; on the contrary, human productive forces in particular - the number of wage-earners, their levels of skill and culture - are expanding rapidly. Socialism, the world revolution, remain a real possibility. Finally, it was not until 1917 that Trotsky succeeded in synthesizing his rejection of substitutionism and his clear understanding of the need for a proletarian vanguard organization to ensure a successful outcome to the struggles that erupt during those periodically recurring revolutionary crises. In the period from 1907 to 1916, he defended the illusion that the mass pressure of a revolutionary proletariat would be adequate to force the different wings of the socialist labour movement into common action. This was what actually happened during the Russian revolution of 1905. But from 1916 at the latest, in Germany, Austria and Russia, even earlier in Italy and elsewhere, it was clear that this semi-spontaneist, semi-conciliatory assumption had no basis in reality. 23
>But even taking into account these misjudgements, Trotsky's theoretical and political achievements are without parallel this century. He will go down in history as the most important strategist of the socialist movement. And now even more so, when the clearly recognized bankruptcy of Stalinism and Social Democracy put the debate about socialism once again on the historical agenda, Trotsky's inheritance will assume even greater importance as the main historical alternative to both those currents in the modern labour movement.

>Le ideology
Your young faggot, systems are just ideas on how to run a society, the people in thos societies need to believe that system means anything for it to have an effect on the planet and likewise the health of those societies rest on the backs of the collective decision making of a populace rather than the system they use

>>400703
Why don't you try again mate with formulation your thoughts, because I couldn't understand a single thing you said.

>>400729
Tldr systems dont matter people do

Don't worry OP, everyone has a Trot phase eventually. Just read and educate yourself, you'll understand Trotsky was full of shit eventually

>>400655
>One wrote a book about the marxist theory of bureaucracy - the other is not.
One of them resolutely fought against bureaucracy whilst the other was accused by Lenin of trying to militarise the trade unions whos "sum and policy would amount to bureaucratic harassment of the trade unions"
<The net result is that there are a number of theoretical mistakes in Trotsky’s and Bukharin’s theses: they contain a number of things that are wrong in principle. Politically, the whole approach to the matter is utterly tactless. Comrade Trotsky’s “theses” are politically harmful. The sum and substance of his policy is bureaucratic harassment of the trade unions. Our Party Congress will, I am sure, condemn and reject it. (Prolonged, stormy applause.)
Lenin, The Trade Unions, The Present Situation And Trotsky’s Mistakes https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm

It's almost like the faggot that whined about bureaucracy was a soul-less bureaucrat himself

What's more even bourgeois historians like Getty say the CC under Stalin tried repeatedly to tackle bureaucracy in the party and Soviet apparatus.
It was difficult at the time to find good, educated people to put them in positions who weren't white guardists/monarchists/ex industrialists/kulaks or other assorted class traitors.
Only a generation previously the majority of the population was illiterate and the only people that could read and write under the Tsar were the people that had their wealth taken away in 1917

>>400748
>you'll understand Trotsky was full of shit eventually
How was he full of shit when he was right?
Party-State bureaucracy was the source of counter-revolution.

>>400750
>One of them resolutely fought against bureaucracy whilst the other was accused by Lenin of trying to militarise the trade unions whos "sum and policy would amount to bureaucratic harassment of the trade unions"
It was Mandel who wrote a book about marxist theory of bureaucracy. But as he was a follower of Trotsky, a part of credit goes to the Old Trot himself by a proxy.
Also Lenin had a log in his own eye together with Trotsky as he whined about bureaucracy while ignoring the source of it - his beloved vanguard, of which he was blood and flesh.

But anyway, the point is - Trotsky analysis of the character of the Soviet Union, his theory of the deformed workers state, appears to be the most accurate. And this is reflected in a theoretical work of his followers, which actually make an effort to understand and learn from experience. This warrants some recognition and take my hat off to mr Trotsky here for his contribution.

>What's more even bourgeois historians like Getty say the CC under Stalin tried repeatedly to tackle bureaucracy in the party and Soviet apparatus.
You can't really fight bureaucracy when you owe your position, prestige, everything to it. That some sections got the wall treatment means nothing on the large scale, on the scale of bureaucracy and social classes as a whole.
Stalin was lifted to the top by bureaucracy, he was supported at the top by it, and he was buried and condemned by it.

>It was difficult at the time to find good, educated people to put them in positions who weren't white guardists/monarchists/ex industrialists/kulaks or other assorted class traitors.
>Only a generation previously the majority of the population was illiterate and the only people that could read and write under the Tsar were the people that had their wealth taken away in 1917
So the logical conclusion is you can't force a revolution, the whole bolshevik effort was doomed from the start. They won, but in winning they lost.

To my knowledge, Trotsky was in no way against a vanguard or in support of direct democracy, so I have no idea where this premise that he did so comes from. Trotsky was effectively an ML who only disagreed with Stalin I'm regards to a few key issues, bureaucracy no even the primary of those concerns. And just saying "bureaucracy" doesn't solve the issue, especially when that bureaucracy gestated behind the obfuscation that is democracy.

>>400738
>systems dont matter people do
Lol

Lenni Brenner was a trot, he’s pretty based. Also permanent revolution was correct. But also socialism in one country was also correct.

The problem with Trotsky is he became a lightening road for western left liberals who can’t stomach parts of the communist struggle. Trotsky would have purged a good deal of his modern day support. He was himself a zealot and a hard liner

>>401237
*lightning rod
Kek

Read "Trotskyism or Leninism". Should help you get over your Trot phase.

>>401223
Trotsky openly opposed Lenin's conception of democratic centralism before 1917. It can be argued, IMO, that after the revolution he acted opportunistically and joined the Bolsheviks despite his disagreements, and after Lenin's death he reverted to his original position (adjusted to the changed conditions, ofc), ultimatelly leading to his expulsion… Just look up the relevant (pre-rev) writings by Trotsky on marxists.org and Lenin's responses. (sry, can't link – on mobile.)

>>400655
OP, please read Losurdo's Stalin book, available on libgen.

>>401234
>permanent revolution was correct
Lol

>>401251
The October Revolution was premised on the theory of permanent revolution which Lenin agreed with, are you not aware of this?

>>400655
Good job OP, most actual communists get over their ML-phase (repeating the same memes and thought-terminating cliches over and over again learnt through a game of telephone played by teenagers who are too lazy to read, and collecting decontextualised quotes to back up their ahistorical worldview) and eventually come to actually read trotsky and trotskyists only to find a coherent and in retrospective entirely correct analysis of 20th century socialism. Congrats on growing up.

>>400655
kys

>>401199
>How was he full of shit when he was right?
This is what is always funny about Trots or trot simps. To these people he's just a rorscach of their utopian socialism which foregoes all the troubling issues like class struggle (and yes, class struggle in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat). Just know, if Trotsky himself were alive today, the kind and merciful Trotsky would shoot the lot of you Trots

What exactly was Trotsky right about?
He said not to go after the kulaks in 1928 having said back in 1924 that Stalin was a tool of the kulaks
In 1931 he said to stop the 2nd year 5 year plan as it would lead to Soviet collapse. Yet 2nd 5 year plan is now attributed to the Soviets being able to outproduce the Nazis in ww2 (and therefore, winning ww2)
In 1936 he tells everyone that the Soviet Union can't win a war against fascist Germany and that "imperialism is incomparably more strong"
In 1939 he is advocating for an independent communist Ukraine whilst the pro communist forces are pro Soviet, pro Stalin and pro Marxism-Leninism
Every single one of Trotskys predictions was immediate or on a 5-10 year guess
The fact USSR Collapses 50 years after Trotsky died and somehow he gets credit for this prediction is borderline retarded or just straight ignorant of history
> his theory of the deformed workers state, appears to be the most accurate. And this is reflected in a theoretical work of his followers, which actually make an effort to understand and learn from experience.
If Trotsky were alive and he saw what his followers now amounted to he'd shoot them himself
>You can't really fight bureaucracy when you owe your position, prestige, everything to it.
Stalin fought bureaurcracy in the Soviet state many times and no he didn't owe his position to it.
His position was to the party and his position would've been more secure without bureaucracy which is why he fought it as he did
>Stalin was lifted to the top by bureaucracy, he was supported at the top by it, and he was buried and condemned by it.
The soviet history understander has logged on
>So the logical conclusion is you can't force a revolution,
The logical conclusion is that history happens in zigs and zags not straight lines. That revolutions in history advance mightily to begin with then slow and get enveloped in a new wave of dialectic. That revolution is not utopia nor is it permanent and the class struggle continues under the era of dictatorship of the proletariat and even when the majority of the industry has been nationalised and is now collectively owned and is subordinated to a central plan
>the whole bolshevik effort was doomed from the start. They won, but in winning they lost.
The Soviet Union collapsing in 1989-1991 had nothing to do with Trotskys moronic predictions of imminent collapse in 1920s and 1930s

Collapse in 1989-1991 was due to a very specific moment in history:
-complete and unrivaled USA hegemony
-complete ideological penetration of Soviet society with American ideology where the Soviet public started to believe that every American lived like they do in their soap operas
And even then the only reason the military coup failed against Yeltsin was because the NSA were helping their agent Yeltsin decrypt the codes which helped break the coup
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/us-agents-helped-yeltsin-break-coup-1436470.html

And finally, if a hard line ML faction had shot Yeltsin and his collaborators in 1991 and saved the USSR you morons would be on here denouncing it and promising us "if only Yeltsin had succeeded Russia would now be a socialist and democratic paradise"

>>400658
can i go now

>>401318
He was literally correct about all these things wtf??

>>401268
>most actual communists get over their ML-phase
Lol

>>401255
<the 1917 revolution was "premised" (lol) on an idea (lol)

>>401318
>If Trotsky were alive and he saw what his followers now amounted to he'd shoot them himself
Based
formulated by trotsky in the 20's

>>401367
*
<the 1917 revolution was "premised" (lol) on an idea (lol) formulated by trotsky in the 20's
'lol'

>>401199
Look, Trotsky wasn’t wrong, but at the time there either wasn’t much of an alternative or there were more pressing matters to attend to for the young Soviet Union.

Personally, I like the Sam Marcy Line, which acknowledges the critiques made by OG Trotsky, but still places an emphasis on Critical Support for so-called Degenerate Workers’ States.

>>401367
>>401377
Read results and prospects (1906) babe ;)

>>401383
Marcy's was for uncritical support if we're honest, and was opportunistic and unprincipled in foreign policy, most orthodox trotskyite theorists like Grant, or even cooky ones like Posadas gave critical support to the USSR and other similar states.

>>400748
From my experience, both Trotskyists converting to Stalinism and Stalinists converting to Trotskyism are very rare. Typically people join one side or the other based on whatever gut preconception they had about the USSR and after that it's further indoctrination, there is very little serious study of the other side's literature. Avowed Trots or MLs who become disillusioned with their ideology usually renounce "Leninism" altogether and either slowly regress into loyalist social democracy or start to read Lenin in the context of the Second International debates and adopt a more classical Marxist view of organization instead of the "vanguard" "party of a new type" that was promulgated after 1921.

>>401384
>Read results and prospects (1906) babe ;)
The theory of permanent revolution Lenin dismissed as "absurdly left" not once but twice and the fact Trotsky wasn't even in the party that would accomplish this task and was in fact trying to liquidate it alongside the Mensheviks?
< The old participants in the Marxist movement in Russia know Trotsky very well, and there is no need to discuss him for their benefit. But the younger generation of workers do not know him, and it is therefore necessary to discuss him, for he is typical of all the five groups abroad, which, in fact, are also vacillating between the liquidators and the Party.
<In the days of the old Iskra (1901—03), these waverers, who flitted from the Economists to the Iskrists and back again, were dubbed “Tushino turncoats” (the name given in the Troublous Times in Rus to fighting men who went over from one camp to another[10]).
<When we speak of liquidationism we speak of a definite ideological trend, which grew up in the course of many years, stems from Menshevism and Economism in the twenty years’ history of Marxism, and is connected with the policy and ideology of a definite class—the liberal bourgeoisie.
<The only ground the “Tushino turncoats” have for claiming that they stand above groups is that they “borrow” their ideas from one group one day and from another the next day. Trotsky was an ardent Iskrist in 1901—03, and Ryazanov described his role at the Congress of 1903 as “Lenin’s cudgel”. At the end of 1903, Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i. e., he deserted from the Iskrists to the Economists. He said that “between the old Iskra and the new lies a gulf”. In 1904—05, he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now co-operating with Martynov (the Economist), now proclaiming his absurdly Left “permanent revolution” theory. In 1906—07, he approached the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1907 he declared that he was in agreement with Rosa Luxemburg.
<In the period of disintegration, after long “non-factional” vacillation, he again went to the right, and in August 1912, he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas.
<Such types are characteristic of the flotsam of past historical formations, of the time when the mass, working-class movement in Russia was still dormant, and when every group had “ample room” in which to pose as a trend, group or faction, in short, as a “power”, negotiating amalgamation with others.
<The younger generation of workers should know exactly whom they are dealing with, when individuals come before them with incredibly pretentious claims, unwilling absolutely to reckon with either the Party decisions, which since 1908 have defined and established our attitude towards liquidationism, or with the experience of the present-day working-class movement in Russia, which has actually brought about the unity of the majority on the basis of full recognition of the aforesaid decisions.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/x01.htm
<From the Bolsheviks Trotsky’s original theory has borrowed their call for a decisive proletarian revolutionary struggle and for the conquest of political power by the proletariat, while from the Mensheviks it has borrowed “repudiation” of the peasantry’s role. The peasantry, he asserts, are divided into strata, have become differentiated; their potential revolutionary role has dwindled more and more; in Russia a “national” revolution is impossible; “we are living in the era of imperialisnu,” says Trotsky, and “imperialism does not contrapose the bourgeois nation to the old regime, but the proletariat to the bourgeois nation.”
<Here we have an amusing example of playing with the word “imperialism”. If, in Russia, the proletariat already stands contraposed to the “bourgeois nation”, then Russia is facing a socialist revolution (!), and the slogan “Confiscate the landed estates” (repeated by Trotsky in 1915, following the January Conference of 1912), is incorrect; in that case we must speak, not of a “revolutionary workers’” government, but of a “workers’ socialist” government! The length Trotsky’s muddled thinking goes to is evident from his phrase that by their resoluteness the proletariat will attract the “non-proletarian [!] popular masses” as well (No. 217)! Trotsky has not realised that if the proletariat induce the non-proletarian masses to confiscate the landed estates and overthrow the monarchy, then that will be the consummation of the “national bourgeois revolution” in Russia; it will be a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry!
<A whole decade—the great decade of 1905-15—has shown the existence of two and only two class lines in the Russian revolution. The differentiation of the peasantry has enhanced the class struggle within them; it has aroused very many hitherto politically dormant elements. It has drawn the rural proletariat closer to the urban proletariat (the Bolsheviks have insisted ever since 1906 that the former should be separately organised, and they included this demand in the resolution of the Menshevik congress in Stockholm). However, the antagonism between the peasantry, on the one hand, and the Markovs, Romanovs and Khvostovs, on the other, has become stronger and more acute. This is such an obvious truth that not even the thousands of phrases in scores of Trotsky’s Paris articles will “refute” it. Trotsky is in fact helping the liberal-labour politicians in Russia, who by “repudiation” of the role of the peasantry understand a refusal to raise up the peasants for the revolution!
<That is the crux of the matter today. The proletariat are fighting, and will fight valiantly, to win power, for a republic, for the confiscation of the land, i.e. to win over the peasantry, make full use of their revolutionary powers, and get the “non-proletarian masses of the people” to take part in liberating bourgeois Russia from military-feudal “imperialism” (tsarism). The proletariat will at once utilise this ridding of bourgeois Russia of tsarism and the rule of the landowners, not to aid the rich peasants in their struggle against the rural workers, but to bring about the socialist revolution in alliance with the proletarians of Europe.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/x01.htm

>>401414
>>401426
Yep, and Lenin being an good marxist in the years since these changed his mind and came to agree with Trotsky :), hence the April theses in which he presents a program Trotsky supported and most of the Bolsheviks initially rejected in line with their and Lenin's former positions, and needed to be cajoled by Lenin into supporting.

its fine imo. Its not all wrong witn Trotskyism, although I am not a big fan. Its not the 20ies anymore

>>401511
We are literally in the 20's

>>401549
Sigma mindset

>>401549
still stuck in the 80ies, ngl

>>401434
>Yep, and Lenin being an good marxist in the years since these changed his mind and came to agree with Trotsky :), hence the April theses in which he presents a program Trotsky supported and most of the Bolsheviks initially rejected in line with their and Lenin's former positions, and needed to be cajoled by Lenin into supporting.
Thats funny because in the April Theses he reiterates the role of an alliance with the peasantry… Which Trotsky rejected as part of his Permanent Revolution because "the peasantry are divided into strata and their revolutionary potential dwindles"
<The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat;
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm

Lmao, btfo'd

Love Internationalism. Love permanent revolution. Hate socialism in one country. Simple as.
But I also hate Trotskyist autism: Trotsky himself was so asshurt over Stalin later on that I cannot take him seriously as a man - all the crying about degenerated worker's state and so on while the Nazis were at the frontdoor…it seemed more like a personal vendetta than any ideological disagreements.

Stalin should have never had Trotsky killed though, it made him a martyr. He was already irrelevant at this point. Letting him sperg away in Mexico with Frida Kahlo should have done the trick.

Many Trotskyists are fucking retarded. Mandel was based, I have a soft spot for Posadas, but look at this Trotskyist word-salad and tell me the people believing this are of a sound mind:

"The growing Rank and Flie Committee movement, despite increasingly desperate denial from the pseudo-left Pabloite revisionist renegades, is striking fear into the hearts of the global imperialist monopoly bourgeoisie. Global capitalism, now more than 80 years into its terminal death agony, can only be transcended through the fulfillment of the objective historical revolutionary role of the proletariat. The emancipation of the proletariat must be the act of the proletariat itself - under the leadership, of course, of the one true world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International. In their steadfast struggle against all forms of pseudo-left vulgarizations of revolutionary Marxism, David North and the SEP have won the Rank and File proletariat to a genuine Marxist program. The contradictions of global imperialism threaten a Third World War fought with nuclear weapons, and therefore the fate of not just the working class, but the human species itself, depends on resolutely exposing the Pabloites, Grantites, Cliffites, Healyites, Hansenites, Wohlforthites, Mandelites, Steinerites, and all other forms of counter-revolutionary opportunism blocking the path to left unity and planetary proletarian revolution. We urge all workers, youth, and intellectuals stirred by this call to action to unite in Rank and File Committees and to contact the International Committee today."

>>401434
Also the Central Committee signed off the April Theses after an internal struggle (William z foster, History of the three internationals, p.201)
So pretty much what you expect from a Communist party

But i sympathise with your position and understand why you (like trotsky) need to make the Bolshevik parties rich history irrelevant until August 1917 (when Trotsky joined)

>>401606
>Lenin literally specifies the poorest sections of the peasantry
>Stalinoids think this means the peasantry wasn't divided into strata
absolute state

>>401640
lol, absolutely Shrek'd

>>401640
It wasnt just that they were divided into strata which everyone knows
It was his rejection of the peasantry because their social relstions were based on peasant provate property
Trotsky took the menshevik position ont the peasantry and rejected them wholesale
Its amazing how many trots ive educated on their messiahs own theory
<From the Bolsheviks Trotsky’s original theory has borrowed their call for a decisive proletarian revolutionary struggle and for the conquest of political power by the proletariat, while from the Mensheviks it has borrowed “repudiation” of the peasantry’s role. The peasantry, he asserts, are divided into strata, have become differentiated; their potential revolutionary role has dwindled more and more; in Russia a “national” revolution is impossible; “we are living in the era of imperialisnu,” says Trotsky, and “imperialism does not contrapose the bourgeois nation to the old regime, but the proletariat to the bourgeois nation.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/x01.htm
Theres a reason the Soviet Union became a dictatorshipnof the proletariat and peasantry and its because its entire foundation rejected Trotskyisys permanent revolution

>>401640
Wrong source it is 2 lines on the revolution
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/nov/20.htm

And further from 2 lines
<A whole decade—the great decade of 1905-15—has shown the existence of two and only two class lines in the Russian revolution. The differentiation of the peasantry has enhanced the class struggle within them; it has aroused very many hitherto politically dormant elements. It has drawn the rural proletariat closer to the urban proletariat (the Bolsheviks have insisted ever since 1906 that the former should be separately organised, and they included this demand in the resolution of the Menshevik congress in Stockholm). However, the antagonism between the peasantry, on the one hand, and the Markovs, Romanovs and Khvostovs, on the other, has become stronger and more acute. This is such an obvious truth that not even the thousands of phrases in scores of Trotsky’s Paris articles will “refute” it. Trotsky is in fact helping the liberal-labour politicians in Russia, who by “repudiation” of the role of the peasantry understand a refusal to raise up the peasants for the revolution!

<That is the crux of the matter today. The proletariat are fighting, and will fight valiantly, to win power, for a republic, for the confiscation of the land, i.e. to win over the peasantry, make full use of their revolutionary powers, and get the “non-proletarian masses of the people” to take part in liberating bourgeois Russia from military-feudal “imperialism” (tsarism). The proletariat will at once utilise this ridding of bourgeois Russia of tsarism and the rule of the landowners, not to aid the rich peasants in their struggle against the rural workers, but to bring about the socialist revolution in alliance with the proletarians of Europe.

Trotsky even admitted this in 1931 where he said his disagreement with Lenin was he "underestimated the role of the peasantry"

The fact USSR became a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry refutes Trotskys PR

>>401646
<That is why the Social-Democrats say they are fighting together with the entire peasantry against the landlords and officials, besides which they—the town and village proletarians together—are fighting against capital. The struggle for land and freedom is a democratic struggle. The struggle to abolish the rule of capital is a socialist struggle.
>t. Lenin in The Proletariat and the Peasantry (1905)

<It is sufficient to try to imagine a revolutionary democratic government without representatives of the proletariat to see immediately the senselessness of such a conception. The refusal of the social-democrats to participate in a revolutionary government would render such a government quite impossible and would thus be equivalent to a betrayal of the revolution. But the participation of the proletariat in a government is also objectively most probable, and permissible in principle, only as a dominating and leading participation. One may, of course, describe such a government as the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, a dictatorship of the proletariat, peasantry and intelligentsia, or even a coalition government of the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie, but the question nevertheless remains: who is to wield the hegemony in the government itself, and through it in the country? And when we speak of a workers’ government, by this we reply that the hegemony should belong to the working class.
>t. Trotsky in Results and Prospects (1906)

<The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.
>t. Lenin in the April Theses (1917)

<The premise of our class policy today is that only the proletariat, leading the poorest peasants (the semi-proletarians, as our programme puts it), can end the war with a democratic peace, heal the war wounds, and initiate steps towards socialism which have become absolutely necessary and urgent.
>t. Lenin in Peasants and Workers (1917)

Face it, Lenin developed his views on the peasant question from an unqualified support of the peasantry in general and attacking trotsky's line of alliance between a proletarian vanguard leading the poor peasant strata, to adopting it himself and agreeing with Trotsky by 1917 when it was apparent and the clear revolutionary line just as Trotsky had been saying from the start. The notion that Trotsky opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry is ahistorical nonsense as that anyone who has read trotsky well knows the theory of permanent revolution rests among other things on this alliance.

>>401721
lmao
<Trotsky is in fact helping the liberal-labour politicians in Russia, who by “repudiation” of the role of the peasantry understand a refusal to raise up the peasants for the revolution!
Lenin, 2 lines on the revolution

> attacking trotsky's line of alliance between a proletarian vanguard leading the poor peasant strata
Only during the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Anons, pay attention to how fucking illiterate trotskyites are

Leading the poor peasantry is not an ally
Trotsky clearly states when bourgeois democratic tasks are on the table that an alliance will occur with Proletariat in lead (ie. against Tsarist despotism)
But when it comes to Socialist tasks are on the table he states on the coming to power of a workers government it will be the job of the workers government to attack private property; including the peasant holdings and hope for world revolution
Do you see now, why Lenin called this absurdly left and borderline retarded given the implications of attacking the peasantry…In 1917 Russia….where the peasantry are most of the country?

You would know all this if you read Trotsky. But reading either Lenin or even Trotsky himself is like kryptonite to trotskyites.
<This rather high-flown expression defines the thought that the Russian revolution, although directly concerned with bourgeois aims, could not stop short at those aims; the revolution could not solve its immediate, bourgeois tasks except by putting the proletariat into power. And the proletariat, once having power in its hands, would not be able to remain confined within the bourgeois framework of the revolution. On the contrary, precisely in order to guarantee its victory, the proletarian vanguard in the very earliest stages of its rule would have to make extremely deep inroads not only into feudal but also into bourgeois property relations. While doing so it would enter into hostile conflict, not only with all those bourgeois groups which had supported it during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry, with whose collaboration it – the proletariat – had come into power.

<The contradictions between a workers’ government and an overwhelming majority of peasants in a backward country could be resolved only on an international scale, in the arena of a world proletarian revolution. Having, by virtue of historical necessity, burst the narrow bourgeois-democratic confines of the Russian revolution, the victorious proletariat would be compelled also to burst its national and state confines, that is to say, it would have to strive consciously for the Russian revolution to become the prologue to a world revolution.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1907/1905/pre.htm

how can someone actaually "be a trot"
its not like there is any real success to show for it?

Or do you get off on causing orgs to split?

>>401775
He was literally right about everything he said that you're quoting.

>>400655
You know I can empathize with Trotskyism, but I think the most sound step for Trotskyism going forward is to become Marcyist and critically support all "degenerated worker's states". I mean, if you recognize degeneration as a material factor due to siege rather than just evil cabals of bureaucrats ruining everything, where are you supposed to go from there? Organize your own, uber special revolution that upon success will still face the exact same problem of siege socialism? No, rather, the only sensible choice seems to be that, if you want to see "degenerated workers' states" overcome their stagnation, you ought to actively support them as much as possible so that they can overcome the material causes of their degeneration. If the Trotskyist movement goes this direction and abandons all the third-camp poison of Cliff and Shachtman , I can see it being a sort of critical companion to Marxist-Leninism: in essence, using the wrong formula to get the right answer.

>>401234
You know, I'm glad that you exposed me to Lenni Brenner, anon, but you honestly seem to be a tad obsessed with him given how you bring him up in practically every thread.

>>401853
Illitrate beyond belief

Really… Did
< the proletarian vanguard in the very earliest stages of its rule would have to make extremely deep inroads not only into feudal but also into bourgeois property relation
Then
< enter into hostile conflict, not only with all those bourgeois groups which had supported it during the first stages of its revolutionary struggle, but also with the broad masses of the peasantry, with whose collaboration it – the proletariat – had come into power.
No it didnt
It created a workers and peasants government without attacking peasant private property at "its earliest stages"

The attack on peasant private property occured in 1928 onward when millions of peasants had been drawn into towns and cities and industrial work (ie. Become proletarians) and they made a huge effort to persuade and educate the benefits of large scale mechanised agriculture (ie. Giant farms based on US model) and only attacking the kulaks and vacillating middle peasants

Whats more the soviets did not rely on world revolution but built socialism

1984 made me into a trot, fuck the anti revolutionaries

>>400655
How I be into these theorylet threadss

>>401777
The reason to be a trot, for the vast majority of trots who don't really study marxism or read Marx/Engels or Lenin (or even Trotsky going off these trot threads), is that they sympathise with socialism and communism but do not want to reckon with the absolutely potent and massive force that is anti-communism

So the bourgeois push Trotsky to the foreground as the "good"(TM) communist.
Like the Hearst Press which was run by a literal nazi sympathiser and fascist William Randolph Hearst. A newspaper magnate that hated socialism, bolshevism and communism with all their breath and were the source of some of the wilder stories about Soviet Union in the 20s/30s and 40s
They were even the newspaper that propagated the 'holodomor' bullshit which started in Ukrainian fascist circles, got a 2nd wind in the nazi press like Der Sturmer then was picked up by the Hearst Press to spread to the anglo sphere
The Hearst press (whilst doing all this and witch hunting communists in USA) was calling Trotsky the "true revolutionary" and also paid him over a million $$$s in todays money

< “He received $10,000 for his first articles for the Daily Express, New York Herald Tribune, New York Times, and other newspapers. Soon he would receive an advance of $7,000 from an American publisher for his autobiography, and for a series of articles entitled ‘The History of the Russian Revolution’ the Saturday Evening Post paid him $45,000.”
-Volkogonov’s Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, page 323.
This is in money from the 1920s and 30s, of course, so $62,000 in 1935 is about $1,170,000 in 2020.

The truth of the matter is these people are mostly (I'm talking the rank and file trotskyites that make up trot orgs) are petit-bourgeois who do not have the steel to reckon with anti-communist propaganda

If we did an alt-history where Stalin loses the power struggle in the party of 1924-1927 whereby Stalin and his supporters are thrown out the party for disobeying the CC, setting up illegal printing presses and setting up alternative October demonstrations after having lost 724,000 votes to 4000 votes (as Trotsky did) then these people would be Stalinists

They would be telling us how correct Socialism in one country is (without understanding it like they do PR) and how Trotsky was a bureaucrat that solidified the bureaucracy in Soviet Union

>>400655
>One recognizes bureaucracy as a separate social strata with its separate interests - the other is not.
Not true lol, not reading the rest of this.

>>401318
>And finally, if a hard line ML faction had shot Yeltsin and his collaborators in 1991 and saved the USSR you morons would be on here denouncing it and promising us "if only Yeltsin had succeeded Russia would now be a socialist and democratic paradise"
God this is so true it's not even funny

>>401434
>Yep, and Lenin being an good marxist in the years since these changed his mind and came to agree with Trotsky
He never did. It was a bullshit Trotsky tried to pull after Lenin's death.

>>403107
wtf are you on about, trots were all against Yeltsin but point out he was the result of the shift to bureaucracy state-capitalism caused by the degenerated workers state. I'm not even a trot simp, but pretending that Trotsky's points about the degenerate workers state aren't an important tool of marxist analysis is Tankies biggest misstep.

>>403113
>bureaucracy state-capitalism caused by the degenerated workers state
Just a bunch of meaningless buzzwords.

>but pretending that Trotsky's points about the degenerate workers state aren't an important tool of marxist analysis is Tankies biggest misstep.
Pretending that idealistic "theory" with the lack of any material or class analysis can be considered a marxist tool, much less important one just exposes you as nothing more than a lib.

>>403113
Degenerated workers state is a cope tbh. It's the original "not real socialism" argument

>>403113
>wtf are you on about, trots were all against Yeltsin but point out he was the result of the shift to bureaucracy state-capitalism caused by the degenerated workers state. I'm not even a trot simp, but pretending that Trotsky's points about the degenerate workers state aren't an important tool of marxist analysis is Tankies biggest misstep.
Na Trots are not a monolithic group. Some adhere to dem-cent some dont. Some think the Soviet Union was socialist some dont.
It's not a coherent ideology

So some trots supported the overthrow of the Soviet Union
Here's just one example of trots supporting the overthrow of socialism in Soviet Union
<The logic underpinning our 1990 event - that if only the reactionary Stalinists and Labourites who dominated the workers’ movement could be replaced by true revolutionaries, the 1917 overthrow could be replicated internationally - was false. The Fourth International had never gained a mass following; the “death agony of capitalism” on which it was predicated had, during the postwar boom, been superseded by a new surge of brutal and violent capitalist expansion.
<After the seminar, Gusev and his friends formed a Trotskyist group that “stood for an anti-bureaucratic revolution in the USSR, for soviets of working people and for a democratically-planned economy. Our immediate aims were workers’ control over production, the liquidation of the KGB [security police], democratisation of the army, expropriation of the CPSU’s property, and the right of Soviet peoples to self-determination”.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/moscow-1990-when-trotskyist-travellers-met-soviet-reality/

All their demands were nonsense dogshit of course that gave cover to the capitalists intent on capitalist restoration

>>403149
>All their demands were nonsense dogshit of course that gave cover to the capitalists intent on capitalist restoration
Funny how those slogans are similar to those that were used by Gorby and later Yeltsin, under pretense of fighting bureacrocy and giving more freedom to people they dismantled institution that actually provided people with freedom.

I believe that 90s on post-USSR territories is exactly how successfull trot "revolution" looks like.

>>403119
what part of trotsky's analysis isn't rooted in a materialist analysis? It's okay to not have read any trotsky, but I don't know why /leftypol/ pretends they hate him for any other reason. Like Stalinists will gripe about Dengist stae capitalism but ignore the obvious issue of the lack of democracy in the soviet union. Yes the soviet union proved a planned economy can work, and yes it had a good quality of life and in some cases better rights for it's people. But it's collapse was inevitable as soon as it allowed a state bureaucracy to take over. We can have nuance guys, it is allowed.

>>403137
Different socialists have different conceptions of socialist states. Shocker.

>>403149
The soviet union of the by 91 wasn't a workers state in any recognizable way though. How can you defend that era of the USSR? The USSR shouldn't have collapsed but there was required huge reform to re-energies the revolution. You can talk about how 'oh but no they really were socialist because… free housing!' but half a million Russians lost their lives in Afghanistan which the Russian people did not want to get involved in, in what way is that a state run by the people. Russian society was pulling apart at the seems by it's collapse.

>>403159
>I believe that 90s on post-USSR territories is exactly how successful trot "revolution" looks like.

Are you retarded?

>>403165
>what part of trotsky's analysis isn't rooted in a materialist analysis?
What part is? His position on bureaucracy as separate force with it's own interests, basically a class but he was careful not to call it such, is nothing but a repeat of turd positionism. Even his stance on unions is similar to that of Mussolini or Hitler. Nothing about it stems from marxism and anyone who actually bothered to read Marx, Engels or Lenin, instead of cherry picking them, would know that.

He was nothing but a wrecker and a tool of porkies from the start. Should've been killed way earlier.

>But it's collapse was inevitable as soon as it allowed a state bureaucracy to take over.

What is material basis for bureaucracy that allows it to "take over"? They don't own MoP, decisions are collective and so on. You have a lib view of a state.

>Are you retarded?
No, trots are. You don't know history, you don't know marxism, you don't even read your own cult leader as was proved times and again in this thread and other ones like this.

>>403165
>Different socialists have different conceptions of socialist states. Shocker.
Trots are just libs doing ideology window shoping. What a surprise.

>>403175
What? So any adaptation of any socialist theory is window shopping. Mao, Lenin, even Stalin fall under your analysis of trotsky.

>>403174
>What is material basis for bureaucracy that allows it to "take over"? They don't own MoP, decisions are collective and so on. You have a lib view of a state.

But that's the issue, they weren't collective decisions towards the end of the soviet union. Something Mao noticed as well, and ironically something that has ended up happening in China as well. A bureaucracy removed from collective decision making. We can argue on pragmatism in the fight against American imperialism, but simping for stalin just because he flew a red banner without critique is an awful position to take.

>you don't even read your own cult leader as was proved times and again in this thread and other ones like this
Yeah Trotsky is the one with the cult, not the hundred weird Stalinist larpers pretending the material conditions of industrialized US is the same as 20s Russia.

>>403190
Trotsky tried to push his cult. Stalin was just popular.

>>403190
>But that's the issue, they weren't collective decisions towards the end of the soviet union.
And why they weren't? You didn't answer the question actually. What material basis allowed bureacracy to take over? You deflected the question and gone on tirade about "simping for Stalin". I guess that is what your "theory" amounts to in the end.

>What? So any adaptation of any socialist theory is window shopping. Mao, Lenin, even Stalin fall under your analysis of trotsky.
Nothing but a pathetic 'no you' without even understanding the argument.

>Yeah Trotsky is the one with the cult, not the hundred weird Stalinist larpers pretending the material conditions of industrialized US is the same as 20s Russia.
Are those stalinists in this room with us right now?