What is it about Trotskyism that seems to just breed endemic splitting?

What is it about Trotskyism that seems to just breed endemic splitting?

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1929/09/fi-b.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/04/finnish.htm
canadafreepress.com/article/fascists-and-bolsheviks-as-friends
phalanx.niceboard.com/t1557-on-left-wing-fascists
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/military/ch16.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/military/ch21.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/military/ch20.htm
leftyhooligan.wordpress.com/maps-of-the-left/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I would ask why you didn't post this in the other Trotsky thread if I didn't suspect you were making a subtle joke.

I'm partly serious.

Well I don't know the origins of it but I'd wager it's partially to do with a manichean worldview. I went to a Trotskyist meeting once and afterwards books came up and I mentioned not liking Thoreau (his writing, not his politics), and was treated to a diatribe about the poverty of Henry's anarchism.

I'm not so sure trots are really much more prone to splitting and sectarianism than the rest of the left. There's always several groups in a country claiming to be a part of the same tendency competing with each other. Even demsocs do this shit. Like what reason does the SPUSA have to exist when DSA basically has the same ideology and at least 20x as many members? Can anyone tell me what the actual difference is between PSL and WWP?

It's sad because most trotskyite analysis (like WSWS) is very thoughtful and well reasoned (when it's not condemning every other leftist in existence as pseudo left). Generally trots are very well read on marxism and some actually can apply his work in ways that serve other than a purely sectarian argument.

Apart from that these bacteria show what happens when you have a middle class intellectual vanguard willing to split parties over meaningless interpretations of "state capitalism v deformed workers state"

I think you misspelled Leftism user

...

I don't know, these Trotskyists just split a lot and sell newspapers from some reason. Also, didn't he want an alliance against Fascism with Social-Democrats who killed Rosa Luxemburg? This seems to me like *sniff* pure *sniff* Ideology, also this is my first week as a leftist and I know nothing but memes

Trotsky openly encouraged sectarianism and splits when he was alive

Yeah such a splitter

mebbe cuz hiss 'ead was splitted uupen bi stalling, innt?

Source?

There are two interesting points of reference for this, one is the conflict with China and the other is the war against Finland.

Regarding China, the KMT and the Soviets beefed over control of the Chinese Eastern Railway towards the end of the 20s, and the opinion of many Leftists in the West was that the Soviet Union should conceded it to the Chinese, but Trotsky protested despite already being in exile. This is from the third book in Deutscher's Prophet series:


Read marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1929/09/fi-b.htm for reference:

As far as Finland goes, both Trotsky and Stalin saw in it strategic value against Germany, Stalin invaded, the american Trotskyists protested the invasion, while Trotsky defended it:
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/04/finnish.htm

I can see where conservatards start viewing leftism as a religion now tbh

it combines democratic centralism with actual broad popularity.

lots of people + mandatory following of party line = lots of party lines

maoist and ML groups have this issue too but its not as pronounced because they tend to be too small of sects to begin with to significantly subdivide

Well Stalin worked with the western capitalists against fascists…

Do you mean Trotskyism or communism in general? cause the two are hard to separate if you understand communism

So?

Yeah and he worked with nazis against Poland before

Lenin did with Mussolini too btw

Lenin did what with Mussolini?

worked

read this:
canadafreepress.com/article/fascists-and-bolsheviks-as-friends

"capitalism in decay" my ass

not that it was anything new, togliatti (the guy they named russian city after) postulated that before too
phalanx.niceboard.com/t1557-on-left-wing-fascists

that or maybe trotskyism isn't being treated properly as a ideology in leftism

Because Trotsky himself got split… His head, at least.

The text you've posted basically makes the argument that Lenin worked with Mussolini prior to his abandonment of Socialism and the creation of Fascism, which is basically attacking Lenin for not having the hability to predict the future. Also, the idea that Mussolini was a star revolutionary who international socialists were even aware of is just conservatives trying to re-write history. For example in 1912 the Italian Socialist Party decided against Reformism, Mussolini against them, Lenin wrote in support of this and his name is not mentioned once. But that's besides the point.

In general, this article is a mess, most of the sources citated are not credible historians but right-wing figures who once or twice wrote "history" books, it deliberately misinterprets events and bind together isolated quotes and moves from completely different times and situations and glue them together in order to construct a narrative.

This essay is exemplary:


Is a mixture of decontextualized statements, events happening years if not decades apart and straight up fabrications just to sustain this narrative. The earliest mentions of Mussolini in Trotsky's works, from 1922, are all negative:
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/military/ch16.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/youth/youth.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/military/ch21.htm
marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/military/ch20.htm

A renegade socialist now turned into monarchism and becoming the hardened wing of Capital, hardly the "Italian Lenin". For Latinized National Bolshevism, the only source of this seems to be a non-academic who wrote a book about Fascist and Socialist alliances that I doubt any academic has ever heard of, and who also published something called "Manifesto of Constitutional American Nationalism" The "Slav Fascism" was an Italian rhetoric invention made during WW2 to persuade Fascists to make peace with the Soviet Union and concentrate against the west. Tip for interpretation: they were losing the war, and such things weren't said before. That Fascism was not seen as an enemy to Bolshevism is easily proven wrong not only by the links I posted but a simple search on Lenin's and Stalin's works from that time. The mention of Stalin as a "fellow Fascists", which the article makes it sound like it happened during the 20s, may or may not have happened, but it certainly didn't happen back then as Stalin was not even consolidated into power, and if you check the Opera Omnia covering this period, he is not even mentioned at all. He might have said it later, during the war, but if we're going to conclude that things said during war for diplomatic purposes are honest statements of ideology , then we must arrive at the conclusion that Capitalism and Soviet Socialism are the same thing, after all they fought in the same side.

In general, stop taking articles like that seriously. Writers concerned with their reputation and citing academic sources often make up or presume a lot of wrong stuff in their treatments of Bolshevism, a right-wing newspaper not concerned with truth or credibility will obviously be nothing but horseshit.

I also would like to mention that nowhere in this is suggested that Lenin and Mussolini worked together, this is a shitty attempt to portray the two doctrines as similar, but the claim is not made anywhere, unless by "worked with Mussolini" you mean "supported the faction of the Socialist Party that Mussolini happened to be in before he became a Fascist".

Trotsky himself.

I guess you're right.

leftyhooligan.wordpress.com/maps-of-the-left/

Scroll a bit down, there's a bunch of family trees of leftist organizations.

Fissiparity is the original sin of the left. We need a Genghis Khan.