Is it fair to say Trotsky was the most compelling political writer of the 20th century?
Any time I read anything he wrote I'm filled with hope and excitement. No one else is able to produce this effect in me. Here's a perfect example of his hypnotically spectacular prose:
Other urls found in this thread:
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
worldstatesmen.org
omniatlas.com
flag.blackened.net
twitter.com
Imagine how much better Holla Forums would be if everyone had to read these two texts before being allowed to post
marxists.org
marxists.org
I know.
I never used to understand what the fuck a dialectic was and just assumed it was pseudo-philosophical hocus pocus. Then I read Trotsky and he explained it so clearly and precisely.
He writes more like a scientist than a philosopher, which I greatly appreciate, since philosophers tend to be intentionally obscurist.
Fuck it I'm going to read le ice pick man.
When marxists.org will translate all Posadas texts?
Trotsky is honestly the single most criminally underrated figure on this board.
This. Not only does he have a very lively prose style, he wrote rather extensively on science and technology, as well as culture and the arts. For him a central part of theory was its relation to human practice, and he did quite a bit on "the problems of everyday life." He's a rare realization of "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the goal is to change it" amid a backdrop of petty-bourg "radicals" and thinkers like Zizek and Badiou.
His abridgement of Capital is top tier, too, and Permanent Revolution is amazingly simple and elegant for its level of explanatory and predictive power.
He only wrote the preface to it.
Trotsky was the one who referred to the Stalin-Hitler pact as "the Midnight of the century" and predicted before most of else that this would lead eventually to war, and how most of
He also wrote a great article ridiculing the sort of neutral outlook of the rest of Europe when Hitler came to power, saying this isn't like the other Conservative movements of the time, and how the decay and smut manifested all the way back to 1914.
Overall, I think Trotsky's writings and pamphlets are worth indulging in and have aged way better than those of Lenin's or Mao's. As a person who's fluent in Russian, his article "The Struggle for Cultured Speech" is still very prescient in the today's Russian workers' speech and dialogue.
He was an amazing writer, no one can deny him this.
Anyone else ship Trotsky and Stalin?
You could cut the sexual tension with a knife.
I don't know about that.
I kinda want an anime about them now though.
Bukharin best girl
That's not Trotsky it's Kalinin. Normies always get it confused
why do people still worship this prick
I know, that's what abridgement means. The preface is nice, but it also takes a good eye to keep all the key arguments intact while cutting it down to a readable length for everyone. You have to be autistic to get through all of Capital Vol 1, it doesn't lend itself that well to a "revolutionary's handbook."
The events of the revolution and Bolshevik internal politics and governance were both very colorful. We could get an excellent drama out of it tbh.
An anime rendering of Trotsky's war train would probably be comfy as hell
You're looking for a value judgement in semantics which just doesn't exist. "Workers' state" refered to the class character of the revolution which established it and its historical origins, rather than implying that the workers directly or beneficially control the state (this is part of what is meant by "degenerated.") Trotsky had called for a political revolution against the Stalinist leadership, for instance, while affirming that the international bourgeoisie indeed no longer had a hand in public affairs there.
Are you a REAL comrade?
'Well uh, technically, nah'
Have you ever shot a sailor, like in Kronstadt?
'Well, uh, nah, nah'
WHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhatt the fucking hell tittyfucking pisschrist shit is this fuken thread wat the fuck
First Marxist writing I encountered. Put me off Marxism for A DECADE. That's amazing ahahahaha fuck you
Here is Trotsky:
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow thanks le science man.
I ride the train everyday while chewing gum! Yiff in hell, Trotsky.
this is your brain on memes
This has got to be a trot pretending to be anti-trot, surely no one is really this retarded.
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more like comrade number two if you know what I mean
Maybe you should look up what Guevara had to say about Trotsky.
You know, for how much Stalinists try to front as rational pragmatists, they sure do get triggered REAL easily.
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What the fuck are you even talking about?
Trotsky didn't suggest that him being in charge would save the Soviet Union. He simply correctly pointed out that Socialism in One Country was a stupid policy and would lead to the death of socialism in Russia.
The one about ayy lmaos is already available, that's all we need
marxists.org
t. person who has never read Trotsky (aka typical Trotskyist)
I'm the OP.
Quote a single instance where Trotsky espoused Great Man theory. He didn't suggest that Stalin CREATED bureaucracy in Russia, just that he happened to have been one of its most prominent representatives and therefore that it could be most aptly associated with his policies.
NEVER FORGET KRONSTADT.
>What is In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky
Next time you want to shitfling, don't out yourself as obvioisly ignorant.
I'm sorry for Kronstadt
t. Lenin
I want a sitcom about Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, maybe some others too
He was a really good writer. Trots kinda suck though.
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t. user whomst never read bordiga
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What's wrong with this?
America was and is more educated and technologically advanced than agrarian Russia. It only makes sense that our revolution would look substantially different.
I can only assume he was a strong proponent of doing nothing.
We haven't reached 2034 yet, so you can't say he was wrong.
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Trotsky was wrong, in almost every way
Trotskyism has no theories on how to actually run society other than some vague notion of 'decentralized planning', trotskys ideology has been obviated, and the old debates between stalin and trotsky are not even that relevant to a modern project of socialism which should be based on economic computability theory anyway.
face it, trotsky deserved that icepick.
And his rhetoric isnt even that good, american socialist Eugene debs was a way better rhetorician
what second hand infograph did you get this blatantly wrong conception of permanent revolution from?
Trotsky argued that due to historical development being uneven around the world the bourgeoisie of late developing countries would be devoid of their revolutionary potential due to having their interests tied to that of the colonial imperialist bourgeoisie.
well here's the thing user, trotsky isn't alive in the 21st century.
Be honest: Have you read a single work that Trotsky wrote?
I agree, Leninism as a whole should fuck off to the dustbin of history.
lol, what are you guys even fucking talking about
The question of whether or not socialism can be developed on a purely national level AND whether bureaucratic anti-democratic governments can be considered socialist is still HUGELY relevant today.
And a good military general.
lol no. He continued to defend the industrialization of the Soviet Union and spoke positvely about its initial results in the Revolution Betrayed and elsewhere:
marxists.org
What he did protest was a few specifics of the Stalinist administration, from the bureaucratization to the extremes it took collectivization to. But that's no surprise: both of them initially thought industrialization would happen within the limits of the NEP, when Stalin announced the first Five Year Plan he wanted only about 20% of the land to be collectivized, only his incompetence lead him to force the goal further and further.
But he never protest industrialization itself. In fact, even when all the western light Socialists were swooning over the results of the industrialization in 1932 he already foresaw famine and argued for inconditional defense of the first Worker's State. He also defended Stalin against the prospect of a Right Thermidorian reaction btw:
"The slogan ‘remove Stalin’ is correct in a definite, specific sense [the sense in which Lenin used it when he advised the Central Committee to elect another General Secretary].… If we were strong now … there would be no danger at all in advancing this slogan. But at present Miliukov, the Mensheviks, and Thermidorians of all sorts … will willingly echo the cry ‘remove Stalin’. Yet, it may still happen within a few months that Stalin may have to defend himself against Thermidorian pressure, and that we may have temporarily to support him. We have not yet left this stage behind us.… This being so, the slogan ‘down with Stalin’ is ambiguous and should not be raised as a war cry at this moment.…"
First of all, you don't really understand the theory of permanent revolution. Second, the theory of a bourgeois revolution lead by the proletariat in an alliance with the peasantry is part of Russian Marxism going as far back as literally the 1905 revolution, in a few ways even earlier. And Permanent Revolution is not about the inability of a country to develop an industrial proletariat, he defended its implementation in India and India had the one of the largest industrial working class of the planet. Permanent Revolution is a strategy for pre-capitalist countries to use in order to keep the capitalist phase as brief as possible, Marx and Engels conceived it, and also thought it somewhat appliable to Russian conditions. Read Marx's writings on the Narodniks.
Hahaha, citation very very needed.
This is something you have completely imagined, and I assume it comes from that "Trotskyists and the Gold Standard" meme that circulated here for a while.
My, EVEN the Anarchists hate him? The anarchists, known for their love for Bolsheviks and Marxists, EVEN they hate a Bolshevik and a Marxist? Now I'm convinced that this Trotsky guy is bad news.
He argued against the Soviet Union being described as State Capitalist you doofus.
marxists.org
His only use of the term to describe Russia was during the debates regarding the implementation of the NEP.
And sure, Trotskyism is not really a strong movement, but it's difficult to build a successful movement when you have competition in both the Third International and the Western Social-Democrats. But that's for the better, Trotskyist parties are shit but Trotsky was a great man. And this thread is about the dude itself, not the micro-cults that developed in the 60s carrying his banner.
Just admit you have no idea what you're talking about m8
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Of course not, and when a person says someone is an "anarcho-capitalist who wants decentralized planning" it's difficult to believe that person has ever read a book at all.
Of course not, this was Lenin's reasoning for advocating state capitalism.
Trotsky's analysis of USSR's economic system was pretty shit, infants did better job at that.
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My reading list is preposterously long and I haven't gotten to any Trtsky yet, so can someone answer me this?
A friend of mine told me that Trotsky wanted to keep the requisitioning system from war communism. Is it true?
Do you seriously need me to point out how wrong this is?
From the source you've quoted. Third paragraph is literally my point about the intensity of collectivization + the complaints he made again and again about how long it took the Stalinist faction to adhere to planning, and how they threw themselves into it 100% when everyone, including Trotsky and, initially, Stalin, advocated the preservation of the NEP and industrialization within it.
How the dipshit who edited this thought this means Trotsky favors something called "decentralized planning" and was against planning is beyond me.
and was against central planning*
It's hilarious how many people in this board who have strong positions about Trotsky and Stalin literally don't even know what they beefed about initially and throughout most of the 20s.
Trotsky, much like Bordiga and Lenin, wrote some good theory. But all their followers are insufferable.
no.
Where did he get that from?
Well if I knew I would have checked it already.
i have no horse in that race, but i would like to be more educated
so, during the Civil War the Bolsheviks did War Communism because it was the only way to survive, right? Then they did NEP because the masses absolutely fucking hated War Communism. And then, after Lenin died, the argument was whether or not to ditch the NEP and rapidly industrialize, with the Left Opposition favoring that option and the Stalin clique arguing for its continuance (with Stalin reversing his opinion after Trotsky and his allies no longer posed a thread).
Is any of this accurate? How did the Bolsheviks justify state capitalism in the form of the NEP? I remember reading Lenin quoting Engels saying that a capitalist state, by its very nature, must be crushed by a proletariat revolution.
*posed a threat
ummm
Obviously a Soviet America would have started from a higher level of social and technological development than the USSR. But there's something endearingly 1930s about thinking that the victorious proletariat will win the middle class over to socialism by using the same marketing and public relations techniques that Porky uses to sell flapper hats and gramophones.
Pic related, it stops being funny when you realize that "import management techniques developed by American porkies" was something that Lenin actually did In b4 tankies/nazbols and "muh industrial output"
Repeating his question: what's wrong with this?
Trotsky took command of Stalin's forces at Tsaritsyn during the war, Stalin objected to this centralized military command structure and Trotsky's use of foreign and old regime military advisors.
Like pottery
War and the international and 1905
I don't quite get what you're saying.
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you what now?
Is Holla Forums finally starting to become more tolerant of Trotskyists, and therefore getting closer to overall leftist solidarity? Or am I just getting my hopes up?
Why would a Trotsky thread get bumplocked? He was a hero of the revolution and singlehandedly won the civil war.
Please tell me more. I've been lurking a while, but I'm still kind of a newfag. Enlighten me, comrade. I wish to learn.
Not him, but Trotsky was Lenin's right hand and worked on many vital tasks in government. Chiefly among them was as the reformer and first commander-in-chief of the Red Army, but "single-handedly" is obviously an absurd claim. Anyway, at the very start, the Red Army still had a libertarian socialist outlook; it was volunteer-only, all members were dedicated revolutionaries and they elected their officers. It's great and all but it wasn't very efficient at actual fighting and was severely undermanned. Trotsky turned it into a conventional armed force, which is arguably reactionary but a necessity if the socialist government was to survive the utter chaos of WW1 and the Civil War.
Picture related. It's made by an enthusiast so it's not strictly correct, and the borders shifted a lot. Trotsky isn't remembered as a general, but he must have been pretty good at it because frankly it's nothing short of a miracle that the Bolsheviks won.
worldstatesmen.org
omniatlas.com
As for bibliography, check the sticky.
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still better than Maoists
Thinking that righteousness and strength interact in any way is wishful thinking at best.
The guy saying that was probably the guest star of another "anti trot pretends to be a trot" episode. But yes, the centralization of command and the use of special advisors was a huge part of the red victory.
He was pretty talented. When the white army attacked Petrograd, Lenin, Zhinoviev and many others advised retreat. Trotsky went to its defence and won, even turning around a retreating regiment by riding out in front of it on horseback.
I'm not so sure about his diplomatic skills given the Brest-Litovsk affair, but the situation at the end of the Great War was even more untenable and it's hard to say if the new government (or the Tsar, or Kerensky, had either remained in power) could've avoided that level of concessions in the first place.
"Pragmatism" is basically Trotsky's word for opportunism. People who play at what's "most practical" with respect to and within the capitalist system implicitly accept the logic and premises of that system and frustrate the revolutionary transformation of society. You have to base a program on the "things that can't be changed by paper" and regard the mentality of the masses as the political arena for this, rather than bend your revolutionary program to the mood of the masses and try to recover some token "socialist" aspects from that. One might very well say that pragmatism "is great in theory but doesn't work in practice."
What he's not saying is that you shouldn't ask or answer questions about optimal revolutionary strategy - that's silly.
trotsky is a shit. prove me wrong
I'll admit, I always did like Trotsky quite a good bit. I've just been afraid to admit it here on Holla Forums because it looks like the board is pretty hostile against Trotskyists on the rare chance that they ever do speak up… though that might have just been the masses of memeing tankies doing that. I honestly have no clue. I can't exactly say I'm a Trotskyist myself, but I sure as hell wish he could have been leader of the USSR after Lenin instead of Stalin. I still see Stalin as one of history's worst monsters, and a complete discredit to the good name of communism by horribly bastardizing it with his own brand of state-capitalist totalitarianism. Don't get me wrong, I still acknowledge the good that Stalin did, such as rapidly industrializing Russia and absolutely destroying the Nazis, but he was also a cold-hearted, genocidal maniac. I've never once taken a single tankie seriously. I don't give a fuck whether or not the kulaks deserved it, it was genocide nonetheless. Fuck tankies and fuck Stalin. I'm proud to endorse Trotsky over that Mario-mustached bastard anyday.
I honestly don't understand how anyone could be a tankie.
If you read Trotsky's incredibly well-sourced and factual biography of Stalin, it becomes so fucking apparent that he was an opportunistic bureaucrat with a pronounced sadistic streak. Nothing more, nothing less.
Fuck, I knew it all along.
You're putting words in my mouth. To go from a minimally-hierarchical, democratic, voluntary army to a traditional one is undisputably a reactionary action, even if, like in this case, it was also absolutely necessary.
comr8 you shouldn't be afraid to speak your mind here so long as you're arguing in good faith. If somebody thinks you're ignorant about a topic, so what? It's all anonymous, and any community has its share of cucks who would rather offend than educate. If it were up to me, telling off anyone requesting knowledge in good faith would be a bannable offense.
I think what attracts mockery to Trotsky is that his career after being exiled was rather… underwhelming compared to what it had been. But then again, there isn't much you can do when both the USSR and the capitalist powers want your head on a plate. Also, Trotskyites have the fame of being even more prone to splitting than the rest of the left, which is saying something. A third factor might be that Trotsky seems to attract dogmatic fanboys, who see him as a flawless Hero cast out by the Villain.
Don't be afraid.
The tankies main beef is with the anarchists anyway.
If you are resilient, you could open a second front.
Trotskyists saying absolute batshit insane stuff with the flag on is a bit of a meme, unlike Nazbols I've never been sure if they were joking or not.
Trotsky was a fucking dick who supported show trials and terror. He wanted to use trade unions to militarize the workers (and this after the civil war) to tell them were they had to go, what to do, etc. He wanted to subject the working class to the discipline of managers, basically creating something more tyrannical than capitalism, if you factor in how to Bolsheviks oh so nicely suppressed all meaningful opposition, which the little shit Trotsky supported, of course. Stalin took the plans for collectivization from him. Fuck this guy.
Reddit influx, bunch of middle and upper middle class trot university kids
I actually agree with this tankie? maybe? poster, its not so much a problem with trotsky as with trotskyists, they basically infest every vaguely left wing thing in the west, but in my experience have no theorizing on economics. and are largely made up of upper-middle class bougie careerist pricks who are more enamored with becoming king of an obscure political party (hence the endless splitting) than any realpolitik. Trotsky was the original splitter, splitting from the Soviet Union itself, for the love of fucking god can anyone point to a SINGLE instance of when a trotskyist party has done anything of value, except failing to infiltrate the Labour party that one time in the 80s?
Trotskyists are a bunch of first world college/university kids doing laughably outdated 1920s tactics like pamphleteering and trying to sell the party newspaper in current year.
The whole thing of trotskyism is it's absolutely vapid analysis of the Soviet Union, blaming all of its problems on Stalin even though they want to basically do the exact same thing and expect it to be different because 'muh stalin'. All of the various problems of the SU basically get reduced to 'it was just one bad dude who ruined 'everything', but trust us, it'll work this time'. VAPID as FUCK.
When the tankie poster said:
They were basically right.
your understanding of Trotsky's analysis of the USSR is very weak. read the revolution betrayed
That's a very interesting link. But to be fair, we can see all the Bolsheviks made plenty of mistakes and had awful ideas because we have hindsight. Hell, maybe Marx himself could have kept the left from splitting if only he hadn't insisted on State concentration of the means of production, communication and transportation.