I'd like to know why Holla Forums has such a hate for this man.
I've read a fair few of his shorter works, and so far I see no problems with his ideas. From what I understand of Trotskyist ideas, I can understand why people might disagree with them in x or y respect, but I don't understand why there is such apparent hate towards Trotskyism here.
Can someone explain?
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His hairstyle is terrible.
I think a big reason why is his talk, during the civil war, of a "labor army" and enforced state managers, as well as backing of central planning as opposed to decentralization.
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Trotsky protests too much
I think it's more hatred of his supporters, who tend to be insufferably sectarian, than of the man himself.
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not an anarchist or a tankie, don't care about their objections to trotsky
but while many of his critiques of the USSR were accurate (as was his analysis of fascism), they only came after his exile (had he not been exiled i suspect he would have ended up doing many of the same things as stalin, like forced collectivization), and he didn't realize that the leninist party model made the "corruption" of the revolution inevitable
Because he frankly had quite a number of bad ideas yet has an undeserved following all due to the circumstances of his death.
I know that some Trot groups can be sectarian but most I've met are cool.
So surely this should be a criticism that is also levelled at Leninists, right?
What are those bad ideas, then? I'm not saying they don't exist, I just don't see what of his ideas is so obviously terrible
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this
And personally he is just plain retarded for me, did you know him and his sect within the party were vouching for attacking india post russian civil war? How fucking retarded do you have to be to attack an asian country of that population without an established industry?
Trotsky like Lenin did write about the growing problem of bureaucracy yet neither Lenin or Trotsky wanted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I also wouldn't call the degeneration inevitable, if revolution had taken hold in Germany then all the problems with Bolshevik Russia would had been a foot note.
not to mention the goldbuggery
It was some harebrained scheme to fuck over the British Empire.
yes I know it would have apparently undermined the UK if there was a revolution in India…Nevermind that India had no industrial basis for a revolution, ie even less than russia, and had nightmarish logistics and a population that could occupy Russia if they really really had to.
And he wanted to spread the revolution to India, among people that didn't have workers movements yet because they were very underdeveloped.
Trotsky was a Leninist
it could have been a lot better, but i'm deeply suspicious, to say the least, that a successful german revolution would have been a magic pill even if it didn't soon fall apart/wasn't crushed by the allies
I guess this is where I admit that I'm not necessarily a revolutionary socialist?
Yeah, well, IIRC this was the guy so bloodthirsty he wanted to march into Poland the moment things were settled in Russia. Permanent revolution and all that.
But there is a difference between a Trotskyist and a Leninist?
Or are you saying that Trots are a subsection of Leninists?
What baby? They created the bathwater themselves with their vanguardism.
the latter, in the same way that "Marxism-Leninism" is a subset of Leninist thought.
Why Trotsky is bad
Begginers reading, pretty essential:
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
Sources against Trotsky by Lenin:
marxists.org
marxists.org
sources against Trotsky by Stalin:
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
marxists.org
Evidence of Trotskies collaboration with imperialists
clogic.eserver.org
History of the CPSU, concerning Trotsky.
marxists.org
marxists.org
Also I advise you to read the complete history of the CPSU, it is a good read and expunges many lies about the party pre-Hruschev
other sources:
The Errors of Trotskyism: A Symposium
marxists.org
The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre: Report of Court Proceedings
marxists.org
The Moscow Trial Was Fair by D.N. Pritt & Pat Sloan
marxists.org
Left in Form, Right in Essence: A Critique of Contemporary Trotskyism by Carl Davidson (October League)
marxists.org
On Trotskyism: Problems of Theory and History by Kostas Mavrakis
marx2mao.com
Trotskyism or Leninism? (Preface) by Harpal Brar (CPGB-ML)
mltranslations.org
some web sources:
marxistleninist.wordpress.com
frso.org
frso.org
how many trotskytes does it take to make a party?
one each person
Just 2 more i might add as a suggestion
Moscow 1937 by Lion Feuchtwanger
Chapter 6
revolutionarydemocracy.org
Mission to Moscow by Joseph Edward Davies
archive.org
Trotsky did not invent the term racism, Holla Forumstard.
What is it about Trotsky that made his followers so damn dedicated? Seriously, holy shit.
They're the only mildly large radical group in the west. Not being sectarian, just asking
Did you even read their post? How can you think he's a Holla Forumstard?
Maybe it's because they're the only ones whose ideas get them that agitated, educated and organized?
The image
You aren't doing a very good job of blending in, you know.
I was mocking the picture genius
just another neurotic fucker (gee I wonder what group of rootless cosmopolitans has a disproportionate number of these).
Filled loser's minds with unattainable spooks.
lrn2SCALE.
first the home, then the commune, the nation. After that who gives a fuck about the world. Don't take more dick than your arse can fit.
Another brilliantly articulated tankie argument
keep denying reality. International anything - the "team of no team" is unattainable. You will never EVER get to that scale. You're trying to build a house of cards (fragile system) without glue (antifragility measures).
It's only ever going to exist in your mind
I don't think you understand what internationalism is even a demand for, then.
Capitalism is already successfully proving that it is possible to have near global heterogeny in an economic system. Your statement that "international anything" is impossible is bullshit.
It didn't abandon proletarian internationalism, numb nuts. It was just the best way to protect the revolution at the time. God forbid the USSR adopt a strategy focusing on the only country that had shown any revolutionary potential. Trotsky would've destroyed the Soviet Union.
I've gotten a bit of a chance to read some of Trotsky's work in the past few months here. This may be a bit odd for an anarchist to say, but while I don't agree with his methodology, I can at least understand the logical conclusions he made and the conditions at the time that caused such conclusions.
Take for example permanent revolution: it was an idea largely born out of the pan-European revolution's failure to take root. Especially in the early years, many of the communists of Russia were whole-hardheartedly expecting the worldwide proletariat to rise up and join them in a global revolution against the bourgeois states. When this fell flat, a lot of the party members (now having formed the Soviet Union) felt rightfully isolated. Thus, there came a decision to make as to how the new state would conduct itself when it came to the support of this worldwide proletariat. Stalin essentially took the approach of "fuck them, we deal with what we already have." Trotsky made the logical leap of "if the proletariat is unable to liberate themselves from within, then the existing socialist state must step in to lead the charge for them." Obviously I'm simplifying, but the goal was to continue the revolutionary tradition and keep spirits up for the eventual success of socialism.
Again, I think better methods may have been preferable, but I hate Trotsky's ideas a little less than I used to.
Trotsky himself was still a piece of shit though.
I don't hate Trotsky and I study his stuff, I hate Trotskyists and Trot organizations because:
1) they tend to be lvl. 1 lefties with little knowledge of theory, including Trotsky's, only adhering to his name because he was the nicer one in the struggle against Stalin
2) trot organizations tend to be some of the most idiotic, cultish, and weirdest groups of any political groups. They used to fuck up the left in a way that SJWs can only dream of
3) they're useful idiots - american intelligence made us of trotskyist groups to help spread anti-Soviet sentiment among the american left
4) they almost always turn into neocons after they stop rebelling against their parents
How do you explain the fact that the most active and involved organizations in Europe are Trotskyist organizations, then? Also I think you are tarring all Trot orgs with the same brush - some are terrible and some are great.
Trotsky was a little like the Thomas Jefferson of the USSR – a brilliant idealist who is remembered too fondly by most of his supporters.
There is little reason to believe Trotsky would have been less repressive than Stalin, especially given his massacres of peasants whose neighbors had harbored anarchists.
Trotskyists generally see their hero as a continuation of the legacy of Rosa Luxembourg, but Trotsky was not democratic in any way. Had he taken power in the USSR, he probably would have been no more libertarian than Lenin.
What ideas were bad besides his autistic and unfeasible insistence on simultaneous global revolution?
Literally not a single one of those things are unique to Trotskyist orgs. Try again comrade.
yikes
jesus christ this
When I was 15 I literally identified as a Trotskyist because of Wikipedia and Animal Farm
Just because you were an idiot and a Trot doesnt mean all Trots are idiots
Daily reminder that nothing makes porky happier than seeing you socialists divide like oil and vinegar over arguments about ~100 year old dead Russian men.
That's a myth.
what do you mean by this?
All I know about Trotskyists orgs is that they were the counterpart to Maoists on college campuses during the 70s and 80s. They were usually less militant, more socially progressive in terms of idpol, and some of them eventually became Neoconservatives.
fucking lol
Gr8 counter-point
this is just plain wrong, the most active and involved organizations are marxist-leninist.
Soros funds the Trotskyites in europe because they plague the left with sectarianism, Trotskyism in it's core was divisive from the start and continues to be today, and sometimes they are just plain traitorous like supporting the bourgeois over progressive movements due to some ideological conflation of theirs. Like when hundreds of trot organizations denounced the efforts of the soviet people in driving back fascism and establishing socialist states, claiming that a 'purer' revolution would erupt under the german occupied lands than the ones the USSR had wrought.
as I said before these are good readings, specifically on the sectarian nature of Trotskyite ideology.
marxists.org
marxists.org
Lenin was as much a sectarian as Trotsky. When Lenin arrived in Leningrad he basically told the party they were all revisionist idiots for not pushing for a workers state then.
Do you have non-stalinist sources?
Stalinism doesn't exist, there is only marxism-leninism.
since the two sources I posted are by lenin I guess I have no 'non-stalinist' sources, by your logic.
Stalinists cost us Spain
If you want to work with them, don't be surprised if you end up with a knife on your back.
Most people Stalin murdered were commies themselves and his disciples are pretty open about it, not afraid to admit, they will do it again.
How can you work with that?
Lenin rewrote Marx. This is literally revisionism.
It's astonishing how you paint yourself as "true" marxists.
Also Stalin was a brute. Stalinism does not exist in theory, practically it's ML, just every power centralised to one man.
It needed Germans knocking at Moscow's door, to give some of them up to more competent people.
yeah okay whatever you say dudebro, just like Lenin cost us Ukraine amirite?
Civil War showed, Stalin was not the brightest bulb of the bunch. Him becoming leader of the USSR was the biggest misfortune that could've happened.
Literally anyone else in charge of the country would've been able to stall the Germans.
read the texts I posted earlier, there were reactionaries in the midst plotting not only against the party but sabotaging the army as well, the fall in quality was marginal compared to what capitalist sources say, at around 9.3%.
exactly, it is a continuation of Lenin's work.
ayy lmao
mein gott, pure ideology
See you admit it, you only sugarcoat it to hell and back.
You cost us the war. You and your stalinist sources can not bullshit yourself out of this.
Stalinism
I never denied a purge of the army never happened, I just said it was necessary. When you have reactionary elements in your government you have to get rid of them
wut, world war 2 was won
Just unapologetic Stalinists justifying murder by making him literally the devil who had it coming.
As a matter of fact there are a lot of Stalinist devils who had it coming, in that regard, he just happens to be the most prominent one.
I'm still talking about Spain.
I know, like I said before, you are not even hiding it. "Reactionary elements" as in "If you don't agree with my sociopathic version of socialism, you are against us". Working with you is suicide.
oh wait you are talking about the civil war in Spain
The soviet government sent over comissars to serve the party and army of the Spanish republic, the government sent the comissars where they were needed, and I doubt the Spanish government purged the counter-revolutionaries for no good reason.
And Spain would have lasted even shorter without Stalins aid, considering he shipped a shit ton of artillery, vehicles, arms and whatnot, you are hilarious if you think Spain which was outdated militarily would last on it's own against fascists armed and funded by German and Italian fascists.
ayy lmao, reactionary elements were those that wanted to revert to capitalism or keep elements of the capitalist system in place either for their own gains or out of general lack of understanding of socialism,and it looks like you have lapped up all the western propaganda against Stalin if you just fling insults senselessly like you do. I don't see how it makes sense to have members in your parliament that are directly working against the goals of the revolution, but oh well logic seems lost on you.
The anarchists were killed because they fought with the revolutionary government.
Uhhh
Isn't Trotskyism just ultra-Orthodox MLism?
His idea of gold standard backed currency.
Accelerationism is disgusting. Do you have a source, though?
no, it actually disagrees with a bunch of core tenants of leninism, and even marxism due to Trotsky having a poor understanding of marx. Trotsky and Lenin never agreed on any of the party congresses
I'll give you a source in a minute, I am posting on 5 boards at a time.
As the quotes mentioned earlier prove, it is amazingly apparent in Trotsky’s writings that he supported not defense of the Soviet Union, but rather terrorism and wrecking against it. “Inside the Party Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State.” Trotsky said. “It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositionist becomes, ipso facto, a terrorist” (New York Evening Journal).
“After the experiences of the last few years,” he continued, “it would be childish to suppose that the Stalinist bureaucracy can be removed by means of a party or soviet congress. In reality, the last congress of the Bolshevik Party took place at the beginning of 1923, the Twelfth Party Congress. All subsequent congresses were bureaucratic parades. Today, even such congresses have been discarded. No normal 'constitutional' ways remain to remove the ruling clique. The bureaucracy can be compelled to yield power into the hands of the proletarian vanguard only by force” (Trotsky The Class Nature of the Soviet State).
continuing
Trotsky insisted that “[t]he Soviet population cannot rise to a higher level of culture without freeing itself from this humiliating subjection to a caste of usurpers. […] No devil ever yet voluntarily cut off his own claws. The Soviet bureaucracy will not give up its positions without a fight. The development leads obviously to the road of revolution” (Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed, 215).
The testimonies of many co-collaborators speak vividly of Trotsky’s desire to destroy the Soviet Union, kill the leadership and restore capitalism.
The opportunism of Trotsky and his followers knows no bounds. After his exile, Trotsky began to immediately lay the ground for a century of equating Hitler and Stalin with pronunciations such as: “…the Soviet bureaucracy is similar to every other bureaucracy, especially the fascist” (Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed). But even though it was Trotsky himself who was advocating the destruction if the USSR and championing the colonization of all of Europe by Hitler, to his last breath he claimed that co-called “Stalinism,” a slandering term invented by Trotsky for Marxism-Leninism, the very ideology he claimed to be upholding, was actually complicit with fascism: “Fascism is winning victory after victory and its best ally, the one that is clearing its path throughout the world, is Stalinism” (Trotsky L'appareil, 238).
also some sources against what the trots claim
clogic.eserver.org
Stalin purged everyone that played any role in the storming of the Winter Palace and the subsequent civil-war then changed history to suit his version of events. Thus it was Stalin's who's opportunism knows no bounds, where he was willing to erase people from history just to gain more power.
Images play an educational and propaganda role in society. When, say, a line-up of Bolsheviks is shown in a magazine for youth, it was to show that these were persons worth emulating or otherwise looking up to.
If an image contains figures who later became renegades, it could cause confusion, particularly in a backward society as the USSR still very much was in the 1920s-40s. Peasants had a peculiar relationship with images, treating them in many cases as special objects.
There was also, of course, a political motive. For example students in schools would take an image that showed a renegade among Bolsheviks in good standing and would be told to blot out the renegade, as a symbolic gesture showcasing condemnation of that renegade and forefeiting his or her standing in Soviet society.
This isn't unique or "totalitarian" behavior. Many celebrities in capitalist countries have gone from famous to being virtually erased from the public eye because of what they did. Jimmy Saville and Bill Cosby are good recent examples. Various honors to them have been "erased from history" not because of some sinister desire to rewrite the past, but as a statement that they are not figures to look up to.
There were various renegades in the history of the Bolsheviks. There was Roman Malinovsky, a rising star within the party who had been trusted by Lenin. He was in fact a police informant and caused the arrest of Stalin, Sverdlov and Ordzhonikidze. After the October Revolution his role was fully exposed, but he had once been in high standing as a member of the Central Committee and as one of the few Bolshevik deputies to the Duma.
To quote from a 1931 interview:
Stalin: "With us personages of the greatest authority are reduced to nonentities, become mere ciphers, as soon as the masses of the workers lose confidence in them, as soon as they lose contact with the masses of the workers. Plekhanov used to enjoy exceptionally great prestige. And what happened? As soon as he began to stumble politically the workers forgot him. They forsook him and forgot him. Another instance: Trotsky. His prestige too was great, although, of course, it was nothing like Plekhanov's. What happened? As soon as he drifted away from the workers they forgot him."
Ludwig: "Entirely forgot him?"
Stalin: "They remember him sometimes—but with bitterness."
also
marxists.org
here is Lenin on the importance of party purges.
Trotsky was an mediocre commander with a dogmatic interpretation of Engels. He had an overblown ego and his influence was centred on a small group of similarly minded people. He was a man that complained the world didn't work as he wanted.
Stalin was a mediocre bureaucrat with a poor understanding of Marxist Theory, who managed to get into such a position that he could fill the entire bureaucratic apparatus with his own men. The entire bureaucracy his supporters claim he fought against was created by the man himself, he laid the groundwork for the nomenklatura cliques that would squabble amongst themselves until the 90s when they figured out they could just privatize everything and get rich.
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He didn't get so much hate until all the philosophy students left and Holla Forums was flooded with Berniecrats from reddit.
this paragraph as a whole is the most paternalistic thing i've ever seen–it's inevitable for any society to reinforce the dominant ideology, but you're basically advocating for total, uncritical acceptance
Where are the trots in this board anyway?
You Stalinists just believe this stuff? Or are you hoping that you can fool people into believing it?
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… such as the Petrograd Soviet? Or the Red Army?