How would the USSR have been if Trotsky had taken over instead of Stalin?

How would the USSR have been if Trotsky had taken over instead of Stalin?
From my understanding his biggest criticism was about the bureaucrats supposedly forming their own class in the Soviet Union. How would he have prevented this from happening?

Stalinist can say whatever they want, but the 1932 famine wouldn't of been of the same scale it was if Trotsky had been in power.

Thats Kalinin not Trotsky in the picture dummy, also Trotsky said that the bureaucrats were not a "New Class" but a "caste".

I googled Trotsky Stalin and that came up.
Here's this one instead.

What's the difference?

Can't be worse, but probably no better. Trots usually forget that Trotsky supported the same economic policies as Stalin and had a string of massacres under his belt. Not exactly the shining example of humanism and independence some hold him up to be.

That doesnt mean anything, that could be worse or better.

Anyway, trotsky was a fucking maniac too.

He wouldn't of forcibly collectivized.

He claimed not to. Realpolitik.

But he would've run aground of the same problems as Stalin did in 1928: small individual farms simply weren't productive enough to support cities.

If you wanted any industrialization to happen, you'd need to either let kulaks loose (and bend to their every whim afterwards, because agrarian sector was the backbone of Soviet economy - not anything else), or to collectivize.

And then there was a different approach in industrialization, of course. Even if Trotsky managed to avoid the worst of social fallout that happened 1930s by throwing pretty things at people, he wouldn't have had economy Soviets got by 1941 under Stalin. And then he would've gotten crushed by the Reich.

And you can't hope that West would've been able to compensate for the lack of heavy industry, when even England couldn't arm itself sufficiently.

Soviets would've paid tenfold for any problems they'd avoid in the 30s.

You make some good points. The fact that without the Soviets economy WW2 would've gone a completely different direction never occurred to me, I still think executions and the Gulags were unnecessary .

I think it would be better, but Trotskyites tend to romanticize the guy since he wasn't in power.

The only reason Trotsky criticised the USSR was because he wasn't in power. Same with claiming the ban on factions in the party was undemocratic after his views were btfo by majority vote and he was supposed to stick to the party line.

He would have been an incompetent Stalin.

...

Utter shit, it certainly wouldn't of lasted as long as it did and the famines would of been much worse. People claiming they wouldn't of been on the same scale are laughable.

So was the USSR state capitalist, or state socialist? Leftypol is really confusing me now.

Depends on if you ask someone who leans more towards tankie or someone who leans more towards leftcom.

It's complicated.

oh boy.

just call it capitalist, state capitalism isn't really all to different from capitalism and wasn't exclusive to Red Russia and its satellite states.

No one knows. Speculation abounds what would have happened. I would imagine worse, Trotsky plans for industrialization didn't include heavy industry as he didn't believe the USSR could pull it off; some sources also claim that Trotsky wanted more foreign help towards developing the industry which Stalin was opposed to. The foreign policy might have been better, although not by much.

This is a mistake people keep making. Trotsky had no chance of taking over the USSR despite many people believing he would.

Stalin was General Secretary so he was able to put in people that were loyal to him into the party, and would have voted in Stalin. The other thing is the fact that Trotsky wasn't liked with the others trying to grab power.

It was a country that was trying to move towards the communism phase by skipping the capitalism step.Inorder to do this they created their own version of capitalism that would eventually be phased out by socialism and finally communism.

Socialist, obviously. Left-coms and trots like to pretend they're above defining a socialist system as "worker control" yet you can see these lies clearly when they claim a society where none of the major economic authorities purchased commodities was capitalist.

Do you have any idea how Party worked?

I don't think you even realize that it several million people in it in 30s. You can't hand-pick every single one.

State capitalism is a confusing term. I don't consider Stalin-era USSR to be like the capitalist countries at the time because, like you said, no commodity production.
But that alone shouldn't make it socialist, unless you also want to claim feudalism was also a socialist system (commodity production didn't take up a large percentage of the economy until capitalism arose). IMO you need both the abolition of the commodity form and worker control in order to call a system socialist inb4 butthurt mutualists and titoists

Tbh the only difference that isn't wild speculation is that Trotsky was a better military leader so the USSR might have done better under him during WWII.

Why phase something out that is obviously working?

castes are unchanagable social constructs , classes are physical relationships.

Castes imply there is no mobility between them

Hopefully you're not talking about the USSR here?

Learn some fucking english you liberal tard