Trotskyist ideology put into practice

[infraxotl]

What have Trotskyist's done in the real world?

[Nolan]

Ok look. I'm a ML and everything, but threads like this don't help anything or even hurt Trotskyism.

The best thing that'll happen is that you can chuckle to yourself that you trolled a couple of trots on the world wide web and the worst thing that could happen is that you get banned for trolling. It's pretty fucking pointless.

Close 'er, mods.

It's late. If this wasn't meant to be a troll thread then nvm.

[Kléber]

Organized the seizure of power in 1917 and the victory of the Soviet regime during the civil war for starters.


All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/06.htm

[infraxotl]

"Don't worry if you think your questions are stupid or pointless, ask away. Learning is not stupid and is never pointless."

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The Teamsters strike in Minneapolis in 1934, still considered a case study of how to conduct a successful strike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_Teamsters_Strike_of_1934

For a time Trotskyists led successful workers movements in Sri Lanka and Bolivia.

There are Trots from different organizations doing important work around the world today.Joe Higgins is the MEP from Ireland

EDIT:Trots spearheaded resistance to Maggie Thatcher

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liverpool/

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Discovered that UFOs come from a socialist future or alien socialist planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_%28Posadist%29

[Weezer]

Discovered that UFOs come from a socialist future or alien socialist planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_%28Posadist%29

At the same time, Stalinists discovered what the word 'purge' meant and discovered what wonders 'purges' entail.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Purges were going on long before Stalin took the leading position. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from the party from the time of the revolution to the mid-1930's.

But it wasn't until the Great Purge in 1936 that being purged came to mean being executed or imprisoned.

[Kléber]

Purges were going on long before Stalin took the leading position. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from the party from the time of the revolution to the mid-1930's.

But it wasn't until the Great Purge in 1936 that being purged came to mean being executed or imprisoned.
Stalin had been effectively in charge from 1928 and thousands of expelled Party members were indeed shot or imprisoned before the mass executions of 1936-41.


Discovered that UFOs come from a socialist future or alien socialist planet.

It's easy to make fun of Posadas after he went crazy from being tortured in a military prison, but over a thousand Posadist guerrillas died fighting against the Argentine bourgeois regime in the 1970's, and many of the Cuban Posadists' revolutionary demands and slogans were appropriated by the Castro regime before it banned them in 1965.

[infraxotl]

So Trotsky played a large roll in winning the Russian civil war, a decade or so later Trotskyists had a successful strike in Minneapolis, and since then they've been doing the same thing pretty much all leftists are doing now to varying degrees of success?

[GracchusBabeuf]

The better question is: how much damage has "Trotskyism in practice" done to the working class movement?

[infraxotl]

I'd rather not start arguments here, I just want to hear about Trotskyist success stories.

[We Shall Rise Again]

What have Trotskyist's done in the real world?


Trotskyist's have succesfully split the workers movement in just about every country they operate their narrow minded sectarian politics in.

they are a prasite on the Irish Left.

[fredbergen]

You can read some of the highlights of what the Trotskyists have done here, on the introductory note to the Internationalist Group web page. (http://www.internationalist.org/welcome.html#readmore)

[Palingenisis]

Trotskyist's have succesfully split the workers movement in just about every country they operate their narrow minded sectarian politics in.

they are a prasite on the Irish Left.

More than a parasite mo chara...The leading Trot group condemned us Dubs for stopping a Loyalist commemoration marching past the GPO.

[We Shall Rise Again]

More than a parasite mo chara...The leading Trot group condemned us Dubs for stopping a Loyalist commemoration marching past the GPO.


Indeed, and view the bully boys of the bourgouise state as meerly 'workers in uniform ffs'!

[RED DAVE]

Trotskyist's have succesfully split the workers movement in just about every country they operate their narrow minded sectarian politics in.Considering that you're a Stalinist, a member of the tendency who is the master betrayer of the working class from around 1928 till they were dumped in the garbage can of history around 1990, I wouldn't open that can of worms.

RED DAVE

[Proletarian Ultra]

As of 2007, Hugo Chavez has come out as a Trotskyist (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6246219.stm). This will no doubt piss off a lot of Trots.

Trotskyists played a key part in the early phase of the Bolivian National Revolution in the 1950's, and in resistance to the Brazilian military government in the 70's (as part of the Workers Party).

[fredbergen]

CWI is not Trotskyist, they are Labourite reformists.

Peter Taaffe in The State (1983, reissued by CWI in 2006):


If the next Labour government introduced an Enabling Bill into Parliament to nationalise the 200 monopolies, banks and insurance companies which control 80 to 85 per cent of the economy, a decisive blow would be struck against the 196 directors of these firms who are the real government of Britain. By the economic power they wield, they dictate the course to be followed by both Tory and Labour governments. They would be compensated for the nationalisation of their assets on the basis of "proven need." Such a step, backed up by the power of the labour movement outside parliament, would allow the introduction of a socialist and democratic plan of production to be worked out and implemented.... A peaceful socialist transformation of society, would be entirely possible if such bold steps were to be taken by a Labour government....

[We Shall Rise Again]

Considering that you're a Stalinist, a member of the tendency who is the master betrayer of the working class from around 1928 till they were dumped in the garbage can of history around 1990, I wouldn't open that can of worms.

RED DAVE


I am not a Stalinist, I am a communist, however i understand had trotsky had is way he would have set up a petit bourgousie state in place of the soviet republic.

as marx said himself he was not a marxist

Trotsky came from what we know in Ireland as te stake in the country class, i.e the propertied class, who are never with the revolution but use it, and hijack working class movements to advance their own postions.

going by the actual work the trots do in the real world as apart from there keyboard campain online, i would say my post on trots splitting and undemining the working class movement is factually correct.

[RED DAVE]

I am not a Stalinist, I am a communist, however i understand had trotsky had is way he would have set up a petit bourgousie state in place of the soviet republic.

as marx said himself he was not a marxist

Trotsky came from what we know in Ireland as te stake in the country class, i.e the propertied class, who are never with the revolution but use it, and hijack working class movements to advance their own postions.

going by the actual work the trots do in the real world as apart from there keyboard campain online, i would say my post on trots splitting and undemining the working class movement is factually correct.Yeah, right, a communist who quotes the Great Leader of Socialism in One Country. See you and your ilk on the picket line if you ever show up. :rolleyes:

RED DAVE

[AK]

Trotskyist's have succesfully split the workers movement in just about every country they operate their narrow minded sectarian politics in.
I hate to break it to you, buddy, but every tendency has a few (more or less) bad apples that seek to do nothing but inadvertently divide the working class.

Sectarianism is far from alien to any tendency.

[AK]

i understand had trotsky had is way he would have set up a petit bourgousie state in place of the soviet republic.
LOL.
Proof? Or are you just spewing the party line?

And since when was a state ruled by those who perform productive labour (but still also own capital)?


as marx said himself he was not a marxist
I couldn't give a shit what he said he was. There's no denying he was a socialist of some sort, but Marx was a Marxist - he followed his own (Marx's) political ideas; making him a Marx-ist. Get over yourself. Incorrect one-liners don't advance your point at all.


Trotsky came from what we know in Ireland as te stake in the country class, i.e the propertied class, who are never with the revolution but use it, and hijack working class movements to advance their own postions.
Yes, I do suppose Trotsky was really just a counter-revolutionary troll waiting to hijack the USSR - given the oppurtunity.

Yet, if I recall correctly, Trotsky led the Red Army in the 1917 revolution. How he amounts to someone who was never with the revolution, I have no idea.


going by the actual work the trots do in the real world as apart from there keyboard campain online, i would say my post on trots splitting and undemining the working class movement is factually correct.
Keyboard campaigning... isn't that what you're doing?

[Weezer]

So Trotsky played a large roll in winning the Russian civil war, a decade or so later Trotskyists had a successful strike in Minneapolis, and since then they've been doing the same thing pretty much all leftists are doing now to varying degrees of success?

Hugo Chavez.

[AK]

Hugo Chavez.
Don't play this card, I warn you. They will just tell you of Nepalese, Indian and Filipino Maoists - and their favourite contemporary state, Cuba.

[The Intransigent Faction]

According to a well-known Trotskyist :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkWQ-DwgmA

Hitchens may have some...disagreeable views, and I'm not a Trotskyist, but he makes some good points in this case.

[Crux]

What have Trotskyist's done in the real world?
Well, unlike some of our opponents here, like we shall rise again, we are actually part of the actual workingclass movement. What exactly is it that you are asking? Do you want a list of historical highlights? What the trotskyist groups are presently doin? Some thing's have already been mentioned here, and it should be noted the teamster strike did not come out of nowhere but the trotskyist movement in the U.S had a long history of taking part in union struggle. Unbeknownst to most there was also a relatively powerfull trotskyist movement in China in the 20's and 30's, as well as in Vietnam up until the mid-forties when the Nationalists and Stalinists through physical force all but eradicated the trotskyist movement in vietnam. But again you have to be more specific, retelling the entire history of the trotskyist movement would take more time than I have.
And disregard the stalinoid trolls, they are only interested in derailing the thread.

[infraxotl]

I'm curious about times when Trotskyists have successfully done uniquely Trotskyist things.

[Zanthorus]

I couldn't give a shit what he said he was. There's no denying he was a socialist of some sort, but Marx was a Marxist - he followed his own (Marx's) political ideas; making him a Marx-ist. Get over yourself. Incorrect one-liners don't advance your point at all.

How can you follow your own political ideas?

And "Marxism" is not necessarily linked to the political ideas of Karl Marx. It was first formulated by Karl Kautsky.

[AK]

How can you follow your own political ideas?
Think about it. If Marx said he wanted to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and all that - like what he proposed - wouldn't he be following his own political ideas?

Either that or Marx was just an anarchist who wrote the manifesto for teh lulz and never intended to follow it.

[Q]

And "Marxism" is not necessarily linked to the political ideas of Karl Marx. It was first formulated by Karl Kautsky.

This is an important point to make I think. It was not Marx who maintained a theoretical publication, but Kautsky with his Die Neue Zeit that made an important impact in forming whole generations of Marxists.

[Zanthorus]

Either that or Marx was just an anarchist who wrote the manifesto for teh lulz and never intended to follow it.

Well now that you mention it... (http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm)


This is an important point to make I think. It was not Marx who maintained a theoretical publication, but Kautsky with his Die Neue Zeit that made an important impact in forming whole generations of Marxists.

Exactly. Engels comes into the picture too. He was still active in the formative years of the SPD and had contact with Kautsky etc. But Kautsky was the one who systematised and publicised Marxism for a mass audience and influenced everyone from Lenin to Luxembug.

[Palingenisis]

Don't play this card, I warn you. They will just tell you of Nepalese, Indian and Filipino Maoists - and their favourite contemporary state, Cuba.

You obviously no nothing about Maoism....We dont consider Cuba to be Socialist let alone Maoist, nor was it ever either.

[S.Artesian]

Well now that you mention it... (http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm)



Exactly. Engels comes into the picture too. He was still active in the formative years of the SPD and had contact with Kautsky etc. But Kautsky was the one who systematised and publicised Marxism for a mass audience and influenced everyone from Lenin to Luxembug.


Well good for them. It, the extension of Marx's analysis, into "real time" questions about capitalism and the prospects for its overthrow, had to be done, and Engels and Kautsky did it.

We can, and do, criticize the content of what they did, but that extension of Marx's analysis was/is essential.

[A.R.Amistad]

Trotskyists don't try to differ themselves from actual Marxism and Bolshevism. The name is only their to distinguish it from other anti-Bolshevik trends. Multiple Maoist movements, such as the Nepalese Maoist movement now, are confirming the correctness and importance of permanent revolution. The communist Partisans in Yugoslavia in WWII are another example of permanent revolution. Lets look at the defining features of Trotskyism


Permanent Revolution: This theory stipulates that colonial/feudalist nations must engage in socialist revolutions, as opposed to the stagist theory of first having a capitalist revolution.
Political Revolution: The idea that the Soviet Union could be restored to a worker's democracy with a political revolution (as opposed to a social and economic revolution, in the traditional Marxist sense of the word.)
Transitional Programme: The use of "Transitional Demands" which can be introduced into workers' struggles with the possibility of receiving widespread support even in non-revolutionary times, but which lead into conflict with capitalism (forming a United Front (http://marxists.org/glossary/terms/u/n.htm#united-front), for example). Such demands are deemed to form a "bridge" between the "Maximum program" of revolution and the "Minimum program" of minor reforms under capitalism. (See the The Transitional Program (http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm)). -MIA

As I have said, and cannot be denied, multiple revolutionary movements not associated with Trotskyism have realized permanent revolution. The same can be said about the importance of United Fronts. Lenina also pointed out that the Trotskyist movement probebly had the most revolutionary praxis record in the United States with the Minneapolis Strike, opposition to WWII, and many other unsing heroic tales of working class victories, which confirms the transitional program. The point is, any win for the working class is a win for "Trotskyists," but we are critical of certain movements inconsistencies (often fatal inconsistencies) and we uphold tht we put forth a fully Marxist program. There are no separte wins for "Maoism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Anarchism, Syndicalism" when it comes to the working class. There are only victories, complete or incomplete.

[AK]

You obviously no nothing about Maoism....We dont consider Cuba to be Socialist let alone Maoist, nor was it ever either.
I realise what I said was a fail. And I don't know how it managed to happen, but I was actually talking about MLs when referring to Cuba O.O

[graymouser]

Indeed, and view the bully boys of the bourgouise state as meerly 'workers in uniform ffs'!
The CWI is not representative of Trotskyism; they are at best a right-centrist deviation from Trotsky's ideas. Trotskyists have consistently criticized them on their opportunist line about the mailed fist of the capitalist state.

[Jolly Red Giant]

More than a parasite mo chara...The leading Trot group condemned us Dubs for stopping a Loyalist commemoration marching past the GPO.
You will have to produce evidence of this one mo chara - and while you are at it justify cheerleading for a goup who praised the UWC strike.


Indeed, and view the bully boys of the bourgouise state as meerly 'workers in uniform ffs'!
I really do like the gross distortions of the sectarian left. Let's abandon those in who are members of the state forces to be condemned as tools of the bourgeois class to be shot come the revolution - a bit like those who condemn the Protestant working class in Northern Ireland as unreformable loyalist bigots.


CWI is not Trotskyist, they are Labourite reformists.
Oh you cruel thing - you hurt my feelings - and I thought I was a Trotskyist for the past 30 years - then again the fact that someone from an irrelevent trotskyist sect is making such accusations shouldn't really upset me.


The CWI is not representative of Trotskyism; they are at best a right-centrist deviation from Trotsky's ideas. Trotskyists have consistently criticized them on their opportunist line about the mailed fist of the capitalist state.
Rampant sectarianism in the trotskyist movement - never. And you'd probably run home crying to mammy if the mailed fist was ever waved in front of your face.



Trotsky came from what we know in Ireland as te stake in the country class, i.e the propertied class, who are never with the revolution but use it, and hijack working class movements to advance their own postions.
Unlike Stalin who was a member of the lumpen proletariat.

To be honest - this thread and other ones like the hoxha one are a waste of time and are nothing more than a sectarian slugfest.

[Q]

To be honest - this thread and other ones like the hoxha one are a waste of time and are nothing more than a sectarian slugfest.

These threads are most of the time.