Trotskyist analysis vs. Trotskyist solutions

[gorillafuck]

I know the analysis of the USSR as a degenerate workers state, but lately I've thought, how is the solution to a degenerate workers state different from that of the solution to a capitalist state? Both would seem to require revolution involving workers taking state power, so wouldn't the solutions look mostly identical in real life, regardless of what the exact nature of the particular state in mind is (whether it be capitalist or degenerate workers state)? That's sort of confusing, help?

What I've heard about May 68 in France and what happened in Poland in August, 1980 seems very similiar, so I don't really know how the degenerate workers state theory would be applied to real life situations.

[Dimentio]

The traditional trotskyist explanation has been a simultaneous revolution in the entire world.

Sadly, I believe that the idea of vanguard party taking power in the entire world would lead to even worse results than in Stalin's USSR, in terms of human suffering.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I know the analysis of the USSR as a degenerate workers state, but lately I've thought, how is the solution to a degenerate workers state different from that of the solution to a capitalist state? Both would seem to require revolution involving workers taking state power, so wouldn't the solutions look mostly identical in real life, regardless of what the exact nature of the particular state in mind is (whether it be capitalist or degenerate workers state)? That's sort of confusing, help?

What I've heard about May 68 in France and what happened in Poland in August, 1980 seems very similiar, so I don't really know how the degenerate workers state theory would be applied to real life situations.

It's a good question. The main idea is the difference between "social" and "political" revolution.

In the countries the "Trotksyists" see as being capitalist, a social revolution leading to the destruction of the capitalist state, dispossession of the capitalist class, and centralization of the means of production in the hands of the "workers state" would be required.

In what they see as being "degenerated" or "deformed" workers states, a political revolution leading to the overthrow of the bureaucracy would be required.

The main difference is that in the "workers states" and state property would be preserved. Some point to things like the Hungarian Revolution as an "incipient political revolution."

[gorillafuck]

The traditional trotskyist explanation has been a simultaneous revolution in the entire world.

Sadly, I believe that the idea of vanguard party taking power in the entire world would lead to even worse results than in Stalin's USSR, in terms of human suffering.
This is about the idea of degenerate workers state applied to real life revolution, rather than the permanent revolution idea.

[gorillafuck]

In the countries the "Trotksyists" see as being capitalist, a social revolution leading to the destruction of the capitalist state, dispossession of the capitalist class, and centralization of the means of production in the hands of the "workers state" would be required.

In what they see as being "degenerated" or "deformed" workers states, a political revolution leading to the overthrow of the bureaucracy would be required. The main difference is that the "workers states" and state property would be preserved. Some point to things like the Hungarian Revolution as an "incipient political revolution."
Alright. So one (political revolution) takes what is already state property and puts it under the control of workers councils, and the other (social revolution) takes capitalist property and puts it under the control of workers councils. But aside from that, they both do the same thing in establishing completely different methods of running society.

I get that then, it seems like it'd be a very meaningless thing in real life.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Well, you've got half of it. The other half would be the difference between smashing an existing state and seizing control of an existing state.

[Kléber]

For the Soviet Union, political revolution meant returning to the democratic Soviet system that had been established in 1917 with multiple parties, independent unions, the right to strike and publicly criticize the government. The bourgeoisie would not have to be expropriated in an economic revolution because there was no bourgeoisie. In response to allegations of treason, Trotsky was emphasizing that he was for the Soviet power but against the caste leading it to ruin. Also, many figures in the bureaucracy itself had been leaders of the workers' revolution who were part of the opposition in the 1920's, but then politically capitulated in return for privileged administrative positions within the state. The opposition knew that these people did not sincerely recant their views and secretly tried to win them back hoping that some of them would turn against the ruling clique. The most common criticism of Trotsky's theory is that it overestimated the extent of anti-Stalinist sentiment in the USSR, but the ferocity with which the terrified clique eliminated all its potential rivals and enemies confirms that there was fertile ground for a political revolution. Today, an economic revolution will be necessary in China, Vietnam, and even to a lesser extent in Cuba or North Korea, and the ruling elite of those countries are not former working class revolutionaries, so the approach against them is little different from that against any military dictatorship.

[Kléber]

The traditional trotskyist explanation has been a simultaneous revolution in the entire world.
A simultaneous effort for revolution everywhere yes but Trotsky also said "no single country in its struggle has to 'wait' for the others."


Sadly, I believe that the idea of vanguard party taking power in the entire world would lead to even worse results than in Stalin's USSR, in terms of human suffering.There would be no Stalinism if the revolution was victorious worldwide. The Soviet bureaucracy only beat the workers because of the weakness and isolation of the revolution.

[scarletghoul]

In traditional Trot theory the USSR just needed to be put back on the right track politically, and this could be done by something as simple as a coup. It would need to be restored rather than overthrown.

But there is more to it than this. Its not just about 'how should we defeat degenerated socialism and capitalism'; for proper trotskyists at least, the degenerated workers states are still workers states. That's why some people influenced by Trotskyist analysis actually defend the DPRK, Cuba, and even China (the PSL for example). Contrast this to the Cliffites and their 'state capitalist' bullshit which means they oppose countries which Trotsky would consider workers states (in other words they take the attractive convenience of Trotskyist criticism but replace its content with what is in fact conceited anti-communism).

In other words, when evaluating the term 'degenerated workers state' one should pay attention to the last 2 words just as much as the first.

Im not a trot obviously, and I think Trotsky's criticisms were opportunist, but its important to remember that he upheld the USSR (subjectively at least lol)

[Die Neue Zeit]

The traditional trotskyist explanation has been a simultaneous revolution in the entire world.

Sadly, I believe that the idea of vanguard party taking power in the entire world would lead to even worse results than in Stalin's USSR, in terms of human suffering.

No it isn't.

The Trotskyist solution is a tight chain of national class struggles and national revolutions by "vanguard parties" in sufficient countries.

It is not one of organizing into a party-movement the working class continentally, much less globally, before revolutionary outbreaks, borders be damned:




In essence, your approach to me feels sometimes too much like "checklist" or "flow chart" socialism. We have this organization, it meets these checks so its really good (class-restricted membership in line with Second International Marxian dogmata, etc.), and it will proceed in this fashion along these AND OR NOT gates to socialism (among them, not seize power for the extreme democracy - which I am skeptical imposition of demarchy would achieve credibly or robustly - unless it has unitary majority class support across a territorial-economic bloc that is autarkically-revolutionarily sustainable). In this case, I don't think one can proceed without admitting the possibility, no matter how good one's theories and lines are, that class forces are mixed, there are problems of xenophobia, craft and trade splits, extractive versus productive versus service sectors, and consciousness-that-doesn't-suit-our-party. Or the reactionaries forcing your hand as in Spain in 1936 with attempted coups or military suppression, etc. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but implicitly here I feel we're left with nothing but the shadow of a whisper of "That. Just. Won't. Happen." here. I find that unconvincing. Hopefully my comprehension is just poor.

I like that level of constructively critical comprehension, actually. You mention flow charts and logic gates (which begs the question of what your line of career studies is, but that's for elsewhere), which in turn imply my emphasis on some sort of process that should be followed.

I don't think its a bad way to structure thought. However, the problem with any sort of reductionist comprehensive framework is there are pathways, triggers, and qualifications frequently unseen (or "outside the chart", if we're to follow the analogy).

[Kléber]

In traditional Trot theory the USSR just needed to be put back on the right track politically, and this could be done by something as simple as a coup. It would need to be restored rather than overthrown.
A coup by itself would be a palace revolution. A proletarian political revolution required a full-scale shakedown of the state apparatus. That meant replacing it with workers' democracy based on councils, not just killing some "revisionists" and declaring mission accomplished.


for proper trotskyists at least, the degenerated workers states are still workers states.The Stalinist regimes that copied (or were forced to) the Soviet system were all deformed workers' states, but only the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state because it was once a real workers' democracy established by a proletarian revolution.


Contrast this to the Cliffites and their 'state capitalist' bullshitYou do realize that Mao considered the USSR to be state capitalist and called for people's war against Soviet fascism, even leading the PRC into a tacit alliance with US imperialism for this purpose?


Im not a trot obviously, and I think Trotsky's criticisms were opportunist, but its important to remember that he upheld the USSR (subjectively at least lol)Trotsky was for unconditional military defense of the USSR against imperialism, that is defending Soviet power objectively. Trotskyists were not the ones who waged "people's war" against the Soviet border police and the pro-Soviet regimes of Vietnam and Afghanistan.

[scarletghoul]

I try being nice to you guys explaining how your theory isnt necessarily bad, but you just start going going on about the evils of mao and bla bla.. a fine example of the hostile opportunism that lurks in the centre of the trotskyite mind :lol:

[Kléber]

You implied that Trotsky was objectively working in the interests of imperialism. I am just pointing out how ridiculous that is coming from the tendency that called for a jihad on Moscow. What could be more "opportunist" than Mao shaking hands with Nixon while the Vietnamese people were still being bombed by the US Air Force?

[scarletghoul]

Yes because anyone who calls themself a Maoist has to fully agree with every action taken by the government of Mao Zedong.:rolleyes:

[Kléber]

Unless Maoism is some kind of emotional costume for you, have you considered that it is time to abjure an ideology once you have retreated from defending it?

[scarletghoul]

This is crazy, you're essentially saying that I can't call myself a Maoist because I am critical of some of his actions and ideas. Perhaps it is inconvenient for your debating style, but I am not a time-travelling ambassador from the 1970s Chinese government.

[Kléber]

You're critical of the official reason for Maoism's existence which is that the USSR had become a capitalist, imperialist, fascist power.

Your Maoism is like a balloon, it's empty inside. Poke it and it goes pop. You embrace the label and the image but shy away from the core politics and history and say everything was a mistake.

[scarletghoul]

You're critical of the official reason for Maoism's existence which is that the USSR had become a capitalist, imperialist, fascist power.

Your Maoism is like a balloon, it's empty inside. Poke it and it goes pop. You embrace the label and the image but shy away from the core politics and history and say everything was a mistake.
Perhaps you have not heard of Mao's ideas about theory and practice, contradiction, peoples' war, cultural revolution, mass line, etc, etc. If you think the core of this tendency is the rejection of the USSR as state-capitalist then I can only conclude that you're mixing it up with Hoxhaism.. Maoism existed long before the Sino-Soviet split.

[Kléber]

What is the point of workers calling for the defense of degenerated workers states? Though the USSR does not exist anymore, which states do Trots undertake defense of today?
The Leninist outlook on imperialism, defended by Trotsky, is to side with all forces fighting against imperialism and to support the defeat of all imperialisms. The working class vanguard can not stand idle in the international struggle between imperialist capital and oppressed peoples. This is true for countries like Iraq and Iran with bourgeois nationalist dictatorships under attack by imperialism just as it is true for Stalinist countries like Cuba and North Korea. The proletariat in the colonized world can only make revolution if it maintains its political independence from all petty-bourgeois nationalist forces, but we are for united fronts with anyone who is fighting against fascism and imperialism. Trotsky explained his position in this interview: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/09/liberation.htm

[Palingenisis]

You're critical of the official reason for Maoism's existence which is that the USSR had become a capitalist, imperialist, fascist power.

.

No its not....Its that the USSR took a revisionist turn.

That doesnt equal it being social-fascist necessarily.

The official reason for Maoism's existence is the liberation of the international proletariat.

[Kléber]

Perhaps you have not heard of Mao's ideas about theory and practice, contradiction, peoples' war, cultural revolution, mass line, etc, etc.
You are running further and further away from the original discussion. You should either take back what you said about Trotsky being "opportunist" or admit that by your own measure, Mao was a thousand times more opportunist.

The concepts of contradiction, people's war and cultural revolution were not invented by Mao, he pieced his theory together from populism, anarchism, Marxism and Chinese nationalism. There was nothing particularly unique or new about Mao's political practices either. That said, making up a new idea does not make it correct. An example of this is Mao's "Mass Line" which some people like to talk about as if it were the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it's actually a rejection of Leninist party democracy in favor of a static, unaccountable command structure. That was a necessary adaptation to the mobile and dangerous position of the CPC after the fall of the Jiangxi Soviet, when the Party was constantly on the move and could not sit down and have democratic discussions and voting - but after 1949 it was simply a club in the hands of the bureaucrats with which to bludgeon the democratic-minded revolutionary people.


If you think the core of this tendency is the rejection of the USSR as state-capitalist then I can only conclude that you're mixing it up with Hoxhaism.. Maoism existed long before the Sino-Soviet split."Maoism" like any tendency "ism" has two different meanings, it refers both to the ideology and the political movement. The history of Maoism as an ideology definitely extends back before the Sino-Soviet split but as a distinct political tendency, Maoism did not come into existence until that split, in fact it took nearly a decade to get its shit sorted out internationally.

[Kléber]

No its not....Its that the USSR took a revisionist turn.

That doesnt equal it being social-fascist necessarily.

The official reason for Maoism's existence is the liberation of the international proletariat.
Sure, at first they just said the USSR was going capitalist, but they were calling it fascist and probing its borders by the late 60's, then launched a Maoist insurgency in "socialist" Afghanistan and invaded "socialist" Vietnam in the late 70's.

Once again let's get back to the original point here, I'd like to have it explained to me how Maoism was not historically sectarian and opportunist for these betrayals, for befriending comprador regimes around the world and arming the genocidal pro-US Pakistani generals in 1971, yet Trotsky was an opportunist simply for being the Soviet Hannibal, the real anti-revisionist proletarian internationalist.

[Palingenisis]

Once again let's get back to the original point here, I'd like to have it explained to me how Maoism was not historically sectarian and opportunist for these betrayals, for befriending comprador regimes around the world and arming the genocidal pro-US Pakistani generals in 1971, yet Trotsky was an opportunist simply for being the Soviet Hannibal, the real anti-revisionist proletarian internationalist.

Trotsky was an opportunist because he was super authoritarian when he had some sort of power and than ran off to be an advocate of "workers democracy" at Imperialist cocktail parties. Maoism is proving itself as a living movement in various countries at this moment in time....Trotskyism has proved itself as just the left wing of Social-Democracy.

[Palingenisis]

Sure, at first they just said the USSR was going capitalist, but they were calling it fascist and probing its borders by the late 60's, then launched a Maoist insurgency in "socialist" Afghanistan and invaded "socialist" Vietnam in the late 70's..

You are aware that many "Maoists" are very uncertain about the turn in the PRC's foreign policy at the end of the 60s and early 70s including heavy weights like Harry Haywood?

[Kléber]

What exactly does political independence mean? From your link:
Political independence means organizational and military independence. When the Bolsheviks defended Petrograd against Kornilov, they fought alongside Kerensky's supporters but they had their own Red Guard armed detachments and they did not try to join the Provisional Government and/or orient their politics toward that bourgeois state.


Since the oppressed peoples, as in 1938 Brazil, are also divided into classes, this is asking workers in those countries to stand behind their native bourgeoisie, instead of fighting them, to develop "national and democratic consciousness of the country" instead of class consciousness.When fascists were invading the Soviet Union and China, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek ceased to be the main enemies of the working class of their countries. The "bourgeoisie" of an oppressed country is weak without the imperialist system for whom it is just a middleman or contract agent, as the Stalinist bureaucracies were/are vulnerable layers which can collapse in the face of mass resistance. The point is for the proletariat to fight for independent and conscious leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle not to build up its own domestic class enemies but precisely in order to undermine those bourgeois nationalists, overthrow them, and telescope the national struggle into a proletarian revolution. Only the working class, through international socialist revolution, can lead humanity out of the exploitation and destruction of imperialist capitalism.

[gorillafuck]

This is crazy, you're essentially saying that I can't call myself a Maoist because I am critical of some of his actions and ideas. Perhaps it is inconvenient for your debating style, but I am not a time-travelling ambassador from the 1970s Chinese government.
His state capitalist theory was/is a pretty important aspect of Mao Tse-Tung thought....

But you're just gonna ignore it because you don't like it, even though you call yourself a maoist and it literally was an extremely key aspect of Maoist policy and basically guided all the PRC's foreign policy from cultural revolution onwards?

[Palingenisis]

His state capitalist theory was/is a pretty important aspect of Mao Tse-Tung thought....



Pretty important maybe....But essential?

I dont believe that its a key dividing line in the International Communist movement.

Support for the people's wars is though. Trotskyites did not support and indeed propagandized against the nearly sucessful revolution in Peru. Likewise they try to undermine the revolutions in India and Nepal.

Scarletghoul doesnt.

[gorillafuck]

Pretty important maybe....But essential?
His ideas were based around what he saw wrong with the USSR, and he called it an imperialist capitalist state and based his policy around this, and Maoists around the world all embraced this view. You can't be a sincere Maoist and not support this view.

So yeah, I'd say it's essential. You can be a Marxist-Leninist who thinks Mao and the USSR were both good, but you can't be a Maoist who thinks the USSR was good.


Support for the people's wars is though. Trotskyites did not support and indeed propagandized against the nearly sucessful revolution in Peru. Likewise they try to undermine the revolutions in India and Nepal.

Scarletghoul doesnt.
Peoples wars like the one allied with Jihadists in Afghanistan? Or the one in Vietnam that Maoists tried to wage? I'd say it's you Maoists that have been going against the "actually existing socialism" governments even more than the Trotskyists. Trotskyists call them "degenerate or deformed" workers states (though as what was demonstrated in Poland, I think it's a stretch to say workers had any sort of power in governing themselves). Maoists call them imperialist capitalism and go as far as waging guerilla wars against them. It's a pretty key dividing line in Marxist-Leninism I'd say.

(Though I don't get involved with Marxist-Leninist politics.)

[Kléber]

Trotsky was an opportunist because he was super authoritarian when he had some sort of power and than ran off to be an advocate of "workers democracy"
Everything you said is false.

Trotsky did what needed to be done to win a war against 14 invading armies and the White detachments; once the war was over he defended freedom of speech and helped get anarchists released from prison. He voluntarily resigned as War Commissar when his enemies accused him of plotting a military coup.

Stalin, on the other hand, spent the Civil War fucking up, disobeying orders and plotting behind the scenes, thus undermining the Soviet war effort for the petty interests of himself and his clique. Once the war was over he did nothing but politically intrigue, bloc with the rightists to defeat the Left Opposition, and eventually sold himself to the bureaucracy as its revisionist-in-chief, the hangman of the October revolution.


at Imperialist cocktail parties.Stalin was the one who had cocktail parties with Nazis.


Maoism is proving itself as a living movement in various countries at this moment in time....Trotskyism has proved itself as just the left wing of Social-Democracy.Maoism was huge decades ago - today it is a shadow of its former self and the biggest parties claiming it are the revolutionary equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. Our beloved internet-dwelling orthodox Maoists are in fact convinced that generally all Maoist organizations over 10 members are revisionist traitors.


You are aware that many "Maoists" are very uncertain about the turn in the PRC's foreign policy at the end of the 60s and early 70s including heavy weights like Harry Haywood?I am aware of them and I'm saying they are very confused, like those who believe that Stalin was held hostage by "rights" and forced to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact against his will. Haywood was a fanatic deserving of pity. It does not follow that because you can find a bunch of people who adhere to X view, that view is correct. Christianity was a hegemonic philosophy in many countries for hundreds of years, despite being riddled with ideological contradictions.

[chegitz guevara]

What is the point of workers calling for the defense of degenerated workers states? Considering the fact that the USSR does not exist anymore, which states do Trots undertake defense of today?

Byelorus, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, possibly China (depending on whether they think it's still a deformed workers state or has become capitalist), etc.

[gorillafuck]

Cambodia
That's a workers government worthy of critical support?! Oh shit.

http://libcom.org/forums/news/garment-workers-strike-cambodia-13092010

[electro_fan]

Im not sure that "trots" defend north korea? Im a trot, and i think north korea is a really fucked up dicatorship, i don't particularly think it should be "defended" at all tbh, i also think that what is going on in china is completely horrific, especially as capitalism has grown rapaciously there, and therefore strikes and whatever else the workers have that they could use as a tool against the chinese gov't should be supported no? Im not talking about supporting america against china or something like that, but i don't think taking the position that because these countries' regimes were once communist they must be defended is partcularly helpful is it.

i lived in an ex soviet country for a year, and I think the USSR wasnt capitalist, the state capitalist theory about those countries which the SWP and some other people, have, is bullshit. the USSR despite a lot of its problems and the fact that it was totally undemocratic, did really improve a lot of people's living standards in ways that are completely undeniable and since the collapse of the USSR life has become extremely hard to the point that life expectancy has dropped by 20 years in Russia and many other Soviet countries

[Kléber]

This may have been a temporary tactic used by the Bolsheviks to defend the revolution during the revolutionary period. However, this does not mean that the workers have to line up behind their "oppressed" bourgeoisie even when there is no revolution going on.
Of course not.


This assumes that the working class of the Soviet Union and China were de facto divided by their national identities and so the foreign fascists became the "main enemies", which seems to miss the point of workers being an international class.The Nazi imperialists were the enemy of all workers and peoples - Germans, Soviets and everyone else. There is a big difference between principled anti-imperialism and reactionary chauvinism like the PCF's WWII slogan, "Everybody kill a German!"


It seems that instead of joining the bourgeois supporting workers in a united front, the revolutionary workers could be convincing them to not fight for their bourgeoisie.The Soviet and Chinese people were resisting imperialism in spite of their treasonous governments which had bent over backwards to please the invaders before the war. Some "communists" did tell people not to resist which was even worse than blindly supporting Stalinism and nationalism.


How can the proletariat of the oppressed countries defend their nation while not building up the power of their bourgeois nationalists/bureaucrats as it happened in Vietnam etc?In Vietnam the Trotskyists did not maintain their political independence, the biggest Trotskyist group joined the Viet Minh government in 1945, which made it easy for the Stalinist assassins to kidnap, murder and assassinate most all of their activists when they opposed the Viet Minh's collaboration with returning French imperialist forces the same year.

[Kléber]

Pretty important maybe....But essential?

I dont believe that its a key dividing line in the International Communist movement.
Once again this comes down to our definition of "Maoism." If by that you mean anyone who claims themselves to follow Mao Zedong Thought, then okay, there is no single line that defines that movement because it includes a pretty diverse range of characters - from Lin Biao to Deng Xiaoping, from Chinese police chiefs to Canadian internet trolls - each with their own unique interpretation of Mao.

But are you really trying to defend Maoism by saying it has no central principles? Is this the ideological equivalent of guerrilla warfare or just unprincipled mysticism, like the villain in a movie throwing some smoke bombs to the ground before disappearing into thin air? If you can not explain or defend the history of your movement then why should I or anyone else take your version of communism seriously?

There is another, historical definition of "Maoism" - a worldwide political movement of Communist parties and organizations which split off from pro-Moscow parties in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split and adhered to the line of the Communist Party of China with its official ideology, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. When people talk about "Maoism" they mean these parties and their progeny. I considered myself a Maoist once but eventually I realized that the origins of Maoism in the 1960's were absolutely sectarian and opportunist, even as the chauvinism and despotism of the Soviet bureaucracy is to blame for the emergence of its Chinese nemesis.


Support for the people's wars is though.No it's not, because most successful national liberation struggles which began as guerrilla wars were not led by Maoists. The leadership of most peasant armies would be considered "revisionist" or worse by you.


Trotskyites did not support and indeed propagandized against the nearly sucessful revolution in Peru.That's pretty funny - the Shining Path was on the verge of victory, its failure had nothing to do with its suicidal choice of tactics, it was all the Peruvian Trotskyites' fault!

I wonder how one was even supposed to approach such a group about a united front when its cadre were launching armed assaults on union offices and opening fire on marching workers.


Likewise they try to undermine the revolutions in India and Nepal.Mao, not to mention Stalin did far more to undermine the revolution in South Asia than the Trotskyists, who struggled for a revolutionary perspective in India at a time when the Comintern advocated collaboration with British imperialism.

I would not consider someone a real Trotskyist unless they oppose the Indian bourgeoisie's ongoing crackdown against Maoists which is part of its social offensive against workers, farmers and indigenous peoples. That does not mean we all have to become Maoists (even if we refuse to defend any specific aspect of Maoism when pressed on it) to show solidarity. Marx and Engels did not blog to each other about the Taiping Rebellion, declare themselves Taiping Christians, and attack other European intellectuals for not supporting the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, simply because that political entity was most actively fighting against feudalism and imperialism during their lifetime. If the most revolutionary ideology is that which appears to be in the most acute immediate struggle against international finance capitalism, then forget about Maoism, we'd better drop Marxism altogether and become Muslim fundamentalists.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Byelorus, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, possibly China (depending on whether they think it's still a deformed workers state or has become capitalist), etc.

Angola? Please enlighten me on Angolan history. So far, my list is Belarus, Cuba, Vietnam, and even capitalistic China to the extent that re-incorporation of Taiwan is still in the cards (but not to the extent of its economic imperialism in Africa).

[Dimentio]

There would be no Stalinism if the revolution was victorious worldwide. The Soviet bureaucracy only beat the workers because of the weakness and isolation of the revolution.

It would. Because the entire world is very hard to govern. The rebellions and regional counter-revolutions which would follow such a revolution would make the Russian Civil War appear as a picnic.

[graymouser]

Byelorus, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, possibly China (depending on whether they think it's still a deformed workers state or has become capitalist), etc.
You'd be hard pressed to find a Trotskyist international that defends Belarus, Laos, Cambodia or Angola. The traditional deformed workers' states (aside from the USSR) were Poland, DDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania, none of which are considered workers' states in any sense today; and China, Cuba, DPRK, and Vietnam, some of which are still considered deformed workers' states. The Grantites had a longer list that included countries like Syria, but they don't talk about that much these days.

Most Trotskyist groupings still consider DPRK and Cuba to be unambiguously deformed workers' states. Positions vary on China and Vietnam, where some still hold out the idea of China being a workers' state - although I would say it gives a far better meaning to the term "state capitalist" than Tony Cliff ever did.

[chegitz guevara]

There's lots of different Trot groups, and I was casting a wide net. If you look at a group like the American SWP (even if they don't overtly call themselves Trots anymore), they supported as deformed workers states pretty much any revolutionary government claiming to be socialist. So the list would have been much longer, but I just ran off the top of my head. Different groups have different analyses as to the degree to which capitalism was abolished or restored.

If you asked me, I'd probably say Cuba and the DPRK are it.

===========

In my research on the Vietnamese Trotskyists, the Stalinists didn't wipe out the Trotskyists directly. Rather, they informed on them to the French authorities, who themselves did the deed. Vietnam was the only place in the world where Trotskyists outnumbered Stalinists, at least until that happened.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If you look at a group like the American SWPAs late as 2009, a former member and ongoing supporter told me the official line was that Russia, etc., were still not capitalist because "there was no counterrevolution."


In my research on the Vietnamese Trotskyists, the Stalinists didn't wipe out the Trotskyists directly."In 1939 elections to the Colonial Council of Cochin China, the La Lutte group ["Trotskyist"] capitalized on this agitational work and managed to win a resounding victory, with more than 80% of the votes going to their candidates...."

"..while the Thang Muoi group [also "Trotskyist"] did not score the electoral successes of La Lutte, it did manage to bring out its newspaper for some years in Vietnamese before the latter attempted this step and managed to put out a daily newspaper..."

"Two days after the ["Communist"] coup, Nguyen Van Tao, now Minister for the Interior of the Viet Minh regime, issued a menacing challenge to the ICL ["Trotskyist"]: 'Whoever encourages the peasants to take over the landed properties will be severely and pitilessly punished ... we have not yet carried out a communist revolution, which would bring a solution to the agrarian problem. This government is only a democratic government, and therefore it cannot undertake this task, I repeat, our government is a democratic and bourgeois government, even though the Communists are in power.'"

...

"On 7 September [1945] Giau issued a decree ordering the disarming of all non-governmental organizations. All weapons were to be turned over to the Viet Minh's 'Republican Guard.' This affected the religious sects but also the 'vanguard youth organizations' and factory-based self-defense groups led by the Trotskyists. The most important such group was the workers militia jointly controlled by the workers of the Go Vap streetcar depot and the ICL. The militia issued an appeal to the workers of Saigon-Cholon to arm themselves for the struggle against the inevitable British-French invasion...

"The British and Indian troops under General Gracey arrived in Saigon on 10 September. Along the road from the airport the Viet Minh had put up banners and slogans welcoming the Allies... On 12 September the People's Committees and the ICL issued a joint manifesto denouncing the policy of treason of the Viet Minh government. Popular discontent was seething in the workers' districts. Faced with the likelihood of insurrection, the Viet Minh moved to behead it. At 4 p.m. on 14 September Duong Bach Mai, Stalinist head of the police, sent a detachment of Republican Guards to surround the local of the People's Council which was in session at the time. Incredibly, the Trotskyists simply gave up to these butchers!

...

"(Among the ICL leaders who were shot as a result of the Stalinist coup were Lo Ngoc, member of the central committee of the ICL; Nguyen Van Ky, ICL labor leader; and Nguyen Huong, younger leaders of the workers militia, killed by the Stalinist police in July 1946.)"

- Stalinism and Trotskyism in Vietnam. Spartacist Publishing Company. December 1976.

[electro_fan]

But im sorry but north korea may technically be a "deformed workers' state" and undoubtedly if capitalism took hold there, it would probably completely make the place into an even worse nightmare than it already is,, but I don't think that socialists should be supporting kim jong il and co, after they are doing things like putting everyone who disagrees with them in jail, i mean they have supplied wepons to people like the junta in burma which hardly makes them pure and anti-imperialist does it?

[electro_fan]

Also the whole idea of the deformed workers states, correct me if Im wrong, but isnt it that the gains made against capitalism and towards the redistribution of wealth etc, should be defended, not that the regime itself should be? Because it's deformed. And not real socialism.

Shouldn't strikes in places like china be supported, but ive seen people argueing that they shouldn't be as they are by definition reactionary and suportive of the west, but I dont think that is true.

[black magick hustla]

i think that beyond the abstract theoretical considerations, the difference is state defencism. a workers state needs to be "military defended" (idk what that means) regardless if its degenerated or deformed, while a capitalist state should not. hence the ridiculous "hail the red army" and "defend the deformed workers state of dprk" from the sparts. the worst crime of trotskyism and the ridiculous concept of a degenerated/deformed workers state was backing imperialist war in 1939-1945.

[electro_fan]

Do you think that it was a bad idea to back "imperialist war" in 1939? Im sorry but I think trotsky was right, who else were they going to support - hitler???? Churchill and Stalin were indeed bastards but who knows what the world would be like today if Hitler had won? :rolleyes:

[Palingenisis]

Maoism was huge decades ago - today it is a shadow of its former self and the biggest parties claiming it are the revolutionary equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. Our beloved internet-dwelling orthodox Maoists are in fact convinced that generally all Maoist organizations over 10 members are revisionist traitors.


This illustrates your dishonesty. The only "Maoist" organizations that are conistently dismissed here are the RCP-USA and MSH/Leading Light Organization both which claim they have gone beyond mere Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and both are tiny compared to the Naxalite movement which all the Maoists here support. Some people might have concerns about some of the lines taken by UCPN-Maoist and the MLPD...but having concerns isnt the same as denouncing as Revisionist.

So yeah WHITE USAan "Maoism" which most Americans havent heard of is dismissed as revisionist while the mass Maoist movements of south east Asia who are making actual history are upheld. I think though that most of us uphold the Afrikan People's Socialist Party which operates in US borders (at least Scarlet and I do).

[RED DAVE]

It's a good question. The main idea is the difference between "social" and "political" revolution.

In the countries the "Trotksyists" see as being capitalist, a social revolution leading to the destruction of the capitalist state, dispossession of the capitalist class, and centralization of the means of production in the hands of the "workers state" would be required.

In what they see as being "degenerated" or "deformed" workers states, a political revolution leading to the overthrow of the bureaucracy would be required. The main difference is that the "workers states" and state property would be preserved. Some point to things like the Hungarian Revolution as an "incipient political revolution."This has never made the slightest sense to me after, say, 1928. The implication is that the stalinist state is in some sense a workers state because of the retention of nationalized property, monopoly of foreign trade, etc.

What this means is that is (1) in some sense stalinism, in "preserving the gains of the revolution" is progressive, which lead some orthotrots to defend Russian nuclear weapons; (2) the state state structure of the USSR, despite its oppressive and bureaucratic nature, is seens as in some sense progressive. This forces Trots who follow this system to have a soft spot for bureaucracy in general.

Then we have the delightful theory of the "deformed workers state." Orthodox Trots note accurately that there is no systematic difference between Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, and further note that Maoist China could not have been a result of the degeneration of a workers revolution because China never had one. So, instead of analyzing the theory of the degenerated workers state to see where it might be wrong, they invented a new monstrosity: the deformed workers state, which was, like the degenerated workers state, defendable by leftists because of the institution (primarily) of nationalized property. Bizarre.

Truth is, the USSR, China, the Eastern European "people's democracies," Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea (Did I miss any?) are/were state capitalist. They morphed or are morphing into private capitalism under the pressure of the world market. A workers revolution is required in these rotten fruit just like in any other capitalist country.

No Orthodox Trotskyist has ever been able to explain the theory of the degenerated/deformed workers state to me without violating a known fact of Marxism: a workers state is only a workers state when the workers rule.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

i think that beyond the abstract theoretical considerations, the difference is state defencism. a workers state needs to be "military defended" (idk what that means) regardless if its degenerated or deformed, while a capitalist state should not. hence the ridiculous "hail the red army" and "defend the deformed workers state of dprk" from the sparts. the worst crime of trotskyism and the ridiculous concept of a degenerated/deformed workers state was backing imperialist war in 1939-1945.

The worst foreign policy mistake of left-coms is to apply "revolutionary defeatism" to clearly non-revolutionary periods. I ain't a Trot, but I'll counter your use of "ridiculous" with my use of "lunacy."

[chegitz guevara]

A revolution against a capitalist state would require a thorough going change of the economy, forms of property, organization, etc.

A revolution against a deformed/degenerated workers state simply requires a new democratic government.

[RED DAVE]

A revolution against a capitalist state would require a thorough going change of the economy, forms of property, organization, etc.

A revolution against a deformed/degenerated workers state simply requires a new democratic government.So what you are saying is that a stalinist state that has (1) bureaucratic control of the economy with no institutions of working class control, (2) a secret police, (3) mass imprisonment, (4) lack of civil liberties, can be taken over by the workers and turned into an instrument of their rule. This state is the instrument of rule over the working class as sure as a classical bourgeois state is such a state.

What does this have to do with workers power: fucking nothing! The forms of property under stalinism are bureaucratic/top down forms. They are capitalist forms. this is why the state capitalist societies morph directly into private capitalist societies with no change in the state.

Like I said: makes no sense whatsoever.

RED DAVE

[el_chavista]

... The forms of property under stalinism are bureaucratic/top down forms. They are capitalist forms. this is why the state capitalist societies morph directly into private capitalist societies with no change in the state.

RED DAVE

This again leads us to the State-capitalism/degenerated-workers-State controversy. There were no capitalists in the URSS because Bolsheviks did what The Manifesto states: The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class.
The problem was that they used the same old tsarist State and the party members became the same tsarist bureaucracy daubed in red, as Lenin remarked in 1918!
The apparatchiki were not legal owners but they had the effective control of the means of economic production.

[BIG BROTHER]

It would. Because the entire world is very hard to govern. The rebellions and regional counter-revolutions which would follow such a revolution would make the Russian Civil War appear as a picnic.

Yea most likely there would be counter-revolutions, but Imperialism would be dead which would be the only real adversary that could endanger the workers state.

[chegitz guevara]

Like I said: makes no sense whatsoever.

RED DAVE

Right, because an entire political tendency founded on a logical fallacy (no true Scotsman) makes so much more sense.

[RED DAVE]

Right, because an entire political tendency founded on a logical fallacy (no true Scotsman) makes so much more sense.How about Stalinism, founded on, among other fallacies, socialism in one country?

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

Socialism-in-one-country is not a logical fallacy.

[Thirsty Crow]

Socialism-in-one-country is not a logical fallacy.
Even worse. It is a fallacy in understanding what capitalism is and how does it function.

[LibertarianSocialist1]

Those bloody state-capitalists funding anti-imperialist movements.

[graymouser]

The forms of property under stalinism are bureaucratic/top down forms. They are capitalist forms. this is why the state capitalist societies morph directly into private capitalist societies with no change in the state.
Yet, this is not what happened.

The USSR got itself tremendously in debt trying to keep up militarily with the USA, and beside that had tremendous inefficiencies in its internal workings. But the Soviet Union didn't have capitalism. Money simply could not be converted into capital until the Gorbachev period and afterward. During the Brezhnev era you had this tremendous accumulation of money by the apparatchiks and the military and so on, which was continuously frustrated by the inability to transform it into capital as Marx identified in modern capitalist society.

With this glut of money, you had all sorts of things going on; a whole second economy of black market goods and grey market services, bribes, even small-scale commodity production, but all of it was quite illegal. It took the co-operatives, and then finally the privatization of broad swaths of the economy, for this money to be realized in its form as capital.

"State capitalism" describes a period in capitalist society where the state, as a joint-stock company, holds a significant part of the economic reins. It does not describe a society where the entire economy is statified. Such a label would apply to China today. To say that there have not been social upheavals and massive economic changes between the China of, say, 1972 and that of 2010, is ridiculous. Yet "state capitalism" describes the latter much better than the former.

[chegitz guevara]

Even worse. It is a fallacy in understanding what capitalism is and how does it function.

Which is still utterly beside the point that the IST's whole reason for existence is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

SIOC was an attempt to find a way out of a materially existing problem. It may have been wrong, but at least it didn't come into existence in order to avoid embarrassment.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Are you referring to the logical fallacy of theories of State Capitalism leading to theories of Social Imperialism?

[Kléber]

The difference is only in the degree of nationalist chauvinism, as both are qualitatively calling for national defense and asking workers to volunteer to die for their nations.
Not to die for their nations, to fight in defense of working-class power. The Bolshevik workers of Petrograd fought alongside Kerensky's troops, not for them.


For workers to not participate in these national wars and to defend their class interests was the only choice that did not involve forming alliances with their respective capitals.
What alliances? By your measure, it's class collaboration to make a revolution in any country where the government is at war with another bourgeois country.. because you automatically become "allied" with the other country.


Was this not also the case in Sri Lanka?
In Sri Lanka the disoriented LSSP leadership abandoned Trotskyism and joined a bourgeois government.

[Kléber]

the worst crime of trotskyism and the ridiculous concept of a degenerated/deformed workers state was backing imperialist war in 1939-1945.
No more than the Left Communists backed imperialist war by demanding a resumption of hostilities against Germany during WWI.

The US SWP's position during WWII did theoretically border on social-chauvinism with their exceptionalist American Military Policy, but in formulating it the party leaders revised their own Marxist principles. Where else apart from the SWP, or Soviet political prisoners let out of the gulag to serve in penal battalions, can you find Trotskyists guilty of this crime? British workers who went on strike under Trotskyist leadership during the war? French Trotskyists who fought for their lives against the Nazi and Stalinist assassins? Sri Lankan soldiers hanged in 1943 for heeding the LSSP's call to smash British imperialism? Vietnamese comrades who were slaughtered almost to the last in 1945 for their stand against the Allied imperialists and the Stalinist traitors?

[electro_fan]

so what should trotsky have done then? said that going to war against germany was a bad idea and ended up abandoning many of his (former) supporters who were fighting hitler? it was quite clear that hitler viewed all russians, jews, etc as subhuman, so what do you suggest that trotsky shold have done, not taken a side in the conflict - supporting the defeat of fascism doesn't mean you support stalin???

as degenerated as the USSR became it isn't nearly as bad as a fascist regime???

[Kléber]

Defending imperialist bourgeois democracies is not equivalent to defending working class power as bourgeois democracies have been among the forefront in destroying any kind of working class movement for the past hundred plus years and it is not possible for workers to preserve their independence while defending their bourgeois states.
So what should the Bolsheviks have done, let Petrograd fall to the forces of Kornilov who wanted to restore the monarchy and massacre communist workers?


In any case, as a logical conclusion of your doctrine of defencism, bourgeois states would have to be defended today by politically independent working class vanguards in case of "fascism", in continuance of the betrayal of the working class by Second and Third Internationals in supporting imperialist wars.If there was some kind of teabag fascist coup in the USA then we should fight against it because it could only be worse for the proletariat than the elected government. We should also be ready for the liberals to betray and disarm us that is why we need our own independence so we can set our own terms for a united front. Obviously in its present state the splintered left can not put up much of a fight but this could change in a few years. The point of an anti-fascist united front is not to surrender to the bourgeoisie, it's to protect the lives of activists and the existence of organizations.


The only communist response by "colonized" workers should be to not rush to the defence of their states when invaders attack them.Communists should not become the propagandists of imperialism and tell oppressed people to stop resisting. The WCPI/FWCUI in Iraq defends working-class neighborhoods against the sectarian bourgeois nationalists and the imperialist occupation.


This does not follow from my posts at all.Then what do you think of the Brest-Litovsk peace?

[electro_fan]

but think about it, you are saying that they should not have fought back, if nobody had done anything then who knows what the world would be like today, it is thanks to the heroism of the soldiers from these countries that hitler's plans did not succeed


not all capitalism is the same, to take a modern day analogy, in the country i live in we have a free healthcare system, nobody is saying that this is perfect, in fact it is at times rather shoddy, and bureaucratically run, but trots, and other socialists defend this because the alternative is worse, not all capitalist regimes are the same, and saying that bourgeois liberal capitalism like we are living in, as bad as it is, is the same as fascism is total bullshit, it is not. do i think that situation could change, of course, because it is well known that wealthy capitalists encouraged the fascist movement in the 1930s for example

you cannot say that we should not have gone to war against hitler and trotsky was wrong to do so, he was absolutely right to take a principled stand despite his differences with stalin and despite what stalin was doing and how much he despised him and everything was doing, because hitler would have been infinitely worse, and it doesn't mean he supported stalin, churchill or any of those. without people who were willing to defeat fascism all my family would be dead and i wouldnt have been born and i am sure nnor would a lot of people here

surely you can tell the difference between a bourgeois "democracy" where people have a limited amount of rights and a few gains that have been won through struggle, and a fascist dictatorship such as that of hitler, it is bizarre that you are chooseing to pick up on this as a reason to criticise trotsky and trotskyism in my view

[electro_fan]

Also it wasn't as though the western states and USSR decided to attack germany, germany was invading poland, czechoslovakia, the USSR and presenting an extremely serious threat to the stability of Europe, and i am interested to know what you're alternative is in the face of a leadership which was determined to expand the country's territory and introduce an industrialised system of mass murder, no matter what. what should trotsky have done? should have just sat there and said it was ok and that in order not to give into imperialism they shouldn't fight against the fascist threat?

[Die Neue Zeit]

As I posted earlier, this was a tactic adopted during a revolutionary period and does not mean that the workers have to line up behind their "oppressed" bourgeoisie even when there is no revolution going on.

Guess what? "Revolutionary defeatism" is revolutionary precisely because it applies only to a revolutionary period. The left-com universalization of defeatism, from WWII to today, is nutty.

There are also class struggle/strugglist defencism (a la Engels) and revolutionary defencism (and Kleber, I don't mean left-com advocacy of continuing the war, but precisely the Bolshevik mobilization against Kornilov).

This realo would go as far as saying that defencism is generally better than defeatism. There were no mass fraternizations between German soldiers and Russian soldiers in 1917, let alone both sides marching towards their home capitals! It was revolutionary defencism, not revolutionary defeatism, that eventually brought down Kerensky.

[electro_fan]

the first world war and second world war were completely different, the first world war was a result of two competing sets of imperialist powers, the second world war involved those imperialist powers attempting to maintain their own dominance in the balance of power, but also a number of expansionist fascist regimes which were attempting to invade and control other countries and killing hundreds of thousands of people

trotsky was jewish, and as you know hitler regarded jews and slavs as subhuman, he regarded the majority of the russian population as subhuman, so it would have been completely cowardly for him to step back in the name of some ideological purity and say that nobody should fight back against hitler, don't forget that hitler's first targets were the poles, who as far as i am aware weren't carrying out any imperialistic conquests at the time

[Kléber]

As I posted earlier, this was a tactic adopted during a revolutionary period and does not mean that the workers have to line up behind their "oppressed" bourgeoisie even when there is no revolution going on.
Now you're just repeating yourself while ignoring my arguments. As I posted earlier, nobody here has advocated that and furthermore, the Bolsheviks did not "line up" behind Kerensky.


"political independence" cannot be gained by rejecting class struggle and joining anti-fascist fronts;
A united front is different from a popular front precisely because in the former the working class does maintain its independence.


workers should not support fascism either, but should oppose both bourgeois democracy and fascism as the capitalist class is the main enemy of the working class.
which is why the Fourth International did oppose Stalinism and "Allied" imperialism.


Anti-fascism necessarily means workers sacrificing class struggle and class unity for united fronts which necessarily means class collaboration
No, it doesn't. In Spain, the left gave up its independence to the liberal-reformist Popular Front. In Petrograd the Bolsheviks did not give up their political independence while they defended the city in a military united front with Kerensky's provisional government.


as was demonstrated by the Third International's and Trotsky's support of the imperialist Second World War in the name of anti-fascism.
You seem to think a lie told often enough will become the truth. Reminds me of the Stalinists who robotically repeat that the Fourth International was a fascist fifth column that supported Hitler, because it would not give up its political independence to the Comintern and its imperialist allies. If we follow your reasoning then the left communists were recruiting sergeants for the Entente who supported WWI by calling for a resumption of hostilities against the German army in early 1918.

Trotsky did not support imperialist war by calling for defense of the Soviet Union and China against outright imperialist attempts at colonization. If Trotsky was a loyal servant of Stalin and Churchill then it does not follow that they chased him out of Europe, murdered him and his comrades around the world.


Of course not, but even "oppressed people" are not classless entities existing outside of capitalist relations and so workers should resist all capitalist forces.
In a country occupied and colonized by imperialism, the working class must fight for leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle precisely to resist the treasonous ambitions of the nationalist petty bourgeoisie.

[Kléber]

Guess what? "Revolutionary defeatism" is revolutionary precisely because it applies only to a revolutionary period. The left-com universalization of defeatism, from WWII to today, is nutty.
With regard to anti-imperialist struggles yes, but revolutionary defeatism is still the correct line in imperialist countries outside of a revolutionary situation. The nucleus of the Third International was established in 1915 in opposition to the war, before the soldiers' and workers' councils took matters into their own hands.


There were no mass fraternizations between German soldiers and Russian soldiers in 1917, let alone both sides marching towards their home capitals!Yeah, the German workers and soldiers in 1917 had no revolutionary party organizing their fightbacks, because there was no organized socialist opposition to the veiled centrism of Kautsky and co. which did not reveal its own craven chauvinist revisionism until 1914. But a year after the Russian revolution, the German proletariat, led by the revolutionary sailors who mutinied at Wilhelmshaven, did refuse to fight. They turned their guns against the Kaiser, bringing the war to an end, and they were inspired to do so by their Russian comrades.

[Kléber]

WHITE USAan "Maoism" which most Americans havent heard of is dismissed as revisionist while the mass Maoist movements of south east Asia who are making actual history are upheld. I think though that most of us uphold the Afrikan People's Socialist Party which operates in US borders (at least Scarlet and I do).
The Naxal movement is an artifact of history and it will eventually be defeated unless the Maoist-led peasant and indigenous mass organizations are saved by a proletarian revolution, the Indian state is thrown into chaos which prevents it from conducting offensives, and/or the Naxals can secure a source of foreign military aid. What you seem to be saying is that, because of the size and armament of the Naxals, we have to embrace the dogmatic and contradictory dogma of Maoism. Well, like I said before, if we have to embrace the ideology of the largest most militant anti-imperialist movement, then you should support some variety of Islamic fundamentalism instead of Maoism - which has been in decline since the 70's. You and scarletghoul do not uphold the revolution in South Asia any more than me.

[Die Neue Zeit]

With regard to anti-imperialist struggles yes, but revolutionary defeatism is still the correct line in imperialist countries outside of a revolutionary situation. The nucleus of the Third International was established in 1915 in opposition to the war, before the soldiers' and workers' councils took matters into their own hands.

Outside a revolutionary period, in imperialist countries the better line is that of the vulgar "centrist" tendency (the likes of Hugo Haase, Robert Grimm, etc.) that formed the majority of the Zimmerwald Conference: peace without annexations or indemnifications.

It's the same as Die Linke's anti-war position on Afghanistan, for example.


Yeah, the German workers and soldiers in 1917 had no revolutionary party organizing their fightbacks, because there was no organized socialist opposition to the veiled centrism of Kautsky and co. which did not reveal its own craven chauvinist revisionism until 1914.

They did have such a party: the USPD.


But a year after the Russian revolution, the German proletariat, led by the revolutionary sailors who mutinied at Wilhelmshaven, did refuse to fight. They turned their guns against the Kaiser, bringing the war to an end, and they were inspired to do so by their Russian comrades.

I think you're exaggerating things. Refusal to fight is one thing, but marching on the home capital is a bigger but separate step.

[electro_fan]

What i think is that its easy for us to sit here and say trotsky, the 4th int'l etc should and shouldnt have done this or that, its easy for us to sit here and condemn them all from the safety of our computer screens about 65+ years later for not upholding a pure ideological line, but the fact is that hitler was dropping bombs and invading countries all over europe, and sometimes life is more imporant than an ideology,

think about it, you may think that the police are a class enemy, but if you have a serial killer going around murdering people, murdering your friends and family and coming after you, you are going to call the police, to have the guy stopped, and you also aren't going to say that you won't resist the murderer because he is against the police and so are you, you are going to try and stop the guy no matter what, even if the people who are assisting you in that are absolute scum, it doesn't matter, because of the immediate threat that has to be resolved

[electro_fan]

no it wasn't the same, as horrific as those atrocities were, they were not fucking genocide

were the allies deliberately carrying out mass murder on a massive, industrialised scale? were they attempting the mass murder of an entire people purely on the basis of who they were and attempting to enslave millions of others, no, so as bad as their behaviour was, hitler had to be stopped, and the fact that trotsky was murdered shortly into the war shows that despite the fact that he was supporting the anti-fascist fight he was still enough of a threat that stalin wanted him killed by any means necessary

[9]

trotsky was jewish, and as you know hitler regarded jews and slavs as subhuman, he regarded the majority of the russian population as subhuman, so it would have been completely cowardly for him to step back in the name of some ideological purity and say that nobody should fight back against hitler

In fact, Trotsky was an atheist. I fail to see the relevance of his parents' religious background to any of this.

[electro_fan]

and again if a serial killer is going around trying to murder people you know, you wouldn't say "i cant call the police as they are class traitors", and alternatively you wouldn't sit back, and not do anything about stopping the serial killer, you wouldn't say "i dont like that serial killer but i hope the police don't catch him as they are a tool of the bourgoise state" and criticise people who were trying to do something about the problem, you wouldn't say any of that, you would either try to stop him yourself or you would assist the police in their attempts to do so, otherwise you are by default helping him through your inaction

[electro_fan]

Don't be stupid, you know full well that many people who were atheists but from a jewish background ended up in concentration camps, i am not especially religious and don't follow Judaism, but because i am from a jewish background i would have ended up in one, hitler didn't define jewishness by religion, he defined it by race (jews aren't a race but he thought they were)

hitler would definitely have put trotsky in a concentration camp, 1) because he was from a jewish background, 2) because he was a marxist, and because trotsky despised everything that the nazis stood for, one of the main criticisms of stalin that he had was because stalin was trying to appease hitler in the 1930s whereas trotsky thought that fascism was that much of a threat, that it had to be resisted at all costs. its completely cowardly to expect other people to defend you if this happened and then to say that nobody should do anything about it when their lives are threatened

[electro_fan]

No it doesn't show anything like that, just because a regime is dictatorial doesn't mean it is also capitalist, stalin seized control of the bureaucracy and it degenerated quite rapidly from there, but what you have said doesn't follow at all

i've lived in a former soviet country by the way, and since 1989 living standards, the quality of life of the people, etc, deteriorated quite dramatically, the country was also asset-stripped by people who took advantage of the fact that few people, even those in high-level gov't positions, understood Capitalism, and because of this were able to exploit the fact that few people knew much about the workings of a market economy and this system, in order to gain vast amounts of money sometimes within a few months or weeks. it was definitely not perfect, it was very bureaucratic and top-down and become horrifically so at that, but there is a definite difference between the life under communism for the average person, and life for them today

[electro_fan]

Im also aware that the reason why the allies entered the war wasn't to stop genocide, nonetheless, if Hitler would have been left to take over every single country in Europe, if nobody had organised anything to stop the Nazis, then what would have happened??

Are you seriously saying the actions of the allies in WWII were as bad as what the Nazis did?

[electro_fan]

He should have done the same thing that Lenin did in the First World War and not support it.

So in other words, just sat on his arse when his friends, family, and countrymen and comrades were being killed, in the name of ideological purity

sickening

[Kléber]

It is quite something to oppose in words but something else to achieve in deeds, as the Fourth International did advocate the victory of the Stalinist Soviet bloc.
The Fourth International struggled against the Anglo-French-US imperialists and the Stalinists in deeds. If Trotskyist leaders in the "Allied" imperialist countries did not resist more it was because they were thrown in jail as soon as the war began in 1939. Nevertheless the Fourth International did fight back and I listed a number of examples, all of which you ignored - they organized strikes in the Allied countries, set off a mutiny in Sri Lanka in 1943 and most importantly, in 1945 hundreds of Vietnamese Trotskyists died fighting against the returning French and British armies in the defense of Saigon and subsequent guerrilla warfare in the countryside, or were kidnapped and assassinated by the Stalinist traitors. If you continue to call the martyrs of Vietnamese Trotskyism as class traitors, I can not continue to take you seriously.


If one were to compare this to Kautsky's support of Germany during the First World War, one would not find much difference.If there is no difference then I suppose the left-communists were Kautskyists for their support of war against Germany.

More on that point, from your vapid posts I might infer that you consider French and Greek Trotskyists who fought as partisans against Nazi-fascist occupiers to have been "servants of Allied capitalism," do you believe the same about Henk Sneevliet and the Dutch MLL Front?


Which bourgeoisie is not part of imperialism today?The Iranian and Venezuelan bourgeoisie. The working class must struggle against and overthrow the Ahmedinejads and Chávezes of the world even as it shares a common enemy with them in the form of Western imperialism. If the imperialists invade Iran or Venezuela, we concentrate fire on the imperialist invaders while maintaining independence from the bourgeois nationalists.


Also what treasonous nationalist ambition are you talking about and why should that concern the working class, which is of an international character? Capitalism is a global system which has penetrated every corner of this world, which means that there is no country in which workers should defend their nation against foreign invaders and analogous to no sane Trotskyist advocating the national defense of the US for the sake of "resisting" the Al Qaeda or the Taleban, analogously, workers in so called Third World countries also do not have any interest in coming to the national defense of their capitalist class against a bigger capital.Surely you must be joking. US imperialism is raping and pillaging countries around the world, if you deny this then you are some kind of North American chauvinist who stumbled upon marxists.org. There is no Iraqi or Afghan imperialism. Those are conquered countries, they need liberation and only the working class can provide it, not through some kind of socialism in one country or bourgeois-nationalist autarky, but only through international proletarian revolution.

[electro_fan]

i can't agree that iran isn't imperialist, they have interfered quite heavily in the affairs of Iraq and a number of other countries, and cooperated with the US on a number of different things, that doesn't mean that we should support a US invasion though and I agree with the rest of your post.

expecting people not to fight back in the name of some ideological goal when they and their country are being attacked and indeed threatened with being wiped out is the last thing we should expect anyone to do

[electro_fan]

How is that relevant? The allies did not enter the war to stop the genocides but for their own imperialist gains. Both sides committed massive acts of barbarism and both deserved our condemnation. Trotsky's and the other bolsheviks' murders by Stalinist agents, if anything, indicated that the so called degenerated workers state was in fact a capitalist regime.

it's absolutely astonishing that someone that calls themselves left wing is glibly spouting platitutides about how "both sides" in WORLD WAR II "deserve condemnation" (!!) and you've been completely unable to answer the question why trotsky and trots shouldn't have supported the fight against fascism. If they had done as you suggest and just did nothing, remember that they weren't fighting "for stalin" or anyone else, they were fighting for self-defence and to protect their families, then what do you suppose would have happened to them?

and i'm not defending stalin or churchill, fuck both of them

how can people sit there, living a fairly comfortable western lifestyle 65 years later and say that it was wrong to fight against nazism, we enjoy all of these things which capitalism is currently destroying because of their sacrifice - because after WWII the ruling class were terrified of the sort of social unrest that had been seen post-WWI and made concessions in the form of creating the welfare state and public healthcare etc.

do you think it would have been like that if hitler had won, do you think we'd even be in a position to be having this discussion today???

In fact Trotsky in the 30s attempted to warn against the threat of nazism and said that it and hitler should be resisted when Stalin and everyone else wanted to capitulate to it, the leaders of the capitalist regimes of europe were practically falling over themselves to appease Hitler and give him what he wanted in the form of land and territory, I don't call that giving into imperialism do you. if you are going to criticise Trotsky then why not do it over something normal people on the left do, like Kronstadt or something

what do you suppose would have happened if nobody had done or organised anything?

[Palingenisis]

. Well, like I said before, if we have to embrace the ideology of the largest most militant anti-imperialist movement, then you should support some variety of Islamic fundamentalism instead of Maoism - which has been in decline since the 70's.

I dont uphold radical political Islam because one I dont the Koran is from God or whatever, I think it has a repressive structure towards women, I think its divisive and I dont think it uproots capitalist property relations...I would like to live in the sort of society that the Naxalites are creating much more than in the sort of society the Taliban are.

[S.Artesian]

So in other words, just sat on his arse when his friends, family, and countrymen and comrades were being killed, in the name of ideological purity

sickening


You may be expressing noble sentiments, comrade, but you've just made part of Promethean's argument for him. You listed, friends, family, countrymen, and comrades-- all of which are the standard patriotic reasons used to justify the war. You left out, and this is no small omission: class.

If Trotsky defended the USSR in WW2 it was because of his class analysis of the USSR; it was because of his examination of the class forces at work.

[electro_fan]

yes that is true mate (@ s. artesian) . i'd do a longer reply right now (acutally this is a subject i know quite a bit about) but ive got a really long day at work tomorrow. so i'll reply to your points tomorrow evening at the easrliest

[FreeFocus]

The idea that invading armies should not be resisted by the working-class in the country being invaded is absolutely asinine (and it shows because people in these countries don't give two shits about this line of thought; it is wholly irrelevant, even amongst Leftists). Should Iraqis, Afghans, and Palestinians just go about their normal routines as bombs are being dropped on them and their homes invaded at night? Their children kidnapped and tortured? Sure, it is important to maintain working-class independence. The thing is, if you don't resist imperialism, there won't be any working-class to speak of because everyone will be fucking dead.

It is possible to resist invasion while attacking the bourgeoisie that enabled or caused it. After all, when a country goes to war with another, it's not going to be the big capitalist or President's house being invaded or bombed. It's going to be the workers whose lives are ruined by war. If another country is bombing your's and invading it, you think taking over factories and instituting worker's control is going to make imperialism say, "Oh, I guess we'll stop bombing and leave now, there's no bourgeoisie in this country anymore." No, they're going to try to smash workers' control and organization.

[NGNM85]

I think Trotskyists tend to offer some very legitimate criticisms of any number of authoritarian regimes which have called themselves 'socialist', however, I have seen little evidence that they have better ideas.

[S.Artesian]

It is possible to resist invasion while attacking the bourgeoisie that enabled or caused it.

Yep, the Paris Commune showed us how to do that, 140 years ago.

[FreeFocus]

Yep, the Paris Commune showed us how to do that, 140 years ago.

If you're implying that this approach would necessarily lead to failure, the Paris Commune was also, almost literally, the first attempt at resisting capitalism in favor of some type of workers' power and control. There were also organizational issues in terms of the forces resisting state invasion. The Paris Commune was 140 years ago - it happened in the past and a lot has been written about it - which means we can all learn from where it went wrong.

[S.Artesian]

If you're implying that this approach would necessarily lead to failure, the Paris Commune was also, almost literally, the first attempt at resisting capitalism in favor of some type of workers' power and control. There were also organizational issues in terms of the forces resisting state invasion. The Paris Commune was 140 years ago - it happened in the past and a lot has been written about it - which means we can all learn from where it went wrong.

Nope, I mean just what I say. The Paris Commune showed us how to combat the bourgeoisie and an invasion.

[electro_fan]

s. artesian -
fascism at least in germany was largely supported by the bourgoisie and petit-bourgoise, the wealthier farmers etc, and the the so-called "little men" (as Wilhelm Reich put it , ) - small to medium sized business people etc, as well as a lot of failed business people/"aspirational" working class people who had failed to get enough money, wealth, prestige etc as they had wanted.

and if you look at what happened in Italy, it's kind of a forgotton thing, but the major victims of fascist state repression there were the trade unions and the organised working class, because normal trade unions were made illegal and people "had" to join official ones which almost always were in the interests of capitalists and the bosses, a similar thing happened in Nazi Germany ...

Also there was a really strong attempt to get people to identify with race rather than class, so against their own class interests against "the jew" and so on ffs. for that reason it was often basically called "the socialism of fools" - it's something that still goes on with fascism today.

now if i remember correctly , trotsky's analysis of fascism was basically that, and the fact that the capitalist system and the borgoisie would have rather seen a fascist state than a communist one, because they believed that the brutality of fascism would be able to keep the workers under control, and also with various "concessions" such as the winterhilfe payments in Germany and so on mean that they would be less willing to rebel against the regime - the corporatist nature of it also appealed to them. trotsky thought that it was going to be used by imperiralism as a safeguard against communism ...

[S.Artesian]

s. artesian -
fascism at least in germany was largely supported by the bourgoisie and petit-bourgoise, the wealthier farmers etc, and the the so-called "little men" (as Wilhelm Reich put it , ) - small to medium sized business people etc, as well as a lot of failed business people/"aspirational" working class people who had failed to get enough money, wealth, prestige etc as they had wanted.

Considerable support from Allianz, the German insurance company; IG Farben the chemical syndicate. Not just little people with not enough money, but big people with a lot of money.


and if you look at what happened in Italy, it's kind of a forgotton thing, but the major victims of fascist state repression there were the trade unions and the organised working class, because normal trade unions were made illegal and people "had" to join official ones which almost always were in the interests of capitalists and the bosses, a similar thing happened in Nazi Germany ...
Nothing forgotten about that at all. Corporatism at work-- destroy independent working class organizations; substitute official state or party unions.



Also there was a really strong attempt to get people to identify with race rather than class, so against their own class interests against "the jew" and so on ffs. for that reason it was often basically called "the socialism of fools" - it's something that still goes on with fascism today.

Yes.



now if i remember correctly , trotsky's analysis of fascism was basically that, and the fact that the capitalist system and the borgoisie would have rather seen a fascist state than a communist one, because they believed that the brutality of fascism would be able to keep the workers under control, and also with various "concessions" such as the winterhilfe payments in Germany and so on mean that they would be less willing to rebel against the regime - the corporatist nature of it also appealed to them. trotsky thought that it was going to be used by imperiralism as a safeguard against communism ...Concessions to the workers were not that big, if they existed at all. I believe wages were frozen at the 1929 level.

Still Trotsky's argument for the defense of the fSU was based on his analysis of its class basis, and his opposition to fascism as being the expression of decaying capitalism.

Family, friends, countrymen played no role in his analysis, other than there existence as members of the working class facing an onslaught.

[electro_fan]

you're right there mate. it didn't form the basis of his analysis, but im pretty sure trotsky felt that it was necessary to fight fascism and wasn't just capitaluating to imperialism by doing so. and i also think that if nobody had opposed the nazis then the world would be in a far worse state than anything we can imagine

you're right that these "concessions" weren't that big (and in many cases were extremely reactionary measures disguised as "concessions" and promoted as such) and when i said that it was forgotten i meant that it is forgotten by the capitalist media, there is a concerted attempt both within and outside italy to try to portray Italian fascism as basically ok and "not racist" ...lol, in fact i think that recent years have seen attempts in the mainstream media to downplay the "evilness" for want of a better word of fascism as an ideology if you see what i mean, and i also think that things like the holocaust are increasingly just been seen as just a result of "racism" rather than a far-right political ideology and a concerted effort on the part of the german ruling class to make this possible.

and when i said the bourgoisie, i also meant the big capitalists as well as the petit-borgoise dissilusioned small businessmen, but i thought that was where they got their "mass" support from largely (given that the very large capitalists such as ig farben etcc only represented a small part of the population?)