Question: What is Trotskysm?

[SacRedMan]

I don't know if I spelled it correct. I'm planning to read a monography of Lev Bronstein, but first I have to know what Trotskyism is.

What is it? :confused:

[Ocean Seal]

Trotskyism is Leninism but an internationalist tendency.
Basically its about a vanguard party, proletarian internationalism (supporting other revolutions and exporting the revolution), and building a bottom up bureaucracy (this one is kind of strange and counterintuitive, but basically it uses dictatorship of the proletariat to establish the bureaucracy).

[Proukunin]

'Lev' Bronstein and it's Trotskyism. It's a Marxist philosophy that differs from Stalinism in that it promotes Permanent Revolution instead of Socialism in One Country. That doesnt mean a infinite state of upheaval, but instead is about spreading the working class revolution to different countries so that domino effect(other countries' working class will rise up) will take place and world communism can be complete.

Now there is more to it and you can find that out by going to Marxist Internet Archive and looking at Trotsky's page.

[Tommy4ever]

It is an ideology derived from the politics of Leon Trotsky.

Generally it is a brand of Leninism that tends to be very workerist, more internationalist, very anti-bureaucratic and more in favour of democratic elements than Leninism evolved from Stalinism. It remains quite statist and supports the idea of vanguardism.

Trotskyism is usually totally slandered by Stalinists and Maoists and is seen by many as a dirty word. Likewise Trotskyists are firmly against these tendencies and called the countries that supported regimes based on these ideologies ''deformed workers states''.

Trotskyism was once very influencial in Latin America, less so now. There was a time when it looked like it might become big in Asia, but everywhere but in Sri Lanka a pretty much pettered out - but in Sri Lanka some Trotskyists even got into a coalition government. In Europe, the Trotskyists traditionally held some degree of support in many countries as an opposition to the more influencial pro-Soviet parties they have not suffered as much as the pro-Soviet parties since the collapse of the USSR. In a handful of European countries Trotskyists remain influencial.

However, Trotskyists have one huge glaring flaw. They love nothing more than splitting and forming new political parties. :p

I know Leftists in general are known for their splits but Trotskyists make an artform of it. It is not uncommon for some countries to have half a dozen inconsequencial Trotskyist parties that all evolved from a single party.

A basic idea of what Trotskyism is.

[SacRedMan]

vanguardism

What's that :confused:

[Tommy4ever]

What's that :confused:

It is a central idea to Leninist iideas on how to achieve revolution as well as other groups.

Basically the vanguard group (a party, mabye even a revolutionary Trade Union) directs the anger of the working class in a situation in which revolution is possible towards its own poltical goals - ie a revolution of the type it desires.

A good example of when a vanguard might have been useful would be the recent Egyptian Revolution. For many days it felt clear that the working class was angry and wanted change, but it didn't know quite what sort of change it wanted. A vanguard might would have directed the working class towards a full blown revolution.

[cb9's_unity]

At this point "Trotskyism" is an assortment of differing Leninist ideologies. Some apparently differing on tactics and others differing mainly on analysis.

You would have to have to different Trotskyists themselves explain their own views on Trotskyism.

[Hit The North]

From the MIA (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/r.htm#trotskyism)



Trotskyism and Stalinism are children from the same womb, born from the Russian Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/o/c.htm#october). Both were nursed to health through the reaction (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#reaction) caused by the Soviet Civil War (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/r/u.htm#russian-civil-war-1918-20).
Trotskyism began with the premise that the transition to Socialist (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/o.htm#socialism) society lay in the balance of the Russian Revolution, but if the transition was not attended to by the Trotskysts, Socialism would not be achieved. Trotskyism explains this as an inheritance of Lenin's theory of the necessity of the vanguard role (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/v/a.htm#vanguard) of the workers' party, an inheritance Stalinists claim as well. While the Stalinists were working to secure their power of the Soviet state through the suppression of all who opposed them, the Trotskysts sought to replace the Stalinist reigns of government with their own methods of establishing Socialism. See: Platform of the Joint Opposition (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm)
The distinguishing characteristic between Trotskyist and Stalinist political theory is based on the events they were born into during these reactionary times. The Stalinists, in control of the Soviet government, became exceedingly pragmatic, throwing out reference to theory or morality with the aim that above all else it was necessary to secure the power of the Soviet state, and as a consequence their power over the Soviet state, at all costs. The Trotskyists on the other hand, occupying a role not as dominate as the Stalinists in the Soviet bureaucracy, focused on Marxist and Socialist theory, claiming at various junctures that the Stalinists were acting directly against these theoretical principles.
From this intrinsic battle much of the sectarianism (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#sectarianism) rampant throughout Marxism in the 20th-century is rooted. The Stalinists labeled Trotskyists as bitterly sectarian, because the Trotskyists would not follow the Stalinist methods of the state and instead constantly beat the snot out of the Stalinists on the most fundamental of theoretical grounds. But while the Stalinists were decrying the Trotskyists as overly theoretical and counter-revolutionaries, the Trotskyists aptly labeled the Stalinists as overly bureaucratic and exceedingly brutal -- Stalinism more and more came into complete control of the Soviet bureaucracy, and increasingly began violently suppressing all dissentors. Though the Trotskyists considered the Soviet state a "workers state", they refused to call it a socialist state until the malignant tumor of the Stalinist bureaucracy was removed.
The two-part solution that Trotskyists saw to remedying the Russian Revolution to a socialist path can firstly be surmised by a "changing of the linen" – replacing the Stalinist bureaucracy with a Trotskyist one. The next necessary step was outlined by the theory of the Permanent Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/e.htm#permanent-revolution). This stipulated that Socialism could not be achieved in any one nation but only through world wide worker's revolutions, a theory starkly in contrast to the revisionary (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#revisionism) Stalinist theory of Socialism in One Country (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/o.htm#socialism-in-one-country), that stated Socialism was possible in a single country.
Along these lines of division in the late 1920s, after the Stalinist suppression of the Trotskyists, the right-wing of the party, and the failures of the Communists in Germany, the Trotskyists moved strongly into the arena of forming a new international, called the Fourth International (as opposed to the Third International created by Lenin and led by the Soviet state). While the Trotskyists continue their internationalist efforts to this day, the Third International was deserted in 1943, with later Stalinist internationalism leaving behind the inherited theoretical aspects which the Trotskyists were so excellent at championing, and instead focused on the direct pragmatic realities of conquering new territories, dominating foreign markets, etc.
The fundamental basis of these deviations between the two children of the Russian Revolution continue to the present. While Stalinist groups of various strips lay claim to having actively led working class revolutions in various countries (the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, N. Korea, etc.), to varying degrees of success, the Trotskyists lay claim to critiquing these revolutions (and others, including the workers revolutions in Mongolia, Cuba, etc) pointing out their theoretical deficiencies. While Stalinists have attempted some basic theoretical work without success, Trotskyists have taken part in some revolutions (the Spanish Civil War), though these also, like the Fourth International, have not achieved success.
Not surprisingly, there are many deviations within Trotskyism, and these deviations run so deep that certain groups of Trotskyists consider other groups of Trotskyists equivalent to Stalinists. Like every other derivative from Marxism, most Trotskyists resent the differing label, refusing to recognize their sect as anything different from Marxism, but they readily label other deviations (including internal ones) as something other than Marxism (i.e. Maoism, Stalinism, Social-Democrats, etc.). Additionally, Trotskyists lay claim to the name Leninism, believing that the theories of Trotsky are more or less synonymous with the theories of Lenin, thus to distinguish between Leninism and Trotskyism is also wrong.

[The Idler]

"Trotsky entirely identified capitalism with private capitalism and so concluded that society would cease to be capitalist once the private capitalist class had been expropriated. This meant that, in contrast to Lenin who mistakenly saw state capitalism as a necessary step towards socialism, Trotsky committed the different mistake of seeing state capitalism as the negation of capitalism.
Trotskyism, the movement he gave rise to, is a blend of Leninism and Reformism, committed on paper to replacing private capitalism with state capitalism through a violent insurrection led by a vanguard party, but in practice working to achieve state capitalism through reforms to be enacted by Labour governments."
- Trotsky: The Prophet Debunked, World Socialism (http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/trotsky_the_prophet_debunked.php)

[Dumb]

- Trotsky: The Prophet Debunked, World Socialism (http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/trotsky_the_prophet_debunked.php)

Interesting perspective. I've personally never come across a British Trotskyist who felt anything short of loathing towards Labour.

[StalinFanboy]

http://libcom.org/library/notes-trotsky-pannekoek-bordiga-gilles-dauv%C3%A9

[Q]

- Trotsky: The Prophet Debunked, World Socialism (http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/trotsky_the_prophet_debunked.php)

The text was written in 1990 and in that context, with Militant being a big faction within the Labour party, that analysis made some sense. These days things have changed a little, which shows in my view how shallow that analysis was as it didn't get beyond mere observation of what was happening at that time.

[Lyev]

I sometimes wonder what the relevant 'permanent revolution' is in today's epoch; I am unsure actually how many places there are left in the world where capitalist social relations are not the dominant. Sure, there are places where proletarians work and live in a non-industrial environment - as poor farmers, agriculturally etc. - but feudalism does not really exist anymore in the same sense that it did in 1917. Having said that, there are still a few points we can make about this element of 'Trotskyism'. Firstly, it was very important in its historical context, in that it deviated from the hitherto accepted accepted orthodoxy of Marxist tradition --- it was a formulation against the stagist interpretations, where revolutionaries insisted on a long wait for the development of productive forces to happen 'naturally', as such. It is a worthy rebuttal to Stalin's 'socialism in one country', and the hotch-potch theory of the Mensheviks etc. I think it's just sort of an expression of the need of working-class political independence, which surely becomes even stark and necessary in a country where proletarians only make up about 10% of the population (Russia, 1917), or even 2% in 1949 in China apparently, though Trotskyists were liquidated there. But in anyway, when posed like this, I guess it just draws emphasis to the fact that Trotskyists - as all Marxists should - advocate working class independence. Anyway, I just though I would comment on permanent revolution because it is a more contentious aspect of Trotsky's thoughts. Also, the transitional programme, along with entryism sometimes get Trotskyists into hot water. We sometimes get accused of reformism, economism etc. for these kind of tactics.

[Jimmie Higgins]

VanguardismWhat's that :confused:

In this line of thinking, the idea is that since people do not always draw radical conclusions at once, since struggle in capitalist societies does not always happen at once, and since the ruling class ideas tend to dominate at all times except for in revolutionary situations or at the height of struggles, that people radicalize at different times and radicals will tend to be the minority in most movements as well as in society as a whole.

So the concept of the vanguard of the working class is the people who have already come to the conclusion that the system doesn't work and are looking to fight for an alternative. This vanguard exists regardless of any "vanguard party" or consciously seeing themselves as part of a vanguard of working class struggle.

The idea of vanguardism is that people like this, committed working class revolutionaries, should try and organize as a group and coordinate their various local struggles. Personally I doubt we will see "one" vanguard party emerge in future struggles, probably be several smaller groups that begin to come together politically through an upsurge in struggle and then decide to coordinate their efforts as a revolutionary situation develops.

Vanguard like "democratic centralism" has been given a bad rap over the years due to many groups just deciding to class themselves "the vanguard" and then telling people that they know everything and that workers should follow them. This is not what a vanguard does or is about - the vanguard does not dictate to workers what do to and does not just announce itself as the true revolutionary vanguard party. The working class makes the revolution, the vanguard party should only exist to try and figure out how to help that along.