Beginner's Questions

[16th_hop]

I have generally considered myself a bourgeois socialist, someone who believes in capitalism with intense government scrutiny. I haven't met many other socialists, let alone communists, and most of my research is from the internet or the books that I read. A couple questions/comments that I would like to discuss with the community are:

a) Has a true Trotskyist state ever been implemented anywhere? ( Cuba, Anarchist Spain, Yugoslavia?)

b) Is this correct: Marxism-Leninism generally focuses on the middle step, the more violent and bureaucratic step, between Marx's paradise and the current situation we are in now, focusing less on international revolution than seizure of bourgeois property?

c) How does the far-left system of government address technological innovation. The current hybrid system we have now with the US government dispelling grants and contracts to private companies to do research ( mostly on killing machines) seems to be working incredibly well. Is government sponsorship generally considered the way foreword for tech advancement?

Thanks for answering some of these noob questions. :confused:

-16th_hop

[Blake's Baby]

a) I don't know, I'm not a Trotskyist; but I don't think there's any such thing as a 'true Trotskyist state'.

b) I don't know, I'm not a Marxist-Leninist; but Marxist-Leninism developed in a period when the world revolution had stalled and gone into retreat, and was therefore (though I'm quite sure Marxist-Leninists wouyld dispute this) a reaction to the failure of the world revolution and a codification of what had been done in Russia to maintain a 'red bastion'.

c) capitalism isn't working 'incredibly well'. Millions of people die unnecessarily every year and our environment is being degraded at a frightening rate because profit is more important than human needs. Technological advancement will depend after the revolution on the necessity that is being addressed. If a problem needs solving then communities will come together to solve it. There will be no distinction in future between education, research and production; there will also be no necessity for 'commercial confidentiality', 'national security' or 'intellectual property rights' that require secrecy under capitalism, so research can be done honestly and in the open. there will be no "government sponsorship" because 1 there will be no government and 2 there will be no money. What there will be is decisions about what needs doing, and the doing of it, with decisions about what resources are necessary being taken by those 'doing the doing'.

[Art Vandelay]

I have generally considered myself a bourgeois socialist, someone who believes in capitalism with intense government scrutiny. I haven't met many other socialists, let alone communists, and most of my research is from the internet or the books that I read. A couple questions/comments that I would like to discuss with the community are:

a) Has a true Trotskyist state ever been implemented anywhere? ( Cuba, Anarchist Spain, Yugoslavia?)

b) Is this correct: Marxism-Leninism generally focuses on the middle step, the more violent and bureaucratic step, between Marx's paradise and the current situation we are in now, focusing less on international revolution than seizure of bourgeois property?

c) How does the far-left system of government address technological innovation. The current hybrid system we have now with the US government dispelling grants and contracts to private companies to do research ( mostly on killing machines) seems to be working incredibly well. Is government sponsorship generally considered the way foreword for tech advancement?

Thanks for answering some of these noob questions. :confused:

-16th_hop

a) In Trotsky's mind he was nothing but an Orthadox Marxist and a leader in the Russian revolution. You could most likely consider the early years of the Russian revolution as a Trotskyist state as he was a part of its creation and supported it through its baby steps.

b) As an anarchist I do not think M-Ls are interested in communism at all.

c) No government is the way forward.

[Rooster]

a) Has a true Trotskyist state ever been implemented anywhere? ( Cuba, Anarchist Spain, Yugoslavia?)

This notion is entirely false. The working class make communist revolutions, not people, not ideologies. Trotsky was just (heavily involved) part of the Russian Revolution.


b) Is this correct: Marxism-Leninism generally focuses on the middle step, the more violent and bureaucratic step, between Marx's paradise and the current situation we are in now, focusing less on international revolution than seizure of bourgeois property?

Marxism-Leninism was the ideology of the USSR state. So it was geared to whatever the bureaucracy at the time was wanting to promote which was usually itself.


c) How does the far-left system of government address technological innovation. The current hybrid system we have now with the US government dispelling grants and contracts to private companies to do research ( mostly on killing machines) seems to be working incredibly well. Is government sponsorship generally considered the way foreword for tech advancement?

Government sponsorship generally just means that people are given money so they don't have to work so that they can study and work on things. I don't see how in a classless society that innovation would grind to a halt. I'm sure it would increase because there would be more people with more free time to do things, there wouldn't be any corporations and government preventing or halting research for their own profit, and such. Also, looking at the USSR under Stalin, there was little innovation and poor quality of goods because the mood was to just produce as much as you could which meant using the old methods instead of looking for new ones (which wasted time), just to fill quotas. Then you had ideological interference in science such as Lysenko.


Thanks for answering some of these noob questions. :confused:

-16th_hop

No problem.

[Lanky Wanker]

a) Has a true Trotskyist state ever been implemented anywhere? ( Cuba, Anarchist Spain, Yugoslavia?)


Just to let you know, if there was a Trotskyist state then it wouldn't be called anarchy. Anarchism (anacho-communism) has no state between now and communism; same destination, different vehicle.

[16th_hop]

@Gk95, sorry cemantic mistake... I meant Republican Spain.