Trotskyism?

[safeduck]

Can someone explain trotskyism to me please? and why do a lot of communists think trotskyism is bad?
Thanks.

[khlib]

I was literally just about to post this question! I was going to ask, what beliefs do modern day Trotskyists have in common? On what issues do they disagree?

[Smyg]

Newspapers.

That is all.

[Ocean Seal]

Can someone explain trotskyism to me please? and why do a lot of communists think trotskyism is bad?
Thanks.
Trotskyism is the line of thought following Leon Trotsky. It is one of the two main competing Leninist currents. They agree with Marxist-Leninists on that a vanguard party is necessary, and that Lenin implemented socialism/building socialism correctly.
They disagree with Marxist-Leninists on several key issues.
Trotskyists believe
1. Revolution cannot be sustained in one country, regardless of how industrialized it is, and that perpetual revolution is necessary to ensure the revolutionary gains of the proletariat. Marxist-Leninists on the other hand believe that revolution happens in waves, as the entire world doesn't develop revolutionary tendencies uniformly.
2. That Stalin implemented too much bureaucracy and thus destroyed worker's democracy

Left-Communists and Trotskyists also have their differences. Among them, left-communists often accuse Trotskyists of subscribing to a great man theory and believing that Trotsky would have changed things if he was in power. Left-Communists of the Council Communist variety do not believe that Lenin for his duration in power was able to deliver power to the workers (in the form of worker's councils organizing the state) and that he organized a bureaucratic dictatorship. They also believe that the party is a grave mistake in organization. Left-Communists who follow Lenin's line will assert that Trotsky didn't follow Lenin strongly enough and believe that he engaged in adventurism. Left-Communists are also for the most part against national liberation which is something that Trotskyists support (much like Marxist-Leninists).

[The Idler]

Maybe look at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism

[Rooster]

Trotskyism is basically just orthodox Leninism which Lenin just considered just orthodox Marxism. Trotsky claims that he pulled the ideas of permanent revolution and combined and uneven development. These are just his take on historical materialism as opposed to the Stalinist and second internationalist line of gradualist development. This was kinda developed to help explain why the revolution started in Russia, a backward country, and not in the advanced west. This sort of argument undermines the Stalinist line and justifications for state control.

Probably one of his best works is this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-1/ch07.htm

The first chapter is worth a read anyway.

[OHumanista]

Can someone explain trotskyism to me please? and why do a lot of communists think trotskyism is bad?
Thanks.

Trotskyism is a heretical movement to the Holy Scriptures of MLism.:D (because we think Stalin was the leader of the bureaucratic corruption of the Soviet Union)
Some other communists dislike us for being leninists, or because like RedBrother mentioned some think we fall in a "Great Man" theory. (and those fall into the trap of historical determinism and ignore the fact it was not Trotsky himself that would make things different but the fact that different factions of the bolsheviks represented different class interests)

[Die Rote Fahne]

Trotskyism is a branch of Leninism which follows th theoretical and historical line of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader, commander of the Red Army and anti-Stalinist who was exiled from the USSR and assassinated on Stalin's order.

Some main ideas of Trotskyism are:
- Permanent Revolution
- United Fronts against fascism
- Trotsky's analysis of the USSR as a degenerated workers state.
- Democratic Centralism.

[khlib]

I understand Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution and his critiques of the Soviet Union, but I am most curious in the views of modern day self-proclaimed Trotskyists. What is specific to their views? How does their rejection of "socialism in one country" manifest itself in praxis?

[Ocean Seal]

I understand Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution and his critiques of the Soviet Union, but I am most curious in the views of modern day self-proclaimed Trotskyists. What is specific to their views?
They hold many different views. Many of them are not in line with what Trotsky would have believed and the fact is that there are many different organizations within Trotskyists often with trivial differences, but sometimes with more complex differences.



How does their rejection of "socialism in one country" manifest itself in praxis?
It doesn't. Because socialism doesn't currently exist.

[Rooster]

I understand Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution and his critiques of the Soviet Union, but I am most curious in the views of modern day self-proclaimed Trotskyists. What is specific to their views? How does their rejection of "socialism in one country" manifest itself in praxis?

You have it the wrong way around. Socialism in one country is a rejection of Permanent Revolution and internationalism. So I have no idea how to answer this. Are you asking how revlevant permanent revolution is to a modern society? Well, it's basically to not work with the bourgeois class nor co-operate with it. Such as not working within bourgeois parliamentary systems or relying on national bourgeoisie or co-operating with them for the sake of realpoltik. As to which trotskyist organisations follow that, I don't know. I haven't been involved with any outright trotskyist party.

[OHumanista]

I understand Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution and his critiques of the Soviet Union, but I am most curious in the views of modern day self-proclaimed Trotskyists. What is specific to their views? How does their rejection of "socialism in one country" manifest itself in praxis?

In involving themselves in class struggle not much (aside from internationalism, but that is a feature of many other movement). It's more of a question of how a revolutionary state would behave. As well as support for other revolutions.
As for the the self-proclaimed trotskyist...some are good, some are the usual not very significant commies movement, and some are those bizarre cults that have little to do with communism itself much less trotskyism. It varies really, as with any other tendency.

[Aurora]

The most important part of Trotskyism is the analysis of Combined and Uneven Development of capitalism and with it the Permanent Revolution.

Capitalism has developed unevenly across the world, the areas that reached capitalism first like Europe and N.America have a massive advantage on the world stage dominating the rest of the world and blocking the way to the other underdeveloped countries. Corresponding to this there is combined development, that is, through foreign capital the underdeveloped countries have small areas of the most advanced means of production and as such have an advanced proletariat side by side with ancient plantations, a large peasantry etc

Drawn from this there is the Permanent Revolution, the underdeveloped countries cannot develop the same way as the advanced countries did, the bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped countries are tied to foreign capital and can no longer play a revolutionary role, the tasks that the bourgeoisie historically did, land reform, democracy, and the national question can only be solved by the revolutionary proletariat leading the peasantry, this proletarian dictatorship of course does not stop at these bourgeois-democratic tasks but pushes forward it's own socialist tasks making the revolution permanent. This revolution cannot be assured in victory unless it is joined by revolutions in more advanced countries which can aid in it's development and relieve the pressure of world capitalism.