Basic Leninism / Trotskyism

[SittingBull47]

I'm not familar with these 2 views. Can someone offer up a summary of what they are and what they stand for?

[Scottish_Militant]

The problem here is that everyone has different opinions on this question, Trotskyists will say Trotskyism is an advancement on Leninism, Stalinists will say the opposite. People can provide you with two or three quotations to back up each case but that will not show you the full picture. Why take peoples words for it, you can easily find out by reading the works of Lenin and Trotsky on www.marxists.org

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2004, 04:31 PM
I'm not familar with these 2 views. Can someone offer up a summary of what they are and what they stand for?
Che-Lives Dictionary (http://www.che-lives.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=8&t=21255)

Che-Lives Who's Who? (http://www.che-lives.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=8&t=21439)

They both have links to varied stuff. The who's who contains a link to the website that most people will refer you too...www.marxists.org, it has collected works for Lenin and selected works for Trotsky.

[Comrade Marcel]

Most Trotskyites will say that Trotskyism and Leninism are synonmous.

However, there are some Neo-Trotskyites out there that argue Trotskyism is different and in some cases superior to Leninism. Some ultra-Trotskyites will argue that Trotsky was even correct before he became a Bolshevik and/or that Lenin actually took on his theories later on, essentially becoming a Trotskyist himself.

Marxist-Leninists (Stalinists) will argue their ideology is the correct exstension of Leninism. Then you have revisionists of various sorts, who argue against some or all aspects of Stalinism.

Maoists will say they are an exstension of Marxism-Leninism, and give praise to Stalin with variating degrees of criticism (depending on the camp).

Ultra-Stalinists, usually the Hoxaites consider almost everything other than Joe and Enver (encluding Maoism) to be a perversion of Marxism-Leninism

There are some, but few ultra-Leninists out there that consider anything other than Lenin a perversion (Trotsky and Stalin), and even rarer you will find an ultra-Marxist (or DeLeonist) who considers Leninism a perversion of Marxism.

Even rarer still are the Socialists out there that only consider some aspects of Marx (and usually are very utopian in nature).

That's a rough description anyhow (and hopefully not unintentionally biased in favour of old uncle Jo ;) ).

Unfortunately, there is going to be no easy way to pick one out. You are just going to have to read and come to descisions yourself.