Trotskyism - the only way for a communist society to work an

[bolshevikshane]

Trotskyism is the only way for the proletariet!

Anarcism doesnt work Stalinism has shown that it is brutal and oppressive. Trotskyism is the natural evolution of Leninism.

Permanent Revolution is the only way a communist/leftist society can survive in a capitalist world. For example if Ireland were to turn communist it would need the UK to turn communist likewise the UK would need France and France Germany.

Daily Trotskyism is growing stronger. Trotsky although dead is the greatest comrade of the left, his ideas his writings his actions will never die.

The stalinist lies have been shown and proven wrong.
The time is now to build the 5th Internationale and win the world

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

[Moskitto]

I prefer Luxumbourgism (also called Council Communism) which is a slight variant of Trotskyism which believes that the means of production should be controlled democraticly in small councils rather than just one central government.

[CheGuevara]

I agree, of all the labeled ideologies, Trotskyism is probably the closest to the ideal one.

What you've suggested sounds somewhat like anarchism, the final stage of Communism, Moskitto.

[Moskitto]

It's not quite like Anarchism. Instead of using a central government which make the decissions it uses lots of smaller governments to control the production in small areas so that the production can be managed easily.

But it's basically half way between Leninism (central government) and Anarchy (no government.)

What seperates Luxumbourgists from Trotskyists is that while Trotskyism advocates a one party state (I think) with absolute freedom of speach, Luxumbourgism believes that a one party state can never allow freedom of speech so is strongly against a one party state.

[DaNatural]

ive read a bit about trotsky but have not read his actual writings yet, i just ordered a book by him about marxism and terrorism, sounds pretty interesting. I get the idea that he has the same ideals as lenin which I tend to agree with in most regards so trotsky seems like quite the man to follow. any recommendations on books from him?

[kevolution]

I too am a Trot, and a comrade of Shane's in Ireland.
Stalinism and 'Socialism in One Country' has been a proven failure by the collapse of the USSR and the reintroduction of gangster capitalism into Russia - there are something like 25,000 contract killings by the rssian mafia a year in Moscow alone.
Anarchism - altho' probably the best IDEAL to many cannot work because a) there a far too many varities of anarchism and B) Anarchism assumes that the 'people' will suddenly realise that capitalism is wrong, disregarding the role vanguard party. that is not to say I don't respect my anarchist comrades (well some of them), just that their programme is fatally flawed.
Maoism, as it is practiced now by the likes of Peru's Shing Path Movement see no role for the revolutionary working class, only the peasant class (who are unrealiable to say the least as they are generally wavering politically and can be easierly bought off thru reformism) and the SP have been known to kill trade union leaders. And they call themselves Communists! Of course Mao did make theoritical advances on revolutionary warfare, but Maoist Bueracracy has now descended into State Capitalism in China (and probably N Korea and Vietnam - but I'm not too up on the recent histories of these countries).
That leaves Trotskyism and Luxembourgism. I cannot comment on the latter as I have never read Rosa, and always assumed she was a Leninist, but I can see the point about federalism. But is it not the case that under REAL Leninism the Soviets (local workers govts) are the government of the people, and make decisions for their areas, but are answerable to the central govt, as a party is answerable to its International, and vice versa? Remember, the USSR was the Federation of SSR, until Stalin changed it to Union of SSR in the 20's.
As for Trotskyism, What Shane said in the 1st post is for me the truth.

As for Trotskyist works...
1) The book you ordered, I hope it was not "Why Marxists oppose individual terrorism" as this is a four page pamphlet from 1909. There is a book asweel, whose name escapes me at the minute, hopefully this is what you mean.

Anyway,
"The Permanent Revolution"
"The Revolution Betrayed"
"The Lessons Of Spain" - all by Trotsky are good staring points.
These can all be found free in the Trotsky section of the Marxists Internet Archive <www.marxists.org> as can most of his other works.
"The Unbroken Thread" by Ted Grant is book that can be found free at <http://www.marxist.com/TUT/index.html>

And if you can afford it (and they are still in print) there is the Epic trilogy of
"The Prophet Armed"
"The Prophet UnArmed"
"The Prophet Exiled" by Isaac Deutscher, an exhastive but entertaining and informative chronicle of Trotsky's life, works and actions. This is where I got my first introduction to what Trotsky was really all about.
Anyway, I hope you find these recommendations helpful...
Hasta La Victoria Siempre :)

[DaNatural]

thanks for the recommendations kev. the book i ordered is called Marxism and Terrorism. It's about 30 pages long and talks about how the capitalist governments are the real terrorists. Peace

[kevolution]

glad i coul be of assistance comrade, peace out to you too:)

[Nobody]

I'm a Trotskyite as well (check out the name). If Trotsky had followed Lenin rather than Stalin, we would all be happy commies right now ...

[redstar2000]

Gee, what a "love-fest" is going on here, guys.

Granted that Trotsky played a major role in the Russian revolution and had some interesting things to say during his period of exile, why all this "greatest comrade of the left" stuff?

You know communism is not about hero worship, don't you? It's not that the writings of 20th century communists are not worth reading, it's that they must be read with a critical eye. Otherwise, you might just as well join a church.

Or, I suppose, a fan club.

:cool:

PS: The Leninist "vanguard party" idea has failed everywhere...does that give you a hint?

[Kez]

kev, are you a grantist?
ie supporting the members of militant that stayed to fight?
coz i went to ur web and it was the socialist party, which was the other half

in any case, it shows how similair the Socialist Party and Socialist Appeal are in theory, its just their strategies that differ

[kevolution]

No, I'm not a 'Grantist'. I assume you ask because I recommened The Unbroken Thread? I just think its a good read is all. I am in the CWI/SP in Ireland yeah - actually, as it goes, I run the website these days.

[Som]

Quote: from LevTrosky on 2:39 am on May 31, 2003
I'm a Trotskyite as well (check out the name). If Trotsky had followed Lenin rather than Stalin, we would all be happy commies right now ...


Some trotsky quotes:

"If we seriously speak of planned economy, which is to acquire its unity of purpose from the center, when labor forces are assigned in accordance with the economic plan at the given stage of developement, the working masses cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers".

"Deserters from labour ought to to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps".

"They [the workers' opposition] have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy! . . The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy."

"We have been more than once accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the soviets the dictatorship of our own Party. . . In this substitution of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class..."

"the militarisation of labour . . . is the indispensable basic method for the organisation of our labour forces" . . . "Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive? . . . This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery too was productive". . . "Compulsory slave labour . . . was in its, time a progressive phenomenon". "Labour . . . obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker, is the basis of socialism".


Oh yea, Overjoyed.

[Conghaileach]

I don't think that Luxemburgism has much in common with Trotskyism. Luxemburg believed in a true dictatorship of the proletariat, of a decentralised form of government in which workers in their own areas would control their own affairs as they need to, in soviets.

Trotsky, I dare say, would not have been much better than Stalin as dictator of the USSR.

[Dynatos II]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 6:35 am on May 31, 2003
PS: The Leninist "vanguard party" idea has failed everywhere...does that give you a hint?


It fail only in Russia and Lenin expected it to fail if the revolution in the west failed. He was proven right.

''But we shall achieve victory only together with all the workers of other countries, of the whole world...''

''...for we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.''

''We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socailism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without aid of the international proletariat''

You should read Lenins and Trotskys work befor you criticise it.

[Conghaileach]

In the west (the developed capitalist nations) there is no need for Leninism.

It may have been needed in backward Russia at the time, where less than 20% of the population could read and write, but it's basically a theory whereby a new elite runs things on 'behalf of' the workers, because the workers are "too stupid" to do it themselves.



And I believe redstar means Leninism failed everywhere in that the Leninist parties all suffered from a lack of internal democracy, and grew stale.

[commie kg]

Quote: from redstar2000 on 10:35 pm on May 30, 2003
Gee, what a "love-fest" is going on here, guys.

Granted that Trotsky played a major role in the Russian revolution and had some interesting things to say during his period of exile, why all this "greatest comrade of the left" stuff?

You know communism is not about hero worship, don't you? It's not that the writings of 20th century communists are not worth reading, it's that they must be read with a critical eye. Otherwise, you might just as well join a church.

Or, I suppose, a fan club.

:cool:

PS: The Leninist "vanguard party" idea has failed everywhere...does that give you a hint?


I couldn't agree more. You must read as much as you can, and formulate your own individual beliefs rather than trying to label yourself.

[Severian]

Quote: from CiaranB on 2:34 am on June 1, 2003
In the west (the developed capitalist nations) there is no need for Leninism.

It may have been needed in backward Russia at the time, where less than 20% of the population could read and write, but it's basically a theory whereby a new elite runs things on 'behalf of' the workers, because the workers are "too stupid" to do it themselves.


Straw man. Nobody is obligated to know anything about Lenin's ideas, of course, but it's a good idea if you want to comment on them.

The "Luxembourgism" somebody was advocating also bears little resemblance to Rosa Luxemburg's ideas. (When did she say she was against a centralized state, for example?)

Why does everyone always focus on (a distorted version of) her disagreements with the Bolsheviks on the democracy question? Why not, say, her opposition to distributing land to the peasants, or to national self-determination? Could it be that none of these "Luxembourgists" have seriously read Luxemburg?

Anyway, on Trotskyism. Y'know, Trotsky never called himself a Trotskyist. IMO what was essential and positive about Trotsky is that he continued the fight for communism, not any new ideology he came up with.

Today, Trotskyist is largely a self-applied label, that a lot of disparate groups use. It doesn't always have anything at all to do with Trotsky's ideas. And when it does, it usually emphasizes the stuff that sets "Trotskyism" apart from communism, not the stuff that makes it a continuation of communism.

As Marx said, "every political sect sees its raison d'etre and point of honor not in what it has in common with the general proletarian movement, but in the particular shibboleth that sets it apart." OK, that was quoting from memory, I may have a word or two misplaced.

[redstar2000]

Why does everyone always focus on (a distorted version of) [Luxemburg's] disagreements with the Bolsheviks on the democracy question?

Good question...could it be because she was right?

Actually, of course, it really doesn't make a lot more sense to be a "Luxemburgist" than it does to be a "Trotskyist" or a "Stalinist" or a "Maoist". To apply such a label to onesellf is to be sectarian in exactly the sense that Marx indicated.

If someone starts a thread along the lines of "Positive Contributions of Trotsky to Marxist Theory", I would read it with interest...and the same would apply to any of the "great figures" of past revolutionary movements.

But what we usually encounter is something rather different, as I'm sure you know. The controversies of the dead are resusitated for purposes of psychological identification, ersatz "struggle", and, I suppose, sheer entertainment. It is the "Battle of the Titans"...indeed, there ought to be a video/computer game idea somewhere in all that crap.

Straw man. Nobody is obligated to know anything about Lenin's ideas, of course, but it's a good idea if you want to comment on them.

You take exception to CiaranB's "quick & dirty" summary of Leninist theory with the suggestion that he is uninformed on the matter.

I am definitely not uninformed on the matter and it seems to me to be "good enough" for the purposes of this discussion. Of course, Lenin never said "too stupid", but in practice during the period 1917-21, the Bolsheviks did gather all substantive decision-making power into their own hands and the soviets (workers' councils) were reduced to rubber-stamp bodies without even token autonomy.

One could argue that there were still some democratic scraps left within the Bolshevik Party, or at least the Central Committee, up until 1930. After that, it's despotism pretty much all the way.

You can also argue that the Trotskyist parties were "not as bad" as the Stalinist parties or, in our own day, the Maoist parties. That would be true, but I don't think the margin is significant. From what I have read about the internal struggles within Trotskyist parties, it seems to me that in practice the leaders behave just as despotically as the most hardened Stalinist. Serious dissent in theory or practice is to be organizationally crushed, period.

Aside from a few young hero-worshippers, working people in the developed world will no longer accept that crap. Nor should they, in the name of communism or anything else.

Amd it all comes from the central Leninist proposition: the most advanced workers and the most theoretically sophisticated petty-bourgeois should form themselves into a tightly disciplined organization that will "direct" the struggle of the working class for emancipation from capitalism and, after the revolution, "administer" the transition to communism.

That proposition was tested in the 20th century and it failed everywhere.

I do not "blame" Lenin or Stalin or Trotsky or Mao for those failures; I think they were all sincere communists trying the scheme that they thought had the best chance of success.

But it would be stupid, knowing what we now know, to keep beating that dead mule.

We must find new ways to revolution.

:cool:

PS: som, those were terrific quotations. I've copied them into a file for re-posting when this stuff comes up again...as we know it will.

[Conghaileach]

from Severian:
Why does everyone always focus on (a distorted version of) her disagreements with the Bolsheviks on the democracy question? Why not, say, her opposition to distributing land to the peasants, or to national self-determination? Could it be that none of these "Luxembourgists" have seriously read Luxemburg?

It was me, I believe, who made an argument for Luxemburg. I've never said though that I followed any kind of doctrine.

I have tendencies towards certain theories. I've always said that I had a tendency towards DeLeon's syndicalism/industrial unionism and Luxemburg's council communism. As a republican, of course I don't agree with Luxemburg's opposition to national liberation struggles.

I've never said that I am a Luxemburgist or DeLeonist (well, I may have before, but not in recent memory) because I like to pick and mix, so to speak.

There were many people who added to communist theory during the 20th century. It doesn't mean that anyone got it completely right.

[Severian]

On "Luxembourgism", I was responding to Moskitto. Didn't go back and look for the name at the time.

My first paragraph, however, was in response to Ciaran's statement that I quoted.

[komsomol]

When I say I am a Trotskyist I mean the true spirit of Leninist-Bolshevism, and when I say I am a Bolshevik I mean I accept the views, writings and actions of the Bolsheviks before and during the Leninist years as opposed to Menshevik dogmatism. Having revealed that, the true spirit of Bolshevism in each country does not mean a rerun of the October Revolution, for if this was our course of action we too would be dogmatists, dogmatists of the Bolsheviks when they applied the Dialectical method of thought to the peculiarities of Russia specifically, when we should be applying this method of thought to our cicumstances.

[YKTMX]

Quote: from Som on 7:14 pm on May 31, 2003

Quote: from LevTrosky on 2:39 am on May 31, 2003
I'm a Trotskyite as well (check out the name). If Trotsky had followed Lenin rather than Stalin, we would all be happy commies right now ...


Some trotsky quotes:

"If we seriously speak of planned economy, which is to acquire its unity of purpose from the center, when labor forces are assigned in accordance with the economic plan at the given stage of developement, the working masses cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers".

"Deserters from labour ought to to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps".

"They [the workers' opposition] have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy! . . The Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy."

"We have been more than once accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the soviets the dictatorship of our own Party. . . In this substitution of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class..."

"the militarisation of labour . . . is the indispensable basic method for the organisation of our labour forces" . . . "Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive? . . . This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery too was productive". . . "Compulsory slave labour . . . was in its, time a progressive phenomenon". "Labour . . . obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker, is the basis of socialism".


Oh yea, Overjoyed.


Interesting post, Som. I think you have to look at some quotes in context, especially one's about economic development, as these are probably made for use in a particular economy i.e backwardness in Russia. But yeah, definetly, I wouldn't agree with 60 % of those quotes. Redstars right, hero worship does no one any favours, not the person being idealized, or the people doing the worshipping. Lenin, being quite a perverse example, as he was himself very much against hero worship, and has suffered somewhat from Stalins promotion of him to almost god like status.

[Dynatos II]

Theres a difference between worshiping someone and agreeing with what he said. So far i dont see anyone worshipping anyone. and theres nothing wrong with calling yourself a trotskite or a maoist or whatever. It just means that you agree with most of what this person did or have a similar political position to him/her. Its also a simple way to inform others about your political whereabouts. Especially today when there are many different groups calling themselves marxists and even though some are very similar, others are very different.

[redstar2000]

and theres nothing wrong with calling yourself a trotskite or a maoist or whatever. It just means that you agree with most of what this person did or have a similar political position to him/her.

I wish that was all it meant. But my experience has been that what it really means is the successful memorization of some formulas that may or may not have been useful at the time they were first written down...but are now brought forward without regard to social reality.

If, for example, Trotsky said that communists in England should work inside the Labour Party in 1940, there are still Trotskyists in England today who echo that analysis...as if 60 years had never passed.

Indeed, it has often seemed to me that Leninists as a group tend to suffer from "theologian's disease"---have a question? Look it up in the Bible.

Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao (and some others from that era) could think through a problem and come up with a fresh answer (wrong or right, but at least original). Their disciples of the present day seem to rely mostly on the ceremonial recitation of sacred words and formulas...as if by repeating Lenin often enough, you can achieve what Lenin achieved.

In psychological circles, this is known as "magical thinking".

<shrugs>

:cool: