Are Marxist-Leninists worse than the Trotskyists?

  1. Ostrinski
    Or are they both flawed in the same way? What do you all think?
  2. Grenzer
    Grenzer
    Interesting that you would ask, since it's something I've been thinking of.

    Of course we recognize that both Trotskyism and Marxism-Leninism are reformist ideologies and comprise the left of capital, and are therefore no better or worse than liberalism, ordinary social-democracy, fascism.. etc; but I assume your'e asking purely as a matter of intellectual abstraction if one were to assign "gradients of worth" to capitalist ideologies(which we don't do), but just for funnies.. which is the "best" of the left-reformist ideologies?

    I have some respect for Trotsky in regards to his actions as a leader in the October Revolution and his actions as a revolutionary, yet at the same time many say he still had some repressed Menshevism. I haven't really investigated to say for sure, but I think there is some truth to this as his infamous "transitional sloganeering" is pretty reactionary IMHO(i.e. his call for a United States of Europe). Marxism-Leninism isn't really a coherent ideology, so I'm going to assume you want us to pick a 'flavor of it'.

    I honestly think Hoxhaism can be better than Trotskyism in some ways; namely because they denounce the Soviet Union post 1956 and all other 'socialist' states except for Albania as capitalist whereas the orthodox Trots insist that these are "worker's states" and somehow worthy of defense, and that imperialism by these entities is excusable. As a result of this, I think sometimes the Hoxhaists have a better position than the Trots who sometimes even defend modern China as a "workers' state".

    Of course this is pure academic abstraction. In reality they are both capitalist ideologies and should be opposed equally along with fascism, liberalism, and social-democracy(which arguably includes Stalinism and Trotskyism). So they are both flawed in that they recognize certain configurations of capitalism as being something other than capitalism, but the Trots tend to be more egregious in this regard than the Hoxhaists, but they are a small minority. We have the Brezhnevites of the PSL as represented by people like Manic who claim that Cuba and the DPRK are socialist.

    It's also in my opinions that Trotskyists tend more towards liberalism at times(i.e. they oppose Stalin's Soviet Union more because they believe that his actions were morally outrageous rather than the fact that it wasn't socialism, or on the road to socialism.

    Good thing our little sub-forum here isn't visited much, or else I could expect some angry Trots to give my message box a visit.
  3. Ostrinski
    But surely there are Trots who acknowledge that after a certain point the SU was not pursuing socialism? It seems hard to me to put someone like Q in with ML's and socdems.
  4. Grenzer
    Grenzer
    I hold Q in high esteem. He's not ordinary in that regards, and he actually rejects the theory of degenerated workers state. He doesn't believe that the Soviet Union was capitalist, but at the same time he rejects the strategic implications that the Soviet Union was worth defending(i.e. Soviet imperialism was excusable) I see the orthodox Trots as being worse than Hoxhaists and other anti-revisionists, but I see the Trotskyists like Q who recognize that the Soviet Union was nothing worth defending as being much more progressive.

    People following the Orthodox Trot line such as AMH are just as reactionary as Stalinists, but I do think it's importance to recognize people who recognize the Soviet Union as utter rubbish. It's also worth mentioning that Q considers himself to be an Orthodox Marxist. He only joined the CWI because it was convenient to do so, at least as far as I know.
  5. Alf
    Alf
    I don't think the question can be answered by looking at particular individuals, or by using terms like 'better', 'worse' or 'more or less progressive'. As EB's first post points out, both Trotskyism and Maoism are part of the left of capital and as a general rule bourgeois political organisations can't change their class nature (even if some leftist groups might split from these currents and evolve towards revolutionary positions as groups, it will tend not to be the more established ones).

    A more important difference is that while Trotskyism began its life as a proletarian reaction against the Stalinist counter-revolution, Maoism was from the very start a direct product of that counter-revolution. But that doesn't necessarily make it easier for individuals involved in either current to move towards communist positions. In some cases it can be harder for Trotskyists to recognise the bourgeois nature of their politics precisely because they seem closer to genuine marxism than the more obviously nationalist and anti-working class ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung thought.
  6. Grenzer
    Grenzer
    Good post, Alf. That was a prescient observation you made of Trotskyism, and I have noted that as well at times. I have often wondered what led Trotsky to his very flawed conclusion on the class nature of the Soviet Union, but at the same time I also think it's critical to recognize that many things which are clear to us in retrospect were not so at the time. I believe even Bilan held the believe that the Soviet Union was still a proletarian state even in the 1930's, even though they recognized that capitalist relations of production existed there.
  7. newdayrising
    newdayrising
    Good post, Alf. That was a prescient observation you made of Trotskyism, and I have noted that as well at times. I have often wondered what led Trotsky to his very flawed conclusion on the class nature of the Soviet Union
    I believe it has to do with an opportunistic view that if there was a "political revolution" there he would be able to go back there and somehow fix it, as it would supposedly be an easier thing to do due to the "revolutionary gains" such as a planned economy and nationalized industry. Of course I'm over simplifying it, but this kind of rationalization to a great extent made Trotskyism equate nationalization with socialism, in my opinion.
  8. electro_fan
    electro_fan
    I don't think so because marxism-leninism is another name for stalinism is it not? I have been a trot for a long time and i would say that the majority of trotskyist groups oppose the methods of stalinism, the murders of political opponents and the fact that the working class had no control over anything (although they would say that because it was nationalised the working class had some control, that it was a deformed workers' state). I think trotskyism is definitely preferable to stalinism although in the end I think they are both wrong.