Leon Trotsky, Trotskyism, And The Fourth International. - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Workers of the world, unite! Then argue about Trotsky and Stalin for all eternity...
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#14790536
Which Fourth international? Do you consider groups like the British Socialist Workers Party who described Stalin's Soviet union as State Capitalist and abandoned the Transitional Programme to be Trotskyist.

I would also like to ask the Stalinists whether they consider the Soviet Union (and the preceding Russian Soviet Federal Republic) under Lenin and Stalin to have been a Dictatorship of the Proletariat as prescribed by Trotsky in "Permanent Revolution" or do they consider it to have been a Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry as under Lenin's formulation?
#14790551
I'm rather new to the subject of Trotskyism which is why I created this thread. I believe they call their own revolution the Fourth International.

I do know they believe in global communism as opposed to national communism and through Trotskyist Entryism they hold considerable influence with neo conservatives along with democrats alike within the United States.
#14790731
Decky wrote:He supplied the communist militias well, he just wouldn't supply the anarchists.

Stalin supplied
52 shiploads of arms in 36/37
12 shiploads of arms in 38
and only 3 shiploads of arms 39

Basically Stalin abandoned the Republicans.
#14790732
You don't keep throwing good money after bad Anarchist. Once they were clearly going to loose anyway why keep supplying them? Especially when loads of them were just an anarchist rabble rather than an organised socialist working class force anyway You might not be aware but the Soviet Union had quite a lot on its plate in the late 30s.
#14790768
Decky wrote:Especially when loads of them were just an anarchist rabble rather than an organised socialist working class force

To be fair the CNT, friends of Durutti etc were pretty organised and effective, this wasn't 1980's style, punk rock, Mohican hair cut, dog on a string Anarchism.
#14790778
Trotsky was, in Lenin's final written words (which you'll have to look up when Marxists.org is back up), was a great and able theorist. Stalin had collected power in his hands.

Trotsky was fundamentally correct about his analysis. Even Stalinists, who tend to despise Trotsky, eventually end up getting back to his analysis of a given situation. For instance, Stalinists (as Stalin himself) don't really stick with the counter-industrial scheme, the Third Period nonsense, or advocate helping Kang Khi Shek instead of Mao, or any other damned thing.

However, before this turns to any kind of gloating one way or the other, Stalin had the power in his hands. In the Marxist vernacular, this has to do with praxis. But for here, we can simply say that Trotsky's theories, like all theories, are useless should they not be implemented. Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it..

The other thing here is that one must be aware that Trotskyists, today, tend to be of the two camps that Trotsky repeatedly told everyone to resist:

Trotsky wrote:There is no doubt that the USSR today bears very little resemblance to that type of Soviet republic that Lenin depicted in 1917 (no permanent bureaucracy or permanent army, the right of recalling all elected officials at any time and the active control over them by the masses “regardless of who the individual may be,” etc.). The domination of the bureaucracy over the country, as well as Stalin’s domination over the bureaucracy, have well-nigh attained their absolute consummation. But what conclusions would follow from this? There are some who say that since the actual state that has emerged from the proletarian revolution does not correspond to ideal a priori norms, therefore they turn their backs on it. This is political snobbery, common to pacifist-democratic, libertarian, anarcho-syndicalist and, generally, ultraleft circles of petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. There are others who say that since this state has emerged from the proletarian revolution, therefore every criticism of it is sacrilege and counterrevolution. That is the voice of hypocrisy behind which lurk most often the immediate material interests of certain groups among this very same petty-bourgeois intelligentsia or among the workers’ bureaucracy. These two types – the political snob and the political hypocrite – are readily interchangeable, depending upon personal circumstances. Let us pass them both by.


Nonetheless, Trotsky becomes a flag under which both, "the political snob," and, "the political hypocrite," can rally as he isn't Stalin. In this vein, most Marxists today consider themselves Trotskyists whether they are or not. Some tendencies, like those that follow Alex Callinicos, claim to be Trotskyists by virtue of them rejecting Trotsky's views and thus saving Trotsky from himself—as if the memory of a fallen saint is more important than what the saint thought or stood for.

And, as noted, Stalinists can use the same Trotsky flag to shake their fist at while eventually coming to accept the theories that Trotsky laid out in opposition.

As to the capitalist west, you can follow with ease Churchill or the New York Times, or any other source condemning Trotsky as the worst devil that had ever existed and cheering on Stalin through the struggle—the general assumption being that Trotsky would win. Up until, of course, Trotsky is killed. Then he becomes the ultimate martyr to show the brutality of the Soviet system the sweet prince had naively attended to build before it turned against him as it will turn against everyone that advocates the left. This is, on its face, propaganda and nothing more.

And this is where it gets real hairy as Trotsky is a symbol, more than anything to most people.

It's best to read Trotsky and not trust anything anyone says about him. Not even me.
#14790781
And, as noted, Stalinists can use the same Trotsky flag to shake their fist at while eventually coming to accept the theories that Trotsky laid out in opposition.

Which is preferable, TIG - to claim to be a Trotskyist yet reject everything Trotsky ever said or did, or to claim to despise Trotsky yet ultimately accept everything he said or did? Hmm.... ;)
#14790825
Decky wrote:All Marxists believe in global communism. Why are you still doing this? :roll:

Stalin was more of a national bolshevik with his socialism in one country policy. Stalin was a nationalist, Trotsky on the otherhand was not a nationalist in that he wanted to see communism not restricted to any particular country but instead spread to every country of the world which he viewed Stalin as being counterrevolutionary.

You seem to have a hard time understanding all of that and once more I'm not even a communist telling you about these things.
Last edited by Joka on 27 Mar 2017 17:41, edited 1 time in total.
#14790842
Stalin was more of a national bolshevik with his socialism in one country policy.


Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist and wanted to spread Communism to every country on the globe just like we all do, the Naz-Bols didn't even exist yet. You have no idea what you are talking about. I have already answered this exact point in the other thread and you just ignored it and cruised onto your next ill informed rambling attempt at a post. No wonder anarchists never seem to achieve anything other than all getting shot or imprisoned. :lol:
#14790859
Joka wrote:Stalin was more of a national bolshevik with his socialism in one country policy.


The thing about Marxists, we're all pedants. We kind of have to be as we ultimately go back to a German philosopher and Russian experience both concerned with French political development. And words matter.

Stalin was not a national bolshevik. As Comrade Decky points out, that political tendency did not exit, nor did its fascist reactionary tendencies from which it springs.

I have issues with Socialism in One Country, and I'd say most Marxists do. But this is not for the reasons that you seem to think. The issue with Socialism in One Country (SIOC) is that it redefines what socialism is. You can read a seven page discussion with me and Ingliz about it, if you want.

This all being said, I think that you're missing the actual point of SIOC. My issue with it, and with a lot of Marxists, is more the title of the word, "socialism," than anything else. There is not, at least in my mind, a reason why we should assume that Stalin wanted a permanent bourgeois-style country simply because he was using Bismarckian tactics on the international field.

Joka wrote:Trotsky on the otherhand was not a nationalist in that he wanted to see communism not restricted to any particular country but instead spread to every country of the world which he viewed Stalin as being counterrevolutionary.


He did not see Stalin as counterrevolutionary, but Bonapartist. And this is more difficult as we tend to like to see things as, "good," or, "bad." But the dialectic is like algebra to that kind of arithmetic. Stalin defended the gains of the revolution, while also strangling part of the progress. This is not counterrevolutionary, though opens up the possibility of counterrevolution down the road:

Trotsky wrote:...despite monstrous bureaucratic degeneration, the Soviet state still remains the historical instrument of the working class insofar as it assures the development of economy and culture on the basis of nationalized means of production and, by virtue of this, prepares the conditions for a genuine emancipation of the toilers through the liquidation of the bureaucracy and of social inequality.

... Thus, the present-day domination of Stalin in no way resembles the Soviet rule during the initial years of the revolution. The substitution of one regime for the other occurred not at a single stroke but through a series of measures, by means of a number of minor civil wars waged by the bureaucracy against the proletarian vanguard. In the last historical analysis, Soviet democracy was blown up by the pressure of social contradictions. Exploiting the latter, the bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations. In this sense we may speak about the dictatorship of the bureaucracy and even about the personal dictatorship of Stalin. But this usurpation was made possible and can maintain itself only because the social content of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy is determined by those productive relations that were created by the proletarian revolution. In this sense we may say with complete justification that the dictatorship of the proletariat found its distorted but indubitable expression in the dictatorship of the bureaucracy.

...Stalin guards the conquests of the October Revolution not only against the feudal-bourgeois counterrevolution but also against the claims of the toilers, their impatience and their dissatisfaction; he crushes the left wing that expresses the ordered historical and progressive tendencies of the unprivileged working masses; he creates a new aristocracy by means of an extreme differentiation in wages, privileges, ranks, etc. Leaning for support upon the topmost layer of the new social hierarchy against the lowest – sometimes vice versa – Stalin has attained the complete concentration of power in his own hands. What else should this regime be called if not Soviet Bonapartism?

Bonapartism, by its very essence, cannot long maintain itself; a sphere balanced on the point of a pyramid must invariably roll down on one side or the other. But it is precisely at this point, as we have already seen, that the historical analogy runs up against its limits. Napoleon’s downfall did not, of course, leave untouched the relations between the classes; but in its essence the social pyramid of France retained its bourgeois character. The inevitable collapse of Stalinist Bonapartism would immediately call into question the character of the USSR as a workers’ state. A socialist economy cannot be constructed without a socialist power. The fate of the USSR as a socialist state depends upon that political regime that will arise to replace Stalinist Bonapartism. Only the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat can regenerate the Soviet system, if it is again able to mobilize around itself the toilers of the city and the village.
#14790874
The Immortal Goon wrote:He did not see Stalin as counterrevolutionary, but Bonapartist.

Hence Trotsky's line:

With the workers always.
With Stalin sometimes.
With Bukharin never.

Lets talk some practical differences. In September 1939 both Stalinists and Trotskyists took a revolutionary defeatist line. They argued for example that Belgian, French, Dutch, Polish, Norwegian and British workers should welcome a victory for Hitler as it was a defeat for their own Bourgeoisies. The Communist parties in the Nazis occupied countries were effectively pushed into collaboration. They were ordered to refrain from any resistance to the Nazi occupiers. In June 41 the Stalinist line changed while Trotskyists continued to argue that British workers should seek the defeat of Britain in its war with Germany.

In March 1917, Stalin and Bukharin took over the leadership of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and pushed a defencist line. So Stalin was quite happy to support the Provisional government, which contained no socialists in its war against the Kaisers, but said that British Communists could give no cooperation to Churchill's government in 1940 fighting Hitler even though Churchill lead a coalition including the Labour party. What a wanker Stalin was?

Donald Trump is spookily reminiscent of Joseph Stalin in the utter contempt with which he treats his working class supporters. Stalin had claimed in the thirties that Trotsky was in a secret conspiracy with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to restore Capitalism to Russia. Do any of you Stalinists actually believe this toss? :roll:
#14791392
The issue with Socialism in One Country (SIOC) is that it redefines what socialism is. You can read a seven page discussion with me and Ingliz about it, if you want.

The argument in a nutshell.

TiG argues ideology.

I argue, "ideas, whatever 'truth' they hold, are nothing in themselves."

TiG disagrees.

I argue, "Who gives a shit if Stalin cobbled together a self serving, pseudo-scientific, politically expedient, theoretical foundation for SIOC (Engels managed to muddy Marx's 'base and superstructure' relationship, also reacting to events, with less - A few lines dashed off to his friends): What matters is the direction of travel."

TiG disagrees.

I argue, "What does it matter what you call the revolution? What you call it, once the productive forces are sufficiently developed, is more politics than economics."

TiG disagrees.
Last edited by ingliz on 29 Mar 2017 16:31, edited 5 times in total.
#14791403
Counterpoint:

I argue that socialism is intended to be an actual physical state based upon the dialectic.

ingliz disagrees.

I argue that you can't just make up whatever you feel like, because things need to be grounded in reality.

ingliz disagrees.

I argue that scrapping history and reality is counterproductive as anything not grounded in reality is destined to fail and, more than likely, do far more harm than good.

ingliz disagrees.

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As I said about Marxists, we are all pedants ;)

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