i was wondering what your thoughts on trotskyism are and if you have any criticism
While I think that some of Trotsky’s written works are good, and that he did good work during the russian civil war, his analysis regarding world revolution, rejection of socialism in one country, was dogmatic.
- What is Socialism in one country? What’s the controversy around it w/ respect to Stalin and Trotsky? 2 3 4
- What did Lenin say about socialism in one country?
Also his stances on the peasant question, and belief that revolution could only survive if it broke out in western europe, was incredibly euro-centric and proven wrong by history. This eurocentric basis is the reason why trotskyist parties are only popular in western countries.
Also after Trotsky’s positions were defeated in the 15th party congress (he got 0.5% of the vote), he left the USSR and spent the next decade trying to gain support for his faction and writing about how it was a “degenerated workers state”, until he got iced. IMO we only know of him so well now because of this period, in his role as a lightning rod of USSR opposition, when in fact it was Trotsky who was extremely unpopular.
The only saving grace for Trotsky as far as I’m concerned is how he absolutely dabs on Makhno and the Ukrainian Anarchists.
Edit: One thing that always stands out to me about the Trotskyist coup attempt is that despite enormous efforts to obfuscate various key events that lead up to the purge (did Trotskyists assassinate Kirov or was it Stalin, Was Tukhachevsky actually a German narc etc) the fact that the Sedov letters, the incriminating correspondence between Trotsky and his son, were in fact discovered by a committed French Trotskyist makes the case clean to me. I only thank Pierre Broué that he had the strength of character to accept and report the reality in front of him and not simply bury the letters for sectarian reasons.