https://twitter.com/DSANorthStar/status/1602758852851531776
Also take a look at their logo
https://twitter.com/jonnysocialism/status/1603024109558206464
https://twitter.com/DSANorthStar/status/1602758852851531776
Also take a look at their logo
https://twitter.com/jonnysocialism/status/1603024109558206464
They're accidentally right that Socialist Alternative is somewhat ultra, lol. They're Trots with unfortunately stereotypical takes on AES. North Star just doesn't understand the term, as is typical for liberals.
Can someone sum up what the fuck Trotskyism is for me? Why are they always so weird and why does it attract weird people?
in theory, the main idea is "permanent revolution"
in practice, the main idea is being party-splitting feds and selling newspapers
The latter is maybe a side effect of being the dominant strain of Marxism in countries where no Marxist party ever held power. Focusing on scoring wins against intraparty opponents because of being too weak to affect the bigger political picture.
The way I picture it, there's kind of a tendency decision tree as you move further left. If you go down the Marxism tree, you eventually get to the point where you have to wrestle with Stalin's legacy. If you move on from that point (rather than stopping or going back a step), you can go forward in the decision tree with or without Stalin. If you choose Stalin, you go down the Marxism-Leninism tree, and without Stalin the main tree is Trotskyism. (This is just my mental picture of it, not the way I think it actually is, just in case it needs to be said lol)
Back when I was a baby leftist, it was mostly just a matter of "I like the Soviet Union, and I like Lenin, but not Stalin, since I've been told all my life that he's basically Hitler" and at that point the natural choice is "well after Lenin it was either going to be Trotsky or Stalin, and I've already ruled Stalin out, so let's go with Trotsky". Thankfully that was just a stage I went through along the way, but I figure some people get stuck there and become Trots
I generally agree and I think you explained the concept well, except that this is a pretty binary way of looking at things on the whole.
Oh yeah there's for sure plenty of nuance, I just didn't want to go too deep into the analogy in case it didn't make sense to anyone else lol. I'm sure there are plenty of Luxembourgists, or what have you, out there who don't uphold either one, and I'm pretty sure I've even seen Maoists who don't support Stalin, however that works
Stalin, I choose you
Remind me to come back to this later with a link to a book that I've been reading that contextualizes criticisms of Stalin in the historical reality of the time. The book is primarily oriented toward the criticisms levelled by Kruschev, but Trotsky comes up pretty often as well (being a prominent detractor of Stalin).
It doesn't really define "Trotskyism" in an explicit way, but it does illustrate many differences that Trotsky and Stalin had which you may find helpful.
It's just what happens when you go all-in on Trotsky's writings, often to the exclusion of all else (even Lenin, lol!), and pick up some of the culture of Western Trots.
If you go down the rabbit hole of just believing basically everything Trotsky said, it starts looking reasonable to criticize every AES because they all start to look, "Stalinist". Where are the workers' council's? Where is the vanguard party with rotating leadership? Why are there still capitalists and exploitation? Why are there secret police? Etc etc etc. The answer to every one of these questions, to such a person, is: they are opportunists and have betrayed the revolution.
They also have some very funny ideas about where and how the revolution will happen and it amounts to trying to replay semi-fictional attempts at promoting and then co-opting trade unions in the imperial core.
Ah!! Ok you and @GarbageShoot have nailed down a very familiar tendency to me that I think must be the main draw for those kinds of people, something much wider than the group of people who actually identify as trots.
It seems like they're rejecting or just not making this analysis:
Instead, western Trots must be basically prioritizing an appeal to liberals, who just see this all as deluded, psychotic denialism. And they're spending a lot of time theorycrafting Real AES or some shit, which could only produce eclectic and weird philosophies.
Basically they need this banger on repeat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uThpIDlfcBQ
Yep, pretty much.
A very similar angle is that such Western Trots, as Western ultras, can construct idealized forms of socialism amongst themselves that do not suffer from decades of mainstream criticism and propaganda, at least not directly. This is because those forms of socialism do not exist and have not existed. They are very close to the "real socialism has never been tried" line of thinking that provides a cop-out avoidance of criticisms towards AES. They explicitly dissociate themselves from all AES and therefore do not have to rationalize its problems as something of their own tendency, nor do they have to defend them against liberals. On the contrary, they pile on, thereby often serving a pro-capitalist function in the imperial core. Sometimes there's an exception (some Trots like Cuba, for example), but they're definitely exceptions.
I would argue that most of their staying power stems from not being much of a threat to capital, which makes it easier to bring in liberals, makes them lesser targets for disruption by the feds (though the feds did/do still mess with them). Also their tendency for splitting and coming across as cultish to others limits their ability to influence.
That said, SA is doing pretty well, mostly due to focusing on local races and funneling a ton of organizing power into a handful of candidates. Also Sawant in particular somewhat stays away from criticizing AES and folks around here claim she's a self-professed ML, though I've seen nothing in her actions that suggest that.
.pdf of that book: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ed33bcd368e221ec227cacd/t/5ee39a1731781f54f197c5f7/1591974443348/Domenico+Losurdo+-+Stalin.pdf
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true, the author definitely has a slant lol
I think because historically, Trot parties weren't just where someone would go if they agreed with Trotsky's theories or w/e (plenty of Trot groups basically disowned Trotsky at some point) or because you disagreed with the Soviet line, etc. They were also where people would go if they got kicked out, or left, the main communist party because they were wreckers, impossible to work with, sex pests, etc. These people basically formed the culture of Trot parties.
Ohh god yeah that explains even more about them
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