It has to be more than just internationalism vs socialism in one country.
I’m just really invested in interpersonal drama between two guys
Enemies to lovers :meow-popcorn:
For the most part its his connection to the Trotskyist tendencies, who as a general rule have a reputation of being disruptive and rude at protests and other organized events when peddling their newspapers, trying to turn every moment into a recruitment opportunity rather than focusing on the events purpose.
Trot tendencies also tend to refuse support or only have the very most critical support for socialist projects out in the world, a lot of times they will also support the destabilizing of those countries through supporting some "true" left movement to rise up from below and cleanse the stalinist taint from the country and state. Trotsky himself advocated for this towards the Soviet Union which is one reason people dislike him personally.
Trotsky also attempted to use anti-soviet and anticommunist events in the US as an advertising opportunity, consenting to appear before the Dies committee of the HUAC to speak against the soviet union and stalinism while promoting real socialism instead, for which they ultimately said "No lmao why would we let you do that" but its remained a stain on Trotsky that many people cite as a reason to hate him.
Theres also some other detail stuff in his letters and shit that people point to but usually in combination with the bigger stuff, people accuse him of collaboration with foreign and particularly fascist powers against the USSR, for which while there isnt concrete evidence of, there also is apparently both partially censored and fully missing letters in the archive kept by his family.
Also some Trotskyist orgs will really put him on a pedestal and make constant disparaging comparisons between him and Stalin for example, just constant petty shit like calling Stalin uneducated, a bad writer, not prominent enough in the Bolshevik party before the revolution etc, comparet to Trotsky.
And this will color peoples perception of Trotsky himself, wether or not they find him personally arrogant in this manner.
people accuse him of collaboration with foreign and particularly fascist powers against the USSR, for which while there isnt concrete evidence of,
There is at least solid evidence in his letters that he worked with the Opposition Bloc just as he was accused of, which included reactionary cliques, but that was a domestic group.
Stalin was an internationalist and that framing is a joke of a false dichotomy. People in Bengal still name their children after him for the famine relief he ordered. He lead the biggest transfer of technology in human history to help the newly-founded People's Republic of China. Though the PRC was the one who fought the Korean War, the DPRK would not even exist without the help of the Soviets, who literally can be said to have jointly founded the country alongside the reconstituted Workers' Party of Korea, which suffered from an anticommunist crackdown under the US that drove it out of the south.
I've gone on these rants before, so I can give you more extensive information, but perhaps just look at this:
https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/trotsky.htm
He desired to collaborate with the fucking US State Department to, in the US, "denounce Stalinism". If we pretend he had good intentions, this is what would be referred to as "losing the plot" to an astonishing degree.
https://redsails.org/the-social-basis-and-logic-of-trotskyism/ https://redsails.org/trotsky-on-state-capitalism/ There are some major disagreeements at the basis of marxist analyses which are most inconspicuously represented by the disagreements between Trotsky and the ML's/bolsheviks. idgaf about trostky anymore until he is brought up to make points about modern analyses, in which case I will always bring up his Petty bourgeois moralisms and anti-revolutionary positions which are deviations from a well-grounded analysis.
When you speak to north african communists (something I have had the privelege to do multiple times), Trostky often is a representation of the way that western communists show their chauvinism and inability to understand any revolution that doesn't represent western petty-bourgeois values.
When you speak to north african communists (something I have had the privelege to do multiple times),
Would you be open to expanding on this experience a little bit? Might help me get the point across to a dogmatic (and anti-AES) trotskyist friend who, in my opinion, would make a great comrade if they were able to challenge their own chauvinism
Yeah, it's not too much deeper than I already said tbh, but just the fact that Trotskyists will focus on the perfect revolution which immediately perfectly values "democracy" and "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" and shit like that without being willing to acknowledge that the struggles aren't even to this level yet. There's a ton of work to be done before this is a realistic expectation, seeing as the US will invade pretty fuckin fast or send agents to fuck with democracies. White countries often in het a bit of a pass on this because of chauvinism and an understanding of struggles, while global southern countries are castigated because the superstructural values were different before revolution and conditions even moreso different.
The specific convos don't have much added, but someone who represents this position well that you could read is Max Ajl (Tunisian). He's why I've talked to people about this
I don't really hate Trotsky much but Trotskyists are super weird, didn't one of Trotskyite groups support ISIS in Syria?
Yeah, but so did the Italian Marxist-Leninist Party.
Or the Greek Communist party (not KKE) that thinks Russia was behind 9/11 and the EU is based.
There's cranks everywhere.
But this weren't them having "hot takes". this was an actual group out of Libya and Syria.
but yes i agree every org has its cranks
The infamous Leon Sedov Brigade? They're a bunch of Argentinians, I believe. They supported Al-Qaeda, not ISIS btw.
Probably insignificant in the grand scale of things, but yeah, actually involved in fighting.
Edit: Apparently it disbanded in 2015 after the Battle of Aleppo.
There was a solid case for supporting Al-Qaeda against the US occupation of Afghanistan on anti-imperialist grounds, at least. I'm slightly impressed that Al Qaeda accepted their help.
weird i could've sworn i heard :brace-cowboy: talk about them being with ISIS
Yeah my one interaction with a major US Trot group was me trying to be friendly and have a conversation about politics and labor and they kept trying to get me to buy their newspaper. I eventually caved and bought one but I thought it was really dumb to focus on that - like here you have this prole saying he's trying to organize his workplace and is politically frustrated and all you do is try to get him to buy a paper.
this thread keeps happening. at some point we need to just pin an explainer.
I swear we get this question every few months. Wish our last couple werent archived
Always maintained that Trotsky was a good guy and smart theorist (maybe I think would’ve been better then Stalin), but ultimately the differences between Trotskyism and you know your average ML group at this point come down to mostly aesthetic. And the groups tend to be British and dogmatic.
I'd disagree, the average Trotskyist group has maybe the most basic level of "its better than the imperialists alternative" solidarity for most socialist countries except maybe Cuba as the most usual exception, yet will often join in on legitimising ops and protests against the state by finding or conjuring forth some miniscule left opposition that represents the true spirit of the workers in that country.
The Tiananmen Square students is a good example, they wouldnt support the broader pro-capitalist riots, but those dang students who bravely sang the internationale were the true spirit of socialism in China when it comes to a lot of trots Ive encountered.
Honestly it's cringe to have any strong opinions on Trotsky. That's like having an opinion on some Medieval anti-Pope
The reason people argue about it is that Trotskyism is used to delegitimize either the whole USSR, or the USSR before Khrushchev's revisionist nonsense was added.
Yeah, I had a conversation with a friend about Stalin the other day and he brought up Trotsky multiple times. It's smart to keep the focus elsewhere because overall Trotsky is basically a footnote, but it helps to know something.
That's just it, Trotsky is like the face of Useful Idiocy in the west. Every faux-progressive latches on to him as a hero and a martyr because he opposed the Stalinist Regime. I don't talk about Trotsky and other third campists when no one brings them up, it's a waste of breath, but when someone does bring them up the idea that they were good Marxists needs to be killed with a pickaxe to the skull.
Because liberals like to use Trotsky to fill in their fantasies about how Stalin "corrupted" the Soviet Union or whatever and that Trotsky would be a much better leader (who presumably would have don't whatever the person speaking about it wanted to happen.)
There's no basis for this of course, Trotsky probably would have been even harsher than Stalin considering his civil war service. But it's annoying to listen to.
SocialistAlternative, a Trotskyist org, used to post articles in r/railroading and it would upset the chud railroaders who hung out there, so uncritical support
