I live in the UK and nearly every older Communist you meet is a Trot and all the protests that I've been to that have had communists at them were mostly Trot orgs but online everyone just seems to shit on them for no clear reason. Am I missing something? Or is it just regular leftist infighting
There's a reason ML parties are known by Trots as a "dictatorship" and "bureaucracy", precisely because they do not split.
What? They absolutely do lol, why do you think we have so many? Also, many of those parties used to be trot parties and then split off from other trot parties soo idk what you're on about
There are three ML parties in the US: CPUSA, WWP, and PSL. WWP and PSL come from a lineage of Trotskyist splinter groups.
That's the point I'm making, Trotskyism is prone to undermining Democratic Centralism. The history of splinter groups is the history of Trotskyism in the US, even if some parties end up back at ML.
There has not been a serious ML splinter from CPUSA, in spite of their rampant revisionism. That is a testament, for better or worse, to their commitment to democratic centralism and unity in action.
I see what you're saying. My response would be that splits happening don't necessarily mean a rejection of demcent. If you're in a demcent org that somehow got coopted by revisionists, is it not your duty to combat that liberalism and raise hell or leave the now neutered liberal or even reactionary org?
Idk, splits as a metric for that sort of thing make about as much sense to me as GDP measuring the health of a nations economy in terms of the average person
Splits are necessarily a rejection of Democratic Centralism.
The method of DemCen is:
The purpose of this method is to maintain unity in action. We are more powerful in a unison, so we must carry out the political line faithfully.
When a split occurs, the splitters will claim they reject that DemCen occurs in the party e.g. there's no open debate, the party refuses to reconsider the line, etc.
The party will claim the splitters are undermining the democratic will of the party.
If there was a single split, I would consider either of these possible. But Trotskyists are routine offenders. The most obvious explanation is that the tendency (in general) does not practice DemCen. I don't know the politics of every Trot party, so there are probably exceptions to the trend.
My point is that I think there can be a split where the splitters don't reject demcent, but reject a deformed and distorted organization that no longer represents revolutionary marxism for example. Say there's an org that starts out revolutionary but then grows and becomes more dsa like, and the core group of revolutionary marxists are now overpowered and the org could start doing stuff like idunno, endorsing Biden and fundraising for him or something, supporting the local police during blm, whatever.
In that case, do you still think that core group would be rejecting democratic centralism?
To further clarify, I'm not talking about any specific example, just thought experiment
That's a fair point, I see what you mean.
You are describing a Liberal organization using DemCen. I'd consider splitting a rejection of DemCen, even if I agree with rejecting DemCen in that case.
A Leninist party is a revolutionary Marxist party guided by DemCen. Trotskyists generally emphasize their interpretation of "revolutionary Marxist" over DemCen. MLs tend to put more weight in DemCen.
Could be, I only have real experience with my particular org, and for us demcent is our core tenant
Fair. I'm talking about very broad trends in these movements. I'm hopeful the splitting in US parties is coming to an end.
Random musings below, feel free to ignore lol
ML parties tend to be extremely unified, even when radically changing political course. Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, Cuba, etc.
Trotskyists see cults of personality, bureaucracy, and a dictatorial nature in these parties. MLs see a strict adherence to DemCen and unity in action which enables them to struggle for their people. At least, that is how I see these disagreements often play out.
Also, I'm a candidate for PSL. Our political history comes from countless splits, so I can't claim to be above it lol