Discover quickly Trotsky in 5 points.

[Schizophonia]

Trotsky, born in 1879 and assassinated in 1940 in Mexico by a Stalinist agent, was a Russian communist revolutionary.

I recently read a book by a historian about him, and even though I automatically don't agree with everything, I thought it would be nice to share why people are interested in him, especially in modern left-wing circles, communists but opposed to the Soviet model.

1)First 1905 revolution.

When we think of Russian communists, we mainly think of the October Revolution of 1917 which installed them in power, but the democratization of Tsarist Russia, which was basically completely authoritarian and aristocratic, began earlier with the revolution of 1905.

In 1905, following a major revolutionary movement (massive strikes, terrorist attacks, etc.) initiated and driven by underground movements such as the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and following various political, cultural, and social upheavals (refusal of land redistribution following the ban on serfdom, refusal of democratization, insurrections in Poland, military defeat against Japan, etc.), Tsarist Russia yielded to a moderate process of democratization.
Russia thus became a constitutional monarchy; the executive branch remained entirely aristocratic, and half of the legislative branch, known as the "State Council," was appointed by the monarchy and government representatives at various more or less local levels.
For a law to be proposed, it must be approved by both chambers (the State Duma and the State Council, and thus indirectly by the aristocracy) before it can even be approved or denied by the executive branch.

In fact, Russia remains a de facto absolute monarchy despite appearances of democratization; that said, the creation of the democratically elected second legislative chamber known as the "State Duma", even if candidate eligibility is controlled to favor people from a high social class, allows the rise of political groups.
The "Sosdem," the usual centrists who would at the time be represented by the Octobrists, or Kedet; the Trudoviks, left-wing radicals who presented candidates who were members of the Social Revolutionary Party, which at the time boycotted the elections and therefore did not run directly; and finally, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, another left-wing party divided between a moderate faction that would become a minority ("Mensheviks") and a more radical faction that would become a majority, called the "Bolsheviks," chaired by Lenin.

In the cities, groups of elected proletarians, drawn from the army, factories, and even farmers, formed organizations whose functioning resembled direct democracy to organize strikes and promote revolutionary ideals, later even functioning as a counter-power to the tsar.
These new organizations were called soviets (hence the future term USSR); it was all the more revolutionary because, beyond its ideological and political nature, it was the first time that the working masses could easily come together and organize themselves for action against aristocratic powers and the bosses.

The most famous Soviet was the Petrograd Soviet; both because it was the largest in Russia, and because it was chaired from 1917 by Leon Trotsky.

 

2)After the October Revolution of 1917; Conflict with Stalin.

In July 1917, two months before the revolution, Trotsky, previously an independent revolutionary and critic of the Bolsheviks, finally joined them to participate in the revolution.
He quickly assumed very important prerogatives and founded the Red Army in early 1918.

However, soon after Lenin's death in 1924, Lenin's will, which prioritized him as his successor, was prevented from being published by Stalin and his sympathetic cadres.
Trotsky gradually came into conflict with Stalin; two "camps" were formed, but ultimately Trotsky was removed from power, then banished from the Communist Party and exiled to what is now Kazakhstan, and finally outside the USSR.
Exiled in various countries before being assassinated in Mexico, he wrote several books and created a global organization in France called the "Fourth International" to promote his ideas.

Faced with the rise of Stalinism or even Lenin's bureaucracy, it was not only Trotsky who opposed it but many radical left opponents, former Mensheviks or members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party like Maria Spiridonova, a party which, as a reminder, was at the heart of the first revolution of 1905; without success.

Trotsky's ideas diverge from those of other "classical" communists, Marxist-Leninists and then obviously Stalinists, on 3 main points:  principle of permanent revolution and bureaucracy, uneven and combined development, societal and cultural issues.

 

3)Permanent revolution and bureaucracy.

Stalin believed it was possible, and even preferable, to simply create and strive to maintain a communist system in a single country (in this case, the USSR), and then opt for a relatively smooth international policy to avoid being perceived as belligerent.
Trotsky, on the other hand, believed that the socialist revolution would only ultimately succeed if the majority of the world's countries converted to socialism.

If the communist revolution were locally isolated, then the bourgeois classes of other countries would fear for their privileges and conspire to isolate the new revolutionary state; for example, through embargoes or military interventions.
This is, in fact, what happened during the October Revolution, where the Red Army had to face a counter-revolutionary White Army reinforced by regiments from most developed countries, including Japan. The USSR also found itself politically and economically isolated after the Bolsheviks' definitive seizure of power. Leo said somewhere that it was a fantasy to consider that the USSR failed because of American conspiracies.
But Western countries did regularly conspire against the USSR; after the revolution, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States severed trade relations with the new USSR for several years.
After the Second World War, starting in 1949, the United States imposed a strategic embargo on the USSR (see "COCOM") on NATO member countries, aimed at preventing the USSR from accessing strategic goods (new technologies, weapons, certain rare earths, etc.).

Beyond this kind of conspiracies, the capitalist system is advantaged by its ability to deprave itself beyond all morality.
A communist system in a capitalist world where the proletarian masses are more exploitable is doomed to be disadvantaged in the international market. If you allow your population to be exploited for next to nothing in factories, then capitalists from all over the world will, of course, for profit reasons, come to you as customers rather than to an ethical communist country, where maneuvering is more expensive.
And so, ultimately, it is the depraved capitalist country that will be able to conduct the greatest number of international trades and the most significant ones, and that will therefore be able to acquire new technologies, infrastructure, and therefore ultimately soft and hard power most easily and quickly.
Ultimately, due to these dynamics, even the social level of a portion of the proletarian class risks surpassing that of the communist country, despite the exploitation of those who own the capital and the means of production.

Trotsky said that colonialism and imperialism are fundamentally imperative for the maintenance of capitalism.
The barbaric exploitation of colonized lands, through the transfer of capital to the metropolis, makes the proletaria of the metropolis more consenting to the capitalist system. To give a modern equivalence, Trotsky would say that the exploitation of the Chinese proletaria by Western economic actors serves to numb the Western proletaria by allowing a profusion of inexpensive manufactured goods.

An important facet of the principle of permanent revolution is bureaucracy. For Trotsky, although organizations, "soviets," were necessary to channel and harness popular revolutionary force, the revolution should not be allowed, as actually happened in the USSR, to lead to the development of a cumbersome, corrupt, and ultimately dictatorial and reactionary bureaucracy, albeit one with Marxist influence.

Since the October Revolution and Lenin's seizure of power, the influence of the soviets was gradually erased in favor of the Communist Party and the bureaucracy, before completely transforming into a ruthless dictatorship under Stalin.

 

4)Uneven and combined development.

Trotsky noted that the sudden access of underdeveloped countries to world trade with the major economic powers often led them to a unique style of development combining strong economic growth with particularly reactionary value systems. One example could be a poor and backward country that, thanks to international trade and foreign investment, develops infrastructure and a modernized production system, while simultaneously keeping reactionary social norms such as slavery.

Also, the faster and more urgent economic development, the more it fosters monopolization of the means of production and therefore an intensification of exploitation.

For example, a 19th-century French farmer can manage to keep up with the evolution of the means of production as they develop.
He can gradually invest in new tools to remain competitive, and therefore ultimately a property owner.

Conversely, in a poor country suddenly inserted into the market, farmers still working with hoe can't suddenly buy tractors, obviously.
Foreign and local investors will therefore be able to create and become owners of a modern agricultural industry, find people to hire, and monopolize the entire market by producing the same commodity for less.
Eventually, all farmers will have no choice but to submit to and work for these large landowners to survive.

Thus, backward social norms, the favoring of monopolies due to accelerated development, and the subjugation to rich colonial countries and their economic actors, imperialism in general, would actually favor social revolution in poor countries rather than rich ones, fundamentally contrary to what Karl Marx believed.
Marx believed that the development of the class struggle was a generally linear process and should logically have begun more quickly in rich countries, but in fact the opposite has occurred (Russia, China, Cuba, Afghanistan, etc.); Trotskyist thinking on combined development and imperialism explains this phenomenon well.

5)Societal and cultural issues.

Trotsky was fundamentally more "progressive" than Stalin and of course the right wing of the Communist Party.

He regularly expounded feminist ideas; he participated in the legalization of abortion in the USSR in 1920, the facilitation of divorce, and the creation of daycare centers, public canteens, collective laundries, etc., to socialize domestic labor.

In the 1930s, Trotsky, in exile, criticized the regression of women's rights under the Stalinist regime. He deplored the return to the patriarchal family, the criminalization of abortion, and the reinforcement of the traditional role of women.

https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/oeuvres/1923/11/lt19231128.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Unlike Stalin, Trotsky, in accordance with his authentically Soviet vision, prescribed a more regionalist approach, permissive towards regional particularities.

For example, on the Ukrainian question, since 1930 he has defended Ukraine's right to self-determination, even within the USSR.

Generally speaking, Trotsky, still following his logic of Permanent Revolution, proposes to promote independence movements in colonized countries, even if this allows the development of anti-progressive nationalism.
For Trotsky, the greatest progressivism is self-determination and anti-imperialism.

 

Edited May 11 by Schizophonia

[Breakingthewall]

Very good article. The idea of communism was seductive but impossible. It is an equation that, to work, needs to eliminate human corruption, and that is like not seeing a herd of hysterical elephants in the room. 

Stalin and Trotsky when young.  They shared revolutionary ideas in politics and hairstyling

 

[Sugarcoat]

Did you write all of this from your own mind? Damn 

[Schizophonia]

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Very good article.

Thanks

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

 The idea of communism was seductive but impossible. It is an equation that, to work, needs to eliminate human corruption, and that is like not seeing a herd of hysterical elephants in the room. 

Probably to be functional communism will always function more or less as a welfare and redistributive state rather than the anarchist (stateless) ideal of Karl Marx, for the reasons you cite.

The heavy sovietic bureaucracy also favorited corruption and inefficiency. 

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Stalin and Trotsky when young.  They shared revolutionary ideas in politics and hairstyling

 

Eheh

[Schizophonia]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

Did you write all of this from your own mind?

Yes, by using my books and some articles i read and and there.

It's not exceptional in the form as in the content but i think it's a good and simple everview of trotskyst thought and the transition from Tsarism to Bolshevism.

I just used google or holy ChatGPT for for dates or party names here and there.

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

Damn 

Indeed i'm not only super cool; i'm also a great intellectual.

[Sugarcoat]

10 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

Yes, by using my books and some articles i read and and there.

It's not exceptional in the form as in the content but i think it's a good and simple everview of trotskyst thought and the transition from Tsarism to Bolshevism.

I just used google or holy ChatGPT for for dates or party names here and there.

Indeed i'm not only super cool; i'm also a great intellectual.

Haha the confidence

[Schizophonia]

56 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Haha the confidence. You're so handsome, I'm so lucky to have met someone like that 😽😻

Ahah thanks I didn't expect so much.

But let's not deviate too much from the topic even if it's mine. 

Edited May 13 by Schizophonia

[Sugarcoat]

1 hour ago, Schizophonia said:

Ahah thanks I didn't expect so much.

But let's not deviate too much from the topic even if it's mine. 

Ok Mr moderator 

[Schizophonia]

17 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Ok Mr moderator 

I lowkey wouldn't be against being it.

[Sugarcoat]

5 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

I lowkey wouldn't be against being it.

Gotta undo those 15 warning points first 

[Schizophonia]

1 minute ago, Sugarcoat said:

Gotta undo those 15 warning points first 

16* lol.

Maybe I could ask Leo for a "criminal record cleanup".

Nevermind i will see.