this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Why does everyone here hate Trotsky/Trotskyism?
Trotsky had some good points, and some terrible points, both theoretically and personally.
Trotksyism has essentially been a western-friendly form of Marxism-Leninism that tries to be what Marxism-Leninism is, but with no party discipline and no support for Actually Existing Socialism. Trotskyist orgs relentlessly bash socialist countries, and split over and over again. They haven't really done much of anything.
I have seen this a lot. Like there are no currently succesful socialist countries. Are they just waiting for world revoluton?
But I also don't want to be yet another leftist that believes there theory is the best and everyone could just end leftist fighting if they became a [insert my prefered leftist theory]
You can't end leftist infighting by hoping for everyone to become the same kind of leftist, especially because different tendencies are often influenced by the given class character of a country. It's why agrarian communists are more likely to be Maoists, like what's found in the Naxalites, whereas western communists tend to be Trots. Marxism-Leninism is found everywhere, because it's the tendency that has most been tested in real life.
I agree.
Tony Blair was a trot, Keir Starmer was a trot. I feel like this says a lot lol
Because MLs aren't very found of other leftists that offer criticism. This makes the revolution/movement weaker so better to label them as traitors
As an ML, I'm quite fond of other leftists, thank you very much.
While we might have our disagreements, some of them quite stark, I still get along with my Trotskyist or Anarchist friends, and their struggles are also my struggle. I might disagree with how they're going about it, but that's what critical support is for.
I love it when other leftists offer criticism. It makes the movement stronger, not weaker, by allowing us to root out wrong ideas or approaches. "Ruthless criticism of everything that exists," as Marx said.
The problem I have with Trots is that they are incredibly obstinate about criticisms that make no fucking sense. For example, the chief Trotskyist criticism of the USSR is the whole "permanent revolution" thing, the idea of expanding the revolution globally. What that actually means is a permanent state of warfare with every other country on earth. Because supporting a revolution in another country's borders is a violation of their sovereignty.
This is a completely impractical and self-destructive approach to foreign policy, and to the extent that the USSR did try to expand communism to other countries, for example, in Afghanistan, it is rightfully criticized for it. But Trots will simultaneously criticize the USSR for things like invading Afghanistan and critize it for not being expansionist enough!
They're just contrarians for the sake of it. It's impossible to know what the Trotskyist position on anything is going to be unless you know the Soviet position, in which case you know it'll be the opposite. There's no actual reasoning beyond that.
Reminded me of this article, Trotskyists dont believe anything
Exactly right.
Great article, highly recommended for anyone reading through this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion
They are often incredibly stubborn and unwillingly to adapt socialist strategy to their different material conditions
Long history of wrecking/coopting movements and orgs.
I know good individual trots, but the trot orgs in my area are all white college students that show up uninvited to things they had no party in organizing, then selling shit or starting fights. We have a lot of coalition building among MLs, anarchists, and DSA types here, and it's always the Trots that refuse to find common ground or show any support whatsoever. Their praxis consists of wrecking/splitting, raising money, and defending sex pests.
I actually don't know. I'm not that well-versed in communism, but I'll try to make a suggestion:
Marx never said to force communism, an envisioned futuristic system, to happen, the same way that one shouldn't force capitalism in the year 900, during the time of fuedalism if some visionary would predict such of type of governance to happen in the year 800. Even if you think capitalism is better than fuedalism, trying to implement it by introducing ballot boxes, constitutions, parliaments and such, likely would get you killed by the nobility and/or clergy, because you forgot to increase the increase the power of the merchants first, so that they could revolt, with lawyers by their side, or better said in front of them, against the old powers.
Trotsky wanted to implement a world government or capitalists will do everything in their power to try to destroy it.
Stalin wanted to develop socialism further in the Soviet Union into a better working model for other countries to emulate.
Furious debates ensued on who was on the right track.
Kinda.
Marx's point wasn't that you shouldn't try to advance modes of production, just that the ideas prevalent among the dominant classes at the time are shaped by their material conditions. Trotsky thought this meant socialism in Russia was impossible due to having a high number of the peasantry, thinking them incapable of allying with the proletariat. He was wrong. Stalin's decision to not attack the peasantry, and instead focus on developing socialism within the USSR, led to the firm establishment of the first socialist state.
Annoying and sex pests
This comment and no mentions the king sex pest of the USSR, Lavrentiy Beria?
Fixed.
Well I'm an anarchist, so a Trotskyist state is still a monopoly of violence
It's lemmy. It's full of Stalinist Tankies.
I've mostly seen non-ml socialists and anarchists. I don't know what you've heard, but Trotsky was also ML.
Trotskyists reject the term ML, instead preferring "Marxist and Leninist" over "Marxist-Leninist" to distance themselves from the soviet union, Trotsky himself rejected the ML label as well.
As far as not seeing many Marxist-Leninists, lemmy.blahaj.zone blocks Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, which have the bulk of the Marxist-Leninists on Lemmy.