Cage Match! Stalin VS Trotsky

ckkomel wrote:

Trotsky on the other hand, as I can see, is presented as a likable figure, by the western propaganda, of the "true and original revolutionary" who got smashed by "the communist beasts"

Reasonable.. He wasn't dangerous, and he he was useful in the effort of presenting the existing socialism as a nightmare.

Don't be so ridiculous. When Stalin had Trotsky killed he was hailed throughout the west as a hero for taking down the rabid dog Trotsky. Stalin gets the lion's share of shit today simply because he's an easy target. His writings aren't known outside Marxists, and he made a lot of real mistakes (like every leader in pivotal times). Trotsky's extreme militancy has been downplayed by western liberals because they want to de-tooth his legacy and make him out as some champion of (liberal) democracy. If you think any western propaganda is favorable to the legacy of any Bolshevik then you're living in a fantasy world.

Dagoth Ur wrote:

When Stalin had Trotsky killed he was hailed throughout the west as a hero for taking down the rabid dog Trotsky.

Bulshit. Have any evidence or just speculating?

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Trotsky's extreme militancy has been downplayed by western liberals because they want to de-tooth his legacy and make him out as some champion of (liberal) democracy.

I think that this task is caried out better by trotskyites themselves (on social demo). Unless it happens you know any "militant" trotskist. I know none

I know several. That many Internet trots and college trots are just liberals masquerading as communists doesn't give you any reason to demean the efforts of active communists. That's the worst type of sectarianism.

Also no I'm not speculating there were several articles praising the murder of Trotsky across the west. Most had the tone of "see that's what communists do to their own". I know for a fact that several hearst publishing articles had that tone. You seem to want to forget that Trotsky was the radical all the way up until his death. The man can be called nothing less than a hardliner unless one is completely ignorant of his stance or witings. You don't have to agree with him to notice this.

Also I hope you're not using people like Grover Furr for your analysis of Trotsky. Hatchet-job doesn't even begin to descibe this sectarian rants.

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Stalin used to be a weapon for the working class

I doubt stalin himself would believe you. His concerns never touched the issue of socialism, but things more relevant the reality of the isolated bureaucratic state: the survival of the USSR, bargaining with the imperialist west, controlling the outside communists, primitive accumulation, purging all opposition, and subduing the peasantry.

Not to mention, weapons of the working class usually don't hold it back when its revolutionary, or abandon internationalism.

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and now he is a weapon for our enemies (in western capitalist countries) because we abandoned our own history.

'Abandoned our own history' No more than abandoning pre-WW1 reformism was abandoning our own history.

Stalinists disregard half of lifetime of the USSR as 'revisionist' (change in leadership denotes a change in means of production, apparently), yet they supposed to be the defenders of 'our history'? You are guilty of the disassociating all communists, from the libertarian socialist to the maoist loon, end up doing, and ironically you are also a huge part of the reason we have to.

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They speak about Katyn and the 1933 famine, but we have the proof that it was a lie.

That doesn't begin to cover what liberals dislike about the USSR. Are you going to try to prove the soviet bureaucratic party-state dictatorship was a myth, too?

It's not just liberals who have this distaste. Most workers realize they have no material interest in 'Marxism-Leninism', and how can they? What stalin and other marxist-leninists ruled over was little more than fanciful nationalization in place of socialism and socialization, and a decorated, adventurist bureaucratic dictatorship in place of socialist mass participation.

M-L's can defend Stalin in the face of liberals and communists all they like, but their godly figure set the stage for his political banishment and, later, the capitalist restoration. It's time to move on.

What you call "dissociating communists", Marx did it with his Critique of the Gotha Program. But it seems that you forgot the very basis of Marxism. Moreover, I'm not trying to become likeable by liberals. The fact that they analyze the USSR as totalitarian is a matter of ideology, but Katyn is a matter of facts. You say that workers "realize they have no material interest in 'Marxism-Leninism'". But the USSR was strong when Stalin was alive. The French Communist Party, which was "stalinist", was also the strongest party of France at that time. Nowadays the Communist Party of Greece is strong, and most active communist movements in the world, such as the communists in India, the Naxalite rebels, the communists in Nepal and Russia and in South Africa, are still marxist-leninists. Where are their critics? What have they accomplished?

Dagoth Ur wrote:

I know several. That many Internet trots and college trots are just liberals masquerading as communists doesn't give you any reason to demean the efforts of active communists. That's the worst type of sectarianism.

I don't mean them. But in general, trotskist organisations, are mostly addressing to these college boys, young ages, and/or middle class "leftists".
Personally from all trotskists I know(not only personaly) only a few of them I can describe communists or revolutionary. The vast majority of them are "tails" to the social-demos and other "progresivists"

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Also no I'm not speculating there were several articles praising the murder of Trotsky across the west. Most had the tone of "see that's what communists do to their own".

Ah.. and so they used it to blame the "bloodthirsty" communists in general (and ofcourse the soviets). That's what I'm saying.

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I know for a fact that several hearst publishing articles had that tone. You seem to want to forget that Trotsky was the radical all the way up until his death. The man can be called nothing less than a hardliner unless one is completely ignorant of his stance or witings. You don't have to agree with him to notice this.

Also I hope you're not using people like Grover Furr for your analysis of Trotsky. Hatchet-job doesn't even begin to descibe this sectarian rants.

Don;t know what you mean radical.. "radical left" in general, tends to be radical as far as it concerns sexism, and immigrant rights, and family, television, music, and other such interesting, but when it comes to socialism, they renounce all revolutionary struggle as "impossible" and not of "21th century".

I dont; say that Trotsky himself was not a devoted communist, but the 4th international of the time was full of social-demos, petty-bourgois, that were hiding thei anticommunism behinf the mask of the marxist (and kautsky was a marxist too, that says nothing, but many of them were not even that).

OP-Bagration wrote:

You say that workers "realize they have no material interest in 'Marxism-Leninism'". But the USSR was strong when Stalin was alive. The French Communist Party, which was "stalinist", was also the strongest party of France at that time. Nowadays the Communist Party of Greece is strong, and most active communist movements in the world, such as the communists in India, the Naxalite rebels, the communists in Nepal and Russia and in South Africa, are still marxist-leninists. Where are their critics? What have they accomplished?

I agree, what have they accomplished? You say they were strong, what qualifies as strong? Soviet support? An army of peasants? Plenty of votes?

French communists led the government in a popular front for a short period of time, awesome. They made some reforms, compromised with dissenting workers, but then hit a wall, and lost their power. The only thing the revolutionary working class could learn from this is the futility of relying on reformism and stalinist popular fronts in giving them socialism.

The KKE isn't very different. It, like the french stalinists, actually has a sizable voting population. What does this mean? There are communists trying to exercise power over the bourgeois state, within the state. That leaves it struggling with anti-government revolutionaries, splitting workers and creating infighting (blocking parliament comes to mind). Having a stalinist vanguard in the workers' movement can create a dangerous parallelism and conflict of interest, IMO.

The naxalites, being the maoists they are, are a vague blend of third world populism and progressive social democracy. At least, that's what maoists have ever amounted to and the only kind of struggle they engage in. The peasantry just isn't enough of a progressive force, and Stalin wouldn't disagree with that. I'm not sure why you support them.

The problem with marxism-leninism is that it's a rather bogus kind of leninist vanguardism. M-L's party history pretty much playing the bourgeois party politics game of take and give in places like France and Germany, leading populist-nationalist revolutions in places like Vietnam, Cuba, China etc., and presiding over massive, bureaucratic states installed by other massive, bureaucratic states, all while struggling with other communists. You say we shouldn't be abandoning history, but what is there worth holding on to? Is it...a tank fetish?

That's a lot of info to take in. So, to all posters, I'm trying my best to learn as much about Communism as possible. I want to be well informed, and capable of teaching others the theory. But, as a communist, whether publicized or not, should I personally respect Trotsky, Stalin and Mao? I don't need to be told to make up my own mind, I don't have enough time/info to make a clear decision. Do you respect them? Should I?

Respect yes. Follow blindly no.

Das_ALoveStory wrote:

But, as a communist, whether publicized or not, should I personally respect Trotsky, Stalin and Mao?

They all make important contributions to Communism and consequently are deserving of the respect of Communists. Like RQ I'd agree that blindly following them is bad idea.

It depends on your reasons for being a Communist then: for some it's almost a religion with it's icons, symbols and scriptures; while for others it's simply about wanting the world to be a better place for the people who live in it.
Reverence to former leaders is secondary to the pursuit of social justice for the oppressed of the world.

Shigalyov wrote:

It depends on your reasons for being a Communist then: for some it's almost a religion with it's icons, symbols and scriptures; while for others it's simply about wanting the world to be a better place for the people who live in it.
Reverence to former leaders is secondary to the pursuit of social justice for the oppressed of the world.

Maybe we should have a poll about degrees of sovietophilia

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I agree, what have they accomplished? You say they were strong, what qualifies as strong? Soviet support? An army of peasants? Plenty of votes?

When I asked "What have they accomplished", I was speaking about people criticizing them. There was no trotskyists after the war because they collaborated with Nazi germany or refused to enter the Resistance. The Party was strong because it had about 1 million members.

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French communists led the government in a popular front for a short period of time, awesome.

No no, we didn't took part in the government during the Popular front, but after the war, with the National front. During the Popular front, we supported some very important reforms for the working class, such as paid vacations, and we opposed fascism, took part in the International brigades. We could not have done that without the Popular Front. After the war, we organized the system of social security, healthcare, the industry, aviation. Thanks to these policies, the Party won a great support amid the population without which we would not have been able to oppose the Marshall Plan and the Truman doctrine, the wars in Algeria and Indochine and the threats of war against the Soviet Union. What have the trotskyists done? Did they succeeded in organizing a revolution? I wonder what is actually "futile".

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The KKE isn't very different. It, like the french stalinists, actually has a sizable voting population. What does this mean? There are communists trying to exercise power over the bourgeois state, within the state. That leaves it struggling with anti-government revolutionaries, splitting workers and creating infighting (blocking parliament comes to mind). Having a stalinist vanguard in the workers' movement can create a dangerous parallelism and conflict of interest, IMO.

The aim of the KKE isn't to size power with the Parliament. Moreover, they tried to size power after the war and most of them were killed or jailed by the imperialists, so your slanders are ridiculous. This is leftist adventurism.

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Is it...a tank fetish?

Maybe.

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But, as a communist, whether publicized or not, should I personally respect Trotsky, Stalin and Mao? I don't need to be told to make up my own mind, I don't have enough time/info to make a clear decision. Do you respect them? Should I?

I respect Stalin and Mao, but I don't respect Trotsky because he didn't respected the party. In 1927, he organized some demonstrations in Moscow and Leningrad, which is the proof that he didn't respected the democracy inside the party.

That's not really fair OPB. Trotsky's only other option was to be reduced to nothing and quietly exterminated (as history prove their conflict at this point would only end in the ruination of the other).

Although I am curious as to the meaning of those rallies, could you explain?

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That's not really fair OPB. Trotsky's only other option was to be reduced to nothing and quietly exterminated (as history prove their conflict at this point would only end in the ruination of the other).

I don't think so. He could have decided to respect the democracy of the party and defend his ideas only inside the party. The fate of the Soviet Union may have been different. I don't think he would have been killed.

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Although I am curious as to the meaning of those rallies, could you explain?

Yes, they were rallies for the anniversary of the October revolution. The left opposition decided to take part in theses rallies, carrying portraits of Trotsky and banners reading "Long live the leaders of the World Revolution, Trotsky and Zinoviev" and "fulfill the testament of Lenin".

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I don't think so. He could have decided to respect the democracy of the party and defend his ideas only inside the party. The fate of the Soviet Union may have been different. I don't think he would have been killed.


That is an interesting point. I have been reading E.H. Carr's The Interregnum (pgs. 310-311) and he cites a letter by Trotsky written on Dec. 8th, 1923, as the catalyst for a break between L.D. and the rest of the politburo. If he had not flirted with the opposition, maybe he would have maintained himself in the politburo. But this is speculation. Still, Carr makes it clear that both L.D. and the rest of the Politburo bare blame for the conflict that followed.

Of course I could be wrong.