askchapo

Plenty of Trotskyists “become” reactionary conservatives later in life. It’s been called a pipeline. Look at Cristopher Hitchens for example.

There is an approach to politics that tends to destabilize groups by encouraging factionalism.

There is a strong tendency to view Trotsky and Lenin as basically infallible. A cult of personality. And a very selective reading of Lenin, based mostly on the works of Trotsky, to insist that Trotskyism is the true heir, the true continuation, of Leninism. Which is (a) not accurate, and (b) kind of an irrelevant point to make anyway, unless you believe Lenin was infallible and a “great man” in the first place.

There is a rejection of “socialism in one country” in Russia by Trotsky which leads to a rejection or even opposition of all “actually existing” socialist states. This results in Trots often becoming the allies of imperialism since any actually existing socialist state is a “de generate” (this word gets filtered, but I think the usage here is correct) socialism that should be resisted.

There is something in the water of Trotskyism that means it almost exclusively appeals to intellectuals and middle class folk or even upper class folk looking for a bit of edge. It has only weak relationships with socialist labor movements.

There is a nexus between the founding fathers of neoconservative ideas and Trotskyists.

There’s a certain compatibility between the Trotskyist idea of permanent revolution, the opposition to the development of socialism in stages, and imperialism.

There’s a reason Trotskyist groups are largely tolerated in the west while other groups get shutdown, often violently. They are the tolerable resistance that oppose the enemies of the west anyway and don’t do much.

But most damningly, they always try to make every protest about themselves somehow. They’re annoying.

I wrote an excessively long comment before, so let me try again:

Motivated reasoning. In my experience, they have a terrible habit of requiring certain conclusions and (usually unconsciously, I think) working backwards from there to tell you why their guy is great and everyone else is bad. It's really cartoonish and frequently leads them to complete dead ends when challenged, but that doesn't seem to ever matter.

And as an aside from my first try:

There is no "we" in this question. If you don't know why I hate trots, then it is not a reason that you hate trots. It is critically important to be able to separate your assessments from the assessments of others, even those you respect (by which I don't mean myself but whoever you might hope to get an answer from here), and to be very clear on this so that others don't fall into the habit of conflating the two either.

I will let successful revolutionaries speak:

Castro

Che Guevara

Ho Chi Minh

Stalin

Lu Xun (CPC)

Tito

I honestly don't think about trotskyism very much at all, but I will say I've always seen it as a sort of negative endorsement that Trotsky is among the more tolerated communist figures in US public education. What I mean is, when I was in public schools he was sometimes presented as "the good one" who meant well but was betrayed by the mean and scary ones.

So I figure, in US public education, schooling in the heart of capitalism, why is this guy in particular so conspicuously tolerated?

The online or offline MLs? Online hates trotskyists in general bc 90% of online leftists are educated through meme and stan culture, where the focus is "loving our guy" / hating "their guy" more than any engagement with theory or praxis; in this way the majority of online antitrot MLs are just parroting what theyve heard from other antitrot MLs, in a chain going back to someone who actually read or did something

Offline MLs hate fightback/RCP specifically for their ultraleftist (in the original, specific sense of "always calling for the most radical action and refusing to associate with non-revolutionary orgs in favour of "pure" communism that doesnt push the movement forward and in fact pushes it backwards", not just "ultraleft is something i dont like". If they would actually put in the work (i.e. building rallies instead of just showing up to them) and not derail and wreck campaigns (i.e. steadily climb the escalation ladder instead of always calling for the most "radical" action), and less importantly stopped constantly calling us "revisionists", "stalinists", "authoritarians" etc, we'd be happy to work with them ime

Zero successful revolutions, antagonize every single AES state ever, yet somehow conclude that hey have the perfect ideas. They are armchair critic liberals who wear the hammer and sickle as a fashion accessory.

My personal dislikes:
Everything they write has a mandatory condemnation of Stalin.
Fuck off with the newspapers already.

(These are, of course, exaggerated)

It's true that they agree with what Lenin said, but the problem is that class struggle has manifested and advanced in multiple ways since then, and they seem to regard these developments as unacceptable deviations rather than understandable progressions. It's like doing lab work with someone who only agrees with scientists up to Curie or Darwin, but disavows anything that came after.

Describing Trotskyism makes me go on and on and on so I will try to be as concise as I can.

The simplest summary is that Trotskyism defines itself through its opposition to Marxism-Leninism. It says, "we are communists, but not like them". They actually hate us actively, we barely pay attention to them most of the time.

But the definition of Trotskyism through what they are not, and in particular, through their rejection of the major socialist revolutionary states of the 20th century (USSR and then China), they have a number of specific deficiencies that make them harmful:

• Trotskyists have the ultra tendency of criticizing every existing socialist project directly to liberals. This strategy is the "we should do socialism, but you should feel good in your fear and rejection of every socialist project". Unsurprisingly they are often tailist as well. This also doesn't work very well to actually organize their own socialist project.
• They are highly dogmatic in their idea of what tactics work and should be relied on based on the specific conditions of the Russian Empire and what they believe Trotsky did. namely, a focus on always believing in the revolutionary capacity of workers. In all situations regardless of context.
• Their concept of international solidarity is therefore twisted. It is often identical to imperialist aims, like supporting "resistance" movements in socialist-run states. They were and generally continue to be big believers in the capacity of the Zionist working class to overthrow the apartheid regime and end Zionism. They cannot fathom that their working class is enjoined to the project itself, they are too formulaic for this and have enjoyed being wrong on this for 80+ years. A book that has been shared here on socialist understanding of Palestine is actually Trotskyist and says these things.
• They have a splitting tendency. Their ideology is premised on hypercriticism and rejection and making a huge deal out of differences, right down to disagreements on tactics or individual positions on whether a campaign is going well. Sometimes a split is needed because the dividing line is important. This is rarely true with Trotskyists.
• They have an entryist tendency. A lot of what they do is trying to be "sneaky", to oretetoto agree with others when they really do not, and they usually are not very convincing about the act. A given entryist project will look like five of them joining a space, seemingly independently, and they are clearly following a script to agree with each other on whatever topic they decided to push a point on. They also tend to be strident. They are bad at althis, so people notice quickly and say, "what the hell is going on? Who are these weirdos?" The result tends to be drama and a rejection of socialists from the space. The liberals don't understand the differences between socialists, they just get a bad taste in their mouths. Our job of working in these spaces is already difficult and Trots make it harder.
• They do tend to form insular groups, which is understandable for communists, but unfortunately they are rarely internally healthy. I've never heard of a Trotskyist org that didn't use a mentor system, where new members are closely monitored by an individual veteran member. Because they are insular, you don't hear if the abuses from current members (they would be expelled), you only hear of them from ex-members and when there are dramatic splits and orgs break down. I also haven't seen a Trot org where ex-members weren't shunned. So young people tend to make some of their best friends in the org and then either live in fear of losing all their friends if they leave or are surprised when this happens.
• Speaking of young people Trotskyists are often active on college campuses and their orientation towards young people tends to be highly cynical, they are treated as expendable. They are again thinking dogmatically, they think fomenting student protests and so on will supplement their other world-historical projects of handing out newsletters nobody reads and pissing off workers at their workplaces. But combine this with the insular and often abusive tendencies and you get abuse from older members towards younger, in all its forms.

It should not be surprising then that theare have been no Trotskyist revolutions. The centrality if rejecting Marxism-Leninism leads them to self-destructive tendencies and an inability to understand the nature of the states in which they operate, like how to organize their working class, how to prioritize, how to message, how to internally organize and educate.

In IRL organising they were always the worst pieces of shit to be around, fucking weirdos seeking to stir shit with everyone.

A criticism I heard about my local ones is that (allegedly) internally the high figures are not seriously considering ever really taking power, but endlessly critiquing it instead, talking about needing massive support for the revolution to happen but not having a plan about what to do if tomorrow 90% of people voted for them.

Which obviously is a miraculous scenario but shit is hitting the fan everywhere everytime all at once so you should have a plan to seize opportunities whatever they are because literal bloodsucking childredacteders absolutely do have a plan to use any slightest chance of fullfilling their demonic fever dreams.

All that said, they probably are the best people to ever sit on the Arg congress (it's a very low bar I know)

Fundamentally, being a "Trotskyist" is about being opposed to "Stalinism" based on a few specific points. But all of that was so long ago (even the fall of the USSR was so long ago) that those are now historical debates instead of contemporary issues with relevance to current politics. You'll find Trotskyist groups with all kinds of different positions on current topics, just like most other tendencies.

A lot of Trotskyists are weirdos and cranks, because you kind of had to be one to be an active communist in the imperial core, that applies to all tendencies.

A lot of Trotskyists orgs have strange or counterproductive organizational habits, because they've been isolated and nearly-irrelevant politically for many decades, the same as the rest of the left. The same reason many became sectarian and dogmatic.

Like every tendancy, there are good orgs that are making real progress on figuring out their shit, and there are bad ones stuck in the various dead ends of their own historical experiences. PSL is formerly trots, most of the criticisms in this thread wouldn't apply to them. RCP(usa) is Maoist and most of these criticisms would apply anyway (just my opinion, no hate to their members). Sparticists used to be the most stereotypical ultra-trots, but they've spent some years making real progress on becoming normal. It depends on the org much more than the tendancy.

they are anti AES, often repeat CIA talking points, have no actual relation to grassroots or union struggles

No, I would not like to buy a newspaper.

This is a great video on why Trotskyism at its core is a eurocentric ideology, and why every communist revolution in the global south firmly rejects it.

• Taimur Rahman - Why I am not a Trotskyist.