“Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned” – V.I. Lenin (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination – Vol. 20 of Collected Works, p. 447-48).
Lenin’s entire work up to the revolution are in depth about why trotsky is unprincipled. Him being wrong in offhanded comments means fuck all compared to that. His lack of principles made him appealing to many revisionists including those with contradictory views to each other. Trotsky formed several factions over the years, with whatever position he felt like at a given time. Per Lenin
The August bloc—as we said at the time, in August 1912—turned out to be a mere screen for the liquidators. That bloc has fallen asunder. Even its friends in Russia have not been able to stick together. The famous uniters even failed to unite themselves and we got two “August” trends, the Luchist trend (Nasha Zarya and Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta) and the Trotskyist trend (Borba). Both are waring scraps of the “general and united” August banner which they have torn up, and both are shouting themselves hoarse with cries of “unity”!
What is Borba’s trend? Trotsky wrote a verbose article in Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta No. 11, explaining this, but the editors of that liquidator newspaper very pointedly re plied that its “physiognomy is still unclear”.
The liquidators do have their own physiognomy, a liberal, not a Marxist one. Anyone familiar with the writings of F. D., L. S., L. M., Yezhov,[3] Potresov and Co. is familiar with this physiognomy.
Trotsky, however, has never had any “physiognomy” at all; the only thing he does have is a habit of changing sides, of skipping from the liberals to the Marxists and back again, of mouthing scraps of catchwords and bombastic parrot phrases.
…Trotsky delivers a long lecture to the seven Duma deputies, headed by Chkheidze, instructing them how to repudiate the “underground” and the Party in a more subtle manner. This amusing lecture clearly points to the further break-up of the Seven. Buryanov has left them. They were unable to see eye to eye in their reply to Plekhanov. They are now oscillating between Dan and Trotsky, while Chkheidze is evidently exercising his diplomatic talents in an effort to paper over the new cracks.
And these near-Party people, who are unable to unite on their own “August” platform, try to deceive the workers with their shouts about “unity”! Vain efforts!
Unity means recognising the “old” and combating those who repudiate it. Unity means rallying the majority of the workers in Russia about decisions which have long been known, and which condemn liquidationism. Unity means that members of the Duma must work in harmony with the will of the majority of the workers, which the six workers’ deputies are doing.
But the liquidators and Trotsky, the Seven and Trotsky, who tore up their own August bloc, who flouted all the decisions of the Party and dissociated themselves from the “underground” as well as from the organised workers, are the worst splitters. Fortunately, the workers have already realised this, and all class-conscious workers are creating their own real unity against the liquidator disruptors of unity.
And again from 1914 we have Lenin writing Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries for Unity which I won’t quote cause the entire thing is about this matter so I would be pasting the entire work. But long story short, he tears into how Trotsky uses claims of unity in order to increase factionalism. His principles are nothing even to himself.
Trotsky’s “unity” was a split by any other name
In the very first words of his resolution Trotsky expressed the full spirit of the worst kind of conciliation, “conciliation” in inverted commas, of a sectarian and philistine conciliation, which deals with the “given persons” and not the given line of policy, the given spirit, the given ideological and political content of Party work.
It is in this that the enormous difference lies between real partyism, which consists in purging the Party of liquidationism and otzovism, and the “conciliation” of Trotsky and Co., which actually renders the most faithful service to the liquidators and otzovists, and is therefore an evil that is all the more dangerous to the Party the more cunningly, artfully and rhetorically it cloaks itself with professedly pro-Party, professedly anti-factional declamations.
In Adventurism (1914), Lenin places “Trotskyism” among groups representing “sheer adventurism.”
“… Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist of the Ryazanov-and-Co. type[.] Either equality on the editorial board, subordination to the C.C. and no one’s transfer to Paris except Trotsky’s (the scoundrel, he wants to ‘fix up’ the whole rascally crew of Pravda at our expense!)—or a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the C.O. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists” (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 34, pp. 339-400).
“Roland-Hoist, like Rakovsky (have you seen his French pamphlet?), like Trotsky, in my opinion, are all the most harmful ‘Kautskians’, in the sense that all of them in various forms are for unity with the opportunists, all in various forms embellish opportunism, all of them (in various ways) preach eclecticism instead of revolutionary Marxism” (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 35, p. 200).
“… it was just as sad to read about the bloc between Trotsky and the Right for the struggle against N. Iv. What a swine this Trotsky is—Left phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat!” (Ibid., p. 285).
I can’t believe this shit is all we have in the UK and they just refuse to engage with any of this, you would think Lenin and Trotsky were best friends the way they are lauded both together
“Helping the US State Department to own the Stalinists” is not, in fact, a stance that it makes sense for a principled Bolshevik to take. How seriously is he taking his Third Camp credo when he seeks to help the First Camp purge itself of the influences of the Second Camp?
The Dewey commission was not about finding and purging communists, it was about clearing the name of Trotsky and others accused in the Moscow trials, and he appeared in front of HUAC to say that they should not pursue either communists or fascists.
His appearance there can be seen as a defense of fascists, but arguing that he was engaged in American purges is wholly unsupported and doesn’t make much sense. He was working with American communists to “clear his name”, why would he throw them under the bus?
On this latter occasion, Trotsky told McGregor Jr. [of the US Consulate in Mexico]… he remembered that over 1929-31, the COMINTERN had spent between Five Hundred Thousand and One Million American Dollars on subsidy to the foreign press. He also named names about the Communist Parties of Mexico (Lombardo Toledano, Alejandro, Rafael Gerillo, Victor Manuel) and Spain (Carlos Contreras, Col. Lister). He ended the meeting by telling McGregor Jr. that USA was committing a great mistake by being conciliatory towards Stalin for the aim of crushing Germany.
Here we find what was referred to when GarbageShoot said:
“Helping the US State Department to own the Stalinists” is not, in fact, a stance that it makes sense for a principled Bolshevik to take. How seriously is he taking his Third Camp credo when he seeks to help the First Camp purge itself of the influences of the Second Camp?
He had conviction yes, but not on anything specific. His conviction was literally just a mirror of the things he opposed. The “stalinists” were very convinced, so he had to be as well. Or his opposition would be (even more apparently) ideologically weak.
This is pure grade a baloney. Trotsky spent half his time denouncing various trotskyites for not believing in the right things, including denouncing anti soviet communists for not supporting the comintern (Althought tbf he did 180 on that once he got bitter enough). People really need to stop getting their info from like grover furr and hexbear posters.
Like Catholics must genuflect before accepting the Eucharist, Hexbear users must declare their hatred of Grover Furr before defending the USSR. Questioning the orthodoxy is not tolerated. It is religious post-modern left communism at its finest.
You just said it yourself tho… he did a 180 on the Comintern because he got bitter. His politics followed his feelings. After a point it was all just spite. And before then it was all politicking.
Trotsky was an opportunist who did whatever he felt like in the moment, like Erdogan. He appeased the shit out of the West in the latter half of his career and swapped from anti-imperialist to imperialist, from left opposition to right opposition.
But Stalin had done that. The thing that split the comintern was over direct military involvement. The Soviets gave assistance to the Greek Democratic Army during the civil war, they gave some bad advice to be sure like abandoning territory to continue fighting in the mountains, but sending weapons wouldn’t change that. The Italians had weapons, famously they buried theirs in the north of the country in stashes in case they needed them later.
The different with permanent revolution would be a full-scale war between the Allies. Something that the soviet people did not want whatsoever. They lost 29 million people, they earned the right to choose peace.
There’s also the issue with China and Korea. It wasn’t a guarantee that the CPC would triumph over the KMT and the point of no return for the KMT was also the time when things started popping off in Korea. Putting things in order:
August 1945: The Soviets invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria, where the Japanese got BTFO.
August 1945 - May 1946: The Soviets occupied Manchuria before quietly handing it over to the CPC.
September 1945: Japan surrendered and WWII officially ends.
June 1946: Hostilities between the CPC and the KMT resumed.
April 1948 to May 1949: The Jeju uprising began in the Korean island of Jeju that was organized by the WPSK.
September-November 1948: The Liaoshen campaign was launched by the PLA and marked the point of no return for the KMT.
October-November 1948: The Yeosu–Suncheon rebellion occurred that was also organized by the WPSK.
June 1949: The WPSK would merge with the WPNK to form the WPK.
August 1949: The Soviets had their first successful nuke test.
October 1949: Mao officially proclaimed the founding of the PRC.
December 1949: The KMT fled to Taiwan.
June 1950: The Korean War officially begins after months of border clashes.
September 1950: The UN joined the south after they got rekt by the Communists too many times.
October 1950: The PVA crossed the Yalu River.
I don’t think Stalin seriously blundered because at the end of the day, China is a large country with a large population population that shared a massive land border with the Soviet Union while Greece is a small country that doesn’t share a land border with the Soviet Union. If you had to focus on one civil war between communists and nationalists, of course you’ll focus more on the one that you share an immediate land border with.
Imagine a timeline where Greece is socialist but China is ruled by the KMT. You could pretty much kiss the DPRK goodbye and even socialist Vietnam and Laos. Maybe someone could argue the case that Stalin didn’t have to worry about the CPC triumphing over the KMT and that he could’ve adopted a more aggressive foreign policy in Europe, but that’s with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how the KMT towards the end was run by a bunch of corrupt clowns. Would someone in 1946 make the case of CPC’s inevitable victory given that even Mao himself was surprised by how quickly the KMT completely folded.
Controversial opinion: trotsky would have been poggers post 1945, nothing good came out of stalin constant appeasement of brits.
Trotsky didn’t believe in anything. I don’t understand how you can interpret his contrarianism as a sign he’d have done anything right.
Trotsky did a lot of posting.
Thats like saying fish do a lot of swimming
Of all the fucking takes.
“Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned” – V.I. Lenin (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination – Vol. 20 of Collected Works, p. 447-48).
“Believe me, with [Roman Malinkovsky] one can build a workers’ party.” Lenin, January 1913 letter to Maxim Gorky
Lenin’s entire work up to the revolution are in depth about why trotsky is unprincipled. Him being wrong in offhanded comments means fuck all compared to that. His lack of principles made him appealing to many revisionists including those with contradictory views to each other. Trotsky formed several factions over the years, with whatever position he felt like at a given time. Per Lenin
The Break-Up of the August Bloc (1914)
And again from 1914 we have Lenin writing Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries for Unity which I won’t quote cause the entire thing is about this matter so I would be pasting the entire work. But long story short, he tears into how Trotsky uses claims of unity in order to increase factionalism. His principles are nothing even to himself.
Trotsky’s “unity” was a split by any other name
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1910/np/ii1.htm#v16pp74-209
So because Lenin was duped by a spy his later analysis of Trotsky is incorrect? What are you even saying?
Saving this quote to throw at the IMT every time they self-identify as Trots.
Here’s some more:
In Adventurism (1914), Lenin places “Trotskyism” among groups representing “sheer adventurism.”
“… Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist of the Ryazanov-and-Co. type[.] Either equality on the editorial board, subordination to the C.C. and no one’s transfer to Paris except Trotsky’s (the scoundrel, he wants to ‘fix up’ the whole rascally crew of Pravda at our expense!)—or a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the C.O. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists” (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 34, pp. 339-400).
“Roland-Hoist, like Rakovsky (have you seen his French pamphlet?), like Trotsky, in my opinion, are all the most harmful ‘Kautskians’, in the sense that all of them in various forms are for unity with the opportunists, all in various forms embellish opportunism, all of them (in various ways) preach eclecticism instead of revolutionary Marxism” (Lenin’s Collected Works Vol. 35, p. 200).
“… it was just as sad to read about the bloc between Trotsky and the Right for the struggle against N. Iv. What a swine this Trotsky is—Left phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat!” (Ibid., p. 285).
I can’t believe this shit is all we have in the UK and they just refuse to engage with any of this, you would think Lenin and Trotsky were best friends the way they are lauded both together
He was a giant opportunist who flip-flopped constantly throughout his life and was treacherous in almost all cases for self-interest
https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/trotsky.htm
Trotsky’s participation in the Dewey commission is very open to criticism. But it is not in any way indicative of a lack of beliefs on Trotsky’s part.
“Helping the US State Department to own the Stalinists” is not, in fact, a stance that it makes sense for a principled Bolshevik to take. How seriously is he taking his Third Camp credo when he seeks to help the First Camp purge itself of the influences of the Second Camp?
The Dewey commission was not about finding and purging communists, it was about clearing the name of Trotsky and others accused in the Moscow trials, and he appeared in front of HUAC to say that they should not pursue either communists or fascists. His appearance there can be seen as a defense of fascists, but arguing that he was engaged in American purges is wholly unsupported and doesn’t make much sense. He was working with American communists to “clear his name”, why would he throw them under the bus?
From the article he shared:
Here we find what was referred to when GarbageShoot said:
What do you mean he didn’t believe in anything? I get that his theory is kinda naive but he seemed to have a lot of conviction.
Menshevik, Bolshevik, aspiring HUAC-collaborator. He pounded the pulpit, but which pulpit varied wildly based on what direction the wind blew.
He had conviction yes, but not on anything specific. His conviction was literally just a mirror of the things he opposed. The “stalinists” were very convinced, so he had to be as well. Or his opposition would be (even more apparently) ideologically weak.
This is pure grade a baloney. Trotsky spent half his time denouncing various trotskyites for not believing in the right things, including denouncing anti soviet communists for not supporting the comintern (Althought tbf he did 180 on that once he got bitter enough). People really need to stop getting their info from like grover furr and hexbear posters.
Getting info from like Grover Furr and Hexbear posters is the best thing anyone can do
No Furr is bad.
I say this as someone who has no love for Trotsky and literally is looking at a picture of Lenin on my wall right now.
furr is a 2010s tankie meme, we shouldn’t need him to defend stalin. i agree.
Like Catholics must genuflect before accepting the Eucharist, Hexbear users must declare their hatred of Grover Furr before defending the USSR. Questioning the orthodoxy is not tolerated. It is religious post-modern left communism at its finest.
but why is he bad
i have heard no criticism from any camp about him
You just said it yourself tho… he did a 180 on the Comintern because he got bitter. His politics followed his feelings. After a point it was all just spite. And before then it was all politicking.
Trotsky was an opportunist who did whatever he felt like in the moment, like Erdogan. He appeased the shit out of the West in the latter half of his career and swapped from anti-imperialist to imperialist, from left opposition to right opposition.
When did Trotsky become imperialist?
By continuing the war and the wartime economy?
By shipping ak47 to greece and italy for starters
But Stalin had done that. The thing that split the comintern was over direct military involvement. The Soviets gave assistance to the Greek Democratic Army during the civil war, they gave some bad advice to be sure like abandoning territory to continue fighting in the mountains, but sending weapons wouldn’t change that. The Italians had weapons, famously they buried theirs in the north of the country in stashes in case they needed them later.
The different with permanent revolution would be a full-scale war between the Allies. Something that the soviet people did not want whatsoever. They lost 29 million people, they earned the right to choose peace.
There’s also the issue with China and Korea. It wasn’t a guarantee that the CPC would triumph over the KMT and the point of no return for the KMT was also the time when things started popping off in Korea. Putting things in order:
August 1945: The Soviets invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria, where the Japanese got BTFO.
August 1945 - May 1946: The Soviets occupied Manchuria before quietly handing it over to the CPC.
September 1945: Japan surrendered and WWII officially ends.
June 1946: Hostilities between the CPC and the KMT resumed.
April 1948 to May 1949: The Jeju uprising began in the Korean island of Jeju that was organized by the WPSK.
September-November 1948: The Liaoshen campaign was launched by the PLA and marked the point of no return for the KMT.
October-November 1948: The Yeosu–Suncheon rebellion occurred that was also organized by the WPSK.
June 1949: The WPSK would merge with the WPNK to form the WPK.
August 1949: The Soviets had their first successful nuke test.
October 1949: Mao officially proclaimed the founding of the PRC.
December 1949: The KMT fled to Taiwan.
June 1950: The Korean War officially begins after months of border clashes.
September 1950: The UN joined the south after they got rekt by the Communists too many times.
October 1950: The PVA crossed the Yalu River.
I don’t think Stalin seriously blundered because at the end of the day, China is a large country with a large population population that shared a massive land border with the Soviet Union while Greece is a small country that doesn’t share a land border with the Soviet Union. If you had to focus on one civil war between communists and nationalists, of course you’ll focus more on the one that you share an immediate land border with.
Imagine a timeline where Greece is socialist but China is ruled by the KMT. You could pretty much kiss the DPRK goodbye and even socialist Vietnam and Laos. Maybe someone could argue the case that Stalin didn’t have to worry about the CPC triumphing over the KMT and that he could’ve adopted a more aggressive foreign policy in Europe, but that’s with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how the KMT towards the end was run by a bunch of corrupt clowns. Would someone in 1946 make the case of CPC’s inevitable victory given that even Mao himself was surprised by how quickly the KMT completely folded.
Have you lost 15% of your nations population in 5 years? If not than maybe I’d wait to demand more war.