Trotskyism is for people who want to call themselves communists but are not fully committed to it. Otherwise they would just be Marxist-Leninists(-Maoists).
In Europe if you tell someone – anyone – you’re a trotskyist you’ll be seen as mostly harmless, maybe a little bit weird. It’s the safe choice if you want to butter up to libs because you can join in on criticizing Stalin for things he didn’t do with your lib friends.
We have a trot party here. They get into a lot of controversies and I’ve never seen them do anything except sell their newspaper, or co-opt other movements to sell their newspapers. They do have a few locally elected politicians (much less than our ML-oriented party) but clearly they fail to connect with the working class. I’ve heard from someone who went there that they don’t have a youth wing, unlike us, and that most people there come out of academia and get into deep Marxist economics discussions. It’s not a very welcoming atmosphere for new people.
Trotskyism is for people who want to call themselves communists but are not fully committed to it. Otherwise they would just be Marxist-Leninists(-Maoists).
In Europe if you tell someone – anyone – you’re a trotskyist you’ll be seen as mostly harmless, maybe a little bit weird. It’s the safe choice if you want to butter up to libs because you can join in on criticizing Stalin for things he didn’t do with your lib friends.
We have a trot party here. They get into a lot of controversies and I’ve never seen them do anything except sell their newspaper, or co-opt other movements to sell their newspapers. They do have a few locally elected politicians (much less than our ML-oriented party) but clearly they fail to connect with the working class. I’ve heard from someone who went there that they don’t have a youth wing, unlike us, and that most people there come out of academia and get into deep Marxist economics discussions. It’s not a very welcoming atmosphere for new people.