Historically after he got exiled he didn’t really matter. Before that he was a useful, vacillating weirdo that led the red army and was generally influential.
Trotskyists are people that got way too into him and his ideas, particularly his post-exile ideas which were basically just, “how the USSR (that kicked me out) is dumb and not socialist so here’s 30 theses on how to do everything right and I hope you die Stalin”. One of those 30 theses causes them all to publish papers that nobody reads. Because their primary defining feature was to be against the first and largest socialist state, they are anticommunist communists and walk a strange line that, in my experience, is massively stunted because they rule out the majority of practical revolutionary methods and developments in theory lest they themselves become Stalinists or tankies.
None of this really matters in isolation and we can all criticize the dumb things different tendencies do. The main issue arises when it is no longer in isolation and they’re trying to infiltrate your org (entryism is one of the theses) or co-opt a rally (coopting shit is one of the theses) or pick fights of no consequence except alienating people (most of the theses). If you’re in a coalition, they’ll be the folks trying to adjust statements dogmatically and to weaken them because apparently one of the theses is “thou shalt hide your true motivations and appeal to liberals as if you’re one of them”.
Anyways despite this criticism I’ve worked with many successfully. But it can get very tiring.
Nah I was just hand-waving a number because they have a number of dogmatisms, often they’re named and nobody else knows what they’re talking about. Example: transitional program. But actually that article basically lists all of them so it’s very funny that my dumb joke about 30 theses ended up being a literal reference.
lol! Actually, I did find an actual writing by Trotsky titled “Theses on Revolution” which has 27 theses. I was googling "Trotsky’s n Theses* to see if you could put in any number and find a position paper from a different micro-sect.
Historically after he got exiled he didn’t really matter. Before that he was a useful, vacillating weirdo that led the red army and was generally influential.
Trotskyists are people that got way too into him and his ideas, particularly his post-exile ideas which were basically just, “how the USSR (that kicked me out) is dumb and not socialist so here’s 30 theses on how to do everything right and I hope you die Stalin”. One of those 30 theses causes them all to publish papers that nobody reads. Because their primary defining feature was to be against the first and largest socialist state, they are anticommunist communists and walk a strange line that, in my experience, is massively stunted because they rule out the majority of practical revolutionary methods and developments in theory lest they themselves become Stalinists or tankies.
None of this really matters in isolation and we can all criticize the dumb things different tendencies do. The main issue arises when it is no longer in isolation and they’re trying to infiltrate your org (entryism is one of the theses) or co-opt a rally (coopting shit is one of the theses) or pick fights of no consequence except alienating people (most of the theses). If you’re in a coalition, they’ll be the folks trying to adjust statements dogmatically and to weaken them because apparently one of the theses is “thou shalt hide your true motivations and appeal to liberals as if you’re one of them”.
Anyways despite this criticism I’ve worked with many successfully. But it can get very tiring.
Is this what you meant by the 30 theses?
https://www.fifthinternational.org/content/30-theses-defence-trotskyism
Nah I was just hand-waving a number because they have a number of dogmatisms, often they’re named and nobody else knows what they’re talking about. Example: transitional program. But actually that article basically lists all of them so it’s very funny that my dumb joke about 30 theses ended up being a literal reference.
lol! Actually, I did find an actual writing by Trotsky titled “Theses on Revolution” which has 27 theses. I was googling "Trotsky’s n Theses* to see if you could put in any number and find a position paper from a different micro-sect.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1926/xx/revo.htm