Trotskyism


Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism and Leninism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin's desired "heir" would have been a collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted ".
Trotsky advocated for a decentralized form of economic planning, workers' control of production, elected representation of Soviet socialist parties, mass soviet democratization,
the tactic of a united front against far-right parties,
cultural autonomy for artistic movements, voluntary collectivisation, a transitional program, and socialist internationalism. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working-class self-emancipation and council democracy. Trotsky also adhered to scientific socialism and viewed this as a conscious expression of historical processes. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Despite their ideological disputes, Trotsky and Lenin were close personally prior to the London Congress of Social Democrats in 1903 and during the First World War. Lenin and Trotsky were close ideologically and personally during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Trotskyists and some others call Trotsky its "co-leader". This was also alluded to by Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin himself never mentioned the concept of "Trotskyism" after Trotsky became a member of the Bolshevik party. Trotsky was the Red Army's paramount leader in the Revolutionary period's direct aftermath. Trotsky initially opposed some aspects of Leninism, but eventually concluded that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the October Revolution. Lenin and Trotsky were also both honorary presidents of the Third International. Trotskyists have traditionally drawn upon Lenin's testament and his alliance with Trotsky in 1922–23 against the Soviet bureaucracy as primary evidence that Lenin sought to remove Stalin from the position of General Secretary. Various historians have also cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky Vice- of the Soviet Union as further evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government.
In October 1927, by order of Stalin, Trotsky was removed from power. In November of the same year, he was expelled from the All-Union Communist Party . He was exiled to Alma-Ata in January 1928 and then expelled from the USSR in February 1929. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile to oppose what he termed the degenerated workers' state in the USSR. On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born NKVD agent, and died the next day in a hospital. His murder is considered a political assassination. Almost all Trotskyists within the VKP were executed in the Great Purges of 1937–1938, effectively removing all of Trotsky's internal influence in the USSR. Nikita Khrushchev had come to power as head of the Communist Party in Ukraine, signing lists of other Trotskyists to be executed. Trotsky and the party of Trotskyists were still recognized as enemies of the USSR during Khrushchev's rule of the USSR after 1956. Trotsky's Fourth International was established in the French Third Republic in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.

Definition

According to Trotsky, his programme could be distinguished from other Marxist theories by five key elements:
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are usually considered to be on the left. In the 1920s, they called themselves the Left Opposition, although today's left communism is distinct and usually non-Bolshevik. The terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Anti-revisionists consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right. However, given that Stalinism is often labelled rightist within the communist spectrum and left communism leftist, anti-revisionists' idea of the left is very different from that of left communism. Despite being Bolshevik-Leninist comrades during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, Trotsky and Stalin became enemies in the 1920s and, after that, opposed the legitimacy of each other's forms of Leninism. Trotsky was highly critical of the Stalinist USSR for suppressing democracy and the lack of adequate economic planning.
Overall, Trotsky and the Left-United Opposition factions advocated for rapid industrialization, voluntary collectivisation of agriculture, and the expansion of a worker's democracy.

Theory

Until 1905, some revolutionaries claimed that Marx's theory of history posited that only a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to this position, a socialist revolution could not occur in a backward, feudal country such as early 20th-century Russia when it had such a small and almost powerless capitalist class. In 1905, Trotsky formulated his theory of permanent revolution, which later became a defining characteristic of Trotskyism.
The theory of permanent revolution addressed how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown and how socialism could establish itself, given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the peasantry's support in Russia. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there. They would win their revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers' state in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries worldwide. As a result, the global working class would come to Russia's aid, and socialism could develop worldwide.
According to political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz, Trotsky's theory of “permanent revolution” was grossly misrepresented by Stalin as defeatist and adventurist during the succession struggle, when in fact Trotsky encouraged revolutions in Europe but was not at any time proposing “reckless confrontations” with the capitalist world.

Capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution

Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and established the essential requisites for the development of capitalism. Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia.
In Results and Prospects, written in 1906, Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, arguing: "History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter." In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what Marxists called a "bourgeois-democratic revolution"—a regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie overthrew the existing French feudalistic system. The bourgeoisie then moved towards establishing a regime of democratic parliamentary institutions. However, while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they were not generally extended to a universal franchise. The freedom for workers to organize unions or to strike was not achieved without considerable struggle.

Passivity of the bourgeoisie

Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a tiny minority. In his book, Results and Prospects, Trotsky states that, by the time of the European revolutions of 1848, "the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power."
The theory of permanent revolution considers that in many countries that are thought, by Trotskyists, to not have completed a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class opposes the creation of any revolutionary situation, as a revolutionary proletariat may threaten their position in society. Trotsky believed that, " fear of the armed proletariat is greater than the fear of the soldiery of the autocracy." In the case of Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant-based society, was organised in vast factories, owned by the capitalist class, and into large working-class districts. Proletariat organisation meant that, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, the bourgeoisie found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements, such as the essentially feudal landlords and, ultimately, the existing Czarist Russian state forces. This was to protect capitalist class ownership of property, such as factories, banks, etc.—from expropriation by the revolutionary proletariat.
Therefore, according to the theory of permanent revolution, the capitalist classes of economically backward countries are incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways. Thus, Trotsky argues that because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia originated under the direct influence of government measures—sometimes with the help of government subsidies—the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. The capitalist class was subservient to European capital.