File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 430


Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:25:41 -0600 (CST)
From: Dennis Grammenos <dgrammen-AT-prairienet.org>
Subject: M-I: BOUNCE: ETOL


I am forwarding the following message to M-I in case some netters might 
actually be interested in exploring the ETOL website, not to initiate a 
flame-war.

Solidarity and Peace,
Dennis Grammenos
co-moderator
---------------------------------------------------------------------

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:31:16 +0100
From: Luciano Dondero <dond001-AT-pn.itnet.it>
Subject: ETOL goes public - FAQ

Dear comrades and friends,

here is the FAQ for the ETOL.

Luciano Dondero

----------
Frequently Asked Questions about the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line
(ETOL) -- FAQ version 1.0.0. -- 19 February 1998

Table of Contents

1. What is this FAQ and where can I find it?

2. What is the ETOL?

3. What is Trotskyism?

4. Who was Leon Trotsky? What did he do?

5. What's in this ETOL? How is it structured? How can I find things in
it?

6. Why is it called Encyclopedia?

7. Where is the ETOL located?

8. Where can I find texts by Trotsky and other people involved in the
Trotskyist movement?

9. When is the ETOL going to be finished?

10. How are new materials added to the ETOL?

11. Who are the authors of the ETOL?

12. What is the Trotsky Project mailing list? How can I join it? Do I
have to join the TP mailing list in order to collaborate with the ETOL?

13. What is the political affiliation of the ETOL?

ANSWERS

1. What is this FAQ and where can I find it?

This FAQ is an introduction to the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online
(ETOL). It describes what the ETOL is, it explains how the ETOL can be
perused, and it provides a fairly basic introduction to the main
elements of Trotskyism. 

This FAQ is posted regularly, about once a month, to the following
newsgroups: news.answers, alt.answers, alt.politics.socialism.trotsky,
soc.politics.marxism, and also to various mailing lists related to
Marxism. It is also made available in HTML format at the ETOL site.

Work on translations of this FAQ into other languages is underway, and
they will be further distributed as soon as they are available.

The maintainers of this FAQ are Sally Ryan (email: sryan-AT-trotskyism.org)
and Luciano Dondero (email: luciano-AT-trotskyism.org). This FAQ has been
drafted by Luciano Dondero, with substantial input by Jorn Andersen,
Hugh Rodwell, David Walters, Sally Ryan and Chris Faatz. After a fair
amount of discussion in the mailing list, version 1.0.0. is released on
19 February 1998.

2. What is the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online (ETOL)? 

The Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online (ETOL) is an ongoing project,
aimed at providing a complete documentation about the history, the idea
and the activity of the international Trotskyist movement, centering
upon the figure of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) and continuing to this day.
This involves compiling information from various sources and historical
documents about several thousand individuals, hundreds of groupings and
publications, and making them available in Internet.

The aim of the ETOL is to be the key location in Internet where anybody
interested in Trotskyism will go when doing research work.

The ETOL will also reproduce original historical documents, and provide
links to other locations on the net, which contains further
documentation. In that sense, especially with the addition of further
documents in languages other than English, the ETOL intends to be an
online repository about the history of the Trotskyist movement.  

3. What is Trotskyism? 

The whole Encyclopedia is devoted to the study and documentation of the
history of the international Trotskyist movement and of its ideas.
Specific entries are available to explain various points of interest.
They cover different standpoints and analysis from the various currents
that call themselves Trotskyists.

Here is a summary introduction to the basic concepts of Trotskyism.

Fundamentally, Trotskyism is Marxist/revolutionary/working-class
socialism in the imperialist era of wars, revolutions and the transition
to socialism. It fights for leadership of the working class against
Stalinism and Social-Democracy, which have dominated the leadership of
the working class worldwide since the mid-1920s. It views the crisis of
working-class leadership as the most important single factor in world
history today. It sees the best possibility of developing a
revolutionary socialist leadership in turning to the struggles of the
working masses and fusing theory and practice in the class struggle.

Trotskyism criticizes the degeneration of the Stalinist regime in the
USSR from a revolutionary Marxist perspective. It sees it as a
counter-revolutionary regime that had nothing to do with socialism and
foresaw that it would lead to the restoration of capitalism if not swept
away by the working class.

The Nazi take-over in Germany could have been stopped and Nazism smashed
if Trotsky's policies had been followed. The Left Opposition led by
Trotsky urged both Social Democratic and Communist German workers to
form a proletarian United Front for the express and limited purpose of
defense of class interests (workers' organizations and democratic
rights) against the Nazis and capitalist reaction. The approach to such
a united front would be "March separately, strike together!" Instead the
Stalinists aimed all their hostility at the Social Democrats as "Social
Fascists," thus splitting the workers' movement and allowing the Nazis
into power.

Trotskyism is also against class collaboration as manifested in the
Popular Fronts of the late 1930s in France and Spain, where allegedly
"progressive" bourgeois forces were unabashedly supported by Communist
Party policies, de facto aiding in the disarming of the working class in
the face of the fascist threat. Similar policies by Stalin towards the
bourgeois nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek in China in the
mid-twenties had led directly to the massacre of huge numbers of
unprepared workers in Shanghai in 1927, setting the Chinese revolution
back by decades.

The tragic defeats of these years showed the price paid by the working
class for surrendering its class independence.

In the face of the distortions of Marxism and Bolshevism by the
Stalinist bureaucracy, a small minority of revolutionaries upheld the
red banner and formed the Fourth International in 1938 to carry on the
traditions of October and the early years of the Comintern (up to the
death of Lenin).

The writings, policies and actions of Trotsky and his comrades remain an
inspiration today, as they represent the continuity from Marx through
the October revolution (led by the Bolshevik party under the leadership
of Lenin and Trotsky) and through the revolutionary resistance of the
Stalinist era to the battles of the present in defense of Marxism and
for a strong Fourth International.

The central features of Trotskyist politics are:

PERMANENT REVOLUTION

On the basis of Trotsky's analysis of the inability of the national
bourgeoisie in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to carry forward
the tasks of the bourgeois revolution (national liberation, democratic
rights, women, health, education, etc), the fight against imperialism
and colonialism requires a permanent revolution. This means the working
class of those countries must win the leadership of the popular masses
in the movement of national liberation and bring it to a Socialist
revolution if there is to be any chance of getting a real solution to
the oppression the people are rebelling against. This is opposed to the
Stalinist theories of Socialism in One Country and Two-Stage Revolution
(first bourgeois, then socialist).

POLITICAL REVOLUTION

On the basis of Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerated
workers state, the fight against Stalinism posed the need for a
*political* revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and
restore genuine soviet power, that is the power of councils of workers
and peasants delegates in government. In imperialist countries *social*
revolution against capitalism is necessary to expropriate the
bourgeoisie, something that workers' states such as the ex-Soviet Union
had already accomplished.

TRANSITIONAL DEMANDS

In order to seize power in the imperialist countries, the working class
must fight for a program capable of bridging the gap between its daily
struggles and the socialist revolution. The methodology expressed by
Trotsky in the 1938 founding document of the Fourth International, best
known as the Transitional Program, remains fundamental to this day, even
though some of the tasks formulated in that document are no longer
applicable. By fighting for transitional demands -- making immediately
understandable demands that will have far-reaching effects if they are
actually satisfied -- the workers are helped to see the link between
getting real solutions to their everyday problems and getting rid of
capitalism.

INTERNATIONAL PARTY

The workers of the world need their own political organization, a
world-wide revolutionary party, whose national sections contribute to
and are guided by an international leadership that is greater than the
sum of its national parts. In the absence of an international
organization, and one Trotsky insisted should be run on
Bolshevik-Leninist lines, international solidarity and proletarian
internationalism remain little more than empty phrases. 

4. Who was Leon Trotsky? What did he do? 

Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovic Bronstein in 1879, in a wealthy
Jewish family in the rural town of Janovka in the Ukraine, then part of
the czarist Russian empire. After an early start as a Narodnik
(Populist) he was won over to Marxism by the woman who was to become his
first wife, Aleksandra Lvovna Sokolovskaja, and joined the Russian
Socialdemocratic Workers Party (RSDWP), founded in 1895 by Lenin .

At the 1903 Congress of the RSDWP, where two factions led by Lenin
(Bolsheviks) and Martov-Plechanov (Mensheviks) clashed, Trotsky sided
with the Mensheviks. In 1905, at the time of the first Russian
revolution, he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of workers
and peasants deputies. For his role he was tried and sentenced to
deportation in Siberia. His views on the program of the Russian
revolution were expressed in his perspective of a "permanent
revolution". Throughout the years 1904-1917 he adopted an in-between
position between the warring Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, finally joining
the Bolshevik Party in 1917, after the February 1917 uprising and during
the preparatory stages of the October revolution. He married for the
second time with Natalia Sedova.

Trotsky played a crucial role in organising the seizure of power by the
Bolshevik-led Soviets in October, and became the most important party
and government leader after Lenin. His role was instrumental in bulding
the Red Army of workers and peasants, and in defeating the "white"
counterrevolutionaries, heavily helped by the imperialists, which sent
fifteen different military invading armies to try and crach the
Revolution.

At the death of Lenin in 1924, Trotsky was kept from taking over the
reins of the central leadership by the alliance of several Bolshevik
leaders, jealous of his authority, and already representing the
interests of the growing state (and party) burocracy. They were Stalin,
Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bucharin.

In 1928 Trotsky was deported in internal exile to Alma Ata, in
Kazakhstan, and in 1929 was expelled from the Soviet Union.

He spent the rest of his life in exile, trying to find ways to intervene
in the political struggles of the Communist movement trhoughout the
world. Between 1929 and 1933 he lived in the island of Prinkipo, near
Istanbul in Turkey, from 1933 to 1936 in France, part of 1936 in Norway,
then in Mexico until his murder in 1940 by a Stalinist agent, Ramon
Mercader.

In his fight against the burocracy Trotsky formed the Russian Left
Opposition (in 1923) and the International Left Opposition (in 1929),
leading to the foundation of the Fourth International in 1938.

Further information about the life and works of Leon Trotsky is
available throughout the ETOL. A search for entries under specific
headings like "Left Opposition" and " Fourth International" could be a
good starting point.

The political activities of Leon Trotsky are well documented in the
writings that have been published in various languages. Probably there
are a bit more in French than in English, as the French-language edition
of the Oeuvres is more complete than the English-language Writings. His
most important books have been printed in most Western language and in
Russian.

Some of his writings have been printed in several other languages, as
the ETOL will document and eventually make available for public
consumption.

5. What's in this ETOL? How is it structured? How can I find things in
it? 

You will find in the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online entries covering
the revolutionary views defended by Trotsky and by the international
Trotskyist movement, the history of its activities, details of the
various Trotskyist groups, their publications, and the individuals
involved in them. Some of these entries are scanty compilations of
information gathered from various sources. Others are essays and short
treatises written by students of particular aspects and relevant figures
of the movement.

The documentary section contains texts, pictures and sound records, many
of whom have been collected specifically for the ETOL.

The structure of the ETOL is that of a large online archive. Its
introductory page offers the visitor the choice between going through
different listings of entries: for groups, for publications and for
specific inviduals. And also to access directly the documentary section,
the accessories room and the links. Each of the subdivisions of the
Encyclopedia lists the materials available therein in alphabetical
format.

There are also chronological charts, geographical maps and other
supporting materials available from the accessories room, to help
everybody find their way through the ETOL. Each entry provides links to
other related entries.

The curators of the Encyclopedia can be emailed directly to ask for
help.

A search engine for the ETOL database will make it possible to find all
entries related to a particular topic (looking for "Trotsky" or
"Trotskyism" is not advisable, you would be better off searching for
specific dates of issues...)

6. Why is it called Encyclopedia? 

The Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online is meant to include everything
related to its subject matter in a format that will make it possible for
its visitors to quickly find information and documents on any person or
topic related to the international Trotskyist movement. It is structured
like an Encyclopedia, and it aims to provide a complete and thorough
answer to all questions related to its subject matter.

7. Where is the ETOL located? 

Physically the main body of the Encyclopedia is kept in one server
located in a particular country. Unofficial mirror sites exist
elsewhere, either reproducing in full or in part, the ETOL
documentation. For an updated listing write to the ETOL. The address of
the ETOL is: www.Trotskyism.org

8. Where can I find texts by Trotsky and other people involved in the
Trotskyist movement? 

This is one of the answers that the ETOL wants to answer in a fully
comprehensive manner. Not only by including in its own body of materials
many texts by Trotsky and others, but by linking up a bibliography of
Trotsky's writings and of key documents of the movement with those sites
where such documentation can be found. In particular we want to point
people in the direction of the Trotsky Internet Archives (TIA), located
at http://www.marx.org/Trotsky. The TIA is a sub-Archive of the Marx
Engels Internet Archive located at http://www.marx.org. The TIA is the
Internet collection of Leon Trotsky's writings. The goal of the TIA is
to collect, in this location, the entire collected writings of Trotsky,
which does not exist in any one publication or location at this time.
The director of the TIA, David Walters (tia-AT-marx.org), is one of the
curators of the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online. 

9. When is the ETOL going to be finished? What are it's completion
goals? 

In a broad sense, the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online is one of those
projects that will never be "finished". Given that its subject matter is
a living movement -- unlike, say, the Soviet Union, which existed
between 1917 and 1991 -- new documents and new entries will continue to
be produced.

In the more immediate sense, our aim is to provide some hundreds of key
entries in the course of 1998, and expand the project with further
entries, as well as translations in other languages, by 1999.

Documentary materials are constantly added to the ETOL (as well as to
the TIA), but it's hard to foresee when, say, all of Trotsky writings
will be available in English, first, and then in other languages. Even
harder is to put a date for the day when all of the Trotskyist
publications will have been reproduced in digital format.

We have specific aims and goals for the expansion of the ETOL, but we
can't have a definite plan with precise deadlines. This FAQ will
document the progress made at each single point in time. 

10. How are new materials added to the ETOL? 

Starting from the initial listings of entries that have been compiled,
new entries are being added this very moment to the Encyclopedia.

The documentary section is expanded thanks to the painstaking work of
many men and women who scan and type old books and articles, and put
them up on the net.

As more people become aware of the existence of this project, both
throughout Internet and in the real world, we should expand the pool of
contributors to the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online. More materials,
especially from non-English-speaking countries, get added once people
make them available to the ETOL (and TIA). 

11. Who are the authors of the ETOL? 

Historically speaking, the authors of the ETOL are Trotsky and the
thousands of people who fought for the ideas of Trotskyism, as they
understood them.

In concrete, the work to put together this material is up to a few dozen
inviduals from various parts of the world, who got together to fulfill
the goal to document the history of the international Trotskyist
movement so that future generations will find more easily a way to learn
about Trotsky and Trotskyism.

The members of the Editorial Board of the ETOL are: [here add list of
names, once we have a first group who have stated their agreement].

Most of the preparatory work for the ETOL has been (and is even now)
conducted by means of ad hoc mailing list, the "Trotsky project mailing
list" located in the USA, thanks to our friends at Spoon's -- which also
houses several other mailing lists devoted to the study of
Marxism-related matters.

12. What is the Trotsky Project mailing list? How can I join it? Do I
have to join the TP mailing list in order to collaborate with the ETOL? 

The "Trotsky project mailing list" (TP) is a small collection of people,
who have been discussing many issues pertaining to the Encyclopedia of
Trotskyism Online. The conditions for joining it are only two: (1) the
willingness to undertake serious work on this project; (2) the ability
to cooperate with others in a non-sectarian manner.

It is a workplace for exchanging points of view about the best way to
present materials, and general information related to the history of the
international Trotskyist movement. It is not just another place where
people can debate current issues of dispute within the movement. Other
venues are available in Internet for that purpose, notably the apst
newsgroup, the Marxism-General mailing lists, and others.

The TP list is a moderated list, and that in a rather strict manner, to
prevent anybody from disrupting this unusual phenomenon of people with
strongly-held different viewpoints collaborating in a joint effort.

Anybody who wishes to join the TP list should send the message:

subscribe trotsky-project

to:

majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Most discussion in the list is conducted in English, and that can
represent a problem for non-English speaking people. We make provisions
for people who want to contribute to the list and are not confident
enough to write in English. Just send your messages in your own language
to the list, and we will do our best to provide a translations (or a
summary) of your intervention.

Collaboration with the ETOL, however, does not require that one joins
the list before hand.

In fact, among the contributors to the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online
there are even people who are opposed to this project, and who have
tried to stop it. But by documenting certain parts of the history of the
movement, for their own purposes, they also contribute to attain our
goal. They are, definitely, unwitting contributors, but none the less
contributors.

More seriously, there are various people who do not find it possible to
follow regularly a mailing list whose traffic may reach 20-30 messages a
day, although normally it's more like 2-3; yet these people write
articles and scan documents, which find their way to the ETOL.

For any further information about ways to contribute to the ETOL, you
can write to the Ed Board, whose address is:
ETOL-EdBoard-AT-trotskyism.org.

13. What is the political affiliation of the ETOL? 

The Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online as such has no political
affiliation whatsoever. Among its contributors are people who belong to
different Marxist groupings, as well as non-Marxist people with an
historical interest in Trotskyism. The crucial requirements of a
non-sectarian attitude, and the ability to cooperate with others in a
broad project, have resulted in some people and some groupings not
getting much involvement with this project. This is to be regretted, but
it's not the result of any particular policy of keeping people out. And
the ETOL will definitely accept relevant contributions from anybody,
whether or not they belong to the Trotskyist movement or are Marxists
themselves.

Copyright (c) 1998 Encyclopedia of Trotskyism online [ETOL]. 
All rights reserved.
Revised: February 19, 1998.
---end-----




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