Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 20:03:55 GMT
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: hariette spierings <hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Critique of Trotskyism-and Trotsky


>You(Louis) wrote: 
>
>s. Lets devote this precious space to what it can 
>>do best: serious, high-level discussions of important questions. 
>
>    Carlos:
>
>    Uhmmmmm ... for a Marxist, the annalysis of any serious, well       
>    thought, theoretical outlook and political program *is* a high
>    level political discussion.
>
>    The Marxist movement, if we understand it as social movement 
>    of the working class by the working class to mobilize itself and
>    its allies and take political power and build socialism, has become
>    a complex movement with various components.  Trotsky *and*          
>    Trotskyism is just one aspect of that movement.

Where?


>    Trotsky, his program, annalysis, historial perspective and legacy
>    stood the passage of time and got confirmed by subsecquent events.

Ha!
    
>    Trotskyism, as the material expression of it, *did not*.            
>    Trotskyism, however, did not collapse by the weigth of its          
>    theoretical irre levance (like Maoism or Eurocommunism or more
>    traditional Stalinism) but because the *praxis* of Trotskyists

How could it collapse if it NEVER actually rose?
   
>    In other words, as oppossed to Stalinism, Trotskyism have the
>    possibility of becoming, in the next decade or so, the theoretical
>    core of the rebuilding of the Marxist movement.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, the day after, fifty years from now, etc.  By then the
revolution would have anyhow culminated and we all be living under
communism.  Who will then need Trotskysm, besides a Museum of Funny
Delusions curator?

>    Trotsky's program and annalysis *was not* merely the revolutionary
>    Marxist current oppossed to reformist and revisionist Stalinism. 
>    That is just *one* of its multiple sides and aspects.

More like the spokesperson for Lord Rothermere!  Another "SIDE" of dear Leon!

>    Outline of Trotsky's legacy;
>
>    * In its first stage, Trotsky represents the confusion of sectors   
>    of of Marxism in confronting the struggle between                   
>    Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.  I do believe Trotsky represented some
>    form of centrism in dealing with the new "party formation" theories
>    of Leninism.  While pragmatically he sided with the bolsheviks and,
>    according to Lenin "became since then the best bolshevik", I do
>    believe that Trotsky *never* resolved the question of the party
>    building process, democratic centralism, etc.  As a result, his
>    followers either regressed to menshevik practices (Usec) or         
>    resorted to copycat Russian formulae which became absolete and/or
>    in spite of their criticism of organizational Stalinism, they
>    practices the same organizational despotism (Healysm and other
>    contemporaries).


Centrism between what and what?  Between Bolshevism and Menshevism!  Well
said "comrade ****ty"!


>    * Trotsky other aspect of work, this time unsurpassed in my         
>    opinion, is that of the strategist of a revolution.  First as the
>    most responsible and able leader of the bolsheviks to lead the
>    mass organizations and its intitutions (Soviets).  This was in 1917
>    as well as in 1905. He draw the most comprehensive theory about the
>    Soviets and, moreover, helped it to become reality and lead them.
>    This is a blue print new generations of marxists have to continue
>    to develop the democratic aspects of the dictatorship of the        
>    proletariat.

Who now thinks himself Napoleon Bonaparte?  The "single handed leader"!
Heil Trotsky Imperator!
    
>    His military career as an strategist and a "general" is until now
>    unsurpassed by any other Marxist.  

More Bonaparte delusions!

His leadership, organizational
>    skills and political organizing combined with military strategy
>    were *central* to the revolutionary victories of the the first
>    period.   He *lead* and offensive struggle against domestic
>    counter-revolution and the combined armies of 14 foreign            
>    imperialist powers.

He was fired by the Central Committee headed by Lenin for incompetence - and
then the war against domestic counter=revolution WAS ACTUALLY WON with him
away from the front.  Bonaparte winning victories from behind his
bureaucratic desktop!

  He *built* the Red Army to conquest the enemy
>    out of *nothing* but a ragtag group of "Red Guards" in a lapse of
>    time surprisingly *short*. 

The proletariat, of course had nothing to do with this.  Neither the
Bolshevik Party organisations. Notice He BUILT!  Not, the Party built, the
class built!  The masses built! Isn't this the view of the bourgeoisie
"heroes make history"?

 We can tract his record on military
>    strategy back to his time as correspondent during the Balkan Wars.
>    Extraordinary.  After him several other Marxists such as Mao,       
>    Giao,etc directed military operations and armies.  No one has ever,
>    stroke by stroke, efficiency wise and comapring armies as political
>    organizers has *ever* surpasses his genius in this arena. Nor any
>    of the others has ever did this based *on the proletariat organized
>    adn armed* as he did.  Nor any of the others has ever succeeded in
>    so many battles in so short time.

Talking about the "cult of personality"  Unbelievable!

    
>    * Trotsky was also a theoretician of the revolution.  His theories
>    of the a) Uneven and Combined Development and b) Permanent          
>    Revolution 

So, is it uneven or is it permanent?  To be sure, Trot believed in both!


has resisted the passage of time and both by the         
>    positive and the negative has proven absolutely correct.


Like saying, if it is not apples is sure to be pears.  And then when it
turns out to be pears claiming absolute omniscience, and if apples, claiming
that it has not yet been proven to be pears!  A brilliant theory for everything!

 No other
>    political theory in the Marxist movement has the implications and
>    importance of these two theories of annalysis the first and         
>    development the second.  His method of political program, as        
>    expressed in his development of the "transitional demands" and the
>    "Transitional Program" to depart from the actual class              
>    consciousness and establish a bridge to the historical program of
>    socialism is, IMO, unsurpassed and essential to develop a program
>    for the next decades in the Marxist movement.

Thanks, but no thanks.  We have enough snake oil in the covert for the time
being.  We will place an order for more when we run out of stock.  Do not
call us, well call you.  


>    * Trotsky as a historian is a monument.  

No wonder the pigeons like Trotsky.  Specially the "stool-pigeons" of the
imperialist bourgeoisie!.


Without him, all the       
>    distortions, forgeries and destruction of the Russian revolution's  
>    history by Stalin and his followers would have succeeded in giving
>    us a froged record of what happened. 


Thanks to him now we all know that Hitler, Churchill, Franco, Mussolini an
every parson and propagandist of the old order was right after all.  Stalin
was a criminal, and the Soviet Union was hell, just like Communism is the
spawn of the devil!.  Brilliant history that turns out to fit the
imperialist bourgeoisie like a glove!. 

 His "History of the Russian
>    Revolution" is a tetimony of extreme value to keep alive the "      
>    "Lessons of October" (not coincidentally the name of another of his
>    books).  His 30 or something volumes of "Writtings" is an History
>    Enciclopeadia of Marxist thoughts and class struggle from 1920 to
>    the 1940s.  "Balkan Wars", "Stalin", "Lenin" and other of his books
>    and writtings are central historic books that every Marxist should
>    read.  Some of them should be consider classics.

Pity that the proletariat does not consider them but a "red painted" version
of the black history that their class enemies are interested in spreading to
put them off the road of persevering in the revolution.  See, if you make
revolution, you go to hell (the big Gulag down in the bowels of the earth,
and if you do not believe Uncle Sam or Uncle John Bull, you should read what
your Uncle Leo Davidovich has to say and tremble even more!

>    * His annalysis of Fascism and other political forces of the        
>    bourgeoisie, such the Turkisk military, the annalysis of the French
>    petit bourgeois jacobins,etc are of tremendous importance today
>    as methodological tools to annalyse present day formations that     
>    many times confuse Marxists (such as the MIlitias, or Buchanan,     
>    etc).  Hence, one of the contributions of Trotsky was the           
>    development of a methodology of the class annalysis.

That is how his followers end up supporting tyrants like Fujimori!

>    * His criticque of reformism and revisionism.  He demolished        
>    Stalinism (and socialdemocracy, and centrism, and anarchism) as
>    to what they were: reformist trends, adaptations of Marxism to
>    bourgeois and imperialist pressure.  And he did so with arguments,
>    facts, logic and counterposing to them all a different perspective
>    and a program, without empty rethoric.

A bit like the ant demolishing the elephant!  Even the "ruins" of Stalin's
contribution are mountains compared with the molehills of Trotskysm!

>    He also particuloarly destroyed the foundation of criminal          
>   Stralinism as a crude distortion of human nature and political
>    forces, as a brutal manifestation of an emerging caste and even
>    predicted how they will fall if they were not first overthrown
>    by political revolution ( a term and a category not invented by
>    Trotsky but developed into a Marxist category by him).

Ha!  Uncle Leo stood "for human nature" - which nature? - bourgeois nature.
Brilliant marxist!  Mankind has an above class nature.  Everything is now
explained and we can see how the "human nature" of Trotsky led him directly
to side with the class enemy. 


>    His criticque of the fake Marxist theories of "Socialism in one
>    country" of the Dimitrov's "United Front from Below" of the
>    "Stalinist's Third Period"; "Revolution by Stages" etce is a        
>    demolishing theoretical arsenal we are able to use today.  But
>    as strong as that is his destruction of all historical myths
>    created by Stalinism around the Soviet Union and Russia.

Who wanted, beside Trotsky, to destroy "all historical myths around the
Soviet Union and Russia"?  Hitler!, the imperialist and fascist bourgeoisie
of all countries!


>    So Trotsky's legacy is multilayered and complex and cannot be
>    judged only by what his followers did or do today.  Trotsky stand
>    by himself, with his theories and practice.  His followers need
>    a lot of homework to even be at an even field with his theories.

Yes!  Trotsky STANDS BY HIMSELF!  Completely isolated from the masses, the
Party and the revolution!  A ONE MAN BAND complete with all the BRASS WORKS
furnished to him by Goebbels!  What an incredible bourgeois vision!


>    But, to be fair with Trotskyists today, not all it's their fault.
>    Trotsky, as a say at the beginning of this post, never resolved
>    the qustion of the party, as a theoretical and practical question.
>    Neither did his followers.

A confession of utter futility.  Are we really unfair in calling people who
think like this "Eunuchs".  They never resolve anything, and only have slimy
insults for those who continue to RESOLVE THE CLASS'S PROBLEMS in practice!


>    Comradely,

With Lord Rothermere, Hitler, Mussolini and Fujimori!
>    Carlos
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>

A tribute to this self-exposure should be cast in bronze and stood alongside
the MAN AS MONUMENT (Trotsky) for all eternity to see it and laugh when we
arrive at Communism!.


A.O.



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