I met some who were very nice, seemed very rational, didn’t even come off as “culty” as their particular Trot party is “known” to be. I mean, yeah, ideologically they’re not quite right, but like, more people working against capitalism, who at least understand and agree with what Lenin said, is a good thing, right? Sectarianism is silly and left unity between Marxist tendencies is important to get to the point of revolution and then sorting out our differences, right?
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Plenty of Trotskyists “become” reactionary conservatives later in life. It’s been called a pipeline. Look at Cristopher Hitchens for example.
There is an approach to politics that tends to destabilize groups by encouraging factionalism.
There is a strong tendency to view Trotsky and Lenin as basically infallible. A cult of personality. And a very selective reading of Lenin, based mostly on the works of Trotsky, to insist that Trotskyism is the true heir, the true continuation, of Leninism. Which is (a) not accurate, and (b) kind of an irrelevant point to make anyway, unless you believe Lenin was infallible and a “great man” in the first place.
There is a rejection of “socialism in one country” in Russia by Trotsky which leads to a rejection or even opposition of all “actually existing” socialist states. This results in Trots often becoming the allies of imperialism since any actually existing socialist state is a “de generate” (this word gets filtered, but I think the usage here is correct) socialism that should be resisted.
There is something in the water of Trotskyism that means it almost exclusively appeals to intellectuals and middle class folk or even upper class folk looking for a bit of edge. It has only weak relationships with socialist labor movements.
There is a nexus between the founding fathers of neoconservative ideas and Trotskyists.
There’s a certain compatibility between the Trotskyist idea of permanent revolution, the opposition to the development of socialism in stages, and imperialism.
There’s a reason Trotskyist groups are largely tolerated in the west while other groups get shutdown, often violently. They are the tolerable resistance that oppose the enemies of the west anyway and don’t do much.
But most damningly, they always try to make every protest about themselves somehow. They’re annoying.
Ngl the, what I’m going to call “saint hood” of certain political people is not a great thing. I get that we need to be hyper vigilante against outside agitators but I sometimes feel like it goes to far in the other direction that it reminds me of the church.
Sainthood is one word and you are absolutely right that it’s critical not to treat any historical figure as a prophet but to regard all of them as just humans with limited perspectives, personal weaknesses, and inevitably at least some meaningfully wrong ideas. We have never had and will never have a messiah, only humanity can save humanity.
Yes exactly
The interview Odd Lots did with him went into this a bit. He helped organize a strike or something and then after it was over management fucked the strikers and his takeaway was that socialism doesn’t work. Guy saw one loss and gave up lol
Ah, now I understand why he’s so wrong all the time.
I did get into a bit of an argument with one about “great man” theory of history and the importance of Lenin’s works and historical role. They are pretty dogmatic while insisting MLs are the dogmatists.
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