Despite their ideological disputes, Trotsky and Lenin were close personally prior to theLondon Congress of Social Democrats in 1903 and during theFirst World War. Lenin and Trotsky were close ideologically and personally during theRussian Revolution and its aftermath. Trotskyists and some others call Trotsky its "co-leader".[21] This was also alluded to by Rosa Luxemburg.[22] Lenin himself never mentioned the concept of "Trotskyism" after Trotsky became a member of the Bolshevik party.[23] Trotsky was theRed Army's paramount leader in the Revolutionary period's direct aftermath. Trotsky initially opposed some aspects ofLeninism,[24][25] but eventually concluded that unity between theMensheviks andBolsheviks was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in theOctober Revolution. Lenin and Trotsky were also both honorary presidents of theThird International.[26] Trotskyists have traditionally drawn uponLenin's testament and his alliance with Trotsky in 1922–23 against theSoviet bureaucracy as primary evidence that Lenin sought to remove Stalin from the position ofGeneral Secretary.[27] Various historians have also cited Lenin's proposal to appoint TrotskyVice-Chairman of the Soviet Union as further evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor ashead of government.[28][29]
In October 1927, by order of Stalin,[30][unreliable source] Trotsky was removed from power. In November of the same year, he was expelled from theAll-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (VKP(b)). He was exiled toAlma-Ata (now Almaty) in January 1928 and then expelled from theUSSR in February 1929. As the head of theFourth International, Trotsky continued in exile to oppose what he termed thedegenerated workers' state in the USSR. On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked inMexico City byRamón Mercader, a Spanish-bornNKVD agent, and died the next day in a hospital. His murder is considered a political assassination. Almost all Trotskyists within the VKP(b) were executed in theGreat 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.[31] Trotsky'sFourth International was established in theFrench Third Republic in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that theComintern or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.[32]
Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and analysis of its features,[35] after 1933, also support forpolitical revolution in the USSR and what Trotskyists term thedegenerated workers' states.
Support forsocial revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working-class mass action.
Use of a transitional programme of demands that bridge between daily struggles of the working class and the maximal ideas of the socialist transformation of society.[37][page needed]
On thepolitical spectrum ofMarxism, Trotskyists are usually considered to be on the left. In the 1920s, they called themselves theLeft Opposition, although today'sleft communism is distinct and usually non-Bolshevik. The terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of aleft-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 thatStalinism is often labelled rightist within the communist spectrum andleft communism leftist, anti-revisionists' idea of the left is very different from that of left communism. Despite being Bolshevik-Leninist comrades during theRussian Revolution andRussian 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 highlycritical of the Stalinist USSR for suppressing democracy and the lack of adequate economic planning.[30]
Overall, Trotsky and the Left-United Opposition factions advocated for rapidindustrialization, voluntary collectivisation of agriculture, and the expansion of aworker's democracy.[38][39]
Until 1905, some revolutionaries[40] claimed thatMarx'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 ofpermanent 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 thepeasantry'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 byStalin asdefeatist 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.[41]
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.
InResults 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."[42] In theFrench 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionarybourgeoisie 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."[43]
The theory of permanent revolution considers that in many countries that are thought, by Trotskyists, to not have completed abourgeois-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, "[the bourgeoisie] fear of the armed proletariat is greater than the fear of the soldiery of the autocracy."[44] 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.[45]
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.[citation needed] 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.[46]
The theory of permanent revolution further considers that thepeasantry as a whole cannot take on the task of carrying through the revolution because it is dispersed in small holdings throughout the country and forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire tolandlordism as well as the poor peasants who aspire to own more land. Trotsky argues: "All historical experience [...] shows that the peasantry are absolutely incapable of taking up an independent political role".[47]
Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today. However, even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the rural poor: the self-organising struggles of the landless, along with many other struggles that in some ways reflect the militant united, organised struggles of the working class, which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs. However, orthodox Trotskyists today still argue that the town- and city-based working-class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that the working class learns of the necessity to conduct a collective struggle, for instance, in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces; and that the collective consciousness it achieves is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.[48]
Trotsky himself argued that only theproletariat or working class was capable of achieving the tasks of that bourgeois revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort, also seeing the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort, forming workers councils (soviets) in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued:
The factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground [...] The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses, while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the "people", half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the greed for gain.
For instance, thePutilov Factory numbered 12,000 workers in 1900 and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.[50]
Although only a tiny minority in Russian society, the proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus "secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on whose support it would rely.[47][note 1] However, to improve their conditions, the working class must create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish the bourgeois revolution and establish a workers' state.[citation needed]
Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism. According toclassical Marxism, a revolution in peasant-based countries such as Russia ultimately prepares the ground for capitalism's development since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers, and traders. This leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges.[citation needed]
Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world and the internal pressures of its backward economy.[citation needed] Trotsky argued that the revolution must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution that must spread worldwide. In this way, the revolution is "permanent", moving out of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers' revolution and from there, uninterruptedly, to European and worldwide revolutions.[citation needed]
Aninternationalist outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works ofKarl Marx. The term "permanent revolution" is taken from a remark of Marx in his March 1850 Address: "it is our task", Marx said:
[...] to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.
— Karl Marx,Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League[51]
His biographer, Isaac Deutscher, has explicitly contrasted his support for proletarian internationalism against his opposition to revolution bymilitaryconquest as seen with his documented opposition to thewar with Poland in 1920, proposed armistice with theEntente and temperance with staginganti-British revolts in the Middle East.[52] HistorianRobert Vincent Daniels believed that the practical differences, in the domain ofinternational policy, between the Left Opposition and other factions had been exaggerated and he contended that Trotsky was no more prepared than other Bolshevik figures to riskwar or for the loss oftrade opportunities despite his support forworld revolution.[53]
In 1917, he had proposed the election of a new Sovietpresidium with othersocialist parties based onproportional representation.[9] On the other hand, he had accepted the ban on rival parties in Moscow during the Russian Civil War due to their opposition to theOctober Revolution. Yet, he also opposed the extension of the ban to the Mensheviks inSoviet Georgia.[59]
In 1922, Lenin allied withLeon Trotsky against the party's growingbureaucratisation and the influence ofJoseph Stalin.[60][61][62][63][64] In 1923, Trotsky and a number ofOld Bolsheviks who signedThe Declaration of 46 raised concerns to the Poliburo concerning intra-party democracy which shared similarities with Lenin'sproposed party reforms before his death. The signatories of the 46 letter expressed grievances related to the provincial conferences, party congresses, and the election of committees. Separately, Trotsky would develop his views further with the publication of theNew Course in 1924.[65]
In 1927, Trotsky and theUnited Opposition had argued for the expansion ofindustrial democracy with their joint platform which demanded majority representation of workers in trade union congresses including theAll-Union Congress and an increase of non-party workers to one-third of representation in these elected organs.[66] They also supported legal protection for workers' right to criticise, such as the right to make independent proposals. According to historianVadim Rogovin, these proposals would have developed democracy in the sphere ofproduction and facilitated the establishment of workers' control over economic management.[66]
Following Stalin's consolidation of power in theSoviet Union and static centralization of political power, Trotsky condemned the Soviet government's policies for lacking widespread democratic participation on the part of the population and for suppressingworkers' self-management and democratic participation in the management of the economy. Because these authoritarian political measures were inconsistent with the organizational precepts of socialism, Trotsky characterized the Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state that could not effectively transition to socialism. Ostensibly socialist states where democracy is lacking, yet the economy is largely in the hands of the state, are termed byorthodox Trotskyist theories asdegenerated ordeformed workers' states and not socialist states.[67]
Bureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy. A restoration of the right of criticism, and a genuine freedom of elections, are necessary conditions for the further development of the country. This assumes a revival of freedom of Soviet parties, beginning with the party of Bolsheviks, and a resurrection of the trade unions. The bringing of democracy into industry means a radical revision of plans in the interests of toilers.
In 1936, Trotsky argued in his work,The Revolution Betrayed, for the restoration of the right of criticism in areas such aseconomic matters, the revitalization oftrade unions and free elections of theSoviet parties.[10] Trotsky also argued that the excessiveauthoritarianism under Stalin had undermined the implementation of theFirst five-year plan. He noted that several engineers and economists who had created the plan were themselves later put on trial as "conscious wreckers who had acted on the instructions of a foreign power".[72]
Polish historian and biographer,Isaac Deutscher, viewed his inner-party reforms in 1923–24 as arguably the first act in the restoration of free Soviet institutions which the party had sought to establish in 1917 and the return ofworker's democracy which would correspond with a gradual dismantlement of thesingle-party system.[73]At the same time, Deutscher noted that Trotsky's attitude towards democracy could be characterised as inconsistent and hesitant by opponents, but this stemmed from a range of reasons, such as theill timing after the failed revolutions in the West and controversies around party schisms.[73]
The concept of uneven and combined development was derived from the political theories of Trotsky.[74] This concept was developed in combination with the related theory of permanent revolution to explain the historical context of Russia. He would later elaborate on this theory to explain the specific laws of uneven development in 1930 and the conditions for a possible revolutionary scenario.[75] According to biographer Ian Thatcher, this theory would be later generalised to "the entire history of mankind".[76]
Political scientists Emanuele Saccarelli and Latha Varadarajan valued his theory as a "signal contribution" to the discipline ofinternational relations. They argued his theory presented "a specific understanding of capitalist development as "uneven", insofar as it systematically featured geographically divergent "advanced" and "backward" regions" across theworld economy.[77]
Faith merely promises to move mountains; buttechnology, which takes nothing ‘on faith’, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial andartistic plan. Man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements innature.
InLiterature and Revolution, Trotsky examined aesthetic issues concerning class and the Russian Revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered his work the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later, Marxist cultural and critical theories.[79] He had also defended intellectual autonomy in relation to the Russianliterary movements and scientific theories such asFreudian psychoanalytic theory along withEinstein’stheory of relativity during the succession period. However, these theories were increasingly marginalised during the Stalin era.[80]
InProblems of Everyday Life, a contemporaneous book which further articulated his views on culture and science, Trotsky argued that cultural development would accentuate industrial and technical progress. He viewed both elements to be interrelated components as part of dialectical interaction in which he viewed the low level of Russiantechnique andexpertise to be a function of cultural backwardness. According to Trotsky, Western industrial methods and products such as the radio should not be rejected due to their status as products of a capitalist system, but rather absorbed into the Soviet socialist framework to facilitate new forms of techniques and cultural production.[81] In this interpretation, thetransference of techniques brought new cultural changes in terms of rationalism,efficiency, exactitude, andquality.[81]
Trotsky critiqued contemporary literary movements such asFuturism and emphasised the need for cultural autonomy to develop a socialist culture. According to literary criticTerry Eagleton, Trotsky recognised "like Lenin on the need for a socialist culture to absorb the finest products of bourgeois art".[15] Trotsky himself viewed the proletarian culture as "temporary and transitional" which would provide the foundations for a culture above classes. He also argued that the preconditions for artistic creativity were economic well-being and emancipation from material constraints.[84]
Political scientist, Baruch Knei-Paz, characterisedhis view on the role of the party as transmitters of culture to the masses and raising the standards of education, as well as entry into the cultural sphere, but that the process of artistic creation in terms of language and presentation should be the domain of the practitioner. Knei-Paz also noted key distinctions between Trotsky's approach to cultural matters andStalin's policy in the 1930s.[84]
Trotsky was an early proponent of economic planning since 1923 and favored an accelerated pace of industrialization.[85] In 1921, he had also been a prominent supporter ofGosplan as a newly established body and called for the strengthening of its formal responsibilities to support a balanced level of economic reconstruction after the Civil War.[86] Lenin andPolitburo members had also proposed he served as deputy chairman with a focus on economic matters related to the eitherSTO, Gosplan or the Council of National Economy.[87][88]
Trotsky had urged economicdecentralisation between the state,oblast regions, and factories to counter structural inefficiency and the problem of bureaucracy.[6] He had proposed the principles underlying theN.E.P. in 1920 to thePolitburo to mitigate urgent economic matters arising from war communism. He would later reproach Lenin privately about the delayed government response in 1921-1922.[89][17] However, his position also differed from the majority of Soviet leaders at the time who fully supported theNew Economic policy.[85][90]
Comparatively, Trotsky believed that planning and N.E.P. should develop within a mixed framework until the socialist sector gradually superseded the private industry.[91] He found allies among a circle of economic theorists and administrators, which includedEvgenii Preobazhensky alongGeorgy Pyatakov, deputy chairman of theCouncil of the National Economy[92] and had more broadly the support of many partyintellectuals.[93]
Trotsky had specified the need for the "overall guidance in planning i.e. the systematic co-ordination of the fundamental sectors of the state economy in the process of adapting to the present market" and urged for a national plan[94] alongside currency stabilization.[95] He also rejected the Stalinist conception of industrialisation, which favouredheavy industry. Instead, he proposed the use offoreign trade as an accelerator and to direct investments by means of a system of comparativecoefficients.[96]
The problem of agriculture is a much more complicated one, and there is nothing surprising in this to the Marxian mind. The change from the system of small individual peasant holdings to socialist methods of land cultivation is only conceivable after a number of consecutive stages of progress in technical science in economics and culture.
Trotsky and the Left Opposition developed a number of economic proposals in response to thescissor crisis, which had undermined relations between the workers and peasants in 1923–1924. This included aprogressive tax on the wealthier sections of populations, such as thekulaks andNEPmen, alongside an equilibrium of the import-export balance to access accumulated reserves to purchase machinery from abroad to increase the pace of industrialization.[98][99] The policy was later adopted by members of the United Opposition, which also advocated a programme of rapid industrialization during the debates of 1924 and 1927. The United Opposition proposed a progressive tax on wealthier peasants, the encouragement ofagricultural cooperatives, and the formation of collective farms voluntarily.[100]
Trotsky, as president of theelectrification commission, along with members of the Opposition bloc, had also put forward an electrification plan which involved the construction of thehydroelectricDnieprostroi dam.[101][102] According to historianSheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters asindustrialisation andcollectivisation.[103] In exile, Trotsky maintained that the disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in the 1930s such as the underdevelopedconsumer base along with the priority focus onheavy industry were due to a number of avoidable problems. He argued that the industrial drive had been enacted under more severe circumstances, several years later, and in a less rational manner than originally conceived by the Left Opposition.[104]
Ernest Mandel argued that the economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forcedpolicy of collectivisation implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement.[105] Notably, Trotsky sought to raise taxation on wealthier farmers and encourage farm labourers, along with poor peasants to form collective farms voluntarily in conjunction with the allocation of state resources to agriculturalmachinery,fertilizers,credit andagronomic assistance.[106]
In 1932–33, Trotsky insisted upon the need for mass participation in the operationalisation of the planned economy:
"Insoluble without the daily experience of millions, without their critical review of their own collective experience, without their expression of their needs and demands and could not be carried out within the confines of the official sanctums.... even if thePolitburo consisted of seven universal geniuses, of seven Marxes, or seven Lenins, it will still be unable, all on its own, with all its creative imagination, to assert command over theeconomy of 170 million people".[107]
The economic platform of aplanned economy combined with an authenticworker's democracy as originally advocated by Trotsky has constituted the programme of the Fourth International and the modern Trotskyist movement.[109]
Trotsky drafted the transitional programme as a programmatic document for the founding congress of the Fourth International in 1938.[110]
He explicitly emphasised the core need for the programme:
"It is explicitly necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat".[110]
The transitional programme features three types of proposals for action. This includes democratic demands such asthe right of unions andself-determination; immediate demands which are concerned with everyday struggles such aswage increases and transitional demands which are directed at the capitalist system such asworker's control of production .[110]
In his collection of texts,In Defence of Marxism,Leon Trotsky defended thedialectical method of scientific socialism during the factional schisms within the American Trotskyist movement during 1939–40. Trotsky viewed dialectics as an essential method of analysis to discern the class nature of the Soviet Union. Specifically, he described scientific socialism as the "conscious expression of the unconscious historical process".[112] According to Daniels, Trotsky conceived historical revolutions as a long, interrelated process of political and social struggle which undergo various stages with national and international dimensions.[113]
Prior to his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Trotsky had encouragedempirical studies with the use of Marxist methods for social and historical development. He also insisted on the need for afreedom of science, including theoretical research, in 1925, for socially useful purposes.[114] Trotsky defendedEinstein’stheory of relativity in Soviet intellectual circles, but this became an anathema during the Stalin era and was only rehabilitated following the latter's death.[115]
In line with the scientific outlook of Marxist philosophy, Trotsky heavily emphasized science to alleviate the level of backwardness among the Soviet masses. Concurrently, he viewed socialism as a progressive struggle forscience, culture, and morality in which science should be given the maximum scope for development.[116] In 1918, he had supportedTaylorism along with Lenin as a means of scientifically managing industries with the support of foreign engineers.[117] Multiple historians have stressed thetechnocratic nature of his governance proposals compared to Stalin and Bukharin with a higher reliance on "bourgeois" experts and specialists.[118][119][120]
Trotskyists have emphasised the dialectical relationship betweenobjective,material conditions, andsubjective factors such as party, leadership, in understanding the nature of change in historical events.[121]
Leon Trotsky's original pamphlet"Fascism: What it is and how to fight it" argued for the tactical method of a united front to counter the rise ofNazi Germany
At a time when hundreds of thousands and millions of workers, especially in Germany, are departing from Communism, in part to fascism and in the main into the camp of indifferentism, thousands and tens of thousands of Social Democratic workers, under the impact of the self-same defeat, are evolving into the left, to the side of Communism. There cannot, however, even be talk of their accepting the hopelessly discredited Stalinist leadership.
—Trotsky's writings on the challenge of Stalinism and fascism in 1933.[122]
Trotsky was a central figure in theComintern during its first four congresses. During this time, he helped to generalize the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks to newly formed Communist parties across Europe and further afield. From 1921 onwards, theunited front, a method of uniting revolutionaries and reformists in the common struggle while winning some of the workers to revolution, was the central tactic put forward by the Comintern after the defeat of the German revolution.
After he was exiled and politically marginalized by Stalinism, Trotsky continued to argue for a united front against fascism in Germany and Spain. According to Joseph Choonara of the BritishSocialist Workers Party inInternational Socialism, his articles on the united front represent an essential part of his political legacy.[123]
Trotsky also formulated a theory of fascism based on a dialectical interpretation of events to analyze the manifestation ofItalian fascism and the early emergence of Nazi Germany from 1930 to 1933.[124]
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in turn needs to be justified. From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man.
—Trotsky's writings on "The Dialectical Interpedence of Ends and Means".[125]
In 1938, Trotsky had writtenTheir Morals and Ours which consisted ofethical polemics in response to criticisms around his actions concerning theKronstadt rebellion and wider questions posed around the perceived, "amoral" methods of the Bolsheviks. Critics believed these methods seemed to emulate theJesuitmaxim that the "ends justifies the means". Trotsky argued that Marxism situated the foundation of morality as a product of society toserve social interests rather than "eternal moral truths" proclaimed by institutional religions.[126] On the other hand, he regarded it as farcical to assert that an end could justify any criminal means and viewed this to be a distorted representation of the Jesuit maxim. Instead, Trotsky believed that the means and ends frequently “exchanged places” as whendemocracy is sought by theworking class as an instrument to actualize socialism. He also viewed revolution to be deducible from thelaws of the development and primarily theclass struggle, but this did not mean all means are permissible.[126] Fundamentally, Trotsky argued that ends "rejects" means that are incompatible with itself.[127] In other words,socialism cannot be furthered throughfraud,deceit orthe worship of leaders but through honesty and integrity as essential elements ofrevolutionary morality in dealing with the working masses.[127]
According to Trotsky, the term "Trotskyism" was coined byPavel Milyukov (sometimes transliterated as Paul Miliukoff), the ideological leader of theConstitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against Trotskyism "as early as 1905".[128]
Trotsky was elected chairman of theSt. Petersburg Soviet during theRussian Revolution of 1905. He pursued a policy ofproletarian revolution at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state. This year, Trotsky developed the theory ofpermanent revolution, as it later became known (see below). In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a book by Milyukov,The Elections to the Second State Duma, published no later than May 1907:
Those who reproach the Kadets with failure to protest at that time, by organising meetings, against the "revolutionary illusions" of Trotskyism and the relapse intoBlanquism, simply do not understand [...] the mood of the democratic public at meetings during that period.
— Pavel Milyukov,The Elections to the Second State Duma[129]
Milyukov suggests that the mood of the "democratic public" was in support of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow of the Romanov regime alongside a workers' revolution to overthrow the capitalist owners of industry, support for strike action and the establishment of democratically electedworkers' councils or "soviets". This differed from variations ofCouncil Communism inGermany due to the Russian Peasantry and the role they have in overallLeninism including Trotskyism compared to the role they have in Council Communism
During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky argued that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the state in as good an order as possible.[130] In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time soon came to lead theMilitary Revolutionary Committee, which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison and carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote:
All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.
As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theory of permanent revolution was embraced by the young Soviet state until 1924.
The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.
Before the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had formulated a slogan calling for the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry", but after the February revolution, through his April Theses, Lenin instead called for "all power to the Soviets". Nevertheless, Lenin continued to emphasise (as did Trotsky) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.[132]
Also, before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted the importance of a Bolshevik-style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out, Trotsky admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Although many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky wrote that without Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.
Lenin,Trotsky andKamenev celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution
Other Bolshevik figures such asAnatoly Lunacharsky,Moisei Uritsky andDmitry Manuilsky agreed that Lenin's influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky's, not to Lenin's plan.[133]
As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory has been fully committed to a Leninist style ofdemocratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not be confused with the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship. However, it is essential to emphasise that after 1917, orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the USSR was caused by the failure of the revolution to spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation, and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.
After the majority of the petrograd Soviet passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks, [Trotsky] was elected its chairman and in that position organized and led the insurrection of October 25.
Lenin on the organization of the October Revolution, Vol.XIV of theCollected Works.[134]
Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in Western Europe so that this European socialist society would come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated:
We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our statements in the press that [...] the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries.
— Vladimir Lenin, Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)[135]
This outlook matched Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution precisely. Trotsky's permanent revolution had foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution but proceed towards a workers' state, as happened in 1917. The Polish TrotskyistIsaac Deutscher maintains that in 1917, Lenin changed his attitude toward Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, and after the October revolution, it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.[136]
Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that:
[...] up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which "possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody's head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist.
— Leon Trotsky,History of the Russian Revolution[137]
"Bolshevik freedom" with nude of Trotsky in a Polish propaganda poster, Polish–Soviet War (1920)
InThe Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated byGrigory Zinoviev andLev Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924 in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.[138]Orlando Figes argues: "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power".[139]
During 1922–1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Ina document dictated before his death in 1924 while describing Trotsky as "distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities—personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee" and also maintaining that "his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him", Lenin criticized him for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work" and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956.[140] Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as theUnited Opposition.[141]
In 1926, Stalin allied withNikolai Bukharin, who led the campaign against "Trotskyism". InThe Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet,From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie, which was re-printed in 1923 by the party publishing house, Proletari. Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution in this pamphlet: "The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution ... The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution". Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later in 1926 "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution."[142]
Trotsky wrote that theLeft Opposition grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party, but in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:
During the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.
In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: "Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!" What was a threat in Stalin's words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution.
The defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the "so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]".[145] He responded to the one-sided civil war with hisLetter to the Bureau of Party History (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing theChinese Communist Revolution and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers:
In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:
"All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky..." (Stalin,Pravda, 6 November 1918)
With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after theGeneral Strike of 1926, and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin.
Trotsky was sent into internal exile, and his supporters were jailed. For instance, Victor Serge first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an innerGPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.[147] However, the Left Opposition worked secretly within the USSR.[147] Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey and moved to France, Norway and finally Mexico.[148]
After 1928, the various Communist Parties worldwide expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "misleadership" of the Soviet bureaucracy and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.[149] Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy and soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,[150] had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labelled a Trotskyist and even afascist.
Trotsky founded theInternational Left Opposition in 1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within theComintern, but anyone who joined or was suspected of joining the ILO was immediately expelled from the Comintern. The ILO, therefore, concluded that opposingStalinism from within the communist organizations controlled by Stalin's supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of theFourth International, founded in Paris in 1938.
Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, based on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution and that it would need to be built in opposition to the capitalists and the Stalinists.
Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power ofAdolf Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of theThird Period policy of theCommunist International and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform and a new international organisation of the working class must be organised. Thetransitional demand tactic had to be a key element.
At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, Trotskyism was a mass political current inVietnam,Sri Lanka and slightly laterBolivia. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese communist movement,Chen Duxiu, amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they prioritised hunting down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst enemies.[151]
The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the USSR could no longer be called adegenerated workers' state and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945, Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in many other countries.
TheInternational Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946 and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War and the tasks of revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments, which came into being afterWorld War II without a social revolution, were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies.[152] By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states". As theCold War intensified, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses byMichel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, under pressure from the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.
The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties, followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counterrevolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the USSR took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.
Pablo began expelling many people who disagreed with his thesis and did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled most of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with the Open Letter to Trotskyists of the World, bySocialist Workers Party leaderJames P. Cannon.
The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. Several sections of the International established theInternational Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt arevisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power and recommitted themselves to the Lenin-Trotsky Theory of the Party and Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution.[153] From 1960, led by theU.S Socialist Workers Party, many ICFI sections began the reunification process with the IS, but factions split off and continued their commitment to the ICFI.[154]
HistorianTheodore Draper had been a Trotskyist in his youth, but eventually became a more independently minded historian, still skeptical of Stalinism. Draper originally gained scholarly recognition for his writings on the history of the American Communist Party.[155]
After theCuban Revolution, a variety of socialist writers likeC. Wright Mills,Paul Sweezy,Herbert Matthews, andPaul Johnson were delivering polemics in defense of the newFidelista government.[156] In 1961Encounter magazine askedTheodore Draper to write an assessment of theCuban Revolution and the new provisional government. Draper publishedCastro's Cuba - A Revolution Betrayed in which, Draper presents a Marxist analysis which claims that "Castroism" is a rudimentary nationalism which ignores the principles of Marxism, and that Fidel Castro is a demagogue. Draper also describes hisBetrayal thesis by alluding to Trotsky's allegation that Stalin "betrayed" theRussian Revolution. Draper alleges that Castro had "betrayed" the Cuban Revolution in a similar manner.[156][157]
Trotskyists in general, were split about Castroism. Trotskyists likeJ. Posadas celebrated Castroism, and claimed that Cuba is on the road to socialism, while the British and French sections of theInternational Committee of the Fourth International, claimed that the Cuban Revolution only developed a form of state capitalism in Cuba.[158]
Trotskyism has influenced some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America. TheBolivian Trotskyist party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario, POR) became a mass party in the late 1940s and early 1950s and, together with other groups, played a central role during and immediately after the period termed theBolivian National Revolution.[159][page needed]
In Argentina, theWorkers' Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, PRT) lay in the merger of two leftist organizations in 1965, theRevolutionary and Popular Amerindian Front (Frente Revolucionario Indoamericano Popular, FRIP) andWorker's Word(Palabra Obrera, PO). In 1968, the PRT adhered to theFourth International, based in Paris. That same year, a related organisation was founded in Argentina, the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army), which became South America's most powerful rural guerrilla movement during the 1970s. The PRT left the Fourth International in 1973.[160] During theDirty War, the Argentine military regime suppressed both the PRT and the ERP. ERP commanderRoberto Santucho was killed in July 1976. Owing to the ruthless repression, PRT showed no signs of activity after 1977. During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 byNahuel Moreno, MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo,Movement for Socialism), claimed to be the "largest Trotskyist party" in the world before it broke into many different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-dayWorkers' Socialist Movement (MST),Socialist Workers' Party (PTS),Socialist Left (IS),Self-determination and Freedom (AyL, which is not outspoken Trotskyist). In 1989, an electoral front with the Communist Party and MRS calledIzquierda Unida ("United Left") retrieved 3.49% of the vote, representing 580,944 voters.[161] TheWorkers' Party (Partido Obrero) in Argentina later founded with other Trotskyist groups theWorkers' Left Front which is represented in parliament.
Venezuelan presidentHugo Chávez declared himself a Trotskyist during the swearing-in of his cabinet two days before his inauguration on 10 January 2007.[162] Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist.[163] In contrast, others consider him an honest revolutionary leader who made significant mistakes due to his lack of a Marxist analysis.[164]
They fear, in a word, thatSoviet America will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like. Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America.
Trotsky onIf American Should Go Communist in 1934.[165]
Trotsky engaged with members of theAmerican Socialist Workers Party on reaching the Black population. He had correspondence withC.L.R. James on the question ofself-determination and expressed support for Black Americans seeking equal rights and an autonomous state.[168]
In 1953 there was a major split in the Fourth International between theInternational Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) led byMichel Pablo and theInternational Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) led iniatially byJames Cannon of theSWP. While a decade later in 1963 the majority of the SWP reunited with Pablo's supporters, a minority group persisted in their independence and criticisms of what they deemed to be the ISFI's abandonment of Permanent Revolution and their promotion of Stalinst regimes and parties. This group that remained loyal to the ICFI would go on to become theSocialist Equality Party (US).[169][170] There is also another North American national section of the ICFI in Canada, also known as the Socialist Equality Party.
In China, various left opposition groups in the late 1920s sought to engage Trotsky against the Comintern policy of support for the Kuomintang.[173] In 1931, at Trotsky's urging, the various factions united in the Communist League of China, adopting Trotsky's document "The Political Situation in China and the Task of the Bolshevik-Leninist Opposition". Prominent members includeChen Duxiu,Wang Fanxi andChen Qichang. The League was persecuted by the Nationalist government and by the Chinese Communist Party.[174]
In French Indochina during the 1930s,Vietnamese Trotskyism, led byTạ Thu Thâu, was a significant current, particularly in Saigon, Cochinchina.[176] In 1929, in the French Left OppositionLa Vérité, Ta Thu Thau condemned the Comintern for leading Chinese Communists (in 1927) to "the graveyard" through its support for theKuomintang. The"'Sun Yat-sen-ist' synthesis of democracy, nationalism and socialism" was "a kind of nationalist mysticism". In Indochina, it could only obscure "the concrete class relationships, and the real, organic liaison between the indigenous bourgeoisie and French imperialism," in the light of which the call for independence is "mechanical and formalistic". "A revolution based on the organisation of the proletarian and peasant masses is the only one capable of liberating the colonies ... The question of independence must be bound up with that of the proletarian socialist revolution."[177]
For a period in the 1930s, Ta Thu Thau's Struggle group, centred around the newspaperLa Lutte, was sufficiently strong to induce "Stalinists" (members of the thenIndochinese Communist Party) to collaborate with the Trotskyists in support of labour and peasant struggles, and in the presentation of a common Workers Slate for Saigon municipal, and Cochinchina Council, elections. Ta Thu Thau was captured and executed by the Communist-frontViet Minh in September 1945. Many, if not most, of his fellowluttuers were subsequently killed, caught between the Viet Minh and the French effort at colonial reconquest.[178]
In Sri Lanka, a group of Trotskyists (known as the "T Group"), including South Asia's pioneer Trotskyist,Philip Gunawardena, who had been active in Trotskyist politics in Europe, and his colleagueN. M. Perera, were instrumental in the foundation of theLanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1935. It expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. After a prison break it helped form the short livedBolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI).
After the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and theBolshevik Samasamaja Party (BSP). In the general election of 1947, the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning ten seats, the BSP winning a further 5. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International after fusion with the BSP in 1950 and led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.[179][180][181]
In 1964 a faction of the LSSP broke away in response to the party joining the governing coalition ofSirimavo Bandaranaike and affiliated itself with theInternational Committee of the Fourth International who shared their critiques of Trotskyist parties joining bourgois governments. In 1968 they would officially form the Revolutionary Communist League which would eventually become the Socialist Equality Party in 1996.[182]
In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of the Sri Lankan LSSP from aBritish prison, a unifiedBolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) was established in India, bringing together the many Trotskyist groups in the subcontinent. The BLPI was active in theQuit India Movement and the labour movement, capturing the second oldest union in India. Its high point was when it led the strikes which followed theBombay Mutiny.
In India, the BLPI fractured. In 1948, at the Fourth International's request, the party's rump dissolved into theCongress Socialist Party as an exercise inentryism.[183][179]
In Britain during the 1980s, theentryistMilitant group operated within theLabour Party with three members of parliament and effective control ofLiverpool City Council, and was described by journalistMichael Crick as "Britain's fifth most important political party" in 1986.[189]
One of the more prominent Trotskyist parties in Britain has been theSocialist Workers Party, formerly the International Socialists (IS) and traces its history back to 1950. The SWP has helped found several organisations through which they have sought to exert influence over the broader left, such as theAnti-Nazi League in the late 1970s and theStop the War Coalition in 2001.[190] It also allied withGeorge Galloway andRespect, whose dissolution in 2007 caused an internal crisis in the SWP. A more serious internal crisis, leading to a significant decline in the party's membership, emerged in 2013 over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against a leading party member.[191]
In April 2019, a 1970s splinter from IS made headlines when three former members of theRevolutionary Communist Party campaigned in the European Parliamentary election as candidates for theBrexit Party,[194][195][196] and a fourth,Munira Mirza, was appointed head of the Number 10Downing Street policy unit by the new Conservative Prime MinisterBoris Johnson.[197] The RCP's rejection of the SWP's critical engagement with the Labour Party and trade unions had morphed into embracing right-wing libertarian positions.[194]
In Portugal'sOctober 2015 parliamentary election, theLeft Bloc won 550,945 votes, translating into 10.19% of the expressed votes and 19 (out of 230)deputados (members of parliament).[198] Although founded by several leftist tendencies, it still expresses much of the Trotskyist thought upheld and developed by its former leader,Francisco Louçã.
The French section of the Fourth International was the Internationalist Communist Party (PCI). In 1952 the party split when the Fourth International removed its Central Committee and split again when in 1953, the Fourth International itself divided. Further divisions occurred over which independence faction to support in the Algerian War. In 1967, the rump of the PCI renamed itself the "Internationalist Communist Organisation" (Organisation Communiste Internationaliste, OCI). It proliferated during the May 1968 student demonstrations but was banned alongside other far-left groups, such as theGauche prolétarienne (Proletarian Left). Members temporarily reconstituted the group as the Trotskyist Organisation but soon obtained a state order permitting the reformation of the OCI. By 1970, the OCI was able to organise a 10,000-strong youth rally. The group also gained a strong base in trade unions. However, further splits and disintegration followed.
TheInternational Committee of the Fourth International maintains its independent organization and publishes theWorld Socialist Web Site. They have full sections in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Australia with sympathizing groups in Russia, Ukraine, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Croatia, Ireland, and other countries.
TheCommittee for a Workers' International (CWI) was founded in 1974 and has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated with the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the largesocial democratic parties. The CWI has adopted a range of tactics, including working with trade unions, but in some cases working within or supporting other parties, endorsingBernie Sanders for the2016 U.S. Democratic Party nomination and encouraging him to run independently.[205]
In France, the LCR is rivalled byLutte Ouvrière, the French section of theInternationalist Communist Union (UCI), with small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, on the industrial proletariat.
The Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) founders claims they were expelled from the CWI when the CWI abandonedentryism. The CWI claims they left, and no expulsions were carried out. In 2006, it became the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties. Known as theRevolutionary Communist International (RCI) since 2024, it is headed byAlan Woods.
Thelist of Trotskyist internationals shows that there are a large number of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky.
The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with theFascists, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference.[211]
However, literary criticJeffrey Meyers, who reviewed the political allegories in Orwell’s work, stated that:
“With all the greater frankness can I state how, in my view, the Soviet government should act in case of a fascist upheaval in Germany. In their place, I would, at the very moment of receiving telegraphic news of this event, sign amobilisation order calling up several age groups. In the face of a mortal enemy, when the logic of the situation points to inevitable war, it would be irresponsible and unpardonable to give that enemy time to establish himself, to consolidate his positions, to conclude alliances… and to work out the plan to attack.”
Trotsky describing the military measures he would have taken in place of Stalin to counter the rise ofNazi Germany in 1932.[213]
Meyers further added that Orwell reinforced his arguments by using the views of aright-wing combatant. In contrast, Meyers citedIsaac Deutscher's biographical account of Trotsky, which presented him to be a much more civilised figure than Stalin and suggested that he would not havepurged the Red Army generals or millions of Soviet citizens.[214]
HistorianSheila Fitzpatrick has also questioned the premise of historical inevitability presented byconservative critics such asRobert Service in that the Soviet Union would have experienced the same "totalitariandespotism under Trotskyist rule". Fitzpatrick suggested it was implausible that Trotsky, like Stalin, would have launched ananti-semitic campaign afterWorld War II or initiated theGreat Purges. Rather, she inferred that Trotsky would presumably have provided goodleadership during the Second World War but may have struggled to maintain party cohesion as seen during the succession struggle after 1924.[215]
Other figures such asBaruch Knei-Paz andVictor Serge acknowledge some affinities with Stalinism in regards to the use of coercion but have also recognised clear differences between Trotsky and Stalin.[228][229] On thecultural field, Knei-Paz highlighted their contrasting attitudes towards matters such as thearts andsciences.[84] According to Knei-Paz, it does not seemcredible that Trotsky would have treatedculture and society with the same total, brutal disregard as Stalin.[230] He also argued that Trotsky soughtfar-reaching economic, commercial relations with European countries which was at variance with theeconomic policy ofisolationism and harsher measures pursued under Stalin.[84] In the view of Knei-Paz, the most discernible difference between Trotsky and Stalin was their respective approaches towardsinternational affairs.[231] In this matter, Trotsky firmly adhered to the notion that socialism in Russia, as “backward society” was dependent on revolution in the West.[231] Biographer Geoffrey Swain believed that the Soviet Union under the leadership of Trotsky would have been moretechnocratic as he would have made far more use of "bourgeois experts" in theplanning process, and inferred this from his conduct during the Civil War along with his writings in the early 1920s.[118] Swain also expressed the view that the Soviet Union under Trotsky would certainly have beena less terrorised society yet was critical of his military methodsin relation to desertion and hostage taking during the Civil War.[232]
In post-exile, Trotsky challenged claims from American socialistNorman Thomas that the Soviet Union would have been no better under his leadership. Trotsky countered that it was not a question ofpersonalities but opposing,social interests represented by thebureaucracy andthe working class.[233] More specifically, Trotsky attributed the retraction of theprogressive gains of the October revolution, the mass purge and Soviet foreign policy as seen inSpanish Civil War to the interests of the bureaucracy rather than the socialist proletariat or Bolshevik tradition.[234] He asserted that the excessive form oftotalitarianism under Stalinism would not have emerged under his variant of Bolshevism.[235][236] Comparatively, he viewed his interpretation of Marxism to represent apolitical andmoral regeneration of the Soviet Union against the Stalinistbureaucracy.[236]
Separately, Trotsky would defend his military decisions as necessary, making a comparison between his military endeavours withAbraham Lincoln's ruthlessness during theAmerican Civil War.[237] Deutscher drew attention to the fact that Trotsky preferred to exchangehostages andprisoners rather than execute them. He recounts that Trotsky had releasedGeneral Krasnov on parole in 1918 after theKerensky–Krasnov uprising during the initial stage of the Civil War, but the general would take up arms against the Soviets shortly afterwards.[238]
Trotskyisttheoreticians have disputed the view that the Stalinist dictatorship was a natural outgrowth of the Bolsheviks' actions as most of the original, central committee members from 1917 were later eliminated by Stalin.[239]George Novack stressed the initial efforts by the Bolsheviks to form amulti-party government with theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries and bring other parties such as theMensheviks into politicallegality.[240] Upon the Menshevik walkout from the Soviet congress, Trotsky released a number of arrested, socialist ministers of theProvisional government from prison, at the request ofJulius Martov.[241]Tony Cliff argued the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government dissolved the Constituent Assembly due to a number of reasons. They cited the outdated voter rolls, which did not acknowledge the split among theSocialist Revolutionary party and the assemblies' conflict with theCongress of the Soviets as an alternative democratic structure.[242]
Cover of a 1934Communist Party USA anti-Trotskyist pamphlet titled "Permanent Counter-Revolution"
Trotskyism has been criticised from various directions. In 1935,Marxist–LeninistMoissaye J. Olgin argued that Trotskyism was "the enemy of the working class" and "should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed the world over."[243] The African American Marxist–LeninistHarry Haywood, who spent much time in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s, stated that although he had been somewhat interested in Trotsky's ideas when he was young, he came to see it as "a disruptive force on the fringes of the international revolutionary movement" which eventually developed into "a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the Party and the Soviet state". He continued to put forward his following belief:
Trotsky was not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's control of the Party apparatus—as his partisans and Trotskyite historians claim. He had his day in court and finally lost because his whole position flew in the face of Soviet and world realities. He was doomed to defeat because his ideas were incorrect and failed to conform to objective conditions, as well as the needs and interests of the Soviet people.[244]
In 1966,Fidel Castro said that "Even though at one time Trotskyism represented an erroneous position, but a position in the field of political ideas, Trotskyism became during the following years a vulgar instrument of imperialism and reaction."[247]
Polish philosopherLeszek Kołakowski wrote: "Both Trotsky and Bukharin were emphatic in their assurances that forced labour was an organic part of the new society."[248]
SociologistPeter Beilharz was critical of Trotskyism and viewed it as the most complete expression ofJacobinism. Although, Beiharz acknowledged that Trotsky had opposed Jacobinism as a young democrat but in his view had extended the tradition during the period ofwar communism and through his ideological defence of terror.[249] On the other hand, historianPaul Le Blanc found Beilharz's historical comparisons between Trotsky and earlier Jacobin figures to be unconvincing and suggested his analogies were more centred in rhetoric rather than in analysis due to his blurring of ideological concepts.[250]
Someleft communists, such asPaul Mattick, claim that the October Revolution was totalitarian from the start. Therefore, Trotskyism has no fundamental differences fromStalinism in practice or theory.[251] French historian and TrotskyistPierre Broue rejected this form of criticism and characterised it in the following way:
"The theory according to which Stalin and Trotsky were two rival wild beasts is useful for historians serving those in power: the establishment of an equivalence between Stalinism and Trotskyism aids the idea of a continuity from Bolshevism and Leninism to Stalinism and strengthens a regime which fears revolutionary sentiments".[252]
British historian Christian Høgsbjerg believed that the academic literature and wider criticisms of Trotskyist organisations had minimised their historical role in building wider social movements. Høgsbjerg stressed the key role of British Trotskyists in various movements such as theVietnam Solidarity Campaign (1966–71), theAnti-Nazi League (1977–81), theAnti Poll Tax Federation (1989–91) and theStop the War Coalition (2001).[253]
In the United States,Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the TrotskyistSocialist Workers Party by raising the question of theKronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky, as leader of theSoviet Red Army, and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towardsdemocratic socialism[254] andanarchism.[255][full citation needed] The Lithuanian-American anarchistEmma Goldman raised a similar critique of Trotsky's role in the events around the Kronstadt rebellion. In her essay "Trotsky Protests Too Much", she says: "I admit, the dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes".[256]
Trotsky defended the actions of theRed Army in his essay "Hue and Cry over Kronstadt". He would also argue that the attitudes and social composition of the Kronstadt sailors had changed during the Civil War. Trotsky further argued that the isolated location of the naval fortress would have enabled financial funding to flow between Kronstadt andWhite army emigres.[257][258] Separately, he would also argue that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on theopposition parties such as theMensheviks andSocialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions ofSoviet Russia had improved after the Civil War.[259]
^Many would put, for instance, the Committee for a Workers' International in this category of orthodox Trotskyists. See for instance"Che Guevara: A revolutionary fighter". Archived fromthe original on 13 October 2007. Retrieved7 October 2007.
^Trotsky, Leon (1962) [1931].Results and Prospects. New Park publications. p. 183.
^Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017). "Trotsky and Trotskyism".The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941.Cambridge University Press. p. 189.ISBN978-1-108-21041-6.A prolific writer and a spellbinding orator, he was a central figure in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917, the organizer and leader of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, the heir apparent to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and the arch enemy and then vanquished foe of Joseph Stalin in the succession struggle after Lenin's death
^Trotsky, Leon (1935)."The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism".New International.2 (4): 116–122. "Trotsky argues that the Soviet Union was, at that time, a "deformed workers' state" or degenerated workers' state, and not a socialist republic or state, because the "bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations," thereby necessitating only political revolution rather than a completely new social revolution, for workers' political control (i.e. state democracy) to be reclaimed. He argued that it remained, at base, a workers' state because the capitalists and landlords had been expropriated". Retrieved 27 December 2019.
^Thatcher, Ian D. (1991). "Uneven and combined development".Revolutionary Russia.4 (2): 237.doi:10.1080/09546549108575572.Talk of uneven development becomes dominant in Trotskii's writings from 1927 onwards. From this date, whenever the law is mentioned, the claim consistently made for it is that 'the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development'.
^Patenaude, Betrand (21 September 2017)."Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism. Vol. 1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941R.Cambridge University Press. p. 204.ISBN978-1-108-21041-6.
^This summary of Trotsky's role in 1917, written by Stalin forPravda, November 6, 1918, was quoted in Stalin's bookThe October Revolution issued in 1934, but it was expunged in Stalin's Works released in 1949.
^Lenin, V. I. (1965) [30 October 1919]. "Economics and Politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat".Lenin Collected Works. Vol. 30. Moscow:Progress Publishers. p. 109.Peasant farming continues to be... an extremely broad and very sound, deep-rooted basis for capitalism, a basis on which capitalism persists or arises anew in a bitter struggle against communism.
^Lenin, V. I. (1965) [15 March 1921]. "Report on the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus-grain appropriation system, Tenth Congress".Collected Works. Vol. 32. Moscow:Progress Publishers. p. 215., This speech, of course, introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was intended to reinforce the basis of the second of the two conditions Lenin mentions in the quote, the support of the peasantry for the workers' state.
^Figes, Orlando (1997).A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924.Pimlico. p. 802.
^Lenin, V. I. (1965).Collected Works. Vol. 36. Moscow:Progress Publishers. pp. 593–598.Stalin is too rude and this defect [...] becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post [...] it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.
^Trotsky, Leon (1971).Revolution Betrayed. Pathfinder. pp. 5–32.
^Lenin, V. I. (1965). "How to organise competition".Collected Works. Vol. 26. Moscow:Progress Publishers. p. 409 – viaMarxists Internet Archive.One of the most important tasks today, if not the most important, is to develop this independent initiative of the workers, and of all working and exploited people generally.
^Ngô, Văn (2010).In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary. Oakland, California:AK Press.
^abErvin, W. E. (2006).Tomorrow is Ours: The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon, 1935–48. Colombo: Social Scientists Association.
^Amarasinghe, Y. Ranjith (1998).Revolutionary Idealism & Parliamentary Politics – A Study Of Trotskyism In Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists' Association.
^"Comissão Nacional de Eleições" [National Election Commission].Diário da República, 1ª série – Nº 205 (in European Portuguese). 20 October 2015. Retrieved18 May 2016.
^Nick, Christophe (2002).Les Trotskistes. Fayard. p. 26.
^Charpier, Frédéric (2002).Histoire de l'extrême gauche trotskiste de 1929 à nos jours. Éditions 1. p. 85.
^Bensaïd, Daniel (2001).Les Trotskysmes. PUF. p. 46.
^Marie, Jean-Jacques (2002).Le Trotskysme. Armand Colin. p. 102.
^Daniels 2008, pp. 195, 396: "While Trotsky was strongly biased toward industrial development, there is little basis to suppose that he would have adopted Stalin’s forcible collectivization, slapdash economic planning, anti expert campaigns, or cultural know-nothingism. Neither Trotsky nor Bukharin would have pursued anything like Stalin’s pseudo-revolutionary 'third period' foreign policy and his connivance in the advent of Hitler, another product of his political manoeuvring against the Bukharinists."
^Mattson, Kevin (2002).Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945–1970. University Park, Pennsylvania:Penn State University Press. p. 34.
^Memoirs of a Revolutionist: Essays in Political Criticism (1960). This was later republished with the titlePolitics Past.
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