What is Trotskyism?
Trotskyism takes its ideas from Leon Trotsky, a key figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917 who created the Red Army. Trotskyists claim the heritage of Marx and Lenin. Their main points are that socialism needs a world revolution and that Stalin's Soviet Union fell under a privileged bureaucracy. No Trotskyist group has ever ruled a country. Yet the current has produced many small parties, papers and international groups, and it has helped shape left-wing debate in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Core beliefs
- Permanent revolution: in poorer countries, workers must carry a democratic revolution on to socialism.
- Socialism cannot be finished in a single country and needs revolution to spread.
- The USSR was a workers' state that had decayed, run by officials and not by workers.
- A revolutionary party run on democratic centralism is still necessary.
- Transitional demands can tie everyday fights to the aim of socialism.
History
Trotsky set out permanent revolution after the 1905 uprising in Russia. He came over to the Bolsheviks in 1917, helped plan the October Revolution and commanded the Red Army through the civil war. After Lenin died in 1924, he fought Stalin's policy of socialism in one country with the Left Opposition. The party threw him out, the state exiled him in 1929, and in 1940 a Stalinist agent murdered him in Mexico City. In 1938 his followers formed the Fourth International. His book The Revolution Betrayed (1936) described a state with nationalized property but political power in the hands of a bureaucratic caste.
Variants
After 1945 the movement split again and again. Michel Pablo, Ernest Mandel and their followers sought influence inside bigger left parties. James P. Cannon and his allies argued for independent revolutionary parties. Groups also disagreed on how to describe the Soviet Union: a degenerated workers' state, state capitalism or a new bureaucratic class society. Entrism, joining a larger labor party to win support from within, was a favorite tactic of several groups.
Criticisms
Liberal and conservative critics point out that Trotsky backed harsh methods in the civil war, among them the suppression of the 1921 Kronstadt revolt, and say his fight with Stalin does not clear him of authoritarianism. Orthodox Soviet-aligned communists said Trotskyists weakened the movement by division. Some democratic socialists and anarchists argue that the endless splits and the focus on doctrine kept the movement small and disconnected from most workers.
In practice
Trotskyist parties have mostly stayed small, though some have won elected seats, for example in France and Argentina. The best-known case is Sri Lanka, where the Lanka Sama Samaja Party entered coalition cabinets in the 1960s and 1970s. The ideas also fed student protest, anti-war work and union organizing, especially around 1968. On the 12 axes it scores at the extreme of Public on Ownership and strongly toward Planned on Markets, with a middling lean toward Strong leader on Authority.