this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Yeah I'm not an expert on the Trotsky-stalin split (still reading about it) but that meme doesn't seem like a fair characterization of either side.
The meme is even more charitable than the reality.
He genuinely thought that unless Europe specifically has a revolution, no other country's attempt will be successful, and will degenerate. He advocated for an expansionist invasion of Europe at a time after the Russian civil war when the USSR was at it's weakest and most devastated. Everybody thought this was incredibly stupid, and that it'd be better to rebuild it's industrial base instead of making war on europe.
Yeah but his position (from my limited analysis) was an incredibly dogmatic Marxist position, which despite being wrong wasn't exactly some random crazy idea, especially without the benefit of hindsight. Sacrifice everything for the European revolution because it was more industrially advanced than Russia.
If the Soviet Union had immediately fallen or been crushed by the Nazis (as Trotsky later seemingly wanted to happen????) the idea might have more merit in retrospect. But that didn't happen so he's anti-vindicated. And the like 700k to 7k vote against Trotsky demonstrates that it wasn't supported at the time either.
I'm familiar with a fair amount of Trotsky bullshit but I haven't seen this one. Can you share a source?
I'm at work so don't have Trotsky's books with me, but I doubt he explicitly said as much, more that one might be drawn to that conclusion from his words and actions. It's the impression I get when reading about the sabotage and disinformation that continued to happen even when it was clear a Nazi invasion was imminent.
I do have the Losurdo book, so here's what I can find with a quick skim:
Trotsky in 1939:
Losurdo quotes Volkogonov (anti-Stalin historian):
Also quotes Goebbels' diary talking about the Third Reich working with Trotskyist radio stations, although that was after Trotsky's assassination.
I agree, his position was proven wrong both by hindsight, and common-sense at the time.
Yes, but the point is wrong doesn't mean insane or stupid, and it doesn't serve any of us to engage with ideas with this kind of reddit-tier irony-poisoned otherizing.
Like I sincerely hope self-described leftists can think in more complex ways than soyjak and chad, but over the last few months I've come to doubt that's universally true on this site.
I don't think many of us are engaging with Trotskyism in a shallow way in this post. We're critiquing his Eurocentrism, wrong view of the peasantry being a reactionary class, and opposition to AES.
I 100% agree that "dunk culture" and thought-terminating terms aren't helpful, and we should elaborate why we think something is wrong.
Like I don't think you're wrong, I guess my problem is portraying disagreement as stupidity or insanity like this kind of meme does. People have reasons for things, and it's better to investigate and understand those reasons than instantly dismiss. It's ingroup/outgroup construction rather than development of ideas and strategies.
Reality is complex and often tactics are wrong in some contexts and right in others. People are going to present similar ideas and even if they're wrong it serves us better to be able to coherently critique them rather than call them stupid because a meme told us bad person thought such.