Louis Proyect wrote: > This is nonsense. Stalinism, except for the brief "Third Period", has > had the same basic strategy as the Mensheviks. Instead of seeking common > cause with the Cadets, it oriented to FDR, the bourgeois parties in > Spain and France in the 1930s, etc. > > The fatal flaw of Trotskyism was its assumption that by pointing out the > errors of class collaboration, the scales would fall from the eyes of > the masses and a new vanguard would emerge. This is fundamentally the > illusion of Antarsya in Greece, which like the ineffectual Trotskyist > movement in Spain during the Spanish Civil War was awfully good at > pointing out the errors of the anarchists, the Stalinists et al, was > just awful when it came to building a party. >
Trotskyist overestimation of the revolutionization of the masses is a problem. But it's based on a series of mistaken theories of Trotsky, such as "permanent revolution". How can one uphold a theory that regards the Marxist distinction between bourgeois-democratic and socialist movements as outdated, and yet not overestimate the revolutionization of the masses? But Trotskyism has always had its rightist as leftist positions. Its rhetoric is usually left of the Stalinists, but its positions are all over the map. These positions vary, of course, from group to group. These positions undermined the work and sacrifice of various Trotskyist activists. For example, since the "French turn" of 1934-35, the Trotskyist movement has had its own way of imitating the Stalinist turn of the mid-1930s. Trotskyist groups don't ally with bourgeois parties - except if they call the bourgeois party something else.. Trotskyist groups oppose imperialist regimes - except if they don't recognize that they're imperialist. Or if the regime has a contradiction with US imperialism. Many Trotskyist groups offered "military but not political support" to various reactionary regimes, such as that of Saddam Hussein, and to various state-capitalist regimes. Trotsky dreamed that the autocrat Haile Selassie would strike a great blow, not just at Italian imperialism, but at world imperialism. Selassie fled Ethiopia soon after Trotsky praised him, and left resistance to Italian fascist aggression to those who were left behind. But Trotsky never reconsidered his stand, and it became a staple of Trotskyist wisdom until this day. The Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt, a Trotskyist group, backed the coup against Morsi until it was too late. ItsTrotskyist standpoint led it to a devastating error in assessing the way opposition to Morsi was developing. The theory of "permanent revolution" negates the distinction between bourgeois-democratic and socialist movements. It makes an objective assessment of struggles impossible. It prevents an objective assessment of the Arab Spring. "Permanent revolution" can therefore result in rightist or leftist stands. Meanwhile, we still have to deal with left-phrasemonering Stalinists as well as the more openly rightist ones. Recall the KKE in Greece? -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
