العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolTROTSKYISM
(Redirected from Trotskyist)
'Trotskyism' is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. His politics differed sharply from those of Stalinism, most importantly in declaring the need for an international "permanent revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist, although they have diverse interpretations of Trotsky's writings.
Probably the consensus English term for adherents is 'Trotskyist'. "Trotskyite" and more recently "Trot" (the latter particularly in Britain and Canada) are used pejoratively.
James P. Cannon in his 1942 book ''History of American Trotskyism'' wrote that "Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International." However, Trotskyism can be distinguished from other Marxist theories by four key elements.
★ Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the Two Stage Theory of his opponents,[1]
★ Criticism of the post 1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its features [2]and after 1933, support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers' states,
★ Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action
★ support for proletarian internationalism.[3]
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR,[4] opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East.
According to Trotsky, the term 'Trotskyism' was coined by Pavel Milyukov, (sometimes transliterated as 'Paul Miliukoff'), the ideological leader of the Constitutional Democratic party (Kadets) in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against 'Trotskyism' "as early as 1905", Trotsky argues.[5]
Trotsky was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet during the 1905 Russian Revolution. He pursued a policy of proletarian revolution at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state. It was during this year that Trotsky developed the theory of Permanent 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:
Milyukov suggests that the "democratic public" supported 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 elected workers' councils or "soviets".
Main articles: Permanent Revolution
In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the Trotskyist theory of Permanent Revolution. It may be considered one of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxists had only shown how a revolution in a European capitalist society could lead to a socialist one. But this excluded countries such as Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a capitalist society, but was instead largely feudal with a small, weak and powerless capitalist class.
The theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites.
Revolutions in Britain in the 17th Century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism, establishing the basic requisites for the development of capitalism. But Trotsky argues that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia. In ''Results and Prospects'', written in 1906, in which Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, he argues: "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."[6] In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what Marxists called a “bourgeois-democratic revolution” – a regime was established where the bourgeoisie overthrew feudalism and ruled though certain democratic parliamentary institutions (although not necessarily instituting universal franchise).
But, Trotsky argues, countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role. In fact, even by the time of the European revolutions of 1848, Trotsky argued, "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."
The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries today which are thought to have not yet completed their bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class oppose the creation of any revolutionary situation, in the first instance because they fear stirring the working class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism. The working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class, in large working class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905 the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially feudal landlords and ultimately the existing Czarist Russian state forces, in order to protect their ownership of their property, in the form of the factories, banks, and so forth, from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.
According to the theory of Permanent Revolution, therefore, in economically backward countries the capitalist class are weak and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. Trotsky further argues that since a majority of branches of industry in Russia were originated under the direct influence of government measures, sometimes even with the help of Government subsidies, the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. In addition, the capitalist class were subservient to European capital.[7]
Instead, Trotsky argued, only the 'proletariat' or working class were capable of achieving the tasks of that 'bourgeois' revolution. The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole cannot take on this task, because it is a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire to landlordism 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.” [8]
Although only a small minority in Russian society, the proletariat would emancipate the peasantry and thus "secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on whose support it will rely.[9]
But the proletariat, in order to improve their own conditions, will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois and then the socialist revolutions.
Yet, according to classical Marxism, capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism, while a peasant based country such as Russia prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism. Trotsky argued that a new socialist state and economy would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world, as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy, unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well.
In 1905, Trotsky argues that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat.[10] In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time led the Military Revolutionary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison, carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote:
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 that day won 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, had called for "all power to the Soviets". Lenin nevertheless continued to emphasise however (as did Trotsky also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.[11]
But also before February 1917, Trotsky had not understood the importance of a Bolshevik style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out Trotsky now realised the importance of a Bolshevik organisation, and joined the Bolsheviks. Despite the fact that many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky says that without Lenin and the Bolshevik party the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.
As a result, since 1917 Trotskyism as a political theory is fully committed to a Leninist style of democratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not to be confused with the party organisation as it developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists (following Trotsky) argue that the degeneration of the Soviet Union (see below) led to the loss of democracy, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.
Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in western Europe in order that this socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. [12] This outlook matched precisely Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. 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. In 1917, Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was adopted by the Bolsheviks. [13]
In ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by Zinoviev and Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.[14] Orlando Figes argues that "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power."[15]
During 1922-24, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, Lenin had demanded that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956. [16] Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.[17]
In 1926, Stalin allied with Bukharin who then led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In ''The 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 by the party publishing house, Proletari, in 1923. In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, writing: "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." [18]
Trotsky wrote that the Left Opposition grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party. But in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:
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]".[19] He responded to the one sided civil war with his ''Letter 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 the Chinese revolution, and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers:
Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.[20] The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union.[21] Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey. He moved from there to Norway, and finally to Mexico.[22]
After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920's and 1930's, despite the "misleadership" of the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.[23] Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,[24] had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and even a fascist.
In 1937, Stalin again unleashed a political terror against the Left Opposition and many of the remaining 'Old Bolsheviks' (those who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.[25]
Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had become a "degenerated workers' state." Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalized industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, Trotskyists claim that the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary force.
Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from foreign powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to bring about his version of socialist democracy: "The bureaucracy can be removed only by a revolutionary force".[26] He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the "Stalinist" bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's Republic of China has also led to capitalist counter-revolution. Many of Trotsky's criticisms of Stalinism were described in his book, ''The Revolution Betrayed''.
"Trotskyist" has been used by "Stalinists" to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a "Trot," "Trotskyist" or "Trotskyite" by the USSR-supported elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or agent provocateur. For instance, George Orwell, a prominent Anti-Stalinist writer, wrote about this practice in his book ''Homage to Catalonia'' and in his essay ''Spilling the Spanish Beans''. In his book ''Animal Farm'', an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he represented Trotsky with the character "Snowball" and Stalin with the character "Napoleon." Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' has also been linked to Trotsky.
In 1937 Trotsky wrote:
Stalin put out a general call for the assassination of Trotsky, and he was finally killed with an ice axe in Mexico in 1940, by Ramon Mercader, a Spanish supporter of Stalin, under direct orders from the GPU.[27]
Main articles: Fourth International
In 1938, Trotsky and the organisations that supported his outlook established the Fourth International. He said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.
Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the Third Period policy of the Communist 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.
At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia. 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 made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.
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 no longer could be called a degenerated workers state and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries.
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International 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 for revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states." As the Cold War intensified, the FI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under pressure by 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 which were followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union 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 large numbers of people who did not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled the majority of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.
The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the 1963 reunification congress which established the reunified Fourth International, the French and British sections maintained the ICFI.
Trotskyism has had some influence in some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America. In particular, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing in of his cabinet two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007.[28]
The Bolivian Trotskyist party (''Partido Obrero Revolucionario'', POR) became a mass party in the period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and together with other groups played a central role during and immediately after the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.[29]
In Brazil, as an officially recognised platform or faction of the PT, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergência Socialista (CS), now the United Socialist Workers' Party saw a number of its members elected to national, state and local legislative bodies during the 1980s.[30] Today the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) is described as Trotskyist. Its presidential candidate in the 2006 general elections, Heloísa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was a member of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she helped found PSOL, in which various Trotskyist groups play a prominent role.
During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism), claimed to be the "largest Trotskyist party" in the world, before it broke into a number of different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-day MST. During the 1980s it obtained around 10% of the electorate, representing 3.5 million voters.. Today the Workers' Party in Argentina has an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, particularly in the city of Salta itself, and has become the third political force in the provinces of Tucuman, also in the north, and Santa Cruz, in the south.
In Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism led by Ta Thu Thau was a significant current, particularly in Saigon.[31]
In Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan Trotskyist party (LSSP) expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. In the general election of 1947 the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning 10 seats. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1950, and led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.[32][33]
In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties calling themselves Trotskyist.[34]
In the UK in the 1980s, the entrist Militant tendency won three members of parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council while in the Labour Party. Described as "Britain's fifth most important political party" in 1986[35] it lead the 1989-1991 mass anti-poll tax movement which was widely thought to have led to the downfall of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[36][37]
There are a wide range of Trotskyist organisations around the world. These include but are not limited to:
The reunified Fourth International derives from the 1963 reunification of the majorities of the two public factions into which the FI split in 1953: the ISFI and the ICFI. It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It is widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyist organisation. [1], [2], [3]. Its best known section is the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France.
In many countries its sections work within working class parties, and alliances, in which Trotskyists are a minority.
The CWI was founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated to the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the large social democratic parties. Since the early 1990s it has argued that most social democratic parties have moved so far to the right that there is little point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent parties, but in some cases working within other broad working-class parties.
The International Socialist Tendency, led by the Socialist Workers Party, the largest Trotskyist group in Britain .
In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the industrial proletariat.
The Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) split from CWI, when CWI abandoned entryism. Since 2006, it has been known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties. In Pakistan, the group has 3 MPs elected as candidates of the Pakistan People's Party. Leading figures in CMI/IMT are Ted Grant (who died in 2006) and Alan Woods.
There used to be several groups claiming the name of International Committee of the Fourth International, but now only two remain. Further, only one of these ICFIs has national groups in more than one country. Its sections are called Socialist Equality Parties and publish the World Socialist Web Site.
The list of Trotskyist internationals shows that there are a large number of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky. Some Trotskyist organisations are only organised in one country.
1. cf for instance, Trotsky, Leon, ''The Permanent Revoultion (1928) and Results and Prosects (1906)'', New Park Publications, London, (1962)
2. Trotsky, ''Revolution Betrayed'', 1936
3. ''What is Trotskyism'' (1973) Ernest Mandel
4. Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924'', p803, Pimlico (1997)
5. Trotsky, Leon, ''My Life'', p230 and 294, Penguin, Harmondsworth, (1971)
6. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', p 184, New Park publications (1962)
7. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', pp 174-7, New Park publications (1962)
8. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', p 204-5, New Park publications (1962)
9. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', p 204-5, New Park publications (1962). Trotsky adds that the revolution must raise the cultural and political consciousness of the peasantry.
10. Trotsky, Leon, ''1905'', Pelican books, (1971) p217 ff
11. "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 ''Economics and Politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat'', October 30, 1919, Collected works, Vol 30, p109
12. "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." Lenin, speaking at the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B), March 15, 1921, Collected works, Vol 32, p215.
13. Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p285, Penguin, (1966)
14. See also Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p 293, Penguin (1966)
15. Figes, Orlando, ''A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924'', p802, Pimlico (1997). Figes, at Birkbeck, University of London, is one of the UK's leading modern Russian historians
16. Lenin, Collected works, Vol 36, pp593-98: "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."
17. Trotsky, Leon, ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', pp89ff, Pathfinder (1971)
18. Trotsky, Leon, ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', pp78ff, Pathfinder (1971)
19. Trotsky, Leon, ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Foreword to the Russian edition, p xxxiii, Pathfinder (1971)
20. Serge, Victor, ''From Lenin to Stalin'', p70, Pathfinder, (1973)
21. Serge, Victor, ''From Lenin to Stalin'', p70 ff, Pathfinder, (1973)
22. Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p381, Pelican (1966)
23. Trotsky, Leon, ''Revolution Betrayed'', pp5 - 32 Pathfinder (1971)
24. "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" Lenin, 'How to organise competition', ''Collected Works'', Volume 26, p. 409
25. Rogovin, Vadim, ''1937: Stalin's Year of Terror'' Mehring Books, 1998, p374. Also see the chapter 'Trotskyists in the camps': "A new, young generation of Trotskyists had grown up in the Soviet Union...lots of them go to their deaths crying 'Long live Trotsky!' " Until this research became available after the fall of the Soviet Union, little was known about the strength of the Trotskyists within the Soviet Union.
26. Trotsky, Leon, ''Revolution Betrayed'', p288, Pathfinder (1971)
27. Isaac Don Levine, ''The Mind of an Assassin'', 1960, p.34. For an online account, see also 'Forty Years Since Leon Trotsky’s Assassination', ''Militant International Review'' Summer 1980 accessed online 20 June 2007
28. BBC News, ''Chavez accelerates on path to socialism'', Nathalie Malinarich, accessed online 19 June 2007
29. Alexander, Robert J., ''International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement'', Duke University Press (1991)
30. History of the PSTU
31. Richardson, A.(Ed.), ''The Revolution Defamed: A documentary history of Vietnamese Trotskyism'', Socialist Platform Ltd (2003)
32. Y. Ranjith Amarasinghe, ''Revolutionary Idealism & Parliamentary Politics - A Study Of Trotskyism In Sri Lanka'', Colombo (1998)
33. Leslie Goonewardena, ''A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party'' accessed online June 19 2007
34. The combined Trotskyist vote was 2,973,600 (10.44%) compared to 1,616,546 (5.3%) in 1995
35. Crick, Michael, ''The March of Militant'', p2
36. BBC 'On this day' retrospective is "1990: One in five yet to pay poll tax"
37. Margaret Thatcher, ''The Downing Street Years'' (1993) pp848-9
★ Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line
★ The Leon Trotsky Internet archive, containing a large number of Trotsky's written works
★ The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet, dealing with Leon Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists
★ World Socialist Website Website of the ICFI, principally the American and German sections.
'Trotskyism' is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. His politics differed sharply from those of Stalinism, most importantly in declaring the need for an international "permanent revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist, although they have diverse interpretations of Trotsky's writings.
Probably the consensus English term for adherents is 'Trotskyist'. "Trotskyite" and more recently "Trot" (the latter particularly in Britain and Canada) are used pejoratively.
Definition
James P. Cannon in his 1942 book ''History of American Trotskyism'' wrote that "Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International." However, Trotskyism can be distinguished from other Marxist theories by four key elements.
★ Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the Two Stage Theory of his opponents,[1]
★ Criticism of the post 1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its features [2]and after 1933, support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers' states,
★ Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action
★ support for proletarian internationalism.[3]
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR,[4] opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East.
Origins of Trotskyism and the 1905 Russian Revolution
According to Trotsky, the term 'Trotskyism' was coined by Pavel Milyukov, (sometimes transliterated as 'Paul Miliukoff'), the ideological leader of the Constitutional Democratic party (Kadets) in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against 'Trotskyism' "as early as 1905", Trotsky argues.[5]
Trotsky was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet during the 1905 Russian Revolution. He pursued a policy of proletarian revolution at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state. It was during this year that Trotsky developed the theory of Permanent 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:
Milyukov suggests that the "democratic public" supported 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 elected workers' councils or "soviets".
Theory of Permanent Revolution
Trotsky with troops at the Polish front, during the Polish-Soviet War, 1919
Main articles: Permanent Revolution
In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the Trotskyist theory of Permanent Revolution. It may be considered one of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxists had only shown how a revolution in a European capitalist society could lead to a socialist one. But this excluded countries such as Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a capitalist society, but was instead largely feudal with a small, weak and powerless capitalist class.
The theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites.
Revolutions in Britain in the 17th Century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism, establishing the basic requisites for the development of capitalism. But Trotsky argues that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia. In ''Results and Prospects'', written in 1906, in which Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, he argues: "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."[6] In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what Marxists called a “bourgeois-democratic revolution” – a regime was established where the bourgeoisie overthrew feudalism and ruled though certain democratic parliamentary institutions (although not necessarily instituting universal franchise).
But, Trotsky argues, countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role. In fact, even by the time of the European revolutions of 1848, Trotsky argued, "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."
The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries today which are thought to have not yet completed their bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class oppose the creation of any revolutionary situation, in the first instance because they fear stirring the working class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism. The working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class, in large working class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905 the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially feudal landlords and ultimately the existing Czarist Russian state forces, in order to protect their ownership of their property, in the form of the factories, banks, and so forth, from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.
According to the theory of Permanent Revolution, therefore, in economically backward countries the capitalist class are weak and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. Trotsky further argues that since a majority of branches of industry in Russia were originated under the direct influence of government measures, sometimes even with the help of Government subsidies, the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. In addition, the capitalist class were subservient to European capital.[7]
Instead, Trotsky argued, only the 'proletariat' or working class were capable of achieving the tasks of that 'bourgeois' revolution. The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole cannot take on this task, because it is a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire to landlordism 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.” [8]
Although only a small minority in Russian society, the proletariat would emancipate the peasantry and thus "secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on whose support it will rely.[9]
But the proletariat, in order to improve their own conditions, will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois and then the socialist revolutions.
Yet, according to classical Marxism, capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism, while a peasant based country such as Russia prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism. Trotsky argued that a new socialist state and economy would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world, as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy, unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well.
Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution
In 1905, Trotsky argues that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat.[10] In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time led the Military Revolutionary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison, carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote:
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 that day won 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, had called for "all power to the Soviets". Lenin nevertheless continued to emphasise however (as did Trotsky also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.[11]
But also before February 1917, Trotsky had not understood the importance of a Bolshevik style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out Trotsky now realised the importance of a Bolshevik organisation, and joined the Bolsheviks. Despite the fact that many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky says that without Lenin and the Bolshevik party the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.
As a result, since 1917 Trotskyism as a political theory is fully committed to a Leninist style of democratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not to be confused with the party organisation as it developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists (following Trotsky) argue that the degeneration of the Soviet Union (see below) led to the loss of democracy, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.
Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in western Europe in order that this socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. [12] This outlook matched precisely Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. 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. In 1917, Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was adopted by the Bolsheviks. [13]
The 'legend of Trotskyism'
In ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by Zinoviev and Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.[14] Orlando Figes argues that "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power."[15]
During 1922-24, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, Lenin had demanded that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956. [16] Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.[17]
In 1926, Stalin allied with Bukharin who then led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In ''The 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 by the party publishing house, Proletari, in 1923. In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, writing: "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." [18]
Trotsky wrote that the Left Opposition grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party. But in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:
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]".[19] He responded to the one sided civil war with his ''Letter 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 the Chinese revolution, and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers:
Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.[20] The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union.[21] Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey. He moved from there to Norway, and finally to Mexico.[22]
After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920's and 1930's, despite the "misleadership" of the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.[23] Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,[24] had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and even a fascist.
In 1937, Stalin again unleashed a political terror against the Left Opposition and many of the remaining 'Old Bolsheviks' (those who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.[25]
Degenerated workers' state
Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had become a "degenerated workers' state." Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalized industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, Trotskyists claim that the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary force.
Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from foreign powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to bring about his version of socialist democracy: "The bureaucracy can be removed only by a revolutionary force".[26] He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the "Stalinist" bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's Republic of China has also led to capitalist counter-revolution. Many of Trotsky's criticisms of Stalinism were described in his book, ''The Revolution Betrayed''.
"Trotskyist" has been used by "Stalinists" to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a "Trot," "Trotskyist" or "Trotskyite" by the USSR-supported elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or agent provocateur. For instance, George Orwell, a prominent Anti-Stalinist writer, wrote about this practice in his book ''Homage to Catalonia'' and in his essay ''Spilling the Spanish Beans''. In his book ''Animal Farm'', an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he represented Trotsky with the character "Snowball" and Stalin with the character "Napoleon." Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' has also been linked to Trotsky.
In 1937 Trotsky wrote:
Stalin put out a general call for the assassination of Trotsky, and he was finally killed with an ice axe in Mexico in 1940, by Ramon Mercader, a Spanish supporter of Stalin, under direct orders from the GPU.[27]
Founding of the Fourth International
Main articles: Fourth International
In 1938, Trotsky and the organisations that supported his outlook established the Fourth International. He said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.
Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the Third Period policy of the Communist 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.
At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia. 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 made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.
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 no longer could be called a degenerated workers state and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries.
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International 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 for revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states." As the Cold War intensified, the FI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under pressure by 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 which were followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union 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 large numbers of people who did not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled the majority of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.
The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the 1963 reunification congress which established the reunified Fourth International, the French and British sections maintained the ICFI.
Trotskyist movements
Graffiti in the Basque Country: James P. Cannon, founder of American Trotskyism.
Latin America
Trotskyism has had some influence in some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America. In particular, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing in of his cabinet two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007.[28]
The Bolivian Trotskyist party (''Partido Obrero Revolucionario'', POR) became a mass party in the period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and together with other groups played a central role during and immediately after the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.[29]
In Brazil, as an officially recognised platform or faction of the PT, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergência Socialista (CS), now the United Socialist Workers' Party saw a number of its members elected to national, state and local legislative bodies during the 1980s.[30] Today the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) is described as Trotskyist. Its presidential candidate in the 2006 general elections, Heloísa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was a member of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she helped found PSOL, in which various Trotskyist groups play a prominent role.
During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism), claimed to be the "largest Trotskyist party" in the world, before it broke into a number of different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-day MST. During the 1980s it obtained around 10% of the electorate, representing 3.5 million voters.. Today the Workers' Party in Argentina has an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, particularly in the city of Salta itself, and has become the third political force in the provinces of Tucuman, also in the north, and Santa Cruz, in the south.
Asia
In Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism led by Ta Thu Thau was a significant current, particularly in Saigon.[31]
In Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan Trotskyist party (LSSP) expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. In the general election of 1947 the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning 10 seats. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1950, and led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.[32][33]
Europe
In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties calling themselves Trotskyist.[34]
In the UK in the 1980s, the entrist Militant tendency won three members of parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council while in the Labour Party. Described as "Britain's fifth most important political party" in 1986[35] it lead the 1989-1991 mass anti-poll tax movement which was widely thought to have led to the downfall of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[36][37]
Trotskyism Today
There are a wide range of Trotskyist organisations around the world. These include but are not limited to:
The reunified Fourth International
The reunified Fourth International derives from the 1963 reunification of the majorities of the two public factions into which the FI split in 1953: the ISFI and the ICFI. It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It is widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyist organisation. [1], [2], [3]. Its best known section is the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France.
In many countries its sections work within working class parties, and alliances, in which Trotskyists are a minority.
Committee for a Workers' International
The CWI was founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated to the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the large social democratic parties. Since the early 1990s it has argued that most social democratic parties have moved so far to the right that there is little point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent parties, but in some cases working within other broad working-class parties.
International Socialist Tendency
The International Socialist Tendency, led by the Socialist Workers Party, the largest Trotskyist group in Britain .
Internationalist Communist Union
In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the industrial proletariat.
International Marxist Tendency
The Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) split from CWI, when CWI abandoned entryism. Since 2006, it has been known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties. In Pakistan, the group has 3 MPs elected as candidates of the Pakistan People's Party. Leading figures in CMI/IMT are Ted Grant (who died in 2006) and Alan Woods.
International Committee of the Fourth International
There used to be several groups claiming the name of International Committee of the Fourth International, but now only two remain. Further, only one of these ICFIs has national groups in more than one country. Its sections are called Socialist Equality Parties and publish the World Socialist Web Site.
Others
The list of Trotskyist internationals shows that there are a large number of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky. Some Trotskyist organisations are only organised in one country.
References
1. cf for instance, Trotsky, Leon, ''The Permanent Revoultion (1928) and Results and Prosects (1906)'', New Park Publications, London, (1962)
2. Trotsky, ''Revolution Betrayed'', 1936
3. ''What is Trotskyism'' (1973) Ernest Mandel
4. Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924'', p803, Pimlico (1997)
5. Trotsky, Leon, ''My Life'', p230 and 294, Penguin, Harmondsworth, (1971)
6. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', p 184, New Park publications (1962)
7. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', pp 174-7, New Park publications (1962)
8. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', p 204-5, New Park publications (1962)
9. Trotsky, Leon, ''Results and Prospects'', p 204-5, New Park publications (1962). Trotsky adds that the revolution must raise the cultural and political consciousness of the peasantry.
10. Trotsky, Leon, ''1905'', Pelican books, (1971) p217 ff
11. "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 ''Economics and Politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat'', October 30, 1919, Collected works, Vol 30, p109
12. "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." Lenin, speaking at the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B), March 15, 1921, Collected works, Vol 32, p215.
13. Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p285, Penguin, (1966)
14. See also Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p 293, Penguin (1966)
15. Figes, Orlando, ''A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924'', p802, Pimlico (1997). Figes, at Birkbeck, University of London, is one of the UK's leading modern Russian historians
16. Lenin, Collected works, Vol 36, pp593-98: "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."
17. Trotsky, Leon, ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', pp89ff, Pathfinder (1971)
18. Trotsky, Leon, ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', pp78ff, Pathfinder (1971)
19. Trotsky, Leon, ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Foreword to the Russian edition, p xxxiii, Pathfinder (1971)
20. Serge, Victor, ''From Lenin to Stalin'', p70, Pathfinder, (1973)
21. Serge, Victor, ''From Lenin to Stalin'', p70 ff, Pathfinder, (1973)
22. Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p381, Pelican (1966)
23. Trotsky, Leon, ''Revolution Betrayed'', pp5 - 32 Pathfinder (1971)
24. "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" Lenin, 'How to organise competition', ''Collected Works'', Volume 26, p. 409
25. Rogovin, Vadim, ''1937: Stalin's Year of Terror'' Mehring Books, 1998, p374. Also see the chapter 'Trotskyists in the camps': "A new, young generation of Trotskyists had grown up in the Soviet Union...lots of them go to their deaths crying 'Long live Trotsky!' " Until this research became available after the fall of the Soviet Union, little was known about the strength of the Trotskyists within the Soviet Union.
26. Trotsky, Leon, ''Revolution Betrayed'', p288, Pathfinder (1971)
27. Isaac Don Levine, ''The Mind of an Assassin'', 1960, p.34. For an online account, see also 'Forty Years Since Leon Trotsky’s Assassination', ''Militant International Review'' Summer 1980 accessed online 20 June 2007
28. BBC News, ''Chavez accelerates on path to socialism'', Nathalie Malinarich, accessed online 19 June 2007
29. Alexander, Robert J., ''International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement'', Duke University Press (1991)
30. History of the PSTU
31. Richardson, A.(Ed.), ''The Revolution Defamed: A documentary history of Vietnamese Trotskyism'', Socialist Platform Ltd (2003)
32. Y. Ranjith Amarasinghe, ''Revolutionary Idealism & Parliamentary Politics - A Study Of Trotskyism In Sri Lanka'', Colombo (1998)
33. Leslie Goonewardena, ''A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party'' accessed online June 19 2007
34. The combined Trotskyist vote was 2,973,600 (10.44%) compared to 1,616,546 (5.3%) in 1995
35. Crick, Michael, ''The March of Militant'', p2
36. BBC 'On this day' retrospective is "1990: One in five yet to pay poll tax"
37. Margaret Thatcher, ''The Downing Street Years'' (1993) pp848-9
External links
★ Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line
★ The Leon Trotsky Internet archive, containing a large number of Trotsky's written works
★ The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet, dealing with Leon Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists
★ World Socialist Website Website of the ICFI, principally the American and German sections.
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
