The Working Class Revolution (WCR) Forums v3.0

Just thought I would make one since Stalin has recieved the honour of having his own thread. As a Trotskyist I see his ideas as the correct continuation of Marxism-Leninism. His theory of Permanent Revolution may have benefitted the Soviet Union as there would have been other Socialist countries to aid in their development. He also created the Red Army without any previous military experience. Impressive! Seems his criticisms about the Soviet Union's bureaucracy were correct too. Please discuss.

I'm a bit unhappy how Trotsky wanted the USSR to fall. But ironically a couple months before he begins to disown the USSR in 1933, he asks to rejoin the Politburo in a secret letter.

(27-07-2009 09:37 AM)Tom Wrote: [ -> ]I'm a bit unhappy how Trotsky wanted the USSR to fall. But ironically a couple months before he begins to disown the USSR in 1933, he asks to rejoin the Politburo in a secret letter.

I don't think he wanted the USSR itself to fall, but rather the bureaucracy. This was one of his big criticisms in The Revolution Betrayed. Also, of course he couldn't rejoin the Politburo. Stalin wouldn't let him. That traitor.

(27-07-2009 03:23 PM)Permanent Revolution Wrote: [ -> ]

(27-07-2009 09:37 AM)Tom Wrote: [ -> ]I'm a bit unhappy how Trotsky wanted the USSR to fall. But ironically a couple months before he begins to disown the USSR in 1933, he asks to rejoin the Politburo in a secret letter.

I don't think he wanted the USSR itself to fall, but rather the bureaucracy. This was one of his big criticisms in The Revolution Betrayed. Also, of course he couldn't rejoin the Politburo. Stalin wouldn't let him. That traitor.

Or maybe because Stalin knew that he would diss the USSR a couple months later ironically? I'm sure if he was given his way he wouldn't have said what he said in 1933. Opportunist much?

(27-07-2009 07:08 PM)Tom Wrote: [ -> ]

(27-07-2009 03:23 PM)Permanent Revolution Wrote: [ -> ]

(27-07-2009 09:37 AM)Tom Wrote: [ -> ]I'm a bit unhappy how Trotsky wanted the USSR to fall. But ironically a couple months before he begins to disown the USSR in 1933, he asks to rejoin the Politburo in a secret letter.

I don't think he wanted the USSR itself to fall, but rather the bureaucracy. This was one of his big criticisms in The Revolution Betrayed. Also, of course he couldn't rejoin the Politburo. Stalin wouldn't let him. That traitor.

Or maybe because Stalin knew that he would diss the USSR a couple months later ironically? I'm sure if he was given his way he wouldn't have said what he said in 1933. Opportunist much?

Yep, considering he went and wrote stuff that was Anti-USSR. He was already considered a traitor by then when really Stalin was a traitor to the working class, considering he took alot of power away from the workers in favour of the party bureaucracy.

Stalin made some major mistakes (Due to his alienation from the proletariat), but we mustn't forget his merits: He united the USSR, he repelled Hitler and he continued the industrialisation that Comrade Lenin started.

(28-07-2009 04:49 PM)Permanent Revolution Wrote: [ -> ]

(27-07-2009 07:08 PM)Tom Wrote: [ -> ]

(27-07-2009 03:23 PM)Permanent Revolution Wrote: [ -> ]

(27-07-2009 09:37 AM)Tom Wrote: [ -> ]I'm a bit unhappy how Trotsky wanted the USSR to fall. But ironically a couple months before he begins to disown the USSR in 1933, he asks to rejoin the Politburo in a secret letter.

I don't think he wanted the USSR itself to fall, but rather the bureaucracy. This was one of his big criticisms in The Revolution Betrayed. Also, of course he couldn't rejoin the Politburo. Stalin wouldn't let him. That traitor.

Or maybe because Stalin knew that he would diss the USSR a couple months later ironically? I'm sure if he was given his way he wouldn't have said what he said in 1933. Opportunist much?

Yep, considering he went and wrote stuff that was Anti-USSR. He was already considered a traitor by then when really Stalin was a traitor to the working class, considering he took alot of power away from the workers in favour of the party bureaucracy.

This pitiful sectarian squabbling is one of the big reasons I abandoned "Marxism-Leninism" a long time ago; more especially because it's a hypocritical contest of personality cults.

Quote:I don't think he wanted the USSR itself to fall, but rather the bureaucracy. This was one of his big criticisms in The Revolution Betrayed. Also, of course he couldn't rejoin the Politburo. Stalin wouldn't let him. That traitor.

The above is quite true; Trotsky saw the bureaucracy as problematic, and advocated as far as the complete revolutionary overthrow of the USSR if it meant the fall of the bureaucracy and a most assured victory of the proletariat, in his words, I believe. However, I'm sure he would've been happier with an internal undoing of the bureaucracy and a reconstitution of the USSR as it once was, or closer to it, anyways. Stalin kicked him out for a reason; he was a threat to his aspiring Premiership, and if Trotsky ever found his way back to the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule, he would probably have been tried for treason and executed, or, more simply, summarily executed, as he was by a Stalinist agent in Mexico in 1940.

Quote:Or maybe because Stalin knew that he would diss the USSR a couple months later ironically? I'm sure if he was given his way he wouldn't have said what he said in 1933. Opportunist much?

This is pure Stalinist taunting with an infantile twist; Trotsky became critical of the rising bureaucracy, which he was part of, just as soon as his influence and power over that bureaucracy started waning, all the way up until he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1928; permanently cast away from any form of political power for the rest of his days. I'm sure he would've continued to criticize the bureaucracy had he been repatriated to the Soviet Union in 1933, although if given a very cushy and powerful position in the bureacracy, I'm sure he would've kept his big yap shut, like he did in his crony days with Lenin, and possibly even renounced his former criticisms of the Soviet Union. If he was repatriated but given negligible influence, or even no power whatsoever, he probably would've continued his criticism, but with considerably more caution than before, for obvious reasons.

Quote:Yep, considering he went and wrote stuff that was Anti-USSR. He was already considered a traitor by then when really Stalin was a traitor to the working class, considering he took alot of power away from the workers in favour of the party bureaucracy.

Trotsky and Lenin effectively destroyed workers' control over the soviets together at the latest by the founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. They had already started gerrymandering and packing the soviets with yes-men as early as 1918; effectively rendering them a rubber-stamp of the Russian Communist Party [Bolshevik] and conceiving the rising bureaucracy. The last formalities of this Trotskyist charade of "soviet power and democracy" were finally completely annihilated by the Soviet Constitution of 1936. Lenin and Trotsky started it, and Stalin finished it. But of course; even Trotskyists like PermRev like to believe that Trotsky and Lenin were the great heroes and protectors of the working class, who never ever sought indulgences of power for themselves or the bureaucracy and gave everything they had for the workers. Yet, they blame Stalin for a deformed workers' state, but are still generous enough to grant that "Stalin's" Soviet Union had only taken a lot of power away from the workers for the bureaucracy, in spite of the fact that it's clear that any pretense of workers' control which the Trots pretend to in the Soviet Union pre-1928 had been totally annihilated thanks to the aforementioned Constitution of 1936.

Is that to say they alone are the culprits of the bureaucratic counterrevolution? Hell no; the real culprits were the remnants of the petty bourgeoisie which reconstituted itself as a new leading social class in the Soviet Union, all thanks to the endearing encouragement of the Bolsheviks. Which was all happily excused by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin in succession with their revised theories of Marxian class analysis, which proudly proclaimed the petty bourgeoisie to be a reliable ally with no coherent or inherent class interests, capable of leading the proletariat to classless relations of production. A goal which was never achieved in over seventy years of leadership by an exploitative social class, which eventually scrapped the whole gamut and parceled out all of its capital to themselves, now collectively known as oligarchs, who are now billionaires in a new, neoliberal Russia. What were the odds of that? Who knew a reactionary social class would turn so violently upon a newly rising revolutionary social class with conflicting interests in so short a space of time? Who knew it would mean the squandering of all the fruits of the labors of an historically significant revolutionary movement? Who knew??? Don't act so surprised; they all rubbed elbows together and called each other comrade in 1918.

And if you want proof; be my guest:

On the Lessons of the USSR Experience

The Bolsheviks and Workers Control

But this whole Trotsky-Stalin feud is a wretched two-headed coin; pointing the finger all the time, calling each other opportunists and counterrevolutionaries, revisionists and traitors; but if they'd all just point those fingers at themselves, they'd start hitting the mark. This is all just a childish battle of idols, and it's the sorta thing that I'd expect from RevLeft. So quit transplanting these pointless flame wars therefrom, coz I'll tell you this much; I don't care for it one bit, and I'm sure I'm not alone, so if this thread or future threads like this are as pointlessly divisive as the exchange quoted above, I'll start talking to the mods about closing these threads altogether; coz it's all just an eyesore and nothing more.

Left Opposition leaders in 1927 not long since their expulsion from Moscow. Seating, from left to right: L. Serebriakov, K. Radek, L. Trotsky, M. Bogulslavsky and E. Preobrazhensky; standing: Kh. Rakovsky, Ya. Drobnis, A. Beloborodov and L. Sosnovsky.