I love it when other leftists offer criticism. It makes the movement stronger, not weaker, by allowing us to root out wrong ideas or approaches. “Ruthless criticism of everything that exists,” as Marx said.
The problem I have with Trots is that they are incredibly obstinate about criticisms that make no fucking sense. For example, the chief Trotskyist criticism of the USSR is the whole “permanent revolution” thing, the idea of expanding the revolution globally. What that actually means is a permanent state of warfare with every other country on earth. Because supporting a revolution in another country’s borders is a violation of their sovereignty.
This is a completely impractical and self-destructive approach to foreign policy, and to the extent that the USSR did try to expand communism to other countries, for example, in Afghanistan, it is rightfully criticized for it. But Trots will simultaneously criticize the USSR for things like invading Afghanistan and critize it for not being expansionist enough!
They’re just contrarians for the sake of it. It’s impossible to know what the Trotskyist position on anything is going to be unless you know the Soviet position, in which case you know it’ll be the opposite. There’s no actual reasoning beyond that.
I love it when other leftists offer criticism. It makes the movement stronger, not weaker, by allowing us to root out wrong ideas or approaches. “Ruthless criticism of everything that exists,” as Marx said.
The problem I have with Trots is that they are incredibly obstinate about criticisms that make no fucking sense. For example, the chief Trotskyist criticism of the USSR is the whole “permanent revolution” thing, the idea of expanding the revolution globally. What that actually means is a permanent state of warfare with every other country on earth. Because supporting a revolution in another country’s borders is a violation of their sovereignty.
This is a completely impractical and self-destructive approach to foreign policy, and to the extent that the USSR did try to expand communism to other countries, for example, in Afghanistan, it is rightfully criticized for it. But Trots will simultaneously criticize the USSR for things like invading Afghanistan and critize it for not being expansionist enough!
They’re just contrarians for the sake of it. It’s impossible to know what the Trotskyist position on anything is going to be unless you know the Soviet position, in which case you know it’ll be the opposite. There’s no actual reasoning beyond that.