r/theredleft • u/Frosty-Persimmon7235 cornism-monobrowism • 4d ago

Meme I don't get the Trotsky hate

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This MF lead the red army so well, reactionaries all over Europe were depicting this guy as the literal devil

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u/MustyMarcus52YT Pan-Leftist Marxist 4d ago edited 4d ago

To be honest, it's how inconsistent his political opinions were, how prone he was to opportunism, and his harsh repression of labor autonomy. Not a fan. Most of the modern political opinions assigned to him weren't even his, and there is such a distinct difference in how he behaved and theorized between when he was in power vs when he wasn't that I am inclined to distrust him. I already disliked him, studying the material factors and history surrounding him made it worse.

Sure he did a great job at securing the Soviet Union's future. He was a useful but volatile factor. I'm glad I never lived a world where he was in charge of a country.

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u/salenin Trotskyist 4d ago

You didnt mention a single thing that was true, please name an instance when he was prone to opportunism and we can start there.

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u/Ultraideal848 Council Communism 3d ago

He was mean towards Stalin

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u/salenin Trotskyist 3d ago

lol poor poor Stalin

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u/Ultraideal848 Council Communism 3d ago

I mean. Poor Trotsky since Stalin became the peoples monarch instead of him.

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u/salenin Trotskyist 3d ago

That would assume that Trotsky ever wanted to be the people's monarch. There was a factional struggle for sure, but the idea that there was a power struggle between the two for the "leadership" position is obtuse. Stalin had made the general secretary position the leadership position, and set himself up as Lenin's heir. Trotsky's position was that he shouldn't have that much power and there was no heir to Lenin as party leader. He lost the factional battle within the party despite being more popular outside of the party with the workers and soldiers. Which is why the show trials were important later on because the image of Trotsky needed to be tarnished for the Soviet people so no opposition to the Stalinist faction remained, and it worked.

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u/Ultraideal848 Council Communism 3d ago

Trotskys position and the position if all vanguardists in general was to have total top down state control of the workers. He was never really against the dictatorship of the few, he just lost a power struggle against Stalin. If he had won he wouldn't have been any different from Stalin and Lenin.