Rev Left Radio - Trotskyism: The Red Army, Permanent Revolution, and the Left Opposition

Episode Date: December 27, 2017

Gabriel Radic is an organizer, student, boxer, and Trotskyist. He helped co-found the Colorado Springs Socialists organization. Gabe sits down with Brett to discuss Leon Trotsky's history and philosophy.  Topics Include: the Bolshevik Revolution, Permanent Revolution, Fascism, the Deformed Worker's State, Stalin and "Stalinism", Kronstadt, the Russian Civil War,  and much more.   Our Outro music by Sole. You can listen to, and support, his music here: https://sole.bandcamp.com/album/sole-dj-pain-1-nihilismo Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo. You can listen and support their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/track/red-black This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition and Omaha GDC 

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Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Anne Comrade Brett O'Shea, and today we have on Gabe Paul Sick from the Colorado Spring Socialist to do an episode about Trotskyism. So Gabe, would you like to introduce yourself and say a bit about your background? Sure.

So, yeah, my name's Gabe. I've lived in Colorado for the last 17 years. I'm currently a student at UCCS. political science and history and minoring in economics. I'm a organizer of local socialists. We have about 50 members. I mean, we'll get into it later, but I've just been focusing on my own education and once or one day become either a journalist or professor or author books

and hopefully be involved in an actual revolution. So we'll see how that happens. Yeah, and it's actually a funny story. And we're going to kind of get into it here. I actually went to Colorado over, I think it was early October. I met up with Soul from SoulCast in Denver, and then I went to Colorado Springs, and that's where I actually met up with Gabe and the Colorado Springs Socialist Organization. It was a blast of a time, really good comrades.

We had really in-depth, interesting conversations. It was really, really fun, and that's where I actually met Gabe face-to-face, and so it's kind of cool. This is coming full circle, and you're finally on the show. Definitely, man. I'm glad to be on the show. Yeah, that was fun having you over. We bullshit it for a good five hours about revolutionary politics.

There were some really good craft years. I think we were like we basically took over the front porch of this brewery and we were just talking loud as fuck. If anybody didn't want to hear revolutionary shit being chirped at them, they'd have to go inside. Basically, yeah. But I was going to ask you, if you want to talk about the Colorado Spring Socialist, what you've been up to, anything about it, I think it's worth noting.

So go ahead and talk about it. Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I only moved to Carter Springs myself about a year and a half ago. And at the beginning of last fall, so fall of 2016, I started a Marxist, because I couldn't find any organized socialist presence in Carter Springs. It grew to, I mean, we started off with about four or five people who would just meet in my apartment and, you know, drink beer and talk about, you know, really basic Marxist texts. Eventually, it grew to about 12 people by the end of the year. And so this last year, 2017, we've just been working on baseball, building, and working with organizations in the area. We're currently at about 50 members, including our branch in Pueblo. We succeeded in starting another group in Pueblo. And our main goals are basically just to help the community in small ways or educating people

with documentary screenings or panel lectures and then increasing class consciousness and class warfare in Carver Springs by the systematic distribution of agitational literature. So it's been a ride. We've had some ups and downs for sure, but I'm really glad it's happening and we have some great comrades here

who are very dedicated. It kind of mirrors in interesting ways what we're doing here in Omaha with the Nebraska Left Coalition. We've recently opened up a second chapter in Lincoln and it was actually through Nebraska Left Coalition that Colorado Springs Socialists came to know about us

and make communication and from there we actually I went out there to meet you guys so it's very interesting that you have two chapters we have two chapters we're kind of I think Omaha and Colorado Springs

are like 41st and 42nd biggest cities in America so they mirror each other in size something like that I could be a little off but it's close well yeah I know I just know that in the West

there's like a huge lack of organized socialist presence Like in my research, I haven't been able to find anything in North South Dakota, Minnesota, Idaho, Wyoming. So the fact that you've been able to penetrate, you know, Nebraska, my hat's off to you because I know it's not easy to organize in these conditions. Yeah, it's difficult. And if anybody lives in those states that Gaye mentioned and you want to get something going or you just want some tips or anything, reach out to us or reach out to Colorado Spring Socialist, there's lots of comrades here that are willing to give tips as far as organizing in small to medium-sized cities. Absolutely. So let's go ahead and dive into the topic at hand, which is.

Trotsky and Trotskyism. Before we dive into the theory, can you maybe please let listeners know who Trotsky was and what role he played in the Bolshevik Revolution? So he was born in Ukraine in, I believe, 1879. He lived in a very rural area about, I mean, his nearest post office was 15 miles away. He was eventually sent to Odessa, became a revolutionary at around age of 18, and was very precocious, a huge breeder. and writer immersed himself in revolutionary activity from the get-go.

And, you know, he was arrested for his, you know, revolutionary activity. At a very young age, spent two years waiting for a trial. The trial happened, spent two more years in exile in Siberia. You know, he honed his mind during this period of imprisonment. There's this most deaf lyric that says, getting knowledge into jail like a blessing in disguise, and he certainly did that. eventually he was convinced by his wife at the time

to escape exile and so through train sledden ship with the Iliad in one hand and his passport and the other he finally reached London and it was during this time that he took up the name Trotsky which was the name of one of his jailers so he eventually joined the Iskra editorial staff

he had been reading Winnon and Plectknot and all these you know great marks writers and was finally able to meet up with them in London, where a group of exiled Russian Marxists were working on the editorial staff of ISCRO, which means the Spark, which was just the Marxist newspaper. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party second Congress happened in London, and I believe in 2003. And they were all basically trying to find the others, which is something we neglect today.

And that's where the party split into Menshevik and Bolshevik. You know, he kept traveling around Europe and stuff, and came back from the 19th Revolution. He became the leader of lives, so he's very young. And, you know, he was arrested alongside the other Soviet leaders. The organization collapsed, and eventually, you know, he basically spent the next 10 years, actually, traveling throughout Europe and America. He was exiled from Brantz and Spain, wrote some really good texts during this period. and an outbreak of the February Revolution of 1917, we can skip to that.

He came back. He was intercepted in Canada, but was released. Yeah, he, you know, took, I mean, he was like one of the major figures of the revolution. So right before the revolution happened in August, in 1917, he rejoined the Bolshevik parties. And Lennon said that from that time on there had been no better Bolshevik when Trotsky finally decided to join the Bolsheviks. He always considered Lenin as a teacher and considered himself when a student. So I think that's something interesting about the man. The revolution happened, obviously, and she was one of the most vocal proponents of the uprising in St. Petersburg, the initial seizure of power.

Which occurred on his birthday, incidentally. He didn't even realize that until three years later, which I thought was funny. He was elected to the Politburo of the Soviet government, which was the leading executive body. and considered, you know, high-ranking Bolshevik from that time on. He became the people's commissor of foreign affairs of the Russian Socialist Federalist Socialist Republic, which was what the Soviet Union was

before it became the Soviet Union. And then eventually resigned from that post during the Treaty of Greslovod's during the Russian Civil War. In the Civil War, he was, you know, the founder and leader of the Red Army. From almost nothing, he created an army of mostly peasants, he united and disciplined this army, maintained its cohesion and morale

with any large measures of repression, and recruited and used, and this is really interesting, tens of thousands of ex-sars officers, including over a thousand generals who would lead the army until red commanders were available, which are, you know, communist well-versed and art of war. But Lenin fully supported Trotsky's centralized approach during this period. I mean, he recognized that the White Army was a massive force and took appropriate measures. I mean, he defeated basically a 14-nation army and was largely responsible for leading that effort during the Civil War. You know, he was even, he was pretty lenient about deserters and stuff during this time, too, which played a big role and I think the success of his, you know, leading the Civil War, I mean,

he treated them generously and the aim was to reintegrate them into the Red Army and nine out of ten times a swirts. So a lot of people accused Trotsky of being like a, you know, really ruthless guy, but he was just more strategic than anything. And eventually, you know, after the Civil War was over, he created this concept of a proletariat-led civil, or a proletariat-led Red Army that would favor proletarian militia, including the election of commanders and stuff. But, yeah, I mean, he was a major figure in the civil war. Yeah, and I think that's one thing that a lot of people don't quite understand is just how many coalitions came together to form the white army

that the Red Army and the Russian Civil War had to fight. You had everything from liberals to socialists who were not a part of the Bolsheviks to monarchists and fascists almost. So you had this wide array of coalitions that formed the White Army and Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Red Army that actually, in my opinion, overcame a lot of odds to crush the opposition and usher in the Bolshevik revolution

and kind of kept it there. So I think that's interesting, and I also think there's an interesting parallel between Che Guevara and Trotsky in that they both kind of had similar positions in their respective armies and their respective revolutions as far as leading groups of fighters into battle.

So it's not a person. parallel, but I think it's interesting. Let's go ahead and move on because I think this next topic is one that is very controversial and one that people get up and arms up about still to this day, which is Kronstadt. So in your opinion, what happened in Kronstadt and what was Trotsky's role in it? For sure. So Kronstadt was an uprising of sailors and I think it was spring of 1921 towards the end of the Russian Civil War. And basically, Trotsky being the head of the Red Army at the time is held as, you know, being responsible for the crushing of the Star Rising against the Bolsheviks.

These sailors were some of the main supporters of the Bolshek uprising during 1917 and were critical in seizing power. They're located on a naval base that's about 30 miles away from St. Petersburg. So, you know, their geographic vicinity to, like, one of the main, you know, cities in the Russian Empire was absolutely crucial. And as it was during the Civil War, the reasons that they rose up are contentious. A lot of, not a lot, but there are some historians that say that there was foreign influence occurring in the White Army at the time. But I think it was a very response to what they saw as anti-democratic moves on the party. of the Bolshevik army due to the, you know, crackdown on political pluralism in the wake of the

civil war. So, yeah, it was definitely a messy thing. It's something that's been long debated by a Leninist and, you know, anarchists and Trotskyists of all sorts. Emma Goldman, you know, is one of the more vocal critics and says that, like, you know, Trotsky's crushing of the Kronstadt revolt makes all his criticisms of Stalinism very hypocritical. And certainly, you know, it's a really difficult situation. It's one that, like, left us are not united on, by any means. It's something that, you know, continues to be argued to say.

So it's definitely, it brings up, like, a wider question, actually, of, like, how do you deal with, you know, the uprising of your supporters, even those who were, you know, absolutely integral and you're using power? How do you deal with that, you know, during periods of crisis? You know, do you crush it? Do you listen to them? Do you let them take over? Like, it's a very difficult situation, one that no one has an easy answer for. Yeah, I think it really is a lesson that, no matter what tendency you claim on the left,

to try to wrestle with that idea, imagine being in, you know, the Bolsheviks position, being attacked from all sides. I'm not taking aside here. I just think it's a lot more complicated than people want to make it out to be. People want to make it out as a clear-cut case of democratic anarchist types rising up and the authoritarian socialist just cracking down on them. And there's a lot more nuance involved there. You can take one side or the other,

but at least wrestle with the issues at hand because it wasn't as clear-cut of a case as people like to make it out to be. Yeah, definitely, especially in the context of a civil war. And civil wars are historically some of the bloodiest conflicts in the world. I mean, if you have a 14-nation army trying to crush the first Soviet state,

how are you going to deal with defective? you know, like even if they were like absolutely loyal and critical to you, like, gaining power in the first place, it's, again, it's not an easy question. I'm of the opinion that was justified, however, in the end, for the greater good, you know. But it was just really unfortunate. I know it really weighed happily on trust he's mind and his soul for the rest of his life. Yeah, that's interesting. So before we, just a couple more history questions, rapid fire, before we get into the theory,

what was Lenin's Last Testament? Because I think this is something that people, that aren't in the Marxist-Leninist circles might not even know about. I didn't know about it for quite a while in my political development. So what was Lennon's Last Testament? And in it, what did Lennon have to say about Trotsky and Stalin? So Lennon's Last Testament is a, it's about three different documents. I think that were written towards the very last weeks of Vladimir Lennon's life before, you know, he fell into total mental disrepair due to the series of strokes he was having. It mainly proposed changes in the structure of the Soviet government,

specifically increasing the number of central committee representatives in a way to reduce centralization of power into very few hands. It suggested that Stalin be removed from his position as general secretary. That's probably the most famous aspect of the entire series of letters because he feared that he was consolidating too much power. Lenin feared that Stalin was consolidating too much power. I have the direct quote, actually. says that Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary General, has unlimited authority concentrated

in his hands. And I'm not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Kamarachs Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the CC, the central committee on the question of the people's commissariat of communications has already proved and distinguished, not only is distinguished not only about standing ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable of man in the present central committee, but also, but he also has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work. I suggest that the comrades think about removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his seat. So, Lenin was basically afraid, I mean, and this is in the wider

context of disagreements that were happening in the leadership of the Bolsheviks in the wake of the Civil War. London was afraid of a split happen. happening around Trotsky on one side and Stalin on the other, which, you know, was, in retrospect, like, very, you know, good on Menon for seeing that because it's exactly what ended up happening. Some claim that these documents are forgeries, even though Stalin, like, literally addressed the document during one of his speeches that was transcribed and that we have today on Marxist.org, and even though it was read aloud at the 13th Party Congress in 1924, over the objections of Lenin's wife the testament was not made widely available during the 1920s after it surfaced in

1924 and eventually all references to this document were banned its existence denied and those who spoke or wrote about it were punished severely so that's lenin's last testament yeah and i think that's extremely interesting because in part lenin saw kind of in what direction Stalin was heading, and he also made critiques of Trotsky, mostly about Trotsky's arrogance, which was kind of something that, you know, for better or worse, Trotsky very much had the reputation of having quite the ego, quite the arrogance. When you'd get into spats with comrades, he would, you know, he'd be arrogant about his position. That's something that I think Marks had. I think a lot of leftists have today. It's just kind of a byproduct of somebody's passion

and their confidence and their own analysis, but it can also be a downfall. But Lenin's kind of condemnation of Stalin was pretty intense and a lot of people on the non-Stalinist left opposition side take that last testament as as Lenin's real last attempt to say hey not Stalin put somebody else in that position so I think it's interesting yeah yeah definitely I mean it has wide-ranging historical consequences as well but yeah sorry I don't want to speak too long about this so the next question in history before we move on to theory was why and how was Trotsky eventually removed from power and then exiled? Where did Trotsky end up going? Okay, so Trotsky went from his, you know, height as leader of the Red Army in 1923 to

quickly being assassinated. Degradation occurred over, you know, a period of about 15, 20 years, started mainly with the left opposition in the 1923, allied with about 47 other people to condemn what he saw as the increasing bureaucratization of, you know, the Soviet Union government and the lack of basically, I don't know, democratic centralism within the party, which is, you know, diversity of discussion, unity, and action, or something along those lines. So, you know, immediately he was met with opposition by the Troika of Stalin, Kemenev, and Zinovive. and these are the three main figures who really, you know, kind of established the beginning of Charleston's fall from grace. Yeah, the platform of the 46th in 1923, it was, I don't know, it was just a critical faction, if you want to call that, in the Soviet government, and factions at the time were banned.

That was one of the protocols established during the Russian Civil War. and there was no hint that it was like a temporary you know thing so everyone assumed it was a permanent ban on factions and so this left opposition was considered

by many to be a faction and that was a huge political mistake by Trotsky of course he was maneuvering in very tumultuous waters but yeah they were just criticizing the Soviet government

And, you know, and yeah, it kind of degradated into, you know, a just a really untimely batch of in fighting between the leadership of the Bolsheviks during the 1920s. I mean, you know, Trotky just kept losing one after another political battles, as Stalin would reorient his, or his, you know, fight against Trotsky with other people. First, it was Kamenev and Zinniv, and then eventually Bukharin. So it formulated, I don't know, it coalescent to this united opposition, wherein Zinnabov and Kamenev went over to Trotsky side. And they continue to criticize what they saw as anti-democratic, increasingly anti-democratic

nature of the early Soviet state, wherein, you know, just communist party members were afraid to voice their opinions and stuff. And like that's not okay. Like, people need to be able to express criticisms of the party, et cetera. Lennon's wife was also very critical during this period. And so, you know, eventually he lost his position as, you know, leader of the naval and army forces. Eventually he was, I think in 1927, he was removed from the Politburo.

He was exiled to Siberia. and then eventually expelled completely from the Soviet Union losing a citizenship. I went to Istanbul first for a little while, or some islands off of Turkey, someone around there, and then made his way to America and then Mexico, where he would spend the rest of his life. So, yeah, it's a very complicated and interesting story of how Trotsky ended up losing up to Stalin, because everyone thought, you know, the Trotsky was, you know, the, I mean, he was considered the second of command, a second in command of the Soviet government during the Civil War and even second in command during the revolution itself.

So everyone thinks, like, you know, how did some mediocre person like Stalin, you know, beat out this genius, at least that's what a lot of Trotsky was like to say. And, yeah, the developments are really, I mean, again, you have to understand them in their historical conditions and stuff, but it was just a series of wrong movies. on Trotsky's part, I think, that led to his eventual, you know, losing out against Stalin. Yeah, and, you know, Stalin himself, he was very smart. He was very clever. He was very conniving.

He was very strategic. He was very much plotting four, five, six moves ahead all the time. And part of the difficulty in an episode like this is precisely that we have to condense so much into so little time. so I mean that's kind of my fault because I'm trying to take all the history and then add in the theory and give you a very small amount of time to describe what is I mean you could do an entire book on just how Trotsky and Stalin fell out and how Trotsky was removed from power but I think that's that's extremely interesting that's a cursory examination of what happened there but yeah it's so it's so complex but let's go ahead and move into theory because I think this is where a lot of the bulk of of the value of Trotsky comes out and I think no matter what somebody's tendency is, there's still a lot from Trotsky that people can learn if they don't just dismiss him based on tendency sectarianism. So let's go ahead and get into that. One of the most famous

concepts that Trotsky brought forth was the notion of permanent revolution. So what is permanent revolution and what were Trotsky's arguments in favor of it? So the theory of permanent revolution was actually first espoused by Marx and Angles in 1850, I believe. And basically, it's just a, it's just a deafening of the internationalism of Marxism. Trotsky reconfigured it to meet the conditions of, you know, early 20th century Russia and other countries. And basically, it states that certain countries don't experience a transitional, boucho-democratic phase, usually in the form of liberal parliamentarianism or presidentialism.

And so there's no transition between the politics of feudalism and the politics of capitalist modernity that would in turn set the stage for seizing a state power by the working class and for socialism. Therefore, it becomes the task of the working class themselves to oversee the creation of democratic institutions, in a worker's state to redistribute your private property, et cetera. So the task of the Vuzrocy is creating democracy or in creating democracy

turns to the proletarians to accomplish. And on top of that, it's also the idea that you want to continue the revolution abroad. You know, you can't just have it succeed in a contradistinction to Stalin's view one country. eventually the revolution needs to be exported and you need to support the workers of other countries and rising up because Marxism is an internationalist ideology so in my opinion and the opinion of others it's a direct continuation of Marxist theory

and I believe you wanted me to talk about socialism in one country Just to give the opposing view because Stalin, you know what his view came to be known as socialism in one country as opposed to permanent revolution for sure. So, socialism in one country was put forward by Stalin and Bukharin in 1924. It was, you know, it totally violated the official party line up until that time. In my opinion, it constituted a complete break from Marxist internationalism and Leninism. It's a very conservative theory that says, you know, in the wake of the failures of revolutions to occur in other advanced industrial countries, you must build up the industrial capacity of your own country in order to increase living standards, increase your military capabilities, et cetera, et cetera. The problem with that, however, is that even if you import as much, you know, innovative technologies

and what have you to build up rapidly your industries, you're still going to fall behind the economies of the advanced industrialist nations, even if you catch up, you know, to a large degree, you're not going to get all the way there because the productive output of that capital is going to be reserved for the countries that produce these innovations. So we're going to kind of our topic with that. But, you know, there's a lot of intricacies to this argument, too, that I encourage comrades to explore if they haven't already. And then Solano also vied for this two-stage theory,

which argues that working-class people have to fight for progressive capitalism along with the progressive national bourgeoisie before making an attempt at a socialist revolution, which totally contradicts the developments of October 1917 and would go on to contradicts the 20th century socialist revolutions in the third world. So, yeah, that's one of, I mean, and this is considered Trotsky's main contribution to Marxist theory

is his development of the concept of revolution, or I'm sorry, permanent revolution, and applying it for basically 20th century material conditions, which, you know, it would go on to be a useful tool and analyzing the social and political developments that occurred in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and all the other things. Absolutely.

Yeah, that's extremely interesting, and I think the internationalism is something that leftists need to take very seriously. We cannot recoil into nationalism. I mean, it's been an argument through Marx, through Lenin. Cuba really did and still does a wonderful job at internationalism at giving funds and medical teams to other countries in need,

fighting anti-imperialist struggles in Africa. So there's a long history of internationalism. And in my personal opinion, to disavow internationalism is to disavow socialism. Not necessarily that Stalin totally disavowed internationalism, but his approach in contradistinction to Trotsky's permanent revolution was in some sense a nationalist recoiling. So I just think those are interesting lessons to learn from. And that's a recurring theme, I think, when we look back on the Soviet Union.

is no matter what your tendency is you should always be trying to find things that you can learn from and things for better or worse and things that you should discard and move on from. So this is not about reliving 1917 or 1927 or whatever it may be

but it's really about taking all this historical knowledge and then finding what's really useful in it and then applying it in today's world. Absolutely. And just to clarify real quick a lot of Marks-Slaninists will respond to this by saying you know, that the world, or the, you know, permanent revolution theory was not applicable in the wake of the failure of, you know, the German revolution and other revolutions in

Europe. And that, moreover, you know, it was, permanent revolution constitutes a rejection, basically, of building up one's own national economy in wake of the failure of other, you know, working class people to rise up against the three or three or two, and that's just absolutely untrue. Trotsky was a you know really strong proponent of building up the industry rapidly you know in Soviet Russia

even though you know other revolutions weren't occurring so it's just one thing I wanted to clarify is like it does not it's not like an either or it's a boat damn like you want to build it up in your own country you want to build socialism in your own country and the economic forces of your own country while at the same time trying to export the revolution abroad

that's a great point great point okay so moving on because Trotsky made really interesting contributions to the understanding of fascism in his time. He was operating and writing before and during the rise of Nazi Germany and going back personally and reading some of his writings on fascism is extremely enlightening even for people today facing the threat of fascism. So what were Trotsky's contributions to the understanding of fascism and how did the theory of a united front play into this analysis?

Yeah, so Trotsky is one of the greatest anti-fascist of all time. I think, with the exception of Marxist class struggle in France and the 18th premier, there's probably no other Marxist analysis of contemporary, political, and social issues, comparable in depth and clarity with Trotsky's writings on Germany from 1929 to 1333, which is when he produced a large, you know, tom of these writings. though he, you know, continued to fight fascism up until 1940 in Outerick of World War II. So he basically saw the dimensions of what was happening in Germany deeper and earlier than most other Marxist writers of his time.

I'd say than any other Marxist writer of his time. He was issuing strong warnings for the working class and other communist organizations all throughout Europe and in Russia, that the rise of Hitlerite, you know, fascism would be disastrous for not just the German working class, but for the working class of literally the entire world. He, you know, basically said this represents an existential threat, not only to the oppressed minorities under, you know, this capitalist decay, but under, you know, every other circumstance. Everyone is in, you know, massive danger. And a lot of these, you know, warnings were not taken seriously by the leadership of the, you know, Stalin's, you know, Bolsheviks at this time.

And this had, you know, devastating catastrophic consequences, obviously, as we saw that were, you know, born out in Second World War. during the critical period of the mid-1930s, when the social and communist organizations and movements needed to unite with social democratic forces as a single class, you know, to oppose the rise of fascism and totalitarianism, they basically failed to do that because of their own, you know, failures, but also because the ideological lines were convoluted by Stalin and his social fascism theory, which, which was upheld by the common turn at the time. And this was, you know, a form of ultra-leftism that divided the class between itself.

It basically said that social Democrats were social fascists. You know, they themselves were fascists. And so it put a huge wedge between the working class in Germany and caused a lot of confusion among the leaderships of these countries. And so, yeah, the United Front is an integral part of this. Um, it's basically saying that, you know, social Democrats and socialists and communists in the face of a existential political threat should work together and mobilize an opposition to this, you know, terrible, terrible deviation. Um, so, you know, that didn't happen and Hitler came to power and World War II. You know, you know, you know the rest of the story. Um, but yeah, it's basically, you know, you have to work with reformists in common cause, uh, while winning workers. to revolutionary socialism and retaining the programmatic

autonomy of your party. You know, this is especially necessary in times of political crisis, such as the rise of fascism, and this is obviously a question in the confronts us today with the rise of the far rights and of populism

in the West especially. So, I mean, we'll get into you know, Trotsky's legacy and the relevance of Trotskyism today, but this after his current revolution was probably one of his greatest contributions to Marxism.

The writing that he did on fascism were not only true, but they were written, like, really, not even beautifully, but it was heavy, you know? Like, the way he talked about German tanks crushing over your skulls and spines and stuff, if you read his rights on fascism, you're going to be like, wow, this is a man at the height of his literary career. And I know he was able to utilize his literary talents in the fight against fascism, since, of course, he was no longer in the Soviet Union.

So he did everything he could, and it just went to hell, obviously. Yeah, I totally recommend reading Trotsky's writings on fascism. Trotsky himself had Jewish ancestry. He very much had skin in the game on this front. And his notion of a united front is still as relevant today as ever in Charlottesville, where our comrade Heather Heyer was ultimately murdered and many others were injured. You saw, you know, democratic socialist, you saw liberals and progressives, You saw communists, you saw anarchists, you saw socialists.

When it comes to the fight against fascism, we need all hands on deck. And I think Trotsky's contributions at the very earliest stages of Nazism were so fundamental to understanding the outgrowth of what it would be and what sort of hierarchies it maintained. So I highly recommend that. But I want to go back into this beef between Trotsky and Stalin. I know it can be kind of mind-numbing for some people. But it's actually important because, I mean, the split between Marxist-Leninist who uphold Stalin

and Marxist-Lennonists who uphold Trotsky is centered on this question. So it's going to reappear and re-emerge continuously. So let's just go ahead and get into the notion of the left opposition. What was the left opposition and what were its main grievances with Stalin and his regime? Sure. So the left opposition, like I stated before, was, you know, Trotsky and his end of his, few of his followers, saw the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet leadership as problematic and so far that it was repressing the expression of free ideas. And so when you're confronted

with this question and you've worked with these comrades who's, you know, political, uh, moved or you're opposing, it's, it's really hard, especially if there had been mudslinging that occurred for, you know, 10 plus years in the form of politics between these people. So there were a lot of interpersonal conflicts, too, that are interesting looking to. But, yeah, the left opposition, basically, you know, was just opposition to the increasing centralization of power in the hands of what was seen as a small clique, who would basically not taking the consideration the Central Committee and even less so, the Communist Workers Party, their opinions about certain matters of national importance, like the economic evolution of the Soviet

Union and the wake of the Civil War and stuff. And so the main point, though, was like bureaucratization. There was increasing bureaucracy that was stifling the expression of free ideas, And that, they thought, was very, very dangerous because it could lead to even further consolidation, as Lenin alluded to in his Last Testament. And, you know, just like what had happened in the French Revolution, all the Bolsheviks had taken upon themselves to study the French Revolution in great detail. And they were all concerned with the question of how to prevent a Russian or Soviet Thermidor from occurring. and, you know, so the question inevitably arose, who would be the bone apart if this would occur? And everyone looked at Trotsky, you know. He's the charismatic second in command. He led the military, just like Napoleon. And, you know, he's intelligent and cunning. And so

everyone was focused on Trots becoming, you know, this repressive dictatorial figure. And no one you know suspected that like hey maybe it would be someone else uh so it i don't know it kind of helped mount the historical baggage helped mount up against trotsky and proved it even more difficult for him to you know explicitly state his opposition to certain matters um when they were needed because he was afraid that he might be over-exerting his opinion uh and might be alluding to the idea that inactions that he you know could become another bonapartist figure um at the 14th congress He, you know, it was for this reason that at the 14th Congress, in 1925, 26, I think, he decided to remain silent. And the people who were allied with him at the time got absolutely crushed by Stalin and the others who were, you know, surrounding Stalin.

And then, you know, the outcome of this fight, obviously, was Truxie's expulsion, a clamp down on inter-party disagreements. And, you know, I mean, we're not going to get into the 1930s with this, but, you know, it led to some pretty horrific things. So, yeah, the left opposition, I'd say 1924 to 1928, 29, later called the United Opposition. And then, yeah, and this is a related question because after we get into the 30s, Trotsky was exiled, and this notion of a deformed worker's state came up in Trotsky's work. So what is a deformed worker state? And how was that term coined and applied with regards to the Soviet Union under Stalin? So Trotsky considered the Soviet Union a degenerated worker state, which states that workers control of production has given way to a bureaucratic control of production.

And then the fourth international that Trotsky founded went on to develop this theory during the post-World War II era to redefined it not as a degenerated worker state, but a deformed worker state. and the differences between those two are complicated. But basically, the deformed worker state is, you know, there's a bureaucratic class that has taken the position of the working class and running and controlling the economy. And then there are other, you know, offshoots of this, like state capitalism and bureaucratic collectivism and stuff.

But, yeah, the deformed worker state are states, where the capitalist class has been overthrown. The economy is largely state-owned and planned. There's no internal democracy, no workers' control of industry. The working class has never held political power like it did in Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution and never would again, basically, in the theory of the deformed worker state, unless, you know, it would vacillate towards socialism. this whole deformed or degenerated worker state are they're considered intermediaries between capitalist economic formations and you know the achievement of socialism and it could go in either direction according to this area

so yeah it was deformed because political economic structures were imposed from the top or even from outside revolutionary working class organizations were crushed I don't know most Trotsky has some examples of the foreign broker state today as including you know Cuba, Vietnam, China, North Korea but even you know some of those are contentious because I mean the whole question of actually

actually existing socialism is a completely different question entirely but yeah it's being applied today to analyze geopolitical you know formations and what have you and state social and all that so I see so yeah so there's an interesting contradiction inherent in this and I think some critics of Trotsky would would argue like what you what you did at Kronstadt could be viewed and through the lens of a deformed worker state in the sense that you crack down on the very democracy that you Trotsky are now arguing should be present in the Soviet Union do you think

that's a fair criticism or how do you take on that that criticism So, I mean, when the Kronstadt Rebellion happened, you know, it was during a civil war. And so it's usually during periods of warfare that we give leaders a bit more latitude to exercise their authority for the overall, you know, safety of a nation or what have you. For sure, there were some contradictions like that. I think, you know, exercising military control over a literal uprising against, you know, like right outside of the second biggest. city in the country is a bit different than exercising bureaucratic control over the economy during peacetime. But there's definitely some comparisons to be drawn there and some criticisms to be drawn. And I'm by no means saying either in all of this that Trotsky was like an

infallible character. He had his flaws, both personal and political. So, yeah, certainly there's a bit of hypocrisy there that one could probably draw. Okay. That's totally fair. Now, this next term is a term that's thrown around a lot. And And it's, in my younger political development days, I used to use it, and now I've totally gotten away from it because I think it is counterproductive. But there's a term that's, you know, Stalinism. It's a term thrown around a lot, but it's a term that's not defined very much. So some Marxist-Leninists, they argue that the term Stalinism is a useless, meaningless

word. What are your thoughts on this term, and what did Trotsky or Trotskyists mean when they use that term? so the trotsky didn't think that Stalin's actions and thoughts represented a direct continuity of Marxist or Leninist ideology

and therefore Marxism Leninism was a misnomer and we should use Stalinism instead that's kind of like you know the argument there I mean the tractors of Bolshevism claim that Stalin's actions were

the continuation and bankruptcy of Leninism, and they point out to aspects of centralization, vanguardism, prohibition of political pluralism and stuff like that. And so they say that, you know, we should use the term Stalin, or sorry, we should use the term Marxism, Leninism, because, you know, what happened under Stalin was Marxism, Leninism. Again, it gets messy here. You have to consider a variety of factors and theories. that are very difficult to untangle. I try to shy away from the word Stalinism, because I just, again, like you, I don't think it's productive.

A lot of my, you know, comrades and Carter Spring Socialists consider themselves Marxist-Linnists. We break it down at MLs. I call them MLs, you know, whatever. But we can joke with each other, too, and I think that's an important, you know, to bring it up to modern day. Like, if people use the word Stalinists or even tankies, you know,

sometimes they're just going to be poking fun at their friends who are of a different, you know, tendency than them. One of my comrades, who's a Marxist-Leninist, he went down to, what is it, Houston after the flood happened, and he jokingly referred to an ML group there who came to help with the reconstruction. He jokingly referred to them as tankies, and they got really offended and stuff.

So I think if you're going to use these words, kind of build rapport with the person using it around before you use it. but I don't know there are theoretical distinctions and also social distinctions is what I'm trying to get to but what I'm another point I'm making is that like you know you can't be afraid to laugh at yourself or to call yourself a tankie or a filthy trot or something like that I mean two two Halloweens ago I dressed up as Trotsky with an ice stick in his head so like I can laugh at myself you've got to be able to laugh at yourself and my girlfriend was free to Calo and it was I don't know nice we threw together in like 10 minutes so yeah

Wonderful. And you know, what you speak to there, I think is so, so important because I made it a point on this show to talk about it. And everybody I know, we're just in the same milieu. So I work with anarchist. I work with Trotskyist. I work with Marxist Leninists that upholds Stalin. I work with left comms. You know, I work with a whole slew of left-wing radicals. And very much inside of those cultures, you do have this sort of poking fun at each other. And it's sort of a manifestation of a sort of sense of humor that we have, maybe just in the U.S. I haven't traveled enough to know if it's more widespread around the world. But there's very much like a sort of comradly elbowing of each other, making fun of each other as a way to show affection towards one another.

And I think these terms pop up a lot. They pop up in sectarian, angry context, but they also pop up in friendly context. the people who do the intro to this podcast, the string bow string duo they have a song called their anarchist leaning and they have a song called

Tankies are people too and it's really funny it's a lighthearted take on sectarianism and I posted it and a lot of people got the joke but some people would get sectarian in response like oh fuck that blah blah blah it's like no like come on

we have to have a sense of humor if we lose that sense of humor then we're going to divide and split an already weak and divided left, so. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great song, but I listened to it a few times. I lost my off off the first time I heard it. I highly recommend it. Me too, absolutely.

All right, so getting to what I might consider the crux of the matter, if Trotsky would have taken, somehow, taken over instead of Stalin, what would have been different, in your opinion? And also, what would have been the same? What would have the differences and similarities been if Trotsky had taken over instead of Stalin? So there were a lot of differences between these two men, dramatic and empirical, and Trotsky was more charismatic and logical, if that makes sense.

You see it in their writings more than anything, but apparently their interactions, you know, give expression to these notions as well. I think there would have been, and this is like the common line that everyone says, I'm sorry, I'm going to be redone in here. But I think there would have been a less repressive state apparatus. I don't think the great purges of the Moscow trials would have happened. I think the repression of intellectual life, especially, wouldn't have happened. There were certain books that were banned in the Soviet Union.

There were certain, you know, ways of even artistic expression that, like, were either heavily discriminated against or outright damned in the, and in its place. Let's put, like, socialist realism, which is just completely, I don't know, I'm not going to get into it, but as an artist, like I have some criticism. But, and then I think there would have been greater preparation for World War II as well. One of the really big flaws that Stalin made in the 1930s was, I mean, aside from purging, basically, you know, a shit kind of people who made the Bolshevik revolution happen. He kind of just wiped out the entire leadership of the Red Army. and a lot of them were ex-Sarist officials, and so in that way, you know, it's totally justified.

I mean, not killing them or putting them in gulags or anything, but maybe replacing them with those Red Commanders that we spoke of earlier in this episode. However, the people that were put in their place, and they weren't just, by the way, ex-Zars army officers, these are people who had, you know, prove themselves in the Civil War who were about communists. But anyway, the people he put in his place

were not experienced in warfare, uh to any considerable degree and so it ended up costing the state union probably many more millions of lives uh because of you know this this brand new military leadership um that had to you know face basically the strongest army in world history which was the nazis uh but you know you're you're i think your comrades and the marxist's learning this episode alluded to this um we're just speculating here and you know we've moved on 80 years since so i don't know like really how relevant this question is. It's fun to think about for sure, you know, think about how things that have played out differently in history. I mean, I'm a study of, or a student of history. I

certainly, you know, engage in sort of speculation all the time, and it's fun to entertain, but in terms of practical, you know, viability in today's world, I don't know. Yeah. I think that's, that's completely 100% fair. It is a counterfactual, and those are fun, those are thought experiments. They're fun to play with, but ultimately, they're kind of meaningless, and they don't lead anywhere in the present but I think something that and tell me if you agree with this or not in the Marxist-Leninist episode that we had with the comrades who upheld Stalin there was this this point that they made is like the debates between Trotsky and Stalin are interesting and they're worthwhile to have those those debates but ultimately it's the people

of the Soviet Union that led the revolution that were the engine of the revolution and that fought the hardest to create a better world and so we don't want to get lost in just the personalities of two or three men the idea is to recognize all of history and recognize the context of an entire society struggling inside material conditions and so would you agree with that basic caveat of like this is interesting and this is important but at the same time we have to realize that it does not come down to one or two or three or four men it comes down to entire societies and rebellion? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You know, they said you are in, you're in danger of reducing all of historical development to the Great Man Theory, which, you know, was a prudent observation. I mean, at the same time, though, you know, single individuals can play major historical roles and alter the course of history, they have themselves by, of course, mobilizing,

you know, working people under them. But, yeah, like the whole, it's done way more harm than good, I think, in the, you know, revolutionary leftist no use of the post-World War II era, the Soltropskies for Stalinist faction. I think the vast majority of working class people don't really give a fuck

about, like, you know, the theoretical minutia that keeps us divided along these, you know, sectarian lines. And I don't know, I would just, I would just avoid, I mean, this is why we, you know, organize on non-tenancy lines and Carter Springs Socialists. You have a bunch of people who are really pissed off at capitalism, and, like,

are pretty open to socialism based off of public opinion polls. He started, like, ranting to them about how, you know, shitty Trotsky or Stalin was. You know, they might agree with you, but, like, they're not going to really know why oftentimes. And they're not ultimately going to care, and it's not going to really have any major impact on your organizing efforts. You know, so these organizations that organize on these tendencies

usually are just small branches of, like, very highly sectarian activists who have been at it for three, years and have just maintained their little clique and have not grown at all, haven't accessed the working class or anything. And I don't know, I'm just completely against it based off of my political experience with the ISO, other organizations that have just failed to grow, in my opinion, and sexually. That's extremely well put, and I could not agree more.

So let's get quickly into the legacy of Trotsky. So what has Trotsky's legacy been since his death? and what revolutionary movements around the globe have called themselves Trotskyist? Sure. So, I mean, the legacy of Trotsky, the man is, I would like to differentiate

even if maybe I'm, you know, pushing it here, his followers, because I think Trotsky himself left a wonderful legacy. And, you know, I mean, his contributions to Marxism are undeniable, especially in the analysis of fascism and in the theories of permanent revolution and, you know, the development, what is it, uneven in combined development. So, I mean, aside from that, you know, his theoretical contributions aside, he was a man of, like, you know, great action and great courage and willpower. He was extremely disciplined and accomplished a lot.

I mean, he oversaw, like, the defense of the revolution and the uprising itself, you know, know, how people can say that. I mean, he helped take over a seventh of the world's landmass when he was in his 30s. Like, for God's sake, you know, he's got quite a legacy, even if you, you know, disagree with him about the theoretical, you know, tribunal in the 20s and 30s, but in terms of revolutionary movements around the globe, they've called themselves Trotskyos, there's a ton of, you know, so-called heirs to the Fourth International. I mean, there's no longer a single cohesive Fourth International.

Throughout the better part of its existence, the Fourth International was founded by agents of the Soviet secret police, capitalist countries like France and the U.S. And rejected by, you know, other socialists as being illegitimate. you know, socialists often still hold it under these conditions of, you know, illegality, basically, and scorn by the left itself. It suffered, the Fourth International suffered a huge split in 1940 and an even more significant one in 1953, but I don't know, it's never really recovered from these splits. There's, God, I think 16 Fourth International's. I did some research on this a few days ago, and if you go to Wikipedia and so

and Fourth International, you'll find, like, 16 or 17 Fourth Internationals, all of which say they're like the direct error to, you know, the Fourth International or whatever. And it's just a huge fucking mess. In the United States alone, there are many, many Trotskyist organizations. There's like 12 or something. And the fact that there are 12 organizations that refuse to unite with each other, even around like a specific tendency, again, due to theoretical differences of very minute. you know, significance in the grand

scheme of things is really depressing and absurd. One of the reasons I don't really, you know, work with them and why I started, you know, my own socialist org that's on non-tenancy lines. But yeah, it's been rightly criticized by malice and Stalinists, or I'm sorry, have Marxist Leninus, as

as being rather ineffective in the post-war era. None of the socialist revolutions that occurred since World War, I mean, we'll ever really have been trochius in nature. they've overwhelmingly been Marxist Leninist. That, however,

does not discount, you know, the theoretical importance of studying Trotsky's writings, if nothing else. So, yeah, there's, you know, there's a huge legacy. It's really confusing today to try to track down, you know, what exists. Like, if you consider yourself atropskists or something and you want to join an Trotskyist organization,

it's like, oh, you have to systematically compare 12 different programs of, you know, the organizations in Europe, country and then you have to systematically compare the 16 programs of the 16 4th International's and it's like holy shit, not a fuss to you like see that he'd be rolling over in his grave

so it's really depressing the legacy that his followers have you know built up for themselves I will say however though that like you know the illegality of you know the fourth internationals that have sprouted up in the World War II or post

World War era and also the support by the Soviet Union for satellite countries basically through like direct military support and what have you like there's a reason that all the socialist revolutions occurred under the hub of the USSR in the 20th century

almost all of them it's because they're materially supported by it so to try to make the leap between the fact that there are no Trotskyists revolutions and Trotskyism itself as being like devoid as a tendency theoretically is you know a historical basically he's still worth studying in light of the fact that, you know, there's never been like a quote-unquote Trotsky estate. Absolutely. Well said. Before we go into conclusions and recommendations, is there any last words, anything you'd like to say about what modern leftists can learn from Trotsky or any summarizing points you want to make before we end the show?

Yeah. So, in the galaxy of revolutionaries, as Lennon once said, Trotsy's like one of its brightest stars. He's, he's contributed so much to Marxist theory and his huge tone of writings. I mean, I think he wrote over 30,000 pages altogether, many of which have, like, great insights as to how a social society can and cannot be built. Obviously, is one of the main actors of, you know, the greatest revolution in history, in my opinion. He's someone that you need to, like, read about. just as I read, you know, Mao Zedong and, you know, Stalin's works, I think, you know, every Marxist and every Malas should read Trotsky's works.

So he's, you know, he was, he just had a very interesting life, too, on top of everything else. Like, read about his life, read about how he conducted himself, read about how discipline he was, read about how, you know, just tenacious he was in all of his endeavors. Like, at least you can say about Trotsky, if he did something, he put his heart and soul into it. And he was a dedicated Marxist revolutionary and remained so until his death. I don't know. Aside from that, just kind of follow his legacy in so far that he was very disciplined. I see a lot of comrades spending, you know, a dozen hours on social media today instead of going out and organizing or educating, you know, get off the computer and go fraternize with the military and trade unions or something.

increase cost consciousness and warfare in your city, educate, agitate, and organize, and study, you know, Trotsky while you're doing this. Not just Trotsky, but Trotsky as well. I mean, there's a pantheon of revolutionaries, and if you don't study every pillar of that, then you're not going to understand the entire structure of Marxism. It's a very, you know, complicated history. It has a lot of aspects to it that take patience and understanding.

And, yeah, I mean, aside from all of this, you know, going, going back to Trotsky real quick, probably going on too long about this, but he had a very dialectical worldview as well. He always considered, like, all forms of social, political and economic conditions and the ongoing evolution that they were, you know, undertaking, basically. And so, I don't know, he made a lot of predictions, too, about especially fascism and what would occur soon after his death. So, in that vein, you know, just, you know, take a look at him. He's one of the great Marxists of the 20th century.

There's no reason not to look at him just because you might disagree with a fallout that he had 80 years ago. Exactly, exactly right. I learned a lot from Trotsky. He was extremely prescient. He was a very principled Marxist. He's a comrade of mine in retrospect. And you mentioned, you used the adjective tenacious to describe him.

Just an interesting thing that I found that at the end of his life, when he was ultimately assassinated, as we all know, with an ice pick to the back of the head by somebody who had pretended to be one of his guards to get close to him. And when he was alone reading the newspaper, snuck up behind him and buried the ice pick into his head, Trotsky got up and screamed and knocked off things from his desk and went after the person who hit him in the head with an ice pick before he collapsed to the ground and was debilitated. So even in his last moments, this is somebody that was a war general in the Bolshevik revolution and fought the Russian Civil War. In his last moments, he went down literally fighting. So regardless of your tendency, Trotsky is somebody that you can learn from and somebody that you can respect. Before we wrap up, are there any recommendations that you would offer to any listeners who want to learn more about anything we've discussed today? Yeah, so obviously read Trotsky's writings yourself. don't just read secondary sources.

An introduction that I've found helpful is Trotsky is alternative by Ernest Mandel, who was one of the greatest Marxists of the post-World War II era. He wrote great, I think it's about 170 pages, that just gives a really good overview of Trotsie and the whole situation that he grew up in. Aside from that, you know, read the permanent revolution, read his his recounting of the Russian Revolution

his biography is pretty good if you really want a definitive biography of him now you'll have to read the profit it's a three part one written by Isaac Joshua and it's you know 1,500 pages long so unless you're heavily invested in learning about this man

I wouldn't pick it out then I think Pathfinder Press put out a series of collected works in the uh in the 1970s and 80s um and it's basically trotsky's writing uh post-exile so 1929 to 1940 and it's just literally like everything he wrote every article he wrote um all together it's like god i don't know 12 000 pages or something um but that's a wonderful addition to any library um his writings on terrorism uh are his i don't know they're not very good in terms of like, I don't know, I'm not going to get into it, but take a look at those if you want.

They're often quoted, so to understand that stuff. Certainly read the criticisms of Trotsky. Kupeskaya, Lennon's life, had some criticisms of them. Lennon himself had obviously some very staunch criticisms of Trotsky. And, you know, Stalin Kamenev, Zunov, in 1925, 1926, all three of them wrote very strongly against Trotskyism and Trotsky himself. It was usually written in the form of Bolshevism and Trotskism or Marxism and Trotskism, trying to create a false dichotomy.

But you can find most of these on Marxist.org. I'd highly recommend utilizing that resource. It's been great for our reading circles. There's a 50 to 60,000 is a really accessible document on there that not only span all of the Marxian canon, but Adam Smith and the German ideologues as well. So yeah, there's a lot out there. Thank you so much for coming on. It's pleasure to meet you, pleasure to hang out with you, pleasure to have you on the show.

It's funny because in the last episode we did with Marxist Leninism, who more or less upheld Stalin at the very end, they also made a very clear call, like read everything, read different tendencies, read people you disagree with. The knowledge is what's important, and you're echoing that exact same call. So I think that's a very interesting pan-leftist solidarity motion to make. I respect it. I respect you. I look forward to working with you in the Midwest in the future. Hell yeah, man. Same to you. Thank you so much, Brad. All right, solidarity. Solidarity.

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