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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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casually making up a "trotskyist" to get mad at
No, in fact Trotsky condemned the abuse of the term "fascism" (see: "social fascism")
Trotskyists have read Engels.
They are addressing modern Trotskyists, not Trotsky himself. Did you miss that point or are you intentionally obfuscating it?
What point is there to make?
This applies equally little to "modern Trotskyists", and claiming anything to the contrary betrays a distinct lack of investigation with an overabundance of speaking.
Verification is trivial: pick your favourite trot website and look up "red fascism".
This depends very much on the flavour of Trot, I've found. There's not a lot of overlap between more Orthodox groups like the Sparts and, say, Cliffite splinters who are often completely divorced from much of Trotsky's theoretical positions.
`An important part, which becomes more and more important, of the Soviet apparatus is formed of fascists who have yet to recognize themselves as such. To equate the Soviet rйgime with fascism is a gross historic error .... But the symmetry of the political superstructures and the similarity of totalitarian methods and of psychological profiles are striking." Trotsky, Nouvelles dйfections (17 March 1938). La lutte, pp. 161--162
Calling the Soviet Union fascist has led to modern day Trots saying "red fascism." And yea, I was mostly talking about Trotskyists, but obviously they were inspired by how much he wrote and complained about "Stalinism" even going so far as to blame "Stalinists" for the rise of fascism. Trotskys writings could mostly be summed up as "i could do it better." And with "social fascism" he was just angry that Stalin and the Comintern called social democrats the left-wing of fascism(which is true).
Cherrypicking the most obscure text by Trotsky imaginable, even then proceeding to ignore all context of and exaggerate what was said, and then claiming modern Trotskyists say the Soviet Union was "red fascist" because they took their ideas from the above obscure text (neither is true). Magnificient.
The full paragraph, without anything omitted "for the convenience of the reader" (machine translated from French, because there seems to be no full English translation after a brief search - does that tell you anything about the text's importance?):
The context is that Butenko, the Soviet envoy to Romania about whom this paragraph speaks about, had actually renounced communism and defected from the USSR to fascist Italy earlier in 1938. To remark on the bureaucracy producing such people is completely different from shouting "red fascism" because a CIA-funded radio station told you to.
they can get their red fash ideas from "Fascism: what it is and how to fight it" if it's the popularity of the text that matters. He writes so much about Stalinism, which doesn't really exist. He was fine pre and during revolution but once he lost the power struggle he really lost it. Still waiting on that successful Trotskyist revolution too. I also wont pretend that i could convince someone with the username "trot" that he was just mad that he got BTFO of the USSR. Having only 4000 votes compared to 700,000 really stung. His post exile theories are ones of sectarianism and wanting to capitulate to social democrats(which he was a socdem at one point). When I meet a Trot that supports AES, even critically, ill let you know. His writings are the reason we have to deal with so many "leftists" who are anti-AES.
"Fascism: what it is and how to fight it" - where Trotsky says the complete opposite to what you are implying? From where are you getting that he called the USSR "red fascist", when he instead demanded for its leadership to not equate everyone else with fascists in order to form a united front against actual fascism (a completely valid criticism given any amount of historical hindsight whatsoever)? Surely, if Trotsky were to believe the USSR was "red fascist", he would instead argue for a united front against the USSR and not alongside it - but he did not.
You could meet more than exactly 2 trots then, instead of getting all your information on Trotskyism from Grover Furr. Or are we defining "critical support" as being without the "critical" part again?
https://www.marxist.com/60-years-of-the-criminal-us-imperialist-blockade-against-the-cuban-revolution.htm
https://www.marxist.com/50-anniversary-sputnik-soviet-science.htm
Excerpt from a 1940 SWP article:
Socialist Appeal, Vol IV No 11, March 16 1940, page 3, literally titled "Why We Should Defend the Soviet Union"
Another quote from the same article:
Do you think the authors of anything in the above actually believed the USSR was the same as Nazi Germany?
The position of a majority of Trotskyist organisations is that the existence of socialist/workers' states is objectively good for the world and they must be critically supported, even though their bureaucracies are steering them towards capitalist restoration. A minority believes that they are already "state capitalists" and therefore equivalent to the USA. But absolutely no-one sincerely conflates them with fascism.
Trotsky himself claimed that the Soviets and Nazis formed a united bloc due to the Pact, that was the second "camp" in his "third camp" theory, so he might call them something other than fascist, but he certainly gave them a very similar smear even in his own day.
"we are totally different than other ultraleft wreckers" lol ok whatever dude
yeah that's the problem, imagine reading a 150 year old book while crying about "Stalinist revisionists", incredibly out of touch from our material conditions