Reply to Troskyist


/* Written 11:30 pm  Nov 19, 1992 by dwalters@igc.apc.org in igc:gen.socialism
 */
/* ---------- "More on Lies re Maoism & Pol Pot/MI" ---------- */
Well this was interesting. Hmmmmmmmm. As a Trotskyist, that is a
Marxist Leninist, I have never been of accused of being a
Christian. Ok.To set a few things straight. Trotsky never 'split'
from Lenin and Stalin. Stalin, during the course of the 1917 Revol
ution was never 'with' Lenin in the sence of a dynamic duo the
likes ow which we one associates with Engels and Marx. Stalin was,
as Trotsky described him, a 'a grey blur' during the course of
events in 1917.I've had a chance to look at much of the english
and german language communist and left socialist ltereature e of
the time and Stalin is indeed missing from most of the events of
1917. Even the capitialist press associated the 'evil
bolsheviks'as personafied by Lenin and Trotsky.  But it was Stalin
after consolidating power in 1927-1928 that REVERSED the bolshevik
policies of internationalism with the corrupt concept that
socialism could be built in one country and thus the reversals of
revolutions EVERYWHERE in the late 20s and throughout the 30s. The
Chinese reveolution of 1927, following Stalins insistannnce on
seeking a POLITICAL alliance and then subordination of the Chinese
CP with the Nationalists resulted in the deaths of thousands of
revolutionary workers s in China that year.
  The ultra leftism of the 'third period' resulted in the Nazis
  coming to power in Germany with out the Communists firing a
  shot! Please, you talk of materialism yet you refuse analyse the
  failures of your policies, failures that resulted in the death
  of
/ millions of workers! The anti-leninist policy of the post german
fiasco called the 'popular front' simply repeated the stalinist
FAILURES that preceded it! It you could show us how the Communist
Internationals line in Spain in 1936 is 'revolutionary' you'll
have turned dialectics on its head.
  Food for thought. If Stalin was such a Leninist why is that
  every one of Lenisn Central Committee (but the one who committed
suicide) executed by Stalins police? If Stalin was such a
revolutionary why did he SELL OUT his own supporters in Greece
during that countries civil war? The list is endless......As to
why other courrents in the revolutionary movement fail to make a
revolution this is a good question.

1. In Spain, the Stalinists, in open alliance with the
capitalists, crushed, with arms the revolutionary workers of Spain
when these same workers wanted to go beyond the artificial limits
set by the Stalinists. The 'Communists'(Mensheviks) felt that a
simple 'anti-Franco' front with the capitialists was all that was
needed the working masses DISAGREED. The Stalinists turned the
forces of the capitalist state against the workers. Thousands were
executed to save bourgeois Spain from the forces of revolut ion
and the 'Communists' delivered Spain into the hands of Franco.

2. VIETNAM <<circa 1945>>. All the forces of the workers movement
..Stalinist, Trotskyist, independent socialists allied to varying
degrees with nationalists fought the Japanese. According to the
Potsdam and Terhan accords Vietnam was supposed to go back to the
French.Stalin agreed.The Viet Mihn, lead by the Communist Party,
ordered its supporters to support the arrival of British troops
who were coming to restablish colonialism and turn the country
back to the French. This did not sit well with thousands of
workers and peasants who wanted to take up arms and fight the
British. The Stalinists flet it was their duty to BETRAY the
struggle for independence and so proceeded to murder the
nationalist and Trotskyist leadership of the workers movement in
southern Vietnam. Oh well....this would go to show that
Trotskyists and other forces just can't lead a revolution!!! 'nuff
said.
      _______________

MIM replies to Dwalters:

Dwalters provides perfect evidence for why we Maoists refer to
the best of the Trotskyists as Christians--principled people
with certain ideals that they worship instead of people with
a science of how to get to communism. Indeed, here we see that
the dwalters kind of Trotskyism is a 20th century version
of Anglo-Saxon individualism (a.k.a. Protestantism).

Like the Protestants, dwalters tells us that we should be concerned
with individuals, not classes. Hence, dwalters tells us that
Stalin was a "grey blur" compared with Trotsky's flashy leadership
in the Russian Revolution. He fails to understand that Marxist
materialists do not care about such individual differences, only
what line and corresponding strategy advances the cause of the
international proletariat. That means formulating a line on classes,
nations and genders (gasp gasp).

After starting with the importance of the individual's
possibilities of reaching God (a.k.a. "principles" in Trotskyist
language), dwalters goes on to name Stalinist history profanity
based on its failure to live up to God's will (a.k.a. "principles").
What he fails to notice is that while Trotskyists were
mouthing principles, IN PRACTICE, it was the Trotskyists
who fell more egrigiously in front of the almighty goals of
communist revolution.

The Christians have been telling us to feed the hungry etc.
for 2000 years, but the lot of them never notice what happens
to Christianity in practice. It gets no where.

The Trotskyists tell us the principle of socialism is carried
out in world revolution, not one country at a time. They think
they are really saying something brilliant with this, but they
haven't noticed that IN PRACTICE (a.k.a history, the material
world, reality) it has been the Stalinists who have led
revolutions in more than one country (simultaneously in the midst
of World War II in Albania, China, Vietnam and elsewhere with
varying degrees of success). The Trotskyists meanwhile have
complained without accomplishing a single revolution, unless
you count the Russian Revolution, which would be one revolution
in one country.

So like any idealist or Christian, Trotskyists have their
litany of crimes that they recite. Dwalters points to Shanghai
in 1927, the rise of the Nazis, Greece, Spain and Vietnam.

1. What did the Trotskyists do to stop the massacre in Shanghai?
Answer: nothing. They didn't even get to the stage of CONSIDERING
the strategic and tactical questions that the Stalinists had
to confront in Shanghai. The Trotskyists mouthed off in principle
like the anarchists, but demonstrated no superior practice. So
once again, in Shanghai in 1927, as in the rest of the world,
Trotskyism amounted to an ideology of the status quo.

2. What did the Trotskyists do to stop the rise of Hitler?
Answer: aid the Nazis (in effect if not always in intentions).
The last straw that caused the Bolshevik Central Committee
to purge Trotsky and stop putting up with his undisciplined
activities was his Clemenceau declaration.

At the time of this declaration, Trotsky was trying to enlist
the support of various military officers in the Red Army. Trotsky
then said in the summer of 1927 (twice and without repentance)
that he would support invading armies in order to wrest
control of the Soviet government from Stalin. He hoped to gain
control of the Soviet government just before the invaders
reached Moscow. (Those invaders turned out to be the Nazis.)

To this day, I don't think you are going to find many people
who think it is sensible to have a Civil War before or during
an imperialist invasion. The Central Committee demanded Trotsky's
discipline within the party, but Trotsky would have nothing
of democratic centralism, which is the fundamental rule of
a Leninist party. Not surprisingly, the would-be Protestant
leader put himself above the party with all the noisy
justificatons of his individual superiority to Stalin.

Not surprisingly, the Central Committee appreciated Stalin's
quiet Central Committee level work, work that was over
a long period of time and in clandestine conditions. Dwalters
makes it sound like Stalin personally and individually
managed a military assault on the "Old Bolsheviks," once
again demonstrating his incapacity for anything but
Christian moralizing about individuals. We Marxists believe
that classes make history and that various LINES won out
inside the Bolshevik party.

(For more on Trotsky's Clemenceau Declaration, read pro-
Trotsky scholar Isaac Deutscher, including page 310 of
Stalin: A Political Biography).

While Stalin was working hard in jobs assigned to him by the
party and taking on ever more bureaucratic responsibility,
Trotsky and Trotskyists were claiming their personal superiority
for rule. When it came time to act in unity through democratic
centralism, Trotsky did what he knew would cause his expulsion
from the party. For that matter, in the late 1930s, when Hitler
was making his moves all across Europe, instead of calling for
a united effort and instead of lending every effort to support
 military work against Hitler, Trotsky was calling again for
civil war to overthrow Stalin.

We at MIM believe that Stalin was right to have Trotsky
assassinated once Hitler did start his invasions of
bordering countries. It is clear that Trotsky was willing
to come to power at the front of a Nazi army. Trotsky
had no use to the proletariat. He was all principled talk
and unprincipled action.

3. Vietnam. Trotskyists have never had a chance of leading
a Third World revolution because they have opposed guerrilla
warfare and because they believe feudal modes of production
can be changed directly to socialist modes of production, as
long as the Third World waits for the West.

In any case, after seeing what the Trotskyists were up to
in Europe, it does not surprise anyone who is serious about
social change that Ho saw the Trotskyists as enemies to be
wiped out. By 1945, it was clear that Trotskyism had nothing
concrete to contribute to fighting Nazism and fascism and
everything to do with dividing the proletariat.

Armchair Trotskyists can talk about principles, but people
who are risking their lives in revolutionary struggle against
colonialism and fascism are rightly going to view Trotskyists
as enemies, especially in 1945. (We make more allowances for
the 1992 situation in the United States because we realize
that the youth are not informed of the historical context in
which Trotskyism became anathema to the proletariat.)

4 and 5. Spain and Greece. What Trotskyist governments gave
aid to the proletarian forces in Spain and Greece? Answer:
none.

Stalin's government was the only government to lend any material
aid to the forces fighting Franco in Spain. Again given the
irresponsible attitude of Trotsky previously demonstrated in
terms of his   willingness to abide an invasion of the Soviet Union,
and given the history of the anarchists' INITIATING fighting (that
they lost in Krondstadt and the Ukraine), the Stalinists had no
reason to especially trust the Trots and anarchists in Spain. From
every act in history they had every reason to think that the
Trots and anarchists would go on screwing up chances at revolution
just as they have in every country in the world this century.

In any case, the mistakes of the Stalinist line are the mistakes
of a line with some proven effectiveness, whereas the Trotskyist
and anarchist line have no proof on their side of effectiveness,
only religious-type reasoning to back them up.

Spain and Greece are also interesting in terms of how the idealists
treat individuals once again. As in Christian theology the Devil is
a powerful actor, so it seems that Stalin sitting in the Kremlin had
divine powers to screw up revolutions thousands of miles away,
according to the hard-core Trots.

We can also thank Trotsky for using the term "totalitarianism" in
connection to both Hitler and Stalin. Stalin the bogeyman puts
down revolutions just as Mao did  later according to the Trots.
But the Trots don't understand the difference between words and
action or diplomacy and armed struggle. Stalin did not have the
option of forcing the Greek communists to lay down their arms.
Nor Indonesia by Mao for that matter. If President Gonzalo in
Peru says we should lay down our arms, do you really think
it matters?

Stalin made an agreement with the World War II victors on
how to divide up Europe. He made revolution in several countries
just as the Trots had been howling for him to do all along.
That is why his policy toward Greece was what it was. It does not
say a thing about the necessity for revolutionaries abroad to
listen to Stalin, Mao or anyone else engaged in diplomacy and
Stalin and Mao were always the first to point that out.

Anyway, as is typical for the Trotskyist, dwalters does not
attempt to understand history and its successes and failures
for the international communist movement. We urge anyone who can
see the difference between words and actions to order our "Stalin
Pack," which explains more of the details of what we discuss here.
For those seeking an ideology with a list of commandments,
a penchant for criticizing reality for not living up to the commandments
and a backdoor individualism, Trotskyism is the answer.