The leader by will of the people differs from the leader by will of God in that the former is compelled to clear the road for himself or, at any rate, to assist the conjuncture of events in discovering him. Nevertheless, the leader is always a relation between people, the individual supply to meet the collective demand. The controversy over Hitler’s personality becomes the sharper the more the secret of his success is sought in himself. In the meantime, another political figure would be difficult to find that is in the same measure the focus of anonymous historic forces. Not every exasperated petty bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petty bourgeois.
~ Leon Trotsky
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm
at this point, i don’t know why trots are bad and i’m too afraid to ask
so there’s two things to talk about here, Trotsky himself, and then trotskyists. Trotsky was a decent Marxist theorist, he has a nice writing style and made a number of useful innovations in the science of Marxism, he even played a pivotal role in the formation of the soviet union and the various revolutions that brought it about. However, as time went on, and especially when Stalin took power, he began to become more and more contrarian with his takes and analysis, spending nearly all of his available energy detracting Stalin and the USSR and taking pains to disseminate that information far and wide through newspapers, which would have already been harmful in a normal context, but with the USSR staring down the barrel of German aggression in WWII, national cohesion was especially important. If you’re curious, the main wedge issue that pitted Stalin and Trotsky against one another is the Soviet Union’s policy on exporting Marxist revolution - Stalin adopted the “Socialism in one country” policy wherein the USSR would devote its energy to strengthening itself as a nation so that it and the torch of socialism it carried would persist, whereas Trotsky endorsed a “Permanent revolution”, by which all countries would need to be continuously folded into the revolutionary movement simultaneously and the USSR would need to prioritize the export and fostering of this revolution to ensure its own survival. Would Trotsky have been able to do a better job running the USSR than Stalin did? Who knows, I kind of don’t think so but far more importantly than that, there’s no way to know and wasting energy factionalizing over it back then, let alone in 2023, was actively detrimental to the cause of Marxism and Communism, which brings us to…
Trots. Both in the modern day and early on, these people took none (or at least none of the important parts) of the neat analysis of Trotsky and took all of the infighting, detracting from Actually Existing Socialism, splitting of existing orgs for the purposes of ideological purity, and just generally prioritizing discourse and whataboutism over progress. The big unifying thread is that Marxist parties often need to make hard choices, required by constant attacks from within and without, and trots will invariably sit back, insist that they know how to do it better, and then drag that insistence into their western (and they’re always westerners) orgs to squabble over instead of just doing some damn movement building. Especially painful is that Trots are by far the most compatible with ordinary Marxists out of anarchists, democratic socialists, social democrats, radlibs, and more, and they still put up the biggest fights when the concept of working together comes up.
If you’re curious, the main wedge issue that pitted Stalin and Trotsky against one another is the Soviet Union’s policy on exporting Marxist revolution
That can’t be right. I read a book on this and I was told it was the argument over whether they should attach a dynamo to the old windmill.
they still put up the biggest fights when the concept of working together comes up.
I think this sort of statement is an overreach. I’ve known a few people who might be described as Trotskyist, and for all their sins they did seem very enthusiastic in their activism. I’d say the problem isn’t so much that Trotskyists don’t work well together as it is that building movements is hard. You’re far more likely to find someone enraptured by Marxist theory who throws themselves into a movement half-cocked and fails, than someone who is well-read and practiced as well as charismatic and sociable to the point that they can build a large successful movement.
Trotsky is more accessible, particularly for academics. But there’s no large social movement to interface with such that baby communists can be integrated into the fold. Plus, there’s a ton of paranoia (plenty of it justified) such that newer organizations struggle to build steam.
So you’ve got these hot-blooded activist types pinballing around, desperately looking for an outlet for their energy. And the folks that don’t get absorbed by mainstream political establishments or burn out, end up being these cantankerously stubborn zealots that we label “Trots” on impulse.
At some point, the problem of “Trots” is just the problem of organizing writ-large. Its hard. Its time consuming. And it requires the integration of a lot of activists with different perspectives and agendas.
