#trotskyism

hi! no worries about ramble, this was perfectly coherent and i understand and appreciate the desire to learn on these things.

so firstly I will say, my own study of trotsky is less developed than I'd like it to be, largely because his ideas never struck me as having so much merit to warrant deep study in the first place, nor are they especially popular. so this reply is largely going to rely on sources which you can study on your own, rather than an indepth breakdown of my own. to contextualize what I will later say from my position, lets first look at the positions of some influential communist. You're no doubt aware to some extent that Trotsky was unpopular within the USSR, but how about other socialist countries?

Quote from Fidel Castro, revolutionary and the first leader of socialist Cuba:

the Fourth International fixed it up so that that leader, who was ignorant of the profound problems of politics and of the history of revolutionary thought, would permit that agents of Trotskyism, about whom we do not have the slightest doubt that he is an agent of imperialism, to publish a newspaper which copies outright the program of the Fourth International. By doing this, the Fourth International committed a real crime against the revolutionary movement to isolate it from the rest of the people, to isolate it from the masses, when it contaminated it with the stupidities, the discredit, and the repugnant thing which Trotskyism today is in the field of politics. Even though at one time Trotskyism represented an erroneous position, but a position in the field of political ideas, Trotskyism became during the following years a vulgar instrument of imperialism and reaction. This is the way these gentlemen think. For example, in relation to South Vietnam, where a broad revolutionary front has united the overwhelming majority of the people and various sectors of the population, has united them closely around the liberation movement in the struggle against imperialism. For the Trotskyists that is absurd; that is counterrevolutionary. Yet these gentlemen who serve imperialism have the gall to do such an unusual thing in the face of the facts and realities of history and against the revolutionary movement and to express themselves in this manner.

Quote from Ho Chi Mihn, revolutionary and the first president of socialist Vietnam, in communication with Communists in China:

Dearly beloved comrades, In the past, in my eyes and those of a good number of comrades, Trotskyism seemed a matter of a struggle between tendencies within the Chinese Communist Party. That’s why we hardly paid it any attention. But a little before the outbreak of war, more exactly since the end of the year 1936 and notably during the war, the criminal propaganda of the Trotskyists opened our eyes. Since then, we have set ourselves to study the problem. And our study has led us to the following conclusions: (...)

3. The Chinese Trotskyists (like the Trotskyists of other countries) do not represent a political group, much less a political party. They are nothing but a band of evil-doers, the running dogs of Japanese fascism (and of international fascism). 4. In all countries, the Trotskyists give themselves fine names in order to mask their dirty work and banditry. For example: in Spain they call themselves the United Marxist Workers Party (POUM). Do you know that it’s they who constitute the nests of spies in Madrid in Barcelona and in other places in the service of Franco? It is they who are organising the infamous ‘fifth column’, the espionage body of the army of the Italian and German fascists. In Japan, they call themselves the Marx-Engels-Lenin League (MEL). The Japanese Trotskyists lure youth into their league, then they denounce them to the police. They seek to penetrate the Japanese Communist Party with the aim of destroying it from within. To my mind, the French Trotskyists now organised around the Proletarian Revolution Group have settled on the aim of sabotaging the Popular Front. On this subject, I think you are surely better informed than I. Here in China, the Trotskyists are regrouping around formations such as The Struggle Against the Japanese, Culture and Red Flag. 5. The Trotskyists are not only the enemies of Communism, they are also the enemies of democracy and of progress. They are the most infamous traitors and spies. Perhaps you have read the charges in the proceedings against the Trotskyists in the Soviet Union? If you have not read them, I advise you to read them and to get your friends to read them. This reading is very useful. It will help you to see the true repugnant face of Trotskyism and Trotskyists. Here, I have taken the liberty of extracting some passages directly concerning China. Before the tribunal, the Trotskyist Rakovsky has sworn that, in 1930, when he was in Tokyo (as representative of the Soviet Red Cross) a person highly placed in the Japanese government said to him: “We are now expecting a change of strategy from the Trotskyists. I won’t enter into the details. I only want to tell you that we expect from the Trotskyists actions which favour our intervention in the affairs of China”. Replying to the Japanese, Rakovsky said: “I will write to Trotsky on this subject". In December 1935, Trotsky sent his followers in China instructions in which he underlined several times this phrase: "Do not create obstacles to the Japanese invasion of China". (...)

In September 1931, at the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Japanese Security made contact with the first three. The two parties signed a pact: the Trotskyist group agreed not to advance any propaganda against the Japanese invasion. Japanese Secunty agreed to make over to the Trotskyists a sum of three hundred dollars monthly as well as other supplementary sums, according to the ‘results of the services rendered’. From this moment, Chen Duxiu (Tran Doc Tu) and his accomplices immediately set to work. With the Japanese funds, they published magazines and satirical pamphlets to propagate ideas such as: ‘In occupying Manchuria, the Japanese wanted to rapidly settle the conflict and suspend it, they did not aim to make themselves masters of China’. Scarcely had these ideas been propagated in the columns of their publications than Shanghai was attacked in turn in January 1932 by Japanese troops. At this moment, what do the Trotskyists say? Do they recognise that they were wrong? Do they cease collaborating with the occupier? Absolutely not! While the soldiers of the 19th army spill their blood to defend the Fatherland, the Trotskyists, in acts as in words, continue to commit crime upon crime. On one side, they write: ‘The war for Shanghai doesn’t concern the people at all. It is not a case of a national revolutionary war. It is a case of imperialist war’. On the other side, they spread false rumours, put forward slogans of a defeatist character, gave away defence secrets, etc. But that’s not all. Trotskyists such as Hoa Van Khoi and Cung Van Thu, in secret liaison with the police and the Japanese bosses, infiltrated into the workers’ strike at Shanghai and employed all means to sabotage the movement. To the point where they managed to have the most talented activists in the strike arrested.

There is a lot more in this source, but this is already a very long block quote, so I highly encourage you to read the rest yourself, its only a few pages (link above) To answer the first bit of your ask from my own view, I would say that yes, most trotskyists would consider themselves marxists, but also that trotskyists have significant rifts from actually established marxist projects, and indeed "leninism" in particular. One of the first things that pushed me away from trotsky was his antisoviet practices, he was charged with treason, terrorism, and espionage, in collaboration with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, by soviet courts. While the actual specifics of this is contentious, he was indicted in soviet court and never showed up to despute the claims - most of the contentions seemingly come down to "the dastardly lying communists made it up", and painting the courts as malicious. You can see the earlier quotes from Ho Chi Minh for some of the evidence presented in court, which personally I find rather damning despite being only a fraction of what was presented, and while this particular source is especially contentious, I would be remiss to not at least offer it [link], you can read and come to your own conclusions.

Personally, having investigated the USSR prior to hearing trotsky's ideas, and reading about how revolutionary the union was, how massively it helped people, how the claims about stalin being a dictator are fabricated (even admitted by the CIA themselves) about how they actually had more calories on average than US-americans, how the famines were regularly occuring before the USSR and the USSR is only blamed for "causing" them now because the were able to stop them from ever occuring again through industrialization, how they increased literacy rates and Physcial Quality of Life drastically, that they were the primary force against nazi germany, etc... hearing these anti-Soviet contentions from Trotsky immediately threw off alarm bells for me. I imagine many new Marxists who are not yet familiar with the reality of the soviet union, may find Trotsky's actions against the USSR to be inline with what they've been told about the union previously, and so be more inclined to support them, and view him charitably, but in many ways thats an artifact of anticommunism. This, as well as the rift between trotskyism and marxism-leninism, are covered in depth by the following article

thank you to @stillnaomi for the source. You may also find these of interest, though more supplimental- Trotskyism Counter-Revolution in Disguise, and Trotsky's Day in Court, both also given to me by stillnaomi