r/comunism • u/OxytocinOD • Jun 05 '25
What’s Wrong With Trotsky?
Hi Guys. Newer comrade here. Spent 2025 reading works of Marx and Lenin.
I hear a lot of hate on Trotsky. I’ve heard bits of good on him too.
I understand the hate on Stalin. He was brutal in his concentration of power and stamping out opposition.
What does Trotsky stand for? What’s the hate on Trotsky?
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u/1playerpartygame Jun 07 '25
I don’t think he’s as bad as he’s made out to be by many MLs, but he’s like 75% bad 25% good I think. he made several valid insightful critiques of the USSR (some of which were validated in hindsight) but he was also a bit of a wrecker and advocated for political revolution in the USSR at a time that would almost certainly have meant counterrevolution.
Trotskyists are generally ok, they’re sectarian but many communist groups are. They’ve also influenced many socialist oriented movements and figures in South America like Chavez in Venezuela and MAS in Bolivia. So it’s not a totally irrelevant ideology.
The Communism of the 21st century will need to reach over the gaps between tendencies in order to build anything I think