Why Trotskyism is the Light Shining the Path of Socialist Revolution

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The history of the last 100 years – that is since the 1921 Soviet victory in the Russian Civil War that consolidated the October 1917 Socialist Revolution – is a history of blown opportunities for workers revolution. Sure, some very important victories were achieved in this period in the so-called “Third World” – that is the anti-capitalist revolutions in North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos. However, at the same time, the world’s first workers state (the Soviet Union) was destroyed in capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92 and so were the East European ones created in the wake of the Soviet Red Army’s heroic triumph in World War II. Moreover, countless opportunities for revolution were not taken or betrayed over these last 100 years – mainly as a result of the re-badged Menshevik strategy of the “Popular Front”. It is as if there has been a soccer match between two sides where one side – the working class – has all the opportunities to score and the other side – the capitalist exploiters – has very few … but the score still ends up being a draw! We therefore insist on Trotskyism as the perspective needed to ensure that the working class seizes all the goal scoring opportunities that history inevitably creates for it.

Trotskyism is merely the program of authentic Leninism - that is genuine Bolshevism. It is only necessary to speak of Trotskyism because the program of Leninism was perverted by the rightward moving post-1924 Soviet leadership.

The following article deals with what authentic Trotskyism advocates. This is crucial because especially since it is now 98 years since the split between the Trotskyist Left Opposition and the post-Lenin leadership of the Soviet Union, the reasons for this split are often obscured in myths, conspiracy theories and disputes about who said and did what back then. The real political issues and disputes are often muddied.

This article also deals with the important question of why and how the Trotskyist Fourth International degenerated, just like the Communist International (Comintern) a few decades earlier. It makes the point that in the end, all Marxist groups are subjected to the same pressures regardless of the particular political tradition that they claim to stand on. Moreover, ever since most of the nominal “Trotskyists” despicably took the side of imperialism in the 1980s Cold War II, it is no longer true that people that call themselves “Trotskyists” are necessarily closer to authentic Bolshevism and thus authentic “Trotskyism” than those that consider themselves anti-Trotskyist, “Marxist-Leninists”. Therefore, any socialist workers group must be judged mainly by their actual actions and political positions and not mainly by the particular “ism” (whether that be Trotskyism or Stalinism or Maoism or anarchism or some other “ism”) that they claim to stand by. Or in other words, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and not in the recipe. However, while the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the recipe is still important. It is true that just like how a cook who can bake a good pudding with a bad recipe has great cooking instincts, a socialist who can arrive at the correct positions despite a flawed political theory has good revolutionary class instincts. But sooner or later, the cook with the bad recipe, perhaps when tired, will get the pudding wrong. Similarly, flawed political principles based on a flawed political tradition will eventually lead to flawed political positions. Meanwhile, just like how having the recipe right allows the cook to teach others to cook well, a correct political theory allows a Marxist to train others in revolutionary politics. That is after all the most crucial task of communist activists – to spread communist consciousness. That is why the principles of authentic Trotskyism need to be explained and propagated. This article, which we have put a huge amount of effort into, attempts to do this. Please have a read.