I will never understand the personal demoralization and intellectual dishonesty required for an individual to defend the bloody and counterrevolutionary legacy of Stalinism. There is not a trace of anticommunism in legitimate Trotskyism. Stalin, on the contrary, as the agency of imperialism in the workers movement, murdered hundreds of thousands of communist revolutionaries and Old Bolsheviks, and promoted a program of class collaboration with imperialism, which led to repeated disaster. The physical anhilalation of revolutionary cadres was devastating to Marxist political culture. The damage Stalin did to the reputation of communism in the workers movement is incalculable.

You want to talk about the revolutionary role of the peasentry at a time now in history when the world peasant population has shrunk to a fraction of its size and the proletarian working class makes up the majority of the world population? Pathetic. Trotsky’s theory, adopted by Lenin in April 1917, of the proletariat leading the peasantry in revolution to establish a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry was absolutely correct, as demonstrated in the victory of October 1917. Returning to the old pre-April 1917 formulation of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was a reactionary step away from the program of world socialist revolution, which strengthened the position of imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie.

Trotsky correctly predicted the result of Stalinist politics, which would be the restoration of capitalism by the initiative of the Stalinist bureaucracies, as was carried out by Deng in China in 1989 and Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1991. The political base of Stalinism is nationalism and class collaboration.

Interesting to see a sympathetic portrayal of Trotsky’s life in popular culture. It is bizarre how such a significant figure in modern history has been confined to relative obscurity. Whenever Trotsky is considered at all, his role is usually minimized and his person demonized. It is not hard to understand why. Between imperialism and Stalinism, he represented a serious political challenge to the forces of world reaction and embodied the power of political consciousness in the working class that reverberates to this day.

As charming as the album is (I gave it a few listens through) I would say it is not without serious problems. Despite the obvious sympathy and admiration for Trotsky, it gives the feeling of a well intentioned though ill-fated struggle of a lofty idealist who was ultimately powerless to stop the descent into the bloody grip of Stalinist reaction. In the end, we are left with impression of an exuberant and violent affair that ended in bloody ruin. What is there to admire or desire to repeat about that?

It also focuses too narrowly on the political turmoil within the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, while Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution emphasizes the primacy of the international situation in determining political programs and analyses. Entirely missing from the narrative are the development of the International Left Opposition, the experience of the Spanish Civil War, the struggle for a revolutionary program against the Nazis in Germany, and founding of the Fourth International, which are essential moments in the fight back against Stalinism.

The music is catchy and shows a range of stylistic expression. The political understanding of Trotsky leaves much to be desired.

It’s been just a few months since I quit weed, but it feels like a completely different life. I had quit drinking a few months prior because of the obvious harms it was causing me, but I kept using weed. The harm with weed was not so obvious as with alcohol, but I wasn’t living up to my idea of what I wanted from myself.

I think with alcohol it beats you up and knocks you down hard. With weed, it’s more subtle. The harm is slower and more accumulated. It keeps you down, makes you slower, less ambitious, comfortable in your position, whatever that is. Even when I quit drinking I was still stuck in a pit and I didn’t notice—or didnt care—that the walls were slowly getting higher and the bottom deeper.

I was a heavy user going through some 3–4 cartridges a week plus some joints on top of that. I was constantly stoned from morning to night, at work, at home, while driving, just always. My attention and memory were shot. I finally had enough. I picked a date and quit. Easy. I had one more occasion to use after that which I already planned. That one day turned into several before I got the wherewithal to quit again. The experience sealed it for me and I’ve been clean since!

Life is not perfect. I quit my job without a backup and I’ve been kind of stuck jobless. I’ve been living on a friend’s couch since leaving an unhealthy domestic situation. The relationship didn’t survive sobriety when our mutual drug use seemed to be the only significant connection between us. I’m grateful for my friend, who appreciates the homecooked meals I make (I’m paying my way with the money he’s saving not ordering delivery! lol) I’ve been reading a lot more now that I have the attention span to do so, and I have progressed much faster in learning how to play music.

It gets easier. Good luck to you on your journey!

Eighty years since the first Moscow Trial

When the first Moscow Trial began, Trotsky was under virtual house arrest in Norway. Under pressure from the Soviet Union, the Norwegian Labor Party was attempting to muzzle Trotsky and prevent him from answering the slanders of the trial. A new voice soon emerged, however; Lev Sedov, Trotsky’s son, published in the Bulletin of the Opposition what was to become The Red Book on the Moscow Trial. Sedov meticulously examined the details of the trial and exposed them as a fraudulent attack on genuine revolutionaries.

By April 1937, Trotsky had organized a counter-trial in the form of the Dewey Commission in Mexico, where Trotsky was now located after expulsion from Norway. The voluminous refutation of the first two Moscow show trials (a second occurred in January 1937) is presented in the book Not Guilty. The two concluding points state: (22) “We therefore find the Moscow trials to be frame-ups. (23) We therefore find Trotsky and Sedov not guilty.”

In carrying out these trials, Joseph Stalin was launching an assault on the legacy and the actual leaders of the first successful socialist revolution. As the Bonapartist leader of an increasingly counterrevolutionary social layer, the Soviet bureaucracy, it was not enough for Stalin to expel these Old Bolsheviks from the party and persecute them with exile or imprisonment.

For the middle-class organizers of these protests, who lack a serious political perspective, the protest is their victory. They have no concept of the independent organization of the masses doing anything, besides protesting and calling it a day. They believe and promote the belief that mass rallies will be sufficient to pressure the Democratic Party, some Republicans, and the trade union bureaucracies to oppose Trump more vigorously. They will not.

It can be difficult to imagine the possibility of general strike when we haven’t seen a real organized mass movement in at least two generations. It’s not enough for isolated individuals convinced of the necessity to simply strike of their own initiative. That would be a recipe for disaster, with the participants facing certain reprisal and victimization. The movement must be prepared, starting with the most advanced sections of the working class organizing the leadership.

The protests express a broadly felt desire for action, but that cannot spontaneously generate the necessary movement. It will take the input of people like you, talking to your neighbors and coworkers, organizing action committees in your neighborhoods and workplaces, reaching out to people from other neighborhoods and workplaces, and organizing in preparation for a struggle. The protests provide a prime opportunity to do just that.

For what it’s worth, in case you’re interested, this is the statement we distributed at No Kings: Mobilize the working class against Trump’s dictatorship!

I’ll also recommend this perspective following the protest: The mass protests against dictatorship in the US and the way forward in the fight against Trump’s coup.

If you read something in there that strikes a chord, I would suggest reaching out through the contact form.

These “humanitarian pauses” merely serve to provide the barest cover for the deliberate mass starvation of the Palestinian people. The images of emaciated skeletal figures have aggravated the mass revulsion and anger felt among the populations of Israel’s imperialist allies, and increasingly among the Israeli population itself. Such “pauses” in the livestreamed genocide are intended to provide the governments of the respective countries with sufficient justification to continue arming Israel and supporting the slaughter.

The protests by themselves are certainly inadequate, despite the impressive turnout. What makes the difference is what we do with them. Last time I went out, I distributed statements, made contacts and even received some donations. People are seeking out fighting perspectives. They need organization and leadership.

I think this sort of pessimism is hopelessly self defeating. People are looking for meaningful ways to fight back. What they lack is organization and leadership. What are you doing to develop this?

June “No Kings” saw the largest single day protests in US history. This is a healthy response by the population. We do absolutely need to move beyond the limits of street protests, and onto the development of a mass strike movement; however, the fact that masses of people are willing to go out and protest on a largely spontaneous basis is significant. What is needed is clear revolutionary political perspective. When this understanding grips the masses, particularly the working class, the movement will take on an explosivly historic significance.

You must be some kind of troll. Music literally transforms the structure of your brain, strengthens neural connections, and makes you smarter in every way. If you knew anything about either music or mathematics, you would know the two are fundamentally linked. There are many problems with our society, but too much access to arts and culture definitely is not one of them. Do they even teach music in schools anymore? States have been cutting the curricula to the bone, and the arts have suffered the most.

Music is far and away the more worthy subject.

Education at all levels should be freely available to everyone who wants it. While billionaire oligarchs hoard unfathomable sums of our social wealth, they limit and ration our opportunities for education on certain arbitrary bases. Expropriate capital and make the former capitalist live at an equal level to the rest of society.

You must be the only real person on the internet!

Get a grip lmao.

Ah, makes sense, I guess, since “flawless” writing is a known hallmark. I assure you that I do my own writing.

What about my writing suggests that it is AI generated? And to what end?

Alright. Goes to show the Stalinist hostility to the revolutionary working class and their affinity for bourgeois nationalism is as strong as ever.

It is wrong to lump the KMT and the SPD together. The KMT was a bourgeois nationalist party. The SPD, despite its well documented problems, was a workers party with enormous political significance. Absolutely not tbe same, hence the difference in policy toward the two.

I use my own brain for writing, thank you very much. There are clear mistakes in my OP, despite my best efforts, that all but prove the human origin or my writing.

This is a level of paranoia suggesting actual brain damage, seek medical attention.

I think you underestimate the class consciousness of the ruling class. Bernie has been faithfully playing his assigned role to keep increasingly radicalized sections of the working class and youth within the orbit of the Democratic Party. I do not think it is a stretch to assign consciously anti-revolutionary motives to his statements, especially this stupidly anti-communist statement.

Despite my therapist not agreeing with me on politics, she thinks I am mentally fine.

How does it give a pass to capitalism? Sanders himself would agree that capitalism contributed to Trumpism.

Stalinism was a degeneration of the workers state in the Soviet Union. Fascism is an extreme counterrevolutionary form of capitalism. Assigning one (Stalinism) to the other (Trump/MAGA) is a category error. Ahisotorical and unscientific (and likelh a conscious distortion given Sanders political history and experience).

People who unironically support Stalinism in the modern day are red fascists.

The Stalinist perspective is counterrevolutionary, but it is not fascist. Ironically, most actual Stalinists will have disavowed Stalin by now following his death and Krushev’s secret speech. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism, international Stalinists are largely reduced to trade union organizing and activist pressure groups. In the third world they routinely enter into coalitions with bourgeois nationalist governments. Edgy teenagers on the internet are not serious Stalinists.

He is specifically operating within the context of modern American politics. Something average academic/armchair/larpy leftists are often completely fucking incapable of. His main use of analogizing Stalinism with Trumpism is the Cult of Personality not that they are literally the exact same thing.

In the contact of American politics, the role of anticommunism cannot be overstated. Sanders plays into this tradition because he supports it. He could have criticized Trump’s cult of personality by referencing the fascist Mussolini (or just made it a direct statement about Trump). He chose to use the word “Stalinism” despite it being clearly inappropriate because it serves his political function.

The survival of the Soviet Union as a socialist state depended on the expansion of the revolution internationally. Stalin’s policy of building socialism in one country led to all manner of bureaucratic overreach with authoritarian methods and betrayal of the international working class. The correct policy would have been to spread the revolution throughout the world on the basis of Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, as advanced by the Left Opposition.

The failures of the revolutions in Germany through 1923 were terrible tragedies, prepared largely by the betrayals of the Second International and the inexperiance of the new communist KPD of the Third International. This is not something you can really blame Stalin for, but it created the conditions for what followed.

The betrayal of the Chinese revolution of 1925–27 was the first great International betrayal of Stalinism. Stalin ordered an alliance with the bourgeouis Kuomantang that ended with the massacre of thousands of Chinese comminists at the hands of the nationalista. After that, he ordered a series of putsches that predictably ended in further defeats. Trotsky was expelled from the Communist party for his criticism of the line that led to this disaster.

The ultraleft line of the Comintern in its third period led to disaster and betrayal in Germany in the 1930s. Stalin divided the forces working class by refusing to allow a united front of the communists with German Social Democracy. The SPD still had significant influence in the working class, with over a million working class members who were trained in the revolutionary theories of Marxism. The KPD under the influence of Stalin denounced these workers as “social fascist” essentially no different than the Nazis, thus paving the way for Hitler to come to power (only to turn around later to make his infamous pact with Hitler). These events led Trotsky to conclude the Third International was dead for purposes of revolution, and to call for the founding on the Fourth International.

Fourth International called for political revolution in the USSR to restore democracy and defend the gains of the October Revolution and to expand the proletarian revolution internationally. Trotsky and large numbers of the cadre of the FI were murdered by Stalinist agents, who opposed this perspective. In the postwar period the role of the Stalinists was to use their influence to prop up bourgeois governments throughout the third world, and to effect its foreign policy objectives with respect to the imperialist countries. Stalin fell out of favor after Krushevs secret speech following his death, but the basic political methods remained the same.

I reject this analysis as unscientific and ahistoric. The similarities are entirely superficial. Its not a matter of different ideology, but different historic content of the regimes themselves.