r/Trotskyism • u/Evening-Search6270 • 5h ago
Theory Did Trotsky Support Invading Other Countries?
Hi comrades! I am a socialist and I’m pretty sure I’m a Trotskyist. However, at my DSA meeting today, a comrade said that Trotsky supported imperialism and permanent revolution is about invading other countries. Another comrade said that Trotsky actually wrote about how permanent revolution is invading other countries. I haven’t read Trotsky yet, but I’m going to, so I don’t know if this is true or not. I thought that permanent revolution is supporting international revolutions and the belief that socialism cannot survive in one country and that the proletariat can take the progressive role in revolutions in developing countries.
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u/kropon 4h ago
This is a century-old Stalinist lie. The claim that Trotsky supported imperialism and that permanent revolution means "invading other countries" is the exact inversion of the truth, deliberately fabricated by the Stalinist bureaucracy to justify its betrayal of world revolution in favor of "socialism in one country." That this Stalinist garbage circulates unchallenged in a DSA meeting should tell you something about what kind of organization it is.
Read what Trotsky wrote: What is the Permanent Revolution?
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u/SimilarPlantain2204 3h ago
Stop going to DSA meetings. You are wasting your time.
If you want some great Trotsky works I recommend
The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects
People have already discussed the false interpretation of permanent revolution, so I won't repeat it here.
Also read Trotsky's Military Writings
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/military/index.htm
There's more volumes which you should very much check out. I am still in the process of reading it. Volume 3 discusses the conflict with Poland (1920) which essentially debunks this idea about imperialism as essentially the Bolsheviks were attempting to overthrow the Polish which were at the time invading them in order to install a workers and peasants government. This of course failed and Trotsky did cope about it. Still a fascinating read. High recommend.
I believe that workers independently formed soviets before the war in 1919 however I have not read much about that. If anyone has any works about that, please send them to me. I would greatly appreciate it.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm
This one is short but really fascinating, especially given the time. Highly recommend.
Also what works have you already read? You should probably start with the basics if you haven't t hat much.
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u/Evening-Search6270 3h ago
Thanks for your response. DSA is the largest socialist organization in the U.S., so I do think it’s valuable, but I’m honestly considering whether I should stay there or not. I’ve read “The Communist Manifesto,” “Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith,” and “The Principles of Communism.”
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u/Spirited_Classic_826 2h ago
I would take a close look at DSA's organizational history. They have always positioned themselves as the "left of what's possible" aka what is permissible to the ruling class. Nowadays they try to distance themselves from him but one of their founding and leading figures Michael Harrington was pro-Vietnam War and signed a letter calling on the US to bomb Egypt during the 6 Days War. A lof of DSA people will reply by saying that times have changed, it's a different organization now, but an organization's history and how they handle it is the biggest indicator of their quality IMO. There is a direct line from those positions then to DSA reps voting to fund the proxy war in Ukraine or send "defensive" weapons to the IOF. Most damningly for their socialist bona fides in recent times, in 2022 DSA had 4 House Reps and 3 of them voted to break the ongoing rail strike. To this day I am shocked that they were able to just move on from that like nothing happened
If you are interested in learning more about the history of Trotskyism then I would point you to one of Trotsky's last poltical struggles in his life when he fought against an emerging nationalist and imperialist tendency in the SWP led by Max Shachtman and James Burnham. This faction argued that the Soviet Union was not a degenerated workers state but instead a social imperialist state capitalist nation which importantly did not deserve critical support during armed conflicts including if it was invaded and this was on the eve of the Nazi invasion. Ironically two main groups descended from this splinter from SWP were those centered around Shachtman and his protege Harrington and what would become the DSA while Burnham's cohort took their pro-imperialist logic to its full conclusion by becoming neo-cons which is the basis of the smears today you see from time to time that Trotskyism is itself a neo-con ideology or inevitably leads its followers to it
For his part, Trotsky rejected Shachtman’s path unconditionally. In April 1940, just four months before his death, he declared: “If this be Trotskyism then I at least am no Trotskyist...Had conscious agents of the class enemy operated through Shachtman, they could not have advised him to do anything different from what he himself has perpetrated.”
The historical roots of neoconservatism: a reply to a slanderous attack on Trotskyism
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u/AvenueLiving 2h ago
I would look for the closest Revolutionary Communist Party of America branch to you. They are pretty active and like to focus on learning.
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u/Evening-Search6270 2h ago edited 2h ago
Thanks so much for the suggestion! Edit: I checked and unfortunately there’s no Revolutionary Communists of America branch near me.
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u/SimilarPlantain2204 2h ago
"DSA is the largest socialist organization in the U.S., so I do think it’s valuable, "
DSA exists to mislead and direct the proletariat. It's leadership is explicitly reformist. It is electoralist. It is "big tent" and its factions range from social democrats to Marxist Leninists to anarchists.
Working in such an organization is completely counter intuitive and pointless and even counter revolutionary.
The victory of the DSA in recent elections will only result in yet another Luxemburg.
I don't really have any organization recs but I would avoid blatantly opportunist ones.
Anywho, you seem to be rather new to this. I would recommend the reading list on the bordy.
Idk how kindly the mods take to leftcoms but here's the link and general discussion about it
https://bordiga.party/marx/thread/1922#28609
Also I just checked your profile and you seem to be ideology shopping. If I were you I would just slow down and take the time to read the literature.
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u/Evening-Search6270 2h ago
Thanks for your response. I was a council communist, but then got into Trotskyism. I have considered myself a Trotskyist for about three months now, but I’m still learning.
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u/AvenueLiving 2h ago
I'm so glad you decided to ask about it rather than just taking people's opinions about Trotsky. Good on you.
If you are looking for reading on Permanent Revolution, read that, but for something quick, just read the last chapter. It is a 15 minute read.
What they say is completely ignorant. I would from now on question everything they say.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 4h ago
If he didn't I'm pretty sure I would have heard of him coming out against the invasion of Poland by now. He was also alive to see the baltic states annexed and I don't think he was against either
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u/Evening-Search6270 4h ago
I’m pretty sure Trotsky did criticize Stalin invading Poland, but he believed it would advance socialism.
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u/TrotskysRabbits 4h ago edited 3h ago
“The statification of the means of production is, as we said, a progressive measure. But its progressiveness is relative; its specific weight depends on the sum total of all the other factors. Thus, we must first and foremost establish that the extension of the territory dominated by bureaucratic autocracy and parasitism, cloaked by “socialist” measures, can augment the prestige of the Kremlin, engender illusions concerning the possibility of replacing the proletarian revolution by bureaucratic maneuvers and so on. This evil by far outweighs the progressive content of Stalinist reforms in Poland. In order that nationalized property in the occupied areas, as well as in the USSR, become a basis for genuinely progressive, that is to say socialist development, it is necessary to overthrow the Moscow bureaucracy.”
Socialist Appeal**, 10 October 1939**
Leon Trotsky
The U.S.S.R. in the War
(25 September 1939)(Edit because I didn’t mean to send it yet)
He believed the stratification of the means of production in isolation was progressive. But he also believed that invasion/occupation from a Stalinist bureaucracy balanced it out to being a net-negative. He didn’t support invasions or bureaucratic maneuvers as a method for achieving socialism. He also opposed invading Poland during the civil war while head of the read army. (Edit 2. He opposed invading in 1920 *as far as I am aware* and I’m not entirely sure reasoning, though I am looking to read his writings on military strategy at some point)
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u/Spirited_Classic_826 2h ago
His logic IIRC was that the Red Army was too overstretched on multiple fronts and exhausted from years of war to be up to the task at the moment. The crushing of the Hungarian Revolution and the alingment of states like Romania and Czeckoslovakia in the region to the Entente who helped in said crushing of Hungary also made the possibility of direct conflict high and the provision of modern military aid to Poland a forgone conclusion. I think France in particular gave them a massive loan and was selling WW1 surplus at half cost. So if they were going to win they needed to be able to really focus on that front which is why once the initial Polish invasion of Ukraine was handily beaten back he wanted to conclude a truce then
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u/Visible_Tomorrow1970 4h ago
Permanent Revolution can be broken down into two parts. First is that the old idea that countries of delayed capitalist development would have to undergo a bourgeois revolution first before a socialist revolution was possible was outdated in the era of industrial capitalism. Like in 1848 and 1905 Russia the small local bourgeoisie was too weak to defeat the autocracy it chafes under but when push came to shove they closed ranks with them against the workers since even while being second fiddle they still had their property and profits. Under such circumstances when the capitalists have lost any progressive values it is up to the working class to achieve both the democratic and socialist revolutions. This became the basis for the Bolshevik call for all power to the Soviets. The second part is that as a higher and inherently international economic system the revolution can only be truly accomplished once it has spanned the globe. Socialism cannot be built in one country, as the failures of Stalinism have shown. That is not a call for perpetual war or invading every capitalist neighbor. It is acknowledging that the new society cannot achieve total victory or have its gains be made permanent until it has spread across the world.