Trotsky

(that is VERY from memory, so cite w.care!!)

c.hitchens likes to think himself a kind of disciple amalgam of orwell and trotsky i think - and recommends isaac deutscher's three-parter

the unspoken subcurrent in literature and revolution - which is good - is "oh fuck it's all coming to pieces in our hands: we have SO screwed this up"

(also, i heart that ppl. are calling collections of articles "comps")

deutscher's books just got reissued, i think.

read lit and revolution a month or so- didn't quite get that subtext, may have to re-read it cos that sounds intriguing.

i'd recommend victor serge on him (especially 'the serge-trotsky letters'), he's very good at acknowledging said cuntishness and salvaging the good bits...

the contradictions will be the only thing to be 'sharpened' on this thread!

heheh. but for cuntishness, 'their morals and ours' is pretty definitive (also his fairly, eh, no-nonsense attitude to the kronstadt rebellion at the same time)

on the whole i'm v ambivalent about trotsky, abt equal admiration and distrust- as for ali, he's ok in my book, tho can be a bit knee-jerk on occasion

Pity Mark S is no longer around..

how does ILX feel about CLR James?

total bro

Always kind of skirted around, but never read. Recommendations?

finally watched a bit of the recent Russian TROTSKY series yesterday for lols and you know it's the most genuinely fascistic thing I've ever seen on TV that isn't the news - like one of those antisemitic cartoons from the Civil War with CGI and sex

— Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley) September 15, 2020

I just saw this come across my TL, confirmation that we follow the same people

Yes, although I doubt you follow some tankies like I do 🤣

oh it's my pal Owen, he follows me you know. My stock must be rising in the tankie community!

xp fped for emoji use, sorry I don’t make the rules

It'll never get to 51 oh wait

on the whole i'm v ambivalent about trotsky, abt equal admiration and distrust- as for ali, he's ok in my book, tho can be a bit knee-jerk on occasion

― Owen Hatherley (owen), Saturday, May 28, 2005 1:19 PM (fifteen years ago)

everyone posting in this thread rn follows Owen ... chronologically

leon trotsky in seinfeld pic.twitter.com/TZmx4APflG

— extreme ultraviolence (@racescientist) July 10, 2022

i had you confused with someone else upthread

I am very shifty that's for sure!

so was the soviet union a degenerated workers' state or was it state capitalism or bureaucratic collectivism or something else? and what is china today?

i'm not a trot and used to think it was state (+sometimes private) capitalism for the most part but hillel ticktin's extremely uncatchy "non-mode of production" diagnosis is actually pretty convincing. contemporary china seems like something else entirely, i have no idea what it is or how to classify it

does any of this matter, probably not

"Trotspotting"

F*** me. In black and white in the report - "Trotspotting" diverted resources away from action on antisemitism. pic.twitter.com/xIqeL5gpvp

— red in the head (@rednthehead) July 19, 2022

as in, did they stand around with notebooks in remote locations doing nothing but waiting until the Trot arrived?

Xp China today is really just a run of the mill authoritarian capitalist state? Do they even do anything remotely identifiably communist/socialist/Marxist now?

Like, the ties between government/ruling party and the private sector isn’t “central planning” but corruption.

Xi at least pays lip service to Marxist/Leninist ideology

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/unleashing-reforms-xi-returns-chinas-socialist-roots-2021-09-09/

The anarchos say authoritarian/capitalist but I don't quite know how that fits into what Xi has done to Shanghai this year.

fits in well enough, he's just leaning on the authoritarian part more these days.

Investors aren't happy, the effects on the global economy have been dire (though there are a couple of other factors).

Anyway pursuing zero covid after a vaccine has been developed isn't really looking after the bottom line.

dogmatic political philosophy for xi is at best a low priority, it's all about maintaining and expanding power.
but also Chinese culture is by nature capitalist, in the sense that taking care of your family (usually by getting rich) is always the most important thing, exploiting this instinct has been the core of their success over the last 40 years.

"dogmatic political philosophy for xi is at best a low priority, it's all about maintaining and expanding power"

Imposing a harsh lockdown to millions of people for months sure looks like a way of doing that.

Anyway.

pic.twitter.com/VoD0Ogm1Gp

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) July 20, 2022

this ->

Chen posts constant bangers. Worst person you know meme, but in the body of a Chinese Politician.

— Jono 🐢 (@WetFlipFlops) July 20, 2022

xps it's confusing to me since it doesn't look like the kind of liberal capitalism I'm used to and because there still seems to be an important role for whatever "marxism" means for xi and the CCP and chinese capital's various purposes, which is (maybe?) unprecedented for a country now so heavily integrated into world markets (even the DPRK which is objectively less capitalist doesn't lean on marxism so hard). of course it's totally cynical but it's not surprising the western left is so disoriented here. if we were better at reading events and conditions than history has shown we are it would still be hard. even if you ignore the whole mao thing (which the CCP itself doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with)

idk if from trotsky's POV (as if that matters) china would still warrant any kind of critical support from socialists- hard to know since most trots seem to be liberals or reactionaries or revisionist "MLMs" or in weird cults these days

from my narrow pov it looks trumpian, i felt the same guilty rush when he was right about something

The most communist aspect to the CCP right now is the bureaucracy, and that links them (at a push) to Lenin, but not really to Marx. I am mystified by friends that still support them (one who was actually deported for drug offenses talks about their work building infrastructure in Africa) but suspect it ultimately comes down to "enemy of my enemy" etc.

Anti-CCP forces are also pretty horrible, many are Falun Gong which often means they take the Epoch Times line, wedded to the far-right wing of the GOP, and especially Trump. They have contempt for the "white left" which is a combination of "soft on China" and culture wars nonsense.

"it's confusing to me since it doesn't look like the kind of liberal capitalism I'm used to and because there still seems to be an important role for whatever "marxism" means for xi and the CCP and chinese capital's various purpose"

It isn't beholden to capital in the way other countries are in the global south. They have 13 trillion worth of assets, and can dictate to investors, banks, markets in a way other countries cannot.

However there are reports of a property bubble that is about to burst. We will see what the effect of that will be.

there's been talk of the property bubble bursting for 20 years now

I've many more reports of this in the last year.

but back to the other topic -- what exactly _is_ trotspotting?

it used to mean identifying toxic elements on the UK left like the SWP who try to infiltrate & appropriate any vaguely progressive protest or social movement for their own ends

it was then appropriated by factional interests within the UK labour party for their effort to purge the (overwhelmingly moderate, non-trotskyist) left wing of the party under the guise of fighting antisemitism - justified by their own antisemitic conspiracy theory about "trots" taking over the party - an obsession which seems to have overridden & deliberately sabotaged actual attempts to deal with antisemitism within the party. it's all very boring & sad

The Labour Party was Trotspotting long before Corbyn became leader.

by trots they mostly mean social democrats though? these days at least. if actual trots were relevant beyond the extra-parliamentary left it was before my time

That's the thing, when Gove started going on about Trots in the teaching unions a few years back, my first thought was, "Does he still think it's the 70s?"

everything in british politics is always still the 70s

tag yrself im an irreconcileable splinter-faction in the revolutionary communist international tendency in britain

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FYUOgtYXkAAtmCW?format=jpg

figures from john kelly's contemporary trotskyism, if im reading the twitter thread correctly (this is my jam and my specialism, and when im not busy i may post some more abt it lol ph34r m3) (membership numbers towards the top of the list definitely overstated btw, swp always a bit notorious for this)

Not convinced there's as many two people in the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency In Britain either.

the international tendency to drink alone whilst having an argument with yourself

Btw re: China, anarcho commies Chuang are explaining in rigorous detail how China isn't communist.

It's well worth reading.

https://chuangcn.org/2022/07/china-faq-communist/

everyone should read/support Chuang, everything I've read from them is excellent & I need to get their book Social Contagion

idk who they are but it is so great to find such unapologetically anarcho/ultraleft/marxish writing (from/about anywhere, let alone China) that is clear to read, isn't dogmatic or nihilistic, actually cares about current events and covers them in a materialist way, doesn't pretend to have all the answers, and still takes class struggle seriously as an ongoing lived reality (instead of overtheorizing themselves into abandoning it as a concept). i wish them the best

"There is nothing more to organize. You can organize workers as workers. You can create a special organization of revolutionary workers. But once you have those two you have reached an end. Organization as we have known it is at an end. The task is to abolish organization." pic.twitter.com/u55Ss6xnPH

— American Worker (@AmericanWork47) March 19, 2024

Uh … what?

hegel giving lenin a great side-eye there

Dud.

Uh … what?

― sarahell, Wednesday, 20 March 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Feeling that quote. It's pretty self-explanatory and says something about how certain modes of organisation can subjugate/marginalise others.

everyone should read/support Chuang, everything I've read from them is excellent & I need to get their book Social Contagion

idk who they are but it is so great to find such unapologetically anarcho/ultraleft/marxish writing (from/about anywhere, let alone China) that is clear to read, isn't dogmatic or nihilistic, actually cares about current events and covers them in a materialist way, doesn't pretend to have all the answers, and still takes class struggle seriously as an ongoing lived reality (instead of overtheorizing themselves into abandoning it as a concept). i wish them the best

Good pub trivia factoid: Dr. Nora Volkow, current director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is Trotsky's granddaughter... she grew up in the house where he was killed

while Stalin's granddaughter runs a boutique in Portland OR... wonder if they've ever met

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3496532/Tank-Girl-Josef-Stalin-s-tattooed-British-educated-granddaughter-mother-abhorred-murderous-tyrant-s-dark-past.html

Uh … what?

― sarahell, Wednesday, 20 March 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Feeling that quote. It's pretty self-explanatory and says something about how certain modes of organisation can subjugate/marginalise others.

my experience is that there's this... urge in radical community to want to systematize personal beefs in theoretical terms. i literally saw once a critique that would more accurately have been called "The Latest Drama On The Discord Server I _Used_ To Be A Mod On: A Marxist Analysis"

it's an understandable desire. i'm not gonna say i never ask myself "How the fuck did a shithead like Vaush become the public face of leftism on the Internet? That dude is a piece of shit." i can tell you how it goes, my brain asks rhetorically "why is it always pieces of shit like Vaush who get popular and never, like, people who aren't assholes", and then the little leftist theorist in my head says "well, actually, there a number of structural reasons, which are worth explicating on because they're really important when it comes to formulating a version of class struggle which is truly effective and cannot be hijacked by counterrevolutionary..."

Like out of fucking scope, Brain Trot. Vaush is an asshole. We can start and end there. Writing theory about _why_ Vaush is an asshole isn't going to make anything better.

Anyway, Trotskyists are leftists who "analyze" their personal beefs with other leftists until everyone else stops taking them seriously. I like trots better than tankies, but that's really only because there's no fucking way trots could ever get their shit together enough to gain control of a tank.

Trotskyist: "We must abolish organization in order to prevent this tank from being used to oppress the people!"
Tankie: *gets into tank and drives away*

trufax, ph34r my 4ge ect ect: when i interviewed clr james in the mid-80s (for nme lol) i asked him about trotsky (who he knew in person) and he said "he means nothing to me now"

also grand work allison & busby for choice of cover images there

It annoys me that the picture order doesn't follow the subtitle order.

thats dialectics mate

my experience is that there's this... urge in radical community to want to systematize personal beefs in theoretical terms

also grand work allison & busby for choice of cover images there

Malcolm & (Sir) Matt?

lol at ilxor.com telling me "Trotsky has new answers"

thanks for the chuang link/rec, that looks super interesting (and was the reason I bookmarked the thread in the middle of the night)

ME: I hate you papa! I’m tired of how bourgeois you are! I’m running off to join the circus!

MY FATHER, FAMOUS REVOLUTIONARY LEON TROTSKY: I am NOT more bourgeois than the circus. Do NOT tell people I am more bourgeois than the circus pic.twitter.com/0uOoFhTugK

— madoc cairns | wsj (@MadocCairns) March 27, 2024

classic middle class trot behaviour

I looked him up and now I'm sad because fucking stalin