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What Is The Deal With Trotskyism And Maoism? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by asdasd201@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml

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Edit: I'm from the Global South, I should've clarified that on the post. The lesson has been learned.

Many leftist movements, legit or not, call themselves either Trotskyist or Maoist and keep dissing Stalin for his “socialism in one state” policy and “ruining” Comintern and Deng Xiaoping for his “liberal” policies.

I want to know what they are trying to do by distancing themselves from the USSR and PRC while fetishizing Cuba and Vietnam—you'll only hear them talking about the Vietnam War, btw—and following either the guy who lost the power struggle or a literal Marxist-Leninist who supported one of the refused countries and founding the other.

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[–] asdasd201@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's probably a regional difference. I'm from the Global South, so people tend to deify Lenin, Fidel, Che, and Ho Chi Minh for their struggle against the imperial powers (as if Stalin was eating brunch with them.)

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Stalin led the struggle against the most aggressive imperialist power in Europe at the time. He deserves just as much respect as the rest of them. The Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War was also a war of resistance against colonization, very similar to the struggles of the global south, since the German plan for the East involved ethnic cleansing and settlement.

Afterwards, the Soviet Union actively supported decolonization efforts across the globe.

[–] asdasd201@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The Comintern and "socialism in one state" bother some people too much, especially Trots, for them to support Stalin. Idk what they were expecting from him and what they believe if Trotsky was the secretary instead.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Well, most people who criticize "Socialism In One State" don't actually understand what it means. But setting that aside because it's a longer theoretical discussion that is probably not worth getting into in 99.9% of cases, i find it amusing how the same people who criticize "Socialism In One State" for not being internationalist enough can simultaneously criticize the Comintern, when the Comintern represented precisely that internationalism which they claim the Soviet Union abandoned*.

It's very contradictory in my opinion, but the point of course is not logical consistency or theoretical coherence, it's that people need a excuse dressed up in the appearance of theoretical justification for disliking the Soviet Union.

Also the Comintern was founded by Lenin, not Stalin.

*(And to be completely fair, they did dissolve the Comintern for a few years around the time of WWII, again for reasons that probably made sense at the time but we don't need to get into now, but it was replaced soon after.)

[–] asdasd201@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

One of the criticisms I hear about the Comintern is that USSR made it a Soviet-adjacent organization instead of a true International, like the first and second ones.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 days ago

The USSR was the birthplace of the revolution and the only socialist state in the world at the time. Of course they were central to the Comintern. They had the most power to materially affect the course of world events.