Ask Lemmygrad

Speaking of trots, since trot orgs are very common in Brazil, I think their stance on things is very different. There are some trots that command certain unions and are in touch with actual working class people, so I wouldn't say it's focused only in academics. I think this approach of Marxist academics thing is more of a Western thing than a ML x Trot thing. And not all trots delve too much on Trotsky, many are good readers of Marx and Lenin as well.

The thing which actually pisses me off on Trots is that they regard every existing socialist experience a failure and a degeneration. For me this is about throwing reality in the garbage while claiming some sort of ideal Marxism (or Leninism) that only exist in their heads. This kind of thinking just makes a socialism revolution impossible and when you propagandize other working people who aren't Marxists with this rhetoric, the logical conclusion that many people take is "Hey, if revolution never worked before, why the hell will it work in the future?". So, basically this ends up being a defeatist discourse that even makes Trots themselves fight a lot and abandon their previous parties to now create a new party with the right line because every other line is Stalinist/degeneration.

Now regarding dogmatism, I think this is a disease that is spread out in the whole Marxist field, and it's hard to fight. People like to cite Marx as if it is some kind of sacred text, that needs to be interpreted literally and everyone that makes a deviation of the perceived "main" interpretation is a revisionist degeneration. It's kinda like every author following Marx, Engels and Lenin never said any contradictory stuff and even if reality does not match theory then it's revisionism. It's not as if Marx himself changed his mind of the revolution starting in Europe vs the rest of the world, given that he had much more experience and actual praxis when he was older, when he could do a better analysis with more data and experience. So this leaves many Marxist orgs with the habit of splitting and denouncing each other over very minor differences in tactics.