Loaded questions for Trotskyites

 

Koci Xoxe during his trial for treason

Let´s have some fun. I recently LARP-ed as a Muslim, Buddhist, atheist and Catholic, answering or countering Norman Geisler´s "Questions for Atheists, Agnostics and Non-Christians". In this blog post, I will pretend to be a Stalinist, asking pointed questions to Trotskyists. So let me emphasize that this is a *joke*, or perhaps a thought experiment, nothing more!

Let´s start... 

1. Isn´t it true that Trotsky wasn´t even a member of the Bolshevik Party until shortly before the October revolution? What makes you think that Trotsky could possibly have assimilated and embodied the will, discipline and *ethos* of Bolshevism, if he had spent most of his life fighting against it in various rotten left-Menshevik blocs? If you believe this isn´t the case, doesn´t that mean you are denying Lenin´s party-building theory? 

What´s the point building a revolutionary Communist party, if any rogue intellectual with some organizing and speaking abilities could join it at any moment, and even claim some kind of fundamental "revolutionary continuity" with his erstwhile political identity? Do you actually believe that there *is* a revolutionary continuity of this kind between the pre-1917 Trotsky, the "Bolshevik" Trotsky, and the later "Trotskyist" Trotsky?

2. How can the theory of permanent revolution be "Marxist"? It was developed by a Menshevik who applied it to Australia (sic) and adopted by Trotsky during his pre-Bolshevik phase as a means to fight Bolshevism. How can you say that "the Bolshevism of 1917" combined "Trotsky´s theory of permanent revolution" with "Lenin´s party theory"? Isn´t this the height of petit bourgeois eclecticism of precisely the kind we would expect from a builder of rotten blocs á la Trotsky?

3. Why did Trotsky, who claimed that Bukharin was the greater danger compared to Stalin, suddenly change his mind in 1929, calling for an alliance with the Bukharinites against comrade Stalin? Isn´t this actually "the bloc of the Trotskyites and the right"? And what about the alliance between Trotskyites and Bukharinites in Spain, which led to the formation of the POUM? 

4. If you support the transition between feudalism and capitalism as historically progressive despite all the violence, why don´t you support the transition between capitalism (or indeed feudalism in some cases) and really existing socialism despite all the violence? Isn´t this entailed by your own theory of "the degenerated workers´ state", which states that the really existing socialist countries are historically progressive compared to capitalism? Some of you even claim to support comrade Stalin´s first five year plan, since it led to an enormous economic growth in the middle of the Great Depression. Yet, you broke with the world Communist movement at exactly the same moment that the Communist Party started to build socialism in earnest, after the NEP tactical retreat!

5. Trotsky claimed to give "military but not political support" to the Spanish Republic against Franco´s fascists. But Trotsky also told his supporters that in the (unlikely) event they would have been elected to the Cortes, they would have *voted against* the military budget of the Republican government. He also supported the so-called May Days in Barcelona, when anarcho-putschists stabbed the Republican government in the back. How is this compatible with "military support" to the Republic?

6. There is a lot of Trotskyist hue and cry over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but this is specious, since Trotsky supported the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty (which was worse for Soviet Russia than Molotov-Ribbentrop). Given the fact that the Soviet Union Sovietized large amounts of territory in 1939-40 and gained precious time, shouldn´t Trotskyists *support* the pact, since you regard the Soviet Union as a "degenerated workers´ state" and even claim to "defend" it against capitalist powers? Aren´t Finland, the Baltic republics, Poland and Romania capitalist? Weren´t the other great powers capitalist?

7. Why do you oppose the progressive Democrats in the United States, such as FDR, and other progressive forces such as the American Labor Party and the Farmer-Labor Party? Why do you oppose the war effort on the Western front, if you claim to "defend the Soviet Union", especially in light of the fact that comrade Stalin himself urged the Western Allies to open a new front in Europe? Do you really believe that Hitler could have been defeated without a second front in the West? Do you really believe that the small Trotskyite groups (many of which were openly defeatist) could have stopped the Nazi invasions and occupations of Western Europe?

8. Really existing socialism spread to almost half of the world under Stalin, and new socialist or socialist-oriented governments were established even under the post-Stalin period. Yet, with a few exceptions, Trotskyists opposed all these revolutions, just as you opposed almost every other national liberation front against colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism. Why, if you really believe that these governments were "deformed workers´ states" and hence historically progressive? See question above concerning the transition from feudalism to capitalism! By your logic, a Soviet intervention in Mongolia, Khorezm or Bukhara would have been "reactionary" if it happened in 1930 or 1940 rather than in 1920. Please specify why!  

9. Why did your Albanian comrades support Mussolini, Balli Kombëtar and Koci Xoxe? Why did the Fourth International support the UPA, the armed wing of the fascist Banderaite organization OUN-B? Is there no end to your petty little fascist provocations against the world Communist movement?

10. Mao Zedong took power in China by creatively reworking Marxism-Leninism under new conditions, basing the party on the peasantry and developing the theory of "protracted people´s war", which eventually made it possible for the CPC and the PLA to take power in China, decisively altering the world balance of forces in favor of the socialist camp and the international working class movement. Mao upheld Stalin overall, while also having some criticisms. He eventually rejected Khrushchev. Logically, you should regard Mao as a "Stalinist" and "revisionist". That´s certainly how you regard Stalin himself, or Enver Hoxha. 

*Yet, you supported China*. 

Isn´t the actual reason for this that the Chinese *broke with the Soviet Union and thereby split the socialist camp* after the death of comrade Stalin? Thus, you are not really interested in Mao´s ideology, but in the fact that he acted as a provocateur against the Soviet Union. *You also supported Tito in Yugoslavia, whose formal ideology was very different from that of Mao Zedong*. It´s interesting to note that the only "anti-Soviet" nation you never supported was Enver Hoxha´s Albania, despite the fact that the arguments you used to justify support of Mao, Tito or Castro ("mass mobilizations", "de facto break with popular frontism", etc) are just as applicable to Albania. Why is this? What is it about Hoxha you can´t stomach, Messrs Trotskyistes? 

11. What is the difference between the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Kronstadt uprising of 1921? Trotsky took personal responsibility for the suppression of the latter, and you claim to believe that he was right. Yet, you support *an identical counter-revolutionary movement* in Hungary in 1956. Imre Nagy left the Warsaw Pact and formed a coalition government with non-Communist (i.e. anti-Communist) parties. Cardinal Midszenty supported the uprising (compare Kozlovsky at Kronstadt). Sure, there were "workers´ soviets" and "anti-Stalinist Communists" in Hungary 1956, *but so was the case at Kronstadt in 1921*. And no, the Western powers didn´t actually intervene to aid the counter-revolution, but neither did they intervene to aid the Kronstadt rebels! If you oppose one, you must oppose the other. 

12. Why did you support the Pope´s and the CIA´s favorite union in Poland, Solidarnosc? Trotsky suppressed striking workers during the Civil War and the NEP. What´s the difference in this case? 

13. Some of you claim to support Cuba. So why did you support the "democratic" counter-revolutions in 1989-91 which destroyed the socialist camp and thereby left Cuba politically and economically isolated? Even after the dissolution of the socialist camp, you continue your anti-Soviet provocations, as if nothing happened, now directing them against Russia, Belarus and Serbia. Doesn´t this peculiar form of shadow-boxing clearly show where you stand: at the side of Western, principally American, imperialism against all the peoples of the world and their socialist bulwark?

14. Why do you support all forms of bourgeois degeneracy, such as grooming, LGBTQ+ or "progressive" pornography? 

15. Isn´t your entire *ethos* basically similar to that of reformists and left-liberals, explaining why you constantly bloc with them, recruit from them, and return to them once your "Trot phase" is over?

16. Why do you always respond to criticism in an almost autistic fashion by writing long-winding "polemics", as you will most assuredly do even in this case, since you can´t help yourselves, although I clearly indicated in the introduction that this is a LARP?