I’m new to communism and when I read about Trotsky and Trotskyism I see there’s many heavy criticism about him like “being a Menshevik”, “Nazi collaborator”. I think, Trotsky’s works like “History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk”, “The Permanent Revolution” are should to read to deepen knowledge of communism and its history. I’m not a Trotskyist or Stalinist just trying to learn.
Why Trotskyist parties are seeing as traitors or divise? Why his books are denounced in communist communities?
It’s often a pipeline for “Western Marxism” ie being against actual existing socialist states (stemming from Trotsky being against the USSR, calling it a degenerate worker’s state/“stalinism”) which then they have to retcon into their political theory and bleeds into another form of liberalism just with “marxist jargon”.
It often ends up having a lot of the problems of Western Marxism (a political theory of Western intelligensia who unable to create a dictatorship of the proleteriat in the imperialist cores and therefore resolved to elevating their theories of superstructure over the base; ie ended up being intellectual naval gazing devoid of praxis, and denunciation of global south revolutionary efforts. This then tied in nicely with Western Hegemony so you had American intelligence services funding the likes of Frankfurt School. The latter is not needed for Western Marxists to be wrong, it’s just quite a common occurence of so-called leftists who do not engage with marxism as a science then being coopted by imperialism).
Please note individuals who identify as Trotskist may be right on certain issues but I could apply that to liberals too. It’s the trotkyism that’s the problem.
Book recommendation:
Article (16 min, Stalin and Stalinism in history): https://redsails.org/losurdo-contra-werth/
what is the evidence of this?
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/07/02/censorship-anti-imperialists-compatible-left/
https://mronline.org/2022/07/06/the-cia-the-frankfurt-schools-anti-communism/
The term “stalinist”: it’s the equivalent of considering someone who understands and accepts Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity as Einsteinist rather than as someone who accepts the science of the physics explained by it (parallels with the science of marxism).
It is, however, important to read broadly so you are right to do so. If one for example doesn’t know what Mein Kampf entails then one may be surprised to learn that Hitler praised the British Empire for its imperialist atrocities and was inspired by USAmerican Manifest Destiny’s settler-colonialism.
https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
I would then add, after learning more on marxism-leninsm, it may be worthwhile re-reading Trotsky with a dialectical materialist lens, with a perspective of the Global South who do not have the privileges of those from the imperial cores.