Why Am I Not a Trotskyist?

When I was in college, I was influenced by Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. I even joined a Trotskyist party. But over time, I came to reject these views. Here is why.

Note: This Video was recorded in Feb. 2020, So Any Reference to Events & News is not to be confused with Recent ones.
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Video by Taimur Rahman & Team.

[Alkemisti]

This is the first time someone explains to me what specifically is wrong with Trotskyism. Everybody ridicules them but rarely anyone explains. Thank you.

[bismarckfamily]

0:07 "so I thought I'm gonna make a short video on trotskism"

Proceeds to make a 42 min long vid

[avSamikkannu]

A top-class lecture on the question of not just Trotskyism but of the relevance of proletarian revolution itself to the third world countries!

[doranrahne]

In other words: history has proven Trotskyism wrong, especially his Eurocentric views.

[ChuNguyen-yckf]

5.00 bureauticration (or bourgeoisement in French) is not created under Stalin's time, it is revisionist and created under Khrushov's time and continues and contributes to the collapse of the USSR. Stalin attempted to decentralised the Party's role but the internal opposition and the WWII prevents this to happen. See Grover Furr's and Vladimir Bobrov's

[markpatterson]

The SWP split from Trotskyism in the ‘80s & formally left the 4th Internationale in 1990

[LarzGustafsson]

I totally agree with what you are saying about the Eurocentric perspective! Spot on! This is extremly important and must be stressed.

[beps]

I don't think your description of the theory of permanent revolution around the 18' mark is a fair representation. The key point is that Trotsky's position on the peasantry didn't have any of the schematism of the Mensheviks and it was more thoroughly dialectical even than Lenin. Like Lenin, Trotsky saw the possibility of an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry as events moved in a revolutionary direction. Clearly they were both right on that. But Trotsky's theory was born out (and Lenin reached the same conclusions) in 1917, which proved that the only way to 'win' bourgeois democratic rights in a country that has been economically dominated is to move straight on to socialism. This has also been shown in Cuba, where the Castro leadership was forced by events to go all the way to socialism, as well as in several African countries.
This theory is simply a consistent development of Marxism, which takes into account the balance of forces that we actually see under imperialism. Marx and Engels themselves saw that in all bourgeois democratic revolutions, the revolution had been carried out not by the big bourgeoisie, but by the petty bourgeoisie (which, like the peasantry, is heterogeneous and never wholly revolutionary or wholly reactionary) and later by the industrial proletariat. What Trotsky added was an understanding that under imperialism, it would simply be impossible for a revolution to result in the establishment of a liberal democracy in Russia. Again, the later history of decolonisation bears this out. Instead, the workers and peasants had to take matters into their own hands, and also call on their counterparts in Western Europe to rise up. That is also a direct application of Marxism, as we understand that socialism will be built on the basis of capitalism, which is an international system, and that this is especially important when a socialist state is established in a country that is dominated by foreign capital.
I apologise if this is a bit rambling, but I think overall you don't completely do justice to Trotsky's ideas here. I would strongly recommend reading the literature of the IMT (soon to be Revolutionary Communist International) on these questions, as I think we have developed Trotsky's ideas in a much deeper way than the American SWP.

I hope you don't mind if I also take a second to explain the relationship of the IMT in relation to the Trotskyist movement, as I think our ideas are very different from other Trotskyist groups, and they are what has convinced me that this organisation has the potential to play the role the Bolsheviks did in 1917. The IMT was initially a part of Trotsky's fourth international, but after Trotsky's death, while the American and French sections fell into prestige politics and continued to repeat whatever Trotsky had said, like parrots, the group that later became the IMT had an unflinching attitude to using the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky as a living method. That is what set them aside from all the so-called Trotskyists that fell into sectarianism or even gave up the defense of the russian revolution and started calling Russia 'state capitalist'. On that basis, the IMT frankly acknowledged that the immediate post-war period was not the period of revolution that Trotsky had expected (for good reason), and on the same basis, now that the conditions on the ground have changed again and capitalism is in its deepest ever crisis, the IMT is revolutionising its methods and building the core of revolutionary leadership that will be necessary to bring the working class to power.

[nonono]

Maybe it's because you recieved mostly trotskyist version of this debate but you skipped one of the main theses of Lenin on the peasant question. A very important one, in fact. It was the analysis of the peasantry as a whole. Lenin showed that they weren't a single class and in fact were already started to divide among themself into capitalist and proletariat, though a significant amount of petit bourg peasants still existed. Lenin talked about accumulation of land in the hands of few peasants (kulaks) and a significant portion of peasantry becoming landless workers on the fields of kulaks or having to pay rent/debt big enough to kulaks that they were practically landless workers too.

That was the biggest argument of Lenin against both Plekhanov and Trotsky - that the peasantry contains a significant amount of proletariat already, even if agrarian proletariat is not as revolutionary and progressive as industrial one. And he was proven right.

Didn't stop Trotsky from lying after Lenin's death that somehow Lenin agreed with Trotsky on the peasant question right before dying.

[VanNordstein]

The SWP broke with Trotskyism in 1963 and finally left the pabloite United Secretariat in 1990 to form the Pathfinder Tendency.

[dinnerwithfranklin]

Thank you. I've wondered so many times about this issue

[Mesterjakel]

incredibly informative and clear analysis, thank you

[zacoolm]

It is all about the continious struggle in true homage to Marx’s quest for humanity to realise the full potential of its conscious existence. Thank you so much Dr. Rahman for this amazing video!

[yungyahweh]

Thanks for this video. I watched it over a year ago but I thought about it again and enjoyed another listen. I tried to get my Pakistani father to check out your channel but I don’t think he has.

[anglo-irishbolshevik]

Thank-you comrade for your detailed analysis ❤

[kilgorehoffman]

I’m wondering if he has ever explained why he is/is not a Stalinist

[dolphone]

Um what this is like some of the best educational socialist content I've seen in months

[MatanteDodo]

I'm not a Trotskyist but to be fair, the SWP is not representative of Trotstyites. Maybe at the time they were better, but now they are a bizarre little bunch.

[shivankmenon]

Great video! However, weren’t the peasant support bases of a Chinese, Vietnamese, and even Cuban revolutions based on the prospect of national revolution and bourgeois land reforms, rather than the struggle for socialism?

[Melisssaaaaaaa]

I also think that the European and western capitalists are harder to get rid of even after a socialist revolution they might re-emerge