Application
While there is general agreement among Trotskyists on these questions regarding Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and China, there is disagreement on questions regarding capitalist counter-revolution. Some Trotskyist groups cheered the fall of the Stalinist governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, even under the leadership of pro-capitalist forces. Arguments put forward by some of these groups included the idea that the mobilizations and political space created by smashing the Stalinist bureaucracy could bring about the ability of the working class to carry out the political revolution as a step towards creating a truly democratic and egalitarian socialist society.
Most Trotskyists hold onto the historic position of Leon Trotsky in advocating only Political Revolution against Stalinism while also standing for the defense of the deformed and degenerated workers' states from imperialism and internal capitalist counter-revolution. They argue that their position has been proven correct by the drop of the standard of living of the people of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe including the lack of medical care and jobs and the rise in racist terror unleashed by neo-fascist thugs. Internationally they point to the strengthened hand of U.S. Imperialism with the fall of the Soviet Union as a major cause of war, including the Anglo-American war in Iraq.
Today these debates continue regarding what some Trotskyists consider the deformed workers' states of the Republic of Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of China.
Read more about this topic: Political Revolution
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his “nocturnes” answered: “All of my life.” With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“If you would be a favourite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)