Trotskyism - Criticism

Criticism

Trotskyism has been criticised from various directions.

In 1935, a Marxist-Leninist named Moissaye J. Olgin published a book entitled Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise in which he put forward the idea that Trotskyism was "the enemy of the working class" and that it "should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed the world over." The notable African-American Marxist-Leninist Harry Haywood, who spent much time in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 30s, stated that although he had been somewhat interested in Trotsky’s ideas when he was young, he came to see it as "a disruptive force on the fringes of the international revolutionary movement" which eventually developed into "a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the Party and the Soviet state." He continued to put forward his belief that:

Trotsky was not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's control of the Party apparatus -- as his partisans and Trotskyite historians claim. He had his day in court and finally lost because his whole position flew in the face of Soviet and world realities. He was doomed to defeat because his ideas were incorrect and failed to conform to objective conditions, as well as the needs and interests of the Soviet people.

The way Trotskyists organise to promote their beliefs, democratic centralism, has been criticised, often by ex-members of their organisations. Tourish, a former member of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) asserts that these organisations typically value doctrinal orthodoxy over critical reflection, have illusions in the absolute correctness of their own party's analysis, a fear of dissent, the demonising of dissenters and critical opinion, overworking of members, a sectarian attitude to the rest of the left and the concentration of power among a small group of leaders.

Some left communists, such as Paul Mattick claim that the October Revolution was totalitarian from the start and therefore, Trotskyism has no real differences from Stalinism either in practice or theory.

In the United States Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the trotskist Socialist Workers Party, by raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Red Army and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism and anarchism. A similar critique on Trotsky's role on the events around the Kronstadt rebellion was raised by the American anarchist Emma Goldman. In her essay "Trotsky Protests Too Much" she says "I admit, the dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes."