Contemporary Trotskyism

Contemporary Trotskyism PDF

Author: John Kelly

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-14

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1317368940

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Almost 80 years after Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International, there are now Trotskyist organizations in 57 countries, including most of Western Europe and Latin America. Yet no Trotskyist group has ever led a revolution or built an enduring mass, political party. Contemporary Trotskyism looks in detail at the influence, resilience and weaknesses of the British Trotskyist movement, from the 1970s to the present day. The book argues that to understand and explain the development, resilience and influence of Trotskyist groups, we need to analyse them as bodies that comprise elements of three types of organization: the political party, the sect and the social movement. It is the properties of these three facets of organization and the interplay between them that gives rise to the most characteristic features of the Trotskyist movement: frenetic activity, rampant divisions, inter-organizational hostility, authoritarian and charismatic leadership, high membership turnover and ideological rigidity. Trotskyist groups have been involved in a wide range of important social movements including trade unions, student unions, anti-war, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups. While their energy and activity in civil society have had some success, their influence has never been reflected in votes or seats at elections even after the financial crisis. Drawing on extensive archival research, as well as interviews with many of the leading protagonists and activists within the Trotskyist milieu, this is essential reading for students, activists and researchers with an interest in the far left, social movements and contemporary British political history.

The Twilight of World Trotskyism

The Twilight of World Trotskyism PDF

Author: John Kelly

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-10-28

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1000816451

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The Twilight of World Trotskyism analyzes the reasons behind the historic failure of the Trotskyist movement around the world. The book begins this assessment by briefly recapitulating the origins of Trotskyism, as a political current within the communist movement, and elaborating its major elements, before describing the historical development of Trotskyism in the four countries where it has sunk the deepest roots and which house the clear majority of the world’s Fourth Internationals: Argentina, Britain, France and the USA. It then proceeds to map the current state of the global Trotskyist movement. Whatever their current size and status, Trotskyist organizations aspire to become mass political parties and lead revolutionary seizures of power. It is therefore appropriate to examine them through the metrics applied to mainstream parties, namely organization, membership and political influence. The author looks at the dynamics of the Trotskyist movement, focusing in particular on the supposedly harmful effects of the communist movement before then turning to examine the role of Trotskyist organizations in the many revolutionary situations that have appeared since the 1920s and in the various ‘cycles of protest’ that have occurred in the latter half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century. The final section examines the two success stories frequently cited in Trotskyist literature, namely the cases of Bolivia and Sri Lanka. The book concludes by setting out and examining a wide variety of explanations for the chronic and sustained weaknesses of the Trotskyist movement, including its flawed appraisals of contemporary politics and economics, ultra-radical programmes and policies, failures in understanding the dynamics of protest and the baleful legacy of Soviet communism. It is argued that these weaknesses are rooted in Trotskyist doctrine and are therefore integral, not peripheral, features of world Trotskyism. This volume will be essential reading for activists and scholars interested in the transnational history and politics of the radical left.

Trotskyism in the United States

Trotskyism in the United States PDF

Author: Paul Le Blanc

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1608467538

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In the new edition of this definitive work on the history of the revolutionary socialist current in the United States that came to be identified as "American Trotskyism," Paul Le Blanc offers fresh reflections on this history for scholars and activists in the twenty-first century. Includes a preface written especially for the new edition of this distinctive work. Paul Le Blanc is a professor of History at La Roche College and author of Choice Award–winning book A Freedom Budget for All Americans.

U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965. Part III: Resurgence

U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965. Part III: Resurgence PDF

Author: Paul Le Blanc

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-12-24

Total Pages: 728

ISBN-13: 9004389288

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This last of three documentary volumes, U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965. Part III: Resurgence, spans 1954 to 1965, and includes a rich selection of primary sources on labor and social struggles, intellectual history, and the revolutionary impact of Leon Trotsky’s perspectives on U.S. socialism.

Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism

Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism PDF

Author: Peter Beilharz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-19

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1000706516

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First published in 1987. Trotskyists have long dominated the revolutionary tradition on the Western left. Written from a critical socialist standpoint, this book provides an analysis of Trotskyism and argues that Trotskyism is increasingly irrelevant as a means of achieving socialism. It argues that, as the realisation grows that the revolutionary tradition and the authoritarianism which necessarily result from it are wrong, the importance of the problem of the transition to socialism increases. It argues that on this point Trotskyism is weak; that Trotskyism's proposals for socialist transition are largely rhetorical; and that its democratic impulse is weak. It supports this argument by showing that Trotsky’s philosophy of history, implicit in his writings, which the author characterises as evolutionary and necessitarian, coupled with a failure to grasp the moral basis of the socialist case, has a disabling effect on Trotsky's account of the transition to socialism and on his explanation of Stalinism. Moreover, it argues that Trotsky's intellectual and political heirs have been unable to escape from the contradictions inherent in his thought.

Trotsky

Trotsky PDF

Author: Ian D. Thatcher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-06-27

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 113457214X

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This new biography provides a full account of Leon Trotsky's political life, based upon a wealth of primary sources, including previously unpublished material. Ian D. Thatcher paints a new picture of Trotsky's standing in Russian and world history. Key myths about Trotsky's heroic work as a revolutionary, especially in Russia's first revolution of 1905 and the Russian Civil War, are thrown into question. Although Trotsky had a limited understanding of crucial contemporary events such as Hitler's rise to power, he was an important thinker and politician, not least as a trenchant critic of Stalin's version of communism.

Trotsky

Trotsky PDF

Author: Ernest Mandel

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2017-11-10

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1788731964

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Leon Trotsky was the most important contributor to the development of revolutionary Marxism this century, after Lenin. As exiled militant or Soviet statesman, party organizer or public orator, as political analyst, soldier or commentator on cultural trends, he was centrally involved in the world-historic upheavals of his time and foremost among the interpreters of their significance for socialism. Yet the fate of his achievement was dramatically discrepant from Lenin's. At the latter's death in 1924, his revolutionary authority was at its zenith. In the Soviet Union his writings were consecrated as repository of a finished dogma, 'Leninism'. Abroad, his thought was interpreted in way much closer to its own original spirit by Georg Lukcs, whose remarkable Lenin sought to elicit its unity and actuality for a later revolutionary generation. In polar contrast, factional assault, official disgrace and proscription, anathema and slander, were the conditions of Trotsky's later life and activity-until his assassination in 1940-and the unvarying background of any reaffirmation of his heritage for decades afterwards. Systematic publication of his writings was beyond the means of his political followers-whose internal discussions of his ides were supplemented only by the attentions of liberal (where not reactionary) academics. In the last decade, however, with the resurgence of the political formations associated with his name, Trotsky's political role and ideas have again become topics of vigorous debate among socialists. Ernest Mandel's book makes possible a necessary extension of this debate by providing the first ever synthetic account of the development of Trotsky's Marxism in its successive encounters with the key problems and crises of the epoch. The Russian revolution and the theme of uneven development, the construction of revolutionary parties, the struggle against fascism and imperialism at large, the nature of Stalinism and the prospect of a full socialist democracy, are all discussed in a compact study that makes a fitting and long overdue counterpart to Lukcs's historic study of fifty years ago.

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