BigBrainEngels

I don't think Trotsky's permanent revolution relates to what you're calling an Ultra.

Trotsky's permanent revolution is explaining the process in which less developed nations are prevented from undergoing a bourgeois democratic revolution due to the pre-existing imperialist powers and this creates a 'permanent' revolution to persist within a nation, spurring the proletariat and peasantry to demand socialist aims in order to achieve any meaningful bourgeois-democratic demands.

Trotsky uses the February Revolution necessitating an October Revolution as an example of this exact process, and of course he was murdered before any other workers' states were created for him to analyze.

I think that much of the "online left" falls into ultraleft/sectarian or reformist/opportunist camps. Oftentimes individuals will find themselves rapidly oscillating between the two. On the surface this might seem contradictory, but hear me out.

Marxism is a materialist philosophy. In order to understand any given situation, we not only analyze the reciprocal relations of all the factors in the situation, but we also have to understand the historical development of that situation, and how that has changed over time to give rise to this situation. You need to balance the particular situation, and the general situation. You can use the two, and the relationship between the two, to develop a deeper understanding of everything that is happening. This is the power of Dialectical Materialism - you gain this ability to cut through the flurry of immediate events and gain a deeper understanding of a given event in life. I'm making it sound like a super-power, but as I explained earlier, it's just looking at events through how they happened and how they're connected. It's simple, really. Where political disagreements arise is in this kind of analysis. Everyone is more or less a rational actor, and so a lot of political disagreements come down to a difference in how people have interpreted various events.

Ultraleftism and Opportunism are similar in that they are natural conclusions that people fall into when they isolate a current situation away from the complexity of factors that make up the situation into one or two factors, and really focus in on those. These factors might be the most important in a situation, but it can lead to the individual viewing these factors as absolute and immutable. That's where you get Ultraleftism. To understand it though, I'm gonna talk a bit about Reformism.

Reformism came about in the decades leading up to the First World War in large part because of the intense pace of development of Capitalism. Standards of living among the proletariat were improving and bourgeois democracy was stable, and thus the Second International was bent in a very Reformist direction. The reformists of that era viewed the trend that they existed within as a permanent feature of Capitalism - Marx wasn't around to correct them, and thus he must've missed something. This, of course, led to philosophical stagnation, and today the parties that come from that tradition don't even consider themselves Marxist.

A lot of Ultraleftism comes from the period after the First World War. Where Reformism came around in the era in which Capitalism was ascending, in the period between the World Wars, Capitalism was in severe decline. Standards of living were falling and bourgeois democracy was unstable and in the middle of a massive collapse. In this period, we can see that the political struggle in the world boiled down to 'Socialism or Fascism'. In a sense, we can see that even as far back as 1917 - Kerensky's government was weak and in danger of imminent collapse, and the two alternatives for Russia were the Bolsheviks and Kornilov - Socialism and (proto-) Fascism respectively.

Looking at all of these events occurring around them, the Ultraleftists concluded their analysis of events - that the situation was 'Socialism or Fascism' - just as they should've started their analysis. They are applying dogmatic theory to reality without understanding the underlying mechanisms within anything they're looking at. And boiling down the struggle to 'Socialism or Fascism' in the 1930s didn't work a lot of the time, because the working class broadly didn't understand the knife's edge that Capitalism was walking on in that period.

The Bolsheviks didn't adopt an Ultraleft position with regards to Kornilov vs Kerensky. The Ultraleft position would be to side with neither and attack both. But Lenin and the Bolsheviks didn't do that. They sided with Kerensky against Kornilov, but did not compromise on their position. They didn't take any kind of ownership over the policy of Kerensky while simultaneously defeating Kornilov. They denounced Kerensky for creating the conditions that allowed for the Kornilov Affair to occur in the first place. As a result, the Bolsheviks were able to maneuver themselves through the crisis of March 1917, and exploded in popularity, ultimately paving the way for their victory in October of that year. They turned the theoretical position of 'Bolshevism or Counter-Revolution' ('Socialism or Fascism') into a material reality.

In short, Ultraleftism is the dogmatic application of theory without understanding the material circumstances that lead to the development of those circumstances, or the way in which those circumstances are bound by various factors.

This stick can be bent too far in the other direction - that being Opportunism or Reformism. If your perspective is too narrow, you can also fall into the trap of assuming that the obstacles that exist for a revolutionary movement are immutable or omnipotent. This can lead to Reformism - believing that a revolutionary movement of the working class is impossible, and thus incremental economic demands are the only way forward - or Opportunism - compromising core Marxist principles to achieve limited aims in lieu of building a revolutionary movement (class collaborationism is a really common Opportunist mistake).

This answer is rather vague. "Ultraleftism is when you do Marxism wrong" isn't very helpful in terms of being a guide to action. Marxism is a science, but an inexact science. That's why debate and discussion are so important. And that's why theory is only half of it - you need to apply your theory to reality in order to determine if it's accurate or not. Test it against something, and if it's wrong - then it won't work. If it's right, it will. But you need to be able to analyze it correctly, and draw the correct conclusions from it. That's a tricky business, and that's part of the reason why we're stuck in the mess we are now.

Robert's Rules are a fantastic tool used by bureaucrats to stymie any kind of discussion they don't like. If you've ever attended a union meeting or the like where it's being used - at least for me, it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

I don't have a handy document to recommend for you, but if you attend any meetings by organizations that come from a communist tradition, you'll find that they tend to have fairly consistent rules. I attend org-related meetings all the time and these styles of meetings flow very nicely.

The organization I'm a part of will have a chair for a meeting. They will work with the attendees to produce an agenda that is distributed to attendees prior to the meeting. For the discussion of the points, the chair will keep a speakers list and give speakers the floor for a reasonable amount of time.

If you're worried about the chair abusing their position - In actual party meetings, the chair is elected with an immediate right of recall should they not be doing their job satisfactorily. For public meetings, the chair is selected by the organization - usually someone who is comfortable wrangling a crowd.

While this system is a lot less regimented than something like Robert's, it (combined with the principles of Democratic Centralism) is very sufficient for both small party meetings and larger public events. This style of meeting dates back to at least the 1st International as far as I know.

Hope that helps.

I'm not trying to be abrasive, so my apologies if I am coming across that way, comrade. I don't appreciate the general abrasiveness and sectarian attitudes in this thread and I don't want to contribute to it.

What I am trying to say is that I am open to discussing the ideas and positions where we way disagree without getting into a slapfight.

Reject the premise all you want, Trotsky has done more for Communism than anybody on this website regardless if you want to want to play word games or not. I just replied to another user in this thread with my reasoning for that statement which I will quote here and I am more than happy to have a good-faith discussion about it if you are.

Part of the pact was sending the Nazis grain, fuel, rubber, and metals in exchange for ships, naval guns, and machinery from the Nazis. The raw materials that the pact gave to Germany allowed them to prepare for the invasion of the Soviet Union and allowed Germany to circumvent the British naval blockade at the time and permitted the Luftwaffe to operate over Britain while building a stockpile for Operation Barbarossa. I don't think we disagree that it was a massive mistake but I don't see how it isn't a temporary collaboration based on a larger strategic outlook.

I'm also happy to discuss your thoughts on Trotsky and your reasons for saying he's a wrecker and counterrevolutionary.

I'm not dragging any liberal delusions into Molotov-Ribbentrop. Part of the pact was sending the Nazis grain, fuel, rubber, and metals in exchange for ships, naval guns, and machinery from the Nazis. The raw materials that the pact gave to Germany allowed them to prepare for the invasion of the Soviet Union and allowed Germany to circumvent the British naval blockade at the time and permitted the Luftwaffe to operate over Britain while building a stockpile for Operation Barbarossa. I don't think we disagree that it was a massive mistake but I don't see how it isn't a temporary collaboration based on a larger strategic outlook.

The issue is that transitioning to a consumption economy and increasing the purchasing power of Chinese workers requires raising wages and will sharply affecting domestic production, which in turn hurts exports. This is a problem that all private economies encounter and was historically a driving force of Imperialism. China has a pressure to begin exporting capital abroad to produce goods for cheaper and cheaper as their own workers benefit from cheap commodities and an increase in living standards.

This quote is from 1914. I urge you to read the many, many times Lenin ruthlessly criticised him in the years after this quote instead of taking a quote and pretending it exists as a thing absent of time and place.

This quote is from the 1st (14th) of November 1917. It was recorded in the minutes of the Petrograd Committee.

What a swine this Trotsky is – Left, phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat! This is 1917. Does it sound like he thought there was no better bolshevik?

Let's look at the full quote:

Pleasant as it was to learn from you of the victory of N. Iv. and Pavlov in Novy Mir (I get this newspaper devilishly irregularly; it must be the fault of the post and not the dispatch department of the paper itself), it was just as sad to read about the bloc between Trotsky and the Right for the struggle against N. Iv. What a swine this Trotsky is—Left phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat!

The context here is that Kollontai and Trotsky were both exiled at the time, with Trotsky living in New York and Kollontai visiting from Norway. Lenin was infrequently hearing of their goings-on. Trotsky addresses this incident in his own biography:

Madame Kolontay was in America at that time, but she travelled a great deal and I did not meet her very often. During the war, she veered sharply to the left, without transition abandoning the ranks of the Mensheviks for the extreme left wing of the Bolsheviks. Her knowledge of foreign languages and her temperament made her a valuable agitator. Her theoretical views have always been somewhat confused, however. In her New York period, nothing was revolutionary enough for her. She was in correspondence with Lenin and kept him informed of what was happening in America, my own activities included, seeing all facts and ideas through the prism of her ultra-radicalism. Lenin’s replies to her reflected this utterly worthless information. Later, in their fight against me, the epigones have not hesitated to make use of mistaken utterances by Lenin, utterances that he himself recanted both by word and by deed. In Russia, Kolontay took from the very first an ultra-left stand, not only toward me but toward Lenin as well. She waged many a battle against the “Lenin-Trotsky” regime, only to bow most movingly later on to the Stalin regime.

Regardless of what you think about Trotsky or his own words, the fact of the matter is that the quote you cited is actually from before the other quote. Trotsky and Kollontai would both travel back to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917.

I would like to remind everyone here that whatever your opinion of Trotsky is regarding his political positions, he was an ardent and vehement defender of the Soviet Union right up until he was murdered.

We Do Not Change Our Course

The statification of the means of production is, as we said, a progressive measure. But its progressiveness is relative; its specific weight depends on the sum-total of all the other factors. Thus, we must first and foremost establish that the extension of the territory dominated by bureaucratic autocracy and parasitism, cloaked by ”socialist” measures, can augment the prestige of the Kremlin, engender illusions concerning the possibility of replacing the proletarian revolution by bureaucratic maneuvers, and so on. This evil by far outweighs the progressive content of Stalinist reforms in Poland. In order that nationalized property in the occupied areas, as well as in the USSR, become a basis for genuinely progressive, that is to say socialist development, it is necessary to overthrow the Moscow bureaucracy. Our program retains, consequently, all its validity. The events did not catch us unawares. It is necessary only to interpret them correctly. It is necessary to understand clearly that sharp contradictions are contained in the character of the USSR and in her international position. It is impossible to free oneself from those contradictions with the help of terminological sleight-of-hand (”workers’ state” — ”not workers’ state”). We must take the facts as they are. We must build our policy by taking as our starting point the real relations and contradictions.

We do not entrust the Kremlin with any historic mission. We were and remain against seizures of new territories by the Kremlin. We are for the independence of Soviet Ukraine, and if the Byelo Russians themselves wish — of Soviet Byelo Russia. At the same time in the sections of Poland occupied by the Red Army, partisans of the Fourth International must play the most decisive part in expropriating the landlords and capitalists, in dividing the land among the peasants, in creating soviets and workers’ committees, etc. While so doing, they must preserve their political independence, they must fight during elections to the soviets and factory committees for the complete independence of the latter from the bureaucracy, and they must conduct revolutionary propaganda in the spirit of distrust toward the Kremlin and its local agencies.

But let us suppose that Hitler turns his weapons against the east and invades territories occupied by the Red Army. Under these conditions, partisans of the Fourth International, without changing in any way their attitude toward the Kremlin oligarchy, will advance to the forefront, as the most urgent task of the hour, the military resistance against Hitler. The workers will say: ”We cannot cede to Hitler the overthrowing of Stalin; that is our own task.” During the military struggle against Hitler, the revolutionary workers will strive to enter into the closest possible comradely relations with the rank-and-file fighters of the Red Army. While arms in hand they deal blows to Hitler, the Bolshevik-Leninists will at the same time conduct revolutionary propaganda against Stalin preparing his overthrow at the next and perhaps very near stage.

This kind of ”defense of the USSR” will naturally differ, as heaven does from earth, from the official defense which is now being conducted under the slogan: ”For the Fatherland For Stalin!” Our defense of the USSR is carried on under the slogan: ”For Socialism! For the World Revolution! Against Stalin!” In order that these two varieties of ”defense of the USSR” do not become confused in the consciousness of the masses it is necessary to know clearly and precisely how to formulate slogans which correspond to the concrete situation. But above all it is necessary to establish clearly just what we are defending, just how we are defending it, against whom we are defending it. Our slogans will create confusion among the masses only if we ourselves do not have a clear conception of our tasks.

Conclusions

We have no reasons whatsoever at the present time for changing our principled position in relation to the USSR. War accelerates the various political processes. It may accelerate the process of the revolutionary regeneration of the USSR. But it may also accelerate the process of its final degeneration. For this reason it is indispensable that we follow painstakingly and without prejudice these modifications which war introduces into the internal life of the USSR so that we may give ourselves a timely accounting of them.

Our tasks in the occupied territories remain basically the same as in the USSR itself; but inasmuch as they are posed by events in an extremely sharp form, they enable us all the better to clarify our general tasks in relation to the USSR.

We must formulate our slogans in such a way that the workers see clearly just what we are defending in the USSR (state property and planned economy), and against whom we are conducting a ruthless struggle (the parasitic bureaucracy and its Comintern). We must not lose sight for a single moment of the fact that the question of overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR; that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.

(emphasis via bold text mine)

• Sections "We Do Not Change Our Course" and "Conclusions" from "The USSR in War", September 25, 1939. From "In Defense of Marxism", Leon Trotsky, published 1942 posthumously.**

It is one thing to solidarize with Stalin, defend his policy, as prime responsibility for it — as does the triply infamous Comintern — it is another thing to explain to the world working class that no matter what crimes Stalin may be guilty of we cannot permit world imperialism to crush the Soviet Union, reestablish capitalism and convert the land of the October Revolution into a colony. This explanation likewise furnishes the basis for our defense of the USSR.

(emphasis via bold text mine)

• Excerpt from "Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events" subsection "The Defense of the Soviet Union", April 25, 1940. From "In Defense of Marxism", Leon Trotsky, published 1942 posthumously.

It is true, Burnham and Shachtman do not stand alone. Leon Jouhaux, the notorious agent of French capitalism, also waxes indignant over the fact that the ”Trotskyists defend the USSR”. Who should be indignant if not he but our attitude toward the USSR is the same as our attitude toward the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) we defend it against the bourgeoisie despite the fact that the Confederation is headed by scoundrels like Leon Jouhaux who deceive and betray the workers at every step. The Russian Mensheviks likewise are howling: ”The Fourth International is in a blind alley!” because the Fourth International still continues to recognize the USSR as a workers’ state. These gentlemen themselves are members of the Second International, which is led by such eminent traitors as the typical bourgeois mayor Huysmans and Leon Blum, who betrayed an exceptionally favorable revolutionary situation in June 1936 and thereby made possible the present war. The Mensheviks recognize the parties of the Second International as workers’ parties but refuse to recognize the Soviet Union as a worker’s state on the ground that at its head stand bureaucratic traitors. This falsehood reeks with brazenness and cynicism. Stalin, Molotov and the rest, as a social layer, are no better and no worse than the Blums, Jouhaux, Citrines, Thomases, etc. The difference between them is only this: that Stalin and Co. exploit and cripple the viable economic foundation of socialist development, while the Blums cling to the thoroughly rotted foundation of capitalist society. The workers’ state must be taken as it has emerged from the merciless laboratory of history and not as it is imagined by a ”socialist” professor, reflectively exploring his nose with his finger. It is the duty of revolutionists to defend every conquest of the working class even though it may be distorted by the pressure of hostile forces. Those who cannot defend old positions will never conquer new ones.

(emphasis via bold text mine)

• Excerpt from "Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events" subsection "No Surrender to the Enemy of Positions Already Won", April 25, 1940. From "In Defense of Marxism", Leon Trotsky, published 1942 posthumously.

If Trotsky was able to defend the Soviet Union at a time when Stalin was actively collaborating with Hitler, there is absolutely no excuse for any self-described Communist on this site to say, for any reason, that this man was counter-revolutionary or a wrecker.