View source for Trotskyism

{{Short description|Variety of Marxism developed by Leon Trotsky}}
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[[File:Leon Trotsky (3x4 cropped).jpg|thumb|[[Leon Trotsky]], after whom Trotskyism is named]]
{{Trotskyism|common variants}}

'''Trotskyism''' ({{Langx|ru|Троцкизм}}, {{Transliteration|ru|Trotskizm}}) is the political ideology and branch of [[Marxism]] and [[Leninism]] developed by Russian revolutionary and [[intellectual]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Traverso |first1=Enzo |title=Revolution: An Intellectual History |date=19 October 2021 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-83976-333-5 |page=68 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=de1DEAAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blackledge |first1=Paul |title=Leon Trotsky's Contribution to the Marxist Theory of History |journal=Studies in East European Thought |date=2006 |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=1–31 |doi=10.1007/s11212-005-3677-z |jstor=20099925 |s2cid=85504744 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20099925|url-access=subscription }}</ref> [[Leon Trotsky]] along with some other members of the [[Left Opposition]] and the [[Fourth International]]. Trotsky described himself as an [[orthodox Marxist]], a [[Revolutionary socialism|revolutionary Marxist]], and a [[Bolshevik]]–[[Leninist]] as well as a follower of [[Karl Marx]], [[Friedrich Engels]], [[Vladimir Lenin]], [[Karl Liebknecht]], and [[Rosa Luxemburg]]. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate.{{sfn|Swain|2014|pp=1–10|ref=Swain2014b}}{{sfn|North|2010|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=mVqvouA22IkC&q=david+north+in+defence+of+trotsky 52–90]}} However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent [[historians]] and [[political scientists]] such as [[E. H. Carr]], [[Isaac Deutscher]], [[Moshe Lewin]], [[Ronald Suny]], Richard B. Day and [[W. Bruce Lincoln]] was that Lenin's desired "heir" would have been a [[collective leadership|collective responsibility]] in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] would be dramatically demoted (if not removed)".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Le Blanc |first1=Paul |title=Leon Trotsky |date=15 April 2015 |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=978-1-78023-471-7|pages=1–30|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VMCkCQAAQBAJ&dq=Paul+le+blanc+swain+heir&pg=PT14 |language=en}}</ref>

Trotsky advocated for a [[decentralization|decentralize]]d form of [[economic planning]],<ref name="BRILL">{{cite book |last1=Twiss |first1=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |date=8 May 2014 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 |pages=105–106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+decentralized+planning&pg=PA106 |language=en}}</ref> [[workers' control]] of production,<ref name="books.google.com">{{cite book |last1=Wiles |first1=Peter |title=The Soviet Economy on the Brink of Reform: Essays in Honor of Alec Nove |date=14 June 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-88190-5 |page=31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mHAIEQAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+legalization+of+soviet+parties+worker+control+of+production&pg=PA31 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |title=Workers' Control of Production |translator=((''[[The Militant]]'', 17 & 24 October 1931)) |date=September 1931 |magazine=[[Bulletin of the Opposition]] |issue=24 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1931/310820.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> elected representation of Soviet [[List of political parties in the Soviet Union|socialist parties]],{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=293}}{{sfn|Trotsky|1991|p=218}} mass [[soviet (council)|soviet]] [[democratization]],<ref name="Taylor & Francis">{{cite book |last1=Wiles |first1=Peter |title=The Soviet Economy on the Brink of Reform: Essays in Honor of Alec Nove |date=14 June 2023 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=978-1-000-88190-5 |pages=25–40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mHAIEQAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+concentration+camp+stalinism&pg=PA25 |language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=207–215}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as Alternative |date=5 May 2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78960-701-7 |pages=84–86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVmcEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+as+alternative+mandel&pg=PT80 |language=en}}</ref>
the tactic of a [[united front]] against [[far-right]] parties,{{sfn|Ticktin|1992|p=227}}
[[cultural]] autonomy for artistic movements,<ref name="Marxism and Literary Criticism">{{cite book |last1=Eagleton |first1=Terry |title=Marxism and Literary Criticism |date=7 March 2013 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-94783-6 |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h7k8t09BbIQC&q=trotsky+literature+and+revolution+socialist+realism |language=en}}</ref> voluntary [[collectivisation]],{{sfn|Beilharz|1987|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Lfe-DwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+widely+acknowledged+collectivisation&pg=PT196 196–197]}}{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=[https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization 161]}} a [[The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International|transitional program]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Löwy |first1=Michael |author-link=Michael Löwy |title=The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx |date=2005 |publisher=[[Haymarket Books]] |isbn=978-1-931859-19-6 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gSrvmQeZyhoC&dq=trotsky+transitional+program&pg=PA191 |language=en}}</ref> and socialist [[proletarian internationalism|internationalism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cox |first1=Michael |title=Trotsky and His Interpreters; or, Will the Real Leon Trotsky Please Stand up? |journal=The Russian Review |date=1992 |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=84–102 |doi=10.2307/131248 |jstor=131248 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/131248|url-access=subscription }}</ref> He supported founding a [[vanguard party]] of the [[proletariat]], and a [[dictatorship of the proletariat]] (as opposed to the "[[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]]", which Marxists argue is a major component of [[capitalism]]) based on working-class self-emancipation and [[council democracy]]. Trotsky also adhered to [[scientific socialism]] and viewed this as a conscious expression of historical processes.{{sfn|Trotsky|2019|p=138}} Trotskyists are [[Anti-Stalinist left|critical]] of [[Stalinism]] as they oppose Stalin's theory of [[socialism in one country]] in favour of Trotsky's theory of [[permanent revolution]]. Trotskyists criticize the [[bureaucracy]] and anti-democratic current developed in the [[Soviet Union under Stalin]].

Despite their ideological disputes, Trotsky and Lenin were close personally prior to the [[2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party|London Congress of Social Democrats]] in 1903 and during the [[First World War]]. Lenin and Trotsky were close ideologically and personally during the [[Russian Revolution]] and its aftermath. Trotskyists and some others call Trotsky its "co-leader".<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/archives/oldsite/2004/RCP-823.htm |title=Revolutionary Communist Party: Revolutionary in Name Only |magazine=[[Workers Vanguard]] |number=823 |date=2 April 2004 |access-date=3 April 2024 |archive-date=8 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408194140/https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/archives/oldsite/2004/RCP-823.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> This was also alluded to by Rosa Luxemburg.<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch01.htm |first=Rosa |last=Luxemburg |author-link=Rosa Luxemburg |title=The Russian Revolution |chapter=Fundamental Significance of the Russian Revolution |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Lenin himself never mentioned the concept of "Trotskyism" after Trotsky became a member of the Bolshevik party.{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|p=281}} Trotsky was the [[Red Army]]'s paramount leader in the Revolutionary period's direct aftermath. Trotsky initially opposed some aspects of [[Leninism]],<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Our Political Tasks |orig-date=1904 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ |access-date=29 June 2020 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |translator=New Park Publications |publisher=New Park Publications}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Vladimir |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |chapter=Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/jan/02.htm |orig-date=21 January 1932 |title=Lenin Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers|Progress]] |date=1974 |location=Moscow |volume=17 |pages=45 |translator-first=Dora |translator-last=Cox |access-date=29 June 2020 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> but eventually concluded that unity between the [[Mensheviks]] and [[Bolsheviks]] was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the [[October Revolution]]. Lenin and Trotsky were also both honorary presidents of the [[Communist International|Third International]].{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=605}} Trotskyists have traditionally drawn upon [[Lenin's testament]] and his alliance with Trotsky in 1922–23 against the [[Soviet bureaucracy]] as primary evidence that Lenin sought to remove Stalin from the position of [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|General Secretary]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Woods |first1=Alan |last2=Grant |first2=Ted |title=Lenin and Trotsky – What they really stood for |date=1976 |publisher=Wellred Books |pages=95–107, 108–123, 185–219|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O6zRDwAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref> Various historians have also cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky [[Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union|Vice-{{not a typo|Chairman}} of the Soviet Union]] as further evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as [[head of government]].<ref>{{bulleted list|
| {{cite journal |last1=Danilov |first1=Victor |last2=Porter |first2=Cathy |date=1990 |title=We Are Starting to Learn about Trotsky |journal=History Workshop |issue=29 |pages=136–146 |jstor=4288968 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288968 |issn=0309-2984}}
| {{harvnb|Daniels|2008|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC&dq=Victor+Danilov+Trotsky&pg=PA438 438]}}
| {{cite book |last1=Watson |first1=Derek |date=27 July 2016 |title=Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930–41 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-24848-3 |page=25 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xhm_DAAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+chairman+rykov&pg=PA25 |language=en}}
| {{harvnb|Deutscher|1965|p=135}}
}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dziewanowski |first1=M. K. |date=2003 |title=Russia in the twentieth century |location=Upper Saddle River, New Jersey |publisher=[[Prentice Hall]] |isbn=978-0-13-097852-3 |page=162 |url=https://archive.org/details/russiaintwentiet0000dzie/page/162/mode/1up?view=theater}}</ref>

In October 1927, by order of Stalin,<ref name=":0">{{cite news |url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/stalin-banishes-trotsky |title=Stalin banishes Trotsky – Jan 11, 1928 |website=History.com |access-date=3 January 2017 |date=21 July 2010}}</ref>{{unreliable source|certain=y|reason=Generally unreliable per [[WP:RS/P]]|date=September 2025}} Trotsky was removed from power. In November of the same year, he was expelled from the [[All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]] (VKP(b)). He was exiled to [[Almaty|Alma-Ata]] (now Almaty) in January 1928 and then expelled from the [[Soviet Union|USSR]] in February 1929. As the head of the [[Fourth International]], Trotsky continued in exile to oppose what he termed the [[degenerated workers' state]] in the USSR. On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in [[Mexico City]] by [[Ramón Mercader]], a Spanish-born [[NKVD]] agent, and died the next day in a hospital. His murder is considered a political assassination. Almost all Trotskyists within the VKP(b) were executed in the [[Great Purge]]s of 1937–1938, effectively removing all of Trotsky's internal influence in the USSR. [[Nikita Khrushchev]] had come to power as head of the Communist Party in Ukraine, signing lists of other Trotskyists to be executed. Trotsky and the party of Trotskyists were still recognized as enemies of the USSR during Khrushchev's rule of the USSR after 1956.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taubman |first=William |author-link=William Taubman |title=[[Khrushchev: The Man and His Era]] |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |date=2003 |pages=56–57 |isbn=978-0-393-32484-6}}</ref> Trotsky's [[Fourth International]] was established in the [[French Third Republic]] in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the [[Comintern]] or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.<ref name="transitional">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm |title=The Transitional Program |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=May–June 1938 |magazine=[[Bulletin of the Opposition]] |access-date=5 November 2008 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

== Definition ==
According to Trotsky, his programme could be distinguished from other Marxist theories by five key elements:
* Support for the strategy of [[permanent revolution]] in opposition to the [[two-stage theory]] of his opponents.<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=The Permanent Revolution |orig-date=1928 |publisher=New Park Publications |location=London |date=1962}}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2025}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Results and Prospects |orig-date=1906 |publisher=New Park Publications |location=London |date=1962}}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2025}}
* Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and analysis of its features,<ref>{{cite book |author-first=Leon |author-last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Revolution Betrayed |date=1936}}</ref> after 1933, also support for [[political revolution (Trotskyism)|political revolution]] in the USSR and what Trotskyists term the [[degenerated workers' state]]s.
* Support for [[social revolution]] in the advanced capitalist countries through working-class mass action.
* Support for [[proletarian internationalism]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Ernest |last=Mandel |author-link=Ernest Mandel |title=What is Trotskyism |date=1973}}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2025}}
* Use of a transitional programme of demands that bridge between daily struggles of the working class and the maximal ideas of the socialist transformation of society.<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of The Fourth International |date=1938}}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2025}}

On the [[political spectrum]] of [[Marxism]], Trotskyists are usually considered to be on the left. In the 1920s, they called themselves the [[Left Opposition]], although today's [[left communism]] is distinct and usually non-Bolshevik. The terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of a [[left–right politics|left-right political spectrum]] are used. [[Anti-Revisionism|Anti-revisionists]] consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right. However, given that [[Stalinism]] is often labelled rightist within the communist spectrum and [[left communism]] leftist, anti-revisionists' idea of the left is very different from that of left communism. Despite being Bolshevik-Leninist comrades during the [[Russian Revolution]] and [[Russian Civil War]], Trotsky and Stalin became enemies in the 1920s and, after that, opposed the legitimacy of each other's forms of Leninism. Trotsky was highly [[Anti-Stalinism|critical of the Stalinist USSR]] for suppressing democracy and the lack of adequate economic planning.<ref name=":0"/>

Overall, Trotsky and the Left-United Opposition factions advocated for rapid [[industrialization]], voluntary collectivisation of agriculture, and the expansion of a [[soviet democracy|worker's democracy]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as Alternative |date=5 May 2020 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=978-1-78960-701-7 |pages=32–66 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVmcEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+as+alternative+mandel&pg=PT80 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Platform of the Joint Opposition |date=1927 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

== Theory ==
{{Marxism|Variants}}
{{main|Permanent revolution}}
Until 1905, some revolutionaries<ref>{{Cite web |last=O'Callaghan |first=Einde |year=1934 |title=A Letter on Russia by Karl Marx |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol01/no04/marx.htm |access-date=7 June 2018 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> claimed that [[Marx's theory of history]] posited that only a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to this position, a socialist revolution could not occur in a backward, feudal country such as early 20th-century Russia when it had such a small and almost powerless capitalist class. In 1905, Trotsky formulated his theory of [[permanent revolution]], which later became a defining characteristic of Trotskyism.

The theory of permanent revolution addressed how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown and how socialism could establish itself, given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the [[peasant]]ry's support in Russia. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there. They would win their revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers' state in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries worldwide. As a result, the global working class would come to Russia's aid, and socialism could develop worldwide.

According to political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz, Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” was grossly misrepresented by [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] as [[defeatism|defeatist]] and adventurist during the succession struggle, when in fact Trotsky encouraged revolutions in Europe but was not at any time proposing “reckless confrontations” with the capitalist world.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|p=343}}

=== Capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution ===
Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and established the essential requisites for the development of capitalism. Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia.

In ''Results and Prospects'', written in 1906, Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, arguing: "History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp03.htm |title=Results and Prospects |date=1962 |publisher=New Park publications |pages=184 |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1931 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> In the [[French Revolution of 1789]], France experienced what Marxists called a "[[bourgeois-democratic revolution]]"—a regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie overthrew the existing French feudalistic system. The bourgeoisie then moved towards establishing a regime of democratic parliamentary institutions.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} However, while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they were not generally extended to a universal franchise. The freedom for workers to organize unions or to strike was not achieved without considerable struggle.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

=== Passivity of the bourgeoisie ===
Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary [[bourgeoisie]] which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a tiny minority. In his book, Results and Prospects, Trotsky states that, by the time of the European revolutions of 1848, "the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Results and Prospects (3. 1789 - 1848 - 1905) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp03.htm |access-date=2025-10-14 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

The theory of permanent revolution considers that in many countries that are thought, by Trotskyists, to not have completed a [[Bourgeois revolution|bourgeois-democratic revolution]], the capitalist class opposes the creation of any revolutionary situation, as a revolutionary proletariat may threaten their position in society. Trotsky believed that, "[the bourgeoisie] fear of the armed proletariat is greater than the fear of the soldiery of the autocracy."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Results and Prospects (3. 1789 - 1848 - 1905) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp03.htm |access-date=2025-10-14 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> In the case of Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant-based society, was organised in vast factories, owned by the capitalist class, and into large working-class districts. Proletariat organisation meant that, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, the bourgeoisie found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements, such as the essentially feudal landlords and, ultimately, the existing Czarist Russian state forces. This was to protect capitalist class ownership of property, such as factories, banks, etc.—from expropriation by the revolutionary proletariat.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Results and Prospects (3. 1789 - 1848 - 1905) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp03.htm |access-date=2025-10-14 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

Therefore, according to the theory of permanent revolution, the capitalist classes of economically backward countries are incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} Thus, Trotsky argues that because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia originated under the direct influence of government measures—sometimes with the help of government subsidies—the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. The capitalist class was subservient to European capital.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp01.htm |title=Results and Prospects |date=1962 |publisher=New Park publications |pages=174–177 |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1931 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

=== The incapability of the peasantry ===
The theory of permanent revolution further considers that the [[peasantry]] as a whole cannot take on the task of carrying through the revolution because it is dispersed in small holdings throughout the country and forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire to [[landlord]]ism as well as the poor peasants who aspire to own more land. Trotsky argues: "All historical experience [...] shows that the peasantry are absolutely incapable of taking up an independent political role".<ref name="Results 204–205">{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp05.htm |title=Results and Prospects |date=1962 |publisher=New Park publications |pages=204–205 |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1931 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

=== The key role of the proletariat ===
Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today. However, even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the rural poor: the self-organising struggles of the landless, along with many other struggles that in some ways reflect the militant united, organised struggles of the working class, which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs. However, orthodox Trotskyists today still argue that the town- and city-based working-class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that the working class learns of the necessity to conduct a collective struggle, for instance, in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces; and that the collective consciousness it achieves is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.<ref>Many would put, for instance, the Committee for a Workers' International in this category of orthodox Trotskyists. See for instance {{Cite web |title=Che Guevara: A revolutionary fighter |url=http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2007/09/27che.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013213331/http://socialistworld.net/eng/2007/09/27che.html |archive-date=13 October 2007 |access-date=7 October 2007}}</ref>

Trotsky himself argued that only the [[proletariat]] or working class was capable of achieving the tasks of that bourgeois revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort, also seeing the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort, forming workers councils ([[Soviet (council)|soviets]]) in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued: {{blockquote|text=The factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground [...] The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses, while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the "people", half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the greed for gain.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source=''Results and Prospects''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |title=Results and Prospects |date=1962 |publisher=New Park publications |pages=183 |author-link=Leon Trotsky |orig-date=1931}}</ref>}}

For instance, the [[Kirov Plant|Putilov Factory]] numbered 12,000 workers in 1900 and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |title=The History of the Russian Revolution |date=1977 |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |volume=2 |pages=519 |chapter=July Days: Preparation and beginning |author-link=Leon Trotsky |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch24.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

Although only a tiny minority in Russian society, the proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus "secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on whose support it would rely.<ref name="Results 204–205" /><ref group="note">Trotsky adds that the revolution must raise the cultural and political consciousness of the peasantry.</ref> However, to improve their conditions, the working class must create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish the bourgeois revolution and establish a workers' state.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

=== International revolution ===
Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism. According to [[classical Marxism]], a revolution in peasant-based countries such as Russia ultimately prepares the ground for capitalism's development since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers, and traders. This leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world and the internal pressures of its backward economy.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} Trotsky argued that the revolution must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution that must spread worldwide. In this way, the revolution is "permanent", moving out of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers' revolution and from there, uninterruptedly, to European and worldwide revolutions.{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}

An [[Proletarian internationalism|internationalist]] outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works of [[Karl Marx]]. The term "permanent revolution" is taken from a remark of Marx in his March 1850 Address: "it is our task", Marx said: {{Blockquote|text=[...] to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.|sign=Karl Marx|source=''Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League''<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Marx |first1=Karl |author1-link=Karl Marx |last2=Engels |first2=Friedrich |author2-link=Friedrich Engels |date=March 1850 |title=Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm |access-date=6 June 2016 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>}}

His biographer, Isaac Deutscher, has explicitly contrasted his support for proletarian internationalism against his opposition to revolution by [[military]] [[conquest]] as seen with his documented opposition to the [[Polish–Soviet War|war with Poland]] in 1920, proposed armistice with the [[Allies of World War I|Entente]] and temperance with staging [[British foreign policy in the Middle East|anti-British revolts]] in the Middle East.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=472–473}} Historian [[Robert Vincent Daniels]] believed that the practical differences, in the domain of [[foreign policy|international policy]], between the Left Opposition and other factions had been exaggerated and he contended that Trotsky was no more prepared than other Bolshevik figures to risk [[war]] or for the loss of [[trade]] opportunities despite his support for [[world revolution]].{{sfn|Daniels|2008|p=195}}

=== Socialist democracy and Workers' Control===
{{Main|Socialist democracy|Union democracy|Workers Control|Our Political Tasks|New Course (Trotsky book)|Soviet democracy}}
[[File:Lev Trotsky 1906-3.3 V1.jpg|250x250px|thumb|The [[Saint Petersburg Soviet|Soviet of Workers' Deputies of St. Petersburg]] in 1905, Trotsky in the center. The [[soviet (council)|soviets]] were an early example of a [[workers council]].]]

Prior to the October Revolution, Trotsky had been part of a tendency toward [[radical democracy]] which included both Left [[Mensheviks]] and Left [[Bolsheviks]].{{sfn|Daniels|2008|p=181}} His work, ''[[Our Political Tasks]]'', published in 1904 reviewed issues related to party organisation, [[public participation|mass participation]] and the potential dangers of [[substitutionism]] which he foresaw in a Leninist party model.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=176–199}} Trotsky would also assume a central role in the [[1905 revolution]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |chapter=Trotsky and Trotskyism |title=The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941 |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=189 |language=en |quote="A prolific writer and a spellbinding orator, he was a central figure in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917, the organizer and leader of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, the heir apparent to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and the arch enemy and then vanquished foe of Joseph Stalin in the succession struggle after Lenin's death"}}</ref><ref>"He emerged from the revolution having acquired an enormous degree of popularity, whereas neither Lenin nor Martov had effectively gained any at all"{{cite web |title=Anatoly Lunacharsky: Revolutionary Silhouettes (1923) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lunachar/works/silhouet/trotsky.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> and serve as the Chairman of the Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates in which he wrote several proclamations urging for improved [[labour rights|economic conditions]], [[political rights]] and the use of [[strike action]] against the [[Russian Empire|Tsarist regime]] on behalf of workers.{{sfn|Thatcher|2005|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cU3yFMLm1voC&dq=trotsky+1905+st+petersburg+soviet&pg=PT39 38–40]}}

In 1917, he had proposed the election of a new Soviet [[presidium]] with other [[socialist]] parties based on [[proportional representation]].{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=293}} On the other hand, he had accepted the ban on rival parties in Moscow during the Russian Civil War due to their opposition to the [[October Revolution]]. Yet, he also opposed the extension of the ban to the Mensheviks in [[Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic|Soviet Georgia]].{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=595}}

In 1922, Lenin allied with [[Leon Trotsky]] against the party's growing [[Nomenklatura|bureaucratisation]] and the influence of [[Joseph Stalin]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=The Soviet Union 1917-1991 |date=4 February 2014 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-317-90179-2 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7cbKAgAAQBAJ&dq=the+soviet+union+1917+1991+lenin+trotsky+bloc+1922&pg=PA59 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 |date=2003 |publisher=Verso |isbn=978-1-85984-446-5 |page=63 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgubj5z1XUcC&dq=lenin+trotsky+bloc+1922+stalin&pg=PA63 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kort |first1=Michael G. |title=The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath |date=18 May 2015 |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |isbn=978-0-7656-2845-9 |page=166 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BHaWGEZA5zMC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitriĭ Antonovich |title=Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary |date=1996 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-255272-1 |page=242 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdqOQgAACAAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=V.L.Lenin |title="To L. D. Trotsky", 13 December 1922 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/21.htm}}</ref> In 1923, Trotsky and a number of [[Old Bolsheviks]] who signed [[The Declaration of 46]] raised concerns to the Poliburo concerning intra-party democracy which shared similarities with Lenin's [[Vladimir Lenin#Declining health and conflict with Stalin: 1920–1923|proposed party reforms]] before his death. The signatories of the 46 letter expressed grievances related to the provincial conferences, party congresses, and the election of committees. Separately, Trotsky would develop his views further with the publication of the ''[[New Course (Trotsky book)|New Course]]'' in 1924.{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=155–182}}

In 1927, Trotsky and the [[United Opposition (Soviet Union)|United Opposition]] had argued for the expansion of [[economic democracy|industrial democracy]] with their joint platform which demanded majority representation of workers in trade union congresses including the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets|All-Union Congress]] and an increase of non-party workers to one-third of representation in these elected organs.{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=418–419}} They also supported legal protection for workers' right to criticise, such as the right to make independent proposals. According to historian [[Vadim Rogovin]], these proposals would have developed democracy in the sphere of [[means of production|production]] and facilitated the establishment of workers' control over economic management.{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=418–419}}

Following Stalin's consolidation of power in the [[Soviet Union]] and static centralization of political power, Trotsky condemned the Soviet government's policies for lacking widespread democratic participation on the part of the population and for suppressing [[workers' self-management]] and democratic participation in the management of the economy. Because these authoritarian political measures were inconsistent with the organizational precepts of socialism, Trotsky characterized the Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state that could not effectively transition to socialism. Ostensibly socialist states where democracy is lacking, yet the economy is largely in the hands of the state, are termed by [[Orthodox Trotskyism|orthodox Trotskyist]] theories as [[Degenerated workers' state|degenerated]] or [[Deformed workers' state|deformed]] workers' states and not socialist states.<ref>Trotsky, Leon (1935). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/ws-therm-bon.htm "The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism"]. ''New International''. '''2''' (4): 116–122. "Trotsky argues that the Soviet Union was, at that time, a "deformed workers' state" or degenerated workers' state, and not a socialist republic or state, because the "bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations," thereby necessitating only political revolution rather than a completely new social revolution, for workers' political control (i.e. state democracy) to be reclaimed. He argued that it remained, at base, a workers' state because the capitalists and landlords had been expropriated". Retrieved 27 December 2019.</ref>

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=|quote=Bureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy. A restoration of the right of criticism, and a genuine freedom of elections, are necessary conditions for the further development of the country. This assumes a revival of freedom of Soviet parties, beginning with the party of Bolsheviks, and a resurrection of the trade unions. The bringing of democracy into industry means a radical revision of plans in the interests of toilers.|source=Trotsky, ''The Revolution Betrayed'', 1936<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Revolution Betrayed |date=15 March 2012 |publisher=Courier Corporation |isbn=978-0-486-11983-0 |page=218 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uTrCAgAAQBAJ&dq=this+assumes+a+revival+of+freedom+of+soviet+parties+trotsky+revolution+betrayed&pg=PT209 |language=en}}</ref>}}

In 1931, Trotsky [[The Spanish Revolution, 1931–1939 (Trotsky book)|wrote]] a pamphlet on the [[Spanish Revolution of 1936|Spanish Revolution]] and called for the creation of worker’s juntas in emulation of [[soviet (council)|elected soviets]] as an expression of [[working class]] organisation.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Spanish Revolution, 1931–39 |date=1973 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |isbn=978-0-87348-273-8 |pages=97–98|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BocizgEACAAJ |language=en}}</ref> Trotsky stipulated the need for shared participation of the communist factions, [[anarcho-syndicalists]] and [[socialists]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Spanish Revolution, 1931–39 |date=1973 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |isbn=978-0-87348-273-8 |pages=97–98, 122–123|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BocizgEACAAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Ten Commandments of the Spanish Communist (April 1931) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/04/spain.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

In 1936, Trotsky argued in his work, ''[[The Revolution Betrayed]]'', for the restoration of the right of criticism in areas such as [[economic policy|economic matters]], the revitalization of [[trade unions]] and free elections of the [[List of political parties in the Soviet Union|Soviet parties]].{{sfn|Trotsky|1991|p=218}} Trotsky also argued that the excessive [[authoritarianism]] under Stalin had undermined the implementation of the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|First five-year plan]]. He noted that several engineers and economists who had created the plan were themselves later put on trial as "[[Great Purge|conscious wreckers]] who had acted on the instructions of a foreign power".{{sfn|Trotsky|1991|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=hiCYS9Z3lDoC&q=trotsky+the+engineers+and+economists+who+created+this+plan+were+a+few+years+later+sternly+punished 28]}}
 
Polish historian and biographer, [[Isaac Deutscher]], viewed his inner-party reforms in 1923–24 as arguably the first act in the restoration of free Soviet institutions which the party had sought to establish in 1917 and the return of [[Soviet (council)|worker's democracy]] which would correspond with a gradual dismantlement of the [[one-party system|single-party system]].{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=674–676}}
At the same time, Deutscher noted that Trotsky's attitude towards democracy could be characterised as inconsistent and hesitant by opponents, but this stemmed from a range of reasons, such as the [[Revolutions of 1917–1923|ill timing after the failed revolutions in the West]] and controversies around party schisms.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=674–676}}

In the ''[[The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International|Transitional Program]]'', which was drafted in 1938 during the founding congress of the [[Fourth International]], Trotsky reiterated the need for the legalization of the [[Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies|Soviet parties]] and [[workers control|worker's control of production]].<ref name="books.google.com"/>

=== Uneven and combined development ===
{{Main|Uneven and combined development}}

The concept of uneven and combined development was derived from the political theories of Trotsky.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Peck |first1=Jamie |last2=Varadarajan |first2=Latha |title=International Encyclopedia of Geography |chapter=Uneven Regional Development |date=6 March 2017 |pages=1–13 |doi=10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721 |chapter-url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0721 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |isbn=9780470659632 |language=en|chapter-url-access=subscription }}</ref> This concept was developed in combination with the related theory of permanent revolution to explain the historical context of Russia. He would later elaborate on this theory to explain the specific laws of uneven development in 1930 and the conditions for a possible revolutionary scenario.<ref>{{cite book |title=Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature |date=8 July 2019 |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|BRILL]] |isbn=978-90-04-38473-6 |pages=1–20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tMqiDwAAQBAJ&q=Trotsky+uneven+and+combined+development |language=en}}</ref> According to biographer Ian Thatcher, this theory would be later generalised to "the entire history of mankind".<ref>{{cite journal |quote=Talk of uneven development becomes dominant in Trotskii's writings from 1927 onwards. From this date, whenever the law is mentioned, the claim consistently made for it is that 'the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development'. |first=Ian D. |last=Thatcher |author-link=Ian D. Thatcher |title=Uneven and combined development |journal=Revolutionary Russia |volume=4 |number=2 |date=1991 |page=237 |doi=10.1080/09546549108575572}}</ref>

Political scientists Emanuele Saccarelli and Latha Varadarajan valued his theory as a "signal contribution" to the discipline of [[international relations]]. They argued his theory presented "a specific understanding of capitalist development as "uneven", insofar as it systematically featured geographically divergent "advanced" and "backward" regions" across the [[world economy]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Saccarelli |first1=Emanuele |last2=Varadarajan |first2=Latha |title=Leon Trotsky and the political conundrum of international relations |journal=Global Social Challenges Journal |date=7 June 2023 |volume=-1 |issue=aop |pages=105–126 |doi=10.1332/CBXB8720 |s2cid=259805358 |url=https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/gsc/configurable/content/journals$002fgscj$002faop$002farticle-10.1332-CBXB8720$002farticle-10.1332-CBXB8720.xml |language=en|doi-access=free }}</ref>

=== Socialist culture ===
{{Main|Literature and Revolution|Problems of Everyday Life|New York Intellectuals}}

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=|quote=Faith merely promises to move mountains; but [[technology]], which takes nothing ‘on faith’, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial and [[artistic]] plan. Man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements in [[nature]].|source=—Trotsky, ''Literature and Revolution'', 1924<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Literature and Revolution |date=2005 |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=978-1-931859-16-5 |page=204 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MG-981usVQEC&dq=man+will+occupy+himself+with+re+registering+mountains+and+rivers+and+will+earnestly+and+repeatedly+make+improvements+in+nature&pg=PA204 |language=en}}</ref>}}

In ''[[Literature and Revolution]]'', Trotsky examined aesthetic issues concerning class and the Russian Revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered his work the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later Marxist cultural and critical theories.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bird |first1=Robert |title=Culture as permanent revolution: Lev Trotsky's Literature and Revolution |journal=Studies in East European Thought |date=1 September 2018 |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=181–193 |doi=10.1007/s11212-018-9304-6 |s2cid=207809829 |url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11212-018-9304-6 |language=en |issn=1573-0948|url-access=subscription }}</ref> He had also defended intellectual autonomy in relation to the Russian [[literary movements]] and scientific theories such as [[Freud's psychoanalytic theories|Freudian psychoanalytic theory]] along with [[Einstein]]’s [[theory of relativity]] during the succession period. However, these theories were increasingly marginalised during the Stalin era.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=729–730}}

In ''[[Problems of Everyday Life]]'', a contemporaneous book which further articulated his views on culture and science, Trotsky argued that cultural development would accentuate industrial and technical progress. He viewed both elements to be interrelated components as part of dialectical interaction in which he viewed the low level of Russian [[technology|technique]] and [[expertise]] to be a function of cultural backwardness. According to Trotsky, Western industrial methods and products such as the radio should not be rejected due to their status as products of a capitalist system, but rather absorbed into the Soviet socialist framework to facilitate new forms of techniques and cultural production.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=282–300}} In this interpretation, the [[Technology transfer|transference of techniques]] brought new cultural changes in terms of rationalism, [[efficiency]], exactitude, and [[service quality|quality]].{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=282–300}}

Trotsky would later co-author the 1938 ''[[Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art]]'' with the endorsement of prominent artists [[Andre Breton]] and [[Diego Rivera]].{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=1474–1475}} Trotsky's writings on literature such as his 1923 survey which advocated tolerance, limited censorship and respect for literary tradition had strong appeal to the [[New York Intellectuals]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Patenaude |first1=Betrand |title="Trotsky and Trotskyism" in The Cambridge History of Communism |volume=1, World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917–1941R |date=21 September 2017 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-108-21041-6 |page=204 |language=en}}</ref>

Trotsky critiqued contemporary literary movements such as [[Futurism]] and emphasised the need for cultural autonomy to develop a socialist culture. According to literary critic [[Terry Eagleton]], Trotsky recognised "like Lenin on the need for a socialist culture to absorb the finest products of bourgeois art".<ref name="Marxism and Literary Criticism"/> Trotsky himself viewed the proletarian culture as "temporary and transitional" which would provide the foundations for a culture above classes. He also argued that the preconditions for artistic creativity were economic well-being and emancipation from material constraints.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=289–301}}

Political scientist, Baruch Knei-Paz, characterised [[The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky|his view]] on the role of the party as transmitters of culture to the masses and raising the standards of education, as well as entry into the cultural sphere, but that the process of artistic creation in terms of language and presentation should be the domain of the practitioner. Knei-Paz also noted key distinctions between Trotsky's approach to cultural matters and [[Socialist realism#Stalin era|Stalin's policy in the 1930s]].{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=289–301}}

=== Economics ===

{{Main|Economic planning|Socialist economics|Planned economy|Mechanised agriculture|Left Opposition||Scissors Crisis|Soviet grain procurement crisis of 1928}}

Trotsky was an early proponent of economic planning since 1923 and favored an accelerated pace of industrialization.<ref name=Twiss>{{cite book |last1=Twiss |first1=Thomas M. |title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy |date=8 May 2014 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 |pages=88–113 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+economic+planning+1923&pg=PA135 |language=en}}</ref> In 1921, he had also been a prominent supporter of [[Gosplan]] as a newly established body and called for the strengthening of its formal responsibilities to support a balanced level of economic reconstruction after the Civil War.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=587}} Lenin and [[Politburo]] members had also proposed he served as deputy chairman with a focus on economic matters related to the either [[Council of Labor and Defence#New name, new role|STO]], Gosplan or the Council of National Economy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Douds |first1=Lara |title=Inside Lenin's Government: Ideology, Power and Practice in the Early Soviet State |date=22 August 2019 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-350-12649-7 |page=165 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yf5aEAAAQBAJ&dq=on+lenin%27s+initiative+trotsky+deputy&pg=PA165 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Getty |first1=J. Arch |title=Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition |date=27 August 2013 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-300-16929-4 |page=53 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RaYzAAAAQBAJ&dq=Lenin+Trotsky+chairman+gosplan+1923&pg=PA53 |language=en}}</ref>

Trotsky had urged economic [[decentralisation]] between the state, [[oblast]] regions, and factories to counter structural inefficiency and the problem of bureaucracy.<ref name="BRILL"/> He had proposed the principles underlying the [[New Economic Policy|N.E.P.]] in 1920 to the [[Politburo]] to mitigate urgent economic matters arising from war communism. He would later reproach Lenin privately about the delayed government response in 1921-1922.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=507–508, 585}}{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=[https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization 161]}} However, his position also differed from the majority of Soviet leaders at the time who fully supported the [[New Economic policy]].<ref name=Twiss /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Day |first1=Richard B. |title=Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation |date=1973 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-52436-0 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cGx-pzsksksC&dq=Trotsky+economic+planning+1923&pg=PA109 |language=en}}</ref>

Comparatively, Trotsky believed that planning and N.E.P. should develop within a mixed framework until the socialist sector gradually superseded the private industry.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=646}} He found allies among a circle of economic theorists and administrators, which included [[Yevgeni Preobrazhensky|Evgenii Preobazhensky]] along [[Georgy Pyatakov]], deputy chairman of the [[Supreme Soviet of the National Economy|Council of the National Economy]]{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=592}} and had more broadly the support of many party [[intellectuals]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitri |title=Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary |date=June 2008 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-00-729166-3 |page=284 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2BNwaOW1VgEC |language=en}}</ref>

Trotsky had specified the need for the "overall guidance in planning i.e. the systematic co-ordination of the fundamental sectors of the state economy in the process of adapting to the present market" and urged for a national plan<ref>{{cite web |title=Trotsky: The Single Economic Plan |url=https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/russian/id/8044/ |website=wdc.contentdm.oclc.org |language=en}}</ref> alongside currency stabilization.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nove |first1=Alec |title=Socialism, Economics and Development (Routledge Revivals) |date=12 November 2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-58266-0 |pages=89–90 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NWn4BbCEH6gC&dq=Trotsky+economic+planning+1923&pg=PA89 |language=en}}</ref> He also rejected the Stalinist conception of industrialisation, which favoured [[heavy industry]]. Instead, he proposed the use of [[foreign trade]] as an accelerator and to direct investments by means of a system of comparative [[coefficients]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gueullette |first1=Agota |title=Trotsky and foreign economic relations. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=212}}</ref>

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=The problem of agriculture is a much more complicated one, and there is nothing surprising in this to the Marxian mind. The change from the system of small individual peasant holdings to socialist methods of land cultivation is only conceivable after a number of consecutive stages of progress in technical science in economics and culture.|source=-Trotsky on the need for a gradual and scientific [[social ownership|socialization]] of agriculture in ''“[[Towards Socialism or Capitalism?]]”'', 1926.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Towards Socialism Or Capitalism? |date=16 July 2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-62338-4 |page=6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TKRxnF5qB1IC}}</ref>}}

Trotsky and the Left Opposition developed a number of economic proposals in response to the [[scissor crisis]], which had undermined relations between the workers and peasants in 1923–1924. This included a [[progressive tax]] on the wealthier sections of populations, such as the [[kulak]]s and [[NEPmen]], alongside an equilibrium of the import-export balance to access accumulated reserves to purchase machinery from abroad to increase the pace of industrialization.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=62}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Documents of the 1923 opposition |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/ilo/1923-lo/index.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> The policy was later adopted by members of the United Opposition, which also advocated a programme of rapid industrialization during the debates of 1924 and 1927. The United Opposition proposed a progressive tax on wealthier peasants, the encouragement of [[agricultural cooperatives]], and the formation of collective farms voluntarily.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kemp |first1=Tom |title=Industrialisation in the Non-Western World |date=14 January 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-90133-4 |pages=1–150 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rjWtAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+progressive+tax+left+opposition&pg=PT67 |language=en}}</ref>

Trotsky, as president of the [[electrification]] commission, along with members of the Opposition bloc, had also put forward an electrification plan which involved the construction of the [[hydroelectric]] [[Dnieper Hydroelectric Station|Dnieprostroi dam]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Carr |first1=Edward Hallett |title=A History of Soviet Russia |date=1970 |publisher=Baltimore, Md. : Penguin Books |page=180 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WbobAAAAIAAJ&q=Trotsky+electrification |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=My Life |date=2 March 2023 |publisher=Wellred Books |pages=1–50 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MioAEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+electrification+offering+the+peasant+a+gramophone+instead+of+a+cow&pg=PT58 |language=en}}</ref> According to historian [[Sheila Fitzpatrick]], the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as [[industrialisation]] and [[collectivisation]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=The Old Man |journal=London Review of Books |date=22 April 2010 |volume=32 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}</ref> In exile, Trotsky maintained that the disproportions and imbalances which became characteristic of Stalinist planning in the 1930s such as the underdeveloped [[consumption (economics)|consumer base]] along with the priority focus on [[heavy industry]] were due to a number of avoidable problems. He argued that the industrial drive had been enacted under more severe circumstances, several years later, and in a less rational manner than originally conceived by the Left Opposition.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=1141}}

[[Ernest Mandel]] argued that the economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forced [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|policy of collectivisation]] implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=59}} Notably, Trotsky sought to raise taxation on wealthier farmers and encourage farm labourers, along with poor peasants to form collective farms voluntarily in conjunction with the allocation of state resources to agricultural [[machinery]], [[fertilizers]], [[credit]] and [[agronomic]] assistance.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=1130}}

In 1932–33, Trotsky insisted upon the need for mass participation in the operationalisation of the planned economy:<blockquote>"Insoluble without the daily experience of millions, without their critical review of their own collective experience, without their expression of their needs and demands and could not be carried out within the confines of the official sanctums.... even if the [[Politburo]] consisted of seven universal geniuses, of seven Marxes, or seven Lenins, it will still be unable, all on its own, with all its creative imagination, to assert command over the [[economy]] of 170 million people".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=Writings of Leon Trotsky. [Edited by George Breitman and Evelyn Reed: 1932-33 |date=1972 |publisher=Merit Publishers |page=96 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WUo8AAAAIAAJ&q=even%20if%20the%20Politburo%20consisted%20of%20seven%20universal%20geniuses,%20of%20seven%20Marxes,%20or%20seven%20Lenins,%20it%20will%20still%20be%20unable,%20all%20on%20its%20own,%20with%20all%20its%20creative%20imagination,%20to%20assert%20command%20over%20the%20economy%20of%20170%20million%20people |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

British [[cybernetician]] [[Stafford Beer]], who worked on a [[decentralization|decentralized]] form of economic planning, [[Project Cybersyn]] from 1970 to 1973, was reported to have read and been influenced by Trotsky's critique of the [[nomenklatura|Soviet bureaucracy]].<ref>"Beer also read Trotsky and found inspiration in Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy".{{cite book |last1=Medina |first1=Eden |title=Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-52596-1 |page=292 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VBC3AgAAQBAJ&dq=Stafford+beer+Trotsky&pg=PA292 |language=en}}</ref>

The economic platform of a [[planned economy]] combined with an authentic [[socialist democracy|worker's democracy]] as originally advocated by Trotsky has constituted the programme of the Fourth International and the modern Trotskyist movement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Weber |first1=Wolfgang |title=Solidarity in Poland, 1980-1981 and the Perspective of Political Revolution |date=1989 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-0-929087-30-6 |page=ix |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-FCyCDv9QswC&dq=trotskyists+planned+economy+workers+democracy+programme&pg=PR9 |language=en}}</ref>

=== Transitional program ===
{{Main|The Transitional Program}}

Trotsky drafted the transitional programme as a programmatic document for the founding congress of the Fourth International in 1938.<ref name="Pathfinder Press">{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution: Including The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International |date=1977 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |isbn=978-0-87348-524-1 |pages=38–40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rL8gAQAAIAAJ&q=the+transitional+program+trotsky |language=en}}</ref>

He explicitly emphasised the core need for the programme:<blockquote>

"It is explicitly necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat".<ref name="Pathfinder Press"/></blockquote>

The transitional programme features three types of proposals for action. This includes democratic demands such as [[labor rights|the right of unions]] and [[self-determination]]; immediate demands which are concerned with everyday struggles such as [[equal pay|wage increases]] and transitional demands which are directed at the capitalist system such as [[Workers' council|worker's control of production]] .<ref name="Pathfinder Press"/>

=== Scientific socialism ===
{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=We must give a scientific explanation of society, and clearly explain it to the masses. That is the difference between Marxism and reformism.|source=—Trotsky on the transitional program of the [[Fourth International]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution: Including The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International |date=1977 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |isbn=978-0-87348-524-1 |page=180 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rL8gAQAAIAAJ&q=the+transition+program+for+socialist+revolution |language=en}}</ref>}}
In his collection of texts, ''[[In Defence of Marxism (book)|In Defence of Marxism]]'', [[Leon Trotsky]] defended the [[dialectical materialism|dialectical method]] of scientific socialism during the factional schisms within the American Trotskyist movement during 1939–40. Trotsky viewed dialectics as an essential method of analysis to discern the class nature of the Soviet Union. Specifically, he described scientific socialism as the "conscious expression of the unconscious historical process".{{sfn|Trotsky|2019|pp=31, 68–70, 138}} According to Daniels, Trotsky conceived historical revolutions as a long, interrelated process of political and social struggle which undergo various stages with national and international dimensions.{{sfn|Daniels|2008|pp=83–92}}

Prior to his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Trotsky had encouraged [[empirical]] studies with the use of Marxist methods for social and historical development. He also insisted on the need for a [[intellectual freedom|freedom of science]], including theoretical research, in 1925, for socially useful purposes.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=476–495}} Trotsky defended [[Einstein]]’s [[theory of relativity]] in Soviet intellectual circles, but this became an anathema during the Stalin era and was only rehabilitated following the latter's death.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=30}}

In line with the scientific outlook of Marxist philosophy, Trotsky heavily emphasized science to alleviate the level of backwardness among the Soviet masses. Concurrently, he viewed socialism as a progressive struggle for [[science]], culture, and morality in which science should be given the maximum scope for development.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sheehan |first1=Helena |title=Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History |date=23 January 2018 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=978-1-78663-426-9 |page=172 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-udOEAAAQBAJ&dq=trotskyists+science+and+technology+emphasis&pg=PA172 |language=en}}</ref> In 1918, he had supported [[Taylorism]] along with Lenin as a means of scientifically managing industries with the support of foreign engineers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hughes |first1=Thomas P. |title=American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970 |date=21 May 2020 |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn=978-0-226-77290-5 |pages=255–256 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZjfnDwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+scientific+experts&pg=PA257 |language=en}}</ref> Multiple historians have stressed the [[technocratic]] nature of his governance proposals compared to Stalin and Bukharin with a higher reliance on "bourgeois" experts and specialists.{{sfn|Swain|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=_a3pAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky%27s+soviet+union+would+have+been+far+more+technocratic&pg=PA118 118]|ref=Swain2014a}}{{sfn|Daniels|2008|p=189}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sandle |first1=Mark |title=A Short History Of Soviet Socialism |date=16 September 2003 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-36639-1 |pages=151–171 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UO2OAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+modernist+industrialist+technocratic&pg=PT253 |language=en}}</ref>

Trotskyists have emphasised the dialectical relationship between [[objectivity (science)|objective]], [[material conditions]], and [[subjectivity and objectivity|subjective factors]] such as party, leadership, in understanding the nature of change in historical events.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Grant |first1=Ted |author1-link=Ted Grant |title=History of British Trotskyism |publisher=Wellred Books |pages=1–282 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LAPaDwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+objective+subjective+factors&pg=PT227 |language=en}}</ref>

=== United front and theory of fascism ===
[[File:Fascism.png|thumb|Leon Trotsky's original pamphlet '''''"[[Fascism]]: What it is and how to fight it"''''' argued for the tactical method of a united front to counter the rise of [[Nazi Germany]]]]
{{Main|United front|The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany}}
{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=|quote=At a time when hundreds of thousands and millions of workers, especially in Germany, are departing from Communism, in part to fascism and in the main into the camp of indifferentism, thousands and tens of thousands of Social Democratic workers, under the impact of the self-same defeat, are evolving into the left, to the side of Communism. There cannot, however, even be talk of their accepting the hopelessly discredited Stalinist leadership.|source=—Trotsky's writings on the challenge of Stalinism and fascism in 1933.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany |date=1971 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |isbn=978-0-87348-136-6 |pages=555–556 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nH5KwgEACAAJ |language=en}}</ref>}}

Trotsky was a central figure in the [[Comintern]] during its first four congresses. During this time, he helped to generalize the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks to newly formed Communist parties across Europe and further afield. From 1921 onwards, the [[united front]], a method of uniting revolutionaries and reformists in the common struggle while winning some of the workers to revolution, was the central tactic put forward by the Comintern after the defeat of the German revolution.

After he was exiled and politically marginalized by Stalinism, Trotsky continued to argue for a united front against fascism in Germany and Spain. According to Joseph Choonara of the British [[Socialist Workers Party (UK)|Socialist Workers Party]] in ''[[International Socialism (magazine)|International Socialism]]'', his articles on the united front represent an essential part of his political legacy.<ref>Joseph Choonara, [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=397&issue=117 "The United Front"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080107230355/http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=397&issue=117 |date=7 January 2008}}, ''[[International Socialism (magazine)|International Socialism]]'', 117.</ref>

Trotsky also formulated a theory of fascism based on a dialectical interpretation of events to analyze the manifestation of [[Italian fascism]] and the early emergence of Nazi Germany from 1930 to 1933.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wistrich |first1=Robert S. |title=Leon Trotsky's Theory of Fascism |journal=[[Journal of Contemporary History]] |date=1976 |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=157–184 |doi=10.1177/002200947601100409 |jstor=260195 |s2cid=140420352 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260195 |issn=0022-0094|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Marxist theorist and economist [[Hillel Ticktin]] argued that his political strategy and approach to fascism such as the emphasis on an organisational bloc between the [[Communist Party of Germany|German Communist Party]] and [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social-Democratic party]] during the interwar period would very likely have prevented [[Adolf Hitler]] [[Adolf Hitler's rise to power#Weimar parties fail to halt Nazis|from ascending to political power]].{{sfn|Ticktin|1992|p=227}}

=== Political ethics and morality ===

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in turn needs to be justified. From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man.|source=—Trotsky's writings on "The Dialectical Interpedence of Ends and Means".{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|p=559}}}}

In 1938, Trotsky had written ''[[Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice|Their Morals and Ours]]'' which consisted of [[ethics|ethical polemics]] in response to criticisms around his actions concerning the [[Kronstadt rebellion]] and wider questions posed around the perceived, "[[amorality|amoral]]" methods of the Bolsheviks. Critics believed these methods seemed to emulate the [[Jesuit]] [[Maxim (philosophy)|maxim]] that the "[[Consequentialism|ends justifies the means]]". Trotsky argued that Marxism situated the foundation of morality as a product of society to [[Marxian class theory|serve social interests]] rather than "eternal moral truths" proclaimed by institutional religions.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=556–560}} On the other hand, he regarded it as farcical to assert that an end could justify any criminal means and viewed this to be a distorted representation of the Jesuit maxim. Instead, Trotsky believed that the means and ends frequently “exchanged places” as when [[democracy]] is sought by the [[working class]] as an instrument to actualize socialism. He also viewed revolution to be deducible from the [[dialectical materialism|laws of the development]] and primarily the [[class struggle]], but this did not mean all means are permissible.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=556–560}} Fundamentally, Trotsky argued that ends "rejects" means that are incompatible with itself.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=1482}} In other words, [[socialism]] cannot be furthered through [[fraud]], [[The Stalin School of Falsification|deceit]] or [[Stalin's cult of personality|the worship of leaders]] but through honesty and integrity as essential elements of [[revolutionary]] morality in dealing with the working masses.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=1482}}

== History ==
=== Origins ===
{{Leninism sidebar|expanded=Schools}}
[[File:Leo Trotzki 1900 in Sibirien.jpg|thumb|Trotsky in exile in Siberia, 1900]]
According to Trotsky, the term "Trotskyism" was coined by [[Pavel Milyukov]] (sometimes transliterated as Paul Miliukoff), the ideological leader of the [[Constitutional Democratic Party|Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)]] in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against Trotskyism "as early as 1905".<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=My Life |pages=230 & 294 |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |location=Harmondsworth |date=1971}}</ref>

Trotsky was elected chairman of the [[St. Petersburg Soviet]] during the [[Russian Revolution of 1905]]. He pursued a policy of [[proletarian revolution]] at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state. This year, Trotsky developed the theory of [[permanent revolution]], as it later became known (see below). In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a book by Milyukov, ''The Elections to the Second State Duma'', published no later than May 1907: {{Blockquote|text=Those who reproach the Kadets with failure to protest at that time, by organising meetings, against the "revolutionary illusions" of Trotskyism and the relapse into [[Blanquism]], simply do not understand [...] the mood of the democratic public at meetings during that period.|sign=Pavel Milyukov|source=''The Elections to the Second State Duma''<ref>{{cite book |first=Pavel |last=Milyukov |author-link=Pavel Milyukov |title=The elections to the second state Duma |pages=91–92}}, is quoted by {{harvnb|Trotsky|1971|pp=176, 295|ref=Trotsky1971b}}</ref>}}

Milyukov suggests that the mood of the "democratic public" was in support of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow of the Romanov regime alongside a workers' revolution to overthrow the capitalist owners of industry, support for strike action and the establishment of democratically elected [[workers' council]]s or "soviets". This differed from variations of [[Council communism|Council Communism]] in [[German Communist Party|Germany]] due to the Russian Peasantry and the role they have in overall [[Leninism]] including Trotskyism compared to the role they have in Council Communism

=== Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution ===
During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky argued that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the state in as good an order as possible.{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|pp=217 ff|ref=Trotsky1971b}} In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time soon came to lead the [[Military Revolutionary Committee]], which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison and carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote: {{Blockquote|text=All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.|sign=Joseph Stalin|source=''[[Pravda]]'', November 6, 1918<ref>This summary of Trotsky's role in 1917, written by Stalin for ''Pravda'', November 6, 1918, was quoted in Stalin's book ''The October Revolution'' issued in 1934, but it was expunged in Stalin's Works released in 1949.</ref>}}

As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theory of permanent revolution was embraced by the young Soviet state until 1924.

The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.

Before the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had formulated a slogan calling for the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry", but after the February revolution, through his April Theses, Lenin instead called for "all power to the Soviets". Nevertheless, Lenin continued to emphasise (as did Trotsky) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=30 October 1919 |chapter=Economics and Politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat |title=Lenin Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=30 |pages=109 |quote=Peasant farming continues to be... an extremely broad and very sound, deep-rooted basis for capitalism, a basis on which capitalism persists or arises anew in a bitter struggle against communism.}}</ref>

Also, before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted the importance of a Bolshevik-style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out, Trotsky admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Although many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky wrote that without Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.

[[File:19191107-lenin second anniversary october revolution moscow.jpg|thumb|left|[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]] and [[Lev Kamenev|Kamenev]] celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution]]

Other Bolshevik figures such as [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]], [[Moisei Uritsky]] and [[Dmitry Manuilsky]] agreed that Lenin's influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky's, not to Lenin's plan.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=1283}}

As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory has been fully committed to a Leninist style of [[democratic centralism|democratic centralist]] party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not be confused with the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship. However, it is essential to emphasise that after 1917, orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the USSR was caused by the failure of the revolution to spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation, and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=After the majority of the petrograd Soviet passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks, [Trotsky] was elected its chairman and in that position organized and led the insurrection of October 25.|source=Lenin on the organization of the October Revolution, Vol.XIV of the ''Collected Works''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Stalin School of Falsification |date=1962 |publisher=Pioneer Publishers |page=12 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rv9oAAAAMAAJ&q=%E2%80%9CAfter+the+majority+of+the+petrograd+Soviet+passed+into+the+hands+of+the+Bolsheviks,+%5BTrotsky%5D+was+elected+its+chairman+and+in+that+position+organized+and+led+the+insurrection+of+October+25 |language=en}}</ref>}}

Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in Western Europe so that this European socialist society would come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated: {{Blockquote|text=We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our statements in the press that [...] the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries.|sign=Vladimir Lenin|source=Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=15 March 1921 |chapter=Report on the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus-grain appropriation system, Tenth Congress |title=Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=32 |pages=215}}, This speech, of course, introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was intended to reinforce the basis of the second of the two conditions Lenin mentions in the quote, the support of the peasantry for the workers' state.</ref>}}

This outlook matched Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution precisely. Trotsky's permanent revolution had foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution but proceed towards a workers' state, as happened in 1917. The Polish Trotskyist [[Isaac Deutscher]] maintains that in 1917, Lenin changed his attitude toward Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, and after the October revolution, it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=285}}

Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that: {{Blockquote|text=[...] up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which "possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody's head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source=''History of the Russian Revolution''<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch16.htm |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=History of the Russian Revolution |pages=332 |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |location=London |date=1977 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>}}

=== "Legend of Trotskyism" ===
[[File:Leon Trotsky.JPG|thumb|"Bolshevik freedom" with nude of Trotsky in a Polish propaganda poster, Polish–Soviet War (1920)]]
In ''[[The Stalin School of Falsification]]'', Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by [[Grigory Zinoviev]] and [[Lev Kamenev]] in collaboration with Stalin in 1924 in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=293}} [[Orlando Figes]] argues: "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power".<ref>{{cite book |last=Figes |first=Orlando |title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 |pages=802 |publisher=[[Pimlico]] |date=1997}}</ref>

During 1922–1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. In [[Lenin's Testament|a document]] dictated before his death in 1924 while describing Trotsky as "distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities—personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee" and also maintaining that "his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him", Lenin criticized him for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work" and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |title=Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=36 |pages=593–598 |quote=Stalin is too rude and this defect [...] becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post [...] it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.}}</ref> Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the [[United Opposition (Soviet Union)|United Opposition]].{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf07.htm 89]|ref=Trotsky1971a}}

In 1926, Stalin allied with [[Nikolai Bukharin]], who led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet, ''From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie'', which was re-printed in 1923 by the party publishing house, Proletari. Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution in this pamphlet: "The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution ... The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution". Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later in 1926 "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution."{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf06.htm 78]|ref=Trotsky1971a}}

Trotsky wrote that the [[Left Opposition]] grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party, but in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:

{{Blockquote|text=During the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.

{{pb}}In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: "Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!" What was a threat in Stalin's words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source={{sfn|Trotsky|1991|p=279}}}}

Internationally, Trotsky's opposition and criticism of the ruling troika received support from several, Central Committee members of foreign communist parties. This included [[Christian Rakovsky]], [[Council of People's Commissars (Ukraine)|Chairman]] of the [[Ukrainian SSR|Ukraine Sovnarkom]], [[Boris Souvarine]] of the [[French Communist Party]] and the Central Committee of the [[Communist Party of Poland|Polish Communist Party]] which was led by prominent theoreticians such as [[Maksymilian Horwitz]], [[Maria Koszutska]] and [[Adolf Warski]].{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=139, 249, 268–269}}

The defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the "so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]".{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|loc=Foreword to the Russian edition|p=xxxiii|ref=Trotsky1971a}} He responded to the one-sided civil war with his ''Letter to the Bureau of Party History'' (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing the [[Chinese Communist Revolution]] and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers: {{blockquote|text=In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:

{{pb}}<blockquote>"All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky..." (Stalin, ''Pravda'', 6 November 1918)</blockquote>

{{pb}}With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the [[1926 United Kingdom general strike|General Strike of 1926]], and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source={{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=87|ref=Trotsky1971a}}}}

Trotsky was sent into internal exile, and his supporters were jailed. For instance, Victor Serge first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.<ref name="Serge 1973">{{cite book |last=Serge |first=Victor |author-link=Victor Serge |title=From Lenin to Stalin |pages=70 |publisher=Pathfinder |date=1973}}</ref> However, the Left Opposition worked secretly within the USSR.<ref name="Serge 1973"/> Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey and moved to France, Norway and finally Mexico.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=381}}

After 1928, the various Communist Parties worldwide expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "misleadership" of the Soviet bureaucracy and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Revolution Betrayed |pages=5–32 |publisher=Pathfinder |date=1971}}</ref> Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy and soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |chapter=How to organise competition |title=Collected Works |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/25.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=26 |pages=409 |quote=One of the most important tasks today, if not the most important, is to develop this independent initiative of the workers, and of all working and exploited people generally.}}</ref> had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labelled a Trotskyist and even a [[Fascist (insult)|fascist]].

=== Founding of the Fourth International ===
{{main|Fourth International|Entryism}}
[[File:Lenin, Trotsky and Voroshilov with Delegates of the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).jpg|thumb|left|Trotsky with [[Vladimir Lenin]] and soldiers in Petrograd]]
Trotsky founded the [[International Left Opposition]] in 1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within the [[Comintern]], but anyone who joined or was suspected of joining the ILO was immediately expelled from the Comintern. The ILO, therefore, concluded that opposing [[Stalinism]] from within the communist organizations controlled by Stalin's supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of the [[Fourth International]], founded in Paris in 1938.

Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, based on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution and that it would need to be built in opposition to the capitalists and the Stalinists.

Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of [[Adolf Hitler]] in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the [[Third Period]] policy of the [[Communist International]] and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform and a new international organisation of the working class must be organised. The [[transitional demand]] tactic had to be a key element.

At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, Trotskyism was a mass political current in [[Vietnam]], [[Sri Lanka]] and slightly later [[Bolivia]]. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese communist movement, [[Chen Duxiu]], amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they prioritised hunting down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst enemies.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Broué |first=Pierre |date=1990 |title=Chen Duxiu and the Fourth International, 1937-1942 |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/china/china04.htm |journal=Revolutionary History |volume=2 |issue=4}}</ref>

The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the USSR could no longer be called a [[degenerated workers' state]] and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945, Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in many other countries.
[[File:V A Antonov-Ovseenko.jpeg|thumb|upright|[[Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko|Antonov-Ovseenko]] was the first former Trotskyist to be posthumously [[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated]]]]
The [[International Secretariat of the Fourth International]] (ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946 and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War and the tasks of revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments, which came into being after [[World War II]] without a social revolution, were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/fi-2ndcongress/1948-congress02.htm |title=The USSR and Stalinism |date=December 1948 – January 1949 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=6 June 2016}}</ref> By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states". As the [[Cold War]] intensified, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by [[Michel Pablo]] that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, under pressure from the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.

The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties, followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counterrevolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the USSR took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.

[[File:Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.4212 (17086177105).jpg|thumb|The [[West German student movement]] in 1968]]
Pablo began expelling many people who disagreed with his thesis and did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled most of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with the Open Letter to Trotskyists of the World, by [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|Socialist Workers Party]] leader [[James P. Cannon]].

The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. Several sections of the International established the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]] (ICFI) as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a [[Marxist revisionism|revisionist]] faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power and recommitted themselves to the Lenin-Trotsky Theory of the Party and Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1967/party.htm |title=The Revolutionary Party & Its Role in the Struggle for Socialism |last=Cannon |first=James P. |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>  From 1960, led by the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|U.S Socialist Workers Party]], many ICFI sections began the reunification process with the IS, but factions split off and continued their commitment to the ICFI.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Heritage We Defend |last=North |first=David |author-link=David North (socialist) |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-929087-00-9 |pages=Sections 131–140}}</ref>

=== Cuban Revolution ===
{{Main|Betrayal thesis}}
Historian [[Theodore Draper]] had been a Trotskyist in his youth, but eventually became a more independently minded historian, still skeptical of Stalinism. Draper originally gained scholarly recognition for his writings on the history of the American Communist Party.<ref>{{cite book |last=Welch |first=Richard |date= October 2017|title=Response to Revolution The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1961 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zOs2DwAAQBAJ&dq=theodore+draper+castro+trotskyist&pg=PA141 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |page=141 |isbn=9781469610467}}</ref>

After the [[Cuban Revolution]], a variety of socialist writers like [[C. Wright Mills]], [[Paul Sweezy]], [[Herbert Matthews]], and [[Paul Johnson (writer)|Paul Johnson]] were delivering polemics in defense of the new ''Fidelista'' government.<ref name=boys>{{cite book |last=Goose |first=Van |date=1993 |title=Where the Boys Are Cuba, Cold War and the Making of a New Left |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wjFy44EcVQAC&dq=theodore+draper+castro+trotskyist&pg=PA214 |publisher=Verso Books |page=214 |isbn=9780860916901}}</ref> In 1961 [[Encounter (magazine)|Encounter magazine]] asked [[Theodore Draper]] to write an assessment of the [[Cuban Revolution]] and the new provisional government. Draper published ''Castro's Cuba - A Revolution Betrayed'' in which, Draper presents a Marxist analysis which claims that "Castroism" is a rudimentary nationalism which ignores the principles of Marxism, and that Fidel Castro is a demagogue. Draper also describes his ''[[Betrayal thesis]]'' by alluding to Trotsky's allegation that Stalin "betrayed" the [[Russian Revolution]]. Draper alleges that Castro had "betrayed" the Cuban Revolution in a similar manner.<ref name=boys /><ref>{{cite book |last=Guttenplan |first=D.D. |date=2012 |title=American Radical The Life and Times of I. F. Stone |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1u6C0morg_oC&dq=theodore+draper+castro+trotskyist&pg=PA354 |publisher=Northwestern University Press |page=354 |isbn=9780810128316}}</ref>

Trotskyists in general, were split about Castroism. Trotskyists like [[J. Posadas]] celebrated Castroism, and claimed that Cuba is on the road to socialism, while the British and French sections of the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]], claimed that the Cuban Revolution only developed a form of state capitalism in Cuba.<ref>{{cite book |last=Le Blanc |first=Paul |date=2018 |title=U.S. TROTSKYISM 1928-1965 Resurgence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qdJ7DwAAQBAJ&dq=trotskyists+betrayal+cuba&pg=PA234 |publisher=BRILL |pages=234–235 |isbn=978-90-04-38928-1}}</ref>

== Trotskyist movements ==
{{See also|List of Trotskyist organizations by country}}

=== Latin America ===
Trotskyism has influenced some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America. The [[Revolutionary Workers' Party (Bolivia)|Bolivian Trotskyist party]] ({{lang|es|Partido Obrero Revolucionario}}, POR) became a mass party in the late 1940s and early 1950s and, together with other groups, played a central role during and immediately after the period termed the [[Bolivian revolution#The Bolivian national revolution (1952–64)|Bolivian National Revolution]].{{sfn|Alexander|1991|p=}}{{page needed|date=August 2024}}

[[File:Marcha de la Resistencia 2017 24.jpg|thumb|[[Workers' Left Front]] in Argentina in December 2017]]
In Argentina, the [[Workers' Revolutionary Party (Argentina)|Workers' Revolutionary Party]] (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, PRT) lay in the merger of two leftist organizations in 1965, the [[Revolutionary and Popular Amerindian Front]] ({{lang|es|Frente Revolucionario Indoamericano Popular}}, FRIP) and [[Worker's Word]] {{lang|es|(Palabra Obrera, PO)}}. In 1968, the PRT adhered to the [[Fourth International]], based in Paris. That same year, a related organisation was founded in Argentina, the ERP ([[People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)|People's Revolutionary Army]]), which became South America's most powerful rural guerrilla movement during the 1970s. The PRT left the Fourth International in 1973.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.archivochile.com/America_latina/JCR/PRT_A/doc_de_PRT/prtde0006.pdf |title=Por qué nos separamos de la IV Internacional |language=es |trans-title=Why we separated from the IV International |author=PRT Argentina. Junta de Coordinación Revolucionaria (JCR) |author-link=Workers' Revolutionary Party (Argentina) |date=August 1973 |access-date=5 February 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211011030600/http://www.archivochile.com/America_latina/JCR/PRT_A/doc_de_PRT/prtde0006.pdf |archive-date=11 October 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref> During the [[Dirty War]], the Argentine military regime suppressed both the PRT and the ERP. ERP commander [[Roberto Santucho]] was killed in July 1976. Owing to the ruthless repression, PRT showed no signs of activity after 1977. During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by [[Nahuel Moreno]], MAS ({{lang|es|Movimiento al Socialismo}}, [[Movimiento al Socialismo (Argentina)|Movement for Socialism]]), claimed to be the "largest Trotskyist party" in the world before it broke into many different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-day [[Workers' Socialist Movement (Argentina)|Workers' Socialist Movement]] (MST), [[Socialist Workers' Party (Argentina)|Socialist Workers' Party]] (PTS), [[Socialist Left (Argentina)|Socialist Left]] (IS), [[Self-determination and Freedom]] (AyL, which is not outspoken Trotskyist). In 1989, an electoral front with the Communist Party and MRS called {{lang|es|Izquierda Unida}} ("[[United Left (Argentina)|United Left]]") retrieved 3.49% of the vote, representing 580,944 voters.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://towsa.com/andy/totalpais/1989d.html |title=Atlas Electoral de Andy Tow |trans-title=Electoral atlas of Andy Tow |language=es |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120706185905/http://towsa.com/andy/totalpais/1989d.html |archive-date=6 July 2012}}</ref> The [[Workers' Party (Argentina)|Workers' Party]] (Partido Obrero) in Argentina later founded with other Trotskyist groups the [[Workers' Left Front]] which is represented in parliament.

Venezuelan president [[Hugo Chávez]] declared himself a Trotskyist during the swearing-in of his cabinet two days before his inauguration on 10 January 2007.<ref>{{cite news |first=Nathalie |last=Malinarich |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6246219.stm |work=[[BBC News]] |title=Chavez accelerates on path to socialism |date=10 January 2007 |access-date=19 June 2007}}</ref> Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jir.org.ve/article.php3?id_article=211 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071010152457/http://www.jir.org.ve/article.php3?id_article=211 |title=Declaración Polãtica de la JIR, como Fracción Pública del PRS, por una real independencia de clase (Extractos) – Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria |language=es |trans-title=Political Declaration of the JIR, as a Public Fraction of the PRS, for a real class independence (Excerpts) – Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria |archive-date=10 October 2007}}</ref> In contrast, others consider him an honest revolutionary leader who made significant mistakes due to his lack of a Marxist analysis.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://venezuela.elmilitante.org/content/view/6417/182/ |last=Sanabria |first=William |title=La Enmienda Constitucional, Orlando Chirino y la C-CURA |language=es |trans-title=The Constitutional Amendment, Orlando Chirino and the C-CURA |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091218105614/http://venezuela.elmilitante.org/content/view/6417/182/ |archive-date=18 December 2009}}</ref>

=== North America ===
{{Quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=|quote=They fear, in a word, that [[Socialism in the United States|Soviet America]] will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like. Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America.|source= Trotsky on ''If American Should Go Communist'' in 1934.<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=If America Should Go Communist |date=1934 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/08/ame.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>}}

The development of the American Trotskyism movement emerged with the [[Communist League of America|Communist League of America (CLA)]], then as the [[Workers Party of the United States|Workers Party of the United States (WPUS)]] and briefly as the [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist Party (SP) of America]] before beginning in 1938 as the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|Socialist Workers Party (SWP)]].{{sfn|Blanc|Wald|Breitman|2016|p=39}} According to historian Paul Le Blanc, [[James P. Cannon|James Cannon]] and [[Max Shachtman]] were the most influential leaders of early US Trotskyism.{{sfn|Blanc|Wald|Breitman|2016|p=54}}

Trotsky engaged with members of the [[American Socialist Workers Party]] on reaching the Black population. He had correspondence with [[C.L.R. James]] on the question of [[African-American self-determination|self-determination]] and expressed support for Black Americans seeking equal rights and an autonomous state.{{sfn|Hirson|1992|pp=184–190}}

In 1953 there was a major split in the Fourth International between the [[International Secretariat of the Fourth International|International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI)]] led by [[Michel Pablo]] and the [[International Committee of the Fourth International|International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)]] led iniatially by [[James P. Cannon|James Cannon]] of the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|SWP]]. While a decade later in 1963 the majority of the SWP reunited with Pablo's supporters, a minority group persisted in their independence and criticisms of what they deemed to be the ISFI's abandonment of Permanent Revolution and their promotion of Stalinst regimes and parties. This group that remained loyal to the ICFI would go on to become the [[Socialist Equality Party (US)]].<ref>{{Cite web| title=Trotskyism versus revisionism - The split in the Fourth International | url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/tvsr/Trotskyism-Versus-Revisionism-Volume-2.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110223922/https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/tvsr/Trotskyism-Versus-Revisionism-Volume-2.pdf | archive-date=2016-11-10}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Internationalism and the SWP |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1953/international.htm |access-date=2025-09-13 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> There is also another North American national section of the ICFI in Canada, also known as the Socialist Equality Party.

There is a Trotskyist-influenced caucus within the [[Democratic Socialists of America]], Reform and Revolution.<ref>{{Cite web |date=31 July 2019 |title=What We Stand For |website=Reform & Revolution |url=https://reformandrevolution.org/2019/07/30/what-we-stand-for/ |access-date=17 July 2024 |language=en-US |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241214072613/https://reformandrevolution.org/2019/07/30/what-we-stand-for/ |archive-date=14 December 2024}}</ref>

=== Africa ===
Through the 1930s, the first viable black trade unions in [[Transvaal (province)|Transvaal]], South Africa were established by Trotskyists.{{sfn|Hirson|1992|pp=177–181}}

The [[Democratic Socialist Movement (Nigeria)]] exists in [[Nigeria]], it was founded in 1986 among a confederation of labour and student socialists. It is affiliated to the [[Committee for a Workers' International (2019)|Committee for a Workers' International]].

=== Asia ===
==== China ====
In China, various left opposition groups in the late 1920s sought to engage Trotsky against the Comintern policy of support for the Kuomintang.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |first=Robert J. |last=Alexander |author-link=Robert J. Alexander |title=International Trotskyism |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online}}</ref> In 1931, at Trotsky's urging, the various factions united in the Communist League of China, adopting Trotsky's document "The Political Situation in China and the Task of the Bolshevik-Leninist Opposition". Prominent members include [[Chen Duxiu]], [[Wang Fanxi]] and [[Chen Qichang (Trotskyist)|Chen Qichang]]. The League was persecuted by the Nationalist government and by the Chinese Communist Party.<ref>{{cite web |title=International Trotskyism – China: Early Years of the Chinese Communist Party |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/china1.htm |first=Robert J. |last=Alexander |author-link=Robert J. Alexander |access-date=22 June 2020 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

In 1949, the [[Revolutionary Communist Party of China]] ({{lang-zh|中國革命共產黨}}; RCP) fled to Hong Kong. Since 1974, the party has been legally active as October Review, its official publication.<ref>{{cite news |title=Leftist Parties of the World – China |work=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>

==== Vietnam ====
In French Indochina during the 1930s, [[Vietnamese Trotskyism]], led by [[Tạ Thu Thâu]], was a significant current, particularly in Saigon, Cochinchina.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Richardson |editor-first=A. |title=The Revolution Defamed: A documentary history of Vietnamese Trotskyism |publisher=Socialist Platform Ltd |date=2003}}</ref> In 1929, in the French Left Opposition {{lang|fr|La Vérité}}, Ta Thu Thau condemned the Comintern for leading Chinese Communists (in 1927) to "the graveyard" through its support for the [[Kuomintang]]. The {{"'}}[[Sun Yat-sen]]-ist' synthesis of democracy, nationalism and socialism" was "a kind of nationalist mysticism". In Indochina, it could only obscure "the concrete class relationships, and the real, organic liaison between the indigenous bourgeoisie and French imperialism," in the light of which the call for independence is "mechanical and formalistic". "A revolution based on the organisation of the proletarian and peasant masses is the only one capable of liberating the colonies ... The question of independence must be bound up with that of the proletarian socialist revolution."<ref>{{cite web |last=Ngo |first=Van Xuyet |title=Ta Thu Thau: Vietnamese Trotskyist Leader |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no2/thau.html |website=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=14 September 2019}}</ref>

For a period in the 1930s, Ta Thu Thau's Struggle group, centred around the newspaper [[La Lutte (newspaper)|La Lutte]], was sufficiently strong to induce "Stalinists" (members of the then [[Indochinese Communist Party]]) to collaborate with the Trotskyists in support of labour and peasant struggles, and in the presentation of a common Workers Slate for Saigon municipal, and Cochinchina Council, elections. Ta Thu Thau was captured and executed by the Communist-front ''Viet Minh'' in September 1945. Many, if not most, of his fellow ''luttuers'' were subsequently killed, caught between the Viet Minh and the French effort at colonial reconquest.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ngô |first=Văn |title=In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary |publisher=[[AK Press]] |location=Oakland, California |date=2010}}</ref>

==== Sri Lanka ====
[[File:Lsspoffice.JPG|thumb|right|[[Lanka Sama Samaja Party|LSSP]] main office in [[Colombo]], Sri Lanka]]

In Sri Lanka, a group of Trotskyists (known as the "T Group"), including South Asia's pioneer Trotskyist, [[Philip Gunawardena]], who had been active in Trotskyist politics in Europe, and his colleague [[N. M. Perera]], were instrumental in the foundation of the [[Lanka Sama Samaja Party]] (LSSP) in 1935. It expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. After a prison break it helped form the short lived [[Bolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma]] (BLPI).

After the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the [[Bolshevik Samasamaja Party]] (BSP). In the general election of 1947, the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning ten seats, the BSP winning a further 5. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International after fusion with the BSP in 1950 and led a general strike ([[Hartal 1953|Hartal]]) in 1953.<ref name="Ervin">{{cite book |last=Ervin |first=W. E. |title=Tomorrow is Ours: The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon, 1935–48 |location=Colombo |publisher=Social Scientists Association |date=2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Y. Ranjith |last=Amarasinghe |title=Revolutionary Idealism & Parliamentary Politics – A Study Of Trotskyism In Sri Lanka |location=Colombo |publisher=Social Scientists' Association |date=1998}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Goonewardena |first=Leslie |author-link=Leslie Goonewardene |date=1960 |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/goonewardene/1960/lssp.htm |title=A Short History of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party |magazine=What's Next? |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=16 February 2019}}</ref>

In 1964 a faction of the LSSP broke away in response to the party joining the governing coalition of [[Sirimavo Bandaranaike]] and affiliated itself with the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]] who shared their critiques of Trotskyist parties joining bourgois governments. In 1968 they would officially form the Revolutionary Communist League which would eventually become the Socialist Equality Party in 1996.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Capitalism offers no solutions to the dangers facing workers: Pani Wijesiriwardena - Hard talk {{!}} Daily Mirror |url=https://www.dailymirror.lk/hard-talk/Capitalism-offers-no-solutions-to-the-dangers-facing-workers-Pani-Wijesiriwardena/334-177499 |access-date=2025-09-13 |website=www.dailymirror.lk |language=en}}</ref> 

In 1974, a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the [[Militant (Trotskyist group)|Militant]] group in the United Kingdom, emerged. In 1977, this faction was expelled and formed the [[Nava Sama Samaja Party]], led by [[Vasudeva Nanayakkara]].

==== India ====
In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of the Sri Lankan LSSP from a [[British Empire|British]] prison, a unified [[Bolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma]] (BLPI) was established in India, bringing together the many Trotskyist groups in the subcontinent. The BLPI was active in the [[Quit India Movement]] and the labour movement, capturing the second oldest union in India. Its high point was when it led the strikes which followed the [[Bombay Mutiny]].

In India, the BLPI fractured. In 1948, at the Fourth International's request, the party's rump dissolved into the [[Congress Socialist Party]] as an exercise in [[entryism]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=Trotskyism in India: Part One: Origins Through World War Two (1935–45) |journal=Revolutionary History |volume=1 |number=4 |date=Winter 1988–89 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/india/india01.htm}}</ref><ref name="Ervin"/>

=== Europe ===

==== Spain ====
In the [[Spanish Civil War]], Stalinist-directed NKVD oversaw purges of anti-Stalinist elements in the Spanish [[Spanish Republican|Republican]] forces including [[Trotskyist]] and [[anarchist]] factions.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sakwa |first1=Richard |title=Soviet Politics: In Perspective |date=12 November 2012 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-90996-4 |page=43 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SQSiM2vPO54C&dq=spanish+civil+war+stalin+purged+nin&pg=PA43 |language=en}}</ref> Notable cases involved the execution of [[Andreu Nin]], former government minister in [[Revolutionary Catalonia]], [[Jose Robles]], a left-wing academic and translator along with many members of the Trotskyist-aligned [[POUM]] faction, such as [[Mary Stanley Low]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bayó Belenguer |first=Susana |date=2018-11-26 |title=Mary Low: A Trotskyist with the POUM in Barcelona |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14753820.2018.1537285 |journal=Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America |volume=95 |issue=9–10 |pages=311–324 |doi=10.1080/14753820.2018.1537285 |issn=1475-3820|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Whitehead |first1=Jonathan |title=The End of the Spanish Civil War: Alicante 1939 |date=4 April 2024 |publisher=Pen and Sword History |isbn=978-1-3990-6395-1 |page=81 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7aLsEAAAQBAJ&dq=andreu+nin+stalin+purges&pg=PA81 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |author-link=Robert Service (historian) |title=Comrades!: A History of World Communism |date=2007 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02530-1 |page=212 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Frgm5QodnFoC&dq=andreu+nin+stalin+purged&pg=PA211 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kocho-Williams |first1=Alastair |title=Russia's International Relations in the Twentieth Century |date=4 January 2013 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-136-15747-9 |page=60 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vu2kOJbrCuMC&dq=spanish+civil+war+stalin+purged+nin&pg=PA61 |language=en}}</ref>

==== United Kingdom ====
In Britain during the 1980s, the [[Entryism|entryist]] [[Militant (Trotskyist group)|Militant]] group operated within the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] with three members of parliament and effective control of [[Liverpool City Council]], and was described by journalist [[Michael Crick]] as "Britain's fifth most important political party" in 1986.<ref>{{cite book |last=Crick |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Crick |title=The March of Militant |pages=2}}</ref>

One of the more prominent Trotskyist parties in Britain has been the [[Socialist Workers Party (UK)|Socialist Workers Party]], formerly the International Socialists (IS) and traces its history back to 1950. The SWP has helped found several organisations through which they have sought to exert influence over the broader left, such as the [[Anti-Nazi League]] in the late 1970s and the [[Stop the War Coalition]] in 2001.<ref>{{cite book |last=Boothroyd |first=David |date=2001 |title=The History of British Political Parties |location=London |publisher=Politicos |pages=303}}</ref> It also allied with [[George Galloway]] and [[Respect Party|Respect]], whose dissolution in 2007 caused an internal crisis in the SWP. A more serious internal crisis, leading to a significant decline in the party's membership, emerged in 2013 over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against a leading party member.<ref>{{cite news |last=Muir |first=Hugh |date=29 July 2013 |title=Diary: Adieu, Comrade Delta. The SWP leader at the centre of sex abuse allegations departs|url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/29/adieu-comrade-delta-swp-sex-allegations |work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> 

[[File:Dungavel3 (cropped).JPG|thumb|250px|Scottish TUSC members protesting against the [[Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre|Dungavel Detention Centre]]]]

The [[Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition]] (TUSC) was formed in 2010 between the [[Socialist Party (England and Wales)|Socialist Party]], the SWP and [[Socialist Resistance]], along with the [[National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers|RMT]] union, has participated in several general elections.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kelly |first1=John |title=Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain |date=14 March 2018 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-317-36894-6 |pages=157–310 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0mJRDwAAQBAJ&q=trade+unionist+and+socialist+coalition+trotskyism |language=en}}</ref> The TUSC stood 40 candidates at the [[2024 United Kingdom general election]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=7 June 2024 |title=TUSC candidates in the general election |url=https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/TUSC-candidates-on-July-4.pdf |website=[[Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition]]}}</ref>

In April 2019, a 1970s splinter from IS made headlines when three former members of the [[Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978)|Revolutionary Communist Party]] campaigned in the European Parliamentary election as candidates for the [[Brexit Party]],<ref name="Walker, 2019">{{cite news |first=Peter |last=Walker |date=23 April 2019 |title=Former communist standing as MEP for Farage's Brexit party |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/23/former-communist-claire-fox-standing-as-mep-for-farages-brexit-party |work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite tweet |user=JamesHeartfield/ |number=1121719607671382018 |title=Glad to announce that I am contesting the Yorkshire and Humber constituency for the @brexitparty_uk in the European elections. |first=James |last=Heartfield |date=26 April 2019 |access-date=28 April 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Former Revolutionary Communist Party's Spiked: Alka Sehgal Cuthbert Candidate for Farage's Brexit Party |url=https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2019/04/13/former-revolutionary-communist-partys-spiked-alka-sehgal-cuthbert-candidate-for-farages-brexit-party/ |date=13 April 2019 |website=Tendance Coatesy}}</ref> and a fourth, [[Munira Mirza]], was appointed head of the Number 10 [[Downing Street]] policy unit by the new Conservative Prime Minister [[Boris Johnson]].<ref>{{cite news |first1=Rajeev |last1=Syal |first2=Rowena |last2=Mason |first3=Lisa |last3=O'Carroll |title=Sky executive among Johnson's first appointments |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/sky-executive-among-johnson-first-appointments-andrew-griffith-munira-mirza |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=23 July 2019 |access-date=25 July 2019}}</ref> The RCP's rejection of the SWP's critical engagement with the Labour Party and trade unions had morphed into embracing right-wing libertarian positions.<ref name="Walker, 2019"/>

==== Ireland ====
The [[Socialist Party (Ireland)|Socialist Party]] in Ireland was formed in 1996 by members who had been expelled from the [[Labour Party (Ireland)|Labour Party]] in 1989 under the leadership of [[Dick Spring]]. It achieved electoral success at the [[1997 Irish general election|1997 general election]] with the election of [[Joe Higgins (politician)|Joe Higgins]] in [[Dublin West (Dáil constituency)|Dublin West]]. The Socialist Party has been part of electoral alliances such as the [[United Left Alliance]], [[Solidarity (Ireland)|Solidarity]] and [[People Before Profit–Solidarity]]. {{As of|2024}}, it is represented at a national level by [[Mick Barry (Irish politician)|Mick Barry]], a TD for [[Cork North-Central (Dáil constituency)|Cork North-Central]]. It contests [[elections in Northern Ireland]] as part of the [[Cross-Community Labour Alternative]].

==== Portugal ====
In Portugal's [[2015 Portuguese legislative election|October 2015 parliamentary election]], the [[Left Bloc (Portugal)|Left Bloc]] won 550,945 votes, translating into 10.19% of the expressed votes and 19 (out of 230) ''deputados'' (members of parliament).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://dre.pt/application/file/70722536 |title=Comissão Nacional de Eleições |trans-title=National Election Commission |language=pt-PT |website=Diário da República, 1ª série – Nº 205 |date=20 October 2015 |access-date=18 May 2016}}</ref> Although founded by several leftist tendencies, it still expresses much of the Trotskyist thought upheld and developed by its former leader, [[Francisco Louçã]].

==== Turkey ====
In [[Turkey]], there are some Trotskyist organizations, including the [[International Socialist Tendency]]'s section ([[Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (Turkey)|Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party]]). The [[International Committee of the Fourth International]]'s Turkish section, the Socialist Equality Party (formerly the Socialist Equality Group),  have held several public meetings on the history of the Trotskyist movement on [[Büyükada]], also known as Prinkipo, an island in the [[Sea of Marmara]] that served as Trotsky’s first exiled home from 1929 to 1933 after being deported from the USSR.<ref>{{Cite web|title=A historic advance in the fight for Trotskyism: The International Committee of the Fourth International accepts application of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu to become its section in Turkey|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/27/truk-j27.html|website=World Socialist Web Site|date=2022-06-27|access-date=2025-11-28|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Lev Troçki Büyükada Çelik Gülersoy Kültür Merkezinde anıldı|url=https://www.salom.com.tr/haber/135466/lev-trocki-buyukada-celik-gulersoy-kultur-merkezinde-anildi|website=Şalom Gazetesi|access-date=2025-11-28|language=tr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=“Dünya Tarihinin Merkezindeki Ada”: 20 Ağustos’ta Büyükada’da Lev Troçki’yi anma etkinliği düzenleniyor|url=https://t24.com.tr/haber/dunya-tarihinin-merkezindeki-ada-20-agustos-ta-buyukada-da-lev-trocki-yi-anma-etkinligi-duzenleniyor,1123935|website=T24|access-date=2025-11-28|language=Turkish}}</ref>

==== Germany ====
A section of the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]] has existed in Germany since 1971, originally founded as the Federation of Socialist Workers (''Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter''), it adopted its current name [[Socialist Equality Party (Germany)|Socialist Equality Party]] (''Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei'') in 2017.

==== France ====
{{main|Trotskyism in France}}
[[Image:Manif Paris 2005-11-19 dsc06344 cropped.jpg|thumb|[[Revolutionary Communist League (France)|LCR]] protesters marching in a workforce demonstration in favour of public services and against privatization]]
The [[Communist League (1930)|Communist League]] was formed in 1930, becoming the first Trotskyist group in the country.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nick |first=Christophe |title=Les Trotskistes |publisher=Fayard |year=2002 |page=26}}</ref> French Trotskyists have historically faced internal splits and external repression, notably during World War II when their activities were banned.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Charpier |first=Frédéric |title=Histoire de l'extrême gauche trotskiste de 1929 à nos jours |publisher=Éditions 1 |year=2002 |page=85}}</ref>{{verify source|date=January 2024}} Postwar, French Trotskyism was shaped by significant divisions, such as the 1952 split between [[Lambertist]] and [[Pabloist]] factions, reflecting global tensions within the [[Fourth International]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bensaïd |first=Daniel |title=Les Trotskysmes |publisher=PUF |year=2001 |page=46}}</ref>{{verify source|date=January 2024}} The movement gained public attention during events like the [[May 1968 protests]], where Trotskyist groups, including the [[Revolutionary Communist League (France)|Revolutionary Communist League]] (LCR), played a prominent role.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Marie |first=Jean-Jacques |title=Le Trotskysme |publisher=Armand Colin |year=2002 |page=102}}</ref>{{verify source|date=January 2024}}

The French section of the Fourth International was the Internationalist Communist Party (PCI). In 1952 the party split when the Fourth International removed its Central Committee and split again when in 1953, the Fourth International itself divided. Further divisions occurred over which independence faction to support in the Algerian War. In 1967, the rump of the PCI renamed itself the "[[Internationalist Communist Organisation]]" ({{lang|fr|Organisation Communiste Internationaliste}}, OCI). It proliferated during the May 1968 student demonstrations but was banned alongside other far-left groups, such as the {{lang|fr|Gauche prolétarienne}} (Proletarian Left). Members temporarily reconstituted the group as the Trotskyist Organisation but soon obtained a state order permitting the reformation of the OCI. By 1970, the OCI was able to organise a 10,000-strong youth rally. The group also gained a strong base in trade unions. However, further splits and disintegration followed.

Today, France remains a hub for Trotskyist activity, represented by groups such as {{lang|fr|[[Lutte Ouvrière]]}}. In [[2002 French presidential election|2002]], three trotskyist candidates ran in the election. [[Arlette Laguiller]] of {{lang|fr|Lutte Ouvrière}} got 5.72%, [[Olivier Besancenot]] of the [[Revolutionary Communist League (France)|Revolutionary Communist League]] ({{lang|fr|Ligue communiste révolutionnaire}}) got 4.25% and [[Daniel Gluckstein]] of the [[Workers' Party (France)|Workers' Party]] ({{lang|fr|Parti des Travailleurs}}) got 0.47%.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Election Results 2002 |url=http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/sections/a_votre_service/elections/resultats/presidentielle/presidentielle-2002 |publisher=Ministère de l'Intérieur |access-date=2024-05-27}}</ref> In 2016 [[Jean-Luc Mélenchon]], formerly of the ICO, launched the left-wing political platform {{lang|fr|[[La France Insoumise]]}} (Unbowed France), subsequently endorsed by several parties, including his own [[Left Party (France)|Left Party]] and the [[French Communist Party]]. In the 2017 French Presidential Election, he received 19% in the first round. In the same election, [[Philippe Poutou]] of the [[New Anticapitalist Party]], into which the Revolutionary Communist League dissolved itself in 2008, won 1.20% of the vote. The only openly Trotskyist candidate, [[Nathalie Arthaud]] of Workers' Struggle, won 0.64% of the vote.

== Internationals ==
[[File:Socialist Alternative Protest1.jpg|thumb|[[Socialist Alternative (United States)|Socialist Alternative]] members in the United States at an antiwar march in 2007]]
The [[Fourth International (Post-Reunification)|Fourth International]] derives from the 1963 reunification of the two public factions into which the Fourth International split in 1953: the [[International Secretariat of the Fourth International]] (ISFI) and some sections of the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]] (ICFI). It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. The USFI retains sections and sympathizing organizations in over 50 countries, including France's ''[[Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire]]'' (LCR) and sections in Portugal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Pakistan.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?rubrique19 |title=Fourth International |date=5 August 2016 |publisher=International Viewpoint}}</ref>

The [[International Committee of the Fourth International]] maintains its independent organization and publishes the [[World Socialist Web Site]]. They have full sections in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Australia with sympathizing groups in Russia, Ukraine, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Croatia, Ireland, and other countries.

The [[Committee for a Workers' International (1974)|Committee for a Workers' International]] (CWI) was founded in 1974 and has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated with the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the large [[social democratic]] parties. The CWI has adopted a range of tactics, including working with trade unions, but in some cases working within or supporting other parties, endorsing [[Bernie Sanders]] for the [[Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016|2016 U.S. Democratic Party nomination]] and encouraging him to run independently.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/7527 |title=Bernie Sanders campaign – an opportunity to build a new party of the 99% |last=Saunois |first=Tony |date=1 April 2016 |website=Socialistworld.net |publisher=[[Committee for a Workers' International]] |access-date=1 April 2016}}</ref>

In France, the LCR is rivalled by {{lang|fr|[[Lutte Ouvrière]]}}, the French section of the [[Internationalist Communist Union]] (UCI), with small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, on the industrial proletariat.

The Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) founders claims they were expelled from the CWI when the CWI abandoned [[entryism]]. The CWI claims they left, and no expulsions were carried out. In 2006, it became the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties. Known as the [[Revolutionary Communist International]] (RCI) since 2024, it is headed by [[Alan Woods (politician)|Alan Woods]].

The [[list of Trotskyist internationals]] shows that there are a large number of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky.

== Debated comparison with Stalinism ==
{{main|Anti-Stalinist Left|The Declaration of 46|New Course (Trotsky book)|The Stalin School of Falsification|Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence}}

[[File:Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky at Felix Dzerzhinsky funeral.jpg|left|thumb|[[Mikhail Kalinin|Kalinin]] and [[Stalin]] bearing the coffin of [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]] on 22 July 1926. Trotsky can be seen over Kalinin's left shoulder.|alt=]]

Some Western historians have regarded Trotsky as a forerunner to Stalinism and centred this notion on his record during the period of [[war communism]], which included practices such as the [[labor army|militarization of labour]].{{sfn|Daniels|2008|pp=194–195}} Criticism has also been levied at his support for [[concentration camps]] to detain [[war prisoners]] and the [[Red Terror]].<ref name="auto2">V. I͡U. Cherni͡aev, "Trotsky" in {{cite book |editor1-first=Edward |editor1-last=Acton |editor2-first=Vladimir I͡u. |editor2-last=Cherni͡aev |editor3-first=William G. |editor3-last=Rosenberg |title=Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NAZm2EdxKqkC&pg=PA191 |year=1997 |publisher=[[Indiana University Press]] |page=191 |isbn=978-0-253-33333-9}}</ref><ref name="Taylor & Francis"/> Other historians such as [[Robert Service (historian)|Robert Service]], [[Dmitri Volkogonov]], N.A. Vasetskii and Alter Litvin contend that Trotsky shared the same [[totalitarian]] strand of thought as Stalin and would not have represented a radically different USSR.{{sfn|Thatcher|2005|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cU3yFMLm1voC&q=volkogonov&pg=PT91 1–30]}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |author-link=Robert Service (historian) |title=Trotsky: A Biography |date=16 April 2010 |publisher=Pan Macmillan |isbn=978-0-330-52268-7 |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bkCXBCWHu1gC&q=trotsky+a+biography |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Litvin |first1=Alter L. |last2=Keep |first2=John L. H. |title=Stalinism: Russian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium |date=2005 |publisher=[[Psychology Press]] |isbn=978-0-415-35108-9 |page=51 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1AFH0yHI_MsC&dq=rogovin+unconvincing&pg=PA51 |language=en}}</ref> Concerning the ideological differences between the varieties of [[Marxist philosophy]] that are Stalinism and Trotskyism, novelist [[George Orwell]] said:
{{blockquote|The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with the [[Fascist]]s, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Orwell |first=George |author-link=George Orwell |date=May 1945 |title=Notes on Nationalism |url=http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat |journal=[[Polemic (magazine)|Polemic]] |access-date=22 December 2006|archive-date=20 January 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120035738/http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

However, literary critic [[Jeffrey Meyers]], who reviewed the political allegories in Orwell’s work, stated that:

<blockquote>"Orwell ignores the fact that Trotsky passionately opposed [[Left Opposition|Stalin’s dictatorship from 1924 to 1940]], which featured [[Siberian]] prison camps, the deliberately created [[Ukraine famine]] and the massive slaughter during the [[Great Purges|Moscow Purge Trials of 1937]].”<ref>{{cite web |title=Orwell and Trotsky |url=https://orwellsociety.com/orwell-and-trotsky/ |website=The Orwell Society |date=4 May 2022}}</ref></blockquote>

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=“With all the greater frankness can I state how, in my view, the Soviet government should act in case of a fascist upheaval in Germany. In their place, I would, at the very moment of receiving telegraphic news of this event, sign a [[mobilisation]] order calling up several age groups. In the face of a mortal enemy, when the logic of the situation points to inevitable war, it would be irresponsible and unpardonable to give that enemy time to establish himself, to consolidate his positions, to conclude alliances… and to work out the plan to attack.”
|source=Trotsky describing the military measures he would have taken in place of Stalin to counter the rise of [[Nazi Germany]] in 1932.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=1192–1193}}}}

Meyers further added that Orwell reinforced his arguments by using the views of a [[right-wing]] combatant. In contrast, Meyers cited [[Isaac Deutscher]]{{'}}s biographical account of Trotsky, which presented him to be a much more civilised figure than Stalin and suggested that he would not have [[Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization|purged the Red Army generals]] or millions of Soviet citizens.<ref>{{cite web |title=Orwell and Trotsky |url=https://orwellsociety.com/orwell-and-trotsky/ |website=[[The Orwell Society]] |date=4 May 2022 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20231108195043/https://orwellsociety.com/orwell-and-trotsky/ |archive-date=8 November 2023}}</ref>

Historian [[Sheila Fitzpatrick]] has also questioned the premise of historical inevitability presented by [[conservative]] critics such as [[Robert Service (historian)|Robert Service]] in that the Soviet Union would have experienced the same "totalitarian [[despotism]] under Trotskyist rule". Fitzpatrick suggested it was implausible that Trotsky, like Stalin, would have launched an [[Anti-cosmopolitan campaign|anti-semitic campaign]] after [[World War II]] or initiated the [[Great Purge]]s. Rather, she inferred that Trotsky would presumably have provided good [[leadership]] during the Second World War but may have struggled to maintain party cohesion as seen during the succession struggle after 1924.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=The Old Man |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |journal=[[London Review of Books]] |language=en |date=22 April 2010|volume=32 |issue=8 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203153914/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |archive-date=3 February 2024}}</ref>

Moreover, several scholars such as Richard B.Day, [[Vadim Rogovin]] and [[Robert Vincent Daniels]] along with Western [[socialism|socialists]] have considered Trotsky to have represented a more [[democracy|democratic]] [[anti-Stalinist Left|alternative]] to Stalin.{{sfn|Daniels|2008|pp=189–198}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Barnett |first1=Vincent |title=A History of Russian Economic Thought |date=7 March 2013 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-26191-8 |page=101 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s71uK9sB27AC&dq=Trotsky+alternative+historians&pg=PA101 |language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=1–15, 497}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Day B. |first1=Richard |title="Trotsky on Dialectics of Democratic Control" in The Soviet Economy on the Brink of Reform: Essays in Honor of Alec Nove |editor-first=Peter |editor-last=Wiles |date=14 June 2023 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=978-1-000-88190-5 |pages=1–37 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mHAIEQAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+legalization+of+soviet+parties+worker+control+of+production&pg=PA31 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Murray E. G. |title=Revisiting Trotsky: Reflections on the Stalinist Debacle and Trotskyism as Alternative |journal=[[Rethinking Marxism]] |date=September 1996 |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=40–67 |doi=10.1080/08935699608685496 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08935699608685496 |language=en |issn=0893-5696|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In particular, emphasis has been drawn to his activities in the pre-Civil War period and as leader of the Left Opposition.{{sfn|Daniels|2008|pp=189–198}} Proponents of this view have specified further differences with Stalinism, which emerged during the succession struggle, over [[intragroup conflict|intraparty democracy]], autonomy of the [[Comintern]] and the [[Cult of personality#Soviet Union|dogmatization of Leninist orthodoxy]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Saccarelli |first1=Emanuele |title=Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The Political Theory and Practice of Opposition |date=28 February 2008 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-89980-6 |page=146 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8GSAgAAQBAJ&q=trotsky+gramsci |language=en}}</ref> Mandel and Deutscher maintain that his intra-party reforms from 1923-1926 would have revitalised party democratization, [[public participation|mass participation]], [[worker's self-management]] and eventually a [[multi-party]] [[socialist democracy]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as Alternative |date=5 May 2020 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78960-701-7 |pages=84–86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVmcEAAAQBAJ&dq=socialist+democracy+internal+union+democracy+mandel&pg=PT118 |language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=674–678, 826}} Trotsky also opposed the policy of [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivisation]] under Stalin and favoured a [[volunteering|voluntary]], gradual approach towards [[collective farming|agricultural production]],{{sfn|Beilharz|1987|p=171}}{{sfn|Rubenstein|2011|p=[https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization 161]}} with greater tolerance for the rights of Soviet Ukrainians.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=637}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Problem of the Ukraine (1939) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> Daniels viewed Trotsky and the Left Opposition as a [[Anti-Stalinist Left|critical alternative]] to the Stalin-[[Bukharin]] majority in a number of areas. He also stated that the Left Opposition would have prioritised [[industrialisation]] but never contemplated the "[[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|violent uprooting]]" employed by Stalin and contrasted most directly with Stalinism on the issue of [[Soviet democracy|party democratization and bureaucratization]].<ref>{{harvnb|Daniels|2008|pp=195, 396}}: "While Trotsky was strongly biased toward industrial development, there is little basis to suppose that he would have adopted Stalin’s forcible collectivization, slapdash economic planning, anti expert campaigns, or cultural know-nothingism. Neither Trotsky nor Bukharin would have pursued anything like Stalin’s pseudo-revolutionary '[[third period]]' foreign policy and his connivance in the advent of Hitler, another product of his political manoeuvring against the Bukharinists."</ref>

Other figures such as [[The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky|Baruch Knei-Paz]] and [[Victor Serge]] acknowledge some affinities with Stalinism in regards to the use of coercion but have also recognised clear differences between Trotsky and Stalin.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=298–299}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Serge |first1=Victor |author1-link=Victor Serge |title=Memoirs of a Revolutionary |date=8 November 2002 |publisher=[[University of Iowa Press]] |isbn=978-1-60938-018-2 |page=xxx |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&q=Victor+serge+Trotsky |language=en}}</ref> On the [[culture|cultural field]], Knei-Paz highlighted their contrasting attitudes towards matters such as the [[arts]] and [[sciences]].{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=289–301}} According to Knei-Paz, it does not seem [[credibility|credible]] that Trotsky would have treated [[Literature and Revolution|culture and society]] with the same total, brutal disregard as Stalin.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=286, 289–301}} He also argued that Trotsky sought [[Towards Socialism or Capitalism?|far-reaching economic, commercial relations with European countries]] which was at variance with the [[economic policy]] of [[isolationism]] and harsher measures pursued under Stalin.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=289–301}} In the view of Knei-Paz, the most discernible difference between Trotsky and Stalin was their respective approaches towards [[proletarian internationalism|international affairs]].{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=300–301}} In this matter, Trotsky firmly adhered to the notion that socialism in Russia, as “[[Underdevelopment|backward society]]” was dependent on revolution in the West.{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=300–301}} Biographer Geoffrey Swain believed that the Soviet Union under the leadership of Trotsky would have been more [[technocratic]] as he would have made far more use of "[[technicians|bourgeois experts]]" in the [[Economic planning|planning process]], and inferred this from his conduct during the Civil War along with his writings in the early 1920s.{{sfn|Swain|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=_a3pAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky%27s+soviet+union+would+have+been+far+more+technocratic&pg=PA118 118]|ref=Swain2014a}} Swain also expressed the view that the Soviet Union under Trotsky would certainly have been [[Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin|a less terrorised society]] yet was critical of his military methods [[barrier troops|in relation to desertion]] and hostage taking during the Civil War.{{sfn|Swain|2014|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=P-ahAwAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+less+terrorised+society&pg=PA3 3, 211]|ref=Swain2014b}}

[[File:Diego rivera Commies.jpg|thumb|left|250px|A [[Diego Rivera]] mural (''[[Man, Controller of the Universe]]'') depicts Trotsky with [[Marx]] and [[Engels]] as a true champion of the workers' struggle]]

In post-exile, Trotsky challenged claims from American socialist [[Norman Thomas]] that the Soviet Union would have been no better under his leadership. Trotsky countered that it was not a question of [[personality|personalities]] but opposing, [[social stratification|social interests]] represented by the [[bureaucracy]] and [[the working class]].{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=434–435}} More specifically, Trotsky attributed the retraction of the [[Soviet Decree|progressive gains]] of the October revolution, the mass purge and Soviet foreign policy as seen in [[Spanish Civil War]] to the interests of the bureaucracy rather than the socialist proletariat or Bolshevik tradition.<ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism (August 1937) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> He asserted that the excessive form of [[totalitarianism]] under Stalinism would not have emerged under his variant of Bolshevism.<ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism (August 1937) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=434–436}} Comparatively, he viewed his interpretation of Marxism to represent a [[political]] and [[morality|moral]] regeneration of the Soviet Union against the Stalinist [[nomenklatura|bureaucracy]].{{sfn|Knei-Paz|1978|pp=434–436}}

Separately, Trotsky would defend his military decisions as necessary, making a comparison between his military endeavours with [[Abraham Lincoln|Abraham Lincoln's]] ruthlessness during the [[American Civil War]].{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=1482–1483}} Deutscher drew attention to the fact that Trotsky preferred to exchange [[hostages]] and [[prisoners]] rather than execute them. He recounts that Trotsky had released [[Pyotr Krasnov|General Krasnov]] on parole in 1918 after the [[Kerensky–Krasnov uprising]] during the initial stage of the Civil War, but the general would take up arms against the Soviets shortly afterwards.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|pp=339–340}}

Trotskyist [[Marxist theory|theoreticians]] have disputed the view that the Stalinist dictatorship was a natural outgrowth of the Bolsheviks' actions as most of the original, central committee members from 1917 were later eliminated by Stalin.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Grant |first1=Alex |title=Top 10 lies about the Bolshevik Revolution |url=https://www.marxist.com/top-10-lies-about-the-bolshevik-revolution-part-one.htm |website=In Defence of Marxism |language=en-gb |date=1 November 2017}}</ref> [[George Novack]] stressed the initial efforts by the Bolsheviks to form a [[multi-party]] government with the [[Left Socialist Revolutionaries]] and bring other parties such as the [[Mensheviks]] into political [[legality]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Novack |first1=George |title=Democracy and Revolution |date=1971 |publisher=Pathfinder |isbn=978-0-87348-192-2 |pages=307–347 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bLMgAQAAIAAJ |language=en}}</ref> Upon the Menshevik 
walkout from the Soviet congress, Trotsky released a number of arrested, socialist ministers of the [[Russian Provisional Government|Provisional government]] from prison, at the request of [[Julius Martov]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=The Prophet Armed Trotsky 1879-1921 (1954) |date=1954 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=330–336 |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507702/page/335/mode/1up?view=theater}}</ref> [[Tony Cliff]] argued the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government dissolved the Constituent Assembly due to a number of reasons. They cited the outdated voter rolls, which did not acknowledge the split among the [[Socialist Revolutionary]] party and the assemblies' conflict with the [[All-Russian Congress of Soviets|Congress of the Soviets]] as an alternative democratic structure.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Cliff |first1=Tony |title=Revolution Besieged. The Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/lenin3/ch03.html |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

== Criticism ==
[[File:Permanent Counter-Revolution (page 1 crop).jpg|thumb|Cover of a 1934 [[Communist Party USA]] anti-Trotskyist pamphlet titled "Permanent Counter-Revolution"]]
Trotskyism has been criticised from various directions. In 1935, [[Marxist–Leninist]] [[Moissaye Joseph Olgin|Moissaye J. Olgin]] argued that Trotskyism was "the enemy of the working class" and "should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed the world over."<ref>{{cite book |last=Olgin |first=Moissaye J. |author-link=Moissaye Joseph Olgin |date=1935 |title=Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise |location=New York |publisher=Workers Library Publishers |chapter=Fourteen}}</ref> The African American Marxist–Leninist [[Harry Haywood]], who spent much time in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s, 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 following belief:
<blockquote>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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Haywood |first1=Harry |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/haywood/black-bolshevik/ch06.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=24 April 2019 |year=1978 |title=Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist |location=Chicago |publisher=Liberator Press |chapter=Trotsky's Day in Court}}</ref></blockquote>

Other figures associated with Marxism–Leninism criticized Trotskyist political theory, including [[Régis Debray]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Debray |first1=Régis |title=Revolution in a Revolution? |date=1967 |publisher=[[Monthly Review Press]] |pages=35–45}}</ref> and [[Earl Browder]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Browder |first1=Earl |title=What is Communism |date=1937 |publisher=Workers Library Publishers}}</ref>

In 1966, [[Fidel Castro]] said that "Even though at one time Trotskyism represented an erroneous position, but a position in the field of political ideas, Trotskyism became during the following years a vulgar instrument of imperialism and reaction."<ref>{{Cite web |title=At the Closing Session of the Tricontinental Conference |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1966/01/15.htm |access-date=2023-08-07 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

Polish philosopher [[Leszek Kołakowski]] wrote: "Both Trotsky and Bukharin were emphatic in their assurances that forced labour was an organic part of the new society."<ref>{{cite book |last=Kołakowski |first=Leszek |author-link=Leszek Kołakowski |chapter=The Marxist Roots of Stalinism |orig-date=1975 |title=Is God Happy? Selected Essays |date=2013 |location=New York |publisher=[[Basic Books]]}}</ref>

Sociologist [[Peter Beilharz]] was critical of Trotskyism and viewed it as the most complete expression of [[Jacobinism]]. Although, Beiharz acknowledged that Trotsky had opposed Jacobinism as a young democrat but in his view had extended the tradition during the period of [[war communism]] and through his ideological defence of terror.{{Sfn|Beilharz|1987|pages=1–15}} On the other hand, historian [[Paul Le Blanc (historian)|Paul Le Blanc]] found Beilharz's historical comparisons between Trotsky and earlier Jacobin figures to be unconvincing and suggested his analogies were more centred in rhetoric rather than in analysis due to his blurring of ideological concepts.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Blanc |first1=Paul Le |title=Leon Trotsky |date=15 April 2015 |publisher=[[Reaktion Books]] |isbn=978-1-78023-471-7 |pages=1–15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VMCkCQAAQBAJ&q=paul+le+blanc+trotsky |language=en}}</ref>

Some [[left communists]], such as [[Paul Mattick]], claim that the October Revolution was totalitarian from the start. Therefore, Trotskyism has no fundamental differences from [[Stalinism]] in practice or theory.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mattick |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Mattick |date=1947 |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1947/bolshevism-stalinism.htm |title=Bolshevism and Stalinism |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> French historian and Trotskyist [[Pierre Broue]] rejected this form of criticism and characterised it in the following way:<blockquote>"The theory according to which Stalin and Trotsky were two rival wild beasts is useful for historians serving those in power: the establishment of an equivalence between Stalinism and Trotskyism aids the idea of a continuity from Bolshevism and Leninism to Stalinism and strengthens a regime which fears revolutionary sentiments".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Broue |first1=Pierre |chapter=Trotsky: a biographer's problems |title=The Trotsky Reappraisal |editor1-last=Brotherstone |editor1-first=Terence |editor2-last=Dukes |editor2-first=Paul |date=1992 |publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]] |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=20}}</ref></blockquote>

British historian Christian Høgsbjerg believed that the academic literature and wider criticisms of Trotskyist organisations had minimised their historical role in building wider social movements. Høgsbjerg stressed the key role of British Trotskyists in various movements such as the [[Vietnam Solidarity Campaign]] (1966–71), the [[Anti-Nazi League]] (1977–81), the [[All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation|Anti Poll Tax]] Federation (1989–91) and the [[Stop the War Coalition]] (2001).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Høgsbjerg |first1=Christian |title=Trotskyology: A review of John Kelly, Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain |journal=[[International Socialism]] |date=18 October 2018 |issue=160 |url=https://isj.org.uk/trotskyology/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240525203955/https://isj.org.uk/trotskyology/ |archive-date=25 May 2024}}</ref>

In the United States, [[Dwight Macdonald]] broke with Trotsky and left the Trotskyist [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|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]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Mattson |first=Kevin |author-link=Kevin Mattson |date=2002 |title=Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945–1970 |location=University Park, Pennsylvania |publisher=[[Penn State University Press]] |pages=34}}</ref> and [[anarchism]].<ref name="Politic">''Memoirs of a Revolutionist: Essays in Political Criticism'' (1960). This was later republished with the title ''Politics Past''.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=August 2024}} The Lithuanian-American anarchist [[Emma Goldman]] raised a similar critique of Trotsky's role in the events around the Kronstadt rebellion. 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".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=650 |title=Trotsky Protests Too Much |date=25 January 2017 |publisher=RevoltLib |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028044431/http://www.revoltlib.com/anarchism/trotsky-protests-too-much/view.php?action=display |archive-date=28 October 2020}}</ref>

Trotsky defended the actions of the [[Red Army]] in his essay "Hue and Cry over Kronstadt". He would also argue that the attitudes and social composition of the Kronstadt sailors had changed during the Civil War. Trotsky further argued that the isolated location of the naval fortress would have enabled financial funding to flow between Kronstadt and [[White army]] emigres.<ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt (1938) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm |title=Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky}}</ref> Separately, he would also argue that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the [[List of political parties in the Soviet Union|opposition parties]] such as the [[Mensheviks]] and [[Socialist Revolutionaries]] as soon as the economic and social conditions of [[Soviet Russia]] had improved after the Civil War.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=528}}

== See also ==
{{Portal bar|Marxism}}
* [[Anti-Stalinist left]]
* [[Democratic communism]]
* [[Far-left politics in the United Kingdom]]
* [[Fourth International]]
* [[Fifth International]]
* [[Left Opposition]]
* [[Lenin's Testament]]
* [[Leon Trotsky and the politics of economic isolation]]
* [[Leon Trotsky bibliography]]
* [[Neo-Stalinism]]
* [[Moscow Trials]]
* [[Orthodox Trotskyism]]
* [[Political revolution (Trotskyism)]]
* [[Red Army]]
* [[Socialist democracy]]
* [[Soviet democracy]]
* [[Socialist economics]]
* [[Third Camp]]
* [[French Turn]]
* Trotskyism in South Africa
* [[The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky]]
* [[Trotskyism in Vietnam]]
* [[Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization]]
* [[World socialism]]
* [[United Opposition (Soviet Union)|United Opposition]]

== Notes ==
{{reflist|group=note}}

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

=== Works cited ===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last=Alexander |first=Robert J. |author-link=Robert J. Alexander |date=1991 |title=International Trotskyism, 1929–1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement |publisher=[[Duke University Press]]}}
* {{cite book |last1=Beilharz |first1=Peter |title=Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism |date=1987 |publisher=CUP Archive |isbn=978-0-7099-3995-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hpc9AAAAIAAJ&q=peter+beilharz+trotsky+trotskyism+and+transition+to+socialism+pdf |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Blanc |first1=Paul Le |last2=Wald |first2=Alan |last3=Breitman |first3=George |title=Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations |date=1 December 2016 |publisher=[[Haymarket Books]] |isbn=978-1-60846-753-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n0G7DQAAQBAJ |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |author1-link=Robert Vincent Daniels |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |date=1965 |title=The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 |location=New York|publisher=[[Vintage Books]] |isbn=978-0-394-70747-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmed00isaa/page/134/mode/2up?q=promote+rykov+}}
* {{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last=Deutscher |first=Isaac |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |date=1966 |title=Stalin |publisher=[[Penguin Books]]}}
* {{cite book |last=Hirson |first=Baruch |chapter=Trotsky and Black nationalism |title=The Trotsky Reappraisal |editor1-last=Brotherstone |editor1-first=Terence |editor2-last=Dukes |editor2-first=Paul |date=1992 |publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]] |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=Knei-Paz |first1=Baruch |title=The social and political thought of Leon Trotsky |date=1978 |location=Oxford [Eng.] |publisher=[[Clarendon Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-827233-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/socialpoliticalt0000knei/page/300/mode/2up?q=proletarian+culture}}
* {{cite book |last1=Mandel |first1=Ernest |title=Trotsky as alternative |date=1995 |publisher=Verso |location=London |isbn=978-1859840856}}
* {{cite book |last1=North |first1=David |author-link=David North (socialist) |title=In Defense of Leon Trotsky |date=2010 |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |isbn=978-1-893638-05-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mVqvouA22IkC |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |author-link=Vadim Rogovin |date=2021 |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Rubenstein |first1=Joshua |title=Leon Trotsky: a revolutionary's life |date=2011 |location=New Haven |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-300-13724-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization}}
* {{cite book |last1=Swain |first1=Geoffrey |title=Trotsky and the Russian Revolution |date=24 February 2014 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-317-81278-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_a3pAgAAQBAJ |language=en |ref=Swain2014a}}
* {{cite book |last1=Swain |first1=Geoffrey |title=Trotsky: Profiles in Power |date=22 May 2014 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-317-86875-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Im2hAwAAQBAJ |language=en |ref=Swain2014b}}
* {{cite book |last1=Thatcher |first1=Ian D. |author-link=Ian D. Thatcher |title=Trotsky |date=27 June 2005 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-57214-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cU3yFMLm1voC |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Ticktin |first1=Hillel |author1-link=Hillel Ticktin |chapter=Trotsky's political economy of capitalism |title=The Trotsky Reappraisal |editor1-last=Brotherstone |editor1-first=Terence |editor2-last=Dukes |editor2-first=Paul |date=1992 |publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]] |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6}}
* {{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=1971 |orig-date=1937 |title=[[The Stalin School of Falsification]] |pages=78 |publisher=Pathfinder |ref=Trotsky1971a}} (Available at: [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/ Marxists Internet Archive]
* {{cite book |first=Leon |last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=1971 |title=1905 |publisher=[[Pelican Books]] |ref=Trotsky1971b}}
* {{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going? |date=1991 |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |isbn=978-0-929087-48-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hiCYS9Z3lDoC |language=en}}
* {{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=In Defence of Marxism |date=25 March 2019 |publisher=Wellred Publications |isbn=978-1-913026-03-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r52JwwEACAAJ |language=en}}
{{refend}}

== Further reading ==
* [[Alex Callinicos|Callinicos, Alex]]. ''Trotskyism'' (Concepts in Social Thought) University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
* Fields, Belden. ''Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States'' Praeger Publishers, 1989.
* Deutscher, Isaac. ''Stalin: a Political Biography,'' 1949.
* Marot, John. "[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/leon-trotsky-october-revolution-paul-le-blanc-stalinism/ Assessing Trotsky"], [[Jacobin (magazine)|Jacobin]], 7 November 2010. 
* Rosmer, Alfred. ''Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism''. Republished by Francis Boutle Publishers, now out of print.
* Slaughter, Cliff. ''Trotskyism Versus Revisionism: A Documentary History'' (multivolume work, now out of print).
* {{cite book |last=Wistrich |first=Robert S. |title=Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary |publisher=Stein & Day |location=New York |date=1982 |isbn=0-8128-2774-0 |author-link=Robert Wistrich}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category}}
* [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/ Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line]
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/index.htm The Leon Trotsky Internet archive]
* [https://www.trotskyana.net/ The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet]
* [https://www.london.ac.uk/senate-house-library/our-collections/special-collections/archives-manuscripts/subject-guides-to-archives/trotskyist Trotskyist archives in the United Kingdom]

{{Leon Trotsky}}
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