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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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fwiw in my life experience, Trotskyists tend to be more pragmatic about integrating ideas from the full spectrum of leftism. i also have to acknowledge that Trotsky has been instrumental to the revolutionary movements of the global south. where i have to critique Trotskyists is the ones i have known have a tendency to dismiss credible accusations of authoritarian comrades being fascists and will say stuff like "we need to break the status quo first, we'll deal with that after the revolution" then after the uprising the authoritarian faction purges the Trots and says they were secret fascist counter revolutionaries all along.
it's a thing where like… i'm reminded of Trotsky himself. he thought Lenin was a blowhard asshole and he sided with the mensheviks until the Bolsheviks got moving. then he joined the Bolsheviks, believing the best strategy was to get on board with the revolution even if the revolution wasn't perfect. then when Stalin seized power despite Lenin wanting to keep him away from power, Trotsky was out. i guess what i'm getting at is i have a great deal for Trotskyists even i think they miss the mark in some critical aspects. what i find most funny though is the extent to which MLs will go to say Trotsky got what he deserved and Trotskyists are fake leftists and still have the Trotskyists prefer to ally themselves with MLs than other 3rd camp leftists like anarchists
I'm probably the worst person to talk about this, given Bakunin influenced my political view by a lot, but I think even this tendency can be explained by the role of the vanguard. Something like this:
I'm oversimplifying it, I know. [And to be frank it has been a long time since I read either theory or history regarding communism.] But note how this creates a situation where Trotskyists end siding with other Marxist-Leninists, but always trying to "pull" that vanguard to a different direction than the rest, creating internal disputes in that vanguard and claims we're trying to fuck everything up.
interesting! i guess that makes a lot of sense why Trotskyists would gravitate to more authoritarian models than their own rather than coalition building with less authoritarian models. i trend towards focusing more on what groups are doing and how they're helping and worrying less about who's in charge (and have even observed that groups survive longer if there's no one person in charge). thank you for the perspective on group dynamics!