Trotsky preferring social-democrats over Stalin and Trotsky's phony
"defense of the Soviet Union"

From [email protected] Fri Oct 27 21:09:52 1995
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 21:09:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <[email protected]>
To: Chegitz Guevara <[email protected]>
cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: An End to Sectarianism

On Fri, 27 Oct 1995, Chegitz Guevara wrote:
> > > > > Pat wrote:
> > >
> > > Uhm Pat . . . ? There's this time issue thingy here. Trotsky was
> > > advocating an alliance with the Social Democrats before the rise of
> > > Hitler (ala the United Front strategy adopted by the Comintern in 1921
> > > and again in 1922). Trotsky thought Stalinism could be reformed back to
> > > the path of workers' democracy *UNTIL* Stalin had the Communists ignore
> > > the "flash in the pan" of real fascism to fight "social-fascism." This is
> > > one of the great crimes against humanity and the socialist tradition.
> > > What ever else you might be able to defend Stalin on, you can't here.
> >
> > Pat for MIM replies: Notice that C.G. doesn't contest that
> > the social-democrats were anti-
> > Soviet, because he can't. So the communists in Germany were
> > supposed to help some parliamentary cretins stay in and expand
> > their state power, so that fascists wouldn't come to power and
> > then be responsible for the social-democrats' immediately allying
> > with the French and British in an attack on the Soviet Union.
>
> Pat, I'm a communist, not a social dem. Can we stick to the subject,
> instead of trying to use strawmen? Don't attack me for what the SD's did,
> I've got nothing to do with it. We're talking about what various
> communists did. What I gather from the above paragraph was that it was

Pat for MIM replies: If you notice even in the part you
quoted in the thread, the subject was Trotsky's call for
alliance with social-democracy. Hence I am not off the topic;
you are trying to evade Trotsky's historical role of leading people
to Menshevism, social-democracy, post-Trotskyism--and anything-
but-Stalin and real class struggle as it happens in this
imperfect world. Trotsky chose his friends carefully--
social-democrats above communists.

>
> Pat, have you actually read anything of Trotsky's? Perhaps you might
> bother to read "In Defence of Marxism." Which documents the factional
> fight that took place in the SWP of the defence of the Soviet Union in
> case of imperialist attack.
>

Pat for MIM replies: Yah I've read that and this too:

"The Stalinists are the problem. . . . We were forging ahead
when they made the switch, paralyzing our work. The workers
are unable to distinguish the real difference between
us, especially with the faction fight compelling us to
give undue emphasis to our defense of the Soviet Union."
(Writings of Leon Trotsky: 1939-40 NY: Merit Publishers, p. 57)

As Proyect has almost correctly explained, Trotsky was the
principle of sectarianism incarnate. In this quote we
learn that Trotsky only took positions on the war and other
issues of crucial importance to the proletariat in order
to recruit away from the "Stalinists." And then he let's
the cat out of the bag that he is being forced into
defending the Soviet Union against his will, because
there were no workers willing to support Trotskyism against
Stalin if he didn't at least attempt to fool them with
rhetoric about defending the Soviet Union.

How much Stalin have you read? Most of the critics haven't
read any, including those who publish 800 page books on him.