Archive for the ‘Michael Moore’ Category

George Soros, Obama, and all their Socialist and Communistic friends Believe this

Manifest Destiny as is practiced today is a term used by the Progressives, Socialists, Elites and Communists that there is a widely held underlying belief among them , that they are the “chosen people,” had a divinely inspired mission to spread the fruits of their beliefs to the less fortunate and unwashed masses.
The idea of an almost religious Manifest Destiny is a common staple in the speeches and newspaper articles of the Progressives. Most of the exponents of Socialism were Democrats.

Critics see the Manifest Destiny rationale as a thinly veiled attempt to put an acceptable face on taking freedom from other peoples. Motives are often described as well-intentioned efforts to improve the lot of backward masses, but in truth the motivators were greed, power and control. The Manifest Destiny crowd are thinly disguised in wonderful names – such as Center for American Freedom.
The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality and freedom, that we have, in reality, but little connection with anyone trying to take our freedom away. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity with individual freedom.

Learn about this oppressive method and the people in history behind it. Be ready to reject and refute it when Comrade George Soros, Comrade Barak Obama, Comrade Valerie Jarrett and Comrade John Podesta use the Coming Debt Crises to force this system upon you.

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. His politics differed sharply from Stalinism, most prominently in opposing Socialism in One Country, which he argued was a break with proletarian internationalism, and in his belief in an authentic dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles, rather than an unaccountable bureaucracy.

Together with Lenin, Trotsky was co-leader of the Russian Revolution and the international Communist movement in 1917 and the following years. Today, numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist, although they have developed Trotsky’s ideas in different ways. In the English language, an advocate of Trotsky’s ideas is usually called a “Trotskyist” or, pejoratively, a “Trotskyite” or “Trot”.

Definition

American communist organizer James P. Cannon in his 1942 book History of American Trotskyism wrote that “Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International.” However, Trotskyism can be distinguished from other Marxist theories by four key elements.

• Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the Two Stage Theory of his opponent.
• Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its feature and after 1933, support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers’ states;
• Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action;
• Support for proletarian internationalism. On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR^, opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East.

Theory of Permanent Revolution

In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the Trotskyist theory of Permanent Revolution. It may be considered one of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxism only claimed that a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to the original theory it was impossible for such to occur in more backward countries such as early 20th century Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a capitalist society, but was instead largely feudal with a small, weak and almost powerless capitalist class.

The theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the support of the peasantry. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there. They would win its own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers’ state in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the global working class would to come to Russia’s aid, and socialism could develop worldwide.

The capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution

Revolutions in Britain in the 17th Century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and established the basic 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.” 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. 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.

Trotsky argues, countries like Russia had no “enlightened, active” revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a very small minority. 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.”

Weakness of the capitalists

The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries, which are thought to have not yet completed their bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class oppose the creation of any revolutionary situation. They fear stirring the working class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism. In Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class, and into large working class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class 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 their ownership of their property—factories, banks, etc.– from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.

Therefore, according to the theory of Permanent Revolution, the capitalist classes of economically-backward countries are weak and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways. Thus, Trotsky argues, because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia were 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 were subservient to European capital.
Instead, Trotsky argued, only the ‘proletariat’ or working class were 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, and the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort also, forming workers councils (soviets), in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued:

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. – Trotsky, Results and Prospects^[11]

The Putilov Factory, for instance, numbered 12,000 workers in 1900, and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole cannot take on this task, 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 landlordism 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.”

Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today, but 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, and many other struggles which in some ways reflect the militant united organised struggles of the working class, and 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 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 as a result is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.

Although only a small 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 will rely. But the working class, in order to improve their own conditions, will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois revolution and then establish a workers’ state.

International revolution

Yet, according to classical Marxism, revolution in peasant based countries, such as Russia, prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers and traders which leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges. Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism.

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, as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy. The revolution, Trotsky argued, must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which must spread worldwide. This was the position, contrary to that of “Classical Marxism” which by that time had been further illuminated by active life, shared by Trotsky and Lenin and the Bolsheviks until 1924 when Stalin, who along with Kamenev in February 1917 had taken the Menshevik position of first the bourgeois revolution, only to be confronted by Lenin and his famous April Thesis on Lenin’s return to Russia, after the death of Lenin and seeking to consolidate his growing bureaucratic control of the Bolshevik Party began to put forward the slogan of “Socialism in one country”.

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.

Origins of the term

An internationalist outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works of Karl Marx. The term “permanent revolution” is taken from a remark of Marx from his March 1850 Address: “it is our task”, Marx said,

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. – Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League^[16]

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. 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:

All practical work in connection with the organization 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. – Stalin, Pravda, November 6, 1918

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”. Lenin nevertheless continued to emphasize however (as did Trotsky also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.

But 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. Despite the fact that many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky’s role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky says that without Lenin and the Bolshevik party the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.

As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory is fully committed to a Leninist style of 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, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the Soviet Union was caused by the failure of the revolution to successfully spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.

Lenin’s outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in western Europe in order that this European socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated:

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. – Lenin, Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)

This outlook matched precisely Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution. 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 Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher maintains that in 1917, Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.

Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that:

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. – Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution

The ‘legend of Trotskyism’

In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky argues that what he calls the “legend of Trotskyism” was formulated by Zinoviev and Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy. Orlando Figes argues that “The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin’s rise to power.”

During 1922–24, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, Lenin, 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”, 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. Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.

In 1926, Stalin allied with Bukharin who then 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 by the party publishing house, Proletari, in 1923. In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, writing: “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.”

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:

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.

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. – Trotsky, Leon, Revolution Betrayed, p279, Pathfinder (1972)

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]“. 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 revolution, and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers:

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:

“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, Nov. 6, 1918)

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 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. – Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsification, p87, Pathfinder (1971)

Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, first “spent six weeks in a cell” after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition. The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey. He moved from there to France, Norway, and finally to Mexico.

After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the “misleadership” of the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy. Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,^[33] had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and even a fascist.

In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a political terror against their Left Opposition and many of the remaining ‘Old Bolsheviks‘ (those who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.

Degenerated workers’ state

Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers’ state had become a “degenerated workers’ state“. Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalised industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, Trotskyists claim that the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Stalinism was a counter-revolutionary force.

Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from foreign powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to bring about his version of socialist democracy: “The bureaucracy can be removed only by a revolutionary force”. He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the “Stalinist” bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People’s Republic of China has also led to capitalist counter-revolution. Many of Trotsky’s criticisms of Stalinism were described in his book, The Revolution Betrayed.

“Trotskyist” has been used by “Stalinists” to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a “Trot,” “Trotskyist” or “Trotskyite” by the USSR-supported elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or agent provocateur. For instance, George Orwell, a prominent Anti-Stalinist writer, wrote about this practice in his book Homage to Catalonia and in his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans. In his book Animal Farm, an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he represented Trotsky with the character “Snowball” and Stalin with the character “Napoleon“. Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has also been linked to Trotsky.

In 1937 Trotsky wrote:

To maintain itself, Stalinism is now forced to conduct a direct civil war against Bolshevism, under the name of “Trotskyism,” not only in the USSR but also in Spain. The old Bolshevik Party is dead, but Bolshevism is raising its head everywhere. To deduce Stalinism from Bolshevism or from Marxism is the same as to deduce, in a larger sense, counterrevolution from revolution. – Trotsky, Leon, Stalinism and Bolshevism 1937, in Living Marxism, No. 18, April 1990.

Stalin put out a general call for the assassination of Trotsky and he was finally killed with an ice axe in Mexico in 1940, by Ramon Mercader, a Spanish supporter of Stalin, under direct orders from the GPU.

Founding of the Fourth International

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, basing itself on Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.

Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of 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 made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.

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 Soviet Union no longer could 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 a number of other countries.

The International Secretariat of the Fourth International 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 for 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. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become “deformed workers’ states.” As the Cold War intensified, the FI’s 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo’s followers considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under pressure by 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 which were followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI‘s view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union 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.

Pablo began expelling large numbers of people who did not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled the majority of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.

The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the 1963 reunification congress which established the reunified Fourth International, the French and British sections maintained the ICFI. Other groups took different paths and originated the present complex map of Trotskyist groupings.

Trotskyist movements

Latin America

Trotskyism has had some influence in some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America.

The Bolivian Trotskyist party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario, POR) became a mass party in the period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and together with other groups played a central role during and immediately after the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.

In Brazil, as an officially recognised platform or faction of the PT until 1992, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergência Socialista (CS), which founded the United Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU) in 1994, saw a number of its members elected to national, state and local legislative bodies during the 1980s.Today the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) is described as Trotskyist. Its presidential candidate in the 2006 general elections, Heloísa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was a member of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she helped found PSOL, in which various Trotskyist groups play a prominent role.

During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism), claimed to be the “largest Trotskyist party” in the world, before it broke into a number of different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-day MST, PTS, MAS, IS, PRS, FOS, etc. In 1989 in an electoral front with the Communist Party and Christian nationalists groups, called “Izquierda Unida” (united left), obtained 3,49% of the electorate, representing 580.944 voters. Today the Workers’ Party in Argentina has an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, particularly in the city of Salta itself, and has become the third political force in the provinces of Tucuman, also in the north, and Santa Cruz, in the south.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing in of his cabinet two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007.Venezuelan Troskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist and other considering him an honest revolutionary leader who has made major mistakes because he lacks a Marxist analysis.

Asia

In Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism led by Ta Thu Thau was a significant current, particularly in Saigon.

In Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. It was led by South Asia‘s pioneer Trotskyist, Philip Gunawardena and his colleague NM Perera. In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of the LSSP from a 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 as well as the labour movement, capturing the second oldest union in India. Its high point was when it led the strikes which followed the Bombay Mutiny. After the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party (BSP). The Indian section of the BLPI later fused with the Congress Socialist Party. In the general election of 1947 the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning 10 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) in 1953.

In 1964 a section of the LSSP split to form the LSSP (Revolutionary) and joined the Fourth International after the LSSP proper was expelled. The LSSP (R) later split into factions led by Bala Tampoe and Edmund Samarakkody. The LSSP joined the coalition government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three of its members, NM Perera, Cholmondely Goonewardena and Anil Moonesinghe, becoming the first Trotskyist cabinet ministers in history.

In 1974 a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the Militant Tendency in the UK emerged. In 1977 this faction was expelled and formed the Nava Sama Samaja Party, led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara.

Europe

In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties calling themselves Trotskyist.

In the UK in the 1980s, the entrist Militant tendency won three members of parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council while in the Labour Party. Described as “Britain’s fifth most important political party” in 1986 it played a prominent role in the 1989–1991 mass anti-poll tax movement which was widely thought to have led to the downfall of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Almost all of the large far left parties in the UK are led by Trotskyists, including the Socialist Workers Party (Britain), the Socialist Party (England and Wales), Respect – The Unity Coalition and the Scottish Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party in Ireland was formed in 1990 by members who had been expelled by the Irish Labour Party’s leader Dick Spring. It has had a sizable amount of support in County Fingal and has an MEP, Joe Higgins, representing Dublin.

In Portugal‘s September 2009 parliamentary election, the Left Bloc won 558.062 votes, which translated into 9,82% of the expressed votes and the election of 16 (out of 230) deputies to the national parliament. Although founded by several leftist tendencies, it still expresses much of the Trotskyist thought upheld and developed by its current leader, Francisco Louçã.

Trotskyism today

There is a wide range of Trotskyist organisations around the world. These include but are not limited to:

The Fourth International

The Fourth International derives from the 1963 reunification of the two public factions into which Fourth International split in 1953: the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) and the ICFI. It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It is widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyist organisation with sections and sympathizing organizations in over 50 countries. Its best known section has been the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France, but today there are also sizeable and influential sections in Portugal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan and several other countries.

In many countries its sections work within working-class parties and alliances, in which Trotskyists are a minority.

Committee for a Workers’ International

The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) was founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated to the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the large social democratic parties. Since the early 1990s it has argued that most social democratic, as indeed socialist parties have moved so far to the right that there is little point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent parties, but in some cases working within other broad working-class parties.

International Socialist Tendency

The International Socialist Tendency, led by the Socialist Workers Party, the largest Trotskyist group in Britain(SWP)

Internationalist Communist Union

In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the industrial proletariat.

International Marxist Tendency

The founders of the Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) claim they were expelled from the CWI, when the CWI abandoned entryism. The CWI claims they left and no expulsions were carried out. Since 2006, it has been known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties.

Currently, International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is headed by Alan Woods and Lal Khan.

Learn about this oppressive method and the people in history behind it. Be ready to reject and refute it when Comrade George Soros, Comrade Barak Obama, Comrade Valerie Jarrett and Comrade John Podesta use the Coming Debt Crises to force this system upon you.

The Phony Radicalism of Michael Moore
by Sheldon Richman, Posted April 27, 2010

With phony radicals like Michael Moore around, the ruling elites have nothing to worry about.

The filmmaker likes to pose as a radical critic of the status quo, but he isn’t. All the evidence you need is in his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. Sure, he rails against home foreclosures, bank bailouts, low wages, and other real and imagined problems, but his solution would not disturb the sleep of any big banker, corporate bigwig, or political big shot.

The tipoff comes right at the beginning of the movie. He paints an idyllic picture of life in America in the 1950s. His father worked for a big auto company, through which the family got free medical and dental care. All was well. He realizes that a major reason things were so good was that the U.S. military had destroyed Japan’s and Germany’s competitive industrial bases in World War II. But the dominance was great while it lasted. It happened at a time when an alliance of big government, big business, and big labor ruled the roost. The military-industrial complex was thriving. This seems fine with Moore, which puts him in the camp of the corporatists of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust, who thought free markets and competition among independent firms were passé. The new world required big monolithic entities that sat down together and worked things out nicely. The spirit of Mussolini hovered over all of it.

Of course, Moore blasts Wall Street because it got all that taxpayer money and is not being held accountable for it. The bailouts are worth getting mad about. But how would he feel if the money had been given with lots of conditions and regulations? He might have liked that. Nowhere does he suggest that failing companies should be left to sink, which is what would happen under free and open markets.

He certainly doesn’t mind that the government had the taxpayers’ money to give away in the first place. He never once suggests that the people should keep their own money because the political elites have no right to it. He has no problem with politicians’ having the power to decide how the people’s money will be spent.

Moore always sides with the politicians who like high taxes and high government spending (except for a few who got sweetheart deals from the mortgage company Countrywide). In his movie he visits AIG and other companies and demands that they give back the TARP money they got from the government. What did he plan to do with that money? I have a feeling he would have delivered it to the Treasury. But, need I say, the Treasury is not the taxpayers.

Moore even complains that the top income-tax rate was lowered from 90 percent some years ago. Conveniently, he gets the history wrong. He says Republican Ronald Reagan cut the 90 percent rate, but it really was Democrat Lyndon Johnson who did it, following through on John Kennedy’s proposal. (Reagan presided over a cut from 70 to 50 and then to 28 percent.) At any rate, Moore is perfectly comfortable with government’s taking 90 percent of wealthy people’s earnings and seems indifferent to whether the money is made through honest trade or political privilege.

Favoring a high top rate may not win him favors from some in the establishment, but for generations there has been a wing of the ruling elite that has understood that high marginal rates are the price of the lucrative corporate state. So Moore may not be the pariah among the establishment that he makes himself out to be. Besides, he knows full well that we aren’t likely to see such high rates again, even in a war, so his complaint is just idle blustering that may be calculated to appeal to his more envious fans. (Moore is wealthy enough to pay a high marginal rate.)

Incidentally, he never indicts the Federal Reserve for its legal counterfeiting, which inherently favors some over others and creates misery for the people he claims to champion. That would be the true radical position.

Moore’s movie contains much else to make us doubt his radical bona fides. He blusters about Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, and Lawrence Summers, and their relationship to the current financial problems. Rubin, a Wall Street hotshot, and Summers were Treasury secretaries under Democratic President Bill Clinton. Geithner ran the New York Federal Reserve Bank from late 2003 to 2009 and oversaw the Wall Street bailouts. In Moore’s eyes, they are the rogues who, along with former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, gave us the meltdown of 2008.

So far so good, though he misses all the politicians who championed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises he also never mentions. But when he gets to the election of Barack Obama in November 2008 he declares, “This is not what Wall Street wanted.” Oh yeah? Then why are Moore’s bêtes noires Rubin and Summers close Obama economic advisors, and why is Geithner now secretary of the Treasury? Moore quickly mentions that Obama got big money from the Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, whose fingerprints are all over the Bush bailout program Obama has continued, but in the end, he’s firmly in Obama’s camp. (Moore doesn’t deal with foreign policy, so we don’t know what he thinks of Obama’s carrying on the Bush war and detention program.)

A true radical would not have given Obama a pass like that.

State capitalism

Moore says he’s for socialism, but I don’t believe him. I think he just finds the term radical and romantic. When he tries to define the word, he says it means that workers have some democratic say in their companies. Nothing very radical about that. Walmart gives a huge amount of authority to its employees. He certainly doesn’t call for the nationalization of the means of production and the abolition of trade, which is what Marx meant by socialism. In fact, he praises worker-owned companies and points out that hundreds of them exist today. If he were more astute, he’d realize that such companies are perfectly consistent with the free market and are disadvantaged by taxes and regulations, which always hit smaller companies harder than larger ones. But then he might find himself critical of government regulation. His whole world would be rocked.

Moore asks Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only self-proclaimed socialist in Congress, to define socialism. Sanders responds that it means the government represents the middle and working classes. Moore had no problem with that somewhat watered-down definition.

Moore wants to indict capitalism, but what he means by that is the system we have today. Fine. There’s much to indict. As I said elsewhere, had he called his movie State Capitalism: A Love Story, I’d have applauded (with some reservations). But his indictment is a mish-mash of confusion. He dislikes that making money is at the heart of the system. But he never distinguishes making money by offering goods to consumers (except for his worker-owned firms) and making money by raiding the Treasury, which got it through taxation in the first place. Moore makes plenty of money with his movies, but I doubt that he thinks of himself as an exploiter. And I don’t think his company is worker-owned. So he doesn’t really mean that all moneymaking by business is bad. Too bad he didn’t take the time to think things through and distinguish political from economic entrepreneurship.

Maybe we shouldn’t blame Moore for his confusion. Pro-business commentators, such as Ben Stein and Lawrence Kudlow, routinely praise the current American system as “capitalist.” In their conservative view (and, alas, in the view of some libertarians), the essence of today’s political-economic system is capitalist and worthy of support. Scrape away a thin layer of intervention, cut some tax rates, and all will be fine, they say. The radical libertarian analysis, on the other hand, says things are not so simple. The alliance of government and business runs deep and has shaped the system for generations, particularly in banking and finance. A little deregulation and tax-cutting will not be enough to create a free market. That will require what Thoreau called “striking the root.”

If Moore were truly a radical critic of capitalism as he conceives it, he’d be for its true opposite: the radical separation of business and State — that is, the free market.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free Association” or send him email.

Multi-millionaire filmmaker and author Views America as a deeply racist nation with a violent, gun-crazed culture Called the U.S. “a nation that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves” Believes that capitalism is “an evil system” Characterized American troops in Iraq as “the occupation,” and the Iraqi insurgents who killed American troops as freedom-fighting “Minutemen” who inevitably would emerge victorious Michael Moore is a multi-millionaire filmmaker and author of several books. He was born on April 23, 1954 in Davison, Michigan, a white, middle-class suburb ten miles east of Flint. After eighth grade Moore enrolled in a Catholic seminary. “He admired the Berrigan brothers [radical anti-Vietnam War Catholic priests Daniel Berrigan and Philip Berrigan] and thought that the priesthood was the way to effect social change,” wrote The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar in February 2004. “This resolve lasted only through his first year, though, after the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series for the first time in Moore’s life and the seminary wouldn’t allow him to watch the games.” At age 18, Moore ran for his local city school board on a simple platform: “Fire the Principal.” He won, becoming America’s youngest elected city official. Moore thereafter began studies at the University of Michigan but soon dropped out. He became a local hippie and hosted a Sunday morning radio show called “Radio Free Flint,” where he developed a reputation for staging whatever stunts and protests would attract media attention. In 1976 Moore created a small leftist newspaper, the Flint Voice (later called the Michigan Voice), which he edited for ten years. This position gave him access to leftwing activists and fundraisers, and the opportunity to do occasional commentaries for the National Public Radio feature “All Things Considered.” In 1986 Moore was hired as editor of the San Francisco-based socialist magazine Mother Jones. But his authoritarian arrogance quickly alienated most staff members, and within four months he was fired. Moore responded by suing Mother Jones for $2 million. He eventually pocketed $58,000 from the magazine’s tax-exempt Foundation for National Progress; this became seed money for the production of his first film, Roger & Me, an assault on General Motors, its chief executive Roger Smith, and its recent worker layoffs in Flint. With assistance from movie critic Roger Ebert, Moore sold his documentary to Warner Brothers in 1989 for $3 million. In 1995 Moore released Canadian Bacon, his only non-documentary production (aside from his music videos for groups such as Rage Against the Machine and R.E.M.). Its fictional plot centers on a President of the United States who boosts his popularity by engineering a war with Canada. Moore also directed and hosted his own television show TV Nation, which aired in 1994 and 1995 before being cancelled due to its small audience. In 2002 Moore’s anti-gun documentary Bowling for Columbine reached theaters. His depiction of America as a violent, gun-crazed culture was honored at the Cannes Film Festival in France and won the 2003 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. When it was later revealed that the film was replete with staged, concocted, or deceptively edited content, Moore defended his falsehoods by claiming that he was a mere entertainer. When Lou Dobbs of Cable News Network (CNN) pressed Moore about his inaccuracies, Moore dismissed Dobbs’ questions, saying: “You know, look, this is a book of political humor. … How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?” To deflect another questioner, Moore declared that Roger & Me was not a documentary but “an entertaining movie, like Sophie’s Choice.” In 2004 Moore released a broadside attack against President George W. Bush, Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival. It was later shown, however, that this film too was rife with lies and distortions. One of Moore’s most strongly held convictions is that, as he declared on the CNN program Crossfire in 2002, “Capitalism is a sin. This is an evil system.” In his 2003 book Dude, Where’s My Country? Moore wrote: “Horatio Alger must die! We’re addicted to this happy myth … that anyone can make it in America, and make it big. … Listen, friends, you have to face the truth: You are never going to be rich. … The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever.” Moore himself is one of these ultra-wealthy few, with a net worth exceeding $50 million. On November 1, 2005, World Net Daily reported that the anti-capitalist Moore — who had proudly declared “I don’t own a single share of stock!” — in fact owned tens of thousands of shares in U.S. stocks. Most notably, Moore owned more than 2,000 shares in Halliburton — the gas and oil company he excoriated in his film Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore is a frequent speaker on college campuses, which pay dearly for his celebrity presence and speeches. The Federal Election Commission launched an investigation into Moore’s 2004 “Slacker Uprising Tour” of dozens of colleges and universities, most in swing states, during the closing days of that year’s presidential campaign. The filmmaker, who exhorted young voters to support Democratic candidate John Kerry over Republican incumbent George W. Bush, charged the schools or student organizations up to $30,000 per appearance. “The slacker motto,” Moore told one cheering crowd of college students, “is ‘Sleep till noon, drink beer, vote Kerry November 2.’” He added, “‘Pick nose, pick butt, pick Kerry,” and ended with an echo of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from the Communist Manifesto: “Slackers of the world, unite!” Moore dedicated his 2003 book Dude, Where’s My Country? to the late Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement activist who had been accidentally killed by an Israeli bulldozer she was attempting to impede as it destroyed tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists to smuggle weapons. “In their hearts [Israelis] know they are wrong,” wrote Moore “and they know they would be doing just what the Palestinians are doing if the sandal were on the other foot.” Moore has been honored by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Muslim American Public Affairs Council. An affiliate of the Iran-linked terrorist group Hezbollah offered to help promote his film Fahrenheit 9/11 in the Middle East, especially after Moore had tried to prevent the movie from being shown in Israel. Vis a vis the Iraq War, Moore’s affections are clearly offered to America’s adversaries: “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation [i.e., against American, British and other coalition forces] are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy,” said Moore. “They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win.” Reciprocating Moore’s support for anti-American and anti-Western terrorists, the Indonesian man convicted of the Bali terror bombings of 2002 had his lawyer read to the court excerpts of Moore’s Stupid White Men as justification for his hatred of the West. In 2008 Moore referred to the United States as “a nation that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves.” In November 2008, Moore was interviewed on CNN’s Larry King Live. On the subject of the financially struggling U.S. automobile industry, Moore said: “… [W]e’ve allowed a few people at the top to get filthy rich…. The Ford chairman is making something like $22 million a year and his company lost $2 billion last year. The G.M. chairman is making $15 million a year. His company lost $39 billion last year. And he’s rewarded with a $15 million payout. I mean this is — this is just absolutely insane. But I’ll tell you what it really has proven to me, Larry, is that these guys, after all of that stuff they’ve been telling us all these years about go capitalism, free market, free enterprise, they don’t believe in any of that. They don’t believe in free enterprise or a free market. They want — they want socialism for themselves. They want a handout and a net for themselves. To hell with everybody else, but give it to them. And I think, really, what we’re seeing here right now with them, with the banks, we’re seeing the end of capitalism — the end of capitalism as we know it. And I say good riddance. It hasn’t helped the people or the planet.” In May 2009, upon learning that General Motors had declared bankruptcy and would be nationalized by Barack Obama and the federal government, Moore wrote the following: “… So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with — dare I say it — joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with…. “But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company!… If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?… “Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices…. “The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call ‘cars’ may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet…. “President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately. Don’t put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce — and most of those who have been laid off — employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation…. “Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now…. “To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.” In April 2010, Moore condemned Arizona’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, for having signed into law a bill deputizing state police to check with federal authorities on the immigration status of any individuals whom they had stopped for some legitimate reason, if the behavior or circumstances of those individuals led the officers to suspect that they might be in the United States illegally. Said Moore about the legislation: “I think it’s the result of a bunch of bigots in the Republican Party of Arizona. That’s, that’s what it’s the result of. And it’s sad that they’re behaving that way and it makes the rest of us look bad as Americans.”