I have read my Soviet history, I have read articles about it, I have watched YouTube videos, and I have even read Trotsky but I still have no idea what being a Trotskyist is supposed to mean. It seems to me like one of Trotsky’s main ideas is Permanent Revolution but what the Fuck does that mean from a practical standpoint? Does that mean being a Trotskyist means you want to gain power so you can start a global war against the bourgeoisie? It seems like whenever someone calls themselves a Trotskyist what they are really saying is they are a Communist but Stalin is bad so we need a new name. :trot-shining:
Okay, real talk time, consider this either a confession or a brag depending on from which viewpoint you read this following comment:
Ideologies named after people have always kind of rubbed me the wrong way / freaked me out. Not necessarily just the naming of a certain person’s ideology as a point of reference, but its when people positively self-identify themselves as also being a subscriber to said ideology. Look: I’m pretty comfortable with accepting Marx as a Marxist, they were his ideas, after all. I suppose Engels can probably refer to himself as one if he so chooses because they both almost exclusively wrote books with each other, and because “Engelsist” sounds like a gross growth you’d get on the back of your knee or something, so I’ll give him a pass. Beyond that though, Can anyone really say they are a MARXist? Yeah he had some good ideas, but he’d be over 200 years old if he were alive today, and wouldn’t have been writing for the past 130+ of those years. I’d HOPE your personal views draw from some people who didn’t do all their writing in a world where the paperclip and thumb tack weren’t even invented yet. Further, I’d hope your views aren’t just lifted from “theory” you’ve read and you have a few thoughts you’ve arrived at with your own critical thinking, but I’m not trying to shoot the moon here.
Just pick a noun that describes what you’d want your ideal world-view to achieve, stick on a few adjectives if you feel they are necessary, and call it a day.
