Ontology talk:9k/RD/Q618-BandasManyReasons

Main entries

618. Q618/Q618 27 Reasons Why the International Committee Should Be Buried Forthwith and the Fourth International Built (Banda 1986) [1] [2] -> (note: I can't find the original article right now, but these articles date it to 1986)
618. Q618/Q618 The heritage we defend (North 2018) [3]
618. Q618/Q618 M. Banda embraces Stalinism (North) [4] [5] [6]

Motifs or claims (Banda)

618. Q618/Q618

     Trotskyist method brings disintegration

     / Trotskyist policies bring disintegration / There is a direct causative connection between the impasse and disintegration of Trotskyism and the method and policies advocated by Trotsky (Banda 1986) [7] -> yeah, that is the "Stalinist" position. Banda is a little hyperbolic in how he goes about all this in that he isn't taking in the whole picture of the totality of Trotskyist groups in the world slowly and painfully filtering into a Fourth International. when you look at it that way, it's not that Trotskyism is unfalsifiable or impossible, if anything it's simply that it settles onto the actually-good methods too slowly.
618. Q618/Q618 All Trotskyist groups substitute subjective idealism for material contradictions when analyzing the previous practice of the Fourth International (Banda) -> you know, this is a nice statement in that it's somewhat falsifiable. you could probably find specific examples of how this is false if you really tried.
     my thoughts right now: when messing around with the ICFI bot and lightly trolling it with meta-Marxist analyses of Trotskyism, it felt like it was taking what I said to heart and genuinely examining the consequences about half the time and immediately rejecting it about half the time. one thing I can remember is that it was very in denial about the character of the original Trotskyite conspiracy, which was strange to me when, like, you don't really have to do that, you could always say that Trotskyism improved and that later groups approaching 1980 were much better.
618. Q618/Q618 Trotsky was a centrist on the Soviet Union's issues -> no. this is one of the statements from Banda that is actually false. Trotsky was radically against the Soviet Union because he was staunchly committed to creating a second Marxist party. that is not being a centrist. you can dislike what he did because of how damaging it can be when two polar-opposite groups that supposedly want the same thing don't cooperate, but this is just historically inaccurate.
618. Q618/Q618 Trotsky cannot mark the character of the Soviet Union "not yet decided by history" without failing to understand the Russian Revolution as a decision of history [8] -> I am going to need to think about what year he said this to fully decide whether this statement is okay. 1936. that's the statement that's being assessed. so... decisions of history are more or less objects forming. [9] I just read a different more recent Trotskyist article bringing up quantity into quality processes, and in a way, those are the process of many vertical relationships breaking and all turning into new horizontal relationships; many seemingly isolated people become united. a decision of history is like one beaker of people pours into another beaker of people and they interact and you get this sea of breaking and reforming and a new object is formed. so if Trotsky is going to say the Soviet Union hadn't been a complete decision of history, he'd have to be saying it was still divided into two interacting things. which does make sense from his point of view; in 1936 the Trotskyite conspiracy is boiling and almost over but not entirely gone yet. so Trotsky doesn't know if the process of transitioning the Soviet Union to Trotskyism will complete. in 1940, right before he dies, he can probably guess it's not going to complete. in 1960? doesn't look like Trotskyism — although it doesn't look much like Stalin's Marxism either. so... you'd say Trotsky doesn't understand decisions of history only if you don't understand what his goals are, which are fully opposed to Stalin's goals. Trotsky actually considered the transition to Stalin's Marxism and the transition from Stalin's Marxism to Trotskyism to be two separate transitions. we know this, because he said that parts of Stalin's Marxism could be kept intact as long as there was some way to take out the central party as it existed and replace it with closer control by the soviets. this statement about Trotsky... is not valid now that violet Marxism exists. it would be much easier for people to argue about otherwise, but no, it doesn't correctly model what process Trotsky is making claims about, which is the proposed second transition, not the first one. also: nobody knew for sure that Stalin's Marxism was going to be so easily defeated in 1953. so the final result is that both Trotskyism and Stalin's Marxism were defeated by 1960, but neither of those things was decided by 1936, so Trotsky is technically right during the year he said that. if a Trotskyist said that in 1960 for some reason, it would be bogus.
     the fact historical periods and eras between events exist might be one of the most important things to teach people when they don't understand dialectical models yet. this is an easy way to show where the interactions and contradictions would have happened so you can start finding them.
618. Q618/Q618 Trotsky cannot mark the character of the Soviet Union "not yet decided by history" -> North says, the capacity for the Soviet Union to be defeated and revert would be more obvious if you looked at the overall world system; Lenin knew the chances of having much success with socialism-in-one-country were not good and the chances inside a large group of red/orange countries that formed soon were better. this analysis gets lost because of the way people divide Stalin's Marxism from Trotskyism, when in reality Lenin had a moment of standing in the middle where he at least considered Trotskyism. (I know there are early works by Lenin that sound just like Trotskyism, but what's unclear here is why or how he apparently changed his mind in later works.) from North's point of view everyone got lost inside the fate of that one country while the real question was always how you'd get through revolutions in multiple countries. hence Banda is lost, Banda's model isn't dialectical because he is considering the individual country as an atomically separate thing from the larger process. while the minimum correction is to consider the process of forming the Third International versus the Fourth International, not one red region versus one orange region. this is... an oddly specific criticism but not wrong. people really don't talk about the Soviet Union as part of the Third International enough. that is one of the strongest arguments for it being 'just as good as Trotskyism', that there can still be a comintern, so, yes.
618. Q618/Q618 Trotsky cannot mark the character of the Soviet Union "not yet decided by history" -> because I can't link things the reverse way: I brought North's idea up on Q4002/LB "Stalinists were not Marxists".

Motifs or claims (North)

618. Q618/Q618 Most science is not done in reality / To dismiss Trotskyism for not already producing mass parties which lead millions is an example of the most vulgar empirical thinking (North) [10] -> Banda says Trotskyism has never succeeded; North retorts with this
     he's got a point. it's one of those statements that is so crazy it wraps around to being smart again, but he does have a point.
618. Q618/Q618 If Marxism has not explained the First World in 140 years, is it already invalid? [11] -> nope, because it's solidly explained the Third World. but you do have to realize, this is part of why people trust what Stalin says and don't trust what Trotsky says. although Stalin was not correct about everything, if we look at it conversely all the things that have already been understood are things written about by Stalin. whereas all the things that still have no answers have been written about by Trotsky. can you see how maybe that would lead some people to think Trotsky didn't actually contribute anything to those questions?? it's not the correct appraisal but it is superficially logical.
618. Q618/Q618 If Trotskyism is nothing more than bashing Stalin, how have Fourth Internationals been assembling? / The existence of ... generations of revolutionists won to its banner all over the world is nothing more than Trotsky's "inability to grasp historic changes" [12] -> I think my first go-to objection would be that Fourth Internationals forming doesn't mean any of them are surviving, but beyond that, he's right, Trotskyism contains Leninism and that is not deniable despite how much more convenient it would be if it was.
     personally, I can forgive Trotskyists for everything if only they would realize that Stalin's Marxism was a Marxism from about 1917 to 1953. it did live for a rather short time before it was overcome by Deng Xiaoping Thought — about 36 years — so in the end, bashing Stalin's Marxism is about as legitimate as most Marxists believe bashing Trotskyism is. the moment the joke's on all of us is when Deng Xiaoping Thought turned out to be more durable than either of them despite hardly being a Marxism at all, and seemingly just being the Third World's own special version of Liberal-republicanism. that's the thing that's truly hard for Marxism to explain, unless you commit to the concept that the bourgeoisie is the set of people inherently stronger than the proletariat because it self-selects how many people are in it in order to try to become invincible.

Motifs or claims (Trotsky)

618. Q618/Q618

     Twenty-five years is hardly an hour

     / Twenty-five years of history is hardly an hour out of a human life, so why use an hour to judge your entire life? (Trotsky) [13] [14] -> um. yes, but no. if you say that, China will use it to justify 100 years of Deng Xiaoping Thought. or worse, critical-theorists will claim that if they've only been going at trying to fix Liberal-republicanism for 25 years you have to give them 100 more years before they'll actually consider Leninism.
618. Q618/Q618 Twenty-five years is hardly an hour (Deng)

Ideologies or fields

• IV / Trotskyism
• ML / Stalin's Marxism
• IV onto ML