From Philosophical Research
Main entry
- What was wrong with East Germany? / Why was the existence of East Germany a problem? / Why did center-Liberals dislike the existence of East Germany? -> I know "center-Liberals" can almost be neatly replaced with "bourgeoisie" to create a laughable tautology, but come on, we have to at least pretend to sound fair.
In Trotskyism
- Why did Trotskyists not consider East Germany to be progress? -> you have to think about this a bit to realize that it's a good question. Trotsky wants each country in Europe to overthrow capitalists and create a workers' state. East Germany pushed out capitalists and created a workers' state. if other European countries had each become "East Germany", it would have been one possible route to a union of European socialist republics — even one independent from the USSR, potentially, given that the USSR stopped occupying East Germany at a certain point. the process of creating East Germany is more or less in line with the mechanism Trotsky proposed for creating Trotskyism. so why were Trotskyists not on board with East Germany?
- East Germany was too small to be Trotskyism -> relatively likely to be the answer you actually get. East Germany small, Trotskyism big. this has never been a satisfying answer to me because it doesn't explain how any group of countries ever gets big enough to form Trotskyism without inevitably forming into unacceptably small "Stalinisms" first.
- East Germany did not have the correct internal structure to be Trotskyism / East Germany had the wrong internal structure according to Trotskyists / If East Germany had had the correct internal structure to be Trotskyist, Trotskyists would have found it acceptable -> derived Trotskyist proposition. some Trotskyists talk about "bureaucracy" and how they don't like the way government ministries and central party structures are put together to unite a country. this would lead to the prediction that Trotskyists look at East Germany and do not like East Germany's internal structure. if this statement about Trotskyism is true, then it implies that Trotskyists have a particular internal structure they require a country to have after expropriating the bourgeoisie or they will not believe the country is in socialist transition. it also vaguely implies that everything Trotskyists say about creating a worldwide civilization and going beyond one country is irrelevant fluff because what they really actually believe is that socialist transition depends on the internal structure of individual countries and each workers' state that has existed is bad because it has gone through transition wrong. a Trotskyism that believed this intentionally and was perfectly honest about it could become a molecular Trotskyism.
- The internal shape of a workers' state leads to buffer state conflicts / There is something about the internal activity of a workers' state which can cause it to participate in international war or not, and this is why Stalin's bloc was struggling over Poland instead of preventing a "world of Alert" scenario -> statements like this are wild when you think about it, because it's like, Trotsky almost accidentally invented MDem and then didn't. if there was actually something inside the Soviet Union which caused it to have to fight imperialist blocs, that would be implying that restructuring the Soviet Union in a specific way changes its outward behavior, which would be claiming that there are multiple possible Bolshevisms. you see this pop up a number of times in Trotskyism, and it's basically never delivered on at any time.
Why don't Trotskyists say....
- If East Germany had been a Fortress Trotskyism, it would have been okay / East Germany could have built up to a Fourth International if only it were Trotskyism in one country -> derived Trotskyist proposition. I have literally never heard this. but it's rather confusing why nobody says this. 1) Trotsky believed every country in Europe could become Trotskyist 2) The European countries form workers' resistances separately around local groups of workers, then they link up into a Trotskyism 3) What's wrong with each of the European countries being Trotskyism in one country, when it's the only way you can build a bigger Trotskyism? put another way, if several European countries can be Trotskyist and oppose Stalin's government, why not just one? how does one prevent there being others? I guess you could argue from Stalin's point of view that because Trotskyisms are sectarian two Trotskyisms-in-one-country would fight each other, but I don't think Trotskyists would actually be that mean in criticizing their own parties. I don't think they see it that way.
Mainstream Marxist-Leninist criticisms
Ideology codes
- MX onto LR
- MX onto ES
- MX onto IV
