From Philosophical Research
Main entry
- Trotsky deserting progressive cause / Trotskyist accidentally abandoning progressive cause (forsaking, deserting; motif) -> the thought experiment motif, or maybe in some texts the non-fictional motif, of Trotsky unintentionally turning his back on movements he logically should be in favor of, especially in reference to anything other than Stalin's government, although "Trotsky abandoning Soviet workers" would technically count too.
is this violet? I kind of feel like it's crimson just because there were at least one or two entire books in the Soviet Union about this. I'll let it be orange but put in the tradition as ML or MX.
Real Scenarios
- Trotsky deserting East Germany / Trotskyist deserting East Germany -> many of these refer to Trotskyists in general, only a few like the very specific Black Panther Party scenario are truly aimed at Trotsky. I have a habit of humorously calling all Trotskyists "Trotsky" but it most of the time meaning any Trotskyist theorist such as Ted Grant, James P. Cannon, etc. I hope that's clear.
Hypothetical Scenarios
- If Panthers succeed Trotsky abandons them / If the Black Panthers succeeded Trotsky wouldn't like them and would insist on a different Marxist movement -> Ironblood setting related question; in this hypothetical scenario the Black Panthers do succeed, but Trotskyism is the most popular ideology in the United States, not anarchism. I am imagining this terrible anecdote where Trotsky thoughtlessly looks at the Black Panthers and is like, this is all wrong, they can't just fence off a socialism-in-one-country of Black people, we won't get to world revolution this way! and then somebody has to inform him he is basically being racist and he is like... oh. um. can there be multiple Trotskyist parties inside a world workers' state. I didn't think that far, I never thought of inventing meta-Marxism if I had any idea what that was. and the other Trotskyists make him agree to creating a better system where the United States will be divided up into five party-nations where people can join the one they wish and the states re-color themselves like in Liberalism. it's like, despite Trotsky moving to North America (and in this scenario eventually moving to New York, which only makes it funnier) he is so behind on United States issues it's always the US-born Trotskyists fixing things he probably would have screwed up.
- If LGBT+ support Stalin, Trotsky abandons them / If gay people support Stalin Trotsky abandons them -> Ironblood setting related question. the first "terrible anecdote" I imagined where basically as it says on the tin, a gay man sides with the Soviet Union, he has to put up with all the backward behavior there and hardly feeling like part of society, then Trotsky outright says in his face, well if you didn't support Stalin you wouldn't have to worry about this. in my imagination Luxemburg just kind of looks at him and is like Trotsky what the
fuck you can't just do that. some of these dumb ideas in my notes are early things I haven't "corrected" to be realistic, other things are intentional deviations from the timeline which would only make sense in context; Luxemburg being alive longer is one of the latter but also an artifact of me not having figured out who and where all the characters are so I toss in other characters as placeholders
- Would a Trotskyist United States be aware of the need to create factories, or would it keep insisting that Careerists are "the proletariat" and bashing China and Vietnam for having factories with the typical "Stalinist mono-structures are slavery", "being part of a nationality is slavery" tropes? -> it must be like, horrifying to be the person who finds this site a little while in the future and is like, oh god, why are they predicting my party like it can't be trusted and it's going to do a bunch of bad things instead of looking at it as what theoretical position it should actually have? welcome to meta-Marxism. here we discuss what specific Marxist parties are actually likely to do and what realistic interventions are actually feasible to get them to behave a bit less badly. it might not be what you're used to, but with so much dysfunction in Marxist parties this "cynical" look at them as simple material objects with a probability cloud of most-likely and least-likely behaviors might be the only way forward. I hope propositions like this will retroactively become satire. I hope that when parties see themselves depicted in the most dim ways they'll actually want to change.
Ideology codes
