• Juice@midwest.socialEnglish
    94·
    2 days ago

    Are “the Blacks” anarchists? It really seems like this is saying that Trotsky betrayed black people, which makes no sense. Incidentally, not even Paul Averich, the anarchist historian who wrote perhaps the best history of the Kronstadt tragedy, blames Trotsky and Lenin for it.

    Personally, I think Trotsky’s handling of Kronstadt was an absolute disaster. But if Kronstadt had been taken by western invaders the revolution would have been defeated. The sailors would have likely been killed by invaders anyway. But after 1921, the revolution was defeated. Lenin banned factions and instituted the NEP. Russia never recovered from the civil war. I think it’s fair to criticize, I’m a Trotskyist and I’m sharply critical of this period, many Trotskyists are! Paul Leblanc says in Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, that Kronstadt was where the Bolsheviks broke from socialist revolution, and I tend to agree.

    But Trotsky is the only person in history to lead two successful socialist revolutions. When Lenin and the bolsheviks were backing a bourgeois revolution, Trotsky convinced them that only a worker-led socialist revolution would defeat the Tzar. Trotskyists who reject sectarianism are defenders of democracy and authentic progressive socialists. My group works with the decentralized anarchists in our city pretty closely. On the other hand it wasn’t that long ago that a clique of anarchists all but destroyed our city’s DSA chapter. Painting any tendency with a broad brush is mindless propaganda. I could just as easily cite examples showing Makhno was little more than a petty tyrant, just to smear anarchism as a tendency. But I wouldn’t because what matters is what we do now, and IMO our tendencies need to work together, rather than litigate 100 year old catastrophes that were actually caused by tsarists and capitalists.

    I have nothing but love for anarchists generally, and I understand this attitude given the history. The sailors at Kronstadt were heroes of the revolution. But online, this meme does nothing to advance anarchist or libsoc perspectives, it only helps online Stalinists gleefully defend the mass murder of revolutionaries from both of our tendencies.

      • Juice@midwest.social
        61·
        2 days ago

        ML

        Trotsky

        You know Trotskyists and MLs are completely different right? 300k is almost 10x the number cited in Averich’s history. At this point you aren’t even trusting other anarchists.

        I think you’re being sectarian, because you are misrepresenting facts to fit a one-sided narrative. None of this changes the fact that your meme is extremely confusing. Using a term (Blacks) no one but your own sect uses that way, which conflicts with most people’s understanding, is one sure sign of sectarianism.

        Defend your meme all you want but you’re actually carrying water for Stalinist MLs, despite what you may think. A disconnect between one’s political imperative and what is actually happening is it’s own kind of authoritarianism. You’re depending on people accepting your authority, negating the authority of fact. The idea that Russia could muster 300k troops in (what appeared to the Bolsheviks to be) the middle of a civil war, is Victims of Communism levels of historical revisionism. But I’d also compare your sources to my own, sources if you would care to provide them.

        Go ahead and make me out to be your enemy because of what Trotsky did over a hundred years ago. This bears no relevance to our present day struggles, yet another sign of toxic sectarianism. Another sign is that you would accept me if I identified as an anarchist, but instead you frame me as an enemy for identifying as a trotskyist, even though we fundamentally agree that Kronstadt was unforgivable. So the surest sign of our political difference is that I care more about learning and teaching the unvarnished truth, whereas you’re invested in campism. It seems like you’re saying facts don’t matter, only ideology matters, which is authoritarian and sectarian. The anarchists I work with never had a problem with my beliefs. They trust me and I trust them. Ideological puritanism is a bigger threat than Trotskyism. So you might want to take a look at that.