Trotskyism

In the new edition of this definitive work on the history of the revolutionary socialist current in the United States that came to be identified as "American Trotskyism," Paul Le Blanc offers fresh reflections on this history for scholars and activists in the twenty-first century. Includes a preface written especially for the new edition of this distinctive work. Paul Le Blanc is a professor of History at La Roche College and author of Choice Award–winning book A Freedom Budget for All Americans.

This illuminating portrait of Leon Trotsky sets the record straight on the common misconceptions about the man and his legacy. Completing his masterful trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union, Service delivers an authoritative biography.

Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein in southern Ukraine, Trotsky was both a world-class intellectual and a man capable of the most narrow-minded ideological dogmatism. He was an effective military strategist and an adept diplomat, who staked the fate of the Bolshevik revolution on the meager foundation of a Europe-wide Communist upheaval. He was a master politician who played his cards badly in the momentous struggle for power against Stalin in the 1920s. And he was an assimilated, indifferent Jew who was among the first to foresee that Hitler's triumph would mean disaster for his fellow European Jews, and that Stalin would attempt to forge an alliance with Hitler if Soviet overtures to the Western democracies failed. Here, Trotsky emerges as a brilliant and brilliantly flawed man. Rubenstein offers us a Trotsky who is mentally acute and impatient with others, one of the finest students of contemporary politics who refused to engage in the nitty-gritty of party organization in the 1920s, when Stalin was maneuvering, inexorably, toward Trotsky's own political oblivion. As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his preface, "Leon Trotsky haunts our historical memory. A preeminent revolutionary figure and a masterful writer, Trotsky led an upheaval that helped to define the contours of twentieth-century politics." In this lucid and judicious evocation of Trotsky's life, Joshua Rubenstein gives us an interpretation for the twenty-first century.

This last of three documentary volumes, U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965. Part III: Resurgence, spans 1954 to 1965, and includes a rich selection of primary sources on labor and social struggles, intellectual history, and the revolutionary impact of Leon Trotsky’s perspectives on U.S. socialism.

First published in 1987. Trotskyists have long dominated the revolutionary tradition on the Western left. Written from a critical socialist standpoint, this book provides an analysis of Trotskyism and argues that Trotskyism is increasingly irrelevant as a means of achieving socialism. It argues that, as the realisation grows that the revolutionary tradition and the authoritarianism which necessarily result from it are wrong, the importance of the problem of the transition to socialism increases. It argues that on this point Trotskyism is weak; that Trotskyism's proposals for socialist transition are largely rhetorical; and that its democratic impulse is weak. It supports this argument by showing that Trotsky’s philosophy of history, implicit in his writings, which the author characterises as evolutionary and necessitarian, coupled with a failure to grasp the moral basis of the socialist case, has a disabling effect on Trotsky's account of the transition to socialism and on his explanation of Stalinism. Moreover, it argues that Trotsky's intellectual and political heirs have been unable to escape from the contradictions inherent in his thought.

Leon Trotsky was the most important contributor to the development of revolutionary Marxism this century, after Lenin. As exiled militant or Soviet statesman, party organizer or public orator, as political analyst, soldier or commentator on cultural trends, he was centrally involved in the world-historic upheavals of his time and foremost among the interpreters of their significance for socialism. Yet the fate of his achievement was dramatically discrepant from Lenin's. At the latter's death in 1924, his revolutionary authority was at its zenith. In the Soviet Union his writings were consecrated as repository of a finished dogma, 'Leninism'. Abroad, his thought was interpreted in way much closer to its own original spirit by Georg Lukcs, whose remarkable Lenin sought to elicit its unity and actuality for a later revolutionary generation. In polar contrast, factional assault, official disgrace and proscription, anathema and slander, were the conditions of Trotsky's later life and activity-until his assassination in 1940-and the unvarying background of any reaffirmation of his heritage for decades afterwards. Systematic publication of his writings was beyond the means of his political followers-whose internal discussions of his ides were supplemented only by the attentions of liberal (where not reactionary) academics. In the last decade, however, with the resurgence of the political formations associated with his name, Trotsky's political role and ideas have again become topics of vigorous debate among socialists. Ernest Mandel's book makes possible a necessary extension of this debate by providing the first ever synthetic account of the development of Trotsky's Marxism in its successive encounters with the key problems and crises of the epoch. The Russian revolution and the theme of uneven development, the construction of revolutionary parties, the struggle against fascism and imperialism at large, the nature of Stalinism and the prospect of a full socialist democracy, are all discussed in a compact study that makes a fitting and long overdue counterpart to Lukcs's historic study of fifty years ago.

During the twentieth century the problem of post-revolutionary bureaucracy emerged as the most pressing theoretical and political concern confronting Marxism. No one contributed more to the discussion of this question than Leon Trotsky. In Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy, Thomas M. Twiss traces the development of Trotsky’s thinking on this issue from the first years after the Bolshevik Revolution through the Moscow Trials of the 1930s. Throughout, he examines how Trotsky’s perception of events influenced his theoretical understanding of the problem, and how Trotsky’s theory reciprocally shaped his analysis of political developments. Additionally, Twiss notes both strengths and weaknesses of Trotsky’s theoretical perspective at each stage in its development.

Trotsky--brilliant publicist, enthusiastic speaker, organizer of the Red Army, eminent member of the Bolshevik Party during the first years of the Russian Revolution--has often been depicted as a romantic figure by biographers. Kostas Mavrakis does not see him in this light. Mavrakis submits Trotsky, his thought and work to a severe but fair critical examination. Among the issues reassessed by this controversial scholar are Trotsky's incapacity for concrete analysis, the 'economism' he shares with Stalin, his concepts of 'permanent revoluation' as compared with those of Lenin and Mao, his views and those of Stalin, on the Chinese Revolution, the fundamental traits of Trotskyism and of the different trotskyist organizations.

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much passion, controversy, and curiosity as Leon Trotsky. His role in history—his epic rise and fall, his fiery persona, his violent end in Mexico in August 1940—holds a fascination that transcends the history of the Russian Revolution. Bertrand M. Patenaude masterfully interweaves the story of Trotsky’s final years with flashbacks to pivotal episodes in his career as a young Marxist, revolutionary hero, Red Army chief, Bolshevik leader, outcast from Stalin’s USSR, and ultimately heretic of the Kremlin, targeted for assassination by its secret police. Gripping, tragic, and based on extensive firsthand research, Trotsky brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history’s most captivating and important figures.

In a work of encyclopedic scope, International Trotskyism, 1929-1985 is sure to become the definitive reference work on a movement that has had a significant impact on the political culture of countries in every part of the world for more than half a century. Renowned scholar Robert J. Alexander has amassed, from disparate sources, an unprecedented amount of primary and secondary material to provide a documentary history of the origins, development, and nature of the Trotskyist movement around the world. Drawing on interviews and correspondence with Trotskyists, newspaper reports and pamphlets, historical writings including the annotated writings of Trotsky in both English and French, historical memoirs of Trotskyist leaders, and documents of the Fourth International, Alexander recounts the history of the movement since Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. Organized alphabetically in a double-column, country-by-country format this book charts the formation and growth of Trotskyism in more than sixty-five countries, providing biographic information about its most influential leaders, detailed accounts of Trotsky's personal involvement in the development of the movement in each country, and thorough reports of its various factions and splits. Multiple chapters are reserved for countries where the movement was more active or fully developed and various chapters are organized around crucial thematic issues, such as the Fourth International. The chapters are followed by extensive name, organization, publication, and subject indexes, which provide optimal access to the wealth of information contained in the main body of the work.