Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself a Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a Vanguard party. He considered himself an advocate of orthodox Marxism. His politics differed in many respects from those of Stalin or Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international "Permanent Revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist and see themselves as standing in this tradition, although they have diverse interpretations of the conclusions to be drawn from this.
Trotskyism is sometimes also used critically by those from a Stalinist or social democratic background to denote any of various political currents claiming a tradition of Marxist opposition to both Stalinism and Capitalism.
"Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International." - James P. Cannon in History of American Trotskyism.
On the Political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR, opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East. The Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, grew in influence throughout the 20s, until Stalin used force against them in 1928, sending Trotsky into internal exile and jailing his supporters. The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey, then Norway, and finally to Mexico.
After 1928, Stalin used his power in the USSR to gain bureaucratic control over the various Communist Parties through out the world, and expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. At this point, inner party democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism, was destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and a fascist. The Communist Parties then began to support capitalist governments, such as the CPUSA. Stalin did this to show that he was not a threat to capitalist rule and so hoped to avoid an invasion of the imperialist powers, as happened after the 1917 revolution.
Trotsky later developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had become a "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state". Capitalism had not been restored, and rational planning of the economy, instituted under Lenin, was still in effect, but it was no longer democratically controlled and so could not be called socialism. Trotskyists defended the Soviet Union against attack from imperialist powers, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to restore socialist democracy. He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the Stalinist bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. Much later, in the view of the ICFI, this is exactly what happened in the form of Glasnost and Perestroika. Many of Trotsky's criticisms of Stalinism were described in his book, The Revolution Betrayed.
In 1937, Stalin unleashed a political terror against all the remaining 'Old Bolsheviks' who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917. He also killed many of the Soviet Union's leading generals including Mikhail Tukhachevsky in a purge because they had served under Trotsky when he was the commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.
"Trotskyist" has been used by Stalinists to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a "Trot", "Trotskyist" or "Trotskyite" by the USSR-supported elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or Agent provocateur. George Orwell, a prominent socialist novelist, wrote about this practice in his book Homage to Catalonia and in his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans. He showed that instead of helping to fight against the fascist forces, the Stalinists did them a great favor by rooting out all the Trotskyists in Spain and then pulling out their forces, allowing Franco to win. In his book Animal Farm, an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he represented Trotsky with the character "Snowball" and Stalin with the character "Napoleon."
Stalin pulled out of Spain in order to make a rapprochement with England and France. He later signed a deal with Hitler. This proved to many people that Stalin was selling out the revolution in order to defend an elite stratum within the Soviet Union, as Trotsky had been saying.
Still not satisfied, he tried Trotsky in absentia, and killed almost all his relatives. An agent of the Russian government finally assassinated Trotsky in Mexico in 1940.
The Fourth International went through a large split in 1953. The International Committee of the Fourth International was led by James P. Cannon, the American who was Trotsky's closest collaborator in building the international Left Opposition and later founding the Fourth International. The International Secretariat of the Fourth International was led by Michel Pablo, who argued that Trotskyists didn't need to fight for power as Trotsky had argued, but had to make deals with Stalinists and nationalists, whom Pablo's followers considered the 'real movement'.
The similar Eastern European communist governments which came into being after World War II without a revolution were later referred to as "deformed workers' states" by some Trotskyists. The ISFI argued that their creation showed the potential of the Stalinist bureaucracy to be progressive. Pablo argued that humanity was entering into a period of centuries of deformed workers states.
The ICFI disagreed, arguing that the Soviet Union took over these countries because of the military results of World War II, and instituted nationalized property relations only to further their own interests and protect the countries from incursion by the West. According to the ICFI, the ISFI's prognosis meant that there was no point in building Trotskyist parties if they were going to be resigned to centuries of Stalin-style deformed workers states anyway. The ICFI proved correct when in the 1980s, the Soviet Union began to collapse and the Eastern European regimes restored capitalism. Even earlier, they pointed to the uprisings of the working class in Eastern European countries as evidence that these regimes were not progressive and could potentially be overthrown by the working class.
Expressed in derogatory language, they are described by their ideological opponents as "left deviationists" ("levye uklonisty", in Russian). Some Marxists who oppose Trotskyism regard it as being in the service of the right because, in their view, it is not an effective route to socialism. Trotskyists are mostly ignored by historians and politicians except when they faced police repression and slander. It is unusual for them to get a fair hearing of their views.
At the time of the founding the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Ceylon and slightly later Bolivia. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese Communist movement, Chen Duxiu, amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies. Thus these movements had to deal with official repression as well as the violent attacks and treachery of the Stalinists.
After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries. However, in Ceylon and Bolivia Trotskyist parties became the mass workers parties prior to experiencing defeats and setbacks at a later stage. In both countries, however, there remains a large scale presence of competing Trotskyist groups. In recent years Trotskyism has also developed large scale support in a number of lesser developed countries in Latin America where it can count on some tens of thousands of supporters in both Argentina and Brazil. Elsewhere in the Third World support for Trotskyist ideas is more diffuse and generally confined to intellectuals but can be found in a diluted form among some sections of various progressive movements as in South Africa.
No governing Communist party or successful Communist revolution has to this date professed Trotskyism, although Trotskyism's influence in some recent major social upheavals is very evident.
Perhaps the largest such tendency is the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. It derives from the ISFI. Led by the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France, it has been criticized as opportunist by many other Trotskyist groups for participating in governments with pro-capitalist parties, such as Lula's PT in Brazil, and the LSSP in Sri Lanka. It also uncritically supports Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba.
In France's 2002 election, candidates calling themselves Trotskyist gained a total of 10% of the vote. In the run-off election, the LCR called for a vote for Chirac, the conservative politician, while many other Trotskyists called for a working-class abstention from the vote, since it only provided voters with a choice between the right-wing Chirac and the extreme right Le Pen.
In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière and the Courant Communiste Internationaliste of Pierre Lambert. Each of the these groups maintains their own international tendency, as does the Socialist Workers Party, the largest Trotskyist group in Britain, which leads the International Socialist tendency from which the International Socialist Organization in the United States, the largest such group in that country, was expelled in 2001. Britain's SWP's support of George Galloway, a former Labour Party MP, and the Respect Unity Coalition, which included Islamicist groups, has proved controversial within Trotskyism due to Galloway's admiration of Joseph Stalin during the Cold War and current support for the Iraqi insurgency. Similarly, the support of both the ISO and Solidarity (a U.S. group containing Trotskyists and other revolutionary socialists) for Ralph Nader, who openly opposes socialism, has been a source of controversy.
Also of importance is the Committee for a Workers' International led by the Socialist Party (formerly Militant) and the Committee to Refound the Fourth International led by Partido Obrero in Argentina. Another large, primarily Latin American based, tendency is the International Workers League led by the Unified Socialist Workers Party of Brazil.
The International Committee of the Fourth International led by the Socialist Equality Parties publish the World Socialist Website, the most widely read Trotskyist publication on the internet. They garnered more votes than any Trotskyist tendency in the recent German election.
There are also a wide variety of smaller groupings (although, as few disclose their membership, it is not certain that those listed above are the largest internationals). Among the better known are the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), formerly known as International Spartacist Tendency, the League for the Fifth International led by the British Workers Power group, who call for a Fifth International and the Workers Liberty groups, who are the largest Third camp Trotskyist tendency.