Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Communism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky advocated the advance of the Proletarian Revolution[?] as set out in his theory of "Permanent Revolution", holding that "socialism in one country", as advocated by Joseph Stalin, was impossible. Trotsky criticized the government of the USSR, calling it a "bureaucratically deformed worker's state". Many of his criticisms were described in his book, The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936-rev/index.htm).

Trotskyism has become a by-word used by Stalinists to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a "Trotskyist" or "Trotskyite" by the Communist supported elements implied that the person was a fascist spy or agent provocateur[?]. George Orwell wrote about this in Homage to Catalonia and in his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans[?].

In 1938 Trotsky established the Fourth International and it is this organisation that represents the Trotskyite strain of thought today.

External Links

• International Committee of the Fourth International (http://wsws.org/sections/category/icfi/icfi.shtml)
• World Socialist Web Site (http://wsws.org/)