Harpal Brar on Trotskyism or Leninism?
What was Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’? What was his approach to organisation? And how have his theories become the tools of the capitalists?
Harpal Brar delivers a 45-minute presentation on the theory and practice of Leon Trotsky and his modern-day followers, followed by a question and answer session that can be viewed here: Trotskyism Q&A.
One of the myths perpetrated by the Trotskyites, with more than a little help from the imperialist bourgeoisie, is that Leninism and Trotskyism are synonymous, that Trotsky was, after VI Lenin, the most brilliant and greatest Bolshevik (some even implying that Lenin was a great Trotskyist); that Trotsky was the true inheritor of Leninism and a worthy successor to Lenin, but was, alas, deprived of his rightful place by the cunning manoeuvres of a third-class mediocrity and oriental despot to boot – ie, Josef Stalin.
This anticommunist myth, repeated ad nauseam decade after decade in truly Goebbelsian fashion, has acquired the force of a public prejudice. Anyone with the least knowledge of the subject cannot but be aware of the total falsity of this myth.
It is the aim of this video presentation, (like Comrade Harpal’s book Trotskyism or Leninism?) is to expose this myth and lay bare the truly reactionary, counter-revolutionary, essence of the petty-bourgeois ideology of Trotskyism, which is as irreconcilably hostile to Marxism-Leninism as is the bourgeoisie to the proletariat – notwithstanding its pseudo-Marxist, ultra-‘left’ and ultra-‘revolutionary’ terminology.
Trotskyism met with dismal failure both during Lenin’s time and after his death, and it failed because, to use Stalin’s words, “the leading group of the opposition proved to be a group of petty-bourgeois intellectuals divorced from life, divorced from the revolution, divorced from the party, from the working class”. (The party and the opposition, 1927)
This, and not any personal factor, explains the total rout of the Trotskyite opposition by the Bolshevik party.
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See also: Trotskyism or Leninism? by JV Stalin, 1924
