Trotskyite appreciation thread.

[BuyingThyme]

[alfredo]

1. Irving Kristol?

[Xipe Totec]

2. Rest in Peace, Snowball n/t

[Ken Burch]

6. We Love Ya, Manny Goldstein!

n/t.

[alfredo]

13. Naw, he spray gunned them and went back to the village.

[Ken Burch]

3. A thread to appreciate Trotskyites, or a thread for Trotskyites to appreciate others?

If nothing else, the nation's locally-owned espresso bars should express their appreciation to the comrades of the Fourth International.

[BuyingThyme]

4. Either way.

[Ken Burch]

5. Also, if Spongebob is a Trotskyite, does that mean Patrick the Starfish

will go after him with an icepick?

(For now, I'm simply going to avoid the whole question of Spongebob having an affair with Frida Kahlo. NOBODY wants that image.)

[BuyingThyme]

8. SpongeBob is a kitchen sponge who lives as a sea sponge.

[Ken Burch]

12. So Captain Patchy ISN'T Stalin, then?

Well, THAT's a relief!

[BolivarianHero]

18. It's a very disrespectul joke thread..

Trotskyite is a slur; Trotskyist is a term for those who consider Trotsky to be e legitimate heir to the ideological, intellectual, and philosophical legacy of Marx and Lenin (made more complicated by Marxists who consider Marxism a contradiction and subversion of Marx and Marxists who are either not Leninist or outright hostile to Lenin).

[Ken Burch]

19. I've never really been clear why TrotskyITE is a slur but TrotskyIST is ok

Actually, the term "Marxist-Leninist" is a greater slur on Lenin than "Trotskyite" is on Trotsky. Lenin never saw himself as the creator of an "ism", or believed that his notion of the vanguard party was the ONLY way that socialism could be created, and the "Marxist-Leninist" formulation was simply Stalin's attempt to make his own bloodsoaked corruption of Marxism into something like a theory or a respectable school of thought.

[BolivarianHero]

20. I know...

They like to hide behind the bullshit personality cult that Stalin had created for Lenin because most other leftists hold them in contempt for identifying their ideology with a totalitarian megalomaniac. That's why Stalinists euphemistically refer to themselves as "Marxists-Leninists" while most other leftists refer explicitly to the ideology and/or the author of its founding principles when discussing what they believe.

[Ken Burch]

23. And thanks to those idiots, most people ASSUME that "Marxist" equals "Marxist-Leninist"

This is like saying that the actual teachings of Jesus are the same as the dogmae of the institutional Churches, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox(teachings Christopher Hitchens, in his pre-reactionary days, aptly labeled "Christism-Paulism").

There was nothing in Karl Marx's original theories that HAD to lead to Stalinism, or even vanguardism.

[BuyingThyme]

21. Actually I didn't know that.

I just borrowed it from the other thread.

[Ken Burch]

24. It's a small point, and you couldn't have been expected to know.

If you REALLY want to annoy a Fourth Internationalist, ask him about Kronstadt.

[rug]

7. Better than a Geithner appreciation thread.

[NoPasaran]

9. I raise a glass to the memory of Fred Halstead

Big Red Fred, his comrades called him. A tireless fighter for the working class.
:toast:

[Ken Burch]

10. Here's to Dave Van Ronk, then,

For a long time, HE was a Trotskyite(Van Ronk was a Wobbly in his later years.)

[Odin2005]

11. Trotskyites suck

[Ken Burch]

15. If nothing else, you at least have to give them credit for fighting Stalinism

And some of them created the POUM, the best and most honorable anti-Franco militia in the Spanish Civil War.

I'd never be a Trot myself, but they did have SOME good points.

And there are worse mottos than "Neither Washington Nor Moscow".

[MrScorpio]

16. Leninists blow

[Alamuti Lotus]

17. Classy--eloquent as always, and a mighty convincing argument

[Ignis]

22. He's lining them up and knocking them down.

Next up: World hunger--good or bad?

[MrScorpio]

14. Here's a toast to Bill Brasky

He was known for having huge chunks of TRAATSKEEYITES in his stool.

[Ken Burch]

25. Give it up for C.L.R. James, Trotskyist, anti-colonial activist, and world-class cricket writer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._R._James

James was also known as one of the founders of Pan Africanism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Africanism