![Q: “ What do you think about Will Lehman running again for UAW president?” AUTOWORKER’S ANSWER: “I hope he doesn’t get as screwed over as he did last time [2022] by the apparatus. I hope he does better. What he was saying before is true and it continues to be true ...”](https://external-preview.redd.it/iaEr5OEs-bXczSE-52zpDO5fRce6CNmamRG_akLHcDc.jpeg?width=320&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=5a88361657c61db4403d45a7c995a4bc2700844d)
Short video
Within Chinese leftist circles, Trotsky was once viewed as a traitor to Leninism and a schemer. Many attacked him based on his private life—such as bringing twin sisters into the Kremlin for sexual encounters or citing highly obscene letters exchanged with his wife during his time in Mexico—while Stalin was regarded as virtually sacrosanct and beyond criticism. This attitude stemmed partly from the Mao-era assessment of Stalin as "70% good, 30% bad" and the persistence of his cult of personality (though the CCP has since degenerated into a revisionist party, and its current assessment is quite negative). It also stemmed from the frenzied vilification of Mao and Stalin by Chinese liberals since the Reform and Opening-up (following Deng Xiaoping's rise to power); this forced the Chinese left into a defensive posture, making them reluctant to fully acknowledge certain errors committed by Stalin (such as denying the existence of classes within socialist states, or providing misguided direction and maintaining a negative attitude toward the Chinese Revolution). As leftist forces expanded, some "Stalinists"—after studying Trotsky's history and theories—began to recognize his indelible contributions during the Russian Civil War and the value of some of his theories (such as the concept of a Soviet bureaucratic *stratum*—distinct from the "bureaucratic class" described by Mao, etc.). Consequently, they are no longer willing to outright dismiss Trotsky, even though they do not identify as Trotskyists. However, other Chinese Stalinists—or rather, a segment of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists—disagree; they adhere to orthodox Marxist-Leninist views and continue to reject theories associated with "anarchism, Trotskyism, Western Marxism, and revisionism." Two factions have now emerged: one advocates for a balanced assessment of Stalin—acknowledging his errors while recognizing Trotsky's achievements—while the other insists on condemning Trotsky (often making "ice axe" jokes and derisively calling him "Ice-Axe-tsky") while steadfastly supporting Stalin. What is your position on this?
>In the speech Khrushchev says
"... it is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics ..."
"Allow me first of all to remind you how severely the classics of Marxism-Leninism denounced every manifestation of the cult of the individual. ... "
"... Lenin at the same time mercilessly stigmatized every manifestation of the cult of the individual, inexorably combated [any] foreign-to-Marxism views about a “hero” and a “crowd,” and countered all efforts to oppose a “hero” to the masses and to the people. ... "
SOURCE: Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.
Reading the speech, it is notable Khruschev emphatically defended Stalin's actions during the Great Terror and hi is silent on other on others matters such as the Third Period line 1928-1935 which aided the Nazis in crushing the Germany working class which eventually led to the Nazi invasion of the USSR.
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Khruschev's explanation of Stalin's role is circular - there was a cult-of-personality because of ... the personality-of-cult-leader-Stalin. Stalin had power over them because the person in power was ... Stalin.
What made his loyal followers so susceptible to submission to Stalin?
Khruschev quotes Lenin's "Testament" about Stalin
>This letter – a political document of tremendous importance, known in the Party’s history as Lenin’s “Testament” - was distributed among [you] delegates to [this] 20th Party Congress. You have read it and will undoubtedly read it again more than once. You might reflect on Lenin’s plain words, in which expression is given to Vladimir Ilyich’s anxiety concerning the Party, the people, the state, and the future direction of Party policy.
>Vladimir Ilyich said:
>“Stalin is excessively rude, and this defect, which can be freely tolerated in our midst and in contacts among us Communists, becomes a defect which cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of General Secretary. Because of this, I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man who, above all, would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely, greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc.”
Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.
But he does NOT quote Lenin's testament about Trotsky. Khruschev could have tried to explain why Lenin was correct about Stalin but wrong about Trotsky. Why the silence
Instead Khruschev defends Stalin and the Great Terror (1936-1940)
>... We must affirm that the Party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyites, rightists and bourgeois nationalists, and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. This ideological fight was carried on successfully, as a result of which the Party became strengthened and tempered. Here Stalin played a positive role.
The Party led a great political-ideological struggle against those in its own ranks who proposed anti-Leninist theses, who represented a political line hostile to the Party and to the cause of socialism. This was a stubborn and a difficult fight but a necessary one, because the political line of both the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc and of the Bukharinites led actually toward the restoration of capitalism and toward capitulation to the world bourgeoisie. Let us consider for a moment what would have happened if in 1928-1929 the political line of right deviation had prevailed among us, or orientation toward “cotton-dress industrialization,” or toward the kulak, etc. We would not now have a powerful heavy industry; we would not have the kolkhozes; we would find ourselves disarmed and weak in a capitalist encirclement.
It was for this reason that the Party led an inexorable ideological fight, explaining to all [its] members and to the non-Party masses the harm and the danger of the anti-Leninist proposals of the Trotskyite opposition and the rightist opportunists. And this great work of explaining the Party line bore fruit. Both the Trotskyites and the rightist opportunists were politically isolated. An overwhelming Party majority supported the Leninist line, and the Party was able to awaken and organize the working masses to apply the Leninist line and to build socialism.
A fact worth noting is that extreme repressive measures were not used against the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites, the Bukharinites, and others during the course of the furious ideological fight against them. The fight [in the 1920s] was on ideological grounds. But some years later, when socialism in our country was fundamentally constructed, when the exploiting classes were generally liquidated, when Soviet social structure had radically changed, when the social basis for political movements and groups hostile to the Party had violently contracted, when the ideological opponents of the Party were long since defeated politically – then repression directed against them began. It was precisely during this period (1935-1937-1938) that the practice of mass repression through the Government apparatus was born, first against the enemies of Leninism – Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites, long since politically defeated by the Party – and subsequently also against many honest Communists, against those Party cadres who had borne the heavy load of the Civil War and the first and most difficult years of industrialization and collectivization, who had fought actively against the Trotskyites and the rightists for the Leninist Party line.
Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U.
>... What had any of these leading ‘old Bolsheviks’ [Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin] got from Leninism when not a single one of them showed himself capable of applying independently the theoretical and practical experiences of the party at a most important and most critical historical moment?
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My [Trotsky's] adversaries did not, of course, foresee that in creating an artificial axis of struggle they would imperceptibly be compelled to revolve it around themselves and to manufacture, by the method of inversion, a new world outlook for themselves.
Leon Trotsky: The Permanent Revolution (Introduction to the Russian Edition)
112 years after the SPD deputies voted unanimously in the Reichstag for war credits it is time to (re-)read ...
PDF: The Bolsheviki And World Peace (1918) : Trotsky, Leon
>The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries. The whole globe, the land and the sea, the surface as well as the interior has become one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected with each other. This work was accomplished by capitalism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country. What the politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was created in the revolutions and the wars [5] of 1789–1815, 1848–1859, 1864–1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development.
>The present war is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state. It means the collapse of the national state as an independent economic unit.
>The nation must continue to exist as a cultural, ideologic and psychological fact, but its economic foundation has been pulled from under its feet. All talk of the present bloody clash being a work of national defense is either hypocrisy or blindness. On the contrary, the real, objective significance of the War is the breakdown of the present national economic centers, and the substitution of a world economy in its stead. But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooperation of all of humanity’s producers, but through the exploitation of the world’s economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country; which country is by this War to be transformed from a Great Power into the World Power.
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[emphasis added]
[5] Revolutions and wars: (a) 1789–1815: The French Revolutionary Wars (led since 1799 by Napoleon Bonaparte established the French nation-state and abolished feudal rights west of the Elbe. (b) 1848–1859: The struggle for the liberation of Italy from Austria and the unification of Italy including the liberation of the City of Rome from the Pope. (c) 1864–1868: Prussia and Austria attacked Denmark in January 1864: Prussia annexed Schleswig, Austria took Holstein. In 1866 Prussia, having secured the neutrality of Russia, France and Italy, declared war on Austria, a war, which in the words of Moltke, Chief of Staff, “was a fight for hegemony ... long contemplated and calmly prepared ...” On July 3, 1866, at Sadowa (Königgrätz) the Austrians were decisively defeated. This assured the domination of the Hohenzollerns over the North German Confederation and ended the German Confederation. (d) 1870–1871: On July 2, 1869, the Provisional Government of Spain promulgated the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to succeed Queen Isabella who had been deposed in 1868. On July 6, France protested and six days later, the candidature was withdrawn. On July 7, the French Ambassador to Germany, Benedetti, demanded an apology from the Kaiser and an undertaking that a Hohenzollern would never again aspire to the Spanish throne. The Kaiser was at Ems, taking the waters. Bismarck redrafted the Kaiser’s reply (the now-famous Ems despatch) so as to make war inevitable. On July 19, 1870 France declared war. Prussia scored immediate victories: August 4th at Wissenburg, August 6th at Worth. On October 27, at Metz, 175,000 troops under Marshal Bazaine were surrounded. The main army under Marshal MacMahon and the Emperor Napoleon III himself surrendered at Sedan on September 2. Paris fell after a four month seige: September 19 to January 28th 1871. By the Peace of Frankfurt (10th May 1871) France lost Alsace-Lorraine, Moselle, Haut Rhine, Bas Rhine and had to pay an indemnity of five thousand million francs. The victory of Prussia brought about the union of Germany under Prussian hegemony. Wilhelm I was crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles on January 18, 1871. The defeat of France led to the Paris Commune and the end of the French monarchy. (p. vii)
So, I'm new to Social Democracy but I had researched a-lot about Marxism and own some marxist books. I've been hearing online that early social democracy movements from the 19th and 20th century had different goals from modern social democrat groups. I heard they actually had plans to replace capitalism with a form of Marxist Socialism instead of just regulating Capital.
Is there any truth to that? Or is it more complicated then it seems
The workers the WSWS have spoken to have no hesitation in denouncing the threats against Will Lehman.
What does it say of "left-wing and progressive organizations" who are silent on the threats.
The IWA-RFC endorses the demands advanced in Lehman’s statement:
The IWA-RFC calls on UAW members and workers in every industry, in the US and internationally, to take up the defense of Lehman as their own cause. As Lehman stated: “This threat is not aimed at me alone. It is an act of intimidation directed against the entire rank-and-file opposition.”
The IWA-RFC also calls on all left-wing and progressive organizations to categorically denounce this threat.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/24/nwfj-j24.html
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According to CBS, “House Ways and Means and other congressional committees allege Singham’s funding of radical activist groups across the globe as well as inside the U.S. bears the classic hallmarks of Beijing’s broader influence campaigns, which weaponize domestic social causes to sow division in American politics.”
This is the classic “big lie” of right-wing witch-hunters: social conflicts in America are caused by “outside agitators,” not by the objective class divisions in a capitalist society in which a handful of billionaires controls the bulk of the wealth and dominates the political system and the corporate media.
This reaches a level of absurdity with claims that the massive “No Kings” protests, in which millions have taken part in some of the largest demonstrations in US history, were actually generated by funds supplied by Singham and George Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire who has long been the target of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories.
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The Trotskyist movement has long and well-documented political differences with the PSL and the groups targeted by subpoenas. Despite these unbridgeable differences, the WSWS condemns the witch-hunt by the Trump administration against the PSL and other groups associated with it. This is an attack on the democratic rights of the working class as a whole, and would set a precedent to be used against any left-wing, socialist or working-class organization.
I understand that the vanguard party is simply supposed to give up power after, but I feel like that isn’t very concrete. Moreover, bureaucracy seems like a large problem in ML states, is there anyway to prevent it from occurring so far?
Özel sektörde çalışan eğitim emekçileri ve mülakat mağduru öğretmenler, taban maaş uygulamasının geri getirilmesi ve atama mağduriyetinin giderilmesi talepleriyle 14 Temmuz Salı günü yeniden Ankara’da bir araya geldi. Demokratik haklarını kullanan öğretmenler 16 Temmuz Perşembe günü şiddetli bir polis saldırısına uğradı; 52 öğretmen gözaltına alındı.
Salı günü Özel Sektör Öğretmenleri Sendikası’nın (Öğretmen Sendikası) Ankara’daki binası önünde toplanan yaklaşık 100 öğretmen bir basın açıklaması yaptı. Polis ablukasına alınan öğretmenler Madenci Anıtı’na yürüdüler ve “Patronların [Milli Eğitim] Bakanı Yusuf Tekin istifa” sloganları attılar. Öğretmenler, Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi’nde (TBMM) toplanan Milli Eğitim, Kültür, Gençlik ve Spor Komisyonu’nda taleplerinin ele alınmasını istediler ve yalnızca kendi hakları için değil, “kamusal ve nitelikli eğitim için ses yükselttiklerini” belirttiler. 2024-2025 dönemi resmi rakamlarına göre özel okullarda çalışan yaklaşık 180 bin öğretmen var; ataması yapılmayan öğretmen sayısının 600 bini geçtiği tahmin ediliyor.
Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’ın Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi’nden (AKP) Eskişehir Milletvekili Ayşen Gürcan başkanlığında toplanan komisyonda, 28 maddeden oluşan bir kanun teklifi görüşüldü. Ancak öğretmenlerin talepleri komisyonun gündeminde yer almadı. Buna karşılık, Plan ve Bütçe Komisyonu’ndaki torba kanun teklifinde özel öğretim kurumlarında görev yapacak öğretmenlerin istihdamına ilişkin bir düzenleme bulunuyor: devlet okullarında zorunlu olan Millî Eğitim Akademisi hazırlık eğitimi şartı özel öğretim kurumları için kaldırılıyor, yani özel okullara ucuz ve hızlı öğretmen arzı kolaylaştırılıyor.
Taban maaş uygulamasının yeniden hayata geçirilmesine engel teşkil eden kurumlardan birinin Hazine ve Maliye Bakanlığı olduğunu belirten öğretmenler perşembe günü bakanlık önünde bir basın açıklaması düzenlediler. Ardından Millî Eğitim Bakanlığı önüne yürümek isteyen öğretmenlere polis saldırdı. Sendika Genel Başkanı Eren Edebali ters kelepçeyle, Genel Sekreter Ozan Fındık ve Örgütlenme Sekreteri Hüseyin Aksoy ile birlikte gözaltına alındı. Eyleme destek veren anneler de darp edilip gözaltına alındı; alanda öğretmenlerin çocukları da vardı. Öğretmenler yerlerde sürüklenirken, hiçbir sendika konfederasyonu öğretmenleri savunmak için eylem çağrısı yapmadı ve milyonlarca üyesini harekete geçirmeye çalışmadı.
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AND WHAT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?
" ... What is most significant is the absence of any serious response within the political establishment. The constitutional forms upheld for two centuries as guarantees against dictatorship have been hollowed out. This is the measure of how far the crisis has advanced.
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Trump’s ability to proceed depends on the Democratic Party. Two concerns govern the Democrats’ conduct. The first is to prevent an independent movement of workers and youth from below, which they fear more than they fear Trump, and which they channel into the courts, the media and the November elections. The second is to press for the escalation of war, above all, a deeper commitment against Russia in Ukraine."
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Hayes-Tilden dispute of 1876 foreshadowed eruption of class conflict - World Socialist Web Site
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>... In the summer of 1877 a massive railroad strike erupted, the most violent outbreak of class conflict in the United States to that date. General strikes paralyzed Chicago and St. Louis. In Pittsburgh crowds of angry workers, responding to the shooting of 20 strikers by militia, set fire to the railroad yards and destroyed 100 locomotives. Hayes redeployed some of the very same federal troops that had been used previously to uphold the rights of blacks in the South to Northern industrial centers to suppress striking workers.
>A Charleston, South Carolina newspaper noted, “The Southern question” is “dead.” The railroad strike had propelled to the forefront of politics “the question of labor and capital, work and wages” (ibid., pp. 246-47).
>The suppression of the strike revealed the content of the so-called Compromise of 1877: the reconciliation of the Northern and Southern ruling elites in the face of a powerful new danger, the working class. The events of 1876-77 brought to a definitive close the period where the political representatives of American capitalism could play a progressive role. From that date on the Republican Party, the main party of Northern industrial capital, shifted rapidly to the right, abandoning its egalitarian pretenses and operating more and more openly as the representative of the wealthiest layers of society.
>Unlike 1860, the crisis of 1876 did not lead to rebellion and armed conflict because in essence it did not involve a conflict between irreconcilable economic interests. As the historian C. Vann Woodward explained, the Compromise of 1877 promised the Southern elites, “a share in the blessings of the new economic order. In return the South became, in effect, a satellite of the dominant region. So long as the Conservative Redeemers held control they scotched any tendency of the South to combine forces with the internal enemies of the new economy—laborites, Western agrarians, reformers. Under the regime of the Redeemers the South became a bulwark instead of a menace to the new order” ( Reunion & Reaction, p. 267). ...
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Capitalism (52%) is viewed somewhat more favorably than socialism (37%) among Americans generally. But people are evenly divided on socialism, with equal shares who are favorable (37%) as unfavorable (37%). A fifth (21%) have a favorable view of communism.
Gen Z stands out for having more people who like socialism (53%) than capitalism (45%). More than a third of Americans under 30 (38%) say they have a favorable view of communism. This means that nearly as many Gen Z Americans have a favorable view of communism (38%) as capitalism (45%). Moreover, Gen Z is the only age group with a more favorable than unfavorable view of communism (38% favorable, 36% unfavorable).
Each successive generation becomes less supportive of socialism and communism and somewhat more supportive of capitalism. For instance, while 53% of 18–29-year-olds like socialism, only 37% of 45–64-year-olds and 23% of seniors have a favorable view of it. And while 38% of Gen Z like communism, this drops to 29% among 30–44-year-old millennials, to 19% among 45–54-year-olds, to 13% among 55–64-year-olds, and only 5% among the nation’s seniors. Support for capitalism increases with successive generations, but less so: about half of Americans under 65 have a favorable view of capitalism compared to 64% among seniors.
The survey also found the “Democratic Socialist” label can both help and harm a candidate. About 4 in 10 (39%) said they’d be more likely to vote for such a candidate, 40% said they’d be less likely, and 22% weren’t sure either way. Democrats (61%), Liberals (64%), and Gen Z (51%) reported they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate with the Democratic Socialist label. This helps illuminate recent wins by candidates using the Democratic Socialists of America label in Democratic primaries over the past few weeks.
In the 1990s, the Left Party’s predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), had positioned itself at the forefront of the outrage over the industrial and social cutbacks in former Stalinist East Germany (GDR), only to then continue those cutbacks in East German state governments and in Berlin. In the 2000s, the PDS merged with a wing of the SPD to form Die Linke, in order to channel resistance against Agenda 2010—the social cuts of the SPD-Green federal government—which it then itself implemented at state level.
The result of this deceitful policy was the rise of the AfD. Many voters turned their backs in disgust on the Left Party, which was implementing right-wing policies under an umbrella of left-wing phraseology. The right-wing demagogues of the AfD were able to present themselves as an anti-establishment party. Now, in the face of a new wave of radicalisation, the Left Party is attempting to repeat this shabby manoeuvre once again.
The party executive presented a key motion to the party conference, which—with a few amendments—was adopted by a large majority. As we wrote on the WSWS, it combines criticism of social conditions with policies that are compatible with those of the Merz government—and, in some respects, the AfD. If one cuts through the mist of left-wing rhetoric, the key motion reveals itself to be a pro-capitalist, nationalist document that defends the interests of the ruling elites.
The AfD is set to win the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania due in September. The Left Party is responding by aligning itself even more closely with Chancellor Merz’s CDU, the SPD and other bourgeois parties, which have paved the way for the AfD through cuts to social services, anti-immigrant rhetoric and militarism. In Saxony and Thuringia, the Left Party is already supporting CDU-led minority governments. Now it wants to join such governments itself, describing this as a policy of “anti-fascist alliances.”
At the party conference, leading members performed a balancing act to reconcile the radical sentiments of younger delegates with this right-wing orientation. The media stood on the sidelines as watchdogs, shouting “foul” every time a red line was crossed.
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The Left Party, as the Potsdam party congress has once again demonstrated, was, is and remains a bastion of the capitalist order. Fascism, war and social cuts can only be stopped by a movement of the international working class that is independent of all established parties and fights for a socialist perspective. This is the policy of the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.
TEXT: Leon Trotsky: My Life (1930) (MARXISTS.ORG)
Marxism converted socialism into a science, but this does not prevent some ‘Marxists’ from converting Marxism into a Utopia.
Rozhkov, arguing against the programme of socialization and co-operation, presents the ‘necessary pre-requisites of the future society, firmly laid down by Marx’, in the following way: ‘Are there already present,’ asks Rozhkov, ‘the material objective pre-requisites, consisting of such a development of technique as would reduce the motive of personal gain and concern for cash [?], personal effort, enterprise and risk, to a minimum, and which would thereby make social production a front-rank question? Such a level of technique is most closely connected with the almost complete [!] domination of large-scale production in all [!] branches of the economy. Has such a stage been reached? Even the subjective, psychological pre-requisites are lacking, such as the growth of class-consciousness among the proletariat, developed to such a level as to achieve the spiritual unity of the overwhelming mass of the people. We know,’ continues Rozhkov, ‘of producer associations such as the well-known French glassworks at Albi, and several agricultural associations, also in France, and yet the experience of France shows, as nothing else can, that even the conditions of so advanced a country are not sufficiently developed to permit the dominance of co-operation. These enterprises are of only the average size, their technical level is not higher than ordinary capitalist undertakings, they are not at the head of industrial development, do not lead it, but approach a modest average level.
>‘Only when the experience of individual productive associations points to their leading role in economic life can we say that we approaching a new system, only then can we be sure that the necessary conditions for its existence have been established.’ [1]
While respecting the good intentions of Comrade Rozhkov, we regretfully have to confess that rarely even in bourgeois literature have we met such confusion as he betrays with regard to what are known as the pre-requisites of socialism. It will be worthwhile dwelling to some extent on this confusion, if not for the sake of Rozhkov, at least for the sake of the question.
Rozhkov declares that we have not yet reached ‘such a stage of technical development as would reduce the motive of personal gain and concern for cash [?], personal effort, enterprise and risk, to a minimum, and which would make social production a front-rank question’.
It is rather difficult to find the meaning of this passage. Apparently Rozhkov wishes to say, in the first place, that modern technique has not yet sufficiently ousted human labour-power from industry and, secondly, that to secure this elimination would require the ‘almost’ complete domination of large state enterprises in all branches of the economy, and therefore the ‘almost’ complete proletarianization of the whole population of the country. These are the two prerequisites to socialism alleged to have been ‘firmly laid down by Marx’.
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https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp07.htm
