Trotsky’s ideas are distortions of Marxism and have led to no socialist revolution, no revolutionary movement even, and have had no practical success because of the fatal ideological flaws of Trotsky’s dogmatism and idealism. Communist revolutionary leaders follow Joseph Stalin and harshly criticize Trotsky. Here are communists on Trotsky, as well as some of Trotsky’s own anti-communist words. Great thanks to Espresso Stalinist at http://espressostalinist.com for compiling these.

Contents of Sections Below:

Vladimir Lenin on Trotsky

Trotsky on Lenin and Leninism

Ho Chi Minh on Trotskyists as tools of fascism

From Joseph Goebbels’ diaries (Trotsky and fascism working together)

Racism of Trotsky (Trotsky’s racist quotes), by Espresso Stalinist

Mao Zedong on Trotsky

Che Guevara On Trotsky and Comrade Stalin

Enver Hoxha on Stalin and against critics of him and on Trotsky

Trotsky’s military incompetence and the Party’s preference for Stalin’s strategies

Antonio Gramsci on Trotsky

Vladimir Lenin on Trotsky:

Quote:

Lenin insulted Trotsky in his letters, telegrams and articles 219 times. How did Lenin call him? “Pustozvon” (“bell”, man who talks much and does nothing), “svin’ya” (pig), “podlec iz podlecov” (scoundrel of scoundlers), “iudushka” (“Judas”/traitor), “politicheskaya prostitutka” (political prostitute) and his most elegant phrase concerning Trotsky that became Russian proverb – “pizdit kak Trotskiy” – “to lie/bitch/bullshit like fu**ing Trotsky”.

“Trotsky is very fond of explaining historical events . . in pompous and sonorous phrases, in a manner flattering to Trotsky” (Lenin, SW #4 194).

Quote:

Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned.

(Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 448, 1914).

Quote:

Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist of the Ryazanov-and-co type. Either equality on the editorial board, subordination to the central committee and no one’s transfer to Paris except Trotsky’s (the scoundrel, he wants to ‘fix up’ the whole rascally crew of ‘Pravda’ at our expense!) – or a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the CO. He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists.

(Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 400).

Quote:

In the very first words of his resolution Trotsky expressed the full spirit of the worst kind of conciliation, ‘conciliation’ in inverted commas, of a sectarian and philistine conciliation, which deals with ‘given persons’ and not the given line of policy, the given spirit the given ideological and political content of Party work.

…

It is in this that the enormous difference lies between real partyism; which consists in purging the Party of liquidationism and otzovism, and the ‘conciliation’ of Trotsky and Co., which actually RENDERS THE MOST FAITHFUL SERVICE TO THE LIQUIDATORS AND OTZOVISTS, AND IS THEREFORE AN EVIL THAT IS ALL THE MORE DANGEROUS TO THE PARTY THE MORE CUNNINGLY, ARTFULLY AND RHETORICALLY IT CLOAKS ITSELF WITH PROFESSEDLY PRO-PARTY, PROFESSEDLY ANTI-FACTIONAL DECLAMATIONS.

(Notes of a Publicist, Collected Works, Vol. 16, June 1910, p 211).

Quote:

The struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevism is… a struggle over the question whether to support the liberals or to overthrow the hegemony of the liberals over the peasantry. Therefore to attribute [as did Trotsky] our splits to the influence of the intelligentsia, to the immaturity of the proletariat, etc, is a childishly naive repetition of liberal fairy-tales.

…

Trotsky distorts Bolshevism, because he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution.

…

Therefore, when Trotsky tells the German comrades that he represents the ‘general Party tendency’ I am obliged to declare that Trotsky represents only his own faction and enjoys a certain amount of confidence exclusively among the otzovists and the liquidators.

(The Historical Meaning of the Inner-Party Struggle in Russia, Collected Works, Vol. 16 pp. 374-392).

Quote:

It is an adventure in the ideological sense. Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism, he unites Potresov and Maximov, who detest the ‘Lenin-Plekhanov’ bloc, as they like to call it. TROTSKY UNITES ALL THOSE TO WHOM IDEOLOGICAL DECAY IS DEAR; ALL WHO ARE NOT CONCERNED WITH THE DEFENCE OF MARXISM, all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views. At this time of confusion, disintegration, and wavering it is easy for Trotsky to become the ‘hero of the hour’ and gather all the shabby elements around himself. The more openly this attempt is made, the more spectacular will be the defeat.

(Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, Collected Works, Vol. 17, pp. 17-22 – December 1910)

Quote:

It is impossible to argue with Trotsky on the merits of the issue, because Trotsky holds no views whatever. We can and should argue with confirmed liquidators and otzovists, but it is no use arguing with a man whose game is to hide the errors of both these trends; in his case the thing to do is to expose him as a diplomat of the smallest calibre.

(Trotsky’s Diplomacy and a Certain Party Platform, Collected Works, Vol. 17 pp. 360362).

Quote:

Trotsky’s dirty campaign against Pravda is one mass of lies and slander… This intriguer and liquidator goes on lying right and left.

(Collected Works, Vol. 35, pp. 40-41).

Quote:

But the liquidators and Trotsky,… who tore up their own August bloc, who flouted all the decisions of the Party and dissociated themselves from the ‘underground’ as well as from the organised workers, are the worst splitters. Fortunately, the workers have already realised this, and all class-conscious workers are creating their own real unity against the liquidator disrupters of unity.

(Collected Works, Vol. 20 pp. 158-161).

Quote:

Needless to say, this explanation is highly flattering, to Trotsky… and to the liquidators… Trotsky is very fond of using with the learned air of the expert pompous and high-sounding phrases to explain historical phenomena in a way that is flattering to Trotsky. Since ‘numerous advanced workers’ become ‘active agents’ of apolitical and Party line [Bolshevik Party line] which does not conform to Trotsky’s line, Trotsky settles the question unhesitatingly, out of hand these advanced workers are ‘in a state of utter political bewilderment’, whereas he, Trotsky, is evidently ‘in a state’ of political firmness and clarity, and keeps to the right line!… And this very same Trotsky, beating his breast, fulminates against factionalism parochialism, and the efforts of the intellectuals to impose their will on the workers!

…

Reading things like these, one cannot help asking oneself. – is it from a lunatic asylum that such voices come?

(Collected Works, Vol. 20 pp. 327-347).

Quote:

The obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy! Trotsky could produce no proof except ‘private conversations’ (i.e., simply gossip, on which Trotsky always subsists), classifying the ‘Polish Marxists’ in general as supporters of every article by Rosa Luxemburg…

..

Trotsky has never yet held a firm opinion on any important question of Marxism. He always contrives to worm his way into the cracks of any given difference of opinion, and desert one side for the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. And thee gentlemen do not stand on ceremony where the Party is concerned.

(The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Collected Works, Vol. 20 p. 447-8).

Quote:

What a swine this Trotsky is – Left, phrases, and a bloc with the Right against the Zimmerwald Left!! He ought to be exposed (by you) if only in a brief letter to Sotsial-Demokrat!

(Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 285).

Quote:

There is also a letter from Kollontai who… has returned to Norway from America. N. Iv. and Pavlov… had won Novy Mir, she says,… but … Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of Novy Mir against the Left Zimmerwaldists!! That’s it!! That’s Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself, twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can…

(Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 288).

Trotsky on Lenin and Leninism:

“The wretched squabbling systematically provoked by Lenin, that old hand at the game, that professional exploiter of all that is backward in the Russian labour movement, seems like a senseless obsession…. The entire edifice of Leninism Is built on lies and falsification and bears within itself the poisonous elements of its own decay.”

– Trotsky, Letter to Chkeidze, 1913

“Lenin’s methods lead to this: the party organisation first substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a single ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the Central Committee……

“This evil-minded and morally repugnant suspicion of Lenin, this shallow caricature of the tragic intolerance of Jacobinism, … must be liquidated at the present time at all costs, otherwise the party is threatened by complete political, moral and theoretical decay.”

— L.D. Trotsky, ‘Nos Tâches Politiques’; Paris; 1970; p192.

Ho Chi Minh on Trotskyists as tools of fascism:

Letter from Ho Chi Minh to the Indochinese Communist Party

Kwelin, May 10, 1939

Dear comrades: In the past, in my opinion and that of a good number of comrades, Trotskyism has seemed a matter of struggle between the trends within the Chinese Communist Party. So they almost were not paying attention. But shortly before the outbreak of the war, more precisely since the end of 1936, and especially during the war, the criminal Trotskyist propaganda has opened our eyes. Then we started to study the problem. And our study has led us to the following conclusions:

1 – The problem of Trotskyism is not a struggle between the trends within the Chinese Communist Party. Because between Communists and Trotskyists there is no tie, absolutely no tie. It is a matter that concerns the whole people: the fight against the country.

2 – The fascist Japanese and foreign fascists know. So, looking to try to create disagreements, to mislead public opinion and undermine the popularity of the Communists, making people believe they are communists and Trotskyists in the same field.

3 – The Chinese Trotskyists (like the Trotskyists in other countries) do not represent a group, much less a political party. They are nothing more then a criminal gang, the hounds of Japanese fascism (and of international fascism).

4 – In all countries, the Trotskyists gave good nicknames to mask their dirty work of bandits. For example, in Spain, their names are Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). Did you know that it is they who are the nests of spies in Madrid, Barcelona and elsewhere in the service of Franco? It is they who organized the famous “fifth column,” agency of the army intelligence of the fascist Italians and Germans. In Japan, they are called Marx-Engels-Lenin League (MEL). The Japanese Trotskyists attract young people to their league, then reported them to the police. They seek to penetrate the Japanese Communist Party in order to destroy it from within. In my opinion, the French Trotskyists, now organized around the Proletarian Revolution Group (1) set a goal to sabotage the Popular Front. On this subject, I think you are better informed than I am. In our country of China [referring to Indochina, N. E.], Trotskyists are grouped into formations like La Lutte, War against the Japanese, Culture and Red Flag.

5 – The Trotskyists are not only enemies of communism, but also enemies of democracy and progress. They are the most infamous traitors and spies. Maybe you have read the indictments of the processes in the Soviet Union against the Trotskyists. If you have not read them, I advise you to do so and to read them to your friends. It is a very useful reading. It will help them see the true disgusting face of Trotskyism and Trotskyists. Here, allow me to extract some passages relating directly to China. The true repugnant face of Trotskyism.

Before the court, the Trotskyist Rakovsky (2) confessed that in 1934 when he was in Tokyo (as representative of the Soviet Red Cross) a high character of the Japanese government had told him: “We have the right to expect from the Trotskyists a change in strategy. I will not go into details. I only wanted to say that we expect from the Trotskyists, actions that favor our intervention in the affairs of China.” Responding to the Japanese, Rakovsky said: “I will write to Trotsky about this.” In December 1935, Trotsky sent to his supporters in China, instructions that repeatedly emphasized that phrase: “Do not create obstacles to the Japanese invasion of China.” And how have Trotskyists in China acted? They are in a hurry to know, is it not true? But, beloved comrades, I can not respond more in my next letter. Do not you recommend me to write short letters? Hope to see you soon.

1939: About Trotskyism (Letter to the Communist Party of Indochina)

Notes

(1) Revolución Proletaria: Newspaper published by a group of French revolutionary syndicalists.

(2) Revolutionary leader in the Balkans before the First World War, Ukrainian Prime Minister from 1919 to 1923, was then Soviet ambassador in Paris and one of the founders of the Left Opposition. Expelled from the CPSU in 1927 continued his work to capitulate in 1934.

Digital edition of Andreu Nin Foundation, August 2005

From Joseph Goebbels’ diaries:

”Our clandestine radio transmitter from eastern Prussia to Russia is creating an enormous sensation. It operates in Trotsky’s name, and is causing Stalin plenty of trouble”

”Now we work with three clandestine radio stations in Russia: first Trotskyist, the second separatist, third Russian-nationalists, all criticise Stalinism. They are an example of cunning and subtlety.”

Racism of Trotsky, by Espresso Stalinist:

I really think more people should read Trotsky’s biography of Stalin, titled “Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence.” You can read it for free online. It really exposes what a flagrant racist Trotsky was.

“The Tsarist government laid down the necessary strategic roads, partially renovated the cities, and established a rudimentary network of schools, primarily for the purpose of Russifying these alien subjects. Of course, in two centuries the Petersburg bureaucracy could not replace the old Asiatic barbarism with a European culture of which its own country was still in sad need.” – Chapter I.

“Trotsky’s mammoth biography Stalin (1940) not only belittles Stalin’s revolutionary activities but actually sees his life and ‘moral stature’ predetermined by his racially defined genetic composition; after discussing whether or not Stalin had ‘an admixture of Mongolian blood,’ Trotsky decides that in any case he was one perfect type of the national character of southern countries such as Georgia, where, ‘in addition to the so-called Southern type, which is characterized by a combination of lazy shiftlessness and explosive irascibility, one meets cold natures, in whom phlegm is combined with stubbornness and slyness.'” — Bruce Franklin, “Introduction to The Essential Stalin.”

Also a darling of some Trotskyists is George Orwell, who stated that it was hopeless to keep Asian communists from following Comrade Stalin because they were “barbarians.” In addition to his racism against non-whites, Orwell regularly and repeatedly wrote articles detailing the “racial inferiority” of Irish people and the need for their domination by the British, even after the achievement of socialism in Britain.

Mao Zedong on Trotsky:

“I believe we should do things honestly, for without an honest attitude it is absolutely impossible to accomplish anything in this world. Which are the honest people? Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are honest, men of science are honest. Which are the dishonest people? Trotsky, Bukharin, Chen Tu-hsiu and Chang Kuo-tao are extremely dishonest…”

Joseph Stalin

Che Guevara On Trotsky and Comrade Stalin:

“My duty as a Marxist-Leninist Communist is to expose the hidden reaction that lies hidden behind revisionism, opportunism and Trotskyism.

We consider that the Trotskyist party acts against the Revolution.

I believe that the key issues on which it was based, Trotsky made mistakes, and I think that his behavior was wrong and rear, in recent times, even obscure.

I believe that the Trotskyists have not contributed anything to the revolutionary movement, in any country, and where they did more have failed because the methods were wrong. ”

Ernesto Che Guevara. Speech at the Ministry of Industry, November 5, 1964.

In November 1960, Che Guevara insisted on depositing a floral tribute at Stalin’s tomb even against the advice of the Cuban Ambassador to the USSR. This was more than four years after Khrushchev’s process of “De-Stalinisation” started.

Guevara’s fellow motorcyclist Alberto Ganado said that it was Stalin that Guevara “discovered” in the mid-fifties (Anderson pp.165-166, p.565).

In 1955 while in Mexico he sent a letter to his aunt signed with the words “Stalin II.”

“I think that the fundamental stuff that Trotsky was based upon was erroneous and that his ulterior behaviour was wrong and his last years were even dark. The Trotskyites have not contributed anything whatsoever to the revolutionary movement; where they did most was in Peru, but they finally failed there because their methods are bad.”(‘Annexes’, p. 402)

— quoted in “Comments on ‘Critical Notes on Political Economy’ by Che Guevara,” from Revolutionary Democracy Journal

Although Guevara helped secure the release of some Trotskyists from prison in 1965, they were freed only on the condition that they cease their political activity (Revolutionary History 2000, Vol.7 No.3) pp.193-195, p.249).

“Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.”

– Letter to his aunt Beatriz describing what he had seen while traveling through Guatemala (1953); as quoted in Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (1997) by Jon Lee Anderson

“Trotsky, along with Khrushchev, belongs to the category of the great revisionists.”

– (December 4, 1965: Letter to Armando Mart)

“Trotsky was fundamentally wrong… Trotskyites ultimately failed because their methods are bad.”

– (Apuntes criticos a la Economia Politica, 1964)

“In the so called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude. You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves, you don’t have to look at him as some kind of brute, but in that particular historical context. I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good.”

Che wrote on December 14 of 1957 a letter to René Ramos Latour (“Daniel”), National Coordinator of the Movimiento 26 de Julio who died in combat, the following:

“Because of my ideological background, I belong to those who believe that the solution of the world’s problems lies behind the so-called iron curtain and I see this Movement as one of the many inspired by the bourgeoisie’s desire to free themselves from the economic chains of imperialism.”

“In Cuba there is nothing published, if one excludes the Soviet bricks, which bring the inconvenience that they do not let you think; the party did it for you and you should digest it. It would be necessary to publish the complete works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin [underlined by Che in the original] and other great Marxists. Here would come to the great revisionists (if you want you can add here Khrushchev), well analyzed, more profoundly than any others and also your friend Trotsky, who existed and apparently wrote something.”

— (Che Guevara, Letter to Armando Hart Dávalos published in Contracorriente, Havana, September 1997, No. 9).

Enver Hoxha on Stalin and against critics of him and on Trotsky

“Stalin’s whole life was characterized by an unceasing fierce struggle against Russian capitalism, against world capitalism, against imperialism and against the anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist currents and trends which had placed themselves in the service of world reaction and capital. Beside Lenin and under his leadership, he was one of the inspirers and leaders of the Great October Socialist Revolution, an unflinching militant of the Bolshevik Party…

What slander did the external enemies not invent, especially against Joseph Stalin, the continuer of the work of Marx and Lenin, the talented leader of the Soviet Union, whom they accused of being a bloody tyrant, and murderer… All these slanders were remarkable for their cynicism. No, Stalin was no tyrant, no despot. He was a man of principle, he was just, modest and very kindly and considerate towards people, the cadres, and his colleagues. That is why his Party, the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the entire world proletariat loved him so much.”

He has lived in France, and apparently, while there, was profoundly influenced by Sartrist, anarchist, Trotskyite, and all sorts of other corrupt anti-Marxist theories –Enver Hoxha on Spanish “Euro-Communist” Carrillo, from his book “Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism”

As we said, Carrillo has been inspired by all the “theories” of the Khrushchevites, the Trotskyites, Browder and a thousand and one other traitors to the working class. However, he demands that things should be said openly, that the i’s should be dotted, in other words, that the revisionists’ actions should be unified with capitalism and world imperialism. First of all, allegedly with theoretical arguments, he calls on all the revisionists and pseudo-communists of the world to rise against Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. He distorts and interprets as he pleases Marx’s writings on the events of 1848, on the June Uprising in France, on the Paris Commune and goes so far as to admit openly that he is taking his treacherous theses from Trotsky or Kautsky. By mentioning these renegades and notorious and discredited opponents of Marxism, he shows from which stable he comes and where the sources of his “theoretical” discoveries lie. –Enver Hoxha on Spanish “Euro-Communist” Carrillo, from his book “Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism”

But Carrillo goes further in his road than Khrushchev and many others. Although he tried, Khrushchev did not dare to publicly rehabilitate Trotsky. By calling Stalin a criminal, by rejecting all the revolutionary trials which were held in the time of the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, in practice Khrushchev rehabilitated Kamenev and Zinoviev. He also rehabilitated many other traitors such as Rajk and so on. However, Carrillo was not satisfied with Khrushchev. In his book, he rebukes him as if to say: “When you have rehabilitated all these fine people whom Stalin had shot, when you have betrayed Marx, Engels and Lenin, why have you not rehabilitated your father’ Trotsky?” Therefore, Carrillo calls for Trotsky to, be rehabilitated and for a campaign to do justice to the “merits” of Trotsky. –Enver Hoxha on Spanish “Euro-Communist” Carrillo, from his book “Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism”

While putting forward the task of creating revolutionary unions, the Marxist-Leninists in no way abandoned their work in the existing unions in which there are large masses of workers, because otherwise they would have left the trade union bosses a free hand to manipulate the working class and to use it in their own interests and the interests of capital. Participation of communists in the existing unions is not determined by contingency and is not a “tactic” as the Trotskyites try to present it, but a stand of principle which stems from the Leninist teachings on the need for unity of the working class, which cannot be achieved without working among the masses and without freeing them from the influences of the bourgeoisie and various opportunists. —Enver Hoxha on Trotskyites from his book “Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism,” at http://marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/hoxha/works/euroco/env2-3.htm

Trotsky’s military incompetence and the Party’s preference for Stalin’s strategies

“War Commissar Trotsky is often praised for being a great leader in the Civil War. However, in the summer of 1919 Trotsky, stating that Kolchak was no longer a menace in the east proposed shifting the forces of the Red Army into the campaign against Denikin in the South. This Stalin pointed out would have given Kolchak a much needed breathing spell and the opportunity to reorganize and re-equip for a fresh offensive. The Central Committee rejected Trotsky’s plan and he took no further part in the campaign in the east which led to Kolchak’s defeat. Similarly with his plan for a campaign against Denikin through the Don steppes, an almost roadless region filled with bands of counter-revolutionary Cossaks. Stalin rejected Trotsky’s plan and proposed advancing across the Donetz Basin with its dense railway network, good supplies of coal and sympathetic working-class population. Stalin’s plan was accepted by the Central Committee, Trotsky was removed from the Southern Front and told not to interfere with operations which led to the defeat of Denikin.”

–Wilf Dixon (16 October 1994), “THE TRUTH ABOUT STALIN.”

Antonio Gramsci on Trotsky

“Trotsky is the puttana of fascism.” – Antonio Gramsci

Great thanks to Espresso Stalinist at http://espressostalinist.com for compiling these.