{"id":4897,"date":"2025-02-22T23:49:21","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T04:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/?p=4897"},"modified":"2025-07-02T14:10:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T18:10:47","slug":"why-i-left-orthodox-trotskyism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/?p=4897","title":{"rendered":"WHY I LEFT ORTHODOX TROTSKYISM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Stacy Barber<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t imagine why I left a milieu that was and is composed of cultist Leon-Trotsky- is-Jesus-Christ types who are forever dividing into smaller and smaller sects, and whose effectiveness at organizing hasn\u2019t gone beyond Dungeons and Dragons in the west in over seventy years.  Ever since I was a kid, I would love having the feeling of following what I called ”other thans”, or as a surrealist would have it, knew I was happiest when I was creatively inspired. The major reason I was and remain a socialist is because I think it is the best way possible to release human creative potential, having a lifelong love of learning and the arts, having been an arts geek in high school and having gone on to obtain my English BA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My involvement with Trotskyism started when I was 15. Some friends and I had done an independent study on socialism the year before. So I had already made up my mind that I was roughly some kind of socialist. I was initially introduced to NWROC \/ RWL by someone I was seeing from another high school. I don\u2019t remember much other than soon being involved in one on one independent studies of \u201cState and Revolution \u201c by V. I. Lenin and being given a bunch of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL)\u2019s documents to read as well as getting involved in their front group, the National Women\u2019s Rights Organizing Coalition (NWROC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While on paper there were 600 members, I recall more like 40 people who bothered to show up for the national convention.  Also all of the national steering committee was RWL. But I was blinded by wanting the revolution tomorrow and the novelty of it. I wound up doing clinic defense, anti-fascist and anti-cop brutality work for a few years, but never formally joined the RWL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left for good when they tried to commit, against his will, someone I was seeing who was a party member at the time for having dissenting opinions. He wasn\u2019t the first and he wasn\u2019t the last. There was that and their just being in the habit of whenever there was a march or any kind of coalition work, tending towards taking everything over and being pretty sectarian about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became involved with Radical Women\/ Freedom Socialist Party hoping for a more democratic, healthier organization, and still bought into many of the myths of identity politics. FSP is Clara Fraser \u2018s old group and known for their Trotskyist feminism, or putting women\u2019s oppression on par with class exploitation. While women are half the working class, fact remains that men are the other half, and no socialist revolution was ever won with a divided house, but will be won with men, women and LGBT struggling in solidarity together. Not to say women\u2019s oppression or any other form of social oppression doesn\u2019t play a role, but economic exploitation is more the car engine of the exploitation mobile and things like race, nationality, gender or sex and sexual orientation are the component parts of the car, each holding up the oppressive structures of class society while being a way for the ruling class to conquer and divide the working class and oppressed against each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One other game that FSP used to like to play was the hierarchy of oppression game, like it was Chutes and Ladders. Basically, if one were black, gay and female, one would have the most insight into oppression while completely ignoring the person\u2019s class background and being little more than the milquetoast corporate leftism that seeks diversity in the board room and pits members of the oppressed against each other since they all have to vie with each other on what can be an individually self-serving careerist basis. While any organization should seek to foster the leadership of the oppressed and have what can be considered a rough affirmative action program, there also needs to be the idea of meritocracy as well, when the best person for the job might be a white, working class man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had originally joined the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) on the basis of their criticisms of identity politics and some of their international positions. I left IBT when it became clear that I at 20 was going to be recruited as someone\u2019s girlfriend, to drop my studies and move to London; I didn\u2019t think so. I tried a few other Trot groups in my 30s but found them just as cultist as any I had previously been involved with, if not more mildly, incredibly cliquey. Or just controlled by slimeballs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major criticism I have of all these various orthodox groups is that they all assume their individual grouplets are the vanguard, when I think only the course of mass struggle determines who that will be. They\u2019re putting carts before horses. They all seem to also like to load up every flyer they write with every demand under the sun and scream socialist revolution like some excited old lady screams bingo if the cash award is especially big and might riot unless she gets her prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, I think anything that doesn\u2019t defend basic reforms like the New Deal or affirmative action and says it can only be solved by socialist revolution really wants us to try navel gazing and inactivity while the working class and oppressed are thrown further back into the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is with some hesitation but increasing respect that I\u2019m currently an observer of SD USA.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stacy Barber I can\u2019t imagine why I left a milieu that was and is composed of cultist Leon-Trotsky- is-Jesus-Christ types who are forever dividing into smaller and smaller sects, and whose effectiveness at organizing hasn\u2019t gone beyond Dungeons and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4897"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4967,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897\/revisions\/4967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}