Caleb Maupin
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
Dispatch dateline: Dec 24, 2022
Most people remain confused as to the role of Trotskyism in the Communist movement. In this chat, Caleb talks about Trotsky's split from the Stalinist wing of the Bolsheviks, his exile and ulterior career in opposition to the Soviet Union (a supposedly bureaucratized state socialist regime with a supposedly new ruling class). Eventually, different factions of Trotskyism became anti-communist agitators (which suited the capitalists fine), and later, some of Trotskyist leading intellectuals abandoned Marxism altogether and became the notorious Neocon phenomenon of rabid US imperialism at any cost. The Kagans (Victoria Nuland is married to one), Blinken, Bill Kristol, and many others are all Neocons today, but their ideological antecedents are among Trotskyists. The Neocons are therefore not just rabid anti-Sovietists but apostates willing to betray their former comrades. As middle-class people for the most part, bourgeois individualism runs deep and thereby the tendency to factionalism. The SWP (Socialist Workers Party), The Neo-Trotskyites (Third-Camp Trotskyites), the Pabloites, the Spartacist League, the Workers League (followers of Jack Healey in Britain), and many other groups and grouplets constitute today the political legacy of Trotsky. Claiming to be "the true revolutionaries", constantly denouncing the mainstream Communist Party, the Trots were and remain middle-class intellectuals with a passion for politics. Poised perennially against all the existing socialist countries, starting with the Soviet Union, etc., they played a highly disruptive role. Their negative obsession with Stalin remains their most salient and curious trait, to most outside observers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caleb Maupin is a widely acclaimed speaker, writer, journalist, and political analyst. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and in Latin America. He was involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement from its early planning stages, and has been involved many struggles for social justice. He is an outspoken advocate of international friendship and cooperation, as well as 21st Century Socialism.