Exploring the Complex World of Trotskyism, Part 1: Rise and Decline

Let's embark on a journey through the labyrinth of Trotskyism and its complex world of factions and ideologies with the Regrettable Century's Jason and Chris and The Measure's Taken's Stephen Hammel.  Even after the disappearance of questions that made Trotskyism unique, it managed to survive well past 1992. Have you ever wondered why? We are here to unravel the mystery. In our conversation, we dissect the strange survival of Trotskyism in America and the myriad of splits it birthed. We'll explore the historical swings and shifts of Trotskyist organizations like the ISO and their transition from Shackmanites and Draperites to Cliffites and Grantites characters.

Do you know the role of the Socialist Party of the USA, the Kasama Project, and the Platypus Affiliated Society in shaping post-Trotskyist tendencies in the United States? We'll discuss this and more, including the ripple effects of the post-Stalinist era that led to a rift between Trotskyism and Maoism. It's a deep dive into Trotskyist theory's core, including the theory of permanent revolution's evolution. When it comes to the decline of Trotskyism in America, we're not just observers. We investigate its re-emergence within DSA caucuses, the rise of Salt, the International Marxist Tendency's debut, and the factors contributing to Trotskyism's resurgence in the US.

With us, you'll be a fly on the wall of history as we recount the various influences and impacts of Trotskyism on the American left and the evolution of communism. You'll travel back to 1992, witnessing the active Trotskyist organizations and their ideologies at the time. We'll also journey through the UK SWP's ties to conservative Islamic politics, the Arab Spring-induced splits, and the role of punk music in Trotskyism's resurgence. Lastly, we'll contemplate the lasting legacy of Trotskyism and the impact of its decline on the American left. This journey promises not just information, but thought-provoking insights on one of the critical aspects of leftist history and thought.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Chapters

• 0:48 Trotskyism's Legacy and Decline in US
• 5:43 Trotskyism's Decline in America's Influence
• 11:04 Exploring Trotskyist Tendencies and Lineages
• 21:51 US Trotskyism and Its Tendencies
• 31:36 Comparing Trotskyism and Maoism in Marxism
• 41:13 Trotskyism and Permanent Revolution Explained
• 57:46 Trotskyism and the Evolution of Communism
• 1:05:34 Leftist Organizations in 1992
• 1:12:20 British Trotskyism in Post-Alter-Globalization Movement
• 1:20:21 The History and Influence of Trotskyism
• 1:30:32 Trotskyism, Student Organizations, and the DSA
• 1:41:15 The Decline of American Trotskyism
• 1:53:29 Exploring the Legacy of Entryism

Transcript

C. Derick Varn: 0:48

Oh, and welcome to the Varm Vlog and Regrettable Century with a guest from In the Measures Taken, and this is one of the first on a series of panels on the legacy and decline of Trotskyism in the United States and also the world. There will be supplementary panels on this. But I'm also going to tell people that I'm not just picking on Trotskyism. We're also going to talk about the decline of non-Dungist, non-connected to official Chinese Communism, malism, in a separate series. This is partly inspired by trying to figure out why there are so many Marxist-Leninists who are not in Marxist-Leninist organizations, who have no ties to Trotskyism or Malism, who have even less of a mass base, which we're going to talk about, because none of these organizations ever really had a mass base, not at least after 19, not at least after World War II really.

C. Derick Varn: 1:54

And then I think I might also start off with the strange non-Deaf of Trotskyism, because one of the questions I've always had is why did it survive for another generation after 1992 at least? Because almost every question that made Trotskyism unique is gone and the Trotskyist organizations no longer had a cohesion and coherent conception of either what their two actual theoretical innovations Pernimate Revolution are transitional program. Because for a lot of Trotskyist organizations like the ISO. They had what I would consider gizdeism, almost where they like. We know that our reforms are going to fail, but we're going to push for them anyway to radicalize the population, and I'm like, literally that's the first thing Marx himself warned against of the political strategy.

C. Derick Varn: 3:06

Of the political strategies, that's the one that got Marxist say I am not a Marxist, clearly and unequivocally. There's no ambiguity about it. And yet that was maintained by, like I don't know, half the ISO.

Chris : 3:25

Yeah, but they never admitted that. They thought that those reforms were never going to happen or weren't going to work, so they were able to provide that level of cognitive dissonance.

C. Derick Varn: 3:39

Right. So first off, I guess to talk about the Klan-Otraskyist in America, we have to do what is a dastardly situation, and briefly, as briefly as we can talk about what the Trotskyist factions and sects were and where they came from, because one of the interesting things that I will point out as we talk about this there was a maintenance and revival of Trotskyism in America, in the Ott and Ott teens, to tell about the Mid Ottens, but interestingly none of it was from the American traditions, the Kyanonite ones, the original Trotskyist sects and ideas were dying and increasingly the ISO, which does one of the few organizations we're going to talk about still existing, unlike Salt, which was literally salted from another country, it increasingly dropped its Shackmanite draperite character for a cliff-ite character. Salt you mean? No, the ISO.

Jason: 4:59

The ISO yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 5:01

By the time I encountered the ISO, I thought it was purely a Tony Cliff organization because it had such strong ties to the SWP, even though it had been kicked out of the IST.

Chris : 5:12

Yeah, it affiliated with the IST after already having been an independent grouping and then got kicked out, but then maintained the exact same politics and still bought and reprinted all of the IST's books. Yeah, it was just a cliff-eyed organization by the time I joined in 2004.

Stephen Hammel: 5:32

Yeah, we have to talk about the tradition of splitting, actually the tendency of splitting.

C. Derick Varn: 5:36

Yeah.

Stephen Hammel: 5:37

But did you really want to start at the very beginning, Bart?

C. Derick Varn: 5:39

Maybe we should start at the end. I don't know, this one's tough because the decline of Trotskyism in America has happened multiple times. That in and of itself is hard to explain why it kept coming back. This one feels terminal in a different way. Also, I think we have to look at the opinion of Trotskyism in America. I remember during Trotsky's birthday you had the Norfites complaining about social democrats celebrating ice picks in the DSA, not just Stalinists anymore. Wait, was that recently? No, it was about three years ago. Okay, yeah, it was like right before the pandemic.

Chris : 6:48

That was when the Stalinists and the DSA hated Trotskyists. And then all the boring herringtonites and the DSA hated Trotskyists because all of the salt and ISO people that joined that were trying to take over the DSA.

C. Derick Varn: 7:04

We have to talk. I guess we do have to talk about the. Maybe we work backwards. This one's a tough one, but I'm also going to give us all of our biases. Stefan, have you now or ever been a follower of any Trotskyite?

Stephen Hammel: 7:22

Yes, I think of this in terms of genealogies. I think that I did inherit a version of Trotskyism. That's unambiguous. I was a member of the IMAHO, the International Marxist Humanist Organization, which was sort of like my graduate training in Marxism. That was a Raya Genia Skye organization. Raya herself was Secretary to Trotsky and a prominent American member of the SWP before the Johnson Forest Intendancy split, before I inherited some version of Trotskyism which is a version of Leninism. It's a curious one, having gone through many twists and turns, including giving up any concept of the party, etc.

C. Derick Varn: 8:08

No, van Gogh party, no, what else? No programism at all.

Jason: 8:16

No proletariat.

Stephen Hammel: 8:18

Well, right, that's right. No, proletariat, necessarily right Instead.

C. Derick Varn: 8:22

Only the advanced parts of the proletariat. Advanced we mean of color.

Stephen Hammel: 8:25

Yeah, it's true. Also, the curious habit of miners and agricultural workers to happen to when in the right conditions, meaning properly trained, properly allowed for by the party or by the organization, will just sprout. You know just lines from the phenomenology of spirit. It's a remarkable phenomenon.

C. Derick Varn: 8:45

And, interestingly, these organizations, while they are not parties and denounce them, often have at least one of them has a more authoritarian structure than a lot of Marxist, leninist parties does.

Stephen Hammel: 8:59

Yeah, they're all in the map. I think you're talking about Climon's organization, which is a model of first person boosterism. But that said, you know, like Trotskyism at its very origin, many of these organizations are built around individuals, and those individuals often have tremendous contributions to make. I mean, these days they're not like political figures, they're academic figures. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everything these people have to say is wrong. In fact, I still learn a lot. I admire the, you know, the Huttus Anderson go to program translation that we just got. That's really useful, you know, et cetera.

C. Derick Varn: 9:39

Regrettable, jason. Have you now, or have you ever been a Trotskyite?

Jason: 9:46

Um, yes, the short answer is yes. I mean, I think I was. I was a member of the Young Communist League and the Communist Party until I was about 19. And then I joined the ISO. For then I was doing the ISO for kind of like a like a while until I was about 30. And I was in the national committee and whatever. It really just kind of defined my life for a little while. So then afterward I was like looking around for whatever else is Trotskyist that I could do while being a member of the DSA. It took a little while for me to like really fully, like consciously, abandon all of the like, the, the heritage and so on. But even now, like you know, it's like it's very interesting and important to like know stuff, and so I read some things. But I would say that I think I'm finally really fully abandoned all of my Trotskyism.

C. Derick Varn: 10:43

All right, Finally he's done.

Jason: 10:46

Yeah, it took like almost dying, but then Exercise. Yeah, all right.

C. Derick Varn: 10:55

Regrettable, Chris. Have you ever been a Trotskyite?

Chris : 11:01

Yeah Well, my trajectory is similar to Jason's. In fact, I'm the one that got him to join the Young Communist League and the CPSA. Then, right around the time that we quit the CPSA, I was really looking around for different Trotskyist organizations and I was like super into the socialist alternative at the time. I think it was socialist alternative, I don't know. I was like in my early 20s, maybe it was social. I was looking into them and I really liked them.

Chris : 11:33

I was in contact with some people from there and then around that was around the time that we met the ISO people and we were like you know, these guys are kind of weird with their state capitalism shit and they're like, no, there wasn't actually real socialism in the Soviet Union kind of like intellectually dishonest obfuscation, way to like not actually have to deal with the question and but whatever, they're the biggest game in town and they're really the only ones here.

Chris : 12:03

So Jason and I joined and we were both pretty much crypto orthotrotts the entire time we were in the ISO and then I quit in, I think, 2014, whenever they did their big shift towards oh yeah, forget everything we ever said about identity politics. Now we're like actually really into identity politics, and it wasn't so much the identity politics but just the really dishonest and shitty way that they went about doing it that made me quit. I just lost lost interest in spending all of my time doing trotski stuff and then I kind of just floated around until Jason and I joined the DSA as a paper member and never did anything. But yeah, I would say that my I've pretty much exercised the trotskism from my brain to for the most part, but you know that the post trotskism is still rattling around in there with my what's left of my Leninism and everything else.

Jason: 13:04

Yeah, I stuck around for like another year to like whatever. Keep fighting the good fight. But that's like the worst aspect of being a trotskist is just not giving up and just being entirely alone and thinking that that was good. Yeah, yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 13:20

And me. Have I ever been a trotski guy? And the question to that is actually, similarly to Stefan, complicated. But it's more complicated by the fact that I have come through, arguably, three different post trotskiist tendencies For a while before 2014. Yeah, so let me.

C. Derick Varn: 13:49

I was involved in the in the SP USA as a fellow traveler, because I was out of the country and joined a local and I was attached to the I believe it was called the militant tendency and it was basic. I didn't know this and have a word, for this is basically a post Marciite tendency of like what would be anything after 1978 doesn't count Maoist and trotskiist who were willing to work with them because they had a critique of the Soviet Union but they were defenseless. So that was the tendency I was allied to. I would love to pretend it was that coherent. Are they stated that clearly? They did not. We'd read a bunch of trotski and Mao texts etc.

C. Derick Varn: 14:41

Coming out of that, I was thrown first towards the Kassama project, which was immediately unpalatable to me, and then towards the Then towards platypus affiliated society, which I was a member for a year and a fellow traveler for a year and a half. The platypus affiliated societies lineage is complicated but at least a few of its initial members are are direct descendants of the Spartacist League and that branch of Orphan Trotskyism. But while there is an admiration for a Fox Trotskyism within platypus, no one would ever accuse it of being trotskyist. And then, lastly, out of when I was coming out of that, I was reading a lot of the weekly worker. You know the McNair public, the Mac. Well, it's not McNair, mcnair and Jack Conrad and whatnot. Publication from the Communist Party of Great Britain, provisional Committee, and got sucked into North Star, which was post ISO, which was a publication, wasn't really an organization.

Jason: 16:01

We really, really hated.

C. Derick Varn: 16:02

North Star. Yeah, no, he really did.

Jason: 16:07

Like, like I got.

C. Derick Varn: 16:08

I got, I've been put on.

Jason: 16:09

I've been put on an ISO enemies list multiple times, but, but it's actually amazing how often our paths almost crossed and what we probably would have had to fight if if they did we met we met actually just just late enough that we didn't have to declare each other enemies.

Chris : 16:28

Yeah, luckily.

C. Derick Varn: 16:30

So and that was a cameo inspired, which is also kind of a Marseillist tendency. Now, for those of you who don't know, marseillism is what we might call a Tanki Trotskyism, and that's always been true. It defended. It defended the Soviet Union's actions in Hungary and in the Prague Spring, it being Sam Marcy which is why he split. However, a lot of the current US Marseillist organizations will try to tell you that we wasn't really a trot at that point. That's not true. We remain a trot for, as far as I know, his entire life. So that that leads us to the context of world trotskyism.

C. Derick Varn: 17:09

One of the things we have to deal with in the US is US has an indigenous for lack of a better word trotskyist tradition that goes directly back to the man himself, and there is an imported trotskyist tradition which goes back to Britain. For the most part, the Argentine, mexican and French trotskyist have had some influence in American trotskyism, like theoretically, but their organizations have never. So as far as I know, I can't find any like imported organizations from France or Argentina. And like mandalite, ism was kind of like you know, it was kind of adopted by the US SWP. Do we have any Posadas groups here? No, posadas tendencies are post groups, so like they, they count.

C. Derick Varn: 18:09

I mean, it's weird. It kind of I literally think that started from an internet meme, so that's confusing. And if you have, if you're one of my many, many viewers who were politicized after 2014 or have never had an experience for trotskyism or come from, say, a more like a PSL or WWP, that's World Workers Party, a party for socialism and liberation. View of revisionism. Also, by the way, I hate to tell you guys, you guys are used to be trots my PSL and WWP friends but definitely you probably don't know any of this and this is probably alienating factions. And then you know we're not even dealing with all the post trotski stuff, because that's a whole that might have to be its own legacy, like, why was there even a thing called post trotskism?

Chris : 19:08

And really like the ISO should be considered post trotskiist, like like I know any like ortho trots in the in the in the audience are going to be like yeah, so is it real trotskiist? I'm like, yeah, ok, I'll concede that. Like the ISO is like a is definitely rejected enough of trotsky to probably can be considered post trotskiist.

C. Derick Varn: 19:33

The ISO in the in the UK SWP is weird also because they were both Stalinophobic and Stalinophilic at the same time. That's a categorization I get from Richard Rubin and Chris Kertron from the Ploypus Filiated Society. They try, they tend, to spectrumize trotskism and Stalinophobic and Stalinophilic variants depending on their stances towards the Fincism. It's not actually helpful with the ISO because the ISO I'm holding a shit ton of all to you share, so much so that a lot of people don't realize that Altee Sarah was a Marxist-Leninist trying to do it in a very strained, trying to basically justify a former Maoism in a very arcane way.

Stephen Hammel: 20:14

While remaining an official communist right. You just remain official communists his entire life. Could I just butt in to distinguish two things? So one of them and I love the idea that there's a kind of trot-Kinsey scale, but whatever that is, it's got to be describing what the positions of a certain organization or certain members of that organization are on the ground in the present. And then there's another thing that we were talking about earlier, which is acknowledging that these things have lineages, and in fact, maybe in the Trotskyist tradition those lineages are more important than in other realms of Marxism, and so it matters like where you came from, where the organization came from. Those two things can have almost nothing to do with one another in a determining capacity. So it just isn't the case that if you inherited your Trotskyism from some genealogy, you have that you want is able to predict what the position of any one of your members is at any given time.

Chris : 21:08

That's true. I would say the only thing that you can predict from it is probably organizational structure, and that would be like adherence to the sect form and the way that it's organized in a sort of caricature of early Bolshevism. That's a good point.

C. Derick Varn: 21:26

So I'm gonna put it to you this way I'm gonna list the various tendencies that were listed not by their founder names, which is how Trotskyist didn't refer them, but by a person affiliated with Neocauskism, I think, and this is Amal Sanhan. She did a map of US Trotskyism. That is incredibly helpful.

Chris : 21:56

But like Jason, did that map back in like 2010?

C. Derick Varn: 22:01

Arguably this map actually argues that you have to acknowledge that all lineage is within a DSA that aren't like pro ML as post Trotskyist, which is kind of funny when I think actually true, because I think Harrington is conciliation of Shackmunism.

C. Derick Varn: 22:24

But these are the tendencies that she came up with that distinguished them Official communism, which doesn't last very long by the end of the commentary and there's no Trotskyist group maintaining a left opposition position to official communism, orphid Trotskyism, and by that we can claim a couple of different tendencies that the Spartacist and the IBT is one, the International Post-Freak Tennessee, and then the Grantites are really what we should call them in the IMT form, the Wuddites, the International Marxist tendency, where they really care if you accept the big bang or not. Ultra leftism, which is Trotskyist, who subsumed in the other councilist or bodigist organizations or took councilist or bodigist positions, although interestingly I would call them left communists and ultra leftists. But interestingly Trotskyist left communists tend to not be accepted by other left communists because if you've met people who were more fractious than even Trotskyist, it's left communists, right oppositionist, are people who emerged who decided to align to Bacarn, which interestingly I might count as which is funny, I joke that I'm on the right, of the ultra left, anti-defensism that was you guys. Shackmanism, clifidism.

Chris : 24:14

It never really was us though, me and Jason, but the rest of the way I saw it Officially yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 24:20

Yeah, officially, officially, you guys were anti-defenses, to our great shame. Anarchism, which tends to come out of draperism, like Wayne Price, who was in one of the videos that I suggested we watch, which I'm gonna link in the show notes, for this opportunism is a tendency which some of these I'm like hey, but some of these existed within the same organization, because I think the ISO in the US and the UK SWP were opportunists as fuck.

Chris : 24:51

Yeah, absolutely Democrat tail list organization.

C. Derick Varn: 24:55

Pro-Marxist, leninist Trotskyism, aka American Marciism, feminist organizations that were Trotskis in origin, cwi and its offshoots, which is considered an. I have never understand if we can consider the militant Tennessee Orthodox or not, cause when I encountered salt they seemed like the ISO but and I would always get like I would always confuse them with Salt in Australia, which is-.

Jason: 25:32

Which is exactly the ISO.

C. Derick Varn: 25:34

Which is a cliffhide organization.

Chris : 25:35

Yeah, they used to come to our conferences and stuff.

C. Derick Varn: 25:38

Yeah, luxembourgist, multiple programs on clear groups, castroism, which is the actual, the main cannonite branch of the US SWP really splits from Orthodox Trotskism. When they're like, when they don't go full pro Marxist, leninist or pro Marciite, but do go. But we're going to defend Castroism.

Jason: 26:06

Yeah, but they also, like they, heralded that by formally, you know, denouncing the fact that they were Trotskis. They, like they wrote what was it called? It was a pamphlet called their Trotsky and ours yeah. So they like I don't know, they kind of don't belong.

C. Derick Varn: 26:22

Well, the thing is that most of these groups that don't belong by the time you get to the 2010s. Let's be honest. Yeah, definitely. I love that there's a multiple programs on clear and the Marxist humanisms, of which there are at least two, and that is confusing, because Marxist humanism also refers to Gramsciism, to Crucifism, et cetera, which is always like Shrodinger's Marxist humanist. When I meet someone who's a Marxist humanist, I'm like are you a Huttist and Anderson Marxist humanist? Are you a climate Marxist humanist? Are you just like, not an Autismarian Marxist humanist? Which one are you?

Stephen Hammel: 27:06

It's the hyphen, it's the hyphen. Yeah, I'm gonna look for the hyphen. If it's a hyphen, then it's us. If there's no hyphen, then it's them.

C. Derick Varn: 27:13

Yes, let's say so. Like many fucking things, a small technicality of grammar is the only way you can tell the difference. So it took us 20 minutes just to lay down the trajectories. That isn't even getting to the different sex and sex tendencies. So there are at least 50-something sex that have existed, that claim Trotsky's levycy in the United States. There are at least eight or nine named tendencies, not just we talked about in direction, but there's the militant tendency, there's the grantide tendency, there's the Marciite tendency, there's a Norphite tendency Norphite's real weird. There's the Oriolar light tendency, which I don't think exists anymore. There's a Shackmanite tendency. There's a Clarophyte tendency which subsumed the Shackmanite tendency. There's the draperite subset of the Shackmanite tendency. There's the right-wing subset of the Shackmanite tendency, doesn't the?

Chris : 28:32

draperite sub-tendency go into the ISO as well.

Jason: 28:36

Some of it does some of it becomes anarchist and some of it becomes a section of the group that was called Solidarity. Oh, the group that is called Solidarity.

C. Derick Varn: 28:45

Yes, and some of it becomes the foundation of what is now Marxist-Leninist rag month review. So there's the Spartacist and post-Spartacist league and then there are like workers power alarm, et cetera. Now that's just in the United States. In the world there's Pablo light, mandel light I forget the French tendencies beyond Mandel, but there's a bunch of them.

C. Derick Varn: 29:22

There's Prasadite, like and every now and then, these ideological tendencies will show up in America as like sub-sect of groups, because someone read a book from somewhere or found an internet meme or something. So now I know that sounds crazy because you're like oh, the only Trotskyists do that If I start listening to different Maoist traditions where legacy is less important. But splitting is also super common. I think that's the most important thing. Splitting is also super common. You will have a similarly weird conconconination of-.

Jason: 29:59

It's actually probably double even yeah.

Stephen Hammel: 30:02

Well, that should be curious, because it is the intention of Trotskyism from the very beginning from 1929 to found an alternative set of organizations in every country possible in order to win, to rest, dominance of the international communist movement from the Soviet state or those who currently control the Soviet state. At least, that's the idea I'd have until the Second World War. That's just not true. There's never a moment in the Chinese Revolution when some figure in the Chinese Revolution decides that there really ought to be an alternative international set of organizations. That's true. So maybe it's the case that Maoism in the United States is the way it is, in its sect-like existence, because they're just organizationally tailing the Trotskists.

C. Derick Varn: 30:51

We will I mean, I think it's bigger than that. I would say it's actually gotta be bigger than that, because that tendency amongst Maoist happens in countries that don't have strong Trotskist movements. Yeah, some of that has to do with the internal politics of China and people attacking themselves to particular figures outside of China like Yulin Bao or Zhou Enlai or any or the Gang of Four or later Deng or anti-Deng movements, and then there's also the fact that in Latin America, there's auxiliary movements that emerge, such as the most famous would be Shining Path to Lonzoism, but there's a bunch of others. So there's actually a whole book on this that actually does a comparison between Trotskism and Maoism as alternative forms of Marxist-Leninism. It's by A Belden, it's from 1988. It's called Trotskism, maoism in the US and France, but it talks about how, in certain places, maoism actually forms the same, like it fills in the gap for Trotskism, but in France and England and the US is actually interesting it more or less competes as a weird other sectarian form.

C. Derick Varn: 32:22

One of the interesting things, though, that we have to look forward to like what really kills the US major party of communism is not the Trotskyist, but it's the Maoist ones. So, like when the CPSA really starts to die and get down to its like perma-sect form of about three to 5,000, is when several different groups leave to form Maoist sectarian groups, the RCP being the first, of Boba Vacan. Well, what is now Boba Vacan? Oh, the Boba Vacan is not a founder. So there's that sectarian.

C. Derick Varn: 33:06

For most people this is incredibly fucking boring. One thing that we can say Max Elbaum says if you would combine all the Trotskyist, maoist and official communist movements in the United States in the 70s, you would have had a million members, which I think may have been true. But I'm also skeptical that any organization could have ever can like, would have ever maintained them and had that kind of mass appeal. So, like the idea of only we had in a split that we would have all stayed together. And the reason why I think that was impossible is that all these organizations and this is one of the first things we have to talk about and what makes Trotskyism unique and maybe why it isn't relevant anymore but all of these organizations have historically maintained the post 1921 Bolshevik faction ban.

Stephen Hammel: 34:04

Oh yeah, which is interesting, so you mean a ban against factions, not the banning of a Bolshevik faction.

C. Derick Varn: 34:14

No, the ban against factions.

Stephen Hammel: 34:16

Like the other factions within the Bolshevik.

C. Derick Varn: 34:18

So there was no longer a clear left and right opposition. There is no longer also left communist moves associated with the Bolsheviks. There was no longer other factions. This leads to the creation of the left opposition. We associate the left opposition almost purely with Trotsky. We should not so, which I kind of don't love. That about Trotskyism is it subsumes the entirety of the left opposition and the Bolsheviks. Like we don't talk about Zenovievism and looks the Novia sucks, but we don't talk about Zenovievism. We don't talk about what about?

Stephen Hammel: 34:58

the workers opposition Kolontai.

C. Derick Varn: 35:00

Yeah, Kolontai, the workers opposition we don't talk about, we have trouble dealing with people like Victor Serge are people who have more Sovietists by Soviet Union Council Positions in the left opposition are the fact that I'm not sure that the left and right opposition Like, for example, I'm going to make a startling claim I don't think that Bukharin actually ever fully renounced his prior left Bolshevik positions just because he thought the NEP was necessary. So associating him with the right opposition makes sense, because a lot of the right opposition picks up the NEP defense. But his other positions are not coherent with the right opposition, which are more concessionary to social democracy. And Bukharin was actually absolutely not. And I think the fact that his major collaborator on two books at least right, who did he co-write historical materialism with it, was the same guy.

Stephen Hammel: 36:12

You're talking about Prave Boshensky. Yeah, I don't think that. No, historical materialism is his own pen. It's ABC of Communism that's co-written with Prave Boshensky.

C. Derick Varn: 36:21

Is it just ABC of Communism?

Stephen Hammel: 36:23

All of the two. I think it is.

C. Derick Varn: 36:25

Okay, Now Prave Boshensky is associated with the left opposition and they never denounced each other. So, but Trotsky personally fucking hated Bukharin, thought Bukharin was more dangerous than Stalin. That's a world historical mistake.

Jason: 36:41

Yeah, oops.

C. Derick Varn: 36:42

Et cetera so.

Chris : 36:46

You just breathe that sectarian spirit out of his body and into the organizations that he found here.

C. Derick Varn: 36:54

So I guess this leads us to one of the very foundational things about Trotskyism. It maintains the 1921 Bolshevik membership constitution. It maintains the conditions of the common turn, the 21 conditions that co-out with the ABCs of Communism. That is significant because that's where all the splitting comes from.

Jason: 37:31

That's definitely where a lot of the splitting comes from. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 37:33

I mean now, when we get into the splits, there's no splitting or there's very little splitting when Trotsky is alive. And I say there's none. Actually, I think some of the splits do happen pretty early, but there's very little splitting when Trotsky is alive. The other things that are unique to Trotskyism I think we do have to talk about one is the transitional program, but no one agrees on what that actually means.

Jason: 38:03

Just the very idea of a transitional program. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 38:07

A transitional program versus the Min Max program of? Yeah, so I guess the second international YouI've always wondered about this the Min Max program is maintained by Marxist-Leninist parties too, after the 50s right.

Stephen Hammel: 38:24

You mean? The language or the deed.

Jason: 38:26

Yeah, it is, I think, the language is too. But I don't think that it's ever really discussed. But effectively, yes.

C. Derick Varn: 38:34

The minimum program operates within the purview of the popular front. Yeah, this is stuff you can demand.

Chris : 38:43

There's the weird classifications of governments from the common turn, which includes you remember this, jason right the workers' government. Then there's the bourgeois government with worker elements. There's a bunch of different classifications that the common turn used to determine whether or not to allow countries as a whole to affiliate to the common turn, and that sort of idea kind of, I think, becomes what the post-World War II Stalinist orientation towards other countries is based on.

C. Derick Varn: 39:32

But what's weird about that is that we actually have seven.

C. Derick Varn: 39:35

Yeah, the common turn classification system is also maintained during third periodism, where we don't properly work with any social democrats or whatnot, and then when it's returned after the secret speech or whatever, it's maintained also in the context of a popular front which has kind of made a lot of that irrelevant. So it is where it is. But one of the things that makes this so interesting is, with the exception of the United States, in most of these areas the official recognized Communist Party remains the biggest group and then a socialist party that in somehow, in spirit, usually came some lineage back to the Second International and ties to the Third Socialist International which we have to admit, there was one or I think still is one Is there.

Chris : 40:44

I thought they were still working on the Second Socialist International, Depending on how you classify it it's like it might actually be the fourth.

C. Derick Varn: 40:53

Yeah, it's the second, second or the third second international. You remember the Fifth International?

Jason: 40:59

There was a socialist international, then there was the labor and socialist international.

Stephen Hammel: 41:04

Oh, and then there's just yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 41:06

There's the Socialist International again. Yeah, and then there's the Socialist International again.

Jason: 41:10

Yeah, and the Socialist International, I think you should get this one, sorry.

C. Derick Varn: 41:14

And then the Socialist International. I mean, the Socialist International. You don't really have to be a socialist party, you just have to throw it in your name the party of the institutional revolution, the centrist party of Mexico, as part of the current Socialist International.

Jason: 41:29

I mean the party that got overthrown in Tunisia a couple of years ago was also a part of the Socialist International.

C. Derick Varn: 41:34

Yeah Right. And then the DSA finally left that international in, I think, 2016, 2016.

Jason: 41:43

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it was a world historic decision to leave that socialist international.

C. Derick Varn: 41:48

It doesn't matter. Yeah, so, and that international has not really mattered in a whole long time. Even when people talk about re-affiliating, no one in America is talking about re-affiliating with an international group beyond a regional group like the conference out in South America. So, okay, all this is to say that let's come up with the defining definitions of Altraskias, at least start off with what makes me unique, a historical lineage to the left opposition, the maintaining of the faction ban. But that means you have to split a lot. Pernimate revolution, what the Okay? So for me, it's actually, when I was a post-trot, one of the things that I just didn't understand. I was like, what do Trotskias mean by permanent revolution? Because that seems to be one of the first things post-trots drop.

Chris : 42:45

Well there was an.

Jason: 42:46

Sorry, in the ISO. What we meant by it when we said it was that there's a revolutionary possibility in any form of mass struggle and that the road would open into the transition of demands by virtue of socialist participation and leadership of that movement. So, despite the fact that it hasn't got any revolutionary aspirations, there would be some. So the working class and its socialist leadership was hegemonic within it.

Stephen Hammel: 43:22

That's right. It has to do with the disconcatenating of the idea that there's a certain stage of efficiency in production that corresponds to the socialist transformation, and therefore the revolutionary struggle need not concern itself with the level of development on the ground in any given place.

Chris : 43:40

And even in the ISO. There were, However, right around the time that I quit, and then they quit talking about stuff like this altogether they were having an argument about whether or not the theory of permanent revolution was even relevant in our era.

C. Derick Varn: 43:55

I mean, clearly one of the things that I can tell you about all the post-trotskias organizations because, like I said, I was a satrual bunch of them is that no, it clearly wasn't, because no, I mean, it took me a long time to get that. Part of that is to distinguish it from the Marxist-Leninist and this is a later Marxist-Leninist but is maintained kind of by official Marxist-Leninist parties like the Communist Party USA, the Communist Party of France and definitely by Maoist parties is the stage theory of revolution which is first political, then economic, then social, I think, and that's the order in which it goes. Or maybe it's first political, then social, then economic. I'm never quite sure what order they put it in and when. Mao is actually being as most radically experimental as during a social revolution and that's when he was doing the most for economics. I don't get it, but that's the argument. Like there's also a great proletarian social revolution in the USSR and everyone forgets that it existed because apparently it didn't change anything.

Jason: 45:04

So Sometimes you just have to name a period.

C. Derick Varn: 45:14

Yeah Right. So there's that distinction. There's also the transitional program, which I've mentioned a bunch of times. No Trotskyist groups really agree on what it is.

C. Derick Varn: 45:28

I'm actually going to say that, even though there was a formal program released by Trotsky which is likeone of my favorite things about it is it has predictions in it that are wrong. It predicts actually the same as Marx and Leninist did that communism was aboutthe communism about to be dominant because the old dynamics of pre-war capitalism were going to kick in and there was going to be an immediate crisis to end all capitalism. Like almost happened in 1929. It's now going to happen in the 50s and everybody is wrong about that because they don't see how capital is evolving in its management. But it's just one of the first problems. But that's actually in the transitional program. It actually sayslike we're going to be in a communist horizon by the end of the 50s because of the capitalist crisis.

C. Derick Varn: 46:32

The economic element of Trotskyism is interesting because TrotskyI'm going to say this nicely and it's going to make a lot of Trotskyist mad, but Trotsky was an economic moron. In my opinion. He doesn't have. It's not that big in his analysis of things. It does come up in the transitional program, but not much anywhere else. Actually In the transitional program he's actually recapitulating Soviet doctrine.

Jason: 47:02

I mean, I think that's why right, Because he didn't have to be the economy guy in the USSR. That question was solved for the rest of capitalism's history, which could only be another couple months, another couple years maybe.

Stephen Hammel: 47:16

Right. Well, there is a moment when he does literally have to be the economics guy, and that's when he's sent to the central planning briefly before he's booted out. But I take this point to be even broader than that and I'll go a step further, which is to say that Trotsky himself does not distinguish himself as a theorist at any level. He distinguishes himself as a rhetoricician, as a military commander and as a historian, but not necessarily as a political economist and not as a political theorist of any extent, even if the theory of permanent revolution is thinner than anything. For example, in the past I'm reminded of this of two titles that, when I was reading up for this episode, I put next to one another.

C. Derick Varn: 47:57

It's thinner than Stephen Mow even, which I think was pretty damning.

Jason: 48:01

I mean at least Mow tried to become a philosopher. That's something to quibble over, because the whole Russian revolution is based upon what the permanent revolution is about. So that's just. That's harder than I Sure.

Stephen Hammel: 48:17

But let's put two things next to one another. So there's Luxembourg looking at Lenin and saying, and I know this is an aproposable title, right, but Marxism or Leninism, polemically, and there are lots of titles that are Leninism or Trotskyism, and you can tell, the Marxism just falls out of the pot because the topic has changed. The topic has gone from a series of theoretical commitments that cash out as political decisions to a series of political affiliations that cash out as institutional affiliations.

Jason: 48:46

Yeah, that's right. That's entirely right. Yeah, I just mean to say that the idea that a minority working class could lead a majority peasantry and still make a worker's revolution is a lot that is theoretically a little bit heavier than you were giving it credit for, but also that's the only way that it is. The permanent revolution as a broader concept doesn't mean anything at all.

C. Derick Varn: 49:10

All right. So there are a few other distinctions and before we talk about the client Trotskyism, just what Trotskyism is that are unique to Trotskyism but maintain One a preference for the United Front, but a specific form of the United Front. Let's go into that, because there's the United Front from above and the United Front from below, and then there's also what's the specific formulation of the United Front that the USSR adopts about self-censorship. That's new, I don't know. I forget the name for it and one of the videos I'm only going to show now it's Matt McNair calls it what it is, but there's a distinct one that kind of moves the United Front into what would become the popular front. It's first tried out on comment or advice to China and their relationship with the Guamandong.

C. Derick Varn: 50:11

Oh yeah, that worked out real great for everybody involved. Yeah, yes, but there's, which means United Front. But you censor your own members through democratic centralism so that they don't break the front, even if they're stating an actual position of the communist organization that they're in. The communism maintains the second international, early third international position of United Front from above strategy and United Front from below. So United Front from above is we will join with parties to use specific actions, but we'll not join a government with them.

C. Derick Varn: 51:02

Now that's a weird distinction in the United States because that's literally fucking impossible to do. It's just like it's not even on the table. It's one of the problems with not just Trotskyist but everybody's orientations coming out of Europe when they hit the United States and they don't have a parliamentary party system to deal with, it actually kind of makes the popular front, even as understood there, as irrelevant. Because part of the issue with the popular front is you are supposed to maintain a distinct party identity, even if you're joining in coalition governments with progressive bourgeois parties. But you can't maintain a distinct party identity in the United States. When you try to, you end up being the seat PUSA, which has almost no electoral clout since the what 40s.

Chris : 51:57

I think key is the idea that the institution that you're a part of, that is cooperating with other institutions, has to be of substantial size to throw your weight around and not be completely subsumed by the ones that you're in coalition with. In the United States, that's not possible if the groups that you're in coalition with are affiliated to the Democratic Party.

C. Derick Varn: 52:17

All right, we've gotten those key features of Trotskyism out. Also, according to Marxist, leninist, we're all secret fascists. That's true. What else do they say about us? We're bourgeois idealists as well. Rekers. I've been called a wrecker.

Chris : 52:41

Terrorists destroying copper mines. That's my favorite thing. It is why I became a Trotskyist.

C. Derick Varn: 52:48

Just go to the industry. Okay, all that, salinas aside, now we have to talk about the theoretical innovations that start causing the splits before we get to the current decline. The first question that comes up and this happens from Trotsky is still alive is what is the nature of the Soviet Union, of which we need to maintain our left oppositions as a separate identity, not as trying to renew a faction. And then, are we going to be defensists or not, in regards to either the USSR and Soviet-aligned countries? Are we taking a third campus? Are we going to even endorse capitalist aggression against them? A lot of positions actually have extreme minority in the Trotskyist movement, but if you were listening to Marcez Leninist, you would think that's what they all believed. This leads you to have to theorize what the Soviet Union actually is and why it has deviated from its revolutionary past.

C. Derick Varn: 54:11

We already have there's already a couple of traditions that have already tried this before Trotskyism does. There's the basic big social democrats, which blah, blah, blah Leninist dictator, all right. Usually that comes out of the fact that they get bitter about not being able to meet the 21 conditions and they get even more mad about social fascism. I get it. Both socialist and communist end up in fucking camps in central Europe because they're killing each other over this shit and then the fascists come and get them both. I have to remind people that communist and socialist rank and file were killing each other in Europe over this. Just a reminder they were killing each other in Europe over this. A lot of the bad blood is not just theoretical. It's like you killed my friend.

Chris : 55:21

In the instance of the German SPD, they actually hired out the free corps like right wing paramilitaries to kill communists.

C. Derick Varn: 55:32

Now, interestingly, a lot of people think that that's the Kalski-Bernstein faction. That's not the Ebert faction, which, by the way, the people that Lenin split with aren't even the right wing of the SPD. The right wing of the SPD is way fuck scarier.

Stephen Hammel: 55:51

That's right In the Calpe, it's nothing but horrible words to say about the right wing of the SPD. It's important to remember that Even in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, stalinist and Trotskis he had Stalinists rounding up and shooting Trotskis who had even fought on the side of the Republicans. It matters. By the way, one of the things that is really distracting potentially distracting about focusing exclusively on positions, which is what's at stake in being a Trotskist in various moments in history, just really changes. You began with the question why does it even survive 1991? Yeah, which is a good question we should come back to.

C. Derick Varn: 56:36

Well, I mean, this is what I'm trying to build to, because that's what we have to ask when we talk about the decline is well, if this question of positions emerges but it comes out of very real people killing each other I know some of my positions are unpopular. For example, I tend to be a Soviet defenseist and I think some of the stuff that Trotsky said he would have done as a leader of the Soviet Union would have been just as disastrous as what Stalin did.

C. Derick Varn: 57:04

So, like Some, of it was what Stalin did. Yeah, right, and so Trotsky gets real mad when I say that. But I also don't deny that people were killing each other over this in active like conflicts because because of like stances on how you did the United Front. That's what. That's what that divide is in the Republican Army in Spain. It's like how you maintain the United Front and who you're willing to work with. So there's that, so the theories. There's what Trotsky says.

C. Derick Varn: 57:47

Trotsky kind of floats a bunch of ideas actually like, which is why most of Trotsky's can can kind of claim that their theories about this are tied to Trotsky, except for the last one. So there is the basic three positions. The Orthodox Trotskyist position is that the Soviet Union is defensible but it's a deformed worker state. Why it is deformed, however, is even with an Orthodox Trotskyist is actually still an open question, whether or not it's Bonapartism or something else. A version of deformed worker state separates from it, and that is a bureaucratic collectivist critique, which is which becomes parallel to the new, the new class critique out of Yugoslavia. And I've always found that weird because I'm like I've never really completely understood how both the deformed worker state and bureaucratic collectivism couldn't be true. I guess the the idea the differences. Bureaucratic collectivism posits that the bureaucrats are a strata that has effectively become a class.

Chris : 59:00

Yeah, it's a firmly entrenched ruling class strata Right.

C. Derick Varn: 59:04

Whereas the deformed worker state is like well, there's a bone apart as structure, but that could go away, yeah.

Jason: 59:10

But those are just degrees. If there was any real basis for either one of those groups existing, they would have found the basis, for this is what starts-. Hey, bring over that difference.

C. Derick Varn: 59:21

This is what starts the first round of splits with Entraschis. Which is the difference between bureaucratic collectivists and deformed worker state theory? Now, several times out of the bureaucratic collective class, casper separately in Europe, the Tony Clef around the Vietnam War, you start having people pick up what was formerly a left communist position or Marxist humanist position, depending of state capitalism, right, yeah. However, again these are under theorized because the theories of why the Soviet Union is state capitalist is wildly different. Some of them are really hard to maintain when the early ones are about the NEP and that's been over since 1931, or something like.

Chris : 1:00:18

Yeah, the Clefite one is literally just about the fact that surplus labor is being extracted by a class that isn't the working class and kept so that's what makes it state capitalist. It has nothing to do with markets. It has nothing to do with anything except surplus value.

Jason: 1:00:36

Yeah, I remember one time I'm not going to name this person, but a person who was in a very high up in the ISO said to me he was like well, so okay, the worker state was deformed Until there was a bureaucratic collective ruling class, us managing state capitalism. Yeah, why can't all three?

C. Derick Varn: 1:00:57

of those things be the same my whole life. I'm like those are actually describing different elements of the system itself. But what is really undergirding those distinction is how defences you're going to be at the Soviet Union Right.

Jason: 1:01:12

Yeah, that's what's at stake.

C. Derick Varn: 1:01:14

Yeah. So what's at stake is do we defend the Soviet Union against Western aggression or not, which is where the whole anarchist and right wing deviations from Trotskyism come from and why. You know the paleocon, why Marxist Leninists love to actually pick up the paleocon conspiracy theories that all the Trotskis became neoconservatives, even though Malist also did that. But they don't talk about it. But there is a real tendency and a specific subset of tendencies that goes from like Shackman to Sidney Hook, from Sidney Hook into Sidney Hook students in the Congress of Cultural Freedom.

C. Derick Varn: 1:01:57

But there's also Burnham who leaves early on, who's a bureaucratic collectivist, who is like the father of both neoconservativeism and parts of paleoconservativism and kind of sets up the Congress for Cultural Freedom and stuff like that. But there's also a whole lot of right oppositionist defectors from the Socialist Party that get tied into that. So to blame it all on Trotskyism is utterly misleading. It's just lazy. I have a Trotskyist who tried to claim that Shackman was never a Trotskyist and I'm like only if you do the no true Trot, like anyone who is not an Orthodox, Trot isn't really a Trot line.

Jason: 1:02:40

Yeah, I mean he was not. If the fact that he was the leader of the Communist Party and then a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and like met Trotsky and whatever, like, if you don't count those things, then sure, yeah, he wasn't a Trotskyist, but if those things don't count, then that means that no one ever was a Trotskyist. Yeah, also that'd be true for Canon, thought you were a Trotskyist, that would also be true for Trotsky.

C. Derick Varn: 1:03:04

Yeah, trotskyism is kind of Trotskyist, which I've actually kind of tried to make that argument before. So the defenseism question and there's like so we have the three justification theories for why we are aren't right. We have the we just talked about those, but then there's defenses. Third, campus, and anti-defensists are even anti-communist Trotskyism that emerges Now. I will point out that I think the anti-communist, anti-defensists line is pretty fucking rare.

Jason: 1:03:41

Well, and also like, at a certain point that stops being Trotskyism, you know just, it stops having much to do with it. So like if you were making a chart, you could draw that line, it would you just fade out.

C. Derick Varn: 1:03:52

Well, I've seen the chart and it does like it. That's like we now are dealing with something that's mutated into something else. Ok, yeah, but you know they also talk about the ultra left or left communist deviations, of mutating into something else too. So that's what the debate's about. So this leads us to my first question why the fuck was there still Trotskyist after 1992? Because if McNair punts out in the book Revolutionary Strategy, they were all it's with a minor exception it may be the Marciites Wrong about what was going to happen in the Soviet Union. None of their theories or their positions on defensism ended up mattering.

Jason: 1:04:41

Yeah, I mean by by 90, but 91, 92,. By that point, the any any actual reason for a distinct kind of communism has already been kind of dead for like a couple of decades and they're just existing because, you know, a tiny handful of people make their living off of running whatever weird sect in it. That they were to all merge into one macro sect, then they would have to I don't know find jobs or something. So what's interesting about?

C. Derick Varn: 1:05:12

this is this is also the one of the things I will say about this is most of the like yes, the US SWP, I think still technically exist and I found, like Pathfinder, I find interesting like Pathfinder press stuff like outside of the United States, More than I find it inside the United States, which is pretty funny. Then they sell the Pathfinder press.

Chris : 1:05:32

Yeah, but the Pathfinder tendency still exists, Anyway.

C. Derick Varn: 1:05:35

So there are dozens of them, at least he had dozens, but one of the things about the post 1992, let's think about the ones, the trustiest organizations that actually are still around Solidarity I don't know when they start, but they're still around. I think they start like 83.

Jason: 1:05:52

OK, they split off of the Jack.

Chris : 1:05:53

Barnes and Mary Alice Waters, SWP, and then they bring in it. Right, Is that correct? And then they bring in part of their elements because of the hard the hard like third worldist pro Stalin turn that the SWP takes, I think in the early 80s, yeah.

Jason: 1:06:11

The 83, I think is the year the, so there's that there is.

C. Derick Varn: 1:06:16

There is a Norfite who are small, and that's the Socialist Equity Party and the United States. There might even be a dozen of them. But they the thing is they have staying power. Don't mock them. They're just one of the few. They're like they're still around.

Jason: 1:06:31

I'm mocking them because they're still around.

C. Derick Varn: 1:06:34

Yeah, the interesting thing about them, though, is they're actually even hard to categorize according to our current schema, like because they take, they take a mixture of. They take a lot of ultra-low, they take a lot of ultra-left positions actually.

Chris : 1:06:51

They really do, yeah. I mean, yeah, a bunch of like sort of Identity issue based issues that they take are incredibly ultra-left.

Jason: 1:07:01

Well, and also like they disagree with one thing that at least I might consider to be fundamental when it comes to Trotsky's whatever political strategy, which is trade unions. They just they won't have anything to do with them, Right. Which which would I think that would disqualify you.

C. Derick Varn: 1:07:21

So they are. They take the same position to trade unions as counselors. They actually take a harder position than Bordegas do, yeah. So so the Norfites are still around. I don't know when they start. They must spend the 80s. The ISO still around. But the nature of the ISO has changed. This is it's. It's incredibly taken on the character of its British, of the British Clefites, which is not its origin.

Chris : 1:07:55

And you mean in 1991?

C. Derick Varn: 1:07:58

Yeah, ok, even as early as 1991,. We're seeing like this British strain really becoming dominant.

Chris : 1:08:05

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:08:05

So we have solidarity, we have we have the ISO, we have the, the Socialist Equity Party. This was real small but they, they hit above their weight with their web, with with website and publication. So we can't ignore that. Who else is around in 92? I guess the WWP is still around and I think at that point they're also still. They're still important because they end up becoming the basis of, like, international answer and whatnot.

Chris : 1:08:38

Right and they are. Is that before the split?

C. Derick Varn: 1:08:43

Yeah, they split in the early on with the 2005.

Chris : 1:08:47

Yeah, oh, wow, that late. Yeah, ok, so that they split from from the workers world party to the workers world party and the the party for social Parted liberation the pumpers by Slot.

C. Derick Varn: 1:09:00

Right.

Jason: 1:09:01

Both of those things to socialism and liberation. Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:09:04

Party for socialism and liberation. That split is not ideological, even really initially.

Jason: 1:09:11

It's clearly not yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:09:13

It's about control over resources of a party in California and relationship of a resources to international answer. But I think at this point there's no like like. If you go to the WWP or the PSL now they literally pick up like 1930s and Marxist winning his curriculum. He start with that and then like they have a lot of ties to special Chinese communism and whatnot. Yeah, but at this time period there's I think they're still Trotskyist. There's no from their own conception. There's some Trotskyist. So that's four left. What's his left? Solidarity in the militant, I mean the militant faction and salt and all that hadn't come over yet.

Chris : 1:09:59

No, right Do you said the SWP, right, the American SWP, yeah, the American.

C. Derick Varn: 1:10:03

SWP is still around.

Jason: 1:10:06

But the freedom socialist party, which is a split out of the out of the SWP, and it's based on Marxist feminism and socialist action also. And socialist actions around, right, yeah, and I think I think the group that that becomes the lead for the revolutionary party, because it's like half a dozen guys who think that the state capitalism thesis is right but it's not a step. But that's a step forward, not a step sideways.

C. Derick Varn: 1:10:44

So okay. So the other thing that's still around the league for the revolutionary party, and then I haven't mentioned the Sparks. Oh yeah, the Sparks splits. I don't know when the IBT starts to exist, but the Sparks are definitely still around, okay.

Stephen Hammel: 1:11:05

What's the end of that period, by the way? Okay, so you say, what's the organization? Still around a 92?. When is the end of the period where it just doesn't seem relevant? Is it 2008, 2009?

Jason: 1:11:15

I'd say it's 99.

C. Derick Varn: 1:11:17

I say I actually say we start seeing the ISO and Solidarity and then start to regain actually out of the Alter Globalization Movement.

Chris : 1:11:30

believe it or not. And so the ISO tailing the Green Party brings in a lot of membership and in fact I think the biggest of membership ever is probably after the first Ralph Nader campaign. And then, it fluctuates and skips right over.

Jason: 1:11:50

It never breaks 2000 and it fluctuates somewhere around between 800 and 1500 for the rest of time. But, 99, that was really the year because there was the Labor Party that was founded in 96, that people in the ISO were very involved in and they were very proud of and happy about, and also the Alter Globalization Movement and the Green Party. Like those factors all combine into that's the ISO's moment.

Chris : 1:12:19

That's when the ISO gets booted from. The SWP is over the Alter Globalization Movement, because the ISO wanted to maintain an orientation of building socialist politics within the Alter Globalization Movement and the SWP wanted to change it up and talk more about anti-capitalism and try to have like a broader appeal.

C. Derick Varn: 1:12:37

Honestly, yeah, particularly in regards to, frankly, islamist movements in Europe, like that was specifically part of the debate. Yeah, so different kinds of opportunism leads to split. But what's funny about this is the IS tradition, because the ISO is kind of the IS tradition but the IST is really dominated by the UK SWP. That domination of, like the Tony Cliff faction as opposed to the old Shackmanite Draperite faction, maintains after they're kicked out in the 90s. So the Alter Globalization Movement leads to this growth. I think it's also interesting that the ISO has ties to other English speaking sex of significant size in Australia.

Jason: 1:13:34

In Canada.

C. Derick Varn: 1:13:35

In Canada. Yeah, so that maintains for a while. Interestingly, I think the beginning of the ISO's decline comes from Occupy.

Jason: 1:13:52

Yeah definitely.

C. Derick Varn: 1:13:54

But the other thing that happens is not the ISO's fault, but there's all these really kind of nasty sex scandals out of the UK, right.

Jason: 1:14:06

Well, and also. The ISO has its own but a part of this is also like so Occupy created a moment that the ISO was not prepared for. Part of that moment was that socialist alternative finally got, you know, shama Sawant elected, which means they they finally stepped onto the stage and the ISO was like very, very protective of that stage and they refused any kind of collaboration. Like I remember, actually, in socialism 2014, in preparing for it, I was making the case to bring Shama Sawant in order to do the panel on elections.

Jason: 1:14:44

And they were like no, no, we can't do that.

C. Derick Varn: 1:14:46

It was crazy how weirdly sectarian they are. So God, they were attacking me all the time. I remember they used to like comb my blog just to make my life hard. I don't know. I mean it was someone within the leadership. Because I, because my affiliation with these two post-trots against organizations made me both. Plotopus and North Star made me persona. No Marata.

Jason: 1:15:12

Yeah, I probably didn't like you and just didn't know you, but just like I didn't like the concept that you embodied, you know.

C. Derick Varn: 1:15:21

So so there's that the IMT, I think, is also becoming more important.

Chris : 1:15:28

Yeah, in the mid-auts and the mid-auts. I remember coming across. They had two members in North Texas and they tried to start a chapter there.

Jason: 1:15:39

They made an appeal that they would bring the IMT into the ISO, but only if the ISO would affiliate to that international, that the IMT was a part of Right, and they were just thinking that, like I would not have a more useless conversation with anyone.

Chris : 1:15:55

And this was after the ISO dropped their state capitalism requirement for membership.

C. Derick Varn: 1:16:00

Right, yeah, which is interesting because the IMT, the woods, the Allen Woods, I'm T, is so very, also severe British but has its own. Well, I guess it doesn't actually does it. So all this happens, iso. The ISO interestingly hits above its weight, even though it's pretty big for a sectarian organization. How's it hit above its weight? It has a market price, yeah, yeah.

Jason: 1:16:39

It has the.

C. Derick Varn: 1:16:39

ISR, which is very well distributed, and it has sometimes it has a fair amount of money, which I don't understand how that happened exactly, but it has like.

Jason: 1:16:50

I mean a lot of it was because of the regime that we had around selling the newspaper, like we didn't just sell the newspaper, every individual member bought newspapers and then they went and sold those papers separate from the paper sales.

Chris : 1:17:02

Yeah, and then we were basically like this the Haymarket Street team. We would like anytime there was an event of any size, we would do free labor for Haymarket books. On top of the fact that they the do's were pretty strong, the do's were pretty significant.

Jason: 1:17:17

Yeah, they were like really really heavy.

Chris : 1:17:19

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:17:21

And the ISO was so expensive that I wouldn't join it when I was shopping for stuff and it was $20 a month and that was the cheapest that reduce could be.

Jason: 1:17:29

That was like basically hardship, do's yeah.

Chris : 1:17:31

It was campus based, so you had a revolving membership of like free labor of idealistic college students.

C. Derick Varn: 1:17:41

Older millennials and younger and younger Gen Xers. When I meet them, if I meet their introduction to Marxism, the vast majority of them either come from the ISO or the SPART, yeah, which, and then the IMT starts growing and the odds they do a lot of internet outreach, so just better at it. For some reason they jump on that pretty early. They also like encounter distinction to the ISO, really double down on anti-indignity politics, like more than almost anybody else, except for the Norfites, like they're like. Well, we can have Marxist feminism, but we don't have any of this feminism bullshit we can have like.

Stephen Hammel: 1:18:28

That's what the ISO uses.

C. Derick Varn: 1:18:29

That's far as that can be position, yeah, so so that's that's the IMT's growth, and they have a strong base in Canada and they've had it for a while.

Jason: 1:18:43

The craziest thing about that group is like they existed. They exist because of the split in the socialist alternative, whatever CWI, because they're the group that wanted to stay involved in the Labor Party after Tony Blair Right. And that means that, like the US section was just founded by a guy from the UK who moved right US and he was like well, I can't just join a US group, I'll found a US chapter of the group I was in Right and that's it. Like they don't, they don't have a, they didn't. I don't think they they ever have had a single ideological difference from the social alternative, except for the fact that you know they're the, they're the American version of the group in Britain.

C. Derick Varn: 1:19:30

So the other thing that this ties us to, though, is salt, which is also a bit the militant tendency is not from the United States, right yeah, it's imported. Why are all these British? What is about? One question I'm going to ask Stephen, chris and Jason what about the post-alternat globalization moment? Makes British Trotskyism, in specific, so fucking attractive that it's a dominant way people encounter Marxism in the arts and the art and early art teams, at least up until right after Occupy?

Stephen Hammel: 1:20:15

You know everything's imported in the United States, lots of most. Socialism is important in the United States. Marxism is important in the United States.

C. Derick Varn: 1:20:21

Can I, can I, so can I. Trotskyism is not imported.

Stephen Hammel: 1:20:25

Sure there's a well, I mean it's important in the sense that that Canon has to go meet Trotsky and then bring Trotskyism back to the United States.

C. Derick Varn: 1:20:32

I guess that's true. But I mean like, but Canon. Canon's an interesting figure because of all the Trotskyism we met he, he was in all the parties, he's in, he's in the SPA, he's in the CPU SA.

Jason: 1:20:45

And the IWW before the SPA.

C. Derick Varn: 1:20:47

Yeah, he's in the IWW. He has a line that is that I mean he's a comrade of devs until that's irrelevant.

Jason: 1:20:55

Yeah, sure, I think the answer to your question can just be found in the fact that, like Americans, mostly just only speak English, and so, like Argentines, brazilians, they couldn't, they can't have a foothold the same way that British people can.

C. Derick Varn: 1:21:12

So, yeah, no, I agree with you on that, Although Mandel was always popular in the United States and he's not part of the US. That's true Belgium, and specifically yeah why is there a term?

C. Derick Varn: 1:21:27

This is actually always interested me because it's over now. Yeah, it's done, but for a long time. The British left not the Canadian left also speaks English. Fucking closer to us, the British left is where a lot of American left ideas that aren't tied to the CPUSA come from. And what makes this even weirder is during the ultra globalization movement the WWE and the PSO really grow. That's because they're in charge of international answer, but early on they're also cooperating with the ISO, like during the anti-war movement.

Jason: 1:22:10

They are yeah, that's definitely true, yeah.

Chris : 1:22:13

Honestly speaking, anecdotally, I would say that the when people first started using the internet to find people to be politically affiliated to, the ones that would show up were the American versions of the British counterparts that were in the United States. So, like I found, you know, socialists alternative, I found CWI, I found the ISO all on the internet. You know, this is all just on the internet and they responded to you when you asked them questions, unlike the IWW or the Socialist Party they like, because they had, I think, the backing of people in Great Britain or whatever. They had publications coming out all the time. They had books that were specifically oh you, you have a question about this. Well, there's a guy in England who wrote this book. Check it out. Yeah, you know.

C. Derick Varn: 1:23:09

and it was it was just a, resources were easily available and on top of that, they were everywhere, every whereas the US Communist Party was a joke during this time, in this time period and specific, that's where I was like you might as well just fucking be a Democrat.

Jason: 1:23:26

Yeah, the DSA was also a joke it was even a bigger, some of somehow a bigger joke yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:23:32

But the DSA maintained 5000 members for for 20 years. But they maintain those members. I think they fluctuated between four and 5000.

Chris : 1:23:42

But well, that has a lot to do with conditions of membership as well being very lax Right.

C. Derick Varn: 1:23:47

Men still are.

Jason: 1:23:49

Yeah, because by that by that definition the ISO should have been like 30,000. But in reality the DSA was probably about what? 10 people who were really active for decades.

C. Derick Varn: 1:24:02

Right, so then salt happens. Go ahead, Jeff. No.

Stephen Hammel: 1:24:05

I'm just gonna say just at a slightly higher level of elevation. It's got to be the case that there's. Why didn't Marxism just die in 1991? Yeah, and you know so. And I think there are two things that it has going for it. On the one hand, it has just the power of its explanatory like its Marxism, right, just the power, the explanatory power of Marxism and its intellectual credibility, which remains, at least in some circles, undiminished. And then, and the second thing is some muscle memory around what it's like to form an organization in the first place, yeah, but otherwise it maintains the flame of Marxism until such time when it all, when at all, I mean, there's an end date. For me it's the, it's the growth period in the DSA, because then at least there is a replacement, there is a plausible, I mean. I think everyone, maybe except for barn, but everyone in the room had to join the DSA at some point, no matter what our trajectory was.

Jason: 1:24:58

Right, yeah, that's true.

C. Derick Varn: 1:25:00

I mean I absolutely refuse to fucking join the DSA.

Jason: 1:25:05

Well, you know you were right. It didn't matter either way, for me.

Chris : 1:25:10

It's not that, it's all right around the point.

Jason: 1:25:12

All of these groups. They were all founded and maintained by a certain generation of people and, like you know, 10 years from now, I don't think that. Well, whatever, I don't want to, I don't think that they'll be around.

C. Derick Varn: 1:25:26

So so we're not this, this. We haven't really answered any questions about why, but we have done over the conditions that in a very brief and we're not dealing. We haven't dealt with the 60s and 70s, which are both the high point of the Trotsky's organizations, but also that split mania, and that's why we skipped it, because it's like, yeah, like that's when, like everyone is splitting and everything like every 35 seconds in the 70s.

Chris : 1:25:52

But because, there's that has a lot to do with the FBI.

C. Derick Varn: 1:25:59

Yeah, there's that too. That's also true for the, but that's also true for the for the Maoist organizations.

Jason: 1:26:08

Maoist organizations are right. The first Maoist organization was founded by the FBI.

C. Derick Varn: 1:26:13

Yeah, what I, what I fucking love about about Co until pro is with rare when they kill people, with the exception of the Panthers. Panthers is the exception when they kill people, so it's an accident because I got local cops involved, Like like that's. Every time I've read I'm like they asked the local oh fuck, someone's gonna get gun happy, and now someone's dead. But most of the Co until pro does is just bring out natural splits that already exist in the organization. Yeah, yeah that's right.

Stephen Hammel: 1:26:46

There was a moment where I mean, I think again, historical context matters a lot.

Stephen Hammel: 1:26:51

When you know, when the international communist movement splits in the wake of the Russian Revolution, for any number of reasons, the, even, you know, the American Party, take the American Party, they take a fraction of the militant working class with them. You know, even when, even when Ryan C L R James split, the John's Forest Densey splits with the SWP, they take a fraction of its worker membership with them. Yeah, and that's just not what happens in the 60s and 70s. There, I mean, you get these sort of cultural personalities emerging and the rest of it, even though structurally, historically, there's still some hope that the basic Trotsky's you know vision, which is to rest control over the international communist movement, is still at least plausible. I've heard, or listened some level liable. When there's no longer a communist movement, not only is it not a main, you know, even close to the mainstream of the international labor movement, etc. When there's just no Soviet Union anymore, it becomes just a maintenance boat, just a lifeboat, really just a life raft.

C. Derick Varn: 1:27:53

Well, one thing we have to do is about the ISO and then this period post 1992, but even in the 60s, because the new left, by this point, when they try to enter workers organizations, they're trying to salt those organizations. They are not organically emerging from the right.

Jason: 1:28:10

That's exactly right. I mean, when the ISO was first founded it was like entirely within the Teamsters Union, right, but that didn't last.

C. Derick Varn: 1:28:19

It was the IS back then, right.

Jason: 1:28:22

Yeah, but so when the ISO founded itself, basically it took the Teamsters out of the IS, but then it was like a tiny group of people until they stopped being a part of the working class.

C. Derick Varn: 1:28:35

Yes, I mean, and this is when how Draper writes his anatomy of the microsec, critique of what he sees, and just is like look, if you're going to do that, you might as well just write don't try to maintain these sex, just communist theorize until there's a better working class movement to what which is which was my position, like I was associated with the reasonable position. Yeah, I was associated with the Draperite Marxist Center, which is center in the term of a center away from sectarian organizations, as opposed to the Kalskate Marxist Center, which is a center of an international communist movement, which doesn't exist, so not yet. So anyway, to get into this, it's funny. It's actually kind of funny when you look at like where they put like on the flowchart. I'm looking at like how Draper becomes like a sect of one, basically, yeah, but for all his really against microsex.

Chris : 1:29:41

he becomes a nanosext Right.

C. Derick Varn: 1:29:43

And then there's like the Love and Rage network and stuff like that, which are also tied to Draper, but they're anarchists they just give up on. They give up on Marxism. That creates people like Ron Tabor, who wrote the tyranny of theory, and stuff like that so, and Wayne Price, my favorite anarchist because he's basically a Marxist. But that gets us into the odds. One of the things I think we need to know we've already moved in the 70s, that we haven't, that we kind of skipped over for the mercy of everybody. I guess we have to come back there eventually, but we are going to know that Stefan is right. One thing happens that really happens.

C. Derick Varn: 1:30:36

The tendency of the new left and this is not unique to Trotskyism to focus on students gets pronounced and the organizations that survived that we mentioned in 1991, all heavily that's the Sparts in the ISO and to a lesser degree the, the SEP, etc. Are heavily campus organizations. You do not encounter them that much off of campus. That's how they recruit. Part of that is the changing nature of the left and like the Gen X left, which is a post new left phenomenon, but like the globalization movement I was the, the ultra globalization, anti globalization movement, that that radicalized and also conservatized me, but it was like I got, even though I was working class. I was a working class kid and got pulled into it. From zines, like not from any traditional labor, organizing, not from organizing, I got put into what would you know, as it was a tendency of media, that kind of presages what we saw the internet.

Chris : 1:31:48

Right. I mean that was that was us too, like at zines from punk shows where how I got my early political education and yeah actually I had two copies of the ISR that I got from somebody that our band played a show with in another city.

Jason: 1:32:06

Yeah, that's right. Before I ever met the ISO, I met the ISO at a demonstration.

Chris : 1:32:11

We were reading those ISRs while we were on tour, yeah, and we were like, well, hey, they have a branch in Austin. We should look those guys up when we get back.

Jason: 1:32:19

Yeah, but critically we did not meet them because we were, you know, unpacking boxes in the warehouse.

C. Derick Varn: 1:32:26

Yeah. So my point is the other the part of this, not students, is subcultural. So again, yeah, yeah, post you left weird ties to counterculture, which I actually found the new left ties to counterculture to be kind of a myth when you actually look at it. But people believed it by the 1990s. That's actually true. Yeah, like these leftist organizations are spreading through subcultural polemics and and and, like you know well, you want something stronger than gutter punks. So what are you going to do? Well, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's your trotskyism.

Jason: 1:33:04

Yeah, it's going to piss off your parents.

Chris : 1:33:06

Yeah, you know, and that's why even more than your haircut the official hat of trotskyism. You know, they say it's like the the Scali cap with the button right. They say it's the official hat of trotskyism. It's because all of those trots came out of the punk scene and that's what all the punk kids were.

Jason: 1:33:19

Yeah, but they look like they were Fugazi fans yeah, I still wear that hat.

Chris : 1:33:26

You do, but that's because you guys are really just still having exercised your trotskyism. Yeah, like you said, you did.

C. Derick Varn: 1:33:34

And that's what gives you trotskyism.

Jason: 1:33:36

It's those hats it gets it Um well, it's like, it's like a whatever.

C. Derick Varn: 1:33:41

It's like a reverse shield of armor.

Jason: 1:33:43

Yeah, it's like one ring.

C. Derick Varn: 1:33:45

So we now have to hurry up because I only have about eight minutes left, but but I want to talk about what happens very quickly in the art teams. Salt emerges big and seemingly from nowhere it has no ties, as we said, neither it nor the IMP have any ties, to quote indigenous trotskyism. This is not a split from anything that comes up, canon, which everything else we've mentioned, even the Norophyts, are yeah. So that leads us to this weird thing. Why did that happen? And two things occupy happens. The ISO is ill prepared to handle it, for whatever reason, and Cosama so on has a successful campaign and in in Seattle, and not only successful. I shit on on a lot of salt who get really misciited about Cosama so wants post first year campaign, but her first year she actually does shit.

Jason: 1:34:49

Yeah, like they also. They also almost won a similar victory in Minneapolis. Right, I came within like 400 votes and so they almost really did matter a lot.

C. Derick Varn: 1:35:00

So this happens at the exact same time across the pond, the, the, the, the US SWP, I mean the UK SWP, excuse me fucking. The other thing with trots is like at least Malice gives their organizations ridiculous names so they're easy to tell apart.

Chris : 1:35:18

So, except for the two freedom road, socialist organizations, yeah, but I mean like monkey smashers, heaven is easy to remember. Yeah, shining path.

C. Derick Varn: 1:35:28

Yeah, leading lights comments organization you remember the LLCO, yeah, so anyway. So so having nothing to do with this does have downstream effects is around around the outtins. There's a bunch of sex candles out of the, out of the UK SWP. That's really, really damaging. But there's a bunch of splits that kind of leave Trotsky as them all together over it.

Chris : 1:35:55

It's. It re splits the ISO from the SWP who were in the process.

C. Derick Varn: 1:36:00

Yeah, right. The other issue that you have is Galloway happens.

Chris : 1:36:05

George yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:36:06

George Galloway, and you have this increasing time with the SWP, with Islamist, and it gets more and more seemingly tied up into like conservative Islamic politics and the UK, which is a big tension in the US to, and then the Arab Spring happens and I'm just going to say the international, the IST, gets fucked in the Middle East Because one of the things we have to admit that the IST actually has people in the Middle East, which is not true for most of the Trotskyist organizations, and they get screwed in the Arab stream Like there's a body count there. Yeah, so all this happens.

Chris : 1:36:48

we were getting updates on the ground from people that were affiliated to the tendency. Yeah, so we yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:36:55

And then they disappear. Hey market, yeah, a lot of them are probably in a prison across the street from where I used to live. I'm not joking.

Chris : 1:37:04

Yeah, yeah, I remember you saying something about that.

C. Derick Varn: 1:37:06

Yeah, the political prison was literally across the street from where I lived. I couldn't take pictures in front of my own apartment because I would be accidentally taking pictures of the political prison. It's fucked up, dystopian shit. But all that happens. They're flat footed on Occupy. My Sanders happens. Now this leads us to a question.

Jason: 1:37:34

That's a really big thing.

C. Derick Varn: 1:37:35

Yeah, that's Sanders also fucks salt because salt won't drop it's arthritis. Trotskyism to freely get on board with Sanders. They can't replicate what they did with Kossama Salwan. So salt. If you meet like older millennial people who get into Marxism, they come in usually from the WP or the PSL. That really starts later. Are they coming through salt? I knew a ton of people who first encountered me who were post salt and came in after so on. Now I'm abroad. At this point I'm also salty and beginning to be fed up by all you fucking Trotskyists at this point in my life. But so that happens and the DSA reemerges Now. The DSA never made sense to me as where the Clearinghouse became, except that Bosch, carson, cara and had made that choice. He was given a lot of choices. He flirted with other organizations, with Jacobin, and Bernie Sanders has historically been in the DSA since the fucking 80s. It's a lot of things.

Jason: 1:38:49

But one thing that's not normally discussed is that the Jacobin reading groups which, before they were founded I remember Baskar was giving a talk at a socialism conference and they were going to be the basis of a revived socialist movement. They were like the organizing center and then eventually they become branches of whatever group turned out to be the DSA.

Chris : 1:39:12

It was a very successful model, it just didn't matter, but it was successful.

C. Derick Varn: 1:39:18

Interestingly it has ties to the Jacobin reading book. Actually does have direct lineage ties to the Platypus affiliated society.

Chris : 1:39:26

That was the first political stuff that I did after having quit the ISO for years was founding a Jacobin reading group with Jason.

Stephen Hammel: 1:39:36

That's right. There's also some parallelism. I've not thought that the reason why everyone entered the DSA was just a homonym. You had the word democratic socialism out there and people were looking for something that had that name, although I acknowledge there is some institutional tie, although Bernie Sanders didn't trumpet his membership in the DSA and still doesn't, if he even is a member of the DSA. Now, what's interesting is that the DSA's electoral strategy now looks a lot which is one in defeat, crafted in defeat. Looks a lot like the original salt strategy, which is electoralism, but at the municipal level and trying to reverse, engineering constituency by virtue of victories. Now we have two salts.

C. Derick Varn: 1:40:20

Yeah Well, except salt the issue. So what happens? The DSA itself? Arguably and I'm going to now go through my argument for why the DSA is actually a post-troschist organization the DSA itself emerges from the Shackman split. The Shackman split with the non-troschistin splits into what? Two groups, or three groups? There's the Social Democratic USA, there is the Socialist Party of America, which people forget about. Socialist Party USA, which is trying to recapitulate the multi-tendency Socialist Party but refuses to work with Democrats. That's where I come from, really.

Jason: 1:41:07

Which is like solidarity, except for that it has a different name.

C. Derick Varn: 1:41:14

Yeah Well, the difference between that. I will defend the Socialist Party on one thing there is no faction ban, so there were tendencies in it, right. But the funny thing about Trotskyism that we haven't covered is sometimes in the 70s, even though they maintain the faction ban, they start seeing themselves as their only viability, as tendencies within already existing parties, like they're no longer trying to make their own workers' party. They're now like well, we have to maintain a socialist tendency that enters into a workers' party or has some kind of united front strategy with the Democrats. And I think ultimately, in my grand duress, that we've had to rush through this and we haven't even talked about the key points.

Jason: 1:42:05

We'll pick it up again.

C. Derick Varn: 1:42:07

But in my grand duress, what happens is all these factions, with the exception of people who are tied to the USP. The USP still exists and so has its own stuff, but all the other factions liquidate very quickly after the ISO dissolves. The reason why the ISO resolves is not only sex scandals, but I also think it's because their ties to Haymarket books meant that they had to have corporate accountability practices, which is why the sex scandals were finally handled, which dissolves the organization, and so Well, and also because there was not a new layer of young people to join, because they were all going into the DSA.

C. Derick Varn: 1:42:53

So you have this post-Trotskyist social democrat affection and then in it, around 2020, between 2019 and 2020, they see that the DSA doesn't have a regional organization and all these caucuses have been emerging, starting with actually like an anarchist caucus, the left-libertarian socialist caucus, but then so the rimness of the ISO, about 4,000 of the 5,000 members remaining of salt who are outflanked by the Sanders campaign and are getting tired with the only thing they can really do is, like some worker salting and defend a Cosama Sawant seat. A large portion of solidarity all liquidate into and this is funny because these are groups that have hated each other for years into caucuses. So the ISO generates the ISO and then solidarity remainders and workers power remainders or whatever. I forget. We forgot about workers power and our people who still around in 1992. But they all liquidate into these caucuses.

C. Derick Varn: 1:44:20

So the Tempest collective emerges, brett and Roses emerges. The International Socialist Project emerges. The Socialist Alternative Section of the DSA emerges. Reform and Revolution emerges. The Independent Socialist Group emerges. A recomposition, which is no longer around, emerges. Collective power, which is no longer around, emerges. So one of the reasons why it's hard to talk about the death of American Trotskyism although I still think it's dying and we haven't even gotten to the international context, but they just start forming micro sex within the DSA as a sub tendencies, because they finally remember a lot of these groups have been trying to liquidate into something for forever and they finally have something to liquidate into.

Chris : 1:45:17

Yeah, that's right. We did an episode called the death of a micro sector or something like that, and we said that the micro sex have dissolved themselves into the DSA, where they reconstituted themselves as nanosex, because they and then given up their independence.

C. Derick Varn: 1:45:34

Yeah, while there were some of these caucuses that are up to about a thousand people, most of the, I was actually informed that most caucuses meant, most of these caucuses, membership, and this is not just the post Trotskyism ones, it's all of them. It's around two to 400.

Jason: 1:45:50

Oh yeah, in a sect of, they say, 95k, we probably know as closer to 70K, but whatever, it's probably more, like 30, to be honest, because I think that they count you as a member for like three full years after you asked them to stop counting you as a member, wait wait didn't, because I think I might still be counted as a member, and if I'm not now, then I won a year ago.

C. Derick Varn: 1:46:15

I'm talking about the member and good standing versus the not member and good standing. Oh, okay yeah and so like, but whatever, everyone knows that the DSA is still claiming its high point from 2001 as its key number. Everybody's ever been on an international meeting. Who goes to a local caucus group is like there's no way it's actually that high.

C. Derick Varn: 1:46:36

And a lot of people even without dealing with your situation, Jason which I call the LDS church of socialism, because it's also really hard to not be a Mormon anymore, as far as being officially counted or not. The other issue is a whole lot of people are truly just paper members and do not care and probably forgot they even have a membership.

Jason: 1:47:06

So it's yeah. Well, yeah, cause you only paid dues one time.

C. Derick Varn: 1:47:12

Right. So I guess in this speed run through the broad history of what Trotskyism is in America, like we defined it, that took us 45 minutes and then skipping the problematic 70s that we're gonna come back to, that's gonna hurt. Running through basically our lifetimes with Trotskyism, post Trotskyist organizations. We see pretty clearly the absolute disillusion of Trotskyism into an organization itself nominally a post Trotskyist organization. That well, excuse me, not nominally, they don't recognize their post Trotskyist organization but they are. Harringtonism is a subset of late Shackmanism, sorry, but not only that. That organization itself is rapidly declining back into positions historically held by the Trotskyist parties and the Malas parties in relationship to the Democratic party itself. But the problem is so Trotskyism really don't no longer in any way form or fashion offers a critique on alternative identity to the broad tendency of the reform of slept. It does not like yeah, I mean Tempest and bread and roses. I mean I really mean the bread and roses caucus and I'm not mean to Tempest and I probably should be. But, yes, they're right. Good polemics, but ultimately that is irrelevant.

Chris : 1:48:41

Yeah, it's entirely irrelevant Is Tempest, the one that's all former ISO people.

C. Derick Varn: 1:48:47

It's former ISO and solidarity, but so is bread and roses is former ISO and solidarity, so like. The funny thing is now too is like if the solidarity and ISO are back together and also they're in league with Cliff. Ironically, in depth, all of these organizations have finally got over their theoretical defenses, positions which haven't been relevant since 1992 anyway, but, as you have pointed out on your show, with the apocryphal Mandel calling Cliff, and they both, like Cliff hangs up on him they couldn't, even when it was longer relevant, these people couldn't drop these positions because they've invested like decades and decades of identity.

Jason: 1:49:27

Those are whole legs, yeah, yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:49:31

So I think that's interesting Now as the final question for this, and then we have to go on. We're gonna have to recontextualize this in terms of actual fighting grounds, because we jumped from the beginning to the end.

Chris : 1:49:42

basically, we're doing it the way that you read a book for grad school.

C. Derick Varn: 1:49:47

Yeah, and then go back and fill in the middle as the papers are relevant. But this isn't just the US trend. One of the things I've discovering like researching for this is Trotskyism and Maoism as separate entities are declining everywhere, not just here, like the Trotskyism and Maoist organizations from France. The Trotskyism and Maoist organizations and well, they're not really Trotskyist Maoist organizations in Greece, for example, pretty much all died with Sarisa, with like some very romp things surviving kind of separately, but not a lot. Trotskyism's fate in Britain and in addition to the SWP's problems, is so thoroughly tied into Corbinism and labor that they're not relevant anymore and any of the forms, but including stuff like momentum and stuff like that.

C. Derick Varn: 1:50:58

And we've seen the increase, strangely, as if from a zombie, from a grave of like dormant official communist parties that have not had any popular appeal for over 40 years, kind of shambling back up but they still don't have mass spaces in any way. I mean, I guess Italy they might kind of, but also getting in the coalitions that make them irrelevant again. So I think as we go in deeper to this Trotsky problem, I think we're also gonna be mapping broader trends on the Marxist left post 1992 and post 1970s. So that's where we're gonna end this. At about two hours we obviously-.

Jason: 1:51:55

That's the introduction.

C. Derick Varn: 1:51:56

yeah, we obviously are just gonna think this is like the very vaguest of introductions because, like I said, we skipped the new left and the post-new left Trotskyist movement. Because, oh my God, if you think this is confusing, like on my chart, the 70s, like you just see this exponential growth of factions.

Chris : 1:52:16

Put that chart in the show notes and send it to me so I can put it in ours.

C. Derick Varn: 1:52:20

Okay, I will because that chart it does help, but it's gonna be interesting. Oh my God, there's a number of Spartacist splits that I didn't even know about, anyway.

Chris : 1:52:39

Oh, oh, oh, oh, Hell yeah, One episode purpose Spartacist split. That's what we're gonna do.

C. Derick Varn: 1:52:48

There's literally like a block on. It has been alleged that there are at least four splits from the communist workers group. Split from the international Bolshevik tendency US section.

Jason: 1:53:03

So at a certain point, you just have to just feel you can't even count them anymore.

C. Derick Varn: 1:53:07

Like it's like there might be two people, but anyway. So that is the introduction to the client and proxies and in the broadest sense, let's what we'll regroup and focus on a thing about how it happens, Maybe next time let's focus on why Trotskyist movements went from splitting to to entryism.

Stephen Hammel: 1:53:29

Yeah, that's interesting question.

Jason: 1:53:31

Yeah, it's actually a question yeah.

Stephen Hammel: 1:53:33

Yeah, the legacy of entry ism actually by itself Is a, is an is an excellent time we can start.

Chris : 1:53:38

We can start with you know the history of entry, ism, and then you know Work our way forward.

C. Derick Varn: 1:53:44

All right, and with that note, goodbye, goodbye.