I don't mean to be sectarian. I know a fuck ton of Trot individuals and orgs and their position on Gaza is very good. But SWP is so bad it's almost comical.

I discovered this as I was trying to find out why We Are Many dissolved 5 years ago. Did SWP go right??

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[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They are definitely utopians without evem knowing what that word means. They were frustrating to deal with, but the only way to defeat them is to outorganize them (which wouldn't be hard) and let them stay in the marsh.

I haven't read Luxemburg's works, I only know of Reform and Revolution and some broad history of the German Revolution, so may I ask what Luxemburgists believe in? And I imagine that even if I were more familiar with Luxemburg's writings it wouldn't explain those who call themselves Luxemburgists. I'm just imagining they are some different flavor of Trot - but that's probably unfair as I haven't investigated it.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They are not Trots, they were a flavor of German Communists specifically from the KPD if I am remembering my acronyms correctly.

Anyways, to summarize, while they were in theory allied with the Soviet Union, Rosa Luxembourg argued against, for example, giving Ukrainians their own nation, as they didn't actually have a distinct ethnic identity outside of recent nationalist romanticism, whereas Lenin and Stalin believed that allying with the Ukrainian nationalists and giving them their own nation after the revolution, would allow them a more united front against their actual enemies in international capital and the white army. Stalin, especially, being a minority Georgian, was early on very big on the idea of giving persecuted ethnicities within the Russian empire latitude to form their own nations, ultimately compromising with others in the Bolsheviks with his idea to literally split up most of Russia into local nations.

In hindsight, Luxembourg may have been correct, but it literally took the collapse of the Soviet project to see her visions of ethnic conflict fulfilled. Yet with the fall of Yugoslavia, we also saw what could have been the eventuality of her ideas as well. It turns out that the national problem is really really difficult.

There are plenty of other theoretical differences as well, but I am not going to bore you with the details here.

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

Thanks the the write up! Definitely not boring!