Editing Trotskyism (section)

== History ==
=== Origins ===
{{Leninism sidebar|expanded=Schools}}
[[File:Leo Trotzki 1900 in Sibirien.jpg|thumb|Trotsky in exile in Siberia, 1900]]
According to Trotsky, the term "Trotskyism" was coined by [[Pavel Milyukov]] (sometimes transliterated as Paul Miliukoff), the ideological leader of the [[Constitutional Democratic Party|Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)]] in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against Trotskyism "as early as 1905".<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=My Life |pages=230 & 294 |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |location=Harmondsworth |date=1971}}</ref>

Trotsky was elected chairman of the [[St. Petersburg Soviet]] during the [[Russian Revolution of 1905]]. He pursued a policy of [[proletarian revolution]] at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state. This year, Trotsky developed the theory of [[permanent revolution]], as it later became known (see below). In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a book by Milyukov, ''The Elections to the Second State Duma'', published no later than May 1907: {{Blockquote|text=Those who reproach the Kadets with failure to protest at that time, by organising meetings, against the "revolutionary illusions" of Trotskyism and the relapse into [[Blanquism]], simply do not understand [...] the mood of the democratic public at meetings during that period.|sign=Pavel Milyukov|source=''The Elections to the Second State Duma''<ref>{{cite book |first=Pavel |last=Milyukov |author-link=Pavel Milyukov |title=The elections to the second state Duma |pages=91–92}}, is quoted by {{harvnb|Trotsky|1971|pp=176, 295|ref=Trotsky1971b}}</ref>}}

Milyukov suggests that the mood of the "democratic public" was in support of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow of the Romanov regime alongside a workers' revolution to overthrow the capitalist owners of industry, support for strike action and the establishment of democratically elected [[workers' council]]s or "soviets". This differed from variations of [[Council communism|Council Communism]] in [[German Communist Party|Germany]] due to the Russian Peasantry and the role they have in overall [[Leninism]] including Trotskyism compared to the role they have in Council Communism

=== Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution ===
During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky argued that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the state in as good an order as possible.{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|pp=217 ff|ref=Trotsky1971b}} In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time soon came to lead the [[Military Revolutionary Committee]], which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison and carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote: {{Blockquote|text=All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky.|sign=Joseph Stalin|source=''[[Pravda]]'', November 6, 1918<ref>This summary of Trotsky's role in 1917, written by Stalin for ''Pravda'', November 6, 1918, was quoted in Stalin's book ''The October Revolution'' issued in 1934, but it was expunged in Stalin's Works released in 1949.</ref>}}

As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theory of permanent revolution was embraced by the young Soviet state until 1924.

The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.

Before the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had formulated a slogan calling for the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry", but after the February revolution, through his April Theses, Lenin instead called for "all power to the Soviets". Nevertheless, Lenin continued to emphasise (as did Trotsky) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=30 October 1919 |chapter=Economics and Politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat |title=Lenin Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=30 |pages=109 |quote=Peasant farming continues to be... an extremely broad and very sound, deep-rooted basis for capitalism, a basis on which capitalism persists or arises anew in a bitter struggle against communism.}}</ref>

Also, before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted the importance of a Bolshevik-style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out, Trotsky admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Although many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky wrote that without Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.

[[File:19191107-lenin second anniversary october revolution moscow.jpg|thumb|left|[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]] and [[Lev Kamenev|Kamenev]] celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution]]

Other Bolshevik figures such as [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]], [[Moisei Uritsky]] and [[Dmitry Manuilsky]] agreed that Lenin's influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky's, not to Lenin's plan.{{sfn|Deutscher|2015|p=1283}}

As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory has been fully committed to a Leninist style of [[democratic centralism|democratic centralist]] party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not be confused with the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship. However, it is essential to emphasise that after 1917, orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the USSR was caused by the failure of the revolution to spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation, and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=After the majority of the petrograd Soviet passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks, [Trotsky] was elected its chairman and in that position organized and led the insurrection of October 25.|source=Lenin on the organization of the October Revolution, Vol.XIV of the ''Collected Works''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trotsky |first1=Leon |title=The Stalin School of Falsification |date=1962 |publisher=Pioneer Publishers |page=12 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rv9oAAAAMAAJ&q=%E2%80%9CAfter+the+majority+of+the+petrograd+Soviet+passed+into+the+hands+of+the+Bolsheviks,+%5BTrotsky%5D+was+elected+its+chairman+and+in+that+position+organized+and+led+the+insurrection+of+October+25 |language=en}}</ref>}}

Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in Western Europe so that this European socialist society would come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated: {{Blockquote|text=We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our statements in the press that [...] the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries.|sign=Vladimir Lenin|source=Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=15 March 1921 |chapter=Report on the substitution of a tax in kind for the surplus-grain appropriation system, Tenth Congress |title=Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=32 |pages=215}}, This speech, of course, introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was intended to reinforce the basis of the second of the two conditions Lenin mentions in the quote, the support of the peasantry for the workers' state.</ref>}}

This outlook matched Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution precisely. Trotsky's permanent revolution had foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution but proceed towards a workers' state, as happened in 1917. The Polish Trotskyist [[Isaac Deutscher]] maintains that in 1917, Lenin changed his attitude toward Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, and after the October revolution, it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=285}}

Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that: {{Blockquote|text=[...] up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which "possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody's head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source=''History of the Russian Revolution''<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch16.htm |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=History of the Russian Revolution |pages=332 |publisher=[[Pluto Press]] |location=London |date=1977 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref>}}

=== "Legend of Trotskyism" ===
[[File:Leon Trotsky.JPG|thumb|"Bolshevik freedom" with nude of Trotsky in a Polish propaganda poster, Polish–Soviet War (1920)]]
In ''[[The Stalin School of Falsification]]'', Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by [[Grigory Zinoviev]] and [[Lev Kamenev]] in collaboration with Stalin in 1924 in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=293}} [[Orlando Figes]] argues: "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power".<ref>{{cite book |last=Figes |first=Orlando |title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 |pages=802 |publisher=[[Pimlico]] |date=1997}}</ref>

During 1922–1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. In [[Lenin's Testament|a document]] dictated before his death in 1924 while describing Trotsky as "distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities—personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee" and also maintaining that "his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him", Lenin criticized him for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work" and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |title=Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=36 |pages=593–598 |quote=Stalin is too rude and this defect [...] becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post [...] it is a detail which can assume decisive importance.}}</ref> Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the [[United Opposition (Soviet Union)|United Opposition]].{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf07.htm 89]|ref=Trotsky1971a}}

In 1926, Stalin allied with [[Nikolai Bukharin]], who led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In ''The Stalin School of Falsification'', Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet, ''From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie'', which was re-printed in 1923 by the party publishing house, Proletari. Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution in this pamphlet: "The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution ... The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution". Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later in 1926 "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution."{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=[http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf06.htm 78]|ref=Trotsky1971a}}

Trotsky wrote that the [[Left Opposition]] grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party, but in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:

{{Blockquote|text=During the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.

{{pb}}In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: "Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!" What was a threat in Stalin's words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source={{sfn|Trotsky|1991|p=279}}}}

Internationally, Trotsky's opposition and criticism of the ruling troika received support from several, Central Committee members of foreign communist parties. This included [[Christian Rakovsky]], [[Council of People's Commissars (Ukraine)|Chairman]] of the [[Ukrainian SSR|Ukraine Sovnarkom]], [[Boris Souvarine]] of the [[French Communist Party]] and the Central Committee of the [[Communist Party of Poland|Polish Communist Party]] which was led by prominent theoreticians such as [[Maksymilian Horwitz]], [[Maria Koszutska]] and [[Adolf Warski]].{{sfn|Rogovin|2021|pp=139, 249, 268–269}}

The defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the "so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]".{{sfn|Trotsky|1971|loc=Foreword to the Russian edition|p=xxxiii|ref=Trotsky1971a}} He responded to the one-sided civil war with his ''Letter to the Bureau of Party History'' (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing the Chinese revolution and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers: {{blockquote|text=In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:

{{pb}}<blockquote>"All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky..." (Stalin, ''Pravda'', 6 November 1918)</blockquote>

{{pb}}With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the [[1926 United Kingdom general strike|General Strike of 1926]], and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin.|sign=Leon Trotsky|source={{sfn|Trotsky|1971|p=87|ref=Trotsky1971a}}}}

Trotsky was sent into internal exile, and his supporters were jailed. For instance, Victor Serge first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.<ref name="Serge 1973">{{cite book |last=Serge |first=Victor |author-link=Victor Serge |title=From Lenin to Stalin |pages=70 |publisher=Pathfinder |date=1973}}</ref> However, the Left Opposition worked secretly within the USSR.<ref name="Serge 1973"/> Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey and moved to France, Norway and finally Mexico.{{sfn|Deutscher|1966|p=381}}

After 1928, the various Communist Parties worldwide expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "misleadership" of the Soviet bureaucracy and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.<ref>{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |title=Revolution Betrayed |pages=5–32 |publisher=Pathfinder |date=1971}}</ref> Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy and soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,<ref>{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |chapter=How to organise competition |title=Collected Works |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/25.htm |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=26 |pages=409 |quote=One of the most important tasks today, if not the most important, is to develop this independent initiative of the workers, and of all working and exploited people generally.}}</ref> had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labelled a Trotskyist and even a [[Fascist (insult)|fascist]].

In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a [[Great Purge|political terror]] against their Left Opposition and many of the remaining [[Old Bolshevik]]s (those who had played vital roles in the [[October Revolution]] in 1917) in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rogovin |first=Vadim |author-link=Vadim Rogovin |title=1937: Stalin's Year of Terror |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |date=1998 |pages=374}}. Also see the chapter 'Trotskyists in the camps': "A new, young generation of Trotskyists had grown up in the Soviet Union...lots of them go to their deaths crying 'Long live Trotsky!' " Until this research became available after the fall of the Soviet Union, little was known about the strength of the Trotskyists within the Soviet Union.</ref>

=== Founding of the Fourth International ===
{{main|Fourth International|Entryism}}
[[File:Lenin, Trotsky and Voroshilov with Delegates of the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).jpg|thumb|left|Trotsky with [[Vladimir Lenin]] and soldiers in Petrograd]]
Trotsky founded the [[International Left Opposition]] in 1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within the [[Comintern]], but anyone who joined or was suspected of joining the ILO was immediately expelled from the Comintern. The ILO, therefore, concluded that opposing [[Stalinism]] from within the communist organizations controlled by Stalin's supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of the [[Fourth International]], founded in Paris in 1938.

Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, based on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution and that it would need to be built in opposition to the capitalists and the Stalinists.

Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of [[Adolf Hitler]] in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the [[Third Period]] policy of the [[Communist International]] and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform and a new international organisation of the working class must be organised. The [[transitional demand]] tactic had to be a key element.

At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, Trotskyism was a mass political current in [[Vietnam]], [[Sri Lanka]] and slightly later [[Bolivia]]. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese communist movement, [[Chen Duxiu]], amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they prioritised hunting down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst enemies.{{Citation needed|date=May 2019}}

The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the USSR could no longer be called a [[degenerated workers' state]] and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945, Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in many other countries.
[[File:V A Antonov-Ovseenko.jpeg|thumb|upright|[[Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko|Antonov-Ovseenko]] was the first former Trotskyist to be posthumously [[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated]]]]
The [[International Secretariat of the Fourth International]] (ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946 and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War and the tasks of revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments, which came into being after [[World War II]] without a social revolution, were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/fi-2ndcongress/1948-congress02.htm |title=The USSR and Stalinism |date=December 1948 – January 1949 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=6 June 2016}}</ref> By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states". As the [[Cold War]] intensified, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by [[Michel Pablo]] that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, under pressure from the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.

The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties, followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counterrevolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the USSR took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.

[[File:Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.4212 (17086177105).jpg|thumb|The [[West German student movement]] in 1968]]
Pablo began expelling many people who disagreed with his thesis and did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled most of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with the Open Letter to Trotskyists of the World, by [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|Socialist Workers Party]] leader [[James P. Cannon]].

The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. Several sections of the International established the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]] (ICFI) as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a [[Marxist revisionism|revisionist]] faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power and recommitted themselves to the Lenin-Trotsky Theory of the Party and Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1967/party.htm |title=The Revolutionary Party & Its Role in the Struggle for Socialism |last=Cannon |first=James P. |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> From 1960, led by the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|U.S Socialist Workers Party]], many ICFI sections began the reunification process with the IS, but factions split off and continued their commitment to the ICFI.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Heritage We Defend |last=North |first=David |author-link=David North (socialist) |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-929087-00-9 |pages=Sections 131–140}}</ref> Today, national parties committed to the ICFI call themselves the [[Socialist Equality Party (disambiguation)|Socialist Equality Party]].

=== Cuban Revolution ===
{{Main|Betrayal thesis}}
Historian [[Theodore Draper]] had been a Trotskyist in his youth, but eventually became a more independently minded historian, still skeptical of Stalinism. Draper originally gained scholarly recognition for his writings on the history of the American Communist Party.<ref>{{cite book |last=Welch |first=Richard |author-link= |date= October 2017|title=Response to Revolution The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959-1961 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zOs2DwAAQBAJ&dq=theodore+draper+castro+trotskyist&pg=PA141 |location= |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |page=141 |isbn=9781469610467}}</ref>

After the [[Cuban Revolution]], a variety of socialist writers like [[C. Wright Mills]], [[Paul Sweezy]], [[Herbert Matthews]], and [[Paul Johnson (writer)|Paul Johnson]] were delivering polemics in defense of the new ''Fidelista'' government.<ref name=boys>{{cite book |last=Goose |first=Van |author-link= |date=1993 |title=Where the Boys Are Cuba, Cold War and the Making of a New Left |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wjFy44EcVQAC&dq=theodore+draper+castro+trotskyist&pg=PA214 |location= |publisher=Verso Books |page=214 |isbn=9780860916901}}</ref> In 1961 [[Encounter (magazine)|Encounter magazine]] asked [[Theodore Draper]] to write an assessment of the [[Cuban Revolution]] and the new provisional government. Draper published ''Castro's Cuba - A Revolution Betrayed'' in which, Draper presents a Marxist analysis which claims that "Castroism" is a rudimentary nationalism which ignores the principles of Marxism, and that Fidel Castro is a demagogue. Draper also describes his ''[[Betrayal thesis]]'' by alluding to Trotsky's allegation that Stalin "betrayed" the [[Russian Revolution]]. Draper alleges that Castro had "betrayed" the Cuban Revolution in a similar manner.<ref name=boys /><ref>{{cite book |last=Guttenplan |first=D.D. |author-link= |date=2012 |title=American Radical The Life and Times of I. F. Stone |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1u6C0morg_oC&dq=theodore+draper+castro+trotskyist&pg=PA354 |location= |publisher=Northwestern University Press |page=354 |isbn=9780810128316}}</ref>

Trotskyists in general, were split about Castroism. Trotskyists like [[J. Posadas]] celebrated Castroism, and claimed that Cuba is on the road to socialism, while the British and French sections of the [[International Committee of the Fourth International]], claimed that the Cuban Revolution only developed a form of state capitalism in Cuba.<ref>{{cite book |last=Le Blanc |first=Paul |author-link= |date=2018 |title=U.S. TROTSKYISM 1928-1965 Resurgence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qdJ7DwAAQBAJ&dq=trotskyists+betrayal+cuba&pg=PA234 |location= |publisher=BRILL |pages=234–235 |isbn=978-90-04-38928-1}}</ref>