How did Trotsky define "socialism"?

Trotsky's Socialism

Compared to Stalinist socialism, they are completely different! The crux of the issue lies here — socialism is not a clearly defined concept, and different people have vastly different understandings of it.

Trotsky on Socialism

1. How did Trotsky define "socialism"?

For orthodox Marxist revolutionary Lev Trotsky, socialism was not simply industrial nationalization, agricultural collectivization, or superficial equality through general poverty. His interpretation of socialism had a clear materialist and internationalist character, with material abundance as its core orientation. Its core content can be summarized as follows:

Highly developed productive forces: In Trotsky's view, socialism is a social form built upon an international division of labor system and inherits the technological achievements of advanced capitalism. The goal of socialism is not "egalitarianism," but to create sufficient material wealth, thereby achieving true equality and eliminating class differences. If such a material abundance foundation is lacking, any attempt to build socialism will ultimately be distorted into a "militarized communism" and widespread poverty.
Elimination of classes: This is not merely abolishing private ownership of the means of production, but thoroughly eliminating the opposition between urban and rural areas, and between intellectual and physical labor. As long as these contradictions still exist, and as long as the state (as a coercive machine) is needed to suppress them, socialism cannot be truly established.
True democracy and the withering away of the state: Trotsky viewed Stalin's Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state — power has been seized by the bureaucratic class, not a so-called "socialist state." In his eyes, real socialism requires expanding workers' democracy to the maximum extent, allowing all workers to participate in social governance, and gradually leading the state to wither away (a view derived from Engels). In the Soviet Union, he saw the opposite reality: the state apparatus expanded恶性ly and became increasingly bureaucratic, while workers' democracy was brutally suppressed.
International character: This is the cornerstone of Trotsky's theory. Socialism is essentially not a national concept; it must be a global social system.

As such, the socialism advocated by Trotsky is a social form that replaces the world capitalist system, which is global, classless, highly technologized, and materially abundant.

2. Why did Trotsky deny the possibility of building socialism in a single country?

His assertion stems from his understanding of socialism and is based on three categories of core arguments: theoretical economic arguments, political sociological arguments, and historical arguments.

A. Theoretical Economic Argument: International Division of Labor

Marx and Engels' theoretical legacy: The classical Marxist writers never regarded socialism as a national cause. They pointed out that capitalism created the world market and the system of international division of labor, and therefore, as the successor to capitalism, socialism must also be global.
Economic backwardness of Russia: Trotsky (in line with Lenin's views before 1917) clearly recognized that Russia was an economically backward, agrarian country with low labor productivity, lacking the material basis required for transitioning to socialism. Its industrial development depended on foreign technology and capital input, and its agriculture essentially remained within the framework of petty bourgeois private ownership.
Impossibility of self-sufficiency model: Attempting to establish a closed socialist economic system in a single country — especially a backward one — is destined to fail. Such an economy would inevitably lag behind the thriving world capitalism, thus facing continuous economic pressure, and even military pressure. Trotsky believed that either a world revolution would break this pressure, or the Soviet Union would eventually collapse due to long-term isolation and backwardness.

B. Political Sociological Argument: The Risk of Bureaucratization

Isolation breeds a bureaucratic class: This is the point where Trotsky's theory directly hits the core of the Stalinist model. Due to the delay in the world revolution, the Soviet Union found itself surrounded by capitalism and had to make a series of difficult compromises. To survive in this hostile international environment, the state had to build a strong army, establish a repressive machine, and form a management hierarchy responsible for allocating scarce resources. This hierarchy eventually evolved into the Soviet bureaucracy. The economic devastation caused by the civil war weakened the working class, the pillar of socialism, creating a power vacuum that the bureaucracy exploited to fill.
"The betrayed revolution": Trotsky argued that the isolation and economic difficulties of the Soviet Union directly led to the bureaucratization of the state. In his view, the bureaucratic class was not a new class, but a conservative privileged group. This group, in order to maintain its own interests, had become the primary enemy of international revolution and domestic workers' democracy. In Trotsky's eyes, the theory of "socialism in one country" was nothing more than an ideological cover used by the bureaucratic class to consolidate its position and avoid taking risks for world revolution.

C. Historical Argument: Permanent Revolution

This theory was proposed by Trotsky as early as 1905-1906. The core argument applied to Russia was: In the imperialist era, the bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries could not independently complete the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution (such as land reform). Therefore, the revolution would inevitably develop from the stage of bourgeois democratic revolution to the stage of socialist revolution, and the ultimate victory of this revolution depends on the success of the proletarian revolution in the developed capitalist countries. In his view, the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 only verified the first stage of this theory; the second stage — the victory of the world revolution — has never been realized, which also doomed the Soviet Union to crisis and degeneration.

Conclusion

In Trotsky's view, the slogan of "socialism in one country" is both utopian and reactionary.

Utopian nature: Because it violates the basic principles of historical materialism, which is based on the international nature of modern productive forces.
Reactionary nature: Because it serves as an ideological cover for the Stalinist bureaucratic class — this class abandoned the path of world revolution, established an authoritarian regime, and its main purpose was to maintain its own privileges.

In summary, Trotsky's denial of the possibility of building socialism in a single country is not a rigid dogma, but a complete theoretical system. This theory attempts to explain: why, in his view, the Russian revolution took a tragic path of degeneration, and what measures should be taken (to ignite the flames of world revolution) to bring the revolution back onto the path of genuine socialism.

So, what is socialism? It is more like a myth, and everyone can imagine any form they want according to it.

Original: toutiao.com/article/7580946143882904106/

Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.