24 February 2016
| Andrew Coates
Some might consider that arguments about the character of the former Soviet Union — whether it was a workers’ state, a degenerated workers’ state, state capitalist, bureaucratic collectivist, a “new class society” — resemble discussion on the Trinity. If some Trotskyists have sunk into religious veneration for Trotsky a more common fault is scholasticism — “proof” of any view by appeal to the authority of quotations from the Old Man, Marx, Engels and Lenin. But when it comes to working out what was wrong with Stalinism, the economic and social framework of the former Soviet Bloc, the several decades of Trotskyist reflection and debate, orthodox and heterodox play an essential part in the effort to develop a socialist alternative today.