Copying this post a user submitted on reddit.

Comrades I am sure you have seen this claim "Stalin adopted the Left Oppositions Super Industrialization plan" or something similar it shows up in Animal Farm, to more "serious" critiques from Left Communists and Anarchists. So I want to debunk this claim because i am tired of hearing it, but it unfortunately permeates a lot of western histories of the events.

The History

Let us start with a good primary source on this from a political opponent of both Trotsky and Stalin, Ryutin.

Ryutin was certainly on the party right, he was very against Collectivization and for very slow Industrialization. It is also worth noting this was written in 1932 and the fullest extent of Stalin's push to industrialize and forced collectivization were still being carried out.

"Having robbed the thread of Trotsky and his group, Stalin affirms that his super industrialisation pressure is not only on the kulaks but also on the middle peasantry; extraordinary tax, extortion of one and a half milliard roubles from the cooperatives and in the future an increase in prices,—cards, queues—all theses are something quite other than suggestions of the Trotskyists.

Stalin, of course, led the economic platform of Trotsky to the limit of the absurd, to the logical end, but this was not accidental : “in for a penny, in for a pound”."

So he compares it to robbing a thread, or taking it to the very extreme. Now Ryutin felt there was similarities and without a doubt the Left Opposition was for Industrialization and Collectivization, and Stalin did implement these, but to such an extreme. The Left Opposition was for Voluntary Collectivization, and not industrialization at the pace Stalin called for, as well as they were not for the targeting of all peasants.

So as far as opinions from histories I want to start with Stephen F. Cohen Stalinism and Bolshevism an article from Robert C. Tucker's Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation

"Trotsky and the Left opposition are said to have been anti-NEP and embryonically Stalinist, the progenitors of "almost every major item in the political program that Stalin later carried out." Stalin is then having said to have stolen, or adapted, Trotsky's economic policies in 1929. Having portrayed a "basic affinity between Trotsky's plans and Stalin's actions," these secondary interpretations suggest at least a significant continuity between Stalinism and Bolshevik thinking in 1920's, and underlie the general interpretation of NEP. They are, however, factually incorrect."

"Even Preobrazhesnky, the avatar of "super-industralization" who's fearful arguments about the necessity of "primitive socialist accumulation" based on "exploiting" the peasant sector are often cited as Stalin's inspiration, accepted the hallmark of NEP economics. He wanted to "exploit" peasant agriculture through market relations by artificially fixing state industrial prices higher then agricultural prices. Both he and Trotsky, and the Bolshevik Left generally, thought in terms of peasant farming for the foreseeable future. However inconsistent their ideas may have been, neither ever advocated imposed collectivization, much less wholesale collectivization as a system of requisitioning or a solution to industrial backwardness"

"Trotsky's actual economic proposals in the 1920s were based on the NEP and its continuation. He urged greater attention to heavy industry and planning earlier than did Bukharin, and he worried more about the village "kulak"; but his remedies were moderate, market-orientated, or, as the expression went, "nepist." Like Bukharin, he was a "reformist" in economic policy, looking towards the evolution of NEP Russia towards industrialism and socialism. "

From Stephen F. Cohen's Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution a Political Biography.

"The turbulent months between April 1929 when Bukharin was defeated and December were among the most important in Russian history. They brought three large, related events: an abrupt radicalization of Stalin's policies, accompanied by his emerging practice of making major decisions autocratically; a further worsening of the state's relations with the peasantry; and the onset of a furious official campaign against the Right opposition and Bukharin personally, which grew into a repudiation of political moderation generally. Together these developments led to policies unlike anything ever advocated by any Bolshevik group, including the Left, to the final destruction of NEP, and to the coming of Stalin's "revolution from above." p.329

Now from Moshe Lewin's Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates

"In propaganda texts, the majority's spokesmen accused the Left of planning to liquidate the NEP, to oppress the peasantry, to raise prices and lower the standard of living, and other sins. But the latter, no doubt sincerely, reasserted that it favored the NEP, did not intend to expropriate the property of the kulaks, nor indeed, that of any other private entrepreneurs, and that it, in fact even, welcomed some growth of these elements provided the growth of the socialist sector, mainly industrial, was constantly assured. They opposed using the G.P.U. against the private sectors.p.35

From the same text we can take a look at historical opinions too to back this up.

“Trotsky, too in a brochure written in August 1925 developed positive expectations about long-term prospects of the NEP and defined it as “cooperation and competition” between socialism and capitalism. “ Preobrazhensky originally an opponent of the NEP in 1921 supported it and its transitional character and was against any violent elimination of it or forced collectivization."

Again from Moshe LEwin's Poltical Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates.

"Trotsky could afford to endorse the NEP wholeheartedly because he too had some previous positions to call back on. He was , in fact, the first to have advocated NEP-like changes as early as Februrary 1920, but his proposals were then rejected by the Central committee. Trotsky then turned to his plan of etatization of the trade unions, but this too was rejected by Lenin, who was soon to adopt the NEP (on this both leaders agreed). For Trotsky's propsals of a new policy towards peasants"

Conclusion

Given Trotsky was one of the first to propose NEP like changes, and continued to defend it. How could one say that Stalin stole his economic position when Stalin got rid of the NEP. This is a very big difference in economic positions. Trotsky nor the LO ever advocated for forced collectivization, or getting rid of the NEP. Stalin's position originates with him, not Trotsky, not the Left Opposition and certainly not Bukharin.

“The Perspective of permanent revolution may be summarized in the following way: the complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is conceivable only in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, leaning on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which would inevitably place on the order of the day not only democratic but socialistic tasks as well, would at the same time give a powerful impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois restoration and assure it the possibility of rounding out the establishment of socialism.

The background of this development deals with the special conditions of Russia's development. If you want some background on it you can read about it in Trotsky's 1905, and Lenin's

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1907/1905/

Part of Trotsky's inspiration is when he read Lenin's book on the economic development of Russia in prison https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/devel/index.htm

Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution also contains an explanation of this. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch01.htm

A big debate within Russian Social Democracy at this time was if the coming revolution would be a bourgeois revolution and establish capitalist development to grow the conditions of proletarian revolution, where Trotsky and some others at this time felt due to the way Russia development made bourgeois capitalist development impossible, and the coming revolution would be a proletariat one. That the Russian Capitalists would be unable to answer the land question, and a workers revolution leading the peasants would happen. We can see from the historical events this is how the things played out in Russia.

Permanent Revolution is also painted as an "opposition" to socialism in one country, or a counter theory. It is not and it predates even the Russian Revolution. It is based around the idea that not all countries will follow the same path of western Europe, an idea that Marx admitted that wouldn't be true in letters, though he never explored the idea in depth.

So I would highly encourage you to maybe consider giving Results and Prospects, and The Permanent Revolution a read. A lot of false ideas get spread about it, so maybe rather then listening to the slanders you can read what the idea says its self.

I am going to end with the main parts that Trotsky ends the book with.

"The theory of the permanent revolution now demands the greatest attention from every Marxist, for the course of the class and ideological struggle has fully and finally raised this question from the realm of reminiscences over old differences of opinion among Russian Marxists, and converted it into a question of the character, the inner connexions and methods of the international revolution in general.

With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.

Not only the agrarian, but also the national question assigns to the peasantry – the overwhelming majority of the population in backward countries – an exceptional place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national-liberal bourgeoisie.

No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletariat vanguard, organized in the Communist Party. This in turn means that the victory of the democratic revolution is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat which bases itself upon the alliance with the peasantry and solves first of all the tasks of the democratic revolution.

Assessed historically, the old slogan of Bolshevism – ’the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ – expressed precisely the above-characterized relationship of the proletariat, the peasantry and the liberal bourgeoisie. This has been confirmed by the experience of October. But Lenin’s old formula did not settle in advance the problem of what the reciprocal relations would be between the proletariat and the peasantry within the revolutionary bloc. In other words, the formula deliberately retained a certain algebraic quality, which had to make way for more precise arithmetical quantities in the process of historical experience. However, the latter showed, and under circumstances that exclude any kind of misinterpretation, that no matter how great the revolutionary role of the peasantry may be, it nevertheless cannot be an independent role and even less a leading one. The peasant follows either the worker or the bourgeois. This means that the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ is only conceivable as a dictatorship of the proletariat that leads the peasant masses behind it.

A democratic dictatorship of the prolelariat and peasantry, as a regime that is distinguished from the dictatorship of the proletariat by its class content, might be realized only in a case where an independent revolutionary party could be constituted, expressing the interests of the peasants and in general of petty bourgeois democracy – a party capable of conquering power with this or that degree of aid from the proletariat, and of determining its revolutionary programme. As all modern history attests – especially the Russian experience of the last twenty-five years – an insurmountable obstacle on the road to the creation of a peasants’ party is the petty-bourgeoisie’s lack of economic and political independence and its deep internal differentiation. By reason of this the upper sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (of the peasantry) go along with the big bourgeoisie in all decisive cases, especially in war and in revolution; the lower sections go along with the proletariat; the intermediate section being thus compelled to choose between the two extreme poles. Between Kerenskyism and the Bolshevik power, between the Kuomintang and the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is not and cannot be any intermediate stage, that is, no democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.

The Comintern’ s endeavour to foist upon the Eastern countries the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, finally and long ago exhausted by history, can have only a reactionary effect. lnsofar as this slogan is counterposed to the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it contributes politically to the dissolution of the proletariat in the petty-bourgeois masses and thus creates the most favourable conditions for the hegemony of the national bourgeoisie and consequently for the collapse of the democratic revolution. The introduction of the slogan into the programme of the Comintern is a direct betrayal of Marxism and of the October tradition of Bolshevism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and, very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution."

Good YouTube channel that I like, small but does good videos on Soviet History.

Good YouTube channel that I like, small but does good videos on Soviet History.