Lenin and Trotsky - What They Really Stood For

"In 1968, I was one of the national leaders of the Young Communist League. I used to have many ding-dong arguments with Alan Woods and other 'Trots' and did everything I could to undermine them. I was very pleased with our efforts in producing the 'Cogito' article on Leon Trotsky. 'That will shut them up!' I said. Then 'they' produced Lenin and Trotsky - What They Really Stood For. I read it and re-read it. The careful, honest presentation of the historical facts and political arguments led me to become a whole-hearted supporter of the Marxist tendency now embodied in Socialist Appeal [Now the Revolutionary Communist International]."

-- Jim Brookshaw

Chair of Young Communist League 1965-68,YCL International Secretary 1969

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The ideas of Lenin and Trotsky are without doubt the most distorted and slandered ideas in history. For more than eighty years, they have been subjected to an onslaught from the apologists of capitalism, who have attempted to present their ideas -- Bolshevism -- as both totalitarian and utopian. An entire industry was developed in an attempt to equate the crimes of Stalinism with the regime of workers' democracy that existed under Lenin and Trotsky.

On the other hand, ever since the invention of 'Trotskyism' in 1924, the Stalinist bureaucracy has systematically falsified the real relationship between these two leaders of the October Revolution.

Originally written as a reply to Monty Johnstone, a leading theoretician of the British Communist Party, this book uncovers the real ideas of Lenin and Trotsky.