Stalin = national communism
Trotsky = international communism
Trotsky was among the many victims of Stalin’s purges. But that doesn’t make him innocent. He advocated the violent overthrow of free societies such as the US.
The tactics of Trotskyites are different than those of Stalinists. Gramsci, Adorno, and Horkheimer would have allied themselves with Trotsky, and rejected Stalin.
Saul Alinsky was in the Trotskyite tradition.
Thank you for the explanation.
I used to employ Trotsky to wrap up my explanation of why Nazi’s were leftists. Historically, the falling out between Hitler and Stalin provided the confusion that liberals employ to assign Nazi ideology to the right. “They were enemies, weren’t they?” My response to this nonsense is that Trotsky and Stalin weren’t exactly on opposite ends of the political spectrum.