Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Communism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky advocated world revolution, holding that "socialism in one country", as advocated by Joseph Stalin, was impossible. Trotsky criticized the government of the USSR, calling it a "bureaucratically deformed worker's state". Many of his criticisms were described in his book, The Revolution Betrayed.

Trotskyism has become a by-word used by some communists to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a "Trotskyist" by the Communist supported elements implied that the person was a fascist spy or agent provocateur. George Orwell wrote about this in Homage to Catalonia and in his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans.