Genuinely what would have even changed, internal policy- wise if he had taken power instead of Stalin?
How would the lives of ordinary soviet citizens and the ones in the (presumedly) soon to be liberated areas be different? How would the state function under his rule? What makes him so different that even to this day he has followers ready to die for his ideas? Sorry for being a theorylet, I just find the whole Trotsky-Stalin affair to be confusing and pointless.
In his book The Revolution Betrayed, he bemoans the fact that Bukharin as a right-deviationist was having persuasion over Stalin's economic policies, which Trotsky (as leader of the posthomous Left Opposition) saw as being too friendly to markets. So, Trotsky would have sought to end commodity production in the USSR completely, which as we see from Stalin's own writings, was a perennial feature.
Its a complicated question, and one worthy of asking. Ideologically, most Trotskyists believe that a revolution of the working class can most effectively happen in an already industrialized nation, where the infrastructure of production is already in place; and can be downsized or reappropriated more effectively. Not to mention globalization of the revolution, which is distinct from the imperial ambitions of Stalin and later Soviet Realpolitik.
Then there is commodity production. Commodities are goods or services specifically created for profit and market surplus, they shouldnt exist under a communist mode of production because there are no market exchanges.
Now in practice, Trotsky wouldnt have eliminated the production of "commodities" immediately, that would be unpractical (and further reinforces the need for an already industrialized base). The goal is that commodities would cease to be so because a centrally planned economy is unfit for markets, and commodities would no longer be produced for profit.
also Stalin was a Georgian and we dont like those
>>2915934>The goal is that commodities would cease to be so because a centrally planned economy is unfit for markets, and commodities would no longer be produced for profit.Care to elaborate?
Not much. USSR would still be the same state-capitalist shithole, but even more imperialist. Permanent revolution = permanent imperialism
Would probably be better on foreign policy and probably wouldn't kill as many communists but I doubt economic policy would be much different
Trotsky would have attempted to invade Germany through Poland without asking for permission first like Stalin if Hitler takes power. Uyghur doesn't know how to take a breather he's just all aggro all the time. Either Trotsky would pull off the greatest victory in European history and successfully usher in world communism, or he would get bogged down in endless fighting until some conservatives (conservative in the sense of cautious, not the political term) in the USSR couped him to try to find a peace.