ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on Trotsky's extensive writings as well as multiple secondary sources to establish the main components of the world view evolved by Trotsky in the early twentieth century and which today (2022) still informs the programmes and activities of the many organizations that adhere to his name. There are disagreements about the content and significance of some of these ideas, but arguably there are nine main themes that can be said to constitute Trotskyist doctrine and the chapter describes and discusses each in turn. They are as follows: the theory of permanent revolution; the united front tactic; transitional demands; critical analysis of the Soviet state; the necessity for a new, Fourth International; the necessity to build revolutionary, democratic centralist, vanguard parties; the necessity to build militant organizations to challenge trade union bureaucracy; the insistence on revolution not reform; and the characterization of the imperialist epoch. Some of these themes are unique to Trotskyism whilst others are shared with the official communist tradition from which Trotskyism emerged in the 1920s.
