> was mostly full of shit.
Hardly. He was one of the leaders of the revolution that changed the course of world history, *and* he had the foresight to warn against dictatorial course Stalin had set upon - maintaining a critique of Stalinism from the left throughout the rest of his life.
You can talk about his weaknesses if you like, but there is a context, and it is one that secures his reputation in the history of the 20C.. If anything, his failing was that he underestimated the degeneration of Stalinism, still imbuing 'nationalised property relations' with a progressive potential, long after this was exhausted: An atypical example of sentimentality on Trotsky's part.
That the movement that took his name after his death failed was not his fault. The prospects of building another international movement in the same generation as the formation of the mass communist parties were slim. It's a tragedy that the most militant sections of the working class dedicated their lives to shoring up a dictatorship that was slaughtering their own class wholesale. It's a tragedy that a better attention to Trotsky's lessons would have averted.