I regularly see trots being memed about because “they do nothing apart from writing newspapers”, but to me from their viewpoint (and as an anarchist) it totally makes sense and is a sympathetic view how it should be the workers leading the fight towards a revolution and the vanguard should stand aside and take the role of advisors (hence the newspapers) rather than leaders.
I feel like i’m missing something but i don’t know what.
Hmm the second part of your comment kinda explains what i might have missed, but anything i have read about the bolsheviks even from their own accounts says that they were pretty actively micromanaging things from above (for example having the Cheka involved with the “competition” with the other organizations) and that’s what i think where trotskyites are - at least from what i read - more ready to let go of reins of official power on behalf of self-organization.