What Is the Workers Socialist League ?!

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The Workers Socialist League was formed on December 22nd 1974 as 'nationalisation under workers' management: all these policies are now part of the fight to carry forward the method and principles of Trotsky's called for in this situation. As they are fought for and workers are mobilised Iransitional Programme, the founding document oi the Fourth Internat- to win these demands, they begin to form a bridge between the present ional. The WSL now represents the continuity of the struggle for these level of political consciousness of workers and the need for the working class to take the power. Yet the WRP refused to take up & fight for hist The formation of the League followed the expulsion of over 200 method. members from the Workers Revolutionarv Partv. carried nut hureanerat- Far this reacon the mnst immortant davalanmanto ia nure ically by the WRP leadership in order to prevent discussion of their own centred on a break from WRP sectarianism and propagandism, bringing abandonment of the Programme both in theory and in practice. These important gains in trade union work and opening up completely new areas. mass expulsions showed that there could be no hope of correcting the We are beginning to recruit and train from the new forces thrown into WRP - an independent organisation had to be founded to maintain the struggles in this period - nót only trade unionists, but also professional workers, housewives, students and youth - in the fight to construct the Such a split came out of particular conditions. The rapid development of the economic crisis of capitalism and the forward movement of the Our record shows that we continue to fight uncompromisingly to world working class, which has now overthrown imperialism in Vietnam expose all those who attack and revise Marxism - not only the WRP but and Cambodia, began to produce the conditions to build revolutionary alsq the 'rank and file' policies of the IS group who refuse to defend the Soviet Union as a workers' state, and the IMG, who liquidate the revolutAt such a point the importance of a fight for the method and principles ionarv movement into unnrincinled hlncs and liaisons with anti-revnhitinn. is paramount in the préparation of revolutionary leadership. After a hard of the Transitional Programme, against both sectarianism and opportunism ary tendencies, as well as against Stalinism and reformism. Already it is clear that throughout the world the movement of the period of isolation from the mass movement, Trotskyism now emerges working class poses similar questions for those groups calling themselves as the only tendency with a programme andka history of struggle to lead Trotskyist, particularly sections of the International Committee of the The defence of jobs through the fight for work sharing on full pay, run Fourth International, producing similar splits and offering a rich possibility by trade union committees; the defence of living standards through the of developing a truly international movement based on the Trotskyist programme. For this reason the WSL 'is now engaged in a process of interfight for all wage agreements to include a sliding. scale to compensate fo nal discussion prior to a full founding conference, a vital part of which is to all increases in the cost of living as determined by trade union prices hammer out and adopt perspectives for the building of the Trotskyist committees; the challenging of the "rights" of the employer and the Fourth International, and the development of revolutionary parties based preparation of the struggle for power through the fight to open the on the Trotskyist programme in every country in the struggle to end books of industry; i and to establish workers control in the fight for principles in the workers' movement.

fight for Trotskyism.

parties internationally.

the working class in the taking of power. capitalism. Name.

Address.

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MILITIA WOMEN ution came as no surprise. Trotsky as early as 1905 had explained that in the epoch of imperialism the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution could only be completed under the dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the peasantry.

Indeed it was the working class of Spain, with a series of strikes, risings, gun battles and the threat of an all-out general strike in 1931, who had been instrumental in the setting up of the republic. Within weeks after its foundation, workers were involved in bloody clashes with soldiers, as they took up a struggle against the Church.

REFORMISTS

While the working class were going into independent actions ation in the bourgeois government. Rejecting the theory of permanent revolution, the Spanish socialist leaders argued, as had the Menshev iks in Russia in 1917, that beiore socialism could come a long period of capitalist development would have to take place.

The task of socialists therefore unty claimed was to recognise that the revolution was a bourgeois one, and to support it and "defend it against reaction" by joining the government. This is the formula of social democratic class collaboration in every country, and of course completely contrary to everything that Marxism teaches us.

The only was that the working class can fight against reaction is From the very beginning working class power was used against fascist rallies.

Gil Robles, the fascist leader, planned three major shows of strength, at Escurial near Madrid, in Madrid itself and at Covadongas, Asturias, in 1934. In each area general strikes were called, street car rails torn up, trains stopped, food and accommodation made impossible, roads blocked and the fascists driven back and dispersed, inflicting a major setback to In answer to this the right wing attempted to bring three fascists into the government. Within six hours the reformist-led UGT called a nationwide General Strike. Armed clashes took place between workers and soldiers.

In Madrid, Bilbao and other cities, production and commerce were paralysed, but in Asturias the most solid resistance took place. Workers, armed with dynamite from the mines, set up a Workers' and Peasants' republic which gave land to the peasants, seized the factories and put reactionaries on trial.

ALLIANCES

For fifteen days they held off the Foreign Legion and Moorish troops. At the centre of this struggle, which was finally defeated only through isolation, were Workers' Alliances, committees of workers from the different organisations, which the Trotskyists had fought to build.

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against their enemies their reformist leaders were arguing for particip-