Trotsky's Transit

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In this last of our occasional series on the w central importance today of The Transitional | overthrow capitalism. The accompanying extract Leon Trotsky on the Transitional Programme Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolut published by Pathfinder Press at £2.20.

The Transitional Programme or. The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International is the founding document of the Fourth International and the work most crucially relevant to revolutionaries all over the world.

And while it is not possible to bring out all aspects of The Transitional Programme within the scope of this article, there are certain key questions which need to be stressed.

First of all it must be realised that Trotsky did not produce the Programme in 1938 as a result of some sudden divine inspiration, or in order to revise any of the basic positions of Marxism and Leninism.

Preserve gains.

He wrote the Transitional Programme in the context of the need to preserve the gains made by the Russian Revolution and the need to pose a solution to the huge crisis of leadership in the workers' movement, following the betrayals of both the Second and Third Internationals.

Moreover, he based the Programme solidly on the most fundamental principles of Communism.

In this sense the Transitional Programme is part of a continuity of revolutionary strategy that begins with the ten demands at the end of Chapter Two of The Communist Manifesto, continues through Lenin's The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (September 1917), through the decisions of the first four World 'Congresses of the Communist International, and through the documents of the Left. Opposition at the start of Trotsky's fight against the counterrevolutionary degeneration of Stalinism.

After 1933, when the full implications of the decay in the Third InterPitched battle in Trotskyist-led Minneapolis, 1930s national had been shown beyond doubt in the defeat of the German working class by Hitler, Trotsky stepped up the development of a programme and method that would arm revolutionaries for the necessary struggle to build a principled leadership in the workers' movement.

Right from the start he em phasised the need to test out programme in practice:

"A new International cannot be prepared without practical participation in the unfolding … events. To counterpose a programmatic discussion to the revolutionTrotsky ary struggle would of course be false. It is necessary to combine the two"

(Declaration of the Bolshevik Leninist Delegation at the Conference of Left Socialist and Communist Organisations, 1933).

In June 1934 Trotsky produced "A Programme of Action for France" , anticipating many of the demands of the Transitional Programme four years later.

In writing the 1938 Programme, Trotsky • bore firmly in mind the "Theses on Tactics" adopted by the Third Congress of the Communist International:

- "In place of the minimum programme of the reformists and centrists, the Cominunist International puts the struggle for the concrete needs of the proletariat, for a system of demands which in their totality disintegrate the power of the bourgeoisie, organise the proletariat, represent stages in the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, and each of which expresses in itself the need of the broadest masses even if the masses themselves are not yet consciously in favour of the proletarian dictatorship...

Guide

It is vital to stress the place of the Transitional Programme in the continuity of Marxist and Leninist development in order to see it for what it is-the guide for building a bridge.

between the present objective conditions and present consciousness and the socialist transformation of society.* Those who argue that it is irrelevant or "out of date" today are thus junking more than 130 years of accumulated knowledge and experience.

That is not to say that the Transitional Programme is some sort of fixed dogma to be woodenly applied in a routine way* Method The key element is the transitional method, method which by its very nature implies intense dynamic contradictions between the needs of workers and the needs of capital.

"During a transitional epoch, the workers' movement does not have s systematic and well-balanced but a feverish and explosive character. Slogans as well as organisational forms should be subordinated to the indices of the movement. On guard against routine handling of a situation as against a plague (Transitional Programme)

Thus it. is necessary for revolutionaries today to take up additional demands which reflect changes in objective conditions since Trotsky was assassinated in 1940.

The WSL, for example, fights for such additional demands as the opening of the books of industries nationalised since the war and of post-war social services, in order to raise the question of workers control.

Likewise we fight for sliding scales of public. expenditure determined by independent bodies of workers to protect health and education facilities that were conceded by capitalism only during the post war boom' period.

Democratic demands Not all the demands in the Transitional Programme are transitional.

Many are basic demo cratic demands designed to defend and extend the right to organise independently, both economically and politically.

Trotsky shows how it is essential for revolutionaries to be at the forefront of the fight for democratic rights, but that at the same time this fight 'must be led by revolutionary methods, which pose independent working class action as opposed to the collaboration offered by reformists and Stalinists.

In the crucially important discussions with leaders of the American SWP (appended to the Pathfinder edition of the Transitional Programme) Trotsky spells out the need to fight for transitional demands as well as democratic ones.

It is vital to take what capitalism can concede-but only as the basis for forcing concessions which will set a time-bomb ticking away within capitalism itself:

"We can't stop only with the day-to-day demands of the proletariat. We must give to the most backward workers some concrete slogan that corrèsponds to their needs and that leads dialectically to the conquest of power". (April 1938).

And again in May 1938:

•"Not one of our demands will be realised under capitalism. That is why we are calling them transitional demands. It creates a bridge to the mentality of the workers and then a material bridge to the socialist revolution.

"The whole question is how to mobilise the masses for struggle"

Objective situation

In these discussions with SWP, leaders Cannon, Schachtman and Dunne, Trotsky discusses in depth how to concretise and fight for some of the principal demands of the Programme -especially the sliding scale of wages and hours and the call for workers' defence squads.

Time and again he emphasises the need to base programme on the objective situation:

"Naturally if I close my eyes I can write a good rosy programme that everybody will accept.

"But it will not corresBond to the situation; and the programme must correspond to the situation.

"I believe that this elementary argument is of the utmost importance:

"The mentality of the

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If we say to the farmer: The agricultural credits-they will bank fools you. They have very understand that. It presupposes big profits. And we propose to a turbulent mood among the you that you create farmers' farmers; it cannot be accomTrotsky is especially severe on a sectarian approach to this question.

"Of course if we had any