[Brings of Leon Trotsky to McGilvray discusses the…]

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Brings of Leon Trotsky to McGilvray discusses the ›gramme in the fight to ire from discussions with d'are taken from "The in" by Leon Trotsky, class of the proletariat is of the backward but the mentality backward but the mentality is not such a substance as the factories, the mines the railroads, but is more mobile and under the blows of objective crisis, the millions of unemployed, it can change rapidly":

Trotsky also places the building of the revolutionary party at the centre of the forging of The Transitional Programme.

The party's programme represents a common understanding of events and tasks by the vanguard • ot the working class.

Only the revolutionary party can lead the fight for transitional, demands and then actually bring about the socialist revolution:

"This [the Transitional Programme brings the reader only to the doorstep.

It is a programme for action from today until the beginning of the socialist revolution." (June 1938):

It is the task of the party also to steer a course between the twin dangers of "sectarian abstraction" and ¡opportunist adaptation"

Thus, in the discussions on the Programme, Trotsky devotes a great deal of attention to the need to build a Labour Party in the This remains a key question of international significance for revolutionaries to this day, a question moreover which is directly linked to the fight for the Transitional Programme.

Sectarianism Arguing that his supporters should not pre-judge the nature of such a party, real choice between a reformist party or a revolutionary party, we would say this is your address [meaning the revolutionary party]. But a party is absolutely necessary ... To say that we will fight against opportunism, as of course we will fight today and tomorrow, especially if the working class party had been organised, by blocking a progressive step which can produce opportunism, is a very reactionary policy, and sectarianism is often reactionary because it opposes the necessary action of the working class"

The culmination of the transitional approach is seen by Trotsky as the demands placed on the reformist and Stalinist leaders that they break with the bourgeoisie and form a workers' government.

Collaboration

This demand must be raised in close connection with the necessary programme of transitional demands which such a government must be called on to carry out.

By cementing this connection it emphasises the dangers of class collaboration and shows workers the need for a government that will genuinely represent Yes, the capitalists do [open their books] in two instances: when the situation of the factory is really bad, or if they can deceive the workers. But the question must be put from a more general point of view. In the first place, you have millions of unemployed, and the government claims it cannot pay more, and the capitalists say that they cannot make more contributions-we want to have access to the book-keeping of this society.

The control of income should be organised through factory committees. Workers will say: We want our own statisticians who are devoted to the working class. If a branch of industry shows that it is really ruined, then we answer: We propose to expropriate you. We will direct better than you. Why have you no profit? Because of the chaotic condition of capitalist society. We say: Commerical secrets are a conspiracy of the exploiters against the exploited, of the producers against the toilers. In the free era, in the era of competition, they claimed they needed secrecy for protection. But now they do not have secrets among themselves but only from society.

Workers control

This transitional demand is also a step for the workers' control of production as the preparatory plan for the direction of industry. Everything must be controlled by the workers, who will be the masters of society tomorrow. To call for the conquest of power-that seems to the American workers illegal, fantastic. But if you say: The capitalists refuse to pay for the unemployed, and hide their real profits from the state and from the workers by dishonest book-keeping; the workers will understand that formula. James P. Cannon create committees to control