The strategic task

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their independent interests.

The reality of life under capitalism is that the ruling class is engaged in a continuous fight to increase profits by making, workers pay for the crisis through unemployment, cuts, speedup, attacks on wages, and so on.

The strength of the Transitional Programme is that it starts from the necessity to reverse this process and from the necessity to solve the crisis of leadership in the workers movement itself:

"The programme for the class cannot fall from heaven. We can arrive only at an understanding of the necessity The programme is the articulation of the necessity, that we learned to understand, and since the necessity is the same for all members of the class, we can reach a common understanding of the tasks and the understanding of this necessity is the programme". (Trotsky, June 1938).

•.. What are the tasks? The strategic tasks consist of helping the masses, of adapting their mentality politically and psychologically to the objective situation, of overcoming the prejudicial traditions of the American workers, and of adapting it [their mentality] to the objective situation of the social crisis of the whole system.

In this situation-taking into consideration the little experience and then viewing the creation of the CIO, the sit-down strikes, etc.-we have the full right to be more optimistic, more courageous, more aggressive in our strategy and tacticsnot adventuristic, but to advance slogans that are not in the vocabulary of the American working class.

What is the sense of the transitional programme? We can call it a programme of action, bur for us, to our transic coat programme-it is a help to the masses in overcoming the inherited ideas, methods, and forms and adapting themselves to the exigencies of the objective situation. This tránsitional programme must include the most simple demands. We cannot foresee and prescribe local and trade union demands adapted to the local situation of a factory, the development from this demand to the slogan for the creation of a workers' These are both extreme points, from the development of our transitional programme to find the connecting links and lead the masses to the idea of the revolutionary conquest of power." That is why some demands appear very opportunistic-because they are adapted to the actual mentality of the workers. That is why other demands appear too revolutionary-because they reflect more the objective situation than the actual mentality of the workers. It is our duty to make this gap between objective and subjective factors as short as possible. That is why I cannot overestimate the importance of the transitional programme.

You can raise the objection that we cannot predict the rhythm and tempo of the development, and that possibly the bourgeoisie will. find a political respite. That is not excluded-but then we will be obliged to realize a strategic retreat. But in the present situation we must be oriented for a strategic offensive, not a retreat. This strategic offensive must be led by the idea a creation of workers' sovie the creation of a workers farmers' government.

Soviets

I don't propose that slogan be launched i immedi ly for soviets-for mai ny reass and especially becaus e the w has not the significar nce for American workers tl hat it ! for the Russian Norkers. order to proceed frc ›m this the dictatorship of 1 the pro ariat. It is very po Issible : probable that in the sc manner that we obser ved the down strikes in the l IS, we 1 observe in a new form i the egi alent of soviets. Pri obably will begin by givin g ther different name.

In a certain peri iod sov can be replaced by far ctory cr mittees, then from a local se to a national scale. We cé foretell, but our strat tegic ori tation for the next pt ariod is orientation towards si oviets. 1 whole transitional F program must fill up the 'gap is betw conditions today and the sov tomorrow.

the i to and the same