[In this series we have been dealing with…]

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In this series we have been dealing with the fight in today's condition: for the demands and brinciples of the Trotskyist Transitional Programme and focussing on the difference between the transitional demands and the line argued by the reformists.

The consistent message of the Trotskyist Transitional Programme is that the fight for the jobs, living standards and democratic rights of the working class must not be tailored to fit in with the requirements of the ruling class and its crisis-ridden system.

To defend existing jobs and create new employment in conditions of slump it is necessary to fight for work-sharing on full pay.

Rationalisation

This runs directly counter to the employers' drive for rationalisation, sackings and speed-up.

To finance such demands, and to pay wages that maintain and improve workers' Living standards may well prove to be beyond the Black sugar workers in Natal means of a particular capitalist -or the employing class as a whole.

The demands, however, are necessary for the defence of workers' interests.

And our answer to the empty pockets and depleted wallet of the individual capitalist is not to compromise on these demands, but to call for the nationalisation of industry, with no compensation to the old exploiters.

Naturally the complete programme of socialist revolution calls for the nationalisation of all major industry.

We would not rest content with the expropriation of one or two bankrupt firms.

But it the full programme of nationalisation is to be carried through, then it must begin with particular struggles through which the mass movement of the working class can be mobilised, can learn its strength and discard its treacherous leaders.

Because we stand at al times for the political independence of the working class and its interests, we insist that nationalisation take the form of expropriating the major capitalist trusts and their shareholders, with compensation paid only in cases of proven need.

This requirement specifically rules out the fake "nationalisation" • that has characterised reformist efforts to prop up post-war British capitalism through the purchase of run-down sectors of industry no longer profitable to private owners.

Strengthen

The effect of such "'nationalisation" is to strengthen the capitalist class by relieving it of the burden of directly sustaining