THIS Sunday’s 65th Anniversary rally of the assassination of Leon Trotsky by an agent of the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1940 is taking place at a time when the rapidly deepening crisis of the world capitalist system is driving forward the world socialist revolution in every part of the planet.
The United States states bourgeoisie has just had its pet scheme for a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas thrown back in its face by sections of the national bourgeoisie of South America led by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, whose regime sits on a sea of oil.
Just behind Chavez stands the working class of South America which is determined to smash the drive by US imperialism to dominate the Americas and rejects the privatisation programmes of the IMF-World Bank in favour of the struggle for socialism.
In the United States itself the bourgeoisie is beginning to shiver at the prospect of the 33,000 Delphi workers taking strike action next January 24th against the attempt to cut their wages by 62 per cent and smash their benefits.
Strike action at Delphi will stop General Motors entirely, and its shares have already begun to collapse even from their junk bond status. In fact, a number of major trade unions have already resolved to support the Delphi workers. The United States is on the brink of an eruption of working class anger not seen since the revolutionary days of the mid 1930s to 1940s when the CIO industrial trade unions were formed.
In Europe the bourgeoisie has already had its bottom singed by the flames of the French youth uprising. All over the EU (there have already been two general strikes in Belgium this year) the working class and the youth are fighting unemployment, privatisation and the plans to cut wages, slash benefits and shift entire industries to Asia.
In Britain, the weakest link in the capitalist chain the Blair regime has been brought down to earth with a bump, by the massive resistance of the working class to its war in Iraq and privatisation programmes.
All over Europe the working class and the masses of youth are moving forward into struggles that pose the working class taking power.
This growing revolutionary movement of the working class in the major capitalist countries will create the conditions where the Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian masses can successfully carry through their struggle against imperialism and its Zionist agency.
The growth of the revolutionary movement in the west will also create the conditions where the Soviet masses in Russia, Belarus the Ukraine and the other soviet states will be able to move into action to defend the gains of the October revolution with political revolutions to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and the new bourgeoisie without the fear of immediate imperialist intervention.
In 1933, after Hitler took the power in Germany, aided by the counter-revolutionary role of the German Communist Party, Trotsky declared that the Stalinist bureaucracy was the most counter-revolutionary force in the workers’ movement, and set out to build a new international, to replace the bankrupt Third International, the Fourth International.
He said that the foundation of the Fourth International in 1938 was the most important work of his life, more important than his role in leading the Russian revolution alongside Lenin or founding the Red Army, because it was to secure the future of the international working class.
Now is the time to salute Trotsky’s lifework by building sections of the Fourth International in every country to lead the developing world socialist revolution to its victory.
