A revolutionary wave is sweeping the planet, driven by the world economic and political crisis of capitalism and the undefeated nature of the working class.
The world’s stock exchanges and money markets are precariously balancing atop a mountain of unrepayable debt and fictitious values, embodied in worthless stocks, shares, government bonds and paper currencies, with nothing to back them up.
The biggest financial crash in history is coming.
The heroic struggles of the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan masses are dealing daily deadly blows at the most counter-revolutionary forces on the planet.
US imperialism, its British poodle, its Israeli mad dog, its Iraqi and Afghan puppets, are all staring defeat in the face.
In America, Britain and the West, the working class is refusing to give an inch to the capitalists and their governments and is fighting to defend its jobs and social services.
Economically, politically and morally bankrupt, capitalism today is a system of imperialist war and civil war ‘toboganing towards economic and military catastrophe’ as Trotsky put it.
Socialist revolution is the only way out of the crisis for the working class and oppressed masses in Britain and around the world.
Socialist revolution to overthrow the capitalist system and smash the capitalist state is the question of the hour.
The death agony of Capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International (The Transitional Programme) is the programme for world socialist revolution and how to achieve it.
It was written by Leon Trotsky in 1938 as the founding programme of the Fourth International.
‘The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat,’ it opens.
‘The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism.
‘Mankind’s productive forces stagnate.
‘Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth.
‘Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses.
‘Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems.’
The introduction concludes: ‘All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is ignorance or lies. They have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten.
‘Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.
‘The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard.
‘The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’
The Fourth International was founded and established in 1938, but Leon Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin’s agent Mercader in 1940.
The assassination was assisted by Stalin’s agent inside the camp, Hansen.
Through immense struggle by generations of socialist revolutionary fighters, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has maintained itself and has sections in a number of countries and is strengthening by the hour.
The Transitional Programme is the programme of the ICFI.
The crisis of revolutionary leadership is resolvable only by building sections of the ICFI and its British section, the Workers Revolutionary Party.
In the chapter entitled The Minimum Programme and the Transitional Programme, the revolutionary role of transitional demands is explained.
The strategic task lies in ‘overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation).
‘It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution.
‘This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.
‘Classical Social Democracy divided its programme into two parts independent of each other: the minimum programme which limited itself to reforms within bourgeois society, and the maximum programme which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future.
‘Between the minimum and the maximum programme no bridge existed.
‘And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying.’
The political aim of the Fourth International ‘is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie.
‘However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics
‘All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups, should be drawn into the revolutionary movement.
‘The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.’
In Britain today gas, electricity and water bills are shooting up, the price of basic needs is rocketing, interest rates are rising and ‘home owners’ face ‘negative equity’ and homelessness.
While the Blair/Brown government continues with its vicious, inhuman policy of arresting and deporting asylum seekers, it is at the same time ‘welcoming’ hundreds of thousands of east European workers who it is using to drive down wages.
Government unemployment figures belie the burgeoning unemployment which is particularly hitting the younger generation.
There are two basic economic afflictions, says the Transitional Programme, in which is summarised the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, unemployment and high prices, demanding generalised slogans and methods of struggle.
‘The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
‘Neither monetary inflation nor stabilisation can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick.
‘Against a bounding rise in prices . . . one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages.
‘This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
‘Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society.
‘The right to employment is the only serious right left to the workers in a society based upon exploitation.
‘This right today is being shorn from him at every step.
‘Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural”, the time is ripe to advance, along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours.
‘Trade unions and other mass organisations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in solidarity of mutual responsibility.
‘On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined.
‘The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week.
‘Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices.
‘It is impossible to accept any other programme for the present catastrophic period.’
The chapter concludes: ‘If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish.
‘ “Realisability” or “Unrealisability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle.
‘By means of this struggle, no matter what its immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.’
The chapter entitled: The Picket Line – Defence Guards – Workers’ Militia. The Arming of the Proletariat states: ‘The bourgeoisie is nowhere satisfied with the official police and army. . .
‘No sooner does the pressure of the English workers once again become stronger than immediately the fascist bands are redoubled. . .
‘The reformists systematically implant in the minds of the workers the notion that the sacredness of democracy is best guaranteed when the bourgeoisie is armed to the teeth and the workers are unarmed. . .
‘Only armed workers’ detachments, who feel the support of tens of millions of toilers behind them, can successfully prevail against the fascist bands. . .
‘Strike pickets are the basic nuclei of the proletarian army. . .
‘In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-defence.
‘It is necessary to write this slogan into the programme of the revolutionary wing of the trade unions. . .
‘It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia as the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers’ organisations, meetings and press. . .
‘Engels defined the state as “bodies of armed men”. The arming of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle for liberation.
‘When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and means to arming. In this field also, the leadership falls naturally to sections of the Fourth International.’
