Living Marxism

Chapter 6 of “On the Marxist Progam” ILTT Draft Program (last revised July 2022)

We have laid out the relationship between the vanguard party and program in testing and advancing the program. The fundamental point here is that the Transitional Method is dialectics in action. Transitional demands to meet workers’ needs are designed to raise revolutionary consciousness as each advance by the workers is met by a bourgeois reaction, forcing in turn a new advance by workers until the point of seizure of power is not only necessary but possible. The essence of dialectics then is the active, conscious leadership of the vanguard to lead the working class “over the bridge,” as Trotsky called it, from united fronts for immediate and democratic demands until a class-conscious majority of workers calling for “all power to the soviets!” arises capable of fighting for and winning socialist demands.

(a) Trotsky’s Transitional Method

The Transitional Program was Trotsky’s weapon to arm the proletariat at a time when once again the bourgeoisie was forced to go to war to resolve its worsening crises. Its method was to close the gap
between the objective world situation, summarised as the coming showdown between the two main classes over the future of humanity, and the subjective backwardness of the consciousness of the masses. Either the war would bring a defeat of the revolution and a fall into barbarism, or the proletariat would rise to the situation and make a socialist revolution. But for that to happen the revolutionary party and program was needed to close the gap. It was a desperate last-minute attempt to create a new international party in time to smash the Stalinist, social democratic and centrist mis-leadership of the proletariat and release its potential as the only revolutionary class. For Trotsky this crisis was summed up as the ‘crisis of Marxism’ which in its heart was “the crisis of revolutionary leadership’ that could be resolved only by a new, 4th International. The TP was the summation of the development of the Marxist program from the Communist Manifesto through the first Four Congresses of the Third International. It built on the Left Opposition that took up the work of defending Bolshevik Leninism after the degeneration of the Third International and the rise of Stalin (from 1924).

As we have seen after the final betrayal of the Third International in Germany in 1933, the Left Opposition became the International Communist League (ICL), the embryo of a new, Fourth International committed to the urgent task of ounding a new international to carry forward the task of the socialist revolution. Between 1933 and 1938 Trotsky fought to bring together the various currents that had broken from the Stalinist Comintern, facing resistance from some who thought a new international premature. Those who opposed its foundation, like the Polish section, the Chinese Trotskyist Chen Tu-Hsiu and Isaac Deutscher, based their belief on the period of defeats suffered by the world proletariat that would render the new international impotent. Trotsky’s response was that no matter how weak, a new international had to be founded urgently to raise the Marxist flag to rally the masses to revolution when the world faced war and counter-revolution and humanity was in mortal danger.

“The new parties and the new International must be built upon a new foundation: that is the key with which to solve all other tasks. The tempo and the time of the new revolutionary construction and its consummation depend, obviously, upon the general course of the class struggle, the future victories and defeats of the proletariat. Marxists, however, are not fatalists. They do not unload upon the historical process those very tasks which the historical process has posed before them. The initiative of a conscious minority, a scientific program, bold and ceaseless agitation in the name of clearly formulated aims, merciless criticism of all ambiguity those are some of the most important factors for the victory of the proletariat. Without a fused and steeled revolutionary party, a socialist revolution is inconceivable. The conditions are difficult; the obstacles are great; the tasks are colossal; but there is no reason whatever to become pessimistic or to lose courage. Despite all the defeats of the proletariat, the position of the class enemy remains a hopeless one. Capitalism is doomed. Only in the socialist revolution is there salvation for mankind.”

The Transitional Program was drafted by Trotsky as the basis for the new international. It was presented as a draft and far from complete. It lacked important aspects of a complete program – a deeper theoretical introduction and a revolutionary conclusion.

“A complete program would should have a theoretical expression of the modern capitalist society in its imperialist stage. The reasons of the crisis, the growth of unemployed, and so on, and in this draft this analysis is briefly summarized only in the first chapter because we have written about these things in articles, books, and so on…Also the end of the program is not complete because we don’t speak here about the social revolution, about the seizure of power by insurrection, the transformation of capitalist society into a dictatorship, the dictatorship of socialist society. This brings the reader only to the doorstep. It is a program for action from today until the beginning of the socialist revolution.”

Trotsky expected that the program would be competed in discussion with comrades in every country so the general lines of the program would be balanced by particular local conditions. This was a clear reference to the need for the new international party to be born both democratic and centralist.
Democratic discussion and critique would complete the program and agreement would be expressed in its adoption by the founding congress and acted upon as a disciplined international. In response to some criticisms from US comrades that “some parts of the program do not conform to the situation” he took it upon himself to ‘elaborate’ on what was missing from the theoretical section and its implications for the missing section on revolution. In discussions with leading US comrades, he said:

“We have repeated many times that the scientific character of our activity consists in the fact that we adapt our program not to political conjunctures or the thought or mood of the masses as this mood is today, but we adapt our program to the objective situation as it is represented by the economic class structure of society. The mentality can be backward; then the political task of the party is to bring the mentality into harmony with the objective facts, to make the workers understand the objective task. But we cannot adapt the program to the backward mentality of the workers, the mentality, the mood is a secondary factor – the prime factor is the objective situation…Everywhere I ask what should we do? Make our program fit the objective situation or the mentality of the workers? And I believe that this question must be put before every comrade who says that this program is not fit for the American situation. This program is a scientific program. It is based on an objective analysis of the objective situation. It cannot be understood by the workers as a whole. It would be very good if the vanguard would understand it in the next period and that they would then turn and say to the workers, “You must save yourselves from fascism.”

However, the criticisms of the incomplete program by US comrades demonstrated not its weakness so much as that of the critics. Trotsky was forced to defend the 4th International against the US petty bourgeois opposition which rejected dialectics for bourgeois empiricism, leading to a capitulation to national chauvinism within the imperialist countries, and a refusal to defend the Soviet Union ‘unconditionally’. The draft program was adopted and it remains for today’s revolutionaries to debate what changes were made in the time since 1938 are consistent with the theory and practice of Marxism as held by Trotsky.

Despite its limitations, as pointed out by Trotsky, the Transitional Program became the revolutionary guide to the proletariat on how to advance its struggle across many class fronts to resolve the crisis of Marxism, to defeat imperialist war and defend unconditionally the Soviet Union. For, while the workers have an instinct for dialectics as they become conscious of the struggle of labour against capital, this is not enough without an international party and program capable of transcending the divide between the objective situation and the subjective consciousness and making the transition to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

(b) Trotsky’s Leadership

Yet it is obvious that the crisis of Marxism put a huge load on Trotsky’s shoulders. Trotsky exiled in Mexico had to contend with the Stalinist trials, the assassination of leading comrades including his son Leon Sedov, the Dewey Commission, and those who opposed the founding of the new international. He also faced the bourgeois slander that the international was a sort of ‘vanity project’ for the sole surviving leader of the Bolshevik revolution. [Deutscher] Trotsky refuted all this in his explanation of the origins of the Transitional Program in common ideas, common understanding and common discipline, the result of common experience:

“One can say that we didn’t have a program until this day. Yet we acted. But this program was formulated under different articles, different motions, etc. In this sense the draft program doesn’t presage a new invention, it is not the writing of one man. It is the summation of collective work up until today. But such a summation is absolutely necessary in order to give to the comrades an idea of the situation, a common understanding. Petty bourgeois anarchists and intellectuals are afraid to subscribe to giving a party, common ideas, a common attitude. In opposition they wish moral programs. But for us this program is the result of common experience. It is not imposed upon anybody for whoever joins the party does so voluntarily …the program for the class cannot fall from heaven. We can arrive only at an understanding of the necessity…The program 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 program. We can go further and say that the discipline of our party must be very severe because we are a revolutionary party against a tremendous bloc of enemies, conscious of their interests, and now we are attacked not only by the bourgeoisie but by the Stalinists, the most venomous of the bourgeois agents. Absolute discipline is necessary but it must come from common understanding. If it is imposed from without it is a yoke. If it comes from understanding it is an expression of personality, but otherwise it is a yoke. Then discipline is an expression of my free individuality. It is not opposition between personal will and the party because I entered of my free will. The program too is on this basis and this program can be upon a sure political and moral basis only if we understand it very well.”

The task is to take the program based on common experience, and common discipline as free activity of the voluntary members, to the masses.

“The duty of the party is to seize every American worker and shake him ten times so he will understand what the situation is in the United States. This is not a conjunctural crisis but a social crisis. Our party can play a great role.” [Question: Isn’t the ideology of the workers a part of the objective factors?] “For us as a small minority this whole thing is objective including the mood of the workers. But we must analyze and classify those elements of the objective situation which can be changed by our paper and those which cannot be changed. That is why we say that the program is adapted to the fundamental stable elements of the objective situation and the task is to adapt the mentality of the masses to thoseobjective factors. To adapt the mentality is a pedagogical task. We must be patient, etc. The crisis of society is given as the base of our activity. The mentality is the political arena of our activity. We must change it. We must give a scientific explanation of society, and clearly explain it to the masses. That is the difference between Marxism and reformism.”

This was no clearer concrete demonstration of this than the question of an independent Labor Party. In the discussions with the SWP leaders on the program Trotsky found that the SWP were divided over whether there was sufficient ‘sentiment’ to call for an Independent Labor Party. Cannon thought that where was strong sentiment in the CIO. Shachtman thought that sentiment was lacking and if the SWP had to call for their formation they would end up as “appendages” of Roosevelt. Trotsky responded by explaining that the objective of the formation of the CIO demanded an Independent Labor Party to take the struggle forward.

On the question that “there is no evidence to indicate any widespread sentiment for such a party”. Trotsky answers:

“We have no machine to take a referendum. We can measure the mood only by action if the slogan is put on the agenda. But what we can say is that the objective situation is absolutely decisive. The trade unions as trade unions can have only a defensive activity, losing members and becoming more and more weak as the crisis deepens, creating more and more unemployed…I say here what I said about the whole program of transitional demands. The problem is not the mood of the masses buy the objective situation, and our job is to confront the backward material of the masses with the tasks which are determined by objective facts and not by psychology. The same is absolutely correct for this specific question on the labor party. If the class struggle is not to be crushed, replaced by demoralization, then the movement must find a new channel and this channel is political. We claim to have Marxism or scientific socialism. What does “scientific socialism” signify in reality? It signifies that the party which represents this social science, departs, as every science, not from subjective wishes, tendencies, or moods but from objective facts, from the material situation of the different classes and their relationships. Only by this method can we establish demands adequate to the objective situation and only after this can we adapt these demands and slogans to the given mentality of the masses. But to begin with this mentality as the fundamental fact would signify not a scientific but a conjunctural, demagogic, or adventurist policy.”

To those who fear becoming a reformist party, Trotsky responds that the SWP would raise its revolutionary program inside the Labor Party to get it adopted:

“…a concrete program of action and demands in the sense that this transitional program issues from the conditions of capitalist society today, but immediately leads over the limits of capitalism. It is not the reformist minimum program which never included workers’ militia, workers control of production. These demands are transitory because they lead from the capitalist society to the proletarian revolution…we can’t stop only with the day-to-day demands of the proletariat. We must give to the most backward workers come concrete slogan that corresponds to their needs and that leads dialectically to the conquest of power…We propagandize this program in the trade unions, propose it as the basic program for the labor party. For us it is a transitional program; but for them, it is the program. Now it’s a question of workers’ control of production, but you can realise this program only through a workers’ and farmers’ government. We must make this slogan popular.”

Trotsky’s assassination deprived the 4th International of his leadership and it succumbed to a failure of dialectics as he feared. The international was weakened by a leadership too influenced by the economism/opportunism of the petty bourgeois/labour aristocracy to operate as an effective international vanguard. It that did not grasp the essentials of dialectics, rather succumbing to national chauvinism in the interests of adapting to the mood of the ‘backward’ masses. Despite Trotsky’s efforts to raise a program based on the objective situation to raise demands that would close the gap between objective reality and subjective consciousness, the TP became reduced to a new mini-max program. The leadership rejected dialectics as the contradictory unity of objective and subjective reality, and resorted to the impressionism of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia which substitutes itself for the agency of class-conscious workers.

(c) A Transitional Program for Today

To conclude this discussion of the Transitional Program we need to work out how to make a Transitional Program for today based on the method of Trotsky’s program of 1938 ‘The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International.’ Trotsky referred to it as ‘unfinished’, and that should adopt it together with all other programmatic documents of the new International such as the Manifesto of the Fourth International on Imperialist War. In this way we use the method to arrive at a program for today’s conditions that takes the objective situation as it presents itself and raises the demands that are capable of developing workers’ class consciousness for the tasks of socialist revolution.

First, what is the objective situation? Trotsky in talking about the TP explained the objective and subjective factors in history from 1848 up to 1940. We would sum up that history as ‘permanent revolution’ in the sense of Marx when he first used the term in 1850; the bourgeoisie was no longer the revolutionary class and had to be replaced by the new revolutionary class, the proletariat, to make the permanent revolution. “The expression “permanent revolution” is an expression of Marx which he applied to the revolution of 1848. In Marxian, naturally not in revisionist but in revolutionary Marxist literature, this term has always had citizenship rights. Franz Mehring employed it for the revolution of 1905-1907. The permanent revolution, in an exact translation, is the continuous revolution, the uninterrupted revolution. What is the political idea embraced in this expression?

“It is, for us communists, that the revolution does not come to an end after this or that political conquest, after obtaining this or that social reform, but that it continues to develop further and its only boundary is the socialist society. Thus, once begun, the revolution (insofar as we participate in it and particularly when we lead it) is in no case interrupted by us at any formal stage whatever. On the contrary, we continually and constantly advance it in conformity, of course, with the situation, so long as the revolution has not exhausted all the possibilities and all the resources of the movement. This applies to the conquests of the revolution inside of a country as well as to its extension over the international arena.”

The objective situation is summarised as the balance of class forces between permanent revolution and permanent counter-revolution. It is not an abstraction, but the practical theory/program for the ongoing class struggle between the two antagonistic classes. We assess the objective situation today in relation to the imperialist epoch as one of capitalist decay and the destruction of the forces of production. This poses the question of which class shall rule – the proletariat or the ruling class. Our program is therefore one that makes the demands necessary to mobilise workers to fight for their immediate needs all the way to the seizure of power and the subjective transformation of the existing objective situation into the new objective situation of world socialist revolution.

Read ‘Workers unite! the historic task of workers is to overthrow rotten capitalism and fight for world socialism!’