What is Trotskyism? - Tony Clark,

What is Trotskyism? - Tony Clark,

6. TROTSKY’S TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME.

Trotsky wrote his Transitional Programme in 1938. Known as The Death Agony of Capitalism and The Tasks of the Fourth International, it was to become the programmatic guide to the various sections of the pro-Trotsky International. That Trotsky held high hopes for this organisation was forcefully expressed in Trotsky’s remark in the programme that

‘The advanced workers of all the world are already firmly convinced that the overthrow of Mussolini, Hitler and their agents and imitators will occur only under the leadership of the Fourth International’. (Trotsky: The Transitional Programme: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International; New Park Publications; p.47).

It can be argued that, not only was this categorical statement an expression of Trotsky’s hope, but also a poignant reminder of his detachment from reality, a consistent feature of Trotskyism, which became more pronounced with his isolation.

In the Transitional Programme, Trotsky had come to the conclusion that

‘The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; p.12)

Nevertheless, Trotsky remained optimistic, observing that

‘…the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; p.14)

So that although Trotsky saw a crisis at the subjective level, that is at the level of leadership, he argued that the material factors, or the laws of history, would eventually predominate. This is of course was true in the most general sense. For Trotsky, what the situation required was to

‘…find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of revolution’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; p.14)

And for Trotsky

‘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’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; pp. 14-15).

Trotsky chided classical Social Democracy because it had separated reform from revolution, while elevating the former into an absolute, thus, essentially, becoming reformist. For these reformists, he argued that

‘Between the minimum and the maximum programme no bridge existed’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; p.15).

Social Democracy had betrayed revolution, and Trotsky implies in the Transitional Programme that this was due to the separation between the minimum and the maximum parts of the Marxist programme. Trotsky thus sought a remedy, a bridge to connect the two parts of the programme, in essence to replace the old programme with a new one. This was to be the ‘Transitional Programme’.

But by replacing the minimum-maximum programme with the Transitional Programme, Trotsky had ignored his own advice that

‘A revolutionary programme should base itself on the dialectics of the class struggle’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; pp. 46-47)

Far from dialectics, Trotsky’s Transitional Programme is an eclectic combination of minimum and maximum demands, with the latter type of demands predominating.

While we must view the Transitional Programme within the context of 1938 and the problem Trotsky imagined he was addressing, the essence of the Transitional Programme is that Trotsky presents mostly maximum demands disguised as ‘transitional’ demands. For Trotsky transitional demands are neither minimum nor maximum demands. In order to discuss Trotsky’s Transitional Programme we can ignore Trotsky’s ideological outlook. Everyone knows that Trotsky was opposed to Stalin. With this out of the way, the most important question that can be asked about ‘transitional’ demands is: what are they? Close examination reveals that the Transitional Programme consists mainly of maximum demands repackaged as transitional demands.

It is remarkable that Trotsky, who participated in the Russian revolution and played a leading role, failed to grasp that, between the minimum and the maximum programme, or rather, between the minimum and maximum parts of the programme, that is to say, between reform and revolution, there can be no ‘bridge’, but rather a qualitative, dialectical leap, the transformation of a quantitative state into a qualitative state.

Trotsky seems to confuse the idea of a transitional epoch from capitalism to communism with the question of the programme. In other words, if the epoch was transitional then the demands must be transitional as well. Thus, in reality, Trotsky’s Fourth International was based mainly on a system of maximum demands, which he labelled as transitional in character. The result is that Trotsky’s followers, since the foundation of their Fourth International in 1938, have actually been agitating for the implementation of revolutionary demands, mostly in non-revolutionary situations.

By fighting for mostly revolutionary demands in mostly non-revolutionary situations, Trotskyism maintained its essence as a pseudo-left, sectarian current in the workers’ movement. It is not the actual demands themselves that are in conflict with the revolutionary needs of the working class, looked at from an abstract level. What is at issue is the presentation of maximum demands as transitional demands in such a way as to ignore the leap from reform to revolution.

The role of Trotskyism has been to confuse anti-capitalist workers and intellectuals about the nature of political demands. Trotsky’s reference to the Social Democracy not having any need for a bridge of transitional demands does nothing to clarify the relation between reform and revolution. The Marxist criticism of Social Democracy is not about their avoidance of a bridge of transitional demands, but rather for betraying the maximum programme of revolution.

For Marxist-Leninists a distinction must be made between minimum demands and maximum demands. This relates to a non-revolutionary situation and a revolutionary situation. This does not mean, of course, that Marxist-Leninists refuse to make propaganda around maximum demands in a non-revolutionary situation. While they propagate maximum demands in non-revolutionary situations, this does not represent calls to action directed at the masses, but rather such propaganda are aimed at the more advanced sections of the class for educational purposes. Marxist-Leninists present the full programme of revolution to the working class, and in the first place, the revolutionary vanguard. They realise that revolutionary, maximum demands will not mobilise the masses in a non-revolutionary situation.

To hope to mobilise the masses with maximum demands, whether disguised as ‘transitional demands’ or not, is the folly of sectarian groups. When Trotsky rebukes sectarianism in the Transitional Programme, this is irony at its most superb. He seems to be making jest at himself and his stillborn Fourth International, because, where sectarianism is concerned, Trotsky warns that

‘At their base lies a refusal to struggle for partial and transitional demands i.e., for the elementary interests and needs of the working masses, as they are today’. (Trotsky: op. cit.; p.55).

Notwithstanding, Trotsky failed to see that his personal contribution to promoting sectarianism was the replacement of minimum-maximum demands with transitional demands, demands that were neither minimum nor maximum and therefore impractical in relation to the real class struggle. The Trotsky of the Transitional Programme is therefore true to form, the essential Trotsky, in practice a non-dialectician, a feature which brought him repeatedly into conflict with Lenin.

The term ‘transitional demands’ is one which Trotsky seems to have first used at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. (See Theses, Resolutions & Manifestos of the Fourth Congress of the C. I.; p.330).

Trotsky’s concept of a transitional programme was a logical development from this early usage. However, the real nature of the Marxist programme, that is to say its purpose, is to guide the action of the masses in non-revolutionary and revolutionary times, in times of reform and in times of revolution.

The demands which are emphasised, and around which the party strives to mobilise the widest number of people depends on whether we are faced with a revolutionary or a non-revolutionary situation.

The Marxist programme, therefore, relates to the defensive and offensive stages of the class struggle, and is made up of minimum and maximum demands. The former represents the tactical, the latter, the strategic aspect of the struggle. Of course, today, we do not speak of a minimum and maximum programme, but rather demands. Unlike Trotsky we do not replace this with a transitional programme, rather we base ourselves on a flexible programme which defends the immediate interests of the working people: minimum or partial demands. On the other hand, the party constantly reminds the masses that the only solution to their situation is the demands leading to socialism: maximum demands. In other words the Marxist programme is made up of a unity between the minimum, partial, relative demands of the masses and the absolute, maximum demands for socialism. The change from relative to absolute demands, their coming into active play, depends on the concrete process of the class struggle. The programme, therefore, relates to the different stages of the class struggle: from the ‘defensive’ struggle to defend the immediate interests of the working class up to the immediate struggle for power.