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The Transitional Program: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International

Trotsky, Leon
http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX5400-TransitionalProgram.pdf
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Year Published:  1938  
Resource Type:  Book

Leon Trotsky's program for the founding of the Fourth International.


Abstract: 
Excerpt:
The Fourth International has already arisen out of great events: the greatest defeats of the proletariat in history. The cause for these defeats is to be found in the degeneration and perfidy of the old leadership. The class struggle does not tolerate an interruption. The Third International, following the Second, is dead for purposes of revolution. Long live the Fourth International!

But has the time yet arrived to proclaim its creation? ... the skeptics are not quieted down. The Fourth International, we answer, has no need of being proclaimed. It exists and it fights. It is weak? Yes, its ranks are not numerous because it is still young. They are as yet chiefly cadres. But these cadres are pledges for the future. Outside these cadres there does not exist a single revolutionary current on this planet really meriting the name. If our international be still weak in numbers, it is strong in doctrine, program, tradition, in the incomparable tempering of its cadres. Who does not perceive this today, let him in the meantime stand aside. Tomorrow it will become more evident.

The Fourth International, already today, is deservedly hated by the Stalinists, Social Democrats, bourgeois liberals and fascists. There is not and there cannot be a place for it in any of the People's Fronts. It uncompromisingly gives battle to all political groupings tied to the apron-strings of the bourgeoisie. Its task: the abolition of capitalism's domination. Its aim - socialism. Its method - the proletarian revolution.

Without inner democracy - no revolutionary education. Without discipline - no revolutionary action. The inner structure of the Fourth International is based on the principles of democratic centralism: full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action.

The present crisis in human culture is the crisis in the proletarian leadership. The advanced workers, united in the Fourth International, show their class the way out of the crisis. They offer a program based on international experience in the struggle of the proletariat and of all the oppressed of the world for liberation. They offer a spotless banner.

Workers: men and women of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!

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