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A Fourth International Tendency (FIT) pamphlet, February, 1988. Used by permission.
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[This article is based on a talk given by the author in Cleveland Ohio, on August 16, 1985.]
Many who would call themselves Marxists have probably never heard of it. It is one of the least utilized tools in the arsenal of revolutionaries. Yet the transitional program is, at the same time, one of the most important acquisitions of the Marxist movement in this century.
What is the transitional program? In its most narrow sense the term refers to a specific document – the original title of which was The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International. It was drafted by Leon Trotsky during his last exile in Mexico and was adopted as the founding program of the FI in 1938. But the concept of a transitional program has a broader meaning as well. That specific document was, in fact, the codification of decades of experience by revolutionary Marxists around the world.
The term “transitional program” also refers to a general method of approaching the class struggle – a method which was first utilized by Marx and Engels in drafting the Communist Manifesto, was applied by the Bolsheviks during the course of the Russian revolution and afterward through the early years of the Comintern, and was finally codified at the founding conference of the Fourth International. Since 1938, the parties of the Fourth International have sought to continue applying the general methodology of the transitional program in approaching new developments in the class struggle.
The reason the transitional program is so important is that it addresses the most difficult problem that revolutionaries face in the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism: How to develop the consciousness of the masses, who are imbued with bourgeois values and assumptions, i.e., who take the current socio-economic system as inevitable in their lives. How do we help to develop their consciousness beyond this, to an understanding of the necessity and possibility of socialist revolution?
Surprisingly, this key problem is rarely considered by those who would like to see the overthrow of capitalism. Most who call themselves revolutionaries act as if the consciousness of the workers and their allies will develop spontaneously, or automatically, and that when this happens the “genuine” Marxists will, as a matter of course, gain their rightful place at the head of the insurrection. Such a view is completely schematic, but its prevalence accounts for the lack of attention paid in most “revolutionary” circles to the problem of a transitional approach.
The transitional method begins with the immediate needs and concerns of the masses, the most obvious and pressing problems, yet does this in a way that helps to show that they are connected to, and a result of, much more fundamental difficulties – the basic structural problems and contradictions that are inherent in the capitalist economic system. Through this process overall class consciousness can be advanced and the idea of the socialist revolution becomes a natural outgrowth of day-to-day struggles.
The Death Agony of Capitalism document followed this approach. It contained both a conjunctural analysis of the immediate situation faced by the workers movement internationally in 1938 – with its economic depression, the imminent threat of world war, and fascist dictatorships in a number of developed countries – as well as a set of specific demands and slogans that addressed this situation. Considering the big changes which have taken place in the world between 1938 and today it is remarkable to what extent many of the demands and slogans of this resolution maintain their relevance. Of course much of the conjunctural analysis is now of primarily historical interest, and some of the medium term prognoses were simply wrong. (For example, the war did not lead to socialist revolutions led by mass Fourth Internationalist parties.)
If we look critically at any document from the history of the Marxist movement – and that is the only way to look from the Communist Manifesto to the present day, we will discover this same reality. Some parts will be outdated; some parts have turned out to be wrong; while others remain strikingly fresh and alive. The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International took up the world in 1938; we must take it up almost fifty years later.
But the fact that so much of this resolution does maintain its vitality despite the changes in the world since 1938 shows that the demands and slogans of the transitional program really do capture something about the essence of the crisis of capitalism – a crisis which has the same fundamental elements today even though many of the specific symptoms are different. These are not demands dreamed up as a result of divine inspiration, but reflect the real experiences of the class struggle.
At the same time, the transitional program cannot be viewed as some rigid set of slogans fixed and determined in 1938 and valid for all times and places. The importance of a particular aspect of the system’s crisis may come to the fore at one moment, only to recede in importance later on, or be superseded by some other aspect at a different time. In different parts of the world, a variety of questions and issues are likely to be of primary urgency.
In addition, the contradictions of the capitalist system emerge unevenly. New aspects of reality constantly reveal themselves. The movements of Blacks and other oppressed nationalities in the United States, of youth and women around the world, have all become much more pressing since 1938. The revolutionary movement has had to address itself to these and other new developments.
That’s how new slogans and ideas become part of the transitional program. In fact, the Socialist Workers Party in the United States adopted A Transitional Program for Black Liberation in 1969, and in the same year the Fourth International adopted a resolution titled A Strategy for Revolutionary Youth. These attempted to codify the specific lessons of these struggles and explain how they could contribute to our overall goal of a socialist revolution. (Both of these documents are published as appendices to the third edition of the book, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, by Leon Trotsky, 1977, Pathfinder Press. The same book contains the text of The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, and related material.)
The development of such documents by our movement today would be far more difficult without the dramatic effect which the original codification of the transitional approach in 1938 had on our methodology. This was one of Trotsky’s last great contributions before his death. Although a transitional method was inherent in Marxism from its inception, and the Comintern even had a brief discussion of the concept of transitional demands in 1922, it was not something about which revolutionists had been truly conscious. Through the process of drafting the Death Agony of Capitalism resolution and the discussions about the program which led up to it, Trotsky helped those who came after him apply a transitional approach in a more systematic, and therefore more effective, manner.
There are three different kinds of demands that make up the transitional program: immediate demands; democratic demands; and transitional demands. Each of them has an important place, and understanding their different but interconnected roles is essential to understanding the transitional program itself.
Immediate demands are those that flow from, and can be formulated spontaneously as a result of, the day-to-day experiences of the masses. Trade union demands for higher wages, or defense of workers rights on the job, are a good example.
Democratic demands reflect the continued fight for basic liberties formally won in this country as a result of the 1776 War of Independence and the Civil War – our two bourgeois democratic revolutions. These are things such as free speech and the right to political organization (which are supposedly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights but which, as we know, we must continually fight to maintain); and the equality of all citizens regardless of race, or nationality (which is again legally recognized but honored more in the breach), or sex (which is not yet even legally recognized in this country).
Finally we have transitional demands proper. These are the slogans which lead directly toward the idea of workers control and a socialist reorganization of society: “Organize a labor party which can run the government in the interests of working people, not the rich!” “Open the books of the corporations which claim they cannot afford to pay decent wages!” “Reduce the workweek with no loss of pay to provide more jobs!” “Organize a massive public-works program to build roads, hospitals, schools and also provide jobs!” “Let the bosses, not the workers, pay for the crisis – raise wages to keep up with the cost of living!” “Nationalize companies that claim they can’t continue to operate profitably and turn control of them over to the workers!”
All of these ideas can be presented in a way that seems eminently reasonable to people based on their experiences within the present system. But in reality they require socialism for their full implementation. I stress the words full implementation, because there is a common misconception about transitional slogans – that it is impossible for them to be won under capitalism. That isn’t true. Struggles of the workers can win aspects of these demands – for example a reduction of the workweek or an escalator clause in a union contract. But the full implementation of a system whereby the necessary social labor is shared equally among all those who need a job and everyone gets her or his fair share of the collective economic product will require a socialist transformation of the economy.
While it is transitional demands in particular which are the unique contribution of the revolutionary Marxist movement, the transitional method is not reducible to transitional demands alone. What is key is the interaction and interrelationship between the three types of slogans. This, too, is a unique understanding of revolutionary Marxism.
Unlike reformists, we don’t see the struggle for immediate and democratic demands as ends in themselves. This doesn’t mean that they are unimportant in their own right; they are. But this is not their only or even their primary importance. Revolutionaries try to use struggles for immediate and democratic demands to advance the consciousness and organization of the masses as one part of the broader struggle for socialism. This also differs from the attitude of ultraleft currents, which tend to disdain any struggles which aren’t radical enough for their taste.
One good illustration of the interaction of the three kinds of demands which comes from the Death Agony of Capitalism document itself is the way it treats the trade union movement and the economic struggles of the working class. It presents a series of ideas, which start from the simple strengthening and defense of the unions and their struggles.
From there it discusses the obvious need to broaden out such struggles in order to gain more power, and of the need for factory committees to wry out a particular battle in a more militant and all-encompassing fashion. From a discussion of the difficulties that will arise in the course of the activity of the factory committee we move on to the need to open the books – to provide that committee with the knowledge it needs to help suggest solutions to the problems faced by the workers it represents.
When the capitalists continue to insist that they cannot apply such solutions and still make a profit, the transitional program raises the idea of expropriation of the capitalists, so the workers – who don’t have to worry about profits – can solve the problems themselves. This leads in turn to the need for armed self-defense by the workers so they can protect themselves against the inevitable attacks of the capitalists who will resist such expropriations. The final conclusion is the need for the workers to take over the government, as this will be the final support of the capitalists against the armed workers. We proceed logically from a simple defense of workers rights on the job – i.e., immediate demands - to the conquest of state power.
A related aspect of the transitional program, which distinguishes a revolutionary Marxist understanding, is our approach to the: methods of struggle that are used even in the fight for immediate and democratic demands. We insist on those methods that educate the masses, that teach them to rely on themselves and on themselves alone to resolve their problems.
This is why we are particularly insistent on the question of mass action, of militant pickets and street demonstrations as the best way to make the power of the workers and their allies felt – both by the ruling class and by the masses themselves. This is directly counterposed to the strategy advocated by many in the radical movement who believe that the way to win reforms is by getting Congress to pass some particular piece of legislation. Such forces may organize demonstrations, but it is always and only as an adjunct to their lobbying and legislative efforts.
Our view is the opposite. We aren’t opposed to parliamentary initiatives per se; getting specific legislation adopted can be of crucial importance at times. But we don’t see this as the main vehicle for social change. Legislative initiatives are useful primarily when they serve as an aid to the self-organization of the masses. The fight for the Equal Rights Amendment is a good example. Ratification of the ERA by the state legislatures would have been a big victory. But ratification of the amendment would not have guaranteed equal rights for women, any more than adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed equal rights to ex-slaves.
What could begin to win equality for women would be the kind of massive mobilization of women themselves, along with the workers movement and others in this country, that remain necessary to win the ERA – just as it was the mobilization of the Black masses that finally won an end to Jim Crow segregation in the South. This is the main reason why the NOW leadership’s pro-Democratic Party, “respectable” campaign for the ERA was such a disaster, It was not just because that campaign failed to gain ratification of the amendment, but primarily because it failed to mobilize the movement that can truly win a measure of equality – whether or not the ERA is formally adopted.
The difference between these two approaches may seem like a subtle one, but understanding it is crucial to understanding the transitional approach. No basic political question has ever been decided by parliamentary means – only by the clash of social forces. One clear illustration of this is the conflict over slavery in this country in the middle of the last century. The “democratic process” expressed itself on this issue through the election of Lincoln as president. The Southern slaveowners knew full well what that election meant, and launched a bloody civil war – the most brutal sort of mass action – to test the real relationship of forces. And it took a victory by the North in the war to actually bring about an end to slavery. The Southern ruling class wasn’t willing to accede to any sort of parliamentary process. The same reality holds true for the U.S. ruling class today.
That’s why revolutionary Marxists, applying the transitional program, insist on methods which don’t simply appeal to the good will or morality of this country’s rulers. We must understand that any concessions we might win will be forced from them. Our task is to organize struggles which help the workers to understand this as well.
The relevance of the transitional program for our situation today can be seen if we look at some of the specific pressing problems faced by working people in the U.S. Let’s take the question of the trade union movement and the workers fightback. It’s easy to see that workers are under attack and that the unions are in crisis. The elementary solution to this is also fairly obvious: a good dose of class solidarity.
But how do we forge this solidarity? This is where the role of conscious revolutionists and other class-struggle militants in the unions comes in. We can find demands in the transitional program which correspond to the present level of consciousness of the workers and begin to raise them in a systematic way. We have already discussed the most important of these: a labor party; escalator clause; shorter workweek with no cut in pay; open the books; organize the unorganized. All of these can be explained in reasonable terms. They may seem outlandish or impractical to many at first, but steady propaganda and education can win ever broader layers to the fight for these goals.
And through that fight we can see how the transitional dynamic will be unleashed. Every working person understands the need for a job at a decent wage. But this idea, perceived as an elementary right, comes squarely into conflict with the basic laws of bourgeois economics – which dictate that capitalism cannot provide a steady job at a living wage for all of its working class. The struggle around this issue begins to break down the illusions of the masses in the benevolence of the bourgeois system – illusions which provide the primary prop by which the bourgeoisie remains in power. This, in turn, leads to a further radicalization and a readiness to fight for more radical demands.
It is important to note here another aspect of the transitional method. We do not approach the masses all at once with the entire program and demand that they accept it completely. We propose only a struggle around those items on which support from large numbers can be mobilized. We pick and choose battles which correspond to the actual consciousness and conditions, and the fight for these leads to more radical conclusions.
We follow a similar method in another area with striking relevance for this country at the present time, the demand: “Let the people vote on war!” Another way of saying the same thing would be, “Let the majority of the population decide on questions of war and peace!” This was a vital issue in 1938 when the Death Agony document was drafted, with preparations being made by the imperialist ruling classes for World War II, and it remains so today with the campaign of the Reagan administration in Central America.
We don’t ask people in this country to support socialist revolution in Central America (or to be consciously “anti-imperialist”) before we will join with them to demand that this government cease its attempt to unilaterally overthrow the FSLN in Nicaragua, or to prop up dictatorial regimes in other Central American countries against the will of the peoples of those countries. We simply ask that they agree with us that every country in Latin America be given the right to determine its own form of government for itself, without interference from the United States – a basic democratic demand.
What happened during the Vietnam war helps make the dynamic of this type of development clear. The campaign we waged in this country against that war was capsulized in the simple slogan “Bring the Troops Home Now!” which was eventually shortened to “Out Now!” This meant two things: first, let the people of Vietnam decide for themselves what kind of government they want without interference from U.S. troops; and second, let the majority of the population of the United States, which doesn’t want the war to continue, have the final say over whether or not it does.
The campaign around these elementary democratic ideas were instrumental in the radicalization of an entire generation in the U.S. The massive movement that arose exposed the hypocrisy and cynicism of the U.S. ruling class – its role as the defender of the rich and privileged – far more effectively than revolutionists could ever have done had we been limited to abstract propaganda on the same subject. The experiences of millions in that movement was a giant class struggle school. The danger that the masses might learn their lesson in that school too well was one of the major factors which prompted the decision of the U.S. rulers to disengage from the war, even at the expense of a “Communist takeover” of Indochina.
Today we are faced with a similar challenge and opportunity regarding U.S. policy in Central America, and in South Africa as well. Once again, the basic democratic right of oppressed peoples to self-determination must be stressed in an effort to mobilize the most massive protests against the policies of our own government.
Vietnam, Central America, and South Africa also point out another aspect of the transitional program – its deep and thoroughgoing internationalism. It is not a program for any specific country, but for the entire world – even though individual aspects of it are aimed at specific regions of the globe. This internationalist perspective is also unique to revolutionary Marxists.
Our fight for the third American revolution is part of a worldwide struggle for socialism. We must be concerned with and help think through every aspect of that worldwide struggle, and understand the relationship between our battles here and those in every other country. In addition to the questions of Central America and South Africa, which are on everyone’s mind today, events over the last few years in other countries, like the rise of Solidarnosc in Poland and the British coal miners’ strike, have deeply affected the class struggle in the United States. The solidarity, or lack of it, by workers here also affects the outcome of these and similar battles.
The transitional program takes up the problems of the revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, of the political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracies which have usurped power in the deformed and degenerated workers’ states, and of the colonial revolution against imperialist domination. All of these battles, taken together, constitute our worldwide struggle for socialism.
It should now be obvious why the transitional program is an essential tool for those who want to make a revolution in today’s world. And it should not be hard to understand, as a corollary, why revolutionary Marxists are the only ones who have concerned themselves with the development of such a program – both in the sense of a specific document and set of demands, and in the sense of an overall method.
The transitional program has frequently been likened to a bridge between the capitalist present and the socialist future, or between the present consciousness of the working masses and their future revolutionary consciousness. Neither reformists nor sectarians have any need for such a bridge.
Reformists are firmly planted in the present. They don’t need a transition to the future because they have no intention of ever going there.
Sectarians, on the other hand, are already – at least in their own minds-living in a period of mass revolutionary consciousness. All that’s needed, they seem to think, is for someone with sufficient authority to come along and issue a call to action. That’s why they spend much of their time decrying the fact that the present leadership of whatever movement they happen to be interested in hasn’t yet issued the demand for a socialist revolution. They seem to think that this would solve the problem.
It is also instructive to look at a specific group of sectarians who do tend to identify with what they call the Transitional Program. In fact, they tend to shout long and loud about it. These groups are descended from and try to identify with the Trotskyist current in the working class movement, but they have nothing in common with the methods of Trotsky or the transitional program.
For them the Transitional Program is a specific set of ideas written down on paper in 1938. They reject thinking of it as a method with which to approach the class struggle. They refuse to recognize any idea that was not incorporated into the 1938 resolution, and when they look for slogans or ideas within that resolution to apply to the present day, they tend to pick the most extreme possible demands, or ask the workers to swallow the whole thing at one gulp.
Finally, it’s worth taking up the evolution of the Socialist Workers Party’s present leadership and its attitude toward the transitional program. It was the SWP leadership in 1938 which collaborated with Trotsky in drafting the Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International. It was the SWP which sponsored this resolution at the FI founding conference. Yet today, and for the past several years, the transitional method has been totally lacking in the SWP leadership’s approach to the U.S. and international class struggles. (See my article, Whatever Happened to the Transitional Program? in Bulletin IDOM #21.) If we look at why this has taken place it sheds a great deal of light both on the methodology of the Barnes leadership of the party and on the nature of the transitional program itself.
The central party leaders have decided that they no longer need the transitional approach. Their current infatuation with the leaderships of the Nicaraguan and Cuban revolutions makes them think that there is a shortcut toward raising the consciousness of U.S. workers. All we have to do is point to a snapshot of Cuba or Nicaragua – take people on tours or show some slides. They will gain an instant understanding and we can avoid a long and difficult process.
Of course this is a completely idealist notion. It idealizes the reality of the Nicaraguan and Cuban revolutions themselves, and completely misunderstands why and how U.S. workers will come to socialist conclusions.
There can be no substitute for the American working class going through its own experience of struggle and in that process learning its own lessons. Only if we succeed in constructing a revolutionary party that understands this and can bring the necessary transitional slogans to the masses in order to mobilize them in action and advance their consciousness will we be able to bring about a socialist transformation of this country. And that, in the final analysis, is what makes a transitional program the paramount revolutionary tool for modern times.
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Last updated on 28.12.2002