Trotsky
The web site of the LIT-CI (IWL-FI) features this “special edition” in tribute to Leon Trotsky, 70 years after his assassination. We have included some of his works as well as those of other authors.
Among Trotsky’s works, Stalinism and Bolshevism (1938) contains a sharp analysis of the major social differences that were at the root of the lethal battle between these two political tendencies: the first expressed by the revolutionary working class vanguard; the second, the material interests of the bureaucracy which had usurped power in the USSR. The Transitional Program (1938) served as a foundational basis for the program of the Fourth International, founded in that same year. Finally, the Testament was written in February of 1940, when Trotsky had already anticipated that his death was imminent, because of either his health problems or Stalin’s order that he be assassinated. In this short text, he recognizes his extensive revolutionary career and expresses his deep confidence in the working class, in Marxism and in the perspectives of socialist revolution.
Among the works of other authors, we recognize, first of all, Joe Hansen’s article (SWP leader and Trotsky’s secretary in Coyoacán), which is dedicated to a reflection on the last days of the great Russian revolutionary’s life. This article is followed by part of an interview with Nahuel Moreno (LIT-CI founder) from 1985. Published for the first time in 1988, it is called called “Being a Trotskyist Today.” Here, Moreno develops this definition by synthesizing a few key questions: the defense of Socialist and Marxist principles, the defense of the necessity of a worldwide socialist revolution, the defense of workers’ democracy and the urgent necessity to construct an international revolutionary organization -the Fourth International.
