Program for Leon Trotsky
Socialist Organiser1981 1981-10-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
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pean, revolution.
But the risings of the West European workers were betrayed by the Social Democrats, and crushed. Russia was left isolated, and all "the old crap" re-emerged within the socialised economy set up by the revolution.
In the Marxist perspective, socialism supersedes capitalism, and capitalism is a world system. The sisterhood and brotherhood of all people and of all peoples can only become possible in a material order based on the resources of integrated by the working class to serve popular need, eliminating the rule of market forces operating blindly through the profit motive.
The free international capitalist market virtually collapsed in World War 1 and after (and this, together with the consequent collapse of production, was the decisive index for the view of capitalism that Trotsky held at his death). In the late '40s and early '50s, capitalism, having defeated the workers' revolutions with the aid of the social democrats and Stalinists, gained barriers and the bilateral quota system that had expressed imperialist rivalries and prepared for World War 2.
This took place, and was probably only possible, under the hegemony of US imperialism (which only began to break down in the later '60s and "70s).
The existing capitalist world economy - out of which and on which we must build socialism + depends on a tremendously advanced and complex level of international integration. In the viewpoint of international working-class socialism, the are at odds with It is from this point of view that Benn's notion of a British national liberation movement is at odds with what the British labour movement must do if it wants to make itself ready to fight for a socialist alternative to Thatcher.
The arguments against Benn's proposals can be summarised:
Scan page 11
Socialist Organiser. Thursday 1 October 1981 Page 11 NATION ONE 'Britain one nation', like Harola Wilson (left), or a united fü objectives, like the shorter working week, by European wor ght for common class kers?