Reprinted below are excerpts from The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-class Politics and the Unions by Jack Barnes. The excerpt can be found in the chapter titled "A new stage of revolutionary working-class politics," a report approved by the Socialist Workers Party National Committee in April 1979. The section of the report that is excerpted takes up the 1938 programmatic document by communist leader Leon Trotsky known as the Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, also available from Pathfinder Press. Copyright © 1981 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

BY JACK BARNES  
In a nutshell, these were some of the main ideas Trotsky laid out for the labor movement and its revolutionary leadership.

First, the defense of the workers against the twin scourges of unemployment and inflation, which are endemic to capitalism. The heart of Trotsky's solution is a sliding scale of wages and hours--what we would call a full cost-of-living escalator and a shorter workweek with no loss of pay. The capitalists, not workers, are responsible for unemployment and inflation, Trotsky pointed out. So they, not the workers, should pay the price. Workers should be guaranteed full protection of their living standards and job security.

Secondly, Trotsky dealt with the trade unions--the class institutions that are central to the fight for such things as the sliding scale of wages and hours. Workers have to strengthen their unions. The illusion exists that the unions are strong, he explained, but they're not strong so long as their strength goes unused.

Socialists have to chart a course to turn them into revolutionary unions, Trotsky said. That's what we're after in projecting our program for a class-struggle left wing in the labor movement. The unions must not be tied to the capitalist class, its government, or its parties, Trotsky said. The class independence of the unions must be fought for and preserved. There must be democracy in the unions, so that the workers themselves can use the unions to fight for their interests. Trotsky talked about the need for solidarity, both within the class and with all the struggles of the masses.

It's clear from Trotsky's discussions about the Transitional Program with American comrades that the slogan of an independent labor party would have come in here. But it was omitted on request of the American comrades so that they could discuss it more fully. There were disagreements on this question among American Trotskyists at that time. We finally adopted the labor party slogan shortly after the Transitional Program was issued by the founding conference of the Fourth International.

Above everything, Trotsky wrote, look to the youth and bring an entire new layer of militant workers into the union leadership. Prepare in this way to sweep aside the old, conservative, class-collaborationist leaders. The Transitional Program, Trotsky said, is such an invaluable weapon for the working class because of both the "confusion and disappointment of the older generation, and the inexperience of the younger generation."

Educate and train the younger generation of workers in class-struggle methods, Trotsky explained. Only along that road can the power of the unions be unleashed. Only along that road will more and more workers begin to say no to the restraints the trade union bureaucracy imposes on their struggles....  
 
Opening the capitalists' books
Then Trotsky dealt with workers control. There were two sides to this. One was opening the capitalists' books--gaining knowledge for the working class and public at large about everything that big business and the capitalist government hide from us. The workers should shine a spotlight on all the so-called business secrets, the preparations for war, the connections among the war industries, the connections between big business and government regulatory agencies, and so on. The labor movement must be mobilized to expose contrived shortages and hidden stockpiles, to get at the truth behind the disastrous breakdowns inflicted on the population under capitalism.

Connected to this is the fight for actual control on the job--control over the pace of the line, control over safety, control over how the job is organized. This becomes a school for the working class in preparing to manage and plan the entire economy under a workers government. Lenin banged away at this lesson after the October revolution: You can't simply leap into workers management even when the workers hold political power. It takes time and experience. Workers control is a school for the entire reorganization of production, for real planning.

Then Trotsky turned to the expropriation of selected industries; in his discussion with some American comrades he agreed that the term "nationalization" can have the same content if properly explained. The goal of the workers government is to expropriate the entire capitalist class and establish a planned economy, Trotsky said.

But sometimes all hell will break loose under capitalism, posing the need to take a vital industry out of the hands of the capitalist profiteers. A particular industry will become crucially important in meeting people's needs, but criminally incapable of doing so. It may undergo a total breakdown. Something won't work. It will greatly endanger workers and their environment.  
 
Demand to nationalize energy industry
We've seen this best around the energy crisis, but it comes up around other particular industries as well. In cases such as these, Trotsky said, we make a demand on the capitalist government that it take over these industries, that it nationalize them and that they should become public utilities rather than remaining privately owned and operated.

There should be full public knowledge about all aspects of the operation of these publicly owned industries; there should be no secret files, secret meetings, or handpicked boards. The whole thing should be out in the open. Tied to this is the fight by the workers in these industries to control all the conditions under which they work and to use their special knowledge and position to make sure that everything is out on the table. These demands point in the direction of expropriating all basic industry and the banks.

Trotsky then turned to the need of the workers to defend themselves and their unions against the bosses' hired goons and fascist gangs. This begins on the most basic level with the strike picket lines and encompasses the entire system of measures that the workers will have to take as the class polarization deepens and the fight for political power is posed more and more sharply. A proper understanding of strategy and tactics here is a life-or-death matter for the workers movement.

From here, the Transitional Program moves on to a broad range of issues facing the labor movement; the need for an alliance with the farmers; war, which is an especially important question for the youth who have to fight and die in imperialist wars; racism and national chauvinism, particularly in countries with large oppressed nationality populations; the fight for democratic rights.

All of this leads up to the fight for a workers government and the organization of councils or soviets--that is, the workers' struggle for political power to reorganize society on a new basis.

Summing up the transitional approach toward the end of the document, Trotsky writes; "All methods are good which raise the class-consciousness of the workers, their trust in their own forces, their readiness for self-sacrifice in the struggle. The impermissible methods are those which implant fear and submissiveness in the oppressed in the face of their oppressors."
 
 
Related articles:
Workers, farmers face brunt of energy crisis
Socialist candidate: Open the books!
 
 
 
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