Here it is: how to make a revolution, all in a short book. If anyone could write a blueprint, it's Trotsky, the marshal of the Red Army and defender of Bolshevism against the Stalinist betrayal. Writing in 1938, two years before his assassination by Stalin's agents, Trotsky is a blazing spark in the encroaching darkness. He rails against capitalism, fascism and Stalinism with weary determination, peering towards the socialist revolution that was torn from his grasp. That he never slips into dogma is a testament to his theoretical brilliance. That he was, ultimately, wrong on some very important points, speaks to his isolation from the movement he helped to create.


The Transitional Program is a guide to action. Preaching abstract socialism to the masses doesn't work. Socialists need to connect their demands to the actual struggles of the day. As Trotsky writes, socialist strategy

consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard... It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution.

The Program is not just a set of good ideas. Trotsky analyzed the 'objective revolutionary conditions': in 1938, it looked like capitalism could no longer offer anyone security and a decent standard of living. Colonialism gripped much of the world; fascism and Stalinism barbarity ruled in Europe; while America suffered through an uneven recovery from the worst Depression in its history. Revolution was a viable alternative to the current mess: capitalism wasn't about to buy anyone off, and the other options were even worse.

It's called the Depression cos it's depressing...

But Trotsky was not a utopian: the point of a socialist party

lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable with the most considered attention to all, even small and partial questions of tactics.

This analysis flows from Marxism's deep democratic commitment - to those who have been shut out of capitalist democracy: "All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups should be drawn into the revolutionary movement." How? Not by what Trotsky calls "speechifying", but by activism:

The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.

Socialism needs socialists

How does it work?

Trotsky analyzes broad trends in the world economy, detailing its crises. Based on its trajectory, he proposes three types of mobilizing demands:

Immediate: day-to-day defence of workers' standard of living. Organizing militant trade unions, for example.

Democratic: defending the independent political rights of the working class. The vote, national independence, democratic management of the firm - measures that aren't socialist, but are a necessary precursor to establishing working class independence. Trotsky correctly anticipated the American campaign to lower the voting age to 18, for example.

Transitional: broader demands that challenge capitalist power. Free public transit, free higher education, free housing - anything that the capitalist system is unable (i.e. unwilling) to provide. If the capitalists cave in and provide it, push for something more.

Cool - my name's in the paper!

Based on these, Trotsky outlines a program of workers' self-defence, including unions and anti-fascist militias; nationalizing banks; opening corporate account ledgers to unions, and others. As workers implement these demands, they feel their own power, gain unity and demand more. The socialists are there with them, calling for the ultimate end of these demands: revolution. Joseph Hansen, an American member of the Socialist Workers Party, describes the process:

The method is not complicated. It consists in approaching the masses at whatever level they may stand and in drawing them through progressive struggles and explanations... in the direction of socialist revolution.

This is far different from the voluntarism of Maoism, Guevarism and (some forms of) anarchism:

Our own wishes, or our own level of class consciousness, must not be permitted to influence our judgment as to the real nature of the current concerns of the masses or the issues on which they are prepared to go into action... we must be prepared to accept situations in which the masses... will respond only to slogans of quite limited nature. Or, to put it in more revolutionary terms, we ought to look for such situations.

But you gotta admit, they have nice leis - Nepalese Maoists create their own 'objective conditions'

If I had a dollar for every time I heard an anti-capitalist bemoan how sheep-like people are, because they don't dumpster-dive, or hate cops, or watch tv... Trotsky knows people aren't revolutionary. Unlike some moralists, he's not shocked by it. He wants to make people revolutionary instead.

Making revolutionaries

This may sound elitist - socialists coming into struggles with their own ideas. I'd argue that

a) Trotsky is asking us to learn from struggles, to understand where the movement is at, not to intervene based on the dustjacket of the Communist Manifesto. And

b) an elitist approach writes working people off ideologized & passive from the get-go, without trying to intervene in struggles as they are. Trotsky isn't just basing this on what he wants a socialist movement to look like: he's reading the historical period, trying to figure out what capitalism is doing, before making demands.

Trotsky is not talking about armchair socialists who show up to a meeting with a list of demands; indeed, he berates them. His audience is activists: socialists who are part of everyday struggles for workers' rights. The 'program' only matters because activists are there to fight for it.

Hmph... yes... well... now I'm going to tell you how to really fight for socialism...

Seen this way, The Transitional Program is breathtaking. It claims revolution is possible, and asks how to intervene in the real world to get there. It analyses and draws political conclusions from capitalism itself. It's not about 'critique' or 'problematics', terms Trotsky would have spat at. It's about action:

The Fourth International sweeps away the quacks, charlatans, and unsolicited teachers of morals. In a society based upon exploitation, the highest moral is that of the social revolution. 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.

That's a terrifying and beautiful vision.

Transitional to what?

The subtitle to the work is The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International. Trotsky felt capitalism was about to slide into final crisis; as he explains to a skeptical listener,

Beginning with the [First World] war we see the cycles of crisis and prosperity forming a declining line. It signifies now that this society exhausted totally its inner possibilities and must be replaced by a new society or the old society will go into barbarism just as the civilization of Greece and Rome.

Capitalism has, of course, not exhausted its possibilities. It's easy to feel smug in hindsight, seeing how wrong Trotsky read the world situation. It's probably true that, after years of isolation, Trotsky's revolutionary faith failed him - not by abandoning him, but by shielding him from the reality that the coming war would save capitalism, not sink it. War, after all, is a very profitable business.

Some production is more profitable than others

But I think this is only one side of his argument. In the 1930s, most people thought capitalism was in terminal decline - hence the rise of fascism and Communism. The war fulfilled his prediction of barbarism: and the last 50 years of militarism and human-created disaster have been nothing if not barbarous. Trotsky may have been wrong on some points, but I think his central theses stand:

1) we are in a transitional period. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It will continue to offload its failures onto ordinary people, with wars, famines and financial crises. The new society is waiting beneath the shell of the old.

2) It's not inevitable. Without planning, the 'transition to socialism' may never come. We have to learn how to translate revolutionary demands into everyday language.

Guides to revolution don't come much more accessible than this.