From: RRobincox-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 21:23:28 EDT
Subject: AUT: The Trotskyist Transitional Programme


Hi all

Here's a crossposting from the worldincommon forum  
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/) where the question of the  
Trostskyist transitional programme is being discussed. Comments  welcomed

Regards
Robin
www.worldincommon.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WiCopendebate
______________________


The  Transitional Program is a fetish for many Trotskyist
organisations. It is  generally the organisations themselves that peddle a 
program of 'Transitional'  demands. Individuals who are not members of a 
organisation but who used to  consider themselves
Trotskyist (or sympathetic to Trotsky) generally see the  concept of 
Transitional demands as a waste of time. The TP was put forward just  before the 
second world war and I think even Trotsky intended it to be some kind  of tactic 
for the coming period and not some
irrereversable  formula.

The TP will never win the mass of workers to socialism. What it  does do is 
act as bait to individual workers (particularly niave young people)  who may 
alreadybe sympathetic to the basic ideas of socialism and it may appeal  to some 
presenting socialism as a list
of demands. Once inside the  organisation the young worker will wonder if he 
is reformist or a revolutionary  and whether his organisation is one or the 
other.

Correct me if Im wrong  but the difference between the
minimum/maximum program and the transitional  program is that the minimum 
part of the min/max program is realisable under  capitalism (ie. a reform 
program) while the inner core of the party/front  holds
a (maximum) revolutionary program. Where as the Transitional Program is  
unrealisable under capitalism. So the TP is just a bunch of unrealistic promises  
put about by another bunch of politicians (the
Central committee of the  organisation) and most workers will know that most 
transitional demands are  unbelievable under capitalism.


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