Is Trotskyism outdated?
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-05-12Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 13 →
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JOYCE Brown's letter (SO, 28 April) is an attack on the struggle for a new leadership in the trade unions.
She talks of the need for "new solutions to old problems" and attacks me for believing that matters were settled once and for all by Leon Trotsky in 1938."
But what the letter really says is that what Trotsky struggled for was meaningless and that we in 1983 must "find" new solutions.
Left wing activists are no different than the rest of the rank and file, and there is crisis of leadership.
Isn't this incredible, written at a time when Leyland workers showed how strong were their feelings and how deliberately the trade union leadership sold them down the river?
Joyce asked what we mean by the struggle for leadership. She then goes on to attack transitional demands which are designed to connect the problems of today with the struggle for socialism.
What kind of "new solutions" can replace such a method? From her position on import controls one can only think a propaganda campaign in the working class is the answer to counteract its backwardness.
This "solution" goes way back before 1938 - as does blaming the working class.
The Transitional Programme was not 'invented' by Trotsky; it was a development on the previous struggles of communists.
It is true we too must develop Trotskyism to meet the needs of che 198Us, but that does not mean junking it.
TONY RICHARDS