78 years after the assassination of Trotsky

"He who kneels before the fait accompli is unable to face the future"He 20 August 1940 an agent of the GPU (Soviet secret police) He sank a peak in its head. The next day, of his wounds, He died in Mexico City where he was exiled. With the assassination of Trotsky, Stalin eliminated the last of the Bolshevik leaders who led the Russian Revolution 1917. To consolidate his power and totalitarian regime in the USSR and the Communist Party, impose his theory of "socialism in one country" and the policy of agreements with the bourgeoisie, Stalinism had to eliminate all vestiges of the Bolshevik tradition of which Trotsky was the main living exponent. On the other hand, the old Russian leader was immersed in work that he described as "the most important of my life, more important than 1917, more important than the period of civil war or any other ": the foundation and consolidation of the Fourth International. Amid the rise of fascist and Stalinist counterrevolution contracara sought to strengthen an organization that rescued the tradition and principles of Marxism and prepare to head a new rise of the working class.

Armed Prophet

Trotsky had been, next to Lenin, the main leader of the Russian Revolution. As president of the Petrograd Soviet she organized the insurrection that for the first time in history overthrew the bourgeoisie and led lxs workers and campesinxs to power. He organized the Red Army defeated the counterrevolution during the civil war and imperialist invasion and was, After Lenin, the Bolshevik leader most influential among the masses.

He led the opposition to the process of bureaucratization of the Communist Party and the Third International so he was expelled from his address, party, deported and persecuted until his assassination, besides being erased from the literature and official history reimagined by Stalinism.

A dead not to be born

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the "real socialism" in Eastern Europe, her figure reemerged from the shadows where they wanted to hide, His works are edited and re thousands in the world who are interested lxs, They sympathize and approach their ideas.

LXS socialists MST, we claim we Trotskyists, we do from dogmatism and the cult of personality. As the founder of our current Nahuel Moreno said to be "Trotskyist is to be critical, even of Trotskyism itself. " (1) Vindicate his career and his contributions to the theory and practice for the victory of the world revolution and believe that its main teachings remain full force and present.

In defense of workers' democracy

Having been at the pinnacle of power and despite being the most important leader of the revolution after Lenin's death, Trotsky ended his days in exile, unx pursued as he watched fall to unx relatives and contributors and by the action of the GPU. Much has been discussed if being the head of the Red Army could not have been a coup to defeat Stalin. In 1935 He is writing up: "The revolutionary movement reflux, the fatigue, defeats in Europe and Asia, disappointment of the working masses were inexorable factors and directly weakened positions and revolutionary internationalists (…) They strengthened the position of the conservative bureaucracy and national (…) It could only rely on the officials to take power who was willing to promote their desires, that is to say, to crearles privileges (…) , who was willing to do a blow that the Soviet bureaucracy has done gradually over ten or twelve years. Undoubtedly it would have been possible to give a military coup against the fraction of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin and company without difficulty (…) but that would only have served to accelerate the pace of bureaucratization and Bonapartism against which the Left Opposition fought. "(2)

Before defending his position or apparatus defend the revolutionary principles chose to preserve for future generation the Bolshevik tradition of workers' democracy and internationalism that otherwise would have been lost.
At a time when the left and Trotskyism begin to gain positions in the labor movement and mass, reaching the conduct of trade unions and student centers, it is important to assimilate this fundamental teaching of relying on the mass movement (and back him if he recoils) instead of appealing to the device maneuvers to consolidate conquered.

Any process that does not progress stagnates and back

Of the countless books, Articles and contributions, Theory of Permanent Revolution is one of the most important. There arises the combination of democratic socialist tasks in countries of capitalist development delayed. He indicates the inability of the bourgeoisie to carry out structural democratic tasks (as national independence and land reform) which can only be resolved from government employee lending encabezadxs by a revolutionary party that simultaneously transform all property relations advancing socialist measures, developing the revolution internationally, taking each national triumph as part of a single process of world revolution. It is a key contribution to understanding, among other things, the failure of "progressive" governments in the last decade in Latin America, whose refusal to move towards socialism ended with major setbacks and the loss of the gains made.

Under the banner of the Fourth International

For Marxism, socialism can only be developed at international level. Lenin and Trotsky always understood this and acted accordingly. The Russian revolution itself understood it as an episode of world revolution. "Whoever or the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia implanted leads not to socialism With what rhythm and through what stages?, It depends on the further progress of capitalism in Europe and the world. " (3)

So in the Civil War they prompted the founding of the Third International to form the "Staff" of world revolution. While he directing the operations of the Red Army, Trotsky wrote manifestos and most important political declarations of its first four congresses. Also to defeat the bureaucracy saw key world revolution: "The October Revolution can be freed from the vice of bureaucratism only by the development of the international revolution, whose victory really ensure the construction of a socialist society. " (4)

Bureaucratization of the Communist International and its subsequent dissolution following the agreements with the yankee imperialism and English in Yalta and Potsdam, It erasing internationalism of consciousness of the mass movement was one of the greatest betrayals of Stalinism.

The foundation of the Fourth International, even in times of retreat it was essential to maintain this tradition at least a part of the revolutionary vanguard. Ser Trotskyist implicit ser internacionalist. Campaigns that urge from the MST, as solidarity with the Nicaraguan people or the Catalan revolution among others, and collaboration in building revolutionary parties in different countries and the formation of Anticapitalisatas in Red are practices militant internationalism and a contribution to the strategy of building the "Staff" of the revolution, a world revolutionary party.

Emilio Poly

1. Nahuel Moreno. What it is to be Trotskyist today?, 1985.
2. Leon Trotsky. How Stalin defeated the Opposition?, 1935
3. Leon Trotsky. Permanent revolution, 1929
4. Leon Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed, 1936