80 years without Trotsky: be a Trotskyist today, by Nahuel Moreno

ByAlessandro Fernandes – Socialist Alternative / Brazil

Have passed 80 years since the assassination of revolutionary Leon Trotsky on 21 August 1940 in his last residence and exile in Coyoacán, Mexico. Stalin was able to breathe a little relief by eliminating the main organizer of the opposition from the process of bureaucratization that the former USSR was undergoing. Many other defenders of the Marxist tradition suffered the same fate at the hands of the gravedigger of revolutions.

The old, as Trotsky he was also known by those close to him, it is part of an important chapter of what was the 20th century, the century of rebellions, uprisings and revolutions. Actively intervened alongside Lenin, others and others, in the revolution of 1917 in Russia, fought against the bureaucratic degeneration of what he helped build with millions of organized workers, waged a battle against Stalinism, that he did not perceive the immediate danger of the rise of Nazism and, Finally, gave the last fight before his assassination for the formation of the world party of socialist revolution, the fourth international.

Since the emergence of the Trotskyist current, following the tradition of Marxism-Leninism, even the Trotskyist diasporas, there has always been an urgent need to understand the world and intervene on the basis of revolutionary traditions and contributions. But the journey from there to here has not had a single course. There have been many forks, crossroads and alleys since the appearance of the Fourth International on the rainy day of 3 September 1938 on the outskirts of the capital, Paris. That day the Transition Program was approved, or «The mortal agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International».

Post World War II Trotskyisms nailed diasporas in history. From Paul, Mandel, going through Lora, inns, Healy, Lambert, others and, among them, the Argentine Nahuel Moreno, that marked the Morenoist tradition in Trotskyism, which we claim, with a large presence in Latin America.

In an interview in August 1985, shortly before his death, Nahuel Moreno spoke a little about what he understood by being a Trotskyist today. Far from being a saint at the altar, Trotsky and Trotskyism must be vindicated from what can still be current in the class struggle, in the project of overthrowing capitalism and for the construction of socialism. "Being a Trotskyist today" was part of the battle in the life of the Moreno tiger, with hits and misses, to build a program of action from the roots of revolutionary Marxism and intervene in reality.

For us the battle continues, international socialist revolution. For effective participation in the processes of rebellions and revolutions. For the relentless fight against capitalism and its offspring – fascism, bonapartism, among others. For the political dispute in the labor movement against reformism and bureaucratism that only delay the urgent task of the revolution.

We reproduce the extract of the interview, originally published in 1988 In » Biographical Sketch», organized by Carmem Carrasco and Hernán Cuello, in the old Notebooks of the International Mail magazine.

BEING A TROTSKYIST TODAY

Nahuel Moreno

In general terms, means defending the principled positions of socialism, of Marxism. That is to say, Trotskyists today are the only defenders, in my own judgement, of the true Marxist positions.

Let's start by understanding what it means to be truly Marxist. We can't worship, as has been done of Mao or Stalin. Being a Trotskyist today does not mean agreeing with everything Trotsky wrote or said., but knowing how to criticize or overcome it. Just like Marx, than Engels or Lenin, because Marxism pretends to be scientific and science teaches that there are no absolute truths. That is first, being a Trotskyist is being critical, even of Trotskyism itself. on the positive side, being a Trotskyist is responding to three clear analyzes and programmatic positions.

The first, that as long as capitalism exists in the world or in a country, there is no background solution for absolutely any problem: starting with education, art and reaching the more general problems of hunger, of growing misery, etc. attached to this, although it is not exactly the same, the criterion that a merciless struggle against capitalism is necessary until it is overthrown, to impose a new economic and social order in the world, that can be none other than socialism.

second problem, in those places where the bourgeoisie has been expropriated (I speak of the USSR and of all the countries that claim socialism), there is no way out if workers' democracy is not imposed. the big bad, the syphilis of the world labor movement is the bureaucracy, the totalitarian methods that exist in these countries and in the workers' organizations, unions, the parties that claim to belong to the working class, and who have been corrupted by the bureaucracy. And this is a great success of Trotsky, who was the first to use this terminology, that today is universally accepted. Everyone talks about bureaucracy, sometimes even the rulers of these states that we call workers. Until there is the broadest democracy, socialism does not begin to be built. Socialism is not only an economic construction. The only one that made this analysis is Trotskyism, and he was also the only one who drew the conclusion that it was necessary to make a revolution in all these states and also in the unions to achieve workers' democracy.

And the third question, decisive, is that it is the only one consistent with the current global economic and social reality, when a group of large transnational companies dominates practically the entire world economy. We must respond to this social economic phenomenon with an organization and an international policy.

In this era of nationalist movements that believe that everything is solved in the country itself, Trotskyism is the only one that says that there is only a solution at the level of the world economy by inaugurating the new order, what is socialism. For that, it is necessary to return to the socialist tradition of the existence of a socialist international, that addresses the strategy and tactics to achieve the defeat of the large transnationals that dominate the entire world, to inaugurate world socialism, that will be global or will be nothing.

If the economy is global, there must be a world policy and a world organization of workers so that every revolution, every country that makes its revolution, spread it worldwide, on the one hand; and on the other hand, give more and more democratic rights to the working class, so that she is the one who takes their destinies in her hands by way of democracy.

Socialism can be nothing but global. All attempts to make national socialisms have failed, because the economy is global and there can be no socio-economic solution to problems within the narrow borders of a country. Who must be defeated is the transnationals on a world scale to enter the world socialist organization.

Because, the synthesis, of Trotskyism today is that the Trotskyists are the only ones in the whole world that have a world organization (small, weak, all you want) but the only existing international, the fourth international, that takes up all the tradition of the previous internationals and updates it in the face of new phenomena, but with the Marxist vision: that an international struggle is necessary.