Trotsky is still the enemy

Trotsky is still the enemy

86  years ago, on August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent while in exile in Mexico. The physical elimination of the revolutionary leader —and of all the militants who had organized alongside him— was essential to the triumph of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the USSR. Thus, the bureaucracy killed imperialism’s enemy, right on the eve of a new world war. Today, his legacy remains as the most relevant and strong guide for action against a global situation of imperialism’s decomposition and the processes of assimilation of the former workers’ states.

Imperialism is attempting to overcome its decline by unleashing a war-mongering process that is spreading, with major flashpoints are the war in Iran, the genocide in Gaza, and the war between Russia and Ukraine —in which a large part of the EU is involved under the umbrella of NATO. The task of revolutionaries is to confront these warmongering processes with the weapons of revolutionary Marxism, for which it is essential to turn to Trotsky.

We must prepare an international vanguard to confront this new scenario by refining the theoretical and political legacy of the revolutionaries who came before us and by developing a new generation that will complete the tasks left unfinished in the last century: the world revolution that will pave the way for the transition to a communist society.

To achieve these aims, we obviously do not start from scratch but rather build upon the most advanced achievements left behind by revolutionary processes —both victorious and defeated. Understanding the programmatic lessons of historical processes and the events of class struggle is essential to settling accounts with our class enemy, the bourgeoisie, and its capitalist system.

The theoretical and political weapons bestowed to us Trotskyists by the architect of the Russian Revolution, the builder of the Red Army, and the founder of the Fourth International are many and still retain their programmatic relevance. Its theoretical core reside in the Theory of Permanent Revolution, in the program of the Fourth International, the Transitional Program, the analysis of transitions, of balances of power, of the types of Bonapartism, and the economic analyses of planning and the laws of capital; and his example as a revolutionary lives in his unwavering struggle against Stalinism, against fascism, against imperialism, and his struggle for the development of revolutionary tendencies even under the most adverse conditions.

In 2026, amid an intensification of the contradictions that led to the 2008 crisis (which capitalism has yet to resolve), exacerbated by a pandemic, the concept of unstable equilibrium is central to analyze the current dynamics of global economy, interstate relations, and class struggle. Reviving this concept —which is rooted in the dialectical materialist method for understanding the historical process— better equips us to challenge reformist or postmodern theories of “systemic chaos,” “polycrisis,” or “interregnum.” In contrast to the impotence of these views —which, at best, end up taking refuge in bourgeois statism, if not succumbing to total resignation— Trotsky charts the path for us to confront a situation in which tendencies toward war are developing. Having systematized the lessons of the Russian Revolution, he was able to generalize the program for the struggle against the bourgeois states by proposing the intervention of the workers’ state in capitalist society. In the face of an imminent war, this transition within the states is demonstrated through the workers’ method of halting the war machine and defeating the bourgeoisie: through workers’ control of factories, raw material production sectors, and ports —that is, by attacking the bourgeoisie at its foundation, which is production.  Many demoralized critics claimed that the Transitional Program had already been superseded by history and dismissed its value as a guide for action in this century; however, from a revolutionary Marxist perspective, the key resides, in fact, in implementing the Transitional Program, which contains, condenses, and generalizes the experience of the Russian Revolution and places us on the threshold of the revolution we must prepare for.

Another key element of the current global situation is the assimilation of the former workers’ states into a decaying imperialist system. Indeed, the category of assimilation proposed by Trotsky is based on a method of analyzing the transitions between the old and the new: the capitalist system and its laws—primarily the law of value—and their influence on the processes of restoration.

In his relentless struggle against the counterrevolution that rallied behind the slogan of “socialism in one country” (in an anti-worker compromise with the forces of world imperialism), Trotsky expanded the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, giving it a permanent character, in the transition to the international dictatorship of the proletariat, which highest expression were the federations, as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. His political struggle was rooted in the theory of Permanent Revolution —a method for the international revolution in general— which is based on the understanding that we are in the stage in which the socialist revolution is transforming into a world revolution.

The imperialist bourgeoisie knows who its enemy is: the global working class organized around a revolutionary program. That is why it not only strives to direct its propaganda against communism, but also uses the state institutions of the bourgeois regime—now in decline—to eradicate any hint of independent organization among the proletariat (a task for which it has relied for decades on the invaluable assistance of the union bureaucracies, with all manner of ideas about class conciliation). Unfortunately, many of the currents that claim to be Trotskyist no longer raise the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and limit themselves to simply carrying “democracy” through to the end. Today more than ever, it is the task of revolutionaries to rebuild revolutionary consciousness within our class. Our struggle begins with the confrontation within the production process and must combat all ideological tendencies that seek to confuse the proletariat—for example, those statist ideas that distance political action from production and lead to the struggle to redistribute accumulation through a regulatory state.

Interesting class struggle processes are currently unfolding around the world, but they reveal significant confusion regarding their objectives—as seen, for example, in the mobilizations of the so-called “Generation Z.” Electoral processes are also taking place (for example, in the United States, among other places) where the idea of socialism is resurfacing, obviously “pasteurized” to be digestible by bourgeois democracy. There have even been radicalized struggles, such as in Bolivia. Our task is to ensure that these banners—which embody aspirations to overcome capitalism—can transform the unconscious process of the masses into a conscious process for socialist revolution. This will only be possible by raising the banners of revolutionary Marxism.

This irreconcilable struggle against the capitalist system, its wars, and its exploitation requires the rebuilding of an international revolutionary organization—the rebuilt Fourth International—capable of systematizing the experiences of our class and equipping it with a program to lay the foundations for a new society. The bourgeoisie is well aware that the enemy remains revolutionary Marxism, which today is rallying behind the figure of Leon Trotsky. But within the Trotskyist movement, we must also wage a struggle against centrist tendencies, which have mutilated the legacy of the Russian revolutionary by incorporating reformist and postmodern theories in order to engage with public opinion and strip it of all revolutionary edge. It is vital to recover that theoretical and political arsenal so that we can wield it in today’s revolutionary struggle.

Eighty-six years after the assassination of Leon Trotsky, let us honor capitalism’s declared enemy by raising the banners of Trotskyism, which are summed up in these words: For the dictatorship of the proletariat!