Leon Trotsky remains the towering figure in the history of revolutionary socialism in the twentieth century. A careful study of his writings is essential for the elaboration of the strategy and tactics of socialist revolution in our epoch, that of imperialist clashes coalescing into a new world war and a worldwide assault on the condition of the working class.
As a young man, Trotsky led the St. Petersburg Soviet during the 1905 Revolution, and formulated the enduring international theory of Permanent Revolution. Alongside Lenin, he led the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and organized the five-million man army to defeat the imperialist onslaught from 1918 to 1921. In October 1923, Trotsky and his supporters founded the Left Opposition to combat the growing bureaucracy in the Communist Party and the state, exemplified by Stalin.
Trotsky’s greatest achievement was the founding of the Fourth International (FI) in 1938, after the Third International under Stalin facilitated the coming to power of Hitler in Germany, without a fight by the multi-millioned German working class. A principled internationalist, opposed to Stalin’s “socialism in one country,” Trotsky wrote in the founding document of the FI that “the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.”
Written over a forty-year period, the essays in this book are devoted to bringing the rich historical lessons to a new generation of workers and young people, in order to resolve the “historical crisis of mankind.”
Table of Contents:
Preface
Leon Trotsky & the Development of Marxism
An Intellectual Pygmy Denounces Trotsky
The Classical Marxism of Leon Trotsky
Trotsky’s Victory over Stalinism: Seventy-five Years of the Fourth International 1938–2013
Why the GPU Assassinated Trotsky
Lenin, Trotsky, and the Marxism of the October Revolution
Trotsky and Trotskyism in the Contemporary World
Eighty Years of the Fourth International: The Lessons of History and the Struggle for Socialism Today
Leon Trotsky’s Four Fateful Years in Prinkipo: 1929–1933
Trotsky’s Last Year: 1939–1940
Trotsky and the Self-Determination of Ukraine
Leon Trotsky and Revolutionary Strategy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Greetings to the Fifth Anniversary Meeting of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists
Forward to May Day 2023! Build a mass movement of workers and youth against war and for socialism!
Index
