100 Years of Trotskyism: Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

The Socialist Equality Party is proud to announce a major public meeting in London to mark the centenary of Trotskyism. The meeting will be addressed by David North, Chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States.

In October 1923, Leon Trotsky initiated the most consequential political struggle of the 20th century, founding the Left Opposition against the Soviet bureaucracy headed by Joseph Stalin and its betrayal of the program of world socialist revolution. The formation of the Left Opposition by members of the Soviet Communist Party was a milestone in the defence of the internationalist strategy which had guided the October 1917 Russian Revolution. The Left Opposition opposed the Stalinist program of “socialism in one country” which represented the interests of a privileged bureaucracy and its usurpation of power from the working class.

The Stalinist program of “socialism in one country”--a nationalist reaction against the October Revolution--led to devastating defeats for the international working class, from the aborted German Revolution of 1923 to the defeat of the British General Strike in 1926 and the Chinese Revolution of 1926-27. These crushing betrayals in turn strengthened the grip of the bureaucracy. Stalin transformed the Communist International from the strategic leadership of the world working class in its struggle for power, into a foreign policy bureau for the defence of bureaucratic privilege against world revolution.

In 1933, the Stalinist KPD (Communist Party of Germany) divided the powerful German working class, allowing Hitler to come to power without a single shot being fired. Trotsky’s urgent calls for a United Front to defeat the Nazis had been opposed by the Comintern, with the KPD denouncing millions of social-democratic workers as “social fascist”. After the KPD’s catastrophic policies were endorsed by the Comintern without dissent, Trotsky issued the call for a new International. He wrote, “An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it. To say this openly and publicly is our direct duty toward the proletariat and its future. In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International.”

The founding of the Fourth International in 1938 was a historic victory for the world working class. It maintained the continuity of Marxism against the counter-revolutionary crimes of Stalinism, including the mass purges, show trials and executions that were aimed at physically destroying Bolshevism. The founding conference of the Fourth International, held on the outskirts of Paris, defied a global network of assassins aimed at murdering Trotsky and his closest comrades. Its founding document, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International”, was written by Trotsky. It summed up the lessons of the revolutionary upheavals and terrible defeats suffered by the working class over the preceding decade. It stated: “The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.”

On August 20, 2023, 83 years after Trotsky’s assassination by a Stalinist agent in Coyoacan, Mexico, David North spoke at a public ceremony in Prinkipo, Turkey, to commemorate Trotsky’s exile there from 1929 to 1933. He told those gathered at Prinkipo and listening online throughout the world:

“Today’s commemoration would be fully justified if it were only honoring the life of Trotsky as a titanic figure in the history of the first four decades of the 20th century: the co-leader, with Lenin, of the October Revolution, the commander of the Red Army, the theoretician of permanent revolution, the greatest orator of his time, the author of literary and political masterworks, the implacable opponent of Stalinism, and socialist visionary who foresaw the possibility of all human beings rising to an intellectual, cultural and moral level attained in the past by only the greatest geniuses.

“But Trotsky is more than a historical figure, whose life and works are studied to understand the past. More than 80 years after his assassination, Trotsky remains an extraordinarily contemporary presence. More than any other political leader of the last century, his ideas retain undiminished relevance. The writings of Leon Trotsky remain essential reading not only to understand the tumultuous events of the 20th century. They provide a critical and indispensable framework for the comprehension of present day reality.”

Today, the eruption of imperialist war, including the murderous siege by the Zionist state of Israel against the Palestinians, confronts the international working class and youth with all the unresolved problems of the 20th century. The images from Gaza--razed apartment blocks, hospitals and mosques, brazen acts of collective punishment reminiscent of the Nazis and of Franco’s bombardment of Guernica---are being seared into the consciousness of the working class and oppressed the world over, driving home the barbarity of imperialism. All of the burning issues facing workers and the oppressed masses—social inequality, war, the pandemic, climate change, state repression and the rise of authoritarianism and fascism—confront the working class as global problems that require a global solution.

Trotsky was the supreme strategist and the personal embodiment of the fight for world socialist revolution, a perspective defended over the past 70 years solely by the International Committee of the Fourth international (ICFI). Since 1953, the ICFI has upheld the program of permanent revolution and Trotsky’s unparalleled revolutionary legacy against Stalinism, social-democracy, bourgeois nationalism, Pabloism, and the various anti-Marxist theories of the pseudo-left. The Trotskyist movement has entered a new phase of its history, characterized by an intersection between the global crisis of capitalism and the program and practice of the ICFI. The World Socialist Web Site, published by the ICFI in more than 20 languages, is today authoritative voice of Trotskyism: the revolutionary Marxism of the 21st century.

The SEP warmly invites workers, students and intellectuals to make plans to attend the November 18 meeting, a major political and intellectual event. Celebrate the centenary of Trotskyism and join the fight for the socialist future of mankind!

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

MAL B34, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, United Kingdom