The conquest of power is the axis of our propaganda.¶
Core Argument¶
Here the author argues that the conquest of power must become the central axis of revolutionary propaganda in the epoch of imperialist decline and world war. The chapter’s core narrative thrust is that the Fourth International cannot merely repeat the Leninist position of 1914–18—irreconcilable opposition to imperialist war and exposure of social-chauvinism—but must advance it. The objective conditions have matured: capitalism is in decay, the masses have made abortive revolutionary attempts, fascism has arisen, and a new imperialist war has begun. In this context, the working class is responsive to the direct posing of the question of power.
The author insists that Marxism is not the mechanical repetition of correct phrases. Lenin deepened Marx; Trotsky developed the theory of permanent revolution. To merely repeat slogans is to fall into the sectarianism of the SPGB or the ultra-lefts. The task is to apply the Marxist method to the concrete problems of the epoch. On war, this means moving from a purely abstract pacifist or oppositional stance to one that links the defence of the country to the conquest of power by the working class. Trotsky’s August 1940 intervention on American problems is cited as the model: revolutionaries must say to workers that they will defend the country, but only a workers’ country, not that of the 60 families and Wall Street. This is not a chauvinist deviation but a dialectical advance.
The chapter draws heavily on the historical experience of the first world war and the subsequent betrayals by Stalinism and reformism. It argues that the present war is a retribution for those betrayals, which frustrated the masses’ revolutionary strivings. The working class, especially in Britain and America, lacks hatred for the German people and differentiates them from the Nazis—a fact that revolutionaries must exploit. The hatred of fascism is a sound class instinct, but it is being misused by bourgeois and Labour leaders. The task is to separate the progressive from the reactionary in this sentiment and win workers to the revolutionary banner.
The polemic is directed squarely at the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), the British section of the Fourth International at the time. The RSL is accused of formalism and sectarianism: it comforts itself with maintaining Lenin’s 1914 position but has failed to understand it dynamically. It stops at educating the vanguard on the nature of war and refusing to defend the capitalist fatherland, whereas the Workers’ International League (WIL) goes further to win the masses for the conquest of power and the defence of the proletarian fatherland. The RSL’s abstract opposition is a retreat from the transitional programme, which demands that every issue—including war—be posed from the angle of the struggle for power. The chapter closes by insisting that the epoch of universal militarism and war requires a strategy based not on peace but on the conditions of war itself, and that the transitional programme is the bridge from the isolated revolutionary group to the masses.