The Death Agony of Capitalism
and the Tasks of the Fourth International

The Mobilization of the Masses around Transitional Demands
to Prepare the Conquest of Power

The Transitional Program

PDF format version

(1938)

Written by Leon Trotsky in 1938. Originally published in the May-June 1938 edition of Bulletin of the Opposition as a discussion document for the Founding Congress of the Fourth International (World Party of Socialist Revolution). The following copy was based on the 1981 printing of the Transitional Program by Labor Publications, and checked against the original Russian by Martin Schreader in 1999. Re-edited and proofread by Scott Wilson in 2006 for the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive

• The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution
   
• The Proletariat and its Leadership
   
• The Minimum Program and the Transitional Program
   
• Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
   
• Trade Unions in the Transitional Epoch
   
• Factory Committees
   
• “Business Secrets” and Workers’ Control of Industry
   
• Expropriation of Separate Groups of Capitalists
   
• Expropriation of the Private Banks and State-ization of the Credit System
   
• The Picket Line – Defense Guards/Workers’ Militia – The Arming of the Proletariat
   
• The Alliance of Workers and Farmers
   
• The Struggle Against Imperialism and War
   
• Workers’ and Farmers’ Government
   
• Soviets
   
• Backward Countries and the Program of Transitional Demands
   
• The Program of Transitional Demands in Fascist Countries
   
• The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch
   
• Against Opportunism and Unprincipled Revisionism
   
• Against Sectarianism
   
• Open the Road to the Woman Worker! Open the Road to the Youth!
   
• Under the Banner of the Fourth International!

Last updated on: 7 August 2019