Author(s): Leon Trotsky; James P. Cannon (Contribution by); Michael Taber (Preface by)

Social Science

Written in 1928, this is Trotsky’s alternative to Stalin’s course toward gutting the revolutionary program of the Communist International. “An international communist program is in no case the sum total of national programs or an amalgam of their common features,” Trotsky wrote. “In the present epoch, to a much larger extent than in the past, the national orientation of the proletariat must and can flow only from a world orientation and not vice versa.” Suppressed by Stalin in the Soviet Union, its publication elsewhere in the world helped gather the forces that continued the fight to build a revolutionary international movement of the working class.“Clearly exposes the dictatorial tendencies of Stalin and the perversion of Marxist ideology in Russia.… Trotsky’s defence of the proletarian cause has now special significance for those who are interested in the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.”—USI [United Service Institution of India] JournalNotes, index.