Okay, let's start at the beginning

Okay, judging by the lack of activity here the text or questions must have been to difficult. So let's start again, from the beginning.

"The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program (part one)"

'The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution'

Simple, just over one page. Please read, assimilate and discuss. We will begin the discussions Friday 10th June at no particular time.

The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution

The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.

A crisis that still continues as a paralysis of leadership amongst the self-proclaimed leadership of the proletariat has led to a continuation of the lack of effective activism that dogged socialism prior to 1918.

The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another.

With the 50/50 vision of hindsight, it is now possible to see that the ‘prerequisites’ that he observed in 1938, were affected by the effects of a war that was still to come. The industrial requirements of a war economy created a false ‘boom’ that was to last until the mid 1970s as governments poured vast amounts of capital into the production of war materials during the war years, and the restoration of infrastructures following its cessation. After the ‘false economic boom years’ the resultant re-entry of the pre-war depression and it inevitable increase, can be seen as restoring Trotsky’s ‘dance macabre’ of democratic bankruptcy.

The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of will.

Now, with Fascism far behind, the bourgeoisie yearns for the return of the ‘gilded age’ of the 19th Century before labour reforms bridled the uncaring lust for ‘free market’ capitalism. In the belief that such a ‘tearing up’ of unnecessary labour agreements will see a return to the dynamic days of capitalist expansion.

The “New Deal,” despite its first period of pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already succeeded in showing that “New Deal” politics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley.

International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914.

All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. 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.

Written in 1938, now 2011 and still the traditional left is trotting out the same tired old line that circumstances are not right.
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Okay early I know, but what the heck? I've put my bits in red