Overview
Trotskyists have long dominated the revolutionary tradition on the western left. This book provides a critical analysis of Trotskyism and argues that it is increasingly irrelevant as a means of achieving socialism. It argues that, as the realization grows that the revolutionary tradition and the authoritarianism which frequently results from it are wrong, the importance of the theory of the transition to socialism increases. The author states that on this point Trotskyism is weak; that Trotskyism's proposals for socialist transition are largely rhetorical and that its democratic impulse is weak. He supports this by showing that Trotsky's philosophy of history, implicit in his writings, which the author characterizes as evolutionary and automatiscist, coupled with a failure to grasp the distinctive theoretical structure of Marx's Capital, has a disabling effect on Trotsky's account of the transition to socialism and on his explanation of Stalinism.