This book is titled: “From the third world war to the end of capitalism” (Title by the Editorial Board). The book was launched in November 2022 for the 18th International Bookfair of Venezuela in Caracas. It contains a selection of texts by J Posadas from 1970 to 1981. It also contains the 1939 text by Leon Trotsky ‘The USSR in War’.
We present several texts by J. Posadas on the fundamental question of the inevitability of war on the part of the capitalist system – and consequently the inevitability of a Third World War. It is vital therefore for humanity to put an end to the capitalist regime. The selected texts are taken from multiple conferences by J Posadas from 1970 until the year of his death in 1981. We have retaken them from books that the ISCPEs already published, like: “The Soviet Union”, “Workers’ State and Socialist Society”, “The Crisis of Capitalism, War and Socialism”.
We publish also Leon Trotsky’s text “The USSR in War” of 25 September 1939. The Second World War had started on 1 September 1939, and on that day, Hitler had invaded Poland from the West. It was only later, and in defence of the USSR, that the Soviet army entered Poland from the East on 17 September.
Trotsky wrote the text we are presenting eight days after that. His reference to “the occupied territories” is about Poland therefore, and not about Finland, which the USSR entered 3 months later, on 30 November 1939, well after Trotsky wrote this article.
Trotsky returned to this subject however in April 1940, in his text Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events. He was assassinated 4 months later in Mexico, on 21 August 1940.
In his text The USSR in War, Trotsky expressed his conviction that, with the Second World War, the revolution would expand again, consolidating the Soviet Workers State, eliminating the factors that had given cause and justification to the rise of bureaucracy in the USSR. Trotsky demonstrated here his full confidence in the role of the proletariat as the class that can lead the transition from bourgeois society to socialism; and the impossibility for the bureaucracy to transform into a class.
Murdered in August 1940, Trotsky did not see the end of the war, but all his analyses and previsions were amply verified. The revolution did expand, and the power of the bureaucracy weakened as a result. This did not bring the end of the capitalist system, but the class struggle took new forms by virtue of a new relation of world forces favourable to socialism, and new relations of forces in the camp of the capitalists. This was analysed subsequently by J Posadas when he showed that the Second World War had caused the rise of new Workers States and Revolutionary States.
With these publications, our aim is to contribute to understand and intervene in the current revolutionary processes, particularly now in the context of the current war in Ukraine. Ukraine is not a war between two countries as in Russia vs Ukraine. It is a war NATO vs Russia, implicating the masses of the entire world. This war did not even start on 22 February 2022 with Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine; but in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR, it expresses a new inclination in the direction of socialism.
Many factors led Russia to the extreme decision of the ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO) in Ukraine. To profit from the crisis and the enfeebling caused by USSR dissolution, Nato decided upon a sanguinary expansion, marked by wars of occupation and rapine – in Europe (Yugoslavia), the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan) and in Africa (Libya). In the former Soviet Republics, it stimulated internal conflicts to bring its Nato ‘frontiers’ closer to Russia, to suffocate it. De facto, the Atlantic Alliance has appropriated a chunk of Ukraine and made it a ‘special’ military base in view of attacking Russia, to destroy it.
Russia’s SMO in Ukraine was a legitimate response. It stands before the world as a powerful warning that the time for unpunished imperialist wars is nearing to its end. It stands as a call to the peoples of the world to trust in the perspective of a World Front, and in the possibility of breaking the hegemony that imperialism can only maintain through NATO.
There are no more “neutral” countries in Europe. Directly or indirectly, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland have joined the NATO military alliance. It matters today that one should discuss clearly, and unite against NATO that is preparing a war on the scale of the world, with nuclear weapons use included.
No nation stands outside this process. The masses of the world do not want to cover the costs of the crisis of the capitalist system. They do not want to participate in its war preparations against Russia or China. In all the communist parties, the socialist parties, the progressive and revolutionary nationalist movements of the world – in all the movements for peace and the environmentalists – the need grows to discuss in depth and to unite globally.
We salute all the initiatives to build an anti-war world front. Our Editorial participates in it with the publication of these important texts by J. Posadas and León Trotsky.
International Scientific, Cultural and Political Editions (ISCPEs) - The Editors, October 2022
Below is the cover of the book in Spanish. The picture’s legend reads: “Moscow 9th May 2022: the Russian people commemorate the 9th of May 1945, the USSR’s Day of Victory against nazism. It renders homage to the Immortal Regiment by filing past with relatives’ portraits.
This is the cover of the book in Spanish, pending the English translation.
