This book is titled: “From the third world war to the end of capitalism” launched in November 2022 for the 18 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 at War’.
The current war situation in Ukraine provokes many debates, as happened in Trotsky’s time when the 2nd World War broke out. Thus, it seemed very important to us Editors, to return to this theme from a Marxist point of view. We present in this book 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. So the need is vital for humanity to end the capitalist regime and go for economic and social transformations towards socialism. This can only become live on the scale of the world.
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 at war” of 25 September 1939. That was around when the Soviet Army began to occupy Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries, and the Stalin government signed the «German-Soviet Pact».
This reading helps greatly to compare the Soviet policy of those days with the current Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
In his text The USSR at war, Trotsky expressed his firm conviction that with the 2nd World War, the revolution would expand, consolidating the Soviet Workers' State, eliminating the causes that gave rise and justification to the bureaucracy in the USSR. Trotsky trusted in the role of the proletariat as the class able to lead society in the transition from bourgeois society to socialism, and the impossibility for the bureaucracy to transform itself into a class.
Assassinated in 1940, Trotsky could not see how the war ended; but all his analyzes and forecasts became vastly verified. The revolution did spread, and consequently the power of the bureaucracy was weakened. The expansion of the revolution did not bring the end the capitalist system, but the class struggle took new forms. These appeared in new relations of world forces favorable to socialism and in new relations of forces between the capitalists. All this was subsequently analyzed by J. Posadas on the basis of the new Workers' States and Revolutionary States that emerged from the 2nd World War.
With this publication, we aim to contribute to understanding and intervening in the current revolutionary processes, particularly in the context of the current war in Ukraine. What happens in Ukraine is not a war between two countries, as in Russia versus Ukraine. It is a NATO versus Russia war in which the masses of the entire world are becoming involved. That war did not start in Feb. 22 either - with Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine – but expresses a rather new course towards socialism after the dissolution of the USSR.
Many factors led Russia to the extreme decision of a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Profiting from the crisis and weakening caused by the USSR’s dissolution, NATO decided to impose its bloody expansion. There followed the NATO’s wars of occupation and plunder in Europe (Yugoslavia), in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan) and in Africa (Libya). It stimulated internal conflicts in the former Soviet republics to bring its NATO « borders » closer to Russia and suffocate it. De facto, NATO has now seized a portion of Ukraine to make of it a "special" military base from where to attack Russia and destroy it.
The legitimate military intervention of Russia in Ukraine stands before the world as powerful warning that the times of imperialism's unpunished wars is coming to an end. It also stands as call to the peoples of the world to trust in the perspectives of a world front, in the possibility of breaking a hegemony that imperialism can only maintain through NATO.
There is no longer any "neutral" country in Europe. Finland, Sweden and Switzerland are more or less integrated in the NATO military alliance. It is a matter today of clearly discussing and uniting against NATO which is preparing a world-wide war, with nuclear weapons’ use included.
All nations are implicated in this process. The masses of the world do not want to pay for the consequences 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 and socialist parties, the progressive and revolutionary nationalist movements of the world - in all the movements for peace and the environmentalists, the imperative is to discuss in depth and to unite globally.
We salute all the initiatives to build the world front against the war in which our Editorial participates 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.
