https://www.prometheusjournal.org/2020/08/08/transitional-programme-a-transition-to-nowhere/

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This article is crap. There is not a single citation of Leon Trotsky's Transitional Program, only characterizations. For example, it states:

"The idea that a small vanguard party, without any mass basis in the working class, will be able to arise victorious out of a revolutionary crisis is laughable."

Yes, it is laughable but Leon Trotsky never said anything like that.

It is useful to study Lenin's polemics that are permeated by citations. For example, from "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky":

The fundamental question that Kautsky discusses in his pamphlet is that of the very essence of proletarian revolution, namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a question that is of the greatest importance for all countries, especially for the advanced ones, especially for those at war, and especially at the present time. One may say without fear of exaggeration that this is the key problem of the entire proletarian class struggle. It is, therefore, necessary to pay particular attention to it .

Kautsky formulates the question as follows: “The contrast between the two socialist trends” (i.e., the Bolsheviks and non-Bolsheviks) “is the contrast between two radically different methods: the dictatorial and the democratic” (p. 3).

Let us point out, in passing, that when calling the non-Bolsheviks in Russia, i.e., the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, socialists, Kautsky was guided by their name, that is, by a word, and not by the actual place they occupy in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. What a wonderful understanding and application of Marxism! But more of this later.