PRESENTATION

The book is divided into three parts:

Part I: it contains the presentation of the first edition and three chapters of the thesis entitled "The events of 1989 and the update of the revolutionary program", published in 2000.
 Such events are described there from the scientific socialism, their genesis and laws which explain capitalist restoration as a result in 1989.
The Chapter III of the first edition took account of international situation opened in '89 until '90.
We have omitted that chapter because in the present edition we include the world situation developed from 1989 to the present time, marked by the beginning of "THE" crisis of the world capitalist system. Since it is about giving a strategic and historical view of world situation between two milestones of  the class struggle: the '89, with the masses on the defensive and imperialism recapturing new markets and developing an extreme parasitism, and the current global crisis explosion with the masses on the counteroffensive in a new open historical  "1989" period , this time does not hit the working class , but it strikes Wall Street instead.
As we will explain in the Prologue to this second edition, Chapter V of the original thesis is substituted by Part III of this book, with a required update.

Part II is entitled "The period opened in 1989: the working class and the masses on the defensive and the imperialist parasites making a 'Belle Époque' in the Titanic. 2007-2008: crack of the capitalist world economy. Imperialist parasites throw the crisis over the masses. The working class fights back". This part defines in its first chapter the '89 as a milestone that opens up a new historical period based on the loss of workers' states, and also because of this, it closes the 2WW post-war period defined in favor of imperialism with capitalist restoration

The first chapter also provides an overview of the events of 1989 from the current historical moment, where the regime of world domination imposed by imperialism since 1989 is in crisis due to the economic crac and masses’ struggle.

In the second chapter, which contains a series of articles published in 2009, focuses on the evolution of the former workers states since 2000 and, crucially, the central questions posed to the proletariat of these countries due to the opening of a new historical period from 2007. Thus, the reader will find along this chapter the following: the first responses of the proletariat of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to the 2007 crisis, a polemic against the neo- Kautskysts who assure that Russia and China are new imperialist powers, and the National question exacerbated by the crisis. These events demonstrated the relevance of our program, elaborated in the Thesis of 1989, about the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms as historical task in countries where capitalism was restored.

The reader should know that there is an extensive work of the FLTI on the Chinese question where we delimited with a kind of particular revisionism of many that appeared in ‘89 talking and still talking about the force of global capitalism. That is, those who believe that, far from overabundance of imperialist powers, as evidenced by the current European crac, to give just one example, exists the possibility of the emergence of new powers. For this current, this would be the case of China and Russia, where on the contrary, these are the countries with the highest concentration of multinationals to plunder every last drop of worker blood and wealth under the boot of the murderous Putin and the Chinese mandarins. This work has also been published by our publishing and is available to the reader of this book.

Part III is entitled "Against reformism, nurse of capitalism ... In struggle for world socialist revolution under the banner of the Fourth International." This part focuses on our historical balance of the degeneration of the Fourth International and defines that is no longer possible to regenerate it, much less reconstruct it. The thread of continuity has been broken by a series of open capitulations, open betrayals, and adaptations.

We decided to publish in this part a series of documents that replace Chapter V of the original thesis. These were published in a special material in 2010, under the title "70 years after the murder of Leon Trotsky". The Fourth International is not dead! Long live the struggle for the re-foundation of the Fourth International ". There it is developed synthetically our fundamental thesis about the degeneration of our world party, which began during the Second World War, after Trotsky´s death.
Finally, we include as an appendix the historical document "Under the treacherous hand of a mercenary, Leon Trotsky has fallen in his struggle for socialism", of the Revolutionary Worker Group, militants of the Fourth International in Argentina. It was published facing Leon Trotsky's murder by a hitman of Stalinism.
We propose the discussion of this work to the revolutionary currents that in different parts of the world confront reformism, and based on recomposing the revolutionary Marxism seek the way to set up again the world party of the socialist revolution.
Thus, this work  is published as a contribution to the workers and youth of the world who try to find their way to the socialist revolution, daily facing the treacherous leaders who have built a wall with the purpose the world proletarian revolution did not sweep away at once and for all, the citadel of power. Throwing their crisis to all the exploited masses, in this citadel are the 147 corporations and banks, 600 managers and directors that control the world economy and 40 million of  parasites without producing, living by cutting coupons and rent, overexploiting and starving more than 6 billion slaves who are the exploited masses and the oppressed peoples of the world.

As The Economist, the imperialist press of  London City, says: when the USSR fell the new bosses coming from the heart of the restorationist bureaucracy that had taken over the nationalized companies, as executioners shouted at the workers: "this crisis we are suffering today it is because of you, for having ruled your dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now, go to work, without saying a word”. That was the sound of the whip on his back that the world proletariat was suffering.
Today there are millions of exploited people who shout: "this crisis is because of you, capitalists and bankers, oligarchs and parasites". It's time the working class gives the orders: now, we must expropriate the expropriators of workers and poor people to live. The masses are in a revolutionary counter offensive position.  To succeed, they need more than ever a leadership at their combat´s level. That is the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution and the re-foundation of the Fourth International.

Socialist Editorial Board, Rudolph Klement.