Revolutionary Greetings to the World Trotskyist Movement (7th Annual Congress of the Socialist Labour League) June 1965

[p004] REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS TO THE WORLD TROTSKYIST MOVEMENT Tuis Seventh Annual Conference of the Socialist Labour League sends its revolutionary greetings to all the forces of the international working class who are in struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the defeat of the treacherous reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the working class. Our Conference declares its solidarity with the struggles of the workers in the United States, Western Europe and Japan against their capitalist exploiters, with the workers and peasants of the colonial and oppressed nations, particularly in Vietnam, against imperialism and its agents, and with the workers of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe against the parasitic bureaucracy which collaborates with imperialism. Only the reconstruction of the Fourth Inter- national, with Trotskyist-Leninist parties in every country, can ensure the unity of these struggles and their victory. We therefore send fraternal greetings to all sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and will give every support to its conference for the rebuilding of the Fourth International, planned for early 1966. Our greetings go particularly to those who have fought revisionism under especially difficult circumstances in the USA, the American Com- mittee for the Fourth International. They will receive every possible support from the Socialist Labour League. The Conference called by the International Committee will mark a qualitative stage in the development of the Fourth International. Revi- sionism in the Trotskyist movement has run its course from theoretical distortions to open class betrayal in the recent period. The entry of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon into the capitalist coalition government of Mrs. Banda- ranaike in 1964 was the most crushing proof of this degeneration. It followed hard on the heels of the unprincipled ‘reunification’ between the Pabloite ‘International Secretariat? and _ the Socialist Workers Party of the United States. This reunification was completed without political discussion, deliberately to avoid the political questions confronting the international movement. The struggle against revisionism carried out by the International Committee has hastened the process of degeneration of the Pabloite forces. Ever since 1951, these revisionists have in effect subordinated the working class and the building of the revolutionary party to the Stalinist bureau- cracy, the reformist leaders and the bourgeois nationalists in the colonial countries. The forces of the International Committee have correctly fought for the political independence of the working class through the building of the revolu- tionary party and the application of the Transi- tional Programme of the Fourth International. Pablo himself now separates publicly from the ‘reunified’ Secretariat in Paris, and openly advocates the complete liquidation of Trotskyism into the Stalinist bureaucracy and the bourgeois- nationalist movements. This open break from Marxism by Pablo, supported by a number of old Trotskyists such as Santen in Holland and Vereecken in Belgium, together with half the French section, the majority of the Australian section and certain groups in Algéria and other colonial countries, should be the warning light for those Trotskyists remaining in the sections of the United Secretariat who want to fight revisionism and defend the Transitional Programme. They should support the Socialist Labour League and the International Committee of the Fourth International in fighting for a discussion of all principled questions and the serious prepara- tion of a future conference of all those who accept the Transitional Programme. This was proposed by the International Committee in September 1963 and rejected by the United Secretariat. The evolution of Pablo, and the events in Ceylon, Belgium and the USA, have proved the correctness of our proposals. Germain, Frank and Hansen have proved themselves utterly incapable of defending the programme of the Fourth International. Their theory and their ‘politics’ are in essence the same as those of Pablo. [In America, the Socialist Workers Party’s prostration before petty-bourgeois nationalism in the Negro movement is only one reflection of their acceptance of the liquidationist revisionism of Pabloism. In Western Europe, the sections of the ‘Unified Secretariat’ have become mere appendages of the ‘Left’ Social Democracy. Belgium provides the proof. ‘Entry’ was used to opportunistically abandon the construction of the revolutionary party, only to end in the adventure of proclaiming a new centrist party in alliance with the worst nationalist and petty-bourgeois elements, whose split from the new party itself is only a matter of time. The next United Secretariat Congress will expel Pablo and his supporters, expel over 500 members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, as well as having to give an accounting of all these events. The present stage is therefore a crucial one. It is the last opportunity to engage in a serious discussion and reconstruction of the International before the forces around the United Secretariat are completely liquidated by Frank, Germain and Hansen, who are rapidly following Pablo to the complete abandonment of revolutionary Marxism. All those who struggle against these revisionists INTERNATIONAL

[p005] INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS TO THE WORLD TROTSKYIST MOVEMENT Tuis Seventh Annual Conference of the Socialist Labour League sends its revolutionary greetings to all the forces of the international working class who are in struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the defeat of the treacherous reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the working class. Our Conference declares its solidarity with the struggles of the workers in the United States, Western Europe and Japan against their capitalist exploiters, with the workers and peasants of the colonial and oppressed nations, particularly in Vietnam, against imperialism and its agents, and with the workers of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe against the parasitic bureaucracy which collaborates with imperialism. Only the reconstruction of the Fourth Inter- national, with Trotskyist-Leninist parties in every country, can ensure the unity of these struggles and their victory. We therefore send fraternal greetings to all sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and will give every support to its conference for the rebuilding of the Fourth International, planned for early 1966. Our greetings go particularly to those who have fought revisionism under especially difficult circumstances in the USA, the American Com- mittee for the Fourth International. They will receive every possible support from the Socialist Labour League. The Conference called by the International Committee will mark a qualitative stage in the development of the Fourth International. Revi- sionism in the Trotskyist movement has run its course from theoretical distortions to open class betrayal in the recent period. The entry of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon into the capitalist coalition government of Mrs. Banda- ranaike in 1964 was the most crushing proof of this degeneration. It followed hard on the heels of the unprincipled ‘reunification’ between the Pabloite ‘International Secretariat’ and _ the Socialist Workers Party of the United States. This reunification was completed without political discussion, deliberately to avoid the political questions confronting the international movement. The struggle against revisionism carried out by the International Committee has hastened the process of degeneration of the Pabloite forces. Ever since 1951, these revisionists have in effect subordinated the working class and the building of the revolutionary party to the Stalinist bureau- cracy, the reformist leaders and the bourgeois nationalists in the colonial countries. The forces of the International Committee have correctly fought for the political independence of the working class through the building of the revolu- tionary party and the application of the Transi- tional Programme of the Fourth International. Pablo himself now separates publicly from the ‘reunified’ Secretariat in Paris, and openly advocates the complete liquidation of Trotskyism into the Stalinist bureaucracy and the bourgeois- nationalist movements. This open break from Marxism by Pablo, supported by a number of old Trotskyists such as Santen in Holland and Vereecken in Belgium, together with half the French section, the majority of the Australian section and certain groups in Algéria and other colonial countries, should be the warning light for those Trotskyists remaining in the sections of the United Secretariat who want to fight revisionism and defend the Transitional Programme. They should support the Socialist Labour League and the International Committee of the Fourth International in fighting for a discussion of all principled questions and the serious prepara- tion of a future conference of all those who accept the Transitional Programme. This was proposed by the International Committee in September 1963 and rejected by the United Secretariat. The evolution of Pablo, and the events in Ceylon, Belgium and the USA, have proved the correctness of our proposals. Germain, Frank and Hansen have proved themselves utterly incapable of defending the programme of the Fourth International. Their theory and their ‘politics’ are in essence the same as those of Pablo. In America, the Socialist Workers Party’s prostration before petty-bourgeois nationalism in the Negro movement is only one reflection of their acceptance of the liquidationist revisionism of Pabloism. In Western Europe, the sections of the ‘Unified Secretariat’ have become mere appendages of the ‘Left’ Social Democracy. Belgium provides the proof. ‘Entry’ was used to opportunistically abandon the construction of the revolutionary party, only to end in the adventure of proclaiming a new centrist party in alliance with the worst nationalist and petty-bourgeois elements, whose split from the new party itself is only a matter of time. The next United Secretariat Congress will expel Pablo and his supporters, expel over 500 members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, as well as having to give an accounting of all these events. The present stage is therefore a crucial one. It is the last opportunity to engage in a serious discussion and reconstruction of the International before the forces around the United Secretariat are completely liquidated by Frank, Germain and Hansen, who are rapidly following Pablo to the complete abandonment of revolutionary Marxism. All those who struggle against these revisionists

[p006] 2 will receive the support of the Socialist Labour League. The successful fight of the International Com- mittee against revisionism and the work of its sections in constructing a leadership of the work- ing class provide the basis for the reconstruction of the Fourth International. Such a reconstruction is the fear of Stalinists and Social Democrats everywhere, just as it is feared by the capitalist class. The responsibility for the split in the International rests squarely upon the Pabloite revisionists. 1963 showed that in the USA the Socialist Workers Party had succumbed to the same revisions. When the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party sent condolences to the widow of Kennedy, and called upon the United States government to defend the Negroes with Federal troops, the consequences of revisionism were shown no less starkly than they were in FourRTH INTERNATIONAL, SUMMER 1965 Ceylon. The ‘reunification’ of the revisionists in 1963 without discussion of past differences was a part of the whole method of liquidationism. The pro- posals for international discussion put forward by the International Committee conference in September 1963 were rejected by the Pabloite United Secretariat. Since then, the disintegration of the Pabloite forces, a reflection of the crisis of the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracies faced with the intensification of the international class struggle, has confirmed the political necessity of a thorough discussion in the world movement to prepare a real rebuilding of the Fourth Inter- national and a defeat of revisionism. We call upon all Trotskyists throughout the world to support our efforts to reorganise the Fourth International on the programmatic basis of its 1938 Founding Conference. June 1965