Declaration of the I.C. on the imprisonment of Polish Trotskyists and members of the Polish CP and of Hungarian militants

[p064] on the imprisonment of Polish Trotskyists and other members of the Polish Communist Party, and of Hungarian militants who participated in the revolution of 1956. "THE class struggle is international. The working class in struggle against the imperialists is joined by the workers of Russia, Eastern Europe and China, who must fight the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy inside their own countries in order to defend the gains of their past revolutionary struggles, and to play their part in the building of a new international working- class leadership. The recent repressions in Eastern Europe and the USSR are part of the response of the Stalinist burea- cracy to strike terror into the proletariat of these countries, and, above all, to prevent the formation of a revolutionary leadership. Of great significance are the recent imprisonments of Polish communists, and of workers and militants in diungary who had participated in the Revolution fe) . A number of those arrested in Poland had worked as communists in the Trotskyist mcvement both in Western Europe and in Poland itself. Their political work in fighting for the defence of the nationalized property foundations of the Polish state, but at the same time criticising and opposing the Stalinist bureaucracy, expresses the highest aims and interests of the Polish working class, and demonstrates the internationalist character of the programme and leader- ship which is required for the fulfilment of those interests. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is equally an inevitable target for the bureaucracy, for it symbolised and inaugurated the political revolution of the work- ing class against the Stalinist regime for the whole of Eastern Europe, the USSR and China. Through their workers’ councils, the proletarian fighters of Budapest and the whole of Hungary initiated the struggle for the overthrow of the Stalinist police dictatorship, for the building of a socialist economy under the political rule of the working class itself. Inside the USSR, the sentences on Daniel and Sinyavsky, like all manifestations of opposition and criticism among the intelligentsia and students, reflect and at the same time impel forward the struggle of the workers themselves. When the Stalinist bureau- cracy unleashes the new wave of repression against all opposition inside the countries under its control, it carries out functions complementary to its service to the imperialists on an international scale, wherever the struggle of the proletariat and the peasantry threatens the stability of imperialist rule. In Vietnam, and in consequence throughout Asia, imperialism is able to stem the tide cf revolutionary war only through the collaboration of the Kremlin bureaucracy, which is willing to threaten the founda- tions of the Chinese workers’ state, and which gives its services to strengthen the ruling classes of India and Pakistan against the mounting social and political unrest. Inside the advanced: capitalist countries, the Stalinist parties are to the fore in breaking the resis- tance of the vroletariat to the integration of their trade unions into the bourgeois state; there is no road to the defeat of this integration except by the defeat of the Stalinists. In all these cases, and in the USSR and Eastern Europe too, it is the very existence of the proletariat as a Class which is at stake. The bureaucracy, basing itself on the experience of the Moscow Trials and of the suppression of the uprisings in Eastern Europe in 1953-56, strives above all in the very first place to politically behead the working class, to deprive it of independent and conscious existence. IN THE PRESENT stage of the class struggle, the international nature of this struggle is ever more clearly marked. When the Stalinist bureaucracy attempts today to prevent the formation of a working-class leadership, it does so, and must do so, at an international level. The bureaucrats themselves understand that they would never have been able to suppress the move- ment of 1953-56 as they did if there had existed an effective international proletarian leadership, able to mobilise solidarity actions in the capitalist world and in the USSR, and able to provide the Hungarian and Polish revolutionaries with a Marxist, internationalist programme. Knowing that critical struggles are on the way, the Stalinists strive to protect themselves through their repressions against every possibility of the growth of a revolutionary leadership. In these future struggles, whose magnitude will far outweigh those of 1956, the existence of a Marxist leadership, part of the Fourth International. showing the workers the programme of the united revolutionary interests of the workers of Western Europe and America against imperialism, and those of Eastern Europe and the USSR against the bureaucracy, would make impossible the suppressions of 1956, achieved only on the basis of those Stalinist betrayals which had divided the workers of Eastern and Western Europe. The Stalinist bureaucracy was able through ths 1935-38 repressions to exterminate physically almost all the vital forces of the proletarian vanguard. In contrast with that period of international working- clacs defeats, the present situation produces a con- stant striving by a militant working class for a new, revolutionary leadership, despite the betrayals of the Stalinists and social-democrats. At every turn the militant workers are thrown into conflict with the bureaucrats as well as with the capitalists. In the past it was possible for the bureaucracy, usurping the revolutionary prestige of October, to successfully hold back the revolutionary movement with a wall of lies, slanders and eventually assassina- tions. It is part of the severe crisis of Stalinism today, however, that the bureaucracy can no longer carry out such acts with the same ‘justification’. Their right to do so is no longer acknowledged by the advanced workers, including many inside the Com- munist Parties themselves. Some other way must be

[p065] DOCUMENTS found to initiate a campaign of slanders to once again prepare the way for political assassinations. Fidel Castro has taken on the mantle of Stalin for this purpose, being uniquely qualified for such a role. Castro, the ‘respected and great revolutionary’, replaces Stalin the ‘old Bolshevik’. To Castro falls the task of repeating the lying phrases of Stalin about ‘Trotskyite agents of imperialism’—all with the purpose of justifying imprisonment and liquidation of prole- tarian revolutionaries. ‘Castro-ism’ has reached a dead end. It was never any more than the extreme left of petty-bourgeois ‘socialism’. Finding itself bankrupt, like all petty- bourgeois formations in the imperialist world, it capi- tulates for the time being to the Kremlin bureaucracy, serving its urgent need to attack the Fourth Interna- tional. On every front—against China, and above all against all those elements in Latin America who are rejecting the Stalinists’ line of collaboration and sub- ordination to the bourgeoisie and seeking the path of proletarian revolution—Castro serves his Kremlin paymasters. When Castro attacks the Fourth International in the same terms used by Stalin, he takes his place in a single campaign of calumnies and repressions by the bureaucrats and petty bourgeois everywhere, whether it be in Latin America or Eastern Europe. The contradiction between the interests of the class in struggle and the bureaucrats and petty-bour- geois who dominate the mass movement is an inter- national phenomenon.. The different forms taken in different countries by this contradiction must be under- stood as parts of a single process, forcing the bureau- cracy and the petty-bourgeois leaderships to fight to prevent at all costs the crystallisation in these struggles of the advanced forces of the proletariat around the programme and. organisation of the Fourth International. THE STRUGGLE WAGED by Leon Trotsky against the Moscow Trials, against the exterminations and slanders carried out by Stalin and the bureaucracy, was an indispensable contribution to the whole life and development of the workers’ movement. Without this fight, not only the political and theoretical con- tinuity of the movement but even the human re- sources of the vanguard stood in danger of liquida- tion. Only because this fight was waged as a necessary part of the building of the foundations of the Fourth International could the programme of Bolshevism and the banner of proletarian revolution be carried forward for future generations of working-class fighters. There is no continuity of the movement purely in the abstract. This continuity is carried through by real, living men and their experience in fighting for the programme and for their own existence against every attack of the class enemy and its agents. In the last two decades, there developed within the Fourth International itself revisionist tendencies which attempted to destroy this essential continuity in struggle. In the years 1953-56 these Pabloite re- visionists betrayed the struggles of the revolutionary workers of Eastern Europe. They abandoned the revolu- tionary programme of building Trotskyist parties in every country, instead trying to liquidate the organisation of Trotskyists on the grounds that social democrats, Stalinists and petty-bourgeois nationalist leaders 157 would, under present conditions, carry out the historic tasks of the proletariat. Today they are found utterly incapable of anything but sorrowful dirges and pleas to the bureaucratic and petty-bourgeois enemies of the working class, having for years hailed these enemies— Castro, the ‘liberal’ Stalinist bureaucrats—as ‘pro- greszive’. Unable to analyse in their class meaning the new wave of repressions and slanders, the revisionists are reduced to weeping and moaning, having in effect helped prepare the way for the repressions themselves. _ Only the Trotskyists of the International Com- mittee can carry out the necessary task of political and physical defence of the vanguard forces of the proletariat in the countries ruled by the Stalinist bureaucracy and in the capitalist couritries. In taking upon its shoulders the task of fighting for the continuity of the programme and organisation of the Fourth International, the International Com- mittee and its sections have the inescapable duty of combatting every manifestation of the new wave of repressions and slanders perpetrated by the Stalinists against the most advanced elements of the working class. This is an international duty in every respect, a task which can be carried out only on the basis of _ the record and traditions of the Fourth International. In this period our main task of rebuilding the Fourth International will be successfully carried out only in and through the acceptance of responsibility for the defence of all those who fall victim to the Stalinist repressions. When we fight on the programme of the Fourth International this means nothing more nor less than an unceasing campaign against the bureaucracy, to resist and turn back every attempt made by them to break the revolutionary vanguard. In this way, by taking up all our responsibilities of struggle on every front against the class enemy and its bureaucratic agents, we carry out in practice the fight for the programme and reconstruction of the Fourth Inter- national. The International Committee fights always for its independent political line: when it takes up the defence of the victims of Stalinist repression it does so without making it a condition that these victims fight on the same programme as the International Committee, nor does it take responsibility for every political stand taken on every question by these victims. Our programme, to organise the revolutionary van- guard for the leadership of the proletariat in the struggle for power, for the political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy as an indispensable part of this international struggle, is clear. To this end we defend all those whom the bureaucracy persecute as part of their campaign to politically behead the pro- letariat. ; . ; In the same way the International Committee accepts enthusiastically its responsibility to defend the conquests and organisations of the working class against every attack of the imperialists, and con- sequently defends every member of the working-class movement who falls victim to the imperialist attack on these conquests and organisations. However, the best defence, and in our epoch the only effective defence of these conquests and of the workers and militants who come under attack, is the

[p066] 158 rebuilding of the Fourth International as the leader- ship of the international struggle of the working class. The duty of revolutionaries, of communists, is always to represent the long-term, revolutionary interests of the proletariat as a whole in every partial and immediate struggle. It is in the conduct of every phase of the inter- national class struggle within the strategy of the struggle for power that the figat against the Stalinists’ repressions and slanders achieves its full force. The sections of the International Committee will fight to demand the immediate release of Modzelewski, Smiech, Badowski, Haas, Kuron and others imprisoned in Poland, and of the revolutionaries of 1956 arrested in Hungary, as part of their fight to win the leadership of the working class in each country and defeat the FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 opportunists and Stalinists. They will mobilise on the broadest possible front a campaign to publicise the arbitrary and repressive character of the arrests, carried out with no other justification than that the accused published their criticisms of the regime, which is the elementary duty of any Communist. A determined and militant struggle can secure the release of those imprisoned and a defeat for their persecutors. The International Committee will work together with all those who will genuinely fight for the defence of these political prisoners in Hungary and Poland against the Stalinists. We are convinced that every blow struck in this campaign will be an in- dispensable contribution to the strengthening of the revolutionary vanguard in the USSR and Eastern Europe as in every country in the world. May 28, 1966, International Committee. Socialist Labour League and Young Socialists demonstrate outside the Polish Embassy against the arrests in Poland.