Editorial

[p036] historical continuity. Revisionism rejects the history of the labour movement, its theoretical and practical struggles. All the tendencies which reject the history of the labour movement, which want to stay on the fringe of its theoretical and practical struggle, reject along with this the whole of historical materialism, Marxism and the fight for the build- ing of the revolutionary leadership, for pragmatism, eclecticism and impressionism. By their method, they are petty-bourgeois tendencies. They have broken with proletarian internationalism. The historical continuity of the Fourth Interna- tional was ensured by the International Committee, for it alone was able to carry out the theoretical and practical fight against revisionism, indispen- sible for the building of the revolutionary leader- ship. Whosoever turns his back on the Fourth International, on its struggle for its historical continuity, on its organised expression—the International Committee—breaks with its pro- gramme, with proletarian internationalism, of which the IC is the concrete expression. 3. Build the revolutionary leadership! 6 HE task of the Fourth International is the T abolition of capitalism’s domination. Its aim—socialism. Its method—the proletarian revolution.’ These definitions of the Transitional Programme are today more than ever living. The Fourth International fights on the ground of the world proletarian revolution, for the building of a world revolutionary leadership and of revolu-

[p037] MANIFESTO OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE tionary parties in every country. Only in this way can the crisis of humanity, which is none other than the crisis of revolutionary leadership, be resolved. ‘The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation of the proletariat. . Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution. Thus it was, thus it will be.’ The entire struggle of these last few years confirms these lines of the Transitional Programme. In Britain, the Young Socialists are the vanguard of the struggles of the British proletariat, of the struggle to build a revolutionary Marxist workers’ party. In France, working-class youth played a leading part during the 1963 miners’ strike, the student youth was in the lead of the action against the counter-revolutionary war of French imperialism in Algeria. In Japan, the Zengakuren were the moving force of the mass action against the imperialist US-Japan pact. In June 1953 in Eastern Germany, in October 1956 in Poland, and during the Hungarian revolution of November 1956, working-class and student youth manned the revolutionary front line. In the USSR the ferment in the working-class and student youth 131 shows that revolutionary movements are beginning to develop. In Vietnam, working-class and peasant youth make up the vast mass of the revolutionary army, whilst in the USA it is in the student youth that the first actions are born against the counter- revolutionary war of US imperialism. It is also the youth who are the most determined element in the struggle of the American Negroes. Mobilising the youth, organising it, ordering its struggles, demands that the broadest perspectives be opened to it, smashing the strait jacket of this society which oppresses and suffocates it. The mildewed and conservative bureaucracies fear the youth, its aspirations and its struggles. Only the programme of the Fourth International, because it is the programme of the world proletarian revolution for socialism, offers the youth a per- spective measuring up to its demands, its aspira- tions and its legitimate ambitions. Only the Fourth International can organise it by uniting it to the mass of the working class in action for the pro- letarian revolution.