Statement of the International Committee on the Robertson Group (USA)

[p023] Statement of the International Committee on the Robertson Group (USA) The Spartacist group (USA) was invited to par- ticipate in the Third International Conference called by the International Committee for April 4-9, 1966. A delegation of four attended the first sessions as observers. (The Voorhis Act in the USA prevents political tendencies from making international political affiliations.) During the course of the conference the political position of Spartacist was revealed as being fundamentally opposed to the programme and methods of the International, and the Spartacist delegation left the conference before its proceeding were com- pleted, Their presence at the conference resulied from an initiative from the Internationa] Committee, whose official representative, G. Healy, met dele- gates of the Spartacist group and of the American Committee for the Fourth International in October 1965. At this meeting on the basis of the accept- ance by both groups of the International Com- mittee’s resolution ‘Rebuilding the Fourth Inter- national’ it was agreed to work towards a unified organisation of the two groups in the USA, in political solidarity with the International Com- mittee; the aim was to complete the preparation for this fusion for the International Conference,

[p024] 120 Subsequently, discussion between the two groups and a certain amount of joint political activity were carried out and a delegation from both groups were sent as observers to the International Con- ference. The Spartacist group led by J. Robertson originated in the opposition to the revisionist course of the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party in 1960-62. The Robertson group broke with comrade T. Wohlforth and those who now form the American Committee for the Fourth International on the basic question of the necessity to start from the building of the Fourth Inter- national. This took the specific form of Robertson and others’ refusal to accept the leadership of the International Committee in the fight against the Socialist Workers Party leadership. Robertson and the Spartacist group placed questions of procedure and questions of their estimate of American prob- lems above internationalism. In the intervening period Robertson and his group published some International Committee material and claimed to stand on the positions of the International Committee. In the course of preparations for its International Conference therefore the International. Committee called upon all those in the USA who accepted the Transitional Programme, the decisions of the first four con- gresses of the Communist International and the resolution ‘Rebuilding the Fourth International’ to work towards the building of a Marxist party. This was the basis of the proposals accepted by Spartacist and the American Committee for the Fourth International in October 1965. It was absolutely essential to clarify at the international level the political problems involved in building a party in the United States. In the conference after the secretary’s report on International Perspectives based on the resolution ‘Rebuilding the Fourth International’, Robertson spoke at length on the third day of discussion (Wednesday, April 6). Despite Robertson’s claim to agree with the resolution before the conference his contribution showed very clear disagreement with the main political line of the report and resolution. After making this contribution Robertson failed to appear for the subsequent session of discussion on the grounds that he was tired due to his having worked overnight on a draft document on American Perspectives for the conference. The conference expressed the unanimous opinion that Robertson must immediately return to the proceedings. Not only were his reasons for his absence quite unacceptable, but he had made no FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 approach to the chairman of the conference before leaving. Robertson saying that he was ‘not available’ refused to return to the conference for the whole of the session in question in which a number of comrades made serious criticisms of points made in Robertson’s contribution. On Robertson’s return for the Wednesday evening session, the Secretary began his reply to the discussion by saying that Robertson’s absence from the exhaustive discussion on his own contribution was utterly irresponsible and that Robertson’s request for permission to be absent had been re- jected by the conference as inadmissable in a communist organisation. Here Robertson inter- jected on what he called ‘a point of personal privilege’. In the first place, he explained, he had not requested permission to be absent and did not know of any rule requiring him to request such permission. He was present at the conference not as an individual but as part of his delegation; his delegation was fully empowered to note the dis- cussion and participate in it during his absence. It was pointed out to Robertson that his responsi- bilities to the international movement through its highest body, the conference, were clearly involved, and he was asked to apologise to the conference. This he refused to do. A motion was then put demanding an apology from Robertson and stating that if he refused then he must leave the conference. In the course of discussion on this motion Robertson again stated that he did not know the rules of the conference. The original motion was modified to say that its application would take place only at the end of the general discussion and the vote on the resolu- tion and report of the Secretary of the International Committee, thus giving Robertson an additional opportunity to reconsider his position. This motion was carried, and Robertson stayed to the end of the discussion, reply and vote on the report and resoltuoin of the International Committee. Robertson and the Spartacist delegation voted for the amended resolution but abstained on the report. Oo In accordance with its earlier resolution, the conference then asked for Robertson’s statement on his absence the previous day. He again refused to apologise. Thus, the resolution applied only to Robertson’s breaking communist discipline in refusing to accept the decisions of the International Conference and notto the rest of his delegation. The chairman asked Robertson to leave. He then left followed by his delegation. By their behaviour the Spartacist delegation

[p025] STATEMENT OF IC ON ROBERTSON showed that they constitute a petty-bourgeois oppo- sition to the programme and discipline of the Fourth International. This rejection of the primary importance of the building of the international is consistent with Robertson’s position in 1962, and demonstrates decisively that Robertson and the Spartacist delegation have failed to break from the pragmatist and anti-internationalist politics, first of Shachtman and then of the revisionist Socialist Workers Party leadership. So-called agreement on programme has a history in the communist movement. Robertson’s actions in the conference constituting a breach of--democratic centralism, speak louder than any declaration on programme and such behaviour is linked to a political method and programme, a petty-bourgeois method which rejects communist methods of building the revolutionary movement. Even if Robertson had thought the conference wrong on a procedural question or that he had been organisa- tionally dealt with on the political questions his duty as an internationalist and a communist would have been to abide by the conference decision and fight to clarify the movement. His refusal to do so and his placing of personal prestige above considerations of his international responsibility condemn him. Radio, Science, Technique and Society 1926, as the inaugural address at the First All-Union Congress of the Society of Friends of Radio. A brilliant anticipation of the major advances of nuclear science and inter-planetary flight. Price: One shilling A speech delivered on March 1, 121 Since the Spartacist group has in the past claimed to adhere to the positions of the Inter- national Committee it must be categorically stated that the International Committee not only dis- sociates itself from the activities and publications of the Spartacist group but insists that a Marxist party can be built only in opposition to it. Marxists in the USA must start from the building of the International as the only basis for constructing such a party. Only in this way can they begin from their responsibilities to the international working class. The comrades in the American Committee for the Fourth International represent this inter- national tendency in the USA. The International Committee reaffirms that the building of a revolutionary party in the United States of America is an indispensable requirement of the international proletariat. It calls upon all] those who accept the programme of the Fourth International to devote all their efforts to this end through the activities of the American Committee for the Fourth International. In particular, we call upon members still in the Spartacist group to learn the lessons of the behaviour of their delegates and the Third Conference, to rally to the positions of the International Committee and to join the American Committee for the Fourth International. The International Committee 9.4.66 Culture and Socialism. _ and a Manifesto Art and Revolution An article compiled by the author from a talk he gave to a Moscow club on February 3, 1926, and a number of other addresses. .The Manifesto, appearing in 1938 under the signatures of Andre Breton and Diego Rivera, ‘ was‘in fact drawn up in collabora- _ tion with Trotsky. Price: Two shillings and sixpence

[p026] 122 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 ~ MANIFESTO of the International Committee of the I. The crisis opened by the war continues HE Third Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International declares that, as the founding programme of the Fourth International stresses, ‘the crisis of humanity is the crisis of revolutionary leadership’. Trotsky’s prediction has been completely con- firmed: the second imperialist world war opened an unparalleled revolutionary crisis, a crisis which still continues, despite the ebb and flow of the world class struggle. Only the absence of revolu- tionary leadership has allowed capitalism to survive with the collaboration of Stalinism and reformism. But imperialism has not been able to inflict an historic defeat on the working class. ‘It is on the basis of the revolutionary crisis opened by the Second World War that the present phase of the class struggle is developing. The deepening of the crisis of imperialism has destroyed beyond recall the equilibrium between the classes upon which the Kremlin bureaucracy rested. The apparent stability of the Kremlin bureaucracy on the morrow of the Second World War masked the deeper processes which revealed themselves in a series of crises as the Kremlin bureaucracy sought a new centre of gravity. The revolutionary move- ments of 1953-56 expressed in terms of the proletarian revolution the joint crisis of imperialism and of the Kremlin bureaucracy. This phase of the crisis of imperialism and of the Kremlin bureau- cracy can only be provisionally surmounted by the class enemy if there is an absence of national and international revolutionary leadership. But here too, Trotsky’s prediction is verified: the Kremlin bureaucracy cannot survive in the long run once the international equilibrium between funda- mental class forces which gave rise to it is destroyed. The perspective henceforth is that of the social revolution in the capitalist world and the political revolution in the degenerated and de- formed workers’ states, fused into a single process. SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM "THE basis of the class struggle is to be found in the contradiction between the development of the productive forces on the one hand, and private ownership of the means of production and national frontiers on the other. The two imperialist world wars were nothing else but the revolt of the pro- ductive forces against national frontiers. Auto- mation gives a new scale to these contradictions. Automation combined with private ownership of the means of production is the exclusion of millions of workers from the cycle of production and from the minimal culture that they have conquered

[p027] 122 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 MANIFESTO of the International Gommittee of the I. The crisis opened by the war continues HE Third Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International declares that, as the founding programme of the Fourth International stresses, ‘the crisis of humanity is the crisis of revolutionary leadership’. Trotsky’s prediction has been completely con- firmed: the second imperialist world war opened an unparalleled revolutionary crisis, a crisis which still continues, despite the ebb and flow of the world class struggle. Only the absence of revolu- tionary leadership has allowed capitalism to survive with the collaboration of Stalinism and reformism. But imperialism has not been able to inflict an historic defeat on the working class. It is on the basis of the revolutionary crisis opened by the Second World War that the present phase of the class struggle is developing. The deepening of the crisis of imperialism has destroyed beyond recall the equilibrium between the classes upon which the Kremlin bureaucracy rested. The apparent stability of the Kremlin bureaucracy on the morrow of the Second World War masked the deeper processes which revealed themselves in a series of crises as the Kremlin bureaucracy sought a new centre of gravity. The revolutionary move- ments of 1953-56 expressed in terms of the proletarian revolution the joint crisis of imperialism and of the Kremlin bureaucracy. This phase of the crisis of imperialism and of the Kremlin bureau- cracy can only be provisionally surmounted by the class enemy if there is an absence of national and international revolutionary leadership. But here too, Trotsky’s prediction is verified: the Kremlin bureaucracy cannot survive in the long run once the international equilibrium between funda- mental class forces which gave rise to it is destroyed. The perspective henceforth is that of the social revolution in the capitalist world and the political revolution in the degenerated and de- formed workers’ states, fused into a single process. SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM E basis of the class struggle is to be found in the contradiction between the development of the productive forces on the one hand, and private ownership of the means of production and national frontiers on the other. The two imperialist world wars were nothing else but the revolt of the pro- ductive forces against national frontiers. Auto- mation gives a new scale to these contradictions. Automation combined with private ownership of the means of production is the exclusion of millions of workers from the cycle of production and from the minimal culture that they have conquered

[p028] 123 Fourth International inside bourgeois society; it is the complete econo- mic and social decomposition of the economically backward countries, famine alone condemning tens of millions of human beings to death, as in India; it means, for imperialism, the imperative need to bring back under its direct control those countries where the economy is planned on the basis of state ownership of the means of production, and to destroy this planning. ; Atomic energy, one of the most powerful tech- nical conquests of mankind, was revealed to the world through the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Automation in the framework of capi- talism is developed primarily through its military uses. There could be no better example of capitalism’s inability to develop technique except under the sign of parasitism, destruction and barbarism. If imperialism survives, these incred- ible technical means which, under socialism, would very rapidly free humanity from the humi- liating constraints of satisfying daily material needs, which, under socialism, would be the basis of a new culture and a new civilisation, can only lead to the destruction of humanity. It is the gains of thousands of years of civilisation which are at stake. ALL THE CONQUESTS OF THE WORKING CLASS ARE THREATENED ROM henceforth, imperialism can survive only by threatening all the conquests which the world working class has torn from it in class struggle over more than 100 years. Every day, hundreds of Vietnamese workers and peasants are murdered by the mercenaries of U.S. imperialism, burned to death by napalm. In Indo- nesia, members of the Communist Party have been murdered by the hundred thousand. In the whole of Africa and South America bloody repression by the civilian or military cliques in the service of imperialism spreads. The strategy of terror and annihilation which U.S. imperialism tests out in Vietnam, after the collapse of all its plans for the stabilisation of the national bour- geoisies, is the only answer that it can give to the disintegration of economy and society in the economically backward countries under its impact, and to the will of the worker and peasant masses of these countries to free themselves from im- perialist domination. The working class is threatened no less in the economically developed countries. The attempt of the bourgeois state to incorporate the trade unions stems from the necessity for the bour- geoisie of these countries to destroy all forms of independent organisation of the working class. As Trotsky put it, ‘the bourgeoisie in crisis must destroy the positions of proletarian democracy inside bourgeois society’. Directly and immediately aimed against the capacity of the working class to organise and to fight, the attempt to incorporate the trade unions into the bourgeois state shows that the bourgeoisie of every country, even in the

[p029] 123 Fourth International inside bourgeois society; it is the complete econo- mic and social decomposition of the economically backward countries, famine alone condemning tens of millions of human beings to death, as in India; it means, for imperialism, the imperative need to bring back under its direct control those countries where the economy is planned on the basis of state ownership of the means of production, and to destroy this planning. : Atomic energy, one of the most powerful tech- nical conquests of mankind, was revealed to the world through the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Automation in the framework of capi- talism is developed primarily through its military uses. There could be no better example of capitalism’s inability to develop technique except under the sign of parasitism, destruction and barbarism. If imperialism survives, these incred- ible technical means which, under socialism, would very rapidly free humanity from the humi- liating constraints of satisfying daily material needs, which, under socialism, would be the basis of a new culture and a new civilisation, can only lead to the destruction of humanity. It is the gains of thousands of years of civilisation which are at stake. ALL THE CONQUESTS OF THE WORKING CLASS ARE THREATENED FROM henceforth, imperialism can survive only by threatening all the conquests which the world working class has torn from it in class struggle over more than 100 years. Every day, hundreds of Vietnamese workers and peasants are murdered by the mercenaries of U.S. imperialism, burned to death by napalm. In Indo- nesia, members of the Communist Party have been murdered by the hundred thousand. In the whole of Africa and South America bloody repression by the civilian or military cliques in the service of imperialism spreads. The strategy of terror and annihilation which U.S. imperialism tests out in Vietnam, after the collapse of all its plans for the stabilisation of the national bour- geoisies, is the only answer that it can give to the disintegration of economy and society in the economically backward countries under its impact, and to the will of the worker and peasant masses of these countries to free themselves from im- perialist domination. The working class is threatened no less in the economically developed countries. The attempt of the bourgeois state to incorporate the trade unions stems from the necessity for the bour- geoisie of these countries to destroy all forms of independent organisation of the working class.’ As Trotsky put it, ‘the bourgeoisie in crisis must destroy the positions of proletarian democracy inside bourgeois society’. Directly and immediately aimed against the capacity of the working class to organise and to fight, the attempt to incorporate the trade unions into the bourgeois state shows that the bourgeoisie of every country, even in the

[p030] 124 economically developed ones, can only survive by the unconditional crushing of the working class. The lot of the great mass of immigrant workers, their wages and living conditions, are a kind of anticipation of the future destiny of the workers of the advanced countries. And this would only be the first stage. The workers of the capitalist countries risk being turned into a rootless urban mass with no place in the productive process, before being annihilated in a new imperialist war. The millions of starving people in India, the victims of the strategy of terror in Vietnam, are merely the first victims of the destiny reserved for the workers of the most technically advanced’ capitalist countries. Far from improving constantly, the standard of living of the workers of the dominant capitalist countries is at the mercy of the insoluble contradictions of imperialism. The working class of the advanced capitalist countries will not always be privileged in relation to other working classes. Inside capitalist ‘prosperity’ itself are contained -the premises for their being thrown back to the economic and political conditions of the period of the primitive accumulation of capitalism. The attempt of the bourgeois state to incorporate the trade unions is nothing else but an expression of these deep tendencies. . These fundamental’ contradictions between capi- talist productive relations and the development of ‘the productive forces find their sharpest expression in the United States, the bastion of world imperial- ism. Its dominant position does not only mean a greater concentration of riches and productive power, it also carries the weight of responsibility of defending, politically and militarily, the whole of imperialism. What is more, automation threatens to reduce to a state of poverty millions of workers inside a capitalist society which depends on a major extension of the internal market. The orientation of the political struggles of the Negro worker is beginning to proceed from the reality of this contradiction. The struggles arising from this will have all the violence and all the intensity resulting from the international conflicts which gave rise to them and which will find in them -their most concentrated expression. The struggles of the Negroes must inevitably be linked to the struggle of the entire American working class and of the world working class. It is in its relation- ship with the international class struggle that the Negro question must be understood and the strategy and tactics of the American Marxists worked out. The building of a section of the Fourth Inter- FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 national in the United States, with its roots in the masses, is of immense importance for the entire world working class. It is in this context that the revisionist degeneration of the leadership of the Socialist Workers’ Party takes on its full mean- ing. Precisely because the Socialist Workers’ Party did not develop Marxist theory, together with organic ties with the class struggle in the United States, it was incapable of undertaking its respon- sibilities at the level of the leadership of the Fourth International, after Trotsky’s death. This opened the way for serious mistakes in relation to the international perspectives which, in their turn, led to even more serious capitulations before the agents of imperialism in the United States itself. It is against this revisionism that a section of the Fourth International will be built in the United States. The USSR, the European countries under its control and China are not oases in which the economy can develop harmoniously and indepen- dently until it peacefully reduces the social antago- nisms, and arrives at socialism. Socialism can only be established on the basis of a mode of production which incorporates and overtakes the gains of the capitalist mode of production. One of the most important of these gains, a productive force in its own right, is the international division of labour. The economic growth of the USSR, of the countries under its control and of China de- mands their ever growing and ever more organic participation in the international division of labour. The ‘theory’ of the building of socialism in a single country expresses the inability of the bureaucracy of the Kremlin and of its satellites to go beyond the framework of national frontiers and to organise a rational international co-operation of labour. Incapable of overcoming the framework of bourgeois nationalism, it cannot appeal to the conscious participation of the worker and peasant masses for the harmonious development of the planned economy, whose growth and _ diversifica- tion comes more and more into contradiction with its bureaucratic management. Its inability to over- come national frontiers by any other means than national oppression, its inability to have recourse to the control of the producers to develop planning, marks its socially parasitic and petty bourgeois character. The parasitism of the Kremlin bureau- cracy multiplies the consequences of the economic, military and political pressure of imperialism (which has the main productive forces at its com- mand), upon the USSR, Eastern Europe and China. The Kremlin bureacucracy must subordinate plan- ning more and more to the fluctuations of the world market dominated by imperialism, and resort

[p031] MANIFESTO OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE to the laws of the market as a regulator, to the detriment of conscious planning. The economic military and political pressure of imperialism grows as its own contradictions deepen. But the pres- sure of imperialism only becomes effective through the growing social contradictions in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China. The USSR, the countries of Eastern Europe and China do not constitute an independent sector of the world economy and class struggle any more 125 than do the economically backward countries directly under the control of imperialism. The further survival of imperialism demands the destruction of what remains of the conquests of the October Revolution, of their extensions in Eastern Europe and China, just as it means the destruction of the conquests of the working class inside capitalist regimes, just as it means the attempt to destroy any revolutionary movement in the economically backward countries. THE SHARPENING OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE FAR from expressing some kind of stabilisation of imperialism, the blows which it is dealing are episodes in a world class struggle which is part of the revolutionary period opened by the war. They mean a sharpening of the international class struggle in the coming years, and an align- ment of social forces in relation to the fundamental classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, leav- ing less and less room for the balancing politics of the petty-bourgeois social strata—the Kremlin bureaucracy and its satellites, the national bour- geoisie of the economically backward countries, the petty-bourgeois apparatuses which have come out of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries. The confrontation which is being pre- pared on a world scale has as its basis the conflict between the development of productive forces and bourgeois social relations, of which national frontiers are part. Either the proletarian revolu- tion will hand over the decisive productive forces of humanity to the world proletariat, through the political and economic expropriation of the world bourgeoisie, through the revolutionary overthrow and liquidation of the parasitic bureaucracies; or imperialism will threaten the physical survival of hundreds of millions of proletarians, just as much in the countries dominated by imperialism, whether economically advanced or backward, as in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China. Imperialist aggression in Vietnam is directed against the conquests of the Chinese revolution. Its destruction by imperialism, given the devotion of the Chinese workers and peasants to these gains, would demand the use of means of destruction, the vastness of which is underlined by the resis- tance of the Vietnamese workers and peasants. The proletarians of the USSR and Eastern Europe will defend the gain represented by state owner- ship of the means of production against imperial- ism and the bureaucracy with no less heroism than the Russian proletariat fought during the second imperialist war. The proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries will not allow itself peacefully to be stripped of its economic and political con- quests. Imperialism is dealing its blows in an historical period in which the proletariat has re- inforced its conquests and its positions and in which the world bourgeoisie is in retreat. Gigantic class struggles on a world scale are inevitable. They will place on the agenda the social revolution against imperialism, combined with the political revolution against the Kremlin bureaucracy and its satellites. The outcome of these struggles, in the last analysis, depends on the building of revolutionary leaderships in every country and of an international revolutionary leadership, for the crisis of humanity more than ever boils down to the crisis of revo- lutionary leadership. This leadership can only be built on the programme of the Fourth Interna- tional, in the tradition of the Fourth International expressed by the 1966 Conference of the Interna- tional Committee. We are in a period in which we must prepare the workers for revolutionary tasks on a world scale. In their struggle for the programme of the Fourth International and to build revolutionary parties fighting for workers’ power, the sections of the International offer the only real strategy for the indispensable mobilisation of the working class for the defence of the conquests of the interna- tional proletariat. It is in the light of these considerations that the Third Conference of the International Committee takes on its full significance.

[p032] 126 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 AGAINST REVISIONISM For the Continuity of the Fourth International HE International Committee of the Fourth In- ternational has fought since 1953 to defend, maintain and enrich the theoretical and political inheritance of the Fourth International. It has had to fight against all forms of revisionism dis- guised in the mantle of Trotskyism: from the liquidationist revisionism at the top of the Fourth International to the insidious revisionism of the groups fed ‘from the crumbs fallen from the table of the Fourth International’, which try to take. advantage of the crisis opened inside it by Pablo- ism to question the Marxist method, the pro- gramme and the continuity of the Fourth International. The Third Conference of the International Com- mittee—which was held in London from April 4 to 8, 1966—is part of the continuity of the Fourth International. The IC has become the axis and the motive force of the rebuilding of the Fourth Inter- national as the centralised proletarian leadership. The Pabloite organisation is in full decomposition. After the open betrayal of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon, which entered a bourgeois govern- ment in June, 1964, after the capitulation of the Socialist Workers’ Patty, which lauded the Castro- ite leadership and sent their condolences to Kennedy’s widow, Pablo, the ex-general secretary of the revisionist organisation and its political and ‘theoretical’ head for more than 15 years, splits from the so-called Unified Secretariat. Revisionism contains the seeds of its own decay. It consists of, fundamentally, adaptation to bourgeois society, therefore inside it the contradictions of bourgeois society must necessarily express themselves. The ‘theory’ of the division of the world into three sectors—‘the socialist states’-—‘the advanced capitalist countries’—‘the countries of the third world or the storm-centre’—which complemented the ‘theory’ of ‘objective forces’ supposedly forc- ing Stalinism and the petty bourgeois leaderships to play the role of revolutionary leadership, im- plying the liquidation of the Fourth International and its organisations, introduced the seeds of decay into the revisionist international organisation be- cause it implied adaptations to the ‘national necessities’ of imperialism, of the bourgeoisie of the economically backward countries, and of the para- sitic bureaucracies, starting with that of the Kremlin. The impact of the world-wide sharpen- ing of the class struggle, together with the activity of the International Committee split the unity of the revisionists who, starting from a common trunk, have now spread out in different branches. Revisionism dealt some very hard blows to the Fourth International, especially between 1953 and 1956. Whereas on a world scale ‘the laws of history were stronger than the _ bureaucratic apparatus’, as the programme of the Fourth In- ternational puts its, whereas the workers of Eastern Europe were marching, weapons in hand, to the assault on the Kremlin bureaucracy, where- as the French working class, stepping over the bureaucratic apparatus, carried out a general strike in August 1953, whereas this international move- ment of the working class culminated in November 1956 with the Hungarian revolution; the interna- tional Pabloite movement and its national branches intervened as the rearguard of the Kremlin bureau- cracy and of the bourgeoisie. By destroying any possibility of a conscious expression of the revolu- tionary struggles of the proletariat under the direct control of imperialism and under the control of the Kremlin bureaucracy, the revisionist organi- sation contributed to the defeat of the Hungarian revolution. It prevented the emergence and or- ganisation under the banner of the Fourth Inter- national of the vanguard of the international pro- letariat. It undermined the organisations of the Fourth International and jeopardised their existence. But the establishment of the International Com- mittee expressed the strength of the programme and the vitality of the Fourth International: from inside it came the organisation and the forces which would ensure its continuity in the class struggle. The Third Conference of the IC marks the victory won against the attempts of Pabloite revisionism to destroy the programme and the historical continuity of the Fourth International. It took up the fight against the groups which tried to use the crisis of the Fourth International to jeopardise its programme and its method. The struggle for the method and the programme of the Fourth International carried out by the IC, enables it to undertake the new tasks of rebuilding the Fourth International as the centralised proletarian leadership. This is the stage opened by the Third Conference of the International Committee.

[p033] MANIFESTO OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE 127 2. The bureaucracies against the revolution in Vietnam MPERIALISM has not miraculously recovered its health and strength. The blows which it is dealing to the international proletariat result from the counter-revolutionary policies of the Kremlin bureaucracy, of its agencies and of the reformist bureaucracy. Imperialist aggression in Vietnam is a consequence of the 1954 Geneva Agreements, which robbed the workers and pea- sants of their victory over imperialism at Dien- Bien-Phu and divided Vietnam into two. It can only develop under the protection of the interna- tional policy of the Kremlin bureaucracy and of the reformist bureaucracy. The arms handed out so sparingly by the Kremlin bureaucracy are only an alibi. Insufficient to allow a military victory over imperialism to the Vietnamese workers and peasants, they can serve the Kremlin bureaucracy as a means of pressure on the government of North Vietnam. The revolutionary war of the Vietnamese workers and peasants is an expression of and a factor in the world class struggle. The throwing- out of US imperialism from Vietnam would mean a resounding defeat for imperialism. It would be a major factor in the extension of the revolution in Asia. All the fragile equilibrium painfully pre- served by imperialism in Asia would crumble. From India to Japan, the proletarian revolution would spread. Complementarily to its betrayal at Geneva in 1954, the Kremlin bureaucracy made itself the direct courtier of imperialism at Tash- kent. Worried as much as imperialism by the consequences of war between the Indian bour- geoisie and the Pakistan bourgeoisie, knowing that the rotten economic and social structure of India and Pakistan would collapse under the strains imposed by the necessities of war, fearing the growth of revolutionary movements encom- passing 400 million men and women reduced to the most fearful conditions, the Kremlin bureau- cracy, to the plaudits of imperialism, undertook to negotiate a compromise which tramples under- foot the right of peoples to self-determination, and the most elementary rights of the exploited masses of India and Pakistan. Its role preoccupation consists in preventing the extension of the revolu- tion in Asia. US imperialism, like world imperialism, con- gratulated itself on such an enterprise. Experienc- ing the greatest difficulties in forcing the Vietnamese masses to submit, despite the enormous use of its military power, US imperialism would be impotent before a _ revolutionary conflagration which, starting from India, would set the whole of Asia alight. The great struggles which are tending to develop amongst the workers and peasants of India to the powerful highly-concentrated Japanese pro- letariat, are ripening the forces which will destroy imperialism in Asia. The specific weight of the Japanese proletariat in the phase of the crisis of imperialism and of the world revolution which is beginning, is considerable. It is an urgent task for imperialism to arrest and discipline this class. This task is today carried out for it by the Stalinists, with their reformist orientation of ‘national independence’ and of class-collaboration with Japanese imperialism. Through its entire policy, but openly at Tashkent, the Kremlin bureaucracy tries to isolate the Vietnamese proletariat in a ghetto. It attempts to establish a situation enabling US imperialism to deploy its entire military strength against the workers and peasants of Vietnam. There is no. separation whatsoever between the policy of the Kremlin bureaucracy towards Vietnam and the policy that it has towards China. The accusation made by Moscow against the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party of wanting to unleash a thermo-nuclear war, the delivery of military equipment and political support given to the Indian bourgeoisie at war with China, are so many steps in @ policy tending to justify a thermo-nuclear attack by US imperialism against China. At preserit, the Kremlin bureaucracy is trying to obtain, through all the means of pres- sure at its disposal, the capitulation of the Chinese bureaucracy before US_ imperialism, especially in Vietnam. But social democracy and the trade union bureaucracy are no less responsible. They support with just as much ardour American genocide in Vietnam. The policy of the Labour Party, because it is in power in a country whose working class could play a considerable part against the inter- vention of US imperialism in Vietnam, as much by the direct influence that it could have on the

[p034] 128 American working class as by its position at the centre of the oldest and most powerful colonial empire, illustrates the policy of the social demo- FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 cratic and trade union apparatus. It consists in support without a murmur of protest for the worst crimes of US imperialism. THE BUREAUCRACIES ARE AGENTS OF THE INCORPORATION OF THE TRADE UNIONS INTO THE STATE G@INCE their capitulation to their own bourgeoisies in 1914, the social-democratic parties have always carried out a policy of class collaboration and flown to the aid of the bourgeoisie every time they were threatened. The Kremlin bureaucracy and the international Stalinist apparatus demonstrated by their capitulation without a fight in Germany at the time of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, that they had definitely gone over to the side of the bourgeois order on the international scale. At the end of the war and immediately after it, imperialism only survived thanks to the political support of the Kremlin bureaucracy, its international apparatus and the social-democratic and trade union apparatus. With the sharpening of the class struggle during these last few years, the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, of the social democracy and of the trade union apparatus has become more open and direct. Not only do they cover up for the genocide of US imperialism in Vietnam, the pre- paration of a thermo-nuclear war against China, but they are also the agents of the destruction of the conquests of the labour-movement in the advanced capitalist countries, in the USSR and in the countries controlled by the Kremlin bureaucracy. ‘The policy of the Labour Party leadership in power, with the co-operation of the trade union léadership, is to impose the Incomes Policy on the British working class, to carry out legislation against the independence of the trade unions, and to incorporate the trade union apparatus into the state machine. In other words, they are beginning the process of subordinating the labour movement to the bourgeois state machine, which can only lead to its destruction. ~ Although it is ‘in opposition’, the German social democracy plays no less a role in the policy of subordinating the West German labour movement to the bourgeois state. It has officially renounced Marxism and the class struggle and presents itself as a national German party since its Godesberg congress in 1959, It is ready to associate itself with anti-strike and anti-union legislation set up by the laws on the state of emergency. The German trade union apparatus has made itself the champion of co-management, the German form of subordinating the workers to the prosperity of the capitalist firm. It is ready to capitulate before the legislation on the state of emergency. These are so many steps towards the incorporation of the trade unions into the German bourgeois state, which the ‘theoreticians’ of this incorporation call the ‘formed society’. In France, the leaderships of the Socialist and Communist Parties place themselves, on _ this question, on the very same footing as Gaullism. They have made themselves the champions of ‘democratic planning’, a phrase invented by the ‘theoreticians’ of the participation of the trade unions in the plan, in ‘concerted’ management of the economy by capital, the bourgeois state and the trade unions. The trade union apparatuses take part in all the organisations for the incorpora- tion of the trade unions into the state, like the Economic and Social Council, the planning com- missions, and the commissions for regional economic development. They take part ‘critically’ in the organisations for the application of the Incomes Policy. The social-democratic, Stalinist and trade union bureaucracies are taking one more step forward in their policy of supporting the bourgeoisie. What the Conservative Party was unable to carry out in Britain, is carried out by the Labour leadership; what the CDU cannot accomplish alone in Western Germany, the social democracy helps it to accom- plish; what de Gaulle demands in France, the socialist, Stalinist and trade unionist leaders hasten to carry out. In order to save bourgeois society in crisis, the petty-bourgeois apparatuses which have come out of the labour movement take part in the destruction of the labour move- ment with their own hands. They are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting.

[p035] MANIFESTO OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE 129 THE KREMLIN BUREAUCRACY, AGENT OF IMPERIALISM "THE policy of the Kremlin bureaucracy in the USSR and in the countries under its control has similarly reached a new stage. The Kremlin bureaucracy becomes more and more the organ of the world bourgeoisie inside the workers’ state, as the Founding Programme of the Fourth Interna- tional foresaw. The putting down of the revolu- tionary movement in Eastern Germany in June 1953, the bloody liquidation of the Hungarian revolution in November 1956, are the hardest blows that have been aimed at the world pro- letariat since the second imperialist world war. Faced with the rise of the political revolution, obsessed by fear of the proletariat of Eastern Europe and the USSR, the Kremlin bureaucracy has only one solution: to lean on and to reinforce the pro- bourgeois tendencies in the USSR and in the countries which it controls. The blind alley that the bureaucracy finds itself in results from its parasitism. The development of bourgeois norms of profitability in the economy, as the solution to the crisis of bureaucratic planning, is closely linked. to the need of the Kremlin bureaucracy and the bureaucracy of the satellites to fight against the proletariat of the USSR and of Eastern Europe. Thus, it makes itself the direct agent of imperial- ism. The only hope that imperialism can have of destroying what remains of the conquests of October in the USSR rests on the policies of the Kremlin bureaucracy in the USSR and in Eastern Europe, and, for that matter, in the rest of the world. , Whether it be in Vietnam and against the con- quests of the Chinese revolution, in the economi- cally advanced capitalist countries, or in the USSR and the countries under the cogtrol of the Kremlin bureaucracy, the social democracy, the trade union bureaucracy, the Kremlin bureaucracy and- its agents are more and more involved in attempts to destroy the conquests of the proletariat. BANKRUPTCY AND CAPITULATION OF THE PETTY-BOURGEOIS LEADERSHIPS oo "THE powerful revolutionary movements of the last twenty years in the economically back- ward countries were and are expressions of the world crisis of imperialism. The national bour- geoisie in these countries has demonstrated the limitations of its.indepéndence from imperialism. Protected on the left by. the Kremlin bureaucracy, which subordinated to it all the mass workers’ and peasant movements, it could, for a time, ride on the mass movement and play a Bonapartist role between the masses and imperialism. But it was unable to resolve the. fundamental tasks of the bourgeois revolution, On February 14, 1964, Suslov, in his report to.the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, rattled the sabre of the Kremlin bureaucracy against the working-class and peasant masses of the econo- mically backward countries dominated by imperialism : ‘It is absurd to say that the task of armed insurrection is posed: to the workers of Algeria, Ghana, Mali and certain other countries. ¥o say this would be, in fact, to call for support for the reactionaries who seek to overthrow these governments. And what could such a call bring in countries like, for example, Indonesia and Ceylon?’ - The recent series of military coups d’etat in Algeria, Indonesia, Ghana, etc., is the consequence of this policy. The petty-bourgeois _Bonapartist cliques are collapsing. Their political role, which gave them an apparent independence in relation to imperialism, consisted essentially in canalising the mass movements. The most radical of. them, however far they may have. gone with their split from imperialism, have finally remained under its domination. The most extreme example—Cuba—is no exception to tk2 rule...US imperialism forced the Cuban petty-bourgeoisie to go so far as to expropriate the American firms and to call. on the Cuban worker and peasant masses to support its measures. But no matter how far Fidel. Castro, and the 26th July Movement may have gone, the social nature of the regime remained bourgeois. In its struggle against U.S. imperialism, its main support could only be the Kremlin bureaucracy, and this made it its prisoner. Inevitably, the petty- bourgeois Castro leadership had to come into con- flict with the Cuban workers and peasants, become more and more the prisoner of the Kremlin bureaucracy and be a bargaining :counter between U.S. imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy. It sought a compromise with imperialism itself. The offers to negotiate compensation for nationalised

[p036] 130 imperialist property, the struggle against the ‘lefts’, the trials of the original leaders of the Castro movement, the discovery of plots against Fidel Castro, the anti-Trotskyist attacks, are so many symptoms showing that the Cuban revolution is reaching a critical stage. Under the petty-bourgeois FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 Castroite leadership the contradictions of the regime grow. In the absence of a revolutionary workers’ party, they will lead to the decay of the regime to the benefit of imperialism, whatever may be the personal destiny of Fidel Castro and his petty-bourgeois entourage. REVISIONISM AND THE CONTINUITY OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL HE policies of imperialism feed on the counter- revolutionary activity of the Stalinist and refomist bureaucracies and of the petty-bourgeois cliques, who form a chain, the last link of which is the revisionism which has developed inside the Fourth International. This revisionism is the ex- pression of social forces hostile to the proletariat —imperialism, the labour bureaucracies, the petty bourgeoisie—inside the Fourth International. It takes up the recurrent positions of revisionism inside the Marxist movement, whilst masking them in ‘Trotskyist’ language. The world class struggle is reduced to a series of isolated operations. It shatters at the level of consciousness, organisation and action, the historical and organic unity of the struggle. It transforms dialectical materialism into a working of ‘objective’ forces, which are to force the Stalinist, reformist and petty-bourgeois leaderships to become revolutionary leaderships, each one in its own ‘sector’. It abandons the struggle for revolutionary leadership, for parties, and for the International. What is more, it becomes an obstacle to their building. Revisionism, as it has developed inside the Fourth International, is not only liquidationist but, usurping the tradition which it represents, serves as a ‘left’ cover for the counter-revolutionary apparatuses. The programme of the Fourth International is the most finished product of the historical develop- ment of the labour movement. It is the result of experience accumulated in more than a century of class struggle, and most especially since the be- ginning of the epoch of wars and revolutions, analysed through the method of dialectical materialism. But a programme is not an inert and lifeless thing. The programme was born with the Fourth International. It has remained alive in and through its action. The Pabloite crisis did not lead to the liquidation of the Programme. For it is from the programme and action of the Fourth International that the forces have arisen who have fought against Pabloism and have organised in the International Committee of the Fourth International, ensuring its