Third World Conference of the International Committee: Preliminary record of the Third World Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International

[p013] in containing the struggles of the international working class. The Fourth International cannot be rebuilt without a struggle against these ‘Trotskyist revisionists. In this period, when the counter- revolutionary actions of the Stalinist bureaucracy are an indispensable support to imperialism,

[p014] 110 revisionism and liquidationism take particular forms of capitulation to this bureaucracy. Centrist tendencies within the Stalinist movement, in Eastern Europe, USSR and China, as well as in the various Communist Parties, base themselves on the perspective of a reform of the Stalinist bureau- cracy. Pabloite revisionism and liquidationism is the expression of this revisionism of our epoch within the revolutionary movement itself. The first steps of a fight against Stalinism in the coun- tries ruled by the bureaucracy go through forms which tend to accept this revisionist framework. In this way, the dominance of Pabloite revisionism in the Fourth International objectively hindered the development of the political revolution in 1953- 1956. Thus Pabloite revisionism and liquidation- ism has not been a purely ‘internal’ or ‘subjective’ experience of the Fourth International. The split in the International of 1951-53 was linked with the development of revisionism into liquidationism. The abandonment of the pro- gramme of the Fourth International which had been contained in the earlier theses of Pablo developed into actual support for the Stalinist bureaucracy against the revolutionary workers of East Germany. This constituted proof that the revolutionary organisation founded by Trotsky no longer existed. In 1953, the revisionism con- tained in Pablo’s earlier theses was most sharply expressed in his retreat from the programme of political revolution in Eastern Europe at the time of the East German workers’ uprising. The theories of ‘centuries of degenerated workers’ states’, ‘mass pressure on the bureaucracy’, and the resultant tactic of ‘entry sui generis’, were the revisionist background of this betrayal and later of the Pabloites’ similar attitude towards the Hungarian revolution of 1956, and to the whole phenomenon of ‘de-Stalinisation’, The funda- mental persepctive of the founding programme of the Fourth International, the construction of revolutionary parties to fight for the political in- dependence of the working class in the struggle for power, was abandoned. The Pabloite con- ception of an international centre whose role con- sists of influencing through abstract ‘theoretical and political support’ the ‘leftward-moving’ sec- tions of the bureaucracy, as the latter supposedly respond to the pressure of the masses and of ‘irreversible’ objective trends, is the negation of the basic task defined by the Transitional Pro- gramme: ‘. . . the crisis of the proletarian leader- ship, having become the crisis in mankind’s culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International.’ The fundamental perspective of the founding pro- FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 gramme of the Fourth International rests on the following appreciation: ‘The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective con- ditions of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the old workers’ organi- sations, Of these factors, the first, of course, is the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus.’ The question is to fight in the course of the class struggle itself for the destruction of the bureaucratic apparatus and the building of the International and its parties. Instead of the struggle to build the International, to construct in the course of this struggle an international leadership selected in and through the struggle, the Pabloites substituted their false idea of an international centre, and this resulted in the negation of the construction of revolutionary parties to fight for the political independence of the proletariat in the struggle for power. The active construction of revolutionary parties in Eastern Europe and the USSR was abandoned, and this assisted in the isolation of the workers in these countries from the working class of the capi- talist world. (This liquidationism is the essence of Pabloism in all sectors of the international class struggle.) In the capitalist countries themselves, the counter-revolutionary role of the Stalinist parties and of the policies of the Soviet bureau- cracy is covered up by the Pabloite revisionists, who speculate on the ‘irreversible’ progressive tendencies within the bureaucracies. Pablo’s theory that the Stalinist party would be forced to the left and even to take power disarmed the vanguard of the French working class at the time of the 1953 General Strike, just as surely as it disarmed the Fourth International in relation to the political revolution in Eastern Europe. Clearly then, every national section of the Fourth Inter- national must carry out a determined struggle against Pabloite revisionism if it is to build a revolutionary party with a real perspective of international working-class unity. The bankruptcy of this revisionism became par- ticularly clear in the Pabloite evaluations of the split between the Russian and Chinese Communist parties. Instead of an objective analysis of the causes and consequences of this division as a way of strengthening the Fourth International in its struggle to defeat the bureaucracy, the Pabloites discussed at length the false problem of which line, the Chinese or the Russian, best expressed the needs of international socialism. The fact is that, although the Chinese make formally correct criti- cisms of the revisionist formulations of the CPSU, these are only a theoretical dressing for an

[p015] REBUILDING THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL empirical rejection of the consequences of the Soviet bureaucracy’s attempted agreement with the American imperialists at the expense of China. Correct formal criticisms of the role of the national bourgeoisie and of the Soviet attitude towards them in the colonial countries has not prevented the Chinese leaders from sabotaging the struggle of the workers, for example in Indonesia and in North Africa, in accordance with needs of Chinese diplomacy. Chinese criticism of the theory of peaceful co-existence is again narrow and purely empirical because it does not go to the point of posing an alternative strategy of international mobilisation of the working class against im- perialism. This emerges clearly from the oft- repeated distinction between the colonial ‘storm centre’ and the advanced countries. of unifying these struggles through the con- struction of revolutionary parties and above all of uniting these with the linked struggles in the workers’ states against the bureaucracies, cannot be solved by the Chinese bureaucrats. Their attitude to Stalin and towards Trotskyism is entirely consistent with this limitation. It is objectively impossible for them to state clearly that proletarian revolution is the only escape from barbarism; they can present no overall strategy based on the nature of the epoch, because such a strategy puts in question their own existence. In the advanced countries, the revisionists who usurp the name of the Fourth International are prostrate before the Social Democracy as well as before Stalinism. Here, too, the building of in- dependent working-class parties is abandoned. Everything is concentrated on ‘deep entry’ and the encouragement of ‘mass centrist’ tendencies in the social democratic parties. In this way, the cadres of these sections are trained in opportunist adaptation to professional centrists and play their part in bolstering up the social-democratic bureaucracy. In Belgium the General Strike of 1960-61 found the revisionists around Germain, because of their failure to prepare the way for the establishment of an alternative leadership, tailing behind centrist demagogues who opposed turning the movement into a struggle for power. They put forward the demand for ‘structural reforms’ derived from the minimum programme of the Belgium Socialist Party. Empirically they adapted themselves to the separatist moods produced by the lack of leadership during the strike and gave wholehearted support to the petty-bourgeois movement for Walloon federalism. From this time they were on the defensive, moving from one opportunist position to another until they The problem 111 found themselves helpless in the face of the bureaucracy’s attacks on their freedom of expres- sion in the Belgian Socialist Party in 1964. After years of ‘deep entry’ they now indulged in the sectarian adventure of proclaiming a new workers’ party along with a handful of non-Marxists and demagogic elements. Their policy of ‘structural reforms’ is no different from that of the left Social Democrats and Stalinists of Italy and other parts of Western Europe. Germain and his collaborators jorovide the ideological cover for the Social- Democracy in those countries where Social- Democracy is the main reflection of capitalism in the working-class movement, just as they play the same role on behalf of the Stalinists in Eastern Europe or in those capitalist countries where the Stalinists are strong In Britain a tiny group of supporters of the Pabloites has concentrated its efforts on attacking the more and more successful construction of a Marxist alternative to the Social Democrats and the Stalinists, particularly in the Labour youth movement. To this end they have collaborated with renegades and anti-communists in service to the social-democratic bureaucracy. The general swing to the right of all the social- democratic and Stalinist parties since 1956 is their response to the renewed upsurge of the inter- national workers’ struggle. The increasing sub- ordination of the revisionists to the bureaucracies even during this right turn indicates clearly the international class nature of this tendency in international Trotskyism. Their theory that mass pressure forces opportunist bureaucracies to the left is a treacherous and reactionary theory. These bureaucracies serve imperialism, and any adapta- tions they make to mass struggles are for the purpose of betraying these struggles to the im- perialists. Only a struggle against the Pabloite ‘objectivist’ revisions of dialectical materialism can prepare for the building of real revolutionary parties based on Marxist theory. Without this fight, there can be no working out of the detailed strategy and tactics necessary in the international class struggle in response to every development in the linked crises of capitalism and the Stalinist bureaucracy. As we have seen, this dialectical connection between imperialism, bureaucracy, revisionism and the fight to reconstruct the International holds just as true for the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The Algerian national-liberation struggle against French imperialism culminated in the established of the Ben Bella government and the Evian Agreement with de Gaulle, leaving French imperialism’s North African interests protected,

[p016] 112 Instead of working for an independent working- class party in France which would forge the real international link between the French and Algerian workers against their common enemy, the Pablo- ites subordinated their sections in Western Europe to the FLN apparatus and collaborated in the new regime’s repressions against the working class, at the same time excusing Ben Bella’s deal with the imperialists at Evian. Even the building of independent working-class parties against bour- geois regimes in countries like Egypt and Syria is condemned as sectarian, and some spokesmen of the Pabloites characterise not only Algeria but these countries too as workers’ states. Castro’s regime in Cuba has been uncritically praised as a ‘healthy workers’ state’ and all independent working-class struggle, including the building of a party, renounced. Even Castro’s repressions of the Trotskyist party there (part of the Posadas group which split from the Pabloites in 1962) has been justified by the revisionists. The building of an independent workers’ party and the establishment of workers’ councils in Cuba as part of a proletarian internationalist orientation, with the extension of the revolution to Latin America and a revolutionary alliance with the workers of the USA and the rest of the world, is completely abandoned. The ‘aid’ of the Soviet bureaucracy is not seen in the context of the international class struggle, with the bureaucracy striving to trade the Cuban revolution for its own purposes, but as a ‘progressive’ assistance to Cuba. The theories about petty-bourgeois revolutionists being ‘un- conscious Marxists’, about ‘Jacobin leaderships sui generis’, about ‘revolutionary parties being built The revisionism and liquidationism which bd has attacked the Fourth International is an 2 international class phenomenon responding to the needs of imperialism in its latest phase of extreme contradictions and dependence upon the Stalinist bureaucracy, Social Democracy, and the nationalist leaders, The abandonment of Marxist theory within the Fourth International, not only thé abandonment of the programme but even of the fundamentals of dialectical materialism, was the mechanism by which the cadres were prepared for this capitulation. The objective situation—physical liquidation of many sections in the late 1930s and the Second World War, the apparent strength of Stalinism in the workers’ movement from 1942 to 1953, the divisions and pressure of the cold FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 in the course of the revolution itself’, about ‘special conditions’ in the backward countries which out- date the theory of crisis of leadership, all of these have served in practice to assist the petty- bourgeois and bourgeois nationalist leaders who, assisted by Stalinism, have managed to contain the mass revolutionary struggles in the colonial countries within the framework of continued world domination of imperialism. The most striking confirmation of the definitively opportunist role of Pabloite revisionism has been provided by the political evolution of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in Ceylon. Adhering to the Pabloite centre, the leaders of the majority of this party responded to the call of Mrs. Bandaranaike and her bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom Party to enter a coalition government. Here we had expressed concretely the fact that the theory about middle-class leaders being pushed to the left, a substitute for the building of independent working- class parties, is the cover for capitalist politics. Imperialism’s survival in Ceylon depended upon the workers’ resistance being divided and broken, above all upon their leadership being beheaded. The ‘unification’ of the revisionists in 1963, explicitly carried through without discussion of such questions as the opportunism of N. M. Perera and company, was an essential part of the preparations of the betrayal of the LSSP in Ceylon in 1964. In this way, the spurious international- ism of the Pabloite revisionists ends by actively assisting imperialism. Under the cover of inter- national ‘unification’, the politics of the national sections are left to adapt themselves to service the direct agents of imperialism in their own countries. war period, the McCarthy repressions in the USA— all provided the circumstances for the decline, particularly by physically separating the class struggle in Eastern Europe and Russia from that of the capitalist world. But the emphasis placed on revolutionary consciousness by the Transitional Programme must be our guide. The death of Trotsky weakened the Fourth International immeasurably. There had not yet been time to train a cadre which had absorbed the living theoretical heritage of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, particularly the lesson learned by Trotsky in the October Revolution of the need for a centralised Bolshevik party, founded solidly on Marxist theory, responding to every need of leader- ship by the working class in accordance with an

[p017] REBUILDING THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL internationalist perspective. This theoretical and political weakness, reflected in a dogmatic attitude towards theory and programme, not developing Marxist theory against hostile ideologies but attempting to ‘preserve’ it, was the reason for the inability of the Fourth International to develop the programme and build parties in the post-war period. Instead the cadres of the International adapted easily to the petty-bourgeois trends dominant at that stage of political development, particularly to the Stalinists. A false and artificial ‘international centre’ was set up, relying on a propagandist con- templation and commentary upon ‘objective’ de- velopments in the class struggle. Such a centre did not discuss the living experiences of the sec- tions in the course of developing Marxist theory and programme but instead either left the sections without guidance or intervened bureaucratically (upon the basis of the most ‘Bolshevik’ of organi- sational statutes) to impose an abstract interna- tional line against the sections. Such an interna- tional centre, isolated from real struggle, adapting programmatic formulae to the surface atmosphere of politics and certain circles of the ‘left’ intelli- gentsia, dominated as it was by the petty-bour- geois elements who inhabit the Labour bureau- cracies, was inevitably exposed to the pressures of the cold war, of international Stalinism and The assassination of President Kennedy provoked from the Socialist Workers Party leaders a reaction which revealed the depths of their capitulation. They addressed their ‘con- dolences’ to the widow, and published a statement denouncing the methods of terrorism. This action was only part of their liquidationism under the direct pressure, not of any Stalinist or social- democratic bureaucracy, but of U.S. imperialism itself. Cannon’s break with Pablo in 1953 only concealed this process of degeneration. It was perfectly possible, in the USA, to reject a tendency which took the form of a capitulation to the Stalinist bureaucracy, and at the same time to fall victim to the pressure of imperialism itself. That this was, in fact, the nature of the process was confirmed by the Socialist Workers Party’s turn to the Pabloites after the crisis of Stalinism reached its peak in 1956. The ‘reunification’ of the Pabloite revisionists in 1963 was preceded by the defection of Posadas and a number of Latin American Pabloite sections, 113 imperialism. Its theory and programme developed not in active connection with living struggle but in the rarefied atmosphere of ‘international secre- tariats’. The theoretical backwardness of the SWP leaders, who paid no heed to Trotsky’s warnings of the need to do battle against pragmatism, the domi- nant American philosophy, made it easy for them to adapt to the Pabloite revisions and to end in the position of pragmatists themselves. Such adap- tation amounted in fact to a narrow nationalism in party matters, an abdication of internationalism and of responsibility to the International. This explains why the rejection of Pablo’s revisionism by the SWP stopped short of a real theoretical analysis. Cannon and the SWP leaders reacted empirically to Pablo’s gross capitulation to Stalinism and to his organisational abuses in organising factions within the national sections, especially in the USA, but they did not probe to the theoretical roots of the revisions and therefore themselves fell victim to revisionism; their aban- donment of the programme of political revolution and the building of revolutionary parties in Eastern Europe, their increasing support for petty-bour- geois leaders in Algeria and Cuba, as well as in the Negro struggles in the USA itself, have all pre- pared a situation where the SWP is now in immediate danger of liquidation. The unification was followed almost immediately by Pablo’s own break with the Unified Secretariat and by the debacle in Ceylon. This decomposition is not accidental. The revisionist theories of the Pabloites adapted them to the Labour and Stalinist bureaucracies and to the petty-bourgeois national- ists who in turn are the agents of imperialism. Consistent with the politics of this adaptation they revised out of existence the role of revolutionary consciousness and Marxist parties. Blinded by the apparent strength of the bureaucracy and the nationalists at the end of a period of working-class defeats and world war, they were taken unawares by the revival of revolutionary working-class struggles in Eastern Europe and later in the imperialist world. They had capitulated to the dominant bureaucracies. The betrayals of the bureaucracy and the opportunists strengthen im- perialism, but only temporarily. In the very act of perpetuating a system racked by contradictions and conflicts, the counter-revolutionary Social Democrats and Stalinists in fact lay the basis for

[p018] 114 more violent and all-embracing class struggles, which demand ever more insistently an interna- tional proletarian leadership. Just at the point where the linked crisis of imperialism and the bureaucracy provoked the sharpest struggles, so do the revisionists support more faithfully the petty-bourgeois nationalists and bureaucracy. This is clearly seen in Ceylon, in Belgium, in Britain and in relation to the Sino-Soviet dispute. The Socialist Workers Party plays a similar role in relation to the Negro movement and its leadership in the USA. There is nothing spontaneous about the growth of a successful revolutionary movement to end the rule of the imperialists. The recon- struction of the Fourth International is a real task which must be consciously carried forward in every country. In every country the sections of the Fourth International will be built by insisting above all on training a political leadership which starts not from tendencies within the bureaucracies but from the movement of the working class which brings it into conflict with the bureaucracy, learning in struggle the treacherous nature of the official leadership and of their theoretical apologists, the revisionists. The policy of the working-class United Front has nothing to do with the policy of capitulation before the apparatus. It is necessary because it opposes the working class as a whole to the capitalist class, to the capitalist state and to the capitalist government. Consequently it implies the exposure of the bureaucracies’ politics of class- collaboration, either with a section of the capi- talist class, or with the bourgeoisie as a whole. The United Front rests upon the correct aspiration of the working class, including those workers who preparation in struggle against revisionism is necessary for the rebuilding of the Fourth International. The deepening crisis . of capitalist society and the connected crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy are dissolving the old political relationships and creating favourable conditions for the construction of revolutionary parties. The changes in the internal relations of the interna- tional workers’ movement at present taking place, and the need to exploit the linked crises of im- perialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy, demand that our national tasks must be placed correctly in their international context as part of the con- ‘struction of the Fourth International; only in this 4 It. follows that the most serious theoretical FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 are members of reformist and Stalinist organisa- tions, for unity in action against the united forces of the capitalists, an aspiration which necessarily conflicts with the politics of the bureaucracy. It is not excluded that the bureaucrats in the traditional leaderships may be forced to take steps along the road of the United Front under pressure from the working class and their own members. In such cases, we support and participate in all actions which can be organised in that direction. In any event, the policy of United Front must be taken in the context of the construction of independent revolutionary parties. Not even the semblance of a United Front can arise from spontaneous developments. It demands political struggle by independent organisations carrying the Transitional Programme into practice. It must serve as the springboard for the development of these organisations. In sum, the policy of the United Front can only really exist through the building of the organisations of the Fourth Interna- tional. At certain stages, entry into mass organisations will be the best way of effecting this tactic, but in no case is such entry to be regarded as a permanent or semi-permanent feature. It is always a tactic, subordinated to the general strategy of the struggle for power, of which the construction of an independent revolutionary party is the general prerequisite. The decomposition of Pabloism, with its politics emerging clearly as a necessary part of opportunism, is thus a consequence of the crisis of capitalism and its agencies, to which the Pabloites sub- ordinated themselves through their abandonment of the Transitional Programme and of dialectical materialism. way will the international class struggle be resolved in favour of the working class. But these parties will nowhere develop spontaneously; they depend in every case on the intervention of Marxists who base their programme on the international perspec- tive of Trotskyism. In particular, these national sections must grasp in theory and in practice the revolutionary role of working-class youth in the USA, Western Europe, Russia and Eastern Europe and in all the colonial and semi-colonial countries. It is these proletarian youth who are now drawn into struggle against the capitalists and the bureau- cracy. In the building of parties of the Fourth International, youth play a special role as one of the most exploited sections of the proletariat. But

[p019] REBUILDING THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the construction of sections of the International requires the mobilisation behind the programme and organisation of the Fourth International of all the principal fighting forces of the proletariat. It is in this perspective, and not in isolation from it, or as a substitute for it, that work among the youth takes on its real importance. The Negro struggle in the USA, intensified especially by the impact of automation under capitalism, the heroic struggle of workers and students in Spain, the political oppo- sition to the bureaucracy in the workers’ states, the fight against the Social Democrats and Stalinists in Britain, France and all Western Europe, as the youth strive to join battle with capitalism, the workers’ battles in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Latin America and Africa, all of these bring a new generation of workers to the fore. As all the old working-class political tendencies swing sharply to the right, a heavy responsibility falls upon the International Com- mittee and the sections grouped around it. They have the responsibility, beginning trom scientific analysis, of providing the motive force for the rebuilding of the Fourth International on the foun- dations of this revolutionary potential. It is not a question of a ‘youth movement’ as such, but of a generation of the working class radicalised by new international revolutionary opportunities, re- sulting from the crisis of imperialism. The cadres of the Fourth International are on trial: in these struggles we must develop Marxism, defeat revi- sionism and demonstrate in practice in each national section the capacity for leadership of the Trotskyist parties as the only answer to the capitalist class and its bureaucratic servants. In each country, therefore, the starting-point must be the construction of revolutionary Trotsky- ist parties based on a Marxist analysis of the present international class struggle. The national tasks of the sections can only be carried out as part of the construction of the Fourth International. In this way they will contribute to the enrichment of Marxist theory and the strength of the Inter- national. (a) Imperialism is in a deepening crisis. The development of the productive forces during and since World War Two, particularly the production of nuclear weapons and _ the introduction of auto- mation, strains to breaking point the conflict be- tween the productive forces and capitalist property’ relations. The struggles produced by this con- tradiction radicalise the working-class youth. The parties of the Fourth International will be built through these struggles. 115 (b ) The realisation by the imperialists of the threat to their world position, and their deter- mination to uphold their domination no matter what the cost in human life, have been shown time and time again. The latest moves by the U.L. government in Vietnam and Latin America, wiih the full support of the British Labour government, underline still more the danger which imperial.sm represents for mankind. In Vietnam the U.s. imperialists are developing a new strategy for dealing with the colonial revolution and wiih the USSR and China. It is no longer a question of ‘peaceful co-existence’, but of a Pax Americana maintained with destructive weapons which can blast out every living creature from large areas. These are not nuclear weapons—which are now only in the background. They are weapons for use they are bound up with the military requiremenis of imperialism at the present siage, in which it can only maintain itself by violence and terror. ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means’—the politics of imperialism have no appeal to the masses but have to be imposed, not on states so much as on peoples. The U.S. imperialists are not concerned about their unpopularity. They know that every bomb dropped in Vietnam makes it more difficult for the agents in the colonial countries to defend their policies, but they obviously do not care about this. They show contempt for the national bourgeoisie and intend to keep them in line by demonstrating — that they possess overwhelming military force. It is not a case in Vietnam of defending U.S. investments, or even only of defending imperialism in South-east Asia. It is rather the need for a testing-ground and demonstration of U.S. striking power to impress Africa and Latin America and the bureaucracies of Russia, Eastern Europe and China as well. The U.S. is concerned principally with the strategy of counter-revolution adapted to the needs of the present stage. The Russian adherence to ‘peaceful co-existence’ has contributed to its suc- cess. The overthrow of imperialism cannot be the result of a number of struggles in the less developed countries: it is necessary to carry out the struggle internationally, with the task of building parties in the advanced countries and in the countries of planned economy as a prime necessity. (c) Imperialism is not only an epoch of wars and revolutions. More concretely, its life has bee~ preserved through these wars and _ revolutions because the working class has not resolved its crisi«

[p020] 116 of leadership. Since 1953, the Stalinist bureau- cracy, severely shaken by the working-class upsurge in its own camp, has entered into closer collaboration with imperialism.’ But this. reflects . above, all the deepening of their own crisis. The construction of revolutionary parties of the Fourth International in Eastern Europe,: Russia and China, with the programme of political revolution as the basic requirement of the workers in these countries, is ,a primary task of the Fourth International. Whereas in the late 1930s defence of the Soviet QYnion implied primary emphasis on support for its military defence against imperialism, it is now necessary to stress the necessity of building revolutionary parties in these countries as the only answer to the capitulationist policies of the bureaucracy, which now directly endanger the basic conquests of October as well as holding back the struggle of the international working class, upon which the future of these conquests depends. (d) Revisionism, which separates into distinct sectors the revolution in the advanced countries, the ‘colonial revolution’, and the political revolu- tion in the workers’ states, is a most important cover for capitalist domination of the workers’ movement and for obstructing the-construction of revolutionary. parties. This revisionism is expressed particularly _ in the theory and practice of the self- styled Unified Secretariat of the Fourth Interna- tional, which was formed without discussion of theoretical and political questions. The next phase in the building of the Fourth International must on the contrary be accompanied by a most serious theoretical discussion in all sections of the policies and theory of the movement, past and present. Many,.workers all over the world, particularly the youth, are in battle against the bureaucratic leaderships who want to confine them to narrow and sectional struggles. The Fourth International and its sections must be able to lead these struggles, explaining the class role of the bureau- cratic leaderships and bringing forward the essence FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1966 © of these struggles—the perspective of world socialist revolution. The intervention in the class struggle is not separate from the theoretical discussion upon which we have insisted. There is no development of Marxist theory except insofar as revolutionary parties fight in practice to penetrate living reality with that theory, enriching it in the course of the struggle, to negate the revisionism which has destroyed the International originally founded by Trotsky. It is not enough to make formal theoreti- cal corrections on the one hand and to carry out intensive activity in the class struggle on the other. Such a procedure might give the appearance of limited success, but only when Marxists see them- selves.and their consciousness as part of the living class struggle, developing with it and transforming its quantitative ebbs and flows into an enriched theory from which to develop the programme of the International, is the unity of theory and prac- tice actually realised. Only in this way will the cadres of the sections of the International be trained. Their internationalism will be worthy of the struggles of the international working class, because it develops as a living part, the conscious and most vital component, of these struggles. The International Committee has been built in the course of the struggle against Pabloite revisionism, and as such has successfully fought for the conti- nuity of the Fourth International. During the last 28 years, the founding programme of the Fourth International has expressed correctly the strategy of the international socialist revolution. It has no less importance for the struggle for the prole- tarian revolution than had the Communist Mani- festo for the Marxist method and the fundamental aims of communists. In its appeal for the recon- struction of the Fourth International, the Inter- national Committee must show clearly the indis- soluble link between this reconstruction and the building of revolutionary parties in every country, as the path to the victory of the socialist revolution. April 1966 Through what stage are we passing? This is the text of a speeca made by L. D. Trotsky to the 5th All-Union Congress of Medical and Veterinary Workevs in the summer of 1924. Of particular interest to our readers in view of the specific references to Britain and metropolitan Europe. Price: Two shillings The Intelligentsia and Socialism A review written for the St. Petersburg review Sovremenny Mir in 1910, of Der Sozialismus und die Intellektuellen, by Max Adler published in Vienna in the same year. Price: One shilling

[p021] REBUILDING THE F OURTH INTERNATIONAL