Editorial

[p003] Editorial T is almost one year since the International Committee of the Fourth International held its Third Conference in London. The achievements of that Conference have proved invaluable in the intervening period. In a political struggle against the petty-bourgeois groups around ‘Spartacist’ in the USA and Voix Ouvriére in France, the continuity of the theory and practice of Bolshevism—the Fourth International was defended and firmly established. From the point of view of the building of this Fourth International, the Conference declared the unity of the revolutionary struggle of the working class all over the world. The heroic struggle of the workers and peasants in Vietnam is a struggle for the international working class, for the defence of the gains of the Chinese and Vietnam revolutions. The defence of working-class organisations against the capitalist state in Europe draws the workers into a political struggle whose only outcome can be the struggle for power. In China, in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the workers are drawn into a fight against bureaucracy as the only way of preserving the gains of the proletarian revolution. Internationally, then, the crisis of the imperialists forces them to place intolerable strain upon the traditional forms of class- collaboration. All the past conquests of the working class are threatened. They can be defended only by a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state, which is forced to organise the attacks. It is in this sense that the founding ‘Transitional Programme’ of the Fourth International corresponds more and more precisely to the deepest needs of the proletariat. In this year of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution more than ever the fight against imperialism can be taken up only by those who oppose implacably the politics of the Soviet bureaucracy. The cynical preparations of Kosygin and his collaborators for a sell-out through secret diplomacy and U.S. military pressure of the Vietnamese revolution is the clearest indica- tion of this. One of Kosygin’s first acts after becoming Soviet Premier was to intercede in the conflict between the Indian and Pakistan bourgeoisie in the Tashkent negotiations. The essence of this action was to ensure, as far as possible, social and political stability behind the imperialist lines in South-East Asia. The Stalinist bureaucracy indulges in all manner of pressure on Johnson and Wall Street for a settlement in Vietnam, within the framework of ‘peaceful co-existence’. Sensing the tensions in the Democratic Party, which reflect the indecision of sections of the American big bourgeoisie under pressure of petty-bourgeois and working class doubts and opposition to the war, the Soviet bureau- crats will announce the stepping-up of supplies to North Vietnam. Kosygin on his European tour will explore the possibility of using de Gaulle’s tactical differences with Johnson. But the real alternative to the U.S. war in Vietnam is the revolutionary action of the international working class, and _ par- ticularly in Europe and the USA. It is particularly criminal, therefore, that some who even call themselves ‘Trotskyists’ are working with Stalinists and pacifists, and have rejected the line of revolutionary defeat- ism in relation to the Vietnam war. In France, Stalinists, Radicals, Social-Democrats, and ‘left’ Gaullists supported a public campaign for relief funds for Vietnam. The list of their signatures was completed by Pierre Frank, claiming to add his name ‘on behalf. of the Fourth International’! In the USA, leading representatives of the Socialist Workers’ Party condemned the revolutionary defeatist line of the Workers’ League on the grounds that such a line implied the wish to see Americans killed in Vietnam! In Canada, the pro-SWP ‘Workers’ Vanguard’ commended

[p004] those who - combined anti-Vietnam-war demonsirations with the commemoration of the 1914-1918 war dead! What a confirmation of the conclusions of the International Conference of April, 1966! The International Committee was formed to ensure the continuity of the Fourth Interna- tional against those revisionists who looked to the Soviet and Stalinist bureaucracy to play a progressive’ role in history. These revisionists wanted to scrap that section of the Transitional Programme which insisted on a war to the death against ‘the gang of Cain- Stalin’ as a condition for the preparation of the revolutionary leadership. The revisionists have very quickly evolved to a position where they adopt the Stalinist policies of capitula- tion to bourgeois pacifism, which remains as always an instrument of imperialism. At the International Conference it was found absolutely essential to reject and eventually exclude those (Spartacist and Voix Ouvieére who demanded scepticism and rejection of our theory, programme and struggle to build the revolutionary party. Precisely at the point where the Stalinists and the Pablo revisionists must be answered directly by the struggle of the alternative leadership, the middle-class sceptics want to lay aside all stress on the uniqueness and independence of revolutionary Trotskyist theory and organisation. Behind the ‘matter- of-fact’ opposition to our perspectives lay a great hostility to theory, and rejection of the historical role of the working class. It is of historic significance that the build- ing of a revolutionary youth organisation in Europe is taking place on the sound basis of an explicit rejection of bourgeois pacificism (see the International Youth Manifesto pre- paring for an international conference of youth organisations). This too owes much to the preparations by the International Con- ference in London in April 1966. One of the decisions of that Conference, proceeding from the analysis of crisis of imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy, was to work through a Youth Commission of the Interna- tional Committee for an international revolu- tionary youth conference and organisations. In particular, the sections of the IC would work through their youth organisations for participation in the anti-NATO and anti-war demonstration called by the Jeune Garde Socialiste (Belgium) for October, 1966. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, APRIL 1967 In the event, Liége proved a great testing ground for revolutionary and revisionist per- spectives in the socialist youth movement. The delegations of the British Young Social- ists and the French ‘Révoltes’ (totalling nearly 1,000) not only provided the numerical majority of the demonstration, but their political slogans inflicted a severe defeat on the revisionists. On Vietnam, they carried the clear line ‘Victory to the National Libera- tion Front!’, and ‘The Enemy is in our own Country!’ But to these were added banners of solidarity with the Hungarian revolution- aries of 1956. And all these slogans were united by the slogan shouted by one thousand revolutionary youth: ‘Long Live the Fourth International!’ It was this political line which drove the organisers of the march to threaten police intervention against the — revolutionary slogans. True to type, the revisionists found themselves driven more quickly to the logical end of their revisions by every step forward of the revolutionary vanguard. That is only as it must be, because their main role is to Oppose and divert whenever possible that vanguard. Some may have thought that the behaviour of the revisionists at Liége was a result only of their wrong tactics, i.e., placing their temporary alliance with various Stalinist and pacifist elements above revolutionary politics. - But that is an error. Their tactics are the consequence of their political line. So high is the premium on consciousness in our epoch of the crisis of leadership, that every flaw in the relation between theory and practice has within it the seeds of class betrayal. Such was the revisionism of Pablo. If we now consider certain developments since the Liége demonstration, then we see that the differences there were by no means simply tactical. In the first place, the SWP and its Pabloite collaborators set in motion a vicious cam- paign of provocation and calumny against the IC, through a personal attack on Gerry Healy, national secretary of the Socialist Labour League (the so-called ‘Tate affair’). Covering up their own betrayals on the Vietnam war, analysed above, they made a desperate effort to isolate and break the Socialist Labour League, and thereby the IC, calling for an investigation of the SLL by

[p005] EDITORIAL centrist and ‘left’ elements, in fact profes- sional anti-Trotskyists. Aided by the follow- ers of Posadas in Britain (who equated the SLL with Fascists) and by Robertson’s Spartacists in the USA, they passed out the worst kind of personal vilification and slander, dropping all pretence of a political struggle against the IC. Robertson was thus forced to occupy his true position vis-a-vis the building of the independent revolution- ary leadership. Having condemned our ‘over-estimation’ of our own importance, and having rejected our characterisation of the social crisis in the advanced countries, he took only a few short months to arrive at this much agreement with the revisionists. We thus see that both on the objective situation and its development, on the radicalisation of working-class youth on an international basis, and on the relations within the Trotskyist movement, the London Conference of 1966 was an essential preparation for revolution- aries. What stage have we now reached? The sec- tions of the IC in Western Europe and North America have a particularly heavy respons- ibility. In the struggle against the integration of the trade unions into the state and against the Vietnam war, youth is to the fore, and is providing the cadres for the Fourth Interna- tional. In Eastern Europe, Russia and China, it is among the youth that great new forces are coming on to the scene. Every step made towards a revolutionary youth international in Western Europe prepares a_ gigantic response in these countries ruled by the Stalinist bureaucracy, just as it provided the key to further advance within each particular capitalist country. Already the Conferences of ‘Révoltes’ and the Young Socialists have laid their main emphasis on internationalism, and have demonstrated the great possibilities for a new, alternative revolutionary leader- ship in France and Britain. The urgent task facing all Marxists is now therefore the Inter- national Youth Assembly of July 29th—Aug- ust 5th, 1967, the main step towards the international youth conference. This assembly must bring together all the forces of pro- letarian youth fighting on the Trotskyist programme. It is only on this basis that the next step can be prepared. That is the lesson of the 1966 IC Conference and what has followed.

[p006] 4 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, APRIL 1967