Fourth International Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International

[p056] The Fourth Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International, meeting on April 10 to 15, 1972, calls upon revolution- aries in all sections of the world movement to take up with every resource they can command the great historic tasks now posed before the Fourth International. Entirely new conditions have opened up for resolution of the crisis of revolutionary leadership which has held back the working class since the rise of Stalinism. The struggle for working-class power, for the socialist revolution enters a new and decisive stage with the crisis of world capitalism precipitated by the August 15, 1971 measures of US President Nixon. With the collapse of the financial agreements of Bretton Woods, the end = of dollar convertibility, and the open declaration of trade war, the foundation of all economic and political relations between imperialism and the working class in the metropolitan capitalist countries since World War II is smashed. In every major _ capitalist country, the ruling class is forced to set out to destroy all the positions won in the past by the working class, to destroy it as a class, break up its organiz- ations, and reduce it to mass poverty. Only in this way can the capitalist class of each country hope to. survive the world recession and trade war. Above all, the conditions under which the revolutionary move- ment works are changed qualit- atively. Trotskyism faces its greatest challenge since the formation of the Fourth Inter- national in 1938. Having success- fully defended the programme of the Fourth International and the theory of Marxism against all the physical repressions and _ political betrayals of Stalinism and_ re- formism and having defeated the attempts of revisionism to liquidate the Fourth I[nter- national, the forces of the Inter- national Committee and _ its sections must now take up the challenge of fighting for leader- ship in the struggle for power. Beneath the ‘liquidity’ and Currency crises of the late 1960s lay the ever-deepening con- tradiction between the productive forces—first and foremost among these the working class itself and the system of monopoly capital- ism. Concentration of these historical contradictions in the crisis of the dominant world currency—the dollar—-gives a universal character to the economic and political character of the effects of the crisis. Trade war is only the foretaste of 200 international slumps, collapse of great monopolies and banks, even of national economies, revolutions and counter-revolutions, and the ever-growing threat of world war. As Marx explained: ‘. . . capitalist production moves in contradictions which are con- stantly overcome, only to be, again, constantly re-established. Still more so. The universality towards which it is perpetually driving finds limitations in its own nature, which at a certain stage of its development will make it appear as itself the greatest barrier to this tendency, leading thus to its own self- destruction.’ (Grunderisse pp. 313-314.) Mass unemployment; attacks by the state machine and fascist mobs on the organizations of the proletariat; colonial repression and conquest; war with other powers; military attack on the deformed and degenerated workers’ states: these are the ‘solutions’ to which capitalism in decay always turns in crisis. Nowhere will the working class be able to defend itself except by the building of revolutionary parties for the conquest of power. The final blow was struck against all reformist solutions by the August 15 measures. For the first time since the early 1920s, the working classes of the advanced capitalist countries are driven to confront the ruling class face to face, class against class, in a struggle for power. The most basic needs of the masses can be defended only by revolutionary methods. When Nixon announced the decisions of August 15, the basic contradictions of capitalism burst asunder the compromise _ re- lations established in 1944-1945. For hundreds of millions of workers the basic conditions of life are now thrown into question, and the established relations for dealing with these problems are suddenly without foundation. Here is the basis for the struggle for revolutionary consciousness, for the develop- ment of Marxist theory. However, the post-war econ- omic settlement was a_ result not of any strength of capitalism but a decision by a capitalist class weakened by depression and war to attempt to contain the strength of the working class rather than to enter upon a decisive confrontation. Keynesian inflationary policies were built into the international monetary settlement. The relative stabilization and expansion of capitalism which followed was made possible only by the treacherous class-collaboration of international Stalinism and of the Stalinist and reformist parties all over the world. The collapse of the gold-dollar standard and the fixed parities of Bretton Woods, and the new stage of class war opened up in each country are therefore blows just as mortal for the Stalinist bureaucracy as they are for the imperialists. Stalinist and reformist parties still dominate the consciousness and organization of the working class in each country, but the foundation of this domination has now been removed. No _ longer will capitalism rule through the ability of these apparatuses to impose treacherous partial con- cessions in response to the strength of the working class; it will require the destruction of that strength. _ This brings the working class, in the essential fight for its political independence, into life and death conflict with the Stalinist and reformist bureaucracies. The Trotskyist movement must take up _ its responsibility of building an alternative leadership, the only alternative to bloody defeat through the class-collaboration of the traditional leaderships. Only the Fourth International can arm the working class against the Stalinist bureaucracy, the principal counter-revolutionary force in the world. The Stalinists work consciously to repair those defences which they built jointly with the imperialists in 1944- 1945, They will aim to bloodily sup- press the political revolution in the USSR and the deformed workers’ states, as well as the revolutionary workers in the capitalist countries. They will strive to repeat in every country the role of the Polish Stalinist strike-breakers in Spain and the Maoist bureaucracy in Bangla Desh. As the capitalist class moves to impose new totalitarian forms of rule, it does not confront a defeated working class. On the contrary, the first outbreaks of the economic crisis—1967 de. valuation of sterling and the 1968 gold crisis—were answered by the action of the French working class in May-June 1968. Since then, the metal-workers’ strike in Germany, the general strikes and political crisis in Italy, the upsurge of the Spanish working class, and the radicaliz- ation of the working class in Britain and Ireland, have shown that the workers of the advanced capitalist countries are under- going a fundamental development as the crisis makes its impact, and this strength reveals itself as the main source of its exten- sion and development. Nixon’s measures of August 15 were made absolutely unavoidable by the wage settlement in the US steel strike and the other im- pending wage battles. It became impossible both to contain the Strength of the US working class and to continue with the international role of the dollar. This is the very heart of the crisis. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p057] Nixon’s international measures were, therefore, linked with new preparations against the US working class. The institution of the Pay Board, the rejection of the long- shoremen’s settlement, prepar- ations for anti-strike legislation, combined with Nixon’s conscious unemployment’ policy have brought the trade unions into direct collision with the govern- ment, This crisis is shaking all the old relationships of class collabor- ation between the trade union bureaucracy, the government and its two parties. This is what forced Meany to walk off the Pay Board. Every struggle of the American working class for wage increases, against speed-up and unemploy- ment must now be a political - struggle, a struggle for power. American workers built the most powerful trade unions in the world but these unions have been tied politically to the Democratic Party through the trade union bureaucracy’s collab. oration with the aid of Stalinism. The only way the American working class can defeat the attacks of the employers and the government is through the break with the Democratic and Republican Parties and the form- ation of a labour party based on the unions and on_¥ socialist policies. The 1972 elections now take place in an entirely new period since August 15, which places the labour party immediately on the agenda now. The emergence of Wallace raises the greatest dangers to the labour movement. Behind the racialist and populist demagogy of his campaign is Wallace’s real programme—the destruction of the unions, the destruction of every right and gain the unions have won. Wallace is the right-wing spokesman for the capitalist class that now must above all destroy the unions if their system is to be preserved. Behind Wallace are gathering all the racialist and fascist forces. Nixon and the Republican and Democratic Parties stand with him. Wallace is putting forward today what the capitalist class as a whole is preparing for the working class in the future. Wallace cannot be defeated today, as the trade union bureaucracy claims, by support- ing politicians in the Democratic Party. The only way that Wallace can be defeated is through the con- struction of this labour party, through the break with the two capitalist parties. The fight for the labour party is the central responsibility of the Workers League. This must be fought for in the unions with the call for a congress of labour to establish this party on a socialist programme. It is to this struggle that the youth and the students must be turned in a fight against the Stalinists, who openly support capitalist parties, and revisionists who seek to side- track the struggle for a labour party, proposing Black and Chicano capitalist parties. Only through the building of the labour party can the American working class be broken from the _ reformist illusions built up in the past and the road prepared for power. The Nixon measures have con- fronted the ruling class of the European capitalist states with the inescapable necessity of going to war on their own working class. By thrusting the burden of the dollar crisis on to these countries, Nixon imposes the. need for the break up of the compromize relationships and un- stable equilibrium which have prevailed since 1945. This blow comes just at a time when, following the events of 1968 in France, the working class enters the scene, strong and undefeated, in a combative way with its own demand. The new militancy of the work- ing class passes at first, in a spontaneous way, through its traditional organizations and takes the old forms. The reform- ist and Stalinist leaderships strive everywhere to prevent it coming forward as an independent force The task of the Fourth Inter- national sections is to establish leadership in the working class and to expose and drive out the treacherous bureaucracies. Only in this way can the working class take the power. This alternative leadership must be established on the pro- gramme and with the perspectives of the International Committee of the Fourth International. There is no other way. Failure to resolve the crisis of leadership in the present period will mean defeats for the working class which will throw mankind back into a new era of barbarism. The economic situation of European capitalism since August 15 has become truly desperate and the bourgeoisie itself has not fully grasped, even eight months later, the full depths of its crisis. But, in the political as well as in the economic sphere, it has not been slow to demon- strate its reaction. In every country it shows that it under- stands that it must defeat its own working class and impose more authoritarian forms of rule. This means that all the demo- cratic rights and conquests of the working class come under intensi- fied attack as the bourgeoisie takes up stations for a decisive round of class battles. A ruling class with its back to the wall, pressed into desperate measures by the weight of US imperialism; a working class staking out claims of its own which challenge the bourgeoisie’s Manifesto from the 4th Congress of the ICFI right to rule; leaders who com- bine to break up and betray the struggles of the working class; this has now become the rule in every European country. First France, where the storm- signals of the European revolu- tion appeared in 1968. In the General Strike of May-June 1968. The mobilization of the entire working class threatened the bourgeois social order. The grip of the Stalinists was weakening day by day as workers manifested their determination to go beyond the limits imposed by the bureau- cracy and demand a workers’ government. The Trotskyist movement in France, the OCI, at that time a section of the International Com- mittee, was unable to grasp the revolutionary opportunities which presented themselves. The situ- -ation in May-June 1968 caught it by surprise and unprepared. This was no accident; nor was it a question merely of numerical strength—‘the smallness of the vanguard’, as the rationalization went. It was a question of method which left the OCI unarmed and carried it through the events with a series of empirical adapt- ations which never, at any time, permitted it to call upon the Communist Party to take the power. This demand is_ the essential path to their exposure before the working class and the establishment of Trotskyist leadership. Although the French _ bour- geoisie was able to retain power with the help of the Stalinists and the reformists, the founda- tions of its rule were irrevocably shaken by the power of the work- ing class and nothing in the rela- tions between the classes has been the same since. The defeat of de Gaulle in the referendum in 1969 struck a further blow. The French bourgeoisie hangs on grimly behind Pompidou in an atmosphere of scandal and cor- ruption which recalls the worst days of the Third Republic. The German working class, written off by the revisionists as ‘integrated’ or ‘reformist’, emerges as the major factor in the crisis of German capitalism. The 1969 movement could still be contained through formation of a Social-Democratic-Liberal coalition and big concessions in wages. This revived reformist illusions in the working class and in particular the youth but the metal workers’ strike of Decem- ber 1971, after Nixon’s measures, spelt the end of réformism, which is now breaking up. The working class has been able to build up an _ unprece- dented strength within the unions in West Germany and within the framework of the deformed workers’ states of the Democratic Republic. It is this strength which the bourgeoisie has now to confront with the 201

[p058] help of the Stalinist and reform- ist bureaucracies and all the old relations have to be changed. German capitalism was rebuilt after the war as the spearhead of imperialism against the Eastern European countries and _ the October Revolution. Today the role of the Social-Democratic- Liberal coalition is to help the bourgeoisie prepare the recon- quest of East Germany and the Eastern European countries and to pave the way in West Ger- many for a_ reactionary CDU/ CSU government to tie the unions to the state. This is where the counter- revolutionary role of Stalinism comes out most clearly. Within the radicalization of the working class they try to subordinate this movement to the coalition government. Just as the German working class remained relatively isolated from the world class struggle even after the defeat of fascism and in the period of the post- war boom, so the collapse of German capitalism after the Nixon measures opens the way for the German working class to find its way back to its revolu- tionary traditions. This requires establishment of the independence of the working class through a _ consistent struggle against Stalinism and revisionism, through the building of the revolutionary party. This resurgence of the German work- ing class opens the door for a reawakening of the Soviet prole- tariat’s hopes for world revolu- tion and for the political revo- lution against the parasitic Krem- lin bureaucracy. The break-up of reformism after the Nixon measures is throwing social-democracy into a deep crisis. The task of the Ger- man Trotskyist movement is to establish the independence of the German working class in a fight for Marxism and in a struggle to break the Ger- . man working class from the con- trol of reformism by exposing it in the fight for the demand that the SPD breaks with the Lib- erals in the coalition and forms an exclusively Social-Democratic government, based on the trade unions with a socialist pro- gramme, In Italy the boom showed it- self to be even more fragile. Since the ‘hot autumn’ of 1969, which was a direct continuation of the 1968 May-June events in France, the country has been in the grip of an economic, social and political crisis unprece- dented since the pre-Mussolini years. Only the heavy weight of Italian Stalinism’s apparatus has prevented the working class from asserting its claim to power in opposition to the debile Italian bourgeoisie and its main political expression Christian Democracy. The betrayals of Togliatti’s heirs have given the bourgeoisie 202 time to prepare new _ attacks which will be struck after the forthcoming elections, whatever their outcome. The panic-stricken petty bourgeoisie are attracted into the orbit of the neo- fascists to whom the monopolists are now turning as an alternative to the increasingly-discredited and impotent parliamentary regime. The Stalinists are the last line of defence for this rotten poli- tical system. It is absolutely necessary to place the demand on the Italian Communist Party: break from all forms of coali- tion with the bourgeoisie parties; take the power. Along this road, the Stalinist hold on the work- ing class will be broken. The bonapartist dictatorship in Greece is a regime of crisis which is an expression of the world crisis of the capitalist sys- tem. It portrays the future that capitalism has in store for the working class in this period of its death agony, where the bour- geoisie is forced everywhere to pass to the most severe forms of state repression, having no other way to defend its rule. At the same time, the seizure of power by the Colonels was the advance warning of the fact that the class struggle, in the whole capitalist world, has devel- oped to its most crucial point, posing on the agenda the pro- letarian revolution for the over- throw of the capitalist system. The colonels cannot solve the problems of Greek capitalism. They are unable to gain popular support or to stabilize their power. On the contrary, their regime is constantly undermined by the deepening crisis of imperi- alism. Particularly since Nixon’s measures on the dollar and the declaration of trade war with Europe, an explosive charge has been placed under the founda- tions of the dictatorial regime. The closure of a series of basic industries, which employed thou- sands of workers, and the last big increases on the basic price of food are the first products of the crisis in its new stage. Similarly, the split inside the junta which came into the open with the sacking of the Regent Zoitakis and the taking of his post by the arch-dictator Papa- dopoulos, is the manifestation of this crisis in another sphere. Intensification of the _ crisis following the August 15 mea- sures has created conditions for a confrontation between the working class and the dictatorial regime. The Greek Trotskyists fight for independence of the working class, opposing the Stal- inists who would drag it behind the liberal bourgeoisie, and to establish the revolutionary party to lead the struggle of the work- ing class for power. In the epoch of imperialism in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the most elementary demands for national independ- ence and democratic rights can only be granted if the struggle in these countries is carried over into the socialist phase. We warn the workers and peasants of these countries not to put any confidence in bour- geois nationalist leaderships. The experience of Bangla Desh demonstrates the danger of such a step. With the suspension of the Constituent Assembly on April 11, the ruling bourgeois nationalist Awami League has demonstrated that it is an obstacle to the granting of full democratic rights, and the volun- tary and revolutionary reunifica- tion of India on a socialist basis. In Ireland bourgeois national- ism expresses itself through IRA térrorism. Far from leading to real independence and _libera- tion, their exclusive reliance on terror, and opposition to Marx- ism and the revolutionary party, have now resulted in a com- promise with imperialism, remin- iscent of the 1921 agreement. The imposition of direct rule from Westminster, welcomed by a section of the IRA leaders, threatens the rights of Protest- ant and Catholic workers alike. Partition, religious divisions, low wages and unemployment will remain, through a coalition of Republican and Orange capi- talism, backed by the Tory government at Westminster. In the colonial and_ semi- colonial countries, as in all other countries, the only guarantee of success for the masses in their struggles for national independ- ence and democratic rights is the building in these countries of sec- tions of the International Com- mittee, dedicated to the central strategy of establishment of poli- tical independence of the work- ing class. and the overthrow of imperialism. In this period of unprecedented crisis for European capitalism the European Common Market takes on a new meaning. Its extension to include Britain and_ those countries grouped with her in the European Free Trade Area emphasizes its character as a counter-revolutionary coalitién aimed at the working class and intended to create conditions in which European capitalism can find a basis for survival in con- flict with the United States and Japan. ; The Heath government in Britain, supported by a section of the Labour Party, has hastened to join the Common Market in preparation for civil war and in the hope that ailing British capi- talism will be given an injection of strength. Competition and rivalry between the European capitalist states will not dis- appear with the entry of Britain but will only reach a new pitch of intensity, driving each govern- ment to strike even more deci- sively against the working class. Fourth International Summer 1872

[p059] In Britain, the Industrial Rela- tions Act, the strengthening of police forces and changes in the law affecting legal rights are part of this preparation. At the same time, British finance capital prepares to take advantage of the new opportuni- ties for profit which it hopes to find within the Common Market. Whole sections of industry in Britain which can no longer be competitive when tariff barriers come down will either be closed down or production will be shifted to the continent. Specula- tors and financiers are eagerly looking for fresh pickings, regardless of the long-term con- sequences. In the Common Mar- ket, as in the whole market, it is capitalist anarchy which pre- vails. In its own way, through the Common Market, capitalism tries to overcome the contradiction between the productive forces and the constricting limits of the historic national states within which bourgeois rule expresses itself. But the Common Market does not in fact transcend these limits of result in any merging of interests of the European ruling classes. It opens up a more bitter struggle for hegemony inside the so-called European Community in which the weak- est will go to the wall. The revolutionary movement opposes and fights in every way the sinister ‘new order’ repre- sented by the European Com- mon Market, which constitutes the main counter-revolutionary strategy of European capital against the working class, aim- ing to destroy its conquests. Brezhnev’s declaration that the Soviet bureaucracy will modify its attitude to the EEC is a declaration of willingness to collaborate in this counter- revolutionary strategy. Against the capitalist Common Market, the Fourth International calls for the taking of power by the working class in the perspec- tive of the United Socialist States of Europe. That is the only answer which accords with the historic interests of the working class. The upsurge of the workers’ movement in the advanced capi- talist countries now joins with the revolutionary struggles of workers and peasants in the colonial countries. In Vietnam, US imperialism is fought to a standstill, despite the interna- tional betrayal of the Vietna- mese revolution; and in Bangla Desh the masses herald an entirely new stage of the revolu- tion in South-East Asia, despite the blows struck against them by the Stalinist bureaucracy in Peking. Mao Tse-tung’s approach to Nixon is the desperate response of imperialism and the bureau- cracy to these revolutionary struggles. The IC of the Fourth Interna- tional affirms its solidarity with the national liberation struggles of the Arab people against world imperialism and its agents in the Middle East—the state of Israel. It warns, at the same time, against the perfidious policy of the Soviet bureaucracy which is using the situation to bring about a deal with imperialism to crush the revolution. These are the _ transformed conditions in which Trotskyism fights for revolutionary leader- ship. The starting point for every Fourth International section can now only be this: after August 1971 we work in qualitatively transformed conditions which hold out the highest possibilities, and at the same time the greatest dangers, the most intense struggle; conditions in which the political decisions of revolution- aries involve the whole future of the working class. The nature of the crisis in the relationship between the classes means that the task now before the revolutionary movement becomes that of winning the leadership of the working class and taking it to power. The International Committee has fought a tenacious and thorough- going theoretical struggle against all conceptions that the political consciousness of the working class can be developed spontane- ously out of the experience of the class itself, or out of the struggle only for its immediate demands. In every country, the capitalist state aims to destroy the trade unions. It is possible to defend the unions only by fighting for revolutionary leadership of the unions, based on a struggle for Marxist theory against trade- union consciousness. The urgency of the prepara- tions now required could not be understood just from bringing together the struggles and experience of the working class itself. It is necessary to make a Marxist analysis of the develop- ing crisis of the capitalist econ- omy and its penetration into the objective relations between the classes at the level of state power and politics, as well as economi- cally, and in the relations within the ruling class itself. Such an analysis is insepar- able from a struggle for Marxist theory, of dialectical materialism, against all conceptions of spon- taneous development of revolu- tionary consciousness, against all propaganda conceptions of simply fighting on a programme of demands. In every country, the sections of the Fourth Interna- tional fight above all to develop the political independence of the working class, to intervene in every partial struggle in order to bring the class face to face with this question of its own power, which involves a complete break with the Stalinists and reformists, Manifesto from the 4th Congress of the ICFI and the building of mass revolu- tionary parties. SECTION II The Fourth International exists only through a continuous and uncompromising struggle against every misleadership of the work- ing class and, in particular, the Stalinist bureaucracy and _its agencies throughout the world. Stalinism as always plays a doubly reactionary role. It holds back the harmonious develop- ment of the productive forces in the workers’ states through its greed, corruption and parasitism. At the same time it disarms the working class in the capitalist countries and facilitates betrayal by its reactionary brainchild of ‘peaceful co-existence’ and ‘peaceful transition’ to socialism. Stalinism is counter-revolu- tionary through and through. By its brutal intervention in Czecho- slovakia in 1968 and_ suppres- sion of the Gdansk uprising in December _ 1970, Stalinism demonstrates its mortal fear and hatred of the working class fight. ing against bureaucratic privilege and dictatorship. The continued harassment, exile and torture of Soviet intellectuals, scientists and writers is a grim reminder of the fact that the Stalinist bureau- cracy, to préserve its usurpatory regime, must repress every expression of artistic and literary dissidence. In doing so it stimu- lates new expressions of anti- bureaucratic revolt in the youth and the working class. The International Committee of the Fourth International fights for the unconditional release of these dissidents as an integral part of the fight to construct a Trotskyist party which alone can carry out the political expropria- tion of the bureaucracy and restore proletarian democracy and intellectual freedom in the USSR. At the same time the Interna- tional Committee of the Fourth International will fight to combat Stalinism’s treachery — Peking and Moscow alike —- which has condemned’ entire communist parties and hundreds and thou- sands of workers in Indonesia, Sudan, Iran and other countries to extinction. The collapse of the French General Strike of May-June 1968 constitutes the most decisive test to date of the correctness of the Trotskyist characterization of Stalinism as counter-revolution- ary. Initially opposing the stud- ents’ struggle, the CP leaders suddenly switched their line in order to more effectively control the General Strike and — in the absence of a revolutionary leader- ship—steered the movement back to ‘normality and order’. The Fifth Republic and French capitalism were saved, not because of any intrinsic strength of the regime, but because of the Stalinist collaboration. Refusal of the revisionists of the

[p060] OCI and the Ligue Communiste to raise political demands and post the question of power before the Stalinist bureaucracy contributed powerfully to the subsequent betrayal of the Stal- inists and the retreat of the masses. As in the Belgian General Strike of 1961, revisionism played an important role in pre- serving the grip of Stalinism on the European working class. The reformist counter-revolu- tionary policies of international Stalinism not only help perpetu- ate imperialism, but by the same token accentuate the isolation of the USSR and China and inten- sify the social contradictions within them. Stalinism cannot be reformed. It must be smashed, overthrown through the mobilization of the working class under the leader- ship of parties of the Interna- tional Committee of the Fourth International. But this struggle requires patience, tactical resourcefulness and a clear dialectical under- standing of the present crisis and the nature and origins of Stalin- ism. No successful struggle can be carried out against the Stalinist leadership outside the USSR, Eastern Europe and China by groups or individuals who base themselves on a one-sided analy- sis and preconceived ideas. Stalinism is the political expression of the interests of a bureaucracy transmitting the pressures of world imperialism on the working class. But the inter- ests of the working class which supports the Stalinist parties, thrown into ever more violent struggle by the crisis of imperi- alism, demands that these parties go forward for power. In the epoch of the intensified crisis of imperialism these con- flicting interests and mutually exclusive aspirations of the working class and the bureau- cracy come into conflict and pre- cipitate crisis after crisis in the Stalinist movement. The Stalinist-imperialist colla- boration after World War II was part and parcel of the monetary arrangements which permitted inflationary policies to be pur- sued by the capitalist powers: now however the termination of the Bretton Woods agreement disrupts completely this relation- ship. This provides the Trotskyist movement with unparalleled opportunities to recruit from the Stalinist parties and destroy the political credibility of their leaders. To ignore these opportunities is to condemn the working class to defeats greater than those of the 1930s. The International Committee of the Fourth Inter- national urges all its sections to engage in this task with revolu- tionary optimism and audacity. Every blow struck against Stalin- ism intensifies the death agony 204 of the imperialist system. The policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy, by turning the working class away from its revolutionary tasks and exposing it to the imperialist drive towards Ccounter-revolutionary dictatorships, constitute the gravest danger to the conquests of the October Revolution itself. As the crisis deepens, imperial- ism is inexorably driven to seek ways of reconquering the areas lost in the Russian Revolution and after World War II. The danger of a third world war threatens the working class ‘more menacingly with every step towards reaction by the imperi- alists. The only answer to the threat of war is the united struggle of the working class for its own power, achieved through the building of revolutionary parties. The International Committee stands for the unconditional - defence of the USSR and the other workers’ states in a war against imperialism. Preparation for the proletarian revolution in every capitalist country is the only effective road to such defence. The crisis of imperialism affects every section of society and, in particular, compounds the agitation and insecurity of the petty bourgeoisie in the devel- oped and _ colonial countries alike. Unable to express their hatred of capitalism in a really revolutionary way, these social groups express their despair and political impotency by individual terror as well as by pacifist non- violence. The International Committee of the Fourth International warns the working class against the dangers of petty-bourgeois adventurism which leads to the blind alley of terrorism and the diversion of the working class from its historic goal — the seizure of state power and the replacing of private property by social property. None of these aims can be achieved by the methods of the ‘urban guerrilla’ revisionist or anarchist—or the rural ‘foco’ of the Guevarists and Maoists. The Pabloite revisionists, by encouraging this trend as well as by their adventurist attacks on the traditional parties. of the working class, display, in the most criminal way, their con- tempt and hatred for the work- ing class and Marxism. The International Committee of the Fourth International will continue its irreconcilable struggle against this reactionary tendency. Only the mobilization of the working masses, in independent actions, under the leadership of parties of the Fourth Interna- tional based on Marxist theory, can win workers’ power. This has been the consistent stand of the International Committee against all revisionism in the Fourth International. ime struggle to found the Fourth International against Stal- inism and its betrayals was at the same time the struggle to con- struct new revolutionary parties on the basis of Marxism. Since 1953, the International Commit- tee has constantly fought the tendency, originally led by Michel Pablo, which declared that the working class was no longer capable. of independent struggle, and that therefore the construction of: Marxist parties must be abandoned in favour of pressurizing Stalinism. This adaptation to Stalinism was the result of abandonment of the Marxist method and thus Capitulation to the pressures of the capitalist class. In 1963, the US Socialist Workers’ Party, which originally supported the formation of the International Committee, broke from the Inter- national Committee to support a reunification with the Pabloites, forming what is known as the Unified Secretariat. This reunification took place without any discussion or assess- ment of the fundamental ques- tions involved in the original 1953 split. Instead the Castro regime was. uncritically sup- ported as the new way to make revolutions without constructing Marxist parties, the opportunist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) of Ceylon was held up as a model Trotskyist organization, and the programme of political revolu- tion was completely thrown out for China. The SWP, having always refused to take up a struggle for the Marxist method, ended up supporting what it broke from in 1953. The Unified Secretariat stands today in complete oppo- sition to everything Trotsky stood for. The fruits of the reunification of these revisionists was soon expressed in Ceylon, where a party calling itself Trotskyist, the LSSP, actually entered a bour- geois coalition government, accepting cabinet posts. The unprincipled nature of the reunification was the political preparation for this betrayal in Ceylon. In 1971, the LSSP again entered the government, this time to participate in a bloody campaign against rebellious youth, ending up jailing Trotsky- ists and banning the press of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Com- munist League, Ceylon Section of the International Committee. This is the real expression of the role of revisionism in this period of the sharp capitalist crisis. The Unified Secretariat today is racked by a_ fundamental internal crisis, being torn apart by the movement forward of the working class internationally. All the questions it refused to face in 1963 now come up—but no section is capable of providing any answers. The majority fac- tion preaches ‘neo-capitalism’ and Fourth International Summer 1972

[p061] ‘structural reforms’ in the advanced countries, while encour- aging the wildest guerrilla adven- tures in colonial countries. It bears political responsibility for the assassinations by the ERP which occur precisely at the moment when the Argentine working class is going into deci- sive battles. The minority, sup- ported by the SWP, collaborates with Stalinism in the anti-war movement, basing itself on all manner of middle-class protests when the American working class is forced to confront Nixon and the Democratic Party is being ripped apart in the pro- cess. After a long struggle within the International Committee to change its course, the French OCI has decided to follow the path of the SWP by breaking from the International Commit- tee. The break has taken place over the most fundamental issue of all. What was at the root of the degeneration of Pabloism— the Marxist method. At the Essen conference in the spring of 1971, the OCI and its youth organization, the AJsS, voted down an amendment, put forward by the majority of the International Committee. This amendment stated that the struggle against bourgeois ideo- logy among the youth was central to the construction of the inter- national Trotskyist youth move- ment. This struggle required a study of the Marxist theory of knowledge and the actual train- ing of the youth cadres in the struggle for this understanding. Following this action the OCI openly supported Lora’s POR which contributed to the defeat of the Bolivian revolution, by forming a broad front with Stal- inism and the bourgeois nation- alist regime of Torres § and refusing to call upon the work- ing class indépendently to arm itself against counter-revolution. Lora has since entered a popular front formation with Torres, the Stalinists and the Pabloites while the OCI remains silent. This political course, which duplicates the Ceylonese events, is the direct result of the refusal of the OCI to take up the struggle to educate its members in the Marxist method and in this way to be able to develop a real orientation towards the working class in France and towards the construction of the Fourth International. There is only one revolutionary tendency in the world and that is the International Committee of the Fourth International, fight- ing for independent revolutionary parties in every country. What Trotsky said of the Fourth Inter- national in 1938 has even greater force today: The Fourth Inter- national exists; it has neither to be proclaimed, nor created, nor reconstructed. What must now be done in each country is to develop the cadres of the movement through a serious struggle for dialectical materialism as in each country the Trotskyist movement takes up the fight for the political independence of the working class, its preparation for taking the power. It is in this way that revolu- tionary parties will be built and the world socialist revolution prepared. The Fourth Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International calls upon working-class revolution- aries everywhere to accept the challenge of the crisis opened up since August 15, 1971, to rally to the banner of the Fourth International in every country, and build the revolutionary parties which will lead the work- ing class to the conquest of power. Adopted unanimously by the Fourth Congress of the International Committee of the Fourth International. April 14, 1972. Manifesto from the 4th Congress of the ICFI

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