Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 08:31:56 +0200 From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se> Subject: M-I: Building an International Party This spring, important moves got under way in our continuing efforts to build an international party capable of coordinating the efforts of revolutionaries in many countries around the world. This latest step brings groups working in Poland and Russia, and possibly others depending on response to the call, into a wider framework of political and organizational international cooperation. The call is also available in Spanish (which I will be posting) and Portuguese (which I will forward to anyone who requests it). Cheers, Hugh =============================================================== Call for an International Meeting Workers International Party (WIP) - ex-USSR Initiative Group of the Workers Party (GIRP) - Poland International Secretariat of the International Workers League (IWL) - Fourth International Presentation This call for an international meeting is directed to all marxists revolutionary organizations that understand that recent world events have made it more urgent than ever to work for the building of a world revolutionary party, democratically centralized on the basis of a revolutionary programme, that follows the lessons of the four internationals which the workers moviment was able to build. Call for an International Meeting 1- On 26-27 January 1997 there was a meeting in Moscow between representatives of the local committees of the International Worker Party (POI) of Ukraine and Russia, a representative of the Group of Initiative for a Workers' Party (GIPR) of Poland, and a representative of the International Workers League - IV International (IWL-FI). The central issue discussed was the imperative necessity of taking concrete steps towards the construction of the World Revolutionary Workers' Party. 2- We consider that the objective and subjective processes in the world workers' movement demonstrate the necessity of continuing, extending and deepening the process begun by the Liaison Committee between the International Workers League - Fourth International (IWL-FI) and the Workers International for the Reconstruction of the IV International (WI-RFI). The current stage of the class struggle and the emergence of new revolutionary organisations in various countries create favourable conditions for this. 3- We consider the Statement of the Liaison Committee, agreed in Paris on 2-3 June 1995 (21 points), is an important and great step forward on the road to building the world revolutionary workers' party, generalizing the experience of a century and a half of revolutionary struggle of the working class against capitalists and bureaucrats; collecting the experience of revolutionary Marxism in the organizational frameworks of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Internationals. 4- Discussions began between the organisations signing this Statement around a series of points in the Paris Statement. Additional proposals, alterations and changes were also received from members and organisations in South Africa, Brazil, Great Britain, Poland and other countries. In the framework of the above, we also state that, despite the existing general agreement on the necessity of building a world revolutionary workers' party, there will be an open discussion on whether the Reconstruction of the IV International is the guide to the completion of this task, as the Paris Statement specifically states. 5- With the objective of deepening this discussion, and the discussions on program and problems of the revolutionary workers' movement, we invite all those who basically agree with the Statement to participate in them soon through the International Bulletin (programmatic) that will be published especially for this discussion, initially in English, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. 6- We propose to hold an International Meeting this year, with the participation of all organisations which consider the Paris Statement a starting point, with the aim of examining programmatic and practical problems. It would also consider the possibility of forming an international organizational framework which could unite, with equal rights and obligations, all the forces who agree to work for the construction of a workers' International based on the principle of democratic centralism and on the basis of a revolutionary program. 7- We propose to all the organisations to make their proposals on the date and place for the international meeting to be agreed in the future between all the participants. Organizing Committee of the International Workers' Party (POI) - Ukraine and Russia Group of Initiative for a Workers' Party (GIPR - Poland) SI of the International Workers League - Fourth International (IWL-FI) 21 February 1997 __________________________________ 21 Points Declaration of the Liasion Committee agreed at a meeting in Paris on 2-3 June 1995 between Workers International League-Fourth International (LIT-CI) and the Workers International-to Rebuild the Fourth International (WI-RFI) Introduction: Today, after the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, the ruling class and its servants in every country proclaim: 'Socialism has failed'. 'Marxism is dead', 'The working class is finished'. This is a lie. What collapsed in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe was not socialism, but Stalinism. In the conditions of the isolation of the young Soviet state, the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy led to the degeneration of the workers' state which the working class had won in the October Revolution of 1917, and finally to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This destructive work of the Stalinist bureaucracy was carried out on a world scale through the politics of the Communist Party. In the name of 'socialism in one country' and then 'peaceful coexistence between the capitalist and socialist systems' international Stalinism betrayed the revolutionary struggles of the working class, and this is what allowed capitalism to continue for so long. This work of Stalinism was very destructive to the working class and the labour movement. But the fall of Stalinism is not a victory for capitalism. The attempted restoration of capitalism in Russia and eastern Europe does not offer world capitalism a way to overcome its contradictions. On the contrary it brings enormous new problems. In the great struggles provoked by its historical crisis, the capitalist class no longer has the help of its main instrument within the workers' movement - Stalinism. The work of combatting Stalinism and building the world party of socialist revolution was begun by Trotsky and his comrades, who founded the Fourth International in 1938. the Fourth International has undergone a prolonged crisis, following the assasination of Trotsky by a Stalinist agent in 1940 and the physical liquidation of many others. In today's new situation following the fall of Stalinism the LIT-CI and the WI(RFI) declare that it is necessary and possible to take definite and positive steps towards the reconstruction of the Fourth International, to overcome past differences, and to renew at a higher level the political collaboration which we attempted in 1987. We present this declaration to explain the agreements on questions of programme and perspectives which already exist between the LIT-CI and the WI(RFI) and which are the foundation of the Liaison Committee of our two organisations to plan a common discussion, elaborate strategy and engage in common activity on all the main questions confronting the working class. We are confident that this basic agreement on the necessity of reconstructing the Fourth International can be important not only for those in the ranks of our two organisations; it forms the basis for initiating a process of discussion and common action by many organisations and militants who are finding in struggle that it is necessary to build on the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky in constructing the world party of socialist revolution. As part of this process of reconstrution of the working-class movement and of the Fourth International, we will actively explore the possibility of uniting the LIT-CI and the WI(RFI) in a single organisation for the reconstruction of the Fourth International. This is based on the following Constitutive Points of Declaration: A. We stand on the basis of the past conquests of the building of an international, Marxist working-class leadership. 1. We support the Resolutions and Theses of the first four Congresses of the Third (Communist) International, all its main and essential strategies in relation to imperialism, the capitalist state, democracy and reformism; the problems of taking power and of the dictatorship of the proletariat in relation to the peasantry and the struggle of the oppressed masses; the soviets; work in the unions; parliamentarism; and the tactic of the United Front. 2. We support the founding and the programme of the Fourth International in 1938, continuing the traditions of Bolshevik organisation and programme. This was made necessary by the definitive moving over of Stalinism to the bourgeois order. On this basis we reaffirm the need to build the Fourth International, in opposition to those who say the Fourth International is dead and proclaim the need to create a Fifth International. The reconstruction of the Fourth International is a task of the very first order in the period which has opened up after the collapse of Stalinism, which affords very favourable conditions for this task to be carried out. 3. The continuity of the Fourth International has been a contradictory process, consisting in the struggle for the continuity of Bolshevism against revisionist leaders who have acted as a transmission belt for Stalinism inside the Trotskyist movement. It was also necessary to wage a hard struggle against those tendencies which wanted to dissolve the Trotskyist parties into the bourgeois nationalist or petty-bourgeois movements or Social Democracy. The latter has been able to maintain its present strength inside the workers' movement because Stalinism destroyed the Communist International; however, it is impossible for Social Democracy at the present time to fulfil the function of Stalinism in controlling the workers' movement. B. The historical crisis of capitalism. 4. The work of reconstructing the Fourth International, the fight to resolve the crisis of working-class revolutionary leadership, means that Marxists trust develop the capacity to win the vanguard of the working class. For this we must base ourselves on a fundamental conclusion of Marxist analysis: in its period of decay, capitalism is a fetter on the productive forces of humanity. The developments of recent decades in technique and science . (which are extremely important in relation to the development of the productive forces), because they take place within the putrefying capitalist system, have unleashed a massive destruction against the most important element of the productive forces, the working class, and now against nature itself. The massive problems of danger to the survival of the planet's natural resources, of the expansion of deserts and famine, are not in themselves by any means ecological problems. They are the reality of the death agony of the capitalist system: production and investment only for the purpose of profit and capital accumulation are the opposite of the conscious and creative planned control and restraint which the future of humanity and its productive forces now demand. The longer this contradiction lasts, the more acute it becomes; the alternative of 'socialism or barbarism' is a daily threat to the lives of millions of people. 5. Capitalism in its highest and last stage - the imperialism of the 20th century - was able to survive the revolutionary struggles at the end of the second imperialist world war only because the Stalinist bureaucracy and its parties maintained political control over the working class. This permitted a relatively long period of world capitalist expansion, within which, under the surface, the historical contradiction between the productive forces and capitalist social relations, including the contradiction between world economy and the nation-state, accumulated and intensified. So the world capitalist crisis today is not a cyclical capitalist crisis from which there will be a 'recovery' and boom, but a new stage in the structural, historical crisis of the capitalist system. That is why, for example, today's mass unemployment is structural and permanent and not just an increase in the reserve army of labour. And that is why for capitalism the peoples of a whole continent, such as Africa, can be virtually written off. In this situation, even in the advanced capitalist countries, not only can capitalism no longer respond to the struggles of the working class through reforms and concessions, but it finds it absolutely necessary to attack, to take back the past gains, reforms and democratic rights won in past struggles. Against these attacks we support unconditionally all the struggles of the workers who confront them. At the same time we declare that we can only advance in the construction of Bolshevik parties of the Fourth International if we are able to take our part in these struggles, big and small, confronting the enemies of the working class and fighting for the leadership of the masses. The traditional bureaucratic and parliamentary (reformist and ex-Stalinist) leaderships in the working class join with the capitalist class and its state in conducting this attack on the working class in accordance with their nature as the instruments of capitalism within the working-class movement. As the needs of capitalism change, so these leaderships change, now more and more openly abandoning any claim to be socialist or even working-class. C. The fall of Stalinism. 6. We state that since the fall of the Berlin Wall there has been, inside both the WI(RFI) and the LIT-Cl, a fertile debate about the nature of those states which Trotskyism has historically defined as degenerated bureaucratic workers' states (ex-USSR) or bureaucratically deformed workers' states (Hungary, China, Vietnam, Cuba etc.). The discussion is more about what these states are today, after the events of 1989-91, than about what they were in the past. This discussion involves the emphasis put on certain tasks (anti-bureaucratic, anti-imperialist, socialist) in the development of the revolution in these states. We believe that we are faced with a far-reaching theoretical, historical, programmatic and political debate and the Liaison Committee should initiate this. This discussion will take a long time but we know that both organization have agreements in programatic and political points like: - The downfall of the bureaucracies through the revolutionary action of the masses was a highly positive development because it destroyed the world Stalinist apparatus, although the process of total destruction of the bureaucracy has not been completed through the control of the working class over its organisations. - What has happened in the former USSR and those countries where the bourgeoisie has been expropriated is the destruction of the reactionary Stalinist utopia of 'socialism in one country'. At the same time the theoretical programme of the Permanent Revolution is confirmed in relation to the world nature of the socialist revolution and of the role of the working class. - We categorically reject any position that substitutes other agencies for the working class as the historic subject of the revolution. The working class is the only class capable of building a Bolshevik party at the national and international levels and successfully achieving the world socialist revolution, while fulfilling a number of democratic, national, anti-imperialist and socialist tasks. - In the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy, history has pronounced its final verdict on the revisionist idea that the Stalinist bureaucracy, or any section of it, could have a revolutionary nature. The break-up of the bureaucracy and its parties, and the struggle of the working class in every country to recover its class conscicousness and rebuild its independent class movement, constitute an unprecedented and complex process, which can be understood only through continuous political intervention and analysis. This is the joint work which must be co-ordinated by the Liaison Committee. At the centre of this work must be the struggle for the development of Marxist theory and of the international strategy of the working class; and this means the fight to build independent revolutionary parties of the working class, a task which cannot be achieved except in the framework of the rebuilding of the Fourth International. - We defend the revolutionary process which brought about the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the break from imperialism as in China, Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere. Above all we defend and support the October Revolution in which the working class in its workers' councils (soviets), led by the Bolshevik Party, smashed the capitalist state and established the workers' state. - We emphasise the central importance of the fight against privatisation and the general process of capitalist restoration which have been instigated by imperialism and the bureaucracy in these states. Today it is absolutely necessary to wage a powerfuI campaign in defence of socialism, against the ideological offensive of imperialism and its agencies which claim that socialism is dead with the collapse of the Stalinist regimes. This campaign is decisive because the ideological offensive of imperialism relies, on the one hand, on the Stalinist dictatorships whose crimes have sullied the name of socialism; on the other hand, on the fact that the revolutionary process in eastern Europe has not yet given rise to revolutionary socialist alternatives. This requires a struggle to face the new theoretical tasks posed by these new historical developments and, in facing these tasks, to develop Marxist theory as the guide to our own action and that of the working class. 7. Defending the conquests of the October Revolution and other revolutions which expropriated the burgeoisie has nothing to do with defending the grave-diggers of these revolutions - the Stalinist regimes. We denounce in particular as a capitulation to Stalinism those positions wich seek to identify the defense of the gains of the Cuban Revolution with the defnce of the Castro regime, as does the leadership of the United Secretariat (Usec). Castroism in collaboration with imperialism is restoring capitalism in Cuba. We believe that the struggle to defend the two principal gains of the Cuban Reolution, independece from imperialism and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie (now heavily compromised by the process of restoration), means the fight for a political revolution in Cuba. Such a revolution would bring down the bureaucratic regime led by Fidel Castro and put the working class and the Cuban people in power, to rule on the basis of working-class democracy, revoking the agreements made by Fidel Castro with imperialism. It would replace the present economic planning in the service of the bureaucracy with a plan controlled by the working class and directed to servicing the needs of producers and consumers. D. With the oppressed peoples, against imperialism 8. We distinguish between the nationalism of the oppressed and the nationalism of the oppressor. We are unconditionally on the side of the oppressed nations when they are attacked, and above all we defend unconditionally the struggle of opressed nations for self-determination. We are unconditionally on the side of the Kurdish People, the Palestinians, the Bosnian nation, the Irish, the Basques, the Catalans, the Chechnyans and all those peoples who are fighting to assert the right to self-determination or who are asserting it. In the former Yugoslavia, in April 1992, the majority ot the Bosnian population voted for independence. Faced with this the Greater-Serbian nationalist government of Milosevic launched a ferocious war of occupation and 'ethnic cleansing'. Our political, strategic objective is a Socialist Federation of the Balkans. But in order to achieve this we have to defend the right of the Bosnian people to their independence and territorial integrity. Without the free decision of peoples, any Federation will be nothing more nor less than an annexation. 9. In spite of the basic political differences that exist between Trotskyism and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist movements, we defend from attack by imperialism and the bureaucracy all liberation movements and all those states that have achieved their political independence from imperialism. We take up especially the unconditional defence of those who find themselves under direct military attack or the threat of military intervention from the imperialist powers, and we defend unconditionally the right of national independence and self-determination. Only the free association of free peoples can achieve the final aim of the abolition of frontiers. On no account does this defence mean that we give political support to the national bourgeois governments of such countries. We defend the national liberation movements unconditionally at the same time fighting for the working class and the oppressed masses to develop their own, independent methods of struggle. We reject the line which appears to put these class forces on an equal footing with the proletariat (the Stalinist 'bloc of four classes') but is in fact the subordination of the working class to the national bourgeoisie. The democratic tasks, including national liberation, cannot be achieved except through the leading role of the proletariat and then its revolutionary dictatorship. We reject any alliance, permanent or strategic, with bourgeois or petty-bourgeois forces. This does not mean that we would exclude anti-imperialist actions. We consider these essential. 10. We denounce the use of the institutions of bourgeois democracy by imperialism, the bourgeois nationalists and the bureaucracy, to deflect the revolutionary processes into the blind alley of elections. We denounce the present-day reformists who act as agents of the reactionary politics of imperialism in defending the supposed 'universal values' of bourgeois democracy. We make use of democratic liberties that are the gains of the masses. We defend these liberties when they are attacked and we struggle for their extension. In relation to the bourgeois electoral process, when we participate we do this in such a way as to publicise our programme widely and to denounce this bourgeois institution. 11. We denounce especially the politics of imperialism which are carried out through its instrument, the United Nations. In Bosnia, the UN's imperialist forces are used to destroy Bosnia's national independence, to impose a settlement, which breaks up the working class and rewards the fascist Greater-Serbian nationalist aggression. The imperialists hoped this would be the first of a series of advances by fascism and the extreme right in Europe. Yeltsin's return to the most bloody and brutal Stalinist methods of extermination in Chechnya is the natural consequence of the fact that he is the representative of imperialism's interests in restoring capitalism in the former USSR. That is why the UN stands aside from the crushing of Chechnya, and US imperialism continues to provide billions to Yeltsin. Their embargo on Serbia is a fraud; at the same time they provide support to Yeltsin, who suppresses Chechnya and is Milosevic's firmest supporter. In Haiti, on the pretext of restoring democracy; in Somalia on the pretence of dealing with famine and civil war: everywhere imperialist military intervention to prevent the possibility of revolution, in reality to ensure the continuation of the unbridled imperialist exploitation which is the cause of the chaos and destruction now inflicted on hundreds of millions of people. The imposition of military intervention and dictatorship for the preservation of this chaos, destruction and disorder is called ... a new world order! 12. We denounce the peace agreemente in the Middle East, those of Mandela in South Africa and those which try to bring to an end the struggle for the unity of Ireland. All these have a counter-revolutionary character because they signify a betrayal of the historic claims of the masses in these countries and regions. They all seek the same objectives as the Contadora and Esquipulas agreements in Central America: to demobilise the masses, betraying their historic claims. The Sandinistas, acting as officials of the government of Violeta Chamorro, the police of the Mandela government repressing black strikers, and the police of the PLO repressing the Palestinian mobilisations, leave no doubt about the character of these agreements and who are the beneficiaries. E. The workers' struggle and its methods. 13. We are convinced that the demand supported by the Founding Conference of the Fourth International - for a workers' and peasants' government - is a correct demand for the working class. It must be an integral part of a programme of transitional demands, i.e. a programme through which the working class, in the course of struggle, preparing and building for the struggle for power, will break with its treacherous traditional leaderships. To demand a workers' and peasants' government is not to place any confidence whatever in these traditional leaderships and parties. Only by posing the demand - break with the bourgeoisie and form a government based on the workers' and people's organisations with an anti-capitalist programme - can the demand for a workers' and peasants' government have a revolutionary content. 14. We affirm that Popular Front governments of collaboration between the leadership of the working class and bourgeois parties (similar to that which Lula tried to construct in Brazil) are bourgeois governments and as such are counter-revolutionary. The existence of a Popular Front governnent confronts the revolutionary party with an exceptional challenge and opportunity. This is not because such a government may be progressive but because the treacherous leadership, by placing themselves openly in the bourgeois governments, makes it easier to expose them in front of the masses for what they really are: agents of counter-revolution inside the workers' and people's movement. 15. We are in favour of all the methods of political struggle that the workers' movement has adopted through its experience, and we are against those petty-bourgeois groups which try to substitute for these struggles isolated actions of the masses or individual terrorism or elitist guerrilla war. We defend those who struggle with these methods when they are suppresped by the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy, but we reject their methods. 16. We are with Marx when he says that 'the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself', but for this the working class needs to have the power to decide its destiny. Against the bureaucratic apparatuses and against the leaders who speak in the name of the workers and the masses, we say: it is the workers who must decide; fight for the widest democracy at all levels, in the struggles in the unions, in the struggles for the land. 17. The parties we fight to build are revolutionary workers' parties, sections of the reconstructed Fourth International, organised on the principles of democratic centralism in all countries. Democratic centralism is the very opposite of the bueaucratic centralism typified by Stalinism, it which the central apparatus dictates to the rank and file. We are against all those false theories which say that the responsibility for revolutionary leadership can be left in the hands of the traditional reformist and ex-Stalinist parties or by petty-bourgeois 'left' leaderships. 18. We condemn the method of slander, violence and fraudulent accusations designed to silence and expel political opposition. In particular we condemn the lies used against M. Varga (Balazs Nagy), J. Hansen, G. Novack, T. Wohlforth, N. Fields, R. Napuri, Juan Pablo Bacherer, Pedro Carrasquedo and now against Cliff Slaughter by David North's party. We condemn the method of 'vale todo' (physical aggression, robbery, the taking-over of premises etc.) to settle internal debates in revolutionlary organisations. We condemn all these methods that are inherited from Stalinism, and affirm that the Fourth International will only be able to rebuild itself if it is capable of constructing and reconstructing not only a programme, an organisation based upon authentic Marxist revolutionary politics, but also a proletarian morality. F. Our objectives. 19. The Liaison Committee has as its objective the reconstruction of the Fourth International in and through the reconstruction of the working-class movement as a whole. Both our organisations reiterate that we shall deal with each other with total mutual loyalty and will ask the same from any other organisation with which we may in future collaborate to advance towards the rebuilding of the Fourth International. We reject the methods of sects which seek to approach other revolutionary organisations only as a means of developing fractional work or as a means of constructing a permanent forum of discussion. 20. In line with this objective, the common elaboration of a programme, based on developing the Transitional Programme for the working class's present needs, is a key task. It is a difficult task, but one we must tackle fearlessly. The party is the programme, as Trotsky emphasised. 21. The common activity, in the class struggle of our two organisations is a priority task of the Liaison Committee, in order to develop closer political relations and to elaborate the programme. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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