From The Archives Of The Class Struggle-The Role Of A Revolutionary Party by Judy Beishon

The Role Of A Revolutionary Party by Judy Beishon

Introduction

OVER 150 years ago, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels explained the need to overthrow capitalism and bring in a new form of society, socialism.

This raises the question: How exactly is capitalism to be overthrown and the transformation made to socialism? Lenin and his co-revolutionaries in Russia provided the answer at the beginning of the 20th century, by building the Bolshevik Party. The Bolsheviks led the Russian workers in overthrowing the Tsarist state and bringing in a workers’ state based on a planned economy.

However, since then, despite capitalism causing an increasing level of suffering, poverty and environmental degradation on the planet and despite titanic workers’ struggles in many countries at different times, the overthrow of capitalism leading to a democratic workers’ state has not yet again been accomplished.

Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the 1917 Russian revolution, summed up the reason in 1938 when he wrote: "The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership" (from The Transitional Programme, written for the founding congress of the Fourth International). These words are as true today as they were then.

Discussion on the need for a revolutionary party and its form of organisation is very important today, especially as many young people regard themselves as ‘anti-capitalist’ and are interested in socialist ideas, but have a degree of mistrust towards political parties. This is hardly surprising given the bureaucratic and undemocratic methods of the main capitalist political parties and the attacks they make on living standards when in power.

Young people can also be wary of organisation itself and of leadership bodies, sometimes because of their awareness of the past existence of the repressive and bureaucratic Stalinist regimes, sometimes for other reasons such as an experience of the remote leaderships of many trade unions. As a result of factors like these, young people can be driven towards the idea of spontaneous, ‘unorganised’ action and loose networks.

However, although there are times when spontaneous action can spur events along, there are great limitations to this type of action. It provides no forum for democratic debate about what is to be done and how to develop it afterwards.

It could leave people involved in the action at the mercy of state repression, through lack of stewarding and planning. And it is not an efficient form of action. When a large number of people protest in a planned and united manner, the impact is likely to be far greater than it would be with disparate action in which every individual acts separately or in small groups.

This pamphlet deals with the role and building of a revolutionary party based on the organisational form developed by the Bolshevik Party: Democratic Centralism. This does not mean that the methods of organisation and role of such a party are appropriate for broader workers’ organisations or parties. A new mass workers’ party in Britain would be a great step forward. It could help develop workers’ struggles and speed up the rehabilitation of socialist ideas.

In such a party, a federal, democratic form of organisation which would allow as many workers’ groups and organisations, left organisations and individuals to become involved, would be most appropriate initially. However, the urgent need for a new mass workers’ party does not contradict the need to also develop the forces of revolutionary Marxism in Britain and internationally.

In fact revolutionary parties have often worked as part of larger, broader parties for a period of time and this is likely to be the case when new mass workers’ parties are formed in the future.

Role of a revolutionary party

REGARDLESS OF whether a revolutionary party exists, when conditions for workers and the poor become intolerable, struggles and at a certain stage revolutionary movements will take place. The end result, in the absence of a revolutionary party is clear from examples given later – the revolution will fail or will not lay the basis for socialism. So a revolutionary party is essential, but what role should it play?

A revolutionary party does not create the conditions that lead to workers’ struggles, but when those conditions exist, the party can play a key role in speeding up the development of workers’ consciousness and in determining the outcome of their struggles. Trotsky, in his book The History of the Russian Revolution, wrote: "Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box but the steam".

Firstly, a revolutionary party must base itself on a Marxist analysis of past workers’ struggles and the lessons arising from them. In particular, the writings of Marx himself, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky are vital aids in learning from past events and how to use the tool of a Marxist approach. In capitalist society, we are taught history at school from the standpoint and interests of the ruling class; ie the capitalist class.

The university historians who write school text books pretend to be objective and factual, when in most cases they are interpreting historical events and struggles from the standpoint of capitalism. A revolutionary party therefore has to carry out a different type of education entirely: the viewing of historical events from a working class and a Marxist point of view.

Secondly, members of a revolutionary party must themselves be part of the day-to-day activities and struggles of the workers and young people around them, so they can learn from experiencing events first-hand, gain the respect of those involved through participating alongside them and so they can assess the general consciousness at each stage. The party is then in a position to work out what tasks are necessary to take a struggle forward.

The working class (and the middle class) does not form a uniform layer in any country. There are always differences in material circumstances, political understanding and outlook.

People do not always draw the same conclusions at the same time. A revolutionary party can assess the stages of consciousness of the different layers and put forward a programme that plays a unifying role; that draws struggles together as far as possible, widens support for them and raises consciousness on the next steps that are needed.

The party explains the nature of the capitalist class, that it is also not a uniform layer but has its own contradictions and failings as a class and that it can be split and defeated. In doing all this, the party uses its collective knowledge of past lessons and the future tasks that are necessary, but must skilfully apply this knowledge, taking into account the level and stage of workers’ consciousness and also workers’ traditions.

How important is a party?

It is only necessary to look at the lessons of revolutions that have failed, to understand why a revolutionary party is vital.

Germany

AFTER THE Russian Revolution, the German working class tried to overthrow capitalism in Germany in 1918. However, the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party had a reformist ideology – they believed that capitalism should be changed only gradually – and this led to defeat of the revolution and the murder of the great revolutionary leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

In 1923, economic collapse and the occupation of the Ruhr by France created a major crisis and an opportunity for the working class to sweep German capitalism aside. This time, the Communist Party (CP) had widespread support amongst workers, but the CP leaders failed to prepare them adequately for the task of changing society and to give leadership when the situation was most ripe for carrying out this task.

Less than a decade later, with a background of the world slump in 1929 to 1933, the situation again became critical. The middle class was ruined in the slump and workers’ living standards fell. Fearful of a new revolution, the ruling class poured funds into the Nazi Party.

When the Nazis received six million votes in the general election of 1930, Trotsky and his co-thinkers, recently expelled from the Communist International, called on workers organised in the German CP to go into a ‘united front’ with those in the Social Democratic Party to defeat the fascists. But such was the political degeneration of the Communist International that their leaders described the Social Democrats as ‘Social Fascists’ and refused a united front.

The Communist International even advocated that the CP should unite with the fascists against the Social Democrats! German CP leaders took the fatal position that Hitler would be no worse than the government they had already, and anyway, if Hitler got into power, it would just spur the workers on to wipe out the fascists.

Nor did the Social Democratic leaders give leadership. While workers instinctively started to form defence groups in factories and among the unemployed, the Social Democratic leaders refused to accept that the fascists were a real danger. For instance, one of them, Sohiffrin, said: "Fascism is definitely dead; it will never rise again". They called for calm and restraint. The terrible failures of the workers’ leaders led to the victory of Hitler in 1933 and the smashing of a mighty working-class movement with a Marxist tradition going back 75 years.

Spain

IN SPAIN, between 1931 and 1937, workers and peasants tried several times to overthrow capitalism and feudalism, gaining at one stage control of two-thirds of the country.

They were organised in four main parties: the Anarchists, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the smaller POUM. However, despite the revolutionary aspirations of their members, the leaders of these parties failed to take the necessary steps to consolidate the gains of the workers and peasants.

They failed to explain the need to get rid of the old state apparatus and the necessary steps to achieve socialism. Instead, they all fell behind the line of the Stalinist communist leaders, who argued the need for two stages, firstly a period of development of capitalist democracy in Spain, and only after that the raising of socialism.

For them, the task was therefore not for the working class to take power, but for power to be handed back to representatives of capitalism. Tragically, this paved the way for the victory of the fascist Franco in the Spanish Civil War, who proceeded to murder thousands of trade unionists and working-class activists and to bring in 40 years of brutal fascist dictatorship.

Lessons of Chile

THE POPULAR Unity coalition that came to power in Chile in 1970 was backed by a powerful workers’ movement. Under great pressure to deliver improvements in living standards, the government went further than its leaders had planned.

Key industries such as copper mining were nationalised, a rents and prices freeze was introduced, wages and pensions increased, a degree of land reform carried out and free milk given to school children. Faced with these measures, the enraged capitalist class was preparing a coup to smash the Popular Unity government.

The situation became very favourable for the wiping out of capitalism entirely. The capitalist class was demoralised and unsure of the path ahead, the middle class supported the Popular Unity government and the working-class movement was strengthening. A revolutionary party would have supported workers’ demands for arms to defeat the counter-revolutionary forces that were preparing. It would also have supported the organisation of councils of workers, peasants, soldiers, small shopkeepers etc, to become the real bodies of power.

However, the masses were held back by the Socialist and Communist Party leaders of the Popular Unity coalition. These ‘leaders’ insisted on remaining within capitalist legality and left the levers of power in the hands of the capitalist class. They left the capitalist army, judges, police and press intact. The end result was the victory of the brutal dictator Pinochet and the subsequent murder of all working-class activists, socialists and communists.

Unfortunately, many other examples can be given of failed revolutions with tragic consequences: the Hungarian Commune in 1919, the Italian workers in 1920, the Chinese revolution in 1925-7, Portugal in 1974-6 and many more. In the Portuguese revolution, 70% of industry, the banks and finance houses were in the hands of the state. The British newspaper, The Times, announced that capitalism was dead in Portugal. But the Socialist and Communist leaders played a counter-revolutionary role through their failure to complete the revolution, thereby ensuring that capitalism remained intact.

There have also been revolutions as a result of guerrilla struggle, that succeeded in overthrowing capitalism and ended up introducing a planned economy, such as in China from 1949 onwards and Cuba from 1959. But the revolutionary parties that led these movements did not set out with the aim of building socialism and as they were based on the peasantry rather than the working class, they were unable to bring about democratic socialist societies (see ‘Role of the Working Class’ below).

Marxists described the resulting regimes as ‘deformed workers’ states’, because although they were able to raise living standards dramatically for the mass of the people for a period of time on the basis of having a planned economy, they were highly repressive regimes which were not based on workers’ democracy.



The Bolsheviks

CONTRAST THESE above examples with the events in Russia in 1917. Lenin realised that for Russian workers to defeat the dictatorial Tsarist state, an organised and disciplined force would be necessary. He spearheaded the building of the Bolshevik Party as a party that educated its members on past struggles, reached decisions through democratic discussion and debate at all levels of the party and acted in a unified manner when carrying out its campaigns and actions.

Leon Trotsky wrote in his pamphlet The Class, The Party and The Leadership: "The Bolshevik Party in March 1917 was followed by an insignificant minority of the working class and furthermore there was discord in the party itself… Within a few months, by basing itself upon the development of the revolution, the party was able to convince the majority of workers of the correctness of its slogans. This majority organised into Soviets, was able in its turn to attract the soldiers and peasants".

Following the success of the Bolsheviks in winning the allegiance of the advanced layer of the working class, they were able to lead the workers to victory in the October revolution. The Tsarist state apparatus was completely removed and replaced with a democratic workers’ state, based on a planned economy.

The workers’ state degenerated politically under the leadership of Stalin due to its isolation (following the failure of revolutions in Germany, Austria and Hungary), added to by the hardship of civil war and problems of economic under-development. However, this degeneration does not negate the fact that the Bolsheviks carried out a successful revolution, a titanic event in human history that transformed the lives of hundreds of millions, and the lessons that can be learnt from their experience.



Role of the Working Class

ANALYSIS OF past struggles and revolutions shows that only the working class can play a leading role amongst the oppressed masses in a revolution that can both overthrow capitalism and bring in socialism. This is due to workers’ role in capitalist production; they are forced to sell their ability to work in order to survive, which creates similar problems and aims among them.

Workers in different industries or services often face similar working conditions and wage levels and sometimes job insecurity. The middle class - the ‘petit-bourgeoisie’ - are the middle layers in society that are not wage labourers, ie the self-employed, small farmers, small business people, etc. Professional workers (teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc) and managers also tend to be regarded as ‘middle class’ even though they are usually employees working for a monthly wage.

Increasingly, as capitalism’s economic contradictions and crises deepen, most people in the middle layers of society are forced closer to the conditions of the working class and so share many of their problems and aspirations.

The middle layer as a class however, due to its relative diversity, and in rural areas due to its scattered and isolated conditions, has never proved capable of playing an independent role as a class. A layer are drawn to support the capitalist class and the maintenance of capitalism, but a majority can be won to support a revolutionary movement led by the working class and can play a very important role, if the workers’ movement (led by a revolutionary party) adopts a programme that appeals to them.

So a revolutionary party must base itself mainly on the working class – the ‘proletariat’ – because of the leading role this class must play. And in turn, to play its necessary role, the working class needs a revolutionary party.

Although the working class is less heterogeneous than the middle class, it still consists of different layers: old and young, skilled and unskilled, different ethnic origins and so on. The ruling class tries to exploit these divisions, for example by sometimes encouraging racial division or by using different wage levels. Workers need to unite in an organised manner in a revolutionary party so they can overcome these divisions as far as possible under the present system and unite in the struggles that are necessary to develop their class interests.

As Trotsky said in his article ‘What Next?’: "The proletariat acquires an independent role only at that moment when, from a social class in itself, it becomes a political class for itself. This cannot take place otherwise than through the medium of a party. The party is that historical organ by means of which the class becomes class conscious".



The programme of the party

"The interests of the class cannot be formulated otherwise than in the shape of a programme; the programme cannot be defended otherwise than by creating the party" (Trotsky, ‘What Next?’)

TO BE fully armed for future events, a revolutionary party needs to have the programme of revolutionary Marxism, which is a body of ideas based on the first four congresses of the Communist International, the founding documents of the Fourth International and the accumulated experience of the Trotskyist movement since then (which means at present, particularly the experience of the Committee for a Workers’ International).

As well as being based on ideas and perspectives, the programme should include demands which are developed at each stage of the class struggle. These should not just echo the mood and existing demands of workers, but while fully taking these into account, needs to include steps ahead so it can raise consciousness, both on the immediate tasks necessary and on the need for socialism.

Aspects of the programme have to be regularly revised and updated, to keep up with events as they take place and they must be tested out in practise. James Cannon, (One of the founders of the Trotskyist movement in the USA in the 1930s) in his article ‘The Revolutionary Party’ made the point that the programme has to be continually taken to workers for "consideration, adoption, action and verification".

Some parties believe that it is sufficient to simply proclaim themselves in favour of revolution to be a revolutionary party. Most such parties have historically been ‘centrist’ parties, that is, parties in which the leaders made revolutionary-sounding speeches, but when it came to decisive moments in a struggle, would switch to a reformist position and fail to take the struggle forward. They would waver between reform and revolution, not least because their parties were not based on a full Marxist revolutionary programme.



How is a party built?

THE BUILDING of a revolutionary party is far from automatic; it must be consistently and consciously built by its members. It usually begins with small numbers. A small force cannot easily have widespread influence, so the weight of its work has to be geared to socialist propaganda and to discussing its ideas with individuals met during day-to-day life and political activities. The work of a larger party will be different, in that it is more likely to be playing a key role in events taking place, and therefore has responsibilities of leadership as well as of propaganda and agitation.

How is a small party built into a large one? This is dependent on both a correct Marxist approach and orientation and on major events and upheavals in society.

Trotsky wrote:

"During a revolution, ie when events move swiftly, a weak party can quickly grow into a mighty one provided it lucidly understands the course of the revolution and possesses staunch cadres that do not become intoxicated with phrases and are not terrorised by persecution.

But such a party must be available prior to the revolution inasmuch as the process of educating the cadres requires a considerable period of time and the revolution does not afford this time." (The Class, the Party and the Leadership).

As well as growing through the direct recruitment of individuals and groups, revolutionary parties can at certain times be built through fusions with other organisations. However a successful fusion depends on whether principled agreement can be reached beforehand on the key contemporary issues of perspectives, programme, orientation and strategy.

Whatever size the party is, hard work and self-sacrifice by its members are indispensable. Trotsky again: "You can have revolutionaries both wise and ignorant, intelligent or mediocre. But you cannot have revolutionaries who lack the willingness to smash obstacles, who lack devotion and the spirit of-sacrifice" (1929, How Revolutionaries are Formed).



What type of party

THE BOLSHEVIKS in Russia, under the driving force of Lenin, used Democratic Centralism as their form of organisation. Democratic Centralism has nothing in common with the organisational forms used by Stalinist parties.

They were repressive, bureaucratic and undemocratic parties. In Russia, the Stalin-led Communist Party inherited the organisational form spearheaded by Lenin but then moved away from it to suit the interests of the growing layer of bureaucrats. Democratic Centralism, on the other hand, is the most democratic form of organisation ever known. Using it, the party thrives on discussion and debate, but when it comes to action, can act in an organised and united manner. There has never been a more effective form of organisation.

Democratic Centralism means firstly that all issues concerning the party are discussed as fully as members think necessary at every level of the party. This does not mean that the party becomes just a talking shop with endless debates. Discussions should be conducted with the aims of the party in mind; particularly for political education and for arriving at decisions on the party programme and tasks.

Every member should have the right to express their views at their local branch meeting. It is important that members are always trying to develop their own political education and abilities, so that collectively the right decisions can be arrived at. The main political ideas and perspectives of the party, as well as all key organisational matters, should be decided by a conference (usually annual) of branch delegates elected by rank-and-file members.

Centralism, the second part of the formula, essentially means that once party members have arrived at a decision at any level, by majority vote, they should then act together to implement the decision.

Whether there are five, twenty or many more members of a revolutionary party in a town, is it more effective for them to intervene in local events as individuals or as a team?

The answer is clearly the latter. And on a national scale, when up against the highly organised and centralised capitalist state with its long experience of countering challenge from below, unity of workers in action through participation in a revolutionary party is vital.

Every member must have the right to oppose an idea or course of action during discussions inside the party, but once a decision by majority vote is made, that member should act according to the decision outside the party. This does not take away their right to continue to argue their point of view in party meetings and to seek to change a decision, organising a tendency or faction with others of similar view if felt necessary.

At some stages a party will need to place greater emphasis on the need for discussion and debate and at other times, action might be more of a priority, depending on the concrete situation. Democratic Centralism is not a rigid formula. As well as being applied flexibly depending on the stage of a party, it will inevitably have a different expression in different countries, depending on factors such as the size, experience and present work of the party, the authority of its leaders, the political situation and workers’ traditions.

There are sometimes questions and discussion about how party members should relate to each other. What should be the norms of behaviour and how should party resources be allocated to enable the participation of members with special needs?

On these issues, it has to be recognised that the party, operating with all the limitations imposed on its members by the capitalist system, cannot be a model of the future socialist society. It is up to the membership to decide on the allocation of resources and on the boundaries for acceptable behaviour, while understanding that it is not possible to build the party with a membership that is untouched by the problems of society today.



Party Leadership

IN HIS article: ‘The Class, the Party and the Leadership’ Trotsky explained the necessary relation between the three layers in the article’s title. He said that the working class leads, and is in turn led by its party, which is in turn led by its leadership. He added that the party membership and leadership are tested and selected during the course of debates and events, to achieve the best possible tool for the working class to transform society.

A revolutionary party needs leaders at every level of its structure who are capable of giving a political and organisational lead to party work. Rank-and-file members who are immersed in political work in a local area do not always have enough information or time to be able to assess and have an overview of the situation regionally, nationally and internationally.

They elect those who they see as the most capable politically and organisationally to give leadership on the basis of gaining a wider overview and deeper insight than they themselves can always maintain. Rank-and-file members must always assess the quality of leadership provided by those they have elected so that changes can be made if necessary. All elected leaders must be fully accountable to those who elected them and subject to instant recall.

A good leadership of a revolutionary party depends on having a politically educated and critical rank and file, because such a rank and file is most able to select the best candidates for leading positions and to change them if necessary. Even the greatest leaders need the check of those at the root of their party. Without this check, leadership committees or individual leaders could eventually succumb to reformist or ultra-left pressures and take the whole party down the wrong road.

However, while the membership must be critical, Trotsky made the important point that:

"The maturity of each member of the party expresses itself particularly in the fact that he does not demand from the party regime more than it can give…it is necessary, of course, to fight against every individual mistake of the leadership, every injustice and the like.

But it is necessary to estimate these ‘injustices’ and ‘mistakes’ not by themselves but in connection with the general development of the party both on a national and international scale. A correct judgement and a feeling for proportion in politics is an extremely important thing."

Leaders should have no financial privileges over and above necessary expenses and leaders and public representatives of the party should not take more than the average wage of a skilled worker. Party leaders should in fact set an example to all members through their own willingness to make sacrifices of time and money, and not ask members to make greater sacrifices than they themselves are prepared to make.

In between meetings of party bodies at every level, leadership bodies have to take decisions to take the party work forward, so members need to have confidence in their leaders' ability to arrive at correct decisions. This can only be developed through ongoing testing of leaders in the course of events and debates. It is also important to sometimes have some renewal in the composition of leadership bodies, so that they do not become stale and set in their ways.

Some of the norms to preserve democracy in a revolutionary party are also applicable to elected leaders in a socialist society after a successful revolution. Prior to the Russian Revolution, Lenin laid down some essential conditions to aid the prevention of the development of bureaucracy after the revolution: All officials and leaders to be accountable to those who elect them; to be subject to recall and de-election at any time if rank-and-file members view it as necessary; to only take the average wage of an ordinary worker; and for there to be regular rotation of elected leaders or officers.

Internationalism … and after the revolution

ALTHOUGH CAPITALISM is based on nation states, the capitalist economy is interlinked throughout the world. No socialist state could survive for a prolonged time, or begin to solve the problems on the planet in isolation.

So socialism is needed internationally, which means that a revolutionary party is necessary internationally. It is invaluable and important for revolutionary parties in different countries of the world to participate together in a revolutionary international. This enables them to make a more complete analysis of world events through discussion with sister parties and to share the lessons of party-building experiences. It can mean that potentially fatal mistakes are avoided in individual countries.

The role of a revolutionary international will also be very important after a successful revolution, through appealing to workers throughout the world to support the revolution and to refuse to be used against it in military ventures by their own capitalist classes, and through making sure that the revolution spreads as rapidly as possible to other countries.

Nor would the role of a revolutionary party in a single country end after a successful revolution. The party would need to arm all workers with its experience and knowledge to ensure the defeat of any counter-revolutionary attempts by the small minority in society that made up the old ruling class.

The party would also help ensure that the new socialist society develops along healthy lines, with fully democratic workers’ control and management of production and services on the basis of a planned economy. Just as a midwife keeps a check on the health of a new-born baby once she or he has assisted the delivery, so a revolutionary party helps to nurture and lead the new society that has come into being following a successful revolution.

Then, although all the problems created by centuries of capitalism will not be wiped out overnight, it will be possible to rapidly create a society presently unimaginable by a majority of people worldwide; one in which the living standards of every human being can be raised to a decent level and beyond; in which the environment can be safeguarded and damage reversed; and in which the talents of every person can be used to further develop society onto an unprecedented plane.



Reading list:

The Class, The Party and The Leadership, Leon Trotsky

The Revolutionary Party, James Cannon

The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, James Cannon

The History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky

Leninism Under Lenin, Marcel Liebman

The Spanish Revolution 1931-9, Leon Trotsky

The Struggle against Fascism in Germany, Leon Trotsky

The Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution, Leon Trotsky

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International -Perspectives and Tasks of the Coming European Revolution-Resolution Adopted by the Fifteenth Anniversary Plenum of the Socialist Workers Party-November 2, 1943

Markin comment:

Below this general introduction is another addition to the work of creating a new international working class organization-a revolutionary one worthy of the the slogan in the headline.

Markin comment (repost from September 2010):

Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
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Perspectives and Tasks of the Coming European Revolution-Resolution Adopted by the Fifteenth Anniversary Plenum of the Socialist Workers Party-
November 2, 1943

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Adopted: November 2, 1943
First Published: December, 1943
Source:Fourth International, New York, Volume 4, No. 11, pp. 329-34..
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Daniel Gaido and David Walters, December, 2005
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2005. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the address of this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.

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This plenum of the National Committee meets one year after the Tenth National Convention of the Socialist Workers Party. The Political Resolution unanimously adopted by that convention set forth the basic position of the Fourth International and the Socialist Workers Party on the imperialist war and the tasks of the proletarian world revolution. [See SWP National Committee: The National Question and Europe.

Everything that has happened since has operated to confirm our Marxist analysis of the world situation and to reinforce our political and strategic conclusions based upon the revolutionary conviction that the workers in alliance with the peasants end colonial peoples will prove capable of overthrowing capitalism and organizing the foundations of an international socialist society of peace, security, human solidarity and unbounded progress.

The course of world events during the past year can be summarized in four major developments of historical significance. These are: (1) the downfall of Mussolini and the collapse of Italian fascism, signalizing the beginning of the Italian, and consequently, the European revolution; (2) the growing preponderance of Anglo-American military power over that of the Axis camp, which has already exposed Wall Street’s aspirations to replace Nazi Germany as master and oppressor of Europe and thrown into bold relief the counter-revolutionary role of American imperialism on the world arena; (3) the colossal victories of the Red Army; (4) the formal dissolution of the Comintern.

Lessons of the Italian Events

Italian fascism which set out in 1922 to rejuvenate tottering Italian capitalism over the broken bones of the revolting workers and peasants utterly exhausted itself within two decades. The murderous regime which its leader boasted would build a new Roman Empire lasted just long enough to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. The workers and peasants simply refused to fight, to work, or to sacrifice for the fascist state which gave them nothing but oppression, misery, starvation and broken promises. The middle classes lost all confidence in the corrupt, incompetent, vainglorious Bonapartist gangsters headed by the mountebank Mussolini. Finally, even the ruling classes, the capitalists, landed proprietors, the Church, the Royal Family, the military caste and part of his own governing clique found it expedient to dump Mussolini in the hope of saving themselves from complete catastrophe. With the entire people in opposition, the African Empire lost, the national economy bankrupt, facing occupation by two superior hostile armies, “fascism, at the end, broke apart like a rotten apple.” To this epitaph Marshal Badoglio added: “Not the slightest resistance to the change was met even from any of the 7,000,000 belonging to the fascist party proper."

This annihilating collapse of Italian fascism pricks like a soap bubble all those theories spawned by the renegades from Marxism that fascism is some new form of managerial or bureaucratic-collective society destined to replace capitalism and bar the road to socialism. It is now clear that these pretentious theories really represented a special form of intellectual capitulation and adaptation to fascism. The Italian experience has once for all demonstrated that fascism is essentially the political instrument of monopoly capitalism in its death agony.

The crumbling of fascism in Italy provides further evidence of the bankruptcy of bourgeois rule. All the repressions, pretensions and demagogy of their fascist mercenaries did not enable Big Business to stifle the class struggle and prevent it from developing. On the contrary, under the iron lid of fascism the class frictions generated enough explosive pressure to blow the regime to bits.

The Italian events have demonstrated the indomitable vitality of the working class. Fascism had smashed all the mass organizations of the Italian workers, their unions, cooperatives and political parties; murdered, imprisoned, exiled their beat leaders; excommunicated revolutionary ideas and prohibited their expression; chained the workers to the bosses through the totalitarian state; isolated them from the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the defeated and atomized proletarians gradually reassembled their forces, lifted themselves to their feet, resumed their struggle for freedom and bread; brought forth new leaders out of their ranks; and moved to settle accounts with their oppressors at the first favorable opportunity.

Mussolini signed his death warrant by dragging the Italian people into the imperialist adventure of the Second World War. After three years of torture and horror, the masses began to revolt, Workers and peasants in uniform refused to fight, deserted, retreated or surrendered. As early as March 1943 strikes broke out in the northern industrial cities. The fascist regime was unable to cope with the revolt. Power was beginning to slip from Mussolini’s hands. Further strikes and demonstrations during the following months made it apparent that Mussolini’s murder machine was breaking down.

Terrified by the rising revolt of the people, by the military disasters and total bankruptcy of fascism, and by the prospective invasion of the mainland by Anglo-American armies, the possessing classes, headed by the monarchy and its military aides and inspired by the Vatican, hastened to depose Mussolini and set up a military-monarchist dictatorship in place of fascism. By a timely coup d’etat these palace conspirators hoped to forestall the workers’ revolution.

But their removal of Mussolini provoked the most unintended and contradictor consequences. Instead of dampening the rebellious spirit, this move enormously heightened the revolutionary mood and spurred the masses to more daring actions. No sooner did the news of Mussolini’s downfall become known than the pent-up revolutionary feelings of the people manifested themselves with titanic force. The people poured into the streets in continual joyous demonstrations; they hunted out and vented their wrath upon the fascist vermin; opened prisons and liberated political prisoners; exulted in their newly regained freedom. They demanded an end to the war. Parties came out from underground, trade unions arose, a free press was established, workers and soldiers councils were organized, and fraternization began. Returned exiles and liberated political prisoners took their places at the head of the masses. Through a series of militant strikes the workers addressed their demands to the Badoglio government.

These developments disclosed the indubitable features of a genuine revolutionary uprising in which the masses directly intervene as an active and decisive force in the determination of events. This stormy movement threatened to sweep over the heads of King Victor Emmanuel and his Marshal Badoglio and upset their new monarchist-militarist government which had succeeded fascism. To prevent any further development of the revolution, all the forces of reaction combined against the insurgent workers and peasants. Badoglio decreed martial law, outlawed public assemblies of more than three persons, took measures to drive the workers back into the factories, shot and jailed their leaders, censored the press, duplicating all the practices of Mussolini’s dictatorship.

While trying to beat down the revolution in the first weeks, Badoglio dangled the prospect of peace before the war-weary Italian people. He utilized against the workers the military forces both of the Nazis and of the Anglo-American bloc with whom he was negotiating terms for collaboration. Badoglio and his generals permitted the Nazis to occupy northern Italy while Anglo-American planes bombed the revolutionary centers of Milan, Turin and Bologna.

Military-Monarchist Plots

These military-monarchist plots against the revolution were facilitated and shielded by the treacherous policies of the Socialist, Stalinist and liberal parties. Instead of arousing and organizing the people for the overthrow of the Badoglio dictatorship and the creation of a Workers and Peasants Republic, these parties restrained the workers from struggle; advised them to trust the new government; and to wait until peace and liberty were bestowed upon them by the King and Badoglio in alliance with the Anglo-American forces. This combination of repression and deceit enabled the ex-accomplices of Mussolini to arrest the development of the revolution and to flee when ready into the embrace of the Allies.

After ruining the country, the utterly reactionary possessing classes have helped convert Italy into a battleground for the rival imperialist camps. Whichever side they may deal with at the moment, both sections of the divided bourgeoisie side with the foreign oppressors against their own people. While Mussolini calls upon the Italians to die for the resurrection of fascism and for Nazism, the King and Badoglio solicit them to die for a military-monarchist dictatorship and for Anglo-American imperialism. The cynical conduct of the Italian ruling classes confirms the great political lesson taught the workers by the French bourgeoisie after the fall of the Third Republic. The capitalist class cares nothing for democracy, national independence or the welfare of the masses. Profits, power, privileges and property are their sole concern. Whenever their political predominance and their social and economic interests are imperiled by the proletariat, the possessing classes are capable of unlimited crimes against the nation and the people.

The Italian workers and peasants can find their way to peace and freedom only by tearing political and economic power out of the hands of the capitalists and uniting with their fellow workers of Europe in a war for socialism. The revolutionary fighters of Italy have already performed deathless deeds. They were the main force which toppled Mussolini and his rotten regime. Their actions constituted a magnificent prologue to the forthcoming European proletarian revolution. They inspired with fresh hope and courage the masses of all Europe.

The Italian workers, isolated and caught between the armies of the rival imperialist camps, have been temporarily driven back on the defensive. They were not given time to organize their own strong Marxist party. The treacherous Stalinist and reformist leaders therefore had a free hand to restrain and disorient the masses. The Axis and Allied armies are now, each in their own way, striving to finish the work of strangling the revolution.

Despite betrayal and bloody repressions, the Italian workers fight on. They thereby serve notice that the Italian revolution still lives. The continued resistance of the workers under the prevailing adverse conditions gives assurance that they will resume their forward march as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

The sequence of events since the fall of Mussolini has shown the interconnection between the Italian revolution and the European revolution. The further course of the Italian revolution is bound up with the development of the European, and especially the German, revolution. The heroic actions of the Italian workers have kindled revolutionary sentiments and ideas throughout the continent and shaken regimes from Madrid to Berlin and Budapest. The subsequent unfolding of the maturing revolution elsewhere in Europe will in turn impart a powerful new impetus to the temporarily arrested Italian revolution.

The developments in Italy have posed point-blank all the major problems of the European revolution. They have confirmed the Marxist conclusions that the only revolutionary social forces are the workers in alliance with the peasants. The only kind of revolution the working class can and will lead is the socialist revolution. The only alternative to the continued rule of monopoly capitalism is the Workers’ and Farmers’ Government based upon Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Councils.

Bourgeois Democracy

The decay of capitalism and the acuteness of class conflicts forbid another extended period of bourgeois democracy for war-torn Europe. While interim bourgeois-democratic regimes may be set up here and there as by-products of uncompleted revolutionary movements, they must by their very nature prove unstable and short-lived. They must either give way before the conquest of power by the revolutionary workers or the military-police dictatorship of the capitalist counterrevolution.

The fact that the economic pre-conditions for an extended period of bourgeois democracy in Europe have disappeared does not, however, put an end to the role that bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats can play to stem the advance of proletarian revolution. With the collapse of fascism, capitalism will attempt to rule by means of naked military force, as already demonstrated in Italy. When this device proves powerless to control the insurgent masses, the native capitalists, allied with the invading imperialists, will push forward their treacherous democratic, social-reformist and Stalinist agents in an effort to strangle the revolution in a “democratic” noose. When all other defenses crumble, the forces of capitalism will strive to preserve their dictatorship behind the facade of democratic forms, even to the extent of a democratic republic.

This stratagem of the bourgeoisie may be aided by the revival of democratic illusions among considerable sections of the masses, especially in the absence of revolutionary mass parties. Under such conditions it is possible and even probable that the treacherous parties of social-reformism and Stalinism can play the leading role in the first stages of the revolution. The definitive victory of the revolution can be assured only by the leadership of a revolutionary Marxist party. The creation of such parties is the most important task of the revolutionary proletarian vanguard of Europe. Amid the gigantic convulsions which will shake European society this task can be accomplished in a very short time.

The revolutionary wave may be so overwhelming as to enable the workers to take power immediately following the collapse of the fascist dictatorship. Hence it is necessary to put forward the slogans of Workers Councils (Soviets) and All Power to the Workers Councils, as soon as the masses begin to move against the fascist regime or any makeshift substitute.

The Trotskyist parties everywhere have the basic duty to expose and fight against the illusions that stable bourgeois-democratic regimes, which have lost their material foundation, can be restored in Europe. They must wage irreconcilable warfare against the reformist and Stalinist parties, and their perfidious “People’s Fronts” which attempt to limit the struggle of the workers to this reactionary utopian program. The Fourth International has long ago foreseen the emergence of this question in the first stages of the downfall of fascism and has spoken explicitly in regard to it. The program adopted by the Founding Conference of the Fourth International (1938) affirms that “once it breaks through, the revolutionary wave in fascist countries will immediately be a grandiose sweep and under no circumstances will stop short at the experiment of resuscitating some sort of Weimar corpse.” The same program makes clear the value and necessity, as well as the limitations and subordinate character, of democratic slogans as a means of mobilizing the masses for revolutionary action.

To win the masses will require linking ourselves with them as we find them with all their illusions. Our task is rendered all the easier by the fact that democratic demands have revolutionary implications in Europe today, if seriously fought for, because the bourgeois governments cannot satisfy them. Appearing before the masses with the fundamental slogans of the Socialist United States of Europe and All Power to Workers Councils, the Trotskyists must also show themselves as the most resolute fighters for democratic demands. These democratic demands (freedom of press, the right to unionize, etc.) will be intertwined with the transitional ones and all of them connected with our fundamental slogans of the Socialist United States of Europe and All Power to Workers Councils.

The proletarian revolution may begin in one country, but no European country can make its way out of the war and the catastrophic crisis of contemporary civilization by itself alone. A victorious revolution in any single European country would immediately be compelled to defend itself from military attack by the imperialists and would have to appeal for international proletarian aid by revolutionary means. In the ensuing struggles it would not be possible to maintain the outlived and arbitrarily drawn borders of the existing national states and the proletariat has no interest in attempting to do so. The national state which once provided the historical arena for the development of the productive forces has long since become a reactionary fetter upon them. The unpostponable historical task of the European peoples is the revolutionary destruction of the reactionary national state and the creation of the Socialist United States of Europe. Peace, security and prosperity can be assured only by the economic unification and socialist collaboration of the free nations of Europe. The only power capable of solving these tasks is the revolutionary proletariat. The central unifying slogan of its fight is “The Socialist United States of Europe.”

Europe, today enslaved by the Nazis, will tomorrow be overrun by equally predatory Anglo-American imperialism. By their attempts to replace the Nazis as masters of Europe the Allied imperialists will thereby transfer to themselves all the consequences which prevented Hitler from “pacifying” the continent. The hatred of the European peoples, now directed and vented against their Nazi oppressors, will be turned tomorrow with intensified ferocity against Yankee imperialism. The burning desire of the European masses to get rid of the invaders and to achieve national freedom will necessarily become fused with their social struggle against the native ruling classes and their Anglo-American overlords; and impart a powerful impetus to the proletarian revolution. Fraternization between the European workers and the soldiers of the occupying forces will become an imperative necessity on the road to the socialist revolution in Europe.

The entire combined forces of the European proletariat will be needed to organize and lead the people in revolutionary struggle against their oppressors. The slogan of The Socialist United States of Europe. will serve as the great rallying cry of unity against the counter-revolutionary schemes of the Anglo-American bloc to colonize, exploit, and dismember the European continent. This slogan will inspire and guide the European workers in their struggle for power. Through the Socialist United States of EuropeÑand not otherwiseÑthey will achieve their economic unification, fraternal solidarity, social and cultural progress. Only on this basis will ruined and shattered Europe be lifted to its feet again and rise to new heights.

The Counter-Revolutionary Role of American Capitalism

The preponderance of American power has everywhere begun to assert itself with increasing force. The industrial, financial and military might of the United States has become the decisive factor in the inter-imperialist struggle for world domination.

Washington’s diplomatic dealings and political acts during the past year have served to expose the pretense that this war is being waged to defend democracy against fascism and to extend the “Four Freedoms” throughout the world. They have disclosed the real reactionary character of the war aims of Washington which are dictated by the drive of American Big Business for political and economic mastery of the world. The slogan of “the war for democracy” was considerably tarnished from the outset by the inclusion of the Vargas and other despotic governments in the “United Nations” coalition; by demonstrative friendship for the butcher Franco of Spain and Dictator Salazar of Portugal; by the wooing of Petain, the patronage of Otto of Hapsburg and various European monarchs-in-exile. Today the deals with Darlan and Badoglio outline in precise terms the counter-revolutionary policies and imperialist aims of Anglo-American capitalism.

The deal with Darlan, the executioner of Vichy and Hitler’s collaborator, served to maintain French imperial relations and to secure the collaboration of the French capitalism colonial governors and military caste. The old system of colonial oppression and super-exploitation remains unchanged under de Gaulle as under Darlan and Giraud; neither the African natives nor the French colonial workers have acquired democracy through Anglo-American occupation.

In Sicily AMGOT kept at their posts all but the most notorious and hated fascist officials and police. The people are forbidden to carry on political activities; the press is controlled. “The fascist label is removed” cables the N. Y. Times reporter, “but the same men carry on the same functions."

Allied Policy in Italy

This policy has been climaxed by the deal with Marshal Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel, who supported fascism for more than twenty years and whose sole backing comes from the industrialists, bankers and big landowners. Roosevelt and Churchill are using their armies and resources to prop up this military-monarchist dictatorship; detested and distrusted by the Italian masses. They do not want the Italian people to have a government of their own free choice for fear that such a regime would make inroads upon capitalist property and power.

The policies pursued by the Allied leaders in North Africa, Sicily and Italy demonstrate that their backing of ultra-reactionary forces is due neither to accidental deviations nor “military expedients” but flows from a calculated plan which is dictated by the interests and necessities of the Anglo-American imperialists. They provide a preview of the Anglo-American program for Europe. The capitalist powers aim to impose new forms of servitude upon the European peoples. They propose to crush all manifestations of revolutionary independence by the European workers and to set up military-monarchist-clerical dictatorships under the tutelage and hegemony of Anglo-American Big Business. They have concluded an alliance with the world general staff of reaction and obscurantism, the Vatican, to promote the realization of their counterrevolutionary schemes.

The Allies shrink from encouraging popular democratic movements of liberation because they fear that these would release the powers of the working class and flow toward the channels of socialist revolution. Roosevelt and Churchill understand that it is not in the cards to establish stable “democratic” capitalist governments in Europe today. Given free scope, given their democratic rights, the European working class will not require overly much time to organize their revolutionary parties and to overthrow all of their capitalist oppressors. The choice, from the Roosevelt-Churchill point of view, is a Franco-type government or the specter of the socialist revolution.

The greatest contribution American revolutionists can make to the fight for socialism in Europe is to expose these counterrevolutionary aims; struggle relentlessly against them; arouse the American workers against the reactionary program of Big Business and awaken sentiments of solidarity with their hard-pressed class brothers in Europe and all other parts of the world.

Significance of the Soviet Victories

The prodigious vitality of the October revolution is strikingly demonstrated in the Red Army victories over Nazi imperialism. While France and Italy, victors in the last war, crumpled before invading armies, the Soviet Union stood up under unprecedented defeats and losses and flung back the assault of the mighty Nazi military machine. The superior powers of resistance and recuperation of the USSR flow essentially from the fact that the proletarian revolution, which was crushed in France and Italy, conquered in the Soviet Union.

The unbreakable will to struggle and high morale of the Soviet armies and peoples refute those deserters who, recoiling against the crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy, abandoned the workers’ state in its hour of mortal peril. They gave up the Soviet Union for lost at the very moment when, despite the incubus of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the state which issued from the October revolution was about to exhibit unprecedented defensive powers in the supreme test on the field of battle.

The USSR, by virtue of the social foundations laid down by the October revolution, still remains a workers’ state in fundamental contradiction with world imperialism. The reactions of the Allies to the Soviet successes and their repercussions among the capitalist rulers of the neighboring countries once again show that the imperialist recognize this fact. The prospect of further Red Army advances has terrified rather than encouraged Stalin’s “democratic” allies.

The recently concluded Moscow pact, based upon an agreement to join forces against the European revolution, has not and could not eliminate the fundamental antagonism between the economic systems of the Soviet Union and the capitalist world. Stalin’s pact with Roosevelt and Churchill, counterrevolutionary in its essence as was his previous pact with Hitler, will prove no more enduring. Neither Stalin’s subservience to imperialism, nor his counter-revolutionary aims in Europe, can abolish this basic antagonism. At a subsequent stage the underlying antagonisms must break into the open and, unless the European revolution intervenes or Stalin makes concessions to the imperialists which change the basic character of Soviet economy, will lead to armed conflict between the USSR and Anglo-American imperialism. In combining with the Anglo-American imperialists against the European revolution Stalin is aiming a mortal blow at the Soviet Union itself.

Stalin’s False Policies

The “enigmatic” character of Stalin’s policies which so perplexes bourgeois commentators is explained by the contradictory position of the Soviet bureaucracy, which conducts its reactionary nationalistic policies upon the social foundations of a degenerated workers’ state encircled by imperialism. Stalin’s nationalist outlook impels him to bargain with the imperialists for territorial and strategic concessions on the periphery of the USSR at the expense of the betrayal of the international proletariat. The inevitable consequences of such a treacherous policy have already been demonstrated by Stalin’s dealings with Hitler. No sooner had Stalin’s ally, Hitler, conquered Western Europe than he hurled his might against the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s Anglo-American allies cannot act otherwise. Once established in a dominating position upon the European continent, they, like Hitler, would of necessity seek to surround and strangle the USSR in order to crush and dismember the Soviet Union, restore capitalist private property, and open up a vast field of resources for imperialist exploitation.

Stalin is aware of the perils to the USSR implicit in the conquest and consolidation of Europe by the Anglo-American imperialists over the prostrate body of Germany. His foreign policy can appear to be temporarily effective only so long as Europe is divided between conflicting imperialist camps which can neutralize each other and permit him to maneuver between them. A decisive victory of one over the other can be followed only by war against the USSR.

The Soviet Union could frustrate the imperialist designs of the Anglo-American war-camp and secure itself against attack by stimulating and supporting revolutionary uprisings of the European peoples. But the Moscow ruling caste will no more dare to pursue this course against its present allies than against Hitler. A victorious proletarian revolution in any major European country would arouse and heighten the self-confidence of the Soviet masses, regenerate the October revolution and doom the hated Kremlin clique.

Stalin’s policy, bankrupt through and through, consists in seeking a middle way between these two fundamental alternatives. On one hand, he sets up “Free Germany” and “Free Poland” Committees and supports the Yugoslav Partisans and similar movements as counter-weights to Anglo-American influence. He plays with the hopelessly reactionary program of reconstituting pseudo-democratic regimes upon a capitalist basis with a “friendly” orientation towards the USSR. On the other hand he concludes agreements with the Anglo-American imperialists to cooperate with them in the subjugation of Europe.

But Stalin’s attempts to find a middle course are doomed to failure. Either the socialist revolution will triumph throughout Europe or the helpless continent will become the victim and vassal of Anglo-American imperialism. Either the Soviet Union will secure itself in alliance with the victorious European proletariat or it will be eventually conquered and destroyed by the imperialists. There are no other alternatives. The Stalinist bureaucracy is doomed in either case. It is not a new “class,” as renegades and philistines denominate it, but a parasitic caste, transitory in nature. There is no solution for the contradictions of Stalinism any more than for the contradictions of imperialism.

Stalin, exploiting the enhanced prestige of the Soviet Union as a result of the Red Army victories, seeks to gain control of the popular movements in Europe in order to use them for bargaining with the imperialists and, when nationalistic considerations require, sell them out. The Stalinist bureaucracy is capable of any treachery to socialism and the international proletariat. Past experience, particularly in Spain, leaves no doubt that the Stalinists, confronted with mass uprisings on the continent of Europe, would be ready to join hands with the imperialists and undertake to do their hangman’s work. But to attempt such an enterprise is one thing; to carry it out successfully is another. There exists a vast difference in conditions between the Spanish revolution and the coming European revolution. A pre-war revolution in the corner of Europe could be isolated, strangled, and sold out as part of the Kremlin’s diplomatic maneuvers. A revolution issuing from this war in any one country will rapidly spread across the national borders and assume continental proportions. Such a revolution cannot be harnessed by any bureaucracy, including the Stalinist, or permanently held down by any imperialist power, including the Anglo-American.

Those who draw defeatist conclusions regarding the prospects of proletarian victory in Europe ignore above all the independent revolutionary action of the masses and assign them a purely passive role as though the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Anglo-American imperialists were two gangs of butchers cutting up a dead carcass. The task of revolutionary fighters is to arouse the masses for independent action under their own banner, and not to speculate, as passive observers, on the designs of Stalin and the imperialists, and still less to take for granted the success of these designs. The decisive power in Europe is the revolutionary proletariat. Upon this fundamental social force we Trotskyists stake our hopes and base our policy through all the twists and turns of Stalinist and imperialist diplomacy.

The End of the Comintern

Stalin’s dissolution of the Communist International officially ends the career of an international workers’ organization which once, under Lenin and Trotsky, was the vanguard of the world proletariat and the hope of all the oppressed. The history of the Comintern since 1924 is a record of degeneration and capitulation. The betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy have inflicted the most disastrous defeats upon the world working class.

The successive steps in this process of degeneration after Lenin’s death embrace the promulgation for the first time in 1924 of the theory of socialism in one country; the bureaucratization of the Comintern and all of its parties; the expulsion of the Bolshevik-Leninist opposition, first in the Russian party and then internationally; the capitulation of the German Communist Party, with its 600,000 members and its 6 million voters, without a fight to Hitler fascism in 1933; the systematic betrayal of the proletariat of the world in the interest of the diplomatic policy of the Kremlin; the murder of the Old Bolsheviks; the assassination of Trotsky; the betrayal of the proletariat in the Second World War, first to Hitler and then to Roosevelt and Churchill.

Stalin’s cynical repudiation of internationalism and international proletarian organization renders the greatest ideological service to capitalism which aims to keep the workers divided along nationalist lines and to dupe and enslave them with nationalist illusions and prejudices. The renunciation of internationalism is the renunciation of the basic principles of scientific socialism. Ever since the Communist Manifesto of 1848 proclaimed “Workers of the World Unite!” the Marxist movement has taught that the emancipation of the workers could be achieved only by their common action on an international scale. The First, Second and Third Internationals were all originally organized to promote the class unity of the workers on a world basis in struggle against the capitalist system for the creation of socialism.

The Third International was born out of the experiences of the last world war, 1914-1918. From the first day of its birth it taught the necessity of international solidarity and fought every variety of national self-inclusiveness. Now, a quarter of a century later, when the bankruptcy of capitalism and its system of national states has developed into its death agony, in the midst, of a second world war which threatens the existence of civilization, Stalin and his traitor gang tell the workers there is no need of international cooperation and organization.

The formal burial of the Comintern ten years after it had ceased to exist as in any respect a revolutionary force does not signify the end of Stalinist intervention in the world labor movement. The Stalinists still retain their organizations, their GPU apparatus and connections, and remain as always the cynical agents of the Kremlin’s foreign policies. The Italian events have shown the capacity of the Stalinists for perverting the struggle of the workers, demoralizing and betraying the working class. The struggle against the false policies of the degenerate servants of the Kremlin remains as one of the most important tasks of the revolutionary vanguard in Europe and the rest of the world.

The Coming Triumph of the Fourth International

The Third International which has been buried by Stalin in shame and disgrace nevertheless left behind the greatest treasures for the future. Its founders, Lenin and Trotsky, belong to us. Their teachings, their example, their traditions are ours. The record of the long internal struggle from 1923 of Trotsky and his co-thinkers and disciples is the basic literature upon which the new generation which is destined to lead the revolution will be trained and educated. The first four Congresses of the Comintern produced documents which are the basic program of the movements of the Fourth International.

Out of the Third International, long before it died and was buried, came the initiating cadres of the Fourth International. The Fourth International is today the only workers’ international. The Fourth International is Trotsky’s crowning contribution to the liberating struggle of the world working class. The Fourth International rests upon the granite foundations of unfalsified Marxism. Trotsky incorporated into its program all the great lessons of the post-Leninist epoch and armed the revolutionary vanguard with the indispensable ideological weapons of the coming struggle for power. The Fourth International alone carries on the progressive traditions of the first two Internationals and the work of the Comintern in its first years. The critical test of the war has destroyed every other international grouping except the Fourth International. Nothing and nobody can dissolve this International, the heir of the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky. Today the numbers of the Fourth International are small but they exist in every important country. They are bound together by common principles and a common goal. Their ideas are correct, their program represents historical necessity, their victory is assured.

Under the banner of the Fourth International, World Party of the Socialist Revolution, the workers and colonial peoples will emancipate themselves from capitalism, fascism and war and create the socialist society of peace, freedom and plenty for all mankind.

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days-Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Germany (1852) -The Other German States.

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink.
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Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
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Markin comment on this series:

No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International).

While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, merely smitten by late Victorian fox hunts with the upper crust. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series specifically the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
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Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany

III.
The Other German States.
NOVEMBER 6th, 1851.

IN our last we confined ourselves almost exclusively to that State which, during the years 1840 to 1848, was by far the most important in the German movement, namely, to Prussia. It is, however, time to pass a rapid glance over the other States of Germany during the same period.

As to the petty States, they had, ever since the revolutionary movements of 1830, completely passed under the dictatorship of the Diet, that is of Austria and Prussia. The several Constitutions, established as much as a means of defence against the dictates of the larger States, as to insure popularity to their princely authors, and unity to heterogeneous Assemblies of Provinces, formed by the Congress of Vienna, without any leading principle whatever—these Constitutions, illusory as they were, had yet proved dangerous to the authority of the petty princes themselves during the exciting times of 1830 and 1831. They were all but destroyed; whatever of them was allowed to remain was less than a shadow, and it required the loquacious self-complacency of a Welcker, a Rotteck, a Dahlmann, to imagine that any results could possibly flow from the humble opposition, mingled with degrading flattery, which they were allowed to show off in the impotent Chambers of these petty States.

The more energetic portion of the middle class in these smaller States, very soon after 1840, abandoned all the hopes they had formerly based upon the development of Parliamentary government in these dependencies of Austria and Prussia. No sooner had the Prussian bourgeoisie and the classes allied to it shown a serious resolution to struggle for Parliamentary government in Prussia, than they were allowed to take the lead of the Constitutional movement over all non-Austrian Germany. It is a fact which now will not any longer be contested, that the nucleus of those Constitutionalists of Central Germany, who afterwards seceded from the Frankfort National Assembly, and who, from the place of their separate meetings, were called the Gotha party, long before 1848 contemplated a plan which, with little modification, they in 1849 proposed to the representatives of all Germany. They intended a complete exclusion of Austria from the German Confederation, the establishment of a new confederation with a new fundamental law, and with a federal parliament, under the protection of Prussia, and, the incorporation of the more insignificant states into the larger ones. All this was to be carried out the moment Prussia entered into the ranks of Constitutional Monarchy, established the Liberty of the Press, assumed a policy independent from that of Russia and Austria, and thus enabled the Constitutionalists of the lesser States to obtain a real control over their respective Governments. The inventor of this scheme was Professor Gervinus, of Heidelberg (Baden). Thus the emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie was to be the signal for that of the middle classes of Germany generally, and for an alliance, offensive and defensive of both against Russia and Austria, for Austria was, as we shall see presently, considered as an entirely barbarian country, of which very little was known, and that little not to the credit of its population; Austria, therefore, was not considered as an essential part of Germany.

As to the other classes of society, in the smaller States they followed, more or less rapidly, in the wake of their equals in Prussia. The shopkeeping class got more and more dissatisfied with their respective Governments, with the increase of taxation, with the curtailments of those political sham-privileges of which they used to boast when comparing themselves to the "slaves of despotism" in Austria and Prussia; but as yet they had nothing definite in their opposition which might stamp them as an independent party, distinct from the Constitutionalism of the higher bourgeoisie. The dissatisfaction among the peasantry was equally growing, but it is well known that this section of the people, in quiet and peaceful times, will never assert its interests and assume its position as an independent class, except in countries where universal suffrage is established. The working classes in the trades and manufactures of the towns commenced to be infected with the "poison" of Socialism and Communism, but there being few towns of any importance out of Prussia, and still fewer manufacturing districts, the movement of this class, owing to the want of centres of action and propaganda, was extremely slow in the smaller States.

Both in Prussia and in the smaller States the difficulty of giving vent to political opposition created a sort of religious opposition in the parallel movements of German Catholicism and Free Congregationalism. History affords us numerous examples where, in countries which enjoy the blessings of a State Church, and where political discussion is fettered, the profane and dangerous opposition against the worldly power is hid under the more sanctified and apparently more disinterested struggle against spiritual despotism. Many a Government that will not allow of any of its acts being discussed, will hesitate before it creates martyrs and excites the religious fanaticism of the masses. Thus in Germany, in 1845, in every State, either the Roman Catholic or the Protestant religion, or both, were considered part and parcel of the law of the land. In every State, too, the clergy of either of those denominations, or of both, formed an essential part of the bureaucratic establishment of the Government. To attack Protestant or Catholic orthodoxy, to attack priestcraft, was then to make an underhand attack upon the Government itself. As to the German Catholics, their very existence was an attack upon the Catholic Governments of Germany, particularly Austria and Bavaria; and as such it was taken by those Governments. The Free Congregationalists, Protestant Dissenters, somewhat resembling the English and American Unitarians, openly professed their opposition to the clerical and rigidly orthodox tendency of the King of Prussia and his favourite Minister for the Educational and Clerical Department, Mr. Eickhorn. The two new sects, rapidly extending for a moment, the first in Catholic, the second in Protestant countries, had no other distinction but their different origin; as to their tenets, they perfectly agreed upon this most important point that all definite dogmas were nugatory. This want of any definition was their very essence; they pretended to build that great temple under the roof of which all Germans might unite; they thus represented, in a religious form, another political idea of the day—that of German unity, and yet they could never agree among themselves.

The idea of German unity, which the above-mentioned sects sought to realize, at least, upon religious ground, by inventing a common religion for all Germans, manufactured expressly for their use, habits, and taste—this idea was, indeed, very widely spread, particularly in the smaller States. Ever since the dissolution of the German Empire by Napoleon, the cry for a union of all the disjecta membra of the German body had been the most general expression of discontent with the established order of things, and most so in the smaller States, where costliness of a court, an administration, an army, in short, the dead weight of taxation, increased in a direct ratio with the smallness and impotency of the State. But what this German unity was to be when carried out was a question upon which parties disagreed. The bourgeoisie, which wanted no serious revolutionary convulsion, were satisfied with what we have seen they considered "practicable," namely a union of all Germany, exclusive of Austria, under the supremacy of a Constitutional Government of Prussia; and surely, without conjuring dangerous storms, nothing more could, at that time, be done. The shopkeeping class and the peasantry, as far as these latter troubled themselves about such things, never arrived at any definition of that German unity they so loudly clamoured after; a few dreamers, mostly feudalist reactionists, hoped for the reestablishment of the German Empire; some few ignorant, soi-disant Radicals, admiring Swiss institutions, of which they had not yet made that practical experience which afterwards most ludicrously undeceived them, pronounced for a Federated Republic; and it was only the most extreme party which, at that time, dared pronounce for a German Republic, one and indivisible. Thus, German unity was in itself a question big with disunion, discord, and, in the case of certain eventualities, even civil war.

To resume, then: this was the state of Prussia, and the smaller States of Germany, at the end of 1847. The middle class, feeling their power, and resolved not to endure much longer the fetters with which a feudal and bureaucratic despotism enchained their commercial transactions, their industrial productivity, their common action as a class; a portion of the landed nobility so far changed into producers of mere marketable commodities, as to have the same interests and to make common cause with the middle class; the smaller trading class, dissatisfied, grumbling at the takes, at the impediments thrown in the way of their business, but without any definite plan for such reforms as should secure their position in the social and political body; the peasantry, oppressed here by feudal exactions, there by money-lenders, usurers, and lawyers; the working people of the towns infected with the general discontent, equally hating the Government and the large industrial capitalists, and catching the contagion of Socialist and Communist ideas; in short, a heterogeneous mass of opposition, springing from various interests, but more or less led on by the bourgeoisie, in the first ranks of which again marched the bourgeoisie of Prussia, and particularly of the Rhine Province. On the other hand, Governments disagreeing upon many points, distrustful of each other, and particularly of that of Prussia, upon which yet they had to rely for protection; in Prussia a Government forsaken by public opinion, forsaken by even a portion of the nobility, leaning upon an army and a bureaucracy which every day got more infected by the ideas, and subjected to the influence, of the oppositional bourgeoisie—a Government, besides all this, penniless in the most literal meaning of the word, and which could not procure a single cent to cover its increasing deficit, but by surrendering at discretion to the opposition of the bourgeoisie. Was there ever a more splendid position for the middle class of any country, while it struggled for power against the established Government?

LONDON, September, 1851.

Veterans For Peace Demand Peace And Justice- October 7, 2012- New York City

Click on the headline to link to the Veterans For Peace website.

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At 10 p.m. on May 1,2012, the New York Police Department closed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, driving out members of the Occupy movement who were holding a nonviolent General Assembly. Eight members of the Veterans Peace Team and two members of Occupy Faith were arrested for standing their ground. A small metal sign has been posted at the park stating that it closes at 10 p.m. This was Vietnam vet Paul Appell's reaction:

"Plato wrote 'only the dead have seen the end of war.' War veterans, loved ones of the fallen, and certainly those living in war ^ones do not have the option of closing down their memories at 10p.m. There is a good reason why suicide is an attractive option for many. It is truly the only sure way of ending the memories. For a memorial to shut down at some convenient time for the city is an insult to all those who do not have the luxury of shutting down their war memories at a specific time. I know that many want us war vets to go out of sight and nof bother them, except when we are needed for some parade. Some of us are not going away at 10 p.m. or any other time. If they do not like it, maybe they should have thought of that before they sent us to war."

From The "Huffington Post"-Chicago Teachers Strike Ends: Union Moves To Suspend Strike After 7 Days -Victory To The Chicago Teachers Union!

Chicago Teachers Strike Ends: Union Moves To Suspend Strike After 7 Days (PHOTOS, LIVE UPDATES)


By SOPHIA TAREEN 09/18/12 05:32 PM ET


Striking Chicago public school teachers picket outside of the Jose De Diego Community Academy on September 17, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. More than 26,000 teachers and support staff walked off of their jobs on September 10 after the Chicago Teachers Union failed to reach an agreement with the city on compensation, benefits and job security. With about 350,000 students, the Chicago school district is the third largest in the United States. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)


CHICAGO -- Hundreds of delegates to the Chicago teachers union gathered Tuesday to debate a proposed contract, the first step before casting a critical vote that could end the city's first teachers strike in 25 years.

Two days after refusing to end the strike because they hadn't seen all the contract details, the 700-plus delegates met at a South Side union hall to go over the settlement offer point by point.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said she wouldn't tell union delegates how to vote. But she said she would vote for the proposal if she were still teaching, calling it the best deal negotiators could get.

"I don't think it's a great deal," Lewis said. "I'm just more proud of our union. The contract is the contract. It's nothing that I take ownership over."

As they arrived for the meeting, many delegates were optimistic the strike would be called off. A few said they weren't sure.

Tanya Ellis an elementary school teacher, hoped for an end to the walkout.

"It's not the best contract. It's not the worst," Ellis said. "We need our kids back in school."

Journalists were not permitted inside the meeting, but reporters peering through windows could see delegates standing and cheering, raising hands and pumping fists. From the outside, it was impossible to know specifically what they were excited about.

Many teachers said they felt conflicted: They were eager to go back to work but determined to see their efforts through to the end.




"I'm desperately wanting to get back to my lab experiments with my kids," said Heath Davis, a seventh-grade science teacher who was picketing outside Goethe Elementary School on the city's West Side.

Davis was optimistic that Tuesday's vote could end the strike that has kept 350,000 students out of the classroom. But he said teachers still had concerns about the academic calendar, pensions and resources for special education, in addition to the more publicly discussed issues of tying teacher evaluations to student test scores and recalling laid-off teachers when schools close.

"We don't want to move too quickly," said Davis, a delegate who was consulting with other teachers at his school before deciding how to vote. "We want to make sure our questions are answered."

Tuesday's vote was not on the contract offer itself, but on whether to continue the strike. The contract must be submitted to a vote of the full union membership before it is formally ratified.

Some union delegates were taking straw polls of rank-and-file teachers to measure support for a settlement.

Craig Richmond, a counselor at Richard Yates Elementary School in northwest Chicago, voted to continue to the strike as a way to pressure the district on the closure of schools with poor performance or declining enrollment. The former music teacher has lost his job three times in such closures.

He described his action as a protest vote, but he recognized that continuing to strike could erode community support and do more harm than good.

"It's a huge gamble," he acknowledged. "The kids would lose out. It doesn't feel good to me to have that position."

Union leaders say trust has become a critical factor after months of strained relations with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the school board, and that Emanuel's effort to get a judge to order the teachers back to class could become an obstacle.

But teachers have begun feeling pressure to decide quickly on the tentative contract that labor and education experts – and even some union leaders – called a good deal for the union after a long stretch of setbacks nationally for organized labor.

"It's risky to extend the strike when everyone was expecting the strike to be over," said Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Irked by the union's two-day delay in voting on whether to send children back to school, Emanuel took the matter into court Monday. A judge has called a hearing for Wednesday to rule on the city's request for an injunction ordering the teachers back to work.

Both sides have only released summaries of the proposed agreement. But outside observers said the tentative contract appears to be a win for the union's 25,000 teachers.

While teachers in San Francisco haven't gotten an across-the-board raise in years, for example, Chicago teachers are in line for raises in each of the proposed deal's three years with provisions for a fourth. In Cleveland, teachers recently agreed to the same kind of evaluation system based in part on student performance that Chicago has offered.

"The district went past the halfway mark," said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. "They got a pretty good deal."

Some union members in Chicago praised the school district's move on what percentage of test scores will be factored into teacher evaluations, reducing it from 45 percent to the 30 percent set as the minimum by state law. The deal also includes an appeals process to contest evaluations. The new evaluations would be phased in over the length of the contract.

The tentative contract calls for a 3 percent raise in its first year and 2 percent for two years after that, along with increases for experienced teachers. While many teachers are upset it did not restore a 4 percent pay raise Emanuel rescinded earlier this year, the contract if adopted would keep Chicago teachers among the highest-paid in the country.

In Chicago, the starting salary is roughly $49,000, and average salary is around $76,000 a year.

The city also won some things from the union in the proposed settlement. Emanuel gets the longer school day he wanted, and principals will have say over who gets hired at their schools, something the union fought. The district will be required to give some preference to teachers who are displaced, and the school district will have to maintain a hiring list and make sure that at least half of hires are displaced teachers.

"We made a lot of progress," said Susanne McCannon, who teaches art at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. "I'd like to be back in the classroom, but I want to be back in the classroom with the best situation possible."

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Associated Press writers Jason Keyser in Chicago, Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Terry Chea in San Francisco and Amanda Myers in Cincinnati contributed to this report.