“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):
Several years ago, 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 issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, 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) was 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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Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
Resolution On The Work Of The Canadian Section
1. The All American and Pacific Preconference, having heard the report of the Canadian delegates, welcomes the successful fusion of the majority comrades with the active nucleus of the minority on the basis of the program of action agreed upon during the Chicago Convention.
2. The Preconference endorses the action taken by the Canadian comrades in forming an open Socialist Policy Group in the CCF [Cooperative Commonwealth Federation] 146 on the basis of a declaration on the war question.
3. The Preconference, after discussion with the Canadian delegates, suggests the following plan of action for the immediate future:
(a) The Canadian comrades should continue to concentrate their main efforts on work within the CCF, with a view to climaxing their activities by a complete programmatic and political fight at or around the national fall convention of the CCF, with a perspective of completing the experience within this declining reformist organization and reestablishing the Canadian section of the Fourth International.
The declining membership and activity of the CCF has increased the specific weight of the petty bourgeois elements and the corresponding entrenchment of a right wing bureaucracy. While our general line is oriented toward an early establishment of an independent Canadian section of the Fourth International, this does not preclude the possibility of continued concerted work in the CCF, in provinces where the objective conditions are more favorable than in Ontario.
(b) The comrades should endeavor to further strengthen our own fraction within the CCF and the group by systematic education and concerted and disciplined action in every field of their activity. The Socialist Policy Group will undoubtedly attract some confused centrist elements who, in a later stage, especially at the moment of split, may oppose our program. Consequently it is of great importance to combine educative work upon our new recruits with revolutionary vigilance against centrism.
(c) The comrades should make immediate attempts to extend the Socialist Policy Group into a national tendency within the CCF, by establishing the cooperation of our comrades in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and elsewhere.
(d) The comrades should elaborate the political documents of the SPG so as to create a thorough line of demarcation between the reformists, the centrists, and themselves on every important national and international problem.
(e) The conference expresses the firm belief that this activity should be expressed through a regular mimeographed or printed organ (appearing weekly or fortnightly) rather than through casual bulletins. A name should be chosen for the organ which can also be used later for the organ of an independent organization, so as to continue the tradition of our revolutionary fight within the CCF. The Vancouver comrades should be invited to collaborate in the creation of such an organ.
(f) In view of a possible premature organizational attack by the CCF bureaucracy, our comrades should be ready to answer every organizational maneuver by energetic politicizing of the issues in order that a full principled record of our position may be established. The experience of our French, Belgian, and American comrades can be studied in this connection.
4. It is most likely that the reestablishment of our comrades in an independent organization will not occur with sufficient forces to make possible the immediate creation of a party, but rather only a broadened propaganda group. Preparatory steps for the new activity of this group should be taken even now.
(a) By systematizing and extending our trade union work, to be carried out with firm democratic centralism and comradely collaboration between the executive and the trade union activists.
(b) In view of the existing ferment within the Stalinist ranks, efforts should be made to establish contacts within their organization for the purposes of information and, if possible, organizational fraction work. The new organ of the SPG should carry on a steady and vigorous campaign against Stalinism both as it appears within the CCF and without. The possibilities of public meetings against the Stalinists should also be considered, in exploiting the “democracy” of the CCF constitution to its absolute limits.
(c) Concerning the Field group,’47 the Preconference considers that any political negotiations with this group should take place only on the basis of an uncompromising stand on the principles and platform of the Fourth International. While our political discussions with the CCF members need be conducted in a spirit of patient education, the purpose of any action concerning the fossilized sectarian Field group should be that of splitting away progressive elements and rendering the group powerless. The progress of our work within the CCF, and the subsequent reestablishment of an independent group, together with the formal foundation of the Fourth International at the coming European conference, will establish our comrades on firm ground for gaining any progressive elements in the Field group through an energetic political attack against their sterility and international isolation. While the necessity of occasional united front action is not precluded, it should not be extended to a degree where the leadership of this stagnating group gains fictitious prestige.
5. Concerning the possible development of the Labor Relations Association, the Preconference suggests that further information be prepared and that discussions be held in Canada as well as in New York so that a definite position may be taken. The same procedure should be followed in estimating the possibilities of applying to Canadian conditions a program of action arising out of the international thesis (Death Agony of Capitalism) adopted by the American section at its last (April) National Committee plenum.
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