• Draft Resolution for the Sixth World Congress
THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION
Its Balance-Sheet, Its Problems, and Its Prospects
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL of the Fourth International
I 1. THE CAUSES WHICH MAINTAIN THE UPSURGE
OF THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION period is produced by a whole series of causes which were lacking or ceased to exist with the same intensity as previously in the advanced capitalist countries.
The process of relative capitalist stabilization in these countries has occurred simultaneously with the worsening of the economic and financial situation in most of the colonial and semi-colonial countries.
Capitalism in the advanced countries has profited by injection of American capital and by the enorworldwide needs in reconstruction and industrial development created by the war, to set in motion a new cycle of expansion on a higher level of productivity. The colonial and semi-colonial countries, on the contrary, having quickly exhausted the capital accumulated during the war and the first years thenafter, saw themselves and more left behind by the advances, both absolute and achieved by the advanced
The economic evolution of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, marked by a process of industrialization which, though jerky and uneven, has not ceased on the average to be continuous, has favored the industrial expansion of the advanced capitalist countries.
At the same time the capitalist countries have profited both by technological and scientific advances to increase their independence from certain imports products and raw materials and by • the fall in prices such imports, to maintain a favorable balance of trade toward dependent countries and a better protection
The dependent countries, on the conare struggling against the feverish upthrusts of endemic inflation.
The lag of dependent countries after advanced countries is aggravated in terms of both absolute production and per capita production by the fact that the population the dependent countries is increasing at a faster rate than their production.
At the basis of these developments lie the facts that the dependent countries have a different social and economic structure, and are historically belated. country to be able to catch up with the present development of the advanced capitalisi countries it is necessary to have as starting-points a developed economic substructure, technically skilled manpower, and a very high per capita rate of investment. Now the dependent countries are structurally handicaped in this race. have a relatively low national income and do not accumulate sufficient capital, both because of industrialization proves to be, in these countries, beyond their present practical possibilities. most of these countries, would be insufficient if it were not backed up by other resources.
In the case of countries whose structure is already capitalist, these resources would normally from foreign capital, in the form of public investments for the substructure) or private reinvestments on the spot Such resources, found - despite capital's reservations about investments not producing the average rate of profit - would have to be immensely higher the total of current annual expenditures going to "under-developed" countries (including USSR): from $4,000 million to over $20,000 million, if not considerably more. I
It is excluded thạt capitalism can agree to such effort. Under these conditions — and without at all mini mizing imperialism's new attempts "to aid" on a broader scale the so-called "under-developed" countries (Indiz, Latin America, Africa, the Arab countries) — what must be foreseen is rather that the gap, both absolute relative (in the meaning indicated), between these countries and the advanced countries will be aggravated in
This means that these countries' economic and industrial development, which nevertheless will not fail to be steady, will be accomplished under conditions that are highly explosive and very different from advanced countries, with real depressions, and not just recessions, unemployment, and inflation.
It is this different economic situation - resulting both from the historical tardiness of the dependent countries compared to the advanced countries launched on a new cycle of expansion, and from the obstacles set up to their development by their economic and social structure, feudocapitalist, and indeed in places tribal with capitalist infiltration — which fundamentally explains the gap between the powerful and constantly renewed revolutionary activity of the masses in the dependent countries, and the decline of the revolutionary workers' movement in the advanced capitalist countries. 1 United Nations experts have put forward the estimate that the sum annually needed to promote, within 35 years, a doubling of the living levels of populations now having at their disposal $100 per capita per annum (i e, some 1,600 million men), estimates raise this sum to $50,000-$60,000 million, and
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Another cause that is at present stimulating the upsurge colonial revolution is obviously the decline imperialism in comparison with the rising power of the workers' states, and the new relationships established in this postwar period by the leading strata of the colonial revolution with imperialism on the one hand and the bureaucracy of the workers' states on the other. leading strata, Bonapartist in function, composed mainly ot elements who aspire to a national economic development, profit by the existence, the power, and the increased possibilities of the workers' states, as well as by antagonism with imperialism, precisely to increase their Bonapartist role and to advance far in their efforts to free themselves from the direct grasp of imperialism.
The colonial revolution is not finished by the attainment of its primordial goal: formal independence from
It continues with the search for a general liquidation of the whole aftermath of imperialism, of all structural economico-social fetters on a rapid economic deyelopment and industrialization. need, felt in a constantly more imperious and irresistible way by the masses of the dependent countries, is rapidly to reach the level of the advanced industrial countries and make up their historical lateness.
It is for this reason that in a general way the national anti-imperialist phase of the colonial revolution, during bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships have been able to piay a leading part, is now giving way to a higher phase that brings forward the imperative economicosocial needs of the dependent countries. This is particularly the case with the formally independent countries of Latin the Moslem countries of the Middle East and North Africa, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Ceylon, etc.
Under these conditions the colonial revolution occupies the vanguard place in the world revolution and operates as its main force, including for the reawakening of the revolutionary struggle in the advanced countries. As a result of the historical lateness of the revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, which is the result of the dialectical interaction of the betrayals of the leaderships and the new economic evolution of capitalism, the colonial revolution is objectively the driving force of the world revolution, combined with the rising force of the workers' states.
The reawakening of the revolution in the advance! capitalist states, particularly of Europe, has every chance of appearing historically as the result, at least in part, of the exterior pressure of these combined forces, in a new economic conjuncture less favorable than at present to capitalism in these countries. 2. THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION AND IMPERIALISM
Under the irresistible drive of the masses, pushing the colonial revolution steadily to a more advanced position, imperialism sees itself forced to resort to more indirect and flexible forms of dependence. All the recent examples given by British, French, and Belgian imperialism clearly show this tendency: the promotion of territories that yesterday were still colonies to the status of self-government, or of dominions within a more and more flexible association with the metropolis; and states that formally are completely independent.
Imperialism — at least its more clear-sighted wing — is at present seeking to safeguard what is essential in its economic positions through a transfer of power to the native élites, which it is trying to develop and bribe, thanks to its political and economic power. is aware of the impossibility of ruling for long either in the form of direct European domination or in the more flexible form of native governments that are not broadly independent.
Wherever native élites exist - intellectuals and various
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL other categories of actually or potentially bourgeois or petty-bourgeois elements — imperialism is endeavoring to itself on them by granting them political power, either immediately or in stages, and by bribing them by associating them in a joint economic exploitation of their
But the big difficulty for imperialism in this enterprise is the lack of native strata sufficiently developed to play such a part, in face of the impetuous
The specific position of each of the principal imperialits strength and the concrete situation which extricated itself time from Asia, while succeeding in safeguarding the essential part of interests in countries like India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and even Malaya, is now trying to carry out the same operation in Africa, while taking into account the special situations in that continent: Central Africa; South Africa, with its large implantation of Europeans, and with very great invested capital at stake. But even in these ter- -ritories imperialism is now coldly visualizing the day when the explosive policy of the colour-ban and of the dictatorial supremacy of the European minorities will be obliged to make way for the majority, in spite of the fierce and prolonged resistance by thest minorities that must be foreseen.
French imperialism itself is at present obliged to jump going from the Empire to the paternalistic over stages, 'Community" and from that to the "renovated" Community, namely, an association of more or less formally independent states like those now attaining "international sovereignty." It is desperately resisting only in Algeria, a land heavily settled by Europeans and endowed with the incalculable wealth of the Sahara.
Belgian imperialism found itself forced to grant independence to the Congo after a slight inclination toward a resistance that was as brief as it was futile.
Portuguese imperialism - which knows that the inde pendence of its colonies will toll the knell of the dictatorial regime, both by showing up the weakness of the regime and by drying up a large part of its economic and financial resources — still resists, defending its slave style of domination. But this all the more reason why, international and African inevitable fall will be all the more violent.
As for US imperialism, its colonial policy
Eschewing direct domination, save in the of Puerto Rico, . does not hesitate to support brutal native regimes in all parts of the world where it possesses very considerable economic and strategic interests (Central
South Vietnam, South Korea, In Africa, on the contrary, where it has to struggle against old imperialisi adversaries, compromised by direct domi it adorns itself with the mask of the "liberator," the "liberal," while trying to get in the good graces of the native bourgeois strata in formation, by means material "aid."
For imperialism, the economic and in part strategic importance of the colonial and semi-colonial countries does not cease to be still vital (both for its supplies of materials and for the export of its industrial products and even of capital, the importance of this last factor having, however, diminished by comparison with the two others). Furthermore, the strategy of atomic war, which favors surprise attack, and raises the problem of survival, leads to the dispersal of bases around the world.
in which, by the force of events, imperialism finds itself setting out against the workers' the maintenance of its influence countries will take on an importance still greater than in the past. For this competition - supposing that it stays "peaceful" for a period — involves a race even hotter
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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL than in the past for economic power, the most important of which still remains the resources and the industrialization of the dependent countries.
In the decade that is beginning, imperialism enters this race handicaped from several points of view: compromised by its past in the eyes of the masses; incapable, structure, of granting effective aid; own ranks among powers that have reëstablished and surpassed their past potential and are throwing themselves into keener competition precisely in the field par excellence accumulation: the industralization of dependent
The only chance for imperialism in this field lies in the help that can be brought to it by the colonial bourgeoisie in formation. The next stage of the colonial revolution depends on the race in time between the for mation of such strata, to which imperialism conduces by and the revolutionary masses looking for radical solutions and therefore a radical leadership.
even the transition via a native neo-bourgeois leadership can turn out historically to be of short duration and finally also economically ruinous for imperialism. For any important development of a native bourgeoisie cannot but diminish in the long run that share of the surplus-value still cornered by imperialism.
3. THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION AND THE WORKERS' STATES
In the present historical phase of the formation, side-by-side with capitalism, of a system of workers' the alliance between the colonial revolution system of workers' states ought to be establishing itself quite naturally and almost automatically. gence of interests in the common struggle against imperialism is obvious, and ought to give rise to and unconditional support of this struggle by the workers'
Furthermore, in the field of economic exchanges, the workers' states will gradually have the possibility of advantageously replacing the "aid" granted by imperialism, and of diverting the present circuits with imperialism into their own orbit. The workers' states can grant low-cost financial and technical aid for the real economic development of the dependent countries, and without imposing political conditions.
They can furthermore establish - though this case may not be general - trade relations on the basis of the complementary nature of their economies: agricultural products and raw materials coming from the dependent countries against material for industrial equipment coming from the workers' states. The development of such relations with the depedent states in a historic perspective will make clearly apparent the enormous possibilities potentially possessed by the workers' states in this field and the fatal risks the eventuality of a prolonged "peaceful competition." It is only the nature of the political degenerated or deformed by the bureaucracy, that limits the possibilities to be exploited, and handicaps and deforms the de facto alliance between the colonial revolution and the workers' states.
Naturally, no objection could be raised to the economic the bureaucracy of the URSS other workers' states is granting to the bourgeois regimes of the dependent countries so that they may momentarily resist imperialism or develop more freely. degree to which this aid is granted in exchange for the "neutralist" policy of the colonial bourgeoisie and that the Communist Parties in the dependent countries find themselves forced to subordinate their autonomous class policy to the requirements of the diplomacy of the workers'
57 consolidation of bourgeois regimes which invariably turn this runs the risk of ending up practically in the against the workers' movement in their own countries, and, at a more distant stage, against the workers' states themselves. From this point of view, the examples provided recently by Nehru, Sukarno, Nasser, Kassem, and other beneficiaries of the aid of the workers' states, speak eloquently:
4. THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL BOURGEOISTE
The native comprador oligarchies, obtaining their income from trading profits, land rent, usury, or acting as funetionaries at the service of imperialism, are strata now in decline in the dependent countries, to the advantage of new social formations, which are reflecting the process steady, in spite of everything - of economic and industrial development in these countries. It is these strata which, directly or through their petty-bourgeois demagogues, are at the present stage cornering for themselves the leadership of the colonial revolution.
The importance of these strata, called national bourgeoisies, is highly variable in the different dependent countries according to the degree of economic development achieved
In cases such as India, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the matter is one already of a genuine class, sufficiently powerful and conscious to take direct political power, even if it risks losing it momentarily to the benefit of other fractions more tied up with the oligarchy and imper.
the case of other Asiatic and Latin American countries, the importance of the national compared to the comprador oligarchy is less.
In certain cases its power is often exercised through Bonapartist political regimes (such as Sukarno, Kassem, Nkhrumah, et al) which are operating historically for the benefit of the national bourgeoisie.
In other cases, which can turn out to be frequent in Africa, the very weak formation of native élites, other than the tribal chiefs and the functionaries at the service of imperialism, can give birth to new comprador bourgeoisies closely associated with imperialism for the economic coëxploitation of their own countries.
Everywhere the principal instrument for the development of the national burgeoisie proves to be Bonapartist political power. It is this power that renders it possible to face simultaneously the oligarchy, imperialism, and the masses, and to find the important amounts of capital required for building the substructure and the finaneing of large-scale enterprises. It is furthermore through the exercise of the political power and the economic functions of the state that the cadres of this bourgeoisie are partly formed, by the enrichment of functionaries, their infiltration in the enterprises, their corruption, etc. The Bonapartist state becomes, under these circumstances, a genuine nursery for capitalist development in the dependent coun tries.
The ideology which best corresponds to the Bonapartist state is the de facto dictatorship of the Single Party, which boils down to its leadership taking power. In the case that this party is truly proletarian and socialist through its programme and ideology, such a dictatorship, based on the masses organized in democratic committees or communes, would unquestionably have a historically progressive meaning. But the pretext of the so-called classless colonial society currently used by certain people to justifv in Africa the Bonapartist dictatorship of the Single Party, engaged in a capitalist economic development and without democratic control by the organized masses, is to be rejected.
Though it is true that the multi-party regime of socialist democracy cannot be transplanted, just as is, into a society
scarcely emerged from tribalism, it would be impossible for all that to neglect the need for such a possible Single Party to have a class character with proletarian ideology and programme and to base itself on the masses tically organized in peasant communes urban committees which control the government and hold the power.
As for more developed countries, the right to more than one soviet party must figure as an essential guarantee of a genuine socialist democracy.
No illusion is permissible about the real tendencies of the national bourgeoisie. Although in its formation it is obiiged to struggle to a certain extent against imperialism and the oligarchy, to ally itself with the proletariat and its trade-union organizations, and to advocate and even put into practice for a certain period nationalizations and "mixed" economy, it invariably tends, precisely through its increase in strength, to act like the classic bourgeoisie of the advanced countries: to turn against the workers' movement and to draw closer to imperialism both by "freeing" its "mixed" sconomy (in order to attract foreign capital and to stimulate native private capitalist initiative) and by lining up diplomatically with imperialism. Nehru's India, one of the first countries that obtained its independence and formed a serious national bourgeoisie, is the mirror in which there is already clearly reflected the national bourgeoisie's inevitable historical evolution, regressive and counter-revolutionary on a relatively short. term basis. (Other examples are: Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Argentina, Brazil.) The greatest danger lying in wait for the colonial masses in revolution is to be lulled by the mystique of national unity with their bourgeoisie and to sacrifice to this mystique their autonomous class policy and organization. 5. THE CAPITALIST ROAD OR THE SOCIALIST ROAD?
The colonial masses' aspiration to political independence and rapid economic development is everywhere profound and irresistible.
The national bourgeoisie is trying to fulfil this mission, profit by it itself and to pacify the masses. it stumbles over the impossibility of attaining the goal of rapid economic development by capitalist roads.
The national bourgeoisie shows itself everywhere unable to nationalize definitively (after a few stages that turn out to be necessary) the essential part of the surplus-value extorted by the imperialists in the dependent countries, as well as the land rent of the native feudalists, and to valorize the enormous resource represented by manpower of these countries. Nowhere has it been able or willing to expropriate without indemnity the imperialist enterprises in agriculture, mining, and trade; to expropriate without indemnity the feudalists and give the land to the to nationalize and plan the economy, and nobilize for its service the masses of the country.
Now the agrarian question is fundamental everywhere. The land for the most part is everywhere hoarded by the native feudalists, colons (big settlers), or foreign imperial• ist firms, and only a part of it (whose importance varies according to each concrete case) is cultivated on a private basis by native peasants or collectively in tribal reserves (of Negro Africa, for example).
Even these free peasants who are neither serfs nor sharecroppers nor rural laborers are for the most part poor peasants compared to the standards of the peasants of the advanced capilalist countries, and have to struggle rately to continue to exist as peasants. From this there arises the primordial importance of a radical agrarian reform, accompanied by the effective material and technical aid of a genuine proletarian state.
The agrarian reform is above all the distribution of the land according to the free will of those who till it. According to the concrete case, this can take the form of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL distribution of the lands of the feudalists and the colons
For almost landless peasants, effective aid by the state to the peasant coöperatives; or else the form of a collective management of the land right from beginning by communes on a village or broader scale, and collectives of agricultural workers and share-croppers of the great plantations and estates; or, most frequently, a mixed system.
For economic the national bourgeoisie counts only on the main contribution of foreign capital. Now its volume and the conditions for granting it render it an illusion to expect an even slightly rapid industrialization of the dependent countries so as to catch up with the advanced countries. The comparative examples of China and India become decisive in this field (without insisting on that of the US S R). The example of Jugoslavia is another. The Chinese experience is extremely valuable as an indication of a specific road for the rapid and balanced economic development of a colonial country that starts out from a very low level of the productive forces.
The organization of peasant masses into communes contains elements that might be able to be profitably applied in other cases, especially where the communal traditions of the peasants are still relatively strong. The political and economic organization of the commune permits productively employing the whole available laboring mass by using the productive means and forces on the spot and thus beginning the rapid and balanced economic development of the country.
The setting up of the communes in general might bo criticized only from the viewpoint of their possible bureaucratic administration, which would have the tendency not to take sufficiently into account the masses' living conditions and the need for their voluntarily joining this new type of economic and social organization. But in the case where the bureaucratic excesses might be limited — thanks mainly the democratic organization of the masses managing the communes - the communes as an institution might turn out historically to be one form for the rapid, balanced, and more productive development of the "under-developed" countries, by using fully and judiciously all the available resources, and a school for a more communal social life.
The Jugoslav example on its side periment in the rapid development of an "under-developed" country in which private small farm property predominates, an economy which, while being economy in its nature, remains open to the advantages of the world market, and thanks also to the close democratic association of the producers in the control and even the management of the economy (workers' councils).
The "under-developed" countries, far from being caught in the dilemma of either stagnation or a capitalist-type development thanks to the contribution of foreign capital, have the real possibility of taking, according to their concrethe "Chinese road" or the "Jugoslav road" or any combination of the two, rid of their negative elements.
But the primordial condition for such a possible development is the setting up of new economic and social structures of the socialist type. This means that the struggle for real liberation from imperialism, and for economic development and industrialization, is inseparable from the struggle for socialist revolution. Only those dependent which have known how to combine the anti-imperialist struggle with the struggle for the socialist revolution have been able really to break loose from the imperialist system and to open wide the road to their rapid development and industrialization.
6. THE PERMANENT CHARACTER OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
Instinetively, the masses who have thrown themselves into the anti-imperialist struggle against direct or indirert imperialist domination, are pushed toward goals that lie
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL beyond that of formal independence. In the present international and national contexts of the colonial revolution, it has inexorably a tendency to develop as a permanent revolution, putting more and more in the forefront the economic and social goals of the broad peasant and worker masses who are carrying it forward: agrarian reform, nationalization and planning of the economy, emancipation of
In this process the clash with the national bourgeoisie also becomes inevitable at a given stage of the struggle. Though the bourgeoisie in the dependent countries inevitably sets out on a sort of de facto united front of all the social classes (except the feudalists and the comprador bourgeoisie) against direct or indirect imperialist domination, the deepening of the struggle no less inevitably differentiates this front along class lines. The national bourgeoisie soon finds itself at grips with the radicalism of the movement of the peasant and worker masses who aspire to agrarian reform, nationalization and planning of the economy, and the emancipation of women -- all objectives incompatible with the regime of the national bourgeoisie. This obliges the bourgeoisie to turn against the mass movement and to resort to a regime that is, whether overtly or not, die-
The prestige acquired by the national bourgeoisie during the phase of the united anti-imperialist struggle can - in th: absence of a genuine revolutionary mass party — win credit for it among the masses and allow it temporarily to stop the revolution halfway (eg, Nehru, Sukarno, Bourguiba, Nasser, Kassem, Nkhrumah, et al). Thence arises the need never to subordinate the autonomous revolutionary niovement of the masses to the political leadership of the national bourgeoisie, "prettify" it, never to stop criticizing and exposing it, while accepting the anti-imperialist united front with it, i e, not a lasting political alliance, but conditional practical agreements for limited and speciffe joint goals. by the national bourgeoisie, or by petty-bourgeois formations with an ideology that is in the last analysis bourgeois, is partly the result of the policy of Stalinism, which has subordinated the autonomous revolutionary movement of the masses to the interests either of the metropolitan bourgeoisie or of the colonial national bourgeoisie. If this policy is not radically opposed, and if a stop is not put to treating the revolutionary movement of the masses simply as a contributory force to the game of the bourgeoisie and its relations with the Stalinist bureaucracy, there is a risk of enormously slowing down the progress of the colonial revolution to a higher level. way the existing national movements with bourgeois leadership or ideology, for in this case they would run the risk of cutting themselves off from the broad masses and remaining
59 in practice ineffective. While taking on everywhere the task of open revolutionary-Marxist publications which clarify the problems and trace out a clear perspective, they may find themselves obliged to carry on the essential part of their activity inside the existing national movements of a mass and revolutionary character, and to advocate within them a wing of a proletarian and socialist orientation. This orientation may in places take the transitional form of a class party, a mass Labor Party based on the trade unions.
The politicization of the trade unions in several dependent countries can operate in favor of the revolutionary movement or of the national bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie will try to domesticate the trade unions as leading political force both for its combat against the other bourgeois fractions, the comprador feudo-bourgeois, fo" its economic development. From this arises the possibility and necessity of directing the organized force of the young and dynamic proletariat of the dependent countries toward the transitional idea of the Labor Party based on the trade
But any orientation exclusively toward the proletariat, which in fact neglects the peasantry, can turn out to be fatal for the victorious outcome of the revolutionary combat. Besides the need of an adequate programme for the agrarian question, taking into account the peculiarities of each case, il is necessary constantly to link up the workers' struggles with the peasants' struggles, and to root the revolutionary organization in the countryside by daily work.
In many dependent countries, conditions are propitious for the organization and maintenance of a guerrilla, fed by the contribution of peasant forces and by the help and protection of the peasant population. The adequate combination of the armed struggle of the peasants with the mobilization of the city workers, can enormously strengthen the vigor and effectiveness of the revolutionary combat, and speed up the fall of the imperialist or comprador regimes in the dependent countries.
The maturity and effectiveness of a revolutionary leader ship in several present cases must be shown by its spirit of initiative, its capacity, its audacity in seizing an occasion for starting an armed struggle of the peasants in order 10 bark up and spur on the national revolutionary movement leave the adversary no respite for reconsolidating his positions.
The reëvaluation of the revolutionary possibilities of peasant warfare, in the light of the experience of China as well as of Algeria, Cuba, and elsewhere, is a duty for every leadership placed in analogous conditions, and one of the most valuable and important lessons, to be thoroughly assimilated, of the experience of the colonial revolution. The modern revolutionary party, in several dependent countries, must be the one to show itself the audacious organizer of the armed struggle of the peasants, raising the revolutionary process in the country right away to a higher level, involved in the seizure of power. II
THE VARIOUS EPICENTRES OF THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION AND THEIR PECULIARITIES 7. INDIA AND INDONESIA
In the dependent countries of the Far East the direct political power is at present to be found in the hands of the national bourgeoisie (India), of Bonapartist governments acting on its behalf (Indonesia and Burma), or of comprador cliques closely tied up with imperialism (South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Ceylon, Malaya, and South
Korea). In all these cases, where we now have to deal with formally independent states, the bourgeoisie's inability to complete the revolution, including the bourgeois-democratic one, is now obvious. The most flagrant example is India, far and away the most developed of these countries.
India, far from progressing along the road of a more and
"socialist," nationalized, and planned economy, of a radical agrarian reform and of a real national unification,
thus laying the foundations for a rapid economic developis in reality going in the opposite "mixed" economy is being developed especially in its private wide open again to foreign capital, while neither the Community Project and National Extension Services nor Vinoba Bhave's unofficial programme of "land gifts" has solved the practical distribution of landl to the peasants and their ensuing effective organization in coöperatives.
Because the superannuated structure of India could not yet be fundamentally overturned, the economic goals of the government of the bourgeoisie remain limited and subordinated to outside capitalist aid. This causes the country's rate of economic development, both industrial and agriculto remain low, and even to lag behind the rate of development of population.
The country's weak economic development and its only slightly shaken feudo-capitalist structure vent the liquidation of regional antagonisms and various obstacles — of customs, languages, religions, ete - which stand in the way of a genuine national unification of the country's rapid economic and cultural development.
As with Indonesia, various regions of Africa, and even Latin America, it is in India the lack of a radical re.
which perpetuates the aftermath of precapitalist ways of living and barbarism, tangled up with those of imperialist domination and aggravated thereby, and which hinders both the process of national unification across superannuated or artificial frontiers set up by regionalism, communalism, tribalism, or imperialism, and an economic and cultural upsurge.
There follows therefrom the prospect, in the years to come, of explosive developments which will cause the power of the hourgeoisie, after a period of maintaining itself with a parliamentary and democratic façade, to turn toward more open dictatorship. Under the combined pressure of the alarming gap between production increase and population increase and of the revolutionary influence of the successes steadily achieved by China, the Indian bourgeoisie is from now on visualizing the day when the prestige accumulated by the Congress Party and by Nehru personally in the period of the struggle against British imperialism will be completed exhausted.
The break-up of the Congress Party, already begun, and the crystalization on its right of more militant feudocapitalist and pro-imperialist formations, are signs of an evolution that may well lead to the same open dictatorship as that already experienced by Pakistan. Thus the proof will be given in the case of India as well that the regime of the national bourgeoisie is everywhere doomed to the same economic and political bankruptey.
In Indonesia, another country where the national bourgeoisie and its leaders were able — thanks to the failures of the Communist Party during the war — to acquire a scarcely deserved national prestige, the parliamentary acrobatics of the bourgeoisie have ended in its setting up its open Bonapartist power, based on the army. It is the treacherous policy of the Indonesian CP which has enabled Sukarno, the "hero" of the weak Indonesian national bourgeoisie, survive all the grave crises that have succeeded one another in this country since and now to consolidate Bonapartist power, prior to turning more decisively against the masses and the CP.
True, even now the power of the Indonesian bourgeoisie remains weak in face of the country's unsolved problems (agrarian reform, real national unification, effective liquidation of the whole economic aftermath of imperialism, industrialization), and of the discontent of the masses, who see their standard of living lowered by the insufficiency of of economic development, inflation, and unemployment.
A radical change in the policy of the CP, in both India
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and Indonesia, toward the national bourgeoisie, could naturally open up real revolutionary prospects in a relatively short time. lo the degree, however, that this eventuality car be considered improbable, the task of the revolutionary Marxists organized in the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and in the Acoma Partai is to work up a concrete transitional programme which completely exposes the power of the bourgeoisie and turns all the revolutionary forces toward the workers' and peasants' government.
The defense of the Chinese revolution and the popularization of all its valid achievements (including the conception of the communes) is not only a duty but a very powerful weapon in the hands of the revolutionary Marxists operating in these countries. Furthermore, a Leninist unitedfront policy with the Indian and Indonesian C Ps is necessary both for an effective fight against the bourgeoisie and for the inevitable ideological differentiation in these parties.
The Indian and Indonesian revolutions are the two great for which it is necessary to prepare with extreme seriousness, starting right now.
Despite the differences that exist in the respective economic development of India and Indonesia, in the relative strength of their bourgeoisies, and in the structures in the rural regions, the decisive equivalent factors in the two cases are the following. Both in India and Indonesia the masses have obtained considerable experience with the direct rule of the national bourgeoisie, with its inability to solve the agrarian question, the question of real unification, and that of industrialization, in the face of a growing population and also with its dictatorial evolution. The blind alley into which this policy has led, which contrasts more and mere with the revolutionary achievements in China and with the international context, can only lead to an explosion.
It is probably the outbreak of the revolutionary crisis in one of these iwo countries that will be able to touch off a new revolutionary avalanche in a whole series of other countries of the Far East at present under the domination of comprador cliques actively backed by American imperialism.
The Ceylonese revolution, even before then, might form an exception, due to the existence in this country of the Lanka Sama/ Samaya Party with a solid mass base. But for the LS SP to play its full part, it must strengthen it: Bolshevik structure and link itself up better with the peasant masses by means of systematic work among them, backed by the party's labor influence, on the basis of a concrete programme of cconomic and political transitional demands.
8. THE ARAB REVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST
At the other end of Asia, in the Islamic countries of the Middle East, there now stands out the epicentre of the Iraqi revolution; this forms a particular part of the Arab
After having gone forward for a whole period, carrying out important measures in the expropriation of some imperialist positions, agrarian reform, emancipation of women, and the trade-union and military organization of the masses, it has for a certain period now been marking time and even going backward.
in other analogous cases, the Iraqi revolution has raised to power a staff of "national" officers, of petty-bourgeois origin, with aspirations for a more rapid economic development, rid of the control and fetters of imperialism. Such staffs are caught between adverse social forces characteristic of the Arab countries of the Middle East: the feudalists and the trading and money-lending comprador bourgeoisie, the limited layers of the national bourgeoisie and the urban petty-bourgeoisie (craftsmen, clerks, functionaries, intellectuals), and the revolutionary proletariat
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and peasantry, and they take on a pronounced Bonapartist character. As such, however, they are doomed either finally to succumb again to the influence of the feudo-bourgeois, or in the best of cases to become the tool of the poliey and interests of the national industrial bourgeoisie and of the urban petty bourgeoisie won over to the same aims.
The evolution of Kassem, following on the analogous evolution of Nasser (more rapid because of the fact that the national bourgeoisie carries greater weight in Egypt than in Iraq), is characteristic in this connection. In order to consolidate his Bonapartist power, Kassem was obliged for a whole period not only to tolerate the revolutionary movement in the cities and the countryside and the organizations claiming to represent it, but to base himself partly thereon in order to stand up to the comprador feudo. bourgeosie and to the pro-Nasser circles that were aiming to overthrow him.
Kassem has gradually become the tool of the policy of the Iraqi ruling circles who think to exploit the considerable wealth of the country on their own account, and who, in connivance with other Arab leading circles, especially in Syria, are competing for supremacy in the Middle East with the Egyptian bourgeoisie lined up behind Nasser. The Kassem-Nasser rivalry, as well as that which sets Nasser against Bourguiba, destroys the myth of Arab unity set above inter-class antagonisms, and shows that the historically progressive search for the effective unity of the Arab nation will be the work not of the Arab bourgeoisie but of the Arab revolutionary masses engaged in the combat against imperialism, and at a given stage equally against their own ruling classes, including the national bourgeoisie.
The relative consolidation of Kassem's power has been greatly aided by the treacherous policy of the Iraqi CP, which has "idealized" Kassem, has enormously helped in building up his prestige, has subordinated the autonomous policy and organization of the revolutionary movement to Kassem's leadership, and has not been able to use this movement to raise the revolution to a higher level. As in the case of Nasser and the Egyptian CP, which for a whole period glorified Nasser and his regime, and also of the Moroccan C P attitude toward the sultan, the monarchy, and his regime, the Iraqi CP is now reaping the contempt and the repression of the idol it adored
The Nassers and Kassems represented, at the culminating moment of the revolution, the Kerenskys of the Arab revolution before becoming, by the force of events, the grave: diggers of its socialist completion. Though it is correct and necessary to support them critically against the attacks of imperialism or the native feudo-bourgeois, it is vital to dissipate the illusions of the masses about them and to promote an autonomous class policy aimed toward the workers' and peasants' government.
The replacement of a transitional programme which links up the masses' elementary economic and political demands with the transitional demands, properly so called, and the prospect of the workers' and peasants' government, by a merely bourgeois-democratic programme ensuring the economic development of capitalism, can lead only to certain defeat for the revolutionary movement and to the dictatorial rule of the bourgeoisie or even of the comprador feudo-bourgeois. For only the proletarian leadership of the revolutionary movement of the masses, setting up a workers' and peasants' government, can solve the bourgeois-democratie tasks in the dependent countries (agrarian reform, liquidation of the aftermath of imperialism, real national unification) and start industrialization off on the basis of a nationalized planned economy that productively mobilizes all the country's unused manpower.
After the Mossadegh experience in Iran and the Nasser 7. experience in Egypt, the experience of the Iraqi revolution forms the most advanced point reached up till now in tha
61 Middle East by the colonial revolution.
This experience also shows that without a proletarian and socialist leadership of the revolutionary movement of the masses, the revolution has no chance of solving the bourgeois democratic tasks and of seriously tackling industrialization. On the contrary, the Bonapartist staffs in power fatally succumb to reactionary native forces and to the intluence of imperialism, and turn against the masses in order to keep their movement within the limits of a capitalist development of the country, based on the essential contribution of foreign capital and the superexploitation of the native masses.
Kassem's power, however, is still weak, and the revolution. ary potentialities of the Iraqi masses, though stricken, have not been exhausted. The rectification of the situation remains possible provided that the mass movement clarifies its position toward the bourgeois Bonapartist power of Kassem, breaks off the permanent alliance subordinated to his leadership, and opens up in Iraq the prospect of the workers' and peasants' government and of the Iragi Federal Socialist Republic. THE SPECIAL CASE OF ISRAEL
The state of Israel, an artificial creation aided by the interests of imperialism in its struggle against the development of the Arab revolution, is at present a special factor which must be taken into account in the Middle East.
The violent disappearance of its population could not be envisaged, nor would it be possible to accept as a permanent state of things its existence in its present form and its expansionist dynamism to the detriment of the Arab masses. The Arab revolutionary Marxists will fight to have the rights of a self-governed national minority granted to the population of Israel within a centralized or federal Arab state of the Middle East. The Israeli revolutionary Marxists will fight for the dissolution of the state of Israel into such a state, and for complete reparation of the abuses and crimes committed against the Arab population uprooted from Palestine. THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION
At almost the other extremity of the Arab world the Algerian revolution is continuing its already six-year-long combat against the essential part of the repressive forces ot French imperialism.
The Arab world is thus caught in between two hotbeds of active revolution, Iraq and Algeria: these have to take into account, beside their own internal difficulties of development, the hostility of imperialism, the very relative interest of the Soviet bureaucracy, and the extreme tendency to go bourgeois in Tunisia, Morocco, and especially Egypt. The bourgeois wing of the Arab revolution has been considerably strengthened, and, left to its own dynamies, would keep the revolution at a level similar to that in the semi-colonial countries of Latin America.
The Algerian revolution is at the present time a plebeian force not yet tamed by the Arab bourgeoisie or by any imperialism. Because of Algeria's lack of a native feudocapitalist class and even of an urban petty-bourgeoisie of any real importance, the peasant and worker base of the Algerian revolution always has a preponderant influence on the few potentially pro-bourgeois elements that stud the apparatus of the FLN.
Much greater, on the contrary, is the danger arising from the structure of this organization, its political apparatus formed in emigration being insufficiently linked up with the fighting forces of the revolution and controlled by them. This factor, combined with the facts that the FL N's social and political doctrine is still insufficiently specified, and that the lack of aid from the French and international proletariat exposes the Algerian revolution to an ever greater pressure of bourgeois and imperialist forces from the outside, stresses the danger of the crystalization in the
F LN apparatus of a bureaucratic tendency susceptible to bourgeois influence.
Such a possible evolution could be fought against only by the contribution of effective proletarian aid, first of all in France itself, and by the creation inside the FLN of a tendency with a more specifically proletarian and socialist orientation, linked up with the fighting revolution, the combatants in the interior and the population, and the proletarian immigration in France.
The need for the transformation of the FLN into a political party with a specific programme, of a control of this party by the combatants and the control of the government by the party inside Algeria itself, has become at present a primordial condition for the healthy later development of the revolution. The Algerian revolution has reached a critical turning-point.
than five years it has sacrificed a great part af its living forces in an unequal combat against a powerful and almost without any aid from proletariat. At the same time it has been able in combat to arrive at an unquestionable maturity, to create cadres, expand the network of its international propaganda, touch public opinion, especially that of the Arab and African countries, and to subject French imperialism to a material and military effort that gravely handicaps its interests and plans in various fields.
At present, in order that it may face the eventuality of a new long period of struggle with French imperialism, it needs — in addition to the aid of the international proletariat and the Arab and African people (in the form of diplomatic, and moral help) — to raise to a higher political and organizational level the organization that leads it. Otherwise the immense losses, wear-and-tear, and combat fatigue might possibly lead to a defeat — not of the struggle for the goal of independence in one form or another, but of the revolution for the goal of a real independence that opens the road to the rapid industrial economic development of the country. Anyway, the plebeian base of the Algerian revolution has already acquired enough experience so that the eventuality of a pure and simple Bourguibist development of the revolution can be excluded.
An ideological differentiatical within the FLN, break into two tendencies — one pro-bourgeois, Bourguibist, which would try to corner the leadership of the country on the basis of a compromise with imperialism, and the other more proletarian — is possible, if not in the long run inevitable. In this case the process which is going on in the Istiglal in Morocco will take place also in the F LN, with this difference: that the Bourguibist tendency may turn out to be weaker right from the beginning, while the left tendency may turn out to be much more radical than the Moroccan left, and turn toward a mass party based trade unions.
The Algerian revolution is a powerful stimulus not only to the entire Arab revolution, but also and especially to the whole African revolution. In the lack of an effective aid from the French rnd European proletariat, it is still the advances of the African revolution that might be able, more than any other factor, to influence later developments in the Algerian revolution. Furthermore, it is on the outeome of the Algerian revolution that it depends whether the Maghrebian revolution as a whole will rebound or not in the next few years.
As for France, dominated by the Gaullist regime, the
Algerian revolution is playing the part of the main force undermining this regime. There can be no stabilization of the Gaullist regime as long as the war in Algeria goes on.
Big capital, which this regime represents, is aware of this fact as well as of the impossibility of putting an end to the Algerian revolution the way of military
"pacification." But on the other hand it is not disposed to lose its vested economic interests in North Africa and
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL especially the advantages of the exploitation of the Sahara whence its "solution" of an Algerian state associated with France.
Such a solution presupposes — in lack of a compromise with a decisive wing of the FLN apparatus — creation of a comprador native élite through the Constantine access to the administration, etc. But that is a long-term process that French imperialism cannot support without grave economic, political, and international risks _ whence the need to conclude that the Gaullist regime is using both "pacification" and the Constantine i as auxiliary means of pressure on the FLN or a decisive wing thereof in order to lead it to a compromise on the solution of association and the specific form thereof.
The special case of the FLN - the leadership of a plebeian revolution in which there are not yet, properly speaking, feudo-capitalist leading classes developed to any serious extent — raises a problem for the proletariat and its revolutionary organizations: they cannot be satisfied to criticize such an organization from the outside without trying above all to bring genuine international aid to the revolution and to work inside this organization's ranks
9. NEGRO AFRICA
The most spectacular developments in the recent unfolding of the colonial revolution are taking place in Negro
At an amazing speed the territories under direct colonial in the region are attaining even formal independence, skipping over stages. British as well as French and Belgian imperialism have selves obliged either to retreat here and there before the movement set going by the masses demanding their liberation from the direct colonial yoke or even to proceed to split such movements by turning the formal power over to native élites. There are still only Central Africa, Africa, and the territories under Portuguese control that are lagging behind in such an evolution.
The reasons driving imperialism to this greater flexibility are various:
The awakening of the African masses as a result of the events of the war and since then (the strengthening of the workers' states, headed by the US SR, the victory of the Chinese revolution, the Arab and especially the Algerian revolution) has been further aided by the development of the capitalist economy in Africa, urbanization, detribalization, the insecurity introduced into the economic and social life of the autarkie societies of earlier days, the birth of a concentrated and dynamic proletariat and strata intellectuals, and even in places potentially bourgeois elements who aspire administer themselves. Furthermore, ali of Africa (and Negro Africa in particular) containing very considerable and still almost unexploited wealth in minerals, sources of power, and agriculture, has since the war the principal colonial reserve of have also increased it: interest for imperialism.
And lastly, the rivalries among the imperialist powers compeiing for the East-West antagonism, have helped the self-confidence of the native élites in the possibility of their exploiting the situation to reach The trend of British imperialism, as well as of French, Belgian, and American imperialisms, in Africa, now sufficiently clear, is to speed up the formation of limited native élites, turn the political over to them, and associate them, by bribing them, economic coexploitation of Africa. In the lack of a classie-type class structure of any degree of development the natives in Negro Africa, and especially the lack of a bourgeoisie, including a developed petty bourgeoisie, the limited élites that exist - a few intellectuals, a few
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL functionaries, a few trade-union cadres, a few tradesmen and businessmen — constitute potentially, if not already actually, new comprador strata, on which imperialism bases its hope to see them develop and stabilize as such.
But on the other hand the still extreme social, economic, and political weakness of these limited élites, faced with a powerful mass movement that is eager for radical reforms and solutions, as well as the awareness of these élites that they have the possibility of staking on the rivalries among the imperialists and the East-West antagonism, pushes them to a sui generis role not only politically but also socially, in the following more specific sense:
Not having yet taken form and root in rapidly changing African society, these élites constitute, at the present stage, less the embryo of a neo-bourgeois class than the embryo of a state bureaucracy manœuvring between the plebeian mass of present African society and imperialism. It is only in cases like Ghana or the Ivory Coast, where capitalist penetration in agriculture has already created a peasantry and an urban petty-bourgeoisie (studded with a few nuinely bourgeois elements), both mercantile, embryo of a native bourgeois power is to be found.
This specific social role peculiar to present-day African society can just as well evolve toward a clearly bourgeois character as toward a quasi-proletarian character, according to the strength of the mass movement, and its relations with imperialism and the workers' states. At the present moment the Guinea of Sekou Touré is the most advanced example of this phenomenon. The Kenya of Jomo Kenyatta, and even the Tanganyika of Julius Nyerere may turn out tomorrow to be analogous examples, as well as the Cameroons, the territories under Portuguese control, and others. In all these examples the fundamental element of future evolution is the slate and the stratum which administers it.
In the case where the economy is aimed toward nationalization of the few key mining, agricultural, and trading enterprises, the collectivization of agriculture on the basis of the tribal village or of broader communes, and the structure of the state on the basis of peasant and urban communes, there is beginning the development of a workers' state based essentially on a nationalized and planneed economy.
The nationalization of the foreign enterprises can, furthermore, be carried out by stages, provided that they expatriate only a limited part of the profit, while reinvesting the rest on the spot, and submit to control by the state and by their workers organized in councils.
The collectivization of agriculture can turn out to be enormously facilitated by the survival in Negro Africa of communal tribal customs, particularly strong in this field. The essential aid (scientific, technical, and material) of the state to agriculture, in order to fight effectively agains: unfavorable climatic conditions and to increase yields can also enormously facilitate such a collectivist trend in agriculture right from the beginning. In these countries the most important resource for their rapid economic development lies in the productive use of all available manpower, hitherto largely
But such a mobilization is impossible without the climate of a genuine revolution, of a genuine workers' and peasants' government, in the framework of a nationalized and planned economy. Naturally it is not a matter of aiming at the construction of an autarkie "socialist" economy, which could only keep the living levels of the masses very low, and make the political regime degenerate toward a bureaucratic dietatorship. It is a matter of profiting broadly all the possibilities of the world market in both its capitalist and socialist sectors, as well as by the development of the inter-African market and trade.
The socialist revolution in Negro Africa inevitably presents peculiarities owing to the fact that we are dealing here with an economico-social level lower than that of the
63 dependent countries of feudo-capitalist structure in other parts of the world, in Latin America or Asia. In Negro Africa we are generally dealing with more specific structures of a still largely tribal society, breaking up under the penetration of imperialism and capitalism that is destroying the autarkie subsistence economy, commercializing native small-scale agricultural production side-by-side with capitalist large-scale agricultural production, and causing the concentration in the cities, the mining centres, and the imperialist plantations of the manpower released by the break-up of the traditional national economy.
Because this degree of economic development did not throw up native ruling classes — for the limited European minorities, up until very recently, administered and directed the economy themselves, while they entrusted local civil administration to the traditional chiefs and their own functionaries — present-day society in Negro Africa is a specific form of combined development of the structures of natural economy, simple market economy, and imperialist economy, while the links of a feudal economy or of native capitalist economy are still totally or largely lacking. 2 ut is from this that there arises the specific role of the limited native stratum which is acceeding to power and controls the state, in an equally specific international and national context unknown in the past. This stratum possesses in the state a force per se, without undergoing the precise influence or control of a ruling clase whose agent it is. It is by its administration of the state that this stratum is developing and acquiring social importance, and not by the intrinsic needs of production and its role in production. Under the historical conditions prevailing in the past and up till the last war, such a stratum could have evolved only toward a comprador bourgeoisie in the service of imperialism.
But under the specific present conditions, where it inevitably is subjected to the influence of the powerful movemeni of the masses and of the rising power of the workers' states, and knows that it can profit by the East-West antagonism, this stratum is taking on a Bonapartist role which it imparts to the whole state, whose economic and social structures are not yet definitively oriented toward an inevitably classic capitalist development.
The boundaries of the present African states are artificial and absurd, and correspond to the lines of the carve-up into zones of influence, a division carried out by imperialism toward the end of the last century (Congress of Berlin, 1885). It is necessary to proceed to a regroupment of the existing states into broader formations, in . the direction of the African Federal State, grouping all the Negro-Hammite peoples' south of the Arab countries of North Africa.
These peoples are not strictly homogeneous from the viewpoint of ethnic origins, language, and religion. But common customs, a common civilization, and a common destiny have been forged on the basis of an identical tribal economic and social organization through of slave exploitation by the whites and the native mercenaries under their orders, and now the beginning of an African common national consciousness through the struggle that it is carrying on for its liberation from the imperialist yoke. The Pan-Africanism that stirs the African élites and more and more carries away the vanguard sectors entering into the decisive struggle against imperialism, corresponds to a confused search for African national unity, forged by those common origins, destiny, and struggle.
Granted, Pan-Africanism can aiso become the ideology of the African bourgeoisie now in formation to overshadow differences and the class struggle and to exploit for a 2 With the exception, however, of certain regions such the northern part of Nigeria, where feudal agricultural property predominates.
period for its own class profit the revolutionary potentialities and labor power of the masses. (Pan-Arabism is undergoing such a fate at the hands of a Nasser and of other spokesmen of ihe rising Arab bourgeoisie.) It is distinguish between Pan-Africanism mouth of a Nkhrumah and Pan-Africanism as an idea of national unity of the whole African Negro powerful revolutionary force urging on the African masses in their struggle against imperialism.
The concrete stages of regroupment of the African nation, by fusion or federation, cannot be foreseen and advocated as early as the present moment. But it can be said that the tendency to unification must be everywhere favored, encouraged, written into the programme of the African revolutionary party. If the radiation of the Guinea of Sékou Touré is destined to grow in all Negro Africa as an attempt at a non-capitalist development, the revolutionary hotbeds to be noted in Negro Africa are South Africa, Angola and Mozambique, Central Africa, Kenya, the Congo, and Nigeria.
The revolution that has begun in South Africa has every chance of developing coming years as a second Algerian war at the other end of the continent. This struggle, a combination of a guerrilla and a revolutionary mobili zation of the proletariat in the cities and the mines, will have the active support of all Negro Africa, which constitutes hinterland. The human reserves of the peasantry, well as the geographical advantages of the country, are extraordinarily favorable to a guerrilla. Furthermore, industrial, agricultural, and mining proletariat of South Africa is vital to the country's economy.. uprising of the South African masses, based on a genuine revolutionary organization of a national character, is capable of putting a relatively rapid end to the fierce resistance of the European minority. But in any case, it is necessary te take this inevitable resistance into account: not to minimize it and to make preparations on the basis thereof.
The South African revolution will inevitably have to take on the aspect of a proletarian and socialist revolution. overthrowing the regime — slavery-minded, racialist, sui generis — of the economically most advanced capitalism in all Africa. Both during the phase of struggle and by the significance and results of its victorious outcome, the South African revolution will pull all Negro Africa up to a higher level of its revolutionary development. What is at present necessary in South Africa is to build on a, national scale a revolutionary organization of the non-European masses which, while setting out from these masses' economic and political national demands, will be aimed toward the armed uprising and the proletarian revolution.
Without decisive action in this direction, without ticipation in all the mobilizations of the masses, without flexible tactics so as not to get cut off from the masses even when they take false steps, there is a great risk that the revolutionary potentiality of the masses may be for a whole period spent in explosions without a future, and that the effective leadership of them may pass over to activist elements who are incapable of keeping up a longtrrm struggle nationally organized and steadily raising
As in the case of the Arab countries - and in places even more in the case also of the countries of Negro Africa - the organization of the revolutionary Marxist everywhere, will have bulk of its work for a whole period inside the existing national mass movements and in the trade unions these exist. Its general goal will be the creation of class parties of a mass character, based on trade unions, to be
These parties will have to work up a transitional programme, corresponding to the specific conditions in each country, while taking their regroupment
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and orientation toward the African Federal State (or the Socialist United States of Negro Africa). The organization of trade unions and their autonomous federation Pan-African scale is a task to be ardently pursued everywhere, for the trade unions are called on to represen everywhere the main organized force that the governments will try to domesticate to their service (as well as, in addition, the nationalist parties of the bourgeoisie now in formation).
10. THE NEW PHASE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTION THE CAUSES OF INSTABILITY IN LATIN AMERICA
The revolution in Latin America is reaching the highest level attained by the colonial revolution at the stage, having gone beyond the phase of formal independence and acquired a considerable experience of the comprador oligarchy and even of the national bourgeoisie.
The capitalist development in Latin America most advanced of all the dependent regions, and in certains cases, such as Argentina, has even reached a level which brings these coun tries close to being capitalist states, admittedly behindhand compared to the advanced capitalist states of today, materially close to the average pre-war capitalist level. Yet even in these cases the imperialist grip is still strong, as well as that of the comprador landed and trading olicountries, full of contradictions, and of discontinuities and disequilibriums characteristic of their economic development.
The process of industrialization of Latin America been considerably speeded up during the war and since, and, despite its jerky character, does not fail to be con-
Of all the dependent regions, Latin America has received the greatest part of the investments of European and North America origins.
But it is also from there that imperialism has extorted the greatest part of surplus value, far surpassing the total of its "aid" without productive reinvestment on the spot. It is the conditions of imperialist exploitation of Latin America's enormous resources in agriculture, power, and mining, combined with that of the parasitical landed and commercial oligarchy, which holds back the economic development of this region and causes the discontinuities, crises, and disequilibriums characteristic of this develop-
The formation of capital productively reinvested on the spot is hindered by the repatriation of the greatest part of the surplus value extorted by the"mining, petroleum, agricultural, and other imperialist enterprises; by the speculative turn given to its investments by the oligarchy; by the very weak rate of internal savings, due to the of the population. The importance last factor in capital formation limited compared to the other iwo factors.
as Latin America's agricultural and mining exports profited by scarcities in the world market during the war and immediately thenafter, the formation of local capital was on the rise and considerable together with other factors, aided speededindustrialization. But since these exports have been suffering from drop in prices and even relatively d= in volume, for the formation of local capital has been diminishing.
Latin America's superannuated feudo-capitalist and imperialist structures, moreover, prevent the balanced expansion of the internal market. The peasant majority of the population has little or no land, and is without adequate aid from the state, the workers' wages are generally low, while developed substructure (communications, power, various cunstructions of publie utility, etc.) are
But the resistance of imperialism and the oligarchy to a workers' and peasants' governement and toward socialism,
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL lacking. As a consequence the internal market is both limited and disjointed.
As a result of the fact, moreover, that the economy often depends on the export of a very limited range of products, if not of one single agricultural or mining product, these countries feel recessions in the world market as genuine economie crises, struggle in the throes of chronic inflation. This does not internal market or to aid the formation and investment of local capital.
The artificial frontiers — an inheritance from imperialist colonization and domination and from / the regional interests of the comprador oligarchy - also prevent the market from being expanded to the full extent of its natural confines: all of Latin America; or, to begin with, South America on the one hand, and Central Ame-
Mexico, and the islands of the Caribbean on the
It is North American imperialism that is opposed, with the firmest determination, to the free development of the Latin American revolution. Latin America's resources in agriculture, power, and mining, from Mexico to Patagonia, passing through the wealth of Venezuela and Brazil, constitute for the highly developed economy of the US A, which is exhausting its own national resources, absolutely
Latin America is, moreover, the most important outlet for the industrial products and capital of Yankee imperialism, while its strategic interest is also
It is North American imperialism which, having gradually supplanted the European imperialisms in Latin America to a great extent, has become the main reactionary force, allied with the comprador oligarchy, in hindering economic development and industrialization, and in maintaining both the anachronistic social structures and the extreme Balkanization of the region.
Its grip on it since the war, however, has not ceased to encounter the violent and sometimes victorious opposition of the new rising forces of the Latin America revolution. Its hold is equally undermined by revived imperialist competition, as well as by that begun by the workers'
To the degree in which, despite everything, the economic development and industrialization of this region have continued and even speeded up since the war, the social configuration of these countries has been seriously modified, and is very different from, far more developed than, that in the other dependent regions of the world.
Besides the peasantry — share-croppers, rural laborers, and poor individual peasants — who still form the great majority of the population, and also besides the considerable urban petty bourgeoisie - intellectuals, officeworkers, functionaries, small businessmen, and craftsnien there has been formed a concentrated and namie proletariat, especially Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, as well as in the mining or oil centres of Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela.
Furthermore, besides the classic comprador landed and commercial strata, there have been formed new strata of the industrial national bourgeoisie, who hope for freer economic development, less hindered by imperialism and the oligarchy. which, in Latin American countries, either directly or though the intermediary of Bonapartist political regimes, are endeavoring to corner and hold on to political power, and to channe] for their own profit the powerful anti-imperialist and revolutionary movement of the masses of the peasantry, the proletariat, and the radicalized urban petty bourgeoisie.
such experiments is still very strong. What is more, the national bourgeoisie itself is afraid to trust too much the support of the revolutionary masses and is incapable of radically imperialism and the oligarchy. This political factor, in interaction with the economic diffthe acuteness of social contradictions, power of the revolutionary movement of the masses, the basis of the chronic instability, the almost permanent revolutionary crisis, which characterizes Latin countries at the present stage.
Since the dictatorship of the regimes of the comprador oligarchy, relying on the army and the police, proves in most cases to be henceforth impossible or inoperative, and since the power of the national bourgeoisie, caught in between the opposition of imperialism, of the oligarchy, the radicalism of the mass movement, proves to be profoundly unstable, political crisis in Latin America becomes endemic. It thus reflects on the political plane the revolutionary transformation now going on in Latin Amesociety, full of contradictions, discontinuities, and disequilibriums, in the present international context of the general crisis of imperialism, the rise of the economic and military power of the workers' states, and the international rise of the colonial revolution.
The prolongation of instability and revolutionary crisis in the Latin American countries is moreover the expression of the lateness — or rather, inadequate parallel growth in maturity — of a revolutionary proletarian leadership capable of bringing this crisis to a victorious outcome in -the immediate future. But the objective eminently favorable for such a rapid growth in and for the formation of a revolutioary proletarian mass leadership.
The objectively revolutionary situation which at present more of less generally characterizes Latin America clearly reflected both in the power of the revolutionary movement of the masses and in the extreme division and acuteness of antagonisms among the leading classes.
The uninterrupted struggle of the Argentine proletariat since the fall of Perón, the maintenance of the fundamental gains of the Bolivian revolution since 1952, the rise in influence of the worker's parties in Chile, the fall of the dictatorships in Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela, the Cuban revolution, and the struggle now begun against the dictatorship in Paraguay, are so many eloquent signs of the rising extreme power of lhe revolutionary movement of the masses.
On the other hand, , the divisions within the ruling classes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and elsewhere, as well as the inability of the army — traditional tool of reactionary dictatorship in these countries — to intervene effectively and thwart the chronie crisis, are also significant signs of the depth of the instability and of the objectively revolutionary situation that marks Latin AmeTHE TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME AND THE MAIN PROBLEMS OF THE LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The level that the Latin American revolution will reach a: the next stage will depend on the formation of a revolutionary proletarian mass leadership capable of replacing the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois staffs that are leading the revolutionary movement of the masses. This task is at present possible provided that the revolutionary Marxist tendency operates with audacity and ingenuity in the mass movement, laking into account the special conditions that prevail in each country.
Everywhere combining independent activity with entrist work in the proletarian or even plebeian mass formations of a revolutionary nature, it will have as its task to work up and to advocate a transitional programme toward
66 which includes in particular: a radical agrarian reform, distributing the land to the peasants who till it, and an effective aid by the state to the latters' coöperative organizations; a plan for economic development and industrialization on the basis of a fundamentally nationalized economy that takes into account the resources of the world and of aid from and exchanges with the workers market, market, especially of ihe unified Latin American
On the general Latin American level the slogan of the Socialist United States of Latin America must be tirelessly propagandized.
What is everywhere necessary is not abstract propagand? for the proletarian power and the socialist revolution, but a concrete answer to the vital problems of each country, te be solved by he workers' and peasants government based on the political and trade-union workers organizations and on the organization of masses into militia and
The agrarian reform must lead to distributing the land of the oligarchy to the peasants who till it and to envisage their immediately collectivist exploitation only in the specific cases where still deep-rooted communal customs facilitate this solution, as also in the case of plantations which collectivist exploitations run by collectives formed by their workers. The agrarian reform must also be accompanied by a programme of specifie aid on the technical and financial level by the workers' favoring coöperative exploitation by peasants. for nationalizations, although those of the banks. transport, some key enterprises, and foreign trade are indispensable right from the start, as for the rest, will be taken according to the criterion of continuity and the increase in production, within the possible limits of state control over enterprises (including foreign ones).
As in the dependent countries less developed than those of Latin America, in this region also one of the main resources for speeding up economic development and industrialization according to a plan is the productive mobilization of the immense manpower of a population, growing at one of the highest rates in the world, that is at present largely unused. But only the radical revolution led by the proletariat, under the power of a workers' peasants' government, can create the moral and practical framework needed for such a mobilization.
The working up of the concrete political transitional programme should go hand in hand with the search for the transitional organizational road toward the mass revolutionary party. The goal in this field, everywhere in Latin American at present, must be to form class political from the most advanced formations of the national bour- organizations having a mass geoisie and the radical petty-bourgeoisie which are corner ing the leadership of the revolution.
A characteristic of the Latin American revolution, more marked than elsewhere, is the important role (including a political role) played in several Latin American countries the trade-union movement (Argentina, Chile especially). In all these countries the national bourgeoisie has sought to domesticate the trade unions as a force to fight against its adversaries and to develop itself. To offset this tendency and to exploit fully the social and political importance acquired by the unions, it is necessary to propagandize systematically the idea of the mass Labor Party based on the trade unions. Furthermore, strengthen the union movement's own power, it is necessary to call for and fight for trade-union unification country (one union per industry and one single trade-union federation) as well as for the creation of an autonomous Latin American trade-union confederation.
The immense revolutionary potentialities of Latin America's landless peasatry have been shown in Bolivia, Colombia, Central America, and above all in Cuba. Unless
FOURTH INTERNAȚIONAL very special attention is paid to this question by the revolu-
Marxist tendency, the revolutionary mobilization of the proletariat runs the risk of remaining ineffective.
The revolutionary mobilization of the peasants is possi ble on the basis of systematic propagande for the programme of radical agrarian reform, and of no less systematic work among them which will root the revolutionary organrural regions and create peasant cadres. But above all it is necessary to seize a politically propitious moment during the period of acute revolutionary ferment to organize and audaciously launch an armed struggle by the peasants for the land, and to connect it up with the workers' mobilizations. Thenafter the peasant guerrilla may to be a powerful stimulus to the workers' struggles and deprive the class enemy of the advantage a possible partial defeat or ebb of the workers' movement.
In Latin America the revolutionary Marxist tendency has a field that is more propitious than elsewhere for its rapid development. Apart from the objectively favorable conditions, neither the existing Socialist nor Communist Parties have become deeply rooted in the masses. Their opportunis! and timorous policy, in tow to the bourgeoisie, not correspond to the revolutionary aspirations of the La-
American masses and to the urgency of a radical
Under the pressure of the powerful revolutionary movement of the masses, the divisions and crisis within the ruling classes, the weakening of imperialism internationally, and the rising power and prestige of the workers' states, important left-centrist wings are at present developing certain Socialist Parties (Chile, Uruguay, Argentina).
The Communist Parties, on the contrary, round the sole goal of bringing pressure on US imperialism for the benefit of the momentary interests of Soviet an o diplomacy, by staking exclusively on the quite relative antagonism hetween the national bourgeoisie and that imperialism — whence their abandonment of any autonomous elass policy and infolding of an ultra-opportunist policy that relegates them to the role of powerless supernumeraries, without prestige and invariably "betrayed" by different politicians of the bourgeoisie looking highly appreciated "left" cover. SPECIAL SITUATIONS
In the present context, which is in general objectively revolutionary in Latin America, there stand out the more special situations in Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and
In Argentina, the spontaneous combativity of the working class is equalled only by that of the masses in Japan. Under these conditions the stabilization of the regime is constantly put off, but neither do the masses suoceed in giving a revolutionary outcome to the country's chronic crisis. Only the creation of a class political party based on the trade unions, which will know how to seize the propitious moment for organizing the masses in committees and militia, mobilizing the peasants and the agricultural proletariat, and aim the whole struggle toward the workers' and peasants' government, can bring the country out of its blind alley.
In the situation created by the revolutionary mobilization of the proletariat, there have appeared at various moments, at least potentially, elements of dual power; these will also probably appear again. It is necessary to work in such a way that these elements take on specific organizational form (committees, militia, guerrilla). In such a increased tenfold, for the Labor Party based on the trade unions can then produce more substantial results, swinging the radical wing of the Peronist trade unions in this direction — which would speed up by interaction the whole revolutionary process in the country. Because, stuck as it now is in the blind alley of an
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL activity that is, from the political viewpoint, largely of the revolutionary syndicalist type, there is a risk that in the long run it will, at least temporarily, exhaust the activist interest of the masses and cause a stabilization - temporary and quite relative — of the open dictatorship based essentially on the army.
In Bolivia we are witnessing a new relative upsurge of the revolutionary movement of the masses which is expressed in the sanguinary deleats among the peasants and miners suffered by both the rosca and the right wing of the M NR But for lack of a sufficient strengthening of the revolutionary party, there is a risk that this upsurge be monopolized once more by the left-centre wing of the MN R (Paz Estenssoro), seconded by the centrist leadership of the COB (Lechín) and the MN R left.
It is the power of the revolutionary movement of the miasses that permitted the maintenance of the fundamental revolution and heretofore victoriously repulsed all assaults by the reaction and by the pro-imperialist right wing of the MNR. It is the weakness of the revolutionary party that has prevented the revolution from ending up in the workers' and peasants' government.
With the prospect of a return to power of the Paz Estenssoro - Lechín centrist alliance and of the present favorable Latin American context, a new rise of the masses is inevitable. It is necessary to profit by this situation to put the whole mining region under the effective administration of the workers (committees and militia), to generalize the agrarian reform under the pressure of the peasants militia and unions, and to impose an economic plan taking into account the country's real resources, including its labor power, and the aid of the workers' states and exchanges with them. plan, can under these conditions become timely again. The key to this possible and necessary development remains, however, the strengthening of the party on the national scale, and especially among the miners and peasants, where the essential part of its daily activity and its leadership
In Venezuela the party borne to power by the revolutionary masses must confront in pressure from imperialism and from the masses eager for a radical transformation, for a real outcome to the revolulion they began. Past experience in this couniry has shown that all governments, in however "revolutionary" a way they may have begun their career, invariably succumb to the pressure of Yankee imperialism and of its enormous interests in Venezuela's fabulous oil and mining riches.
The Acción Democrática is a heteroclite formation re. miniscent of the A PR A or the MNR, with a radical petty-bourgeois leadership, which has aiready become differentiated into a reactionary and pro-imperialist wing and a wing more pervious to the influence of its radical base. Without the organization of workers' and peasants' militia and committees, it will prove to be impossible to force the party and the government to broaden the conquests of the revolution, to procted to a genuine agrarian reform, to nationalize the country's oil and mining riches, to promulgate a plan for the diversified and rapid development of the economy, profiting by the country's considerable financial resources, and thus effectively to defend the revolution against the inevitable new assaults by imperialism and reaction.
Entrist work of the revolutionary Marxist tendency in side the leftwing of the A D must lead to advocating the formation of a Labor Party based on the trade unions. revolution, are already numerous and important.
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The Cuban revolution has demonstrated the effectiveness of a guerrilla based on the active support of a poor peas antry eager for a radical agrarian reform, combined with the mobilization of ihe proletarian and petty-bourgeois masses of the urban centres, including, at a given stage, in the form of armed action by limited squads surrounded by the sympathy and protection of the population.
The Cuban revolution, under the impetus of the revolutionary masses - peasants, urban petty-bourgeois — and in face of the fact that the comprador forces were so extremely compromised with the sanguinary dictatorship now overthrown, is developing rapidly and powerfully as a permanent revolution, in spite of its disparate official leadership and the lack of a mass revolutionary party.
The leadership of the Cuban revolution, purged of a whole series of flatly bourgeois-liberal elements, present a Jacobin staff subjected in varying degrees to the revolutionary influence of the masses - that is to say, a staff which, despite its non-proletarian social origins and ideology, has found itself forced to go beyond the limits of capitalism and seriously to undermine its equilibrium. But it has not yet overthrown this regime, and it will not be able, in its present form, to do so, without the creation of a mass revolutionary party, linked up with the masses' militia, committees, and trade unions.
By the scope already attained by the agrarian reform, by the few measures of nationalization of foreign imperialist enterprises, by the thorough purge of the state apparatus, and by the creation of militia and people's tribunals, the Cuban revolution has already gone considerably outside the frame of capitalism without having completely broken it and replaced it by a state of a new type based on a nationalized and planned economy. What is important ar the present stage is not so much the completion of the economic and social measures that will confirm the overthrow of the feudo-capitalist regime, but rather the organization of a proletarian political power by the extension and institutionalization of militia and people's tribunals, and the organization of communes and committees as organs of local power.
The economic and social measures in the direction of an effective nationalized and planned economy can in this case be spaced out in accordance with the strengthening of the revolution internally and internationally, provoking premature reactions by Yankee imperialism and without causing production to suffer disproportionately. The key to the victorious development of the Cuban revolution lies, inside the country, in the rapid formation of the mass revolutionary integrating all the country's valid with a clear proletarian and socialist programme, revolutionary elements, and, outside the country, in an international organization for the defense of the Cuban revolution, especially in the countries of Latin America.
The echo and repercussions of the Cuban revolution in all this region are already immense and will continue increase. Hence these are to be expected fierce efforts by Yankee imperialism and the Latin American comprador oligarchies to beat down the Cuban revolutionary regime by any means, or to bring it to capitulate and go bourgeois.
For this reason the safety of the Cuban revolution lies finally in keeping up its effective defense in the Latin American countries, in a clear indication addressed to Yanker imperialism that any military intervention it might make in Cuba would stir up a regular hurricane in all Latin America, in the spread of the Cuban revolution to other countries of Latin America. The movement of organization of Committees for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution, as well as volunteer corps, must be rapidly extended through all Latin America.
THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION
AND THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
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11. CONCLUSIONS
One of the most positive aspects of the colonial revolution is the fact that immense masses of humanity — who were still up lill yesterday crushed by the exploitation of imperialism and the comprador ruling classes, poverty-stricken, uncultured, passive — have got into movement, irreversible and irresistible, to win for themselves a material, cultural, and social level in conformance with the present possibilities of humanity.
From this point of view a qualitative transformation has been produced in humanity by this revolutionary awakening to the highest civilizing aspirations, and by the results of this awakening on, for example, the status of women and is ready benefing from dial quitted an hormation now being radically changed. All humanity up its general movement toward the new socialist civili-
Granted, it is not a question of exaggeratedly embellishing the fact that the colonial revolution at the present historical stage occupies the vanguard of the world revolution. The revolutionary Marxists are also fully aware of the drawbacks inherent in the lateness of the socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries for raising the ideological level of the masses, for creating genuine mass revolutionary Marxist parties, for overcoming the phenomena of bureaucratization in the movement and workers' states, and for rapidly building a socialism that immediately, and not just in some distant future, of benefit to the masses.
But it is a question in any case of taking as a point of departure the present historical realities, and of making the most of them. It is now clear that the process of the world revolution is developing from the periphery, from the colonial and dependent countries as well as from the existing workers' states, toward the capitalist countries of Europe, and the United States (very probably the last of all).
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
The Fourth International, heir to the revolutionary traditions and principles of the Third International of Lenin and Trotsky, under these conditiors cannot do otherwise than, quite naturally, carry on the essential part of its activity in the living field of the revolution, masses, and the world's most oppressed and exploited peoples, are struggling.
For valid historical reasons the development of the Fourth International was during a whole period centred on the considered, advanced capitalist countries, of the last war, as the N° I epicentre of the world revolution.
Now it is necessary for the Fourth International to reorganize its activities as an International in terms of the principal sector of the world revolution, which is the colonial revolution, and carry on in this field, for a whole period, the essential part of its efforts.
The immediate future of the International lies in coun tries and regions like India, Indonesia, Japan, the Arab lands, Negro Africa, and Latin America, where immediate and rapid gains are possible.
The Fourth International must show itself capable of organizing in all these fields valid forces which without any sectarianism link themselves up with the revolutionary movement of the masses and provide effective answers to their aspirations.
The extreme degeneration of the Social-Democracy, in tow to moribund imperialism, and of Stalinism, tow car an to the conservative Soviet bureaucracy, leave the field of the colonial revolution wide open to the strategical and practical audacity, the tactical ingenuity, of the revolutionary organizations of the Fourth International.
It is by its close and total fusion with the emancipating struggle of the masses and the most disinherited peoples in the world that the Fourth International will prove its full historical justification and impose its role as the leading revolutionary vanguard. May 1960
La te
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