FOR THE NEW STAGE
A NEW LEADERSHIP
2
Editorial
The Sixth World Congress of the Fourth International took place amid an international situation of an unprecedented crisis of the capitalist ystem and an advance of the revolutionary orces in crucial sectors of the globe. On the one hand, the American economy, despite its enormous possibilities, has bogged down in a stage of prolonged stagnation, with all the resulting political and social repercussions, and never was US prestige so low throughout the world. Un the other hand, the constant growth in the economy of the workers' states, in spite of bureaucratie malpractice, is increasingly representative of one of the dynamic elements of our period and objectively contributes to the steady upsurge of revolutionary forces throughout the world. These forces are seething, becoming conscious, organizing, fighting, and winning vietory after victory, first in the colonial and semi-colonial world, main motive-force of the revolution at the present stage: the Cuban mass movement culminates in the formation of a workers' state, while the anti-imperialist revolt in Africa spreads to new zones and deepens in other areas such as, for instance, Algeria. Even in Western Europe, the stagnation of the struggles is now coming to an end: the Belgian workers have already shown the possibilities for the coming period.
In such an international context, a whole series of fundamental problems is raised for the international workers' movement and must necessarily receive an answer.
How will the proletariat be able definitively to win the battle on the world scale by overthrowing the capitalist regime even in its strongest citadels; how, in other terms, will it be able to complete the first stage of the transition from capitalism to socialism?
How will the masses of the colonial countries be able to give the finishing stroke to colonialism and above all how will they be able to ensure the gradual transformation of the anti-imperialist revolution into a proletarian, socialist revolu-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL tion? How, in the workers' states, will it be possible to solve all the economic, political, and social problems now pending and thus secure a complete and harmonious use, on a world scale, of the inexhaustible possibilities inherent in the new collectivist production relationships and to reorganize from top to bottom the political and social structure on the basis of a genuine proletarian democracy freed from all bureaucratic distortion? How, last but not least, will the masses of the entire world be able to prevent imperialism at bay from trying to drag all humanity along into its own ruin by unleashing a nuclear war of total extermination? All these are the problems which nobody can evade.
Indeed, in the last two months it is basically these same problems which have been discussed in two international meetings of the workers' move. ment — the Conference of the Eighty-one in Moscow and our own World Congress — and one cannot underestimate the significance of the fact that certain traditional conceptions of our move. ment — even in a very partial and deformed way - have actually penetrated into the polemies among the CPs and especially between Moscow and Pekin.
But apart from these analogies there were profound, essential differences between the two congresses.
The bureaucratized C Ps sent their leaders to Moscow without even informing the militants and cadres about the topies of the discussions or giving them the possibility of expressing their and their criticisms. Concerning the respective positions, only the top leaders were informed and often in a completely one-sided while concerning the real import of the discussions, which lasted about 20 days, a discreet silence was and is still being maintained. It is true that an extensive statement was issued; but it is conceived more for the purpose of camouflaging the differences and reaching formal unity at any cost than of clarifying the basic problems and giving clear answers.
The Congress of the Fourth International was
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL prepared by a discussion which lasted eight months in all the organisms of our movement, from the International Secretariat to the rank-and-file cells. The discussions took place on the basis of draft resolutions written by the outgoing leadership and different positions were freely expressed, including by the presentation of counter-drafts, amendments, and counter-reports during the congress itself. Our aim was not to organize a propaganda demonstration, as is too often the case with big workers' organizations, but to discuss the burning questions and arrive at clear conclusions.
Our answers to the problems we have enumerated above are expressed in the documents published in the present issue.
We basically refuse, as utopian and implying in practice an opportunist line, the conception according to which it would be possible to carry out a transition to socialism less "peaceful" way on the basis largely of an economic competition between the capitalist countries and the workers' states. As has always been the case at the crucial turning-ponts of human history, as has always been the case during the whole last half-century, this transitional period will again be marked by extraordi. narily acute conflicts, breaks, revolutions, wars. The proletariat needs to be armed for such a prospect, without any illusions: it must be more convinced than ever that it is only the revolutionary way of destruction of the bourgeois apparatus and not its "democratic" transformation that can lead it to power.
In the colonial and semi-colonial countries, we say that the fight against colonialism and neo-colonialism must be continued without truce or weakening, that an armed fight of the workers and peasants will always be the rule, that the national bourgeoisie, owing to its class nature, cannot lead this fight to the finish, and that the masses must everywhere themselves create a workers' and peasants' leadership capable of beating imperialism, liquidating all its aftermaths, and simultaneously beginning the socialist revolution.
In the workers' states, while emphasizing the very favorable objective developments which have marked the post-Stalinist period, we have insisted upon the fact that new revolutionary developments are being outlined as a result of the growing economic improvements. These developments are shaking and will shake more and more the foundations on which the bureaucracy stands, raising more and more imperatively the question of the reëstablishment of socialist democracy. We still believe that the overthrow
3 of the bureaucratic power is the sine qua non for a real socialist blossoming and for the creation of a new civilization without any possible comparison with all previous ones.
And lastly, without neglecting any of the new elements and above all the nuclear power of US SR, we are still convinced that in the last instance war can be avoided only if the revolutionary forces of the proletariat are in a position to paralyze and overthrow capitalism in its vital centres themselves.
In the last analysis, the primordial problem which is raised is that of a revolutionary leadership on the world scale. This has been true in a general sense for 30 years, but never was this necessity so concrete and so urgent as it is now. And never were the objective and even subjective premises for the achievement of this task so widely developed. The aim of our movement is to ensure the creation of this leadership, acting already as the most conscious, active, and central. ized force expressing this need, and helping to organize the regrouping of the revolutionary forces which are developing in this direction.
We are of course aware of our present limitalions, we know perfectly well that it requires not only expressing correct conceptions and working out correct analyses, but also and mainly acting in such a way that our movement gains everywhere a decisive mass influence. Still we have recorded important steps forward and new sectors of the Fourth International have developed, especially in the colonial and semi-colonial world — a fact reflected even in the composition of the new international leadership of our World Party. Furthermore, our cadres and militants are now much more deeply integrated in the mass movement of their countries than in the past.
But our confidence in the future is mainly deed pments in the conten the direcion whic based on the fact that the logic and trends of was foreseen by our movement in its basic analyses: that is why the Fourth International is the best prepared to understand the tasks of our period and to help the proletarian and peasant masses to accomplish them.
The fundamental meaning of the • Sixth World Congress — besides the deepening of this analysis and of this understanding of the revolution — was precisely to provide our World Party, in view of the revolutionary decade which is before us, with the power and effectiveness needed to play a part corresponding to the great scope of the tasks set by the advance of the revolution throughout the world.