TOWARD THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
As announced elsewhere in this number of Fourth Interrational, the recent plenum of the International Executive Committee reached the decision to hold next year the Sixth World Congress of our International, and to open, as from now, the preparatory discussion for this Congress. This discussion has for its scope supremely important subects which at present preoccupy the vanguard of the international workers' movement, and concern at its highest point the future of this latter: the situation and prospects in western. Europe; the unfolding, the problems and the prospects of the colonial revolution; the economic prospects for the workers' states and for capitalism; a platform for the political revolution in the workers' states dominated The discussion has already opened on the basis of a first the bureaucracy.
oleum of our le C, beal ig on the adorapd an the recent
bearing on the European perspectives - of which we are publishing large extracts in this number of Fourth International.
We shall shortly publish, in like manner, the other documents which must serve as the basis for the discussion.
The revolutionary Marxist vanguard will thus have the opportunity to become familiar with the present stage in the thinking of our international movement.
As always, this thinking continues to be guided by the principles, the traditions and method of revolutionary Marxism, and is nourished by the living revolutionary experience of our epoch.
As a result, it is separated fundamentally from the vulgar opportunism in which, more than ever, the traditional social-democratic and so-called "Communist" leaderships delight. While the former, under the effects of the economic conjucture of a passing euphoria which has for some years already characterized the capitalism of the advanced countries, are in haste to rid themselves of all "Marxist" vestiges, the so-called Communist leaderships seem to be drawing the ultimate conclusions from the theory of "socialism in one country" which Stalin put forward from 1924. After the fashion of pragmatists, the social-democratic leaderships theorize on a phase of the cyclical evolution of post-war European and north American capitalism, ephemerally dominated by the expansion and the "miracles" of "free enterprise." This phase they extrapolate into the entire foreseeable future, and so doing seem to forget not only the immense problem of the under-developed countries but also the lagging behind of the capitalist countries by comparison with the expansion in the workers' states. The so-called "Communist" leaderships theorize on the in-
terests, no less ephemeral, of the Soviet bureaucracy for ships: What are the causes, the limits, the prospects of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL an international agreement and "peaceful coëxistence."
If we are to believe them, the world victory of socialism socialso in the sain the est plate buddit the socialism universal and irresistible contagion of her example. Whence
"hrushe bit he Thomic development of the US SR
in the years to come is responsible for much of this mysticism tending to liquidate the international revolutionary movement.
The thinking of the IVth International has nothing in common with these pragmatic theories, which are determined by very precise social and political interests.
The preparatory discussion for the Sixth World Congress will pose and clarify from the vantage point of revolutionary Marxism the fundamental questions so completely avoided, so entirely warped by the traditional leader-
11 present relative stability of European and north Americal capitalism? What are the economic prospects of the evolu tion of capitalism and the workers' states and of their competition in the decade to come? What are the problems and the prospects of the colonial revolution? What are the balance-sheet and the prospects of the Khrushchevite policy in the USSR and the European "people's demoracies?" Where is China going? Whither the European an vorld workers' movement? etc, etc. To all these question the forces of the IVth International working in the mass movements in the capitalist countries, the colonial and dependent countries, as well as the militants in the workers' states, will try to give the reply most in conformity with living revolutionary Marxism.
Both the preparation and the holding of the Sixth World Congress will brilliantly underscore the ideological and organizational advance of the IVth International, World Party of the Socialist Revolution.