Introducing this issue
Together with the economic crisis shaking the capitalist economies, the reform proposals initiated by Mikhail Gorbachov represent the dominant factors shaping the world situation today.
For six decades the idea that the Russian revolution would bring about a higher form of democracy has been buried by bourgeois ideologues. For Lenin, the simultaneous exercise of legislative and executive powers by bodies run by the toilers and the election of all state officials meant a qualitative growth of direct democracy as against indirect democracy. The workers' state would be the first state to uphold the rule of the majority of working people against the minority, exploiting, ruling classes.
The ideas of State and Revolution were not merely a vision of socialist society of the future, they were also a guide for the practical conduct of the new Soviet state. The lack of political pluralism (both tendencies and parties), and of the bureaucratic suppression of discussion under the Stalinist regime meant that mistakes committed by the government of the new workers' state went unchecked. Mistakes committed by a workers' government are inevitable under the pressures exerted by imperialism, the hardships of socialist construction and the ebb and flow of the consciousness of the masses. But they cannot be corrected without free debate and the capacity to organise to fight for an alternative course.
But socialist democracy is also a vision that can inspire the working class of the imperialist countries, particularly when they are gripped by economic and social crises that erode the rights to welfare and employment wrung from the capitalist class in this century. A major part of the explanation for the lack of successful socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries must hinge on the revolting tarnishing of the image of socialism which is not only the legacy of Stalinism, but also of the totalitarian practices of his successors.
In his article on the significance of Gorbachov, Ernest Mandel considers the implications of the reform programme for the Soviet working class, the largest in the world. He concludes that while Gorbachov's programme is not and cannot be a real programme for socialist democracy, it can be a breach through which the mass action of the Soviet workers can begin
the process of the regeneration of socialist democracy. The impact of such a change on the rest of the world working class was accurately expressed by Gorbachov himself when he stated that imperialism is 'not afraid of
Soviet nuclear missiles. But it is afraid of the extension of democracy in
It is doubly afraid if such an extension of democracy is contrasted with the capitalist alternative of a property-owning democracy whose fortunes
However, the absence of a socialist alternative in the East has not been the only problem of revolutionary Marxists. There is also the problem of developing a strategy for workers' power in the advanced capitalist countries themselves. The essay by Antoine Artous and Daniel Bensaid pertinently reminds us of Lenin's position on capitalist crisis, polemicising against both bourgeois economists who treated such crises as inevitable, but temporary, sicknesses, and those revolutionaries who attempted to prove that there is no bourgeois answer to the crisis. For Lenin: 'There is no situation which is completely without a solution.' There was always a political solution at the level of state power, that is at the level of politics, that could rescue the existing social order, in the absence of a working
The authors evaluate the contributions made by Lenin, Trotsky, Luxembourg and Gramsci to the debate on revolutionary strategy and in particular the way in which Marxists should address the question of the state
The role of women's liberation in revolutionary strategy in the semi- colonial countries is thoroughly discussed in Heather Dashner's article on the women's movement in Latin America. Drawing together the experience in the sub-continent over the last twenty years, she provides a panoramic view of the development of the movement, as well as confronting difficult problems that still face the Fourth International in these
Revolutionary strategy in the Philippines is the topic of a dossier of recent contributions by revolutionary Marxists. After the first massive wave of revolutionary activity by the Filipino workers and peasants that overthrew the Marcos regime, all sides are now drawing out the lessons for the next stage of the process. We hope this first exchange will start to clarify some of the most important issues for our readers.
The bulk of the articles that appear in this issue were discussed by the
1987 meeting of the International Executive Committee of the Fourth
Ernest Mandel's contribution on Gorbachov was adopted by the body.
The article that appears here by Heather Dashner was compiled in collaboration with other Fourth Internationalist comrades from Latin
- International Marxist Revien the Soviet unien.
class alternative.
and the differing processes of crisis.
countries.
International are dependent on the swings of the Dow-Jones Index.
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Introduction America, particularly Tatau of Brazil and Yusmedia of Colombia. A final document will be presented for vote to the upcoming world congress of the movement. The report by Roman on the Philippines was not put to the vote, the author instead presenting it as the beginning of a discussion. However, the reports by Brown from the Fourth Internationalist Tendenc (USA) and Socialist Action were proposed by their authors for vote, but were decisively rejected by the IEC. Other resolutions adopted have been published in International Viewpoint, the fortnightly analysis and news journal of the Fourth International.
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