[We have translated the following statement from the May issue of De Internationale, the newspaper of the Dutch section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency. The IRMT is the grouping headed by Michel Pablo that split from the Fourth International in 1965.]
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1. After several years of discussing the political line of the world Trotskyist movement and the differences between the various currents, in particular between the current to which it belonged and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the Dutch section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency came to reorient itself with respect to the world movement. This led us on the one hand as a result of the disappearances of the issues that led to the 1965 split, progressively closer to the United Secretariat; and at the same time it led us away from the International Tendency, which has abandoned or watered down a series of basic Trotskyist principles, especially concerning the concept of building the revolutionary party.
2. This evolution was expressed clearly in a political way in the documents of the October 1971 conference [of the Dutch section]. The conclusion of the document "Political Trends and Party Building" stressed the need for reunifying the two international Trotskyist organizations, above all in view of the fact that in the Netherlands this organizational division posed a serious obstacle to taking advantage of better opportunities for growth of the Trotskyist movement.
3. At its April 8-9, 1972, conference the Dutch section moved to make the reorientation more concrete. On the agenda for discussion were the two documents circulated in preparation for the international conference of the International Tendency — the "Manifesto" and "Contributions to a Critique of the Development of the Fourth International and the Organizational Perspectives of the Revolutionary Marxist Tendency." Also up for discussion were the following documents of the United Secretariat: "The New Rise of the World Revolution" (the positions adopted at the Ninth World Congress), the "Resolution on the Chinese Cultural Revolution" (adopted at the same congress), and the resolution of the International Executive Committee (December 1969), "Building Mass Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe." The conference was able to agree with the line of the last three documents.
In the first two documents cited of the International Tendency, the conference noted a further confirmation of the same trend to which we have pointed before — the trend toward abandoning the Leninist conception of building the Fourth International and revolutionary parties in the various countries. This tendency was reinforced in particular by a recommendation for dropping the name "Fourth International"; the absence of a serious Marxist analysis of the development of capitalism today; and the absence similarly of any serious analysis of the evolution of the workers states, a deficiency which led earlier to a false estimate of the de-Stalinization process and the economic development in Yugoslavia.
4. The following facts are clear: The International Tendency is moving further and further away from the International Trotskyist movement and from Bolshevism. It has gotten into a position of sterile isolation from the whole international development of revolutionary Marxism.
By maintaining its link with the International Tendency, the Dutch section would find itself politically and organizationally isolated and its capacities for growth seriously hindered.
Breaking our formal ties with the Tendency can promote the unification of the revolutionary Marxist forces in the Netherlands, and this is a prerequisite for taking advantage of the increased possibilities for serious work toward building a revolutionary vanguard movement.
Therefore, at its conference the Dutch section made the following decisions:
— To sever its organizational ties with the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency of the Fourth International.
— To apply for membership to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
April 9, 1972