The following message was sent by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the world party oi socialist revolution founded by Leon Trotsky, to the founding congress of the Ligue Commuon the worked april 6 biengs held which was held founded by students and workers who stood in the vanguard during the revolutionary events of May and June 1968, and who supported the communist action journal Rouge.
Many former members of the JCR (Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire -- Revolutionary Communist Youth) and PCI (Parti Communiste Internationaliste -- Internationalist Communist party - the French section of the Fourth International) are participants in the new formation. The JCR and PCI were banned by the Gaullist regime in June 1968.]
Dear Comrades,
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International sends you its fraternal greetings and its wishes for the success of your congress.
The revolutionary upsurge of May 1968 in France, which you contributed so importantly to bringing about, has profoundly changed the political and social climate throughout capitalist Europe. For the first time in twenty years, this upsurge has put struggle to overthrow the capitalist system back on the immediate agenda in one of the fortresses of imperialism. It has helped to shake the apstability of bourgeois society in parent several other imperialist countries of Europe, speeding the development of a "pre-May" situation in these countries.
The revolutionary Marxists are convinced that what happened last year in France was not something exceptional but the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge in all of capitalist Europe which will culminate in new explosions of an objectively revolutionary nature in a series of countries -- and most of all in France itself.
You have already plunged into this process of renewing the drive of the socialist revolution in the imperialist countries. You have done so by the role that your members were able to play in the events of May and June 1968; by the way in which they responded to the Gaullist repression; by your success in launching a mass paper; by consolidating your influence in the high-school and university student milieu; by your systematic pioneering work among the workers.
But most of all, you have become part of the process of renewing the revolutionary struggle by your conscious effort to build a revolutionary organization capable of capitalizing on the lessons which the vanguard of the French proletariat drew from the experience of May 1968.
You have shown the entire world that the new generation of revolutionists rising up today is no longer content simply to denounce the mistakes and betrayals of the traditional leaderships of the workers movement, nor to give advice to others. Jou have shown that this generacion has gathered the strength and the needed dynamism to go. forward at the head of a section of the vanguard of the masses and demonstrate the difference between a revolutionary policy and the reformist policy of the old leaderships.
were able to i te toreat strengtuenon you the revolutionary movement on a world scale. This example is being studied and will be studied in many countries and on all continents. The revolutionary capital gained from your action will bring dividends to you and our whole movement for years to come.
The turn in the world situation, which we will discuss at our coming world congress, considerably increases the responsibilities of revolutionary Marxists throughout the world as well as the risks and the adverse pressures to which they will be subjected. Lenin's teaching to unite our ranks tightly in a structure based on democratic centralism which dynamically combines revolutionary theory and practice, program and organization, on a national as well as international basis will prove more indispensable than ever as a guide for us in this period.
But this new rise in the world revolution, the beginning of which now confronts us, also increases the opportunities for the revolutionary Marxist movement beyond anything open to us in the past. Breakthroughs like the one you have just achieved in France are not only possible, they are inevitable in several countries, if the revolutionary Marxist militants are able to seize the opportunity offered them to play a leading role in the action of sections of the vanguard of the mass movement.
We are not yet on the eve of mass revolutionary parties and a mass revolutionary International. But we are on the eve of a qualitative transformation of the revolutionary movement. In several countries, the revolutionary movement is entering a very important stage on the road toward the creation of mass revolutionary parties and a mass International. And the decisions of your congress will contribute in an important way to speeding up this process on an international scale.
Dear Comrades,
You are faced today with an immense responsihility. You have an opportunity which has not existed for decades, an opportunity to create a large revolutionary organization in a highly industrialized country. You have a chance to spread revolutionary ideas widely among a working class faced objectively with a historic opportunity to take power and organize a workers state based on the democracy of workers councils, a system capable of exercising irresistible attraction to the proletariat oi all the other imperialist countries. On the success or failure of your effort may depend the outcome of the revolutionary upsurge in Europe, the fate of tens of millions of workers.
By remaining faithful to the revolutionary program of lenin and Trotsky, you can successfully carry out this task -- exploiting every opportunity to popularize this revolutionary program, propagating it among the masses, and patiently and perseveringly developing worker cadres capable of winning the confidence of their shopmates in the factories.
The Fourth International and the revolutionary vanguard of the entire world are observing your course. They have confidence in your ability to fulfill your revolutionary mission. They are proud of you and recognize in you the image of their own future, of the communist future of all mankind.
Iong live the Communist League, the vanguard of the future revolutionary party of the French proletariat!
Long live the French socialist revolution!
Long live the world socialist revolution!
Page
In this issue
DRAWING: Georges Pompidou
CP Canceled the May Day Demonstrations
Why the French An Interview with Pierre Frank:
The Meaning of de Gaulle's Resignation -- by Dick Roberts
DRAWING: Charles de Gaulle
Thousands in Japan Demand Return of Okinawa
New Clashes Between Students and Police in Ethiopia
Strike Widens at the University of Dakar
The Crisis in Lebanon
Adolfo Gilly and Others Sentenced to Iong Prison Perms in Mexico
Barrientos Spells Trouble for the Bolivian "Gorillas"
The End of
Australian Left Maps United Action -- by Ivan Dixon
Critics of Czech Invasion Purged from Canadian CP Leadership
Yakhimovich's Appeal to the Soviet People
DRAWING: Ivan Yakhimovich
Right-Wing Terrorists Attack a School in Paris Report from the Spanish Underground: "The Popular Resistance Has Not Diminished"
462 464
Maoism and the Indian Revolution -- by Raj Narain Arya
More About Max Eastman Documents:
Fourth International Hails Founding of French Communist League
[Statement by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International]
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