MAINTAINS PRESSURE ON OIL COMPANIES
In inaugurating a hydrocarbon center in Algeria September 15, Ben Bella again denounced the oil companies engaged in exploiting the reserves in the Sahara, He accused them of conducting themselves like a "state within a state."
"Nothing would be more contrary to our socialist option than to remain content with the role of a tax collector to which certain people would like to confine us," Ben Bella said, He envisaged the Algerian state as a "producer ,"” active "at all stages of the produsc~ tion of oil" and utilizing "petroleum and gas for the benefit of the national economy and its development,"
.. IN GELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
[The following is the text of a declaration issued by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, ]
One hundred years ago, on September 28, 1864, the International Workingmen!s Association held its inaugural assembly in London, For the first time the world proletariat had its own international political party.
Despite political limitations, organizational weakness and con-~ suming internal disputes, the First International carried out tasks . of historic importance. For the first time, national organizations of the working class were able to draw on the joint experience, knowledge and skill of the proletarian movement as a whole, They learned how to unite their forces against the common enemy.
The First International did not prove able to carry on its work to a final successful conclusion, However, its program, enriched by fresh experiences and knowledge, became embodied in successive international organizations, — ;
The Second International. created great mass parties and brought knowledge of scientific socialism to millions of workers, particularly in Western Europe, before it ignominiously collapsed in 1914 in face of the task for which it had been preparing for years; namely, offering ‘revolutionary socialist opposition to imper~ ialist war,
The Third International witnessed the consolidation of the first workers state, following the first victorious working-class revolution in 1917, and sowed the seeds of revolutionary socialism throughout the colonial world, After the conservative bureaucrasy headed by Stalin usurped power in the Soviet Union, the Third International became an instrument of Moscow's foreign policy, was even turned against revolutionary upsurges in many countries and was finally dissolved by Stalin in 1943,
How well have the fundamental principles of Marxism withstood the test of one hundred years? Capitalist spokesmen say that Marxism has been disproved, Revisionists, again and again, have said that Marxts views require basic alteration, The, truth is that Marxism, particularly as it has been developed and enriched by figures like. Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, offers the only key to a rational understanding of world society and the only effective method to change it. for. the better,
In particular, the past century of struggle, including glorious victories and pitter defeats, shows that Marx and Lenin were completely right when they warned that it is utopian to believe that
a "peaceful road" to socialism can be found. The very latest evidence is to be found in the cases of Cuba and Algeria.
In the world of today, complex and difficult problems face the international working class... On these the Fourth International, building on the best in the three previous internationals, offers the insights of living Marxism.. To the workers in the Soviet Union and the other workers states, it offers the only rational explanation for the strange phenomenon of Stalinism, which it fought from the very beginning under the guidance of Leon Trotsky. The partial revelations made by Khrushchev at the Twentieth, Congress of the Soviet Communist party confirmed in the most. trenchant..way.the analysis made by Trotsky decades before, By the same token, these,revelations oonfirmed. the correctness of the platform of the Fourth International for the work~ ers states; namely, the establishment of proletarian democracy as defined and explained by Lenin in State and Revolution,
Today the international working class faces a task of worldwide proportions. On the one hand, it must complete the colonial revolution which opened with the viotory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 and reached a new height ten years later with the victory in Cuba. On the other hand, it must begin, and bring to swift conclusion, socialist victories in the highly developed capitalist countries.
This is the only sure way to prevent a third world war and the possible extinction of mankind through a nuclear conflict, It is the only way to win a world that guarantees racial equality, the equality of men and women, of the youth and the aged -~ a world of boundless abundance, full opportunity for human development, well-being from cradle to grave; the bright socialist world of enduring peace, of international brotherhood,
The road out of the capitalist jungle is not an easy one. It is beset with difficulties, Some of the principal problems are now being discussed by advanced workers in all continents, particularly in association with the differences in the Sino-Soviet dispute. In that controyersy, we believe that the Chinese Communist leaders have said many correct things but that they are greatly in error on the question of Stalin's role, No single person did as much as Stalin to turn possible proletarian victories into certain defeats and to slow down, cripple and halt socialist revolutions,
The