AROUND THE WORLD
Japanese section of the Fourth international the current situation in the workers' resolution described the Japanese section as it was built throughout the 1970s as a
"spontaneist,
Trotskyist political organi-
It set the task now as "building the section as a communist nucleus this nucleus in the proletarian masses."
holds congress Y. SAKAI
Facing the threat of physical attacks from the degenerated far-left Chukaku League, Japanese section of the Fourth International, held its Twelfth Congress in September. More than forty delegates, elected by the local units, members of the out-going Central Committee and Control Commission, and representatives of the Communist Youth League attend
The congress took place when the Japanese working-class movement was passing a historic turning point. In 1983the left reformist leaderships that dominated the workers' movement in the 1950s and 1960s, represented by the union confederation Sohyo and the left Social Democratic Socialist Party, finally reached a dead end. An outright pro-imperialist and procapitalist right-wing current, entrenched in the big factories and enterprises of the private sector got a clear upper hand in the trade-union movement as a whole, compelling the parliamentary SP to make a major right turn toward pro-imperialist coalitionist politics. The situation of the left independent currents and groups in the trade-union movement has become extremely difficult.
This shift in the situation in the working class movement obliged the Japanese section to make a deepgoing reevaluation of the nature and special features of the states as marking a historic impasse of the whole postwar development of the Soviet Union and of Sino-Soviet relations. It pointed out that the crises of international imperialism and of the workers' states are more and more combined on the
At the same time, despite the advance of the Central American revolution and the new rise of the Latin-American workers' and peasants' struggles, the postwar structures of the mass workers' ments in the imperialist countries and the postwar colonial revolution have also reached a historic impasse. workers' movement in countries and the colonial revolution have entered a qualitatively new stage of a process of decomposition-recomposition.
The balance-sheet report was composed of two parts. The first was a balance sheet of the evolution of the workers' states, the mass workers' movements in the imperialist countries and of the colonial revolution since the Second World War. The second part was a balance sheet of our assessments of the Japanese mass workers' movement and our political orientations throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The report concluded that the Japanese section had been profoundly and consistently spontaneist in its evaluation of the situation in the working class and in its political orientations throughout that period and the section had failed from the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s to build itself as a genuineis to struggle to build a revolutionary, anti-imperialist workers' current both inside of and outside of the existing trade-union structures.
Along with the organizational tasks, set immediate objectives relating to the resistance strug gle against the general right-wing recomof the trade-union movement; the fight against the new Tokyo International Airport; and campaigns against Japanese imperialist militarism solidarity with the Korean, Philippine and Central American struggles.
The congress also set specific tasks for combating Chukaku's terrorist campaign against the Japanese majority of the Farmers League Against the Narita Airport.
Finally, the congress adopted the resolutions submitted by the outgoing leadership by a large majority and elected a new Central Committee and Control 1. These attacks have included raids on the homes of members of the Japanese section in the predawn hours and the deliberate crippling of one in such a raid. See "The tragedy of the far left." International Viewpoint, No 68, January 28, 1985.
### Statement
The Twelfth World Congress of the
Fourth International condemns the
Chukaku's terrorist attacks and intimidation campaign against the Revolutionary Communist League, Japanese section of the Fourth Internation-
Japanese working-class movement of the ly independent communist proletarian
1950s and 1960s. This discussion developed in the Central Committee and in the the mid-1970s a large majority of its section as a whole over 1983-1984. By necessity, it went hand in hand with an orientations and left reformist structure of the Japanese activities of the section in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The national congress marked the culmination of these discussions.
In addition, in the precongress period, the Central Committee introduced a discussion on the international situation and the problems of the world revolution to-
The congress adopted a resolution on the international situation, characterizing the present crisis of international capitalism as a long-term, historic, structural
The resolution also characterized organization, despite the fact that after membership was in the trade unions.
the impasse of the postwar workers' movement and a general right turn of the entire reformist apparatus, the congress focused on the tasks of building the section in the new situation. Central to this is a return to the first four congresses of the Third International, including its red trade-unionism, and to the principles and lessons of the struggle for the Fourth International in the 1930s.
In the immediate future, the section will have to struggle against the current. It has also to be recomposed politically and organizationally. The organizational al, and expresses its solidarity with the Japanese section.
The World Congress also expresses its solidarity with the imprisoned militants of the section.
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