The message of the World Congress of the Fourth International moment the two sides are more or less in balance without clear advantage. This either one being able to gain a is not because of the inherent strength of the opposing classes but because of the weaknesses from which each suffers.
The crisis of leadership in the working class movement has prevented it from winning victories. But this statement
Interview with Daniel Bensaid
The Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International took place in
February, five years atter the last. Daniel Bensaid, a leader of the Fourth
International and of its French section, congress in significance of this magazine of the French section of the
Communiste, the theoretical
Fourth International. Our translation of the text of this interview follows.
Minor editorial changes have been made in the English version.
The task of a World the main developed on the general political level;
features of the international situation now and in the period ahead. And the situation today is dominated by crisis in every part of the world.
adopted at the congress characterizes the standpoint of its undercrisis from the experienced by capitalism on the interna-
This point is important in order to assess and put into perspective the situation in the European capitalist countries, in order to combat the notion that the crisis can be resolved by a new wave of technological innovations simply through limited defeats of the working class.
tempo, or obstacles, the crisis is going to persist and deepen.
The specific crisis of the Eastern bloc countries does not derive automatically from that of imperialism, although it is given impetus indirectly by some of about the the April issue of Critique
Such a counteroffensive has in fact on the military level, with the renewed arms drive; and on the social level with offensives in the various capitalist countries.
However, we should try to assess how successful the imperialists have been in achieving their objectives. Their aim around the international situation that took form at the end of the 1970s and which was marked by the paralysis of the US after its defeat in
You refer to the devastating effect of the crisis on the European workers' also include Japan. In these countries, the working class has experienced setbacks, defeats, although they remained limited in scope, for example the defeat at Fiat in 1981 or the recent outcome of the test of strength between Thatcher and the British miners. We will have to see now what effect this latter defeat is going to have on the workers' has to be qualified a bit in the light of the British miners' strike. It was not a lack of determination on the part of the miners' leadership that explains the defeat but the attitude of the other trade unions and a real split in the working class, which existed also in some mining areas. The mechanisms of solidarity in the workers' movement did not operate effectively enough to overcome the resistance of the traitor union leader-
At the same time, there is a parallel crisis of leadership on the bourgeois side. Thatcher has just won a victory on the front of social struggle, but she may face a defeat on the electoral and political front tomorrow. is a general political setups. Whether it is the reformist left bourgeois parties that take on the job of they very quickly have to pay the price for this on the electoral level.
On the level of the basic relationship of forces among the classes, we say that nothing has yet been decided. It is necessary to measure the points scored by the bourgeoisie against what they have to get, if not to resolve their crisis, at least to gain a serious respite and the time to carry through economic restructuration.
When the representatives of the bosses are saying openly that it is necessary to reduce the buying power of wages by the latter's effects. There are by now considerable mechanisms set in place when these states were established are losing their effectiveness, major political strength and even the democratic rights in particular the social security systems
When the effects of the economic crisis are becoming painful, we have not seen any more or less general challenge to a manifestly bankrupt capitalist system the West European mood in the working class is not one of self-confidence. France is eloquent in this regard. At the isolated, threatened by a US imperialism that has gone back to its old tricks.
You have to right turn that happened in 1970 between the end of the Carter administration and Reagan's entry into the White House. On the other hand, that was the year of the triumph of the Nicaraguan revolution-
From Reagan's first actions we began talking about an imperialist counteroffensive.
since it's clear enough that the objective of the Conservative government is to undermine the organizational of the labor movement.
However, for the moment this imperialist counteroffensive has run up against working-class resistance whose potential exhausted. If you just take the year 1984 in Europe, we saw the struggle by the factory councils in in defense of the sliding of wages, the historically unprecedented remobilization of the West German union movement in the campaign for the 35general strikes of public workers in Belgium and the Netherlands, struggles in Asturias and Sagunto in the Spanish state. In the latter country, at the start of 1984 social struggles came up more or less to the level of 1975 in the aftermath of Franco's death. So, there have been big fightbacks, often ending in compromises, without a decisive victory on the one side or the other.
The view of the present situation
15%, the bourgeoisie is still far having achieved that. Likewise, it is far from having dismantled past social gains, unemployment insurance various countries. These battles have not yet been decided.
nonetheless, that there has been a real erosion of the strength of the trade unions, mainly in southern a limited extent at most in the North. The decline in trade-union membership has been spectacular in the state, and considerable in France. In response to the attacks the workers' movement has faced, one might have expected deeper going and more rapid processes of reorganization.
One of the reasons for the slowness of the processes of reorganization that are occurring (to some extent) in the unions but not yet very much on the political level is the fact that the inflow of youth into the centers of production has been slowed to a trickle. The statistics show this clearly in France and Spain.
On the other hand, one of the import-
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
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third limit that the imperialist does want to intervene and the threat is ant elements in the combativity of the British miners' strike was the role played by youth. With the swelling of youth unemployment, there has been little rejuvenation of the work force except in marginal or temporary jobs.
There are some striking indications of this exclusion of young people from the industrial workforce. For example at the last congress of the Workers Commissions in Spain, the average age of the delegates was around 37 or 38, which is very high. The youngest delegate was 29! generation that represents the center of gravity in the working-class fightbacks has lived through the end of Francoism, May 1968 in France, and the 1969 upsurge in Italy.
Since 1976, the younger age groups have been coming on the scene at best in reduced numbers. This has a major negative effect. It weakens the workers' movement more than the working class
The second element is that the extent of unemployment is not provoking the reactions of self-defense and solidarity that were in fact seen in the 1930s, although they should not be exaggerated. The means that exist now for adminthe problem of unemployment create a situation where the predominant mood is still a confidence in, and a looking toward, the established institurather than the idea that the workers' movement itself should take the responsibility for solving them. obviously can last only as long as the bourgeoisie is able to finance these systems. We are in an intermediary situa-
If the working class is on the defensive, developing whose importance should be properly assessed. Some people are talkabout a depoliticalization of youth. But that is wrong. The political activity and mobilization of the youth powerful and extensive than they were in the 1960s at the anti-Vietnam The great mobilizations of the youth in Europe today against the threat of war, against the missiles, the marches against
Belgium have been unemployment in
Even in France, where mobilizations have been weaker, the antiracist demonstrations have affected far anti-imperialist more youth mobilizations twenty years ago.
and this is an important political consciousness has not developed difference from the 1960s mobilizations. There is a general mistrust of political organizations and a doubt that makes it difficult for people to see real. But for the moment there is still a considerable gap between statements and his actions. His line of rebuilding imperialist power has made a certain impact on public opinion, the extent that he has gotten an opening for launching a new arms drive.
to foreign interventions, the Vietnam syndrome continues to stand
Direct intervention in the Middle East or El Salvador would still be difficult for the imperialists. That is why the central question in our congress revolution in progress today. It not only represents a national liberation struggle but a socialism, for the establishment of a in the shadow of the United States.
the past in our movement, we have thought in terms of a dynamic, an interaction among what we called the three sectors of the world revolutionthe revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, in the dependent and capitalist bureaucratic societies of the Eastern block. How does this dialectical interrelationship operate today?
You can describe the effects of the crisis that run through more or less all the sectors of the world revolution. But, and this is one of the features of the immediate unity of the world revolution.
problem. We maintain our overall view. There is a unity in the long interaction among the various sectors.
convergence did appear in 1968, when the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the
Prague Spring, and May-June 1968 in
France all came together to give the impression that the three sectors of the world revolution were marching in step.
But that is no longer happening.
The Mexican PRT in conference (DR)
It should not be thought that the a subjective shortcut dreamed Rome or Paris. That was a time, for revolutionary organizations looked Europe and believed in the possibility of a revolution on the old the European revolutionary organizations facing similar problems.
Today, the prevailing view organizations is that Europe backup area for solidarity. It is useful and nice that people are still revolutionary in Western Europe, but revolution is no longer on the agenda there.
The Polish developments have had a dual effect on Latin American revolutionists. For a major sector, they brought a revelation of the fragility, the possible crisis of the bureaucratic states. sectors linked to the Christian Communities and liberation have been particularly sensitive to Poland, not only because of the religious question involved.
conclusion drawn by sectors, including even the more lucid, was that Poland proved that "it can't be done," that you can't defy the USSR on its own doorstep and that Jaruzelski is the lesser evil. You hear this being said in currents that can be regarded as revolutionary, where it is seen as realism.
is a desynchronization among the various sectors of the world revolution. Among revolutionists in the dependent countries, it is considered that the effects of the crisis in the countries still don't amount to anything
There is unemployment, but there is still social welfare. The phenomthe dependent countries are unknown.
The unity of the revolutionary dynamic is hard to see, and this situation fosters a view that sees the international class struggle dominated by the relationships between the bloes, between the systems of alliances among states.
You say that the Nicaraguan Q.
revolution What tasks of solidarity with was at the center congress.
this revolution were adopted?
The Nicaraguan question was in fact central in the preparation for, and A.
the proceedings of the congress. It is socialist revolution in progress, the only and it affects the political relationship of forces in the world for four reasons:
- It is taking place in the heart of the
US sphere of influence.
- It is taking place in Latin America while the Cuban revolution continues not lead us to the extent of mobilization and readiness for struggle among the youth.
counteroffensive has run is obviously Central America.
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985 impact, when Cuba has not yet suffered a bureaucratic counterrevoluto have an tion and still serves as a beacon for the continent.
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de
a domestic
- It has already become in the US because political problem proportion of the
American of the that is Spanish today population speaking.
detonator for an explosive is a
- It situation in Central and South America.
For all of Latin America, Nicaragua shows that Cuba is not an exception, context of the crisis, in the that, revolution is possible today.
So, solidarity with Central America task for us in order to is a long-term international relationship affect the of forces. It is also important for the new generations in Europe, which are active against nuclear weapons, racism, and famine. They are moved by a feeling of human solidarity but often also feel
Solidarity with Nicaragua is impotent.
one of the few activities where you can work directly for a revolutionary solution.
Q. In Europe, it has been hard to the impact of the
Nicaraguan assess revolution on Latin America as a whole.
aroused the
Has this revolution really hopes of the entire continent? Is it and the strategic helping to renew political thinking of the vanguard in these by the trau med victory.
in a nation existed that is, itselt.
It such as
Mexico, effects of the crisis the will operate in such a way as to give rise to great mass proletarian currents overnight.
We are going to see much more differentiated, complex, intermediate forms of reorganization and relignment.
We do not think that the structure of the bourgeoisies in the more industsuch as Brazil or trialized countries
24 wave of a new the last
In they there
However, in sections are that are positions over and-fast the
Brazil,
In goes beyond that
A third very imperialist threats.
an this is still
While twelve and the eruption occupation, societies involved produced
Then, on which seems
Its guarantees.
IS enormous.
which example, more limited sectors.
are unite different you will have to components with different traditions, that you have to learn to live with such differences. This idea of pluralism that is to social and political being applied action as well as governmental organization is also influencing the way people organizations and their see building that this life. I don't say internal acquisition, far attitude is already an from it, but this concern is new.
defeated antibuof this
A.
institutions, the inasmuch imperialism.
working which to serve understanding the for implications from being
• framework
There a was about how to a the movement of
To what extent did this rapid selfprocess of
Solidarnosc, self-management of cadres.
in
NPRECOR further that it went in the struggle for our strength might seem to represent a static situation. But in Latin America, where we were badly weakened by the split that followed the Eleventh World has been the
International
Congress, rebuilt, consolidated, or advanced in most
CMERIATIONAAE
İNPREKOR countries the continent, leaving aside Central America.
In Europe, our strength has remained the same or declined in some cases. But at the same time we have made progress in terms of our organizations putting down social roots, stabilizing their functioning, and building leadership teams. This is very important when you remember that after 1968 the organizational continuity of the sections emerging from entryism was precarious. In 15 years this capital has been rebuilt. In the last years it has been consolidated. Finally, the dominant note at our congress was a determination to go about political work differently.
The Fourth International stall at the 1985 LCR/Lutte Ouriere 'fete' in France (DR) organized with only a bureaucratic lid Society in such countries is not un- the Soviet bureaucracy would have to
The tendrils of the it, as well as the regime's transmission organization. How should you deal with the Church these facts? Can a spontaneous mass antibureaucratic upsurge directly pose the quesiton of power?
Mass movements in such countries may roll a lot faster than in capitalist countries, consciousness more quickly. But the problem of finding can rise a lot a real political strategy cannot be solved spontaneously just by the momentum of the movement. A strategy means more than just a general strike and fight for power. It involves something else besides. The more you think about the need for a political strategy, the more the question of a revolutionary party is posed.
However, in the East bloc countries, people are obviously suspicious of the notion of a party, which they identify with the ruling party. Along with this, there is a hope that the mass movement will resolve all the problems in a short time. If you accept, on the other hand, that there are political and problems that have to be solved, the question of a vanguard organization, of forming a militant current on a defined political basis, then arises.
Another problem that was discussed was how to respond strategically to the argument of the threat of Soviet tanks. You can always criticize the positions that the KOR put forward in Solidarnose for being weak-kneed. But what produced the notion of the need for "self-limitation"
of the revolution was the search for some kind of standoff, at least a nonaggression pact, with the Soviet bureaucracy.
KOR's response to the problem, that is that social and economic questions should be left to the workers' movement and diplomatic and military ones to the bureaucracy in order to avoid a direct collision with the USSR, was an illusion.
The alternative that we put forward throughout the Polish events was that the more daring the movement was and the
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985 power, the higher would be the cost pay in order to intervene. This response is the starting point for combating any reformist policy in the East European countries. But it is only a starting point. You have to answer another question: what sort of solidarity should be appealed for and built in the other East European countries and in the USSR itself? What sort of language should you adopt toward them? What sort of dialogue should you develop, and with whom?
If you think in this context, it is clear that divisions in the bureaucracy the Polish Communist Party, the crisis it underwent in the summer of 1981, like the crisis of the Czechoslovak CP in counter-balance intervention by Warsaw Pact tanks.
The document adopted at the congress offers an initial questions. In it we stand on a strategic foundation - on a basis of experience political lessons accumulated, orientations to be discussed in the East European countries who engage in dialogue with us.
In accordance with the stalemated described, it seems that the forces of our
International have not experienced any notable growth in the recent years. Five years after the last world congress,
International look in those countries where it has organizations?
A. Except in Mexico and to a lesser extent in Brazil, the International has not grown numerically since the Eleventh maintained our forces. There have been gains in terms of new sections, in Brazil, Uruguay, and Ecuador. Our first African section has been recognised that we have maintained
There, you have to make clear what you are talking about.
You have to remember that in the past the International, not exclusively but mainly, served as a point of reference for defending program in the most general terms. That the inevitable result of and having to struggle against even though there constant striving to keep the connection with practical work and to do the utmost with our limited resources, as is shown gave to the
For example, we defended the concept of permanent revolution against the Stalinist theory of revolution by stages, with a feeling that from that flowed quite naturally the answer to political situations. For many sections there was no difference between putting forward their general ideas in propaganda and political activity in the form of initiatives, tactics, operations, answers to day-to-day political political response to a given problem tended to appear either as a direct confirmation or betrayal of the program. There was no flexibility, no room in between. This mechanism is no behind a lot of the splits we have seen. trying to respond to concrete political What is new is the idea that we are in general terms the permanent the worker-peasant alliance, determine whether in the context of the antidictatorial can make alliances sections of the bourgeoisie. But for all these questions are no longer something to be discussed on the level of principles alone or general theory. Because every one of them faces a concrete problem that it has to solve. Should we be in the Izquierda Unida in Peru? How should we fight against
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OIATRIENME
extending this coalition to the APRA, proceeded which is a full-fedged bourgeois party? although there were on its agenda debates over fundamental evident at the congress. It without any break,
How should the electoral battle waged from this stand point? In Brazil that involved our comrades took part in the formation some of the points on which the Fourth of a mass workers party, the PT. But this International was founded. This was the is neither the major nor the only party world congress that I have of the working class. How should attended and by far the most tranquil appeal to other sectors and continue to because there was this broad majority build the PT? This party exists as an for this conception of the International independent working-class party. independence in and of itself is not a complete class program. In Uruguay, should we join the Frente Amplio, a broad front which does include a bourgeois party but also embodies the united resistance to the dictatorship, which has been the political expression of the united reorganization of the trade.
union movement, which gave rise to a thousand local and street committees, etc. in Montevideo? And if we should be in this front, what sort of fight should we wage in it? These are the problems that the sections want discuss now.
Small organizations, once they have passed a certain threshold of development and begin to play a role in the crisis of the workers movement, assume responsibilities far exceeding their numerical forces. For example, our
Bolivian comrades played an important role in the formation of the new majority that emerged at the last congress of the
СОВ, the Bolivian Confederation of Labor. They can no longer just challenge the CP, as they could when it led the
COB, to launch general strike or organize mass self-defense! Now it is their responsibility to do that, or in any case a responsibility they share. This is the reason for the need for concrete answers that was deeply felt at the world congress.
In the same way, the functioning of the International must change. What the comrades expect is not to be offered programmatic orthodoxy in response to the concrete situations they face. Of this sort of answer remains currents. But what our comrades need is in polemies with other framework for discussion in they can take up their problems of line in which other terms than "censure"
For "excommunication." Outside the International, the Moreno and Lambert currents offer a caricature of such practices.
Within the framework of our common programmatic orientations, there is place for political dialogue that does not involve making judgements of people but rather an attempt, between sections or between sections and the International leadership, to deal with political problems, to utilize common experience.
Over and above whatever political differences there may be, there is a conviction that we are trying to solve the different answers, same problems. but they We : may offer necessarily involve differences of program, do not historic breaks, or capitulation anyone's part. on
This feeling was very strong and very 26 be programmatic questions fourth we and a determination to transform
But accordingly.
НЕИ®
What is more,
A.
to the is a that in the 1920s and revision and have been a the to determine poncy and ne where creates problems reread
Trotsky's work on revolution and eliminated sion.
While the bourgeois socialist tasks of the rev ot separated in time by they are not totally tele
The proletariat can have different at times the process.
Unfortur
Trotskyists put forward the theory of permanent the dependent countries the one that it experiences.
in particular, has represented an alternative to
Stalinism.
very
In we, who have maintained the democratic process, under the events, integral part of the process. The
Integrating ourselves fully in this discussion, working together with other revolutionary forces - that's fine. But for building the International emerged from this congress?
An old notion was thrown out at this congress, the idea that the International could suddenly transform itself into a mass organization by making a breakthrough around a key event in the world class struggle. The reorganization of the vanguard on the international scale will be a longer, more complex, and more uneven process. There is not going to be such a great leap forward, such a transformation, at least not in the foreseeable future.
The idea of a sudden transformation of the International could seem logical enough in 1938 when our movement was founded. There were then three currents in the workers' movement -the Stalinists, the Social Democrats, and a Fourth International that represented the direct and still fresh heritage of the Russian revolution. Moreover, there was still a strong hope that a mass Russian section could reemerge from the
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
At a conference of the Japanese section... (DR) deportations had not struck deep enough to destroy the revolutionary tradition.
The spectrum of political forces the international today is much more open ended. There are not only Stalinists, Social Democrats, and the Fourth International. There are strong bases of support. The situation, therefore is much more complex. question of forming new parties is being raised everywhere in Latin America. We must participate fully in these processes, continuing to keep our sights set on the need for the Fourth International and defending its program. This goal requires different methods of work.
the congress proceeded in this way, it was also because the process had been set in motion before, in particular through the transformation of the press
International. International Viewpoint are now reportting extensively on the activities of the sections. It has become clear that the are led to collaborate with other currents, the more we have to do so on the basis of confidence in our own positions, and thus it is necessary to train and widen a layer of internatonal cadres. It is ironic that our international, which holds the record for longevity over the others, waited more than fifty years before setting up its own international cadre school. This school has been functioning now for three years
Regional meetings of political bureaus (in Europe, Latin in other parts of the world) have created discuss politics, which offer a framework experience regarding
When we talk about centralizing the International, people tend immediately to think about the application of the decisions of a central committee. On the nternational level, things are much more :omplicated. There can be centralization n the form of making a decision. You ›ass a resolution on an important world estion and apply it. But there are other inds of centralization, and political ialogue is one of them. The machinery hat has been set up, the dynamic that as been set in motion, and the congress emonstrate the common resolve that
‹ists to persevere in this direction.
ernational Viewpoint 17 June 1985 this new standpoint, what role is the leadership of the International called upon to play, and what sort of relations does it propose to build up with the sections?
method that I have spoken of has proved necessary and useful not only for dealing with proposals for revision. But let's take as a starting point. They reflect tendencies that exist outside it. Because the Nicaraguan revolution exists, because the unity of the world revolution, while it an underlying tendency, not immediately apparent or visible to the untrained eye.
When you face real demands, you cannot respond to such pressures only by a reaffirmation of principle. That would be fatal. You could get a confrontation between sections facing more and more problems and an International deviations - a sort of permanent red
The centrifugal tendencies can be only by facing up to the difficulties, not by taking refuge in abstractions. We do not have an international leadership based on the experience of a revolution, endowed with a great authority won in the test of the class struggle. This means that we have to find mechanisms of leadership that can build political dialogue by concentrating what is best in accumulated experience of the International in order to make it easier to find answers to the problems as they arise. The result can only be an enrichment of the understanding and heritage of the International.
In discussing in this way, the International becomes interesting and useful for currents that don't necessarily have organizations in Asian or Latin American countries are asking to participate in the schools of the International because they find in them a historical clarification they example, the ChinaVietnam-Cambodia conflict has made it necessary to rethink the entire history workers' movement in the region. International's schools, organizations outside our movement also find elements for comparing political experiences, so long as these experiences are dealt with in their own terms and not dissolved into programmatic generalities, are important but do themselves solve the problems.
Obviously this change and this resolve at the same time create This resolve has to be matched by answers to these expectations. So, the congress able to carry forward, taking the time necessary, this transformation in
International, its approach to political problems and its relations with the sections.
In accordance with this logic, it will be necessary to rethink the conception of future world congresses. The Twelfth World Congress was a typically transitional one. Some 80% of the time was devoted to discussing general programmatic questions and the remaining 20% to the conception and functioning of the International. cerns were expressed, but little time was left for ughly. This moreover, raises a problem in itself. How can a world congress discuss concretely the line in Bolivia? Either the discussion would be for the information of the delegates, or we would risk making people have only a superficial familiarity.
It has to be possible to discuss and adopt broad resolutions on key points, such as the problems of the imperialist military drive on Nicaragua, and reserve a considerable part of the time at the congresses for work in commissions. This, moreover, was roughly how the Third functioned in
As for the specific role of the leadership bodies of the International, they should be left the responsibility for defining the position of our movement as a whole toward big events in the class struggle but also for dialogue with the sections about their problems of line, for preparing regional meetings, for publishing setting the line of the international press, for adjusting the system of international education to the needs of the for coordinating and what can be centralized experiences of building the
This objective is modest and ambitious at the same time. It can be accomplished only by relying more and more on the leaderships of the sections themselves; by internationalizing their work; by widening, on the basis of concrete tasks, the network of cadres involved not only in the discussion but in the activity of the International; and by assuring that the leadership bodies can reflect the living experience of the sections and their cadres.
We have to seek a real synthesis and not simply confirm a division of labor, which in the long term would be fatal, between the daily political work in which only the sections are involved and international leaderships devoted to theoretical and programmatic questions.
27
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY.