state apparatus
Sphere
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986 going through a similar experience, and we are drawing all the practical conclusions concerning the role of solidarity work in building our parties and our youth organisations in the present phase of our partybuilding.
But this is insufficient for transforming these initial nuclei into revolutionary proletarian parties.
Only successful intervention in the class
Regarding the
Cuban and
Nicaraguan provide is certainly developed countries, and difference with the first and educators
"programme strategy and for power.
And the lessons of the Russian absolutely insufficient.
countries are their survival greater and their dependence on forces, forms a supple-
It is necessary pragmatism.
For all these reasons
Fidel
Castro
Sandinista the are not going to international organisation.
the majority can be tested in
That debate and act sooner or later and will be involved
28 in the decisive battles for the world revolution. These battles will take on general forms of mass strikes, general strikes, the of emergence self-organisation bodies of soviet revolutionary international for these one.
and of the will be tory of the future parties'.
an the tarian revolution and beings, by and by
The mass revolutionary International, the struggle for the Fourth International and its programme is literally a question of life and death for the human race.
On several occasions Lorimer tries to paint the Fourth International as a sect that counterposes its ular points of honour — its shibboleths, to borrow Marx's phrase revolutionary process. But if one draws in the periodic ideological
SOLDARNOS
Solidarnose demonstration on May Day (DR)
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986 industrialised dependent countries will able to accomplish all the tasks only be of the national democratic revolution through the conquest of power by the proletariat allied to the poor peasantry, that is, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship, as a logical itself, will begin to deal severe blows consequence of the class struggle to capitalist private property.
5. The USSR and the other the first victories countries of the socialist revolution took place where remained economic, social, cultural and political isolated in a backward environment, which did not facilitate the carrying through to completion of a process of building a socialist society. Consequently, and to varying went through processes of bureaucratisation which are a sup- degrees, they factor holding back the plementary
La classless society.
march towards remain societies in
These countries capitalism and transition between socialism, be resolved by the outcome of the whose final destiny will class struggle on a world scale. Any re-establishment of private ownership of the means of production would unmistakable historical regression. This is the reason why we mean an must d-fend the USSR and similar countries against periodic imperialist attempts to achieve such a restoration.
For decades Soviet society has
6. that is the product of the bureauc- been suffering a structural crisis racy's hold over the economy and state. This has been more or less reproduced in East Europe and in China. The bureaucracy's control prevents any new and qualitative advance to socialism. We are not simply dealing, in all these cases, with talism and socialism, but with bureauc- transitional societies between capiratised workers' states, blocked in their blockage can be ended only by an progress to socialism. This anti-bureaucratic political revolution.
The latter will maintain and consolidate planned economy but will bring to an the collective ownership and the end the bureaucracy's monopoly of political power and its control over the social surplus product and its consequent hold over the main spheres of social life. The bureaucracy's privileges will be eliminated and social inequality will be radically reduced.
The crisis of humanity as a whole will only be resolved with the 7. victory of the world socialist revolution, that is, the creation of a world socialist federation. Stocks of nuclear, biologice chertical and 'conventional' of mass destruction can weapons only be eliminated and arms production halted at that level. Humanity's material resources likewise can only be redistributed to eradicate poverty, famine and misery in the Third World on a world scale. Only internationally will it be possible to ensure the safeguarding of the natural conditions for the fullest development of the human race.
The proletariat is the revolutionary protagonist in the three sectors of the world revolution. The self-organisation of the proletariat, state power based on democratically elected workers' councils, is the only suitable for form of state power building a classless society. 9. In all the present struggles of the workers, exploited peasants and the support for the immediate demands of those struggling, with propaganda for, and putting into practice of demands and forms of action that allow fighters to come, through an understanding their own of experience, the the conquest of state power. takeover necessity of to to struggle the workplaces for and the qualitative advance to 10. Any socialism, where capitalism has already both in the countries been
29
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986 overturned and those still to have a socialist revolution, requires, once the civil war is over and workers' power consolidated, institutions based on socialist democracy: real exercise of state power by democratically tical tendencies and parties; full demoall working people, including those who are opponents of government and of the political councils. These larly include the right to defend their for them by legal political means.
positions of the Fourth International form a programmatic whole, a coherent explanation of what has happened century, a coherent proposal for the solution of the world crisis.
It is the only one conforming to
Marxism. They represent at the same time a coherent line of action for world proletariat, whole of the exploited and oppressed on an international scale - the only line of action corresponding to the class interests of the proletariat. Far from reflecting some sort of dogmatic rigid position, they are only the synthesis of the experience of the actual class struggle, of the real movement for emancipation people for more than a hundred years.
Hundreds of millions of human beings have gone through the real-life experience of points 1,2 and millions of human beings have begun to put into practice points 3,4,6,8,9 and 10. Only the Fourth International for the moment defends the entirety, or even the majority of these positions. There is nothing sectarian about
On the contrary, what is sectarian is wanting to counterpose to this real movement proletariat on a world scale the shibboleth of the priority of immediaie alignment with just the 'new revolutionary leaderships' which have erged in two, three or four countries - alignment which, mature leaderships do not generally request themselves. A ship wihout a rudder or a compass will never get to port.
Building the Fourth International, building revolutionary parties throughout the world still has to be done under exceptionally difficult exceptions). The weaker the inherent ditions (with a small number con- of material force of an organisation, the more it is exposed to the centrifugal and disintegrating pressure of external social forces. This is a self-evident truth for anyone applying the theorems of historical materialism to the political-organisational life of our epoque and also to revolutionary organisations themselves.
If the Fourth International has survived in conditions and subject to pressures and persecutions which cannot be compared to those suffered by the First, Second or Third Internationals (to grasp this you have to compare Hitler to Thiers, Stalin to Noske and Senator McCarthy to Palmer (23)
whose name nobody remembers even.), if it has not only survived but considerably developed, especially over the last twenty years, it is fundamentally for two reasons.
Objectively its construction corresponds to a necessity of the world class struggle and is perceived as such by vanguards in a growing number of countries on the basis of their own experience, that is, of the lessons themselves draw from the big struggles in which they have participated. This facilitates our growing roots inside the proletariat, our increasing activity not as observers or commentators as participants, in a certain number leaders (at least functionally and at certain times) of the real mass struggles and organisations of our resisted the test of tumultuous, often Our programme has successfully unexpected events. More than ever it is the only compass for pointing the world proletariat and its vanguard a way forward to avoid the catastrophes toward which the crisis is militants are deeply convinced that this is the case, that the choice not between a few reforms more few struggles less, between already passed never taken power anywhere, but the victory or defeat of the world revolution, the life and death of humanity, then they will be sufficiently motiexternal pressure, 'fashionable' ideas, inclinations to discouragement, resignation or a retreat into 'private life'. Such pressure strong because for the moment we are in a phase of defensive downturn of workers' struggles most countries of the world, due to initial effects of the capitalist economic crisis and the capitulation of the labour bureaucracies, which implies the absence of a credible crisis for the broad masses (the crisis will produce many other effects in the long term).
But when this commitment, which is not based on a naive religious-type faith but on numerous scientific analyses and verifications, is undermined or disappears; when it is replaced by growing political scepticism and relativism; when Realpolitik takes over from principles, then the moorings come adrift. Then the ship is taken off course without rudder or compass by a stormy sea. It can run aground on many a rock and beach. Above all it can sink beneath
Is it not obvious that it appears senseless to commit one's life to building organisations that are still weak and whose impact on the real course is still limited for the moment, (even if it is much greater than it was formerly) - if one does not believe to the marrow of one's bones in the inevitable historic necessity of this task, from the point of view of the interests of the proletariat, of all the exploited and oppressed, of all humanity? If the difference between revolutionary Marxists and much stronger organisations is only quantitative and not programmatic - if we are not the only organisation that embodies the overall interests of the world proletariat and acts accordingly - then all these efforts at partybuilding seem an utter waste of separate existence of our organisation is not based. on any material force, apparatus or state.
Some people will say that is the cause of our persistent weakness. Let us leave the cynics to stew in their own cynicism. On the contrary, for us it is a striking proof of our strength - of which there have been few examples in the history of the exploited revolutionary organisations. The fact that we have been develop, to grow in these conditions so many tests, to proof of the correctness of our ideas and the quality of our cadres. But this also means that the very existence of the organisation is linked to its programmatic and political identity. Any putting into question of this identity organisational justification, contrary to what happens in mass organisations, which can survive ten programmatic revisions and a hundred political adaptations, precisely because their existence has other material foundations.
In this sense those who are involved in the systematic liquidation of the political and programmatic heritage of revolutionary Marxism as are the Australian SWP, are digging their own graves as an independent current. ment official in the Wilson Administration, 23. Palmer was the Justice Departwho launched a sweeping crackdown against the communists in 1919, which led to the arrest and deportation of many militants.
There is no way of surviving as such without one's own programmatic and political base, outside of the major currents of the international workers' movement. Having left the Fourth International they will be rapidly faced with the choice of either disappearing as an organisation or currents. The Sandinista and Fidelista sub-current is too weak on a world scale and provides too few references country like Australia to be able to really constitute an alternative. alternative will only be on offer from
The course of the Australian SWP has clear origins: growing scepticism with respect to the proletarian revolution and the revolupotential of the working class in the main countries of the world. From this flows the seeking after substitutes and short cuts instead of the slow and relentless preparation of future working class explosions, of a day-to-day intervention in struggles historically justified by this perspective. The SWP leaders looked for these substitutes first of all among revolutionaries elsewhere in Nicaragua and Cuba. That was honourable but insufficient. Experience has confirmed that building real revolutionary parties cannot be based on such imported models. This is one of the essential causes of the successive failure of the Stalinists (and Stalinist/ Khrushchevists), Maoists and 'Albanians. Without frankly admitting iteven declaring the contrary - the Australian SWP leaders are demonstrating in practice that they are looking to vary their diet. The 'ratatouille' dish they now want to tuck into is com-
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986 posed of the most diverse, bizarre and unappetising ingredients. It would be quite unfair to identify the original Sandinsta or Fidelista ingredient in
You can find in it very hot pro-Moscow spices, equally spicey Croat nationalists (24), ecologist/pacifist fruit that is still a bit and bureaucratic trade-union candidates a little rotten round the
In itself there is nothing wrong in wanting to look for openings to build the revolutionary party out of all forms of the there are openings and one is armed with a great confidence in one's political ideas and programme, then intervening in the mass movement is carried out with the aim of winning forces and more influence for these ideas. If this confidence disappears in a growing scepticism, then activism and 'partybuilding' become ends in themselves, detached from any basis forces one wants to influence becomes replace more and more the struggle for political influence, anchored in the This adaptation is already shown the concessions made to current (the Australian SP) contained in the dreadful report on the Moscow festival. The rudderless, compassless boat is already carried along by the currents. Nobody, beginning with Percy/Lorimer themselves, knows where it will end up.
are not supporters of polities of the worse-it-gets-the-betterit-is-for-us. The Australian SWP organises a number of valuable revolutionary militants. It would be regrettable if they become lost to revolubasis of nise and the inevitable the strengthening national must intervene to a solid and frankly present course is suicidal.
reborn or without militants
(we for the proletariat will produce experiences confirm the proto-Stalinism a country historical change
•
Action. On this see the article from "Direct demand supporting not only implicitly separatism the supporting establishment of a
'Great
Croatia', of
40% the which of inhabitants would be non-Croats.
31
International
VIEWPOINT
TEMPORAt
VIEWPOINT
POLAND
SPECIAL:
workers alliance for socialism growing instability
SOUTH AFRICA: Lessons of exemplary str
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Portugal's
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workers movement
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state of siege
Salvador's fighting unions
Thatcher sets fifth column against NUM
Implications of the Anglo-Irish Acc
New rise of
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