Documents of the World Congress of the Fourth International Section Socialist Appeal Workers Of The World Unite!
OFFICIAL WEEKLY ORGAN OF THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY VOL. II No. 46 Saturday, October 22, 1938 375 The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International Following is the full text of the central thesis adopted by the World Congress of the Fourth International which met in Switzerland in September, 1938.
World Congress Greetings to Leon Trotsky The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours The world political situation as a whole is chiefly character ized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind productive forces stagnate. Already, new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the weight of the social crisis affecting the whole capitalist system weigh ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the State and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to an other.
The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, ie, in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumu.
lations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc. all of capital traditional parties are in a state of perplexity, bordering on a paralysis of will. The New Deal, despite its first period pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already succeeded in showing that New Deal politics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley.
International relations presente no better picture. Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914.
All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet tipened for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ripened. they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period, at that. catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.
The turn is now to the proletariat, e. chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.
these are the last political resources of imperialism in the struggle against the proletarian revolution. From the historical point of view, however, both these resources are stop saps. The decay of capitalisin continues under the sign of the Phrygian cap in France as under the sign of the swastika in Germany. Nothing short of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can open a road out.
The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the old workers organizations. Of these factors, the first, of course, is the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus. No matter how the methods of the social betrayers differ from the social iegislation of Blum to the judicial frame ups of Stalin they will never succeed in breaking the revolutionary will of the proletariat. As time goes on, theit desperate efforts to hold back the wheel of history will demonstrate more clearly to the masses that the crisis of the proletarian leadership, having become the crisis in man.
kind culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International.
conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropri.
ating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, professions groups should be drawn Dear Comrade: into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distin.
The Conference of the Fourth International sends you guished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from its warmest greetings.
day to day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.
The barbarous repression which rabidly attacks our movement in general and you in particular prevented you The Fourth International does not discard the program of from being with us to bring to our debates the contributions the old minimal derands to the degree to which these have of the former founder of the Red Army, the organizer of preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, the October insurrection, the theoretician of the permanent it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the work revolution, and the direct successor of Lenin.
ers. But it carries on this day to day work within the framework The Stalinist, the fascist, and the imperialist enemies of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial minimal demands of the masses clash with have subjected you to severe trials. Leon Sedoff, Erwin Wolf, the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism Rudolf Klement are dead, fallen victims to the Stalinist. and this occurs at each step the Fourth International advances counter revolution. Ta Thu Thau lies suffering in the prisons a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is conof French imperialism. Numerous German and Greek comtained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will rades are being tortured in fascist prisons. You are the obbe directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The ject of constant attempts at assassination. But all these per old minimal program is superseded by the transitional program, secutions, though they rain painful blows upon us, have as the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses their final result only the definite strengthening of our con for the proletarian revolution viction of the value of the Marxist program, of which you are in our opinion, since the death of Lenin, the principal interpreter.
That is why our greeting contains more than just affection for the great present day theoretician of revolutionary Marxism. There is also the certainty that the enemy blows, however heavy, will not prevent the doctrine of the socialist Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the revolution from becoming the living reality of tomorrow. masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, The Conference of the Fourth International marks a new threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of be.
spring forward of our movement along the road of unifica ing cast to the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthtion, of organizational reinforcement, and of the perfecting ful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither of its propaganda by the adoption of the transitional pro the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, gram. We express the strong hope that you will long share partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of conin its successes as you have shared in its vicissitudes. crete circumstances national, local, professional. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing ab surdity of the capitalist system: that is unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation; inexperience of the younger generation. It is The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist pro the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole gram of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the mone transitional demands, stemming from today conditions and from tary system and all other scourges stemming from, capitalism today consciousness of wide layers of the working class and indeath agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth Interna.
alterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power tional demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
by the proletariat.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as sloClassical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the apgressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts, independproach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one ent of one another; the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the in wages in relation to the increase in prices of consumer goods.
maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social De Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat mocracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word Socialism cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the is used only for holiday speechifying. The Comintern has set out workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only se capitalism; when, in general, there can be no discussion of syste rious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation, matic social reforms and the raising of the masses living stand This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against ards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even ev. unemployment, structural as well as conjunctural, the time is ery serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slobeyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the gan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other bourgeois state.
mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed The strategical task of the Fourth International lies not in together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis, all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. The political aim: the workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the unrealizability of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers catecruel falsehood in which Czechoslovakia is playing the same gorically denounce sugh conclusions and references. The question role as poor Belgium in 1914.
is not one of a normal collision between opposed material in The Anglo. French imperialists, who mercilessly beat down terests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from des the fighters for independance in India, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, cay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death Palestine, and everywhere, recognize nothing but their inde of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of pendent right to exploit millions of slaves, black, brown and the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying white, throughout the world.
the demands, inevitably arising from the calamities generated by The capitalist world is mortally wounded. In its agony it itself, then let it perish. Realizability or unrealizability are exhales the poisons of fascism and totalitarian war, which threatin the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, ens to subject the workers and farmers everywhere once more to which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this a new and horrible servitude, and to unleash the forces of de struggle, no matter what its immediate practical successes may be, struction which will shatter modern civilization.
the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
In the midst of abundance, with a productive apparatus which could, well organized and directed, cover more than all the present requirements of humanity, capitalism dooms millions Trade Unions in the Transitional of men to unemployment, miserables doles, or to starvation.
The ruling class which long ago broke the chains of feulism in the name of democracy and equality, brings together the darkest elements of reaction and the most debased of the In the struggle for partial and transitional demands, the lower depths of society to abolish all the democratic rights con workers, now more than ever before, need mass organizations quered by the people. It wants, with the dagger and fascist principally, trade unions. The powerful growth of trade unionism knout, to preserve the sovereignty it would lose through the in France and the United States is the best refutation to the preachinexorable victory of socialism.
ments of those ultra left doctrinaires, who have been teaching Capitalism is utterly incapable of assuring the well being that trade unions have outlived their usefulness. Continued on page 10)
The Bolshevik Leninist stands in the front line trenches of The Minimum Program and a Transitional Program The strategic task of the next period a pre revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and Manifesto of the Congress Against Imperialist War!
The following manifesto was issued by the conference during the height of the war crisis over the issue of Czechoslovakia.
The Proletariat and Its Leadership The economy, the state, the politics of the bourgeoisie and its international relations are completely blighted by a social crisis, characteristic of a pre revolutionary state of society. The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the pre revolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian leadership; its petty bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony.
In all countries the proletariat is wracked by a deep disquiet.
In millions, the masses again and again move onto the road of the revolutionary outbreaks. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic apparatus.
The Spanish proletariat has made a series of heroic attempts since April. 1931, to take power in its hands and guide the fate of society. However, its own parties (Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists, POUMists. each in its own way acted as a brake and thus prepared Franco triumphs.
In France, the great wave of sit down strikes, particularly during June, 1936, revealed the whole hearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist systern. However, the leading organizations (Socialists, Stalinists, Syndicalists) under the label of the Popular Front succeeded in canalizing and damning, at least temporarily, the revolutionary stream.
The unprecedented wave of sit down strikes and the amazingly rapid growth of industrial unionism in the United States (the Clo) is most indisputable expression of the instinctive striving of the American workers to raise themselves to the level of the tasks imposed on them by history. But here, too, the leading political organizations, including the newly created CIO, do everything possible to keep in check and paralyze the revolutionary pressure of the masses.
The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of the bourgeois order, its cynically counter revolutionary role throughout the world, particularly in Spain, France, the United States and other democratic countries, created exceptional supplementary difficulties for the world proletariat. Under the banner of the October Revolution, the conciliatory politics practiced by the People Front dooms the working class to impotence and clears the road for fascism People Fronts on the one hand fascism on the other; Unite against exploitation, oppression, war and fascism!
Forward for the class struggle, international socialism, and freedom!
Workers, exploited, and colonial peoples of all countries!
The founding conference of the Fourth International the World Party of the Socialist Revolution meeting in September, 1938, issues this appeal at a time when the greatest peril threatens the masses of the entire world and the cause of their emancipation from modern slavery.
We are confronted with the horrors of a new imperialist world war.
It is a monstrous lie that the war will take place between peaceful and warlike nations, because war is in herent in capitalism itself, and every capitalist nation is engaged in the mad armaments race.
It is a monstrous lie to say that the war will be between democratic and dictatorialcountries, because the democracies are already allied with many dictatorships and when war does break out the first victims will be the democratic rights and institutions already largely undermined in the peaceful countries.
It is a lie to say that the war will take place for the natio.
nal independance or freedom of Czechoslowakia. That is a Epoch