OCTOBER 22, 1938 SOCIALIST APPEAL The Fourth International Defends the Soviet Union despotism. It is very likely that a genuine proletarian success in one of the democratic countries will be necessary to give impotens evolutionary movement on fascise teise nye tenim Preservation of the Conquests of 1917 Depends on the preparing for the evolution means to the sectarians the convincing Overthrow of Stalinist Dictatorship day reduced mainly to Stalin Bonapartist clique, hangs on by terroristic methods. The latest judicial frame ups were aimed as a blow against the left. This is true also of the mopping up of the leaders of the Right Opposition, because the right group of the old Bolshevik Party, seen from the viewpoint of the bureaucracy interests and tendencies, represented a loft danger. The fact that the Bonapartist clique, likewise in fear of its own right allies of the type of Butenko, is forced in the interests of self preservation to execute the generation of Old Bolsheviks almost to a man, offers indisputable testimony of the vitality of revolutionary traditions among the masses as well as of their growing discontent.
o The complete diplomatic correspondence of the Kremlin to be published. Down with secret diplomacy!
All political trials, staged by the Thermidorian bureaucracy, to be reviewed in the light of complete publicity and contro versial openness and integrity. Only the victorious revolutionary uprising of the oppressed masses can revive the Soviet regime and guarantee its further development toward socialism. There is but one party capable of leading the Soviet masses to insutrection the party of the Fourth International!
Down with the bureaucratic gang of Cain Stalin!
Long live Soviet Democracy!
Long live the international socialist revolution. Against Opportunism and Unprincipled Revisionism ilar effect is possible by means of a financial or military catastrophe. At present, it is imperative that primarily propagandistic, preparatory work be carried on which will yield large scale re sults only in the future. One thing can be stated with conviction even at this point: once it breaks through, the revolationary wave in fascist countries will immediately be a grandiose sweep and under no circumstances will stop short at the experiment of resuscitating some sort of Weimar corpse.
It is from this point onward that uncompromising di vergence begins between the fourth International and the old parties, which outlive their bankruptcy. The emigte People Front is the most malignant and perfidious variety of all possible People Fronts. Essentially, it signifies the impotent longing for coalition with a non existent liberal bourgeoisie. Had it met with success, it would simply have prepared a series of new defeats of the Spanish type for the proletariat. merciless exposure of the theory and practice of the People Front is therefore the first condition for a revolutionary struggle against fascism.
TASKS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Of course, this does not mean that the Fourth International rejects democratic slogans as a means of mobilizing the masses against fascism. On the contrary, such slogans at certain moments can play a serious role. But the formulas of democracy (freedom of press, the right to unionize, etc. mean for us only incidental or episodic slogans in the independent movement of the prolet ariat and not a democratic noose fastened to the neck of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie agents (Spain. As soon as the movement assumes something of a mass character, the demo cratic slogans will be intertwined with the transitional ones; factory committees, it may be supposed, will appear before the old routinists tush from their chancelleries to organize trade un.
ions; soviets will cover Germany before a new Constitutional As.
sembly will gather in Weimar. The same will be true of Italy and the rest of the totalitarian and semi totalitarian countries.
Fascism plunged these countries into political barbarism.
But it did not change their social structure. Fascism is a tool in the hands of finance capital and not of feudal landowners. revolutionary program should base itself on the dialectics of the class struggle, obligatory also to fascist countries, and not on the psychology of terrified bankrupts. The Fourth International rejects with disgust the ways of political masquerade, which impelled the Stalinists, the former heroes of the Third Period, to appear in turn behind the masks of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, German nationalists, liberals only in order to hide their own unattractive face. The Fourth International always and everywhere appears under its own banner. It proposes its own program openly to the proletariat in fascist countries. The advanced workers of all the world are already firmly convinced that the overthrow of Mussolini, Hitler and their agents and imitators will occur only under the leadership of the Fourth International. TROTSKYISM IN THE Petty bourgeois democrats of the West, having but yesterday assayed the Moscow trials as unalloyed gold, today repeat insistently that there is neither Trotskyism nor Trotskyists within the They fail to explain, however, why all the purges are conducted under the banner of a struggle with precisely this danger. If we are to examine Trotskyism as a finished program, and, even more to the point, as an organization, then unquestionably Trotskyism is extremely weak in the However, its indestructable force stems from the fact that it ex.
presses not only revolutionary tradition but also today actual opposition of the Russian working class. The social hatred stored up by the workers against the bureaucracy this is precisely what from the viewpoint of the Kremlin clique constitutes Trotskyism. It fears with a deathly and thoroughly well grounded fear the bond between the deep but inarticulate indignation of the workers and the organization of the Fourth International.
The execation of the generation of Old Bolsheviks and of the revolutionary representatives of the middle and young gen.
erations has yet more swung the political pendulum to the side of the right, the bourgeois wing of the bureaucracy and its allies throughout the land. From them, e. from the right, we can expect ever more determined attempts in the next period to re.
vise the socialist character of the and bring it closer in pattern to Western civilization in its fascist form.
From this perspective, impelling concreteness is imparted to the question of the defense of the If tomorrow the bourgeois fascist grouping, the fraction of Butenko, so to speak, should attempt the conquest of power, the fraction of Reiss inevitably would align itself on the opposite side of the barricades. Although it would find itself temporarily the ally of Stalin, it would nevertheless defend not the Bonapartist clique but the social base of the e. the property wrenched away from the capitalists and transformed into state property. Should fraction of Butenko prove to be in alliance Hitl then the fraction of Reiss would defend the from military intervention, inside the country as well as on the world arena.
Any other course would be a betrayal.
The politics of Leon Blum party in France demonstrate anew that reformists are incapable of learning anything from even the most tragic lessons of history. French Social Democracy slavishly copies the politics of German Social Democracy and goes to meet the same end. Within a few decades the Second International intertwined itself with the bourgeois democratic regime, became, in fact, a part of it, and is rotting away together with it.
The Third International has taken to the road of reformism at a time when the crisis of capitalism definitely placed the proletarian revolution on the order of the day. The Comintern policy in Spain and China today the policy of cringing before the democratic and national bourgeoisie demonstrates that the Comintern is likewise incapable of learning anything further or of changing. The bureaucracy which became a re actionary force in the cannot play a revolutionary role on the world arena.
Anarcho syndicalism, in general has passed through the same kind of evolution. In France, the syndicalist bureaucracy of Leon Jouhaux has long since become a bourgeois agency in the working class. In Spain, anarcho syndicalism shook off its ostensible revolutionism and became the fifth wheel in the chariot of bourgeois democracy.
Intermediate centrist organizations centered about the London Bureau, represent merely left appendages of Social Democracy or of the Comintern. They have displayed a complete in ability to make head or tail of the political situation and draw revolutionary conclusions from it. Their highest point was the Spanish which under revolutionary conditions proved completely incapable of following a revolutionary line.
for partial and transitional demands, e. for the elementary of the working. as are today.
of themselves of the superiority of socialism. They propose turning their backs to the old trade unions, e. to tens of millions of organized workers, as if the masses could somehow live outside of the conditions of the actual class struggle! They remain indifferent to the inner struggle within reformist organizations as if one could win the masses without intervening in their daily strife! They refuse to draw a distinction between bourgeois democracy and fascism as if the masses could help but feel the difference on every hand!
Sectarians are capable of differentiating between but two colors: red and black. So as not to tempt themselves, they simplify reality. They refuse to draw a distinction between the fighting camps in Spain for the reason that both camps have a bourgeois character. For the same reason they consider it necessary to preserve neutrality in the war between Japan and China. They deny the principled difference between the and the imperialist countries, and because of the reactionary policies of the Soviet bureaucracy, they reject defense of the new forms of property created by the October Revolution against the onslaughts of imperialism. Incapable of finding access to the masses, they there fore zealously accuse the masses of inability to raise themselves to revolutionary ideas.
These sterile politicians generally have no need of a bridge in the form of transitional demands because they do not intend to cross over to the other shore. They simply dawdle in one place, satisfying themselves with a repetition of the self same meager abstractions. Political events are for them an occasion for comment but not for action. Since sectarians, as in general every kind of blunderer and miracle man, are toppled by reality at each step, they live in a state of perpetual exasperation, complaining about the regime and the methods and ceaselessly wallow.
ing in small intrigues. In their own circles they customarily carry on a regime of despotism. The political prostration of sectarianism serves to complement shadow like the prostration of oppor tunism, revealing no revolutionary vistas. In practical politics, sectarians unite with opportunists, particularly with centrists, every time in the struggle against Marxism.
Most of the sectarian groups and cliques, nourished on a cidental crumbs from the table of the Fourth International, lead an independent organizational existence, with great pretensions but without the least chance for success. Bolshevik Leninists, without waste of time, calmly leave these groups to their own fate. However, sectarian tendencies are to be found also in our own ranks and display a ruinous influence on the work of the individual sections. It is impossible to make any further compromise with them even for a single day. correct policy ree garding trade unions is a basic condition for adherence to the Fourth International. He who does not seek and does not find the road to the masses is not a fighter but a dead weight to the party. program is formulated not for the editorial board or for the leaders of discussion clubs but for the revolutionary action of millions. The cleansing of the ranks of the Fourth Interna: tional of sectarianism and incurable sectarians is a primary con: dition for revolutionary success.
The and Problems of the Transitional Epoch The Road to the Woman worker The Road to the Youth THE CHIEF TASK Although it is thus impermissible to deny in advance the possibility, in strictly defined instances, of a united front with the Thermidorian section of the bureaucracy against open attack by capitalist counter revolution, the chief political task in the still remains the overtbrow of this same Thermidorian bureaucracy. Each day added to its domination helps rot the foundations of the socialist elements of economy and increases the chances for capitalist restoration. It is in precisely this direction that Comintern moves as the agent and accomplice of the Stalinist clique in strangling the Spanish revolution and demoralizing the international proletariat.
As in fascist countries, the chief strength of the bureaucracy lies not in itself but in the disillusionment of the masses, in their lack of a new perspective. As in fascist countries, from which Stalin political apparatus does not differ save in more unbridled rough shoddedness, only preparatory propagandistic work is possible today in the As in fascist countries, the impetus to the Soviet workers revolutionary upsurge will probably be giv.
en by events outside the country. The struggle against the Comintern on the world arena is the most important part today of the struggle against the Stalinist dictatorship. There are many signs that the Comintern downfall, because it does not have a direct base in the will precede the downfall of the Bonapartist clique and of the entire Thermidorian bureaucracy in general The Soviet Union emerged from the October Revolution as a workers state. State ownership of the means of production, a necessary prerequisite to socialist development, opened up the possibility of rapid growth of the productive forces. But the apparatus of the workers state underwent a complete degeneration at the same time; it was transformed from a weapon of the working class into a weapon of bureaucratic violence against the working class and more and more a weapon for the sabotage of the country economy. The bureaucratization of a backward and isolated workers state and the transformation of the bureaucracy into an all powerful privileged caste is the most convincing refutation not only theoretically but this time practically of the theory of socialism in one country.
The thus embodies terrific contradictions. But it still remains a degenerated workers state. Such is the social diagnosis.
The political prognosis has an alternative character: either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back to capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.
To the sections of the Fourth International, the Moscow trials came not as a surprise and not as a result of the personal Madness of the Kremlin dictator, but as the legitimate off spring of the Thermidor. They grew out of the unbearable conflicts with in the Soviet burcaucracy itself, which, in turn, mirror the con tradictions between the bureaucracy and the people, as well as the deepening antagonisms among the people themselves. The bloody fantastic nature of the trials gives the measure of the intensity of the contradictions and by the same token predicts the approach of the denouement.
The public utterances of former foreign representatives of the Kremlin, who refused to return to Moscow, irrefutably confirm in their own way that all shades of political thought are to be found among the bureaucracy: from genuine Bolshevism (Ignace Reiss) to complete fascism (F. Butenko. The revolutionary clements within the bureaucracy, only a small minority, reflect, passively it is true, the socialist interests of the proletariat. The fas.
cist, counter revolutionary elements, growing uninterruptedly, express with ever greater consistency the interests of world imperialism. These candidates for the role of compradores consider, not without reason, that the new ruling layer can insure their positions of privilege only through rejection of nationalization, collectivization and monopoly of foreign trade in the name of the assimilation of Western civilization, e. capitalism. Between these two poles, there are intermediate, diffused MenshevikS. liberal tendencies which gravitate toward bourgeois democracy.
Within the very ranks of that so called classless society, there unquestionably exist groupings exactly similar to those in the bureaucracy, only less sharply expressed and in inverse proportions: conscious capitalist tendencies istinguish mainly prosperous part of the kolkhozes and are characteristic of only a small minority of the population. But this layer provides itself with a wide base for petty bourgeois tendencies of accamulating personal wealth at the expense of general poverty, and are consciously encouraged by the bureaucracy.
Atop this system of mounting antagonisms, trespassing ever more on the social equilibrium, the Thermidorian oligarchy, toThe tragic defeats suffered by the world proletariat over a long period of years doomed the official organizations to get greater conservatism and simultaneously sent disillusioned petty bourgeois revolutionists in pursuit of new ways. As always during epochs of reaction and decay, quacks and charlatans appear on all sides, desirous of revising the whole course of revolutionary thought. Instead of learning from the past, they reject it. Some discover the inconsistency of Marxism, others announce the downfall of Bolshevism. There are those who put responsibility upon revolutionary doctrine for the mistakes and crimes of those who betrayed it; others who curse the medicine because it does not guarantee an instantaneous and miraculous cure. The more daring promise to discover a panacea and, in anticipation, recommend the haſting of the class struggle. good many prophets of new morals are preparing to regenerate the labor movement with the help of ethical homeopathy. The majority of these apostles have succeeded in becoming themselves moral invalids before arriving on the field of battle. Thus, under the aspect of new ways old recipes, long since buried in the archives of preMarxian socialism, are offered to the proletariat.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the bureaucracies of the Second, Third, Amsterdam and Anarchosyndicalist Internationals, as on their centrist satellites, or reformism without reforms; democracy in alliance with the pacifism without peace; anarchism in the service of the bourgeo oisie; on revolutionists who live in deathly fear of revolution.
All of these organizations are not pledges for the future but decayed survivals of the past. The epoch of wars and revolutions will ráze them to the ground.
The Fourth International does not search alter and does not invent panaceas. It takes its stand completely on Marxist as the only revolutionary doctrine that enables one to understand reality, uncarth the cause behind the defeats and consciously prepare for victory. The Fourth International continues the tradition of Bolshevism which first showed the proletariat how to conquer power. The Fourth International sweeps away the quacks, charlatans and unsolicited teachers of morals. In a society based upon exploitation, the highest moral is that of the social revolution. All methods are good which raise the class consciousness of the workers, their trust in their own forces, their readiness for self sacrifice in the struggle. The impermissible methods are those which implant fear and submissiveness in the oppressed before their oppressors, which crush the spirit of protest and indignation or substitute for the will of the masses the will of the leaders; for conviction compulsion; for an analysis of reality demagogy and frame up. That is why Social Democracy, prostituting Marx.
ism, and Stalinism the antithesis of Bolshevism are both morta!
enemies of the proletarian revolution and its morals.
To face reality squarely; not to seek the line of least resistance; to call things by their right names; to speak the truth to the masses no matter how bitter it may be; not to fear obstacles; to be true in little things as in big ones; to base one program on the logic of the class struggle; to be bold when the hour for action arrives these are the rules of the Fourth International. It has shown that it could swim against the stream. The approaching historical wave will raise it on its crest. fresh upsurge of the revolution in the will un.
doubtedly begin under the banner of the struggle against social inequality and political oppression. Down with the privileges of the bureaucracy! Down with Stakhanovism! Down with the Soviet aristocracy and its ranks and orders! Greater equality of wages for all forms of labor!
The struggle for the freedom of the trade unions and the factory committees, for the right of assembly and freedom of the press will unfold in the struggle for the regeneration and develop ment of Soviet democracy.
The bureaucracy replaced the soviets as class organs with the fiction of universal electoral rights in the style of HitlerGoebbels. It is necessary to return to the soviets not only their free democratic form but also their class content. As once the bour.
geoisie and kulaks were not permitted to enter the soviets, so now it is necessary to drive the bureaucracy and the new aristocracy ont of the soviets. In the soviets there is room only for representa tives of the workers, rank and file kolkhozists, peasants and Red Army men.
Democratization of the soviets is impossible without legal ization of soviel parties. The workers and peasants themselves by their own free vote will indicate what parties they recognize as soviet parties. revision of planned economy from top to bottom in the interests of producers and consumers! Factory committees should be returned the right to control production. democratically or ganized consumers cooperative should control the quality and price of products.
Reorganization of the folkbozes accordance with the will and in the interests of the workers there engaged. The reactionary international policy of the bureaucracy should be replaced by the policy of proletarian internationalism.
The defeat of the Spanish revolution, engineered by its leaders; the shameful bankruptcy of the People Front in France and the exposure of the Moscow juridical swindles these three facts in their aggregate deal an irreparable blow to the Comintern and, incidentally, grave wounds to its allies: the Social Democrats and Anarcho Syndicalists. This does not mean, of course, that the members of these organization will immediately turn to the Fourth International. The older generation, having suffered terrible defeats, will leave the movement in significant numbers. In addition, the Fourth International is certainly not striving to become an asylum for revolutionary invalids, disillusioned bureaucrats and careerists. On the contrary, against a possible influx into our party of petty bourgeois elements, now reigning in the apparatus of the old organizations, strict preventive measures are necessary: a prolonged probationary period for those candidates who are not workers, especially former party bureaucrats; prevention from holding any responsible post for the first three years, etc. There is not and there will not be any place for careerism, the ulcer of the old Internationals, in the Fourth International. Only those who wish to live for the movement, and not at the expense of the movement, will find access to us. The revolutionary workers should feel themselves to be the masters. The doors of our organization are wide open to them.
Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period, as bystanders. When a program or an organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it.
The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past. The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation of the proletariat. All of its policies strive to inspire the youth with belief in its own strength and in the future. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution. Thus it was, thus it will be Opportunist organizations by their very nature concentrate their chief attention on the top layers of the working class and therefore ignore both the youth and the woman worker.
The decay of capitalism, however, deals its heaviest blows to the woman as a wage earner and as a housewife. The sections of the Fourth International should seek bases of support among the most exploited layers of the working class; consequently, among the women workers. Here they will find inexhaustible stores of devotion, selflessness and readiness to sacrifice.
Down with the bureaucracy and careerism! Open the road to the yowih! Turn to the woman worker! These slogans acc. em.
blazoned on banner the Fourth International. Under The banner of the fourth International!
Against Sectarianism Under the influence of the betrayal by the historic organizations of the proletariat, certain sectarian moods and groupings of various kinds ațise or are regenerated at the periphery of the Fourth International. At their base lies a refusal struggle THE ROOTS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL Sceptics ask: but has the moment for the creation of the Fourth Internatjonal yet arrived? It is impossible, they say, to Create an International artificially; it can only arise out of great events, etc. etc. All of these objections merely show that