SOCIALIST APPEAL JUNE 29, 1940 Second and Third Internationals Lead Workers Only to Disaster but contaminating and poisoning this class consciousness.
The official propagandists of each of the belligerent camps expose, sometimes quite correctly, the crimes of the opposing camp. Goebbels tells a good deal of truth about British violence in India. The French and English press says a great many penetrating things about the foreign policy of Hitler and of Stalin. Nevertheless this one sided propaganda by itself represents the worst chauvinist poison.
Half truths are the most dangerous kind of lies.
The entire present propaganda of the Comintern belongs to this category. After five years of the crudest fawning upon the democracies, when the whole of communism was reduced to the monotonous indictment of Fascist aggressors, the Comintern suddenly discovered in the autumn of 1939 the criminal imperialism of the Western democracies. Left about face! From then on not a single word of condemnation about the destruction of Czecho Slovakia and Poland, the seizure of Denmark and Norway and the shocking bestialities inflicted by Hitler gangs on the Polish and Jewish people! Hitler was made out to be a peace loving vegetarian continually being provoked by the Western imperialists. The Anglo French alliance was referred to in the Comintern press as the imperialist bloc against the German people. Goebbels himself could have cooked up nothing better! The emigre German Communist Party burned with the flame of love for the fatherland.
And since the German fatherland had not ceased to be Fascist it turned out that the German Communist Party helda social fascist position. The time had finally come when Stalin theory of social fascism took on flesh and blood.
At first sight the conduct of the French and English sections of the Communist International appeared to be diametrically opposite. In contradistinction to the Germans they were compelled to attack their own government. But this sudden defeatism was not internationalism, but a distorted variety of patriotism these gentlemen consider their fatherland to be the Kremlin, on which their welfare desperids. Many of the French Stalinists behaved with unComintern along with oil and manganese. But the doglike THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL SWIMS AGAINST THE STREAM SOCIAL DEMOCRATS, STALINISTS, AND THE COLONIES Parties tied up with the exploiters and interested in privileges are organically incapable of carrying on an honest policy with respect to the most exploited layers of the toilers and the oppressed peoples. The physiognomy of the and Third Internationals, therefore, is revealed with especial clarity in their attitude towards the colonies.
Acting an attorney for the slaveholders and a shareholder in the profits of slavery, the Second International has no sections of its own in the colonies, if we ignore casual groups of colonial functionaries, predominantly French free masons, and left careerists in general who sit on the backs of the native population. Having renounced opportunely the unpatriotic notion of rousing the colonial population against the democratic fatherland the Second International has gained for itself the prerogative of supplying the bourgeoisie with Ministers for the colonies, that is, slave drivers (Sidney Webb, Marius Moutet, and others. In a brief period of time the Third International, which began with a courageous revolutionary appeal to the oppressed peoples, has likewise prostituted itself completely on the colonial question. Not so very many years ago when Moscow saw an opportunity ahead for an alliance with the imperialist democracies, the Comintern advanced the slogans of national emancipation not only for Abyssinia, Albania, but also for Austria. But for the colonies of Britain and France it modestly restricted itself to wishes for reasonable reforms. At that time the Comintern defended the Indians not against Great Britain, but against possible attacks by Japan, and Tunis against the fangs of Mussolini. Now the situation has changed abruptly. Complete independence for India, Egypt, Algiers Dimitrov will accept no less. Arabs and Negroes have found their best friend in Stalin once again, not counting, of course, Mussolini and Hitler. The German section of the Comintern, with that brazenness characteristic of this gang of parasites, defends Poland and Czecho Slovakia against the plots of British imperialism. These people are capable of and ready for anything! With a new change in the Kremlin orientation towards the Western democracies they will again respectfully solicit London and Paris to grant liberal reforms to their colonies.
In contrast to the Second International, the Comintern, thanks to its great tradition, exercises unquestionable inAuence in the colonies. But its social base has altered in accordance with its political evolution. At the present time the Comintern in countries of a colonial nature rests on the stratum which is the traditional base of the Second International in the metropolitan centers. The crumbs that drop from its super profits have enabled imperialism to create the semblance of a native labor aristocracy in the colonial and semi colonial countries. Insignificant in comparison with its prototype in the metropolitan centers it stands out, however, against the background of general poverty and maintains a tenacious grip on its privileges.
The labor bureaucracy and aristocracy of the colonial and semi colonial countries, together with the state functionaries, provide especially servile recruits for the friends of the Kremlin. In Latin America one of the most repulsive representatives of this type is the Mexican lawyer, Lombardo Toledano, whose intimate services the Kremlin has The Old Leaderships Bear the Historic Responsibility for Repeated bourgeois democracy. But the first to be vanquished in the war will be the thoroughly rotten democracy. In its Defeats of Great Revolutionary Movements which could definitive downfall it will drag with it all the workers Have Re Made the World After the Last War organizations who served as its support. There will be no room for reformist unions. Capitalist reaction will destroy them ruthlessly. It is necessary to warn the workers of this questionable courage under persecution. But the political becoming more and more authoritarian. In war time the at once and loud enough for everyone to hear.
content of this courage was smirched by their embellish trade union bureaucracy definitively becomes the military new epoch demands new methods. New, methods dement of the rapacious policy of the enemy camp. What must police of the Army General Staff in the working class. mand new leaders. It is possible to save the trade unions the French workers think of it?
But no zeal will save it. War brings death and destruc in only one way: by transforming them into fighting orRevolutionary internationalists have always been portion to the present reformist trade unions. Those trade ganizations which will set as their goal victory over capitaltrayed by reaction as agents of a foreign enemy. The Comunionists who are in their prime are mobilized for the ist anarchy and imperialist banditry. The trade unions will intern created a situation for its French and English secslaughter. They are replaced by boys, women, and old men. play a paramount role in building socialist economy, but the tions that made them provide the very grounds for such that is, those least capable of resistance. All countries will preliminary condition for this is the overthrow of the an accusation and thereby forcibly drove the workers into come out of the war so ruined that the standard of living capitalist class and the nationalization of the means of production. The trade unions can escape burial beneath the the patriotic camp or condemned them to confusion and for the workers will be thrown back a hundred years. ruins of war only if they take the road of socialist revo.
passivity.
Reformist unions are possible only under the regime of lution.
The policy of the Kremlin is simple: it sold Hitler the servility with which these people allowed themselves to be sold irrefutably testifies to the internal corruption of the Comintern. Neither principles, nor honor, nor conscience The proletarian vanguard is the irreconcilable enemy of sionment and mass fatigue, in a political atmosphere poihave been left to the Kremlin agents only a supple spine.
imperialist war. But it has no fear of this war. It accepts soned by the malignant decomposition of the traditional But people with supple spines have never yet led a revobattle on the arena chosen by the class enemy. It enters organizations of the working class, in the midst of heapedlution.
this arena with its banners flying.
up difficulties and obstacles, the development of the Fourth The Fourth International is the only organization which Stalin friendship with Hitler will not endure forever, International of necessity proceeded slowly. Isolated and correctly predicted the general course of world events, at first sight much broader and more promising attempts nor even for any length of time. Before our Manifesto which anticipated the inevitability of a new imperialist reaches the masses the foreign policy of the Kremlin may at unifying the left wing have been undertaken more than catastrophe, which exposed the pacifist frauds of the bourundergo a new turn. In that case the character of the once by centrists who disdained our efforts. All these preComintern propaganda would also change. If the Kremlin geois democrats and the petty bourgeois adventurers of tentious attenipts, however, crumbled to dust even before the Stalinist school, which fought against the policy of draws close to the democracies the Comintern will once the masses had a chance to memorize their names. Only class collaboration bearing the name of the People the Fourth International, with stubbornness, persistence, again dig out of its warehouses the Brown Book of NaFronts, which pilloried the treacherous role of the Comintional Socialist crimes. But this does not mean that its tern and the anarchists in Spain, which irreconcilably criand increasing success keeps on swimming against the stream.
propaganda will assume a revolutionary character. In ticized the centrist illusions of the POUM, which continued changing labels it will remain as servile as before. Revoluto steel its cadres unceasingly in the spirit of the revolu We Have Withstood the Test!
tionary policy demands that above all, the masses be told tionary class struggle. Our policy in war is only a concenthe truth. But the Comintern lies systematically. We turn What characterizes a genuine revolutionary organization trated continuation of our policy in peace.
to the toilers of the world and say: Do not believe the liars! The Fourth International builds its program upon the is above all the seriousness with which it works out and granite theoretical foundations of Marxism. It rejects the tests its political line at each new turn of events. Centralism contemptible eclecticism now dominating the ranks of the is made fruitful by democracy. In the fire of the war our official labor bureaucracy of the different camps and which sections passionately discuss all questions of proletarian policy, testing methods and brushing off in passing those rewarded by elevating him to the decorative post of Chairmost frequently serves as a cloak for capitulation to bourunstable elements who joined us only because of their man of the Latin American Trade Union Federation. geois democracy. Our program is formulated in a series of By posing the questions of the class struggle point blank, documents accessible to everyone. The gist of it can be opposition to the Second and Third Internationals. Separation from unreliable fellow travelers is the inevitable overthe war creates for these jugglers and weather vanes an summed up in two words. proletarian dictatorship.
head expense in the formation of a genuine revolutionary increasingly difficult position, which genuine Bolsheviks party.
must utilize in order to sweep the Comintern out of the Our Program Founded on Bolshevism colonial countries forever.
The Fourth International stands completely and wholeThe overwhelming majority of our comrades in different heartedly on the foundation of the revolutionary tradition countries have withstood the first test of the war. This fact Centrism and Anarchism of Bolshevism and its organizational methods. Let the is of inestimable significance for the future of the Fourth By testing everything that exists and discarding everypetty bourgeois radicals whine against centralism. workInternational. Every rank and file member of our organizathing rotten, war represents a mortal danger to the outer who has participated even once in a strike knows that no tion is not only entitled but is duty bound to consider lived Internationals. considerable section of the Comin struggle is possible without discipline and a firm leadership.
himself henceforth an officer in the revolutionary army which will be created in the flame of events. The entry of tern bureaucracy, especially in case of reversals for the Our entire epoch is permeated with the spirit of centralism.
Soviet Union, will unfailingly turn to their own imperialist Monopoly capitalism has brought economic centralization the masses into the revolutionary arena will reveal at fatherland. The workers, on the contrary, will move more to its ultimate limits. State centralism in the guise of once the insignificance of the opportunist, pacifist and cenand more to the left. Under such conditions splits and fascism assumed a totalitarian character. The democracies trist programs. single real revolutionist in a factory, a crack ups are inevitable. number of symptoms also indi more and more attempt to emulate this pattern. The trade mine, a trade union, a regiment, a warship, is worth incate the possibility that the left wing of the Second union bureaucracy is ruthlessly defending its powerful finitely more than hundreds of petty bourgeois pseudoInternational will break away, Centrist groupings of dif machine. The Second and Third Internationals are brazenly revolutionists stewing in their own juice.
ferent origin will merge, break up, create new fronts, utilizing the state apparatus in their struggle against the The politicians of the big bourgeoisie are far better at camps, etc. Our epoch will disclose, however, that it finds revolution. Under these conditions the elementary guarantee orienting themselves on the role of the Fourth International centrism intolerable. The pathetic and tragic role played of success is the counterposing of revolutionary centralism than our petty bourgeois pedants. On the eve of breaking in the Spanish revolution by the POUM, the most serious to the centralism of reaction. It is indispensable to have an off diplomatic relations, the French ambassador Coulondre and honest of the centrist organizations, will always reorganization of the proletarian vanguard welded together and Hitler, seeking during their final interview to frighten main in the memory of the advanced proletariat as a ter by iron discipline, a genuine selection of tempered revolu each other by the consequences of the war, were in joint rible warning tionists ready for self sacrifice and inspired by an uncon agreement that the only real victor would be the Fourth But history is fond of repetitions. The possibility is not querable will to victory. To prepare the offensive system International. Upon the launching of hostilities against excluded of new attempts to build an international organ atically and painstakingly, and when the decisive hour Poland the major press of France, Denmark and other ization on the pattern of the 22 International, or, this time, strikes to throw the entire strength of the class on to the countries carried dispatches saying that in the workers the 4 International. Such beginnings merit attention only field of battle without faltering only a centralized party quarters in Berlin placards appeared on walls: Down as a reflection of far more profound processes taking place which does not falter itself is capable of teaching this to with Stalin, Long Live Trotsky! This means: Down in the working masses. But it can be stated with certainty the workers.
with the Third International, Long Live the Fourth Interin advance centrist fronts, camps and InterShallow sceptics the of national! When a demonstration was organized by the nationals. lacking any theoretical foundation, revolution Bolshevik centralism into bureaucratism. As though the en more resolute workers and students of Prague, on the ary tradition, or finished program, will have only an tire course of history depended on the structure of a party! anniversary of national independence, the Protector ephemeral character. We shall assist them by mercilessly As a matter of fact it is the fate of the party that depends Baron Neurath issued an official declaration placing the criticizing their indecisiveness and half heartedness. on the course of the class struggle. But in any case the responsibility for this demonstration upon the Czech This sketch of the bankruptcy of the old working class Bolshevik party was the only party which proved in action Trotskyites. The correspondence from Prague which aporganizations would be incomplete if we failed to mention its capacty for accomplishing the proletarian revolution. pears in the newspaper edited by Benes, the former Presianarchism. Its decline constitutes the most incontestable It is precisely such a party that is needed now by the inter dent of the Czecho Slovak Republic, confirms the fact that phenomenon of our epoch. Even before the first imperialist national proletariat. If the bourgeois regime comes out of the Czech workers are becoming Trotskyites. As yet, all war the French anarcho syndicalists succeeded in becoming the war with impunity, every revolutionary party will suffer these are only symptoms. But they indicate unmistakably the worst opportunists and the direct servants of the bour degeneration. If the proletarian revolution conquers, those the trend of development. The new generation of workers geoisie. In the last war most of the international anarchist conditions which produce degeneration will disappear. whom the war will impel on to the road of revolution will leaders came out as patriots. In the heat of the civil war in In the conditions of triumphant reaction, mass disillu take their place under our banner.
Spain the anarchists took posts as Ministers of the beurgeoisie. The anarchist phrase mongers deny the state so long as it does not need them. In the hour of danger they, like the social democrats, become agents of the capitalist The basic conditions for the victory of the proletarian Already the disorientation of the bourgeoisie, the alarm class.
The anarchists entered the present war without a prorevolution have been established by historical experience and dissatisfaction of the popular masses are intense, not gram, without a single idea, and with a banner dirtied by and clarified theoretically. 1) The bourgeois impasse and only in the warring but also in the neutral countries; these their betrayal of the Spanish proletariat. Today they are dissatisfaction and the striving towards decisive changes in the resulting confitsion of the riding class. 2) the sharp phenomena will become intensified with every passing month of the war. In the last twenty years, it is true, the incapable of introducing anything into the ranks of the workers save patriotic demoralization flavored with humanthe ranks of the petiy bourgeoisie without whose support proletariat has suffered one defeat after another, each itarian lamentations. In seeking a rapprochement with the the big bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself. 3) the con grawer than the preceding one, became disillusioned with anarchist workers who are really prepared to fight for the sciousness of the intolerable situation and readiness for its old parties and met the war undoubtedly in depressed revolutionary actions in the ranks of the proletariat. 4) a spirits. One should not, however, over estimate the stability interests of their class, we will at the same time demand that they make a complete break with those leaders who in clear program and a firm leadership of the proletarian van or durability of such moods. Events created them, events war as well as in revolution serve as the messenger boys of guard these are the four conditions for the victory of the will dispěl them.
War as well as revolution is made first and foremost by the bourgeoisie.
proletarian revolution. The main reason for the defeats of many revolutions is rooted in the fact that these four the younger generation. Millions of the youth unable to conditions rarely attain the necessary degree of maturity at find aceess to industry began their lives as unemployed and one and the same time. In history, war has not infrequently therefore remained outside of political life. Today they are finding their place or they will find it on the morrow: it among the working masses. It is impossible to perform been the mother of revolution precisely because it rocks the state organizes them into regiments and for this very this filthy chore so long as workers democracy within the superannuated regimes to their foundation, weakens the reason opens the possibility for their revolutionary unificatrade unions is maintained. The regime in the unions, folruling class and hastens the growth of revolutionary in tion. Without a doubt the war will also shake off the lowing the pattern of the regime of the bourgeois states, is dignation among the oppressed classes.
apathy of the older generations.
CONDITIONS FOR WORKERS REVOLUTION ARE PRESENT THE TRADE UNIONS AND THE WAR While the magnates of monopoly capitalism stand above the official organs of state power, controlling them from their heights, the opportunist trade union leaders scurry around the footstool of state power, creating support for