Issuing body: Parti ouvrier internationaliste (POI), Comité communiste internationaliste (CCI), and the "Octobre" group — joint appeal announcing the formation of the Parti communiste internationaliste (PCI), the French section of the Fourth International
Workers,
For nearly five years the imperialist war has been piling up mountains of ruins and corpses. During the war, the groups of the revolutionary vanguard laying claim to the internationalist programme of the Fourth International — the Parti ouvrier internationaliste (POI), the Comité communiste internationaliste (CCI), the Octobre group — have never ceased denouncing this war as an imperialist war whose aim is a new carve-up of the world.
These organisations accordingly developed an internationalist policy and internationalist action, denouncing "our own bourgeoisie," French imperialism, as the first enemy, and holding out a fraternal hand to the German worker against German imperialism, the current master of Europe. For nearly five years, despite all the episodic errors of this or that grouping, the action of the organisations laying claim to the platform of the Fourth International has been conducted on the basis of the struggle against world imperialism (American, British, German, etc.), for the defence of the USSR despite its bureaucratisation, and for the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war.
Today we are arriving at the decisive turning-point of the war: the advance of the Red Army and the Italian revolution are the forerunners of the formidable revolutionary crisis now brewing in Europe, a crisis that will take on its full scope as soon as German imperialism collapses. It is for this moment that British imperialism and American imperialism are preparing their armies — armies they were unwilling to use against Hitler but which they are getting ready to hurl against the revolution and against the proletariat.
The contradictions gnawing at the "unified Europe" of German imperialism, together with the rising revolutionary crisis, place before the revolutionary vanguard, as a burning task, the question of building the revolutionary party: the Bolshevik-Leninists could neither confront the revolutionary crisis nor enter the decisive turning-point of the war politically disarmed.
For the political arming of our European organisation, a European Conference has just been held, which, after lengthy discussion, defined the tasks of the organisation in the face of the rising revolutionary crisis. On the political basis of the line laid down by the European Conference, the three organisations of Bolshevik-Leninists of France have decided to form a single organisation, taking the name Parti communiste internationaliste, thereby underlining its attachment both to true revolutionary communism, the communism of Lenin and Trotsky, and to the whole international political tradition of the Left Opposition of the Communist International.
A step forward is thus taken towards the formation of the true revolutionary party capable of leading the victorious struggle for the proletarian revolution, for the Socialist United States of Soviet Europe. The French section of the Fourth International thereby affirms its will to constitute the revolutionary ferment of the crisis that is coming and to become the pole of attraction for all the revolutionary elements of the vanguard.
At this decisive moment, the Fourth International is regrouping its forces, correcting its errors through Bolshevik self-criticism, retempering its cadres, and affirming in action its presence and its political unity.
At this decisive moment, the French section of the Fourth International calls on advanced workers to join its ranks and to take part, shoulder to shoulder, in the formation of a true Bolshevik party.
Against fascist and "democratic" imperialism! Against the union sacrée! For the struggle against our own imperialism! For the triumph of the socialist revolution!
Long live the Parti communiste internationaliste! Long live the Fourth International!
The Parti ouvrier internationaliste (POI) The Comité communiste internationaliste (CCI) The "Octobre" group
March 1944