6 June 1951, Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)
The main propositions contained in the "Theses on international perspectives" are as follows:
1. Since the Korean War, imperialism has been rushing into accelerated military and political preparations for a new world war.
2. These preparations inevitably meet with resistance from the masses, who suffer the effects of militarization (lowered living and working standards, attacks on their rights, etc.).
3. The imperialist drive toward total war is taking place in an international situation that is unfavourable to capitalism and threatens to become still worse.
4. The growing strength of anticapitalist forces and the erosion of imperialism may equally well hasten or delay the outbreak of war. In any case, the final decision depends on American imperialism. The American imperialists may launch themselves into a general war precisely in order to prevent the unfavourable relationship of class forces from becoming worse.
5. A third world war unleashed under such conditions would from the outset acquire the character of an international civil war, notably in Europe and Asia. It would be a war waged by the imperialist bloc against the Soviet Union, the "people's democracies," China, the colonial revolutions and the revolutionary workers' movement in the capitalist countries. It would be a war of capitalist counter-revolution for the restoration of private property, colonialism and the other forms of servitude, against the international revolutionary movement in all its diverse forms.
6. Such a war would differ from the two preceding world wars in important respects. First, it would not be a struggle between two rival imperialist blocs for world domination, but above all a class war. Second, it would not come at the culminating point of a series of defeats of the proletariat and its political prostration. Rather it would come as the result of serious setbacks for imperialism, not at a moment when the workers and colonial peoples are crushed and weakened, but when hard blows are being inflicted on imperialism itself. Consequently, the immediate effect of another world war would not be to blunt and suppress the class struggle, but to exacerbate it enormously toward social paroxysms.
7. This analysis of the world situation makes the following orientation necessary and opens up the following perspectives for the revolutionary movement:
a) The preparations for, and even the outbreak of, world war do not constitute grounds for despair or defeatism in the ranks of the vanguard. On the contrary, they must be seen as opening up considerable revolutionary possibilities on an international scale, provided the vanguard pursues a correct line and takes full advantage of these possibilities.
b) Marxists cannot take a "neutralist" or abstentionist attitude toward the forces that would confront one another in the threatening war. They must oppose the imperialists and their agents intransigently, and they must ally themselves unambiguously with the opponents of imperialism, who have a different social nature, tendencies and objectives. This class position, which clearly differentiates between the opposing camps, must be made evident in all political activity and in the press.
c) In the movements, countries and forces led by Moscow and the Stalinists, or by the reformists, Marxists must clearly distinguish between the social regimes, the forces, the movements of an anticapitalist nature, and their bureaucratic and opportunist leaderships.
d) Wherever the masses go into action against capitalist regimes, Marxists must participate with their own programme alongside the workers, peasants and colonial peoples in their struggles, with a view to deepening and broadening the movements along revolutionary lines. Under certain conditions, this may make it necessary to enter movements controlled by the Stalinists and even to give critical support to regimes established under their auspices, such as that of China.
e) This necessarily implies, at the same time, fighting against the Soviet bureaucracy and exploiting the world crisis of Stalinism in order to create a new revolutionary leadership. This requires systematic efforts to draw closer to the masses who are currently in Europe and Asia under the influence or domination of Stalinism.
f) In countries where Stalinism is weak and where the reformists are at present the dominant force, as in England or India, this means working among the masses and within the parties that currently follow reformist leaders. In countries where both Stalinism and social democracy are weak, this means directly confronting the trade-union bureaucracy and the spokesmen of the capitalists in order to win the leadership of the workers.
With the above propositions we are in total agreement. At the same time, in our view it is necessary to develop and reinforce the theses along the following lines.
8. The necessity of opposing the imperialist bloc and defending the conquests of October against imperialism does not mean supporting the diplomatic measures or the military strategy of the Kremlin, as the theses themselves indicate. The development of the class struggle and the lines of class interest would not necessarily coincide, in the course of the war, in every circumstance and every place, with governmental or military alignments. The case of Yugoslavia illustrates such a circumstance well today. Similar cases may arise in the course of the war itself. In the coming period, Marxists face a double problem: on the one hand, to defend the conquests of October against imperialism, and on the other, to defend the revolutionary struggles and their conquests (as in Yugoslavia today) against the Kremlin.
9. The direct counter-revolutionary role that Moscow has played and continues to play will not fade into the background in the event of war. On the contrary, it will come to the fore whenever and wherever independent mass movements threaten to pass beyond the control of the parties that it dominates. Independently of their effects on the defence of the Soviet Union, the Stalinist bureaucracy will not support independent mass movements, and in particular oppositional movements. If the Kremlin judges that such independent movements call its interests into question, it will not hesitate to repress them. As they develop, these revolutionary movements may, under certain circumstances, draw along with them agents of the Kremlin who will seek to take their leadership in order to control them. It must be stressed that the more these movements tend to pass over their heads, the more openly the Stalinist bureaucracy will tend to clash with them and seek to crush them.
10. While the international situation, considerably worsened and continually deteriorating, reduces the chances of a bargain between the Kremlin and the imperialists, the possibility of such a bargain nevertheless persists. The conservative Stalinist bureaucracy is far from having abandoned its perspective of living in peace with imperialism, if only the latter will allow it to do so. To this end it is prepared, as it always has been, to sacrifice the interests of the workers everywhere. Measures such as Togliatti's offer to the Italian bourgeoisie demonstrate that the Kremlin is far from having lost all hope of concluding a bargain. Although such a bargain, if concluded, could only prove temporary and partial, it would nonetheless modify the international situation and our own perspectives in the immediate period and, consequently, should not be entirely excluded from our analysis.
11. Instead of attempting to provide a general redefinition of the Stalinist parties, it would be more appropriate to recommend following their concrete evolution in each given case, in their specific relations with the Kremlin on the one hand, and with the mass movement in their own country on the other. At the same time, it is essential to reaffirm our earlier characterization of Stalinism as a counter-revolutionary force. Stalinism remains what it has been, before, during and since the last war. It is a national reformist bureaucracy and an agency of imperialism within the world labour movement. What is new in the situation is not any change whatsoever in the nature and role of Stalinism, but the new conditions in which these parties, including the Kremlin, now find themselves, and as a result of which they have been plunged into crises.
The possibility and the probability that mass movements may in some countries pass over the heads of the Stalinist parties opens up two variants of development. If these parties follow the masses and begin to pursue a revolutionary path, this will inevitably lead to their break with the Kremlin and to their independent evolution. Such parties can then no longer be considered Stalinist, but will rather tend to acquire a centrist character, as was the case with the Yugoslav CP. But parties which, under conditions of mass upheaval, remain wholly bound to the Kremlin, will fully develop their counter-revolutionary character. The characterization of the Stalinist parties as "not exactly reformist" is both vague and misleading and must be discarded.
12. The analysis concerning the conduct that the Stalinist parties might adopt in wartime in the capitalist countries tends to be one-sided in the theses. It is said that, under certain circumstances, these parties may be compelled to sketch out a revolutionary orientation. This is not excluded. But the opposite is equally not excluded. Under certain circumstances, the Stalinists could and effectively would strangle revolutions in the course of a war. This variant should be underlined just as much. Furthermore, it should be stressed that with the outbreak of war not all Stalinist parties would escape the crisis that afflicts them, but that this crisis would rather intensify considerably.
13. In keeping with what has been said, it must also be stressed that a tactical orientation implies no conciliation with Stalinism. On the contrary, these tactics are designed to enable us to merge with the living mass movement and thereby combat Stalinism all the more effectively.
14. Although the immense revolutionary upheavals that the outbreak of a world war would provoke in the imperialist sectors are correctly emphasized, it should be pointed out that such a war would also aggravate the latent conflicts and stir up independent mass movements against the Kremlin's dictatorship in the regions it dominates. This would probably occur in the countries of Eastern Europe, where the Communist parties have already had to undergo the purging of their national leaderships, and among the Soviet nationalities that have directly experienced the evils of Stalinist oppression. The task of the Marxists will be to link up with these anti-Stalinist popular movements, to give them a clear and consistent anti-imperialist and anticapitalist expression, and to guide them in a revolutionary socialist direction.
15. The perspective of "deformed workers' states" as a line of historical development for an indefinite future period must not be endorsed, whether implicitly or explicitly, in the theses. Whether in Eastern Europe or in Asia, the backward countries constitute only one of the principal channels of revolutionary development. The extension of the proletarian revolution to one or more advanced countries would radically change the whole picture of the world. This aspect should be given prominence in the theses. The delay of the socialist revolution in a backward European country, and the limitation that resulted from it, was a historical circumstance that has largely determined the course of world history since 1924. But we are today on the threshold of an entirely new situation. The unparalleled rise of the colonial revolutions may seem to reinforce this earlier tendency. However, in the last analysis, it will reverse it. For these colonial revolutions, which now also embrace the Near East, are shaking and dislocating the entire world imperialist structure and are thereby providing an enormous impulse to the socialist revolution in all the advanced countries, including the United States. The outbreak of a world war will not alter this tendency: on the contrary, it will considerably reinforce revolutionary developments both in the backward countries and in the advanced countries. The rise of the colonial revolutions must be directly linked in this sense to the perspectives of the advanced countries. At the same time, it should be noted that this interconnection between the development of the backward and the advanced countries will aggravate to the extreme the crisis extending not only to imperialism but also to Stalinism.
16. The central political characteristic of the world situation today is the crisis of proletarian leadership. It is imperative to reaffirm this proposition from our founding congress theses. Everything turns on the solution of this historic task. The objective conditions for its accomplishment are now ripe, but the task will not be resolved automatically or mechanically, nor independently of our intervention and our policy. The tactical measures proposed acquire their full significance and importance in relation to the solution of this problem.
6 June 1951 The Political Committee of the SWP (translated from the American by Pierre Frank)