Issuing body: Joint declaration signed by four organizations — the International Secretariat of the International Communist Left Opposition, the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (Holland), and the Independent Socialist Party (Holland)
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The undersigned organizations, fully conscious of the historic responsibilities weighing upon them, have agreed to unite their efforts in order to work together for the regeneration of the revolutionary proletarian movement on an international scale. As the basis of their activity they set out the following principles:
1. The world crisis of imperialist capitalism, which has removed the ground from beneath reformism (social democracy, the Second International, the reformist trade-union bureaucracy), imperiously poses the task of breaking with reformist policy, of placing on the order of the day the revolutionary struggle for the conquest of power and for the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, as the only path for the transformation of capitalist society into socialist society.
2. The task of the proletarian revolution, in its very essence, is international in character. The revolutionary party of the proletariat nonetheless has the task, in every country where historical conditions are ripe, of leading the working class into the struggle for power. But the proletariat can build a completed socialist society only on the basis of the international division of labour and of international collaboration. The signatories therefore resolutely reject the theory of "socialism in one country", which undermines the very foundations of proletarian internationalism.
3. The Third International, which arose from the October revolution, which laid down the fundamental rules of revolutionary policy in the epoch of imperialism and gave the world proletariat its first lessons in the revolutionary struggle for power, fell victim to its servile dependence on the Soviet bureaucracy, which degenerated in the spirit of nationalism and centrism.[1]
4. The fascist offensive in Germany put the organizations of the working class to the decisive test. Social democracy there once again confirmed the judgement Rosa Luxemburg had passed on it. It showed itself to be a "stinking corpse". To triumph over the organizations, the ideas and the methods of reformism is an indispensable condition for the victory of the working class over capitalism.
5. It is with no less vigour that the events in Germany also laid bare the collapse of the Third International. This is the result of the radically false policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The decisive influence of this bureaucracy over the CI has had the effect that the CI, which was called upon to awaken revolutionary energies throughout the world and to create in every country mass communist parties capable of fulfilling their task and leading the world revolutionary movement, has become increasingly an obstacle to the world revolutionary movement. Under the conditions thus created by the policy of the Comintern, reformism has been supported everywhere, and a frightening incapacity for action on the part of the working class has been provoked.
6. The situation of world capitalism, the appalling crisis that is plunging the popular masses into unprecedented misery, the revolutionary movements of the oppressed colonial masses, the world danger of fascism, the prospect of a new cycle of wars threatening to destroy the whole of human civilization — these are the conditions that imperiously demand the gathering of the proletarian vanguard into a new International. The signatories undertake to contribute with all their strength so that this International may be formed in the shortest possible time, on the unshakeable foundations of the theoretical and strategic principles laid down by Marx and by Lenin.
7. While ready to collaborate with all organizations, groups and factions that are genuinely evolving from reformism or bureaucratic centrism (Stalinism) towards the policy of revolutionary Marxism, the signatories declare at the same time that the new International cannot allow any tolerance towards reformism or centrism. The necessary unity of the working class cannot be achieved by a mixture of reformist and revolutionary conceptions, by an accommodation to Stalinist policy, but only by overcoming the policy of the two bankrupt Internationals. In order to fulfil its tasks, the new International cannot tolerate any deviation from revolutionary principles on questions of insurrection, of the proletarian dictatorship, of the soviet form of state, etc.
8. By virtue of its social foundations, by virtue of the dominant form of property, the USSR remains, even today, a proletarian state. The new International inscribes the defence of the Soviet Union against imperialism and internal counter-revolution on its banner as one of its most important tasks. It is precisely the revolutionary defence of the USSR that imposes upon us the imperious duty of freeing the revolutionary forces of the whole world from the pernicious influence of the Stalinized Comintern and of building a new Communist International. Only on condition that the international proletarian organizations are made completely independent of the Soviet bureaucracy, and that its false methods are ruthlessly unmasked before the working masses, is a victorious defence of the Soviet Union possible.
9. An indispensable condition for the fundamental development of the revolutionary proletarian parties, on both a national and an international scale, is party democracy. Without freedom of criticism, without the election of officials from top to bottom, without control of the apparatus by the membership, there is no genuine revolutionary party. By stifling internal democracy, the Stalinist bureaucracy has stifled the Comintern. The new International, as well as the parties composing it, must therefore build the whole of its internal life on the foundations of democratic centralism.
10. The undersigned have agreed to set up a commission of representatives from all the signatory parties for the purpose of:
a. Drafting a programmatic manifesto, the charter of the new International;
b. Preparing a study of the contemporary labour movement in all its organizations and all its tendencies;
c. Drafting theses on all the fundamental questions of the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat;
d. The permanent and systematic organization of preparatory work for a new International; the transmission of the above-mentioned material to all the organizations and groups linked to or sympathizing with the initiators of the conference, for the purpose of a fundamental and general discussion on the principles of the new International.
— International Secretariat of the International Communist Left Opposition: E. Bauer. — Socialistische Arbeiter Partei [Socialist Workers' Party] (Germany): J. Schwab. — Revolutionary Socialist Party (Holland): H. Sneevliet. — Independent Socialist Party (Holland): P. J. Schmidt.
La Vérité, No. 170, 1 September 1933
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## Notes
1. Editor's note (Prager): The text of the Declaration reproduced in volume 2 of Trotsky's Œuvres includes, in particular, an additional point 3: "3) One must reject with no less energy the theory of the Austro-Marxists, centrists and left reformists who, under the pretext of the international character of the socialist revolution, advocate, as regards their own country, a passive, wait-and-see attitude, thereby delivering the proletariat in reality into the hands of fascism. A proletarian party that refuses to take power under present historical conditions commits the worst of betrayals. The proletariat victorious in a single country must reinforce its national dictatorship through socialist construction, which necessarily remains incomplete and contradictory until the working class has seized political power in at least several advanced capitalist countries. At the same time, the working class victorious in a single country must direct all its efforts towards the extension of the socialist revolution to other countries. The contradiction between the national character of the seizure of power and the international character of socialist society can only be resolved through courageous revolutionary action."