Issuing body: International Secretariat for the Fourth International
For a World Campaign of Support for the Vanguard of the Fourth International in France, Spain and Belgium
Comrades, friends!
The recent international conference for the Fourth International took place under the sign of the revolutionary upsurge in Western Europe. In France, in Spain and in Belgium is being decided the fate not only of the European proletariat, but also of that of every continent, for years, if not for decades, to come. The Spanish proletariat has entered into a heroic struggle. While Mussolini and Hitler do not hesitate to send aircraft and bombs to the reactionary generals, Stalin and Blum abandon the Spanish proletariat to its fate. The Second and Third Internationals are too intimately bound up with the world bourgeoisie to break free of it even at the moment when their own skin is at stake.
What is needed today is not platonic demonstrations of solidarity, not an impotent philanthropy, but the effective support of the revolutionary vanguard by every means at our disposal. At the moment these lines are being written, the French section is preparing to send a team made up of artillerymen, airmen, technicians, doctors and nurses, which is on the point of leaving for Spain. Our financial resources are weak and our material aid is insufficient. But the value of our action of assistance consists above all in giving an example to the world proletariat, so that the workers of every factory and every working-class municipality may likewise give proof of solidarity.
But what is decisive is the political significance of this action. The Fourth International alone, free of all compromise with the bourgeoisie, advocates without reticence and openly the closest brotherhood-in-arms with the Spanish proletariat. We can and we must make every advanced proletarian understand that it is only in the strengthening of the new revolutionary international that the pledge of final victory resides.
Henceforth, it is the turn of Spain, of France and of Belgium. We must concentrate all our forces on these countries in order to wrest the proletariat from the fascist pincers. Only strong organisations of the Fourth International in Western Europe will be capable of opening the eyes of the proletariat in time to the deceptive character of the alliance of its present reformist and Stalinist leaders with the summits of the bourgeoisie; only strong sections will be capable of rallying around them the overwhelming majority of the proletariat and the peasantry, so as to lead them to victory in the decisive struggles to come.
Revolutionaries of every country in the world, we appeal to you! Help the proletarian vanguard of France, Spain and Belgium! Our correct ideas alone do not suffice. They must seize hold of the masses in order to become a material force. Certainly, the sections of the Fourth International are poor. In its ranks there are neither ministers nor "people's commissars." They rely only on your devotion and your sacrifices. But the sacrifices that you make now will bear a thousand fruits in the future. For success in your own country will also depend decisively on who prevails in Western Europe: the proletarian revolution or fascist reaction.
Comrades, friends! Time is pressing. Carry on with us the world campaign of support for the revolutionaries of France, Spain and Belgium! Do not delay! Solidarity!
The International Secretariat for the Fourth International
P.S. — Send money to the leadership of the section in your country, indicating its destination. The latter will forward it to the IS, which will publish, as it comes in, the amounts received, in the IS's information and press service as well as in the French and Belgian press. The distribution between the three countries will be carried out by the IS according to need.