Issuing body: International (Pre-)Conference of the Fourth International
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MANIFESTO TO THE WORKERS, THE EXPLOITED, AND THE OPPRESSED COLONIAL PEOPLES OF THE WHOLE WORLD
The first world conference of the Fourth International held since the end of the second imperialist war has met at a moment when the crisis of society has reached a depth and breadth hitherto unknown. In the face of the spectacle of smoking ruins, of devastation, of the blood spilled in this latest holocaust, the third world war is being prepared! The empires of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Japan have been destroyed by the "United Nations." But already the victors are engaged in a furious competition that sets them against one another for possession of the most perfected instrument of destruction, the atomic bomb. What still stands after a totalitarian war waged with flying fortresses and heavy tanks, flying rockets and bazookas, flame-throwers and Katyusha rocket-launchers, is threatened with total annihilation by the most perfected and most horrifying of all inventions of death. The crisis of humanity has thus become a matter of life or death, in the fullest and most literal sense of the term.
The Deception of the "Four Freedoms"
The second imperialist war was solemnly consecrated by the governments of the "United Nations" and their lackeys at the head of the "socialist" and "communist" parties, as well as of the trade-union bureaucracies, as a war against fascism and for democracy. It was a war for the "four freedoms," in the words of its most eminent protagonist, the late leader of American imperialism, Franklin Roosevelt.
Instead of being "delivered from fear," humanity finds itself faced with the threat of its own destruction by atomic energy. Instead of being "freed from want," three-quarters of the world is ravaged by famine and epidemics. In place of "freedom of speech," the great majority of peoples must obey the orders of military governments or puppets installed by the victors. Only the fallacious "freedom of religion" remains as a tool, ever pliable in the hands of the rulers, enabling them to stir up hatred and quarrels among their subjects. Such is the true face of the promised liberty and democracy. Meanwhile, under the benevolent eye of the victors, fascism is raising its head again in new forms — for example, the "Uomo Qualunque" [Common Man] movement in Italy, and elsewhere as well.
Such were the supposed war aims, the promises brandished before the popular masses. They have proved to be nothing but a pack of deceitful lies. In the Manifesto issued by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International of May 1940, we had branded these lies in advance. The Fourth International alone told the truth!
"Contrary to the official fables forged to chloroform the people," states the Manifesto of 1940, written by Trotsky, "the essential cause of war, like that of all the other social evils — unemployment, the high cost of living, fascism, colonial oppression — lies in the private ownership of the means of production and in the bourgeois state which is its foundation."
Like Lenin during the First World War, we gave this warning: "So long as the principal productive forces of society remain in the hands of the trusts, that is, of small capitalist cliques, the struggle for markets, for sources of raw materials, for domination of the world, will inevitably acquire an increasingly destructive character."
Such are the true aims. And today they still remain the driving forces of the next war. If victorious workers' revolutions do not overthrow the rapacious system of private property and do not establish a socialist system of planned production to satisfy the needs of humanity, we repeat with Lenin and Trotsky, imperialist war will surely break out once again. This time it will be accompanied by the annihilation, through atomic energy, of the industrial regions of entire countries at a single blow.
This is why this manifesto addresses itself to the workers, the exploited, the oppressed. The destiny of humanity is in their hands, and in their hands alone. It is to them that this conference of the Fourth International, world party of the socialist revolution, turns, explaining to them the situation that we must together confront, and calling them to action against the masters of the world.
Results of the First World War
The war's real aims were the struggle for markets, for sources of raw materials, and for hegemony over the world economy. Two groups of capitalist powers were opposed in the conflict. On one side stood the old, bloated imperialist nations such as England and France, which had long since carved out the lion's share of the world market in the colonies, but whose outdated industrial technique made their economic grip very precarious. On the other side stood younger imperialist nations such as Germany and Japan, latecomers to capitalist development, benefiting for that very reason from more modern industrial equipment, but finding the world market already divided up and unable to wrest colonies from the old powers except by force of arms.
Within the orbit of the first group also gravitated "satiated" secondary powers such as Belgium and Holland. Within the orbit of the other, "hungry" powers such as Italy. Their alignment was a function of their early or late arrival on the scene of capitalist development. Over the whole loomed the threat of the capitalist Benjamin, the American giant, itself a latecomer to the arena; the vast internal market of America allowed it for a long period to enrich itself without entering into immediate conflict with the other powers, while at the same time building the most modern productive apparatus in the world. In the first imperialist war, which served merely as a prelude to the second, the participation of the United States had been no more than a preventive measure. They wished to forestall the danger of a Germany that had swallowed the whole of Europe.
However, the productive apparatus of world capitalism as a whole was expanding to such an extent that it resulted in a relative shrinking of existing markets. The struggle for markets thus set every imperialist nation against every other. Recourse to war was determined solely by the degree of intensity of the struggle for markets. "Export or die" was the war-cry of Nazi Germany in its struggle for "living space."
Already, through the First World War, no less than defeated Germany, the economies of England and France had been considerably weakened, to the greatest benefit of America, which drew from it the largest profits. But a factor of the first importance, the great proletarian revolution of October 1917 in Russia, reduced the market of capitalism as a whole. By abolishing private property and socializing the whole of industry, the revolution led by the Bolshevik Party tore a sixth of the globe at a single stroke from capitalist exploitation. Under the shock of this event, the first great colonial uprisings broke out in the Far East, warning imperialism of the approach of a universal revolt against its domination. After vain efforts to crush the young socialist Republic through the armed intervention of 1917–1921, all the capitalist powers cast covetous eyes on this lost market. Their fear of further losses, through the extension of the revolution to Europe, and their desire to make up for the initial loss, softened their own internal struggles for more than twenty-five years. That is why all the victors of 1914–1918 contributed to the restoration of German capitalism. They intended to use Germany as a battering-ram to bring down the USSR. England hoped to weaken her French rival, and to find allies against the American colossus. America and France had identical aims.
The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany
But once back on its feet, German capitalism, with the high degree of technical development it had attained, could not content itself with this role. Since the unification of Europe had not been accomplished by a victorious proletarian revolution on the continent, this task was undertaken by the German capitalists, and for reactionary ends. It was to serve them as a springboard for world domination.
To realize their ambitions, they chose the most murderous and the most barbaric of all forms of government, the Nazi state of Adolf Hitler. The task of the Nazi state was to break the working class in Germany, to dominate capitalist Europe, to crush the USSR, and to enter into the struggle for world domination with the USA.
The democratic powers contributed directly to the first stage of this task. The bankrupt, cowardly, and treacherous policies of the social democrats, the Stalinists, and the trade-union bureaucracy facilitated it. Even when their own skins were at stake, they were unable to form a united front of the working class to fight against Nazism. The final phases brought on the conflict with the Western powers, in which the social democrats first, and later the Stalinists, took part in the war.
In the Far East, the imperialists likewise saw in Japan a bastion against the USSR. But there too, Japan did not content itself with this role. Having swallowed half of China, with the tolerance of the other powers, the empire of the Mikado defied American and British domination over the markets of the Pacific, with the aim of creating a Japanese "Greater East Asia."
The economic resources of Italy, Germany, and Japan proved insufficient for the totalitarian second imperialist war that broke out. One after another, they ended by succumbing in the struggle. But England, France, and the other secondary powers likewise were not equal to this struggle of world proportions. Each of them emerged from the war in a greatly reduced position, with an economy weaker than ever and an empire threatened with disintegration. No more than Japan and Germany did they attain their true war aims: to keep their markets, to continue and increase their colonial exploitation, to safeguard their old system of profit.
Prospects of the Capitalist Victors
Only the USA emerged from the war formidably strengthened. Its rivals, Japan and Germany, are annihilated. Its allies, France and England, have become debt-ridden to the point of vassalage. But at what price did the American imperialists triumph? The USSR, that vast sector of the world market torn from capitalist exploitation in 1917, still stands. It even threatens to swallow up many other countries on its borders, thereby provoking a further shrinkage of the capitalist market. What remains of the world under the capitalist yoke has been considerably impoverished and devastated by the war, and its populations' purchasing power has been reduced by half. At the same time, American productive capacity has more than doubled during the war.
Even if its domination over the capitalist world were absolute and unchallenged, American imperialism could reap profits only for a short period of boom, in order to fill the shelves left empty, in America and abroad, by the conversion of all industry to war production in the period just past. When reconverted industry begins to satisfy the increased demand, American capitalism will find itself facing a crisis of "overproduction," a depression so severe that it will dwarf the memory of 1929–1933 and its fifteen million unemployed.
But the domination of Wall Street is neither unchallenged nor absolute. The other imperialist states, with their lower living standards and wages, remain rivals still important enough to harass it. The resumption of planned production in the USSR, and above all its acceleration through a revolutionary overthrow of the Stalin regime and the restoration of workers' democracy, is an ever-present threat. At the same time, numerous revolts have ripened, beginning with Indonesia and Indochina and extending to India and China as well, not to mention the Near East and Africa.
The masses of Europe have begun a shift to the left, challenging the whole capitalist system, including that of the oldest bourgeoisie in the world, England. Only the cowardice and treachery of the traditional parties (the Labour Party, the reformists, the Stalinists) toward which the workers turned in the first stage of this movement, and the lack of mass revolutionary parties, have for the moment halted its transformation into victorious revolutions.
Reflecting the state of mind of the working class, Wall Street's own army is loudly demanding, from every outpost in the world, to be brought back to the USA. The GIs do not want to be the chain-gang of a world of slaves. And in the USA, big capital has launched a campaign of wage-freezing and union-busting in order to prepare cheaper production that would consolidate the markets conquered by force of arms. But the bosses find before them a wave of rebellion, millions upon millions of strikers opposing this campaign and fighting to bring their wages into line with the rising cost of living.
Results of the Second World War
Even with regard to their real aims, the second imperialist war has resolved none of the fundamental problems for the masters of the world. On the contrary, they have become more acute than ever. So long as private ownership of the means of production, production for profit, and the search for an exclusive market persist — accompanied as they are by a constant fall in the purchasing power of the masses — that is, so long as capitalism continues to live, misery, chaos, and the inevitable and futile recourse to war will persist.
With its fifty million dead, its fifty million maimed, its hundreds of millions of people torn from their homes, with its immense destruction of cities and the devastation of the countryside, the second imperialist war has resolved nothing. But it was inevitable. The approaching third world war, whose only conclusion would be the annihilation by atomic energy of the mass of humanity, is equally inevitable, so long as capitalism exists.
Make no mistake about it: the third world war is on its way. Churchill's anti-Soviet, anti-communist harangues, the spy-mania surrounding the atomic bomb, the orders re-establishing secrecy over troop movements and reconstituting air forces in the American army, are its heralding signs. In their greed for super-profits, the capitalists care nothing for the fate of humanity. The two world wars since 1914 have demonstrated this with blinding clarity. Only victorious proletarian revolutions, transforming society into a planned socialist system, can prevent the third world war and the barbarous self-destruction of humanity.
The Power of Marxist Predictions
When the Nazi tanks were rolling across Europe toward the Channel and Hitler was still maintaining his pact with Stalin, certain impressionable people, rejecting Marxist "theory," drew novel conclusions. According to them, Europe stood before an epoch of a "new order." Some even went so far as to see in the events, and in the Stalin-Hitler pact, the advent of a new class destined to replace, at the head of society, both the capitalists who clung to it and the proletariat that threatened it. They spoke of a new "managerial society," lumping together under a single label Hitler's National Socialist Party, Mussolini's Fascist Party, Roosevelt's New Deal, and the Stalinist bureaucracy. These innovators found wide credit among the petty bourgeoisie and even penetrated the ranks of the proletarian vanguard. Defending Marxism against the revisionist innovators, the Fourth International wrote in its Manifesto of 1940: "To compensate for the enslavement of the peoples, Hitler promises to establish over Europe a 'German peace' for a period of several centuries. An empty mirage! The British peace that followed the victory over Napoleon barely lasted a century — not a thousand years! — and only because Britain was the pioneer of a new technique and a progressive system of production. Despite the power of its industry, Germany today, like its enemies, is the representative of a doomed social system."
How quickly this judgment was borne out! How quickly those of the revisionists were refuted! The strength of the Fourth International rests on its programme, which is capable of standing the test of great events. The fall of Nazi Germany, like that of fascist Italy, has simply proved that even the most brutal and most frank formula of state dictatorship cannot resolve the inextricable contradictions of the capitalist class. Frenzied fascism, like decadent bourgeois democracy, are doomed because they are simply different forms of one and the same social system that has long been crumbling, condemned by the development of the productive forces.
The Fourth International, in 1940, also branded as a lie the notion of a democratic federation of European states sponsored by a victorious United States, sharing the world market with it. "The state is not an abstraction," said the Manifesto, "but the instrument of monopoly capitalism... A voluntary renunciation by the most powerful state of the advantage its strength confers upon it is a utopia every bit as ridiculous as a voluntary division of capital among the trusts." On the future of the United States itself, the Manifesto declared: "Yet the industrial, financial, and military strength of the United States, the foremost capitalist power in the world, guarantees no economic flowering in America whatsoever, but on the contrary lends the crisis of its social system a character that is particularly grave and convulsive." Compare these forecasts, made six years ago, with the reality of today. On every important point, the analysis of the Fourth International has stood the test of time!
The USSR Versus World Imperialism: The Fundamental Antagonism in the Present World
Episodic considerations, founded at the time on the Stalin-Hitler pact, gave rise to speculation about a "fundamental" alignment of the USSR with the fascist states, just as the breach of that pact and the outbreak of war between the two partners later gave rise to further speculation about a "fundamental" alignment of the USSR with the "democratic" states. The theses of the Fourth International had long since provided an assessment that remains valid: "Episodic agreements between the bourgeoisie and the USSR change nothing in the fact that, on the scale of history, the contradiction that exists between imperialism as a whole and the Soviet Union is infinitely deeper than the antagonisms that set the capitalist countries against one another."
It is only on the basis of this assessment that one can explain the unleashing of Hitler's war against the USSR after the Hitler-Stalin pact. It is only on the basis of this assessment that one can explain, today, the customary and violent war-preparation campaign waged by American imperialism and its British junior partner against their ally of yesterday, the Soviet Union.
World politics for the entire period now opening before us is characterized by this fundamental contradiction. So long as the USSR persists in its present social structure, despite the ever more monstrous degeneration it undergoes under the leadership of the Stalinist bureaucracy, it remains an obstacle in the path of imperialist covetousness for markets. The Second World War did not resolve this contradiction; it merely sharpened it.
The devastation of all the industrial regions of the western part of the USSR has considerably weakened the Soviet Union economically. The reactionary, chauvinist policy of banditry pursued by the Stalinist bureaucracy has weakened the USSR politically, by alienating from it broad layers of its natural allies, the masses of Eastern Europe. But the very fact that the USSR survived the war, that the bureaucracy was unable to destroy its social foundations from within, and that it was even compelled to give an impulse toward social transformation, to varying degrees, in the economies of the countries occupied by the Red Army and placed under its control, has increased the acuteness of the problem for imperialism. That is why the imperialists have set the settling of accounts with the USSR as their most pressing task.
The Fourth International remains, without any reservation, for the defence of the USSR against imperialism. But this defence, today more than ever, can only be a revolutionary defence. It can, consequently, have nothing in common with the counter-revolutionary policy of the Kremlin.
The Role of the Stalinist Bureaucracy
"The defence of the USSR coincides with the preparation of the world proletarian revolution. We absolutely reject the theory of socialism in one country, that brainchild of ignorant and reactionary Stalinism. Only the world revolution can save the USSR through socialism. But the world revolution inevitably entails the eviction of the Kremlin oligarchy."
Since 1924, the date when this fatal theory was first proclaimed by Stalin, the policy of the Kremlin has served to prevent the establishment of socialism in any country. In fact, this theory was invented in order to justify the consolidation of a privileged caste of nationalist bureaucrats. Drawing its origins from the isolation in which the young Soviet state found itself during the decline of the first revolutionary wave in capitalist Europe, and from the exhaustion produced in Russia itself by the years of civil war, the bureaucracy sought to secure for itself a privileged position at the expense of the masses on whose shoulders it rose to power. Rejecting the internationalist policy of Lenin, which, with the help of the workers of every country, saved the USSR in its early years against imperialist intervention, the Stalinist clique used the Communist International that it had founded to ruin a whole series of revolutionary opportunities.
Thus, in 1926, at the time of the general strike in England, it engaged in opportunist bargaining with the General Council of the Trade Unions in order to prevent the revolutionary development of the great strike wave. In China, from 1925 to 1927, it delivered the Communist Party bound hand and foot to the policy of the bourgeois Kuomintang, which resulted in the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek, the butcher of the Chinese proletariat. From 1929 to 1933, it spread the idea of "social fascism," lumping social democrats and Nazis together, preventing a united front of the workers' organizations and thereby enabling Hitler to come to power. In 1936, when the wave of factory occupations posed the question of power in France, the Popular Front that it had created with the reformists compromised so as to tie the working class to capitalism. When, that same year, civil war broke out in Spain, it did everything in its power to hold back the revolutionary action of the masses and keep them within the noose of bourgeois democracy, thereby making Franco's victory possible. The development of this whole policy was governed by the desire to ward off attacks from without and to allow the bureaucracy to consolidate itself within the USSR by courting the favour of the capitalist rulers and their petty-bourgeois agents among the masses. In the course of this process, the Communist parties were transformed into mere instruments of Kremlin foreign policy. The Stalinists led the USSR's natural allies, the masses of every capitalist country, from defeat to defeat.
Within the Soviet Union itself, the Kremlin oligarchy launched a violent wave of repression against the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky. For Trotsky recorded every step of the growing betrayal, from the proclamation of the theory of "socialism in one country" down to the strangling of the Spanish revolution. Only the vanguard Communist militants in every country, rallying to the banner of Trotsky and the International Left Opposition, were able at the outset to grasp the counter-revolutionary import of the evolution of this clique that had usurped power in the first workers' state. But the Moscow trials and the bloody purge conducted in 1937 against the entire generation of Lenin's comrades began to open the eyes of ever-broader layers of workers to the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism.
The Hitler-Stalin pact was accompanied by the partition of Poland and by propaganda designed to whitewash Nazi imperialism, presenting it as a "friend" of "peace." Fascism became, according to Molotov, "a matter of taste." Broad masses of workers everywhere were sickened by this vile and voluntary self-abasement of the Kremlin. When, in payment for this service which inaugurated the war, Hitler repaid Stalin's clique by unleashing his whole war machine against the Soviet Union, the Kremlin executed a complete about-face. In a campaign of the most savage chauvinism, Stalin branded not only the Nazi gang — yesterday still "friends of peace" — but the entire German people, for Hitler's crimes.
Today, with military operations over, the Red Army, under Stalin's orders, has the mission of ravaging and plundering industry and homes in Germany, Austria, and every part of conquered Eastern Europe. The alleged purpose is the reconstruction of ruined Soviet industry. But this is a rotten lie. The pillage is undertaken only to cover up the bankruptcy of the Stalinist regime, to which the Soviet masses are growing less and less docile.
The Kremlin's present foreign policy, which serves only the bureaucracy and its privileged members, ostensibly aims at strengthening the USSR against imperialism, just as the whole of its pre-war policy aimed at "neutralizing" the capitalist states and preventing war. But the bloc with the English trade-union bosses, the capitulation before Chiang Kai-shek, the betrayal of the French and Spanish revolutions, the opportunity given to Hitler to come to power without a fight, and finally the Hitler-Stalin pact — all these "clever" manoeuvres did not prevent Hitler's war nor the ruin of half the industry of the Soviet Union. They considerably weakened the Soviet Union and set back its progress for years. In the same way, the present counter-revolutionary policy of plundering Eastern Europe and Asia, and of the complete suppression of the mass movement in these countries, can only lead to the inevitable strengthening of America and of its preparations to crush the USSR once and for all.
In 1940, Trotsky wrote: "As a result of the first period of the war, the international position of the USSR, despite its apparent successes, has already noticeably worsened. The Kremlin's foreign policy has alienated from the USSR broad layers of the working class and the oppressed peoples. At the same time, Germany has obtained the most industrialized part of Poland, and has acquired a common frontier with the USSR, that is, an open door to the East." A year later, this warning had been completely borne out!
Today, the Fourth International warns that, despite apparent territorial gains and massive plunder, the Kremlin's policy has, in this last phase of the war, further weakened the international position of the USSR. The peoples of Eastern Europe suffer from the Kremlin's criminal policy and, as the elections in Austria and Hungary have shown, turn toward the most backward parties to express their anger. In the Far East, the insurrectionary mood of the masses makes itself felt not only in the territories placed under British and American domination, but also in Korea and Manchuria, which the Red Army controls. Meanwhile, American imperialism has penetrated everywhere, to the very outposts of the USSR itself, strategically encircling its territory from Western Europe to China, over the whole surface of the globe.
The Kremlin oligarchy thus plays into the hands of imperialism's designs against the USSR itself, while at the same time undertaking the task of directly suppressing the independent mass movements for their own emancipation — movements toward which it shares the same hatred and fear as the capitalist rulers.
Only the revolutionary action of the masses can thwart the plans of imperialist plunder, defend the USSR, by extending the social overturn of October 1917. But the revolutionary action of the masses is possible only in a struggle for the overthrow of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist regime in the USSR and its replacement by freely elected soviets of workers and peasants. Thus the defence of the USSR directly implies the defence of the European and world revolution against Stalinism.
The Present Revolutionary Situation
Are conditions ripe for revolutionary mass action? Will Stalinism on the one hand, and the social-democratic accomplices of world imperialism on the other, once again prevent revolutionary development from reaching a victorious outcome? Will the Fourth International, with the weak forces at its disposal at the present time, succeed in overcoming these obstacles and giving the masses a leadership? Such, without doubt, are the questions that serious workers are asking themselves. The past defeats of the working class, under social-democratic and Stalinist leadership, weigh very heavily indeed.
These were terrible blows. The great weight of Stalinism today undoubtedly remains a formidable obstacle. But, on the other hand, one must set on the other side of the scale the situation of world capitalism today, more critical and more grave than ever. Such is the starting point for revolutionaries, for those who seek to show the masses the road to action.
Long ago, the Fourth International enumerated the conditions for proletarian revolution: "The fundamental conditions for the victory of the proletarian revolution have been established by historical experience and clarified by theory. They are: 1) the hopeless impasse of the bourgeoisie and the resulting confusion of the ruling classes; 2) acute discontent and efforts toward a decisive change among the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, without whose support the big bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself; 3) consciousness of an intolerable situation and readiness for revolutionary action in the ranks of the proletariat; 4) a clear programme and a firm leadership of the vanguard."
Never has the hopeless impasse of capitalism been so tangled, never has confusion spread so widely within the ruling class. Inflation is creeping from country to country. The burden of public debt reaches astronomical figures. The lowering of living standards and the impoverishment of the masses as a whole are taking on unprecedented proportions. Despite governmental intervention and control to a degree never before attained, the economic crisis continues to grow in a dizzying spiral and, while already acute in Europe and the colonies, threatens to disturb the most stable economy in the world, that of the USA.
After the First World War, in order to restore the balance of classes in society threatened by the revolutionary wave that had begun in Russia, the bourgeoisie was forced to make considerable economic concessions to the masses. It thereby lent a certain stability to the political regime of reformism which it had called to its rescue to save it from destruction. After this war, such a strategy is a luxury the capitalist class can no longer afford. In Europe in particular, where unproductive war expenditure and the enormous destruction of capital have considerably reduced the specific weight of the economy in the world market, the bourgeoisie can hope to rebuild its profit-producing capital only slightly, and then only by a fresh assault on the wages and living standards of the masses. But this holds true, in the broadest sense, for England as well as for the USA.
If, consequently, government could fall into the hands of the Labour Party in England, or of a coalition of socialists and Stalinists with the bourgeois democratic parties in a "Popular Front" in France, Belgium, etc., this was not the design of the bourgeoisie. The ruling class tolerates these "left" regimes because the pressure of the workers and the popular masses is too strong, because its own forces are still too weak to establish an open dictatorship. The capitalists reckon that the consequences of economic collapse will heap discredit on the traditional parties of the masses that have been pushed to take power. They rightly appreciate the cowardice of these parties, which are afraid to go beyond the limits of the bourgeois structure of the state, which leave the reactionary army and police untouched, and which respect private property as religiously as does the bourgeoisie itself.
While hatred of the trusts drives the workers and peasants to demand the socialization of industry, the workers' parties are compelled to adopt measures of "nationalization." But these measures do not infringe upon the property rights of big capital. They ensure full and complete compensation for the owners of "nationalized" enterprises, thereby imposing new burdens on an already overburdened economy. The government bonds issued to them in place of their former shares assure the capitalists the continuation of their profits. The management of "nationalized" industries, instead of passing to workers' committees, is in fact left in the hands of the former directors in the service of the trusts. Through these fictitious "nationalizations," the bourgeoisie thus aims to further concentrate its grip over the whole economy in the fist of monopoly capitalism.
While the socialist and Stalinist ministers disarm the independent workers' and peasants' militias that had formed under the Nazi occupation, while they crush every manifestation of class revolt within the armed forces, the bourgeoisie concentrates in its own hands the permanent apparatus of its state (the army, the police, the secret services). Behind the scenes, it prepares itself, it conspires with the royal dynasties and the reactionary generals, for the favourable moment when it will be able to seize total control of the state and install new Bonapartist dictatorships.
However, the bourgeoisie's whole policy, resting on a worsening economic situation, is marked by indecision and oscillation. After more than a year of efforts to consolidate his position by means of authoritarian ultimatums, de Gaulle in France finds himself pushed into the background. In Belgium, the bourgeoisie advances and retreats in its campaign for the return of King Leopold. In Greece, the efforts to reinstall the monarchy under the protection of British bayonets are the prelude to open civil war, etc.
At the same time, the petty bourgeoisie, whose support was in the past indispensable to monopoly capitalism, both for its domestic aims (fascism) and for its foreign policy (war), has found itself detached from the grip of big capital. In the countries where fascism was the form of state, just as in the "democratic" countries, the process of proletarianization and pauperization of the urban middle classes has not only failed to slow, but has been accelerated by the disintegration of the economies and the absolute decline in living standards brought about by inflation. On the other hand, the peasantry, which, as in every war, seems to have profited from the black market, in reality finds itself no better off than before. Its profits are essentially in devalued currency. With its paper fortune, it cannot buy the indispensable farm machinery, which grows ever more expensive, nor fertilizer, nor livestock, etc. Thus a new and more acute agricultural crisis looms on the horizon.
Moreover, the war has burst the old petty-bourgeois illusions of national unity. The big bourgeoisie has proved itself thoroughly "collaborationist." The discontent of the petty bourgeoisie and its efforts toward a decisive change are shown in its massive shift toward the parties that, traditionally, represent workers' parties in its eyes. The formidable victory of the British Labour Party, the overwhelming votes for the socialists and Stalinists in France, Belgium, and Italy, the support given by the masses to EAM in Greece, etc., can only be understood in this light. Meanwhile, the rising wave of strikes which, in Europe and the Far East, sweeps from country to country, reaching its high point in America itself, the citadel of world capitalism, and spreading into its South American semi-colonies, testifies, by its persistence, by its high degree of combativity, as well as by its advanced slogans (a sliding scale of wages, the opening of the account books of the great corporations, etc.), to a growing awareness among the workers of their intolerable situation. The formation of workers' militias, of factory committees, in Italy, France, and Belgium, which began during the first period at the end of the war and which is, for the moment, being broken by the collusion of the Stalinists and the reformists with the bourgeoisie, is a clear sign of preparation for revolutionary action.
If these elements of preparation for revolutionary action are not yet ripe in Europe at the present time, this stems in large measure from the unprecedented physical collapse of Germany. The outbreak of the German revolution was expected as the signal for the intensification of the revolutionary struggle across the whole continent. The criminal campaign of unbridled chauvinism waged during the war by the Kremlin against the German people, including the working class — and supported by the traitorous reformist and Stalinist parties in every "democratic" country — served to disorient the German masses in the course of the catastrophic military events and to paralyze their action when the collapse of the Nazi regime became precipitate. At the same moment, the Big Three agreed to forestall the outbreak of revolution through concentrated physical destruction such as had never before been seen in history (on a scale far vaster than the bombing of the Turin and Milan insurrection after the fall of fascism).
Before the German working class, the most powerful in Europe and the one with the oldest revolutionary traditions, can resume the road to revolution, which it will undoubtedly do, certain essential material conditions must be fulfilled: the restoration of a minimum of food, of housing, of communications, and the return of the millions of young men held prisoner in the camps. But the absence of an immediate outbreak of revolution in Germany has only delayed the pace of its development; it has not in the least altered its direction.
Despite this fact, despite the disarming of the workers' militias, despite the crushing of the armed insurrection of the masses in Greece, we have not witnessed a return to reaction. None of these defeats has been decisive. On the contrary, every attempt by reaction to consolidate itself (through the monarchy in Greece, Italy, Belgium, through the establishment of an authoritarian executive power in France) has met with the liveliest resistance from the masses and has likewise failed in its designs.
On the other hand, the workers are not confining themselves to fighting off all these reactionary attempts. They are passing to the offensive with strikes against the wage freeze, directed against the bourgeois regimes in which their "own" parties participate, transforming every strike objectively into an action that raises the question of state power.
While revolutionary developments in Europe show a slowed pace, elsewhere they are taking a faster course. The waves of strikes and soldiers' demonstrations in the USA prove a rapid development of revolutionary consciousness among the American masses, far more backward in this respect than those of Europe in the past. But of still greater importance is the present maturing of the revolutionary struggle in the colonies. Beginning with the tenacious insurrections against British, French, and Dutch imperialism in Indonesia and Indochina, with a nascent revolt even against the hypocritical, "liberating" American imperialism in the Philippines, the wave of struggles in the Far East has penetrated the Indian masses, where great political strikes and mutinies open the prelude to the outbreak of national insurrections aiming to reject all imperialist domination. Its effect will surely be felt in China and later in Japan. Likewise, in the Near East, the incessant demonstrations and strikes of the Egyptian masses herald the revolutionary uprising of the masses in every Arab country.
Thus, the world situation presents every symptom proving that it fulfils the first three conditions for the victory of the proletarian revolution, as laid down in the Manifesto of 1940. What of the fourth? Is there "a clear programme and a firm leadership of the proletarian vanguard"?
In other words, the question comes down to this: in a situation that, without doubt, is more favourable than ever to revolution, both because of the depth of the crisis and of its universal extent, does the party necessary to lead a revolution to victory exist? In other words, shall we succeed in transforming the present revolutionary minority into a mass party of the working class? Or will the old parties, the reformists and the Stalinists, once more be able to betray the revolution? To answer this question, it must be correctly posed. The present situation is not one of a conjunctural crisis. It is not a matter of an isolated uprising in a given country. It is a matter of a whole revolutionary period on a world scale. The capitalist world has no way out but a prolonged agony. In such a period, the programmes of the old parties — the socialists and the Stalinists — can have not the slightest value for the masses. That is why they will be compelled to come into conflict with them.
For its part, our programme is built precisely for this period. In the troubled epoch in which we live, our programme has already found, and will continue to find, a growing echo.
Only a few years ago, sceptics and dilettantes ridiculed the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International. Today, its essential slogans — the sliding scale of wages and hours, nationalization without compensation, the opening of the account books of the great corporations to workers' control, workers' militias, a workers' and peasants' government — are beginning to find an echo among millions of workers in every part of the world. The programme is clear. The growing echo it finds shows the great possibilities that are opening for the building of mass parties of the Fourth International.
However, the building of mass parties, even in the most favourable situations, is a process fraught with great difficulties. A whole set of complicated organizational problems must be mastered. Confidence must be established in the relations between the leadership and the party, and between the party and the masses. This process develops unevenly everywhere. There is no doubt that there will still be situations in which the failure to develop a mass party or a revolutionary leadership in time will lead to a partial defeat. But it is precisely because a whole epoch is at stake that such defeats are partial, that the task of rapidly building mass parties is constantly posed anew before us, and that the possibilities keep increasing. Such is the perspective on which the young parties of the Fourth International are working.
A solid revolutionary leadership is forged first in the defence of the programme. If the programme of the Fourth International is beginning today to penetrate among millions of people, if it is beginning to be verified in the test of action, this is due, first and foremost, to the capacity of the young cadre parties of the International to stand firm against every obstacle placed in their path.
The Fourth International Has Survived the Test of War and Reaction
The cadres of the Fourth International gathered together in the most bitter of struggles against the current, during the years of reaction that followed the decline of the revolutionary wave that closed the First World War. From the very beginning of its development in 1923, the watchword of Trotsky, the founder of the Fourth International, was "Back to Lenin!" This was the first war-cry of the Trotskyist Left Opposition against Stalin and the whole clique that was then beginning its counter-revolutionary career by revising the internationalist theory of class struggle of Marx and Lenin. This was the war-cry that, in the years that followed, expressed the Trotskyists' fidelity to the programme and the conception of the Bolshevik Party, the first and only party in history to have shown how the proletarian revolution can be victoriously accomplished.
At the beginning of the present war, the Fourth International once again had to fight other attempts to revise the foundations of the revolutionary programme, this time within its own ranks. It was in this struggle that the Fourth International armed itself from within, in the hard test of the war years that followed. "Back to Lenin" — back to proletarian internationalism, to fraternization between the warring peoples, to the revolutionary defence of the USSR, to the continuation of the class struggle, to preparation for the coming revolutionary tasks — such was the war-cry of the Fourth International during the dark years of Nazi terror and amid "Allied" persecution.
The Second International has vanished without trace, and the social-democratic parties that composed it have transformed themselves into wretched propaganda agencies for Anglo-American imperialism. Its collapse repeated, in a still more grotesque form, its performance of 1914–1918. After being eaten away by years of betrayal, the Third International was simply struck off the map by Stalin, in exchange for Wall Street's lend-lease. All the international centrist organizations, such as the London Bureau, simply broke up into their component parts.
Only the Fourth International has kept the banner of proletarian internationalism, of revolutionary struggle against the war, flying high. Only the Fourth International has withstood the test of the war. Only the Fourth International has remained faithful to the programme of Marxism, to the traditions of the October Revolution. "Back to Lenin" remains our war-cry, for it is the war-cry of proletarian victory.
The war has been a terrible ordeal for the Fourth International. All the powers of present-day society were leagued against it, from imperialism and its war machine to the Stalinist bureaucracy and its GPU. In the very first year of the war, in August 1940, the Fourth International was deprived of its founder and organizer, the great revolutionary genius of our time. Leon Trotsky was ignobly assassinated by a GPU agent in Mexico. This was a terrible blow. Our enemies thought it would be fatal to the young International. But Trotsky had built more solidly than they believed. Trotsky was dead, but the International he had built took up this cowardly blow as a challenge. The Fourth International honoured the memory of its great martyr by expanding and developing more widely than ever before.
In France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, throughout the whole European continent, the cadres of the Fourth International underwent the murderous terror of Hitler's Gestapo. Léon Lesoil, Marcel Hic, Pouliopoulos, and their comrades — a whole generation of heroic Trotskyist leaders — fell, victims of Nazi bestiality. In the very midst of Nazi domination of Europe, the French and German Trotskyists together organized fraternization between soldiers and workers. They published and distributed within Hitler's Wehrmacht "Arbeiter und Soldat" ("Worker and Soldier"), a remarkable paper that kept the banner of proletarian internationalism flying high even while the hurricane of chauvinism still raged. Sixty Trotskyist soldiers and workers, working under the leadership of the indomitable Victor Widelin (Martin Monat), paid for this work with their lives. Their memory will be honoured by all workers when the Fourth International triumphs.
In Greece, Stalin's vile agents assassinated a hundred of the best fighters of the Fourth International during the civil war of December 1944. But they were unable to kill the World Party of Socialist Revolution. Despite terrible and weakening losses, the sections of the Fourth International have grown throughout the European continent. In England and America, the "democratic" bourgeoisie imprisoned the leaders of the Trotskyist parties — alone among all the parties of the working class — in the prisons of Roosevelt and Churchill. They sought to decapitate the parties. But the English and American Trotskyists, like their brothers in Europe, took up the persecution as a challenge and redoubled their activity.
Still more terrible were the imprisonments and persecutions carried out against our comrades in India, China, and the colonies. But there too, the fighters of the Fourth International showed themselves equal to the challenge of the rulers. In the very midst of the war, when terror and persecution were at their height, new sections of the Fourth International were created in India, Egypt, Italy, and South America.
The fact that neither Stalin, nor Hitler, nor the "democratic" imperialisms were able to halt the forward march of the Fourth International is a sign for the future. It shows the workers that the surest way to overcome the betrayal of Stalinism and reformism is to join the new parties, the parties that have learned to fight against the current with the programme of the Fourth International.
The test of the war has shown that the Fourth International is not only a living reality, but that it possesses such vitality that even the most unfavourable conditions cannot prevent its growth. In calling the roll of its sections, after years of interrupted relations, this Conference can proudly say to the workers of the world: Our International lives! The Fourth International has survived the worst years of reaction and imperialist war! The parties of the Fourth International are everywhere in the process of developing and maturing!
More than that, this conference can report to the workers of the world that, despite the isolation and lack of direct relations during the war, the parties of the Fourth International find themselves in a programmatic solidarity greater than ever before. The strength of the Fourth International, as its own experience has shown, lies in its unshakeable Marxist programme. The survival and growth of the Fourth International in the struggle against reaction and war augurs well for the development of its sections into the mass revolutionary parties indispensable for transforming today's favourable revolutionary situations into victorious revolutions. The overthrow of capitalism, the next steps toward the establishment of a world federation of socialist states, which alone can prevent the annihilation that another war would bring, and resolve the crisis of humanity — such is the task for which the Fourth International has been preparing throughout its entire past.
The Programme of the Fourth International
This Conference of the Fourth International meets after the so-called "United Nations Organization" has adjourned its sessions in London, and while preparations are being made to hold the "peace" conference in secret session in Paris. The UN conference was marked by clashes between the representatives of American and British imperialism on the one hand, and those of the Stalinist bureaucracy on the other. Hypocritical concern for the fate of the small nations served to mask the clashes. The "Labour" Bevin bewails the fate of Iran, Romania, and Bulgaria at the hands of the Kremlin, all the while continuing to pursue Churchill's super-imperialist policy in full in the British Empire and in Greece. Vyshinsky, the representative of the Stalinist bureaucracy, bewails the fate of Greece and Indonesia at the hands of Britain, while the Kremlin outrages the conscience of workers the world over with its shameful actions in Western Europe and Asia. Two bureaucrats hoisted to power on the shoulders of the workers play the game of "masters of the world," according to the rules laid down by rotten imperialist diplomacy. The UN even elected the "socialist" Spaak of Belgium as president and the "Labourite" Lie of Norway as secretary-general. But nothing in this "left" camouflage can conceal the fact that the UN is simply a new edition of that imperialist League of Nations which Lenin baptized a "den of thieves." Not a single act of this assembly arouses the slightest enthusiasm among the masses of the world. All peoples followed its debates with fear and apprehension, and at best with apathy. No one expressed any hope that it would solve a single one of the problems confronting humanity. It was accepted, in complete contradiction of its own name, only as a new arena of combat for the powers at grips with one another. The Paris "peace" conference is regarded with no greater optimism.
Even as the diplomats obstruct one another in London and Paris, the revolutionary storm is gathering in India and Egypt. The events unfolding there follow the pattern traced not by the programme of the UN or of any of its participants, but by that of the Fourth International. That is why we can say with confidence that the deliberations of our Conference are of infinitely greater importance than those of the bourgeois "International," despite its imposing façade and all the "worker" camouflage lent to it by the traitors of reformism and Stalinism.
This Conference of the Fourth International appeals to all workers, to all the exploited and all the oppressed, not to despair before the works of their masters, but to engage in struggle against them. Not merely to disdain their bad guides, but to impose their own will upon them. The present masters of the world brandish the threat of the fearful atomic bomb to intimidate the human race. But they forget that atomic bombs, too, need workers' hands to be produced. They forget that it will take workers in uniform to wield these fearsome weapons. Workers, filled with distrust of their greedy bosses, will know how to strike in the atomic-bomb factories as in every other place of production. Soldiers, filled with hatred for their imperialist leaders, will know how to forestall the use of this weapon of self-destruction. They will need only to become conscious of the power of the world solidarity of the proletariat and of its socialist revolutionary goal. This is the only way to confront the threat of the atomic bomb.
In calling the international proletariat to action, the World Conference of the Fourth International salutes, above all, the heroic struggle of the Indian and Egyptian masses, who have entered upon the road of the revolutionary overthrow of British imperialism. It notes with satisfaction, in these mass uprisings, the already evident signs that the attempt of American imperialism to profit from the difficulties of its British rival is meeting open hostility and manifest resistance. It warns against the efforts of the colonial bourgeoisie, tied to imperialism by its capitalist interests, to hold back the struggle and betray it. No confidence in Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, and their like! The struggle of India, Egypt, Indonesia, Indochina, and all the other colonial peoples for national independence, for total liberation from imperialist oppression, can triumph only through an uncompromising fight against the oppressors. Only the young working class, backed by the peasant masses, can carry the struggle through to victorious completion!
Form your own councils of workers and peasants to lead the struggle! Seize the land for those who till it! Establish workers' committee control of the factories!
Do not allow the bourgeois leaders and the Stalinist traitors to strike a compromise with imperialism! Demand the immediate convocation of a Constituent Assembly where the will of the people and its right to govern itself may be freely expressed!
The struggle of the colonial masses for freedom is but one part of the struggle of the workers of England, Europe, and America against the same imperialist masters. The Fourth International calls on the workers of the great metropolitan centres to rally to the defence of the colonial masses: hands off the Indian revolution! Hands off the revolution in Indochina, in Indonesia, in Egypt, in the Far East and in the Near East! Such must be the resolute voice of the workers of England, America, and Europe against the machinations of their capitalist masters!
At the moment when oppression in the old colonies is meeting rebellion, the imperialist masters, in agreement with the Kremlin bureaucracy, are striving to impose the same kind of oppression and plunder upon the masses of the defeated imperialist nations: Germany, Japan, Italy.
The Fourth International calls on the workers of the "democratic" nations to rise up against these reactionary plans. Against the chauvinist lies that seek to place the responsibility for the war of every imperialism on the shoulders of the proletarians of Germany, Japan, and Italy, the Fourth International calls on the American, British, and European workers to demonstrate their class solidarity with the workers of the defeated countries. Withdrawal of the troops from Germany, Japan, and Italy! Full freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly! Free elections!
Only by raising these demands against the imperialist oppressors and their Kremlin accomplices can the workers of the "allied" nations win the German, Japanese, and Italian masses to their common goal, "the Socialist United States of Europe and of the world."
In every country, it is necessary to resist the unleashed inflation and the enormous programme of taxation, by means of which the capitalists of the whole world are striving to shift the burden of their war debt onto the shoulders of the workers, through a mass counter-offensive led by the working class. The Fourth International calls on the workers to defend themselves by launching the struggle under the following slogans: a sliding scale of wages to meet the rising cost of living! Tax the rich, not the poor. Confiscation of the war profits of the great corporations!
At the same time, the bourgeoisie is planning to rid itself of the burden of the approaching depression by throwing millions of men out of production, thereby demoralizing the proletarians and setting them one against another. The Fourth International calls on the workers to fight the capitalists' depression plans under the slogans: a sliding scale of working hours! Division of labour among all those fit to work! Reduction of the working week without reduction of wages!
The war revealed the prodigious feats of production of which modern industry was capable. But under capitalism, all these great productive efforts serve only war and destruction. When the war is over, the factories close their doors. Capitalism cannot produce for peace. The Fourth International calls on the workers of every country to demand: the reopening of the closed factories! Their operation under workers' control! In response to the bourgeoisie's lamentations that such measures would "undermine" the economy, the Fourth International calls on the workers to demand: the surrender of the trusts' books to inspection by workers' committees! Abolition of trade secrets! It is in this way that the theft and plunder of monopoly capitalism will be revealed to all.
In Great Britain, France, and the other countries of Western Europe, the radicalization of the masses has forced the monopoly capitalists and their trusts onto the defensive. To the growing demands for the socialization of industry, the Labour government and the coalitions of the social-reformists and Stalinists with the bourgeois parties respond with "nationalizations" that leave capitalist profits untouched. The monopolies thereby find themselves in a position to use such "nationalizations" as a cover for extending their grip over the economy. The Fourth International warns against these illusory measures and calls on the workers to demand: "Nationalization without compensation! Workers' control over the nationalized industries!"
To carry through these indispensable measures, without which there is no way to prevent the world crisis from plunging humanity further into the agony of capitalism, the workers' organizations must break with the capitulationist parties and pursue an independent class policy. That is why the Fourth International calls on the masses to demand of their traditional organizations: "Break the coalition with the capitalists! Take all power! Form workers' and peasants' governments! Carry out a genuine anti-capitalist programme under the control and protection of the workers and peasants!"
The Fourth International puts forward these slogans while actively participating in the daily struggles of the masses, sharing their experiences and drawing lessons from them. In the course of this common struggle, the parties of the Fourth International unfold their full programme, the programme of the socialist revolution and the establishment of free workers' republics, in a world federation of socialist states. In the struggle for this programme, the Fourth International calls on the workers to combat chauvinism, whether of the reformist or the Stalinist type. In the countries of Eastern Europe in particular, it calls on the workers to fight the Kremlin's ferocious chauvinism through fraternization with the troops of the Red Army. To fight the bureaucratic and reactionary policy of pillage and plunder, they must develop their own independent movement of workers' and peasants' councils, to impose the socialization of industry and the division of the land among the poor peasants, to struggle for their democratic rights and for the right of all nationalities to self-determination. In order to fight victoriously for these demands, the workers of Eastern Europe will unite their forces with the workers of the Soviet Union to overthrow Stalin's reactionary bureaucracy and establish a genuine Soviet democracy in the workers' state.
In opposition to the social-reformists and the Stalinists, the Fourth International does not build its policy on the basis of the military and diplomatic designs of the capitalist states, but on the crying needs of the workers, the exploited, the oppressed. Its programme is the programme of the total emancipation of the proletariat from capitalist exploitation, of the colonial peoples from the imperialist yoke, of the Soviet masses from the cancer of the paralysing bureaucracy. The Fourth International supports none of the existing regimes. It calls on the workers to overthrow these regimes and to build their own power. The overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of workers' power is a task that can be accomplished only on a world scale.
Only socialist states, united in a world federation of socialist republics, can banish war forever, organize production for the needs of humanity, and ensure abundance for all, and create a society of free and equal human beings.
Only a World Socialist Federation can transform the atomic energy that now threatens to annihilate the human race into a benefit without precedent for the progress of humanity.
Such is our programme. Workers of the whole world, there is no other way out than to unite beneath the banner of the Fourth International!
The International Conference of the Fourth International, World Party of the Socialist Revolution.