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Fourth International, February 1946

 

Facing the New Revolutionary Period in Spain—III

 

From Fourth International, February 1946, Vol.7 No.2, pp.60-63.
Transcribed, edited & formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for ETOL.

 

Following is the third and last part of the theses approved by the Internationalist Communists, Spain” section of the Fourth International, at their conference in May 1945. The first two sections appeared in the December and January issue of Fourth International. Translation is by Chris Andrews.



POUM Slogans

55) The slogans which the POUM left wing gives—nationalizations, dissolutions of the Army, workers’ control of production, convocation of a constituent assembly in the shortest possible time, reestablishment of the social legislation of 1936-1939, have the character of demagogic phrase-mongering, since they are not linked intimately to the arming of the workers and the poor peasants, to the setting-up of committees of the masses, that is to say, to the development of organs of dual power, toward the proletarian insurrection, but on the contrary seek to combine such formulas with their traditional policy of “extreme Left” of the Popular Front today the Junta of Liberation.

It is evident that the utilization of the democratic and transitional slogans can and must play a role of first rank in the development of the Spanish Revolution. “But the formulas of democracy” points out the transitional program, “mean for us only incidental or episodic slogans in the independent movement of the proletariat, and not a democratic noose fastened to the neck of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie’s agents (Spain)!” In the framework of the restoration of the Republic, the anti-Fascist front, about which the POUM left wing is dreaming, can be nothing else but a new Popular Front, a new betrayal, not only of the proletariat but also of the petty bourgeois masses.

56) In the international arena, also, the left wing wishes to “continue the POUM.” In fact, the most recent abortion of which news has been received—an “International Socialist Commission,” set up in Mexico represents not one step forward but almost a step backwards. This Commission does not seek to deepen the analysis of the different revolutionary experiences and of the present perspectives in a work strictly demarcating itself from the petty-bourgeois, pacifist, socialist currents, etc., but to “convoke when circumstances permit, a World Socialist Congress, to which would be invited all the economic, political, trade union and cultural organizations of all nations, large and small, and from the colonial peoples, that accept the necessity of a socialist transformation of society.” It is out of this Assembly of the “partisans of the socialist transformation of society” that the POUM left wing expects to build its new “International,” side by side with other hybrid groups, without a past or a future.

57) The complexity of the tendencies in the ranks of the anarchist movement is even greater than in the remaining sectors of the proletariat. In recent years we have witnessed an increasing abandonment by part of the anarchist and anarchist-syndicalist leaders of their traditional positions in order to fit themselves into the framework of bourgeois politics. A clear and full abandonment by some, and a disguised but no less actual abandonment by others. In the face of this veering toward reformism by those who only yesterday were the champions of pure anarchism, the reaction of the rank and file expressed itself in the most hopeless confusion. By refusing to draw up the perspective of an independent class policy, as against the reformist policy, the pure anarchists disarm themselves for the effective struggle against the renegades, not only from anarchism, but from the proletarian revolution. That’s why every struggle in this field terminates in a “reconciliation” or in “a postponement of the disputed questions” in which under cover of the “sacred unity in defense of the organization” the political and doctrinal bankruptcy of the anarchists is smeared over.

58) In spite of this evolution of the anarchist leaders, the attitude of the bourgeoisie continues to be extremely reserved toward the CNT. The “Spanish Junta of Liberation” of Mexico was set up behind its back; and in the local Juntas of Liberation or in the Anti-Fascist Alliances, an attitude of reticence has characterized, in general, the position of the bourgeois republican elements. To this attitude, the anarchist leaders do not respond by formulating class positions, but by marching at the heels of the official “republican” policy and offering their support to a utopian government which, within the republican-bourgeois framework, should guarantee “the substance of the conquests of July 19.” The only thing such a government will guarantee will be the substance of capitalist exploitation. From the moment that the anarchist leaders do not link the guarantee of the July conquests to the creation of workers and peasants militias, to the patrols of control, to the committees, in a word: to the organs of struggle and power that arose in July, the position of the anarcho-Syndicalism leaders is clearly revealed in all its opportunism.

59) The revolutionary strategy of the present period must be directed toward the violent conquest of power by the proletariat. This does not by any means signify that the whole task of the revolutionary leadership must consist in preaching such a thing. It would be completely erroneous and sectarian to believe that the maturing of the objective conditions for the socialist revolution frees the revolutionary Party from participation in the daily movements of the masses, no matter how limited or partial. The gaze should be fixed upon the conquest of power; but the ear should be attentive to the real processes of the daily struggle.

“It is not a question,” the Communist International pointed out in the days of Lenin and Trotsky, “of preaching the final objectives to the proletariat, but of making a concrete struggle develop, which only can lead them to struggle for their final objectives.”

All this signifies that the revolutionary party must mobilize the masses around a program where the democratic and transitional slogans are so combined that the struggle for the winning of immediate demands is transformed by the development of working class action into a struggle for the final objectives by the organisms that must provide their attainment.
 

Alianza Obrera Workers (Allance)

60) In regard to Spain, a viable program of working class action necessitates withdrawing the toiling masses and their organizations from the influence of the bourgeoisie. More concretely: from class collaboration, hailed by the bureaucratic leaderships of the workers movement, who follow formulas of “Popular Fronts” and “Patriotism.” The instinctive sentiment for unity of independent action which animates the masses must, from our side, be moulded into a slogan that expresses at the same time a positive experience lived through by them, this slogan is ALIANZA OBRERA (Workers Alliance). But the campaign for the constitution of the Alianza Obrera will remain a zero if it is not combined with the formulation of some programmatic bases that arise from the needs of the masses and are intimately entwined with their experience.

61) The first of these aspirations is their liberation from the bloody dictatorship of Franco. One must go, then, to the masses proclaiming: We are in the front rank fighting Franco and his regime. But this struggle is inseparable from the struggle against the Spanish bourgeoisie and its economic and political power. The dissolution of the reactionary Army; the destruction of the economic and political power of the clergy; the expropriation without indemnity of the landlords and the handing over of the land to the peasants; nationalization of the banking system, of the means of transportation, of the trusts and private monopolies, the arming of the workers and against Franco must lead, and only the working class can give that leadership.

Turn to the leadership of your parties and organizations, demanding that they build upon this basis the Alianza Obrera making of it the center, the leadership of the resistance and the struggle of the masses against the Franco dictatorship: Against Franco and his regime: Alianza Obrera!

62) It is impossible to foresee the concrete forms the revolutionary movement will take in Spain in regard to the organs of struggle and dual power. It is not excluded that in a given situation the experience of 1936 might be repeated with the decentralization and the autonomy of the Committees and the Militias. In any case, we do not suggest that the Committees of the Alianza Obrera will come to perform the role of the July Committees (which with all their defects represented a superior form of organization) and even less to suggest that the Alianza Obrera should compete with the Committees. The Alianza Obrera in the present period should be conceived as a policy of united front among the workers’ organizations, serving to restore to the workers’ movement its class independence and thereby opening up the road to the future mass Committees.
 

Trade Union Unity

63) Connected with the slogan for the building poor peasants ... This is where the struggle Unity. The creation of a single trade union body is one of the problems most preoccupying the Spanish proletariat, which has felt and knows the inconveniences and harm that the division of the workers means on the trade union level. The force of the urge for trade union unity is so strong that its weight has made itself felt even in the midst of the UGT and CNT bureaucracy, which, without any enthusiasm, have been obliged to outline a policy of contacting and of Joint Committees. The current among the masses towards unity must be stirred up in order to sweep past the dikes which the bureaucratic leadership have erected against it. Each group persists in maintaining its trade union body and a point of support for its own policies.

The building of the Joint Local and Regional Committees (CNT-UGT) must be systematically pushed forward. The slogan of periodic, common Assemblies of these local and regional CNT-UGT Joint Committees must take a principal part in the policy toward trade union unity. They must be open to all workers, who must be able to democratically choose their leadership, breaking with all monopolies whatsoever of this or that political or “non-political” tendency. At all times the propaganda for trade union unity must he united to revolutionary policy on the trade union field. In that way the slogan finds its full content. That means: against collaboration with the bourgeoisie, against compulsory arbitration, for direct action, for proletarian democracy and the international solidarity of the workers.

64) We must open up before the workers and peasants the perspective of a revolutionary way out of the Spanish situation. To the attempts of the bourgeoisie and its agents in the working class to substitute for Franco’s government, a governmental apparatus of class collaboration, we must counterpoise the slogan of a “Workers Government, of a government of workers’ organisations. That signifies: a break with the bourgeoisie and its parties.

65) The experience of the first biennium in Spain (1931-1933, Azana) and what is being seen in the situations of the “liberated” countries of Europe, demonstrate that the Socialists and Stalinists justify their treacherous policies to the masses by accusing their colleagues, the bourgeois Ministers, with being guilty of the governmental policies.
 

The Land To The Peasants

The revolutionists must demand that the Stalinists, Socialist, and Anarcho-Syndicalism leaders set up a Workers Government in order to realize the program which they profess they want to carry out. “Break the Coalition with the Bourgeois Parties,” “Take the Power,” will be the formulas which will sum up Marxist policy in such a situation in order to accelerate the experience of the masses. The slogan of “Workers Government” in the manner indicated, will be translated into the formula of “Workers and Peasants Government” in the case, for example, of the regional power in Catalonia, and other regions where the weight of the small farmers, who have set up their own organizations, is decisive in the solution of the agrarian problem.

66) The destruction of the great landholders’ properties is expressed in the slogan: The Land to the Peasants. In the solution of the land problem, there arise a whole series of demands which must be placed in the forefront, such as:

67) The experiences of collective development of the land, carried out during the Civil War, upon the basis of the free consent of the peasants and the existence of technical means necessary for such collective development has already revealed the immense possibilities and advantages of socialist agriculture. Nevertheless, the experience of forced collectivizatioin in the places where it was practiced, also demonstrated the erroneous nature of such an orientation. The problem of collectivization can only be approached to the degree in which the technical elements needed for greater production and greater labor yield can be utilised. That is how the individual peasant can be gained to the cause of socialist agriculture; how collective exploitation of the land will be solidly established. Nevertheless, this collective farming is necessary in large-scale cultivations, in those where industrialization already exists.

68) The slogan of land to the peasants is not the completion of the revolutionary program in this problem, but the means of destroying the great landholding class. Only the workers’ power can and must carry out from the first day a true collectivization of land by the State, which will serve not only economic ends, but also teach by example the individual peasants, who will now be won over to the collective system by abstract propaganda but by reality and the experience of daily life. Only the power of the proletariat, aided by the armed peasantry, can guarantee the transfer of the land to the peasants and the keeping of it in their hands.

69) But revolutionary policy in a country like Spain must always keep in mind the existence of a vast agricultural proletariat, to which the forms of organization and the political concepts displayed in the functions of the industrial proletariat, are substantially applicable. It is above all on the agricultural workers, in their trade unions and Committees, that the policy of division of the land must be based. The Committees of agricultural workers, in intimate unity with the poorest layers of the peasantry, must prevent the rich and well-to-do farmers from being the principal beneficiaries of the agrarian revolution.
 

Expropriation of the Church and Religious Brotherhoods

70) The clergy plays a most important role in the economic and political life of Spain. It has been and continues to be one of the most solid pillars of Spanish reaction. The struggle for the separation of Church and State and for the immediate confiscation of ecclesiastical wealth for the benefit of the workers and peasants is one of the first objectives of the Spanish Revolution.

For the expropriation of large industry, of the mines, the transportation system, nationalization of the banking system, of securities, workers control, planned economy and monopoly of foreign commerce.

71) The sources of wealth must be torn from the hands of their owners and placed at the disposal of the people. Only by this policy can Spanish economy be raised out of the decay into which the bourgeoisie has sunk it. The fall of Franco, the entry onto the scene of the masses, will put in first place the problem of the restoration of the economy, an economy to be built up on the recognition of the needs of the masses.

The propaganda and the measures for the expropriation of the great monopolies of the large industries, of the corporations, for workers’ control of production, must be linked up with the idea of planned economy, established by the working through its trade union organisations, through its Factory Committees. We must tirelessly denounce to the masses the bourgeois trick of pseudo-nationalization, whether by indemnification, or by keeping in the capitalists’ hands the ownership and actual direction of the industries. Nationalization is inseparable from the concept of workers’ control of production.

72) In propagandizing and agitating for this socialist economy, we must base ourselves upon the vivid historical experience lived through by the Spanish proletariat during the Civil War, not only in order to win the masses to this program, but also to point out the omissions and negative aspects of this experience. Its first lesson is the impossibility of building a collective economy without destroying the apparatus of the bourgeois state.

The working class economy cannot be a mixture of “collectivized enterprises,” each one of them constituting a world in itself, but a system of planned economy, centralized, directed by a Central Commission for Planning, designated by the great trade union congresses of the proletariat. This presupposes the expropriation of the entire banking system, the establishment of a single bank, which can distribute credit according to the actual necessities of production and which will provide “cheap credit.”

73) The hours of labor required for production must be divided up among all workers. There must be no unemployed at the same time as long working days for those who are employed. A sliding scale of hours under workers’ control with customary income assured for all! The worker’s salary must be calculated in relation to living costs. The collective contracts must assure automatic increases in salaries, related to the increase in the prices of consumers’ goods. Sliding scale of wages! Workers’ control of hiring and firing!

74) In the manner suitable for bringing forward the realization of the democratic rights of the masses, upon the basis of the experience lived through during the Civil War, the revolutionary policy must not only differentiate itself fundamentally from the “republican” policy, but it must push the proletariat toward class consciousness and the decision to take power. While consistently defending the most elementary democratic rights of the masses against any attack or restriction by the bourgeoisie, this defense and the very existence of these rights must be intimately linked with the establishment and development of the organs of defense and dual power by the proletariat.

75) Instead of the “liberty of the press” of the Republicans and reformists, which will consist, in the majority of cases, of the “right” to publish, by a thousand sacrifices, publications of small press runs, while the greatest technical means will remain in the power of the bourgeois owners, the liberty of the press of the working class must consist in tearing from the hands of the Luca de Iena, Godo, Mencheta, etc., these means of information, broadcasting and propaganda, in order to place them at the service of all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations.

We must denounce as treachery any policy which tries by different pretexts to leave the great printing presses and the great supplies of paper in the bands of their bourgeois proprietors. The same must be mid of the radio stations which must be placed at the disposal of the proletarian organizations, of the big meeting halls, etc.
 

The Constituent Assembly

76) The problem of the Constituent Assembly can appear as one of the most critical in a revolutionary situation. According to the circumstances, the slogan of “the Constituent” can, as in Germany in 1918, be a fatal trap, presented by a shrewd bourgeoisie; or as in Russia, in 1917, an important step toward the revolutionary solution of the crisis. For this reason, because it is a two-edged sword, it is not surprising that there are few problems in which the danger of deviations and tendencies toward sectarianism and ultra-leftism appear with such sharpness.

All the more reason to comprehend the role that the slogan of the “Constituent Assembly” can play in the revolutionary Spanish situation. The slogan of the “Constituent” does not go beyond the category of a transitional slogan. The Constituent Assembly cannot accomplish the revolution. Therefore, even in those cases where such a slogan must be launched, we must tirelessly explain to the masses, we must warn them that the “Constituent” can in itself provide no definite solution for their problems and their aspirations. Save in extremely exceptional cases, the slogan of the “Constituent Assembly” is not a slogan which forces itself toward its own final realization. Either it is a defensive slogan in the descending course of a revolutionary wave which is retreating before the counter-attack of a military dictatorship; or if it is employed in an ascending revolutionary wave, it is probable that at a certain point, the growing radicalization of the masses will make it possible to surpass it by means of the decisive aid of the organs of dual power. In any case, it is needless to say that its use does not correspond to a period of complete bourgeois “democracy.”

77) In Spain, concretely, the slogan of the “Constituent Assembly” will be able to have an important value and aid the revolutionary mobilization of the masses, in the event that Franco is replaced by the “liberal” bourgeoisie, arising out of conditions, for example, analogous to the situation in France under the regime of De Gaulle. To every attempt by the bourgeoisie, after the replacement of Franco, to continue governing by decree, by special powers, without making any direct appeal to the people, the slogan for us, in such a situation, of “immediate elections” and of “convocation of a Constituent Assembly” can offer during a determined period an appreciable contribution to the revolutionary mobilization of the Spanish masses.

78) The slogan of the free self-determination of the peoples must be systematically wielded in the course of the Spanish revolution. Federalism within the framework of working-class power must be the fundamental principle of the revolutionary structure. This federalism is a decisive weapon in the plan for the destruction of the old bourgeois state apparatus, a channel for the action and initiative of the masses as well as a guarantee of the administrative and cultural rights of the nationalities. This federalism must carry with it, on the one hand, the most energetic condemnation of all nationalism, of every tendency for separation from the Spanish community in revolution, tendencies which could only benefit the bourgeoisie and be stirred up by their agents as a lever for destroying or weakening the indissoluble unity of the revolution. On the other hand, this federalism necessitates the most absolute centralization in the management of planned economy.

79) The Spanish Revolution will develop itself under the sign of internationalism. This orientation must not consist solely of general propaganda, but in a consistent activity against imperialism and for the world revolution, supporting all the revolutionary actions produced in other countries and arousing in them a political radicalization by means of the proper orientation.
 

Independence Of Morocco

80) The Spanish Revolution will develop under this sign of internationalism. Throughout the whole period which may extend between its triumph and that of the world proletariat, it must wield two powerful levers: independence of Morocco, and expropriation of the interests of the great foreign companies. The first slogan, linked intimately to a policy of destroying the great land-owning class and all the feudal survivals, will find a profound echo in the hearts of the colonial peoples, who are also drawn into the world revolutionary process which has now begun. The second, combined with calls for acts of international proletarian solidarity, for defensive actions and to paralyze the imperialist counter-offensive, must be an instrument of intense radicalization, not only of the Spanish Revolution, but also of the world revolutionary process.

81) The problem of arming and of military preparation of the workers’ cadres, of its organization into special combat and defense groups, must not be left until after the fall of Franco. It must be begun immediately and increased to the degree that the decomposition of the Franco regime makes itself clearer, investing this question with a character of class unity and class independence, of proletarian democracy. All the revolutionary slogans will assume a demagogic phrase-mongering character, unless they start from the fundamental principle that the arming of the proletariat and the poor peasants constitutes the only guarantee for the revolutionary struggle. Every action, all the propaganda for a class program, must then lead above all to the task of arming the worker masses in the Workers’ Militia.

82) The propaganda for the disarming of the bourgeoisie and for the arming of the workers and poor peasants, must be based not only on general considerations, but on the problems and preoccupations of the masses themselves at each given moment. It must also be based on the very experience of the Spanish proletariat, which set up its militias during the course of the Civil War. Although by building them upon the base of the various parties and organizations, rather than by setting up one single Workers’ Militia in a democratic organization, they directed themselves along an essentially wrong road.

83) No confidence in the organisms of the bourgeois state in any pretended “purging” of the Army. The recent lesson of Italy in which the Badoglios and other such types were maintained must serve to show the worker and peasant masses what the bourgeoisie means by such changes. Theirs is the opposite to the conception that the masses have of such problems, as the even more recent experience in North Italy has also shown us.

Everything which is not directed practically toward the dissolution of the Army will leave unresolved the crucial problem of the Revolution. Its dissolution, like that of the Civil Guards and the other repressive forces of the State, will only be realized by the action of the proletariat, taking into its own hands the arms torn from the armed bodies of the bourgeoisie.
 

Local and Regional Workers Committees

84) Just as in Asturias in 1934 and on July 19, 1936, in the workers’ districts, in the industrial cities, in the villages and towns, the COMMITTEES will surge up, and will take into their hands the exercise of political, economic and military power, based upon the arming of the working class and the poor peasants. Only on this road of the Committees is the victory of the Spanish proletariat and the popular masses possible.

85) The Committees of July 19 were appointed in general from above by the leaderships of the different organisations and parties. Moreover each Committee worked and lived in isolation, disconnected from the whole of the proletariat, from the entirety of the Committees on the provincial, regional and national scale. This lack of a democratic base and a centralization of activities and efforts were two mortal weaknesses of the July Committee. The future Committees must be constituted by direct designation of the worker and peasant masses in their factories and in their trade unions, The Committee must be the democratic representative of all the workers democratically electing their delegates, able to revoke them at any time.

86) Each one of the workers struggles, up to the open revolutionary period, requires of itself the establishment of such Committee embracing all the proletariat, as an expression of the profound necessity of the workers to give a unified, truly democratic leadership, without bureaucratization of any kind, to its class mobilization. It requires the development of such organisms, the coordination of their activity, their furious defense against the attacks and maneuvers of the bourgeoisie. Each Committee must send its representatives to the regional congresses to the National Congress of Workers and Peasants delegates. Each Committee must make itself the agitator for this goal, must organize larger and larger meetings, must impart energy and strength to the existence of the Committees.

87) These Committees of the masses will be the only organizations surging directly from the ranks of the masses of the city and country, that will drive them to action at a given time. Their force, their authority will definitively prevail against the power of the bourgeoisie, if the Committees, animated by the revolutionary party, are fully conscious of their power and direct themselves along the road which fulfills the slogan: ALL POWER TO THE COMMITTEES.

That will be the result of the common experience of the working masses and the activity of the revolutionary party. The campaign for the constitution of the Committees must start from, and base itself constantly on the desires, the necessities that at all times impel the masses to action. Before converting themselves into organs of power, the committees must be the organized and fighting expression of the actions and desires of the masses.

88) The perspectives and revolutionary tasks which we have analyzed are impossible to realize without the existence of a firm revolutionary direction, firm in its political positions and in its organizational principles. These tasks and perspectives have a European and world scope. For the problem of the revolutionary leadership to be really resolved, it must be approached from this international angle. To speak of the revolutionary party, for us means to speak of the World Party of the Socialist Revolution.

89) For ourselves this world orientation of the proletarian revolution exists in the program and organization of the Fourth International. Since the degeneration of the Third International, it has shown how to give to the proletariat an experience, a program and revolutionary cadres that were hardened in the struggle for fidelity to revolutionary Marxism, to Bolshevism. We are vindicating this revolutionary capital; and we consider that the revolutionary party of the Spanish proletariat must be based on it and on the organization which defends it.

The movement of the Fourth International – and that is the best guarantee for the future – has satisfactorily passed the severe test of the Second World War. The capacities of the Internationalist Communists have not been expressed in slurring over crises, errors, and desertions, but in finding in the current program and the correct methods of organization the necessary resources for straightening their course and making their cadres more cohesive.

90) Such a characterization of our position signifies that we not only faithfully adhere to the fundamental principles of Marxism, but more concretely: that we maintain our fidelity to the political and organizational principles of Bolshevism as the expression of Marxism in the contemporary epoch.

The retreats suffered by the working class in the course of these last years has caused a veritable slaughter in the camp of the petty bourgeois currents, disguised as Marxism. To revise, to m-examine, to give a “new” theory to the workers movement are expressions now “in vogue” among the men and organizations that have not known how to apply Marxism in their own actions, and, therefore, have seen themselves disarmed in the period of social action we have lived through in these years. Against all these, we reaffirm that Marxism appears to us today more than ever the scientific doctrine of the revolutions; and Bolshevism is the system of organization and of political struggle for the Marxists of our time.

91) The federalist conceptions concerning the political organization of the proletarian revolution in Spain have nothing to do with the present organization of the revolutionary party, which cannot be the anticipated image of the future classless society, but the steel instrument for to the communist society of tomorrow. A revolutionary Spanish working class policy must concentrate on the building of a “national” and centralized party, and not upon a hybrid and impotent amalgam of “regional” parties. The Spanish revolution constitutes a single whole; and one party must be built for its leadership. A party in which the fullest internal democracy destroying capitalist society and opening the road permits the elaboration, the comparison and the constant criticism of political positions together with the most iron unity and centralization in the development of the revolutionary struggle.

92) The political and organizational desertion by the leaders of the former Spanish Section of the Left Communist Opposition brought it about that the positions of the Fourth International in the midst of the Spanish Revolution were defended only by isolated revolutionary militants. Alone in full civil war, the actions of “The Leninist Voice” Group defended the revolutionary program and constituted itself as the Spanish Section of the Fourth International. Its numerical weakness, its lack of roots in the ranks of the vanguard of the Spanish workers, considerably limited the range of such activity.

The regrouping of the Spanish militants of the Fourth International, the existence in Spain and in the emigration of militants and of Internationalist Communist nuclei, constitute an important step in the building of the revolutionary party, which is the fundamental objective of the Communist-Intemationalists. In the task of building “the Internationalist Communist Party” of Spain, other nuclei or political currents cast agree with the necessity of such work. A systematic labor of discussion and clarification must be carried on by our comrades along that line.

One affirmation must be clearly formulated by us in order to give greater seriousness and effectiveness to such activities. The Internationalist Communists are not a grouping of militants who “seek a new doctrinal base for the workers movement” or who “are in a period of thoroughgoing revision,” etc. For us, the question consists in knowing how to apply the political fundamentals that the first Four Congresses of the Communist International bequeathed to us and all the political material developed since in defense of the proletarian revolution by the movement of the Fourth International.

We carry our revolutionary capital with us in order to oppose it to the programs which others think might add to it, better it or disprove it. In this way we Internationalist Communists will develop our work in the building of a revolutionary leadership.

MAY, 1945

(The End)

 
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