Report of the commission on rebuilding the Fourth International and the tasks of the IC

Report of the commission on rebuilding the Fourth International and the tasks of the IC

April 8, 1966 

1. The London Conference reaffirms that the programme and method for the building of the revolutionary parties and the Fourth International are to be found in the Transitional Programme. This programme remains the only one that is capable of providing a solution to the problems raised by the historical crisis of revolutionary leadership.

2. The Conference affirms that Pabloism (whether of Pablo, Frank-Germain, Hansen, or the Posadas tendencies) constitutes a revisionist current alien to the programme and methods of the Fourth International.

3. The Conference affirms that the Fourth International has not degenerated. The historical continuity of the Fourth International founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky, re-formed in the years 1943-46, which Pabloism attempted to destroy in 1950-53, has been maintained since 1953 by the struggle waged by the Trotskyist organizations grouped within the International Committee. As a result of this, the International Conference proclaims that the continuity of the Fourth International has been fought for and maintained by the International Committee's actions.

4. The conference recognises the inability of the leadership of the International, after Leon Trotsky's death, to succeed in the tasks required by the building of revolutionary parties and the International. During the course of this hard battle for Trotskyism, some cadres have been exterminated, victims of imperialist and Stalinist repressions, others worn out, and the leadership of the Fourth International became bankrupt. This leadership collapsed because of its distortion and abandonment of Marxism, i.e., of the method of dialectical materialism. This is why this leadership was unable to root the movement in the struggle of the working class, and particularly the youth. As a result, they were incapable of assimilating the methods and principles of communist organization. In no case can this failure be considered the failure of the Fourth International.

5. The essential unity of the international class struggle, flowing from the international character of the joint crisis of imperialism and the bureaucracy, implies the direct consequence of the necessity of building Trotskyist parties in every country. As against the liquidationist conclusions flowing from the revisionist 'division of the world into sectors', this perspective emphasises the urgency of building independent revolutionary proletarian parties in the countries of Eastern Europe, USSR, and China, and in the colonial and semi-colonial countries.

6. This central task of building independent revolutionary parties stresses yet again the essential struggle for the political independence of the working class, against the politics of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the reformist leaderships. This fight for the Party implies a determined struggle against syndicalism and all ideas that a revolutionary party can be spontaneously produced from the working class.

7. The International Conference stresses that the Trotskyist movement, in the course of the struggle to build the International, works towards the creation of a centralized leadership of the world revolutionary party, in a struggle organically linked to the fight in each country to rebuild revolutionary centralized parties leading the struggles of the masses. This building of parties and of the International must be carried out on the basis of the lessons of the struggle against revisionism and of the continuation of this struggle.

8. The proceedings of this Third Conference emphasise the necessity for the International Committee to politically prepare within eighteen months the Fourth International Conference, whose aim will be to rally all Trotskyist organizations fighting for the programme of the Fourth International. This will include a struggle by the International Committee to rally to the ranks of the Fourth International the militants and groups who are misled by the revisionist leaders of the United Secretariat.

9. In order to achieve the tasks before such a Conference, the International Committee must organize an international discussion on the following subjects:

(a) The building of the revolutionary parties on the basis of the Programme in the context of the concrete struggle for the rebuilding of the International. Trotskyists, organized as sections of the Fourth International, must struggle for the construction of revolutionary proletarian parties based on the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International. They carry the fight for this programme and for the construction of the Party as the main basis of their work in the mass organizations and trade unions of the working class, and in particular towards the working class youth, as the principal source of new forces for the Fourth International. All such work is subordinated to the main task of constructing the Party. The building of the Party necessitates the production of a newspaper able to constantly fight for the overall programme of the Party, to raise the consciousness of the working class in all spheres of the class struggle. This fight for the independent party is the only basis for the defence of the positions won in the past by the working class, and all tactical considerations are subordinated to it. In conditions where the tactic of entry into existing working-class parties is necessary, this tactic is conducted in a manner which subordinates it to the main task of the construction of the independent party.

(b) The unity of the international class struggle.

(c) Defence by revolutionary methods of the conquests of the international working class, in the capitalist countries, in the USSR, China and all the countries which have been removed from the sphere of imperialism. This discussion will be carried out on the agreed framework of the unconditional defence of these states.

10. In the framework of the objectives agreed at this Conference, the International Committee must, so far as its resources permit, give assistance in:

(a) the building of Trotskyist organizations;

(b) the activity of Trotskyist organizations;

so that they can advance from the stage of propaganda groups to being Communist organizations fighting in the class struggle for the leadership of the proletariat in the struggle for power.

11. The International Committee will publish an official internal bulletin in English to be translated into the various languages by each section.

12. The financing of the International Committee's tasks will be decided according to the possibilities of each section. The International Committee will work out for the next Conference the basis of financial contributions for the budget of the International Committee as such.

13. The International Committee will set up a youth commission working under its direction and consisting of representatives of the Young Socialists and Revokes. The immediate tasks of this Commission to be: 

(a) Convening of an international conference of revolutionary youth organizations;

(b) Organization of mass participation in the Liege demonstration against NATO and the Vietnam war in October 1966.

14. The International Committee must make a political and practical study of the tasks to be achieved in the building of sections in Eastern Europe, in the first place in strengthening the Hungarian section.

15. The International Committee is recommended by the Conference to organize visits to the United States and Latin America, and to Greece and Denmark. Also recommended are exchanges of cadres between sections as methods of strengthening sections.

16. The International Committee will appoint a Commission to begin work immediately on a history of the Fourth International.