For the Defence of the Colonial Peoples!
Issuing body: European Executive Committee of the Fourth International
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Colonial domination, one of the most important pillars of world imperialism, is on the point of collapse. While the bourgeoisie meets with growing difficulties in maintaining its power in the metropolitan countries and in settling its international relations, the colonial peoples are rising one after another to sweep away the infamous tyranny of the imperialist "civilisers". Indochinese and Indonesians are revolting against the domination of their French and Dutch masters, who have brought them nothing but a ferocious exploitation based on a bloody military and police dictatorship. In Burma, in India and Ceylon, in the Philippines and in Korea, the masses are organising to enter in their turn into the emancipatory struggle.
Seized with terror and rage at the scale of these popular movements, the bourgeois and social-patriotic slanderers are closing ranks. The world press of every tendency is mobilised against the revolutionaries of the Far East. The hypocritical defenders of "democracy", who called for the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of men to bring down "Japanese militarism", do not hesitate to use that same Japanese militarism against the uprising of the colonial masses. It is to the Japanese army that the British generals turn to restore "order". It is with the help of the Japanese police and irregular French bands that British troops have tried to crush a rebellious Annam. It is together, forgetting for a time their particular and contradictory interests and appetites, that all the imperialisms would tomorrow organise a savage intervention, should a colonial nation succeed in momentarily consolidating its independence.
Thus a single revolutionary spark suffices to reveal the imperialist bourgeoisie and its agents in their true light. Their "defence of freedom" is the defence of the bankers' right to live off the blood and sweat of millions of colonial slaves. Their "defence of the rights of small nations" is the refusal to grant to the colonial nations the most elementary democratic right: independence!
Against the united front of the slave-holders, let us raise the united front of the exploited of the whole world! Certainly, the colonial proletariat still has immense tasks to accomplish before the victory of the colonial revolution can be made definitive: drawing in the masses of poor peasants in order to abolish, together with the domination of foreign imperialism, that of its own bourgeoisie; resolving the agrarian question; sweeping away feudal survivals; abolishing frontiers and building the great socialist federation of the peoples of Asia. But the struggle of the colonial masses for their immediate independence is in itself, from its very birth, a highly progressive struggle which the metropolitan proletariat must support with all its strength. It places the domination of imperialism over the globe in mortal danger; it strips the decadent European bourgeoisie of its last reserves; it decisively favours the class struggle of the proletariat in the metropolitan countries. It places the organisations and the working masses of the whole world before an inescapable alternative: either with the imperialist bandits, to perpetuate their own enslavement, or with the peoples risen against a barbarous exploitation of which they are themselves the victims.
"Full and entire solidarity with colonial emancipation" — such is the watchword of the Fourth International. Such must be the rallying cry of all European workers. The cause of the colonial peoples is their cause. Bloody imperialism, which is dragging humanity towards barbarism, is the common enemy. It is imperialism that must be brought down, through intransigent revolutionary struggle, by the regrouping and union of all around the banner of communism, around the Fourth International.
Proletarians of Europe, do not allow the colonial revolution to be crushed! Its defeat would prepare your own defeat. Its victory will be a decisive step towards your victory. Follow the example of the Australian workers, who by their deeds affirmed their solidarity with their brothers in the colonies.
Dockers of Marseilles, of Naples, of Antwerp and of Rotterdam, refuse to load ships carrying arms and troop transports intended to fight the colonial peoples.
French, Dutch and Belgian railwaymen, refuse to transport soldiers and war material to the ports of embarkation for the Far East.
Soviet workers, men and women, denounce the Kremlin's abandonment of the Leninist policy of total support for the colonial revolutions. The defence of the USSR is today being decided at Saigon, at Hanoi, at Java.
English workers, men and women, demonstrate, stop work to protest against the infamous collusion of your "Labour" government with the slave-holders of Paris, Amsterdam, London and Tokyo!
Proletarians of all countries, unite in the struggle against imperialism, in defence of the threatened colonial revolution. Demand that all the workers' organisations, parties and trade unions, make international working-class solidarity an effective reality and not an empty and demagogic formula.
Not one soldier, not one rifle against the colonial peoples!
Down with imperialism, long live the colonial revolution!
Total and immediate independence for all colonies! Long live international working-class solidarity!
The European Executive Committee of the Fourth International
PCI, French section of the Fourth International RCP, English section of the Fourth International PCR, Belgian section of the Fourth International POC, Italian section of the Fourth International PCI, Greek section of the Fourth International IKD, German section of the Fourth International CRM, Dutch section of the Fourth International GCI, Spanish section of the Fourth International PCR, Irish section of the Fourth International MAS, Swiss section of the Fourth International
October 1945
In Quatrième Internationale, No. 22-24, September-November 1945