THE
COLONIAL REVOLUTION
Its Balance-Sheet, Its Problems, and Its Prospects
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
1. THE CAUSES WHICH MAINTAIN THE UPSURGE
OF THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION
The continuing rise of the colonial revolution in the last decade has been in striking contrast with the prolonged stagnation of the revolutionary workers' movement in the advanced capitalist countries.
The upsurge of the colonial revolution in this postwar period is produced by a whole series of causes which were lacking or ceased to exist with the same intensity as previously in the advanced capitalist countries.
The process of relative capitalist stabilization in these countries has occurred simultaneously with the worsening of the economic and financial situation in most of the colonial and semi-colonial countries.
Capitalism in the advanced countries has profited by the mass injection of American capital and by the enormous worldwide needs in reconstruction and industrial development created by the war, to set in motion a new cycle of expansion on a higher level of productivity. The colonial and semi-colonial countries, on the contrary, having quickly exhausted the capital accumulated during the war and the first years thenafter, saw themselves more and more left behind by the advances, both absolute and relative, achieved by the advanced countries.
The economic evolution of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, marked by a process of industrialization which, though jerky and uneven, has not ceased on the average lo be continuous, has favored the industrial expansion of the advanced capitalist countries.
At the same time the capitalist countries have profited both by technological and scientific advances to increase their independence from certain imports of agricultural products and raw materials and by the fall in prices of such imports, to maintain a favorable balance of trade toward the dependent countries and a better protection against inflation. The dependent countries, on the contrary, have seen their balance of trade deteriorate and are struggling against the feverish upthrusts of endemic inflation.
The lag of dependent countries after advanced countries is aggravated in terms of both absolute production and per capita production by the fact that the population of the dependent countries is increasing at a faster rate than their production.
At the basis of these developments lie the facts that the dependent countries have a different social and economic structure, and are historically belated. For à country to be able to catch up with the present development of the advanced capitalisi countries it is necessary to have as starting-points a developed economic substrucskilled manpower, and a very high per capita rate of investment.
Now the dependent countries are structurally handicaped in this race. They lack an adequate economic substructure, have a relatively low national income at their disposal, and do not accumulate suffficient capital, both because of their present limited income and because of the facts that a large part of the surplus-value created goes back the imperialist countries that a large part of the capital belonging to the native oligarchies tends to be directed toward usury, trading profits, and rent.
I
In any case the rate of accumulation of 15 to 20% of the national income considered necessary for large-scale industrialization proves to be, in these countries, beyond their present practical possibilities. Even this rate, in most of these countries, would be insufficient if it were not backed up by other resources.
In the case of countries whose structure is already capitalist, these resources would normally have to come from foreign capital, in the form of public investments (for the substructure) or private reinvestments on the spot.
they were found capital's reservations about investments not producing the average rate of profit - would have to be immensely higher than the total of current annual expenditures going to
"under-developed" countries (including from the US SR): from $4,000 million to over $20,000 million, il not considerably more. 1
It is excluded that capitalism can agree to such an effort. Under these conditions — and without at all mini mizing imperialism's new attempts "to aid" on a broader
"under developed" countries (India, Latin America, Africa, the Arab countries) — what must be foreseen is rather that the gap, both absolute and relative (in the meaning indicated), between these countries and the advanced countries will be aggravated in the
This means that these countries economic and industrial development, which nevertheless will not fail to be steady, will be accomplished under conditions that are highly explosive and very different from those of the advanced countries, with real depressions, and not just recessions, unemployment, and inflation.
It is this different economic situation — resulting both from the historical tardiness of the dependent countries compared to the advanced countries launched on a new cycle of expansion, and from the obstacles set up to their development by their economic and social structure, feudocapitalist, and indeed in places tribal with capitalist infiltration — which fundamentally explains the gap between the powerful and constantly renewed revolutionary activity of the masses in the dependent countries, and the decline of the revolutionary workers' movement in the advanced capitalist countries.
Another cause that is at present stimulating the upsurge of the colonial revolution is obviously the decline of imperialism in comparison with the rising power of the workers' states, and the new relationships established in this postwar period by the leading strata of the colonial revolution with imperialism on the one hand and the bureaucracy of the workers' states on the other. These leading strata, Bonapartist in function, composed mainly ot elements who aspire to a national economic development, profit by the existence, the power, and the increased possibilities of the workers' states, as well as by their 1 United Nations experts have put forward the estimate that the sum annually needed to promote, within 35 years, a doubling of the living levels of populations now having at their disposal $100 per capita per annum (i e, some 1,600 million people), would reach $20,000 million. But other raise this sum to $50,000-860,000 million, and
34 antagonism toward imperialism, precisely to increase their Bonapartist role and to advance far in their efforts to free themselves from the direct grasp of imperialism.
The colonial revolution is not finished by the attainment of its primordial goal: formal independence from imperialism. It continues with the search for a liquidation of the whole aftermath of imperialism, and of all structural economico-social fetters on a rapid economic development and industrialization. The essential need, felt in a constantly more imperious and irresistible way by the masses of the dependent countries, is rapidly to reach the level of the advanced industrial countries and to make up their historical lateness.
It is for this reason that in a general way the national anti imperialist phase of the colonial revolution, during which bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships have been able to piay a leading part, is now giving way to a higher phase that brings forward the imperative economicosocial needs of the dependent countries. This is particularly the case with the formally independent countries of Latin America, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Ceylon etc. In Cuba the logic of the process of the permanent revolution already caused that revolution to break through the limits of capitalism.
Under these conditions the colonial revolution occupies the vanguard place in the world revolution and operates as its main force, including for the reawakening of the revolutionary struggle in the advanced countries. result of the historical lateness of the revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, which is the result of the dialectical interaction of the betrayals of the leaderships and the new economic evolution of capitalism, the colonial revolution is objectively the driving force of the world revolution, combined with the rising force of the reawakening of the revolution in the advance] capitalist states, particularly of Europe, has every chance of appearing historically as the result, at least in part, of the exterior pressure of these combined forces, in a new economic conjuncture less favorable than at present to capitalism in these countries. 2. THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION AND IMPERIALISM
Under the irresistible drive of the masses, pushing the colonial revolution steadily to a more advanced position, imperialism sees itself forced to resort to more indirect and flexible forms of dependence. All the recent examples given by British, French, and Belgian imperialism clearly the promotion of yesterday were still colonies to the status of self-government, or of dominions within a more and more flexible association with the metropolis; and states that formally are completely independent.
Imperialism - at its more clear-sighted wing -is at present seeking to safeguard what is essential in its through a transfer of power to the native élites, which it is trying to develop and bribe, tbanks to its political and economic power. is aware of the impossibility of ruling for long either in the form of direct European domination or in the more flexible form of native governments that are not broadly
Wherever native élites exist — intellectuals and various other categories actually or potentially bourgeois petty-bourgeois elements — imperialism is endeavoring to base itself on them by granting them political power, either immediately or in stages, and by bribing them by associating them in a joint economic exploitation of their respective countries. But the big difficulty for imperialism in this enterprise is the lack of native strata sufficiently developed to play such a part, in face of the impetuous
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL movement of the masses, who from now on demand living conditions which capitalism cannot ensure.
The specific position of each of the principal imperialisms depends on its strength and the concrete situation with which it has to deal.
British imperialism, from Asia, while succeeding in safeguarding part of its interests in countries like India, Pakistan, Ceylon, even Malaya, is now trying to carry out the same operation in Africa, while taking into account the special in that continent: Central Africa; South Africa, with its large implantation of Europeans, and with very great invested capital at stake. But even in these terimperialism coldly visualizing the when the explosive policy of the colour-ban and of the dictatorial supremacy of the European minorities will obliged to make way for the power of the majority, in spite of the fierce and prolonged resistance by these minorities that must be foreseen.
French imperialism itself is at present obliged to: jump over stages, going from the Empire to the paternalistic "Community" and from that to the "renovated" Community, namely, an association of more or less formally independent states like those now attaining "international sovereignty." It is desperately resisting only in Algeria, a land heavily settled by Europeans and endowed with the incalculable wealth of the Sahara.
Belgian imperialism found itself forced to grant independence to the Congo after a slight inclination toward a resistance that was as brief as it was futile.
Portuguese imperialism — which knows that the indeof its colonies will toll the knell of the torial regime, both by showing up the weakness of the regime and by drying up a large part of its economic and financial resources — still resists, defending its slave style of domination. But this is all the more reason why, present international and African inevitable fall will be all the more violent.
As for US imperialism, its colonial policy is more domination, save of Puerto Rico, it does not hesitate to support brutal native regimes in all parts of the world where it possesses very considerable economic and strategic interests (Central America, South Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, etc). In Africa, on the contrary, where it has to struggle against old imperialisi adversaries, compromised by direct domiit adorns itself with the mask of the "liberator," the "liberal," while trying to get in the good graces of the native bourgeois strata in formation, by means material "aid."
For imperialism, the economic and in part strategic importance of the colonial and semi-colonial countries does not cease to be still vital (both for its supplies of raw materials and for the export of its industrial products and even of capital, the importance of this last factor having, however, diminished by comparison with the two others). Furthermore, the strategy of atomic war, which favors surprise attack, and raises the problem of survival, leads to the dispersal of bases around the world.
In the decisive race in which, by the force of events, imperialism finds itself setting out against the workers' states, the maintenance of its influence over dependent countries will take on an importance still greater than in
For this competition - supposing that it stays "peaceful" for a period — involves a race even hotter than in the past for economic power, the most important reserve of which still remains the resources and the industrialization of the dependent countries.
In the decade that is beginning, imperialism enters this race handicaped from several points of view: compromised by its past in the eyes of the masses; incapable, by its structure, of granting effective aid; divided within its
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL own ranks among powers that have reëstablished and surpassed their past potential and are throwing themselves into keener competition precisely in the field par excellence the industralization of dependent
The only chance for imperialism in this field lies in the help that can be brought to it by the colonial bourgeoisie in formation. The next stage of the colonial revolution depends on the race in time between the for mation of such strata, to which imperialism conduces by every means, and the revolutionary movement of the masses looking for radical solutions and therefore a radical leadership.
But even the transition leadership can turn out historically to be of short duration and finally also economically ruinous for imperialism. For any important development of a native bourgeoisie cannot but diminish in the long run that share of the surplus-value still cornered by imperialism.
3. THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION AND THE WORKERS' STATES
In the present historical phase of the formation, side-by-side with capitalism, of a system of workers' the alliance between the colonial revolution system of workers' states ought to be establishing itself quite naturally and almost automatically. The convergence of interests in the common struggle against imperialism is obvious, and ought to give rise to an active and unconditional support of this struggle by the workers'
Furthermore, in the field of economic exchanges, the states will gradually have the possibility of advantageously replacing the "aid" granted by imperialism, and of diverting the present circuits with imperialism into their own orbit. The workers' states can grant low-cost financial and technical aid for the real economic development of the dependent countries, and without imposing political conditions.
They can furthermore establish - though this case may not be general - trade relations on the basis of the complementary nature of their economies: agricultural and raw materials coming from the dependent against material for industrial equipment com from the workers' states. The development of such relations with the dependent states in a historic perspective will make clearly apparent the enormous possibilities potentially possessed by the workers' states in this field and the fatal risks run by imperialism in the eventuality of a prolonged "peaceful competition." It is only the nature of the political regime in the present workers' states, degenerated or deformed by the bureaucracy, that limits the possibilities to be exploited, and handicaps and deforms the de facto alliance between the colonial revolution and the workers' states.
Naturally, no objection could be raised to the economic the bureaucracy of the URSS other workers' states is granting to the bourgeois regimes of the dependent countries so that they may momentarily resist imperialism or develop more freely. degree to which this aid is granted in exchange for the "neutralist" policy of the colonial bourgeoisie and that the Communist Parties in the dependent countries find themselves forced to subordinate their autonomous class policy to the requirements of the diplomacy of the workers' this runs the risk of ending up practically in the consolidation of bourgeois regimes which invariably tura the workers' movement in their own countries, and, at a more distant stage, against the workers' themselves. From this point of view, the examples
35 provided recently by Nehru, Sukarno, Nasser, Kassem, and other beneficiaries of the aid of the workers' states, speak eloquently.
Still, the aid of the workers' states can objectively help the process of the masses becoming mature and consequentappear to capitalism to be an objective threat. This explains, among other things, the attitude of certain bourgeoisies, such as those of Brazil and Bolivia. The objective alliance between the colonial revolution and the workers states is expressed in all its dynamism by the case of Cuba, where the Soviet bureaucracy found itself forced to override the policy of peaceful coexistence to offer its missiles for the defense of the revolution. In its new stage, the colonial revolution is factually joining forces with the workers' states despite the efforts of the Soviet bureaucracy and petty-bourgenis leaderships to prevent it.
This alliance must be stimulated in all fields, particularly among the masses. The Fourth International will have 10 alliance of the central labor organizations, the trade unions, and peasant and other mass organizations with the organizations of the workers' states, as a concrete way of establishing this alliance.
4. THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL BOURGEOISIE
The native comprador oligarchies, obtaining their income from trading profits, land rent, usury, or acting as funetionaries at the service of imperialism, are strata now in decline in the dependent countries, to the advantage of new social formations, which are reflecting the process indutrial development in ehere intries. It is nome sata in spite of everything - of economic and which, directly or through their petty-bourgeois are at the present stage cornering for themselves the leadership of the colonial revolution.
The importance of these strata, called national bourgeoisies, is highly variable in the different dependent countries according to the degree of economic development achieved.
In cases such as India, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the matter is one already of a genuine class, sufficiently powerful and conscious to take direct political power, even if it risks losing it momentarily to the benefit of other fractions more tied up with the oligarchy and imper-
In the case of other Asiatic and Latin American the importance of the national bourgeoisie compared to the comprador oligarchy is less.
In certain cases its power is often exercised through
(such as Sukarno, Nasser, Bonapartist political regimes Kassem, Nkhrumah, et al) which are operating historically for the benefit of the national bourgeoisie.
In other cases, which can turn out to be frequent in
Africa, the very weak formation of native élites, other than the tribal chiefs and the functionaries at the service of imperialism, can give birth to new comprador bourgeoisies closely associated with imperialism for the economic coëxploitation of their own countries.
Everywhere the principal instrument for the development of the national burgeoisie proves to be Bonapartist political power. It is this power that renders it possible to face simultaneously the oligarchy, imperialism, and the masses, and to find the important amounts of capital required for building the substructure and the financing of large-scale enterprises. It is furthermore through the exercise of the political power and the economic functions of the state that the cadres of this bourgeoisie are partly formed, by the enrichment of functionaries, their infiltrathe enterprises, their corruption, etc. The Bonapartist state becomes, under these circumstances, a genuine
36 nursery for capitalist development in the dependent coun tries.
The ideology which best corresponds to the Bonapartist state is the de facto dictatorship of the Single Party, which boils down to its leadership taking power. In the case that this party is truly proletarian and socialist through its programme and ideology, such a dictatorship, based on the masses organized in democratie committees or communes, would unquestionably have a historically progressive meaning. But the pretext of the so-called classless colonial society currently used by certain people to justifv in Africa the Bonapartist dietatorship of the Single Party, engaged in a capitalist economic development and withoat democratic control by the organized masses, is to be re-
Though it is true that the multi-party regime of socialist democracy cannot be transplanted, just as is, into a society scarcely emerged from tribalism, it would be for all that to neglect the need for such a possible Single Party to have a class character with proletarian ideology and programme and to base itself on the masses democra tically organized in peasant communes and urban committees which control the government and hold the power.
In any case the International cannot give up the conception according to which the right to have several workers' parties represents an essential guarantee of a genuine so-
No illusion is permissible about the real tendencies of the national bourgeoisie. Although in its formation obliged to struggle to a certain extent against imperialism and the oligarchy, to ally itself with the proletariat and its trade-union organizations, and to advocate and even put into practice for a certain period nationalizations and a "mixed" economy, it invariably tends, precisely through its increase in strength, to act like the classie bourgeoisie of the advanced countries: to turn against the workers' movement and to draw closer to imperialism both by "freeing" its "mixed" aconomy (in order to attract foreign capital and to stimulate native private capitalist initialive) and by lining up diplomatically with imperialism. Nebru's India, one of the first countries that obtained its independence and formed a serious national bourgeoisie, is the mirror in which there is already clearly reflected the national bourgeoisie's inevitable historical evolution, regressive and counter-revolutionary on a relatively short-
(Other examples are: Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Brazil.) The greatest danger lying in wait for the colonial masses in revolution is to be lulled by the mystique of national unity with their bourgeoisie and to sacrifice to this mystique their autonomous class policy and organization. 5. THE CAPITALIST ROAD OR THE SOCIALIST ROAD?
The colonial masses' aspiration to political independence and rapid economic development is everywhere profound
The national bourgeoisie is trying to fulfil this mission, both to profit by it itself and to pacify the masses. it stumbles over the impossibility of attaining the goal of rapid economic development by capitalist roads.
The national bourgeoisie shows itself everywhere unable to nationalize definitively (after a few stages that turn out to be necessary) the essential part of the surplus-value extorted by the imperialists in the dependent countries, as well as the land rent of the native feudalists, and to valorize the enormous resource represented by the unused manpower of these countries. Nowhere has it been able or willing to expropriate without indemnity the imperialist enterprises in agriculture, mining, and trade; to expropriate without indemnity the feudalists and give the land to the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL peasants; nationalize and plan the economy, and mobilize for its service the masses of the country.
Now the agrarian question is fundamental everywhere. The land for the most part is everywhere hoarded by the native feudalists, colons (big settlers), or foreign imperialist firms," and only a part of it (whose importance varies according to each concrete case) is cultivated on a private basis by native peasants or collectively in tribal reserves (of Negro Africa, for example).
Even these free peasants who are neither serfs nor sharecroppers nor rural laborers are most part poor peasants compared to the standards of the peasants of the advanced capilalist countries, and have to struggle desperately to continue to exist as peasants. From this there arises the primordial importance of a radical agrarian reform, accompanied by the effective material and technical aid of a genuine proletarian state.
The agrarian reform is above all the distribution of the land according to the free will of those who till it. According to the concrete case, this can take the form of the distribution of the lands of the feudalists and the colons landless or almost landless peasants, accompanied by effective aid by the state to the peasant coöperatives; or else the form of a collective management of the land right from the beginning by communes on a village or broader scale, and collectives of agricultural workers and share-croppers of the great plantations and estates; or, most frequently, a mixed system.
For economic development, the national bourgeoisie counts only on the main contribution of foreign capital. Now its volume and the conditions for granting it render it an illusion to expect an even slightly rapid industrialization of the dependent countries so as to catch up with the advanced countries. The comparative examples of China and India become decisive in this field (without insisting on that of the US S R). The example of Jugoslavia is another. The Chinese experience is extremely valuable as an indication of a specific road for the rapid and balanced economic development of a colonial country that starts out from a very low level of the productive forces.
The organization of peasant masses into communes contains elements that might be able to be profitably applied in olher cases, especially where the communal traditions of the peasants are still relatively strong. The political and economic organization of the commune permits productively employing the whole available laboring mass by using the productive means and forces on the spot and thus beginning the rapid and balanced economic development of the country.
The setting up of the communes in general might be criticized only from the viewpoint of their possible bureaucratic administration, which would have the tendency not to take sufficiently into account the masses' living condition; and the need for their voluntarily joining this new type of economic and social organization. But in the case where the bureaucratic excesses might be limited - thanks mainly to the democratic organization of the masses managing the communes - the communes as an institution might turn out historically to be one form for the rapid, balanced, and more productive development of the "under-developed" countries, by using fully and judiciously all the available resources, and a school for a more communal social life.
The Jugoslav example on its side is valuable as an experiment in the rapid development of an "under-developed" country in which private small farm property predominates, an economy which, while being a workers' economy in its nature, remains open to the advantages of the world market, and thanks also to the close democratic association of the producers in the control and even the management of the economy (workers' councils).
The "under-developed" countries, far from being caugh!
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL in the dilemma of either stagnation or a capitalist-type development thanks to the contribution of foreign capital, have the real possibility of taking, according to their concrete case, the "Chinese road" or the "Jugoslav road" or any combination of the two, rid of their negative elements.
But the primordial condition for such a possible development is the setting up of new economic and social structures of the socialist type. This means that the struggle for real liberation from imperialism, and for economic development and industrialization, is inseparable from the struggle for the socialist revolution. Only those dependent countries which have known how to combine the anti-imperialist struggle with the struggle for the socialist revolution have been able really to break loose from the imperialist system and to open wide the road to their rapid development and industrialization.
6. THE PERMANENT CHARACTER OF THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION into the anti-imperialist struggle against direct or indirert imperialist domination, are pushed toward goals that lie beyond that of formal independence. In the present international and national contexts of the colonial revolution, it has inexorably a tendency to develop as a permanent revolution, putting more and more in the forefront the economic and social goals of the broad peasant and worker masses who are carrying it forward: agrarian reform, nationalization and planning of the economy, emancipation of
In this process the clash with the national bourgeoisie also becomes inevitable at a given stage of the struggle. Though the bourgeoisie in the dependent countries inevitably sets out on a sort of de facto united front of all the social classes (except the feudalists and the comprador bourgeoisie) against direct or indirect imperialist domination, the deepening of the struggle no less inevitably differentiates this front along class lines. The national bourgeoisie soon finds itself at grips with the radicalism of the movement of the peasant and worker masses who aspire to agrarian reform, nationalization and planning of the economy, and the emancipation of women -- all objectives incompatible with the regime of the national bourgeoisie. This obliges the bourgeoisie to turn against the mass movement and to resort to a regime that is, whether overtly or not, die-
The prestige acquired by the national bourgeoisie during the phase of the united anti-imperialist struggle can - in the absence of a genuine revolutionary mass party — win credit for it among the masses and allow it temporarily to stop the revolution halfway (eg, Nehru, Sukarno, Bourguiba, Nasser, Kassem, Nkhrumah, et al). Thence arises the need never to subordinate the autonomous revolutionary niovement of the masses to the political leadership of the national bourgeoisie, never to "prettify" it, never to stop criticizing and exposing it, while agreeing to give critical support to all might be led to adopt, to the degree that it continues to have credit among peasants. Revolutionary Marxists do not exclude, under exceptional circumstances, the united front of the national bourgeoisie on precise objectives which permit the revolution to go forward. But the anti-imperialist united front is generally the rule when it is a matter of revolutionary movements led by non-bourgeois or petty-bourgeois forces.
The prominent role now played in the colonial revolution by the national bourgeoisie, or by petty-bourgeois formations with an ideology that is in the last analysis bourgeois, is partly the result of the policy of Stalinism, which has subordinated the autonomous revolutionary movement of the masses to the inlerests either of the metropolitan bourgeoisie or of the colonial national bourgeoisie. If this policy is not radically opposed, and if a stop is not put to treating the revolutionary movement of the masses contributory force to the game of the bourgeoisie and its relations with the Stalinist bureaucracy, there is a risk of enormously slowing down the progress of the colonial revolution to a higher level.
Revolutionary Marxist elements who operate in these dependent countries do not always have the possibility opposing from the outside and in a completely independent way the existing national movements with bourgeois leadership or ideology, for in this case they would run the risk of cutting themselves off from the broad masses and remaining in practice ineffective. While taking on everywhere the task of open revolutionary Marxist publications which clarify the problems and trace out a clear perspective, they may find themselves obliged to carry on the essential part of their activity inside the existing national movements of a mass and revolutionary character, and to advocate within them a wing of a proletarian and socialist orientation. This orientation may in places take the transitional form of a class party, a mass Labor Party based on the trade unions.
The politicization of the trade unions in several dependent countries can operate in favor of the revolutionary workers' movement or of the national bourgeoisie. This will try to domesticate the trade unions as a leading political force both for its combat against the other bourgeois fractions, the comprador feudo-bourgeois, for its economic development. From this arises the possibility and necessity of directing the organized force of the young and dynamic proletariat of the dependent countries toward the transitional idea of the Labor Party based on the trade
But any orientation exclusively toward the proletariat, which in fact neglects the peasantry, can turn out to be fatal for the victorious outcome of the revolutionary combat. Besides the need of an adequate programme for the agrarian question, taking into account the peculiarities of each case, il is necessary constantly to link up the workers' struggles with the peasants' struggles, and to root the revolutionary organization in the countryside by daily work.
In many dependent countries. conditions are propitious for the organization and maintenance of a guerrilla, fed by the contribution of peasant forces and by the help and protection of the peasant population. The adequate combination of the armed struggle of the peasants with the mobilization of the city workers, can enormously strengthen the vigor and effectiveness of the revolutionary combat, and speed up the fall of the imperialist or comprador regimes in the dependent countries.
The maturity and effectiveness of a revolutionary leader ship in several present cases must be shown by its spirit of initiative, its capacity, its audacity in seizing an occasion for starting an armed struggle of the peasants in order 10 back up and spur on the national revolutionary movement and to leave the adversary no respite for reconsolidating his positions.
The reevaluation of the revolutionary possibilities of peasant warfare, in the light of the experience of China as well as of Algeria, Cuba, and elsewhere, is a duty for every leadership placed in analogous conditions, and one of the most valuable and important lessons, to be thoroughly assimilated, of the experience of the colonial revolution. The modern revolutionary party, in several dependent countries, must be the one to show itself the audacious organizer of the armed struggle of the peasants, raising the revolutionary process in the country right away to a higher level, involved in the seizure of power,
THE VARIOUS EPICENTRES OF THE COLONIAL
REVOLUTION AND THEIR PECULIARITIES
38
II 7. INDIA AND INDONESIA
In the dependent countries of the Far East the direct political power is at present to be found in the hands of the national bourgeoisie (India), of Bonapartist governments acting on its behalf (Indonesia and Burma), or of comprador cliques closely tied up with imperialism (South Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Ceylon, Malaya, and South Korea). In all these cases, where we now have to deal with formally independent states, the bourgeoisie's inability to complete the revolution, including the bourgeois-democratic is now obvious. The most flagrant example is India, far and away the most developed of these countries.
India, far from progressing along the road of a more and more "socialist," nationalized, and planned economy, of a radical agrarian reform and of a real national unification, thus laying the foundations for a rapid economic development, is in reality going in the opposite direction. "mixed" economy is being developed especially in its private sector, wide open again to foreign capital, while neither the Community Project and National Extension Services Programme nor Vinoba Bhave's unofficial programme of "land gifts" have solved the practical distribution of land to the peasants and their ensuing effective organization in coöperatives.
Because the superannuated structure of India could not yet be fundamentally overturned, the economic goals of the government of the bourgeoisie remain limited and subordinated to outside capitalist aid. This causes the country's rate of economic development, both industrial and agricultural, to remain low, and even to lag behind the rate of population growth.
The country's weak economic development and its only slightly shaken feudo-capitalist structure furthermore prevent the liquidation of regional antagonisms and various obstacles — of customs, languages, religions, ete — which stand in the way of a genuine national unification, and of the country's rapid economic and cultural development.
As with Indonesia, various regions of Africa, and even it is in India the lack of a radical re. volution that perpetuates the aftermaths of pre-capitalist ways of living and barbarism, tangled up with those of imperialist domination and aggravated thereby, and that hinders both the process of national unification across the superannuated or arlificial frontiers set up by regionalism, communalism, tribalism, er imperialism, and an economic and cultural upsurge.
There follows therefrom the prospect, in the years come, of explosive developments which will cause the power of the bourgeoisie, after a period of maintaining itself with parliamentary and democratic façade, to turn toward more open dictatorship. Under the combined pressure of the alarming gap between production increase and population increase and of the revolutionary influence of the successes steadily achieved by China, the Indian bourgeoisie is from now on visualizing the day when the prestige accumulated by the Congress Party and by Nehru personally in the period of the struggle against British imperialism will be completed exhausted.
The break-up of the Congress Party, already begun, and the crystalization on its right of more militant feudocapitalist and pro-imperialist formations, are signs of an evolution that might lead to an open dictatorship similar to that already experienced by Pakistan. Thus the proof will be given in the case of India as well that the regime of the national bourgeoisie is everywhere doomed to the same economic and political bankruptey.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL In Indonesia, another country where the national bourgeoisie and its leaders were able — thanks to the failures of the Communist Party during the war — to acquire a scarcely deserved national prestige, the parliamentary acrobatics of the bourgeoisie have ended in its setting up its open Bonapartist power, based on the army. It is the treacherous policy of the Indonesian CP which has enabled Sukarno, the "hero" of the weak Indonesian national bourgeoisie, survive all the grave crises that have succeeded one another country since 1945, and now to consolidate its Bonapartist power, prior to lurning more decisively against masses and the workers' parties. True, even now the power of the Indonesian bourgeoisie remains weak in face of the country's unsolved problems (agrarian reform, real national unification, effective liquidation of the whole economic aftermath of imperialism, industrialization), and of the discontent of the masses, who see their standard of living lowered by the insufficiency of the rate of economic development, inflation, and unem. A radical change in the policy of the workers' leadernational bourgeoisie might enormously aid new waves of revolutionary struggles within a relatively short time, both in India and in Indonesia. This eventuality being unlikely, organizations like Communist Party in India and the Partai Acoma in Indonesia have even more the task of working up a concrete programme which completely exposes power of the bourgeoisie and turns all the revolutionary forces toward the struggle for the workers' and peasants' government.
The defense of the Chinese revolution and the populari. zation of all its valid achievements (including the conception of the communes) is not only a duty but a very powerful weapon in the hands of the revolutionary Marxists operating in these countries. Furthermore, a Leninist unitedthe revolutionary Marxist party and the C Ps and other workers' tendencies is necessary both for carrying on an effective fight against the bourgeoisie and for causing an inevitable ideological differentiation within the traditional workers' parties.
The Indian and Indonesian revolutions are the two great events to be faced in the coming years, for which it necessary to prepare with extreme seriousness, starting right Despite the differences that exist in the respective economic development of India and Indonesia, in the relative strength of their bourgeoisies, and in the structures rural regions, the decisive equivalent factors in the two cases are the following. Both in India and Indonesia the masses have obtained considerable experience with the direct rule of the national bourgeoisie, with its inability to solve the agrarian question, the question of real unification, that of industrialization, in the face of a growing population and also with its dictatorial evolution. into which this policy has led, which contrasts more and more with the revolutionary achievements in China and with the international context, can only lead to an explosion.
It is probably the outbreak of the revolutionary crisis in one of these iwo countries that will be able to touch off a new revolutionary avalanche in a whole series of other countries of the Far East at present under the domination of comprador cliques actively backed by American imperialism.
Revolutionary Marxists must further be aware situation favorable to revolutionary struggle is becoming
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL clear in South Vietnam, where at the. present stage there exist in various regions revolutionary hot-spots that are spreading and are more or less autonomous, under the leadership of middle cadres who have already had experience in the fight against French imperialism. The task of revolutionary Marxists is to participate in this armed struggle, which, in the specific situation in that country, can open the way toward the conquest of power and the reunification of the country.
The Ceylonese revolution, even before then, might form an exception, due to the existence in this country of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party with a solid mass base. But for the LSSP to play its full part, it must strengthen its Bolshevik structure and link itself up better with the peasant masses by means of systematic work among them, backed by the party's labor influence, on the basis of a concrete programme of economic and political transitional demands.
As for the South Pacific, even though the population of the islands of this area is small and they have been little developed in the capitalist way, the effects of the colonial revolution elsewhere have had their effects.
The main economic feature of the region is the selfsufficient agricultural economy, broken into to a greater or lesser extent by merchant capitalism that exploits to a small extent tropical production, mainly in copra. Politically they are colonially administered, through the tribal chiefs.
There are, however, several importani exceptions to this general economic backwardness.
First, in the British colony of Fiji, there is a highly developed sugar industry, run by peasant proprietors, but effectively controlled by the Australian sugar monopoly, Colonial Sugar Refineries. The majority of the population is of Indian origin, who feel particularly the influence of the world colonial revolution. Under petty-bourgeois nationalist leadership, the well organized trade unions engaged last year in a strong struggle with the colonial government; and 1961 will see new explosions unless some agreement is reached between the petty-bourgeois leadership and the colonial government, that is, unless independence of some sort is achieved.
Second, in the French colony of New Caledonia there is a substantial proletariat working in the nickel mines and processing depressed French peasantry exists, living at the standard of the natives. There have been episodic demands for nationalization. population have of militant struggle against the French, which comes up to very recent times.
Third, on some isalnds (Tahiti, Samoa) there is a struggle in progress against the colonial administration. West Samoa will become formally independent in 1961, although it sets an example.
Fourth, in Australian New Guinea there are signs of a awakening. The struggle for West Guinea by
Indonesia raises the question of the Australian half. The question of the incorporation of the whole of New Guinea into Indonesia must be seriously considered.
The centre of the revolutionary upsurge in the South
Pacific will most likely be Fiji. This upsurge will have important political effects both in Australia and in New
Zealand.
The Fourth International must raise the question of the
United Socialist States solution to the geographical isolation of the various islands.
Imperialism will attempt to limit this political integration and particularly try to isolate possible areas tionary upsurge. The slogan of the United Socialist States of the South Pacific will play a decisive role in the development of a socialist revolution in that area.
39 8. THE ARAB REVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST
At the other end of Asia, in the countries of the Middle East, there now stands out the epicentre of the Iraqi revolution; this forms a particular part of the Arab
After having gone forward for a whole period, carrying out important measures in the expropriation of some imperialist positions, agrarian reform, emancipation of women, and the trade-union and military organization of the masses, it has for a certain period now been marking time and even going backward.
As in other analogous cases, the Iragi revolution raised to power a staff of "national" officers, of petty-bourgeois origin, with aspirations for a more rapid economic development, rid of the control and fetters of imperialism. Such staffs are caught between adverse social forces characteristic of the Arab countries of feudalists and the trading and money-lending comprador bourgeoisie, the limited layers of the national bourgeoisie and the urban petty-bourgeoisie (craftsmen, clerks, tionaries, intellectuals), and the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry, and they take on a pronounced Bonapartist character. As such, however, they are doomed either finally to succumb again to the influence of the feudo-bourgeois, or in the best of cases to become the tool of the policy and interests of the national industrial bourgeoisie and of the urban petty bourgeoisie won over to the same aims.
The evolution of Kassem, more rapid than that of Nasser, is characteristic in this connection. In order to consolidate his Bonapartist power, Kassem was obliged for a whole period not only to tolerate the revolutionary movement in the cities and the countryside and the organizations claiming to represent it, but to base himself partly thereon in order to stand up to the comprador feudobourgeosie and to the pro-Nasser circles that were aiming to overthrow him.
Kassem has gradually become the tool of the policy of the Iraqi ruling circles who think to exploit the considerable wealth of the country on their own account, and who. in connivance with other Arab leading circles, especially in Syria, are competing for supremacy in the Middle East with the Egyptian bourgeoisie lined up behind Nasser. The Kassem-Nasser rivalry, as well as that which sets Nasser against Bourguiba, destroys the myth of Arab unity ser above inter-class antagonisms, and shows that the historically progressive search for the effective unity of the Arab nation will be the work not of the Arab bourgeoisie but of the Arab revolutionary masses engaged in the combat against imperialism, and at a given stage equally against their own ruling classes, including the national bourgeoisie.
The relative consolidation of Kassem's power has been greatly aided by the treacherous policy of the Iraqi CP, which has "idealized" Kassem, has enormously helped in building up his prestige, has subordinated the autonomous policy and organization of the revolutionary movement to Kassem's leadership, and has not been able to use this movement to raise the revolution to a higher level. As in the case of Nasser and the Egyptian C P, which for a whole period glorified Nasser and his regime, and also of the Moroccan C P's attitude toward the sultan, the monarchy, and his regime, the Iraqi CP is now reaping the contempt and the repression of the idol it adored.
That is why, though it is correct and necessary to sup port them critically against the attacks of imperialism or the native feudo-bourgeois, it is vital to dissipate the illusions of the masses about them and to promote an autonomous class policy aimed toward the workers' and peasants' government.
The replacement of a transitional programme which
40 links up the masses' elementary economic and political demands with the transitional demands, properly so called, and the prospect of the workers' and peasants' government, by a merely bourgeois-democratic programme ensuring the economic development of capitalism, can lead only to certain defeat for the revolutionary movement and to the dictatorial rule of the bourgeoisie or even of the comprador feudo-bourgeois. For only the proletarian leadership of the revolutionary movement of the masses, setting up a workers' and peasants' government, can solve the bourgeois-democratie tasks in the dependent countries (agrarian reform, liquidation of the aftermath of imperialism, unification) and start industrialization off on the basis of a nationalized planned economy that productively mobilizes all the country's unused manpower.
After the Mossadegh experience in Iran and the Nasser experience in Egypt, the experience of the Iraqi revolution forms the most advanced point reached up till now in tha Middle East by the colonial revolution.
This experience also shows that without a proletarian and socialist leadership of the revolutionary movement of the masses, the revolution has no chance of solving the bourgeois-democratic tasks and of seriously tackling industrialization. On the contrary, the Bonapartist staffs in power fatally succumb to reactionary native forces and to the influence of imperialism, in order to keep their movement within the limits of capitalist development of the country, based on the essential contribution of foreign capital and the superexploitation of the native masses.
Kassem's power, however, is still weak, and the revolutionary potentialities of the Iraqi masses, though stricken, have not been exhausted. The rectification of the situation remains possible provided that the mass movement clarifies its position toward the bourgeois Bonapartist power of Kassem, breaks off the permanent alliance subordinated to his leadership, and opens up in Iraq the prospect of the workers' and peasants' government.
More generally, revolutionary Marxists must fight for the formation of both a United Socialist Republic of the Arab East and a Maghrebian Socialist Republic, first stages toward the formation of an Arab Socialist Republic. THE ALGERIAN REVOLUTION
At almost the other extremity of the Arab world the Algerian revolution is continuing its already more than sixyear-long combat against the essential part of the repressive forces of French imperialism.
The Arab world is thus caught in between two hotbeds of active revolution, Iraq and Algeria: these have to take into account, beside their own internal difficulties of development, the hostility of imperialism, the very relative interest of the Soviet bureaucracy, and the attitude of the bourgeoisies. bourgeois wing of the Arab revolution has been considerably strengthened, and, left to its own dynamics, keep the revolution at a level similar to that in the semi-colonial countries of Latin America.
The Algerian revolution is at the present time a plebeian force not tamed by the bourgeoisie of the Maghreb or by any imperialism. a seriously breached feudal class and of a relatively important urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, the depth of the revolutionary process is causing the peasant and proletarian base of the Algerian revolution always exert a preponderant top and the petty-bourgeois elements who stud the appara. compared to the bourgeois elements at the tus of the FLN.
But a serious danger arises from the structure of this organization, its political apparatus formed in emigration being insufficiently linked up with the fighting forces of the revolution and controlled by them. This factor, com-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL bined with the facts that the F L N's social and political doctrine is still not specified, and that the aid from the French and international proletariat has been insufficient. has contributed to the constant pressure on the revolution external bourgeois and imperialist outside, and bureaucratization of the FLN.
Such an evolution could be fought against only by the contribution of effective proletarian aid, first France itself, and by the creation inside the FLN of a tendency with a specifically proletarian and socialist orientation, linked up with the fighting base of the revolution, the combatants in the interior and the population, and the proletarian immigration in France.
For six years it has sacrificed a great part of its living forces in an unequal combat against a powerful imperialism, and without substantial aid from the world proletariat. At the same time it has been able in combat to arrive at an unquestionable maturity, to create cadres, to expand network of its international propaganda, publie opinion, especially that of the Arab and African countries, and to subject French imparialism to a material and military effort that gravely handicaps its interests and plans in various fields.
At present, in order that it may face the eventuality of a new long period of struggle with French imperialism, it needs — in addition to the aid of the workers' states, the international proletariat, and the Arab and African people (in the form of material, diplomatic, and moral help) — to raise to a higher political and organizational level the organization that leads it. Otherwise the immense losses, wear-and-tear, and combat fatigue might possibly lead to a defeat — not of the struggle for the goal of independence in one form or another, but of the revolution for the goal of a real independence that opens the road to the rapid industrial economic development of the country. Anyway, the plebeian base of the Algerian revoution has already acquired enough experience so that the rentuality of a pure and simple Bourguibist developmen of the revolution can be excluded.
An ideological differentiation within the FLN. with a break into two tendencies - one bourgeois, Bourguibist, which would try to corner the leadership of the country on the basis of a compromise with imperialism, and the other more proletarian — is possible, if not in the long run inevitable. In this case the process which is going on the Istiqlal in Morocco will take place also in the F LN, with this difference: that the Bourguibist tendency will turn out to be weaker right from the beginning, while the left tendency may turn out to be much more radical than the Moroccan left, and will be able to turn toward a mass party based on the trade unions.
The December 1960 mass movements marked a new stage in the revolution characterized by: a) the active mobilization of the masses in the cities; b) the spontaneous nature of the demonstrations, which went far beyond the cadres and directives of the FLN; c) the participation of new generations that have been formed during the war and have had no previous political experience, and the blossoming forth of new cadres emerging from these youthful strata; d) the mass participation of women, who played an extremely important role in the struggle; e) the functioning of embryonic committees that ensured the de facto leadership of the movement.
As a result of all these factors, taken together, the plebeian left of the FLN comes out of this new stage strengthened and consequently holds increasingly strong cards in the hypothesis that an agreement is achieved between the F L N leadership and de Gaulle (this agreement cannot in any way imply a capitulation of the FLN under the present objective conditions).
The Algerian revolution is a powerful stimulus not only to the entire Arab revolution, but also and especially to the whole African revolution. In the lack of an effective
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL aid from the French and European proletariat, it is still the advances of the African revolution that might be able, more than any other factor, to influence later developments in the Algerian revolution. Furthermore, the Algerian revolution forms an integral part of the Maghrebian revolution, the coming resurgence of which depends to a large degree on developments in the struggle in Algeria. Within the general framework of the Maghreb, a very important part will be played by the revolution in Morocco. In this country there is to be found the numerically most important, most concentrated, best organized, and most combative working class, and in fact the feudo-capitalist classes took power after a bitter fight against it (the opposite of Tunisia, where the bourgeoisie reached power with the support of the popular forces). Several factors indicate that the class forces facing each other are engaged in preparing for a decisive show-down and that this show-down may even
Whatever may be the future of the Algerian revolution and the FLN, it is not possible to be satisfied with criticizing such an organization from outside it before having brought a genuine international aid to the revolution and having worked within the very ranks of this organization. After the December days of 1960, revolutionary Marxists must in particular try to make connections with the middle cadres who have emerged in the movement, who represent embryonic form the first nuclei of proletarian leadership.
9. NEGRO AFRICA
The most spectacular developments in the recent unfolding of the colonial revolution are taking place in Negro
At an amazing speed the territories under direct colonial control in the region are attaining self-government even formal independence, skipping over stages. British as well as French and Belgian imperialism have found themselves obliged either to retreat here and there before the movement set going by the masses demanding their liberation from the direct colonial yoke or even to proceed to split such movements by turning the formal power over to native élites. There are still only Central Africa, South Africa, and the territories under Portuguese control that are lagging behind in such an evolution.
The reasons driving imperialism to this greater flexibility are various:
The awakening of the African masses as a result of the events of the war and since then (the strengthening of the workers' states, headed by the USSR, the victory of the Chinese revolution, the Arab and especially the Algerian revolution) has been further aided by the development of the capitalist economy in Africa, urbanization, detribalization, the insecurity introduced into the economic and social life of the autarkie societies of earlier days, the birth of a concentrated and dynamic proletariat and strata of intellectuals, and even in places potentially bourgeois elements who aspire to administer the power themselves. Furthermore, all of Africa (and Negro Africa in particular) containing very considerable and still almost unexploited become since the imperialism. strategic positions have also increased it: interest for imperialism.
And lastly, the rivalries among the imperialist powers who are compeiing for the continent, as East-West antagonism, have helped the self-confidence of the native élites in the possibility of their exploiting the imperialism, as well as of French, Belgian, and American imperialisms, in Africa, now sufficiently clear, up the formation of limited native élites, turn the politica] power over to them, and associate them, by bribing them, in the economic coexploitation of Africa. In the lack a classic-type class structure and the lack of a bourgeoisie, and even a petty bourgeoisie with an organic structure, the limited élites that exist - a few intellectuals, a few functionaries, a few trade-union cadres, a few tradesmen and businessmen - constitute potentially, if not already actually, new comprador strata, on which imperialism bases its hope to see them develop and stabilize as such.
But on the other hand the still extreme social, economic. and political weakness of these limited élites, a powerful mass movement that is eager for radical reforms and solutions, as well as the awareness of these élites that they have the possibility of staking on the rivalries among the imperialists and the East-West antagonism, them to a sui generis role not only politically but also socially, in the following more specific sense:
Not having yet taken form and root in rapidly changing African society, these élites constitute, at the present stage, less the embryo of a neo-bourgeois class than the embryo of a state bureaucracy manœuvring between the plebeian mass of present African society and imperialism. It is only in cases like Ghana or the Ivory Coast, where capitalist penetration in agriculture has already created a peasantry and an urban petty-bourgeoisie (studded with a few ge. nuinely bourgeois elements), both mercantile, embryo of a native bourgeois power is to be found.
This specific social role peculiar to present-day African society can just as well evolve toward a clearly bourgeois character as toward a quasi-proletarian character, according to the strength of the mass movement, and its relations with imperialism and the workers' states. At the present moment the Guinea of Sekou Touré is the most advanced example of this phenomenon. The Kenya of Jomo Kenyatta may turn out tomorrow to be an analogous example, as well as the Cameroons, the territories under Portuguese control, and others. In all these examples the fundamental element of future evolution is the state and the stratum which administers it.
In the case where the economy is aimed toward nationalization of the few key agricultural, and trading enterprises, the collectivization of agriculture on the basis of the tribal village or of broader communes, and structure of the state on the basis of peasant and urban communes, there is beginning the development of a workers' based essentially on a nationalized and planned
The nationalization of the foreign enterprises can, furehpamiate only armied part of she pr fit, wide rehavesthes the rest on the spot, and submit to control by the state and by their workers organized in councils.
The collectivization of agriculture can turn out to be enormously facilitated by the survival in Negro Africa of communal tribal customs, particularly strong in this field The essential aid (scientific, technical, and material) of the state to agriculture, in order to fight effectively agains: unfavorable climatic conditions and to increase yields can also enormously facilitate such a collectivist trend in agriculture right from the beginning. In these countries most important resource for their rapid economic development lies in the productive use of all available manpower, hitherto largely unused.
But such a mobilization is impossible without the climate of a genuine revolution, of a genuine workers' and peasants' government, in the framework of a nationalized and planned
Naturally it is not a matter of aiming at the construction of an economy, which could only keep the living levels of the masses bureaucratic dictatorship. It is a matter of profiting broadly by all the possibilities of the world market in both its
42 capitalist and socialist sectors, as well as by the development of the inter-African market and trade.
The socialist revolution in Negro Africa inevitably presents peculiarities owing to the fact that we are dealing here with an economico-social level lower than that of the dependent countries of feudo-capitalist structure in other parts of the world, in Latin America or Asia. In Negro Africa we are generally dealing with more specific structures of a still largely tribal society, breaking up under the penetration of imperialism and capitalism that is destroying the autarkic subsistence economy, commercializing native small-scale agricultural production side-by-side with capitalist large-scale agricultural production, and causing the concentration in the cities, the mining centres, and the imperialist plantations of the manpower released by the break-up of the traditional national economy.
Because this degree of economic development did nol throw up native ruling classes — for the limited European minorities, up until very recently, administered and directed the economy themselves, while they entrusted local civil administration to the traditional chiefs and their own functionaries - present-day society in Negro Africa is a specific form of combined development of the structures of natural economy, simple market economy, and imperialist economy, while the links of a feudal economy or of native capitalist economy are still totally or largely lacking. 2
It is from this that there arises the specific role of the limited native stratum which is acceding to power and controls the state, in an equally specific international and national context unknown in the past. This stratum possesses in the state a force per se, without undergoing the precise influence or control of a ruling clase whose agent it is. It is by its administration of the state that this stratum is developing and acquiring social importance, and not by the intrinsic needs of production and its role in production. Under the historical conditions prevailing in the past and up till the last war, such a stratum could have evolved only toward a comprador bourgeoisie in the service of imperialism.
But under the specific present conditions, where it inevitably is subjected to the influence of the powerful movement of the masses and of the rising power of the workers' states, and knows that it can profit by the East-West antagonism, this stratum is taking on a Bonapartist role which it imparts to the whole state, whose economic and social structures are not yet definitively oriented toward an inevitably classic capitalist development.
The boundaries of the present African states are artificial and absurd, and correspond to the lines of the carve-up into zones of influence, a division carried out by imperialism toward the end of the last century (Congress of Berlin, 1885). It is necessary to proceed to a regroupment of the existing states into broader formations, in the direction of the African Federal State, grouping all the Negro-Hammite peoples' south of the Arab countries of North Africa.
These peoples are not strictly homogeneous from the viewpoint of ethnic origins, language, and religion. But common customs, a common civilization, and a common destiny have been forged on the basis of an identical tribal, economic, and social organization through the centuries of slave exploitation by the whites and the native mercenaries under their orders, and now the beginning of an African common national consciousness through the struggle that is being carried on for liberation from the imperialist yoke. The Pan-Africanism that stirs the African élites and more and more carries away the vanguard sectors entering into the decisive struggle against imperialism, corresponds to a 2 With the exception, however, of certain regions such as the northern part of Nigeria, where feudal agricultural property predominates.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL confused search for African national unity, forged by those common origins, destiny, and struggle.
Granted, Pan-Africanism can also become the ideology of the African bourgeoisie now in formation to overshadow differences and the class struggle and to exploit for a whole period for its own class profit the revolutionary potentialities and labor power of the masses. (Pan-Arabism is undergoing such a fate at the hands of a Nasser and of other spokesmen of the rising Arab bourgeoisie.) It is to distinguish between Pan-Africanism in the necessary mouth of a Nkhrumah and Pan-Africanism as an idea of national unity of the whole African Negro people, powerful revolutionary force urging on the African masses in their struggle against imperialism.
The concrete stages of regroupment of the African nation, by fusion or federation, cannot be foreseen and advocated as early as the present moment. But it can be said that the tendency to unification must be everywhere favored, encouraged, written into the programme of the African revolutionary party. If the radiation of the Guinea of Sékou Touré is destined to grow in all Negro Africa as an attempt at a non-capitalist development, the revolutionary hotbeds to be noted in Negro . Africa in the coming years are South Africa, Angola and Mozambique, Central Africa, Kenya, the Congo, and Nigeria. The revolution that has begun in South Africa has every chance of developing in the coming years as a second Algerian war at the other end of the continent. This struggle, a combination of a guerrilla and a revolutionary mobili zation of the proletariat in the cities and the mines, will have the active support of all Negro Africa, which constitutes the hinterland. The human reserves of the peasantry, as well as the geographical advantages of the country, are extraordinarily favorable to a guerrilla. Furthermore, the industrial, agricultural, and mining proletariat of South Africa is vital to the country's economy. A revolutionary uprising of the South African masses, based on a genuine revolutionary organization of a national character, is capable of putting a relatively rapid end to the fierce resistance of the European minority. But in any case, it is necessary te take this inevitable resistance into account: not to minimize it and to make preparations on the basis thereof.
The South African revolution will inevitably have to take on the aspect of a proletarian and socialist revolution. overthrowing the regime - slavery-minded, racialist, sui generis — of the economically most advanced capitalism in all Africa. Both during the phase of struggle and by the significance and results of its victorious outcome, the South African revolution will pull all Negro Africa up to a higher level of its revolutionary development. What is at present necessary in South Africa is to build on a national scale a revolutionary organization of the non-European masses which, while setting out from these masses' economic and politica! national demands, will be aimed toward the armed uprising and the proletarian revolution.
Without decisive action in this direction, without participation in all the mobilizations of the masses, withour flexible tacties so as not to get cut off from the masses even when they take false steps, there is a great risk that the revolutionary potentiality of the masses may be for a whole period spent in explosions without a future, and that the effective leadership of them may pass over to activist elements who are incapable of keeping up a longterm struggle nationally organized and steadily raising itself to higher levels.
As in the case of the Arab countries - and in places even more in the case also of the countries of Negro Africa _ the organization of the revolutionary Marxist tendency, necessary everywhere, will have to do the bulk of its work for a whole period inside the existing national mass movements and in the trade unions where these exist. Its general goal will be the creation of class
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL parties of a mass character, based on trade unions, to be organized everywhere. gramme, corresponding to the specific conditions in each country, while taking into account their regroupment and orientation toward the African Federal State (or the Socialist United States of Negro Africa). The organization of trade unions and their autonomous federation on the Pan-African scale is a task to be ardently pursued every. where, for the trade unions are called on to represen! everywhere the main organized force that the governments will try to domesticate to their service (as well as, in addition, the nationalist parties of the bourgeoisie now in formation).
10. THE NEW PHASE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTION THE CAUSES OF INSTABILITY IN LATIN AMERICA
The revolution in Latin America is reaching the highest level attained by the colonial revolution at the present stage, having gone beyond the phase of formal independence and acquired a considerable experience of the comprador oligarchy and even of the national bourgeoisie.
The capitalist development in Latin most advanced of all the dependent regions, and in cer lain cases, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, xico, has even reached a level which brings these coun tries elose to being capitalist states, admittedly behindhand compared to the advanced capitalist states of today, but materially ciose to the average pre-war capitalist level. Yet even in these cases the imperialist grip is still strong, as well as that of the comprador landed and trading oligarchy, which implies combined structure in these countries, full of contradictions, and of discontinuities and disequilibriums characteristic of their economic development.
The process of industrialization of Latin America has been considerably speeded up during the war and since, and, despite its jerky character, does not fail to be continuous. Of all the dependent regions, Latin America has received the greatest part of the investments of European and North America origins.
But it is also from there that imperialism has extorted the greatest part of surplus value, far surpassing the total of its "aid" without productive reinvestment on the spot. It is the conditions of imperialist exploitation of Latin America's enormous resources in agriculture, power, and mining, combined with that of the parasitical landed and commercial oligarchy, which holds back the economic development of this region and causes the discontinuities, crises, and disequilibriums characteristic of this development.
The formation of capital productively reinvested on the spot is hindered by the repatriation of the greatest part of the surplus value extorted by the mining, petroleum, agricultural, and other imperialist enterprises; by the speculative turn given to its investments by the oligarchy; by the very weak rate of internal savings, due to the present low income of the population. The importance of this last factor in capital formation is nevertheless limited compared to the other two factors.
As long exports profited by scarcities the war and immediately thenafter, the formation of local monetary capital was on the rise and considerable in amount. Thai, together with other factors, aided speededup industrialization. But since these exports have been suffering from the drop in prices and even relatively in volume, this source for the formation of local capital has been diminishing.
Latin America's superannuated feudo-capitalist and imperialist structures, moreover, prevent the balanced expan-
43 sion of the internal market. The peasant majority of the population has little or no land, and is without adequate aid from the state, the workers' wages are generally low, while a developed substructure (communications, power, various constructions of public uffity, ete) are lacking. As a consequence the internal market is both limited and disjointed.
As a result of the fact, moreover, that the economy often depends on the export of a very limited range of if not of one single agricultural or mining product, these countries feel recessions in the world market as genuine economic crises, and struggle in the throes of chronic inflation. This does not tend to broaden the internal market or to aid the formation and investment of local capital.
The artificial frontiers — an inheritance from imperialist colonization and domination and from the regional terests of the comprador oligarchy — also prevent the market from being expanded to the full extent of its natural confines: all of Latin America; or, to begin with, South America on the one hand, and Central America, Mexico, and the islands of the Caribbean on tha othe is North American imperialism that is opposed, with the firmest determination, to the free development of the Latin American revolution. Latin America's resources in agriculture, power, and mining, from Mexico to Patagonia, of Venezuela and Brazil, constitute for the highly developed economy of the US A, which is exhausting its own national resources, absolutely necessary reserves. Latin America is, moreover, the most important outlet for the industrial products and capital of Yankee imperialism, while its strategie interest is also vital for the latter.
It is North American imperialism which, having graaually supplanted the imperialisms in America to a great extent, has become the main reactionary force, allied with the comprador oligarchy, in hindering this region's free and balanced economic development and industrialization, and in maintaining both the anachronistic social structures and the extreme Balkanization of the region.
Its grip on it since the war, however, has not ceased to encounter the violent and sometimes victorious opposition of the new rising forces of the Latin America revolution. Its hold is equally undermined by revived imperialist competition, as well as by that begun by the workers' states.
To the degree in which, despite everything, the economic development and industrialization of this region have continued and even speeded up since the war, social configuration of these countries has been seriously modified, and is very different from, far more developed than, that in the other dependent regions of the world.
Besides the peasantry — share-croppers, rural laborers, and poor individual peasants — who still form the great majority of the population, and also besides the considerable urban petty bourgeoisie - intellectuals, officeworkers, functionaries, small businessmen, men - there has been formed a concentrated and dyindustrial proletariat, especially in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, as well as in the mining or oil centres of Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela.
Furthermore, besides the classic comprador landed and commercial strata, there have been formed new strata of the industrial national bourgeoisie, who hope for a freer economic development, less hindered by imperialism and the oligarchy. It is these strata which, in various Latin American countries, either directly or though the intermediary of Bonapartist political regimes, are endeavoring to corner and hold channel for their own profit the powerful anti-imperialist
44 and revolutionary movement of the masses of the peasantry, the proletariat, and the radicalized urban petty bourgeoisie.
But the resistance of imperialism and the oligarchy to such experiments is still very strong. What is more, national bourgeoisie itself is afraid to trust too the support of the revolutionary masses and is incapable of radically opposing imperialism and the oligarchy. This political factor, in interaction with the economic difficulties, the acuteness of social contradictions, and the power of the revolutionary movement of the masses, is at the basis of the chronic instability, the almost permanent revolutionary crisis, which characterizes Latin American countries at the present stage.
Since the dictatorship of the regimes of the comprador oligarchy, relying on the army and the police, proves be henceforth impossible and since the power of the national bourgeoisie, caught in between the opposition of imperialism, of the oligarchy, the radicalism of the mass movement, proves profoundly unstable, political crisis in Latin America beendemic. It thus reflects on the political plane the revolutionary transformation now going on in Latin American society, full of contradictions, discontinuities, and disequilibriums, the present international context of the general crisis of imperialism, the rise of the economic and military power of the workers' states, and the international rise of the colonial revolution.
The prolongation of instability and revolutionary crisis in the Latin American countries is moreover the expression of the lateness — or rather, inadequate parallel growth in maturity — of a revolutionary proletarian leadership capable of bringing this crisis lo a victorious outcome in the immediate future. But the objective conditions are eminently favorable for such a rapid growth in maturity and for the formation of a revolutionary proletarian mass
The objectively revolutionary situation which at present generally characterizes Latin America clearly reflected both in the power of the revolutionary movement of the masses and in the extreme division and acuteness of antagonisms among the leading classes.
The uninterrupted struggle of the Argentine proletariat since the fall of Perón, the maintenance of the fundamental gains of the Bolivian revolution since 1952, the rise influence of the worker's parties in Chile, the fall of dictatorships in Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela, the Cuban revolution, and the struggle now begun against. the dietatorship in Paraguay, are so many eloquent signs of the rising extreme power of the revolutionary movement
On the other hand, the divisions within the ruling classes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and elsewhere, as well as the inability of the army - traditional tool of reactionary dictatorship in these countries - to intervene effectively and thwart the chronic crisis, are also signifi. cant signs of the depth of the instability and of the objectively revolutionary situation that marks Latin AmeTHE TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME AND THE MAIN PROBLEMS OF THE LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The level that the Latin American revolution will reach a: the next stage will depend on the formation of a revolutionary proletarian mass leadership capable of replacing the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois staffs that are leading the revolutionary movement of the masses. This task is at present possible provided that the revolutionary Marxist tendency operates with audacity and ingenuity in the mass movement, taking into account the special conditions that prevail in each country.
Everywhere combining independent activity with entrist
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL work in the proletarian or even plebeian mass formations of a revolutionary nature, it will have as its task to work up and to advocate a transitional programme toward a workers' and peasants' governement and toward socialism, which includes in particular: a radical agrarian reform, distributing the land to the peasants who till it, and an effective aid by the state to the latters' coöperative organizations; a plan for economie development and industrialiof a fundamentally nationalized economy that takes into account the resources of the world market, especially of ihe unified Latin American and of aid from and exchanges with the workers' states. On the general Latin American level the slogan of the Socialist United States of Latin America must be tirelessly propagandized. What is everywhere necessary is not abstract propaganda for the proletarian power and the socialist revolution, but a concrete answer to the vital problems of each country, to be solved by the workers' and peasants' government based on the political and trade-union workers' tions and on the organization of the masses into militia and The agrarian reform must lead to distributing the land of the oligarchy to the peasants who till it and to envisage their immediately collectivist exploitation only in the specific cases where still deep-rooted communal customs facilitate this solution, as also in the case of plantations which collectivist exploitations run by collectives formed by their workers. The agrarian reform must also be accompanied by a programme of specific aid on the technical and financial level by the workers' state, favoring coöperative exploitation by peasants.
As for nationalizations, although those of the banks. transport, some key enterprises, and foreign trade are dispensable right from the start, as for the rest, measures will be taken according to the criterion of continuity and the increase in production, within the possible limits of state control over enterprises (including foreign ones). As in the dependent countries less developed than those of Latin America, in this region also one of the main resources for speeding up economic development and industrialization according to a plan is the productive mobilization of the immense manpower of a population, growing at one of the highest rates in the world, that is at present largely unused. But only the radical revolution led by the proletariat, under the power of a workers' and peasants' government, can create the moral and practical framework needed for such a mobilization. The working up of the concrete political transitional programme should go hand in hand with the search for the transitional organizational road toward the mass revolutionary party. The goal in this field, everywhere in Latin America at present, must be to form class political organizations having a inass influence, from the most advanced formations of the national bourgeoisie and the radical petty-bourgeoisie which are corner ing the leadership of the revolution. A characteristic of the Latin American revolution, marked than elsewhere, is the important role (including a political role) played in several Latin American countries by the trade-union movement (Argentina, Chile especially). In all these countries the national bourgeoisie has sought to domesticate the trade unions as a force to fight against its adversaries and to develop itself. To offset this tendency and to exploit fully the social and political importance acquired by the unions, it is necessary tu propagandize systematically the idea of the mass Labor trade unions, and of a workers' government based on the trade unions (where the objective conditions for such a slogan exist). Furthermore, in order to strengthen the union movement's own power, it is necessary to call for and fight for trade-union unification in each
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL country (one union per industry and one single trade-union federation) as well as for the creation of a single revolutionary union centre of the toilers of Latin America. Agitation for the anti-imperialist united front, always combined with that for the proletarian united front, is the agitation corresponding to the needs of this period.
The immense revolutionary potentialities of Latin America's landless peasatry have been shown in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Central America, and above all in Cuba. The worker-peasant alliance is the decisive factor for the victory of the revolution in this country.
The revolutionary mobilization of the peasants is possible on the basis of systematic propagande for the programme of radical agrarian reform, and of no less systematic work among them which will root the revolutionary organization in the rural regions and create peasant cadres. But above all it is necessary to seize a politically propitious moment during the period of acute revolutionary ferment to organize and audaciously launch an armed struggle by the peasants for the land, and to connect it up with the workers' mobilizations. Thenafter the peasant guerrilla may prove to be a powerful stimulus to the workers' struggles and deprive the class enemy of the advantage in case of a possible partial defeat or ebb of the workers' movement.
In Latin America, the revolutionary Marxist tendency has a field that is more propitious than elsewhere for its rapid development. Apart from the objectively favorable conditions, neither the existing Socialist nor Communist Parties have become deeply rooted in the masses. The sole exception is Chile. There, under the pressure of the masses, the Socialist Party (whose class composition and influence are entirely different from those of the other SPs in Latin America) and the Communist Party (which has kept a considerable rank and file) sei up a united front (the
Rich froThy an oas of ayed So alcisive tven has thin
which Trotskyism has played a decisive role, contributed to correct partially the CP's line of support to the national bourgeoisie. The opportunist and timorous policy of the CPs and SPs elsewhere, in tow to the bourgeoisie, does not correspond to the revolutionary aspirations of the Latin. American masses and to the urgency of a radical solution.
Under the pressure of the powerful revolutionary movement of the masses, the divisions and crisis within the ruling classes, the weakening of imperialism internationally. and the rising power and prestige of the workers' states, important left-centrist wings are at present developing in certain Socialist Parties (Chile, Uruguay, Argentina).
The Communist Parties, on the contrary, are centred round the sole goal of bringing pressure on US imperialism for the benefit of the momentary interests of Soviet diplomacy, by staking exclusively on the quite relative antagonism hetween the national bourgeoisie and that imperialism — whence their abandonment of any autonomous class policy and unfolding of an ultra-opportunist policy that relegates them to the role of powerless supernumeraries, without prestige and invariably "betrayed" by different politicians of the bourgeoisie looking for a highly appreciated "left" cover. SPECIAL SITUATIONS
In the present context, which is in general objectively revolutionary in Latin America, there stand out the more special situations in Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba.
In Argentina, the spontaneous combativity of the working class is equalled only by that of the masses in Japan. Under these conditions the stabilization of the regime is constantly put off, but neither do the masses succeed in giving a revolutionary outcome to the country's chronic crisis. Only the creation of a class political party based on the trade unions, which will know how to seize the propitious moment for organizing the masses in committees
45 and militia, mobilizing the peasants and the agricultural proletariat, and aim the whole struggle toward the workers' and peasants' government, can bring the country out of its blind alley.
In the situation created by the revolutionary mobilization of the proletariat, there have appeared at various moments, at least potentially, elements of dual power; these will also probably appear again. It is necessary to work in such a way that these elements take on specific organizational form (committees, militia, guerrilla). In such situation, propaganda, increased tenfold, for the Labor Party based on the trade unions can then produce more suhstantial results, swinging the radical wing of the Peronist trade unions in this direction — which would speed up by interaction the whole revolutionary process in the country. Because, stuck as it now is in the blind alley of an activity that is, from the political viewpoint, largely of the revolutionary syndicalist type, there is a risk that in the long run it will, at least temporarily, exhaust the activist interest of the masses and cause a stabilization - temporary and quite relative - of the open or camouflaged dictatorship based essentially on the army.
In Bolivia we are witnessing a new relative upsurge of the revolutionary movement of the masses which is expressed in the sanguinary defeats among the peasants and miners suffered by both the rosca and the right wing of the M NR. But for lack of a sufficient strengthening of the revolutionary party, there is a risk that this upsurge be monopolived once more by the left-centre wing of the MN R (Paz Estenssoro), seconded by the centrist leadership of the COB (Lechin) and the M NR left.
It is the power of the revolutionary movement of the masses that permitted the maintenance of the fundamental conquests of the revolution and heretofore victoriously repulsed all assaults by the reaction and by the pro-impe ralist right wing of the M NR. It is the weakness of the revolutionary party that has prevented the revolution from ending up in the workers' and peasants government.
With the prospect of a return to power of the Paz Estenssoro - Lechin centrist alliance and of the present favorable Latin American context, a new rise of the masses is inevitable. It is necessary to profit by this situation to put the whole mining region under the effective administration of the workers (committees and militia), to generalize the agrarian reform under the pressure of the peasants' militia and unions, and to impose an economic plan taking into account the country's real resources, including its labor power, and the aid of the workers' states and exchanges with them.
The slogan of the Special Congress of the COB, to settle — with the help of the committees and militia - the question of power, of agrarian reform, and of the economic plan, can under these conditions become timely again. The key to this possible and necessary development remains, however, the strengthening of the party on the national scale, and especially among the miners and peasants, where the essential part of its daily activity and its leadership should be.
In Venezuela the party borne to power by the revoluionary masses must confront pressure from imperialism and from the masses eager for a radical transformation. for a real outcome to the revolution they began. Past experience in this country has shown that all governments, in however "revolutionary" a way they may have begun their career, invariably succumb to the pressure of Yankee imperialism and of its enormous interests in Venezuela': fabulous oil and mining riches.
The Acción Democrática is a heteroclite formation reminiscent of the A PR A or the MNR, with a radical pelly-bourgeois leadership, which has already become differentiated into a reactionary and pro-imperialist wing and a wing more pervious to the influence of its radical base.
Without the organization of workers' and peasants' militia and committees, it will prove to be impossible to force party and the government to broaden the conquests of the revolution, to proceed to a genuine agrarian reform, to nationalize the country's oil and mining riches, to promulgate a plan for the diversified and rapid development of the economy, profiting by the country's considerable financial resources, and thus effectively to defend the revolution against the inevitable new assaults by imperialism and reaction.
Entrist work of the revolutionary Marxist tendency side the left wing of the A D must lead to advocating the formation of a Labor Party based on the trade unions.
In Cuha, the achievements and teachings revolution, advanced post of the whole Latin American revolution, are already numerous and important.
The Cuban revolution has demonstrated the effectiveness of a guerrilla based on the active support of a poor peasantry eager for a radical agrarian reform, combined with of the proletarian and petty-bourgeois masses of the urban centres, including, at a given stage, in the form of armed action by limited squads surrounded by the sympathy and protection of the population.
The Cuban revolution, under the impetus of the revolutionary masses - peasants, proletarians, and radicalized urban petty-bourgeois — and in face of the fact that the comprador forces were so extremely compromised with the sanguinary dictatorship now overthrown, is developing rapidly and powerfully as a permanent revolution, of its disparate official leadership and the lack of a mass
The leadership of the Cuban revolution, purged of a whole series of flatly bourgeois-liberal elements, present a Jacobin staff subjected in varying degrees to the revolutionary influence of the masses - that is staff which, despite its non-proletarian social origins has found itself forced to go beyond the of capitalism and seriously to undermine its equilibrium. But it has not yet overthrown this regime, and it will not be able, in its present form, to do so, without the creation of a mass revolutionary party, linked up with the masses' militia, committees, and trade unions.
By the scope already attained by the agrarian reform,
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL by the few measures of nationalization of foreign rialist enterprises, by the thorough purge of the state apparatus, and by the creation of militia and people's tributhe Cuban revolution has already gone considerably outside the frame of capitalism without having completely broken it and replaced it by a state of a new type based on a nationalized and planned economy. What is important ar the present stage is not so much the completion of the economic and social measures that will confirm the overthrow of the feudo-capitalist regime, but rather the organization of a proletarian political power by the extension and institutionalization of militia and people's tribunals, and the organization of communes and committees as organs of local power.
The economic and social measures in the direction of an effective nationalized and planned economy can be spaced out in accordance with the strengthening of the revolution internally and internationally, provoking premature reactions by Yankee imperialism and production to suffer disproportionately. The key lo the victorious development of the Cuban revolution lies, inside the country, in the rapid formation of the mass revolutionary party with a clear proletarian and socialist programme, integrating all the country's valid revolutionary elements, and, outside the country, international organization for the defense of the Cuban revolution, especially in the countries of Latin America.
The echo and repercussions of the Cuban revolution in all this region are already immense and will continue to increase. Hence these are to be expected fierce efforts by Yankee imperialism and the Latin American comprador oligarchies to beat down the Cuban revolutionary regime by any means, or to bring it to capitulate and go bourgeois.
For this reason the safety of the Cuban revolution lies finally in keeping up its effective defense in the Latin American countries, in a clear indication addressed Yankee imperialism that any military intervention it might make in Cuba would stir up a regular Latin America, in the spread of the Cuban revolution to other countries of Latin America. The movement of organization of Committees for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution, as well as volunteer corps, must be rapidly extended through all Latin America.
THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION AND THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL 11. CONCLUSIONS
One of the most positive aspects of the colonial revolulion is the fact that immense masses of humanity — who were still up till yesterday crushed by the exploitation of imperialism and the comprador ruling classes, povertyuncultured, passive — have got into movement, irreversible and irresistible, lo win for themselves a material, cultural, and social level in conformance with the present possibilities of humanity.
From this point of view a qualitative transformation has been produced in humanity by this revolutionary awakening to the highest civilizing aspirations, and by the results of this awakening on, for example, the status of women and the family, benefiting from this qualitative transformation now being radically changed. All humanity is already by the revolution of masses who have long lived on the edges of civilization, a revolution which by this fact speeds up its general movement toward the new socialist civilization.
In fact, the worker and peasant masses of the colonial nd semi-colonial countries are engaged in achieving their olitical maturity by leaps and bounds, rapidly springing over stages. Driven by their own experience, stimulated by the successes achieved by sectors of the masses of other backward countries, by the victories of the revolution now going on, by the economie advances of the states, and especially of China, masses (more and more capable of turning toward the ideas of Trotskyism and our movement) will find the way to a rapid progress of their political consciousness, serious strata of their vanguard will make the direct leap to the ideas and most advanced programme of humanity: the ideas and the programme of the Fourth International.
Granted, it is not a question of exaggeratedly embellishing the fact that the colonial revolution at the present histori. cal stage occupies the vanguard of the world revolution. The revolutionary Marxists are also fully aware of the drawbacks inherent in the lateness of the socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries for raising the ideological level of the masses, for creating genuine mass revolutionary Marxist parties, for overcoming the phenomena of bureaucratization in the movement and in the workers' states, and for rapidly building a socialism that is immediately, and not just in some distant future, of benefit to the masses.
in any case of taking as a point of departure the present historical realities, and of making the most of them. It is now clear that the process of the world revolution is developing from the periphery,
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the colonial and dependent countries as well as from the toward the capitalist countries of Europe, and the United States (very probably the last
The Fourth International, heir to the revolutionary traditions and principles of the Third International of Lenin and Trotsky, under these conditions cannot do otherwise than, quite naturally, carry on the essential part of its activity in the living field of the revolution, where the masses, and the world's most oppressed and exploited peoples, are struggling.
or valid historical reasons the development of the Fourt was during a whole period centred on th capitalist countries, considered, until the eve of the last war, as the N° 1 epicentre of the world revo-
Now it is necessary for the Fourth International to reorganize its activities as an International in terms of the principal sector of the world revolution, which is the colonial revolution, and carry on in this field, for a whole period, the essential part of its efforts.
The immediate future of the International lies in countries and regions like India, Indonesia, the Arab lands, Negro Africa, and Latin America, as well as in Japan, where immediate and rapid gains are possible.
The Fourth International must show itself capable of organizing in all these fields valid forces which withou any sectarianisın link themselves up with the revolutionary
47 movement of the masses and provide effective answers to their aspirations. Indeed, Fourth International is already playing an important though still limited part in various centres of the colonial revolution. The dynamic action of the Fourth International in its theoretical and practical support of the Algerian revolution raises it to the highest levels. In Cuba the action of the Cuban section and of the Trotskyist delegation to the Latin American Youth Congress enabled our movement to win important though diffuse influence within the Cuban revolution and contributed to its progress. In Argentina, the section fused in the last elections with an important current of the Peronist workers' movement.
All this demonstrates that in the next period the Fourth International has the possibility of fusing with important mass movements and leading, or sharing with other currents the leadership of, revolutionary movements in certain countries or regions of the colonial revolution.
The extreme degeneration of the Social-Democracy, in tow to moribund imperialism, and of Stalinism,
Soviet bureaucracy, leave the field of the colonial revolution wide open to practical audacity, the tactical ingenuity, of the revolutionary organizations of the Fourth International.
It is by its close and total fusion with the emancipating truggle of the masses and the most disinherited people in the world that the Fourth International will prove it full historical justification and impose its role as the leading revolutionary vanguard.