RESOLUTION ON THE PERSPECTIVES OF THE WORKERS' MOVEMENTS IN
EUROPE AND OUR TASKS (EXTRACTS) EUROPEAN REVOLUTION AND WORLD REVOLUTION In Great Britain and in the Scandinavian countries the masses were clearly manifesting their will to replace capitalcreated de facto organizations of dual power, and maintained, even after their dissolution, a powerful pressure against the capitalist régime, which ended in the great strikes of 1947-1948 in France, and July 14th 1948 in Italy.
All these factors produced in the capitalism of Westerr Europe a crisis more serious even than that of the period just after the First World War. But today, ten years later, everywhere capitalism appeares recovered and consolidated. Its economy, entirely reconstructed, has surpassed the pre. war level by 50%. Its states, consolidated, are governed everywhere — save in the Scandinavian countries - by the direct representatives of the bourgeoisie.
In France, the key-country of this post-war period in western Europe, it has been able to inflict a very serious lefeat on the workers' movement by establishing withoul a fight the Bonapartist régime of de Gaulle. Elsewhere under the pressure of the recession and encouraged by its victory in France, the bourgeoisie is endeavoring to take back the economic concessions given to the working class in the preceding period, and to reinforce its state
2. Historically, this relative stabilization European capitalism is due neither to the lack of combativity of the masses, nor to objective conditions favorable to capitalism. With the exception of Germany, the situation on these two planes was more unfavorable for the bourgeoisie in western Europe in the period immediately after
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the Second World War than after the First. The fundamental responsibility for that relative stabilization devolves on the bureaucratic leaderships of the SP and CP, who with their own hands rebuilt the crumbling edifice of capitalism. By preserving the foundations of the economy and of the bourgeois state; by using the pretext of the extension of the state sector so as to sow confusion about the lature of this economy and of this state (notably by way of the theory of the 'new democracy"); by dissolving the armed forces of the proletariat, and chanting in favor of he collaboration between the classes with the de Gaulles and de Gasperis; by explaining to the workers that it was necessary to make sacrifices for "national reconstruction,
French and Italian C Ps, with a big majority in the working class, objectively played the same role in France and Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War that was played by the Social-Democracy in Germany Austria in the aftermath of the First.
This treacherous policy of the traditional leaderships of the proletariat had the consequence that the favorable opportunities for a struggle for the conquest of power were lost: "they missed the bus." From that fact, inevitably, the correlation of forces evolved in favor of the bourgeoisie. There are no economic and social situations without a way ut for capitalism. If the workers' movement proves capable, after several years, of resolving a national crisis its own way, then the bourgeoisie ends up by imposing its own solutions. It was thus after 1918; it was the same
3. Nevertheless, the relative stabilization of capitalism western Europe occurred under conditions absolutely different historically from those which prevailed at the end of the revolutionary wave which followed the First World War. In that period, capitalism was more or less stabilized, on the whole of the European continent right up the frontiers of the USSR. After the Second World War, the proletarian revolution triumphed in a new European country, Jugoslavia, and capitalism was destroyed by military-bureaucratic means — in the rest of eastern
From 1923 to 1929, the European bourgeoisie had in addition maintained, without major shocks, its domination over the colonial and semi-colonial countries - with the exception of the Second Chinese Revolution. Since 1945, on the contrary, the colonial revolution has not ceased to extend from country to country and from continent to continent. By its victory in China it has modified the global relation of forces between the classes. By its extension to. Africa, it is now delivering new blows to the economic, social, and political equilibrium attained in western Europe. By penetrating the Portuguese colonies, it may be able to bring about the fall of the régime in Portugal, and on the rebound that of France.
On their side, the economic upsurge of the workers' states, especially that of the US S R, created insecurity and doubt about the advantages of the capitalist régime even among broad layers of the petty-bourgeoisie of western Europe, increased and will increase the popularity and the force of attraction of the ideas of socialization of the means of production and of economic planning. If the crimes of the Soviet bureaucracy have incontestably in the past demoralized the workers' movement in western Europe. thus contributed to the relative stabilization of capitalism, the present upsurge of the Soviet economy, without relucing the distrust of the masses towards the bureaucracy and its agents, will become more and more an force in favor of a new radicalization of the European working class.
reasons, this temporary stabilization of capitalism in Europe will be more unstable, more apt to produce abrupt breakdowns and to create new chances for a rise of the workers' movement than during the last six to seven years, themselves not destitute of abrupt flare-ups of the class struggle. The possibility of a long period of
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL reaction, seeing the triumph of fascist or semi-fascist dictatorships in numerous countries, is excluded. In a world where the relation of forces continues to evolve in favor of the anti-capitalist forces, the opportunities elling blows to capitalism will be offered numerous times
The existence of unsolved international questions question of German unity); the decline of the Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships; the fact that structural deficreate potential foci of political and social crises (colonial war for France; question of the Mezzogiorno in Italy; misery in Greece and Turkey) all that contributes and will contribute to sap the relative stability and will create the possibilities of a chain reaction, if the workers' movement rises to the height of its tasks.
5. For a long period, the international revolutionary movement considered the European revolution, and more especially a victory of the proletarian revolution in of the big industrialized countries of Western Europe (Germany, France, Great Britain), and even indispensable condition, for reversing relation of world forces in favor of the revolution, and for the rise of new forces against the bureaucracy in the US'S R, and the possibility of a victory of the political revolution in that country That thesis, correct for the 19471949 period (and 1928-1949 in relation to the US S R) had to be revised a first time with the victory of the Third Chinese Revolution. That and the extension of the colonial revolution which it aided, have incontestably shifted the centre of gravity of the revolutionary movement outside the advanced capitalist countries. By modifying in the USSR itself the relation of forces between the bureaucracy and the proletariat, they have also created the objective conditions for the defeat of the Soviet bureaucracy in the workers' states.
The upsurge of the colonial revolution will continue to mount; at different paces, in the different regions (SouthEast Asia, the Arab countries, Negro Africa, rica) during the months and the years to come, though it has not immediately brought in its wake a parallel rise of the European workers' movement. On the contrary it has rather coincided with a stagnation and ebb of this movement. The causes of this phenomenon lie in the internal dialectic of the class struggle in western Europe. The victory of the Chinese revolution, the victory of the revolution North Vietnam, the extension of the colonial revolution to the Arab countries, to North Africa and to Negro Africa, were produced precisely after the turning point in western Europe, when the relation of forces started to evolve in favor of the bourgeoisie (1948-1949). The objective consequences of this new situation, and the negative effects of the betrayal of the traditional workers leaderships, have been stronger than the subjective favorable impulses the workers' movement should have received from the success of the colonial revolution. This was all the more true that — for reasons already made explicit in the theses of
Fifth World Congress, and mentioned further on — European capitalism was able to allay for a long time, even direct effects of the colonial the economic situation and the standard of living of the masses.
6. But the dynamic of the world revolution is not merely a question of a time table; it is also and above all else a question of social forces. proletariat of western Europe no longer represents the majority sector of the world proletariat; it constitutes not more than a quarter, the other more or less numerically equivalent sections being represented by the proletariat of Democracies," and that of China, Japan, India, and the semi-industrialized countries of Latin America.
Still it is distinguished from the three other sections of the world proletariat by the fact it is the oldest, the longest having the richest tradition of struggle and trade-union and political experience, and also without
construction was largely terminated, which constitutes a the competition and productivity thus stimulated, produc-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL doubt possesses even today the highest political consciousness and democratic tradition of self-administration. If its entry on the arena of the world revolution is no longer a condition sine qua non for the victory of the colonial revolution or for the victory of the political revolution in the US S R. it remains and will remain yet for a long time the decisive factor for raising the world revolution to its highest level of consciousness, as well as for drawing the American proletariat on to the path of socialism.
That correlation of forces can be fundamentally modified only by two factors: either the destruction of European industry by war, with the simultaneous maintenance upsurge of industry in the other parts of the globe, an improbable hypothesis, or the victory of the political revolution in the USSR and the conquest by the Soviet proletariat of a standard of life superior to that in the United States, as well as democratic managerial practices serving as a pole of attraction for the rest of the world. Even in that case, it is much more probable that this force of attraction will make itself felt at first in Europe, and only through Europe on the United States.
For all these reasons, European revolutionary Marxists, while measuring in a realistic way the objective and subjective difficulties which hamper a new revolutionary rise in western Europe, must be profoundly convinced that the decisive battles are ahead of them and not behind them, that the European proletariat has still a key rôle to play for the victory of the world revolution, and that its own destiny depends essentially, in the years to come, on its capacity to resolve the fundamental crisis which has until now prevented a great revolutionary victory in Europe: the crisis of revolutionary leadership. THE ECONOMIC SITUATION OF WESTERN EUROPE AND ITS PERSPECTIVES
7. Contrary to the 1919-1929 period, one of relative stagnation and of a relatively slow and quickly interrupted growth of the productive forces in western Europe, since this second post-war period, after the period of revoluinstability in 1943-1948, has been marked by an exceptionally important rise of the economy of western Europe and by a high level of employment. That is the fundamental objective fact which distinguishes the 1948-1958 decade from the 1923-1933 decade.
Even in the supreme year of the 1929 boom, the national per capita income was higher than that of 1913 by only 2% in Germany, 5% in Great Britain, and 26% in France (falling back to 10% in 1938 in the last-named country). The share of western Europe in the world market was continually declining. In 1929, in value, its exports were higher than those of 1913 by some 20%; in 1938, they were generally lower than before the First World War. The volume of foreign trade of the 1925-1929 period was lower than that of 1913, exceeding it generally only in 1929, falling back in 1938 to less than 70% of the pre-First World War
The evolution during the last ten years is entirely different. The national per capita income has risen an average of 50% for the countries of the O EEC (it has exceeded the 1938 level by 40%). If that rise is unequally divided. there are however among the industrialized countries only Great Britain, Sweden and Denmark who remain greatly below that average, and these three countries already in 1948 enjoyed an income level higher than that of the pre-
Industrial production during that same period has nearly tripled (starting from a very low base) in western Germany, and risen nearly 80% in France and 90% in Italy). In these countries the increase was uninterrupted for the whole of the 1948-1958 period, only France having marked time in 1952. In fact, these three countries have an increase of 40 to 50% in their production from 1953 to 1957, when rerate of growth nearly equal or equal to that of the US S R during that period
Thanks to that rise, western Europe has greatly improved its share in world trade, and in world industrial production from the morrow of the Second World War, is near or has already slightly exceeded the levels of 1938 in that
8. This historical phenomenon, unforeseen both by our movement and by all economic observers on the morrow of 1945, has three fundamental causes:
a) American aid and inter-capitalist solidarity. Contrary to what took place during and just after the
First World War, and during the Second World
War, solidarity and mutual aid were developed among the imperialist powers and took precedence inter-imperialist competition. This has continued to operate, but as a secondary and contradictory force within the framework of the "cold the consciousness that the American bourgeoisie has acquired of being engaged in a struggle to the death with the anti-capitalist forces, and from the consciousness which it has of the decisive rôle which western Europe would play to tilt the scales definitively to the side of the anticapitalist forces.
This solidarity explains the extremely important aid in dollars (Marshall Aid, off-shore procurements, MS A aid, etc) granted by American imperialism to the capitalists of western Europe, aid which without doubt is as high as 25,000 million dollars if private capitalist investments in
Europe are taken into account.
Without that aid, which continued even when
European export industry became competitive with
American industry, the European "boom" would not have been possible. It is necessary to add to this the inter-European aid, in the framework of the EPU, without which various countries like
Italy, Holland, Denmark, and especially France would have undergone extremely serious commercial crises at different times.
b) The broadening of the European industrial base, and especially its base of raw materials. Since the Second World War western Europe has largely surpassed its own production of raw materials in a series of important sectors, especially that of gas and petroleum (Italy, France, Holland, Germany), that of synthetic textile fibres, of artificial
Rubber, of plastics, etc. At the same time the ris of the machine-tool industry, particularly in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, France, and Great Britain, has made Europe practically independent of the importation of American industrial plant, save in a few sectors. An important increase of production has resulted from the modernization ot European industry.
c) The extension of the internal market, especially by the rise of the industry of durable goods. The production of cars in western Europe at present exceeds 3 million per year, or more than ten times pre-war production. The loss of the fields of investment in the colonies has been compensated to a large extent by the rise of industries of durable consumers' goods, made possible by a continuous increase of the real income of broad layers of the population, who have moditied the distribu
9. The creation of the Common Market — enlarged or not to a zone of free trade — was to be, in the minds of the bourgeois ruling circles in Germany, France, Italy (and as regards the free-trade zone, Great Britain) the king pin which might clinch the economic upsurge and ensure it a long future. Thanks to the freeing of the exchanges, to
16 tion and national income should continue to increase at he rate of 5 to 6% per year, attaining in 12 to 15 years he present level of production and productivity of Americans. (Interview of Jean Monnet, Common Market, in the magazine United States News and World Report.)
At the very moment, however, when the Common Market be established, the 1957-1958 recession brought to several European countries a serious warning. In spite of the fact that it has been equally possible to get over this recession at no very great cost and that we are
Be postiat a new recovery, it does not seem that it will
in most European capitalist countries, to find again the same high rate of expansion as in the years 1950-1957. American aid will be drying up. created by the war and new manufactures have begun more and more to reach saturation point in the framework of among the capitalist powers - the United States, Britain, Japan and the Common Market, and within the bounds of the latter — in a climate of constant techno-
In these conditions, and taking into account the mono›oly price structure in several fields. and thus the everpresent danger of inflation fed by very high military expenditure, probable consequences of the new juncture should not be neglected: increased technological unemployment and, after a period of new relative saturation of the market, the danger of a new recession in the face of an internal and foreign market which has not expanded proportionately.
On the other hand, the imperatives of the enlivened competition between the capitalist countries will dictate a greater resistance than in the past to working-class demands, if not direct attacks on the workers' standard of living, particularly in those countries and branches of industry where the standard was highest (including in the United States).
This changing social climate is favorable to a comeback of the workers' movement, if the latter knows how to organize adequately and to push back in an energetic manner the attack of which the working class is now the target. THE EVOLUTION OF THE RELATION OF FORCES BETWEEN THE CLASSES IN EUROPE
10. Three successive phases can be distinguished in the post-war evolution of social relations. Although their determining dates naturally do not coïncide exactly in all counthese phases appear nevertheless in most if not all a) A phase dating from 1944 (1943 in Italy) until
1948-1949, during which the relation of forces refundamentally in favor of the working lass. The bourgeoisie was weak, its economy shaky and not yet reconstructed, its state without sufficient foundations. The workers' parties remained predominant from the point of view of government and parliament: the organizations representing the working class within the factories (comités d'entreprise; betriebsrate: commissioni shop stewards, etc) to a great extent laid down the sometimes even taking over the functions which made them appear as potential organs of dual power. The property and the authority of the bosses were challenged in the big plants and entire sections of the economy.
b) The phase from 1948-1949 until 1957.
economic boom following the partial defeats of the great workers' struggles
(French strikes of 1947-1948; July 14, 1948 in
Italy). An ebbtide became evident in the workers' movement. The political actions launched by the
French Communist Party isolated it from a part of
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the working masses. The split in the trade unions sapped the workers' strength in various countries. The bourgeois parties gained predominance and exercized power in a more and more exclusive way. The bourgeoisie regained confidence and strength. It tried both to corrupt the working class and to de-politicize it. The power of the representative organs in the plants became lessened.
) The phase which began with the end of the boom, with the rise to power of de Gaulle, and which is at present being prolonged into a new recovery. The bourgeoisie, encouraged by its political victories, and under pressure from the imperatives of the enlivened competition between the capitalist countries, maintains the offensive against the working class in order to snatch from it certain advantages which it gained in the preceding period. The working class is replying to this offensive according to the forces of the working-class movement and the resources of the masses for a spon11. In general, the workers' movement started this new phase of bourgeois offensive with its organizational forces more or less intact, and with real possibilities for a counterstroke. The big exception was France, the only country where the workers' movement had suffered a defeat during the preceding phase. It is incontestable, however, that the workers' organisations no longer possess today, of the countries of western Europe, the same organizational strength, and especially the same enthusiastic support from the masses that they enjoyed in the days immediately folof the workers' movement due jective effects of economic prosperity, of the boom? It is necessary to combat resolutely that defeatist thesis. Certainly, a period of economic prosperity is not favorable to revolutionary workers' struggles; the possibilities of such struggles, numerous in the first years after gradually reduced thereafter in most of the capitalist
But though a period of economic prosperity is not favorable to a revolutionary upsurge, that nowise it necessarily implies a weakening of the workers' movement. On the contrary, it is traditionally in a period of when full employment improves the relation of economic forces to the benefit of the proletariat and at the expense of the employers, that the trade unions can gain the maximum members, and that offensive economic struggles to win increases in wages and shorter hours are possible. In a period of political and social instability, that favorable climate can moreover aid broader strike struggles, for transitional demands. Thus the great strikes, with occupation of the factories, in France, Belgium, and the United States, did not occur right in the middle of the 1929-33 crisis but during 1936-37, the year of the best economic conjuncture between 1929 and 1939.
12. It is therefore not essentially the boom — an objective factor — which explains the relative weakening of the workers' movement in sundry European countries, and on the rebound, the lowering of combativity and political consciousness in the working class. On the contrary, principally it is the weakening and the bad politics of workers' organisations — the subjective factor witnessed an undeniable lowering of the combativity and political consciousness of the masses of western Europe. The betrayal of the traditional leaderships; the lack of audacity of the trade unions; the sectarian line of most of the C Ps inside the workers' movement which, beginning with 1949, replaced the opportunist line of the preceding phase; the absence of a programme of transitional demands; the refusal to generalize the struggles; the practice of "roatin said arbitration applied by the reformists. all these ; the generalization of procedures of "concili-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL phenomena considerably weakened the parties and the trade unions at the time when the employers were in a position to make important economic concessions to the
Now, the workers' organizations are, for the great mas of the workers, above all, instruments of struggle. If thes instruments are no longer effective, if they no longer yield anything, if even the rights and advantages of the workers are increased independently of these instruments, then the We rise of bang gradually reduced ony to the layer on only to the layers of the vanguard, the most politically conscious.
This becomes clearly apparent if one compares the way in which the principal increases in wages and social advantages have been achieved since 1948-1949. In Great Britain and Belgium, they are the product of trade-union demands, backed up by the threat of strikes, and sometimes by strikes themselves; the trade unions have roughly preserved their 1945 strength (70 unionists in Belgium, 50% in Great Britain). In western Germany, these increases in wages are the result of trade-union negotiations, in which, with some rare exceptions, the threats of strikes were not taken seriously by anybody, the employers having made clear their willingness to concede increases by annual portions; the trade unions there group only 40% of the wor-
In France and Italy as a consequence of the split in the trade unions, and as a result of the deliberate intention of the employers to weaken the C G T, wage raises have been conceded in inverse proportion to trade-union demands and without prior negotiations with the CGT and the CGIL (Renault and Fiat agreements); their result has been a downright collapse of trade-union strength, reduced to 15 or 20% of the mass of the wage-earners, and divided among three or four tederations, and in Italy an analogous development, with forces which remain more i3. If the relative weakening of the European workers' movement is not the necessary and inevitable result of the boom, it is even less the result of "profound social transformations" as argued by the theoreticians of various reformist tendencies: André Phillip in France, Giolitti in Italy, Crosland and Strachey in Great Britain, etc
It is not accurate that have been produced which have modified the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist system in our epoch, that of monopoly capitalism. More than ever it is the directors of the great monopolies who lay down the law in the economy and in the state. Especially where the state sector has been extended in the economy (France, Austria, Italy, Great Britain), it is not the state which has subordinated the monopolies to itself, but the monopolies which more and more subordinate the state directly to themselves.
That does not signify that differences of interests, often very deep, cannot oppose such or such a sector of the big bourgeoisie to such or such an other (heavy industry of the Ruhr to conversion and export industries in Germany; finance capital and state monopoly capital in Italy, steel and other modern sectors to textiles and other sectors interested in the French Union in France, etc). But these are antagonisms of interest within the bourgeois class, and not oppositions between a new class of "managers" and
"old bourgeoisie.
It is no more accurate either to say that "the working class is deeply divided," or even "on its way to disappearing' From the point of view of its remuneration, the working class has never been completely homogeneous. It is true that, during the boom, the big enterprises tried to ensure supplementary so-called advantages (freiwillige Sozialzuweiungen). That was the case in the petroleum industry, steel, and the great automobile factories, in most of the European countries. From that fact, the wages of these workers were generally superior to those of the skilled workers (and naturally of the laborers) in the other
47 branches, in the peripheral regions, etc. But these differences have always existed in the past.
On the contrary, a serious comparison will prove that the wage spread between laborers in light industry, and skilled workers in privileged branches has rather lessened than increased in the last 50 years — without speaking of the agricultural proletariat, homeworkers, domestic servants, and the mass of the sub-proletariat, much more nu merous, more wretched, and further from the standaro of a skilled worker half a century ago than now.
It is equally false to affirm that the transfer of manpower towards other branches of activity than industry (a transfer moreover still very slight if not non-existent in countries like Great Britain, France, west Germany and Italy, where the number of industrial workers has risen compared to pre-war) would have destroyed the homogeneity of the working class. More than half a century ago nobody contested the fact that dockers or railwaymen be different today with the workers of the "tertiary sector, of telecommunications, of electricity, gas petroleum distribution, of drivers, or even of the technical personnel of aviation?
It is finılly inaccurate that, from the sole fact of the raising of the standard of living, the workers' combativity "seems to be disappearing." On the contrary the raising of th': standard of living can result in a raising of the cultural and political level, and therefore to a greater class activity, on condition that the workers' organizations fulfil their duties, carry out the work of education and of formation of the necessary consciousness, and that they aim their struggles towards more general objectives than the immediate demands which are satisfied thanks to the boom: the transitional demands.
From this analysis, a crucial. drawn: the working class of western Europe generally preserves practically intact its capacity to react, with the exception of the French working class, at the time when the bourgeois offensive is becoming clear. The workers' movement, from that fact, has at its disposal the possibility of organizing an energetic counter-action against this ofpassing over in its turn to the attack. If the success of this defense, and of a possible counter-offensive, depends in the last analysis on the leadership of the working class, on the unity and generalization of the struggles, on the concentration of all energies on the of decisive transitional demands struggle for power, the possibility of an effective workers' policy is created from the more or less spontaneous will of the masses to counteraction.
Revolutionary Marxists have the duty to face up to this new stage with the firm conviction that their class not let itself be done in," that it will seek by numerous means and multiple ways to counter the capitalist oftensive, and that their politzcal rôle of coordinator of the struggles, of creator of a replacement leadership for the
15. Two objections must be met in this context. It is true that in France no spontaneous reaction against the coming to power of de Gaulle occurred. That fact, however, constitutes an exception and not the rule. It is due essentially to the Algerian war, ie, to the possibility for the bourgeoisie to launch its offensive in a field where it played the S FIO — the field of the colonial war. Even in France, the following events demonstrated that spontaneous reactions occur when the offensive touches the domain where the working class is the most sensitive: standard of living, working conditions, and stability of employment.
Are the creation of the Common Market and the existence of new European institutions a major obstacle to
the launching of a counteroffensive by the workers? It cannot be asserted at the current stage and for the or three years to come. Granted, in the framework of the Common Market, the employers' solidarity fortified in each branch of industry, the cartellization of industry, and tomorrow the international interpenetration of capital, will make the employers much less sensitive to direct actions of the workers conducted on a regional or national scale, and put more and more on the order of the day the necessity of internationally coördinated strikes. But, during the whole transitional period which embraces especially the stage of the class struggle before us, the working class of all the countries of Europe preserves the objective possibility of dealing very hard blows to the bourgeoisie in each country. The tighter bonds among the European countries will act in that sense rather in favor of an international extension of the struggles, starting from one precedent or a spectacular success in one or several countries. EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES
16. At the moment of the post-war revolutionary crisis, when the strength of the workers' movement was at its zenith and the bourgeoisie was seriously atraid of a general assault against its power, the setting for "bourgeois demowas extremely shaky; its essential support was the reformist and Stalinist workers' organisations themselves — to the degree that they were not violating this "sacred" legality, notably by their high-handedness with regard to the revolutionary organizations and the representatives of the liberation movement of the colonial peoples. The traditional formations of the bourgeois right and centre were in clear decline. The Christian-Democracy appeared as the sole and least direct prop of the bourgeoisie, incapable of governing alone. Organizations of the right and the extreme-right, partisans of "strong states" of different kinds, grew stronger in many countries (neo-fascism in Germany and Italy; RPF in France; Nazi influence in the Free Democratic Party of Germany, etc).
The temporary stabilization of capitalism, and even more, the capitalist boom in Europe, modified that situation. The gradual weakening of the workers' organizations was expressed also on the electoral plane — although often a distorted and slow way. The C Ps were the first to eliminated from the governments. It even came, little by to governments without the participation of the Social-Democrats, although these were able to appear in power consequent on minor electoral swings (as in Belgium in 1954 and in Italy for some months after the last elections). The extreme-right was in decline if not in complete defeat. The bourgeois centre was triumphing.
17. The reasons for this surprising "renaissance" of tradicover bogies so palaterap are not idea for l bourgeoisie. In addition to the fact that they are very expensive and that they open the way to revolutionary crises of collapse they involve an abandonment of liberty for the bourgeoisie itself (at the least for a big part of the capitalists and all their political personnel). When it is a question
"the main thing, i e, capitalist property and the state which protects it, the bourgeoisie is ready make the sacrifice of its own political liberties. . no immediate danger threatens it, such a sacrifice appears to it dangerous and useless.
From the point of view of the bourgeoisie, the boom has strengthened two tendencies which create a certain social base for parliamentarism and traditional governments: the middle classes have seen their standard of life relatively improved and have vigorously reacted against "austerity," "statism," with which they identify more or less the workers' parties (this niggling "dirigism," that has nothing in common planning, operates furthermore especially for the monopolies); this is the key to the electoral victories of the Conservatives in Great Britain and of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CDU in Germany during the boom. In other respects this bourgeoisie to make economic concessions, often considerable, to the laboring masses. In the absence of an energetic and aggressive political leadership, utilizing the favorable economic conditions, to deal stronger and stronger blows at the employers, the working class to be de-politicized by the climate of "prosperity" and by the impotence that its organizations were manifesting concerning itselt.
Under these conditions, the bourgeois point of view appeared one of the "mendèsiste" type (with its diverse national variants: Butlerism in Great Britain, the Gronchi-Mattei tendency in Italy; the SocialChristian left in Belgium, etc). This policy maintains the framework of bourgeois democracy and carefully avoids anything which might provoke political reactions on the part of the workers. It patronizes "constructive trade unionand encourages it by negotiations and agreements involving important advantages for the working class, and endeavors at the same time to de-politicize and integrate it in a "social," "settled-down," "popular" capitalism.
Its first objective is to break the hold of the Left tendencies (French and Italian CP; Bevanism in Britain; the trade-union Left in Germany and Belgium, etc) on the majority or important minority sectors of the working class. This is an attempt to Americanize the social life of Europe, the "high standard of living" supposedly sapping the political consciousness and certainly the "Marxist tradiof the European workers' movement.
18. In spite, however, of a boom exceptional in magnitude and duration, this policy has not been with cohesion and lasting chances of success by the boura) It runs up against all the exorbitant weight of the military expenses in certain countries (Great Britain and France), which have held up or shown an improvement of the standard of living which its lawyers would have liked to see more massive and more spectacular.
b) It has run up against numerous contradictions within the possessing classes which have provoked decisions which awoke as lashes the political reactions of the masses (German rearmament, Indochinese crisis in 1955, prolongation
Suez crisis, economic policy, causing a massive periodical unemployment in Belgium, stagnation of the situation in meridional Italy, etc, etc). These reactions have often caused political swings which have brought to power the Social-Democrats, or the Right Conservatives who are impermeable to the doctrine of "social capitalism."
The bourgeois political personnel is profoundly divided by this question of fundamental orientation, a division often tied to anagonistic material interests (Gronchi against the Right Christian-Democrats in Italy; Left against the Right in the CD U; Butler against Macmillan in Britain; Independents against mendèsistes in France, d) The political tradition of the European working class still remains deep. Even if under these unfavorable subjective conditions, it seems to be burning but dimly, it can is just occuring particularly in France).
19. Even during the honeymoon period of "social" capitalism, we have witnessed a permanent tendency to the strengthening of the state apparatus, which profoundly differentiates this "new look" bourgeois democracy from the traditional pre-1914 bourgeois democracy. That tendency corresponds to the deep economic and politicalmilitary necessities of the period. Economically, all the capitalist countries are characterized by a growing intervention of the state in the economy for the fundamental benefit of the monopolies, by an extension of the public sector of the economy, by the increased importance of the public budget in the national income, by the considerable increase in the number of functionaries and of their rôle
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48
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL in the numerous spheres of social life. On the politicalmilitary plane, the capitalist boom in western Europe has coincided with a period of "cold war" 1949 to 1959, relatively slackened from 1954 to 1957, ac-
1957 on — of preparation for world war and of preparation for civil war implicitly contained
All the bourgeoisies of western Europe are profoundly conscious of it, and the NATO treaty and headquarters make it "their duty" to recall it periodically to the different governments. Laws on the state of emergency and of civil mobilization are being prepared or in effect. Special police
Bereitschaftspolizei) are created strengthened. The administration receives full powers to
"civil disturbances." Laws on pulsory consultation" "compulsory arbitraare being prepared or in effect. this procedure are declared strikers are threatened with prosecution or actually prosecuted. Frontal attacks against the right to strike are being prepared. The power of the army in the state - and in the economy, of which the arms sector becomes a permanent important sector — is steadily increased.
20. When a serious military and political crisis destroys
"normal" equilibrium of political life (Algerian war in France); when the end of the boom and the growth of competition in the framework of the Common oblige the bourgeoisie to take back the economic concessions previously granted to the working class, the bourgeois-democratic stage-setting risks speedy collapse. dency towards "the strong state, 'technical" in the previous period, and hardly perceptible to the masses, is rapidly pushing its way toward the surface. The bourgeoisie is testing various replacement solutions and is look-
"supreme arbiter-savior" of the Bonapartist type whether by a partial or total outlawing of the workers' movement, or by a frank military dictator-
When that tendency coincides with a sudden impoverishment of layers of the petty and middle bourgeoisie - especially of the peasantry, tradesmen, and the noncompetitive industries subjected to the shock of the Common Market — an objective base for the fascist danger can reappear for the first time since the end of the war.
21. If a new and graver recession breaks out, with its consequences (unemployment, a revival that is relatively limited and, especially, varying according to sectors); if a structural depression continues in agriculture and retail trade, the attempt to orient within a limited time towards a Gaullist-type solution might show itself in many of the countries of western Europe. But such an attempt would not appear in a vacuum; it would appear in a social milieu that is also able and inclined to react to the effects of the recession and of the Common Market. The most probable hypothesis, is that this workers' reaction will everywhere precede the attempt to install a strong state by the bourgeoisie. Under the whip of the same conditions that are pushing the capitalists to modify the democratic idyll, the workers themselves are also pushed to react and to manifest anew their hostility to capitalism, to the recession, to unemployment, to political reaction, both by voting more to the Left and by launching direct class actions against firings and attempts to lower real wages.
With the keynotes of recession and unemployment, most of the elections this year and next will probably show relative strengthening of the parties claiming to represent the working class (particular national conditions can crease or lessen the importance of the fluctuation). Actions like those of the workers in Florence, of the miners of the Borinare in Belgium, of the workers of FivesLille and of other enterprises in the north of France, will
22. It will depend on the ability of the movement to generalize these struggles and give them a precise political objective - the constitution of workers' governments or and peasants' governments, under the political form appropriate to each country — whether the bourgeois offensive will be thrown back or not, before passing to a decisive political stage. The spontaneous energy of the workers' reaction can, by itself, if it is sufficiently extensive, prolong this intermediary period and thereby increase the chances of a decisive counter-action.
It is only after a possible failure of all these reactions and the demoralization which would flow from it, that the achievement of "the strong state" would be put on the order of the day. This hypothesis is improbable in the immediate future. Our sections and our militants have the duty of combating tendencies to demoralization among the masses and especially in the vanguard, by explaining the real mechanism of the evolution. In France too, the Algerian crisis at first gave an opportunity to (movement of the recalled conscripts; January, 1956 elec tions); it was only when the workers parties criminally squandered this chance that it opened the way to May 13 1958 and the Gaullist régime. At the same time, our sections must warn the masses that a change of policy by the big workers' organizations is urgent and of vital importance if the new struggles are to terminate in victories, if the awakening political interest and the growing combativity of the masses are not to be once more wasted. there is a risk of the repetition of the French affair. THE SITUATION OF THE WORKERS MOVEMENT
23. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the Communist Parties have everywhere experienced an unparalleled rise; the social-democratic Parties nonexistent or suffering from the force of the attraction of the CP as well as from the contradictions of their long-term bourgeoisification went through a deep crisis, save in some countries like Great Britain, Sweden, etc, where they comprise the crushing majority of the working class.
From the end of 1947, however, the situation has rapidly evolved towards a division of the structure of the workers' movement into two zones: one, that of France, Italy, and Greece, has a solid and durable workers' movement, predominantly Stalinist, with a social-democracy in slow decomposition and of relatively indifferent importance; the other, comprising all the other countries of western Europe, has a social-democracy that groups the great majorit the working class, with the C Ps falling to the level of littl isolated sects, often weaker than before the war and even sometimes than during the '20s. Finland and Iceland constitute two exceptions to this rule, explained without difficulty by peculiarities of developments since 1945.
24. The cause of this division must be sought essentially in the regroupment of the principal workers' cadres of the different countries in question, during the whole historic period from 1933 to 1958. Wherever the CP has succeeded especially thanks to the 1936 strikes and to the battles of the Resistance — in winning the decisive cadres which have the ear of the working masses in the enterprises at the time of periods of struggle, they have been able to preserve their majority in the workers' movement, in spite of the periods of ebb and often dramatic isolation (1958, 1949-53, and, the most terrible of all, 1939-41).
Wherever their progress in the so-called "Popular Front" periods and the post-war upsurge has not permitted them to win their cadres or the majority thereof, they are, in the stage of the ebb-tide, falling as low if not lower than
25. The failure of the "break-through" of the CP in most of the countries of western Europe is not explained by the boom: it preceded it. Its fundamental causes are:
a) The especially baneful influence of direct experience with the reactionary aspects of Soviet bureaucracy, particularly since the outbreak of the "cold war" (this is especially true for Germany and Austria after 1947). In the same
"Khrushchev report" and the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution caused an unprecedented crisis
in the C Ps of western Europe, further aggravated by the new "Jugoslav affair."
b) The fact that iust at the decisive moment when masses began to go over from the social-democracy to the C Ps, the latter were roughly. social-democratic sibility of a break-through (1944-4f). To this must be a pled policy, thus eliminating any objective basis for the the fact that as the masses began to flow back to social-democracy, they were once more severely shocked by the sectarianism in the working class movement which became the "general line" of the C Ps after they abandoned the opportunism of the preceding period.
The second is the most fundamental and lasting of these two factors. The day-to-day policy of the small western C Ps combining small-scale reformism with a vague comnunist eschatology (the "final victory amp), postponed to an uncertain future and brought about practically independently of any action of the woring class of the country concerned, otters no perspective r interesting function to the working masses of the west. it best they are small parties, reformist in their activities nd linked to the US SR which ask for their votes side-by-side with the big reformist parties. They obtain less and less support from the masses. wed less support comes mr resend ala he electoral influence of the C Ps has fallen to 2º%o or 3% of the votes (often the lowest for 35 or 40 years) and their cadres within the working class have fallen to a few thousand, and in some countries even a few hundred
26. From the fact that the basic cause of the failure of the small CPs of the west to break through lies in their incorrect policies and not in the handicap of their continuing links with the Kremlin (however important this factor may have been at specific moments in the past), there follows an extremely vital conclusion: Even when the attitude of the masses changes and becomes more favorable to the USS R. or even when they are attracted by many aspects of Soviet reality, they do not turn to the C Ps. This could be seen in the "thaw" of 1955-56. It will be even clearer in the future when the industrial advances and a rising living standard in the Soviet Union and "peoples' democracies" may renew such especially if there is relative stagnation in the living standards of the west. The result would be to increase the interest of the masses in the planning and socialization of their own economies. This would favor "indigenous" Leftwing tendencies within the mass movement. velop, the decline of the CP might continue in spite of the change in attitude to the USSR.
On the other hand, in France and Italy, for the same reasons of organizational tradition, it can already be confidently predicted that the coming wave of working-class militancy will at first be led by the CP, even if it is a CP more critical and independent of its leadership.
27. Electorally, the European social-democracy is still very strong, and even in certain countries stronger than ever. In several cases, it has just obtained or will obtain within a short period the highest electoral percentage its history. In Austria it has even succeeded three times universal adthe suffrage. y be 40% baluter is arity to der an absolute majority under broken through in many countries.
Yet this façade of power conceals deep decrepitude. In many countries, such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden, the social-democratic parties are only a shadow of what they were 30 years ago — at a time when they had already degenerated greatly from what they had been at the beginning of the century. Everywhere the Marxist tradition has been swept away with the bulk of the cadres, murdered by fascism, broken by repeated betrayals, and suffocated by a pervasive tendency to go bourgeois. In many countries these parties have been reduced to just an apparatus without. contact with the masses save during
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL election campaigns. Even where the links with the working class are strongest — as in Norway, Belgium, and Britain — he number of workers who take part in the internal political life of these parties is far lower than at the best periods in their past. The political level is terribly low; this is most striking in countries like Austria, Germany, Holland, and Norway, which had a deep-rooted Marxist tradition. The masses still follow these parties, but do not seem to work inside them.
The political degeneration of these parties has been swift in the fields of policy and theory - to the extent that any theoretical interest remains. Formerly reformism was defined as a belief in the attainment of socialism by the path of reforms. Nowadays it may be defined as a "mixed" economy, as acceptance of the welfare state and a "broad sector of market economy" in an "ideal" society: The programs of the Austrian, Swiss, west German and Dutch social-democratic Parties, the propositions for "reform" put forward by Right-wing Labour on the morrow of the recent British elections, are syntheses of this petty-bourgeois ideology, which has much more in common with the mentality of bourgeois civil servants than that of trade-union bureaucrats.
28. Yet the electoral stabilization or even gains of the Socialist Parties, which make to be the only political expression of the anti-capitalist desires of the broad masses, are in complete contradiction with this gradual degeneration of the reformist organizations and their apparatus. This contradiction tends to show itself suddenly and violently on a large the will to fight and the reawakening of the masses runs up against the petty-bourgeois conservatism of their leaders. The outcome of such clashes is the appearance of vast Lettwing tendencies which express, after a fashion, the aspirations of the masses without bringing into question the reformist character of the party, e g, and the most militant trade-union cadres are the ideal field of recruitment for this Left. It is significant of the crisis in the social-democratic parties of several countries (France, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Germany) that the youth and the most militant trade-unionists are to be found to the Left of the Socialist Parties and in as-it-were uninterrupted opposition for eight to ten years,
The contradiction between the anti-capitalist aspirations of the masses and the conservatism of the reformist party apparatus can be more or less kept down as long as the economic situation is favorable and the masses' standard of living is rising, even if it is more slowly than they would wish. When the bourgeois offensive is opened against working-class living standarde oft we masses vion the pus- vorking-class living standards, damentally rightist and collaborationist course of the Socialist Parties, and they are forced to make a Left turn. Even the Dutch Socialist Party, the most Right-wing in Europe, was obliged to follow this law. Such turns to the Left have favorable effects, objectively by encouraging the militancy of the masses, and subjectively by facilitating the work of revolutionary Marxists inside the Left. But it will be a historical deception if a new leadership does not emerge which, in the view of the masses, can fight the rotten Right wing for the control of the movement.
29. Recently various intermediate formations have oppeared, independent of both Socialist and Communist parties: the Left Socialist Union (U GS) and Autonomous Socialist Party (PS A) in France, the New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review groups in Britain, cifist-Socialist Party and Bridge-Group in Holland, the People's Socialist Party in Denmark, the Independent Socialist Group in Austrian Carinthia, etc. These groups have been produced by two phenomena: on the one hand, the deep crisis which has for years been affecting both the Communist and Socialist parties in these countries, and, on other hand, the absence of a Left-wing sufficiently politically conscious, militant, and powerful within the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL mass movement to attract critical elements of varying orift varying degrees, all these groups in general are marked by a sectarian attitude to the mass movement, and by the lack of a serious program and international connections. They are, therefore, essentially transitional, more or less centrist, and doomed to a series of explosions, and to electoral and trade-union insignificance.
But special conditions in some countries may create for them opportunities for relative success. Thus, in France, the integration of Guy Mollet's SFIO into the Gaullist régime is favorable to the appearance of a traditional social-democratic Party, a place which the UG S-P SA could occupy. In Denmark and Holland the extremely
51 Right-wing character of the Socialist parties and the rapid decline of the CP have created the possibility of a limited regroupment of centrist elements, that might even win more votes than the C P
While carefully following these developments and devoting some of our forces to them — without weakening our basic work inside the mass movement — we must under. stand that these experiments cannot have any historically valid results, and help their militants to avoid experiences which would end in demoralizing and breaking the best of them. We can do so only by presenting to them, with the necessary flexibility and caution, the perspective of constructing a new working-class leadership inside the mass
III.