The Fourth International enthusiastically hails the first flight of man in cosmic space, accomplished by a Soviet astronaut.
This magnificent undertaking has once more demonstrated the scientific and technical advance of the workers' states over capitalism, and the immense posibilities opened up to humanity by the nationalized and planned economy.
The first cosmic flight is not only a great victory of Soviet science and technics; it is also a new blow struck at imperialism throughout the world, at its self-confidence and prestige. It is a new and powerful encouragement to the world's masses, whose imagination, initiative, and determination to win have been strongly stimulated. It is a new spur to the alliance between the workers' states and the colonial masses in revolt, who see in these dazzling conquest of Soviet science a picture of the immense possibilities that the socialist future offers to humanity. It is a new encouragement to the struggles, self-confidence, and hopes of the masses of the Soviet Union and the other workers' states to re-establish a socialist democracy.
The conquest of space by man, begun by the first victorious workers' state in history, while imperialism in decomposition still threatens a nuclear hecatomb, strengthens the determination of the masses who are fighting everywhere on the planet for the destruction of capitalism and imperialism, to reassert and guarantee the dignity of human beings, their possibilities of unlimited expansion and their happiness, and to prevent imperialism's suicidal war by the only sure means: the overthrow of capitalism everywhere.
The Fourth International hails, in the first cosmic flight of man, the unlimited possibilities which will be opened up to humanity by the triumph of the Socialist revolution on the planet.
12 April 1961.