Issuing body: European Conference of the Fourth International
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Resolution: On the Strategy of the European Sections of the Fourth International in the Workers' Struggles
1. The strategy of the Fourth International is always dominated by this central idea: to push the masses to take their struggle into their own hands and to exercise power themselves. This strategy takes on an ever more urgent significance in the revolutionary upsurge. That is why it always tends, in the last resort, toward the constitution of soviets (factory councils, soldiers' councils, peasants' councils broadened into local and regional councils, into a national congress, etc.).
The soviet form of organization carries to its highest point the unity of action of the workers in the factory and of the toiling peasants in the village. It constitutes the expression of proletarian democracy. It thus makes possible the greatest effectiveness of the struggles. It opens the period in which the working class sets its power against that of the bourgeoisie. It provides the state framework for the dictatorship of the proletariat, pending the opening of the road to the progressive disappearance of all state power, thereby allowing humanity to pass from the administration of men to the administration of things.
2. The experience of the recent revolutionary struggles in Italy, and in part in the Balkans, shows decisively, after France and Spain in 1936, that workers' struggles tend spontaneously, under the present conditions of the decomposition of the capitalist system, to take the soviet form, even after twenty years during which all revolutionary propaganda was interrupted. However, the reformist and Stalinist workers' leaderships have so far succeeded, every time, in diverting these movements away from revolution and integrating them into the bourgeois state apparatus.
The whole effort of the sections of the Fourth International is therefore aimed at preserving the working-class character of these movements, at developing their organization in a soviet direction — using for this purpose even the most embryonic elements of direct workers' representation — at giving them the widest democratic expression, at broadening the movement to the maximum, not only to make it more effective but also to make it burst the bounds of a merely corporative, sectional-demand framework and to bring it to grips with the problem of power.
3. The formation of factory committees constitutes a decisive moment in this struggle for soviets. At its highest stage, the factory committee is part of the soviet movement and of soviet power. At its most modest stage, it constitutes the democratic expression of economic struggles, and already a heightened awareness among the masses. The revolutionary movements of 1943 in Italy, which led to the formation of a vast network of factory committees, show the way to the international working class — in the front rank, the Fiat workers refusing to recognize the integration of the factory committees into the framework of the bourgeois state by men like Roveda and Buozzi.
4. Even now, in the midst of occupied Europe, in Belgium, we are witnessing the formation of genuine factory committees. In certain regions, workers meet in the factories, discuss the problems of the enterprise, elect or recall their delegates. Their victories on numerous economic demands, sometimes even against the decisions of the occupying forces (against deportation), are leading workers in other enterprises and other regions to follow their example.
The Bolshevik-Leninists support with all their strength the formation of these factory committees, their regional inter-factory liaison, and, as soon as the maturity of the revolutionary situation permits, their liaison with the factory committees of other countries.
At the same time, they warn these factory committees against the dangers that threaten them: brutal intervention by the forces of repression, reformist degeneration in various forms.
Against this degeneration, they oppose every attempt to confine the movement within a corporatist and trade-unionist rut, combating in particular the "apolitical" currents which exploit the workers' hatred of the reformist politicians who monopolized the trade-union movement before the war. They pose clearly before the committees the problem of proletarian power. They push the workers to unify the effort of the factory committees on a local, regional, etc. basis, which naturally leads them to burst the corporatist framework. Against repression, the Bolshevik-Leninists stress the necessity of backing up the quasi-legal forms of organization with a rigorously clandestine organization, with its restricted cadres unknown to the mass of the workers and selected in struggle.
Workers' Groups
5. Wherever conditions do not permit the creation of factory committees, the militants of the Fourth International push the workers to organize in order to prepare for struggle. That is why they appeal to the most class-conscious workers, unorganized or organized, without distinction of party, to group themselves in the workshop and the factory into strictly illegal groups of three or four workers. These groups must remain in as close contact as possible with the whole body of workers in their enterprise, represent their aspirations, systematically organize the struggles, and take the lead in every movement. The Workers' Group is in no way a group of party sympathizers or a political discussion group; its task is to organize and lead the workers' struggles. It is above all through these struggles that the best working-class cadres will come to understand the role of the revolutionary party.
6. The Bolshevik-Leninists do not invent a particular form of organization; they seek essentially to give the working class the highest form of organization. To this end, they take as their starting point all the forms of organization that workers in struggle give themselves, whatever their label, even if these forms are of a dangerous kind. For example, where French workers organize in illegal unions in the face of yellow or fascist unions, or in order to burst the bounds of the legal unions, the Bolshevik-Leninists make use of these illegal union groups and strive to develop them into autonomous organs of struggle (while insisting on the necessity of democracy).
7. But the present workers' struggles already spill far beyond the framework of the workshop or the enterprise. We see great waves of workers' action breaking (the strikes at Liège, at Charleroi, of the miners of the north of France, strikes in the metal industry, strikes against forced labor drafts, the strikes of 11 November, etc.). It is essential to organize these movements, to free them from the nationalist husk in which the parties of sacred union still often clothe them, and to weld them one to another around class objectives. This is why the Fourth International stresses the necessity of the workers' front as a general watchword of propaganda and organization.
8. On the level of propaganda, the policy of the workers' front expresses the necessity of counterposing a class policy to the chauvinist policy of reformist and Stalinist sacred union. It calls on the workers to place no trust in any victory on the imperialist fronts, and to understand that their liberation will be won not on the imperialist military fronts but on the front of the class struggle. By putting forward the watchword of the workers' front, revolutionaries counterpose, in their day-to-day propaganda, the workers' front of the socialist revolution to the narrow and reactionary national fronts of the émigré imperialist cliques. They call on the oppressed to constitute their own class force outside of any sacred union with their oppressors.
9. Beyond immediate objectives, the watchword of the workers' front opens up the perspective of the proletariat's seizure of power. It does not replace the watchword of workers' committees, of soviets; it opens the road to them by formulating the necessity of posing the question of power in working-class terms, insisting on the fact that workers' power is not the power of a party or its bureaucracy imposed on the backs of the workers and beyond their control, but is, on the contrary, the power of the masses democratically organized, able to discuss together the road to follow, and to choose freely among those offered by the various parties.
Workers' Front and United Front
10. The workers' front expresses the necessity of uniting the working masses on the basis of the enterprise against the exploiters and against imperialist oppression. It in no case constitutes a bloc of parties, but aims to group or organize the workers directly, without distinction of tendency or party, for the victory of their struggles. The weakening of the hold of the old political and trade-union organizations over the working class clears the way for the direct organization of workers within their own autonomous organs. The policy of the workers' front pushes toward such organization. It helps the workers to burst the bounds of the traditional reformist or Stalinist organizations, which in the past have played a considerable role in lulling and paralyzing the working class and diverting it from revolutionary struggle. It also opens the road to the soviets.
At the same time, the B-L always stress the united-action character of the workers' groups and of the workers' front. This means in particular that every worker may set out his point of view within it. As far as we are concerned, we strive to make the Bolshevik policy triumph and to form revolutionary cadres. Whenever it is useful, the militants of the Fourth International address themselves to the parties which claim to represent the working class, with a view to the common organization of the workers within the workers' groups, the factory committees, or any other direct organization of the workers. For this purpose they address themselves, in particular, to the militants and factory cells of the Communist Parties but also, whenever necessary, to the higher bodies of the Communist Parties, in order to demonstrate to the militants of these parties that it is not the B-L, who wish to unite the working class against its class enemy, who divide the working class, but the reformist and Stalinist leaders, who wish to unite it with its class enemy and who do not hesitate, to that end, to break the unity of its ranks and to set the workers of one country against those of others.
Workers' Front and the Broadening of the Struggles
11. At the same time as it pushes toward the formation, within the enterprises, of workers' committees and groups, the policy of the workers' front stresses the necessity of federating these groups and committees on a local, regional, and national plane, so as to give the struggles of the working class the maximum effectiveness, cohesion, and vigor. The B-L call on the workers to avoid, as far as possible, the atomization of struggles and to engage in combat on the broadest possible front: to bring the whole factory to support the struggle of one workshop, the various plants of one enterprise to support one another, the plants of a single town or region to back one another up, and so on.
Workers' Front and the Trade Unions
12. Whereas trade-union organization brings the working class back under the rod of a paralyzing and virtually immovable bureaucracy, and often acts as a brake on the struggles of the most exploited layers, the Workers' Groups and the workers' front burst the traditional bounds of the trade union and open the way to soviet forms of organization. In a number of countries and regions, the only legal unions at present are unions of a fascist type, which permit neither the membership of advanced workers, nor the struggle of revolutionaries within them, nor work among the exploited masses (the UTMI in Belgium, the miners' union of the north of France, etc.).
Nevertheless, revolutionaries neglect none of the possibilities of using legal unions as cover for illegal work, in order to organize illegal cadres, to orient the workers grouped in the legal unions, and to make contact with militants of the older generations. That is why, wherever possible, they strive to penetrate the legal unions and call on the workers to overthrow the reactionary leadership of these unions. Where illegal unions actually take shape, our militants strive to transform them into workers' groups.
13. The policy of the workers' front stresses the necessity of uniting workers against their capitalist exploiters without distinction of nationality or race. In the factories or on the building sites where workers of various countries work, the workers' front brings them together in the same struggle against the employers. It ensures that colonial workers are everywhere treated on a footing of absolute equality with European workers. In Germany, it counterposes the international solidarity of the workers to chauvinist hysteria. It groups the workers of all the countries of Europe, fraternally united with the German workers, in the immediate struggles against the bourgeoisie (food supply, the pace of work, leave, etc.), against the Nazi organs of espionage, for the winning of workers' liberties, for the overthrow of capitalism and its fascist state. It prepares the union of the workers of the whole of Europe for the socialist revolution and the building of the Socialist United States of Europe.
The Workers' Front and the Non-Proletarian Masses
14. The present epoch is characterized by the tumultuous movement of the petty-bourgeois masses, driven from their conservative routine by the gigantic events now under way: the disappearance of democratic liberties, the collapse of the standard of living, mass deportation as forced labor, etc. These non-proletarian layers have been set in motion against the imperialism that oppresses them. Their movement bears above all the marks of their reactionary aspirations (a return to the past), of their chauvinist and revanchist tendencies, of their trust in "good" liberating imperialisms. It may end tomorrow in a fascist-type movement, as in Finland in 1919 and later in Italy and Germany. The responsibility of the working class is decisive here. It falls to the working class to draw the non-proletarian layers (white-collar employees, civil servants, technicians, the toiling peasantry) toward the only road that is not a dead end: that of the socialist revolution. Failing this, they will throw themselves into the arms of big capital and become its instrument against the proletariat and the revolution.
The workers' front therefore strives to bring about an alliance with the exploited layers of the middle classes against the common enemy. This implies no concession whatsoever to the reactionary ideology of the petty bourgeoisie, but on the contrary the most implacable struggle against its illusions and its reactionary tendencies. It is above all the power of the workers' movement that will draw the middle classes along with it. Only the workers' front can draw the oppressed masses along and guide them onto the road of the socialist revolution.
It is obviously the toiling peasantry whose alliance is most precious to the working class. Winning the alliance of the toiling peasantry and the neutrality of the better-off layers is a vital problem for the revolution. That is why, from now on, the workers must strive for a united front with the toiling peasants. The workers' front must address the toiling peasants with the following essential watchwords: solidarity of the town workers and the toiling peasants against finance capital and its state apparatus; workers' and peasants' control of food supply and stocks; the formation of councils of toiling peasants and common action with these councils.
Workers' Front and Workers' Militia
15. In anticipation of workers' struggles that will take on the character of physical struggles, even of armed conflicts, the B-L are striving even now to prepare the arming and military organization of the workers on the basis of the factory, while taking care to avoid any provocation and any adventure. At the same time, they strive to wrest the partisans from the grip of their leaderships by directing them toward the anti-capitalist struggle and the defense of the workers' movement.
Workers' Front and Programme
16. The front does not have a party programme, nor even a platform comparable to that of a trade-union centre, around which it would call on the workers to group themselves. Its programme is, in each case, nothing other than the expression of the struggles that the workers intend to wage in this or that factory or region. Their demands may differ according to region and period, in particular as the struggles develop and intensify and as the workers' consciousness rises. What matters above all is that it unite the working masses, rally the proletarian masses behind the workers' struggle, and orient the struggles in a revolutionary and internationalist direction. Naturally, as the workers broaden and develop their organization, they tend to express their struggles in a fuller and more organic charter. The B-L take part in drawing up this charter in order to accentuate its revolutionary character in the sense of the Transitional Programme and of the programme of the Fourth International. But they always stress that this is solely a basis for action, which can in no case be confused with a party programme.
17. The B-L strive to organize the struggles chiefly around the following points:
1) Defense of the immediate economic interests of the workers; struggle against disguised wage cuts, for a living wage (getting around the German laws by means of uniform bonuses, the unblocking of wages); for a slower pace of work against the lengthening of the working day (in view of inadequate food supply and the lower skill level of the labor force); for equal wages for women, young workers, and colonial workers (as far as possible, struggling not for a percentage increase but for equal cost-of-living bonuses). Struggle for better food supply, for workers' organization of food supply. The struggle in defense of the immediate interests of the workers must be oriented toward broader watchwords such as the sliding scale of wages and workers' control (for example, workers' control over canteens, their account books, the use of ration tickets and provisions, direct management by the workers, workers' and peasants' control over grain silos, warehouses, etc.).
2) Organization of collective resistance to measures for the requisitioning of labor, for deportation to Germany, and for industrial and military mobilization (orienting this struggle so as to show the effective solidarity of the native bourgeoisie with the occupying imperialism, and the solidarity of the workers of the occupying country and of the occupied country).
3) Solidarity with the victims of fascist repression, with militants arrested by the police and the Gestapo, with the réfractaires [draft-evaders] driven from legal life (giving this solidarity, each time, its true meaning as proletarian solidarity).
4) Organization of effective liaison with workers deported to Germany, so as to extend the struggle to the German factories.
5) Organization of fraternization with the workers of the countries subjected to fascist dictatorship, both in the German factories and through internationalist propaganda among the troops of the Axis (stressing the importance of this fraternization in preventing the repression of movements, by paralyzing the intervention of the SS through the attitude of the soldiers: drawing on the example of Italy).
6) Systematic offensive for the exercise of workers' liberties; maintenance of the right to strike through the exercise of that right itself; election or designation of workers' delegates who are genuine spokesmen for workers' interests; protection of these delegates, etc.
7) Systematic disorganization of German war production through collective action in all its forms (go-slow strikes, passive resistance, etc.), up to and including mass sabotage (stressing the class character of this struggle, which is in no way linked to the military struggle of the Allied imperialisms, but is determined by the struggle of the working class and of the Soviet Union).
8) Preparation for the insurrectionary struggle of the masses. (The B-L explain that the liberation of the workers can only be the work of the workers themselves, and that they must prepare not only to rid themselves of the German state apparatus and its satellites, but at the same time of the native bourgeoisie, which is striving to reinstall its power with the support of Allied bayonets. They direct the armed struggle with all their strength toward the overthrow of the capitalist dictatorship and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship.)
Conclusion
In all struggles, the B-L stress the necessity of uniting the workers around their objectives of struggle, of uniting the international working class, of uniting the workers with the whole body of the oppressed and exploited, of uniting the struggles with one another. They stress the working-class objective of the struggles, the necessity that these struggles correspond to the will of the workers, and the necessity of the greatest possible workers' democracy.
The workers' front is the watchword that sums up the whole unitary, democratic, and internationalist working-class conception of the struggles. It thus throws a bridge between the struggles of today (the beginning of the workers' counter-offensives) and the struggles of tomorrow (the offensive for power). It sums up, at the present stage, our struggle for the preparation of the soviets and of soviet power.
Resolution on the Policy of the Workers' Front
The Conference declares itself for the active pursuit of the policy of the workers' front. This policy implies:
1) On the level of propaganda, a class policy in opposition to the chauvinist policy of class collaboration practiced by the social-democratic and Stalinist organizations.
2) On the level of organization: a) the formation, in every workplace, of committees or workers' groups made up of the most active elements of the working class, without political distinction. b) the federation of these groups on a local, regional, and national plane, so as to give the maximum effectiveness, cohesion, and vigor to the class struggles.
3) On the level of tactics, the use of united-front tactics whenever this is necessary.
The Conference recommends that all sections of the Fourth International seek, in the particular experience of each country, the concrete organizational forms — often spontaneously created by the mass movement — best suited to the requirements of the policy of the workers' front.
In Quatrième Internationale, no. 4-5, February-March 1944