ecline of Stalinism » had fully analyzed.
The Fifth World Congress of the Fourth International - faced with the final phase of this process which has plainly begun in a whole sector still dominated only yesterday by the Soviet bureaucracy — is above all concerned with defining the precise conditions for the fall of Stalinism, the conditions for an upsurge and victory of the revolutionary proletariat on the ruins of the crumbling dictatorship.
That is why the present theses do not take up again either the historical expositions or the structural analyses and definitions of the theses « Rise and Decline of Stalinism, » of which they are neither a substitute nor a corrective, but a natural continuation and thus an integral part.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL I - THE DECLINE AND FALL OF STALINISM
IN THE USSR
1. - Since 1953 Soviet industry has grown at a rhythm far surpassing that of the growth of the most advanced capitalist countries. (fuels; petroleum, partially; machine construction; automation; industrial use of nuclear energy), the Soviet economy has succeeded in overcoming the backwardnesses and unevennesses of the end of the Stalin era, and achieving progress that surpasses everything that it had known in the past. The first partial reconversion of heavy industry, carried out in 1953 in favor of certain durable consumer goods (watches, bicycles, - in s ad o. осне о television sets, sewing machines, washing machines, etc.) permitted suTneglected, the production of all capitalist countries except the USA, and perceptibly raising the living standards of the working masses.
At the same time the Soviet economy continues to suffer from two disproportions which represent the principal inheritance from the Stalin era: on one hand, the disproportion between heavy industry and light industry, and, on the other, the disproportion between industry and agriculture. These disproportions are the main cause of the fact that, despite the unquestionable successes in raising the living standards of the masses during the last years, consumption still remains very much below that in capitalist countries having an industrial proletariat propostionately comparable to that of the USSR. This is particularly true concerning high-grade food products (meat, dairy products, imported fruits), durable consumer goods (household articles, scooters, radios, automobiles, etc.), and the quality of semi-durable consumer goods (clothing and shoes). The crisis in housing continues to be more than ever the almost universal grounds for discontent among the working population.
The backwardness in agriculture compared to the general boom in the economy is the main worry of the present leaders of the bureaucracy. They tried to do away with it either by by-passing the kolkhoz peasantry (the so-called « virgin land » policy), or by stimulating the private interests of the peasantry (e. g. upward adustment of the price of potatoes), or by threatening them with suppressing the last vestiges of private exploitation (atlacks against private market-gardens and livestock). But in the absence of a correct and coherent overall policy, the fragmentary and often contradictory results of these different efforts did not permit the agricultural crisis as such to be solved.
The malpractices of excessive bureaucratic centralization continue to weigh upon the Soviet economy, despite the first timid measures of administrative decentralization in industry. They are sum-
57 marized in the officially admitted percentage of productive workers the whole of Soviet manpower, which is not over 35 %.
of these contradictions and disproportions represents a strong brake on the development of productive the Soviet
The replacement of bureaucratic ment by democratic preparation, adoption, and execution of the plan under the control of the masses, would permit a considerable increase in the productivity of labor, reducing. overhead and waste, and guarantee a higher standard of living for the working elass and the laboring peasants, without slowing the rhythm at which the economy is: advancing.
2. - With the improvement in the masses' living standards, which was particularly considerable in 1953 and 1954, the economic and social demands of the different social strata, far from diminishing, were manifested in a more and more clear and open fashion. They went beyond the stage of immediate demands — better food-supplies; better quality of industrial products; better workers' housing; higher prices for purchases by the State; more freedom of trade; cheaper industrial products' for the peasants — to reach the stage of demands expressing the social logic of the different classes or strata composing Soviet society. Thus the policy • of concessions under mass pressure, temporarily braked after the fall of Malenkov, started advancing again during the preparation, the holding. and the aftermath of the XXth Congress.
Two general currents, fundamentally opposed to each other, are showing themselves and having a parallel development in Soviet society; they are beginning to state their demands:
a) The current of the most active and conscious part of the working class, which tends more more to raise the question of the administration of the plants. workers obtained important
XXth Congress (raising of low salaries, equalization of pensions, etc.). Workers skilfully seized on the « struggle against the per.
cult » to fight the principle of « single command » (i. e., the arbitrary omnipotence of the manager) within the plant. They also obtained the recognition in principle that the Labor Code — the world! - must be revised. The attempts to introduce a reform into the salary system which — on the pretext of a struggle against the excesses of Stakhanovism and against the system of graduated bonuses — in reality reduced overall pay of the most skilled workers, were suecessfully combated. The proletarian current will take its inspiration from the example of the Polish and Hungarian trade-unions to demand a return of the unions to their genuine historical function: the
58 defense of the specific interests of the workers — if needs be, against the administration and the bureaucratically degenerated State.
b) The current of the most conscious representatives of the most privileged layers of the bureaucracy (managers of trusts and factories, chief engineers, etc.), who seeking to obtain additional legal guarantees for their privileges, these are more and more brought in question by the pressure of the masses and their beginning to take
This current had scored points especially during the year 1955, at the Moscow industrial conand obtention of a model status for managers; increase in the prerogatives supervisory personnel within the plants), workers' pressure aiming at revising the Code threatens to destroy part of these advantages. The bureaucracy demanded and obtained at the XXth Congress the extension of the bonus system in favor of the administrative personnel. asking for a liberalization of the Penal Code in economic matters and is obtaining particularly the right for each industrial enteprise to sell certain production goods, which broadens (and legalizes)
grey market in these goods and introduces a disintegrating factor into planning.
As for the peasantry, scarcely had an opportunity to formulate in, an articulate way any long-range social demands. supposed, however, that above all it obstinately intends to hang on to its little bits of private land, on which a considerable part of its effort is concentrated and from which it derives a disproportionately high percentage of its income. The fact that it has just received from Khrushcher the right to sell freely. the products of these little plots constitutes an important concession in its favor, and will induce it to increase the production vegetables and stock-raising products.
Thus the continuance of the « new course » is inexorably preparing the big show-down between the proletariat and the more privileged layers of the bureaucracy, a show-down which will have as its main stake the administration of the plants and which will inevitably raise all the questions of the structure and control of the economy and of the workers' state.
3. — Since the period of preparation for the XXth Congress, it had become plain that a revolt was rumbling on the intellectual workers' front in the USSR. The virulent and well-justified criticism to which, one after another, the cinema, the theatre, literary, artistic, architectural, scientific, and philosophie productions were subjected, revealed both the lamentable failure of Jdanovism and the passionate desire of a new generation of artists, writers, and savants to free themselves from « directives » that were ignorant, and at variance with the genuine
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL exigencies of their work. The Soviet intellectual youth demanded freedom of criticism, thought, and creation, and it demanded it so loudly that certain serious concessions had to be made to it.
But to grant artists and savants a freedom of criticism in polities and economies, not enjoyed by citizens and above all by workers, is to make of artistic creation and scientific research an inevitaof social criticism. The broad extent of this criticism, even from artists who were liegemen of the bureaucracy (Ehrenburg!), surprised and worried the bureaucratic tops - whence their efforts to check the current, and even turn it backward, to return to a more « sincere » « socialist realism, » to tolerate only those crities who « respect the correct general line of the party. » The ups-and-downs of Soviet history-writing — clinging to most of the Stalinist legend up to the eve of the XXth Congress, then seeming to break free, only to fall back under the ferule of bureaucratic control, whether it be exercised by a Molotov or by even more narrow-minded functionaries — clearly characterize the zigzags of a bureaucracy faced with the demand- for freedom of criticism by the intellec-
But despite the desperate resistance of this bureaucracy, despite the steps backward, the delays, and even the reactions shown in this or that field, the battle for freedom of thought in the USSR won at the XXth Congress tremendous victories whose effects cannot be wiped out. Filtering inexorably through all the cracks and crevices henceforth opened up in the shaking dictatorship, the spirit of criticism, the spirit of rebellion, will penetrate into the political field and will strike the spark of the political revolution.
4. — The XXth Congress marked a high point in the crisis which has been shaking the Bonapartist tops of the Soviet bureaucracy since Stalin's death, and which is itself the reflection of the basie change in the relationship of forces between the proletariat and the bureaucracy. pressure of the masses and of a discontent that was beginning to take on a political aspect, the leading nucleus of the hureaucracy was torn into various tendencies: tendency in favor of major concessions to the masses (Malenkov-Mikoyan?); a tendency for stiffening the dictatorship (Kaganovitch-Molotov?); a « centrist » tendency (Khrushchev-Bulganin). open attempt of the « liberals » to capitalize on the hatred toward Stalin by openly attacking authority of the defunct dictator, Khrushchev tried to neutralize this manœuvre by himself launching a much more violent attack against Stalin in his secret report. Thus, having tried in vain to make Beria shoulder all its collective crimes, the bureaucracy made own chief the main scapegoat, thus winning a short
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL respite before having to face a political opposition.
This colossal manœuvre, of really historic scope, showed from the beginning the marks of the haste and even panic that engendered it. At no moment were the leaders of the bureaucracy able to control. or even to foresee, the forces that they were thus setting loose. While they perhaps delayed the arpearance of an anti-Stalinist oppositional tendency within the CP of the USSR, and perhaps temporarily won back some sympathy in certain intellectual cireles and lower layers of the bureaucracy, they at the same time set going a real snowballing movement which will end up by crushing them. detroyal they of treat
By destroying in so thorough a fashion the cratie autocracy, they definitively undermined the spirit of bureaucratic command at every level. By cynically revealing the monstrous crimes of Stalin, with which they had nevertheless associated, they definitively destroyed the obedience of Communist militants toward their leadership, while covering themselves with
By explaining the thus revealed horrors by an inverted « personality cult, » they satisfied nobody, and opened the way to a critical Marxist
Soviet society its bureaucratic degeneration.
The XXth Congress thus raised to the pitch of paroxysm the crisis of Stalinism in several countries, especially in the « People's Democracies » where were on the threshold unleashing movement which speeded up the outbreak of the political revolution, it temporarily transferred the centre of gravity of the struggle the proletariat and the bureaucracy outside the borders of the USSR. Thrown into consternation by the breadth of the revolutionary force thus set free, the bureaucracy vainly tried to backward and to check destalinization (Summer 1956). These backward steps ended by exasperating the masses even more, especially in Poland and Hungary, and finally faced the Kremlin with the necessity of repressing the mass revolutionary movements in these countries Through the Soviet soldiers in contact with this powerful revolutionary movement, the wave of the political revolution will flow back from the « glacis » into the USSR itself, thus signing the deathverdict for the bureaucracy at bay.
The first repercussions of the Polish and Hungarian revolutions, furthermore, were the exacerbation of the fraction struggle in the very centre of the Kremlin leadership. Threatened by a temporary bloc made against him by the Malenkov and the Molotov-Kaganoviteh tendencies, outvoted in the Political Bureau (Presidium), Khrushchev was able to stay in power only by making a direct appeal to
59 the Central Committee over the heads of the Political Bureau, and by eliminating his adversaries from the « collective leadership. » By using classic Stalinist methods (calumnies, amalgams, falsification of history) for this purpose, he diminished his credit still further among the more and more critical circles of the bureaucracy's lower layers and of the proletariat. By involving a part of the party cadres more directly in the solution of this dispute, he contributed, in his own way, to the politicization of the masses, and prepared the following stage during which those opposed to him may well carry an appeal against him to the Congress and to the party rank and file.
5. — Thus the objective and subjective preconditions for the revolution are rapidly ripening in the Soviet Union. After having lost the aureole of omniscience, the Kremlin has now lost that of omnipotence. Having abandoned the mantle of autocracy, the bureaucracy is now losing the mask of enlightened liberalism. With an unheard-of rapidity, history is foreing Stalin's heirs to throw down all their cards and to face empty-handed, so to speak, the assault of the masses.
The more that popular pressure grows, the more the divergences at the top will tend to be accen-
The neo-Stalinist tendeney will see in the concessions already granted the cause of the drive of the masses and will try to put a stop to « liberalization, » bringing into question even the concessions made since 1953. The « liberal » tendency, on the contrary, will understand that the drive from below will continue to grow if the dictatorship does recognize, partially, the people's anxieties, and will prepare a new wave of « destalinization », perhaps even more sensational than that of the XXth Congress. Both, however, are trying only to preserve and defend the privileges of the bureaucracy as a whole. Both will be led more and more to appeal to the army, the only effective tool of repression remaining after the dismantling of the police, to arbitrate their conflicts.
The temporary elimination of Malenkor and of Molotov-Kaganovitch, far from putting an end to this faction struggle, will make it still more violent. Under present conditions, where the relationship of forces is evolving in a way that is unfavorable for the bureaucracy in the USSR, and where the antagonistic currents in society have a tendency to be indirectly reflected within the leading clique itself, it is impossible that the bureaucracy's Bonapartist tops accept once more the iron reign of a super-arbitrator. While the leading staff continues to tear at each other and to discredit itself collectively in the eyes of the masses by its repeated and rapid turnabouts, the rôle of arbitrator will more and more pass over into the hands of the army
60 leaders, while among the lower and middle cadres of the party, the trade-unions, and especially the youth, there will be produced the first crystalizations of semi-proletarian tendencies aiming at the reëstablishment of soviet democracy. It is only at the moment when the masses enter directly into action that the great social currents will find their own political expression in mutually opposed political groupings.
This growing tension between the masses and the bureaucracy, between the different currents bureaucracy, and between the army soldiers and the function of repression assigned to them (Hungary!) — all these explosion. Let a group within the bureaucratic leadership be led to appeal to the masses; let the masses go into the streets to an economic, social, or political which is close to their hearts; let vanguard currents within the youth, the working class, or even the army, begin spontaneously to formulate a programme of political demands, or let there. action or combination among these different factors - and an open collision between the forces that want to keep the basic institutions of the dictatorship (single party with bureaucratic structure; trade-unions at the service of the state: omnipotence of the managers; formalistic character of representative institutions; great differences in income) and the masses who want to undertake a democratic administration of the State and the economy will be on the order of the day. The transformation of the pressure of the masses into direct action of the masses will in this way signalize the beginning of the political revolution in the USSR. II - DECLINE AND FALL OF STALINISM IN
THE « PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACIES »
6. - The economic, social, and political development of the « People's Democracies » has not in recent years been parallel to that of the USSR. Whereas in the Soviet Union production, productivity, real wages, and the living standards of the population have in the last eight years increased in a regular though uneven way, the development of the economy in the countries of the Soviet « glacis » has been much more contradictory. is owing above all to the special forms of exploitation that the bureaucracy had introduced into these countries (reparations, Soviet corporations, mixed companies, trade treaties with one-sided preferential tariffs, ete.), an exploitation that has weighed heavily upon the economy of the « People's Democracies » and partly neutralized their unquestionable advances in industrialization. Though the crudest ferms of this exploitation began to be suppressed after the 17 June
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL 1953 revolt in Berlin, the after-effects of this policy have been kept up till today, especially in the matter of trade policy.
The attempt to apply to each of the called « People's Democracies » the Stalinist schema of industrialization (absolute priority of heavy industry, plus autarky) was to have the most unfortunate consequences, especially in countries East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, which had formerly been deeply integrated in the world market, and partially remained so until the Korean War and the imperialist « blockade. » The attempts at coördination of the « glacis » economies as a whole, or even the development of a joint plan, were tardy, timid, and marked by the idea of « completing » the more or less autarkic national economies and not by a spirit of joint planning in the common interest of the peoples of the « glacis. »
The higher living standards to which the workers were accustomed, especially the Germans and Czechs and partially the Poles and Hungarians; the even fiercer attachment of the peasants to small property, whose tradition was more ancient; the existence of urban middle classes that were more numerous and had more solid political and social traditions than in Russia; lastly the power of the Catholic church, which served in practically all these countries as the main rallying point for the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois oppositions to the regime of « democracy » — all these factors have from the beginning given a greater social instability the societies of the « People's Democracies » compared to the USSR.
If there is added to the foregoing the fact that it is scarcely seven or eight years since the opposition parties were eliminated, that the workers keep up a trade-union tradition that leads them to oppose any excessive raise in work-norms by passive resistance, slowdowns, or even outright strikes, that peasant property and private enterprise remain predominant in the agriculture of the whole « glacis, » then it is understandable that bureaucratie planning had to face up to much more dangerous tensions than in the USSR, and that it even broke down at times when faced with those difficulties that it had itself partly brought about.
industrial production followed a jerky rhythm, some years being marked by stagnation or even recession in certain sectors. The real income of workers even went down at certain (Poland 1951-1952, and East Germany 1952-1953. Czechoslovakia 1953), and in numerous cases just stagnated. Poland and Hungary had in 1955 a standard of living scarcely superior to 1949, and doubtless inferior to 1938, at least for the workers. Czechoslavakia has raised its standard of living in the course of recent years, but it scarcely
exceeds that of 1947 and 1936. East Germany, it has been crippled by the 1948-1953 series of purat its disposal; Tito; the absurd explanation of the Soviet-Jugoslav
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL also in great progress since 1949, remains below the level of 1936, and especially below that of West Germany. If in Rumania and Bulgaria the pre-war level has been largely surpassed, that has been brought about partly at the cost of difficulties in food supplies, difficulties which are furthermore common to all these countries, once the granary of Europe, demonstrating the complete bankruptey of Stalinist agricultural policy.
7. — Based on objective conditions very different from those in the Soviet Union, the relationships between the toiling masses and the Stalinist parties in power, as well as the relationships between the masses and the state, are far more differentiated and far more contradictory than in the USSR. Thus, though the CP of the USSR can scarcely be considered any longer a workers' party in the sociological meaning of the term (it is to a large extent composed of bureaucrats, as is confirmed by the statisties published on the occasion of its XIXth and XXth Congresses), this is not the case with the UPs of the different countries of the «glacis,» in which the majority of the advanced continue to be active (especially Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, and to a lesser degree until 1956, Poland and Hungary). The tradeunions of these countries are still of a contradictory nature; the bureaucracy considering them just extensions of their own arms, the workers often keeping up the hope — which proved justified, especially in East Germany on 17 June 1953, at Poznan, and in Hungary • - of being able once more to use them for their own ends.
For all these reasons, tendency struggles can be launched more easily in these parties than in the CP of the USSR, and above all these tendency struggles can have a much wider echo among the rank. and-file and the advanced layers of the working class. Since their objective living condiare much worse than those working class, these tendency struggles become preparatory stage of mass action. These overall objective conditions, as well as the relatively much greater weakness of the state and cratic apparatus, considerably reduce the time-lapse between the outbreak of these tendency struggles — under the pressure of all the social - and the beginning of the political revolution of the masses.
Furthermore, the isolation of the bureaucratic apparatus from society as a whole is much greater in the « People's Democracies » than in the Soviet Union. The apparatus installed from abroad finds itself faced with the still living autonomous class forces; it has not yet been able to surround itself with a broad layer of labor aristocrats; it has infinitely more limited material means
61 ges. That is why such an apparatus, terrified by fear of a popular opposition, is without real means of defense apart from open repression, and hangs desperately on to « friendship with the Soviet Union » (i. e. subordination to the Kremlin). and to the « principle of the monolithic party, » unable to tolerate the slightest fissure without risking loss of power.
the explanation of the paradoxical fact that the first impulse toward « destalinization » came
Soviet Union, the bureaucracy is relatively more solid, whereas the most revolutionary effects of this « destalinization » were felt in the « People's Democracies, » where it was the immediate starting-point for the political revolution.
Lastly there must be taken into account the increased violence with which the national question is showing itself in the countries of the « glacis. » The leaders of the Stalinist parties there appear generally as Quislings imposed by a foreign power. The opposition within the CPs capitalizes on national feeling. The struggle for the « national road toward socialism » thus takes on there a highly progressive and revolutionary value, contrary to that in the CPs of the West, where it generally covers up a turn toward codified rightist opportunism. Gomulka in Poland, Nagy in Hungary, tomorrow perhaps Hernstedt or Ackermann in East Germany, by becoming in the eyes of the masses symbols of a struggle for national emancipation, are creating favorable conditions for a renewal of popularity for the CP (through its « national » tendency) and permitting the political revolution under oppositional communist leadership to mobilize national feeling in its favor. This has occurred especially in a elassical form in Poland.
8. — The revolt of the Jugoslav CP against the Kremlin in 1948, which was the first stage of the international crisis of Stalinism and origin of « destalinization, » has continued to influence the relations between the « glacis » countries and the USSR, as well as the internal evolution in these different countries. During this last period, however, this influence has also revealed its profoundly contradictory nature, itself an expression of the contradictory nature of the Jugoslav CP — a centrist party that stopped on an opportunist and pragmatie line halfway between Stalinism and revolutionary Marxism.
In the process of « destalinization » started by the Soviet bureaucracy as a movement of self-defense under the pressure of the masses, the CP leadership was obliged sooner or later to bring up again the case of the Jugoslav CP. Khrushchev's spectacular trip to Belgrade; the spectacular rehabilitation of
62 crisis by reference to the « machinations of the tor Beria » - these were the first sledge-hammer blows that the new leadership of the bureaucracy had to give to Stalin's authority: rebound, to its own authority and to any bureaucratic authority within the communist movement. Jugoslar communists themselves insisted that the genuine responsibilities for the break be sought not in Beria but in Stalin and in the whole political system in effect in the USSR during the Stalin era. They once more played a highly progressive role in the international communist movement, during the whole crucial period of preparation for the XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR.
Simultaneously the rehabilitation of the « renegade Tito » — suddenly treated with infinitely more consideration than the lackeys Chervenkov, Rakosi, Bierut, Ulbricht, and C° — brought about, even before the XXth Congress, a profound crisis in the mutual relations among the CPs and the workers states such as they had been conceived and set up in the Stalin era. The idea of a basic equality among all the communist parties and all the workers' states, the idea that the petty-bourgeois nationalist concept of the « leading role of the Soviet Union within the socialist camp » must be urgently revised, the idea that it was fatal in other workers states to imitate the excesses and errors that the Soviet bureaucracy had committed in the USSR itself — made their way quickly through the CPs of the « glacis, » aiding the rapid derelopment of « national » and « liberal » oppositions. The effects of the Khrushcher Report combined with those of Tito's rehabilitation — the two turns being furthermore inseparably linked up with each other -these tendencies played a highly progressive, and even objectively revolutionary, role within the respective CP's.
But as soon as these divergences at the top started more and more violent movements in the ranks and masses themselves began to intervene in the political struggle, the leadership of the Jugoslar CP itself began to be afraid of the extent of popular reactions, and, from being the motor. it became the brake. of « destalinization, » trying to limit it to the replacement of one leading staff by another (Bulgaria), or even by a simple admission of the errors committed » by the leadership in (Rumania). The moment of this transformation of the role of the Jugoslav CP in the preparation of political revolution in the « glacis » can located between the first and second trip of Tito to the USSR.
It was not only subjectively but also objectively that the JCP became an obstacle on the path to the full and complete unfolding of the revolutionary forces in Eastern Europe. While the Jugoslav
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL experiment of worker's administration of the plants remains a progressive stimulant in all cases where bureaucratic regime is maintained, the of adequate political democracy Jugoslav state and CP deeply disappointed the left oppositions the «glacis» who were seeking a democratization of the movement, especially in the Polish CP. tionably the absence living and victorious example of a democratic workers delayed the ripening of the revolution and especially in the case
Hungary preventing a revolutionary solution of the crisis created by the popular rising of 23 October. scope and revolution also frightened leadship of the Jugoslar CP and produced its hesi. tant attitude during the decisive days in Budapest.
When, on the contrary, the Soviet bureaucracy big movement of pulling back from «destalinization» after the Hungarian events, and when it tried to condemn all the more or less independent currents in the CPs of Eastern Europe, the JCP, considering itself (and with good grounds) to be aimed at, felt obliged to specify and accentuate ence more its opposition to • Stalinism and the Soviet bureaucracy. The violent offensive launched against police terrorism making its reappearance
Hungary, Albania, Rumania, etc.; the defense, at first hesitant (Tito's speech at Pula), then clearer and more courageous (Kardelj's speech before the the Hungarian revolution against Soviet interrention; the unconditional support given to the Polish revolution; the slogan « All power to the workers" councils» launched by the JCP for Hungary, even though after the event—these have great significance in this direction, and permit the positions taken by the JCP once again to plav the role of an ideological motor in the differentiation within the CPs.
The progressive role played by the resistance of the Jugoslav CP to the Stalinist ukases is nowise brought question again preceding
This role already belongs to history. has also demonstrated by the Jugoslav example that a pragmatic opportunist policy which piles up passing «successes» on a day-by-day basis, can abruptly become a historically negative when the revolutionary requires decisions of another sort of audacity and in conformity with principles.
first time at the moment of the Korean It was shown time during crucial weeks of the Polish and Hungarian revolutions.
9. The political revolution in Poland dips its roots not only into the overall objective conditions into the
From August to October 1956, from the VIlth to faithful to its programme, applies it in practice, organiza- will determine its
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL element of national oppression that the Kremlin introduced into this country, but also into the serious revolutionary traditions of the Polish • themelves workers movement, that have shown themselves uninterruptedly, so to spek, for half a century. By rapidly breaking the iron yoke of Stalinist ideas and dogmas that were never wholly assimilated by the Polish CP-dissolved for this reason by Stalin in 1938—the political revolution in Poland linked itself again to a tradition which had no equal save that of Bolshevism. Hence the exceptionally high level of consciousness of the old and new generation of workers in Poland, which enabled the political revolution, right from its first stage, to surpass the best writings and actions of the JCP, as far as the latter had surpassed Stalinism properly speaking.
Having received its first stimulus from the XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR, and aided by a crisis in the leadership coinciding with that XXth Congress (Bierut's death), the awakening of communist consciousness, nurtured by the exceptionally grave economic errors committed by the Stalinist staff in power, led rapidly to a struggle of tendencies for the leadership of the party, parallel to which there developed a struggle for the return of Gomulka to that leadership.
Freedom of thought and of criticism then burst out violently within workers' organizations, encouraging publie manifestations of workers' discontent. If the pressure of the masses explains « democratization, » « democratization » prepared the ground for the transformation of pressure into direct action by the masses. It is thus that there occurred the Poznan strike, the proletariat's answer to a senseless economic and social policy that was violating the workers' most immediate interests.
Poznan raised straight away the question of the struggle for the leadership of the Party. The repression and above all the calumny used against the strikers unleashed a storm of popular opposition. While a Stalinist tendency considered the strike a product of limited « democratization, » and, with the help of the Kremlin, tried to limit the « excesses » of political liberty within the workers' movement, a left opposition crystalized, determined to remake contact and unity with the working class by resolutely taking the lead in a movement of democratization of all social life. The VIlth Plenum of the CC of the Polish CP (August 1956) adopted important reforms imposed under the pressure of this opposition, but Kremlin pressure sufficed to impose on the Polish CP a paritary leadership that paralyzed in practice the application of the line of the VIIth Plenum. the VIIIth Plenum of the CC, the tendency struggle became general throughout all workers'
63 tions and took on a more and more tumultuous and violent form, transforming it into a fraction struggle in the course of which each fraction tried to mobilize support in the proletariat. The Stalinist right appealed to the worst anti-semitic and chauvinist instinets and launched demands of pure demagogy; the liberal left appealed to the workers' class consciousness and desire for emancipation. It began to mobilize them against the bureaucracy.
The mass movement then attained a new level for long unknown. Spontaneously the factory workers began to demand workers' administration of the plants. Worker and student youth put itself at the head of the movement of political democratization and a return to Lenin on the theoretical plane. When Gomulka joined the left fraction at the beginning of October, its victory seemed certain. As a last resource the Stalinist fraction called the Kremlin to its aid; the brutal intervention of the Stalinist delegation at the VIllth Plenum brought about a general mobilization of the proletariat, which occupied the factories, armed itself, and sei up councils. After four days of revolutionary fever, of the party. The political revolution in Poland had won a first decisive stage.
By its manifold connections with the proletariat in which it had deeply rooted itself during the six months of violent political struggle; by the clarity of its criticism of Stalinism, which came quite close to revolutionary Marxism; by its programme of mobilizing the workers taking over the leadership of the economy — the left tendency, which associated itself with the centrist fraction of Gomulka in overthrowing the Stalinist leadership of the Polish CP, can be considered, especially in its advanced the youth, a nucleus forming revolutionary Marxist leadership of the Polish proletariat. The alliance of this tendency with Gomulka remains unstable, subject to the contradictory influences exercised on the centrist fraction by the pressure of the masses on the one hand, drawing it each time closer to the left, and by the of the Polish bureaucratic apparatus and
Soviet bureaucracy on the other, periodically pulling it away. The relationship of and especially the audacity correct tactics of the Left will definitively decide this evolution. The workers' discontent (Lodj), and the way the students hold on to the liberties won in October threaten to break it up. The relationship of social forces and above all the Left's audacity and correct tactic will definitively determine developments. The degree to which the left tendency remains and binds itself ever more closely to the proletariat, capacity to fulfil completely the
64 role of Leninist guide to the Polish working class.
10. The political revolution in Hungary burst out in far more unfavorable conditions than those that permitted the Polish revolution to win its first stage. Among these unfavorable conditions must be listed:
(a) The much more limited Marxist tradition of the workers' movement, the traditional weakness and internal divisions of the communist movement.
(b) The more police-ridden and odious character of the Stalinist dietatorship (the Rajk trial).
(c) The lack of an alternative leadership resulting from the lack of a broadly organized tendency whole party and the workers' movement.
This fact led a group of intellectuals and students, the « Petöfi Circle, » who were not all communists, to play the role of guide in the democratization, the Nagy-Rakosi (Gerö) tendency struggle being no longer reflected in the leading organisms of the party.
(d) The fact that the «liberal» elements, having once risen to power in 1953, had been driven out of it after the fall of. Malenkov, which brought about a purge from the party of many left elements and a hardening of the Stalinist elements.
(e) The lack of an alarm signal of the Poznan sort, which delayed the formation of a broad Nagy fraction and allowed the Stalinist elements to refuse till the last minute any substantial concession to the masses (delays in Rakosi's resignation, interventions against the Petöf Cirele, étc.).
(f) The truly criminal provocations of which the Stalinists made themselves guilty when faced with movement powerful but still peaceful and not breaking out of the framework of « people's democracy »: Gerö's 22 October speech, the 23 October shootings, the call for the intervenlion of Soviet troops.
These different factors explain why the rise of the mass movement - which, from the XXth Con• gress of the Soviet CP up to the fall of Rakosi and even up to the victory of the first stage of the revolution in Poland, had developed in parallel with the Polish upsurge — abruptly took a more violent turn and, beginning with 23 October 1956, overflowed into an insurrectional general strike against the bureaucratic dictatorship.
This more spontaneous character of the political revolution in Hungary gave a classio proletarian form to its means of struggle and organization: street demonstrations and factory occupations; the going over of the army to the side of the people; general arming of the workers; formation of workers', soldiers', and students' councils all over the country.
There were thus assembled all the objective elements for a rapid and brilliant revolutionary vie-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL tory, capable of raising the whole world revolutionary movement to a higher level. It was essentially the danger of that victory, and not the counterrevolutionary danger, that incited the Kremlin — after hesitations and repeated reversals of policy Hungarian revolution, which threatened to extend - to engage in military intervention against the to the whole « glacis » and to the USSR itself.
But the essentially spontaneous character of the 23 October insurrection and the lack of a revolutionary leadership capable of quickly coördinating the proletarian forces and guiding them rapidly toward the constitution of a democratic and independent republic based on the councils, permitted free manifestations of all currents in the population, the reappearance of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois parties, and even a beginning of counter-revolutionary activity, which provided the Kremlin's intervention with a semblance of justification and an alibi seized on the wing.
The revolutionary people in arms, who had risen to wrench the factories and the power from the bureaucrats, would never have tolerated that they should be restored to their old capitalist masters and landlords. It was strong enough to prevent any victory of the counter-revolution. But the less it had at its disposal a revolutionary leadership at the level of its tasks, the more prolonged became a transitional period of confusion which the reaction could organize and show itself. The longer bureaucracy delayed withdrawing from Hungary, and the more it intervened directly against the revolution, the more exacerbated national become and to move into the foreground of the masses' concerns. his friends, anxious above all to take the leadership of the movement in hand again, could only adapt themselves to this evolution of popular feelings, and enter into open «liberal» tendencies of the Soviet bureaucracy.
The Soviet military interventions against the Hungarian revolution were crimes that struck an enormous blow against the Soviet Union and the international communist movement. They were a bad setback for the Hungarian Communist Party itself, now totally cut off from the proletariat of
They were unable, however, to break its country.
magnificent combativity of Hungarian workers. These lost only the first round of the political revolution, which will arise again, invincible, from the blood-letting imposed by Kremlin. Already the Kadar regime is forced to keep part of the conquests of 23 October. Encouraged by fierce passive resistance and an unremitting mass pressure, the revolution will again take up its march forward, and will reëstablish, with
inevitably delay the outbreak of mass movements in rian
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL full and complete proletarian democracy, the honor of communism in Hungary.
11. The XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR. the Khrushchev Report, and the political revolution in Poland and Hungary, have all the worker, profound influence on the CPs of statesincluding that of China, where there was shown a certain delay in « destalinization, » explicable above all by the backward state of the country and the enormous objective economic difficulties that the leadership of the Chinese CP must But the of the current of « destalinization » was sufficiently strong to impose important decisions on the Congress of the Chinese CP, especially in favor of the right to tendencies, 'the right of minorities to defend their ideas within the Communist Party
65 countries, by stimulating them to a greater conformism with the Stalinist apparatus as a whole, their long-range repereussions will render the inevitable explosions against the bureaucracy all the more violent and radical.
One of the most spetacular results of the Hungarian revolution was the Soviet declaration of 30 October. This statement attempted to establish relations between the « People's Democracies » and the USSR on a new basis, thus implicitly recognizing the element of national oppression that the Kremlin had introduced into the mutual contacts among workers' states.
Though the brutal intervention of the Kremlin in the Hungarian revolution opposes a scathing denial to the bureaucracy's protestations of good faith, even after majority decisions, and even the need its 30 October declaration will nevertheless of tolerating several « democratic» parties in a workers' state. These ideas, even if they are nol put into practice in China, will help stir things up numerous Communist Parties, especially in Asia.
Subsequently, the contradictory pressures of social forces, revolutionary and conservative, on the international scale and even inside China, seem to have produced serious divergences within the leadership of the Chinese CP. While for one wing of this leadership the public support given to the repression of the Hungarian revolution seems to have been accompanied by an analysis of bureaucratic phenomena the public support given to the repression of the Hungarian revolution seems to have been accompanied by an analysis of bureaucratic phenomena going farther along the road of « destalinization » than any Kremlin tendency has done to date (oral report of Mao Tse-tung about the « rectification movement and about the « contradictions » within the people), another wing, momentarily victorious, seems to have succeeded in backing up very fast (differences between Mao's speech and its publiely printed text, waves of repression, etc.). The social difficulties being met with in China itself, the strike waves, the peasant resistance to agrarian collectivization, the student rebellions, have doubtless convinced the majority of the leaders of the bureaucracy that any Gomulkist » course would within a short time provoke a mass uprising.
Stirrings have appeared even in the countries where the bureaucratic dictatorship was not immediately confronted by a mass movement (Harich group in East Germany, intellectuals' and students' movement in Czechoslovakia, purge in Bulgaria. etc.). I The bureaucratic leaders have to make concessions, especially economic ones, to the and have had to promise likewise democratic political reforms. Though the Hungarian events will be invoked against it every time that a tendency in a CP of the « Peoples' Democracies » will try to free itself effectively from Kremlin tutelage. It will thus become, without the bureaucracy's realizing it. a new time-bomb which will blow to bits the relationships of subordination among the communis! parties and workers' states.
The immediate repercussions of the Hungarian revolution can stimulate a momentarily predominant fraction in the Kremlin to « harden » again its attitude toward the countries of the « glacis. » But the pressure of the masses cannot fail to continue to grow in these countries. The fermentation of natio. nal independence and the autonomy of the CPs toward the Soviet CP cannot fail to « break up » a large part of the youth and of the communist militants themselves. The process of the transformation of relations among workers' states, of relations of national oppression and economic exploitation, into relations of equality and fraternal collaboration, is irreversible. The more the bureaucracy grasps the importance of this process, the more it is obliged to substitute a policy of effective economic aid to the « glacis » countries for its old policy of exploitation, in order to try at least to establish an alliance, however fragile, with the leading bureaueratic groups in those Any attempt to go back to the old relationship of flagrant and economic exploitation of the « glacis » runs the risk of provoking uprisings there in a short time → what the Kremlin is trying at any price to avoid.
12. The theses on « The Rise and Decline of Stalinism » had characterized the period opened by Stalin's death and the acute crisis of the Soviet bureaucracy as a period in which there would rapidly ripen conditions favorable for the reconstitution of the Soviet section of the Fourth International. The experience of the Polish and Hungarevolution has completely confirmed this prog-
among advanced of meeting halls, broadeasting time on the radio
66 nosis. Spontaneously, on the basis of their own experience and relinking up with the living Leninist tradition in the history of world communism, nuclei of left communists there reached programmatic positions close to those of the Fourth International. The formation of such nuclei is inevitable in the USSR as well, if it has not already occurred. By helping these nuclei to clarify completely their analysis of the bureaucratic dictatorship and their programme for the political revolution, by pointing out to them the way to the maintenance of living contacts with the masses and their integration in the broad currents of more or less centrist communist opposition that exist or are being formed in all the countries under the domination of the Kremlin, the Fourth International will try within the shortest possible time ta achieve the constitution of genuine sections, of authentic Trotskyist organizations, in these countries. This will be the hest guarantee that the new revolutionary leadership of the proletariat be rapidly forged in the fire of the revolution, and that there be reduced to a minimum the dangers of confusion and of the temporary taking over by counter-revolutionary forces in the course of mass uprisings. III - THE PROGRAMME OF THE FOURTH
INTERNATIONAL FOR THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION
The development of the Polish and Hungarian revolutions, the rapid ripening of both the objecconditions for a political revolution in the the appearance of oppositional currents in the Stalinist parties of the other « People's Democracies, » as well as the whole international discussion started by the present crisis of the bureau. cratic dictatorship, make the formulation by the Fourth International of a more detailed and precise programme for that revolution an urgent necessity. It is not a question of immediate or transitional demands that might be able to lead to the first mass against bureaucratic dictatorship. Such demands, following in general the line of the demands incorporated in the Transitional Programme for the USSR, must be worked up by the revolutionary Marxists of the Soviet Union and of the « People's Democracies » on the basis of the concrete conditions existing in those countries. programme sketehed out below is the one that revo. lutionary Marxists present to already awakened and politically active masses, on the eve of, morrow of, the outbreak of the political revolution. It is the programme for the building of soviet democracy in the state and the economy. a crucial problem of the political revolution, around which the discussion
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL workers is concentrated, as the Polish and Hungarian examples have proved.
Such a programme can no longer be based merely on generalization of the experience of the democratie workers' state of the first years after the October revolution. It must at the same time base. itself on the numerous experiences that the working class movement has accumulated since then: that of the degeneration of the Soviet bureaucratic state; that of the Third International and of the Communist Parties; that of the Spanish revolution; those, whether positive or negative, of the Jugoslav, Chinese, Polish, and Hungarian revolutions; those of the so-called « People's Democracies, » as well as the demands put forth by the proletarian vanguard and revolutionary youth in struggle against the bureaucratic dictatorship, for the establishment of a soviet power (in particular in the days, of 16-17 June 1953 in East Berlin and throughout the whole of the DDR; at the end of May 1953 in Czechoslovakia; the revolts at Vorkuta and other forced labor camps in the USSR since the second half of 1953; those of the June 1956 strike at Poznan, etc.).
13. The organization of the workers' state must be reviewed in the light of classie Leninist theory on the subjeet, that is, the theory of soviet democracy conceived as broadening and not the limiting of democratic rights and freedoms of which the whole of the toiling masses may partake, as compared to those they enjoy even in the democratio bourgeois states. The dictatorship of the proletariat and soviet democracy are synonymous in that the granting of unlimited political freedom to the toiling masses can and must be accompanied by the limiting or even the denial of political freedom to all representatives of the hostile classes, to all those who aim at the overthrowing of the workers' state based on the suppression of the private ownership of the major means of pro-
Practically speaking, the real exercise of power by the soviets, the freely elected councils of the manual and intellectual workers of the towns and country-organisms that are both legislative and executive and for this reason represent a higher form of democratic organization—is possible only if the following guarantees exist:
(a). The freedom to organize all parties that place themselves within the limits of Soviet legality and the framework of the Constitution of the workers' state.
(b) Genuine freedom of press and assembly, i.e., the right for each tendency supported by a legally established minimum of manual and intellectual workers, or by a decision of the soviets, to dispose
and television, paper and printing presses propor- dangers as long as the world victory of socialism is that, on the basis of past experience, it is absolutely by secret ballot; the right to organize tendencies must always face two and even to print internal tendency bulletins;
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL tional to existing available supplies.
(c) The election and periodical reëlection of the members of the central legislative organisms and of the principal central, provincial, and local funetionaries, by secret ballot and with multiple candidates or lists, representing the various soviet parties; and the recall of those elected when those who elected them so wish.
(d) The limitation of the salaries of all funetionaries in the administration, especially the state administration, to those of a skilled worker.
(e) The election and periodical reëlection of judges by secret ballot, thereby guaranteeing their complete independence with regard to the organisms of state administration. Open trial with full hearings, and with the defense's rights guaranteed in each case, and on the basis of written law.
(f) The disbanding of all permanent organisms of internal security. replaced by public workers' militias that function, when necessary, with the help of auxiliary organisms constantly under the publie control of the soviets.
(g) The generalized arming of workers and the setting up of arsenals of automatic arms in the plants and working-class quarters. relations between the proletariat and its class . enemy, it must be eliminated from the relations which, within the working class, bring into conflict different tendencies in the labor movement, abort, leneies, and from those among various currents, tendencies, or • fractions within the revolutionary party. The dictatorship of the proletariat means the use of violence against the class enemy, according to the resistance of the enemy. Soviet democracy means the refusal to use violence within the workers' movement, and the use of only persuasion experience by the revolutionary party in its relations with the working class and the other toiling strata of society.
Since in practice the boundaries between the toiling classes and their enemy are not sharply drawn, and since various objective conditions can lead the class enemy to seek support among the most conservative currents within the toiling classes. the revolutionary vanguard may sometimes be
67 not ensured: the return of a capitalist counter-revolution, and the development of bureaucratie degeneration. The weaker the state, the stronger the pressure exerted by the enemy, the more the trust and the political initiative of the great majority of the workers are lacking, then the more any coercion used against sections of the working class drains their confidence in the state and opens the gates to bureaucratic degeneration.. That is why it is the duty of the revolutionary party to submit itself to the democratic verdict of the soviets, even when they make serious mistakes that the working masses by experience will recognize and right. sooner or later. It is only in this spirit that the principle, ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS, as the basis of organization of the workers' state, ácquires its full meaning.
In developing the programme of the political revolution for the reëstablishment of workers' democracy in the workers' states, the Fourth International unshakably maintains the principle of the defense of all workers' states against imperialism. It will fight against every effort by imperialism to exploit the political revolution in its own counterrevolutionary interests. These efforts will become more accentuated as the political revolution goes forward. This renders that much the more urgent our task of permanent explanation of our traditional position on this matter to the masses and the communist cadres.
14. The bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR has proved that the roots of the power of the bureaucratic apparatus lie in its more or less arbitrary disposal of the state production machine. The relations among the state apparatus, the apparatus directing the economy, and the revolutionary party, for this reason decisive in guaranteeing the increase in soviet socialist democracy. These relations must be governed by the following principles:
(a) A fundamental differentiation between workers' the revolutionary party, one being quite distinct from and in no way subordinated to the other. This means in particular that under no condition can any state organism - and even less so any security organism — intervene in the discussions or the struggles of tendencies inside the party. This also means that no state organism elected by the masses (or the soviet) may be called upon to make a painful choice: either to accept the development of a dangerous situation within the workers' state, or, in order to overcome this danger, to use methods that may seriously un- party leaders by the members of the party, by the dermine the workers' trust in this vanguard and in the state. Without wanting to emit absolute truths or dogmas, the Fourth International declares elear that a workers' state modified in its composition by a party decision.
(b) The election and democratic control over strict observance of all rules of democratic centralism: congresses and conferences at fixed periods; the election of local, regional, and national leaders
68 complete information and discussion as possible in the rank and file before important differences are settled by the central organisms; no sanctions against members without the agreement of the rank-and-file organisms to which they belong; etc.
(c) Democratic control of the state apparatus and that of the economy, respectively organized in local and factory committees. The election and revocability of the principal members of this apparatus by these organisms. The active participation of the different existing political tendencies in the choice of leaders and of alternative action programmes.
(d) The lack of material privileges in connection with leadership activities, there being no exception other than in the case of technicians not belonging to the party; such cases must be subjected to the elose control of the soviet rank-and-file organisms.
(e) The principle of maximum information and publicity for all controversial issues within the party, the state organisms, or those of the economy. This is an indispensable condition if the proletariat is to direct the state effectively and acquire in the shortest possible time the necessary experience to govern with the maximum efficiency.
15. The organization of the socialist economy: during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, is the touchstone for either the extension of socialist democracy in the workers' state-until such a time as democracy itself withers away as the form of state—or towards the various bureaucratic deformations of the state and the appearance of fresh social inequalites to a monstrous bureaucratic degeneration.
As Marxists, we know that the bureaucratic degeneration of the state can be only a transitional in the history of the struggle for world socia sumicient materiel basis in any workers state a phase rendered possible by the lack (or group of workers' states) and by its (or their)
But, while recognizing this basic cause of degeneration, Marxists nowise accept a mechanistie and automatic determinism, i.e., the inevitability of an extreme degeneration of the Soviet type. They recognize only that the poorer the material basis of the workers' state, the greater the risk of bureaucratic deformations of the Soviet Union that cost the Soviet and international proletariat avoidable slaughters, defeats, and sacrifices, they understand that it is an imperative necessity that the revolutionary vanguard oppose insofar as possible; subjective factor, the play of spontaneous objective forces determined by need, pressure of a hostile milieu, lack of culture and skills, etc.
In this respect is essential to understand the necessity of a division of economic functions and powers so as to ensure a severe limitation of bureau-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL cratic arbitrariness, and at the same time producing the best guarantees for the most harmonious possible development of the productive forces. This sharing out of powers should be schematically established according to the following plan:
(a) Central decisions (in a national Congress of the soviets or workers' councils) to be taken after democratie discussion of alternative plans, insofar as the main lines of distribution of the national product (investments policy, rate of progress, priceand-wage policy) concerned. The Fourth International rejects as antidemocratic and anticommunist anarcho-syndicalist myth of the complete autonomy of enterprises, that can end only in the competitive fight for a market, more or less free or more or less monopolized, with all the injustices that this brings about (the appropriation • by the workers of the more modern factories of part of the product created by the workers of more backward entreprises, etc.), with the danger of dislocation of the planified economy.
(b) The running of entreprises by the workers' committees, within the framework of the general plan elaborated by the elected representatives of the whole of the proletariat. These councils must control and, if necessary, modify the plan during its execution, and they must defend the specific. interests of the producers (working and wage norms in their concrete application, dismissal and hiring, organization of work, etc.). They must elect the director and at the same time become the great management school in which a growing number of workers will each in turn become familiar with the exercise of administrative functions.
(c) The trade unions' role of control must be mainly to defend the interests of the workers as consumers and citizens with given cultural needs, against the workers' councils (mainly representing the production point of view) and the central organisms of planifications. The unions must discuss general work and wage norms and their application to the various branches of industry and the factories within the framework of collective fixedterm contracts; they must watch over all forms of workers' social insurance, without playing an administrative part (this belongs to the state, i.e., to the local organisms of self-administration); they must try to reduce working hours, increase the possibilities of paid holidays and the participation of the workers in all aspects of cultural life, ete. They must be based, like the party, on the striet rule of voluntary membership, contrary to the workers' councils and the soviets in which every wage-earner of the enterprise or locality automatically has the right to vote.
The effective guarantee of the right to strike is at the same time an effective and not merely formal
of countries, insofar as the problems set by the de. ducers coöperatives in all strata of the peasantry
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL guarantee of this division of economic powers.
By insisting on the importance of the dividing up of economic powers, the Fourth International also affirms that, however ideal any organizational structure may be, it remains but a framework void of content as long as political working-class democracy and effective participation in the political life of the country by an ever-increasing number of workers are not flourishing. In a planned economy, the decision as to how the national income is to be shared out in major proportions is a capital factor that sets up a more or less rigid framework to all administering organisms from which they cannot dissociate themselves without disrupting the whole system of planification. So long as the majority of the working class does not participate in taking this decision, either directly or indirectly (through its freely elected representatives) and does not itself - in full knowledge of the facts — establish the limits of the sacrifices it is willing to make in order to develop the productive forces, it is not possible to speak concretely of a genuine and fully developed soviet democracy. So long as different workers allowed to present general or tial alternative plans for the choice of the workers themselves, this participation will remain more fie. tive than real.
16. Socialism is a form of social organization abundance. When proletariat any given country, including highly developed ones, the existing productive forces are not sufficient to ensure abundance for all citizens, and even less to all the the globe. period of transition between capitalism and socialism is therefore any case a period during which the proletariat cannot be satisfied merely by a new and more equitable distribution of the already existing wealth of the earth. The proletariat will have to ensure a considerable increase in the current production of wealth, and in the stock of means of production that are at the disposal, of society, in order to attain its goal: the organization of a society that ensures the full and complete satisfaction of the needs of one and all, without calculating this satisfaction according to the work that each has contributed in exchange.
In the light of this thesis one might suppose that there exists only a quantitative difference between the problems of developing production posed in a workers' state or a group of such states which have scarcely started industrialization, and for workers states created in countries where capitalism had already ensured an important development of modern industry. This, however, is not the case: there are qualitative differences between these two types
69 velopment of a socialized industry are concerned:
(a) From the social point of view, in the first group of countries industrialization-even when it can avail itself of the help of an international socialist economy-develops in a hostile milieu (the majority of the population composed of small peasant producers). In the second group of countries, the workers' state can count on the support of the majority if not 2/3rds of the population for its economic policy.
(b) From the economic point of view, industrialization in the first group of countries must corre spond to combined aims: the specific interests of the workers, the raising of their level of living and culture, etc., and the need to differentiate the peasantry (from which must be detached a stratum of poor peasants that can be freely integrated in a socialized economy, and a stratum of middle peasants that can be neutralized against the primiaccumulation of the rich peasants). In the second group of countries, the development of the economy can be fundamentally oriented towards the satisfaction of the growing needs of the mass of producers, while reserving an important segment of the national product, during a long transitional period, to help the less industrialized workers'
The Fourth International affirms not only the principle that it is impossible for a workers' state to impose on the workers a margin of sacrifices above that which they freely accept; it also affirms that any attempt systematically to increase the rate of accumulation over a long period of time has negative repercussions on the productívity of labor and on the self-discipline of the producers, and thus creates enormous losses and waste that to a great extent cancel the advantages thought to be gained accumulation. Only a planitication that establishes narmonious proportions in development of the different sectors of the economy —industry, agriculture, and transport— and of the different branches of industry itself, pays off in the long run. The basis of such a system must be an increase in production together with a more or less equivalent raising of the standard of living of the producers.. The easier it is for the producers to this parallel progress, the more conscious and enthusiastic their creative participation in a harmonious development will become. The requirements of such a harmonious development of all branches of the economy rule out from the start any policy of forced collectivization in agriculture, which is the source of stagnation if not of falling off in agricultural production, and of serious disruption in the cities food supplies.
These requirements, on the other hand, are compatible with the creation of agricultural pro-
70 that are socially and economically ready to accept such a means of production, on condition that such coöperatives bring them concrete material advantages.
Without the necessity, arise even in the future, for a workers' state isolated on a given continent to start building up a socialist economy on its own, all experience has shown that international division of labor and mutual aid states on a basis of equality, constitute a factor that aids and stimulates the upsurge of the economy, a factor that is in any case indis. pensable to catching up with and surpassing the level of productivity reached in the most advanced capitalist countries, this being the only criterion of the final victory of a socialized economy over a capitalist economy. The idea of achieving the construction of an autarkie socialist economy, in one country or in a small group of countries must be rejected as a reactionary myth.
17. Soviet democracy, goal of the political revolution in the degenerated workers' states and of the social revolution in the capitalist countries, is inconceivable without the free development of artistic scientific work, and all the cultural activities of mankind. Such a development is more and more proving to be an indispensable condition for the full and complete exploitation of the tremendous reserves of the technical and productive creative forces that the revolution puts at the disposal of the new society. Such a free development does not mean that the party and the revolutionary vanguard refrain from expressing their own views with regard to the numerous controversies that may arise in theoretical fields. It means:
(a) that the revolutionary party engages in milifavor ot the these ho Mariand and of persuasion in tant action historical materialism; that it demands the widest possibility for teaching all these without the state's imposing the adoption or the exclusive presentation of these theses on the body of teachers or on the youth;
(b) that no scientific, artistic or cultural tendency that is not considered to be progressive, or the most progressive, by the revolutionary vanguard, can be repressed or sanctioned administratively or hindered in its productive and creative efforts;
(c) that the state does not give its official approval either in the form of material advantages or by distribution of hierarchic posts to any tendency in the fields of science, the arts, or cultural activities - fields which are the ripest for the integral application of the principle of self-administration:
(d) that the party establish clear distinctions between the choice of the social, economic, or cultural aims that have priority (for example the priority
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL of the solution of the housing problem over that of the needs of urbanist aesthetics and the need to defend on a theoretical level (that of planification, the long run) the correct principles that appertain to these aims, even if it is not possible to implement them immediately.
Soviet democracy is equally inconceivable without a radical elimination of all the obstacles that today prevent a majority of citizens from enjoying the material and cultural gifts of civilization. It must guarantee completely free education at all levels, selection being made strictly according to individual capacity; it must guarantee every citizen the right 1o free medical care without social discrimination. It must ensure the full and autonomous participation of youth in political life. It must completely apply the principle of « equal pay for equal work, » give maximum encouragement to the emancipation of women from thousands of years of submission, and at the same time permit professional selection according to the physical peculiarities of
It must revise the marriage laws in the spirit of the October Revolution, as well as the right to divorce and voluntary maternity (free distribution of the means of contraception, and the right to abortion), children's rights, the self-administration of schools, all of which must bring about the absolute equality/ of men and women, and a complete absence of coercion by one person over an-
18. The Soviet bureaucracy usurped power under the banner of « socialism in one country »; it is under the banner of true proletarian internationalism based on strict equality between all nations, that the political revolution against the bureaueracy will triumph. The bureaucracy has poisoned the relations among the various workers' states, as well as those among the various nationalities inside the USSR, by its brutal Great-Russian chauvinism and its narrow petty-bourgeois prejudices.
The Fourth International condemns the Stalinist conception of the subordination of the interests of the world proletariat to those of the Kremlin bureaucracy as a criterion of proletarian international¡hesis accordinion hould or the Smalt at onelic It also rejects the centrist, anti-Leninist thesis according to which the chauvinism of a great While raising the banner of international solidarity everywhere, it makes a clear distinction between Great-Russian (and Great-Han) chauvinism, which are unconditionally reactionary, and the nationalism of small nations oppressed by the bureaucracy, which is often only a deformation of the just revolt of the masses against the national oppression they suffered, and that can in no way modify the objectively progressive nature of their struggle for emancipation.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
That is why the Fourth International defends the slogan of the independent and sovereign Soviet Socialist Republies of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, while at the same time advocating the confederation of all these workers' states on a strict basis of equality, in one or several democratic federations of workers states.
democratic workers' will educate the workers and youth in a spirit of complete respect for the cultural personality of all peoples, for whom it will ensure an unlimited development. It will untiringly combat any manifestation of chauvinism, national or racial hatred, antisemitism, etc. It will try to increase whenever possible the solidarity, in. terest, and conscious participation of the workers of the workers' states in the struggles of every country throughout the world.
Any nationalistic tendency toward the subordination of the interests of the international revolution to the defense of the workers' state, however important and progressive be this state, is always a clear sign of bureaucratic deformation.
19. The Fourth International conceives the problem of the Workers' International in the same spirit as the revolutionary party. An по « Дело"
which includes one or several parties that hold power in workers' states can no more « dietate » policy to the citizens or the governments of these states than can the party to the workers organized in soviets. It can only bring weight to the convietion and prestige of the arguments it submits to the decision of the workers—and even this only insofar as experience has proved to the workers that it has systematically defended the collective interests of the proletariat against particular or nationalist deformations of these interests.
Conceived in this spirit, a revolutionary International, far from being outdated or losing importance due to the conquest of power by • the proletariat in several countries, remains an absolutely indispensable instrument for resolving the tasks set by the building of world communism:
(a) Leaving aside the indispensable diplomatic manœuvres that one or several workers states may be obliged to make, the International coördinates the struggle of all the revolutionary parties, including those that have already conquered power, in order to achieve the victory of the world revolution in the shortest possible time.
(b) After the victory of the revolution, the International will make every effort to coördinate and encourage the best possible international economic planification, thus preceding the practical possibilities of federation or confederation of workers' states.
71
(c) The International will be an instrument for the coördinating and encouraging of all the activities of the revolutionary vanguard in the workers' states, in the process of permanent revolution, until world communism is brought about. This is all the more important since in these fields complete theoretical generalization has to be accomplished, and this cannot be done on the basis of fragmentary national experiences.
Given the disastrous experience many communist militants had with the Komintern, then with the Kominform, during the Stalinist era, these militants have become wary about the very idea of on democratic centralism. wariness is in no way justified, and to give in to this tendency is to abandon an essential element of revolutionary Marxism. It is not through the degeneration of the Communist International that the world crisis of Communism began. It was in a party, the Russian party, that the bureaucracy first destroyed democracy, thus departing from the Leninist road. The stronger the International, and the more it is out of reach of the predominating influence of one section or of a small group of sections, the easier becomes the struggle against the danger of bureaucratization in a party workers' state, by the transfer of the full weight of the healthiest sectors of the international workers' movement towards the country most in danger.
For this very reason any idea of « polycentric » international organization or of purely « bilateral » relations between CPs must be rejected. Far from guaranteeing a healthy evolution to the workers' movement, the aim of such opportunistic formulas is to protect the national bureaucracy from the influence of the international revolution. IV. - THE DECLINE AND FALL OF STALINISM
IN THE CAPITALIST COUNTRIES_
20. The crisis of the Communist Parties, that originated in the contradiction between the revolutionary aspirations of the militants therein and the function of instruments of Soviet foreign policy that the bureaucracy wanted to force upon them, has in the past few years been accentuated by two factors. On the one hand the progress of the revolutionary upsurge throughout the world has brought several parties face to face with pre-revolutionary (or revolutionary) situations, and caused the militants therein to express their dissatisfaction with the leadership's opportunist policy. In some cases, as in Algeria, the pressure of the workers or revolutionary movement of the masses has been such that it has foreed the Stalinist leadership to make an important move to the left, away from a position that had originally placed it on the coun terrevolutionary side.
72
On the other hand, the outbreak of the crisis of bureaucracy in the USSR itself and in the « People's Democracies » has acted as a powerful stimulus to the development of the crisis in the Communist Parties of all capitalist countries. This crisis exploded immediately after Stalin's death; it was greatly accentuated by the spectacular rehabilitation of Tito; it reached a first breaking-point with the XXth Congress in the USSR, only to reach very rapidly a second breaking-point and a real paroxysm with the Polish and Hungarian revolutions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the CPs today are divided into two currents, and that some them (the Polish, Jugoslav, Norwegian, and and partly the Italian, Belgian, and Swedish Communist Parties, with strong opposition in Great Britain, Austria, Brazil, etc.) condemn the first Soviet intervention in Hungary and regret if not condemn the second, identifying themwith the Polish Revolution; while others (the Soviet, Czech, East German, Rumanian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and French Communist Parties) servilely identify themselves with the Kremlin's policy. The Chinese CP, followed by the majority of the Asian CPs, seems to occupy a half-way place hetween the two tendencies, which is gradually evolving, towards an arbiter's position in the international Communist movement, while associating its efforts with those of the Kremlin in order to limit the disintegrating effects of « destalinization » on the international Stalinist movement.
The origins of this spectacular development are evident: in the Polish and Hungarian revolutions lhere was a convergence of the two currents that are today feeding the Stalinist crisis, the objective revolutionary current and the subjective current of « destalinization. » Furthermore, in Hungary, for the first time since the Spanish civil war, the Soviet bureaucracy was forced to play an openly counterrevolutionary part—that is, itself to repress a revolutionary upsurge of the masses on a broad scale (the 1953 experience in Germany was far more limited). Though in certain parts of the world, the Hungarian events coincided with an objective situation that was not favorable to a mass revolutionary upsurge, this was not the case for the colonial and semi-colonial countries for which these events served as a direct lesson and an encouragement in their own struggles. Thus the «orthodox» Stalinist position became even more untenable in these countries.
21. The general characteristies of crisis in the CPs, which apply in varying degress to the CPs of all capitalist countries, can be thus summarized:
(a) Since Stalin's death and especially since Khrushchev's revelations, the very basis of Stalinist thought, i.e., of faith in the infallibility of the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL leader, of the Soviet government and the leaders of the Soviet CP, has received a mortal blow. All the fundamental questions of communism are once more brought into diseussion. Henceforth, an important issue the actions of the Soviet government seem to come conflict with the interests of a fraction or the whole of the world proletariat, the validity of such actions will be openly brought into question by an ever-increasing number of Communist militants.
(b) This loss of faith which was the basis of obedience is causing a real revolt against the rigid system of the bureaucratic CP leadership, against the absence of freedom of discussion, against the lyranny of the machine and the anti-democratic way in which it maintains its control at the head of the CP. More and more voices are being raised to demand a genuine and not formal application of democratic centralism (genuine discussions in the publie organs of the parties before congresses; the congresses; the election of the right to tendencies within the party or, at least, the right—as already established in the new statutes of the Chinese CP —of minorities to keep their opinions even after their defeat in congresses, etc.).
(c) Since, except for a few cases, the Stalinist leaders are not giving way the democratic pressure of the rank and file or only partially doing so (in order to maintain their leadership in the party), the rank-and-file vanguard is forming more or less open or secret tendencies, according to the more or less bureaucratic atmosphere of their own party, so as to force democratization and the revision of political activity on given platforms that are being on many sides elaborated, and compared, as open or secret discussion develops within the party.
(d) Inevitably these currents and opposition groups must revise on the basis of the experience revealed by the Khrushcher report their relations with the USSR, and analyze Soviet society and the Soviet state (or even more generally, as in the Jugoslav and Polish CPs, all the problems raised by the transition period from capitalism to socialism). The « Russian question » (such as was discussed in the international Trotskyist movement over a whole period) is now breaking out in an entire wing of the CPs.
(e) These opposition currents that are coming up against the satisfied conservatism and the ignorance of the bureaucratic apparatus in office soon find that they have to extend their platforms not only to the problems of the USSR but also to all the problems of communist doctrine: relations with the social-democracy, analysis of contemporary capiworkers guners, roads to socialism, International, towards colonial revolution, etc., etc.
22. Experience has proved that according to the confrontation of various ideas before it can again
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL position they adopt towards these various problems of immediate interest and of doctrine, the opposition currents that crystallize within the Communist Parties may be classified in two categories: a rightwing and a left-wing opposition current.
The right-wing opposition current is the logical or let it do the c
consequence of the rightist opportunism of important CPs for long periods of their life (and even recently following the XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR) but an opportunism that loses, in its relations with the capitalist world, its main brake - that provided by the unconditional subordination of the Stalinist parties to the Soviet bureaucracy. Such currents (Hervé in France, Giolitti in Italy; the Gates tendency in the American CP, etc.) take as good coin Khrushcher's words on new roads to ing the largest and most powerful among them, on closer contacts with the social-democrats. They are rapidly undergoing an evolution toward « social-democratization » to such a point that they question the legitimacy of the colonial revolution from the point of view of « peace » or, in a even more vulgar way, the « nation » (that of the imperialist bourgeoisie!) of the country where they happen to be.
The left-wing opposition current, on the other hand, rises up against the contradictions of the Khrushchev interpretations of the Stalinist phenomenon and the fundamentally opportunistic character (periodically associated with a childish sectarianism) of their own CP's policy. It reproaches the CP leadership with its incapacity to take advantage of many favorable opportunities to encourage or lead to victory the mass movement, or really to root itself in the native workers' movement of its country. It wants, not « peaceful coexistence» with the country's imperialist bourgeoisie, but a more forceful and efficient struggle against it. The « Marty » current in the French CP, the oppositional groups in the Austrian and Brazilian CPs, various oppositional groups in the Italian CP, are all typical of this tendency.
As long as these currents express themselves inside the CP or fight for the right to express themselves openly, the various sections of the Fourth International that practise a policy of sui generis entrism in the CPs, and those sympathizers who are either led by these sections or work in collaboration with them, will defend the right of speech and of democratic representation in the organisms of leadership of all tendencies inside the CP. After decades of bureaucratie strangulation, the critical state of mind of rank-and-file Communist militants needs a long period of reflection, discussion, and
73 find the capacity to discover its own orientation in political life. The left-wing current has nothing to fear from a free confrontation of different tendencies, which will facilitate the crystalization of a true revolutionary vanguard in these countries. Moreover, it is impossible to assert as main demand the right to organise tendencies and to deny this right to a tendeney with which one does not politically agree. For all these reasons, the Trotskyists will be in the vanguard of the struggle for inner democracy in the CPs for all members, without exception, while at the same time calling on the most advanced elements to form a left-wing oppositional current.
23. In the mass Communist Parties of the Western European countries (Frace and Italy), the « destalinization » problems that are under discussion are exasperated by the flagrant incapacity of the bureaucratic leadership of these parties to take advantage of the numerous pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations favoring the developinent of the party. At the same time, however, within the general conjuncture that exists in these countries, the even greater bankruptey • of the social-democracy (Algerian war, Suez adventure in France, collaboration with the Christian-Democracy in Italy) has enabled the Communist Parties of these countries to continue to canalize the majority, and above all the most combative section, of the proletariat. In Italy, however, the more leftish line of Nenni's party offers a serious competition to the CP. For this reason, the most healthy and left currents will tend to stay within the CP, the expelled groups that tend towards « right-wing communism » rapidly degenerating to form right-wing The evolution of the Hungarian and Polish revolu tions, and the attempts made by the Polish and Jugoslav CPs to influence ideologically other CPs, have a similar effect. This does not mean that our sections must, as a matter of principle, disdain to work within these formations, especially if they have a certain numerical importance and influence in sectors of the working class; but this work continues to be subordinated to the general sui generis entrist tactic that, more than ever before, is proving to be the only efficient tactie for the building of a revolutionary party in these countries. • The same thing cannot be said of the small Stalinist sects of Western Europe (German, British, Belgian, Duteh, Swiss, Austrian, Scandinavian CPs, ete.) where the Stalinist crisis is fed not only by the general repercussions of « destalinization » and the Polish and Hungarian revolutions, but by the catastrophic decline in the influence of the CP over the masses, its almost complete isolation from
74 the organized workers' movement, its incapacity. — spite of the periodic alternation of sectarian and right-wing opportunistic tactics — to operate a « rapprochement with the social-democratic rank-and-file. » The right-wing communist tendencies of these parties are particularly inclined to capitulate, and usually go so far as to propose nothing less than the complete dissolution of the CP. The leftwing communist tendencies, insofar as they are not paralyzed by a complete sectarianism towards the mass movement, soon evolve tacties near to those of our movement. While proposing that these elements continue their struggle within the CP for the triumph of a Leninist line, we must offer them, as an alternative to the right-wing policy, the prospect of working within the social-democratic organizations and the trade-unions on a revolutionary platform, within the framework of the sections of the Fourth International. The object of this work is not that they should adapt themselves to the opportunism of the reformist leaders, but to reduce in the shortest possible time the influence of the latter on the most combative layers of the workers, and to aid the creation later of new mass revolutionary parties. From such a platform (to which the positive results already obtained by different sections in this work give weight) the communist oppositional elements can be won over by our movement.
In the CPs of the semi-colonial and colonial countries, the crisis of Stalinism is more particularly nourished by the right-wing opportunistie policy that the XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR forced on the leaders of these parties: direct and servile subordination to the interests of the colonial bourgeoisie allied to the Soviet bureau-
For « neutralized » by it. In the general atmosphere of « destalinization, » such a policy can end in the developing of powerful left-wing eurrents within these parties. The pressure of the revolutionary movement of the masses, however, can in practice bring the leadership of these parties, or a part thereof, to sketch out a turn towards a revolutionary orientation and to suppress before its birth the development of an autonomous leftwing current within the party.
Whatever be the forms taken in the next phase of the crisis of Stalinism within the various CPs of the capitalist countries, the revolutionary movement that is developing in the « People's Democracies » and in the USSR already foreshadows its final issue: the disappearance of Stalinism as ideological current of the international communist movement, the return of part of the cadres and the CP militants of today to social democracy (or similar centrist or right-wing formations), and the regrouping of the healthiest part of the great majority of convinced communist militants in new
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL revolutionary parties that will emerge from the crisis. V. - THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION IN THE USSR AND THE « PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACIES »
AS A PHASE OF THE WORLD SOCIALIST
REVOLUTION
24. The political revolution in the USSR and the so-called « People's Democracies » is in itself a process of the permanent revolution. Unleashed by the accumulation of grievances that the working masses hold against the bureaucracy, it develops, according to its own logic, from a popular revolution in which all the layers of the nation participate, towards a more and more rapid social differentiation that can end only in the victory of the i most proletarian and conscious current: that which brings about socialist democracy by advocating and achieving the concentration of all power in poor peasants" "emocratically elected workers' the hands of the and councils. The permanent character of the revolution does not stop at the conquest of power by the workers' councils. On the contrary this opens up a revolutionary period of exceptional fertility in which, thanks to the spirit of audacity and creative initiative pushed to their highest pitch of expression under the spur of the revolution, aspects of social life will be submitted to a merciless criticism and revision, in produce everywhere the highest forms of direct democracy, equality, and solidarity that are material framework of society. The rapid broadening of this framework, due to a prodigious development of the productive forces, which will at last be freed of bureaucratic tutelage, and to the international extension of the revolution, will itself then become the object of the permanent revolution of which this precise stage will seek more and more conseiously the following colossal objective: the triumph of soviet democracy throughout all the workers' states, for one third of mankind and over one quarter of the globe.
25. But the political revolution in the bureaucratically degenerated or deformed workers' states not only process of permanent revolution according to its own dynamics. It also represents an integral part of the world dynamics of the permanent revolution, of the world socialist revolution. It is in fact inconceivable that the victory of the political revolution in several of the existing workers' states can fail to return to the fundamental forms of proletarian internationalism. Far from having particular interests to defend that will force them to continue their efforts to keep under a tutelary control the international workers' movement, they will aid and stimulate insofar as
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL possible the emancipation movements of the workers in the capitalist states and of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples.
Also, both objectively and subjectively, the international working-class movement will receive from reëstablishment of soviet democracy in USSR a stimulus comparable only to that of the October socialist revolution. The effect of bourpropaganda and of its social-democratic servants against communism, exelusively aimed at the bureaucracy's erimes, would disappear. The increase in the standard of living of the workers in the Soviet Union and in the « People's Demorapidly become possible
75 would no doubt place on the order of the day the conquest of power within a short time.
The concrete march of the world revolution throughout the world after the Second World War has made of the Chinese and colonial revolutions the principal motor of the world revolution. reaching the USSR and the countries dominated by the Soviet bureaucracy, the revolutionary makes of the political against this bureaucracy the second powerful motor of the world revolution. In these countries the revolution finds itself faced with millions of qualified and highly cultivated workers capable which cracies will would increase the power of attraction of these states on the inhabitants of the capitalist world. The the German or French workers could have done imperialist bourgeoisie of the last capitalist powers resolving the problems set by the socialist reorganisation of mankind, with the same consciousness as so on the morrow of the First World War.
would soon become isolated in a world that is fundamentally its enemy, and the majority of the volution in the USSR is that of the direct exercise workers all over the world would soon join the side of power by the proletariat in the second of the workers' states and of the colonial revolution. powerful industrial country in the world. It can
The internal reënforcement of the working-class movement in the greater part of these countries revolation.
Prospects and Dynamics of the Political
Revolution against the Bureaucracy