— At the end of 1983 the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United States expelled from the party the majority of the members who, within the National Committee and the party branches, opposed its political orientation and its challenges to the programmatic foundation of the Fourth International, particularly concerning the theory of permanent revolution for the countries dominated by imperialism and the necessity of anti-bureaucratic political revolution in the bureaucratised workers states.
This political purge, carried out in a brutal and anti-democratic fashion, lost the SWP more than 150 members, including a number of former leaders of the fraternal section of the Fourth International in the United States. These comrades, organised in Socialist Action (SA) and the Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT), appealed against their expulsions to the SWP convention in August 1984. The convention rejected their appeal, and on the same occasion refused to allow a delegation of the United Secretariat to participate in its deliberations.
In January 1985, the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International receiving a collective appeal from the expelled comrades, adopted by a majority of almost 90 per cent the following motions:
'a) The World Congress upholds the collective appeal of the expelled SWP members now regrouped in SA and FIT.
Whereas these expulsions were carried out in bare-faced violation of the statutes of the Fourth International — of which the SWP is the fraternal organization in the USA — and whereas this political purge made mockery of the rights of minorities inside the SWP,
the World Congress demands the collective reintegration of all the present members of SA and FIT who were expelled from the SWP, into membership.'
Vote: for / against / abstain / not voting — Delegates 97.5 / 5 / 1 / 0 — Fraternal 3 / 9 / 0 / 0
'b) Whereas the new members of SA and FIT who are not expelled former members of the SWP or who resigned from it in relation with the expulsions or who resigned on the basis of the programme of the Fourth International and whereas they would have been members of the SWP if the latter had not carried out these unjust and undemocratic expulsions,
the World Congress supports the SA and FIT request that all their members be collectively integrated into the SWP with all the rights and duties stemming from the organizational norms of democratic centralism.'
Vote: for / against / abstain / not voting — Delegates 97 / 5 / 1.5 / 0 — Fraternal 3 / 9 / 0 / 0
'c) Given the situation that has been created in the United States by the undemocratic expulsion from the SWP of those who opposed the orientation of its majority leadership,
and noting that as a result Fourth International adherents are now divided into three separate organizations when they should all be members of the Fourth International in the United States, the SWP,
the World Congress rules that, as long as SA and FIT are not collectively reintegrated into the SWP, the entire organized membership of SA and FIT will be considered as full members of the Fourth International with all the rights and duties prescribed by its statutes, and within the limitations imposed by reactionary US legislation.'
Vote: for / against / abstain / not voting — Delegates 98 / 5.5 / 0 / 0 — Fraternal 3 / 9 / 0 / 0
In August 1985 the delegates of the twenty-third convention of the SWP, on the recommendation of the Political Committee, rejected all the demands formulated by the World Congress and reiterated at the convention by the United Secretariat representative present.
— These decisions openly violate the overwhelming majority demands of the World Congress. If carried out by an affiliated section they would make a nonsense of the elementary norms of functioning for an international organisation. While the SWP is prevented by reactionary US legislation from being affiliated to the Fourth International, it has the political and moral obligation to give the greatest weight to World Congress decisions, if it takes seriously the fact of being the fraternal section in the United States.
The statutes of the International leave a broad area of sovereignty to the national sections in determination of their national political line and the choice of their leadership bodies, but they fix a minimum of obligations and norms of functioning that make it possible to have the broadest possible exchange of ideas and positions within a common programmatic and organisational framework. The decisions of the SWP convention, if adopted by a section, would be a complete negation of even the simply moral and political authority of the sovereign body of the International: its World Congress. In so doing, a section would be refusing to abide by the spirit of our statutes, and thus put itself outside the common framework of our norms.
The International has the duty to state clearly and publicly that the SWP, fraternal section of the Fourth International in the United States, is not, because of its own decisions, the only organisation identifying politically with the Fourth International in the United States.
In conformity with the resolutions adopted by the Twelfth World Congress (and because of the division of Socialist Action into two distinct groups) there are now in the United States, four totally separate organisations of fraternal members with the same rights and duties: the Socialist Workers Party, the Fourth Internationalist Tendency, Socialist Action and Socialist Unity. Each of these organisations is sovereign over decisions concerning its political line and composition of is leading bodies. While deploring their division, which is the outcome of the crisis in the SWP and the anti-democratic purge of those in opposition, the United Secretariat defends the right of each of these organisations to attempt to build the revolutionary party in the United States but does not support the orientation of any one group against the others.
— All the steps taken by the SWP leadership, if taken by a section of the Fourth International, would show the section's desire to deny in practice the minimal functioning of the International, at the same time as it is turning its own party into a monolithic faction, accomodating itself to the formal framework of the International only on condition that it does not respect a single obligation and gradually emptying this framework of all programmatic content.
No revolutionary party, particularly in the bastion of imperialism, will be built by trampling on the democratic traditions of Bolshevism and the Communist International, which the Fourth International was formed to defend, with the valuable collaboration of the SWP, against Stalinism. Through its own weakening in the United States, the SWP is already paying the price of this orientation, in striking contradiction with its past and with the internal regime of the Fourth International and its sections.
In fighting for the World Congress demands to be respected, the United Secretariat is convinced that it is fighting for the defence of one of the basic principles of the revolutionary Marxist programme: freedom of discussion within the revolutionary organisation, in the framework of the discipline and centralisation necessary for effective action in the class struggle. The Fourth International stands adamant on this principle and this programme.
October 5, 1985