Issuing body: European Executive Committee (EEC) of the Fourth International Published in: Quatrième Internationale, No. 22-24, September-November 1945 [text approved by the EEC at its October 1945 session]; reprinted in Quatrième Internationale, April-May 1946
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1. The initiative taken by the bureaucracy of the Communist Parties with a view to the immediate realization of organic unity with the Socialist Parties on the basis of the common defence of bourgeois democracy is the logical outcome of their evolution since the inauguration of the Popular Front policy and their break with the Marxist-Leninist principles of the class struggle.
This evolution, begun more than ten years ago under the sign of class collaboration, through the disfigurement of the policy of the united front between the workers' parties into systematic collaboration with the radicals, the Catholics and other bourgeois political formations, was accelerated and reinforced during the war, being transformed into a pure and simple policy of sacred union [union sacrée] with all its consequences: disfigurement of the imperialist character of the war, unconditional support for the war effort of the "democratic" bourgeoisie, complete abandonment of proletarian internationalism; and finally, participation in bourgeois governments. This last fact constitutes the crowning point of the historic degeneration of the Communist Parties and the necessary culmination of the whole of their prior policy.
2. The goal which the bureaucracy of the Communist Parties is seeking to attain through organic unification with the Socialist Parties forms part of its general strategy at the present stage. This strategy is dictated by the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy at the present stage, namely: to permit the peaceful consolidation of the USSR's territorial conquests and the reconstruction of its economy by lessening the pressure of American and British imperialism, through the neutralization of the greatest possible number of capitalist countries, and in the first place of the European and Chinese bourgeoisies.
This neutralization of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of the Communist Parties is today seeking not through the pressure of the direct action of the masses, as in the past (pressure exerted, certainly, not in order to arrive at the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie, but in order to arrive, in the last analysis, at a compromise), but principally through parliamentary and above all governmental action. The bureaucracy of the Communist Parties hopes, through this action, to demonstrate to the bourgeoisie that it alone is capable, at the present stage, of guaranteeing internal peace and of restoring the wrecked capitalist economy (thereby securing for the bourgeoisie the maximum degree of independence vis-à-vis American imperialism) in exchange for a foreign policy more or less in conformity with the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
Hence the appeals of the Communist Parties for respect for the bourgeois state and for the increase of production, through the disarming of the partisans and militias, the braking of struggles over demands and even their disapproval, and through the tendency to transform the trade unions into organs whose purpose is to control the workers and to conduct a propaganda of Stakhanovite emulation in favour of capitalist production.
3. The more particular purpose of the organic unification proposed to the Socialist Parties is to take advantage of a situation still, for the moment, favourable to the Communist Parties (given their influence relative to the Socialist Parties) in order to prevent reformism from once again becoming the agent of anti-Soviet currents, and above all the agent of American or British imperialism (in order also to colonize the whole of the labour movement as completely as possible and to prevent the crystallization of left-wing tendencies). It is indeed above all against the danger which the world-wide expansion of these imperialisms, and their tendency to subject to their tutelage all the bourgeoisies ruined by the war, represents for the USSR that the bureaucracy of the Stalinist parties is fighting today.
4. The organic unification of the Communist Parties with the Socialist Parties, while claiming platonic allegiance to Marxist ideology, in reality takes its stand solely on the ground of the common defence of bourgeois democracy.
This real ideological community between the classical reformism deriving from the Second International and the neo-reformism of the epigones of the Third International has been made possible thanks to the continuous degeneration and regression of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which for several years has emptied its policy of all revolutionary content.
For this reason, the proposed organic unification does not constitute a progressive step for the working class, but reflects, on the contrary, the whole historic retreat of the labour movement.
5. The bankruptcy and treachery of the Socialist and Communist leaderships of the workers' parties between the two imperialist wars and during the second imperialist war, far from having diminished the importance of the existence of a genuine revolutionary party of the proletariat, firmly oriented toward the revolutionary seizure of power as envisaged by Lenin's theory of the party, on the contrary places it in the forefront of the historic imperatives of our epoch.
Against the advance of barbarism issuing from the putrefaction of the capitalist regime and from the delay of the socialist revolution, the working class, and with it all the exploited strata of capitalist society, which constitute the overwhelming majority of humanity, have no other way out than the swiftest possible triumph of the socialist revolution.
But this task is historically impossible without the prior construction of a genuine revolutionary party and a genuine revolutionary International. This is the goal which the Fourth International sets itself in calling upon the working masses in every country to rally around its banner, and which justifies the principle of its organic independence.
6. Nevertheless, under the present conditions of the ideological retreat of the labour movement, despite the extreme maturity of the objective conditions for revolution, the unification of the Communist and Socialist Parties into a single party could, under certain conditions, constitute a relatively favourable step, by eliminating in the eyes of the masses a distinction between two political formations that scarcely differ in their present reformist policy, by reinforcing the regroupment of the working class, and above all by permitting, through the establishment of a democratic internal regime such as the Stalinist bureaucracy can never accept within its own party, the development of revolutionary tendencies.
This consideration may exert, in certain countries, an influence on the tactics to be adopted by the sections of the Fourth International in order to arrive at the construction of the revolutionary party. It may be that, in the face of the accomplished fact of the unification of the Socialist and Communist Parties, or during the process of unification, and under conditions found to be favourable (important progressive centrist currents, a favourable internal democratic climate, extreme weakness of our own forces, etc.), tactical considerations may imply, for a given section of the Fourth International, the provisional abandonment of its organic independence. However, no such decision may be taken by any section whatsoever without the responsible assent of the leadership of the International.
7. Despite the tenacious and sincere efforts currently being made by the bureaucracy of the Communist Parties to bring about unification, it is nevertheless highly improbable that the Socialist bureaucracy will, in the end, accept this unification. The relations between the two bureaucracies reflect, in reality, the relations between the Soviet bureaucracy and imperialism, principally American and British imperialism, and to the extent that the influence of the latter becomes preponderant in a given country, not only will unification risk becoming unrealizable, but even united action between the two parties — so long as it is based not on the Leninist tactic of the united front but on the rapprochement and good relations between the bureaucratic summits — will become increasingly difficult.
Only the revolutionary rise of the masses can give some chance of success to unification, which the bureaucratic leaderships would in that case seek to use in order to subdue and channel the revolutionary rise along their own path.
Our sections must explain the process of unification between the Communist and Socialist Parties in the sense of the analysis set out above, and must follow it in each country with the attention that is appropriate.
Text approved by the EEC at its October 1945 session
In Quatrième Internationale April-May 1946