Issuing body: Editorial of Quatrième Internationale (organ of the Fourth International's European Executive Committee)
A STAGE
Somewhere in Europe, about a month ago, a Conference of the European sections of the Fourth International met — the first since the founding of the International (September 1938) and since the declaration of the second imperialist war.
This special issue of our review, henceforth, by decision of the Conference, the organ of the Executive Committee of the organization of the Fourth International in Europe, contains the principal texts adopted by the Conference.
In a forthcoming issue of "Quatrième Internationale" we will publish the theses concerning the "situation in the workers' movement and the perspectives for the development of the Fourth International."
The European Conference met in the midst of imperialist war and under conditions of repression of the revolutionary movement that unquestionably go far beyond anything seen in the past.
That in a Europe bled white by more than four years of total war, crushed beneath the yoke of the most hideous of imperialisms, whose prisons and concentration camps overflow with victims of the most savage and most systematic repression, our organization was able to hold its European assembly, to work out and define its political line of struggle — this alone constitutes the most eloquent manifestation of its vitality, of its internationalist spirit, and of the revolutionary ardour that animates it.
In 1938, the skeptics voiced doubts as to the timeliness of the proclamation of the Fourth International and as to its viability.
Today, some six years after its founding, and some five years after the declaration of the second imperialist war, the Fourth International affirms by its deeds that it is the sole international organization of the revolutionary proletariat which, despite conditions of reaction and repression without precedent in history, despite even the failures and desertions recorded in its own ranks — reflecting the general ebb of the movement at the outbreak of the war — has in the end successfully withstood the test of events, fighting courageously alone against the current and preparing the future as best it can.
Around it, the old social-democratic and Stalinist organizations stagnate in the fetid waters of chauvinism and the sacred union, while the opportunist amalgam of the centrist organizations of the London Bureau has disintegrated at its first contact with the burning reality of the war.
For six consecutive days, the representatives of the various European sections who were able to be present at the conference reviewed the international situation, and particularly that of Europe, going deeply into every aspect of it, clarifying the differences that existed, correcting the errors committed, and working out, in a spirit of revolutionary community, the broad lines of the policy that will serve as the political basis for all the sections of our International in Europe.
The time devoted to the discussion of political problems, the active participation of all the representatives, and the results obtained make the European Conference one of the best international assemblies of our movement since the appearance of the International Left Opposition.
The principal text to emerge from the European Conference is the theses on the "liquidation of the second imperialist war and the revolutionary upsurge." The militants of our European organizations, who must study this text carefully, will find in it the general political basis for their propaganda and agitation in the critical months to come.
It is necessary, further, to point to the important resolution on workers' front tactics, as well as the resolution concerning the adoption, by all the European sections of the International, of the common name of communist-internationalists.
The more than probable creation of a second front in Western Europe, and the confusion prevailing in the vanguard as to the relation of these military operations to the outbreak of the revolutionary crisis, gave rise to the resolution on "the revolutionary upsurge and the second front."
All these documents are brought together in the present issue of "Quatrième Internationale," together with the supplements to the statutes of the International.
The Conference concluded with the approval of the broad outlines of a manifesto addressed to the workers and peasants of Europe, and with the election of a European Executive Committee, which will constitute the supreme leading body of the European organization until its next conference. Day-to-day administrative and political work has been entrusted to a restricted European Secretariat, which will at the same time maintain regular liaison with the sections.
Among the happiest results of the work of the European Conference must certainly be counted the achievement of the immediate unification of the three French organizations — the POI, the CCI, and the Octobre group — into the Parti communiste internationaliste, henceforth the sole section of the Fourth International in France.
This is a great step forward on the road to the regrouping of the revolutionary forces in France and throughout the world, and one that will undoubtedly be hailed by all the militants and friends of our International as a very important success.
The European Conference of the Fourth International completed its work on the eve of the decisive turning-point of the second imperialist war, which places on the agenda the problems of its liquidation, for the bourgeoisie as much as for the proletariat. While the general staffs of the imperialists put the finishing touches to their plans for the final battles, and while the diplomats conspire in the greatest secrecy to impose on the masses, once their war is over, a new capitalist peace infinitely more crushing than that of 1918, the proletariat must concentrate its forces, clarify its ideological horizon, and move resolutely towards the revolutionary way out. It will find in the Fourth International the sole leadership capable of accomplishing this task.
The European Conference, by posing with precision and clarity the problems of the present political movement, and by resolving them in the sense of revolutionary Marxism, by tightening the ranks of the Bolshevik-Leninists, and by strengthening the ideological cohesion that unites them beyond their passing differences, unquestionably marks a stage in our movement.
With far more reason than yesterday, we can now repeat the words written as early as 1938 (the Transitional Program):
"The advanced workers, united in the Fourth International, show their class the road out of the crisis.
"They offer a program based on international experience in the emancipating struggle of the proletariat and of all the oppressed in general. They offer a banner without a single stain.
"Workers and women workers of all countries, rally beneath the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your coming victory!"
Editorial of Quatrième Internationale n° 4-5, février-mars 1944