Issuing body: Various congress delegations (French PCI majority, German delegation, Austrian majority, Italian delegation, Vietnamese minority, Swiss delegates Pia and Jacques, SWP Political Committee)
---
Amendments and Resolutions Rejected or Not Included
• Amendments proposed by the majority delegates of the French PCI to the theses of the Ninth Plenum
Thesis 5, second paragraph. Instead of "a war which, by force of circumstances, will transform (...)," write "a class war in the course of which the revolutionary action of the masses will inevitably develop on an international scale."
Thesis 5, third paragraph. Write: "The latter [Western Europe] running the risk, in the event of war, of passing under the control of the Red Army or of undergoing a revolutionary development escaping the direct control of the Kremlin's bureaucratic and military apparatus, even if in several countries the CPs are pushed forward by the mass movement."
Thesis 5, last paragraph. Write: "The victory of imperialism will become problematic in the face of the expansion of the revolution across the European, Asian, and probably African continents, an expansion that has a strong chance of overflowing the capacity for control and counter-revolutionary repression of the Kremlin bureaucracy."
Thesis 12. Delete the last sentence: "which the bureaucracy has not yet been able to destroy completely."
Thesis 13. Delete the sentence: "This expansion would, moreover, through the organization and rapid development of the productive forces in the world, remove the objective grounds for the existence of the omnipotence of any bureaucracy."
Thesis 15, third paragraph ("to undertake a struggle for power"). Write: "if they wish to avoid the masses advancing directly toward the second stage of overflowing, which is that of the organizational break with the leadership of these parties and direct struggle against it." Then integrate the entire end of comrade Germain's third thesis, from "One thing is the outline of a struggle for power, another thing is the effective conquest of power" down to "insofar as they would bring the CPs to positions endangering the Bonapartist character of the Soviet bureaucracy, which bases its power on an international balance of the fundamental classes of contemporary society."
Thesis 15. Delete the eighth paragraph and replace it with: "The International must clearly draw the lessons from the errors of assessment committed in the past in Yugoslavia and China, errors arising from the misjudgment of the relations between the revolutionary masses and the Kremlin's counter-revolutionary apparatus. Conscious of the gigantic struggle that will arise from the contradictions of imperialism, even and especially when the latter seeks its salvation in unleashing a general war, and of the struggle already under way in several colonial countries, it must pay increased attention to the evolution of the CPs possessing mass influence and, by inserting itself more deeply into the struggles of the masses, influence the base of these parties."
Thesis 16. Delete the second paragraph and replace it with: "In reality, the bureaucracy pursues no systematic policy of expansion whatsoever. Quite the contrary, the extension of its bureaucratic control [the "glacis," or buffer zone] reinforces the disintegrating elements of its power. Above all, the victory of the proletarian revolution, even in backward countries, even under the leadership of a CP, as it was achieved in Yugoslavia and China, represents an immediate and direct threat against its very existence."
Thesis 17, second paragraph. Delete "proceeded with caution."
Thesis 20, third paragraph: "In these backward countries, and especially under these regimes of terror, Stalinist propaganda can still find a significant echo, although the experience lived through by the masses in certain countries may either limit Stalinism's capacity to organize and control the masses (Spain, Algeria), or create new relations between the CP and the bureaucracy (China)." (Here, the need for a detailed analysis of the relations currently existing between the masses, the CPs, and the Kremlin bureaucracy.)
Thesis 21, fourth paragraph. Delete the phrase: "imposed by the dialectic of development."
Thesis 22, third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs: "The Fourth International, aware that the action of the Kremlin's counter-revolutionary bureaucracy represents the principal asset of the imperialist bourgeoisie, especially in the event of world war, fights for the autonomous development of mass action with regard to the Kremlin. The effective leadership of the revolutionary struggle and of the power conquered by the proletariat and by its direct organs of class — party, unions, soviets — is, in the third world war, a condition for the victory of the world revolution, a condition that can be realized in the development of the struggle itself through the conscious intervention of the Fourth International. The international extension of the revolution and its completion in world revolution, including the advanced sectors of the world economy, excludes any possibility of a bureaucratic deformation reproducing the USSR's experience of the organs of proletarian power. The other alternative element can under no circumstances be a new bureaucratic society, but the victory of imperialist barbarism."
Thesis 23, in the tasks section. Tasks of the Bolshevik-Leninists in the USSR explaining the decisive importance, in Ukraine, of the watchword of overthrowing Stalin before the war or during the war, in accordance with the specific character of the third war.
Thesis 24, first sentence. "The rapid and inevitable appearance of foci of civil war, at least in Europe and Asia, within the framework of a class war unleashed by imperialism against the workers' states (...)." Develop seriously the passage on the crisis of Stalinism.
Thesis 25. Delete: "and to help to the utmost, as best we can, the objective revolutionary process in a world that is collapsing."
Amendment presented by the German delegates and supported by comrade Jacques (Switzerland)
After the paragraph ending with: "may once again endanger the cohesion of the bourgeoisie" (third chapter, "The Evolution of International Relations"), add: "The mass struggles in the capitalist countries, and even revolutionary upheavals within them, transform the international balance of forces in favour of the proletariat and strike a substantial blow against the strategy and progress of American imperialism. In this way the pace of development toward war can be reduced. In the event of an immediate intervention by imperialism, the war will reveal from its very outset its character as a civil war." (This perspective makes it possible to replace the inevitability of war with the thesis of the inevitability of the final struggle, in which the proletariat is not an object but a subject of history.)
Amendments presented by the Austrian majority
Page 1, first paragraph, last sentence. Replace: "and the new upsurge of the workers' movement in the metropolitan countries" with: "as well as the fact that the workers' movement of the metropolitan countries has remained intact."
Page 1, third paragraph. Replace "to suppress the powerful movement of mass emancipation in the colonies and the metropolitan countries" with: "to suppress the powerful movement of mass emancipation in the colonies and to destroy the workers' movement of the metropolitan countries."
In the chapter on the situation of the workers' movement, the section on social democracy, last paragraph before the analysis of Stalinism. Cut the part of the sentence concerning entrism.
In the chapter on tasks, replace the entire sixth paragraph (except for the last sentence) with the following text: "Among the most important tasks of our movement must be mentioned the building of autonomous and independent organizations, or the ideological and organizational consolidation of such organizations where they already exist. If we can rely on such organizations, it will be possible for us, still more than in the past, to link our cadres to the real movement of the class. It is only on this basis that a flexible tactic toward the traditional workers' parties and mass organizations will succeed."
Amendment concerning the assessment of the results of the Italian elections proposed by the Italian delegates
"In Italy, the elections of spring 1951 demonstrated the general maintenance of the positions of the workers' parties (with some local reinforcements) and a shift of bourgeois votes from the dominant Catholic party toward the parties of the right (neo-fascist, liberal, etc.). This indicates the persistence of powerful working-class positions and the beginning of a crisis of leadership within the bourgeoisie."
Declaration of the Vietnamese minority
The minority of the Vietnamese group votes against all the political resolutions of the IS because of their confused and contradictory character and their tendency to subordinate Trotskyism to Stalinism.
Declaration of the Swiss delegates Pia and Jacques to the world congress of the Fourth International
We have stated with satisfaction that in the drafting of the political resolution, the starting point was, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the international situation. We have also stated with satisfaction that, likewise for the first time, the catastrophe of a threatening war is recognized as a short-term danger and is traced back to the fundamental contradiction of the world capitalist system. In this way the decisive criteria of a Marxist analysis of the situation are introduced, as we have always demanded since 1946. A correct assessment of the general objective trend of development of the international situation thus results.
If, subsequently, some fundamental opposition were to arise against these texts, we would — with corresponding reservations — have voted for these texts. But this is not the case; we have therefore abstained, for the following reasons, which do not allow us to approve them:
1. These texts understand the particular character of the present period (profound shaking of the world capitalist system, etc.) only as a consequence of the war years 1939-1945 and of the following years with their colonial revolutionary events, whereas this period, in reality — namely the "death agony of capitalism" (the Transitional Programme) — had already begun before 1939. Our assessment of the situation rests on this state of affairs, proceeding from the fact that the war phase of 1939-1945, arising from this mortal crisis, was in no way able to reduce the capitalist contradictions of this period (as, for example, the imperialist war was still able to do!); the war phase of 1939-1945, on the contrary, aggravated these specific contradictions of our period and consequently made even a temporary peaceful stabilization impossible. This is the real basis of the "algebraic formula" that we uphold to characterize the phase since 1945: "the world war continues."
2. Formulas such as "the Stalinist world" and the identification of the "Stalinist camp" with the proletarian camp, such as they appeared in comrade Pablo's article and in the report (and we must regard this article, like this report, as unofficial elements in the interpretation of these political texts), signify, in their consequence, an integration of the proletarian class front into the Stalinist camp. We, on the contrary, regard the USSR and the colonial revolutions as part of the entire proletarian front.
3. The texts (and in particular also comrade Pablo's report) assess in an erroneous manner the character and role of the Stalinist parties. They admit that the Stalinist parties, under appropriate mass pressure and in the presence of other particular external circumstances, can be brought back onto a revolutionary line. They further conclude that these parties can establish workers' power. This is, in our opinion, a revision of the correct assessment of these parties that we had held up to now: they are petty-bourgeois workers' parties, bureaucratic apparatuses which can no longer be brought onto a revolutionary line and which, consequently, are no longer able to lead the masses to the establishment of workers' states. Our task, on the contrary, is to detach the masses from these parties. But this line in fact condemns the International to being merely a left opposition to the Stalinist parties, and thereby renders impossible, and destroys, the only correct orientation for building independent revolutionary proletarian parties, parties of the Fourth International.
4. The texts finally characterize the "people's democracies" as workers' states, a characterization which in our opinion is false. We have presented our conception on this question in the resolution of our section's political bureau, as well as in various articles on the question of the "glacis" and of Yugoslavia.
5. These errors, still contained in the texts, arise in our opinion from the fact that the consistent application of the Marxist method, as against the empirical investigation of reality that has hitherto strongly predominated, and the eclectic representation of the whole, has not yet been fully carried through — a state of affairs that appears clearly in comrade Pablo's article as well as in a series of votes during the discussion.
Contribution of the SWP Political Committee to the discussion on international perspectives
This text, dated June 1951, was not brought to the knowledge of the international bodies and of the Third World Congress by the American delegate George Clarke, who judged it necessary to keep it to himself.
The main proposals contained in the "Theses on International Perspectives" are as follows:
1. Since the Korean War, imperialism has plunged into accelerated military and political preparations for a new world war.
2. These preparations inevitably meet with resistance from the masses, who suffer the effects of militarization (lowered living and working standards, attacks on their rights, etc.).
3. The imperialist drive toward total war is taking place in an international situation that is unfavourable to capitalism and threatens to become still worse.
4. The growing vigour of the anti-capitalist forces and the erosion of imperialism may equally well hasten or delay the outbreak of war. In any case, the final decision depends on American imperialism. The American imperialists may launch themselves into a general war precisely in order to prevent the unfavourable class relation of forces from becoming worse.
5. A third world war unleashed under such conditions would acquire from the outset the character of an international civil war, notably in Europe and Asia. It would be a war waged by the imperialist bloc against the Soviet Union, the "people's democracies," China, the colonial revolutions, and the revolutionary workers' movement in the capitalist countries. It would be a war of capitalist counter-revolution for the restoration of private property, colonialism, and other forms of enslavement, against the international revolutionary movement in all its diverse forms.
6. Such a war would differ from the two previous world wars in important respects. First, it would not be a struggle between two rival imperialist blocs for world domination, but above all a class war. Second, it would not occur at the culminating point of a series of defeats of the proletariat and of the latter's political prostration. It would rather come as the result of serious setbacks for imperialism, not at a moment when the workers and colonial peoples are crushed and weakened, but when heavy blows are being inflicted upon imperialism itself. Consequently, the immediate effect of another world war would not be to blunt and suppress the class struggle, but to exacerbate it enormously toward social paroxysms.
7. This analysis of the world situation makes necessary the following orientation and opens up the following perspectives for the revolutionary movement:
a) The preparations for, and even the outbreak of, world war do not constitute grounds for despair or defeatism in the ranks of the vanguard. On the contrary, one must see in them considerable revolutionary possibilities opening up on an international scale, provided the vanguard pursues a correct line and takes full advantage of these possibilities.
b) Marxists cannot adopt a "neutralist" or abstentionist attitude toward the forces that would confront one another in the threatening war. They must oppose the imperialists and their agents intransigently, and they must ally themselves unambiguously with the opponents of imperialism, whatever their differing social nature, tendencies, and objectives. This class position, which clearly differentiates between the opposing camps, must be made evident in all political activity and in the press.
c) In the movements, countries, and forces led by Moscow and the Stalinists, or by the reformists, Marxists must clearly distinguish between the social regimes, the forces, the movements of an anti-capitalist nature, and their bureaucratic and opportunist leaderships.
d) Wherever the masses go into action against capitalist regimes, Marxists must take part, with their own programme, alongside the workers, the peasants, and the colonial peoples in their struggles, with a view to deepening and broadening these movements along revolutionary lines. Under certain conditions, this may make it necessary to enter movements controlled by the Stalinists and even to give critical support to regimes placed under their auspices, such as that of China.
e) This necessarily implies, at the same time, fighting against the Soviet bureaucracy and exploiting the world crisis of Stalinism with a view to creating a new revolutionary leadership. This requires systematic efforts to draw closer to the masses who are currently, in Europe and Asia, under the influence or domination of Stalinism.
f) In countries where Stalinism is weak and where the reformists are today the dominant force, as in England or India, this means working among the masses and within the parties that currently follow reformist leaders. In countries where both Stalinism and social democracy are weak, this means directly confronting the trade-union bureaucracy and the spokesmen of the capitalists in order to win the leadership of the workers.
With the above proposals we are in total agreement. At the same time, it is in our opinion necessary to develop and reinforce the theses along the following lines.
8. The need to oppose the imperialist bloc and to defend the conquests of October against imperialism does not mean supporting the diplomatic measures or military strategy of the Kremlin, as the theses themselves indicate. The development of the class struggle and of the lines of class interest would not necessarily coincide, in the course of the war, in every circumstance and every place, with governmental or military alignments. The case of Yugoslavia illustrates such a circumstance well today. Similar cases may arise in the course of the war itself. In the coming period, Marxists find themselves facing a twofold problem: on the one hand, defending the conquests of October against imperialism; on the other, defending the revolutionary struggles and their conquests (as in Yugoslavia today) against the Kremlin.
9. The direct counter-revolutionary role that Moscow has played and continues to play will not recede into the background in the event of war. On the contrary, it will come to the forefront when and where independent mass movements threaten to escape the control of the parties that Moscow dominates. Regardless of their effects for the defence of the Soviet Union, the Stalinist bureaucracy will not support independent mass movements, and in particular oppositional movements. If the Kremlin judges that such independent movements call its interests into question, it will not hesitate to repress them. As they develop, these revolutionary movements may, under certain circumstances, draw along with them agents of the Kremlin who will seek to take their leadership in order to control them. It is necessary to give warning that the more these movements tend to pass over its head, the more openly the Stalinist bureaucracy will tend to clash with these movements and to seek to crush them.
10. While the international situation, considerably worsened and continually deteriorating, reduces the chances of a bargain between the Kremlin and the imperialists, the possibility of such a bargain always remains. The conservative Stalinist bureaucracy is far from having abandoned its perspective of living in peace with imperialism, if only the latter allows it to do so. To this end it is prepared, as it has always been, to sacrifice the interests of the workers everywhere. Measures such as Togliatti's offer to the Italian bourgeoisie demonstrate that the Kremlin is far from having given up all hope of concluding a bargain. Although such a bargain, if concluded, could only prove temporary and partial, it would nonetheless modify the international situation and our own perspectives in the immediate period and, consequently, should not be entirely excluded from our analysis.
11. Instead of attempting to provide a general redefinition of the Stalinist parties, it would be more appropriate to recommend following their concrete evolution in each given case, in their specific relations with the Kremlin on the one hand, and with the mass movement in their own country on the other. At the same time, it is obligatory to reaffirm our earlier characterization of Stalinism as a counter-revolutionary force. Stalinism remains what it has been, before, during, and since the last war. It is a national reformist bureaucracy and an agency of imperialism within the world workers' movement. What is new in the situation is not any change whatsoever in the nature and role of Stalinism, but the new conditions in which these parties, including the Kremlin, now find themselves and as a result of which they have been plunged into crises.
The possibility and the probability that mass movements may, in some countries, pass over the heads of the Stalinist parties opens up two variants of development. If these parties follow the masses and begin to follow a revolutionary path, this will inevitably lead to their break with the Kremlin and to their independent evolution. Such parties can then no longer be regarded as Stalinist, but will rather tend to take on a centrist character, as was the case with the Yugoslav CP. But the parties which, under conditions of mass upheaval, remain totally bound to the Kremlin, will fully develop their counter-revolutionary character. The characterization of the Stalinist parties as "not exactly reformist" is at once vague and misleading and must be eliminated.
12. The analysis concerning the conduct that the Stalinist parties might adopt in wartime in the capitalist countries tends to be one-sided in the theses. It is stated that, under certain circumstances, these parties may be compelled to sketch out a revolutionary orientation. This is not excluded. But the opposite is equally not excluded. Under certain circumstances the Stalinists could strangle, and would actually strangle, revolutions in the course of a war. This variant should be underscored just as much. Moreover, it should be pointed out that, with the outbreak of war, not all Stalinist parties would escape the crisis that afflicts them, but that this crisis would rather intensify considerably.
13. In keeping with what has been said, it must also be stressed that a tactical orientation implies no conciliation with Stalinism whatsoever. On the contrary, these tactics have the purpose of enabling us to merge with the living mass movement and thereby to fight Stalinism all the more effectively.
14. Although the immense revolutionary upheavals that the outbreak of a world war would provoke in the imperialist sectors are correctly emphasized, it should be pointed out that such a war would also aggravate latent conflicts and stir up independent mass movements against the Kremlin's dictatorship in the regions it dominates. This would probably occur in the countries of Eastern Europe, where the Communist parties have already had to undergo the purging of their national leaderships, and among the Soviet nationalities that have directly experienced the evils of Stalinist oppression. The task of Marxists will be to link up with these anti-Stalinist popular movements, to give them a clear and consistent anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist expression, and to guide them in a revolutionary socialist direction.
15. The perspective of "deformed workers' states" as a line of historical development for an indefinite future period must not be recognized, whether implicitly or explicitly, in the theses. Whether in Eastern Europe or in Asia, the backward countries constitute only one of the main channels of revolutionary development. The extension of the proletarian revolution to one or more advanced countries would radically change the whole picture of the world. This aspect should be brought to the fore in the theses. The delay of the socialist revolution in a backward European country, and the limitation that resulted from it, were a historical circumstance that largely determined the course of world history since 1924. But today we stand on the threshold of an entirely new situation. The unparalleled rise of the colonial revolutions may seem to reinforce this earlier tendency. In the last analysis, however, it will reverse it. For these colonial revolutions, which now also encompass the Near East, are shaking and dislocating the entire world imperialist structure and are thereby providing an enormous impulse to the socialist revolution in all the advanced countries, including the United States. The outbreak of a world war will not alter this tendency: on the contrary, it will considerably reinforce revolutionary developments both in the backward countries and in the advanced countries. The rise of the colonial revolutions must be directly linked, in this sense, to the perspectives of the advanced countries. At the same time, it should be noted that this interconnection between the development of the backward and advanced countries will aggravate to the utmost the crisis extending not only to imperialism but to Stalinism as well.
16. The central political characteristic of the world situation today is the crisis of proletarian leadership. It is imperative to reaffirm this proposition from our founding congress theses. Everything turns on the solution of this historic task. The objective conditions for its accomplishment are now ripe, but the task will not be solved automatically or mechanically, nor independently of our intervention and our policy. The tactical measures proposed acquire their full meaning and their full importance in relation to the solution of this problem.
6 June 1951
The Political Committee of the SWP (translated from the American by Pierre Frank)