Issuing body: European Executive Committee of the Fourth International Published in: Quatrième Internationale, nos. 16-19, March-June 1945
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RESOLUTION: PERSPECTIVES FOR AN IMPERIALIST PEACE AND OUR TASKS IN EUROPE
The imperialist war, begun almost five years ago, has come to an end in Europe. The Hitlerite regime, on which German imperialism had based its gigantic effort to redivide the world market to its own advantage, has collapsed as a result of the crushing economic and military superiority of its adversaries, and also as a result of the resistance of the masses of occupied Europe.
Contrary to the optimistic prognoses we made on the eve of, and at the beginning of, this new imperialist carnage as to its probable duration — which we had expected to be short — and as to the reaction of the masses, which we had expected to be much swifter and more effective, this war, despite the immensity of the destruction it has caused and despite the unprecedented suffering it has inflicted on the masses, has lasted much longer than the war of 1914-1918 and has ended in Europe only through the total military destruction of one of the adversaries.
This fact is due mainly to the following factors:
a) the state of the workers' movement on the eve of this war, entirely prostrate and demoralized by the previous policy of the reformists and the Stalinists;
b) the extent and harshness of the German occupation, which provoked a vigorous reaction among the masses in Europe, directed mainly against this occupation;
c) the USSR's entry into the war and its victorious resistance;
d) the policy of the reformists, and above all of the Stalinist bureaucracy of the USSR and the Communist parties, who, taking advantage of the interdependence of the two preceding factors, justified to the masses the struggle of the "democracies against fascism", called on them to give unconditional support to the war effort of the "democratic" bourgeoisie, sabotaged, through their chauvinist action, fraternization in Germany and in the occupied countries, demoralized the German proletariat and abandoned it to Hitler.
The Economic Situation in Europe
Europe emerges from the imperialist war more ruined than ever. All the pessimistic prognoses that the Communist International made about its fate after the war of 1914-1918, in the event that the capitalist regime were maintained, have been confirmed and far surpassed. Its productive forces, in constant regression since 1914-1918, are today in complete decomposition.
Its industrial installations are destroyed or paralyzed by the lack of energy (coal, electricity), by the lack of raw materials, by the fall in labour productivity, by the wearing-out of equipment. Its ports are destroyed, as is most of its land and sea transport.
Despite an apparent enrichment of the peasantry, the state of European agriculture is no better. Agricultural production is falling because of the lack of fertilizer, machinery and labour. The peasants, despite hoarding depreciated banknotes, have been unable to renew either their equipment, their livestock, or their housing.
The colossal expenditures of the war have been financed through the extraordinary lowering of the standard of living of the masses, subjected to famine rationing, through the capitalist state's absorption of the income of the rentier petty bourgeoisie (taxes, loans), and through indebtedness five to ten times greater than in the previous war. The growing imbalance between the scarcity of goods intended to meet the needs of the masses and the unproductive expenditure devoted to the needs of the war has resulted in the catastrophic depreciation of paper currency in all the capitalist countries and in a dizzying rise in the cost of living, ten to twenty times higher than in 1939 and three to six times higher than the corresponding rise recorded at the end of the 1914-1918 war.
The war has meant a gigantic leap backward for Europe. It has enormously diminished its specific weight in the world economy and has extremely accentuated its economic dependence on the other continents of the globe, in particular on America.
Phenomena of barbarism, such as the senseless destruction of the productive forces, mass poverty, the tyrannical hypertrophy of the state's bureaucratic, military and police apparatus, and the partial or total loss of independence of viable nations, had appeared since the war of 1914. During this war, these phenomena have taken on considerable scope throughout the world and have already taken decisive steps forward, particularly in Europe.
Without socialist revolution, Europe is incapable of rising from its ruins, of emerging from the chaos into which the war has plunged it.
The Political Situation in Europe
The political regime of the various European countries is largely determined by the fact of either American and British occupation, or Russian occupation. Without the effective aid of the imperialist armed forces and without the intervention of the Red Army, the bourgeoisie of all the European countries would have been obliged, when the German troops withdrew, to face civil war under the least favourable conditions it has ever encountered.
However, the presence of the Anglo-Americans and the Russians has had the effect of compressing, restricting, and even breaking (Greece) the insurrectionary movement of the masses, and of giving the national bourgeoisie time partially to rebuild its own apparatus of coercion, police and military.
The policy of the Stalinist parties, into which the radicalization of the masses during the war was channelled to a very great extent, owing to the victorious resistance of the Soviet masses and the Red Army — a policy acting in the direction of pacifying the class struggle and demoralizing and ideologically confusing the masses — has greatly facilitated this reactionary evolution. Thus, thanks to the combined action of these two factors — the presence of the occupying armies and the treacherous policy of the Stalinist parties — the national bourgeoisie has been able, in every country, to re-establish regimes that at present tend to approximate, more or less clearly, the Bonapartist type, resting above all on the military, police and bureaucratic apparatus.
It is thanks to this "strong-arm" method employed by the bourgeoisie from the outset, and also thanks to the illusions of the masses concerning the intentions of the Allies and the Kremlin, that the initial upsurge of the masses, which at the time of the German troops' withdrawal had taken the form of civil war, was halted or suppressed.
Both in the Anglo-American sphere of influence and in the Russian sphere of influence, into which Europe is politically divided, foreign tutelage is decisive. Only France continues to make attempts, as desperate as they are vain, to safeguard part of its economic and political independence. Political democracy, already gravely compromised in Europe after the war of 1914-1918, is today more fictitious than ever.
The war, the economic ruin of Europe, and foreign interference have largely swept away the parliamentary and democratic gains. This does not exclude the possibility that the bourgeoisie, at a later stage, threatened by the rising of the masses, may find itself forced momentarily to check its reactionary evolution by resorting to democratic concessions. In every country, the bourgeoisie, more or less openly backed by its foreign tutors — American, British or Russian — and under various pretexts, governs by force, through special powers, decrees, and arbitrary measures. Sham parliaments, more powerless and more decorative than ever, exist here and there to mask the arbitrary character of the bourgeois governments.
But no important question in the life of the peoples is any longer submitted for their approval, and at no moment of the capitalist regime in Europe has secret diplomacy attained such scope, nor has even the formal consultation of the masses been so neglected.
In Italy, despite the anti-monarchist and democratic aspirations of the masses, the political regime of the country continues to be dominated by the reactionary tutelage of the British and American imperialists.
In Belgium, the bourgeoisie, subservient to British and Yankee imperialism, now governs by means of "civil mobilization", which crowns the arbitrary and authoritarian measures employed since the "liberation".
In Greece, London's agents are preparing, through the simultaneous use of terror, corruption, and blackmail over food supplies and economic recovery, the "triumph" of the plebiscite intended to restore the royal dictatorship.
In France, de Gaulle, despite the categorical verdict of the municipal elections condemning his reactionary policy, is reinforcing the right-wing and arbitrary character of his government, and convenes his "Consultative Assembly" only to deliver commemorative speeches to it and announce his decisions to it.
In Germany, finally, the "democratic" re-education of the German people has been undertaken by the Allies on the basis of a military regime that plunders the country's material resources and subjects its population to slavery.
The Soviet bureaucracy, having erected itself into a ruling caste — the most absolutist that history has known — having strangled, within the USSR itself, every organization and every democratic expression of the masses, is by its very nature incapable of granting to other peoples the freedoms it has stifled in its own country.
The capitalist regime of the countries occupied by the Red Army is currently undergoing transformations. The evolution of the regime in all the countries occupied by the Red Army, and in which Russian tutelage tends to become permanently established (the Baltic states, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, part of Austria and of Germany), is a function, on the one hand, of the tendency of the Soviet bureaucracy to assimilate their structure, and, on the other, of the pressure of imperialism and of the national bourgeoisie of these countries.
Since it rests on an economic and social system opposed to the capitalist system, and since it is the beneficiary of that system, the Soviet bureaucracy will try to transform the structure of the occupied countries in the image of its own regime.
On the other hand, subject to the pressure of imperialism and of the national bourgeoisie of the occupied countries, it will only be able to carry out this policy through contradictory movements and setbacks. The effort of the Soviet bureaucracy in these countries, in the political sphere, will consist in creating a ruling layer, recruited from the most diverse social elements, capable of administering these countries politically and economically according to its directives and its interests.
In these countries, economic and social reforms are being carried out (agrarian reform, more or less extensive nationalization of industry) which tend either to make their economy cooperate with, or to assimilate it to, the Russian economy. But this progressive economic evolution is not based on the initiative and democratic organization of the masses, does not lessen the degree of their exploitation, does not free them from their proletarian condition, and does not facilitate their access to the direct management of the economy, which is the other essential element of the concept of socialism.
The transformation underway in the countries occupied by the Red Army is a bureaucratic transformation, which benefits above all the Russian ruling layer and the parasitic and bureaucratic national elements who cooperate with it in each of these countries.
International Relations
Never have the inter-imperialist contradictions, and those opposing the capitalist countries to the USSR, reached such widespread and flagrant acuteness as in the aftermath of their "common" victory over Hitlerite Germany.
This fact, made manifest by the whole of recent political developments since the fictitious "agreement" of Yalta, is due to the following causes:
a) the imbalance between the gigantic development of the industrial and financial potential of American imperialism during the war and the shrinking of the world market;
b) the economic weakening of the USSR, which today drives the Stalinist bureaucracy to extend both its economic base and its strategic zone over a larger part of the globe;
c) the impoverishment and dislocation of British imperialism, squeezed between the United States and the USSR, which make it even more rapacious towards the defeated or weaker imperialisms;
d) the collapse of French and Italian imperialism, which are trying desperately to cling to a few remnants of their former imperial power;
e) the rivalries among all the small capitalist nations, reflecting both their own antagonisms and those of the "great powers".
The industrial and financial power acquired by the United States, before and above all during this war, towers over the world situation and constitutes the principal cause of the present imbalance. American capitalism has attained such a degree of wealth, development and concentration that it is capable of fulfilling the role of the world's bank and factory.
This expansion can therefore only take place at the expense of all the other world powers and, by its imperative character, is the principal cause of the present tension in international relations, of their inevitable future aggravation, of the ever sharper rivalries of the secondary powers for access to a world market that is ever more difficult to reach, and of an increasingly threatening antagonism between the USSR and the United States, which aim not only to prevent a defensive extension of the Soviet bureaucracy, but also, and above all, to destroy its economic foundations.
Thanks to their economic power, the United States plans to encircle the world with a set of economic-political bodies, such as UNRRA, the "Food and Agriculture Organization", the Stabilization Fund, the Bank for Reconstruction, the San Francisco Economic Council with its annexes, etc., backed by a standing army and a system of land, naval and air bases, which will wrest from every nation part of its sovereignty and will establish the world hegemony of Yankee imperialism.
For the USSR, the war has marked the brutal bankruptcy of "socialism in one country" and, at the same time, the beginning of a period that will decide the final fate of the regime established by the October revolution. The Stalinist bureaucracy sacrificed the interests of the world revolution and the well-being of the Russian proletariat to the dream of a gradual and peaceful construction of a self-sufficient, statified and planned economy in the midst of a capitalist world.
The war has put a cruel end to this disastrous experiment. The USSR was forced to undergo the imperialist war despite the retreats, the concessions and the betrayals of the revolution by which Stalin believed he could neutralize the world bourgeoisie.
The war has largely destroyed the effort made over several years by the Soviet masses for the economic construction of the USSR, and has abruptly thrown it back.
For the Russian economy to recover once again, for this recovery to take place without recourse to the exclusive aid of American imperialism — which would take advantage of it to destroy its independence — for the USSR to place itself out of reach of the pressure of world imperialism, it needs to extend its economic base and its zone of protection on a larger scale, both in Europe and in Asia.
However, the stabilization and effectiveness of such an expansion are ultimately possible only on the basis of a more or less complete assimilation of the economic and social structure of these countries with the structure of the USSR.
The Stalinist bureaucracy will ultimately be forced to undertake this assimilation. It will do so by the bureaucratic path, trying to create in these countries a bureaucratic ruling layer, and not by basing itself on the action of the masses themselves managing production. But this attempt already poses the whole problem of the fate of the Stalinist bureaucracy and of the USSR.
The creation and coexistence of such a Russian space with American imperialism, more expansionist than ever, and with impoverished British imperialism — both less disposed than ever to yield the European outlets previously blocked by German imperialism — are impossible.
On the other hand, the extension in Europe of the economic base of the Stalinist bureaucracy, while reinforcing its sources of profit, also increases the economic possibilities and the specific weight of the working masses of the USSR and of the other countries of the Russian space, who aspire, after so much suffering during the war, to a regime of well-being and freedom.
Thus the Stalinist bureaucracy will find itself subject to two tendencies: that of imperialist and capitalist pressure, tending to forbid it from finally creating a space such as it currently envisages, and that of the masses intervening ever more energetically for their rights. If imperialist pressure gains the upper hand and the Stalinist bureaucracy retreats, the whole system of the statified and planned economy will be placed in mortal danger.
If the reactions of the masses in America and in England, the rivalry between the imperialisms of Washington and London, and above all the fear of revolution, prevent them from launching an immediate and direct attack on the USSR; if the Stalinist bureaucracy, while retreating here and there before the pressure of American imperialism, succeeds in consolidating the essentials of its present positions in the countries under its influence — the pressure of the masses towards the true content of socialism will soon make itself felt, stronger than ever, and the bureaucracy's regime, despite its initial successes, will rapidly be checked. The USSR and the Stalinist bureaucracy are more than ever at the crossroads.
British imperialism, indebted to the United States and to its colonies, with its exports declining, its trade balance in deficit, its empire in dislocation, and the equipment of the metropolis grown old, clings with brutal energy to the remnants of its colonies and to the positions freed up by the collapse of German, French and Italian imperialism.
French imperialism is in full decomposition; the war and the German occupation have ruined its metropolitan economy and irremediably undermined its prestige and its means of coercion in the colonies. For lack of an adequate material base, de Gaulle's policy of "grandeur" — aiming to preserve the Empire, to restore the compromised situation of the metropolis through the exploitation of the colonies and participation in the plunder of Germany, and to avoid complete vassalage to the United States — suffers bitter setbacks every day.
Its policy, which consists in playing on the antagonisms between the United States, England and the USSR in order to establish passing equilibria that grant it certain profits, is proving ineffective, and the whole experience of the evolution of the international situation since the Franco-Soviet pact, the Yalta accords, the San Francisco conference and the Syrian affair show that the arrangements among the great powers are ultimately made at its expense.
Italian imperialism has totally collapsed. Capitalist Italy is already subservient to the American and British spheres of interest, and is incapable of laying claim to any independent role whatsoever.
German imperialism has suffered a complete disaster, a catastrophe without precedent in the history of a nation. Ruined Germany, abruptly thrown back several decades, is today delivered up to the most monstrous plunder that any country has ever suffered in the capitalist era.
Europe, having lost in destroyed Germany its economic backbone, seeks to raise itself from its ruins by plundering the remnants of its own substance. What remains of Germany's wealth — its coal, part of its equipment, and above all its labour-power — is the object of covetousness as sordid as it is monstrous. England, France, Belgium, Holland, Poland and Yugoslavia hope to resolve the coal and energy crisis from which they suffer, and to restore their war-ravaged economies, only through the coal of the Ruhr and the Saar, extracted by German miners, and through the allocation to each of these countries of a percentage of German slaves. The Soviet bureaucracy sets the example, being the first to demand and apply the forced labour of the German proletariat, already martyred under Hitler's totalitarian regime.
Thus, in the aftermath of the end of hostilities in Europe, the bursting-out of all the latent antagonisms, hitherto partly camouflaged behind the facade of the common struggle "against fascism", already leaves no illusion whatsoever concerning the character of the period of "peace" now beginning.
The proceedings of the San Francisco conference, the Polish affair, the occupation of Germany, Austria, and Trieste, and the events in North Africa and Syria already clearly show that neither the imperialists nor the policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy are capable of granting the peoples a peaceful life of well-being and progress.
It is not peace that the "three", the "four" or the "five great powers" are preparing, but an armed truce, laden with the gravest threats, with economic, political and military blackmail alike, followed by compromises and equilibria as rotten as they are unstable, which are heading, absent the intervention of revolution, towards new local and general conflicts.
The inter-capitalist contradictions are more exasperated than ever; the contradictions between the capitalist world and the space that the Soviet bureaucracy is in the process of organizing are sharper than ever. The world is at an impasse, and only the socialist revolution and the federation of the Socialist United States of Europe and of the world can bring it out of it.
The Situation of the Workers' Movement
The situation of the workers' movement in Europe is a function of the Russian occupation, of the destruction of Germany, of the Anglo-Saxon occupation, and of the role of the Stalinist parties. The revolutionary ferment that characterized the situation in a series of European countries during the Nazi occupation, and especially at the time of the withdrawal of the German troops — countries such as Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia — is today experiencing a lull as a result of the Russian occupation and of the reforms initiated by the Stalinist bureaucracy. A certain lapse of time is necessary for the masses before they can crystallize their new experience and before they begin to see clearly into the bureaucratic designs of Stalin and his agencies: the Communist parties.
Another important factor conditioning the development of the revolutionary crisis in Europe, its scope and its rhythm, is the partial destruction of the material and human premises of the German revolution. The war in Europe, especially in its final months, brought about the sudden and almost complete destruction of Germany's industrial framework; it destroyed its cities, its ports, its means of transport. The human material has been no less affected. Germany has lost an enormous percentage of its male manpower on the battlefields; another enormous percentage is in captivity. One can no longer count on the revolutionary action of the German proletariat before material life is reorganized in Germany and before some millions of German prisoners find their place again in the national economy.
The presence of the Anglo-Saxon armies in Germany, Belgium, Italy and Greece constitutes another factor that compresses the free development of the revolutionary crisis.
There is, finally, the importance of the Stalinist parties, into which the radicalization of the masses is still channelled to a very large extent, and whose policy consists in exploiting their influence over the masses to bolster the manoeuvres of the USSR's foreign policy.
All these factors together mean that the revolutionary crisis in Europe has not yet attained the scope and degree of ripening that had been expected. However, the objective conditions throughout Europe and the world are such that it is no longer a question today of a brief period in which the fate of the revolution will be decided, but of an entire revolutionary epoch, which will shake, besides Europe, the colonies, the United States, and the whole world, and in which the revolutionary party will have the opportunity to form itself, to educate itself, and to conquer.
The best chances for revolution in Europe currently exist in Italy, and soon in France. In these two countries, the collapse of their imperial positions, the ruin of their economy, the rise in the cost of living, and the difficulties of food supply are shaping an objectively revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation.
In Belgium, since the "liberation", we are witnessing a powerful mass movement that has highly developed their political consciousness.
In England, the radicalization of the masses is manifest and rapid, and the probable electoral victory of the Labourites will have a favourable influence on the whole situation in Europe and in the world.
In Greece, despite the defeat of the December 1944 movement, and despite the policy of the Stalinist party which, through its bureaucratic excesses before and during the December events, and through its lack of class content, provoked a sharp reaction among the peasantry and even within the working class, the proletariat is regrouping in its trade-union organizations and, driven by the high cost of living, is moving into broad struggles over demands.
In Spain, finally, there is no doubt that the fall of Franco, in whatever way it comes about, will mark the beginning of a revolutionary crisis that will have to its advantage the past revolutionary experience and the international situation.
Our Tasks
If the final triumph of the revolution, despite the favourable objective conditions, is inconceivable without the prior construction of a real revolutionary party — which in turn presupposes the masses' detachment from the Stalinist orbit — and if this perspective is still a distant one, the present objective situation, on the other hand, everywhere allows the organizations of the Fourth International to become an important political force within the workers' movement.
At the present stage, the tasks of all our European sections must be defined in relation to the occupation of Europe by the American and British armies and by the Red Army, to the extent of reformist and above all Stalinist influence within the workers' movement, and to the young and limited forces of our organizations. In most of the European countries occupied by the Anglo-American armies, this occupation currently constitutes the principal support of "capitalist order".
The bourgeoisie of these countries, with the exception, at least at present, of the French bourgeoisie, is not only incapable of seriously opposing the ever more decisive stranglehold of foreign imperialism over the country, but is even forced to accept it and to rely on it, conscious of the fact that this alone can presently guarantee its continued exploitation [of the country].
Our sections must fight with the utmost energy to dispel the illusions that still mask the reactionary character of the Anglo-American occupation. They must make the masses conscious of the fact that this occupation can only accentuate the decadence of Europe's economy, threaten in the long run the independence of its nations, and that it aims to systematically strangle the socialist revolution.
Democratic Tasks
With the aim of accelerating the revolutionary mobilization of the masses in the countries occupied by the Anglo-American armies, our sections must put forward a series of transitional slogans of a chiefly democratic character. The evolution of the situation in each European country may place the emphasis on one in particular, or on several at once, of these slogans. On the other hand, the character of the present period is such that sudden changes are not only always possible but inevitable, in the direction of an acceleration of the revolutionary evolution of the situation — changes that may render the importance of these slogans more or less secondary, or even completely obsolete. But agitation itself, for these slogans, implies uninterrupted propaganda for committees and soviets, propaganda of clarification against all the parliamentary illusions of the masses.
1. Self-determination for every people. Immediate withdrawal of the occupation troops.
2. Immediate elections by universal and secret suffrage for all men and women from the age of eighteen, including soldiers, for a Constituent Assembly. Complete freedom of propaganda, guaranteed by the free and unrestricted disposal, for all parties, of paper stocks, printing presses, radio, meeting halls, etc.
3. Abolition of the monarchy, in all European countries where it still exists, and proclamation of the republic.
4. Creation, following the recent experience of Northern Italy, of popular purge committees, whose purpose is to track down fascist and reactionary agents in the administration, the police, the army, and economic circles, and to bring them before democratically elected people's tribunals. Disarmament of the fascist and reactionary bands and of the mercenary police. Against the disarmament of the partisans and other popular formations. For the reconstruction of the workers' militias.
5. Full restoration of all democratic and workers' freedoms — freedom of the press with respect to the state and the big capitalists, freedom of assembly, of speech, of trade-union association, the right to strike, the suppression of every form of censorship. A ban on the reappearance of all reactionary and fascist organizations, whether open or disguised, and of their press. Struggle against every form of "civil mobilization", against every form of binding workers to a given workplace or industrial branch, against every form of state control over the trade unions, the press, and the workers' organizations.
6. Denunciation of the imperialists' "peace" plans. Against annexations and reparations, against the Balkanization of Europe. For the fraternization of the occupation troops with the popular masses of each country, including the German prisoners of war. For the abolition of secret diplomacy, for the publication of all secret treaties.
7. Against military government, the occupation, the dismemberment and the plunder of Germany. Against the deportation and forced labour of German workers. For the fraternization of the occupation troops with the German working masses. For the fraternization of the workers of other countries with the deported German workers. For their integration into the trade unions of those countries. For the same working and living conditions and the same rights as the workers of those countries. For the purging and punishment of the Nazis in Germany by the German workers themselves. For complete freedom for the workers' movement in Germany.
8. For the dissolution of the standing army, for the general arming of the people.
9. For the Socialist United States of Europe, through the freedom and complete independence of every European nation and their free federation.
The Executive Committee draws the particular attention of all the national leaderships of our European sections to the necessity of linking, as of now, the struggle for these slogans to the struggle for the following transitional slogans, which remain valid throughout the present period.
Transitional Demands
1. The dominant problem in every country is currently that of the growing disparity between wages, which are more or less frozen, and the cost of living, which is perpetually rising. Our sections will demand the immediate unfreezing of wages, a sliding scale following step by step a price index established by the trade unions, together with the fixing of a vital minimum in kind.
2. Against the high cost of living, our sections will raise the slogan of the supervision of prices and of the market by committees of housewives, poor peasants and small shopkeepers, who will also have to organize, ever more completely, the equitable distribution of all goods.
3. The rise in food prices has ultimately benefited only the middlemen, the transport, wholesale and retail trusts. The gap is enormous between the price paid by the consumer and the price received by the grower. In order to weld together, as one bloc, the producers of town and country, our sections will raise the slogan of price-supervision committees, made up of elected worker and peasant delegates. They will demand the radical suppression of all the big middlemen and the creation of peasant sales cooperatives and workers' purchasing and transport communities.
4. The general stagnation of the economy is resulting in a new wave of unemployment. Our sections will demand the practical implementation of the "right to work" and will raise the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours, the sharing-out of the existing work among all available hands, and the forced reopening of factories under workers' control.
5. Against the negligence and sabotage of the bourgeoisie, which shows itself incapable of raising the economy out of its ruins, our sections will defend the idea of a general plan for the reconstruction of the country, worked out by the trade unions and applied under workers' control. They will denounce the demagogic and lying character of promises of planning without the intervention of the workers and under the absolute control of the bourgeoisie. They will put the socialists on notice to carry out their promise of planning by the only effective method: through workers' control over the management of enterprises, over the supply of goods, over hiring and firing, and over all production — control to be exercised by works committees — as well as through control over banking operations exercised by committees of qualified employees.
6. They will demand the immediate confiscation of all war profits. Against the bourgeoisie's attempts at fraud, they will demand the abolition of commercial secrecy; they will urge the workers to force the capitalists to reveal their true accounts. Then the parasitism, the waste, and the economic sabotage will be brought fully into the light, before the eyes of the masses.
7. The decisive step on the road to planning the economy will be the nationalization, without indemnity or buy-out, of the banks, the mines and the key industries. Our sections will denounce the "nationalization plans" of the liberal bourgeois, and even of the "socialists" and "communists", who want to burden an already paralyzed economy with the weight of indemnities. This is particularly odious in those sectors of the economy where the owners have already received subsidies covering several times over the purchase value of their enterprises.
8. Our sections will work out, in the shortest possible time, a programme of transitional demands for the small and middle peasantry, in keeping with the particular conditions of each country. They will place special emphasis on the suppression of middlemen and the readjustment of wholesale prices, on the struggle against the fertilizer trusts, on cheap credit, and on an equitable distribution of new agricultural equipment among the small and middle farmers. They will raise the slogan of "the land to those who work it" and of the abolition of all their debts.
9. Our sections will also work out a programme of transitional demands for the urban petty bourgeoisie, relying in particular on the new middle classes (civil servants, technicians, employees), for whom the general demands of all wage-earners are valid. As for the layer of small artisans and shopkeepers, whose situation varies from country to country but is everywhere continuing to worsen, the struggle against the fraudulent monetary manoeuvres of finance capital and against the grip of the big department stores and the trusts is particularly called for.
10. The central slogan of the present period, an indispensable condition for the achievement of all the others, is that of a workers' and peasants' government. Our sections will everywhere continue their campaign for this government, calling on the workers' parties actually to break the coalition with the bourgeoisie, to take power, all power, and to apply their whole programme by relying on the organization of the masses in the trade unions, in the factory, neighbourhood and village committees, and in the militias.
Tasks in the Countries Occupied by the USSR
In the European zone occupied by the Red Army, our sections, while fighting in the front rank for the complete accomplishment of the agrarian reform and of the statification of large-scale industry, the banks and the means of transport, as well as for the realization of all the slogans listed under points 2 to 5 (2, 3, 4, 5) above, demand the right of every people freely to determine its own fate. They oppose the forced integration and federation of other peoples with the peoples of the USSR; they demand the free development of the workers' movement in these countries, guaranteed by the free formation and free functioning of workers' parties, trade unions and soviets. They tolerate the presence of the Red Army only as a friendly proletarian armed force, whose purpose is to guarantee, against imperialism and against national reactionary elements, the accomplishment of the agrarian reform and the statification of the means of production, without in any way hindering the free development of the workers' movement.
Organizational Tasks
Our sections, having for a long time before the war lived on the basis of a general policy, and then, during this war, isolated from the masses, inexperienced and plunged into the strictest illegality, today find great difficulty in breaking with outmoded conceptions and methods of organization and action.
The Executive Committee again insists on the necessity for all our European sections to adapt themselves as rapidly as possible to the new conditions currently characterizing the workers' movement in Europe, and to this end makes the following recommendations:
1. All our sections in Europe must, at the present stage, cling with the greatest tenacity to the legal positions they have already won, and avoid all clumsiness that would allow or help the bourgeoisie to plunge us back into complete illegality. Sections that have not yet won a legal position must immediately undertake an energetic, intelligent and carefully studied campaign to wrest their legalization from the bourgeoisie.
2. Particular attention must be given to the question of the press. Our sections must fight to secure the legal publication of their central, regional and local organs, and should these attempts fail, they must not hesitate to move to the publication of legal organs, not signed by the party, capable of conveying to the masses the essentials of our propaganda and our programme.
3. Furthermore, should the bourgeoisie systematically ban our political meetings, our sections must switch to other forms of gatherings, such as conferences, private meetings, artistic and cultural evenings, sporting outings, etc., in order to maintain contact with our circles of sympathizers and to increase our influence… Our comrades who carry influence in their factories or neighbourhoods must, in general, come forward before the masses as spokesmen for our organizations and our programme, and abandon their political anonymity.
4. Our sections must give the greatest attention to the trade-union movement, which is currently experiencing a prodigious upsurge in every European country. Our militants must show themselves to be the best organizers of the unions and of the masses' struggle for their demands, and must defend our programme within them. In general, in every country, they must be the staunchest defenders of trade-union unity, of union reorganization on the basis of workplace delegations (workplace sections), of proletarian democracy, of international proletarian solidarity, and of a concrete programme of action aimed at organizing and mobilizing the masses in the struggle against the high cost of living, against the danger of unemployment, and for getting production going again, against bourgeois reaction and police repression. Our sections will everywhere strive to entrust the whole of the trade-union work to a commission made up of the comrades best qualified for this work. The task consists above all in creating within the unions an organized opposition movement on the basis of the programme defined above.
5. Our sections must strive to create and consolidate, within all workers' organizations — political, cultural, sporting — points of support and fractions aimed at winning over to our programme, through patient, methodical and long-term work, the progressive currents that appear within these organizations. Particular attention must be given to youth organizations.
6. The action of the reformist leaders, and in particular of the Stalinists, systematically destroying the traditions and the socialist education of the cadres of the working class, sets our sections the urgent task of carrying out work of Marxist education, both within their own ranks (cadre schools) and within the working class itself (Marxist circles, the publication of Marxist works, libraries, etc.).
7. The transition from illegality to legal work must be accompanied by a radical transformation of the methods and forms of organization of clandestine work, with the aim of increasing its effectiveness and avoiding delays and wasted effort. This implies maintaining the Bolshevik forms of organization (workplace and neighbourhood cells, districts, etc.), the distinction between militants and probationary members, the regular payment of dues, etc. The Executive Committee calls on all the leaderships of our European sections to plan their work, to designate concretely the sectors in which each national section must concentrate its main efforts, and to concentrate the maximum available forces on carrying out the work in these sectors.
However, this transition from illegality to legal work must in no way cause our sections to lose sight of the fact that they may at any moment be forced to plunge back into the most complete clandestinity. The structure of each section must be subject to the strictest rules of democratic centralism. The EC calls on the national leaderships of our European sections to take all necessary measures to safeguard, complete and strengthen the Bolshevik structure of our organizations, and to oppose resolutely all workerist, social-democratic, dilettantist and petty-bourgeois conceptions of organization and action.
The European Executive Committee of the Fourth International End of June 1945 In Quatrième Internationale, nos. 16-19, March-June 1945