Issuing body: Conference for the Fourth International (Movement for the Fourth International)
The International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity (London Bureau) and the Fourth International
The rearmament of Germany and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia have put an end to the post-war epoch and have officially inaugurated a new pre-war epoch. With the strike movement in France and Belgium in June 1936, a new epoch of revolutionary upsurge begins. All the opportunist, social-patriotic and pacifist-centrist parties and groups of the working class are now caught between the approaching war and revolution. The first to be crushed will be those fragments of organisations gathered together in what is called the London Bureau.
The events of the last two years have fully confirmed the Marxist assessment of the parties and groups of the London Bureau as conservative-centrist organisations, completely incapable of resisting the pressure of reaction and chauvinism. A simple enumeration of the facts leaves no room for doubt on this score.
The German Socialist Workers' Party (SAP), as the active force of the London association, provoked a split in the Dutch RSAP with the sole aim of dragging the party onto the path of centrism. It entered the Popular Front of the German emigration, the most dismal, the most wretched and the most deceptive of all popular fronts. It undertook the hypocritical defence of the Stalinist bureaucracy against the Bolshevik-Leninists and in reality waged its struggle exclusively against the Fourth International.
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) had tried to take a correct position of principle in the Italo-Abyssinian conflict, but the pacifist-parliamentary clique of Maxton and co., who regard the party merely as their convenient technical auxiliary, again pushed it, by means of a brutal ultimatum, into lamentable pacifism, while at the same time adopting an exceptional law against "factions" — that is, against the revolutionary Marxist wing. On the question of the USSR, the ILP places the October revolution on the same footing as the Bonapartist bureaucracy, passes over its crimes in silence, and in particular advertises the byzantine compilation of the Webbs, whose only purpose is to lead the workers astray from the true paths and methods of the proletarian revolution.
The Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification raised the banner of the "socialist-democratic revolution" and thereby completely sacrificed the theories of Marx and Lenin, as well as the lessons of the October revolution, which prove with equal force that the proletarian revolution cannot unfold within the framework of bourgeois democracy, and that the "synthesis" of bourgeois democracy and socialism is nothing other than social democracy, that is, the organised betrayal of the historic interests of the proletariat. In complete accord with its own platform, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) found its place in the Spanish Popular Front, trailing behind the party of the left bourgeoisie, including the present president of the Republic, Azaña. The subsequent criticism levelled at the Popular Front by the leaders of the party does not lessen their crime by one grain, for revolutionary parties are judged by how they act in critical moments, not by what they say about themselves once events have passed. During the momentous years of the Spanish revolution, the party of Maurín and Nin showed itself absolutely incapable of passing from petty-bourgeois phrase-mongering to proletarian action.
In France, the bloc between Doriot — who has just founded, following the dissolution of the fascist leagues, the French Popular Party (PPF) — and Marceau Pivert against the Fourth International very quickly revealed its reactionary character: the mayor of Saint-Denis, Doriot, under whose protection the last conference of the London Bureau had taken place, soon afterwards passed over into the camp of reaction. Marceau Pivert today acts as an agent carrying out the "left" errands of Léon Blum, who has the seizure of the only revolutionary workers' newspaper in France carried out by the bourgeois police and has adherents of the Fourth International prosecuted by bourgeois judges.
One may quite calmly spare oneself any particular consideration of the Swedish party, which does not go beyond the framework of provincial pacifism, not to mention the Italian Maximalists,¹ the groups in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, which have not the slightest qualitative or quantitative significance.
The Stockholm Youth Bureau,² attached to the London Bureau, pursues the policy of the SAP, that is, one of duplicity and deception, which has a particularly demoralising and harmful effect on the new revolutionary generations. What best characterises the physiognomy of this Stockholm Bureau is the fact that, in order to be able to pursue its friendly policy towards the worst opportunist and patriotic groupings, it saw fit to exclude the representative of the Bolshevik-Leninists — in a minority on the bureau — who claimed no more than the right of free criticism. By this action, the leaders of the London Bureau, as well as those of the Stockholm Bureau, have proved, even to the politically blind, that there is not and cannot be any place for revolutionaries within these organisations.
The international conferences of the two bureaus mentioned represent, on the same level as the Second International — though to a much lesser degree — semi-diplomatic, semi-parliamentary institutions and gatherings, which serve only as a means of providing right-centrist organisations with a decorative international cover, allowing them to pursue their national opportunist policy. The declarations and supposed decisions of the international conferences, already fundamentally eclectic, remain without any influence on the actual policy of the affiliated national organisations.
What the "international Marxist basis" and the "revolutionary homogeneity" proclaimed by these conferences amount to is shown by the fact that there is no agreement whatsoever within this dwarf International on any question of principle or current politics. In the Italo-Abyssinian conflict, for example, the English ILP is an opponent of the sanctions of the League of Nations (LN) and condemns any joint action by the workers' movement with the League of Nations, whereas the Italian Maximalists, on the contrary, implore the League — whose active force is England — to intensify the sanctions against Italy. The Spanish section of the London Bureau, for its part, signs the bourgeois programme of the Spanish Popular Front, which demands a foreign policy in conformity with the principles and methods of the League of Nations. The same confusion reigns in the London Bureau's position in the face of the treacherous policy of the Stalinists' Popular Front. Whereas the last session of the Bureau hails the policy of the Popular Front, and the Spanish section has taken part in the Spanish Popular Front while the German and Italian sections have taken part in the parodies of a popular front of the German and Italian emigrations, the ILP — and evidently also the Swedish Socialist Party — reject the Popular Front policy for their own countries (while recognising it internationally!). The ILP even goes so far as to refuse the Labour Party's candidates its support against bourgeois candidates, yet the London Bureau enthuses over the French Popular Front, which elects to parliament, with socialist and communist votes, bourgeois figures in the Herriot mould.
Suffice it to say that at the last congress of the Norwegian Labour Party (NAP), in May 1935 — the only mass organisation affiliated to the London Bureau — not a single voice of protest was raised against that party's breaking off relations with the London Bureau. This eloquent fact proves irrefutably that membership in the London Bureau has a purely external character, since it entails no obligation for anyone, does not intervene in any way in the internal life of the various sections, and can therefore in no way favour the formation of even the suspicion of a left wing.
The parties of the London Bureau possess neither a doctrine nor an autonomous policy of their own. They vegetate between the left wing of the Second International and the Third International which, in its latest phase, represents fraternisation with their own bourgeoisie in the supposed interest of the workers' state, the defence of the democratic "fatherland," the anti-fascist Popular Front, etc. In this sense it forms a new edition of the Two-and-a-Half International, but on a thoroughly miniature scale. In the course of the last two years, the London Bureau has not taken a single clear revolutionary position on any question, has contributed nothing to the workers' movement, and, far from drawing upon itself the hostile attention of the Second and Third Internationals, has rather joined them in their stand against the Fourth International. Now that the two old Internationals have drawn so close together, the existence of an intermediate international becomes a sheer absurdity.
The interests of the Fourth International, that is, of the proletarian revolution, exclude any compromise of principle, any tolerance, any conciliation whatsoever towards parties, groups and isolated politicians who, at every step, abuse the names of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht for aims that are in direct contradiction with the ideas and acts of these masters and fighters.
When the spectre of the new war began to appear in all its horror, the London Bureau, under the leadership of the SAP, instead of raising the question of a Marxist programme, a Bolshevik policy, and the selection of revolutionary cadres, launched the hollow slogan of a "new Zimmerwald." All those generally frightened by revolutionary difficulties hastened to seize upon this seemingly Leninist slogan. A few months passed, and even its originators forgot their own invention. Yet the tasks of building the new International on the granite foundations of principle remain intact. It is not by any easy path that one will emerge from this historical situation.
The leaders of the most important organisations of the London Bureau are neither adolescents nor novices. They all have behind them a long past of opportunism, pacifism and centrist vacillations. Neither the war, nor the October revolution, nor the destruction of the German and Austrian proletariat, nor the treacherous turn of the CI, nor even the approach of a new war, has taught them anything — rather, all this has only demoralised them further. There is not the slightest reason to expect their revolutionary re-education. Proletarian revolutionaries therefore have the immediate duty of systematically and irreducibly unmasking the half-measures, ambiguities and hypocrisies of the London Bureau as the nearest and most immediate obstacle on the road to the further construction of the Fourth International.
Resolution on the anti-war conference of the London Bureau
The World Congress against War, Fascism and Imperialism,³ announced for October 1936 by the International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity (London Bureau), is, by its very nature and by the composition of the organisations that have made known their intention of attending, condemned to impotence and incapable of exercising the functions for which it was convened.
The "struggle against war" cannot be waged separately and apart from the class struggle itself, from the uncompromising struggle of the proletariat against imperialist capitalism — that is, against the social order which inexorably engenders imperialist war and oppression and which is inconceivable without these two scourges. Any attempt to wage a struggle "against war" by "special methods," distinct from or "above" the class struggle is, at best, a cruel illusion, and generally leads to bitter disappointment, thereby favouring the work of the imperialist warmongers. In this respect, the conference convened by the London Bureau can only be a caricatured repetition of the numerous Amsterdam congresses of the Stalinists, all of which ended up in the camp of a barely veiled social-patriotism.
This conclusion is reinforced by the composition of the proposed conference. Its aim is supposed officially to be "direct working-class resistance to war and the refusal of union with the capitalist class or with capitalist governments in the preparation for war or in its execution." The participation in the conference promised by a series of organisations, most of them affiliated to the London Bureau, already gives the lie to this basis, which remains in fact an empty phrase. "Union with the capitalist class or a capitalist government" is condemnable for a proletarian organisation, not only in "time of war," but also in "time of peace," which is nothing other than the period during which the imperialists busy themselves preparing for war. The most commonly used, and consequently the most dangerous and disastrous, form of such a "union" at the present time is the Popular Front, organised by various parties of the Second and Third Internationals with the bourgeoisie, in which the bourgeoisie necessarily plays the dominant role.
By depriving the proletariat of its class independence and subordinating it to the imperialist bourgeoisie or to fractions thereof, the "workers' parties" in the Popular Front facilitate the imperialist work of organising the "nation" for the threatening war, and constitute a direct obstacle in the path of the proletarian struggle against it. Yet among the announced participants at the congress of the London Bureau are protagonists of the Popular Front such as the Italian Socialist Party, the Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, the German Socialist Workers' Party and — however monstrous it may seem — the Revolutionary Left of the French Socialist Party, whose leader, Marceau Pivert, is one of the official leaders of Blum's patriotic regime, which is currently "improving," with such solicitude, the army of French imperialism.
The struggle against war, correctly understood and waged, presupposes the uncompromising hostility of the proletariat and its organisations, always and everywhere, towards its own bourgeoisie and towards any other. Yet among the announced participants at the congress of the London Bureau, which is supposed to organise the common struggle against war, one finds simultaneously notorious defenders of the imperialist "sanctions" of the League of Nations (such as the Italian Socialist Party) and opponents of these "sanctions" (such as the British Independent Labour Party). What is required beforehand for the proletarian struggle against war is not union between the pro-sanctionists and the anti-sanctionists, but their implacable separation.
The struggle against war and against its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active and unequivocal support for the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A neutral position is equivalent to support for imperialism. Yet among the announced participants at the congress of the London Bureau are members of the Independent Labour Party who advocate abandoning the courageous Abyssinian fighters against conquering Italian fascism, on grounds of "neutrality," and members of the "left" Poale Zion who lean on British imperialism in its savage campaign against the justified, if confused, struggle of the Arab peasantry.
Finally, even if the conference of the London Bureau were to adopt a formally correct resolution on the question of imperialist war, which is fairly improbable, this would not improve matters but would make them worse. Agreement between words and deeds is the characteristic, significant trait of a serious revolutionary organisation. That is why the resolutions it adopts at its assemblies are not mere formalities, but the established results of the experience it has accumulated in action, and serve as a guide for future action. For centrists, a "revolutionary" thesis adopted on some solemn occasion serves only as a deceptive decoration, a veil in front of the irreconcilable divergences within its own ranks, and a cover for its non-revolutionary acts, past and future. There is therefore not the slightest reason for genuine revolutionaries to lend any assistance whatsoever to the centrists in their work of deceiving the forces of the vanguard.
The planned conference is, in its true character, a great fraud, which can only paralyse the genuine proletarian struggle against war, fascism and imperialism. If this congress were composed of mass organisations of the working class, it might be worthwhile for revolutionary organisations, regardless of programme or leadership, to attend it in order to expose the fraud before a proletarian tribunal and to counter it with the programme of revolutionary struggle. In the present case, participation in such a congress could serve only to fraternise with these professional confusionists of centrism, or to unmask leaders who have no masses behind them. In any case, the movement for the Fourth International refuses to participate in this deception or to lend it any revolutionary colour or dignity by sending a delegation. It recommends identical action to all affiliated organisations.
The Conference for the Fourth International takes note of the resolution of the last congress of the Dutch RSAP concerning its possible participation in congresses convened by the London Bureau. The conference is not in a position to assume, and does not wish to assume, responsibility for this decision of its Dutch sister party. However, should the Central Committee of the RSAP, following the decision of its congress, find it necessary to send a delegation to the congress of the London Bureau, the Geneva conference for the Fourth International trusts that the Dutch delegation will conduct itself in the spirit of the present resolution.
--- Translator's notes (from Prager's annotations): 1. The Italian Maximalist Socialist Party, of centrist tendency, publishes Avanti in exile in Paris. 2. The Stockholm Bureau was led by Willy Brandt, who had the Trotskyist delegate Walter Held expelled from it. 3. The anti-war congress was held in October 1936.