Workers,
The Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution, meeting in its second World Congress since the reunification (the eighth World Congress since its foundation), addresses an urgent appeal to you to bring effective help and assistance to the Vietnamese popular masses, who are facing an ever more ferocious aggression by American imperialism.
The heroism of these masses, who have been fighting for twenty-five years for their national and social liberation, commands the respect of all. Arms in hand, the workers and poor peasants of Vietnam have shown that the omnipotence of American imperialism is a baseless myth, that even a small country can stand up to the greatest power in the world once it fights for a just cause and its fight has the support of the whole people.
The fight the Vietnamese masses are waging to drive back the American imperialist aggressor is a fight for all the workers of the world. Had this fight not been waged with exemplary courage, the imperialists would try with growing insolence to crush in blood every liberation movement, wherever in the world it might break out; they would seek more and more to nibble away at, to undermine, even to reduce the part of the world already wrested from their exploitation.
Since, for all its cowardice, the Soviet bureaucracy is nevertheless not ready to commit suicide, the escalation of American imperialism, unless it is firmly stopped in time, risks reaching the level at which it would lead to the immediate threat of a world nuclear war. To fight imperialist aggression today, while there is still time and while the nuclear deadline is not yet imminent, is also to fight to preserve the very existence of the human race.
Precisely because the heroic masses of Vietnam are fighting for the workers of the whole world, it would be shameful to go on leaving them practically alone in the front line of the common struggle against imperialism. Having to hold off alone the assault of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers equipped with the most modern weapons, they are paying an ever heavier price in sacrifices for their attachment to the cause of their emancipation and of international socialism. The dead can no longer be counted. The country is being covered with ruins. The imperialist bandits are trying out their most barbarous new weapons there, destroying vegetation, poisoning the rivers, experimenting with toxic gases.
It is urgent that imperialism should feel directly the indignation and revolt of the peoples against its aggression in Vietnam. It is urgent that the fighting Vietnamese masses should receive effective aid, not merely fine words and appeals "for peace through negotiation" which make the enemy sneer.
Communist workers, members of the Communist Parties, workers and young intellectuals of the workers states: launch and broaden your campaign to force the Kremlin to stop its shady confabulations with the imperialist aggressor at the very moment when it grants the heroic masses of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the NLF of South Vietnam only a miserable trickle of aid. Take up in your millions the slogan "Planes and missiles for the Vietnamese people!"
Workers, poor peasants, nationalist militants of the semi-colonial countries: rise resolutely against imperialism, strike it everywhere at once. Take advantage of the fact that it has committed its main forces in Vietnam to multiply new fronts and to bring down its lackeys and its flunkeys wherever conditions are favourable!
Workers of the imperialist countries: in demonstrations and strikes, demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the imperialist troops from Vietnam! Dockers, railwaymen, truck drivers, refuse to carry the arms and munitions that help imperialism to pursue its dirty war of repression against the Vietnamese people fighting for its freedom.
Workers, students, young people, soldiers, Black fighters of the United States: the Vietnamese people ask only one thing, to be left free to decide their own fate. Your imperialist government is waging against this people the same kind of war of oppression that the British waged against your own Declaration of Independence in 1776, that the Nazi imperialists waged against the peoples of Europe from 1939 to 1945, that French imperialism waged against the Algerian people from 1954 to 1962. Take up the old socialist slogan: not a man, not a penny for this dirty imperialist war! Rally in ever greater numbers, in a powerful fighting front, to end the war by bringing home to the United States the soldiers who are falling in Vietnam so that your bankers' safes may go on filling up.
Workers of the whole world: compel the leaders of all the mass organisations, and the leaders of all the workers states that claim to speak in the name of socialism, to form an unshakeable anti-imperialist united front that will drive imperialism back under the terrible blows dealt it!
The Fourth International, which today unites sections and battle-tempered revolutionary militants in forty countries, calls on you to combine the utmost vigilance and critical spirit towards treacherous or incapable leaderships with the utmost effort to unite in struggle all those who are ready to support the heroic Vietnamese people in practice.
Down with the imperialist aggression against Vietnam!
Long live the effective solidarity of the world proletariat with the Vietnamese revolution!
Long live the world socialist revolution!
THE WORLD CONGRESS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL.
15 December 1965.