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1. This Conference of orthodox Trotskyists, meeting on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International, reaffirms the basic ideas of the Transitional Programme; that the historical crisis of mankind is now reduced to the crisis of working class leadership. Our central strategic line remains as it was in 1938; to overcome the contradictions between the objective conditions which are ripe for the social revolution, and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard.
2. The rising revolutionary wave towards the end of the war broke out of the grip of the Kremlin bureaucracy in China and Yugoslavia. In its defensive measures against imperialism, the Soviet bureaucracy was forced to overturn the capitalist property relations in Eastern Europe by bureaucratic-military means. The colonial revolution developed with increasing intensity. But this did not resolve the decisive questions of the world revolution.
The world revolution cannot take a decisive leap forward until it breaks through in the metropolitan countries. The treachery of Stalinism and Social Democracy preserved European capitalism and, in consequence, American capitalism—immediately after the war.
3. In 1938, we forecast revolutionary explosions in the metropolitan countries, and an impulse afforded by these developments, to the political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy. We predicted that the crisis caused by the imperialist war would enable the Fourth International to win the leadership of the revolutionary masses.
4. Events followed a different path. The revolutionary upsurge generated by World War II was halted in Europe by the betrayals committed by the working class leaderships. U.S. imperialism was able to launch its preparations for the counterrevolutionary Third World War. Today the threat of nuclear destruction hangs over the working class as a warning of the urgent need to resolve the crisis of leadership.
5. But while the revolutionary tide has not risen fast enough to enable us to build our cadre as rapidly as we forecast in 1938, the orientation of the Founding Conference has been confirmed in its main essentials. The necessities of class struggle cannot but come into conflict with the bureaucratic apparatus which stands between the proletariat and the social revolution. The expression of this historic necessity will be the creation of a revolutionary leadership of the toiling masses—the Fourth International, organizing the workers and the colonial peoples to smash through that apparatus in their struggle against imperialism.
6. Capitalism faces growing problems of economic recession, added to the strain of its militarization and its inability to crush the colonial revolution. In its desperate efforts to preserve the property relations by which it exists, the ruling class of every country is undertaking an offensive against the living standards and organizations of the working class and the masses generally. In every country, however, the ruling class is confronted by a working class whose will to struggle is far from having been broken. The resistance and the inevitable counteroffensive of the workers in the metropolitan countries will spur the colonial revolution forward to new heights. It will also open up a new stage in the world revolution in which the struggles in the advanced capitalist countries will play a central role.
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7. From the United States of America, the citadel of capitalism to the older capitalist countries, imperialist attempts to crush the working class can bring nothing other than tremendous class battles. The decline of French capitalism has brought about the crumbling of the institutions of the bourgeois-democratic state, and the betrayals of the Stalinist and social democratic leaderships have opened the road to De Gaulle. But even in France the proletariat has not been crushed in struggle, and has within itself a great potential for resistance and revolutionary advance.
8. In the new and sweeping revolutionary movements the working class will collide sharply with the bureaucratic apparatus in a manner not seen in the postwar years. We can foresee the acuteness of the crisis of bureaucratic leaderships, not only because of the objective conditions but also because there already exist sections of the Fourth International, which have succeeded in establishing links with the mass movements in their countries.
9. The struggle to resolve the crisis of leadership is immeasurably aided by the deepening crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy since 1953. Events have revealed the gulf between the workers and the bureaucracy in the Soviet sphere. The new upsurge of the Soviet masses and its reverberations in the bureaucratic apparatus create great possibilities for our intervention to remove the Communist parties as obstacles to the world revolution, and to win their best cadres to build parties of the Fourth International. The crisis in the Soviet bureaucracy contributes also to mobilizing the forces which are developing in opposition to the reformist bureaucracies in the capitalist countries.
10. We reject all conceptions that mass pressure can resolve the question of leadership by forcing reform of the bureaucratic apparatus. Involved in that conception is the false idea that this apparatus is a brake but not a barrier, and that the role of the revolutionary movement is simply to hasten what is an inevitable process in any case. With these conceptions, the struggle for clarity, programme, and leadership is undermined.
I1. In order to preserve its rule, the bureaucracy has been forced to make concessions to the masses. These concessions the bureaucracy advances in order to defend itself in face of the rising tide of discontent. Such concessions as have been made, however, in no way lessen its monopoly of political power. Further, Hungary showed that the bureaucracy, in severe danger, will be capable of the most brutal crushing of the working class. Within the development of the political revolution coinciding with the rise of the masses in the capitalist world, the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy can very well unite at a given moment against the revolutionary movements that threaten their rule.
12. We can distinguish two stages in the development towards the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucracy, that have taken place in the last five years. First, the stage which started out at the beginning of 1953 (Vorkuta, Eastern Germany) and continued in Poland and Hungary. The smashing of the Hungarian revolution and the control of the revolution in Poland by Gomulka marked the second stage, a temporary check to the advance of the masses. The bureaucracy has been able to carry out the counteroffensive measures, developed at the same time as the counteroffensive of the bourgeoisie against the masses in the capitalist countries. But concessions and repressions alike in the long run feed the fires of mass revolts. The crisis of Stalinism can lead to nothing other than the abolition of bureaucratic rule. However, the march of political revolution will not be an uninterrupted one leading in a direct line to final victory. The interplay of the contending forces can go through a series of stages until a revolutionary party arises during the struggle to lead the masses in smashing the bureaucratic regime.
13. The social revolution in the capitalist world and the political revolution in the Soviet sphere do not develop as a separate process. Each affects and nourishes the other. The crisis of Stalinism aids the building of parties of socialist revolution in the west. Revolutionary events in the west and the building of revolutionary parties there, will develop and stimulate the possibilities for political revolutions in the Soviet sphere, and for the building of the revolutionary leadership which is indispensable to the political revolution. We reaffirm the words of the Transitional Programme: "there is but one party capable of leading the Soviet masses to insurrection—the Party of the Fourth International."
14. The continued existence of capitalism results in a grave threat of counterrevolutionary war, with its consequent atomic slaughter. We repudiate, however, the idea that a Third World War is inevitable. Revolutionary events have already slowed down the imperialist war-drivers, and given precious time to revolutionaries in the metropolitan countries. The choice before the working class remains that of social revolution or war. All efforts must be directed to the building of a proletarian leadership capable of organizing and leading the working class along the road of social revolution and preventing nuclear catastrophe.
15. The task of the revolutionary movement in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism is to defeat the bureaucratized traditional parties on the class struggle arena and to replace class collaboration with class-struggle methods and policies.
16. The revolutionary movement seeks to unite, in action which raises the independence of the masses, all those tendencies which are breaking with the bureaucracies or are in struggle with capitalism. It proceeds with tactical flexibility on a principled basis. Its regroupment of forces which are moving in a revolutionary direction is coupled with an ideological offensive against Stalinism, social democracy, centrism, trade union bureaucracy and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships of national movements in colonial and semi-colonial countries.
17. In the colonial and semicolonial countries, our central task is to build revolutionary proletarian parties. Armed with the theory of the permanent revolution, these will participate in united anti-imperialist fronts with the aim of establishing proletarian leadership of the masses. We reject all conceptions of subordinating the programme of the social revolution to the limited aims of the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie.
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18. The construction of revolutionary vanguard parties as part of the Fourth International is the only key to a unified and successful strategy for the colonial revolution, the revolution in the metropolitan countries and the political revolution.
ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY
5th June, 1958