Declaration of Intent of the International Workers' Committee:
Reclaiming Marxism on the Eve of the New Millennium
In 1848, on the eve of the great European revolutions, the proletariat
entered the world stage as an independent force. The Communist Manifesto
raised the slogan, "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!" Less than 70
years after this call was first raised, workers in Russia -- the "prison
house of peoples" -- united to overthrow the old bourgeois order and
establish the first genuine proletarian dictatorship.
In the wake of the First World War, the workers of the world, inspired by
the actions of the Russian proletariat, rose up against their imperialist
masters. Guided by the inspiration of the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin,
L.D. Trotsky and Y.M. Sverdlov, class-conscious workers came together to
found the Communist International. Workers from Sweden to Senegal rallied to
the red banner of the October Revolution.
But the post-WWI wave of uprisings and revolutions in Western Europe was
defeated; capitalism was able to temporarily stabilize itself and isolate
the fledgling Soviet Union. The result was the growth of a parasitic and
conservative bureaucracy, led by J.V. Stalin, in the Bolshevik Party and the
USSR. Under the nationalist and anti-Marxist slogan of "socialism in a
single country," the bureaucracy abandoned the perspective of international
workers' revolution. Beginning in China in 1926, and continuing until the
end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Stalinist bureaucracy was the
gravedigger of proletarian revolution. The adoption of the policy of the
"people's front" by the Comintern in 1935 subordinated the once-Communist
parties to imperialism and "their own" bourgeoisies. The betrayals of
proletarian revolution by Stalinism paved the road for capitalist
counterrevolution.
Decades of imperialist pressure on the faltering bureaucratic apparatus
combined with the inherent contradictions of Stalinism led to the growth and
eventual victory of an openly counterrevolutionary wing of the bureaucracy.
Led by M.S. Gorbachev, this new wing -- guided by a neo-Bukharinite
political program -- proceeded to dismantle decades of gains that grew out
of the October Revolution. Beginning in 1989, a wave of counterrevolution
was let loose on the workers of the USSR and Eastern Europe that culminated
in the rise of Boris Yeltsin and the destruction of the first workers'
state.
The destruction of the USSR was a world historic defeat for the
international working class. The imperialist bourgeoisie gloated that the
end of the USSR meant the "end of history" and the "death of communism."
U.S. imperialism declared a "New World Order," and demonstrated its meaning
with the wholesale slaughter of over 100,000 Iraqis in the Persian Gulf in
1991. The ongoing imperialist campaign to dismember the former Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is the current expression of the
imperialists' blind arrogance. The counterrevolutions in the former
workers' states opened up a new period of imperialism, driven by new markets
and an explosion in technology.
But the imperialists' honeymoon was short-lived. The eight years following
the counterrevolution in the USSR have seen some of the largest class
battles of the last 50 years. Mass strikes and workers' actions in
Australia, Canada, Ecuador, France, South Africa, South Korea and other
countries have been a clear signal that the class struggle -- a central
tenet of the Marxist method -- is alive and well. Peasant rebellions in
Brazil, Mexico and Peru have galvanized people in semicolonial countries to
fight imperialist intervention. In Russia and the former workers' states,
workers are once again taking to the streets to fight counterrevolution.
The recent victory of workers in Yasnogorsk, Russia, and the ongoing strike
struggles in Samara, Kazan and other cities in the former USSR give hope to
the rebirth of Marxism and Bolshevism in the land of the October Revolution.
Today, the message is clear: Communism is not dead! It lives in the
struggles of the international working class! Today, over 150 years after
the birth of communism, the bourgeoisie is still haunted by its specter. The
capitalists have opened an all-sided propaganda war against Marxism. In
France, the publication of the so-called Black Book of Communism, which
disgustingly sought to equate Lenin's Bolsheviks with the Nazis, signaled
the beginning of this new "Cold War." In the U.S., the bourgeoisie has
attempted to put a positive spin on McCarthyism and the anti-communist
hysteria of the 1940s and 1950s. But all the bourgeois propagandists cannot
change reality. What "died" in the USSR was not communism, but Stalinism,
the antithesis of Marxism and Leninism. At the same time, with the ongoing
attacks on workers' living standards, imperialist war and brutal
exploitation, capitalism continues to produce its own gravediggers,
especially those who are able to assimilate all these lessons and come to
Marxism. But what is necessary today is the development of an international
Marxist party of the working class.
It is with this understanding that we announce the formation of the
International Workers' Committee and declare our intention to build this
international party of proletarian socialist revolution. The Marxist
Workers' Group of Britain, the Marxist Opposition of Finland, the Marxist
Workers' Group of the United States, and the "Crveni Kriticar" group of
Yugoslavia are founding the International Workers' Committee. The central
organizational task of the International Workers' Committee is to assemble
the core cadre to build a mass international Marxist party of the
proletariat.
The history of the Marxist movement in the last 150 years has proven the
need for an international proletarian communist leadership, and its central
place in the struggle for the liberation of all humanity. The historic
betrayal of international Social Democracy in August 1914 led to the death
and dismemberment of hundreds of thousands of workers across Europe. The
parties of the Second International, under pressure from the bourgeoisie and
petty bourgeoisie, worn down by the influence of parliamentarism,
bureaucratism and declassed intellectualism, sided with "their own"
bourgeoisies, plunging the West into four years of World War. The Social
Democrats' entry into the bourgeois order led them to brutal suppression of
emerging proletarian revolutions after the end of the War, primarily the
German November Revolution of 1918-1919. These acts led workers around the
world to join the ranks and leadership of the emerging Third (Communist)
International. In country after country, workers seized on the
revolutionary wave to join their class brothers and sisters of Soviet Russia
in throwing off the shackles of capitalism. The first four World Congresses
of the Communist International analyzed the developing international
situation and elaborated the Marxist method for the epoch of imperialism.
But the ebb in revolutionary struggle that led to the rise of the Stalinist
bureaucracy had a disastrous effect on the growing Communist International.
In the struggle against the rise of bureaucratism and opportunism in the
USSR All-Union Communist Party, the Left Opposition, led by L.D. Trotsky and
others, elaborated the method and politics of Lenin's Bolshevism. The
emerging Bolshevik-Leninist movement became the continuity of Bolshevism and
the early Communist International. It was during this time that Trotsky
generalized and elaborated the theory of permanent revolution. Originally
developed by Marx in the period of mass popular revolts in Europe, Trotsky
correctly outlined and developed this principle for the epoch of
imperialism. The theory of permanent revolution was strikingly confirmed by
the 1917 October Revolution and by every revolution and social overturn
since.
The Left Opposition, and later the International Left Opposition, struggled
for 10 years against the degeneration of the Communist International. In
the wake of the disastrous defeat of the German proletariat at the hands of
Hitler and his Nazis, the Bolshevik-Leninists realized that the Communist
International, born in the fire of proletarian revolution, had become the
grotesque instrument of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Two years later, when the
Comintern adopted the policy of the "people's front," the Third
International joined the ranks of counterrevolution and became an adjunct of
bourgeois order in the capitalist countries.
When the working class in Spain and France rose up against bourgeois rule,
the "official Communist" parties -- at the behest of the Kremlin -- betrayed
and strangled the incipient revolutionary movements and opened the door to
dictatorship and fascism. Through their alliances with imperialism, the
Stalinist parties suppressed revolutionary movements and sabotaged
revolutionary opportunities in Europe and Asia during and after the Second
World War. In the years following, the Stalinists' policies of the "people'
s front" and "peaceful coexistence" led to disastrous defeats around the
world, including the physical elimination of over 1 million Communists in
Indonesia in 1965 and the rise of Pinochet in Chile in 1973.
In response to the Comintern's counterrevolutionary international policy,
the Bolshevik-Leninist movement began the process of building a new, Marxist
International. The founding of the Fourth International (World Party of
Socialist Revolution) in 1938 was the culmination of the 15-year struggle to
reclaim Marxism in the wake of Stalinism. As the founding document of the
Fourth International, "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the
Fourth International" (the "Transitional Program"), proclaimed: "The Third
International has taken the road of reformism at a time when the crisis of
capitalism definitely placed the proletarian revolution on the order of the
day. The Comintern's policy in Spain and China today -- the policy of
cringing before the 'democratic' and 'national' bourgeoisie -- demonstrates
that the Comintern is likewise incapable of learning anything further or of
changing. The bureaucracy which became a reactionary force in the USSR
cannot play a revolutionary role on the world arena."
As the Second World War approached, the ranks of the young Fourth
International fought hard to remain at the forefront of the struggle for
socialism. The Bolshevik-Leninists correctly raised the slogan of
unconditional defense of the USSR in the face of imperialist attack. They
said that the only genuine way to defend the gains of the October Revolution
was to fight for proletarian political revolution to oust the bureaucracy
and return control to the workers' councils (soviets). During this time, a
struggle broke out between the proletarian and petty bourgeois elements in
the International. The petty bourgeois current, exemplified by Max
Shachtman and James Burnham in the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, was ready
to abandon defense of the USSR due to the aggravating contradictions of
Stalinism. Their rejection of defense of the Soviet Union was accompanied
by a rejection of the Marxist method - materialist dialectics. The
International Workers' Committee stands alongside Trotsky -- and, to the
extent they agreed, James P. Cannon, the founder of the Bolshevik-Leninists
in the U.S. -- in his struggle in defense of Marxism.
The onset of WWII took a heavy toll on the ranks and leadership of the
Fourth International. The pressure from imperialism, Social Democracy and
Stalinism weighed heavily on the Marxist method of the young International.
That, in combination with a loss of proletarian cadre, led the sections and
affiliates of the Fourth International into the centrist swamp. The
tendency toward "national Bolshevism" by the Fourth International led to
disastrous consequences by the end of the War. By 1945, the Fourth
International had backslid into centrism. The sections of the
International, gripped by a sterile and catastrophist method of
"war/revolution," were disoriented in the face of the growth of the
"official Communist" parties, and the development of the deformed workers'
states in Eastern Europe and China.
The fight against revisionism, centrism and bourgeois ideology in the ranks
of the Marxist movement is a constant struggle as the pressures of bourgeois
society weigh down upon it. Disconnected from the working class and
impatient at the prospects of the revolutionary development of the
proletariat, the post-WWII Fourth International began to openly court
non-proletarian "vanguards." The Marxist method that was forged through the
struggle against Stalinism -- Bolshevik-Leninism -- was subordinated to the
"Trotskyism" of the post-War FI. Beginning with Titoism in 1948, the
post-War International engaged in an ever-rightward moving tailism. This
tailism was begun under the leadership of Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel,
and is known by the term "Pabloism." However, at the time when Pabloism
took leadership of the Fourth International, all currents in the FI
supported this trend. It was only later that the so-called "anti-Pabloites"
began to wage a partial struggle against the open revisionism of Pabloism.
The political collapse of the Fourth International began as the Second World
War entered its decisive stages. The 1953 organizational collapse of the
International was only the culmination of the previous 13 years of centrist
degeneration. The political end of the Fourth International marked the
decisive break in Marxist continuity. The international Marxist party of
the working class must rehabilitate and reclaim Bolshevik-Leninism -- "the
only possible form of Marxism for this epoch" -- and be built in its best
traditions.
Today, the so-called "world Trotskyist movement" bears no resemblance to its
Bolshevik-Leninist origins. Just as Stalinism was an antithesis of
Bolshevism ("a petty-bourgeois response to the October Revolution"), so the
"Trotskyists" of today are an antithesis to the Bolshevik-Leninists. The
"world Trotskyist movement" is akin to the pre-WWI Social Democracy, with
"Trotskyists" standing on opposite sides of the barricades in all major
events of the class struggle. This is why it is necessary to begin anew,
with the modest cadre and resources at our disposal, to rebuild the ranks of
the Marxist movement.
The Transitional Program of 1938 declared: "The world political situation as
a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of
the proletariat." We believe this statement not only retains its full
validity, but has been proven again and again by historic developments.
Today, the different currents that are a part of the international workers'
and socialist movement have rejected this fundamental statement to one
degree or another. In the wake of the counterrevolutions that have swept
through the former workers' states, one international current after another
has deemed the need for building a working-class, Bolshevik-Leninist
political leadership as "ultraleft," "sectarian" and even "workerist." They
declare that the current world situation has left the working class in an
unchangeable situation for at least the near future. They believe that the
working class is unable to advance beyond simple economic or democratic
demands, and to attempt to advance struggles is "foolish." Finally, they
believe that the current period we are in -- which they grossly misname
"globalization" -- has decimated the ability to fight for workers' power.
We agree with Trotsky that, as he wrote in Lessons of October: "All shades
of opportunism are, in the last analysis, reducible to an incorrect
evaluation of the revolutionary forces and potential of the proletariat."
The Marxist Workers' Group of Britain (MWG) was formed only recently by
working-class youth in the city of Leeds. Historically a center for working
class struggle, it is more than a coincidence that the rebirth of
proletarian Marxism is occurring here. In its development toward
proletarian communism, the MWG of Britain has decisively rejected the common
practice by the petty-bourgeois left of orienting toward students and
petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and has instead set as a primary area of work
the organizing of Black and Asian workers.
The Marxist Opposition of Finland (MO) was born out of the struggle to
rebuild a Marxist movement in the Socialist League, formerly the Communist
Youth of Finland. The MO developed in the wake of NATO's war against
Yugoslavia and the need to defend it against the ongoing imperialist
campaign. The MO currently operates as an open Marxist tendency in the
Socialist League, with the goal of developing a Bolshevik-Leninist movement.
The Marxist Workers' Group of the United States (MWG) was formed in the wake
of the collapse of Workers' Voice (U.S.) and various other "Trotskyist"
organizations. The MWG of the U.S. began the call for the need to reclaim
Marxism through building proletarian communist organizations, elaborating
Marxist theory for today's conditions and reclaiming the Bolshevik-Leninist
method from the ashes of the "world Trotskyist movement." Through its
theoretical and practical work, especially around the war against
Yugoslavia, the MWG was able to make contact with the international comrades
who are coming together to form the IWC.
The "Crveni Kriticar" group of Yugoslavia (CK) emerged in the midst of
NATO's Tomahawk assaults on Belgrade. The CK group was the only Marxist
voice coming from Yugoslavia as the war progressed. Its goal in the next
period is to consolidate its initial gains and begin the process of "giving
the Yugoslav proletariat a genuine Marxist standpoint through
socio-political analysis of events taking place in our country."
In forming the International Workers' Committee, we declare our intention to
build an international Bolshevik-Leninist organization in the tradition of
L.D. Trotsky and his co-thinkers. As a part of this, we distinguish
ourselves from the centrist and counterrevolutionary trends in the
international workers' and socialist movement -- including those of the
"world Trotskyist movement."
Lenin's Communist International and Trotsky's Fourth International fought
for the method of Marxism, the program of Bolshevism, the young Soviet
Republic and the October Revolution. Bolshevik-Leninism has nothing to do
with the comical, anti-proletarian and - at times - criminal actions of the
organizations in the "world Trotskyist movement." Regardless of the many
myriad of differences that exist among these groups, they all share a common
method and worldview that has no relation to Marxism. Whether they are
"Pabloites," "anti-Pabloites," "state capitalists" or "orthodox
Trotskyists," they share the same capitulations to bourgeois ideology
(pragmatism, impressionism, mechanical materialism, etc.).
Counterposed to this, we fight to build an international Bolshevik-Leninist
movement that represents the best traditions and program to emerge from the
150 years of the Marxist movement.
The International Workers' Committee is an organization in the early stages
of its formation. It seeks to draw to its banner the best proletarian
communist elements, to elaborate the method of Marxism for today's
conditions, to educate and develop workers as leaders and theoreticians, and
to build mass, Marxist parties of the working class in every country. Our
goal is the formation of a mass, Marxist International, based on the program
of Bolshevik-Leninism, guided by the method of materialist dialectics and
structured on the basis of democratic centralism.
The IWC is guided by the method and tradition of Marx and Engels, the
Communist League of Germany, the International Working Men's Association
(First International) and the program developed in this period, best
expressed in the "Communist Manifesto." We stand on the heritage of Lenin
in his struggle for building the Marxist combat party of the proletariat,
including the method expressed in works like "What Is To Be Done?", against
economism, tailism and Menshevism. We defend as our own the heritage of
Lenin's Bolshevik Party, which led the first successful proletarian
revolution, including the major political works of this period like "The
State and Revolution," and "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present
Revolution."
The IWC adheres to the method outlined in the theses, resolutions and
manifestos of the first four World Congresses of the Third, Communist
International. We reclaim as our own the history and struggle of Trotsky's
Soviet and International Left Opposition, League of
Communist-Internationalists (also known as the International Communist
League) and the early Fourth International (World Party of Socialist
Revolution) on the basis of works like "The Revolution Betrayed," "In
Defense of Marxism" and the "Transitional Program."
The International Workers' Committee adopts the Basic Principles of the
Marxist Workers' Group of the U.S. as its own, as an expression of Marxist
principle developed for today's conditions, and we accept as our own the
declarations of fraternal relations between the organizations that have come
together to form the IWC.
Out of the ashes of the past, and on the eve of new class battles in the
next millennium, we declare openly and proudly that we will reclaim Marxism
for the international working class. As the IWC advances, we hasten the day
when the international proletariat moves forward beyond the wreckage of
capitalism to the universal brotherhood of workers. We declare that the
communism of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky is not dead. Communism lives!
It lives in every struggle of the working class, from the factories of
Russia to the cities of Argentina -- from the streets of Detroit to the
bridges of Belgrade. We declare: Proletarians of all countries, unite! You
have nothing to lose but your chains, and a world to gain.
Marxist Workers' Group of Britain
Marxist Opposition of Finland
Marxist Workers' Group of the United States of America
"Crveni Kriticar" group of Yugoslavia
12 September 1999
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