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Subject: 1^st International Plenary of Revolutionary and Classist Groups and Organisations

From: Groupe bolchevik (France)

To: CR (Brazil), LBI (Brazil), OCI (Argentine)

Date : January 24, 2003

Dear comrades,

The Groupe Bolchevik received the invitation to your 1^st Plenary in Porto Alegre the 26^th of January. By lack of money, our small organisation cannot currently send a representative to Brazil. So, we address to the Plenary this message.

In the imperialist era, no to any common house with the agents of the bourgeoisie: It is necessary to build revolutionary workers parties and a revolutionary workers international

Everywhere, the centrists of the labour movement advance the prospect of non-revolutionary parties. They erase the border from the reformism and the social-patriotism, from the policy of collaboration of classes and the defence of the bourgeois state.

On the contrary, the goal of the Leninists-trotskystes is to gather the healthy forces which emerge from the current crisis of the labour movement, to constitute an egalitarian and active organisation, practising the true democratic centralism. Its role will be to help the proletariat to organise in Soviets and to arm, to carry out the revolutionary insurrection and to seize the power in each country, to expropriate the exploiters and to build the socialism on a continental and world scale. In short, it is necessary to build in each country a party of the Bolshevik type, which is not possible without close links with the organised vanguard of the other countries.

However, we do not think that it is still possible to rebuild the 4^th International. For that, it would be necessary to be ground on some decisive forces of the organisation founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and a few thousands of Leninist-Bolsheviks of all the continents. 65 years, it is long: this 4th International does not exist any more.

The 4^th International and its sections had wavered more than once, even in the time of Trotsky, and still more after its assassination by Stalin. But it truly exploded because of the revisionism of its Pabloite leadership in 1952-1953, which gave up to the Kremlin bureaucracy the task to smash the capitalism. The capitulation of Pablo-Mandel was all the more criminal as in 1953 the proletariat faced for the first time the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The program of 1938 was able to affirm proudly that the flag of the 4th International is without spot. It is not true anymore. Several organisations have usurped for several decades the flag of the 4th International, they have discredited it and they have soiled it many times. They have capitulated to the Stalinist bureaucracy, to the nationalist leaderships of the oppressed countries, to the corrupted apparatuses of the workers movement of the imperialist centres and, in last analysis, to the world bourgeoisie.

The attempts -in which we had taken part until the end- to save the 4^th International finally failed. The sections which resisted the revisionism and the liquidation (in France, in the United States, in Great Britain and Argentina) constituted in 1953 the International Committee of the 4th International one. But they successively gave up the task of redressing and of rebuilding the international, they have sunk themselves in opportunism and have disappeared as trotskyist organisations.

The degeneration of the epigones seems without limit:

ü In France, the LO’s Bartists support the claims and the demonstrations of policemen and gendarmes. The PT’s Lambertists are among the most chauvinistic parties. The LCR’s Pabloites voted for Chirac.

ü In Brazil, the PSTU’s Morenists support the World Social Forum of class collaboration and they vote Lula-Alencar. O Trabalho’s Lambertists capitulate before the popular front. DS’ Pabloites are members of the bourgeois government.

As well as the treasons of Stalinism did not mean that the program of the 3^rd International was false, the ultimate destruction of the 4^th International does not mean that its program is out-of-date.

To define ourselves on the solid ground of the program and on the basis of the great events of the world class struggle: Iraq, Brazil…

The necessary delimitation of the revolutionary forces must rest in our opinion on:

ü The fundamental texts of the League of the Communists (the 1848 Manifesto, the 1850 Address),

ü The resolutions of the last period of 1^st International (in particular the 1871 Addresses),

ü The texts adopted by the first four congresses of the International Communist (1919-1923),

ü The basis of the 4th International one (in particular: 1933 Call, 1936 Theses, 1938 Program, 1940 Manifesto).

But these references are useful only if they are used as a basis to understand together the great contemporary events, to define a common strategic line, to in each national form of the world class struggle.

Of course, the times are difficult ones, because the proletariat have moved back for two decades, even if it has always resisted and have sometimes opened revolutionary situations. The world proletariat boxed a certain number of retreats:

ü The defeat of the minors in Great Britain;

ü The attacks against the former gains of the workers of Europe, Japan and North America;

ü The capitalist penetration in China, in Cuba and Vietnam, the re-establishment of capitalism in Eastern Europe and especially in Russia (the only country where the proletariat had seized in hand the power);

ü The imperialist wars conducted victoriously against Grenade, Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan;

ü The crushing of the Palestinian refugee camps by the Zionist army.

Against the current, the fight makes possible to delimit the vanguard:

ü The last conquests which remain in bureaucratic workers states of Cuba, China, Vietnam and North Korea must be defended until the last moment. This fight is against the imperialist bourgeoisie which intends to reinstate them in the world market and to make them dominated countries. But the fight is also against the Stalinist bureaucracies which are more and more openly restorative of capitalism. To drive away the parasitic caste, the proletariat needs a revolutionary party.

ü The attitude to Palestine and in Israel is also a test: Against the agreements of Oslo-Washington, for one secular and multiethnic Palestine. This prospect needs the destruction of the Zionist state, a workers and peasants government of the whole Palestine and needs to survive the framework of the Socialist Federation of the Near East. It is thus necessary to build a party based on the proletariat, facing the Zionist oppression but also the Palestinian bourgeois leaderships, whether secular or clerical.

ü Vis-à-vis the threat on Iraq, international revolutionary collaboration must defend the oppressed countries in the event of aggression by the imperialism. The currents which adapt to pacifism, the imperialist UNO, the US Democratic Party or the European bourgeois governments give up the 1914 line of the Bolshevik Party and the program of the 4^th International, for the defeat of the imperialism. But the permanent revolution strategy condemns any prospect for durable and political block with the national bourgeoisie, the trotskyist program rejects the so-called "anti-imperialist united front", adopted by the Morenists, the Lorists, the Lambertists and so on. To really carry out the fight against the imperialism, rests on the mobilisation of the working class of the imperialist countries coupled with the mobilisation of the urban workers, the poor peasants, the women and the youth of the dominated countries. For that, it is necessary to build revolutionary, internationalist, Marxist parties.

ü Any form of class collaboration must be condemned. That of the ultra-reactionary clerical leaderships. But also the nationalist petty-bourgeois leaderships that have given numerous concessions to imperialism since the disappearance of the USSR. The revolutionists also oppose the trade-union bureaucracies. The revolutionists oppose the traitorous politics of the traditional workers parties (whether from Stalinism or from social democracy) or those parties which go on their path (like the Brazilian PT).

ü In front of the Popular Fronts which all the partisans of the World Social Forum look for: the revolutionary line is: no participation, no support. The denunciation is essential, but it is not enough. It is necessary to define audacious tactics of rupture with the bourgeoisie, of united workers front, of alliance with other exploited workers, of workers government. In front ot the first Popular Fronts, the theses of the first conference for the 4^th International one of July 1936 traced the following way:

"The fight against reformism and Stalinism is at the present stage the fight above all against the block with the bourgeoisie. For the honest unity of the workers, against the dishonest unity with the exploiters! Bourgeois out of the Popular Front! Out the capitalist ministers! " (L. Trotsky, Œuvres t.10, p.154)

For a revolutionary convergence

On this basis, the Groupe Bolchevik wants to get links with the other organisations which, whatever their origins, refer to the communist program, which seek the way of the proletarian revolution.

Thus, we have just signed a declaration in defense of Iraq with the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand, the Grupo Obrero Internacionalista of Chile, the Liga Obrera Internacionalista of Argentina and Lucha Marxista of Peru.

We regret not being able to take part in your plenary. We hope that it will constitute a step towards the international regrouping of the revolutionaries on a basis of principle.

ü Long live the independence of the Brazilian proletariat! Long live the world socialist revolution! Long live Bolshevism!

The central cell of the
Groupe bolchevik pour la construction du Parti ouvrier révolutionnaire, de l’Internationale ouvrière révolutionnaire