|
The
Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution
The
world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical
crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in
general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under
capitalism. Mankind's productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions
and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural
crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist
system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses.
Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the
state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes,
as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another.
The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already
been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans
with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically
privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for
a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense
of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.),
all of capital's traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering
on a paralysis of will.
The "New Deal," despite its first period of pretentious resoluteness,
represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in
a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable
wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already
succeeded in showing that "New Deal" politics, like Popular
Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley.
International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing
tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an
impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances
(Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce
into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course,
is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war.
But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on
the eve of 1914.
All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet "ripened"
for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The
objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only "ripened";
they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution,
in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole
culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly
to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced
to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.
The
Proletariat and its Leadership
The
economy, the state, the politics of the bourgeoisie and its international
relations are completely blighted by a social crisis, characteristic of
a prerevolutionary state of society. The chief obstacle in the path of
transforming the prerevolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist
character of proletarian leadership: its petty bourgeois cowardice before
the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its
death agony.
In all countries the proletariat is racked by a deep disquiet. The multimillioned
masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they
are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines.
The Spanish proletariat has made a series of heroic attempts since April
1931 to take power in its hands and guide the fate of society. However,
its own parties (Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists, POUMists) -
each in its own way acted as a brake and thus prepared Franco's triumphs.
In France, the great wave of "sit down" strikes, particularly
during June 1936, revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat
to overthrow the capitalist system. However, the leading organizations
(Socialists, Stalinists, Syndicalists) under the label of the Popular
Front succeeded in canalizing and damming, at least temporarily, the revolutionary
stream.
The unprecedented wave of sit down strikes and the amazingly rapid growth
of industrial unionism in the United States (the CIO) is the most indisputable
expression of the instinctive striving of the American workers to raise
themselves to the level of the tasks imposed on them by history. But here.
too, the leading political organizations, including the newly created
CIO, do everything possible to keep in check and paralyze the revolutionary
pressure of the masses.
The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of bourgeois order,
its cynically counterrevolutionary role throughout the world, particularly
in Spain, France, the United States and other "democratic" countries,
created exceptional supplementary difficulties for the world proletariat.
Under the banner of the October Revolution, the conciliatory politics
practiced by the "People's Front" doom the working class to
impotence and clear the road for fascism.
"People's Fronts" on the one hand-fascism on the other: these
are the last political resources of imperialism in the struggle against
the proletarian revolution. From the historical point of view, however,
both these resources are stopgaps. The decay of capitalism continues under
the sign of the Phrygian cap in France as under the sign of the swastika
in Germany. Nothing short of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can open
a road out.
The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions
of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the
old workers' organizations. Of these factors, the first, of course, is
the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic
apparatus. No matter how the methods of the social betrayers differ -
from the "social" legislation of Blum to the judicial frame-ups
of Stalin-they will never succeed in breaking the revolutionary will of
the proletariat. As time goes on, their desperate efforts to hold back
the wheel of history will demonstrate more clearly to the masses that
the crisis of the proletarian leadership, having become the crisis in
mankind's culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International.
The
Minimum Program and the Transitional Program
The
strategic task of the next period-prerevolutionary period of agitation,
propaganda and organization-consists in overcoming the contradiction between
the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity
of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment
of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation .
It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle
to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of
the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands,
stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide
layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion:
the conquest of power by the proletariat.
Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism,
divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum
program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois
society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism
for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum
program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of
such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying.
The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an
epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion
of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses' living standards;
when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand
of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist
property relations and of the bourgeois state.
The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism
but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the
proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However,
the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most
considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics.
All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups
should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is
distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from
day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly
with the actual tasks of the revolution.
The Fourth International does not discard the program of the old "minimal"
demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their
vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and
social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day work
within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective.
Insofar as the old, partial, "minimal" demands of the masses
clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism
- and this occurs at each step-the Fourth International advances a system
of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact
that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the
very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old "minimal program"
is superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic
mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.
Sliding
Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under
the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live
the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any
other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They
must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better
it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those
separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete
circumstances-national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions,
in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system,
that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and
methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of
the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of
their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism,
the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges
stemming from capitalism's death agony upon the backs of the toilers.
The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions
for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for
the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against
a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume
an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan
of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should
assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price
of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit
the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically
unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right
to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society
based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society
based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every
step. Against unemployment, "structural" as well as "conjunctural,"
the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the
slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass
organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the
solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand
would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how
the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker
remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a
strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is
impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the "unrealizability"
of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition
will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce
such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a "normal"
collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of
guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question
is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and
by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of
satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated
by itself, then let it perish. "Realizability" or "unrealizability"
is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which
can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter
what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come
to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
Trade
Unions in the Transitional Epoch
In
the struggle for partial and transitional demands, the workers now more
than ever before need mass organizations, principally trade unions. The
powerful growth of trade unionism in France and the United States is the
best refutation of the preachments of those ultra-left doctrinaires who
have been teaching that trade unions have "outlived their usefulness."
The Bolshevik-Leninist stands in the front-line trenches of all kinds
of struggles, even when they involve only the most modest material interests
or democratic rights of the working class. He takes active part in mass
trade unions for the purpose of strengthening them and raising their spirit
of militancy. He fights uncompromisingly against any attempt to subordinate
the unions to the bourgeois state and bind the proletariat to "compulsory
arbitration" and every other form of police guardianship-not only
fascist but also "democratic." Only on the basis of such work
within the trade unions is successful struggle possible against the reformists,
including those of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Sectarian attempts to build
or preserve small "revolutionary" unions, as a second edition
of the party, signify in actuality the renouncing of the struggle for
leadership of the working class. It is necessary to establish this firm
rule: self-isolation of the capitulationist variety from mass trade unions,
which is tantamount to a betrayal of the revolution, is incompatible with
membership in the Fourth International.
At the same time, the Fourth International resolutely rejects and condemns
trade union fetishism, equally characteristic of trade unionists and syndicalists.
(a) Trade unions do not offer, and in line with their task, composition.
and manner of recruiting membership, cannot offer a finished revolutionary
program; in consequence, they cannot replace the party. The building of
national revolutionary parties as sections of the Fourth International
is the central task of the transitional epoch.
(b) Trade unions, even the most powerful, embrace no more than 20 to 25
percent of the working class, and at that, predominantly the more skilled
and better paid layers. The more oppressed majority of the working class
is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional
upsurges in the labor movement. During such moments it is necessary to
create organizations ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: strike
committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets.
(c) As organizations expressive of the top layers of the proletariat,
trade unions, as witnessed by all past historical experience, including
the fresh experience of the anarcho-syndicalist unions in Spain, developed
powerful tendencies toward compromise with the bourgeois-democratic regime.
In periods of acute class struggle, the leading bodies of the trade unions
aim to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless.
This is already occurring during the period of simple strikes, especially
in the case of the mass sit-down strikes which shake the principle of
bourgeois property. In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie
is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually
become bourgeois ministers.
Therefore, the sections of the Fourth International should always strive
not only to renew the top leadership of the trade unions, boldly and resolutely
in critical moments advancing new militant leaders in place of routine
functionaries and careerists, but also to create in all possible instances
independent militant organizations corresponding more closely to the tasks
of mass struggle against bourgeois society; and, if necessary, not flinching
even in the face of a direct break with the conservative apparatus of
the trade unions. If it be criminal to turn one's back on mass organizations
for the sake of fostering sectarian factions, it is no less so passively
to tolerate subordination of the revolutionary mass movement to the control
of openly reactionary or disguised conservative ("progressive")
bureaucratic cliques. Trade unions are not ends in themselves; they are
but means along the road to proletarian revolution.
Factory
Committees
During
a transitional epoch, the workers' movement does not have a systematic
and well-balanced, but a feverish and explosive character. Slogans as
well as organizational forms should be subordinated to the indices of
the movement. On guard against routine handling of a situation as against
a plague, the leadership should respond sensitively to the initiative
of the masses.
Sit-down strikes, the latest expression of this kind of initiative, go
beyond the limits of "normal" capitalist procedure. Independently
of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals
a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in
a practical manner the question of who is boss of the factory: the capitalist
or the workers?
If the sit-down strike raises this question episodically, the factory
committee gives it organized expression. Elected by all the factory employees,
the factory committee immediately creates a counterweight to the will
of the administration.
To the reformist criticism of bosses of the so-called "economic royalist"
type like Ford in contradistinction to "good," "democratic"
exploiters, we counterpose the slogan of factory committees as centers
of struggle against both the first and the second.
Trade union bureaucrats will, as a general rule, resist the creation of
factory committees, just as they resist every bold step along the road
of mobilizing the masses.
However, the wider the sweep of the movement, the easier will it be to
break this resistance. Where the closed shop has already been instituted
in "peaceful" times, the committee will formally coincide with
the usual organ of the trade union, but will renew its personnel and widen
its functions. The prime significance of the committee, however, lies
in the fact that it becomes the militant staff for such working class
layers, as the trade union is usually incapable of moving to action. It
is precisely from these more oppressed layers that the most self-sacrificing
battalions of the revolution will come.
From the moment that the committee makes its appearance, a factual dual
power is established in the factory. By its very essence it represents
the transitional state, because it includes in itself two irreconcilable
regimes: the capitalist and the proletarian. The fundamental significance
of factory committees is precisely contained in the fact that they open
the doors, if not to a direct revolutionary, then to a pre-revolutionary
period-between the bourgeois and the proletarian regimes. That the propagation
of the factory committee idea is neither premature nor artificial is amply
attested to by the waves of sit-down strikes spreading through several
countries. New waves of this type will be inevitable in the immediate
future. It is necessary to begin a campaign in favor of factory committees
in time in order not to be caught unawares.
"Business
Secrets" and Workers' Control of Industry
Liberal
capitalism, based upon competition and free trade, has completely receded
into the past. its successor, monopolistic capitalism not only does not
mitigate the anarchy of the market, but on the contrary imparts to it
a particularly convulsive character. The necessity of "controlling"
economy, of placing state "guidance" over industry and of "planning"
is today recognized-at least in words-by almost all current bourgeois
and petty bourgeois tendencies, from fascist to Social Democratic. with
the fascists, it is manly a question of "planned" plundering
of the people for military purposes. The Social Democrats prepare to drain
the ocean of anarchy with spoonfuls of bureaucratic "planning."
Engineers and professors write articles about "technocracy."
In their cowardly experiments in "regulation," democratic governments
run head-on into the invincible sabotage of big capital.
The actual relationship existing between the exploiters and the democratic
"controllers" is best characterized by the fact that the gentlemen
"reformers" stop short in pious trepidation before the threshold
of the trusts and their business "secrets." Here the principle
of "non-interference" with business dominates. The accounts
kept between the individual capitalist and society remain the secret of
the capitalist: they are not the concern of society. The motivation offered
for the principle of business "secrets" is ostensibly, as in
the epoch of liberal capitalism, that of free ' competition." In
reality, the trusts keep no secrets from one another. The business secrets
of the present epoch are part of a persistent plot of monopoly capitalism
against the interests of society. Projects for limiting the autocracy
of "economic royalists" will continue to be pathetic farces
as long as private owners of the social means of production can hide from
producers and consumers the machinations of exploitation, robbery and
fraud. The abolition of "business secrets" is the first step
toward actual control of industry.
Workers no less than capitalists have the right to know the "secrets"
of the factory, of the trust, of the whole branch of industry, of the
national economy as a whole. First and foremost, banks, heavy industry
and centralized transport should be placed under an observation glass.
The immediate tasks of workers' control should be to explain the debits
and credits of society, beginning with individual business undertakings;
to determine the actual share of the national income appropriated by individual
capitalists and by the exploiters as a whole; to expose the behind-the-scenes
deals and swindles of banks and trusts; finally, to reveal to all members
of society that unconscionable squandering of human labor which is the
result of capitalist anarchy and the naked pursuit of profits.
No office holder of the bourgeois state is in a position to carry out
this work, no matter with how great authority one would wish to endow
him. All the world was witness to the impotence of President Roosevelt
and Premier Blum against the plottings of the "60" or "200
Families" of their respective nations. To break the resistance of
the exploiters, the mass pressure of the proletariat is necessary. Only
factory committees can bring about real control of production, calling
in-as consultants but not as "technocrats"-specialists sincerely
devoted to the people: accountants, statisticians, engineers, scientists,
etc.
The
struggle against unemployment is not to be considered without the calling
for a broad and bold organization of public works. But public works can
have a continuous and progressive significance for society, as for the
unemployed themselves, only when they are made part of a general plan
worked out to cover a considerable number of years. Within the framework
of this plan, the workers would demand resumption, as public utilities,
of work in private businesses closed as a result of the crisis. Workers'
control in such case: would be replaced by direct workers' management.
The working out of even the most elementary economic plan-from the point
of view of the exploited, not the exploiters-is impossible without workers'
control, that is, without the penetration of the workers' eye into all
open and concealed springs of capitalist economy. Committees representing
individual business enterprises should meet at conference to choose corresponding
committees of trusts, whole branches of industry, economic regions and
finally, of national industry as a whole. Thus, workers' control becomes
a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control,
the proletariat will prepare itself for direct management of nationalized
industry when the hour for that eventuality strikes.
To those capitalists, mainly of the lower and middle strata, who of their
own accord sometimes offer to throw open their books to the workers -
usually to demonstrate the necessity of lowering wages-the workers answer
that they are not interested in the bookkeeping of individual bankrupts
or semi-bankrupts but in the account ledgers of all exploiters as a whole.
The workers cannot and do not wish to accommodate the level of their living
conditions to the exigencies of individual capitalists, themselves victims
of their own regime. The task is one of reorganizing the whole system
of production and distribution on a more dignified and workable basis
if the abolition of business secrets be a necessary condition to workers'
control, then control is the first step along the road to the socialist
guidance of economy.
Expropriation
of Separate Groups of Capitalists
The
socialist program of expropriation, i.e., of political overthrow of the
bourgeoisie and liquidation of its economic domination, should in no case
during the present transitional period hinder us from advancing, when
the occasion warrants, the demand for the expropriation of several key
branches of industry vital for national existence or of the most parasitic
group of the bourgeoisie.
Thus, in answer to the pathetic jeremiads of the gentlemen democrats anent
the dictatorship of the "60 Families" of the United States or
the "200 Families" of France, we counterpose the demand for
the expropriation of those 60 or 200 feudalistic capitalist overlords.
In precisely the same way, we demand the expropriation of the corporations
holding monopolies on war industries, railroads, the most important sources
of raw materials, etc.
The difference between these demands and the muddleheaded reformist slogan
of "nationalization" lies in the following: (1) we reject indemnification;
(2) we warn the masses against demagogues of the People's Front who, giving
lip service to nationalization, remain in reality agents of capital; (3)
we call upon the masses to rely only upon their own revolutionary strength;
(4) we link up the question of expropriation with that of seizure of power
by the workers and farmers.
The necessity of advancing the slogan of expropriation in the course of
daily agitation in partial form, and not only in our propaganda in its
more comprehensive aspects, is dictated by the fact that different branches
of industry are on different levels of development, occupy a different
place in the life of society, and pass through different stages of the
class struggle. Only a general revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat
can place the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the order of
the day. The task of transitional demands is to prepare the proletariat
to solve this problem.
State-ization
of the Credit System
Imperialism
means the domination of finance capital. Side by side with the trusts
and syndicates, and very frequently rising above them, the banks concentrate
in their hands the actual command over the economy. In their structure
the banks express in a concentrated form the entire structure of modern
capital: they combine tendencies of monopoly with tendencies of anarchy.
They organize the miracles of technology, giant enterprises, mighty trusts;
and they also organize high prices, crises and unemployment. It is impossible
to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism
and capitalistic anarchy-which supplement one another in their work of
destruction-if the commanding posts of banks are left in the hands of
predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investments
and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the
entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national
institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration
of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the
latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material resources-and not merely
paper and bureaucratic resources - for economic planning.
The expropriation of the banks in no case implies the expropriation of
bank deposits. On the contrary, the single state bank will be able to
create much more favorable conditions for the small depositors than could
the private banks. In the same way, only the state bank can establish
for farmers, tradesmen and small merchants conditions of favorable, that
is, cheap credit. Even more important, however, is the circumstance that
the entire economy-first and foremost large-scale industry and transport
directed by a single financial staff, will serve the vital interests of
the workers and all other toilers.
However, the state-ization of the banks will produce these favorable results
only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the
exploiters into the hands of the toilers.
The
Picket Line, Defense Guards/Workers' Militia and The Arming of the Proletariat
Sit-down
strikes are a serious warning from the masses addressed not only to the
bourgeoisie but also to the organizations of the workers, including the
Fourth International. In 1919-20, the Italian workers seized factories
on their own initiative, thus signaling the news to their "leaders"
of the coming of the social revolution. The "leaders" paid no
heed to the signal. The victory of fascism was the result.
Sit down strikes do not yet mean the seizure of factories in the Italian
manner, but they are a decisive step toward such seizures. The present
crisis can sharpen the class struggle to an extreme point and bring nearer
the moment of denouement. But that does not mean that a revolutionary
situation comes on at one stroke. Actually, its approach is signalized
by a continuous series of convulsions. One of these is the wave of sit-down
strikes. The problem of the sections of the Fourth International is to
help the proletarian vanguard understand the general character and tempo
of our epoch and to fructify in time the struggle of the masses with ever
more resolute and organizational measures.
The sharpening of the proletariat's struggle means the sharpening of the
methods of counterattack on the part of capital. New waves of sit down
strikes can call forth and undoubtedly will call forth resolute countermeasures
on the part of the bourgeoisie. Preparatory work is already being done
by the confidential staffs of big trusts. Woe to the revolutionary organizations,
woe to the proletariat if it is again caught unawares!
The bourgeoisie is nowhere satisfied with the official police and army.
In the United States even during "peaceful" times the bourgeoisie
maintains militarized battalions of scabs and privately armed thugs in
factories. To this must now be added the various groups of American Nazis.
The French bourgeoisie at the first approach of danger mobilized semi-legal
and illegal fascist detachments, including such as are in the army. No
sooner does the pressure of the English workers once again become stronger
than immediately the fascist bands are doubled, trebled, increased tenfold
to come out in bloody march against the workers. The bourgeoisie keeps
itself most accurately informed about the fact that in the present epoch
the class struggle irresistibly tends to transform itself into civil war.
The examples of Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain and other countries taught
considerably more to the magnates and lackeys of capital than to the official
leaders of the proletariat.
The politicians of the Second and Third Internationals as well as the
bureaucrats of the trade unions, consciously close their eyes to the bourgeoisie's
private army; otherwise they could not preserve their alliance with it
for even twenty-four hours. The reformists systematically implant in the
minds of the workers the notion that the sacredness of democracy is best
guaranteed when the bourgeoisie is armed to the teeth and the workers
are unarmed.
The duty of the Fourth International is to put an end to such slavish
polices once and for all. The petty bourgeois democrats-including Social
Democrats, Stalinists and Anarchists-yell louder about the struggle against
fascism the more cravenly they capitulate to it in actuality. Only armed
workers' detachments, who feel the support of tens of millions of toilers
behind them, can successfully prevail against the fascist bands. The struggle
against fascism does not start in the liberal editorial office but in
the factory-and ends in the street. Scabs and private gunmen in factory
plants are the basic nuclei of the fascist army. Strike pickets are the
basic nuclei of the proletarian army. This is our point of departure.
In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative
to propagate the necessity of creating workers' groups for self-defense.
It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary
wing of the trade unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning
with the youth groups, to organize groups for self-defense, to drill and
acquaint them with the use of arms.
A new upsurge of the mass movement should serve not only to increase the
number of these units but also to unite them according to neighborhoods,
cities, regions. It is necessary to give organized expression to the valid
hatred of the workers toward scabs and bands of gangsters and fascists.
It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers' militia as the one
Serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers' organizations, meetings
and press.
Only with the help of such systematic, persistent, indefatigable, courageous
agitational and organizational work always on the basis of the experience
of the masses themselves, is it possible to root out from their consciousness
the traditions of submissiveness and passivity; to train detachments of
heroic fighters capable of setting an example to all toilers; to inflict
a series of tactical defeats upon the armed thugs of counterrevolution;
to raise the self-confidence of the exploited and oppressed; to compromise
Fascism in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie and pave the road for the
conquest of power by the proletariat.
Engels defined the state as "bodies of armed men." The arming
of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle
for liberation. When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and
the means to arming. In this field, also, else leadership falls naturally
to the sections of the Fourth International.
The
Alliance of the Workers and Farmers
The
brother-in-arms and counterpart of the worker in the country is the agricultural
laborer. They are two parts of one and the same class. Their interests
are inseparable. The industrial workers' program of transitional demands,
with changes here and there, is likewise the program of the agricultural
proletariat.
The peasants (farmers) represent another class: they are the petty bourgeoisie
of the village. The petty bourgeoisie is made up of various layers, from
the semi-proletarian to the exploiter elements. In accordance with this,
the political task of the industrial proletariat is to carry the class
struggle into the country. Only thus will he be able to draw a dividing
line between his allies and his enemies.
The peculiarities of national development of each country find their queerest
expression in the status of farmers and, to some extent, of the urban
petty bourgeoisie (artisans and shopkeepers). These classes, no matter
how numerically strong they may be, essentially are representative survivals
of pre-capitalist forms of production. The sections of the Fourth International
should work out with all possible concreteness a program of transitional
demands concerning the peasants (farmers) and urban petty bourgeoisie,
in conformity with the conditions of each country. The advanced workers
should learn to give clear and concrete answers to the questions put by
their future allies.
While the farmer remains an "independent" petty producer he
is in need of cheap credit, of agricultural machines and fertilizer at
prices he can afford to pay, favorable conditions of transport, and conscientious
organization of the market for his agricultural products. But the banks,
the trusts, the merchants rob the farmer from every side. Only the farmers
themselves with the help of the workers can curb this robbery. Committees
elected by small farmers should make their appearance on the national
scene and jointly with the workers' committees and committees of bank
employees take into their hands control off transport, credit, and mercantile
operations affecting agriculture.
By falsely citing the "excessive" demands of the workers the
big bourgeoisie skillfully transforms the question of commodity prices
into a wedge to be driven between the workers and farmers and between
the workers and the petty bourgeoisie of the cities. The peasant, artisan,
small merchant, unlike the industrial worker, office and civil service
employee, cannot demand a wage increase corresponding to the increase
in prices. The official struggle of the government with high prices is
only a deception of the masses. But the farmers, artisans, merchants,
in their capacity of consumers, can step into the politics of price-fixing
shoulder to shoulder with the workers. To the capitalist's lamentations
about costs of production, of transport and trade, the consumers answer:
"Show us your books; we demand control over the fixing of prices."
The organs of this control should be the committees on prices, made up
of delegates from the factories, trade unions, cooperatives, farmers'
organizations, the "little man" of the city, housewives, etc.
By this means the workers will be able to prove to the farmers that the
real reason for high prices is not high wages but the exorbitant profits
of the capitalists and the overhead expenses of capitalist anarchy.
The program for the nationalization of the land and collectivization of
agriculture should be so drawn that from its very basis it should exclude
the possibility of expropriation of small farmers and their compulsory
collectivization. The farmer will remain owner of his plot of land as
long as he himself believes it possible or necessary. In order to rehabilitate
the program of socialism in the eyes of the farmer, it is necessary to
expose mercilessly the Stalinist methods of collectivization, which are
dictated not by the interests of the farmers or workers but by the interests
of the bureaucracy.
The expropriation of the expropriators likewise does not signify forcible
confiscation of the property of artisans and shopkeepers. On the contrary,
workers' control of banks and trusts-even more, the nationalization of
these concerns, can create for the urban petty bourgeoisie incomparably
more favorable conditions of credit purchase, and sale than is possible
under the unchecked domination of the monopolies. Dependence upon private
capital will be replaced by dependence upon the state, which will be the
more attentive to the needs of its small co-workers and agents the more
firmly the toilers themselves keep the state in their own hands.
The practical participation of the exploited farmers in the control of
different fields of economy will allow them to decide for themselves whether
or not it would be profitable for them to go over to collective working
of the land-at what date and on what scale. Industrial workers should
consider themselves duty-bound to show farmers every cooperation in traveling
this road: through the trade unions, factory committees, and, above all,
through a workers' and farmers' government. |
