Rodolphe Prager: The Founding of the Fourth International
First time in English
Tp mark the founding of the Fourth International, which happened this week in 1938, we are sharing the extract below. It comes from the book "Naissance de la IVe Internationale (1930-1940)" (The Birth of the Fourth International, 1930-1940), which is the first volume in the series "Les congrès de la IVe Internationale" (The Congresses of the Fourth International).
The Introduction to the Founding Conference was written by the book's editor, Rodolphe Prager.
The Manifesto ("Manifeste aux travailleurs du monde entier") was adopted by the Founding Conference of the Fourth International in September 1938. The main programmatic document for this conference, known as the Transitional Programme, was drafted by Leon Trotsky, whose profound influence on the conference's programmatic output is clear.
From: The Birth of the Fourth International (1930-1940)
5. The Founding Conference of the Fourth International (September 1938)
INTRODUCTION
The founding of the Fourth International, which could have taken place at the end of 1933 but was delayed due to the withdrawal of its centrist allies, was finally accomplished five years later. Trotsky found this delay regrettable, as all his activity throughout these years had tirelessly aimed towards this primary objective. "The holding of this conference represents a great success," he announced by way of a preface. "An intransigent revolutionary tendency, subjected to persecutions that no other political tendency in world history has probably ever endured, has once again shown its strength" (Writings of L. Trotsky, 1937-1938. p. 435).
Recalling the three stages in the prehistory of the Fourth International, after the one where the Opposition was still working for a possible regeneration of the Comintern, the entry into the Socialist Parties was, in his view, particularly beneficial for the education of the sections: "Our cadres have grown by a head." He was also pleased "that the incorrigible sectarians, the muddle-heads and the charlatans" who paralyse the movement had separated from us. In the third stage, it was necessary to face the tasks of a mass movement. "The reflection of this considerable turn is the programme for the transitional epoch, whose importance is not to provide an a priori theoretical plan, but to draw a balance sheet of the already accumulated experience of the sections [...] The adoption of this programme, prepared and ensured by a long preliminary discussion [...] represents our capital achievement."
It was therefore in a period of profound international reaction, marked by the defeats of the proletariat, where the tragic episode of the Popular Fronts in Europe made the Second World War inevitable, that Trotsky and his supporters founded a new international. Never before had a world leadership of the revolution been created in such dramatic circumstances. Trotsky was more aware than anyone of the weakness of its numbers. Still, he responded to the sceptics: "Internationals are not built on command, nor at congresses, even the most 'representative' ones. One must not confuse the party with the apparatus nor the banner with the party. The programme is more important than the banner and the apparatus. The programme of the Fourth International has elicited innumerable sacrifices and acts of heroism. That is the main thing. This programme must be given the most complete organisation. Such is the meaning of the Congress. The sceptics, the phrasemongers, the pedants must be rejected. We must go forward, against the current! A revolutionary who measures the rhythms of his epoch by his own impatience is worthless. Never before has the path of the world revolutionary movement been encumbered by such monstrous obstacles as at present, on the eve of a new epoch of formidable revolutionary convulsions. An exact Marxist appreciation of the situation imposes the conclusion that, despite everything, we have won inappreciable successes in recent years."
On the eve of the conference, the criminal activities of the GPU against the militants of the Fourth International had intensified. In 1937, Trotsky's secretary in Norway and member of the International Secretariat, Erwin Wolf, was abducted and assassinated in Spain. Ignace Reiss, the secret GPU agent who had sent his resignation to Stalin and announced his adherence to the Fourth International, was gunned down in Switzerland. In February 1938, Léon Sedov, Trotsky's own son, died in more than suspicious circumstances in a Parisian clinic. In July, Rudolf Klement, administrative secretary of the Fourth International, responsible for preparing the founding conference, was assassinated in Paris. A significant number of documents intended for the conference disappeared with him.
The founding conference sat in the suburbs of Paris, at Périgny, in the barn-pavilion belonging to Alfred Rosmer. The essential work took place in commissions that operated for a good month, both before and, in part, after the conference. The latter was held in a plenary assembly for only one day, on 3 September 1938, to avoid the risk of a GPU plot. Its location was kept secret, and it was declared that it had been held in Switzerland. The delegates representing the organisations of twelve countries—the United States, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, Brazil, Poland, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands and Greece—proclaimed the new "World Party of the Socialist Revolution". Trotsky was concerned to find a title that would express the programme and goal of the new international with the required political accuracy. One cannot limit oneself to a number that does not express an idea, he felt. Internationalism, at the heart of all his work, the strategy of the world struggle, the notion of an international party could not have been formulated more successfully. A youth international was simultaneously created. Many other groups were not represented due to reasons of distance, illegality, or otherwise. Still, they had signified to the conference their adherence to the Fourth International. They had actively contributed, through their participation in the preparatory discussions, to the elaboration of the theses adopted.
[...] The major programmatic contribution of this conference remains, of course, the text drafted by Trotsky: "The Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International", better known as the Transitional Programme, whose aim was to transmit the programmatic heritage of Bolshevism and "to help the masses, in the process of daily struggle, to find the bridge between their present demands and the programme of the socialist revolution".
Manifesto to the Workers of the Entire World
Workers, exploited people and colonial peoples of all countries!
The founding conference of the Fourth International—the world party of the socialist revolution—which was held in September 1938, issues this urgent appeal to you at a time when the greatest peril threatens the masses of the entire world and the cause of their emancipation from modern slavery.
World capitalism, which plunged humanity into the catastrophe of 1914, is today on the point of precipitating it into a new war, infinitely more destructive, more bloody and more devastating than the previous one. The governments of the great world powers have already engaged, if not openly, at least secretly, in this path. They have already drawn the working masses of all countries into the preparations for this war, using the most formidable machine of lies and deception ever seen in history and thanks to which the traditional parties of labour, the Second and Third Internationals, have bound them hand and foot.
The leaders of the Second International act as the direct agents of "democratic" imperialism, helping it to mitigate the shocks of the class struggle, and thus hoping to preserve their position in the declining capitalist democracy. Those of the Third International, betraying all their traditional principles and ideals, have been converted into instruments of the Soviet bureaucracy. The two old Internationals now differ mainly in the measure that the Anglo-Franco-American bourgeoisie and the ruling Stalinist clique differ.
Instead of dispatching the putrefied corpse of capitalism to the dustbin of history, social democracy and Stalinism unite to patch it up and preserve it. They have long since abandoned the class struggle. They both concentrate their efforts on training the working class to serve capitalism, in the name of a falsified "democracy" and "popular front", instead of destroying the monster. They support the domination of colonial peoples by their respective imperialisms and offer their military aid for the same purpose.
Neither of the old Internationals has been able to organise proletarian resistance to fascism, in Germany or in Austria. Even in Spain, where the proletariat, alongside which we stand firmly and enthusiastically, has shown its capacity to fight effectively against the fascist beast, the old parties have undermined its resistance and have brutally exterminated the revolutionary forces. The policy of betrayal of the Second International and of the Moscow International has made possible the triumph of reaction in almost all of Europe and has led the working class to a state of extreme demoralisation and to the loss of its illusions and confidence.
Those who rule today over the ruins of the October 1917 revolution in the USSR are no longer its heroic leaders and organisers, who have died by the hundreds and thousands under the bullets of Stalinist executioners, or who are imprisoned or exiled in all parts of the world. A Bonapartist, totalitarian, counter-revolutionary clique has usurped power, transforming the USSR and the Communist International into instruments of its policy against the international working class and particularly against the Soviet working class. This policy includes the strangulation of democracy within the party, purges, repression against revolutionaries abroad and the corruption of the workers' and intellectual movement. This regime discredits the name of socialism. The so-called communist parties are nothing other than bribed agencies of this totalitarian regime, whose sole world purpose is the maintenance of the status quo.