congress of the Grupo Comunista Internacionalista (Internationalist Communist Group), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Mexico, issued a call for the unity of revolutionary forces to oppose the frontist altemative that the bourgeoisie is now preparing. Without sectarianism, it proposed a line of class struggle to the trade-union tendencies that have emerged independently of the bureaucracy. It stressed the necessity of the Mexican revolutionary movement going beyond narrow nationalist limits in order to unite in the building of an international revolufionary Marxist organization, the only alternative that will guarantee the future triumph of the proletariat. The first national congress of the Grupo Comunista Internacionalista (GCI - Internationalist Commu-
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MEXICO nist Group), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Mexico, was held in mid-December 1974. The delegates met for four days to discuss the points on the agenda of the congress: the problems of building the revolutionary Marxist party in Mexico; the tactic to be followed in maintaining the unity of the Fourth International in Mexico (that is, the problems and perspectives of the fusion with the Liga Socialista /Socialist League, another sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Mexico); and the problems and tasks of revolutionary Marxists in the workers movement, which is now beginning to reawaken. Two tendencies emerged during the precongress discussion and presented documents and resolutions on all the points of discussion at the congress. During the democratic debate that preceded the congress seven internal bulletins containing more than fifteen discussion documents were published. The discussion went on for six months, which permitted the delegates to come to the congress with the greatest possible clarity on the issues under debate, on the real differences and the points of genuine agreement. Tendency 1 obtained a majority of 60 percent of the votes. The new central committee reflects as nearly as possible the votes received by the tendencies at the congress. Thus the CGI, a young organization, has shown both the old Stalinist left and the new militants skeptical about Leninist norms the concrete possibility of organizing a tendency debate (sometimes a very hard one), the possibility of coming to a congress with clearly defined positions and of determining a majority on the basis of the democratic discussion and the final decisions, and, finally, of continuing to function in a centralized way within the same organization. This practical demonstration of what Leninist democratic centralism can be is not the smallest gain made for the whole of the Mexican left by the comrades of the GCI in their congress. This practical demonstration of Leninist functioning, which the GCI learned within the Fourth International, already has some weight within the present debate on the left: For the first time in the new Mexican left (that is, for the first time in thirty years) it has been demonstrated that a tendency debate, freely waged in a democratic fashion, need not lead to a split but on the contrary can result in a strengthening and maturation of the nucleus of the revolutionary Marxist party, represented by the GCI. Since its formation in 1968 the GC has marked a qualitative change in the history of Mexican Trotskyism. Unlike the Trotskyists of the early 1960s, the GCI has succeeded in establishing ties with the natural and spontaneous vanguard without which it is not possible to build the party. Without the slightest triumphalism we can say that the congress of last December was the clearest proof of this social 14 and national rooting that the GC1 has succeeded in effecting during the six years of its existence, of the strengthening and irreversible consolidation of Troiskyism in Mexico. This success was demonstrated concretely by the many areas from which delegates came: Baja California, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Monterrey, Colima, Morelos, Puebla, Sonora, the state of Mexico, and the Federal District (Mexico City). The GCI had not managed to hold such a large and representative meeting since its first general conference of May 1971. This is true even taking account of the international congress held at the beginning of 1974 in preparation for the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International. The organization of this first national congress of December 1974 was an urgent matter. After three and a half years of important experience of "accumulating cadres, " of strengthening the program theoretically, and of injecting revolutionary Marxist ideology into the vanguard born at the end of the 1960s, the GCI could and had to draw a balance sheet. Its propaganda work and the participation by its cadres in various struggles, especially student struggles, permitted preparation for the congress to begin in 1973. But the holding of the congress was postponed by various factors, among them the present situation in the Fourth International, within which two main tendencies are debating what strategy and tactics should be applied in practice. In Mexico this situation led to a split from the GCI, a split that led to the formation of the Liga Socialista. The first congress of the GCI had to approach this problem seriously. After a very thorough discussion on this point, the congress adopted the following resolution: "The congress accepts the fusion process with the Liga Socialista on the basis of the development of common work between the two organizations. Likewise, it accepts the election of a commission of the GCI that, along with a commission of the LS, will form a parity commission that will take charge of organizing the work preceding the fusion, a process that, on the part of the GCI, will be oriented around the resolutions of this congress." Through this decision the short-term construction of the Mexican section of the Fourth International is being prepared; this will result from the unification of the GCI and the LS, the two organizations of the Fourth International in Mexico. The congress of the GCI thus marked a real step forward toward the merging of the revolutionary Marxist program and the process of class struggle itself. From this standpoint, the first congress of the GCI was closely linked to the problems stressed
by the Ninth and Tenth World Congresses of the Fourth International. In fact, in a certain sense, the GCI congress cannot be explained without an adequate comprehension of these two world congresses. The Ninth World Congress had initiated the transformation of the movement of the Fourth International. In view of the powerful upsurge of the world revolution that began in 1968, the tasks of constructing the revolutionary Marxist leadership were transformed. Comrade Ernest Mandel defined the organizational change marked by the Ninth World Congress in this way: "The penetration of revolutionary Marxism to the point of building mass revolutionary parties is not yet possible. That will be the task of the next stage. But in the present stage it is possible to build vanguard organizations capable of independent initiatives in the revolutionary struggle. History will show that these initiatives will be able to exert a far from negligible influence on the behavior, activity, and level of consciousness of broader masses. In this sense, the Ninth World Congress is the congress that initiates the transformation of the Trotskyist movement from a propaganda group into a combat organization capable of effectively directing vanguard revolutionary actions. " (Quatrième Internationale, July 1969.) In Mexico the GCI, whose delegation participated in the Ninth World Congress, was a typical example of what Mandel was describing: a Trotskyist group tied to representative elements of the Mexican vanguard who in 1968 had assured their place in the revolutionary history of the country. But the development of the GCI was more difficult than that of other organizations of the Fourth International that emerged (like the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria/ETA-VI in Spain) or were strengthened (Like the Ligue Communiste in France) during the same period. Two factors were responsible for this: first, the absence of collective political and organizational continuity of Trotskyism in Mexico; second, the very problems of building the Fourth International in Latin America, aggravated by the absence of experiences and traditions of proletarian struggle. In Latin America the revolutionary Marxist program is confronted not only by the traditional enemies of the workers bureaucracy (Stalinism and reformism of the social-democratic type); it also must fight against the insidious influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois populism in many decisive cases. Argentina and Mexico, each in their own way, are examples of the latter phenomenon. In Mexico the GCI, with its very great political immaturity, has had to confront the virtually absolute domination of both Stalinist reformism and the political demagogy of Mexican Bonapartism. A whole series of obiective and subjective factors have forced the GCI to begin practically from zero, with the exception of a small political and organizational capital of a primarily individual character. Since 1969 we have begun to resolve some fundamental problems of the revolutionary Marxist program that were virtually not broached during the whole prior history of the Mexican left during this century: characterization of the Mexican revolution and of the government that emerged from it; analysis of the present social structure, of trade-union "charrismo, "* and of the present tasks to accomplish, given the specific conditions of the GCI as (l) a revolutionary Marxist group that must as quickly as possible implant the revolutionary Marxist program through the sorts of propagandist actions that were taken years or even decades ago by other sections of the Fourth International, and as (2) a Marxist group that must at the same time participate to the greatest extent possible given the forces it commands in the actions undertaken by the vanguard that emerged in 1968 (not to do so would risk isolation from that vanguard). The congress drew a positive balance sheet of the accomplishment of these tasks of the nucleus of the party. It made a sober judgment of the work of the organization, avoiding the easy road of triumphalism. But the congress also observed that the fundamental reason why a small group of leading comrades and militants of the 1968 movement were able in October 1968 to launch this enormous undertaking with some chance of success is that the undertaking was not carried out under the aegis of a centrist program, but was instead based on the perspective of building a group of the Fourth International in Mexico. The founding core of the GCI, fifteen comrades, knew that the best way to build the national party was to participate in the construction of the revolutionary international, which today more than ever must determine all the efforts of communist renovation. The resolutions adopted on the building of the revolutionary party, on the situation in the workers movement, and on the tasks of the revolutionary Marxists are a solid basis on which the second phase of party-building can be begun. The central committee elected by the congress was formed in accordance with the votes obtained by the two tendencies. A control commission was also elected. Finally, in its opening declaration the congress launched a call to Mexican revolutionaries to consider the positive balance of its work as their own. *A word colloquially used by the Mexican workers to apply to labor bureaucrats directly linked to the ruling parties and the government.
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Revolution We are publishing below three articles dealing with the