TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
[The Lanka Sama Samaja party, Ceylonese section of the Fourth Inter~ national, held a meeting October le to commemorate the twenty-fifth annin versary Of the ‘founding of the Fourth International.
[the meeting was chaired by N,.M,Perera. Speakers included Bernard soysa, P.B. Tampoe , Leslie Goonawardene, Edmund Samarakkody and Colvin R. de Silva. .
[In connection with the occasion, Leslie Goonewardene, member of parliament and general secretary of the Lanka Sama Samaja party, wrote an article for the press, The full text, which appeared in the Ceylon Daily News of October 21, is as follows, -- Editor,
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September of this year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation in 1938, in the life-time of Trotsky, of the Fourth Internation-~al,. World Party of the Socialist Revolution. The purpose of this short article written in commemoration of that event is to give a brief descrip- ‘tion of the Fourth International and to consider to what extent its ideas have been borne out by events,
It was in 1924 that »n Opposition was formed under the leadership of Protsky within the Communist party of the Soviet Union [CPSU] to fight the bureaucratic degeneration that had set in within the party and the state apparatus, It was really after 1929, when Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Soviet Union that people in other Communist parties had an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the ideas of the Left Opposition in the CPSU and this led to what was known as the International Left Opposition. The aim of this Left Opposition was to fight the degeneration that was _ developing and to bring back the Communist parties and the Third (or Come
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munist) International to which they belonged to. the revolutionary road.
However, with the passage of time it became clear that degeneration... had. proceeded too far for reform to be effected from within, and that the Third International, which had been founded under the leadership of Lenin to give guidance and leadership to the international revolution, had in fact become. an obstacle to it,
The Lesson of Germany
The advent of Hitler to power in Germany (without even a struggle), which had been facilitated by the incorrect policies of the Comintern, and the further degeneration in the Soviet Union, as exemplified by the liquidation of most of the comrades=in-arms of Lenin and the destruction of every vestige of democracy in the Communist party of the Soviet Union, in particular, helped to confirm this conclusion; and in September 1938 the > step was taken of forming a new, revolutionary Fourth International.
In much the same way as the first world war witnessed the collapse of the Second International led by reformist socialists, the second world war saw the collapse of the Third International led by degenerated communists. Politically the fate of the Third International was sealed when, after the advent of the Soviet Union into the war, it instructed its sections.to sup= port the "democratic imperialisms" in their war, Formally, however, it continued to exist till 1945. when it was unceremoniously dissolved by Stalin from above.
In contrast to all this, “the Trotskyist groups and parties of the ° Fourth International, weak ag they were, entered the war and went through it guided by a single clarified, revolutionary line. The murder of Trot-. sky in Mexico in.1940 by an agent of Stalin did not succeed in destroying the Fourth International. For the potency of his ideas, embedded as they are in realities of our epoch, continue to inspire revolutionists through the organisation that he set up. How many of these ideas have already been vindicated by history, we shall illustrate later. 7 Rise of Stalinism Explained
It is only the Trotskyists who have been able to explain how it came about that the Third International, founded by Lenin, degenerated into an -instrument of foreign policy of the Soviet government, betraying the revoe lutionary struggle in country after country, It is only they who have an adequate explanation for the peculiar phenomenon of the appearance of the monstrosity of Stalinism in the wake of a revolution which was inspired by an ideology which claimed to be superior to capitalism in every respect.
- In brief, the Trotskyist analysis is as follows: After the Revolution of October 1917, a degeneration took place in the state and in the Communist party of the Soviet Union, The basic historical causes for this lay firstly, in the Soviet Union being a backward country in which an illiter-~ ate peasantry formed a preponderant majority and secondly in the fact that the Russian revolution instead of spreading, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had hoped and expected, was isolated in the midst of a hostile capitalist world, In this situation it became possible for a bureaucracy to replace the workers as the real wielders of political power, a :
The sole aim of this bureaucracy was the preservation of its position and privileges. .Since on the one hand its very position was founded on the property system established by the October Revolution it perforce had to defend that system against attempts from within or without to re-establish capitalism, On the other hand, conservative by nature and distrusting the masses, this bureaucracy conceived this defense of the Soviet Union not in a revolutionary manner but in an opportunist manner. And in certain cases ~~ as in the case of the Spanish Revolution ~- this opportunism led it to play an openly counterrevolutionary role,
The validity of this analysis is borne out in ample measure both by what. happened within the Soviet Union and by the policies pursued by the international Communist movemeént.
Since the war the crisis of Stalinism has developed APACE. The Fourth International drew attention to this developing crisis even before . the death of Stalin in 1953.
Destruction of Basis of Stalinism
The principal reason for the aggravated crisis of Stalinism was the disappearance in the years following the war of the two major historical -factors that had contributed to its rise. We earlier defined these two historical causes as the backwardness of the Soviet Union and the isolation of the Russian revolution, . But in the years following the war, thanks to its planned economy on the basis of property relations of a socialist type, the Soviet Union swiftly developed from a backward country into an advanced country, in which an actual majority of the population were now workers and in which a layer of privileged bureaucrats, performing managerial functions, became no longer indispensable, -
On the other hand, the years following the war saw the emergence of a series of workers! states across the western borders of the Soviet Union while in the East a new and powerful workers! state arose in the form of the People's Republic of China, In other words, the isolation that had. characterised the prewar period gave place to a spread of the world revo~ lution from country to country. Indeed, in the colonial world, this process is still spreading before our very eyes.
It is the position of the Fourth International that these historical factors lie behind the changes which are taking place in the Soviet Union -~ changes which, no doubt, were given an impetus by the removal of Stalin from the historical scene,
- It is true that the Fourth International as a world organisation is weak, A principal reason for this is the fact that, in most countries, before its ideas could get a foothold among the masses, the masses had already built and given their allegiance to their traditional organisa-~ tions, either reformist socialist or Communist, However, history has: proved and is constantly proving the correctness of the ideas of the Trotskyists,
‘The changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union after the death
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of Stalin are an illustration of this, However much Khrushchev may endeavor to show that the regime of terror under Stalin was due to a “cult of personality,'' this can never provide a satisfactory explanation, The crimes already revealed show a degeneration so deep and widespread that to a Marxist they are explicable only by a probe into the social roots of the phenomenon of Stalinism, It is only the Trotskyists who have done this,
Nor is this all, The Fourth International considers that the changes that have been taking place in the Soviet Union since Stalin's death mark only the first halting steps in a process that is destined to go forward to the revolutionary regeneration of the Soviet Union through the destruction of the power of the bureaucracy and the re-establishment of proletarian | democracy, And events have already taken place to confirm this belief.
De-Stalinisation after Stalints death has not taken place as a single episode or phenomenon but as a process which has developed under the pres~ sure of events. It suffices to point out that the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU made revelations up to a point. Then came the Twenty-second Con- ‘gress which took the process several steps further. Is it not apparent that. what we have witnessed up to now are still only the preliminary steps in the exposure and eradication of Stalinism?
Theory of Permanent Revolution
Another example of the vindication of the ideas of the Fourth International is provided in connection with the theory of permanent revolution of Trotsky. This theory has been’the object of special attack and gross ” misrepresentation on the part of the antirevolutionary Stalinist bureau-~cracy.~. Although the correctness of this theory was proved in a negative ‘way in the prewar period by revolutions like the Chinese Revolution and the Spanish Revolution which were led to defeat by the Third Internation= al, it is only in the postwar period that the correctness of the theory has been proved by revolutions that have gone forward to victory.
Briefly, the theory of permanent revolution in relation to backward countries is as follows. In a backward country which still faces its bourgeois democratic revolution, the indigenous bourgeoisie is incapable in this epoch, unlike the bourgeoisie in previous centuries, of giving leadership to this revolution, This role falls on the young working class, This working class, although a minority of the nation, in virtue of its leadership of the bourgeois democratic revolution has the opportunity of coming to power with the aid of the peasantry.
A working class coming to power in this manner will carry out the unperformed bourgeois democratic tasks most thoroughly, but will not con= tent itself with the performance of these tasks. It will go on to the performance of its own socialist tasks. And thus the bourgeois democratic revolution transforms itself uninterruptedly into the proletarian socialist revolution. (In contradistinction to this theory, Stalinism puts forward the theory of revolution by stages, providing for a period of capi-~ talist development between the bourgeois democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, )
The correctness of the theory of permanent revolution was first borne out by the Russian Revolution itself, which reached victory as a socialist
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revolution placing the workers in power. In the more than quarter century that followed under a leadership which opposed the dynamic under which the Russian Revolution itself had attained victory, revolutions in backward countries were led to defeat. However, during and after the war, with the weakening of Stalin's hold on -the Communist parties, a new era dawned.
Series of Victorious Revolutions
_ Even before the conclusion of the war, under the leadership of the Communist party of Yugoslavia, the revolution which had commenced as a war of national liberation developed, in spite of the pressure of Stalin, into a proletarian socialist “revolution which has not looked backward from that time,
It is a similar thing that took place in China from 1948 onwards, . While Stalin ponderously advised that "China is not Yugoslavia," the Chinese Communist party, having learned from bitter experience not to take | Stalin's advice, embarked on their war against Chiang Kai-shek and did not look back till they had proceeded on to the socialist revolution and established a workers! state,. Today, albeit with a certain lack of clarity the Chinese leaders have come to accept certain aspects of Trotsky!s theory of permanent revolution,
And what has happened in more recent times in Cuba? The revolution for national liberation has been won and stabilised by Castro by developing that revolution in accordance with the needs of the situation as they arose into a socialist revouubion which. established a workerg! state.
And there is the even more recent example of Algeria, After victory in the historic seven-year-old war of national liberation against the might of France, it is clear that under the leadership of Ben Bella, Algeria is consolidating its gains precisely by going on to the socialist revolution,
Even when one regards the present conflict of ideas between China and the Soviet Union, one sees a further confirmation of the ideas of Trotskyism,
There are many points of difference that. emerge in the debate between the leaderships of these two countries, However, two principal and basic differences, more important than the others, appear to emerge, On the one hand, there is the accusation of China that the Soviet Union has utilised "neaceful coexistence" as a means to soft-pedal the class struggle and depart from the revolutionary path in the capitalist world. But it was the Fourth International, long before Mao, and in a much clearer manner than Mao, that has pointed this out throughout the years.
. The other pig difference that emerges is on the question of "de- Stalinisation,." China is not in favor of this process even to the limited extent that it has been carried out by Khrushchev. China's completely incorrect characterisation of Yugoslavia as a capitalist state is only another facet of this same question. While China's attitude on Stalinism is completely wrong, this does not mean of course that Khrushchev is correct!
However, as. stated earlier, even the limited steps taken by Khrushchev
to do away with the more objectionable features of Stalints regime, point to the correctness of the positions of the Fourth International on this question,
Today, as one looks back on the twenty-five years that have elapsed. since the founding of the Fourth International, it is not possible to say that the Fourth International has developed into a powerful world organi~ sation as its founders may have hoped, However, this much it is certainly possible to say, Its ideas have stood the test of time,