FSLN on the Fifth Socialist International: Globalise struggle and hope!

It is truly wonderful to see the growing interest in the need for a revolutionary workers' international. Not surprisingly, many will approach this question from distinct, partial and incomplete bases of information. An accurate appreciation of the history and role of the first four Internationals is indispensable to a global process of discussion and principled unity in theory and practice. Unfortunately, the piece by Carlos Fonseca Teran presents a caricature of the Fourth International (which is holding its World Congress this week), amongst other shortcomings in Teran's analysis of the larger subject.
Readers interested in another view should visit the web site of International Viewpoint, and of Socialist Action www.socialistaction.org . On those sites one can find a range of interesting articles by such leaders as Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank, James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, George Novak, Alain Krivine, as well as the following piece:

IV Online magazine : IV405 - October 2008
Fourth International
70 years ago: the founding of the Fourth International
François Sabado

The Fourth International was founded when it was “midnight in the century”. Fascism was on the rampage, the counter-revolution had triumphed in the USSR and Stalinism was suffocating the revolutionary workers’ movement all over the world. In contrast with the preceding Internationals, it was not carried forward by waves of workers’ struggles and a growth of the working-class movement.

Earlier issues of Quatrième Internationale, a predecessor of International ViewpointImage: SirdonThe First International arose after the revolutionary explosions of 1848 in Europe. The Second International was the incarnation of the growth and the organization of the workers’ movement at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. The Third International was launched after the Russian Revolution. But the Fourth International stood against the stream, at a time of major historical defeats for the workers’ movement. Also, contrary to certain forecasts, in particular those of Trotsky who, taking the example of the Third International after the First World War and the Russian Revolution, foresaw the development of a mass Fourth International after the Second World War, it would remain a minority organization.

But the foundation of the Fourth International was not justified by forecasts or by responses to the conjuncture of the period; it was justified by the need, faced with the betrayals of social democracy and Stalinism, to affirm a historical alternative, a new political current which would ensure continuity and the programmatic, theoretical and political vitality of the revolutionary workers’ movement. So it was not a question of proclaiming a “Trotskyist International”. It was necessary, at the moment when with the war “everything was going to pieces”, to preserve the heritage of Marxism, not in order to put it “in cold storage” while waiting for better days, but in order to aid the political struggle and the building of revolutionary parties.

Against the stream
The origin lay in the Left Opposition to Stalinism. But the Fourth International was much more than that. It maintained a certain vision of the world, marked by internationalism - which already flowed from a certain capitalist globalisation and was opposed to the “socialism in one country” of Stalin. Its whole struggle was conditioned by the class struggle, by the elements of a programme of transition towards socialism, by the united front of the workers and their organizations, by the independence of the workers’ movement faced with the governments of class collaboration in the developed capitalist countries – the different formulas of the Union of the Left or the plural Left -, but also with respect to the national bourgeoisies in the countries dominated by imperialism, which would go down in history as the theory of permanent revolution. Where many commentators reduced their analysis of the world of the last century to camps or states - the USA and the ex-USSR -, the Fourth International put forward the struggle of the peoples and the workers against their own imperialism and against the Soviet bureaucracy.

The Fourth International was not confined to defending Marxist ideas in a general or dogmatic way. Ernest Mandel, for example, analyzed the dynamics of the development of capitalism, from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s. Programmatic documents were discussed and adopted by international congresses, on the questions of socialist democracy, feminism and ecology. Faced with Stalinism, Trotsky and his movement had distinguished themselves, from the 1930s onwards, by tenaciously defending democratic socialism. These references have allowed many generations, especially today, at a time when school textbooks confuse communism and Stalinism, to distinguish between the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist counter-revolution, to maintain the objective of the revolution… and to be able, in spite of the defeats, “to start again”.

Because our movement has also another singularity, even with respect to other Trotskyist movements: that of recognizing revolutionary, anti-imperialist and socialist processes, even despite their leaderships, of expressing unflinching solidarity with them against imperialism. We clearly defended the Chinese, Yugoslav, Vietnamese, Algerian, Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions. In particular, our relationship with the experience of Che Guevara expresses this will to link ourselves to these revolutionary processes.

New period…
Now of course, that was not done without any political mistakes or faults. While combating Stalinism and expressing our solidarity with the peoples of Eastern Europe against the bureaucracy, our movement globally underestimated the extent of the destruction caused by Stalinism, which, when the Soviet bloc collapsed, left the road open, not to an anti-bureaucratic political revolution or to mass movements for democratic socialism, but to the restoration of capitalism. In our solidarity with the colonial revolutions, in this enthusiasm for living revolutions, we underestimated the problems which were linked to them. We did not sufficiently exercise the duty of criticism. But the organizations of the Fourth International demonstrated other weaknesses, often linked to their small size: a propagandist character, some sectarian faults, a style of political “advisers” towards other and bigger forces, generally reformist parties … “Do what we cannot do! ”, we said to them…

Trotskyism also suffered from factionalism. There is a well-known proverb: “one Trotskyist, a party; two Trotskyists, two factions; three Trotskyists, a split…” Whereas, over the last 70 years, a number of revolutionary organizations and currents have disappeared, the Fourth International has maintained itself. It did not fulfil its historical objectives, it experienced ups and downs, there were major crises in certain countries - as in Brazil, recently -, but there have also been breakthroughs, as in France, and positive experiences, as in Portugal, Italy, Pakistan and the Philippines. That is a considerable achievement.

At the moment when the LCR wants to write a new page of the history of the workers’ movement, we have to know where we come from, in order to “enrich with a revolutionary content” the processes of reorganization of the workers’ movement that are underway. Because this is indeed an historical turning point. The Fourth International is the product of a period marked by the driving force of the Russian Revolution, but its programme and the reality of the activity of its members go beyond this history. However, nothing is guaranteed. “New period, new programme, new party”, that also means a new International. It cannot just be proclaimed, and the road will be long. But the comrades of the Fourth International will do their utmost to bring it into existence.

François Sabado is a member of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International and an activist in the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France. He was a long-time member of the National Leadership of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).
Other recent articles:
Fourth International
Hugo Gonzalez Moscoso (1922-2010) - February 2010
Building the Labour Party Pakistan - January 2010
Daniel Bensaïd, a revolutionary for our times - January 2010
The meaning of the 16th World Congress - January 2010
Notes on the international situation - November 2009

Between the Fourth and the Fifth International, no room for a 4.5!

Hi Barry,

Thanks for your comment.

You began your message as follows:

“It is truly wonderful to see the growing interest in the need for a revolutionary workers' international. Not surprisingly, many will approach this question from distinct, partial and incomplete bases of information. An accurate appreciation of the history and role of the first four Internationals is indispensable to a global process of discussion and principled unity in theory and practice. Unfortunately, the piece by Carlos Fonseca Terán presents a caricature of the Fourth International (which is holding its World Congress this week), amongst other shortcomings in Terán's analysis of the larger subject.

“Readers interested in another view should visit the web site of International Viewpoint, and of Socialist Action www.socialistaction.org . On those sites one can find a range of interesting articles by such leaders as Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank, James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, George Novak, Alain Krivine, as well as the following piece:”

The Fifth International is already and will be even more a much broader international that the description you use (“revolutionary workers' international”). La Quinta is much more than a workers’ international, perhaps because it is launched under the sign of the Bolivian and Bolivarian revolutions, with Matiátegui standing guard. It already draws in the leaderships of mass indigenous and campesino movements, and their revolutionary anti-imperialist and ant capitalist processes, most importantly the Bolivian indigenous revolution.

Perhaps a graphic way to depict this would be to say that our Fifth International is and will be like a gathering together of the movement represented by the founding congress of the Third (Communist) International and the Baku Congress of Peoples of the Far East. There will be no 21 Points for affiliation, on the contrary a celebration of unity in diversity of experience and outlook.

We know that sectarians and formalists will object to this, with the spurious argument that such a movement could not possibly be Leninist – after all, without the 21 points what will we end up with? (Of course, this is not a question for you, and I would hardly want to include you in this crowd of playground, would be revolutionaries. But let´s leave that aside and recognize that this movement has already shown it can make revolutions and defend them. I think that Lenin, in this context, would deny he was a Leninist, and insist that the question is not a matter form , but of content. A ballerina can dance in the nude, something the costume cannot do, nor even the slippers.

I concur with you that Carlos Fonseca Terán's characterization of the Fourth International is not accurate, either historically or currently. You call it a “caricature,” as if you felt that Fonseca Terán had bad motives for his description. But your choice of word, here, is ill advised. Carlos Fonseca Terán and other FSLN leaders have serious reasons for their apprehensions about groups claiming to be the Fourth International; perhaps they are misapprehensions, but they have material roots, not just ideological origins. You need be aware that many Latin American revolutionists, going as far back as Fidel and Che in the preparatory years of the Cuban civil war and insurrection of 1956-59, have had bizarre and seriously negative experiences with groups advertizing themselves as the Fourth International, or its national sections.

What would your attitude be to Trotskyism if your only direct experience and concrete knowledge of it were from contact with the two or three varieties of Spartacist Trotskyism operating in Toronto over the past several decades (with the pretentiously named Bolshevik Tendency rivaling the even more obscurely named October 1917 Tendency — a really smart foot to step out on when approaching the Toronto working class, n’est-ce pas?!)?

Perhaps Carlos Fonseca Terán is unaware of the many examples where Trotsky outlined a program and strategy for NATIONAL, not INTERnational revolution in various countries, at junctures or crossroads where they were passing through revolutionary crises and opportunities (China, 1926-27, Germany 1932-33, France and Spain in the mid 30s.

The Old Bolshevik´s total identification with the anti-imperialist measures of the Lázaro Cárdenas del Río government in Mexico is not well known internationally, and its significance today seems to be lost on many who claim to be his followers.

All that Trotsky (or Lenin) ever argued on the theme of the national revolution is that it takes place not just within a nation-state, but also within a definite and strategically important international framework. It must unfold and find itself either constricted or favored by the international correlation of forces. And, that working class state power cannot be victorious indefinitely if confined to a single country, especially in the less developed nations.

This view of the constrictions on the national revolution was the common position of the Soviet Communist Party and the Comintern, including Stalin, until 1924-25 when Stalin advanced the ill-fated theory of ‘Socialism in One Country and counterposed it to an internationalist strategy of promoting revolution in Europe and Asia, especially in Germany and China. This new narrow nationalist policy placated the conservative and bureaucratic layers in Soviet society who desperately searched for a historic compromise with imperialism; for a respite; and for a life with more comforts and benefits for their children – at the expense of the toilers of the young workers state. This theory, counterposed to Lenin´s internationalism (and later to the internationalism of the Cuban revolution), is the ideological mask of the social counterrevolution that began at first with Stalin´s disregard, but later triumphed in the terror of the 1930s that he consciously promoted and personally monitored, as Khrushchev acknowledged in his famous speech to the 1956 20th Congress of the CPSU (see Isaac Deutscher, et al, and http://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24-abs.htm .

Cuba has proven that it is possible, given a genuinely revolutionary and Marxist leadership, to hold out for an extended period (now five decades, and counting). But without the advance of the socialist revolution to other countries, especially now in the case of Venezuela, the Cuban Revolution would be hard pressed to survive and solve its problems in a healthy way. Cuban communists understand and act on this reality better than any of their critics on the intellectualized and decaffeinated left.

Nicaraguan Sandinistas learned the bitter lesson of how easy it can be for imperialism to isolate and defeat revolution within one country, or even across a region such as happened in Central America in the 1980s. Our revolution was above all a national revolution to overturn a U.S. imposed dictatorship and to reclaim national sovereignty. This process, in class terms, was led by an alliance of workers and campesinos, and by the young vanguard assembled in the FSLN. The national character of our revolution, however, in no way was able to overturn an unfavorable relationship of forces, especially after the Yankee invasion of Panama, and the implosion of the USSR.

The final collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated how prescient and astute Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Thermidor was. He predicted that either the bureaucratic cancer had to be removed by an insurgent working class and peasantry, or else the revolutionary conquests of October 1917—1928 would be overturned and capitalism restored by a wing of the bureaucratic caste holding political power in the name of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Events did not turn out the way all genuine anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutionaries wanted. Instead, bureaucratic power prevailed, and finally a wing of the bureaucracy took advantage of an unfavorable world relationship of forces of both an economic and military nature. They converted themselves into a new capitalist class via the road of pillage and primitive accumulation – that is, outright confiscation and theft of social property, and its conversion into private ownership and capital.

One might add, in passing, a salient aspect of the Soviet implosion. The fact that this retrogression back to unfettered, savage capitalism took place peacefully, in the cradle of an intrabureaucratic party struggle, is another element indicating that the bureaucracy was not a capitalist ruling class. The superstructural venue of this history-making dispute is a fact that revealed just how far bourgeois ideas, concepts, prejudices, illusions, and methods had penetrated deeply and widely into Soviet society – not just in Russia, or at the top of its social hierarchy, but throughout the Union, and even among the oppressed nationalities of the Soviet Far East, the southern republics, the Baltic republics, and the Ukraine. This counterrevolution took place in the midst of mass apathy and resignation within the Soviet Union, unlike in East Germany and other Eastern European “really existing” Peoples Democracies where mass opposition to the regimes was evident and widespread.

It would be a serious mistake on the part of Fifth Internationalists, from its soldiers to its theoretical captains, to make disputes about history, and historical analysis a matter of division and disunity in the new world movement. All currents coming into unison today in the ranks of the new international have both merits and demerits to be considered, and hopefully reconsidered – but this evaluation is only of historical interest. It is not immediately vital and is hardly a priority.

All militants, no matter from what tradition they come, should recognize that the Fifth International initiative already has a proven and recognized leadership, a pluralist and widely respected leadership comprised of those parties that have made or are still in the process of consolidating anti capitalist and anti-imperialist, and indigenous revolutions. Their political influence and authority in this process is not so different from that exercised by Marx and Engels in the First International, Engels in the Second, the Bolsheviks in the Communist (Third) International, or Trotsky in the Fourth International. It is not at all unreasonable that other revolutionists pay heed to their views and advice, and grant them the benefit of the doubt as they carry out their leadership responsibilities under heavy imperialist and oligarchic assault.

Current political clarification and convergence, or differentiation, must be based on today’s political challenges. The question today is: What is to be done NOW? – both in the national and an international contexts. If this methodology is maintained and privileged, we can avoid senseless disputes and we will discover that new alignments will emerge, based on new discussions and new problems. Marxism will be retooled and reformulated in living struggle on a mass scale, and will escape the confines of university seminars , academic discourse and pedantry, and the dungeons of the mini, telephone-booth “internationals.”

In an ever increasing tempo, the masses will write their own history, and will reflect on the past based on current experiences. Deeds, not words will define the vanguard, as is already the case (and, need it be said, has always been so). As stated in the Second Declaration of Havana, the duty of all revolutionaries is to make the revolution. We can leave it to the critics to criticize us, and exaggerate our faults. They will make few mistakes, because in general they do very little. Those who do nothing, of course, make zero errors with ploughshares or swords, only with words.

With that caveat in mind, a further comment about the Fourth International (no matter its several capitals) seems to be in order. It appears undeniable that genuine Fourth Internationalists from its mainstream variants have often made the mistake of throwing all Stalinist or more latterly Stalinist-originated groups in the same wash basin (the twin operation to those who cast all self-proclaimed Trotskyists into the same barrel of vodka) This includes even the absurd claim that the Cuban July 26 current under the leadership of Fidel and Che had become Stalinist under the pressures of the alliance with the Soviet Union, or that Che was Maoist when his critique of the Moscow-dominated CPs and of Kremlin policies became undeniable – even in Paris, London, Brussels, and Buenos Aires.

I suggest you adopt a fraternal attitude towards Carlos Fonseca Terán and our Sandinista current, and settle for recounting the genuine of mainstream Fourth Internationalists to not a few vital revolutionary experiences.
You could mention, to settle for a short list, the great Minneapolis general strike of the 1930s and the organization of the mid-West Teamsters Union in the USA, the contribution of European Trotskyists to the Yugoslav revolution, the US SWP’s collaboration with Malcolm X, the defense of the Cuban Revolution in North America and Europe, the exemplary role of the then healthy US SWP in building mass opposition to the Vietnam war among the US public and even its armed forces, the role of the French Ligue Communiste Internationaliste in the May-June revolutionary crisis of 1968, and their ongoing role today in the NPA, the role of the FI International Secretariat (Pablo faction) in the late fifties and early 60s in aiding the Algerian FLN and national liberation war against French imperialism, the role of the UK comrades in building the Russell War Crimes Tribunal and mass demonstrations in defense of the Vietnamese revolution through the lever of a mass antiwar movement, and last but surely not least the phenomenal contribution of Hugo Blanco and the Peruvian Trotskyists in the La Convención peasant rebellion, an armed struggle at the head of a powerful rural mass movement that won Che Guevara´s acclaim.

More important than all that, however, is the deed today, that is what can the cadres of the Fourth International contribute now to the consolidation and education of the new generation of internationalists converging within the Fifth International?

All that said, Fourth Internationalists today, if you intend to be scientific and historically objective, must address the question of why your world organizations, in the custody of Eurocentric Marxists (including some North American and Southern Cone varieties) and their followers, failed so many tests on the national level, and were bypassed by other revolutionary forces -- Cuba. Nicaragua. Grenada. Venezuela. Bolivia. El Salvador. And most recently, the mass resistance movement in Honduras., to cite just some of the experiences on the continent I know best in terms of personal experience and participation since the victory of the Cuban revolution. (1)

Not all the problems of your current can be laid at the feet of bourgeois and Stalinist repression and marginalization. For the most part, the Cuban revolution put an end to the capacity of pro-Moscow forces to isolate the Fourth International or other revolutionary forces, although they did play a significant role in the defeat of Che´s initiative in Bolivia. Others from the same party, such as the Peredo brothers, played an exemplary role that for some gets overshadowed by the shameful role of CP General Secretary, Mario Monje. Fidel has taken pains to make that clear. (2)

In any case, the acid test today in Bolivia is not to dwell on that past, but to assume Linera’s challenge and become full participants and allies of the indigenous revolution which is not yet a socialist revolution in the classical sense of overturning capitalist property relations. This too, the Bolivian Trotskyists, at least in their organized expressions, seem to misunderstand. They have not been able to grasp one of Linera´s central arguments – the indigenous, non-European character of this revolution, not unrelated to the economic displacement of the mines-based proletariat as the driving anti-capitalist force. Many European and North American Marxists made a similar error in their assessment of the character and programmatic requirements of the South African Black majority rule, anti-Apartheid revolution – insisting on either a socialist revolution or no revolution, and thereby making their followers irrelevant, or the subjects of a story yet to be written in the process of an ongoing revolution.

Carlos Fonseca Terán´s most substantive criticism of the Trotskyist forces he knows is valid, when he points to their inability to test their theory against real class struggle experience (for whatever reason), and how that did lead to a dynamic of talk-shop sectarianism.

Perhaps more dangerous was not just a bout or two of outright ultra leftism and opportunist adventurism of the kind the USec majority carried out with the disastrous 1969 turn to continental guerrilla warfare in Meso and South America, followed by its infantile spinoffs in Europe. It can be said without risk of exaggeration that had it not been for the salutary intervention and protracted internal struggle waged by the veteran leaders such as Joseph Hansen, Farrell Dobbs, George Novack, and Hugo Blanco, the entire current represented by the USec in that period would have been shattered beyond all prospect of evading the fate of Humpty Dumpty. This tragic adventurism did not enhance the image of the Fourth International within the South and Meso American vanguard. Ironically, while that debate largely paralyzed its protagonists, the Nicaraguan revolution triumphed and revealed a totally different dynamic and framework for revolution – the interplay of armed struggle and mass urban insurrections in major cities and towns.

Wouldn´t it be reasonable to argue that the challenge now for the Fourth International, whose congress you mention is about to take place, is to make common cause with the Fifth International? If this is done in a genuine and loyal way, and not as a sectarian entry or raid, then the rich arsenal of ideas and programmatic conquests assembled by the FI ever since Trotsky´s time, especially the Old Bolshevik’s post Lenin contributions, can become available incarnate, and not just through the printed word, to the hundreds of thousands of militants and revolutionists who now look to the ALBA, to the Bolivarian and Bolivian revolutions, to the Sandinistas and the Farabundistas, and to Cuba´s veteran communists for inspiration and leadership.

The choice is yours. No one will put any pressure on you because if Fourth Internationalists cannot pass this test, then you will have drifted past the point of no return as an organized current.

Thus far, as far as I am aware, the responses at an official level, both from Paris and from various national expressions, have been positive. But, as it holds in all challenges, the test is to move from the word to the deed, and to be seen to have done so.

I think we can all take as good coin the words of French NPA leader François Sabado [*} in the article you attached to your message. I want to quote a part of his comments here, so as to emphasize them:

"Trotskyism also suffered from factionalism. There is a well-known proverb: 'one Trotskyist, a party; two Trotskyists, two factions; three Trotskyists, a split… Whereas, over the last 70 years, a number of revolutionary organizations and currents have disappeared, the Fourth International has maintained itself. It did not fulfill its historical objectives, it experienced ups and downs, there were major crises in certain countries - as in Brazil, recently -, but there have also been breakthroughs, as in France, and positive experiences, as in Portugal, Italy, Pakistan and the Philippines. That is a considerable achievement [my emphasis here, FSC].

“At the moment when the LCR wants to write a new page of the history of the workers’ movement, we have to know where we come from, in order to “enrich with a revolutionary content” the processes of reorganization of the workers’ movement that are underway. Because this is indeed an historical turning point. The Fourth International is the product of a period marked by the driving force of the Russian Revolution, but its programme and the reality of the activity of its members go beyond this history. However, nothing is guaranteed. “New period, new programme, new party”, that also means a new International. It cannot just be proclaimed, and the road will be long. But the comrades of the Fourth International will do their utmost to bring it into existence.´¨
________________________________________________________________________
[*} François Sabado is a member of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International and an activist in the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France. He was a long-time member of the National Leadership of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). ___________________________________________________________________________

François Sabado’s statement is as timely as it is frank and sincere in the Marxist sense of the terms. He and other NPA militants want to support on an international level the same course they have undertaken in France. That is both consistent and inherently non-sectarian, the approach of serious and seasoned Marxists.

One cannot but fail to note, however, that the argument advanced about the Fourth International having survived while other currents “have disappeared” is hardly impressive. Some revolutionary currents did more than survive – they led revolutions, some defeated, at least one victorious, and others now underway. It is against that standard, and not against the record of those currents that went defunct, that the accomplishments and/or failures of the Fourth International should be self-evaluated.

In that process, I believe that some of the real accomplishments of this current, especially of Trotsky in the post-Lenin period, will be appreciated best.

Worthy of mention in this context are Trotsky’s critique of Stalinism that offered not just a historical reference (the French Thermidor) but a social underpinning for the political crisis that rocked the young Soviet Republic. Any analysis of the rise of Stalinism that restricts itself to political and legalistic argumentation fails the elementary Marxist standard of seeking out the class and social roots of the political regression that Stalin led within the USSR and throughout the Comintern.

Of equal importance was Trotsky’s critique of the Comintern refusal to make an alliance with the German and European Social Democracy in order to unite the German and European proletariat and middle classes against the rise of Nazi fascism in Germany. His prescience in this regard was based on his own novel and unique analysis of the nature of European fascism in the epoch of war and revolution – a genuine and original contribution to the arsenal of Marxism that is still necessary and crucial in the new century, especially in the United States of North America and the European Union.

One may concur or disagree with Trotsky’s contributions on these, and other important questions – such as his opposition to the ultra left turn of the Comintern taken by its 1928 Congress (a shift that led to disaster here in Nicaragua with the split of Comintern cadre including Farabundo Martí from Sandino´s forces). This turn was also the main root of the disaster in Germany, and the characterization of the German Social Democracy as the twin of the Nazi´s and the main enemy. But, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has often pointed out, revolutionists in our time have much to learn from the leader of the October 1917 insurrection, and of the Red Army of the young Soviet Republic. How could it be otherwise with the cofounder with Lenin of the Communist International, and author of most of its main political resolutions through its first four congresses?

Most importantly, agreement or disagreement on these historical questions is not relevant to the process of unifying revolutionary forces today. To insist otherwise is to exude the odor of sectarianism and fail to keep pace with today´s revolutionary advances and challenges.

The questions of Stalinism, Maoism, or Trotskyism are NOT, I repeat, NOT on today´s agenda for revolutionary combatants. That is not to deny that some of the questions disputed historically will not reappear in new forms and situations. If and when they do, we will have to debate them on their merit, and not by appeal either to perceived historical precedent or to some revolutionary authority, no matter the authority cited.

I am happy to report that at least some comrades with a background in the F.I. (or Q.I., as it is known here) have assimilated the lessons of 1959, 1979, and 1998, and of Bolivia, and have organically and easily found in Sandinismo the most effective expression of their Marxist ideas and programmatic concepts on a mass level, most importantly their concept of internationalism and international collaboration. This has enriched our experience because at last we can collaborate with them in a healthy framework and not remain confined to irrelevant theoretical polemics, mostly about the past. The same can be said, and in even greater numbers and significance, for a whole raft of comrades here who come from the experience of militancy in a pro-Moscow CP experience – the old Nicaraguan Socialist Party whose best elements split and went on to play important roles in the Sandinista revolution and the FSLN government.

The mass insurrections of the late 1970s and the Sandinista revolution of the 80s transformed many of us. The experience of the Bolivarian and Bolivian revolutions, the second phase of the Sandinista revolution now underway in Nicaragua, and the mass resistance movement in Honduras, are now pressing all of us to reconsider many concepts once held to be beyond question or irrefutable. History is an invincible debater.

I think this is a natural consequence of any genuine revolution.

Didn´t the Paris Commune radically alter some basic concepts in the arsenal of the First International, especially on the question of the nature of the state and government, and on the issue of how to respond to the spontaneous mass upsurge of the kind presented in the Paris uprising? Didn´t Marx have the valor and the revolutionary integrity to admit his own errors vis-à-vis the Commune, and to recognize the merits of the plebian uprising, to the extent that he and Engels became the intellectual beacon and political bulwark for the international defense of the Communards.

Didn´t 1905 in Russia provoke a reconsideration of important concepts in the Russian and international Social Democracy?

You and I are both old enough and perhaps even young enough in spirit to recall what an enormous impact the Cuban Revolution had, and likewise the Vietnamese revolution. So too, the national liberation process in southern and South Africa, and the special role the Cuban revolution played there.

And now we can salute, take inspiration from, defend, and become participants in two revolutions on-the-rise, in Venezuela and Bolivia. Both evidence very novel combinations of mass struggle and leadership that defy all previous schemas, just like the July 26th movement did in its time, and just like the Commune did in the eyes of Marx and the General.

The Bolivarian revolution and its reach via the ALBA process has been much discussed and is, perhaps, better appreciated and understood than the indigenous majority rule revolution in Bolivia. Far less within the theoretical and programmatic grasp of revolutionists on an international scale is the rise of indigenous revolution in the Americas, whose high-water mark to date is the taking of governmental power, via elections, by the MAS, a coalition of mass social and indigenous movements in Bolivia. Not just some, but nearly all of the self-described Marxist schema about the process in Bolivia have been shattered by this experience, as has been convincingly argued by Vice-president Álvaro García Linera. AGL is a Marxist of the highest caliber, one of the best exponents in the Americas of the Mariátegui-Gramsci tradition, so lacking in both the Third and the Fourth Internationals, even in their healthiest periods. The Peruvian indigenous and campesino leader Hugo Blanco has recently written and spoken about this lacuna, but unfortunately his current outlook seems to invite scorn in many Trotskyist circles.

But a deep and promising discussion is taking shape, centering on the revolutionary struggles underway in our Americas, and on the relevance of the Fifth International. Many problems of a theoretical and programmatic nature that have seemed to loom so large in the past could well be subsumed and resolved in a positive direction by the very momentum and illumination of enormous challenges and victories, and by the insights and capacities of a younger generation untainted by the terrible defeats of the last century -- defeats that carried with them new names – fascism, the Holocaust, Stalinism, Zionism. McCarthyism, Mutual Assured Destruction, and Pol Potism.

But it is also the century that gave us Lenin´s Bolsheviks, and Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, the Russian and Chinese Octobers, the Soviet victory over its Nazi invaders, the Yugoslav revolution, the Bolivian revolution of 1952, the colonial liberation movements and independence for many nations, the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions, the heroic and immortal heritage of Che Guevara, the Grenadian and the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolutions, the defeat of Afrikaner apartheid, and much more….as the old century gave way to the new, the Bolivarian and Bolivian revolutions put their stamp and the seal of the Fifth International on the new revolutionary epoch.

Barry , I hope you will get to your Congress. Maybe you can help tilt the process even more in the right direction. Pacha Mama, speed the day!

Felipe Stuart
Managua
• (1) I largely confine my references to Meso and South America, and the Caribbean region, the cradle of the ALBA alliance and the locus of the most advanced process of socialist revolution at this opening phase of the 21st Century. In doing so, I do not wish to underestimate or fail to appreciate the significance and weight of other critical battles such as those being waged by the victims of US aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, or the Palestinian people locked in an ongoing battle against the Zionist apartheid regime in the state of Israel and the occupied territories.
• (2)See Che Guevara’s Bolivia Campaign: Thirty Years of Controversy, Matilde Zimmermann, Departments of History and Latin American Studies, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/LASA98/Zimmermann.pdf

Hi Felipe,

I hope you will pardon me for not responding to your message with comparable volume or literary flourish. It will suffice for me to make the following simple points:

1. I am glad you agree that Carlos Fonseca Teran's characterization of the Fourth International "is not accurate". This may encourage a few more folks to look at other sources, including the ones I suggested (at the web sites of International Viewpoint and Socialist Action), to get a more accurate and complete picture of the FI, from its foundation to now.
2. We agree that the forces that respond to the call for the Fifth International will be very important. Where we differ, apparently, is concerning whether the Fifth should be programmatically and strategically formed and defined as a party for world socialist revolution, as was the Communist International in 1919.
3. We agree that "Cuba has proven that it is possible, given a genuinely revolutionary and Marxist leadership, to hold out for an extended period (now five decades, and counting)." I hope that we can agree that it is a task of the potential Fifth Int'l. to foster the formation and development of parties and leaders of the calibre, and sharing the outlook of the Cubans, and of the Bolsheviks.
4. It is essential for socialists and workers to support and defend all anti-imperialist measures, from those of Cardenas in 1930s Mexico, to Ben Bella in 1960s Algeria, to FSLN-led Nicaragua in the 1980s, to Chavez in Venezuela today. At the same time it is important not to confuse specific anti-imperialist measures with the socialist transformation of society.
5. Without socialist democracy and workers' control there can be no lasting socialist transformation and healthy re-construction of society on a new basis.
6. Either we learn from history, or we are doomed to repeat it, not just farcically as Marx warned, but in the worst possible ways. Hopefully, the Fifth will take this to heart, whatever the risks. You made important points on this score with respect to 'socialism in one country', the united front, the high cost of Stalinist betrayal in Germany and Spain, etc., and we should add the Bernard Coard-led Stalinist coup in Grenada. The lessons of these experiences must be reflected in the programme of our class and its allies if we are to win emancipation and environmental sustainability on a global scale.
7. All the beautiful poetry and prose in the world does not obscure the need for clarity and precision. It impels us to fight for both. The alternatives facing humanity are socialism or barbarism, or to use a similar expression that is the theme of a conference I am presently organizing to occur in Toronto, May 20-23, 'socialism or extinction'. There can be no socialist transformation without replacing the bourgeois state with organized workers', farmers' and aboriginal peoples' power, and without nationalizing the commanding heights of the economy. In Russia, Yugoslavia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and some other countries, that did occur. In Mexico, Egypt, Algeria, Nicaragua and other places, hopes were raised, but the transformation did not occur. The international and domestic class relationship of forces were, and always will be, a major factor in the process. So were factors of programme, strategy, leadership and organization. That is why the best supporters of the revolutionary process in Venezuela and Bolivia combine ardent hope, ceaseless solidarity, and critical analysis. The mainstream Trotskyist movement has much to learn, and much to contribute to the struggle for revolutionary leadership in every country. I suspect that will be the consensus at the FI World Congress. I hope the Fifth will be open to that perspective, and will become a mighty, unified force in the fight for global socialist transformation.

best wishes,

Barry

Felipe's reply to Barry W, and the consequent response from Barry really get to the heart of the debate around the potential founding of the Fifth International. On the one hand Felipe's description of how revolutionists on the ground in Latin America participate in mass movements captures brilliantly the need to approach things in a political,not polemical way. On the other hand, Barry's concerns regarding the disappearance of 70 years of hard won analytical knowledge and political tradition reflects the unease many revolutionary Marxists feel when faced with the reality of complex social phenomena and making choices in a new context, particularly when it doesn't fit the schema.

For example, how does Francois Sabado feel about jumping into bed with a government which cut a deal with the Catholic church and criminalized abortion, as did Felipe's Sandinistas. More concretely and politically, how can you justify this action in presenting Ortega as a revolutionary to the international womens' movement.

Or, how would you feel, if you were part of the International Department of the Cuban Communist party discussing and analyzing the pros and cons of building an international revolutionary movement, trying to make sense of, for example, how to deal with the 13 variants of Argentinian Trotskyism in existence, some of whom define you as a state capitalist but who MIGHT want to join so as to get a forum to denounce you.

These types of questions have the potential to rip apart any attempt to find a common organisational framework for disparate political viewpoints, or more precisely, puntos fijos, that is reality viewed through the lens of different experiences which provide no common understanding.

So, perhaps we need to define what the new International is not, so as to clear up any elevated or distorted expectations. First off, it is not a new Third International in the sense that it has emerged from the fires of a new born revolution under the tutelage of a single mass revolutionary party. So, if those who wish to see a mass Leninist international emerge full blown from the brow of Fidel, that just isn't going to happen.

This does not preclude sections or a big majority of those organisations adhering to it moving in that direction, but only history and those participating will tell.

For my part, I view this as a new World Socialist Forum, where revolutionists from around the globe can develop campaigns and share experiences in a supportive and fraternal framework. More specifically, it would be an organisation where LEARNING from those who have made it past the starting post is an integral part of the organisational framework.(I can remember a song Felipe used to sing to us, many years ago:"In revolution, there is one rule; Experience is, the only tool!")

For example,the very process of drawing up a global political balance sheet incorporating the contributions of those engaged in open mass struggle or in clandistine anti-repression organising combined with the global insights of a great many of the world's finest revolutionary intellectuals (a few of whom are not in the Fourth International) can only be an enriching and humbling experience for those genuinely willing to learn the lessons of living history.

The crisis of these times is the crisis of leadership of those forces able to confront and defeat imperialism and its national allies and agents. A new continental leadership is beginning to emege which has the potential to resolve the crisis of leadership in humanity's favour. It is the recognition of the need to resolve this crisis by joining forces with other like minded revolutionaries which has prompted the call by Hugo Cgavez, leader of the first workers and peasants government since the Cuban revolution, to create a Fifth International whose task it will be to build unity amongst the peoples in struggle, and to build and promote a leadership joined together in common cause to develop the strategic and tactical co-ordination needed to defeat imperialism, abolish capitalism and save humanity.

I,for one, plan on being at that party in Caracas.

Bob L

Thank you Bob for your most clear and succinct summary of the Heart of the Debate on the Fifth International between Toronto-based Barry Weisleder and Managua-based Felipe Stuart C. Perhaps the phrase “exchange of preliminary views” is a better description that the word “Debate,” although I am not averse to debating this theme with whatever thrust and tone seems appropriate, especially if the contrary view represents either reformism or sectarian ultra leftism.
I think your brief comments and my much more lengthy submission in response to brother Weisleder largely coincide and concur, at least on the substance of the question, and in the end that is all that is important and consequential.
My reply to Barry centered on a key affirmation, presented in the negative – I wrote that “The questions of Stalinism, Maoism, or Trotskyism are NOT, I repeat, NOT on today´s agenda for revolutionary combatants. That is not to deny that some of the questions disputed historically will not reappear in new forms and situations. If and when they do, we will have to debate them on their merit, and not by appeal either to perceived historical precedent or to some revolutionary authority, no matter the authority cited.”
You made the same point from a different angle of vision – “So, perhaps we need to define what the new International is not, so as to clear up any elevated or distorted expectations. First off, it is not a new Third International in the sense that it has emerged from the fires of a new born revolution under the tutelage of a single mass revolutionary party. So, if those who wish to see a mass Leninist international emerge full blown from the brow of Fidel, that just isn't going to happen.”
I agree with the thrust of your words above, but have a concern about how they may be misunderstood, especially among today’s youth who will not be familiar with some of your references or comparisons.
First of all, your reference to “a mass Leninist international emerg[ing] full blown from the brow of Fidel…” could be misleading to people unfamiliar with the real origins of the movement for the Fifth International. The principal motor force driving this movement is the interaction of at least four revolutions underway – the Bolivarian revolution (Venezuela), the indigenous/led Bolivian revolution, the renewal of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and the recent advances of the Cuban revolution – all of that refracted through the impact of the ALBA alliance in Latin America and the Caribbean region. There is an even more powerful, but as yet pronounced backdrop to the ALBA process which is programmatically both anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist or revolutionary-democratic in the usage that Lenin gave to that concept. I refer to the broad movement up and down the hemisphere, or better put, OUR America (Abya Yala), for Indo Latin American and Caribbean unity in defiance of imperialist domination from either North America or Europe, or even Asia as the case may become. The decision of last week’s Cancun presidents’ summit to launch a hemispheric organization that specifically and pointedly excludes the two imperialist powers this side of the Atlantic pond – Canada and the USA – is, as Cuba’s Raúl Castro put it in his summit presentation, “an historic event.” I call it a giant step forward towards our dream of the Patria Grande, the great Indo-Latin American and Caribbean nation that stretches from the Rio Bravo separating Mexico from the US conquered western territories and Tierra del Fuego in the Antarctic south.
The driving force of this new international is not ideological. It is the mass struggle up and down the hemisphere for national liberation and escape from the ravages of savage capitalism and imperialist pillage.
When you write that the Fifth International “… it is not a new Third International in the sense that it has emerged from the fires of a new born revolution under the tutelage of a single mass revolutionary party,” you capture only a part of the reality, and not its essence. The Third International did not come out of the womb of the victorious October revolution and the defeated German revolution as a “Leninist” international. It rather resembled a zoo of revolutionary currents, all drawn to the north star of the newly formed workers’ and farmers´ republic, the first workers state in history that looked to the Paris Commune for inspiration and precedents. The Comintern did not become assuredly Leninist until at least the Fourth Congress, and the intervening years found Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek, and other Bolshevik leaders attempting to educate and forge a genuinely communist world organization or party. Unfortunately Lenin lost his last struggle, succumbing to illness and death, and soon after Stalin and his bureaucratic secret faction took hold of the reigns of raw power first in the party and soon after throughout the state.
Did any of the non-Soviet parties of the Comintern ever acquire a rounded Leninist leadership in terms of its conceptions, its capacities for mass work, and its nose for political power? Did any of the sections of the Fourth International ever get beyond an intellectual or conceptual command of the lessons of the Comintern´s first four congresses, and of the October revolution? The answer to both questions is for the most part in the negative, not because of a lack of will or commitment and dedication, but largely for deep-going and overwhelming objective problems, or because of the gigantic subjective problem of the Stalinization of Marxism on a global scale. What began in the realm of political and ideological revision and distortion of the ideas of Marx and Lenin became converted, because of the enormous influence and power of the Soviet State, into a massive, Jupiter-scale objective barrier to the advance of the socialist revolution in Europe and on other continents. Fortunately that problem dissipated in the wake of the break-up of the USSR some two decades ago, and the subsequent re-dimensioning and re-evaluations carried out by many CPs.
If I have dwelt overly on this issue of being Leninist or otherwise, it is to cut this kind of dead end politics off at the pass. Hence, when Barry Weisleder replied to my last post to LINKS, arguing that “Where we differ, apparently, is concerning whether the Fifth should be programmatically and strategically formed and defined as a party of world socialist revolution, as was the Communist International in 1919,” I have to call for a heads up. [1] What does that sentence really mean, especially the expression “defined as a party of world socialist revolution”?
Isn´t the PSUV´s call for building socialism of the 21st century a sufficient axis to both draw in broadly formed and acting anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements while at the same time clearly defining the central mission as the building of a socialist alternative? Isn´t the Bolivarian stand against social democratic and liberal reformism an adequate starting point to initiate not just international organization unity, but also an ongoing process of enrichment and clarification of programmatic and strategic ideas, based on real and deep-going mass experiences and on holding governmental and/or state power in several countries? How should we weigh the enormous political authority of the Cuban revolution and its enrichment and planting of Marxism on American soil, successfully grafting it to the great revolutionary anti-imperialist and indigenous traditions of our hemisphere, and of being a beacon for the ideas of José Martí, Josê Carlos Mariátegui, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara?
Upon examination, Barry Weisleder’s argument is tantamount to arguing that only the programmatic arsenal of the Fourth International (of course, meaning the one he supports of the several on offer) is adequate to enable more victories for socialism, and to defend them against counterrevolution or degeneration. If that is true, then the logical argument would be that the movement for the Fifth International should throw its gears into reverse and back up into the turf of the Paris-based Fourth International.
Of course, Weisleder does not pursue his own logic in this case, for obvious reasons. The Fifth International, before its first congress has even been held, draws into its current hundreds of thousands, if not millions of revolutionary minded workers, farmers, students, intellectuals and artists, indigenous militants, environmentalists, feminists, and defenders of democratic and human rights. To turn away from or ignore this movement is tantamount to political suicide on the left. It is not surprising, therefore, that many currents are trying to influence this movement, including non Marxist currents such as ZNet in the USA, the World Social Forum in its Latin American and European expressions, Via Campesina, sections of the Brazilian Workers’ Party, and the leadership of the Bolivian Movement towards Socialism (MAS). The scope and depth of this magnetic phenomenon can only become enhanced by the rising curve of social, national, economic, and anti-imperialist struggles, especially in our Americas.
The fate of the first four internationals is essentially today an historical question. In the case of the Comintern, one can argue without too much risk of exaggeration that the Third International only experienced a very brief window of Leninism on the level attained by the Russian Communist Party during and immediately following the October revolution. The Soviet CP and in its wake the Comintern itself was converted from a Marxist revolutionary vanguard into a vehicle to advance and protect the interests of a privileged bureaucratic and conservative, anti-internationalist caste in the USSR. Stalin created a bureaucratic dictatorship that depended on creating the cult of the great, infallible leader. He redefined the national interests of the Soviet state as being the bureaucracy’s caste interests, not the interests of the world working class, peasantry, and oppressed peoples – that is, not the needs and interests of advancing the socialist revolution beyond the borders of the USSR.
Hence, Bob, if the new or Fifth International is not born under the sign of Leninism, we need not worry. Over time, experience will help the younger generation of class struggle militants and anti-imperialist combatants to learn from the rich history of Marxist struggle and theory, reaching back to the Manifesto of the Communist Party, to the Paris Commune, to Engel´s enormous battle to keep the Second International and the German Social Democratic Party on a revolutionary axis, to Lenin´s profound re-orientation of revolutionary social democracy from the time of What is to Be Done to his April 1917 theses, from the October Revolution to the founding of the Third International. This younger generation will have occasion to learn from Trotsky´s post Lenin defense of Marxism against the Stalinist parody of Leninism, to his monumental struggle against fascism and its Nazi form in Germany, and his work to pass on the lessons of October and the first four congresses of Lenin´s international. And perhaps most vital of all, our youth will have an opportunity to assimilate the lessons of the Cuban revolution and the work of Fidel Castro and Che, and through them find their way forward to José Marti, Bolivar, Tupac Amaru, Maríategui, Sandino, Farabundo Martí, Carlos Fonseca Amador, and Antonio Gramsci.
To put this in other words, through the building of the Fifth International today’s youth, no matter their arena of direct involvement, will discover for themselves the rich, pluralist, open-ended, and constantly growing nature of Marxism, its dialectical and scientific methodology, as opposed to the dogmatism and sclerotic variants of Marxism posited by Stalinism and its offshoots. Those influenced by sectarian, ultra left, and anarchistic currents will have an opportunity to come into collaboration with revolutionary action on a mass scale and on the level of collaboration and growing unity between socialist and revolutionary democratic and nationalist governments in an increasing number of countries.

All roads and paths now lead to Caracas. See you there in April, even if I have to pilot a panga from Bluefields to Caracas.

Felipe Stuart, Managua

End Notes
[1] Barry Weisleder to Felipe Stuart, Monday, February 22, 2010 9:38 PM, and posted to the SV-Circle list (Canada) and the Green Left discussion list (Australia). I have posted it below so that LINKS readers following this thread have ready access to it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Felipe,

I hope you will pardon me for not responding to your message below with comparable volume or literary flourish. It will suffice for me to make the following simple points:

1. I am glad you agree that Teran's characterization of the Fourth International "is not accurate". This may encourage a few more folks to look at other sources, including the ones I suggested, to get a more accurate and complete picture of the FI, from its foundation to now.
2. We agree that the forces that respond to the call for the Fifth International will be important. Where we differ, apparently, is concerning whether the Fifth should be programmatically and strategically formed and defined as a party of world socialist revolution, as was the Communist International in 1919.
3. We agree that "Cuba has proven that it is possible, given a genuinely revolutionary and Marxist leadership, to hold out for an extended period (now five decades, and counting)." I hope that we can agree that it is a task of the potential Fifth Int'l. to foster the formation and development of parties and leaders of the calibre, and with the outlook of the Cubans, and of the Bolsheviks.
4. It is essential for socialists and workers to support and defend all anti-imperialist measures, from those of Cardenas in 1930s Mexico, to Ben Bella in 1960s Algeria, to FSLN-led Nicaragua in the 1980s, to Chavez in Venezuela today. At the same time it is important not to confuse specific anti-imperialist measures with the socialist transformation of society.
5. Without socialist democracy and workers' control there can be no lasting socialist transformation and healthy construction of society on a new basis.
6. Either we learn from history, or we are doomed to repeat it, not just farcically as Marx warned, but in the worst possible ways. Hopefully, the Fifth will take this to heart, whatever the risks. You made important points on this score with respect to 'socialism in one country', the united front, the high cost of Stalinist betrayal in Germany and Spain, etc., and we should add the Stalinist Bernard Coard-led coup in Grenada. The lessons of these experiences must be reflected in the programme of our class and its allies if we are to win emancipation and environmental sustainability on a global scale.
7. All the beautiful poetry and prose in the world does not obscure the need for clarity and precision. It impels us to fight for both. The alternatives are socialism or barbarism, or to use a similar expression that is the theme of a conference I am presently organizing to occur in Toronto, May 20-23, 'socialism or extinction'. There can be no socialist transformation without replacing the bourgeois state with organized workers', farmers' and aboriginal peoples' power, and without nationalizing the commanding heights of the economy. In Russia, Yugoslavia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and some other countries, that did occur. In Mexico, Egypt, Algeria, Nicaragua and other places, hopes were raised, but the transformation did not occur. The international and domestic class relationship of forces were, and always will be, a major factor in the process. So were factors of programme, strategy, leadership and organization. That is why the genuine supporters of the revolutionary process in Venezuela and Bolivia combine ardent hope, ceaseless solidarity, and critical analysis. The mainstream Trotskyist movement has much to learn, and much to contribute to the struggle for revolutionary leadership in every country. I suspect that will be the consensus at the FI World Congress. I hope the Fifth will be open to that perspective, and will become a mighty, unified force in the fight for global socialist transformation.

best wishes,

Barry

Thanks Felipe for your cogent and well turned response to my brief interjection into the discussion between you and Barry W. I would like to respond in the following way.

1. The reference to the Fifth International emerging full blown from the brow of Fidel was in reference to the notion of a schema in the sentence two paragraphs before. Your response fleshed out what I wrote in a kind of short-hand to make that point.

2. I will quibble with you about the notion that "The driving force of the Fifth International is not ideological.It is the mass struggle up and down the continent for national liberation...". I would submit that the notion of a 21st century socialism, one which is inclusive,revolutionary and profoundly democratic, in contradistinction to the horrors of Stalinism and the decades of betrayal by the social democrats,is also a driving force not only for those committed to building a new Nuestra Anerica, but forms the content of the pole of attraction which has won over the millions of those who are in struggle for not only national liberation, but for the socialist transformation of their countries. While this process is an uneven one throughout the hemisphere, it none the less informs mass politics throughout the Grande Patria.
Let me provide one example. Here in Costa Rica Chavez is seen as a hero amongst all but the most reactionary sectors. The people love his constant poking of the stick in the eye of the Cyclops. They understand that he is "able to get away with it because of oil". In addition, they ask with a great deal of indignation what is wrong with using the proceeds of the sale of the oil for raising the living standards of the people.The recent election of Laura Chinchilla, while a continuation of the social neo-liberalism of the Arias regime, was also a rejection of any turn to the right. Her margin of victory was enhanced by the desertion of a portion of the base of the other social democratic party in order to stop the right wing of the Republican party backed Movimiento Libertario and its candidate Otto Guevera. 75% of Costa Ricans rejected the ML, and voted for the other parties of the left and center left. This is a reflection, in grossly distorted form of the impact of the mass revolutionary struggles, and particularly the mass resistence to the coup in Honduras which are seen here as symbols of the emegence of the new Nuestra America.

3. I would also like to examine the notion of what the Grande Patria means today. I would like to suggest that as a political category a limiting geographical description no longer applies. When I see the faces of Mexican and Salvadorean farm workers in the beet fields of Alberta, when I hear the voices of the Nicarauguan and Costa Rican workers singing on the construction sites of New Jersey, when LaRaza marches for its dignity in the streets of Los Angles and Minnieapolis, Seattle and Orlanda demanding that no one is illegal, I understand that imperialism has brought its victimns into its heartland and will now have to face them as its protagonist.
Many years ago now, when I was doing solidarity work in Chile during the last few years of the Pinochet dictatorship, I had an opportunity to speak to a concentration of Chileans on the barricades in one of the pobladores around Santiago. A previous speaker (Maoist) had made a not so subtle attack on the organiser of the nights events (a companera from one of the small Trotskyist groups which had survived the repression). When it came time for me to speak, I remember making two points. The first was that sectarianism had resulted in far more deaths on the continent than the forces of reaction. I used the example of Che in Bolivia and the fact that he had fought virtually alone, abandoned by almost all forces of the left. But while I was speaking and looking into the faces of those manning the barricades, their faces lit by the burning tires all around us, I began to understand that our own liberation would come about as a result of their struggles, that their struggles would inform the context of how our own working classes would begin to see the world.
I will use the analogy of the Fair Play for Cuba committee and its impact on Canadian politics. It was because of the link up between the Cuban revolution and the work of the revolutionaries in the Fair Play for Cuba committee, that the Canadian ruling class was politically unable to join with American imperialism in isolating Cuba.
Now in the context of the global crisis of capitalism, the crisis of neo-liberalism and social liberalism, and the almost non-existent influence of Stalinism in the North American workers movement, the mighty wind which is blowing from the South will soon shake the windows and rattle the walls of the imperialist fortresses to the North. As the revolution deepens throughout Nuestra America, those children of Pacha Mama, Iyok Ami living in the imperialist heartland will listen to the voices of their brothers and sisters carried on these winds of change, calling them to take up the struggle for their own liberty, their own dignity and to not be afraid to struggle for their own liberation.
If we can learn to think about the interconnectedness of these things, then Chavez's remarks about not having represntation from any revolutionary organisation from the United States shows that he undertstands the revolutionary dynamic between South and North. For North Americans, the creation of this Southern based International is above all else a clarion call to join the mass revolutionary struggle for Our America. It is an invitation, in the words of Marti, to cast our lot and share the fate with "los hombres sinceros de la tierra".
The Permanent Revolution is at work all around us. Whether it is in the creation of the peasant militias in Venezuela to defend those campasinos struggling to implemnt the agrarian reform law, whether it is in the workers' occupations to defend their work in the industrial zones of Argintina, whether it is in the proceses of building an armed resistence to the incursions of the golpistas in the neighbourhoods of San Pedro Sula or in organising the General Strike in San Juan, the processes of liberation have been set in motion, and only a mighty defeat of the masses, a defeat which would require the deaths of tens of thousands of socialist militants, will turn back the clock.
Los horas de los hornos, the hours of the crucible, are upon us. For those who fail to recognise its face will not only be cast over by the eyes of history, but will have failed the test outlined many years ago in the coalfields of Appalachia: which side are You on, oh which side are You on?