Unión de Militantes por el Socialismo: Resolución del Comité Central sobre la Vª Internacional/Resolution on the Fifth Int.

The following statement was adopted by unanimous vote of the federal steering committee of Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste (Canadian state) in early December, 2009.

Statement on the significance and meaning of the call for a Fifth International by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

The call by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela for a Fifth International goes well beyond an appeal for international solidarity against imperialism. It is a proposal for the formation of an international political movement to end capitalist rule and to build socialism on a global scale.

This is the first time since the degeneration of the Third (Communist) International that a head of state has issued such an appeal. Not even Fidel Castro, who led the first socialist revolution in the Americas by bursting the strictures of the misconceived 'stages' strategy and the fallacy of 'socialism in one country', ever issued a call for a new International. Not even the internationalist par excellence Che Guevara ventured that far.

Why does Chavez do this now? Elements of the answer can be found in the objective situation. We are witness to a triple crisis of the bourgeois order, a crisis of unprecedented scale:
* The deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
* The worst environmental threat in the history of civilization.
* The most dangerous expansion of militarism and imperialism.

For Venezuela, one can cite an additional reason: The threat of invasion by its neighbor Colombia, which possesses the biggest and best-equipped military in Latin America, fully backed by Washington which is expanding several military bases it occupies in that country.

In 1920, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union promulgated “21 Conditions” for adherence to a new Communist International. The conditions were very precise, perhaps overly prescriptive and invasive, designed to combat the corrosive influence of reformism and opportunism across the international workers' movement.

How does the Chavez call compare? Apart from its general anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist content, it is not based on any programmatic platform. It seems that the process towards developing a program will move forward at meetings scheduled to occur in March 2010. What about the range of parties at the gathering in Caracas in November where Chavez first announced his proposal? The assembled forces included reformist, Stalinist, bourgeois, socialist and revolutionary nationalist parties. Does Chavez plan to lower the bar for inclusion so as to encompass reformists and other enemies of the working class, or does he aim to separate the revolutionaries from the reformist leaders by summoning a broad assembly into which he will aggressively intervene to crystallize a revolutionary party? It is important to recall that Lenin and his co-thinkers invited the anarcho-syndicalist IWW and the centrist Eugene Debs-led faction of the Socialist Party of America to join the Third International.

What should our attitude be towards this development? Should it be passive criticism, abstention, or should it be active solidarity and revolutionary intervention? If our aim is to affect the outcome in a positive direction, the answer should be clear. A revolutionary intervention never means leaving one's critical thinking capacity at the door.

The Fourth International, with which SA/LAS (Canadian state) is in political solidarity, responded to the Chavez appeal in a constructive and principled way. The continuation of that approach depends, at least in part, on the F.I. keeping its own house in order. Presently, leading up to the World Congress of the F.I. set for February 2010, there is a debate about political perspectives. “The Role and Tasks of the F.I.” document presented by the leadership representing the majority of sections errs in the direction of weakening the strategic line of building the F.I. as an international revolutionary Marxist organization. Socialist Action – USA, which is limited by reactionary legislation to being a 'fraternal organization' of the F.I. in the USA, has responded with questions and criticisms of the majority document. Other F.I. leaders/sections have issued their own criticisms and amendments to the majority text.

What about the situation of pro-F.I. forces in the Canadian state? In the first place, SA/LAS is not the official section of the F.I. Our organization emerged from a 1994 split in Socialist Challenge, which was the component in English Canada of the Pan-Canadian F.I. section. The split was over democratic-centralism and the Leninist strategy of revolutionary party building. We were expelled for adherence to the latter principles, which we continue to uphold. Subsequently, Socialist Challenge dissolved into an explicitly anti-Leninist formation of socialists and anarchists, the New Socialist Group. Presently, the NSG is on a fusion course with the Socialist Project, which we characterize as left-reformist. That leaves the Quebec-based Gauche Socialiste as the official FI section in the Canadian state.

SA/LAS is engaged in the process of building a revolutionary workers' party along democratic-centralist lines through our active, collective participation in the workers' movement. The latter includes the labour unions and the labour-based New Democratic Party, along with associated social protest campaigns and movements. We consider that our rightful place is as participants in the preliminary F.I. discussions and at the F.I. World Congress. SA-USA has directly communicated with the F.I. leadership to ask that a representative of SA/LAS be invited to attend the World Congress. In the spirit of building unity amongst anti-capitalist forces worldwide, a process which the FI expressly advocates, it seems elementary that this should occur.

Whether we attend, or not, our task is clear. That is to take a stand in favour of the big political opening that Hugo Chavez has provided, and in favour of a Marxist programme for a New International of revolutionary socialist organizations of the working class and oppressed peoples – a New International to be comprised of millions that will hasten the end of capitalist rule worldwide.

Companeros:

My congratulations for recognising the importance of this call by Commandante Chavez. I believe you are now the second Canadian political organisation to respond positively, the Socialist Project being the first. As well, I understand that a discussion on this question is being organised within the ranks of the New Socialist Group who will have an observer in attendence at the inaugural meeting in Caracas.

Having said that, I am disturbed at the formulations used in your annoucement, as well as the mixing of messages which the very form of your announcement takes. Why introduce the subject of your relations with the Fourth International in a text ostensibly meant to welcome the creation of an organisation designed to create international organisational unity?

Why characterise the other Canadian socialist organisations who have responded to the call as "left reformist" or "liquidationist"? Or perhaps I should ask; What gives you the right to do so? Who are you to forsee what history will bring in the form of peoples actions? Only an egotistical sectarian schematicist would ever presume that they are "more revolutionary than thou".

Felipe Stuart C. has already admonished you as to the way in which you approach a discussion with the companeros of the FSLN of Nicaragua. I suggest you take his admonishments to heart and examine your own practice with respect to those on the left with whom you might have political differences.

Revolutionary politics is first and foremost politics; that is, it is about winning allies in the struggle against, in your case, North American imperialism. Using terms which denigrate the efforts of others with whom you disagree makes you disagreeable, not effective.

On the level of political practise, we do have disagreements which center on your conception of how to go about building instruments of struggle for the conquest of power. Let me be clear about one thing, the workers and peasants of the world have NEVER been able to take power without some type of revolutionary instrument. The 26 July movement in Cuba, the Vietnamese Communist party, the Yugoslavian partisans and the Russian Social Democratic Party (Bolshevik) have all been instruments of struggle, but each has taken a different form dependent upon the actual historical relations between the objective reality and the nature of the development of the subjective factors.

The difference between us centers on the formulation expressed in your statement: "The SA/LAS is engaged in the process of building a revolutionary workers party along democratic-centralist lines through our active, collective participation in the workers movement." The central thrust of your political priority is further expressed in the sentence..."The split was over democratic-centralism and the Leninist stratefy of party building".

To your political priority I would like to counterpose another notion, that expressed in the Second Declaration of Havana:" The duty of a revolutionary is to make the Revolution". This priority implies that the central political focus of revolutionary socialist militants is to defend the masses against the attacks of imperialism and national capitalisms, to promote the self organisation of the masses in struggling for their just demands and to defend themselves against the repression of the state and its bureacracy, and to raise the political consciousness of the masses so that they understand that they are not just the objects of history but they are the makers of history. The organisational forms which they use to do that are many, ranging from underground cell structures when operating against the dictatorships, as in Chile and soon in Honduras, to mass fronts as in the case of the FSLN and FMLN in Nicaraugua and El Salvador to organised mass politcal parties as in the case of the PSUV in Venezuela and the Communist Party of Cuba.
In each case, these organisational forms arose in response to the actual living history of each national social-political formation.In two of these cases, Cuba and Venezuela, the parties were formed on the strengths of a growing revolutionary tide after the seizure of power. In the case of Cuba the destruction of the old bourgeoise state apparatus and the flight of the Cuban compradors prefigured the transformation of the July 26 movement;in the case of Venezuela, the construction of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela took place after the mass movement defeated the golpistas of the compradors and its allies in the American and British embassies, and after some sections of the electoral front which had been part of the original intention showed their incapacity to understand the revolutionary dynamics which determined the Venezuelan political process.
In none of the cases above was the political priority of the companeros leading the revolutionary processes in their respective nations one of "the Leninist strategy of party building". Think about this for a moment.
Indeed, while you are reflecting on this, you might think about the possibility that there is not now and never was a "Leninist strategy of party building" in the sense that you presently understand it. The difference between Lenin and the SA was that Lenin intervened in the workers' movement to strengthen it, to prepare it for its historical tasks by raising the consciousness of the authentic leadership of the workers to understand that they and only they could defeat Tsarism and carry out the democratic tasks of the Russian revolution. It was to fuse socialism with the workers movement which Lenin defined as the tasks of the Russian revolutionists, not to intervene in the workers movement in order to build the Bolshevik section of Russian social democracy.
You, on the other hand, say that you intervene in the workers' movement in order to build your organisation as the key political conception of your organisation, "the Leninist strategy of party building".
Which of course leads one to wonder about your political intentions in regards to the Fifth International, especially in light of the following: "Whether we attend or not, our task is clear. That is, to take a stand in favour of the big political opening Hugo Chavez has provided, and in favour of a Marxist programme of a new international of revolutionary socialist organisations of the working class and oppressed peoples..."
It is not clear whether you are refering to attending the meetings of the Fifth International or the World Congress of the Fourth International, but in any case, let me pose the following question. Does the "big political opening" you refer to mean that it represnts a chance for your organisations to engage in a secterian "smash and grab" operation in the name of "the Leninist strategy of party building? Do you intend to intervene to bring "the Programme" to those poor benighted well intentioned but misguided revolutionists like Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro,Hugo Blanco and Evo Morales; to enlighten them as to the real meaning of the socialist revolution and proletarian internationalism?
If this is the case, you will very quickly have a face to face with the true meaning of "political irrelevancy".
For already, the call for the creation of a V Socialist Internacional, La Quinta, is in the process of uniting those whose political priority is to make the revolution, and not fetishize about organisational forms. The potential to unite, as you correctly point out "millions that will hasten the end of capitalist rule worldwide" represents an historic opportunity for revolutionists world wide to come together in a spirit of supporting one another, and learning from one another.
May I suggest that this spirit of unity begins at home. Companeros,I await you response.

Elena Zeledon L.
San Jose

Elena's diatribe violates every protocol she suggests others should follow, starting with an assault on solidarity adorned with a string of political cuss-words. (A strictly literal reversal of her calumny would consist of sending a volley back at her like this: 'only a blindly opportunist, impressionistic camp-follower would try to conceal the truth about non-revolutionary tendencies.' But what's to be gained by that, other than showing the power of a mirror?)
Every revolutionary has the right, indeed the duty, to tell the truth as s/he sees it, hopefully informed by concrete political practice. I don't know what political practice Elena has, or has had, in the Canadian state, which would justify her having an opinion on the subject of our work.
Our assessment of certain Canadian organizations as being 'left reformist' and 'liquidationist' is based on facts: their position in favour of reforming the bourgeois state rather than seeking to dismantle and replace it with organs of workers' power, on their counter-posing of a 'project' to the construction of a workers' revolutionary party, and on their anti-dialectical notion that the 'socialist' organization can hold, simultaneously, a range of contradictory political positions, including no policy at all, on vital issues of the day -- which makes a mockery of the Marxist idea that only by collective practice can a policy be put to the test to be verified and further elaborated.
Unity is important, but not that alone. It begs the question: unity for what, for whom? History is clear. It is extremely unlikely, if not impossible, to make a revolution without a revolutionary programme, embodied by a revolutionary party. For Lenin there was no more important task than building his party, which was the highest expression of all strivings to smash Tsarism and capitalism, and to build a better world. It was the reason for the split in the RSDLP in 1903, and for twenty more years of sharp, uncompromising polemics against his political opponents in every camp, including potential allies.
Although Elena may be able to describe the differences between the revolutions in Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Russia, she seems unable to grasp what those experiences had in common -- the smashing of the capitalist state in a mass struggle led by an intransigent, disciplined revolutionary movement/party, with a programme to match. That is the challenge with which the Bolivarian movement is coming to grips.
Elena does confuse and conflate accounts of the origins of our party, SA/LAS, with commentary I offered on both the actual Fourth International and the potential Fifth International. At its most recent World Congress, the Fourth Int'l. welcomed the call for the Fifth, took note that the conveners of the Fifth do not ask, much less require that existing national and international currents and organizations dissolve themselves in order to participate in the Fifth, and decided that the Fourth will continue to build itself on the basis of its historic programme, while seeking to find common ground with like-minded forces within and beyond the Fifth Int'l. I agree with that approach, although I suspect it may be too Leninist, too sharp, too 'conspiratorial' for Elena's liking.
It is too easy to dismiss those with whom one may disagree politically as "irrelevant". The proof of the pudding is a long way down the road, even in Costa Rica I suspect. We may converge with other tendencies, or further differentiate, and thus we will demonstrate our singular or collective relevance -- and that may be all to the good or to the bad for the advancement of the class struggle for workers' liberation. But we cannot move one step forward with mere impressionism and cheer leading, or by trying to silence critics into submission. As Marx famously wrote over a century and a half ago, "We disdain to conceal our views." Although Marx never made a revolution, I wouldn't toss his legacy overboard just yet.
So, Elena, please reflect on the above brief observations and consider the possibility that we may learn from one another even while respecting our right to disagree.

In solidarity, for a revolutionary Fifth International,

Barry Weisleder,
SA/LAS Canadian state