1. The CWI, founded in 1974, defends the central role of the working class with support from all those oppressed by capitalism in the struggle for socialist revolution. It stands on the basis of the first four congresses of the Comintern, founding documents of the Fourth International and those of the CWI. We fight to build a revolutionary socialist international. A revolutionary socialist International is essential to transform society and build an alternative social system, socialism. Only such a change can take humankind forward to a higher level of development that can satisfy and develop the material and cultural needs of the global population. It is also vital to end, and seek to reverse, the environmental damage caused by capitalism’s drive for profit and rival imperialisms’ drive for control.
2. Capitalism has ceased to play any progressive role or develop the productive forces in general, as it did historically when it replaced feudalism. Whatever advances are made are restricted or distorted by the profit system. We seeing this again with the development of AI which, under capitalism, will be used to boost profits and strengthen state machines. Under capitalism it cannot be deployed on a generalised basis globally, despite its application in some important areas. Only based on the replacement of capitalism by a democratically owned and planned economy will it be possible to raise living standards without damaging the lives of working people and the environment.
3. Entering the stage of history, dripping with blood and dirt, capitalism, through the private ownership of the means of production, developed industry and smashed through the local particularism of feudalism. It broke down the archaic limitations of feudalism. It gave rise to a strengthened nation-state and then a world market, which led to the development of imperialism. After having played an historically progressive role in replacing feudalism, it then became a fetter and brake on the further development of society and the productive forces. Capitalism cannot harmoniously develop society. In the 21st century, it is in a protracted death agony. It is preparing to exit the stage of history as it entered it – dripping in blood and unleashing suffering and misery onto the masses of the world. Capitalism is not only unable to play a progressive role but is dragging society backwards. It will not leave the stage of history voluntarily but will need to be overthrown by the working class and a socialist revolution.
4. Capitalism now is in a new period of polarisation, conflict and global crisis, epitomised by the election of the nationalist-protectionist second Trump regime in the US. The pronounced national antagonisms taking place globally mark a definitive break with the post-Second World War settlement that dominated capitalism for an historic period. The collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the former USSR and Central/Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1992, and the restoration of a gangster capitalism in those states, opened a new period. This broke the balance of power which existed between two different social systems. In general, however, Western imperialism maintained a consensus between those powers, dominated by US imperialism, despite friction and some differences.
5. The collapse of the Stalinist regimes initially led to a wave of capitalist triumphalism. An era of capitalist development, peace and prosperity was promised. The integration of the world market and unlimited globalisation, and the weakening of the nation-state, were anticipated by the gurus of capitalist society. The ruling class in that period launched a sustained ideological offensive against the idea of socialism, class struggle and solidarity. An ideological collapse of most of the socialist left took place internationally. These processes had a profound historic impact on the workers’ movement and political consciousness. Former bourgeois workers’ parties abandoned the idea of socialism and fully embraced capitalism and the market. Socialist political consciousness was thrown back. Yet, as the CWI anticipated, the utopian optimists of capitalism were proved wrong as their hopes rapidly turned to ashes.
6. Conflicts and crises developed anew. The short-lived era of a unipolar world dominated by US imperialism began its death agony on the killing fields of the second Iraq war. The rise of a special form of state capitalism in China and the decline of US imperialism saw the beginning of the emergence of a new multipolar world order. The economic crash and crisis between 2007 and 2009 ushered in a new era of global capitalist instability, crises, and conflict. This has now greatly intensified. An unprecedented era of polarisation – economically, nationally, socially and in class relations – has opened. It has reached a level not experienced since the period between the imperialist first and second world wars. This is seen within nations and between nations. In geopolitical relations it is reflected in the outbreak of a series of wars and clashes. These are both economic and military, national and ethnic conflicts.
7. Socially and politically, we have also seen the emergence of right-wing populist forces and regimes with Bonapartist features, bitter class polarisation and mass struggles, and the emergence of left-populist movements and other left movements and parties. It is an era marked by uncertainty and strong instability. Capitalism is again in an era of war reflected by the slaughter taking place in Palestine, Iran, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere. The depth of crisis in this new era of increasing dystopian capitalism is compounded by the unfolding environmental catastrophe. As Marx warned, capitalism is the only social system with the potential to destroy the world. Environmental crisis impacts every aspect of society. On a capitalist basis, there is no way of avoiding impending catastrophe.
8. The establishment of a world federation of socialist states is both necessary and essential. Only such an alternative can overcome the fetters now imposed by capitalism and imperialism and end the struggles, sometimes violent, between rival gangs of capitalists. This is the only road, not only to preserve the social gains that have been conquered, but to take humankind forward to a new level of economic, social and cultural development. This is more urgent and necessary than ever. It is a prerequisite towards the eventual withering away of the state and the evolution of a communist society. The transition to socialism will need to begin with state ownership of the productive forces together with a system of democratic workers’ control and management. It means the establishment of a workers’ democracy to replace the capitalist state, to plan the economy, raise living standards and end scarcity, leading to a further social and cultural development of society.
9. The programme, strategy, and tactics of the working class and the oppressed, especially its politically conscious layers and leadership, are essential components in a struggle to overthrow capitalism and imperialism. Workers of the world need to unite to build an international that can undertake this historic task. An international perspective, programme and strategy are essential for the working class to end capitalism and imperialism. The development of imperialism and capitalism today means more than ever an international perspective, programme and struggle is essential. A national perspective is impossible without starting from an analysis and understanding of the world situation and the nature of the era we are now in.

 

The First, Second and Third Internationals

10. The building of a revolutionary socialist international is an essential task to achieve these objectives. The process of building such an organisation has developed over a lengthy historic period of struggles, victories and defeats of the working class. From these crucial experiences in method, programme, strategy and tactics, lessons can be drawn and applied to the new situation. Marx and Engels took the necessary steps to build the First International, the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), founded in London in 1864. It brought together the most politically advanced sections of the working class on an international scale. However, it was not ideologically uniform. It included trade unionists from Britain, French radicals, Russian anarchists and others. Guided by Marx, it was to lay the basis for building the workers’ movement in Europe and the United States. Deep social roots were sunk amongst the working class in key European countries at the time. The ruling classes were terrified of the potential threat posed by the IWMA. For a heroic few weeks Parisian workers took power in the 1871 Paris Commune before falling beneath a vicious counter-revolution. This was followed by a period of capitalist economic upswing.
11. Along with other factors, including the lack of a cohesive political leadership, this inevitably impacted on the IWMA. Factionalism and clashes heightened, especially because of the attitude of the anarchists. Marx and Engels eventually concluded that it was better to “let it go” and allow its dissolution to protect its political heritage. It split in 1872 and was dissolved in 1876. Objective conditions are always reflected in a struggle of political ideas and programme. This was reflected in the IWMA and on subsequent developments in the struggle to build the international workers’ movement.
12. The pioneering work of Marx and Engels in the First International was not wasted. It bore fruit in the mass organisations of the working class that later developed in Germany, France, Italy and some other countries, as Marx anticipated. This, and the idea of building an international again, eventually led to the establishment of the Second International in 1889. This was strongly influenced by the principles of Marxism, unlike the First International. It embraced sections of the mass of the working class in key countries and played a crucial historic role in propagating the idea of socialism as an alternative social system to capitalism. Yet it was born during a period of capitalist upswing. Whilst espousing Marxist ideas verbally, many of its top leaders ultimately buckled politically as the pressures of capitalism, reformist ideas and a capitulation to different national interests took root.
13. Growing tensions between the imperialist powers developed and the threat of war became evident. In response, in Basle in 1912, the Second International again declared its opposition to war and threatened mass struggle and actions to prevent the slaughter that war would mean. It reaffirmed the previous decisions that if war did break out, the International’s parties would “employ all their forces to utilise the economic and political crisis created by war to rouse the masses of the people and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule”. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Trotsky, Luxemburg and others participated in the Second International and played a central role in establishing this revolutionary opposition to war.
14. However, when war came in 1914 the pressures of capitalism and the capitulation by a majority of leaderships to reformism and nationalism resulted, not in the threatened mass struggles and determined socialist opposition to this imperialist war, but in the collapse of the International. Most of the leadership of the national parties in different countries deferred to ‘national unity’ and capitulated to support the ruling classes of their respective countries. This was a crisis of leadership and betrayal by the national leaders of the movement. Many activists, including Lenin, were shocked when this took place. Facing its first serious test, the Second International failed. Ingloriously, it collapsed as a revolutionary socialist force.
15. A minority resisted and did not capitulate to the pressures of national chauvinism, including Lenin, Trotsky, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Maclean, Connolly and a few others. They were reduced to leading small groups. An attempt to resist the nationalistic pressures and oppose the war came together at the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference. The adherents at Zimmerwald were an assorted group of varying trends. They lacked a coherent agreed position other than opposition to the imperialist war.
16. The adherents to Marxist ideas, who were numerically small at that time, had the fundamental historic task of defending the principles of Marxism and class struggle, as opposed to the social patriots and reformists that had betrayed the movement and supported the war. Accepting that imperialism was responsible for the war, the right of nations to self-determination, the need for the working class to conquer power and a clear line of distinction from the reformists and their programme of managing capitalism, were crucial. Lenin formulated a clear position on the character of the war and the need to oppose it. His writings on this were mainly aimed at the revolutionary cadres. Formulating agitation and demands opposing the war needed skilful application. Even amongst those revolutionary socialists that opposed the war there were differences of opinion on central issues, such as the right of nations to self-determination.
17. The principles defended by the small layer of revolutionary socialists were to be vindicated as the war developed. It eventually acted as the midwife of revolution. A revolutionary wave swept Europe from 1917 until 1923. The first victory was achieved by the Russian Revolution in October 1917 as the Bolsheviks led the working class to power. This was the most crucial conquest by the working class. It led to the formation of a series of Communist parties and the foundation of a new Third International, the Communist International, or Comintern. This represented an historic leap forward for the working class and was the largest international revolutionary movement seen in history. The CWI stands in defence of the revolution of 1917 and of the first four congresses of the Third International.
18. However, the victory achieved by the Bolsheviks was not repeated elsewhere in the following period as they anticipated and struggled for. The Bolsheviks were imbued with the idea that the revolution in Russia was only a first step. It was essential for it to be followed by the working class taking power in Germany, Britain, France, and other countries if the revolution in Russia were to survive. Despite often heroic struggles, immaturity, weaknesses in programme and lack of experience of the leadership of many of the young Communist parties resulted in critical political and tactical mistakes. It meant that, despite building some significant parties, they failed to capitalise fully on the revolutionary wave which swept much of Europe. The social-democracy and reformism also played a decisive role in derailing the revolutionary wave. The victory scored in Russia was not to be repeated elsewhere. Instead, it was isolated in a relatively undeveloped country. In 1923 in Germany, mistakes by the leadership of the Communist Party resulted in the loss of an opportunity for the working class to seize power. Capitalism internationally was temporarily able to stabilise itself.

 

Stalinism and the Struggle of Trotsky and the Left Opposition

19. The isolation of the revolution in the Soviet Union, in a country with a relatively strong but small working class combined with semi-feudal conditions and a massive peasantry, led to a political counter-revolution. A ruthless bureaucratic caste was eventually able to consolidate itself in power. The historic leap forward flowing from the taking of power by the Russian working class was relatively short-lived. By the end of 1924, this caste gave itself a theoretical justification which it formally adopted later – the pernicious idea of ‘socialism in one country’. Prior to this, such an idea was totally alien to Bolshevism and Marxism.
20. Inevitably this rapidly had an impact on the young Communist International. It was to rapidly degenerate politically. From a world party of the socialist revolution, it was eventually transformed through the concept of ‘socialism in one country’ into an instrument to defend the Bonapartist regime in power in the Soviet Union. It was reduced from the force for the world socialist revolution to a ‘border guard’ of the USSR. The political degeneration of the Second International had taken place over decades. The Third International began to politically degenerate within five years of its birth in 1919. Lenin had begun to challenge the early tendency towards bureaucratisation in the Soviet Union but died in 1924. Trotsky was to lead the core of resistance to this degeneration and formed the Left Opposition, first in the Soviet Union and then internationally, to rally and organise a revolutionary and internationalist opposition to Stalinism.
21. However, the Left Opposition, which struggled to defend the main principles of Marxism and Bolshevism, was to be expelled and eventually crushed in the Soviet Union. It was to be driven out of Communist Parties internationally, with the Stalin grouping claiming it defended the heritage of the Bolsheviks. In the Soviet Union ‘Old Bolsheviks’ and younger Communists were imprisoned, tortured and executed, and a mass purge of millions took place in a vicious political counter-revolution The defeat of the General Strike in Britain in 1926, the Chinese Revolution in 1927, and other events and factors prepared the way for this.
22. The crystallisation of the Bonapartist regime headed by Stalin was a process that unfolded over several years but was nevertheless quite rapid from an historical point of view. Initially it was defended by some as a question of ‘mistakes’ by Stalin, Bukharin, and their backers. Yet it reflected the material interests of the crystalising bureaucracy. These Stalinist ideologists represented a privileged layer of a bureaucratic caste. They suffered terrible blows as they tried to conciliate with reformism in Europe and the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie in the neocolonial world in the east – especially China.
23. Soon violent zigzags in policy took place domestically and internationally. Thus, opportunism was then followed by a lurch, in 1928, to ultra-leftism, the so-called ‘third period’, dragging the Communist International with them. The subsequent world economic slump of 1929-33, the Stalinists claimed, was the “last crisis of capitalism” which confirmed their idea of a ‘third period’. Revolution, they claimed, was inevitable, and this they said justified their ultra-left sectarian policy of ‘social fascism’ that, in Germany, gave the social-democratic leaders an excuse to oppose a united front against the Nazis.
24. In Germany, the Stalinist policy of ‘social fascism’ denounced the social-democrats as ‘twins’ with the fascists, helped to block united working class action against the Nazis. While formally calling for a united front ‘from below’ the Communist Party’s denunciation of the social-democrats as ‘social fascists’ acted as a barrier to united action. It provided the social-democratic leaders with an excuse for their own refusal to seriously challenge fascism. In this way the Communist International helped pave the way for the Nazis and Hitler to come to power in 1933.
25. By then the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union had been crushed as an organised force. This was a consequence of a series of major defeats of the working class internationally, mainly due to the policies and programme adopted by the Stalinists. By the 1930s the nationalised means of production, planned economy and state monopoly of foreign trade were all that fundamentally remained from the heritage of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
26. From Lenin’s death in 1924 until 1927, Stalin and his grouping based itself on an alliance with the ‘kulaks’ and ‘Nepmen’ in the Soviet Union. They claimed to be building socialism, but, Trotsky criticised, “at a snail’s pace”. Then, fearful of the growing capitalist sector, Stalin’s grouping swung violently towards rapid industrialisation, carried out in a top-down and increasingly authoritarian way. By the mid-1930s, to ward off the threat of war posed by the Nazis coming to power, Stalinist policy swung to attempts to form alliances with capitalist states, powers and parties. This policy meant consciously preventing revolution, as in Spain, and conciliation with the social-democrats, as in France.
27. At the same time, the policies of the Left Opposition, although defeated in the USSR, won support amongst the most politically advanced sections of the Communist and revolutionary movements internationally. Opposition groups did develop in Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, USA, Britain, South Africa and other countries. It had big support in China and later in Vietnam. Trotsky particularly launched a struggle for a revolutionary programme in the struggle against the Nazis and during the 1930 to 1937 Spanish revolution. Initially the Left Opposition, although formally expelled from the Communist Parties, maintained a position of reform of the Soviet Union and the Third International.
28. This changed with the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 and the refusal of the Third International to draw any lessons from this catastrophic defeat. Fascism is a particular form of reaction distinct from other right-wing repressive regimes and movements. Basing itself on mass mobilisation, especially of the petty bourgeoisie and lumpenised proletariat, its aim is the destruction and atomisation of the workers’ organisations. Yet the Stalinist bureaucracy and Third International initially claimed that the victory of Hitler “accelerates the rate of Germany’s development towards proletarian revolution”. Tragically, the opposite was true as the Nazis consolidated their rule.
29. That such a catastrophic defeat did not provoke debate and a crisis within the Communist International and the Communist parties led Trotsky to conclude it was impossible to reform either them or the Soviet Union. He concluded a political revolution was necessary in the Soviet Union and a new international had to be built. It was necessary to prepare the way for building a ‘Fourth International’ untarnished by the betrayals of the reformist Second and Stalinist Third Internationals. Soon Trotsky’s change of position was given added validation when, from 1935 onwards, the Stalinists used fascism’s victories as justification for forming ‘popular front’ alliances and governments with liberal capitalist parties, something the Bolsheviks never did.

 

Trotsky, the Fourth International and the Transitional Programme

30. Those adhering to the real ideas of revolutionary socialism and internationalism at the time were small in number and often isolated. In the Netherlands, they won 48,000 votes and one MP in 1933 and had a sizable organisation. Similar groupings in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Austria, and smaller groups in other countries in the rest of Europe, Asia and Latin America were established. In 1934 the Trotskyists in the US unified with the leftward-moving American Workers Party. The Left Opposition’s supporters had a perspective of impending class battles and the prospect of building stronger revolutionary parties. The need to overcome their isolation was one factor that led to the idea of ‘entrism’ being developed, to reach leftward-moving layers of workers.
31. ‘Entrism’ meant working within the social-democratic parties, some of which at that time were being convulsed with powerful left currents developing. This was to reach some of the most politically conscious and advanced workers at the time. This idea was conceived as being a temporary short-term tactic. It was first applied in Britain in the Independent Labour Party, which had split away from the Labour Party in a leftward move with just under 17,000 members and five MPs. The developing revolutionary crisis in France saw the tactic particularly applied to youth in the then left-moving Socialist Party and the Socialist Party in the US. These bourgeois workers’ parties were reformist, left-reformist or had centrist layers of the working class.
32. They had a largely petty bourgeois or bourgeois leadership, sometimes including reformist workers’ leaders, but a large or mass base amongst the working class. Decades later, in different objective conditions, the application of this tactic, in an adapted form, was crucial in Britain in the building of Militant. The social-democratic parties of that era were fundamentally different to the bourgeois ‘Socialist’ or ‘Labour’ bourgeois parties which exist today. Then they had a mass base and active membership of the working class and were a forum for debate and struggle over programme and tactics for the class struggle. Today, they have degenerated into bourgeois parties lacking such a social base.
33. The defeats of the working class in Germany, France, Spain and elsewhere were due to the policies of both the Second and Third Internationals. These in turn prepared the way for the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1938, the idea of a Fourth International was transformed into a reality with the holding of its founding congress.
34. Trotsky recognised war was inevitable. His perspective was that this would act as the midwife of revolution and open the way for a series of revolutionary upheavals. This in turn would give the small, immature Fourth International the opportunity to make leaps forward and build large or substantial revolutionary socialist parties. The approach was reflected in the adoption of the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International at that congress. This is based on the concept of mass work in the class struggle being linked to the idea and necessity of the socialist revolution. The method of the Transitional Programme is crucial, as seen in the way in which the Bolsheviks won majority support within the working class during the 1917 revolution. It is essential it is applied today.
35. It involves the advocacy of transitional demands which link the programme for the socialist revolution to the day-to-day demands and struggles of the working class. It means formulating demands in such a way that they find reference points in the existing consciousness of the class and build a bridge between these and the conclusion that the proletariat must seize power and carry through the socialist revolution. This is the only way to sustain gains and conquests won by the working class. What the bourgeoisie are compelled to concede with the left hand they will take back with the right. This was distinct from the idea of a minimum and maximum programme, previously developed by the Second International.
36. The method of the Transitional Programme is vital for the building of the revolutionary party, one that was rejected later by the Tony Cliff-led Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain and elsewhere. Other groups adhering to Trotskyism, while formally agreeing with it, fail to apply this method and in effect fight for isolated demands without linking them to a programme for the socialist transformation of society. This is the case for example with many groups in Latin America like the Workers’ Party (PO) in Argentina or the United Socialist Workers’ Party (PSTU) in Brazil. Later some on the left ‘rediscovered’ the Transitional Programme but distorted it and fail to grasp the method Trotsky used. This was, for example, the case with a former leader of the British SWP, Alex Callinicos, whose ‘Anti-capitalist Manifesto’ was not based on the Transitional Programme but was at root reformist.
37. The application of the transitional programme or method does not mean crudely repeating by rote the demands in the 1938 Transitional Programme where they are not applicable to the existing consciousness or struggles of the working class. Reformists denounce this method as raising impossible demands that can never be achieved. This is false. The immediate demands that are fought for by the working class can be conceded by the ruling class or employers if confronted with a powerful mass movement. However, such concessions can only be maintained if combined with a struggle for the socialist transformation of society.
38. Trotsky hoped that, after the impending world war, the obstacle of Stalinism would be resolved, either through a political revolution in the USSR to replace the Stalinist bureaucracy with workers’ democracy, or for it to be removed through the victory of socialist revolution in another country, or a combination of both. This was the conditional prognosis he defended at the time.

 

New World, New Tasks Post-1945 – and Crisis in the Fourth International

39. However, although this was vindicated from a broad class analysis of society, events took another route and did not develop as Trotsky anticipated. The war in Europe mainly became a massive battle between Stalinist Russia and the Nazi regime in Germany. This, and the role of Communist parties in the resistance struggles to German occupation, meant that in many countries these emerged with big authority at the end of the war. In some countries they had a mass base and membership. However, despite strength in numbers, their leaders in Western Europe and elsewhere rapidly joined coalition governments with capitalist parties, thereby politically disarming the working class.
40. A revolutionary wave did sweep Europe. Yet the political beneficiaries were Communist parties and, in some countries, social-democrats. This, together with the establishment of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, which initially had a strong social base, meant Stalinism emerged from the war massively strengthened in world relations. It was perceived as an alternative social system to capitalism and imperialism, especially in the colonial and neocolonial world.
41. Thus, the revolutionary wave which swept Europe was derailed by the Stalinists and reformists. By 1944 it was clear the next era would be marked by a strengthened Stalinism globally. In the industrialised capitalist countries, this was to lead to counter-revolution that generally took a democratic form, except for Greece. There, in December 1944, British imperialism took the lead in beginning a civil war against Communist Party-led forces. But generally, in Europe, due to the impossibility of capitalism maintaining its rule without the aid of social-democratic and Communist parties, the ruling classes were compelled to rest on them, at least immediately after the war.
42. The first example was the Italian Communist Party (PCI) changing its position under pressure from Moscow and, in June 1944, joining a capitalist government and working with the monarchy and Badoglio, a fascist general who helped overthrow Mussolini because he saw Italy would lose the war it had joined in 1940. The PCI stayed in every Italian government until May 1947 when it was ousted. This ousting was part of the developing ‘Cold War’ which led to capitalists taking action to push Communist parties out of coalitions and limit their influence, not because they posed a revolutionary threat, but because they were seen as agents of the Soviet Union.
43. As the world war ended, a full reappraisal of the new world situation was necessary. Trotsky, having been murdered by the Stalinists in 1940, was not a participant in this historic task. The changed world situation plunged the young Fourth International into debate and crisis. The Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain, formed from a merger of the Workers’ International League and the Revolutionary Socialist League, began raising the need to reappraise the changed situation in 1944.
44. However, the leaders of the Fourth International, heavily influenced by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the US, equivocated. Despite some internal opposition, led by Albert Goldman and Felix Morrow, the leaders of the SWP argued in October 1943 that capitalism could only survive in Western Europe through “military monarchist-clerical dictatorships”, a position the SWP confirmed in November 1944. They failed to grasp that the new world situation, with a massively strengthened Stalinism, meant that imperialism was on the defensive. A correct understanding of the significance of the strengthening of Stalinism at that time was decisive to analyse the world situation. Indeed, nearly five decades later the reverse was true. When the Stalinist regimes collapsed after 1989 it was essential to recognise the impact this had on the world situation and on the organisations of the working class. Understanding that process and its implications was crucial for revolutionary socialists to draw the conclusions that flowed from it.
45. At the second international conference of the Fourth International (FI) in 1946, the document of the International Secretariat (ISFI) even argued that “combined economic, political and diplomatic pressure and the threats of American and British imperialism” would be enough to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union. The new Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, where capitalism had been overthrown and a nationalised planned economy introduced, ruled by bureaucratic dictatorships, they dubbed “state capitalist regimes”. These, they argued, would only last for a short period of time. In contrast, the majority of Trotskyists in Britain, including Ted Grant who would later help found the tendency that became the Militant, wrote that “the economies of these countries are being brought into line with that of the Soviet Union”, a position the FI’s 1948 Second World Congress overwhelmingly rejected.
46. Later, as upheavals and crisis began to engulf some of these Stalinist states, they then developed illusions in various ‘reformist’ wings of the bureaucracies, for example, the Polish leader Gomulka. His opposition to some of Stalin’s policies led to his removal from office in 1948. He wanted to establish his own fiefdom, more independent of Moscow, but not a new regime of workers’ democracy. Yet he was dubbed a representative of “democratic communism” by Fourth International leaders. The same mistake was to be repeated with Tito in Yugoslavia in 1948 after his break with Stalin, when the International organised ‘volunteer’ brigades to help reconstruct Yugoslavia. In May 1950 a French Trotskyist leader, Lambert, who later founded a separate tendency, wrote after a visit that “Personally, I believe that I saw in Yugoslavia a dictatorship of the proletariat, led by a Party which passionately wants to fight bureaucracy and impose workers’ democracy”. Decades later similar illusions existed in relation to Gorbachev in the USSR.
47. The international leadership failed to recognise the processes at work in Mao’s victory in China in 1949 at the head of a peasant army. The victory of Mao and the social revolution which followed represented the second most important development in the overthrow of capitalism and landlordism after the 1917 Russian Revolution. The changed world situation and strengthening of Stalinist Russia, the inability of the Chinese national bourgeoisie to confront imperialism, and the defeat of the working class following the 1927 Chinese Revolution, resulted in the sweeping away of capitalism and landlordism by a peasant army, not by the working class.
48. To carry this through, the Maoists had to break from the practice of the ‘stages theory’ that the Stalinists in Moscow had argued for since the 1930s.  The Sino-Soviet dispute a few years later was rooted in the Chinese leadership, like those in Albania and the then Yugoslavia, having its own national base which soon led to a clash of interests (and military conflict in 1969) between the Russian and Chinese bureaucracies. Yet the Maoists, when breaking from Moscow to carry through the revolution and later, for a time, making radical critiques of the increasing reformism of the pro-Moscow Communist Parties, did not embrace Trotskyism and the ideas of the Permanent Revolution. Instead, they formally led a “Bloc of four classes”, the workers, peasants, urban petit-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie (patriotic capitalists) against the landlord class and the bureaucratic-bourgeoisie (i.e. comprador capitalists). Having taken power nationally in 1949, landlordism was abolished and, needing to consolidate their power, the regime, after 1952, expropriated the major capitalists. This secured the basis for the regime they established, one like the Bonapartist bureaucratic regimes resting on a nationalised, non-capitalist economy that had developed in the Stalinist USSR and, after 1945, in Central and Eastern Europe.
49. The character of the new Chinese regime reflected the social and class forces involved in the revolution – a peasant army – which had carried through the revolution. In Russia, the new regime in October 1917 initially established a workers’ democracy which then degenerated and was replaced by a Stalinist bureaucracy due to the isolation of the revolution. In China, a workers’ democracy was never established. The revolution was led by a peasant army – with support amongst the working class – rather than being led by the working class, as it was in Russia in 1917. The class characters of the forces involved in the revolutions were different. This determined the character of the regimes established following the overthrow of the ‘ancien regime’.
50. When, after Japan’s defeat and the end of the Second World War, the civil war between Mao’s ‘Red Army’, (renamed the People’s Liberation Army in 1947) and the pro-imperialist Kuomintang (KMT) restarted, the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) was content to merely echo what Trotsky had argued in an entirely different situation. Namely, that Mao was preparing to capitulate to the bourgeois nationalist KMT leader Chiang Kai-Shek even as his armies were collapsing and retreating. Routine repetition of a formula which was once correct in a fundamentally different situation is the route to decisive mistakes and wrong analyses. Such a blunder can and will disorientate and shipwreck revolutionary organisations.
51. The lack of progress in building the Fourth International and revolutionary parties after the Second World War in various countries was mainly due to objective conditions flowing from the prolonged historic upswing of capitalism in Europe and the US. It also flowed from a reaction to the Fourth International’s initial idea that the war had not really ended and that revolution was imminent. This led to frustration and a search for shortcuts. They argued that the European and US working class had become ‘bourgeoisified’ or corrupted. One consequence was the FI’s effective dropping of the transitional method, instead concentrating on left-reformist demands. Frustration led the international leadership to look for revolutionary developments in the collapsing colonial empires and neocolonial countries. They looked to forces other than the organised working class, seeking political shortcuts.
52. Capitalism and imperialism demonstrated its incapacity to develop the productive forces in general throughout the neocolonial world of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The existence of strong Bonapartist Stalinist regimes in the USSR, Eastern Europe and then in China changed the international balance with the imperialist powers. This resulted in events in some neocolonial countries taking an historically peculiar route. Many adopted ‘socialist’ phraseology and sometimes attempted to copy aspects of the Stalinist regimes. The conditions which existed, and the struggle against Western imperialism, resulted in explosive revolutionary developments which revolutionaries had to intervene in.
53. Those events made it even more important to maintain an implacable defence and understanding of how the ideas of Trotsky on the Permanent Revolution and the role of the working class should be applied in that era. From the events in China, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Cuba, and elsewhere it was essential to maintain a clear understanding of the different political and class forces involved in the revolutionary processes which took place – bourgeois-nationalist, petty bourgeois, Stalinist, and reformist. The leadership of the Fourth International in effect capitulated to the bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces which emerged during the unfolding revolutionary upheavals. These forces enacted many reforms during the revolutions which benefited the masses. In China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Angola and some other countries capitalism and landlordism were later overthrown. In others, like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Zimbabwe and elsewhere, it was not. The leadership of the International could not apply the ideas of the Permanent Revolution to the situation that developed in these revolutionary movements.
54. The leadership of the International opportunistically bowed before the forces involved in the leadership of the revolutions that erupted and dropped a sharp independent class programme. Thus, in Algeria they mainly positioned the International behind the banner of the National Liberation Front (FLN). The International split in 1953 following both political differences and rivalries that were generally not of a principled nature on either side. Our comrades in Britain were expelled in 1951 but still supported the idea of a unification of the International on a principled basis. Later in the 1950s we rejoined and argued for our positions when appropriate. A key issue at that time was Algeria where it was correct to give critical support to the FLN and to fully support the struggle of the Algerian masses for independence from French imperialism. (Comrades in Britain sent two members to Algeria who had the expertise to assist cutting the electronic fence that French imperialism had constructed between Algeria and Tunisia).
55. However, it was wrong to subordinate the role of the revolutionary Trotskyists to the bourgeois-nationalist leaders and not advocate an independent revolutionary socialist internationalist position, which was essential. This would include an appeal to the French working class to unite in a struggle for a socialist revolution as the only way to secure full independence from the shackles of imperialism, which would otherwise maintain crucial influence and control through its economic might despite formal political independence.

 

Marxism and the National Question

56. The issue of the national question has historically been crucial for revolutionary socialists. It is a vital legacy of the bourgeois-democratic revolution that arises in capitalism. Lenin’s contribution on this issue was decisive in securing the victory of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Opposition to national chauvinism, oppression and defence of the right of nations to self-determination is a vital ingredient of a revolutionary socialist programme.
57. Today, the national question is assuming critical importance in all areas of the world. It is more extensive and complicated than when Lenin developed this aspect of the Bolsheviks’ programme. It is essential Marxists oppose all forms of national and ethnic oppression. This means defending the democratic national rights of all oppressed peoples up to, and including, the right to self-determination and independence. However, there can be no trust or confidence in the national bourgeoisie. In the oppressor nation it is essential that a relentless struggle against nationalism, chauvinism and racism is conducted amongst the working class and in society in general.
58. An independent class programme is essential, stressing the need to break with capitalism combined with an internationalist perspective. It is essential to withstand imperialist and capitalist pressures, and at the same time fight for the unity of the working class. This approach is absent from most of the revolutionary left. They fail to advocate an independent class position or criticise the programme of bourgeois or petty bourgeois nationalist leaderships. In practice they cling to the coattails of bourgeois or petty bourgeois leaderships of oppressed nations.
59. Each national question is concrete. The demands raised will be different in each situation. The specific conditions can also change. The exact demands raised at each stage are therefore not static or fixed. They need to be adapted, amended or changed as the consciousness and specific situation changes. The CWI successfully applied this method politically to many situations, specifically in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Palestine, Israel, Scotland, Catalonia, the Balkans and elsewhere. It is important to link the struggle for democratic and national rights to the question of the socialist revolution as capitalism is incapable of fully resolving it anywhere.
60. Depending on the consciousness of the working class of the oppressed nation and state of the movement, it is necessary in some situations to raise the demand for an independent socialist state. We do this for example in Catalonia and Scotland – although in the latter case this was not always applicable. In Sri Lanka we defend the Tamil peoples’ right to self-determination including separation. In Nigeria, while defending the right to self-determination, we do not currently call for separation. Where we do raise the demand for an independent socialist state it is also necessary to raise the demand for unity of the working class in all the states involved – both oppressed and oppressor. The approach of the CWI on this crucial question is in marked distinction to that of other revolutionary groups that adhere to Trotskyism.
61. The national question is a decisive issue in both the war being waged in Ukraine and Gaza. That is seen in the Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s 2022 invasion and the subsequent struggle which also has an element of being an inter-imperialist proxy war, and in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza following the attack by Hamas in 2023. In both it is essential to defend the rights of all those suffering from national oppression and to stand in defence of democratic national rights. As part of this it is essential for revolutionary socialists to adopt an independent working class position and programme. Thus, the CWI opposed Putin’s intervention in Ukraine and defends the rights of all the Ukrainian population. This does not, however, mean support for Zelensky’s pro-capitalist regime, its leadership of the war, or his Western imperialist backers. Some on the left have buckled to the pressure of simply ‘supporting Ukraine’ without advocating the independent class position of demanding a workers’ government in Ukraine, with the working class leading the struggle to defend democratic and national rights while making a class appeal to the Russian working class.
62. This war caused divisions to open up within and between the surviving old Communist Parties with some opposing Putin’s war and others supporting Putin in opposing NATO, seemingly on the basis that as Moscow was once the Soviet Union’s capital, it must still be defended. Revolutionary socialists stand in opposition to NATO, but this does not mean support for the Russian oligarch Putin or his regime. An independent class position also includes the defence of the democratic and national aspirations of all minorities, including the Russian speaking population in Eastern Ukraine.
63. In the war on Gaza, it is essential to defend the struggle of the Palestinian people and their right to establish a state and oppose the Israeli regime’s war against them, which is aimed at carrying through a policy of ethnic cleansing. Defence of the right of the Palestinian people to conduct an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation and repression is crucial but does not mean support for Hamas or other forces aligned with reactionary right-wing political Islam. At the same time, it is necessary to recognise the existence today of an Israeli national consciousness which has developed since the state’s establishment in 1948. The Israeli population also has a right to their own state, but this cannot be on the reactionary basis of Zionism that denies rights to others. In both wars only the Ukrainian and Russian working class and the Palestinian masses and Israeli working class can offer a way forward in the interests of all. This means in each of these conflicts defending the democratic and national rights of all national and ethnic groups and showing how these areas can be reconstructed and developed through the establishment of a democratic socialist confederation. Under capitalism there is no solution. An independent class position is essential, alongside building working class organisations that can win support for that and offer a way out of the nightmare of repeated wars and continual repression.

 

Cuba, Vietnam and the Revolution in the Neocolonial World Today

64. The mistake of the ISFI in Algeria was repeated in other struggles in the neocolonial world at the time. Not least in Cuba, where the revolution went much further. There, and in some other countries, the revolution took a new twist due to the balance of forces between the capitalist and non-capitalist world. In Cuba, the revolution led by Castro’s guerrilla forces resulted in the overthrow of landlordism and capitalism. The Batista regime imploded, reflecting how it had rotted away. It had no social base. Yet the forces leading the struggle were not the working class but the guerrilla July 26th Movement – a radical petty bourgeois grouping. It did not initially defend the idea of socialism, instead aiming to replace the Batista regime with a cleaner, more developed, democratic form of capitalism. The guerrillas, however, enjoyed big sympathy from the working class and the urban population, who greeted Castro’s forces with a general strike as they entered Havana.
65. The revolutionary process radicalised Castro’s regime, driven by pressure from the masses and US imperialism’s fear that the revolution could inspire others. This led the regime to take measures that radicalised the Cuban masses. With mass enthusiasm, it eventually overthrew what remained of the capitalist class and nationalised the economy. Initially some elements of workers’ control existed at local level as the masses entered the revolutionary process. The regime was enormously popular. Massive social and economic gains eventually flowed from it for the masses. This had a profound effect internationally.
66. However, it was not based on a real workers’ democracy but a bureaucratic caste resting on a nationalised planned economy. This flowed from the class forces at the head of the revolution. Although some elements of workers’ control were present at the beginning of the revolution, the absence of workers’ councils and other checks meant that it became an increasingly bureaucratised, one-party state, with the emergence of a strengthened ruling bureaucratic caste. The world situation made this development possible because of the existence of the Stalinist regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe. In the 1970s, a similar process began in some other areas of the neocolonial world, for example Angola.
67. Rather than recognise and support the positive features of these developments and, at the same time, skilfully explain the limitations which existed and advocate an independent class programme, the leadership of the International became captivated by the process and its leadership. Castro was declared an “unconscious Trotskyist” despite initially supporting a more ‘democratic’ form of capitalism. They had adopted a similar approach towards Tito in Yugoslavia, who had come to power leading a guerrilla army and later clashed with the Moscow bureaucracy. In Cuba, reflecting a misunderstanding of the character of the regime, they argued that only minor reforms were necessary to establish a healthy socialist regime. The Gerry Healy-led International Committee grouping at the time took the opposite position and in effect argued that capitalism had not been overthrown because there was no revolutionary party in Cuba.
68. Later, during the revolution and revolt against US imperialism in Vietnam, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI – a new name after the ISFI, US SWP and others reunited in 1963) gave uncritical support to the ‘communist’ leadership of the liberation movement headed by Ho Chi Minh. This was symbolised when on anti-war demonstrations they uncritically they took up the chant “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh”. It was correct to support the liberation struggle in the war against US imperialism. However, it was also necessary to advocate an independent revolutionary socialist programme as opposed to the Stalinist programme and methods which dominated the liberation movement.
69. At the same time, we argued that socialist revolutionaries in the neocolonial needed to have an internationalist perspective. That meant understanding, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks did, that while capitalism could be broken in a single country, the key to survival of the socialist revolution depends on spreading to neighbouring countries, in particular the more industrialised countries. This meant a rejection of the ‘theory’ of ‘socialism in one country’ that Stalin advanced after Lenin’s death.
70. Tragically that ‘theory’ came to dominate the Communist movement, initially because it was mistakenly seen as a way to defend the Soviet Union. Soon, however, it helped open the door to nationalist policies, even amongst founders of communist parties. Unlike Castro, Ho Chi Minh had a history in the Communist movement. In Paris, he participated in the 1920 Congress of the SFIO (Socialist Party) which split, with the majority founding the French Communist Party. In 1921 he was in Moscow attending meetings of the Comintern and met Trotsky. However, this did not prevent the Ho-led Viet Minh, in collaboration with returning French soldiers and British-led forces, from massacring Trotskyists and their supporters, especially in Saigon in 1945 where they had a large base amongst the working class. Throughout Latin America the Fourth International increasingly looked to the left guerrilla movements emboldened by the victory of the revolutionary forces in Cuba. In essence it turned away from the working class and its methods of struggle as the motor for the socialist revolution, only paying lip service to its role.
71. In marked distinction to today, the guerrilla organisations and national liberation movements which developed at the time contained a radical, left, socialist, secular element while still being multi-class movements. This reflected that socialism was viewed as offering an alternative social system to capitalism. The existence of the non-capitalist countries held up, in a distorted way, that an alternative social system to capitalism was possible. Nevertheless, these movements tended to have Menshevik ‘stageist’ ideas that the first objective was ‘democratic capitalism’. Thus, the central debate in that period was in relation to the method of struggle and which class would play the central leading role in the revolution.
72. In some countries guerrilla organisations, or a peasant army, could potentially play an important auxiliary role in the struggle and in the socialist revolution. Yet based on petty bourgeois or peasant forces, they cannot play the same role as the working class. Its collective class consciousness is decisive in winning a socialist revolution and establishing a workers’ democracy. As China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola, and other situations illustrated, under certain conditions a peasant army or guerrilla force can carry through a revolution and overthrow the old order. The question is: what is the character of the regime that will replace it?
73. Prior to the collapse of the former Stalinist states, some of these regimes moved to overthrow capitalism. As the CWI analysed at the time, this was the case in Cuba and some other countries. However, as we stated at the 1993 6^th World Congress of the CWI, “with the advantage of a longer historical perspective, it must be said that we sometimes appeared to elevate this trend from a series of aberrations into a general historical law”. On the other hand in Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere, the old state regime was overthrown but capitalism and landlordism remained. After years, in some cases decades in power, some regimes like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or Maduro in Venezuela have, in effect, morphed back into the capitalist-based regimes which existed prior to the revolutionary upheavals that shook those countries. US imperialism in 2026 intervened and kidnapped Maduro. The Bolivarian regime maintained a certain but limited base resting on the legacy of the revolutionary process under Chavez and opposition to US imperialism and its aim of seizing Venezuelan oil.
74. The process in some countries, where capitalism was overthrown and replaced by a bureaucratic regime, arose due to the existence of the Stalinist regimes in USSR and Eastern Europe, however this began to change in the late 1970s. As these countries faced mounting economic issues, especially stagnation, due to bureaucratic methods stifling the economy, the Soviet Union’s bureaucratic regime became less willing to support more ‘Cubas’. But this process is far less likely today because of the changed world situation following the collapse of the Stalinist regimes.
75. However, under the pressure of a mass movement and disintegration of capitalism and landlordism in some countries, it is not excluded that new radical regimes could emerge that encroach on capitalism and landlordism, threatening its interests. Such regimes could have some parallels with the Paris Commune in 1871. Whether they could consolidate power and how long they would survive is another question, especially without the adoption of clear socialist policies internally and the development of the socialist revolution in other countries. The intense global crisis of capitalism and role of imperialism will result in the coming to power in neocolonial countries of regimes that have a bourgeois character alongside an anti-imperialist flavour. This is currently seen in the Ibrahim Traoré-led government in Burkina Faso. Despite not posing the idea of socialism, such regimes can gain a big echo and mobilise big sections of society in these countries. Revolutionary socialists need to engage with such movements in a skilful way and develop a programme flowing from the application of the ideas of the Permanent Revolution and building independent workers’ organisations.
76. Today, as a consequence of the collapse of the Stalinist states, the guerrilla organisations which have developed are of a different character than those which previously existed. Often encompassing reactionary religious ideology and nationalism, the role they play is different from those organisations which existed in the past historic period. The PLO in Palestine, despite its corruption and diplomatic manoeuvring with capitalism, was secular and included a ‘left’, ‘socialist’ component. The same was true in South Africa in the ANC. Marxists participated in the African National Congress (ANC) while stressing the need for independent, democratic and combative trade unions and a socialist break with capitalism if true liberation was going to be won.
77. These earlier movements were fundamentally different to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, or other such organisations which subsequently developed. These newer formations have a politically reactionary ideology despite being in conflict with Israel and/or Western imperialism. This means revolutionary socialists, while opposing imperialism, cannot give any critical support to such reactionary sectarian organisations. Some, like the PO in Argentina, however, fail to grasp this crucial difference and simply regard them as the “resistance” without applying an independent class position to what these organisations represent.
78. The turn towards guerrilla movements, especially in Latin America, by the USFI was echoed by a turn towards the students in Europe as the driving force for the revolution and a turning away from the organised working class. This was partly fuelled by the eruption of student revolts in France, Pakistan and other countries in 1968. In practice, this was the USFI approach, although often with an insurance clause added in written material about the working class. Later, especially in the 1970s, some, particularly the then USFI, undertook a somersault, reflecting an upturn in the class struggle by the working class. A ‘turn to the working class’ was advocated. Students and those with positions in the public white-collar sector were urged to abandon their positions and go to work in the factories. Such a turn to the working class was undertaken in a totally artificial manner with few, if any, positive results.
79. Already these political weaknesses culminated in our then very small forces in Britain eventually being effectively expelled from the USFI in 1965. This was the second time we had been excluded from the USFI and this necessitated a fundamental re-orientation on how we would work to build a revolutionary socialist International. This flowed from the political degeneration of the forces of the USFI. Other splits shook it, including in 1979 the Trotskyist group in Latin America led by Nahuel Moreno, who clashed with the USFI’s flirtation with guerrillaism and other issues, while the American SWP officially turned towards Castroism in 1982 and formally left the USFI in 1990. Moreno, despite crucial political deficiencies (vacillating between opportunism and ultra-leftism, and lack of understanding on the national question) did, however, succeed in building in Argentina a large party with a significant base amongst sections of the working class and other forces in Latin America.

 

Founding the CWI: A New Beginning

80. After being ‘demoted’ from the International in 1965, a discussion took place amongst our comrades in Britain on how to proceed with building a revolutionary international. Should an orientation towards the USFI be maintained or should a turn be made to new fresh forces? After debate, the latter course was decided upon in May 1970, having concluded that there was little point in attempting to rejoin the USFI, and that a turn to fresh new forces was necessary.[1] The theoretical debates and differences between us and the USFI, and other tendencies, were now to be tested out in practice and concrete intervention in the class struggle.
81. The tactic of entrism into the mass bourgeois workers’ Labour Party in Britain began to be implemented again after the collapse of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1949. This followed a brief period of ‘open work’ when the Communist Party was convulsed by two events in 1956, Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ denouncing Stalin and then the Hungarian workers’ uprising. While only limited gains had been made in the Labour Party this began to change in 1960 when it restarted a national youth organisation. The previous one had been dissolved in 1955 by the right wing dominated Labour leadership. Briefly the new ‘Young Socialists’ (YS) grew but we only made limited gains, before the YS almost collapsed due to splits and attacks by the Party bureaucracy.
82. But the objective situation began to change in the mid-1960s which enabled us to grow. Thus we began to see, in Britain and internationally, both an increase in industrial struggles and a youth radicalisation, at first mainly of students although we had been involved in both the sizeable apprentices’ strike in 1960 and a smaller one in 1964. These developments paved the way for an upsurge of the class struggle and radicalisation of the working class and labour movement from the late 1960s and early 1970 onwards. In turn, this saw a transformation of the Labour Party that lasted until the mid-1980s. The tactic of entrism was applicable at that stage due to the character of the Labour Party. The Militant was launched in 1964 and the group during the 1970s began to make substantial steps forward. Peter Taaffe played a decisive role politically and organisationally in what developed following the launch of Militant and later the CWI.
83. However, this was not the short-term entrism of the 1930s that Trotsky sometimes advocated. It had instead assumed a different longer-term character, which both offered opportunities and presented dangers to revolutionaries. In Britain in 1970 we won a majority in the then very small Labour youth organisation, now called the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS). We turned this organisation outwards to intervene in the class struggle, reach fresh forces and proceeded to build it into an organisation of approximately 10,000 at its peak, mainly of working class youth. The LPYS generally stood on our political programme and was de facto a youth organisation from which we recruited. At the same time, we conducted independent work in the name of our paper campaigning in communities and workplaces, plus, where we had influence, turned the local Labour Party branches outwards to intervene in the class struggle. The entrist tactic we therefore applied was not simply orientated towards intervening inside the social-democratic party organisations. Thus, it was somewhat distinct to the tactic of entrism that Trotsky advocated in the 1930s.
84. Today this tactic is no longer applicable because of the fundamentally different class basis of these parties compared to the past. Previously, they were bourgeois workers’ parties, i.e. parties with roots in the working class but with a pro-capitalist leadership. Now they have become bourgeois parties. The process of the bourgeoisification of many of these parties began in the late 1980s. It rapidly accelerated following the collapse of the Stalinist states after 1989. This was one of the consequences of the historic turning point this represented. The developments later in Britain around Corbyn were an exception. They were not consolidated because the ‘new left’ leadership refused to act against the pro-capitalist elements, paving the way for a counter-revolution in the party that saw Corbyn himself expelled.
85. Supporters of the USFI had also applied entrist tactics. Yet reflecting the political degeneration of that organisation, they did so on an opportunistic basis, as did the forerunners of the British SWP (something our comrades raised within the USFI before they were ‘demoted’). They repeated this when they re-entered some social-democratic and other parties as they adapted to left reformist trends in those parties, aimed at influencing the leaders of such trends. In practice this meant they did not defend a principled Marxist programme.
86. Trotsky had envisaged this tactic as a short-term one, reflecting the political situation which existed at the time. However, the political situation that developed in Britain meant it was applied over decades until the late 1980s. Then, in response to our success, fear of the struggles we were leading and ruling class pressure, rightward moving former ‘lefts’ began a drive to limit our activity and ultimately push us out of the Labour Party.
87. Until then, from the mid-1960s this tactic was extremely successful for Militant, especially in Britain and later in Ireland. It was combined with an active intervention in the class struggle which had started to intensify at that time. It led to the building of a strong organisation of eight thousand in Britain that was able to lead mass struggles of the working class in Liverpool and then the anti-poll tax movement, which ultimately brought down Thatcher. Later, important mass struggles were also led by the Irish section. Internationally the platform we built allowed the CWI, founded in 1974, to win a number of groups and sections from within the social-democracy, mainly in Europe – in Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands.
88. Despite the successes of entrism in Britain, which prevented our organisation from being isolated, there is always the danger that any tactic applied over a protracted period, especially with a changing political situation, can become routinely applied as a fetish. All tactics can have advantages but also dangers and weaknesses for a revolutionary party. The dangers of both opportunism and sectarianism need to be guarded against. It is a question of what you give and what you get. Prolonged periods of entry work into reformist or even centrist organisations can put alien pressures on revolutionary socialist organisations. For this reason we spoke of “problems of entrism” in some of our written material. These can lead to a blunting of the programme and the idea of building an independent revolutionary party in the consciousness of some of the membership or even the party as a whole. This, in the main, did not happen in Britain although that danger existed.
89. The entry work conducted by the CWI, especially in Britain and then Ireland, was historically correct and brought great successes. In retrospect, however, it was a tactic that was applied too long. It should have ended earlier, especially in Britain as the situation in the Labour Party changed. The mass struggle we led in Liverpool and the subsequent sizeable witch-hunt by the Labour right-wing which took place reflected historic changes taking place in social-democracy in general. As well as closing off what the LPYS could do and other avenues to work within the Labour Party, the expulsion from the Labour Party in Liverpool offered the possibility of launching an open revolutionary party during a mass movement. Had an open party been declared at that stage, it would have resulted in the CWI (Militant) being in a stronger position to face the fundamental changes in the world situation which were to take place at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s.
90. However, the decisive changes in the world situation which then took place meant that, had such a step been taken, it would not have qualitatively changed the situation revolutionary Marxists confronted. It would, however, have left us in a stronger position politically and numerically.
91. The massive impact that we had in the British Labour Party dialectically meant such a success was unlikely to be repeated elsewhere. The bureaucracy of the social-democracy in Europe were terrified of what had happened in Britain. The small forces in Sweden at the time were very rapidly expelled from the social-democracy from 1976 onwards. Around that time the same happened in Spain and in Greece, where CWI members were soon expelled from the newly formed Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). In Denmark, members of the CWI were banned from the social-democracy even before any had been recruited.
92. In the light of historical experience, in some countries there was a tendency to try to replicate the tactic of entrism in Britain. Sometimes this was through the prism of the past, rather than the real situation which existed at the time. Thus, in Argentina an attempted entrism was applied into Peronism in the mid-1980s. Peron had built a Bonapartist nationalist movement with a strong basis in the working class. There was some questioning of whether comrades won to the CWI should leave the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS – the Moreno organisation) to try to work in the Peronist movement. However, the turn to the Peronists was undertaken. This was a mistake. This was not the Peronism of Peron, when an entirely different situation existed.
93. But in the 1970s tensions within exploded into violent clashes between far-right fascist elements and the Peronist youth, many of whom considered themselves revolutionary. In the 1980s a right-wing neo-liberal current strengthened itself within Peronism and, in 1993, a member of this current, Menem, was elected president of Argentine and implemented neoliberal policies. This period saw a decline in the Peronist left and also a crisis developing in the sizeable forces of Trotskyism that had developed. Thus, it was wrong to turn towards Peronism at a time when its left was declining. This mistake has the important lesson for revolutionary socialists of not applying what was becoming a routine formula to a changed and fundamentally different situation.
94. In the Portuguese revolution, which had a massive impact and almost resulted in the overthrow of capitalism, there was possibly too much attention given to the Socialist Party. A massive revolutionary wave there led to the emergence of large parties and organisations that regarded themselves as revolutionary and Marxist. This included big layers of the armed forces, including some of its leading layers, and needed to be engaged and debated with about how to take the revolution forward, and organise and consolidate a genuine workers’ democracy in a situation where the bulk of the economy had been nationalised, which the CWI did in our analysis. Nevertheless, in general, the entrist tactic brought with it some limited successes in other countries, like Greece immediately after PASOK’s formation, initially in Sweden and in Germany in the radicalised Young Socialists.
95. It is crucial to emphasise that a revolutionary international will not be built through the application of one tactic or orientation. This has never been the approach of the CWI. The CWI was not only built through the application of the entrist tactic. In some countries, like the US and Nigeria the absence of mass workers’ parties meant that the call for the establishment of an independent working class party was a central part of CWI comrades’ activity from the start. Other existing revolutionary groups and parties, outside the social-democracy, joined the CWI on a Trotskyist basis. In Sri Lanka, where a very strong Trotskyist tradition existed, a large party, the NSSP, emerged from the LSSP, a mass workers’ party which had Trotskyist roots, as a result of the intervention of the CWI, and then affiliated to it. Other existing groups in Greece, South Africa, Cyprus, Nigeria, France and elsewhere also joined the CWI. In the 1980s the CWI turned to intervene in Latin America especially in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. There, new sections of the CWI were established, recruiting members from a variety of political trends. The CWI built a substantial base and succeeded in leading important movements, in some cases mass movements in some countries.
96. In Britain the section had led mass battles in Liverpool, bought down Thatcher in the Poll Tax struggle and, through the work in the Labour Party, got three Trotskyist MPs elected. Prior to this the NSSP in Sri Lanka had led the 1980 mass public sector general strike. In Spain in 1986/7 a mass movement of school students was led by the then CWI section. In Ireland a victory was scored in the anti-water charges campaign, while other campaigns like opposition to the introduction of “bin charges” were fought. The then Irish section also got three comrades directed elected to the parliament and also one to the European Parliament. In South Africa CWI members played an important role in the struggle against the apartheid regime and its members had played a pioneering role in helping to build the trade unions in some areas and later, in 2012, in the strike by mineworkers in Marikana. During the struggle against the then Nigerian military regime’s annulment of the 1993 presidential election CWI members played a key role in calling a general strike and mass protests. In 1992, CWI sections in Europe mobilised 40,000 in the first mass international demonstration against racism which was followed by thousands participating in anti-racist and anti-fascist activity in many European countries. Major schools strikes against the 1991 Iraq war were led by CWI members in Germany and Ireland. This was repeated in 2003 in Britain and other countries in mobilisations against the US-led invasion of Iraq. In the US we elected a socialist against a Democratic opponent to the city council in Seattle in 2014 and defeated the employers, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, in a battle for a higher minimum wage. The theoretical ideas that the CWI was founded on were tested out in practice in the class struggle.

 

Collapse of Stalinist regimes – new tasks for revolutionaries

97. As seen historically throughout the workers’ and Marxist movements, decisive changes in the world situation provoke discussion, debate, upheavals and political ruptures. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw such a change, which required a further total reassessment of the world situation and the tasks facing the working class and revolutionary socialist organisations.
98. Trotsky had warned decades previously that the Stalinist bureaucracy, if not overthrown through a political revolution by the working class, would face the prospect of counter-revolution and capitalist restoration. In the absence of a political revolution, the initial process of which was diverted into a pro-capitalist counter-revolution, this prognosis was eventually borne out decades after his death. It took place after a protracted period of time due to the strengthening of Stalinism following the second world war.
99. But by the 1980s, most of the Stalinist states had become ossified, strangled from further development by bureaucracy, corruption, and mismanagement. They had also failed to apply modern aspects of production and technology on a more generalised basis. They had developed but limited their application to the arms industry and space exploration. They maintained outmoded means of production out of fear that the widespread application of new technology like computers would cause disruption, possibly producing movements and reducing the ruling bureaucracy’s control.
100. Shortages of food and other products in some countries, allied with repression, undermined the social base of these regimes. They fell behind the West, whereas in 1956 Khrushchev had confidently declared the USSR would “bury the West”. Consciousness had changed from, for example, Hungary in 1956 where a political revolution began to develop with the formation of workers’ councils that could have overthrown Stalinist rule without restoring capitalism.
101. The stagnation and decline taking place in the Stalinist countries eventually led to a seismic historic change. The Soviet bureaucrats in the USSR had lost all connection with the 1917 revolution, and credibility and standing amongst the working class. A younger layer like Gorbachev and some others could see the ossification taking place by the 1980s, foresaw the dangers and searched for a means of trying to break out of the straitjacket they were imprisoned in. Yet this was impossible without the overthrow of the bureaucracy itself by the working class and a political revolution being carried out from below. However, some reforms were attempted and Gorbachev launched Perestroika. This was an attempt at the impossible – to overcome the constraints of the bureaucratic system without overthrowing it. Significantly, Gorbachev looked for inspiration in Bukharin’s ideas of a long-term development of a capitalist sector, rather than Trotsky’s programme of political revolution, which posed the overthrow of the whole Stalinist political system. Society in the former USSR and Eastern Europe became convulsed.
102. Initially, protests in the USSR, China (until the Tiananmen crackdown), the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary demanded more democracy. In the main, they were not demanding a return to capitalism despite some illusions in the rich Western countries. However, in Poland a somewhat different situation existed. Widespread illusions existed in capitalism. This was a warning as to what would develop elsewhere. However, the situation changed as there was no revolutionary party or clear programme for a political revolution. Encouraged by Thatcher, Reagan and Western imperialism, sections of the bureaucracy, especially in the USSR and Poland, saw their opportunity and, under the cover of a token banner of ‘freedom and democracy’, in effect seized state assets to became a new bourgeoisie of a particular type. This became a general pattern in the former deformed workers’ states in Europe. Gorbachev, having been courted by the West, was then unceremoniously discarded. They backed Yeltsin, who built support by demagogically attacking the old elite resting on the nationalised economy, while opening the way to the return of capitalism. Following an attempted coup and ousting of Gorbachev in August 1991, the USSR soon disintegrated. Gorbachev was overthrown, and the bureaucracy morphed into new oligarchs and mafia capitalist classes in the USSR’s successor states.
103. The collapse of the former Stalinist states decisively changed world relations and impacted on the political consciousness of the working class, its organisations, and all classes. World imperialism proclaimed its victory over ‘socialism’. “We won”, they proclaimed in a Wall Street Journal A global ideological offensive was waged against the ideas of socialism, class struggle, solidarity and collective consciousness. The market was proclaimed the only possible system as an almost theological mantra. The ruling classes and their propagandists proclaimed that capitalism and liberal bourgeois democracy promised a future of stability, peace and democracy. The ‘end of history’ rang out from the pulpits of bourgeois academia.
104. The loss of the idea of an ‘alternative’ social system to capitalism, a counterweight to the market and imperialism, which flowed from the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, resulted in a throwing back of socialist consciousness. The advanced layer of the working class, numbering hundreds of thousands of socialist activists globally, organised and active in social-democratic and/or Communist Parties and trade unions, largely ceased to exist. There was an ideological implosion of the socialist left in general and an accelerated process of bourgeoisification of the former reformist bourgeois workers’ parties. Most of the Communist Parties were also affected by this process and swung further to the right, with some dissolving themselves.
105. This change in the world situation provoked debate and discussion throughout the left, including the CWI and the rest of the revolutionary left. A fundamental reappraisal of the world situation was once again called for. Confronted with this new world situation, a layer of the revolutionary left initially refused to face the reality of what was taking place. The CWI majority became the first to recognise that counter-revolution had triumphed and capitalist restoration was being carried through in the former Stalinist states.
106. A minority within the CWI, that later became the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), like others on the left, refused for many years to recognise reality or the changes that were under way. It was only in 2002 that an IMT international document declared in relation to the restoration of capitalism in Russia: “Ten years is sufficient time to judge. We have to say that the Rubicon has now been passed.” Ten years too late and by then worshipping the accomplished fact, they finally caught up. The tendency to simply repeat old analyses when the situation had fundamentally changed resulted in them being incapable of drawing the conclusions that flowed from a new conjuncture.
107. The minority in the CWI denying capitalist restoration also argued to continue conducting work in the Labour Party and social-democratic parties, as though nothing was changing and everything should continue as before. Already from the late 1980s it was becoming more and more difficult to work in the British Labour Party. Its youth-wing was emasculated by the bureaucracy and increasing numbers of CWI comrades were being expelled as the ‘broad left’ within the Labour Party weakened. Crucially, important sections of the working class and youth were moving away from the Labour Party. The Labour Party played no role in mass ‘Anti-Poll Tax’ movement which we independently initiated and that saw up to eighteen million people refuse to pay that tax. Amongst the minority there was a stark refusal to face up to a new world situation. Former leaders like Ted Grant, who had played a leading role in the post-war period in the RCP and later in Militant, had recognised the changed world situation that was unfolding after 1945. Yet in the 1990s, he and others became imprisoned in formulas corresponding to the post-war boom but not to the new post-Stalinist world following the USSR’s collapse in 1991-92.
108. This transformation in the world situation was preceded by other debates in the CWI where crucial changes were also taking place, for example South Africa. In retrospect, these were an anticipation of other fundamental changes in the world situation that were unfolding. The tectonic plates were once again shifting. The old formula that the CWI defended in South Africa, that the white apartheid regime would counter no change and attempt to continue to rule, no longer applied. The balance of forces in South Africa had fundamentally changed and compelled the regime to agree far-reaching changes to maintain capitalist rule.
109. Unfortunately, the founders of the CWI section had, in their early days, ruled-out discussing the possibility that the South African ruling class could even make temporary concessions in the face of a mass movement. This was despite the apartheid government having temporarily suspended the ‘Pass Laws’, requiring black South Africans to carry at all times a book with personal details of where they lived, work etc., when faced with mass unrest after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre. With other discussions beginning to emerge about the possibility of capitalist restoration and the changing situation in the social-democracy, leaders of what became the IMT refused to countenance such changes were taking place in South Africa. In 1990, Grant argued that the recent concessions of the apartheid government, including the release of Mandela and others, the unbanning of the ANC, SA Communist Party etc. were traps designed to bring activists out of the underground in preparation for renewed oppression and mass arrests. What they did not see was that events in the Stalinist states and South Africa were an anticipation of the new world situation that was beginning to emerge. Failure to come to terms with the new world situation resulted in a split in the CWI in 1992.
110. While it took the IMT a decade to finally catch up with capitalist restoration in the former USSR, it took them over three decades before, in around 2023/4, they concluded the Labour Party had changed. They then lurched in a wildly ultra-left direction, proclaiming themselves as the ‘Revolutionary Communist International’ – based almost exclusively on university students, generally abandoning the transitional method and programme, while often downplaying criticism of Stalinism in their agitational material.
111. On the other hand, the Moreno LIT in 1990 produced their ‘Thesis of the 90s’, which concluded that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and overthrow of the bureaucracy had removed an obstacle to the socialist revolution and was therefore positive. The revolts in the USSR and Eastern Europe thus represented the opening of a new revolutionary wave internationally. This analysis brushed aside that, despite the initial mass movements against the bureaucracy, capitalist restoration had taken place and this was a socially counter-revolutionary development despite the overthrow of the totalitarian Stalinist regimes. In essence, the counter-revolutionary outcome was being ignored in favour of simply praising the mass movements that had taken place.
112. Of course, Marxists were not against these movements and revolutions, but understood that there were two potential currents within them: one of political revolution to create a workers’ democracy; the other a pro-capitalist counter-revolution. With small forces, the CWI attempted to intervene in these movements with Trotsky’s programme of the political revolution. But we were unable to create a significant force and Trotsky’s warning, in Revolution Betrayed, that Stalinist rule was preparing “an explosion of the whole system that may completely sweep out the results of the revolution”, i.e. restore capitalism, came to pass. In essence, the LIT confused counter-revolution with revolution. A wedding dance was being played by them at a funeral.
113. The popular movements which took place had not, despite their strength and size, resulted in a political revolution but, under the banners of ‘democratic rights’ and ‘freedom’, ended in capitalist restoration and counter-revolution The global impact on the political consciousness of the working class of those events was a closed book to them. Not surprisingly, this analysis was later reappraised by the various Morenoite currents, which fractured and split following this fundamental misreading of the world situation.
114. The post-Stalinist era prepared the way for a strengthening of imperialism and the rapid development of the integration of the world economy and further globalisation. Briefly, US imperialism tried to impose its position in a unipolar world situation. The CWI argued that, far from a period of capitalist stability, the new situation would give way to a new crisis of global capitalism. The adoption of neoliberalism, the ‘Washington Consensus’, as the global incantation of the period illustrated the new era that capitalism had entered with the end of the post-1945 economic upswing, that had generally allowed an increase in living standards, at least in the advanced capitalist countries.
115. Towards the end of the twentieth century the USFI had increasingly become a loose international association rather than a revolutionary socialist international. They became mesmerised with globalisation, European integration, and the weakening of the nation-state. Some even raised the idea that capitalism had overcome the nation-state. In Europe, they argued, a state and capitalist class would develop on a continental level surpassing the nation-state. These ideas even got an echo amongst a few members of the CWI at the time. The process of globalisation and integration of the world economy in this period did go a long way. In some respects, it went further than the CWI anticipated.
116. However, this had its limits. This was historically illustrated in the period prior to the first world war when a globalisation of the world economy also took place. However, this gave way to a new crisis, national antagonisms and then world war as capitalist crisis and national antagonisms erupted. The CWI argued that the process of globalisation of the 1990s would be checked and thrust into reverse gear with the onset of a new economic crisis of capitalism.
117. This perspective of the CWI was vindicated in crystal clarity as the twenty-first century unfolded with the onset of trade wars, wars, and national/ethnic antagonisms, to which capitalism has lurched back. This flows from the emergence of a multipolar world and the systemic crisis capitalism faces economically, politically and socially. The global economic crisis that hit in 2008 ushered in a multipolar world marked by the decline of US imperialism and the rise of China. This is far from the unfettered globalisation and the end of the nation-state anticipated by some bourgeois commentators and echoed by some on the left, including sections of the revolutionary left. The rise of China and decline of US imperialism is the decisive backdrop to the world situation that sees a check and at least partial reversal of globalisation and the re-emergence of national conflicts.
118. The Chinese bureaucracy began to move towards the introduction of the capitalist market in 1978 and then began a second stage in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fifteen years of negotiation culminated in China joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001. However, the process of capitalist restoration was not a repetition of what took place in the former USSR and Eastern Europe. The growth of China has been possible because of the way it emerged from a nationalised planned economy. Thus, a similar development has not and cannot take place in India, for example. The capitalism introduced in China has a unique character. It has been a special form of state capitalism – distinct from other capitalist economies and distinct from other forms of state capitalism, where sectors of the economy have been nationalised by classic capitalist regimes.
119. The Chinese Communist Party has retained control, for its own interests, of the state. Through this the CCP exercises direction and control over the capitalist class which has emerged. This provoked discussion in the CWI. Some argued that capitalism had been restored – end of story. However, this crude, simplistic characterisation of a unique historic development is not adequate to analyse what has taken place in the second most powerful economy of the world, in which the second most important revolution after Russia 1917 had taken place. This difference affects perspectives for how events can develop in China. The special form of state capitalism has had an impact on how China has developed, distinct, for example, with India.
120. This special form of state capitalism is distinct from the analysis of the Cliff-led International Socialist Tendency (IST), which wrongly proclaimed the USSR had become ‘state capitalist’ by the 1930s. The process of capitalist restoration in China since the late 1980s had not taken place in the former USSR, as claimed by Cliff. The USSR remained a degenerated workers’ state ruled by an increasingly decaying authoritarian bureaucracy resting on a nationalised planned economy.
121. The recent development in China has brought its own contradictions and potential for social and political crisis. With the largest industrial working class in the world, the massive inequalities that exist and slowdown in the economy, big social turmoil and class upheavals are pending. This will become a decisive front in the global class struggle. The form and type of capitalist restoration means that the revolutionary programme today needs to combine demands for the social revolution with some aspects of the demands of the political revolution in the former Stalinist states.
122. The conflicts that have erupted globally, rooted in the structural crisis of capitalism, have resulted in a lurch towards militarisation internationally. This is a crucial aspect of the new era capitalism has entered. The programme of revolutionary socialists must include opposition to the militarisation policies of the ruling classes which is taking place.
123. The new world situation, during and after the collapse of the Stalinist states, inevitably provoked debate, discussion and division in all tendencies of the revolutionary socialist left. Starting in the mid-1990s, the CWI explored a process of discussion with the main groupings adhering to Trotskyism and also with other socialist forces from a different tradition like the Parti Socialis Malaysia (PSM). This was done to assess the impact the new world situation had on these organisations and to explore the possibility of realigning revolutionary forces. For this to be achieved, there needed to be common ground and the prospect of reaching principled political agreement on the character of the period, programme and tasks facing the working class and revolutionary socialists.
124. The CWI’s method was inspired by the ‘Bloc of Four’ the Trotskyists helped create in 1933 but, unfortunately, it was clear that in the 1990s no such agreement could be reached with the international organisations we discussed with such as the UIT, the USFI or the LIT. However, in France groups from Trotskyist traditions and organisations came together and formed the French section of the CWI. Some groups we discussed with, like the then UIT, which originated from the Moreno current, avoided engaging in political debate seeking a short cut to unification to overcome their isolation. However, it is possible that in the future reproachment processes with some organisations can be more successful.
125. The CWI has a crucial role to play in building a large revolutionary socialist international. We must strive to urgently strengthen our forces and build the revolutionary party. Our programme, perspective, methods and what we build amongst the working class are decisive in attracting and influencing other genuine parties and organisations. However, a mass international will not only develop from the CWI. Other forces can emerge and the method that we applied, inspired by Trotsky’s approach to the ‘Bloc of Four’, remain valid today.
126. This is especially the case with decisive changes in the world situation. Even when exploratory approaches to existing organisations fail to progress, the issue can arise again, possibly with existing parties or groups from a Trotskyist milieu. This is especially the case should world events drive some of them to reappraise their situation, methods and programme. Crucially, it can arise in a different way from the formation of new parties and groups that do not now exist. These will emerge as a product of the class struggle. These forces will inevitably bring with them their own features, methods and programme which a Trotskyist international would strive to integrate, based on a firm, principled political agreement. However, if full political agreement cannot be reached in the short term, then an element of the method of a united front, of marching separately but striking together, could be a necessary stage in the relationship between different forces to test the different ideas and methods in practice while also learning from experience.

 

Dual tasks in the New Situation

127. One of the decisive issues that arose from the collapse of the former Stalinist states was the bourgeoisification of the former reformist bourgeois workers’ parties. The changed class composition and programme of these parties, despite their previous reformist character, represented a crucial setback for the working class in the absence of mass or large Marxist revolutionary parties.
128. Previously, these parties acted as a political point of reference for the working class. This involved debate and struggle over socialist programme and ideas. Despite the reformist pro-capitalist leadership of these parties, until the 1990s they mostly at least appeared to offer the idea of socialism as an alternative to capitalism and the market. The changed character of these parties has left the working class with no political reference point. The absence of independent mass parties of the working class is one factor that means generally today it is a class ‘in itself’, rather than a class ‘for itself’ that consciously struggles for an alternative social system to capitalism.
129. It was in this new world situation, and the throwing back of the political consciousness of the working class, including its most politically conscious layers, that the CWI, uniquely on the revolutionary left, raised more generally, from the mid-1990s, the demand for the need to form and build new broad mass parties of the working class.
130. An inspiration for this call was the discussion between Trotsky and the US Trotskyists on whether and how to call for a Labor party in the US alongside building the SWP as a revolutionary party. This demand retains its full validity today, both objectively and subjectively. It is posed more sharply today than in the 1990s because of the depth of the crisis capitalist society has entered. The advantage of such a party arises from the political consciousness of the working class. The formation of a broad party of the working class would represent a step forward but is not an end in itself. The most advanced militant layers of society can be won directly to the programme of revolutionary socialism. Yet the broad mass, reflecting its political consciousness in general will need to pass through the experience of testing out the programme, methods and ideas of reformism before drawing revolutionary socialist conclusions.
131. Within this process the task of revolutionary socialists is to intervene and assist workers drawing revolutionary socialist conclusions. The formation of broad workers’ parties, through a struggle over programme and class battles can be part of the process leading towards the building of much larger revolutionary socialist workers’ parties. However, under exceptional circumstances of capitalist crisis, big sections of the working class can move directly to embrace the ideas of revolutionary socialism. These could have a decisive impact on broader layers of the working class whose broad support would be needed to carry through the socialist revolution.
132. Initially in the 1990s the CWI, in those countries where entrism had been practiced, viewed the question of open work independent from the social-democracy as possibly being temporary following the lurch to the right – a ‘detour’ until there was a change in the traditional organisations with a possible influx of a new generation of workers. However, we amended this prognosis in the light of experience, but we always stressed that if the situation changed the tactics of CWI sections would also need to change.
133. The demand for broad mass parties of the working class is not put forward as an end in itself. The formation of such broad parties would mark the beginning of a process. The struggle within them over programme and ideas, with the participation of a revolutionary Marxist core, mean they could be a step along the way towards the strategic objective of building mass revolutionary Marxist parties. Demanding the formation of such broad parties does not diminish the essential need for revolutionary Marxist parties or the task of building them now, prior to and if, or when, such broad parties are formed. On the contrary, it underlines the central importance of building a revolutionary socialist party. There is therefore a dual task for revolutionary socialists in this respect. The involvement of CWI sections in parties or movements like Die Linke in Germany, La France Insoumise in France or more recently Your Party in Britain has been in this context despite that none of them are yet workers’ parties and they all have an uncertain future.
134. The formation of broad parties of the working class has been an extremely protracted process. This arises from the low level of political consciousness which has existed and the pathetic weakness of so-called ‘left’ leaders. Past betrayals by reformists and Stalinists have resulted in a hostility to the idea of a party among significant layers of the masses. The process has been compounded by the ideological collapse of most of the ‘left’ in this era.
135. The idea of new mass workers’ parties was vindicated by the emergence of new political parties and forces, especially following the 2008 financial crash and economic crisis. This produced a political radicalisation in many countries and mass social explosions. This was reflected in a distorted way with the formation and growth of PODEMOS in the Spanish state, Syriza in Greece, Die Linke in Germany (formed earlier) and the Left Bloc in Portugal, as well as PSOL in Brazil and, in a different way, the 2016 mass mobilisation in support of Sanders in the US in opposition to Hillary Clinton, and later the victory of Corbyn in the Labour Party. However, these formations showed the potential but also the complications in the process. They were not workers’ parties.
136. They assumed a radical character, opposed neoliberalism and the ruling elites, yet failed, in the main, to pose the question of an alternative social system to capitalism – socialism. They limited themselves to reform of neoliberal capitalism, not the overthrow of capitalism as a social system. These parties and formations drew into them young, radicalised layers of the semi-petty bourgeois, sections of the precariat, but in the main, not the organised working class, who often voted for these parties but did not participate or dominate them. This determined these parties’ class character.
137. They were not, and did not develop into, workers’ parties, instead mostly they assumed the character of left-populist formations rather than socialist ones with a solid, active base amongst the working class. The recent period has ideologically been one of populism of both the left and the right. In the case of Sanders, he remained imprisoned in the bourgeois Democratic Party and refused to break with it. Despite his mass base, Corbyn refused to transform the Labour Party and purge the pro-capitalist right-wing, allowing a counter-revolution to follow. But the reform programme they advocated seemed radical to a new generation.
138. Yet what they offer is a pale reflection of the left-reformist trends that emerged in the 1970s and in other periods. Yet these developments were a pointer to the potential, and were an anticipation of what can develop. Yet they were not new workers’ parties. In the main the period has been dominated ideologically by left-populism in these new radical formations globally. This is the case with PODEMOS in Spain, Syriza in Greece, the Left Bloc in Portugal, the LFI in France and some movements in Latin America. These formations have generally not taken a class struggle stance but argue the new conflict is between “the people”, or a “citizens revolution” as Mélechon calls for, and the elite. Others like Die Linke in Germany and the PTB/PvdA in Belgium claim to be building socialist, class parties, but in reality they do not live up to this claim.
139. Betrayal by these parties during mass movements or when in government, echoed in some areas of the neocolonial world like Chile, has complicated the process of building new parties of the working class. The protracted nature of this process is illustrated by the fact that we have been raising this demand since the early 1990s. In Nigeria we have done so since our foundation in 1985 and likewise in the US. In South Africa it became a key issue after the ANC’s first election victory.
140. The mass uprisings in Chile in 2019, Sudan, and Sri Lanka had been preceded by a series of uprisings, which, as the CWI commented at the time, reflected the new era of capitalism. In the early 2010s most of the Arab world was convulsed by revolutionary upsurges.
141. However, the absence of mass parties, democratic organisations of struggle and a revolutionary socialist programme meant that these revolutions were not taken forward to a conclusion, ending in a dead-end or defeat. One crucial issue that resulted in the decline of the new parties in Europe was entry into coalition government at national and other levels with bourgeois parties, under the guise of ‘lesser evilism’. This is a vital question Marxists face in this period which, in a skilful manner, needs to be fought against, particularly when confronting the threat of right-wing populist forces. In Brazil, a majority in PSOL effectively capitulated to this pressure and refused to run a candidate in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections against Lula.
142. Prior to the crisis of 2008, Latin America was rocked by a ‘pink wave’ with left regimes coming to power in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. In Venezuela, Chavez launched the idea of “socialism in the 21^st century”. This put the issue of socialism on the agenda for debate. However, the limited nature of their programmes, which were a version of reformism, resulted in these movements being defeated and the process rolled back. This paved the way for the emergence of right-wing populist regimes for a period. The movements which erupted later in Chile and other countries led to the re-emergence of a radical but paler version of the first pink wave.
143. Right-wing populism emerged and grew, coming to power in some countries. This is an essential issue for the working class and revolutionary socialists. The support they have won is largely because of the failure of the ‘left’ to offer a way out of the crisis and the vacuum this has created. The right-populist parties and movements have sought to portray themselves as opposing the ‘elite’, the ‘establishment’, often using elements of class rhetoric to appeal to a layer of the working class. The character of the right-populist movements varies in different countries. However, in general they adopt a nationalist, racist stand and highlight the issue of immigration. The threat posed by these movements and parties to split and divide the working class must not be underestimated. They reflect the polarisation which is gripping all countries and the loss or weakening of the social base of all traditional parties.
144. It is important to distinguish between right and far-right populists and fascism. The right-wing populists are a threat to the working class but are distinct from fascism. This aims to totally atomise and destroy the organisations of the working class. In some countries the far-right includes a fascistic element. The class balance of forces and changed social situation mean the mass fascist movements in 1920s and 1930s Italy and Germany will not simply be repeated today in most countries. However, in some countries large fascistic organisations can develop and pose a threat to the working class, for example the RSS in India.
145. A feature of this period under right-wing populist and also bourgeois parties’ regimes is the recourse to Bonapartist measures of rule. These include both a downgrading of the role of parliaments and more repressive methods by the state. The need to oppose such measures and fight for democratic rights is an important task of socialists and the working class today. A crucial aspect of the struggle against the right-populists is the need to fight racism, defend the rights of migrants, for workers’ unity and answer workers’ fears about immigration.
146. This new era has so far been dominated ideologically by populism – both left and right. The left version appears to be radical but replaces the idea of ‘class’ with that of ‘the people’, in an ideological echo of the historic period of the nineteenth century bourgeois revolutions. Revolutionary socialists have a historic role of conducting an ideological struggle for socialism, explaining what this means, the collective role of the working class and the programme necessary to achieve it.
147. It is possible, although not certain, that the development of broad mass parties can still be more protracted for subjective reasons. Support for such an idea can rapidly develop, arising from the sharp social polarisation of this period. However, realising this in practice can still be complicated and complex, and may be further protracted for subjective reasons, as currently seems to be the case with ‘Your Party’ in Britain. In such a situation it is possible for revolutionary socialist organisations and parties to develop and win a big base of support prior to the formation of broader parties of the working class. Theoretically, it cannot be excluded that, in some explosive situations, a revolutionary socialist party could emerge as the main party of the working class with a Trotskyist revolutionary core, as historically took place in Sri Lanka with the formation of the LSSP in 1935 – the first political party to be formed in that country, which later moved away from Trotskyism.
148. Prior to the formation of broad mass parties of the working class, it is necessary to be prepared to orientate towards interim, temporary organisations or parties that can emerge and fight for leadership of the working class as a whole. This has been illustrated in Germany. In early 2025 a large influx into Die Linke took place, including many youth, in response to the growth of the far-right AfD. This development is very significant. It has been necessary for the German section to undertake a rapid increase in its intervention in this development. Die Linke is still not a workers’ party and how long this positive development will last is uncertain given some of the policies of the party leadership, especially the willingness to be in pro-capitalist governments and adapt to pro-capitalist forces. Die Linke’s sudden growth illustrates the need to be alert to such rapid changes in the situation and to respond to them.

 

Identity Politics and Marxism

149. A certain lag in the class struggle, combined with the failure of the ‘left’ populist forces and absence of the emergence of a broad socialist consciousness, has led to a certain impasse politically. At the same time, the eruption of crucial social movements, like that opposing the war on Gaza from 2023+, on women, the LGBT+ community, anti-racist movements, the environment and others with people coming together to collectively fight against oppression and injustice have represented an important development.
150. Revolutionary socialists have a key responsibility to intervene in these movements, and possible future movements, like anti-militarism for example, opposing all forms of oppression and discrimination. This must be done on a class basis defending the programme for a revolutionary socialist transformation of society as the means to end all oppression and liberate humanity from capitalism.
151. This means engaging in these important movements, using a transitional method to unify all those oppressed by capitalism, combating ideas of identity politics that re-enforce divisions of gender, race or sexual orientation. The CWI understands that the failure of the leaderships of some workers’ organisations to seriously take up the issue of fighting oppression, sexism and racism has led to a search for ways to struggle for change. We strive to build or rebuild combative workers’ organisations and, while understanding why identity politics can seem initially attractive to some, we also explain the reactionary consequences that can flow from them by undermining united struggle.
152. A combination of frustration with the lag in class struggle, the decline in active membership in trade unions and lack of a socialist consciousness in general had an impact on all revolutionary socialist organisations. Theoretical and political corrosion also affected some sections and members of the CWI. Short cuts and an adaption to the petty bourgeois pressures of identity politics took place over a period. It resulted in a turning away from the working class and trade unions and an opportunist turn to these important social issues, in a non-class, non-revolutionary manner.
153. The protracted nature of the struggle and complications of the situation following the 2008 crisis resulted in frustration and impatience amongst a layer. The global ideological collapse of the left was also reflected in a theoretical corrosion that affected some within the CWI. It resulted in an opportunist capitulation to identity politics and a turn away from the organised working class and a consistent intervention and struggle in the trade unions and workplaces. Such a turn is fatal for a revolutionary socialist organisation. This represented an opportunist departure from Marxism, similar to that taken place by the USFI in the 1960s and 1970s.
154. The CWI implacably defends the central role of the working class in the struggle for socialism, arising from its collective consciousness and potential strength as a class. An active, consistent intervention in the trade unions is a central ingredient to this. A strike wave in some countries in 2023-24 illustrated the beginning of a revival of the class struggle. This was an extremely positive and significant development. It was accompanied in some countries by a growth, sometimes temporary, in trade union membership. At the same time, it is important to recognise that the active layer of the trade unions has declined in many countries and, in some cases, only a shell of an organisation exists compared to the post-world war period. The weight of the bureaucracy has increased. It acts as a break on the class struggle. A struggle against the pernicious role of the trade union bureaucracy is critical to transforming them into combative working class organisations. The struggle to transform the trade unions and, in some cases, partially rebuild them is a crucial task in this era. An upturn in the class struggle can see a new generation of activists in the trade unions or, in some cases, attempts to build new unions. At the same time, it is a crucial task for revolutionaries to also build in the workplaces and not only in the trade union structures.
155. Globally, the industrial working class has grown in strength, particularly in Asia. This has enormous potential and significance as numerically, workers in China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea and other south and east Asian countries are the majority of the world’s workers. Significant numbers of these ‘new’ workers are young and their entry into struggle, coupled with the development of democratic, combative workers’ organisations, will open up tremendous possibilities to build support for genuine socialism. Class battles are certain to erupt in these crucial countries. The political consciousness which initially develops is unclear at this stage. However, such struggles in Asia will open a new decisive chapter in the struggle of the international working class.
156. In some countries, both in older capitalist countries like Britain, the US, and some other countries, and those in the neocolonial world like Nigeria, Brazil and others, the industrial working class’s size has declined but it still has a crucial role to play. In those countries where it has declined, there has been a change in the composition of the working class. A new layer of precarious workers, such as those on contract or in gig working, has developed. Layers of workers in the service, utility, transport, state and distribution sectors can play an important role in the class struggle and the trade unions. Some working in the precarious sectors have in some respects a semi-plebeian character. This tendency can give rise to new forms of struggle and protest, especially amongst young workers, and even new organisations of struggle.
157. The eruption of social and community movements over such issues as housing, immigrant rights and others can be crucial in the period we are now in. Key battles will erupt in and around the trade unions but can also erupt outside of them. Revolutionary socialists need to adopt very flexible tactics in such situations whilst maintaining a consistent intervention in the trade unions as they exist. At the same time, sections of the middle class have been radicalised and, in some countries, have taken up the methods of struggle of the working class. In the neocolonial world in particular the question of the urban poor, (amongst the most downtrodden and oppressed) is crucial.
158. In the neocolonial countries the massive urbanisation that has taken place can strengthen the working class and also see an explosion of the urban poor – street vendors, etc. This layer almost survives as peasants in the cities and can bring some of the methods of the peasantry into the struggle. It is essential for the working class to reach out and link together with these super-exploited sections of society. Some on the left draw the conclusion that the organised working class represents a privileged, “semi-bourgeoisified” layer, and that the revolutionary force is thus to be found amongst the urban poor. This was an important issue in the revolutionary wave that hit Venezuela following 2002. This view ignores the crucial role of the working class in the socialist revolution. This arises from its collective consciousness and role in production which the urban poor in general lacks. However, it can play an important role if united with the working class. If this is not done some of the most downtrodden, lumpenised layers can become a base for reaction.
159. In many countries there is an extremely youthful population, and the challenge is to win them not just to the idea of ‘change’ but to the struggle for socialism. The question of linking the organised working class with the urban youth and poor is a crucial question in all struggles in the neocolonial countries.
160. The protracted nature of the struggle and complications of the situation following the 2008 crisis resulted in frustration and impatience amongst a layer. The global ideological collapse of the left was also reflected in a theoretical corrosion that affected some within the CWI. It resulted in an opportunist capitulation to identity politics a turn away from the organised working class, and the formation of an unprincipled bloc in the CWI, which broke away in 2019 and went on to form the International Socialist Alternative (ISA). Within a short period this opportunist, unprincipled grouping fragmented and split into various grouplets, reflecting its contradictory political make-up and the rapid, opportunist degeneration of some of its leading elements. Some of the best comrades who broke with them, having passed through this experience, are finding their way back to the CWI. (The content of this political struggle is published in ‘In Defence of Trotskyism’)

 

Building the CWI and the International

161. This rupture within the CWI reflected the changes in the world situation that were unfolding. Since then, the beginning of the re-emergence of the working class in struggle in a series of countries, along with multiple mass uprisings that have taken place internationally, have confirmed the ideas, programme and methods defended by the CWI. These processes are unfolding in an entirely new era of dystopian capitalism, which is in a protracted death agony. Capitalism is in its most severe crisis since the interwar period. A highly polarised world situation exists with tensions increasing between rival capitalist classes. The working class and revolutionary socialists in this new era face new tasks and challenges, underlined by the absence of both mass workers’ parties and a broad socialist consciousness.
162. Political consciousness does not develop in a straight line. The crisis faced by capitalism post-2008 led to important steps forward in opposition to the ruling elite, the demand for greater equality and opposition to the system – especially opposition to neoliberalism. This was reflected in the growth of left-populist movements at the time. It did not, as we had hoped, lead to the emergence of a broad socialist consciousness. These developments represented an anticipation of what can develop. However, following defeats of these movements in some countries, political consciousness retreated, and the populist-right gained the upper hand.
163. Amongst a significant layer, the victories of Trump in the US and advances of right-populism are drawing them into struggle against the populist-right. A pronounced consciousness against the oligarchs and ruling class is developing in many countries. A minority are beginning to look to the idea of ‘socialism’ as an alternative social system. However, within this layer there is an understandable confusion as to what this means and what programme and organisation is necessary to achieve it.
164. The era that has now begun will present big opportunities to build revolutionary socialist parties. Periods of small, limited growth can be followed by leaps forward in membership in the period that is now beginning. This poses a crucial question in relation to the tasks of building a revolutionary socialist international. One aspect of this is the essential need to conduct an ideological struggle on many questions, not least the issue of socialism, what it is and how to achieve it. In a sense, ideologically the movement has been thrown back to the period of the First International. At the same time, we are confronted with many of the issues and tasks that confronted the Fourth International when it was founded in 1938. Between those two, the Second International before 1914 succeeded in propagating the idea of socialism to a mass audience, while the early years of the Communist International drew important conclusions from the revolutionary struggles resulting from the First World War. With much smaller forces we will face those tasks today.
165. The crisis that is taking place and its impact on the class struggle mean that, as Trotsky anticipated, small revolutionary groups and parties can make crucial advances and win a significant base amongst sections of the working class and youth. The formation of a new generation of cadres, through intervention in the class struggle and education in the methods of Marxism and its application in a new world, is crucial. Our comrades must be adept to rapidly changing situations in which routine repetition of formulae do not correspond. The methods of Marxism need to be applied in a new era. Through combative, audacious intervention in the class struggle and social movements, combined with political training of a new generation in the method of Marxism and its application in this new era, combined with waging an audacious ideological struggle, the CWI can substantially strengthen its forces. Through this, we can play a decisive role in building a large revolutionary socialist international which can become a skeleton around which a mass international of the working class can eventually take shape, the crucial tool for the socialist transformation of society.

[1] The document ‘Programme of the International’ which outlined this strategy was approved in principle by the British NC in May 1970 as a Conference document.