SOCIALIST ORGANIZER

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Tel. 415-641-8616
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[please excuse duplicate postings]

[INTRO -- The article below is reprinted from Issue No. 68, June 2010 of La
Vrit/The Truth, theoretical journal of the Fourth International. Other related
articles in this issue include "Degrowth and the United Secretariat" by Lucien
Gauthier; "Woods-Goulart Claim: 'The Fourth International Will Not Be
Resuscitated!'", by Alfredo Luna; and "What Is the Bolivarian Alternative of the
Americas (ALBA)?" by Andreu Camps. To order a copy of this new and
exception issue of our international journal, please send $5, includes postage, to
Socialist Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140. Please make
checks payable to The Organizer. Many thanks. -- Alan B.]

-----

After the 16th World Congress

Of the United Secretariat
By Dominique Ferr
The Sixteenth World Congress of the United Secretariat (USec) (1) was held in
Belgium in late February. The USec's previous world congress took place in
2003. The balance-sheet of the recent world congress was drawn by Salvatore
Cannavo in an article in the USec's review International Viewpoint (558-559,
February-March 2010), under the heading: "The International becomes a
perspective".

Let us start by asking a question: any worker, any youth has the right to ask a
revolutionary organisation not only what it says, but also what it does.
Now, Salvatore Cannavo is, together with Franco Turigliatto, the main leader of
the USec's group in Italy. The names of Cannavo and Turigliatto are not
unknown to the Italian workers. And with good reason. When they were part of
the leadership of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), representing the
Sinistra Critica (Critical Left) current, Cannavo and Turigliatto were elected in
May 2006 as Deputy and Senator respectively, and served from 2006 to 2008
for the duration of the Prodi government, which was supported by all of the left-
wing parties in Italy.

Thus, the author of the report to the USec world congress had been a Deputy
for two years. During the same period between the world congresses of 2003
and 2010, another USec group in Brazil participated in the Lula government.

That an organisation which calls itself "revolutionary" should participate in the

government of one of the main dominated countries - Brazil - and support the
bourgeois government of one of the top six imperialist powers one could at
least expect that the world congress of that organisation would, at the very least,
draw a balance-sheet of those experiences.

But nowhere in the report that was made is the question of Brazil or Italy
mentioned, even once.

Some delegates to the world congress had nevertheless asked for it. Thus, in a
contribution to the preparation of the congress, the American group linked to the
USec, Socialist Action, wrote:

"In Italy, our participation in Communist Refoundation (RC) has been a

demonstrated failure, with RC's continued rightward and unprincipled direction
essentially compelling our comrades to leave. The RC experience included a
major error of political principle when a leading FI comrade [in other words
Turigliatto, a member of the USec leadership - La Vrit/The Truth] cast the
decisive vote (in a formal vote of confidence) in the Italian Parliament that kept
the coalition capitalist government in power."

Some extremely serious characterisations were made. But it must be noted that
Socialist Action's request for a debate on these questions received no reply from
the USec congress.

The USec's balance-sheet in Italy

What was the balance-sheet of those two years during which Cannavo and
Turigliatto held high office? (2)

Let us recall first of all that Berlusconi's defeat in May 2006 saw the introduction
of a government produced by "l'Unione" (The Union), a vast electoral alliance
regrouping several parties, from the Christian-Democrats to the Communist
Refoundation Party.
In the Senate, where the Prodi government could only count on a one-seat
majority, sat Senator Turigliatto, member of the leadership of both PRC and
Sinistra Critica, the USec's Italian section. As early as July 2006, Prodi decided
to organise a vote of confidence on the delicate question of war credits for the
Italian troops in Afghanistan. Turigliatto of the Critical Left voted in favour of the
government, saving the Prodi government by the skin of its teeth and allowing it
to send troops and weapons in support of the bloody occupation of Afghanistan
by the United States.

Shortly afterwards, Rouge, the main publication of the French Pabloites,

interviewed Senator Turigliatto, who said:
"In 2006, I passed a vote of confidence in the Prodi government, in line with the
mandate I had been given and in relation to the programme of the Unione
government coalition, which at the time did not include the war without limits in
Afghanistan or the expansion of the US base at Vincenza." (Rouge, issue
no.2195)

However - and Turigliatto knew this perfectly well - Prodi had posed the question
of a vote of confidence in his government in order to be able to send weapons
and troops to Afghanistan. That is what Turigliatto voted in favour of, and he
knows it!

But had the Italian workers who elected Turigliatto voted in favour of continuing
the Italian participation in the military occupation of Afghanistan? Had they not
voted precisely in favour of the opposite?
Turigliatto's voting decision was fully accepted by the USec leadership, in the
September 2006 issue of International Viewpoint, where a "member of the
International Executive Bureau" wrote:

"Voting for the war credits. It was therefore decided to vote in favour, to take the
government representatives at their word - after announcing a 'change of
mission perspective' out of sheer panic at the possibility of the government
falling - and to give Prodi another six months, since the funding of the 'missions'
would have to be submitted to Parliament in December."

Yes, you read that right: give Prodi another six months ... so that he can send
Italian troops under NATO orders to massacre the Afghan people.

Is this anything other than direct support for the policy of US imperialism?

Cannavo and Turigliatto gave a vote of confidence in the Prodi

government 23 times
We must point out here: it was not just once, but 23 times that Messrs Tuirgliatto
and Cannavo gave a vote of confidence in the Prodi government! Not only did
they give a vote of confidence, but they also voted in favour of the laws and
measures submitted to Parliament by Prodi, laws and measures derived directly
from the reactionary and anti-labour demands of the European Commission and
applied in a servile fashion by Prodi.
For example, in December 2006 the Senate voted through a budget bill - with
Turigliatto's support - which provided for: a 5 per cent cut in "labour costs", 3.5
billion of cuts in the health budget (resulting in the introduction of a 25 charge
for all consultations in hospital emergency departments for deemed to be "non-
vital"), the cutting of 50,000 teaching jobs, and a 13 per cent increase in military
spending.
This budget was immediately welcomed by the European Commission, which
stated: "The measures contained in the budget bill fit in with bringing down the
deficit to below 3 per cent in 2007." (La Repubblica, 13 December 2006)

The USec's Italian organisations gave this excuse: "Could anyone do anything
different - vote against the budget bill, bring down the government, and pave the
way for the return of Berlusconi?" (statement by Sinistra Critica, 18 December
2006)

What followed showed that this criminal policy of the leaderships of the "left"
parties in Italy (with the active participation of Cannavo and Turigliatto) not only
resulted in the return of Berlusconi to power, but also to the disappearance from
parliament of all parties claiming to represent (even in words alone) the
particular interests of the workers!

Could anyone do anything different, asks the USec. Indeed, did not the workers
who voted to get rid of Berlusconi vote precisely for parties that would "do
something different", something other than the anti-labour policies dictated by
NATO and the European Union? Did they not vote against Berlusconi in order to
put an end to privatisations, the public budget cuts, and so on? Is this not the
mandate they gave, especially to the Deputies and Senators of the PRC,
including of Sinistra Critica? Is this not what the Italian workers were demanding
the dozens of times they responded to the trade unions' call and went on
general strike?
"Transcendance of capitalism"
Not a single word, not a single resolution at the world congress on the question
of Italy and the support of not only Sinistra Critica but also the USec leadership
for a government which, for two long years, implemented an anti-labour policy of
submission to NATO, of submission to the European Union and the capitalists.
Not a single word either on the participation of Minister Rossetto in the Lula
government in Brazil, from 2002 to 2006, as "Minister for Agrarian
Development". Rossetto, leader of Socialist Democracy (DS), which then was
the USec's section in Brazil, refused to take any step towards land reform,
dismissing both the landless peasants who were occupying the big estates and
the paid killers operating on behalf of the big landowners, without pronouncing in
favour of either of them. (3)

Cannavo indicated his "conception of the International" in his article: "A body
based on a program, a common perspective (the transcendence of capitalism),
internal democracy, social effectiveness and absolute independence from
governments."

"Absolute independence from governments"? But between 2003 and 2010, the
United Secretariat directly participated in the Lula government in Brazil and
supported the Prodi government in Italy! "Left" governments which, each in its
own way, implemented a policy that went against the very things for which the
masses had brought them to power.

And Cannavo calmly tells us that the conception of the International, according
to the USec, is "absolute independence from governments"?

But is there not a link between that very particular conception of "absolute
independence from governments" and the concept of the "transcendence of
capitalism" put forward by Cannavo?

Any worker interested in the Fourth International can note that it is founded on a
programme which states that "the strategic task of the Fourth International lies
not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of
power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie." (4)

One will note that the expression used here is the "transcendence" of capitalism
and not its "overthrow", not the expropriation of private ownership of the means
of production, which is at the heart of the Fourth International's programme (in
the continuity of the First, Second and Third Internationals).

This expression has a history. In the 1970s, it was adopted and popularised by
the leaders of the PCF, the French Stalinist party, as a way of giving (on behalf
of the Kremlin's counter-revolutionary apparatus) even more proof of its defence
of the bourgeois order, by giving up - even verbally - any perspective of the
working class seizing power.
More recently, the PCF's secretary general wrote: "We want to transcend
capitalism. To achieve this objective, is not the question only posed in terms of
seizing power? No. It is posed in terms of each individual becoming conscious
and taking hold not only of his own destiny, but that of the collective, of society."
(Marie-George Buffet, "Un peu de courage" ["A little courage"], 2004)

So we are supposed to give up, even verbally, the overthrow of the capitalist
system, give up on the seizure of power by the working class (at the very
moment when the unsolvable crisis of the system based on private ownership of
the means of production is threatening to drag the whole of humankind into
barbarism).

The USec's report to its world congress said the following on this point: "It is
necessary to impose a distribution of wealth that will put into question the logic
of profit, by regaining possession of those parts of added value that had been
taken by capital from the pockets of wage-earners over recent decades, by
giving priority to social needs, to employment, health, education, to a decent
income, to leisure - by proceeding with incursions into capitalist ownership."

As anyone can realise, as far as the USec is concerned, the question is one of
"redistribution of wealth", of "incursions into capitalist ownership" but not of
overthrowing the system, not of the collective appropriation of the means of
production. Marx considered that the phrase "abolition of private property", of
private ownership of the means of production, summed up the programme of the
Communists and defined all other programmes (Manifesto of the Communist
Party, 1848). The USec is inviting us to follow it in a completely different
direction.

So what did the USec's congress deal with?

A "Russian section of the Fourth International"?

Cannavo wrote: "To recount the 16th congress of the Fourth International, we
could begin by speaking of the reconstitution of the Russian section of the
International, a kind of return to the sources: the Fourth International was
founded at the initiative of Leon Trotsky in 1938, in the wake of the struggle and
defeat of the Left Opposition to Stalinism, destroyed in Russia during the 1920s
and 1930s."

So a "Russian section of the International" is supposed to have been set up at

the world congress?
The Fourth International was founded in 1938, at a time of the biggest defeats
for the proletariat: the triumph of fascism, the escalation towards world war, and
the installation in the Soviet Union of a bureaucratic parasitic layer which,
through the Stalinist terror, had physically destroyed the Bolshevik Party in order
to guarantee and extend its privileges - eating away at the workers' state like a
cancer.

Maintaining the continuity of the Left Opposition, thousands of "Bolshevik-

Leninist" militant activists of the Fourth International had lost their lives fighting
against the bureaucratic Stalinist clique which, in the name of the so-called
theory of "socialism in one country", was preparing the conditions for the
collapse of the USSR.

The Fourth International was set up on the basis of the programme of the
political revolution, in other words of calling on the Soviet workers, peasants and
youth to overthrow the bureaucratic clique as the only way of defending - and
extending - the gains won through the revolution of October 1917.

Defending social ownership, the social relations imposed by October 1917 on

the basis of expropriating capital, against the bureaucracy that, sooner or later,
would seek to re-establish capitalism in order to transform its privileges into
private property: this lies at the heart of the struggle for the political revolution.

Of course, the struggle for the political revolution is no longer posed in the same
conditions after 1991. That year, the bureaucracy destroyed the Soviet Union
and, in an unprecedented offensive of pillage and privatisation, dismembered
state property for the benefit of international capital. But the continuity of the
struggle for the political revolution after 1991 is embodied in the fight to win back
the gains of October 1917 (and the defence of the segments of those gains that
have been saved).

But what is the characteristic of the VPERED group, which participated in the
USec's world congress and was proclaimed the "Russian section of the Fourth
International"?

The political characteristic of the leaders of the VPERED group is that over
recent months in Russia, they have fought against the demand for the
renationalisation of those state enterprises that had been privatised and pillaged
by the bureaucracy.

On its website, the VPERED Socialist Movement thus states that "the question
of whether or not the enterprises will be nationalised is not the key question. The
counterposition private ownership-state ownership is, in modern-day Russia, to
a large extent a false one".

According to the Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise

Institute, last year in Russia "production fell by almost 20 percent - a rate of
decrease unseen since 1941 and 1942, the years of the Nazi onslaught." He
added that the collapse of the company towns "could catalyze a nationwide
explosion of political turmoil", as "a quarter of the urban population - 25 million
people - live in monotowns and produce up to 40 percent of Russia's GDP". (5)

As the International Herald Tribune says, within the framework of the world
capitalist market in full crisis, these single-industry towns are condemned to
death. And we should not pose the problem of renationalising them?
Should we fight for renationalisation or not?

VPERED writes: "State ownership in Russia is a particular form of private

ownership."

But if there is no difference, then the workers were wrong to oppose the
privatisation programme.

If there is no difference, then it would be a mistake to fight against the new

privatisations announced by the governments in Russia, Kazakhstan, Moldavia,
etc. To give just one example: which railworker in Russia can believe that his/her
situation will not change if the RGD (Russian Railways, a company still owned
by the state) is privatised?

It is a fact: the economic, social and cultural collapse of the republics of the
former USSR is the result of the privatisations carried out by Gorbachev, Yeltsin,
Voronin, Nazarbaev, etc., who were all produced by the bureaucracy and then
reconverted, after 1991, to the "market economy".

The Soviet working class was constituted within the framework of the social
relations introduced in October 1917 (state enterprises, social gains, etc.). Its
survival, one could say, "depends" on maintaining the state enterprises and all
the guarantees linked to those enterprises (housing, health clinics, canteens,
kindergartens, schools, etc.).

Not fighting for nationalisation (in other words to win back the gains of October
1917) in fact means accompanying the veritable genocide that is threatening the
working class in the former USSR.
Should we pose this problem?
Or should we say, as VPERED says in its website, that "nationalisation is not the
key question", because "what is really more important is to be found elsewhere:
can the workers exercise control over the management decisions in their
enterprises, or not? Which leads us to the most important of questions: the role
and place of the workers' organ in the enterprise, that is the trade unions."
In a polemic against this position, the newspaper Rabochie Izvestiya (6) said in
an article:

"Is this the role of the trade unions? The independent trade unions were set up
to exclusively defend the particular interests of the workers. To involve them in
the managing of the enterprises would mean nothing other than integrating them
into the management of the enterprises, therefore chaining them to managing
privatisations, organising plans for job-cuts, organising cuts in wages Do we
not have, in the upper levels of the FNPR (7) in Russia, a striking example of
what a 'trade union' that is integrated into the enterprise management really
means? No, it was in all honesty that a small vanguard of a few thousand
workers began to open the perspective of winning back state ownership. And
that struggle requires that the working class has at its disposal its own
organisations, beginning with independent trade unions. This is why our
newspaper included in its platform the fight for renationalisation, against
privatisation, and for winning back the gains of October 1917."

For not only are the leaders of VPERED fiercely opposed to the slogan of
"renationalisation", they explain:
"For the ideas of opposition that are sprouting in Russia to be able to be
expressed, it is important for the population to understand that it must not be
satisfied with just thinking, that it can also act. Indeed, currently, Russian society
is completely unaware of the effect its actions can have on the government's
moves, and the way in which it can change the course of things." (8)
The relevance of the struggle for political revolution

What contempt for the Russian working class! It is supposedly reduced to a

passive mass stripped of all consciousness. Since August 2007 (and especially
since the strike at the giant AvtoVaz auto factory in Togliatti on 1 August 2007,
when over 800 workers stopped work for a few hours in response to a call by
the Edinstvo independent trade union - which was then operating underground -
despite the preventative arrest of activists), Russia has witnessed what one
newspaper scornfully called at the time "the fashion for strikes".

Hundreds, thousands of strikes have affected factories, not only in Russia, but
more recently in Ukraine, Moldavia and Kazakhstan. Small groups of
independent trade unions have been formed - often underground - decimated by
repression and then tirelessly reformed. Tens and hundreds of thousands of
workers have surged into a movement making demands for the payment of
back-pay and against the winding-up of enterprises and job-cuts. Also - even
though this only applies to a few dozen enterprises - the demand for the
"renationalisation" of enterprises has begun to be heard. A demand that was
formulated in particular by several thousand AvtoVaz workers in August and
October 2009, but also by strikers at the coach-repair factory in Alma Ata, or by
strikers in the Janaozen coalmines (Kazakhstan), the KhMZ factory in Kherson
(Ukraine) and the "Moldcarton" and "Glodeni Zahar" factories in Moldavia.

The appearance of this slogan is also a confirmation of the correctness of the

struggle of the Fourth International for the political revolution.

For their own survival, gradually rebuilding their own class struggle, the workers
of the former USSR have been led to formulate this slogan which - for us -
totally confirms that, even 20 years after the destruction of the USSR, the "gains
of October live on in the consciousness of the masses", quite simply because
the masses have no other choice than to win them back in order to survive.

This is not the policy of the USec or the VPERED group, which fiercely oppose
the slogan of "renationalisation".

From this point of view, the USec is fully in line with its own continuity. Just after
the destruction of the USSR, all of the labour movement leaderships (ex-
Stalinists, social democrats) used this pretext to claim that the "fall" of the USSR
was due to the superiority of capitalism, launching an unprecedented ideological
offensive to justify their own submission to the capitalist system.
At the same time, the "Programmatic Manifesto" adopted by the USec's world
congress in 1992 stated that the "capitalist system seems less contested as a
whole than it has been for decades. The idea that it has definitively won over a
socialism that is falsely identified with the societies under bureaucratic
domination in the USSR and Eastern Europe is widespread. This is above all
due to the crisis of credibility of socialism."

It then expanded on that so-called crisis of credibility of socialism - a socialism

that it identified, more or less, with the Stalinist bureaucracy.

From this point of view, the USec's world congress in February 2010 is fully in
line with the continuity of the last 20 years, from now on openly calling for the
"transcendence of capitalism". All reference to the expropriation of capital, to the
perspective of the seizure of power by the working class, must be excluded,
even from statements, in favour of the "redistribution of wealth".
The reader will see in this issue of La Vrit/The Truth a contribution by
comrade Lucien Gauthier, who demonstrates the way in which the texts adopted
by the USec world congress on "climate change" fall within the framework of the
ultra-reactionary ideology of "de-growth".

"Self-management", the USec's response to the crisis

It is true that the VPERED group has not invented anything. The same
rapporteur at the USec word congress who called for the "transcendence of
capitalism" and "incursions into capitalist ownership" stated:

"In a series of sectors affected by the crisis, there have been - such as in
Argentina or Venezuela - experiments in worker control, of boosting production,
of managing the enterprises. Those experiments must be popularised."

The so-called experiments in "self-management", of workers "taking back"

enterprises that had been liquidated by the capitalists, have ended in
catastrophe.

In Argentina, where following the revolutionary wave of 2000-1, various so-

called "extreme left" currents promoted a movement of "self-managed" factories,
the balance-sheet is irrevocably clear.
In a 2009 interview on that movement, a worker in Argentina (who does not
share our opinion on "self-management" in the factories) at the Zanon tile
factory, which had been "self-managed" since 2001, gave this explanation:
"Many occupied factories have not been able to survive. Unfortunately, we
cannot escape the rules of the neo-liberal market system, since if we do not
succeed in selling the government 100,000 metres of tiling per month, we
cannot survive."

Yes, it is difficult to escape the "laws" of the market.

A real dead-end that puts onto the shoulders of the workers - who have now
become their own "bosses" - the responsibility which lies with the leaders of the
labour movement.

On the one hand, the workers are invited to "self-manage" their factory - in other
words, to achieve "socialism in one factory".

On the other, the leaders of the labour movement are cleared of any
responsibility, after having a long time ago given up fighting for the
nationalisation and renationalisation of those enterprises, for a ban on job-cuts,
in other words for a government that would take the basic measures needed to
save working people, by expropriating the capitalists who are incapable of
guaranteeing production.

The only conclusion the Argentinean worker (who, let us repeat, does not share
our opinion on "self-management" in the factories) can draw is to recognise that:

"We also need state control, so that the state can market our products and in
that way make the factory serve the community, so that the state can build the
housing the people need. We are therefore calling for a plan of public works,
because in Neuqun they are short of 60,000 housing units for which we are
going to supply the tiles. At the same time, we will demand of the state that it
guarantees our wages, because today with the crisis, the factory's production
and sales have fallen considerably."
This veritable trap of "self-management" set for the workers, who are facing an
unprecedented wave of job-cuts and deindustrialisation, has become a leitmotif
for the USec's policy in every country.

Thus, Mr Cannavo's own organisation concentrated its campaign for the

legislative elections in Italy on 28 and 29 March on the demand for "the self-
management of factories in crisis".
This in order to oppose the slogan of banning job-cuts, which is the only way to
open a perspective of unity for the workers and their organisations to save their
factories, to save their jobs.

"Self-management" as opposed to the class struggle

This policy has been developed by the USec in all parts of the world. In France,
the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), which for months rejected the calls by the
Independent Workers Party (POI, in which militant activists of the French section
of the Fourth International are active) to organise a united march for a ban on
job-cuts, still counterposes to this perspective the so-called solution of self-
management.
In January 2010, the NPA wrote the following about the Philips factory in Dreux,
which was threatened with closure by the multinational: "By taking control of
their enterprise, the Philips EGP employees, like those at LIP in the 1970s, are
opening a new phase in their fight to defend jobs in Dreux. The NPA totally
supports the decision by the Philips EGP employees to re-open their factory
under their own control."

On 13 January, the NPA added: "Through their action, the employees are
showing that they do not need anyone in order to produce."

In reality, the Philips workers in no way sought to "imitate" the disastrous

experiment at LIP, which in the 1970s led to the bankruptcy of the watch and
clock company after a few months of "self-management" (at the time with the
complete support of the Communist League, then the section of the United
Secretariat). The fact is that in Dreux, as in hundreds of other factories, when
the workers were threatened with closure and received an "offer" from the
corporation's management to move to Hungary and work for 450 euros (about
US$560) per month, they tried to use their trade union organisations to impose
unity for "Not one job-cut".
In the mass-meeting that followed the tribunal decision to overturn the decision
to close down the factory, POI activists who had instigated such a meeting,
stated:

"Nationalisation is the only way of guaranteeing jobs. This debt is not ours.
Cancel all plans to cut jobs. Hands off our pensions!

"These simple and obvious things are what unity should be based on.
Management is boasting about having held 16 social dialogue meetings: but we
can no more agree to a single job-cut, a single lay-off, whether they have one
social dialogue meeting or 16 social dialogue meetings. The same goes for
pensions: who can agree to discuss a schedule, its duration or decision dates?

"What has just happened at Philips is not the result of debate-consensus. It is

the result of a united fight for the withdrawal of the plan, its cancellation. On the
slogan of a ban on job-cuts, of withdrawal of the redundancies plan at Philips
like everywhere else, on the question of pensions, we can come together.

"The owner of Philips has just published a press statement, saying: 'We note the
tribunal's decision. Production will resume on Monday.' Looking beyond the legal
process, this is about the class struggle. This shows the capacity of the working
class to unite, even if at the level of just one factory.

"There is no reason to agree to consensus in the industry conventions, just as

there is no reason to agree to discuss a schedule for the so-called reform of the
pensions scheme! Hands off our pensions, ban all job-cuts, and that's it: that is
the basis for unity!

"They have talked about proposals for transfers to Hungary in order to play on
the sensational aspect. That forms part of the transfer obligations provided for
under the Labour Code. In fact, Sarkozy wants to smash the right to a job. We
must say clearly: what is scandalous is not that a French person is sent to
Hungary to earn 450 euros a month; what is scandalous is that a Hungarian
worker only earns 450 euros."

The return of "self-management" as flavour of the month (even when it is

dressed up as "workers' control") amounts to covering for giving up the fight to
overthrow the system based on private ownership of the means of production.
That is the fundamental difference between the Fourth International and the
Pabloite Usec.

Fourth or Fifth International?

It is on the basis of these particularly reactionary positions that we must address

the key question posed in the USec's recent congress: What reply to give to the
proposal by Venezuelan head of state Hugo Chavez, to set up a "Fifth Socialist
International"?

That call by Chavez (9) represented an attempt to loosen the vice with which US
imperialism is seeking to strangle Venezuela. At the same time, the call is not
located in the labour movement, does not form part of the continuity of the First,
Second, Third and Fourth Internationals, which all included as one of their
founding principles the independence of the working class with the aim of
overthrowing the system based on private ownership of the means of
production.

Let us recall the "principles" on which Chavez is calling for the setting up of a
"Fifth International", as stated in the official documents of Chavez's party, the
PSUV:

"The International Meeting of Left-wing Political Parties held in Caracas on

November 19, 20 and 21, 2009, having received the proposal made by
Commander Hugo Chavez Frias to convoke the Fifth Socialist International as a
body for socialist parties and currents and social movements of the whole world,
in which we can harmonise a common strategy for the struggle against
imperialism, transcend capitalism for socialism and solidarity-based economic
integration of a new type, resolves to endorse the said proposal in the light of its
historic dimension which proposes a new spirit of internationalism."
As one can see, here again it is a question of "transcending capitalism" and not
overthrowing it. It is also a question of promoting "solidarity-based economic
integration of a new type". The reader will see in this issue of La Vrit/The
Truth a file on the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), to which this
phrase refers, and which does not put into question the system of private
ownership.

Behind the apparently enthusiastic response by the USec leadership to

Chavez's proposal, it appears that things are a bit more complicated, as far as
the USec is concerned. A journalist who was officially invited to attend the USec
world congress gave the following report:

"The embarrassing proposal by Chavez to build a Fifth International: the

Europeans are not very keen, the Latinos are much more enthusiastic."

On the other hand, the journalist informs us, the USec congress was much
taken by the idea of defining the USec "as an Anti-capitalist International. This
second French proposal is undoubtedly designed to allow the NPA to join, but it
raises a mass of problems."

"Chavez's embarrassing proposal"

The USec's "official" position is to welcome the proposal for a "Fifth

International" with a more-than-limited enthusiasm. Cannavo thus writes in
International Viewpoint that it is a question of "respond[ing] now to current
challenges, such as the possible convening by the Venezuelan Government of a
debate for a Fifth international. The propagandist nature of this proposal and the
complexity of an invitation from a head of government escaped nobody. At the
same time, and this has been stressed repeatedly, the hypothesis gives new
credibility and a new visibility to the conception of the International, the fact that
this dimension is crucial to confront capitalist globalisation and its crisis."
For his part, USec leader Eric Toussaint describes the concept this "Fifth
International" should have: "But in my opinion, it would not be an organisation
like the previous Internationals were - or still are, since the Fourth International
still exists - that is to say, party organisations with a fairly high level of
centralization. In my view, the Fifth International should not be highly centralised
and it should not require the self-dissolution of international networks or of an
organisation like the Fourth International. They could join the Fifth International
and still keep their own specifics, but their membership would demonstrate that
all the networks or major movements are determined to go further than the
present ad hoc coalitions on climate or social justice, food sovereignty, the debt,
etc. We have common causes among many networks and that's a positive thing.
But if we could successfully form a permanent front, it would be better still. The
term 'front' is a key word in defining the Fifth International. For me, the Fifth
International would be, in the present situation, a permanent front of parties,
social movements and international networks." (10)
In short, according to the USec leadership, the "Fifth International" could be
something which in the end would very much resemble the "social forums". This
would be even more desirable, since those same USec leaders, having
previously been the most enthusiastic of supporters and co-organisers of the
"social forums", now consider them to "no longer be a success". And for good
reason: they can now openly be seen for what they always were: gatherings to
"protest" against capitalismfinanced by the capitalists themselves. Eric
Toussaint, who heads the NGO "Committee for the Abolition of Third World
Debt" (CADTM) and as such has been a member of the "International Council of
the World Social Forum" since 2001, indicates that "it worries me to arrive in
Porto Alegre and see that the seminar 'Ten years later' is sponsored by
Petrobras, Caixa, Banco do Brasil, Itaipu Binacional (11), with several
governments in attendance. This really worries me. I would much rather have
seen a Forum with less financial means but more militant in nature."

As a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum since 2001,
Eric Toussaint knows perfectly well that the funding of the social forums has
always benefited from the generosity of big multinational companies, not to
mention governments and international institutions like the IMF, the European
Union or the World Bank. But there you go - this seems a bit too much now, and
the initial spark seems to be missing from their meetings now. (12) So they need
to move on. A "Fifth International" that would be a new avatar of the social
forums would therefore perfectly suit the USec's leaders. But that is not exactly
what Chavez expects from his "Fifth International". Hence the embarrassment of
the USec leadership. (13)

The line of "new anti-capitalist parties" during the PSOL's crisis

Because for the USec leaders, the major axis remains "the birth of the New Anti-
capitalist Party in France, regardless of its contradictions and its growing pains,
constituting the main novelty of European politics".

Cannavo points out: "The political process that must be watched carefully is the
construction of 'new anti-capitalist parties', broad and with a mass influences,
including 'the current response to the crisis of the workers' movement and the
necessity of its reconstruction'."

As luck would have it, the world congress took place at the same time that two
parties being promoted by the USec leadership to illustrate that orientation - the
NPA, formed in France in June 2008, and the Party of Socialism and Liberty
(PSOL) in Brazil - were sinking into a deep crisis.
In Brazil, the PSOL has just blown apart, six years after its foundation. Two
separate meetings took place in Rio de Janeiro (10 April 2010) instead of the
pre-election national conference called to pick the PSOL candidate for the
October 2010 presidential election.
On one side, there is Heloisa Helena, deposed PSOL leader, former Workers
Party (PT) senator (while a member of Socialist Democracy (DS), the then
Brazilian section of the Pabloite United Secretariat), allied with Deputy Luciana
Genro, who support Martiniano Cavalcante as the PSOL presidential candidate.
But we should say that this is more of a "fantasy" candidate than anything else,
since in reality Heloisa Helena supports the candidacy of Lula's former Minister
of the Environment and now Green Party member, Marina Silva. In return, the
latter is supporting Heloisa Helena in her bid for the senator's seat in her state.
The Green Party has a fashionably "environmental" way of talking, but in fact is
a subsidiary of the bourgeois party of former President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso (kicked out of power in 2002 by the vote for the Workers Party).

On the other side, the "rival" conference brought together Enlace (the current
section of the Pabloite USec), the group of former Deputy Baba and all those
who support Plinio Sampaio to represent the PSOL in the presidential election. If
there is no "legal separation" between the two opponent wings of the party, it is
only because Brazilian law obliges election candidates to stand under the same
party label for the whole of the current year. But open warfare has been
declared, with accusations from both sides of "fraud" and "gangsterism", in a
general climate of demoralisation for numerous activists who broke with the PT
on the grounds of needing to create an "ethical" and "radical" party. This latter
excuse has also fallen victim to experience. The weekly newspaper Brasil de
Fato, which defends the PSOL's arguments, recorded (6 April 2010) the point of
agreement between Plinio and Martiniano: "Socialism is not on the agenda, we
need to fight for radicalisation and democracy."

Which is a similar programme to that of the PT leadership.

In point of fact, the PSOL has succeeded in reproducing all of the PT's faults,
without a single one of its qualities (a mass grass-roots, link with the main labour
and popular organisations, etc.). The ongoing split in the PSOL is a
supplementary chapter in the story of the decay of the USec's Brazilian section,
currently known by the name of Enlace, which bears enormous responsibility for
the demoralisation and dispersion of cadres and activists trained in the PT's
school of the class struggle.

Socialist Democracy, whose members included future officers of Enlace,

participated in the Lula government from 2002 onwards. A shameful role was
played by Lula's Minister for Agrarian Development Miguel Rossetto, a member
of Socialist Democracy, who always rejected land reform and covered for the
murder of landless peasants by killers hired by the big landowners. That policy,
for which a balance-sheet has never been drawn, neither at the USec's world
congress in 2003 nor at its 2010 world congress, resulted in the DS's decay and
break-up. A minority has remained in the USec under the name of Enlace.
When she was a DS member, Heloisa Helena had raised huge hopes when, as
a PT Deputy, she had refused to vote for the counter-reform of the pensions
system during Lula's first term. But the USec's policy (covering Rossetto's
participation in the government) pushed her to give up the fight within the PT,
including against her own expulsion from the PT. The USec pushed her into
embarking on the adventure of a "new party" - which has led today to her
running after the "green" candidacy of Marina Silva, breaking with Enlace.

At its last congress in February 2010, Enlace was for an initial period
enthusiastic about Marina Silva's candidature, presented in a resolution as an
"environmental and social alternative" (part of the continuity of the USec's
"ecosocialist" line), and whose platform concentrates on the "democratisation of
political power".

... and the NPA's crisis

This crisis in Brazil coincided with that of the NPA in France, following the
regional elections of 14 March 2010. An Agence France Presse (AFP) report (9
April 2010) said that "around 10 per cent of the NPA's National Political Council
(CPN) recently resigned from their posts, half of them also quitting the party,
according to the NPA leadership, which at the same time is denying any "sudden
drop" in its membership (8,000). Out of 191 members of the NPA's CPN, "18
departures were noted" after the regional elections, often over questions of
"political differences", and "around half of them" have also quit the party, NPA
Executive Committee member Ingrid Hayes announced on Friday, when asked
by AFP. "We are sticking with our estimate of 8,000 members", there is no
"sudden drop", she maintained, at the same time recognising "the difficulty in
measuring exactly the scope of the departures". "A number of people are waiting
for the congress [11-14 November - Editor] before making a decision", she
explained."

On the other hand, the NPA leader indicated that the NPA is in "a complicated
situation from a financial point of view".

And with good reason. The leaders of the "Convergence and Alternative"
current, representing almost one-third of the NPA, signed an appeal just before
these statements were made, accompanied by "political figures" like Patrick
Braouezec, calling for a "national conference of a front for social transformation
open to the whole of the left, for joint political formulation and action in social
struggles such as the next elections". Patrick Braouezec, former mayor of Saint-
Denis (near Paris) and former member of the leadership of the French
Communist Party (PCF), is known for having dramatically resigned from his
party a few weeks ago, calling on PCF members to resign from the party en
masse. He is playing a full part in the ongoing offensive against political
democracy, by questioning "the traditional form" of the parties rather than
contesting the PCF's real political orientation. Moreover, the appeal launched by
Braouezec and the leaders of the NPA's main tendency declares itself in favour
of putting an end to "party political logic".

On the other hand, on 7 April, the "globe-reshaper" Raoul-Marc Jennar, one of

the NPA's main leaders - who had been given prominence by the leadership
because he had not been a member of the LCR - published his resignation
letter, which said:

"I have no choice but to note the defeat of the NPA project. The resolution
adopted at the end of the CPN meeting on 27 and 28 March is irrevocable: Point
8 in that resolution confirms an unchanged political line: that of a solitary
approach by a vanguard that acts in line with the sectarian tradition of a faction
of the extreme left."

He also declared his opposition to the "party religion that holds sway in all the
groupings", adding that "the time has come to ask oneself about the "party" form
(which dates from the 19th century) for political action."

To understand the reasons for this crisis, it is necessary to look back at the
regional elections of 14 March 2010, during which the working class expressed
through a massive abstention (55 per cent) its total rejection of all of the
institutional political forms of representation. An abstention whose class content
leaves no doubt (69 per cent of blue-collar and 64 per cent of white-collar
workers abstained) and which expresses the workers' rejection of the
"consensus" between the Sarkozy government and the "left" parties (Socialist
Party, Communist Party) that are managing the policies of Sarkozy and the
European Union in the regional councils. The Independent Workers Party (POI),
within which the militant activists of the French section of the Fourth
International are active, had chosen - purely from a tactical point of view - not to
stand candidates in the regional elections, concentrating its efforts on a political
campaign against "consensus" between the government and the leaderships of
the labour movement that aims to impose the "pension reform" demanded by
the European Union and finance capital.

"Abstention serves the government's policy"

A deeply divided NPA stood lists of its own candidates in certain regions and
joint lists in others within the framework of an alliance (called the "Left Front")
with the Communist Party. While all the commentators had been announcing for
months that there would be a massive abstention to express rejection, the NPA
ran an extremely reactionary and election-focused campaign, with its main
leaders coming out with more and more statements like: "Our main competition
is abstention" (Olivier Besancenot on the TF1 TV channel, 5 March).
One NPA candidate heading an electoral list went as far as accusing abstainers
of being responsible for the policies of Sarkozy and the Socialist Party leaders,
saying: "Abstention ... serves the policy of the UMP government and the SP,
which in the provinces has greatly increased subsidies to enterprises and is
accompanying a capitalist system that we are fighting against". (11 March, La
Dpche du Midi)

In one dpartement (14), the NPA stated: "Abstention only serves those parties
taking turns in power and which precisely bear the responsibility for the situation
that the popular classes are in. Abstaining in order to protest is in fact just
another way of resigning oneself to it". (NPA 31, 12 March)

The NPA leaders went a long way in expressing nothing other than a policy of
accompanying the government's anti-labour policy within the framework of the
regional councils. Thus, in a whole series of regions, the electoral lists featuring
the NPA openly called for a programme of "aid to the enterprises" (under the
pretext of being able to monitor it or impose conditions), in other words aid to the
capitalists. In Burgundy, the profession of faith demanded that "aid to
enterprises will come under a regional public fund for employment, under the
control of a commission composed mostly of trade unionists, experts and
citizens".

In the Pays de Loire region: "No aid of any kind to enterprises that do not
respect a terms of reference that is both social (employment, insecure jobs),
environmental (conditions of production and transportation) and democratic
(monitoring of accounts, employees having a veto)."

In the same region, a joint platform signed by the NPA, the Stalinist party and
various "de-growth" groups called for the "development of 'soft' modes of
transport (bicycles, going on foot)". The workers who have been thrown out of
their factories by an unprecedented wave of job-cuts (several hundreds of
thousands in 2009) will appreciate that!
The NPA systematically painted a rosy picture of the role of the regional
councils, ascribing to them virtues that nobody knew they had. Thus, an NPA
leaflet published for 8 March claimed: "The region can be a leverage-point for
defending women's rights. It could offer its help in the fight against discrimination
, [it] could also create a regional public service for professional training that
would tackle gender inequalities, especially by favouring the mixing of the sexes
in the courses."

In France, an offensive has been waged in the name of "regionalisation" for the
last 20 years against the unity of the Republic and the nation, within the
framework of which the working class has constituted itself through its
organisations and its gains. The POI statement dealing with the election results
said on this point:
"On 14 March also saw expressed the rejection of the whole architecture of
regionalisation put in place over decades within the framework of the institutions
of the Fifth Republic and the 'Europe of the Regions'. 'Led by us, the regions are
and will be a social shield, protection for the population', the leaders of the
Socialist Party and their allies said. The fact is that although those parties
partially benefited from the vote against the government, regionalisation did not
appear in the eyes of the workers and the population as a response to their
expectations. Quite the contrary! The dismantling of rights, region by region,
within the framework of sharing out the roles between a central government and
the regions, both implementing the same directives of the European Union:
working people want nothing of that."

While continuing to denounce in words the leadership of the Socialist Party

(which heads 20 out of 22 regions), the NPA was also part of the framework of
regional "good management".
Such arguments apparently did not convince millions of voters - especially
among the working class - who abstained despite the incessant appeals from
the NPA to go to the polls. ... The NPA leadership, which continuously declared
that it had set itself the target of getting more than 5 per cent of the vote, was
forced to note that its results (less than 3 per cent) "were not good", with the
"Convergence and Alternative" current, representing one-third of the
organisation, denouncing "the NPA's position, which had been disowned". The
crisis is even deeper due to the fact that, while condemning the Socialist Party
leadership's management, the NPA leadership had announced months ago that
it envisaged "democratic fusions" between its lists and those of the Socialist
Party, allowing it to get seats on the councils.

Thus, as early as 18 February, the NPA leadership was saying: "We have
always said that we were ready to be part of executive bodies that carried out
policies that were heading in the right direction . One could envisage, after the
first round, a democratic alliance, in which the emerging majority accepts the
proportionality of the votes obtained. More or less, the SP should prefer having a
critical partner to its left rather than lose votes and eventually lose the region to
the right."

Having failed to gather the 5 per cent of votes needed to make this kind of
agreement, the NPA leadership nevertheless called on the evening of 14 March
for a vote in favour of the SP-led Union of the Left lists (which it had denounced
throughout the campaign for "accompanying the capitalism system we are
fighting against"). A big and continuous gap between very radical-sounding talk
and offers of service to the "popular front" within the framework of good regional
governance.
This "New Anti-capitalist Party" in decay is the "model" held up at the heart of its
world congress by the USec leadership. Can such a policy (which, as one will
agree, has nothing to do with the Fourth International - while at the same time
claiming to represent it) result in anything other than demoralisation and
decomposition?
------

ENDNOTES

(1) Let us recall where the United Secretariat came from:

"It was in the conditions of the so-called "Cold War" - a period referred to by
everyone as one of confrontation between the Soviet and American "blocs" -
that an orientation which went against the programme of the Fourth International
was developed within the Fourth International itself, encouraged by its
leadership (Michel Pablo). In a situation marked by the risk of a Third World War,
the USA-USSR confrontation, Pablo developed the following idea: the Stalinist
bureaucracy is forced to move "to the left", it finds itself in a position - during
"centuries of transition" - of being obliged to achieve "socialism", but of course in
a bureaucratic manner, he consents to point out! The conclusion drawn from this
by the leadership of the Fourth International was that the International should
merge into the Stalinist parties in order to reinforce that supposed move to the
left. Such a position on the one hand substituted the struggle between (Stalinist
and imperialist) blocs for the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie;
and on the other hand, it led to the liquidation of the Fourth International. The
majority of the French section, which fought against this orientation, was
bureaucratically expelled. This is the root-cause of the split with the "Pabloite"
current, which broke with Trotskyism." ("The 20th Century in 20 Chapters", an
educational pamphlet of the French section of the Fourth International).

The destruction of the USSR in 1991, for which the Stalinist bureaucracy bears
complete responsibility, settled once and for all the "thesis" according to which
the bureaucracy was going to "achieve socialism sui generis". But the Pabloite
group (United Secretariat) maintained itself after 1991, merging into the NGOs
and the "social forums", while at the same time continuing to claim to represent
the Fourth International. This grouping is represented especially in France by
the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), in Brazil by one of the tendencies of the
Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL), in Portugal in the Left Block (BE), in
Pakistan in the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP), to mention just the main groups.

(2) See also La Vrit/The Truth, issue no.56-57 (September 2007), "Some
reflections on the role and place of the United Secretariat today".

(3) In order to avoid extending our point too far, we refer the reader to La
Vrit/The Truth, issue no.56-57 (September 2007), "Some reflections on the
role and place of the United Secretariat today".

(4) "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International:
The Mobilization of the Masses around Transitional Demands to Prepare the
Conquest of Power ", also known as the Transitional Programme, adopted at the
founding conference of the Fourth International (1938).

(5) Leon Aron, "Darkness on the Edge of Monotown", International Herald

Tribune, 16 October 2009.

(6) Rabochie Izvestiya, "international tribune of the class struggle", a Russian-

language newspaper published since September 2008, with the participation of
militant activists of the Fourth International on an equal basis with labour
activists of the former USSR.

(7) FNPR: Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia. Contrary to what

its name implies, it is the heir to the bureaucracy's old vertical "trade unions",
which were integrated into the management of state enterprises.

(8) Public statement by "Ilya Budraitskis (member of the VPERED Socialist

Movement, Russian section of the Fourth International) and Mathilde
Dugauquier (member of the Belgian LCR)", following the attacks on the Moscow
Metro that caused the death of 38 passengers (March 2010).
(9) See La Vrit/TheTruth, issue no.67, January 2010, "Sabado and the Fourth
International".

(10) From the weekly Brazilian newspaper Brasil de Fato, February 2010. The
newspaper was launched at the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.

(11) All big Brazilian companies.

(12) Which has not prevented the USec from being part of the string of forums
and counter-summits, notably, as Cannavo points out: "the 'Summit' in
Cochabamba on global warming, called by the Bolivian President Evo Morales
[see the article by Lucien Gauthier in this issue of La Vrit/The Truth], the
various Social Forums - that of the Americas in Asuncin, the European Social
Forum in Istanbul and the World Forum, in 2011, in Dakar, the Euro-Latin
American summit in Madrid next May and that against NATO in November 2010
in Lisbon."

(13) The USec's leaders are not the only ones to have responded positively to
the call for a "Fifth International" by Chavez. Thus, the defeatist petty-bourgeois
current "International Marxist Tendency" (ex-Militant), ravaged by an
unprecedented political crisis and represented in Brazil by Serge Goulart,
declared recently (17 March 2010): "Today the so-called Fourth International
does not exist as an organisation. Those who speak in its name (and there are a
few of them) have neither the masses, nor the correct ideas, nor even a clean
banner. All talk of resurrecting the Fourth International on this basis is absolutely
excluded."

(14) An administrative political unit roughly equivalent to a state, province or

county. Metropolitan France is divided administratively into 96 dpartements,
which are grouped together to form 26 regional units.