FROM the workers' revolt in East Germany in June 1953, through to the Hungarian revolution workers in 1980/81, the Fourth International has been on the side of the East European proletariat revolutionary cractic struggle.
We adopted the same attitude to the workers' Republic of China these did not take a revolutionary direction, they did add up to an acute social and political challenge to the bureaucracy.
This approach stems from strategic considerations. tions which reduce the political struggles on a world scale to the opposition between two camps or between two military alliances, in which the class struggle is a minor element or subordinate.
There are two camps in the world. But they are the camps of the working class and the bourgeoisie. these the bureaucracy usurped power in the very When it attacks imperialism sometimes does that owni power and strengthens the international working class, When it attacks the working class, as it has just done in Poland, it reinforces the international bourgeoisie.
Solidarity bureaucratic struggles of the workers of Eastern Europe, China also flows from practical considerations. The class been an international one for a long time. Imperialism and the interna tional bourgeoisie have fundamental objectives which they relentlessly and intelligently pursue on a world scale.
To paraphrase Karl Marx, unless the workung Ciass foreign policy of the bourgeoisie with ils own internationalist policy it will go down to endless defeats. And there is no other material basis for an interpolicy TOT other than active solidarity based on common interests.
The Fourth International's support for these workers struggles in the countries of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China is based on a precise understanding MEBO historic goals that these struggles aim to achieve.
Contrary to the propaganda of both the bureaucracy bourgeoisie there is no socialist coun try anywhere in the world, that is, in the sense that Marx and Lenin gave to the word "socialism' no classes. All the countries commonly referred to as socialist, are, in fact, in transition between capitalism and socialism, transition bureaucratic dictatorship has frozen midway between one and the other The sunscite against a government calling itself "socialist' clearly shows the bankruptcy of that government. But it is not cialist Challenge 4 February 1982 page 8 of October/ November consistently in anti-bureaustruggles in the Peoples put during the For although We reject all concepBetween which has Soviet Union little autonomy. and to defend its privileges whether it wants to or not.
the Soviet Union and struggle has counterposes the Kania the proletariat linked: workers"
anti-burcaucratic immediate and man.
workers and - a society with workers which the ty/state would workers' revolt to the failure of socialism or Marxism.
the bankruptey bureaucratic usurping of power in this post-capitalist society which is revealThe goals of the anti-bureaucratic political revolution which the Fourth had Carned theoretical analysis tional Programme of 1938, resolution on the decline of Stalinism 1957, and in theses on Democracy in 1979 — have been fully confirmed by practical experience. These are the same goals which were forward by the workers in their 1956 revolution, the Czechoslovak workers in 1968/9, and the Polish workers in 1980/81.
- two faces of These goals revolve around two central ideas which are indissolubly democratically self-management; -TEC management economy by the working class, based on the values of equality, and the self-fulfilment of the human personality of every woman and every Such an economy is one where the themselves determine production and priorities and the organisation of the It is different to burcaucratic centralism as it is to the rule of the market, which both subordinate the exterior and trollable forces Authentic socialist with the ending of the total monopoly of power by a single For a Front'/State. involve much democratic freedoms for the working masses, in other words, freedom of the press, of association, of the right demonstrate and the access in in the Transi- the in our Socialist Hungarian of the state. Partly leader and premier, Jaruzelski, with former party chief, the same BOWE There is no centralisco check tha solidarity excluded.
InC workers' consumption democratically uncondemocracy away party, a parThis greater management, strike; in- socialist dependence of the unions from the state and plurality of political parties, free access with no censorship to all groups of workers to the printing presses, the radio and television; free to all sources of culture, knowledge and information.
These two principles featured in revolutionary Marxist State and Revolution by Lenin. They are central to the construction of a socialist society, the progressive taking of control over all aspects of cconomic and political life by society, and thus the gradual withering away There is no better indicator of the progress towards socialism than this withering away - the transfer of real privileged bureaucracy the mass of the people. better indicator of the on the building of socialism than the long term reinforcement of the state, which is and always will be the sum of the apparatuses, the men and women who exercise the functons from which society as a whole is These two ideas culminate in one and the same conclusion: all power to and centralised popular For the importance of the workers and popular councils is that while they are organs of the state, exercising repressive functions over the imperialism and the class enemy, they also reflect the progressive withering of the state, gradually fusing with the mass of the population in the exercise of governmental powers.
If this process of fusion is real, and it cannot be so without selfsocialist democracy, and the plurality of parties — then and only then, is the construction of a classless society genuinely put into motion.
and build classic, have historic level, perialism, disastrous bureaucratic dictatorships Today, tries alone.
recall institutionalised in countries? broken the Stalinism, the struggle.
ries all the hopes for humanity -to enemies eager organised ing and leading it towards built.
the That's the socialism that we want.
That's the socialism that the workers in the Prague Spring and the workers in Solidarnose had started to conceive have been one ha he is through since 1914 is a world crisis. At the the crimes im the disastrous quences of the survival of capitalism are even graver than the crimes and consequences of the there are thirty million unemployed in the imperialist coun There are undoubtedly more than 100 million people caught in the ghetto of poverty and degradation and in the so-called Third World There are some thirty million children each year who die of hunger. Must we that torture and atrocities ZITE more than fifty Reformism long ago abandoned any attempt to suppress the capitalist regime which is responsible for these abominations. It contents itself with slightly alleviating the worst excesses. Bot even this goal, which has nothing to do with the elementary imperatives of solidarity and human liberty, has down lamentably since the crisis of the system accelerated.
To the joint crisis of capitalism and the burcaucratic dictatorships, to bankruptcy of reformism and struggles for the democratic power of the workers and world socialist federation, is the only alternative. The Polish workers, after those in Portugal and those of May and autumn in Italy, have shown that it is anchored in the reality of the condi ton and the capacity of the workers!
The Polish events like those of so many other countries have also confirmed that for this plan, which car be realised, the spontancity of the workers, as impressive as it might be, is not enough. Against to defend their privileges at all costs there needs to be yanguard, rooted in the class, prepar- and sighted The fronts the workers: their interests repressive apparatus conare in fundamental contradiction power.
Revolutionary parties must be built, the Fourth International needs to be SOliD
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1956, to the Prague Spring in 1968, up to the rise of the Polish