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Despite all the historical evidence and despite the dead ends which have resulted from all nationalist revolutions, the present
fighting generation is artificially lined up behind a new tradition which says that nationalism can be progressive. We have to
win back this generation to internationalist ideas. This is the challenge that we, internationalist revolutionaries, have to
take up today.
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In the days of the Second and Third International, working-class organisations were the vehicle of class consciousness and
internationalism. Today's economic developments in the imperialist system make the need for an internationalist struggle more
obvious than ever. But this need is more than ever rejected by the military or bureaucratic machines which try to take the
leadership of the masses or which organise them.
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Before 1905 and 1917, Lenin faced a similar problem. He had to fight the policies of the liberals armed with bombs, as he used
to say. These militants who wanted the good of the proletariat despite itself, were alien to it even though, because of the
prevailing situation, they called themselves revolutionary- socialists.
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Today, in those countries where revolution is on the agenda, we have to fight the policies of the same bourgeois liberals, who,
in addition to bombs, now use small military and bureaucratic machines. And, even if they do not yet have these machines, they
have the skills to organise and lead the masses without being outflanked by them.
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Our task is to build the opposite skills. The emancipation of the working class will be achieved by the workers themselves. This
deeply-rooted conviction must guide our steps in our interventions, everywhere, in every situation even in the smallest
struggle.
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Once the masses are on the move, one of our tasks is to allow them to learn how they can outflank the reformist and nationalist
machines and those leaders who rush to take their leadership. The time will inevitably come when these machines and leaders will
tell the masses that - for the sake of the nation or the national economy or the national religion - they must toe the line: the
line of the bourgeois order.
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This may seem enormous given the weakness of the Trotskyists and of those among them who are conscious of this task. But its
completion may be nearer than it has ever been, since the objective situation is now more favourable. It is now at least as
favourable as it was for Lenin in 1902. Besides, there are circumstances in which the problem is not one of numbers, but rather
to be there - to have links with our class and to know what we want.
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Take the Polish strikes in August 1988. Up to then the working class fighting against Jaruzelski's regime trusted Walesa
totally. He was quick to learn the tricks of the Western trade-union bureaucrats. He played the role of political fire fighter
and went round the striking yards, mines and factories to contain the fire and bring the strikers back to work.
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There were 20,000 strikers left in the country. According to Walesa's own assessment they were mostly in their twenties, very
determined and much more militant than the 1980 strikers. And yet, eventually, Walesa managed to get them back to work
empty-handed, and everyone knew it.
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However the strikers did not go back because they still trusted Walesa. Everywhere he went their response ranged from frozen,
hostile silence to angry protests, insults and shouts against 'betrayal'.
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Very often things turn that way. The Polish strikers were embittered but they did go back to work. Because once they were
betrayed by their most popular leader, no other leader, closer to what they wanted and whom they could really control, was
prepared to take over the leadership and carry on the strike.
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In Gdansk there were probably hundreds of young strikers who were ready for anything. But what was patently not there was a
group of even a dozen young workers, tightly organised, aware of possible about turns on the part of Walesa, known by their
workmates for defending proudly and openly their proletarian ideas, but also for their critical stand towards the leadership of
Solidarity. When Walesa turned against the rank-and-file, such a group could have stepped forward and stood for the leadership
of the strike by saying something like: We propose the election of a new strike committee to carry on the strike and we call
upon our brothers in the other plants to elect representatives to this committee, like in 1980. There was no such group because,
in Poland, no proletarian revolutionary organisation, not even a small one, is educating the workers who are militant and most
conscious of such tasks.
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In the end the Polish strikers went back because they did not find in their own ranks an alternative leadership. And yet, if a
small group of militants had stepped forward, the grip of the leadership of Solidarity over its five million members might have
been broken open in a matter of days...
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It is always the same old story. When the workers are strong, as they were in Poland in August 1988, attempted betrayals are
more likely. But such situations are also the best opportunities for revolutionaries, even when they are only a small minority,
provided they know how to make the best of the workers' mobilisation by posing objectives which allow them to win and by
exposing all those who want to sap their strength. Knowing how to do this is, in a way, part of the art of taking power at the
head of the masses and with them.
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We may feel our task overwhelming compared to the strength of the reformist apparatus and to the credibility of their leaders.
But there always comes a time, a critical situation, when the objective is suddenly within reach simply because at that point
the workers in struggle are stronger than the apparatus. Those who are active within the ranks of the working class and have not
yet learned to grab such opportunities have still to learn their revolutionary trade.
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What took place in Poland can be repeated here tomorrow. We too will see strikes over wages spreading in a way that frightens
the bosses and their politicians. We too will then hear a Scargill in Britain or a Reuther in the USA saying as Walesa did that
after all strike action is not the best thing to do. Here too there will be torn membership cards and shouts against betrayal.
But that will not be enough.
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To avoid what happened in Poland, revolutionaries will need the will to take the lead, the audacity to step forward and take the
necessary responsibilities in front of their workmates. In these circumstances our ideas, instead of being an obstacle, help us
to make the best of the situation.
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All this is possible, if we have enough confidence in our own ideas to be convinced, as Marx teaches us, that ideas become
strength when the masses start using them. But before such a chain reaction can take place, those who have these ideas must
uphold them steadfastly.
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- Only the proletariat can achieve the socialist revolution
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- The working class, the class of the proletariat, of those who have nothing to lose, who have no fatherland, no property to
defend, is the only class which can be revolutionary to the end.
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- The proletariat will certainly have to make alliances with other social layers in order to win, but it should never accept
their leadership, even when waging common struggles.
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- The socialist revolution may burst out in one isolated country, but no country can survive on its own. The historical role of
the bourgeoisie, in fact its only progressive role, was as we can still see today to create an economy which knows no borders. A
socialism which aims at surviving within any borders, whether those of the huge USSR, those of the Chinese sub-continent or
those of tiny Cuba, can only be a socialism based on poverty and in the end a reactionary utopia.
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- Capitalism, nearly a century after reaching its imperialist stage, only survives from one crisis to the next, from one world
war to another, without solving its contradictions. Since the beginning of this century, the capitalist crisis has been more or
less permanent and living conditions more or less bearable. Today, living in Berlin may be more comfortable than in Mexico but,
in 1944-45, when the Allies were bombing Germany, the converse was certainly true. There is no safe spot in the world. Not even
the Malvinas Islands, so distant and small that they were almost unknown until 1982. There is no possible escape.
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- All proletarian demands remain on the agenda. Only the international proletariat can break the chains imposed by national
borders.
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- Only a planned economy, organised on a world scale on the basis of the most advanced technology, can allow the human race to
take one step further in mastering its history and its evolution. This will mean organising production not for profit but
according to needs, by establishing a balance between the material needs of society and the use of the natural resources of the
planet, while at the same time allowing at last the unlimited development of the intellectual and artistic needs of all human
beings. Capitalist society only manages to create a sick abundance for a minority while forcing the majority into the utmost
deprivation. The human race cannot carry on living this way: starvation in Sudan while land is left uncultivated in Europe; the
drought allowing a handful of American wheat dealers to make fortunes by exporting to Argentina while deprivation there spreads
brutally as a result of the latest money devaluation which follows years of soaring inflation. And all the inequalities and
injustices: charity for the homeless and for medical research while taxes are used to pay for providing heavy weapons to
dictators who throw their people onto battle fields. Not to mention the madness of national borders which in some regions are
forcing whole peoples back to the Middle Ages. This will not and cannot last much longer.
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This is where the role of individuals, of a few tens of thousands individuals worldwide, can be decisive. A revolutionary party
cannot be a mass party: it can only become one through revolution itself. Outside such revolutionary crisis, the role of
individuals, of militants, is paramount and decisive. The exploiting classes have always known this and they have always tried
to protect themselves fron the revolutionary minorities in critical periods.
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This is what a revolutionary party, an International, is about: an organisation of a few tens of thousands individuals. Not any
individuals, but people who have chosen to have a real goal in their lives, in other words an organisation which is capable,
when it becomes a mass organisation, of winning where others have only degenerated.
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This is our ambition.
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