| Written by Ronald León |
| Friday, 17 February 2012 17:54 |
 Three decades in defense of socialism and the construction of an international and revolutionary leadership. Last January 11 marked the 30th anniversary of the International Workers League – Fourth International (IWL-FI). Three decades have passed as from that International Conference that was held in Bogotá, Colombia, with the participation of delegates from some 18 countries. Most of those delegates were from the former Bolshevik Faction (FB), an international trend whose main leader was the Argentinean Trotskyist Nahuel Moreno, our leader and founder who was recently remembered by the 25th year of his physical disappearance. To those “Morenist” leaders it was subsequently joined the Venezuelan Alberto Franceschi and the Peruvian Ricardo Napurí, two other major leaders who had split from Lambertism due to irreconcilable differences in the field of moral and revolutionary principles. The IWL-FI (LIT-CI) arises, from this 1982 Conference, as an international organization which, since its beginning, has anchored its bases in the orthodox Trotskyist program and has worked internally supported by the Leninist democratic centralist regime. Thirty years have passed. Since 1982 lots of things have happened. Many deep changes and events have taken place in the world class struggle since that January in Bogotá. Yet, we are here, standing firm in the daily struggle against the capitalist-imperialist system, with the same conviction as ever in the revolutionary force of our class, the working class, and in the communist future of mankind. Continuing a valuable heritage We claim the current IWL-FI as a continuity of the ongoing battle to keep alive the revolutionary program, which several revolutionaries have carried out throughout the labor movement’s history against the attacks of imperialism and against bureaucratic and traitors leaders who have been working inside the labor and social movements. The IWL-FI was born to defend a theory, the theory of permanent revolution, a program, the Transitional Program, a type of organization, the International, the world party of socialist revolution based on democratic centralism. The defense of this program and organizational principles have been fundamental since 30 years ago and it is still much more important currently, when the vast majority of the international Left, including many organizations that claim to be Trotskyists, succumbed to the “opportunistic storm” that gathered strength in the 1990’s of last century and have completely abandoned the struggle for the workers’ class power – the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat – and the struggle for the construction of a global revolutionary leadership which has as their primary goal the destruction of imperialism and the building of socialism, the first step toward a communist society. Full of militant emotion and pride, we begin a campaign to celebrate the 30th anniversary of IWL-FI, our international organization which, besides rescuing the legacy of revolutionary Marxism since its roots, has its origins in the Trotskyist current born in Argentina in 1943, with Nahuel Moreno as one of the founders. The IWL-FI is the result of fierce battles that our international trend – as did, at their time, Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky – had to fight in defense of the revolutionary principles, program, policy, the methods and morals and against all kinds of revisionist currents within and outside the international Trotskyist movement itself. In this sense, the IWL-FI is the most important theoretical, political and organizational legacy, of nearly seven decades of struggle of our current, facing fierce pressures from both, dictatorial and “democratic” regimes in several countries and continents. The IWL-FI is the result of a relentless struggle to build an international revolutionary leadership for the world workers’ class in a permanent struggle against opportunism and sectarianism. That’s why it is of major importance to emphasize the role of Moreno. The objective of constructing a world party aiming at the world socialist revolution was a cause to which Moreno devoted his best efforts since 1948. This struggle went through several phases: in the unified Fourth International until 1953; in the International Committee until 1963, in the United Secretariat (Usec) from that year until 1979 and in the construction of the Bolshevik Faction that year, and finally, with the IWL-FI since 1982. The construction of the World Party was Moreno’s obsession throughout his life. It was, as he himself said, “The number one priority of the labor movement”, i.e. there was no more important task. And in this understanding, so fundamental to Marxism, he built several parties and educated hundreds of militants and workers, peasants and students with class conscience. However, highlighting the important role of Moreno in our history does not lead us to make any kind of cult of personality. Nothing is farthest from our desires. Rather, we believe that one of his main contributions was to, despite his enormous capacity, build and train diligently leadership teams. This fact, together with his method to publicly acknowledge his mistakes and correct them were qualities deeply attached to Moreno’s personality profile, while most of the Left and the Trotskyist parties lacked those features. Both the Argentine party and all his experiences to shape international organizations were marked by a constant battle for them to be led by the parties teams, never by a caudillo or “infallible” leaders. Therefore, the IWL-FI was never “the international of Moreno”. Moreno was, undoubtedly, its most experienced and capable leader, such as Trotsky was for the IV International or Lenin for the Bolshevik party. But the decisions have always gone through the party bodies in a very democratic way. To highlight this feature is very important even to explain our current own existence. It was in large part because of Moreno’s method that the IWL-FI, despite the terrible crisis it went through after his death and for most of the nineties of last century, did not disappear. These 25 years of continuing struggle of the IWL-FI, without Moreno’s guiding hand, are the primary evidence that our leader, above all, gave us solid theoretical, methodological and morals basis, on which we could, not without much effort and loss, overcome our crisis and now introduce ourselves as a concrete alternative for an international revolutionary regrouping. We have built the IWL-FI with the strategy to rebuild the Fourth International For us the strategy is the same as it was 30 years ago: Reconstructing the Fourth International. It is the only way for Humanity to defeat imperialism which has relentlessly been leading Humanity to destruction. That is why our militants, in each country and in every fight that reality and our modest forces enable us to be present, struggle to construct, with patience and with a blind trust in our class, an international leadership who may be able to lead the seizure of power worldwide. We do not proclaim ourselves as being “the” Fourth International in any way. This is a task placed in a dramatically urgent way and must be assumed by each and all revolutionaries who agree with this need and who agree with a program with sound principles and revolutionary coherency for it. We are aware that this is a task not only of the IWL-FI, although we take it as our priority. We have built the IWL-FI but to serve this greater strategic task – to reconstruct the Fourth International. We have built the IWL-FI to put all our militant forces and theoretical, programmatic, morals and practical accumulation over nearly 70 years as part of the struggles of the labor movement and Trotskyism in the service of rebuilding the Fourth International, so that it can turn to be what was the Third International of Lenin and Trotsky: a true World Party of Socialist Revolution. This, which is a historical need, sharpens to the most these days, where on one hand, the capitalist-imperialist system is experiencing one of its worst economic, social and political crisis and, on the other, the masses have begun to fight back the capitalist attacks in different parts of the planet, mainly in the European continent and in the amazing process of revolutions in north Africa and Middle East. For these reasons and more, we invite you, fellow comrades, to join us in our international campaign to celebrate these 30 years of the IWL-FI through a variety of activities, events and materials that we will be conducting and publishing throughout 2012. We will be posting on our website several articles rescuing our history and historical positions as well as news of the activities to be undertaken in the countries where the IWL-FI operates. We start with a transcript of an oral intervention of Nahuel Moreno in that founding Conference of 1982, in which he rightly said that “The existence of an orthodox Trotskyist tendency is a fact” stating an axiom that marked all his life as a revolutionary leader: “I strongly state that all national parties that are not part of a Bolshevik International organization, with an international leadership, makes more and more mistakes and a fundamental one: because if it is a national Trotskyist party it inevitably ends up by denying the Fourth International and moving to opportunistic or sectarian positions, and then disappear. If it isTrotskyist the party must be part of an international party, or disappear”. |