Policy of the proletariat: OUR FIGHT AGAINST THE CRISIS OF DIRECTION

Masses, 30^th year, n. 572 – September 16^th to 30^th, 2018.

The first and second world wars showed that the last phase of capitalism, which is imperialist, is characterized by social barbarism. Resolved the division of the world between the victorious powers and past the course of reconstruction of Europe, after the great conflagration of 1939-1945 and the Korean War of 1950-1953, the highly developed productive forces once again shocked with the relations of production and with national borders. The crises of overproduction and, consequently, the commercial wars were resumed. Restarted a new stage of armament, of imperialist interventionism and of internationalized civil wars. The exploited masses everywhere and the oppressed nations have borne and bear the impossibility of capitalism continuing to develop the world’s productive forces. Unemployment, underemployment, poverty, misery and hunger, which have always been in the bowels of class society, have been projected on a large scale.

In historical contrast, the Russian revolution of 1917 and the subsequent revolutions in other countries of Europe, Asia and Latin America, broke important links in the world chain of capitalism and paved the way for its transition to socialism. These were gigantic achievements of the international proletariat, which marked much of the twentieth century. In particular, the Russian revolution distinguished itself by having constituted a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leadership. It raised the program and the theory of scientific socialism on a high scale. What made possible the founding of the Third International, whose First Four Congresses extended the internationalist conception, necessarily present in the proletarian revolutions. They forged the world program and tactics, which served as a guide to the construction of communist parties around the world. Programmatic, strategic centralization, based on solid Marxist theory, allowed the Third International to function as the World Party of the Socialist Revolution. This monumental achievement was supported by the internal democracy of the International and its sections. The collective elaboration and the method of criticism and self-criticism practically established democratic centralism. Proletarian internationalism was the pillar of support for the Third International and therefore for the world class struggle. It has shown organizationally and programmatically that every proletarian revolution by its form is national and by its content international. So that the revolution in one country would immediately project itself worldwide. The national achievements of the revolution could not close in on themselves and it was inconceivable to build socialism in one country.

Revolutions are faced with counterrevolution. The proletariat that faces the counterrevolution in its country finds its forces in the revolutions of other countries. In countries where the revolution has triumphed, its strength depends on the development of the revolution in other countries. The Third International was built based on the concrete need for the Russian revolution to rely on the struggle of the world proletariat and thereby to counter the imperialist counterrevolution surrounding it. The centralization of the world proletariat by the Third International, who commanded the communist parties strategically, proved to be a condition for gathering forces opposed to the bourgeois counterrevolution. Not surprisingly, Leninist internationalism rested on the thesis that the survival of the Russian revolution depended on the development of the European revolution.

The programmatic and physical liquidation of the Third International by Josef Stalin disarmed the world proletariat. This disarmament reflected the process of counter-revolution within the working-class state itself, which Trotsky characterized as the terminator of the Russian revolution. The dissolution of the Third International in mid-1943 responded to the demands of imperialism for the Soviet Union to participate in the post-war world-sharing agreements. This route, which initially seemed to serve the defense of the Soviet Union and the strengthening of the world revolutionary movement, actually adapted the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy to the historical interests of imperialism. After the reconstruction process, under the leadership of the American power, imperialism was strengthened and able to reorganize the counterrevolutionary forces, aimed at overthrowing the world proletariat city, which was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was a matter of time before the Stalinist bureaucracy, which eventually generated fractions, concluded as the driving force of capitalist restoration and collapse of the USSR. The defeat of the Russian Left Opposition allowed the Stalinist bureaucracy to sign itself as a termidor. The foundation of the IV International, in 1938, ensured the continuity of the internationalist program of the First Four Congresses of the III International. There were, however, no historical conditions to defeat the Stalinist counter-revolution and to reconstitute the world forces of the proletariat. The triumph of imperialism imposed a devastating retreat to the achievements of proletarian revolutions.

That is why today we face a crisis of direction that is deeper than the one of 1938. The disintegration of the Fourth International in the 1950s and 1960s, hit by revisionism, contributed to further the setback. In 2008, the deepest global crisis of post-war capitalism broke out. Everywhere, the proletariat, the exploited majority and the oppressed nations face brutal attacks on their conditions of existence. The commercial war was finally declared by the United States. The imperialist interventionism is intensified. And the threats of wars between military powers are advancing. It was in these conditions that the Fourth Congress of the Liaison Committee was held, which had as its goal the struggle to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership. The banner of rebuilding the World Party of Socialist Revolution must be wielded by the proletariat and its conscious vanguard. The POR of Brazil has worked harder and harder on internationalist work. This demands the construction of the Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist party within the Brazilian proletariat.