The Revolutionary International and the Reconstruction of the Fourth International

The global crisis of capitalism has entered a new phase. War has become the dominant feature of the international situation; the world order that emerged from the Second World War is in the process of disintegration; the struggle between the great powers is intensifying on all fronts; economic contradictions are worsening and the masses are once again periodically bursting onto the political scene. Humanity is once again faced with the choice posed by Rosa Luxemburg: socialism or barbarism.

There is an urgent need for a workers’ international to respond to capitalism’s drive towards war and barbarism. The rebellions against the austerity measures of the capitalist crisis. The threat from the far right. The internationalist tendencies expressed in the movement for Palestine and in the rejection of militarism and conscription. We workers need to establish our own General Staff capable of leading our struggles to victory, in the fight for workers’ governments. We put forward to the world’s working-class vanguard the proposal to refound a revolutionary workers’ international. By virtue of its programme and methods, this international must be the Fourth International. The historical conditions that gave rise to the Fourth Internationalist proposal remain in place. The strategic premises of its programme remain entirely relevant today because they express the objective contradictions of contemporary capitalism. The reconstruction of the Fourth International is therefore not a matter of formal continuity, but a political necessity imposed by the development of the global class struggle.

I. War as the dominant feature of the international situation

War constitutes the dominant feature of the current historical stage. We are not witnessing a mere accumulation of regional conflicts but the manifestation of a general trend towards an ever-widening confrontation between the major capitalist powers. Ukraine, Palestine, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and the trade, technological and financial wars are all part of the same international crisis.

The growing militarisation of the economy, the rearmament of the major powers, the expansion of military alliances, the rise in arms spending and the increasingly frequent resort to war reveal that capitalism is attempting to resolve, by force, contradictions that it can no longer address through economic or diplomatic means.

This is not a mechanical return to the world wars of the 20th century. The forms of confrontation have changed. But their substance remains unchanged: the struggle for the division of markets, strategic resources, spheres of influence and positions of global dominance. Economic competition is increasingly leading to military confrontation. The international crisis is set to involve rapprochements, shifts and realignments amongst the main actors, the unfolding of which will ultimately establish a definitive configuration of the opposing blocs in the run-up to a future world war.

War is not an accident of international politics, nor is it the product of particularly aggressive governments. It is an expression of the imperialist phase of capitalism. Consequently, the consistent struggle against war requires combating the social system that engenders it. Any form of pacifism that seeks to separate the struggle for peace from the struggle against capitalism ends up subordinating itself to one of the contending blocs or fostering illusions in a diplomatic solution that is impossible within the existing order.

The current era once again confronts the working class with strategic problems. War alters the conditions of the class struggle, accelerates capital’s offensive against the masses, strengthens Bonapartist and fascist tendencies, and reopens the prospect of major revolutionary confrontations. The formulation of an internationalist policy must be based on this characterisation of the current stage.

II. War expresses the historical crisis of capitalism

War is the most acute manifestation of the historical crisis of the social system founded on private ownership of the means of production and on the division of the world into rival nation-states. The trend towards world war demonstrates that the contradictions of capitalism have reached a stage of development that can no longer be resolved by peaceful means.

Both world wars were preceded by profound economic crises that disrupted the balance of the capitalist system. The current phase reproduces this trend in new forms. The capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China did not usher in a new historical cycle of global capitalist prosperity. On the contrary, far from overcoming its contradictions, it exacerbated the crises of overproduction, expanded the world market on increasingly unstable foundations, and paved the way for economic upheavals and crises of even greater magnitude.

The international financial crisis of 2008 marked a turning point. Despite massive intervention by governments and central banks, global capitalism has failed to overcome its consequences. The growth of public and private debt, the fall in productivity, trends towards stagnation, the proliferation of speculative bubbles and recurring financial upheavals demonstrate that the crisis remains unresolved. At the same time, imperialism failed in its attempt to achieve a semi-colonisation of the former Soviet space and China and, in this way, to overcome its crisis.

The global offensive currently being waged by Trump constitutes an attempt by US imperialism to regain the initiative and the leading role it has lost, and to reshape the world according to its needs. War appears to be an attempt by the major powers – first and foremost the US and the European powers – to use force to alter a balance of power that the economy can no longer resolve.

Faced with this reality, numerous left-wing currents characterise the crisis as a succession of imbalances, maladjustments or short-term disruptions in the functioning of capitalism. In doing so, they reduce the crisis to a cyclical phenomenon and overlook its systemic nature. This interpretation inevitably leads to seeking solutions within capitalism itself and to fostering illusions in an eventual recovery of the system.

The current crisis has a different scope. It expresses the historical exhaustion of capitalist social relations and the growing incompatibility between the development achieved by the productive forces, on the one hand, and private ownership of the means of production and the framework of nation states, on the other. War, recurring economic crises, chronic indebtedness, militarism and the constant assault on the living conditions of the masses are different manifestations of the same historical contradiction.

The choice facing humanity therefore remains as relevant as ever. The crisis of capitalism will not spontaneously lead to a superior society. It may lead to new forms of barbarism or pave the way for socialist revolution. The resolution of this contradiction depends on the conscious intervention of the working class and the building of its revolutionary leadership. The historical cycle that began with the October Revolution remains ongoing.

III. The crisis of the imperialist order and the relative decline of US hegemony

The centre of gravity of the global capitalist crisis lies in the disintegration of the imperialist order established under US hegemony at the end of the Second World War. For decades, that order rested on US economic, financial, monetary and military supremacy and on a set of international institutions designed to guarantee the stability of global capitalist domination.

That system has entered a deep crisis. The United States remains the leading imperialist power, but its capacity to organise and stabilise the world order is increasingly eroded. The uneven development of capitalism, the rise of new competitors and the deepening of economic contradictions have weakened the foundations of US hegemony.

The crisis of the post-war order is evident in the deterioration of the institutions that for decades underpinned the international system. The growing criticism of the IMF, the paralysis of the WTO, the tensions within Western military alliances, and the increasingly frequent recourse to economic sanctions, trade wars and military coercion all reflect the loss of effectiveness of the traditional mechanisms of imperialist domination. It is also evident in the devaluation of the dollar and its decline as a store of value and means of international payment, as well as in the depreciation and loss of confidence in US Treasury bonds on the markets.

Europe is one of the most obvious manifestations of this crisis. Economic stagnation, the loss of competitiveness, the energy crisis, rising military spending and Europe’s growing strategic subordination to the United States reveal the relative decline of the old European powers within the global system.

The crisis of US hegemony is intensifying competition amongst the major powers for control of markets, strategic resources, technologies and spheres of influence. The breakdown of the old international order is thus one of the main drivers of contemporary trends towards war.

IV. The disintegration of the imperialist order has not given rise to a multipolar world

The crisis of the imperialist order has not given rise to a new international system. The breakdown of US hegemony and the weakening of the institutions that emerged after the Second World War must not be confused with the consolidation of a multipolar order. The crisis of the old order is a fact; the existence of a replacement order is a fiction.

China’s economic and military rise, Russia’s resurgence as a regional power, and the increased international influence of other states reflect significant shifts in the global balance of power. However, no single power or coalition of powers has managed to establish a new equilibrium capable of replacing the system in crisis. The defining feature of this period is precisely the absence of a new, stable order.

The BRICS reflect this reality. Their development reflects the tensions within the international system and the aspiration of certain national bourgeoisies to secure a more favourable position in the global distribution of markets, finance and strategic resources. Yet they do not constitute a homogeneous bloc nor a historical alternative to the existing capitalist order. The profound political, economic and geopolitical contradictions amongst their members prevent them from being characterised as the embryo of a new international system.

China occupies a central place in this process. Its extraordinary economic growth has profoundly altered the structure of global capitalism. However, this rise has not given rise to an alternative order. China has become a major capitalist power integrated into the global market and engaged in a growing dispute with the United States over the appropriation of markets, technologies, raw materials and spheres of influence. This rivalry reflects the crisis of the existing order; it does not signify its overcoming.

Theories of multipolarity draw mistaken political conclusions. They present the relative weakening of the United States as the emergence of a more balanced or progressive order and fuel illusions that humanity might find a way out by replacing one hegemony with another. From the standpoint of revolutionary socialism, no capitalist power can offer an alternative to the historic crisis of capitalism.

The absence of a new international balance of power is one of the main factors contributing to global instability. The struggle to define a new balance of power between the major powers fuels tendencies towards war, militarism and widespread confrontation. The historical alternative is not a transition to a multipolar world, but the choice between a deepening of capitalist barbarism and the struggle for a socialist reorganisation of world society.

V. War once again divides the field within international Marxism

Imperialist wars put all political programmes and organisations to the test. As happened in 1914 with the collapse of the Second International and on the eve of the Second World War, war once again draws a dividing line between those who subordinate the workers to one of the opposing capitalist blocs and those who defend a policy of class independence.

The war in Ukraine has revealed a profound alignment of broad sections of the left with the opposing camps. One section has ended up aligning itself with NATO and the Western powers under the guise of a supposed defence of democracy, human rights or national self-determination. Another has capitulated to ‘campism’, presenting Russia, China or the BRICS as a progressive or anti-imperialist bloc and attributing to them a historical mission that is at odds with their nature as capitalist powers.

Between these two positions, intermediate formulations proliferate which, under the guise of an independent policy, ultimately align with one of the conflicting camps. The abstraction of certain aspects of reality – such as the right to national self-determination or resistance to military aggression – when detached from the overall nature of the war and the intervention of the major powers, frequently leads to political conclusions that favour one of the opposing blocs.

Positions have also emerged that champion a supposed ‘independent Ukrainian resistance’, without drawing all the conclusions that follow from the Ukrainian state’s military, financial and political subordination to the Western powers. These positions reflect the difficulty faced by broad sections of the left in maintaining a policy of class independence in the face of conflicts dominated by the intervention of the major powers.

The policy of the proletariat cannot be derived from national sympathies or geopolitical preferences. It must be based on the role of the conflicting states on the international stage, the class nature of the war, and the historical interests of the workers. For this reason, we revolutionary socialists reject any subordination to any of the opposing capitalist powers and defend an independent internationalist policy.

The war once again highlights the relevance of an old lesson from the revolutionary workers’ movement: the workers’ main enemy is to be found in their own country. Only on the basis of this principled distinction can a policy be developed that is capable of uniting workers from all countries against imperialism, war and the social system that breeds them. In opposition to the imperialist European Union of warmongering and austerity, on the one hand, and to reactionary chauvinism – which found its clearest expression in Brexit – on the other, we advocate the socialist unity of all workers and peoples of Europe, including Russia.

VI. Proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism

The demarcation from the competing capitalist powers finds its positive expression in proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism. These principles are not mere propaganda formulas, nor are they slogans of the past. They constitute the only policy capable of defending the historical interests of the working class in an era of wars, crises and revolutions.

Proletarian internationalism is based on an objective reality: the common interests of workers in all countries in the face of capital. Whilst the national bourgeoisies seek to mobilise the masses behind their military and strategic objectives, the task of revolutionaries is to strengthen the international unity of the working class against all capitalist governments and against all imperialist blocs.

Revolutionary defeatism does not mean indifference to the outcome of the war, nor a passive attitude towards events. It means rejecting any collaboration with one’s own bourgeoisie and fighting against the policy of ‘national unity’ that inevitably accompanies military conflicts. In imperialist wars, the defence of democracy or national security constitutes the ideological rhetoric through which the ruling classes attempt to subordinate the working class to objectives that are alien to their interests.

War profoundly alters the political and social situation. Increased military spending, inflation, the deterioration of living conditions, the curtailment of democratic freedoms and the strengthening of repressive apparatuses generate new contradictions and fuel the resistance of the masses. The task of revolutionaries is to intervene in these struggles with an independent policy, directing them against the capitalist class and its state.

Pacifism is an inadequate and illusory response. War cannot be eliminated through diplomatic appeals, international conferences or agreements between governments that represent the very same capitalist interests responsible for its existence. As long as the social causes that give rise to it persist, any peace will be precarious and will pave the way for new conflicts.

The struggle against war demands transforming the crisis it provokes into a crisis of the bourgeoisie’s rule. The strategic task of the proletariat is not to choose between opposing capitalist powers, but to transform imperialist war into a civil war against their own bourgeoisies, in order to fight for a historic solution: the conquest of power and the socialist reorganisation of society.

VII. Wars of national liberation against imperialism

The fundamental contradiction of contemporary society pits capital against labour. However, imperialism does not eliminate other historical contradictions; rather, it reproduces and deepens them. Among these, the national question occupies a central place. The economic, political and military domination of the great powers over oppressed peoples and nations remains a fundamental feature of the world order.

We revolutionary socialists distinguish between oppressor nations and oppressed nations. We do not adopt a neutral position towards this contradiction. The struggle of peoples subjected to imperialist aggression, occupation or domination has a progressive character because it weakens the mechanisms of oppression upon which the global imperialist system rests. We revolutionaries are distinguished by our support for the military defence of the oppressed nation against an imperialist power, not only if the oppressed government is relatively progressive, but even if it is repressive or reactionary in character. We maintain that, to be successful, the anti-colonial struggle must be prepared to arm the population and expropriate the bourgeoisie, as in the revolutions in Cuba and China.

This position does not imply granting political support to the bourgeois governments or leaderships of oppressed nations. The national bourgeoisie is incapable of carrying through a consistent struggle against imperialism to its conclusion because its material interests bind it to the capitalist order it claims to be fighting. The theses of the permanent revolution remain a suitable tool for explaining the dynamics of the contemporary revolution. The political independence of the working class is an indispensable condition for the national struggle to be carried through to its ultimate conclusion.

The imperialist aggressions of recent decades confirm this characterisation. Palestine is the most obvious example of a nation subjected to systematic oppression by the State of Israel, which is supported politically, militarily and financially by the major Western powers. Defending the Palestinian people’s right to resist this oppression forms part of the general struggle against imperialism. The differences in programme and political perspectives that we socialists hold with Hamas and other organisations in Gaza cannot be used as an excuse to shirk the struggle as it is being waged on the ground, as has been the case with left-wing currents such as the PTS in Argentina. We uphold the right of the Palestinian people to rebel using all means at their disposal. The left’s pacifist stance on this issue reveals an acquiescence to the pressure and media bombardment exerted by imperialism and Zionism.

The same applies to the attacks and threats directed against Iran and other countries subjected to military, economic or diplomatic pressure from the major powers. Defeating such aggression is in the interests of the oppressed peoples and the international working class. No imperialist intervention can provide a progressive solution to the national, democratic or social problems of the countries subjected to its domination.

The fact that bourgeois nationalism sometimes takes on reactionary, religious or ethnic ideological traits does not alter the position of revolutionaries in the national struggle against imperialism. Marxists’ analysis of any conflict does not start from its ideological framework or the rhetoric of its protagonists, but from the actual social structure that is in conflict and the social and national interests at stake. The Western media are fond of presenting conflicts in Africa and the Middle East as the result of age-old hatreds, when every single one of them is necessarily rooted in capitalist disputes and the actions of imperialism in those regions, with the full weight of their relatively recent colonial pasts. The revolutionary debate and demarcation required to overcome Islamism in the ground it has gained as a form of confrontation with imperialism – particularly in the face of the retreat of a significant cohort of national leaderships that presented themselves under the guise of secularism and national liberation, only to surrender completely to subordination to imperialism and Zionism – must be achieved by demonstrating that socialists are the most effective leadership of the national struggle.

The socialists’ dispute with religious and nationalist leaderships has nothing in common with imperialist propaganda that portrays them as ‘barbarism’ in contrast to the ‘civilisation’ of bombs and ethnic cleansing. The ideologically reactionary nature of sections of the Palestinian resistance or other militant groups has been used as part of the arguments put forward by those who have adopted pacifist or neutralist positions in the Middle East conflicts. We denounce this as tantamount to endorsing imperialist propaganda from the left. Any military action against Zionism and imperialism is a response to a process of colonisation, ethnic cleansing and aggression that has existed for far longer. Islam ophobia and propaganda in general against migrants from the exploited world are the hallmarks of the far right, but they also have variants presented as secular, progressive and even as defenders of women and the LGBTI community. Just as the mass movement for Palestine has consistently responded to the ‘pinkwashing’ of imperialism and Zionism, the architects of genocide and imperialist wars are the worst oppressors of all humanity, and we reject their attempts to cloak themselves in any progressive banner.

The struggle against national oppression and the struggle for socialism form part of the same historical process. Only the independent action of the working class, at the head of all exploited and oppressed sectors, can see the struggle against imperialism through to the end and pave the way for genuine national and social emancipation. The socialist revolution is not opposed to the national aspirations of oppressed peoples; it constitutes their only consistent and lasting solution. This strategic orientation is summarised in the following slogans: imperialism out of the Middle East; for the destruction of the State of Israel; for a single, secular and socialist Palestine, within the framework of the socialist unity of all the peoples of the Middle East.

VIII. The struggle against the far right

The trend towards imperialist war is reflected on the political stage by the proliferation of far-right and fascist-leaning forces. The far right is in power in the United States, Israel, Italy and much of Latin America. It stands a chance of winning in no less than the UK, Germany and France. These forces, which embody governments waging a direct offensive against the working class, are emerging, in part, as a result of the failure of capitalist democracy and its traditional forces to provide a solution to the most basic aspirations of the masses. At the same time, they arise from capital’s need to discipline the ‘home front’ at a time when it is preparing to advance imperialist war. In some cases, they differ from classical forms of fascism in that they are not based on shock troops recruited from sections of the petty bourgeoisie. They seek to split the working class itself by using the tools of the state, pursuing racist, anti-immigrant, sexist, homophobic, anti-trade union and even anti-communist policies. In other cases, fascist tendencies emerge more clearly, as evidenced by the anti-immigrant police in the United States (ICE) or the armed and vigilante reprisals carried out by Zionist settlers in the West Bank.

The rise of the right does not, however, rule out the possibility of a militant surge by workers and young people into the political process. This is demonstrated by the extraordinary rebellion of workers and peasants in Bolivia and the student mobilisation against Kast in Chile. In the United States, the ‘No Kings’ protests brought eight million people onto the streets, whilst young people played a leading role in university occupations in protest against the genocide in Palestine. In Italy, the working class took action, through a general strike and blockades, to bring the war machine, arms production and shipments to a standstill.There have been strikes against labour and pension reforms. Other uprisings have taken place against monetarist austerity measures, as in Kenya, or against governments with a progressive or nationalist slant that have turned deeply reactionary, as in Albania or Nepal.

In many of these experiences, the working class’s potential for struggle has been laid bare, alongside its enormous crisis of leadership. Many of these uprisings have led to adjustments within the framework of the same political system or have petered out due to the working class’s severe lack of leadership. Several of the uprisings associated with Generation Z have even resulted in reactionary outcomes. On the other hand, there have been remarkable shifts towards seeking a left-wing solution, generally channelled through various forms of progressivism or the institutional left.

The lesson to be drawn from these processes is that the momentum of the struggle must go hand in hand with the building of a revolutionary political force of the workers. Only the independent action of the working class, acting as the leadership of all oppressed sectors, can see the struggle against exploitation, oppression and all forms of barbarism engendered by capitalism through to the end.

In the struggle against political reaction, it is necessary to distinguish the popular front strategy from the tactic of the workers’ united front. Whilst the former entails the political subordination of the working class to the programme, methods and institutions of the capitalist class – which neutralises the direct intervention of the masses and paves the way for the triumph, sooner rather than later, of political reaction – the latter represents the driving force of the class struggle, that is, the direct action of all the working-class forces present, whilst always defending the political independence of the workers.

The unfolding capitalist crisis is having a dissolving effect on traditional political regimes: outsiders with new or improvised political forces are governing in more than a dozen countries. The British political system, regarded as a robust two-party system, is splitting along left- and right-wing lines, with successive Conservative and Labour e failures and a migration of their voters towards the neo-fascism of Reform UK or a left-leaning version of the Green Party. The same is happening in France with surges in support for the National Rally and La France Insoumise. In the United States, although the two-party system is formally maintained, very distinct factions have developed within it: both fascist-leaning ones, such as Trump’s MAGA movement, which controls the Republican Party apparatus, and the DSA, which leads a broad social-democratic wing that holds more than 200 elected offices and, under Mamdani, has taken control of New York City—the country’s largest city and the richest in the world. The DSA’s reformism, whilst developing as the left wing of an imperialist party, does not preclude it from drawing on militant, left-wing positions, including support for the Palestinian cause and the condemnation of genocide. Overall, there is a trend towards political polarisation.

In many cases, shifts to the left reflect a tendency towards the radicalisation of sections of the masses. This tendency, however, must be distinguished from the democratising orientation of the political leaderships which, for the time being, are capitalising on these shifts. We revolutionary socialists intervene in these processes by shunning both unadulterated sectarianism—which condemns us to political marginalisation—and opportunism, which leads us to dissolve into a form of leftism that defends the prevailing order. Instead, we intervene through a programmatic and combative struggle, advancing a programme of transitional demands whilst always maintaining our political independence.

IX. Class-based political independence against all forms of collaboration with the bourgeoisie

The struggle against war, imperialism, the far right and the capitalist crisis demands the strictest political independence of the working class. No form of class collaboration can offer a progressive solution to the contradictions of our time. The subordination of workers to sections of the bourgeoisie, even in the most radical or reformist forms, ultimately reinforces the rule of capital and politically disarms the masses.

The historical experience of the recent period fully confirms this conclusion. Where broad sections of the left placed their hopes in nationalist, progressive or reformist governments, they ended up adapting to the management of the capitalist state. The defence of the ‘lesser evil’, of democratic fronts or of supposed intermediate stages systematically led to the abandonment of an independent working-class policy.

Latin America offers numerous examples of this experience. Chavism in Venezuela, the Workers’ Party governments in Brazil, the various forms of Peronism in Argentina and other manifestations of Latin American nationalism and progressivism were presented as alternatives to neoliberalism and imperialist domination. However, none of them altered the social foundations of capitalism, nor did they resolve the fundamental problems facing the working masses. On the contrary, they ended up managing the system’s contradictions and passing on the costs of its crises to the population.

The alignment of broad sections of the left with these governments had profound consequences. Instead of developing an independent political alternative, they acted as critical supporters or direct allies of movements whose horizons remained within the confines of capitalism. This approach weakened the working class’s ability to intervene with a policy of its own and, in many cases, facilitated the subsequent rise of reactionary and far-right forces.

The same logic is evident in support for democratic coalitions, broad fronts or electoral alliances formed in the name of defending institutions, fighting fascism or preserving partial gains. Experience shows that subordination to sections of the bourgeoisie does not strengthen the struggle against reaction. On the contrary, it allows the right to regain ground and paves the way for it to eventually seize power, leading to fresh frustrations and new defeats for workers.

This progressive left is in retreat due to the failure of Latin American progressive governments, which have aligned themselves with the International Monetary Fund and US imperialism, just as Syriza has in Greece and the PSOE-Unidos Podemos government. Thousands have looked to Mélenchon, Corbyn, Mamdani and others for a path to socialism or some form of social change, yet all they have found are disappointments, demobilisation and frustrations. Tens of thousands have shown that they want a militant left-wing channel, but have encountered only electoral apparatuses that serve to perpetuate the system. The scope for reformism is very limited in times of capitalist disaster and war.

Class-based political independence does not mean isolation, nor indifference to the real events of the class struggle. It means actively intervening in them with a programme of our own, driving forward the independent mobilisation of workers and fighting to wrest political leadership of the masses from the reformist, nationalist and bureaucratic currents. Only on this basis can a revolutionary alternative capable of tackling the tasks posed by the times be developed.

X. The Relevance of the Transitional Programme Method

War, the economic crisis and capital’s offensive against the living conditions of the masses lend renewed relevance to the method of the Transitional Programme. The fundamental contradiction of our era remains that between the maturity of the objective conditions for a socialist reorganisation of society and the absence of a revolutionary leadership capable of leading the working class towards the conquest of power.

The immediate demands of the working class are increasingly coming up against the limits of capitalism. The defence of wages, jobs, pensions, healthcare, education, housing and democratic freedoms comes into conflict with the demands of finance capital, public debt, militarism and the preservation of capitalist profits. Even the most basic demands increasingly highlight the need to challenge capitalist ownership and the power of the state.

Transitional slogans form the bridge between immediate struggles and the struggle for power. They do not represent a minimum programme aimed at humanising capitalism, nor a set of arbitrary demands. They arise from the concrete needs of the masses and, through their own dynamics, lead to the need for a revolutionary transformation of society.

The sliding scale of wages and working hours, the redistribution of working hours without wage cuts in the face of unemployment, the opening of company accounts, workers’ control of production, the nationalisation of the banking sector and foreign trade under workers’ management, the expropriation of monopolies and the repudiation of usurious debts are examples of demands that link immediate needs with the struggle for workers’ government.

The relevance of this programme is particularly clear in an era of war and militarisation. Whilst governments allocate increasing resources to the arms race and shift the cost of the crisis onto the masses, transitional demands make it possible to unify workers’ defensive struggles with an overarching political perspective against the rule of capital.

War is an expression of capitalist barbarism, but it is also a powerful factor in revolutionary crises. The great wars of the 20th century were accompanied by revolutionary upsurge that altered the course of history. The task of revolutionaries is to intervene in current struggles with a programme capable of transforming the resistance of the masses into a conscious struggle for the conquest of power and the socialist reorganisation of society.

XI. Struggles within the trade unions and against various forms of oppression, and the prospect of socialist revolution

In the struggle against the capitalist offensive that dominates the global landscape, the aim is to promote a united front of all workers’ organisations and pave the way for a working-class response commensurate with the needs at hand. The success of the struggle for various social demands is closely linked to the political independence of the workers. The collaborationism that prevails globally amongst the various factions of the trade union bureaucracy – and which acts as a dam holding back the workers’ struggle – stems from their role as agents of capital within workers’ organisations. In this context, the demand that workers’ organisations break with the bourgeoisie, the state and the employers’ parties takes on particular relevance. The struggle for the political independence of workers’ organisations is, above all, a means of accelerating the process of separating the rank-and-file from their bureaucratic leadership and its policy of compromise and ties to the capitalist state and its parties, and of establishing a class-conscious leadership of the labour movement aimed at opening up a new trade union and political perspective.

To this end, it is necessary to promote anti-bureaucratic united fronts in all trade unions, student centres and federations, with the aim of ousting the trade union and student bureaucracies and reclaiming these organisations to transform them into organs of the class struggle of workers and young people, and in this way to underpin the cause of national and social emancipation in each country and on a global scale.

We revolutionary socialists are committed to organising the hardest-hit sections of the working class, including the unemployed, the underemployed and those in precarious employment, as well as migrant workers. Stigmatisation, persecution and the relentless attacks by bourgeois governments in every corner of the world against these sections are commonplace. The fundamental aim of these attacks has been to neutralise the potential for struggle that lies within these sectors when they are set in motion. The piquetero movement in Argentina bears witness to this. The refusal of left-wing forces – as is the case in Argentina with the PTS – to take upon themselves the organisation and mobilisation of the most marginalised sections of the Argentine working class is a conservative stance. One can only speak of genuine progress in class consciousness when the workers’ vanguard unconditionally defends any section of the working class – regardless of their background, nationality or circumstances – against the abuses of the capitalist state.

The crisis of capitalism is not only expressed in the economic exploitation of the working class. It also manifests itself in the intensification of multiple forms of oppression affecting broad sections of the population. Environmental degradation, the oppression of women, discrimination against sexual minorities, racism, the persecution of immigrants and the denial of basic democratic rights are all part of the intolerable contradictions accumulating in contemporary society.

Revolutionaries play an active role in these struggles because every form of oppression strengthens the domination of capital and fragments the resistance of the exploited. The defence of democratic, environmental, cultural and social demands forms an inseparable part of the general struggle against the existing order.

At the same time, we reject views that present these struggles as autonomous processes or as disconnected from the capitalist social structure. The various forms of oppression have their own specific dynamics, but they find in capitalism a powerful mechanism for their reproduction and intensification. The destruction of the environment, the commodification of social life and the systematic use of prejudice and discrimination respond to deep-seated needs of the prevailing regime of exploitation.

For this reason, revolutionaries oppose both the subordination of these struggles to the parties of the ruling class and the identity-based conceptions that separate them from the class struggle. The effective emancipation of oppressed sectors requires tackling the social roots that fuel these forms of oppression, and not merely their most visible manifestations.

The task is to promote the unity of the working class with all exploited and oppressed sectors on the basis of a common programme of social transformation. Far from standing in opposition to these struggles, the socialist perspective offers them a coherent way forward, by linking their immediate demands to the struggle against the economic and political power of capital.

XII. Against opportunism, sectarianism and propagandism. The struggle to win over the masses

The historic crisis of capitalism raises the need for a revolutionary leadership capable of leading the working class towards the conquest of power. This task requires simultaneously combating two deviations which, in opposite forms, lead the labour movement away from that objective: opportunism and sectarianism.

Opportunism adapts the socialist programme to the demands of bourgeois democracy, reformist governments or trade union bureaucracies. In the name of political realism, the gradual build-up of forces or the defence of the lesser evil, it ends up subordinating class independence to the interests of the bourgeoisie. Its inevitable consequence is the demobilisation of the workers and the abandonment of the struggle for power.

Sectarianism represents the opposite deviation. It confuses the defence of principles with political isolation, replaces intervention in the real movement of the masses with abstract propaganda, and refuses to contest the leadership of the workers where they are developing their political experience. A correct programme loses all value if it does not find a way to transform itself into a material force.

The struggle to win over the masses requires intervention in all the arenas where workers and young people are active. Revolutionaries participate in trade unions to confront the bureaucracy and win back the workers’ organisations; they take part in elections to use the parliamentary platform in the service of the class struggle; they participate in student unions, grassroots organisations and mass movements to contest their leadership against reformist and conciliatory tendencies.

Such involvement does not mean adapting the programme to the regime’s institutions or fostering illusions in them. Parliamentary, trade union or electoral activity is subordinate to a revolutionary strategy based on the independent mobilisation of the masses, direct action and organisation from below. Revolutionaries use all available platforms to develop the political consciousness of the working class and strengthen its organisation.

The struggle against opportunism, sectarianism and propagandism expresses the same strategic necessity: to unite the uncompromising defence of the socialist programme with active engagement in the real-life experience of the masses. Only on this basis can a revolutionary leadership be built that is capable of transforming the crises of capitalism into victories for the socialist revolution.

XIII. The Relevance of the Struggle for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The struggle for power inevitably raises the question of the state. The socialist revolution does not consist in gradually conquering the institutions of bourgeois democracy, nor in using the existing state apparatus for different purposes. It entails the destruction of the bourgeois state, its permanent bureaucracy, its armed forces, its repressive apparatus and the entire system of class domination, and its replacement by a new type of state based on the direct political organisation of the workers.

Marx termed this form of state the dictatorship of the proletariat. Far from representing an arbitrary or despotic regime, it constitutes the political rule of the vast exploited majority over the expropriated capitalist minority. Its task is to break the resistance of the classes ousted from power, defeat attempts at capitalist restoration, confront international counter-revolutionary intervention, and reorganise the economy on new social foundations. In this sense, it constitutes a form of democracy infinitely superior to bourgeois democracy, because it places political and economic power in the hands of those who produce social wealth.

The organs of this new power arise from the self-organisation of the struggling masses: soviets, workers’ councils, factory committees, local bodies and other forms of direct workers’ representation. However, we revolutionaries do not turn these organisational forms into a fetish. Historical experience shows that the organs of workers’ democracy do not possess a predetermined political content. Their orientation depends on the struggle between programmes, tendencies and parties that unfolds within them. The decisive issue remains the political leadership of the revolution.

For this reason, the dictatorship of the proletariat presupposes the struggle for the political hegemony of the revolutionary party within the working class and its organs of power. Far from being incompatible with workers’ democracy, the leading role of the revolutionary party is an indispensable condition for the organs of power of the masses to be able to develop a consistent strategy of social transformation and resist the pressures of the national and international bourgeoisie. Without revolutionary leadership, even the most advanced organs of workers’ democracy can be led astray, paralysed or defeated.

The slogan of ‘workers’ government’ is a popular expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Revolutionary socialists do not equate this slogan with workers’ governments that administer the bourgeois state, nor with parliamentary coalitions relying on existing institutions. A genuine workers’ government can only be based on the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses and on the organs of power arising from their own struggle.

Revolutionaries do not rule out the possibility that, under exceptional circumstances, reformist, centrist or bureaucratic organisations, driven by a profound revolutionary crisis and pressure from the masses, may be forced to make a partial break with the bourgeoisie and take power. It is precisely for this reason that we raise the slogan of a workers’ government. Faced with such a development, revolutionaries would support every effective step towards a break with the bourgeoisie and every measure directed against capital, driving these forward to their ultimate conclusion. But they would maintain their complete political and organisational independence, without joining such governments or assuming responsibility for a leadership whose strategy does not consciously aim at the dictatorship of the proletariat. All historical experience confirms that only a revolutionary party, armed with a socialist programme and an internationalist strategy, can carry the revolution through to its ultimate consequences and transform a workers’ government into an effective instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The abandonment of this perspective is one of the defining features of the contemporary democratising left. Under various guises – radical democracy, democratic expansion, participatory democracy, constituent processes or social republics – the struggle for the destruction of the bourgeois state and for the dictatorship of the proletariat is abandoned. The decisive question of power is replaced by projects to reform and refine the existing democracy. The defence of the dictatorship of the proletariat therefore remains the main dividing line between the socialist revolution and all forms of adaptation to the bourgeois order.

Ultimately, proletarian internationalism finds its highest expression in the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat in every country and for the world socialist revolution. The working class cannot definitively abolish war, exploitation and oppression by merely resisting the attacks of capital or combating certain government policies. It must seize power, destroy the bourgeois state and pave the way for a socialist reorganisation of society. This is the strategic essence of revolutionary internationalism and the fundamental political conclusion drawn from the entire historical experience of the labour movement.

XIV. The Building of Revolutionary Parties and Democratic Centralism

The working class’s struggle for power requires the building of revolutionary parties. The crisis of capitalism, the social upheavals and the revolutionary tendencies that periodically arise from the class struggle do not eliminate the need for conscious political leadership. Historical experience shows that the principal contradiction of our era lies in the gap between the maturity of the objective conditions for socialist revolution and the backwardness of its political leadership.

The crisis of leadership within the working class, as analysed by Leon Trotsky in the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International, remains generally valid, but today it has, nevertheless, a different historical context. This crisis of leadership is not limited to the problem of the political orientation of mass organisations of the working class which subjectively claim to be revolutionary but whose leaderships adopt a reformist line. The period of more than four decades, during which there have been countless uprisings but no successful revolution, is exploited ideologically by the bourgeoisie to instil the idea of an invincible capitalism. The disappearance or loss of influence of the mass reformist workers’ parties has a contradictory nature. On the one hand, insofar as they have lost their power as mechanisms of containment, when uprisings occur they can be more intense. But at the same time, they are a sign of a political impasse for the class as a whole, and even of the possibility that sections of the working class may follow right-wing factions en masse. The majority of the working class is politically disorganised and has even regressed in terms of trade union organisation. The working conditions of the working class itself have become deeply fragmented, and the widespread adoption of remote working in many sectors has added another dimension to the international competition for labour , with a downward trend in wages. The tremendous pressure that the crisis places on the working class at this time is overwhelming and disorganising, but it also gives rise to regular outbursts of struggle against the state and political regimes, which take on violent forms precisely because of the lack of well-oiled and authoritative apparatus for containment. The left that claims to be revolutionary does not currently present itself as an organised alternative to the mass reformist leaderships, but rather as a system of small, fragmented organisations with little capacity to align themselves within a common movement. There are few processes of synthesis and unification, and far more instances of rupture and split in the face of every unexpected turn in the political situation. A great many activists and organisations are capable of organising struggles and becoming involved in mass fronts. When a struggle has managed to gain wider traction, such as the fight against genocide in Palestine, they spring into action, demonstrating the existence of enormous resources for international organisation and action. In this context, the challenge facing the workers’ vanguard is how to give this potential a political expression and a revolutionary perspective.

This course cannot be led by organisations built exclusively for electoral intervention, by opinion-based movements, or by permanent structures that bring together incompatible programmes and strategies. Nor can it be led by revolutionary trade unionist organisations, however effective they may be in trade union struggles, if they do not intervene in the national and international political struggle against the political expressions of the bourgeoisie and its state, and with a perspective of fighting for power. The conquest of power poses tasks that demand political cohesion, strategic continuity, discipline, the training of cadres, and unified intervention in the class struggle.

The revolutionary party is the organisation through which the historical experience of the labour movement, Marxist theory and the day-to-day practice of the class struggle are transformed into an organised political force. Its function is to fight to win over the majority of the working class to a strategy for seizing power and to prepare the conditions for the victory of the socialist revolution.

This conception is incompatible with the theories of so-called ‘broad parties’, ‘pluralist movements’ or ‘parties of permanent tendencies’, which seek to replace programmatic unity with circumstantial agreements between currents with divergent objectives. International experience shows that such structures ultimately end up adapting to the pressures of parliamentarism, electoralism or various forms of reformism.

Democratic centralism is the organising principle of a revolutionary party. The broadest possible political discussion and collective decision-making must be combined with common and disciplined action. The working class faces a highly concentrated ruling class, equipped with the state apparatus, enormous economic resources and powerful instruments of ideological domination. Only a politically cohesive organisation can effectively lead this struggle.

We revolutionaries may even intervene from time to time in the organisational processes of mass working-class parties that are not thoroughly revolutionary in character, but which indicate a progressive step towards a policy of class independence, provided that we carry out work to clarify their strategy and programme ly within them. These processes reflect a shift to the left among significant sections of the working class and deserve not only attention but also encouragement, insofar as their emergence represents a step forward in the political organisation of workers as a class. However, the condition for adopting transitional tactics of this kind must be political action characterised by clarity and open confrontation with reformist or centrist leaders. The countless leftists who have positioned themselves as advisers to reformist or nationalist leaders – from Hugo Chávez to Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn – have done little or nothing to advance an independent, mass-based regroupment of the working class.

The building of revolutionary parties is not an organisational task separate from the programme. It is the concrete means by which the working class can equip itself with a leadership capable of intervening in revolutionary crises and challenging the bourgeoisie for power. Without revolutionary parties rooted in the working class, the crisis of capitalism will continue to come up against the absence of a leadership capable of steering it towards a socialist solution.

XV. The Relevance of the Fourth International and the Struggle for its Reconstruction

The theses set out above lead to a fundamental strategic conclusion. War as the dominant feature of the era; the historic crisis of capitalism; the disintegration of the imperialist order that emerged after the Second World War; the absence of a new world order to replace it; the continuing relevance of the strategic struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the defence of proletarian internationalism through revolutionary defeatism;the struggle against reactionary wars between great powers; the defence of oppressed nations against imperialism; the need for class-based political independence; the continued relevance of the method of the Transitional Programme; the struggle against all forms of oppression from a socialist perspective; and the building of revolutionary parties constitute the programmatic foundations of a Revolutionary International.

These premises are encapsulated in the programme, strategy and methods of the Fourth International, founded in 1938. Their validity does not stem from the authority of its founders, nor from a dogmatic assertion. It stems from the fact that the contradictions which led to its founding remain unresolved and have developed to a greater degree. We continue to live in an era of imperialism, wars and revolutions. The crisis of revolutionary leadership within the proletariat remains the main obstacle preventing the crisis of capitalism from leading to its revolutionary overcoming.

The evolution of the world following the capitalist restoration confirmed this characterisation. Far from ushering in an era of lasting prosperity and stability, global capitalism entered a period of recurring crises, wars, militarisation and social upheaval. The 2008 financial crisis, the intensification of rivalries between the major powers and the growing trend towards war demonstrated that none of the system’s fundamental contradictions has been overcome.

The failure of numerous currents that claimed to be Trotskyist does not invalidate these conclusions. Just as Marxism cannot be judged by the capitulations of social democracy or Stalinism, the validity of the Fourth International cannot be measured by the trajectory of organisations that abandoned their programme or adapted their policies to the pressures of the existing order. We do not confuse the fate of particular organisations with the historical validity of the programmatic premises that gave rise to them.

The reconstruction of the Fourth International does not mean the reunification of scattered groups or the formal proclamation of organisational continuity. It means regrouping the international revolutionary vanguard on the basis of a programme, a strategy and methods capable of responding to the tasks posed by the era. The global nature of the economy, of war and of the class struggle demands an international leadership capable of intervening in a unified manner in the major events of our time.

The building of revolutionary parties in each country and the reconstruction of the Fourth International are inseparable aspects of the same historical task. The socialist revolution will inevitably take on national forms, but it can only triumph definitively as an international revolution. The struggle for a Revolutionary International is therefore neither a doctrinal aspiration nor a propaganda slogan. It is an objective necessity imposed by the global nature of the contradictions of contemporary capitalism.

The relevance of the Fourth International lies in the continued relevance of the historical tasks that gave rise to it and in the continued relevance of its programmatic and strategic foundations. As long as humanity continues to face the choice between socialism and barbarism; as long as imperialism continues to engender wars, exploitation and oppression; and as long as the working class needs a leadership capable of guiding its struggle to the conquest of power, the reconstruction of the Fourth International will remain a strategic task for revolutionaries throughout the world.