complementary political resolution

1. The utilization by the Chinese and Cuban bureaucracies of a penal code establishing extreme repressive measures, including the death penalty, against common crimes and even against political opponents, without these countries being in a situation of civil war, does not in any way constitute a defense of the revolution but rather that of the governing bureaucracies and an intimidation of the people that should be systematically denounced. 

The intimidation against the people seeks to block the development of a political revolution against the bureaucracy; to that extent, it favors the restoration of capitalism in these countries, whose prime actor --together with world capital-- is the state bureaucracy.

2. We ratify the characterization as reactionary of wars between oppressed nations as well as the call for fraternization, unity and common combat of the peoples against the local bourgeoisies and imperialism.

In particular, we denounce that before the fear of a new popular uprising, the Bolivian bourgeoisie has refloated chauvinist agitation on the maritime question. We point out that backwardness and misery in Bolivia are not the consequence of its being penned in continentally but rather of imperialist looting, with the complicity of the Bolivian bourgeoisie itself. We denounce that for the Bolivian exploiters, the demand for access to the sea is linked to the exploitation of gas, that is, to a new national surrender in return for the juicy "commissions" involved.

Against the chauvinist campaign of the Bolivian bourgeoisie, we oppose Out with Mesa; state-ownership without compensation and under workers control of the oil and gas industries, mining and the banking system; unity of the peoples of Bolivia, Chile and all of South America against imperialism and the local bourgeoisies. The progressive solution to Bolivia´s maritime demands, favoring the interests of the exploited peoples of Bolivia and Latin America, can only be found in the context of the socialist unity of Latin America. The workers and peasants governments of Bolivia, Chile and Peru will establish a common plan for the exploitation of the resources of the sea and of the wealth of the region for the benefit of the economic, social and cultural development of all the peoples.

3. The overthrow of a government (people´s insurrection) is inconceivable without its being organized. If the overthrow is not organized, the most that can happen is that other members of the established power replace it. But if the overthrow of the official power is the aim, the overthrow of that power must be an organized activity.

The taking of power is a concrete task, it is not the derived result, either automatic or spontaneous, of other tasks. The uprising of the workers must help the troops to achieve the destabilization of the armed forces. A people that develop enormous sacrifices and takes the struggle to its ultimate consequences runs the risk of suffering a huge defeat if it is not capable of bringing about the outcome of the struggle, the defeat of the enemy.

That outcome, that is, the organization of the taking of power, is an art or a technique, with rules, it requires discipline, it requires prior work. An organized activity to take power at the culminating moment requires a political party of the working class. The strategic finality of the revolutionary party is the struggle for the conquest of political power.

The structuring of dual power does not resolve the question of the taking of power, it exacerbates it. Dual power is not a strategic objective; the workers and peasants government is. The development of dual power has been, in revolutionary history, the most frequent variation; but it is not an absolute law of that development. The limits of dual power and that which has historically pertained to all the people's organizations, can only be overcome by a program and a party, that is, by conscious political organization.

In the particular case of Bolivia, we point out that the demand of the COB for the dissolution of parliament and its replacement by a Popular Assembly is not a proposal for power. On the contrary it is a proposal for co-power with the pro-imperialist democratizing regime (since it does not call for the overthrow of the government), in which the Popular Assembly would be reduced to "controlling" the Executive, that is that the latter would have as its mission that of being the "political commissar" of the bourgeois government. The "co-power" raised by the COB -a Popular Assembly side-by-side with the bourgeois government-reproduces, in a worse manner, the experience of the Popular Assembly of 1971, according to whose nationalist and democratizing majority it was deemed necessary to co-govern with the President, general Torres, and to convert the Popular Assembly into the parliament the latter lacked. In contrast with the COB's proposal, however, the Popular Assembly of 1971 did raise a workers and peasants government, although only in a formal manner. After Banzer's coup d'etat, its exponents recognized that the arming of the masses had never taken place - something they had never attempted.

In opposition to this co-power, we raise: Out with Mesa, the parliament and the judges of the bourgeoisie, dissolve the armed forces and the security forces, to be replaced with the arming of the people, a Constituent Popular Assembly convened by the people's organizations on the basis of a program of transitional demands, workers and peasants government.

4. The uprising in course in Iraq is a manifestation of the complete quagmire of the imperialist occupation and the failure of the plans to "redraw the political map of the Middle East," taken on by US imperialism.

The crisis unleashed by the war and by the bogging down of the occupation no longer refers only to the confrontation between US and European imperialism. It has created a major political crisis inside the US bourgeoisie and State and even within Bush's government itself. The public accusations of Richard Clarke, a former chief of the intelligence services, against Bush for having "scorned" the "threat of terrorism" and used it as an excuse for the invasion of Iraq are an acute manifestation of this crisis in the heart of the political regime, the intelligence services and the Executive. Another manifestation are the declarations of senator Kennedy to the effect that "the problem is Bush," constituting an imperialist version of the old internationalist slogan "the real enemy is at home."

We ratify the necessity and the obligation of using the political crises created by the imperialist wars in the metropolis and the people's repudiation of the massacre in order to organize and mobilize the masses to put an end to the wars by means of the overthrow of the imperialist governments through proletarian revolution.

5. We emphasize the characterization of the capitalist restoration as an unfinished process, transitory and contradictory, as one of the keys to the characterization of the present historical stage.

In particular, we point to the very contradictions that the process of capitalist restoration creates at each step. In Russia, for example, the appropriation of the principal assets and oil and mineral deposits by a highly concentrated oligarchy, sprung from the bowels of the governing bureaucracy itself, is a manifestation of the process of restoration and, at the same time, enters into contradiction with its subsequent development. This to the extent to which:

a. it blocks the development of an intermediate capitalist class, the basis for the development of capitalist accumulation and development inside Russia;

b. is a factor of sharp clashes with foreign capital, without whose involvement the process of restoration is unfeasible;

c. has a markedly parasitic and plundering character, to the extent that it concentrates in the exploitation of the extraordinary profits derived from natural resources such as oil;

d. is a factor of clashes with the governing bureaucracy (as evidenced by the partial confiscation by the government of Putin of the oil companies Yukos and Sibneft) and, also, of the blocking of the continuation of the process of privatizations (gas, electricity, oil pipelines).

6. We emphasize as an important contribution of the "Draft..." the characterization of the various political and social phenomena developed under the common denomination of the so-called "European integration."

The failure of the European Union in the constitution of European capital as a measure of defense against US and Japanese capital characterized by the "Draft...," is made manifest, for example, by the high level of integration of the British arms industry (the country's foremost industry) with its US counterpart and the Pentagon, by the high level of penetration of US investment funds in the principal Spanish industries (Repsol, Telefonica, Endesa) and by the accords between Fiat (the foremost Italian capitalist group) and General Motors for the purchase of the former by the latter. The French government, for its part, is blocking the fusion of the pharmaceutical cartel Aventis with the Swiss-German Novartis with the argument that "French national interest" requires that the centers of investigation and production of Aventis vaccines "remain under French control."

Another manifestation of this failure is the exclusion of Great Britain, under direct US pressure and even against the will of important sectors of the British bourgeoisie, in the common European currency.

7. We emphasize the characterization made by the "Draft..." concerning the central character of participation in elections and parliamentary struggle as a factor allowing for the development of a vast revolutionary political agitation among the broadest masses, for the education of the workers vanguard in the political struggle and for the independent organization of the exploited; and of the subordinate character of the parliamentary struggle in relation to the action of the masses.

8. We salute the struggle developed by the Partido de los Trabajadores (Workers Party) of Uruguay against the future government of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front)-Encuentro Progresista (Progressive Encounter), which we characterize as a bourgeois, anti-worker and pro-imperialist government.

In particular we salute the political campaign carried out by the PT -on which their representative gave a broad report in the Commission-for the formation of an electoral front of the Uruguayan class struggle left to politically regroup the workers vanguard in opposition to the Frente Amplio, even before the latter reaches government.

The central point in Uruguay does not concern, from a revolutionary point of view, the illusions still awakened by the FA (subjugated to Encuentro Progresista with the Whites and the Reds), but rather the accelerated disillusionment suffered by the Latin American center-left, and the inevitable impact this has in the legion of activists and popular fighters. The Uruguayan left deeply scorns the two factors which will quickly wear down the FA government: the failure of the Latin American center-left and the emergence of financial crises even more violent than those of the recent past. The PT of Uruguay bases its delimitation with the pro-imperialist FA-EP on this perspective and direct itself to the vast mass of left-wing militants and popular fighters who are now obliged, by these circumstances, to raise an energetic political realignment.

The Partido Obrero and the Fourth International support with every means at their disposal, the struggle of the Partido de los Trabajadores of Uruguay.

9. We indicate as another of the fundamental contributions of the "Draft..." the precise characterization that it makes concerning the crisis of leadership in the current historical stage, consisting of the rupture of political and organizational continuity of the international proletariat and in the backwardness in the socialist consciousness of the working class as a result of the defeats suffered by the working class, the colonization of the so-called "traditional parties" by imperialism and the resurgence of petite-bourgeois nationalist leaderships in their most backward and even reactionary forms.

The exceptional combination of factors presented by the current historical stage -the crisis of capitalism that threatens humanity with a sinking level of civilization, the tendency of the masses towards rebellion, and the absence of a political leadership on the international plane-raises the historical opportunity for the refoundation of the Workers International, derived, not from ideological precepts, but rather from the nature of the situation itself. The task of refounding workers internationalism and the Fourth International should be understood as a concrete practical task, with its corresponding organizational consequences and conclusions.

10. We ratify the affirmation formulated in the "Draft..." on the validity of raising, in the face of left-wing governments, the slogan Out with the Capitalist Ministers. This slogan expresses, in a practical manner, the demand that the parties claiming to defend the workers break with the bourgeoisie and form an integral part of the conception of the slogan of the workers (or workers and peasants) government as a transitional slogan, whose aim consists in the systematic mobilization of the masses for the purpose of proletarian revolution.

"The chief accusation which the Fourth International advances against the traditional organizations (...)is the fact that they do not wish to tear themselves away from the political semi-corpse of the bourgeoisie. (...)the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership: "Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!" is an extremely important weapon for exposing the treacherous character (of these leaderships). Of all parties and organizations which base themselves on the workers and peasants and speak in their name, we demand that they break politically from the bourgeoisie and enter upon the road of struggle for the workers' and farmers' government...." (Transitional Program).

"This slogan (workers government) signifies, first of all, a policy that consists in developing within the traditional organizations of the masses and in those created by them in the course of their struggles, the comprehension of the question of power being posed and of the fact that the real and integral satisfaction of the popular aspirations demand the taking of power by the workers. When in the course of the struggle itself and as a consequence of the experience of that struggle, those organizations conquer a position of overall political authority, the workers government is the demand we direct to those organizations to prepare the direct struggle for political power. The possibility, however, of the traditional leaderships taking up that struggle for power is remote or exceptional, even under the revolutionary pressure of the masses. (...) In this sense, the demand for a workers government is the method the IV International utilizes, not in order to give a new opportunity for survival to the old leaderships, but rather to conquer the leadership of the masses and the organizations of its combat for the revolutionary vanguard." (Draft...)

11. We ratify the timeliness and validity of the slogans "for the PT to break with the bourgeoisie" and "out with the capitalist ministers" against the government headed by Lula.

The Brazilian situation is characterized by the fact that a party that invoked the name of the workers has not formed a government of the workers but rather, on the contrary, a government of the greatest bourgeois concentration in the history of the country, which governs for the bourgeoisie and imperialism and against the exploited majorities.

What do we tell the masses who voted for Lula? That the most elementary satisfaction of their demands is incompatible with the government of the bourgeoisie. For this reason we demand that the PT break with the bourgeoisie, oust the ministers of the bourgeoisie from the government (which also includes the bourgeois elements inside the PT). That is, a policy that defends the expulsion of the bankers, industrialists and land-owners from the government.

If the unfolding of the capitalist crisis and the people's discontent and mobilization force a political crisis in Lula's government, provoking the expulsion of the capitalist ministers and the Vice-President, the question of political power is raised in Brazil: in that regard we raise the convening of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of a program of transitional demands. If, on the contrary, in the face of the crisis and the pressure of the masses, Lula reinforces his alliance with capital, a frontal assault on the government will be developed, which as it unfolds will also raise the question of political power.

12. We denounce that the nationalist movements that in the past have launched struggles for the emancipation of their countries under colonial tutelage have surrendered to the most abject collaborationism with imperialism, which has co-opted them as factors of contention in their areas of influence (this is the case, especially, of the CNA in all of the sub-Saharan Africa, or of Khadafi in the Greater Magreb and in the Middle East.

This has led to the collapse of these movements, historically secular (in their majority) and progressive, paving the way -particularly on the African continent and throughout almost all of Asia-for the "Islamic" tendencies. This religious wrapper signifies an ideological involution and is the result, transitory, of a set of factors: the betrayals of the historic leadership and the contradictory pressures of imperialism itself and the masses. Generally speaking, when these movements reach power, they submit themselves to the rules of the imperialist international "order."

The Fourth International clearly distinguishes between this retrograde clerical leadership of these movements, which it combats, and the national anti-colonial-anti-imperialist resistance, upon which it bestows its unconditional support; and commits itself to building sections of the Fourth International in these countries in order to dispute the leadership of the masses with these leaderships.

We particularly denounce the damage to the national struggle of Kurdistan occasioned by the nationalist bourgeois leaderships, accomplices to the imperialist occupation of Iraq.

Submitted by: Partido Obrero (Argentina)

PASSED BY MAJORITY

Votes in favor: 75 votes

Votes against: 7 votes

Abstentions: 2 votes

INDICATIVE VOTE OF OBSERVER DELEGATES

Votes in favor: 4 votes

Votes against: none