proposed
amendments to the "draft of the programmatic thesis for the congress for
the refoundation of the IV international" - continued
21
April 2004
Point
8
Replace
the third paragraph (beginning "Under the pressure...") with:
The
economic, social, and political contradictions of world capitalism weigh heavily
on the European Union. Centrifugal and centripetal tendencies are combined with
no possibility of foreseeing today a clear line of development. The war in Iraq,
on the one hand, provokes acute division and, on the other hand, reinforces the
dominant Franco-German bloc as the axis of building the union. The historic
tendency of the big bourgeoisie of the continental European countries (in
contrast to that of the English bourgeoisie, more linked to the axis with the
USA) is certainly that of unifying itself as much as possible to compete with US
imperialism. But this tendency finds its strict limits in the general situation
of the crisis of capitalism. In any case, the Fourth International struggles
openly against any tendency in the workers' movement to adapt to the EU, either
in the social-chauvinist form which, in the name of the struggle against the
dominant US imperialism, supports the building of the capitalist union, or in
the form of the utopian perspective of a "social and democratic Europe",
which tends to translate itself into a perspective of pressure to "to
democratize" the imperialist institutions of the EU.
Submitted
by: Franco Grisolia (Progetto Comunista)
NOT
PASSED
Votes
against: Majority
Votes
in favor: 8 votes
Abstentions:
2 votes
INDICATIVE
VOTE OF OBSERVER DELEGATES
Votes
against: Majority
Votes
in favor: 2 votes
Abstentions:
none
Observation:
the Presidium of the Congress don't record the figure of the majority votes
Point
19
Alter
the first line to: "The IV International rejects any form of political
subordination of the Arab workers and peasants with respect to their
bourgeoisies and feudal classes, [even] in the name of unity of the Arab Nation,
and emphasizes the importance of political struggle against the exploiters,
taking into account the peculiarities of the different Arab states."
Add
to the first paragraph:
It
stands on the historical position of the Third International before its
Stalinist degeneration and of the original Fourth International on the necessary
struggle to realize the unity of the Arab nation, artificially divided by
imperialism, in particular after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. But this
perspective can be realized only by the Arab masses under the leadership of the
proletariat in a process of permanent revolution in frontal opposition to all
the feudal-bourgeois, bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois governments and leaderships,
which all betrayed, for their own class interests and their subordinate
relationship to imperialism, the struggle for the unity and national liberation
of the Arab nation. This perspective, therefore, can be realized only as
socialist unity by the overthrow of the present Arab governments and the taking
of power by the workers in all the countries into which the imperialists
artificially divided the Arab nation.
Point
28
Alter
the first line to: "In the course of the present world crisis enormous
social and national struggles have taken place, but the proletariat in the
principal industrial nations have been relatively absent from them, with [the
exception of South Korea and, partially, of Italy and Spain]."
Point
30
Add
to the end of the third paragraph (beginning "In numerous countries..."):
Naturally,
the Fourth International does not confuse in any case the forms, even the most
advanced, of bourgeois democracy with proletarian power and its form of
organization. It rejects therefore the positions -- typical in particular of the
Morenoist tradition ("revolutionary constituent assembly") -- which
confuse the two grounds, as Trotsky criticized the position of the Communist
Party of Italy at the end of the twenties when it put forward the slogan of a
"constituent assembly based on workers' and peasants' committees". The
demand of the constituent assembly makes sense for us only in the same form in
which it was put forward by the Bolsheviks in 1917, in reference to the
democratic illusions of the masses, as a demand useful to overcome those
illusions and to realize the conditions for the creation of council power.
In
sixth paragraph (beginning "In the history of the IV International...")
alter the sentence "In the rainbow of tendencies claiming to be Trotskyist
there exist a wide range of positions on the State, but [the majority have
abandoned openly or de facto] the demand for the dictatorship of the proletariat."
Point
31
In
the last paragraph, replace "The Unified Secretariat of the IV
International has become, at least as a whole, an appendix of the democratizing
petite-bourgeoisie, even in the imperialist countries." with:
The
United Secretariat long ago transformed itself into a revisionist center of
political and organizational destruction (in place of building) of revolutionary
Marxism, at the same times as it tries to present itself as the continuity of
the Fourth International. Because of this it plays a reactionary role and must
be politically destroyed. This is even clearer in this phase, when one of its
most important sections (the DS of Brazil) goes openly to the side of the
bourgeois order, entering the Lula government, while the USFI as a whole
develops a petty-bourgeois democratist program (a "social and democratic
Europe", "radical democracy").
Submitted
by: Franco Grisolia (Progetto Comunista)
NOT
PASSED
Votes
against: Majority
Votes
in favor: 9 votes
Abstentions:
3 votes
INDICATIVE
VOTE OF OBSERVER DELEGATES
Votes
against: Majority
Votes
in favor: 2 votes
Abstentions:
none
Observation:
the Presidium of the Congress don't record the figure of the majority votes