DECLARATION ON THE FINAL DOCUMENT OF THE BUENOS

AIRES MEETING FOR THE REFOUNDING OF

THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

31 May 1998

The Associazione Marxista Rivoluzionaria Proposta of Italy, the Trotskyist League of the United States, and the International Trotskyist Opposition join with the Partido Obrero of Argentina, the Partido Causa Operária of Brazil, the Oposicion Trotskista of Bolivia, the Colectivo En Defensa del Marxismo of Spain, the Partido de los Trabajadores of Uruguay, and the Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece in the call for an International Conference of Workers and the Class-Struggle Left, as part of our joint campaign for the refounding of the Fourth International.

We cannot, however, simply sign the document "For an International Conference of Workers and the Class-Struggle Left." We agree with the general analysis and programmatic and organizational conclusions of the document, which were first set out by the nine organizations in the February 1997 "Declaration of Genova." But we have the following reservations about the new document.

We agree that world capitalism has been in crisis since the beginning of the 1970s and that the capitalists have no solution to the crisis. Their current preferred policy of neoliberalism clothed in bourgeois democracy provides no solution. Nor does the fall of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it removes an element of stability in the previous situation: the counterrevolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy.

We agree that the crisis is deepening on a world scale and will continue to worsen the conditions of workers everywhere, even in the imperialist countries, which can protect themselves for a time by shifting the burden of the crisis to the semicolonies and the former workers' states.

We agree that social tensions are increasing worldwide and that the workers and the oppressed will struggle against the crisis. Explosions like those in France, Albania, South Korea, and Indonesia not only will continue, but will become more frequent. They will provide invaluable experience for the vanguard and the masses and opportunities to build revolutionary parties.

However, we think it essential for Trotskyists to consider carefully the rate of development of the crisis. And here we find the document deficient.

On the economic ground, we think the document exaggerates the importance of stock markets and other financial speculation, relative to the real economy of production and distribution. The October 1987 stock market crash was proportionally greater than the 1929 crash, yet it barely affected production.

World capitalism suffers from an overaccumulation of capital and excess capacity. At some point soon this will lead to a new recession, and at some point later to a depression. But for now the economies of the advanced capitalist countries continue to expand. While conditions are terrible in most of the semicolonies and former workers' states, for the moment many of their economies are actually growing.

On the political ground, we think the document is somewhat too mechanical in linking the economic crisis and the development of revolutionary struggle. In many of the semicolonies and the former workers' states conditions are bad enough to provoke revolutions. Yet in most of them we see no revolutions. For the moment, the explosions are contained.

We think the document generalizes too much about the political development of the masses and overstates the perspective of revolutionary confrontations in the next period. In particular, we think it premature to talk of the "Latin-Americanization" of the struggle in Western Europe, or Western Europe being "on the eve of revolutionary confrontations."

In this framework, we think the document's formulations on the popular front confuse the question.

We agree that imperialism for now would prefer to use bourgeois democracy, rather than military or other dictatorship, to block the radicalization of the mass movement. At times this includes support for center-left coalitions and popular fronts. We agree that the center-left coalitions and popular fronts of today have a more openly pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist policy than the popular fronts of the 1930s.

And we agree that Trotskyists must unmask these and all other forms of class collaboration, polemicizing as necessary against their "far-left" apologists, including those who identify themselves as Trotskyist.

But we think the document incorrectly tends to identify the political dynamics of the center-left coalitions and popular fronts of today with the dynamics of the popular fronts of the past.

In the name of "democracy" and "the struggle against fascism" - not "socialism," as the document says - the popular fronts of the 1930s sought to block revolutionary upsurges in France, Spain, and elsewhere. The Communist Parties rationalized this to their ranks as "Now democracy and anti-fascism, later socialism."

The dynamic of blocking revolutionary upsurges differentiated the 1930s popular fronts from previous forms of class collaboration, such as the "Left Bloc" between the Socialists and the Radicals in France in the 1920s, the "Lib-Lab government" of Ramsay MacDonald in Britain, and various social-democratic governments.

Some of the present center-left governments have a role similar to the 1930s popular fronts. For example, the Mandela-ANC government in South Africa and, to some extent, the Jospin government in France. They seek to hold back real, ongoing mass struggles.

But other center-left governments are simply pale versions of past class-collaborationist governments. The Prodi, Blair and, to a certain extent, even the Jospin governments have been chosen by the big capitalists to implement their neoliberal policies, not to head off revolutionary upsurges.

These governments are not the popular fronts described in the well-known passage from the Transitional Program: "'People's Fronts' on the one hand - fascism on the other: these are the last political resources of imperialism in the struggle against the proletarian revolution." We may see the capitalists turn to popular front and other "left-wing" governments in the advanced capitalist countries to block revolutionary developments. But for now they have no need to do so.

To repeat: We agree that a central task of Trotskyists is to expose all class-collaborationist coalitions and governments, including the center-left and popular-front governments of today. Our disagreement on this point is related to our disagreement on the rate of development of the world revolution, particularly in the advanced capitalist countries.

We stress these points because we think Trotskyists must struggle against oversimplified, impressionistic analyses of the world situation. The history of the Fourth International shows the negative effects of "catastrophism."

For example, Pablo's "imminence of the third world war" in 1951, Healy's economic and political catastrophism in the 1960s and 1970s, Lambert's "imminence of revolution and counterrevolution" in the 1970s, the "imminent clash" and "new mass vanguards" of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in the 1970s, and "the impending revolutionary situation" of the Morenoites in the 1980s.

These methods have led to confusion, failure, demoralization, and political deviations. These deviations include revision of the tasks involved in building revolutionary parties, and speaking continually of revolution but failing to recognize real revolutionary situations when they arise.

The other six organizations involved in our joint project for the refounding of the Fourth International do not suffer such deviations, and the document does not include such deviations. But the document does tend to oversimplify the economic and political situation in ways that are potentially dangerous.

Time will tell whether we are right or wrong in our assessment of the world situation. Over the next two or three years the world capitalist economy either will or will not collapse, and revolutionary confrontations either will or will not occur in Western Europe and other imperialist countries. Our respective assessments will be tested by events.

Meanwhile, we reconfirm our commitment to our joint campaign for the refounding of the Fourth International, to the political basis for the refounding outlined in the "Declaration of Genova," and to the project of an International Conference of Workers and the Class-Struggle Left.

Associazione Marxista Rivoluzionaria Proposta

Trotskyist League of the United States

International Trotskyist Opposition

Buenos Aires, 31 May 1998