Signed by Pouvoir Ouvrier, Gruppe Arbeitermacht, Irish Workers Group, Workers Power, this is the founding document of the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International
The years since the Second imperialist World War have fully confirmed the characterisation of the Twentieth Century as the century of wars and revolutions. The war itself was fought to re-divide the world between the imperialist robber states. The United States of America emerged as the victor in that war and, freed from the creeping restrictions imposed by the old European Empires, reshaped the world in its own interests. This, coupled with the massive destruction of capital during the war, allowed a hitherto unprecedented expansion of the productive forces which lasted until the late sixties.
That expansion, however, was, first and foremost the expansion of capital, and therefore, of capital’s social relations and the social contradictions that attend them. Whilst capital has harnessed the labour of numberless millions, boosting production to unheard of proportions, private ownership of the means of production and the subordination of their potential to the pursuit of profit now doom millions to misery and starvation. Humanity itself is now threatened with annihilation as the imperialists prepare to unleash nuclear war to protect their global domination.
However, while the content of Capital’s domination of the world has changed not one iota, the form of that domination, end of the class struggle which it engenders, have seen substantial changes. Thus the countries exploited by imperialism are now ruled, typically, through the puppet regimes of semi colonies rather than by direct colonial rule,
Limits of existing struggles
Although there have been many determined and heroic struggles against colonial rule and semi colonial oppression, these have taken place under Stalinist or petty bourgeois nationalist leaderships, that is, leaderships committed, ultimately, to achieving a compromise with imperialism and not its international defeat. Such forces mobilised the masses in struggle to force concessions but, wherever that mobilisation threatened to pass beyond their own control and to pose the possibility of struggle for power by the proletariat and its peasant allies, they have demobilised, undermined and openly sabotaged the struggle in the interests of their projected compromise. They are both unwilling and unable to utilise the struggles of the exploited and oppressed to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and, thereby, own the way to socialism with the strategy of Permanent Revolution.
In the metropolitan centres the cost war period witnessed a long economic boors under US hegemony which strengthened the hold of reformist ideologies and or organisations. When the boom ended, and was replaced by increasing instability arid crises, those reformist parties and trade unions, both Stalinist and Social democratic, proved capable of disorienting, stifling arid directly sabotaging the militant response of the working class.
A further obvious change in the form of the class struggle has taken place in relation to Stalinism. In the thirties it appeared that the clique around Stalin, which had usurped proletarian power in the Soviet Union, and their programme of socialism in one country, would not survive the developing crisis. In the event, divisions within the imperialist camp did allow not only their survival but an increase in their power, prestige and influence. The existence of workers‘ state, even though degenerated, altered the balance of class forces in the post war world and allowed the creation of equally counter revolutionary and degenerate workers‘ states in other countries. However. Stalinism has not gone unchallenged by the masses. Time and again proletarian and peasant forces have had to be suppressed by military force to ensure the survival of Stalinist regimes. This force has often been aided by the confusion of political direction and strategy ‚within the rebellious forces who have frequently been misled by reformist, nationalist or even counter revolutionary leaders.
Addressing the changed world
Similar dramatic changes in the class struggle have occurred before, for example, at the outbreak of the imperialist First World War and, again, in the period of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Workers State. In those periods, however, there existed, as a result of the political and organisational advances made in preceding periods, a communist cadre able to re analyse the changed circumstances and to derive from that analysis a communist strategy, a communist programme and communist tactics equal to the needs of the working class in the new period. This was the historic contribution of Lenin and, later, Trotsky in the creation of the Third and Fourth Internationals.
Today, revolutionaries the world over stand in need of a similarly refocused communist programme and the International Party needed to implement it. As in earlier periods it is not a matter of rejecting previous programmes out of hand but of re applying their methods, principles. strategies and tactics to the political problems of the resent period. However, unlike the earlier periods, there is today no already existing communist leadership capable of winning to the revolutionary banner the millions who wish to destroy capitalism’s hold on humanity. Instead that leadership must be forged precisely through the programmatic. theoretical and practical work necessary to re elaborate the communist programme. The task of building a new revolutionary International stands before us today as an urgent necessity. Before it can be built, however, programmatic clarity over the changed circumstances of the class struggle, and of the leaderships which it has thrown up must be achieved.
The obstacle of centrism
The task of building a revolutionary party has always been hampered by the existence of centrism in the workers‘ movement. The Kautsky centre in the Second International shielded most member parties from Bolshevism. Bureaucratic centrism in the Stalinised Comintern hindered the Left Opposition’s struggle for reform. Centrism also stood as an obstacle in the shapes of the POUM (Spain), the lLP (Britain), the Gauche Revolutionaire (France) etc. to the building of the Fourth International during the 1930s.
Crisis of the Fourth International
The Fourth International of Leon Trotsky, founded in 1938, was the authentic continuation of Bolshevik Leninism, the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the revolutionary Comintern (first four congresses). After the war. however, that organisation was racked by crisis. Unable to explain the continued existence, and indeed expansion, of Stalinism, the stabilisation of western capitalism and the apparent victories of petit bourgeois nationalism, it began increasingly to shed fundamental elements of the Trotskyist programme.
This programmatic degeneration became qualitative in the period 1948 51. In 1948 Tito’s split with Stalin was presented as proof that, under pressure, Stalinism could be transformed into a centrist force capable of overthrowing capitalism and creating workers‘ states which, like Yugoslavia, only required reforms to become healthy workers‘ states. On this basis both the strategy of political revolution against Stalinist bureaucratic rule and ultimately, the need for independent revolutionary (Trotskyist) parties were abandoned.
Flowing from this the FI, under the leadership of Pablo, Frank and Mandel and with the approval of Cannon and Healy, moved further in the direction of liquidationism If Stalinism could be transformed under pressure so also could social democratic reformists or, in the semi colonies, petit bourgeois nationalists. The perspective of an immediately imminent War Revolution was used to justify a new tactic of „entryism sui generis“ (entryism of a special type). There being insufficient time to build revolutionary parties on a Trotskyist programme, it was argued, adherents of the FI should enter and loyally build reformist or petit bourgeois nationalist parties. thereby helping to develop the pressure that would, supposedly, transform their hosts into left centrist formations which would be capable of imitating Tito and, later, Mao.
This period of programmatic degeneration name to a head in 1951. The World Congress of that year codified the revisionism that had been adopted piecemeal in the receding three years. The fact that there was no revolutionary opposition to the wholesale abandonment of the fundamental tenets of Trotskyism is proof positive that the FI by this date, had undergone a Qualitative degeneration. It was no longer a revolutionary current which had made some centrist errors but a consolidated centrist formation incapable of self reform.
Organisational collapse followed programmatic collapse. Different tendencies within the „F“ wished to accommodate to different politically popular or dominant currents. The split of 1953, which created the International Secretariat (IS) and the International Committee (IC), took place purely on organisational grounds. Neither aide challenged the liquidationist position of the 1951 Congress; hence neither can be said to have represented any continuity with the revolutionary programme of Trotsky.
No Trotskyist continuity
There has been no such continuity of Trotskyism on a world scale since 195t1 The International created by Trotsky in the face of enormous difficulties, had, within 11 years of his death, failed to overcome its isolation a fate which MIGHT befall any revolutionary tendency for long periods of time and collapsed into centrism a fate that WILL befell any tendency that believes mass growth or influence can be attained by dissolving or abandoning the revolutionary, that is Trotskyist, programme.
For revolutionaries toddy the centrism of the Fourth International itself, and its offshoots, is s major obstacle to the establishment of revolutionary parties and a revolutionary International.
Degenerate fragments
More than thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Fourth International. Since then the fragments of what had been the world Trotskyist movement have compounded their errors, suffered further splits and engaged in unprincipled fusions. Of the principal tendencies to emerge from either the IS tradition (the US FI I and various national wasps) or the IC tradition (the IC, OCRFI) of Pierre Lambert, the IWL of Nahuel Moreno, the iSt, or the TILC crested by the British WSL) none has broken from centrism. Today there is no such thing as a world Trotskyist movement. What still exist are the degenerate fragments
of the Fourth International. Once again revolutionaries are confronted with the task of defeating centrism this time a centrism emerging from the FI in order to develop national revolutionary parties and a revolutionary International.
The ‚United Secretariat‘ of the FI
The USFI today stands on the threshold of yet another internal upheaval. Since its formation in 1963 it has never transcended its existence as a coalition of permanent factions. Today the conflict is between the SWP(US) and the European based Mandel tendency. The terms of the debate an outright rejection of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and the embracing of Castroite Stalinism by the SWP(US) versus the defence by Mandel of the centrist ‚objective processism‘ whereby the revolutionary party is rendered irrelevant in the ‚process‘ of permanent revolution is not a principled battle between orthodoxy and revisionism.
USFI on Iran
The USFI’s most recent positions in revolutionary situations confirm its chronic tendency to adapt to alien class forces. In t979 in Iran and Nicaragua the USFI advised its members programmatically to liquidate themselves into the religious led mass movement and the petit bourgeois FSLN respectively. In Iran, despite the imprisonment of its own members by Khomeini’s regime, the USFI section, prior to splitting, refused to criticise Khomeini and refused to rally the forces and raise the programme necessary to fight his counter revolution. After a split the Mandelite HKS offered some criticisms of Khomeini but still refused to raise the call for his overthrow by the independently organised working class. The SWP sponsored HKF on the other bend, carried sway by Khomeini’s anti imperialist rhetoric during the US hostage crisis, enlisted in the „jihad for Reconstruction“ a united front with the Khomeini forces who were at the very same time butchering the Kurds and the left Islamic Mojahedin. Indeed the latter were condemned as sectarian by the HKE for refusing to unite with their murderers‘ Throughout this period both the HKS and the HKE potentially on opposite sides of a physical conflict remained affiliated to the USFI.
USFI on Nicaragua
In Nicaragua a similar course was followed. During the struggle that brought down Somoza the USFI condemned and disciplined its own members for forming an independent organisation (the Simon Bolivar Brigade). It demanded that they cease all attempts to form a separate ‚Trotskyist‘ organisation and instead become loyal Sandinistas. After the fall of the Somoza dictatorship the SWP (US) christened the popular front GRN a Workers and Peasants‘ Government, ignored its attacks on workers‘ democracy and hailed it as the vanguard of the world revolution. The split that this led to in late 1979 was along familiar unprincipled lines. Moreno’s factional difference with the majority led him to walk out of the USFI with significant forces. His limited criticisms over Nicaragua. his preceding and subsequent history all pointed to the centrist nature of his politics.
As for the factions remaining in the USFI, the SWP have begun to theorise their capitulation to petit bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism. The Mandelites donning the utterly fake mantle of ‚orthodoxy‘ stilt utilise the terminology of Permanent Revolution which in their view still has use as a means of disguising their centrism from serious revolutionary militants. However, since they fill the empty formulas with a thoroughly centrist content in practice, like the SWP they also capitulate time and again to the foes of proletarian revolution.
In the imperialist countries the sections of the IS/USFI have been consistent only in their opportunist accommodation to varying political currents. In the 1950’s and early 1960s it was primarily towards the left reformists of Social Democracy and/or the Trade Unions. In the late 1960s and early 1970s it was the generally ultra left student movement and Black nationalism. Presently they appear to be intent on forming a bridge between reformists, the feminist movement and peace campaigners. In each case the method has been, essentially, the same – adaptation to the political norms of whatever current is identified as ‚moving left‘, uncritical support for the leadership of that current in the belief that this will help to develop that leadership into the leadership of a ‚left wing‘ within which the ‚Trotskyists‘ will wield some influence. The left wing in turn becomes s substitute for the revolutionary party and the revolutionary programme is conveniently dropped.
Poland
Finally the USFI offers no independent programme for political revolution in the degenerated and degenerate workers states. In the Polish political revolutionary crisis of 1980-81 the USFI failed to raise the question of the revolutionary overthrow of the Stalinist ruling bureaucracy. The building of an independent revolutionary party was subordinated to accommodation to“ the existing leadership of Walesa and Co. The call for genuine soviets was replaced by the call for a second chamber in the Polish parliament (Sejm). Thus, said the USFI, would lead to the evolution of dual power which would evolve into workers‘ power. No mention of soviet power, insurrection, the general strike, the arming of the workers etc. In a piece of evolutionism worthy of Kautsky the USFI reduced political revolution to a ‚total series of reforms‘ the formula originally used by their leader Hansen in the 1950s.
Time and again the USFI has demonstrated its bankruptcy, its centrism. Yet it still masquerades as THE Trotskyist International. It is probably the largest grouping of so called Trotskyists at the moment, though it seems doomed to split before long. Its claim to be the continuity of Trotsky’s Fl is a total sham. We have dealt here with a mere handful of its errors. It has committed many more in its long history. They are not isolated mistakes. They constitute so unmistakable pattern of centrism. As such, on a world scale, the USFI is, at the moment, the principal centrist obstacle to the construction of a new International. It attracts, and then dupes arid mis-educates, thousands of militants who will genuinely strive for e revolutionary answer to the world crisis. We will criticise, debate with and polemicise against the USFI while at the same time uniting with it in action where appropriate in order to address and win these militants sway front their centrist leaders.
The ‚International Committee‘ tradition
The 1953 split spawned not only the USFI. Apart from this mainstream centrist current a host of sectarian and centrist offshoots today litter the world. In certain countries a particular offshoot may be more important then a USFI section. For this reason our battle with centrism cannot he restricted to polemics against Mandel and Barnes of the USFI.
The International Committee (IC) originally made up of the SWP(US), the Lambertists in France and the group led by Gerry Healy in Britain, now only consists of the latter and its satellites. It was at its birth a parody of orthodoxy, never sole to break with the politics of Pablo only with the man. It is now a deeply opportunist collection of sects who have replaced revolutionary Marxism with Hegelian idealism to justify their long term catastrophism and their crass capitulation to petit bourgeois nationalism. The British WRP (led by Healy) is now a cheerleader for Gadaffi, Yasser Arafat and the Ayatollah Khomeini, brooking no criticism of these leaders. Even at the height of Khomeini’s bloody counter revolution the Healyites were singing his praises.
The Lambertists have undergone various mutations since breaking with Healy in 1971. Various manoeuvres and splits have led to a series of name changes all around the theme of ‚reconstructing‘ the Fourth International the OCRFI Parity Commission, FI(IC) and now the Fl(lCR). They have danced with the rightist Guillermo Lora of the Bolivian POR, the P0 of Argentina, the USFI itself and, most recently, Moreno. In every dance the ill matched partners have, inevitably, stamped on each ether’s feet.
The splits, fusions and further splits have ALWAYS dodged the question Of programmatic agreement or disagreement. This a because the partnerships have only aver been for factional convenience or gain. As a result they demoralise or render rank and file militants cynical. Good militants are sacrificed for the sake of shoddy manoeuvres. The Lambertists are characterised by their making a fetish of the democratic programme in the semi colonial countries and the workers‘ states, centring on a repeated opportunist use of the Constituent Assembly slogan. In Europe, and particularly in France where the largest Lambertist group, the PCI, is located, they pursue a rightist course of adaptation to social democracy. In this respect they are on a par with the Militant Tendency.
A large number of smaller tendencies have laid claim *to the mantle of orthodox Trotskyism and have announced their intention to defend it against the revisionism of Mandel, Healy and Lambert. The French organisation Lutte Ouvriere and its satellite organisations (Combat Ouvrier in the Antilles, Spark in the ISA and the African Union of International Communist Workers), the International Spartacist Tendency (iSt) the Fourth International Tendency (FIT), the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee (TILC), and Moreno’s IWL are all in the same camp. However, none of these tendencies has transcended centrism.
Lutte Ouvriere, like many others, allegiance to the Transitional Programme of 1938 but, in so doing, it rejects the need to re elaborate that programme. The program me becomes little more than abstract principles, not a guide to action. Its inability to apply the method of the 1938 programme, refocusing it to the modern world, has led LO to glaringly inconsistent positions. It characterises the countries of Eastern Europe as capitalist but the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers‘ state. In the French class struggle its sectarian refusal to apply the tactic of CRITICAL electoral support to the mass reformist parties (PS and PC.) collapses into OPPORTUNIST calls for support for Mitterrand: „he can’t be worse than Giscard“ (1981). Like the SWP in Britain with which it once had close relations, LO is fundamentally an isolated national variant of degenerated Trotskyism.
The iSt is a Stalinophile sect willing to countenance the crushing of Solidarnosc by Soviet tanks. The TILC, while it lasted, presented neither political clarity nor any will or perspective to achieve it. In essence it was a cluster of politically disparate groups unified by the British WSL’s pretence of being a major factor in the class struggle. When this pretence was exploded, when the British section refused to take s defencist position with regard to Argentina during the Malvinas air, it was effectively blown apart. Since then it has fragmented further with, for example, the Italian section heading off into the USFI.
The FIT likewise has no real existence an International tendency. Its main organisations, the P0 of Argentina and the POR of Bolivia both have histories of opportunism. The P0R failed the test of two revolutionary crises (1959 and 1971) by capitulating to anti imperialist‘ nationalist. The PO attempted to build an electoral bloc, effectively a popular front, with the bourgeois Intransigente party in the recent elections in Argentina. This was a logical extension of its opportunist misuse of the anti-imperialist united front tactic. This slogan they convert into a strategy in the semi colonies, with persistent opportunist results.
Moreno’s IWL split from Lambert supposedly because of his capitulation to social democracy in France. However, this long-standing opportunist Moreno led his organisation into the MAS. This was a social democratic formation of no independent significance. However, Moreno now argues that in the transition from dictatorship to democracy a stage of social democracy is inevitable. To achieve mass growth he argues that it is necessary to set up social democratic organisations or participate in and build them loyally, without raising the revolutionary programme. The ‚process‘ will do the rest. This is classic centrism that would do Mandel proud. Indeed it paints to the likelihood of further unity manoeuvres by these centrists.
The key to regroupment
The fundamental problem with all of these groups, and others like them, is that they refuse to recognise there was s break in the continuity of Trotskyism. They do not recognise that the Ft of 1931 was not, programmatically, the Fourth International of 1938. Unable fundamentally to break with whichever of the IS or IC traditions they themselves spring from, they are left proclaiming their allegiance to the „Fl“ but this necessarily implies allegiance not only to the letter of the 1938 programme but to the spirit of the 1948-51 revision. Thus, they characteristically call for the „reconstruction“ or „rebuilding“ or „refoundation“ of the Ft without specifying, programmatically, what the basis for such a re establishment should be. They are incapable of recognising that, without a thorough assessment of the degeneration of the Fl a new revolutionary international cannot be built. They are doomed to mimic the manoeuvres and dishonest diplomacy of their IS or IC forbears. An understanding of the process of degeneration through which the Fl passed would enable them to see that reconstruction without the re elaboration of the political basis, the programme, for regroupment would only lead to the recreation of the atmosphere of mistrust and national exclusiveness that organisationally wrecked the Ft.
The rotten traditions of the past have to be transcended by a commitment to re elaborate the revolutionary programme, exposing and so rectifying past mistakes the clearing the way for the building of a new international on a principled basis. The point of departure for the undersigned groups is that we believe programmatic re elaboration to be a pre requisite for real unity amid the creation of a healthy International. We are committed to addressing this task and fulfilling it. At present our tanks can be summed up in the slogans:
• Forward to the building of a Leninist Trotskyist International!
• For a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!
We recognise that there have been and will again be tendencies, factions and whole groups emerging from the so called Trotskyist groups throughout the world who are aware of the errors of their leaderships and are prepared to fight then. All of the undersigned groups recognise their own origins in left centrist splits from degenerate fragments of the Trotskyist movement. Our limited international experience prevents us from pointing to the existence of other groups like ourselves. However, we remain. confident that such groups, if they do not already exist, will come into being under the impact of the international class struggle when the bankruptcy of their parent organisations stands exposed. We will search out, help to create, discuss with and if possible unite with such tendencies on a principled basis.
Necessity
Our goal is the creation of national revolutionary parties and a revolutionary International. The unevenness of the working class, divided an it is by country, race, industry, religion, sex and age, means that it cannot spontaneously achieve a homogeneous anti capitalist struggle. The need for an armed insurrection to seize state power, to build the Dictatorship or the Proletariat, end to overcome the hopeless decline of capitalism, are all vital tasks which cannot be left to the spontaneous struggle of the working class. Their fulfilment requires that the working class be won to a programme of, scientific socialism, which is embodied in the revolutionary party.
The centralised power of the bourgeoisie must be overthrown and smashed by a conscious disciplined force which has won the allegiance of the majority of the proletariat. Thus, a revolutionary party a the indispensable instrument for seizing and holding state newer. Party struggle within the workers‘ movement is the indispensable means whereby the proletariat selects and tempers the right party. Defeat and demoralisation await it if this process of party struggle within the labour movement is not won by revolutionary communists.
Communists have, at various times, had to pass through successive stages of development. From an ideological current primarily concerned with acquiring a thorough understanding of scientific socialism and, on this basis, hammering out the main components of a revolutionary programme, to a fighting propaganda group which seeks to combine a struggle for that programme (against the numerically stronger mass forces of bourgeois and petit bourgeois influence within the workers‘ movement) with an orientation to, and involvement in all key struggles, to the creation of a small party which, because it embraces a serious section of the advanced workers the militant minority, can combat other parties on the terrain of the class struggle itself where the leadership of the reformists can be openly disputed and broken.
Our groupings stand close to the beginning of this process of development because of the collapse of the Fourth International into centrism. However, the new period of crisis end profound instability in the capitalist world will throw all the existing leaderships and parties of the proletariat into crisis and confusion. It is into that flex that communists must intervene to prove to the beat elements that, correctly applied, the revolutionary inheritance of Lenin and Trotsky can provide a way forward. It is along that path that we must advance, winning and tempering a cadre of communists and, thereby, building the nucleus of a revolutionary communist party of the proletarian vanguard.
While the revolution can be carried through in one country, socialism cannot be built in one country. The point of departure for Marxists is the fact that capitalism has created a world economy. It is an international system that must be combated internationally. The building of a revolutionary parts is, therefore, inseparably linked to the building of a democratic centralist World Parts of revolution, an International.
The building of the International cannot be put off until national parties have been built. Nor can it arise out of unprincipled international alliances that are not founded on programmatic agreement. The International must be built by revolutionaries simultaneously with the building of national parties. It must be founded on the basis of an international programme guiding and informing the work of the national Sections. On this basis it can and must be organised as a democratic centralist International.
International Tendency
If the building of a democratic centralist International requires the elaboration of a programme to guide the internationals work and form the basis of its discipline then it is clear that, prior to its foundation, there must exist a more embryonic form of organisation whose purpose a to develop that programme. We call such an organisation an International Tendency. Such a Tendency would be characterised by:
1. The recognition by its component parts of the need to re elaborate a world programme on the basis of the method of the 19938 Transitional Programme;
2. Proven agreement between the component sections with regard to the interpretation of fundamental tenets and tactics of Marxism and, therefore, agreement on how proceed with the necessary programmatic work
3. Proven agreement with regard to the application of the principles, strategy and tactics of revolutionary communism in the context of conjunctural crises of proletarian leadership both historically and contemporary and expressed in the resolutions of the international conferences of the national sections;
4. An established and recognised democratic centralist leadership, based on the decisions of, and elected by, international conference; and the necessary organisational structures to ensure the disciplined application of agreed policy.
An International Tendency founded upon such agreement would be a fully principled grouping and a major step towards the creation of a new revolutionary International.
Fraternal relations
However, even such a Tendency could not spring unprepared into existence. In order to examine programmatic positions and methods of work, to overcome weaknesses of national one sidedness and to establish a recognised and trusted leadership and organisation, it is necessary for revolutionary groups to develop an organisational framework within which collaboration and private discussion can take place. Within such a framework autonomous groups of communists could test their ability to generate programmatic advance, to adopt common responses to current political problems, to create a leading cadre and organisation worthy of the trust and loyalty of the various groups.
Such an organisational framework we call ‚fraternal relations‘. We base the establishment and declaration of such relations between our groups on a proven and public record of past agreement on fundamental political and programmatic issues. These are summed up in the document „Fundamental Principles of our Programme“, adopted in common by each of our groups. Whilst this document, in its characterisation of, for the nature of reformism and the to tactics to be used against it, and in its analysis of Stalinism since the Second Imperialist World War, already signifies a higher level of agreement than exists in many a so called ‚International‘, we recognise it as only a necessary though important step forward. It is the necessary basis for further and closer collaboration between our groups and for their mutual assistance and development.
At another level, the agreement of common positions between our groups on such diverse issues as the Polish crisis, Nicaragua, Iran, Grenada, the Malvinas war and the destruction of the South Korean airliner over the territory of the Soviet Union, are all further testament to the principled nature of proceeding to closer co operation and identification.
From now on each of our groups undertakes to open its internal organisational life to the others. We shall attempt, wherever possible, to present internationally agreed positions on major political issues and we shall collaborate on programmatic work. However, given the difference of resources, size and circumstances of our groups, we recognise the present autonomy of the groups and respect each group’s right to publish its own positions.
As an identifiable international grouping of nationally based communist groups, but not yet an International Tendency, we adopt the name Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International. We call on all groups and individuals who recognise the need for the building of a new International, free of unprincipled manoeuvre and programmatic compromise, to examine the positions and documents of our grouping and to join with us in the vital and urgent work necessary to pass beyond our present stage of development towards the building of a new Revolutionary Communist International a true and worthy successor to the Internationals of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.