6-10 June 1995
14th World Congress of the 4th International
The Congress had four major debaies. The first was a general discussion on the global situation organised around three themes — globalisation and the crisis of capitalism, the major political tendencies of the current period, The second debore represented an evaluation period, and the restoration of capitalism in Eastern of the current situation and the perspectives in Latin America, with special attention to the evolution of the Castrist regime in Cuba. The third debate covered the general tendencies of the socio-political situation in Western Europe, with special attention on the state of the left and the response to the European Union. The fourth and final debate concerned the strategies and problems of construction of revolutionary, parties and an International in the new global period Specific discussions, working group meetings and commissions covered feminist activities, youth work, ecology, solidarity campaigns with Bosnia and Chiapas (Mexico) and the campaign to abolish third world debt. The congress also examined and decided on a number of organisational problems concerning the status of various groups in various countries. Congress also noted the division of the torces of the International in Germany and Mexico, and looked for ways to organise co-operation between the parties concerned. The collapse of Stalinism and the continuing, capitalist crisis (corresponding to the extension of the long wave of crisis which began in the 1970s) has contradictory effects. Myths and illusions connected to the restoration of capitalism in the post-Stalinist societies have dissipated, faced with the actually existing market economy. But reactions to the socio-economic crisis, in this period of loss of credibility of the socialist project, all too often take the form of reactionary tendencies of an ethnic, nationalist, racial or religious character. Hence the urgent need to rebuild a world-wide movement of anti-capitalist struggle, within the socialist perspective, taking account of the recomposition of the workers' movement which is underway as a result of the double failure of social democracy and Stalinism. The political disorder in the ranks of the anti-capitalist nated by perism, has resold in or el domi left, in the context of a global balance of forces domieven ideological capitulations. But it has also led to a spectacular overcoming of the sectarian traditions generated by the existence of Stalinism, which have taken root in the anti-capitalist left over the decades. Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the historical abomination that was Stalinism and to continue, against the winds and the tides, to right against capitalism are being realised in a number of countries so large that it is legitimate to extrapolate a general tendency in the new period. This process can take a variety of forms. In some cases there are wide regroupings of anti-capitalist forces where the major element comes mainly, but not exclusively from the decomposition of Stalinism. In other cases there are narrower regroupments of tendencies which are based in the mutation under way inside the revolutionary lett. Sometimes this takes the form of the creation of new political formations organised on the basis of democratic pluralism, respecting electoral level and in the field of general social and political struggles. In all the countries where one or the other of these possibilities exists, the organisations of the Fourth nternational are ready to be part of the regroupment process. We consider this as an important step towards the recomposition of the anti-capitalist lett on a world scale. At the international level, the Fourth International is an active participant in regroupment bringing with it the advantages of a long tradition of combat against capitalism and Stalinism. *
Participants, delegates, guests and greetings