Draft 4 Aims of the Socialist Fight 2022

Revolutionary socialism

1. We stand with Karl Marx: ‘The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. The struggle for the emancipation of the working class means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies but for equal rights and duties and the abolition of all class rule’ (The International Workingmen’s Association 1864, General Rules). The working class ‘cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society’ (Marx, A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843).

2. US imperialism is the global hegemonic power via its great financial houses mainly based in Wall Street and their allied transnational corporation. All other imperialist powers are subordinate to the US via the dollar as the world’s reserve and trading currency, the IMF and World Bank, the global stock exchanges it dominates, its great banking houses and transnational corporations, its string of 800 military bases worldwide and its overwhelming naval and military prowess. It is true China is an aspirant imperialist power and potential successor if the US suffers an economic catastrophe and/or a very serious military defeat which allows others to break loose from its domination. China may now be termed a neo-imperialist or proto-imperialist power.

All the economic and professional means exist right now to provide clean water, adequate food, advanced education, medical care, and welfare to every member of the human race; all that prevents us doing that is this global imperialist system based on the profit system rather than planned for human need.

3. In the class struggle we shall fight to develop every struggle of the working class and oppressed in the direction of democratic workers’ councils (soviets in Russia in 1917, shoras in Iran in 1979) as the instruments of participatory democracy which must be the basis of the successful struggle for workers’ power. We reject any struggle for ‘democracy’ in the abstract (even ‘extreme democracy’) which only confuses this absolutely vital distinction; there is no peaceful, bourgeois democratic gradual parliamentary road to socialism.

The capitalist state forces will always act to prevent a peaceful transition to socialism, as we saw in the Indonesian mass killings of the Communist party and others in 1965–66, the other 9/11, and the Chilean coup that overthrew Allende on 11 September 1973. And we were reminded again of this on 20 September 2015 when a serving general threatened Corbyn in the pages of the Sunday Times with “a mutiny” from the military if as prime minister he tried to take Britain out of Nato, scrap Trident or cut the size of Britain’s forces. That was an act of high treason, of course, and the Ministry of Defence and some right wing Tory MPs condemned it, but no one demanded the Sunday Times reveal the general’s name for prosecution. The Trump coup attempt on January 6, 2021, and the continuing preparation for another such also reinforces this.

Revolutionary strategy and tactics

4. We recognise the necessity for serious ideological and political struggle as direct participants always in the trade unions; membership of an appropriate trade union is mandatory for all members of SF. If unemployed in Britain or Ireland, the Unite Community provides for cheap membership of 55p p/w or £2.38 p/m to continue the struggle; other options internationally should be pursued.

5. We recognise the necessity to work in the mass reformist social democratic bourgeois workers’ parties internationally, and also Stalinist ones where possible, despite their pro-capitalist leaderships when conditions are favourable. We fight neo-liberalism in the Labour Party as part of the broader struggle to transcend reformism. We recognise the Labour party is a reformist party which can never be won to the cause of revolutionary socialism. However, it may well be forced to defend some of the gains of the working class in future periods of developing class struggle as it has in the past; it is subject to pressure from its voter base and from the trade unions; there is no such pressure on the Tories. As the secondary defenders of British capitalism and imperialism it is not simply another imperialist party like the Tories or Liberal Democrats – hence the Leninist term ‘bourgeois-workers party’, which distinguishes it and other such formations internationally from the US Democrats who are a straightforward party of US imperialism similar to the Whigs/Liberals in British history and today.

6. Work within the Labour party is a tactical and not a strategic issue in the struggle to cohere a revolutionary nucleus to build the mass revolutionary party. Whether or not to work within Labour in Britain or in any other bourgeois workers’ party internationally depends on our assessment of the opportunities, whether we still regard them as bourgeois-workers’ parties and if sufficient internal democracy allows us to function independently within them.

7. We strongly support campaigns to democratise the trade unions’ traditional link to the Labour party. We are for funding only those MPs who agree to and have a record of fighting for union policies. We are for the abolition of all anti-trade union laws. We demand an end to the farcical Warwick-type Agreements which sees top TU leaders, acting bureaucratically as plenipotentiaries and defenders of capitalism, asking for miserable reform, accepting far less, and ending up with practically nothing in practice from Labour Governments.

National funding of Labour must also be on the basis of fighting for union policies and must be withheld until the Labour leaders agree to represent the interests of trade union members, the working class and oppressed against the bankers and the capitalist system in general. We support union funding for working class left-wing alternatives to Labour when Labour fails to meet those conditions but never the ‘other political parties’ formulation which would mean funding outright capitalist parties like the Scottish Nationalist Party, the Greens, the Liberal-Democrats and even the Tories.

8. We fight for rank-and-file organisations in the trade unions within which we will fight for consciously revolutionary socialist leadership in line with Trotsky’s Transitional Programme statement:

“Therefore, the sections of the Fourth International should always strive not only to renew the top leadership of the trade unions, boldly and resolutely in critical moments advancing new militant leaders in place of routine functionaries and careerists, but also to create in all possible instances independent militant organizations corresponding more closely to the tasks of mass struggle against bourgeois society; and, if necessary, not flinching even in the face of a direct break with the conservative apparatus of the trade unions. If it be criminal to turn one’s back on mass organizations for the sake of fostering sectarian factions, it is no less so passively to tolerate subordination of the revolutionary mass movement to the control of openly reactionary or disguised conservative (“progressive”) bureaucratic cliques. Trade unions are not ends in themselves; they are but means along the road to proletarian revolution.”

9. We totally oppose all economic nationalist campaigns like Gordon Brown’s, ‘British jobs for British workers’ and the Brexit/Lexit English nationalism of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the ‘left’ nationalists of the CPB/Morning Star, SPEW or SWP that means capitulation to national chauvinism and so to the political and economic interests of the ruling class itself. The main enemy of the working class is always its own ruling class, not some other capitalists in Brussels, Paris, Washington, Moscow, or Beijing; this opportunism only prepares workers to slaughter other workers as in WWI and WWII.

We are strong adherents of Karl Liebknecht’s famous words in his pamphlet of May 1915: ‘The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is against their own imperialists’. We therefore fight for a Socialist United States of Europe as part of the struggle for a global federation of socialist states via world revolution.

10. Representatives of all political parties are welcome to participate in blocs to organise and support specific, concrete struggles for quantifiable demands that are in the interest of the working class. When under direct attack by reactionaries we may form alliances ‘with the devil or his grandmother’ in defence of life and limb as Trotsky put it. But in forming united fronts of class struggle we must draw a line against anything that even seems to imply a common programme for government, at national or local level, with non-proletarian forces. Such blocs that go beyond practical united fronts for action, with representatives of non-working class parties such as the Greens, Lib Dems or SNP, by definition rule out ever fighting for the socialist revolution, the only ultimate solution to all capitalist crises.

11. We are totally opposed to all these popular fronts, that is, political alliances of workers organisations with political representatives of the capitalist class to ‘save the planet’, ‘defeat fascism’, ‘stop the war’, etc. These characteristically have broadly defined aims that imply an open-ended bloc tailored to the politics of those parties, or even a joint government. As Trotsky said, ‘no mixing of the Red and the Blue’ (or Green – SF). However, whilst recognising the counter-revolutionary essence of the Second, Social Democratic and Communist Internationals our tactics there is to fight to set the base against the leadership to recruit the base of these serious class fighters to the cause of the revolution.

So, we do not identify Labour party members with the leftist reformism of Jeremy Corbyn, or the rightism of Keir Starmer. Likewise, we do not equate all Communist party members in Britain and internationally with the politics of Stalin, Mao, or their current leaders. We are strongly opposed to both Stalinophobia, represented most prominently by the French Lambertists, and Stalinophilia, represented by Michel Pablo and the USFI in a liberal-democratic way and the Spartacist tendency in a more dogmatic, ultra-left way.

Climate Change Crisis and the Ecology

12. Planet Earth is at a crossroad. Capitalist induced massive spewing of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has reached a critical point. Massive fires that destroy and kill millions of trees has been increasing. Capitalist greed combined with forest destruction is destroying the Amazon Forest which is critical for global ecological stability. The Amazon is changing from absorbing greenhouse gases into omitting greenhouse gases. Since the Amazon Forest is so huge, this by itself seriously contributes to the worsening of Climate Change. Floods are increasing everywhere with horrific consequences, in places like Germany, China and England. Thousands of people are dying from such disasters. Capitalism and imperialism in particular, are fully responsible for this. All the ecology “conferences” boil down to nothing but hollow promises by representatives of the imperialist countries.

And the alternative source of energy (solar, windmills, etc.) only produces a dent in the battle against Climate Change. The truth is that nothing can stop the catastrophic progression of Climate Change short of the international socialist revolution. Only a rational planned economy that stop relying on spewing harmful gases into the atmosphere can stop the catastrophe from Climate Change. But we are running out of time. Climate Change should be a critical element for the class struggle, and it should be a motivation for the socialist revolution. We need a set of Transitional Demands that mobilize the working class against Climate Change. Such demands should be linked with other TP’s demands. The working class must be mobilized against Climate Change. Yet, this is unlikely to happen unless Climate Change is linked to the workers’ struggles. For example, forest firefighters are in a critical short supply, and they are grossly underpaid. We must demand the massive hiring of firefighters and demand that they get good union salary. The drive to unionize forest firefighters is important in this context.”

13. We reject nuclear energy as the solution to the ecological catastrophe facing the planet. The problems with accidents in nuclear power plants like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, Chernobyl in 1986 and Three Mile Island in 1979 will always threaten disasters. The problems with the disposal of nuclear waste are horrendous and last thousands of years. And despite the huge cost of nuclear energy governments keep them for producing the raw materials for nuclear bombs.

14. The use of the element thorium instead of uranium has been advocated because it is cheaper, more efficient and there is an almost zero chance of a nuclear meltdown. But the mining costs are still prohibitive, and these contribute significantly to global warming. Nuclear fusion is also much safer, but the energy source of the sun has yet to produce more electricity than goes into achieving the fusion of the hydrogen isotopes so that project still seems decades away. The necessary rapid replacement of petrol and diesel driven vehicles with electric vehicles depends on the rapid expansion of charging points and, of course, sustainable sources in the manufacture of the batteries and the production of the electricity. As we approach the tipping point in the polar and other icecap meltdowns, sharply increasing methane escape and global weather outrages and bushfires, time is not on our side.

 15. The solution to the ecological catastrophe of coal, gas and nuclear is sustainable energy sources, wind, sun, and tides but planned on a global scale to get over local and regional wind and sun source variations. Global water and electrical networks are also necessary; the sun always shines somewhere on the planet and the wind blows enough somewhere. Local and regional droughts could be alleviated by these networks. Massive expansion of desalination plants could assist in areas of chronic low rainfall in the poor third world countries like Africa and southeast Asia super-exploited by imperialism today.

Special Oppression and Racism

16. We recognise that class society, and capitalism as the last form of class society, is by its nature patriarchal. In that sense the oppression of women is different from all other forms of oppression and discrimination. Sexism and the oppression of women is inextricably tied to the ownership and the inheritance of private property. To achieve sexual and individual freedom women need to fight in the class struggle in general to overthrow capitalism itself. We cannot leave the struggle against women’s oppression until the revolution but must recognise it as one of the most fundamental aspects of the revolutionary struggle itself or we will never unite with the fight of women for equality to make that revolution. We therefore give unconditional but critical support to the #MeToo movement, which has encouraged many women to come forward to expose historic cases of sex abuse by famous and powerful men and institutions exploiting power relations like the infamous Hollywood casting couch. The Met Police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped, and murdered 33-year-old Sarah Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in south London on 3 March 2021. Subsequent revelations showed that police violence against women was rampant not only in London police and other institutions but nationwide.

17. We fight racism and fascism. We support the right of people to fight back against racist and fascist attacks by any means necessary. The global movement sparked by the police murder of George Floyd has made Black Lives Matter one of the most progressive movements in the past decades not only in the US but internationally. It has exposed the continuing reliance on racism by the US ruling and other ruling classes internationally and the continued promotion and defence of police murders. In no way will we equate the opportunism of some of the leaders of the #MeToo and BLM with the genuine anger unleashed at racist murders and the sexual exploitation and, degradation and abuses of women. The rise of the Republican far right under Donald Trump signals this problem of human equality will not be solved by appealing to liberal sympathies but by real revolutionary class struggle which unites black, white, Asian native Americans and all the working class and oppressed against capitalism itself. US capitalism is centrally dependent on weaponizing racism to maintain its privileges by divide and rule. From the days of slavery racism is built into the DNA of US capitalism.

The majority of the Founding fathers were slave owners and Abraham Lincoln was an out and proud self-declared racist. In the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate, on 18 September 1857, in Charleston, Illinois, in refuting judge  Stephen A. Douglas’ charge that he favoured racial equality, he declared, to a baying racist audience, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favour of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.]”

18. We also support the fight of all other specially oppressed including lesbians and gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people and the disabled against discrimination in all its forms and their right to organise separately in that fight in society as a whole. In particular we defend their right to organise and caucus inside trade unions and in working class political parties. We defend the right of transgender women to use female toilets in conformity with their gender. As Media Matters have pointed out, experts from 12 US states that protect trans rights have thoroughly refuted the objections of some to allow these transgender women the use of female toilets, pointing out that there was not a single reported instance of this kind of voyeurism occurring in states with legal protections for trans people. In another investigation, Media Matters also found that 17 school districts around the US with protections for trans people, which collectively cover more than 600,000 students, had no problems with harassment in bathrooms or locker rooms after implementing their policies. However, the fears of some women are real, although these have been whipped up by a hostile right wing media and we totally oppose the actions of some transgender activists in physically attacking these so-called TERFs.

19. We support the rights of sex workers and oppose all laws which criminalise them or tend to endanger their lives and health. Whilst recognising that sex work is a commercial activity driven by deprivation which is a product of the oppression of women and the deformation of sexuality under capitalism and knowing that this will disappear with the ending of the patriarchal-dominated private property structure of class society we raise the demands to protect their rights now such as free and regular health checks under the NHS and a safe working environment for all sex workers.

19. Fascism today is a growing danger in the US, in France, Italy, Greece and other Eastern European countries. It is vital now to fight for the formation of defence guards based on the trade unions and all other workers organisations. In Vermont. Perhaps the most important development in the current revival of US class struggle, ‘striketober’ as it was dubbed, is taking place in Vermont. Vermont AFL-CIO President David Van Deusen cited the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol as a reason to bear arms and fight back against right-wing and fascist attacks; workers will not have a choice but to do this, with guns, if necessary. Defense guards should also be extended to the oppressed neighborhoods, where fascist attacks take place. Such defence guards should also defend the neighborhoods against police brutality. It is a legitimate act of self-defence for the working class to ‘No Platform’ fascists but we never call on the capitalist state to ban fascist marches or parties; these laws would inevitably primarily be used against workers’ organisations, as history has shown.

20. We oppose all immigration controls. International finance capital roams the planet in search of profit and imperialist governments disrupt the lives of workers and cause the collapse of whole nations with their direct intervention in the Balkans, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan and their proxy wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc. Workers have the right to sell their labour internationally wherever they get the best price. The only way to guarantee an open border, in which workers can cross whenever they want to get a better job or unite with their families, is to get rid of the capitalist/imperialist system that rests on the division of the working class via the nationalism of the national states, and the imperialist system that perpetuates the division of oppressor nations and oppressed nations. The trade union leaders and Labour politicians should fight for open borders, and we who see ourselves as its vanguard should strongly criticise and seek to replace those labour movement leaders who fail to do this and advocate immigration controls, albeit ‘non-racist’ ones

21.The Covid-19 pandemic has a dire effect on the class struggle internationally but strikes are now beginning to unfold in late 2021. We reject all anti-vax conspiracy theories that this is a virus formed by China in a Wuhan laboratory to undermine the US, that Bill Gates or Big Pharma invented it, that it is not killing so many people or that lock-downs and social distancing do not work. It is no accident that those former leftists who have gone down this road, like the US SWP under Jack Barnes, have grown ever more sympathetic to the politics of Donald Trump, even defending the fascist murderer, Kyle Rittenhouse. A similar phenomenon is manifest in Britain where the former Revolutionary Communist party, now organised around the Spiked website, also take these red-brown fascistic political stances. Munira Mirza, for example, heads Boris Johnson’s policy unit and was his deputy London Mayor for arts for eight years. She was a supporter of the RCP and wrote for Living Marxism, and then became a libertarian reactionary writing for Spiked.

Revolutionary internationalism

22. We defend the Leninist position on the differences between imperialist and semi-colonial countries. As Trotsky observed in 1937; “…the difference between England and India, Japan and China, the United States and Mexico is so big that we strictly differentiate between oppressor and oppressed bourgeois countries, and we consider it our duty to support the latter against the former. The bourgeoisie of colonial and semi-colonial countries is a semi-ruling, semi-oppressed class.” Leon Trotsky Not a Workers’ and Not a Bourgeois State? (November 1937).

23. We were and are for the immediate withdrawal and/or defeat of imperialist armies in wars like Afghanistan Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Whilst giving no political support apart from against imperialism to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Sunni and Shia militias in Iraq, Hamas or Fatah in Palestine, Gaddafi (as was) in Libya, Assad in Syria, the ‘Islamic State’ in Syria and Iraq, the theocratic regime in Iran or the Donbass leadership in Eastern Ukraine we recognise US-led world imperialism as the main enemy of humanity and so advocate critical support and tactical military assistance from the working class to all those really fighting for the defeat of imperialism, even if only for their own self-preservation, as part of the perspective of Permanent Revolution. The Islamic State is hated by great majority of the masses. It massacres them for the slightest deviation from the Islamic State’s brutal version of Islamism. Any “united front” with the Islamic State and similar organizations could only mean a temporary truce in which we, and the Islamic State shoot in the direction of the imperialist troops and their collaborators. But when the imperialists are defeated, our guns must turn against the Islamic State and all similar reactionary forces.

24. We defend all semi-colonial states and all third world formations like Syria and Iraq against the bombing of US imperialism but do not give any political support to them against their own working class and oppressed minorities. We support the Kurdish defenders of Kobane and Rojova (Western Kurdistan) against the Islamic State and the Turkish invaders. We support the Kurdish nation’s right to self-determination and to their own nation state, even though they are scattered over four other nations now.

We do not object if the Kurds take advantage of airstrikes against the Islamic State to defend their own territory in a process of nation-building, but we reject any strategic alliance with US imperialism itself, with Israel or with US-sponsored forces on the ground, like the Free Syrian Army. US imperialism betrayed their allies against the Islamic state when Donald Trump gave the green light to Turkey to invade Rojava in October 2019. The Kurds have every right to accept arms from Assad or anywhere else with no preconditions and a section around the PKK is now actively pursuing this option.

25. We stand for a multi-ethnic workers’ state in Occupied Palestine/Israel and are totally opposed to a two state solution. We are for the destruction of the settler-colonial state of Israel and for a Multi-ethnic Workers State of Palestine in a Socialist Federation of the Middle East. The Zionist state is an outpost of imperialism; the US subsidises its military expenditure to the tune of well over $3 Billion annually. This expenditure is to maintain a bridgehead to militarily protect imperialism’s access to oilfields in the Gulf and Caspian Sea and crush any revolutionary developments that might threaten US interests in the region.

We do not recognise Israel as a nation. This Zionist law grants every Jew in the world Israeli citizenship and the “right to return” on the basis of their mother’s religion as determined by a religious court whilst denying the right of return and citizenship to Palestinians and to their descendants who were born there who were driven out en masse in 1948, 67 or 73, continually over that period by settler theft of the lands. We recognise that Israeli Jews constitute a nationality like other nationalities in the region, Christians, Druze, etc but we do not advocate Jewish right to self-determination because that would be to endorse the Zionist racist project of excluding non-Jews from the state.

So, whilst we are for the destruction of the Zionist semi-theocratic state, we defend the rights of Jews as a nationality to their cultural identity and local autonomy. We propose a multi-ethnic workers’ state of Palestine where Jews, Palestinians, and all minorities have equal rights as citizens, to which the several generations of Palestinian refugees are given the right to return and to which all immigrants have equal rights of entry. We reject the two state solution as an impossible dream now. Zionist settlements have made sure of this. The fact that it is a solution advocated by but never seriously sought by Zionism and imperialism and that it has been accepted by successive PLO leaderships and might well be accepted by Hamas does not make it a progressive solution nor one that the majority of Palestinians would opt for if they were given a viable choice.

26. As socialists living in Britain, we take our responsibilities to support the struggle against British imperialism’s occupation of the six north-eastern counties of Ireland very seriously. For this reason, we have assisted in founding the Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group and we will campaign for political status for these Irish Republican and Republican Socialist prisoners of war and for a 32-county Socialist United Ireland. We reject all ‘two nations in Ireland’ theories.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made their famous ‘Irish turn’ in 1856 following Engel’s visit to the west of Ireland and the absolute devastation he saw there following the Great Famine, or genocide as it is more properly termed. Previously they had seen colonialism as progressive in transferring advanced technologies, industries, and railways to these colonies. Now Engels saw the brutal reality, confirmed the following year in the Sepoy Mutiny, India’s first war of independence from 1857 to ‘59. Marx and Engels went on the give unconditional support to the Fenian movement, always trying to unite it in struggle with the English radicalising workers.

Marx wrote to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt on 9 April 1870 on Irish immigrant labour, “Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker, he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

… This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.”

27. We recognise that many socialists and working class militants may agree with much of the above statement of principles, but still have differences with parts of it. Therefore, the basis of adherence to our trend is acceptance of the above as the basis for current activity, not necessarily agreement with all of it. We are seeking to create a revolutionary party in which Marxism can be developed through open debate of the many complex developments that exist in the real world. This means members must be free to disagree and debate with each other, form tendencies and factions, and publish their views by whatever means is available, provided they do not disrupt agreed actions of the collective while they are being carried out.

One of the problems with the methodology of Stalinism and those in the Trotskyist tradition who follow this, is that it changes Lenin’s understanding of democratic centralism to bureaucratic centralism. However, as we know from the Russian Revolution, in particular with lack of discipline by Zinoviev and Kamenev, that in the midst of a revolutionary development when the questions of power and insurrection are posed, centralism and the success of the insurrection is more important than the debate about it, particularly after the votes are taken in favour of insurrection.

The relationships between democracy and centralism can be complex, and as Trotsky stated a number of times, a revolutionary leadership must be mature in the sense of weighing correctly when centralism must be instituted over democracy. But such weighing should mostly be done when the class struggle is advanced, and the question of working class power is posed. However, in most cases before the question of power is posed, democracy should be preferred. And it is better to err on “too much” democracy.

28. We are for the regeneration of the Fourth International based on our support for the first Four Congresses of the Communist (Third) International, the Comintern, and the early years of the Fourth International. We recognise that, whilst most self-declared Trotskyist groups internationally have degenerated into abject centrism (in Marxist terms) they have not gone over to the class enemy and become counter-revolutionary like the Second (Social Democratic) and Third (Stalinist) Internationals did in 1914 and 1935.

Most of those of Trotskyism origins who did go over no longer call themselves Trotskyists and those who claim the name of Trotsky contain many sincere revolutionaries who are versed in the Marxist classics, including Trotsky’s works, in their ranks, in second level leadership levels and some leaders. It is therefore necessary to continue to orientate to these layers sensitively and to appeal to these revolutionaries. It is by orienting to the ranks of workers in struggle; wages and conditions struggles against capitalist exploitation itself, against imperialism in Ireland and internationally, struggles of oppressed minorities against varied all forms of social oppression, as well as political ferment among intellectual layers radicalised through these struggles, that we will lay the basis for regroupments with forces internationally breaking with reformism, centrism and various forms of radical populism/nationalism, and seeking to reforge and rebuild the regenerated Fourth International.