Tuesday 30 August

OUR CONCEPTION of the fourth international today

(Penny)

Nature of this report

Final report = an element of "politico-organisational" as well as "politico-pedagogical" content.

Purpose of the Time Chart

What is the Fourth International

* brief summary of organisational situation

From the "world party of socialist revolution"

*Where we've come from (see Chapter 9 of Role and Tasks 2003, statutes 1974 10th World Congress (additional material))

*World vision/ project

• continuity of Russian revolution

*struggle against Stalinism

• programmatic foundations

• right to tendency and faction (from the start)

*post 1968 -

• new generation, new confidence

To "an international organization struggling for socialist revolution"

* 1979(11th World Congress) Socialist revolution and the struggle for women's liberation (reading)

• autonomy of women's movement because

• understanding of women's oppression something other than a simple socio-economic question

• separate organisation of women is neither petty bourgeois nor splitting the working class

* Socialist democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat (1970s ->1985(12th World Congress))(reading)

• possibility of plurality of authentically revolutionary organisations

• rejection of idea of one revolutionary party which can synthesise all needs and interests and represent the whole class,

* Positive action 1991(13th World Congress) -

• full recognition reality of unequal power in our own organisations and legitimacy of women organising

Learning from social movements, programme develops also outside party, "black period" for politics and ourselves

* 1991 first attempt at ecology document, Appeal for new internation alism

* 1992 Adoption of manifesto

* 1995 Building the Fourth International (14th World Congress)

* 2003 lesbigay and ecology documents(15th World Congress)

• apply Marxist methods of programme and analysis to these question

* 2003 new statutes (additional reading)

• concretisation of rejecting pretensions

• BUT "acting together on the main political questions while discussing freely and respecting the rules of democracy"

* need for political organisation

• bringing politics into the economic struggle,

• active intervention to have an effect

* need for centralisation and democracy in action of such an organisation

• shared programme to be effective and democratic

• collective action to make a balance sheet

* need for an international

• even as small as ours

• not a "mother house" with offshoots

• and applying "positive action" to make our organizations closer to what we want to be

* women

• dynamic of exclusion of women from public (political) sphere

• division of labour, unequal power,

• prefigurative relations

* youth

• new generations, new experiences , creativity

• action and partybuilding

* positive action because capitalist society is not a school for the proletariat

• striving towards "a new revolutionary pluralistic international" in new political situation

* after Berlin wall ->

• programmatic questions -> relations other groups

*Zapatistas->

• strategic questions, power, taking power, the state

*global justice movement->

• new form of internationalism – not direct solidarity with political movements

• new forms of organization

- old debates

- new technologies

- NGOs