A joint statement published by the International Socialist League, International Trotskyist Opposition and the League for the Fifth International
The International Socialist League, the International Trotskyist Opposition and the League for the Fifth International have agreed to begin a process of collaboration, exchange and discussion with the aim of trying to reach a fusion of our international organizations before the end of next year.
This convergence arises from profound agreements on the characterization of the world situation, the revolutionary policy towards the main events of the current class struggle and a common perspective on the need to regroup revolutionaries on a programmatic and principled basis and a sound democratic centralist method to advance in the construction of a strong International.
The three organizations came together at the Milan Internationalist Meetings, where we noted significant agreements regarding our analysis of the world situation, the characterization of China, Russia and the inter-imperialist conflict, and the revolutionary policy towards Ukraine and Palestine.
We see a perspective of a deepening systemic crisis of capitalism, with growing unequal social and political polarization, with a rise of right-wing and extreme right-wing expressions, even reaching the government in many countries, combined with resistance, mass mobilization movements, strike waves, rebellions, revolutions and the emergence of a new and young radicalized militant vanguard in the world class struggle. However, while one pole advances in consolidating a political representation with the extreme right in the lead, the other pole fights in the streets but does not materialize a clear political representation. The crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the working class and popular masses is more acute than ever. Hence the need for a new International rooted in the worldwide struggles of the exploited and oppressed to build a leadership and a program based on the legacy of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and the experience of over 150 years of the working class movement’s struggles against the bureaucracy, bourgeoisie and imperialism.
We agree on the characterization of China and Russia as emerging imperialist powers that are beginning to compete with a Western imperialism that is still hegemonic but in decline. We see a dynamic of a sharpening of the global inter-imperialist dispute between the US and China and their respective allies, which will lead to increasing friction, conflicts and regional and proxy wars. Although a direct global confrontation is not the most probable scenario in the short term, we face a global stage in which that perspective may arise in the future and only the victory of socialist revolution on a planetary scale can avoid it.
We agree on the revolutionary policy towards Ukraine, where we identify the combination of two processes: the invasion of a country by the imperialist power that historically dominated it; and the global inter-imperialist conflict that is also being waged in the trenches in Ukraine. To the extent that there is not a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, we identify the resistance of the Ukrainian people to the invasion of Russian imperialism as the predominant process. Therefore, a revolutionary policy implies supporting the resistance for it to win and defending the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people, as well as of the Donbass, and at the same time confronting Zelensky’s anti-workers policies and fighting for the dissolution of Nato.
We agree that there is no possible solution for the Palestinian people without defeating the genocidal state of Israel and replacing it with a single, secular, democratic and socialist Palestine within the framework of a voluntary federation of socialist republics in the Middle East. And that the struggle for this goal implies supporting the resistance of the Palestinian people, as well as that of Lebanon, and of any other people attacked by the Zionists, and building a revolutionary leadership that fights for socialist revolution throughout the Middle East against Israel, the Arab regimes and all bourgeois leaderships.
These points of agreement are substantial. It is not a question of agreeing on two or three arbitrary, conjunctural/contingent issues, but on the global perspective, the main events of the class struggle and the central tasks of revolutionaries in the world.
It is no less important that we also agree on the need to regroup revolutionaries internationally on the basis of a principled revolutionary program and a healthy method of construction, a democratic centralism that allows us to discuss everything in an atmosphere of camaraderie, to process nuances and disagreements, to intervene in the class struggle with common international positions and campaigns and to assist each other in the construction of our national organizations.
In this way, we believe it is possible to help overcome the theoretical, political and methodological limits of a large part of the current political currents of Trotskyism, whose politics and models of construction have been proving inadequate for facing the global reality for decades which has caused increasingly recurrent crises and splits in the different tendencies.
The currents we, who are in a process of confluence, come from have not been exempt from mistakes that we intend to correct. On the basis of this critical evaluation of the past, we see the need for a patient convergence of diverse experiences, taking the best elements that each current has to contribute, but in the service of laying the foundations of a new revolutionary tradition that we will build together.
In a series of meetings in recent months, the ITO, the L5I and the ISL have confirmed that there is a basis of sufficient political and methodological agreements to begin a process of discussions, exchanges and coordination with the goal of merging our forces.
We have begun a work of coordination and joint intervention and a process of debates on the program, strategy and tactics for the world revolution with this goal. Although divisions and splits have long predominated among revolutionary organizations, from the ISL, the L5I and the ITO, we promote a dynamic of unity and fusion. It is a process that is open to the integration of other revolutionary forces that share the need to regroup in order to contribute to the construction of a revolutionary international that, over time, can become the political representation that the working masses need and lead them towards the world socialist revolution.
