I CONGRESS OF THE TRFI

On November 17th and 18th we held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the First Congress of the Tendency for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International, with the participation of delegates of the COR from Chile, COR from Argentina and the LOI from Brazil. The Congress discussed and took steps forward in understanding the general trends of the development of the crisis at a worldwide scale, as well as the political phenomena in Latin America.

We consider that we are within a historical period characterized by a tendency to the decomposition of imperialism and a process of capitalist assimilation of the former workers’ States. This whole period is signed by a historical crisis of the capitalist system, since its imperialist stage gets into a contradiction between capital and the State; not as regards class nature, but rather in its political form, namely, in the safeguard of capitalist reproduction all over the World within a States-system that is in crisis. We are talking about decomposition in the sense that the decaying element of imperialism, as historical character, is generating a social decomposition that attacks the very foundations of capitalism. One of the features of decay of capitalism in its imperialist stage is that this stage turns a great part of the bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries into rentiers, what Lenin called the formation of rentier States. During the historical process of this phenomenon, imperialist penetration all over the World created a greater decomposition of the world bourgeoisie and its relation with production; and a greater differentiation of the working class –between the so called workers’ aristocracy, the semi-aristocracy and a union bureaucracy ever more assimilated to the capitalist system. The historical tasks of the bourgeoisie is diluted before the growth of imperialism as the superstructure of capital and, by the way, they decompose class relations.

Today the imperialist bourgeoisie is trying to discuss a new deal between capital and labor, due to the break up of the post war deals. From there come the political lines of fiscal, labor and pensions reforms as an international policy to redefine the relation of forces.

We updated the Thesis submitted to the Congress with the conjunctural international processes and the development of the world crisis, especially the mid-term elections in USA and the victory of Bolsonaro in Brazil. As regards USA, we defined that the results of the elections could not tip the balance in favor of any of the competitors. Rather, the result was a balance of forces that allowed Trump keep the chance of a future reelection and the Democrats got a possibility to have more control on Trump’s administration. The Republicans kept their constituency, although they didn’t get social base for imperialist policies, such as the trade war unleashed by this administration. On the other hand, the Democrats were not able to broaden the so-called blue wave; but they did contain within their ranks the social movements, feminists, LGTB and pseudo socialists; which enabled them to make a good election and regain the House of Representatives. At an international scale, the imperialist powers that are being attacked by USA have analyzed the elections as a partial setback of Trump. We also discussed on the relationship of the USA with China, the European Union, Russia and Iran. We reinforced our analysis on the trends, that we developed in the thesis on the process of decomposition of imperialism.

Throughout the unfolding of the world crisis there can be conjunctures of growth, not as a whole, but in some industries and even some industries against others. The need to recreate a workers’ aristocracy is based on the need to reinforce a social base, which is a structural matter for an imperialist State. And there is a central contradiction between USA, that must strengthen a workers’ aristocracy and the EU, that must attack its workers’ aristocracy to boost the State for trade war. 

On Bolsonaro’s victory we reaffirmed the idea that it is not fascism, as we have explained in the articles published in our website; and we tried to go deeper on the relation with the petty bourgeoisie, with the concept of sui generis Bonapartism. We picked up the thread of Trotsky’s writings on Latin America and how the general laws of capitalism and their special combinations come up in semicolonial countries. This analysis is important, because the relation of the petty bourgeoisie with the imperialist bourgeoisie is not the same in semi States, in which the bourgeoisie (sub-bourgeoisie) is weaker and mediated by imperialism. The features of this petty bourgeoisie in semicolonies impede the emergence of fascism, because a “national” capital will never be an imperialist financial capital, it rather depends on this international capital for its survival. Therefore, the petty bourgeoisie acquires other type of features; its radical and democratic wing tries to refine the institutional conditions of the semi State and finds shelter in education –as a counterweight in terms of consciousness- to avoid the most reactionary course of capitalism. The historical development in semicolonial countries of a urban and, mainly, rural petty bourgeoisie has been the foundation –throughout bourgeois-democratic revolutions- of the formation of what we know as sub-bourgeoisie.

This refinement was required at sight of the growth of different movements with petty bourgeois features and for the discussion on what are the tasks of revolutionaries to influence them. For that, the old revolutionaries said that the only way for the petty bourgeoisie to trust the proletariat was to make the proletariat trust its own strength, that the proletariat regains the role as leader and takes over the historical tasks that the bourgeoisie is unable to carry out because of its decay. Therefore it is a mistaken policy on behalf of the Left to call for a vote for Haddad, which leads –in their adaptation to movements- to sow more confusion.

The I Congress reinforced the idea of building up a revolutionary core for the reconstruction of the Fourth International, a task that us, members of the TRFI, are committed to. We also believe that it is a priority that the revolutionary trends that vindicate the need of a IV International and the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship prop up the necessary measures to set up and unify an international workers’ vanguard lined up behind a revolutionary program. This is why we make an appeal for a Latin American Conference, to begin –at first in our Region- to help the vanguard walk the tough road of forging a revolutionary leadership.