Report
Comrades, the IEC of the LIS, published a text to contribute to a series of congresses that have these days (the congress of the comrades of Pakistan was recently held, there will be a congress in Kenya soon, we had this one of the Argentine MST) that appeared in bulletin No. 17,[1] with an outline of the most significant issues to facilitate the debates and encourage the the discussion of the international situation in our congresses. More so in the current situation, where national issues, particularly here in Argentina, have trapped us for several months.
We titled the text Socialism or barbarism, with which we do not intend to say the same as always, because we often use this slogan. But we think it has greater importance now, because it is a forecast that is becoming more and more relevant and we think it is important as a starting point. Because the crisis of capitalism has reached such a degree that there already are elements of barbarism and everything indicates that, if we do not put a stop to it, they will continue to advance. The title intends to focus on the fact that we are facing a significant moment, in which this dilemma is becoming increasingly present, more current, and it is important to take this debate, about the current stage and the moment we are in, to the activist vanguard.
The economic crisis, which took an extraordinary leap in 2008 and is the largest in at least the last 70 years, has not stopped. On the contrary, it has continued to deepen. The economic analysis of the situation does not show a positive perspective for this year and next year. All economists and international organizations predict it will continue to deepen, so the prospects are very bad for the world economy. And we all know what this means for the masses: a situation of worsening hardships.
Because the bourgeoisie, faced with this crisis, is unleashing a brutal offensive to try to resolve the crisis at the cost of brutal adjustments, even calling into question the political regimes that it needs to apply this level of austerity. In many places, they are unable to impose dictatorships, but bourgeois democracy as we know it no longer serves them in some countries to advance with the austerity plans. So we are seeing bourgeois sectors betting on more far-right variants. Although we don’t yet see outright fascism, there are clear elements of it, and it is linked to the crisis.
The situation of hunger and misery is causing mass migrations, which have tremendous effects in Europe. People´s desperation to reach the metropolises from semi-colonial countries causes deaths and those who manage to arrive live in a situation of permanent misery because they do not find the future they were looking for. This also happens in Latin America in relation to the United States.
We are seeing a brutal attack on nature. We have to discuss that we are in a critical stage in relation to the productive model and the possibility of entering a path of almost no return in relation to the possibilities of survival, as a result of the brutality of capitalism. Racism and religious disputes are growing. Where progress is made in achieving democratic rights for women, there is also a reaction to that. In many places there are epidemics caused by violating the limits of nature and a productive model that produces more and more catastrophes.
Therefore, it is very important that we clearly affirm something that may be obvious to many of us here, but is also a political debate, because it implies convincing the vanguard and important sectors of the mass movement that capitalism has no reform and that there is no possibility of solving the crisis without destroying capitalism. And this, which, I insist, may be obvious to us, is not so obvious to the vanguard and sectors of the mass movement. Therefore, there we have a political battle to wage to convince people that there is no perspective for humanity without destroying capitalism, that there is no reform possible, that there is no good or humanitarian type of capitalism. And that, therefore, the great task for humanity – which we have to collaborate with – is the socialist revolution. The crisis has reached such a degree that capitalism does not even allow minimal reforms. You almost have to make a revolution to achieve minimal reforms that, in other times, reformists coils achieve and maintain.
This is precisely what is leading reformist projects around the world into crisis: they raise expectations, but since they cannot give anything to the mass movement when they govern, because of the current stage of the capitalist crisis, they quickly go into crisis. This is what often opens the door to the right: disappointment with these projects. We have seen this in Europe with Syriza, with Podemos, in Latin America with everything that Chavismo meant, with what Lula was at the time, with Kirchnerism itself in Argentina: they cannot offer absolutely anything to the mass movement because, in the context of the current capitalist crisis, there is no room for reforms. The reformists fall prey to this.
That is why it is very important to take this debate to the vanguard. We have to fight politically to explain to the vanguard that if we do not destroy capitalism, what comes is barbarism, and there already are elements of barbarism; that the battle we must wage is precisely to avoid barbarism, to avoid the emergence of extreme right-wing expressions, and that this requires breaking definitively with any reformist perspective and moving towards a revolutionary perspective.
Another important element of the current stage, without which practically none of what is happening can be understood, is that the crisis of capitalism has also brought about an interbourgeois struggle between old powers that are in crisis and new powers that are emerging. This is also an important element. Practically nothing can be understood about what is happening, or about the conflicts that are beginning to take place at the international level, without understanding that we are in a kind of new Cold War, which is increasingly heating up and, in a period of time, could even lead to a new international confrontation. Although we cannot make a definitive prediction about this, we should know that, until now, struggles for hegemony between imperialist powers have always ended in military confrontations. Now we are in a time in which the atomic power that exists could even raise the possibility of a new global confrontation ending life itself on the planet. That is why it is important to point out that revolutionaries are the only ones who can stop this perspective, because only a socialist revolution can intercede to prevent things from reaching that terrain. We should know that the war between Russia and Ukraine, for example, permanently raises the possibility that, especially Russia, which is a nuclear power, if it sees itself threatened, could act in this area. In fact, this is a permanent debate in Europe.
To understand and to position ourselves politically, it is important to determine the issue of the decline of the United States. Because the United States continues to be the hegemonic power to this day, but it is in a period of significant decline and various factors have led to this situation. One element is that, although the US “sold” the idea – in a strong propaganda campaign that impacted on the conscience of the mass movement – that, with the fall of the Soviet Union and everything that happened afterwards, it was going to achieve a semi-colonization of those countries, it failed in that task. Not only did the US not manage to semi-colonize China, Russia, but the opposite happened. the capitalist restoration did not end in a semi-colonization, it ended in the formation of new capitalist powers that began to contest the hegemonic role of the US, especially China. But it is not just China, it is also Russia. It can be discussed whether Russia has the character of a more regional or more international power, but it is ultimately a power in its entire region, where it acts as an imperialist power.
Another very important element is that the United States lost the Soviet bureaucracy as its fundamental partner in the class struggle. Although the restoration was a victory of capitalism over “real socialism”, carried out precisely by all the Stalinist policies, at the same time, US imperialism lost the bureaucracy, which played a fundamental role in responding to the world situation. And that weakened imperialism and the United States. I always make a comparison, which is important to take into account. Imagine if the bourgeoisie here lost the union bureaucracy as a fundamental player in the class struggle. Because the advances of the bourgeoisie cannot be understood only by what the bourgeoisie wants to do. In many cases they can only be understood by what the policy of the bureaucracy allows it to do. In Argentina we are in a situation in which, if there was a general strike and a plan of struggle, it would be difficult for Milei’s plan to survive. But he advances thanks to the complicity of the bureaucracy. Well; st the global level, the Soviet bureaucracy also played a role in that sense.
There is a very important debate on the left, first because there are many comrades who believe that China cannot yet be defined as imperialist. It is a debate that leads to political conclusions, because if China is not imperialist and there is at some point a confrontation between NATO and China, and one is imperialist and the other is not, this objectively suggests that we should side with China. If there are two imperialist sectors, which is what we believe, neither one is progressive and, therefore, we should not support either of them. This translates into conflicts that exist all the time. For example, the comrades of the PTS in Argentina (Trotskyist Fraction) believe that China becoming imperialist is a process that has not been completed, which has a lot to do with their position on Ukraine and other places.
The same with the Russia and Ukraine war. It is not the same if they are two semi-colonial or non-imperialist countries. What is in debate around Ukraine is whether there is an imperialist country attacking another country. The Partido Obrero has a tremendous mess in its head. It’s very confusing; they state that the restoration in Russia has not yet been completed, but at the same time that Russia plays an imperialist role. But this is a real debate internationally and we have to have a solid position on it. The ISL has contributed important texts on all this, which are in the magazine on this topic.
This debate exceeds campism. Campism exists. Even sectors of the bourgeoisie itself stoke campism, as nationalists and sectors that come from Stalinism do so. But there is a debate that exceeds campism and reaches Trotskyist forces with which we are still unable to agree with. This makes unity of action difficult in response to processes that occur and find us debating them and even positioned in opposing camps. We are categorical: we believe that none of the sectors, neither the old powers – obviously the United States – nor the new ones, play any progressive role. Therefore, our policy is independent of all of them.
And this is important for intervening, not only in response to conflicts like the one in Ukraine. It is important for intervening, for example, in Nicaragua. What policy do we have for Nicaragua,which is nearby? We have an independent policy. We revolutionary socialists develop a policy against US imperialism, but also against the government of Nicaragua. We do not give in to the government of Nicaragua, as other sectors do, especially the campists. We have maintained a policy that has allowed us to strengthen our organization throughout Central America precisely because that policy is independent of the government of Nicaragua. We organized a brigade. All of this allowed us to strengthen our presence, build our Nicaraguan section, begin to develop relationships and build in Central America because we were clear on this.
There are sectors of the left that do not have clarity. They do not have clarity on Cuba, which is in a process of restoration. They have a completely ambiguous policy, often not supporting the mobilizations that take place there. We, in the first place, differentiate ourselves from imperialism, which constantly tries to intervene and take advantage of every crisis. But we also have to have a policy that is independent of the governments that are part of the bloc organized around China and Russia.
In the mass movement, the justified hatred of the United States often makes these debates complex, because “the enemy of my enemy” often attracts sympathy for whatever the powers that oppose the US do. But it is a political debate in which we have to explain. It is also often true that some understand Russia as if it were a continuity of what the Soviet Union was, but what happens today in Russia has nothing to do with what happened in the Soviet Union.
In Ukraine, all this came into contradiction. In our opinion, an important sector of the left fell into a unilateral position of seeing only one side of the process that occurs in Ukraine, when, in reality, two processes are combined. Because the conflict began with the invasion by Russia – an oppressive power, a prison of peoples, historically oppressive of the various peoples of the region – of a semi-colonial country. That event posed, first of all, the defense of Ukraine’s right to self-determination. But that is also combined with the fact that NATO took advantage of the conflict to rearm and strengthen itself. The Russian invasion even suited NATO perfectly to achieve this, even to incorporate new countries into the alliance. This was confusing, there were comrades who adopted a policy based on only seeing this aspect and, therefore, not raising the right to self-determination of Ukraine, but subsuming it in the struggle against NATO and letting Russia off the hook of its role as oppressor and imperial power in the region.
There were also currents like the UIT (Socialist Left of Argentina) or the LIT (PSTU of Brazil) that ignored the fact that NATO takes advantage of the conflict and, therefore, only saw one side of the problem: that of self-determination, when any policy needed to incorporate both elements in order to adopt a concrete position and be capable of building organizations in the region.
Because our big problem, if it is true that socialism is the alternative to avoid barbarism, in order to advance toward a socialist revolution, is that we need to build a party and we need to build organizations in each of the places where we intervene and have policies to build them. Many comrades have a completely abstract orientation, from afar, without attempting to intervene and fight for the leadership of the mass movement.
In Ukraine, the mass movement is contested and those who give in to Russia will never be able to build anything or win over the best of the vanguard. They will concede everything to the nationalists. Because the best way to help the nationalists is not defending the right to self-determination in those countries. Because you concede the mass movement to the Zelenskys and NATO, who present themselves as the great defenders of people’s rights, when we all know that all they want is to subdue Ukraine and deepen its colonization. But to contest for influence in the masses, to have the authority to do so and confront the colonization plan of Western imperialism, it is very important to be at the vanguard of defending the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people.
And the same thing happens in Russia. It is impossible to build anything in Russia while conceding to Putin, who has developed a completely authoritarian and dictatorial regime to support his offensive and the transformation of Russia into a power in the entire region, who has the best of the activist vanguard imprisoned, exiled abroad or driven underground.
We believe that contesting the leadership of the mass movement is not an abstract, intellectual, academic problem. It has to do with specific struggles that exist in specific places. We, revolutionary socialists, will never win the proletariat of Eastern Europe without having a clear policy of complete delimitation of the oppressive power of the region and, at the same time, explaining to the mass movement that the solution is not the West, it’s not NATO, it’s not is United States.
This combination also has to do with the policy towards Cuba. We are never going to build anything without supporting the vanguard that fights and defends the Revolution, but is critical of the bureaucracy. We can’t build anything there if we have prejudices, thinking that if we support a mobilization we will play into the hands of US imperialism, like many currents, including Trotskyist ones, which do not support the concrete processes of struggle and do not challenge the leadership of those processes. This is a very important debate. All characterizations are linked to policies and we have to equip ourselves well because these are concrete debates with the vanguard.
We are not nationalists. We have to be clear that our solution is not the division into countless countries and nationalities. We fight for the unity of the working class. We fight for the Free Federation of Socialist Republics throughout Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Europe, in Latin America. But we identify clearly that there are different types of nationalism. The nationalism of countries that oppress other peoples is not the same as the nationalism of oppressed countries. And that is why we need to establish policies to defend the right to self-determination. And this is a crucial policy, because in the period that is beginning, we will see many processes of subjugation of peoples’ sovereignty. And we, who are not nationalists, are going to have to defend that right.
Look, there would have been no Russian Revolution if Lenin had not defended the right to self-determination of the nationalities that the tsarist empire oppressed, even defending their right to separation, which was not the Bolshevik’s policy, because the Bolshevik’s policy was the Federation. But politics cannot be imposed by force of arms, which is the best way to help the mass movement go behind the right-wing nationalists. There was a revolution thanks to getting that right, and it was a significant debate among the Bolsheviks, because Stalin and others were against it. Even Rosa Luxemburg was against it, because she only had an abstract policy that socialists had to be internationalists. But to lead the international revolution we have to win the mass movement and to win the mass movement, like the transitional program also proposes, we have to raise the demands of the mass movement in order to win over to internationalism, not hand over the mass movement to the nationalist leaderships.
There will be new problems. What are we going to do about Taiwan, for example, if China invades? Of course, there are all kinds of arguments. Yes, when the revolution took place, the entire right wing went there. There was a policy by Mao’s own government to transfer to Taiwan all the people that were then siding with the Chinese bourgeoisie. But many years have passed since that. Do they have the right to self-determination or not? These are debates that we have to have, that will come up at any time. These are debates that we have to open among ourselves to think about what policies to adopt on the issue.
There is another debate, which is Palestine. Unlike Ukraine, there is a significant degree of unity, not total, but significant, in relation to the defense of the Palestinian cause. But on the issue of what is the solution for the Palestinian cause, there are many debates on the global left. There is a debate that we have long held against those who have over the years defended the two-state solution. This policy has been pulverized by reality now, but it allowed Zionism to be strengthened by the capitulation of Arafat and the historic leadership when they accepted the two-state policy, which was accompanied by their recognition of the Zionist State.
There are other debates today. After the two-state policy failed, is a binational State possible, a single State where the two peoples coexist? A long time has passed since the Zionist State was created 75 years ago. Some comrades suggest that so much time has passed that the Jewish population has already settled, so the issue of the destruction of the Zionist State is under debate, and perhaps we should advocate a single binational State. These are debates that exist among comrades who are trying to find a solution. We don’t agree with this proposal. We believe that there is no possibility of peace in the region if it is not on the basis of liquidating the Zionist State and returning to the situation of 75 years ago. It is a debate even with comrades with whom we have fraternal relations, because it is a logical debate, because our proposal to liquidate the Zionist State and advance to a single, secular, democratic and socialist Palestinian State is not easy either.
There is another debate: will the solution come from the fraternization of the working classes of Palestine and Israel? There is a strong working class in Israel. However, we don’t see that this fraternization is possible if there is not a defeat of the State of Israel. Because today that working class is contaminated to the bones by the politics of Zionism, which has had a policy to make the population follow Zionism, which was to give them the territories, the homes and everything that belonged to the Palestinian people, to incorporate the entire population into the army so that everyone, in one way or another, also participates in the ethnic cleansing, the taking of territories and the genocide itself.
Therefore, if there is not a categorical defeat of Zionism that opens a new perspective, it is very difficult. What are we going to do with the nearly seven million Palestinians who are outside the territories? Are we going to allow them to return to the territories, which is a historical slogan? We are in favor of them returning. But if they return to the territories, they will want their lands, they will want their homes. But in that house there will surely be an Israeli worker, who came from another place and settled there. The problems we have are very specific.
First of all, we must defend the right of the people who have been massacred and who continue to suffer genocide to this day. So, as we discuss how we stop genocide, we also have these debates, which are very important on the left.
We are convinced that there is only one solution, and this is why debating is so important, because we have made a change in a historical slogan. Some of us raised what was the historical slogan of the PLO, which was that of a single, secular Palestine, which was a democratic slogan, if you will. We believe that this is no longer posed in reality. First, because there is practically no leadership that raises it. The PLO, in capitulating and accepting the Zionist State, allowed the radical Islamist leaderships to strengthen, and they don’t raise this policy. What they want is to destroy the State of Israel but to replace it with a new Iran. And we don’t defend that policy. There is a struggle against them. That is why we believe that the only solution, and I return to the initial slogan, is the socialist revolution in the region. There will be no solution without socialist revolution in the Middle East against the Arab bourgeoisies that have allowed Israel to become stronger.
And to fight for that objective, we have to build a party, because there is no revolution without a party. And here comes the same thing again. How do we contest leadership and build organizations? That is why we see the policy towards Lebanon as very important. I tell everyone about this: the first time I went to Lebanon, invited by the comrades who later joined the International Socialist League, they organized a big talk for me. Many comrades from the youth came, and the first question they asked me was: are you for or against the destruction of the State of Israel? Thanks to my answer, we have a section of the ISL in Lebanon. Because many times things are discussed from outside the specific processes and the relationship with the mass movement and the vanguard. There is no possibility of building anything in the Middle East without starting on that point.
Of course, this does not mean refusing to have a policy towards the movements that are developing within Israel. There is a brutal crisis over the Netanyahu regime. Repudiation of what is happening in Gaza is beginning to grow. We have to have a policy, but we have to win them over to a revolutionary policy, which is the policy of standing alongside the Palestinian resistance to defeat that State of Israel and build something new where the people can live in peace again. These are concrete debates that have to be carried out with the vanguard, because they exist. The Jewish community has permanently provided valuable elements to the revolution, not only historically, but on a daily basis. Our party here in Argentina has very valuable comrades who come from there. There is a strong representation of the Jewish community in this country, so we have to take on these debates.
How to define the world situation? I know that there is a tendency here, inherited from our historical current, to constantly try to find a very precise name for the situation. Is it a pre-revolutionary situation, a revolutionary situation, non-revolutionary, counter-revolutionary? We are part of an international organization that is not Morenist, although Morenism is an important component, but the ISL is a confluence with other comrades who have other types of mechanisms to define things. We do not want to define the situation around a name or do what many currents do, first determining the name and then trying to make the situation fit into the name.
For example, currents like the LIT, which since Moreno said that there was a revolutionary situation – 40 years have passed – there is still a revolutionary situation today. It’s the same if there is defeat, if there is no defeat, if the right advances, if the right does not advance, because they never dare to change. Definitions are concrete, they have to do with the situation.
Now, we reached the conclusion that a possible definition of the situation could be pre-revolutionary at the international level. Essentially because there are struggles everywhere but the subjective factor is missing. But we are not too interested in this. What we are interested in is identifying that there is a situation of enormous social polarization, because we believe that is the best definition to understand what is happening. In other words, the current situation is characterized by extreme polarization that is reaching all countries.
When we made this definition, Milei was not in government nor had society practically split in two. But it arrived in Argentina, as it exists in practically all countries. There is a pole that has an increasingly clear political expression on the extreme right, and we must assimilate it. It is a reality as big as a house. It is an extreme right even with fascist elements, which have not become fascist because they have not yet achieved historic defeats of the working class in practically any country, because the other pole responds with struggle, though with many weaknesses, because it does so without leadership, which is the big problem. But the right wing forces act and have won a sector of society. We cannot be stupid and not realize that they have achieved a certain social base. That social base has to do with the fact that the traditional right-wing parties, and even the new left that emerged, did not solve any problem. Precisely because of the crisis of capitalism, by not taking anti-capitalist measures, none of them was able to sustain themselves. They went into crisis and fell, and that has opened the door to these right-wing expressions, along with the fact that a sector of the bourgeoisie and imperialism, to implement their plans, need political expressions that are willing to take things to the end and even to provoke changes in regimes in places where bourgeois democracy fulfilled their needs for a time but no longer does. That is why they are leveraged by significant sectors.
Trump is not crazy. He emerged in the world’s central country and managed to come to power. He is not crazy, it has to do with the powers behind him and the sectors of the bourgeoisie that bet on him. Yesterday I explained this at the rally: in Argentina, you can’t understand Milei without Roca, without Bulgheroni, without the great owners of the country, who are behind Milei and want to put an end to a working class that has been screwing their plans for 40 years. They want to aim for the whole package. And the same thing happens to the bourgeoisie around the world, in many countries where they want to get rid of workers’ remaining gains, because they have made progress in liquidating them in many cases, but there are still many left. They want to go against democratic freedoms because they are a hindrance to them.
Now, they have not yet managed to defeat the working class. That is why we do not have a pessimistic vision, nor do we give in to the idea that “well, the right is here, let’s hide.” Nor do we share the politics of those who, against the right, propose that the solution is popular frontism and that the left has to subsume itself behind sectors of the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy, who don’t even have that project, but do represent the failure of having tried to govern countries without generating any change.
This is a specific issue, we are experiencing it in Brazil, for example. In Brazil we have a big problem, because the tool that had been built, in which Trotskyism played a fundamental role, which was the PSOL, is falling apart precisely because a reformist wing has won which, in response to fear of Bolsonaro, has proposed to practically fully integrate the PSOL into the PT government, and they wants to expel those of us who are critical.
These are specific problems, we are going to have them here in Argentina. Don’t think that Peronism, because it is defeated, is dead. The Peronists will invent some proposal, because the bourgeoisie is going to try to put something together. And they are going to try to pressure us with the idea that, to fight Milei, we all have to unite. That is a concrete pressure that captures the will of very honest people who are terrified of what is happening, want to get rid of Milei and the right and see the unity of everyone as a solution.
Careful now, we are in favor of unity, unity in the streets, unity in mobilization. We don’t have to be sectarian towards that. We are not sectarian in the mobilization, but we maintain political independence, because if revolutionaries lose political independence there is no salvation for humanity, comrades. Because the only way for humanity to stop this disaster is for a revolutionary leadership to emerge, independent of all bourgeois and bureaucratic sectors. And to achieve that we have to remain firm and debate with the vanguard, and explain to them that this is not the solution.
From global debates, policies emerge. And at the same time, we have to discuss how we go about building the revolutionary leadership. Because the other pole, which manifested itself in the United States with the strikes last year, which was one of the years of the most strikes in decades, and they will continue this year; in Europe, in Africa. There are processes in practically the entire world, but they have a weakness – we saw it here in the whole wave of struggles in Latin America – that there are no revolutionary leaderships in the lead. The crisis of the revolutionary leadership is very acute, because the masses fight, and fight, and fight, but they do not have a leadership in front to make victory possible, and that allows the bourgeoisie to recompose itself, and that allows these right wing forces to emerge.
Our great task is to collaborate with the emergence of this revolutionary leadership. There are countries where we have more responsibility than others because there is certain accumulation. I said it yesterday at the rally: in Argentina there is a tremendous responsibility because there is accumulation to build a strong alternative. That is why the debates we have in the FITU are not academic debates. Because if we do not solve this problem correctly, the revolutionary left will miss the opportunity. That is why we have to carry out these debates strongly in the vanguard, because we will find sympathy in the vanguard .
All the changes that the party is discussing here to improve our dissemination of ideas, our communication apparatus, are linked to fighting this fight and better reaching the vanguard, which is tired of the PJ but if they don’t see the left, they will fall into the traps that will be set up for them again, like they are already setting up from the Church with Grabois, who says things similar to what we say and that is why there are people who tell us not to be sectarian. We must not be sectarian, but we must have a political debate, because Grabois proposes capitalism with a human face and the Pope’s encyclicals that we will never read. That’s not our solution. And if the left does not respond, this new peddler of illusions in a capitalism that does not exist will grow stronger, as it is already doing.
Careful, though, in the PSOL our party must wage a political struggle towards the MES and the sectors that, though timidly, stand to the left of the majority leadership that is completely subordinated to the PT. We have to support the NPA process, which is a very important process in France, a central country. And we have to build our parties, comrades, we have to help build our parties.
It is essential to insert ourselves into the working class, because fundamental battles are going to come in the working class. We have to structure ourselves in the class. In general, our parties are very structured in state workers sectors and this is very good, because they have been permanently attacked and continue to be attacked. We have to continue strengthening our work among teachers, in the state in general, in the culture sector, but we have to go to the industrial proletariat. We have to be able to structure ourselves there. We have to recover the mystique of our young comrades wanting to go to the factory, wanting to become leaders of the labor movement. It’s difficult, it’s not easy to withstand the process, but it is strategic, because it is our class and it is beginning to move everywhere, from the United States to Europe, Argentina, everywhere. So we have to structure ourselves there, without losing our policies towards youth, because the youth is a seedbed of cadres with which we can go to the labor movement, and respond to everything. We have to help our parties to be structured among the youth, because it is often difficult for us to structure ourselves among young people.
We have to respond to the new problems that have arisen. Environmental problems are new problems. They have nothing to do with the environmental problems of 20 years ago, which were essentially demands of more middle-class sectors. Today they are concrete problems of capitalism. We have to respond to women’s problems, without falling in or giving in to identity politics, which are disastrous for the construction of parties. They take advantage of real and concrete demands to lead movements to completely mistaken politics. There is a political struggle in the women’s movement. We can’t just “go and go”: we have to fight those political fights and we have to fight them in strength.
To finish, I believe that the ISL project, which is a new, innovative project, that is receiving a lot of sympathy, which explains the rapid growth that we have had, although it is still a small pole, it will continue to develop. We have to use it in all countries to build our organizations because the vanguard always follows international questions. And it is essential to be part of an international project to build our organizations. But we have to use it, make it known. More so in the ISL’s small groups, because it gives strength to the small groups in engaging the vanguard, because it shows that we are part of a whole.
The ISL attempts to build a project that is not easy, which is to try to synthesize the different traditions of Trotskyism and Marxism into a new tradition. It is not easy to do so because it is always easier to be around people who think exactly the same as oneself, as many Trotskyist tendencies do. But that model has failed. That model played an important role in maintaining the flags in a dark period after the Second World War, when Stalinism became strong, and it allowed us to get here. The model of small, more homogeneous internationals played a role, we cannot deny it. We cannot throw away the past and say “it’s all useless.” But today it is exhausted as a model and that is why all the international projects that were built around a single hegemonic party have failed and have gone into crisis.
The English tendency had a very big International, which we didn’t know about because we were elsewhere. We followed Mandelism, but we did not follow the English. As they separated from the Fourth, we paid them almost no attention and they built huge parties alone, bigger even than those built by Mandelism and those we built. But they are in crisis. That project blew up. Everywhere there are parties and groups that come from there, that have reached conclusions similar to ours, and that is why we have bonded with the comrades from Pakistan, we have fraternal relations with our comrades in Australia, etc.
And ourselves, the Morenist current, exploded across the air. We must recognize this, comrades, and assume it. And it also exploded because it is not adapted to the new times we live in. Not to mention Mandelism, which is in a phenomenal crisis. Anyone who believes they can repeat that model is either going to crash into a wall or become a small sect. We don’t want that. In the current stage, it is a crime to form a sect and refuse to build something that can contest mass influence. Because in the current struggle between socialism and barbarism, we need to build international and national organizations that contest mass influence, which is the only way to respond to the current stage. And for that we have to remove all the cobwebs we have and bet on joining with others as the only way out. If we do this, I believe that we will fight in better conditions to contribute to the resolution of the tasks that revolutionaries have, which is to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership.
That ‘s all. I hope that the debate will be fruitful and that, together, we contribute to continue improving and polishing our politics and our orientation. Thank you all.
Closing statements
The density of this session shows that the party, beyond all its weaknesses, which will be discussed in the following sessions to improve, has achieved a very important understanding of the international issue in recent years. The debate that took place here shows the interest and importance that is being given to it. I believe that it is crucial, especially in this stage that we live in, to be an increasingly internationalist party in order to understand what is happening and to intervene in reality. And I think it is very good that progress is being made in that sense. We presented a document that, of course, is a complement to the materials we discussed at the last world congress. Let us remember that we had a world congress in March of last year, that is, exactly one year ago. I recommend you all read some of those materials because they are still relevant. They have passed the test of events and they are very useful to deepen some of the debates that we have had here.
Now I want to take up some debates that are not in the document, that we owe ourselves, especially those of us who come from the Argentine current, from so-called Morenism. It is difficult to determine who is Morenist. Who ‘s not? There are already many families within Morenism. Therefore, for me it defines and no longer defines anything. But there are debates that are anchored in that past and I think it is important to take them up in a non-dogmatic and even critical way, if necessary. Because, to interpret reality, one has to have the courage to be critical, even of one’s own ideas, among others things, because the elaborations of Morenism are from a different stage than the current one. Moreno died in ’87. There are still some currents that call themselves Morenist and continue to repeat like parrots what Moreno said in a completely different stage, which has nothing to do with today. Perhaps the maximum expression of this is continuing to define the situation as revolutionary. In other words, a definition that works for all stages, epochs, moments of regression, of advancement, is useless. Because what good is a definition that never allows you to specify the relationship of forces in the moment and see reality as it is? However, there are currents that call themselves Morenist that maintain that definition.
I think we have to rediscuss some things. This does not mean we should abandon all our heritage. But Marxism is a living, non-dogmatic science that is constantly encouraged to change. It is, in a sense, an elaboration that also has empiricism in the middle, in which one makes hypotheses and those hypotheses can be confirmed or not confirmed. One does not fall in love with the hypotheses that he makes and maintains them for decades.
For example, a fact that is evident and that some comrades touched on, which is our own elaboration that we have to continue working on and has to do with the normalization of the revolutionary process. It is evident that in the period from ’45 to ’90, a series of phenomena occurred that generated much debate and many problems in the Trotskyist movement. Because there was a combination of elements that, in a sense, went against what had been the fundamental experience, which had been the Russian Revolution. For example, we who are Trotskyists armed ourselves with Trotsky’s characterization that there was no possibility of revolution without the industrial working class as the fundamental factor and a revolutionary party, a Bolshevik party. If either of the two were missing, revolution was impossible. However, what happened? And Trotsky made other predictions that proved mistaken, such as that after World War II the revolution was going to be strengthened and Stalinism was going to go into crisis. And the opposite happened. Analyzing these facts is very important, because if you repeat like a parrot and do not see reality as it is, you cannot understand it.
What happened from ’45 to ’90 was that without a revolutionary party, revolutions were made that ended up expropriating the bourgeoisie, and without the working class at the front in many cases, with the peasantry. We can discuss China and a series of countries that expropriated the bourgeoisie. A third of humanity ended up in “real socialism.” With many problems, because the elementary correct element of Marxism, and of Leninism and Trotskyism, was that without a revolutionary party and without the working class, these processes were born flawed from the beginning and in that they were right. But the Fourth International entered into a brutal crisis due to not understanding this, because, for example, as the Communist Party ended up leading processes, there was a tremendous adaptation to the communist parties. That’s where the revisionism in the Fourth began, which ended in an explosion and disintegration into several currents, permanent entryism, etc.
We are not going to discuss a historical balance sheet of all that now, but we do have to see that there is a new, different stage, which is important to analyze. Because today, at least from the ’90s until now, there has been no process where a non-revolutionary leadership without the working class advanced to expropriate the bourgeoisie. This has also confused many who were used to the previous stage. It has made many fall into pessimism as well: “What is happening, there are no victorious revolutions, the bourgeoisie will not be expropriated anymore?” This is also the reason behind the campaign that “socialism is a thing of the past.” There is no model. Before there was a model, a deformed one, but a model nonetheless. They are new problems, we have to work on them. I, for example, believe that the current from which we Morenists come, as a result of this issue that there were leaderships that, pressured by the masses and by the existence of the USSR, advanced more than what their own programs said, we fell into very objectivist traits. I believe that at the end of the ’90s, for example, we fell into objectivism and believed that the rise and crisis led to the possibility of new revolutions, even some victorious ones, without a mass revolutionary party in the lead. We have to discuss this, because I believe that even today there are objectivist traits in some of the currents that come from that past.
Now we are in another world stage, which in a sense is more similar to before 1914. Because before ’14 there were no models either. There was the Paris Commune, but it was a model for few, which did not do so well. The Bolsheviks drew fundamental conclusions from it, without which Lenin’s State and Revolution and a series of elaborations would not have been possible. But there was no triumphant model. One of the complexities of this stage is not having a model, and that the models that existed are not well regarded by the mass movement, because they ended in tremendous catastrophes, like the USSR, which ended in capitalist restoration. We can say that Trotsky had it right, but that’s only for us, because it doesn’t mean that people become Trotskyists. The same thing happened with the issue that “socialism in one country” was going to fail.
These are issues that must be discussed, especially to see how even a critical analysis of ourselves allows us to better equip ourselves for the stage we are in. I believe that we are returning to a stage in which without a revolutionary party and without the working class at the front, the revolution is not on the table. This is what we mean by normalization. This raises new tasks and complexities that we have to discuss. An important debate is whether we are in a stage that has already exhausted its forces and therefore, after the ’90s, so many years have passed without the revolution occurring that it will no longer be posed, or if we are in a transitory stage in which we have to have confidence in the working class, in that the process will lead to more and more conditions beginning to exist to resolve these contradictions. I believe the latter. But these are debates that we have to have. We have to avoid objectivism and adopt policies to resolve contradictions and problems.
I believe that we must also rediscuss a concept that offered an explanation, especially in the early 80s, for a series of phenomena that occurred in the world, but that I believe today, extrapolated, generates confusion. Which is the famous concept of democratic revolution. I personally believe that this definition is useless. Why do I think that concept doesn’t work today? Because I believe that today raising too many expectations in mobilizations for democratic aspects, at a time when capitalism is in a brutal crisis and cannot concede any democratic gains, leads a bit toward having illusions that there will be a path in stages that will lead to socialism. And that is not the case. And it leads to not warning about the weaknesses of the processes.
For example, I believe that the failure of the Catalan revolution has to do with the fact that there is no possibility of democratic change without a deep rooted debate that leads to socialism. The Palestine debate has to do with the same thing. There is almost no possibility today of provoking reforms without heading directly into a head on clash with capitalism. And we have to build our organizations on the basis of that reality, not on believing that a democratic victory, which is difficult to imagine, is going to lead us and open the door to go towards socialism. Also, it didn’t happen. Reality is reality. It didn’t happen. The famous political revolution that we expected did not happen. It didn’t happen. What Trotsky said didn’t happen, that the crisis of the bureaucracy was going to lead to a process where mobilization was going to defeat the bureaucracy and the USSR could be recovered without a social revolution. It didn’t happen. And we have to assimilate that it didn’t happen. There are some who are still waiting for the second stage. Things are as they are in reality and we have to arm ourselves understanding reality, precisely because that is what Marxism is: it is not a dogma. And none of that happened because there were no strong and structured revolutionary parties in the working class.
Exaggerating a little, because one exaggerates in debates, I always say that the most Marxist in the Russian Revolution were actually the Mensheviks. Because, in a sense, Marx had predicted that revolution was impossible in a backward country like Russia, and that was what gave a certain scaffolding to Menshevism and the majority of the Bolshevik leadership. That’s why Lenin arrived and had to kick them their butts in April 1917 and adhere, without saying so, to what Trotsky had said: that the socialist revolution was posed in Russia and that not fighting to take power was a crime. Because Marxism is not a dogma in which one has a blueprint and tries to fit reality into that blueprint. No, it is a living science. And the blueprints that we design, because we need blueprints, we have to have the courage to throw them out when reality does not match those blueprints and think, open our heads to think, to elaborate.
We still have much to elaborate, much, much to elaborate. I believe that we have to do this elaboration on the basis of regrouping with others, because it is very difficult to fully understand reality from each of the small sectors that come from one tendency or another. And this has to do with the ISL project, to achieve a more complete elaboration, even knowing that we can make mistakes again, the friction, the clash with other currents, with other comrades who come from other experiences, who have built organization in other realities. It is very difficult, from Latin America, at the bottom of the world, to get it right and believe that you are going to get it right when trying to understand what is happening in a very complex world and, on top of that, from here you are going to export “illustrated politics” for those who speak in Urdu, who speak in languages that are difficult for us to even pronounce. I believe that contact with other currents of Marxism and Trotskyism that have been formed in other points of view is essential. That is why the ISL project is not just regrouping for the sake of regrouping: it is because we believe that it is the only way to try to solve the leadership problem, which is the most acute problem that we have, and that we will not solve from here or from there, but only in a process of confluence, of debate, of listening to each other.
That is why the ISL project is not to self-proclaim the ISL, although we believe that it is important to build the ISL. The project is to build the IAL and to work with other comrades who are not in the ISL, but with whom we have the perspective of common work, like the comrades in France, like the comrades in Australia. We have to be open to working with others. That’s why we give importance to going to events like the one in Milan. If you see the resolutions you wonder “why did I come here?” But it allows you to contact others, it allows you to discuss, debate, not cook in your own stew.
We are going to an event in Brazil that the MES has organized, for example. We have agreements and significant differences with the MES. But we can’t shy away from debate and discussion. The MES in Brazil is a significant force. For the perspective of overcoming the PSOL, which is in a process of accelerated degeneration, we must have a policy toward these comrades as well. Because, the truth is, the desert outside the PSOL in Brazil is tremendous. It is a kilometers-long desert with no water to build in. Working to see if we can connect with others to see if there is any perspective is very important.
It’s the same as with the definitions. For example, I think we could define the situation as pre-revolutionary. But there are comrades you say that to and they don’t understand a damn thing. They think you drank a liter of tequila. When you speak in the world and see the importance most give to the rise of the right. So it can be for our consumption, those of us who come from some current. But for me, polarization defines the situation better, is more understandable and allows us to join in a debate to get to the content of the situation, which does not deny the positive elements that exist, but does not give the impression that everything is advancing on a bed of roses towards the revolution, when everything that is happening is more complex.
I believe that polarization is a concept that better defines the situation. On the one hand, it clearly identifies the extreme right, which is a problem that we cannot minimize. Because, although we do not see fascism today as a consolidated project, we cannot deny that, in perspective, if the working class and the revolutionaries are unable to gain a foothold, it can advance. Because if it is not socialism, it is barbarism. We seem to only like the socialism part of the phrase, not the barbarism part. But the barbarism is there, it’s at the door, it’s around the corner.
However, I think it is important to not see only that pole, but also to see the other one. Because the other pole is what opens the possibility that the alternative be socialism. Because there are tremendous struggles and as long as there are struggles, as long as heavy battalions of the proletariat like that of the United States, Europe, England, are joining the struggle. In England there was a tremendous defeat, the miners’ strike with Margaret Thatcher, which marked the beginning of neoliberalism and brutal attacks worldwide. That stage has now ended. A recomposition is beginning in the working class, and they are the heavyweights. The strikes in the United States are no small feat, because it is worth 50 Argentinas, comrades, for the United States to begin to move as it is beginning to move. For the definition of the world situation, it is qualitative that, in the United States, socialism is no longer a bad word among young people and among parts of the mass movement. It is a qualitative thing, although it is still in the reformist stage. These are elements of the situation. In France, comrades talked about there being an almost pre-French May situation at one point, which did not end in a victory, but opened a tremendous political situation.
Now, it is not easy to build a party. This is a reality. There are problems in consciousness that we have to analyze. We must also know that the advance of the extreme right is a shock that causes layers of the mass movement to also polarize to the other side and advance and enter into crisis with the reformist leaderships, which we have to take advantage of. Nor can we be backwards objectivists and expect problems to solve themselves. The politics of the revolutionaries also intervened in this. I believe that in many places there is no progress because of the mistakes that revolutionaries make.
For example, I believe that the policy of the PTS, which is the one that dictates from here what the French have to do. Leaving the NPA prematurely was criminal, because the NPA congress could have been won, a very important defeat of reformism could have been achieved and there would be a huge party. But that is not their policy, because they are pessimists, they do not believe it’s possible. They just want to see if they recruit four or five. The policy they are employing here is criminal, because in order to try to have the fashionable figure, they block the possibility of creating a militant force of 30 or 40,000, and even the possibility of transforming the Left Front Unity into a great movement, where the parties would function like tendencies and let the political debate determine who is right, but also advance the revolution in Argentina and transform the left, which has become ossified.
Comrades who come from abroad, who see the potential of the Front, have to know that the Front has a problem, because sectors that supported you yesterday, today tell you “well, I supported you, but I don’t see you solving anything.” In some places, in some provinces, the Front won the elections. In the capital of Salta, the election was won, there was a majority in the Deliberative Council. And then most of it was lost. Why? Many people tell you “well, I supported you, but what happened to you?” That was the Partido Obrero’s doing. They did not call on all the forces of the left to see what the hell we can do with this, because we are in a tinderbox. The same thing is happening in Jujuy. There the responsibility lies more with the PTS. It is an electoral project, when they should have called everyone, intellectuals, everyone. The MST got 25% of the votes of the Left Front and they tried to ignore us, attempting to keep us from advancing. When in reality what had to be done was to convene a large plenary, an assembly, invite intellectuals from everywhere, because you also have to demonstrate that you are an alternative. In other words, the politics of the revolutionaries have an influence on reality. It’s not that we can’t advance because objective conditions close everything. There are opportunities that we have to know how to take advantage of. Of course, in some places there is more accumulation than in others.
Look, I was impressed with Portugal. That example that Gil gave, that a group of Trotskyists, a small group of Trotskyists, managed, based on a success, which is the formation of a small union, to mobilize, I think on two occasions, about 100,000 people in Portugal and shake the entire bureaucratic union structure because STOP has become a tremendous pole. We must follow the STOP phenomenon in Europe to see if we cannot learn from this phenomenon elsewhere. And of course, it has been difficult for our comrades to translate that success into political building. Rotten sects have also acted to avoid that, because the UIT, in the middle of this process, to win over one comrade, carried out a campaign against the STOP leaders.They ran a red-baiting campaign, a current that calls itself revolutionary, going to the assemblies to say that STOP was led from behind by the MAS, to attract the most backward part of the union movement and to block the process. This has demoralized our leaders there, it has put them on the defensive. A current that, to win over one person, tries to destroy the possibility of becoming a political alternative. In other words, the policies implemented by leaderships have an impact. I believe that Portugal is not lost and that we all have to work to see how we reverse that situation, because STOP is still there, there is still an opportunity, and we have to work to find a way to translate that success into political organization. And we all have to help. Even, if necessary, in an act of internationalism, with the Brazilian comrades sending young comrades to help with the party building there. We have to discuss how we do it, because that’s what it’s all about. When there are opportunities, we are all Portugal, because if not, there is no true internationalism.
So, I think the situation is very contradictory, but revolutionaries can intervene and can accumulate forces. It is very difficult to achieve mass influence. But it is not difficult to accumulate forces, to form vanguard parties, and strengthening them so that a turn in the class struggle, which will come, may allow us to take a leap in some places and transform it into a stronghold. But I think we cannot do this from a national perspective. I believe that we can only do this from an international perspective and by helping each other among revolutionaries to take advantage of opportunities where they are presented to us, to strengthen our organizations. Because the strengthening in one place is the strengthening of all.
That’s why we are obsessed with this project that tries to break with a past where the only thing you were interested in was recruiting one person. We have to recruit, not just one, but two, ten and 100, because we want to build a revolutionary party. But around responding to the tasks of the class struggle and the moment we are in, which is to try to see if we can begin to form small poles, and we can only do that internationally. We cannot do it locally, we cannot even do it in Argentina. Let’s be clear. The ISL has been a great help for us, to position ourselves politically. Without the ISL, the MST would not be well positioned politically. Even with its weakness, the international debate, the opinions of comrades, are essential to train cadres. In other words, there is no possibility of forming cadres within a solely national framework, without friction and clashes with others. There is no chance.
There are debates that we have to deepen. I, for example, see our comrades from Costa Rica a bit rushed on the issue of inter-imperialist friction. Because although I believe that friction exists and there is a process, World War III is not around the corner. And this is important, because it leads to politics. As Marxists, we can’t say “there is going to be a third world war.” We raise a hypothesis. There are other contradictions too. The nuclear bomb is also a factor, because, when a bomb goes off on one side, a bomb goes off on the other side. And that is a fact of reality that, for example, prevented there from being a third world war last century and the war remained cold for a long time until the USSR fell. Now there is a growing inter-imperialist dispute and we cannot say that there will not be one, but we have to observe the rhythm. There is a sector of the world left that practices politics as if there were already a third world war. So they say that the center is defeatism everywhere. And sure, defeatism in Russia is fine, defeatism in the imperialist countries is fine, but do we also have to do defeatism in Ukraine, which would mean allowing Putin to reach Kyiv and set up a puppet regime? No, that’s not a correct policy. And if there was a third world war it would be correct. But not so fast, because Lenin, analyzing the First World War, said about Serbia that it was a shame that the beginning of the First War had covered up the national problem that existed in Serbia. Don’t think these are all new phenomena. There have been many similar phenomena in the world. But they are debates that are complex.
The Ukrainian Maidan was against a government that was a satellite of Russia. The process was backwards in a sense. But it has points of contact with what happened, for example when the Soviet Union fell, in that, due to the absence of revolutionary leadership, even counterrevolutionary forces became strong. By having a unilateral analysis of the Maidan, one can fall into opposing mass mobilization and end up supporting a government that was a puppet of Russia. The problem is one of revolutionary leadership. I believe that these are issues that must be analyzed well, not superficially. Even Putin’s own campaigns fall apart in relation to this issue, as Ukraine would be a unique case in the world, where an entire country is fascist and right-wing, and the reality is not like that, it is more contradictory, more complex. These are debates that we have to have.
We have to continue writing about China, because there is the issue of imperialism. But there is another issue, which the Pakistani comrades are permanently concerned about. And China is closer to Pakistan than to Argentina or Latin America, the debates are much more concrete there. There are elements that we have to use at the service of our proposal. It is evident that China developed as a capitalist and imperialist power very rapidly, in part, because it takes advantage of the centralization of its economy. It this a fact of reality. And we defend economic centralization, at the service of a socialist project, not at the service of an imperialist project. But it is a reality that we have to use this, as at some point – I don’t want to generate controversy – we used “socialism with democracy” to try to explain our proposal. Here we had a mess with Cuba because we had it next door, and to try to explain Cuba’s defense and say that it was missing something, we said that. One constantly juggles to find ways to communicate.
Then there is the tactical issue of the name, of socialism, and how we use it. The central problem for me is that we have to uphold socialism, the program. Careful though, in Ukraine our comrades are called the Ukrainian Socialist League and they have survived for quite some time. It will depend on the class struggle, on how it evolves. I believe that if the war is lost, a process will begin against Zelensky and against everything. When all the combatants return to look for a job that does not exist, we will see what happens in Ukraine. Of course, if the war were won, I think it would be a shock wave: it would reach to Russia and beyond. But that’s a matter for another topic.
I think there are many weaknesses in the ISL that we have to attack. For example, we have to improve our social networks, we have to improve our campaigns. We have carried out campaigns, but it has been difficult. We do not have a circular and that prevents many things from being socialized. We have given a lot of importance to the website, but less to the other things. We need to advance. The ISL is a project that is just beginning, and we all have to improve it together.
But I believe that in the few years of the ISL we have demonstrated some things. Nobody has imposed on any national leadership any policy that was developed elsewhere. We have been patient in carrying out some of the discussions because we really believe in this project. We do not believe that anyone, no matter how big or small, can impose policies on another. What we want is to create instances of debate and discussion so that there is conviction in the policies that are applied. And I think that is a fundamental point, because we need to build a project that listens to others.
I believe that the Pakistani party is a fundamental organization within the construction of the ISL, because building a revolutionary party in Pakistan is very complicated. It is much, much more difficult than building in countries with certain democratic stability – even though this is now being lost – with very different economic situations, with more backward societies as a result of fundamentalism and the economic development of the country. And that has to do with what I said about the English Trotskyists. I think they built parties even in very complicated places.
Now, at the same time, the English Trotskyists’ international projects have blown up. Why did they fly into the air? Why is Peter Taffe alone and sad today, after having been one of the leaders who had built a great International? Why did all the parties flee and leave him alone? It was a rebellion against the English party and everyone left. They formed something else called the International Socialist Alternative. Because Peter wanted to continue imposing politics from England on each of the sections. In particular on the Irish, who had developed with significant strength and took up a very important cause that catapulted them up, which was the feminist cause. And because Peter Taffe was against this, he tried to organize a faction against the Irish and it backfired. A different faction was organized, but against him, and gained a majority of the International. The issue of the mother party is political. I believe that, for example, the small French Mandelist party of 200 that remains is still a mother party. Because it’s not just about the numbers. It has to do with those leaderships believing that they continue being the fundamental leadership to build the international project and will develop policy from there for everywhere else. That leadership imposed on its Greek section that it had to go with Syriza when the Greek leadership was against this and their party wanted to go the other way with Antarsya. And so forth with each of the groups. That is what destroys parties: imposition. For example, in England it’s correct to defend Muslims against xenophobic attacks. And it is correct to defend, as in France, having candidates with that characteristic. But it is incorrect, as the English wanted to do, to impose that same policy on Muslim countries, where you fight against Islamism and cannot follow behind it.
Our basis, and there must be social control by all parties, is knowing that we have a very weak leadership, that has not led anything, that can only export a weak experience of what we do and that will only be able to transform its leaderships the day we lead something. And to have a chance at that, we need to work together, all of us as a team, with the parties, with the militants and with each of the largest or smallest groups that we have.
March 31, 2024 – Approved unanimously
(together with the ISL document)