The International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU–FI) and the International Liaison Committee (İşçi Demokrasisi Partisi, IDP and Lucha Internacionalista, LI) decided to unify. To do so we convened a conference in early August 2014. It will also feature the incorporation of the Partido Obrero Socialista–Movimiento al Socialismo (POS –MAS) of Mexico. This unity of forces is the result of of building a common response to the main problems of the international class struggle.

Capitalist crisis and workers struggle

We live in a terrible crisis of capitalism, which around the world hits the working class and is sinking the living conditions of the masses: destruction of millions of jobs, wages of misery, hunger and disease, destruction of public health and education systems, reversal of democratic rights, increased repression... They want to present this situation as a transient deregulation of capitalism, but as Marxists we know we are in a structural crisis caused by the system itself and that inevitably pushes it to further destruction of the productive forces.

Against this offensive, the workers and the people resist and fight. Special mention required for the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, in which dictatorships that ensured the imperialist order for decades have fallen, in which workers and especially the youth, arose for bread, work and freedom and which spread in the region like wildfire. There is a permanent attempt by the counterrevolution and imperialism to defeat and stop these processes, such as the genocide of al-Assad in Syria or Al Sisi’s bloody coup in Egypt. But the masses resist under the rubble in towns and cities destroyed by the Syrian dictatorship, while new protests confront the power of the Egyptian military. Our place is beside the peoples and the workers and young people, supporting the revolutionary left.

This process in North Africa and the Middle East impacted the world and has fuelled responses as the popular rebellion in Turkey (Gezi Park–Taksim Square). At the head of the resistance of European workers against the austerity plans that the governments of the European Union and the troika (IMF–ECB–EU) dictate is the Greek working class that has over twenty general strikes. Another expression of this struggle is the massive rally in Madrid on 22 March, which was not controlled by the big unions. We support the struggles seeking to unite them into a European general strike, for the defeat of austerity plans, against payment of the debt and for the break with the European Union.

There have been prominent mining strikes in South Africa, in the Indian textile workers and popular mobilizations in Asia. In Latin America there have been very important struggles against the adjustment that were expressed in the June days in Brazil, in the general strikes in Argentina and Paraguay and student demonstrations of Chile. There is a growing political erosion of the centre-left which had created expectations in the Latin American and in the world left, especially the Chavist government of Venezuela.

Building a political alternative

At the forefront of these struggles appear new comrades willing to give their best, to go to the end, in the Syrian streets, in the Egyptian textile companies, in the Greek strikes or in the Brazilian demonstrations. Anti-bureaucratic sentiment grows, the old union leadership are questioned, control of the mobilizations is claimed from the assemblies. They face the power of the state and its repressive forces, imperialism, the bosses and the governments in their service.

They face the trade union bureaucracy accommodated to manage the crumbs that fell from the capitalist table and who attempt to disable any struggle or directly betray it. They must also confront the false political solutions, as Chavism, political Islam, or the Ukrainian bourgeois leadership. Neither is a solution the reformism of those who say that it is enough with democratizing the state and the system as Syriza in Greece.

But the trade union and political alternative to the old leaderships that fetter the working class to capitalism, and peoples to the dictates of imperialism, will not be the result of spontaneous action. Revolutionary parties which are a fighting tool for these activists have to be built. Parties are needed which make the problems of the workers their own, which are part of the working class, youth and popular sectors, and build with them the answers to their needs. Parties which, without losing their political projects, avoid sectarianism; because this is incompatible with the success of the struggles of workers and peoples. Parties whose objective is not to have a new apparatus but to contribute to the struggle for workers’ governments and socialism. The lack of such instrument causes defeats and setbacks, even though workers and youth demonstrate an unquestionable ability to fight. To help overcome this problem is our goal.

We merge taking the pillars of revolutionary Marxism, of Leninism, of the Fourth International. The theory of permanent revolution is essential for a dialogue with the trade union and youth vanguard of Tunisia or Egypt, to explain that there is no possibility of a revolution in stages. And that to even achieve democratic demands it is necessary for the revolution to join with anti-capitalist tasks, and become a socialist revolution.

We vindicate the currency of the Transitional Program on which the Fourth International was founded, which aims to respond to and from the most pressing needs of the masses to fight resolutely for the workers to take power and build a socialist society. The fight for the working class to assume the defence of individual and collective rights, to lead the struggle of the oppressed against the system. Building parties for fighting based on democratic centralism: full freedom in the discussion and unity in action. Parties that rejecting all bureaucratic and pyramidal conceptions defend workers’ democracy.

We claim the need of a revolutionary international organization facing conceptions as Castro- Chavism which speaks of socialism for the XXI century while justifying the capitalist restoration in China and Cuba, and which rules facing the workers and agreeing with multinational like in Venezuela. They have a counter-revolutionary policy that supports the genocidal regime in Syria and present to the world the reactionary Iranian regime as an ally of the workers and youth. Today Castro-Chavism tries to redirect the re-composition of the old Stalinism and is an obstacle to the construction of a revolutionary leadership.

We vindicate the method by which we come to the merger. We put at the centre the problems of world class struggle. Based on these vital issues we elaborated and discussed to decide how to act. We continued discussing agreements and differences in a democratic, candid and loyal form of discussion. We come to the Congress with a principled framework and a common method, without solving all the issues but convinced that the new organization will be better able to answer the challenges of the class struggle.

We believe that the announcement of the unification is important in a situation marked by the division and fragmentation of the revolutionary forces. This Congress is also a call for other revolutionary organizations and fighters to work together in order to build an International. Our goal is to achieve the union of the revolutionaries. We avoid all self-proclamation, all sectarianism. We reject reformism trying to make us believe that there is solution within capitalism, which can be humanized.

We join to continue to support more vigorously the struggles of the workers and peoples against imperialism and their governments, so that the capitalists pay for the crisis. The result of the unification of the IWU–FI with the ILC (IDP, LI) plus the addition of the POS–MAS is still far from resolving the historical crisis of leadership, but it is a bold step with the intent that the IWU–FI be the engine of the reconstruction of the Fourth International. Today more than ever the choice is socialism or barbarism.

International Workers Unity–Fourth International (IWU–FI)

Partido Obrero Socialista–Movimiento al Socialismo (POS–MAS), Mexico.

Barcelona, 19 April, 2014