The standpoint of the world bourgeoisie is a class standpoint. The standpoint of the Fourth International is based on the same fundamental class considerations. This determines their fundamental antagonism to the USSR. This determines our attitude and approach to the Russian question. The attitude taken toward the Soviet Union throughout all these years has been the decisive criterion separating the genuine revolutionary tendency from all shades and degrees of waverers, backsliders and capitulators to the pressure of the bourgeois world-the Mensheviks, social-democrats, anarchists and syndicalists, centrists, Stalinists. A precise attitude has been taken at every stage. At each stage in the development of the Soviet Union, its advances and its degeneration, we seek the basis for revolutionary action. We have followed its evolution, both progressive and retrogressive, at every stage. Without a firm position on the Russian question our movement also would inevitably have shared the fate of the others. Lacking connection with the workers’ movement through failure or inability to get jobs in industry or membership in unions, the student and unemployed youth are subject to terrific pressure from the petty-bourgeois world. At the same time, the convention resolution decreed that discussion in the branches must cease, and that all attention and energy of the party membership be concentrated on practical mass work in the next period.
This tendency (Souvarinism) has manifested itself in leading circles of our party (Burnham) and in certain sections of the membership. A Proposal for a Joint Statement to the Party Membership, to be Signed by the Leading Representatives of Both Groups in the PC. In whole home remodel minneapolis or in part, all of these groups attempt to identify Bolshevism with Stalinism. If we were to call the roll of these ultra-radical groups it would present a devastating picture indeed. It would be interesting, if we had the time, to call the roll of these groupings which one after another left our ranks to pursue an ostensibly more "revolutionary" policy on the Russian question. All the time throughout this entire period of 16 years, the Bolshevik-Leninists have stoutly maintained, in the face of all slander and persecution, that they were the firmest defenders of the workers’ state and that in the hour of danger they would be in the front ranks of its defence. They're great, but not in the way I might have thought. That is the only way to assure a firm and consistent policy. It shows the way forward.
Defencists on Russia were defeatists at home. Defencists at home were defeatists on Russia. The nationalised property and the planned economy stood up under all the difficulties and pressures of the capitalist encirclement and all the blows of a reactionary bureaucracy at home. Conclusion: nationalised and planned economy, made possible by a revolution that overthrew the capitalists and landlords, is infinitely superior, more progressive. Later, when it became clearer that the Communist Party of Lenin had been irremediably destroyed, and after it became manifest that the reactionary bureaucracy could be removed only by civil war, the Fourth International, standing as before on its analysis of the Soviet Union as a workers’ state, came out for a political revolution. We recall the case of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union here in New York. To defend the Soviet Union as a gigantic labour organisation against the attacks of its class enemies does not mean to defend each and every action of its bureaucracy or each and every action of the Red Army which is an instrument of the bureaucracy.
At all times the New International was the property of our organisation. Successful achievement of this internal transformation is a thousand times more important than any amount of empty phrases about "preparation of the party for war". The integration of the party into the workers’ movement, and the transformation of the party into a proletarian organisation, are indispensable for the progress of the party. On the Russian question there are only two really independent forces in the world. As Trotsky remarked in this connection: "If we wait till everything is right in everybody’s head there will never be any successful revolutions in this world" (or words to that effect). No, if we are genuine revolutionists and not pacifist muddleheads we will cross the border and meet them at the point of landing. The Russian question is with us once again, as it has been at every critical turning point of the international labour movement since November 7, 1917. And there is nothing strange in that. All those who in the past rejected the conclusions of the Fourth International and broke with our movement on that account, have almost invariably fallen into the service of the imperialists, through Stalinism, social and liberal democracy, or passivity, a form of service.