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Fourth International
15th World Congress - February 2003
The Fourth International held its 15th congress in early February 2003 in Belgium. Delegates and observers, representing organizations from 40 countries debated and adopted resolutions on the world political situation (which also included a balance sheet of Stalinism and resistances to capitalist globalization), the role and tasks of the Fourth International, a new Preamble to the Statutes as well as a reform of the Statutes, and two programmatic documents: ’Lesbian and Gay Liberation’ and ’Ecology and Socialism’. The Congress elected a new leadership, the International Committee, which will meet at least once a year and will choose from its ranks an Executive Bureau. The two have been substantially renewed and rejuvenated.
The 15th World Congress of the Fourth International which met in early 2003 recorded a much-changed situation - in world politics and the International itself - compared with the previous Congress in 1995.
Relaunch, opening, regroupment and repositioning
The Fourth International held its 15th congress in early February 2003 in Belgium. Delegates and observers, representing organizations from 40 countries debated and adopted resolutions on the world political situation (which also included a balance sheet of Stalinism and resistances to capitalist globalization), the role and tasks of the Fourth International, a new Preamble to the Statutes as well as a reform of the Statutes, and two programmatic documents: ’Lesbian and Gay Liberation’ and ’Ecology and Socialism’.
The interval between this 15th World Congress and the preceding one is unusual in relation to our tradition. Certainly, this time gap stems from our organizational weaknesses. However, particularly in recent years, it is due to a very large extent to the revival of our national organizations.
A leader of the peasant uprising in the Cuzco region of Peru in the early 1960s, a symbol of the unity and renewal of the Peruvian revolutionary left in 1978-1980, imprisoned, threatened with death, exiled and freed thanks to international solidarity, Hugo Blanco has in the last year faced what for him is a new enemy - illness.
Many comrades, men and women, have left us since the last world congress. Our publications have already paid tribute to our memory. Today we symbolically remember some of them.
We should start by noting a marked change in relation to the 14th Congress of the International in June 1995. That congress took place in a situation marked by political and social defeats. The 2003 congress took place in a quite different political situation, marked at our level by the growth of the anti-globalization movement and social resistances in a series of countries.
Since the end of the 1990s, a turning point in the world political situation has put new phase of activity, programme, strategy and organization on the agenda of the workers’, social and popular movements.
The World Congress of the Fourth International reaffirms a common approach by the Fourth International, whatever differences in analysis exist over the processes of capitalist restoration in the bureaucratically-led regimes that usurped the name of socialism.
The resolution Resistances to Capitalist Globalization: Opening for a New Internationalism was adopted by the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International in November 2000. The following introduction was presented and discussed at the 15th World Congress, then amended on the basis of the discussion.
Opening for a new internationalism
In the last few years in many countries we have been witnessing widening resistance to capitalist globalization. Major convergences have occurred among resistance movements, which are very varied, on the occasion of a series of international campaigns and initiatives.
The new political cycle in the activity, programmatic and political orientation and organization of the workers’, social and popular movements puts resistance on the agenda, for a whole stage, against the ruling classes’ brutal offensive.
The unanimous vote in favour of the resolution on lesbian/gay liberation at the Fourth International’s 15th World Congress culminated almost five years of work, and marked a big step forward in the International’s lesbian/gay work.
Lesbian/gay movements have grown considerably in numbers and spread to every continent since the late 1960s. They have managed to win significant reforms in some countries while many other movements have been on the defensive.
This Congress was the first in the history of the Fourth International to adopt a resolution on ecology. This document, published in draft form in IV nearly two years ago, was debated at length at the FI’s International Executive Committee (IEC) and amended accordingly by the drafting committee designated by the IEC.
Humanity has faced ecological problems at other times, but these have taken on a new urgency today due to their scope and gravity. Damage to the environment often has an irreversible impact on humanity and nature and the ecological crisis on the horizon at the dawn of the 21st Century is endangering the lives of millions.
The Fourth International - an international organisation struggling for the socialist revolution - is composed of sections, of militants who accept and apply its principles and programme. Organised in separate national sections, they are united in a single worldwide organisation acting together on the main political questions, and discussing freely while respecting the rules of democracy.
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