Declaration of the Fourth International at the 1st International Anti-Fascist Conference for the Sovereignty of Peoples
The Fourth International has, since the start, contributed to the development of the Anti-Fascist Conference for the Sovereignty of People. This is a very important initiative for the struggles underway. We wish, however, to contribute to the debate by presenting our own positions, in particular our view of imperialism and what is at stake in the world today. We are also organizing a conference to present our Manifesto for an Ecosocialist Revolution. This will take place on 28 March at 8.30 am at the Centro de Eventos Barros Cassal (R. Dr. Barros Cassal, 220B – Floresta, Porto Alegre).
UNITE THE ANTI-FASCIST STRUGGLE THROUGHOUT LATIN AMERICA!
FOR A GLOBAL ANTI-FASCIST AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST FRONT!
Donald Trump's second term, with its far-right agenda, has brought about a shift in the international situation. In his eagerness to reaffirm a hegemony as weakened as his economy, he tramples on the United Nations Charter and the sovereignty of peoples with a foreign policy of recolonization and war.
Together with his partner in massacres, Netanyahu, Trump is bombing Iran to ensure complete domination of the oil and gas market. This comes after the genocide of the people of Gaza, the invasion of Venezuela, the attempt to strangle Cuba, and threats to annex Greenland.
The tyrant is striving to normalize genocidal language, blackmail, and interventionism, as well as racism, misogyny, and hatred of migrants — attempting to expel millions of workers from the United States. He supports Bolsonaro, Milei, Bukele, and the "patriotic" (read: far-right) European parties.
Bloody authoritarianism is the central instrument of imperialism in our time, because it needs to impose policies of hunger, the proliferation of ecocidal technologies and practices, the excessive power of Big Tech, the dispossession of natural and energy resources from all peoples, and increased military spending. If it is not defeated, Yankee imperialism will embark on a blind march toward ecological disaster.
The peoples of the United States, Argentina, and India show the way
But imperialism's march is already beginning to encounter tremendous obstacles. The victorious struggle of the people of Minneapolis/Saint Paul and of all the community and popular resistance in the United States to the persecution of migrants points the way to defeating the extreme right. Only the combination of the international struggle of the peoples with a defeat of Trump on his own turf can stop their joint project.
The same is true of the working classes in Argentina against Milei and the peasants in India against Modi's policies. In Argentina, Milei faced the fourth general strike, now against labour reform, in an example of unified struggle that has the left as one of its pillars, with 90% of the population opposed to this measure. In Brazil, the victory of the indigenous resistance struggle against Cargill and the privatization of large Amazonian rivers points to hope and paths forward.
A united front of the exploited and oppressed!
There is an urgent need for a united front of the exploited and oppressed, free from subordination to governments and parties, capable of acting with full independence to confront the new faces of fascism with mobilization and coordination among the oppressed.
This 1st International Anti-Fascist Conference for the Sovereignty of Peoples is an extraordinary opportunity to deploy across the globe, starting with the American continent, a strong united action by the forces present here against hegemonic imperialism. New conferences and meetings must be held on other continents and in other major regions: the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia. Let us make this meeting a modest but strong starting point for an international campaign that serves the struggles and, at the same time, the construction of an alternative program to that presented to us by the representatives of capital.
The far right is growing by presenting itself as a radical alternative to the status quo, its elites, and its parties. We know that it does so demagogically to defend the system it claims to challenge, but there is a key lesson here: in order to grow, resistance must also be a radical alternative to the crisis of the prevailing system, its policies of hunger and repression, its worn-out institutions, and its parties.
The crisis of capitalist civilization (economic, political, ecological, climatic) raises the possibility and necessity of linking immediate concerns, including the anti-fascist struggle, with the need to overcome capitalism. A set of demands is needed that, based on the most urgent popular concerns, leads to the questioning of private control of production and to an understanding of the need to place it under the democratic control of working people and their communities.
No illusions in capitalist "models"
Trump's national security strategy states: "The disproportionate influence of the largest, richest, and strongest nations is an immemorial truth of international relations." It is, quite simply, an invitation to divide the world among the most powerful.
There is no room for illusions here. Neither the European Union or its components, nor the governments of Russia or China represent an alternative or a wall of defense against US imperialism — as their sterile actions in the face of US attacks on Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran have shown us.
China has become a capitalist power more interested in consolidating its business and its own areas of military (in Asia) and economic (Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America) influence. More regional in nature, Putin's Russia seeks to reestablish what was once the Tsarist empire, with a militarized economy and an increasingly authoritarian regime. In this context of tensions between old and new or aspiring powers, the task of the left cannot be to celebrate the multipolarity resulting from the confrontation between capitalist projects.
Solidarity with the oppressed of the world!
To Trump's supposed "immemorial truth" of the domination of the powerful, we oppose three orientations: the defense of the right of all peoples to self-determination, solidarity with the exploited and oppressed in all countries, and therefore opposition to all forms of imperialism.
We reject the United States' aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and former deputy, and we also reject the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine. We recognize the right of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and any country attacked by the United States to defend itself, including militarily, and to seek the material means necessary for that resistance wherever they can find them, and we recognize the same right for Ukraine, which is under attack by Russian imperialism.
We denounce and combat anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and Islamophobic policies in the United States and Western Europe. We take the same stance toward the Chinese government's repression of various peoples and ethnic groups.
We repudiate the persecution, repression, and censorship in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries of protests against the genocide in Palestine, and we also denounce the repression and imprisonment in Russia of opponents of the war of aggression against Ukraine.
We do not support the Maduro government. We denounce its anti-democratic and anti-worker actions. But no objectionable action by the Maduro government can validate the United States' aggression against Venezuela. We therefore demand the withdrawal of the US from Venezuela and the release of former deputy Cilia and President Maduro.
We propose the dissolution of NATO, as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organization. We do not support the Zelensky government in Ukraine. We denounce its anti-worker, corrupt, anti-democratic, and chauvinist policies. But no questionable policy of this government justifies the Russian invasion and bombing. Therefore, we organize our solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
Reject intervention, support the struggles
Bourgeois governments refuse to recognize that popular mobilizations against them are the result of deep social contradictions. Typically, they attribute them to the action of internal or external "agents." We cannot accept this conspiracy conception of history. Undoubtedly, imperialism and its agencies try to take advantage of struggles, such as that of the Iranian people against authoritarian theocracy, but that does not reduce those struggles to an operation of imperialism. We must oppose such intervention, while continuing to support those struggles.
Preaching to the people that they must accept dictatorships that oppress and mistreat them as the "lesser evil" turns those who do so into promoters of resignation and submission. Oppressed peoples will have little interest in anti-imperialism or geopolitical analysis that excludes their most pressing democratic and economic demands. It is up to us to ensure that activists see our anti-imperialism as their ally, or that, tragically, they will find encouragement and support only in the camp of imperialism that seeks to exploit them.
Universal demands of the working class
Historically, US and NATO imperialism have acted in the name of freedom, democracy, etc. The left is not fooled by these proclamations. But we must be consistent. The same is true of rival imperialisms: we must explain how, in the name of multipolarity, anti-hegemony, rejection of the hypocritical model of Western democracy and Eurocentrism, attempts are made to justify the denial of democratic rights to the working class, women, religious minorities and LGBTTQI+ people.
In the face of cultural relativism tailored to authoritarian governments (in Russia and China, among others), we affirm that trade-union rights, women’s rights, freedom of expression, assembly, and association, and the election and recall of rulers are not “Western values” or “liberal models” or Eurocentric ideas that imperialism seeks to impose: they are historical demands of the international working class. That is why we defend them throughout the world, in all countries, without exception.
We reject the blackmail that any criticism or demand made of progressive governments, or those that proclaim themselves progressive, is destructive and favorable to imperialism. What weakens the struggle is not criticism and debate, but their suppression.
The hypocrisy of the West and consistent anti-imperialism
We are familiar with the hypocrisy of Western imperialism when it denounces repression in Iran or the invasion of Ukraine. What moral authority can the accomplices of genocide in Gaza claim? What respect can those who have just kidnapped the president of Venezuela deserve? But denouncing the hypocrisy of the West and its crimes cannot become our silence on the abuses of the governments of Putin or Xi Jinping, or the idea that these abuses are “inventions of imperialism.”
We do not oppose the double standards of Western imperialism with another double standard, but with the rejection of all those who exploit and oppress.
Today more than ever, we must practice consistent internationalism, a solidarity without borders that encompasses the struggles of workers, the oppressed, and for self-determination in all countries of the world, without exception. It is a policy that opposes all forms of imperialism. It does not subordinate the struggle in any country to that of another country. It is the policy that corresponds to the slogan Workers of the world, unite!
FOR SOLIDARITY WITHOUT BORDERS!
FOR INTERNATIONALISM WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS!