This resolution presented by the Tendency for a Revolutionary International (TIR) was rejected by the 2025 World Congress by 3 votes in favour, 106 against, 10 abstentions, and 9 No Votes.
Building an international and national sections is a priority task, addressed by the resolutions on "the role and tasks of the Fourth International".
An essential part of our time and energy as revolutionary activists is devoted to intervention in mass movements beyond our own ranks. What are our objectives in all these social movements, given the diversity of our national situations and the social movements in question?
1- We intervene primarily within the working class
Consequently, the social movement in which we intervene as a matter of priority is the workers’ movement.
The working class plays a central role not only because of its role in production, but also because of its ability to organize struggle collectively and democratically, and its capacity to fight not just on its own behalf, but also for objectives that concern society as a whole, integrating the concerns of other oppressed strata and groups. And thus to potentially rally all the exploited and oppressed around it, by giving it a collective form and an objective.
Our aim is to make the organized workers' movement the fighting force that unites all the oppressed. The guiding idea is to strive to converge the struggles of all oppressed strata around the goal of workers taking power: this is the perspective described by Lenin in What is to be done? : "Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected — unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other. The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class-consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life”.
This is what Marx also suggested when he spoke of the "universal class".
This doesn't rule out intervening in movements like the peasant movement, or in some cases in social movements that encompass diverse social forces like the Gilets Jaunes [Yellow Vests]. However, our strategic aim is to ensure that it is the working class that stands at the head of all the exploited and oppressed. It is this goal that determines our political and organizational priorities.
2- We combine our own political intervention, particularly in the workplace, with intervention in mass movements and organizations.
Intervention in mass organizations is one of the fundamental aspects of our activism, indispensable for linking up with circles broader than the most conscious militants.
However, it is essential to constantly combine our own political intervention with mass intervention. The expression of our organization's political viewpoint and proposals for action within the circles and movements in which we intervene is an essential task: not only does it make our orientation known, but it also enables us to give a collective form to the intervention of militants who intervene in the same milieu.
In the workplace, we strive not only to be present in the unions, but also to build them up and try to convince them of our policy. We bring together activists from the same sector or company in basic cells of our organizations, and publish a political party press to defend our own point of view, independent of that of reformist leaders.
In every social movement and in every environment, we combine
- our own appearance, coordinating the intervention of our militants, which must be discussed not only at local level but also in the directorates in order to guide and help comrades and not leave them adrift. Discussion in the cells, in intermediate and national managements of the intervention of comrades, in particular
- involvement of our comrades in movement-building tasks, and taking on responsibilities in movements and organizations commensurate with our degree of influence within them. We don't shirk our responsibilities when our militant work enables us to exert influence beyond our own ranks, but we don't take on positions on a scale cut off from the level of support and real involvement of the militant collectives of workers we effectively organize around us. If we're part of a team, of a collective force, it's this force, that of the workers, that seizes a lever of influence. But if we lack this influence and artificially gain access to a position of leadership, it's the position that captures us rather than us capturing it!
3- Trade unions are the most important mass organizations
Their durability and mass character compared to other organizations and social movements, and the possibilities they offer to intervene in a "generalist" way on a wide range of political issues (women, racism, ecology, war, etc.) make them absolutely essential forces in our intervention.
All our members, without exception, must be unionized.
If the unions take on board the need to fight on the issues that are essential to us, this will be an essential lever for mobilization.
4- We intervene on as many political issues as possible, with no restrictions other than those imposed by the extent of our own strength.
We don't limit ourselves to intervening on "economic" issues, or those that directly affect salaried workers. We intervene on all injustices and global political issues, regardless of the class or classes affected.
We seek first and foremost to rally the mass organizations of the workers' movement, including parties, unions and associations. But we don't make our involvement conditional on the support given to any particular stage by the leaderships of the mass organizations of the workers' movement or the social movements concerned.
The fight to preserve the environment, the fight for LBGT rights, etc... we are stubbornly fighting to ensure that the workers' movement and the revolutionary movement make these struggles their own.
The solidarity movement with Palestine is an illustration of this principle: the NPA's policy in France of taking the initiative in calling for demonstrations immediately after October 7, when the state was systematically banning them, while challenging these bans in the courts and calling on all the organizations of the workers' movement to act in concert, maintaining calls for street demonstrations in coalition with other forces (Europalestine) even when the traditional leaderships are giving up... here's a recent example of offensive intervention on an overall political issue by our own forces, while at the same time seeking to involve others.
5- A united front policy: unity of organizations and unity of the exploited
On every question crucial to the class struggle, we seek to unite as many organized and unorganized forces as possible.
The aim here is to unite the maximum number of forces from our own class and, secondarily, from other exploited classes. Organizational unity must be a lever, not a brake, in building this unity of our camp, of our social class.
This united front approach is always combined with an effort to fertilize the unity of struggle with an anti-capitalist, revolutionary program - in other words, a transitional program. In struggles against lay-offs, for example, we seek to unite as many companies as possible, and to invite all trade unions, political organizations and others to join the fight. But we also propose a ban on lay-offs as a unifying, anti-capitalist slogan, illustrating this by explaining, for example, that the recent auto strike in the USA led to the cancellation of plant closures and the re-hiring of laid-off workers. Beyond the various slogans and coalitions of organized and unorganized forces that we manage to get to work together, it's the self-activity of our class that we seek to stimulate through our united front approach.
6- Class independence: a fundamental compass
“viii) In different contexts, movements are faced with the situation where local or even national governments are controlled by parties that stand on policies advocated by the movements themselves. Leading activists from the movements may even join those governments. This can be experienced as a contradiction between defending and promoting the independent action of the movement and pushing those governmental structures to provide resources and implement their policies.
ix) While our methods of organisation within social movements attempt to be as close to the base as possible and for political independence from the state, we are also not opposed in certain situations to putting energy into – or even creating - non-governmental organisations. The judgement is whether the rules which govern them and the access to funding gained on balance enhance the political objectives or restrict them.”
(Our orientation and tasks in social movements, October 2023)
In contrast to the wording of the texts submitted by the Bureau for discussion, which opens up the possibility of participating in bourgeois governments and which, surprisingly, does not seem to raise any objection in principle to the financing of mass organizations by the opposing class and the state, we intervene while constantly bearing in mind the need to preserve total independence from the capitalist class and its state.
The two most important guarantees (never absolute, of course) are the program adopted by these movements, and their self-organization (see next paragraph). The adoption of objectives of struggle to confront the bourgeoisie, based on the needs felt by the masses, is the foundation of class independence.
We are hostile to any participation in a bourgeois government: the thousand ties that bind such governments to respect for private property and the state make such participation contradictory to the pursuit to the end of the goals of workers' struggles and social movements.
7- The struggle for self-organization
Workers and the oppressed themselves taking charge of their own struggle is not only a democratic guarantee, but above all the element that links the dynamism of today's struggle to our class's confidence in taking power.
We are fighting for daily general assemblies and elected strike committees. We fight for similar forms of self-organization in the struggles of the exploited and oppressed in all fields.