10. The Fourth International and strategic debates - Penny Duggan

1. Our strategic goal - a dream we have - society without oppression and exploitation

• Different ways of expressing it:

- overthrow capitalism

- make the revolution

- transform society and install the dictatorship of the proletariat

- dictatorship = rule of the majority

- the proletariat? = the exploited and oppressed

• How to get there : the emancipation of the workers the act of the workers themselves (Marx 1st International)

- “those on top can’t rule any more and those below won’t stand for it any more”

- mass mobilization -> different forms

- no schemas, anything can be a spark

2. The need for a party

• What is a party - has a political programme - attempt at synthesis of interests of exploited and oppressed

- different parties can be authentically “revolutionary”

- collective decisions, acts together, balance sheets

- memory and education

- the party, its relationship to the movements of exploited and oppressed

3. The FI's orientation today to party building - a bridge between where we are now and what we want

• The founding of the Fl as a minority current, Trotsky's approach, shaped history

• The 1995 World Congress:

- the period opened by 1968

- fall of the wall in 1989

- the political consequences : old political divisions could be overcome

• The development of this orientation in 2003, 2010 continued in 2018

- lessons learnt from national experience

- towards a balance sheet, the discussion in the FI - 17th World Congress

• What sort of parties?

- activist, which intervene, which have an effect

- build the struggles and movements of the exploited and oppressed

- democratic

- aim to ensure a non-oppressive internal climate through policies which prefigure the society we want

• The forces and the situation of the FI today

- overview of where we are present

- some elements on particular national experiences

- a conclusion: necessity to build FI today

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