Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Congress approves the PST back to the IWL- FI

After a separation of 17 years, the Honduran Socialist Workers Party (PST) voted, during its Extraordinary Congress “Nahuel Moreno” for its reintroduction to the Workers International League – Fourth International (LIT-CI, in spanish).

The congress was held in Tegucigalpa, on 14 and 15 May, with representatives of the Socialist Workers Unity (UST) from El Salvador and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) of Costa Rica, both sections of the IWL.

This was preceded by a process of monitoring and working together for several months and a simultaneous process of study and discussion of the main documents of LIT-CI. In this Congress, it has been discussed since the “Theses on the world situation” until the documents on revolutionary moral developed by LIT-CI, which reflect the tradition of the tendency led by Nahuel Moreno, whose principles we walk on all these years.

For the PST, which, since its founding in 1986, was linked to IWL-IV, this present decision means “coming back home”, from where we shouldn’t ever have left, regardless of those time difficulties when the main political party of the tendency (MAS Argentina) burst into pieces. Since then, our party has developed regional experiences increasingly fragile until falling down, for a brief period, in the “national trotskyism”.

Despite all these difficulties, we are the single left organization in the country – with a structured continuous publication – which overcame the crisis of the 1990s and, when the popular movement has reorganized over the priordecade, we had been at all times together with the masses keeping pace with all the efforts made, especially in organizing the National Coordination of Popular Resistance (CNRP), which was distinguished by its internal democracymethod and its class independence. This democratic room had its best time with the organization of the Civic Strikes in mid-2008, and was the organizational basis of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP).

We followed at all levels the teachers’ struggles, the workers’ struggles, the students and the peasant sector struggles, which has brought us difficult experiences, like the death of comrade Edikson Lemus, from the leadership of the National Center of Agrarian Workers (CNTC), whose murder is still unpunished. In March last year, a former comrade was killed, José Manuel Flores Arguijoathis workplace, and currently three of our fellows from the student sector are suffering persecution from the regime in the National Pedagogical University Francisco Morazan, aiming at their expel.

Why have we come back?

Our return to IWL-IV basically means two things: first and foremost it is the most concrete proof that we are not lost either methodological or strategically, it means that it is crystal clear for us the need to overcome the leadership crisis of the world labor movement, by building the Fourth International and the mobilization of the working class in its struggle against imperialism, until the triumph of the international socialist revolution and the deployment of the proletariat revolutionary dictatorship.

The second is best explained by a Central American poet, the Salvadoran Roque Dalton, who wrote: “Thank you, Lenin, from you we have learned that the parties are built in accordance with the image and likeness of the best men, and when it is not so, it is necessary to build it again”. So, for us it is also reorganizationwith a new breed of young revolutionaries in an experienced international current. It is a serious commitment to the future; we must ensure the best response to the class struggles throughout our country, the region and in all corners of the world where we have built our parties or wherever we are able to influence. Thus, we are absolutely sure, no doubts allowed, about our moral strength forged over the years, despite the relative international isolation, and became part of the great development that the IWL-IV experiences in Central America and the world, which fully coincides with the revolutionary situation, characterized by the masses willingness to fight.

The struggles in the world

The imbalance of the capitalist system worldwide continues, and there is no policy capable of stabilizing it. The new labor movement, which did not believe in the tale on the end of the history, watches this episode: there’s no place on earth where the masses have not struggled. On every continent, the specter of Communism is still prowling. The reasons are objective ones and, despite the crisis of leadership, their triumphs are well known. The ongoing revolution in the Arab world is a great proof of that. Similarly, the Latin American region is waking from the democratic reactionhypnotic trance and starts again its fight against the populist governments, which, while sharing their last income leftovers among themselves, are giving the nations’ wealth to the multinational companies.

The most emblematic case is the Castroism, which makes the socialism a comedy, since the measures approved in the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party last month are eminently capitalist measures, no matter how strongly Raul Castro denies it. In practice, Cuba has long abandoned the socialist program, the loss of the revolution achievements are on the agenda and there is no force that is able to hold it. It is definitely the antithesis of what we understand by socialism and the world is watching this.

Honduran Reality

At this point, the resistance lives a decisive moment in its fight against the coup regime headed by Pepe Lobo, which incorporates Latin American elements since this is an important region to imperialism, especially during the current period when the populist governments are making concessions under the pressure of their re-colonizing masters. José Manuel Zelaya fulfilled the same role, with the complicity of the an important sector of the  National Resistance Frontleadership, when giving directions for a pacifist resistance, from the very day of the coup, a pacifist resistance that did not weaken the bourgeois institutions, thus preventing, at any cost, an insurgent explosion that could get out of control.

It is obvious that after the elections of 29 November 2010, the incorporation of some former government officials and popular tacit recognition of the Zelaya to Lobo spurious government, the resistance real program was limited to seeking its share in the political of democratic reaction driven by imperialism and the Honduran bourgeoisie. This highlights the counterrevolutionary role of a large sector of the National Resistance Front direction. To this is added the shameful collaboration of the populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, in collusion with one of the chief servants of the gringo empire in Latin America, Mr. Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president. All this does not surprise us, because we always knew what to expect from all these leaders and we have settled all the political battles in all areas, both inthe leadership and in the grassroots levels of the movement.

The construction of a revolutionary party

Facing this reality, we allow ourselves to reaffirm that it has never been more important to claim the class independence and building a revolutionary party to guide the masses to overcome the betrayal of the reformists and the Stalinist bureaucrats, who have seen this trick as a great opportunity to camouflage the electioneering politics – expressed in the demand of being recognized as a political force. They failed to impose it on FNRP great national assembly, held on 26 and 27 February this year, with the formation of abroad electoral front. The Assembly voted, otherwise,for the going-back to streets in order to continue the fighting,which had turned, after the presidential elections, into a commemorative calendar, harmless to the regime.

Our task is to denounce this betrayal and to propose a revolutionary program for the region, and we know that in the International Workers’ League our efforts will be fruitful. Maybe for us it means a path full of challenges but it will also be an opportunity to contribute to the organization of the world working class.

If it is so, all the sacrifice will worth it and the work of Trotsky, Moreno and all the revolutionaries who have given all their efforts to make real the teachings of the Third International best times, concretized afterwards in the Transitional Program, will finally yield the fruits humanity expects for.

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