A Message from the Editors
The International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) held its 8th World Congress in December 2023. In the previous five months, a draft document on the world situation and slogans, approved by its IEC on 1 July, was under discussion in all its sections and sympathiser groups: Draft World Document. The most serious capitalist crisis in history.
In the preparations of the congress, the debate on this text was a priority, to which were added various discussion bulletins with contributions from the militants. The project was approved in general, with some additions. And it was resolved to be published as a magazine in April 2024.
This edition incorporates both the additions and the update of important events that have taken place since July 2023 in the world reality, such as Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip or the triumph of the far-right Milei in Argentina, and which give continuity to the initial vision of the project.
April 2024
Introduction
Humanity lives in increasingly worse conditions. Especially the working class, the popular and oppressed sectors of the world. Social inequality, poverty, hunger, unemployment, wars and environmental destruction are growing.
The cause of all this is the capitalist-imperialist system based on an ultra-millionaire oligarchy that owns multinationals and banks that mercilessly exploit the people of the world.
Even in New York there is growing poverty, almost 1.3 million households or 3 million people suffer to make ends meet in the city of skyscrapers (Forbes Staff Data, 25 April 2023).
But there is a minority of super-rich who live better and better. According to Bloomberg and Forbes surveys, the 10 richest people in the world were repeated in 2023, but being even richer. First on the table is Elon Musk —owner of Tesla and satellite communication and former Twitter, now X— his fortune amounts to us$ 232.4 billion. Second place —according to the Bloomberg table— goes to Bernard Arnault, the president of Louis Vuitton (LVMH), with us$193.5 billion, Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) is third with us$178.3 billion, one place ahead of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, who accumulates us$ 140.5 billion. They are followed by Mark Zuckerberg (owner of MetaFacebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), with us$129.6 billion, Larry Page (co-founder of Google), with us$126.8 billion, Carlos Slim, the Mexican owner of América Móvil, with us$ 104.4, and Amancio Ortega, the richest Spaniard — owner of Zara— with us$87.6 billion, among others (Data Clarín, Argentina, 14 January 2024).
The people of the world, fed up with so many austerity plans and plunder, come out to fight. There were massive popular rebellions in Sri Lanka, women in Iran, previously in Chile, Colombia, and Peru, workers’ strikes in France, Germany and the rest of Europe, in the United States, in Latin America and Asia. As well as massive mobilisations in support of the Palestinian people against the crimes of Zionism in Gaza.
The fundamental change to get out of this situation and to progress involves achieving, with the mobilisation, workers’ governments that open the path to socialism in each country and the world.
It is once again confirmed that large mobilisations of all kinds continue to take place but the great weakness of the workers’ and mass movement is the lack of consistent revolutionary leadership. That is the weakest link in the class struggle. As León Trotsky pointed out in the Transitional Program (1938): “the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership.”
Undoubtedly, the task of overcoming the crisis of revolutionary leadership is far from easy. But it is essential. The reality of the global class struggle and the emergence of a youthful, women’s and popular workers’ vanguard, offer us new and better opportunities to continue fighting that fight. It is in this sense that we have to continue raising not only the tasks of unity of action for mobilisation but also the permanent call to unite revolutionaries, confront enemy leaderships, to build revolutionary parties in each country. The text that we present from the IWU-FI is added as a further contribution to this strategic task.
April 2024
