CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Nahuel Moreno Speeches in the First Congress Nahuel Moreno Speeches in the First Congress 1985 First Spanish Edition: Editorial Crux, Buenos Aires, 1991 English translation: Daniel Iglesias Cover and interior design: Daniel Iglesias www.nahuelmoreno.org www.uit-ci.org www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar Copyright by CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Buenos Aires, 2017 [email protected] CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Table of Contents First speech ................................................................................................................................1 Report on the World Situation ...................................................................................................................1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................................................1 Revolutionary world situation (I) ..................................................................................................................................................................2 The Revolutionary United Front (I) .............................................................................................................................................................8 Minimum revolutionary program (I) ..........................................................................................................................................................9 Second Speech ........................................................................................................................ 13 South Africa ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................13 World Revolutionary Situation (II) ............................................................................................................................................................13 Third Speech ........................................................................................................................... 16 Reply to Comrade Harry ............................................................................................................................16 On the theory of the permanent revolution .......................................................................................................................................16 Fourth Speech ........................................................................................................................ 19 Independent countries ....................................................................................................................................................................................19 Democratic rights ...............................................................................................................................................................................................21 Semi-colonisation of the Workers’ States ..............................................................................................................................................23 The class politics of Trotskyism (I) .............................................................................................................................................................23 Pacifist movements ............................................................................................................................................................................................28 Nationalist and religious movements ......................................................................................................................................................28 Fourth Speech ........................................................................................................................ 30 The class character of Trotskyism ..............................................................................................................................................................30 The agreements between revolutionaries .............................................................................................................................................31 Why “Fourth International”? ........................................................................................................................................................................32 World Revolutionary Situation (III) ..........................................................................................................................................................34 Revolutionary United Front (II) ..................................................................................................................................................................37 About the church ...............................................................................................................................................................................................40 The class politics of Trotskyism (II) ...........................................................................................................................................................40 On the economy .................................................................................................................................................................................................44 Fascism and the imperialist counter-offensive in the current revolutionary stage ........................................................44 On the drafting of the theses .......................................................................................................................................................................45 On Afghanistan ....................................................................................................................................................................................................45 Close of the World Congress ................................................................................................ 48 First speech REPORT ON THE WORLD SITUATION Introduction First of all, because there have been so many contributions, suggestions, modifications of form, and so on, I want to clarify the character of the Theses1 and at the same time the character of my answers. They are well-condensed Theses, very brief, made and written intentionally so. We had prepared a report on the world political situation that was huge; I suspect of one or two volumes. That is, much larger than a book. And suddenly we realised that for the IWL2 grassroots militants they were overstated, they were too documented. We embraced every sector of the world revolutionary process extensively and with quotes. Contadora3 alone was almost a book. We would contribute quotes of all kinds to show why Contadora was an unspeakable betrayal. In another chapter we brought quotations to show the counter-revolutionary front, and so on. And suddenly we realised that we were sabotaging the understanding of our militants, especially the younger militants because in the midst of such a number of events the most important ideas that we wanted to demonstrate were lost. We showed them so exhaustively that they were lost in that multitude of facts. In the IWL Secretariat, we radically changed the approach and decided to make theses as short and concise as possible, in order to centre the main axes and to allow us to read them with our rank and file members, to discuss the theses with a clear understanding of those centres, those axes. In general, very interesting contributions have been made. I want to point out, for example, the comrades in the United States: Comrade Perez, Comrade Harry, who coincides in some points with Comrade Perez; [the contributions of] the Swedish comrades on the problem of youth and other similar problems; also the contributions of the Brazilian comrades, even if they disagree with the Theses; the comrades of Argentina, where many contributions have been made both in the national and international Internal Bulletins. I also have received — and I have read only the first part—- the document by Comrade Roberto, from Chile, which is very interesting. Today I will rebut it only in its first point and tomorrow in all its points. I have not been able to read the contribution and criticism of the comrades from Mexico because they gave it to me just a while ago. We have also received contributions from Portugal, from a small group of supporters, or friends — I do not know how to name them — that split from us and now they seems to be approaching. Well, there are plenty of observations, for all tastes. There are formal corrections, proposals to modify the wording of some parts… I will not respond to these issues of detail and form. For me, in the cases in which propose, for example, “instead of writing it this way, we should write it in 1 It refers to the “Theses on the World Situation”, Draft Resolution of the International Secretariat of the IWL, 20 October 1984. They were published in Spanish in Correo Internacional, Year I, No8, 31 October 1984, [Editor.] 2 Following on Moreno’s death in 1987, the International Workers League – Fourth International (IWL-FI) went into crisis and in 1990 it began to split. Currently, Moreno’s