IV351-2 - Summer 2003

The 15th World Congress of the Fourth International which met in early 2003 recorded a much-changed situation - in world politics and the International itself - compared with the previous Congress in 1995.

Since the end of the 1990s, a turning point in the world political situation has put new phase of activity, programme, strategy and organization on the agenda of the workers’, social and popular movements.

The World Congress of the Fourth International reaffirms a common approach by the Fourth International, whatever differences in analysis exist over the processes of capitalist restoration in the bureaucratically-led regimes that usurped the name of socialism.

The resolution Resistances to Capitalist Globalization: Opening for a New Internationalism was adopted by the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International in November 2000. The following introduction was presented and discussed at the 15th World Congress, then amended on the basis of the discussion. Like the November 2000 resolution, it will serve to further collective thinking about the process of capitalist globalization and the development of the movement for a different globalization.

The new political cycle in the activity, programmatic and political orientation and organization of the workers’, social and popular movements puts resistance on the agenda, for a whole stage, against the ruling classes’ brutal offensive.

Lesbian/gay movements have grown considerably in numbers and spread to every continent since the late 1960s. They have managed to win significant reforms in some countries while many other movements have been on the defensive.

Humanity has faced ecological problems at other times, but these have taken on a new urgency today due to their scope and gravity. Damage to the environment often has an irreversible impact on humanity and nature and the ecological crisis on the horizon at the dawn of the 21st Century is endangering the lives of millions.

The Fourth International - an international organisation struggling for the socialist revolution - is composed of sections, of militants who accept and apply its principles and programme. Organised in separate national sections, they are united in a single worldwide organisation acting together on the main political questions, and discussing freely while respecting the rules of democracy.