Towards the II Congress of the LIS
In the second week of March 2023 a new Congress of the International Socialist League will take place. The appointment will be in Barcelona, Spain. Delegates and guests from all continents will debate for a week the current situation of the class struggle worldwide, the important changes that have occurred since our previous Congress, made at the end of last year, the latest advances of the LIS and we will prepare to carry out a series of tasks to continue strengthening this project that has proven to be dynamic and exciting..
ByAlejandro Bodart
A few months after our previous congress ended, Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused enormous changes in the international panorama and divided the left around the world.. Away from bourgeois expressions, when the world had not yet managed to recover from the consequences of the Pandemic, the economic crisis worsened, produced a jump in the hardships of the masses worldwide and once again put humanity in suspense due to the possibility that the aggression would escalate to an open confrontation between the different wings of imperialism..
The lack of understanding of the double nature of war, which combined from the beginning a just struggle of the Ukrainian people against the invasion of a foreign power with imperial desires such as Russia on the one hand and the use of the conflict by the US and NATO to try to expand their influence in the region, caused an intensification of inter-imperialist frictions such as had not been seen since the end of World War II on the other hand., creating enormous confusion in a part of the left. Instead of supporting the resistance of the Ukrainian people, call for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and NATO from Eastern Europe, a sector of the left aligned itself with Russia, ignoring its imperialist character.
As usually happens in the heat of major events of the class struggle, Within our international organization, nuances arose with colleagues from Turkey that, with the course of events, transformed into important differences in relation to the war and the policy that we revolutionaries had to carry out..
Being the only organization with a section in Ukraine allowed us to hold an in-depth debate, in addition to participating directly in the events through our colleagues from the Ukrainian Socialist League.
at the congress, in addition to analyzing the changes that the war has produced in the world situation, We will debate in depth the characterization and role of emerging imperialisms, not only from Russia but mainly from China and the dynamics that their increasingly hot “cold war” with the US and the European Union can take.. Right and new rebellions
A topic that will not be absent in the deliberations will be the emergence and dynamism that different extreme right formations have been taking in practically all regions of the world.. This phenomenon, that cannot be underestimated, nor superficially overrated, forces us to study it in depth. These neo-fascist rights in many countries are reaching the government or are strengthening themselves as government alternatives.. What forces us revolutionaries to develop the best policy to combat them, rejecting at the same time the orientation of reformist sectors that, based on this reality, promote and generate expectations in popular front solutions., as we are seeing in France or Brazil.
Evidently the world is experiencing extreme political and social polarization.. What we try to talk about little is the other pole of the situation., that has the working and popular class leading rebellions and revolutions in more and more countries and regions, as we are seeing these days in Iran or Peru, but which have been preceded by major uprisings in Sri Lanka, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Lebanon, the US itself and major union struggles in England and other countries in Europe and Asia.
In these processes, the absence of revolutionary leadership continues to be the weakness that prevents categorical triumphs., At the same time, the depth that these events have acquired opens up conditions to begin making leaps in its construction., debate that will be crucial to develop in our event.
PSOL and NPA
Politics against the different Broad Parties that emerged in this century, a few more, others less anti-capitalist and where reformists have coexisted with some revolutionary formations, It has been a very important debate these years. Syriza in Greece was the one that perhaps aroused the most expectations and also the one that produced the most frustration. Beyond the balance of that and other experiences, that we have to continue debating to draw conclusions, An acute crisis is currently occurring in two broad experiences in which we are involved.
In France the NPA has just been split in two. The Mandelist sector caused the breakup to pave the way for its change towards the NUPES, the center-left formation led by Melanchón. But the other sector, a regrouping of different extreme left tendencies, has decided to set up a new socialist and revolutionary party, opening a new opportunity for the left.
In Brazil, the leadership of the PSOL, although for now he has not achieved the votes to join Lula's new government with officials, just voted at your last meeting, almost unanimously, that will support the government “from outside”, starting a liquidationist course of a project that managed to bring together a broad vanguard when it broke with the PT and began a policy independent of the bosses' and reformist variants.
In our congress one of the important topics will be the debate on the policy and orientation of our international to accompany the new party that is being born in France and the support for our colleagues in Brazil in the difficult dispute against the accelerated course towards the debacle that the PSOL is taking.
one step back, several ahead, many challenges
The LIS has many challenges ahead. Unfortunately, a founding group of our project, the SEP of Türkiye, from disagreements with the war, decided to disassociate itself from the international instead of betting on debate and the search for consensus. We will take stock of this experience and surely draw useful conclusions for the future..
But the central debate of our Congress, in addition to those that we have already raised and the theoretical and political definitions that we will discuss, It will be how to take advantage of the enormous opportunities that have been opened to us from the different incorporations and presence of our international in practically all continents..
We have just carried out a very successful campaign in support of those imprisoned and persecuted in Nicaragua by the Ortega dictatorship.. This allowed us to connect with the PRT of Costa Rica, a traditional party that has just asked to join the LIS. With them, Our Nicaraguan section and colleagues in other countries in the region have the challenge of expanding to all of Central America.
The process of unification of our Colombian youth group with our GTS colleagues is underway., long tradition and structure among workers. In Brazil, the unification conference between Socialist Alternative and Socialist Struggle already has a date, that will allow us to fight with much more force against the liquidationist course of the PSOL leadership and offer an alternative to the vanguard that rejects this course.
In Argentina, the MST has the challenge of continuing to develop in a political situation where the left, through the FITU, can become a mass alternative in the next period..
In Africa, our Kenyan colleagues, recently incorporated into our international, They have built an important organization and can become a pole of attraction for groups from other countries in the region with which they have increasingly fluid relations..
In Ukraine and the entire East a favorable outcome of the war, that we cannot rule out, It can open a revolutionary situation and allow us important leaps in several countries.
In Asia the development of The Struggle, our pakistani section, opens up the prospect of building ourselves in the near future in India and beyond the subcontinent.
The fraternal relationships we maintain with our Australian colleagues, that come from a very important electoral success, with colleagues from the US and France, immersed in the construction of a new party, They broaden our panorama and enrich our elaboration. All these opportunities and those we have in other countries, make our Congress an event of great importance, to collectively develop and outline guidelines that allow us to live up to the situation in which we live and the opportunities that lie ahead of us.. The LIS is still a small and very young organization, but with a huge future if we remain firm on the path we have decided to take.
