April 2024 marked the 50th anniversary of the founding conference of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), the worldwide socialist organization that the Independent Socialist Group stands in solidarity with. The CWI is organized in many countries and works to unite the working class and oppressed peoples against capitalism and to fight for a socialist world. To commemorate this occasion, we republished excerpts from a 2014 article by Robert Bechert on the 40th Anniversary of the CWI and the need for socialist internationalism today:
Since the beginning of the 20th century, every decade has witnessed revolutions as the working and poor masses attempt to end the oppression and exploitation they suffer under capitalism. There have been mass struggles, revolutions, counter-revolutions, and mighty, world-changing developments. The old empires have disappeared, the world’s balance of forces has repeatedly changed, the world’s population has become urban and younger, and environmental and climate threats have become major international issues.
The past 40 years have been no exception to the story of mass struggle. A mere four days after the CWI’s formation, 48 years of military and dictatorial rule in Portugal ended with the April 25th revolution. A few months later, the Greek military junta collapsed. But history does not develop in a straight line. In both countries, the ruling classes could survive mainly because the mass movements that threatened them did not have a concrete strategy of how to replace capitalism and a leadership prepared to lead that battle.
It was not accidental that the foundation of the CWI took place in a very turbulent and radical period. The long post-World War Two economic upswing was ending. But already, before the 1973 oil crisis that came to symbolize the changing economic situation, Europe and then Latin America had been gripped by revolutionary movements and crises, especially France in 1968. In Vietnam, US imperialism was facing its first-ever military defeat. The Stalinist regimes had been shaken by the 1968 “Prague Spring” in then Czechoslovakia and the 1970/71 wave of workers’ strikes in Poland, movements which were not pro-capitalist but, in essence, looking towards establishing a workers’ democracy.
At that time, the trade unions in Britain, the CWI’s first base, were at a high point, but not just in terms of numbers. The miners’ victories and the 1974 defeat of the Tory government in the “who runs the country” election showed their potential strength.
The onset of a generalized capitalist crisis deepened the political radicalization in the workers’ movement in many countries. The bitter experience of the bloody 1973 overthrow of the Allende government in Chile provoked a wide discussion on how socialism could be achieved and also how to prevent counter-revolution from blocking the labor movement’s path. It was truly a period of international struggle.
In 1974 the Spanish dictatorship of Franco, faced with a developing revolution, was crumbling. But the Spanish ruling class sought, and obtained, the help of the workers’ leaders to contain the revolutionary movement within capitalism and establish a capitalist, not a socialist, democracy.
Against this background, the Marxists who founded the CWI then consolidated around the Militant newspaper, had begun to reach a much wider audience in Britain and soon in other countries. Internationally, this was initially mainly in Europe but also in Sri Lanka, where the history of a Trotskyist movement with mass support meant that the ideas of the CWI found an early echo.
However, despite the worldwide revolutionary upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s the idea of a real workers’ international, while attractive to many activists, had become less central to the mass of the workers’ movement. Mainly this flowed from the failure of both the Socialist and Communist Internationals to remain and develop as organizations that strove to change the world. But in the 21st century, with the world’s obvious and growing interdependence, the issue of international action and struggle is once more being sharply posed.
Alongside the need for global solutions, the experience of the workers’ movement has again and again shown that protests alone can win individual demands but not fundamentally change the situation, something that can only be achieved by overthrowing capitalism. But to securely achieve that, a movement needs a concrete program of action that provides national and international answers and clear-sighted leadership, both of which require a political party to formulate and help put into action.
But in many ways, these first four decades are really only a pre-history. We are already in a tumultuous period; everything is either being questioned or will soon be. The experiences of this period of capitalism, the growing environmental crisis, with no future on offer to the vast mass of young people, will produce revolutionary storms. The CWI will play a full part in these events, including the building of a movement that can finally end this brutal, chaotic, and unfair capitalist system and make life a pleasure for all.
For more on the history of The Committee for a Workers International, visit marxist.net. In addition to classic texts from Marxist thinkers, the website archives documents from debates that shaped the CWI in the 1990s and 2000s. Check socialistworld.net and the CWI Media YouTube channel for new articles and interviews commemorating the 50th anniversary of the CWI’s founding.
Independent Socialist Group 