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From The Militant, Vol. IX No. 8, 24 February 1945, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
There is not and there will not be any place for careerism, the ulcer of the old Internationals, in the Fourth International. Only those who wish to live for the movement, and not at the expense of the movement, will find access to us. The revolutionary workers should feel themselves to be the masters. The doors of our organization are wide open to them.
Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period, as bystanders. When a program of an organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.
The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation of the proletariat. All of its policies strive to inspire the youth with belief in its own strength and in the future. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution. Thus it was, thus it will be.
Opportunist organizations by their very nature concentrate their chief attention on the top layers of the working class and therefore ignore both the youth and the woman worker. The decay of capitalism, however, deals its heaviest blows to the woman as a wage-earner and as a housewife. The sections of the Fourth International should seek bases of support among the most exploited layers of the working class; consequently, among the women workers. Here they will find inexhaustible stores of devotion, selflessness and readiness to, sacrifice.
Down with the bureaucracy and careerism! Open the road for the youth! Turn to the woman worker! These slogans are emblazoned on the banner of the Fourth International.
(From The Founding Conference of the Fourth International, pp. 53–54. Published by Socialist Workers Party, 1939; 128 pp., 25 cents. Order from Pioneer Publishers, 116 University Place, New York 3, N.Y.)
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