FIFTH INTERNATIONAL III

FROM LOUIS PROYECT

The Fifth International — let’s remember that the

• First International was established in 1864. Karl Marx with a number of other comrades called for the First International.

• Many years later Frederick Engels called for the establishment of the Second International at the end of the 19th century.

• And then at the beginning of the 20th century Vladimir Lenin with many other great revolutionaries established the Third International, and

• Leon Trotsky in 1936-37 established the Fourth International.

All of them had a context but remember that all four Internationals, experiments to unite parties and currents and social movements from around the world, have lost their way along the road for different reasons — some degenerated, lost their force, disappeared soon after their formation. But none of them was able to advance the original aims that they had set themselves…

Let us reclaim Rosa Luxemburg’s slogan “Socialism or barbarism”

Two Socialist Alliance members, Frederico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke, are reporting on location from Caracas and participated in the conference where Chavez issued his call. I would strongly urge reading Fuentes’s article that appeared shortly afterwards and that adds much to the excerpt translated by Jorquera above (Jorquera was formerly a member of the Democratic Socialist Party in Australia which dissolved into the Socialist Alliance.) Fuentes writes:

Hugo Chavez’s call for a Fifth International on November 19-21, 2009, it is difficult to find his actual words. you can read them here

One of the more interesting contributions comes from Carlos Fonseca Terán
of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)

But if nothing else comes out of it except the idea, that would be a step forward since as Chavez and Terán have correctly concluded, it is time for a brand-new movement.

We are living in a period in which very important attempts to break with sectarianism are being midwived by a growing economic and environmental crisis.

the idea of 21st Century Socialism and the call for a Fifth International forces us to think about the future rather than the past. It is about time.