Introduction
This book contains the decisions and main resolutions of the 6th World Congress of the Committee for a Workers' International, held in December 1993.

The socialist movement has always seen the need, not only for international solidarity, but also for a movement that would cut across the national boundaries of capitalism. From its earliest days, the labor movement sought to organize on an international basis.

The First International
The International Workingmens' Association, the First International, under the leadership of Marx and Engels, was the first such international organization. Including British Trade Unionists and Chartists, Hungarian Revolutionaries, Russian anarchists and Italian nationalists, it was involved in all the earliest struggles of the working class.

Under the impact of world boom and the internal conflict between socialism, anarchism and bourgeois nationalism, the International fell apart in 1876. The need for an international organization, however, could not be ignored; in 1889 the Second, Socialist International was built.

The Second International
The Second International grew into a major force on the planet, with sections numbering their supporters in millions. It came to include many parties that claimed to be Marxist, such as the German SPD, and others such as the British Labour Party. However, the years of relative class peace and parliamentary activity took their toll; at the first major test, the International failed the aspirations of the working class. Despite all their statements about international solidarity and their anti-war resolutions, with the outbreak of war in 1914, the leadership of nearly every social democratic party supported the war aims of their "own" ruling class. Almost alone, a minority of the German Social Democratic Party and the Russian Social Democratic and Labor Party opposed the war.

The Third International
Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, it was the Bolsheviks in the RSDLP that led the Russian Revolution of 1917. The War and the success of the revolution brought split and turmoil to the socialist parties of the world. From the collapse of the Second International, grew the Third, Communist, International, the Comintern, a revolutionary international intervening in all the struggles of the oppressed throughout the world.

Tragically, the isolation of the revolution in Russia led to the degeneration of the Soviet state and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The international changed, from being a weapon of revolutionary struggle, into the slavish tool of Stalinism.

The Fourth International
The final betrayal of the Third International in Germany in 1933 led Trotsky and the International Left Opposition around him to set up the Fourth International, an organization whose banner was unsullied by the betrayals of social democracy or Stalinism.

Yet, hardly had the International been founded in 1938 than war broke out. Once again, war proved an acid test of the movement. In the aftermath of conflict, the Fourth International collapsed into a number of differing organizations and groups, each claiming the mantle of Trotskyism, most with little or no support within the working class.

It was because of the burning need for a new international, based on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, that the Committee for a Workers' International was set up.

The Committee for a Workers' International
The CWI was launched in 1974, its first Congress being held in April of that year. Four sections were represented at that Congress - Britain, Ireland, Sweden and Germany. At the time of the Zimmerwald Conference which brought together those in the various socialist parties of the Second International who had stood firm against the national chauvinism of the First World War, Trotsky remarked that the true internationalists could be gathered together in one stagecoach. The same task faced us in 1974; the forces of revolutionary Marxism were pitifully small.

Yet, we had confidence in our ideas; with a correct perspective, with a correct orientation to the working class, we could rebuild the forces of Marxism into an international force to be reckoned with.

At this 6th Congress, 25 countries were represented, with six others unable to attend. Our International is now an objective factor in events, intervening in all the struggles of working people throughout the globe. The Second International is now little more than a high-class club, jet setting bureaucrats around the world. The Third International was ignominiously wound up in 1943. The remains of the Fourth International is in chaos, with any number of groups claiming its name and traditions.

With every day, both the national sections and the International grow stronger. The founding resolution of the CWI stated: We regard this Committee as the germ of the mighty workers' International which will within the next decade become the decisive force on the planet. The building of this mass revolutionary international is the task that confronts us all.