A new German section of the Fourth International, the Gruppe Internationaler Marxisten, was created over the New Year weekend at a fusion conference of the old GIM and the youth organisation RKJ (Revolutionary Communist Youth).
The major discussion at the conference took place around an analysis of the European situation and the tasks of revolutionaries, presented by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International as part of the discussion for the 10th World Congress to be held later this year. Particular stress was laid in the discussion on the crucial role of Germany in the European revolutionary process, and on the profound effects that a social revolution in West Germany would have in both capitalist and Stalinist Europe.
It was noted in this respect that Germany had not escaped the deepening of the crisis of European capitalism, its growing political instability, and the failure of its attempt to integrate the working class. The enormous demonstrations of support when the Brandt government lost its majority were the first sign of a new combativity. The extent of the youth radicalisation was also shown last October when 15,000 revolutionaries demonstrated in Dortmund against the banning of the Palestinian organisations. A period of social explosions on the scale at least of those of May 1968 is potentially on the agenda today, in Germany as elsewhere, and Marxist revolutionaries must work with this in mind. Finally, the fusion conference discussed and passed a series of reports on Vietnam, on the programme for action of the GIM, and on its organisational tasks. The central apparatus will be reinforced politically and materially, so that in the next period the GIM can begin to assume a national role in combatting through this centralisation the fragmentation of German economic and political life which has always until now prevented the revolutionary left from playing a central political role.