On the way to the 3rd ISL Congress. Interview with Alejandro Bodart

Italian version

At the beginning of December, the 3rd Congress of the International Socialist League (ISL) will take place. It will take place in the midst of a heated international and social situation, polarized, with inter-imperialist disputes, wars and challenges and opportunities for revolutionaries. The Congress will also show the important advance of the LIS and the integration of new organizations. On these and other issues, we spoke with Alejandro Bodart, Coordinator of the LIS and General Secretary of the MST of Argentina.


Alejandro, first of all, in what international context will the LIS Congress take place?

I think that we are living in a new international situation of great changes. A starting point to analyze what is happening is the second Trump presidency and the orientation of U.S. imperialism to try to recover its hegemonic role. Although it has not totally lost it, it has weakened a lot in the last years, with many questionings and disputes. What was left of the post-war world order and of the capitalist globalization that emerged with the fall of the Soviet Union is being left behind, although it is not clear whether it will be able to achieve a new order.

A great world disorder is taking place now. U.S. imperialism, in order to recover its role, is trying not to rely on the institutions that emerged from the post-World War II agreements or after the fall of the Soviet Union, but on new agreements between the strongest world or regional powers, mainly with Russia and China. These countries have made a great leap in their position on the world scene, becoming new imperialisms, with which U.S. imperialism competes but also tries to reach agreements to try to stabilize the hot zones that have been arising at the international level. The crisis of U.S. imperialism has been going on for a long time, but it deepened with the fall of the Soviet Union. Precisely because, instead of being able to semi-colonize the countries where capitalism was restored, new and enormous competitors have emerged, even new imperialisms like China, which disputes the dominant role at the global level. We are living in a world where this generates permanent instability and we are preparing ourselves for the continuity of this type of critical situations, with more wars and regional conflicts and a dynamic that we have to stop before it evolves into a new world confrontation.

At the same time, the unabated economic crisis, which has contributed to the emergence of far-right expressions, riding on the debacle of social democracy and conservative parties, made the traditional two-party system and their regimes enter a deep crisis, thus generating a worldwide situation of deep social and political polarization.

And at this moment we could speak of a new situation within this new international stage, where the uprising has resumed with great force, mainly due to the enormous world mobilization in support of the Palestinian people, but also due to a series of rebellions that are spreading to different regions of the planet. We have just seen, for example, that of Morocco, Madagascar, Nepal, Niger, Kenya, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Kashmir and different expressions of this type, the uprising of generation Z in various countries, which mark a little the course of the world situation, where in spite of the strength of many uprisings the great weakness continues to be the absence of a revolutionary leadership with mass weight in some countries and at the international level. In the majority of the countries, although there are enormous struggles of the workers and popular sectors against the attempts to make them bear the burden of the crisis, these do not achieve a positive solution because they still do not have truly consistent leaderships. The great task we have in our Congress and in our activity is to help them grow, develop, consolidate and advance this process of new leadership, something truly strategic, taking advantage of the great opportunities that the class struggle will offer us in different countries and continents. Because to the extent that there are great and genuine struggles and processes, they become great opportunities if our parties turn thoroughly to intervene there. That is why we have to assimilate that the international context brings us challenges, complexities and also great political opportunities that we must try to take full advantage of. This Congress is at the service of that.


As part of everything you were talking about, the Palestine issue found the LIS as the protagonist of the Sumud Global Flotilla. What is your reflection on this initiative?

Palestine has been a central axis of the activities of all the organizations gathered around the ISL since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinian people. In this context, we have been developing an extensive work in unity of action with numerous social, political and human rights organizations in different countries. As part of this work, we participated in the Sumud Global Flotilla, in which an ISL comrade was detained by the Zionist army. Thanks to the great solidarity campaign that was deployed – with strikes, mobilizations and actions all over the world – the Flotilla was finally released. This action was very important because, in addition to the enormous mobilization that preceded it, it made it possible to reach wider sectors and demonstrate that the policy of the State of Israel is a genocidal policy. Therefore, I believe that it is a very important internationalist activity, which shows the potential of international actions to act in this complex world, in fact this flotilla was reaching peaks of support and solidarity truly extended throughout the world. I believe that we have to vindicate this type of activities, because they play the same role that in the past had the internationalist brigades for Spain, or the Simon Bolivar Brigade in relation to Nicaragua. Even the last brigade that we were able to assemble together with other organizations, to try to free the prisoners of the authoritarian regime of Ortega and Murillo. I believe that the Flotilla reflects the best of humanity: young people, women and men, from different countries, united around a cause of solidarity, knowing that they could suffer the consequences of a murderous regime such as the Israeli regime. All this was aimed at breaking the blockade which, in addition to the bombs, has condemned the people of Gaza to hunger and despair. But, at the same time, this political action allowed the Palestinian cause to spread and gain social support in more and more sectors.


Now going to Congress, surely the debate on the world situation will be addressed. But we imagine that other current political issues will be debated. What would they be?

That’s right. The LIS Congress will address various debates and very topical issues, which make the concerns and needs to respond in such a complex world. Palestine and the analysis of the last agreement and the situation that has opened up as a result of it will certainly be a very important point. Together with the situation in Ukraine, which has been almost four years since the invasion of the Russian imperialist army, which caused intense debates that have divided the world left. For us, this issue is very important because it was a key point in the regroupment with other forces with which we coincide in maintaining a principled position: to defend the right to self-determination of the peoples and, at the same time, to confront the maneuvers of U.S. imperialism and NATO, which seek to use the conflict for their own interests. But the debate will not be exhausted in this alone, another very important debate that will be part of this Congress, will be the elaboration of a very complete program of the LIS, which will be a contribution also for the revolutionaries of the whole world. We will also discuss, of course, the economic situation. We will have an important debate on the policy of the revolutionaries in relation to the electoral issue, which is a debate that has many points of agreement, but also controversial issues and new processes in different countries, where we intervene and we want to specify how to do it and draw the best conclusions. We are going to discuss from now on how we continue to deepen the tasks in defense of women’s rights and dissidence. How we confront the brutal aggression against the environment that is deepening with the rise of the right wing. And also a series of issues that make up how to intervene in the different processes of the class struggle so that, as I said before, we can advance in the construction of our socialist and anti-capitalist organizations and in the construction of the revolutionary leaderships that are needed. This and other issues, debated over several days, give us the conviction that it will allow us to come out strengthened to face the challenges of this world situation, as complex as it is exciting, that we have to live.


Previous LIS events have already shown an outstanding participation from different continents and countries. We understand that in this case it will be an even greater leap in the presence of organizations and delegates.

This 3rd Congress will imply a very important organizational leap for the International Socialist League. Because not only will different organizations with which we have been working for some time be integrated to the International, but also because it will allow us to come out stronger to intervene in practically all the continents. We are going to come out in better conditions to intervene in the Middle East, based on the advances and the relations that we are making with different comrades of this region and in Ukraine where our organization has been passing the test in the resistance to the invasion. We have advanced in this time in organizing and strengthening our force in the United States, which has been a strategic step, as we have also advanced in different countries of Europe, which is of course of great importance. In many of the rebellions in Latin America we have not only intervened, but we have gone out with stronger organizations, for example we were recently in Ecuador collaborating from the LIS with the comrades there who have been joining us. In Africa, we have just come from a Congress a few days ago in Kenya, which is the vanguard of our work, but which has spread to other countries of that continent with so much history and combativeness. On the other hand, our comrades have actively participated in the rebellions in Kashmir and in several regions of Asia. That is to say, this Congress will allow us to take a leap forward and be stronger to continue fighting for our objectives. Which in reality is only one: to advance in a world that only under the banners of socialism can have a way out. And we need to advance quickly on that road before capitalist barbarism takes us back to the Middle Ages.


From what you say, there are different organizations that have made the decision to join the LIS, where do they come from? Does that imply new challenges?

The project of the LIS tries to regroup forces, not on the basis of the origin of the organizations, but on the basis of important current political agreements, of a common coincidence in the need to go to a new tradition, which is the fruit of unity between different organizations on the basis of a program, a method and a common project. Unfortunately, the projects of the revolutionary organizations that emerged after World War II, which played a very progressive role, because they defended the banners of the October Revolution for decades, have been exhausted. The new world stage we live in, the new situations, need to go to another type of organization that, taking the best of those organizations, surpasses them. Starting also from a critical analysis of the problems that have led practically all of them to enter into crisis. And the International Socialist League is the attempt to regroup those forces, from whom we draw common conclusions to build an organization that aims to build a new tradition based on a policy, a strategy, an orientation and a healthy method, learning to coexist between different components, respecting the different traditions and at the same time learning to coexist with nuances, generating the necessary confidence to continue moving forward.

And I am convinced that this is going to be reflected in this Congress, because practically the LIS is made up of comrades who come from the different traditions of Trotskyism, but we are united and strong in building a new one. Comrades from the former OTI, from the League for the Fifth International, comrades who come from some organizations like the LIT, also comrades who come from what was the Unified Secretariat, we are going to have comrades who come from different traditions of English Trotskyism. All with the same objective: to build a great international, on the basis of trying to work together to overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership, to overcome the problems and to advance towards a great international grouping that will give an answer to the most pressing needs of the class struggle and of the workers at world level.

Anti-government protesters, including indigenous people, clash with police near the National Assembly in Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019. Anti-government protests, which began when President Lenín Moreno’s decision to cut subsidies led to a sharp increase in fuel prices, has persisted for days and clashes led the president to move his besieged administration out of Quito. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)


It is evident that such an advance and integration responds to a type of international construction. What can you tell us about it?

Well, as I said before, I believe that the progress we are making, as well as the integration of comrades and organizations of different origins, has to do with the fact that the project we have built from the LIS is the one that best responds to the needs of the present time. This 3rd Congress is in fact the concrete proof that we are on the right track. Even different organizations that, without being part of the LIS, have been working with us and we hope that in a process they will also be integrated, will also come to this Congress. I believe that for this reason, this Congress will open a new stage in our organization, which confirms in part the validity of the postulates that we have proposed. And at the same time, it poses us new challenges, new responsibilities, which with a healthy, democratic centralist method, appealing to the collective elaboration among all, will continue to bear fruit in the time to come.


And about the objectives of this Congress, how would you summarize them?

If I had to summarize the concrete objectives of this Congress, I believe that the first one is to finish consolidating the advances and to go for more. As I have just said, a new stage is opening that we will have to face within the framework of a completely different International Socialist League, larger, with more components and that will imply a great strengthening. And at the same time, a great challenge that we assume with optimism and with great joy, because we believe that this is what is needed in the new world stage we are going through.


Well Alejandro, we leave you a final reflection, with what you think is important to tell us or highlight about the Congress and its relation with the perspectives that are coming in the world.

As I said at the beginning, we are in a very complex world. With greater social polarization and with a right wing that will try to advance on conquered rights, and with a mass movement that will resist, so we prepare ourselves to intervene in these processes of class struggle and at the same time we prepare ourselves for the emergence of new political phenomena located on the left.

In fact, we are seeing the emergence of new parties outside of Laborism, as in the United Kingdom and also how some of the broad anti-capitalist parties are being revitalized which, at the time gave rise to a phenomenon such as Syriza, which aroused great expectations but which later ended up failing and generating a wave of skepticism that was taken advantage of by the right wing. Broad parties that have raised many debates in the revolutionary left, about how to participate, whether to participate, whether not to participate, whether to participate is a tactical problem, whether the strategy is that type of parties. We clearly believe that the strategy is to build revolutionary parties, but without any kind of sectarianism or dogmatism, having an open mind to have bold tactics if these allow us to strengthen our organizations.

All this puts us before the permanent need to elaborate, to reelaborate. Today our International is present in most of the countries where there are phenomena of all kinds, phenomena of rise, of rebellions, of emergence of the right wing, of this type of parties that arise precisely to confront these rightists and because the absence of strong revolutionary leaderships makes it necessary to go through these mediations. But I believe that the LIS is going to emerge with sufficient strength to be able to intervene in all kinds of phenomena and take advantage of the opportunities that the reality of the world offers us, to continue advancing in our strategy, which is to regroup the revolutionaries to provide the workers with a leadership, and in a period of time, to defeat the bourgeoisie and imperialism, before they lead us to barbarism.

So we are very pleased and we already know that the Congress will be very successful and will be a very important contribution to the world vanguard. We are going to try to socialize its conclusions through our magazine, through our networks, to open a debate beyond our ranks, with all those who really want to change the world, end this world of misery and exploitation, defeat the right wing and open the way to workers’ governments, which is the only way for the enormous wealth of the world to overcome hunger, misery and guarantee a dignified life for all.