Trotskyist Discussion Bulletin: A Left Opposition in the USFI

OLITICS OF THE INTERNATIONAL TROTSKYIST OPPOSITION:

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| %& LRCI's critique of the ITO's “Declaration of | Principles” . | ¥ An ITO critique of the Trotskyist Manifesto % Reply by Workers Power

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Introduction

This pack contains a number of documents unavailable elsewhere

relating to the formation of the International Trotskyist Opposition

(ITO) within the United Secretariat of the Fourth International

(USFI). The ITO was founded when the former Faction for a

Trotskist International of the USFI, led by Franco Grisolia, came

together with the Trotskyist Opposition i in the British USFI section

and leaders of the expelled French youth section, JCR. Egalité. Tt has HES published its tendency platform “Declaration of Principles” Guly eee 1992) within the USFI: 2 : eS :

The ITO is combining its formal project - a long term fight to the next USFI World Congress an “open conference” | orientation towards various international Trotskyist organisations such as Militant, the WRP/WIRFI and the Liaison Committee of Communists (Voce Operaia and the Austrian RKL) and the French GSI (a split from Lambertism). One organisation significantly excluded from the ITO’s “orientations” is the League:fora Revolutionary Communist International. Despite requests for discussions with the ITO and its constituent groupings the LRCI has received no reply.

The documents in this bulletin ¢o some: way to:explaining why: The ITO is on course to create yet ancther failed opposition within the USFI and yet another unprincipled international bloc: Its unifying feature will be opposition to the LRCYs programmatic clarity and unflinching struggle for revolutionary regroupment.

The LRCI’s Critique of the ITO Platform: lays out our basic disagreement with the politics of the Tendency and explains their pedigree in the politics of Alan Thornett’s TILC and the former International Trotskyist Committee (ITC).

We also publish here for the first time a substantial critique of the LRCI?’s founding document, The Trotskyist Manifesto, by comrade ND, formerly of the Revolutionary Internationalist League, the ITC’s British Section. Despite being advertised for publication two years ago Critique of the Re-elaborated Programme was never published or properly agreed by the RIL before the organisation split in 1992.

In November 1992 ND and his collaborator.GD announced that they were intending to leave the RIL/ITC and apply for membership of the British USFI and the ITO within it, joining other former RIL comrades who left when the initial ITC split occurred in July 1992. Recognising that ND himself may have changed his opinions on his draft critique we wrote to him and offered him the chance to revise it. He did not reply. It remains a substantial critique and a reply by. the LRCI is all the more necessary since it has been furtively circulated an “official” ITO document to individuals within the USFI

The USF is in crisis and terminal decline. Its British section is wracked by factional struggle over whether to fester in the Labour | Party, launch an open organisation on an opportunist: platform, or t make some form of break with the method of the past. We say to those within the British Section who want to make that break that _ only the politics of the LRCI are capable of guiding it to a revolution- _ ary conclusion. This lesson has already been drawn by two of the delegates to the ITO’s founding conference and we are unashamed in our attempt to convince others to follow.

The material in this pack offers but a glimpse of the crisis in the USFI. To read the LRCIs full critique of various developments before and after the XIII World Congress read the articles in our international press, available on request from Workers Power at the address below.

Workers Power March 1993

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POLITICS OF THE ITO |

SFI’s

The existence of an Invernationa) Trotskyist Opposition (ITO) within the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) must appear encouraging to those members of the USFI who have watched for years as their leaders steadily abandoned more and more Trotskyist and Leninist

positions. The disorientation and disintegration ofthe USFI | , ' dus versions of the document (partly as a result of our polemics) it is still flawed and mistaken.

reveal the néed for a struggle to win the best elements to Trotskyism and away from the adaptation to, or dissolution into, various left Stalinist, reformist and Maoist organisations or petit bourgeois movements.

What does the ITO offer to militants within the USF!

who want to reverse this. abandonment of. Trotskyism? In "1992 the grouping was. launched following the coming together of a number of oppositional tendencies. Some of these, like the comrades of the Faction. for a Trotskyist ‘International, have been distinct, organised oppositions for

many years. Others, such as the French comrades, had -

recently moved to the left, Already the ITO has attracted interest around the world; as the collapse of Stalinism reveals the depth of the bank-

ruptey of the USFI leadership. At one level, the laurich of » the ITO clearly corresponded a felt need amongst the hest

militants of the USFI.

But the answer provided by the ITO to the crisis of the USF Tis insufficient, both polemically and programatically. At its founding conferenve it adopted a “Declaration of Principles” which it will use in its tendency struggle within the USFI. Although the document ranges from the historic necessity of socialism to the need for a world party of the proletariat it is not, as claimed in the “Draft declaration of

tasks of the ITO” adopted at the same meeting, “a pro-

gramme . .. for the political regeneration and organisational reconstruction of the Fourth International”.

From principles to adaptation

The ITO’s founding docwnent is precisely a “Declaration of Principles”. The differences with the programmatic documents of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky are striking. The [TO deliberately advances positions that are vague and empty ‘of programmatic content. Most of them’ are deliberately so

anodyne and abstract that virtually any. self-respecting’

“Trotskyist” could agree with them: After all, who could oppose “the aim of the Trotskyist party is to win hegemony over the masses in action”, a criticism of “socialism in one country” or the call for “unification on the programmatic bases of Bolshevism of the forces of the vanguard of the proletariat”? But despite this carefully crafted catalogue of truisms there are a number of positions which reveal a systematic streak of opportunism.

The Declaration argues fer the building of non-proletarjan mass movements of the oppressed and exploited, “mobilising not only the proletariat but also the non-proletarian

No answer ‘to.

risis

oppressed and middle layera”, It argues that revolutionaries “must fight against the petty-bourgeois (or sometimes bourgeois) leaderships of these movements, struggling for proletarian leadership of the non-proletarian mass move-

_ments.”

Whilst this is better than the equivalent section in previ-

- We agree that oppression of women, lesbians and pay then, youth etc exists in all classes, and that petit bourgeois and even bourgeois elements will be drawn into struggle around their oppression, but we do not draw the.same conclusions as the Declaration: The ITO documents says that’ “They (non-proletarian mass movements - WP) are therefore continually brought i into conflict with the capitalist class and its state.”

. This is an adaptation to petit bourgeois imovetnentism” , to the idea that such movements - be they’ the peace movements of the early 1980s or the women’s movement of the 1970s - are “objectively anti-capitalist” or have an “anticapitalist dynamic”. .

‘Bourgeois and petit bourgeois women, or other oppressed sectors, while facing real oppression under capitalism, do not have the same interests as proletarian and poor peas-

ant women in emancipation through working class revolu-

tien. Their interests are not solely, nor primarily, deter-

mined by their oppression, but rather by their relationship

to production, by their class position.

Ofcourse the best oppressed individuals within the bourgebisie and petit bourgeoisie may be ideologically convinced of the need to struggle for socialism to overcome oppression. But this is not the same as arguing. that their struggle aghinst oppression ‘will automatically bring them into conflict with capitalism i in the state.

‘That this is not an isolated “poor formulation” but part of

/@ wrong method is shown by the section on the “anti-

imperialist united front”, The comrades reject the “revisiohist” idea that “it is possible to establish anti-imperialist untied fronts with the national bourgeoisie of an oppressed country”, arguing that only patit-bourgeois nationalist partieg or organizations can be partners in such a front. The only kinds of agreement which are permitted with the national bourgeoisie are “limited practical agreements’. But surely, comrades, that is a united front! :

The ITO clearly suggest that something other than “im. ited practical agreements” are possible with “petit-bourgeois national parties”, in the name of the “entiimperialist united front”. This is opportunism masquerading as orthodoxy. Call them what you will: the only kinds of agreements which are possible with forces of other classes are precisely “limited practical agreements”. Anything else - such as an electoral bloc or a common organisation - will inevitably lead to a confusion of banners, to an opportunist adaptation of the revolutionary programme to that of the alien class

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forces.

As with the séction on oppression, the comrades around the FTI have changed their formulations over the years in reaction to our criticisms. But the fundamental methodological error resists all re-drafting, for the simple reason that this is what the comrades believe. Their .cross-class “movementism” in the imperialist countries goes hand in hand with leaving the door open toan unprincipled “united front” in anti-imperialist struggles. ©

Denunciation is not enough

Oppositionists within the USFI will agree with the ITO on the need to resolve the ‘political crisis in the Fourth International, which according to them includes two.elements: “political revisionism and organisational dispersion”. To rally people within and outside of the USFI (the ITO directs its appeal to the whole “world Trotskyist movement”) itis necessary to explain exactly what the errors of the existing USF leadership are and have been, how these can be understood in relationship to the degeneration of the

revolutionary tradition of the FI, and what would have been :

othe correct positions to have. fought for in Key events of the class struggle.

'- ary purity” or in order to insult the USFI leadership, but because without a clear diagnosis ofthe errors, the neces-

“gary prescription for regenerating. ‘Trotekyism cannot be

determined. Many oppositionists within the FI, and certainly many * opposing groups who claim adherence to Trotskyism, will

vagree that the USFTis indeed marked by political revision:

ism and organisational dispersion, Many will also agree “with the ITO when it’ states, “The problem is that for

~ decades the leadership of the FI, in part for subjective, in :

‘part for objective reasons, has not. been able to build the

International and strengthen it politically and organisa_ tionally enough so that it could become a mass Fourth: International”, and that there i is a need to launch;‘a strug-

‘ ple against the deepening revisioniam of the majority lead- “ership of the USFI’.

~ But will all the oppositionists -or even ‘all the members of

the ITO - agree on which particular positions, interventions

" or perspectives and on which bit of the leadership over the

years ‘were revisionist? Was it the belief that. the 1979

Nicaraguan revolution installed some kind of “workers’.

government”? Was it the entry into the British Labour Party and the attempted creation of a class struggle left “wing with left reformist forces? Was it the support for and

attempted fusion with ex-Communist Party members:

‘ around Pierre Juquin in France? Was it the description of Cuba aa a workers’ state, not. degenerate but merely need- "ing some reforms? Or was it the USFI position.on the USSR ' “in the Gorbachev years which called for a “deeper glasnost”? Or the total adaptation to Solidarnose, including its proimperialist leadership? Or all of the above? - - Andifthe USFI leadership(s) were wrong over, for. example Nicaragua, what was the revolutionary position? Could revolutionaries have given any support to, or even entered the Sandinista government? Or in Poland how should

revolutionaries have intervened around the mass.move- . ment led by Solidarnosc; and where would we have stood . :

> when Jaruzelski sent the troops in? Where would revolutionary: Trotskyists have placed their forces during the August Coup ‘in the Soviét Union? ur purpose in raising these questions is not to go through the last 30 years ofinternational class struggle and present the line of the LRCI alongside a critique of the USF, but to point out that there are many different issues on which the USFI leadership has taken wrong positions, and also many interpretations of the “revolutionary” position. In the process of defeating the ideas and actions of the ‘revisionist leadership of the USFI it is. necessary to be : precise | in identifying errors and in providing alternative

positions.

Ifall that was needed wasa denuneiation of the revisionism of the USF leadership, then almost the whole of the left that has any adherence to Trotskyism, including a majority of the USFI, would join the ITO. Rectifying the errors and building “a mass Fourth International” on a revolutionary basis requires a serious accounting with the errors of the

: past, an understanding. of the process of degeneration of the

No eriticlsm from the ITO

The “principles” put forward by the ITO contain neither a rounded critique of the USFI’s leadership or practice, nor any positions on the key issues that have divided those who regard themselves as Trotskyists over the past three decadeg. Without such clarity the “Declaration of Principles” remains an ineffectual statement of broad principles which fails'to arm revolutionaries. The ITO’s only criticisms of the USE] leadership are the following:

“The International majority has for some time been progressively abandoning the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now, in face of the fall of the Stalinist

‘-yepiines and under pressure from the’ reformist leaderships “This approschis important ‘not for reasons of “yevolution-

- for pxample, the Lula leadership i in the Brazilian Workers

‘Party (PT) - it is abandoning the concept of the Leninist

party as thie essential political instrument of the proletariat in the struggle for socialism. This political break with Leninism, is reflected organisationally both in the diasolution.of sections and, in those sections that remain, in an organisational. regime in which the leaders do as they

please and the members do as they please”.

“For along time, there has been a tendency in the USF! to lose sight of” the general value of the method (of the Tyarisitional Programme - WP) as ‘a system of intervention in the class struggle. There is a tendency to consider tran-

» sitional demands simply as ‘the ‘most radical’ demands that

can be used when it is necessary to have a higher political profile. There is also a tendency , to forget the general methodological importance of using transitional demands

asa form of‘agitation, whére'the objective situation and our ‘ foreds allow iti . ‘marked the policy of the USFI in the past, that.is, the

. We algo have to reject a method that has

pretension that we can seize on.one ‘anti-capi talist demand’ that‘has a unique and central, value for our action in the class struggle.”

“For fifty years the Trotskyist, movement has been under massive pressure from the Stalinists and reformists, and sections of it have adapted to the Stalinist conception of the united front as a policy of mixing banners, and even to the

_ transformation of the united front into a popular front with

directly bourgeois forces. In many cases, the small size of the Trotskyist organisations has intensified that pressure, as the organisation’s independent agitation has seemed so weak as to be ineffective. Often the adaptation has taken the form of turning the united front into an abstract general prin¢iple to which the organisation’s independent propaganda i is sacrificed. A Trotskyist rejection of mixing banners is then characterised as ‘sectarian’, The Fourth, International must make a decisive break from this adaptation and

‘return to the Leninist policy of the united front: as an

agreement on concrete practical action, within which the participants put out their own propaganda and agitation.”

These timid criticisms of the leadership of the FI are broadly correct, ‘so far as they go, but they hardly form a convincing or rounded analysis of decades of vacillation and mislgadership. Nor are any examples of these crimes, presented, as if making specific rather than general criticisms would cause offence - or reveal differences. -

Even more striking is the fact that the “declaration” contdins whole sections on the working class and permanent:revolution, the need for independent revolutionary parttesin all countries, the need for a democratic centralist

‘international, the Tavoluticnary struggle in the trade un-

- ons, centrism, the anti-imperialist united front, the workers’ government, oppression, the national question, the - deformed workers’ states and war, and in each of these » contains no critique of the disastrous centrist policies of the

USFI! a ;

Take the section on oppression, for example. The ITO makes a general statement about the necessity for the proletariat and its party to be a “tribune of the people” and champion the struggle of all the oppressed and exploited. Who could disagree? It goes on to argue for mass move- ‘ments of the oppressed, including the statement “(Trotskyists) must fight against the petty-bourgeois (or sometimes bourgeois) leaderships of these movements, struggling for proletarian leadership of the non-proletarian mass movements”. It also calls for the creation of revolutionary caucuses where movements of the oppressed are under opportunist: leaderships. There is not a word of criticism of the USF Ys practice on oppression! '

There is no recognition that the USFI has taken key positions within tne leadership of cross-class movements and used their positions to hound Trotskyists not only-for organising “caucuses” but for daring te argue revolutionsry class politics within these movements. The USEFI leadership in Britain, for example, adapted to the petit bourgeois feminists all along on theory, organisation and politics. They became the hatchet women of the feminists, denouncing revolutionaries for the crime of fighting against the petit bourgeois leaderships and struggling for proletarian leadership.

How to fight against “Trotskyist” centrism | .

Perhaps the ITO consider that the positive principlés they advocate are sufficient, or that they form a clever “hidden polemic” by arguing abstract positions that the USFI has clearly rejected in practice. If this is the idea behind the dacument’s method it is an inadequate, even dishonest, way of’ building an opposition. To rectify mistakes requires that they are identified, understood andthe correct alternative debated out and agreed upon.

The USF Tis a centrist organisation and has been since its inception in 1963. Composed of a reunification of most of the elements of the 1953 split in the Fourth International, the USFT has never broken with the centrism which marked the Fl from 1951 onwards, It shares this characteristic with virtually all the various “Trotskyist” organisations which, through the many subsequent splits and fusions, have retained the fundamental centrist errors of this initial degeneration. We have written on this elsewhere, particu-

larly in our book The Death Agony of the Fourth Interna-'

tional and the Tasks of Trotshyists Today (Workers Power & Irish Workers Group, 1988), Before the errors of the present and recent FI leadership can be corrected, an understanding and agreement on the origins of this centrism within the Flis necessary. :

‘To group together a new leadership capable of defeating the revisionists requires clarity of understanding of the degeneration of the FI, a sharp critique of the present leadership and a programme which deals with the neces-

_ sary strategy anc tactics in the class struggle at the moment, But the [eclaration fails on all three counts. It neither provides a.coherent critique of the USF leadership, nor an evaluation of the degeneration of the FI nor, whilst purporting to be a programme, does it provide a guide to action in the current class struggle. It does state a number of “principles” of Trotskyism, but does not give them the level of detailed content necessary for the discussion of concrete situations.

A bit of history

The driving force behind the ITO is what used to be the Faction for a Trotskyist International, led by Franco Grisolia

Page 5 of the Italian section of the USFI. The method used by the ITO in its founding documents is that used by the comrades of the FTI to build their organisation over nearly 15 years. Indeed, not only the method is the same: the very document adopted by the ITO is an amended version of one first put forward in 1980!

At the end of 1979 the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee (TILC) was formed. It included within it the British Workers Socialist League (WSL), led by Alan Thornett (now in the USF), the Bolshevik Leninist Group (GBL, later the LOR) of Italy, plus the RWL of the USA and the TAF of Denmark. As well as adopting the original version of the ITO “Declaration of Principles”, the TILC adopted a document called “The Transitional Programme in today’s class struggle”. It explicitly confined itself to revolutionary principles without any discussion of their tactical application. We were observers at the founding conference of the TILC, and we explained that this was a method of building an international tendency which would inevitably cover over real political differences, and would sooner or later lead to a split.

Three years later, we were proved right. The TILC’s founding documents, like those of the ITO, contained a formally correct position on any war between a semi-colony andimperialism, namely defeatism for the imperialist country and defencism with regard to the semi-colony. But at the first concrete test, the member organisations took different positions on the outbreak of war between Argentina and Britain over the Malvinas.

The abstract principles failed to help when it was revealed that the British section, having a different understanding not of general principles but of the specifics of, in this case, the “right to self determination” of colonial settlers, decided that this was the decisive feature. The British section took a defeatist position on both sides, whilst their comrades in the other sections correctly stood on the other side in the conflict and defended Argentina against imperialist aggression. The TILC split.

The non-Thornett TILC groupings subsequently set.up the International Trotskyist Committee (ITC) with sections inside and outside of the USFI which in turn split; those inside the USFT (principally in Italy and Denmark) created the Faction for a Trotskyist International (FTI) which gained some more support (e.g. France). The FTI then helped to set up the ITO,

The ins and outs of all these splits are largely of interest only to archivists, but what is of fundamental importance is to understand why this method of regroupment is so wrong. For those who look to the ITO as a step forward in the USFI it is important to recognise how unstable and ultimately impotent tendencies built on such a basis are.

The problem with the ITO

The ITO is being built on the basis of broad agreement on principles which serve to cover up real differences of analysis, perspective and programme amongst its members, In addition, itis not clear in its critique of the USFI leadership.

The section of the document on the crisis of leadership defines as centrist organisations whose positions vacillate between reformism and Trotskyism, have not in general developed overt consistent counter-revolutionary activity, and with their opportunist policies constitute “a supplementary obstacle to the proletarian revolution”.

That definition fits the USF very well, even according to the relatively mild critique in the Declaration. Yet the comrades stop short of applying the label to the organisation that they are seeking to reform. Why? This has long been the method of those within the USFI who seek to reform it from within. They regard it as having a leadership making serious errors, but not requiring the name centrist as this would perhaps frighten off USF] members from supporting the opposition and may even get them expelled from the USFI.

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a emai

But regrouping a revoluticnary vanguard to rescue revo- *dutionary politics from the revisionism of the USFI and the -other large FI fragments is a serious and urgent task. The Declaration itself suggests that the crisis of humanity is “in elemental form the crisis of the Fourth International”. Diplomacy, leading to a refusal to label the leadership : centrist will only serve to confuse, not clarify, The “crisis of ' humanity” will continue. ‘Mandel is not about to read the ITO Declaration, recog- “-nise his errors and turn the USF into a healthy International. He needs to be exposed as a misleader, as do.all the other USFI leaders, majority and minority, for their role in miseducating thousands of young militants, and squandering opportunities for the working class and oppressed. The reluctance to call the USFI centrist is not just a : diplomatic nicety, It is based on a wrong understanding of

» revolutionary regroupment as outlined above, but also on a_

false idea about the fate of the FI and of Trotskyism. :. The Declaration explicitly argues that the USFlis only a ‘fragment of the FI, and argues “the need to develop the struggle for the political regeneration and organisational -” reconstruction of the Fourth International in all the trends : ‘of the world Trotskyist movement”, . This “FI” is clearly not the USFI, or it could not exist “in : all trends of the world Trotskyist movement”, What is it ‘then? Is it a programme which all the different fragments agree upon? Clearly not, since they all argue vociferously about what is wrong with the others. Is it the tradition of the revolutionary struggle against Stalinism in the 19308? Partly, but to be of any practical use in today’s class strug- ‘gle, the political lessons of 60 years ago need to be applied clearly and concretely. And that leads us back to the politi- “eal differences which separate the myriad tendencies which ' ‘claim to be Trotskyist. ~~ Ernest Mandel thinks thst the F’l exists. He also thinks ‘he leads it. Gerry Healy thought the same thing. Pierre ~ Lambert and Nahuel Moreno did too. So too did Anibal Ramos and Michel Varga. There has hardly been a shortage _ over the years of groups claiming to be “the” FI. But no - matter how crazy some of their ideas may have been, at - least their versione of “the FI’ were reoted in concrete ' : Yeality: their own groups. '. The FTIATO idea that the FI exists as a set of ideas, . somewhere in the heads of scattered groups of Trotskyists across the six continents is a nonsensical myth, a meta-

physical comforter for all those looking for an excuse not to’

-break politically with one of its fragments.

‘The world Trotskyist movement, referred to at other times as “the world family of Trotskyism’, isa similar vague claim that there is something common to those whose centrism originates in the degeneration of the FI that distinguishes them from centrists from reformist or Stalinist traditions. Again this creates illusions in some kind of “special” form of centrism, and leads to the conclusion that revolutionary regeneration wil! necessarily occur through some regroupment of these dissident Trotskyist siblings. Indeed, the ITC/FTI used to peddle this kind of argument to

: explain that the USF itself wasa particularly healthy form

- of “centrism sui generis” as they called it.

We reject this argument. The centrism of groups that have their origins in the I can be as right wing and disastrous for the working class as centrists of any origin. Revolutionaries need to make this clear, not promote the illusion that the USFI, or the LIT or any other “Fourth International” are a more progressive kind of centrism. A decisive break needs to made from both their organisations and politics to win militants to revolutionary Trotskyism. Where there are numbers of disaffected members a faction fight within the USFI is absolutely correct and necessary. But such a struggle must lend to a break with the existing

_USFI, recognising this will not be a process of, steady reform but rather one of forcing a split with the inveterate centrist leaders,

in or out of the USFI?

What are the ITO's perspectives? The Opposition’s documents are deliberately vague. The “organizational resolution” argues that their intervention in the USFI “will culminate in the struggle around the Fourteenth World Congress”. This clearly suggests that their work within the USF could be over in 2 to 3 years.

But if this is the case - and this accusation has been used in factional attacks against ITO members, notably those around the JCR-Egalité in France by the majority of the USF - why does the ITO refuse to clearly characterise itself as a faction?’ ‘

In the history of Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism the terms faction and tendency have quite distinct meanings. A faction is a group of oppositionists who have a distinct platform from the leadership and are trying to replace the existing leadership. Trotsky’s struggle inside the CPSU and the Comintern in the late twenties and early thirties was a factional one, A tendency on the other hand is organised to change particular policies of the organisation, not overthrow a bankrupt leadership. Which is it to be?

The draft organisational resolution of the ITO explicitly states that it is a tendency. Its aims are “to conduct a tendency stiuggle in the USFI against the revisionist and liquidationist line of the International majority”. Does this mean that the comrades are agreed that the line can be chahged without changing the leadership? If this is the case, it seems strange that one of the founding organisations of the ITO, indeed the originator of the call fer the ITO, was the Faction tor a Trotskyist International. As an open faction it was fighting to change the leadership.

It appears as if the members of the FTI have changed their position and agreed that a factional strugele is not necessary and a tendency will do. Or perhaps they just dropped the term factional in order to win broader support. This is no way to defeat revisionism inside the USFI or any other organisation. It is a refusal to take seriously and fight for the positions you believe in, and instead replace them with a diplomatic compromise to win wider influence but at the expense of fighting for your programme against the established leadership.

A consciously opportunist method

This is the fundamental method that the ex-TILC, ex-

ITC and now ex-F'TT members have been using for nearly 15 years, In addition to compromising over whether they need & factional or a tendency struggle, they are always keen to compromise on political positions rather than risk losing partners in their tendency, The vague statement of principles will appeal to many people but glosses over many real differences that exist among those that sign up to join the tendency, A new revolutionary leadership, true to the positions of Lenin, Trotsky, the first four congresses of the Comintern and the founding documents of the FI, needs to be forged through common agreement on the principles, strategy and tactics of the class struggle. With agreement on programme, incliding key tactics, a new leadership can be built within the working class through practical intervention and defeating the centrist, reformist and nationalist alternative leaderships.

The TILC-ITC-FT] tradition has al ways rejected the idea that revolutionary regroupment needs to be on the basis of agréement on tactics as well as strategy and principles, arguing that tactics are somehow less fundamental. This is a serious error leading to the kind of compromise positions we see in the declaration,

This is clearest when we look at the key question of the last few years: the collapse of Stalinism. Not surprisingly, the Declaration says very little about the programme of revolutionaries in this situation. There are of course broad statements on the transitional nature of the economies and states, the need to defend social property and the call for a

Page 7

political revolution “of a special type”.

But the international workers’ movement has been thrown into disarray by the wave of political revolutionary crises which have swept Hastern Europe since 1989, The growth of democratic struggles in these states, the mass revolutionary uprisings against Stalinist repression in some of the states, and the «ibility of pro-imperialist and nationalist leaderships to come to the head of these movements, leading them to counter-revolution - all these developments have been testing the principles, strategies and tactics of all sectors of the labour movement, including self proclaimed Trotskyists. This hes been the most important development of recent years, and if revolutionaries fail to analyse it correctly and develop the correct strategies they will be unable to build the mass international that the ITO claim to want.

The August coup in the USSR in 1991 was a key event. One wing of the loureaucracy staged a coup, and was resisted by another wing of the bureaucracy. Events like this in the midst of political and economic turmoil can be the spark for revoluticns, counter-revolutions and the rapid development of political forces through struggle. Revolutionary internationalists must put forward a position on such events, we cannot throw up our hands and say - it’s a long way away and we are not sure what to say.

But the “declaration” says nothing. Perhaps they forgot? No, they did not forget since it was a point for discussion amongst those coming together to form the tendency. The reason it is missing is because the people within the ITO disagree. On the one hand the Grisolia supporters have a position of “we would have supported the coup if only the masses had supported it”, believing that it represented some kind of defence of the USSR against restorationists. Others argued for opposition to the coup and defence of the democratic gains made in the previous six years.

Staying silent on such an issue does not resolve the problem. It guarantees that the farce of the TILC’s collapse in the face of the war will be repeated. Were the August coup to happen tomorrow, the ITO would be completely split. [t would either be reduced to silence or would see its different components putting forward positions which would, literally, put them on opposite sides of the barricades! And they deliberately chose not to confront this difference! This is hardly the mark of a serious revolutionary opposition. The ITO consciously sacrificed political clarity in the name of short-term organisational expediency.

Confronting such differences in an attempt to reach common agreement: on programme can lead to the development of positions, to the welding together of a leadership around a common programme based on living struggles, to establishing a solid basis for revolutionary regroupment.

Why do we think that key tactics are so important? Having correct tactics for a strike, a campaign, a demonstration, a war, or a revolution will determine not only who will win, assuming your tactics are adopted, but will also demonstrate the correctness of revolutionary principles and strategy to workers in struggle. Tactics are not divorced or secondary issues, they are the focusing of andimplementation of prograrame, and they are fundamental to winning leadership within the working class.

The wrong positions of centrist leaderships are often on tactical questions, but frequently signify an underlying methodological difference on points of strategy. Glossing over tactical differences will, in reality, also cover up differences over strategy. This is clearly the case with regard to the August coup and the ITO.

Conclusion

The development: of an international opposition which claims to advance a revolutionary critique of the USF is of great importance. ‘The USFI continues to organise thousands of militants sround the world, many of them subjective revolutionaries, increasingly revolted by the opportun-

ism of their leaderships. The USFI majority leadership is aware of this, and at the moment the ITO is the subject of their factional attentions.

Yet the ITO does not represent a revolutionary alternative for critical members of the USFI. Over 15 years, the method employed by its founders has proved their inability to forge a new programme and a new organisation. The potential represented by those who have recently been attracted to the banner of the ITO will be wasted if the old method, which led to the shipwreck of the TILC and the wasted year's of the ITC, is repeated.

Building a group around positions which are designed to cover up real political differences can hardly lead to a thoroughgoing fight for political clarification against the USF leadership. If we can detect the political differences between the various components of the ITO from outside the USF, you can be sure that the USFI majority will be able to do at least as much. The political differences concealed by the ITO will explode to the surface at the firat real test of the international class struggle. Rather than being part of the answer to the “crisis of the Fourth International”, the leaders of the ITO are confirming their status as part of the problem.

We do not simply address a call to the comrades of the ITO tojoin the LRCI. Those of you who consider that we are right on any or all of these points but who think that your leaderships can be won over should raise your criticiams within your national sections and win your comrades away from their current method. The key task is to apply the method of Trotsky’s Transitional Programme to today’s class struggle and to fight for international revolutionary regroupment on a clear programmatic basis, devoid of diplomatic “no-go” areas and evasive centrist abstractions. That was Tratsky’s method in the 1930s; it should be our method today. *

“a

rs

CRITIQUE OF THE: RE-ELABURATED PROGRAMME 0 57.

AUTHOR'S NOTE? Thies document was ori igqinally conceived as a critique by the £4C af the LRCI' a ‘Trotskyist Manifesta' arid * “Substantially written in the summer of 1990, Some more work was dene in’ about February 194t, Since then, nething, The #kC/R#4 essentially ditched the praject for a number of reasons, all af them bad emes, Rather than fiddle about with it I have decided te circulate it in its original, incomplete form as sean as passible in order to provoke discussion, Cdes are invited to comment, criticise, update or whatever, but I think that something should came aut in some form, even if only semi-public, as a challenge to the LACI's “Hikle" is long overdue, ,

INTRODUCTION: WHAT THE 'TROTSERYIST WANIFESTO’ 15, AND WHY A RESPONSE TS NECESSARY

Launched at the end of 13839 by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International CLRCI) amidst some triumphalism, the 'Tretskyist Manifesta' CTH) purports ta be the “re-elaboration” af Troetsky's Transitional Pragranne, but even concerning its stated aim and purpose there is a definite air of ambiguity and cemfusion, Within the ranks of Workers! Power, the LRCI's British section, same regard it as a bible te be thumped, Others, mare modestly anc wre seriously see it as a summation of the thearetical progress made by WF/LRCI since the emergence fram the International Socialists ¢15) in the mid 1970s, This is net a new programme, but a fudge which sacrifices clarity, It is, in fact, a very slippery dacument, diplomatically written, which has something for everybedy, It has beer ‘awaited several years and toagk “sa long .to preduce because it had te meet Sic ‘any pressures from differing pelitical pasitions internally and from other LRCL sections, It has confused and confusing positions,

sometimes within a few pages of each other, Whatever the claims made for the document, coming from a current which claims te take a more serious approach than mast to questions of pragrammatic clarity and development, and with which we share, at least formally, a number of important positions, it deserves thorough consideration and a sericus reply,

It is no accident that this has net yet been done, The LRCI shares with the #eC othe position that Trotsky's Fourth International CFI) callapsed inte

centrism in 1351, Goeth refute any idea of “continuity"- the "thin red line" of Trotskyism, Both regard all the currents claiming to be the FI, or the organising centre for its reconstruction as centrist, in other words,

Say that they da not consistently defend the prograsme of Trotskyism, yet neither have they passed, as have secial-democracy and Stalinism, inte the camo af counter-revolution, While it is not inconceivable that one or other of these centrist currents might veniture.a criticism af the. 7M, ‘antrists have never been the mest consistent oar exacting critics af centrism, The job of mak ing any sott of serious and objective analysis ot the TH within ‘its cn terms of reference therefor falls to the #4C, “

In many respects the TM is a distillation of the political method of the LRCI/WP, reflecting berth the strengths and weaknesses of the tendancy, In terms of its content, some of the TM is an overdue and constructive attempt ta develop the 1935 Transitional Frogranme, toth ta take account of developments af the last 50 years, and te develop those Bape ts which by

the Trotsky's oun admission were incomplete, such as the struggles in the semi-colonies, However, at the heart of the TMH is all that is negative about the LRCI/WP, scholasticism, prinative economism, and most

_ importantly, ari apparently irredeemakle sectarianism om the fundamental question af international regroupment, manifesting itself as confused agnosticism on what are the tasks in the present pericd, and on what should be their programmatic basis, This weakness eats away at the guts of the THM, producing the evident, confusion on what is the ultimate purpose af the document, Le,

, . CONFUS LON ON THE PROGRANBE

The intreduction ta the TH cantains a general exposition af the LROI's conception of the Transitional Progranne, with apparently uncontroversial observations on the transitional method itself, on the need for a “oridge" between the minimum and the meccinum, stating that while the transitional method predates 1425, the Transitional Programe was the:

5 enarest and most cemplete expression that fad occurred in the preceding

years of Marsism’ to3) and that:

” ocoranmetie declarations of Marxism were enriched a& capitalist saciety deyeloped, In each case the Marxists found it necessary te ‘ref ine and reelaborate the programme in the light of experience, which in Trotsky's words, is the supreme criterion of human reason" ¢ibid)

Clearly, Marxists have to be continually developing the Marxist parogranmne The failure tea develop the 1335 programe was part of its abandonment in practice by post-war Trdétsky yists,” ‘Where it has been used, inadequately, “this has ‘generally widnifested a one-sided view of programme either as “abstract procaganda, ap in a purely agitational way, This means that when conditions becatie unfavourable for large-scale ‘agitational work, the progqrance is seen as redundant, © In both cases, there is a ‘fundanental misunderstanding af the method of the Transitional Pragranme- of the duality between propaganda and agitation, Either the duality is ignored sa that propaganda and agitation become indistinguishable and the Transitional Pregranie is ladled up in huge, indigestible chunks, irrespective of the needs and demands of the situation, On the other hand, there is the notion that the program is simply an agitational tool, te cil the wheels of the ‘enward mavement of the working class", When this “orward movement" jJudders to a halt, and it becomes difficult to raise advanced demands in a purely agitational way on a large scale, then the whele programme is deemed inappropriate- both agitation and propaganda, Both these wrong methods are characteristic af the crisis of post-war Trotskyism, and we shall return te this question later,

The Frogranme's updating and development are inseparatle from the fight for its methed, for censistent Trotskyism, -for international regroupment and regeneration, and against the sectarians and oppertunists who have made a profession af the distertion of Trotskyism ever the past forty years, At least that is how the ITC understands it, “How does thé LACT “understand it? ooo

wT : 4.

an pa af the TM it states “that: "Cur programme, like the 1936 programe, is a develogment of the previous

pregrammes af Marxism, net a Break from then, It stands on the shaulders of the preceding gains of revolutionary Marxism, It bases itself an their wethad anc incorporates all their essential features as well as many of their demands”,

However, the TH does net live up to the extravagent claims made on its

behalf, For a start, for all the talk about the “re-elaboration” of the Transitional Pragrawaé, the TM is in fact intended te replace it, The whole project is based on a profound misconception of what the Transitional

Programe is, and whateit represents, In order ta justify its can |

existence, the TM presents the Transitional Programme in a cotupletely ore

sided way, Throughout the ‘Introduction’ there are frequent assertions that

the: Transitional Progranme, is § an “action programe” and ne thing else, 08g, hank, Certainly. aspects of ‘it have that character, for éxample the opening: "Mankind'!s productive forces stagnate” C'TP' SLL éditioh pla), This was true at that time, and the TF was written in the expectation of indinent war-revalution and current world crisis, In that sense, it was an action pragranmeé to equip the FL pragrammatically at a particular conjuncture, Hoyaver, that is mot fundamentally what the Transitional Programme is, The Transitional Programme is a programe —torthis e the epoch af — ierialism, an epoch of wars and revolutions, It is a pregranmne which addresses Ttselt ta the crisis of working class leadership, to Stalinism and social-demacracy and the need to Build a world party of socialist revolution,

Is a New programme necessary? Has, for example, Stalinism become a new mode of production? Have the "Trotskyists" crossed class lines as did the degenerate Comintern? The answer is af course Noa, subject to well-known exceptions in the latter case, So what dees all this preoccupation with the programme mean for the LRCI? Surely it boils down to the question of the international? a new international, & new programme, |

For us, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International CUSFI), the International Workers! Léague CLIT? and ethers are net counter- . revalutionary, there cah be & serious perspective of struggle around the “Treetskyist oragranme,*“ This is based on our. understanding af these centrist forces as: not only continuing ta formally identif Trotskyist, Bart tes actually continue ‘to defend’ as ec ts of the Trotsky: ist preagr gy aaniines in practice; albeit inconsistently and inadequately, and te act aS & pole af attraction. te advanced workers, . he LROI's perspective is different, It is not ane of struggle, but of passive and sectarian propagandism, That is how WP have built many af the LRCI's sectians, that is haw they aporcached the break-up of the WRP, This is how they approach the crises in the USEFI, Its conception of programme flows fram this practical method, :

However, in pe oof the ‘Preface’ te the TM we read that the problem is net

that the Transitional Programme is qutoof date, it is that it has;

“long been abandoned by those who call themselves his followers", Fight far : : =a . : . >

the existing programme, or draft a pew one? This is just one of the

examcles oX\(Qself-contradition and ani guity that, despite

its triumpha wenn through the whele decument, ft ’ ab€ ~olah ok;

(ACF say

THE CLASS STRUGGLE AS THE “MOTOR OF HISToRy"

On ploef the “Intreduction" of the TM there appears the statement that thes

“Harsxist prograume asserts that the class struggle is the mater force of history" AS a description af Marxist historical materialism this is simply wreng, The motor force of Ristery is mot the class struggle, but the development of the productive forces, and the contradiction between this development and the social relations of production,

The class struggle is part ef the superstructure, dependent on the economic base, on infpasttucture, Anxidus ta refute accusations of crude economic determinism, and conse ious that they may have overstated their case at. the eutset, Marx and Engels frequently qualified this relationship, pointing cut that the class struggle, as well as law, polities and, ideology was na mere Cassive agent of the economic tase, but capable of dialectically interacting with it, and in fact giving many historical struggles their particular form, while remaining, ultimately, subordinate, This qualification is actually expressed jmast lucidly by Engels in a letter to Joseph Bloch (Sep tenber 1890):

"According ta the materialist conception of history, the ultimate determining element in history is the preduction and reproduction of real life, More than this neither Marx nor myself have ever asserted, Hence if somebody twists this inte saying that the eccmamic element is the only deternining ane, fe transforms the prapasitiaon inte =e teaningless, abstract senseless phrase, The economic situation is the basis, but the various ~ Blements of the superstructure- political forws of the class struggle after a Successful battle etc,, Juridical forms, and even the reflexes af these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, poilasephical thearies, religious views and their further development inte & system of dagmas- alse exercise their influence in the course of the historical struggles, and in many cases predominate in determining the

form There is an interaction of all these elements, in which, amid all the endless hosts of histerical accidents. (that is of things and events whose interconnection is sa remote or so imenssiGle te prave that we can pegard it as nonexistent, aS negligible), the econcmic movement. finally. assserts itself as necessary, itherwise the application of the theory ta. ta any . period of history woul be easier than the selution of. single equation of the first degree ve, oo , Bee . .

. . : 3 ty wee pee 4 t tote chet thee ’ ios

fo what, then, li#s behind the LRCI' 's revision of Marxism. o om this question? A slip of the pen, or careless drafting, - perhaps? To shed mare Light on this we need te go back to an exchange between the WRPCWorkers' Fress) and WP sometime during the WRF's “Prague Spring", probably 1986, In their dacument entitled 'Dialectics and the WRP' WP make this same point thus: "The moter force af human history is the conflict between cone class which has a monopoly of the decisive means of production and exploits the babour ef anather class ," ¢p6)

' Just above this, in an apparent attenpt to give it some sort of authority is the quotation from the ‘Conmunist Manifesto’

"All Metary of all sacieties is the history of ‘class struggle", which 1s

quite a different prapesition altagether Cand in any case was heavily qualified by Engels in a footnete to the 1859 English edition ta the effect that “all history “ should really be "all written histary", )

Further, when reflecting on Engels’ famous speech at Marx's graveside on

the nature of society, Workers’ Power states that: "Th shert, purposeful preductive labour is the key ta our understanding", This remark is

meaningless, It starts fram a pure abstraction: "purposeful productive ‘lebeup", The leabeur process is ceanmfon ta all societies, What is important is mot the process itself but the social farms that it takes in any given period: the social relations of production and the necessity far those relations to be averthrewn when they came inte insoluble contradiction with the development af the productive forces, ,

What are the practical implications of positions such as these?

If the LRCI/WP regards the class struggle as the mator of Kistary, it becawes easier tc understand where its ecanomism comes from, and how this cami be menifested as strong tendancies towards syndicalism, “workerism" and trade union rank and filism, In practical terms, therefore, the end result is the sectarianism on the national question, A particular specific aspect of this is the position on British trade unions in Ireland i,e, that it is epposed ta demands that these unions, which which are part af the sectarian apparatus, withdraw fram Ireland, Here is trade union rank and filism at its worst, A second example is the chronic eceancmism exhibited cn - the question of special oppression, to which we will return in more detail later,

ras

ON "THE OBJECTIVE BASIS FOR SOCTALIST REVOLUTION"

Muck of the chapter so called is a resume of the principle features and tendancies of the past-war era, the world market, combined and uneven development, the increasing inequalities, the results of imperialist exploitation in the semi-colonies, the inter-imperialist competition etc, It asserts that the objective conditions far socialist reyvolutian on an international scale exist, -as they did when the Transitional Progranme was written, that the social relations of production are a fetter on the further development on the productive forces and that it is the problem of leadership of the working class that is preventing it from fulfilling its historic mission, In particular it stresses the role played by secial— detacracy and Stalinism in actually rescuing imperialism from apparently terminal crisis, In the main, sa far as it is a commentary on the main features af the past-war world, there would appear ta be little ta disagres with, . .

However, in’ the midst of this is a reference to South Africa having “caught up" with the imperialist countries, This an example of a kind of formalism, the point of departure in any kind of analysis being "what category can we put it in?" rather than approaching samething as a many~-sided phencmencn, Sauth Africa exhibits characteristics of imperialism in its local ecenamic and military role in Southern Africa, and the presence of a relatively 5 large and independent industrial beurgecisie, It is an exparter af capital and has a financial oligarchy, However, the low level of productivity of

its working class, its dependence on the export of primary products te the imperialist countries and the migrant labour system etc, puts the nature af South Africa firmly inte perspective, While South Africa cannot simply be regarded as a Semi-calemy, neither can it be seriously regarded as imperialist, It does, however, have characteristics of teath,

The same problem manifests itself later on on p65 where Portugal is ‘described as “imperialist", Portugal had colonies, but ta describe it as imperialist only on this basis is extremely dubious, Througheut the imperialist era, Portugal has been economically weak, with a small industrial base, an even smaller finance capital base, and agriculturally hackward, particularly in the nerth, As far its colonies, while it might have cwned the cow, others certainly drank the milk, These colonies were virtually pum ard exploited by British impertalism which preferred the pliant Portugese to the French or Germans in Africa, with the Fortugese plantation-owning colonial Geurgecisie taking their cut, The relatively weak Portugese bourgeoisie did not have the resources ta develog their colonies even in the one-sided, distarted way that the British and French developed theirs, Neither did Portugal gain the same benefits fram its colonies as the other colonial powers in terms of accumulation, super prafits, the creation of a strong, stable, privileged labeur aristocracy, Portugal itself had almost a semi-calemial relationship to British imperialism, depending aon British warkets for its almost entirely agricultural experts, In ‘Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism' Lenin considers this very question in the context of an analysis af "finance capital and its corresponding foreign policy Cwhich) gives rise ta a nunber of transitional farms of state dependence, the diverse forms af af dependent countries which, officially, are politically independent, but in fact are enmeshed in a net of financial and diglematic dependence, " "Portugal" he continues "is an independent sovereign state, but actually,

for mare than two hundred years, it has been a British protectorate, . Great Britain has protected Portugal and her colonies ta fortify her own position in the fight against her rivals, France and Spain, In return, Great Britain has received commercial privilages, preferential conditions for importing goods and especially capital inte Portugal and the Portugese colonies, the right to use the ports and islands ef Foartugal, her telegraphs, cables étc," C'Imperialism' Peking edition poloi-1o2) Jo describe Portugal as imperialist on the basis of its colonies, which in many ways vere simply a left-over from Portugal's maritime power in the sixteenth century, is simply inadequate, Describing it as a country of intermediate capitalist development may take a little longer, but at least it recagnises the contradictions which exist, If Fartugal is still suppesed ta be imperialist after the lass of its colonies, is there are serious comparison with the imperialist states, even the weaker ones of West Europe? If, having last its colonies it is no longer imperialist, this does not say much for the LRCI's analysis af imperialism! If the LRCI still describe Fortugal as imperialist then how do they regard Greece, or Ireland, which are — comparable accarding. te many af the jndices used ta measure economic develooment?

ANTI-INTERNATIONALTSM OM THE QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP

Cn peo of the TM we will find the following:

"(The working class) has not yet found or been able to preserve the leadership capable of completing the task af world revolution, Only triefly, between 13517 and 1923, did the international working class posses ‘such a leadership in the form of the world centre of the Comintern, The hureaucpatic leadershig of the USSR and the triumph of Stalinism robbed the proletariat of this leadership, Based on the the lessons learned from these failures, and’ from its achievements, the proletariat must return ta the offensive if it is te be spared further crisis and a peortentially final world holecaust, Gn its success rests the future of humanity",

ment of the reducibility of the crisis

All in all,.a fairly conclusive ste uF adership in the working « class,

te ef the human race ta the crisis of le However, on TM o19, the first page of the Chapter entitled: “The Crisis af Froletarian Leadership" appears the Following:

“However, today it would te wrong’ te repeat that all contemporary crises are reduced te the crisis of leadership, The proletariat worldwide does nat yet face the stark alternative af taking power ar Seeing the destruction a7 all its past gains, Nevertheless in many countries and indeed whole comtinents, the crisis dees reach such a level of acuteness,

This is a puzzling and alarming statement, not just because it appears to be in flat contradiction te the statement on po quoted above, but because it appears to be denying the international character of the crisis of capitalism in its final and most acute stage: imperialism, Presumably, and this has to be a presumption, the LACI are saying that the inmediate implications of the crisis of leadershio are not as drastic as they were in 1935, Surely they would nat deny that the crisis reaches "such a level of acuteness” in, for example, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, the USSR,

China, Poland and Peru anymore than they would argue that it has reached that level in Britain or Belgium, Burt that dees not mean that the crisis of leadership.is net an international question, to be appreached from an international perspective by revalutionaries, hence the central importance af the regeneration of the Fourth International, Therefore the crisis of capitalisn, as well as that of working class leadership cannot be seen in any other than an international context because of the existence of a global ecanamic system, the export of capital and inter-imperialist conflicts,

The crisis af leadership in the 19305 alsa manifested itself in an uneven fashion, with obvious differences between Germany and Spain on the one hand, and the USA on the other, This is not to get into an argument about which, in & general sense, is the more acute crisis of leadership, JOS8 ar 1590, only to say that in attempting ta distance itself from what it regard as the "action programe” of the Transitional Fragranme, the LRCI appears toa be denying the centrality af the crisis af leadership for the international working class as a whole, despite an earlier statement te the contrary, ;

What are the practical consequences which flow from this? | '

Firstly, there are obvious implications for the struggle for international regreupment, and for the struggle for consistent Trotskyism as a struggle fought aon an international plane, despite the obvious disparities tetyean any given nation states (for example Austria and Peru, te name two LRCI sections), ft is of Course obvious that an international tencdancy'’s

develogment is given tremendous impetus if it has sections in countries where the class struggle is at its mast ferocious, and it should orient itself ta that effect, just as it should seek to aveid being confined tea the advanced capitalist countries if it is to remain peolitically healthy, tut this dees net deny the international nature of the crisis of leadership and the struggle far consistent Tretskyism, quite the contrary,

Where the crisis af leadership is “less acute" dees this fundamentally effect the tasks of revolutionaries? In Britain, for example, is there te be no inmediate perspective of struggle on the question of leadership, and is the task of revolutionaries simoly that of making revolutionary progadanda, and building propaganda groups?

Sugparters of the LRCI wha da have a perspective of international regroupment should consider very carefully the implications far their arganisation of the confused anti-internationalism of this whole chapter, Anyone can build a sect, Do they want to build a genuinely internationalist world party of secialist revolution?

“THE WORKERS' GOVERMENT; SOME PROBLEMS

This part of the TM sets cut a series af demands, some af which are lifted from the Transitional Programme and put in the context ef the 1390s and seme of which take up questions which were neglected or just skimmed over by the 1938 programme, ar which are the product of post-1946 events, Same of this work is quite valuable and in purely formal terms, there would nat appear ta much of a quarrel with it, The problem, as ever, lies in the method,

Pages 28 and 29 take up the relationship in the transitional method between agitation and propaganda, talking about the transitional programme and its method as a “sehool" for educating workers, The relationship between agitation and propaganda is not discussed in as full a way as it should be, cp as we understand it in the ITC, The LRCI lacks a real organic understanding of this relationship and this is shewn by the section in this chapter on the Workers! Government question,

Page Sh of the TM states that: 4

"The only consistently revolutionary workers’ government is that which exercises the dictatarship of the proletariat" then:

"However, in the transitional period crises arise that that geoee the question af poawee ta the proletariat, before it has been won, in its tajerity to the revolutionary party, In these situations the working class has locked ta its existing leadership to enact a programme in its interests while in government, "

Surely a correct forwulation should be: “won in its majority ta SUPPORT the revolutionary party"?

The TM then censiders the slogan of the workers’ gavernwent as it was utilised by the Galsheviks in relation ta the Provisional Government in 1317, that is as a demand that the workers! leaders break with the bsurgesis parties in the government, expraopriate capitalist holdings, arm the workers’ arganisations etc, It alsa deals with the conceptions of the workers’ .gavernmnent held by the revolutionary Comintern, and the centrist distortions of the question e,g, by the USFI on Nicaragua, The emphasises that a workers’ government is only a real workers’. government when in.real struggle against the bourgeoisie, and, significantly, that the demand should te used td:

“glace demands on workers’ leaders, ta expose to the rank and file their leaders refusal ta break with the bourgecisie (p87)," and that the slogan Mor i "algabraic,,, the actual composition of such a gevernment cannot be fixed in advance, "

The problem with how the TH treats the workers! gevernment question is that it is envisaged as a mobilising demand entirely and only as a way af exposing misleaders and splitting the rank and file from them in en immediately pre-revolutionary situation, This is a comtradiction and « negation of the idea of the dual character af the Transitional Programme: its combined agitational and propaganda aspects, It represents a sliding back inte a method of seeing the demands as either immediately agitational, op irrelevant,

There is a need to always be orientating to the most advanced elements, however small they might te in number, and however much of a mood of retreat and caution might prevail in the working class as a whole, with the propaganda and educative aspect te cur programme, such as the workers! government question, This dees not mean that the workers! government is raised in every agitational intervention, That would be absurd, However, it ig necessary to raise the question with advanced workers whe are breaking from their traditional leaderships because without it, the methed and the content of the other demands could not really be fully understood,

An example has been the Poll Tax, This is vital to the strategy of the ~ Government and represents a definite stepping up of the attack on jobs, living standards and democrratic rights, It is an all-embracing attack on the working class invelving a strengthening of the state forces: the police, the DSS, the courts, and the local state, In other words, for both sides, there is a lot riding on-the odtcame of the campaign against the poll tax, ;

Let us assume that a fight against the poll tax based on non-payment and

egret ate A eae ta tee eee ee ene ere ae tga rere

Ane we eee

nen~inclementationand involving industrial action had begun to make seme headway and the Gavernment had begun to lose the initiative, This would call inte question the Government's right and ability to rule and would pase a new and possibly decisive stage in the struggle, #*struggle which wedild te! gathering meientum’ &ll the tite, In this event, what would Workers! Fower have posed as their crowning demand? A one-day strike ajainst the Poll Tax, something which many sincere reformist workers have grown cut of,sa to speak, This is a crucially self-limiting demand, chopping the head off their programme, Of course, Yorkers! Power, supporters will say; “the ene day strike demand is not the be all and end " mF our programe, it would just be a start", The start of what though?

thoughtful and serious worker whe has followed all the arguments and understood the questions raised in the course of the struggle deserves something better, Presumably, Workers! Power would say that their demands would change as the struggle developed, and that in time, they would pose the workers!’ government question, but that is still not good enough, There is a need for the advanced aspects of the programme to be addressed te advanced workers now, Anything less is one-sided: it downplays the subjective factor, the need ta engage the most advanced workers, albeit a small, very small, number of workers, in a theoretical struggle at the highest level, The fact that the mood in the working class might be a merece af conservatism, retreat and caution means that such a struggle is all the fere necessary, Otherwise, revolutionaries are guilty of starting from ‘the existing consciousness of the warking class, not what is necessary,

It is useful in this ceomtext to refer to a part of the preconference discussion of the Fourth International in 1338 entitled ‘On the Political Backwardness af US Workers' in whit Tretsky contributes the following:

What can a revolutionary party da in this situation, It can give a clear honest picture of the objective situation, of the historic tasks which fallow from this situation, irrespective of whether today's workers are Vifie for this, Our tasks don't dépénd on the mentality of the workers, cur task is to develop the mentality of the workers, That is what the programe should formulate and present before advanced workers,,,when we appear with cur programme before the working class, we cannot give any guarantees that they will accept cur pragramme, We cannot take responsibility far this, Ge can only take the responsibility for ourselves, We must tell the workers

the truth, then we will win the test elements, Whether these best elements ~ ‘will be capble ef guiding the working class ta power I dem't knew, T hope that they will be able to, I canmet give a guarantee, Naturally, if f close wy eyes I can write a good rosy programme that everyone will accept, But it will net respond to the situation, and the programme must respond ta the situation, I believe this elementary argument to be of the utmast inportance, The class consciousness of the proletariat is backward, but consciousness is not such a substance as the factory, mine or railroad, It is more mobile, and under the blows of the objective crisis,, it can change rapidly," ¢'The Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution’ Pathfinder Press pt57) ,

— PROBLEMS WITH THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST UNITED FRONT:

eee Lpewe mene cape ye mmeeregenematne eee Se Eo } pre paeenencen : ;

This ig ene respect in which the 1938 programe is deficient, bath in its treatment of semi-coelonial and colenial struggles as they stood at the time, but alsa, of course, because there is nething on the post war developments, Any serious attempts to develop the transitional programme taking these develpoments inte account is to be welcomed, This section ot the TM begins with a fairly pedestrian look at the historical aspects, e.g, the Chinese ENT, and then at the post-war struggles, often led by the national-bourgecisie, thrust, despite itself inte a position of physical canfrentation with imperialism, Some of the TM's demands in this section are fine, taking up the land question and then questions of cash-crope, and demanding the right for peasants to grow narcotics on a free and legal basis,’ taking up the question of ecalogical catastrophe and calling for the voluntary collectivisation of the land, There is alsa semething on the repudiation of the dett, self-determination for national minorities, and the demand for a constituent assembly with which, on the. face of it, it wottled be difficult to have much disagreement,

{It is om the question of the Anti-imperialist United Front that ‘the problems really start, Page &3 of the TM states that; (this is a lang quotation, but it is important not to appear ta be taking things cut of cantext) . oo .

"Se long as the bourgeoisie or bourgecise forces have a real mass influence in the anti-imperialist struggle it is necessary for the workers! party to use the tactic of the anti-imperialist united frent, This involves striking tactical agreements with non-proletarian forces at both leadership and rank and file level, Such agreements might invalve formal alliances or committees, Where this is the case, the fundamental pre-canditions for such blecs are: that the bourgecisie ar pre-bourgecis forces are waging a struggle against imperialism or its agents, that no limitations are placed aon the political independence of the revolutionary organisation within this bloc and that there are neo bureaucratic exclusions of significant forces struggling against imperialism, It is even possible that this united front may fave to be carried cut within the base organs of a mass organisation with a popular-frontist character within which distinct class parties tay net have emerged, What is vital is that this unity should be aimed at mobilising the broadest anti-imperialist forces for common objectives such as the introduction of democratic rights and the expulsion of the Luperialists, "

The problem with this is the specific inclusion of the bourgecisie in an anti-imperialist united front, altheugh this invalvement is conditional, as per the later remark that:

"There is nothing consistently anti-imperialist or revolutionary about the semi-colenial tourgecisie and no permanent place should be found for it in the anti-imperialist united front’ (pes)

This appears to be in odd contradiction to Workers’ Powers record of sectarianism ta national liberation movements, but it does make sense in the context of Warkers' Power and the LRCI's understanding, or pather— wisunderstanding of theunited front as a Limited and shomtoterm project, A

—wiltary BIS With the metionar bourgeoisie is perfectly possible in the event of an attack by imperialism, For example, revolutionaries in Iraq would have had a de facto military united front with Saddam Hussein for the duration af the Gult War, Anether case in point is a military coup by that

Saget teem

section of the national bourgeisie and military most closely tied ta imperialism te,g, Bolivia in 19712, This is of course the praduct of an immediate and exceptional set of circumstances, it is short term, and it is net the same thing as an arnti-ingerialist united front,

The Anti-Inperialist United Front is a tactical question, but the method it entiodies is & strategic one far Tretskyists in semi-colenial countries, Its task is tae unify, on a long-term pasts all oppressed, non-proletarian ‘forces behind the working class, The Anti-Imperialist United Front can alsa be the vehicle for putting forward a pregame of political demands for the comquest of power by the workinng cla

Although the situation will often be 5 sufficiently fluid for both these tasks to be correctly posed, they are “honetheless distinct, and the LRCI's problem is that it confuses the two, ar runs them together, The results of this method in practical terms could be absolutely disasterous, and worthy ef the USFI's worst mistakes; It is therefore a matter af extreme geod fortune that the LRCI has net been in a position ta put this pesition inte practice in apposition of leadership, although a practical demonstration of this method was Workers! Power's Tranian defencist pastion at the start of the Iran-Iraq war,

STALINISM: BEHIND APPARENT ORTHODOXY, CONF US TON,

The question of Stalinism is broken up inte twa sections, The first is om the degeneration of the Comintern in the section on the Crisis of Leadershic, The second is in the chapter called ‘For Freletarian Political Revolution’, The first section makes a big point that Trotsky continued to regard the Comintern as still bureaucratic centrist fram after it led the German working class to defeat in 1933 until it adopted the popular front strategic alliance with the tbeurgesisie in 1994/25, Despite this, Trotsky:

"declared that the Comintern, having failed te recagnise and correct its Wistakes was, while still Guresucratic centrist, irreformable and. ‘dead for the purpose of revolution’, He therefore demanded the building of a new party in Germany and hen «a new international world-wide, although the Stalinists had not definitively passed over to the camp of the counterrevolution, This appears toa be the analogy used by the LRCI ta justify the call far "a new Leninist-Trotskyist international", even theugh the USFI Cand others) have not passed aver ta counter-revalution, and ta justify the characterisation af. "inveterate" or "“fassilised". centrism Csicd-af the USFI and others as comparable to the bureaucratised, though still centrist Camintern af Toss,

This is just a mass af comfugion and non-sequiteurs, While the Comintern comprised parties with mass working class bases, its centrism was based on the ebb and flaw of the class struggle which was still powerfully influenced by the Russian revolution, The defeat of the German working class in 1935 and the refusal of the Comintern to discuss, let alone take responsibility for it was the decisive event which finished off’ “the Comintern and comsigned it definitively to counter-revelution, even if this

Sp RE TERRE emg

was net actualised until 1934-35, The Trotskyist-centrist groups such as

the USFI and others are net rushing headleng te adopt counter-revolutionary pasitions, In fact there are many instances of groups evolving in a leftwing direction for a greater or lesser period, thus opening up the possibility af a struggle, ta fight with sections and factions of these i. groups to reassert the Tretskyist programme, The Cagintern was maving te ‘ the side of the counter=revelution in TSR and ruthlessly cut off its own left wing, That is, it had driven out not just the Left Opposition but all left critics of its policies, The two situations are just not Comper a able,

In the chapter on the Praletarian Political Revolution (pplal-102), it is em the national question in the USSR that. the LRCI is wearing the asses ears! .

“Even where a seperatist movement threatens ta espouse counter-revolution we cermbinue to defend the right to state independence while maintaining the struggle for proletarian power”,

The problem with this is that it fails te stress the necessity for differentiating state independence from counter-revolution, be it threatened ar actual, It leaves the door open ta liquidation or capitulation to the forces of reaction when they dominate Ee working class, and it has a real aspect of Stalinophobia, Surely it would have been ‘absolutely obligatory for Trotskyists to oppose German reunification on imperialism's terms rather than capitulating te it, as Workers’ Power did with the argument that you had to relate ta the mass movement, The same apportunist argument is used to stress democratic demands above transitional demands, even going te the paint of preferring the demand for the right ta vote ta the demand for workers! councils and refusing, te counterpase workers! democracy ta bourgeois demacracy, as Workers’ Power did in reply to & question at a Workers! Power public meeting, This is presumably what is behind the wobbles on this question by Workers’ Power, For example, on the Soviet military crackdown in Baku in early 1950, the article appearing in the February issue of ‘Workers’ Power’ is confused, It . appears tic give critical support te the Seviet armed forces previding there were na atta en civilians, ar attacks on civil rights, such as the banning of cenone trations ar the imposition of a curfew, Why else were | Seviet soldiers sent into Baku? Presumably not to help direct the traffic! It was certainly not to protect the’ Armenians, who had fled the city, ar ta protect the USSR against imperialist invasion, of which there was not the remotest possiblity at that time, This position appeared to be based ona fairly unsophisticated identification of the defence of the Soviet Union with the existing state boundaries and the Soviet military and bureaucratic apparatus, How da we square this attitude with the attitude to Lithuania, where the gavernnent has far more af a conscious pestorationist praject than the Azeri Popular Frent, In 'Werkers' Power' in May 1990 there is the demand: [cist the British Government recognises Lithuania and supplies qocds / requested by Lithuania without conditians, " This can only be read as a criticism of the British Government's reluctance te fund a restorationist republican government in the USSR! Is this an ‘ adaptation to British public opinion, which lagks more kindly on white European Lithuanians than on Asiatic Muslim Azeris? No members af the LRCI/WE have ever provided a convincing explanation for this Liberesl nuddle-headedness, .

t *. ae : . -s Leet ame etree Tages GME RS are

\ S prea CJ) LS / THE 'TROTSKYIST MANIFESTO! AND SPECIAL OPPRESSION eigepenest

In the past, this is one area where some progress has been made fram the econcmism af the Cliffite tradition, but the making of that progress has served ta threy up further comtradictions, and to underline -the fact that that Workers! ‘Fower has mot Geen able ta make any fundamental break from ecancmnisn,

Fage 104 of the TM starts with the proposition that here are:

“other systematic, econcmic, social, legal and political inequalities which specifically affect women, youth, different racial and national groupes, lesbians and gay men, ,

"These specific forms of social oppression are a fundamental feature of class society, Their functions are intimately and inseparably connected te the pracess af exploitation, but they create an oppression which is nat confined to the working class, Women of all classes face discrimination and disadvantage as a result of the particular role they have in the family and their class, But it is working women and likewise working class youth, flacks, lesbians and gay men wha face the mast intense sacial oppression, " This section then emphasises that the: “working class is the only class with the decisive interest and capacity in overthrowing the system which maintains all forms af social opmoression, Only under the leadership of the working class can oppressed sections of the exploited classes be drawn inte the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship which is a precondition far the ending of all oppression",

There is a comtradiction here, Firstly, the TM recognises that “serjal(sic) appression is net confined to the working class" and then it calls for the “oppressed sections of the exploited classes" ta be drawn inte the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, ° There -seens fo be = confusion as to what the-strategy should actually be, For example, in @ritain, where there is no peasantry, the LRCI's formulation would mean include only those specially oppressed from the working class,

This is omly the start of the confusion, The longer this section of the TH continues, “the wore incoherent and contradictory ‘it becomes, It cis: increasingly abvieous that the LRCI/WP has no real strategy as far as the struggles of the specially appressed are concerned, The ecomomism af the leadership is occasionally tempered by the demands of some af the rank and file, and the result is this dags dinner of a chapter, If mewbers of Workers! Fower regard this as cheap rameccalling, then we should examine the chapter further,

For example, on pl0S, there appears to be an attempt to interact the struggles within the labour movement against special oppression with thease among the specially copressed for an orientation ta the labour movement, although this is not very well developed,

"the revolutionary Vanguard has the task. of combatting prejudices within the labour movement and putting the mass organisations of the working class in the forefront of the struggle against social oppression, "the most class conscious elements of the oppressed will be the vanguard far its cun liberation,,, participation within the overall class struggle can ensure that their interests are actively taken up by the working class",

Un the same page there is a Statement arguing for the right of the oppressed "tho organise and caucus (within the working class movement) in

ander for their demands ta be taken up by the whole of the class, "

age 1O7 argues first for “united frants against oporession", se that these navenents of the specially oppressed are not laft te the Stalinists and petit bourgecds elements, Then there are conditions put on the social composition of the movement of the smectally appressed by advecating a ' “arcletarian movement of the appressed", and then:

"Hur aim is to tuild comaunist movements of the oppressed" and then Gack to the cbsessiaon with sacial composition

“a proletarian movement for lesbian and gay liberation", (ples

What is it that the LRCIT actually wants to build? The TM states quite clearly that it regards special oppression as being cross-class, so why is ‘there an economist obsession with social origin, expressed as "proletarian" mavenents af the oppressed? Is there no strategy for the specially oporessed a5 a whole, other than a liberal recognition that it exists?

The results of this ecomemist confusion can be seen all too clearly in everyday practice, For example, there is Workers' Powers! scandalous behaviour at the 1589 All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation when its wemebers, inclucting a member of the leadershio refused ta vate for the "Friday" (Black Lesbian and Gay) Grous's resolution aon the role af the specially oppressed in anti-Poll Tax campaigns, This resclution said quite clearly that racist or hemephebic Gehayiour ar the abuse of women should be incampatible with menhershio, It was the only apposition ta the primitive workerism of Militent, and was accercdingly opposed by its leadership, Many Militant members were unhappy at not voting for it, and it was supported by Anarcha-Syndicalists, ‘Socialist Outlook’ and a mumber of indepemcents in what was a clear left-right split in the conference,

A mare pecent example, tea show how nothing has been learned, 16 the February Toth PSO) March against Clause 25, in which Workers! Power, was a part of the HOME contingent, Workers! Power menters refused to fight for the contingent to praise the question af the Gulf War in its slogans, and instead adopted the liberal and classless “equal rights", They then criticised a R#F member for referring te the war, and calling far Yictoary ta Iraq in his platform speech, AL] this is from the group which accuses ‘the RAE of “popular frantism on the leskian and gay question! Presumably, the Clause 25 demonstration was ret yet ready for "real" politics, just Liberalism,

As with everything else, Warkers’ Power has displayed its brand af sectarianism and opportunism on lesthian and gay struagles, When the

enper tunity for rapid recruitment had passed, me more work was done, ar is being dene, The fact that three lesbian and gay members of Workers! Power { have now joined the RAF, and virtually all the others have left tells its cod Aft cw stary o 1 conservative, meralistic hemenhobia which prevails in the {¢ organisation ;

FOR THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL? OR THE FIFTH?

The ‘Trotskyist Manifeste'! then turns its attention to the question af the International and the the collapse of the Fourth International inte centrism in 1248-51, On the struggle ta regenerate Treatsky's Fourth International, and the struggle fof consistent Tretskyism within those ceavtrist organisations claiming tao be Trotskyist, those emerging from the

crisis af the FI share:

"The same incapacity to use the methed of Lenin and Trotsky and guide the working class ta victory” The SANE incapacity? This is simply nat true, Surely supperters of Workers! Power must know this, What about the WSL in

Britain, the USFI group in Angola, for example?

Cver the past thirty or forty years there have been numercus attempts te reassert the progranme of Trotskyism, These attempts have been variable,

‘with some being more successful than others, and on a wore advanced

political basis, Ultimately, they have all been hampered by a one-sidedness and an inconsistency bern out of being based on one national section, or a faction within a section of the centrist international groupings, ar their struggle has only been partial, and therefor never carried through, Why we fight for a demecratic~centralist international tendancy, struggling for consistent Trotskyism is because we recognise that weakness, Ta say that these groups all share the “same incapacity ta use the method of Lenin ane Tretsky can only be to justify the sectarian project of the LACT,

Needless to say, this initial proposition justifies:

"The LRCI is the instrument for the creation of a new Leninist-Trateakyist: international, a. "cur abject is therefore the construction of a new world party of sacialiSt revolution, a refounded Leninist-Trotskyist international, "

This last section captures very well much of what is wrong with the method ef Workers’ Power/LRCI, On the question of the international, as on sa many others, there is a passive, comservative, sectarian disinclination ta struggle for anything other than the augmentation by ones and twos af their sect, Take the assumption that the struggle for consistent Trotskyism taok a long holiday while Workers’ Power were still embedded in the [5, or while they had a five-year “holding position" of state capitalism, Take the attitude towards the callacse of the WRF, To those fighting for regroupment, for a real international development, the LRCI simply says, "join ug", hence its sectarian smash and grab raids which often net the mast sectarian er deworalised elements with the least inclination to carry cout any kind of long term struggle, who are not encouraged toa struggle and whe simoly want to "Join semething", This is how Workers! Power has attempted ta recruit, and this is hew the LRCI is busily acquiring its sections,

The LRCI has absolutely no strategy at all for the struggle against the epportunists whe have dominated the international currents which claim ta enbrace Trotskyism, In fact, it lets the oppertunist USFI leadership off the hook by leaving it unchallenged in its own baileywick, The LRCI is therefore quite happy to draw a line in the sand between itself and the USFI aver which it will net cross, There is only the occasional lecture on ‘centrism which Workers! Power understands in the most wooden fashion, The fact that the centrists in the USFI, for example, are capable at times af defending aspects of the Trotskyist programme, albeit inconsistently or inadequately, that rank and file militants might want to struggle against their oppeartunist misleaders and reassert Tretskyism, the fact that the "Trotskyist" USF acts as a pole of attraction for the most advanced

Dard

workers seeking te break from Stalinism, reformism or nationalism is

presumatly not important,

The problem far the LRCI is that it is the victim of its own opportunist confusion, It does not actually call for a Fifth International, which would at least have logic ‘on its side, Instead, it remains agnostic (Fourth? Fifth? New?) and therefore totally abstract on what fer revolutionaries must be a vitally concrete question, that of internationalism and international regraupment- bhew this has te be fought for, and an what grogramiatic basist

CONCLUS TON

In-the contest of generalised thearetical confusion on the far left, Werkers' Power has at times been able to pose as a consistent, pragranmnatically solid defender of Tratskyist orthodesxy, It is becoming harder and harder to carry this aff: om special oppression, om Stalinism, en the poll tax, the chickens are coming home te roost,

{It is on the united front, on real practical struggles that the rot has started te set in, It was forced inte the cul de sac of its own appartunist and sectarian approach ta the united front, On lesbian and gay work, the oppar tunities for fast recruitment fad passed, sa the Trade Unionists Against Section 28 was wound down, Irish solidarity work was alsa visibly wound caw at the start af 15950 (with a few exceptians),and, to a large extent, so ag anti-Poll Tax work, Workers’ Power was left with its own public events,

The start of the Gulf crisis praveked a flurry of united front activity, and in a certain capacity, i.e, in apposition to the oppertunism of Sectalist Organiser and Seacialist Outlock on CAWIG we were able ta da some useful joint work and achieve a measure of agreement om slogans and practical tasks, Nevertheless, Yorkers' Fower was capable of being alarmingly disarientated, For exancle, at the start of the crisis it was calling fer Self-Determination for Kuwait Cebjectively pro-imperialist) and Hande aff Iraq (liberal, and empty of class content), When the war actually started, the initial, correct, Victory to lraq was rapidly toned dewn in favour of Defend Iraq, not necessarily the same thing, aor even, as in one case, the pre-imperialist Cease Fire and Stop the War, Whe knows where Workers! Power would shave ended up if the war had not have ended when it did! .

This political disorientation is accompanied by an increasingly sectarian degeneration, The public slander and intimidation of former members wha have left as a result of political disagreements and joined another arganisation is the mark of a cult, not a serious political organisation, This is combined with a lurch back towards Cliffite ecanomism, and a straight-laced moralism prepostercusly dressed up as “proletarian marality",

Supporters of Warkers' Power whe want to build a revolutionary leadershin, net a sect, should consider very carefully where the organisation is gcing, A combination of passive sectarianism and crags ceconamism, the disease of: the British revolutionary Tert, is taking Workers! Power away from _ comsistent Tretskyism, If they want to work towards a real international Pevelutionary regraupment, rather than build another sect, -if they want to fight econamism, if they want ta fight for the liberation of the specially oppressed, is there any future far them in an upcmarket version af the SWP?

ad

LSU tet One See ee are pga ete nett ten beemmitent oy REPLI TEE Meee nt pam hp aan

Page 25

REPLY TOND ~

Introduction

Following the recent split in the International Trotskyist Committee (ITC), its British group, the Revolutionary International League (RIL), has suffered a series of defections. Most of these ex-members are gravitating towards the British USFI section. They are seeking to join the USFI as members of the the International Trotskyist Opposition (ITO).

While he was a member of the RIL ND wrote a critique of the LRCI’s founding document, The Trotskyist Manifesto (TM). This critique was never published but it is currently being circulated amongst an audience of USFI supporters and ex-RIL members, although the document has never been submitted to the LRCI. It is a strange method of polemic if those being criticised are not allowed to see thé criticism let alone reply to it! It hardly suggests that our critics are full of conf. dence about their arguments. Having read ND’s document we understand why.

The critique is not made from the standpoint of revolu- ‘tionary Marxism but from the point of view of the RIL’s centrist method. The majority of the political positions argued, reflect in one way or another the politics of the old ITC and in particular of its Grisolia wing now in the ITO.

We are therefore teiking the opportunity of the circulation of this document to submit a reply to it. We offered ND, who from recent public documents seems to have moved a long way from the RIL’s tactical sectarianism, the opportunity to revise his critique before publication. We received no reply. Still, no matter how far ND may have moved from his former opinions they are still being circulated as “an ITO document” to individuals within the USFI, We hope that this can clarify our positions on the international left taking forward a discussion process between the LRCI and the supporters of the International Trotskyist Opposition (ITO) in the USFTI.

Programme and method

According to ND the TM is the key to understanding all our errors: .

“At the heart of the. TM is all that is negative about the LRCY/WP: scholasticism, primitive economism, and most importantly, an apparently irredeemable sectarianism on the fundamental question of international regroupment, manifesting itself az confused agnosticism on what are the

tasks in the presen’; period, and on what should be their

programmatic basis.”

Let us see if any of these charges have a basis in fact.

The critique starts by attacking the TM for lack of political clarity:

“This is not a new programme but a fudge that sacrifices clarity. It is in fact a very slippery document, diplomatically written, which has something for everybody.”

This is strange given that we are attacked later in the document precisely for producing . . . a new programme! This accusation of producing a “fudge” has more to do with amyth, promoted within the RIL at the time, that the LRCI was in crisis, riven with differences etc. We are told by ND that the programme took so long to produce because it had to “meet so many pressures from different political positions internally and from other LRCI sections.”

The LRCI, whatever our opponents say, is not a monolithic organisation. What new international tendency could be? Developing our programme was a vital and important stage in welding together, politically, a truly democratic centralist international tendency. Unlike the organisation that ND came from, the line of our organisation is not decided by transatlantic telephone conversations from a guru in Ann Arbor. It is decided in thoroughly democratic Congresses of our tendency after full discussion in all ofour sections. Democratic debate that enabled us to resolve differences and cement solid programmatic agreement took time. Butit was time well spent. It meant thatit was not the LRCI that went into crisis and flew apart but the ITC.

‘ND gives no evidence for his charges of diplomatic formulations, Where he suggests the TM is confused the confusion turns out to be his, not ours. ;

We are taken.to task for apparently claiming, on the one hand, that the TM is a re-elaborated programme while, according to ND, some of our members say “more modestly and seriously” it is merely a statement of where the LRCI has got so far.

ND’s document is riddled with accounts of what our

. members are supposed to have said, what RIL members say they have said etc. This is a method of polemic the RIL learnt from the Spartacists and it isregurgitated by ND. No one should take such “polemics” seriously.

‘In this case however ND has got it nearly right. The TM

is both are-elaboyated programme and “a summation of the theoretical progress made by WP/LRCI’, just asthe lransi-

tional Programme itself was for the Fourth International. The TM is a programme for world socialist revolution, but one based on the admittedly limited experience, both historically and in terms of our implantation in the class

HI

Page 26

A A AAA _Alruggle on a world scale, of the LRCI to date. There is no“._and tactics posed for revolutionaries? When the system of

contradiction. Because we urideratand the programme as 2 living thing, we recognise that new experience will oblige us to both add and subjzact things from the TM.

e events surrounding the collapse of Stalinism are a case in point. The concrete experience of applying our programme in interventions in the USSR, East Germany etc taught us that the bald formulation “We oppose the

creation of bourgeois parliamentary institutions in work- |

erg’ states” (TM p97) was not an adequate guide to action.

lonial rule was replaced by one of semi-colonial rule, did not.this necessitate re-focusing and re-elaborating the progranime for the semi-colonial revolution?

ND shuts his eyes to all this. Instead he rhetorically asks:

“Is a new programme necessary? Has, for example, Stalinism become a new mode of production? Have the “Trotskyists’ crossed class lines as did the degenerate Comintern? The answer is of course no, subject to well known exceptions in the latter-case.”

Our leaflets and focused action programmes in Germany {° i Here you have dogmatism par excellence. And it has a and the CIS had to develop concrete answers to the emer- (purpose. If you turn the programme into a series of princi-

gence of bourgeois democretic illusions and institutions beyond what was anticipated in the TM. Comparing our most developed action progremme for the collapsing Stalin-

ist states (Action Programme for the CIS Rabochaya Viast -xéntrist to adhere to generally agreed “Marxist principles” ;

No3/Trotskyist Bulletin 2) with the TM’s section on Stalinism will show any reader how much more concretely actual

ples, disconnected from strategy and tactics, you destroy it ag a guide to action, as an “action programme”. This is precisely the method of centrist Trotskyism. It allows the

while having a licen rtunism in the held o

stra d tactics, It allows national sections to adopt

intervention into the class struggle forced us to relate the completely different strategies and tactics while adhering

defence of the working class gains to the task of overthrowing the bureaucracy. No doubt further and deeper interventions will force us to improve and refine out present action programme.

However, that does not stop us saying now: “here is what we stand for, here is our anaiysis, here is what we fight for, here is what we believe is necessary to take the class struggle forward to a revolutionary conclusion, here is the TM”.

Trotsky said the same thing about the Transitional Pro- is the method of Wensijenaldemands. But this on

gramme (TP). He recognised it was “incomplete”, he re-

té a common “programme”. It destroys a democratic centralist intemational. The USF is the supreme sample, / of wrong, slippery and diplomatic approach to programme.

Trotsky, in contrast, developed the Transitional Programme in opposition to the minimum/maximum programme of social democracy and the pseudo-revolutionary programme of the Comintern. The epochal character of his achievement, which we recognise and remain fully loyal to,

firms the nature of the 1938 programme as a revolutionary

ferred to it as the summation of “our collective work to action programme, what Trotsky called a”’manual of action” date”, he also said it was the programme of the Fourth and “a programme of action”.

International (FD), to be advanced in the class struggle as the way forward. There was no contradiction for Trotsky, nor is there for us.

The FI itself called the Transitional Programme “its yopramme of action for the immediate period in which we —

ive. as, for ‘Trotsky, a “programme of revolutionary

cw There is only a contradiction if you are gripped by a action” as against the degenerate Comintern’s “bare collecdogmatic understanding of the Marxist programme. ND _ tion of abstract propositions”.

makes a few nods in the dire:tion of the need to develop the programme. He says for instance:

“The Programme's updating and development are inseparable from the fight for its method, for consistent Trotskyism.”

Fighting Centrism There is a further reason for the RILATC approach to

Absolutely true. But then he draws back in horror when programme. It is designed to justify the belief that sup-

the LRCI does it! Outraged at the LRCI producing stich a posed loyalty to

programme he declares:

“for all the talk about ‘re-vlaboration’ of the Transitional ~transforme

Programme, the TM is interided to replace it.”

This approach goes to the heart of ND’s centrist approach to programme, an approach which also lay at the heart of the ITC and its forerunner the Trotskyist International

the Transitional Programme of 1938 makes you_a special kind of centrist. The 1938 programinie is~ ‘om what it was - a programme for a specific Diptevelutionsry period” - into a talisman. If you wear this talisman then no matter what centrist erimes you commit, no matter how deeply you have enshrined a centrist method into your entire politics, you are

Liaison Committee (TILC). The TILC emblazoned on its protected from the ultimate betrayal. Thus the degenerate

banner “The Transitional Programme: Vali a

This dogmatism towards the TP has a opportunist purpose clearly revealed in the critique. ND attacks us for emphasising the “action pregramme” aspect of the TP. By

fragments of ‘Trotskyism, according to ND, “actually contirlue to defend aspects of the Trotskyist programme in practice, albeit inconsistently and inadequately”.

The opposite is the cage. The centrist FI has a record

this we mean that the FI’s programme was heavily focused _ second to none in trampling on the method of the Transi-

towarde a particular world conjuncture. While ND cannot

tional Programme “in ice”. In relation to Tito and

deny this entirely (he admits for example that “certainty Yugoslavia, Bolivia 1952, the LSSP in Sri Lanka, Algeria, aspects of it have thatcharacter”) he wants tode-emphasise Guerrillaism, Castro and Cuba, the Portuguese Revolution,

it. Thus he says:

Tran, the FSLN in Nicaragua, Poland and Solinarnose, the

“However thatis not fundamentally (our emphasis) what revolutionary crisis in the USSR (to name but the. most the Transitional Programme is. The Transitional Programme obvious examples), the post war FI and USFI showed

is a programme

addresses itself to the crisis of working class leadership, to

rogre the epoch ofimperialism,an thémselves again and again as centrist organisations that 7 _-” \epoch of wars and revolution. It is a programme that abandoned Trotsky’s revolutionary programm

ei €. In Britain we only need to point out the USFTs craven

Stalinism and social democracy and the need to build a and uncritical tailing of every so called “left” in the Labour

world party of socialist revolution.”

Party such as Tony Benn (and Ken Livingstone before they

ND wants to turn the TP “fundamentally” into a set of “fell out” with him), and their similar line towards the lefts

timeless principles that hold throughout the epoch of imperialiam. Some obvious questions reveal the falseness of this approach: Was the crisis of working class leadership the same after the war, when capitalism had stabilised and

in the trade unions such as Arthur Scargill, to realise that this is an organisation which has broken from Trotskyism, not one that defends it. ever . frofix hy

Of course all these policies were carriéd out while the

entered the “long boom” as it; was in 1938? When Stalinism leaders continued, formally at least, to “adhere”, and occa-

did not collapse under the onslaught of fascism but expanded into the whole of Eastern Europe were new tasks

sionally even espouse (verbally), their commitment to the “Transitional Programme”. Such “loyalty” to the revolu-

-2

x i

tionary programme is typical of centrists. It is a loyalty that has no bearing on practice, on the positions taken in the class struggle, on the programme as applied in life. ND’s position obliges him to cover this up, It blunts his purported

. struggle against centrism. It leads him into excusing céntrism by pointing to its formal fidelity to the Transitional Programme. And he calls us scholastic!

This softness on the centria ]eads directly to ND’. criticism of our approach towards it:

“On the question cf the International, as on so many others, there is a passive, conservative, sectarian disinclination to struggle for anything other than the augmentation by ones and twos of their sect... The LRCI has absolutely no strategy at all for the struggle against the opportunists who have dominated the international currents which claim to embrace Trotskyism. In fact, it lets the opportunist USFI leadership off the hook by leaving it unchallenged in its own baileywick.”

What ND really disagrees with us on, apart from our refusal to be diplomatic about the ceritrists, is that we do not have along term entry tactic exclusively directed to the USFI

The entire problem is that for ND this “tactic” is the

beginning and end of all party building. He cannot conceive es of the USFT.

of political life beyond the factional struggles o I “Batis Tetras that we ave" “passive, conservative, sectar-. jan” towards oppositions and crises within the centrist organisations? Absolutely not. The example he gives to back up this assertion, our intervention into the crisis of the WRP-FI(IC) in 1985/86, is a complete distortion of our approach to these events. We were one of the first groups to actively intervene. We took up the call for an international conference of those considering themselves Trotskyist, including the USF as well as the Morenoites, recognising the important international reverberations of the collapse of the FI-IC. We placed no barriers on any groups that claimed to be Trotskyist participating in such a conference. : We produced a contribution to the debates around the WRP implosion, “22 Theses in Defence of Trotskyism”, ta submit to such a conference with the aim of rallying those forces breaking fromm centrism towards revolutionary com: munism. We estimated that the 22 Theses could be 4

3 ; B ‘incipled basis for a “bloc of four” type regroupment mod:

. __glied on Trotsk

rotsky’s taczics towards centrist forces in 1983/34. It was the WRP- Workers Press leadership which prevented any such conference taking place. All the diplomacy and sophisticated tactics of the ITC did not prevent them being shut out of the organising committee. Nor did it prevent them trying to recruit “the ones and twos”. The essential difference is that we conducted our struggle in the open, with documents outlining our political positions, through systematic debates with the membership and leaders of the WRP. We fought for our positions, the ITC constantly manoeuvred in ordey to avoid such a fight.

ND claims that we are simply interested in “smash and grab raids” against the centrists, that oppositionists are not encouraged to struggle in their. organisations but to “join up” to the LRCI. As a result he says we recruit the most “sectarian or demoralised elements with the least inclination to carry out any sort of long term struggle . . . who simply want to join something’.”

We believe that the fight against centrism needs to be an with a preparedness torecogriise

where we part company from ND. He resolutely rejects

that. This means that we pose to those potentially revolutionary forces disgusted at the line of their opportunist leaders a plain truth - their leaders and organisations have proved resistant to regeneration for over forty years; to pursue a revolutionary course means an inevitable organisational break with them.

If ND succeeds in obtaining membership of the British USE section, for exemple, he will be formally committed to selling one of the most rancidly opportunist papers on the British left. It might be worth doing so if there were vast

Page 27

numbers of leftward moving workers and youth inside that organisation, looking for an political lead. Recent events suggest this is not the cage.

ND’s co-thinkers in the ITO carry through a practice which is based on a perspective of reforming the USFI. They formed a faction inside the Tonly after its recent World Congress secure in the knowledge that there will not be another one for a very long time..Then they reduced the faction back to a “tendency” (which formally does not challenge for leadership) in order to accomodate leftward moving elements from the French JCR Egalité and the British section. They have no perspective whatsoever of breaking from the USF.

When ND sneers at those who just want to “join something” he exposes everything that is rotten about ITC methods. in the USEFI. It does not occur to ND for one moment that these might be cadres who want to do something in the class struggle, who are disgusted at the politics and tactics of the USF'I sections which they have to carry out every day, whose papers peddle disastrous policies for the workers, be it in Britain or Algeria. These are cadres who want to be part of a revolutionary organisation that intervenes in the class struggle in a revolutionary not a centrist fashion. - ia wf -¢??

What is the alternative that ND offers? A long term struggle in the USFI. And around what politics? Around an “opposition” that far from leading a revolutionary fight against the USF] leaders vacillates and compromises, that perpetuates the lie that the USFI leaders “continue to defend aspects of the Trotskyist programme in practice”. This is precisely the method of the Grisolia opposition in Italy, a perspective which far from building a revolutionary opposition attempts to embroil healthy opponents of centris into a life of cohabitation with the centrist leaders.

Yes, the LRCI has an alternative strategy to combat centrism and the centrist leaders. We are building a revolutionary international tendency that intervenes in the international class struggle;.that develops its revolutionary positions based on this intervention around our programme, We think this is the best, indeed the only way to address healthy oppositions in the centrist organisations,

And unlike the ITC we have had some success! We intervened actively as an international tendency into the revolutionay crisis in the DDR in 1989. The USFI was virtually invisible, waiting around as usual for an “opposition” to emerge from Stalinism, coaxing it along by gentle criticism and advice. The LRCI in contrast entered the PDS, fought to build a revolutionary tendency, won comrades to our positions. The result: we built a new section, small but a start. The USFT’s “section” disintegrated and declined still further.

.In France we intervened in the crisis of the JCR-Egalite on aclear position: the French youth and proletariat need a new revolutionary organisation. We argued this not just in theory, but we showed in practice how a revolutionary organisation should intervene against the fascist threat, how we should build a workers’ united front. As a result we won youth to our banner, maybe only the much maligned “ones and twos” but again a start,

The RIL/ITC and ND, on the other hand, fought for a much grander, less sectarian, non-conservative perspective.

Alas this grand perspective has deprived ND of an organisation. The ITC has split and what is left of the RILis areal cult, having lost the only two members who by their own account identify with the “WSL/Workers Powey tradi-

tion” of orientation to the working class, Meanwhile ND -

and his co-thinker are left in the political half life of the Socialist Outlook waiting room.

Fourth or Fifth International?

The difference of method over relating to centrism is reflected in ND’s hostility to The Thoishyist Manifesto’s

Page 28

insistence on the need for a new, revolutionary international.

ND starts off this section with a deliberate distortion of our position. ND accuses us of saying (p132 of the TM) that all those emerging from the crisis of the FI have:

The same incapacity to use the methods of Lenin and Trotsky to guide the world working class to victory”

He then quotes the examples of the British WSL and the Angolan USFI section, apparently to disprove this.

Firstly, if ND had used the whole quote rather than. a selective part of it, readers would have known that we were. referring to the “several international centrist currents which claim its (the Fl’s) heritage”, currents which came out of the break up of the FI. That is we were referring tothe USFI, the Morenoite LIT, the Lambertist FICICR), etc. .

Do we deny the possibility of healthy breaks from cen-

trism emerging within these organisations? Oppositions:

which are moving leftwards towards revolutionary

Trotskyism? We don’t deny it. Any revolutionary current:

has to relate to these oppositions, which is precisely what the LRCI does. We have to collaborate with these oppositions, show that the disagreement with this or that position of the USFI, in this or that country, should be understecd in

terms of the the whole centrist method of the USFI and its '

leadership.

The problem with many of these oppositions is that they have never generalised from their experience, never drawn the correct conclusions about the nature of the collapse of the Fourth International inte centrism and about the tasks of Trotskyists today. This was certainly the case with the WSLTILC which WP certairily argued with, attempted to win to a revolutionary perspective through long, patient and fraternal discussions, but whose leaders finally collapsed into the USFI on an uncritical basis with a small fraction of their former orgarisation.

ND, in contrast, wants to laud every break from centrism, however partial, as proof that the USFI can repeatedly throw up revolutionary oppositions. Thisis because he, and his allies in the ITO, are part of the problem not the solution. They too have only made a partial break from the politics and method of the USFI, so how can they guide and develop such oppositions towards genuine Trotskyism?

ND attacks the Trotskyist Manifesto for being:

*...avictim of its own opportunist confusion. It does not actually call for a Fifth International, which at least would have logic on its side. Insteacl it remains agnostic (Fourth, Fifth, New?) and therefore totally abstract on what for revolutionaries must be a vitally concrete question, that of internationalism and international regroupment - how this is to be fought for and on what basis.”

Itis because itis “a concrete question” that the LRCI does not lay down in advance by what number or title the new world party of socialist revolution will be known. For us this is a question that will be resol ved in the international class struggle, in the struggle against centrism and reformism.

We do not discount the possibility that the new International will be built out of the bulk of the thousands of cadres that, at the moment, comprise the various centrist ‘Fourth Internationals”, Certainly it.would take mighty class struggles world wide and an intransigent struggle within these currents to achieve this. In which case such an International might well decide it was the refounded Fourth.

This is not the only possibility or even the most likely one. Anew International might come into to being, or have tobe declared, out of such mighty struggles, drawing in a mass of cadres with little or no links with the existing “FIs”, a situation which might leave the banner of the FI in the hands of the centrists, a besmirched and discredited banner before the vanguard. In such circumstances we would not shrink from the task of declaring a new banner against the old- the Fifth against a besmirched and centrist Fourth.

This question will be reso.ved in struggle, against the centrists and in the class struggle. Does this mean we are “abstract” on what we are fighting for? No. How can we be clearer than by proclaiming our fight for a Leninist-

Trotskyist International? On regroupment, on programme? The LRCIis clear and concrete. ND might disagree with it, butt is neither “passive” nor “abstract” as we have shown.

ND refers to our tactics towards the centrist as “wooden”,

- Our tactics are flexible, but not in the sense that ND wants

ie. opportunist and diplomatic towards the USFL It is ND whois “wooden” when he focuses all revolutionary possibilities towards developments in the USFI. He declares that: “the USF acts as a pole of attraction for the most advanced workers breaking from Stalinism, reformism or nationalism”.

The USF is in chronic decline and crisis, its sections wedkened and riven with perpetual factionalism of the worst sort. The other major centrist groups claiming to

' stand in the tradition of the FI are in no better a state.

There is nothing in the logic of the clase struggle that says that advanced workers will automatically turn tothe USFI.

This is why we refuse to draw the distinction that ND does between “centrist Trotskyists” and other centrists with the implication that centrist Trotskyists are qualitatively better. In Britain, for example, the two main centrist

organisations, the SWP and Militant both stand in effect for -

a “new” International, not the revival ofthe Fourth. In ND’s schéma this puts them beyond the pale.

But the fortunes of these two tendencies as compared to-

the fortunes of the British USFI expose the uselessness of this:schema. The fact that the SWP are not formally loyal to the Transitional Programme does not make them better or worse than the supporters of Socialist Outlook or the USFI.

The,fact that the SWP, and toa lesser extent Militani, are -

considerably more influential in the working clase than the dwindling band of USFI supporters makes them far more important targets for revolutionaries. Nor is Britain the only example of this. In many countries across the globe the centrist Trotskyists are of secondary importance compared with other centrist forces. With the “centrist Trotskyist” schéma it is impossible to relate to such forces.

But in all cases we follow Trotsky’s method of calling centrism by its right name, stigmatising its mistakes and warning the working class not to follow it. Warning, not in a purely literary sense, but by intervening in the class struggle with the objective of demonstrating in practice who is right and who is wrong. By refusing toface up to this necessity ND is bolstering centrism not combating it. Itis a sign.of his own inadequate break with centrism.

Last but not least ND accuses us of “anti-internationalism”. on the question of the crisis of leadership. This is another piece of dogmatism in the service of opportunism.

Dogmatism because it suggests that the Transitional Programme’s assertion about the crisis of humanity being reducible to the crisis of proletarian leadership is applicable for all time and for all places. This we are told is the cornerstone of internationalism.

Rubbish. The cornerstone of internationalism is a recognition of the international character of the class struggle and a determination to act on this by building a world party.

For Trotsky the crisis of leadership had a precise meaning. At that point in human history (on the eve of the world war) the entire future of humanity was reduced to the crisis of leadership. Has this situation pertained for every moment of history since 1938. Of course not, because the issue was not world war or revolution, on a world scale. The future of humanity was not at stake in the immediate sense for along time after the war, nor indeed when we drafted the programme. The crisis of leadership did not pose the alternatives of socialism or barbarism as the immediate ensuing perpsective on a world scale.

There is nothing anti-internationalist in recognising this. It does not mean that the crisis of leadership ceases to exist. It means that i in oan arts of the globe and at certain

even more acutely, to the crisis of leadershi p: But when the ‘TM. was written this was clearly not the case.. :

The TM’s position on the crisis of leadership does not

mean that we can all take a holiday from struggling t tobuild

a new leadership (sornething ND implies is lodged ‘within |

our position). The lack of the immediacy in terms of the “fate of humanity” does not mean that it ceases to be.a central

question. The crisis of leadership is decisive in every strug- |

gle. We say that in the TM: “Today the central problem facing humanity remains:

who leads the. working: class?” (p.19 of the English language .

edition)

We strive to resolve this crisis, But we were not in the

same situation as Trotsky when we observed that the nature of the crisis of leadership had a different, character.

But ND’s dogmatiem is designed to add urgency to the sectarian schema of reforming the Fourth International, more specifically the USFI. Thus, ND tells us that his determination to stand by Trotaky’s 1938 position is because of the “central importance of the regeneration of the Fourth International.” This justifies the struggle for regroupment, which in turn justifies orienting to the USFI, which in turn justifies liquidationism.

“Primitive Economism”

The charge of “primitive economism” is the second major theme of ND’s critique. Only one concrete example of this is given: our abstention on an amendment from RIL supporters at an anti-poll tax conference,

We were right. The struggle against the poll tax involved .

masses of working cless people. in the rarefied atmosphere of the RIL, grappling with the prejudices of the masses is simple - expel anyone who is guilty of homophobia, racism or sexism from the onganisations of the working class. This was the substance of the RIL amendment.

In building a mass campaign we take a different approach. If somebody is guilty of systematic racism, homophobia and sexism then yes, they need to be dealt with administratively, as the occasion demands. But this wasn’t what the RIL amendment said. It was designed to exclude people because of their prejudices in advance of uniting with such people in struggle against the Tory government. We have a different approach. Backward ideas can and must be fought. Drawing workers into struggle creates the best possible conditions for combating and overcoming the prejudices they have had stuffed into their heads by bourgeois society. The RIL on the other hand wants to deal with such problems by administrative exclusion.(Note 1)

Economism is, as Lenin defined it, the belief that the economic struggle within the workplace, in and ofitself, will spontaneously transform itself into a revolutionary strug-

gle. The task of revolutionaries, according to economism, is -

to advocate militant (rade unionism, pure and simple, and

allow the economic struggle to do the rest. The practical :

consequence of this is the degradation of the revolutionary

- party to the level ofa trade union auxiliary organisation, to leave politics out of the class struggle and the class struggle out of “politics”.

Further, “primitive” economism,,. which we are specifically charged with, “dJenotes a narrow scope of revolutionary work generally, failure to understand that a good organisation of revolutionaries cannot be built on the basis of such narrow activity, and lastly - and this is the main thing

.. - attempts to justify chis narrowness and to elevate it to a special ‘theory’ “.

‘The scope of our work is far from narrow. We are involved

in considerably more than the trade union struggle. We build our organisation in a wide range of activities andon a wide range of political issues, considerably wider than the issues that the RIL preoccupied itself with. Most importantly we have never tried to theoretically justify “narrowness”. ND is just bandying with words.

He does try to justify his charge with two attacks on the

Page 29

TM - one on the question of the role of the class struggle in _ history a and one on our position on social oppression:

fine Motor Force of History.

On the. class atruggle ND accuses us of revising Marxism. We say the class struggle is the motor force of history. ND replies:

“Asa description of Marxist historical materialism thisis simply wrong. The motor force of history is not the class struggle, but the development of the productive forces, and the contradiction between this development and the social relations of production. The class struggle is part of the superstructure, dependent on the economic base, or infrastructure.”

Our mistake makes it “easier to understand where ite {the LRCI’s] economism comes from, and how this can be manifested as strong tendencies towards syndicalism, ‘workerism’ and trade union rank and filism.” Our tactical position on unions in Ireland and our position on special oppression prove our guilt.

Itis ND, not the LRCI or the TM, whois guilty of revising Marxism. Ironically the long quote he gives from Engels proves this. ND asserts that the development of the productive forces and the social relations of production are the

' motor force. That is crude economic determinism. Of course

we are the last people to deny the centrality of the economic base as a determining factor in shaping every society, But determining the shape ofa society is not the same as driving that society forward to a higher level.

The contradiction between the productive forces and social relations creates the conditions for change but not the change itself. Modes of production have to be changed by the intervention of classes that are a legitimate component of that mode of production but have an interest in advaneing to a higher mode. This struggle, theclass struggle, is the motor that brings the contradiction to breaking point and makes possible a higher synthesis. Saying anything else means that you lapse into the sort of economic determinism characteristic of the Second International. The collapse of capitalism is inevitable, therefore we will wait for it to happen. Thisis the logical end point of ND’s position. It will go down very well with the USFI for whom the “historical process” has always stood higher than the class strugele and the conscious intervention into it by revolutionaries seeking to diract it towards socialist goals.

In short, only the class struggle makes possible the passage from one mode of production to another in modern class society (and by modern we mean documented class societies from tributary modes of production through to capitalism - this and this alone being the import of Engels’ correction to the Communist Manifesto that ND attaches such significance to),

Without the class struggle (the forms of which are part of the superstructure, but whose content ig an integral part of the social relations of any class society) society cannot move forward. It would be like a car without a motor. In that sense our assertion is completely correct, We are astounded that any Marxist could think otherwise. After all we didn’t invent this idea. Marx and Engels refer toit in the Communist Manifesto. In The Class Struggles in France Marx remarks that:

“Revolutions are the locomotives of history.”

* Against the “objective historians” of his day Marx, in his

_ 1869 Preface to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napo-

leon, explained that “the class struggle [he emphasised this, riot us} in France created circumstances and conditions which allowed a mediocre and grotesque individual to play the hero's role”, noting in this case how the locomotive could work in reverse (counter-revolution). And in his famous work on Bonaparte, far from suggesting that bourgeois society came into being merely as a result of the contradietion between the productive forces and the social relations of production, Marx observed:

Page 30

“But unheroic as bourgeois society is, it still required heroism, self-sacrifice, terror, civil war, and battlesin which whole nations were engaged, to bring it into the world.”

In a letter to Weydemeyer Marx insists hia “discovery” was “that class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat”. For his part Engels, in a letter to Lavrov in 1875 states that he continues to “regard previous history as a series of class struggles”. Lenin, writing after the death of both of the founders of Marxism, repeats that modern society (by which he means capitali sm) has “shown even more strikingly (though sometimes in a very onesided, ‘peaceful’ and ‘constitulional’ form) the class struggle as the mainspring of events.” (Karl Merz).

We list these various examples from Marx, Engels and

Lenin to show that we are not; saying anything particularly’

new when we assert that the class struggle is the motor force of history. Indeed, only if you understand ‘the class struggle in its narrowest economic form, as ND apparently does, can you suggest that this tenet of historical materialism is somehow a root cause of economism. We understand the three dimensions of the class struggle - the economic, the political and the theoretical - as products of the contradiction between the productive forces and the social relations, but special products in that without them society would not move forward. Quite simply, history would not have progressed one step forward without the struggle between the contending classes. In that sense the class struggle is the motor force oi’ history.

Social Oppression .

Why is this relevant to social oppression -the oppression —

of women, of gay men and lesbians, youth and black people? In the first place you have to understand the social basis of oppression. This oppression is rooted in class society and is necessary for the maintenance of certain key structures in class society (the family and the nation state). That is why we refer to social oppression rather than “special oppression”, The distinction is that the term social oppression expresses a phenomenon that can be understood in social, and class terms. “Special” oppression signifies no such thing. On the contrary, as aterm, and as a concept acted on by the RIL/ITC, it dislocates the question of oppression from the class struggle.

Unless you understand the role of the class struggle in the fight against social oppression you end up with the grossly opportunist practice of the RILIITC. For them, and clearly ND held to their line when he wrote his critique, “special oppression” is separate from the class struggle. He objects to our central argument that only proletarian leadership can guarantee the liberation of the socially oppressed. He declares our commitment to “proletarian movements of the oppressed” as “an economist obsession with social origin”. He asks:

“Ig there no strategy for the specially oppressed as a whole, other than a liberal recognition that it exists?”

The answer to all of this is simple - without the victory of the working class, without the socialist revolution, there will be no liberation for the socially oppressed. That is not economist. It flows from a central tenet of Marxism. - namely that the working class is the only consistently revolutionary classin capitalist society because it alone has no stake in capitalist saciety. To deny this, and to suggest that there is some “special” strategy for the oppressed asa whole is to abandon Marxiam.

The “specially oppressed” as a whole consists of different layers and strata, different classes. Sections of the “specially oppressed” have a substantial stake in capitalist society. As a result of this their interest in liquidating their oppression is subordinated to their fundamental class interests - ruling class women, ruling class gay men, black capitalists in the USA, the youth who attend Eton and Harrow, to give just a few examples. This is why we reject - the RIL position of fighting for a “strategic alliance” be-

tween the working class and the specially oppressed. This canonly mean calling for a cross class movement embracing our class enemies, because it fails to draw the class line amongst the socially oppressed.

Does this mean that we'are saying social origin determines our entire strategy? Are we being “workerist”? Let's get things in proportion: being determines consciousness, so social origin is not an insignificant question. Most people whose social origin lies within the classes who have a material stake in class society - the bourgeoisie and sections of the petit bourgeoisie - are unlikely to come over to the social revolution simply because of their gender, sexuality or colour. A minority will.

‘Will those who do break with their class be welcomedinto the pfoletarian movement of the oppressed? Yes. The decisive character of a proletarian movement is not whether or not all the gay men or women in it are workers by socia) origin, but whether or not itis based on proletarian politics, on the politics of class struggle. In other words, “proletarian” defines the class interest such a movement serves. Theréis nothing economistic about that. Nor does that have any bearing on tactical. decisions a party may take about particular campaigns. That is why ND’s digression into tactics over Clause 25 is so pointless. (Note 2)

For the RILATC the struggles of lesbians and gay men, for example, become decisive - regardless of who leads them, regardless of their class content - because these layers are the real “vanguard”. The entire practice of the ITC was based on elevating the centrality of the struggles of the oppréssed. It was a method that led the US ITC section, the Revolutionary Workers League, to hail the Los Angeles riots as the “beginning of the US revolution”. Because it was a revolt, primarily of black people, specially oppressed people, it was spontaneously revolutionary.

This nonsense flows directly from the ITC's refusal to analyse the socially oppressed and their struggles from a working class standpoint. The ITC wrote:

“Lesbians and gay men are potentially among the most militant and committed revolutionary fighters, because capitalism’s anti-lesbian/gay bigotry means they have less to loge and more to gain by capitalism’s overthrow.”

What utter rubbish. The class position of lesbians and gay men can be decisive in realising or thwarting such potential and militancy. Working class lesbians and gay men:do have little to lose and are potentially militant and revolutionary.

But this flows from the combination of their class position and their social oppression. It is not an automatic potential lodged within all lesbians and gay men regardless of their social position inside class society. Moreover the RIL/AITC position glosses over the backwardness than can manifest itself in the communities of the socially oppressed. What about the misogyny that exists inside the male gay community, the sexism of some black men, the backwardness many women suffer from as a result of their social position.

All of these things militate against the “specially oppressed” automatically becoming a vanguard. To say thisis not to deny that from these groups, precisely because of their oppression, can come important class fighters and a significant part of the vanguard. Out of struggles against their oppression the best elements can and must be won to revolutionary politics. It demonstrates the centrality for the revolutionary party of orienting to these struggles, of winning the socially oppressed toa proletarian, revolutionary socialist perspective. If this is economism, then Marx, Engels, Kollontai, Zetkin, Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky were every bit as guilty of i it as the LRCL.

Other Points

ND’s main point is to prove that we are a sectarian and economist group. He does criticise a number of other aspects of the TM. Most of these are secondary to the central thrust of his argument.

* On the anti-imperialist united front, for example, it is ND whois being scholastic. He believes that a bloc with the national bourgeoisie in certain circumstances is permissible but is not to be called the anti-imperialist united front. He is welcome to call it by any name he chooses. For us it involves unity in action against a common enemy with no mixing of banners and with the aim of breaking the masses from their misleaders. That is a the method of the united front as spelled out by the healthy Comintern.

The real problem he has is that he believes the united front is a much broader, longer term tactic. This is revealed when he claims that the anti-imperialist united front “can also be the vehicle for putting forward a programme of political demands for the conquest of power by the working class.” Not true. The united front can never be the substitute for the party - though it has to be said that every united front the RIL/ITC ever intervened in was considered to be the vehicle, not for common action, but for common propaganda with a long list of political demands which properly speaking is the task of the party.

¢ On Stalinism we are attacked for supporting selfdetermination even where there is a threat of restoration. ND tells us that the problem in the TM is that “it fails to stress the necessity fer differentiating state independence from counter revolution, be it threatened or actual”. There then follows a series of arguments taken from the Workera International League‘Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (WIL/ LTD) critique of WP and the LRCI. For comrades who want to see the detailed replies to the originators of these positions they should refer to the relevant issues of Workers Power.

¢ND declares we should have opposed “German reunification on imperialism’s terms rather than capitulating to it, as Workers Power did.” We did oppose imperialist re-unification; we stood for the “Revolutionary re-unification of Germany” i.e. for a workers’ council German Workers Republic (see Trotskyist International No.4).

We also opposed the “imperialist anschluss” as it came about and raised revolutionary and democratic demands in these events. ND in faxt wanted tojoin the bankrupt Green and “autonomist” left who were completely marginalised with their hopeless and liberal cries of “Never Again Germany”. What a strategy!

* This revolutionary pi ket repeats the charges of the WIL/LIT that we were wrong both on the Baltics for supporting their rights for self-determination and on the Azeris for opposing it! For good measure he throws in the inuendo that this difference of position was something to do the Azeris being Muslims while the Balts were white Christians.

For the record we opposed the break up of the Soviet Union, argued against it. When the vast majority of the workers in the Baltic states, including a high proportion of the Russian workers there, clearly demonstrated their support for independence we supported it, fought for a Soviet Lithuania, Estonia etc., and defended the workers’ - demonstrations against the murderous attacks of the black berets. FAACTIC£E 2?

Does this fail to distinguish “state independence from counter-revolution”. No, it is a revolutionary method of fighting counter revolution, the method of Lenin and Trotsky on the national question, clearly argued for in the ABC of Communism, the coramentary on the Bolsheviks’ programme. Far from handing the leadership of the struggle for independence over io the restorationist nationalists, the counter-revolutionaries, the tactic allows the revolutionaries to fight alongside the workers for independence, but for an independent Soviet. state.

ND on the other hand would do what? Stand with the Black Berets, with the Stalinists to crush the movement? Or abstain, wring his hands and go home? He does not tell us. One thing is clear. After a very short period of state independence the abi.ity of nationalist demagogues like Landsbergis to manipulate the masses’ anti Stalinism to

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the ends of his fast track restorationist: programme has diminished. Most commentators report the virtual absence of the “national” question from the current struggles of the Lithuanian masses, as they focus on the gocial deprivation thrown up by the stalled restoration programme. As a result the Lithuanian masses have voted in a state capitalist restorationist President with Stalinist credentials.

Azerbaijan presented a different situation. The insurrection led by the Azeri Popular Front took place after bloody pogroms against the Armenian minority in Baku. Its aim was to seize power to pursue an all out war against the Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh. This was the clear aim and. slogan of the movement. It had support and arms coming from Iran. It did not even, at the time, call for the separation of Azerbaijan from the USSR. It was a movementin defence of the right of Azeri nationalists to carry out pogroms. Without taking any responsibility for the brutality with which KGB troops put down the rising (they largely failed to stop the pogroms and attacked innocent Azeris) we had to give critical support to the armed forces of the workers’ state against a pogromist, religious cbscurantist uprising. ;

* On the workers’ government ND is again being scholastic about when it can be raised agitationally and when propagandistically. His implication appears to be that we are only prepared to raise it agitationally. This is a desperate scraping around for criticisms, He should look at our election coverage, our propaganda during the miners’ strike and a host of cther occasions to see that we are quite capable of raising the slogan at a propaganda level as a means of trying to break advanced workers from reformism. Frankly we need to be enlightened about ND’s real criticism here. If he can explain to us what he means by our lack of “an organic understanding” of the relationship between propaganda and agitation we may be able to take the discussion forward. But we are genuinely unclear about what “an organic” understanding is. °

¢ ND attacks out characterisation of South Africa and makes an interesting point about our characterisation of Portugal as imperialist. We are in a process of trying to analyse the exact structure of imperialist expolitation developing within the EC, and there may be a case for saying that Portugal has.become a semi colony. Certainly Ireland is a semi colony and our provisional position is that Greece is one. But the case ND makes from Lenin’s comments on Portugal is hard to sustain. It could be said equally that Belgium had become a mere tool of Anglo French imperialism at the outbreak of World War One. But it remained a small imperialist country.

More importantly we reject ND’s solution to the problem of analysing the character of countries like Portugal: labelling them “countries of intermediate capitalist development”, It is not a question of trying:te pigeonhole countries into two broad categories: “imperialist” and “semicolonial”. Transitional categories are not excluded from Marxism. But we have to try to understand the passage from quantity into quality in the transitions taking place in modern states. With Iraq, for example, centrists like the Leninist group in Britain tried to avoid defending Iraq on the grounds that it was an intermediate kind of state, in the process of becoming a minor imperialism. We pointed out that what was stopping it becoming a minor imperialism was a structure of economic and military domination held in place by the major imperialisms - its semi-colonial status.

Despite all this we would be the first to admit that fully understanding the changing structure of the imperialist world economy is an ongoing theoretical task we have by no means completed.

Conclusion

ND’s critique is a weak attempt to justify the bankrupt strategy of the RIL/ITC. He has left this organisation, but he is clinging on to its schema of reforming centrist

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Trotskyism, specifically the USFI.

This explains why his document is being circulated now. Itis an attempt to warn USF dissidents to stay away from the LRCI. It is a failed attempt because it is a critique written from the standpoint of somebody who has no programmatic mooring, somebody who believes that agreement on a programme written in 1938 is a sufficient basis for regroupment in 1998.

It is a centrist critique. Centrism is incapable of developing a programme for the current period so it denounces the reyolutionaries who confront and execute this task for their arrogance. ,

Centrism is incapable of building revolutionary parties and a new revolutionary International, so it denounces the revolutionaries who actively seek to do this as sectarians and conservatives. .

Centrism is embarrassed about winning people to its banner, so it attacks revolutionaries seeking to recruit people to their organisation as “passive”, __

Centrism, in a nutshell, has nothing to offer dissidents in the USFI other than more of the same, perhaps with a left gloss to salve consciences. :

For those who wish to break from centrism ND’s critique, the ITO and the RIL/ITC tradition offer nothing. The LRCI, on the basis of The Trotskyist Manifesto, offers an opportunity to begin afresh, to intervene in the class struggle on a revolutionary basis, to join in the real struggle for a new world party of socialist revolution. And like every previous revolutionary party we are not at all ashamed to say to revolutionaries: join us.* .

AER ANP ec IT TL A A tN PUA Hc tt errr renner rr

Notes

(1) This is ND’s only example. Of course he adds the fact that we “slandered” somebocly they recruited from us, one CB.. CB was and is a thief. Saying sois not slander. The RIL knew he was a thief, who stcle a computer from one of our branches, and covered up for him for the brief period he was one of their members. The proof of this? In a document he co authored before leaving the RIL ND reveals the full story:

“The CC of the RIL decided that after initial protests and exposure of the way the WP were using the issue of the computer and CB, we woul¢. hand back that computer to WE, as it stood in the way of a serious political intervention and debate, WHATEVER THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE DISPUTE ITSELF. CB however sold the computer, Leland [the leader of the RWL] came over, told him it was OK and recruited him to the RIL then and there” (emphasis in original).

(ND and GD Regenerate the Fourth International, Regenerate the ITC an account of the RIL/RWL’s internal life available to those with strong stomachs from ND himself.)

(2) We took a decision on this campaign, prompted by our lesbian and gay fraction, that; WP alone would be unable to sustain the campaign if it failod to draw in wider forces. Organisations serious about building parties are frequently required to take such tactical decisions. To make out this is a crowning proof of our economism is nonsense.&