Break with Centrism! Build the Fourth International!

[p039] Break with Centrism! Build the Fourth International! The split in the International Committee is not something accidental, but something necessary. It flows out of a history of political differences between the Socialist Labour League and the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste. We have fought to overcome these differences in joint work and discussion over many years. But under the impact of decisive changes in the objective situation ——particularly since 1968—a split has become necessary. The split is not the result of organizational questions or mis- understandings. And it is not about tactical aspects of how to build the Fourth International. It is a political split, going to the foundations of the Fourth International—Marxist theory. A smokescreen For this reason, the pri- mary task is to explain the basic theoretical questions involved, and in this context to disperse the smokescreen of organizational inventions raised by the OCI document. The IC meeting which adopted the October 24 statement was not valid according to the OCI because they were not invited. But the IC had already been split by the political actions of the OCI at Essen and on the Bolivian revolution. It was the first responsibility of the IC majority to speak out for Trotskyism against this split. The OCI allege that they were excluded from the meeting as part of the SLL’s avoiding of discussion on the _ principled questions of building the Fourth 184 International ever since the IC pre-conference in July 1970. The meaning of the differences at that pre-conference, and _ their subsequent significance, are dealt with in detail below. However, we must clarify one fabrication before going on to the basic differences. According to the OcI: ‘Ever since July 1970, the SLL leadership has refused to call a second session of the pre- conference. On the contrary, it was to make approaches to the leading centres of the liquidators of the FI, to the Unified Sec- retariat of Mandel and company, and propose a joint conference in terms which were not only opposed to the decisions of the pre-conference, but also to the overall struggle of the IC: this was revealed in an article by its national secretary, Gerry Healy, in the Workers Press on Sep- tember 8, 1970. A sharp and rapid reply from the OCI was, at this stage, to stop the develop- ment of this dangerous ten- dency...’ The author of these lines knows full well that Comrade Healy’s approach to a represent- ative of the Unified Secretariat was made with the full agreement of the OCI leadership. The purpose of it, like the Parity Committee for discussion with the Pabloites in 1962, was to carry the fight for the IC line into every section of their ranks. We were convinced that the development of the capitalist crisis created conditions in which a thorough historical accounting could be made of the disputed questions in the Trotskyist move- ment since the split with Pablo. This discussion required the Continued from Fourth International Vol 7 No 2 Winter 1971-1972 participation of all the revisionists as well as of our own forces. We also were sure that such a wide discussion was the best frame- work for fighting out the differ- ences exposed at the pre- conference. This discussion, if it had proved possible, would have given the opportunity of winning any cadres who were moving into opposition within the Pabloite organizations. Not only the revisionists themselves, and particularly Hansen, rejected such a discussion, but so did the OCI leaders. On both sides, they sensed the dangers to the course they were pursuing. The present discussion, in which Hansen and the Pablo- ites publish the documents of the IC majority and of the OCI, and make their own comments upon them, is in its own way con- firmation of the necessity of the scope of the discussion which was proposed! Willy-nilly, all the parties are now engaged in the discussion of fundamental questions. As for the flimsy arguments to ‘prove’ that the IC majority is not a majority, they are easily disposed of. Listing eight sections of the IC, the OCI acknowledge that four support the October 24 statement. But they omit the Greek section, commenting: ‘At the moment there is no Greek section, for the latter which participated in the 1966 Con- ference split in two on the eve of the 1967 coup d’état and con- ditions have not allowed clarifi- cation of the reasons behind the split and an estimation of one group or the other. Consequently, on the suggestion of Comrade Slaughter, the IC decided to Fourth International Summer 1972

[p040] treat the two groups as sym- pathetic to the IC.’ This is untrue. The facts are these. In 1966 the Greek section was internally divided, but accepted the proposal of the IC that they would avoid a split until a Conference with IC participation. As the OCI knows, such a document of the IC is not something which can be enforced as discipline. The majority leader- ship considered that refusal of the minority to accept decisions endangered the section to such an extent that expulsion was necessary. After this (1967) the IC tried to bring together repre- sentatives of both groups for discusrion. If the IC was not able to take a position on the question of the expulsion of the minority by the Greek section, this is not because of the situation created by the 1967 coup, but because of the fact that the problems of the Greek Trotskyist movement were the problems of the IC itself and could therefore be resolved only through the resolution of those problems. But there can be no question of the Greek section being excluded from IC membership because a majority of the IC want a discussion in the section re- opened! It is not true that Com- rade Slaughter made any proposal to recognize two sympathizing sections. There remains a Greek section on the IC; and_ the proposal to bring together the two sides for discussion, includ- ing both their participation in an international conference if no unification is agreed beforehand, remains on the agenda. There remains the POR of Bolivia. All that was agreed at the IC was that Lora’s application for membership of the Committee should be put before the next International Conference. This would give full opportunity for clarification of the ‘present political positions of the POR, as well as of the record of Lora and the POR in the struggle against Pabloite revisionism. The SLL had severe reservations on both counts, and the OCI knows perfectly well that these were forcefully expressed in IC meet- ings. Finally, on these preliminary questions, the OCI tries to justify the resignation of Stephane Just as ‘secretary of the International Committee’, on the grounds that the IC decided Comrades Just and Slaughter work as a_ ‘co-secretariat’, because of ‘difficulties the SLL had in taking on the secretary- ship’. What happened (in 1969) was that, in order to facilitate closer working relations between the sections, given the prospect at that time of growing agreement, Comrades Just and Slaughter should meet briefly and more regularly, in Paris or London, to prepare statements on behalf of the IC. Centrism and the OCI On the two sides of the split are two distinct political lines. The IC majority, support- ing the position of the SLL, are for the building of independent revolutionary parties in every country as sections of the IC. This line proceeds from the fact that the Fourth International means precisely the cadres of such parties, fighting against all revisionism which has tried and still tries to destroy the parties of the FI. The FI means the struggle of these cadres to win the leadership of the masses in their own countries from the reformists and Stalinists. Only the building of such independent parties and _ their successful winning of the leader- ship can ensure the victorious struggle for working-class power. We live in a period where the break-up of the Stalinist bureau- cracy and its parties, which inevitably reflect the capitalist crisis, and the _ sporadic occurrence of petty-bourgeois nationalist and protest move- ments, exert pressure on the working class and the revolution- ary movement. This pressure is, above all, concentrated against the development of Marxist theory, against the building of independent Trotskyist parties whose cadres are based on this theory. As against theory, these petty- bourgeois tendencies glorify activism and militancy. They pour contempt on those who start from the revolutionary theory and continuity of the movement built by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. They talk about combating bourgeois ideology, but refuse to take up any struggle for dialectical materialism against that ideology in the fields of philosophy and the _ historical and natural sciences. They revel in ‘new’ revolutionary tendencies, but pull back from any struggle against Stalinism. The OCI, the LSPH, and the LOM are a centrist tendency. Behind Trotskyist phraseology and worship of the Trotskyist programme, they in fact repre- sent the results of petty-bourgeois pressure on the revolutionary party. This is why they reject the essential continuity of the FI, represented by the IC cadres, today. They prefer the ‘common- sense’ formula that there was a Fourth International, but revisionism smashed it, and we have to ‘reconstruct’ it. In this way they politically avoid the essential theoretical and practical struggle against those centrists who say precisely that experience has proved the correctness of their own centrist forefathers of the London Bureau who opposed the found- Discussion on international Perspectives: Document 4 ing of the FI in the first place, on the grounds that it was pre- mature, not rooted in an upsurge of the masses. The formula ‘reconstruction of the FI’ is the weapon with which a theoretical clarification of the struggle against Pabloism is avoided. It is converted into an organizational question. Little wonder then that the OCI found its way back to inter- national centrism at the 1971 Essen youth conference. Outstanding amongst the centrist groups of the 1930s who rejected Bolshevism and opposed the very founding of the FI was the Spanish POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification). The utter failure of the POUM to provide any leadership or to win any independence from the Stalinists (for which they paid with their lives) was one of the most basic political lessons upon which the FI was established. The POUM continues to exist and was represented at Essen by its youth movement. The POUM’s paper, ‘Adelante’ (December 1971) reported the Essen con- ference as follows: ‘In the afternoon and evening, a meeting took place of an International Conference, where amendments were debated on the initial text which had been put forward by the various organiz- ations. Only the amendment proposed by the English delega- tion of the Young Socialists, on the need to discuss the problem of Marxist theory was rejected in a vote after discussion (the JCI did not. participate in this vote)... ‘In its intervention, the JCI explained how the general frame- work proposed was in line with the struggle that the POUM and the JCI had been carrying on since 1936... In the 1930s, Andres Nin and his group sacrificed the organiz- ation of a centralized leadership based on Marxist theory for unity with the group of Maurin on the grounds that it commanded the allegiance of a large number of workers. This liquidationism led to defeat in the Spanish revolu- tion. To repeat this type of mistake today, is to open the door to all the pressure from the petty-bourgeois tendencies which always denounce as ‘sectarian’ the Trotskyist insistence on theory and continuity. That the OCI is prepared publicly to vote against the Young Socialists, youth organiz- ation of the SLL, with political support from the POUM, is a clear indication of the political nature of the split in the IC. No doubt the OCI will want to excuse itself on the grounds that there are possibilities of change in the POUM. This has been answered in advance by one of the POUM’s leaders, writing in 1970 (published in Paris 1971): ‘. almost 35 years after- 185

[p041] wards, the younger generations in Spain are asking questions and are interested in the role of the POUM in these’ circumstances (the Spanish Civil War), and internationally people still recall the hopes aroused by the party in the world of revolutionary socialists as a new concept of the desire for freedom in the working class against totalitarian- ism and the crimes of Stalin, who, at the time, was at the peak of power. On the other hand, Trotskyism can show no success in its record of activity in the different movements throughout the world, unless it is its breaking up into even more groups in all the countries where it exists, which are then en- meshed in an even more ferocious struggle against each other.’ (From the Preface to ‘Los Problemas de la Revolucion Espafiola’, written by Juan Andrade, a leading member of the POUM as an introduction to a selection of the work of Andres Nin.) The OCI leaders were perfectly aware that this was the position of the POUM. Their ‘recon- struction’ of the Fourth Inter- national is a rallying of centrist elements to whom they hand, as a concession, the formula: the FI was destroyed by revisionism, it must be reconstructed. They know that the centrists will interpret this to mean: in an international ‘regroupment’ we will all begin at the same place, with no compulsion to learn the lessons of past revolutions and past betrayals. The OCI and its followers mis- calculate. A thousand times more important than the ephemeral groupings thrown off by the Stalinist bureaucracy and _ the petty bourgeoisie because of the crisis of imperialism is the deep- going change forced on the life and activity of the masses by this crisis. Only the independent work of the revolutionary parties, based on Marxist theory, will penetrate to these changes in the masses, and in this way carry forward the construction of the Fourth International. The OCI’s political association with the POUM, and _ their Opposition to the line of the SLL and the IC of the Fourth Inter- national on the fundamental question of the International quite naturally came to a head on the amendment proposed by the Young Socialists at Essen. In order, so far as was possible at that late stage, to correct the completely anti-theoretical line of the document proposed by the AJS (youth organization of the OCD, the YS_ proposed the amendment drawing attention to the theoretical basis of the revolutionary movement. The OCI represents this as some sort of ultimatum. But, as the British delegation explained, what was actually required was a new 186 resolution based on these theoret- ical foundations, and an amend- ment could only attempt to preserve for the future whatever basis there was for agreement. There proved conclusively to be none. The split actually occurred on the question of the place of Marxist theory as the foundation of the revolutionary party. The OCI, as well as all sorts of other people, will pay lip- service to Lenin’s statement ‘Without revolutionary theory there can be no _ revolutionary movement,’ but in the actual struggle to build the movement they reject the struggle for theory in order to preserve the centrist alliance they have been building up. They have ‘prepared’ for this public declaration against the theoretical foundation of our movement by years of failure to take up basic questions of theory in the French labour movement. We shall see where this neglect has led them in the revision of basic Marxist concepts. And so the split is not a question of dozens of detailed points of organization, or even of political positions on various questions. Every one of these points must and will be answered, but the great advantage of the present split is that it occurs with the basic theoretical questions out in the open. At the point in history where the deepening of capitalist crisis actually opens the door for Trotskyist parties to be built and to lead the working class to power, a point where the con- ditions for development of Marxist theory by revolutionary cadres are better than ever before, and where all the lessons of the long. struggle against revisionism in the Trotskyist movement can be capitalized— precisely at this point the OCI wants to devalue theory, to join the derision of the petty bourgeoisie against discussion on philosophy, to condemn the ‘ultimatism’ and ‘sectarianism’ of the SLL, and to accept the petty- bourgeois prejudice that the Fourth Intérnational, having in any case been misconceived, died long ago. These are the fundamental positions behind the split. They are the basis of the differences on the united front, on Bolivia, and on the policies of the: OCI in France, as well as on the historical and theoretical issues already raised in the discussion. When a split takes place on the fundamental question of the relationship of Marxist theory to programme and to the building of revolutionary parties, it can- not be tackled by arguments, like those of the OCI, that ‘There can no more be a ‘‘majority” of the IC than there can be a “minority”, since there has been no meeting of the IC’! The OCI did not need a meeting of the IC to reveal at Essen that on the question of the Fourth Inter- national they were prepared to write off some 35 years of his- tory. It is not just that they returned, formally, to the posi- tion of ‘for the Fourth Interna- tional’ instead of ‘building the Fourth International’. They rejected the positions ‘of the FI on those centrists who had opposed its very foundation. The differences are not new The political differences in the IC did not begin in 1971, nor in 1969, as the OCI suggests. In the two years before the Third International Conference of the IC in 1966 there was discussion, both at IC metings and in writ- ten bulletins, on the differences betweén us on the nature of revolutionary leadership. The dangerous political implications of these differences were, in = our opinion, most openly expressed (as early as 1964) in the asser- tion of a leading OCI member, that the meaning of certain expressions in the Transitional Programme has not been dis- cernible in their objective signifi- cance until that time. According to him, only now were some of these phrases revealing their real content. He referred particularly to the last sentence of this para- graph: ‘Is the creation of such a {workers’ and farmers’) govern- ment by the traditional workers’ organizations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is to say the least highly improbable. However one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influ- ence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, finan- cial crash, mass_ revolutionary pressure, etc.) the petty- bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie.’ The real experience of the Trotskyist movement since these sentences were written had proved beyond any doubt that, as the Stalinists and reformists grow ever more open in their betrayals, in their counter- revolutionary role, revisionism seized on precisely this passage to justify liquidation of the revo- lutionary party. Pablo split the FI with his thesis that ‘mass revolutionary pressure’ and World War III would force Stalinism to play a revolutionary role. Ignoring the deliberate warning given by Trotsky (that even if a workers’ government were estab- lished by the traditional workers parties, ‘it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat’) Pablo pre- dicted ‘centuries of degenerated workers’ states’. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p042] The OCI was in danger of pre- paring the theoretical slipway for the same liquidationism in another form: to liquidate the independent programme and identity of the party in an all- embracing policy of ‘united front for a workers’ government’. At this stage, we were pre- pared to fight for the clarifica- tion of these problems within the same International. At the 1966 Conference, the attack on Trot- skyism by non-member partici- pants, the US Spartacist (Robert- son) group and the Voix Ouvriére (VO) group (France),* brought a united response from the SLL, the OCI and the other sections of the IC. Our opinion at that time was that the defence of the continuity of the Trotskyist movemént against the opportun- ism of Robertson and Voix Quvriére laid the basis for tack- ling some of our differences. It is of great importance for the present discussion that the VO based their attack on the formulation in the IC documents that the FI had been organiza- tionally destroyed by Pabloism and must be ‘reconstructed’. While it is formally true, as the OCI states, that the final resolutions in some _ places retained the terms ‘reconstruc- tion’ and ‘rebuilding’, what is certain is that the content of these resolutions was above all the continuity of independent parties and of the FI fought for and preserved by the IC and based on Marxist principle and theory. Against the attacks of VO and Robertson, the SLL, the Workers’ League and the Greek section fought for the continuity of the FI and in doing so com- promised with the OCI on the wording of the amendment car- ried. There was no_ concession on principle. What soon emerged was that the OCI’s participation in the fight against VO and Robertson, rather than proving a basis for changing their wrong positions on the question of the independ- ent revolutionary party, served as a screen behind which they proceeded on exactly the same road. By 1966 the OCI had agreed that, even while opposed to Pabloism, it had committed grave errors of precisely a Pablo- ite type in relation to. the Algerian national movement. But it did not go any further, and this was fundamental. The next step should have been to probe the unresolved theoretical question in the split with Pablo which had left the OCI vulnerable to such a mis- take. Because this was not done, the OCI in its latest document can still say, on the lessons of the Algerian experience: ‘The fact remains that the *These groups attended” as observers. policy of the Trotskyist organiza- tion was wrong because it rejected “the struggle for the development of a Trotskyist van- guard”’.’ Certainly! But when you say this, you are left precisely with the big question: how did it arise that a ‘mistake’ was made on the principal question of the epoch! And if this question is not posed, let alone answered, what dangers exist of liquidation of the revo- lutionary party in France itself, and in every country? The OCI’s attitude towards the ‘rebuilding of the Fourth International’ through a ‘regroupment’ of all those claiming to support the Transitional Programme is the instrument for this liquidation. That is why, in 1967, the OCI, having moved from its previous position of setting up some sort of ‘League’ consisting of a sup- posedly already existing ‘van- guard’ of the best organizers and militants in the working class focused its attack in the IC on all sorts of plans to create artificially a centre for the IC. Proposals were made for full- time workers and special financial schemes to attract forces inter- nationally (such as_ dissident youth in E Europe) who were said to be only looking for some- where to go. The SLL’s opposi- tion to these methods, its insistence on the central import- ance of the training of a cadre, was condemned as opposition to the need to build ‘the Interna- tional as such’ (en tant que telle). There was no resolution of these questions in discussion. We could get little or no agree- ment on our estimation of the growing economic crisis of capi- talism as the objective source to which our comrades must be directed for their development as Marxists. Indeed, leaders of the OCI told us that our attention to Economic Perspectives at our Conferences was wrong, and that there could be no separation of economic from political perspec- tives. The fact is that their own per- spectives were not based upon this appreciation of the depth of the economic crisis, and they were left like all non-Marxists and revisionists simply to agree on the existence of a crisis when its effects could no longer be missed by the naked eye. Con- sequently the political manifes- tations of the crisis, and particu- larly the May-June 1968 struggles in France, took them completely by surprise. All through 1967, the OCI had pursued their proposals on ‘the International as such’ and attacked the organization of the SLL (just as later they privately opposed the plans for a daily paper) on the grounds, funda- mentally, that we were leaping too far ahead of the movement Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 4 and consciousness of the working class, the ‘real movement’ (see the letter of the OCI to the SLL and the SLL Reply, 1967). These differences about the discipline, training and organiza- tion of the revolutionary party were obviously connected with the emphasis of the SLL on the fact that the advanced stage reached by the economic crisis would very soon pose the struggle for power in a number of coun- tries, and that our parties would be called upon to take up lead- ership. At the International Assembly of Youth in Britain in August 1967, the SLL found itself having to exercise great patience and firmness in insisting on these perspectives on all the questions which they affected: security, organizational details, finance, and the whole problem of pre- ‘paredness of the youth cadre. Undoubtedly the May-June days in 1968 once again pro- vided the opportunity for a struggle to clarify political dif- ferences. It was absolutely cor- rect for the SLL to campaign, as it did, to win wide support, political and financial, for the OCI. A large fund was raised, and a broad movement of oppo- sition to the repressions against the OCI was mobilized through the columns of ‘The Newsletter’ (predecessor cf the Workers Press). What is more important is that the rapid development of the objective situation, of the class struggle itself, had completely vindicated the political prepara- tion fought for by the SLL. It was vital to bring home this indis- pensable lesson to the members and leaders of the OCI, and to the international movement. It was the responsibility of the SLL to fight to overcome previous dif- ferences on this basis. The following months actually suggested the possibility of success, but behind formal politi- cal agreement, the OCI pursued its course and still the basic questions were not resolved. After May-June 1968, it was certainly impossible to avoid ‘recognizing’ the international crisis. Nor was it possible to escape any longer the direct and immediate way in which preparation for the strug- gle for power was posed. These conceptions found their way into the documents of the OCI, and in a series of discussions it was possible to win a certain degree of agreement on the way that the struggle for a workers’ govern- ment was posed in France, by making specific demands on the Communist and Socialist parties. The 1970 ‘Pre- Conference’ of the IC It was at this stage, when the immediate features of the objective situation seemed -to have provided the basis for agree- 187

[p043] ment, that the basic differences became more clearly exposed. At the pre-Conference of the IC in 1970 this contradiction was first clearly identifiable. As soon as the formal agreement was probed, to the method behind it, we were faced with disagreement on the basic question of dialectical materialism as the theory of knowledge of Marxism. Revisionists like Joseph Han- sen think it clever to make the point: can the SLL explain how they stayed together with the OCI despite differences on such a fundamental matter. Of course, Hansen regards a ‘correct’ posi- tion on dialectical materialism and on questions of programme as something fixed for all time: the actual process is one of struggle for clarification as existing conceptions are tested against the objective develop- ments. The OCI document refers only briefly to this theoretical dis- cussion at the pre-Conference, recalling that its delegates ‘warned the comrades of the SLL against the serious political risks in any tendency to transform dialectical materialism into an ideology (philosophy), a system of ideas developing by itself, which is a complete break with the very essence of dialectical materialism: the unity of method, of form and content’. Let us state what actually occurred in the _ discussion, because this was indeed the occa- sion on which there first came out clearly and openly the issues voted on at the Essen Confer- ence. Delegates from the SLL showed from experience’ of building the revolutionary party in Britain that a thoroughgoing and difficult struggle against idealist ways of thinking was necessary which went much deeper than questions of agree- ment on programme and policy. The Trotskyist movement had gone through a long period of isolation in which propagandism inevitably took a strong hold, so that it was difficult for comrades to be trained theoretically in an actual, developing relationship of revolutionary practice in the workers’ movement. In_ these conditions, as was now being shown in the practice of trying to turn the movement to the working class and accept the responsibility of fighting for leadership, formal propaganda agreement, even to the extent of acknowledging verbally the basic theoretical premises of Marxism, actually served as a barrier to the real understanding of the unity of theory and practice. The same ‘theory’ which had ration- alized a propaganda existence before, and which had never been called upon to guide a really revolutionary practice, now provided a_ screen of formal agreement to obstruct change, to obstruct understanding of the 188 living movement of the class struggle. Formal agreement with Marxist principles in fact co-existed with failure to have challenged the deep-going ways of thinking and feeling (i.e, bourgeois idealist philosophy) which tied members of the revolutionary party to fixed ways of life under capitalism. Activism, no less than propa- gandism and abstract ‘pure’ theorizing had its roots in ‘English’ bourgeois tradition. When, therefore, the SLL dele- gates spoke at the pre-Confer- ence about the need to fight for a deepening of the understanding cf dialectical materialism as the theory of knowledge of Marxism, it was precisely to direct the movement towards the funda- mental questions involved in the nature of consciousness, of what is meant by a ‘leap’ in con- sciousness, and of what this means for the stage reached by the Fourth International and its parties in the new stage of the epoch of proletarian revolution which has opened up. When the OCI and Hungarian delegates dismissed this dis- cussion as irrelevant and even dangerous, then the SLL and other delegations realized that their fears of fundamental differ- ences concealed by formal agree- ments on programme were only too well founded. If this hap- pened at the international level, then there was every danger that in the building of sections, in France or any other country, our sections would react to the inter- national crisis and the radicaliza- tion of workers by tail-ending the movement (though of course con- tinuing to state their adherence to revolutionary principles) instead of, by a more intense struggle, selecting and training the best of the new forces in a fight to develop Marxism. The OCI delegates at the pre- Conference did not simply, as they now put it, ‘warn us of a tendency to transform dialectical materialism into an_ ideology’. They told us that dialectical materialism was certainly not a theory of knowledge, and that Marxist theory did not. exist except aS concentrated and fought for in the form of the programme of the revolutionary party. They rested then, as now, on the remark of Marx and Engels in ‘The German Ideology’ that philosophy is surpassed by the extension of science, of revo- lutionary theory and practice, to the sphere of human activity. On these grounds they dis- missed the arguments of the SLL and other sections that a struggle on Marxist philosophy was the basic qualitative task confronting the revolutionary movement. This is a= sophistic distortion of Marx and Engels. The OCI remain indifferent to the fact that Lenin. in his work on philosophy in the early part of World War I, insisted that dialectics as the theory of know- ledge of Marxism was not just a neglected ‘aspect’ of Marxism but was the ‘essence’ of the question.* As for Marx and Engels, they regarded philosophy as ‘sur- passed’ only in so far as it was practised as a system standing above the sciences. There is no question but that Lenin’s work on these questions was crucial to his break with Social-Democracy and the build- ing of a new, communist, Inter- national, and for the October Revolution itself. His enriched understanding of the development of consciousness breaks through decisively in the April Theses and the discussion around them, against the ‘Old Bolsheviks’. His work on ‘State and Revolution’, incomplete when the 1917 Revolution demanded his return to Russia, is directly and decisively influ- enced by the methodological ad- vances he was able to make on the ‘Philosophical Notebooks’ for the 1914-1916 period. Those who reject the thesis that dialectics is the theory of knowledge of Marxism, and that this ‘essence of the question’ is decisive for the period of proletarian revolu- tion, where revolutionary con- sciousness comes into its own, will soon find themselves ques- tioning all the basic tenets of Leninism. And this is precisely what emerges from the OCI’s document on the questions of the united front and on the question of revolutionary class- consciousness. Dialectical Materialism and the OCI We are certainly not say- ing that the SLL has answered all the problems in this field: on the contrary, the first thing is to recognize that a long and con- tinuous struggle is necessary in every section against the dominant bourgeois ideology, which inevitably takes a ‘national’ form. This was, of course, the meaning of Trotsky’s deadly serious warning to the Socialist Workers’ Party in the United States on the necessity of a conscious struggle against the dominant American philosophy, pragmatism. The French Trotskyists have neglected to take up any fight against the school of ‘Marxism’ * ‘Dialectics is the theory of knowledge of (Hegel and) Marxism. This is the “aspect” of the matter (it is not “an aspect” but the essence of the matter), to which Plekhanov, not to speak of other Marxists, paid no attention.’ (Emphasis in original.) Lenin: ‘On the Question of Dia- lectics’, Collected Works Vol. 38, p. 362. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p044] in France (actually a Stalinist compromise with ‘national’ tradi- tions in the name of a revolu- tionary heritage from Jacobinism and the Enlightenment). This school is based, precisely, on playing down. the decisive break from 18th century’ French materialism that was necessary for Marxism to be born. Unless this philosophical struggle is fought out and deepened in the course of a battle against the way that bourgeois ideology today - still strengthens the hold of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, then ‘Marxists’ and ‘Trotskyists’ in France will continue to pub- lish books, articles and resolu- tions which look like Marxism, which rehearse the ‘programme’ with great expertise and with the most impeccable Trotskyist phrases, but without making any development of Marxism in theory or practice. Marxism—here we see it once again—is not seen from the standpoint of a theory of know- ledge, of the contradictory de- velopment of consciousness in struggle, but as the ideological expression of the interests of the working class. This one-sided view of the relation between Marxism and the working class is in fact very little different in its basic conception from the theory of knowledge which the pre-Marxiam French materialists held. These materialists, to the limited extent that they applied their theories to history ex- plained ideology in terms of ‘utility’ in ensuring the interests or happiness of those who em- braced the ideas. If those who call themselves Marxists conceive of Marxism simply as the expression of the nature and struggle of the work- ing class, they do not go beyond this. Roger Garaudy, for example, writing about the French mater- ialists and Marxism, explained that the latter could be a more consistent materialism because of the collectivist and non- exploitative character of the pro- letariat and its need for an out- look free of mystification: ‘Materialism is the ideological expression of the action and struggles of the working class.’ This has nothing to do with Marxism. Garaudy expands his explanation: ‘Here we discover at its very origin the fundamental weak- ness of all our precursors: not one of them, before Marx, set out his socialist or communist doctrine founding it consistently on the positions of the working class. For them, materialism was never the ideological expression of the action and struggles of the working class. What essen- tially distinguishes them from Marx is that they wanted to de- duce materialism from this or that stage of the progress of the sciences instead of seeing in it the necessary principle of the action and struggles of the work- ing class. This attitude con- demned them to leave idealism its share: it will always be the same if one tries to make of materialism a necessity arising from thought and not from action. To deduce materialism from an idea or system of ideas is to subordinate it to something not the same as it, to descend into metaphysics and finally into idealism. ‘Marx gave to the working class and to philosophy the method necessary to escape from these illusions. Henceforth we have a measure with which to judge social doctrines and philo- sophical works: their value is a function of the weapons which they provide for escaping all mystification.’* The purpose of this quotation, let us say before the screaming starts, is not to make an amal- gam of Garaudy and Stephane Just. They are, of course, politi- cally different, opposed to each other, in their whole political course. But we are here talking about what Engels called ‘the theoretical front’ in one of its sectors, the vital sector of philosophy. Garaudy manages to make of Marx a continuator of the materialists of the 18th century bourgeois enlightenment, but able to be consistent because he- based himself on the specific interests of the working class. The French materialists of the 18th century prided themselves on tearing away the veils of illusion and unreason, particularly in their religious and_ political forms, but, according to Garaudy, only a philosophy based on the working class, which has no system of exploitation to intro- duce, can really provide the basis for destroying illusions. Such explanations of class and ideology would not be out of place in the many books and Magazines of ‘sociology’ from which ‘Marxists’ in France find it impossible to break, and which neither the OCI nor anyone else has theoretically challenged. Stephane Just, writing for the OCI, in his own way speaks very similarly to Garaudy: ‘Marxist method only exists through its content which inte- grates all the moments of the class struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation. It is in this sense that the programme of the socialist revolution concen- trates Marxism and that the de- fence of Marxist theory can only be the defence of programme, i.e., the struggle to resolve the crisis of leadership.’ * Roger Garaudy: ‘Les Sources Francaises du Socialisme Scienti- figue’, revised edition, 1949, p. 277. Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 4 Certainly it is only in the struggle for the revolution that the fight for Marxism has any meaning, but this struggle de- mands a defence of Marxism in the realms of philosophy, sociology, etc. as well as at the level of politics as such. The youth in the AJS are being edu- cated in the spirit of Just’s dis- tortions, and this is the meaning of the opposition to the Young Socialists’ amendment at Essen. We have the representative of the AJS, discussing the Essen amendment at the subsequent meeting of the ‘Liaison Com- mittee’ set up there, saying: ‘There is no ideological battle in itself, no Marxist theory in it- self, but a programme which is the expression, concentrated through the Marxist method, of the totality of the struggles of the proletariat, and upon which an organization fights.’ We are not saying, of course, that there is such a thing as ‘ideological battle in itself’ or ‘Marxist theory in itself’, as we have explained in describing the differences at the pre-Conference. But we are certainly fighting against those who seem to under- stand the unity of theory and practice as meaning that theory no longer exists. We are certainly saying that dialectical materialism is the theory of knowledge of Marxism, of the path of struggle from error to truth—not to a ‘final’ truth, but continually making advances through contra- dictory struggle to real know- ledge of the objective world as we fight to change it and change ourselves as part of it. Because this is rejected by the OCI leadership, insofar as they are represented in the document be- fore us and in the writings of Stephane Just, they leave out the conflict between the de- velopment of scientific conscious- ness in the revolutionary party and the spontaneous conscious- ness of the working class. Stalinism Revisionism & the OCI The excursions of the OCI into historical questions of the movement in this connection are very instructive. So anxious are they to refute the Essen amend- ment that they contradict even their own recent writings. According to the OCI document, the Essen amendment errs by saying that revisionism can be found behind the development of Stalinism. ‘No,’ they say, ‘be- hind each development of oppor- tunism in the workers’ movement there is not “ideology” in the form of the revision (rejection) of Marxism, there is the reality of social forces in conflict, the class struggle expressed in the centre of the working-class move- ment itself, which is both the terrain and the stakes in the 189

[p045] struggle. This created justifica- tions in the form of a revision of Marxism.’ And, on the inter- pretation, Stalin’s revision of Marxism ‘expresses the interests of the bureaucratic caste which is taking over political power...’. Once again we have develop- ments in ideas interpreted purely as expressions of the interest of ‘social forces’. This general truth is used to deny any role to the conscious struggle for theory. Trotsky once compared the re- volutionary party to a ‘labora- tory’, in which there certainly was, and must be, a temporary but definite abstraction of cer- tain elements of the changing reality, and definite theoretical effort, before understanding of the reality of the class struggle could be taken further in revo- lutionary practice, the results are to further enrich theory. On the other side, revisionism, like any other idealist develop- ment, has theoretical roots, epistemological roots in un- resolved theoretical traditions, etc., and only under certain con- ditions do these traditions get the chance to develop and be- come ‘anchored’, as Lenin puts it, in definite class interests.! Stalin’s revisionism (the doctrine of socialism in one country) was the product of Stalin’s (and others) limited theoretical out- look when encountering the in- tractable realities of the early 1920s. It became ‘anchored’ in the definite interests of the bureaucracy, and could have come to dominance only on the basis of this bureaucracy and the social and cultural conditions which sustained it. For this revisionism, and the bureaucratic caste whose interests it adequately represented, to suc- ceed, it was necessary first to achieve what Trotsky called the ‘inner corrosion’ of the Bolshevik Party itself, and that process was above all one of ensuring the destruction of the _ theoretical basis of the Party (in the cam- paign against the theory of per- manent revolution and the dis- crediting of Trotsky as a previous opponent of Lenin). The dialectical relationship be- tween ideas and the classes or fractions of classes whose in- terests they serve is entirely wiped out by the OCI’s mechani- 1 ‘Human knowledge is not a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a_ series of circles, a spiral. Any frag- ment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (trans- formed, one-sidedly) into an in- dependent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is an- chored by the class interests of the ruling classes.’ Lenin: Vol. 38, p. 363.) 190 cal and ‘sociological’ theory that ideological changes are simply ‘justifications’ of social interests. Revolutionary consciousness de- veloped in a struggle to grasp the changes occurring through the struggle of opposites in the objective world; this struggle and change is fundamental, whereas the identity of opposites is tem- porary and transitory. It should at least be recorded in this discussion that in Step- hane Just’s ‘Defence of Trot- skyism’, published earlier in 1971, which contains many of the mis- taken theories which recur in the OCI document, he did at least state a correct position on this particular matter. Answer- ing the Pabloites, who ‘explained’ the rise of Stalin by ‘objective’ conditions, Just replied: ‘It is not so-called “objective” conditions which lie at the origin of the isolation of the Russian proletariat and of the Bolshevik Party, of the degeneration of the workers’ state and of the Bol- shevik Party, but so-called “sub- jective’ conditions which lie at the origin of these so-called “objective” conditions.’ Even though the use of the adjective ‘so-called’ reflects ex- traordinary confusion (as we shall see, Just obliterates the opposition of subjective and objective), this quotation is quite correct about the origins of the degeneration of the workers’ state. At this point, since the OCI promises another document on the disputed questions, we will make one specific request: let them say categorically, is dialectics the theory of know- ledge of Marxism or not? And if it is not, what were the con- sequences, in Lenin’s theory and practice, of his mistaken concep- tions on this score. We do not expect this request to be favour- ably considered, and yet the author of the OCI document has in fact already embraced a for- mulation by Stephane Just which, without referring to Lenin as such, directly challenges his basic idea. Stephane Just corrects Lenin The OCI document tells “As S. Just recalls in his “Defence of Trotskyism”: Con- sidered as a historical and or- us ganic process, the formation of. the class-consciousness of the proletariat depends on _ the analysis of the development of the class struggle and ends the metaphysical discussions on whether class-consciousness is brought in from the outside or not, and on whether the van- guard is self-appointed or not’’,’ Here we have arrived at the crucial link between the philo- sophical and methodological errors of the OCI, on the one hand, and their centrist political tendency on the other. Stressing the unity of the opposites, Marxist theory and_ exploited working class, they ignore the struggle of these opposites in which the unity consists. Just’s ‘organic’ conception serves very well to help recognize any emerging ‘allies’ as more or less legitimate expressions of this organically developing conscious- ness. An extended quotation on this question from fJust’s book shows how, by a series of ration- alistic formulae to ‘integrate’ all the different aspects of the class struggle, the actual dialectic of how consciousness is achieved is abolished. ‘But it is abstraction to con- sider the struggles and organiz- ation of the proletariat outside the totality of the _ social, political and ideological relations in society. They are born and develop as one of the components of the whole history of humanity. They are fed on all this history whose mainspring they become. The struggle of the proletariat against exploitation, the forms of organization which it adopts, concretize the basic contradiction in bourgeois society, but this is expressed in many forms within all classes and social layers in bourgeois society, through con- tradictions which derive from the production relations of that society. ‘The struggies of the proletariat and its organization feed in their turn the social, political and ideological contradictions and antagonisms within bourgeois society. The proletariat maintains complex relations with all the other classes in bourgeois society, their struggles, their antagonisms, their political and ideological relations. There is nothing more stupid than these symmetrical views: Class - consciousness brought into the proletariat form outside its struggles by “good prophets”, bourgeois intellectuals, or the class-consciousness of the proletariat monopolized by horny- handed workers who produce surplus value, with the “good” petty bourgeois or bourgeois having to put themselves humbly at the disposal of these workers and to imitate them. ‘Basically, these systematic points of view reveal the con- tempt of the petty-bourgeois for the proletariat: they make the working class a present of their consciousness and the others imagine a mythical working class made up of workers who are incapable of going beyond the narrow horizon of their immedi- ate exploitations. Fighting against exploitation, trying to break the social relations based on their exploitation, in search of ways and means of organizing, the proletariat builds and develops its consciousness in an_ organic historical process fed by all its previous history and the relations it maintains with all the other social classes, their contradictions, Fourth international Summer 1972

[p046] their antagonisms, the political, social and ideological struggles developed there. Thus petty- bourgeois and bourgeois intellect- uals can break with their class, join the proletariat, participate in the formation and development of its class-consciousness, by bringing the acquired knowledge of other classes and social layers. But the latter are _ radically transformed when they _§ are integrated into the struggle of the proletariat which they enrich. The struggles of the proletariat give them a new content and a new historical dimension.’ Because the proletariat’s role is related to everything else that happens in bourgeois society, and because its existing consciousness is dependent on the end-result of all the interconnections, Just forbids any study of the living struggle whereby the con- tradiction between the working class as objéct and the working class as subject is overcome! No wonder then that he dismisses the central idea of Lenin’s ‘What is to be Done?’ as a ‘metaphysical discussion’! It was precisely against the type of ‘organic’ theory of consciousness put forward by Just that Lenin insisted very firmly on the fact that Marxism as a science was developed on the basis of a conscious theoreti- cal effort by bourgeois intellectu- als to grasp reality at the level of the relations between all the classes, and not at the level of the experience oor _ existing consciousness of the working class. If Just’s ‘organic’ point of view were correct, why would Lenin want to insist that left to itself the proletariat can achieve only trade union consciousness, and that this is bourgeois consciousness? Because, although In their anxiety to oppose this insistence on the fight for Marxist theory, for dialectical materialism, and to make them- selves acceptable to others who dismiss the basic importance of this question, the OCI are forced back on to the use of quotations from Marx in a way which deliberately counterposes general statements of the principles of historical materialism against the specific developments of this theory by Lenin. The document quotes ‘The German Ideology’, attempting to show by this that it is nonsense to talk about fighting for socialist class- consciousness because only the revolution itself can produce from some god’s eye view, or from the point of view of pure reason which has gathered into itself all the determinations (or ‘moments’ as Just has it), the beautiful whole can be seen as integrated, nonetheless from the standpoint of revolutionary practice the task is precisely the struggle for political or socialist consciousness against the ideology imposed by the bourgeoisie and its agencies. such consciousness. (‘A massive transformation of man is necessary for the mass creation of this communist conscious- ness . .. such a transformation can only be wrought through a practical movement, through a revolution. .. .’) This is another sophism. The fight to build the revolu- tionary party on the basis of Marxist theory is the struggle for conscious leadership of the ‘practical movement’ of the prole- tarian revolution. Nor did our original formulation suggest that the fight for consciousness was some abstract one taking place entirely separately from the class struggle. That is a_ distortion. What we said was ‘What was most essential in the preparations of the sections was to develop dislectical materialism in a struggle to understand and to transform the consciousness of the working class in the changing objective conditions.’ (emphasis added). What a_— shameless distortion to quote this and then make jokes about people who want to ‘develop’ dialectical materialism on the model of exercising the muscles.’ These thoroughly anti-Marxist views on the character of dialectical materialism and on the nature of the relation between theory and_ class-consciousness cannot but be associated with a revision of the Marxist positions on the revolutionary party and the relation to the working class. Lenin’s argument on the question of theory being ‘brought from the outside’ was directed to laying the foundations of the revolution- ary party in Russia. Just’s rejection of this as ‘metaphysics’ is directed towards the liquid- ation of the positions of the International Committee, which have been fought for against re- visionism in the Fourth Inter- national. In 1967 the SLL warned the OCI on the political implications of failure to build on the gains of the 1966 Conference. The OCI has now reaped the political harvest. Already by 1967 the OCI presented once again the formula ‘the FI was destroyed under the pressure of hostile social forces.’ (15.5.67) The SLL Central Committee replied (19.6.67): ‘The OCI delegates voted [at the 1966 Conference] for the SLL’s amendment that the FI was not déstroyed. It is not possible to go forward and build revolu- tionary parties except on this basis. Those who left the Con- ference on this issue joined the attack on the SLL by those who have gone over to the camp of bourgeois pacifism and they will never return. We tell the OCI: You cannot separate the return to this formula, together with your attacks on_ centralized organization and the supposed “ultimatism” of the Socialist Labour League. from the line-up Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 4 of revisionist forces on exactly these questions. ‘In the preparation for the Fourth Conference of the Inter- national Committee, as our SLL 9th Conference resolution makes clear, we will fight to reaffirm the decisions and gains of the April 1966 Conference. Having insisted there on the continuity of the Fourth International, rejecting the formula “The Fourth International is dead” as a middle-class, pessimistic rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class and of revolution- ary consciousness, we went on to formulate in the Commission on the tasks of the International Committee, the central principles of the type of Party we build, a Bolshevik party. ‘We stressed that all trade union work, youth work, etc. was subordinated to this task. We _ specifically rejected all “spontaneity” and syndicalist theories of the “organic” or “natural’’ emergence of revolu- tionary parties through struggle.’ Further, we drew the attention of the OCI to the implications of these differences for the develop- ing situation in France itself. It is necessary to quote this section in full, because it shows the continuity in the positions the SLL has taken on the political questions involved, in contrast to the OCI’s caricature of the SLL position as one of abstract theorizing on philosophy: ‘Now the radicalization of the workers in W Europe is proceed- ing rapidly, particularly in France. The election results there, the threat of a return to the political instability of the ruling class in the Fourth Republic, the mount- ing strike struggles, the taking of emergency powers—all these place a premium on revolution- ary preparation. There is always a danger at such a stage of development that a revolutionary party responds to the situation in the working class not in a revolutionary way, but by adapt- ation to the level of struggle to which the workers are restricted by their own experience under the old leaderships, i.e., to the inevitable initial confusion. Such revisions of the fight for the independent party and_ the Transitional Programme are usually dressed up in the disguise of getting closer to the working class, unity with all those in struggle, not posing ultimatums, abandoning dogmatism, etc.’ The indications here for the policy of the OCI in the May- June events, only 12 months later, discussed in our statement of October 24 last are obvious. The ‘working-class united front’ The OCI’s turning its back very deliberately on the theoreti- cal foundations of the building of the revolutionary party, particu- larly in respect of the youth, is the necessary companion of its 191

[p047] distortion of the Leninist policy of united front. The capitulation to spontaneity is the link between these two aspects. Whereas Just wipes out the distinction between spontaneity and _ revolutionary consciousness, calling it ‘meta- physical’, Lenin very deliberately insists on this distinction: ‘The working class spontan- eously gravitates towards socialism: nonetheless, the most widespread [and continuously and diversely revived] bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater degree. ‘Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the work- ing-class movement from this spontaneous, trade unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of the revolutionary social-democracy.’ (Lenin: ‘What is to be Done?’) Once this fundamental distinc- tion is obliterated, and the conscious’ struggle for the development of Marxist theory through conflict with spon- taneously developing conscious- ness (inside as well as outside the Marxist party) ¢s dropped, then the party’s cadres, above all its youth, are raised entirely in a spirit of adaptation to existing centrist and opportunist forces, no matter how much this is hidden behind a screen called ‘working-class united front’. In the last four years, the OCI has staked all its policy on this ‘working-class united front’. In the name of moving forward from abstract proclamations on the united front towards taking into account the actual development of the working class, they have in fact subordinated the building of the independent revolutionary party to the general truth that the working class in struggle first tests out its traditional mass organization. Taken one-sidedly, without concentration on the independent role of the revolu- tionary party, this can only result in becoming a hand-maiden of the existing leadership of the working class. In conditions where the con- tradiction between the needs and demands of the masses and the reformist and Stalinist bureau- cracy becomes extremely acute, then the first consideration is the theoretical preparation of the cadre against all adaptation to spontaneity. At every vital stage of his struggle against Stalinism, Trotsky returned to the essential theoretical preparation of the youth. After explaining the lessons of the anti-Trotskyist campaign of the Stalinists, and outlining the tasks of the opposition, Trotsky concluded: ‘Today the theoretical education of the younger generation is our supreme task.’ (Feb. 7, 1930). Five years later, in the midst of many discussions about’ the 192 united front and the relations between the centrists and the building of the Fourth Inter- national, Trotsky wrote: ‘The task at present is to prepare the cadres of Leninist youth, to raise them to the level of the tasks of our epoch. In this sphere, the requirements are special theoretical clarity, ideo- logical honesty and an irrecon- cilability to opportunism and to diplomacy.: ‘The conservative centrist apparatuses inherited from the past must be prevented from checking the revolutionary development of the proletarian vanguard; that is the task!’ (April 24, 1935.) At Essen we had a clash between this conception on the one hand, and a conception of playing down theoretical prepar- ation and _ ideological indepen- dence of the revolutionary van- guard for the sake of alliances with the remnant of international centrism on the other. Essen was the extreme limit of the attempt of the Socialist Labour League and the IC majority to fight this centrist tendency within the same international organization. Again Trotsky’s words are perfectly apposite: ‘The Bolsheviks have no reason for uniting with the centrists. Hollow international parades are of no use to us. Revolutionists do not flirt with centrists at con- ferences but carry on tireless day-to-day work against them in their own countries, and they participate in their own revolu- tionary international conferences, where they do not blow soap- bubbles but discuss and decide the questions of the class struggle.’ (April 24, 1935.) The OCI has fallen into the trap of converting the tactic of the united front into its whole policy. This can only mean that the independent programme of the revolutionary party, while repeated on _ suitable solemn occasions, becomes no longer the actual guiding line of the party, fought for by an independent cadre which constantly deepens its theoretical understanding of the historic significance of this programme through participation in the class struggle and study of the living movement. It is clear from all the publications and campaigns of the OCI (as well as from the theoretical positions we have already discussed) that the youth in the OCI are _ being trained exclusively around this mistaken conception of the united front; they are trained to believe that by campaigning consistently as the only principled fighters for the unity of all working-class organizations against the bourgeois government, and for a government of these workers’ organizations, they will win the best elements in the working class and in this way build their party. fs this policy sufficient to build the revolutionary party? On the contrary: precisely at a time when the sections of the FI are emerg- ing in struggle from a generation of isolation and the dominance of propaganda methods, all the well- known dangers from the necessary tactic of united front come to the fore and must be consciously guarded against. Only theoretical training can do that, a theoretical training fought for in the building of our independent resources, our independent political line. What are these dangers? We already know their manifestation at Essen, in the international youth movement. We have al- ready indicated their results in the failure to go beyond the demand for a ‘central strike com- mittee’ in 1968. These results could have been avoided. The warnings against these dangers abound in the theoretical work of Lenin and Trotsky. The fact that théy went unheeded is a sure indication of the weight of hostile class pressures behind the line of the OCI leadership. Trotsky, writing and speaking at the time of the Third and Fourth Con- gresses of the Communist Inter- national, (often spécifically about the French Communist Party) de- voted many thousands.of words to the question of the united front, but never once went beyond describing it and advocat- ing its use as a tactic. (‘First Five Years of the Comintern’, Vol. II). Nor was this tactic applicable in all cases or at all stages in the development of the revolutionary movement. ‘In cases where the Com- munist Party still remains an organization of an_ insignificant minority, the question of its con- duct on the mass-struggle front does not assume decisive practical and organizational significance. In such conditions, most actions remain under the leadership of the old organiz- ations which by reason of their powerful traditions continue to play the decisive role. Similarly, the problem of the united front does not arise in countries where ... the CP is the sole leading organization of the toil- ing masses.’ Lessons of history We cannot simply take phrases from the history of the communist movement about the necessity for the united front, and transplant them as timeless truths into the present. It is always a question of understand- ing definite and necessary stages in the development of the revo- lutionary party in relation to the development of the working class and its needs. This is what Lenin explained in the discus- sion on tactics at the Third Comintern Congress (1921): ‘The first stage in our struggle Fourth International Summer 1972

[p048] was to create a genuine com- munist party, so that we could know with whom we were talk- ing, and in whom we could have complete confidence. At the first and second congresses we said: “Out with the centrists!’ . . . But now we have to go a bit further. The second stage, after we have created the party, must be to learn how to prepare the revolution. In many countries we have not even begun to learn how to win the leadership .. .’ The sections of the _ Inter- national Committee are not, of course, at the same stages of development as the parties of the Comintern. These sections, as part of the Fourth Inter- national, have had their own specific evolution, with its own specific stages, in the fight against Stalinism and revisionism, in objective conditions different from those of the years after World War I. But we can certainly say that these sections have defended Trotskyism and have developed as revolutionary parties, and will continue to do so, only on the basis that the building of independent revolutionary par- ties is the central task of our whole epoch. These parties must indubitably work out the way to use the united front tactic in each country. But the OCI is making the united front a principle to which the independence of the van- guard and the development of Marxist theory are subordinated. Under today’s conditions this is equivalent to a new and more sophisticated form of the liquida- tionism which has been the main content of revisionism in the Fourth International. The history of the struggle for the Fourth International is strewn with warnings against these dangers which exist in the united front tactic, and for good reason. Representative are the following extracts from Trotsky’s writings in Germany in 1931- 1932, writings in which he deals fully with the question of the united front, and indeed where the main emphasis was on the necessity of the united front. His warnings therefore carry special weight: ‘That a workers’ party is com- pelled to carry out the policy of the united front—that is not to be gainsaid. But the policy of the united front has its dangers. Only an experienced and a tested revolutionary party can carry out this policy successfully. In any case, the policy of the united front cannot serve as a programme for a_ revolutionary party. And in the meantime, the entire activity of the SAP is now being built on it. As a re- sult, the policy of the united front is being carried over into the party itself, that is, it serves to smear over the contradictions between the various tendencies. And that is precisely the funda- mental function of centrism. ‘To reduce the whole policy of the proletariat to agreements with the reformist organizations or, still worse, to the abstract slogan of “unity”, is something that only spineless centrists of the stripe of the Socialist Workers Party (SAP) can do. For the Marxists, the united front policy is merely one of the methods in the course of the class struggle. Under certain conditions this method becomes completely useless; it would be absurd to want to conclude an agreement with the reformists for the socialist revolution. But there are conditions under which the rejection of the united front may ruin the revolutionary party for many decades to come... .”’ There could be no clearer warning to the OCI: ‘. .. the policy of the united front can- not serve as a programme for a revolutionary party ... the en- tire activity of the SAP is now being built on it.’ And this is centrism. The extent to which this process has gone in the OCI is graphically illustrated by the following extract from their latest policy statement: ‘What government deserves confidence of the workers?’ (Extract from the political re- port for the conference of Feb- ruary 5-6.) ‘In a political situation where the struggles of the workers, which are necessary for the im- provement of their wages and pensions, against the worsening of their living and working con- ditions, against unemployment, do not bring the anticipated re- sults, increased prices, super- explcitation in all its forms im- posed by the government on behalf of the employers, inevit- ably wipe out every success. ‘In a _ situation where every serious action, even if, we repeat, its point of departure is a par- tial demand, leads to the posing of the fundamental question of power, each’ organization is obliged to formulate and to pre- sent to the workers the govern- mental solution which corres- ponds to the interests of the workers. The will of the work- ing masses and the youth to win satisfaction of their demands and hopes cannot be doubted, but in order that this will can be realized, an immediate objective is necessary: replace the Pom- pidou-Chaban-Delmas govern- ment with another government. A government which would re- spond positively to the aspira- tions of the masses, because it would rest for support on the mobilization of the workers in struggle against the employers and the state. ‘The working class expects clear answers from its organiza- tions, the conquest of govern- mental power cannot consist only of a change of ministerial per- Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 4 sonnel. It is not general phrases against the monopolies, but only through a political and organic break with the French capitalists and all their bourgeois parties that an orientation can be made in deeds and not just words to- wards a change of government. We shall not tire of saying this over and over again, of repeating it afresh, certain of expressing the will of the working masses. ‘It is necessary to define clearly the political content and form of the government corres- ponding to the aspirations of the workers, because it is this government, leaning on _ the masses in struggle against the employers and the state, which will decide what measures to take. If it is not said clearly: ‘not one capitalist minister, not a single representative of the ‘bourgeois parties will sit along- side us in the government,’ then we would be accepting class- collaboration, and nothing would be done to advance along the road struggle against the high cost of living and unemployment, for the true satisfaction of demands. ‘The only politically respons- ible thing to do is to say to the leaders of the mass organizations who claim to speak for the in- terests of the workers: ‘ To accept the presence of represen- tatiyes of the bourgeoisie in the government, even in_ limited number, is to reject any pros- pect of making any inroads into property rights in the major means of production, to open the door wide for runaway deterioration of living and work- ing conditions, to leave un- touched the police state con- structed by Marcellin to defend the interests of capital. ‘It is only on this basis that the government of united workers’ organizations, for which the workers are ready to fight, can meet the needs of the workers and the youth. The necessity of the common struggle for the workers’ government flows from the decisions taken by the government, the conse- quences of which will be to reinforce the general offensive of capitalism against the work- ing class. The workers’ govern- ment is an economic necessity because the struggle of the working class to defend itself against exploitation has become apolitical struggle for its demands. ‘It is necessary to drive out, and with the utmost speed, the bourgeois government and _ the bourgeois ministers. The unity of all workers wanting to fight capitalism, of the organizations which bring them together and of the leaders who speak in their name, must impose _ the workers’ government. For this objective, it is necessary to 193

[p049] combine and unite in a powerful united front of workers’ organ- izations, which must undertake to carry out a real struggle against the bourgeois government. Socialism is not in some distant and obscure future; the will to fight for the workers’ govern- ment represents today the im- mediate step to be realized, for the lessons which great masses are assimilating more and more consists in this: if the power of capital is not overturned, exploit- ation cannot be abolished.’ (‘In- formations Ouvrieérs’, January 5- 12, 1972.) These are questions which French Trotskyists cannot avoid. Is the policy of united front sufficient for the building of the revolutionary party? The history of the Fourth International gives an unequivocal No! What is the content of the united front? It must not be simply a matter of expressing generally .the aspira- tions of the masses for unity, but must state firmly the area of united front agreement in relation to the programme of the revolutionary party, which expresses the revolutionary in- terests of the working class. - The OCI advances no such programme, and confines itself to the general slogan of a workers’ government formed by the existing workers’ organiza- tions. Without such a programme the door is opened for the social democrats and _ Stalinists to arrive at a false ‘united front’ which_is nothing more than reformist treachery. Again this is not a new question in tne history of our movement. Trot- sky wrote in the summer of 1934, in France: ‘We criticized Naville for not concretizing the revolutionary 194 content of the united front, thus permitting the two bureau- cracies to seize upon this slogan without great risk.’ With this distortion of the tactic of the united front, the OCI goes over to the essence of the revisionism which has for 20 years attacked the Fourth International. The _ difference here is not one of emphasis but of principle. Trotsky, writing on the ILP in 1933, condemned - . a united front made not for. one single practical action but. . ‘ . for collaboration in general...’. There cannot be the slightest doubt about where Trotskyists place their essential concentra- tion. Every day of the history of our movement, especially in the fight against Pabloite revisionism, has reinforced Trotsky’s warning: ‘The policy of a united front with reformists is obligatory, but it is of necessity limited to par- tial tasks. There can be no thought of making the socialist revolution in a united front with reformist organizations. The prin- cipal task of a revolutionary party consists in freezing the working class from the influence of reformism.’ (September 1933.) The ‘government of united workers’ organizations’ in which the OCI wants to participate is clearly a government of the bourgeois state. Revisionism opens the door to reformism. If this point has had to be explained at length, it is because the consequences of error on this score are truly enormous. For the sake of a practical ‘alliance’ with Lora of the Boli- vian POR, the OCI leaders ‘re- constructing’ the Fourth Inter- national in Latin America after their own prescriptions chose to forget even their own criticisms of the POR’s capitulation to Stalinism in 1970. They adopted a position on the Bolivian re- volution which totally liquidates the independence of the working class and the revolutionary van- guard, not merely into the trade union bureaucracy and the Stalinist apparatus, but into the bourgeois nationalism of Torres. All the demagogic talk from the OCI about the ‘universal republic of Soviets’, with the Bolivian Popular Assembly as its first manifestation, all the talk about the permanent revolution, is disguise for the awful reality that the working class was placed under the domination of bour- geoisie. Because of this the counter-revolution was able to isolate and repress the working class. without the Popular As- sembly being able to carry out any real mobilization of the masses. Lora and the Assembly sup- ported the Torres regime, they did not prepare for its overthrow in any way; and finally, with the counter-revolution at the gates, the POR itself appealed for the arming of the masses ... by Torres! There could be no more fit- ting end to this reply. Lora’s party took to its logical and practical conclusion the oppor- tunistic opposition to theory entailed in the positions of the OCI. It is time to draw all the lessons of this experience, in line with those of the Belgian General Strike. of the Ceylon coalition and of Algeria. With such policies and programmes, a split in the International Committee of the Fourth International was shown to be absolutely necessary and inevitable. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p050] INTERNATIONAL COMMITTE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

[p051] THE INTERNATIONAL Committee of the Fourth International held its fourth international conference from April 10-15. Delegates from eight countries participated, some of them travelling many thousands of miles. First concern of the confer- ence was the urgency given to its proceedings by the trans- formed economic and _ political changes in the months since the August 15 measures of United States President Nixon. In the US and in the capital- ist countries of Europe, the working class have moved into struggle under conditions where the question of taking power cannot be avoided. Only the forces of the Inter- national Committee have fought, all through the 1950s and 1960s, to prepare for these changes. Every other ‘socialist’ and ‘Com- munist’ tendency — including some falsely claiming the name Trotskyists—based themselves on the theory that the capitalist boom had made it no longer pos- sible for the workers of the advanced countries to achieve the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. As the conference resolution on international perspectives points out, this theory of ‘neo- capitalism’, a capitalism without fundamental contradictions, was only the surface impression of middle-class opponents of Marxism. With this theory they turned to other social forces — the Stalinist bureaucracy, the colonial middle-class _ nationalists, the peasantry, and finally, in 1968, the students—as the basis for the overthrow of capitalism. This was really the politics of protest and radical propaganda in the capitalist countries. Since May-June 1968 in France, the working class itself has thrown into chaos and confusion all those who based themselves on these revisions of Marxism. Consequently, only the Inter- national Committee is able to put forward a_ revolutionary inter- national perspective at this stage. The conference Manifesto (printed tomorrow in Workers Press) urges revolutionaries in every country to recognize and to act upon their historic re- sponsibilities, to fight in every struggle of the working class for the building of revolutionary Marxist parties. Now the full fury of the crisis has been unleashed by Nixon’s measures, it iS necessary to pre- pare for the most. explosive economic and _ political conse- quences, says the Manifesto. Trade war becomes’ massive slump. Great industrial and financial concerns quake and crash. Whole national economies face break- 196 down. War tempts big business as the solution, and at the same time frightens them. Revolution and counter-revolution appear first in one country, then in another. The reformist and _ Stalinist bureaucracies, tied to imperial- ism, can only lead the masses to disastrous defeats. - These same bureaucracies assis the imperialists who are driven by intensified competition to turn upon the working class in their ‘own’ countries to destroy their basic rights and organizations. Never was it more urgent to build working-class revolutionary parties based on the Transitional Programme of the Fourth Inter- national. This period now brings out the full meaning of the long struggle, since 1953, of the International Committee against Pabloite revisionism, which abandoned the building of such parties. In this overall perspective, the conference proceeded to discuss in detail the work of the national sections. It is a question, in each country, of working out a concrete programme of struggle to enable the working class to emerge as a politically independ- ent force, by breaking it from the present domination of the Stalinists in countries such as Greece, France or Italy, and from the social democracy in other countries, such as Britain. CONFERENCE also discussed the work of Trotskyists in the United States, although the Workers League, which works in sympathy with the IC, is prevented by US law (the Voorhis Act) from join- ing the Fourth International. In this presidential election year, the conference considered that the long-term fight for a US labour party based on the trade unions could be and must be taken forward decisively. Not only are US trade union- ists being subjected to the in- ternal measures —— pay freeze, legal restrictions—flowing from August 15, but the presidential candidacy of the ultra-right wing George Wallace is the spearhead of a big attack by the capitalist parties on the unions. It was the strength of the American working class, particu- larly in the steel and automobile industries, which made Nixon’s August 15 decision inescapable. It had become impossible to continue with both domestic in- flation and dollar convertibility at fixed prices and parities. In this situation, a campaign to mobilize trade unionists for the formation of a labour party, to defend the unions and the independent interests of the working class, is the correct path for US Marxists. Within this fight for a labour party, the Workers League must battle independently for the socialist programme which it proposes for such a party, and at the same time come forward as the only consistent fighters for the labour party. This central theme, the fight to lead the working class to poli- tical independence, was the basic orientation of the discussions on the work of the sections. On this basis, plans were made for the International Committee to help directly in the work in each country. IN GREECE, for example, the most effective way to break the working class from the counter- revolutionary influence of Stalin- ism is to demand in every struggle that the Stalinist parties break from their treacherous alliances with capitalist parties. Particularly, the Partsalides- Theodorakis Stalinist tendency must be exposed and fought for its extreme turn away from the working class and its demands. FOR IRELAND, the conference discussion emphasized the im- portance of the _ revolutionary unity, not only of the workers of N and S Treland, but of Ireland and Britain in struggle against the Tories in both countries, In a_ Situation such as that prevailing in Ireland, the essential emphasis must be on the recruiting and training of revolutionaries, particularly among the young workers, who are able to break from the nationalism and syndicalism which have always dominated in the Irish working class, neither of them able to challenge the basic ideological grip of the church on the one hand and Protestant Unionism on _ the other. THE CONFERENCE main reso- lution and Manifesto draw atten- tion to the heroic revolutionary struggles of the colonial countries. After bearing the brunt of im- perialist exploitation, repression and war ever since the 1940s, the oppressed peoples are now able to mount an offensive, especially in Bangla Desh and Vietnam, which shakes imperialism to its foundations, and now combines with the struggle in the advanced countries. All those who dismissed Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution as outdated now find it confirmed on an international scale. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p052] Mat: ‘nN mum ANENINIE WITH OF ALL NS “ Discussion on the United States, centred around the need for a labour party \aRE id TAM EAT \ OF} WAR. WELAI\S \ AND UNEMPLONMEN) \BUILO A LABOR PRR" Wee \ 4 NRERS LEAGUE ae atl In these colonial countries, _ the qualitative task of building Trotskyist parties founded on the fight to develop Marxist theory presents itself with equal urgency to the situation in Europe and America. CONFERENCE discussed __ the work of its section in Ceylon (the Revolutionary Communist League), where the degeneration and revision of Marxism in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (which joined the capitalist coalition in 1964 while still affiliated to the Pabloite ‘United Secretariat’!) 4th International Congress had led to open betrayal to im- perialism. Conference carried unani- mously a resolution condemning the imprisonments in Ceylon, carried out by a government in which renegade ex-‘Trotskyists’ participate with Stalinists and capitalist parties. ANOTHER resolution concerned the struggle in Argentina. It condemned the campaign of kid- napping and individual terrorism which culminated in the shooting of the hostage Fiat representa- tive, Sallustro. Carried out by a_ tendency claiming to be __ Trotskyist (actually affiliated to the Paris Unified Secretariat), this action completely contradicts the pro- gramme and methods of struggle of Marxist parties, the principles fought for by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Right at the point where the industrial workers of Argentina are building up mass actions, this middle-class individualist terror- ism avoids the fundamental problems of leadership and mobilization of the class, substi- tuting for it personal heroism and ‘propaganda by deed’ and opening the door to savage re- pressions. 197

[p053] IN CONSIDERING the future work of its youth commission (set up in 1966) the conference drew attention to the split which has occurred in the International Committee after the international youth rally which met in Essen, W Germany, last June. The AJS_ (Socialist Youth Alliance, youth organization of the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste [OCI], then the French section of the IC) at that rally put forward the programme of setting up a centrist inter- national youth organization. _ This involved their rejecting an amendment from the Young Socialists, which called for the fight to develop dialectical materialism as the only basis for a revolutionary Trotskyist youth movement. THE CONFERENCE dealt at length with the political lessons of this split. Essen had been followed by the dispute over Bolivia. There, the counter- revolutionary coup which over- threw the nationalist regime of Torres and bloodily repressed the working class had cruelly ex- posed the descent into centrism of the POR (Revolutionary Workers Party) led by Guillermo Lora and sharing the political conceptions of the OCI. At this point, the OCI, far from pulling back from its dangerous positions, persisted in them and solidarized with Lora against the International Com- mittee. The conference endorsed the positions taken by the IC in breaking from the revisionist leadership of the OCI. It would be impossible for revolutionary Marxists in this period to co- exist in the same international organization as those whose false theories and opportunist actions prepare defeats for the working class. IN PLANNING for the future, commissions at the conference gave guidance to comrades struggling to establish new sec- tions in places as far away as Australia. The international summer school was planned, in which several hundred comrades from many countries will partici- pate. One of the main issues at this school will be the history of the Fourth International and _ the International Left Opposition. A special commission was appointed to begin this work. They, and the individual sections, will bring together the prelimi- nary results by the summer. This is no academic pursuit: the history of the International em- bodies the theoretical lessons of all the vital experiences of the working class in our epoch. Another resolution on future tasks instructed the International Committee to draft rules for its functioning founded on _ the original statutes of the Fourth International (1938) which would facilitate centralized work and guidance to the national sections. IN THE five days of the con- ference, delegates worked together, not in an atmosphere of mutual compliments and abstract schematic formulations, but rather in an intensive struggle to examine every problem to its roots, by relating it to the great historical transformations in the objective situation and _ the theoretical struggle made urgent by these changes. In this sense, the Fourth Con- ference of the International Committee ended on a note of high revolutionary optimism, an optimism tempered by determina- tion, above all else to devote every nerve and every muscle to the task outlined by Leon Trotsky: to resolve the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class, the only road to resolving the historical crisis of humanity caused by decaying capitalism. 198 Fourth International Summer 1972

[p054] oe MANIFESTO CONFERENCE OF THE. INTERNATIONAL FOURTH INTERNATIONAL —