Reply to a Splitting Act: For the Defence of the International Committee! For the Reconstruction of the Fourth International!

[p029] of the International Communist Organization (for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International) Reply to a splitting Act: For the Defence of the International Committee! Continued from Fourth International Vol 7 No 2 Winter 1971-1972 For the Reconstruction of the Fourth International! Workers Press, the daily paper of the Socialist Labour League in the November 5 issue, and the ‘Bulletin’ weekly crgan of the Workers League of the USA, dated November 8, published a document entitled ‘Declaration of the International Committee of the Fourth International’ (Major- ity). This document was adopted on October 24 at the end of a meet- ing attended by, according to the signers, representatives of the following organizations: Socialist Labour League (Great Britain). The Workers League (USA), League for a Workers Vanguard (Ireland), International Workers Leaque (Greece), and a German group ‘Sozialistiche Arbeiter Bund’ formed by elements ex- pelled from the German Trotsky- ist organization, IAK, for refusing to obey in action the discipline of the organization.) The title of this document is in itself a flagrant political false- hood. There cannot be any ‘majority’ of the International Committee any more than there can be a ‘minority’ since there was no meeting of the Inter- national Committee. The factional meeting of October 24 was held in fact with- out informing the OCI, the League of Revolutionary Hun- garian Socialists (LSRH), the Revolutionary Workers Party of Bolivia (POR), and the Workers Marxist League (LOM) of Mexico. The document which came out i, It must be noted that this German group is only men- tioned as a si) ‘er in the ‘Bul- letin’ of the Workers’ League. It is omitted in the Workers Press. 174 of this meeting was not sent to the sections of the International Committee before being made public. The purpose of this document is to break up the framework of the International Committee, to break up the discussion and not to provide the basis for a serious discussion. Therefore, as such, it is not so much a question of an answer, but a Clarification: this is the purpose of the present declaration. All the same this document represents by itself an element of the very discussion that it wants to prevent: this discussion will be carried out and the Central Com- mittee of the OCI will publish next a text which will answer the basic questions posed by the present stage of the fight for the reconstruction of the Fourth International. Who wants to break up the International Committee? The first chapter of the text adopted on October 24 is called ‘A New Period for the Trotskyist Movement’. A. flamboyant headline for such a pitiful attempt to break up the International Committee founded in 1953 to defend Trot- skyism, the programme of the Fourth International against the liquidationists. The whole argument of this chapter is dictated by the follow- ing conclusion: ‘There is the International Ccemmittee of the Fourth Inter- naticnal resting on the found- aticns laid down by Trotsky in 1938, the first four Congresses of the Third International and all the work of the IC since 1953, particularly the decisions of the 1966 conference. And there is the bogus “IC for the reconstruction ef the Fourth International’, re- presented by the OCI and the Hungarian section, who want to regroup with centrists against the Fourth International. This split, and not the Bolivian revolution and the Bolivian POR is the basic issue.’ To believe the authors of this document, the OCI and the LSRH have thus created the split by publicly attacking the SLL and the Workers League in company with Lora (whose organization is supposedly not affiliated with the IC) and in holding a meeting where comrade Stéphane Just abusively designated himself the title of Secretary of the IC, etc., all in able to avoid discussing the ‘fundamental questions’. What terrible crimes! Suppose for a minute that the formal excuses used by the signers of the October 24 Declar- ation are well founded: OCI and the LSRH committed a splitting act in relation to the IC. What then was the duty of the other sections and especially of the most important among them, the SLL? To propose a plenary meet- ing of the IC as soon as possible, to place those who threatened the unity of the IC before their responsibilities, to force them to make a retraction or else make a clear break. The way to pro- ceed was certainly not to hold a secret meeting with four sections of the International Committee and then to try and make it appear that the others had taken the initiative to split. But it only seems to be illog- ical. The strange method used by Fourth International Summer 1972

[p030] the leadership of the SLL who initiated the October 24 meeting can be explained by the inaneness of the excuses and by a panicky flight from ‘fundamental dis- cussion’. Let us re-establish the facts, the best way to give politics its proper rights. For more than two years—and especially since the pre-conference of the July 1970 of the Inter- national Committee—the leader- ship of the SLL has been multi- plying its efforts to prevent any discussion on the ‘fundamental question’, that is, on the con- crete content of the present stage of the struggle for the re- construction of the Fourth International. In September 1969, the OCI submitted a political text, ‘For the Reconstruction of the 4th International’ for discussion. In July 1970 a pre-conference of the IC sections and groups associated with it was held, a step towards an international conference re- grouping organizations, groups and militants who base them- selves on the Transitional Pro- gramme. The OCI text was the only document submitted to the discussion. The SLL delegation began by affirming that the heart of the problem was ‘Marxist philosophy’. Then they declared that the OCI text was correct in its overall line, but needed some amendments. Then they declared that the text was unacceptable. Finally, they asked, due to ‘lack of preparation’ (when it meant taking a stand on a text in their possession for nine months) that the vote be put off until the second session of the pre-con- ference. They proposed that this session take place in October. The OCI delegation, fighting to preserve and_ strengthen’ the International Committee, accepted this report, taking into account the political difficulties of the sections. But—by a com- mon proposal of the OCI and the SLL—a statement was voted on which provided a framework to continue the discussion and which characterized the OCI text as a basis for discussion in line with the principles of the Fourth International. Since July 1970, the leadership of the SLL has refused to call the second session of the pre-con- ference. Instead it appealed to the leading centre of the liquidators of the Fourth Inter- national, to the ‘Unified Secre- tariat’ of Mandel and company to propose a common conference in terms not only opposed to the decisions of the pre-conference but contrary to the meaning of the whole battle of the Inter- national Committee, proof of which is the article of its general secretary Gerry Healy in the September 8 issue of the Workers Press. At that point a clear and rapid Bolivia, August 1971: workers fight (above) armed only with dynamite. reply by the OCI Central Com- mittee retarded the development of this dangerous tendency. But that it was able to reveal itself to this extent shows the serious- ness of the oscillations of the SLL leadership which has led the SLL today, with the document of October 24, to become the vehicle of conceptions close to those of the Pabloites to the point where the Pabloites run out to distri- bute it as widely as possible. Since this episode, the SLL leadership intensified its obstruc- tionist attitude, only to come out of it in order to launch a deliber- ate offensive against the unity of the International Committee, with a disloyal and slanderous attack against the POR of Bolivia: Tim Wohlforth’s article in the August 30 issue of the ‘Bulletin’, reprinted by the Workers Press September 8, and in the October 24 document ‘Our Statement on Bolivia’. The OCI replied publicly to this public offensive, explaining its estimation of the revolution- ary struggle in Bolivia (delaration of the Central Committee of the OCI September 17) without mentioning the SLL or the Workers League. Then, after Comrade Lora wrote to the sections of the IC to ask that the IC hold a meet- ing as soon as possible to discuss a report prepared by the leader- ship of POR; the Lambert com- rades (OCI), Nagy (LSRH), and Lora (POR), signed a_ public declaration which said: ‘What is more natural than for all the difficult problems of the whole international class struggle to be reflected and concentrated within it? What is more natural than for the gigantic world struggle to be expressed in the crisis of all the organizations of the working class? ‘Today, the leadership of cer- Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 3 tain organizations of the Inter- national Committee, like the Socialist Labour League and the Workers League, lacking clarity precisely on the strategy of con- quering power and on the recon- struction of the Fourth Inter- national, have given in to enormous pressures by attacking the POR. ‘The three delegations, meeting in Paris, believe that the dis- cussion is a_ legitimate one, between the sections of the IC as well as within each of these sections, but that the method used by the Workers League and the SLL must be condemned, as they, without even studying the reports from the POR leadership, undertook to publicly condemn the Bolivian section of the IC. ‘This is why the OCI delegation and the Organizing Committee of E Europe support the demand of comrade Lora that the Inter- national Committee meet in plenary session as soon as possi- ble to take a position on the report of the POR on _ the Bolivian revolution and on the tasks of reconstructing the Fourth International.’ No. political reaction to the political problems raised, no answer to the proposals put for- ward, no attempt to set up a discussion, but suddenly October 24, the declaration of a split by a factional meeting, held secretly by four sections of the IC and abusively baptized ‘IC Majority’. In fact, in addition to the fact that we do not see how a major- ity cculd be created within the IC without a meeting, we must bring up the strange manner in which the SLL buiit this ‘Majority’. As it is weil known, the activity of the IC to reconstruct the Fourth International led to the formaticn ot new groups which did not automatically become members of the IC. There 175

[p031] was unanimity on this question as on others. Thus, for example, the German Trotskyist organization, IAK, a sympathizer of the IC, is not a member. The International Committee is thus composed at the present time of the following eight sections: OCI (France), SLL (Great Britain), LSRJ (Hungary), POR = (Bolivia), Revolutionary Communist Party (Ceylon), Workers Marxist League (Mexico), League for a Workers Vanguard (Ireland), and Workers League (USA). There is presently no Greek section, because the latter, which participated in the 1966 Con- ference split into two groups on the eve of the 1967 coup d’etat and conditions have not allowed a study of the motives of this split and an analysis of each group’s policies. Therefore, on Comrade Slaughter’s suggestion, the IC decided to treat the two groups as sympathizers of the IC. As for the POR in Bolivia the issues are clear: an old Trotskyist organization, section of the Fourth International before the split of 1951-1952, the POR re- joined the IC in 1970 on the basis of its experience and its fight against Pabloism in Bolivia itself. It joined after a meeting of the IC which Comrade Lora person- ally attended. Moreover this was officially announced in ‘La Verite’ (No. 547 March 1970) and was not denied by anybody. The legitimate status of the POR in the IC was not challenged in the slightest by the SLL who wrote in No. 545 of its daily paper, Workers Press, August 28, 1971, on the death of a Trotskyist student leader at La Paz during the struggle against Banzer’s troops that: ‘the POR is the Bolivian section of the Inter- national Committee’. It would be inconceivable to think that the POR is a member of the IC when its. militants are felled by fascist bullets and that it is no longer a member when an analysis of its policies must be discussed. In any case these are procedures alien to Trotskyism. Thus, the efforts of the SLL to create, by adding and rejecting, a fictitious majority in the IC do not change the facts: There are only four member organizations of the IC among the organizations which signed the October 24 text. Moreover, and on the question of ‘reconstruction of the Fourth International’ since the October 24 document alludes to the decisions of the 1966 Conference, let us remember that the funda- mental texts of that ‘conference 2. Organization in political soli- darity with the IC, the Work- ers’ League politically has the status of a section, although as an organization it is not affiliated to the IC because of reactionary laws in the USA. 176 (general resolution manifesto and resolution on tasks) were essenti- ally elaborated by the OCI and that they politically legitimize the use of the word ‘reconstruction’. The resolution on __ tasks (adopted unanimously) is more- over entitled ‘Resolution on the Reconstruction of the Fourth International’ and states among other things that: ‘The international conference declares that the Trotskyist move- ment, in the struggle for the reconstruction of the Fourth International, must build the centralized leadership of the world party of socialist revolution in a fight organically linked to the fight in each country for the construction of revolutionary parties leading the revolutionary struggles of the masses. The con- struction of these parties and of the International must be con- ducted on the basis of the expérience and the pursuit of an incessant battle against revision- ism. ‘The IC is composed of repre- sentatives of sections designated by it. At the present stage, the decision of the IC can only be taken by unanimous vote. At this stage, the IC is not pro- claiming itself the centralized leadership of the Fourth Inter- national which must still be constructed.’ Finally, concerning the Secre- tary of the IC, let us simply recall that in light of the diffi- culties the SLL faced in assum- ing responsibility for this post, it was agreed to institute a co- secretariat composed of Com- rades Slaughter and Just. We have insisted at length on aspects which may seem sec- ondary and judicial in order to give a clear place to the political aspect and to show that the formal excuses have nothing to do with reality, but are only traps - aimed .at covering up an organ- izational break without political debate. The essential thing is of course this ‘fundamental discus- sion’ that is spoken of and which naturally includes the experience of revolutionary struggle of the Bolivian proletariat and the policies of the POR for they are at the heart of the debate: the meaning of the ‘imminent revo- luticn’ the question of the struggle for power and the way in which the working class can approach this problem (the United Front, a workers’ and peasants’ government, the institu- tions of dual power and the dic- tatorship of the proletariat). This discussion only has mean- ing for Trotskyists in light of the problems of the reconstruction of the Fourth International which the leadership of the SLL seeks to avoid by wanting to break the frame-work of the IC. We must seek out this discussion, beyond the manoeuvres, the falsehoods and the amalgamisms a criticism of the October 24 document. Split at Essen? ‘Split at Essen’; this is the dramatic title of the second chap- ter of the October 24 document. A split which is supposedly expressed by the fact that ‘the delegates of the OCI, the Hun- garian section, and the LOM of Mexico voted with the centrists and even right-wing organizations (they refer here to the National Students Association of the USA) against an amendment proposed by the majority of the sections of the IC (Ceylon, Ireland, SLL, USA, Greece). We have already explained what this ‘majority’ is. What then happened at Essen? First, we must remember, because some seem to forget it, that it was an international gathering of revolutionary youth which brought together 5,000 partici- pants and representatives of 32 countries. This gathering was called on the basis of an appeal written by the AJS and taken up by the Young Socialists at their January, 1971 Conference at Scarborough. This call, initiated by youth organizations working together with the International Committee was also signed from the beginning by youth organiza- tions which did not consider themselves Trotskyist (like the JCI, youth organization of the POUM). The incontestable success of the Essen meeting was a political success in which the International Committee and its organizations raised the level of the fight for the construction of a Revolution- ary Youth International. In this sense, Cliff Slaughter, speaking in the name of the Central Commit- tee of the SLL, correctly hailed this gathering as ‘a step forward in proletarian internationalism’. The international meeting was preceded by a conference of dele- gates where a resolution was pre- sented and adopted unanimously (including by the Young Social- ists delegation) and ratified the next day by the 5,000 youth présent. Right at Essen, the Interna- tional Committee met to deter- mine its political intervention. Amendments were proposed — moreover, several by the SLL were accepted. But during the conference, the delegates of the SLL and the Young Socialists, breaking with the agreement passed by the IC, presented a new amendment that the OCI delegates considered deeply false. The chairman, Comrade Berg, proposed to consider this amend- ment and to refer it to the Liaison Committee established at Essen, in order to prevent the SLL and YS delegates from being politically crushed. This solution would allow the question to be taken up within the sections of Fourth international Summer 1972

[p032] the IC without a public battle before making a final decision. The YS delegation refused. The majority of the Conference adopted the proposal of the AJS. We must point out, in the inter- ests of historical truth, that the NSA delegates who were only observers, did not take part in the vote. In any case, this is not the essential point. There was not the shadow of a political conces- sion by the OCI, the LSRH or by the POR to centrist elements. Nonetheless the amendment was inadmissible for the OCI. ‘There can be no revolutionary party without revolutionary theory. Behind each opportunist development in the history of the workers’ movement, and especi- ally Stalinism, stands revisionism. ‘The continuity of the struggle for revolutionary Marxist theory in the past, the struggle of the Fourth International and _ the International Committee, was the only basis for the _ initiatives which led to this gathering and for the struggle to construct a revolutionary youth international. ‘Everywhere, revolutionary youth must devote themselves above all to the task of develop- ing Marxist theory in the fight against bourgeois ideology and all the forms that it takes in the workers’ movement. This is the only basis for combating the dangers of adventurism, of “pure” activism and militancy with which the revisionists and the Maoists misled the youth and which can only lead to historic defeats for the working class.’ Why? Above all, because of the section expressing the idealist position, the abandonment of Marxism, in the name of an ideo- logy which it baptizes as ‘Marx- ist philosophy’. ‘When the French delegation opposed the SLL amendment on the struggle for Marxist theory, it sealed an opposition to dia- lectical materialism which is not in the least new,’ explains the October 24 document. ‘One year earlier, in June 1970 at the pre- conference of the IC these dif- ferences had become explicit.’ At the 1970 pre-conference, the OCI and LSRH delegations had warned the SLL of the seri- ous political risks of any tend- ency which transforms dialectical materialism into an_ ideology (philosophy), a system of ideas developing within itself which breaks with the very essence of dialectical materialism; the unity of method, of form and content. They emphasized that a discus- sion on the Marxist method was a serious vital discussion for it concerns the foundations of the programme and it should thus be approached with caution. The correctness of this warning has been revealed by the Essen amendment. The babbling about ‘Marxist philosophy’ has led, we repeat, to a fall into ideology. No, behind each development of opportunism in the workers movement, there is not ‘ideology’, in the form of a revision (aban- donment) of Marxism, there is the reality of social forces in struggle, the class _ struggle expresséd within the workers’ movement itself which is the arena and outcome of this fight, and which gives rise to justifica- tions in the form of a revision of Marxism. It was not Bernstein’s ‘mis- understanding’ of Marxism which lay behind reformism, it is the class collaborationist practice, resting on the situation of the workers’ aristocracy in the period of the development of imperial- ism, which creates the necessity of ideologically justifying this practice. This doesn’t mean that Bernstein is only a ‘reflection’. In his political activity, he is an expression and at the same time an integral element of the strugglé within the workers’ movement. The defence of the proletariats’ class interests imply a ‘defence of Marxism’ through an implacable theoretical criti- cism of revisionist ideology, a criticism which itself is an integral element of the prolet- ariat’s class consciousness in his organized struggle for emancipa- tion. Marx explains that we must go from the arms of criticism to the criticism of arms: but the arms of criticism is itself a moment in the development of the class struggle and in this sense is a criticism of arms. Also, the theoretical struggle is always an expression of the class struggle; it does not exist outside of it. Neither does the limited char- acter of Stalin lie ‘behind’ the theory of ‘socialism in one coun- try’. This expresses the interests of the bureaucractic caste which took hold of political power. Does this mean that the theore- tical struggle is ‘secondary’? No, on the contrary. Marxist theory is the concentration and general- ization of all the determinations of the class struggle, of its his- torical movement, and in this sense the class struggle ‘does not permit a single theoretical mistake’. But theory, Marxist method, is not an abstract sys- tem of ideas of social reality, existing in and of itself and which only needs to be ‘applied’. The Marxist method only exists through its content which inte- grates all the moments in the proletariat’s struggle for his emancipation. In this sense, the programme of socialist revolu- tion concentrates Marxism and the defence of Marxist-theory can only be the defence of the pro- gramme, that is, the struggle to resolve the crisis of leadership. It is not by fighting against ‘bourgeois ideology’ in isolation, on the level of ideology, that the International, revolutionary par- ties, and of course a revolution- ary youth organization will be built. It is by organizing the Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 3 youth in a political fight for the proletarian revolution, under the leadership of the proletariat. The = formulation of the astonishing Essen amendment means that the youth organiza- tion is a substitute for the party and not a part of the struggle to construct it. Theoretical elabo- ration comes from the _ pro- gramme, and thus from the party and the necessary relationship between the theory and the con- struction of the youth organiza- tion is the formation of young communist cadres, a task which unites the assimilation of the programme to the political fight. Programme, Consciousness, Revolutionary Party. But the Essen amendment goes further. In a fraudulent way —since it only deals with youth organizations—it makes the ideo- logical struggle the basis of the construction of revolutionary parties. ‘Revolutionary youth,’ we are told, ‘must devote themselves above all to the development of Marxist theory.’ At this point, we have the right to ask a question: is or is not the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International the highest expression of Marxism, that is, the theoretical generaliza- tion, on the basis of the Marxist method, of the experiences, strug- gles and gains of the world pro- letariat, of the whole movement? On this point, at least the October 24 text is absolutely clear. The answer is no and thus the content of the Essen amend- ment is perfectly revealed. ‘What became the most important thing in the prepara- tion of sections was to develop dialectical materialism in a fight to understand and the working class under objec- tively changing conditions. This means the assimilation and development of — dialectical materialism as the theory of Marxist knowledge. Reflecting the attacks on_ dialectical materialism by the petty bour- geois intelligentsia in the advanced countries, particu- larly in France and Germany and in the Eastern European countries; the French and Hungarian delegations declared that dialectical materialism was not a theory of knowledge and defended the position that only the programme forms the basis of building revolutionary parties. ‘This is the very essence of revisionism which opens the way to liquidation of the party into centrism.’ So you say! We are so naive that we thought that the method of the Transitional Programme was the revolutionary mobilization of the 177

[p033] working class, beginning with its present level of consciousness, against the bourgeois state, a mobilization indissolubly con- nected to its organization, whose movement towards accomplishing its tasks was its consciousness, or as Marx and Engels said in ‘German Ideology’, ‘A massive transformation of men is necessary for the mass creation of this communist con- sciousness as well as being a pre- requisite for its success; but such a transformation can only take place by a practical move- ment, by a revolution; this revo- lution is necessary not. only because it is the only way to overthrow the dominant class; it is equally necessary because only a revolution will enable the class which overthrows the other to sweep away all the garbage of the old system which hangs on to it and enable it to build a society of new foundations.’ But no, to ‘transform’ the con- sciousness of the working class is a specific task, possible when one ‘undertands’ this conscious- ness, an undérstanding which is gained on the condition that one wants to ‘develop’ dialectical materialism (which means pre- cisely what? If one understands how a muscle is developed with exercises it is difficult to con- ceive the ‘development’ of dialec- tical materialism.) What that means in any case, is that the programme is not enough. There is more, above that, in actuality up in the sky, as an independent factor, whose ‘development’ undoubtedly depends on the intellectual gymnastics of the thinkers of the SLL, Marxist philosophy as a ‘theory of the knowledge of Marxism’. But what then is the programme if not the most com- plete expression of dialectical materialism in our epoch? A recipe book? It will be necessary to carry this discussion through to its end and no preventive ‘splits’ sanc- tioned by trumped up majorities will prevent it. Profound disagreements were revealed at Essen. By themselves do they make a split? Proof of the contrary was demonstrated by the leadership of the SLL who after Essen, invited Comrade Lambert to give the last presen- tation at the SLL’s educational camp ... on dialectical materi- alism! Form and content: the revolutionary struggle of the Bolivian proletariat, the policies of the POR and the desire to break up the International Committee The sliding towards ideo- logy and the putting forward of pronounced idealist positions, 178 cannot be explained by an abrupt ideological loss of balance by the SLL leadership. ; The mists of so-called Marxist ‘philosophy’ invade the political landscape of the SLL at a very precise moment in relation to precise political problems. _ The most dangerous oscilla- tions of the SLL leadership are in relation to the central ques- tion of the reconstruction of the Fourth International. They declare their disagreement with the decisions of the 1966 con- ference that they nevertheless accepted. The Fourth Interna- tional does not need to be ‘recon- structed’: it is timeless, immo- bile, incarnated in the Interna- tional Committee. In other words, the SLL lead- ership confuses the continuity of the Fourth International, the defence of its programme, assured by the activity of the IC and its organizations, faced with the attempt to liquidate the Fourth International with the existence of political conditions, relations between Trotskyist organizations and the class, con- ditions of selection of an inter- national leadership leading to the formation of a centralized inter- national léadership. This attitude is related to a refusal to follow through with an analysis of the crisis of the Fourth International, to a tend- ency to see it only as an episode, whereas the Fourth International, reorganized after the war, was broken up as a_ centralized organization around the Transi- tional Programme by the capitu- lation of the vast majority of its leaders, a capitulation whose origins must be identified in order to conduct an effective battle against revisionism. There is no need to construct the Fourth International, it is enough to build the revolutionary party in each country. This is in fact the construction of the Fourth International in each country. The correct affirmation that the fight to build revolu- tionary parties in each country is an international task thus winds up as a hollow formula to the extent that the international dimension, that is the concrete tasks of reconstructing the Fourth International practically no longer exists. This is not simply an academic position. It has led the SLL lead- ership to first ignore and then to practically oppose all the initia- tives taken towards reconstruct- ing the Fourth International. No Trotskyist organization can be built outside of the fight for the reconstruction of the Fourth International. The wrong orienta- tion of the SLL on this, to the extent that it was carried out, could not help but have an effect on all its activities. The greater and greater place given to ideo- logy corresponds to the more and more narrow limits of the impasse that the SLL leadership has got itself into. From this point of view, Essen marked an important stage. The oscillations of the SLL leader- ship were expressed by its refusal to participate in the Essen meeting, then by the fact that it was drawn into it with- out mobilizing its organization. They were thus at this meeting under false pretences and the ‘ideological’ offensive expressed its political hostility to this step forward in the reconstruction of the Fourth International which places the SLL and all the organ- izations of the IC before its responsibilities. If we do not begin from the political contradictions of the SLL leadership and from _ its refusal to work them out in a discussion within its ranks, we cannot understand the shocking bad faith and the criminal light- ness in its approach to the prob- lems of Bolivia and the policies of the POR. It is not a question of moral errors but of the results of an orientation which is taking the SLL in the direction of aban- doning the programme of the Fourth International. In all seriousness, the SLL leadership thus explains that Bolivia was only a pretext used by the OCI to precipitate the split by avoiding discussion. Thére is the same relationship between the real political devel- opments within the IC and the affirmations of the SLL as there is between a positive and nega- tive photograph. The terms must be reversed to find the truth. It is the leadership of the SLL and its New York mouth- piece who seized on the problems of the Bolivian revolution not as a means of political clarification but as a pretext to present the other sections of the IC with the accomplished fact of a brutal public offensive against the POR. It is the SLL who is running away from a full discussion in the name of a public break over the question of Bolivia and which avoids at the same time any dis- cussion on Bolivia. But form does not go with- out content. The chosen pretext is at the same time a question of capital importance since it directly concerns the proletarian revolution. The revolutionary process in Bolivia marked the highest poli- tical point reached by the up- surge of the working class on the whole Latin American continent and it was characterized by the role played by a Trotskyist party, section of the IC. This deserves a serious dis- cussion, a rigorous assessment of the POR policies, an assimilation of the lessons of the struggle. In this sense, it is legitimate to discuss the policies of the POR at every point. The OCI, for its part did not wait for events to happen: within the IC, between Fourth international Summer 1972

[p034] organizations which base their activity on the same programme, it conducted a discussion with the POR (‘La Verité’, No. 550, October 1970). What is criminal, is that the deliberate desire of the Workers League and the SLL to use the victory of the fascist coup against the unity of the IC, leads them to reject this serious discussion, to repeat the most vulgar slanders of the enemies. of Trotskyism and the proletarian revolution against the POR without even trying to inform themselves of the facts. The coup d’etat took place on August 20. On August 30 while communications were cut off, Tim Wohlforth publishes an article which brands the POR as having main. responsibility in the workers’ movement for the fascist coup. In this article, which the SLL hastens to make official by publishing it in Workers Press and where there is not the slightest reference to solidarity in struggle against the class enemy or the least allusion to the role of American imperial- ism, Wohlforth goes even further: he compares the position of the POR to the LSSP of Ceylon. Here is an amalgam worthy of the Stalinists: even if Wohlforth’s attack against the POR were considered to be correct, what relationship is there between the renegades of the LSSP which rules with a bourgeois govern- ment and covered up a bloody . repression, and the fighters of the POR who stood with their class before the - counter- revolution? The desire to treat the Bolivian question without regard to the real positions of the POR as a ‘war machine’ against the unity of the IC is manifested once again in the October 24 text. ‘The PGn and Lora repeated the policies of Poum in Spain in 1935-1938 and did not act in a fundamentally different manner. The relationship with Torres and the COB parallel those that the POUM held with the repub- lican government and the CNT. The support that the OCI gives the POR reveals today the mean- ing of its political bloc with POUM.’ This little paragraph is full of mistruths and is a good example of amalgams. We could write pages just on this subject alone. We will simply make _ two remarks, the first essential point which ‘reveals’ the political trickery of this pseudo-exposi- tion: one of the characteristic traits of the POUM policies was the entry into the Catalogne government (bourgeois govern- ment). What characterized the policies of the POR was the re- fusal to collaborate with the Torres government, the preserva- tion of the political independence of the proletariat. The second remark which shows with what indifference the SLL leadership treats historical problems of the workers’ move- ment: the CNT and COB paral- lel. The CNT was in the hands of a political faction. The anar- chists, the POUM militants were expelled and Trotsky criticized them precisely for adapting to this situation by forming their own union organizations. The COB, university centre, included all the tendencies of the Bolivian workers’ movement and the POR militants, while not being its leadership played a considerable role in it, including at the con- ference level. Where is the parallel? But better yet, in his interview in ‘Informations Ouvrieres’ Com- rade Lora explained: ‘The ultra-leftists and Pablo- ites forget the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky: they elaborate their “documents” with extreme simple mindedness and put Torres and Ovando-Banzer on the same level. These people refuse to under- stand the various shades of bourgeois nationalism in a back- ward country. ‘Because they are outside of the class struggle, they do not understand that there is a differ- ence between the bourgeois democratic methods of _ the Torres government and_ the method of the fascists: the differ- ence that exists between going to prison legally or being liqui- dated with a bullet in the back of the neck. ‘Revolutionary tactics must begin with this difference. It is not a question of supporting Torres but of crushing fascism in order to impose the workers’ government.’ This passage is commented on in the October 24 text in the following way: ‘Revolutionary strategy does not begin with the difference between the left wing and the right wing of the army, but from the perspective of overthrowing the whole bourgeois order.’ Where Lora spoke of tactics, the editors of the October 24 text have substituted the term, strategy. Furthermore, the SLL introduces an almost absolute distinction between strategy and tactics. When it is a question of the workers’ United Front (we will return to this) strategy and tactics are presented as totally separate categories which lead parallel existences in a meta- physical heaven. On the other hand when it is a question of attacking the POR, strategy and tactics become interchangeable terms. Moreover, when we read that criticism of the POR’s policies were founded on the ‘necessity to build the Fouth International on the basis of principle and total honesty’ it seems to be an acci- dental comic note in an other- wise sinister text. Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 3 But once again, we must come to the essence. The October 24 text proclaiming Wohlforth’s article to be ‘our declaration’ has no more than that to say about the Popular Assembly. This is however the most important question on which the OCI first took a position and gave an opinion on the pro- gramme of the POR. Therefore this is the question which must be discussed first. But from reading the October 24 text we learn simply that the OCI talks about a ‘whole process’ concetized in ‘something’ like the Popular Assembly. In its declaration on Sep- tember 17 the Central Com- mittee of the OCI emphasized that the POR had been ‘the motor of the Popular Assembly, that is the organ which material- ized the struggle of the Bolivian proletariat to build its own power and which opened the road to the dictatorship of the prole- tariat in Bolivia’. Yes or no, was the Popular Front, originating in the united reply of the Bolivian masses and their organizations to the October 1970 coup d'etat, an organism of the _proletariat’s hegemony, from the base to the _ top? Yes or no, did the Popular Assembly become, through the intervention of the POR, an organ of dual power which con- cretely opened the way to a workers’ government? In_ this sense, did it or not deserve the epithet that its enemies gave to it, the first Latin American soviet? Yes or no, was the correct strategy to begin with this reality given by the mass struggle it- self, with this soviet organ to pose the question of power by linking the mobilization of the Masses around the Popular Assembly as their expression to the fight inside the Assembly to open concretely the way to power with the slogan: ‘All Power to the Popular Assembly’. Could this struggle be con- ducted independently of the Bolivian vanguard, of the revolu- tionary maturity of the masses themselves, independently from all the revolutionary develop- ments in Latin America? The OCI gave an answer. The anti-Trotskyist centre of Mandel & Co in confusion have given theirs. What is the answer of the SLL and of the groups which signed the October 24 declaration with them? This is a discussion which cannot be avoided by any organizational measure for it is a discussion that is at the heart of the problems raised by the present stage of the class struggle. The period of ‘imminent revolution’—and thus also of imminent counter-revolution — the period of class confrontations raises the question of power: 179

[p035] how can the masses concretely approach and understand the question of power? This is the question of institu- tions of dual power, of a workers’ United Front, governmental slogans, concrete questions of course as the October 24 text points out but this concrete would only be a dead abstrac- tion if it was not the expression of a ‘generality’, that is that the period that we live in is marked by the movement of the inter- national working class towards its own power. This is not an abstraction to us of which the revolutionary party should be a passive ex- pression. This manner of under- standing problems shows very well the deep lack of under- standing by the SLL of the dialec- tic. On the contrary, it is con- crete reality which constitutes the decisive part of the revolutionary party and the fight to build it nationally and internationally. Some attacks on the OCI There is an implacable logic to political conflicts. The SLL’s evolution can only lead it to attack the OCI at its heart: the very method of the construc- tion of the revolutionary party, the question of the workers’ United Front, the means and ex- pression of mobilization of the masses, a fundamental part of the construction of the party. But politics do not exist in a vacuum. If one attacks the poli- cies of the OCI it is necessary to propose an alternative. And here the SLL must use the weapons of the Pabloites. Thus the attacks against the OCI lead to this conclusion: ‘ ... the position of the OCI on the united class front becomes a complete liquidation of the party and subordinates it to the labour bureaucracy and_ the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties.’ To reach this conclusion, the SLL leadership must purely and simply invent, in vague terms, a ‘spontaneist position’ of the OCI, must multiply attacks so exaggerated that they become in- significant, so little have they followed the OCI position, and which would make the collabora- tion of the OCI and the SLL in the IC incomprehensible. For our part, we seek politi- cal clarity, not just to make an impression which can only fool those who want to be: the SLL does not suddenly veer from white to black. We will simply point out the contradictions of the leadership and show the orientation that it has developed, which if continued, would lead’ to the abandonment of the pro- gramme of the Fourth Inter- national and to the break up of the SLL. 180 We wish to take up just two attacks. Firstly, the October 24 docu- Ment dares to state that at the beginning of 1968 Comrade Charles Berg took an openly ab- stentionist position on Vietnam. This clearly means that he gave equal weight to imperialism and the revolutionary war of the Vietnamese people, in other words, that he took an openly counter-revolutionary position. This is false and outrageous. Even the Stalinists have not dared to go this far: so far only the well-known Weber of the Communist League has spoken of the ‘defeatist’ position of the OCI. At no time, under any circum- stances, has any militant, any OCI publication been equivocal on this topic. On the other hand, unlike others (like Comrade Banda who saw in Ho Chi- Minh’s party, the party who assassinated the Indo-Chinese Trotskyists, the reincarnation of the Bolshevik Party), we have never confused unconditional support with political support to its petty-bourgeois and Stalinist leaders. If we emphasize this miserable accusation: it is because Comrade Berg, due to the development of the AJS is now the target of a concentrated attack by the bourgeoisie, the Pabloites and the Stalinists. The fact that the SLL leadership joins these attacks at this time should be noted. There is a secondary attack which deserves comment. The SLL is so anxious to find motives for its split that it must go back in time. This is their right. They vehemently denounce the poli- cies of the French Trotskyist organization in the Algerian revolution. They say that the Pabloites supported a faction of the petty-bourgeois nationalists and the French Trotskyists sup- ported another faction. This is a bit brief and would only be con- vincing if the SLI criticized themselves. In fact, if there was no difference between the FLN and the MNA why did they sup- port as they explain, the MNA? It is true, as we are told, that this support was ‘critical’ which undoubtedly solves everything. In any case the policy of the Trotskyist organization was false because it abandoned ‘the fight to select a Trotskyist vanguard’. This is nothing new. This quote is from the pamphlet ‘Some Lessons of Our History’ pub- lished in May 1970. We only hope—especially since the SLL finds it useful to accuse the POR and Lora of being a pillar of Pabloism in Latin America, which is false, while forgetting that the’ SLL and its general secretary were _ initially the hatchetmen of Pabloism in Western Europe—that the SLL will be willing to learn a few lessons from its own historv in order to construct a vanguard in England and in the world. The offensive against the workers’ united front and its meaning The trumped up charges against the OCI lead to a whole offensive against the workers United Front. The workers United Front had already been a point of disagree- ment between the OCI and the SLL within the IC. But for the SLL, the differences seemed to be on one point (brought up again in the October 24 docu- ment) that the United Front is a ‘tactic’ while the OCI calls it a ‘strategy’. To counterpose strategy and tactics as absolutes is to ignore the dialectic that it is so much a question of. Of course, the terms strategy and tactics are not interchangeable; they are geared to different levels of revolution- ary politics. But strategy only exists through tactics which are its expression. At the same time each tactical move has meaning only as part of a_ general strategy. When we speak, in Marxist terms, of a strategical slogan, we mean a slogan which under different forms (tactics) is a con- stant factor in the revolutionary struggle. For example, the neces- sity to defend the social con- guests of the proletariat won in the October Revolution and by its extension, today controlled and threatened by the bureau- cracy. But for Marxists, strategy and tactics are relative terms. To the extent that we say that the strategical line of the Fourth International is the fig.it for pro- letarian revolution, the defence of the Soviet Union is only a tactic following from this objective. Trotsky said on the defence of the Soviet Union (while showing that this defence is a major ex- pression of the programme of the Fourth International and is a question of principle.) ‘The defence of the USSR coincides for us with the prepara- tion of the world revolution. Only those methods are accept- able which do not conflict with the interests of the revolution. The defence of the USSR is con- nected to the world socialist revolution in the same way that a tactical task is connected to a strategic task. A tactic is sub- ordinate to a strategic goal and does not in any way contradict it.’ In this sense, the United Front is a tactic in relation to the socialist revolution which it prepares for as a way of mobiliz- ing the proletariat. It is a strategic line in the sense that it Fourth International Summer 1972

[p036] is always (that is, independent of circumstances, relationship of forces, tactical considerations in the strict sense of the word) present in a revolutionary policy, taking of course different tacti- cal forms without which it would only be an empty principle (‘government of united workers organizations’ in Fran¢e today; battle for ‘a workers party based on the unions’ in the United States, slogan of ‘a Labour government on a programme of defence of the working class’ in England, slogan of ‘a break with the coalition and with a homo- genous social-democratic govern- ment’ in Germany). The OCI’s opposition to the implicit policy of the SLL, now explicit in the October 24 text, is therefore not a semantic quarrel. No, the United Front, is not, as the SLL says, simply a ‘tem- porary relationship between mass parties, in order to win the masses to the Communist Party’. To reduce the United Front to this is not the conception of Lenin and Trotsky as the SLL falsely claims. At best it is the conception of Zinoviev, or rather a caricature of it, a pale reflec- tion of the way Zinoviev ex- pressed the policy of the Com- munist International. The axis of the Transitional Programme is the mobilization of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The United Front ‘slogan’ of this programme is at the same time central to it. What is involved is the mobilization of the whole class. its unity based on its political independence against the common enemy. It is the concrete expression. of the start- ing point of any revolutionary policy since the Communist Manifesto of 1847; class against class. And this policy takes the form of the United Front of all organizations of the working class under conditions where the work- ing class is organized and con- trolled by distinct organizations. As the text of the OCI Sep- tember 1969 document states: ‘The policy of class struggle is identical to the strategic lines of the united class front of workers’ parties and organizations. It is alien to “peaceful co-existence” between the traditional parties and organizations of the working class and the revolutionary van- guard which builds the revolu- tionary party. It is impossible to build the revolutionary party without concretely defining at each stage, a policy which opposes the class as a class to the bourgeoisie, its state and its government. Without building the revolutionary party it is im- possible to fight for the united class front for the workers and peasants government, for the de- struction of the bourgeois state and for workers’ power.’ This conclusion perfectly sums up Trotsky’s conception on the United Front in relation to Germany threatened by fascism and in France after the begin- nings of the upsurge of the pro- letariat in the united demonstra- tion February 12 1934: ‘Why are the soviets necessary in the struggle for power? The answer to this question is the following: as the union is the elementary form of the United Front in the economic struggle so the soviet is the highest ex- pression of the United Front under conditions where the pro- letariat is entering into the period of the struggle for power.’ (And now Leon § ‘trotsky, ‘Collected Works’, Volume IID): ‘The natural apparatus of the United Front in the days of battle is the proletarian repre- sentation, the deputies of the factories and shops, of the workers’ districts and the unions, the soviets.’ (It is France’s turn. For the Fourth International! March 1934), The SLL is opposed to this conception of the United Front by criticizing the OCI policies during the May-June general strike of 1968. The October 24 text includes this sentence which deserves to be preserved for posterity: ‘The leaders of the OCI trailed behind the working class, restricting the political scope of the strike by demanding a central strike com- mittee. This was a complete evasion of the political responsi- bilities of a revolutionary leader- ship.’ Thus, to the profound dialec- ticians of the SLL, the national strike committee was not a poli- tical question. This is a con- fession which reveals the mean- ing of their hostile indifference to the Popular Assembly of Bolivia, the absence of any reference, in a text which claims to begin with the world class struggle, to the formation of workers’ coun- cils in Gdansk in December 1970, the scorn heaped on the Irbid Soviet. Were the strike committees merely formed for immediate de- mands? Was this then the whole character of the general strike to the extent that it was not given a governmental ‘formula’? No, the general strike, ‘the sharpest form of the class struggle’ as Trotsky said, demonstrates ‘the impossibility of separating the economic and political elements’ as all those who are supposed to be Marxists know ever since Rosa Luxemburg wrote it in 1905. The general strike was in- herently political because _ its demands led directly to the fight against the capitalist govern- ment and because the degree and form of the mass mobilization posed the question of working class power. As a political battle, the general strike could not achieve its goal unless the illusion Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 3 that the general strike was enough in and of itself to win was overcome and unless a governmental solution, a road to the struggle for power was opened up. All the bureaucracies linked to the bourgeoisie blocked this solu- tion. The fight for a national central strike committee was the political fight par excellence, at the heart of the general strike, because it was a fight for this solution by centralizing the strength of the working class in struggle against the bourgeois state. The words ‘in struggle’ must not be forgotten and this is why the centralization of the strike committee born in this struggle; a step towards workers’ comncils, elements of the United Front, was the concrete form of the perspective of a workers’ govern- ment, a government of united workers’ organizations. But the SLL leadership, not content with understanding nothing about the dialectic of the mass mobilization in the general strike had another government solution—a CP-CGT government and not a workers’ government. Or rather if the formula of a CP-CGT govern- ment could be _ considered synonymous with ‘workers gov- ernment,’ then the Socialist Party, the CGT-FO, the FEN are not considered workers’ organi- zations. The SLL has not yet written. this. What then does the ‘preferential’ choice of the Stalinist bureaucracy over the reformist bureaucracy mean? Have not both of them gone over to the bourgeois order? Or is this a new analysis of Stalin- ism—not so new at that, for it has already been exposed in the theory and practice of the Pablos and Mandels who said that Stalinism, definitively, and despite its crimes, despite its counter-revolutionary aspects was the only political ‘delegation’ of the proletariat. This discussion must be con- tinued and is related to a number of other political oscillations in the SLL: its idealization of the leadershop of the North Vietnam- ese Communist Party and the NLF, its serious uncertainties about the political evolution in Czechoslovakia where on the eve of the invasion, they gave the same importance as the demand for the withdrawal of the War- saw Pact troops from Czechoslo- vakia, its discretion about the development of political revolu- tion in Poland and its refusal to see the unity of the workers struggles in the USSR, China, and Eastern Europe against’ the bureaucracy with the struggle in the capitalist countries, This discussion will also clarify the meaning of their criticism— which may seem minor and tac- tical — about the slogan of ‘a 181

[p037] single candidate of workers orgazations’ during the presi- dential elections. This criticism shows once again the SLL’s indif- ference to facts. The OCI is criti- cized for not having denounced the Social Democrats who refused on the second ballot to call for a vote for Duclos. The French working class has enough well- founded accusations against the reformist leaders without having to invent them: Duclos was eliminated in the first ballot. To make everything clear — we are dealing once again with a tactical application of the strategy of the United Front—this is what the position of the Trotskyists was during the presidential elec- tions: ‘After the fall of De Gaulle the perspective of a working class solution to the government and of the regime necessitated devel- opment of great struggles by the proletariat. This could only emerge from the United Front of labour and_ political organiza- tions which had called for a “No” vote in the referendum. A single candidate of workers’ organiza- tions meant that confronted with the bourgeoies parties, proposing a candidate of a government of united workers’ organizations. Immediately all the leaders of the workers’ organizations and parti- cularly the Socialist Party and the Communist Party managed to disrupt the unity established for a moment in the “No” vote on the referendum. The candidate Deferre — supported by Mendes- France popped up as if out of a magician’s hat. The CP before putting Duclos forward = as candidate demanded “the elabo- ration of a common programme” as a condition for a common candidate of “the left”. The “pro- grammatic” concerns of the CP who supported the _ bourgeois candidate Mitterand in 1965 without any concern for a “com- mon programme” barred the road just as much as the Deferre candidacy to a united candidate of workers, not of the “left” organizations. The fight for the workers United Front, the prole- tarian front against the voluntary and deliberate division that the Socialist Party and the CP imposed on the working class meant the development of a poli- tical campaign around the theme: single candidate of workers’ organizations against the bour- geois candidates. (...) ‘But the programme? Wasn't this necessary to the single candi- date of workers organizations? What had become of it? In these precise circumstances, the devel- opment of a programme of a gov- ernment of workers’ organiza- tions flowed from this candidacy. The fight for the defeat of the bourgeois candidates gave a class content to the single candidate of workers’ organizations that the 182 revolutionary organizations had a duty to develop.’ (Stephane Just), ‘Defence ot ‘l1rotskyism’. To conclude We are arriving at the end of this exposition. Its purpose has been to bring out the real dif- ferences, behind the petty man- oeuvres, the blatant falsehoods and verbal terrorism. These disagreements are serious and deep ones. They demand a clear discussion that the OCI is not in the least afraid to hold publically before the interna- tional workers vanguard. As the culminating point in its charges against the OCI the SLL leadership states that the capitu- lation to spontanetity had reached the point in this organ- ization where .. . it did not even have a general secretary! What can we say about the nerve and capitulation to spon- taneity of a party like the Bol- shevik party which dared to lead the proletarian revolution to vic- tory without a general secretary and even without a_ political office? This would be ridiculous—it is obvious that if democratic cen- tralism is an integral part of the revolutionary party, the forms of the organization of the leadership is not a principled issve and the existence of general secretaries as well as their absence, is not a guarantee—if it was not related to something more serious. In the same paragraph the OCI is taken up for not seeing the ‘Fourth International as truly existing’. This is a backhanded way of attacking the OCI’s posi- tion that we must fight for the reconstruction of the Fourth International broken up as a politically centralized force inter- nationally by the Pabloite liquida- - tionists. Therefore, on the one hand the revolutionary party exists by itself, a timeless metaphysical category, waiting to meet the class struggle and whose nature depends on whether or not one proclaims or one has attributes supremely deemed necessary to its functioning (a general secre- tary for example). On the other hand there is the proletariat, its ‘objective’ struggle, its general strikes which are not ‘political’. In defence of the Essen amendment the Octo- ber 24 document states that: ‘the fundamental struggle for dialec- tical materialism must be con- ducted against all the enemies of Marxism and developed in the fight against the spontaneous consciousness of the working class’. The dialectic is most certainly misused. Independently of the fact that the idea of a ‘pure’ spontaneous consciousness of the working class is an absurdity: the conception—completely false—of proletariats consciousness at any moment is a_ historical result, this sentence sums up a whole relations between the construc- tion of the revolutionary party (this is the fight for dialectical materialism!) and the movement of the class. The revolutionary party is not outside of or against the move- ment of the working class. The construction of the revolution- ary party proceeds from the whole development of the class struggle; based on the struggle of the proletariat, but it is not an automatic product of it. It only exists and can only be built as a conscious activity. Marxism is ‘the conscious ex- pression of an unconscious pro- cess’. The revolutionary party is the organized form of _ this conscious expression in the class struggle, but the very conditions of the proletarian revolution give it the decisive role in accom- plishing the historic tasks of the proletariat. Marxism, method of the prole- tarian revolution, the unity of theory and practice in the con- struction of the revolutionary party and expressing the histori- cal interests of the proletariat is contrary to each of the limited moments in the formation of the proletariat’s class consciousness as a class of bourgeois society but goes beyond them by unify- ing the whole process involved in forming the proletariat’s con- sciousness and by ultimately determining it. This truth has been known since the Communist Manifesto without which Trot- sky’s sentence on ‘the instinctive tendency of the proletariat to re- build society on communist foundations’ would only be a utopian formula. As S. Just pointed out in ‘In Defence of Trotskyism’: ‘con- sidered as a_ historical and organic process, the formation of the proletariat’s class conscious- ness is drawn from the analysis of the development of the class struggle and puts an end to metaphysical discussions about class consciousness brought in from the outside as well as those about the self-proclaimed van- guard’, The dualism that the SLL creates between the party and the class is at the root of its in- comprehension of the period that we are living in, of the dynamic of the advance of world prole- tarian socialist revolution ex- pressed in the General Strike of May-June 1968, in the political revolution in Czechoslovakia, in the formation of the Irbid soviet, in the formation of workers coun- cils in the Baltic, in the forma- tion of the Popular Assembly. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p038] The inevitable subjectivity is accompanied by a_ mechanical objectivism. We are told that the years of the ‘post-war boom’ were unfavourable to the development of Marxist theory (one wonders how the Transitional Programme was developed in the years of profound defeat and what Trotsky meant when he said that the Fourth International was born out of the deepest defeats!) but that the ‘new conditions’ are favourable to us. Subjectivity and objectivism indisolubly linked together were the methodological roots of the growth of Pabloism within the Fourth International. Today the SLL leadership is paying the price for its refusal to make a real assessment of Pabloism and of its origins which is impossible without analysing its own history, without relating the problems of reconstructing the Fourth International to the con- struction of the revolutionary party in England. But this is not automatic. Today because of precise politi- cal problems that the class struggles pushed to the forefront the problems of the struggle for power, these tendencies develop into a_ policy whose logic, through the break with the Inter- national Committee is the aban- donment of the programme of the Fourth International. Responsibly, we address our- selves to all the organizations and militants affiliated with the International Committee but par- ticularly to the SLL: to its leadership, to its militants be- cause of the special place of the SLL in the formation of the IC. We say responsibly: the SLL is at the crossroads. The position of an organization, its political character does not depend on good intentions. Politically un- defined organizations do not exist. The place the SLL holds in the British class struggle was won as a Trotskyist organization; the SLL is taking the path of a break with Trotskyism which does not exist outside of the Fourth Inter- national, that is the fight to re- construct it today. It is thus taking the road to its own de- struction. In any case, because the struggle for the reconstruction of the Fourth International is an international process organically linked to the world struggle of the proletariat, the conscious fight for the construction of the revolutionary party finds its ex- pression in England in the re- sistance within the SLL to its own liquidation as a Trotskyist organization. But, we say it firmly, political clarification is in the interests of the Fourth In- ternational and in the defence of its programme. The International Committee must meet in plenary session at the earliest possible date with the participation of all the mem- ber organizations especially to reply to the legitimate request of Comrade Lora. The real flight from political problems, the amalgams, the gross manoeuvres cannot go far. There must be an end to the false prestige of leaders who— like everybody—have made poli- tical errors and have led positive actions. There must be no re- treat from the discussion within all the sections of the Inter- national Committee, from the questions that the class struggle requires the Trotskyist move- ment to resolve. We say, in any case, that this discussion will take place: no one has the power to prevent it. In any case, the gain repre- sented by the International Committee, the continuity of the Fourth International, its programme will be preserved, in the fight to reconstruct the Fourth International, by the preparation of the Fourth Inter- national Conference on _ the initiatiye of the International Committee associating accord- ing to the decisions of the 1966 conference all the organizations and groups who fight for the programme of the _ socialist revolution. We repeat: For those who intend to defend the programme of the Fourth International it iS a common demand: the Inter- national Committee must meet as soon as possible. SSS SSP se ysl SSS Ssh Sv hs, Discussion on International Perspectives: Document 3 183

[p039] International Committee of the Fourth International (Majority) Statement of March 1, 1972