DOCUMENT 4

INTERNATIONAL In preparation for the Fourth Congress of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League are publishing the four main documents of the International Committee covering the, split with the French Organisation Communiste Internationaliste. Statement by the Internationa Committee of the Fourth International (Majority) March 1, 1972 Centrism and OCI (continued)

In order, so far as was possible at that late stage, to correct the completely anti-theoretical line vf document proposed by the AJS (youth organization of the OCI), the YS proposed amendment drawing attention to the theoretical basis revolutionary movement. The OCI represents this as some sort of ultimatum. But, as the British delegation explained, what was actually required was a new resolution based on these theoretical foundations, and an ainendment 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 for Trotskyist parties to be built and to lead the working class to power, a point where the conditions development Marxist theory by revolutionary cadres are 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 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 Fourth International, having in misconceived, the fundamental positions behind the split. They are the basis of the differences on the united front, on Bolivia, and on in France, as 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 cannot 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 International they were prepared to write off some 35 years of history. It is not just that they returned, to me Four hint posational' 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 written bulletins, on the differences between 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 assertion of a leading OCI member, that the meaning of certain expressions in the Transitional Programme has not been discernible in their objective significance 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 paragraph:

Is the creation of such a [workers' and farmers] government 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 influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.) the petty-bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than break with the bourgeoisie, to a 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. counterrevolutionary role, revisionism seized on precisely this passage to justify liquidation of the revolutionary party. Pablo split the FI with his thesis that 'mass revolutionary pressure and World War Ill would force Stalinism to play a revolutionary role.

Ignoring the deliberate warning given by Trotsky (that even if a workers' government were established by the traditional workers parties, "it would represent merely a short episode o: the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat') Pablo predicted 'centuries of degenerated workers' states'.

The OCI was in danger of preparing the theoretical slipway for the same liquidationisr another form: to liquida th independent programme a!.: identity of the party in în al.embracing policy of 'united iront for a workers' governmen:

At this stage, we were prepared to fight for the clarification of these problems within the same International. At the 1966 Conference, the attack on Trotskyism by non-member participants, the US Spartacist (Robertson) group and the Voix Ouvrière (VO) group (France),* brought a united response from the SLL. the OCI and the other ses.tions of the IC. Our opinion at that time was that the defence of the continuity of the T.. :kyist movement against the opportunism Robertson and Voix Ouvrière laid the basis for tackling some of our differences.

It is of great importance for the present discussion that the *These groups . attended observers. VO based their attack on the formulation in the IC documents that the FI had been organizationally 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 reconstruction' 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 compromised with the OCI on the wording of the amendment carried. 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 independent revolutionary party served is a screen behind which the 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 Pabloite 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 mistake. 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 policy of the Trotskyist organiza. tion was wrong because it rejected "the struggle for the development of a Trotskyist vanCertainly! 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 revolutionary 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 supposedly already existing 'vanguard' 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 fulltime workers and special financial schemes to attract forces internationally (such as dissident youth in E Europe) who were said to be only looking for somewhere to go. The SLL's opposition to these methods, its insistence on the central importance of the training of a cadre, was condemned as opposition to the need to build 'the International as such' (en tant que telle).

There was no resolution of these questions in discussion. We could get little or no agreement on our estimation of the growing economic crisis of capitalism 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 perspectives.

The fact is that their own perspectives 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. Consequently the political manifestations of the crisis, and particularly the May-June 1968 struggles in France, took them completely by surprise.

All through 1967, the OCI had pursued their proposals on 'the Internationa as such and attacked the organization of the SLL (just as later they privately opposed the plans for a daily paper) on the grounds, fundamentally, that we were leaping too far ahead of the movement and consciousness of the working class, the 'real movement' (see the letter of the OCI to the SLI and the SLL Reply, 1967).

These differences about the discipline, training and organization 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 countries, and that our parties would be called upon to take up leadership. 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 preparedness of the youth cadre.

Undoubtedly the May-June days in 1968 once again provided the opportunity for a struggle to clarify political differences. It was absolutely correct 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 opposition to the repressions against the OCI was mobilized through the columns of "The Newsletter' (predecessor of 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 preparation fought for by the SIL. It was It was particularly the struggles in May-June 1968, in France (above) which took the OCI completely by surprise.

vital to bring home this ipdispensable lesson to the members and leaders of the OCI, and to the international movement. was the responsibility of the SLL to fight to overcome previous differences on this basis.

The following months actually suggested the possibility of success, but behind formal political agreement, the OCl 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 struggle 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' government was posed in France, by making specific demands on the Communist and Socialist parties. CONTINUED TOMORROW *