Trotskyism Today no. 3

TROTSKYISM

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL -

PROBLEMS AND TASKS

Fruits of Pabloite politics: the 1964 coalition in Ceylon, inch This document, adopted at the Founding Conference of the WSL on the 19th October, is intended to form the basis of a discussion within the world Trotskyist movement on the theoretical problems and tasks which need to be confronted in rebuilding Fourth International. By the an analysis the history of beginning of the post-war Trotskyist movement, and centrally, of the problems posed by the development of post-war Stalinism, the document attempts to focus discussion on some of the fundamental questions of method and principle which in the view of the WSL have to be clarified before a firm basis can be estab- lished for a reconstructed International.

PART 3

In fact, the attempt on the part of the WRP leadership to early period almost bury that certainly goes back further than the publication of Trotskyism versus Revisionism in 1974. Although the SLL and OCI leaderships did not take these questions up at the time of the SWP's reunification' with the Pabloites, their supporters in the SWP did. The outcome was Wolforth's The Theory of Structural Assimilation: Marxist Analysis of the Social Overturns in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China. Work on this document started right after the January 1961 National Committee Plenum of the SWP, at which the large majority adopted the position that Cuba was a workers' state and began their political return towards the Pabloites.

The document was completed in September 1963.

after the SWP had reunified with the Pabloites, and issued publically at the end of 1964, after the pro- International Committee tendency in the SWP, headed by Wolforth and Robertson, had been expelled, and was acting independently. Although the document was sold by the remaining IC sections in the 1960s it was never, so far as can be told, formally discussed nor a position taken on it. Nor do Wolforth's subsequent writings on the period refer to it.

Yet The Theory of Structural Assimilation is an attempt to set out an overall political reply to the basis on which the SWP leadership reunited with the Pabloites, and to justify the standpoint that Cuba remained capitalist state. In essence it argued - through a factual study of the political events - that the social overturns in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China were a form of *defensive expansionism' by the Soviet bureaucracy, undertaken to protect the military and strategic position of the Soviet Union. In the case of most of the Eastern European states the transformations were carried out directly, in the case of Yugoslavia and China by the protection provided to the native Wolforth Stalinist parties. This process, argued, had reached its limit in China in 1953.

Events in Cuba, he argued, were quite distinct, as Khrushchev's retreat in the 1961 missile crisis confirmed.

and Cuba was not a workers state. Moreover he argued workers* aside from that since states could the independent revolutionary action of the working class - only come into being by the expansion of a state power which was itself the result of proletarian revolution, the ylon, including renegade "Trotskyists'.

new workers states, being essentially extensions of the Soviet Union, should also properly be described as 'degenerated' (rather than 'deformed') workers' states.

Wolforth's Theory of Structural Assimilation had, and has, definite limitations which make it essential that it be fully developed. But it has also great strengths. In the first place it was a definite attempt to set out an overall standpoint on the development of class. relations and world Second World War against politics during and since the the series of 'reassessments and impressions of Stalinism put about by the Pabloites.

It sought to grasp how it was that Stalinism remained, had reinforced its position as, the main counter- and revolutionary tendency in the workers movement, while at the same time abolishing capitalist relations of product- ion in the areas which came under its military and political control. It quite consciously, an attempt to develop was, Trotsky's pre-war work on Eastern consistently Europe. It attempts to make concrete the central concept that the crisis of mankind is concentrated in the crisis of revolut- and that the main plank of counter- ionary leadership, revolution is, in the post-war world, the Stalinist bureaucras cy. Its essential limitation was that it saw the nature and scope of state power and its action as too narowly confined within the geographical and population borders of partic- ular nation states, independently of their relative import- ance in the struggle of classes on a world scale. In fact, the state power of giant states - especially the USA and the USSR - is necessarily employed to settle and mediate in class struggles, up to and including questions of state power - on a world scale. It is not necessarily limited, for example, to areas bordering geographically on the Soviet Union. Thus, as the world economic crisis accelerates and the international class struggle passes more and more out of the control both of American and other imperialist powers, and of the major Stalinist apparatuses, these forces are compelled to negotiate and re-negotiate a series of attempt- ed re-divisions of the world into 'spheres of influence.

In particularly in the countries under many areas, imperialist domination, the character of the native state power is thoroughly weak and disintegrated. The state machines defending capitalist and imperialist property with the aid of continuous, survive only relations can direct, financial, military and other assistance from one or more of the major imperialist powers, not to mention the open or tacit collaboration of Stalinist or other bureau- cratic elements within the workers' movement. In Chile, in Indochina, and in Portugal, what is at stake is not only, or even necessarily primarily, the state power exercised by the native bourgeoisie but the state power of American imperialism itself, exercised on a world scale.

This extension of the character of state power, the fact that it now has a rational form but an international content, reflects, of course, not any conscious decisions by the major imperialist ruling classes, but the fact that with the delay of the world revolution and the survival of imperialism the nation state as such becomes more and 5p

NUMBER 3

10th DECEMBER, 1975

THEORETICAL SUPPLEMENT

TO SOCIALIST PRESS

more an historical anachronism; while the forces of prod- uction, the social relations of production, and the state power which based upon them and defends them, IS break more and more through the boundaries of the nation states formed in earlier historical periods.

premise (or analogy) from which Yet the essential Wohlforth's work takes its departure, and which is part and parcel of Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Soviet Union, remains an indispensable basis for under- standing the role of Stalinism in world politics. It is this: that the Stalinist apparatus is a parasitic caste based upon definite conquests of the working class, just as the bureau- crats in the leadership of a powerful trade union are.

COMPROMISE

Just as trade union bureaucrats will, on occasion, seek to defend or extend their trade union base, and even on occasion give, in a distorted form, a lead to trade union struggles - not as part of an overall policy to defend the working class and prepare for the overthrow of capitalism, but in an attempt to preserve their own position and basis of support - so the major Stalinist apparatuses, acting on a world scale, seek in the long term to preserve a relation- ship of compromise and equilibrium with imperialism, but, in particular cases, will employ their state and military power, and the diplomatic leverage which expresses these, to promote or protect the abolition of capitalist social Talauous in particulal ai cas they do this not as part of any international Equally, strategy to lead the workigg class for the overthrow of consolidate and imperialism, but, again, order basis of state power and socialised production GeCHO Ene on which their own existence as a parasitical social form- ation rests. From this point of view the kernel of Wohl- forth's view remains correct: that post-war political devel- and especially the role of opments on a world scale, Stalinism, must be seen as the bureaucratic limitation of working class to overthrow imperialist the drive ot the state pow talling and in no way as the result of the historical either consciously or Stalinism, LO unconsciously. Stalinism could only possess such initiative as a new In this sense Pabloism and state capitalism ruling class. reflect parallel abandonments of the revolutionary char acter of the working class Hungary 1956 - testimony to the counter-revolutionary role of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

AFTER THE 1963

"REUNIFICATION"

The re-unification of the SWP was, without question, carried out with a good deal of cynicism as far as most of SWP leaders were concerned. The record of negot- iations with Joseph Hansen, published to the membership of the SLL after the break with the SWP had become definite, (27) shows clearly that Hansen - at the same time that he was negotiating the basis for re-unification with the Pabloite leaders was unwilling to discuss the political bases or lessons of the 1951-53 split fact, prior to the re-unification it was Mandel, on behalf of the Pabloites, who evinced a greater willingness to conduct political discussion with the British and French sections of the International Committee than did the SWP

Page 2 SLL demonstration in 1968 calling for support for political revolution leadership. Mandel in fact attended a camp held by the SLL and addressed SLL members. The SWP re-unified with the Pabloites on the basis that there had, especially since 1956 Hungarian revolution and the revelations of the the 20th Congress of the CPU in that year, been.a convergence between the political standpoints of the two tendencies on the basis of their joint recognition that Cuba was state and of the supposed historical importance workers' and decisiveness of guerilla and petty-bourgeois nationalist America and other areas of the Latin movements in colonial world. Hand in hand, however, with this "political' agreement of the split which went an agreement to defer discussion in fact, this culminated in the open letter of 1953. And, discussion has never taken place within the USFI despite the fact that ever more open and serious political disagree- ments have erupted along their ranks, to the point where public and or less permanent there is now a more factional opposition between the SWP leadership and the minority groupings supporting them internationally on the one hand, and the Mandel-Frank-Krivine grouping, holding a majority on the international leadership bodies on the other. In fact one of the main political disagreements has revolved around the SWP leadership's condemnation of the "ultraleftism' and 'adventurism' of the Mandel tendency in giving too uncritical support to guerilla and terrorist tendencies in Latin America - almost a 180-degree about- turn from the SWP's position in relation to Castro in the early 1960s. These differences were crystallised, organised and set out in a series of opposed documents when the SWP declared an independent faction within the USFI early in 1973. the form they take at a of But, independently fact that what was they express the particular time, brought together in the USFI was an unprincipled political bloc, based on the burying of the past and an agreement that the lessons of the Pablo split and the relationship of the Trotskyist cadres internationally would not be studied by either the membership or the leadership.

Naturally, with the growth and systematisation of the SWP leadership have differences

USFI,

the within the started to resurrect some of this earlier period for their own purposes, but always within the framework of the slender international framework of discipline of the USFI and without in any way attempting to probe and criticise their actions then or since.

politically unprincipled character of the USFI The was underlined, very shortly after the reunification, by the defection from Pabloism of the majority of the Ceylonese section, the LSSP. The LSSP had acted as a broker between Cannon and Pablo immediately after the 1953 split. However, having failed to negotiate terms for the sections ot attend the Fourth International Committee World Congress' of the Pabloite leadership in 1954, the LSSP leaders themselves attended that congress and in the period 1953-1963 remained a section - though autonomous in many respects - of the Pabloite International Secretariat.

For their part the Pabloites accepted their support and respected their political autonomy, permitting the LSSP involved in leadership to get more and deeply more adaptation to reformism in the Ceylonese trade unions and to various forms of nationalism in their political and parliamentary work. The ground had been prepared with the negotiation of a 'United Left Front' agreement with the Stalinists and the centrist and opportunist MEP (People's United Front). By March 1964 N.M.Perera, one of the leading right- wing parliamentarians of the LSSP was involved in secret negotiations with Mrs. Bandaranaika's bourgeois SLFP to form a coalition agreement. Despite the fact that a left wing within the LSSP leadership fought the moves towards a coalition during 1963, and warned that the United Left Front' was an unmistakeable avenue to capitulation to the bourgeoisie, it was April 1964 before the USFI intervened with any clear warning against the course of the LSSP leadership. And by this time, of course, the SWP leadership too had made itself politically co-responsible for the wholesale betrayal of the Ceylonese section.

Only at the point where three of the right-wing leaders of the LSSP had already accepted in Mrs. ministries Bandaranaika's government in June 1964, did the USFI act to expel them from their 'International' and to suspend the conference delegates who had voted for the coalition resolution.

ARL

revolution in Czechoslavakia trace through and draw the essential political lessons from Within the SWP a tendency, betrayal of the

LSSP.

the around Tim Wolforth, which had opposed the drive of the of the SWP towards re-unification leadership majority with the Pabloites, continued to insist on discussion and on a proper political accounting of the Ceylonese betrayal.

They were expelled late in 1964.

Frank Krivine Mandel leaders of the Pabloite International Secretariat The remaining sections of the International Committee - primarily the British and the French - held an international SWP's conference in of 1963, after the the autumn re-unification with the International Secretariat had been once again, their carried through, at which they set out, wish to continue with a discussion of the fundamental questions dividing the world movement, despite the SWP's leadership's opposition to any such discussion. But, at the sáme time, they made preparations to assume to themselves the responsibilities of reconstructing the world movement against the SWP and their new-found allies.

SLL theoretical journal, Labour For example, the Review, Was retitled Fourth International and became the international theoretical journal of the International Committee. This bloc between the British and French based on an opposition to Pabloism running up sections, through the recent struggle with the SWP leadership, and now given fresh political possibilities and urgency by the beginnings of the break-up of the post-war economic "miracle', was consolidated at the 1966 conference of the IC. The Third Conference of the International Committee, held in April 1966, formed the main basis of the attempts draw the sections of the International to remaining Committee together - along with other smaller organisa- tions from other countries - to 'reconstruct the Fourth opposition the International in a clearly renewed to politics of the USFI. From the late 1950s until 1963 the main leaders in Britain and France had fought a rearguard 'drift' of the SWP leadership back action against the towards an unprincipled re-unification with the Pabloites.

In the course of this struggle they had some won support, within the SWP itself, and internationally The 'Third Conference' was to be the consolidation of starting point for taking up collectively the main this, a political, theoretical and historical tasks facing the move- ment, and a declaration before the advanced workers internationally and the world "Trotskyist' movement of the tasks of the IC. But in fact the outcome of the conference was an agreement for an uneasy political collaboration among the was to split sections, which last only until the main TROTSKYISM TODAY, Wednesday December 10th, 1975 resolution, amended as Rebuilding the Fourth Interna- tional', was prepared by the French leadership. (28) The the SLL and the OCI centred disagreements between around the formula to be adopted on the state of the world movement. In the result both leaderships accepted a form of amendment Banda which removed the position that Pabloism "penetrating all sections of the Trotskyist movement, has destroyed the Fourth Interna- tional as an organisation founded on the Transitional Programme and now necessitates a complete break with the revisionists: PInstead, Banda's amendment substituted • Instead, Banda's amendment substituted International the position that: Fourth successfully resisted and defeated the attempts of petty- bourgeois in the shape of a hardened opportunism, revisionist tendency which penetrated all sections of the Trotskyist movement, to destroy it politically and organ- isationally." The main concession to the French, however, was a motion proposed by Lambert that 'We agree to democratic centralism and intervention in principle, but at present it is impossible. The only method of arriving at decisions that remains possible at present is the principle of unanimity'. (29) The WRP now suggest (30) that the OCI participated from the in the Third Conference in bad faith. Yet, documents they publish, there was no dissimulation on either side. There were major concessions on both sides to agree the formulae of the 1966 Conference, but the agreement reached broke surface just a fragilty of the year after the conference in the exchange of documents of May-June 1967. (31) complained that the IC's tasks, as laid The French down by the 1966 conference, had remained a dead letter' They opposed the idea that the Pablo split could be simply "with the IC taking the place of into the past, written the Pabloite IS". "We cannot shout the King is dead, long live the King. We must open a discussion on these questions which has not yet been thoroughly undertaken inside the IC. For us it is indeed a question of rebuilding the FI by bringing the fundamental reasons for the Pabloite crisis the light of day and drawing the into lessons from it". The Fourth International, they continued, returning to the position which they had allowed Banda 'was destroyed under the pressure to amend away in 1966, of hostile social forces; its leaders capitulated to Stalinism bourgeoisie through not having been able to and the define its tasks in the class struggle'. (32) The SLL leadership immediately replied, rejecting the OCI positions 'in toto'. They insisted that the Fi lived, Pabloites, and (though this in the struggle against the was not stressed mearly so much as it came to be later) rooting this in the struggle for dialectical materialism.

They rejected the OCI tactic of a United Class Front and laid stress on the need for democratic centralism in the iC, following the principles set out in the Transitional Programme. They accused the OCI of preparing the road "complete pessimistic rejection of the whole Marxist for a revolutionary" perspective".

"What is the • And they asked of theoretical mistake underlying this abandonment perspective? It is a wrong understanding of the role of consciousness, of the unity of theory and practice, and therefore of the dialectic". (33) Yet, implicitly, the SLL 'Reply' acknowledges that democratic centralism in the IC had been shelved, full when it recognises that the work of the IC was essentially based on the 'collaboration' of the French and British sections. The fact of the matter is that the basis and results of the 1966 Conference were themselves contradictory and ambiguous, strong wish by the representing the British and French leaderships, which had gone through fifteen years of a struggle against Pabloism, to continue their joint work, but without having a worked-out agree- the gains and problems, of their ment on the history, reach a movement, or even being able to workable agreement on the methods of work together as an international movement. This is clear from the fact that Banda's amendment - declaring the FI 'alive', whereas the French draft had destroyed' - was inserted characterised it as without of the text! Thus the amendment to the political body political and theoretical summing-up of the state of the come out as the result of movement, which should have the concrete assessment given in the body of the resolution, was detached from it, becoming a mere formula. As such, it took its place beside the other formulae which were subsequently counter-posed: of the Transitional Pro- gramme on the one hand and the philosophy of dialectical materialism on the other.

ambiguous nature of the 1966 Conference is The visible in another respect. Two of the delegations which attended - the Voix Ouvriere (now Lutte Ouvriere) group the Sli

TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday December 10th, 1975 from France, and the Spartacists (Robertson group from the USA, which had split from the SWP in parallel with the Wolforth group) broke with the IC, essentially over the "formula' on the FI. The VO group, as they explained in writing before the Conference, had held this position since the 1940s - they also held that China and the Eastern European states were bourgeois states. (34) The Spartacists left when their leader, James Robertson, after refusing to apologise for his 'petty- bourgeois' behaviour in missing a session. His expulsion was apparently carried out mainly by the British leadership, with the passive support of the other delegations.

The circumstances (later exploited to the hilt by the SWP and USFI (35)) are obscure: certainly it cannot be claimed that the grounds of the expulsion brought much political clarification to anyone. From the assessments of Voix Ouvriere and Spartacist, made shortly after the Conference by the French and British leaderships, it is hard to under- stand why they were brought to the Conference at all.

Palestinian liberation forces in 1973 Sharp differences erupted between the OCI and SLL with the outbreak of the Middle East War, at the beginning of June 1967. The SLL favoured critical support for the Arab states; the French regarded it as a war between agents of imperialism on both sides. The differences were never resolved, they raised the issue of principle of central- ism within the IC, with the SLL pressing for an immediate joint declaration, the French for full discussion. A week after the key IC discussion, the SLL took the provocative step of instructing Dany Silvere to put their line at a public youth meeting in Paris; having seen her notes the OCI leadership refused to let her put the position, and she did not speak. (36) Almost certainly, these differences would have led to a split much earlier had it not been for the May-June 1968 general strike in France.

The IC sections defended the OCI - both against the repressions launched against all left organisations after the defeat of the general strike at the hands of the Stalinists, and against the political attacks Paris, May 13th, 1968 Workers and Students join hand directed at it, mainly by the Pabloites.

account of the May-June events by Tom Kemp, The which the SLL published, implicitly criticised the failure of the OCI to call for a government of workers' parties to put the Stalinists on the spot and hinder or prevent them doing what, fact, they were able to do: return the strike movement via wage concessions, and retreats negotiated plant by plant (37). But neither at the time, nor before the split in 1971(as far as it is possible to tell did the SLL leaders take the line which they now express by saying that Lambert 'helped betray the 1968 General Strike' (38). The struggle between the OCI and the SLL was an open one within the ranks of the SLL and the YS during 1967, with an OCI speaker putting their position at the SLL conference in that yeaz and being involved in a sharp discussion. But it appears to have been closed down, in Britain at any rate, among the rank and file in 1968 and to have re-opened only in 1970-71. In February 1971 the OCI, acting formally on behalf of the IC, but in effect, it appears, on their own initiative, convened a conference of representatives of 'sympathising' groups in Latin America.

It was a preparatory meeting with the aim of preparing conditions for rebuilding the FI on that continent, and the most important grouping there was Lora's Bolivian POR grouped (on conditions which were later to be disputed) with the IC since 1969. The SLL does not seem to have participated in this conference, though the OCI was fully involved, but equally it does not appear to have objected at the time to the basis on which the conference was held.

The conference also issued a political appeal to the group- veteran Peruvian Hugo Blanco, ing of the Trotskyist affiliated as a sympathising section of the USFI. (39)

BREAK

The final break came very suddenly, at the International The SLL moved an Youth Rally, at Essen in July 1971.

amendment to the main resolution (prepared by the OCI, but presented at the last minute) which called for the dev- elopment of Marxist theory as the basis of the fight against opportunism. There was an open split, and the amendment was defeated. From then on, collaboration was at an end, and the SLL participated in none of the later meetings of the Essen Liaison Committee. In the autumn of that year with a public break over the split completed Workers' League and SLL attack on Lora's role in the (40) DOLLVId ICVOTALIOL. Within a very short time from the 1971 split, both sides had taken initiatives towards the USFI, and especially the SWP. Even before the split, in April 1970, Healy had acted the name of the IC in holding two conversations with Pierre Frank of the USFI to discuss - very much in the abstract = the possibility of discussing the political differ- ences and, even more remotely, of eventual unifications.

conversations got nowhere. Although secret at the These time, they were leaked within months, the USFI giving as the main reason for rejecting any organised

SOTEECTS

(41). But after the split both sides renewed discussion. the approaches separately. The OCI made a series private approaches, starting at least as early as May 1973.

In October 1974 serious - but very general - conversations were held between the OCI and a delegation provided basically bamilles. Private sgotiations presemably still candels "supervised' Mandel's The SLL made a public approach in a statement of August 1973, following this up with formal approaches via Wohlforth to the SWP in October 1973 (43). The SWP as a manoeuvre. rejected these According to a recent SWP statement they did this at the same time as they were sympathetically considering the second approach from the OCI, 'more comradely' than the first. (44) On the SLL's part therefore, the picture appears to be one of an erratic propaganda move, not aimed at procuring possibly of searching discussion, but with the any sort ›bject of forestalling or delaying a 'bloc against them by the JSFI and OCI's international tendency From the Uci une initlatives seem to nave been casea on tne expecu ation of a split in the USFI, following which some sort of unification with on the basis Trotskyist Tne

SWP

*orthud fron aoln o pone byustit gest o bocs meted.

"blocs' manoeuvring on an international scale is there any evidence of a political basis which would permit the reassessment of the history of the International, or the conditions for a resolution of the general crisis of the wreld movement which opened in 1951-52. On the contrary, the sharpening of class relations internationally, and the ot the OCINVe workmg cidss give rise to manoeuvres, splits, political repetitions and re- the falsification groupments, and burying of the move- ment's histroy, which serve only to deepen and complicate The Chicis Paris, May 13th, 1968 Workers and Students join hands in a huge demonstration prior to the sit in strikés

CONCLUSION

The conditions which have created the posibility of building full revolutionary parties in many countries are essentially same as those which have produced the the acute political crisis and paralysis of the International Committee (and, though less directly, of the Pabloite collapse

USFI).

The of the post-war boom and the development not simply of the economic crisis, but of a total social crisis, within the capitalist states has major removed conditions under which reformism and The Stalinism could consolidate and retain the hold that they reasserted following the post-war defeats and curtailmen of the lhe material development of th working class. crisis sharpens to an intolerable pitch the contradiction between the real needs and struggles of the masses and the cowardly, treacherous, partial leadership of the bureau- crats of the labour movement.

The crisis sharpens these tensions - in innumerable but of itself it cannot break it. spontaneous forms Spontaneity, under these conditions, can achieve nothing the left centrism of sections of the class, more than shifts and movements in the direction of revolutionary actions, the 'left' and militant criticism of the bureaucratic apparatuses. But what is required - and what is now Page 3 Bolivia 1971 - miners armed only with dynamite fight fully armed troops possible - is not adaptation to the spontaneous leftward of the class, but the construction - from those moves elements driven into political movement and ferment - of an alternative leadership, consciously struggling to win the body of the class from the bureaucrats.

It is the material conditions that pose this task that have at the same time thrown the "Trotskyist' organisations into crisis. A generation of their leaders has been formed conditions under vast, hostile ideological pressure, making itself directly felt in the form of pressures to adapt and compromise the political divide between revolutionary Marxism on the one side and left reformism and Stalinism on the ather. Unable, because of the lease of life granted to imperialism in its main centres, to win important sections of the working class from the influence or control of the the Trotskyists of the 1950s and bureaucracies, 1960s were in large part forced back to the defensive task of preventing the erosion and destruction of Marxism within their own - numerically and politically fragile ranks. In the qualitatively reversed conditions of the 1970s, the past limits imposed by circumstances on the movement became positive obstacles to the building of parties within the class, and past strengths - together with their limits - an transformed into vices. In the case of the SLL/WRP the necessarily narrow existence as a largely propaganda group, strengths that the necessary with all the came from Marxist cadre, turned attempts to train and retain a themselves within a short space of time into a shell, preventing a break out into wider sections of the class - despite the considerable human and material resources which had been brought together.

The experiences of the post-war faction fights had lef their mark: workers who clashed with the WRP leadership's of were treated as potentially (and line the moment actually) politically hostile. The previous threats to the principle of Bolshevik leadership left a leadership incapable of tolerating any challenge to its position, and consequent- ly incapable - in its own view - of error, of learning from loyal criticism within the party.

that this 'ossification It far from accidental was as the SLL recognised the accelerated at the same time new conditions (without being able to profit from them) in transforming itself into the WRP. The need and possibil- ity of building party in the class was sensed and reflected in a form, without the old propaganda new leadership being able to weld together the new content.

The WRP began to be built - even before its inauguration - surrounded by a "halo' of as an inner core of activists, paper members, recruited with scarcely a shred of agree- with the programme and principles of Trotskyism.

ment This method - at its sharpest in the election campaigns of 1974 - reinforced the effects of 'philosophy' as a 'theoreti- cal truncheon in the hands of a leading clique.

These were the particular forms taken by the speedy political degeneration once theory and perspectives became separated, as a matter of routine, from the practice of The inability of the International Committee party work. to apply centralism to the direction of its national sections the 1966 already acknowledged in the work of was Conference; in the 1974 faction struggle we found that even the most elementary democratic rights were denied to a minority. What follows from this is that the IC (WRP) can under no circumstances be regarded as the continuator of the FI as the organised leadership with an authoritative international centre - of the World Party of the Socialist Revolution. At the same time it must be clearly reaffirmed that the sections adhering to the IC after the 1953 split and through only the reunification maintained the struggle there was for political continuity of Trotskyism - despite the fact that the IC never really operated as a centralised organisation. The fact is - belatedly - acknowledged in the loose organisational character of the OCTs organising Committee for the Fourth International.

10,000 strong OCI youth rally at Le Bourget airport, Paris in 1970 For the WSL, therefore, it can be neither a question "Fourth existing of attaching ourselves to an already which has maintained unbroken the political International' since the and organisational continuity of Trotskyism founding conference, nor of a pure and simple proclama- tion that we are the hasis of the 'real Fl ourselves The accuracy of the OCTs 1966 formula, at least, must be accepted: that the FI has been destroyed as an organising

Leon Trotsky - Murder caused leadership crisis within FI centre based on the Transitional Programme.

But - and here is the cifterence - this destruction was not a sımple result of Pabloism, and did not take place suddenly one in 1952 or 1953. It was the outcome of a series of day political struggles in which there have been real political gains and defences made, despite the failure to hold together and build the centralised international party which was formed in 1938. And the destruction has resulted not just from Pabloism as some outside force, but because there has been a failure to answer Pablo and his successors politically.

INITIA TIVE

The primary responsibility of the WSL, therefore, is to take a position before the world "Trotskyist' movement and the advanced sections of the class

WOK P

political, not an organisational basis, and to take initiatives in accordance with this. ReTC S O aMeN Os Ea Wa posed is the 'reconstruction' of the Fourth International.

trom the defence and development of the SEa CaES Transitional Programme and the gains which it represented.

The elements of our political position should include a brief of the statement following powts

WECE

agreement should form the basis for initial discussions between ourselves and other tendencies, especially those expelled from the IC: 1.The 1951-53 split turned on a definite revision of and the Transitional Programme, especially Marxism of the Stalinism and petty-bourgeois position tendencies within the international workers HOve- ment. The revisionist tendency of Pablo was enabled capture the leadership of the FI due to (a) the of of the relative weakness and inexperience many blows of cadre and leaderships, due largely to the Stalinism itself, and of the war, and (b) the apparent strength of Stalinism and imperialism, including the destruction, under Stalinism, of capitalist production as the outcome of the Telations in Seve a Col ecs. defeats of the working class, imposed as part of the post-war settlement. 2.The actions of the PCI and SWP in 1950-53 in resisting Pablo's tendency must be defended, despite their political limits and 'hasty character.

3. The history of the IC, as a tendency continuing this struggle through 1963 'reunification' must equally be detended. 4 Yet there is, more then at any previous time a need for the theoretical re-arming of the Trotskyist move- In noTt0u0t do raporde tho not wer neve ormant - while abstractly recognising the need for The IC theoretical development - was unable to accomplish it or attack it collectively.

5: Internationally, conditions are more favourable than at Trotskyist time since the war to build parties any rooted in the working class. Equally the acceleration of the world economic crisis and the breakdown of all the arrangements of political and economic 'stability" in the advanced and previously countries many "controlled" render semi-colonial and colonial states, this more than ever critical even for defending and advancing the elementary interests of working peo- ple, as well as in the preparation of new revolutionary eaderships. 6.This renders urgent steps towards an open, democratic- ally organised discussion among all those striving to draw upon the gains of our movement and reconstruct the FI as a democratic centralist world party. The WSL will participate in all such discussions, and will discussions with take the initiative in seeking such tendencies and individuals. The aim of such discussions be to the political basis for must prepare open conference of tendencies, working towards political agreement and ultimate organisational unification. The form and conduct of such discussions must be agreed by the political tendencies participating.

7.No tendency internationally can lay claim to sole rights within such a discussion. Nor can participation in such discussion interpreted as conferring immunity from public polemic. However, all tendencies have the gravest responsibility to avoid poisoning oI political accusations of a aborting discussion with police, provocateur or agent character.

The general agreement of other tendencies on such a for basis discussion, should be judged, naturally, not just from their formal declarations but from their work in 'the class struggle itself. For our part the WL must decide on, prepare and publish those documents - in addition to these general International Perspectives - which will form our essential platform within such discussions.

These must include a separate document dealing with the main developments of world history during and since the Second World War, especially the changes in the character and role of the Stalinist bureaucracies.

This document must contain a critical assessment of Wolforth's The Theory of Structural Assimilation.

WCT

the

ITATE

one TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday December 10th, 1975 reopening of political discussion with the USFI and its component sections, taking up the whole post-war history of Trotskyism and defending the struggle of the IC for the political independence and theoretical continuity of Marxism. this purpose the USFI leadership and sections For cannot be regarded in advance as having placedithemselves outside the world Trotskyist movement. Equally the WSL while politically hostile to the USFI as a bloc, rejects all attempts to poison the political struggle with the USFI with accusations or insinuations of 'provocateurs' etc.

In this context, too, the WL should also make some other points clear from the outset of discussion though on these, equally, prior agreement should not )e seen as the essential basis of discussion: 1. The defence of the Transitional Programme, as the highest expression in the world of the struggle for the proletarian party and its political strategy, must not become an obstacle to its development.

"The USSR particular the section dealing with and Problems of the Transitional Epoch" must be supplemented and brought up to date to provide essential transitional the demands and slogans for the leadership of the political revolution in the workers The main thrust of these should states. be the inability of the bureaucracies to provide economic development under control of the working masses, the political usurpation and the enforcement of their political monopoly, and the bureaucracy's standpoint of 'socialism in one country', lethal subordinating themselves imperialist diplomacy to endangering the existence of and military pressure, the workers' states themselves, and sabotaging the elementary military, political and economic unity which should exist among them.

2. The initiatives of the Organising Committee of the Fourth International towards the USFI, and especially the SWP, since 1973 contain - in our view the serious danger of erasing the essential political drawn in distinctions which must be the course of the necessary political conflict.

While we are not opposed on principle to initiatives towards the

USFI,

consider should take place they not we privately but on the basis of a public statement of position. The necessary organisational conditions must be secured through political clarity and correct and correct and open approach and response on the organisational level. 3. The claim to constitute the FI by abstract proclamation of its necessity cannot be the basis for its reconstruction. Such a position in the absence of any political assessment of the post-war history of the FI, will become an obstacle to the struggle for political and programmatic independence which is necessary. 4. The conflict which developed between the OCI the

SLL

leadership the programme the over on one hand and Marxist philosophy on the other is our view an artificial one in In the case of the SLL it has ossified the question of marxist method, separated it from the political tasks fo the sections and rendered it a means for holding back not developing, the membership. The development of dialectical materialism cannot take place in the abstract, but only in the struggle to grasp and take the lead in concrete political developments.

CONCLUDED

27. In SLL Internal Bulletin, 1963.

28. Reprinted in Documents from the Third Conference of the International Bulletin International Series No.3.

Committee, 1971. 29. See letter immediately after conference by Rose J., expelled Spartacist, in Marxism v Ultraleftism, pp 84-5.

30. In the editorial passages of the fifth volume of Trotskyism versus Revisionism. 31. See Trotskyism versus Revisionism Vol.5.

32.

OCI

Statement, May 1967, Trotskyism versus Revisionism pp 84 ff. 33. Reply to the OCI by the CC of the SLL, June 19th 1967, in Trotskyism versus Revisionism Vol.5, po 107 ff.

34. See Trotskyism versus Revisionism Vol.5 pp 64 ff.

35. See Marxism u Ultraleftism 36. See TuR Vol.5 pp 134 ff.

37. Pamphlet by Kemp, French Revolution Betrayed, 1968.

38. TUR, glossary of names.

39. See TuR Vol.5 pp 166 ff.

40. Article in The Bulletin, Aug.30th, 1971.

41. See Intercontinental Press, July 23 and October 25, 1970, and Workers Press, 7 July 1970.

42. See Intercontinental Press, Jan. 1975.

43. See Marxism v Ultraleftism, p.195.

44. Intercontinental Press, Jan 13th, 1975.

For Lenin, Marxist philosophy was never counter-posed