Democratic Centralism
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Democratic Centralism
Crisis in SWP raises general issues for marxists
A crisis has erupted within in the Socialist Workers Party, the UK'S largest left group and the main section of the International Socialist Tendency. We do not intend to enter into the inevitably messy debate over specific allegations. But the conflict raises many important questions about democratic centralism and revolutionary organisation so here are some documents and links which can help readers explore the general issues. The opposition within the SWP has gathered most of the document and comments at http://internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk/. The most prominent member is Richard Seymour who runs the well established Lenin's Tomb blog at htttp://www.leninology.com. SWP leader Alex Callinicos replied to the opposition in the following article and we follow it with contributions from leading Americans, blogger Louis Proyect and International Socialist Organisation intellectual Paul Le Blanc (the American ISO was expelled from the IST several years ago). Is Leninism finished?Feature by Alex Callinicos, January 2013 Do revolutionary parties, like the Socialist Workers Party, that draw on the method of organising developed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks still fit in the twenty first century? Alex Callinicos challenges the critics and argues that Leninism remains indispensable The demise of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and of the political tradition that it seeks to embody have been widely proclaimed on the British left in recent weeks. Thus the columnist Owen Jones has announced that "the era of the SWP and its kind is over." Is he right? The flood of attacks on the SWP originates in some internal arguments that culminated in our annual conference in January. The conference discussed a difficult disciplinary case. But wider political differences emerged. Two factions were formed in the lead-up to the conference to fight for changes in the model of democratic centralism - the system of decision making used by organisations in the revolutionary Marxist tradition - that the SWP has developed. These issues were argued out in vigorous political debates at the conference, and the positions put forward on democratic centralism by the outgoing Central Committee (the main party leadership) were approved by large majorities. Unfortunately, a small minority refused to accept these decisions. Through a series of leaks and briefings some ensured that a highly distorted account of the disciplinary case was circulated on the web and taken up by some of the mainstream media. The minority has used this coverage to argue that the SWP was now "toxic" and to make a variety of demands - for example, a special party conference to nullify the decisions just taken, the censure or removal of the newly elected Central Committee, and various changes to the party's structure. One thing the entire business has reminded us of is the dark side of the Internet. Enormously liberating though the net is, it has long been known that it allows salacious gossip to be spread and perpetuated - unless the victim has the money and the lawyers to stop it. Unlike celebrities, small revolutionary organisations don't have these resources, and their principles stop them from trying to settle political arguments in the bourgeois courts. Moreover, in this case a few individuals, some well known, others not, have used blogs and social media to launch a campaign within the SWP. Yet they themselves, for all their hotly proclaimed love of democracy, are accountable to no one for these actions. They offer an unappetising lesson in what happens when power is exercised without responsibility. All of this would be of interest solely to the SWP and its supporters, were it not for the political conclusions that are being drawn. Both Owen Jones and "Don Mayo", an ex-member of the SWP leadership who recently left the party, have targeted what "Mayo" calls "the orthodox Trotskyist model of Leninism". Like Jones, he says this is "an historically outdated model". Marxist tradition So what's at stake here? The SWP has sought, since its origins in a handful of people expelled from the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1951, to continue the revolutionary Marxist tradition. Started by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this tradition reached its highpoint in the Russian Revolution of October 1917, when the Bolshevik Party led the first and still the only successful working class revolution. Leon Trotsky, who with Vladimir Lenin headed the Bolsheviks in October 1917, then fought the degeneration of the revolution with the rise of Stalin's tyranny between the mid-1920s and the early 1930s. What does continuing a tradition mean? There are plenty of sects, Stalinist as well as Trotskyist, who think this involves the mindless repetition of a few sacred formulas. But genuinely carrying on a tradition requires its continuous creative renewal. Marxism is about the unity of theory and practice so this process of renewal has both intellectual and political dimensions. The theoretical development of Marxism requires above all deepening and updating Marx's critique of political economy. His target was the capitalist economic system: in his masterwork Capital he uncovered its structural logic. But capitalism develops historically, and, as it does, so must Marxist analysis. In the SWP we have contributed to this process, most recently with Chris Harman's great last work Zombie Capitalism - not alone, however. There is a great renaissance of Marxist political economy under way at present that can help political activists understand what's happening to capitalism during its greatest crisis since the 1930s. But Marx's political legacy - the necessity of working class organisation to overthrow capital - is less secure. In 1968 the SWP's predecessor the International Socialists decided to adopt a Leninist model of organisation. In other words, we decided to take our reference point in how we organise the way the Bolsheviks organised under Lenin's leadership in the years leading up to the October Revolution. Flexible tactics In fact, as Tony Cliff (the founder of the SWP) showed in his biography of Lenin, the Bolsheviks were very flexible in their political tactics and organisational methods. But there were some common factors. Most fundamentally, as has been confirmed by subsequent experience, workers' struggles have again and again developed into revolutionary movements that challenge the very basis of capitalist domination. But the same experience also shows that these revolutionary movements tend to be held back by traditions that represent a compromise between resistance to and acceptance of the capitalist system. Historically the most important of these traditions has been reformism, whether in the shape of mainstream social democracy or the Western Communist Parties after Stalin's triumph. But there are other ideologies embodied in organisations that have played a similar role - social Catholicism in Poland during the great Solidarnosc movement in 1980-1, or variants of Islamism in Iran in 1978-9 and Egypt today. The hold of these traditions on workers is reinforced by the way in which the workings of capitalism tend to fragment their consciousness and encourage them to think in terms of the interests of a smaller section rather than the class as a whole. And so major working class struggles, from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the Great Miners' Strike of 1984-5 in Britain, have ended in heroic and inspiring defeats once the question of political power is posed. The reason why the experience of October 1917 is so significant is because here the Bolsheviks succeeded in breaking the grip of the reformists (in this case the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries), which had been overwhelming in the months after the overthrow of Tsarism in February 1917, and winning the active support of the majority of workers for the conquest of power. What this involved was the Bolsheviks acting as what is sometimes called a "vanguard party". They represented for most of their existence before October 1917 a small minority of the Russian working class. But this minority was united by a shared Marxist understanding of the world. And, above all, it organised and acted on the basis of this understanding. The Bolsheviks collectively intervened in the struggles of the Russian working class. In doing so, they put forward proposals that would help to advance the struggle in question. But they simultaneously sought to encourage workers to recognise that they had to fight for political power and, to achieve this, to support the Bolshevik Party itself. So the Bolsheviks won the majority of the working class through a continuous process of dialogue between them and their fellow workers, in which they sometimes changed their minds, learning from workers who had actually moved ahead of them. But in this process the party sought to overcome the uneven experiences of different groups of workers and the way capitalism fragmented their consciousness. How the Bolsheviks organised as revolutionaries became obscured with the degeneration of the October Revolution, which developed as a result of the isolation of the new workers' republic and the disintegration of the working class itself caused by civil war and economic collapse. When we rallied to Leninism in the late 1960s we were trying to apply this original model. But renewing Leninism wasn't simple. In the first place, we faced different conditions from those confronting the Bolsheviks: reformism, rooted in the trade union bureaucracy, was far more entrenched in Britain and the rest of Western Europe than it had been in Tsarist Russia. Escalating struggle Secondly, these conditions were changing. From 1968 onwards we were able to turn ourselves towards a wave of escalating workers' struggles that culminated in the fall of Ted Heath's Tory government in early 1974. The picture was the same in the rest of Western Europe: this was the era of May 1968 in France and the Italian "hot autumn" of 1969. But then in the mid-1970s everything began to change. The Labour government of 1974-9 was able to halt the rising tide of workers' militancy and to incorporate rank and file workers' leaders into managerial structures. Then in 1979 Thatcher came to office. She successfully renewed the capitalist offensive that Heath had attempted and defeated the miners and other key groups of workers. Her administration and that of Ronald Reagan in the United States marked a global turning point. The neoliberalism they pioneered sought to revive the profitability of capital above all by fragmenting the working class and weakening its organisations. Its effects were contradictory: as the present global economic crisis shows, it failed to resolve the underlying problems of profitability, but workers did emerge more divided and with less effective organisations. This doesn't mean that resistance to capitalism has vanished - far from it. The Arab revolutions were fundamentally caused by the effects of neoliberalism in polarising societies such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. But certain trends are visible. First of all, the mainstream political organisations of the working class continue to decline. The Italian Communist Party - in its prime the largest Western party - has vanished almost without trace. The social democratic parties have tried to adapt to neoliberalism by moving rightwards and embracing the market - the project of New Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But not only did this end in disaster (Brown's devil's pact with the City helped to bring about the 2008 financial crash), but the base of the social liberal parties (as many now call them) in a more fragmented working class has continued to shrink. This doesn't mean that reformism is finished: François Hollande beat Nicolas Sarkozy in last year's French presidential elections and Labour is running ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls. But it's weaker. Secondly, we have seen since the Seattle protests of November 1999 waves of political radicalisation directed at neoliberalism and sometimes at capitalism itself. The great protests against the invasion of Iraq whose tenth anniversary we are about to celebrate were a high point. In 2011 the Arab revolutions helped to stimulate first the 15 May movement in the Spanish state and then the Occupy movement that spread from Manhattan around the world. These movements are tremendously important. But they have not led to or been sustained by workers' struggles that have reached a similar level of generalisation or intensity. Of course, workers have been playing an important role - think of the pensions strikes here in Britain on 30 June and 30 November of the same year, of the general strikes and other workers' struggles in Greece, or of the strike across southern Europe on 14 November 2012. Streets or factories? The fact remains that, while an insurgent working class was at the centre of the radicalisation of the late 1960s and early 1970s, so far this is not true today. Even in Egypt, where the struggle today is most advanced, the movement on the streets has been more central than the movement in the factories in the two years since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. What conclusions should we draw from this? It would be ridiculous to assert that the working class is finished. The neoliberal era has seen a contradictory and uneven expansion of capitalism that has drawn wider social layers into the net of wage labour. The struggles that I have referred to (and there are many others - for example in the new centres of capital accumulation such as China and Vietnam) represent the learning experiences of a working class that has been restructured to meet the changing demands of capital. There's no reason why they should repeat the pattern of the upturn of the late 1960s and early 1970s, any more than they did those of earlier waves of working class struggle. Nevertheless, one consequence of the form taken by the present radicalisation is that the centrality of workers' struggles in the fight against capitalism is less obvious than it was in the past. This is one reason why - along with the atrophy of the mainstream political parties as they are drawn deeper and deeper into the corporate world - contemporary anti-capitalist movements tend to be suspicious of political organisations. The burden of proof is on those of us who still think Leninism is the best form for revolutionary organisation to show why this is so. This is the serious question raised by the polemic launched by Owen Jones and his like. Jones seems to be stating his alternative when he writes, "Britain urgently needs a movement uniting all those desperate for a coherent alternative to the tragedy of austerity, inflicted on this country without any proper mandate." This sounds very nice but is quite misleading, since Jones is an increasingly high profile member of the Labour Party. And indeed he writes, "so long as trade unions ensure Labour is linked to millions of supermarket checkout assistants, call centre workers and factory workers, there is a battle to be won in compelling the party to fight for working people." In other words, although Jones is critical of Ed Miliband for failing to "offer a genuine alternative to austerity", he thinks that activists should devote their energies to pushing Labour leftwards. This is a project that generations of activists have pursued since the 1920s (indeed Jones says his parents met as members of the Militant Tendency, which fought valiantly to win Labour to socialism till most were expelled during the 1980s). The nature of the Labour Party The failure of the struggle to win Labour for the left isn't a matter of lack of effort or determination. The very nature of the Labour Party defeats its left wing challengers. It is geared to the electoral cycle, so that discussion of policy and support for struggle are subordinated to the effort to win votes on terms set by the Tories and the corporate media. Miliband's opposition to the pension strikes is just the latest in a long and sad story of betrayals by Labour leaders that goes back to Ramsay MacDonald during the 1920s and Neil Kinnock in the 1980s. The power of the parliamentary leadership has historically been buttressed by the social weight and financial muscle of the trade union bureaucracy. Today the union presence still ties Labour to the organised working class, but at a price. The role of full-time trade union officials is to negotiate the terms on which workers are exploited by capital. Sometimes this leads them to take action, as they did on 30 November 2011, but only in order to improve their bargaining position. The subsequent betrayal of the pensions struggle is therefore absolutely typical. So the trade union bureaucracy is a conservative force within the workers' movement. But, far from addressing this problem, Jones is currently campaigning for the re-election of Len McCluskey as general secretary of Unite. McCluskey talks a good fight, but he sat by while other union leaders killed off the pensions strikes. He has also thrown Unite strongly behind Labour under Miliband. This is why the SWP conference voted to support the campaign of Jerry Hicks to challenge McCluskey as a candidate committed to strengthening the rank and file. Despite his radical rhetoric and the excellent stance he takes in the media on specific issues, Jones is defending an essentially conservative position, lining up with Labour and the trade union leaders. "Mayo" represents an apparently more radical option. He aligns himself with some other former leading members of the SWP, Lindsey German, John Rees and Chris Bambery, in arguing that the mass movements that have developed since Seattle represent an alternative to Leninist politics. But if we look at the movements against neoliberal globalisation and imperialist war that developed at the start of the millennium, we see that they had an astonishing global impact, but failed to sustain themselves. The same proved true of Occupy, which emerged very rapidly as a worldwide symbol of anti-capitalist resistance - and then equally rapidly dissipated. There are various reasons for this pattern. Probably the most important is the absence of a sustained revival of working class militancy, which would give a social weight to the protest spectaculars offered by the movements. But the situation hasn't been helped by the domination of the anti-capitalist movement by "horizontalist" hostility to political parties and by unworkable (and ultimately undemocratic) methods of decision-making based on consensus. When "Mayo" and his like renounce Leninist politics and uncritically embrace the movements they are evading these problems. They are equally shifty when it comes to confronting the biggest problem facing the progress of resistance to austerity in Britain - the role of the trade union leaders in blocking strike action. Like Jones, "Mayo" and his co-thinkers are backing McCluskey on the grounds that he "is no bureaucrat". Neither they nor Jones are offering an alternative to the dominant forces inside the British workers' movement. United fronts But maybe the SWP is just too hopelessly sectarian to provide the basis of this alternative. Yet Jones pays us a curious if back-handed tribute: "The SWP has long punched above its weight. It formed the basis of the organisation behind the Stop The War Coalition, for example, which - almost exactly a decade go - mobilised up to two million people to take to the streets against the impending Iraqi bloodbath. Even as they repelled other activists with sectarianism and aggressive recruitment drives, they helped drive crucial movements such as Unite Against Fascism, which recently organised a huge demonstration in Walthamstow that humiliated the racist English Defence League." So the SWP is awful, but it has played a crucial role in the most important movements of the past decade. How can this contradiction be resolved? In reality we are committed to the politics of the united front. In other words, we will work, in a principled and comradely way, with political forces well to our right to build the broadest and strongest action for common if limited objectives - for example, against the "war on terror" or the Nazis. We have followed the same practice in Unite the Resistance, an important alliance of activists and trade union officials to campaign for strikes against the coalition. Moreover, what our critics dislike most about us - how we organise ourselves - is crucial to our ability, as Jones puts it, to punch above our weight. Our version of democratic centralism comes down to two things. First, decisions must be debated fully, but once they have been taken, by majority vote, they are binding on all members. This is necessary if we are to test our ideas in action. Secondly, to ensure that these decisions are implemented and that the SWP intervenes effectively in the struggle, a strong political leadership, directly accountable to the annual conference, campaigns within the organisation to give a clear direction to our party's work. It is this model of democratic centralism that has allowed us to concentrate our forces on key objectives, and thereby to build so effectively the various united fronts we have supported. But this model is now under attack from within and without. Scandalously, a minority inside the SWP are refusing to accept the democratically reached conference decisions. What they, and some other more disciplined and more reflective comrades are arguing for is a different model involving a much looser and weaker leadership, internal debate that continually reopens decisions already made, and permanent factions (currently factions are only allowed in the discussion period leading up to the annual party conference). If they succeeded, the SWP would become a much smaller and less effective organisation, unable to help build broader movements. The stakes in these debates are very high. The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France imploded in 2011-12, leading to a very serious breakaway to the Front de Gauche led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This has weakened the far left in Europe, and indeed the rest of the world. The implosion was caused by political differences and setbacks, but it was exacerbated by an internal regime very similar to the one advocated by some SWP members. All the debates within the NPA went through the filter imposed by the struggle between four permanent factions. Members' loyalties focused on their factional alignments rather than the party itself. I am confident that the SWP is politically strong enough to overcome its internal differences. Our theoretical tradition and our democratic structures will allow us to arrive at the necessary political clarity and to learn the lessons of the disciplinary case. But if I am wrong and the SWP did collapse, this would not solve the political problem that it exists to address. The anti-capitalist struggle won't be advanced by relying on Labourism and the trade union leaders or by uncritical worship of the movements. If the SWP didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it. Published online on 28 January 2013. This article will be in the February issue of Socialist Review http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=12210 Leninism is finished: a reply to Alex Callinicosby Louis Proyect After a month’s worth of attack on the SWP leadership, including from its own members, Alex Callinicos has taken to the pages of Socialist Review (“Is Leninism Finished?”) to frame the fight in terms of a defense of Leninist orthodoxy. I think this is useful since it helps to crystallize the broader issues facing this fairly important group in Britain and the socialist movement internationally: is the “democratic centralist” model that is the hallmark of aspiring “vanguard” parties appropriate to our tasks today? Just over 30 years ago the American SWP was going through a profound crisis involving the democratic rights of its membership. The Barnes leadership had decided to dump Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution overboard in a bid to make itself more acceptable to what it saw as an emerging new revolutionary international with Havana functioning as a pole of attraction. When many long-time members, including those who had worked closely with Trotsky, fought to have a debate over this change, Barnes decided to forgo a constitutionally mandated party convention and began expelling members on trumped-up charges. I had left the SWP by this point but was so disturbed by these developments that I began calling comrades I respected. Les Evans was a member of a group of expelled members who hoped to resurrect the “good, old SWP”, a task tantamount to reassembling Humpty-Dumpty. My next phone call was to Peter Camejo, who had been expelled mostly because he was an independent thinker popular with the membership–a terrible threat to the SWP’s leader. After he began figuring out that the party he had belonged to for decades was on a suicidal sectarian path, he took a leave of absence to go to Venezuela and read Lenin with fresh eyes. This was one of the first things he told me over the phone: “Louis, we have to drop the democratic centralism stuff”. That is what he got out of reading Lenin. I was convinced that he was right and spent the better part of the thirty years following our phone conversation spreading that message to the left. In the early 80s it was a tougher sale to make. Back then orthodox Trotskyist parties, and ideologically heterodox parties like the British SWP, did little investigation into the actual history of the Russian social democracy and were content to follow organizational guidelines based on what someone like James P. Cannon filtered down to them through books such as “Struggle for a Proletarian Party” or Tony Cliff’s Lenin biography. Largely through the efforts of Lars Lih, it has become more and more difficult to ignore the historical record. The publication of his 808 pageLenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context was like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door in 1517, except in this case it was the door of the Marxist-Leninist church. Unlike Peter Camejo or me, Lih was not interested in building a new left. He was mainly interested in correcting the record. As a serious scholar with a deep command of the Russian language, he was quite capable of defending his thesis, namely that Lenin sought nothing more than to create a party based on the German social democracy in Russia. There was never any intention to build a new kind of party, even during the most furious battles with the Mensheviks who after all (as Lih convincingly makes the case) were simply a faction of the same broad party that Lenin belonged to. The British SWP has been deferential to Lih, whose scholarship was beyond reproach, but at pains to dismiss its implications. The September 2010 issue of Historical Materialism organized a symposium on Lih’s research in which they made the case for “Leninism” as they understood it. While HM is largely inaccessible to the unwashed masses (where was Aaron Swartz when we needed him?), you can read SWP’er Paul Blackledge’s contribution at http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=218. We can assume that he was speaking for Callinicos and the SWP leadership when he wrote: The novelty of this form of organisation was less than obvious in the early part of the last century, and Lih is right to point out that Lenin was attempting to build something like the German SPD in Russia. Nonetheless, it is also true that Lenin did succeed in building something different, and better, than the SPD. It is in this respect, I think that Lih is wrong to reject Georg Lukács’s interpretation of Lenin, upon which many of the activists have based their analyses. When I first ran across the British SWP on the Internet back in the early 90s, I never would have dreamed that they would have ended up with such a horrible scandal on their hands. I was impressed with both their theoretical prowess and with their work in the British antiwar movement. My only caveat was that their organizational model would prevent them from breaking through a glass ceiling imposed by their sectarian habits. I put it this way: I believe that the methodology of the [American] SWP was flawed from the outset. In its less lethal permutations, such as the Tony Cliff or Ted Grant variety or the SWP of the early 1970s, you end up with a “healthy” group but one that is destined to hit a glass ceiling because of its self-imposed “vanguardist” assumptions. In a nutshell, the group sees itself as the nucleus of the future revolutionary party no matter how much lip service is given to fusing with other groups during a prerevolutionary period, etc. In its more lethal versions, you end up with Gerry Healy or Jack Barnes where megalomania rules supreme. Apparently some SWP members were grappling with the same problem as I discovered from a document written by Neil Davidson for their 2008 convention (it can be read on a blog devoted to a discussion of the SWP crisis. Davidson writes: The problem is rather that there seems to be a limit beyond which the Party is unable to grow. In 1977, shortly after International Socialism (IS) had transformed itself into the SWP, Hallas wrote in The Socialist Register that “the SWP is ‘something approaching a small party’. But a small party has no merit unless it can become a much bigger party”. I imagine that if Martin Smith had not been such a sexist pig, the SWP would have meandered along in this fashion for a number of years. Like a match thrown into a room filled with gasoline fumes, the rape incident and the Central Committee’s role in covering it up has provoked a crisis threatening the very existence of the party. Returning to Callinicos’s article, I was struck by his exasperation over how “internal” party matters have spilled over into the Internet: One thing the entire business has reminded us of is the dark side of the Internet. Enormously liberating though the net is, it has long been known that it allows salacious gossip to be spread and perpetuated – unless the victim has the money and the lawyers to stop it. Unlike celebrities, small revolutionary organisations don’t have these resources, and their principles stop them from trying to settle political arguments in the bourgeois courts. In a nutshell, this is the same mindset that is on display at MIT, the elite institution that insisted on prosecuting Aaron Swartz for purloining JSTOR documents. Like the Gutenberg printing press that made possible generations of revolutionary-minded print publications like Iskra, the Internet is the communications medium for 21st century socialism. If anything has become clear, the “internal” documents of the SWP cannot be bottled up behind a firewall. In the same way that a Madonna video will make its way into Pirate’s Bay, some controversial SWP document will get leaked to the wretched Andy Newman’s Socialist Unity website. I am not even taking a position on whether this is reflecting the “dark side” of the Internet–only that this is the reality we operate under. But more to the point, there really is no basis for revolutionary socialist organizations to keep their business internal. This was not the case in Lenin’s day, nor should it be the case today whether we are communicating through the printed page or on the Internet. This idea that we discuss our differences behind closed doors every couple of years during preconvention discussion was alien to the way that the Russian social democracy operated. They debated in public. We are obviously more familiar with Lenin’s open polemics with the Mensheviks that some might interpret as permissible given that a cold split had taken place (a false interpretation as Pham Binh and Lars Lih have pointed out.) But even within the Bolsheviks, there was public debate as demonstrated over their differences on whether the bourgeois press should be shut down. In John Reed’s “10 Days that Shook the World”, there is a reference to divided votes among party members over key questions such as whether to expropriate the bourgeois press. At a November 17th 1917 mass meeting, Lenin called for the confiscation of capitalist newspapers. Reed quotes him: “If the first revolution had the right to suppress the Monarchist papers, then we have the right to suppress the bourgeois press.” He continues: “Then the vote. The resolution of Larin and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries was defeated by 31 to 22; the Lenin motion was carried by 34 to 24. Among the minority were the Bolsheviki Riazanov and Lozovsky, who declared that it was impossible for them to vote against any restriction on the freedom of the press.” Get it? Lenin and Riazanov debated at a mass meeting and then voted against each other. This was normal Bolshevik functioning. All discipline meant was a deputy voting according to instructions from the party’s central committee, etc. For example, if Alex Callinicos was elected to Parliament and instructed to vote against funding the war in Iraq, and then voted for funding, the party would be entitled to expel him. Instead, democratic centralism in the Fourth International parties, and in parties following such a model like Callinicos’s International Socialist Tendency, has meant something entirely different. Discipline has meant enforcing ideological conformity. For example, it would be virtually impossible for SWP members in Britain to take a position on Cuba identical to the American SWP’s and vice versa. As it turns out, this is a moot point since most members become indoctrinated through lectures and classes after joining the groups and tend to toe the line, often responding to peer pressure and the faith that their party leaders must know what is right. Keeping watch on the ideological purity of the group leads to the formation of a priesthood that is in the best position to interpret the holy writings, whether of Trotsky, Tony Cliff, Ted Grant, or whoever. When they are also full-time functionaries, their power is magnified. For a rank-and-file member of such parties to raise a stink over some questionable strategy or tactic is almost unheard of. It takes something like a rape to get people mobilized apparently. Virtually none of the latest thinking on the problematic of “democratic centralism” is reflected in Callinicos’s article. Instead he uses the term “Leninism” as a kind of shorthand for revolutionary politics that the SWP is defending against what he views as Owen Jones’s Labourite opportunism. Callinicos describes Jones as a “an increasingly high profile member of the Labour Party.” This is the same party that rests on a trade union leadership that “is a conservative force within the workers’ movement.” To cap it off, Callinicos draws from the same poisoned well that goes back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s: Despite his radical rhetoric and the excellent stance he takes in the media on specific issues, Jones is defending an essentially conservative position, lining up with Labour and the trade union leaders. In other words, Callinicos is resorting to the “scratch to gangrene” method of attack that is the hallmark of the Trotskyist movement going back to the late 1930s and to the Zinovievist Comintern of the 1920s, which Trotsky adopted as a model. It is basically a way of stigmatizing your adversary as reflecting “alien class forces”. To protect the integrity of the party, you must ward off the disease-carrying agents of the ruling class. Jones has it right. This kind of disgusting “Leninist” politics belongs not only to the twentieth century but a socialist politics debased by the USSR’s “dark side”. We need a new way of functioning, one that is free from the sectarian “us versus them”, small proprietor mentality of groups like the SWP as currently constituted. In Jones’s Independent article—as opposed to the straw man that Callinicos erected–he called for the following: What is missing in British politics is a broad network that unites progressive opponents of the Coalition. That means those in Labour who want a proper alternative to Tory austerity, Greens, independent lefties, but also those who would not otherwise identify as political, but who are furious and frustrated. In the past two years of traipsing around the country, speaking to students, workers, unemployed and disabled people, I’ve met thousands who want to do something with their anger. Until now, I have struggled with an answer. This is simply another way of stating that something like a British SYRIZA is necessary. Perhaps anticipating the struggle that has broken out now, Richard Seymour defended the Greek multi-tendency electoral formation in an open challenge to the SWP leadership. I have no idea how the fight in the SWP will be resolved but I have a strong feeling that if the current gang is removed from the leadership, the party can be a powerful catalyst in moving Britain in the direction that Owen Jones outlined and that the revolutionary left contingent of SYRIZA in Greece is working toward. And if they are defeated, I would only hope that the comrades consider becoming part of a broad initiative that aims to unite the left on a nonsectarian basis. In a post I wrote on the debate over SYRIZA on the left, I offered this conclusion. I think it is worth repeating: Finally, I want to suggest that SYRIZA has much more in common with traditional Marxist concepts of a “revolutionary program” than many on the left realize. (I will be elaborating on this at some length in a pending article.) Our tendency is to mistake doctrine with program. For example, not long after I joined the SWP of the United States in 1967, I asked an old-timer up in party headquarters what our program was. (A Maoist friend had challenged me about our bona fides.) He waved his hand in the direction of our bookstore and replied, “It’s all there.” This meant having positions on everything from WWII to Kronstadt. Becoming a “cadre” meant learning the positions embodied in over a hundred pamphlets and books and defending them in public. Of course, this had much more in common with church doctrine than what Karl Marx had in mind when his Communist program sought, for example:
When you stop and think about it, this is sort of the thing you can find in SYRIZA’s program. Maybe it is time for the left to rethink the question of how we demarcate parties? Instead of demanding that new members learn the catechism on controversial questions going back to the 1920s, they instead would be required to defend a class orientation in their respective arenas, like the trade union movement or the student movement, etc. That would make us a lot stronger than we are today. We need millions united in struggle, especially since the death rattle coming out of capitalism’s throat grows louder day-by-day. Leninism is unfinishedBy Paul Le Blanc February 1, 2013 http://socialistworker.org/2013/02/01/leninism-is-unfinished The crisis in the British SWP has stirred a sharp debate among party members about the allegations of sexual harassment and rape at the center of the crisis and about how a revolutionary organization deals with disputes and disagreements among its members and leaders. In response to an article titled "Is Leninism Finished" by SWP leader Alex Callinicos,Paul LeBlanc, author of numerous books, including Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, commented both on the article and the resulting discussion. A TRAGIC development has unfolded on the British left--the destructive crisis of that country's Socialist Workers Party (SWP). People have been hurt and humiliated, the organizational measures taken (and not taken) have aroused fierce controversy, there have been expulsions and resignations, after a narrow vote at a party congress there has been an unsuccessful internal ban on further discussion of the matter, and serious damage has been done to one of the most important organizations on the global revolutionary left. A public intervention in the discussion by the SWP's most prominent theorist, Alex Callinicos, has posed a key question--in part as a defense of the decisions implemented by the leadership of his organization--as the title of his article: "Is Leninism Finished?"Responding to him, a U.S. socialist blogger, Louis Proyect, has affirmed: "Leninism Is Finished."[1] The question and answer would seem to have great significance for revolutionaries of all lands. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The scandal and subsequent organizational developments and measures within the SWP, together generating the crisis, have been discussed at length and in depth by others. Some of the Internet discussion is saturated with voyeuristic speculations, rumor-mongering and sectarian gloating far removed from serious, genuinely progressive or revolutionary politics. Some of it, coming from members of the SWP, has been informative and thoughtful. Anyone with access to the Internet can easily read it all, if they have the time and the inclination. Since both Callinicos and Proyect cite an article by Owen Jones, a left-wing columnist in the pages of The Independent, I will allow him to summarize what seems to have happened:
The first paragraph tells us that the SWP is "imploding," which is really not clear as of this writing, but to say that it is currently wracked by crisis is to state the obvious. Nor is it necessary to take sides in regard to the charge of "sectarianism and aggressive recruitment drives" (and also to the assertion that many SWPers "end up burnt out and demoralized"). All the more impressive, in the face of these criticisms, is the acknowledgement that "the SWP has long punched above its weight," with a capacity to organize impressive struggles and to mobilize thousands and even millions. This cannot be said about most left-wing groups in Britain or the U.S., and Callinicos makes the obvious point:
In fact, there is an overly expansive aspect to Callinicos' definition of democratic centralism--a point to which we will need to return. But there does seem to be some correlation between the way the SWP seeks to organize itself (consciously drawing on the Leninist tradition) and its political effectiveness. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Louis Proyect has long wrestled with the question of revolutionary organization, driven to do so in large measure because of his own traumas (shared by others, including myself) in the SWP of the United States a quarter-century ago. The political traditions of the U.S. SWP and its crisis of the 1980s (and consequent implosion) are not exactly the same as the traditions and crisis of the British SWP--but there are certainly parallels.[3] Proyect focuses his attention on these, for the purpose of making what he hopes will be useful generalizations for the left as a whole. Yet there seems to be a serious contradiction in the line of argument that he puts forward. Early in his article, Proyect tells us that he was especially influenced by former SWPer Peter Camejo:
The contradiction is that for much of his article, Proyect insists that Lenin's own organizational thinking (including on the matter of democratic centralism) is consistent with the thinking of Proyect himself, not with the thinking of Callinicos and others whom he accuses of following in the footsteps of Gregory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky. Callinicos' conceptions, he insists, are rooted not in Lenin, but in "the Zinovievist Comintern of the 1920s, which Trotsky adopted as a model." But this means a more appropriate title for his essay would be: "Cominternism is Dead, Long Live Genuine Leninism!"[4] It may be, however, that Proyect's position is similar to that of Charlie Post, who argues that there was nothing in Lenin's thinking to distinguish him from Karl Kautsky (of pre-1914 vintage), and that "Leninism" is an invention of Zinoviev and other leaders of the Comintern of the 1920s.[5] Among the many problems with this, however, is the fact that the 1920s Communist International of Zinoviev and Trotsky was also the Comintern of Lenin himself. (There is also a reality highlighted by the immense, very rich contributions of John Riddell and others, that there was much more of value in the early Communist International than one would be led to believe by superficial attacks on "Zinovievism.") There is no question that Lenin was profoundly influenced by other comrades in the pre-1914 Socialist International, particularly George Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky. But his thought cannot be reduced to that. Nor did his thinking stop in 1914. In fact, the 1921 Comintern theses "The Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of Their Work" were put forward at Lenin's insistence. Not only did Lenin help to shape the theses (which included a substantial emphasis on democratic centralism), he also defended them after they were adopted.[6] Apparently to present a Lenin more consistent with political points he wishes to stress, Proyect chooses to leave this and much else out of his account of the history of the Bolsheviks. Yet a fairly selective reading of Lars Lih's contributions cannot render more than a fragmentary understanding of Lenin, Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution. This is not to deny an important point that Proyect makes:
In elaborating on this, however, Proyect tends to play fast and loose with the historical evidence in order to "prove" that Lenin himself was no "Leninist" (when, as we shall see, Lenin actually was an approximation of what we would call a "Leninist"). Such dilution results in the loss of ideas and historical experiences that we really cannot afford to lose. It is unfortunate that a selective utilization of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World serves to push aside, for all practical purposes, what is presented in Trotsky's classic History of the Russian Revolution. Consider the complex and dynamic notion which Trotsky advances in his preface:
We need to wrestle with the meaning of this dialectical passage if, as revolutionary activists, we are to make our way through the no less dynamic complexities of our own time. Proyect presents as the "essence" of Lenin's approach the fact that he and other Bolsheviks could publicly argue against each other and openly vote in opposite ways. But this draws us away from the actual Leninist "essence" that Trotsky points us to. This is especially unfortunate because it can obscure the positive contribution Proyect actually makes in his article. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Proyect argues that revolutionary socialist organizations must stop giving in to a fatal sectarian temptation, the false vision that they are the "revolutionary vanguard," or perhaps the nucleus of the revolutionary vanguard party of the future. Even in its less pathological variants, he warns, revolutionary socialist groups can thereby create for themselves a vanguardist "glass ceiling." The problem is that "the group sees itself as the nucleus of the future revolutionary party no matter how much lip service is given to fusing with other groups during a prerevolutionary period, etc." At some point, the perceived necessity of preserving and advancing the group's special role as "nucleus" will nurture fatally sectarian dynamics within the group and between that group and other forces. In criticizing the relatively healthy pre-crisis British SWP and the relatively healthy pre-1980 U.S. SWP, Proyect makes the point that "it would be virtually impossible for SWP members in Britain to take a position on Cuba identical to the American SWP's and vice versa." He tellingly adds that this is "a moot point since most members become indoctrinated through lectures and classes after joining the groups and tend to toe the line, often responding to peer pressure and the faith that their party leaders must know what is right." To the extent that he is right (as I know he is about the U.S. SWP and suspect he may be about the British SWP), this suggests an issue that defenders of any kind of "Leninism" (and of political-organizational coherence in general) must wrestle with. No serious socialist group can afford to abandon the education of its members around theory and history ("indoctrination") in the form of lectures and classes. Nor can any human group abolish "peer pressure." But what healthy countervailing tendencies can be nourished that will help overcome the negative tendencies to which Proyect usefully directs our attention? Proyect tells a story from the late 1960s of his discussion with an older veteran of the Trotskyist movement when both were members of the SWP. After a Maoist friend had challenged him, the young recruit asked what the SWP's program was. The old-timer "waved his hand in the direction of our bookstore and replied, 'It's all there.'" It is interesting to consider Proyect's interpretation of this--that it "meant having positions on everything from WWII to Kronstadt. Becoming a 'cadre' meant learning the positions embodied in over a hundred pamphlets and books and defending them in public." This was, in fact, the conception of many (not all) comrades of that time--but there is another, quite different way of understanding the old comrade's comment. It is not the case that SWP bookstores were simply stocked with pamphlets and books outlining positions on everything from the Second World War to the Kronstadt uprising of 1921. Rather, they contained a rich array of material--accounts of labor struggles, anti-racist struggles, women's liberation struggles, the history of the revolutionary movement, writings by Marx and Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, Ernest Mandel, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, (in some cases, also Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millett, Sheila Rowbotham), as well as some of the most creative thinkers in the SWP--not simply James P. Cannon (worth reading despite the criticisms made of him), but people like George Breitman and Joseph Hansen who developed insights and innovative formulations incompatible with any closed "orthodoxy." To say "it's all there" could be seen as reference not to a closed system of Truth, but to a rich and multifaceted tradition, an approach that is rigorous but also open, critical-minded and revolutionary, with theory and analysis rooted in the actual mass struggles of one's own time. This may not be what that particular old comrade meant, but I did know some old comrades who happened to think this way. The proposed political orientation that emerges from Proyect's piece could be stated, I think, with four basic and interrelated points:
This approach, which I think Proyect is advancing, makes sense to me. It projects the seasoning and tempering, through mass struggle, of substantial layers of activists who are part of the broad working-class vanguard, helping prepare the social base and organizational experience that are preconditions for the crystallization of a genuine revolutionary working-class party, or the practical equivalent of that party. Owen Jones similarly seems to get it right when he argues for "a broad network that unites progressive opponents of the [neoliberal] Coalition. That means those in Labour who want a proper alternative to Tory austerity, Greens and independent lefties, but also those who would not otherwise identify as political, but who are furious and frustrated. In the past two years of traipsing around the country, speaking to students, workers, unemployed and disabled people, I've met thousands who want to do something with their anger." A broad left front, agreeing on certain basic programmatic principles, "could link together workers facing falling wages while their tax credits are cut; unemployed people demonized by a cynical media and political establishment; crusaders against the mass tax avoidance of the wealthy; sick and disabled people having basic support stripped away; campaigners against crippling cuts to our public services; young people facing a future of debt, joblessness and falling living standards; and trade unions standing their ground in the onslaught against workers' rights." The way Alex Callincos dismisses this seems odd to me. "This sounds very nice but is quite misleading," he tells us, "since Jones is an increasingly high-profile member of the Labour Party." He then goes on to repeat the traditional SWP critique of the British Labour Party, counterposing this to the tradition that the SWP is attempting to continue: "Started by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, this tradition reached its high point in the Russian Revolution of October 1917, when the Bolshevik Party led the first and still the only successful working class revolution. Leon Trotsky, who with Vladimir Lenin headed the Bolsheviks in October 1917, then fought the degeneration of the revolution with the rise of Stalin's tyranny between the mid-1920s and the early 1930s." All of which is fine--and which could be quite consistent with responding positively to the Left front for working-class mass action that Jones is proposing. It seems obvious to me that the SWP could make powerful contributions to the process being projected here. If, however, instead of seeing the revolutionary vanguard and its organization(s) as being forged through actual mass struggles, one sees the Socialist Workers Party as the true, already-existing revolutionary vanguard organization, making its way through a morass of flawed competitors, then perhaps one can afford to be dismissive. Is that what Callinicos actually believes? If so, then the parallels Proyect is drawing between the two SWPs and his warning about a "vanguardist glass ceiling" may be appropriate. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - If something approximating a revolutionary vanguard party, with good politics and a mass base, can actually be forged by different currents joining together in the class struggle, then the question is posed as to how such a formation can hold together and be an effective force for the advance of the working class and the revolutionary cause. And this brings us back to the question of democratic centralism. In their different conceptions of what this meant for Lenin and what it should mean for us, it seems to me that Proyect veers off the path of historical accuracy and political logic, while Callinicos traps himself in a problematical formulation that may be related to the present crisis of the British SWP. Here is how Proyect explains the meaning of Lenin's conception of democratic centralism and relates it to our own time:
This very narrow interpretation, however, is not the way the Mensheviks (Lenin's factional adversaries in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) understood democratic centralism --and they were the first ones to introduce the term into the Russian revolutionary movement. The term involved much more for them than simply control over parliamentary delegates. According to their resolution of November 1905, "decisions of the guiding collectives are binding on the members of those organizations of which the collective is the organ. Actions affecting the organization as a whole...must be decided upon by all members of the organization. Decisions of lower-level organizations must not be implemented if they contradict decisions of higher organizations." The Bolsheviks fully accepted the term. In a 1906 discussion, Lenin explained: "The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticize so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out allcriticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided by the Party."[9] At this point, it is time for us to turn our attention back to the formulation of Callinicos that we questioned earlier--that "our version of democratic centralism" involves two key points: 1) "decisions must be debated fully, but once the vote has been taken, by majority vote, they are binding on all members," and 2) "a strong political leadership, directly accountable to the annual congress, campaigns within the organization to give a clear direction to our party's work." This two-point definition is different from the way Lenin and his comrades defined the term. Missing in what they put forward is Callinicos' emphasis on "a strong political leadership...giving clear direction to our party's work." But also missing is the broad insistence that "decisions" as such "are binding on all members." In fact, Lenin was absolutely resistant to the efforts of some of his Menshevik comrades to establish "limits within which decisions of Party congresses may be criticized." As he stressed:
Lenin went on to argue that "criticism within the principles of the Party Program must be quite free,...not only at Party meetings, but also at public meetings."[11] One might expect a change in the way Lenin and his comrades discussed the concept of democratic centralism in the 1921 organizational resolution on organization--but the section of that document dealing explicitly with democratic centralism contains nothing to contradict what Lenin was saying in 1906. In fact, the document contains warnings regarding efforts by Communist Party leaderships to go too far in the direction of centralization. "Centralization in the Communist Party does not mean formal, mechanical centralization, but thecentralization of Communist activity, i.e., the creation of a leadership that is strong and effective and at the same time flexible," the document explained. It elaborated: "Formal or mechanical centralization would mean the centralization of 'power' in the hands of the Party bureaucracy, allowing it to dominate the other members of the Party or the revolutionary proletarian masses outside the Party."[12] Freedom of discussion, unity of action remains the shorthand definition of Lenin's understanding of democratic centralism. The creation of an inclusive, diverse, yet cohesive democratic collectivity of activists is something precious and necessary that serious revolutionaries must continue to reach for. It is not clear that the world can be changed without that. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As a serious Marxist theorist and educator, Alex Callinicos, in explaining the SWP commitment to the Leninist tradition, asks: "What does continuing a tradition mean?" He answers quite aptly that "genuinely carrying on a tradition requires its continuous creative renewal." This dovetails with points made by the organizational resolution which Lenin helped to prepare for the 1921 congress of the Communist International:
Both the 1921 resolution and Callinicos' article, each in their own way, make the point that there has not arisen some qualitatively new form of organization--whether reformist or "movementist" or anarchist or syndicalist--that makes unnecessary the kind of revolutionary organization that Lenin sought to build. We will need something like that kind of organization in order to challenge capitalism effectively and to replace it with socialism. Some of the formulations Callinicos advances seem to indicate such an organization already exists in the form of the British SWP. To question whether that organization is actually the party of the revolutionary vanguard (as opposed as an element of the future organization that has yet to be forged) does not eliminate the underlying point: the centrality of revolutionary organization. If there is truly the need for such a revolutionary organization--inclusive, diverse, democratic, cohesive--then it seems clear that Leninism is far from "finished" in any sense of the word. It is something that is needed, it still has relevance. More than this, the organizational forms and norms associated with Leninism must be applied creatively and flexibly, continually adapting to the shifting political, social, cultural realities faced by revolutionaries. These forms and norms must never become a final, finished, closed system--they are necessarily open, fluid, unfinished. In seeking to accomplish what the Bolsheviks accomplished, but to do it better, we need to engage with the praxis (thought and practical experience) of Lenin and his comrades, making use of it in facing our own realities. Much work remains to be done--the struggle continues. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1. Alex Callinicos, "Is Leninism Finished?" Socialist Review, January, 2013, and Louis Proyect, "Leninism is Finished: A reply to Alex Callinicos," The Unrepentant Marxist, January 28, 2013. A reply to Paul Le Blancby Louis Proyect http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/a-reply-to-paul-le-blanc/ Paul Le Blanc of the International Socialist Organization just wrote an article titled “Leninism is Unfinished” that tries to circumnavigate the differences between my approach, that of Alex Callinicos, and his own. I will turn to Paul’s article but only after providing some background. I have been debating these questions with him since 1998 when he still shared the perspectives of The Fourth Internationalist Tendency, a small group that had recently disbanded and entered Solidarity as a group. The FIT had operated as an expelled faction trying to persuade the SWP of the United States to return to its gloried past. I certainly hope that the British comrades don’t get any silly ideas in the course of reading back issues of the FIT’s magazine about wooing their own leadership back to Planet Earth. Unlike me, Paul viewed the American SWP’s collapse as a function of a radicalization that had run out of steam combined with Jack Barnes’s abnormal psychology. Although I put little stock in the psychological angle, I did get a smile when reading this: The impact of Barnes in the SWP is a reflection not of Leninist principles or the tradition of Cannon, but of basic human psychological dynamics. The functioning of some SWP members, responding to the powerful personality and tremendous authority that Barnes assumed, brings to mind Freud’s insights on group psychology: ‘the individual gives up his ego-ideal [i.e., individual sense of right and wrong, duty, and guilt] and substitutes for it the group-ideal as embodied in the leader.’ The authority of the leader (in the minds of at least many members) becomes essential for the cohesion of the group, and the approval of the leader, or a sense of oneness with the leader, becomes a deep-felt need that is bound up with one’s own sense of self- worth. But why do we have so many crazy Trotskyist leaders? Were they crazy to start with or does the burden of being “the Lenin of today” make people crazy? When you get Pablo, Posadas, Moreno in Latin America, and Gerry Healy, Jack Barnes, and now Charlie Kimber in the English-speaking world carrying on like the cast of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, you have to wonder if it is something in the way these organizations are structured rather than their qualification to be listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. I want to start off with a clarification. Paul states my article contains a contradiction, namely that I defend Lenin’s approach even though I blame “the Zinovievist Comintern of the 1920s, which Trotsky adopted as a model” for the British SWP’s problems, as well as the American group of the same name that is virtually extinct. He wonders if a more appropriate title for my essay would have been: “Cominternism is Dead, Long Live Genuine Leninism!” and drives the point home with this: “Among the many problems…is the fact that the 1920s Communist International of Zinoviev and Trotsky was also the Comintern of Lenin himself.” So how can I be critical of Lenin when he launched the Comintern, not Zinoviev? I don’t expect Paul to be familiar with my thinking on Lenin’s role in all this, but I have written: There are no shortcuts in building revolutionary parties, but the overwhelming tendency in “Marxism-Leninism” is to do things in the name of expediency… Unfortunately, this type of behavior is deeply ingrained in the Communist movement and got its start in the very early days of the Comintern, even when Lenin was in charge. This is an excerpt from my article on The Comintern and German Communism that takes pretty strenuous exception to how Lenin treated Paul Levi, despite being applied in the name of “democratic centralism”. If Lenin’s organizational principles of the early 1920s represent the fruition of some sort of breach with the Kautskyite orthodoxy of “What is to Be Done”, then I’ll stick with the old soft drink rather than the new and improved formula. What the Communist Party of the Soviet Union tried to do immediately after taking power was to create a model that other parties could follow. The first clear statement on organizational guidelines appeared in July of 1921. They stipulate: “to carry out daily party work every member should as a rule belong to a small working group, a committee, a commission, a fraction, or a cell. Only in this way can party work be distributed, conducted, and carried out in an orderly fashion.” It is not hard to understand where this kind of mechanical application of the Bolshevik experience was coming from. When you have a successful revolution, there is a tendency to write cookbooks with recipes for every occasion. That happened with the Cuban Revolution as well, the sad evidence being Che’s ill-fated venture in Bolivia based on Regis Debray’s “Revolution in the Revolution”. Lenin was uneasy with these guidelines, writing “At the third congress in 1921 we adopted a resolution on the structure of communist parties and the methods and content of their activities. It is an excellent resolution, but it is almost entirely Russian, that is to say, everything in it is taken from Russian conditions.” I think if he had lived longer, he might have dumped them altogether. Indeed, the fact that he was considering moving the Comintern to another country showed his grasp of problems that would only deepen. The remainder of Paul’s article gets into the minutiae of how democratic centralism was understood variously by Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. I would prefer to deal with a question that is not addressed in the article but one that is essential to the tasks that face us today. Ironically, they are very much bound up with the opening words of Leon Trotsky’s “Transitional Program” that are embraced by some of the worst sectarians on the planet: “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” The sectarians feel that forging a revolutionary program and recruiting cadre around it can resolve the crisis. This is how James P. Cannon, Tony Cliff and every other Trotskyist of note started out. But I don’t think that Trotsky really understood how the crisis could be resolved. It was not by launching small propaganda groups that competed with each other, like small businesses each advertising its unique product line. Instead it requires building a framework that will allow the natural leadership of the working class to come together in a common framework. Here is the problem. Ever since I have been involved with the left, there have been exceptional individuals who have emerged in the mass movement with socialist politics but who belong to no group. For example, many of the left wing leaders in the trade union movement are unaffiliated. The same thing is true with the Black, Latino, women’s and gay movements. I estimate that the layer of revolutionary leaders steeled in the struggle numbers in the tens of thousands. The same situation confronted Lenin in 1903. He proposed that a newspaper be created that could provide a framework for the already existing working-class leadership that had no party. When there was a massive social democratic consciousness in Czarist Russia that had spread like a wildfire from Western Europe, the primary task was to help link up people like Kamenev, Bukharin, Trotsky, Plekhanov and Martov. For example, Bukharin’s political life began at the age of 16 when he and his friend Ilya Ehrenburg built support for the 1905 revolution in student circles. The leadership of the Russian social democracy was men and women who had proven themselves in battle long before a party existed. The problem with groups like the British SWP, the American SWP, the ISO et al is that they can never hope to attract the broad layers of such a leadership even though occasionally someone as talented as a Peter Camejo or a Richard Seymour is drawn into their ranks. If you had visited Nicaragua in the 1980s, you would have met FSLN members who were neighborhood leaders of the fight against Somoza. They were leaders before they joined the FSLN. All the FSLN did was give the natural leadership of the Nicaraguan working class a vehicle for their aspirations. The same thing was true of the July 26th movement in Cuba. Ironically, despite the hatred directed against Stalinism from the Trotskyist movement, the Vietnamese CP was far more like the Bolsheviks than any section of the F.I. in this regard. I opposed the repression of the Trotskyists in Vietnam after WWII but like most of their co-thinkers they had no possibility of ever reaching the masses. Ho Chi Minh understood better. In the final analysis, I don’t have any problem with the ISO being constituted as it is at present. They have little interest in the kind of approach I am laying out and know that if anybody spoke this way to me in 1969 when I was in the SWP I would have denounced them as petty bourgeois centrists, swamp dwellers, talk shop kibitzers, etc. My appeal is really to independent-minded young people (and even some old fogies) in the tens of thousands who are sick and tired of the capitalist system and have learned to fight. They—we—need our own organization that can allow everybody to thrive within it and to draw upon each others’ abilities to move the struggle forward. I have seen encouraging signs of movement toward such a new approach and am sure that by the time my life is over a new period of revolutionary history will have begun. I want to conclude with an article I wrote about a decade ago. I have posted it before but feel it is worth posting again since I have attracted many new readers since the last time it was posted. Instead of dealing in abstractions about how reach the workers, etc., it is a pretty specific set of proposals. I am no Lenin but I think the SWP would have been a lot better off if it had followed them. The Speech that Jack Barnes Should Have Given in 1974Comrades, 1974 is a year that in some ways marks the end of an era. The recent victory of the Vietnamese people against imperialism and of women seeking the right to safe and legal abortion are culminations of a decade of struggle. That struggle has proved decisive in increasing both the size and influence of the Trotskyist movement as our cadre threw their energy into building the antiwar and feminist movements. Now that we are close to 2,000 in number and have branches in every major city in the US, it is necessary to take stock of our role within the left and our prospects for the future. In this report I want to lay out some radical new departures for the party that take into account both our growing influence and the changing political framework. Since they represent such a change from the way we have seen ourselves historically, I am not asking that we take a vote at this convention but urge all branches to convene special discussions throughout the year until the next convention when a vote will be taken. I am also proposing in line with the spirit of this new orientation that non-party individuals and organizations be invited to participate in them. A) THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT While our political work of the 1960s was a necessary “detour” from the historical main highway of the socialist movement, it is high time that we began to reorient ourselves. There are increasing signs that the labor movement is beginning to reject the class collaborationist practices of the Meany years. For example, just 4 short years ago in 1970, various Teamsters locals rejected a contract settlement agreed to by their president Frank Fitzsimmons and the trucking industry. They expected a $3.00 per hour raise but the contract settled for only $1.10. The rank and file went out on a wildcat strike that Fitzsimmons and the mainstream press denounced. Fitzsimmons probably had the student revolt on his mind, since he claimed that “Communists” were behind the teamster wild-cat strike. Nobody took this sort of red-baiting to heart anymore. The burly truck-drivers involved in the strike were the unlikeliest “Communists” one could imagine. The trucking industry prevailed upon President Richard Nixon to intercede in the strike at the beginning of May, but the student rebellion against the invasion of Cambodia intervened. The antiwar movement and the war itself had stretched the US military thin. National guardsmen who had been protecting scab truck- drivers occupied the Kent State campuses where they shot five students protesting the war. In clear defiance of the stereotype of American workers, wildcat strikers in Los Angeles regarded student antiwar protesters as allies and invited them to join teamster picket lines. The wildcat strikes eventually wound down, but angry rank and file teamsters started the first national reform organization called Teamsters United Rank and File (TURF). It is very important for every branch to investigate opportunities such as these and to invite comrades to look into the possibility of taking jobs in those industries where such political opportunities exist. What will not happen, however, is a general turn toward industry that many small Marxist groups made in the 1960s in an effort to purify themselves. Our work in the trade unions is not an attempt to “cleanse” the party but rather to participate in the class struggle which takes many different forms. We are quite sure that when comrades who have begun to do this kind of exciting work and report back to the branches that we will see others anxious to join in. B) THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT We simply have to stop observing this movement from the sidelines. There is a tendency on the left to judge it by the traditional middle-class organizations such as the Audubon Club. There are already signs of a radicalization among many of the younger activists who believe that capitalism is at the root of air and water pollution, etc. Since the father of the modern environmental movement is an outspoken Marxist, there is no reason why we should feel like outsiders. Our cadre have to join the various groups that are springing up everywhere and pitch in to build them, just as we built the antiwar and feminist groups. If activists have problems with the record of socialism on the environment based on the mixed record of the USSR, we have to explain that there were alternatives. We should point to initiatives in the early Soviet Union when Lenin endorsed vast nature preserves on a scale never seen in industrialized societies before. In general we have to be the best builders of a new ecosocialist movement and not succumb to the sort of sectarian sneering that characterizes other left groups who regard green activists as the enemy. C) THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST MOVEMENT This will strike many comrades as controversial, but I want to propose that we probably were mistaken when stood apart from all the various pro-NLF committees that were doing material aid and educational work. We characterized them as ultraleft, whereas in reality those activists who decided to actually identify with the Vietnamese liberation movement were exactly the kind that we want to hook up with. In the United States today there are thousands of activists organized in committees around the country who are campaigning on a similar basis for freedom for the Portuguese colonies in Africa, against neo-colonialism in Latin America, etc. Nearly all of them are Marxist. Their goals and ours are identical. While we have had a tendency to look down our noses at them because many of the insurgencies they were supporting were not Trotskyist, we have to get over that. For us to continue to regard the revolutionary movement in a Manichean fashion where the Trotskyists are the good forces and everybody else is evil is an obstacle not only to our own growth, but the success of the revolutionary movement overall. This leads me to the next point. D) RELATIONS WITH THE REST OF THE LEFT One of the things I hope never to hear again in our ranks is the reference to other socialists as our “opponents”. Let’s reflect on what that kind of terminology means. It says two things, both of which are equally harmful. On one hand, it means that they are our enemies on a permanent basis. When you categorize another left group in this fashion, it eliminates the possibility that they can change. This obviously is not Marxist, since no political group–including ourselves–is immune from objective conditions. Groups can shift to the left or to the right, depending on the relationship of class forces. The SWP emerged out of a merger with other left-moving forces during the 1930s and we should be open to that possibility today. The other thing that this reflects is that somehow the SWP is like a small business that competes for market share with other small businesses, except that we are selling revolution rather than air conditioners or aluminum siding. We have to get that idea out of our heads. We are all struggling for the same goal, which is to change American society. We only disagree on the best way to achieve that. Unfortunately we have tended to exaggerate our differences with other small groups in such a way as to suggest we had a different product. This goes back for many years as indicated in this quote from a James P. Cannon speech to the SWP convention nearly 25 years ago. “We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can’t stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution. Isn’t that a fact? This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretense of being a working-class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery We are monopolists in politics and we operate like monopolists.” Comrades, we have to conduct an open and sharp struggle against this kind of attitude. The differences between the SWP and many other left groups is not that great and we have to figure out ways to work with them on a much more cooperative basis. For example, La Raza Unida Party in Texas shares many of our assumptions about the 2-party system and they are open to socialist ideas, largely through the influence of the left-wing of the party which has been increasingly friendly to the Cuban Revolution. We should think about the possibilities of co-sponsoring meetings with them around the question of Chicano Liberation and socialism. The same thing would be true of the Puerto Rican Independence movement in the United States, which shares with us a positive attitude toward the Cuban revolution. In terms of the Marxist movement per se, we have to find ways to work more closely with the activists around the Guardian newspaper. While many of them continue to have Maoist prejudices, there are others who have been friendly to our work in the antiwar movement. The idea is to open discussion and a sure way to cut discussion off is to regard them as “opponents”. Our only true opponents are in Washington, DC. This new sense of openness to other groups on the left has organizational consequences that I will now outline. E) REDEFINING OUR ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES Much of our understanding of “democratic centralism” has been shaped by James P. Cannon’s writings. Although the notion of 500 to 1500 people united ideologically around a homogenous program has a lot to recommend itself, it can only go so far in building a revolutionary party. This was Cannon’s contribution. He showed how a small band of cadre dedicated to Trotsky’s critique of Stalin could emerge as a serious force on the American left. Although this will sound like heresy to most of you, I want to propose that Cannon’s writings are a roadblock to further growth, especially in a period when Stalinism is not a hegemonic force. In reality, Lenin’s goal was to unite Russian Marxism, which existed in scattered circles. Our goal should be identical. Despite our commitment to Trotsky’s theories, we are not interested in constructing a mass Trotskyist movement. That would be self-defeating. Many people who are committed to Marxism are not necessarily committed to Trotsky’s analysis of the Spanish Civil War, WWII, etc. We should take the same attitude that Lenin took toward the Russian left at the turn of the century. We should serve as a catalyst for uniting Marxists on a national basis. Are we afraid to function in a common organization with Castroists, partisans of the Chinese Revolution, independent Marxists of one sort or another? Not at all. We should not put a barrier in the way of unity with the tens of thousands of Marxists in the United States, many who hold leading positions in the trade union and other mass movements. The only unity that interests us is the broad unity of the working people and their allies around class struggle principles. Our disagreements over historical and international questions can be worked out in a leisurely fashion in the party press. In fact we would encourage public debates over how to interpret such questions in our press, since they can make us even more attractive to people investigating which group to join. It is natural that you would want to join a group with a lively internal life. This question of ‘democratic centralism’ has to be thoroughly reviewed. Although the Militant will be running a series of articles on “Lenin in Context” this year, which explores the ways in which this term was understood by the Bolsheviks and then transformed by his epigones, we can state with some assuredness right now that it was intended to govern the actions of party members and not their thoughts. The Bolshevik Party, once it voted on a strike, demonstration, etc., expected party members to function under the discipline of the party to build such actions. It never intended to discipline party members to defend the same political analysis in public. We know, for example, that there are different interpretations of Vietnamese Communism in our party. We should not expect party members to keep their views secret if they are in the minority. This is not only unnatural–it leads to cult thinking. F) CONCLUSION As many of these proposals seem radically different from the principles we’ve operated on in the past, I want to make sure that all disagreements–especially from older cadre who worked side by side with James P. Cannon–are given proper consideration. The last thing we want is to railroad the party into accepting this new orientation. Since a revolution can only be made by the conscious intervention of the exploited and oppressed masses into the historical process, its party must encourage the greatest expression of conscious political decision-making. There are no shortcuts to a revolution. And there are no shortcuts to building a revolutionary party. |
Report from the IMT February 2010 IEC (in full)
To the IS, the IEC and all members of the Internatonal Marxist Tendency ( http://www.marxist.com ) Report from the February 2010 IECby Martin Lööf and Jonathan Clyne, IEC members from Sweden
The IEC meeting has given us a clear picture of the direction in which the IS and the international is heading organisationally and politically after the Spanish split.
The main conclusion drawn by the IS is that the reason for the split was laxity on their part. It is true that they have been sloppy for years. However, what they fail to understand completely is that this is a political and not an organisational question. The Spanish leadership, unlike the IS have been well organised for years. To be organised is obviously a good thing. However, the Spanish leadership has been reliant on the international for political guidance. They spent a lot of time and effort on organisation, but not on developing politically.
This division of labour, which was also encouraged by the IS, worked for some time. But then something happened. The political analysis of the IS started to decline, and when the Spanish discovered this after a few years when Ted became too sick to really contribute, they saw no reason why they could not produce bombastic formulas themselves. They realised they had no real need of the IS at all. It was just a drain on their resources, and what is the point in having to put up with being the perpetually bullied pupils of Alan?
The IS refuses to acknowledge that the main reason for the split is its own political weakness. After all, they are “standing on the shoulders of giants” and therefore possessing the magic wand, the method of Marxism”. They act as if Marxism is a number of set formulas, not a method that constantly has to be applied in new situations, a process that is both time-consuming and difficult, and something that Ted always did for them. So, the only conclusion they are able to draw is that the problem is that they did not have complete organisational control over the Spanish leadership.
This means that the IMT is in for a period in which the already 'top-down' method of leadership will be even more pronounced. They are going to reinforce the international centre at all cost. Because they have lost a large proportion of their income, they will have to sack one full-timer and cut back on a whole number of other things. But their aim is to employ a new full-timer by the end of the year and they will go all-out to achieve that. This will be at the expense of everything else. Already now they are raising the international subs by 10% and for the first time ever all sections in the Third World will have to pay subs too.
And that is just the beginning. The sections will be sealed off from one another, unless contact is made under the auspices of the IS or their local loyalist. Every decision about the work that affects anything at all international (and many national decisions) will have to pass through the international centre. The same type of regime will be instituted in the sections, with the branches not being allowed to have contact with each other without permission from the EC. This is the real meaning of having to go through “the correct democratic channels”. Some sections will deal with this more intelligently and flexible, but most won't.
This organisational turn goes hand in hand with a political turn. Deep entrism will be the policy. This is not how it is presented, but it is the logical consequence of the new line. The other reoccurring reason, apart from laxity, given for the degeneration of the Spanish leadership is that it has not done consistent entry work. Therefore, in order to distinguish the IMT from the Spanish/Latins, they are putting an enormous emphasis on entry work. This is also the result of a shift in the balance of forces within the international from the Spanish section to the Italian.
It is false that the present-day situation in what used to be the Spanish section, is due to a lack of entry work. The Spanish were expelled from the Socialist Party in the second half of the seventies and have not done consistent entry work since then. On the other hand, the degeneration of the British section during the eighties happened after decades of consistent work in the Labour Party and long before we were pushed out of the Labour Party. We had a lot of very important work there when it was decided to make a 'turn'.
But again, because they cannot point to the real cause of what happened in Spain, they must point to an imagined one. And make up an imaginary way forward. Back to the seventies is the tune of the day. Secret entry work.
The work is not secret in the sense that we don't openly put forward our programme in a paper. But the organisation itself is secret. There is a fear that if the bureaucracy is aware of us being “entryist”, we will be expelled. In one case, we first publicly dissolved the organisation and then re-emerged within a party. However, this is not the seventies. The traditions of the Cold War when everybody had secret factions in the Labour Party has been almost wiped out. Then it was accepted by workers as a necessity born out of a war like situation. Today the workers parties are weak with few active members. The bureaucracies are weak. Because of this there is less of a need to be secret. On the contrary, it is counter-productive. It makes any defence against bureaucratic attacks much more difficult. This is something we have experienced in Sweden. If we are open about everything the leadership cannot produce enough hysteria to be able to expel us. Actually, open entrism, the entrism suggested by Trotsky, has never been more accessible than today in most places.
However, there is an important difference to the thirties. Because there is not much of a leftward moving rank-and-file at this stage, our main work in the parties consists of using our membership in these parties to initiate campaigns, connect to workers struggles, and help our union work. By being members of the mass organisations we can reach out to workers on the move outside. That will bring workers into the parties and strengthen our position in the parties, which in turn will give us even greater chances of reaching out to workers struggles. This is the real preparation for a future radicalisation which will bring new layers of radicalized workers into the mass organisations. But this is obviously something that has to be discussed in detail from place to place.
This is not the perspective of the IS for the work, nor is it how we generally work in France and Italy. Our main emphasise there is for campaigns within the party. There is nothing wrong with a campaign for a socialist programme within the party. We should take part in the ideological struggle within the parties we are active in. But because these parties are quite small, with few active workers in them, our main aim should be to get the party to connect to workers in struggle outside the parties.
Today, the labour bureaucracy can accept a Marxist current that talks about socialism and Marxism. They may even find it amusing. However, a tendency that challenges the parliamentary forms of the party, one could say the “correct democratic channels”, is a different matter. Bringing workers struggle outside the party into the party and taking the party to the struggle outside, is definitely frowned upon. That is a tougher task, but it is essential. Otherwise, there is a clear risk of an adaption to the bureaucracy. We cannot win by playing the bureaucrats game better than them.
In the seventies we always based ourselves on the radicalised workers that were joining the mass parties. Now we must mainly base ourselves on the radicalised workers that are outside the mass parties. If we do not do this, our entrist work will lead to opportunism. This can already be seen in Italy where Sonia Previato is standing in a regional election without any transitional demands. Instead the focus of her campaign is that she is an ordinary working women, which she is not after sixteen years as a full-timer. (See Sosteniamo Sonia Previato on Facebook)
Compared to the seventies, the IS is putting forward one major change to the entrist work. Everybody should do work in the communist parties or ex-communist parties, in so far as they exist, and not in the social-democratic parties. Now the Italian model (the result of 18 years work) is to be exported, in the unthinking manner that has become the norm.
In the main, the communist and ex-communist parties are small and disintegrating. Yet now we are supposed to be extremely loyal to these parties. In the seventies, we clearly identified ourselves with the Labour Party or the Social Democratic Parties, because that was identifying ourselves with the broad layers of the working class that were in these parties or supported them. To be more 'communist' than the orthodox Stalinists in the Communist Parties today, is simply identifying ourselves with a dead tradition and a present-day insignificant bureaucracy. Yet this is what we are doing in France and Italy, even opposing electoral alliances with other left parties because that would be “liquidationism”. (What we heard is that in France we recently changed our line. But only after it was clear that there were so few in favour of the PCF standing alone in the elections, that it would have left us completely isolated). This is sectarianism.
This loyalty to the Communist Party will also lead to opportunism. Especially as most sections are not at all equipped to do entrist work today. The main pre-condition for such work, a high political level, is not there. In the seventies we had comrades that could debate any political question with facts and arguments, picking up on what was actually said by our opponents and in a calm and friendly way explaining our ideas. That will not be possible today, especially considering that the turn in the internal regime will reduce the internal discussions, the pre-condition for raising the level. Therefore there will be a tendency for on the one hand taking positions (not difficult at all today) without having won the political argument, and on the other hand, to just act as megaphones putting forward some basic slogans, and thereby isolating oneself.
The paradox is that in Britain the leadership of the Tendency will not decisively turn to the Labour Party, despite some lip-service, because it is not a Communist Party. Instead the main focus is, and will remain, on paper-selling on the streets. All forces to the point of attack! No double orientation! Those are the main slogans of the IS today. That should be applied internationally as well as nationally. Now the international will try to present itself as a communist international. The same thing in Eastern Europe. Hang on to anything that is remotely connected to the old communist parties. Never mind that in most East European countries they are small sects, bourgeois parties, or even anti-semitic nationalist parties, as in Russia today. And where there are absolutely no remnants of the CP, then the orientation should be to a myriad of tiny sects, instead of orientating to the trade unions and workers struggle.
A major problem for the Tendency is the difference between what we argue for in the labour movement and what the rules are inside the IMT. Inside the labour movement we argue for our right to exist as a separate tendency with our own paper. We are not so concerned about the “correct democratic channels” there either. And we demand to know what the leadership is really deciding behind closed doors. Within the IMT it is almost impossible to form a faction, opposing views are given a hard time. And we have a very formal approach to raising differences. When the bureaucracy in the labour movement find out about this, which they always do at some stage, they get all the ammunition against us they need. They attack us for being hypocrites who complain about the rules inside the labour movement but have stricter rules within our own organisation. This contradiction also leads to a fear of internal information being revealed to our enemies. Since it is even less possible in this day and age to seal off the IMT from the rest of the world, an inordinate amount of time has to be spent searching for the “enemy within” who reveals our secrets.
The tightening of the internal regime and the orientation to secret work in the CP's, lead inexorably to paranoia within the Tendency. As comrades cannot be trusted, the leadership must control everything in detail. And because the work is 'secret', nothing about what is going on in the Tendency must leak out. Security, instead of politics, has become the thing which they are using to keep the organisation together. The detailed report below of the hate sessions at the IEC show this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The banning of our faction (because our platform was not considered good enough...by those it criticised!), the suggestion that we might be allowed to form a faction only once we had been voted down all over the place (after “debates” in sections that we were not allowed to participate in), the expulsion of Heiko (without him being given a chance to defend himself) and the Iranian section (because they supposedly exposed two comrades to the Iranian state, who in actual fact are public political figures on for example facebook), the forbidding of factional material on facebook and “indiscriminate” emails, the behaviour during the IEC, the placing of us (Jonathan and Martin) “outside the organisation” because we left the IEC meeting, all show that the IMT is un-reformable. Events during and around the IEC finally proved this. The reply to our platform set the tone. The IS is incapable of leading by political authority. Up until the Spanish split there was a progressive decline in the political capacity of the IS. The split could have provided the opportunity for a regeneration that we were hoping for, but instead the IS used the opportunity to jump into the abyss.
Internally the IS is well on its way to creating a regime where all opposition is seen as an enemy, and externally it is heading the wrong way. The IMT is incapable of adjusting to modern times. The leadership has converted our entrist work in the 70s into a formula. It cannot analyse what is happening in China, it does not understand what has happened in Eastern Europe, it can't relate to the working class in Western Europe (where are the party loyalist workers that the IS refers to?). The IS talks about real workers in the factories, but is not even aware that computers are used on a daily basis by a large part of the modern working class, both at work and at home. Since internet creates “security” problems, they will not use the modern means of communications to the extent that it is possible to do.
In 1933, there was no self-criticism from the Comintern or its national sections after Hitler came to power and destroyed the KPD. The leadership’s conclusion was that the “general line” had been correct. Trotsky drew the conclusion that the Communist International was dead. And that was a mass international! When Alan in his lead-off at the IEC implied that the setback in Spain, Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia was a positive development it should ring a bell. When a leadership is not even able to call a major setback a setback, a new international organisation must be built.
What we do next should be dictated not by looking back and attempting in vain to reform the IMT, but by looking forward at what kind of organisation we want and need. We should be an open and completely honest organisation. We should have the same rules within our organisation as we want for the whole movement. We are based on the Marxist tradition (that distinguishes us), but we use it as a method to apply intelligently to the modern existing world. This is what we should be, and we should project this from the start.
We should not be born into the world as another one in an endless row of splits in the Trotskyist movement. A split filled with the usual acrimony, accusations of betrayal, obscure quotations, show trials, antiquated language, and above all - expulsions. Those kind of splits are incomprehensible to most workers and young people. They will wonder how we could ever come to join an organisation like that. Nothing good can come out of it.
In Sweden and Poland we also have the situation that we have been fighting for years to establish ourselves with a serious and honest image in the Labour Movement, because we are serious and honest. Now we are beginning to reap the benefits of this and we do not want it torn down.
The International Bolshevik Faction, together with anybody else who can and wants to, should begin preparing the grounds with the prospective of building an alternative international organisation. This is going to take time. We should not be sloppy. We should discuss things through carefully, peacefully and thoroughly. Going over issue after issue on the intranet, at meetings, telephone calls etc, before announcing the formation of a new organisation. We want to create a serious alternative, not a gathering for random ex-members of the IMT. We should not waste time on meaningless struggles against a bureaucratic regime in the IMT, but get start doing something positive now. If we do this, we will create a solid and successful organisation. Therefore we should not wait to get expelled, but after a process of democratic discussion, vote to disaffiliate from the IMT. We should make a simple statement that we are leaving because the organisation that we once joined no longer exists. That although there remain good and honest comrades there, that we hope will join us when we show that we can create a living organisation, we must begin the constructing of an alternative. In our opinion, the IMT has no future.
We should never leave the Labour Movement voluntarily. We should always fight every inch. We should always let ourselves get expelled, because we want to signal to the working class that we want to be a part of it. But the Labour Movement is something else. It is the organised expression of the working class. The IMT has become just another Trotskyist group, that has placed itself outside of Trotskyism, in the sense that it in practice bans organised disagreement with the leadership. As a matter of fact, outside of Pakistan (where we will probably never know what the real membership is and even more unlikely actually communicate with them) there are today about 1200-1300 members in all. Of which perhaps half are active. It would be dishonest to pretend that we think it worth remaining in the IMT, by waiting around until we follow in the Iranian comrades foot steps and get expelled.
Leaving and beginning the construction of a viable Marxist organisation will make us a pole of attraction for those that we want to win from the IMT – the serious activists who want to know that there is a living alternative before abandoning the organisation they have been fighting for years. A typical “Trotskyist” faction struggle will mean that most of these comrades will become demoralised and end up leaving politics. Given the hostile pressure building up inside the IMT, we probably have a better chance of reaching them from the outside. Then they do not have to sit in the crossfire, an experience that normally demoralises comrades. They can follow our development and ideas (through the internet!) and compare that to the IMT and then make a choice.
Furthermore, a long factional struggle risks demoralising comrades. The bureaucrats will use any methods available in this struggle – lying, blackmail, threats, bribery, whatever. Anything but a real discussion about the real issues. They would rather destroy the organisation than let us take over. We cannot win against such methods in a small organisation with no roots in the working class. They have all the advantages, because we refuse to use the same methods. The longer we stay, the more they will demoralise comrades. Not politically, but psychologically. Comrade will be turned against comrade. Friend against friend. For a period of time a factional struggle could act like a snort of cocaine, giving a high. But afterwards comes the depression, when faced with the task of having to construct a new organisation. That is how it was in 1992. What we need instead is positive creative energy that goes from strength to strength.
In some places there are branches which are sympathetic to our ideas. There the best thing is to take a collective decision to leave and start working for a new organisation. And produce a statement about this to the remaining members, appealing to them to follow suit.
Some comrades think that the tactic which we are putting forward here is an emotional reaction to an unpleasant experience at the IEC meeting. Of course, what happened there was not what you would normally expect in a revolutionary organisation. But it was not unexpected for us that attended. Things developed approximately as we had discussed before the IEC. For Jonathan it was not unfamiliar either. It was similar to what happened in 91-92 and when we got expelled from the Swedish Young Socialists in 1982, not to mention numerous smaller incidents when fighting the Swedish bureaucracy. We were therefore well-prepared for the the IEC meeting. We remained completely calm and on the offensive throughout (which probably enraged them even more).
We should avoid empty gestures like 'fighting to the end'. That costs more than it gives. We have no need to prove our 'macho' credibility. We need to think afresh and break the old “Trotskyist” mould of splits. We should act offensively, not just defensively.
In early 1938, Ted and eight other comrades walked out of the Militant, the main Trotskyist group in Britain at the time, because of the use of slander against one of the members. They established the Workers International League and within a few years most Trotskyists in Britain and many new workers were united under their leadership in the Revolutionary Communist Party. Ted explained clearly that they would have wasted their time trying to reform the Militant. We should be inspired by Ted's, to our mind, bold step in walking out.
Of course, our leaving will be used against those that stay. But then it makes no difference what we do, they will always find arguments against us, however contrived. Comrades who remain should use our leaving as an argument against the leadership: 'The lack of real democracy in the organisation is causing splits and walk-outs. It is time to call a halt, before the organisation disintegrates even more.' That is no tactical manoeuvre. It is the truth.
The IMT is rotting from the head downwards. We do not want to be members there. We want to create a real revolutionary international organisation. Honesty should always be at the centre of any tactical considerations, as honesty in the long run is what works best. It arms comrades with a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve and why.
If our main aim is to expose the leadership, we already have more than enough ammunition to do so. Instead, we can focus on starting something new. Reaching good comrades who are in the IMT is a concrete thing. We can do so from the outside via the internet, but above all by example. It is better to leave with our heads held high after a proper democratic discussion. That is what we believe. But we don’t want to leave as an individual stand. We want the decision to be made collectively by the Swedish section and by other comrades in the opposition.
Below is another report from the IEC meeting – it takes up the witch hunt at the IEC rather than focusing on the political aspects of the IEC meeting. The two aspects are of course closely related.
The witch hunt
"I have seen these methods before. This is Healyism! This is Cannonism! This is Stalinism!" Ted during the CWI split, 1991-1992
From the IBF four comrades took part in the IEC. Jonathan, full member of the IEC (Sweden). Martin, alternate member (Sweden). Wojtek and Amin, guest (Poland and Iran). Amin only attended the session on Iran.
We went to the IEC with our platform Forward to democratic centralism! and the hope that a proper debate would take place. In addition, the IBF had agreed on a “unity resolution” to present to the IEC during the discussion on democratic centralism. In the resolution we made a number of proposals to avoid a split in the IMT. Above all that we would be given factional rights on the condition that we would abide by democratic decisions and work loyally in the IMT up to the world congress. Our resolution was based on different resolutions that were the policy of the SWP in the famous factional struggle in the late thirties in the USA. The resolutions of SWP were written in close contact with Trotsky. Alan and Fred rejected this resolution as “blackmail”.
We expected that we would be in for a rough time at the IEC. So we were not surprised that, after a “gentle” sarcastic prodding start, the IEC moved from one hate session to another to push us towards making a self-criticism and removing some of our strongest criticism. These sessions were accompanied by a flood of resolutions and statements to tie us up and make it close to impossible to argue for our ideas. On Thursday evening we decided that it was pointless to stay in the meeting. On Friday morning we made a declaration and walked out of the meeting. We have written this report to show all members why we made this decision.
During the IEC a mood of hysteria and paranoia was built up. The main means of doing this was to whip up a feeling that the organisation was under attack. The “enemy within” was a threat to the organizations and that the only “responsible” thing to do is to remove the threat. Anything else was deemed “completely irresponsible”.
To create a paranoid mood, some chock effects were needed. Suddenly new information had to be brought up and circulated. Surprise sessions were held after long days of discussions. Nobody was warned beforehand about what the extra sessions were about. Everybody felt under pressure to get up and condemn “the enemy”. Neutrality was not allowed. The mood in the meeting went from bad to worse. A bidding began – who can damn the enemy the most, who can come up with the most restrictive resolution.
Some comrades got frightened and just wanted it to stop so that the meeting could 'get back to normality'. But the only way out presented to them was to fall into line to get rid of the “enemy” as quickly as possible. Once this hysterical process began, it was not possible to go back to normality.
The constant stream of lies and threats, the closed-in atmosphere, the long sessions, the emphasis on the “attacks” against the organisation disorientated comrades who normally would not be carried along. The whole process was a carbon copy of the methods employed by the bureaucracy in the Labour Movement in extreme circumstances. Day 1 Monday - World perspectiveAlan led off on world perspectives. In his speech he made sarcastic comments on all issues that would be discussed during the IEC. Alan explained to us that “there was no faction”. He explained that the split-off groups in Spain, Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia were ex-comrades. (The first time this was made official). He presented the split in the international not as a setback for the IMT but as something positive. It was presented as something normal - “ a man goes through crisis, it is normal in life”.
In Alan's summing up he said that the faction’s claim that the IMT was lead by a “monstrous totalitarian “ bureaucracy had no base. (We had never used any expression even near that to describe the IS). The he spent the largest part of the summing-up ridiculing a caricature of Jonathan's position on China. He also spent considerable time on claiming that the orientation of the work in Eastern Europe was incorrect, because we had not orientated sufficiently to the Communist Parties.
The Austrian IEC members handed out a resolution where they explained that they would not send material to the IEC since it could be leaked by some IEC members.
The world perspective discussion continued after dinner. Day 2 Tuesday - The split in the IMTThe IS covered up their own responsibility for supporting the Spanish EC for many years. They denied on several times promoting the Spanish section as a model. They said it was a lie that the IS tried to set up a secret faction in Spain with ex-comrades. It was claimed that the expulsion of the Municio group was accepted because “they did not appeal for re-admission”. Furthermore it was said that the question of the internal regime in Spain could not be raised earlier because “people do not understand that kind of thing” and the leadership has to “help members understand and take them with you gradually”. It was stated that the leadership must lead and therefore members should not receive all information because then the organisation would become a “discussion club”, that information was there to “help build and inspire the membership”. That the sending out of emails had created “panic and insecurity”.
During the day alarmist reports were made that the intranet and the Facebook discussion group was sabotaging the work of the sections. The intranet “was the beginning of the end of the international” and that the CIA gained an enormous amount of information from Facebook.
The International Bolshevik faction was accused of being a ”self-appointed group”. (How can a faction be anything but self-appointed? Should the leadership decide who has a particular opinion?)
Manzoor was in the pay of the Pakistani state and secret service. We were helping him. In addition, we were “giving a present to the Polish secret police”. And we risked destroying the work in one country for “ten to twenty years”. At times it seemed the session was not about the split in the IMT but about the Swedish section. Jonathan was accused of manoeuvring for the last six months.
By a peculiar logic the blame for everything bad in the Tendency was put on us. Because we are guilty of pointing out the many contradictions in what the IS is saying and doing we are demoralising people left, right and centre.
Ted and Alan pointed out in 1992 in Against bureaucratic centralism in whose interest the argument about security is used.
“The fact is that the argument about “security” has been used to violate internal democracy and keep vital information from being distributed. It is not a weapon against the labour bureaucracy, but against the rank and file.”
In the end of the day it was reported that an evening session on internal security and democracy would be held after dinner. We received no information about what the content of this session was going to be.
Extra session on internal security and democracy
The session was introduced by Greg. In his lead-off he managed to combine saying that he is known for being mild and at the same time he threatened us with expulsion. IEC members and visitors went up and said that our activity was sabotage of the international. Earlier Ubaldo from Mexico described how the old leadership in Mexico dealt with political opponents; they ridiculed them as a first step to expelling them. That was exactly how the meeting was. We were called babyish by Greg because we don’t understand the ABC's of Marxism. We were given 24 hours to close down the intranet and the Facebook group. It was a difficult choice. In the end we decided to follow the resolution and we asked the members of the faction to follow the decision.
What was the Facebook group? It was an internal group on Facebook, where only those that where invited had access. As Jonathan pointed out, in the last faction meetings we asked comrades to wait with setting up the Facebook group so that we had some guide-lines for how this was supposed to work. The intranet had a no more than 50 people with access, and the Facebook group had 35 people.
Theoretically the bureaucracy in the labour movement and the state could get access to our internal documents from this. But that is a very paranoid description of the situation. The dumbest bureaucrat or police could easily go into our homepages and find out that we are doing entrist work in different organizations just by reading History of British Trotskyism and seeing who has links to www.marxist.com.
If they want to get our internal material they can easily send someone in as a member (there are no security checks on who becomes a member), as they have often done in the past. The real problem is that there is no forum where rank and file comrades in the IMT can discuss with each other in-between World Congresses, especially if one is forbidden to form a faction. Another big problem is that the “democratic structures” are in the hands of the IS. During the IEC there was plenty of talk that the amount of the oppositions material that should be sent to members should be limited. “I don't have time to read 500 pages” and “ a worker who comes home from work tired doesn't want to read such a lot”. In the past year most of the IEC discussion material about the Spanish conflict was not distributed further than the national leaderships, whose task was then to verbally interpret the material for ordinary members. On the other hand, the IS feels free to start a one-sided public campaign on Marxist.com against our position claiming that we are anarchists. Day Three - IranAlan had written an insulting letter filled with distortions about the Iranian sections position to Razi. Razi had written a reply. There was some discussion about why Razi's statement had not been sent to all IEC members. Alan exclaimed that it should not be sent out to all IEC members, because Razi had not come to the IEC. Nobody questioned Alan's outburst. So, a full member of the IEC can't send out letters to the IEC if Alan doesn’t like it.
A debate between Jordi and Amin took place. A lot of fuss was made about the fact that Razi had boycotted the IEC meeting and about his “tone”. There were accusations that the Iranian section was allied with the ex-comrades. At one stage Alan said that Razi was probably in Madrid, supposedly meeting Juan Ignacio. This was another example of the paranoia during the IEC meeting. The Iranian section and Amin were accused of being workerist, sectarian, rigid, mechanical, petit-chauvinist, un-dialectical, lecturing workers, not being able to build anything in 300 years, pretending to be what they are not, talking third worldist trash, and only having 2 members in Iran and 4 outside. This was the same section that had been highly praised when they were voted into the IMT at the world congress just a year and a half ago.
Razi published a letter where he criticized Chavez for supporting Ahmadinejad, Iran's fundamentalist leader, and condemning the popular movement as “counter-revolutionary”. It was claimed by Jordi that Razi's letter “could destroy all our careful work” in Venezuela. That “the bureaucracy could use it to attack us” and expel comrades from Venezuela. And despite Amin referring to films on youtube showing demonstrations in Iran chanting slogans against Chavez, the Iranian section was accused of a “cruel fabrication” when it said that there was an anti-Chavez mood in Iran after Chavez embraced Ahmadinejad.
Alan demanded that Amin would say how many comrades were working secretly in Iran.
After the session Amin was informed that he was not allowed to stay in the meeting. Other visitors had no restrictions on what sessions they could attend. Democratic centralismIf the session on Iran had some resemblance to a political discussion, that was not the case with the one on democratic centralism. The session was more like cross-examination by the police. All kinds of questions was asked: What kind of relationship did we have with Pat Byrne and the Democratic platform? Why did one faction member call another comrade fascist at the Winter School? Why had somebody said that Alan Woods was crazy? How many members are in the faction? How many members were the in the EC's of the sections that supported the faction? At what level in the section were the supporters of the faction? We did our best to answer all the questions. Then we were accused of bringing down the level by just talking about who said what. On those questions where we couldn’t give a full answer (we were not given any chance to prepare our replies) we were told that we didn’t want to reply. In the middle of the debate we were told that we were dishonest for not wanting to debate. These were clear example of double-punishment – there are no right answers, whatever we said could be held against us – a classic method for people at the top of the hierarchy to control those below.
We were told that the platform of the opposition was “infused with the method of philosophical idealism” and that it referred to “universal abstract laws” because there were “no quotes”. Fred claimed that the political level of Jonathan's lead-off was very low. He felt no need to explain why. It was said that we were trying to “inflict as much damage as possible” and that “expulsions are necessary as a means of self-defence against pollution”. It was “disgusting” that 5% were dominating 50% of “our time”. That “we were causing big problems” and that our “accusations of totalitarianism” had demoralised comrades and contacts.
A resolution was handed out from Alex from Canada where the Swedish EC was accused of lying when we said that he demanded access to Adam Fulsom's private correspondence with Heiko (something Adam has confirmed in writing). Accusations were made that we were responsible for the fact that Adam Fulsom became demoralised and left with a group in Ottawa because he received emails from us. Similar claims was later made by Fred that the Berlin branch collapsed due to our demoralizing effect. In reality, these comrades left because they felt that the leadership is out of touch with reality.
Alan said we were “trying to foment a crisis (in the international) where none existed”. And that “we can't just declare a faction, but if we persist there are limits to all things. Expulsions can be necessary.” After falsely claiming that Jonathan leaked everything to Heiko he said that “any comrade leaking information from the IEC, should be taken off the IEC mailing list”. He said there was an international campaign “of threats and blackmail”.
It was claimed that worker comrades “on the ground” had no interest in the discussion about democratic centralism and the split in Spain.
More accusations of “petty-bourgeois views” were made from Serge from the section in Brazil that has recently joined. He put forward two resolutions. One for postponing the congress of the Swedish section until a perspectives document had been written and another resolution that our platform was full of “insults and slanders of the international and was not a basis for a political discussion, but an attack on the whole international – its structures, methods and policies” and that it “questions the foundations” of the international. We should therefore retract our criticism. He said that Jonathan should come and work in a factory in Brazil. Day 4 – Mass organisationsFred led off and explained the new turn of the IS. The “discussion” was used for more attacks on us. Tanvir told us that we are supporting both Manzoor and Zadari. Comrades started to say that it would not be possible to speak in the sessions in our presence since we could leak information to any one and that we should be made to leave.
Then came another surprise session during what was supposed to be our afternoon off. Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000222 EndHTML:0000042610 StartFragment:0000012052 EndFragment:0000042574 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/heikokhoo/Desktop/politics/org/IEC%20report%20by%20Martin%20and%20Jonathan%202.doc Expel Heiko Khoo sessionThey now tried to do everything to force us into submission and support the expulsions of Heiko. Once again psychological pressure was used to try and force us say things that we didn't believe in. It was said that it was a matter of principle to vote in favour of Heikos expulsion. That this was necessary to protect the international. A paranoid resolution was presented. Alan said that Heiko is a “police provocateur”. When they had no more arguments they just used insults, Miguel from Spain called the faction “a whore house”. In vain we hoped that at least that remark would lead to some reactions from someone at the IEC, but he received loud applause. He also claimed that because of us 50 comrades from the majority had not joined the minority in Spain and said we were “mean and selfish and spiteful”. Tanvir said that Heiko had sent an email and then a comrade in Pakistan had died. The connection between the two events was never explained. It was proposed that the emails of the three oppositional EC's not receive emails from the IS and IEC and that they should be asked to leave the IEC.
The level of hysteria and paranoia was so great that when Jonathan received a text message to his phone and wrote a reply, Alex from Canada reported this suspect activity to the whole meeting and demanded that he reveal whom he was texting and about what. Alan exclaimed to the IEC that Jonathan was taking detailed notes and asked what he was going to do with them.
We were tricked into believing that Heiko had published all the audio files from the winter school on the internet (including contributions of comrades working in secret). In reality he had only published his own speech, although by using some nerdish technology it was possible to access all files. They wanted us to either say that we supported everything Heiko had done or that we would distance ourselves completely from Heiko. We were not prepared to do either. We explained that we were clearly opposed to the expulsion of Heiko, but as we didn’t support all his actions we would abstain. In retrospect, this was a mistake. We should have voted against the resolution. Now the IS is claiming completely dishonestly that we did not oppose Heiko's expulsion. In this loyalty test even the visitors voted. After that Rob Sewell explained that “the real IEC had voted” in favour of Heiko's expulsion.
Day 5 – Our departure
On Friday morning we went to the meeting in time. The first thing that happened was that Ana tabled a resolution that Wojtek's recordings of the meeting should be wiped out. Wojtek is almost blind. He uses a white stick and for years he has recorded meetings he attends. It is his way of taking notes. The real reason why they confiscated the audio files was that it gave us evidence of the behaviour of the IS and the majority of the IEC. Last summer the IS complained about the hacking of emails. Now they were prepared to use similar kind of police methods. Ana told Wojtek that he would receive “the recordings that they saw fit”.
In addition, a group of resolutions was presented. Among other things our faction should be banned. Factional activity on Facebook was forbidden. The Winter school was condemned. The Iranian section should be kicked out. The IS was given a mandate to expel anybody immediately. The only means of increasing the pressure on us at that point was through the use of physical violence.
There was no point in remaining at the IEC meeting. Jonathan went up and declared: “Well, comrades, unfortunately this IEC has proceeded in a manner which is both expected and familiar. I recognize it both from the last period in CWI and the last period in the Swedish Young Socialists. And we will leave the IEC now, because there is no point in continuing to be here. We will go out into the sunshine. We’ll have dinner tonight, we’ll have a laugh tonight, tomorrow morning we’ll get up and have a shower. And then based upon our firm convictions we will recommence the building of a revolutionary organization. Other people will leave the IEC with different attitudes. Some comrades will be pleased about what has happened this week. They will feel a sense of belonging and a sense of power and they will build nothing. I think the majority of comrades will be a bit disquieted. Maybe in one year, maybe in two years, maybe in five years, they will understand what has happened and I hope, at that point, they don’t draw the conclusion to leave revolutionary politics. Because that is the most common conclusion to draw at that point, but we must continue the struggle, and we certainly will be.” Despite Martin and Wojtek explaining that leaving the meeting did not mean that we had had left the IMT, the IS has chosen to disseminate the myth that we have left. They claim this is proven by Jonathan saying that we would “recommence the building of a revolutionary organization”. However, after reading this report it is not difficult to understand that after a four day witch hunt, we intended to do something better when we got home – build, which ought to be understood as something very different from leaving the IMT. Even after we sent an email explicitly stating that we remained members of the IMT, IS members have “informed” comrades that we have left.
The IS naturally denies what the real discussion at the IEC was like. They claim that it was a nice calm democratic discussion. However, we can prove that all the things mentioned above were said. Everyday Wojtek transferred his audio files to Martin's laptop. Only the last hour of the IEC meeting was eradicated from his recorder. We have no intention of publicising these recordings. We have no intention of disrupting the work of comrades who mistakenly think they have to work in secret. Nor do we not want to let it be known to the labour movement that we have been members of an organisation where the meetings of the leadership are a madhouse. However, any comrade who does not believe what we have written can listen to the recordings.
This report tells the truth about what happened at the IEC, but the IEC has forbidden us to tell the truth. All discussions at the IEC are supposed to be “confidential” now. This is the method by which the IS hides its true face. We cannot accept that.
The leadership of the CWI behaved better during the factional dispute in 91-92 than the present leadership of the IMT today. There was the same dishonesty, the same hysteria and paranoia. However, when Ted and Alan stood up and said that they wanted to form a faction to fight a bureaucratic clique, there was no decision that they had to wait until all “democratic channels had been completely exhausted”. Faction rights were granted. And at the expense of the international debates were held in most sections, even down to branch level.
The manner in which this IEC meeting was conducted has injected a massive dose of poison into the IMT. Trust and honesty cannot be rebuilt, even if we leave. Most of the leadership will never be able to admit the shameful role they have played. Therefore they will continue down the chosen path against anybody and everyone. What is not already dead in the IMT will inevitably be killed off. We are more interested in building a living organisation than sitting around the death bed.
Appendix
Our resolution is, as comrades can see below, basically a cut and paste of the classic Trotskyist position on the rights of minorities. We merely modernized the language slightly and added a few details about the internet. It is we, not the IS, that stand for the Bolshevik traditions.
Unity declaration of the IEC of the IMT and the IBF In view of the fears expressed by some comrades that the present internal discussion can lead to a split, either as a result of expulsions by a majority or the withdrawal of a minority, the IEC and the leading representatives of the IBF declare: 1. It is necessary to regulate the discussion in such a way as to eliminate the atmosphere of split and reassure members that the unity of the IMT will be maintained. Toward this end both sides agree to eliminate from the discussion all threats of split or expulsions. 2. The issues in dispute must be clarified and resolved by normal democratic processes within the framework of the IMT. After the necessary period of free discussion, if the two sides cannot come to agreement, the questions in dispute are to be decided by a World Congress, without, on the one side, any expulsions because of opinions defended in the pre-congress discussion, or any withdrawals on the other side. 3. Both sides obligate themselves to loyal collaboration in the daily work of the IMT during the period of the discussion. 4. The intranet is to be jointly edited by two editors, one from each side. All members who wish should be allowed access to this site, after being vetted by the appropriate national leadership. 5. A parity commission of four - two from each side - is to be constituted. The function of the parity commission is to investigate all organisation complaints, grievances, threats, accusations, or violations of discipline which may arise out of the discussion and report same to the IEC with concrete recommendations. 6. An unrestricted distribution of factional documents, besides those published on the intranet or in an official bulletin. 7. A discussion at all levels in all sections about the issues concerned. Both sides should be represented, if possible, and have equal time for lead-off and summing-up. 8. The discussion shall continue until the World Congress. The discussion may be continued in literary form if the representatives of either side, or both, so desire. Articles dealing with the theoretical-scientific aspects of any disputed questions may be published on www.marxist.com. Political discussion articles are to be published in the intranet, under joint editorship of the majority and minority. 9. The decisions of the World Congress must be accepted by all under the rules of democratic centralism. Strict discipline in action is to be required of all members. 10. The IEC shall publish all resolutions considered by the World Congress, those rejected as well as those adopted. Editorial comment shall be restricted to defence of the adopted positions. 11. No measures are to be taken against any member because of the views expressed in the discussion. Nobody is obliged to renounce his or her opinion. There is no prohibition of factions. The minority is to be given representation in the IEC and assured full opportunity to participate in all phases of the Tendencies work. 12. In order to acquaint the IMT sympathisers and the radical labour movement with all aspects of the disputes, and the opinions of both sides, the IEC shall publish in pamphlet form and on www.marxist.com the most important articles about the disputes. This shall be jointly edited and each side may select the articles it wishes to publish. The following is taken from Cannons “Struggle for a proletarian party”: Resolution on Party Unity
A Proposal for a Joint Statement to the Party Membership, to be Signed by the Leading Representatives of Both Groups in the PC. In view of the fears expressed by some comrades that the present internal discussion can lead to a split, either as a result of expulsions by a majority or the withdrawal of a minority, the leading representatives of both sides declare: 1. It is necessary to regulate the discussion in such a way as to eliminate the atmosphere of split and reassure the party members that the unity of the party will be maintained. Toward this end both sides agree to eliminate from the discussion all threats of split or expulsions. 2. The issues in dispute must be clarified and resolved by normal democratic processes within the framework of the party and the Fourth International. After the necessary period of free discussion, if the two sides cannot come to agreement, the questions in dispute are to be decided by a party convention, without, on the one side, any expulsions because of opinions defended in the preconvention discussion, or any withdrawals on the other side. 3. Both sides obligate themselves to loyal collaboration in the daily work of the party during the period of the discussion.The internal bulletin is to be jointly edited by two editors, one from each side. 4. A parity commission of four—two from each side—is to be constituted. The function of the parity commission is to investigate all organisation complaints, grievances, threats, accusations, or violations of discipline which may arise out of the discussion and report same to the Political Committee with concrete recommendations.
Supplementary Resolution on the Organisational Question In order to assure the concentration of the party membership on practical work under the most favourable internal conditions, to safeguard the unity of the party and to provide guarantees for the party rights of the minority, the convention adopts the following special measures: 1. The discussion in the party branches on the controversial issues is to be concluded with the convention decisions and the reports of the delegates to their branches. It may be resumed only by authorisation of the National Committee. 2. In order to acquaint the party sympathisers and the radical labour public with all aspects of the disputes, and the opinions of both sides, the NC shall publish in symposium form the most important articles on the Russian question and the organisation question. These symposia shall be jointly edited and each side may select the articles it wishes to publish. 3. As an exceptional measure in the present circumstances, the discussion may be continued in literary form if the representatives of either side, or both, so desire. Articles dealing with the theoretical-scientific aspects of the disputed questions may be published in the New International. Political discussion articles are to be published in a monthly Internal Bulletin, issued by the NC, under joint editorship of the convention majority and minority. 4. The NC shall publish all resolutions considered by the convention, those rejected as well as those adopted. Editorial comment shall be restricted to defence of the adopted positions. 5. The decisions of the party convention must be accepted by all under the rules of democratic centralism. Strict discipline in action is to be required of all party members. 6. No measures are to be taken against any party member because of the views expressed in the party discussion. Nobody is obliged to renounce his opinion. There is no prohibition of factions. The minority is to be given representation in the leading party committees and assured full opportunity to participate in all phases of party work. |
Proyect on Lars Lih Lenin Reconsidered
Historical Materialism symposium on Lars Lih’s “Lenin Reconsidered”by Louis Proyect, 4 March 2010
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/historical-materialism-symposium-on-lars-lihs-lenin-reconsidered/ Lars Lih is on the left The September 2010 issue of Historical Materialism includes a symposium on Lars Lih’s “Lenin Reconsidered”, a mammoth book that includes his own new translation of “What is to be Done” (Chto Delat in Russian)—the object of his research. Put simply, Lih argues that this seminal text is not a harbinger of a party of a “new type” but rather Lenin’s call for building a party in Czarist Russia that is modeled on the German Social Democracy. Not only did I come to this conclusion long before reading anything Lih has written (I confess to having read only partial selections of “Lenin Reconsidered”), I have quoted this selection from WITBD frequently to support this claim: Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not add to the authority and prestige of Social-Democracy? Because Social-Democracy is always found to be in advance of all others in furnishing the most revolutionary appraisal of every given event and in championing every protest against tyranny. It does not lull itself with arguments that the economic struggle brings the workers to realise that they have no political rights and that the concrete conditions unavoidably impel the working-class movement on to the path of revolution. It intervenes in every sphere and in every question of social and political life; in the matter of Wilhelm’s refusal to endorse a bourgeois progressist as city mayor (our Economists have not yet managed to educate. the Germans to the understanding that such an act is, in fact, a compromise with liberalism!); in the matter of the law against “obscene” publications and pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election of professors, etc., etc. Everywhere the Social-Democrats are found in the forefront, rousing political discontent among all classes, rousing the sluggards, stimulating the laggards, and providing a wealth of material for the development of the political consciousness and the political activity of the proletariat. I especially love the business about “obscene” publications and government interference in the election of professors. That’s a Lenin who would appreciate what we are up against today, with neo-Czarists like Glenn Beck and Daniel Pipes on the scene. It should be stressed that Lih was not the first person to develop this approach and neither was I. Back in 1982 or so after I started working with Peter Camejo to launch a new left organization, he advised me to read Neil Harding’s “Lenin’s Political Thought”. Harding was very careful to stress Lenin’s debt to Karl Kautsky on organizational questions. For reasons I cannot fathom, Lih does not acknowledge Harding’s ground-breaking work in this area. Lih has two aims in his book. The first is to challenge the academic “textbook” interpretation of WITBD that blames it for Stalinism. It interprets the idea of socialist consciousness coming to the workers from the outside by intellectuals as elitist and a necessary building block in the erection of the totalitarian state. In high school, my teachers used to sneer at the USSR as a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, words they assured us during the height of the Cold War as meaning dictatorship over the proletariat. Lenin is blamed for Stalin and Marx for Lenin. The other challenge is to activists like Tony Cliff, John Molyneux (a disciple of Cliff), and Paul LeBlanc who are singled out in the introduction (the introduction can be read in its entirety in the google books entry for “Lenin Reconsidered). The articles break down into two categories, one comprising left academic experts whose approach to WITBD is of a more specialized and scholarly interest. It is simply beyond the scope of this article to address their arguments. The other category includes a couple of those “activists” who Lih finds fault with. One is the late Chris Harman who obviously shares the views of Tony Cliff and John Molyneux, fellow members of the state capitalist current. The other is Paul LeBlanc, whose article I found quite interesting. I have had exchanges with LeBlanc going back to the mid-90s that can be read here: http://www.columbia.edu/%7Elnp3/mydocs/american_left/leblanc_wald_review.htm http://www.columbia.edu/%7Elnp3/mydocs/american_left/wald_mclemee_lovell.htm http://www.columbia.edu/%7Elnp3/mydocs/american_left/reply_to_leblanc.htm While I understand that HM is not the sort of thing that most Unrepentant Marxists have a subscription to, I recommend tracking it down at a research library since the question of Lenin’s intentions back in 1903 are very germane to the problems we face today. While Lih does not have any kind of activist past—as far as I know—the elevation of WITBD into some kind of guidebook for party-building throughout the ages has led to terrible problems. Ironically, despite Harman and LeBlanc’s praise for Lih’s research, they can’t swallow the main point he is making, namely that Lenin was never about building a party of a “new type”. As members of the SWP in Britain and, in LeBlanc’s case, the ISO in the USA, it is clear that must adhere to concepts of “democratic centralism” that have hobbled the left ever since Zinoviev turned WITDB and other of Lenin’s writings on party-building into a kind of cookbook. If tracking down HM is too daunting a task, I would recommend a look at John Molyneux’s 2006 review of “Lenin Reconsidered” that can be read here: http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.com/2006/11/lihs-lenin-review-of-lars-t-lih-lenin.html. Molyneux writes: My argument, then and now, is that, in the period 1903–14, there developed a fundamental difference between the (reformist) practice and nature of the Social Democratic Parties and the (revolutionary) practice and nature of Bolshevik Party. This is explained, in the main, by three factors:1) differences in the objective social and political conditions between Russia and Western Europe, including the non-emergence in Russia of a trade union and party bureaucracy; 2) differences in the level and intensity of struggle, especially in 1905 and 1912-14; 3) Lenin’s concrete, sometimes ad hoc, empirical (‘instinctive’) political responses to these circumstances. Here, as elsewhere in the history of our movement (the Paris Commune, the role of Soviets in 1905 and 1917) practice ran ahead of theory. In 1914 the scales fell from Lenin’s eyes regarding Kautsky, Bebel and the rest and theory caught up with a vengeance (see Imperialism- the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, the Philosophical Notebooks, Marxism on the State, The State and Revolution and much else besides). You can also find the same argument from Paul Blackledge, an SWP member who also wrote the introduction to the Lenin symposium in HM. Again, we are fortunate enough to be able to read his views online at: http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=218. Once again, the formulations are the same as Molyneux’s and Chris Harman’s—a symptom, alas, of the problems inherent in a schematic reading of Lenin’s party-building articles. Blackledge writes: The novelty of this form of organisation was less than obvious in the early part of the last century, and Lih is right to point out that Lenin was attempting to build something like the German SPD in Russia.53 Nonetheless, it is also true that Lenin did succeed in building something different, and better, than the SPD. It is in this respect, I think that Lih is wrong to reject Georg Lukács’s interpretation of Lenin, upon which many of the activists have based their analyses.54 And just to drive the point home, let’s see what Chris Harman has to say: It took the outbreak of the First World War to reveal to Lenin that his interpretations of Kautsky’s argument had been very different to those of Kautsky himself. This because it was only then that the practical implications of the Kautskyite approach became clear internationally. Until that point, people could read what they wanted into Kautsky’s writings, within certain limits. Paul LeBlanc says exactly the same thing in his article: The reality of German Social Democracy was certainly more problematic than what Lenin was able to glean from the very best writings of Karl Kautsky. This became clear to Lenin himself in 1914. At that point, it became obvious that Lenin was building a very different party than the actual SPD. Fundamentally the problem with Molyneux, Blackledge, Harman and Le Blanc is that they superimpose problems of program on that of party building. If your main point is to demonstrate that Kautsky was a reformist, arguably long before WWI, while Lenin was a revolutionary, then the investigation revolves around what the American SWP used to call “revolutionary continuity”. Instead of putting the emphasis on what at least I see as the real problems with how to interpret WITBD—namely, how do socialists organize themselves—they shift it to questions of what socialists should fight for. This is especially critical in coming to an understanding of what Lenin meant by a “vanguard”, a term that is so poorly understood in self-declared vanguard organizations like the SWP and the ISO (of course it should be understood that they pay lip-service to the idea that a vanguard can only emerge through struggle and might encompass broader forces than their own, etc.). Lih does a good job demonstrating that the term predated WITBD, specifically on page 556 passim of “Lenin Rediscovered” that can be read online (with all the usual frustrating deletions) on google books. Let me conclude with my own remarks on WITDB that owe much to my reading of Neil Harding as well as my sad experience in a group with “vanguard” pretensions that reduced itself to rubble. It was part of a long article titled “Lenin in Context” (http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization/lenin_in_context.htm) that I wrote back in 1994 or so. The next time you run into one of our latter-day “Marxist- Leninists” who trace their lineage to the historic split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in the Russian Social Democracy, give them a little quiz. Ask them to identify the authors of the following 2 opposing motions around which the historical split took place. One is Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, the other is Martov, the Menshevik leader. 1. A party member is one “who recognizes the Party’s programme and supports it by material means and by personal participation in one of the Party’s organizations.” 2. A party member is one “who recognizes the Party’s programme and supports it by material means and by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the party’s organizations.” Lenin is the author of the first motion and Martov the second. As should be clear from this, the split between Bolshevik and Menshevik did not involve the kind of deeply principled questions that caused the Zimmerwald Movement to emerge as a counter to the socialist parliamentarians who voted for W.W.I. It is essential to understand is that the whole purpose of the convention at which this historic split took place was to form a party where none existed. It was Lenin and Plekhanov’s intention to form a new social-democratic party on the model of the Western European parties. It was not, as our contemporary “Marxist-Leninists” believe, an initiative to innovate some new “democratic-centralist” type of party. Plekhanov was the father of Russian Marxism and Lenin considered himself a disciple of Plekhanov. In the articles leading up to the convention, Lenin continuously pointed to the example of Kautsky’s party in Germany as something Russian socialists should emulate. As often occurs in the socialist movement, Lenin was confronted by roadblocks. The most important of these was “Economism”. Economism was a current within Russian social democracy which tended to limit struggles to bread- and-butter issues at the individual factory level. It was suspicious of any efforts to make the struggle nation-wide and general, such as was the goal of more orthodox Marxists like Plekhanov and Lenin. Lenin was a master of getting to the heart of underlying socio-economic dynamics. He explained that “Economism” was a reflection of the more primitive, handicrafts phase of Russian capitalism when shops were smaller and more isolated. He noticed the great concentration of large factories in major cosmopolitan centers and concluded that a more professional and more generalized approach was needed in line with the changed circumstances. Economism belonged to Russia’s past; orthodox Marxism was the way forward. He saw modern social democracy as corresponding to the highly complex and specialized nature of modern mass production. He saw socialist parties as the working-class equivalent of large-scale industrial plants. A centrally-managed, large-scale division of labor was needed to move the struggle forward, just as it was necessary to construct steam locomotives. Lenin was no enemy of capitalist technology and mechanization. Rather he sought to appropriate its positive features whenever necessary. The split between Bolshevik and Menshevik took place at only the second convention of the Russian socialist movement not the 22nd or the 32nd. The basis goal of the convention was to establish the structure and purpose of a new Russian socialist party. One of the key ingredients of a socialist party, according to Lenin, was a newspaper. He saw a national newspaper as a way of uniting and orienting social democrats. A newspaper would allow the party to have a national focus. It would allow all of the particular economic struggles to be politically linked together in a meaningful fashion. Lenin did not envision the newspaper as a means of propagating a “party line”.It had just the opposite role. The newspaper would be the vehicle for allowing opposing views to be compared and weighed against each other in order to allow the party to arrive at a political orientation. Lenin argued that unity must be “worked for”. He said: “Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise our unity will be purely fictitious…We do not intend to make our publication a mere store-house of various views. On the contrary, we shall conduct it in the spirit of a strictly defined tendency. This tendency can be expressed by the word Marxism. … Only in this way will it be possible to establish a genuinely all-Russian, Social- Democratic organ. Only such a publication will be capable of leading the movement on the high road of political struggle.” Another common source of confusion is Lenin’s use of the term “professional revolutionary”. In his view, “professional revolutionaries” are the key to the success of Russian social democracy. In modern “Marxist-Leninist” groups, “professional revolutionaries” are those who are on movement payroll. People who are not full-timers but who contributed lavishly of their time and funds are lower on the hierarchy. They are like the drone bees who keep the hive functioning. This of course has nothing to do with Lenin’s understanding of the term. For Lenin, the need for “professional revolutionaries” arose within the context of the difficult and semi-clandestine nature of socialist activity under Czarism. Professional revolutionaries were needed at the core of the party to keep the apparatus functioning in case of police crack-downs. As an extension of his ideas about divisions of labor in large-scale capitalist enterprises being adapted to socialist organizations, Lenin saw the need for gradations of skill, expertise and conspiratorial training appropriate to the levels of risk in each phase of organizational activity. At each level the degree of risk could be minimized by introducing specialization of function, so that, at no matter what level, activists would have the chance to become proficient in dealing with their own area of work. As in every aspect of his recommendations for Russian Social Democracy, Lenin was operating within the concrete conditions of Russian objective conditions at a given time in history. In 1907 Lenin was very specific about the particular framework of “What is to be Done” which addressed problems in the 1899-1903 time-frame. “Concerning the essential content of this pamphlet it is necessary to draw the attention of the modern reader to the following. The basic mistake made by those who now criticize “What is to be Done” is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party.” So much for our contemporary Bolsheviks who use Lenin’s writings the way amateur cooks use the recipes of French masters such as Jacques Pepin. If they don’t follow the recipe to the letter, what comes out could be inedible. But we now have to create our own recipe, just the way Lenin did. Let us conclude with an examination of the question of democratic centralism, probably the most vexing legacy of the period coincident with “What is to be Done” and one that has been most widely misinterpreted. In 1906 Lenin said that “the Russian Social Democracy was in agreement on the principles of democratic centralism, guarantees for the rights of all minorities and for all loyal opposition, on the autonomy of every Party organization, on recognizing that all Party functionaries must be elected, accountable to the Party and subject to Recall.” Later Lenin clarified how tolerant of political disagreements his concept of democratic centralism was. He wrote “The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticize so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticisms which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticisms which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.” Nowhere does Lenin suggest that democratic centralism applies to doctrine. Every member would of course have his or her interpretation of political questions, but once a decision had been made to build a strike or a demonstration, etc., it was incumbent upon each member to concentrate on building the action. Many contemporary “Leninists” attach some kind of apocalyptic meaning to the split at the second congress of the Russian Social Democracy in 1903 as if two radically different and irreconcilable sets of principles were counterposed to each other–Bolshevism and Menshevism. This split is seen as the fountainhead of all 20th century revolutionary politics, the dividing line between communism and opportunism or some such thing. Those who think that the rival motions between Martov and Lenin constitute some kind of fault-line of revolutionary politics must then explain why Lenin told participants at this congress that, referring to Martov’s motion, “we shall certainly not perish because of an unfortunate clause in the Rules.” Let’s let this sink in. Lenin, arch-enemy of opportunism, said that the motion which caused the Bolshevik-Menshevik split was simply “unfortunate”. The differences between orthodox Marxists who were educated by Plekhanov and, on the other hand, the Economists who gravitated to the newspaper “Rabochaya Mysl” were principled and clear. The differences within the orthodox camp, which included the Bolshevik Lenin and the Menshevik Martov, were not so clearly defined. The Bolsheviks were anxious to rid the party of all elements who resisted the creation of a centralized Russian Social Democracy, while the Mensheviks tended to be more conciliatory to the Economists and the Bundists. The Bundists shared with the Economists a resistance to a centralized and unified Russian party that could coordinate struggles on a national level. Their particular interest was in preserving some kind of automony for their exclusively Jewish membership, a goal that was in conflict, needless to say, with creating one party for the entire working-class. So when Lenin and Plekhanov triumphed, they maneuvered to isolate the Bundists and Economists as much as possible. This meant overruling the original Menshevik proposal that would have preserved some representation on the editorial board of Iskra for Bundists and Economists. The proposal passed by the new Bolshevik majority at the congress consisted of only three seats on Iskra, none to be allocated for the decentralizers. It was this issue more than the original fight over Lenin and Martov’s rival motions which precipitated the split. The narrowing of the Iskra staff meant that such long-time party leaders as Zasulich, Akselrod and Potresov would lose their posts. Why was Lenin so anxious to dump these old-timers? Was it because they were smuggling capitalist ideology into the pages of Iskra? The real concern of Lenin was much more practical, as befits a revolutionary politician who strived for professionalism above all else. In his “Account of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.”, Lenin describes the motivation for getting rid of them: “The old board of six was so ineffectual that never once in all its three years did it meet in full force. That may seem incredible, but it is a fact. Not one of the forty-five issues of Iskra was made up (in the editorial and technical sense) by anyone but Martov or Lenin. And never once was any major theoretical issue raised by anyone but Plekhanov. Akselrod did no work at all (he contributed literally nothing to Zarya and only three of four articles to all the forty-five issues of Iskra). Zasulich and Strarover only contributed and advised; they never did any actual editorial work.” Lenin was simply interested in getting rid of dead wood, people who were not carrying their load. Those who simply “advised” were not needed. Lenin sought to place genuine contributors at the helm of the major newspaper of Russian Social Democracy. I empathize deeply with his lack of respect toward people who are simply “advisers”. The revolutionary movement needs people who can get things done. If this Marxism list ever went through a split between “advisers” and people who know how to get things done, I’m sure that most of us know who these two respective groups would include. Who did Lenin propose as the three people best qualified to lead the new Iskra editorial board? They were Lenin himself, the great Marxist educator Plekhanov and Martov. Martov, we should remind ourselves, was the individual who put forward a motion rival to Lenin’s on the requirements of party membership. This motion has become synonymous with Menshevism itself. It is like the apple in the Garden of Eden for dogmatic interpreters of the historic split. The trouble is that these dogmatic interpreters can’t account for the fact that Lenin then proposed to put Martov–the Serpent himself–in a leading position at Iskra. Also, to be perfectly blunt, the reduction of representation on the Iskra leading bodies generated bitter personal rivalries. Personal rivalries! Can you believe that? Aren’t you glad that we’ve evolved beyond those sorts of problems. As it developed, Zasulich and Akselrod were deeply insulted by their firing from Iskra. Martov, an old friend of theirs, rallied to their defense and then decided to step down himself from the newly re-constituted editorial board. Even Plekhanov, one of the most hard- line Bolsheviks, eventually drifted into the Menshevik camp. (Does this sound like typical movement wrangling over “petty” issues? Well, yes it does. Because, believe it or not, it is.) The Menshevik Akselrod, who had every reason to be bitter at Lenin, saw no great principles involved in the split either. Years later he confided to Kautsky that personality was what caused the great divide between Bolshevik and Menshevik. Kautsky said: “As late as May 1904 Akselrod wrote that there were ‘still no clear, defined differences concerning either principles or tactics’, that the organizational question itself ‘is or at least was’ not one of principle such as ‘centralism or democracy, autonomy, etc.’, but rather one of differing opinions as to the ‘application or execution of organizational principles…we have all accepted’. Lenin had used the debate on this question ‘in a demagogic manner’ to ‘fasten’ Plekhanov to his side and thus win a majority ‘against us’.” Would genuine political differences between the two factions eventually emerge? Certainly they would and sooner rather than later. In 1905 and 1906 major struggles between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks developed over how to overthrow Tsarism and to create a democratic republic. In 1903, however, at the famous “split” conference, there were none. Furthermore, attempts to derive some kind of new organizational approach to revolutionary party-building from the split are just as ill-advised. When one of today’s “Marxist-Leninist” groups votes to change the party line at a convention, then every member has to defend this new line in public. It would mean, for example, that CPUSA members would have been under discipline to defend Soviet intervention in Afghanistan publicly. Party rank-and-file members who oppose the line have to wait patiently for the next convention in order to persuade the majority of his or her position. The problem, of course, is that in “Marxist-Leninist” formations, it is difficult to maintain such contrary positions and resist peer pressure to conform to the rest of the group in between conventions. When individuals or groupings decide to maintain dissident points of views like these, it is often the prelude to a split. This has nothing in common with Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism. The Bolsheviks were free to criticize party positions publicly as long as they acted in a disciplined fashion with respect to demonstrations, strikes and other actions. |
The Origin of the ‘Slate System’
Pat Byrne March 2010
The Origin of the ‘Slate System’ used in elections for the leadership of Leninist Groups
The leadership-recommended slate system for internal elections to the national leadership is used in most leninist groups. It is not a natural system arising from the workers own experiences and democratic instincts but something artificially imported into the workers movement. In theory, the slate system can be used to recommend a list that consciously includes a good balance of talents and personalities. In practice, it gives the existing leadership a temendous advantage in elections and experience has shown that it has allowed leaders to secure their continuous re-election along with a body of like-minded and loyal followers. Let’s examine how the ‘slate system’ arose. As the leninist
movement supposedly bases itself on the example of the Bolshevik Party,
we need to start our process of discovery here. The following
information comes mainly from a study made on how Communist Party
internal elections were carried out in Revolutionary Russia. The study,
‘The Evolution of Leadership Selection In The Central Committee
1917-1927’, was written by the well-known sovietologist and academic
Robert V. Daniels who drew most of his information from the official
records of Bolshevik and CPSU party congresses. His essay was published
in a fairly obscure academic study of Russian Officialdom which covered
Russian society from the 17th to the 20th centuries.
The first thing that may be surprising to state is that the Bolshevik Party did not operate slates. By Bolshevik Party we mean the party that led the Socialist Revolution in October 1917. This party, the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party (majority), used the normal system of electing its leadership that has naturally emerged in every workers movement across the world – voting for individual candidates in a competitive election. Thus those successfully elected to the Central Committee (the leading body of the Party) had to receive higher votes than the unsuccessful candidates. Of course, unofficial slates did exist based on political questions and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there was no official list of candidates recommended by the outgoing leadership with all the advantage and status that would have conferred on a candidate. This normal election procedure continued after the revolution and the Bolshevik Party changed its name to the Communist Party: “Until well after the Revolution the makeup of the Communist Central Committee was governed by genuine elections at the party congresses, however they may have been influenced by factional controversies and pressure by the leadership (i.e. Lenin). Congress delegates voted for as many individuals as there were seats on the Central Committee, and the appropriate number with the highest votes were declared elected. Candidate members were originally the runners-up, but by 1920 they were being voted on separately after the roster of full members was announced. Under these conditions the membership of the Central Committee was naturally drawn from well-known revolutionary activists and key figures in the central party leadership.” (pp.357-358) Thus the relatively small Central Committee was made up of well-known individuals: “Through 1920, at least, the numbers were small enough so that most aspirants were being voted on by the Congress delegates on the basis of personal or direct knowledge. However, or perhaps for this reason, election to the Central Committee was sensitive to personal popularity and the interplay of the factional controversies that freely animated the life of the party during the War Communism period. Some individuals (A.S. Bubnov, for instance) reached, fell, and returned to the Central Committee as many as three times.” (p.358) However, a significant change occurred in 1921. This was a key year in the development of the Soviet Union. In many respects 1921 was the turning point from which we can trace the degeneration of the Communist Party and the Soviet state it ruled. This was the year which saw mass hunger in the countryside and strikes in the cities. A major factional battle ensued between Lenin on one side and Trotsky on the other over how to solve the crisis. The old Central Committee was almost evenly divided. In the elections for the delegates to the Tenth Party Congress Lenin’s more flexible and positive position won a large majority. But the delegate election campaign also reflected the growing ability of the official party bureaucracy to manipulate the party machine with many examples of the packing of meetings etc. Lenin’s victory meant the abandonment of War Communism and the introduction of the New Economic Policy. The latter allowed the partial reintroduction of the market and small-scale capitalism. However, the serious revolt of the sailors at Kronstadt which threatened the whole future of the revolution brought matters to a head. It was in the midst of this crisis that the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party met. Quite apart from the division within the party leadership caused by the Trade Union Debate, discontent was rife at all levels of the Party. There were two rank and file opposition factions: the Democratic Centralists who protested that the democratic aspect of the party and state life was being lost; and the Workers Opposition who were pushing for direct trade union control of industry. It was in this situation that Lenin introduced his disastrous proposal to ban factions. Although this was only thought to be a temporary measure to prevent the party being torn apart in the crisis, it became a permanent rule within the Soviet Party and was used by Stalin again and again to silence dissent. The same was true with the proposal to purge the party of uncommunist elements who had joined for opportunist reasons. This had originally been put forward by the Workers Opposition and was taken up and psuhed forward by Lenin. But its implementation was carried out by Stalin and his loyal party apparatus who used it to remove poilitcal dissidents and recruit more ‘reliable’ elements. The third organisational measure that was to make it much easier for Stalin to assert and maintain control was the introduction of a block slate system in the elections for the Central Committee: “In 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, the first signs appeared of a basic change in the actual manner of selecting Central Committee members. This was the practice of making up a semiofficial slate of aspirants, to be voted on de facto as a group by the Congress delegates. The occasion happened to be the most acute crisis ever experienced by the Soviet leadership, when it came under attack both externally from peasant rebels and the naval mutineers at Kronstadt, and internally from the left and ultraleft factions represented by Trotsky and the Workers' Opposition. Having decisively defeated his critics within the Communist Party in the pre-Congress delegate selection, Lenin evidently decided to use his influence not only to oust several key oppositionists from the Central Committee but to expand the body from nineteen to twenty-five, thereby creating in all nearly a dozen openings for new people. The fact that a slate of recommended official candidates was prepared for the Congress delegates to vote on is made clear by the totals of individual votes announced after the ballot. Lenin was everyone's choice, with 479 votes. But nearly unanimous votes were received by numerous other people, tapering down to 351 for the twenty-fourth member, the newcomer I. Ia. Tuntul, ... far ahead of the next contender, the deposed Trotskyist party secretary Krestinsky with 161.” (p.357-358) In addition to the ‘old Bolshevik’ leaders, Lenin promoted less well-known figures who he thought would be more supportive of his position: “Basically Lenin's slate making to curb the opposition factions that so plagued him in 1921 relied on the award of Central Committee status to loyal but not widely known provincial functionaries who would have stood little chance in the earlier style contest for a smaller body of stellar personalities.” (p.359-360) At the Eleventh Party Congress in 1922, in which Lenin was unable to play a major role due to illness, the individual figures for the elections to the Central Committee were for the first time not even announced. Presumably because it would have appeared strange and embarrassing to see the unofficial leadership slate all gaining similar votes, way ahead of the rest of the candidates. 1922 was also the year in which Stalin was able to decisively take over the party machine. As with other measures introduced by Lenin that were intended to temporarily minimise dissent, the tactic of increasing the size of the Central Committee was seized upon by Stalin who combined it with a leadership-organised slate as a means of securing the election of new more loyal members. This culminated at the Twelfth Party Congress in 1923 (with Lenin absent): “Nineteen twenty-three was the year of Joseph Stalin's signal breakthrough in setting up a personal political organization in the Party, following his designation as general secretary the year before. Turning Lenin's proposal for an expanded Central Committee to his own advantage, Stalin persuaded the Twelfth Congress to increase the body from twenty-seven to forty. 7 This substantial expansion, together with three vacancies, gave him sixteen slots to fill. Slate making was in evidence once again when the Twelfth Congress came to the election of the Central Committee, though the mathematics of it were covered up by a motion at the Congress to withhold announcement of individual vote totals. 7. Trotsky led the opposition to the proposed expansion, holding out for a small body that could continue to exercise quick day-to-day decision-making authority.” (p.360) At each succeeding Party Congress up to and including 1927 Stalin increased the size of the Central Committee, thus allowing him to promote yet more grateful party and state functionaries and thereby increase his domination of the leadership: “The Thirteenth Party Congress of May 1924, was the first to come after Lenin's demise and the open break between Trotsky and the party leadership. It was the occasion for another substantial expansion in the ranks of the Central Committee, this time from forty to fifty-two. While practically all incumbents were confirmed in office. 9 9. One—Lenin—had died; one was transferred to the Central Control Commission, which ruled out Centra! Committee membership, and one—Karl Radek—was dropped for his activities on behalf of Trotsky.” (p.361) “At the Fourteenth Party Congress, in December 1925. when Zinoviev broke with Stalin and went down to defeat, the Central Committee was once again substantially enlarged—this time by eleven men, from fifty-two to sixty-three. In this manner Stalin continued to build his power base while minimizing the head-on confrontations that would be implied in removing his leading opponents.” (p.362) “The Fifteenth Party Conference, held in December 1927, a year later than the rules called for, saw the dramatic expulsion of the Left Opposition headed by Trotsky and Zinoviev. The unprecedented number of eight Central Committee members were dropped for oppositionist activity... With the seventy-one members of 1927, the Central Committee had reached a level that was to hold constant through the post-purge Eighteenth Congress of 1939... 121 members and candidate members in total.” (pp.363-364) Daniels concludes his assessment thus : “Within the short span of five years under Stalin's organizational domination the central leadership body (Central Committee members and candidates) was expanded more than two and a half times and almost totally realigned from an elected group of the articulate and politically popular to a body de facto appointed on the basis of bureaucratic constituencies.” (p.366) Stalin’s peversion of democracy within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union reached the point at the Seventeenth Party Conference in early 1934 where the only way the delegates could express their feelings in the elections was to cross out the name of the people they didn’t want. This they did in the elections for the Politburo with Stalin receiving 267 negative votes in comparison to the more moderate leader of the Leninigrad Party, Sergei Kirov, who only received 3 negative votes. This result was of course not reported to the Congress delegates. “The 17th Congress has also been given the name ‘The Congress of the Condemned’ because of 1,996 party members present, 1,108 were arrested, and about two thirds of those executed within three years, largely during the Great Terror. Of the 139 members elected to the Central Committee in the 17th Congress, 98 would be executed in the purges. And of the remaining 41, only 24 would be re-elected to the Central Committee in the 18th Congress.” * Kirov himself was assassinated later in the year and much of the evidence as well as the motive points to Stalin as having ordered the assassination against Kirov as a popular alternative. The results of the election at the 1934 conference would have not only marked Kirov as a dangerous rival in Stalin’s eyes but also convinced Stalin of the party’s disloyalty to him. It may explain not only the Kirov assassination but the use of it as a pretext for the Great Purge which saw the removal of 850,000 members from the Party, or 36% of its membership, between 1936 and 1938. Many of these individuals were executed or perished in prison camps. “Old Bolsheviks” who had been members of the Party in 1917 were especially targeted. Additional triggers for the purge may have been the refusal by the Politburo in 1932 to approve the execution of M.N. Riutin, an Old Bolshevik who had distributed a 200-page pamphlet calling for the removal of Stalin and their refusal in 1933 to approve the execution of A.P. Smirnov, who had been a party member since 1896 and had also been found to be agitating for Stalin’s removal. The failure of the Politburo to act ruthlessly against anti-Stalinists in the Party combined in Stalin’s mind with Kirov’s growing popularity to convince him of the need to move decisively against his opponents, real or perceived, and destroy them and their reputations as a means of consolidating Stalin and the bureaucracy’s power over the party and the state. * ‘The Russian Revolution’ by Sheila Fitzpatrick The Trotskyist Movement And The Slate System How and why the slate system was adopted by the trotskyist movement would be a very useful subject for study. It could be that it was just carried over with the rest of the democratic centralist model imposed on individual communist parties by the Communist International. Or it could have been stalinist baggage carried into the trotskyist movement when the international left opposition was formed out of so many splits in the communist parties. Interestingly, there was a reference to its introduction into the British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) at its conference in 1950: “At this conference Healy introduced another novelty - a slate for election to the National Committee. The EC had drawn up this slate and if any delegate wanted to nominate someone who was not on the slate they also had to nominate someone else to be taken off!” (‘The Methods of Gerry Healy’ by Ken Tarbuck, published in Workers News No.30, April 1991, under the pseudonym of "John Walters" and with the title "Origins of the SWP") Bear in mind that the 1950 conference of the RCP was the one where Healy was able to overcome all his opposition. The slate allowed him to get a Central Committee entirely to his liking. In previous years the RCP had operated a system where the factions in the organisations automatically had a number of seats on the CC according to the level of support they had among the membership. And the faction’s representatives on the CC were decided by the faction themselves. Compare this to the situation in the rare occasions that factions were allowed in the Militant Tendency. Then whether a faction had representatives on the CC and who they were lay in the hands of the majority leadership when they drew up their recommended slate. A completely undemocratic situation. Pat Byrne March 2010 |
Political leadership of the proletariat (letter from Greece)
The
virtual alternative political leadership of the proletariat The
dynamics between social reality and
political self-imaging in the epoch of crisis of capitalism Labros Kostopoulos Athens, February 28, 2010
The failure
of the leadership The essential
task of the leadership of a revolutionary organization is to direct
its development towards the formation of a mass party. So, the final
criterion of success of an alternative political leadership is the degree
in which it has built and the rate in which it is building the mass
party. In the past
two decades this task has been facilitated by the fall of the soviet
bureaucracy and its associated Stalinism. Further, this task has been
facilitated by the social movements that have developed in Latin America.
Finally, the current world crisis of capitalism facilitates incredibly
this task but also imposes a quick pattern in the building of the mass
party. Has the leadership
contributed to the achievement of this aim either in quantity or in
quality? No, it has not on any criteria and at any rate. So, the leadership
has been proved to be completely incapable to do what is supposed to
be the reason for its existence. This conclusion is simply a fact of
life. Further more,
the leadership has been proved also to be incapable to maintain the
unity of the organization. Concretely,
the sections in Greece, Pakistan and Venezuela have been split from
the organization. The sections in Spain and Mexico have left the organization.
The Russian and Turkish connections have disappeared mysteriously from
the scene. So, this conclusion
is also a simple fact of life. The irresponsibility
of the leadership Has the leadership
recognized these elementary facts of life? No, it has not and still
does not! The leadership does not interest in what happens in reality
as well as in the organization. Instead, it is exclusively interested
not to take any kind of responsibility for its obvious failure. The way for
diverting responsibility is very well known and familiar to all of us:
the failures are due to some “bad guys” who hate the leadership,
have betrayed the revolution, do not respect the collective discipline
defined by the constitution and the principles of democratic centralism,
etc, etc. This is a childish
reaction when caught out in front of the teacher: “Sir, I didn’t do it.
S and L did it in Greece. M did it in Pakistan. Etc, etc. … Any other
person did it, except myself!”. This irresponsibility
of the leadership leads it to “the restoration of the disturbed order
by the expulsion of every one who is fount to be guilty by it each time
of political failure”. The negation
of the internal discussion and collective decisions
from the part of the leadership But this “restoration
of order” by the leadership is not done on collective terms, openly
and in the framework of the established procedures of the organization.
Oh, no! It is done “privately”, in the framework of a parallel informal
network established by the leadership for its defense against its own
rank and file. So, a part of the leadership has substituted the proper
operation of the whole organization by its parallel informal network. So, instead
of discussing with the comrades, the leadership expels the comrades
who dare to put it in the corner of reality and responsibility. The negation
of any internal discussion is proved by the fact that the leadership
has not be able and willing till now to establish an internal discussion
bulletin / internet forum for the members of the organization. It seems that
the leadership thinks that the political participation of the rank and
file is incompatible with their employment as fulltime wage-earners. The gradual
silent destruction of the organization by the leadership Of course,
the leadership’s expulsions and splittings do not restore any order.
In reality the leadership sacrifices each time of failure a part of
the organization without being able to replace it with new recruits.
So, the leadership continuously reduces the organization. In the final
step of this diminishing process the leadership will be indentified
with the organization. Leadership and organization will be one and the
same thing. But for this reason there will be neither leadership nor
organization. There will be only independent journalists and columnists
striving to get a retirement from anywhere it seems to them to be possible. The political
content of the leadership’s failure Why is the
leadership irresponsible and consequently destructing the organization
as well as self-destructing? Is its attitude due to the “foulness
of grandeur”, to the ill belief that it is the “reincarnation of
Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky all together in one collective person”,
to the “professional incompetence for the task to be wage-paid revolutionaries”
or to the fact that it is composed simply by “bad guys”? All these factors
as well as others not included in the above list can be valid or not.
But also in this symmetrical case, it is not a question of others’
faults. All these factors are not the causes of the actual leadership
failure but the effects of leadership’s incapacity to formulate a
revolutionary program of political action, a historically updated transitional
program. The leadership’s
complete political incapacity to lead anybody to anywhere is extremely
flagrant in the case of Venezuela. “Bolivarian
revolution” is considered by the leadership to be the nucleus of the
of the contemporary world revolutionary process. Consequently, the first
mass revolutionary party has to be built in the context of the ongoing
revolution in Venezuela. Has the leadership built this mass party after
a decade of revolutionary mobilization of masses? No, it has not! And
that’s not all: not only the leadership has failed to build a mass
revolutionary party but it has also achieved to split the small organization
in Venezuela in two mutually competitive parts! This is not building
something, this is destroying everything. The leadership
can not engineer in a ten years period of time a transitional set of
slogans to overthrow Chavez’s Bonapartist regime! Lenin was
politically capable to overthrow Kerensky in about 3½ months and the
leadership can not overthrow Chavez in ten years! On the top
of that some comrades think to join in the 5th International
proclaimed in the end of the last year by Chavez! These comrades fail
completely to understand that the revolution is against Chavez and not
in association with him. The evident
inability of the leadership to transit politically from February to
October in Venezuela is the historical cause of the actual disarray
in its state of mind and conduct. The major political issue to discuss
openly and thoroughly in the organization is this unfinished transition
and not either the “civic rights of revolutionaries in privacy”
or “what democratic centralism is in theory and how it is applied
in practice”. The organization can not intervene politically anywhere in the world. Its ideas and principles have not the least appeal on the proletarian vanguard, the intellectuals and the rebelling youth. For this reason, now in the epoch of crisis and of the associated mass action, the organization is disintegrating under the leadership of its leadership. Only politics, a brand new transitional political program of social action, can save it from the fatal end already coming to us very quickly. |
Letter on Iranian explusion from ex-IMT member
More
experienced left activists will see through the arguments used by the IMT's
leadership against its Iranian section. The story about exposing two Iranians
living abroad is just not logical. Once someone in exile starts
to carry out solidarity work whether by writing an article, making
comments on the web, picketing an embassy etc. they will inevitably come to the
attention of the security forces of a country like Iran. As I understand it,
these comrades had been quite open in their political work and were active
on the IMT's public websites. Thus all this talk of the IMT's Iranian Section
acting like a police informer is a complete smokescreen. And all these
accusations about putting these comrades lives in danger is just plain
ridiculous.
But why would the IMT's Iranian Section even refer to these two people who I understand were not members of their political group but just IMT members in the countries they live in? From what I have heard, the IMT leadership in preparing to pushing out the independent-minded Iranian section were trying to gather together any Iranians they could find so that they could claim that there was a split in the Iranian Section or at least that it was only a partial loss of comrades. This was exactly the same tactic applied in Spain. For months, the IMT leadership secretly conspired with a small group of Spanish comrades against the democratically elected leadership of the Spanish Section. Discovery of this was one of the main factors that accelerated the split with Spain and convinced them to leave the IMT. When the other Latin American comrades heard of this it opened their eyes to the undemocratic nature of the IMT leadership.
So you can see that the IMT leaders have been carrying out all kinds of manouvers behind the scenes. They are doing this because they are not willing to tolerate an international composed of equals. Their model of an international is based on the myth of the world party inherited from the Communist International. In such an organisation, the international centre has the right to intervene in any national section, suspend or expel people. The IMT make a big song and dance about not having expelled people in the last twenty years. The reason for this is that by treating comrades who question their rule or raise political differences as enemies, they have usually been able to make these comrades life so difficult that they leave of their own accord. Often this happens in such a way that comrades in the rest of the international only get to hear that so and so has dropped out. When people ask why, they are usually told that the comrade was tired, demoralised or some other bullshit excuse. The significance of the current crisis in the IMT is that it is the first split to happen in the full glare of online communications. As we shall soon see, the IMT leaders will not be able to get away with the usual diet of false accusations. For the first time the victims of their actions will have the right of reply. Thus the democratic mask that the IMT leaders wear will be torn away to reveal the intolerant and authoritarian characters that they really are |
Degeneration of the IMT leadership at the IEC
The following document was sent to me by a non-member of the IMT, it confirms what I had been told about the hysterical atmosphere in the International leadership. The explusion of the entire Iranian section passed without the right of defence against allegations. To IEC members, national leaderships, sections and groups Dear Comrades, We send you a first report on the IEC meeting of March 1-7. This IEC represents a turning-point in the International's development. Contrary to the false impression that a small group of individuals are attempting to create, there was no mood of crisis, and all the discussions took place in a calm and serious atmosphere. The comrades in Spain, Mexico and Venezuela displayed complete confidence and enthusiasm for the perspectives that open up in these countries. The experiences of these sections provide both the comrades concerned and the whole International with important lessons, which we will discuss in detail over the next few months. We had very in-depth discussions on orientation, tactics, organisation building, etc. for all these three countries. The reports show that possibilities in Venezuela and Mexico are tremendous, and that the reorientation of the work in Spain can give important fruits in the next future. We will produce more detailed material on these subjects in the future. All comrades should study this material and learn from it, as it is rich with lessons for our future work in the mass parties and the unions. The explanations of the comrades from those sections shed a lot of light on the problems of the work that was being done there before, the real political differences that were emerging with the old leadership, and organizational methods that had become or were becoming consolidated which were completely alien to our traditions. It goes without saying that we were not looking for a split. But it is clear that, under the circumstances, a split was inevitable. The quality of the comrades who support the International is very high. In Mexico we took a big majority. In Venezuela we took a majority of the active members. In Spain the comrades have regrouped and are already intervening. For example, in a recent demonstration in Bilbao, we had more comrades selling our brochure as against the supporters of the EC and we have recruited our first worker since the split and have many contacts who can join. In spite of the difficulties they have experienced, the morale in all three sections is excellent. The expulsion of HK Comrades will have seen the resolution on the expulsion of HK we sent out on Friday, and the attached explanation. We do not often resort to expulsions. In almost twenty years we have never expelled anybody. But where it is necessary to defend the organization against provocations and sabotage, we have the right to take the appropriate measures. We point out that this resolution was passed with no votes against and the abstention of only one full member and one alternate. This means that not even members of the "faction" were prepared to defend him. We have been informed today that HK is continuing his provocations. As part of his personal war against the International has decided to publish on the internet, available to the broad public, the whole content of the intranet website that was set up by the self proclaimed "Bolshevik Faction". By his deeds HK is showing to the whole organisation how well founded were the objections we raised to the use of intranet or facebook forums to host internal debates. This is not a game, nor a justified difference of opinion between comrades. It is an all-out attack against the International. We ask all sections to inform all members of the International as soon as possible of these developments, in order to counter the lies and disinformation that is being spread by this individual. The IEC had to take other measures to defend the organisation from what is quite clearly an organized and concerted attack against the International, namely, the expulsion of MR and the disaffiliation of the Iranian section (see resolutions). A criminal act What is the reason for this drastic step? Before the IEC, MR had publicly attacked the positions of the International on several occasions. In spite of being offered all the internal channels to express his disagreement, he decided to boycott the IEC, considering it to be a bureaucratic rubber stamp for the IS (he sent a representative to read a statement to this effect). His deliberate boycotting of the democratically elected leadership of the International and his slanderous campaign against it were sufficient reasons for disciplinary action – suspension from the IEC at the very least. But what he did subsequently can only be described as a crime. In his latest tirade of insults against the International, sent out to undisclosed recipients, he deliberately leaked personal information on two young Iranian comrades who support the line of the International. This information was enough to allow the Iranian state to identify them, making it virtually impossible for these comrades to return to Iran to build the International or even to visit their families. These comrades' "crime" was to disagree with the position defended by MR that there is no revolution in Iran. This is no longer a political question. It is a betrayal of the most elementary principles of the workers' movement and is equivalent to acting like a police informer. The only possible response was immediate expulsion. And since these actions were carried out in the name of the whole Iranian group (there are only a few of them), the consequence was the disaffiliation of the group itself. This does not mean the end of our work in Iran. On the contrary, it will be stepped up and put on a far healthier basis. Our ideas are having a big impact in Iran and we have many contacts in Iran and in exile, in addition to the Persian speaking comrades in Pakistan. The antics of MR, who denies that there is a revolution in Iran and has a sectarian approach, has alienated many people on the Left who would otherwise have joined us. His departure from our ranks, far from being a problem, will open new doors. On this basis we are sure that the work in Iran (which was at a very embryonic stage) can be quickly rebuilt on a far sounder basis. JC's walkout For months JC and his followers (including HK) have been waging a noisy campaign to the effect that there is a "bureaucratic and totalitarian" regime in the International. He issued a document putting forward a completely false and distorted picture of the International. He was offered the chance to participate in an orderly debate, and the IS guaranteed to distribute his document, first to IEC members and then to the whole International and give him equal time to defend it on the IEC. Instead, he immediately distributed it to an undisclosed list of recipients. How did the IEC react? Did it decide to suppress the views of JC and his supporters? No, it gave them plenty of opportunity to put their views, including a special session devoted to these ideas. During the IEC discussion on democratic centralism, contrary to the norm, which would be an IS lead off followed by a counter lead off, we proposed JC to give the only lead off, to allow for more time for discussion. In his speech in the session on democratic centralism JC complained that there were "unwritten rules" that he did not recognise and would not obey. These rules are really ABC for anyone with the slightest knowledge of democratic centralism and the history of our movement. What did the IEC do? It simply to put these rules in writing. In that way there could be no confusion or ambiguity about the position. What the IEC did was to establish the rules by which a genuinely democratic debate could be conducted, and what was acceptable and what was not. It established certain perimeters that must not be transgressed. It prohibited the irresponsible use of emails to conduct campaigns against the official positions of the International – both inside and outside our ranks. It prohibited the practice of leaking internal IEC correspondence and publishing internal documents on Facebook. It specified our attitude towards the formation of factions etc. It was precisely at this point that JC decided to walk out, together with the representatives of the self-proclaimed "Bolshevik faction": ML (a Swedish alternate), and WF (a visitor from Poland), walked out of the IEC, announcing they were leaving the IEC and would the next day "recommence the work of building a revolutionary organization". This happened on Friday at the beginning of a session where a number of resolutions were to be discussed and voted, including one reaffirming the right of the IEC to confidentiality. An organized walk-out There was also nothing spontaneous about the walk-out of JC, ML and WF. In the resolution of the "faction", we read the following: "In view of the fears expressed by some comrades that the present internal discussion can lead to a split, either as a result of expulsions by a majority or the withdrawal of a minority" (our emphasis) Nobody had mentioned expulsions before. Neither had anyone hinted at the possibility of a "withdrawal of the minority". On the other hand, in the emails of MR, there were implied threats of a split, if the IS did not print his views denying the existence of a revolution on the website of the International. These threats and ultimatums were a form of blackmail: "do as I say – or else!" HK used the same method: "do what I demand or I will denounce you as Stalinists!" But we have never given in to blackmail and do not intend to start now. What we have here is an unscrupulous and cynical attempt to force the majority to accept the ideas and methods of a tiny minority, on the basis that the latter can make a lot of noise, cause a scandal, throw mud at the organization in public, provoke splits etc. This is like the behaviour of a spoilt child, who shouts and breaks his toys and wrecks his bedroom because he cannot get everything he wants. Such behaviour is not acceptable on the part of adult people, and far less on the part of people who claim to be revolutionary Marxists. The International is a democratic organization, with well-established channels in which comrades are free to defend whatever views they wish. But in a democratic organization, there are rules that everyone must obey, and the majority decides. This is not the first time our movement has seen such conduct. In the Second Congress of the RSDLP, Lenin broke with Martov and his supporters precisely because they would not accept being in a minority. Let us remember that the word Bolshevik originally meant a supporter of the Majority (bolshenstvo in Russian) and Menshevism meant a supporter of the Minority (menshenstvo). It was the refusal of the Martovites to accept the decisions of the Congress that led to the split in 1903, although on all the political questions there were apparently no differences. Let us be clear. Nobody forced JC to walk out. Nobody prohibited him from expressing his opinions inside the organization, and not outside it, following the rules of debate agreed by the majority, not made up by an unelected and unrepresentative minority, using the internal channels that are open for democratic debate, not facebook, Intranet and emails to "undisclosed recipients". JC walked out, complaining of an "unbreathable atmosphere", but everybody in the room was breathing quite normally. What did he mean by this? Only this: that JC can only feel "free to breathe" when there are absolutely no rules and anyone can behave as scandalously as they wish – including in the public domain – with complete impunity. When he realized that this game was up, and the IEC was going to pass resolutions that would finally introduce some order into the proceedings, he decided to walk out and organize a split. And this is supposed to represent "democracy"! What do they represent? Other than those who walked out, these ideas received no support whatsoever on the IEC. We could only interpret their words and actions as an indication that they were leaving the International. The full transcript of JC's statement is attached as the resolution condemning their walkout that was passed with one abstention of an alternate member. For months we have been receiving emails and documents signed by the "Swedish, Polish and Iranian ECs". When he was asked who was on the Polish EC and when they were elected, WF from Poland told the IEC that their EC is composed of just two comrades. He also admitted that they had only sent out their factional documents two weeks before the IEC. In other words, they flooded hundreds of comrades and non-comrades from around the world with their factional emails signed by the Polish EC (jointly with the Swedish and Iranian ECs) before they even informed the comrades in their own section. All this in the name of democracy. The representative of the Iranian group (who we invited to the session on Iran, although we were under no obligation to do so, since MR, the elected IEC representative had boycotted the meeting) was asked several times to give the figures for membership of this group, but refused to do so "on security grounds". But they showed no such concern for security when they effectively betrayed two young Iranian comrades to the authorities. To the best of our knowledge the group consists of only a handful, with not more than a few in the interior. And the "Iranian EC", like the "Polish EC" consists in reality of two people: MR and A. The situation in Sweden is not much better: only around 12 members are, according to the EC, actually active in the labour movement of the 45 members. Of these twelve active members, five have declared their disagreement with the EC on these questions, including the whole of the Gothenburg branch. Moreover, the question of declaring a faction has never been put to the Swedish CC. The mass organizations and the Fifth International The IEC was not devoted purely to these questions, which we reluctantly had to deal with as a result of the scandalous campaign that has been waged inside and outside the International. The IEC held very good discussions on a number of very important matters that will be part of our discussion up to the world congress. We held an in-depth discussion on the question of our work in the mass organisations. Throughout the last 20 years we have accumulated much experience in many sections which should be discussed and shared with the whole International. On the basis of this discussion, the IS will present a short document to be discussed in the International in the lead-up to the World Congress and voted upon there. Also of great importance, is the IEC's decision to support Chavez's call for the 5th International and participate actively in it. In the words of comrade SG (Brazil): "this is a discussion of transcendental importance because it concerns the essence of what Trotskyism is." We will be publishing material on this question very soon and it will be discussed at all levels of the International in the lead-up to the World Congress. We will also be re-emphasizing the Venezuela solidarity work in light of the upcoming regional elections, and will hold a Panamerican gathering in Caracas in April, in conjunction with the official launch of the 5th International. We will have more statements and information coming soon, and the sections should prepare to organise delegations to Caracas. We will also be launching issue 2 of the Pan-American journal. More information on this will be forthcoming. Comradely, The IS *** IEC resolutions – March 1-7, 2010 1) The split in Spain, Venezuela and Mexico This IEC notes that the Spanish EC and their supporters in Spain, Mexico and Venezuela split from the IMT in December 2009 and have now publicly announced a separate group. They have not been expelled by anybody who supports the IMT. They were not expelled, but have left of their own accord and in a completely undemocratic and bureaucratic manner. This is an unprincipled split which was decided without any consultation with the rank and file members of these sections. The political differences that emerged in the polemic between the IS and the Spanish EC in 2009, though important, did not justify a split. The Spanish EC, fearing an open and frank debate of ideas, decided to split away. This shows a light-minded and irresponsible attitude towards politics, one that puts the prestige of the leadership above principled political considerations. The split also reveals a completely bureaucratic attitude which deals with political questions with administrative measures by resorting to splits and expulsions. These methods are alien to our international and to the genuine traditions of Bolshevism. The casual way in which they decided to split also reveals a narrow, parrochial and nationalist approach, which has nothing to do with genuine proletarian internationalism. Rather than attempting to convince the IEC and the membership of the International of their points of view, they decided to split away before the debate could take place. From the end of November, comrades in the Spanish section who did not agree with the Spanish EC were excluded from branch meetings and other activities. The Spanish EC refused to pay international subs, JIR resigned from the extended IS and they cut off all links with the IMT. This process led to the expulsion by the Spanish EC of anyone who was not in favour of splitting away from the IMT, including comrades who did not support the views of the IS in the debate in 2009. At least in Spain there had been a semblance of a debate. In Venezuela and Mexico the situation was worse. In these two countries, the supporters of the Spanish EC in their ECs and CCs decided to split even before any documents had been sent to the ranks and before there was any debate about those, never mind a debate about splitting away from the IMT. In the case of Mexico, the majority of the EC took the decision to split against the expressed will of the majority of the members of the section. In the case of Venezuela, 40 comrades, representing at least half of the active membership, signed an appeal for an extraordinary congress which the EC completely ignored, fearing that such a meeting would never support the split with the international. The small group in Colombia decided, without hearing the opinions or the IMT to also split away with the supporters of the Spanish EC. The IEC therefore: condemns this unprincipled split in Spain, Venezuela and Mexico. appeals to all comrades in these countries to come back to the IMT, regardless of their political views, as long as they are prepared to work within the democratic structures of the International. fully supports the efforts of the comrades in Spain and Venezuela who are rebuilding the sections of the IMT. recognises the democratic congress of the Mexican section of the IMT which took place on January 16 and 17, and the CC that was elected. [Passed unanimously] 2) On Security, Intranet and FB It has been brought to the attention of the IEC, presently in session, that a "Facebook" discussion group has been set up in order to discuss the internal affairs of the International. The IEC has not authorised this initiative – and was not even asked to do so – and considers it to be a totally unacceptable breach of internal democracy. It poses a very serious security threat to the work of our national sections. In a number of countries, this work is carried out in extremely difficult and potentially dangerous conditions. Such methods expose our organisation to attacks from the ruling class, from the state, and also from our enemies within the workers' organisations. The IEC understands that not all comrades will necessarily agree with this point of view. These comrades have the right to put forward their arguments, on this and on any other question, within the organisation. In the meantime, however, as the elected leading body of the International, the IEC demands that this discussion group, together with the "Intranet" site set up for the same purpose, should be immediately closed down, and formally instructs the comrades who are responsible for it to do this within the next 24 hours, as from 22h.00 this evening (2nd March). The IMT is a democratic organisation. All comrades, at all levels of the organisation, are free to present their views and criticisms on all aspects of our policy, perspectives and organisational methods, through the democratically established structures of the tendency. However, the unauthorised publication of internal discussions, outside the structures of the organisation, is clearly an intolerable breach of revolutionary democracy. The maintenance of these public networks would amount to active sabotage of our organisation. [Passed in a special session on Tuesday, March 2] Full members: In favour: 24; Against: 1; Abstentions: 0 Alternates: In favour: 5; Against: 1; Abstentions: 0 3) On the Expulsion of HK For many months, the International has been subjected to a systematic campaign of harassment and intimidation, organized by Heiko Khoo. This campaign, allegedly intended to "inform" the membership of the International, is in fact based on an avalanche of lies, insults, slander and disinformation. It is calculated to create the maximum confusion, disrupt our work and demoralize comrades. These attacks on the International have been deliberately introduced into the public domain, where they are being used by our enemies, to blacken the name of the International. The only effect of this campaign has been to cause resignations, damage the work in a number of sections and assist our enemies. In the face of gross, deliberate and repeated provocations, the International has shown extraordinary patience and restraint. But all things have their limit. We have made repeated requests to Heiko Khoo to desist from his disruptive actions. He has had every opportunity to make use of the democratic channels of the organization to put forward his ideas. But he has not used these channels and all our appeals have been cynically ignored. These actions show a complete contempt for the most elementary norms of revolutionary morality and discipline. The exact motivation behind Heiko Khoo's activities remains obscure. But we can say that they constitute a deliberate and systematic sabotage of the work of the revolutionary tendency. Whether Heiko Khoo is conscious or not, such activities are indistinguishable from the work of a provocateur who seeks to destroy the organization from within. The International has the right to defend itself against sabotage and provocation. We therefore resolve that Heiko Khoo is expelled from our ranks with immediate effect. [Passed without votes against – Thursday, March 4] Full members: In favour: 24; Against: 0; Abstentions: 1 Alternates: In favour: 5; Against: 0; Abstentions: 1 Visitors: In favour: 9; Against: 0; Abstentions: 1 [On Friday morning, March 6, before a session where a number of resolutions were meant to be voted, JC (Full member), ML (alternate) and WF (visitor) announced their walk-out – See full transcript of the statement of JC further below.] 4) Resolution on Intranet Forums 1.This IEC pledges to uphold the democracy and security of the International. All differences and discussions should be channelled through the existing structures of the organisation. 2.This IEC for reasons of internal democracy and security rejects the setting up of online discussion forums (intranet). Such mechanisms are wide open to security breaches where our internal material would be easily made available to our enemies. This has already occurred. They are in flagrant contradiction with our existing policy making structures. They would be dominated by those with plenty of time and immediate access to the Internet and would tend to exclude those comrades with restricted time and access. This is a recipe for substituting control by elected leading bodies by the rule of unelected and self-appointed cliques. 3.The "assurances" that it will be "strictly controlled" and "for members only" are worth nothing. In the period that opens up, and especially with our growing success, witch-hunts and attacks on the organisation will become more frequent. As this intranet will make available all our internal material in electronic form, such sites would be a magnet for provocateurs and infiltrators, eager to get their hands on compromising internal material. It greatly increases the risk of expulsions, proscriptions and witch-hunts in a number of countries and also of state repression in others. This is completely unacceptable. 4.For these reasons, this IEC places a ban on intranet sites and calls on sections to keep all discussions and disagreements within our internal channels. [Passed unanimously, Friday March 6] 5) Resolution on emails 1.This IEC recognises the damage done to the International by the indiscriminate circulation of emails, in a completely destructive manner. It is an attempt to undermine the democratically elected structures of the organisation. 2.The practice of sending unsolicited blind carbon copies of email correspondence for factional and destructive reasons has resulted in our security being breached and our internal affairs being leaked to non-members and enemies of the tendency. 3.This kind of behaviour creates disruption, forcing the elected bodies to drop important work in to respond to the a mass of misinformation. If this practise is allowed, it will have a damaging effect on our work and undermine the organisation. 4.This IEC views such behaviour as an assault upon the democracy of the organisation and condemns it. The International must take steps to defend itself. We consider such activity to be incompatible with membership of the IMT and call upon national leaderships to take whatever measures they consider necessary to put a stop to it. [Passed unanimously, Friday March 6] 6) Resolution on Winter School This IEC considers that the manner in which the 2010 Winter School was organised is unacceptable. The IEC resolves that in future the Winter School or any other events encompassing more than one section should be in the hands of the IS, the appropriate elected body to oversee such events. [Passed with 1 abstention (alternate member), Friday March 6] 7) On Confidentiality 1) The IEC is the highest body of the IMT between World Congresses. Membership of the IEC implies rights, but also obligations. There is no question of IEC members or invited guests doing whatever they please, without reference to the rules of conduct agreed by the IEC as a whole. 2) The IEC guarantees to provide the membership of the IMT with full reports of the political discussions and organizational decisions. 3) However, the practice of systematically leaking information about internal discussions on the IEC is unacceptable. 4) Without the principle of confidentiality, it would be impossible to have a free and frank discussion on any question. The leaking of internal IEC business is a violation of the democratic rights of IEC members. 5) Correspondence between the IS and IEC members is of a confidential nature, unless otherwise stated. It is impermissible for any IEC member to circulate internal IEC correspondence to persons outside the IEC. Any member who breaks this rule will receive a warning, and if these actions are repeated, may be suspended from the IEC, subject to ratification by the next World Congress. 6) The use of Facebook, or any other public electronic media, for unauthorized and unofficial factional purposes, and the unauthorized publication of internal documents , audio recordings and other information, which in the hands of our opponents does serious damage to the work of the International is unacceptable. 7) The IEC has the duty to take whatever measures are necessary to preserve the democratic rights and security of the membership. Members of the leading bodies of the International, must be able to express their ideas and criticisms without fearing the communication of these outside the normal channels. 8) The IEC instructs the IS immediately to take whatever measures it deems necessary – up to and including expulsions – in order to protect the rights and the security of the membership of the International. [Passed unanimously, Friday March 6] 8) On Factions The right to form a faction is a democratic right, which is recognized by the International. However, it is not the case that every group of comrades can simply declare themselves a faction without more ado. Factions are not a good thing, but are sometimes necessary, after all the normal channels of democratic discussion have been exhausted. They are not a first, but a last resort; they should not be resorted to in a light-minded manner and should reflect a clearly defined political line. The "declaration" of a faction by some comrades in the last few weeks does not comply with the most elementary conditions for a faction. In the first place, we have yet to see a coherent political platform for such a faction. The document "Forward to Democratic Centralism" does not constitute such a platform. What is being proposed, in effect, is a faction formed on the basis of forming a faction. This is not serious. Before forming a faction, the comrades should have exhausted all the normal channels for democratic discussion that were open to them: branches, central committees, national congresses, the internal bulletin, the IEC, and the World Congress. This was not done. At this moment in time, therefore, we consider a faction to be premature and out of order. We call on the comrades to take a step back, to dissolve the faction, and participate in the common work of building the International and strengthening it politically through a comradely exchange of opinions. This must not be a confrontational and public discussion of differences on the Internet and Facebook, and the indiscriminate distribution of alarmist and misleading emails to members and non-members alike. We draw the comrades' attention to the fact that we are at present in a pre-Congress period, where there will be every opportunity for every comrade to express their point of view on any subject. We invite the comrades to participate in the pre-Congress discussions and to go through all the normal democratic channels inside the organization. Such discussions will help to raise the collective political level of the whole International. [Passed - Friday March 6] Full members: unanimously in favour Alternates: In favour: 4; Against: 1; Abstentions: 0 9) On the Walkout of JC, ML and WF The IEC condemns the walk-out of JC and ML from Sweden and WF from Poland. This behaviour is unprecedented in the whole history of the International. The tactic of boycotts, walk-outs, threats, ultimatums and blackmail is completely unacceptable in our organization. We note that in the resolution on "Unity" which they submitted they talked about the dangers of a split and the "withdrawal of a minority" (which until then had not been raised by anyone). Within 48 hours, these comrades had staged just such a withdrawal. This clearly indicates that this was a premeditated act. The IEC stresses that nobody forced these comrades to leave. They had every opportunity to speak and defend their ideas. In fact, a whole session on Wednesday was devoted to a discussion of JC's document "Forward to Democratic Centralism", where JC gave the introduction and the IS renounced its right of reply in order to allow more time for the discussion. On Thursday, the IEC voted for the expulsion of HK for his actions, which amounted to deliberate sabotage of the work of the International. The vote was unanimous except for JC and ML, who abstained. This indicated an ambiguous attitude toward the destructive activity of HK, who is a member of the self-proclaimed "Bolshevik Faction" set up by JC, ML and others. In recent months, internal IEC correspondence and documents have been systematically leaked and published on the internet. This has led to serious damage being inflicted on our work in a number of sections. The IEC was going to vote on a resolution on confidentiality which prohibits these unacceptable practices. Before the matter could be discussed and voted on, JC announced that he wished to make a "Short Statement". He stated that the International was "like the [Taaffeite] CWI and the Swedish Young Socialists". He concluded by saying that they were leaving the IEC, and "we will recommence the building of a revolutionary organisation". He then walked out, followed by ML and WF. As he was leaving, he was asked to clarify whether he was leaving the International, but he said only, "I have answered enough questions". These words and actions can only be interpreted in one way: they have split from the International. The conduct of their faction in recent weeks confirms this. The publication of internal documents and audio recordings on the internet, the sending of factional emails to non-members and to the leaders of the split-off group in Spain, were clear acts of sabotage, calculated to do maximum damage. Comrades in Spain and Venezuela were given to understand by the Spanish split-off group that something serious was going to happen at the IEC. In addition to this, there is the scandalous attack of MR, who has circulated personal details of comrades, exposing them to reprisals by the Iranian state. By their words and actions, it is clear that these three comrades have split from the organization. The International must take immediate action to defend itself against what is clearly an organized and systematic attack. The IEC therefore instructs the IS to intervene in the Swedish and Polish sections to rally the forces that support the International. [Passed with no votes against and one abstention (alternate member)] Appendix: FULL TRANSCRIPT of JC statement "Well, comrades, unfortunately this IEC has proceeded in a manner which is both expected and familiar. I recognize it both from the last period in CWI and the last period in the Swedish Young Socialists. And we will leave the IEC now, because there is no point in continuing to be here. We will go out into the sunshine. We'll have dinner tonight, we'll have a laugh tonight, tomorrow morning we'll get up and have a shower. And then based upon our firm convictions we will recommence the building of a revolutionary organization. Other people will leave the IEC with different attitudes. Some comrades will be pleased about what has happened this week. They will feel a sense of belonging and a sense of power and they will build nothing. I think the majority of comrades will be a bit disquieted. Maybe in one year, maybe in two years, maybe in five years, they will understand what has happened and I hope, at that point, they don't draw the conclusion to leave revolutionary politics. Because that is the most common conclusion to draw at that point, but we must continue the struggle and we certainly will be." [He was then asked whether he was splitting to which he replied:] "I have answered enough questions. I will not answer any more questions." 10) On the Work of the Spanish Section This IEC ratifies the decisions adopted by the provisional National Committee of the IMT in Spain, held on 6-7 February. Particularly, we think the Spanish comrades must take advantage of the project to relaunch Izquierda Unida and decisively orient their forces to work in IU, as a Marxist current, linking the newspaper of the section to this orientation. We mandate the IS to produce a more detailed resolution to serve as a basis for discussion in the debate that will take place in all branches, in the lead up to the June conference which must take definitive decision on the tactics we should adopt. In the meantime, we call on the comrades in Spain to intervene in the movement and not limit themselves to an internal and introspective discussion. [Passed unanimously] 11) On the M. Appeal Having considered the appeal by the group of comrade M., this IEC concludes that these comrades were unjustly expelled from the former Spanish section of the International. Irrespective of the political positions defined by comrade M., the methods used by the former Spanish leadership, including the hacking of emails, were unacceptable, and amounted to an attack to eliminate by bureaucratic means an opposition that they were unable to answer politically. The IEC recognizes that the International made a very serious mistake in failing to investigate these matters with the necessary attention at the time, and in accepting as good coin the false arguments of the Spanish leaders to justify their actions. We express our appreciation for the courageous and principled stand taken by the comrades in maintaining their commitment to revolutionary internationalism under difficult conditions. We accept the offer of the comrades to open the lines of communication and discuss our ideas, with the aim of arriving at a principled agreement. We understand that the comrades have expressed some doubts and differences concerning the positions taken by the International, and the prolonged period of separation may have deepened these differences. We hope that we will be able to overcome those differences through patient discussions, and, where possible, practical collaboration. The IEC therefore instructs the IS to open a discussion with the Municio group, and report to the next IEC meeting on its progress. With comradely greetings, The IEC 5 March 2010 [Passed unanimously] 12) Resolution on the Conduct of Comrade Maziar Razi (1) This IEC condemns the action of comrade MR in boycotting this meeting. Comrade MR was elected to the IEC by the World Congress. If he has serious differences with the line of the International on Iran or any other question, he had the duty to attend the IEC and explain his ideas. For unacceptable reasons, he has refused to attend the IEC and instead sent a letter announcing he was boycotting the meeting. The International is a democratic organization where comrades with differences are given every opportunity to put their point of view. The IEC has guaranteed comrade MR's right to express his ideas freely, with the same time as the representative of the IS. For unacceptable reasons, he has refused to attend. We reject the undemocratic method of "debate by email". Neither do we accept the method of threats, ultimatums and blackmails that has characterised comrade MR's correspondence with the IS in the recent period. We totally reject the unfounded allegations made by comrade MR against the IS, and in particular the assertion that he has been "censored". We point out that, while any comrade is free to express criticisms and differences within the normal channels of the International, the articles published on the public organs of the International must reflect the line of the International, decided democratically by the World Congress and its elected bodies - the IEC and the IS. Neither comrade MR nor anyone else has any right to demand that our public organs must publish opinions that contradict the line of the International. The actions of comrade MR, in publishing articles in alien websites, and giving interviews on the radio, attacking the positions of the International and the International itself constitute a blatant and unacceptable violation of revolutionary discipline. [Passed unanimously] 13) On the Provocations of MR (2) Following the deliberate and scandalous boycott of the IEC, MR has launched a vicious attack on the International which has been sent to an undisclosed list of recipients. The material he circulated includes personal attacks against two young Iranian comrades whose only "crime" is that they dared to disagree with the political line of MR. In making these personal attacks, MR saw fit to publish detailed information about them, from which their identities can be easily determined by the Iranian state forces. One of these comrades has previously been arrested, imprisoned and tortured in Iran. By publishing information that compromises these two comrades, MR has made it impossible for them to return to Iran to build the International without putting their lives in danger, even to visit their relatives. MR is not an inexperienced person. He is well aware of the question of security. His group has even refused to give the most basic membership figures to the International, alleging it was a "security risk". He was therefore well aware of what he was doing when he circulated this information. It was an attempt to strike back at his critics by exposing their identity, thus opening them to identification by the Iranian authorities. This was the action, not of a Marxist revolutionary, but of a vulgar police informer. This is a crime against the International, against the working class, and against all the democratic and progressive forces in Iran. We therefore declare that MR is expelled with ignominy from the International with immediate effect. In view of the fact that this criminal conduct was carried out with the active participation of both the internal and external ECs of the Iranian section, the IEC hereby disaffiliates the Iranian section of the International. [Passed unanimously] 14) The IMT and the V International In November 2009 Chavez made an appeal for the formation of a V International. He specifically explained that this international should be anti-imperialist but also anti-capitalist and socialist. He also put the appeal in the context of the previous Internationals (I, II, III and IV). Some of the representatives present at the Gathering of Left Parties in Caracas opposed this call with the argument that we already have the "Foro of Sao Paulo" and that such an international did not need to be openly anti-capitalist. Chavez said that the appeal is made to parties, organisations and currents. The appeal has opened a mass debate in Venezuela and also a debate within many left wing parties and organisations throughout Latin America and beyond. In El Salvador for instance, while president Funes has opposed the V International and said he has nothing to do with socialism, the FMLN has officially come out in favour. In Mexico the idea has been taken up by sections of the PRD and other mass organisations. In Europe this will be surely discussed in the Communist Parties and ex-Communist Parties in Europe. We as Marxists are in favour of the setting up of mass international organisation of the working class. The IV International created by Trotsky was destroyed after the 2nd World War, and in effect is only alive in the ideas, methods and programme defended by the IMT. As Marxists we carry out work in the mass organisations of the working class in all countries. We do not know wether this appeal for a V International will actually lead to the formation of a genuine international or not. It is possible that it will remain on the level of an idea, or a meeting of bureaucrats from different parties on a regular basis. However, it is clear that the fact that this appeal comes from Venezuela and president Chavez means that it will be an attractive proposition for many. This appeal will also raise many questions about the programme such an international should have and about the history of the previous internationals, their rise and fall. This is a debate in which the IMT, which is already recognised widely for its role in building solidarity with and providing Marxist analysis about the Venezuelan Revolution, must take a clear position. We need to take a bold initiative and declare our support for the setting up of a mass based revolutionary international, and make a clear proposal of what we think its programme and ideas should be. This IEC agrees to: issue a public statement of the IMT supporting the appeal for a V International, while at the same time stressing that this should be armed a clear socialist programme, and based on the struggle of the working class. discuss in each country how we can participate in or launch initiatives to promote the V International and how we can best intervene politically in these participate in the founding conference of the V International in Caracas in April and other meetings like that, where we will defend our programme and ideas [Passed unanimously] |
Answers to the document In Defence of DC
Revised IB statement of the British Faction on Internal Democracy
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