Social democracy: there never was any golden age'
Socialist Press1979 1979-05-30Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 6 →
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"To say 'not replace the apparatus but reform it' means to be a reformist, means to become not a revolutionary but a reformist democrat. Reformism means nothing more than concessions on the part of the ruling class, but not its overthrow; it makes concessions, but power remains in its (Lenin: Can the Bolsheviks retain State Power?)
Johnny hands."
The Labour Party in Britain represents the archetypal model of social democracy in practice.
It is the living example of a reformist approach to politics, a walking condemnation of the view that capitalism can be tinkered with until it yields (in the words of the Party's constitution) "the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange"
The Labour Party is affiliated to the 'Second International' , the grandiose name for a whole rag-bag of the world's social democratic parties.
The Second International is, however, nothing more than a pathetic charade, an occasional excuse for bureaucrats from different nations to get together to swap stories about how they are propping up capitalism in their respective countries.
Imperialist war
Formed in 1889 the Second International failed to survive the impact of the First Imperialist War in 1914 when the most powerful section (the German Social Democratic Party) voted in the Reichstag for war credits for its own imperialist ruling class.
At the crucial moment, when the bourgeoisie in every country was forcing workers into a horrific blood-bath to defend "the national interest" through imperialist war, the so-called 'socialist' parties in Europe showed their true colours and fell in behind their "own" national capitalists The lessons of this historic betrayal are of vital importance to the revolutionary movement.
The key question for us remains the breaking of the mass of workers from their reformist leaders.
Expose record
To do this, the record and practice of social democracy must be relentlessly exposed, as Trotsky wrote in 1915 when he referred to:
"the old Socialist Parties which have become the main hindrance to the revolutionary movement of the working class."
It was necessary, he said, that these parties should:
"demonstrate to the full their extreme backwardness; that they should discredit their utterly inadequate and narrow methods; and bring the shame and horror of national discord upon the proletariat, in order that the working class might free itself, through these terrible disillusionments, from the prejudices and slavish habits of the period of preparation and become at last that which the voice of history is now calling it to be-the revolutionary class fighting for power" • The War and the International.
In Britain, the Labour Party gained enormously from its support for the war.
The ruling class saw. that here was a ready-made intermediary to fool the workers into believing that "national interest" was greater than class interest.
The role that the bureaucracy was already playing in the labour movement was widened and deepened by the government, who knew only too well that military success depended entirely on efficient industrial output.
Opposition
The militancy of the working class erupted continuously in "unofficial" struggles, but the rewards of historic betrayal were finally reaped by the Lavour Party and the trade 1918 Labour became ior the first time the biggest opposition party.
1918 was a key year for the Labour Party. A new constituțion was adopted and it was transformed from a loose federation of affiliated organisations into a centralised party, organised into local constituency parties subject to discipline and national cohesion.
TGWU leader and The party's officially adopted platform was "Labour and the New Social Order" , an anaemic document which set the tone for piecemeal advance and capitulation to capitalism in all its forms.
The formation of a Labour Party as a break from the confines of the openly capitalist Tory and Liberal parties had represented a political gain for the working class.
But the Labour Party was born deformed with the cancers of parliamentarism, reformism and class collaboration.
Many workers today have the illusion that the Labour Party was once a genuine fighting socialist organisation and that it is simply a matter of reium==:: ame golden age" of Bourgeois Nothing could be further from the truth. The Labour Party is and always was, as Lenin termed it, "bourgeois workers' party".
It has always fought against those who seek to expose the sham of parliamentary democracy, and it has never attempted to do minister Bevin after betraying more than smooth some of the roughest edges of capitalism.
As such, Callaghan and Healey are simply the latest running sores on a body that has produced such monumental traitors as MacDonald Henderson, Attlee, Gaitskell and Wilson.
The best conditions for exposing social democracy occur when the reformists are in power.
Unemployment
The first Labour government was formed in 1923 when 191 Labour MPs were returned against a background of rapidly rising unemployment.
The leadership was in the hands of Ramsay MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas. Henderson and the Fabian these menin parate meetings at Webb's house.
After one such meeting Snowden wrote the following. comment in his memoirs:
The conversation turned upon what we might be able to do in the first session of Parliament. There would be two courses open to us.
1926 General "We might use the opportunity for a demonstration and introduce some bold Socialist measures, knowing that we would be "Then we could go to the country with this illustration of what we would do if we had a Socialist majority.
"This was a course which had been urged by the extreme wing of the party, but it was not a policy which commended itself to reasonable opinion.
"I urged very strongly to this meeting that we should not adopt an extreme policy but should confine our proposals to measures that we were likely to be able to carry... We must show the country that we were not under the domination of wild men."
MacDonald himself =: mised repeatedly to ...re the wild socialist heel Minor reforms The ears :: this frst Labour government speaks for itseli-a iew minor reforms on housing and welfare benefits, complete refusal to repeal the Emergency Powers Act MacDonald BABOORIL Labour's 1973 conference - i (which chained the unions to war-time restrictions), full support for British imperialism (especially in India) and vicious repression of strikers (notably the London transport workers):
Jimmy Thomas, Colonial Secretary, proposed a toast to the Empire at the 1924 Exhibition with the words that Labour intended:
"above all else to hand to their successors one thing when they gave up the seals of office, and that was the! general recognition that they were proud and jealous of, and were prepared to maintain, the Empire"
Indeed the most striking! feature of those, the first British social democrats in power, was their absolute desperation to appear as decent middle class diplomats who kept their caps| firmly in their hands.
The Labour leaders vied with the Tories as to who! could be the most virulently anti-Communist.
Accordingly. after 10 months and despite increasing class polarisation. the first Labour government collapsed-learning nothing from its defeat.
The next two years were marked by a huge upsurge of working class militancy in the face of rising unem-s ployment and wage-cutting.
'Red Friday'
In 1925 major strikes by l textile workers and miners won important gains, natnhirr +ho~ n.1 'Red Friday victory of the miners which forced the Tories to scrap the wage-cutting proposals and subsidise the mines.
The Labour Party leaders responded with expressions of "concern" that a government and employers were being compelled to give concessions through "force rather than reason"!
This prepared the ground for the historic defeat of the British working class in the General Strike of 1926, when the Labour leaders kept up continual secret talks with the government in attempts to engineer grovelling settlements.
This collaboration by the reformist hureanerats was not some monstrous aberra- ..VaLLДAU. YV LAO tion. It was simply a natural and inevitable consequence of the implicit support for capitalism which is built into the social democratic consciousness.
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immonly portrayed as a key shift to the left.
As the capitalist crisis collaborationist pressed home their advan- wondered:
"how far it is possible, National Government. It force, the Labour Party without abandoning any. of would be preferable that elaborated a "tentative our party positions, without Mr. MacDonald should served in Churchill's reactionary war coalition. SOCIALIST Sankey As Jimmy Thomas himself admitted:
"I suppose my usual critics will say that Thomas was almost grovelling, and it is true.
"In all my long experience I have never begged and pleaded like I begged and pleaded all day today, and I pleaded ... because I believed in my bones that my duty to the country involved it.
Paramount
Capitalist Britain was of paramount importance, dwarfing any case that the three million strikers, spearheaded by a load of starving miners, might have.
When the working class moves and flexes its muscles the reformists are invariably frightened out of their wits.
One single independent action by workers threatens the whole mandate that the ruung class nas granted to social democracy.
intensified and employers ment, tage on a demoralised workLabourites Attlee, Morrison, Bevin Wednesday May 30, 1979.
Thomas
doctrineless socialism" (MacDonald's words) that it hoped would soften the blows of capital.
The crisis of 1929 was so sharp that a gut class vote returned Labour to power with 287 seats (the Tories had 260 and the Liberals 59).
This second: Labour government • presided over 2½-3 million unemployed. It resolutely set its face against those who had put it in power, and stepped up cooperation with the Tories and Liberals (especially the latter).
The collective impotence of the Labour 'lefts' , the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Stalinists of the Communist Party -then engaged in the ultraleft policies of the 'Third Period'- contributed strengthening of MacDonald's position.
in nis IrSt speech as Prime Minister of the new governMacDonald 7. 48.
and Cripps Gaitskell in any way surrendering any item of our party principles, to consider ourselves more as a Council of State and less as arrayed regiments facing each other in battle"
Thus the way was cleared for the betrayal of the National Government in 1931.
It was gradually dawning on the centre of the Labour Party that MacDonald and his circle were losing even the most tenuous connict with the labour moment.
The crunch came when Snowden introduced £96 million worth of public spending cuts in the summer of 1931.
£66.5 million of this was accounted for by a 20% cut in unemployment benefit!
Even the TUC turned on the government, who accordingly resigned. The National Government which followed was a coalition of Tories, Liberals and four leading LabouritesMacDonald, . Snowden, Thomas and Lord Sankey.
These four were expelled from the Labour Party, though no political break was made with their policies.
This episode is crucially important to an understanding of just how useful social democrats are to the bourgeoisie.
Prefer Mac Donald
One of the Opposition leaders, Sir Herbert Samuel, told the King that:
"in view of the fact that the necessary economies would prove most unpalatable to the working classes, i woula be to ine general interest if they could be imposed by a Labour government... or the best alternative would be a PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Wilson remain Prime Minister in such a National Government".
In the subsequent election, Labour was, not surprisingly, smashed- returning only 52 MPs opposed to the National Governemnt.
As unemployment. continued to rise and wages to tall, and with tascism loomlarger, the 1935 election saw Labour regain a further hundred seats.
The Second Imperialist World War in 1939 saw wholehearted participation from the social democrats; Attlee, Morrison, Cripps and Bevin all holding important posts in Churchill's coalition Again, with millions of workers being put to death in defence of competing sections of capital, working class militancy began to reassert itself.
The miners' strikes towards the end of the war and the return of the troops in 1945 prepared the ground for the first post-war election.
Labour was returned with its biggest majority ever (a majority of roughly 160 over all other parties).
Anyone who had illusions that this big majority would usher in a period of socialist policies, however, was in for a rude awakening.
The Labour Party was as incapable of changing its spots in 1945 as it is today.
There are still many myths about the 1945-51 Labour government that need to be nailed.
Tribunites point to the nationalisations and the National Health Service and other reforms as a triumph of socialism.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The concept of socialism played little part in the nationalisations Labour undertook.
Already the demands of war. had extended the State's role in industry. The reformists simply extended this State intervention further.
Nationalisation, where it occurred was understood as a means of rationalising failing, but basic, sectors of the economy, not as means of destroying capitalism.
No planning What nationalisation was done was carried out with no attempt at socialist planning of production nor any reference to the supply and distribution of commodities.
Excluded from the process of nationalisation was any form of workers' control or managemeni of the newly - nationalised industries.
At the same time, however, the previous owners of these largely bankrupt firms were very handsomely compensated by the Labour administration.
The NHS, which repres ented a gain for the working class, on the one hand, also became a sitting target for private supply industries on PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Callaghan the other.
All that the reformists had achieved for a consenting bourgeoisie was a way of keeping workers healthy to promote the post-war reconstruction of capitalism.
Similarly with the educational reforms which were carried out.
The Labour government and the TUC set out quite consciously to stifle any militant action by the working class. In the six years after the First World War, 190 million working days were 'lost' by strikes; from 1945 to 1951 only 13 million were so lost' And where the trade union bureaucracy lost its stranglehold the Labour government was quick to act. Troops were used to smash up strikes on an unprecedented scale-notably continuing struggles by dock workers.
The government consistantly refused to revoke the repressive anti-union Order 1305 (passed early in the War in 1940).
The British army was used to oppress national rights abroad (particularly in Palestine and Malaya) and Labourite Ernie Bevin became one of the main architects of NATO.
Despite these betrayals, the 1951 election saw hatred of the Tories and bitter memories of the 20s and 30s give Labour its highest ever percentage of the poll (48.8%).
But this was not enough to stop the Conservatives taking over the job of rebuilding capitalism themselves by a small majority of seats.
For the next 13 years the cancerous body of British social democracy was haggled over by the right wing leadership, under Gaitskell, and the windy 'lefts', like Bevan.
Any attempts to build a serious challenge to the reformists of right or left were met with witch-hunting and expulsion.
Gaitskell at least had the honesty to back moves to drop Clause 4 from the Labour constitution (that is the clause that pontificates about achieving common ownership "by hand and by brain") but the majority of Labourites fought to keep the clause with a passion that mirrored the depth of their own delusions that the Labour Party could ever ever carry it out.
By 1964 Harold Wilson, after careful manipulation of a moderately 'left' image, had replaced Gaitskell and led Labour to a narrow victory in the election.
"Modernisation" of the economy was Wilson's watchword, a policy which mainly consisted of making capitalism more efficient by encouraging greater concentration of private economic power.
The middle classes showed their appreciation of Wilson's efforts by deserting the Tories in the 1966 election. For Harold Wilson the conclusion was clear:
"It proved that Labour could give national leadership, that we rejected the Conservative concept of cynical conflict between class and class".
Class conflict, however. has a hasty way of continuing despite the verbal denials of bureaucrats.
The seamen's strike of 1966 provided a particularly sharp reminder for Wilson, who succeeded in helping the NUS bureaucracy to regain control by witch-hunting strike leaders.
• This, and the attempts to railroad in anti-union laws in 1969 of course were merely a prelude to the massive attacks on workers launched by Wilson, Healey and Callaghan in the last Labour government.
These attacks • were carried out under conditions where working class action, led by the miners. had smashed the Tories under Heath and returned Labour to power (for a chronological survey of the record of social democracy between 1974 and 1979 see Socialist Press 145).
The key aspects to stress in the patient exposure of the reformist parties by revolutionaries are the consistency of social democracy's betrayals and the continuity of its support for capitalism.
Arguments about whether Callaghan is worse than MacDonald, whether Attlee was better than Wilson and so on are pure diversion.
Reformism does not follow a downward course from some more principled point in the past.
Reformism follow's a consistently anti-working class strategy.
Traditional leaders
Moreover, whilst advanced layers of workers have broken with reformism and taken up the struggle for a revolutionary perspective, the mass of the working class is still bound to its traditional leaders.
The degeneration of the Third (Communist) International, the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, and the splitting of the Trotskyist Fourth International by opportunism and sectarianism have all contributed to this.
Only Trotskyists, fighting patiently and consistently on the Transitional Programme with the transitional method can expose the reformists for what they are.
The Workers Socialist League stands for the reconstruction of the Fourth International on the basis of a struggle for the principles of the Transitional As Trotsky wrote in 1935 (in Once Again the ILP):
"An absolutely clear programme is the first condition. A small axe can fell a large tree only if it is sharp enough"
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exact . characterisation or ine counter-revoluvunary utsFl. It is essential that we start troyers of Trotskyism"'etc, as from a mutual recognition of do the WRP or OCRF!, we the revolutionary character of should maintain the same our two organisations." (para 4) essential framework of relations marked change of position from groups mentioned in this that expressed in the USFI section :. " (p3) [the resolaresolution "Relations. with tion then goes on to talk of Trotskyist organisations Or some unspecified "unfortunate The immense revolutionary upheavals • that toppled the Shah in Iran; that continue to rock the racist regimes of Southern Africa and military dictatorships throughout Latin America; that in 1974 brought down Portuguese fascism and today still threaten the stability of Franco's heirs in Spain; and that have found their reflection in recent mass struggles by the working class in nearly every European country, are clear testimony to the colossal strength and tenacity of the working class.
But they also indicate-each in its own way-the continuing and historic crisis of leadership that has proved the key factor in limiting these struggles to spontaneous explosions of militancy which have failed to attain the level of consciousness necessary to carry through the socialist revolution, sweep away once and for all the repressive machinery of the capitalist state, and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
To lead such struggies, Trotskyist parties are needed. Such parties must be based on the programme, the principles and the method that were developed out of the experiences of the Russian Revolution,. and the continuous struggles against Stalinist degeneration of the CPSU and the Third (Communist) International, as well as against every form of centrism.
This kind of clarity is also vital in the struggle to construct a leadership capable of mobilising and directing the struggles of the workers in the deformed and degenerated workers' states of Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba towards the political overthrow of the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracies that monopolise political power in these coun tries and feed off the progressive nationalised property relations established there.
Contradictory
It was with this historic political task in view that the Trotskyist Fourth International was founded in 1938. But since Trotsky's death and the complex and contradictory changes in the balance of class forces in the post-war period, the FI has found itself wracked by successive crises, each revolving around the problems of analysing the manoeuvres and counter-revolutionary politics of This led in 1953 to a major split in the International, which divided into the two main currents that remain with us today:
1) an opportunist wing. grouped around Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel, which responded to the post-war changes by throwing overboard the established Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism, and instead adapting to emerging "progressive" forces;
and 2) an "orthodox" wing, around Cannon, Lambert and Healy, which responded to the new problems by clinging on rigidly to formulations drawn up in the past, and refusing to examine their own past mistakes.
Cuban revolution
The Cuban revolution, in which Trotskyists were faced with the necessity to chart a path that steered clear of adaptation to Castro's petty bourgeois nationalism, and that correctly analysed the role of world Stalinism in moulding the evolution of the Cuban state, produced a further split in the "orthodox" with forces, SWP Cannon's American breaking politically from the International Committee to rejoin the political camp of Mandel and Pablo.
The inability of the remaining IC "orthodox" forces to agree on anything beyond the repetition of general political truisms and hostility to Pabloism opened the door for a further split in its forces, and in 1971 Lambert broke away to form the present-day OCRFI, based around the French OCI.
To compound the confusion, both the OCRFI and the IC have since 1971 each in their own way moved towards the opportunist adaptationist politics that are the hallmark of the Pabloite USFI.
In which direction, then, are militants to look for the continuity of the Trotskyist Dear Comrades, Our National Committee has now discussed the letter dated 29 September from. Comrade Grogan of the IMG (copy enclosed). In it, he spells out the changed attitude of the IMG and the USFI towards the long-standing proposals for the WSL to become involved in the pre-conference discussion prior to the USFI Xith World • We noted in particular Cde Grogan's statement that:
"In the first place, we need clarification as to your This is quite clearly programme and method? To the "orthodox" statements and opportunist practice of the OCRFI? Or to the grotesque combination of sectarianism and capitulation to bloodstained petty bourgeois nationalist regimes of the Middle East, embodied in the "anti-Pabloite" IC?
Promise of "unity"
Of course neither of these offers the answer. But large numbers of wouldbe revolutionaries, while rejecting both of these options wrongly seek the answer in the promise of groups claiming to be Trotskyist which are outside the Fi" which was adopted on April 34 1976. That resolution stated that:
"While this (the WSL) should be clearly characterised by us as a Trotskyist organisation, it maintains a slightly different relation towards us than the other currents previously mentioned-stating simply that it will not pre-judge in advance of discussion whether the Fl is a Trotskyist organisation or not. However, as it clearly does not characterise the International as dac with the WSL as with the other James P. Cannon Iranian revolution "unity" held out by the much larger USFI.
Of course every revolutionary seeks to be part of a massbased revolutionary movement. But there is no virtue in numbers if they are achieved at the expense of programmatic clarity.
A revolutionary party must prove itself not by its size but by its ability in practice to offer correct leadership to the working class under the fire of great events. The USFI's record makes it unable to offer such a lead.
Its "unity" is indeed an artificial creation based The following the British IMG sympathising ser Poisoned Well. I makes.
sectarian moves" by the WSL, of which we have heard no mention since l Our position on the characterisation of the USFI has not changed from that day to this. Nor, in the absence of discussions, could it have done so.
Clear
Our latest statement on the matter, therefore, in the WSL document The Poisoned Well, makes this absoluiely clear:
"It is necessary for the world Trotskyist movement to re-examine the issues bearing on the post-war role of Stalinism in order to clarity and correct the wrong positons that have been adopted. For this purpose, the USFI, the IC and OCRFI leadership and sections, for all their false positions, cannot be regarded in advance as having placed themselves outside the world Trotskyist movement."
It comes as some surprise to us therefore to find thatafter two years of exchanges on the proposals that we submit material for the XIth Congress discussion-Cde Grogan's letter now attempts to persuade the WSL that we should start the discussion with the USFI at a point which could only be reached as a conclusion of a thorough process of discussion: an acknowledgement by us that the USFI is, beyond question, a revolutionary organisation.
Discussions
For our leadership and cadre to be convinced of such a position it would first be necessary for discussions to begin, and for these discussions to be connected-as outlined in The Poisoned Well-to a thorough examination of the practical work carried out by the USFI and its sections.
We had understood that common confusion, evasion and an opportunist "agreement to disagree' on crucial questions that divide its main component currents. It is a paper unity that cannot be extended into the practice of its various sections.
Bitter divisions
After five years of bitter factional divisions over the question of guerrilla war in Latin America, the 1974 events in Portugal found the American SWP (barred by reactionary US laws from affiliating to the USFI) and its supporters in the LTF at loggerheads with Mandel's supporters, in a conflict that still has not been resolved.
The SWP's supporters adapted to the Portuguese Socialist Party, while Mandel's IMT signed joint agreements with the Stalinists and trailed after the petty bourgeois Armed Forces Movement. More differences emerged over the war in Angola.
But in 1977 moves were made to dissolve these factions and produce a "united" leadership-"united". • that is, on a refusal to discuss past differences and an equally opportunist assessment of current tasks.
Subsequent events have brought the rapid collapse of even that "unity"
The recent wars in South East Asia brought forth a huge spectrum of opposing assessments throughout the USFI's various sections-with none -of them able to arrive at a principled or consistent analysis of Stalinism. letter was sent on October 25, and to other leading members stions, pressing the case for do reply has yet been received was the purpose of the longstanding USFi invitation to the WSL to submit material to, and become involved in the discussions prior to, the XIth World Congress.
It was for this reason that we responded positively when, first of all in the summer of 1976 Comrade Grogan wrote to us proposing the following:
.. i we could go rapidly forward to a membership meeting, with the participation of a member of the United Secretariat which could take forward the discussion. We think the WSL should agree to this proposal as well as taking up the proposals of the USEC concerning making a contribution to the World Congress discussion. "
That same letter (August 1, 1976) concluded:
"(ili) The WSL should make a submission to the discussion for the next World Congress. The IIDB [Discussion Bulletin] would be circulated to WSL members. To further debate this, a membership meeting should be held at which half the time should be devoted to the submission of the WSL and half to the discussion in the FI-with the basis of this the two Political Resolutions of the last World Congress...
We would point out that there was no mention either in this letter or in the USFI's preceding April resolution of any preconditons being imposed on our submitting a document to the World Congress. Nor was there in existence at that pointto the best of our knowledgean agenda for that Congress.
And when, some six months later, Cde Grogan wrote again, arranging for us to receive our first consignment of IIDBs in line with our prior agreement, he made no attempt then to lay down preconditions or to prescribe any topics to be covered by our cussion. that the 1978.
The SWP has dug in and defended its position of refusing to call for the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea, against public polemic from Mandel.
And the SWP is persisting in this stand despite a majority vote by the USFi to adopt a "troops out" position.
Far from offering a cohesive organising centre for a world party of socialist revolution, therefore, the USFI offers a confused debating chamber for all manner of undisciplined tendencies-in which even on the occasions that votes are taken, the minority feels free to disregard the result!
Common struggle
Nor is the discussion within the USFI equally open to all tendencies. The "united" front between Mandel and pro-SWP supporters is waging a common struggle against the oppositional Bolshevik Faction, led by Nahuel Moreno, which commands the allegiance of a majority of USFI forces in Latin America.
A lengthy document by Moreno attacking the "united" USFI leadership's document Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been effectively suppressed by the USF!.
And the WL discussion document, The Poisoned Well, submitted to the USFI early in 1978 for circulation in the discussion prior to the Xith Worid Congress, has also been suppressed, by a joint decision of pro-Mandel and pro-SWP 1978 to Brian Grogan of of the USFI and of its the circulation of The to any of the points it submission to the disHe merely informed us projected date for the was, at that time, May Timetable Drawing on the material contained in the IIDBs, and having regard initially to this tentative timetable, we drew up our document The Posioned Well.
As it became clear that the Xith Congress would be delayed well beyond May 1978, we made discussion of our contribution a part of the discussion for our own Second Annual Conference, and it was finally adopted in an amended form in February 1978.
Our intention remains to complete the second half of this project, which will be a document dealing with the lessons of the recent class struggle in Europe.
At no point during this entire preparatory period-d TROTSKYISM- '-EORFTIÇA, TODAY INSIDE, • Mandel's dance with Stalinism • The significance of the Transitional Programme • The U.S. SWP 40 years on. Price 45p plus 15p postage from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.
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We reprint below the French and Spanish the WSL document published this week.
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Page 8 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday May 30, 1979. nanswered questions for the IMG