Blems Solved

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Anti-war protest in Peking during the invasion of Vietnam nationalised • of deformed and their orm of rule. whatever idox" phrases er up their real SP's analysis butright denial live difference formed and • a kers' state. turn that the e abandon the erstanding of he Stalinist SWP leaders" imism we do ace pessimism ture of the t on the need analysis of the dents which * in the postmd on the 1 and national onary role of eaucracy.

-aces is have been result of the theoretical which have recent months this dispute w problems, issues which by no means fact the same I arose at the isputes which i period have questions as. Is state? What Vietnamese militia forces is the difference between a healthy and degenerated or deformed workers state? What is the historical role of the Stalinist bureaucracy?are all questions which have concerned the Trotskyist movement since its inception.

We do not take the position that final definitive positions have been reached on all these questions.

Restorationist

One particular problem yét to be fully tackled is the mechanism which deformed workers' states are created, and the laws of motion • which govern the behaviour of degenerated and deformed workers' states.

Another is to define in what manner the Stalinist bureaucracy is restorationist.

We believe that one condition for the reconstruction of the Fourth International as an authoritative and cohesive world revolutionary leadership is that theoretical progress should be made on these issues.

But theoretical progress is impossible without the most profound and honest theoretical discussion.

The USFI however is an organisation which was founded partly on an agreement to impose moratorium on potentially divisive discussion.

Obstacle

And this is one of the senses in which the USFI has continued to' act as an obstacle to the theoretical clarification which must go hand in hand with the organisation of reconstruction of the Indeed it is only an extreme political difference within the USFI leadership (implying support for different sides in a war) that has made the reopening of a theoretical discussion on these issues in Ernest Mandel's words, "unavoidable":

As we said in opening this series of articles, we welcome the fact that such a discussion is taking place.

We do not approach it in any spirit of gloating that such a sharp discussion is developing in the USFI.

But we must, nevertheless, make some highly critical comments on the kind of debate which is taking place.

We see continual evidence that the USFI leadership, far from welcoming the theoretical debate as a precondition for theoretical clarification, is once again taking steps organisationally to limit and curtail that debate.

One way in which this shows up is in relation to Cuba. It was the position of the USFI at its foundation in 1963 that Cuba was a workers' state which had not degenerated and was not bureaucratically deformed from the outset.

Today the SWP leadership explicity endorses that position-indeed it uses selective reference to certain actions of the Cuban bureaucracy-which are in our opinion ever more counter-revolutionary-to "prove" • that the Castro leadership is consistently a 'revolutionary' one.

It is clear that the theoretical questions which are raised by the recent events in Indochina can be resolved only by a disussion which also includes the quesion of Cuba.

In the present dispute the SWP leaders have complained about the extreme reluctance of Ernest Mandel, or anyone else who supports the USFI majority resolution on the Indochina wars, to discuss the question of Cuba.

Fred Feldman, 1979, reprinted in IP/l April 9, 1979.

in IP/| April 9, 1979.

Steve Clark, Fred Feldman, Indo-china - What Policy for But what explains this reluctance? Surely it is the fact that to reopen theoretical discussion on Cuba would reveal, even more clearly than the present dispute, the shaky theoretical foundations on which the rickety political edifice of the USFI rests.

So, on the question of Cuba, it seems that Ernest Mandel at least would like to extend the moratorium on debate.

Within their own party, however, the SWP leaders have not been able to hold back a growing pressure to debate the party's position of virtually uncritical support for the Castro leadership.

This has now reached the position where the SWP whitewashes the role of Castro in support of the genocidal policies of the Ethiopian military dictatorship.

For SWP members and supporters "information" about the "progress" of the Cuban masses is provided in the pages of the SWP's weekly paper The Militant via the reprint without comment of the statements of a member of the Cuban bureaucracy (See The Militant, August 3, 1979).

Opposition within the SWP to these policies of adaptation to Castro has existed for some time and has now begun to emerge in public.

'Unity'

in Socialist Press we will soon be publishing some articles which take up and comment on this debate in the SWP, at which the rest of the USFI seems still to be merely looking on in embarassed silence.

In other words, despite the outbreak of public debate in the USFI press, they are uniting to try to preserve the opportunist political agreement reached in 1977.

Like the 1963 "reunification" agreement this has been based on a common wish to avoid discussion of the most divisive theoretical and poliGus Horowitz and Mary-Alice Waters, Revolutionists?" IP// July 16, 1979. tical issues in the interests of a fake 'unity'.

Today, as in 1963, such moves can only damage the prospects of reconstructing the Fourth International on a principled basis as an authoritative world revolutionary organisation.

The WSL will continue to resist these moves to inhibit the necessary theoretical rearmament of Trotskyism.

That • is why we have produced these articles which we hope both inside and outside the USFI will help to break the bounds within which the USFI leadership would like to confine the discussion.

Mandel SWP leader Barnes The purpose of the articles is not to lay down a final position on the questions it raises but to stimulate further • discussion of them.

To this end the columns of Socialist Press are open to both members and non-members of the WSL. We wish to encourage readers to make written contributions which take up aspects of these articles or of the dispute within the USFI.

In our view the starting point for any theoretical development on the questions raised in the present dispute must remain Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Soviet Union, set out in The Revolution Betrayed and In Defence of Marxism.

But in the post-war epoch these documents, fundamental as they are, no longer remain sufficient for the understanding of Stalinism.

Trotsky himself regarded them as having something of a provisional character in terms of their conclusions.

In particular the post-war period has faced the Trotskyist movement with the challenge of understanding situations in which capitalist property relations were overthrown without the intervention of a proletarian revolutionary party-a problem which Trotsky had only begun to consider.

Open wars

More recently we have witnessed bitter conflicts between Stalinist-ruled states, now escalating into open wars -a problem which Trotsky, writing when the Soviet Union was the only non-capitalist state, did not, of course, have to deal with.

The emphasis of Trotsky's writing on the Soviet Union under Stalin was that, although a social counterrevolution had not taken place, the Stalinist bureaucracy • was a vast material force which, despite its defence "by methods of its own" of the social conquests achieved, represented a profound threat to those conquests.

It is necessary to advance beyond those positions in order to understand the nature of Stalinism in the post-war period.

Its extent and power has grown vastly since Trotsky was writing.

"Orthodoxy"

Both sides in the current dispute within the USFI hold the view that they are defending Trotskyist "orthodoxy"

But when put to the test their "orthodoxies" turn out to be unequal to their task.

If orthodox Marxism involves following the footsteps of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, then one of its characteristics must surely be the capacity to extend and develop theoretical and political positions to cope honestly with new realities, rather than clinging forlornly and abstractly to inadequate past positions which are dignified by being attributed to the dead.

Concluded

Beginning in Socialist Press 167: a series of articles replying to the main texts before the USFI XIth World Congress this November.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, #'ednesde; September I2, 1979 Founded on July 15 of this when it comes to considering year, the Workers Party has been the history from which they formed by forces recently ex- come, the WP comrades react pelled from Gerry Healy's recent past with organisational issues of their Bulletin, number issues of their Bulletin, number 5 of which includes a number of 5 of which includes a number of articles attacking the positions of the Workers Socialist League.

and final part of a reply to those points : but the issues raised are also of more general interest to those wishing to understand revolutionary principles of organAs we indicat ed in our first article, the comrades of the Workers P arty have not yet grasped the concrete problems of intervention in the class.

These problems can only be approached by seeing the struggle for programme as a bridge between workers' present consciousness and isation. Workers Revolutionary Party.

They have now produced six stantian tha nacitinne of This article is the second and can itself be very one-sided