Avoidance of history paves way for present-day confusion

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Cuban troops in Africa-USFI cannot explain their role In looking at the formally orthodox phrases and cliches that form the bulk of the main documents for the USFI XIth World Congress one of the first questions that arises is whether the documents can be assessed at face value.

Do these documents really represent the political views and programme fought for over the last period and to be upheld in future by the USFI's sections?

The answer is clearly 'no' for two related reasons.

Firstly, the documents themselves bear little or no relation to the past and present practice of the USFI and its sections in any country in the world.

They are, of course, characterised by a tone of lofty abstraction that struggles to conceal this total paucity of content.

silence But the fact is that the USFI which claims dozens of sections and thousands of members, is unable to examine or draw a balance sheet of the practical work carried out by even one section in the tumuituous period of struggle since the Tenth World Congress five years ago!

The explanation for this stony silence will become clearer as we examine the kind of questions that are omitted as a result of this approach.

But the second reason the documents cannot be taken at face value is that they are themselves only the latest, empirical outcome of a process of continuing political adaptation that has marked the whole history of the USFI since its formation in 1963.

Far from representing Trotsky any final or conclusive return to the Marxist method, even the formally "orthodox" statements in the documents have emerged from an empirical assessment of particular conjunctural events in the class struggle and from factional struggles within the USFI itself.

The USFI and its quickchange political perspectives can only be understood as a phenomenon continually changing in . mat, response to external evtils. nestamenl Tossed off course • While the USFI has historical links to the postwar Trotskyist movement its leadership's continual inability to comprehend the contradictory role of Stalinism and to use the Marxist method of analysis to chart a consistent independent road forward for the proletariat, leaves it tossed off course by every wave in the world class struggle.

Whatever "orthodox" phrases may be wheeled out from time to time, therefore, there can be no real stability within the USFI. • The theoretical basis for munh enhility mould Anly he derived from an objective analysis of the history and the practical experiences of the movement.

And such an analysis is continually dodged by one or more of the USFI's main factions.

Compromise •The opportunist basis on which the USFI was formed in 1963 rests on a political compromise between essentially diverse currents and a subordination of political clarification for the "tasks of the moment" in the wake of the Cuban revolution.

This has remained a major barrier within the USFI to any attempt to develop the method of dialectical materialism.

Trotsky insisted against both sectarians and centrists alike that dialectical materialism "takes experience as its point of departure and always returns to it."

What is the body of experience of the Trotskyist movement? It is of course contained in its history, its practical attempts to carry the Marxist programme into the class struggie-wneiner these be last week or ten or twenny form of "take it or leave it" attitude to history -leaving it up to individuals to "interpret" for their own subjective reasons and refusing to direct the attention of the party to the theoretical and practical lessons of the recent and distant past-must leave a movement rootless.

It cuts away the groundwork necessary to develop a consistent policy and perspective.

The Workers Socialist League does not hold the view often attributed to us by the USFI of wanting to «vote on history" as such.

Nor do we en alone with Healy's absurd notionwhich he brought to its peak in the 1971 split with the OCI-of carrying out or defending splits over "theory" or "method" in the abstract.

Our focus is at all times on the defence of the principles, and development of the programme of the Trotskyist movement.

But we cannot do that by blinkering our vision to stare straight ahead, simply ignoring the past; nor by ignoring theoretical differences and problems.

The whole experience of the Marxist movement demonstrates the importance of Trotsky's approach in In Defence of Marxism:

"It would be a piece of monstrous nonsense to split with comrades who on the question of the sociological nature of the USSR have an opinion different from ours, insofar as they solidarise with us in regard to the political tasks.

«But on the other hand it would be blindness on our part to ignore purely theoretical and even terminological differences, because in the course of further development they may acquire flesh and blood and lead to diametrically opposite ical conclusions.

"Just as a tidy housewife [!] never permits an accumulation of cobwebs and garbage, just so a revolutionary party cannot tolerate lack of clarity, confusion and equivocation. Our house must be kept clean!"

Our analysis of the XIth Congress documents will attempt to show how, by rejecting Trotsky's view, the USFI leaders in fact ensure that the theoretical blunders and programmatic errors of the past are carried forward as part of the heritage for the future.

Disorientate

By looking on forward and never back they perpetually disorientate their movement, rendering it incapable offering adequate leadership to the working class.

In focussing as we have on the rich lessons to be drawn from the post-war history of the Trotskyist movement, therefore, we are consciously setting ourselves the task of grappling with today's mistaken theoretical positions.

Past problems that are not resolved must remain as Sandinista guerrillas: mistakes on Cubd current sources of confusion and political impotence in the present period.

USFI leaders have repeatedly argued that this insistence on history is the WSL's artificial, sectarian means of walling ourselves off from political debate and eventual fusion with the USFI.

"Unity'

The great revolutionaries of the past-Lenin and Trotsky-never required any such historical accounting, they claim.

All we need to do, they say, is agree in general terms on current tasks and then argue out our differences within a common international body.

It is by no means flattering to us to notice that the IMG extends a similar invitation to the British SWP, Big Flame, etc., readily abandoning elements of the Trotskyist programme in the hopes of producing a superficial political basis for "unity'.

Our approach to the struggle to reconstruct the Fourth International is in our view more akin to that of Trotsky.

Trotsky's approach was well summed up by leading US SWP member John G. Wright in an article reprinted in the SWP's own series «Towards a History of the FI"

"Classic"

Talking of the struggle for the elaboration of an international programme by the Left Opposition, he wrote:

«Trotsky's touchstone for evaluating "tendencies in world communism"-and therefore his touchstone for political collaboration—-was: the position taken by any given group on the abovelisted three questions which he designated as "classic" (Anglo-Russian Committee,

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Mass upsurge in Portugal 1974: USFI draws no lessons from these massive experiences hosa post-war period has been haracterised by profound polit:al disorientation and a coninuing series of incomplete and pportunist splits and fusions.

The forthcoming XIth World iongress of the USFI is however n important event. It offers larxists the opportunity of ssessing in more detail the stage if development of the political risis which has characterised he USFI's existence since its ormation in 1963.

Such an assessment is no asy task. Unlike the IC and the JCRFI, the USFi is the very opposite of a politically monoithic grouping consisting of attelite "sections" grouped ound a national based party.

Rather the USFl is a deliberItely heterogeneous body, a ionsciously created hodgelodge of widely varying sositions, analysis and practice, mean mistakes today on Nicaragua Chinese revolution of 192527 and Soviet economic policy in conjunction with the theory of socialism in one country).

"In his opinion oniy an organisation which demarcated itself ideologically from all others on these issues, could prove viable, capable of action, capable of withstanding the test of events, and finally able to unite the proletariat under its banner.

"Why? Because in each case fundamental principles of revolutionary policy were involved. Agreement meant the possibility for joint work within a common organisation; disagreenient either excluded such a possibility or rendered extremely remote.

It is worth noting that in none of these classic questions-all of which were 'past history' by that timedid Trotsky draw the conclusion that-for all its bankruptcy and opportunism and all its catastrophic results for the working class -the role of the Stalinist bureaucracy had placed its parties definitively in the camp of the class enemy.

Rather they were opportunist errors that called initially for a factional struggle to remove and replace the Stalinist clique.

"One of the psychological sources of opportunism is superficial impatience, the lack of confidence, the lack of confidence in the gradual growth of the party's influence, the desire to win the masses with the aid of an organisational manoeuvre or personal diplomacy. Out of this springs the policy of combinations behind the scenes, the policy of silence, of hushing up, of selfrenunciation, of adaptation to the ideas and slogans of others; and finally, the comVICLE vassaKe LU nlata to 11K straddled by a leadership which -for all: its weaknesses and divisions-is definitely internationally based.

The USFI makes a virtue of the fact that within its ranks currents holding completely opposing political views on issues of programme and practice can exist side-by-sideeven when such differences on topics such as strategy and tactics in Portugal 1974-6, the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea and the analysis of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua reach a level where rival USFI factions find themselves potentially or actually on opposite sides of barricades, publicly denouncing the line adopted by their own "comrades"

The USFI therefore is no fixed entity: it is a sum total of divergent factional currents which continually shift and positions of opportunism. ' «The subordination of the CP to the Kuomintang in China, the creation of workers' and peasants parties in India, the subordination of the British party to the minority movement, etc., etc.-in all these phenomena, we see the same method of bureaucratic combinationism which commences with superficial revolutionary impatience and finishes with opportunist treason."

(Leon Trotsky, Marxism and the Trade Unions, p.74)

But at the same time if the Trotskyists were unable to reach agreement with other "tendencies in world communism" on the fundamental lines of policy involved in these classic instances, then it meant that joint work within a common organisation was either excluded or rendered "extremely remote"

In pointing to the issues at stake between us and the USFI we could perhaps also point to a number of similar "classic" cases in which opportunist deviations from the task of building independent Trotskyist parties and fighting for the Transitional Programme have led to wide differences in "fundamental principles of revolutionary policy" in which we are convinced that opportunist errors have been made but which we have not characterised as definitive class betrayals.

These issues would include:

*The orientation towards and analysis of Eastern and Western European Stalinism in the post-war period-in particular the question of defending the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism as a definitively counter-revolutionary bureaucratic force within the workers' movement.

*The understanding of switch position in response to the surface developments in the class struggle.

Untenable At its Tenth World Congress in 1974 the main factions were the Leninist Trotskyist Faction, politically supporting the formally "orthodox" • opportunist positions of the US Socialist Workers Party, and the International Majority Tendency, clinging on to the ultra-leftist and guerrillaist schemas of the USFI's European Secretariat.

But the untenable positions taken by both the LTF and the IMT during the Portuguese events of 1974-6 and the Angolan war led to a sharp realignment of forces which now shapes the coming Xith World The bulk of the USFI's the process whereby deformed workers' states have emerged under Stalinist leadership in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam and Kampuchea, and the programmatic response required from Trotskyists.

*The understanding of the processes of the Cuban revolution and the question of the necessity within that revolution for an independent Trotskyist party: the application of these lessons in the struggle for the Transitional Programme throughout Central and Latin America.

*The 1974-76 events in Portugal and the necessity in that situation for a consistent struggle for working class political independence from both reformism and Stalinism.

Other topics, related in one way or another to these main themes, could be added to the list.

But in delineating areas of difference on programmatic questions between us and the USFI-in particular the differences in approach 'to the fight against Stalinism-we see also that divisions on such questions also have emerged and continue to arise within the USFI's own ranks.

Evasions

The problem is that such political questions are met not by frank and serious discussion aimed at clarifying the programmatic points at issue, but by evasions, diplomacy, silences, or by bitter, but entirely superficial polemics.

The failure to hammer out a clear, agreed, common line on these major issues of the post war experiences of the Trotskyist movement and continued • bitter divisions over them are themselves a tacit admission Latin American member sections and sympathising sections broke with the line of the SWP and the LTF and, led by Nahuel Moreno's Argentinian PST, formed the Bolshevik Tendency'.

The growing challenge from these forces, combined with the complete collapse in the credibility of the IMT's guerrillaist perspectives of 1969 and 1974, pressured both the European and SWP leaders into a hasty dissolution of factions and the formation of a new, "united" leadership prior to the Xith Omissions It was this new majority leadership that drafted the five main documents tabled for the Congress. But their manifest that the USFI has failed to accomplish the task it set itself in 1963.

The reunification took place in the name of avoiding what the two sides saw as needless divisions and wrangles over supposedly long-gone issues. Instead, they argued, what was important was a united approach to the "big political questions" of the day.

The SWP contemptuously declared that:

"It is self-evident that the continued division of the world Trotskyist movement in factions wrangling over obscure issues will vitiate its capacity to attract these new forces on a considerable scale."

And they went on to declare that:

"We can attract the best layers of this new generation of rebels by our bold programme, our fighting spirit and militant activity;

we can only repel them by refusing to close ranks because of differences over past disputes of little interest to young revolutionists of action, who are primarily concerned about the great political issues and burning problems of today."

For this reason the newly "united" USFI shuffled off for ten years any discussion or the adoption of any positions on the issues involved in the 1953 split.

Yet workers faced with major struggles do not turn to a revolutionary movement looking for cosy relationships in its leading ranks: they turn looking for leadership in practical struggles.

What has the practical record of the USFI been since 1963?

On virtually every "big political question" , from Ceylon 1964 and France 1968, through the "guerrillaist" turn in 1969 tailure to reconcise past ponucar disagreements is demonstrated by the pattern of conspicuous diplomatic omissions and evasions in. the documents.

The Bolshevik Tendency has in the meantime declared itself a Faction dedicated to the removal of what it calls a "Castroist current' and an "unprincipled bloc" at the head of the USFI and the restoration of "'orthodox" Trotskyism.

The USFI leaders for their part have mounted vicious public attacks on the Simon Bolivar Brigade organised by parties of the Bolshevik Faction for intervention in the Nicaraguan revolution.

These attacks go so far as to endorse the action of the FSLN leaders in expelling members of the Brigade from the country!

Increasingly the language used in these attacks is that and up to the failure to prepare against the Chilean catastrophe of 1973, the record of the USFI is of being caught by surprise, of political confusion, of abject opportunism and not infrequently, profound internal division at the key moment.

The USFI in fact ignominiously failed virtually every test of practice between the reunification and the last, (Tenth) World But has all this now changed? Is the USFI transformed? Do the XI Congress documents show a new ability of the USFI to come to grips with the laws of motion of the class struggle and offer firm and principled leadership on the "big political questions"?

On the contrary the XI World Congress documents show a determination to evade every key issue of world politics in the last five years!

Seven questions We would argue that any list of such issues would have to include at the very least (if we exclude the most recent events-the ousting of the Shah and of Somoza) the following seven questions:

*The Portuguese events of 1974-76, in which the challenge and opportunity of fighting for the Transitional Programme in an advanced pre-revolutionary situation was starkly posed.

*The defeat of US imperialism by Stalinist-led armies in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975-posing the question of the independence of the working class and the need to struggle for the formation of a healthy rather than a deformed workers' state.

*The defeat of imperialist intervention in Angola in 1976, followed by the mounting involvement of appropriate o a spure 'auror than an internal debate on A much lesser threat is seen in the statements produced by a new, 'Leninist Trotskyist Tendency" which has also emerged, with forces in a number of sections, pledged to "correct the errors" of the existing. USFI The USFI in short is a movement wracked by the most profound internal crisis and contradictions.

In assessing its development and its problems we can not only better grasp the political problems within it but also pinpoint central issues on which clarity is essential in the struggle to reconstruct the Fourth International as an authoritative interational centre for the necessary Trotskyist world party of socialist revolution.

Stalinist military forces and diplomatic manoeuvres in the African continent-raising questions of the strategy and characterisation Stalinism and the nature of Moscow's client African states.

*The defeat of the Argentinian working class when Isabel Peron was replaced in the coup which brought Videla's butcher dictatorship to power in 1976: what role had the PST-the USFI's sympathising section and described as "the largest Trotskyist party in the world"_ played in opposing the coup?

*The erosion of the Francoist dictatorship in Spain under the impact of massive working class mobilisations-resulting in the partial and largely cosmetic "democratisation" of the state machinery. What role was played by the Popular Frontist politics of the Spanish CP and PSOE?

In what way have these bureaucracies been fought by the Spanish USFI section the LCR?

*The emergence of the black masses of South Africa in the Soweto struggles, and the eruption of the Zimbabwe liberation struggle in the wake of the Angolan war. What strategy do Trotskyists advocate for these struggles -the 'stageist' view of the Stalinists and nationalists, or an application of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution?

*The mounting threat of a military/fascist coup in Turkey, fostered by the Popular Frontist policies of the reformist and Stalinist leaders in their reactionary alliance with "anti-fascist' bourgeois Prime i Minister Ecevit: the acute danger ol another Chile style catas trophe in Europe itself posing the burning neces sity for a united front policy.

All of these issues are oi vital relevance to the struggle for revolutionary leadership not simply in thi country concerned, but or an international level. They have all arisen since thi USFI's Tenth Work Yet the XIth Congres documents present no anal ysis whatever of thes issues!

In 28 pages of the World Document the USFI leadership refers only fleetingly (and generally in brackets)

to the colossal events that brought Portugal in 1974-6 to the brink of social revolution and left the world's proletariat and bourgeoisie gasping.

The European document is little more generous-out of 45 pages it gives less than a page to sum up the whole rich spectrum of experiences and struggles in Portugal which have totally transformed that country since the last World Continued next week