The lisone Well

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At the same time the SWP had responded empirically to the Cuban revolution, in 1963 but had retained from the IC and their long traditions as a Party a wariness of totally liquidating the Trotskyist Party itself.

The subsequent death of Hansen this year and the immediate profound lurch by the SWP to the most brazen (Castroism is testimony to the way in which such crass oppor(tunism was moderated by the older, more experienced cadrewho are now losing their grip on the younger SWP leaders.

The SWP had also developed an increasing orientation towards the pacifist elements drawn aroung the anti-war imovement in the USA. So it began to pull back from this position.

Others-such as Moreno and Blanco, who had bitter experinces arising from the follies been most numerous.

The problem of course if that the Mandelite:, attempt to supplant one empirical set of conclusions with another with little or no attempt to challenge the method and historical enalysis through which the mistakes were originally made.

How, then, has the USFI stood up since 1963 as a movement equipped to give a lead to the working class on the "big political questions" of the day?

Well, by 1964 its policy of substituting organisational tactics for political struggle and belittling the fight within the International for theoretical and programmatic clarity had created ideal conditions for the treacherous desertion of the vast majority of its Ceylonese section to the class enemy at a crucial point in the struggleperspective These began with petty bourgeois guerrillaist adventures coupled with opportunist flip flops in Bolivia; included the open desertion of the PRT/ ERP-the USFI's recognised Argentinian "section"-from Trotskyism in 1971; and culminated in the complete bankruptcy of the USFI on the Chilean struggles prior to the 1973 coup.

Not only did the guerrillaists of the USFI have no perspective to offer the Chilean working class-other than purely organisational talk of workers militia, completely divorced from political programme-but the majority leadership refused even to characterise Allende's Popular Unity government as a It even opposed any political demand for the ousting of the bourgeois ministers and generals the Bolshevik Faction, based around Moreno's PST and the Latin American section of the USFI.

Moreno has a long record of opposing Pablo and many of the consequences of Pablo's analysis.

But he himself-astoundingly for a Latin American Trotskyist —declares that he has no analysis of the Cuban Revolution, and has offered no really positive alternative as challenge to the false positions adopted in one form or other by the USFI leadership.

Moreno openly and easily proclaims that he has made "hundreds of mistakes" in the past. But we can point to a number of absolutely crass errors by at least one Bolshevik Faction grouping in the present that cast a serious An analysis by the WSL of the Self-Criticism published by the USFI on the basis of which the new majority leadership was formed.

Available in English, Danish, Spanish, and French from:

WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 ' 1HR Price 35p including postage. in the first issue of a new international discussion bulletin, the task of which is to provide a central focus for the political and organisational discussions that are essential to prepare for the genuine reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth International.

The answer to today's manifest crisis in all of the international bodies proclaiming themselves the Fourth International is not any hasty 'minimum agreement' or new diplomatic link-up between existing fragments, but a thoroughgoing political assessment of the roots of the crisis, and a concrete statement of the programme and practical orientation needed to resolve it.

We invite serious militants now adhering to the USFI and other 'Fourth Internationals' to play a positive role in this vital" political reassessment, which offers the only sound basis on which to go forward.