TILC Resolution on Parity Commission

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1) The TILC at its meeting on April 8 1980 heard a report from its representatives who visited the Parity Commission in Paris on March 16.

From this report it aj peared that what had originally promised to be a development offering new opportunities in the fight to reconstruct the Fourth International is undergoing a process of rapid change.

2) When first approached by the PC, our organisations were assured that there was no intention by the PC's organisers of forming a new international movement. We were told that the sole task of the PC was to organise as quickly as possible a conference "open to all those organisations regarding themselves as based on the Trotskyist programme" , and designed to start the process of discussion and clarification on the question of Pabloism.

On this basis we welcomed the call for the conference, and declared our willingness to work for it on the Parity Commission. This remains our position.

3) But it now appearsdespite public statements to the contrary by some national groupings adhering to the PCthat the PC no longer intends to organise any such conference. Nor is the PC any longer inviting other Trotskyists to join it in undertaking such a task. Instead the PC has effectively formed itself into a joint secretariat of the Bolshevik Faction (BF), Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (LTT) and the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI), acting as a new international organisation and closed to other organisations.

4) In place of the 'open conference' of world Trotskyists, we are now told that the PC plans to hold a closed conference of PC forces-together with those elements that declare the PC to be the main axis around which the Fourth International will be reconstructed and its components to represent the continuity of the struggle against revisionism in the Trotskyist movement. Yet we hear the USFI has been invited.

In place of the invitation to other organisations to join the PC are rules offering only associate (non-voting) membership to organisations by unanimous vote of all 3 PC groupings.

5) The PC has meanwhile begun to issue political statements on Iran, on Nicaragua, on Afghanistan, on Peru and El Salvador as well as a general political resolution.

fusing revolutionary and reactionary movements and paving the way for major deviations on such a basic issue as defence of the USSR, it is to be stressed that all of these statements appear to be written in such a way as to evade the fundamental political differences between the BF and the OCRFI.

• PC leaders stress that they intend to pursue discussions only on areas where a substantial measure of agreement exists, and not to debate out their differences.

6) It is here that we must fundamentally disagree with the method employed by the PC. The historical experiences of the post-war FI show that the International cannot be reconstruc ted on the basis of diplomatic statements restating already agreed positions. What is needed is a thorough discussion of the real political and programmatic issues that have split and divided the Trotskyist movement since 1953-the role of Stalinism; the political independence of the working class from petty bourgeois nationalist movements; and the application of the Transitional Programme to the fight in the mass movement of the working class. Mere agreement on the Nicaraguan eventsalthough thePC rightfully exposed the complete Pabloite liquidationism of the USFI on this issue-is inadequate as a basis to reconstruct the FI. We should remember in this context that Healy emerged on the "right" side against Pablo in 1953.

7) The present course of the PC stands in marked contrast to its early political statements, which indeed emphasised the need for identifying the historical roots (starting from Pabloism) of the crisis of the FI which produced the 1979 USec split. Yet the present trajectory of the PC appears to be not towards resolving these basic problems but towards a repetition of the unprincipled "reunification" of 1963-which was at that point correctly opposed by the OCI.

8) The TILC restates its commitment to struggle for the broadest possible discussion in the world Trotskyist movement to lay principled programmatic basis for the reconstruction of the FI as a democratic centralist world party of socialist revolution.

The trajectory of the PC, on the other hand, appears to be towards an avoidance of discussion on basic issues, and a diplomatic agreement conduçted at leadership level, without the involvement of the rank and file of the PC organisations. This can in our view only lay the basis for political confusion and future splits.

• 9) We therefore call on the PC to return to its original terms of reference and its stated objectives-the convening of an open conference to begin the process of political clarification needed for the reconstruction of the FI.

We call on the PC to open itself to those forces that declare their adherence to the Trotskyist programme and are Willing to constructively engage in the political preparation and building of such a conference.

We propose that its agenda should embrace the struggle against the methods of Pabloism in connection with Stalinism, social democracy and petty bourgeois nationalist movements.

10) On such a basis we declare ourselves willing to participate in the Parity Commission in the preparation of that Open Conference.

Meantime we approach the presently • constituted Parity Commission on the basis of seeking discussions between our two distinct international organisations. We seek to initiate a political debate, which we feel should be unrestrained and public.

We are ready to continue such a discussion outside the framework of the PC: and for our part we intend to submit our political reply to the declarations already passed by the PC.

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Besides profoundly wrong positions on Afghanistan, con-