IMG: Permanent Liquidation

Scan page 6

There is lithout heat political there dead e heat is companied I smoke.

seldom light • This is true of struggles. And wood is involved not infrequently by a good deal ¡ The series of articles currently ppearing in Red Weekly (paper of i International Marxist Group, ritish section of the 'United ecretariat of the Fourth fernational " - "USFI') which blemicises against Socialist Press Id the Workers Socialist League is good example.

Red Weekly succeeds in ivialising whole mies of issues that are of indamental significance for the orkers' movement.

These include such questions as ie united front; the history of the ast war Trotskyist movement; the iture of the Transitional rogramme; and the relationship etween organisational and political mity. • As though this were not enough card of the dust, athusing of also caricatures the fall ending the working class"; of ¡ectarianism"; of accomodation to it reformism; of "perpetuating ianisational separation from the burth " International" ie the ISFI'); and (more generaily) of onfusion': an entire catalogue of Tors!

The attacks against us are ritten in a tone of patronising bscurity and it is difficult to see hy, if we were as guilty as Red eekly supposes, they should be poposing to us as they do a "incipled fusion" with the IMG ed the USFI, • or even why they ould think it important to demicise against such a miserable anisation as the WSL at all!

Red Weekly makes great play er the supposed failure of the SL to "break from Healyism' after i expulsions from the WRP. But mat does not seem to have scured to the sages of the IMG adership is that the essential bestion over which we fought the caly leadership also lies at the my root of our differences with he IMG.

| Attention centred especially on ose demands on pay and jobs -Ich as those for the sliding scale of ages, for work sharing without of pay, and for opening of mpany books - which - directed to the organised working class, munst the bureaucrats, left and and pointed • towards ganisations of workers control.

The WSL has done this because lis is where the key lies to the ruggle for political leadership and agting unity within the workers lovement. • But the period of slightly over a rar since the expulsions from the [RP, "transitional demands' have ow become the small coin of all arts of political tendencies. Even te WRP leadership adopted many ! the formal positions of the pposition while it was in the very it of expelling them, and from ben on the pages of Workers Press pere cynically and eclectically lecorated with lists of transitional lemands'.

And since then at conference Iter conference various "left' peakers have put up this or that agment of the Transitional rogramme - usually abstracted rom any overall political Espective, OI proposals for aking a real fight even on the mediate demands - as their own olitical nostrum.

And this process - which has itainly been driven on by the Inclopment of the class stri iggle self, particularly the willingne ss of sackings - is one of which too, has been a part.

Scarcely an issue of Red Weekly now appears without several articles ending in a shopping list of such 'transitional demands'.

On occasion the IMG positively falls over itself in its new found enthusiasm for "programme', as in the main resolution for the recent London conference on 'Women and the Cuts', which in two closely printed sides contained literally dozens of demands - but with scarcely any indication of how they were to be fought for , or by whom!

But the IMG has by no means been consistent, even in its own propaganda. Leading IMG members, and IMG militants in some areas, have opposed fighting for the demands of the Transitional Programme, on the grounds that they are 'ultimatistic leadership feel driven to launch sis then, the IMG political criticisms against the WSL? The kernel of the answer is found in the first article in Red Weekly (The WSL and the Fight for Unity in Action, February 12th), where are reproached not immersing ourselves in initiatives (whose siogans we emphațically support) such as Troops Out Movement (TOM) and the National Abortion Campaign (NAC).

Blithely passing over the main body of work of the WS in the organised working class ("On much of its work in the unions we have no wish to disparage the WSL.' •"), Red Weekly hastens on to accuse us of 'sectarianism' for our refusal (to which we emphatically adhere) to entangle ourselves in the interminable manoeuvres and wheelings-anddealings of such committees.

To believe the IMG the very centre of politics and the class struggle is to be found in such formations.

Not only that, but having passed over the whole body of the trade union movement with a phrase, the sleight of hand is then embellished with a 'theoretical' formula. They inform us that this sort of activity is part of the application of the 'united front' tactic.

This is a completely spurious claim. Neither the NAC nor TOM is a working class united front. In the main they are made up of radicaiised individuals and revolutionary left organisations, decorated with a few bureaucrats who have sniffed the wind.

The IMG seeks to justify their position by citing certain formulations by Lenin and Trotsky which correctly point out that a united front cannot by-pass the labour bureaucrats. But this does not at all that limited unity with certain bureaucrats of itself makes for a united front The essential ingredient is the involvement of the masses, for the purpose of breaking them from the bureaucracy in action and winning forces to revolutionary policies.

Sharing a platform with bureaucrats is the price revolutionaries must sometimes pay for unity in action with the vanguard of the working class - but if this plattorm itself 'by-passes' the working class the bureaucrats themselves fervently desire), then the practice becomes pure tribute-money to the labour fakers, and nothing can be more dangerous than to disguise this with idle chatter about the 'united front tactic'.

Healy moved to mass expulsions of the WRP opposition at the point where we insisted on a turn into the body of the working class, On policies which could really come to grips with the struggle for leadership and defeat the bureaucrats -especially • within the unions -instead of left', propaganda phrasemongering from the sidelines. the class.

The form is different, but the content the same. Behind all the Psetarianism at o did fore s an inner identity between recent liquidationist course of the WRP and the Pabloite politics of the IMG.

Healy dissolved the WRP into election campaigns, crippling the daily paper that had been built over years. The IMG exists in a state of permanent liquidation, not as a whole, but in its several factions.

Red Weekly accuses us of "tail-ending" the working class, and even (laughably) of spreading the illusion that the left MPs can take state power.

But meanwhile, back at the ranch, IMG delegates at the National Abortion Campaign conference split three ways in public on what the central slogan of the campaign should be! And every slightest left shift of the Stalinists is greeted by the IMG as good coin and a real step forward. Seriously, with "heads' like these who needs 'tails"?

This dissolving of political leadership is reflected also in the evolution of one of the key concepts of the present IMG leadership and of the Majority Tendency within the USFI of which they form a part - the concept of the "new mass vanguard"

This first came to prominence in 1972-3, to describe an "advanced" minority within the European working classes which had allegealy broken free of the political influence of Stalinism and reformism.

It served, in effect, as justification for political work which sidestepped the struggle with the reformist conceptions of advanced workers - by claiming that • an important section of the working class could exist in a sort of political vacuum.

Now, three years later, this particular conception of the vanguard has been dropped and it is recognised (in the USFI majority's statement on Britain) that every serious struggle involves a definite break with reformism.

What now comes to the fore is a tactical "dialectic of unity and outflanking" ' whereby the IMG cadre is to demonstrate (in an 'exemplary" manner) that they are the best fighters in such struggles as left reformists and Stalinists will agree to support.

There has been no attempt to give a political accounting of this switch.

But, most important, what the latest tactic avoids is the self-evident fact that Stalinists and lett reformists now stand as one to prevent any practical struggle taking place which might endanger Wilson.

Far from if being necessary rantinna tr possible to deal blows at the Stalinists and 'lefts', the opposite is the general rule - even to start a real struggle requires their defeat!

This is, for example, very clearly the case in the fight to defeat the Ryder "participation', rationalisation and speed-up schemes in British Leyland - the very centrepiece of Wilson's industrial strategy.

In British Leyland's Cowley plants the building of a principled mass opposition to Ryder has required, above all, a systematic fight against Stalinist and left' plans to smuggle 'participation' in behind workers' backs.

In this fight the IMG has stood with the WSL. We are in no way cynical about this unity. It goes together, for example, with the excellent and prompt response in Red Weekly to our call for an inquiry into TGWU election practices by the right-wing in Cowley and the Midlands.

In this way we have struck real -not propaganda - blows against the employers and Government offensive. But we ask that the IMG cadre should draw the real lessons of our common struggle. We at no point tried to 'outflank' the reformists and Stalimists - we could go forward only by fighting them head-on.

These concrete lessons on the relationship between a revolutionary organisation and the bureaucracy are also central to the issues at stake when Red Weekly calls on the WSL to abandon its 'shibboleths' and fuse with the USFI and the IMG.

MANGLING

This position is bolstered by a) a total mangling of the historical significance of Lenin's struggle for Bolshevism against the Mensheviks and conciliators of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1903 (Red Weekly 26th. February and 4th. March) and b) an equally false characterisation of the 1953 split in the world Trotskyist movement.

Our positions on the split in the world Trotskyist movement are set out in our perspectives document 'Fourth International - Problems and Tasks' (in Trotskyism Today, supplement to Socialist press, Nos. 21-23), and a future article will answer specifically the positions of the IMG on this, and on the continuity between Lenin's struggle for the Bolshevik Party and the Third International, and the fight today for the programme and party of the Fourth International.

But it is essențial here to put the record straight on Lenin's view of the Party. The Red Weekly articles put the line that because the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks both existed factions of the RSDLP up to the Prague conference of 1912 and the split then took place because the Mensheviks violated discipline, there was some sort of real party unity in tha norind 1092.1917 seems to be saying if Lenin and the Mensheviks could be members of the same party for a decade, shouldn't the WSL and the IMG combine today? - though they diplomatically steer clear of who corresponds to whom!

This view is justified by snippets from Lenin's writings in the course of the faction battles with the Mensheviks (and of Trotsky's writings against Stalinism, and later against revisionism in the Fourth the real results of his struggle in 1920, after the party he had built had accomplished the October As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for a victory of the proletariat.

The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat's revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced! First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and - il you wish -merge in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people - primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall fat and end up in phrase-mongering and clowning." (Lenin:

Selected Works, vol 3, 'Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder"

p 352; notice that Lenin is mainly arguing against abstract sectarianism towards the Labour Party!)

It is in this spirit that the WSL takes up - internationally - the political struggle for the principled reconstruction of the Fourth International. We know that our record and our positions have produced important discussions and ferment within the USFI.

The WSL are not *split merchants'. , we have no intention of drawing political lines a priori, before full discussion and struggle have been engaged. But at the same time we insist that the questions which split the world Trotskyist movement in 1951-53 will not be reenlved withnut testine contending

Scan page 7

¡S_…BLĄC KWE50G Since our last • account of the dispute. In view the bureaucracy in this edition.

editi ion went to press Bla ckwells strike by of the importance o in this victimisation At a time when capitalism requires the weakening of trade union organisation, the increasing attacks on wages and jobs create conditions for whole sections of workers to begin to organise for the first time.

The recent successful four-week strike at Blackwell's in Oxford reflects many aspects of the capitalist crisis and also the way in which the class collaboration of the trade union leaders nationally drive them to suppress all attempts by the working class to act in theit own defence.

BATTLE

we have receiv one of the pi : the questions fight, we have Led this mi ire detailed kets invo Ived in the raised by the role of therefore included it dispute there had developed increasing conflicts between union members and management in response to the company's offensive on working conditions.

This centred on time and motion studies being implemented with no consultation or agreement, and it was as part of this resistance to the company's speed-up that the dispute arose.

Ted Heslin, a Branch Committee member and well known as leading union organiser, had been subjected to persistent harrassment over a considerable period, mainly on trivial issues, but; also on his principled opposition to work study in his own section. Throughout this, he had insisted on being •70 action.

But at a meeting the following day between Thompson management, it became clear that the officials had prepared a sellout. The Picket Committee was told that the "union" had agreed on an immediate return to work and the question of Ted Heslin's re-employment and • union recognition should be referred to ACAS for arbitration.

Despite the strongest objections, One of the mass pickets which carried detaus of the dispute. Mass pickets were organised and support began to grow nationally.

With the fight directed back into the local union leadership, their position was forced to change to the extent that after three weeks the strike was declared official, at which the company agreed teemployment and shop steward recognition.

The experiences gained during staged outride this fight provide a strong basis for the inevitable struggles to come. A further gain from the dispute was the strong links established between students and trade unionists.

The Blackwell's T&GWU 5/833 branch is for this reason sponsoring the establishment of a delegate student-trade union committee from which programmes of joint action can be fought for in the town.

----- pull-quotes -----

RED WEEKLY