'not a Political March"

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them and a various times united was a faction only in its outward jorm.

In the essence of the matter, the nucleus of the Bolshevik Party of the October Revolution was the Lenin Bolshevik faction. It was a party. And the proof of the fact that it was a party and not an exclusive faction of Lenin was that within the Bolshevik faction there were different tendencies. There were left wing and right wing Bolsheviks. At times some of them openly polemicised with Lenin. The Bolsheviks even had splits and reunifications among themselves.... Lenin's faction was in reality a party." (Speeches to the Party p. 186, emphasis added).

Cannon sums up the position quite clearly. But the IMG writers know this already! Why then have they put together a wrong position in their article Faction or Party? Because the IMG leaders are quite determined to separate organisational questions from politics.

SELF CONTRADICTORY To attempt to justify this, they use arguments which patently contradict their own case. They cite Lenin to "prove" that the split was on organisational questions:

"It was precisely after the Plenary meeting of 1910 that the above mentioned chief publications of the liquidators Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni, definitely turned to liquidationism all along the line, not only "belittling (contrary to the decision of the Plenary meeting) the importance of the illegal party" , but openty renouncing it, declaring the party was "extinct" that the Party was already liquidated... calling upon the workers to regard the nuclei of the Party and its hierarchy 'as "dead" " etc» (emphasis added).

Tell us, IMG, are these not political differences? One member publicly advocates winding up the party - the other members are prepared to die to defend it. By what stretch of the imagination can this be described as an organisational question?

Have not the different political assessments of the liquidator placed him organisationally outside the party in all but the most formal, literal interpretation?

DISCIPLINE?

More tangibly, it IMG members produced a newspaper, or wrote in The Guardian that the IMG was "dead" , and others began advocating winding up your independent apparatus, would you be content to brand them as "in breach of discipline" - and not. seek the polincai motivation for such action?

Ot course if we argue a real case we see that "organisational" differences are merely a reflection of deeper-seated class political positions as they emerge in the practice of the movement. This is why from 1903 Lenin attacked the all and sundry" was a political tendency hostile to democratic centralist revolutionary leadership.

Here, of course, we touch on a sensitive area for the IMG, noted on the one hand for their enthusiasm to "make a Party member of all and sundry" , and on the other for the repeated public divisions on programme and policy amongst their members.

Democratic remind the IMG, is not method of giving tendencies faction rights and facilitating endless debate. It is an organisational method to ensure a discipline in the activities of the party, subordinating the individual to the party majority, welding together a combat party equipped to lead mass movements of the working class.

This side of democratic centralism is clearly foreign to the IMG who daily make mockery of the Transitional Programme's cogent formulation:

"Without inner democracy • no education. Without discipline - no revolutionary • action. The inner structure of the Fourth International is based on the principles of democratic centralism; full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action."

In abandoning this fight for discipline the IMG become unable to train and harden a firm revolMandel utionary cadre. And by stepping aside from this they cut themselves still further adrift from the possibility of a working class base.

This is both a political and an organisational question.

"Opportunism in programme is naturally connected with opportunism in tactics and opportunism in organisation".(One Step Forward, Two Steps Back p. 193).

BAG The IMG's scorn for this organic link between organisation and politics is an expression of their conception of a party. For them it is a conglomeration of largely autonomous factions - a kind of elastic sided bag which stretches to accomodate every twist and turn of the membership, with room for all comers.

It is a "united" party which is able to move only in the manner of rugby scrum unpredictably, with each tendency pushing in different (and often opposing) directions, only half realising where the "ball" is that they are seeking.

This can only continue under the conditions of the propagandist limitations of the IMG. Cannon correctly pointed to this, writing in 1953:

CIRCLE "A propaganda circle which has no intention of taking part in any actions - and that is the central, governing feature of such a formation, as distinct from a party.. has even less use for the Leninist system of democratic centralism. Such a group may begin, or think it isation is designed exclusively for a combat party, and is strictly derivative from a single programme and perspective of revolution.... Speeches to the Party p. 284, emphasis added).

Organisational principles thus flow from political assessment. The sloppy, opportunist USFI, publicly divided against itself, reflects the propagandist political standpoint of its leadership. And no amount of praising up the virtue of "unity" can outweigh this. Unity in the revolutionary party must be on principle and programme if it is to mean anything The "democracy"

Bolshevism without its centralism becomes just a front for Liberal phrasemongering.

FACADE

The "unity" of the IMG, like its "united front" activities are a facade behind which they carry on an opportunist diplomacy with whatever forces are around. In addition, the major factional groupings within the IMG and the Ustl have become so entrenched and case-hardened in this practice that they have only the most passing elationship to democratic centraiist practice. Cannon wrote revealingly against "permanent factions":

"There is no greater abomination in the workers' political movement than a permanent faction. There is nothing that can demoralise the internal life of a party more than a permanent faction". • (Speeches to the Party .•....permanent factions become cliques and they exclude everybody else. If a permanent faction happens to get control of the leadership of the party and runs the party as a faction, it is bound to exclude others from any real place in the leadership. By that very fact it drives the others into the organisation of counter-cliques and counter-factions, and there is no longer a single cadre in the leadership of the party". (p. 187).

It ill becomes the IMG, which acts more as a coalition than a party, or the USFI, which is anyLINE OUT tect but an ongorising centre, ist lecture Workers Socialist League (or anyone eise) about democratic centralism.

PABLO'S HERITAGE

The liquidationist political heritage of Pablo, whose wrong opportunist politics led to corrupt, bureaucratic organisational methods (which combined with internal weaknesses of post-war Trotskyism to destroy the International Secretariat as an organising centre in 1953) can still be seen today in the IMG's attacks on Bolshevism, and the pliant adaptations of the USFI.

Our next article will take up some of the unresolved political questions from the 1953 split and the so-called "principled reunification" with the SWP in 1963.

TROTSKYISM TODA

heoretical Supplement Socialist Press Back copies available including WSI International Pers] ect ives: "Fourth Internati nal Problems and Tasks"

Available from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park London NWS 1HR LETTERS We welcome letters from readers. Letters for publication should be kept as brief as possible. Send to the editor, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NWS 1HR When WSL members in Coventry went with their banner on the Rank and File Organising Committee's Right to Work March last week, they were thrown off by the organisers and told that this "was not a political march".

This of course is a lie. It is a political march - though the politics are the opportunist politics of the International Socialists.

The Rank and File Organising Committee was set up by "rank and file" organisations all of which were set up by IS members as fronts in the Trade Unions for the politics of IS.

One good example of this is in the ten "calls to action" of the march, one of which reads "no to all participation schemes". . But at a recent conference of the so-called carworker 'rank and file' group the policy adopted was to work within participation schemes (ie 'no' to participation - unless the employer wants it!).

OPPORTUNISM

This is simple opportunism and follows on a long line of similar positions of IS on such issues as Measured Day Work (which they first of all verbally opposed, but, when the employers pushed it, immediately changed to a position of working within it.

Such an opportunist course is taken in order to avoid any conflict with the present consciousness of whole sections of the working class and in order to steer clear of any struggle against the Stalinist and reformist trade union bureaucracy.

The disgusting position of barring political banners on the Right to Work March plays right into the hands of the capitalist class - since by saying that the fight for the right to work is 'not political' you leave the Labour government unchallenged.

It is, of course, the Labour government which is carrying out these attacks on the working class. IS policies leave the "lefts" to carry on politically covering up for Callaghan, Healey and the rightwing. The role of these "left" Labourites in the leadership contest is clear. They will not challenge the policies of Wilson. Benn says only that he wants more participation, (ie more of the policy that is being used to attack BLMC workers).

Heffer isn't even standing and both of them alongside the other "lefts" last week voted for a motion of confidence in the economic strategy of the government.

ABSTAINS

There could not be a better period for exposing both right and left reformism - but the IS abstain from these political questions, descending to pure protest gimmickry.

Their "no polities' position also assists the reformist trade union leaders such as Jones and Scanlon whose own politics of cooperating with and supporting the attacks of the capitalist state at present dominate in the unions.

The whole perspective of the march avoids fighting these people because instead of turning into the trade unions in order to fight ther (and in the process of this develop ing a mass based, genuine rank anc movement where the fight could begin for revolutionary politics, the IS simply want to ger together a few individual militant and then direct them into separate committees outside the fight in the unions.

COUNCILS When the WSL fights for the setting up of committees by Trades Councils and other trade union bodies to deal with the problem of the unemployed we see in this a political fight. Trotsky, in his pamphlet Marxism and the Trade Unions outlined the main fight in the trade unions.

"In other words, the trade unions in the present epoch cannot simply be the organs of democracy as they were in the epoch of free capitalism and they cannot any longer remain politically neutral, that is, limit themselves to serving the daily needs of the working class. They cannot any longer be anarchistic, ie, ignore the decisive influence of the state on the life of peoples and classes. They can Do longer be reformist because the objective conditions leave no room for any serious and lasting reforms. The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat" (p9).

REACTIONARY

So no politics' is a reactionary position and leads to the Right to Work March and Rally being only a protest action. As Socialist Worker says, it is an 'anger march'.

Even when the call for nationalisation is brought into their demands it amounts only to a propaganda demand because it in no way creates a bridge between the present trade union level of consciousness of the working class and the necessity for socialist revolution. The call for "nationalmanagement.

MILITANCY'

The other demands such as a 35-hour week are just trade union demands and effectively imply that all that is needed is to be 'more militant'.

The IMG show that they accept fully this positon of IS when in Red Weekly they merely attack the protest nature of the march ignoring the bankruptcy of programme and not even mentioning that political banners were not allowed on the march.

The Is, by refusing to focus workers' hostility to unemployment on the central political issues facing the working class, and by avoiding any fight to develop beyond trade union militancy, have ensured that their march will do nothing to resolve the crisis of leadership and the real problems of the next period.

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with them in a single party, but nevertheless remained a faction,

isation' on its own in no way brings in demands that develop workers' control in preparation for workers'