Lessons from the split in the Wa Internationalist League (Greece]

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DEFEND THE METHOD the Communist Internationalist League, (the Sreek Workers Internationalist League. TI a majority of the WIL were expelled after the aly, (then General Secretary of the Briti h Workers Revolutionary Party) acting in the We expelled interven name of The internal crisis of the Vorkers Internationalist eague in Greece led finally to : split. It would be futile and lisorientating if we attempted in interpretation of this split ly abandoning ourselves to a icious circle of little incidents ind the mutual accusations vhich are related to it. : This is even more true now that he sectarian clique in the leaderhip of the British Workers RevolItionary Party and its puppets in Freece, have started a campaign of landers and have resorted to reacionary activities, the like of which as never been seen in the Trotskyit movement.

Everything must be publicly xposed and the truth of every spect of the split must be restablished.

A Marxist approach though, equires first of all the analysis and larification of the theoretical and olitical questions which lie at the asis of the split.

YARDSTICK

Only after that is done, can we nut in order the smaller incidents. Ve must acquire before everything Ise a yardstick which will enable us D put all the facts into line.

Let us suppose that we have in ront of us two members of a ertain organisation which has split.

Each of them accuses the other if breach both of discipline and of ecisions, of using methods inadnissible for Communists and so on.

We are confronted by a tangle of nutual accusations to which we can ind no end. Who is right and who B not?

It is very simple to see that in uch a case our job would be to ask he two fighting members about heir political differences.

The methods used in the volitical struggle are not self-contained, but they are interwoven vith the theory, the policies, the programme and the practice wery group.

POLICIES

We would have to examine whose policies contradict the interests of the working class, whose policies were destructive for the organisation of the revolutionmy vanguard and whose policies bould not survive if fought against hearty Calletion pron cale basishin centralism.

It is very simple for everyone to understand, that a comrade who defends within the workers' movement the interests of the oppressed, the Marxist method and the policies and the programme of Trotskyism, does not have to swear, to siander, lo create provocations or use organisational manoeuvres; they are accessary only to people who have become renegades from Trotskyism reprint here the majority of the ' ion of Gerry He the International first of four parts of the Document by Committee of the Fourth International.

and have soiled their hands betraying the working class.

Every honest fighter and every logical person who does not want to fool himself and the others will necessarily approach matters in this way.

Everyone who insists one-sidedly on the organisation incidents of the split and does not care about the political questions that lie at its roots, is at best an inexperienced person or at worst a hypocrite, who never devoted himself seriously to the cause of the working class.

Let us call the attention of every Trotskyist to the fact that this split is not a Greek complication, but part of an international split.

When one approaches the question from an international and universal aspect it immediately ceases to appear as accidental (that it was supposedly provoked by this or that "wrong move" and its neccesity comes into focus.

There are certain comrades, who ale now on the periphery of the organisation or on the other side, who turn around several "ifs" which, they think, had they not happened; the split would have been avoided.

Such ideas only prove that those who have them take their subjective wishes as an objective reality.

It would be usefui to ask them: how do you apply those "ifs" in the case of the US Workers League and Tim Wohlforth, of the British WRP and Thornett, or the similar incidents in the life of the Portuguese section?

COINCIDENCE

The Greek Pabloites used to interpret successive splits as being the result of coincidence, of certain people's state of mind and with the method of individual psychology.

This method hardly appears logical when applied in Greece or in any other individual country. But it is blown sky-high when one tries to apply it to a split that is taking place on the international plane, as was the split with Pabloism.

Every serious split - and an international split is certain such -can only be the result of the historical stage of development of society and of the evolution of a party.

As materialists we know that the consciousness of classes in society is determined by the material conditions under which they live.

NOT AUTOMATIC But this determination is not automatic. Material reality changes but people's thinking usually lags Nor do men all simultaneously ascend the stairs of social consciousness.

While one section manages to grasp what is new in reality another Internationalist jority of th : WIL were exp orkers Revc utionary Party)

section lags behind and does 10u follow this progress. Only this can explain the splits.

Engels writes in a letter to Bebel, referring to the split with the Lassalians:

...Moreover, Old man Hegel said long ago: A party proves itself victorious by splitting and being able to stand the split. The movement of the proletariat necessarily passes through different stages of development; at every stage part of the people get stuck and do not join in the further advance; and this alone explains why it is that actually the 'solidarity of the proletariat' is everywhere being realised in different party groupings, which carry on life-and-death feuds with one another as the Christian Sects of the Roman Empire did amidst the worst persecutions." (20th June, 1873 in Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence Propagandism and the Method of the Transitional Programme The labour movement today and the whole of humanity, are not simply ascending to a new stage of development but they are at a tremendous historical turning point.

The period of the post war boom has long since ended for good. Capitalism today passes through the most complex and most eruptive crisis in its history.

All the old economic and political relations are being destroyed rapidly as inflation remains rampant on a world scale and the productive forces of humanity are generally in decline.

Millions of workers throughout the world are thrown onto the streets, unemployed; the peasants are condemned to an indescribable misery: and the young nations in the underdeveloped world are under imperialist attack.

MASSES

Within these conditions, broad masses of working people are pushed into struggles to defena both their rapidly falling living standards and their democratic rights.

Every demand today surpasses the limits and the possibilities of crumbling capitalism. The question of the working class taking the power is objectively posed.

The Trotskyist groups have gone through a long period of isolation.

Their main task now is not limited propaganda and individual recruitment, but the struggle to develop links with the masses, to win their confidence, to train cadres capable of leading in struggle not tens but hundreds of thousands and millions of oppressed people.

Their slogan now must be "to the of the League, lled afte acting i masses" because the conquest power is not possible without conquest of the masses.

This is the destination of the revolutionary party. Otherwise it has no reason for existence. If the Trotskyists fail, the punishment for them, for the whole working class and for humanity will be fascism, war and barbarism.

But the Trotskyist movement carries a very long tradition of propagandism. It is obliged to carry out today a kind of internal revolution, a decisive break with the past.

ISOLATION

Without taking into account the pre-war period of reaction, the Fourth International, after the war, went necessarily through a long period of isolation.

Revolutionary ideas could naturally not get much response in conditions of boom, of inflationary expansion and full employment for working people.

The Fourth International consisted of small propagandist groups. For almost half a century, the job of the cadres of the Trotskyist movement was to spread to a few people the general principles of Communism.

But outside of the class struggle these principles were separated from their living content and were gradually transformed, in the minds of the propagandists, into inflexible dogmas.

These propagandistic circles with their dogmas and all the related defects were an unavoidable stage in the development of the revolutionary movement and in the conditions under which they acted, they really offered fruitful results. by first of all securing the continuity of the Trotskyist movement.

But the objective movement has radically changed, and that which yesterday was a necessary evil, becomes today a retrograde and liquidationist element of the movement.

Propaganda was always necessary but propagandism must now be smashed. Lenin said:

"As long as it was (and inasmuch as it still is) a question of winning the proletariat's vanguard over to the side of communism, priority went and still goes to propaganda work; even propaganda circles, with all their parochial limitations, are useful under these conditions, and produce good results. But when it is a question of practical, action by the masses, of the disposition, if one may so put it, of vast armies, of the alignment of all the class forces in a given society for the final and decisive battle, then propagandist methods alone, the mere repetition of the truths of "pure" communism, are of no avail."

(Left Wing Communism, p77). This is precisely the question today: the leaderships of the International Committee remain hostages to their propagandistic have learned by heart.

The cadre of the International Committee that has been trained in the propagandistic . method, conceives of Marxism and the socialist programme as a stock of recipes which we must propose to the masses both in winter and summer alike.

Thus the job of the revolutionist is presented as an extremely simple one. He has only to learn a few standard things and to say them to others in oral and written form.

ULTIMATUM

Naturally. Marxism and the socialist programme are transformed in this way into an ultimatum, no less strict and fixed than the Commandments of Moses.

The propagandist is transformed today into a sectarian.

His method did not create problems in the past, but now, within the class struggle, it produces amazing results in the policies as well as in the organisational life of his group.

Many comrades have been really surprised by a series of incidents which seem inconceivable to them. But there is nothing surprising. As Trotsky says in the Iransitional crogramme, the sectarians:

....Live in a state of perpetual exasperation, complaining about the 'regime' and the 'methods' and ceaselessly wallowing in small intrigues. In their own circles they customarily carry on a regime of despotism."

(Folrose edition, p40)

The epoch of imperialism is generally an epoch of wars and revolutions.

This is enough for the sectarians. It forms the basis for their socialist propaganda. But they do not have, and they do not seek the means-to open the road for the taking of révolutionary perspectives into the masses.

The • gap between the objective tasks of the masses and their inadequate level of consciousness does not concern them.

They limit themselves to constant repetition of the truths of communism and they have no tactics to push forward the movement of the working class:

«These sterile politicians generally have no need of a bridge in the form of transitional demands because they do not intend to cross over to the other shore. They simply dawdle in one place, satisfying themselves with a repetition of the self-same meagre abstractions.

(TP., Folrose edition, p40)

These two extracts from the Transitional Programme describe with admirable accuracy the organisational regime and the policies of the WRP and of certain servile disciples of its leadership within the sections of the International Committee.

These people rejected and still reject the method of the Transitional Programme, the dialectical method of Trotsky, and have transformed its slogans into an empty abstraction. Essentially, the Transitional Programme is a banned book within the International Committee.

But if this could be tolerated in the past, a precondition for the International to pass through the Triumphal Arch is not only the relentless struggle against right-wing opportunism but also, the final crushing of sectarianism inside and outside our ranks.

Trotsky was imperative:

"However, sectarian tendencies are to be found also in our ranks and display a ruinous influence on the work of the individual sections.

It is impossible to make any further compromise with them even for a single day. A correct policy regarding the trade unions iș a basic condition for adherence to the Fourth International. He who does not seek and does not find the road to the masses is not a fighter but a dead weight to the party. A programme is formulated not for the editorial board or for the leaders of disucssion clubs but for the revolutionary action of millions. The cleansing of the ranks of the Fourth International of sectarianism and incurable sectarianism, is a primary condition for revolutionary success.

(TP., Folrose edition, p.40)

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• SOCIALD* PREso; weanesauy oin ucrober, 19r° The leaders of the WRP - and they are not the only ones - are completely opposed to the method. of the Transitional Programme, the dialectical materialism of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.

They sometime, somewhere read that a programme is formed on the basis of a scientific analysis of the historical epoch, and retlects the objective tasks of the working class, not its political backwardness.

Trotsky says that:

"The programme must take society as it is, because it is itself an organ for us to fight this backwardness of the working clas i and to win."

FURTHER

They never went further than this.

What does a scientific programme for the working class of Greece mean today for example?

We say that the dictatorship installed in our country in 1967 was not a thunderbolt from a clear sky. It was a testimony to the historical decay of parliamentarism.

Its overthrow in July of 1974 and the rise of Karamanlis, was not based on the solution of the economic crisis, but, on the contrary, on the deepening of this crisis.

We do not face the prospect of the restoration democratic "normality" as the Stalinists claim. The existence of Parliament and of democratic liberties today is the result of an unstable balance of forces between the classes.

The period is extremely transitory and will necessarily lead to a confrontation which will decide the question: fascism or socialism?

Out of this analysis - based on material facts and not on wishful thinking and illusions - it becomes clear that the task of the working class is to immediately seize the power. If it fails, it will pay with But what does that mean for us? That we must summon the working class immediately to undertake the battle for power? The leaders of the WRP, in a confused way, indeed arrive at such a conclusion.

But this has nothing in common with Marxism. It is a caricature of it.

Ine seizure of power by the working class and socialism, is the conscious strategic goal of the revolutionaries, in the epoch of imperialism in general and of the present crisis in particular. But the fact that the economic structure of capitalism is mature enough for its overthrow - and indeed it is rotting - does not indicate that this historical task can be carried out in practice at any given moment.

Human beings live and work within given economic conditions. They will never transform society if the necessity for its transformation does not pass through them and does not become a conscious thought which will then be turned into the will to undertake revolutionary activity.

How are we going to achieve this? It is not at all enough for one to have a scientifically determined One must also have the method to make the broad masses conscious of it. The correctness of the goal does not at all ensure a correct day-to-day activity.

And as Trotsky says in the Transitional Programme:

"The achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial questions of tactics."

(I5, Folrose edition, p.8)

In his discussions with the members of the American SWP, Trotsky said it is one question to have a correct programme and:

•..another question to know in which way we will present it to the working people. It is to a great extent a pedagogic question, 8 question of terminology, a question of selection of the terms.

. UNDERSTANDING The presentation of the programme does not simply depend on experience and our subjective talent, but it presupposes first of all a dialectical materialist understanding of the unity which in reality exists between the everyday struggles of the masses and the struggle for power.

Secondly it requires a careful analysis of the correlation of political forces and the most accurate appreciation possible of the concrete stage of development of the class struggle. must ignore te state of mind es the masses and that in their activity they must take as an exclusive measure their scientific analysis of the epoch, is clearly sectarian nonsense.

This idea is subjected to violent criticism by Lenin in his book Left Wing Communism and was fought against by Lenin during the whole of his life.

The sectarians in the leadership of the WRP would also denounce participation in parliament since it is objectively outlived, if they were consistent and not formalistically attached to the letter of Marxism.

STATE OF Lenin and Trotsky however insist on the participation of Communists in parliament, precisely because they do not start purely from the objective tasks of the masses, but also take into account their state of mind.

To analyse society objectively, as it is, and not subjectively, as you would like it to be - not to start from ideas within your own head -means to take into account not only the economic element but also the human element and its consciousness.

Instead of this approach, the "Perspectives for the WRP" proposed to its First Annual Conference in December 1974, and which are an indirect reply to the critique of Thornett® start as follows:

"The • Workers Revolutionary Party October Election Manifesto began: The General Electíon is being held under the shadow of a threatening economic catastrophe.' Our intervention in the Election was decided first and foremost from this fact."

If they wanted to be more frank, they should say that their intervention was decided not "first and foremost" but exclusively by that. clections with a full socialist programme of complete nationalisation without compensation and under workers control, because - they said - the Election took place under the shadow of a threatening For Alan Thornett's analysis of WRP's position see the book the Battle for Trotskyism. economic catastrophe."!

But this programme in reality is simply propaganda learned by heart, which they have repeated steadily, every year, under all circumstances, and not something proposed especially elections of 1974.

CORRECT

As propaganda, the complete nationalisation (expropriation of the expropriators), is a slogan correct for this imperialist epoch, when every moment we are under the shadow of a "threatening economic catastrophe" . But it is not a slogan for immediate action.

If we want to be a party of the masses and not talkers, we must put forward the question of nationalisation, whenever and wherever the situation permits it, (and today there is perhaps no country where this question is not posed) taking into account the degree of maturity of the broad masses This means that in practical terms we cannot put forward the question of wholesale nationalisation but of nationalising the most basic secors of the economy, or the most parasitic, or those sectors which are related immediately to the public (ie transport and so on).

We must put forward the question nationalisation wherever SO called #private initiative" has already aroused the masses, and we also try to sharpen their feelings, by exposing the speculation, the robbery of the capitalists and the illogicallity and anarchy created by private property.

TROTSKY

Trotsky writes in the Transitional Programme under the subtitle "Expropriation of Separate Groups of Capitalists":

"The socialist programme of expropriation, ie., of political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and liquidation of its economic domination, should in no case during the present transitional period hinder us from advancing, when the occasion warrants, the demand for the expropriation of several key branches of industry vital for national existence or of the most parasitic group of the bourgeoisie"

But in their document quoted Trotsky speaking in Copenhagen, 1932, above, the leaders of the claim that:

"The party's struggle for political demands, for the building of the vanguard, for the exposure of the reformists and Stalinists, for the mobilisation of the workers for power in the course of every economic struggle, and for the building of the party, must be brought into conflict with this spontaneity. It [the struggle of the party] does not grow alongside it or out of it, related to it simply by a set of the workers forward » gently bring demands which will (WRP Perspectives, 2nd November «The mobilisation of the workers for power in the course of every economic struggle"! This ridiculous statement shows that the WRP reduce the struggle for revolutionary education of the masses into mere propaganda.

PASSIVE:

It reflects the passive expectation, under the form of an idealistic messianism; that the masses, pushed by the crisis, will tally come to us through a single leap.

The WRP go on in the same perspectives document:

"This 'bridge' is the transition from spontaneity to political consciousness. The whole of Leninist teaching revolvès around the understanding that this transition is a dialectical one, a revol. utionary leap, achieved through the practice of the revolutionary party in struggle against opportunism and sectarianism....' " and so on.

Poor dialectics! How much have you suffered in the hands of these magicians! The less they understand the dialectic the more claims they make for it.

The WRP forget that it includes not only the category of leaps, but also the category of quantitative developments which prepare the leaps.

Being conscious of this, Marxists not only in the period of liberal capitalism but also in the period of imperialism - and especially in the latter - never underestimated the struggle for economic and political reforms, the struggle for the elementary demands of the masses..

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