DEFEND THE OF THE TRA PROGRAMV Lessons from the Internationalist Led

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This is the fourth of five parts of the Docu expelled majority of the Greek Workers Internationalist Li intervention of Gerry Healy, (then General Secretary of! name of the International Committee of the Fourth Interna recruits among immigrants, precise- conditions of legality, of smooth Dass over to the Trotskyist move- routine rounds of propagandist 3ein. in the Greek section.

It is a fact that during the first International School last September, the secretary of the Greek section disagreed ladically with Kantian dualism which was served up there as lialectical materialism by the eaders of the WRP.

But the disagreements were not imited to the level of philosophy. Interwoven with the philosophical ute the political questions, and in he last analysis they are summed ip in the gap between the method * Lenin and Trotsky and the propagandism of the petty bourgesis Healy sect. weak with propagandim decimies for i the more urgent as the economic risis deepens, and it is this necesity that lies behind the crisis in the International Committee.

This was the question posed in he split with the OCI, the work of he_ Blick-Jenkins group on the VRP and the split with Thornett.

PURGE

The same questions lie behind the crisis of the Workers League of the USA and the purge of its secreary and founder, Tim Wohlforth.

Within the new situation propaandism had become unbearable ind the successive crises, the fractional struggles and splits posed that question independently of the olution proposed by anyone.

All the splits in the Fourth International have taken place in relation to the Transitional In the past this was because iose who were unable to bring the Programme into the mass movement ended up rejecting it. Now it • because this same inability to late the Programme to the masses ¡pes as far as the rejection of the truggle for this Programme within be masses, which likewise ends up • the betrayal of the Programme.

We need not add that no such roblem exists as tar as the petty ourgeois sect of the WRP is soncerned.

"RENEGADES"

For them it is simply that some "renegades", "revisionists" (retched people" retreated in the perse of their struggle to transbem "every strike" into an attack o their eal faces, or exposed.

For exposed Leir long established relations with The CIA, the GPU...and so on!

SECTARIANISM TO REFORMISM Sectarianism can very well not ly turn out in the form of opporin practice, but under certain conditions can even become the route along which one can be finally drowned in the marsh of opportunism, by openly capitulating to the class enemy and betraying the working class.

Situations change, but the minds of people do not reflect the change in an automatic way. As Engels says in the quotation above [Part One, Ed), one section of the people finds it difficult to grasp the change and lags behind.

BACKWARDS

But this does not mean that this section stands still. On the contrary, it goes backwards.

Sectarianism, which theoretically draws its roots from propagandism and formalistic thought, not only prevents the party from going forward, but liquidates it organisationally and politically.

Kautsky In this process, the main bearers of this method become corrupted. That is what happened with Kautsky and Plekhanow, who were giants of Marxism.

That is also what has happened today with Healy and his colleagues who anyway were pygmies on the level of theory.

Lenin writes in Left Wing Communism:

"That which happened to such leaders of the Second International, such highly erudite Marxists devoted to socialism as Kautsky, Otto Bauer and others, could (and should) provide a useful lesson. They fully appreciated the need for flexible tactics; they themselves learned Marxist dialectics and taught it to others (and much of what they have done in this field will always remain a valuable contribution to socialist literature); however, in the appli cation of this dialectic they committed such an error, or proved to be so undialectical in practice, so incapable of taking into account the rapid change of forms and the rapid acquisition of new content by the old forms, that their fate is not much more enviable than that of Hyndman, Guesde and Plekhanov.

The principte reason for their bankrupecy was that they were WRP hypnotised by a definite form of growth of the working class movement and socialism, forgot all about the one-sidedness of that torm, were afrak to see the breakup which objective conditions made inevitable, and continued to repeat simple, and, at first glance, incontestable axiors that had been learned by rote, like: "three is more than two."

But politics is more like algebra than arithmetic, and still more like higher than elementary mathematics. In reality, all the old forms of the socialist movement have acquired a new content and, consequently, a new symbol, the "minus" sign, has appeared in front of all the figures; our wiseacres, however, have stubbornly continued (ant stil continue) to persuade themselves and others that "minus three" is more than "minus two"

(pp84-85).

In essence this is what has really happened to our contemporary "wise men"

They did not grasp that in front of three' and 'two' we have today a 'minus' sign.

OLD TRUISMS

Healy and Banda, by continuing to repeat even under today's new conditions their old truisms learned by heart, did exactly the opposite of what was necessary for the Trotskyist movement and the working class.

Their method no longer offered the slightest prospect of fruitful results, but instead began to liquidate the movement.

These people found it impossible to see any further than the end of their noses, or to change their approach. The propagandist heritage of the movement lies heavily upon them.

Propagandism is rooted firmly in their minds, like an old superstition. But it is not only that. They are also subjectively, as individuals, unable to grasp the new situation and to correct their policies.

This is due in particular to their historical position within the class struggle. Trotskyism, in its period of worst isolation was - in the main - recruiting its cadres only among a special stratum of people, those who were in a position to swim against the stream.

OUTSIDE

This was often not because such comrades had the necessary devotion to the cause of the working class or because they were armed with the necessary theoretical weapons, but precisely because they were outside the stream itself.

They lacked ties not only with the working class but with any class, being people you can hardly classify socially.

Trotsky had underlined this fact and had observed that the sections of the Fourth International in the different countries made more ly because immigrants, in order to ment, need not carry out such an internal revolution, need not in the same way clash with the prevailing national level of social consciousness, as this was already alien to them.

From this point of view the fact that the leading figures of the WRP are not English is not insignificant.

Such people, isolated from the masses, deprived of the possibility to test their ideas in the living class struggle in order to accuire a consciousness of the real world, lost also the chance of developing this consciousness in ever changing conditions; they are especially capable of buiding a world of their own, within their own heads, locking themselves in private ideological prison where it is impossible for a breath of real life to touch them.

What does it matter to these people whether they hold this or that philosophical conception, this or that programme or tactics?

How is it possible for them to grasp the real problems posed to the labour movement in general and the Trotskyist movement in particular by the present economic crisis?

In the struggle against the BlickJenkins group the Healy leadership were forced to recognise that a certain problem did exist in relation to propagandism.

But they never attempted to analyse or explain to themselves or to the others what this break with propagandism really meant, what concrete changes in the objective situation made it necessary, and the problems encountered in the struggle for its realisation.

But there was another factor over and above the fact that their position in the class struggle prevented the Healy leadership from going forward. Long before this period they had shown themselves bankrupt.

In the whole of the post-wal period they had been acting under political development, devoted to activity, where their membership offices, their printshops and the grew gradually, along with their onlices, whole of their apparatus. This mooth progress, without any serious changes and troubles, helped to make the Healy leadership into philistines.

APPARATUS

They formed an apparatus and acquired the necessary technical means to carry out activity within the masses and to recruit new forces to the revolutionary party. But in the process, the Healy leadership transformed the means into the cause, and they subordinated everything to the maintenance of the apparatus.

They became sensitive to everything concerning the legality of the bourgeois state and especially sensitive towards every political. disagreement within their ranks and within the Internaitional Committee (IC) as a whole.

The IC was used by Healy only in order to secure the stability of the leading clique in Britian.

They gradually developed a whole theory around the infamous "security question". This began initially in order to keep their group away from adventurist encounters that could bring them into conflict with the police.

But they later used this "security" within their ranks in order to increase through constitutional and every other means the powers of the apparatus and to eliminate every critical thought.

Sectarianism and ultimatism towards the masses, found its logical consequence in the sectarian, ultimatistic and autocratic counterposition of the apparatus of the party to the party itself.

The Healy leadership in this way became unable to benefit and to learn from the crisis which was unavoidably produced, within the ranks of their movement in Britain and in the whole IC by the present historical turning point.

Their response to the political questions brought to the surface by the crisis, was literally to copy the methods used in the past within the Trotskyist movement by Michel Pablo.

When one reads the first two of the five volumes Trotskyism Versus Revisionism, the similarity of the methods comes as a surprise.

Evidently Healy has learnt much in this field from Pablo. But we must note that he missed the most important lessons: he did not learn from Pablo's misfortunes. He did not learn that every success due to organisational manoeuvres is always short lived.

The inability of the leading clique of the T'RP to grasp and to face 2 corszous may the

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SOCTALIST PRESS, Medresde, 171k Monember 1976 nent by the Communist Internationalist League, 1 ague. The majority of the WIL were expelled after he British Workers Revolutionary Party) acting in ional.

problems of the movement, is leading it already with great speed to the right, towards a complete capitulation to the labour bureauмасу, and through this, with British imperialism.

Within the conditions of broad radicalisation of the masses they succeedea, as did other sections of the IC, in increasing their membership, their financial resources and onl this basis their apparatus, through straightforwad propaganda work.

But their numerical increase brought them into a new environment where they were faced with new problems.

Many of the new members were working in factories or studying in universities. But here, the propagandist luggage they had been given by their "wise" leaders was revealed to be useless, or at least inadequate.

WRP members in Britain, as also the members of the WIL in Greece, felt themselves completely disarmed in the face of massive economic struggles.

They failed to intervene fruitfully or to put the stamp of the party on these struggles, despite the obviously favourable conditions. Naturally this was not due to the failure of the members themselves, but to the bankruptcy of the propagandist policies of the party and of their whole method in the training of cadres.

FUTILE

The attempts of the WRP leaders to embellish their failures were also proven futile. This was clear, for example, in the case of their électoral failure, where, underestimating their members' intelligence, the the the they claimed that the party won three thousand members in the electoral campaign - a number which was much greater than the number of votes cast for its candidates.

"DIALECTICAL"

Their claims of "dialectical" contradictions could not persuade anyone, and everyone in the party could understand what kind of "members" these were, since they did not even vote for the candidates of the WRP.

was used in etce, worn that's puppets tried to justify the loss of seats held by the organisation during the last elections in the students unions, by presenting this reversal as a "negative verification of our policies"!

Greek workers occupy their factors The sectarian insistence on propagandist formulae within our movement, resulted in demoralisation of the members. many losses, the increasing indignation of the members against the leadership, and the appearance of fractional tendencies. At the same time, the leadership simply entrenched and counterposed itself to the members.

This is the way it happened in Greece, in Britain, in the USA and undoubtedly the same situation exists in every other section of the International Committee.

very good description ot this situation can be found in the statement of the IC on Wohlforth of March 22 1975:

"During the months preceeding their exit from the party, the Wohlforth-Fields leadership had realised an extremely catastrophic turn (?) which caused the loss of more than 100 leading branch cadres in New York and the decimation of forces in some other states.

The work within the unions was nonexistent, the youth work was reduced to charity and dinner parties in the neighbourhoods, and they had thrown themselves with excessive zeal to the paper sales, thus substituting the work of recruitment and training of revol utionary cadres within the working class."

At another point in the same statement they write:

"After the interviews and the investigations of all the related material, no connection of Nancy Fields or Tim Wolforth with the CIA or any other government ser he see prover magnanimous" people recognised that Wolforth had no connection with the CIA!

Alright, but since it was not the CIA who were responsible for the responsible?

The writers of the statement keep as silent as the grave on this decisive question, which as they claim themselves, was the cause for the "salutary" intervention of the International Committee into the American sympathising section.

In reality, Wolforth and Fields were used as scapegoats. The cowardly leading sect of the WRP wanted in this way to get away with what was above all its own responsibility.

APT DESCRIPTION

Everyone knows that the : bovequoted description of the wi y the 3001-0 CHENER TO NO KELAPTORGI Workers League was working in the USA is absolutely apt in relation to every section of the IC - and above all to the WRP.

The decimation of forces had its impact on the functioning of the apparatus. Workers Press, the newspaper of the WRP, developed great financial problems.

Its editors began to confess through its columns, that it was in danger and with it the revolutionary party was in danger, since it cannot be built without a regularly published newspaper.

But with the same sophistic method as always, they blamed the economic crisis of capitalism for the crisis of the Workers Press, thus cynically offending the intelligence of their readers.

Trotskyists waited patiently during the whole of the boom period for the outbreak of the Karamanlis' police i economic crisis which would brin about favourable conditions for th building of mass parties, the regula publication of newspapers and st on.

But now the leaders of the WRP tell us that the crisis threatens to destroy the newspaper of the revolutionary party and the revolutionary party itself!

They try with this nonsense to cover-up the political crisis shaking the WRP and the whole IC.

In the International Youth Conference, organised recently in London, the WRP were not able to gather more than 250 youth. These are the same people who could until only recently mobilise thousands.

It is this fact - the result of their political bankruptcy - that lies behind the economic crisis of Workers Press, not the crisis of Agricultural workers demonstrate in Greece.

capitalism.

It is their inability to respond to the tasks posed in front of us by the crisis of capitalism.

Under these conditions, the sectarians imagine that they can save their apparatus by watering down their wine, by kicking away principles, as Pablo did earlier and as the Pabloites of the United secretariat continue today.

So, the same people who tor years shouted against 'corporatism' pation ainst the so-calied particiment of the capitalist concerns and who denounced it as a dangerous deception aimed at creating confusion, splitting the working class and enforcing its submission to the needs of the bourgeoisie, sat suddenly • around the same table with British Leyland employers in a "Participation Committee' in line action against demonstrators in Athens. with the plan of Tory Lord Ryder, head of the National Enterprise Board.

This is a total, a historic betrayal. They arrived at the point of publishing in Workers Press extracts from the report of the joint committee dealing with the process of production of Leyland's Princess model, and of commenting † you please, that it the production f the Princess is not satistactory, (if, that is, the workers are not exploited enough by the company!) it is not the workers who should be blamed for that but the management of the factory (which is unable to sufficiently organise their exploitation!)

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By a Guest ReT iewer !:HA

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FIGHT FORCE

LABOUR RESIGN

crisis in the Workers' League and the decimation of forces, who was