Defend the Method

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This is the concluding instalment of the Document by the Communist Internationalist League, + expelled majority of the Greek Workers Internationalist League. The majority of the WIL were expelled after intervention of Gerry Healy, (then General Secretary of the British Workers Revolutionary Party) acting in name of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The first four parts of this document have outlined the political differences between the leadership of the Greek section and the leadership of the International Committee of the Fourth International. This concluding section gives an account of the split itself - in which the General Secretary of the Greek section was expelled, in circumstances oxtraor dorkers Revolutionary Party byn tie same leadership in 1974mbers PART FIVE.

The petty bourgeois Healy sect ad their puppets are today meating in the struggle to prove lat the split in the WIL was #stituted by Sklavos ...

We will narrate the facts. But core that, let us ask: Why should Klavos want a split? Is there erhaps even one member of the IL who did not consider that a nishing political defeat of the *aly clique would have been itain in a party conference?

It the l Healy sect and their appets are really in a position to Ppose Sklavos' critique of their asitions on philosophical and blitical questions, they have in *ir hands all the related docuEnts and they can do so publicly ₺ it eyen now.

PROPHET Let them prove in this way that te split was 'organised' and "peretrated' by Slavos because he was ot in a position to defend his tws in front of the whole Interitional Committee and the tembers of the WIL. : Let them prove in this way that • left in panic in the face of the fire" of their critique!

We do not want to play the rophet but we are afraid that beir mighty guns suffer from corrigible.. damp powder!

Let us now take the most sportant of the facts, in their tual sequence.

On the 9th April 1975 L. Flavos proposed a short draft molution to the Central Comittee of the WIL under the le "On our tactics against the ¡araman lis Government"

The text of the draft was sent amediately to the IC and for the üticism of the English leadership.

It is true the draft resolution is ot characterised by maturity, but : contains a central idea which was Ever really abandoned by its #thor, and which he now defends reconculeadly.

This idea is summed up in the allowing extracts:

"The objective situation in the suntry is ripe for the socialist solution from every point of ET, The consciousness of the orking class is determined by this •jecrive situation. But not in a rechanical and automatic way... "He say clearly we are going rough this preparatory period, e period of preparation of the Mitical and organisational preaditions for the conquest of mer by the working class. This reparation has not yet proceeded nough. On this basis, we consider at the slogan "Down with Karamniis" does not correspond to the reparatory character of the beation as it is today and to the matete correlation of forces of i ciass struggle and to the level of trelopment of this struggle.... "kihile our strategy is characterpd by the resolutionary character Healy .. hysterical' of the period we are in, in our tactics we must take into account the concrete correlation of class forces and to so popularise our programme by formulating appropriately our slogans without retreating an inch in the essence."

We considered then, that the slogan "Down with Karamanlis" which was a slogan for immediate activity, was disorientating the organisation by obscuring the preparatory character of the period we were in.

In our view this was limiting the struggle to the level of propaganda and in practice it meant the negation of the struggle for the overthrow of Karamanlis and was disarming the organisation in front of the Stalinists within the mass struggles.

We shall SoOn present an extensive analysis of the objective situation and a concrete determination of the tasks of our movement.

We will there have the chance to refer extensively to the question of the struggle for the overthrow of the Bonapartist government.

For the time being we only want to show that with the submission of this document to the IC, the factional activity of the leadership of the WRP against the secretary of the WIL began.

At that time neither the first document by Thornett nor Banda's reply to it had yet been translated or circulated in Greece.

The leadership of the WRP had ational' question and it was spreading the story that Thornett had left the party and refused to discuss, while they were trying to 'persuade' him to stay in the party and defend his views at the conterence.

Banda ... 'a mistake' leading gue ot the ploy, dine dat This method minimising the importance of the political questions and diverting the members from studying them with the necessary zeal. They had much success in this attempt.

In this first document Thornett criticised the method of the WRP leadership in essentially the same spirit as that in the draft resolution presented by L. Sklavos.

Thornett accused the WRP leadership of having a mechanical conception of the relationship of economics and politics, and that in the formulation of its slogans the Healy leadership "starts only from the economic basis"

EXPELLED

He put forward the question of tactics by • citing the following quotation from Trotsky:

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

Transitional Programme, p8.

That meant that the secretary of the WIL put forward these conceptions to the IC while a short time before Thornett and a number of members of the WRP had been prevented by organisational measures from presenting essentially the same questions to the party and had been expelled on the eve of the conference.

It was impossible that the secretary of the Greek. section should receive any different treatment, when he presented the same views.

Healy and Banda started working factionally for the expulsion of the secretary of the Greek section.

In the last analysis this the the the working against the section itself, in the sense that they did not care about what would become of the WIL, as they had the chance to declare openly. (See "Monistic or Dualist Conceptions of History" by L. Sklavos, [to be published by Folrose Books in the New Year, Ed]). And they would rather see the section liquidated than face additional problems, while they were engaged in a life and death struggle against Thornett's critique.

They proposed and they got the postponement of the Greek conference, so that it would take place after the conference of the International Committee.

During the international conference they tried to undermine the prestige of the secretary of the Greek section, and at the end of it they proposed the signing of an enigmatic document, where it is stated that "The IC does not aim at creating a fraction within the Greek section"

Ine enigma or this document has now been solved.

In the Greek conference that banda el o a tacked the stole dine followed of the leadership sowing tremendous confusion and disorientating the members completely.

Our organisation was never as confused as after its 7th Conference, where it was obliged, after Banda exploited the prestige of the policy without having anything to put in its place.

Banda personally attacked and nead incults arsinet thaco romradad who were warmly supporting the views of the secretary within the Central Committee. He was *** 4.27g Pines • .. obviously told who they were and he tried to morally intimidate them. We can say that he succeeded in this attempt.

The next stage was at the International School. There, after certain lectures by Slaughter on Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, and by Healy on the basic conceptions of matter in motion, the secretary of the Greek section found himself in disagreement with their philosophical conceptions which bore no relation to dialectical materialism but rather represented Kantianism and relativism.

SCANDAL

But when they were criticised, Healy and Slaughter reacted hystercally, as panic-ridden bureaucrats.

Vithin the school, Banda held private discussions with the rest of the Greek delegation, where he advised them to start fighting for the expulsion of the secretary.

Healy was obliged to intervene to avoid a scandal. He stated in front of all the Greek delegation that Banda had made a "mistake" and that he was..."separating the opposites"

At the end of the school a statement was presented according to which L. Sklavos should present his conceptions in writing to the IC for discussion.

This statement aimed at preventing the discussion by intentionally referring to the danger of a "split" It also stressed that the discussion would take nlace under the dirertion of the IC.

STRANGLE The statement said that the differences were...on an "international level", but despite that it said that the discussion will start in Greece, with a meeting between the Central Committee of the Greek section ana ine t0, line represen- --3 1L- 111tatives of which would naturally be the leaders of the WRP!)

In the period between the InterGreek police open fire with tear gas on construc