PRESS GANG Out With A Bang

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Eric Miller was rich. He lived the life of a tycoon. He bought and sold companies with less worries than most of us buy doughnuts.

When he put a revolver to his head last week and blew a hole in himself it could be seen as just another capitalist trying to find the decent way out.

We should be grateful to the press for reminding us that Miller was in fact a "socialist'. • He was treasurer of the Socialist International, the same international denounced by Lenin at the outbreak of World War I.

In fact when the Socialist International came to London he looked after them.

The Daily Express tells us:

"He gave members of the Socialist International meeting at the Churchill Hotel-the Peachey flagship named after the politician he most admired-lunch of lobster and champagne. It puzzled them but they ate and drank heartily."

Miller was a friend of Sir Harold Wilson and seemed equally at home with the leaders of the Labour or the Tory Party.

To Sir Harold he was an clection campaigner. To Reginald Maudling a very convenient landlord.

Sir Eric could see no difference the Labour aristocracy and leading business role.

He took Marcia Williams to London's most expensive restaurant to discuss "Labour Party business" says the Mirror. He had links with a Mafia godfather.

Just to show that being a "socialist' is a passport to international living even Bobby Moore OBE came to his funeral.

The picture drawn tor us in the press is supposed to be about the downfall of one man who lived it up too long.

In fact it is the detai about the so called leaders of the labour movement that provides the most interest.

Who got most out of Miller? Maudling , with his house deal, or Harold Wilson with his helicopter trips at election time?

Was this man really so unusual? He had more money than most. But the signs are there in other so called "pocialists'.

Eric Miller isn't the only member of the Labour Party to be a JP and hand out sentences to the working class. He isn't the only 'socialist' equally at home with Tories or top Labour bureaucrats.

Perhaps the best lesson out of the whole affair is that the labour movement needs Sir Eric Miller and his less rich followers like it needs a hole in the head. politically liquidate the torces of Trotskyism in ill-conceived "deep entry" into the national Stalinist parties.

A public split began when the US Socialist Workers Party (which was prevented by reactionary US legislation from affiliation to the FI) issued an Open Letter declaring opposition to Pablo's line.

But those which sided with the Open Letter and formed the International Committee also failed to develop a full understanding of Pablo's method and of the problems that remained unanswered.

As a result the Cuban revolution produced considerable confusion within the IC, and in 1963 the SWP, believing that Castro was a "natural Marxist" and that Cuba was a non-deformed workers state, broke from the IC and declared its sympathies lay with the groups that had followed Pablo ten years before.

HISTORICAL In examing the positions of the "Trotskyist' groups on the current developments of world Stalinism, therefore, we cannot sce them as positions plucked from the air. They represent a historical process of development and are a symptom of the crisis within the world Trotskyist movement itself.

The position of the majority tendency of the 'United Secretariat of the Fourth International (the IMT) is argued most clearly by Ernest Mandel, whose articie Three Facets of huro-Communism was published in the April 28 issue of Inprecor Mandel this question and attempts defend himself against a charge arguing Pablo's position specifically saying:

"These ("Euro Communist") parties cannot be transformed into revolutionary or centrist parties "under pressure from the masses'."

But despite this dental, everything in the article shows that he 15 again attempting to get around the counter-revolutionary Tole Stalinism, by looking simply at the surface of events. While he is capable of referring to historical truths, he shows himself equally capable of ignoring history altogether.

For this reason the article begins by saying that what he terms 'Euro Communism' is a continuation of the rightward development of Stalinism, quoting Trotsky's description of the dual pull on the Stalinist parties-from Moscow on the one hand, and the national bourgeoisie on the other.

Trotsky however did not make this point simply to pass the time. He was analysing an actual process through which the Communist Parties, by following the Stalinist logic of fighting for 'socialism in one country and implementing the Stalinist 'Popular Front' policy involving alliances, with bourgeois parties, were moving even closer to support for their own capitalist class against the Soviet The so-called Communism" phenomenon be understood unless it is these terms.

Todays mass Communist anxious above all to win the of their current Popular allies, and to show they F intention of leading to of by Union. "Euro cannot seen in Parties, respect ave no ocialist COUNTER-REVOLUTION Mandel, however, because he takes everything the Euro Communists' say about Easter Europe as genuine, winds drawing the ludicrous conclusic: that • it is being openly implicitly acknowledged that Soviet society, far from being a workers paradise, , has many features that no 'Euro Communist' party would introduce in the event of the merthrow of capitalism in their own countries."

So carried away has Mandel become that he has actuall! forgotten yet again that these Stalinist parties are counter rerolutionary parties that stani absolutely opposed to the ove:throw of capitalism, and have shown (as in France, May-June 1968) their determination prevent such an overthrow!

Mandel goes on to suggest in the most idealist fashion that tr.: masses will come into conflict wit the CPs because of inconsistencies in the Stalinists' argumentspreaching "democracy" within the USSR, while running bureaucrasi: parties at home.

Workers however wil come i:: struggle against these CPs I.:: intellectually but as a mate:= necessity-because the CPs supporting and assisting employers' attacks on workers living standards and basic rigts The CP-led trade unions. i=: from relaxing their "monolitic regime as Mandel suggests. tighten the bureaucratic screws sti further in the struggle to coner:. the working class.

This will force many rans re file CP members into controntate: with this leadership. in wita = clear analysis of these CPs i accontial

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesdar 28 September 1977 Members of the Left Opposition on their way to exile in 1928. 23433 1320.