Doing Chat 'unity' Waltz Photo: Andrew Wiard, Report Open Letter Fever Grabs Left Groups

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IMG leader Tariq Ali CP leader MacLennan "Choose your partners for the 'unity waltz'!" is the essence of a string of 'Open Letters' and initiatives' by left wing organisations in recent weeks.

Yet the common factor that unites each of the would-be dancers is a cynical contempt for programmatic clarity and a refusal to take up the slightest fight for principled opposition to the class collaborationist Lib-Lab coalition.

At the centre of the floor stand the Stalinists of the Communist Party. They have izunched the latest edition of heir reformist programme The British Road to Socialism with an 'Open Letter to the British Left' by Party leader Gordon MacLennan.

Reformist formulae

The letter is diplomatically vague about who the 'British Left' are, and how the CP has selected 30,000 of them as lucky recipients of their appeal.

It refers to the 'left as "trade unionists, co-oper-tors, Labour Party and Communist Party members and ¿hers" (our emphasis).

But since the statement :as to call for Labour to -eak with the Liberals, and :.e CP is notorious for its :?s! relationships with shops and "progressive" ::gitalists, we can draw our : an conclusions as to who •hese "others" may be.

The Stalinists' Open Letter ¿vocates the same bankrupt ::ormist formulae as The sish Road. It calls for "expanding the economy" **asing wages" and .r.creased investment in -justry"

Lasting approval

Each of these demands is -ratible with capitalism, ::: course employers well ember the consistent role :*e CP in opposing those *ruggles that came into - - ... with Phases 1 and 2 • Social Contract.

-ing Stalinist Derek - ...on convenor at = us Longbridge plant, particular and lasting -*** irom Callaghan, the =÷ and the employers by ...e the Leyland tool strike-all the time aure. of course, the . is lass ollaborati on Is 1-+ +13 In France the Stalinists also argued abstractly for wage increases, but combined this with practical unity with the bourgeois forces in the 'Left Radicals'.

Support for Tories

In Italy, the Communist Party has gone even further to the right, and actively supports wage cuts, while giving official support to the ruling Tory (Christian Democrat) government-again, all in the name of 'unity".

The British CP has nothing but praise for the French and Italian CPs, attempting in its own way to follow their example of large-scale class collaboration. Hence the need for 30,000 letters.

Sections of the Labour 'left' will no doubt greet the Stalinists' overtures-only last week coalition minister Benn was himself calling for "unity" behind Callaghan.

But while the CP has set the pace with the scale of its "unity" appeal, those left groups that trail after the Stalinists have also joined in.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Benn The Socialist Workers Party has appealed for "unity" with the CP, while the International Marxist Group's body of admirers in the "Socialist Unity" grouping have put out a plea for "unity" with the S WP!

The SWP open letter, published on 18 March, starts from the fact that both CP and SWP have candidates standing in the Garscadden by-election-where the SWP favoured a united campaign behind one candidate.

Discrete veil

The letter does not ticis single: ition the Minist Part! . Ins d it nic C tich not having "anything to say to the people of Gascadden on the real issues that affect their lives"

"A united left is essential if further defeats are to be avoided" , the SWP goes on, calling for the CP to "discuss united action during the campaign"

The reformist platform proposed by the SWP for such united action centres on :

abortion and a woman's right to choose: the rise in Glasgow bus fares, and a campaign to fight youth unemployment"

The SWP thus manage to draw a discrete veil over the treachery of the CP in the Scottish shipyards, where both candidates actually work.

Deeply ingrained

Yet it is the Stalinists under convenor Jimmy Airlie who have turned the Govan Yard into the scab yard to which the employers have diverted work from Tyneside, causing sackings at Swan Hunter, and intensifying the attack on working conditions throughout the industry.

. By ignoring such questions the SWP Open Letter indicates that the opportunism of the SWP leadership is deeply ingrained.

Their urge to depict their organisation as "mass" party cannot conceal the fact that such politics cannot establish a firm foothold in the working class, but simply offer a passing acquaintance with certain layers of militants opposed to the reactionary moves of their official leaders.

But the SWP's facade of representing a "mass" workers' party has been sufficient to fool the freewheeling impressionists who lead the self-styled 'Trotskyist" International Marxist Group.

"Statement"

Hoping that a link-up with the SWP could open up their longed-for route to contact with the working class the IMG last month launched a "Statement" in their paper Socialist Challenge (23 February).

This is a call for a 'unified organisation" which would include both SWP and IMG. The only two aspects of mentioned are "unity" and "damarrary' constructed, and propose "democratisation of the ANL" (the Anti-Nazi League); in the student movement they suggest "a united far-left campaign against the Tories and the right wing on racism, tascism, autonomy and other issues"

Yet they do not criticise a single point of the S WP's reformist programme.

In this way the IMG gives tacit endorsement to such positions as the S WP call for a 35-hour week; their opposition to the demand for sliding scale of wages to keep pace with inflation; their consistent tail-ending of workers in trade union disputes; their ridiculous call for firemen to picket power stations during the firemen's strike: and of course the S WP's analysis that the Soviet Union is a capitalist and not a workers' state.

The 'Statement' ', published in the centre pages ot Socialist Challenge' was signed among others, by leading IMG members Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn and National Secretary Brian Grogan.

Spurious

Since the IMG has long been involved in an utterly unprincipled bloc with the anti-Trotskyists of the 'Big Flame' group and the Vorkers League, this latest opportunist episode should come as no surprise.

But what distinguishes this latest initiative is the way the signatories have agreed to prostitute the writings of Lenin in order to provide a spurious authenticity for their positions, quoting from Lenin at a particular historical juncture in 1906.

Yet in the same article these people fly in the face of Lenin when they proclaim that:

... the internal functioning of our organisations, the content and appearance of our press and publications are not irrelevancies. They are part and parcel of what we are fighting for and canno be subtracted from our ultin ate democracy" was explicitly rejected by Lenin in the April Theses in 1917, in crucial move that helped lay the political basis for the October revolution.

Arguing for a change in the name of the Party from "Social Democratic" to "Communist" , Lenin stated :

"The name "Social-Democracy" is scientifically incorrect, as Marx frequently pointed out, in particular, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme in 1875, and as Engels reaffirmed in a more popular form in 1894. From capitalism mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i.e. to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution products according to the amount of work performed by each individual. Our party looks further ahead: socialism must inevitably evolve gradually into communism, upon the banner of which is inscribed the motto "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". (note this is ultimate aim).

That is my first argument.

Here is the second: the second part of the name of our party (Social-Democrats) is also scientifically incorrect. Democracy is a form of state, whereas we Marxists are opposed to every kind of state"

(p.S1)

Lenin goes to argue for:

"a state for the purpose of the transition to socialism; but not a state of the type of the usual parliamentary bourgeois-democratic • republic, but a state like the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Soviets of Workers' Deputies of 1905 and 1917."

In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

For the IMG now to define the "ultimate goal" as "socialist democracy" is no more an accident than their decision last year to abandon in practice the Trotskyist call for defence of the Soviet Union in the name of "unity"

It represents an opportunist adaptation to political forces totally alien to of their entrenched view of Russia as a capitalist state, neither the SWP, the Workers League or Big Flame agree with the dictatorship of the proletariat as fought for by Lenin and Trotsky.

The deliberately vague and non-contentious formulation "socialist democracy" also opens wide the doors of "Socialist Unity" for frustrated 'left' Labourites-and possibly even more right wing elements too.

Because while the IMG's circuitous route to class collaboration flows through their courtship of the SWP, the SWP cuddling up to the CP and the CP proposing marriage to the defenders of the Lib-Lab coalition, the election-brokers of Socialist Unity seem to have found a short-cut.

Apparently recent acquisition of the Socialist Unity electoral stable is a Mr Len Valters, who was originally intended as a candidate in the Brixton by election for the obscure grouping calling itself the 'West Indian Block' According to the Guardian Mr Walters has now announced that he will stand as a joint Socialist Unity- WIB candidate, and it has been revealed that the WB and Socialist Unity are at present negotiating an electoral pact.

Such a deal if concluded, will follow the announcement this weekend of a pact between the WB and ... the Liberal Party!

How long would it then be before the ever-ready opportunists of the IMG go the whole hog and formulate a statement that drops the word "socialist" from their present "ultimate goal" of "socialist democracy"?

The WL has repeatedly proved it is not against united actions on specific questions facing the working class.

But we will always fight for our programme and for the building of a Trotskyist Party dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism. the dictatorship of the proletaria: and the ultimate goal o: i

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DUSTIAL NEWS

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PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL and file organisation" be