Dead End for Centrist 'Internationals'

their seething ranks. Dead end of centrist "Internationals" With the current disorientation of the main international groupings laying claim to the title Trotskyist', the temptation has grown among certain tendencies out- side the main currents to substitute organ- isational moves towards unity' and compromise formulae for genuine prog- rammatic and practical agreement and the political fight to reconstruct the Fl.

Such mini. "internationals". for all their short-term pretensions, must be doomed to disaster, as the following sorry self-criticism, circulated last autumn by the 'RFA for the Fourth International' demonstrates. For any movement to admit that the quality of its groupings "was much lower than the medium standard of the Euro pean USec sections" is a crushing indict- ment of this whole approach to the problem of reconstructing the Fl and of those groups, including the British ICL, that have subscribed to it.

In March of 1976, a minimum level of agreement, to start a pro- grammatic discussion, was reached among the following organisations: the Revolutionary Marxist Faction (FMR) existing mostly in Italy and born from the experience of the Third International Tendency at the Page time of the Tenth World Congress of the United Secretariat) the Sparta- cusbund of West Germany, the groups Spartacus and Kommunis- tisches Kollektiv from Austria (which shortly afterwards fused in the Inter- nationale Kommunistische Liga).

At the end of September 1976, the NIl was entered by the Inter- national Communist League from England. In differend form and in different moments an interest in the NIl has been shown only by Com- rade Samarakoddy in Ceylon, by the American Revolutionary Marxist Committee (which had joined after- wards the SWP in the USA) some leaders of the Portuguese LCI (expelled afterwards and today dissolved, after having tried to build an autonomous organisation in Portugal), and some comrades of the Trupo Revolucao Socialista from Angola, who have followed the same destiny as the Portuguese comrades.

The minimal level of agreement necessary to enter the programmatic discussion was expressed in a declara- tion, translated in several languages which was given wide publicity and which was based on three essential points evaluation

importance and the reasons of the Portuguese defeat after the semi- golpe from the Sixth Government, in November 1975. A common evaluation, in particular, of the crucial character of the problems posed by the Portuguese experience and of the necessity to face these problems in the light of concrete historical experiences. 2) A common evaluation of the failure, in the Portuguese situation, of the United Secretariat and of all those currents who pledge allegiance to Trotskyism; such a failure, while showing once more the • pro• grammatic inexistence and the organisational inexistence of the Fourth International, posed with bigger strength the necessi y of rebuilding. This point went together with some appraisals on the historical origins of the destruction of the Fourth International of the time of Trotsky and on the developments of "centrism sui generis", , on which the English comrades didn't agree.

3) The appeal to build an inter- revolutionary-marxist national tendency, after a discussion, realised in the light of common concrete experiences, of the following six points, considered as fundamental: 1. The crisis of imperialism and our epoch. 2. The political revolution in reaucratised workers' states.

3. The proletarian revolution in the neo-colonial countries and the national question. 4. Popular fron government. 5 The programme. 6. The ci national. th On these same points the dis- cussion had already started some time before among the FMR, the Constanchund and the Austrian KK.

and the framework of had a positive effect, conclusion and a fusio FMR, expressed today tence of a German a sympathising grou Germany and of a FM Austria. However, with the the English ICL, with th the Austrian comrades the NIl has allowing its n inside the by the exis- section and in West R nucleus in comrades e majority and with of of minority tendency inside the Sparta- cusbund, things have not gone in such positive way: outside of the programmatic discussion, these three components converged on a common base, without programmatic references, but with a common rejection of the FMR positions (whether the true positions or the ones believed s suci). This polarisation inside the NIl has rapidly taken on all the negative aspects typical of the debate among sects ("Trotskyist" sects in particu- lar) and has rapidly degenerated into childish factional behaviour.

Among these, the worst-because it destroyed the essential aims of the NIl-was the refusal to publish the International Discussion Bulletin (a task assumed by the ICL and the IKL) destroying in this way any further possibility of programmatic political The was call had oy bulletins, internati sign led the NI opening splits: in Austria, in the form of a bureau- cratic expulsion of the minority.

The FMR, as a component of the NIl can only accept the end and the defeat of the project, without con- soling itself with the relative enlarging of its strength, as a sect would do. The defeat of the NIl, in fact, disregarding the forms assumed in the last period, has shown that the difficulties of starting a process of programmatic discussion and there- fore of fusion, are bigger than was presumed, and obliges the FMR today to leap in its political orientation. An understanding of the mistakes made with the NIl can represent a first step forward in such a direction.

1. A in the method; the discussion on the pro- grammatic points had to be done with a direct reference to precise aspects of class struggle, together with a practical collaboration among This the method had been followed at the beginning with the German and Portuguese comrades (partly also with the Angolan comrades), but it was abandoned after the end of the ce. The absence of concrete points of reference and of collaboration provokes necessarily a sterilisation sectarisation of the discussion.

this time Portugal could no longer represent this point of reference, the discussion inside the NIl has taken all the characteristics of an ideological debate among sects. Actually, this debate didn't really take place. The NIl should have been dissolved at the forward around a new common experience.

2. mistake in the after having verified the small interest in the NII appeal we should have considered reasons that prevented other political currents Page 34 taking part in our framework of discussion (but also in the framework of Lutte Ouvriere, for example). In particular we didn't keep in account that the programmatic declarations of the FMR state very clearly that the best energies which pledge allegiance to Trotskyism are today those inside the USec and that with them we must have the maximum confrontation. In the NIl not only were currents from the USec absent, but there were only groupings which had broken with the USec or never belonged to it; without real pro- grammatic explanations. Leaving aside any diplomatic language, we must admit to have built the NIl, with national isolated groupings, whose quality was much lower than the medium standard of the European USec sections. For an organisation as the FMR, which represents a global programmatic alternative to the USec, and which in the past has shown its analytical and programmatical superiority on the USec in important moments of class struggle, this was a serious step backward, contrary to the ideas expressed in the Declaration.

We must admit also, th opportunist step backward given any practical result at th hasn 3. Some comrades think that another mistake has been not to build from the beginning our factions inside the centrist groupings which were taking part in the NIl. This sec- tarian attitude must be opposed, but one must see the true mistake which we made on this ground; it was a mistake not to impose, at every step forward, a precise definition of what that step represented, in relationships to the general positions of the FMR; was it against or in accord with our programmatic declaration?

This way of proceeding would have produced an enrichment of the declaration or a process of political differentiation inside the com- ponents; it is enough to think of the opportunist positions of the ICL toward the Irish Provisionals or the abstensionism of the Spartacusbund in Germany. We have not been politically aggressive, but our aggres- sivity should have been a program- matic one and not organisational or factional. The NIl has died, after having accomplished only partially the provisional function which had been assigned to her. The FMR comes out of this experience stronger but with- out having exploited completely all the possibilities offered by such an initiative. The mistakes we have made shall not obviously be repeated and the fact of closing such an experience with a self critical