Together Down the Dead-End Road to 'Unity'

signed orkers Together down the dead-end road to «Unity" The opportunist "Socialist Unity" policy now being tirelessly flogged by the British International Marxist Group is only one reflection of the hell-for- leather scramble towards unprincipled mergers and fusions by self-styled "Trotskyists" internationally.

The biggest single example is the diss- olution of the warring IMT and LTF factions within the "United" Secretariat of the Fourth International while every major difference between them remains unresolved. But in their own, much smaller, fashion, two US Trotskyist' groups - the TOC and the CRSP - have pressed ahead with a merger which carries all the opportunist characteristics of the more ambitious projects dreamed up by the USFI leaders. Two organisations with obvious and virtually total disagreement on almost every issue of strategic and tactical policy have pooled their resources in order to serve up their combined confusion to the US working class.

A guage of their differences - and the abysmal level at which they have been discussed - can be obtained from this following report of the CRSP con- ference published by the TOC only a month before the "unity" deal: The Committee for a Revolu- tionary Socialist Party (CRSP) had its first national conference at the beginning of October for the stated purpose of the "reconstruction of American Trotskvism and the re- groupment of radical forces in this country." We in the Trotskyist Organizing Committee (TOC) agree with this aim and sent an observer to the conference. The conference clearly that CRSP has, established generally, accepted the five pro- grammatic points which the TOC had posed as a principled basis for Trotskyist unity: the counter-revol- utionary role of Stalinism, the necessity of an international of revolutionary Marxism, the validity of the Transitional Programme, the construction of a broad leftwing in the unions and the need for a labor party. However, it also clearly established that serious strategic and tactical differences continue to exist between our two organisa- tions, differences which this article will explore.

SERIOUS OMISSIONS

However, it is disturbing that the organisers of the conference could not fit in any time in a four day period to deal with such subjects as: organising the unorganised, the formation of youth and unem- ployed organisations, how practical work should be carried out in the unions or the fight for a labor party. There was not time for these topics because nearly three days of the conference were taken up by a discussion of "socialist feminism".

If "socialist feminism" meant the struggle for the equality of women, we in the TOC would be socialist feminists, just as we are supporters of the fight for equality of all the oppressed. But the comrades in CRSP and the Free- dom Socialist Party, its largest component, are not talking about equality. Instead "socialist femin- ism" is being used as a buzz word, with each speaker and writer giving it a different meaning. The CRSP comrades deny that they are advo- cating female superiority or that feminism means hating men. But they emphasize the need for leadership by women as well as the need for women to organise Page 30 separately from men. One of the sister organisations of the Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, excludes men from membership.

Presumably, Radical Women is a transitional organisation where women can learn to think and speak without the inhibiting presence of men. We in TOC disagree with the separatism of women just as we disagreed with the separatism of Blacks and Chicanos which leads them towards nationalism rather than socialism.

It is particularly ironic that those who advocate the exclusion of men do it on the basis that women are somehow inferior to men in social skills and need such a transitional organisation in order to be in the same organisation with men. (The CRSP comrades play with the idea of "the natural superiority of women" which doesn't accord with this other stated position). But the CRSP comrades do not seem to be aware that most male workers also lack public speaking skills and know absolutely nothing more than women workers-and often a great deal less-about writing a leaflet or using a mimeograph machine.

It may very well be true women workers will unite together before men. In some areas, Black workers will organise and provide the most militant cadres before women. In other areas, young workers, male and female, Black and white, will provide that leadership. In such situations, caucuses may develop which will be largely Black, or largely women, or largely white.

But CRSP announces before the fact that women will be the vanguard. Really comrades,

because your organisation in consists of largely of women of whom are lesbian and does not mean that other s of the working class still pol backward will not come f in the future.

THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

At the CRSP conference, speakers asserted that the Seattle (many white) ections itically orward several movement was in ine vanguara ur the women's movement because lesbians reject the nuclear family.

We fully support the struggle of women now breaking with the traditional sex roles imposed upon them by class society, but we cannot take seriously the position that being lesbian or gay is in itself revolutionary step. Alternative life styles may annoy the ruling class, but not really threaten it. Many radicals have become involved in the so-called Food Buying Conspiracies.

Although it is laudable to sell food at lower cost than the big super- market chains, Safeway and the A&P are not about to go bankrupt.

Neither is capitalism going to collapse because lesbians and gays stop having families. Of course, capitalism would cease to exist if women stopped having babies, but so would all human society at that point-scarcely what CRSP is advocating!

THE TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM

Although the CRSP comrades say they are for the Transitional Programme, the practical work they propose has practically nothing in common with the actual Transition- al Programme. Their programme is reforms now, the Transitional Programme later. The document by Robert Crisman says as much, "We must support and lead the fight for the most minimal reforms" • But the Transitional Programme does "not discard the programme of the old minimal the old 'minimal demands • programme is superceded by the Transitional Programme ..• CRSP supports quotas and "affirmative action" in admissions to colleges. The TOC opposes quotas for the same reason we opposed the preference given previously to the white middle class. Quotas divide the working class among white workers, Black wokers, women workers, etc., in the fight for the leavings of decay- ing capitalism. On this basis, quotas are not an affirmative action, but play into the hands of reaction and fascism. The TOC fights for open admissions to the universities, so that everyone who wishes an education can obtain it.

The democratic demand for open admissions becomes a transitional demand in this period when the bourgeoisie is raising tuition costs and cutting back on scholarships.

Quotas, "affirmative" hiring, "affirmative" layoffs, etc., are proposed on the premise that, as the working class cannot beat the bourgeoisie at this time, it is neces- sary to negotiate a compromise.

The TOC representative at the CRSP conference compared the CRSP to a lifeboat" which would make the white male worker walk the plank because there were not enough provisions in the boat to feed everyone. The programme of quotas to lighten the boat is scarcely the kind of programme to unite the class. The TOC believes it is our task to teach the working class how to win their struggles, not to negotiate defeats. The CRSP leadership may correctly point to the SWP's mis- taken tactics in Portugal in support- ing the Socialist Party, but Comrade Murry Weiss and other CRSP comrades supported the manoeuvres of the Communist Party and General Carvalho which used the ultraleft-and also Trotskyists-as catspaws of the "left" military bureaucrats.

EMPIRICISM

METHOD

The CRSP comrades begin with their particular experiences. Their experience in a particular union led them to advocate independent unionism, their genuine vanguard role in struggles in Seattle led them to generalise this position. Their experience with sexism as individ- uals and within the radical move- ment led them to generalise about men. Although the method of empiricism may be satisfied with experiential knowledge, the Marxist method recognises the existence of objective reality and, therefore, of knowledge which has penetrated beneath the immediate subjective experience to a scientific under- standing of complex interacting social phenomena, of theoretical knowledge. The experiential know- ledge of living under capitalism leads to cynicism or to the panglossian acceptance of this "best of all possible worlds" . with social- ism left to some future time

AND MARXIST

Yet despite the clearly hopeless nature of the CRSP, November 16 saw the publication of the following utterly bankrupt statement by the TOC, in Pane 31 which even questions of strategy are brushed aside as irrelevent in the rush to 'unity' at all costs: strategy in the rus are I to Over the past few months, the Trotskyist Organizing Committee (TOC) and the Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party (CRSP) have been discussing the basis for a principled unity of Trotskyists in the United States.

As a result of these discussions and attendance at the first national CRSP conference of an observer, we in the TOC have decided to join CRSP. We have, therefore, dissolved the TOC and ended the publication of Socialist Appeal with its October issue. sharp strateg ences among that unity achieved! But obscure which Is it possible to in one vanauard ic and tac all formati can and unite party Trotskyists • given the tical differ- ons? We say must be our the unite polemics areas of us.. The should not agreement TOC and

-LUJ

general programmaue ayreement on the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism, on the need to build the Fourth International, on the validity of the Transitional Programme, on constructing a rank and file movement in the unions, and on a labor party based on the unions independent of the capitalist parties.

STRATEGIC AN

DIFFERENCES.

But what about our differences?

They remain. We will continue to differ on the Equal Rights Amend- ment, on feminism, on "affirmative comradely relations action" with the Socialist Workers Party, on Portugal and on other questions.

We will constitute a tendency within CRSP. We will seek to convince the organisation of the validity of our strategic and tactical positions while working together loyally to build it. Those who insist on raising every strategic and tactical difference to the level of principle and as the basis for division, who insist that only unity on their strategic and tactical line is permissible and possible will never achieve it. On the contrary, they will only insure new splits in their own organisa- tions. But the emerging revolution- ary opportunities require unity-of the Trotskyists and of the working class-not splits. CRSP as a whole nave reacnea ant an

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