The Fight for Revolutionary Leadership (Parts Five, Six and Seven)

THE FIGHT FOR

REVOLUTIONARY

LEADERSHIP

¡ this edition of "Trotskyism Today' we publish the final section of the Perspectives * First Annual Conference of the Workers Socialist League last December. The ope Economic Crisis'; Part Two The Labour Government'; Part Three The Trade Union issues of these sections are available in Trotskyism Today' Numbers 10 and 11, The Ruling Class Prepares at th "The Back Document for Britain adopted ning sections were:- Part One.

': and Part Four 'Programme' Part Five The hysterical witch-hunting which drew the biggest cheers at the last Tory Party Conference is further confirmation of the warning we have made since the foundation of our movement that the Tory leadership is preparing the basis of the most draconian attacks on living standards and democratic rights since the 19th century. From the so-called moderation of Heath with his 'end of the road' speech, through to the rabid reaction of Heseltine and Thatcher, the Tory Conference echoed all week with demands for still more savage and sweeping spending cuts, an end to price controls, and a battery of anti-working class policies at present too extreme even for the Callaghan leadership to impose, even while sparing some time to praise Callaghan for his efforts on behalf of capitalism.

ALIENATION

The extreme right wing Thatcher leadership has cashed in on the alienation of Labour voters, and set out consciously to build a movement on the basis of small businessmen, middle and professional classes using the openings provided by reactionary campaigns to reach new sections.

Thus they have consistently lent their backing to anti-abortion campaigns, private medicine, private and grammar school education, ratepayers campaigns, and the so- called "unions" of the self-employed.

This is a conscious move to strengthen and extend the Tory power base, with a view to a return to office in the event of the Callaghan government facing a showdown and splitting or resigning.

The vague talk of possible 'coalition' waited about by various Tories is merely to cover over the fact that they have not yet selected the time to launch the all-out offensive against the Labour government.

SUPPRESSED

Such a Tory government it elected under conditions where the working class struggle was still suppressed by the bureau- cracy would represent a far more serious threat than that of Heath.

Indeed it is possible to envisage such a Tory government coming to power in spite of the unbroken strength of the working class only because of the utterly bankrupt leadership put forward by the Labourites both right and left' It would draw its majority from the abstentions of millions of Labour voters alienated by the attacks of Wilson and Callaghan. While it, too, could be a govern- ment of crisis, it would be one setting out from a conscious plan of action to defend class rule and restore profitability.

On the extreme right of the Tory ranks stands Powell with his racist campaign once more avidly supported and boosted by the press and mass media. And revelling in the heat of this racist press campaign, gaining in self-confidence and obviously attracting considerable support from sections forces of the fascist National Party. The " fascists' poisonous propaganda campaigns are today increasingly backed up by violent attacks on immigrant workers, youth and gays while labour movement meetings have been openly attacked.

The call for labour movement action to defend immigrant workers against such attack is a class call. It is not a call that can be limited to simply "support black self- defence" as the IMG and others see it.

It is vital to stress that the defence of these sections of the working class is the responsibility of the whole labour move- ment. We fight now in affected areas for trade union mobilisation on this issue raising the question in every branch where we have members or contacts and struggling to involve the broadest possible support.

of business are the National Front and

UNIFY

Wherever possible we will attend meetings of those defence organisations already formed, urging them to unify with trade union bodies - particularly trades councils. But the political struggle on the questions of working class leadership remains central. If racialism is being kindled now amongst some backward layers of workers as well as its traditional petty bour- geois spawning ground it is because the fuel has been provided by the trade union bureaucracy's solidarity with the national capitalist class, enforcing acceptance of mass

sea ra nova

BOAR

COLONIAL

TROT

militant opposition to the deal by offering to 'lead' a fight to defeat the 4½%.

In fighting rank and file CP members these Stalinist betrayals must be highlighted and forced home in front of the broadest possible audience of workers.

At the same time the logical outcome of the "Parliamentary Road to Socialism" as exemplified in Italy by the Stalinists support for a Tory government must be brought out to the full in challenging British Stalinists.

Their current Popular Front policies in Britain and internationally renders the Stalinists, insofar as they retain any militant base in the working class, most vulnerable now to principled attack by Trotskyists.

We must also recognise that the recent events in Poland place again in the fore- ground the whole question of the fight for the political revolution in the degenerate workers' states, and lose no chance to use these issues against the Stalinists.

MILITANTS

In the coming period it is quite possible that a number of CP militants could be drawn towards Trotskyism as a result of the extreme right wing orientation of their own party - provided we make no accomodation or compromise with them on questions of principle or programme. But at the forefront of our fight in every area, whether or not such opportun- ities emerge (and in some areas there are only right wingers left in the CP, must be our clear understanding of the need expose and smash Stalinism, destroy its corroding influence in the workers' move- ment. In this we will approach the fight with infinitely more clarity than the panoply of centrist and self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups, who find themselves unable to find a principled road to working class militants, least of all towards the Stalinists.

Just as the reformists and the Stalinists are thrown into confusion and crisis by the sharpening of the objective situation and the strengthening of the working class, so these groups also find their empirical assessments and protest politics completely unable to grasp the new situation and capitalise on it.

We will not catalogue them and their peculiarities here, merely point be us tha ta further short document could be usetul in providing an assessment of the most politically important tendencies and outlining our proposed attitude towards them. I TODAY, Wednesday 2nd February, 1977.

who have so far been won by the struggle for the politics of the WL must play their role, along with worker members in strength- ening further the content of the paper.

THEORETICAL WORK

At the same time there now éxist opportunities to further develop the theoretical work of the movement. The in- coming National Committee must therefore oversee a full programme of education within the movement, particularly for new comrades fresh to Marxism, combined with a conscious effort to enrich the movement's understanding on particular theoretical problems - with special regard to further work on the origins and movement of the post-war economic crisis; more research into the history of British and international Trotskyism; and perhaps above all, a broad- ening and deepening of our understanding or the evolution of post-war Stalinism.

Other possibilities tor development of the movement also exist. Since the WSL was formed just two years ago we have been approached by many self-styled "Trotskyist" groups. For our insistence on programmatic agreement and common practice as a basis for fusion with other tendencies we have earned the epithet 'sectarian'. It is, however, to the credit of our leadership that we have not abandoned the principled struggle for leadership and programme in the working class in favour of schematic regroupment strategies" so popular with those bereft of any serious perspective for building a revol- utionary combat party in the working class.

Lenin in Red Square in 192 and the prestige of the Bolshevil forces of the Left Opposition, k long principled struggle for theoretical clarity it is inadequate today to seek simply to fuse what basic differences of method exist betw fusion... we have earned the epithet 'sectarian Nevertheless, there exists the danger of bending the stick too far. The WL includes in its ranks comrades from several political traditions. We have leading comrades with experience of IS, IMG, RCG, etc.

This is a reflection of the willingness of more and more comrades to return to the foundations or our movement - the Trans- itional Programme and its method - and to attempt to come to grips with the struggle to build a revolutionary International.

Such a turn is not unconnected with the emergence of the Workers Socialist League.

It is therefore important that the WSL takes an interest in the developments within other organisations, and seeks to take maximum advantage from tendencies towards our positions emerging within organisations or sections of them.

No blueprint can be laid down in advance for this - the specific course of action in each case will have to be decided by the in-coming National Committee. If however we find that there exist organis- ations with which we have common ground then we should consider seriously a genuine effort to fuse with these organisations - subject of course to the approval of the comrades in the International Tendency should this be established.

ESSENTIAL

allo wed to obuch a pro ebes malstaot be 1 allowee te recruitment of fresh forces to the banner of I rotskyısm, hand ın hand with a rounded struggle to build a cadre within the trade unions, to turn to the problems of youth, women and minorities, and to develop as part of an international movement - only in Part Seven Tasks of the WSL Throughout this document we have emphasised the great depth of the capitalist crisis that faces us. Only the working class with a revolutionary programme can provide a solution to this crisis and only a revolutionary party based on the principles of Trotskyism can provide the basis of resol- ving the crisis of leadership in the working class. Because we inherit the traditions of the struggle for Trotskyism, because the starting point of our movement is a defence of its fundamental principles, we must pay serious attention to the struggle for a Bolshevik Party in Britain and internationally.

For this reason further development of our movement must include the building of a party that has the resources as well as the political capacity to intervene every day in the struggle of the working class.

DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM

We have inherited from our experience a deep hostility to bureaucratic dictatorship but this should not hold us up in building an organisation that is capable of reviving the principles and practice of democratic centralism in the working class, of taking all steps necessary to bring the struggle for revolutionary programme to wider layers of workers. Our movement has already begun to assemble a full-time staff, a headquarters, and a range of our own publications. Some of the practical (other than strictly financial) problems to be overcome in developing Socialist Press into a weekly paper have already been raised for discussion in an Internal Bulletin, and it is clear that one prerequisite other than expanded sales is a much wider team of comrades to play an active role in reporting and writing features tor the paper. It is crucial that the advances in the production and the political content of the paper that have been made are seen as the starting point of a drive wherever possible to increase sales, laying at the same time the basis both of future weekly publication and of new recruitment into the movement.

The significant cadre of intellectuals

this crisis vay will it be possible to resol of leadership. Unemployment remains the central problem facing working class youth, hitting particularly black youth and thousands of school leavers who cannot find work because capitalism no longer has the capacity to employ them. The trade union bureaucracy offers no way forward to the working class youth in dealing with this question - all they can offer is the acceptance of more closures.

more cuts in spending and less prospect of decent education.

READY

TO FIGHT

But the youth themselves, not having experienced the betrayals of previous periods of crisis, have not participated in forming the opportunist trade union leader- ship of the boom period. They come forward instead today with a readiness to fight, while capitalism offers the young worker only long-term enforced financial and social dependence on the family by depriving him of work. A programme for youth must begin from the fact that youth unemployment demands not simply the defence of existing jobs but the creation of new ones.

So while we must fight the cuts imposed by the Labour government with a demand for the extension of education and the open- ing of higher education to all youth ready to study, we must also involve youth in the fight for a full programme of useful public works under workers' control, paid at union rates. The extension of education of course calls for both a sliding scale of spending to protect against inflation, and a substantial Trade Unions The Transitional clear that: "In the struggle for partial and transitional demands the workers now more than ever before need class organisations, principally the trade unions" At the same time it is only the Trans- itional Programme that can defend the trade unions' independence against ruling class attempts at collaboration and disciplining the working class through police methods.

The independence of the mass organisations of the working class is a vital precondition for taking up revolutionary tasks.

This involves the development of a programme to drive out the reformist leadership. Democratisation of the mass organisations of the class necessitates the defeat of the methods of the routine func- tionaries and the bureaucratic cliques.

It demands putting to the forefront in key struggles the demand for the regular election and right to recall all union officials and for them only to be paid the average wage of the workers they represent.

This campaign of course cannot in any way be separated from the political questions of the programme, nor from the development of a revolutionary party that Programme ternational (Comintern) was able to draw on the strength of the revolutionary gains of October 1917 itant workers internationally. But the degeneration of the Comintern was fought against only by the rotsky. When the Fourth International was established its most priceless asset was the fruit of this on the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism and the need for revolutionary leadership. This is why • different tendencies claiming to be Trotskyist without first establishing what common ground and een them. Yet "for our insistence on programmatic agreement and common practice as a basis for struggles against the limitations iate trade union consciousness.

As Trotsky writes: *The more oppressed majority of the working class is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labour movement. During such moments it is necessary to create organisations ad hoc embracing the whole fighting mass, strike committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets."

The struggle for the programme is inseparable from the building of new, more flexible workers' organisations which are open, for example, to women, youth and unemployed. We must learn the lessons of our intervention in the "Fight the Cuts" committees in London and elsewhere, and deepen our understanding of the relationshit between these committees and our struggle inside the various unions themselves.

Already in many unions we have laid a solid basis for intervention as a result of a determined but patient struggle for principle and programme. We must strengthen all these roots, and recruit from our fight in the unions. of immed- injection of education. For youth at work we demand the extension of training schemes and release schemes, paid for initially by the capitalists but under trade union control.

The trade unions must turn towards the youth, and establish youth commissions to recruit and educate young workers. Young workers' delegates must be brought on to trades councils, to unite their struggles with those of the local labour movement as a whole. additional finance Women Our purspectives women are more fully set out document [to be published Trotskyism Today]. But again of our approach is useful in general context. The capitalist crisis and its consequent attacks on the working class particularly affect working class women. They are most directly affected through all the cuts in the state sector, and by redundancies where many of them work, The depth of the crisis will drive women, as well as other previously little organised sections of the working class, into class struggle and political activity for the first time. However they will not automatic- ally move towards socialist policies.

The bourgeoisie actively attempts to appeal to women against men workers, and at the same time now initiates an ideological among h a special shortly in an outline this more Youth The development of a serivus cadres amongst the youth is an requirement for the growth and v our movement. While more detail tion is given to this in our Youth tives See The Way Forward Fo SP49| lan outline of the work can here. group of essential itality of ed atten- Perspec- + Youth be given campaign to reassert the traditional values of the family. Every attack on the working class unemployment, wage cuts, inflation, public spending and social service cuts, and youth unemployment - all increase the strain on and within the family as a social unit.

In this way the crisis of leadership in the working class and upheaval in the family are linked. The bourgeoisie defends and ideologically bolsters the family in order to cut across moves by workers to resolve these problems by serving their class interests.

In order to break down the isolation, fragmentation of the working class within the family, women must be drawn from the home into the direct organisations of the working class - prices committees, factory committees, etc. Only through a struggle for workers' control will the subordinate position of women in the family be undermined.

At the same time we must develop a socialist analysis of the ways in which capitalism has adopted and perpetuated sexual oppression. This will inevitably involve an analysis of sexuality but this is not an abstract theoretical task.

Such work must be closely related to our daily political activity with women, and it will enable us to direct our interventions in such campaigns as the NAC and the gay liberation movement. It is vital to extend the method of the Transitional Programme to all general democratic demands which capitalism can- not satisfy, so that we can transform such movements into a strengthening of, rather than a diversion from the revolutionary struggles of the working class.

OPPOSED

The WL must develop a programme to defend working women as part of the work- ing class. Such a programme will necessari, be in opposition to the "all-class alliance of women represented by the petty-bour- geois women's liberation movement. The questions facing all women can only be answered by the working class.

The building of communal catering facilities requires a development of the prod- uctive forces now only possible under social- ism, as does the drawing of women into the labour force with conditions and opportun- ities equal to men. The provision of completely free and sate contraception and abortion on demand both - pose workers' control of the Health Service, massive increases in public spending and the nationalisation of the NHS suppliers.

Likewise the provision of adequate nursery facilities demands a huge increase in the education budget. In fighting for such demands these implications must be drawn out and the fight directed towards enlisting the active mobilisation of the mass organisations of the working class in the fight to win them.

where the bourgeoisie is carrying through massive spending cuts. The task of the Immigration Act is to erect a barrier between immigrant workers and the remainder of the working class, enabling the authorities and the employers to harass any attempt at trade union organ- isation among immigrant workers, and through this, in conjunction with orches- trated racist propaganda, to deflect the fight of all workers against wage cuts, unemploy- ment and housing shortages, away from attacking the bourgeoisie towards the immi- grant worker, set up as a ready scapegoat.

It is essential that we campaign for the repeal of the Immigration Act, and for the principle of the right of all workers to live and work in the country of their choice. We must demand the trade union leaders act on this question by fighting to organise immi- grant workers into the unions where none as yet exist, and ensuring that immigrant workers receive the necessary representation on trades councils and all local trade union committees. Only this will break the working class immigrant from the elaborate state campaign to establish "community relations councils" under the domination of the immigrant workers and separate them from the rest of the working class. The question of defence of immigrant workers from racist and fascist attack is dealt with in Section 5 of this document - but two points need to be stressed here.

The first is that whereas combatting racist propaganda is important work partic- ularly when the fight is carried right into there propamada wit it hitselt be mough to pure propaganda will avert the dangers of racist division.

In the last analysis it is the fight to mobilise the working class as a class in action which alone can lastingly break down racist divisions. It is therefore crucial that our fight against racism is at no point separated from our programme of fighting demands on jobs and wages, or from our fight against the Labour and trade union bureaucracy whose efforts to prevent the resistance of the working class to capitalist attack provide the frustrated breeding ground of confusion essential for the racists and the fascists.

The second point is that where black self-defence groups begin to emerge in some areas we must resist any temptation to see the young workers in them either as ready made revolutionaries, or, even worse, as some kind of blank sheet of political paper on which we can simply write our programme. There are a whole range of political tendencies active among immigrant workers - many of them extremely hostile to Trotskyism. In particular Maoists, Stalinists Immigrant Workers Immigrant workers in the coming period face the prospect of increasing racist and police harassment added to the special problems they already face as a section of the working class. Drawn into the capitalist economy during the boom' to expand the labour force and prevent wage rises in service industries in a general situation of full employment, immigrants now face a massive attack on elementary democratic rights enshrined in the Tory Immigration Act of 1971. As the crisis develops further the maintenance of immigrants as a pool of unorganised low-wage labour becomes vital to industries on the verge of collapse - for example catering and the public sector

RICT

TRADES COUNCIL

Anti-racist demonstration in Bradford last year: mass support showed base for

rage and Black Nationalists are to be found.

It is only through detailed and patient political struggle that a firm political relationship can be expected with these groups of militant youth.

We must begin this struggle by indicating both our support for their right to self defence and the direction we as rotsky- ists feel that self-defence ought to take in order to connect up with the struggles of the working class as a whole.

In this way the strength of their resis- tance can be brought into the broader labour movement as part of the fight against the bureaucracy, and the power of the organised working class as a whole can be mobilised in the fight against racism and fascism.

TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 2nd February, 1977.

The Unemployed The fight against unemployment which the WSL has continued on a number of fronts is a vital fight. It involves both the defence of the living standards of the working class and to prevent the fragmen- tation of the class through a division between employed and unemployed which threatens to sap the strength of the working class. The defence of existing jobs and the right to create new ones must therefore be combined in our struggle. We have consis- tently advocated the demand of work sharing on full pay, a demand which summarises the Transitional Programme: "Against unemployment... the time is ripe to advance, along with the programme of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organisations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidar- ity of mutual responsibility.

On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined.

The average wage of every remains the same as it was under working week." worker the old Fourth International We regard the building of an inter- national revolutionary leadership as an essential prerequisite for the development of the Workers Socialist League.

We do not consider this document therefore as in any way separable from the problems and conclusions set out in our international document "Fourth Internat- ional: Problems and Tasks" adopted at our first conference.

EXPANDED

Our understanding of essential questions of post-war Stalinism, capitalist boom and crisis, and the history of the Fourth Inter- national must be expanded by the further work of our movement. We must press further in the coming period with our initiatives towards an inter- national discussion on the problems of the international, and take further steps to establish agreement and political relation- ships with those groups that have already stated they hold considerable common ground with us.

PRINCIPLED

It is even more important for us now to be part of a principled movement with members in Lisbon or New York than simply to expand our national base to Bristol or Edinburgh. For the further development of our international perspectives, we have a partic- ular responsibility as a British movement to develop our programme and practice on the question of the age-old Irish national question. We have only really begun this in the pages of Socialist Press, and further develop- ment is essential in at least two ways. We must on the one hand develop a programme for an Irish section of the Fourth Inter- national which can link Irish and British workers in the common struggle against British imperialism. And on the other hand we must become part of a fight in the British workers' move- ment for a campaign to force the removal of the British army from Northern Ireland.

With the collapse of the attempts at "power-sharing" by British imperialism, the inseparability of these two questions becomes even clearer. The WS must now take up as a crucial question the fight in the working class movement, for the removal of troops. And having correctly rejected the petty bourgeois revisionist politics of the Troops Out Movement, we have the responsibility of developing a clear alternative.

It is the principled record of our move- ment and the many successful interventions we have already carried through that give us the confidence that these and many other problems which remain for the develop- ment of our movement can and will be solved. September, 1976. Perspectives for Work

NEXT

spectiv Among Part

ISSUE

is for W Women One.

PUBLIC

WORKS

In other words the defence of existing jobs through work sharing on full pay cannot be separated from the demand to extend jobs by a programme of public works. Trotsky makes clear the work is to be shared on full pay among the whole work- force - employed and unemployed. As Section 4 on programme shows, we fight for such a project of public works to be admin- istered by trade union committees.

On such committees must be repres- entatives of the unemployed workers. To facilitate this, and in the meantime to strengthen the links between the unem- ployed and the employed sections of the working class we are fighting in every area for the unions to recruit the unemployed, and guarantee them full rights as union members. The recruitment of such new layers can be crucial in our fight in each area against the bureaucracy, its acceptance of cuts and closures, and for new leadership.

Lambert (OCRFI), Mandel (USFI, and Healy (IC): none will discuss history of FI with a view to its reconstruction.

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