Wohlforth Archive | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Written: 1970.
First Published: 1970.
Source: Labour Press for the Workers League.
Transcription / HTML Markup: Sean Robertson for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Copyleft: Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (marxists.org) 2013.
Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons license.
Please cite any editors, proofreaders and formatters noted above along
with any other publishing information including the URL of this
document.
IntroductionEarly in 1969 there took place an international conference of the so-called "United Secretariat of the Fourth International." This body, which claims the name Trotskyist, is in fact a product of groups which have abandoned the program of Trotskyism and the building of revolutionary parties. Originating from the group following Michel Pablo in the 1953 split in the Fourth International, they have been supported since 1963 by the Socialist Workers Party.
This pamphlet analyzes the documents of this conference and the struggle which took place there. It originally appeared as a series of articles in the summer of 1969 in the Bulletin, organ of the Workers League and the Newsletter, forerunner of the daily Workers Press and organ of the Socialist Labour League in England.
This discussion is even more pertinent now than when it was originally published over a year ago. Nothing has been resolved within the United Secretariat in the interim. Moreover the objective developments since that time have of necessity deepened the internal crisis within the United Secretariat and within the SWP itself.
TROTSKY AND SHACHTMAN
This fall marks the 30th year since the death of Leon Trotsky at the hands of Stalin's agent. What is called for at this time is a struggle to understand Trotsky's contributions to the Marxist movement and to learn from his struggle how we can best carry forward the struggle for the socialist revolution today. As Trotsky himself wrote in his introduction to Revolution Betrayed: "We shall dwell upon the past only so far as that helps us to see the future."
Trotsky's last great struggle was the fight inside the Socialist Workers Party against the opposition tendency led by Shachtman, Burnham and Abern. It was a fight within the American movement and it was a fight which centered on the question of dialectics and American pragmatism. It is this fight more than any other which lays the basis for the Trotskyist movement particularly in the United States. We shall of necessity dwell on this struggle over and over again precisely in order to be able to prepare the future.
In 1940 the discussion moved in two opposite directions. Burnham began his opposition on the question of the nature of the Soviet state and then proceeded to retreat from this level to a bloc with Shachtman and Abern on the "concrete issues" of the party's attitude toward Finland, Poland and the Soviet Union's invasion of these countries. Trotsky on the other hand began by probing the question of the Soviet state to its depths and showing that with the position of Burnham the whole Transitional Program and perspective of working class revolution itself must be abandoned. From this he proceeded to the philosophical and methodological roots of the opposition in their pragmatism. It was this pragmatic method which allowed tile opposition to stand, not on fundamentals, but on a common attitude towards immediate appearance or "fact". This pragmatic method is the method also of the ruling class. With this method the opposition became a channel and funnel for alien class influences into the party and they finally broke from the party under these class pressures.
The task facing the SWP after 1940 was to take up the struggle for dialectics within the party itself. A turn toward involvement in the trade union movement would not in and of itself insure the party from alien class influence. The trade unions are, as Trotsky pointed out, "a culture medium for opportunist deviations." And Trotsky was the most insistent on work in the unions and in the working class as a whole.
PABLO EMERGES
In the postwar period a new opposition developed within the Fourth International led by Michel Pablo. This tendency, like the Shachtman tendency before it, in a pragmatic way adapted to the temporary quiescence of the working class movement in the advanced countries at that time and abandoned the working class, the Transitional Program, the struggle for Marxist parties, The theoretical outlook of Pablo is analyzed in some detail in this pamphlet.
In 1953 James Cannon and the SWP broke "definitively", they said, with Pablo. Unlike Trotsky's struggle of 1940, Cannon in 1953 did not probe the dispute to its theoretical and methodological roots and in this way educate the party in dialectical materialism. (See The Struggle for Marxism in the United States by Tim Wohlforth.) He simply made an empirical break and left it at that.
THE NEW REVISIONISM
Beginning in 1961 the Socialist Workers Party moved once again toward unification politically (it was barred from direct affiliation by the Voorhis Act) with the Pabloites. The SWP based its proposals for unification on the grounds that there was common agreement on "concrete issues" with the Pabloltes. Following in the pragmatic footsteps of Shachtman the SWP proposed that unity take place on this concrete basis and that above all no discussion take place on the theoretical and methodological basis of the original split in 1953.
Again the pattern of 1940 was repeated. The SWP moved away from questions of theory, of principle, of method while the Socialist Labour League, together with other sections of the International Committee and the minority in the SWP which was to become the Workers League, insisted that we must proceed from the concrete questions of agreement and disagreement to the level of theory, principle, method. In 1963 the unification was completed and the Unified Secretariat set up with SWP political backing. In 1964 our tendency was expelled from the SWP tor protesting the first fruits of the unification, the entry into a bourgeois coalition government of the LSSP in Ceylon.
DISCUSSION AND CRISIS
In 1963 the Socialist Labour League proposed that a discussion proceed despite the depth of the differences so far revealed. This proposal for discussion was rejected. In 1969 a discussion erupted within the United Secretariat which touched on the very points in dispute in 1963. The discussion which was suppressed in 1963 exploded with new force within the Pabloite camp. Leaders of the Pabloites themselves are raising the charge of abandonment of Trotskyism and liquidationism by sections of their own international movement.
In the fall of this year the Socialist Labour League proposed that discussions take place between the Unified Secretariat and the International Committee. It even stated that it would be willing to confine criticism of the Unified Secretariat to internal discussion if necessary so that a real discussion proceed. The Unified Secretariat rejected this proposal. This fall the Workers League proposed to the SWP that joint meetings be held commemorating the death of Trotsky as a common blow against the Stalinists. The SWP refused. The Workers League then proceeded to hold very successful meetings across the country while the SWP did not hold even a single meeting of its own to mark the death of Leon Trotsky who had contributed so much to the foundation of the Fourth International and the SWP itself.
The discussion however proceeds. It can no more be suppressed now than the SWP leadership was able to suppress it in 1963. It proceeds under new circumstances. Each day the position of the International Committee is strengthened by the development of the class struggle itself. It is reinforced by the class weight of the great movement of the working class internationally. Each day the class struggle finds its reflection, no matter how distorted and muted, within the revisionist camp where it pulls apart and polarizes the party.
TO THE RIGHT
There are signs already of a very sharp development to the right of sections of the SWP itself. More and more whole sections of the SWP are openly embracing the bourgeoisie through the cover of "democracy". The struggle against the war is not seen in class terms and under the cover of a "single issue" a common movement is built including the liberal bourgeoisie. The women's question is seen as a democratic and sex question, not a class one and the SWP builds a common movement with the liberal bourgeois women like Betty Friedan. The black question is viewed the same way and a bourgeois black party is called for instead of a class labor party. The defense of victims of the class struggle is seen only as a civil liberties issue and again a bloc is formed with the liberals.
On the one side a turn away from the International Committee, a refusal to discuss with us, a refusal to hold joint meetings with us against the Stalinists. On the other side the development of close working relations with the liberals and through the liberals with the bourgeoisie itself. This is the objective class logic of the SWP. This direction, this movement is the direction, the movement of Shachtman in 1940. But today, unlike 1940, fresh class struggles are breaking out and fresh youth forces are coming forward. Under these conditions the SWP cannot peacefully slide into the camp of the bourgeoisie. A struggle must take place. It cannot be avoided.
We hope this pamphlet will in a small way be a theoretical contribution to this struggle. What is at stake in this struggle is Trotskyism itself here and internationally. Trotskyism is the party of socialist revolution; there is no other. Thus at stake is the future of mankind.
Tim Wohlforth November 9, 1970
A discussion of the most fundamental kind has broken out within the organizations affiliated with the United Secretariat and the Socialist Workers' Party, which is in political solidarity with the United Secretariat.
A liquidationist tendency has developed of such an extreme nature that Peng Shu-tse, one of its leading members, has called for a 'return to the road of Trotskyism'.
This tendency, formed primarily around the question of uncritical support to guerrilla warfare, dominates the European and Latin American sections of the United Secretariat, placing the supporters of the Socialist Workers' Party of the USA in a minority at its recent International Congress.
Among the leaders of this tendency are Ernest Mandel, Livio Mahan and Moscoso of Bolivia. Supporting the SWP are essentially the Canadian section and Peng Shu-tse.
The emergence of this tendency and the questions raised in this discussion pose before all members of the SWP, its youth affiliate the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), and other supporters of the United Secretariat the question of the complete liquidation of their organizations. It is of the utmost importance that these questions be probed to their depths, that the origins of these questions in the history of the Fourth International, particularly the split in the International Committee in 1963 and the fusion of the section led by the SWP with the United Secretariat, be seriously confronted.
The central document in the dispute is the 'Draft Resolution on Latin America". This document puts forward 'the perspective of a prolonged civil war with rural guerrilla warfare as its principal axis . . . '. Flowing from this it proposes the liquidation of the Latin American sections of the United Secretariat into Castro's movement:
'Integration into the historic revolutionary current represented by the Cuban revolution and the OLAS, which involves, regardless of the form, working as an integral part of the OLAS.'
The most fundamental attack on this position was made by Peng Shu-tse, who reports that he was a minority of one on the International Executive Committee on this question.
'The comrades,' he states, 'have consciously or unconsciously discarded the Transitional Programme and have replaced it with the strategy of guerrilla warfare.'
This, he holds, poses a very fundamental question for the comrades of the Fourth International: 'Should we continue to carry out the traditional and fundamental programmatic line of the International – the Transitional Programme – or should we adopt the new strategy of guerrilla warfare?'.
Peng points out, drawing on Trotsky's Problems of the Chinese Revolution, that guerrilla warfare conducted isolated from urban struggle is adventurist and leads to the destruction of the movement.
'To avoid the disastrous results of the guerrilla warfare strategy and to prepare the victory of the revolution in Latin America, it is necessary to project a transitional programme which should include among others, demands for agrarian reform; national independence; freedom of the press, speech, assembly, strike, etc.; and a "Constituent Assembly with full powers,. elected by universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage".'
Peng then turns to the question of Cuba, for this is obviously at the heart of the dispute as the Maitan-Moscoso group uses the "Cuban example' as its model, supports uncritically Castro's 'strategy' of armed rural guerrilla warfare, and proposes liquidation into Castro's movement.
'Castroism', Peng Shu-tse notes, 'has made no theoretical contribution to Marxism. Castro's programme is merely one of action based upon his own experiences in the Cuban revolution, i.e. guerrilla warfare. It is clear that Castro does not understand some of the basic tenets of Marxism or some of the most important lessons and experiences of the world working class movement, such as the Bolshevik Revolution; the struggle between Trotsky, Stalin, etc. This lack of understanding is expressed practically in Castro's politics by the lack of any democratic-centralist party in Cuba itself, by the lack of any democratic government in Cuba based upon the workers' and peasants' soviets, by the support of a guerrilla war strategy in Latin America, etc.'
Peng then goes on to discuss the general orientation of his whole movement.
'In the past period the International on the whole has found itself working in and recruiting from primarily petty¬bourgeois strata, especially the student movement. To a great degree, of course, this area of work was determined by the objective conditions; nevetheless, our past work in and orientation toward the integration into the working class is the most urgent task facing our movement today.'
If the current situation is allowed to continue for any period of time then he predicts the sections of the United Secretariat 'cannot but degenerate'. This orientation towards the working class 'must, above all, be concretely based on our work in the trade unions'.
Next he goes into the question of Algeria which it seems he has tried unsuccessfully on several occasions since 1965 to raise within the United Secretariat. He states that the Boumedienne coup 'represented a heavy blow to the Fourth International and its political position not only because of the direct involvement and participation in the Algerian events on the part of several sections – France, Algeria, etc., – but also because one of the International's leaders, Michel Pablo, participated in Ben Bella's government. As a result, we must accept as much of the responsibility as anybody for the serious setback . . . One of the most important mistakes was the failure of the International to seriously criticize Ben Bella's government as well as the failure to propose any revolutionary programme for the Algerian masses in order to advance the struggle.'
In assessing the fundamental meaning of these mistakes Peng concludes they represent 'an adaptation to a petty-bourgeois leadership'. Such an adaptation is not accidental or without precedent.
'The International, in the past, has displayed a tendency to adapt to reformist bureaucrats and the radical petty bourgeoisie.'
This he then traces back to Pablo's position in the early 1950s of 'so-caned self-reform of the bureaucratic leaderships in the workers' states and of certain Communist parties . . . '
Peng concludes his document by stating:
'Replacing the Transitional Programme with the strategy of guerrilla warfare, neglecting the most serious work in the working class and its traditional class struggle organizations, i.e. the trade unions, and continuing to adapt ourselves to different petty-bourgeois currents and leaderships, cannot only not build an International, but will lead our movement into a blind alley. The above represents a deviation from Trotskyism, and it is the most urgent task and duty of the coming World Congress to consider seriously these questions by taking a formal stand on them in order to return to the road of Trotskyism.'
Needless to say the World Congress took a formal stand in favour of the road of guerrilla warfare and liquidationism.
Joseph Hansen of the SWP, in a somewhat more diplomatic way, takes the same essential position as Peng on the guerrilla warfare question.
'Thus if the concept of rural guerrilla warfare for a prolonged period is adopted as the principal axis of revolutionary work: Hansen concludes, 'then the problem of mobilizing the urban masses becomes somewhat irrelevant, and along with it most of the Transitional Programme'.
Hansen also warns against liquidation in Castro's movement in Latin America.
'. . . Just as the main orientation advanced in the draft resolution on Latin America appears to be an adaptation to the orientation of the Cubans at their present level of development, so the prescription of working as an "integral part" of the OLAS appears to be an adaptation to the organizational level they have reached. To make an organizational adaptation of this kind could have very serious consequences for the Latin American sections of the Trotskyist movement, whose problem is precisely the one indicated in the main resolution – to doggedly continue "to build their own parties and their own International".'
In Hansen's opinion the Latin American resolution is in contradiction with the main resolution on international perspectives. 'How the implicit contradiction between the two resolutions would be resolved in practice if both were adopted without either of them being substantially changed is hard to foresee.'
This is precisely the position the United Secretariat is presently in as both resolutions were passed at its last International Congress.
There are certain differences between Peng's and Hansen's presentations worth noting. Peng warns the United Secretariat of the dangers of an exclusive orientation towards the students and urges instead a turn towards the trade unions. Hansen argues against guerrilla warfare from the perspective that the United Secretariat's main orientation should be towards the student youth in the urban centres.
While Peng brings up the Algerian question, Hansen remains completely silent on it. The reason could be that Hansen played a major role in formulating this policy of support to Ben Bella and wrote extensively on this in the Militant at the time.
Also it should be noted that for years now the Militant and other SWP organs have been in the forefront of pushing the guerrilla warfare line and spreading the cult of 'Che'. Moscoso's writings have appeared without comment in the International Socialist Review. More recently a group of YSAers have visited Cuba and written completely uncritical accounts of Cuba; the SWP is a major publisher and distributor of the guerrilla warfare propaganda of Che Guevara and Castro. There is, of course, no accounting made of this in Hansen's article.
Hansen lays great stress on the necessity to construct 'Leninist combat parties' in Latin America and elsewhere and sees the guerrilla warfare position as a threat to this. But, writing on the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, James P. Cannon, National Chairman of the SWP, stated that in the colonial areas such parties were no longer needed and 'blunted instruments' could be used. In other words the SWP leadership has made its contribution to the emergence of this Iiquidationist tendency it now opposes.
This discussion involves much more than Cuba, and the liquidationism expressed in Latin America cannot be confined to that continent. It is not an accident that virtually the entire European movement of the United Secretariat has come to the defence of guerrilla warfare. Of course it is not that they wish to conduct some kind of guerrillaism in Europe so much as it is they wish to liquidate in their own way into the new petty-bourgeois movements which have arisen in Europe riding on the crest of a class struggle these organizations are so removed from.
Livio Maitan expresses this outlook the most clearly though still in a covered, cautious way:
'On the one hand certain present movements which are being unleashed, by their very scope go beyond the present possibilities of our restricted organizations, on the other hand – and above all – these new movements, which are breaking through or passing over every "traditional" organizational framework and in which the militants often display a tendency to consider us, too, as part of the "traditional" left, exercise a powerful attraction in circles where formerly we were alone in speaking a revolutionary language. In other words: to the degree that the weight of the ideological factor in the choice of political alignment decreases (in the cases indicated from the very fact that a series of ideas have become, more or less, common property) it is understandable that some layers of militants and cadres prefer, at least at this stage, to merely join mass movements rather than become linked organizationally with the Fourth International or national Trotskyist organizations.'
And what does Maitan propose to do about this 'understandable' situation where activists do not wish to join his 'restricted' organization?
'It goes without saying – in addition – that we must continue to apply in the most supple way our basic criticisms through integration in the real movements and avoid any kind of political sectarianism or organizational fetishism.'
In addition Maitan proposes the United Secretariat throw everything into creating a guerrillaist miracle in Bolivia. And if the miracle does not come off? Then it would seem logical that Maitan and friends would wish to get rid of the 'organizational fetishism' of their 'restricted organizations' which is such an 'understandable' barrier for the masses of students he is seeking to work with.
This liquidationist trend has apparently, begun to take its toll in the SWP and YSA. Maitan himself notes 'that the SWP used to have a greater number of black militants than today'.
"What has happened is that many black members of these organizations have developed the logic of the SWP's uncritical support of black power groups to its logical conclusion of resigning from the SWP and joining such groups as the Black Panthers. At the same time we know of YSAers who have resigned from the YSA to get into the broader SDS movement.
This helps to explain why Hansen now feels compelled to fight in Europe a political trend which for so long he and the rest of the SWP leadership have whether they like it or not encouraged and contributed to.
There can be no turning away from the issues raised in this dispute. Every member of the SWP and YSA .as well as other groups supporting the United Secretariat must return to the political issues raised at the time of the split of the SWP and its supporters from the International Committee and their political fusion with Mandel, Maitan and company (1963).
At this time we insisted upon a full discussion as an absolute prerequisite to any fusion. Unless the whole history of Pabloism since 1952 is discussed, these questions probed by the point of view of the Marxist method and within the framework of the continuity of the Fourth International and the Transitional Programme, we insisted any unity would be unprincipled and would mean the liquidation of the Fourth International.
The SWP refused to discuss any of these questions seriously. Instead it posed unity on the basis of 'concrete agreement' with the 'facts' of the Cuban Revolution in the first place and the 'vindication' of these 'facts' in the Algerian Revolution under Ben Bella in the second place.
Now the United Secretariat is coming unstuck precisely over these questions of Cuba and Algeria and a whole section of this movement is going over to open liquidation of their organizations.
We fought consistently during that struggle and right up to today for the building of the sections of the International Committee on the basis of the perspectives of the Transitional Programme. We held that capitalism was in a new period of extreme international crisis, that the very centre of this crisis was in the advanced capitalist countries, not the Third World, that because of this the Transitional Programme could now become the fighting programme of millions of workers, and that the key to the development of this programme was the struggle to build sections of the Fourth International in all countries with deep roots in the working class.
The defence and development of this perspective required, above all, a serious study of Marxist theory, of the Marxist method, and such theoretical development tied to and integrated with the actual work of constructing the party. Our advances since the period of the split with the SWP have been possible only because we sought to probe the roots of the degeneration of the Fourth International in the development of Pabloite revisionism in the 1950s.
The events of May-June in France are a complete vindication of this perspective of the new period of crisis and revolutionary struggle we are now in. But they are more than that. May-June places before the Trotskyist movement the absolute immediacy of the task of constructing revolutionary parties.
This is why a discussion to clarify the theoretical questions which produce liquidationism is even more of a burning necessity now than it was in 1961-1963.
This discussion must now go forward. In fact nothing can prevent it any longer. It will go forward!
At the recent congress of the 'United Secretariat' forces, the delegates voted unanimously for the main resolution 'The New Rise of the World Revolution', Thus the tendencies which stood in opposition to each other over the question of guerrilla warfare and Latin America were able to vote without qualms for a common international resolution.
This in itself raises questions as to the character of this resolution. How could those whom Peng Shu-tse urges to 'return to the road of Trotskyism', and those whom he undoubtedly considers are on this road, support the same general international line?
The answer lies in the very character of this resolution and its theoretical continuity with a long series of resolutions beginning with the Third Congress of the Fourth International in 1951.
This resolution, like its predecessors, is actually: an eclectic cover for liquidationism with bits and pieces of orthodoxy and statements about the building of the Fourth International thrown in. It thus expresses the very contradictions and permanent crisis of Pabloism since its origins. A whole series of tendencies and individuals, such as Cochran (USA), Lawrence (England) and Mestre (France) in 1953 have followed out the theoretical logic of these resolutions to the point of abandoning the orthodox cover and liquidating into Stalinism or other anti-Trotskyist tendencies. The United Secretariat now faces a new manifestation of this trend, in a much more aggravated form than in 1953.
The very first paragraphs of the resolution establish the central theoretical outlook which has marked Pabloite resolutions since the Third Congress. This makes clear that while Pablo, the man, left the United Secretariat several years ago, Pabloism as a revisionist method remains at the very heart of the world outlook of the United Secretariat and its supporters.
THREE EPICENTERS
The paragraph sees the world divided into three sectors, or as Pablo called them 'epicentres' – 'the colonial revolution, the political revolution in the bureaucratically degenerated workers' states, and the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries'.
The purpose of the resolution is to outline the 'dynamics' of the 'inter-relation' and 'interaction' of these three sectors or epicentres. While the world revolution has suffered 'serious setbacks' in one sector (the colonial revolution), it has also 'scored new successes' in another sector (the imperialist countries) with the May 1968 revolutionary upsurge in France.
But, in sum, things worked out pretty well:
'As a result, the global balance of forces is continuing to turn against imperialism, a still clearer interaction has emerged among the three main sectors of the world revolution, and an important change has occurred in the dynamics of their inter-relation – revolutionary struggles in the imperialist countries themselves occupying a more important place in this world-wide process today than in the past 20 years.'
Here in essence we have the outlook of Pabloism since 1951. It begins with the conception that the world balance of forces has been altered in favour of socialism, proceeds to divide the world into three epicentres, and then notes in which epicentre the world revolution is forging ahead at the moment.
The theoretical structure remains constant from document to document, only the epicentre where the main action is changes from resolution to resolution. Thus in the 1951, 1954 and 1957 resolutions the main epicentre was in the workers' states, while in the 1961 (Socialist Workers' Party resolution), 1963, and 1965 resolutions the epicentre switched to the colonial countries, and in the current resolution the advanced countries emerge as the main epicentre.
The causes of these changes in epicentre are never explained, nor can one learn from reading a previous resolution that the authors are in any way prepared for or capable of predicting an imminent switch in epicentre. But this does not matter as the purpose of the resolution is not to prepare the movement for future turns in the international situation, but rather how best at the moment to adapt to what is going on.
And why does it really matter, since all resolutions claim the balance of forces in our favour anyway. If we are to make a•few errors here or there, pick and choose the wrong epicentre, this will be but small change in the over-riding onward and upward march of the revolutionary process.
This theory that the global relationship of forces has altered in favour of socialism is what Pablo called the 'new world reality'. We find a classic formulation of the theory in the 1954 Pabloite Fourth World Congress document 'The Rise and Decline of Stalinism':
'The evolution of the Soviet Union and of the world working class movement since 1917 is fundamentally determined by the dynamic of the relation of class forces on the world scale. This development has passed through major phases: the rise of revolution in 1917-1923, the ebb of world revolution in 1923-1943, and the new revolutionary rise since 1943.'
We find the same theory put forward in the 1961 SWP resolution 'The Struggle Between the Socialist and Capitalist Camps', which laid the political basis for the re-unification in 1963. The resolution begins with the 'four major stages' of the struggle for socialism, identical with the Pabloite stages quoted above except that an earlier stage from 1900-1917 is inserted. On the current stage the resolution states:
'The victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, coupled with the setback of American imperialism in Korea in 1952, definitely altered the world relation of forces in favour of socialism.'
It would, however, be historically unfair to attribute the authorship of this theory to Michel Pablo alone. In truth it was first formulated by Zhdanov, the theoretician of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the early period of the cold war, in 1947, as follows:
'The end of the Second World War brought with it big changes in the world situation. The military defeat of the bloc of fascist states, the character of the war as a war of liberation from fascism, and the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in the vanquishing of the fascist aggressors sharply altered the alignment of forces between the two systems – the Socialist and the Capitalist – in favour of Socialism.'
For Zhdanov and Stalin this theory was at the very heart of their justification of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist countries. If the balance of forces had been sharply altered in favour of socialism, then the independent struggle of workers in all countries for socialism was no longer needed, in fact could be downright harmful.
The very existence of the Soviet Union alone had altered things in favour of socialism and its continued existence and growth could not help but further alter the relation of forces leading in time to the automatic collapse of capitalism and the world triumph of socialism. The thing to do now was to give the Soviet Union this time to triumph by maintaining peaceful relations with the doomed remnants of tottering capitalism.
The theory played a similar role for Pablo and for his present-day theoretical followers in the United Secretariat. Under conditions of a decisive change in the world relationship of forces the 'old Trotskyism' of the Transitional Programme with its constant assertion of the absolutely critical necessity to construct the revolutionary party no longer carried as much weight. In this new reality history had shown that 'blunted instruments' could bring the working class to power at least in backward countries. As the 1963 resolution of the Reunification Congress put it:
'The weakness of the enemy in the backward countries has opened the possibility of coming to power with a blunted instrument.'
And now Hansen and Peng seem surprised that the Latin American sections of the United Secretariat wish to dissolve into Castro's OLAS movement. Surely no blunter instrument could be found.
The three-sector theory is methodologically part and parcel of the same outlook with the same objective political results. The Pabloites see the world divided into three distinct sectors, each formally separated from the other, but each of which 'interacts' on the others. This is seen as very much an external interaction with students or workers in one sector being 'inspired' by struggle in another sector, conducting solidarity campaigns and in other ways manifesting their 'sympathy' for these struggles which remain very external to them.
Most important of all, both theories obscure the real relations between capital and labour internationally and thus undercut the central importance of the struggle to construct the Fourth International in all countries. Instead of beginning first with the fundamental oppositional forces of modern society, the class struggle is dissolved into a global conflict between the forces of socialism and capitalism with the former including the workers' states with their bureaucratic leaderships and the colonial revolution with its petty-bourgeois and bourgeois national leaderships.
This global conflict is then broken into sectors, thus obliterating the essential unifying forces of capitalist relations on the one hand and the working class as an international class on the other. At the same time the material foundations of the class struggle rooted in the crisis of world capitalism are either ignored altogether or seen as only one among many factors affecting the imperialist sector of the schema.
What is required is a return to the very fundamentals of Marxist theory and its development by Lenin and Trotsky in particular. First of all we must understand that we exist in a world dominated by capitalism. Capitalism is a world system which covers almost the entire face of the globe, having an impact, as we shall see, even within those countries which have established workers' states.
The colonial world is part of the world capitalist system and can only be understood in this way. This 'sector' does not inter-relate as an autonomous unit with the advanced countries. On the contrary, the imperialist holdings and the national bourgeoisie are extensions of the world capitalist class. The working class is an extension of the world working class. The great peasant mass finds that its very conditions of existence are determined fundamentally by world capitalist market reiations.
The most fundamental turn in the world situation, the creation, if you like, of a 'new' world reality', took place around the time of the First World War when world capitalism entered the period which Trotsky called 'The Epoch of Imperialist Decay', Since 1914 world capitalism has been in a period of general decline marked by revolutionary upheavals, depressions, wars. True, Trotsky pointed out time and time again that within the general framework of decay and decline world capitalism has had a limited period of boom, growth.
It is not enough to understand the general character of the decline of capitalism. A revolutionary strategy requires a deep understanding of the ups and down and detailed development of the capitalist economy and the impact this has in unsettling class relations in one period only to produce temporary periods of stability and reformism at another point.
Did the entry of capitalism into this period of decay signify a changed relationship of forces internationally between revolution and socialism on the one hand and counter-revolution and capitalism on the other? More precisely, did the victory of the Russian Revolution signify such a changed relationship of world forces?
Trotsky answered that question in the negative not once but ten thousand times in the course of his long struggle against Stalin from 1923 to 1940. His whole struggle against the theory of socialism in one country was based on the conception that there could be no definitive change in the world relations of forces unless there was a successful revolution in an advanced capitalist country. Without such a revolution the Soviet Union would find itself fighting for its life in a world dominated by world capitalism and this objective situation would lay the basis for the growth of bureaucracy within the Soviet Union.
AIDED STABILITY
According to the Pabloite schema this relationship of forces changed in 1943, or at least definitively in 1949, with the triumph of the Chinese Revolution. Even if we take this later date, we see that while the Soviet Union now existed under conditions where workers' states formed a buffer on its eastern and western flanks, at the same time the Soviet bureaucracy was willing to pay for this buffer by helping the capitalists achieve a certain degree of stability in the rest of the world.
This political stability allowed world capitalism to go through another period of temporary growth so that while the Soviet Union's economy also advanced in this period, it emerged in the 1960s still with a greatly inferior level of productivity when compared to capitalist Europe and America. This inferiority was further intensified by the great arms burden foisted upon the workers' states by the aggressive character of world imperialism.
Thus the Soviet Union was able only to extend the perimeter of its isolation and that at the cost of deep poly-centrist processes breaking loose within the bureaucratic strata. Despite the monopoly of foreign trade, the nationalization of basic industry and the planned economy, these countries are forced to compete under conditions of a world market dominated by imperialism. Attempts at isolated autarchic economic development within the confines of Comecon are futile and reactionary for they seek to ignore rather than overcome the central problem – the relatively lower level of productivity in the workers' states when compared to Europe and America.
It is this economic situation, under conditions of deepening world capitalist crisis, which sees the objective stage for the deepening crisis of the ruling bureaucracies in the workers' states and the concurrent renewed combativity of the working class of these countries as displayed in Poland, Hungary and more recently Czechoslovakia.
DEGENERATION
The current resolution seeks to see the struggle in the Soviet countries as some independent conflict between the bureaucracy and the needs of the planned economies and the working class. What the resolution totally ignores is that this bureaucracy represents a counter-revolutionary force, a degeneration in the direction of capitalism. The contradiction between this bureaucracy and the planned economy is but an expression of the fundamental contradiction between capital and labour and can only be understood within this context. This is why the crisis in the workers' states takes place at the same time as the deepening crisis and renewed class struggle in the advanced capitalist countries.
If we approach the question of international perspectives from a Marxist point of view, then we proceed very differently from the United Secretariat resolution. We recognize that it will take a victorious proletarian revolution in at least one advanced capitalist country to alter the world balance of forces. We break through the formal schematism of the 'three sectors' theory to reveal the fundamental historic crisis of world capitalism, the fundamental class polarization on a world-wide basis between capital and labour with the crisis in the workers' states as essentially a subordinate reflection of this polarization.
With this outlook the task of building the Trotskyist party becomes absolutely central to our whole perspective – not a formal afterthought tacked on to the end of a resolution whose main thrust contradicts this demand.
If we approach the question this way we must then place our understanding of the development of the capitalist crisis at the very centre of our international strategy, see the development of the social classes within this framework, and pose our own tasks on this basis. Such an approach will reveal that the capitalist boom in the 1950s has now gone over into a fundamentally economic crisis requiring the ruling class to intensify its class struggle against workers in all countries. This, in turn, places the working class in a new position where it is required to fight back, but its own objective needs, its own desire to fight, comes into conflict with the conservative reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the working class. Thus the central strategy of the Transitional Programme, which saw the crisis of humanity as a crisis of leadership, and the solution to this crisis coming only through the struggle to construct the Fourth International, is our central strategy today.
While the very centre of the crisis is in the imperialist countries this crisis must have the profoundest impact in the underdeveloped and Stalinist countries. This crisis of European capital places the weaker colonial capital in an absolute and profound crisis. This in turn leads to the creation of the objective conditions for the renewal of working-class struggle in these areas: Curacao, Argentina, Pakistan, West Bengal.
Precisely at the point, where the workers' states reach a level of economic development which requires of them greater integration into the world market if the economies are to move forward, the world market is marked by the fiercest international competition since the 1920s. The ruling bureaucracies are forced to discipline their own working class in a futile attempt to raise the level of productivity to a point where competition is possible, thus intensifying the conflict between the working class and these bureaucracies.
The deeper we get into the resolution the clearer it becomes that the Pabloites have no understanding whatsoever of the real movement of world forces and the role Trotskyists must play in this period; The very structure of the resolution reveals this. It begins, as we have noted, with a brief description of the three 'sectors' of the revolution under conditions of a favourable global balance of forces. It then launches into a description of the 'new relationship' which for some mystical reason has emerged in this period between these sectors.
The shift in the 'centre of gravity' to the advanced countries is laid primatily at the door of the Vietnam War. One would be forced to conclude from this that if the imperialists succeeded in getting themselves out of this war then the whole struggle in the advanced countries would be finished.
Then we are treated to a brief description of the May-June events in France. Then, only after a description of May-June, do we get to an economic analysis of the 'end of the long imperialist boom' as if this phenomenon had no causal relationship to May-June. Then comes a section of the crisis in the workers' states, the 'problems of the resurgent colonial revolution', 'the crisis of the traditional workers' movement and the appearance of a new youth vanguard in the imperialist countries' and finally 'the construction of a new revolutionary leadership'.
Thus the very structure of the resolution itself reflects its method. It has no central thrust, as the authors are incapable of comprehending the centrality of the capitalist crisis and the tasks which flow from this understanding. We have only a collection of impressions of various sectors of the world, disjointed, commentaryish and the central strategy of constructing the Fourth International becomes liquidated and broken up by this very impressionism.
When we turn to the specific analysis of each 'sector' the confusion and liquidationism will become even clearer. First is the question of the colonial revolution. We are informed that:
'After the victory of the Cuban revolution, the colonial revolution unquestionably marked time. For ten years, no new workers' state has been established.' And further: 'In fact, starting early in the sixties the colonial revolution suffered a series of spectacular reverses.'
In this way the Pabloites admit that their whole assessment in earlier resolutions of the forward sweep of revolution in this 'epicentre' came to nought. Obviously what is required at this point is a serious assessment of the reasons for the complete failure of any of their predictions to come true.
This is particularly the case when we realize that the Pabloites denied in their earlier resolution that the 'subjective factor', the question of leadership of the revolution, should be given any great weight. The lesson they learned from Cuba was that 'the weakness of the enemy in the backward countries has opened up the possibility of coming to power with a blunted instrument'. The political landscape of the colonial countries has been virtually cluttered with blunted instruments, some in power, some not in power. Certainly the failure of new Cubas to develop was not due to some lack of 'blunt instruments'.
The resolution offers two explanations for this state of affairs. First, 'the capacity to lead the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses – though strictly limited for well-known historical reasons – which the colonial bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois nationalist governments had for a certain period came to an end'.
Thus it is asserted that, contrary to Lenin and Trotsky, the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie did have a 'strictly limited' capacity to lead the anti-imperialist struggle but it no longer has such a capacity. There is no attempt to explain seriously what the limits were on this capacity and why today it no longer has this capacity, In effect all we have here is impressions – in the early 1960s it seemed as if these 'blunted instruments' could accomplish the task and by now it seems as if they cannot.
The second explanation is essentially that the enemy is no longer as 'weak' as it once seemed. Great credit is given to American counter-insurgency efforts and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities in defeating guerrillas and dumping the Sukarnos, the Nkrumahs and the like. Did the Pabloites expect the American imperialists to stand idly by and not use their great economic and military might to maintain as best they could the political status quo in the colonial world?
To attribute the failure of revolution to the strength of the enemy is just as incorrect as to see victory assured because of the weakness of the enemy. In both cases there is a complete under-estimation of the critical role of leadership and programme necessary for mobilizing the strength of the working class and the support of the peasantry against the very real power of imperialism as a world system.
BANKRUPT
The truth of the matter is that the position taken by the United Secretariat on the colonial question – so central in their eyes to their reunification – has been proven by historical events to be absolutely and completely bankrupt. We can see this most clearly in the case of Algeria, mentioned by Peng Shu-tse in his discussion article.
The June 1962 Plenum of the Socialist Workers' Party passed a resolution answering the criticisms of the Socialist Labour League and ourselves, entitled 'Problems of the Fourth International – and the Next Steps'. Discussing the position taken by the SLL on Cuba and Algeria, the resolution makes the following judgement:
'The disorientation displayed by the SLL in regard to these two revolutions flows from their wrong method of approach to the fundamental processes at work. The root cause of the errors in both cases is the same: a loss of Marxist objectivity, disregard and depreciation of all other factors in the situation but the character of the official leadership. The subjective method of analysis results in over-simplified and sectarian conclusions.'
What was the position taken on Algeria by the SWP and United Secretariat on the one hand and the SLL on the other? The dispute centred first of all on how to interpret the Evian Agreements which ended the Algerian war and established the independent Ben Bella government. The resolution in question assesses the Agreements as follows:
'For more than seven years the Algerian rebels had to strain every resource to win national liberation from French rule. Now they have signed a cease-fire which, for all its shortcomings, substantially realizes this wholly progressive aim.'
While the SLL stated:
'This settlement is the most cynical deal which a nationalist leadership has ever made with a colonial power.'
DOMINANCE
The Evian Agreements granted formal independence to Algeria – in fact specifically placed the FLN in power as the government – and in return maintained basic economic dominance over the country particularly as regards the critically important Sahara oil and gas reserves. To the SWP and the United Secretariat, these compromises did not matter, nor did the 'subjective' factor of the bourgeois character of the leadership. The objective situation – the new world reality with its onward sweep of colonial revolution – would quickly force Ben Bella along the road to socialist revolution. In order to egg Ben Bella along this road Michel Pablo joined the Ben Bella capitalist government.
But history was to tragically illustrate once again the decisive role of revolutionary leadership and programme. Trapped by the provisions of the Evian Agreements, limited by his own social base, Ben Bella was forced to turn on the trade union movement of Algeria, make economic concession after economic concession to French imperialism, and so demoralize the mass of the Algerians that Boumedienne was able to remove him in a military coup without the Algerian masses putting up any fight at all.
The assessment of the SLL proved to be totally correct and that of the Pabloites disastrously wrong. The theoretical position of the SLL, which saw and sees the essential crisis today as a crisis of leadership of the working class, was fully confirmed and the theory of 'blunted instruments' invalidated. These are the 'facts', Messrs. Hansen and company, of the Algerian experience.
It is not correct to place the blame for the failures in the colonial sphere at the door of these petty-bourgeois and bourgeois nationalists alone. As Peng correctly points out, the United Secretariat must bear its direct responsibility for supporting these forces and refusing to struggle to build a working-class alternative.
What real assessment and change in orientation does the current resolution offer? We are told that the 'colonial revolution had reached the point where it could go no further unless it made the transition into a socialist revolution – and for that the subjective factor was lacking'. Good, six years too late, but better late than never. Then we turn to the section 'Problems of the Resurgent Colonial Revolution' to see what the resolution proposes as the solution to this subjective leadership need.
Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla warfare and more guerrilla warfare. The entire section is permeated with the Castroite perspective of the resolution on Latin America discussed earlier.
In the midst of all this guerrilla business, applied not only to Latin America, but also to Asia and Africa, appear two sentences – no doubt inserted at the insistence of Hansen:
'Still lacking is a revolutionary Marxist appreciation of the need for a transitional programme for the city masses in order to set these explosive forces in motion through their own inherent needs. Likewise lacking as yet is a revolutionary Marxist appreciation of the role which a party of the calibre of the Bolsheviks could play in bringing the struggle to a successful conclusion at the earliest possible moment.'
Even if we leave aside the important point that the need for this party is seen as not an absolute necessity but because it would allow victory earlier than by other means, the statement sticks out like a sore thumb among the guerrillas. The point is, it is not simply the Castroites who lack this 'revolutionary Marxist appreciation', but the overwhelming majority of the adherents of the United Secretariat.
ONLY "TENDENCY"
When we turn to the treatment of the Stalinist countries we are particularly struck, in fact stunned, by one theme running through the whole section. The section is written from a theoretical position that Stalinism no longer exists in these states – or to the extent that if it does exist it is nothing more than a 'tendency' competing with other non-Stalinist tendencies within the leadership of these countries.
Thus we see mentions of a past 'Stalinist era'; we are told that part of the crisis in these countries is 'the bureaucracy's inability to develop a consistent ideological line to take the place of the Stalinist doctrine' and the 'embryonic new vanguard' is warned not to be forced to make a choice between the new technocratic section of the bureaucracy and a 'return to Stalinism'.
If we place these formulations within the context of the position taken by the United Secretariat on Czechoslovakia (not discussed in this resolution), it becomes clear this is no matter of terminology alone. The United Secretariat openly supported Dubcek against the Soviet Union. Our position was one of opposition to the Soviet intervention, but refusal to give any political support whatsoever to the Dubcek section of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Czechoslovakia. Instead we relied on the independent struggle of the working class of Czechoslovakia and called for the creation of a section of the Fourth International to take this struggle forward to the political revolution. We gave critical support to Dubcek only insofar as he resisted the Soviet invasion.
TRANSFORMED
Clearly the United Secretariat no longer views Stalinism scientifically as the ideology and practice of a bureaucratic caste which rules in these countries. Instead it has become transformed into a tendency within that bureaucracy and the ideology identified with the particular programme of that tendency. The purpose of such formulations is to free the United Secretariat from an independent struggle against the bureaucracy as a whole so that the political revolution can be dropped in favour of support for a section (the 'non-Stalinist' section), of the bureaucracy against another section of the bureaucracy.
What is this but another variation on the theme of the self-reform of the bureaucracy which lay at the roots of the political disputes which led to the split in the Fourth International in 1952-1953?
Once again we can see the theoretical and methodological continuity between Pablo's positions of 1950-1953 and the political positions expressed in this resolution. We say that Stalin the man has gone but Stalinism remains in the material form of a bureaucratic caste and in the ideology of this caste. We say that Pablo, the man, has gone, but Pabloism remains as the theory and method of the United Secretariat.
Now we must turn to the analysis of the document on the crisis in the advanced countries and the strategy and tactical tasks flowing from an understanding of that crisis. The section 'The End of the Long Imperialist Boom' makes for the first time a serious assessment of the capitalist crisis. But in the middle of the analysis the document makes an important exception:
'Doubtless, American imperialism still commands sufficient reserves and resources, to continue using Keynesian techniques in the United States for some time without mounting a direct assault on the living standards of the American working class.'
GREAT FAITH
The authors of the resolution have, typically, greater faith in the 'reserves and resources' of American imperialism than does Nixon, and the finance capital which rules through Nixon.
All the spokesmen of the Administration and the banks have repeated time and again that Keynesianism is out, bankrupt, worthless in dealing with the crisis now facing American capitalism. Thus, while American capitalism is forced to throw as much of the cost of its crisis on to Europe as possible, it must at the same time launch an attack on American workers. This has already affected the living standards of American workers who are experiencing, for the first time since before the Second World War, an actual fall in their real wages. At the same time Nixon is planning new attacks on the working class through the conscious introduction of recession and unemployment.
The world crisis has destroyed, among other things, John Maynard Keynes. He lives on only in the minds of the authors of this resolution as an expression of their childlike faith in American capitalism. Even 'facts' only slowly break down such faith.
But an even more important point is the nature of the strategy the United Secretariat develops even from its inadequate assessment of the capitalist crisis. Here impressionism enters once again in a new form: the 'appearance of a new youth vanguard'. It is clear from the last two sections of the perspectives resolution and the accompanying resolution – 'The Worldwide Radicalization of the Youth and the Tasks of the Fourth International' – that the new epicentre within all other epicentres is the student movement. Thus, as we noted in our first article, Hansen's alternative to rural guerrilla warfare is an orientation towards the urban student movement in Latin America. Everywhere, but especially in the advanced countries, the United Secretariat is looking towards these students.
SECTARIAN
This immediately poses the question of the relationship between the radicalization of the students and the struggles of the working class, something of which the United Secretariat has finally taken note. Here two important positions emerge. First, and most importantly, caught up in their impressionism and some numerical gains among the students, the resolution adopts a sectarian and completely bankrupt policy towards the existing leaderships of the working class – reformist and Stalinist.
There is talk of the 'new enfeebling of the traditional workers' organizations', the 'weakening of the CP's grip on the worker youth in France and Italy', etc. The United Secretariat's sections are seen as 'being borne along and propelled by popular currents'. And finally:
'The new relationship arising among the three sectors of the world revolution guarantees that the question of the International will be divorced from the polarization around the Soviet Union which has been in effect ever since October '1917. Although this polarization was beneficial when the Soviet Union was led by Lenin and Trotsky, it has pernicious effects long after Kremlin policy came into direct opposition to the expansion of the world revolution.'
What this all adds up to is that the Pabloites 'being borne along and propelled by popular currents' among the student youth, with the 'new enfeebling' of the reformist and Stalinist (they no longer even use this term) organizations, with polarization no longer centred around the Soviet Union, have a perspective of simply sweeping by these traditional organizations directly into power.
If we look at the assessment made of May-June in the resolution ('The World Radicalization of Youth and the Tasks of the Fourth International'), the perspective put forward for future struggles in France, and the actual practice of the Pabloites in the recent Krivine Presidential candidacy, we will see exactly what these people are driving at.
After correctly attacking the Communist Party and the CGT leadership for selling out the May-June Revolution, the resolution ignores the central lesson of this – the CP was able to get away with it.
This in itself illustrated that 'enfeebled' or not; the Communist Party remains a powerful force in the French working-class movement which can play a decisively counterrevolutionary role in future developments unless it is confronted and its power in the French working class destroyed.
"DUAL POWER"
The only concrete proposal made by the resolution for future struggles in France is that 'dual-power' organizations must be strengthened. In other words the Pabloites propose to somehow organize workers in France independently of the CP and in this fashion skirt around the very great power the Communist Party has in the French working class.
The complete absence of any strategy to deal with this question of the Communist Party is revealed in the Krivine candidacy in the recent elections following the 'no' vote and the resignation of de Gaulle. After first abstaining in the 'no' vote, the Pabloites in France organized an election campaign aimed at expressing the student movement developed a year ago in May-June.
Thus they ignored the central task posed after the resignation of de Gaulle – the development of a strategy aimed at breaking the Communist Party rank and file from its Stalinist leadership. This required first a 'no' in the referendum, as the workers understood it, then a call to vote for Duclos, posing to the Communist Party a socialist programme as an alternative to Gaullism and capitalism. This would have begun the process of exposing the Communist Party before the mass of French workers who still look to this party for leadership in their struggles against the capitalists.
VITAL TASK
The very centre of our strategy, we repeat, must be overcoming the crisis of leadership under conditions of deepening capitalist crisis and renewed desire to struggle on the part of the working class. This requires not only our own independent struggle for the strategy of the Transitional Programme, but a tactical approach aimed at the very difficult but vital task of breaking the mass of the working class from its traditional reformist and Stalinist parties.
This cannot be done from outside through the student movement alone. While the students in May-June evinced a certain independence from the Stalinists, and sections of workers proceeded to struggle beyond the limits set by the Communist Party, in the end the Stalinists were able to contain and defeat the revolution. The Pabloites contributed to this defeat by confining their activities to the 'popular currents' among the students and allowing themselves to be 'borne along and propelled' by these currents. The real task was to confront these currents with the real need to direct the whole struggle around the question of power and the Communist Party and to break in the process from all the Cohn-Bendits and other anarchistic 'popular' currents.
We have no doubt that in time the Pabloites will turn their attention once again to these traditional organizations, finding empirically that they cannot be by-passed by flowing along with the students. At this point, rather than developing an independent orientation directed towards the rank and file and directly linked to the struggle to build the Trotskyist party, they will, as they presently are doing in relation to the Stalinist bureaucracy in the workers' states, seek 'points of support' among the factions of the leaderships of these movements. Consistent with Pabloism at each stage of its development is a rejection of independent working-class struggle and the independent construction of the revolutionary party. This is the essence of liquidationism.
The second aspect of this orientation is what they call 'the strategy of the red university'. They formulate a series of demands which start from the perspective of student power and propose to carry this perspective forward to the creation of a working-class university to serve the political and
[text missing in the original]
It is, of course, noted that the creation of such a university is impossible under capitalism. All the better, states the resolution, for in the process of struggle the students will realize this and discover they must join with the working class and overthrow capitalism so that they can have a red university and the workers' red factories. Utilizing this logic we can envisage a situation where a group of hippies decide to retire to a farm in Pennsylvania and create on this an ideal communist state. Our authors would then be forced to support this effort, understanding that in the course of their efforts the hippies would be forced to the realization that in order to establish their commune they will have to join with the working class and overthrow capitalism.
What is required on the university campuses is a head-on confrontation with the 'popular current' of student power and particularly the Utopian notion of a 'red university'. We must counterpose to this the whole strategic programme of the working class which encompassed demands in defence of the students against police attack and against economic blows aimed at them as the crisis deepens.
"SECTOR" METHOD
Once again we have here another expression of the 'sector' method. In the Pabloite perspective, workers are to fight in their independent sector and the students in theirs and each will be somehow inter-related.
The only uniting force between international sectors or these sectors of struggle within a country is the revolutionary party and its programme. The students join the working class through joining and subordinating themselves to the revolutionary party. This party fights for a single programme in all fields of struggle not for separate programmes and demands in each isolated sector. It is this single programme which unites the class nationally and internationally against capitalism and rallies to the working class the viable sections of the middle class and intelligentsia.
By dissolving the revolutionary party into the 'popular currents' of the students, the Pabloites only deepen the divisions between students and workers and within the working class and leave the leadership of the working class to the 'enfeebled' traditional parties.
In conclusion we must return to the question of method. In the resolution of 1962 'The Problems of the Fourth International – and the Next Steps' and the 1963 article by Joseph Hansen 'Cuba – The Acid Test' the central method which is reflected in this current resolution is clearly stated.
'It is a fact,' the SWP stated in 1962, 'that the main arena and most dynamic sector of the world revolution is today located in the underdeveloped countries where imperialism and capitalism are breaking at their weakest links.'
But what, according to dialectics, is a 'fact'? It is not a permanent fixture, but rather a temporary unity of oppositional forces which will soon emerge as a new and different fact. And so the 'fact' of the colonial revolution being the main arena and most dynamic sector of the world revolution soon became the fact of the fall of Ben Bella, Nkrumah, Sukarno – the fact noted in the current resolution:
'Starting early in the sixties the colonial revolution suffered a series of spectacular reverses.'
UNDERSTANDING
To note the new facts represents no greater step towards a Marxist understanding than the noting of the old facts.
What is required is an understanding of the underlying contradictory developments which lead to the changes in appearance – which lead one fact to be replaced by another fact. This requires first and foremost a study of the objective development of the contradictions and on this materialist basis the projection of a course of independent struggle aimed at destroying all the existing facts of capitalist relations and replacing them with the qualitatively new facts of socialist relations.
Now we turn to 'Cuba – the Acid Test' and find Hansen lecturing us once again on facts:
'But no revolutionary socialists "choose" what shall be regarded as the touchstone of revolutionary politics. This is done by much bigger forces; namely classes in conflict. Cuba and Algeria happen to be the two areas in the world where this conflict has reached revolutionary proportions at the moment. This was not determined by any decision of ours. It was determined by revolutionary mass actions. Nor did we choose the current leaderships of the colonial revolution. They are the result of objective conditions of vast sweep. What we did was to study the facts and in these facts seek openings for effective application of our programme.'
Here is empiricism in a nutshell.
Of course revolutionists cannot choose by a subjective act where or even if a revolutionary explosion will or should break out. But Marxism is a science. A serious understanding of the objective laws of capitalist development allows one to predict in general outline the way in which the revolutionary crisis will develop. Thus as early as 1961 we were able to see development of a European crisis, a renewed struggle of the working class in the advanced countries, and a new May-June. Of course, we could neither predict that May-June would take place in France and not England or Italy, nor the exact date it would erupt. But we were able to understand that the key to the development of the Fourth International did not lie with the colonial revolution nor with its petty-bourgeois leadership but in a turn towards the industrial workers in the advanced countries and a real fight among them for the Transitional Programme and the revolutionary party.
NOT SURPRISED
Also we were not surprised when the fact of Ben Bella in power moving leftward was transformed into the fact of Ben Bella out of power and the rightward movement of the Boumedienne regime. This could not but be the case with the growing crisis of international capital and the economic squeeze this necessitated on the vulnerable and weak petty-bourgeois strata of the underdeveloped countries. We are not even hypnotized by the fact of the growth of rightist regimes in colonial areas for we understand that the very same objective conditions which spell the doom of the pseudo-revolutionary nationalists also create new conditions for struggle of the proletariat and the peasantry in the colonial countries. Hence the resurgence of the struggle in recent months in the colonial areas in new and different forms, with the proletariat in the forefront.
Of course we do not 'choose the current leaderships of the colonial revolution', but neither do we accept these facts as unalterable. But this is exactly what Hansen does. He advises that we accept these facts of the existing leaderships and 'in these facts seek openings for effective application of our programme'.
Here we have the heart of the whole liquidationism of Pabloism under the differing sets of facts it has faced since 1950. The Pabloites study the existing situation and then choose openings within the existing leaderships of the working class, colonial peoples and Stalinist countries. We, on the other hand, recognize the fact of the traditional leaderships as subject to change – not automatic change – but change through our own conscious struggle.
The existing workers' movement is a unity of opposites' – the leadership reflecting essentially the interests of the capitalists and the working class seeking to fight back against capitalist attacks. At the moment there is a relative identity between the two and this identity cannot be destroyed except through the intervention of the conscious factor – our struggle to pit the working class against the leadership and in the course of this struggle build the parties of the Fourth International as the alternative.
The breaking of the unity between the opposition forces of the rank-and-file workers and capital reflected through the leadership and its ideology is a necessary part of breaking the capitalist system itself which is a contradictory unity between capital and labour. Only this will create a new world reality – a world socialist society.
On January 2, 1961, the Socialist Labour League directed a letter to the National Committee of the Socialist Workers' Party in the United States (SWP). Referring to the Open Letter issued by the SWP in 1953, which led to the formation of the International Committee (IC), and assessing the political evolution of the Pabloites since that date, it proposed a discussion within the IC on the question of Pabloism. There was no ambiguity on where the SLL stood on this question: 'It is time to draw to a close the period in which Pabloite revisionism was regarded as a trend within Trotskyism'.
But the SWP leadership had already made a decision to proceed forthwith with re-unification with what was then called the International Secretariat. This was to be carried through politically on the basis of the common position the SWP and the Pabloites were taking on the class nature of the Cuban state and a number of related developments particularly in the colonial world.
In fact, central to the SWP's conception of re-unification was that Pabloism and the 1953 split were under no condition to be discussed either among the International Committee supporters or with the Pabloites.
For instance Hansen notes in his 'Report on the World Congress', that at the Re-unification Congress we reached an agreement to leave the assessment of the differences of 1953 to a time in the future when we could discuss them in an educational way – without any heat.'
For a period of two and a half years, from January 1961 to re-unification in the summer of 1963, the Socialist Labour League and ourselves sought to hold a discussion on the question of Pabloism, the political meaning of the 1953 split, and the evolution of the political formations since that date. We did not object to discussions with the Pabloites, and in fact it was the SLL which proposed a parity committee precisely to discuss questions in dispute. We were not even opposed to a reunification of forces in principle as long as it was a principled reunification.
We made absolutely clear our own assessment that reunification must take place on the basis of the Transitional Programme and that there must be an understanding that Pabloism as a political tendency is a fundamental revision of all the basic tenets of Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism. We stood by the assessment of the 1953 Open Letter:
'To sum up: The lines of cleavage between Pablo's revisionism and orthodox Trotskyism are so deep that no compromise is possible either politically or organizationally.' Unification yes, but only on the principled basis of a complete break with revisionism.
DIFFERENCES
The SWP succeeded in holding off any serious discussion of the question of 1953 and everything that flowed from this at the 1963 Re-unification Congress and at the 1965 congress.
'Now the present congress,' Hansen notes, 'was different. We had some differences.' In fact all the questions submerged for the opportunist purpose of unification have reasserted themselves in a number of forms each in its own way pushing the forces of the United Secretariat towards the very discussion we proposed in 1961-1963.
We have already noted the theoretical and methodological continuity of the cover resolution, which everyone at the recent Pabloite congress supports, 'The New Rise of the World Revolution' with the essential revisions of Trotskyism instituted in 1950-1953 by Pablo. But this continuity has re-asserted itself in other ways.
One example is the 'Draft Resolution On Our Tactics In Europe'. This resolution proposed a turn from the deep entrism practices of the European Pabloites in the whole period from 1950, when Pablo proposed it, to the last year or so. But it also contained a positive evaluation of this entrism. This, of course, raised a question which played a critical role in the 1953 split – Pablo's whole liquidationist proposal to dissolve our movement into the Stalinists which was taken up by the Cochran-Clarke opposition inside the SWP and used to justify their own desertion of the party. The document has been held over for further discussion but discussion will have to take place.
Then there is the question of China. Hansen explains how this question was handled in 1963:
'The other thing was that in 1963, certain differences on the question of China had to be considered. We had reached agreement on all other major questions in the world as we saw them at that time, with the exception of China. . . . They did not believe in the necessity of a political revolution. That was the key point, so we had some discussion on that question, and we reached agreement that what we would do was use a formula that included the substance of calling for a political revolution in China, but without naming it as such. That was the agreement that we reached in 1963.'
Faced with a fundamental difference on the key question of reform or revolution in China – the very question that was at the centre of the dispute in 1953 as it effected Stalinism as a whole – the whole matter was swept under the rug as a 'terminological' affair. All agreed not to use the term 'political revolution', but somehow its content would get through.
Then we come to the current conference and what was under the rug comes out flying all over the room. The SWP agrees to draft a resolution for the conference on the Cultural Revolution. This is sent to Europe where the European leadership 'edits' it. The editing consisted of such matters, as Hansen reports, of changing 'Stalinized Chinese Communist Party' to simply 'Chinese Communist Party'. In the interim the terminological difference of 1963 was cleared up for, as Hansen notes, 'Mao had come out for a political revolution in China'. But the difference in line which so obviously underlay the terminology of 1963 erupted in this form of 'editing'.
At this point the Europeans introduce the edited SWP resolution as the majority resolution and the SWP supporters counterpose the unedited edition as the minority report. But the question was not so simple as that. Peng Shu-tse enters the dispute with another minority report proposing that the United Secretariat intervene on the side of restorationist Liu Shao-chi. Then in walks 'Comrade Capa of Argentina, who was also for an active policy of intervention in China, but he tended to be for intervention on the side of Mao'. As if things weren't confused enough Ernest Germain proposes to muddy the waters even further stating: 'that the area of agreement between the two documents was much more fundamental than the disagreements; that actually the two documents were almost the same so far as the points of agreement were concerned'.
No wonder one delegate described the discussion as a 'marital dispute between the Europeans and the Americans'. In fact the whole congress was marked by such marital disputes which reflected unclarity as to the causes of the original divorce proceedings.
At the very centre of this dispute was the impact upon the United Secretariat of the bureaucratic fissures within the Stalinist camp. One side tended to move towards Mao and another side towards the Kremlin variety of Stalinism. This in itself is another manifestation of the inability of the United Secretariat to start from the independent perspective of the working class in its struggle against both capitalism and Stalinism and develop a strategy on this basis. But this, in turn, demands a return to an understanding of the original 1953 split.
The spectre of 1953 haunted the proceedings of the congress in an even more fundamental way. The theoretical positions formulated by Pablo in 1950 took organizational forms by 1953 leading to the expulsion of the majority of the French section of the Fourth International, the emergence of the Lawrence faction within the British section which split, only to dissolve into the Communist Party, and the Cochran-Clarke faction within the SWP which utilized the new world reality theses and the entrism 'sui generis' as a cover for a split from the SWP and liquidationism. Now a new liquidationist tendency has grown up around Guevarism in Europe and Latin America. It has found an expression within the SWP through liquidationist tendencies among the youth of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) – most particularly in the form of black members leaving the YSA for the Black Panthers.
The unmentioned question which lies behind the whole struggle of the SWP at this conference is: 'Are we headed for another 1953? Will it be necessary to issue another Open Letter to protect the SWP from a new form of Cochranism within its ranks? Will we be forced back into a discussion on 1953 in the course of this struggle?'.
OPTIMISTIC
Hansen states near the end of his report on the congress: 'But it could turn out that the discussion on China and on the question of guerrilla warfare as it develops, the question of party building as it is associated with the problem of entryism; that all of this could turn out to be one of the richest and most educational discussions that the Fourth International and the world Trotskyist movement has had up to this point. That remains to be seen. My feeling is rather optimistic'.
He is optimistic but not totally convinced this is the way things will work out. It 'could' turn out that way but 'that remains to be seen'.
The spectre of 1953 haunts the SWP leadership today. It cannot be erased from their minds. There is the grave danger of history repeating itself, but in a far more disastrous way, for history is never an exact replica of the past. Today the International Committee exists independently of the Pabloites and the SWP. It is growing in strength and theoretical clarity. For the first time in history a Trotskyist daily paper is about to be launched in England. This cannot be ignored. It is an empirical fact – a fact brought into existence precisely through a principled struggle against Pabloite revisionism and pragmatism. The question of 1953 cannot be raised without raising at the same time the principled struggle of the International Committee based on the programme and method of the Transitional Programme.
There are certain central lessons of the 1953 split which must be assimilated by revolutionists today. The origins of the 1953 split must be traced back to the role of the SWP in the Fourth International since the death of Trotsky.
With the passing of the Voorhis Act in 1940 the SWP was barred from membership in the Fourth International by law. Ever since that time the SWP has not been able to be an affiliate of the Fourth International. So today its relationship to the United Secretariat is one of political solidarity just as the Workers' League stands in political solidarity with the International Committee. But this in no sense lessened the political role of the SWP as politically part of the Fourth International. The SWP has always played a very critical role in the development of the Fourth International – in its strength and in its weaknesses. It is with this understanding that we approach this question.
The SWP emerged after Trotsky's death as politically the leading party of the Fourth International. It was the one party with serious experience in the class struggle, in the construction of a serious movement, and a party which had the benefit of the closest political collaboration with Trotsky, particularly in the years from 1937-1940. Therefore the main responsibility for the leadership of the Fourth International fell to the SWP. But it was precisely this responsibility which the SWP has refused to accept.
Hansen expressed this very clearly in his above quoted 'Report on World Congress':
'One of the things we have always held to – very consciously – was not to assume leadership of the International. We viewed our position, and our role, and our function, even though we were the most powerful sector of the movement for many years, as that of offering support – helping and supporting the key leaders but not substituting for them and not trying to assume leadership. '
With this conception, as soon as the war was over, the SWP gratefully foisted the responsibility of leadership of the world movement on to a group of Europeans – most notably Pablo, Germam and Frank.
This is how Cannon, describes the situation in his 'Internationalism and the SWP', a report to the majority caucus during the Cochran fight:
'Our relations with the leadership in Europe at that time were relations of closest collaboration and support. There was general agreement between us. These were unknown men in our party. Nobody ever heard of them. We helped to publicize the individual leaders, we commended them to our party members, and helped build up their prestige.'
And so the SWP turned over responsibility for international leadership to these inexperienced and 'unknown men' and happily proceeded to concern itself primarily with American affairs. Of course the support the SWP offered was material, real, highly important. Its collaboration was of critical importance in the development of many of the sections – particularly the British. But this was not the same thing as leadership.
This refusal to assume leadership flowed from the very conception of internationalism developed by Cannon and the SWP. This is the way Cannon states it in this same speech:
'We don't consider ourselves to be an American branch office of an international business firm that receives orders from the boss. That's not for us. That's what we got in the Comintern. That's what we wouldn't take. And that's why we got thrown out. We conceive of internationalism as international collaboration, in the process of which we get the benefit of the opinions of international comrades, and they get the benefit of ours; and by comradely discussion and collaboration we work out if possible, a common line.'
The same essential position was reiterated in the 1962 SWP resolution 'The Problems of the Fourth International – and the Next Steps':
'In our opinion internationalism is essentially a process of comradely discussion and collaboration in which the constituent sections of the world movement exchange views and jointly work out, if possible, common positions on the most vital problems of world politics.'
With such a perspective the question of leadership of the world movement loses its vital importance. Each party carries out its own tasks as it sees fit, collaborates with other parties on its own terms, and 'if possible' works out a joint line for the international movement. The national party emerges as the central thing, the international merely a clearing house for collaboration, a source for nice manifestos.
This conception of internationalism has as little in common with that of Lenin and Trotsky as do Stalin's dictatorial policies of transforming the Communist International into a docile adjunct of the Soviet Union's Foreign Office. For Cannon, as he does throughout this speech to the majority caucus, to equate the Comintern of Lenin and Trotsky with that of Stalin under the general heading 'Cominternism' is revealing in itself.
INTERNATIONAL
Lenin's and Trotsky's conception of internationalism flowed first of all from Marx's understanding of the international character of capitalist relations. It is this which creates the working class as an international entity which must develop an international programme and strategy in order to carry forward the revolution in any particular country. The international party is but the necessary organizational expression of this international programme and strategy. To see this international party as but a collection of individual national organizations which collaborate where possible and work out common positions where possible is a reflection of a view which sees the working class in national and not international terms.
The development of the national party with serious roots within the working class of a particular country is possible only if that party starts at all times from the international party, from its programme and strategy and takes as its major responsibility the development of that programme and strategy. Such a party must, of course, develop that strategy under the particular historical and economic conditions prevalent in the particular country, but this is only possible if the party begins first of all with the international perspective and actually deepens that international perspective through the process of concretizing it, within the particular country. So it was with Lenin and the Bolshevik party. But not with Cannon and the SWP.
And so the SWP placed the international movement in 'unknown hands', offered its support, printed the manifestos, but carried out its work within the United States with its own pragmatic methods and moods. Thus in 1947 Cannon developed his famous 'Theses on the American Revolution'. Reacting to the post-war strike wave, he projected a coming American revolution, despite the fact that world capitalism was entering a new and sustained period of economic boom.
He noted the effects of this new turn in Europe, but maintained that despite the impossibility of revolution in Europe at that time, the American revolution could proceed on its own. This was a form of reverse American exceptionalism which reflected that Cannon had learned nothing from Trotsky on the inter-relationship of the American and European revolutionary developments. The result was the party was completely unprepared for the McCarthy era and as a result the Cochran faction was able to utilize this demoralization arid disorientation to carry out its liquidationist aims.
In 1950, when Pablo's revisionism had become so blatant as to raise serious questions in the minds of the SWP leadership and ranks, the SWP leadership consciously pulled back from any real confrontation with Pablo, hoping to avoid as long as possible a struggle which would require the SWP to assume international leadership. Again we refer to Cannon's speech of 1953:
'When Pablo wrote his article about "centuries of degenerated workers' states," we again had the most violent disagreement. We said, "'What in the world is he talking about – 'centuries of degenerated workers' states'?" In a world where capitalism is collapsing, and revolution is on the order of the day and revolution is going to be victorious – is it going to take centuries to liquidate the bureaucratic excrescences?'
'I told Comrade Stein that I was going to have to write against that, that I didn't believe in that at all. But he said, "If you write against that you will strike at Pablo's prestige and you will make his position impossible. If it appears in the International that Cannon is attacking Pablo, the whole alliance will appear to be broken. The thing is so fragile that you just can't do that".'
And so they didn't. They avoided the political struggle, avoided the responsibilities for leadership such a struggle would entail, and built Pablo's prestige for three more years.
By 1952 Pablo was utilizing this prestige in a knock-down fight within the French section seeking to get it to liquidate 'sui generis' into the Stalinist movement seeing this movement being transformed under conditions of 'war-revolution' into a revolutionary force. He finally carried out his political line with an organizational move and expelled the majority of the French section.
The French comrades sent an appeal to Cannon and this is how Cannon explained his reaction:
'As the situation developed further, Renard, one of the French majority, appealed to me in a letter. I didn't answer him for months. I didn't see how I could write on the French question without referring to this organizational monstrosity that had been committed by the IS. I finally wrote my answer to him out of purely political considerations, and didn't mention the organizational violation at all. He had raised it in the letter, and I think that's the first time I ever answered a political letter and just pretended I hadn't read certain sections – those sections where he complained about the organizational violations.'
So Pablo's prestige was preserved for a little while longer, even at the cost of what was close to the destruction of our section in France.
Meanwhile a raging faction fight broke out within the SWP led by Cochran and Clarke. They based themselves on the liquidationist positions taken by the Third World Congress (1951). Cannon and the majority answered them by claiming that the decisions of the Third Congress did not apply to the United States as there did not exist any mass Stalinist or social-democratic party in this country. Liquidationism was all right for Europe but it was not to be imported into the United States.
SITUATION TURNS
Cannon's speech to the Majority Caucus on May 18, 1953, marked a turn in the situation.
'We have heard,' states the very first sentence, 'that the Cochranites are claiming in the party that they have the support of what they call "the international movement".' And the speech concludes: 'We hope to have the sympathy and support of the whole international movement. But if we don't have the sympathy and support of one individual here or there, or one group or another, that doesn't mean we will give up our opinions and quit the fight. Not for one moment. That only means that the fight in the SWP becomes transferred to the international field. Then we take the field, and look for allies to fight on our side against anyone foolish enough to fight on the side of Cochran.'
But still Cannon did his best to hold off an international struggle.
'We hope to avoid such a fight. We are not looking for it. We have no tangible evidence to prove that there is any conspiracy against us, or any actions against us, on the international field. But if a fight should come, we will be prepared for it. That is the way we size this thing up.'
But there was a conspiracy, if one wishes to call it that. Pablo lined up with Cochran. And so the unavoidable international fight was on•-•and it was a quicky. In November 1953 the SWP printed its 'Open Letter' to Trotskyists throughout the world proclaiming a complete and uncompromising break with Pabloism and urging all Trotskyists to join with it in this struggle. The British and French groups responded and the International Committee came into being.
The SWP now faced the responsibility of taking the international leadership it had dumped in Pablo's lap after the war. But leadership, as Hansen puts it, is something which the SWP consciously seeks to avoid. And so, after a brief spate of articles in the Militant, the whole international question was filed in a drawer at 116 University Place, the British and French left as much as possible to their own devices and the political and theoretical struggle with Pabloism avoided.
The SWP, because it refused to function even under these new conditions from an international perspective, never really understood Pabloism. It fought Pablo's revisions with orthodoxy. Perhaps the finest expression of this orthodoxy was its 1953 resolution 'Against Pabloist Revisionism'.
Answering Pablo's theory of a new world reality based on the concept that the world relationship of forces had changed in favour of socialism – a concept which we noted in both the 1961 SWP international resolution and in the current 1969 resolution – the document stated:
'A rounded review and realistic résumé of the net result of the march of the international revolution from 1943 to 1953 leads to this conclusion. With all its achievements and greater potentialities, the failure of the revolution to conquer in one of the major industrialized countries has thus far prevented the revolutionary forces of the working class from growing strong enough to overwhelm the Kremlin oligarchy and give irresistible impetus to the disintegration of Stalinism. There has not yet been such a qualitative alteration in the world relationship of class forces.'
Since the SWP never probed the question of PabIoism to its methodological roots, Pabloist methods of thought were able to reassert themselves within the SWP under the empirical impact of new events. So, in 1961, reacting to Cuban developments, being pressed by the SLL for a real discussion of and real struggle with Pabloism, the SWP began to retreat back into the Pabloite camp. And retreat it was – retreat from a discussion which would have required of it an internal and external struggle for Marxism, a break with decades of pragmatism and purely American functioning, the assuming for the first time of an international strategy and real international leadership.
HONEYMOON OVER
Well, some people never seem to learn. The honeymoon is now over. The cold water of the deepening international crisis is forcing upon the ranks of the United Secretariat a serious discussion of the very fundamentals of the movement. Some within the United Secretariat have actually developed the audacity to judge the SWP's functioning within its own precious sphere of American work. It seems that some at the congress were saying, according to Hansen, 'that if any conclusion was to be drawn it was that we were under the influence of the peace movement in the United States and that we were continuing in the tradition of "commentary" politics; that we comment and do not engage in action'. The majority at the congress voted the SWP down on the Latin American question and the Chinese question, and evinced such opposition to its resolution on youth radicalization that a vote on it had to be postponed to the future.
The question is now posed with all its sharpness and urgency before the membership of the SWP and YSA. They can allow their movement to continue as it has in the past, seeking to duck any real struggle for clarity internationally or within the SWP, and preparing to break off all international political connections if it is impossible to so duck the issues, retreating this time completely into American national affairs without any cover at all.
Or the SWP ranks can insist on a serious discussion which delves the very depths of all questions from the point of view of the Marxist method and to their historical roots in the 1953 split and what preceded it.
The latter road leads in the direction which the International Committee has pioneered since 1963, the direction of the international proletarian revolution.
The former road leads the movement into the arms of the American bourgeoisie. That is the logic of pragmatism, of nationalism. The International Committee will assist this process of clarification in every way it can, for much depends on it.
There is no longer room in the middle ground. The international crisis is upon us. Each political organization is tested dally, hourly. The tasks before us are tremendous, the potential fantastic. We have entered the era of the European Revolution and the American Revolution is fast at Europe's heels.
What Trotsky fought so hard for under such difficult conditions is now coming into life, into the reality of the mass movement of workers in all lands. There is no greater task nor more rewarding one than to take up NOW the struggle for the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International with its central task of building the Fourth International into the leadership of the workers of all countries.
We must return to a thorough discussion of Cuba, which played such a central role in the 1963 reunification and today has become the central question which divides the United Secretariat supporters. First we must be absolutely clear that the position of guerrilla warfare which the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) now opposes is a position of which the SWP was the main propagator for a whole number of years beginning with 1961.
It was only an empirical reaction to the defeat of Guevara in Bolivia and the outbreak of struggle in the advanced countries which led the SWP to its present critical position on Guevarism. It neither predicted and prepared for the outbreak of revolution in May-June France nor warned and fought against guerrilla warfare in the period which preceded the defeat in Bolivia.
It was only the International Committee which upheld during this whole period the perspective of revolution in the advanced countries and exposed the dangerous character of rural guerrilla schemes in Latin America.
For instance the resolution around which the SWP carried through reunification in 1963 ('For Early Reunification of the World Trotskyist Movement') had this paragraph of guerrilla warfare in it:
'Along the road of a revolution beginning with simple democratic demands and ending in the rupture of capitalist property relations, guerrilla warfare conducted by landless peasants and semi-proletarian forces, under a leadership that becomes committed to carrying the revolution through to a conclusion, can play a decisive role in undermining and precipitating the downfall of a colonial or semi-colonial power. This is one of the main lessons to be drawn from experience since the Second World War. It must be consciously incorporated into the strategy of building revolutionary Marxist parties in colonial countries.' So read point 13 of the 16 points around which reunification took place.
Much the same can be said for the accusation that the Latin American sections of the United Secretariat are today seeking to dissolve themselves into the Organization of Latin American States (OLAS) and the Castroite forces in Latin America. It is this policy which the SWP itself advocated in its resolution 'The Problems of the Fourth International – And the Next Steps':
' . . . We believe the Trotskyists of Cuba should seek to enter and take their place in the soon-to-be-formed unified revolutionary party where they can work loyally, patiently and confidently for the implementation of the fully revolutionary socialist programme which they represent. In addition to mobilizing support for the Cuban cause, as they are doing, the Trotskyists throughout Latin America should try to bring together all those forces, regardless of their specific origins, which are ready to take the Cuban experience as the point of departure for the revolutionary struggle in their own countries.'
These liquidationist policies flowed quite logically from the characterization of the class nature of the Cuban state and of the Cuban government. If Cuba was, as the SWP's original Draft Theses maintained, 'a workers' state, although one lacking as yet the forms of democratic proletarian rule', it would therefore seem to follow that a petty-bourgeois grouping engaged in guerrilla warfare could create a workers' state. Thus an orientation towards and liquidation into such formations is perfectly logical. All this business about 'blunted instruments' and what it means in liquidating the conscious struggle for Marxist theory and the party then follows.
So far the SWP has not probed this root question, reaching as empirically to the failures of guerrilla warfare as it did originally to what it interpreted as its success, But the discussion must go beyond this level; it must return to an objective analysis of the origins and nature of the Castro regime and the Cuban state from the point of view of the Marxist method. Again and again we see every question must be probed to its roots.
The position the SWP took on Cuba is expressed in summary in their 1962 resolution:
'Facts, however, are stubborn things. It is a fact that capitalism was eliminated in 1960 and no longer constitutes the basis of Cuban social and economic life – and this overturn was directed by a leadership which did not explicity call itself Marxist until a year and a half after the overthrow of capitalism and does not avow Trotskyism to this day. As the precedents of the Soviet Union under Stalinism and then of Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China demonstrate, Cuba could not logically be defined as anything but a workers' state, even if its political structure was not democratic and its leadership was non-Marxist.
'But the SLL comrades,' the resolution continues, 'do not want to admit even this much. They correctly view the deformed states in Eastern Europe dominated by the Kremlin as non-capitalist, but they refuse to grant that status to the uncorrupted workers' regime in Cuba. They set aside the traditional Marxist standards for determining the character of a workers' state and advance instead purely political criteria. They so exaggerate the importance of the subjective factor that they lose sight of the fundamental changes in the basic property relations.'
Facts, as we have noted earlier, stubborn or not, are transitory, changing things. It is one thing to 'recognize' them and it is quite another to understand them. For the former the empirical method suffices, but for the latter dialectics is essential to get at the underlying processes of change which produce the momentary appearances.
The SWP's theoretical approach to Cuba consists essentially of two methods used in combination and in this it reflects the methodological approach of bourgeois social science. First is empiricism. The facts are noted, collected. As Hansen put it in his speech to the 1961 SWP Plenum on Cuba;
'Now the conclusions that we have reached are not speculations, they're not projections, are not based on any political confidence in what the regime down there is going to do. Our characterizations simply reflect the facts, just the facts. The fact that the capitalists have been expropriated in Cuba. The facts that a planned economy has been started there. The fact that a qualitatively different kind of state exists there. No matter what you call these things, they are the facts that everyone has to start with.'
But the SWP does not stop with these 'facts' alone – and obviously much of the above that Hansen calls a fact is actually a conclusion he draws from certain empirical data. These facts are then interpreted on the basis of certain 'precedents' – the degeneration of the October Revolution and the establishment of workers' states after the Second World War in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China. From these precedents the SWP is able to develop a formula useful for labelling the facts it has gathered on Cuba.
Because all these states are workers' states, but in none of them do workers democratically rule, the SWP is able to remove from its definition of 'workers' state' the question of the nature of the regime. Because in some of these states – particularly Yugoslavia and China – the workers' state was established under the leadership of a Stalinized party we can remove from our consideration of Cuba the question of the nature of the leadership which came to power in Cuba. Thus we have a precedent for the formula that 'blunted instruments' can bring the workers to power under certain circumstances.
FORMULA
With these precedents utilized to remove from consideration all questions of leadership, consciousness and even what class carries through the revolutionary overturn, we are left with a very simple distilled formula: a workers' state equals a country where the basic means of production have been expropriated by the state, some form of overall state planning exists and the state also maintains a monopoly over foreign trade.
Suddenly theoretical work becomes simplicity itself. We have the facts at our disposal and we have a ready-made label with a simple, clear definition. The facts of Cuba fit the definition and therefore Cuba is a workers' state.
It is the syllogism of formal logic in all its beauty. The law of identity: A = A, The definition matches the facts. It is all so simple and clear that Hansen cannot understand how anybody could possibly object to it.
What we actually have here is an empirical gathering of facts which are then matched to a metaphysical notion – the definition of a workers' state – abstracted out of the concrete development of history. Methodologically the SWP combines the worst features of empiricism with the worst feature of metaphysics, which the empiricists sought to fight. To give pragmatism its credit, its one virtue was its war against superimposing on factual reality pre-conceived schemata – the old method of seeking to order and explain empirical development by imposing upon it fixed notions from one's head. Of course the pragmatist's notion that somehow theoretical understanding would emerge from out of the immediate appearance under study was just as blind.
Dialectics, as Lenin particularly emphasized over and over again, is always historically concrete and has nothing in common with schematism. We do not abstract from out of the development of workers' states in the post-war period certain formal criteria for labelling workers' states. Rather we seek to understand this development in all its complexity, rooting it in the historical circumstances of the time, the relationship of class forces, and particularly the inter-relationship between imperialists and the Soviet Union at the time.
If we do this we see that imperialism was forced to make a deal with the Soviet Union following the Second World War precisely in order to rebuild capitalism in the main industrial countries, laying the basis for the post-war boom which had such a reactionary impact on the class struggle in the advanced capitalist countries for so long. Unable to simultaneously wrest control of Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union and stabilize the political situation in Western Europe and America and other parts of the world, it was forced to grant Soviet hegemony in this region in return for Soviet aid in holding down the working class in imperialist-dominated regions. In time the Soviet Union was forced to carry through in a bureaucratic way social transformations in this region to secure it at least temporarily as a buffer against the imperialists.
China fits into this picture – but not in a completely identical way. Here the internal factors of capitalist decay, in the face of a massive peasant-based army led by the Chinese Communist Party, placed both the Kremlin and the United States in a very difficult situation. Despite the wishes of both powers, Chiang Kai-shek could not stand on his own either ruling the country in his own right and certainly not as part of a coalition government with the CCP.
The choice before the United States was either to intervene in the civil war on the scale it presently has intervened in Vietnam – except multiplied to the figure of millions of American troops – or write off China to Mao. It was the latter course that the United States followed. And Stalin made the best of it after first pursuing the Utopian aim of a coalition government with tottering Chiang.
There are many lessons to be learned from this whole historical experience but they are mainly lessons rooted in a particular concrete context – a context which has long since changed. First and foremost is that the expansion of Stalinism into the Western and Eastern buffers of the Soviet Union in no way resolved the crisis of Stalinism, but as is now clear deepened this crisis (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Sino-Soviet split, etc.).
Secondly, these concessions, while detrimental to imperialism, made it possible for imperialism to strengthen itself in its main industrial bases thus presenting the working class with a very powerful, well-equipped enemy. The conclusion to be drawn from this whole experience, rather than all this impressionism about 'blunted instruments', is quite the opposite. The absolute necessity for the creation of the sharp instrument of the Bolshevik-Leninist party in every country of the world is a pre-condition for revolutionary advance in these countries.
The Cuban Revolution took place within a very different historical framework and was part of a different international process, representing different class forces. The very uneven development of world capitalism meant, that while as a whole capitalism in the 1950s went through a period of boom and expansion, this expansion effected only partially a very slim layer of the colonial peoples. The bulk of the peasantry found its conditions of existence deteriorating further as the advanced countries built their boom in part on the draining of the colonial countries – particularly in the form of a declining world market price for agricultural products.
The national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie were also placed in an impossible bind as in these countries what limited economic development that can take place is dependent on small surpluses of income from the sale of raw materials to the advanced countries. This set the stage for the profound upheavals in the colonial countries throughout this whole period which the Pabloites impressionistically reacted to. It also gave these upheavals a particular social character which in the end led to their general defeat.
Just as the proletariat in the advanced countries, while continuing to struggle, struggled on a much lower level than they do today and in a way which did not fundamentally challenge the political and social stability of these countries, so too, to a somewhat lesser extent, it was with the proletariat in the colonial countries. This left the stage to the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois nationalists and the peasantry. But these forces on their own, without the leadership of the proletariat in the backward and advanced countries, cannot make the fundamental break with capitalism necessary for the carrying through of the democratic revolution in these countries by going over to the socialist revolution.
These petty-bourgeois and bourgeois forces were, however, capable of a number of very radical statist steps aimed at the very weak national bourgeoisie of these countries seeking to substitute the functioning of the state for the absolute bankruptcy of the national bourgeoisie. In fact, to the extent that governments were able to function with even a limited Bonapartist immediate independence of the national bourgeoisie, they tended to act in the long terms of capital development against the immediate interests of these national bourgeois forces. Thus nationalizations took place in Burma, Ghana, Guinea, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Bolivia, Cuba, more recently in Peru and Chile.
STATISM
First it should be pointed out that this statism has nothing in common with the state capitalism which Marx projected as a theoretical possibility, but a political and social impossibility, When Marx talked of this possibility, he projected it as the logical outcome of advanced capitalism with its tendency towards ever increasing monopolization. He also pointed out that the very same tendency produced greater and greater concentration of the proletariat and even if such a state were to emerge it would be so vulnerable to expropriation by the working class as to have only a momentary existence.
The statism we are talking about is a reaction to the extreme weaknesses of capitalism within the colonial backward countries. To apply the state capitalist term to this development is but another manifestation of the ahistorical schematic method we are fighting which shows the methodological identity between the state capitalists and the Pabloites.
In what fundamental way was the development of the Cuban Revolution qualitatively different from the statist processes in these other countries? In only one essential way, and as we shall see this was not a qualitative distinction – in its empirical turn to and support received from the Soviet Union.
Castro's move against American holdings in sugar was the critical step. Of course in itself the move was no more radical than the Mexican nationalization of oil, the Bolivian nationalization of tin, and the recent Peruvian nationalizations of oil and take-over of much of the land, What was different was that when the United States reacted to these moves by cutting off the sugar quota and refusing to grant any aid or credits to the impoverished Castro regime, Castro turned to the Soviet Union and received support. Then followed a series of swift back and-forth retaliation moves which ended up with virtually all capitalist holdings in Cuba in the hands of the state and Cuba dependent on the Soviet countries both for aid and as an important market for its sugar.
So what actually emerged was a pragmatic bloc between the Castro petty-bourgeois nationalist regime and the workers' states at the expense of the United States. This raises several questions. First, did this bloc lead to the kind of internal transformations which took place in Eastern Europe and China? If we look at the question seriously and concretely and not superficially as does the SWP, we will immediately see a critically important class distinction between the Castro government and these other governments.
PURGES
A deformed or degenerated workers' state is still a workers' state. The very process of expropriation of capital in these countries was accompanied by a process of the creation of this workers' bureaucracy through the taking over of the government by a workers' party, the Communist Party, and the purging of the government of all forces unreliable to the tasks this party had to carry out – some positive social tasks as well as reactionary tasks.
The Castro government is in no sense a workers' bureaucracy. In fact Castro has carried out a series of purges against even Stalinist elements within his government – as illustrated by the two Escalante affairs – and maintains complete control in the hands of the petty-bourgeois nationalist forces who came to power with him. In Cuba, and only in Cuba, the nationalizations were not accompanied by the emergence of a government controlled by the Stalinists. Instead we have to this day, as we had in 1961, a pragmatic bloc between a petty-bourgeois national formation at home and the Soviet Union abroad.
Secondly what remains a mystery to the Pabloites now becomes crystal clear. Why is it that for ten years following the Cuban Revolution 'no new workers' state has been established?'. It is clear that the extremely radical 'statist' direction of Cuba was only possible because of the support the Soviet Union gave to Cuba. If the Kremlin bureaucracy decides not to give such support, then this kind of leadership is impossible. But the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union is a counter-revolutionary force. Thus the 'Cuban road to revolution' is actually dependent on the goodwill of counterrevolutionaries.
Is it thus so surprising that the Soviet Union today does not consider it in her interests to involve herself in any more highly expensive Cuban 'experiment'? The Soviet Union leadership has also learned some lessons from Cuba. While undoubtedly it first viewed Cuba as just one more left-nationalist regime which could be bought off, perhaps to play a certain neutralist role, it has ended up having to assume a tremendous financial burden at a time when all its resources are stretched to the limit and now has a sore point which must be regulated for its strategy of working with the American imperialists.
The task of the socialist revolution in a backward country is to carry through the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution by proletarian methods, going over to socialist measures. This requires first of all industrialization and the raising of the productivity of labour together with an international revolutionary strategy. While the deformed workers' states have not as yet been able to raise the level of their economies to that of the advanced capitalist nations, and will not be able to do so as long as they remain under bureaucratic rule, it is a tribute to the class nature of these states that they have made definite economic development. Trotskyists note this progress as a tribute to the power of socialist property relations and not to any ability of the bureaucracy.
The central economic task in Cuba is to free that country from its dependence on the one export crop of sugar and developing a more balanced economy through an industrialization programme. Such economic plans require the political power of the working class in Cuba, orientated towards an international revolutionary struggle against imperialism. Castro has openly abandoned even an attempt at this, placing even greater emphasis on the sugar crop than did Batista. The result is that the living standards of the Cuban people, to the extent that they are not subsidized by the Soviet Union, are completely dependent on the world price of sugar. This alone shows the dependence of Cuba on world capitalism, a problem qualitatively different from those facing the deformed workers' states, and illustrating once again that the petty-bourgeois nationalists, statism or no, Soviet aid or no, are unable to carry forward the bourgeois democratic revolution. To call Cuba a workers' state is to make a travesty of what we are fighting for – socialism itself.
EXTREME CRISIS
When we understand Cuba in this scientific way, then we see Castro's policies and his failures as an expression of the class nature of his regime and state – not as a series of inconsistencies in the class nature of this state and regime.
Castro has followed a consistent line of opposition to the working class. He jailed Escalante as an agent of the Soviet Union, a workers' state, and because he advocated material incentives for the working class – and thus was even in a Stalinist way a reflection of the working class. But he was more than happy to support the Soviet Union when it meant imposing its will on the workers of Czechoslovakia and when the Czech example could be used to intimidate any oppositional elements in Cuba which could become vehicles for working-class struggle against his regime. Recently he has been cracking down on the Black Panthers. Even such a tendency as the Panthers displays an independence of the Cuban regime and thus is dangerous to Castro.
He ignored May-June in France, ignored the Mexican student rebellions and even complemented the 'progressive' character of the Mexican government following its bloody repression of the students. He utilizes guerrilla warfare as a pressure upon the governments of Latin America which refuse to recognise him – supporting it against his friends. He was more than happy to block with the Stalinists at the Tri-Continental Congress against Trotskyism, only to suppress Stalinists within Cuba if he fears they in any way reflect the working class.
Today Castro faces his most extreme crisis. His sugar policy has collapsed around him with the smallest production in a number of years. As a result he has limited international reserves and is under the greatest pressure to ship almost all his sugar to meet contract terms with the Soviet countries. He is applying the greatest pressure on the Cuban working class, seeking to raise productivity without giving the workers anything in return – not to mention his use of unpaid labour in evenings and weekends for the sugar harvest. Resistance is growing within the Cuban working class to Castro. His international policies are completely bankrupt, especially following the Guevara adventure.
We cannot predict exactly what will happen next in Cuba, but the situation is becoming remarkably similar to that which preceded the fall of Ben Bella. Whether Castro will fall to the military or to other forces in his government, or make it deal on his own with the Americans, or limp on for a little longer, cannot be predicted.
But the Cuban 'miracle' is over. The fundamental problems facing the workers in Cuba remain. And Castro has no programme at all for the workers in Latin America or the world.
This task now falls to the Fourth International. We can carry out this task only if we completely destroy any remaining illusions about Castro, his real policies, the class nature of his regime and state.
It is the accumulation of these material, class contradictions in Cuba and on a world scale that is shaking the foundations of the so-called 'reunification' of the revisionists in 1963. Their haste to run behind Castro in 1961-1963 completed their rejection of the Marxist method. Its consequences are liquidation of even the semblance of independent programme and organization.
The Socialist Workers' Party refused in 1961-1963 to face up to the Iiquidationist character of their new allies in the Pabloite grouping. Now they face the choice of either being completely destroyed by this pragmatic alliance or making one last effort to 'return to the road of Trotskyism'.
It is this great historical dilemma which provides the fuel for the crisis which has hit the revisionists. It gives the opportunity for the best elements in the SWP and sections of the United Secretariat to now insist on the discussion which was rejected in 1963 and to grasp the significance of the fight carried out by the International Committee.
Wohlforth Archive | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive