Sun, 1 Dec 1996 15:11:51 +0100 (MET)

COCKROACH! #23 (special on LIT/CI) part 2

A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE.

WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS.

It is time that the poor and working class people
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CONTINUED FROM PART 1. Cockroach #23
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E. The workers' struggle and its methods

13. We are convinced that the demand supported by the Founding Conference
of the Fourth International - for 'a workers' and peasants' government'--is
a correct demand for the working class. It must be an integral part of a
programme of transitional demands, that is, a programme through which the
working class, in the course of struggle, preparing and building for the
struggle for power, will break with its treacherous traditional
leaderships.
To demand a workers' and peasants' government is not to place any
confidence whatever in these traditional leaderships and parties. Only by
posing the demand - break with the bourgeoisie and form a government based
on the workers' and people's organisations with an anti capitalist
programme - can the demand for a workers' and peasants' government have a
revolutionary content.

14. We affirm that Popular Front governments of collaboration between the
leadership of the working class and bourgeois parties (similar to that
which Lula tried to construct in Brazil) are bourgeois governments and as
such are counter revolutionary. The existence of a Popular Front government
confronts the revolutionary party with an exceptional challenge and
opportunity. This is not because such a government may be progressive but
because the treacherous leadership, by placing themselves openly in the
bourgeois governments, makes it easier to expose them in front of the
masses for what they really are: agents of counter revolution inside the
workers' and people's movement.

15. We are in favour of all the methods of political struggle that the
workers' movement has adopted through its experience, and we are against
those petty bourgeois groups which try to substitute for these struggles
isolated actions of the masses or individual terrorism or elitist guerrilla
war. We defend those who struggle with these methods when they are
suppressed by the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy, but we reject their
methods.

16. We are with Marx when he says that 'the emancipation of the working
class is the task of the working class itself', but for this the working
class needs to have the power to decide its destiny. Against the
bureaucratic apparatus and against the leaders who speak in the name of the
workers and the masses, we say: it is the workers who must decide; fight
for the widest democracy at all levels, in the struggles in the unions, in
the struggles for the land.

17. The parties we fight to build are revolutionary workers' parties,
sections of the reconstructed Fourth International, organised on the
principles of democratic centralism in all countries. Democratic centralism
is the very opposite of the bureaucratic centralism typified by Stalinism,
in which the central apparatus dictates to the rank and file.
We are against all those false theories which say that the responsibility
for revolutionary leadership can be left in the hands of the traditional
reformist and ex Stalinist parties or by petty bourgeois 'left'
leaderships.

18. We condemn the method of slander, violence and fraudulent accusations
designed to silence and expel political opposition. In particular we
condemn the lies used against M. Varga (Balazs Nagy), J. Hansen, G. Novack,
T. Wohlforth, N. Fields, R. Napuri, Juan Pablo Bacherer, Pedro Carrasquedo
and now against Cliff Slaughter by David North's party.
We condemn the method of 'valetodo' (physical aggression, robbery, the
taking over of premises etc.) to settle . internal debates in revolutionary
organisations.
We condemn all these methods that are inherited from Stalinism, and affirm
that the Fourth International
. will only be able to rebuild itself if it is capable of constructing and
reconstructing not only a programme, an organisation based upon authentic
Marxist revolutionary politics, but also a proletarian morality.

F. Our objectives

19. The Liaison Committee has as its objective the reconstruction of the
Fourth International in and through the reconstruction of the working class
movement as a whole.
Both our organisations reiterate that we shall deal with each other with
total mutual loyalty and will ask the same from any other organisation with
which we may in future collaborate to advance towards the rebuilding of the
Fourth International.
We reject the methods of sects which seek to approach other revolutionary
organisations only as a means of developing fractional work or as a means
of constructing a permanent forum of discussion.

20. In line with this objective, the common elaboration of a programme,
based on developing the Transitional Programme for the working class's
present needs, is a key task. It is a difficult task, but one we must
tackle fearlessly. The party is the programme, as Trotsky emphasised.

21. The common activity in the class struggle of our two organisations is a
priority task of the Liaison Committee, in order to develop closer
political relations and to elaborate the programme.

taken up by demoralised petty bourgeois socialists and even some
revolutionaries. The illusion at the end of the Gulf War was that the war
would resolve problems of the domination of imperialism over the Middle
East. Already, even then, imperialism was not able to carry through the war
to the complete crushing of Saddam Hussein because of mass opposition in
the Arab world and also the need to preserve Hussein as a balance against
Iran.
However, the results of the war set back Arab nationalism, split up Arab
national capitalist leaders, weakened the struggle of the Palestinians and
began the developments to the PLO-Israel agreement. But, just half a decade
after the end of the Gulf War, the United Nations is in crisis. The
assembly of an awesome military might under the leadership of American
imperialism was the last success of this organisation which later was to
show such ignominious failures: Somalia and Bosnia.
The UN is short of cash to the tune of $3.6bn, because thirty countries are
behind with their payments to it. The United States itself owes $1.1bn. For
several months behind closed doors the British government has been seeking
to persuade its ally to pay. The US is more than two years in arrears and
Rifkind, the British Foreign Secretary, hinted that, according to rule, the
US could have its voting rights in the UN assembly taken away. But the US
has sought a more direct domination in Europe through NATO and a more
direct control over the Bosnian 'peace-keeping.
While the problems for capitalism sharpen immeasurably, where it is able to
fend them off it is able to do so only because of the crisis of leadership
- the capitulations of the labour and trade union bureaucracy and the
weakness of the revolutionary leadership. We can expect continuous attempts
at world economic and political agreements and their repeated break-up or
threatened break-up. During the Golden Age the myth was built up of the
possibilities of uniting Europe. World capitalism has prevented its present
grave problems of capitalist accumulation and surplus from ending in a
collapse or crisis of the character of 1929 or a revolutionary overturn,
not because of its intrinsic strength but, because of the weaknesses of
working class leadership and the capitulation of a large swathe of
petty-bourgeois intellectuals, former 'Marxists', before the ideological
offensive of capitalism. Now, the accumulation of capital has reached
crisis stage which capitalism seeks to resolve at the expense of the
working class and by increasing competition between larger and larger
conglomerates of capital. Retreats by labour and trade union leaders have
allowed big changes to go through in the working and living conditions of
the mass of the people in the advanced countries as well as in the
semi-colonial and former colonial countries.
The powerful groups of capital are now re-organising in order to cut each
others throats and to gobble each other up. Their production capacity has
expanded faster than the market that capitalism engenders, and increases
their need to counteract the falling rate of profit. The world is being
divided into a contest between colossal groups of capital ruthlessly
increasing the intensification of labour and cutting labour costs. The
increasing tensions in society brought about by the demands of the policies
of finance-capitalists pose increasingly sharp problems for capitalism and
explosions of all the arrangements to unite capitalist powers in joint
exploitation. The European Union runs into severe difficulties in its
attempt to achieve a single currency in 1979 not only because of the uneven
development of each capitalist nation as explained by Lenin in his pamphlet
on Imperialism but also because of the class relations in each country.
Germany seeks a European unity that she will dominate. A single currency
demands that the budget deficits of the countries joining be kept at a low
level - the Mastricht agreement is that this should be no more than 3 per
cent of the Gross Domestic Product by 1999. Thus the demand is for
countries like France, Italy and others to slash Welfare State provisions.

The Working Class
However, even though world capitalism in some respects has moved the world
relationship in their favour and against the working class, the working
class is still an already powerful, and certainly potentially powerful,
force in all countries and it is that which is posing the greatest problems
for capitalism and which brings the grave political, diplomatic and
economic difficulties in the way of the European Union, which suddenly
appeared in the Autumn of this year. The shocks, in fact were the result of
some very deep-going social antagonisms in European countries which had
been reflected in governmental instabilities for many months - mainly in
Italy, France and in the Conservative crisis in Britain. The press now
comments on the extent of the social crisis in France and thus underlines
the conclusions of our comrades there on the meaning of the 1.4 million
vote for the Lutte Ouvriere candidate for President standing as a
revolutionary candidate (see Socialist Voice no. 4). In the last few years
there has been a change in which the world's working class has begun to
recover from the confusion and retreats in consciousness that it suffered
in the eighties and nineties. There has been an increasing anger and
bitterness at the governments which have carried out the capitalist
policies under which unemployment and homelessness have increased; policies
of accelerating attacks upon health, education and the Welfare State and on
the organisations and democratic rights of the working class. The change
has been reflected in the electoral field where the hatred of capitalist
parties which have presided over increasing uncertainty, inequality
corruption and speculation has been shown in the resurgence of support for
the refurbished ex-Stalinist parties in Eastern Europe and Italy.
A recent survey in Russia held by the US based International Foundation of
Electoral Systems reported, according to the Financial Times, 29 September,
that "...like voters in Hungary and Poland who returned communists to power
in their most recent elections, the survey suggests that Russians hold
deeply negative views about markets reforms...Three-quarters of respondents
said they were deeply dissatisfied with the current situation in Russia and
slightly more than half wanted the re-establishment of state control over
the economy...More than 80 per cent of those surveyed said state corruption
was commonplace and 60 per cent said that elected officials were interested
only in helping themselves, rather than representing their constituents."
The reactionary protagonists of 'economic liberalism' declaim the 'end of
history' meaning the defeat of socialism and the working class. The
'democrats' whose aim is the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe continue the activities of Stalinism in covering over
the history of Bolshevism and workers' revolutions. Labour leaders, like
Blair in Britain, cover over the history of the working class and its
independent struggle.

The Fourth International
Of central importance is the international revolutionary organisation
carrying forward the programme of the Fourth International. How to arrive
at an authoritative world party is something that is discussed too much in
general terms and, in fact, is thought about far too little. It is said
that the reconstruction of the Fourth International is intrinsically
connected with the reconstruction of the working class movement. That is
correct as a general conclusion and a pointer to the present stage the
working class is in, but it is really the beginning and not the end of the
discussion. What we are dealing with here when we say reconstruction of the
working class movement is surely the reconstruction of the international
consciousness of the working class vanguard. One of the worst crimes of
Stalinism was the destruction of the Communist International, its blows at
internationalist consciousness and its fostering of reactionary nationalism
and chauvinism. The struggle of Trotskyism, centred around proletarian
internationalism, has been against enormous pressures which have effected
the movement itself with the sectarian and bureaucratic centralist method
of building an international organisation around a father party such as in
the International Committee and the Lambertist organisation or with the
revisionism of the USec, with the majority of its leadership believing the
concept of a world party belongs to another time. Last year the Workers
International proposed a Liaison Committee between itself and the
International Workers League (Fourth International), of which the ISL is
the British section. This was agreed at the World Congress of the IWL and a
first meeting of the Liaison Committee took place early in 1995. After
further discussion a joint declaration was issued. The IWL grasped the
proposition for a Liaison Committee believing that it was an important step
in the re-building of the Fourth International. Its 1994 Congress believed
that the coming together of the two organisations could strengthen both,
intensify joint practical activity where there was already agreement and
develop discussion with the aim of a unification of the two organisations.
The members of the ISL - who have experience of both organisations - are
very much in support of that opinion. We believe that the building of the
Fourth International generally is a question of both synthesis and
assimilation and in the present conjuncture an authoritative basis for that
International will be created primarily by bringing about the synthesis of
the tendencies and organisations which move towards principled
internationalism in the period we have entered. The Liaison Committee can
be important in deepening our experience in the methods by which the Fourth
International can be built and, correctly carried through, can be an
example and attraction to those in other Trotskyist organisations and among
the working class generally who earnestly desire an authoritative Fourth
International and seek to break out of a sect existence. The Liaison
Committee between the WI and the IWL was preceded by a period when the two
organisations had worked together or found their work running parallel.
There was joint work on the very important issue of Bosnia; parallel work
in Russia and Ukraine; a support of the leadership of the IWL for the South
African comrades of the WI in building a revolutionary party in South
Africa and a clear need for mutual contact between Brazil and South Africa
where there were some similar problems.
A criteria, proposed by the International Secretariat of the IWL, was
agreed to guide the joint statement of both organisations and the future
course of the Liaison Committee. The criteria was that the statement should
set out the agreements between the two organisations which had brought
about their joint work. The issues on which there were disagreement should
become the subjects for a discussion throughout the two organisations for
the purpose of developing an agreed basis for a merging of the two
international organisations. We give great importance to the method of
procedure in this criteria. We believe it expresses some very important
experiences which came out in the internal relationships in the IWL, out of
the best of its traditions and particularly out of the pre-conference
discussion of the World Congress of the IWL and in the Congress itself
where three tendencies fought out quite sharply expressed differences but
at the end of the Congress were in agreement on the major tasks, including
the composition of the leadership and dissolved their tendencies while
continuing discussion.
Now we have to extend our activity together and develop our international
discussion. Neither of the international organisations are in favour of
self-proclamation of the Fourth International. In the present development
of the working class and Trotskyism, the rebuilt Fourth International can
only be declared when it wins a sizeable layer of workers internationally.
This does not contradict Trotsky's arguments with the ILP when he attacked
their conceptions that the International could only be built by the coming
together of various national parties who had built in their own countries.
The ILP conception was of a federal international and not a world party.
Internationalism must be expressed in a world organisation built on
democratic centralism, with its sections "exchanging mutual criticism and
experience with their co-thinkers internationally", as Trotsky put it. The
WI and the IWL claim to be such organisations standing on a Trotskyist
programme and part of a Trotskyist movement.
The discussion must be opened up on those questions which were put aside
from the declaration of the Liaison Committee on which there are
differences between the two organisations or within them. This period will
give the opportunity to conduct those discussions together and together
with practical activity in the workers' movements.

Flexibility
We are entering a period when the building of the revolutionary party will
entail a great deal of flexibility in working in struggles whose
participants are fighting against capitalist policies on one or several
issues. We must know how to apply tactics in alliances and united fronts
and also how to educate a cadre in firm principles. And only in the
struggle both outside and in discussion inside the party will we overcome
the inevitable sectarian and opportunist mistakes.
We have to continually explain in our own theoretical and general
propaganda articles and discussion that we are, above all, striving for a
class way out and the development of a mass international movement with
which to oppose the imperialists. Our strategy is the development of a
world party, the building of cadre for the socialist revolution. That is
our own independent task. But it is the most important task which faces us
as Fourth Internationalists - it is a strategic task. Our tactics lead to
that. But here we can have agreement with a large number of people who are
not Fourth Internationalists and indeed have differences with us on
fundamental questions, but agree, for example on the defence of a
multi-ethnic Bosnia. The defence of multi-ethnic communities is an
extremely important struggle throughout the world and for us, that defence
can assist in the development of a working class international
consciousness and is an extremely potent part of the struggle against
racism.
We have to take the new people who come around through the problems of
organisation as well as developing the revolutionary cadre in experience in
bringing and keeping together people of various opinions. The International
will be reconstructed as a world party based on a principled programme and
clear political perspective; United Front activity means moving workers and
their organisations into action around certain demands despite principled di
fferences on other questions. The members of the united front continue to
be independently organised and each respects the right of the other to have
their independent positions and to put them forward. This is the meaning of
the well-known definition of united front activity: 'We march separately
and strike together'. It demands respect of Trotskyists for the other
organisations who form part of the front and a thorough realisation of what
Trotsky insisted on in his writings in the 1930s on building a movement -
that the right to leadership has to be won. No-one has a marshal's baton in
his or her knapsack because he or she is a Trotskyist.
We have, however, to struggle for perspective and theory otherwise we will
come out the same as we went in. We have to study the history of the
communist movement and particularly the experiences of the Trotskyist
groups throughout the world who from time to time have expanded in
movements in the working class and youth . We must do so in order to equip
ourselves for the opportunities which are now undoubtedly coming up. In the
past, these successes of Trotskyist groups have invariably brought the
danger of complacency and the pragmatism which can so easily develop in
previously small groups who face a rapid growth of membership or expansion
of a wider movement in which they are the main leadership.
There is an international attack on the working class and a polarisation of
wealth throughout the world.. The struggles of masses throughout the world
all thus have the character of the defence of past conquests of the working
class. Only a conscious orientation placing it in the centre of strategy
can bring the building of the international world party which alone can
bring the working class to socialisms. It is not enough just to declare its
need but an urgent question in all real Trotskyist groups must be the
elaboration of tactics with the strategic aim of re-building the Fourth
International.

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