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COCKROACH! #36 Part 1

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1.On the crisis of the world trotskyist movement. (Part 1)

Editors Note! This document is not supported by Cockroach
although it appears to be and honest attempt to deal
with the subject matter..

Bob Malecki
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Document about the crisis of the world "trotskyist movement". We are sending 
it because we want to promoter a discussion on this important question.

On the crisis of the world trotskyist movement and Revolutionary Regroupment

Below is a version of the document on revolutionary regroupment
presented by Tendency A members now with the CRR (Committee for a 
revolutionary Regroupment) to the Socialist
Outlook Central Committee earlier this year. It has been edited,
abridged and updated and reflects their work in preparation for the
public meeting on 15 December on revolutionary regroupment. It is
incomplete and needs further work both on some groups covered e.g. the
Sparts, and on groups simply mentioned or omitted, e.g. Lutte
Ouvriere, the FI (ICR) Lambertists, Morenoite and other Latin American
Trotskyist groups,  WRP (Workers Press), the ICFI and various other
splits from the old Healyite ICFI, Workers Liberty, individual USFI
sections, ITC, ITO etc.

Introduction
Perspectives are necessarily drawn from assessments of the state of
the international class struggle, the relative strengths of the
working class and the bourgeoisie materially, politically and
ideologically. The purpose of Marxist political analysis is to
estimate the situation of the world working class and its national
sections, and to develop the perspectives for building revolutionary
leadership which flow from this. For a number of years, workers have
suffered a chain of setbacks and defeats (eastern Europe/ex-Soviet
Union, regional settlements, declining levels of unionisation, the
retreat of reformism and petit bourgeois guerrillaism etc.). But
although the world working class has been battered by these
experiences, its main sections are intact and capable of struggle.
Despite the growth in Europe of racist and fascist movements, the
present period cannot be directly compared with the defeats of the
1930s. It has an intermediate character, which contains the
possibility of further and more catastrophic reverses, or of a
generalised working class revival. The fundamental characteristics of
imperialism - wars, intense trading rivalries etc. - are beginning to
reassert themselves with the collapse of Stalinism after 1989 and the
chronic economic crisis affecting much of the world economy. At the
same time, there are clear signs of a revival of the class struggle in
a number of countries - France, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy
among the European nations, even Britain has begun to see a modest
recovery, admittedly from a historically low base. Much of Latin
America and Africa is in acute turmoil, and there is every indication
that the working class of South Africa will prove much harder to
subdue than it was in the 'front line' states. In contrast, the 1930s
saw the powerful working classes of Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan go
down to fascism and atomization before the second world war. We are
not about to witness the victory of fascism anywhere in Europe in the
short term. However the ideological level of the working class, its
class consciousness, is at or near an all time low this century. The
bourgeoisie internationally does not feel any immediate threat to its
rule from socialist revolution. Consequently, given the choice between
bourgeois democracy and fascism, they still prefer the former. This
also determined the nature of the 'democratic counter-revolutions' in
Eastern Europe and Russia. But they use the rise of fascist and far
right populist parties to shift the political agenda further right,
the better to divide the working class, drive down its living
standards, and so increase the profits of the big monopolies. The
resulting attacks on trade union and democratic rights, and the
impoverishment of sections of the middle class however set in motion
big changes in the political landscape, which may not proceed
according to the wishes of the big bourgeoisie. This is not cause for
any complacency or abstentionism in the anti racist and anti- fascist
fight. The implosion of the 'political class' in Italy has
demonstrated that fascist and far right parties can, under certain
circumstances, impose their own agenda on the bourgeoisie. The
continuous targeting of national and ethnic minorities, gays and
lesbians creates new dangers in the situation which, if not confronted
by mobilising workers and those under attack, can allow the further
growth of the far right. The bureaucratic leaderships of the working
class are capitulating to this ideological offensive, and are using
the situation to act more openly as the policemen of the working
class. Not content with marginalising militant activists, the
bureaucrats often assist their victimisation, and thus strengthen the
anti-union offensive of the bourgeoisie. The past six - seven years
have left a deep impression on many who consider themselves
Trotskyists. Those who expected political revolution in eastern Europe
to unfold automatically find themselves disoriented and demoralised.
Confronted by a still unfavourable class struggle in their own
countries, many have become despondent about party building. Those who
have not dropped out entirely have tended to become either purely
'practical' or passively 'theoretical'. The main 'Trotskyist'
groupings internationally have seen intense factional struggles
between 'optimists' and 'pessimists', between 'objectivists' and
'volutarists', between 'liquidators' and 'party builders', between
'entrists' and 'anti-entrists' - the factional line-ups are endless!
But they are the product of a common crisis. The LIT, the CWI
(Militant) and the FI(ICR) (Lambertists) have all suffered major
splits or purges in recent years. It is ironic, given the recent
developments in Mexico, to recall that this country had one of the
largest 'Trotskyist' parties in the world until it split and entered a
deep crisis in 1992. The enormous ideological crisis created by the
collapse of Stalinism has, more than any other event, exposed the huge
task facing Trotskyists in rebuilding the Fourth International. The
crisis of revolutionary leadership is now an enormous obstacle in the
way of the masses making revolution. Rejecting equally objectivism and
voluntarism - the hallmarks of much of post-war Trotskyism - we must
set course to intervene in every movement of the class and every real
leftward movement in its vanguard to reconstruct the revolutionary
leadership. We must intervene as Trotskyists, with the method and
political orientation of the Transitional Programme (TP), as applied
to and developed for today's conditions. The task of renovating the
TP, which many Trotskyists have set themselves down the years, remains
largely uncompleted and is a major weakness. Developing programmatic
positions on such disputed questions as the anti-imperialist united
front, entrism and fraction work in mass organisations, the oppression
of women, lesbians and gays, environmental issues - all questions for
which no blueprint exists in the TP - must be central to the
theoretical and practical work of revolutionaries today. Only such a
tactically flexible but theoretically firm struggle can regroup the
best elements of the 'world Trotskyist movement'.

For a DC International
Democratic centralism is the necessary organisational norm for
Trotskyist groups both nationally and internationally. It is a crucial
political conquest of communism and its principles must be reasserted
against both Stalinist bureaucratic centralism and petit bourgeois
'pure democratic' liberalism. In the words of the TP, a revolutionary
party requires 'full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action'.
The history of modern Trotskyism is littered with examples of both
repressive internal regimes (Healy, Lambert, Robertson, Lora etc.),
and federal arrangements (the IC up to 1963, the USFI etc.). The
necessity for a disciplined party arises from the concentrated
character of state power under capitalism. The need for genuine
internal democracy, in which all members can debate and influence the
policy of their party, is equally necessary for unity in action.
Although a critical attitude is necessary towards the internal regime
of the Bolshevik Party -it is clear that Trotsky never agreed with
some of the propositions of What is to be done? - Leninist
organisational norms were not simply a consequence of the conditions
of illegality obtaining in Tsarist Russia (as many have argued), but
were elaborated out of a Marxist understanding of the necessary
relationship both between the revolutionary party and the working
class, and between different layers within the party itself. A
revolutionary party is the highest expression of working class
organisation. While the working class as a whole does not fully
understand the nature of its oppression, it has, nevertheless, been
obliged to develop forms of organisation which counterposed its
strength as a class to the rule of capital. The most basic form of
working class organisation is the trade union. At least implicitly
this counterposes workers' democracy to bourgeois democracy,
especially during a serious strike. Crucial to workers democracy is
the right to free and open debate before votes are taken to determine
the course of industrial conflict, and the proletarian discipline that
the picket line imposes. The mobilisation and heightened consciousness
of the working class creates conditions for revolutionaries to
intervene and deal blows against the bureaucratic misleaders.
Extrapolating from this and the history of revolutions, Lenin and the
Bolsheviks developed democratic centralism to enable the working class
to give its revolutionary strivings an organised expression. Without
democratic centralism, the party cannot learn from its mistakes,
cannot reliably test its programme and perspectives in the class
struggle, and cannot gain the confidence of the masses. 

Entrism and fraction work
To carry out such work effectively presupposes a DCIT with coherent
and integrated political perspectives, and a leadership which has the
confidence of the membership on the basis of a proven track record.
Without a DCIT, attempts to carry out work in mass political
organisations will lead to various forms of routinism, adaptation or
national exceptionalism, and political differences will inevitably
lead to confusion and splits. The tactics advocated by Trotsky in the
1930s towards mass workers parties retain their validity and do not
depend merely upon the particular conjuncture which prompted them. By
extension, they also apply under some conditions to other formations
(e.g. petit bourgeois nationalist movements) which have the allegiance
of the mass of the working class. Such experiences have shown the
variety and flexibility of the tactics necessary to build the nucleus
of mass Trotskyist parties. We reaffirm the stages necessary in
entrist tactics - particularly the necessity of a period of
implantation; the maintenance of the democratic centralism of the
entrist group (whether or not it has a publication); and the
recognition of the correct time to split. This requires a careful
estimate of the trajectory of the host centrist, reformist or
nationalist organisation, and particularly its rank and file. These
tactics are necessary for large, bureaucratically-controlled
organisations. With centrist groups who move to the left and are of
more comparable size to our own the possibility exists of winning the
entire group to Trotskyism and we should work for that if we fuse with
or join them - with due humility on our part that because of the
crisis of Trotskyism we ourselves may have much to learn from our new
group or partners in fusion. We stress that this is not to be seen as
a raiding party but as real and ongoing political struggle  - a battle
for Trotskyism which emphasises always the road to the working class
via the ideological struggle to win the vanguard - openly fought for
wherever we get an audience. The need to carry out entrism or fraction
work arises from the impossibility of small groups applying the united
front towards mass organisations from outside. We must not confuse
common actions between left groups for genuine united fronts, despite
their frequently similar method. To do so leads all too often to
substituting the one for the other, and results in sectarianism and
self-proclamation sheltering behind a verbal commitment to united
front policy. The LRCI, for instance, maintains that there is no
distinction between common actions and united fronts, and increasingly
turns its back upon mass organisations in favour of 'build the party'
exhortations. No revolutionary organisation today is in the position
of the KPD in the early 1930s, when Trotsky advocated the workers
united front. With its mass following it would have been able to put
the larger SPD under extreme pressure and win its mass base if it had
applied the united front. Today, with tiny forces, we must be
prepared, in countries where it is relevant, to work among the
vanguard of the working class within the mass social democratic
movements on a long term basis where this is possible. The balance to
strike between open, fraction and entry work can only be assessed on
the basis of real experiences and an estimate of the dynamics within
reformism (e.g. whether a left current exists or is developing which
can be won to revolutionary politics). However, we explicitly reject
the notion that Trotskyists should constitute themselves as 'the left
of the left' - i.e. as part of a continuum stretching from left
reformism to revolutionary Marxism. Such a formula, beloved in the
USFI, obliterates or blurs the qualitative difference between
reformism, no matter how left, and revolution.

Trotskyist Regroupment
For a number of years, the USFI has been in thrall to various versions
of 'recomposing the workers' movement'. In practice this has meant a
series of botched - and sometimes disastrous - 'regroupments' with
non-revolutionary (Stalinist, Green, left reformist, etc.) forces
aimed at building new workers' parties. In no country has this tactic
(which threatens to become an overarching 'strategy') been successful.
In some countries it has effectively dispersed the Trotskyist vanguard
to the four winds. In fact, this method has been consciously
counterposed to regroupment with genuinely revolutionary forces, who
are ritually denounced as 'sectarian' for failing to suffer from the
same illusions as us. Revolutionary regroupment and intervention in
mass parties or new political formations are different - if often
linked - tasks, and must not be confused. Revolutionary regroupment
presupposes winning a minimum necessary level of agreement on a
revolutionary programme and grouping together conscious vanguard
fighters for the purpose of intervening in the wider workers'
movement, whether in the form of fraction work, entrism or as an
independent party. The level of agreement necessary to enter new
radical formations alongside other leftists is correspondingly lower,
since it is a tactic aimed not at dozens and hundreds, but at tens of
thousands. However, the link between the two tactics lies in the
necessity for revolutionaries to act as a disciplined 'core' in
reformist and centrist parties. Without this, no amount of grandiose
'recomposition' schemes will add up to a row of beans at the end of
the day. Herein lies the importance of an active attitude to
regroupment. This must gain a special urgency in the present period,
given the disarray of much of the far left internationally. It is

Continued in Part 2