Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:40:08 +0000
Subject: M-G: The ICL and Norden group!


Bob,  
I really appreciated your willingness to share this stuff on the 
ICL and your politics on this list. I agree with a lot of it, though 
I cant agree that the ICL represents a healthy tendency. I have snipped 
the part on the ICL and Norden and a couple of para later on.

Bob wrote: 
> Now I would like to take up something that Seymour wrote which confuses me 
> very much. In the article "Pabloism of the second mobilization" on page 143 
> of the bulletin he wrote the following; "I believe you do not accept that,
>  beginning in the late 1970s, there has occurred a historic retrogression in the 
>  political conciousness of the working class and left Internationally. 
> This development both conditioned  the counterrevolution in the Soviet block 
> and has been reinforced by it."
> 
> I find this statement highly confusing, completely one sided and 
> undialectical! Whew that was a lot. But that is how I feel about it! So I 
> will try to explain what I mean and perhaps we can clear up some of the 
> confusion at least on my part. In the first place I do not think that one can 
> just bluntly state that the working class and its political conciousness was 
> thrown back.  Conciousness  in the class in the first place is living experience 
> connected to ideological leadership both bad and good. For Communists the 
> point is changing that conciousness and forging it into a vanguard party to 
> lead a  revolution Internationally. So I get the feeling that Seymour with his 
> statement is saying, this big lump of shit has historically regressed, thus....

I agree Bob. This is blaming workers for the dissillusionment of a 
centrist leadership - so  I would include the ICL. By liquidating 
their party, centrists relied on history to do their job, as you have 
pointed out may times on this list.  When the workers don't come up 
to scratch, they get the blame. I would like to know how "Hailing the 
Red Army" in Poland or Afghanistan is not "liquidation". Isnt it 
subsituting the `Red Army' for the party. Unconditional defence of 
the DWS's in a bloc with USSR, or crictical support against imperialist
backed reactionary forces in Afghanistan, is one thing, but we should not 
create the impression that the `Red Army' is anything but a 
counter-revolutionary force in the last analysis. Just as Trotsky 
says of Poland in 1939,  bloc with the Red Army to expropriate the 
Polish bourgeoisie, but the fact that the working class cannot do it 
by itself, makes the invasion of Poland, even to defend workers 
property in the USSR, on balance  counter-revolutionary. Its 
like "hailing"  the trade union bureaucracy in the middle of a strike 
for negotiating a settlement behind the backs of the workers.   
 
> I just don.t buy this Seymour! In fact the Working class has been beheaded 
> of any "revolutionary leadership" for a long time and these days are 
> beheaded of both Stalinist and Social Democratic leadership. This is 
> naturally connected to the situations in different countries and different 
> regions and depends on a number of other thing also. But and this is a big 
> but!!! The working class despite this is trying to mobilise against the 
> present counter-revolutionary attack in many different ways. So stop blaming 
> the working class for the present situation and in fact the working class 
> just by its position in society is revolutionary! Which means that they have 
> the muscle to counter but are lacking leadership.

Again, I agree. Doesnt it worry you that Seymour can't see the 
dialectical link between objective and subjective factors. Doesnt 
that say something about the ICL method?   I would say that the ICL 
never escaped centrism and the underlying forces which caused the 
post-war Trotskyist movement to degenerate. Robertson thinks that 
Cannon was as true revolutionary even after the the sell-out to US 
patritiotism in the proletarian military policy, and  the "American 
Theses" that put the US working class, the most backward, because of 
its aristocratic  privileges,  up as the most advanced.  Where can you go 
without jettisoning that US chauvinist baggage?

> Then again the left which you claim has regressed and which i find very 
> confusing also. In fact ideology is living in that it is the human material 
> that picks up on this stuff and carries it on everyday historically. The 
> left some say has moved in this direction or that direction. But to regress 
> I just don,t get it. What I see from my very little corner of the world more 
> then regression is both chaos and confusion which is beginning to firmate 
> into a lot of Neo-Stalinist and Menshevik politics of varying degree. A 
> re-orientaion is taking place and new faces with old iodeas and old faces 
> with old ideas claiming they are "new" are all over the place!

Yeah. To say the left has regressed means you had illusions in its 
"advances" in an earlier period. I don't see those advances even in the 
early 1970's. Even the most "healthy" groups, which on the surface 
looked like they could break free of centrism  did not break out of a 
formal, intellectual, orthodoxy, into a healthy unity of theory and practice.  
So the centrist left did not rise to the leadership challenges of the 1970's, 
but continued to put their faith in`objective' forces outside themselves. 
At the most they were the " accidentially correct" advisers form the sidelines. 
Even in the mid-1970's there was no prospect of splits and fusions 
that could rebuild a healthy FI unless it was on the basis of refounding 
Marxist method on the documents and struggle of up to 1940. 
However, in one sense some of the centrist left has moved 
quantitatively to the right,  as it must do,  since it tails the working 
class under pressure from the right and without a leadership. In that 
sense they are playing their part in the democratic counter-revolution.  

> We have the Usec moving to the right. The Euro-Communists moving towards 
> traditional Social Democracy--Social Democracy moving towards the camp of 
> the bougeoisie for example. Naturally this is understood by the various 
> things that these tendencies and leaderership say and do. But it should be 
> seen in the context of how the working class is reacting to this stuff. In 
> the East despite lots of attempts by capitalism the working class is at best 
> accepting the situation fairly luke warm. In the Serbia the working class 
> appears to be not joining the present counter-revolutionary Nationalist and 
> Fascist mobilisation. Where as in Bulgaria things appear to be a bit 
> different. I heard last night that the workers are even supporting this shit 
> there. In France we are seeing mass mobilisations. In Korea also. In Sweden 
> politics jumps to the right as the workers jump to the left in activity!
> Germany we see the beginnings of movement. Turkey things are happening and 
> also Greece! Not to mention the former Soviet Union where the miners without 
> leadership are being forced to move.

I agree that the world situation means an intensification of class 
struggle. This cannot go beyond defensive struggle without a new 
vanguard. Yet the old, broad, menshevik left that is being 
reconditioned to head off this upsurge is still there. If you just 
look at Korea, despite the obvious  courage of the masses, they are 
sitting under a bureaucratic leadership whose tradition goes back at 
least to the Stalinists sell-outs after the war, and who are trying to use 
the OECD and the ILO to  do deals with the Government. If those 
neo-Stalinists don't do their job, and keep the lid on, then the troops 
and neo-fascist forces will be mobilised to do the job..  

> Much of this stuff is connected to what Trotsky called the historical crisis 
> of leadership. This was a fact at the hight of Stalin's power and certainly 
> is just as actuall at its ebb. And things do not stand still which your 
> statement gives me the impression of. Because in the wings both the 
> bougeoisie and the fascists are actively working to solve the present 
> situation in their interests. Just as the opportunists of varying degree are 
> doing all kinds of hat tricks!

Today the crisis of leadership is more acute than in 1938. There is not 
even a core of a revolutionary international in existence. Much of 
the revolutionary marxism Trotsky feared was being "liquidated" along 
with the Trotskyists,  has to be rebuilt from scratch, which is why 
the call to go back to the marxist fundamentals on this list is so 
important. 

> Nor is the Neo-Stalinists and Social Democratic trends, nor the various fake 
> Trotskyist trends retrogressing. Perhaps chaos, but also there will be a 
> re-orientation towards vying for the leadership of the Proletariat from 
> these trends. But also the Trotskyists, naturally the question for 
> Trotsktists is on What Program? And with which tactics? I think what i am 
> trying to say is that this period opens in a sense the orientation of a 
> Trotskyist organisation. In fact it is not the period of new leftism and the 
> sixties any longer and polemsizing with just those groups moving to the 
> left. Although this is still the basic strategic task of physically growing 
> and recruiting cadre. But the situation as it is- is very unstable for the 
> Proletariat. Events in the former Eastern block countries and the Soviet 
> Union to Korea and into the Balkans not to mention even this little one time 
> Social Democratic paradise. In the decisive struggles that will come in the 
> next period. In these class battles the the Trotskyists can quickly find 
> themselves in a position of leading mass struggles. I do not think that we 
> can abstain from taking part in those struggles despite the orientation of 
> splitting and regroupment. Sorry! But this period which now seems to be 
> opening up appears to be a new period of wars and revolutions and even 
> counter-revolutions!

Trotsky also thought that the FI would find itself taking the 
leadership of the mass struggle during the last war. It didnt happen.
We have to draw the lesson WHY?  Because, though Trotsky was correct 
in his hopes, the FI "human material" as you put it was not. Its 
programme collapsed into centrism,  So we cannot put our faith in 
such new hopes. As conscious dialecticians we have to "force events".
We are in a new period, very similar to the late 1930's, but different in 
the sense that capitalism has moved on, its contradictions are even more 
extreme, so that objectively capitalism is a hugely destructive 
force,  set against another  massive force, majority of workers and peasants 
being ground down by the juggernaut, but with no  FI at the head.
We have to "force events" in our favour by rebuilding a revolutionary 
international based on the method of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, in the 
next few years, or  the consequences will be worse than the outcome 
of the 2ww]  

Dave.


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