Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 16:34:40 -0500
Subject: M-G: Cockroach Special! (Revolutionary Regroupment!)


Introduction:

As the International spartacist Tendency, now the International Communist
League (ICL) hold a very special place in my heart i sent out the first part
of a long document produced by them on the subject of "revolutionary
regroupment". As the document is fairly long and i only recieved it in the
post (snailmail) today it will take some time to write it out and get it on
line. Hopefully by the weekend or next week.

My only comment is that much of what i have learned about trotskyism comes
>from this organisation-but even the Sparts don't get a free ticket!

So read and enjoy the first part of this document. Actually it is about
political skeletons that need to be dragged out of the closet and discussed!
Hopefully the full document will be on line at my homepage and will be a
permanent feature in that much of what is said is extremely important for
anybody who really wants to make a revolution..

So check out my home page towards the week end and see if I have been up
nights typing this stuff out. Hopefully it will help in finding some
revolutionary Marxist clarity for all those who claim the mantel of Trotskyism.

Forward to a reforged Communist International!

Bob Malecki and Cockroach...
--------------------------------
Revolutionary regroupment or centrist alchemy?

The imperialist triumphalism over the counterrevolutionary
destruction of the bureaucratically deformed workers states
in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has impacted
widely on those who claimed to adhere to the programme and
principles of revolutionary Marxism. As the world's ruling
classes pronounce the "death of communism", much of the left
is rapidly repudiating even any pretence of Leninism as they
seek "regroupment" in larger reformist organisations together
with social democrats, ex-Stalinists,Greens, other so-called
"progressives" and even capitalist forces.

Cliff Slaughter's Workers Revolutionary Party, one of the
degeneration products of Gerry Healy's organisation of the
same name, has liquidated itself. The Slaughterites are now
seeking to form a broad church encompassing "envionmental
and justice campaigning organisations, all socialist grpoups,
the Labour Party and the trade unions". Militant Labour has
recently decided that its name was far too "radical" and has
opted for the more "palatable" name of the Socialist Party. The
"United Secretariat of the Fourth International" (USec), which
for years falsely laid claim to being the continuation of
Trotsky's revolutionary Fourth International, is in a state of
near-terminal collapse.

In France, the former "star" section of the USec is casting
about for an electoral alliance with the French Communist
Party, and the petty-bougeois Greens. In Italy, Usec members
have joined all manner of other groups in liquidating into Ri-
fondazione Comunista (RC). An offshoot of the old Italian
Communist Party, RC serves as a left prop for the Italian
popular-front government that is enforcing vicious capitalist
austerity and racist attacks on immigrants.

Posturing as an alternative to this wholesale liquidation
is the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT), who are hosting a
conference on "revolutionary regroupment" aimed at picking
up disaffected groups from the disintegrating USec. The
particular cosumation of this intention is to be a fusion with
the ex-Usec members now in the Committee for Revolutionary
Regroupment as well as with elements of the Liason Committee
of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International
(LCMRCI), a split from Workers Power's "international"
tendency of roughly the same name  with a few less initials.

A joint statement issued by the LTT and LCMRI declares
"the two tendencies agreed that it is neccessary to attempt a
discussion and regroupment process with all forces that are in
favour of a Leninist-Trotskyist international opposed to
centrism" (Workers News no 58, October/November 1996).
Yet the coming together of these tendencies has nothing to do
with "revolutionary regroupment". Rather, this fusion is a
rotten bloc predicated on papering over political differences.
At the same time, it is a genuine right-centrist "regroupment"
based on a shared record of championing the forces of anti-
Soviet reaction in the pivotal events leading to the counterrev-
olutionary destruction of the bureaucratically deformed
workers states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The
variouis opportunist appetites of the different components find
recouncilation in a common perspective of tailing Labourite
/Third world nationalist forces.

Revolutionary regroupment-the fight for a Leninist party..

Revolutionary regroupment-the struggle to win subjec-
tively revolutionary elements from reformist and centrist
organisations to the programme and party of Leninism-is
indeed vital and driven home with renewed urgency today as
the question of forging a genuinely revolutionary international-
ist leadership of of the world's working class is starkly posed. In
the aftermath of the destruction of the Soviet Union, the ruling
classes are waging a ruthless offensive against the working
class, ripping up any and all social programmes while fanning
the flames of racist reaction to make immigrants the scapegoat
for increased unemployment and misery. As they seek to
increase their competitive edge against their imperialist rivals,
the international bougeoisies are bringing the world closer to
obliteration in interimperialist World war III.

Across Western europe, the working class has fought back
in some of the largest and most militant battles in years; yet,
for the first time since the Paris Commune, the masses of
workers in struggle do not identify their immediate felt needs
with the ideals of socialism or the programme of proletarian
revolution. As we of the International Communist League
wrote in our international "perspectives and tasks memoran-
dum" in January 1996.

 "The ICL exists today in a period in world history, one
 conditioned by the collossal defeats for the proletariat with
 capitalist counterrevolution in the former Soviet Union and
 across East europe, and the potential for simular defeats looming
 in Cuba,China, Vietnam, and North Korea. As Trotskyist
 internationalists, we fight against capitalist counterrevolution.
 Lacking historical precedents as a guide, Marxist programmatic
 clarity is essential as a compass. As revlutionary Trotskyists we
 are, still the party of the Russian Revlution. This defines not
 only or mainly our unique Soviet defensism, which today has
 few points of application, but charts our fight for genuine
 communism today: to pursue the class struggle to workers'
 victory with their power implanted in workers councils across
the world-the necessary condition to begin the elimination of
the economic exploitation and social oppression within the
human species and the transition to a stateless, socialist so-
ciety....Struggle with contending parties and currents within
the class is essential for the ascendancy of a clear, defined and
organised revolutionary vanguard party."

Since our inception we have understood that revolutionary
regroupment is a crucial element to forging a Leninist  interna-
tional party, requiring both patient and intransigent polemical
struggle and work such as united-front actions in which the
political viewpoints and strategies of different organisations
are tested in action. The purpose of such a struggle is to split
subjectively revolutionary elements from reformist and centrist
organisations and lay the basis for fusion into a common,
principled organisation based on the programme of revolutionary
Marxism.

This was the method of the Communist International of
Lenin and Trotsky, which established "21 Conditions" for
admission, based on sharp programmatic points designed to
draw a clear distinction between revolutionaries and centrists
or reformists. This was carried forward by Trotsky in his
struggle to found and build the Fourth International through
merciless battle against the Stalinists, the Social Democrats
and also against centrist pretenders to revolutionary politics,
whom he described as "revolutionary in words, reformist in
deeds".

Our international tendency was built through a process of
revolutionary regroupment, largely with cadre from the United
Secretariat in the 1970s. The programmatic basis for regroup-
ment with such leftward-moving elements was outlined in the
following draft declaration written by these former USec cadre
in the late 1970s:

. "No political or electoral support to popular fronts;for
  conditional opposition to workers parties in open or implicit
  class-collaborationist coalitions;

. Uphold the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution; for
  proletarian leadership of the national/social struggle;

. For military support to petty-bougeois nationalist forces
  fighting imperialism, but absolutely no political support to
  such forces; for Trotskyist parties in every country.

. For unconditional defense of all the deformed/degenerated
  workers states against imperialism; for political revolution
  against the bureaucracies; no political support to competing
  Stalinist cliques and factions;

. Against violence within the workers movement.

. For Communist fractions in the unions, based on the Tran-
  sitional Program;

. For the Communist tactic of the united front from above; for
  the tactic of regroupment to unite subjective revolutionists
  in the vanguard party; for intransigent exposure of centrism;
 
. Rejection of the claims of ostensibly Trotskyist Internation-
  als to speak for the Fourth International, destroyed by
  Pabloism in 1951-1953.

. For the reforginging of a democratic-centralist Fourth Interna-
  tional which will stop at nothing short of the dictatorship of
  the proleatariat."
 
  -Spartacist (English edition) no 27-28, Winter 1979-80

This declaration was printed in the document for the first
international conference of our tendency which was held in
1979, on the eve of the full-fledged outbreak of imperialist
anti-Soviet Cold War II. As we noted there: "The trotskyist
position of unconditional defense of the gains of the October
Revolution will have the same cutting edge as our opposition
to the popular front in West Europe and Chile had in the
previous period."

We fought intransigently for the defense of the Soviet
Union and the other deformed workers states against imperial-
ist attack and internal counterrevolution. As Trotskyists, we
understood that the fight for workers to seize power from the
anti-revolutionary Stalinists usupers of the Russian Revolution
was the only real defense of the gains of the revolution as part
of a struggle for world socialist revolution. Meanwhile, every
variety of self-described Leninist groups and "internationals",
including the LTT conference's "regroupers", fought neither
for defense of the deformed workers states nor for political
revolution. Rather they took up the cause of imperialist-
inspred counterrevolutionary forces.

Of course, today there are few leftists around who don't
bewill the consequences of the counterrevolutions they helped
forment together with the pro-imperialist social democrats and
their bourgeois masters. Capitalist counterrevolution has led
to the drastic impoverishment of the Soviet/Eastern European
masses and brutal "ethinic cleansing". This comes alongside
the imperialist "New World Order" with its reactionary
triunphalism and brutal anti-working-class attacks and the
desperate situation of the "Third World" in a "unipolar" post-
Soviet world. In an issue of its theoretical journal In defense
of Marxism (no 3, June 1995) titled "The Marxist Theory of
the State and the Collapse of Stalinism", the LTT writes;

 "The collapse of Stalinism thoughout eastern Europe and the
 ex-Soviet Union between 1989-91 is the most important
 development in world politics in the past half century. It has
 resulted a major shift in the nternational balance of power,
 and unleashed in its wake wars, economic crisis and upheaval
 throughout the region."

Easy to say now. But let's look at where the LTT, the
LCMRCI and their "regroupment" partners stood at every
crucial juncture when the defense of the Soviet Union was
urgently posed.

Afghanistan-the opening shots of Cold War II..

In December 1979 the Soviet Army intervened in Afghani-
stan in support of the modernising nationalist PDPA regime
against Islamic reactionaries and to protect the Soviet Union's
crucial southern flank against imperialist incursion. This
signalled the opening shots of imperialist Cold War II. In the
biggest CIA operation in history, over US=A72 billion of
equipment was supplied to the Afghan mujahedin, who were
also armed with munitions from Thacther's Britain. While
recognising that the Kremlin bureaucracy had only reluctantly
intervened in order to stabilize a client state, we nonetheless
also understood that it was only the Soviet military interven-
tion which offered the possibility of opening the road to
emancipation for the hideously oppressed people of Afghani-
stan, particully women. The International Communist
League (then international Spartacist Tendency) declared: "Hail
Red Army in Afghanistan! Extend social gains of the October
Revolution to Afghan peoples!"

The forebears of the LTT were cadre in Gerry Healy's
Workers Revolutionary Party which screamed bloody murder
over the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. After emerging
>from the implosion of Healy's outfit in the mid-1980s and
forming the Workers International League (WIL), they
continued to denounce the Soviet Army's presence in Afghani-
stan. Even while admitting the potential for a social transfor-
mation opened up by the Red Army intervention, the WIL
nonetheless denounced it as "completely inadmissable (sic)
even if it is intended as a means of extending nationalised
property relations" (Workers News no 8,April 1988)!

The LCMRCI continues to uphold the position taken by
Workers Power in response to the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan as a "big revolutionary step forward". While
Workers Power finally recognised the Soviet Union as a
degenerated workers state, as opposed to "state capitalist", its
position on Afghanistan was an extreme example of centrist
shilly-shallying. On the one hand, they declared "we oppose
the invasion of Afghanistan". On the other hand, they declared
it would be "tactically wrong for revolutionaries...to demand
the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops". In other words,
for Workers Power Soviet defencism was reduced to a "tacti-
cal" question.

In 1989 the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan
by Gorbachev's Kremlin regime, with the futile aim of trying
to appease imperialism, was the direct precursor to the
counterrevolutions that engulfed Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union itself. Though the Partisan Defense Committee,
we offered to organise international brigades to help fight the
CIA-backed mujahhedin cut-throats in the city of Jalalabad.
This purposal was aimed not only at providing concrete
military assistance. It was also premised on the understanding
that such an international brigade could futher the struggle for
political revolution in the Soviet Union, against the traitorous
Stalinist bureaucrats, among soldiers and officers who had
believed in the internationalist implications of their involve-
ment in Afghanistan.

Solidarnosc counterrevolution in Poland...

Following Afghanistan, the rallying cry of the imperialist
drive to overturn the gains of the October Revolution was
"Solidarity with Solidarnosc!" When Solidarnosc emerged out
of a mass strike movement of the Polish working class in
August 1980, we noted that insofar as the strikes enhanced the
workers capacity to struggle for proletarian political revolu-
tion against the Stalinist bureaucracy--which had mortgaged
the economy to the IMF bankers and conciliated the Chatholic
church and small-holding peasantry while lording it over the
working class--revolutionaries could support it. At the same
time we warned that "only a blind man could fail to see the
gross influence of the Chatholic church and pro-Western
sentiments among striking workers" (Fight clerical
reaction! For proletarian political revolution! Polish workers
move", Spartacist Britain no 25, September 1980).

The forces of clerical reaction and capitalist restoration
emerged triumphant at Solidarnosc first national conference
in September 1981. Recogonising that this "union" was nothing
other than an agency for the Vatican, the CIA and IMF,
when Solidarnosc made a bid for power in December 1981,
we called to "Stop Solidarnosc counterrevevolution!" While
standing militarily with the government of General Jaruzelski
in the defense of the Polish deformed workers state against
capitalist counterrevolution, our call to stop Solidarnosc was
integrally linked to the need to forge an internationalist
Trotskyist party in Poland that could lead a proletarian
political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy. In
contrast, all throughout Europe most "leftists" were wild for
Solidarnosc as the means of diving into the Cold War Social
Democracy-the SPD in Germany, Mitterand's Socialist
Party, the British Labour Party and so on.

The LCMRCI continues to uphold the line taken by
Workers Power at the time, which admitted that all the
dominant tendencies in Solidarnosc were counterrevolutionary
but supported it anyway! The leaders of the LTT were then en-
sconced in Healy's WRP, which was so fulsome in its support
for Solidarnosc that it supplied ammunition to Thacher's
drive to destroy the British miners union. On the eve of the
miners strike the Healyites "leaked" a letter by Arthur Scarghill
which denounced Solidarenosc as "anti-socialist" to the Fleet
Street press who, together with the Cold war TUC tops, used
it for an anti-communist crusade aimed at isolating the miners
union.

After the victory of capitalist counterrevolution in Poland,
the WIL itself enthused: "The unprecedented scale of the
struggle of the Polish working class (in 1981) showed the
writting on the wall for international Stalinism" (Workers
News no 30, April 1991). Not an entirely incorrect statement.
Except it was not the forces of the working class that prevailed
but rather the forces of imperialism in the final unraveling of
the former Stalinist-ruled countries of Eastern Europe and in
the Soviet Union.

To be continued on my homepage soon!

--------------------------------------------------------
Check Out My HomePage where you can,

Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!

Or Get The Latest Issue of,

COCKROACH, a zine for poor and workingclass people

http://www.algonet.se/~malecki

Back issues of Cockroach and my book at
http://www.kmf.org/malecki/

--------------------------------------------------------



     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---