Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 10:04:31 -0500 Subject: M-G: Cockroach Supplement! (Revolutionary regroupment or centrist alchemy?) (Part 2) "The 'gang of eight' was capable of sweeping away Yeltsin in its pathetic excuse for a putsch because, as we wrote, it was a 'perestroika coup'. But both imperialism and the forces of internal counterrevolution were aligned on Yeltsin's side. The coup plotters were not only irresolute but didn't want to unleash the forces that could have defeated the more extreme coun- terrevolutionaries, for that could have led to a civil war if the Yeltsinites really fought back. And in an armed struggle pitting outright restorationists against recalcitrant elements of the bureaucracy, defense of the collectivized economy would have been placed on the agenda whatever the Stalinists' intentions." --Workers Vanguard no 535, 27 September 1991 The WIL/LTT today openly acknowledge that Yeltsin's countercoup was the key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, deriding the ICL because we did not immediately declare at the time that the Soviet Union had ceased to be a degenerated workers state. While recognising that the state power had been decisively fractured by the August events, we looked to spark working-class action in defense of collecti- vised property. The ICL distributed tens of thousands of copies of our leaflet "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yelysin-Bush Counterrevolution!" It was only when it became clear that the working class, which had been atomised and its conciousness thrown back by decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule, was not going to move against Yeltsin that we said that the Soviet workers state had been definitely destroyed. And what was the position of the WIL/LTT, which now prides itself on recognising that the victory of Yeltsin spelled the end of the Soviet degenerated workers state, at the time of Yeltsin's countercoup? While taking out Workers Power for their call for a "united front" with Yeltsin (and effectively demolishing WP's inane denial that capitalism has been restored) the LTT nonetheless declared that "those supporters of the LRCI and the WRP/Workers Press who appeared at the barricades were entirely correct to do so" (Workers News no 46,August 1993). Small wonder: at bottom the LTT had exactly the same position as Workers Power, albeit dressed in somewhat different verbiage. In In Defence of Marxism (no 3,June 1995) they write: "...as at August 19, 1991--the most important task was to defend the democratic rights of the working class and the mimority nations against the immediate threat of the coup, by mobilising for a general strike, and, if conditions had ripened, by organising an armed uprising.... "The success of such a policy presurposed a willingness to fight in a military bloc alongside Yeltsin and his supporters. Simular tactics were applicable towards the nationalists in the non- Russian republics, most of whom sat out the coup in cowardly neutrality." In the name of "democratic rights" the LTT not only proposed "a temporary bloc with the Yeltsinites"--but denounced the various reactionary nationalist regimes (many of which, like in the Baltics, were filled with fascists), for not actively participating! As for the LCMRCI group, when they left Workers Power's international in 1995 they excoriated the LRCI's call "for a 'united front' with Yeltsin without conditions" as tantamount to a "united front" with imperialism. True enough. But this didn't stop the LCMRCI group in New Zealand from proposing the possibility of a "military block" with Yeltsin, offering that if Yelysin "broke with the bourgeisie", revolu- tionaries would have demanded that he call for a general strike. In other words, their "opposition" to the LRCI's line of unconditional support to Yelysin's counterrevolution was a call for a "united front"" with Yeltsin...under certain conditions. Nonetheless, the LCMRCI still has problems in squaring their condemnation of Workers Power with their fusion with the LTT which had a virtually identical position. At a 15 December London public meeting on "regroupment", the LCMRCI's (John Doe) tried to discover a "class line" between WIL and Workers Power's attitude to Yeltsin. To this end, (John Doe) cited an LTT statement issued after Yeltsin took power, proclaiming that "while a military bloc with Yeltsin and his supporters would have been appropriate had the August Coup developed into a civil war, there could have been no united front with a restorationist government bent on the destruction of the workers state" (In defence of Marxism no 4, May 1996). Only a centrist manoeverer, loking for a home in a bigger swamp, could find a principled difference in the LTT's "opposition" to a united front with a restorationist government when it was quite prepared to line up with Yeltsin in creating just such a government. "Workers Aid to Bosnia" Capitalist counterrevolution and the resulting destruction of the Yugoslav bureaucratically deformed workers state has brought the Balkan peoples all-sided communalist massacres, fuelled by contending imperialist rivilries and intervention. As proletarian internationalists, we have opposed all of the competing nationalist forces in the wars that have raged in the former Yugoslavia, while militarily defending the Bosnian Serbs against imperialist attacks. We have stood against all forms of imperialist intervention, including under the UN flag, and called for an end to the economic embargo of Serbia. Most of the centrist and reformist left lined up behind one communalist force or another and, at least tacitly, behind imperialist intervention. Workers Power, the United Secretar- iat and the WIL/LTT all boosted "workers Aid to Bosnian", which was a stalking horse for NATO/UN intervention on the Bosnian Muslim side. This repeated call to "loft the arms embargo of Bosnia" was simply a thinly veiled call for the imperialists to arm the Bosnian Muslim forces. The LCMRCI split from Workers Power as a puported "left opposition" after the latter flagrantly refused to call for defence of the Bosnian Serbs against NATO bombing in the summer of 1995. Denouncing his former organisation's support to the Bosnian Muslims in the Balkan conflagration, LCMCRI leader (John D) wrote that "all sides were reactionary" and called for "defeatism on both sides and the transformation of an inter-ethnic slaughter into a class war" (Workers News no 56, March-April 1996). But now this put to one side, as (John D's) LCMRCI prepares to join forces with the LTT, which called for support to the Bosnian Muslims (and earlier Croatia) in the nationalist fratricide. Bosnia is not a nation and there is not a Bosnian "people". As part of the former Yugoslavia, prior to the communalist slaughter of recent years, the population of Bosnia consisted of a mix of Slavic Muslims, Croats and Serbs living together within the samr territory. In such situations, there can be no "democratic solution" within the confines of capitalism where "self determination" of one peoples take place through denying that right to another, through bloody "ethnic cleans- ing". The only just solution to the Balkin crisis lies in socialist revolution to sweep away all the reactionary regimes and establish a socialist federation of all the Balkans. Above all this task requires the building of revolutionary Trotskyist parties, bound together by the principles of proletarian internationalism. Tailing laborism "Old" and "New".. A strategic task for genuine revolutionaries is to break the stranglehold of Laborism on the working class. For much of the so-called "far left" in Britain, however, the very idea of breaking from Labor is unthinkable. This has been brought home in their reactions to the formation of Arthur Scargill's SLP. WIL is cravenly loyal to Labor, and hostile to Scargill's break from the Labor Party. they admit that New Labour's election material is a "bosses charter", and that "Labour's pro-imperialism is stronger than ever" (Workers News no 58, October-November 1996) but advocate that workers must vote for it, and therefore against the SLP, come hell or high water. Others like the International "Bolshevik" Tendency (IBT) have simply liquidated into the SLP (or partly liquidated as in the case of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The formation of the SLP as a split from the Labour Party represents a challenge to the hegemony of the Labour Party over the workers movement. As such it provides a potential opening for a Marxist party to intervene and to demonstrate the neccessity for an authentic Leninist Party by exacerbating the contradictions between the aspirations and the interests of the working class base of the Labour Party and its pro-capitalist leaders. That is the basis upon which the Spartacist League/ Britain has sought to intervene into the developments in and around the SLP. While maintaining our own political independence, SL/B comrades have actively campaigned for the SLP candidates in Hemsworth and Barnsley East, noting that their platforms addressed felt needs of working people, and that they stood in opposition to Tony blair's "New" Labour Party. Together with going door-to-door with SLP members and distributing their election materials, we also intervened in SLP election meetings where we distributed our own leaflet calling for critical support to the SLP candidates and sold our newspaper Workers Hammer. While the IBT, the CPGB and others are busily engaged in internecine manoeuvering for internal influence in the SLP, we made it clear our fundemental disagree- ment with the political programme of the SLP, which is one of "Old" Labour reformism, tacitly accepting the framework of British imperialism and its parlimentry institutions. We counterpose the need for a Leninist party committed to the revolutionary overthrow of British imperialism and the establishment of a federation of workers republics in the British Isles. As for the WIL, they have a history of attacking Scargill >from the right. Thus they published a Stalinophobic denuncia- tion of Scargill's SLP by Al richardson, which rails that the SLP "appears to be mesmerised by Stalinism" and refers to ex- Communist Party members now in the SLP as "the fag ends of the most sevile defenders of the old Russian bureaucracy" (Workers News no 57, May-June 1996). Here is a measure of the commitment to "democratic socialism" (otherwise known as social-democratic betrayal) of the Laborite left in Britain. Harsh words for Stalinism--which even the imperialists proclaim is dead--from those who amnesty that servile instrument of British imperialism, the Labour Party. Nothing new here for the WIL, which has never repudiated their past role as servants of Gerry Healy and his vicious anti- Communist attacks on the miners union leader. As for the Committee for Revolutionary Regroupment (CRR), they split from the British USec rejecting the latter's purposed fusion with Militant. As cheerleaders for green nationalism, the CRR couldn't stomach Militant's fawning over notorious Ulster Loyalist paramilitary figures such as Billy Hutchinson. Yet the CRR retains the USec's commit- ment to support for and "entry" work in Blair's Labour Party, while turning a blind eye to Blair's enthusiasm for Loyalist leaders like David Trimble, who last year stood at the head of some of the largest Loyalist mobilisations against Chatholics which has beeen seen for years in Northern Ireland. In this centrist lash-up, WIL and the CRR are wedded to Blair, yet the LCMRCI calls for a vote to the SLP, having declared that "The creation of the SLP represents the most important left wing split from Labour in more than sixty years" (International Bulletin no.1, Augusy 1996). None- theless, the LCMRCI still calls for a vote to Tony Blair's Labour Party in constituencies where the SLP is not standing. The Leninist tactic of the united front v the "anti-imperialist united front".. Our intervention and concrete work around the SLP candidacies in Hensworth and Barnsley East were an applica- tion of the tactic of critical support proposed by Lenin in 1920 as a means for a small communist vanguard to "det a hearing" >from the masses. Critical support is an application of the tactic of the united front: by proposing urgent united action around concrete issues in defense of the working class, the young Communist parties sought to win the mass of workers who retained allegiance to the reformist social-democratic parties, proving in struggle the superiority of the communist pro- gramme and leadership. Through the clash of opiomion in open political debate and common action the conciousness of the working class is raised and the workers can be broken from their reformist misleaders and their centrist tails. The ICL bases itself on this Leninist tradition, summed up in the slogan "march seperately, strike together", because our aim is to fight for proletarian state power. In his1934 piece on "Centrism and the Fourth Interna- tional" Leon Trotsky desdribed how a "centrist swears readily by the policy of the united front, emptying it of its revolution- ary content and transforming it from a tactical method into a surpreme principle". These words aptly describe, the LTT, whose lengthy tones about the "united front" serve as a justfication for supporting class-collaborationist alliances. Independence for the working class from their exploiters is the fundemental principle of revolutionary Marxism. Yet the LTT not only calls for electoral support to workers parties in popular-front coalitions with the parties of the bourgeoisie but even gives electoral support to bougeois nationalist parties. In the 1994 elections in South Africa, WIL called for a vote to the nationalist popular-front "tripartite alliance" of the ANC, Communist Party and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions). Yet, even at the time they openly admitted that " the ANC has ceased to be a national liberation movement, and has become an increasingly conservative bourgeois nationalist party, readt to give white-dominated South African capitalism a black political face" (Workers News no 50, May June 1994). This is characteristic of centrists. They are quite capable of a perfectly correct "analysis" from which they draw absolutely no practical revolutionary conclusions. On the contrary they act, in practice, in a manner indistinguishable from organisa- tions to their right. As Trotsky noted, "Centrists talk a lot about the 'masses' and always end up orienting themselves towards the reformist apparatus." The LTT uses this centrist rationale for their capitulation to anti-proletarian forces. Thus, their South African group Comrades for a Workers Govern- ment (CWG) tries to justify supporting the ANC with the arguement that it "has a mass proletarian following". In the South African elections we called for a vote to the Workers List Party (WLP). While noting that the WLP's programme did not go beyond the bounds of left reformism, we wrote: "The question of political organisation of the proletariat, independent from and in opposition to the nationalist ANC, is a key strategic question for South Africa today. In this regard, the WLP does draw a crude class line and a vote for it will be seen in South Africa as a vote for a workers party rather than ANC." --"ANC/DeKlerk neo-aparthied regime:enemy of black freedom", WH no 141,May/June 1994 For its part , the LTT/WIL has also supported Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) in the 1995 elections. In spite of its name, Zyuganov's party is a throughly bougeois party committed primarily to fostering Great Russian chavinism and the revival of Russian imperialism. Evidently the LTT/WIL's previous concern for the "democratic rights" of minority nations in the former Soviet Union vanished in the aftermath of the counterrevolution. (John D.) and the Latin American component of the LCMRCI try to invent a supposedly "anti-imperialist" wing of the bourgeoisie in underdeveloped countries in order to politically capitulate to it. They call this the "anti-imperialist united front". For (John D., along with all Latin American centrist organisations, this is a convenient cover for their position that the "main enemy" is not at home. This centrist methodology, which is also shared by WP, flatly contradicts Trotsky's perspective of permanent revolution. Trotsky insisted that the bougeoisie in backward countries is so dependent on imperialism that even the tasks of the bourgeois- democratic revolution can only be accomplished through a proletarian seizure of power, and its international extension. The "21 Conditions" for entry into the Communist Interna- tional (CI), adpted at the Second Congress of the CI, in- cluded the condition that: "Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has the obligation of exposing the dodges of its 'own' imperialists in the colonies, of support- ing every liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds." At the same CI Congress, in his "Priliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions", Lenin also clearly spelled out the tasks of the Communist Parties in relation to the colonial countries, calling for: "...a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bougeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on the condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not onlt in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special task, i.e., those of the strugggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations." To Be continued... --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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