Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 17:50:23 -0500
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (Hariette Spierings)
Subject: M-G: Louis Proyect on the FMLN - A challenge by Jim Hillier


>Return-Path: <Jim_Hillier-AT-msn.com>
>Delivered-To: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk
>Date: Sun, 30 Mar 97 21:07:26 UT
>From: "James Hillier" <Jim_Hillier-AT-msn.com>
>To: LeninList-AT-aol.com
>Subject: Louis Proyect on the FMLN
>
>In a recent post to Marxism-International, Louis Proyect cited the FMLN as an 
>example of a movement to be emulated. This was above all because it was able 
>to unite "the CP and the SP", which, Proyect argues, if it had been achieved 
>in Europe in the 1930s, would have led to the defeat of fascism (by 
>implication before it came to power). Comrade Proyect also called (on 
>marxism-international for some strange reason) to be removed from the 
>LeninList because all that happens there is that Adolfo and Mark post 20,000 
>byte essays which then go unanswered.
>
>A word on this last point first: if Adolfo and Mark go unanswered, this is in 
>part to be blamed on Proyect himself: he could have answered them, but chose 
>not to. I am now posting this as a direct challenge to a point he has made. I 
>hope he will not leave this unanswered, too.
>
>A while back, on marxism-international, when I tendered my temporary 
>resignation from the list in protest at the expulsion of two communists, Jay 
>and Adolfo, I mentioned in passing that I regretted having to take this course 
>of action because, among other things, I wanted to debate the question of 
>Castroism with Louis. As he has now raised the question of Castroism again (he 
>singled out Castro as well as the FMLN as an example to follow when it comes 
>to attitude to other forces), I will take the opportunity to start that 
>debate.
>
>There are a number of serious political questions raised by comrade Proyect's 
>comments on the FMLN. Firstly, there is the question of the defeat of fascism 
>in Europe. Secondly, there is the question of the type of unity between social 
>democracy and communism. Thirdly, there is the question of the nature of the 
>Communist Party in El Salvador and of where this has led, today. I will take 
>these points in this order. Underlying it all is the question of the nature of 
>social democracy.
>
>Firstly, it is of course one of the central tenets of Trotskyism that the key 
>to the defeat of fascism in Europe in the 20s and 30s was the united from, 
>from above and below, of the Communist Parties and the Socialist Parties. It 
>is held that the failure to build such a united front was mainly the fault of 
>the Communist Parties, who adopted a sectarian line of united front from 
>below. In Trotsky's memorable phrase, a united front from below is a united 
>front with yourself. By characterising the socialists as social fascists, the 
>CPs prevented the necessary unity in action of the two great contingents of 
>the European proletariat, according to the Trotskyist account.
>
>This could clearly become a thread in its own right - and I for one would 
>welcome that. 
>
>Was the term "social fascist" really at odds with reality? It was the social 
>democrats in Germany that assumed power after the fall of the Kaiser. It was 
>the social democratic leaders who had the leaders of the fledgling Communist 
>Party, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, brutally murdered. It was under social 
>democratic local government that workers demonstrations were banned, and when 
>they took place anyway were repeatedly fired on, leaving many wounded and 
>dead. The Comintern line was that the social democrats were socialist in 
>words, but in deeds they acted like fascists. That seems to me to be precisely 
>what they were doing. Given their record, there is little basis for 
>challenging the characterisation.
>
>Trotsky [and comrade Proyect has repeatedly stated that he agrees with 
>Trotsky's analysis of the fight against fascism] was arguing two things: that 
>a united front was *possible*, and that this united front was *necessary* if 
>fascism was to be defeated. 
>
>For a genuine anti-fascist alliance between the CP and the SPD, it would have 
>had to be true that the social democrats actually wanted to fight fascism. The 
>evidence contradicts this, though. Throughout, the social democratic 
>leadership saw communism as part of the problem, not part of the solution. The 
>Reichsbanner, the nearest thing the SPD had to an armed wing, had inscribed on 
>its banners the defence of democracy against both fascism and communism! 
>
>At different times in the 20s, the CP made calls on the SPD leadership which 
>went unheeded. Every overture was met with rejection. In the end, the party 
>opted for a direct appeal to the SPD rank and file, what it called a united 
>front from below. That failed too. 
>
>The united front was not built in Germany because the SPD did not want to 
>fight against fascism alongside the CP. It saw the defeat of both fascism and 
>communism as necessary for the defence of democracy, ie bourgeois democracy. 
>They were for the defence of the status quo - an untenable position in the 
>circumstances.
>
>It must be remembered also that Trotsky was not for just any kind of united 
>front with the SP. No, he wanted only to march separately and strike together. 
>As an explicit precondition to the united front, Trotsky insisted on the 
>freedom to criticise. Under the circumstances, with the SPD repressing the 
>Communists while remaining out of the fray with regard to the anti-fascist 
>struggle, the criticisms that the CP wanted to make were very sharp indeed. 
>Trotsky could not have been clearer on this: no freedom of criticism, no 
>united front. But what evidence is there that the SPD leadership would have 
>agreed to such a thing? None whatsoever. Like all Trotskyists slogans, the 
>united front from above *and* below was just so much hot air: it was never a 
>practical policy.
>
>If the united front really was necessary, then it was imperative that it be 
>built at any cost. If this meant a temporary suspension of criticism between 
>the different parties of the united front, what of it? And yet this Trotksy 
>refused to countenance. This was because at the heart of the Trotskyist method 
>is the notion that the tasks of the CP was to "expose" the SPD leaders. Once 
>exposed, the masses would flock to the CP. In fact, it was only the lack of 
>such an "exposure" that explained the loyalty of the masses to socialdemocracy 
>in Trotsky's eyes. And of course If there was no freedom of criticism, for 
>Trotsky there could be no "exposure". 
>
>As if there needed to be any more evidence of what the SPD leaders really 
>stood for! They made no secret of it after all. It was not illusions in the 
>SPD really fighting fascism and bringing in socialism that kept the mass of 
>the organised German proletariat loyal to social democracy: it was their lack 
>of faith in revolution. They had seen repeated revolutions fail in Germany 
>after WW1. Their illusion was to believe that they could turn the clock back 
>to social peace, not that the SPD was still a fighting force capable of 
>defending their rights against capital. That illusion belonged only to the 
>Trotskyists and centrists like the Brandler/Thalheimer KPO or the SAP.
>
>On the second issue: what kind of alliance. Trotsky not only opposed the 
>united front from below, but also rejected the policy adopted at the 7th World 
>Congress of the Third International for a People's Front. This, he argued, was 
>a capitulation to the bourgeoisie, because it was an alliance not only between 
>workers parties but also between radical bourgeois and petty bourgeois 
>parties.
>
>There can be no clearer indication than this of the correctness of the 
>Comintern's characterisation of Trotskysim (in 1926) as being a social 
>democratic deviation. Trotsky saw social democracy as a current within the 
>workers movement. And yet the social democrats represent the line of the 
>bourgeoisie: politically, the social democrats are a bourgeois formation, 
>despite the fact that they had a mass working class following. 
>
>The history of the working class movement is, from one perspective, the 
>process of the political separation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie. 
>When the working class first emerges onto the political arena, it is tied to 
>the bourgeoisie ideologically *and* organisationally. Slowly, the 
>organisational link is broken. The political ties are much harder to smash. 
>The Chartists, for example, the first mass working class political movement, 
>did not raise any demands which could not ultimately be met under capitalism. 
>The trade unions, likewise, are formed to fight within capitalism, not against 
>it. In Britain, the formation of the Labour Party was a major step because it 
>severed the organisational dependence of the working class movement on the 
>radical bourgeoisie, but politically Labour has never been anything other than 
>a bourgeois current. With the split in the international workers movement and 
>the creation of the Comintern, social democracy became not simply a step 
>towards the political independence of the working class, but a conscious step 
>back towards bourgeois politics.
>
>An alliance with the Social Democrats is an alliance with a pro-capitalist 
>party. In other words, with a bourgeois party. Not to recognise this is to 
>dress up a temporary alliance between forces which stand for counterposed 
>classes as something different: the practical fighting unification of two 
>trends within the workers movement.
>
>In reality, what Trotsky called the proletarian united front would have been 
>an alliance between the working class party (the CP) and the most radical 
>section of the bourgeoisie, the Social Democrats. The fact that the latter had 
>a mass working class base could not alter the fact that the alliance would 
>have been across the class line.
>
>Not that there is anything wrong with that in principle. If it is effective, 
>if it actually led to a stronger fighting force against the fascists, it would 
>have been perfectly acceptable for the duration of the anti-fascist struggle. 
>But why stop at an alliance with the social democrats? *Any* forces that were 
>willing to fight fascism, to actually suspend their attacks on the Communist 
>Party in order to further this end, should have been welcome within the 
>anti-fascist coalition.
>
>The Comintern recognised this, and adapted its slogans accordingly. The 
>People's Front, or Popular Front as it has been more commonly called in 
>English, was the attempt to gather together just such a fighting alliance in 
>order to defeat the fascists.
>
>What made it possible to contemplate a fighting alliance with the social 
>democrats and others in 1935 was precisely the fact that there was a change 
>within social democracy and other bourgeois democratic forces after the 
>victory of Hitler in 1933: a section really did want to fight. It would have 
>been criminal to have turned your back onsuch forces which were now willing to 
>fight with communists against fascism instead of against communism.
>
>The Trotskyists continual harping on about the class line in the People's 
>Front obscures this fundamental question, the question which Dimitrov put at 
>the heart of his analysis presented to the 7th World Congress. A real, 
>fighting alliance; a real, fighting unity. That was something which was not on 
>offer in 1933.
>
>The question is, then, a united front on whose terms? If the forces wanted a 
>real fight, andnot just a few slogans and lip service to the anti-fascist 
>struggle, then the alliance strengthens us: it is on our terms. If they refuse 
>tofight, and we still enter into alliance, then it is on their terms, and 
>defeat must follow.
>
>Thirdly: the nature of the Salvadorean CP.
>This post is already long, and I will be brief. The CP in El Salvador was not 
>a typical Moscow-line party. The existance of marxist-leninist groups like the 
>FPR who were armed under the inspiration of the Cuban revolution, had a big 
>influence on Shafik Handel and the CPS leaders. Instead of the more typical 
>Latin American example of a growing separation between the Moscow-line CPs and 
>the armed anti-imperialist movements, the CPS moved in the opposite direction. 
>The immediate result was the strongest armed struggle in central America. 
>
>In El Salvador, any genuine democrat had to take up the gun, or at least 
>support the taking up of the gun by others. The Salvadorean bourgeoisie made 
>revolutionaries out of people who elsewhere would have been no more than 
>liberals and social democrats. To unite such forces into a fighting movement 
>was something which is to be commended, and I do not doubt that there are many 
>lessons to be learned from this experience.
>
>But what happens when the local bourgeoisie, supported by imperialism, offers 
>another way out? What happens when they try to undermine the armed struggle by 
>the combination of heavy repression and the offer of a place within the 
>political life of the country?
>
>After ten years of fighting, in which many victories were won, the unity of 
>the FMLN and its commitment to revolution were wearing thin. One big offensive 
>(maybe to win power once and for all, or maybe to force concessions) failed to 
>topple the regime, and after that they were looking for an opportunity to 
>bring the peoples war to an end. When - under Arena and D'Aubuisson of all 
>people - the "peace" process offered the FMLN a way out of the war so long as 
>they handed over their weapons, the vast majority were willing to take it.
>
>One section quickly separated itself from the FMLN. But even the core of the 
>FMLN in 1994 showed that ideologically they had sunk to the level of social 
>democracy. A mass armed movement fighting for workers and peasants power had 
>become an amalgam of social democrats whose main bone of contention was 
>whether they should see themselves as social democrats or as democratic 
>socialists.
>
>Whenever someone holds up the FMLN as a model to follow, they need to explain 
>this, too. The net result of the FMLN's 17 years of existence is today an 
>impressive electoral victory in a bourgeois state by a formation that is 
>social demoratic.
>
>I am very far from wanting to make cheap points. I can recal being approached 
>by the FMLN in London at the time of their final military offensive. Gorbachov 
>was in power and this had no small effect on their fighting moral and 
>political direction. He made it clear to us (we were pro-Soviet Communists) 
>that what was being asked for was not the old form of solidarity, but 
>revolutionary solidarity because everything depended on the outcome of the 
>offensive. The PTB in Belgium set up blood donor clinics for El Salvador: a 
>practical response which represents the reality of proletarian 
>internationalism. 
>
>But despite the heroism, despite the victories on the way, in the end the FMLN 
>was an alliance that collapsed back into social democracy. As such, it cannot 
>offer us a way forward. The FMLN did not defeat fascism in El Salvador, even 
>though it dealt heavy blows to it. Ultimately, it was fascism, in a new guise, 
>which destroyed the revolutionary potential of the FMLN.
>
>And what now? What can the FMLN achieve as a result of of its electoral gains? 
>I have already posted to this list on this matter, and will not repeat my 
>comments here. Perhaps comrade Louis you found those comments too boring along 
>with the rest of the postings on the LeninList. Give me your perspectives in 
>their place, in that case. What role is there for social democracy (or if you 
>prefer democratic socialism) in the context of the bourgeois state in El 
>Salvador in 1997? Will they succeed where Salvador Allende failed in Chile in 
>1970-73? If so, what will they have to do? Or will they go the way of Alan 
>Garcia? 
>
>
>
>
>
>



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