Date: Tue,  8 Apr 97 20:49:55    
Subject: M-G: Reply to Cockroach on elections.


Reply to the Bob and the to the Spartacists against the LCmrci

Dear Bob:
In many "Cockroaches" you re-printed our materials. You distributed our 
documents on Peru, Albania, Middle East, etc. You participated in the 
discussion of some of our resolutions. You asked us to defend you in your 
battles against the Mao-Stalinistas and the exclusions in the LU list. In 
fact, some of our comrades where expelled from that list because they 
defended you.
We don't deny that we have differences. However, in the last days you make a 
big turn. Now you are asking all of us to jump into the Spartacist League.
With that statement you confess that you are becoming a sort of supporter of 
the Spartacists.

We started this reply when you sent to us the extremely long Spartacist 
attack on us. The fact that we were attacked by this tendency means that we 
have some importance. It also show that they are afraid of our influence. 
They never recruited any single comrade from our movement. However, they 
lost a faction led by important cadres who are now part of the Leninist 
Trotskyist Tendency, which is in discussions with us. Quite recently they 
lost the only section which they have in the souther hemisphere.
We want to say that we are not in an opportunist fusion process with the 
British WIL and its international current: the LTT. We still have 
differences which we need to resolve. We have differences on Bosnia, the 
national question, etc.
We have a big difference with the Spartacists. The only "regroupment" that 
they can make is around their programme, policies and leaders. Lenin 
regrouped with trotsky and other adversaries. Trotski made the "block of 
four". These are experiences completely impossible to understand by the 
Spartacists.
They don't have an internal democratic regime. Their political discussions 
are not made in the front of the working class. Their dissidents are 
expelled without allowing them too much rights for political debate. we are 
in favour of political discussion and even to allow for some debates to be 
open to the class. All their dissidents (IBT, CWG, LTG, Norden group) agreed 
on the extreme anti-democratic nature of Spartacists internal regime.
We want to have reagrupment discussions with the LTT and other 
left-"trotskyist" forces.

The Spartacist pamphlet wrote many things which are not truth. Lets see some 
examples:
1- They said that we where capitulators because we didn't split with the 
LRCI when it called for a "constituent assembly for the two Germanys in 
1989". In 1989 and 1990 we published our papers which were openly AGAINST a 
german re-unification. In fact that wa s the official line of the LRCI. In 
1991-92 the LRCI's left opposition was able to DEFETA the right wing 
leadership's position on that question.
2- The Spartacists wrote that "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 'anti-imperialist 
united front'".  
We never try to invent an 'anti-imperialists' section of the semi-colonial 
bourgeoisie. It doesn't exist and even less in the post-cold war order. 
However we recognise that there are "third world" nationalists which could 
enter in episodic confrontations with imperialism, like Husein or Khaddafi, 
and that we need to critically defend them against the US. 
It was Lenin and Trotsky who invented the term "anti-imperialist united 
front". Some tendencies, like the Stalinists, Pablo and Lora, transformed 
that tactic into a popular front strategy. For us an anti-imperialist united 
front is a sort of common actions with non-proletarian forces which are 
resisting imperialism. The Spartacists had a pro-imperialist sectarian 
position on this question. That is why they didn't critically defended the 
Palestineans against Israel in the 1960s, Argentina against UK and US in the 
early 80s and the Irish republicans against the unionists. 
We don't call the semi-colonial countries as "under-develop" for two things. 
First, because we are against the "dependency" and "develop" theories which 
claim that the so-call "third world" countries could economically develop 
into part of the first world. This is impossible under capitalism. Second, 
because in some respects the political level of the working class 
consciousness and organisation is much more developed that in many 
imperialist countries.   
3- They publish a quotation of Poder Obrero in which we are in favour of the 
"penetration of the army and the military police". There is not an 
indication of the sources of that quotation. It is false. We never call for 
an specific work inside the MILITARY police. However we are completely in 
favour of creating communists cells amongst the Bolivian police because of 
the specific characteristics of some countries. The Spartacists don't 
understand at all the reality of the semi-colonies. 
In April 1952 Bolivia had the most important working class revolution in the 
Americas. It was a revolution which could led to a trotkyist regime. However 
all the factions of the fourth international (including the International 
Committee which the Spartacists vindicated) supported the MNR's bourgeois 
government. The destruction of the bourgeois army started when the policemen 
made a united action with the miners, the urban and industrial workers, the 
poor people and rank and file soldiers against the right wing counter-coup. 
In Bolivia and Peru the police organised several strikes. What have to be 
our position when the policemen, which received very low wages (they earn 
less than $100 per month), organised demonstrations and strikes demanding 
that they don't want to repress the workers and that they want to make an 
alliance with the wage workers for better social conditions. In Peru the 
police clandestine unions organised many strikes and their leaders were 
persecuted. Some of them became supporters of the guerrilla organisations 
(PCP-SL and MRTA). The state created an special police corp who have to 
repress police union activities. 
What does the Spartacists said to the transit policemen which like to read 
Trotsky and to support the workers strikes? They can not say them "leave 
that job" because there are no jobs in countries which have only a minority 
of workers in stable jobs, and because we need to fight inside that 
institutions. We have to say to them: build communist cells in your corps 
and try to create unions linked with the workers.
Trotsky had to fight against Stalin and others because he employed TEN OF 
THOUSANDS of Tsarist officers during the Russian civil war. Without them it 
would be impossible to defeat the Whites. we are not in a position of trying 
to recruit reactionary officers and we are for the abolition of the officer 
corps. However, we are in a position to try to influence members of the 
reactionary state apparatus who could sympathise with the proletarian 
revolution.

This is our view of the Spartacists.
In more than one third of century of existence they never led any 
significative section of the industrial proletariat or where capable of 
being an important force in a general strike or a revolutionary situation. 
All their attempts to build something in the semi-colonial world were 
failed.
It is mostly a petite bourgeois sect which live with parasite attacks on the 
rest of the left. They adopted very absurd positions.
They, as a group which live in the most important imperialist country had 
the obligation to unconditionally support every semi-colony in any 
confrontation against the US and its allies. However, they failed to do 
that. In the early 1980s when Argentina, a semi-colony of the US and the UK, 
was in war against the UK, backed by the US, the Spartacists, instead of 
participating in the massive demonstration in all Latin America against 
US-UK, they adopted a criminal neutral position. In a war between an 
imperialist country and a semi-colony if you advocate dual defeatism, you 
are supporting imperialism.If Argentina had won the war against imperialism 
it would had created marvelous conditions for the class struggle world-wide 
and would had spread confident into the Central American , Andean and world 
revolution. They also had a dual defeatist position in the Iran conflict.
In the mid-60s the Spartacists said that the revolutionary position was to 
support the Israel state against the Palestineans during the 1948 war. They 
also said that if, during the 1967 six days war the Arabs will start to 
defeat the Jews, it wa indispensable to support Israel.
This sectarianism against the semi-colonies is linked with an strong 
stalino-philia and sectarianism against the working class.In 1980 the 
Spartacists hailed the Red Army in Afghanistan. We didn't agree with the 
reactionary USSR invasion into this country. However, when it happened we 
critically sided with the stalinists and the local popular front against the 
reactionary landlords. However, the Sparts endorsed the Stalinist Army.
 In Poland 1980-81 millions of workers went into strike and created massive 
unions. The tasks of revolutionaries was to be in that movement against the 
stalinists and fighting against bourgeois and clerical influence. We were 
against a possible Walessa government and we were against such currents like 
the Morenoites or Lambertists which called for a Solidarnosc government. 
However we could not side with the stalinist bureaucracy. The Spartacists 
heavily backed the Jaruselski coup. This stalinist counter-revolution had a 
terrible effect on the international class struggle:
1- The most militant section of the working class in Europe was heavily 
persecuted and disorganise. The Polish uprising, instead of spreading to 
other European countries, was stopped and destroyed.
2- Stalinist bureaucracy was pushed to rely more on imperialism. A programme 
of capitalist restoration and IMF measures was spread. 
3- The repression of a militant working class in Poland, together with the 
discredit of Stalinism and its developing process towards an open 
restoration process, gave Reagan and Thatcher some forces to launch its 
neo-liberal counter-offensive. The privatisation and liberal model which 
they started and the attacks which they initiated were becoming the norm of 
the world capitalist class in the late 80s and early 90s.
The defeat of Argentina during the Malvinas war and the defeat of the Polish 
workers created the best conditions for the Conservatives to launch their 
terrible attacks. In that decisive battles the Spartacists supported a 
repressive coup against the most fighting working class in Europe and 
adopted a defeatist position against the only Latin American country which 
made a war against imperialism in the 1980s.
Today the Spartacists are making a big scandal because our British comrades 
are in favour of a critical vote for a bourgeois workers party to get rid 
off the Conservatives.
First, the Spartacists sectarian policies re-forced the Tories.
Second, the Spartacist line on the British elections is extremely wrong.
They don't  want to support for the Socialist Party or the Scottish 
Socialist Alliance, which are so-call trotskyist organisation and the most 
rooted electoral force of the far left amongst the working class. In Glasgow 
the SSA is the second force. We don't agree with their view on Ireland and 
their concessions to the parliamentary road to socialism. However we are 
critically supporting their candidates when they express militant sections 
of the proletariat.
The Spartacists never wanted to participate in the experience of the SLP. 
This is a very minor but significant split with Labour. A revolutionary 
organisation outside Labour had to try to intervene in that process. The 
former External Tendency of the Spartacists (the IBT) decided to do it, but 
in a liquidationist way. The Spartacists, like always, adopted an easy 
commentator attitude.
We had friends and supporters that entered in the SLP with the aim to fight 
for a revolutionary programme for this new party. We are in favour of 
opening the SLP to the left and for making electoral fronts with other 
socialist forces (like the SP). The Spartacists don't want to vote for the 
SP, despite that it have more militant workers and it is much more left-wing 
than the SLP. Instead of doing work inside this party they collaborate with 
the bureaucracy with-hunts fingering SLP oppositionists as members of rival 
organisations. According the SLP constitution it is not possible to be a 
supporter of other journal and be a member of the SLP. In this moment 
Scargill is expelling tens of far left comrades, entire branches and even 
candidates. The Spartacists are not part of this resistance process, don't 
collaborate with them and, on the contrary, are fingering dissident SLP 
members.
The Spartacists don't want to vote for a mass bourgeois workers party. 
Labour is nothing to do with the US democrats. There a HUGE differences.
The democrats were founded by a section of the imperialist ruling class and 
always expressed it. Labour was created by the unions and their bureaucracy. 
It is a workers bourgeois party. Lenin and Trotsky constantly advocated 
critical support for them in the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. 
In Britain the workers are experiencing 18 years of in interrupted Tories 
attacks. Never the Conservative were so much in power during this century. 
Their is too much hostility against them and the workers have illusions in 
that their historical party (Labour) will defend them. We need to be with 
the workers with the aim to unmask the Labourites.
It is truth that Clinton and Blair are PROGRAMMATICALLY very similar. 
However, they have different parties, The US Democrats is a bourgeois party 
backed by union bureaucrats. Labour is a workers party led by yuppies. 
precisely because Blair wants to destroy the workers class character of 
Labour and that inside that party it exist some resistance, it is important 
to participate in that process. Only sectarians could put one of the first 
mass working class parties and one of the worst imperialist bourgeois 
parties in the world as the same thing. 
The Spartacists don't want to fight alongside the militants inside Labour 
which want to keep the union link, which defended clause 4 (semi-socialist 
aspirations) or beat Blair. They were neutral. They don't want to 
participate in the fight inside the SLP. They don't want to make a front 
with the SP and even vote for them.
They are "pure" marxists completely isolated from the class struggle.
They are like the commentators of football matches. They are not playing 
football and they always have the best recommendations from *outside*.
The Spartacists criticised the LTT for advocating a critical vote for the 
Russian Communist Party against Yeltsin in the last presidential election in 
Russia. We critically supported the CP not because we had illusions in them, 
but because millions of workers believed that they could re-impose 
"socialist" measures. Incredible, the Spartacists supported militarily the 
Stalinists when they crushed the working class (Poland 1981) but not when 
they where trying to organise limited mobilisations against neo-liberal 
restoration.  
 
Last words to Bob. You are trying to build an image of a consistent 
anti-imperialist. You claim that you are an honest US trotskyist refugees 
because you fought against your own state during the Vietnam war. However, 
you are asking us to split with the Lcmrci and to join the Spartacists, a 
current which capitulated to their own imperialism in the Malvinas war and 
on the Zionist question. You attacked us for being pabloites because we want 
to fight against Blair but with the Labourite masses. However, you are 
becoming a propagandist for a sect that supported Jaruselski repression of 
the most militant European working class in the 1980s. 
You can disagree with our electoral tactic on Britain but you can jump to 
easy conclusions and abusive characterisations. 
Bob, try to think another time what you are doing.

Daniel


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