Date: Tue, 22 Apr 97 15:17:49    
From: LCMRCI <lc-AT-mailhost.pi.net>
Subject: M-G: Reply to Malecki on British Labour



Bob Malecki wrote:
> 
> In reply to Dave and the Lmcri on the "Spartacists" I suggest that people 
> read the following  article. This is produced by Workers Hammer (newspaper 

> of the Spartacist League in Britain).  These are the *real* positions of 
the 
> Spartacists and not the stuff presented by Dave.


Bob I'm sorry I got it wrong. I thought that the Spartacists in 
Britain no longer regarded the Labour Party as a bourgeois workers 
party. I see that I was wrong [as of September 1996 anyway]. So why 
the carry on from you about the rotten opportunist LCMRCI calling for 
a vote for New Labour.  This must also apply to the Spartacists. It is not 
crredible  to say that Labour "remains  a bourgeois workers party" and 
not offer critical support unless that party is actively attacking 
the working class. 

As for "learning to think", we cannot apply past experience 
mechanically to the present situation it is true, but Trotsky's 
position in the 1930's was based on the tactic developed by 
Lenin in relation to Labour in the 1920's.  Communists had to join
[if they were able to maintain freedom of criticism] Labour, and make 
an electoral united front with it so that the vanguard could develop the 
backward workers still trapped in Labour.  

For Lenin this did not depend on a "socialist" programme, but on 
organised working class support and a bourgeois leadership and 
bourgeois programme. At that particular time, Britain was in a 
revolutionary situation with a mass 10,000 or more communist party. 
The question of breaking workers from Labour was tactically very 
important to win them to the Soviets. Labour had a pretty "socialist' 
[i.e. reformist] programme because it was pressured by a militant 
working class from below. 

Later in the 1930's the situation was very different. Fascism was in 
power in Europe and  a world war was on the way. For Trotsky it
 didnt matter how right wing the Labour Parties programme was. 
That's why I used the example from the 1930's when Trotsky says 
even a Labour Party that is about to go to war has to be voted for, 
for the same reason that Lenin advocated, to get it into office and to 
expose it.  Because the situation was pre-revolutionary, it was 
vital also to break workers from the reactionary labour leaders into 
the new international and Soviets that would spring up under the 
pressure of imperilialist war.

Today, the conditions are very different again. Workers have had 
nearly two decades of defeats.  Labour is not being pressured from 
below, yet the vast majority of organised workers, now much more 
backward than in the 1920's and 1030's,  are still trapped inside 
that reactionary party.  The unions are so weak that Blair can openly 
attack them. But this doesn't alter the basic tactic, which is that 
workers who remain trapped inside this historic Labour party must be 
split from it. This is recognised by the Spartacist article that you 
reprint from Workers Hammer, of late [what date?] 1996.

But it is only a tactic after all. The basic task today is regrouping a 
revolutionary party to form the core of a vanguard.  The question of 
how to fight for and win the best militants to that vanguard is the 
most pressing task. Among the tactics which revolutionaries apply 
without in the least abandoning their revolutionary progrrame or 
adapting to opportunism, is working inside or alongside[ if they 
cannot retain freedom of criticism] all the organisations of the 
working class including the Labour Party.  Not to do so means not 
recruiting the best militants and not building the vanguard, and not 
winning next time.

I'll come back to you later about "cop-lovers" and "Galtieri 
suckers".

Comradely, 
Dave

>


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