Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 02:07:33 -0400
Subject: M-G: Re: Replies! (A VITAL DISCUSSION FOR TROTSKYISTS!)


Brown writes:

>Bob,  on the Morenoites it is true that they were part of the anti Pablo
>bloc.  However, they were wretched very early on.   Even In Defense of a
>Revolutionary Perspective -- INDORP contains a critique of the Argentine IC
>section -- Moreno which was in a bloc with the party of Peron...   Moreno was
>capitulating to outright nationalism as early as the early 60's if not
>earlier.   Healy had also not been pure himself -- the Spartacist bullitin on
>the Proletarian Military Policy shows a flyer from World War II signed by
>Healy where they say Our War Production Is In Disarray.   In fact, one of the
>best arguments against the Spartacists defense of the International Committee
>are the antics of Moreno and Healy.  Neverthess, the Healyites did regroup a
>lot of people out of the Communist Party around the 1956 Hungary events and
>they wrote very well on a number of issues.
>
>I think one of the early signs of the Healyites going off the deep end, well
>before the Arab Revolution stuff, was their support for the Maoist cultural
>revolution.  I think that was the moment when people in the Spartacists
>breathed a sigh of relief and were aware that they would not be confronted
>with people asking them why they don't just fuse with the Workers League...
>
>Maybe we should Email Timmy Wohlforth...Im sure he's an expert on this
>stuff....
>
>Frats
>Brown

You are probably right about the Moenoites. But I do not have access to the 
old documents..I burned it up in a rage when writing my book and the Sparts 
called me up offering a lawyer..See even Trotskyists go crazy sometimes..

And on the Healites jumping on the Mao bandwagon makes sense. It was very 
big here in Europe. Probably Healy was worried about the Maoists growing 
from zero to parties of petty bougeois intellectual youth movements and 
parties ten times the size of his own English organisation and the Healy 
International here in Europe. Another short cut that took him over the 
edge..But both the Healyites and the Maoists are dead today..

As far as the Spart defense of Healy and Moreno, I am not so sure it was 
incorrect out of a tactical perspective. Robinson and the Spartacists 
hopefully realized that it was necessary to at least try and get a biggest 
part of the anti-Pabloite block as possible. What was fatal was that 
everybody had their own turf and own National tradition and obviously the 
International was not functioning as a Democratic centralist organization 
after the war. This led to some horrific hauncho chavinist mentality where 
three distnct parts of the world were operating completely disconnected from 
one another because of the war and because of the various pressures in the 
different parts of the world.

But it was the Spartacists who at least in my book who tried to turn things 
in the right direction..Unfortunately they were a little tiny group in the 
SWP and soon on the outside of the SWP. Both Moreno and Healy had much 
larger operations running. But because there was no Democratic centralist 
International of cadre
but more or less groups who fundementally while defending their own turf 
were attempting to get a part of the regroupment around the fight with 
Pablo, and I think that the biggest mistakes unfortunately for Trotskyism, 
was that Cannon and the SWP put the American section before the 
International, because Cannon at that time was the only sizeable party that 
could have won a sizeable piece of the International along Trotskyist lines, 
let Healy run things in Europe and Moreno in Latin America. In fact a 
continuation of the forced isolation brought about by the second world war.. 
I do not thing it was a concious mistake. But the SWP under Cannon was 
trying to pick up the pieces of the American organisation connected to the 
Pabloites heading of to outerspace letting Healy and Moreno alone far too 
long as the European and Latin American representatives of the anti Palbo 
trend...

It was only when the Sparts were excluded from the SWP that a new 
Revolutionary Internationalist perspective of building a *REAL* Communist 
International started coming to the fore. This was far to late and just a 
tiny group of smart asses around Robinson..And things went as they 
went...But again it was this tiny group that alone in the world set out on a 
course to reforge the Fourth International around some of the basics...Both 
Moreno and Healy took another path..

So the whole point is I believe that it was ONLY the Sparts who stepped onto 
the hard road of a principly and programmatically road forward against all 
odds! All of the groups today claiming to be Trotskyist must take a position 
on this stuff. Because it not only represents the historical continuity of 
Trotskyism but who turned down another path in regards to the anti Pabloite 
International. Where are the Healyites today and the Morenoites and the SWP? 
And where are all of the clones and splits of these groups? The latter in a 
sense has been formulated well by Jim Robertson I believe in something along 
the lines of "clones of Pabloite revisionism or second generation of Pabloites..

In fact these groups not having any history to stand on are forced to 
confront just what both Healy and the Morenoites did! Some of these people 
today have fallen out to the left and find themselves somewhere between 
Trotskyism and a rejunivated left wing version of Pabloism connected to the 
present situation and where they find themselves in the world today. They 
are groupletts who are highly 
fluxuaiting with some serious communist politics and outright betrayal 
inside the same parties... This in and expression of people who are lost and 
trying to find there way back to Trotskyism in a serious manner or outright 
left wing centists opportunists that want to return to the good old days of 
left centered Pabloite liquidationism as things move to the right 
Internationally..

We are seeing the same phenomina in the now dead Stalinist movement of 
people lost and trying to find a foothold back in the good old days as most 
of the bureaucrats have joined the capitalist counter-revolution under the 
guise of being Social Democrats.

There is really no difference in that people after events of the latest 
years find themselves in motion and completely confused and trying to find a 
political fast point in their reality. For those who claim to be Trotskyist 
and really want to become Trotskyists they will be forced to go back to the 
Pablo anti Pablo fights in the International to find the answers of what 
went wrong. All those who continue along the happy road of liquidationism or 
in the sense of these grouplets thrown out of the Healyite and Moremoite 
sphere into all kinds of conglomerations will only find their Trotskyist 
roots by tracing what happened after the second world war..

This goes for Hugh, the Lcmcri who come to mind but also a myriad of groups 
being thrown up after the destruction of the Healyites and the destruction 
of the Soviet union among other things.

By the way could anybody tell me where Lambert fits into the picture? I just 
can't remember because I getting old...
Warm regards
Bob Malecki
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Tom Condit writes;
>Dear Bob,
>
>I think you miss something in your polemicizing, which is that in their own
>way the Spartacists are Pabloites themselves.
>
>By this I mean that one of the essential characteristics of Pabloism was the
>theory that Stalinism some how retained a "progressive" kernel and the role
>of Trotskyists, rather than building an independent movement, was to somehow
>try to foster and encourage that revolutionary seed within the CPs. For
>Deutscher, of course, it meant the theory that the bureaucracy would somehow
>reform itself and establish socialism after all in the Soviet Union.
>
>What are we to make of the SL's fervent support of the Polish bureaucracy
>vis a vis the workers' movement there? Is the role of Trotskyists to call
>for the crushing of workers' movements by Stalinist bureaucracies, rather
>than to fight for a class-conscious leadership within those movements?
>
>Similarly, the SL support for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which
>ideologically armed the Islamic forces there just as the C.I.A. physically
>armed them. This again is based on the idea that the Soviet bureaucracy was
>somehow capable of playing a progressive, not to say revolutionary, role in
>Afghanistan. It rejects not only the Trotskyist condemnation of that
>bureaucracy, but Engels' dictum that a revolution cannot be imposed by 
bayonets.
>
>Pass from that to the flirtation with the old-line bureaucrats in East
>Germany and Russia, and you have Pabloism dressed in a suit of
>"r-r-r-revolutionary" rhetoric.
>
>Yours for the revolution (the *workers'* revolution, not the bureacrats'),
>
>Tom Condit

Tom Condit is and nteresting case. He talks about the Spartacists being 
Pabloites or at least soft on Pabloism in regards to the Stalinists. Now 
these accusations must be seen in that Tom himself is involved in the 
American left and the Labor Militant group who is on a "deep entry" 
operation inside the American Labor Party (LP)! Now not only a deep entry 
operation into the LP but on its extreme right wing of pro democratic party 
people and trade union bureacrats who are using the LP to suck up confused 
activists and militants from any serious kind of attempt to build a real 
independent party for poor and working class people. I should also point out 
that Tom when not trying to trash the Spartacists is trying to trash people 
on the LP list who rightdfully are saying that we must discuss politics and 
the horrible pro democratic party line and things like the Detroit strike 
and not in the least it is not numbers that count but what program and who 
you are fighting for from the right!
In fact these leftists critisized by Tom despite their incredible inability 
of discussing the party question and certainly lay no claim to being 
Trotskyist are far to the left of the Labor Militant Group where Tom is!

Notice that TOM in a classical Stalinphobist way takes the question of 
Poland and Afghanistan as his point of departure. He wants to build up his 
anti communist credentials in the LP rather then any kind of serious 
Trotskyist analisis of these two specific events--

In both cases I stand squarely on the side of the Spartacists. In Poland 
like Iran they were the only group who saw and told the truth about 
Solardarnosc and where it was going. And in a choice between capitalist 
counter-revolution in Poland and Solidarnosc Trotskyist take sides. 

In the case of Afghanistan it is even more bizarr that Tom winds up on the 
side of the Aghan Mullahs and he knows very well that the only thing 
standing between a feudal conter-revolution and the imperialist backed 
Mullahs was the men and women of the Red army. The Spartacists were unique 
in understanding this while at the same time calling for a workers political 
revolution. In fact the slogans and propaganda were directed not only at the 
Stalinist traitors in Moscow but in splitting the conscipt Red army in 
afghanistan..

But to understand this stuff we have to look at the trajectory of the Labor 
Militant Group that Tom adheres to and in the United States is om their 
knees to the Democratic party trade union bureaucrats. I bet that the Labor 
Militant Group comes out of the Tony Cliff state capitalist sphere! Although 
I do not know this for sure. But their utter Stain phobia in the form of 
Tom's critique makes me thing so. And this is probably why Tom paints up the 
Sparts as "Pabloite" liquidaters towards Stalinism. Coming from the 
anti-Communist sphere of the Tony Cliff state caps and residing in the 
United States and the home of the anti communist McCarthite witchhunt Tom's 
critique is a cheap shot just to raise his anti Stalinist credentials and in 
fact in the final analisis deserting the findemental position of 
uncinditional defense of the deformed and degenerated workers states during 
this period...

I bet if we trace the roots of the Labor Militant group back to the second 
world war we will find the answers to Tom's short letter. Can someone who 
knows the Labor Militant group run the short historical trajectory of this 
group? 

It will prove how vital going back to the ebd of the second world war is in 
trying to find the real theads of the orthodox Trotskyists. And also 
exposing the Labor Militant group now inside the LP and their complete 
liquidation of ANY kind of Trotskyism, never mined Stalinism...

Warm regards
Bob Malecki
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