Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 12:51:20 1200+
Subject: M-G: LCMRCI reply to Spartattack


Robert and others,
 We are reproducing here an article reprinted 
from Class Struggle, newspaper of the Communist Workers Group in New 
Zealand, which is reponding to an earlier debate with Robert on this 
list over mainly critical support for New Labour. But it also goes 
into more detail about our fundamental methodological differences 
with the Spartacists that go back to the early 1970's. 
 Dave.



Reply to Spartattack on LCMRCI.
[reprinted from Class Struggle, No 17, August-September 1997]

In the lead-up to the recent elections in Britain, a Spartacist 
League supporter, Robert Malecki,  reprinted on his web site a 
Spartacist League (ICL) attack on the LCMRCI regroupment talks with 
the LTT. Malecki focussed mainly on our position of critical 
support for Blair=92s New Labour Party.  We deal with the Spartacists 
own behaviour during the election in a separate article titled 
"Spartacist Method". The reply that follows here is directed at 
Malecki, but is also concerned to explain the causes of the 
Spartacists ultra-left sectarian method and politics. 

Why we gave critical support to the Labour Party.

By its very nature the tactic of critical support does not fuel
illusions in Labour.  It  is clearly a limited united front
specifically designed to get Labour elected to office in order for its
betrayals of workers class interests to be demonstrated in practice. 
It is not enough to condemn Labour as reformists from the sidelines,
workers have to learn from their own experience that this is so, and
recognise that it is communism that truthfully explains why it is so.

The history of  British Labour has always been that of  a bourgeois
workers party. This means a party with a  Bourgeois programme but
which was founded and supported by organised labour. The Labour Party
was founded by the unions to express the class interests of the
majority of society in reforming capitalism.  Labour as a Bourgeois
workers party therefore is a cross class party.  Its bourgeois
programme expresses its loyalty to propping up the capitalist system,
while its working class support expressed the needs of workers to
reform capitalism to provide jobs, decent wages and basic democratic
rights. Such a party represents the basic class contradiction of
capitalism of workers needs vs bosses profits and this contradiction
will remain until workers break off their support for Labour.  This
will only happen when the majority of workers no longer believe Labour
can reform capitalism and break to the left.  We don't  think that
Labour has yet lost the critical working class support, and it can
even attract more support, as at present after 18 years of Tory rule,
or under the impact of a working class upsurge.  The class line still
runs through Labour despite its blurring by the defeats of the last 18
years. Therefore Labour cannot be removed as an obstacle to the
progress of  the mass of workers until they are split decisively from
its rotten leadership. It cannot be wished away by left bureaucrats
like Scargill or by ultra-left Trotskyists like the Spartacists.
That's why Scargill's cynical split was premature from our point of
view.  He is indulging himself in the  illusion that Labour, before
Blair came along, could have introduced parliamentary socialism.  And
now that the Blair leadership has defeated him he wants to create a
new old Labour Party.

What=92s New about Blair?

But what=92s new about Blairs programme?  It cannot be  qualitatively
worse than that of Kinnock or Wilson. The most `left=92 and `right=92
expressions of Labour=92s programmes were all bourgeois programmes which
refused to overthrow capitalism. If you want to see Labour at its
worst look no further than its support for imperialist war in the late
1930=92s, when Trotsky still argued for critical support for Labour. He
specifically refused to concede that one form of bourgeois programme
is better than another when he rejected the ILP=92s plan to vote for
Labour pacificist candidates and to boycott the candidates who were
for the war. The reason that Blair=92s New Labour is still a bourgeois
workers party is that the character of the Labour party is not
determined by its programme, but by its support.  As yet the bulk of
workers have not decided to become communist despite, or perhaps
because of, the long invitations issued by Workers Hammer. By its very
nature the tactic of critical support does not fuel illusions in
Labour.  It  is clearly a limited united front specifically designed
to get Labour elected to office in order for its betrayals of workers
class interests to be demonstrated in practice.  It is not enough to
condemn Labour as reformists from the sidelines, workers have to learn
from their own experience that this is so, and recognise that it is
communism that truthfully explains why it is so.

Ultra-left tactics.

Those  who reject critical support and accuse us of fostering
illusions in Labour are therefore doubly wrong. As well as
misunderstanding the basis of critical support, they are guilty of the
very sin of cultivating illusions in reformism that they accuse us of.
Rejecting the tactic of critical support because of the  rightward
trend in the programme and leadership, is  precisely what gives
workers illusions that "old" Labour was capable of reforms.  Scargill
and his supporters, and all those who had illusions in Labour before
Blair,  reinforce those illusions by breaking with Labour now and
trying to rebuild a new Labour Party.  Underlying all of the
Spartacists positions is this US chauvinism. It led them to take a
sectarian position in all struggles outside the US, but to capitulate
to opportunism inside the US and  where the US interests are involved
as in the case of Israel. 

On the contrary,  declaring Labour to be still a bourgeois workers
party that will betray workers in office, but giving it critical
support to get it elected and to expose it in office, is correct,
since only by this method can those illusions be broken.
Revolutionaries have always been hostile to the labour lieutenants of
capital who run the Labour parties.  But that doesn=92t automatically
make workers class conscious. They have to be won in struggle, not
dictated to with ultimatums from outside by sectarians who feel very
workerish and proud of their loyalty to the ideal of revolution, but
are separated from the bulk of the class by their sectarian position.
Basically sectarians are frightened opportunists, who want to keep
their hands clean by abstaining from revolutionary activity.  This is
why the Spartacists preach pure revolution, but can do nothing to
bring it about.

The problem with the Spartacist Method.

Around the same time that Robert Malecki joined the Spartacists in 
the early 1970=92s our  political tendency underwent a split when part 
of our group led by Bill Logan and Adair Hannah joined the 
Spartacists. Those who opposed the Spartacists, led by Owen Gager, 
wrote a critique of its origins which is still the best critique that 
we have seen, entitled "James P Cannonism".  The gist of this 
critique is that the ICL are US chauvinists.  They are sectarians 
mainly outside the US where they have little influence, but 
opportunists in the US and anywhere else where they have some 
influence. This is no contradiction because whether they are being  
sectarian or opportunist, the ICL rely on objective forces rather 
than their revolutionary leadership to bring about revolutionary 
change. According to our analysis,  the problem arose historically  
because  the  ICL  defended the SWP as healthy until it folded over 
Cuba, and did not recognise the seeds of centrism already sown during 
the war which caused the whole breakdown and collapse of the 4 I into 
fatalism after the war. This includes an incredible failure to 
acknowledge the capitulation of the SWP to US chauvinism during the 
war when Cannon put the defeat of fascism before the defeat of the US 
ruling class. The Spartacists, blind to these wartime betrayals, also 
 include, as part of its healthy tradition, the post-war American 
Theses of the SWP which elevated the most backward working class in 
the world, the US working class, into the most advanced, that is, 
leading force the world revolution. When Cannon rejoined the 
International Secretariat in 1963 as the United Secretariat it was 
not because he had changed his mind about the method of Pablo. On the 
contrary, the SWP went along with everything that happened in the 4I 
including the revision of Stalinism which allowed an independent 
Stalinist Tito, " the unconsious Trotskyist" to act as  a substitute 
for the vanguard. Why bother with a Trotskyist vanguard when 
stalinists could become unconscious trotskysists and take state 
power?

Cannon=92s phoney break with Pablo.

Cannon only broke with Pablo over Pablo's threatened takeover of the
SWP [US].  That could not be tolerated.   The SWP rejoined the USEC in
1963 after another "unconscious trotskyist", Fidel Castro,  had made a
revolution in the US hemisphere under the noses of the most backward
working class. From henceforth, Cannon too could put his faith in
petty bourgeois revolutionaries undergoing a conversion to stalinism
and then an  unconscious trotskyism. When the ICL broke with the SWP
over Cuba it was over this action alone. It was too much to swallow
the SWP now behaving like US Pabloites in adopting Cuba as its own
workers state. The Spartacists correctly took the position that this
was pabloite substitutionism, but they failed to trace the problem
back to its roots in the pre-war, wartime, and immediate post-war
experience of the SWP. What they overlooked was the reality that the
SWP had succumbed to US chauvinism during the war, and that its record
after the war was nothing more than a series of unprincipled
manoeuvres to defend the SWP as the most important section of the 4I.
So while the ICL was correct to break with the SWP over Cuba, they
never went back to uncover the roots of the degeneration of the SWP
and the 4I during and after the war. This means that the Spartacists
own "healthy" tradition over this period is also a product of this
degeneration, and the method which has led them to adopt a clear US
chauvinist line has to be traced back to Cannon's American Theses and
beyond.  Underlying all of the Spartacists positions is this US
chauvinism. It led them to take a sectarian position in all struggles
outside the US, but to capitulate to opportunism inside the US and 
where the US interests are involved as in the case of Israel. 

The fear of the Popular Front.

The Spartacists position on the "foreign" popular front is a classic
case. They  reject anti-imperialist united fronts (AIUF), by falsely
arguing that such united fronts claim that a section of the national
bourgeoisie in oppressed countries is anti-imperialist.  But the AIUF
is based on the premise of permanent revolution - that no section of 
the national bourgeoisie is capable of  leading and carrying through
an anti-imperialist struggle. The ICL rejects the AIUF as an alibi to
avoid contaminating its hands in actual anti-imperialist struggles,
and to cover its adaptation to the chauvinism of  US workers. In
Argentina in 1981 it was necessary for Trotskyists to bloc militarily
with Galtieri against Britain and the US.  Why? Because despite the
right-wing military dicatorship,  the regime was still  merely a FORM
of bourgeois dictatorship in an oppressed country. Robert Malecki 
cannot see why a semi-colony might have a dictatorship created by
imperialism to maintain political  order so that its super-profits can
be pumped out. When Galtieri, to prop up his regime, took a stand
against imperialism and its super-profits, workers were obliged to
bloc with them and defeat imperialism, without in any way giving them
political support. Trotsky's position on popular fronts was to
actively break them up, not scream from the sidelines in the way that
the Spartacists do. Hence in Poland in 1980, the Spartacists put their
bets on the Stalinists against the Solidarity popular front.
Trotskyists had to enter that popular front to split the workers away
from the would-be bourgeois leadership.  Instead of acting as a
vanguard in a fluid situation where revolutionary leadership could
have meant something,  the Spartacists "worshipped the accomplished
fact" [Trotskys phrase for bourgeois logic] and saw Solildarity as
cast in concrete, representing only bourgeois restoration, and
dominated by the church. Against this solid bourgeois object, they
cast the Stalinist tanks  as the progressive defenders of state
property.  

The National Question.

On the National Question, the Spartacists also use the alibi of
"interpenetrated peoples" to avoid taking sides.  In Northern Ireland,
Protestants and Catholics are said to be too interpenetrated to
support Irish freedom without Catholics oppressing Protestants.  In
Israel,  Israelis and Palestinians are said to be too interpenetrated
to support the national rights of the Palestinians.  Bob Malecki's
response to the LCMRCI  position is  to claim that we want to "drive
the Israeli's into the Sea". Actually we want a multi-national workers
state. Whether or not this means Israelis being driven into the sea
depends upon  Israeli workers taking the side of the oppressed
Palestinians  and winning their support for a multinational workers
state. When we look at the politics of the Spartacists inside the
countries in which they have sizable sections - mainly the US, [but
also the UK in the 1970's] - we can see that they take the form of
opportunism rather than sectarianism. This is because they have to
relate to the level of consciousness of the leading layers of the
working class which remain trade union conscious and chauvinist. We
can see in all of these positions the liquidationism that
characterises post-war Trotskyism. The Spartacists are no better than
anyone else on this fundamental question.  The problem goes back to
the degenerate method which breaks from dialectics and which separates
the objective reality from the subjective in the vanguard party and
revolutionary programme.  If the Spartacists want to regroup a new
international with other tendencies they are going to have to go back
and look at their history to uncover the sources of their
sectarian/opportunism. 




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