Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 14:40:34 +0000
From: Gerry Downing <gerry-AT-gerryd.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-G: Gerry D and Arturo of the LTT Vs Robertsonism



Dear Comrade Bob,

You have an annoying habit of avoiding the main political arguments
behing a barrage verbiage. The entire point of my original document on
Afghanistan was that there WAS a working class there, that it had
organised and struck and fought but that both the PDPA and your beloved
'Red Army' held them in total contempt and viciously suppressed them.
Though the working class was led by Maoists and pro-Peking communists
nevertheless how much worse were these than pro-Moscow leaders and
social democratic leaders in other countries?

They were about 10% of the population which was 90% illiterate,
approximately the same statistics as 1917 Russia. In fact yours is a
'campists' argument which the Stalinists always used against the
Trotskyists - the fundamental battle is between the USSR and world
imperialism and Trotskyists are objectively pro-imperialist (or pro-
fascist in the 30s) because they keep insisting on the political
independance of the working class as a precondition for revolution. 

Defence of the USSR against imperialism is obligatory on Trotskyists and
class conscious workers but the political capitulation of 'Hail Red
Army' is obscene. And we could do with a little differentation between
the 1920s real Red  Army and the politically decimated (1937/38) arm of
the bureaucracy which put down every workers' uprising it encountered
since then. Remember Warsaw!

I note that you produce two arguments for Afghanistan - first of all
there was not a working class and then even if there was it was under
reactionary leadership.  And  here we  can trace the political
degereration of the Spartacist League. They opposed the revolution in
Iran with the 'Down with the Shah, down with the mullahs' slogan.
Revolutionaries understand contradiction when they see it - there is a
world of class difference between the religion of the oppressed masses
and the religion of the oppressing mullahs and  bureaucrats and the
Iranian shoras were where this was  fought out. The mullahs won - with
the able assistance of your own Iranian resident 'Red Army' the Tudah
Party. But to be sure if you were unable to fight the mullahs for the
soul of the revolution, if you postulated a 'pure' working class which
never has and never will exist then transitional demands and method are
superflous. Simply hoist the banner and demand the workers flock to it
and if they do not they are reactionaries and we will have to look to
the 'Red Army' to make the revolution.

So they were charged with this task in Afghanistan after the
dissapointment of Iran. But now a further degereration took place. In
Poland  there was no denying the existance of a seasoned and very large
working class with a  wealth of revolutionary history. Solidarnosc arose
on the wave of a developing political revolution.  But having supported
the Hungarian revolution of 1956  you now supported the counter-
revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy in crushing the Polish political
revolution. There was no question for you of intervening in the 10
million strong militant workers' organisation and fighting to develop
revolutionary leadership by the transitional method. No question that
you were now on the wrong side of the barricade because of this action. 

Many would say that this appalling position put you outside the ranks of
Trotskyism forever. But I do not hold that view. Because  as the
centrist tendency that you represent you still held to some aspects of
Trotskyism and within your ranks the likes of Yossie, Maria and Arturo
could still fight for the real method of relating to the working class
and attempting to win leadership by taking the class through its
struggles and putting forward  transitional demands to develop the
struggle. Do not give me the stuff about Regan and the CIA and the Pope
bacause it was when Jaruleski smashed the struggle that their influence
over the working class  was consolidated.  And that  defeat of the
Polish working class greatly  contributed to the fact the east European
and then the Soviet  working class  were  unable to politically mobilise
in their own interests when the Staslinists regimes fell in 1989 and
1991.  These then fell to the right and capitalism was restored.

Arturo appealed to you to think before you replied. There is some
evidence of some reconsideration.  And finally - for the fifth time -
please explain how arming individual workers is the same as arming the
working calss as a class? Is not the class consciousness of the working
class lodged in its existing organisations - trade unions,  social
democratic  parties as well as revolutionary parties? If this is not the
case why was the destruction of these organisations in Germany 1933 the
greatest defeat the world working class has ever endured? Just look at
the type of leaders these organisations had and then attempt again to
equate the 'reformism' of the leaders (which is counter-revolutionary)
with the 'reformism' of the masses which Trotskyists must learn to
develop against their treacherous leaders to revolutionary consciousness
with - you've guessed  it - transitional demands and method. And maybe a
tribute to Dale Ross to acknowledge she was correct in 'Women and
Revolution' would be in order.  


In message <199801151847.NAA44899-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>,
Robert Malecki <malecki-AT-algonet.se> writes
>After a half of page drawing the ICL or "Sparts" over the coals for their 
>polemical style....
>
>Arturo writes!
> But the
>question remains unanswered.
>I think that the ICL method on Afhganistan is a covert (and often quite
>overt) way of
>substituting 'revolutionary war' for the independent organization of the
>working class and the oppressed masses. 
>
>Bob
-- 
Gerry Downing


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