From: reed-AT-hn.pl.net
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 1997 11:31:08
Subject: M-I: Re:Jim Casey and the ISO.


Jim Writes.
 And the left in
>Hobart is healthier as a result than it's has been for since the big
>environmental actions of the early eigthies. 
--------------------------------------
This is typical from the ISO. Measuring meetings and marches by how much of
a buzz they get!. I doubt whether the ISO played any role in challeging the
ideas working class people had during this demonstration. Fundamental to
the ISO program is the spontaneity of the masses, traditionally the ISO
never distinguished itself from flabby  reformism.

Does Jim think the Hanson demonstration was a united front? probably.

The ISO calls every campaign a united front. For Trotsky however, the
united front was not a timeless formula to be applied in all situations:
"The UF is determined by concrete circumstances, for concrete aims"
(Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1932).

The UF tactic was a particular approach to a particular problem. In the
early 20's the European communist parties had a substantial working class
following. The problem they faced was that of winning the majority of
workers away from the old reformist parties and uniting them behind the
revolutionary vanguard.

Trotsky assumed that the Communists had the support of around a third or
half of the working class. Where they did not have a mass following,
different tactics were appropriate: "In cases where the communist party
still remains an organisation of a numerically insignificant minority, the
question of its conduct of the mass struggle front does not assume a
decisive practical and organisational significance". (On the UF, The first
five years of the communist international, vol 2 1922).

Today revolutionaries constitute a "numerically insignificant minority". We
cannot begin to pull the mass of the working class around a revolutionary
vanguard, for a strong current of class conscious workers does not yet
exist.  Marxists first priority must be to build a vanguard. All our
tactics must be directed towards this objective. The UF tactic is therefore
inappropriate to current circumstances.

Andrew Reed.

CWG NZ section of the LCMRCI.


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