From: "Robert Malecki" <malecki-AT-robertsfors.mail.telia.com>
Subject: SV: M-TH: Gays & lesbians
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 07:52:32 +0100


Rebecca writes...

>Hi Bob!
>
>
>Bob:
>The party fights as the tribune of all the oppressed.  But.. to create
>genuinely free and equal relationships between people in all sheres,
>including sex, requires nothing less than the destruction of this class
>system and the creation of a communist world...
>
>
>Rebecca:
>But I dont understand. The piece I sent does suggest otherwise. Please
>explain!

Well, this is what I have been trying to do since you first sent the piece
to the list. It is the political and organizational conclusions that are
drawn by the Workers Power people that I oppose. The document quite clearly
puts not the TP and need for a world party on the order of the day for these
sectorial fights linked to the dire necessity of smashing this system
through workers revolution as a pre-equisite for these particular groups or
in fact anyone's liberation. But appear to want to turn this stuff upside
down. These vague formulations of "fighting" united fronts as some sort of
permant feature above and beyond the party being put on a pedistal almost as
permanent institutions and the need to enter these alien bodies on a more
permanant basis which in fact goes against the very grain of what a United
Front actually is..You yourself admit this at the end of this letter that
the WP gets it backwards and in a sense is opportunistically trying to adept
the tactic of the United Front to these movements along with a special
program other then the Trotskyist program of world revolution..
>
>
>Bob:
>So the full program of the Fourth International is in fact the only
>salvation for these people. It looks like the Workerspower people want to
>create a special TP for every sector that they think their might be some
>action..
>
>Rebecca: Perhaps you are right. However I took the piece to mean that the
>interests of gays and lesbians forms an integral part of the one
transtional
>programme. Are you not mistaking the transitional programme for the action
>programme? There is a distinction you know. The transitonal programme is a
>comprehensive programme for the world working class irrespective of the
>specific conjuncture of events in a particular city, country or whatever.
>The action programme is a specifc programme grounded in the transitional
>programme. Trotsky's action programme for France was not identical to the
>transitonal programme.

No I am not mistaking anything. I realize that some demands and slogans in
*action* will become absolutely vital and burning issues before any seizure
of power. However this does not mean that any action program is seperated
from agitating and fighting for the full program of Trotskyism always and
everywhere..
>
>Bob:
>I notice that you write;
>
>>Revolutionaries will fight for political leadership in  relevant united
>>front organizations to win lesbians and gay men to the programme of
lesbian
>>and gay liberation and revolutionary socialism.
>
>I ask you what the program for "gay and liberation" is if it is not the
>program of the FI and world revolution? Because you have obviously come up
>with another program which puts "revolutionary socialism" of some sort
after
>their liberation instead of proletarian revolution being the pre-exquisite
>for their and everybody else's liberation..
>
>Rebecca: Point well made Bob. Thanks.

Yup! Here is how "Women and Revolution" put it in No 43, Winter 1993-Spring
1994.

"The party fights as the tribune of all the oppressed.  But.. to create
genuinely free and equal relationships between people in all sheres,
including sex, requires nothing less than the destruction of this class
system and the creation of a communist world..."

Warm Regards
Bob Malecki








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