Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 10:17:50 -0800
From: iwp.ilo-AT-ix.netcom.com (CEP )
Subject: Re: Socialist Labour Party


You (Adam Rose) wrote: 
>
>
>And why not straight to a revolutionary party ?
>Why are you so desparate to submerge yourself in reformist clothing ?
>
>It's almost as if you don't really believe workers can be won to
>an open revolutionary party - which is clearly not the case.
>

    Carlos Replies:
    Sure, the question is a tactical decision, not strategic.  You
    may be a revolutionary tendency or party and still believe that
    if a phenomenon of regroupment of potential revolutionaries occur
    somewhere else, you should be there to attract to a revolutionary
    program.  Lenin and Trotsky tried that very succesfully with
    socialdemocrats, anarchists..etc.  Before them, Marx and Engels
    envisioned the First International as an international united
    front.  Lenin have its own faction inside the 2nd. International
    (which, by the way) had a terrible right wing positions (remember
    the Rosa Luxembourg/Lenin/Martov and others tendency in the 18..(?)
    International Conference of Socialdemocracy on the question of
    immigration...  Even when they were succesful in a revolution
    (1917), Lenin, and Trotsky, INSISTED IN REGROUPMENT IN THE THIRD
    INTERNATIONAL.  Didn't they?  The idea of maintaining a pure
    unspoiled group of revolutionaries outside any historic process of
    regroupment that occur in the real world doesn't look very smart
    IMO.


    Adam wrote:

>Call me old fashioned, but I am part of a party which is a 
revolutionary
>party, which says its a revolutionary party, and whose members join it
>on that basis. We state unambiguously and clearly that the key to 
change
>in society is action by the working class, outside of parliament. We
>have proved that it is possible to achieve some influence building 
like 
>this.

        Carlos Replies:

        Here is the key, Adam, you say "achieve some influence building
        like this".  You are proposing an slow, linear development
        until the SWP reach mass influence.  I think that only lead
        you, with good luck, to a linear, molecular, individual growth.
        In terms of maitaining an structure, is not bad, in terms to
        mobilize the working class behind a revolutionary program is
        just wishful thinking, IMO.
         Momentum for social change and revolution do not
        last forever.  The working class and the oppressed do not have
        the stamina or the idealism to keep fighting for long periods   
        of
        time.  Prolonged confrontation ALWAYS HAS BENEFITED THE RULING
        Class (remember stalinism as a reaction to the Russian Civil
        War?).  You cannot sustain a regular, little by little,         
        approach to build the revolutionary movement.  You need to      
        grasp the opportunities as they are presented to you.  Now, I
        do not know if the SLP is one of those opportunities, but if it
        is not that should be dicussed in terms of numbers, quality of  
       the
        regroupment and possibilities of the revolutionaries to win
        over a significant number of its participants to revolutionary
        politics in certain period of time.  The question where
        you, as a revolutionary, feel more confortable is not the       
        question at all.  Of course you
        will feel better in a party that have small numbers and more
        programatic homogeneity.  But revolutionary politics is not     
         about revolutionary, confortable "micro-climates" but about
        acting as a level to mobilize as many as you can behind revo-
        lutionary politics.  Is the SWP that level?  If they are, what  
        is your point of support to multiply its energies? -- Is the
        SLP the possibility to be the point o f suppor for the          
        revolutionary level to 
        multiply its efforts?  That's the question on the matter of
        the SLP tactic ...  Isn't it?

        Comradely,
        Carlos---
>



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