From: Godenas-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 14:05:24 -0500
Subject: Tony Cliff, a Degenerate Even by


To give us some idea of the thinking of the "leading lights" of the
Trotskyite movement on this list, we now have a "defense" of Tony Cliff of
the British SWP, who, in my opinion, was a degenerate even by Trotsky's own
standards of at least defending the gains of the "degenerated workers states"
(i.e., socialist countries) against imperialism.   
In 1950, Cliff's organization (today's Socialist Workers Party) was kicked
out of the so-called "Fourth International" for, in effect, supporting US and
British imperialism against Korea--a war in which THREE MILLION Koreans died.
  The Swede's defense--that workers have no stake in "imperialist"
wars--echoes Cliff's own belief that the USSR was "state capitalist", a
theory derived not from Trotsky (who, as we have already seen, urged his
followers to "defend" "degenerated" worker-states), but from Karl Kautsky,
whose 1918 tract Terrorism and Communism characterized Lenin's state to that
effect.  (Cliff's "principles", however, did not prevent him from sniffing
the prevailing winds in the early 70s and calling for a Vietcong victory
after years of prevarication.  He also called for the "victory" of Saddam
Hussein in 1991).  Cliff's own State Capitalism in Russia, written in
1947-48, in fact, closely mirrors, in tone and content, Kautsky's polemic
against Lenin.  While it is unclear whether Cliff, in his rabid
anti-communism, was actually taking the side of Hitler against the Soviet
Union, his characterization of pro-Hitler "resistance" groups in the Ukraine
leave no doubt where his sympathies lay.  He extols the "principled"
anti-Stalinist opposition of the "Vlassov movement and the Ukranian Resurgent
Army (UPA)" (pp.273-74).  The pro-fascist UPA was founded IN COLLABORATION
WITH THE WEHRMACHT in 1940, explicitly to fight against the Red Army.  The
UPA also closely collaborated with the anti-semitic Petliura
government-in-exile.  Cliff's other "hero"--General Vlasov--formed, with the
active aid of Goebbels, a Russian fascist army, and was later given a
commssion in the SS for his service to Hitler.
Cliff's and the SWP's rabid anti-communism later led them to "hail" Lech
Walesa, Yeltsin and Hekmatyr (of Afghan cut-throat fame; now, THERE'S someone
who stands foursquare for womens' rights).  Their toadyism to the Labor Party
has led them to knife--together with labor sellouts like Norman Willis--
practically every worker action in Britain in the back.  The behavior of
Cliff during the 1984 miners' strike was particularly reprehensible--"The
miners' strike is an extreme example of what we in the [SWP] have called the
`downturn' in the movement." Socialist Review, 1984.  That same year, Cliff
boasted of SWP members crossing picket lines: "...We have steelworkers in
Redcar who cross picket lines.  We have three steelworkers in Scunthorpe,
they cross picket lines.  We have a steelworker in Ravenscraig who crosses
picket lines.  We have a steelworker in Llanwern who crosses picket
lines...."
For years, Cliff and the SWP denied that the Vatican was involved in the
Walesa's counterrevolution in Poland (it was left to Newsweek Magazine to
reveal the truth), held up the murderous, woman-hating clericalists of the
Mujahedin as a model for the struggle against Stalinist "totalitarianism",
hailed the "victory" of Yeltsin and the CIA in Moscow, and grovelled before
the sending of British troops to N. Ireland by successive Labour governments.
 
I find it fascinating that the trots on this list can speak of "marxism" and
"revolution" and "left opposition" on the one hand, and yet defend to the
death people like Tony Cliff and the SWP.  
                                                                  Louis
Godena


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