Date: Thu, 29 Aug 96 10:38:11 PDT
From: LCMRCI <global-AT-uk.pi.net>
Subject: Discussing revolutionary regroupment. Joint statement by the LTT and the LCMRCI 


DISCUSSING REVOLUTIONARY REGROUPMENT 
Joint statement by the LTT and the LCMRCI

The international Leninist Trotskyist Tendency is composed of groups in 
Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Jamaica, South Africa and Sri 
Lanka. The Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist 
International is composed of groups from Bolivia, Europe, New Zealand and 
Peru.  

1. On August, a meeting took place in London between representatives of the 
Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT) and the Liaison Committee of Militants 
for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI). The discussion was 
focused on the following points:
* The nature of the period
* Bosnia and the national question
* Revolutionary regroupment
2. Both tendencies agreed that the present period is characterised by a 
reactionary neo-liberal offensive which has been developing unevenly 
throughout the imperialist and the semi-colonial world. Former dictatorships 
in Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia have been replaced by the 
facade of democracy, behind which the living standards, rights and 
organisations of the working class have been under sustained assault. 
Meanwhile, the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-91 resulted in ‘democratic’ 
counter-revolutions (as distinct from militarist or fascist 
counter-revolutions) in eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union. From the 
point at which these states stopped defending  post-capitalist property 
relations in practice, they ceased to be workers’ states. Internationally, 
the working class has suffered a chain of setbacks as its Stalinist, social 
democratic and nationalist leaderships have capitulated to the policies of 
neo-liberalism, but overall it has not suffered bloody defeats on the scale 
of the 1930s, and in a number of countries (including France, Germany, 
Bolivia and Brazil) it has shown a renewed fighting capacity.
3. On the war in Bosnia, there were significant differences between the two 
tendencies. The LTT defended the existence of a multi-ethnic Bosnia as the 
only realisable form of self-determination and as the only progressive 
solution to the national question in Bosnia, without giving any political 
support to the Izetbegovic government. It defended the Bosnian Muslims 
against the weight of  ethnic cleansing directed against them, and until 
they were safe from extermination, while opposing the creation of the 
Muslim-Croat Federation and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of the Krajina 
Serbs.  
The LCMRCI considered that throughout the inter-ethnic conflict, and 
especially since the creation of the US-backed Croat-Muslim Federation in 
1994, it was clear that every side had reactionary aims. They wanted to 
destroy the multi-national degenerated workers’ state and create 
ethnically-cleansed bourgeois states. The main task was to unite workers of 
every ethnic group against imperialism. Both tendencies opposed all 
imperialist attacks on the Bosnian Serbs, defending them despite their 
reactionary chauvinist leadership, and were for the defeat and expulsion of 
Nato/UN forces. Both were in favour of multi-ethnic workers’ councils and 
militias, the construction of a Trotskyist internationalist party, a 
proletarian revolution to overthrow the pro-capitalist regimes in Zagreb, 
Belgrade, Pale and Sarajevo, and the creation of a multi-national socialist 
federation in the region. 

4. On more general issues surrounding the national question, the LCMRCI 
defended Marx and  Engels’ theory of the so-called ‘non-historic’ peoples of 
eastern Europe, while the LTT considered this was wrong and was in broad 
agreement with the positions outlined by Roman Rosdolsky in his book ‘Engels 
and the ‘‘Nonhistoric’’ Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 
1848’.

5. On regroupment, the two tendencies agreed that it is necessary to attempt 
a discussion and regroupment process with all forces that are in favour of a 
Leninist-Trotskyist international  opposed to centrism. With a view to 
narrowing the differences between the LCMRCI and the LTT, it was agreed to 
carry out common work in Britain wherever possible and to establish a 
framework for a written international discussion.

August, 1996





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