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In Defence of Trotskyism No.4

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In Defence of Trotskyism Price: Waged: £2.00 Concessions: 50p, €3 Number 4. Spring 2013 The Methodology of Communism The United Front and the Anti-Imperialist United Front are tactics that ap- ply at all times except when the direct uprising takes place for the seizure of power and the masses are flocking to the revolu- tionary banner; in a sense it is wrong to characterise the UF as a tactic at all be- cause it is the methodol- ogy of communism, its very mode of existence, its orientation to the global working class as a whole class, the only method that can mobilise that force that alone can over- throw capitalism. In Defence of Trotskyism is published by the Socialist Fight Group. Contact: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ. Email: [email protected]. Blog: http://socialistfight.com/ đoàn kết là sức mạnh, Jedność jest اتحاد قدرت است ., ,Unity is strength, L’union fait la force, La unión hace la fuerza, Η ενότητα είναι δύναμη siła, ykseys on kesto, યુનિટિ થ્રૂ .િા , Midnimo iyo waa awood, hundeb ydy chryfder, Einheit ist Stärke, एकता शक्ति,है единстве наша сила, unità è la resistenza, 団結は力だ, A união faz a força, eining er styrkur, De eenheid is ,אחדות היא כוח ,vienybės jėga, bashkimi ben fuqine !Ní neart go chur le céile, pagkakaisa ay kalakasan, jednota is síla, 일성은 이다 힘 힘, Workers of the World Unite ,الوحدة هو القوة ,de sterkte In Defence of Trotskyism page 2 WRP) and a group of South African Trotskyists. Contents Other groups to join the LTT included the Comrades for a Workers Govern- ment (South Africa), Workers Voice (Sri Lanka), the Leninist-Trotskyist Group (Canada) and the Swedish Arbetarförbundet för Socialismen (AfS – Workers New Preface….…...….……………...Page 2 League for Socialism). The LTT included former members of a number of Trotskyist tendencies, such Revolutionaries and the Labour as Gerry Healy’s International Committee, the United Secretariat, the Sparta- cist tendency, the Revolutionary Workers Party (Sri Lanka) and the Moreno- party………….………...……………...…...Page 6 Lambert Parity Committee. The Method of the United Front…...Page 16 The LTT fell apart soon after the dissolution of the Workers International League in 1997. Reprints of selected documents of the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency [The LTT is not to be confused with the tendency of the same name that was with a new preface for them all by the Socialist Fight Group. established by the US Socialist Workers Party and its co-thinkers in the United The Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT) was the result of the 1991 fusion of the Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1973]. Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency of Belgium and Germany, the Workers Interna- A large section of the documents can be found on the site of the Encyclopedia tional League of Britain (which emerged from the collapse of Gerry Healy’s of Trotskyism On Line at. http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/ltt/ whereas the WIL New Preface by Gerry Downing May 2013 tended to make the UF a tactic the RIL/ he Socialist Fight Group republishes these selected docu- ITC tended to make T ments of the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency/ Workers Inter- it a strategy so they national League because we acknowledge their continuing rele- can correctly criticise vance to the struggle to build a revolutionary current which them in the following seeks to relate to the whole working class and to win a vanguard terms, ‘This is the to revolutionary politics in preparation for coming struggles. argument of the In- However despite the strength of Revolutionaries and the Labour ternational Trotskyist Party its weakness is that the WIL itself increasingly tended to Committee (ITC). It make entry work in the Labour party less of a tactic and more of is misconceived in a strategy as the years wore on until it finally recruited some that it adds to the deep entrist from the ISG which swamped its revolutionary char- general confusion on acter by their reformist Labourism. the AIUF, and is Revolutionaries must neither capitulate to reformism when en- bound up with the trists by proclaiming that the Labour party can become the vehi- ITC’s false under- cle to introduce socialism as the original CPGB, Healy, Grant and standing of united Matgamna did nor adopt the opposite side of the same coin by fronts as party fronts proclaiming that the Labour party no longer has any relationship operating at a high to the working class and must be denounced as simply bour- level of program- Ramsey McDonald, despite the gross class geois and the revolution (or at least their own current) can be matic agreement, but treachery of the Labour leader Trotsky advanced by self-proclamation and increasingly manic revolu- at least it sees that never abandoned the Comintern’s United tionary verbiage as the CPGB, Healy, Taaffe and Matgamna did/ there is a problem Front method of calling for a class vote for do when in their ‘open party’ phase. here which needs to Labour against the direct representatives of These documents by the LTT are amongst the best on the ques- be resolved.’ the ruling class, the Tories. tion of the United Front we have seen but yet there is a problem And of course if the with them all. They do not fully appreciate the centrality of the WIL/LTT collapsed question. This is shown in the final paragraphs of the document because of its failure to penetrate the masses due to a (relative) What is the Anti-Imperialist United Front and should we fight for sectarian approach to the UF because they regarded it too much it? where they pose the following question, ‘A tactic or a strat- as simply a tactic the RIL/ITC collapsed because of they re- egy? Would it cause too many problems to call it a ‘long-term garded it (relatively) too much as a strategy and so substituted tactic’ or a tactic with strategic implications, or maybe some- front organisations for the revolutionary party and international. thing else entirely?’ All that remains of their perspective of world revolution is the UK The United Front is neither a tactic nor a strategy, it is a ques- Movement for Justice and the US Coalition to Defend Affirmative tion of methodology, it is the way that communist must operate Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights with no public face for in all their work because it is the way to get closer to and win revolutionary Trotskyism, which operates like a secret Masonic leadership of the masses via their natural vanguard thrown up in lodge within these fronts. What were initially small errors of em- struggle, both domestically and internationally. This approach phasis and characterisation grew in time under the pressure of then eliminates the handwringing at the end of What is the Anti- the neo-liberal offensive into gross and fatal errors. Imperialist United Front and should we fight for it? We regard the interpretation of the Workers Power and FIT on ‘Without wanting to contradict the central argument of this docu- the Anti-Imperialist United Front as basically historically correct. ment, does this struggle for working class leadership in the The LTT attack on the WP position is unconvincing, struggle against imperialism not share some of the characteris- ‘What the LRCI does is take two separate questions, the struggle tics of the united front? Do we not maintain the political inde- waged by the proletariat for leadership of the other oppressed pendence of the working class? Do we not march separately and sectors and the notion of military action alongside the national strike together? Do we not aim to break the non-proletarian op- bourgeoisie in the event of a struggle against imperialism, and pressed from their own political misleaders? Do we not realise lump them together as the united front. They thus perpetuate that the only way, to begin with, to relate to those we want to the previous theoretical confusion. The LRCI is quite unabashed win is through their organisations? Do we not also realise that about this. In a published polemic against the International Trot- around concrete issues we will be working together with these skyist Opposition (ITO), it says: misleaders, in order to demonstrate to their base the practical On the AIUF, for example, it is ND who is being scholastic. He superiority of our programme and method, but also, if possible believes that a bloc with the national bourgeoisie in certain cir- to win that base to it?’ cumstances is permissible, but it is not to be called the AIUF. He In the same article it correctly tackles the old RIL/ITC because Leon Trotsky: I am confident of the victory of the Fourth International; Go Forward! In Defence of Trotskyism page 3 is welcome to call it by any name he chooses. For us it involves ‘One relatively sophisticated argument for the AIUF came from unity in action against a common enemy with no mixing of the forces which at one time constituted the Fourth Interna- banners and with the aim of breaking the masses from their tionalist Tendency (FIT), principally the Politica Obrera of Ar- misleaders. This is the method of the united front as spelt out gentina and Guillermo Lora’s Partido Obrero Revolucionario of by the healthy Comintern. Bolivia. The FIT regarded the Comintern position as healthy The LRCI appears to have lazily adopted the method of the and made a clear distinction between the notion of worker- fourth Comintern Congress, whose participants did not have peasant parties and the Stalinist ‘Anti-Imperialist Front’, and the possibility of 70 years hindsight.
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