In Defence of Trotskyism No. 9 £1 waged, 50p unwaged/low waged, €1.50 On the Continuity of Trotskyism Four Internationals since 1864:

Founding of the 1st (Workingman’s) In- Second Congress of the 4th International ternational (IWA, 1864–1876) in London. Paris 1946: Pierre Favre (PCI, France), S. It held left-wing socialist, communist, Santen (Holland), Pierre Frank (PCI), anarchist and trade unions. Dissolved by Jock Haston (RCP), Colin de Silva Marx because of anarchist reaction to his (standing, LSSP, Grandizo Munis, who defence of the Paris Commune. bloced with Max Shachtman here.

Sixth Congress of the 2nd (Socialist) Second Congress of the 3rd International International in Amsterdam in 1904: (Comintern) Moscow 1920: Karl Radek Includes Rosa Luxemburg , Karl Kaut- (third), Nikolai Bukharin (fifth), Maxim sky (Germany), Victor Adler (Austria), Gorky (ninth), Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin, Georgii Plekhanov (Russia), Edouard tenth, hands in pockets), Grigory Zinoviev Vaillant (France) and Sen Katayama (thirteenth, hands behind his back), Maria (Japan). Ulyanova (nineteen white blouse). Page 2 On the Continuity of Trotskyism Where We Stand ets/workers’ councils to sup- agenda of the petty-bourgeois press the inevitable counter- reformist leaders of the Labour 1. WE STAND WITH revolution of private capitalist party and trade unions KARL MARX: ‘The emancipa- profit against planned produc- 5. We oppose all immigra- tion of the working classes must tion for the satisfaction of so- tion controls. International be conquered by the working cialised human need. finance capital roams the planet classes themselves. The struggle 3. We recognise the necessity in search of profit and imperial- for the emancipation of the for revolutionaries to carry out ist governments disrupts the working class means not a serious ideological and political lives of workers and cause the struggle for class privileges and struggle as direct participants in collapse of whole nations with monopolies but for equal rights the trade unions (always) and in their direct intervention in the and duties and the abolition of the mass reformist social de- Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan all class rule’ (The International mocratic bourgeois workers’ and their proxy wars in Somalia Workingmen’s Association parties despite their pro- and the Democratic Republic of 1864, General Rules). capitalist leaderships when the Congo, etc. Workers have 2. The capitalist state con- conditions are favourable. Be- the right to sell their labour sists, in the last analysis, of cause we see the trade union internationally wherever they ruling-class laws within a judicial bureaucracy and their allies in get the best price. Only union system and detention centres the Labour party leadership as membership and pay rates can overseen by the armed bodies the most fundamental obstacle counter employers who seek to of police/army who are under to the struggle for power of the exploit immigrant workers as the direction and are controlled working class, outside of the cheap labour to undermine the in acts of defence of capitalist state forces and their direct gains of past struggles. property rights against the inter- agencies themselves, we must ests of the majority of civil fight and defeat and replace Subscribe to Socialist Fight society. The working class must them with a revolutionary lead- and In Defence of Trotskyism overthrow the capitalist state ership by mobilising the base and replace it with a workers’ against the pro-capitalist bu- Four Issues: UK: £12.00, EU: state based on democratic sovi- reaucratic misleaders to open £14.00 the way forward for the struggle Rest of the World: £18.00 Socialist Fight produces IDOT. for workers’ power. Please send donations to help It is a part of the Liaison Com- 4. We are fully in support of in their production mittee for the Fourth Interna- all mass mobilisations against Cheques and Standing Orders the onslaught of this reactionary to tional with the Liga Comunista, Con-Lib Dem coalition. How- Brazil and the Tendencia Mili- ever, whilst participating in this Socialist Fight Account No. 1 tante Bolchevique, Argentina. struggle we will oppose all poli- Unity Trust Bank, Sort Code Editor: Gerry Downing cies which subordinate the 08-60-01, Account. No. Assistant Editor: John Barry working class to the political 20227368.

Introduction ity of Trotskyism: Reply to Revolutionary Commu- This pamphlet on the continuity of Trotsky- nist International Tendency (RCIT) Part 2. ism consists of two parts. The first part is an The following quote could have been written article from Socialist Fight No 8, November at anytime in the post war history of Trotsky- 2011 by Gerry Downing On the Continuity of ism. It neither guarantees the orthodoxy of Trotskyism: Programme vs. Struggle? No, Pro- the authors not the success of their endeav- gramme via Struggle! The second part is a devel- ours. It could describe either an unprincipled opment from that and was part of the docu- lash-up or a principled fight for revolutionary mentation for the founding conference of the Trotskyism. But it does speak of struggle on Socialist Fight in March 2014; On the Continu- a programmatic basis similar to the one we are engaged upon now.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 3 “The process of winning political hegemony for revolutionary Marxism in the upsurge will involve a range of tactics and organisational forms. But we must be clear on our goal: to build revolutionary Marxist, that is, mass Trotskyist parties in every country as sections of the Fourth International. One important aspect of the struggle to build the Fourth International is attempting to unify the world Trotskyist movement — the political forces that affirm the Transitional Program and identify with the Trotskyist tradition. If we achieved this, we could qualitatively increase our impact in the workers’ movement and clarify and resolve our differences in the framework of international democratic cen- tralism. Our International needs to promote a process of political clarification and organ- isational reunification of the world Trotskyist movement. To build the Fourth International as a real World Party of Socialist Revolution — this is the core of the problem we face. To take advantage of the contradictions in the present, undeniably difficult situation to the Goldman-Morrow-Heijenoort minority advance the struggle to build the Fourth In- in the American Socialist Workers Party. ternational — this is the decision we must Therefore when in 1946 Haston led a delega- make.”[1] tion of the RCP to a conference of some of We might mention this Wiki article on the the sections of the Fourth International in life of Jock Haston which shows the struggle Paris it is surprising that he moved that the for Trotskyism was waged by many: conference be considered as a Congress of “With the turn of the war against the Nazis the movement. This was in part motivated by the RCP was at pains to look for any signs of the opposition of the RCP to the demoralisa- the coming revolutionary upheavals that were tion of the German comrades of the Interna- expected in line with the perspectives of the tional Communists of Germany (IKD). Fourth International as outlined in the fa- More important, politically, were the amend- mous Transitional programme. The leading ments that Haston wrote, along with Bill theoretician of the RCP, Ted Grant, was Hunter, to the resolutions of the FI leader- therefore far seeing when he sought to tailor ship put forward at the meeting. In contrast the political demands of the movement to to the FI leadership the RCP amendments the actual movement rather than succumbing recognise that Stalinism had emerged from to a rosy view of events. This realistic view of the war strengthened and that an economic events was also prompted by the agreement crisis was unlikely in the near future. There- of the RCP leadership with the documents of fore it was argued political demands and ex- pectations had to recognise these changes

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 4 On the Continuity of Trotskyism and not pose revolutionary tasks in the ab- loism were clear did a section of the F.I. pull sence of a revolutionary situation. The FI back. In our opinion, the “orthodox” move- majority around Ernest Mandel and Michel ment has still to face up to the new theoreti- Pablo, backed by the SWP in the United cal problems which rendered it susceptible to States, prevailed however. Pabloism in 1943-50 and gave rise to a The dispute with the leadership of the FI ragged, partial split in 1952-54.”[3] deepened with time and became centred on On one level there is a great deal of truth in three interlinked questions. Firstly there was this assertion, serious problems beset the the role of Stalinism in Eastern Europe Fourth International during the war, the US where the RCP took a different position to SWP was clearly falling victim to national the FI in particular when the latter began to isolation, but is very wrong to speak of “the support the split of Josip Broz Tito in Yugo- failure of Leon Trotsky’s perspective of the slavia from the USSR the RCP became very break-up of the Soviet bureaucracy and of critical. This criticism being expressed in new October revolutions in the aftermath of documents written by Haston. Secondly the war”. Trotsky’s perspectives were those there was the question of economic perspec- of revolutionary struggle. The Trotskyist tives and the growing tendency of the Labour fought those struggles heroically as outlined party government of Clement Attlee to take below. We cannot speak of the “failure of various industries into state ownership as was perspectives” in this manner as if was wrong also happening in Eastern Europe. Again it to have these perspectives in the first place was Haston who opposed the idea that state ownership could be equated with any form of socialism in the pages of Socialist Ap- peal.” [2] Did the Fourth International die in 1943? The Fourth International degenerated and died as a revolutionary organisation, we are told by Comrade Jim, in the period 1943 to 1951. This is the conclusion drawn by James Robertson at the Third World Congress of the Fourth International in 1966 in London (he was bureaucratically expelled from the conference essentially for this speech on the initiative of Gerry Healy and Mike Banda), “The pressure which produced Pabloism began in 1943, following the failure of Leon Trotsky’s perspective of the break-up of the Soviet bureaucracy and of new October revo- lutions in the aftermath of the war: this fail- ure resulted from the inability to forge revo- lutionary parties. After 1950, Pabloism domi- Albert Goldman (1897–1960) a defendant and lead defence attorney in the 1941 Smith Act prosecution nated the F.I.; only when the fruits of Pab- of the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 5 and what happened was inevitable. It was problems in constituent national parties, like not. But problems there were as IDOT No. 1 any real functioning International must. But points out: as it points out, “In WWII a very powerful wave of national “Comrade Trotsky, the founder, leader and chauvinism swept the US including the work- inspirer of the International, was among the ing class. This assisted in the Trial and jailing first to be murdered by Stalin after the out- of the 18 Trotskyist leaders, including Can- break of the war. Later the Stalinist gangsters non. Cannon’s failure to defend revolution- claimed other victims. In Greece they killed ary defeatism in that trial was a crucial victory over one hundred Trotskyist, included for the state. Grandizo Munis was correct on among them the most qualified leaders of the this, even if he clearly attacked from an ultra- movement. In Indochina they disposed of left perspective. This national isolationism Tha-Tu-Thau and numerous others. They grew until it produced the 1946 American killed Blasco, the Italian Trotskyist leader Theses [4] and Cannon’s The Coming Ameri- who could have rendered inestimable service can Revolution [5] – which was both objec- in the construction of the Italian party. tivist and chauvinist at the same time.”[6] The Gestapo, wherever it had control, We now know that the SWP was heavily hounded the Trotskyist militants and submit- infiltrated by state agents at that time, whilst ted them to fierce torture and annihilation. repudiating the Healyite Security and the Only a handful of the German Trotskyist Fourth International slander campaign survived the concentration camps. The Aus- against Joe Hansen and George Novak, nev- trian Trotskyist lost some of their major cad- ertheless as IDOT No. 1 points out, res after they were placed on trial by the Na- “Sylvia Callen Franklin was a GPU spy in the zis and condemned to death. The Czechoslo- SWP and passed on internal documents. vak Trotskyist lost about a dozen of their Floyd Cleveland Miller organised the assassi- cadre elements. The Polish section was wiped nation of Trotskyist seamen on the WWII out almost in its entirety. The French, Bel- convoys, having infiltrated the movement gian, the Dutch organizations lost the most and there were others, like the Dallins and experienced leaders and many militants. Robert Sheldon Hart who had a case to an- The Anglo-American imperialists who fought swer.”[7] the war ostensibly in the name of democracy and against fascism did not feel in the least More to the Fourth International restrained in persecuting the Trotskyist. The than the US SWP leaders of the American Trotskyist were But there was more to the Fourth Interna- thrown into prison for over a year. The Brit- tional than the US SWP. There was the po- ish Trotskyist suffered a similar fate. But they litical and ideological disruption caused by were especially ruthless in the colonial coun- lack of an International during WWII but we tries. The leaders and many members of the maintain that the proceedings of the Second Indian party spent the war years in jail with- World Congress in 1948 went a long way to out indictment, trial or any definite term. The overcoming that disruption and its resolu- Chinese Trotskyist were submitted to the tions and proceedings are still within the triple brutalities of the Japanese imperialists, norms of revolutionary Trotskyism. This is Chiang Kai-shek’s hangmen and the Stalin- shown particularly in the clear manner in ists. Even Switzerland, the ideal country of which it tackled and fought out internal bourgeois democracy, which remained neu-

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 6 On the Continuity of Trotskyism tral in the war, would not allow the Trotsky- ist to function freely and jailed its leading spokesmen.” [8] The details were not known to the 1948 Con- gress but here is what happened to the French Trotskyists in 1944 (one year after Trotskyism had supposedly ‘collapsed’): “The Paris region was organised as two branches. But the heart of the organisation was in Brit- tany, both around Nantes and in particular around Brest where the soldiers provided the party with Ausweis [identity cards] and weap- ons. In Brest the organisation had about fifty soldiers on average despite some people be- ing posted elsewhere. Contacts were estab- lished in Toulon, Valence, La Rochelle and at Conches aerodrome. Links were established with the German Trotskyist organisation, most importantly in the port of Hamburg, in Lübeck and in Rostock. Victor [a German Trotskyist, whose real name was Widelin] was responsible for these contacts. Arbeiter und Soldat was also distributed in garrisons in Italy. On 7 October 18 Fourth Interna- tional Committees activists in Brittany were arrested, along with much of the Paris or- functioning sections. This current retains its ganisation. In total around fifty French activ- analysis of the fundamental crisis of capital- ists were rounded up, and many of them ism in our epoch. This crisis has only been were tortured, executed or sent to concentra- aggravated by the consequences of the war. It tion camps. Similarly, as many as fifty Der retains its perspectives of the socialist revolu- Arbeiter soldier comrades were put to death, tion, having confidence in the revolutionary and their paper never reappeared.” The full capacities of the proletariat, in its ability to contents of their press are available here liberate itself from the grip of Stalinism. It thanks to David Broader, an AWL member places the main emphasis on the transforma- at the time. We maintain those journals con- tion of our organizations from propaganda stitute an heroic struggle for Trotskyism; [9] groups into genuine mass parties, a transfor- How the 1948 Second Congress fought mation which is not only necessary, but for Here is how the 1948 Second Congress the first time also feasible. fought out the question of opportunism and (b) Opposed to this is the current which lays sectarianism: “In summarizing the long in- stress on the retreat of the socialist revolu- tensive discussion, we see despite the various tion, on the forces of historic retrogression, divergent tendencies, two main currents: the sinking into barbarism, the incapacity of (a) The traditional Trotskyist current which the proletariat, its degeneration, its profound forms the overwhelming majority of the contamination with Stalinism. They are im-

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 7 pressed, on the contrary, by every “success” cratic strata, like the softening of the USSR, of capitalism, by its “stabilization.” They look the isolation of China, India brought to heel, with scepticism on the future of the Interna- Africa neatly stabilized, and Castro a captive tional and they denigrate its work and of Russia and the U.S… achievements. This revisionist current is pro- Many statements and positions of the I.C. foundly defeatist in relation to the perspec- show theoretical weakness or confusion on tives of the proletarian revolution. This cur- this question. Thus, the l.C. Statement on the rent embraces principally the KDI and the fall of Ben Bella declared: “Where the state Workers Party. takes a bonapartist form on behalf of a weak The line of this tendency would sterilize and bourgeoisie, as in Algeria or Cuba, then the paralyze the struggle of the International to type of ‘revolt’ occurring on June 19-20 in sink roots into the mass movement.” [10] Algiers is on the agenda.” –Newsletter, 26 Robertson’s speech at the 1966 conference June 1965. was, as the citation above shows, far closer to While the nationalization in Algeria now the truth than Healy and Lambert. They sim- amounts to some 15 per cent of the econ- ply wanted to establish a bogus line of conti- omy, the Cuban economy is, in essence, en- nuity running through the International tirely nationalized; China probably has more Committee 1953 split to avoid the questions vestiges of its bourgeoisie. If the Cuban of their own past errors and opportunism. bourgeoisie is indeed “weak,” as the I.C. af- Here is some more of Robertson’s 1966 firms, one can only observe that it must be speech, tired from its long swim to Miami, Flor- “We take issue with the notion that the pre- ida.” [11] sent crisis of capitalism is so sharp and deep However there was substance also in the that Trotskyist revisionism is needed to tame charges laid against Robertson in that 1966 the workers, in a way comparable to the de- Congress by Healy and Banda. They charged generation of the Second and Third Interna- Robertson with a US national orientation, tionals. Such an erroneous estimation would and subsequent history has shown the truth have as its point of departure an enormous of that assertion, and they charged him with a overestimation of our present significance, propagandist orientation because of his asser- and would accordingly be disorienting. tion of the need for a Fighting Propaganda We had better concentrate upon what Lenin Group, said concerning the various, ubiquitous crises “The Spartacist draft theses state: “The tacti- which beset imperialism (a system essentially cal aim of the SL in the next period is to in crisis since before 1914); Lenin pointed build a sufficiently large propaganda group out that there is no impossible situation for capable of agitational intervention in every the bourgeoisie, it is necessary to throw them social struggle in the U.S. as a necessary step out. Otherwise, “crises” are all in a day’s in the building of the revolutionary party. For work for the mechanisms and agencies of this intervention we seek an increase in our imperialism in muddling through from one forces to at least tenfold. From our small year to the next. Just now, in fact, their task is force of around 100 we move toward our easier, after the terrible shattering of the In- goal in three parallel lines of activity: splits donesian workers’ movement; add to this the and fusions with other groups, direct involve- other reversals which expose the revisionists’ ment in mass struggle, and the strengthening dependence on petty-bourgeois and bureau- and education of our organization.” [12]

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 8 On the Continuity of Trotskyism This, Healy claimed represented not an ori- skyist International Liaison Committee, the entation to the working class in struggle but a International formed by the WSL) and in the deep scepticism of the working class and its ITC and elsewhere on the history of the So- potential to make revolution and a petty cialist Labour League/ Workers Revolution- bourgeois orientation to other self- ary Party in the context of the crisis of the proclaimed Trotskyist groups which became Fourth International, a summary of the main a substitute for the class struggle in later points pertinent to the development of the years. They have now become parasites on all Workers Socialist League is necessary. the other claimants to Trotskyism. This criti- (a.) The formation of the Revolutionary cism was basically correct, leaving aside the Communist Party in 1944 reflected (to a cer- constant ‘impeding catastrophe’ method of tain extent) a sectarian response to the La- mobilising members Healy had which we will bour Party class collaboration (the coalition come to later. As the IDOT No 1 observed government, etc.) and to the lack of any real of the IBT and the Spart family in general, Labour Party activity during the war. The “You have “disappeared” the rest of the sub- problems this created became marked with jectively revolutionary Trotskyists interna- the end of the war and the revival of Labour tionally, the rest of the subjectively revolu- Party political life in 1945 and thereafter. tionists of any colour outside the “Family” Subsequently, Healy led an opposition calling and with them the entire historical experience for entry into the Labour Party, but it was of the fight by other forces for Trotskyism essentially an opportunist response to the internationally, however inadequate that strength of social democracy and the weak- might have been and with them has gone the ness of Trotskyist forces. These develop- working class and its revolutionary potential. ments took place in a very difficult period for The healthy revolutionary elements outside the Fourth International. The Stalinist of your own ranks must now be reduced to a purges, the assassination of Trotsky, the war, few dozen at most, in the eyes of the three and the Nazi occupation of much of Europe opposing sectarian “Family” groups.” [13] had severely depleted its forces and disrupted Now we will look at the history of the British its functioning internationally. Trotskyist movement and the IC tradition in It had, nevertheless, come through the war Britain as set out in 1989 by Tony Gard, a and into the postwar world as a revolutionary former member who went on to join Thor- international. However, the strength, politi- nett’s WSL and later founded the Revolu- cally, of Stalinism and the expansion of the tionary Internationalist League, British sec- Stalinist bureaucracy’s area of control, the tion of the International Trotskyist Commit- beginnings of the restabilisation of capitalism tee (ITC), the international remnants after under US hegemony, and the Cold War the 1982 split with the WSL).[14] posed enormous problems for Trotskyists, “The origins and Development of the Inter- led in some cases to physical liquidation and national Committee Section in Britain generally to their isolation from the masses. The Workers Socialist League was formed in Healy’s split from the RCP on the basis of 1974 as a result of the expulsion by the Labour Party entry and the consequent col- Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) of the lapse of the RCP was the application in Brit- Oxford based opposition led by Alan T., ish conditions of the liquidationist course Tony R., and John L.. While there has been taken by the Fourth International under its considerable discussion in TILC (The Trot- International Secretary, Michel Pablo, as it

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 9 (c.) In the late 1940s and early 1950s, The Club completely supported the policies of Pablo’s International Secretariat. It endorsed the increasingly confused and ultimately revi- sionist response to developments in postwar Stalinism including the view that Tito’s na- tionalist Stalinism in Yugoslavia was a form of centrism. Subsequently there was no at- tempt to re-examine the lessons of this epi- sode. (d.) The 1953 split was a response to the effects on national sections of Pablo’s gener- alisation of his liquidationist orientation to Stalinism. For The Club this meant a clash of liquidationisms Pablo’s liquidation into Sta- linism vs. Healy’s liquidation into social de- mocracy. Both sides of the split (Pablo’s In- ternational Secretariat and the International Committee of Cannon, Healy, and Lambert) were part of the Fourth International’s cen- trist degeneration. There were positive as- pects to the International Committee’s stand for the political independence of Trotskyists from Stalinism. Nevertheless, the Interna- tional Committee remained trapped within sought short cuts out of its isolation and national Trotskyist responses and thus never looked to larger forces that could in some conducted an examination of the postwar way be substituted for building Trotskyist Fourth International and carried over from parties. Pabloism the objectivist method which, for (b.) Healy’s group, The Club, practised a instance, The Club applied in its Labour liquidationist form of entrism in the period Party work. 1948 to 1956 and to some extent down to (e.) The contradictory character of Trotskyist 1958. It was an early example of Trotskyists’ -centrism, and specifically of the Interna- attempting to create themselves as a centrist tional Committee split, was illustrated by The current in the Labour Party when one does Club’s generally principled and quite success- not exist and adapting to the bureaucratic ful intervention into the Communist Party’s leaders of left reformist currents when these crisis in 1956. This did not, however, mean a emerge. The principal vehicle for The Club’s break with Labour Party liquidationist poli- politics was the journal Socialist Outlook. tics, as the politics of the 1958 Rank-and-file When this was banned, the arguments of Conference indicated. However, it did pro- Labour Party legality were accepted without a vide a basis for the “left turn” with the for- struggle, and The Club became part of the mation of the Socialist Labour League as a Tribune tendency. public Trotskyist organisation (while continu- ing to work in the Labour Party) in 1959.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 10 On the Continuity of Trotskyism (f.) This “left turn” is particularly important but having close connections with the La- for us, since from its contradictions devel- bour and trade union left. Subsequently these oped the political tendency identified with developments were extended by the turn to Alan T. This turn did not represent a break youth in the early 1960s, as the Labour Party with past methods or any political reassess- set up a national youth movement, the ment. The conjunctural basis of the turn Young Socialists, in the wake of its third suc- consisted of the following elements: cessive general election defeat, at a time of 1) the enlargement of the group as a result of growing militancy among working-class its intervention in the Communist Party in youth. As a result, the Socialist Labour 1956/1957; League (SLL) drew to itself (and to Trotsky- 2) the overall decline of the Labour left and ism, despite its distortions), an important the difficulties in Labour Party work created layer of student and working-class youth and by the witch-hunt; a smaller but significant layer of industrial 3) the growth of shop-floor militancy on the militants. wages front, as shop stewards committees led (g.) However, the general objectivist method largely unofficial strikes to improve living was retained and applied to the process of standards independently of the bureaucrats economic crisis and class struggle. From liq- under conditions of full employment and to a uidationism Healy’s forces lurched increas- much lesser extent, the rapid growth of the ingly to sectarianism, especially after the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as a break/ expulsion of the Young Socialists mass movement outside the Labour Party from the Labour Party around the time of the 1964 general election. Objectivism and sectarianism were combined in an increas- ingly prominent catastrophism; the theory of an impending capitalist economic collapse which sees the working class break from reformism. At the same time, the elements of confusion on Stalinism continued and were reinforced by the way the Socialist Labour League reacted to the Castroism of the US Socialist Workers Party (which was the basis for the International Secretariat-SWP reunifi- cation that formed the United Secretariat of the Fourth International [USFI] in 1963) by asserting that Cuba remained capitalist. On the other hand, the Healyites were to show their own sort of accommodation to the Maoist Red Guards in China and to the successes of the Vietnamese Stalinist bu- reaucracy against US imperialism. They also retained their basic confusion on social de- mocracy, a confusion embodied in the call for a Labour government on socialist poli- cies.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 11 (h.) The other side of the SLL’s objectivism (i.) Even during this supposedly best period, was its failure to fight for the Transitional the SLL remained trapped by national Trot- Programme. At best its use of transitional skyism, as did the French Organisation Com- demands and the education of its cadres in muniste Internationaliste (OCI; the only the significance and method of the Transi- other section of any size in the International tional Programme were erratic. Increasingly Committee after 1963). Indeed, federalism the Transitional Programme simply disap- and national Trotskyism were confirmed by peared from the League’s practice. To some the International Committee’s 1966 World extent, this point is made by John L. in an Congress. This prevented the development article, “Lessons of Our History”, published in of international democratic centralism and the WSL’s newspaper Socialist Press in 1975 thus prevented also any international struggle (see issue no. 18, 1 October 1975). In this against the weaknesses of the national sec- article which compares most favourably as a tions. The International Committee contin- serious piece of political argument with the ued as a mere bloc of the SLL and the OCI: superficial journalistic hack work John L. is the mutual nonaggression pact between them currently churning out the abstract sectarian- was the basis for their split in 1971, after ism of the 1974 WRP election manifesto with which the International Committee was its ‘maximum demand’ calls for nationalisa- merely the SLL/ WRP and its satellite clones. tion, socialist policies, etc., is contrasted with (j.) Thus, by the late 1960s and early 1970s the use of transitional demands in the 1965 sectarianism and catastrophism were rampant SLL election manifesto. and increasingly bizarre. These features facili- The contrast is correctly drawn, and John L.’s tated the growth of other centrist such as arguments on transitional demands and International Socialists/Socialist Workers against Healy’s 1970s sectarianism are well Party (IS/SWP) and the Trotskyist-centrist made, but this article illustrates some of the International Marxist Group (IMG) British confusions the WSL inherit. In general, it section of the USFI. Neither of these could gives uncritical support to the Socialist La- offer any political alternative to the SLL/ bour League of the mid-1960s and traces its WRP. On a number of points (the class na- abandonment of the Transitional Programme ture of the Soviet Union, the leading role of from 1967 to 1974. It does not look at the the working class in the revolution) the SLL/ strengths and weaknesses of the SLL in the WRP was correct over against the IS/SWP early 1960s to mid-1960s in the context of its and IMG. However, they were able to ex- history as a whole, its previous as well as its pand because of the sectarianism of the SLL/ subsequent development. Thus, though a WRP, for instance towards the student based rather routine reference to objectivism affect- movement against the Vietnam War. ing both sides of the 1953 split is made at the (Incidentally, the growth of Militant, though end of the article, John L.’s general view is less spectacular in this period, was facilitated the same as Alan T.’s in The Battle for Trotsky- by the sectarianism of the SLL/WRP, IMG, ism: the sectarian turn of the late 1960s and and IS/SWP on the Labour Party.) 1970s resulted from the impatience of previ- The turn to philosophy (that is, Healy’s idio- ously isolated revolutionaries faced by a mas- syncratic idealism) in the early 1970s served sive upsurge in the level of struggle world- to create a wall between the SLL membership wide. and the real world, with the former domi- nated by an increasingly brutal internal re-

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 12 On the Continuity of Trotskyism gime. The transformation of the SLL into a cult was complete. These features help to explain the failure to develop any internal oppositional struggle. Alan T.’s opposition was in reality a belated resistance emerging in conditions where internal discussion, clarifi- cation, and struggle were completely impossi- ble. (k.) Finally, it is necessary to make a general point on the particular characteristics of the objectivism of the International Committee The former (USFI) have tended to adapt to petty- bourgeois forces and tendencies of nationalist or tradition, represented by the SLL/ WRP, Stalinist origin: the FLN in the Algerian War of the since it has an important bearing on the sub- 1950s, Castroism in Cuba, the student movement in sequent development of the WSL. This has, Europe and North America in the 1960s and early in fact, been touched on, in points g and j 1970s, guerrillaism in Latin America during the same period, Sandinism in Nicaragua. above. All objectivism represents a denial of the role of revolutionary consciousness, thus be some differences between the objectivism of the struggle to build Trotskyist parties as followed by those forces which were part of the conscious revolutionary leadership of the the International Secretariat following the working class, through a fight for Trotskyist 1953 split and those which were part of the politics and intervention in the class struggle International Committee. The former have based on the Transitional Programme. Ob- tended to adapt to petty-bourgeois forces jectivism substitutes a notion of revolution- and tendencies of nationalist or Stalinist ori- ary consciousness in some sense or other gin: the FLN in the Algerian War of the evolving as part of the objective process. 1950s, Castroism in Cuba, the student move- This always involves a rejection of the politi- ment in Europe and North America in the cal independence of the working class from 1960s and early 1970s, guerrillaism in Latin bourgeois ideology and petty-bourgeois ide- America during the same period, Sandinism ology (the latter, of course, representing no in Nicaragua. political independence from the bourgeoisie). The latter have tended to adapt to the objec- This understanding of objectivism was estab- tive movement of the working class. The lished long ago in the communist movement. spontaneous struggles of workers and move- It is in fact the core of Lenin’s argument in ments in the trade unions have been seen as “What Is To Be Done?” the forward movement of workers breaking from reformism. This has led to syndicalist Objectivism and economist adaptations of Marxism to the Nevertheless, objectivism has been the theo- present level of consciousness of Rank-and- retical basis of the centrist degeneration and file movements in the trade unions. It has consequent crisis of the Fourth International. generally been clothed in the guise of ortho- It has led to the tail-ending of one movement doxy an attack on the adaptation of the Inter- or process after another (the attitude to Ti- national Secretariat/USFI currents to petty- toism in Yugoslavia in the late 1940s and bourgeois movements. early 1950s being the first clear example of While much of that criticism was correct, the this method). However, there have tended to orthodoxy itself was poisoned. Fundamen-

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 13 tally, it represented a legitimation of the We contend that this record is merely a Brit- equally revisionist workerism of the Interna- ish-oriented record of what has been a post tional Committee tradition. One particularly war struggle for Trotskyism worldwide. important aspect of this form of objectivism Part of that struggle also was the 1985 split in has been the attitude of the International the Workers Revolutionary party and also the Committee currents to the movements of the current regroupment process. It is correct to specially oppressed. At best this has been a assert that there was a programmatic break nod in the direction of democratic rights for with Trotskyism in this period. As Tony example, on abortion at worst outright hostil- Gard outlines above this was based on fatal- ity for example, to lesbians and gay men. ism and objectivism by the small forces that Movements of the specially oppressed were emerged from WWII. We may disagree on universally attacked as petty-bourgeois, single whether this happened in 1943 or in 1951-3. issue politics, and a diversion from the class I favour the latter because of the political struggle. None of this represented in reality strength of the 1948 Second World Congress any more of a struggle for the political inde- but agreement on that is not necessary in my pendence of the working class than the Inter- view. However like Tony Gard I believe it is national Secretariat/USFI’s forms of objec- wrong to place an equals sign between the IS tivism. As the attitude to the specially op- and IC in 1953. Despite all the problems of pressed shows, it has left workers open to those years a fight against Pablo and what he and even reinforced reactionary bourgeois represented, inadequate, one sided and with- ideology. It has reflected an accommodation out any real reassessment of what led to the to the prejudices of the more conservative, liquidationist tendency though it was, had more privileged layers of the working class. many positive aspects to it and must be ret- In the SLL/WRP these tendencies were re- rospectively critically supported today. We flected in adaptation to the rank-and-file mili- should not just designate them as two equally tancy of the shop stewards movements in the degenerate centrists groups because this ig- 1960s and early 1970s and were reinforced nores a real struggle which did produce real hand-in-hand with its increasingly sectarian, gains for Trotskyism in Brittan and interna- catastrophist turn. Indeed, there was a direct tionally after Khrushchev’s secret speech in link between the objective process of work- 1956. This does not deny real contributions ers’ struggles as conceived by the SLL/ WRP to Trotskyism in the IS/USFI tradition, we and catastrophism – the crisis and collapse of speak here of tendencies, not iron laws of the capitalist economy pushing the working history. class further to the left and forcing it to break with reformism. However, this did not im- Notes munise the SLL/WRP or any other Interna- [1] Building the Fourth International and mass tional Committee currents, from the very Trotskyist parties in every country, Submitted same accommodation to bourgeois or petty- by Chris Edwards and Alex Acheson (Britain), Jette Kromann and Inge Sorensen (Denmark) bourgeois forces that they attacked in the To the Discussion for the XIV World Congress International Secretariat/USFI, so that the 14 February 1995. WRP was to display an uncritical worship of [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Haston Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Yasser Arafat [3] Spartacist Statement to International Con- unsurpassed by anything in the history of ference, http://www.bolshevik.org/history/ Pabloism.”[15] ICL/Tr2-icco.htm

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 14 On the Continuity of Trotskyism [5] James P. Cannon, The Coming American Revolution, Nov 1946, http:// www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/ works/1946/comamrev.htm [6] IDOT No 1, http://www.scribd.com/ doc/24552193/In-Defenceof-Trotskyism- No-1 [7] Ibid. [8] Report on the Fourth International since the Outbreak of War, 1939-48, Written: December 1948 and January 1949, http:// www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/ fi/1938-1949/fi-2ndcongress/1948- congress01.htm [9] Arbeiter Und Soldat, Worker and Soldier, The entire contents of Arbeiter Und Soldat here on the ETOL are the result of the ef- forts of David Broder, who put them up on the Alliance for Workers Liberty website. Broder translated the entire surviving con- tents of Arbeiter Und Soldat from the Ger- man. http://www.marxists.org/history/ etol/newspape/soldat/index.htm [9] IDOT No 1. [10] Report on the Fourth International. [11] Spartacist 1966 Statement. [12] Ibid. [13] IDOT No 1. [14] The WSL was founded in 1975 with a leadership grouped around Alan Thornett, Tony Richardson and John Lister, expelled from the WRP in 1974. Terry Eagleton was a well-known member. It inherited much of its politics from the WRP but fought suc- cessfully to break from this on Ireland, the woman question and gay and lesbian libera- tion. The group also concluded that Cuba had been a deformed workers state since the revolution of 1959. It published the weekly paper Socialist Press and a number of issues “The WRP was to display an uncritical worship of Gad- of the theoretical journal Trotskyism Today. dafi, Saddam Hussein, and Yasser Arafat unsurpassed [15] Trotskyist History No 1 September by anything in the history of Pabloism.” 1993, What Happened to the Workers’ So- [4] Theses on the American Revolution, James cialist League? http://www.scribd.com/ P. Cannon http://www.marxists.org/archive/ doc/19117508/Trotskyist-History-No-1 cannon/works/1946/thesis.htm

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 15 For the political regeneration and recon- struction of the Fourth International Reply to RCIT Part 2, SF and LCFI, March 2014 Socialist Fight and the Liaison Committee for theory of the “red blob” to the “thin red line the Fourth International affirms its belief that of continuity”. We therefore do not agree the Fourth International descended into cen- with comrade Michael Pröbsting that: trism in the 1951-53 period, the program- The IC, itself developing in a rightward direc- matic continuity of Trotskyism was shattered tion (e.g. Healy’s work in the Labour Party) was at that time and no section, not the Interna- distinguished from the IS by the pace of its tional Secretariat (IS, USFI after 1963) led by development. It recoiled from the most blatant expressions of liquidationism issuing from the Michel Pablo, Pierre Frank and Ernest IS, but not from the right-centrist documents Mandel nor the International Committee (IC) that underpinned that liquidationism. Therefore led by James P Cannon, Gerry Healy, Nahuel the IC did not constitute a “left centrist” alter- Moreno and Pierre Lambert represented that native to the IS. continuity then or at any time subsequently. And later: Nor did any group, such as the groups led by The RCIT strongly rejects any orientation of Ted Grant or Workers Power Britain (WPB, building the new International towards the so- who are for a Fifth International in any case), called “worldwide Trotskyist movement.” We regenerate Trotskyism subsequently to the maintain that the slogan “rebuilding the Fourth extent of correctly claiming to have re- International” either expresses an illusionary belief that any of the centrist fragments claim- established it. Big problems existed before ing to be Trotskyist in fact represents, in any the Third World Congress in 1951 but on way, a continuum of authentic Trotskyism, or balance we judge that these did not amount that any of these fragments is somehow capable to a definite decent into centrism, although of self-reform. we acknowledge that it is possible to argue Whilst it is true the IC opposition to Pablo that the 1948 Second World Congress itself was not an orthodox Trotskyist ‘alternative’ crossed that line. nevertheless the nature of the struggle forced We continue to fight for the political regen- the IC to advocate an opposition to liquida- eration and reconstruction of the Fourth tionism as Bill Hunter’s document, Under a International via the traditional method of Stolen Flag shows (see below), albeit only splits and fusions because, whilst we believe when an ultra-Pabloite opposition the Fourth International descended into cen- (advocating total capitulation to Stalinism) trism in 1951-53, we do not believe that the emerged in both the UK, France and the US struggle for Trotskyism died in 1953 and did (Cochran/Clarke in America Lawrence in not rear its head again until WPB appeared to Britain, the Lyon opposition in France). re-establish it in 1974 or even 1982 when The However it did contain many elements of a Degenerated Revolution appeared or in 1983 struggle for the Trotskyist Transitional Pro- with the publication of the Death Agony of the gramme, despite the political degeneration of Fourth International or when the Trotskyist its central leaders, Cannon, Healy, Moreno Manifesto appeared in 1989. John Lister and Lambert. It did assert the need for inde- dubbed the position as counterposing the pendent revolutionary parties based on that

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 16 On the Continuity of Trotskyism programme to lead successful socialist revolutions to open up the path to world revolution embarked on by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks in 1917. And whilst it is true that neither side “represents, in any way, a contin- uum of authentic Trotskyism” none- theless some within the IC as a whole did represent a left centrist opposition to Pablo which in- formed and inspired future generations of Trotskyists in Leon Trotsky (third from left) at the second congress of the Comintern in 1920. their struggles against centrist leaderships who were of the might judge us to be objectively in that cate- same opportunist/sectarian variety. gory also) to win the leadership to our com- We see here the WPB/RCIT rejection of the mon project or to provoke serious secondary transitional method, no orientation whatso- leaders or rank-and-file members to fuse with ever to splitting the ranks from the corrupt us. We therefore do not agree with the com- leadership by placing demands and working rade Michael that: patiently with oppositionists. Gerry Downing When Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ arrived at this experienced this attitude in 1986 where WPB conclusion in 1914 they called for the building gave no serious assistance to the struggles of of the Third International. So did Trotsky after the Internationalist Faction as recorded in his the failure of the Stalinist centrist Comintern in 1933. And so do we, since history has shown so WRP Explosion [1] waged against the Slaugh- many times that the so-called “worldwide Trot- ter/Pilling/Pirani leadership of the WRP/ skyist movement” has degenerated into ossified Workers Press apart from ultimatums to the centrism and cannot be reformed. group which meant split immediately and Principled Trotskyists should have critically join them. supported the IC against the IS in 1953, de- The ‘splits and fusions’ tactic is the practical spite all the correct criticisms made of it in application of the method of the Leninist/ Bob Pitt’s Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy docu- Trotskyist United Front and Transitional ment, in the WPB’s Trotskyist Manifesto, in the Programme which enables us to place de- RCIT piece itself which we are now criticis- mands for talks and fusions with left-moving ing and in many other Left Trotskyist docu- centrists groups (we are aware that history ments. See Bob Pitt’s comment:

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 17 There seems no reason, then, to dispute Livio Policy’. Yet, by Socialist Outlook’s own ad- Maitan’s claim that, when Pablo’s famous mission, Bevan had done no more than de- essay ‘Where Are We Going?’ was circulated for fend political positions which were common- discussion within the International early in place in the Labour Party before 1945, and he 1951, Healy expressed no disagreement with had made it plain that he had no desire to it whatsoever. Nor did Healy challenge the wage a serious struggle against the right wing. adoption, at the FI’s Third World Congress Healy provided a ‘theoretical’ gloss to this in August-September 1951, of a full-blown political adaptation in his review of Bevan’s ‘Pabloite’ programme. This put forward the book In Place of Fear. Not only did Healy perspective that with the outbreak of another accept Bevan’s reformist conception of the world war, which was held to be both immi- working class advancing to socialism ‘through nent and inevitable, the counter-revolutionary the gate of parliament’, [2] but in doing so he character of Stalinist parties outside the shamelessly echoed the patriotism underpin- USSR could be transformed. Following the ning Bevan’s political philosophy. ‘Great supposed examples of the Yugoslav and Britain’, Healy wrote, ‘can never regain its Chinese CPs, some of these parties could be position of world leadership under capitalist expected to break with Stalinist politics and auspices.... Britain, however, can rise to a ‘project a revolutionary orientation’. All the newer and higher level of world leadership, British delegates to the Congress – Healy, provided the Labour movement resolutely John Lawrence and Bill Hunter – voted for carries its struggle for Socialism to victory these perspectives. And in the Club itself only here in the coming period.’ The chief condi- Betty Hamilton and Charles Van Gelderen tions for success, as enumerated by Healy, opposed the Third Congress decisions. were: ‘1. Complete reliance on the organised power of the working class. 2. No confidence Healy’s right centrist intervention in Britain’s capitalists or America’s imperial- in the Labour party ists. 3. Finish without delay the job of nation- Healy’s intervention in the Labour party was alising, democratising, and reorganising in- right centrist, Pablo himself even criticised dustry along socialist lines. 4. Put into effect a Socialist and democratic foreign policy.’ This his liquidationism and lack of a theoretical programme, which was to be implemented by journal which defended the Trotskyist pro- a future Labour government, was, Healy gramme. As Bob Pitt explains: wrote, ‘the only road to workers’ power and Healy eagerly seized on the opportunist im- Socialism in Great Britain’. [3] plications of this (Pablo’s – SF) perspective, Tom Kemp has written that Healy’s attitude in order to transform British Trotskyism into to Bevanism, as expressed in this article, was a left component of Bevanism. Thus Bevan’s that of a ‘fully-fledged Pabloite’. [4] But this speech to the 1952 Labour Party conference only reveals the problem in using the term was hailed by Socialist Outlook with the head- ‘Pabloism’ in reference to politics which had line ‘Bevan Gives the Lead that Workers general support within the Fourth Interna- Want’. Bevan’s election to the NEC on a tional. Indeed, for all Healy’s later fulmina- record vote, and the replacement of right tions against ‘Pabloite liquidationism’, if he wingers Dalton and Morrison by the had any difference with Pablo in this period it Bevanites Harold Wilson and Richard was that Healy favoured a more thoroughly Crossman, the front page editorial stated, was liquidationist course within the Labour Party. ‘the clearest indication’ that the rank and file After all, the FI leadership did take the view wanted socialism. A month later, next to a that, in addition to Socialist Outlook, the message of support from Michael Foot on British section should publish ‘a theoretical behalf of Tribune, the paper carried the head- organ, openly defending revolutionary Marx- line ‘Aneurin Bevan Demands a Real Socialist ism’ [5] – only to have their repeated requests

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 18 On the Continuity of Trotskyism to this effect ignored by Healy. Indeed, Pablo under orders to enter the Viet Minh, Healy himself would subsequently criticise Healy’s approached his fellow IEC representative adaptation to Bevanism as an ‘opportunist Peng Shuzi who was to address the meeting, application’ of the entry tactic! [6] and persuaded him to remain silent about the The 1951 French document Where is Pablo Mao regime’s persecution of Trotskyists in going? by Bleibtreu-Favre looks good at the China. Peng was left in no doubt that this start in its attacks on Pabloism but a reading was ‘an instruction or suggestion from of the second half, on China and Yugoslavia, Pablo’. In order to defuse opposition to the entrism sui generis tactic, Healy and Pablo reveals him as an enthusiastic supporter of thus conspired to conceal from the Vietnam- the Pabloism of the first vintage and only an ese Trotskyists the extent of the repression opponent of the ultra-Pabloism which was they could expect at the hands of Stalinism. now emerging as clearly liquidationist. But Bleibtreu’s document suffered from the same Healy was not for tolerating any opposition objectivism which was later to prove fatal to to Pablo whatsoever. As Bob Pitt observes: the PCI/OCI (the ‘Hasten’ condemned by The Parti Communiste Internationaliste, the him is undoubtedly Jock Haston who with French section led by Bleibtreu and Lambert, Grant as leaders of the RCP had put forward did take a stand against Pablo at the Third World Congress. For, while they were enthu- the best position of Eastern Europe and siastic supporters of the IS’s pro-Stalinist line Yugoslavia). This is part of what Healy and on Yugoslavia and China, they baulked at its Cannon voted to expel, with all its Stalino- application to France, where the PCI had its phobia and its capitulation to Mao (“an inher- base in the anti-communist Force Ouvrière ently temporary compromise between the counter- trade union confederation. Faced with the revolutionary bureaucracy of the USSR and its NE- PCI leadership’s stubborn resistance to his GATION, the Chinese revolution)”. This is policy of ‘entrism sui generis’ in the French surely a left centrist critique of Pabloism: Communist Party and the Stalinist-dominated The main danger in the explanation given by CGT unions, in January 1952 Pablo abused Pablo (even when juxtaposed with the discus- his authority as FI secretary to suspend the sion of another, correct explanation, the majority of the PCI central committee. above one) is that it has the effect of masking Needless to say, the French received no sup- the organically counterrevolutionary nature of port from Gerry Healy. On the contrary, the workers bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. when Pablo’s bureaucratic action was nar- This bureaucracy cannot be equated with the rowly endorsed – by five votes to four – by bureaucratism inherent in any society in which the IS, Healy sided with Pablo. And at the a scarcity in consumer goods exist. This bu- IEC Twelfth Plenum in November, Healy reaucracy is the result of nearly thirty years of voted for the expulsion of the PCI majority the degeneration of a workers state. Politi- from the Fourth International. According to cally, it has totally expropriated the Soviet one account, Healy even turned up in person proletariat. Contrary to what Pablo states, at Pablo’s side to inform the Bleibtreu- wherever it has been able to act bureaucrati- Lambert faction that they had been expelled cally or to maintain its bureaucratic control and replaced as the official section by the over the masses, the Soviet bureaucracy had ‘Pabloite’ minority led by Pierre Frank and tried to develop the productive forces (in the Michele Mestre. Healy played a no less rotten USSR and in the annexed or satellite territo- role in relation to the FI’s Vietnamese sec- ries) in order to strengthen the base of its tion, within which a minority faction sup- own privileges and increase their extent. On ported the Bleibtreu-Lambert position. Be- the other hand, its liquidationist attitude to- fore chairing a meeting of Vietnamese com- ward the revolution that began in France in rades who were about to return from France

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 19

A debate at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern from July 19 to August 7, 1920 between Jack Tanner, Lenin and Trotsky over the specific position and point of the party and the role of the revolutionary minor- ity. Raising left-wing objections to parties, and the problems it causes, especially in relation to ideological unity and leadership. Including a discussion of syndicalism and trade union relations with politics.

1936; the way it brutally crushed the con- Nor do we have any substantial disagreement scious cadres of the Spanish revolution; its with Bob Pitt and the RCIT on Healy’s un- complicity with Hitler in order to allow him principled history in the Labour party to crush the Warsaw uprising; its Yalta policy (although Comrade Pitt now completely dis- against the interests of the revolution in agrees with his former revolutionary self, he Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, and France; its blockade and military pressure against the informs in his introduction). Yugoslav workers state in the hope of deliv- If there are lessons to be learned from Healy ering it bound hand and foot to imperialism and Grant’s entry work in the Labour party (contrary to the interests of defending the they are that it is necessary to have an open USSR itself) unequivocally express the incom- outside Trotskyist party and publication to patibility between the Soviet bureaucracy and the guide this work and that genuine left moving development of the proletarian revolution. Such a elements in that milieu will never be won by revolution would represent an immediate and direct capitulation to reformist currents. Deep en- threat to the bureaucracy’s existence and it would tryism without outside assistance is abso- do so even more sharply if it were to take place in an economically less backward coun- lutely politically fatal as a long term project, a try. [7] few years at most is all that is appropriate.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 20 On the Continuity of Trotskyism Working with these currents, fighting their struggles – were to remain constant themes in reformism and encouraging their moves in Healy’s political pronouncements throughout the direction of revolutionary Trotskyism is his subsequent career. the essence of the tactic. Dissolving the for- This made any serious long term work in mer Revolutionary Communist Party into Labour and the trade unions very difficult as formations called ‘the Club’ or ‘the Group’ as the 1974 Thornett split showed. This catas- Healy did produced nothing for eleven years trophism was in reality a modern, leftist ver- for Trotskyism. In fact it was only when the sion both of the German SPD programme Socialist Labour League was formed that the before 1914, separating the maximum and possibility of winning the leadership of the minimum programme with no transitional Young Socialist in 1963 emerged. But by demands whatsoever, apart from stock refer- then Healy was acting in such a provocative ences every now and again which no one way that he presented the Labour party bu- took seriously, and the German communist reaucrats with every opportunity to expel him KPD ultra-leftism of the early 1930s, which and his members. later come to the fore. Ken Livingstone was As with Grant and Militant a decade and a quite happy to hear Healy speak of the immi- half later it was possible to weather the storm nent collapse of capitalism as long as it did and maintain a presence in the Labour party not oblige him to oppose Thatcher in the to renew the struggle at the next opportunity. GLC over the rate capping struggle in 1984- But Peter Taaffe repeated Healy’s error and 5. pulled out of the Labour party entirely after Healy’s capitulation to bourgeois the expulsion of leading members. It is true that Healy never went to the extent of declar- nationalism and left reformism ing the Labour party no longer a bourgeois The manner of the expulsion of Gerry Healy workers’ party as Taaffe did after 1989 but forced serious discussions on revolutionary the approach and method was very similar politics in the WRP from late 1985 after the apart from that. However Militant, despite all departure of Mike Banda to early 1987 and its capitulation to reformism whilst inside the the adaption to Nahuel Moreno’s MAS. The Labour party, did at least produce its paper two central points that began it were the ca- which openly advocated various aspects of pitulation to Gaddafi, Arafat, Saddam Hus- the Trotskyist programme. Healy’s Socialist sein and the Arab bourgeoisie and the capitu- Outlook [8] was not really an identifiable lation to Labour left reformist politicians like Trotskyist paper at all. The ISG’s paper, [9] Ken Livingstone, Ted Knight, Bill Sirs of the of the same name was modelled on the ear- Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (a right lier Healy paper, and was similarly liquida- wing trade union leader to which the WRP tionist. shamefully capitulated) and Arthur Scargill of And it is necessary to criticise Healy’s per- the National Union of Mineworkers, etc. spectives of work within Labour too. As Bob Also prominent were repudiation of the Se- Pitt observes: curity and the Fourth International case Despite his future somersaults on the Labour against Joseph Hansen and George Novak Party question, the main threads of this analysis and later practically the entire leadership of – impending economic collapse, the erosion of the US SWP who were all accused of being parliamentary democracy, a drive towards right- KGB/CIA agents. wing dictatorship, and imminent revolutionary

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 21 There is little disagreement about capitulation to bourgeois nationalism and left reformism. Nor is there much disagreement that these were not new phenomena but constituted an essential part of Healy’s political method as demonstrated by his entire history. Despite left turns at certain periods Healy would al- ways return to these position established in his political youth. The following quotes from Bob Pitt, which gel with the RCIT analysis, established the opportunist and un- principled nature of Healy’s Labour party work: it was carried out on Pablo’s perspec- tive that by joining not very left reformists currents they could be assisted into evolving into ‘centrists’ (in fact Healy frequently incor- rectly referred to them as ‘centrists’ without the need for any ‘evolution’) As a result of Healy’s efforts, Bevanism was able to acquire what it had previously lacked – a base in the trade union movement. After the collapse of the upsurge on the docks, the Healy- ites continued to work closely with Tribune, for ing account of his visit to Messali Hadj, the example in organising meetings for the Bevanite Algerian National Movement leader held under MPs Crossman and Mallalieu in Yorkshire. In house arrest in France. In an article notable for exchange for such services, members of the its total lack of political analysis, Healy paid Group were occasionally allowed a letter or tribute to ‘the amazingly confident personality’ short article calling for a programme of nation- of Messali Hadj and to his ability to create ‘an alisation without compensation under workers’ atmosphere which is unique for its calm, im- control or for a sliding scale of hours in re- pressive feeling’. Clearly, crawling to Third sponse to automation. But if Healy had been World nationalists was not something Healy minded to draw up a political balance sheet in invented in the 1970s! But this was no mere terms of what he got for what he gave, the personal deviation on Healy’s part. He was answer would have been – very little. For Healy, visiting the Algerian leader to convey a message of course, no such question arose. His purpose of political solidarity to the MNA from the was not to build a revolutionary tendency in the International Committee, which earlier that Labour Party, but to pursue Pablo’s strategic month had passed a resolution hailing Messali line of ‘assisting the evolution’ of Bevanism into Hadj as a ‘living symbol’ of the struggle against a supposedly centrist movement. imperialism. [10] Healy’s own contributions to Tribune were shallow, journalistic pieces which did nothing to History records that Messali Hadj became an introduce Trotskyist politics to leftward-moving open agent of French Imperialism; the RCIT workers within the Bevanite current. But he did provides the link to the Revolutionary History give his readers a taste of what passed for article: ‘orthodox Trotskyism’ within the International The key year is 1958, as the working-class de- Committee of the Fourth International. In No- feat constituted by De Gaulle’s seizure of power vember 1955 Tribune published Healy’s fawn- and the creation of the Fifth Republic together

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 22 On the Continuity of Trotskyism with Messali Hadj (who became the main target not be the continuity of Trotskyism. This is of the Algerian FLN) going over to De Gaulle how Healy came to be the first ‘great leader’ — while Lambert had presented him as ‘the of British Trotskyism as recounted by Bob Algerian Lenin’ — were hard blows for the Pitt: group. […] [11] At the 1949 Labour Party conference, Healy After the 1985 split the question of Messali made a stirring speech in defence of ‘a de- Hadj and the MNA was one of the central mocratic principle for which men and women issues bothering Mike Banda then in the have fought and died in this Movement: the throes of a breakdown following Healy’s right to speak, to differ, and to have their expulsion. He gave Gerry Downing a pam- opinions democratically discussed without phlet, The Algerian Revolution by Messali Hadj fear of expulsion and fear of threats’. 43 But (1956) with and introduction by Peter James these words would have appeared somewhat entirely uncritical of Hadj and with no class ironic to the victims of the purge which Healy now proceeded to carry out within the analysis whatsoever of the nature of this Club. In February 1950 Haston resigned, ‘revolution’; “the Algerian revolution is now unable to tolerate the political atmosphere in developing at a rapid pace… For the Alge- Healy’s organisation (‘there was a terrible rian revolution is no more than an extension atmosphere’, Grant recalled, ‘of a low theo- of the Asian revolution into the continent of retical level, of a really ignorant character’), North Africa” he tells us in fine Pabloite style and a few months later announced his com- in paragraph two of his introduction. Banda plete break with Trotskyism. Healy then pro- revealed that he had escaped death in the mid ceeded to expel all those who refused to 1950s by barely an hour in Paris when he break personal contact with Haston. ‘Healy was just getting into his stride’, Born- arrived to discuss with Hadj’s followers only stein and Richardson recount. ‘Up and down to find them assassinated by the FLN. This the country he went, dissolving, amalgamat- was during the so-called Café Wars between ing and splitting branches apart at will.’ the MNA and the FLN, which the latter won Grant, who had been transferred from his in France and Algeria. Banda’s complaint was own branch into one led by Healy loyalist Bill that the IC had capitulated to the wrong Hunter, was ordered to get a job in a factory, petty-bourgeois nationalists. We therefore and when he refused this instruction to be- had no substantial disagreement with the come an industrial militant – a proposal RCIT section on Algeria and the IC’s history which suggests that Healy was not without a certain warped sense of humour – he too was of unprincipled relationship with semi- thrown out. In reaction to the pro-Stalinist colonial bourgeois nationalism. line of Healy and the IS, the state capitalist position of Tony Cliff had won a growing Healy’s thuggery cannot be the number of adherents in the Club; but Healy, Continuity of Trotskyism incapable of answering this faction theoreti- Healy’s internal regime in the later RCP, the cally, resorted to organisational suppression Club, the Group, the SLL and the WRP, i.e. as a substitute for political argument, and the at all times when he had sole control of the Cliffites were also expelled. group, was that of a Stalinist-type bureau- ‘You cannot remove people and defeat their cratic centralist regime, the very opposite of ideas by bureaucratic expulsion’, Healy had told the 1949 Labour Party conference. The that required for a Trotskyist democratic truth of this statement was to be demon- centralist party. There was no internal de- strated when in later years both Grant and mocracy; Healy’s bullying and thuggery can- Cliff built large centrist groupings which

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 23 complemented Healy’s own efforts in politi- cally misleading tens of thousands of genuine militants. In 1950, however, Healy’s victory appeared to be complete. He had succeeded in smashing up what was left of the RCP, driving the overwhelming majority of its members out of the Fourth International and establishing his own exclusive domination over what now passed for Trotskyism in Britain. [12] Remember the date Bill Hunter’s Under a Stolen Flag was written: 1957. We have the evidence of the Socialist Labour League’s internal regime at the time from the 1959 resignation letter of Peter Fryer. It is outra- geous to propose that the following extract could describe a party or regime which repre- sented the continuity of Trotskyism: We who came into the Trotskyist movement from the Communist Party, hard on the heels of the experience of Hungary and our strug- gle with the Stalinist bureaucracy in Britain, were assured that in the Trotskyist movement we would find a genuine communist move- ment, where democracy flourished, where dissenters were encouraged to express their dissent, and where relationships between by the national committee to the panel com- comrades were in all respects better, more mission. brother and more human than in the party The denial of democracy to members of the we had come from. Instead we have found at organization is summed up by the general the top of the Trotskyist movement, despite secretary himself in two phrases he has em- the sacrifices and hard work of the rank and ployed recently: “I am the party” and – in file, a repetition of Communist Party meth- answer to the question “How do you see ods of work, methods of leadership, and socialism?” – “I don’t care what happens methods of dealing with persons who are not after we take power. All I am interested in is prepared to kotow to the superior wisdom of the movement”. Politically this is revisionism, the “strong man”. all too clearly reminiscent of Bernstein’s “the That the ruling clique is an instrument of the movement is everything the goal nothing”. general secretary is shown by the way it was Philosophically it is solipsism: if the move- elected. How many comrades know that the ment is everything and “I am the move- panel presented by the panel commission to ment”, then “the world is my world” – and the inaugural conference was first presented “I” inhabit a fantasy world less and less con- in toto by the general secretary to a meeting nected with the real world. It is just such a of the executive committee, as if that was the fantasy world that the general secretary in- most natural thing in the world, then pre- habits, in which “we” can “watch ports” (to sented by the executive committee to the stop me leaving the country!) and be outgoing national committee, then presented “absolutely ruthless” to the point of carrying out “killings” (as the general secretary de-

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 24 On the Continuity of Trotskyism clared to PMcG) – when “we” have in cold fact fewer than 400 members. [13] This state of affairs had not improved over the years. The Battle for Trotskyism was the name the expelled opposition of 1974 based in the Oxford Cowley car plant gave to its collection of documents on that split, and it certainly was that, even if it did not succeed in its initial revolutionary impulse. It was clearly a left split of serious revolutionaries who did wage a fight for Trotskyism for the next eight years, up to their political collapse to right centrism in 1982 over the Malvinas war. The charges of disloyalty to the party are spurious, who is obliged to be loyal to a party which treats its members in the manner de- scribed by Peter Fryer above and who intimi- dates and physicality assaults both its own members and political opponents as a matter of course. How is one to conduct a legitimate political struggle in that atmosphere? Notori- ous incidents over the years include Mike Banda pulling a knife on John Lawrence dur- ing that split, The beating of Ernie Tate out- side an SLL meeting (after the 1985 split Chris Bailey admitted to being part of the team who did this on Healy’s instructions), David North’s SEP/WSWS is the only ICFI offshoot that seriously defends the agent-baiting campaign the visiting of Ted Knight’s house late at against the US SWP, still producing the books full of night with Cliff Slaughter forced to come unfounded allegations and baseless slanders along to teach him to be a thug also, the beating of Mark Jenkins, Tony Richardson votes, let alone serious political discussion. and Healy’s appalling beating of Stuart Carter There was just simply no way of politically during a Central Committee meeting because fighting him within the organisation; such he opposed the line of condemning the IRA was the terror regime he operated with his over the Brighton bombing of the Tory Con- close knit clique of personal followers in the ference (no one came to his assistance, did leadership. Bob Pitt relates the appalling some hold him down for Healy?) and Mike situation in the WRP in 1974: Banda’s assault on Corinna Lotz during the All the conditions for a major crisis in Healy’s 1985 split. organisation were present (because of the falsified prediction of military dictatorship Healy would allow no opposition did not happen - SF) , and it was not long in breaking. The catalyst was provided by a votes group of former SLL members linked with An open and honest opposition was clearly the French OCI – Robin Blick, Mark Jenkins impossible; Healy would allow no opposition and John and Mary Archer – who in January

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 25 1974 began publishing a regular Bulletin etc – which Thornett had accused the WRP aimed at WRP members. Although the Bulle- leadership of rejecting. As it became clear tin group held an unduly positive opinion of that he was incapable of answering Thornett Healy’s earlier deep entry in the Labour Party, politically, Healy abandoned any pretence of they were very effective at exposing the anti- democratic procedure. In October, Tony Marxist absurdities of his current political Richardson was summoned to the party’s line. In particular, the group emphasised the Clapham headquarters and physically as- need for transitional demands instead of saulted by Healy. A control commission set Healy’s ultimatist calls for the immediate up to inquire into the violence against nationalisation of major industries and the Richardson was then rigged by Healy to pro- banks. vide trumped-up charges against Thornett Healy’s reaction was to ban WRP members and his supporters in order to justify their from reading the Bulletin, and to change the expulsion. Some 200 members were thrown party’s constitution, removing the right of out of the WRP, and its main base in industry expelled members to appeal to conference. liquidated. [14] Even loyal party members baulked at this. Alan Thornett, the leading figure in the Security and the Fourth Interna- WRP’s factory branch at British Leyland tional Cowley, voted against Healy’s constitutional As the WRP moved to the right following changes on the central committee. A furious the expulsion of the Thornett group in 1974 Healy demanded, and got, from Thornett a written retraction of this vote. When the it moved back closer to the USFI/Pabloite issue was put to the party’s special conference position on the semi-colonial world and in in July 1974 another Cowley WRPer, Tony many other ways. For instance it took almost Richardson, made the mistake of asking a the exact same position of capitulation to question of clarification. He was hauled off Ayatollah Khomeini on the Iranian Revolu- to Healy’s office and forced to admit, on pain tion after 1979. In fact it was only from of expulsion, that he was wrong even to have within the USFI section in Iran that any seri- asked the question. ous opposition to this rejection of the Trot- Hamstrung in their industrial work by Healy’s skyist theory of Permanent Revolution sectarian ultra-leftism, and faced with a party regime which prevented any serious reassess- emerged. Now what distinguished Healyism ment of the WRP’s policies, Thornett and his from ‘Pabloism’ was the apparent fact that supporters opened up discussions with the his rival organisations were run by agents of Bulletin Group, and began with the latter’s the CIA! The ICL statement on this charade assistance to organise a faction against Healy. is to the point: In September, Thornett presented a docu- As for North, he was specially chosen by Healy ment in his own name urging a return to the to be the WL “leader” as a reward for his eager Transitional Programme, which was in fact services as mouthpiece for Healy’s obscene written in large part by Robin Blick. It dem- “Security and the Fourth International” cam- onstrated irrefutably that the WRP’s politics paign – a psychotic smear job impugning the were utterly divorced from Trotskyism. integrity of the old, revolutionary SWP and Healy responded to this challenge with his Trotsky himself. Slandering the SWP’s Joseph usual anti-Bolshevik methods. Thornett’s Hansen as a conscious agent of the FBI and the views were dishonestly misrepresented to the Russian secret police, and an accomplice in the membership and denounced as a form of murder of Trotsky, the Northites have for over Menshevism, while Workers Press editorials a decade echoed the Stalinist lie that Trotsky suddenly began including the very transitional was killed by one of his own. demands – sliding scales of wages and hours, “Security and the Fourth International” grew

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 26 On the Continuity of Trotskyism straight out of Gerry Healy’s own particular creasing inability of Healy to wage serious combination of years of political banditry and political struggle against his opponents in the paranoid megalomania. It was Healy’s way of world Trotskyist movement because he fun- “explaining” his International Committee’s damentally agreed with many of their most failure to definitively expose and defeat Pab- loism, the revisionist current originated by Mi- important political positions. chel Pablo which in the early 1950s abandoned Centrists of Trotskyist Origin Trotskyism with the perspective of liquidation into the mass Stalinist and social-democratic We agree with the International Trotskyist parties. In the 1960s Joseph Hansen became the Opposition group on this in its 1992 docu- main spokesman of the Pabloite degeneration ment, Theses on the crisis of the Fourth Interna- of the SWP as it abandoned the struggle for an tional and the tasks of consistent Trotskyists: independent proletarian vanguard. But instead Point 7. Only the emergence of ultra-Pabloite of political struggle the Healyites concocted internal tendencies, which carried liquidationism their devil theory that Hansen had been hired to its extreme, drove the British section and the by the U.S. government and the Kremlin Stalin- SWP/US to launch, in 1953, the struggle against ists to destroy the SWP… An indisputable and Pablo. Conducted on the basis of the SWP’s monstrous fact is that the Healyites hailed the federalist conceptions, and so on the basis of execution of 21 Iraqi Communists by Ba’ath relations among the separate national leader- rulers in 1979. Healy’s payoff was blood money! ships, this struggle did not come near to achiev- [15] ing all the results which were possible. Gerry Downing heard Healy in early 1980 …Point 8. In practice, the International Com- boast that he had met Bert Ramelson (the mittee, based on organizational federalism, did CPGB’s Industrial Organiser) in Bagdad air- not in any way represent a Bolshevik response port and he said to him, “aha Ramelson, the to Pabloism. It proved incapable of drawing the slightest lesson from the crisis of the Interna- boot is on the other foot now” – in other tional. The successive policies of its different words Healy’s ally Saddam Hussein was exe- organizations (the entrism of Moreno’s organi- cuting ‘Stalinists’ just as Stalin had executed zation in the Peronist movement; the policy of Trotskyists. And Healy excused the execution the French PCI in relation to Algerian national- of leftist, Trotskyist and trade union leaders ism and, later, in relation to social democracy; and members by Khomeini in Iran on the the more and more marked adaptation of the same agent-baiting basis; they were all CIA SWP to petty-bourgeois intellectual circles in agents who deserved what they got, the same the US; the zigzags of the British section in its method which Healy applied against Joseph work within the British Labour Party; etc.) clearly demonstrated that the International Hansen and the US SWP. This made abso- Committee itself -- even if obviously in a less lute sure that Healy and his International serious form than the Pabloite International Committee could never recruit any serious Secretariat -- suffered from opportunist devia- revolutionary fighters or intellectuals in the tions of a centrist type, which its federalist char- Middle East or Iran to his version of Trot- acter could only exacerbate. skyism. The great majority of the forces which have One of the big questions after the 1985 split degenerated from Trotskyism maintain politics was when Cliff Slaughter would produce an which are generally revisionist and centrist -- or, evaluation of this campaign which he had in a few instances, ultraleft-revisionist -- without breaking openly and completely with revolu- been so central to founding and developing. tionary Marxism. He never did. This agent bating campaign The Pabloites have distorted the Trotskyist proved nothing apart from hiding the in- program and adapted it to various nonrevolu-

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 27 tionary petty-bourgeois and bu- reaucratic currents. They have subordinated or denied the role of Trotskyist parties as the necessary expression of the political inde- pendence of the working class, in favour of adaptation to these nonproletarian and nonrevolu- tionary forces. The organizations of the International Committee of 1963-1971 tended to combine national-Trotskyist adaptationism with extreme forms of national- Trotskyist sectarianism (Lambert most clearly characterized by capitulation to social democracy, Healy by collapse into crazy sec- tarianism). …In continuing to proclaim their adherence, even in a distorted fashion, to the revolutionary pro- gram of Trotskyism, these organi- zations continue to attract mili- tants breaking towards revolution- ary politics from social democracy, Stalinism, of the ranks it is classically sectarian and re- and conventional forms of centrism. jects the progressive effect on the body poli- …For the orthodox Trotskyists to turn their tics of the subjective revolutionary left of backs on the advanced workers being drawn even a left centrist Trotsky group. In fact this toward Trotskyist positions by the “Trotskyist- centrist” organizations and the militants fighting analysis seems to reject the notion that there for Trotskyist positions within them would be is such a category as left centrist Trotskyist an act of sectarianism of historically tragic pro- groups at all. portions. Rather, the task of orthodox Trotsky- And we assert that the degeneration of the ists is to develop an international tendency Fourth International cannot be compared to oriented strategically toward reconstructing the the degeneration of the Second (Social De- Fourth International through linking up with, mocratic) International or the Third supporting, and organizing every struggle for (Stalinist) International. By definition centrist Trotskyism, every genuinely Trotskyist develop- groups are those who mix elements of the ment throughout the world, both within and revolutionary programme with reformism. In outside the major “Trotskyist-centrist” organi- zations. [16] particular within these centrist groups again However saying that it did not even represent and again the Trotskyist Transitional Pro- a left centrist opposition rejects the fight gramme and method are the points of refer- itself and the effects that fight had on the ence for oppositional currents and individual ranks of these groups and on later genera- oppositionists. The leadership is accused of tions of those who were fighting to be genu- betraying the Programme, of being centrist, ine Trotskyists. In equating the cynicism of of capitulation to reformism and/or Stalin- the leaders with the idealism and self-sacrifice ism. Invariably the degeneration of the group

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 28 On the Continuity of Trotskyism is initially set at the point and on the single and the Stalinists Third International did by issue where the oppositional group or indi- allowing Hitler to come to power in 1933 to vidual has come into conflict with the leader- decapitate the best organised working class ship or shortly before that, when the crisis of on the planet and set in train the political the group is seen as emerging. Once histori- events that led to WWII. And the German cal reasons begin to be sought for this degen- tragedy happened without a struggle by the eration outside their own tradition, identify- Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and ing their own current as part of the problem with no honest assessment of why and how it of post WWII Trotskyism, then real advance happened. Of course some groups who were is possible. Trotskyist have crossed class lines, like the Severe crisis may see the opposition group LSSP in Sri Lanka, Michel Pablo own current deal with the entire history of Trotskyism as within the USFI and some South American was the case with the WRP split of 1985 groups but they have been expelled from the where the entire group, which this time ranks of Trotskyist centrist groups and are no uniquely constituted the majority, were longer seen as in the same tradition by those obliged to account for their own past politi- who regard themselves as Trotskyists. We do cal errors and betrayals and then the entire not include state capitalist groups like the history of Trotskyism and its post-war degen- SWP (UK) or its offshoots internationally in eration (this lasted for just over a year in the the category of Trotskyist centrists; internal WRP, from late 1985 to early 1987) as re- struggles there are directed in the main at the counted by Gerry Downing in the WRP Ex- ‘IS tradition’ and there is no talk in the cur- plosion, rent split crises in the SWP, for example, of The basic premise that I have set out to demon- the leadership having betrayed Trotskyism. strate is, that despite sincere efforts on the part Like the US Workers World Party and the of the rank-and-file of the party’s members and Weekly Worker/CPGB and others of Stalin- some of its leaders, it failed in the task it set ist/Maoist origins not tied to any degener- itself in the immediate aftermath of the expul- ated or deformed workers’ states they may sion of Healy; that of the regeneration of Trot- skyism and the orientation to the reconstruction now be categorised simply as centrists. of the Fourth International. The revolutionary In our fight against the positions of RCIT impulse of the party to seek out the reasons for and LFI there is a further issue as well as the the degeneration of the Trotskyist movement in Anti Imperialist United Front (AIUF) and the post-war period was wrecked because those revolutionary defencism; another key element leaders, who had been responsible, with Healy, for analysis of the degeneration of the Fourth for many of the betrayals of Trotskyist princi- International: the question of the class char- ples in the past were unable to overcome their acter of the Trotskyist party. A petty bour- own corruption. [17] geois cancer, Shachtmanism, destroyed the Self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups Fourth International Trotsky founded in have not crossed class lines 1938. It was an internationalist Bolshevik The vast majority of self-proclaimed Trotsky- organization that struggled to gain real influ- ist groups have not become outright counter- ence in the labor movement. It directed im- revolutionary and have not crossed class lines portant political and industrial working class leading to the slaughter of millions like the struggles; its biggest section, the American Second International did after 4 August 1914 SWP, led the Teamsters strikes in Minneapo- lis in the 1930s. However Trotsky knew the

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 29 risk that both the SWP and especially smaller sections could be hegemonised by the petty bourgeoisie. The biggest fight waged by him in his later years was against the petty bourgeois ten- dency lodged within the Fourth Interna- tional. The minority fraction of the SWP was led by Max Shachtman, an intellectual cen- trist who renounced defence of the USSR in the approach to World War II, the materialist dialectic and finally renounced Marxism it- self. This reactionary tendency, Max Shacht- man’s International Socialist League, refused to defend the Stalinist-led forces, claiming that their victory “would mean nothing but the extension of the slave power of Stalinism over the whole territory of Korea” (New International, July-August 1950). [18] Shacht- man defended the Bay of Pigs CIA merce- nary dogs who invaded Cuba in 1961 and the US war against Vietnam. The epigones of Trotskyism today as LIT, IMT, CWI, USFI, LFI, ITU, FT, FLT, RCIT and other “internationals” who proclaim David Broder recounts the history of Arbeiter und themselves Trotskyists objectively defended Soldat: “It was with this aim of winning over Ger- the intervention of mercenary agents of im- man troops to a common struggle against the perialism in Libya and now in Syria against belligerent imperialists that in summer 1943 the semi-colonial bourgeois governments, ac- French Trotskyists turned to organising among the German troops occupying France…In early cepting the imperialist embellishing this tactic October 1943 a meeting of Trotskyist activists and as “revolutions”. Degeneration repeats itself German soldiers held in Brest was found out by because, as the old Bolshevik warned: the Gestapo, who arrested all the participants. 17 A qualification must be made to this extent – German soldiers as well as Robert Cruau, who that not only Shachtman’s personal failing is organised fraternisation in the region, were exe- cuted on 6 October. Once the Gestapo were on the embodied therein, but the fate of a whole trail, the Trotskyists were doomed. On 7 October revolutionary generation which because of a 18 Fourth International Committees activists in special conjuncture of historical conditions Brittany were arrested, along with much of the grew up outside the labor movement. More Paris organisation. In total around fifty French than once in the past I have had occasion to activists were rounded up, and many of them were speak and write about the danger of these tortured, executed or sent to concentration camps. valuable elements degenerating despite their Similarly, as many as fifty Der Arbeiter soldier devotion to the revolution. What was an comrades were put to death, and their paper never reappeared. Arbeiter und Soldat was itself out of inescapable characteristic of adolescence in action until May 1944, such were the losses suf- its day has become a weakness. Weakness fered by the Fourth International Committees. invites disease. If neglected, the disease can http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/ become fatal. To escape this danger it is nec- newspape/soldat/broder.htm

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 30 On the Continuity of Trotskyism

The Sparts celebrate the political death of Gerry Healy (and Mike Banda later that same year).

essary to open a new chapter consciously in bourgeoisie. Although at first the anti- the development of the party. The propagan- Pabloist wing, the International Committee dists and journalists of the Fourth Interna- (IC), has represented a more progressive left tional must begin a new chapter in their own centrist sector against the revisionist liquida- consciousness. It is necessary to re-arm. It is necessary to make an about-face on one’s tionism of Pablo and Mandel, leaders of the own axis: to turn one’s back to the petty- International Secretariat (IS), today all sec- bourgeois intellectuals, and to face toward tions of that split are completely useless for the workers” [19] the reconstruction of the world party of pro- The disease was fatal; it destroyed the Fourth letarian revolution. International. But now we live in far worse Only by a principled break with pseudo - times, almost all the Trotskyists groups have Trotskyism and a radical change of direction failed this test, those who do not directly link towards the labor movement and working the banner of the Fourth International to the class can regenerated the Fourth Interna- imperialist recolonisation at best chose a tional. As Trotsky warned above: “The third camp and elect not to fight for the vic- propagandists and journalists of the Fourth tory of the oppressed nation in the war, cre- International must begin a new chapter in ating confusion and distaste for Trotskyism their own consciousness. It is necessary to re- by workers in Imperialist countries and semi- arm. It is necessary to make an about-face on colonial ones alike. Their stance is typical of one’s own axis: to turn one’s back to the Shachtman whose sterile and petty bourgeois petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and to face to- propagandism did such damage to the ward the workers”. [20] Fourth International. What was a minority Our splits and fusion approach to the subjec- trend in the SWP in the days of Trotsky be- tively revolutionary cadres of the self- came hegemonic in the International after his proclaimed Trotskyist groups will gather to- death because quite simply the dominant gether the forces to begin the revolutionary social class of the propagandists and journal- regeneration and reconstruction of the ists of the Fourth International was the petty Fourth International.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. On the Continuity of Trotskyism Page 31 Notes Launched as a bi-monthly magazine in May 1987, [1] Downing, Gerry, WRP Explosion, http:// the title Socialist Outlook was partly selected www.scribd.com/doc/88358031/WRP - because, at that time, most of the ISG’s members Explosion-By-Gerry-Downing were also active in the Labour Party. It was pub- [2] Bob Pitt’s note: Healy took the phrase from lished as a fortnightly newspaper between 1992 Trotsky’s Where is Britain Going? Trotsky, how- and 2002. It was then a quarterly magazine and ever, emphasised that ‘a workers’ government used the ISSN 0951-8657. created by parliamentary means would be forced [10] Pitt, Bob, The Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy, to construct new revolutionary organs for itself, http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/ resting upon the trade unions and working class Healy/Contents.html organisations in general’. This had nothing in [11] Revolutionary History, Obituaries, Pierre Lam- common with Bevan’s commitment to a parlia- b e r t ( 1 9 2 0 - 2008) h t t p : / / mentary road to socialism. Leon Trotsky’s Writ- www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/obituaries/ ings On Britain, CHAPTER V, The question of obituaries/lambert94.htm revolutionary force [12] The Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy, Chapter 2 http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/trotsky/ (1944-1950) works/britain/ch05.htm http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/ [3] Labour Review, August/September 1952. Healy/Chap2.html [4] News Line, 3 November 1985. [13] An Open Letter to Members of the Socialist Labour [5] ‘Resolution adopted unanimously by 8th Ple- League and Other Marxists, Peter Fryer num IEC’, Club internal document, 1950. http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/ [6] Pitt, Bob. Rise and Fall of Gerry Healy, Chapter Healy/Fryer.html 3, [14] Pitt opus cit Chapter 9, http:// http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/ www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Healy/ Healy/Chap3.html Chap9.html [7] Where is Pablo going? By Bleibtreu-Favre, June [15] Workers Vanguard No. 456 (1 July 1988), 1951, http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/ David North, Joseph Hansen’s Natural Son, http:// document/fi/1950-1953/ic-issplit/04.htm anti-sep-tic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/david-north- [8] Socialist Outlook (1948 - 1954), the first So- joseph-hansens-natural-son.html cialist Outlook was the name of the newspaper [16] Theses on the crisis of the Fourth International and published by the Socialist Fellowship from De- the tasks of consistent Trotskyists, http:// cember 1948 until 1954. For much of that period, refoundation.home.igc.org/ito_tl/ it was edited by John Lawrence and was formally ito_crisis_fi_1998.html published by an association of left wing members [17] Downing, Gerry, Introduction, WRP Explosion, of the Labour Party. The paper’s editorial policy http://www.scribd.com/doc/88358031/WRP- was controlled by a group around Gerry Healy. Explosion-By-Gerry-Downing This Trotskyist group was privately known as The [18] Workers Vanguard no. 937: http://www.icl- Club. Socialist Outlook was banned by the La- fi.org/english/wv/937/iso.html bour Party’s National Executive Committee in [19] Trotsky, Leon. From a scratch to the danger of late 1954 and soon expired. The Club moved to gangrene, In Defence of Marxism, 1940, http:// selling Tribune instead. www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/21 Wiki Socialist Outlook, http://en.wikipedia.org/ -scratch1.htm wiki/Socialist_Outlook [20] See 73 ANOS SEM TROTSKY, TRÊS [9] Ibid. Socialist Outlook (1987 - 2009), The ANOS DA LC E O PROLETARIADO, Conquis- second Socialist Outlook was the publication of tar o proletariado, condição essencial, para a reconstrução the International Socialist Group, the Trotskyist da IV Internacional! h t t p : / / organisation which was the British section of the lcligacomunista.blogspot.com.br/2013/08/73- Fourth International between 1987 and 2009. anos-sem-trotsky-tres-anos-da-liga.html

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected]. Page 32 On the Continuity of Trotskyism

Corin Redgrave, pictured standing for the WRP in the 1978 Lambeth by-election. The vast majority of self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups have not become outright counter-revolutionary and have not crossed class lines leading to the slaughter of millions like the Second International did after 4 August 1914 and the Sta- linists Third International did by allowing Hitler to come to power in 1933 to decapitate the best organised working class on the planet and set in train the political events that led to WWII. And the German tragedy happened without a strug- gle by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and with no honest assessment of why and how it happened. Of course some groups who were Trotskyist have crossed class lines, like the LSSP in Sri Lanka, Michel Pablo own current within the USFI and some South American groups but they have been expelled from the ranks of Trotskyist centrist groups and are no longer seen as in the same tradition by those who regard themselves as Trotskyists.

Socialist Fight: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, http://socialistfight.com/[email protected].