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International Socialist Forum January 1998, Vol International Socialist Forum January 1998, Vol. 1, No. 2, £3.00 In this issue: . Discussion on "Revolutionary Socialism: The Minimum Platform "; Back to Marx; The Russian Revolution; Reports & Announcements International Socialist Forum Contents Introduction (4) * . ISF Meetings (4) Discussion on "Revolutionary Socialism: The Minimum Platform" (5) A Contribution to Discussion - Cliff Slaughter (5) The Revolutionary Party - Don Cuckson (10) The Law of Value in the Transition Period - Jim Smith (12) Dual Power and Vanguard Parties - John Robinson (21) Back to Marx (24) Back to Marx - Ellen Meiksins Wood (24) Karl Marx and the Trotskyist Tradition - Cyril Smith (27) Wealth, Value and Nature - Cyril Smith (31) The Russian Revolution (34) Beyond Kronstadt - MK (34) Dictatorship and Democracy - Simon Pirani (47) Obituary: Geoff Pilling - Terry Brotherstone (54) Reports and Armouncements (55) Conference Marks 80th Armiversary of Russian Revolution (55) Revolutionary Publishing in Russia (56) Critique 25th Anniversary Conference (58) 150 Years of the Communist Manifesto (58) Illustrations by Jose Venturelli International Socialist Forum Introduction We hope that this International Socialist Forum no. 2 will cially pleased to include a contribution from outside our further develop the discussion begun in the first issue. own immediate circle - by Ellen Meiksins Wood - as well as two articles by Cyril Smith, an active participant in the The document by a group of Iranian comrades, "Revolu• ISF. tionary Socialism: The Minimum Theoretical, Political and Organisational Platform", published in the first issue, A third section discusses how the Russian revolution and raised a series of points about the development of the so• the early years of the Bolsheviks rule should be viewed cialist programme for the 21 st century. The first group of by socialists today. We republish an article already pub• articles in this issue, by comrades who have participated lished in pamphlet form. Beyond Kronstadt by MK; Si• in our discussion meetings in London, responds more or mon Pirani's article was written in response. less directly to some of these points. Cliff Slaughter sug• gests some lessons from the history of Trotskyism. Don We include an obituary to Geoff Pilling, whose writing Cuckson questions common assumptions about the mean• and activity in the movement has been, and will no doubt ing of "the vanguard party" and "democratic centralism". continue to be, a powerful influence for many of those Also on the question of the revolutionary party and dual involved in the ISF. power, John Robinson takes issue with Istvan Meszaros. Jim Smith raises questions about the transition to social• May we thank all the comrades who have subscribed and/ ism, and how our view of it is affected by our understand• or sent financial contributions to ISF. We need more of ing of the Soviet Union and its degeneration. these to go further - and we need your participation in our meetings and your correspondence and articles for future A second section concentrates on how Marx may be issues. viewed from the end of the 20th century. We are espe• i • . • ISF Meetings This journal was launched by comrades - socialists from Our October meeting was a discussion on 'the law of value Britain, Iran and other countries - who have participated in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism'. in a series of discussion meetings in London throughout The opening contribution by Jim Smith is the basis for an this year. article included in this issue. Our most recent meeting was held, jointly with the jour• Subjects of earlier meetings included the Iranian revolu• nal Critique, on the 80th anniversary of the Russian revo• tion, the need to develop the theory of permanent revolu• lution in November. The discussion was opened by three tion, and the nature of the period and the contemporary speakers: an Iranian socialist, Critique editor Hillel Ticktin crisis. and Istvan Meszaros, author of Beyond Capital. The Ira• nian comrade said that in saluting, and appreciating, the In the immediate future, it is intended that meetings will Russian revolution, we had to ask: what do we mean by continue to concentrate on the questions raised in the docu• 'workers' state'; what is the 'transition to socialism'; and ment Revolutionary Socialism: The Minimum Theo• what is the relationship of democracy and socialism. This retical, Political and Organisational Platform, pub• latter point, also dealt with in articles in this issue of ISF, lished in ISF No.l. became the focus of much of the discussion. It was also stressed that the relationship of party and class, for which We welcome readers to participate in our meetings. the Russian revolution had often been taken as a model, had to be reviewed for today. International Socialist Forum A Contribution to Discussion on 'Revolutionary Socialism: The Minimum Platform' Cliff Slaughter My comment is limited at this stage to the Platform's sen• one group or another had a certain temporary influence in tences: particular sections of the working class or the youth. The different organisations coming out of the Left There is of course no doubt that the power and pressure of Opposition, having played a major role in resisting the Stalinist bureaucracy, physical as well as ideological, this (Stalinist) degeneration and in safeguarding the on the working class and particularly on the Trotskyists, revolutionary tradition, have proved eventually to be imposed grave and often impossible difficulties for the incapable of developing this theory in correspondence building of revolutionary parties. Today the physical pres• with the new changing situation. A thorough review sure is no more and the ideological pressure residual. We of this experience, the fight to liberate revolutionary are obliged to not only expose and oppose the open bank• theory from decades of decline and a serious effort in ruptcy of Stalinism and Social-Democracy as manifesta• developing it in accordance with present-day condi• tions of capital's structural crisis, nor only to review the tions must be in the forefront of the tasks of all social• ways in which these objective changes open up the class ist revolutionaries. struggle in new ways, but to review also our own concep• tions and methods of 'party-building', the' subjective' side 1 think it wrong to not differentiate, in this matter of theo• of things, as it were. retical work, between different sections of the movement calling themselves Trotskyist (for example, there was a Central to the thinking of all who have tried to continue crucially important fight against the positions of Pablo the fight of Trotsky and the International Left Opposition and Mandel and in this way against the pressure of Sta• has been the opening section of the 1938 'Transitional linism, even if later some of those who participated in Programme': 'The world political situation as a whole is that fight, like the Workers Revolutionary Party and its chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leader• International Committee, fell into similar opportunist po• ship of the proletariat'; and again, 'The historical crisis of sitions in relation to the national bourgeoisie in colonial mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary lead• and ex-colonial countries). Nonetheless I agree whole• ership.' heartedly with this emphasis on the necessity of critically reviewing the movement's experience in the context of a An essential fight was taken up in the Trotskyist move• fight to develop Marxist theory. ment against those (e.g. Michel Pablo) who effectively abandoned the fight for independent revolutionary lead• For many years comrades in Trotskyist organisations con• ership with ideas of the 'self-reform' of the Stalinist bu• ducted a fight for what they understood as 'party-build• reaucracy and of the ability of Stalinist and reformist lead• ing'. Today, none of us will contest that Stalinism has erships to lead revolutions under 'mass pressure'. But was disintegrated, with the Communist Parties having become this enough? I have come round to the opinion that the 'social-democratic', but at a time when social-democracy 'crisis of revolutonary leadership' was until very recently itself, as a method of capitalist rule in the advanced capi• understood in a dangerously wrong and narrow way. 1 talist countries depending on control of the working class mean to say that there was a tendency in our movement to through some reform concesssions, is finished, because it assume that the crisis of leadership would be resolved by is no longer in accord with the needs or the capabilities of replacing one leadership by another (and that that other capital in the period of accelerated articulation of its struc• was us). This took the most extreme forms in the procla• tural decline (see Meszaros, Beyond Capital). Thus the mations of more than one group that they were indeed working class has been betrayed and failed by its 'tradi• 'the (reconstructed) Fourth International'. (Since the tional' parties. Fourth International was the name for a 'world party of social revolution', their claims were and are patently ab• The Fourth International was founded as 'the world party surd). of socialist revolution' in order to defend proletarian in• ternationalism against these betrayals as long ago as 1938. Much of what went for 'party-building' was done with When the programme of the Fourth International was re• this conception that what was needed was to build an ap• vised, especially as by Pablo and Mandel, there was a fight paratus and train 'cadres' to replace the bureaucratic ap• to defend it. But it is absolutely necessary to recognise paratuses of the existing parties. All those who have been also that the 'party-building' in which we engaged for so working in the Trotskyist movement will recognise the long did not 'build parties', even if from time to time outcome of this conception in the grotesque regimes which Page 5 International Socialist Forum developed under the leadership of Healy in Britain and the future of mankind was ensured by the socialism being Lambert in France and no doubt in other countries.
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