Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spartacist League

-a bulletin series of opponent material

NUMBER 12 English-language translation of "Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spartacists" Bulletin No.1, published by the Spartacist Group of (SGP), section of the International (Fourth-Internationalist)

leL Trotskyism vs. Mandelite "Left" Polish Nationalism

Introduction On the Spartacist Renegades Reprint of a polemic by a supporter of the NLR [Revolutionary Left Current], undated, distributed in December 1998 For New October ! lel Trotskyism vs. Mandelite "left" Polish Nationalism Reply of the Spartacist Group of Poland, 14 March 1999

December 1999 Spartacist Publishing Company whole no.12 Box 1377 GPO US$1.50 Cdn$2 Mex$5 New York, New York 10116 FF8 DM2.50 £1 L.2.300 zl2 USA Reais.75 Rand 4.50 ¥150 A$2 Introduction

The content of this bulletin is an English-language workers state of any kind represents: protection against translation of "Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spanacists" the armies of and native , the tre­ mendous development of productive forces, witnessed in Bulletin No.1, published in March 1999 by the Spar­ Eastern Europe and China, for example." tacist Group of Poland (SGP), section of the Interna­ The reader of course will observe that the NLR tional Communist League (Fourth-Internationalist). polemicist's main attack against us today comes from a This bulletin, contains an exchange of documents diametrically opposite viewpoint: he accuses us of being with a member of Nurt Lewicy Rewolucyjnej (NLR, apologists for the Stalinist bureaucracy. But it is not our Current of Revolutionary Left)IDalej!, which is affili­ politics that have changed. The ICL (formerly the inter­ ated to the late Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat of national Spartacist tendency) has remained consistent the (USec). The first two items in in its adherence to Trotskyism. The USec, however, has this bulletin are "On the Spartacist Renegades, Part I tailed whatever political movement is trendy at a given and 2," both undated, but circulated in late December moment in petty-bourgeois radical circles. In the 1950s 1998/early January 1999. Our reproductions of this they broke from Trotskyism, preaching that the Stalin­ material are taken straight from the originals; respon­ ist leaderships would be forced by objective pressures sibility for all typographical, spelling and punctuation to playa revolutionary role. In the 1960s and 1970s, errors lies with the author. The SGP's response, dated they hailed "new mass vanguards" such as bourgeois 14 March 1999, makes up the last item in this bulletin. feminism and student power. In the late 1970s and This is the first "Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Sparta­ 1980s, they became the biggest cheerleaders for coun­ cists" bulletin published in the Polish language. It con­ terrevolutionary forces that sought the destruction of the tinues the traditions of our comrades of the Spartacist , from Khomeini's Islamic guards in Iran League/U.S. of producing material hostile to our ten­ to Solidarnosc in Poland. They rejoiced at Boris dency written by ostensibly Marxist opponent organi­ Yeltsin's victory in the USSR which ushered in the zations. This series has allowed us to make available to destruction of the Soviet workers state. In order to avoid our members and others interested in our organization, responsibility for this betrayal of the interests of the representative arguments against our politics, particu­ working class, the USec now denies that the counter­ larly by left-sounding centrists and critics. has actually taken place, while giving polit­ The first number in this series of the SLIV.S., dated ical support to the pro-capitalist social democrats. March 1975, reprinted a document entitled "Spartacist We believe the counterposition of the ICL's Trot­ League: Anatomy of a Sect," which was published skyist program to the "left" Polish nationalism espoused by the more left-wing adherents of the USec in North by the USec in Poland will be a useful guide to all those America. In those days, when the Mandelites were en­ seeking the road to authentic in Poland and thusing over the Vietnamese National Liberation Front internationally today. and posturing as armchair guerrillaists, we were reviled As supplementary reading to this bulletin, we refer for not embracing and as our readers to our earlier polemic against the USec enti­ modern-day equivalents of the Bolsheviks Lenin and tled "USec's Nationalization Fetishism," published in Trotsky. At that time the USec claimed the Spartacists Platforma Spanakusowcow No.4, Summer-Fall 1993, were "Stalinophobes," charging that we deemed the which takes up the USec's line that the former Soviet degenerated and deformed workers states "unworthy Union is still a workers state. English-speaking readers of unconditional defense against imperialism (third are also referred to Spanacist No. 52 (Autumn 1995), campism)." One selection from this document reads as which contains a political obituary of Mandel, as well follows: as the presentations, summaries and some excerpts from "The Spartacists' conception of deformed workers states the discussion at a debate between Mandel and Joseph as being only slightly 'superior' to capitalism. and qual­ Seymour of the ICL in New York City on 11 November itatively inferior to healthy workers' states, leads to the same kind of sectarian third campism in practice. It 1994. leads to underestimating the gains for the masses which a -16 March 1999

2 [Translation, document undated/received 16 December 1998] On the Spartacist Renegades Part One sion: the USSR and other states in which capitalism To introduce the topic I'll point out at once that the was overthrown, introducing into them the same kind of sense of this polemic may seem doubtful in view of the economic-social relations, were workers states to the fact that its subject, i.e., the Spartacists, are outside the degree that as states they remained on the basis of, workers movement. Lenin polemicized with the ultra­ and sometimes even defended, the class foundations leftoids, the economists, the Kautskyists, etc. only whose genesis traces back to the October Revolution, because these currents represented a real part of the i.e., to the degree that they remained based on the workers movement, thus their ideological effect on the anti-capitalist (the social gains in working class could have catastrophic results from the the workers states were inseparably linked with the viewpoint of the interests of . I decided planned, non-capitalist character of the economies of to take up a polemic against the Spartacists not because these states). By way of analogy, as Trotsky wrote, we they have a negative influence on the working class (as are dealing with the true dictatorship of the proletariat fortunately they have no influence at all on the latter) but in Russia not from the moment at which the Soviets because they could have a negative influence on a few seized power, but from the moment at which the bour­ people who declare their openness to revolutionary geoisie was expropriated, the economy was nationalized , take part in the informal debate going on and capitalism was replaced by a planned economy, i.e., between the SGP, Solidarnosc Socjalistyczna (now since 1918. Employee Democracy) and NLR (Mandelites). In this The bureaucracy as a ruling and parasitic layer in the informal debate, both the SGP and SS use punches workers country in this way possessed a dual character: against the NLR that are below the belt, using lies, mis­ on one side, in consolidating its privileges it under­ representations, etc. They even resort (especially the mined the proletarian class foundations of the workers SGP) to censoring Trotsky's writings, despite the hag­ state and the social gains associated with it, forcing iographic interludes regarding him in their papers. The political passivity on the proletariat, not permitting it to Spartacists also sow a great deal of ideological muddle, take part in the planning process; the bureaucracy com­ create lots of confusion around their own sect, disorient promised the workers own state in the eyes of the work­ external observers and compromise the revolutionary ers, leading a downright counterrevolutionary interna­ left in the eyes of its potential participants. The theoret­ tional policy; it turned the working masses of the ical mess served up by Platforma Spartakusowcow capitalist countries against the program of world revo­ stands in blatant opposition to the elementary principles lution, and through all this it drifted unconsciously of Trotskyism and Marxism as a whole. toward capitalism, toward counterrevolution; on the The theoretical errors of the Spartacists derive in a other hand, on many occasions it stood in defense of considerable degree from a failure to understand the the class foundations which were created by October, nature of the degenerated/deformed workers states, the besides which the Soviet bureaucracy succeeded in nature of the bureaucracies of the workers countries, overthrowing capitalism in several countries (it's not the relation of the bureaucracy to the class foundations important here to go into the reasons it did this), many of the workers state, the dual nature of the bureaucracy, economic decisions which it took were dictated by the etc. In order to demonstrate the error of the theories interests of the toiling masses, etc. However, all its publicized by the SGP, the focus must be placed on progressive potential did not reside in [the bureaucracy] these vitally important questions. itself, but in the planned economy which it exclusively In politically expropriating the Soviet proletariat the administered. Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy did not carry out a counter­ The failure to understand this ABC of Trotskyism revolution, in that it did not replace the mode of pro­ has led the Spartacists to transform the demand for the duction (and the type of social relations which go with defense of the workers state (regarding Poland) into a it) proper to the dictatorship of the proletariat by a demand for the defense of the bureaucracy itself against new mode of production and a new type of social rela­ the working class. Defense of the workers state accord­ tions proper to the rule of some new social class. The ing to Trotsky and the Fourth International, however, bureaucracy was thus not rooted in a mode of produc­ doesn't mean defending the rule of the bureaucracy over tion different from that of the proletariat. We thus were the proletariat in the workers country, but the defense of dealing with a political counterrevolution, a Thermido­ the class economic foundations of the workers state, the rian overthrow, rather than a social counterrevolution. non-capitalist planned economy and its gains against The degenerated Soviet workers state remained a work­ imperialism and against internal pro-capitalist ten­ ers state to the degree that its class basis and the social dencies (this may sometimes mean a tactical alliance gains connected with this, which resulted from the with the bureaucracy as a whole, or its healthier ele­ October Revolution, were not overthrown by the ments, since the bureaucracy is not a monolithic entity). bureaucracy and replaced by different ones. Conclu- The postulate of defense of the workers state is also 3 dialectically linked (for the opponent of dialectics these Republic, etc. were non-capitalist because, together postulates may appear mutually incompatible) with the with the liquidation of the bourgeoisie as a social class, postulate of anti-bureaucratic political revolution, aim­ together with the nationalization of industry, the capi­ ing at the return/introduction of workers democracy: talist law of value, which in capitalist countries is the " ... either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the main regulator of the economy, was overthrown. In the instrument of the world bourgeoisie in the workers planned economies it was not the law of competition, state, will overthrow the new property forms and throw not the tendency to maximize profit, but the necessity the country back into capitalism, or the working class to satisfy definite social needs, the tendency to resolve will rout the bureaucracy and open the road to social­ definite problems, etc. which had a decisive character ism" (, "Transitional Program"). The work­ in economics (in these economies health services, edu­ ers country thus requires defense not only against impe­ cation, housing, etc. did not represent commodities). rialism, but against the more and more pro-capitalist Accumulation in the workers country thus has a com­ bureaucracy. For a Trotskyist, the defense of the work­ pletely different character than accumulation in capi­ ers state means the defense of the mode of production talist countries. The restoration of capitalism, and not corresponding to the dictatorship of the proletariat, merely the capitalist state (two things which should not from which the bureaucracy has not yet managed to be confused), requires getting to the point where the free itself. For a Trotskyist, the workers state can be main regulator of the economy would again be the cap­ defended in the long term only by the working class italist law of value, rather than administrative decisions (and only for the working class), and not by divorc­ taken by state officials. The bourgeois state, of which ing oneself from the working class through a putsch we can speak in Poland since 1989, is a bourgeois state or a conspiracy of Polish and DDR generals. For the to the degree that it conducts the counterrevolutionary Spartacists, in contrast, defense of the workers state policy of destroying the anti-capitalist planned econ­ means defense of Kiszczak and laruzelski, while the omy in the interest of the reborn bourgeoisie, under the basic question, i.e., defense of the planned economy diktat of world imperialism, for the purpose of estab­ and its gains against the capitalist counterrevolution, lishing the capitalist mode of production. In just the doesn't exist for the Spartacists. The defense of the non­ same way, we speak of the Russian workers state after capitalist economy, defense of jobs, free education and the revolution, but prior to 1918, in the sense that as a health care is, according to them, pure reformism. For state, i.e., as a political power, it strove for the liquida­ the SGP the greatest tragedy is not the restoration of tion of capitalism and the establishment of the prole­ capitalism, the attacks of Balcerowicz on the workers, tarian planned mode of production (a dictatorship of but the fall of Kiszczak and laruzelski, since now that the proletariat in the political sense, as was the Paris they've fallen we have capitalism, and since we have ). The restoration of capitalism is not, as the capitalism, it's all the same if there will be privatization Spartacists would have it, a one-time action, but a pro­ or not. The state sector is no different (since we no cess having its own inner dialectic. A planned econ­ longer have Rakowski and laruzelski) from the private omy which produces (to a greater or lesser extent) for sector; it's also all the same how many workers lose the satisfaction of definite social needs, can't be trans­ their jobs. Those who calIon the workers to defend jobs formed in a single day into a capitalist economy based and free social services are reformists. Real revolution­ on the striving of individual capitalists to maximize aries, now that Kiszczak and laruzelski have retired, their profits. Whether or not we are dealing with capi­ consider the struggle to have been lost, and withdraw talism is not decided by the fact that one nomenclature from politics in order to occupy themselves with nurs­ is replaced by another (the bureaucracy of a comprador ing the revolutionary program, conserving it until "bet­ bourgeois state has replaced the bureaucracy of a ter times" approach. workers state), but by concrete socio-economic pro­ Thus what a lousy reformist Trotsky must have been, cesses. While we Mandelites attempt to counteract for whom, even under the conditions of bourgeois rule, these processes, calling on the workers to struggle with the issue of the relation of the state sector to the private the counterrevolutionary restoration of capitalism, the sector wasn't at all a matter of indifference. The postu­ Spartacist self-styled revolutionaries shamelessly capit­ late of nationalization of specific groups of capital ulate, stating that the fight ended the moment generals by the bourgeois state, and the attending postulate of laruzelski and Kiszczak were retired. maintaining those branches of industry already nation­ The question of defense of the workers state is inti­ alized by the state is, according to Trotsky, one of the mately connected with the assessment of Martial Law transitional demands. We refer those interested in this and Solidarnosc. Declaring their support for Martial question to read the "Transitional Program" (chapters: Law, the Spartacists display a total incomprehension of "Expropriation of Specific Groups of Capitalists", the problem. The only correct view of this question "Expropriation of Private Banks and Nationalization of from a Trotskyist vantage point is as follows: 1) Soli­ the Credit System"). darnosc-a mass workers movement-had a unique The error of the Spartacists consists of failing to chance to make an anti-bureaucratic political revolu­ understand 1) why the economies of the workers states tion, remaining on the basis of an unchanged mode of did not have a capitalist character, and 2) why the resto­ production and the type of social relations connected to ration of capitalism is not a one-time action, but a pro­ the latter; the demands of Solidarnosc, before this cess. The economies of the USSR, the Polish People's movement was smashed by the bureaucracy, were not 4 pro-capitalist demands, but democratic ones, approxi­ olutionary workers movement should be organized. mating the Trotskyist demand for workers democracy; These demands include, among others, the demand for 2) Martial Law was a bureaucratic coup against the a sliding scale of working hours, demands for the mass workers movement, for the purpose of smashing expropriation by the bourgeois state of specific groups it and weakening the working class politically; thanks of capitalists, the demand for the state to expropriate to the imposition of Martial Law, i.e., thanks to the private banks and nationalize the system of credit, etc. destruction of the workers movement from below, the These demands constitute a real bridge between the bureaucracy could perform certain small pro-capitalist minimum program (defense of the workers current reforms, opening the flood-gates for the social coun­ interests) and the revolutionary maximum program. terrevolution which was soon to follow; pro-market These demands, in spite of the fact that in themselves reforms couldn't be introduced by the bureaucracy they do not presuppose the overthrow of the bourgeoi­ in conditions where there existed a strong workers sie, already have a profoundly anti-capitalist character movement, because it was clear in the negotiations -starting from today's conditions and today's con­ with the authorities that Solidarnosc occupied leftist sciousness of the working class, they lead inevitably to positions, while the bureaucracy occupied rightist (pro­ one conclusion: the conquest of power by the workers. capitalist) positions. Martial Law thus did not mean Putting forward such demands permits "overcoming defense of the workers state, but defense of the threat­ the contradiction between the maturity of the objective ened position occupied by the bureaucracy in that state, circumstances for revolution and the immaturity of the defense of the bureaucracy's secure bargaining position proletariat and its vanguard." On the other hand, they in its underhanded dealings with imperialism (analo­ are of tremendous mobilizing value-around these gous to the attacks on the workers class carried out by demands it is easier to organize working people. These the Chinese bureaucracy, forcing through counterrevo­ demands, leading inevitably to the overthrow of the lutionary, pro-capitalist reforms against the will of the bourgeoisie and capitalism, thanks to the fact that they workers). Martial Law turned out to be the eve of social derive from the current economic struggle of the work­ counterrevolution in Poland. After pacifying the work­ ers, are neither incomprehensible to them nor abstract. ing class, reaching a common agreement between the The question of their reality, inasmuch as they are pro-capitalist leadership of Solidarnosc and its neolib­ directed at the bourgeois state, is exclusively one of the eral advisers and the bureaucracy, and both parties with balance of forces (while we are dealing with a balance imperialism, was only a question of time. The technical of forces in the proletariat's favor in the conditions of details of the counterrevolution were hammered out at capitalist crisis). As Trotsky wrote: "If capitalism is Magdalenka and at the Round Table. But it should be incapable of satisfying the demands arising inevitably pointed out that we do not use the word counterrevolu­ from the plagues which it unleashes, let it perish." tion to mean the removal of the PUWP (Stalinist party) Even if, under the conditions of capitalist crisis (and from power, as the Spartacists would have it, but the under the circumstances of the emergence of a revolu­ process of capitalist restoration initiated as a result of tionary situation) the bourgeoisie, under the pressure of the agreement reached between both parties over the the revolutionary workers movement, meets these workers' heads, the process of replacing the proletarian demands, this still won't help them. Above all, this mode of production, i.e., the planned economy, with the is because the profoundly anti-capitalist character of capitalist mode of production. these demands is not compatible with the further main­ According to the Spartacists, Martial Law saved the tenance of private property. Furthermore, if the workers Polish workers state from CIA-financed counterrevolu­ were capable of forcing the bourgeoisie to realize the tionary Solidarnosc. The difference, however, between transitional demands which negate the very nature of a Trotskyist and a Spartacist is that a Trotskyist affirms the capitalist mode of production, they would by that the only force that can save a workers state, i.e., the same token be able to overthrow the bourgeoisie stand up against counterrevolutionary attempts to altogether. destroy the proletarian mode of production, is the work­ What a contradiction with the "Transitional Pro­ ing class; while saving the workers state in the long gram" is Spartacist abstractionism. The Spartacists, term is only possible as a result of an anti-bureaucratic bothering once in a while to attend union demonstra­ political revolution. tions, approach working people exclusively with slo­ gans of the type: "For a Leninist -Trotskyist Party!" "For New October Revolutions!" or "For the Communism of On the Spartacist Renegades, Part Two Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht!" The charge here Another blatant conflict between the program of the does not concern the slogans themselves, which on their Spartacists and that of the revolutionary Marxism own are unreservedly correct, and furthermore attest to expressed by Trotsky in the "Transitional Program" is the courage of those who put them forward. The charge linked with the Spartacists' complete failure to com­ here concerns only the fact that they are almost the only prehend this basic document. So what is the real con­ slogans put forward by the Spartacists. In their press the tent of the "Transitional Program," and what is the real Spartacists are incapable of linking the ongoing strug­ attitude of the Spartacists to this revolutionary ABC? gle of the workers with the goal declared by the entire In the "Transitional Program" Trotsky puts forward a revolutionary left. The whole problem is exactly how to series of "transitional" demands around which the rev- show miners, fighting to keep their jobs and decent liv- 5 ing conditions for themselves and their families, that the following quotation from the "Transitional Pro­ there exists a close connection between their particular gram" fit our beloved Spartacists like a glove? struggle and the struggle that has long been waged "Under the influence of the betrayals and deformations between labor and capital; and that the one solution to of the historical organizations of the proletariat, on the margins of the Fourth International appear or emerge this struggle is the revolutionary transformation of soci­ various types of sectarian moods and groupings. At their ety. The only method for drawing the broad masses of foundation lies a refusal to fight for partial and transi­ the working class into open political struggle with the tional demands, i.e., for the elementary interests and bourgeoisie are transitional demands. Declaring exclu­ needs of the working masses, such as they are. Prepara­ tion of revolution means for sectarians persuading them­ sively abstractionist demands, which have no connec­ selves of the superiority of . They propose tion to the real course of class struggle, one can only turning their backs on the old trade unions, i.e., on tens expose oneself to ridicule. In Poland, a struggle is cur­ of millions of organized workers, as if the masses could rently being waged against the final phase of the resto­ live outside the realities of the class struggle! They remain indifferent to the internal struggle inside the ref­ ration of capitalism led by the right-wing AWSIUW ormist organizations-as if you could win the masses government, i.e., against Balcerowicz' Plan II and its without involving yourself in this struggle! (The Sparta­ social consequences, against the liquidation of tens of cists dub all members of reformist organizations with thousands of jobs in mining and steel, against the pri­ the title of murderers of and Lieb­ knecht-Author.) ... Sectarians can distinguish only two vatization of more workplaces and institutions, against colors-red and black. In order not to succumb to temp­ the neoliberal reform of health care, education and tation, they simplify reality. They refuse to distinguish social security, against entry into the EU and NATO, between the opposing camps in Spain because both camps have a bourgeois character.... They are not able etc. This is a real struggle around which working peo­ to find a road to the masses, and thus gladly accuse the ple need to be organized, to point out to them that masses of being unable to rise to the revolutionary idea. there are no capitalist solutions to the problems born out A bridge, in the form of transitional demands, is quite of capitalism, that reformist solutions are not capable unnecessary for these barren politicians, because they have no intention of crossing to the other shore. They of significantly changing their situation, that only the stand in one spot, contenting themselves with constantly workers conquering power guarantees an ultimate repeating the same abstractions. Political events are for escape from capitalist misery. The workers will only them a cause for commentary, not action. As is the case follow those revolutionaries who will be able to con­ with sectarians, and in general with all types of charla­ tans and miracle workers, they are always being dealt struct a bridge between today's class struggle and humiliation by reality and find themselves in a state of tomorrow's dictatorship of the proletariat. Those "rev­ permanent irritation .... In their own circles they are usu­ olutionaries" who can only repeat revolutionary phrases ally governed by despotism. The political prostration of over and over will forever remain cut off from the sectarianism complements the prostration of opportun­ ism like a shadow not opening any revolutionary per­ workers movement, because they are incapable of join­ spectives. In practical politics sectarians join at every ing the vortex of that movement's real struggle. The step with opportunists, especially centrists, in struggle Spartacists' attitude to the class struggle in Poland is against Marxism. The majority of sectarian groups and cliques, living on accidental crumbs from the table of more or less as follows: "generally speaking we're even the Fourth International, live an independent organi­ against privatization, overall I guess we even support zational life, without the least chance of success. The strikes, but god forbid we should think such things are Bolshevik-Leninists can without wasting time calmly important; the real struggle happens completely else­ leave such groups to their own fate .... A correct policy in relation to the trade unions is the basic condition for where." So where exactly does the struggle happen, membership in the Fourth International. He who does dear comrades? This question remains unanswered in not seek out and does not find a road to the mass move­ the Spartacists' press. Fortunately the class struggle ment is not a fighter for the party but a useless burden. goes on independently of whether there's any mention The program is not for editorial boards, reading rooms or discussion clubs, but for the revolutionary action of of it in the Spartacists' press, while strikes and union millions. Purging the ranks of the Fourth International of demonstrations, which in certain situations might even sectarianism and incurable sectarians is the most impor­ count on support from the Spartacists, are a symptom of tant condition for revolutionary successes." that struggle. Instead of being conscious participants Whoever has but encountered the Spartacists will in the class struggle, the Spartacists are only the all­ admit that they couldn't be better described. Trotsky knowing observers of it. In the struggle between labor touches here on many important questions, including and capital, a struggle in which Marxists stand uncon­ the attitude of the sectarians to trade unions. Sectarians ditionally on the side of labor, seeking to give that strug­ tum their backs on reactionary trade unions. The Spar­ gle a political character, and attempting to transform tacists don't support strikes organized by anti-Semitic, it into an open struggle for the overthrow of the bour­ Catholic Solidarnosc. They don't even trouble them­ geoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of selves to explain where this anti-Semitism and religios­ the proletariat, the Spartacists occupy a position of neu­ ity comes from, what their social origin is and how to trality, occasionally giving support to the working class. fight them (Too bad our great Bolsheviks haven't yet It is obvious that real revolutionaries don't occupy read Lenin's brochure on "The Attitude of the Workers themselves with such inessential issues as the struggle Party to Religion"). At the same time, boycotting union between some social classes or other. demonstrations at which anti-Semitic slogans or reac­ Nobody has given a more precise and accurate char­ tionary accents might appear, ceding the field to the far acterization of the ultra-left sectarian deviation repre­ right is exactly the best way to push unionists even fur­ sented by the Spartacists than Trotsky himself. Doesn't ther into the embrace of the anti-Semitic Wrzodaks, or 6 the neoliberal lankowskis (unbelievably fantastic is the support "bourgeois" Cuba in its struggles with Ameri­ Spartacists' attitude to anti-Semitism. An NLR speaker can imperialism. In both cases, neutrality means on the crisis of capitalism was called an anti-Semite by betrayal and capitulation to imperialism. Capitulation the Spartacists for naming George Soros as a represen­ to imperialism is the "star attraction" of the Spartacists. tative of speculative capital-no comment). The Spar­ Fighting imperialism for them is virtually a sure sign of tacists also call for the weakening of reactionary trade nationalism, since the main enemy is at home. Apply­ unions and the building of new unions. Can it be that ing the same logic, the Spartacists don't support strikes they have yet to understand the difference between a (or if they do support some strike or other, it's with great and a revolutionary party? How mercilessly reservation)-after all, at any strike some nationalists Trotsky ridiculed such ideas, just as Lenin utterly might show up. The Spartacists, however, go to even mocked them in "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile worse absurdities. This is because they refuse to oppose Disorder," concluding that work even in the most reac­ the sellout of Polish state enterprises to foreign capi­ tionary union is the duty of every revolutionary. The tal-struggle against foreign capital is, of course, sectarians' attitude to transitional demands is one of the nationalism of the purest order. The Spartacists haven't defining marks of sectarianism. The demands formu­ yet noticed that the sellout of Polish enterprises to for­ lated by Trotsky, the dialectical revolutionary process eign capital is not international cooperation among foreseen by him, is for these great revolutionaries noth­ nations, but one of the elements of the counterrevolution ing but pure reformism. (the Spartacists presumably see no connection between Attesting to the bastard-leftism [lewactwo] of the the restoration of capitalism in Poland and the imperi­ Spartacists is also their practical boycott of the Trot­ alist appetites of American capital, Western European skyist theory of permanent revolution. When the USA capital, etc.). We strongly advise the Spartacist com­ attacked Cuba (Bay of Pigs invasion), the Spartacists' rades to go back to a very important text: Imperialism: political forebears inside the Fourth International, to the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Those who don't whom they trace their origin, declared their neutrality understand that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are in the war between "the bourgeois regime of Fidel Cas­ international classes, those who don't understand that tro" and the bourgeois USA. This position is the unfor­ the struggle between them is an international struggle, tunate result of their failure to understand a certain the­ understand nothing. Fleeing from the context of inter­ ory discovered by Trotsky long ago. A basic outline of national class struggle under the pretext of fighting the this is called for. enemy at home is rendering service to imperialism. In backward countries which are subject to the law Nothing increases the strength of imperialism as the of combined and uneven development, bourgeois­ international atomization of the separate, national work­ democratic revolution, which is at the same time anti­ ing classes does. Only the united efforts of workers of imperialist, to the extent that it is to conquer and reach Third World countries, European and American work­ its conclusion (i.e., achieve the historical tasks set for it ers can strike down the monster of American imperial­ by history---democratic and civilizational tasks), must ism-the emperor of the international bourgeoisie. grow over into , meaning the over­ But the greatest tragedy of the Spartacists is nei­ throw of capitalism and its replacement with a planned ther their lack of knowledge of certain classical texts economy, breaking with imperialism, etc. Imagine the of Marxism, nor their incapacity to carefully read those surprise of the illustrious precursors [of Spartacism] texts which have been passed by Spartacist censor­ when it turned out that Castro's petty-bourgeois guer­ ship. Such things can always be made up for. It is the rilla army was able to overthrow capitalism in Cuba (or incapacity-imposed on this sect from above-for dia­ rather cause capitalism to be overthrown acting as the lectical thought, which is a fundamental basis of the spark for the social explosion), at the same time deal­ Marxist world view. For the Spartacists, just as for anti­ ing a slap in the face to imperialist America. The anti­ dialecticians, everything is "A" or "not-A". "A" =only imperialist potential of Fidel's movement, hatred for the working class can build a workers state; conclu­ imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie grew over sion: thus it is impossible for a bourgeois revolution to in the end into an anti-capitalist revolution. Only break­ grow over into a proletarian revolution. Example two: ing with capitalism could free the Cubans from the "A" = until 1989 there was no capitalism in the Polish degrading influence of American imperialism, also per­ deformed workers state; conclusion: after 1989, i.e., mitting the achievement of genuine social advancement after the fall of the Polish Peoples Republic, it must be for broad layers of Cuban society. Fidel Castro under­ capitalism at once. Example three: "A" = revolution stood this perfectly, and for this reason finally converted means the introduction of workers councils; conclu­ officially to communism. Long after the fact, having sion: in Cuba there were no councils, therefore there previously taken umbrage at the Fourth International for was no revolution. The examples can be multiplied. recognizing Cuba as a workers state, even the pre­ The Spartacists boast of their unanimity. They accuse Spartacists figured this out, shamefully blacking out the Fourth International of not being unanimous. Mean­ their recent "neutrality." In parentheses, even if Fidel's while, a similar charge might be levelled against the regime had remained bourgeois, i.e., in a situation Bolshevik Party. Anyone the least oriented on this sub­ where the Cuban revolution had not gone beyond the ject could draw up a whole list of situations in which framework of bourgeois society with respect to its Lenin found himself with some opinion in a minority in social content, Marxists would have been obliged to relation to his party comrades. Even on the most key 7 issue, on the question of revolution, there was no unity hobbyists, investigators of various political and relig­ in the Bolshevik Party. This didn't mean the necessity ious sects. One can't treat seriously a group which of a split, but the necessity of a confrontation of the occupies itself exclusively with denunciation of other opposing views at a party forum. An appropriate sec­ tendencies and the preparation of appropriate quota­ tion on this can be found by the reader in Trotsky's bro­ tions for this purpose without the least effort to enter chure entitled "Lessons of October." Similarly, in the into the vortex of the class struggle. To sum up, the Fourth International in Trotsky's time, there was no talk choice between the Fourth International (with all its of theoretical unanimity. The mortar of the Fourth Inter­ strengths and defects, with its lack of unanimity, with national was its revolutionary program. When the party its errors) and the International Communist League is faced with a new challenge, sometimes standing on (Spartacist tendency) is a choice between a revolution­ the same ground in Marxist methodology, it is possible ary organization and an ultra-Ieftoid sect, the choice to arrive at opposing views. The administrative removal between workers democracy and a monastic order, of a minority yields nothing. Historical practice passes whose members are merely the minions of the politics its verdict on all disputes in any case. The losers, if they of the leadership, the choice between the class struggle are Marxists, admit to their mistakes. Even Lenin him­ and abstract phrasemongering. self wasn't infallible, and didn't in the least pretend to be. Both Lenin and Trotsky were able to admit mis­ * * * takes with head held high. The practical criterion of truth-that is the basis of the materialist worldview. Between wntmg the first and second parts of this Workers democracy, democratic centralism-these, in polemic, I have learned that according to the Sparta­ the mouths of the Spartacists, are empty slogans. The cists, the view which I presented in Part One that, Spartacists' body of internal legislation is completely according to Trotsky, we are dealing with the real dicta­ irrelevant to its declared democratic centralism. Let me torship of the proletariat in Russia only from the Fall recommend some delightful reading: "Declaration of of 1918, is incorrect. I have decided to add here the Principles and Some Elements of Program," available quotation from the marvelous brochure by Trotsky from the Spartacists for only a zloty. I especially sug­ entitled "The Class Nature of the Soviet State", which gest reading the sections on the internal jurisprudence is also distributed by the Spartacists. with references to the Code of Hammurabi, Norman "Only toward the autumn of 1918 did the petty-bour­ Law at the time of William the Conqueror, or even on geois soldier-agrarian elemental wave recede a little to William Shakespeare. its shores, and the workers went forward with the The above critique of the Spartacists in no way nationalization of the means of production. Only from exhausts the topic. But following every calamity, this time can one speak of the inception of a real dicta­ betrayal and absurdity which are the lot of this pitiful torship of the proletariat. "-1 encourage some serious sect is a waste of time. I'll leave that task to patient reading .•

8 For New October Revolutions! ICL Trotskyism vs. Mandelite "Left" Polish Nationalism Recently a polemical document against the Inter­ mortal danger, they must remain on the last barricade" national Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) (The Class Nature of the Soviet State, October 1933). has been circulated by a supporter of the Revolutionary The International Communist League (formerly Left Current (NLR), Polish section of the late Ernest international Spartacist tendency) has from its incep­ Mandel's United Secretariat (USec) organization. tion upheld the Trotskyist position for unconditional Acknowledging the impact of the communist program military defense of the deformed and degenerated of the ICL among youth in their milieu, the author workers states against imperialist attack and internal of the piece seeks to whitewash his organization's his­ counterrevolution, while fighting for proletarian politi­ tory of bootlicking for Solidarnosc and a host of other cal revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracies which counterrevolutionary forces. To this end the polemic were leading these societies to destruction. Soviet raises as a central charge that the ICL has transformed defensism was an inseparable element of our fight for "the demand for defense of the workers state .. .into a international proletarian socialist revolution. Today the demand for the defense of the bureaucracy itself against deformed workers states of China, Cuba, Vietnam and the working class." Opposing our determined defense North Korea are under tremendous pressure from the of the degenerated and deformed workers states against forces of counterrevolution. The ICL fights to win the capitalist restoration, the "anti-Stalinism" of these proletariat in these countries to the urgent perspective pseudo-Trotskyists in fact constituted a loyalty oath to of proletarian political revolution to stop the galloping the imperialists and their social democratic lackeys. drive towards capitalist restoration there, while strug­ The wave of capitalist counterrevolution which gling for socialist revolution in the capitalist world. destroyed the USSR and deformed workers states of In contrast, swimming with the stream of bour­ Eastern Europe nearly a decade ago has been an unprec­ geois propaganda, the vast majority of self-styled "radi­ edented defeat for the working class and the oppressed cal" left organizations spent the 1980s tailing pro­ not only in those countries, but around the world. Cap­ imperialist in hailing the forces of italist restoration has brought immiseration, massive counterrevolutionary reaction. In the forefront of this unemployment, and the explosion of nationalist, racist phenomenon was Mandel's USec organization. From and fascist violence, religious reaction and anti­ chanting "Solidarity with Solidarnosc," to calling for the Semitism. It has also led to an escalation of rivalries withdrawal of Soviet troops fighting the CIA-backed between the imperialist blocs dominated by the USA, women-hating Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Japan and Germany, whose bourgeoisies are ratcheting to backing Boris Yeltsin's counterrevolutionary counter­ up the rate of exploitation, chopping social programs putsch in 1991, the USec supported the very forces of and smashing workers' living standards so as to increase counterrevolution which now hold state power, impos­ their competitiveness, thereby pushing the world closer ing capitalist devastation on workers, women and the to imperialist war. oppressed from Berlin to Warsaw to Moscow and Tash­ The demise of the degenerated and deformed work­ kent. As our speaker pointed out during the public ers states in the USSR and Eastern Europe is ultimately debate which was held in New York between Ernest the responsibility of the Stalinist bureaucracies, which Mandel and Spartacist League/U.S. Central Committee undermined those states and destroyed any semblance member Joseph Seymour in November 1994: of revolutionary consciousness among the working "During the period of Cold WaI II, Mandel and his fol­ lowers never met a non-Russian anti-communist nation­ class. In the Soviet Union, Poland and other countries alist in East Europe they didn't like, they didn't support, of Eastern Europe the traditions of the revolutionary pro­ and they didn't apologize for-of course in the name of letariat and the October Revolution had been systemat­ democracy, national independence and anti-Stalinism." ically expunged from the memory of the working class In an attempt to cover up their own support for the and replaced by the nationalist outlook of the Stalinists, forces of counterrevolution, the USec must deny reality, whose program of "socialism in one country" meant the claiming that capitalism has not been restored in the for­ betrayal of revolutionary struggles abroad as well as the mer Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But if what undermining of the workers states themselves. exists today is some form of an "anti-capitalist planned The momentous events in the former USSR and East­ economy," as the USec asserts, then who in their right ern Europe provided an acid test for all groups claim­ mind would want to be a socialist! Earlier, the USec ing to be revolutionary. Warning of the "tragic possibil­ supported the CIA and its agents against the Polish ity" of counterrevolution in the USSR, Trotsky had deformed workers state in the guise of "anti-Stalinism." insisted that "Not the slightest taint of guilt must fall Now that the Stalinists have sold out the workers upon the revolutionary internationalists. In the hour of state and are acceptable to the imperialists as social 9 democratic props of the Polish capitalist state, USec clear that what was necessary was not a new form of also embraces the newly-hatched social democrats of class rule, but a change in the political character of the the SdRP. Their newspaper Dale}! puts it blatantly: regime which exercised the dictatorship of the proletar­ "The milieu of the social democrats can't be looked iat. The bureaucratic caste had to be overthrown and down upon. They are our closest allies in the struggle genuine workers democracy restored through the rule for a just Poland. A Poland without the exploitation of of soviets (workers councils). man by man" (Dale)!, No. 25, 1998). Trotsky was unambiguous about which forces must overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy-the proletariat The Russian Question Point Blank and its revolutionary party. As he wrote in his 1937 The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 once and "Not a Workers State and Not a Bourgeois State?": for all took the question of workers revolution out of the "Stalin serves the bureaucracy and thus the world bour­ realm of abstraction and gave it flesh and blood reality. geoisie, but he cannot serve the bureaucracy without defending that social foundation which the bureaucracy The overthrow of the capitalist state, and the taking of exploits in its own interests.... However, he carries power by the Soviets of workers and peasants deputies through this defense with methods that prepare the gen­ was a beacon for the working masses around the world eral destruction of Soviet society. It is exactly because who saw in the victory of the Russian working class the of this that the Stalinist clique must be overthrown. But it is the revolutionary proletariat that must overthrow possibility to prevail over their own capitalist oppres­ it. The proletariat cannot subcontract this work to the sors. It was likewise the object of the universal hatred imperialists." of the imperialist bourgeoisie who (seconded by the Subcontracting this work to the imperialists and other pro-imperialist social democrats) since 1917 sought counterrevolutionary forces is exactly what the USec without pause to "strangle the infant of in did, as dramatically evidenced by its support to Polish its cradle." Solidarnosc. The Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky understood that the preservation of the NLR: Lawyers for Solidarnosc fledgling Russian workers state depended upon the Counterrevolution international extension of their revolution, particularly By 1980-81, decades of Stalinist betrayals had mort­ to the more advanced capitalist countries. The extreme gaged the Polish economy to the West German banks backwardness and impoverishment of the country com­ and driven large sections of the Polish working class bined with the failure of the revolution in the West and into the arms of Solidarnosc, an imperialist-backed cler­ the relentless onslaught of the world's imperialist pow­ ical reactionary organization which sought to destroy ers led to the consolidation of a bureaucratic caste in the deformed workers state in Poland. The USec read­ 1923-24 headed by J.Y. Stalin. Repudiating the prole­ ily allied itself on the side of the Vatican, the CIA and tarian internationalism of the Bolsheviks, in 1924 the Western banks. Throughout the 1980s, Mandel himself Stalinist bureaucracy led a political counterrevolution spared no effort to paint clerical anti-Semitic and (Therrnidor) under the anti-Marxist nationalist dogma anti-communist Solidarnosc in "leftist" colors. An arti­ of building "socialism in one country." The Stalinist cle in the 1 March 1982 Intercontinental Press signed bureaucracy was, as Trotsky argued, not a by Mandel and his co-thinkers Pierre Frank and Livio but a contradictory and fragile caste. While resting on Maitan praised Walesa's supposed "political revolution" and parasitically deriving its privileges from the prole­ as "one of the highest forms of proletarian activity and tarian property forms of the Soviet degenerated workers self-organization which the world has seen since the state, it simultaneously undennined the workers state Russian revolution." This line doesn't wash so well by acting as a transmission belt for the imperialist these days in Poland, a decade after Solidarnosc capi­ pressures which would ultimately lead it to destruction. talist counterrevolution became an accomplished fact. Leon Trotsky formed the Left Opposition to fight to So the Mandelites simply resort to telling fairy tales. As return to the Leninist program of authentic Bolshe­ their anti-Spartacist polemic would have it: vism: the revolutionary internationalist struggle for "Solidarnosc-a mass workers movement-had a unique proletarian rule essential to preserve and extend the chance to carry out an anti-bureaucratic political revolu­ tion, remaining on the basis of an unchanged mode of gains of the Russian Revolution. As Trotsky wrote in production and the type of social relations connected to his searing analysis, The Revolution Betrayed (1936), the latter; the demands of Solidarnosc, before this move­ the gains of the Russian Revolution had been betrayed ment was smashed by the bureaucracy, were not pro­ capitalist demands, but democratic ones, approximating but not yet overthrown. the Trotskyist demand for workers democracy." In contrast to the fog of contradictions offered by the Solidarnosc demands "not pro-capitalist"? The pro­ Mandelite polemic, the Trotskyist program on the Rus­ gram of Solidarnosc, adopted by its founding congress sian question was very clear: unconditional military in September 1981, calls for "smashing" the planned defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack economy (section III, thesis I, point 1), liquidating the and internal counterrevolution, and proletarian politi­ state monopoly on foreign trade (section III, thesis I, cal revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy. Uncon­ point 3), strengthening and extending private agricul­ ditional defense meant explicitly that this defense was ture (section III, thesis 3, point 4) and for Poland to join not conditional upon the prior overthrow of the Stalinist the world bankers' cartel, the International Monetary bureaucracy. Trotsky used the term proletarian (note: Fund (section III, preface). not "anti-bureaucratic") political revolution to make Parading ever more openly under the crowned eagle 10 and cross, its leadership riddled with outright anti­ succeed in Poland: Semites together with the likes of Priest Jankowski, "Foreign capitalist investment would be invited in on a Solidarnosc glorified the viciously anti-worker fascistic massive scale .... Wages would be kept low to compete on the world market. Hundreds of thousands, if not mil­ dictatorship of Marshal Pilsudski. Its program, pep­ lions of workers would be laid off.... Certainly the mass pered with quotations by Pope Karol Wojtyla, fulmi­ of deluded workers in Solidarity do not want this. But nates against "biological threats to the nation" and for the restoration of capitalism in all its ruthlessness would "the protection of motherhood"-thinly veiled refer­ follow, as the night follows the day, from Solidarity'S program of 'Western-style democracy' ." ences to the clerical crusade to ban abortions and force - "Power Bid Spiked," Workers Vanguard women back into the home. From the start, it required No. 295, 18 December 1981 willful blindness to fail to perceive the reactionary ten­ We alone warned of the resurgence of virulent clerical­ dencies driving Solidarnosc, whose 21 demands from ism and nationalism, the sharp increase of women's August 1980 included a call for radio broadcasting oppression and attacks on abortion rights that would rights for the Catholic church. attend a victorious capitalist counterrevolution in Years later, the American bourgeois weekly Time Poland. We called Solidarnosc by its right name: Com­ (24 February 1992) said openly what the international pany Union of CIA, Bankers, and the Vatican. Spartacist tendency had exposed years before: "Until The Mandel supporter writes: Solidarity'S legal status was restored in 1989 it flour­ "For the Spartacists, in contrast, defense of the workers ished underground, supplied, nurtured and advised state means defense of Kiszczak and Jaruzelski, while largely by the network established under the auspices the basic question, i.e., defense of the planned econ~my and its gains against the capitalist counterrevolutIOn, of Reagan and John Paul II .... Money for the banned doesn't exist for the Spartacists." union came from CIA funds, the National Endowment It takes real nerve for these imperialist bootlickers to for Democracy, secret accounts in the Vatican and West­ accuse us of ignoring the defense of the planned econ­ ern trade unions." Solidarnosc leaders hobnobbed with omy! Our support for Jaruzelski's introduction of Martial anti-Communist leaders of the American "AFL-CIA" Law in December 1981 was a straightforward application and big-time capitalists. Invited to Solidarnosc's first of the criteria of defense of the deformed workers state conference in 1981 as part of the AFL-CIO delegation set out by Trotsky repeatedly, including in the ''Transi­ was one Irving Brown, identified by ex-CIA official tional Program": 'The possibility of entering into a bloc Philip Agee as the "principal CIA agent for control of with the Thermidorian [Stalinist] bureaucracy for the pur­ the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions." pose of defeating the forces of counterrevolution cannot And in October 1981, barely two months before Soli­ be ruled out in advance." For the same reason, we were darnosC's bid for power, Walesa was wined and dined prepared to back a possible Soviet intervention if this at a hush-hush breakfast (subsequently exposed in Le were necessary to stop Solidarnosc counterrevolution. Canard Enchafne, 16 December 1981) with some 20 We were equally aware that Martial Law could only top-level American financiers and industrialists who buy time against the immediate threat of counterrevolu­ flew in just to meet him at a posh restaurant at Paris' tion. As we wrote shortly after Martial Law was Charles de Gaulle airport. As the saying goes, "Tell me declared: "Now is the time to start building educational who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are." and propagandistic cells of a Trotskyist vanguard to As for "democracy," as Lenin pointed out in his defend and extend the historic gains of socialized prop­ polemic The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade erty, inherited from the October Revolution, by ousting Kautsky, directed at an ideological forebear of Mandel: the usurpers who undermine them and crushing those "It is natural for a liberal to speak of democracy in who would destroy them." We put forward a program general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: 'for what for the proletariat of Poland, whose key elements class?'" As Solidarnosc leaders (and their USec law­ included a struggle against clericalism and for the strict yers) knew full well, by taking up calls for "democ­ separation of church and state; for the collectivization racy," "free elections," and "free trade unions," they of agriculture; for trade unions independent of bureau­ were wielding Western imperialism's ideological weap­ cratic control and based on defense of socialized prop­ ons oj choice, which had been used by the CIA for erty. We called for canceling the imperialist debt and decades to undermine the Soviet Union, Cuba and other international socialist economic planning. We stood deformed workers states abroad and to split and smash for soviet democracy, not bourgeois parliamentarism, trade unions in Europe, Africa and Latin America. As the to be realized through proletarian political revolu­ Spartacists warned at the time, Solidarnosc "democ­ tion. As counterposed to Polish nationalism, we called racy" was nothing other than a call for "bourgeois par­ for defense of the USSR against imperialism and for liamentary democracy," i.e., the restoration of capital­ the revolutionary unity of Polish and Soviet workers ism in Poland, as a stepping stone for imperialism to ("What Next For Poland," WV No. 298, 5 February bring counterrevolution to the Soviet Union itself. 1981 [Platforma Spartakusowcow, Supplement No.7, For all the NLR polemicist's claims to "defense of November 1995]). the workers state" and the "planned economy" (now As we had noted in our article headlined "Stop that they no longer exist) in 1981, when it counted, the Solidarity's Counterrevolution!" (WVNo. 289, 25 Sep­ USec was on the other side of the barricades! tember 1981): In contrast, we Spartacists wrote in 1981 what would "What do revolutionaries do when the Marxist program happen if a Solidarnosc-Ied counterrevolution should stands counterposed to the overwhelming bulk of the 11 working class, a situation we of course urgently seek to attracted to the ICL militants of the Young Left Move­ avoid? There can be no doubt. The task of commu­ ment, who later in 1990 formed the Spartacist Group of nists must be to defend at all costs the program and gains of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today Trot­ Poland. skyists find themselves in such a position over Poland, In January 1990, after fascists had desecrated a and it is necessary to swim against a powerful current of memorial in East Berlin's Treptow Park to the Soviet counterrevolution." soldiers who had died in the struggle to smash Hitler's In 1989-90 the Polish Stalinists handed the Polish Nazis, we issued a call to "stop the Nazis through united deformed workers state over to the imperialist-backed front action!" Fearful of our growing impact on the East Solidamosc counterrevolution. After claiming first that German working class, the ruling Stalinist party was Solidamosc was fighting for political revolution and forced to take up the united-front call and 250,000 came occupying "leftist positions," only a few lines later the out to protest at Treptow. At this demonstration, the first Mandelite writer states that "a common agreement be­ time in over 60 years that the Trotskyist program and tween the pro-capitalist leadership of Solidamosc ... and banner had been raised before the proletarian masses the bureaucracy, and both with imperialism, was only anywhere in the Soviet bloc, our proletarian internation­ a matter of time." This retrospective discovery of Soli­ alist program was directly counterposed to the Stalinist damosc's "pro-capitalist leadership" is at best hypoc­ plans to sell out the deformed workers state. This pow­ risy, considering that Ernest Mandel was touting Jacek erful demonstration alarmed not only the imperialists, Kuron as a ''Trotskyist,'' right up to the moment Kuron but also the DDR Stalinists, who feared above all the became the minister of labor in the first Solidamosc possibility of proletarian political revolution. The SED capitalist government in 1989. The American Mandel­ renounced Treptow and made themselves the willing ites of the "Fourth Internationalist Tendency" insisted agents of capitalist counterrevolution. that capitalist restoration in Poland was "a purely Our comrades of the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei abstract possibility raised by Mazowiecki in his public Deutschlands (SpAD) were the only ones that uncondi­ pronouncements" (BIDOM, December 1989)! Thus the tionally opposed capitalist reunification in the March entire Mandelite myth of "good" Solidamosc of 1981 vs. 1990 East German elections. In contrast, the Mandel­ "bad" Solidamosc of 1989 is just that, a myth in the ser­ ites were utterly impotent and split, unable to decide vice of political tailism. whom to tail next. A minority USec tendency supported The fruits of the capitalist counterrevolution were no by the U.S. Socialist Action group obscenely hailed cap­ "abstraction" for the Polish working class, which was italist reunification as an act of "self determination" of instantly struck with IMF "shock therapy" free-market the German proletariat! Mandel was willing to support immiseration and rampant clericalism. Three years capitalist unification under certain conditions-laid out after Solidamosc took power, the fragile new capitalist in his pamphlet "When Stalinism Crumbles" (December state was threatened with a massive strike wave. At this 1989)-that included the withdrawal of a unified Ger­ moment, the Western imperialists shifted their bets for many from NATO and the departure of all foreign troops maintaining capitalist "stability" to the ex-Stalinist (including Warsaw Pact forces) from Germany. Of social democrats; not coincidentally, so did the Man­ course, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the DDR delite NLR! Sidelining their support for Solidamosc was one of the major demands of the imperialists! (which it continues to treat as a legitimate "trade union") at this point the Mandelites launched their pol­ August 1991: USee "Fighting at icy of electoral support to the SdRP-led SLD popular Yeltsin's Side" front under the slogan "Get the Right Out of Power!" The Mandelite polemic declares, citing Trotsky's (Dalej! No. 16, September 1993). "Transitional Program": '''Either the bureaucracy, be­ coming more and more the organ of the world bour­ DDR 1989-90: Test of Political Revolution geoisie in the workers state, will overthrow the new At bottom the Mandelites' methodology comes down property forms and hurl the country back into capital­ to adaptation to tailing whatever is popular at a given ism, or the working class will rout the bureaucracy and moment. No sharper contrast to the USec's inveterate open the road to socialism.' The workers state thus tailism can be found than the ICL's fight in 1989-90 to requires defense not only from imperialism, but also provide Trotskyist leadership during the incipient polit­ against the more and more pro-capitalist bureaucracy." ical revolution in the East German deformed workers But compare this with the USee's actual record during state. As mass demonstrations in East Germany raised the period of capitalist counterrevolution which ended slogans for "Socialism without privileges," we mobi­ with the destruction of the USSR in 1991-92. lized our forces internationally with the aim of arming Responding to the renewed economic, military and the working class with the Trotskyist program. We political pressures of Western imperialism, Soviet opposed the drive by the German bourgeoisie and its leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in SPD ''Trojan horse of counterrevolution" to foment cap­ 1985, introduced the slogans of perestroika (restruc­ italist restoration. We fought for proletarian political turing) and glasnost (openness). Particularly with his revolution in the DDR, as a bridge to socialist revolu­ declaration for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from tion in West Germany. We called for a red Germany of Afghanistan, it became clear that Gorbachev's "new workers councils in the framework of a Socialist United thinking" represented open capitulation to Western States of Europe! It was this intervention that first imperialism, while powerfully encouraging the forces 12 of counterrevolution within the Soviet Union, includ­ pro-imperialist countercoup in August 1991 has, in the ing pro-capitalist elements in the Stalinist bureauc­ absence of mass working-class resistance, culminated racy itself. Even as late as 1990, as Gorbachev's pro­ in the creation of a bourgeois state, however fragile capitalist policies were already wreaking devastation and reversible." ("How the Soviet Workers State was on the Soviet working class, the draft "Manifesto" for Strangled," WV No. 564, 27 November 1992 [PS sup­ the USec world congress downplayed the threat of cap­ plement No.2, January 1993]) In Poland, there was a italist restoration, while politely advising Gorbachev capitalist counterrevolution in 1989-90. The Stalinist on how to carry out his counterrevolutionary designs regime gave state power over to Solidarnosc, while "democratically": "The use of money and the partial Jaruzelski remained head of state only as a figurehead. functioning of the market must therefore take place The military wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy totally within a democratically planned economy-that is, capitulated in the face of the capitalist restorationist within an overall decision-making structure that ensures forces and became within a very short period the guar­ that partial market mechanisms do not exacerbate social dian of the new social order. From this moment the inequalities." workers state in the Leninist meaning of the term While Mandel was cheering for "democratic" pere­ ceased to exist. stroika, in 1989, Prof. Ludwik Hass, now a leading sup­ Since Yeltsin, Walesa and their ilk consolidated cap­ porter of NLR, could barely contain his enthusiasm for italist state power, the proletariat throughout the repub­ the clique of Gorbachev's rival, Great Russian chauvin­ lics of the former Soviet Union and the now-capitalist ist demagogue Boris Yeltsin. Hass referred to Yeltsin states of Eastern Europe have learned bitter lessons (who first made a name for himself as mayor of Mos­ about the meaning of "democracy," which was, as cow in the mid-1980s by legalizing the Russian fascist the ICL warned, nothing other than a code word for organization Pamyat) as the "egalitarian current" of capitalist counterrevolution, with devastating poverty, the Soviet bureaucracy, adding: "Yeltsin and his co­ mass unemployment, homeless ness for the toiling thinkers ... are in accord with the entire Bolshevik tradi­ masses, together with the unrestrained rise of woman­ tion of socialist thought" (lglica No. 9-10, 1989)! At hating clericalism, racism, nationalist fratricide and the same time, seeking to curry favor from the fascist­ . ridden nationalist movements in the USSR's Baltic One hardly needs to be a Marxist to recognize that republics, the USec journal International Viewpoint (lV, something fundamental has changed in the former September 18, 1989) printed an article ("The Armed USSR and Eastern Europe. Indeed, when challenged Struggle Against Stalinism in Estonia") hailing Esto­ by our speaker during the 1994 New York debate on nia's Nazi collaborators, the "Forest Brothers" during the USec's position of denying that capitalist counter­ WW II! We immediately printed a denunciation of revolution has occurred there, Mandel himself didn't this outrage: see "Centrists Swing Wildly over Baltics, even try to defend it. But USec still officially clings to Poland-The Men on the Flying Trapeze," WV No. 486, the position that Poland is an "anti-capitalist planned 29 September 1989. economy," while simultaneously asserting that this In August 1991, the openly counterrevolutionary "planned economy" has coexisted with a bourgeois forces around Boris Yeltsin used the botched coup state since 1989! Thus they write: attempt by the GKChP "Emergency Committee" (who "The bourgeois state, of which we may speak in Poland stood for a slower-paced restoration of capitalism under since 1989, is a bourgeois state to the degree that it con­ ducts the counterrevolutionary policy of destroying the bureaucratic control), to seize power with the direct anti-capitalist planned economy in the interest of the backing of Western imperialism, led by then-U.S. reborn bourgeoisie, under the diktat of world imperial­ president George Bush. ICL supporters in Moscow ism, for the purpose of establishing the capitalist mode of urgently attempted to spark working class resistance to production." Yeltsin's countercoup, distributing before Moscow fac­ For USee the class character of the state (whether the tory gates tens of thousands of copies of our Russian­ proletariat or the bourgeoisie exercises its dictatorship) language appeal "Soviet Workers: Defeat YeltsinlBush is entirely secondary: "Whether or not we are dealing with capitalism is not Counterrevolution !" decided by the fact that one nomenclature is replaced by The USec, in contrast, (lnprecor, 29 August 1991) another (the bureaucracy of a comprador bourgeois state explicitly stated: "It was necessary to unhesitatingly has replaced the bureaucracy of a workers state), but by oppose the coup and, on these grounds, fight atYeltsin's concrete, social-economic processes." side." NLRlDalej! (No.5, 1991), for its part, cheered The NLR revises the Marxist definition of the state that: "[Genuine socialists] greet with delight the col­ by divorcing it from the property forms it defends. For lapse of Stalinism in the USSR" and "in August a Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky the state was an organ people's democratic revolution began in the USSR." of class rule. The bourgeois state consists of "special bodies of armed men"-committed to the defense of Mandelites "Disappear" Capitalist capitalist private property. Likewise, the overthrow of Counterrevolution capitalist property relations requires the smashing of the When it became clear that the forces of capitalist capitalist state and its replacement by "a 'special coer­ restoration had succeeded in destroying the Soviet cive force' for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by workers state, we told the bitter truth: "The period of the proletariat (the dictatorShip of the proletariat)" open counterrevolution ushered in by Boris Yeltsin's (Lenin, State and Revolution). 13 The Mandelite claim that a capitalist state exists in Trotsky was not denying that the dictatorship of the pro­ conjunction with some kind of "anti-capitalist planned letariat came into being in October 1917. In fact, as is economy" is in fact simply of version of what the clear from the full passage, he was ridiculing those who social-democratic ideologue Karl Kautsky argued. sought to deny the existence of the dictatorship of the Denying the need to overthrow the capitalist state, the proletariat because it did not conform to the "ideals" of social democrats spread the illusion that "socialism" such "Kantian sociologists": can be introduced by gradually nationalizing more and "Not only up to the Brest-Litovsk peace but even up to more enterprises within the framework of the capitalist autumn of 1918, the social content of the revolution was restricted to a petty-bourgeois agrarian overturn and state. This kind of has a long history among workers' control over production. This means that the pseudo-Trotskyists; the British "Militant Tendency," for revolution in its actions had not yet passed the bound­ example, perpetually called on the Labour Party to form aries of bourgeois society. During this first period, sol­ a "workers government" via nationalizations. diers' soviets ruled side by side with workers' soviets, and often elbowed them aside. Only toward the autumn Indeed, at bottom, the Mandelites' argument that cap­ of 1918 did the petty-bourgeois soldier-agrarian elemen­ italism has not been restored boils down to the fact that tal wave recede a little to its shores, and the workers nationalized property still exists. To be sure, Marxists went forward with the nationalization of the means of production. Only from this time can one speak of the are not indifferent to the destruction of industry. Thus inception of a real dictatorship of the proletariat. But today in capitalist Poland we Trotskyists seek to fight even here it is necessary to make certain large reserva­ all attacks on the proletariat, including privatizations tions. During those initial years, the dictatorship was and union-busting which these invariably entail. But geographically confined to the old Moscow principality and was compelled to wage a three-years' war along all only through the prism of Social Democracy, which the radii from Moscow to the periphery. This means that claims that the bourgeois state is "class-neutral" and up to 1921, precisely up to the NEP, that is, what went promises a gradual, parliamentary road to socialism, is on was still the struggle to establish the dictatorship of the question of nationalized industry per se primary. the proletariat upon the national scale. And since, in the opinion of the pseudo-Marxist philistines, the dictator­ What is fundamental to Leninists is which class rules, ship had disappeared with the beginning of the NEP, i.e., which class exercises its dictatorship. (For a de­ then it means that, in general, it had never existed." tailed discussion of the Mandelites and nationalization Thus, Trotsky concludes: see: "Camp Followers of Counterrevolution! USec "To these gentlemen the dictatorship of the proletariat is Labourite Nationalization Fetish," WVNo. 573, 9 April simply an imponderable concept, an ideal norm not to be 1993 and Platforma Spartakusowcow No.4, Summer­ realized upon our sinful planet. Small wonder that 'theo­ reticians' of this stripe, insofar as they do not denounce Fall 1993.) altogether the very word dictatorship, strive to smear As Trotsky pointed out in "Not a Workers State and over the irreconcilable contradiction between the latter Not a Bourgeois State?" (November 1937), were the and bourgeois democracy." proletarian state to be overthrown in the Soviet Union, - "The Class Nature of the Soviet State" (1933) nationalized property would still continue to exist for a The proletariat, spearheaded by the. Red Guards, prolonged period of time: indeed seized power in Russia on 7 November 1917, yet "Should a bourgeois counterrevolution succeed in the major industry was not nationalized until late 1918. So USSR, the new government for a lengthy period would what was the class character of the Soviet state between have to base itself upon the nationalized economy. But what does such a type of temporary conflict between the November 1917 and the autumn of 1918? Lenin was economy and the state mean? It means a revolution or a categorical, declaring in his October 1919 article "Eco­ counterrevolution. The victory of one class over another nomics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of signifies that it will reconstruct the economy in the inter­ ests of the victors." the Proletariat" that 8 November 1917 was "the first day of the dictatorship of the proletariat." The key question As a result of Solidamosc counterrevolution, the new was which class held state power, whose class interests capitalist class which has wielded state power since were served by the "apparatus of coercion of one class 1989-1990 in Poland is reconstructing the economy in by another"? From day one of its rule, revolutionary its interest-with the complete backing of its agents in soviet power served to suppress "the profiteer, the com­ the workers movement: the SdRP, PPS and the OPZZ mercial racketeer, the disrupter of monopoly"-the bureaucracy. forces Lenin termed "our principal 'internal' enemies." Mandelites Repudiate October 1917 ... By denying that the proletarian order was established Applying this same bogus "theory," the Mandelites in 1917, the Mandelites trivialize the significance of the deny even that the workers' armed seizure of power in October Revolution. The NLR's repudiation of October October 1917 smashed capitalism, thereby denying in 1917 shows their true kinship with Karl Kautsky, who, practice the dictatorship of the proletariat itself. To this as Lenin wrote: "Takes from Marxism that which is end, the polemicist quotes totally out of context a pas­ acceptable to liberals, to the bourgeoisie ... while reject­ sage from Trotsky: ing, or passing over in silence, or erasing from Marx­ "Only toward the autumn of 1918 did the petty-bourgeois ism that which is not acceptable to the bourgeoisie soldier-agrarian elemental wave recede a little to its (revolutionary violence of the proletariat against the shores, and the workers went forward with the national­ bourgeoisie for the purpose ization of the means of production. Only from this time of its destruction)" (The can one speak of the inception of a real dictatorship of the Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky). In proletariat." addition, the NLR is here resurrecting the Menshevik! If one reads this material in context, it is clear that Stalinist theory of "two-stage revolution" which claims 14 that a separate bourgeois democratic revolution must to supporting the concordat and restoring vast proper­ precede the struggle for proletarian revolution. This is ties and privileges to the Catholic Church. nothing but a program of class treason, leading again For three years the SdRP-Ied SLD government and again to the betrayal of revolution and the massa­ enforced the vicious ban on abortions introduced by cre of proletarian forces, as in China in 1925-27 and Solidarnosc, introducing a largely symbolic "liberal­ Indonesia in 1965. ization" of this law only in its last year of office. Far from being the "lesser evil," the SLD government in Trotsky's "Transitional Program" vs. fact paved the way for the clerical reactionaries of NLR "Pressuring the SLD to the Left" AWS, while today continuing to compete with uw as The Mandelite polemicist charges us with a com­ champions of "free-market liberalism," European inte­ plete failure to understand the "Transitional Program" gration and Polish NATO membership. (1938), which Trotsky wrote for the founding of the It takes the profoundest hypocrisy for the polemicist Fourth International. He charges that we "who can to hail what he ludicrously calls the "struggle against only repeat revolutionary phrases over and over will the final phase of the restoration of capitalism led by forever remain cut off from the workers movement .... " the right-wing AWS/uw government...against the liq­ Revolutionaries, of course, have always been branded uidation of tens of thousands of jobs in mining and as "sectarians" by inveterate opportunists like USec. steel, against the privatization of more workplaces and What the Mandelites really hate about us is that we institutions, against neoliberal reform of health care, intervene in social struggle as communists who seek to education and social security, against entry into the EU expose all brands of class betrayal. and NATO ... " while passing over in silence, thus cov­ Trotsky fought to forge the Fourth International ering for the social democrats' openly expressed sup­ because of the total political bankruptcy of the social port for all these attacks on the working class. democratic, Stalinist and centrist misleadership of the For all the rhetoric of the polemicist regarding working class. For all the NLR writer's pious invoca­ Trotsky's "Transitional Program," the Mandelites' role tions of Trotsky's "Transitional Program," he omits the is clearly not to "draw the broad masses of workers fact that this document stands above all for the political into open political struggle with the bourgeoisie" but to independence of the proletariat as opposed to all forms defend the pro-capitalist, pro-privatization, pro-NATO of class collaboration, i.e., exactly what is pushed on social democrats from exposure before the workers by every page of Dalej!. In the words of the "Transitional the "sectarian, ultraleft Spartacists." In sharp contrast, Program" itself: "People's Fronts on the one hand-fas­ we communists fight against privatization, sackings, cism on the other, these are the last political resources anti-abortion laws, deportations and all other attacks of imperialism in the struggle against the proletarian on the working class and the oppressed in the under­ revolution. From the historical point of view, however, standing that the condition for the working class' vic­ both these resources are stopgaps .... Nothing short of tory will be breaking them from the SdRP, OPZZ the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can open a road out." "labor lieutenants of capital." Declaring "uncompromising war on the bureaucra­ This is the communist program of transitional cies of the Second, Third, Amsterdam and Anarcho­ demands with which the Spartacist Group of Poland syndicalist internationals, and their centrist satellites," intervenes in union demonstrations and strikes, such as the ''Transitional Program" was a program for achiev­ last winter's transit strike in Poznan, the nation-wide ing proletarian power. In the hands of the USec it is machinists strike and the current struggles in the health turned into its opposite, i.e. a cover for their prostration sector. It is our very concrete exposure of the reformist before alien class forces, support for Social Democracy, misleaders of the SdRP, PPS and OPZZ, and our refusal popular-frontist class collaboration and counterrevolu­ to subordinate the workers' struggle to the electoral tionary reaction. interests of the SLD popular front, which earns us the It's no coincidence that "On the Spartacist Rene­ title of "sectarianism" from the Mandelite opportunists. gades" never once mentions Social Democracy, the PPS, the SdRP or the SLD (the popular-front electoral Down With Anti-Semitism: formation of the SdRP which chains its working class Tool of Reaction! base to open bourgeois forces such as Urban's NIE For a document issued by self-proclaimed leftists in organization). But the NLR paper puts forward their Poland today, "On the Spartacist Renegades" is imme­ line clearly: "Let's Pressure the SLD!", "Let's Demand diately striking for what it leaves out: among topics Leftist Policies" (Dalej! No. 21) and "One should vote never mentioned in over 10 single-spaced pages are: for the SLD" (Dalej!, No. 24). women's oppression, the ban on abortion, resurgent Any radical-minded worker or youth reading the fascism, anti-immigrant racism and deportations, anti­ above lines might wonder just what planet Dalej! is Roma terror, and clerical reaction. published on. The SLD popular front government, Because of their loyalty to the Polish capitalist state which ruled Poland for the capitalist rulers between through its "left" pillar, the SLD, the Mandelites cannot 1993 and 1997 introduced massive attacks on the work­ help but imbibe deeply of the Polish nationalism of the ing class and the oppressed, from pushing forward pri­ bourgeois rulers, and all the reactionary filth this entails. vatization and slashing budgets for healthcare and edu­ A few years back, as Solidamosc rammed through its first cation, sharply increasing anti-immigrant deportations, anti-abortion ban, the NLR capitulators duly fell to their 15 knees with the slogan: "We demand full rights for which are ~ining it, while preserving the 'good' charac­ women to freely choose motherhood" (Dale}! No. 13, ter .... But SInce there does not exist a capitalism which 1993). As the bourgeoisie enforces "Catholic education" has the 'good' tendencies without also possessing the 'bad,' ~he petty bourgeoisie is forced to dream it up. It is in the state schools, Dale}! runs regular articles hailing no aCCident that the petty bourgeoisie has invented 'super­ "guerrilla priests" in Latin America. capi.talis~,' the '~ad' deviation of capitalism, its evil The NLR writer now raises a call for the defense of spmt. ~t IS. no aCCident that its theoreticians have strug­ gled rrughuly for over a century (Proudhon) against 'bad the Polish bourgeoisie worthy of Rydzyk's Radio speculative capitalism' and defended 'useful productive Marija: "The Spartacists haven't yet noticed that the capitalism.' The attempt of Nazi theoreticians to distin­ sellout of Polish enterprises to foreign capital is not guish between 'national productive capital' and 'Jewish international cooperation among nations, but one of the parasitic capital' is probably the last attempt of this kind." elements of the counterrevolution" ("On the Spartacist (For a fuller account of Abram Leon and the history Renegades"). What kind of "Marxists" are so con­ of class struggle against anti-Semitism, see Spartacist cerned that the factories are owned by Polish exploit­ No. 49-50: "Revolution, Counterrevolution and the ers? It's no secret that "the defense of Polish enter­ Jewish Question" [PS SGP Bulletin, No.2, Fall 1997].) prises against foreign capital" is the battle cry of the The Mandelites' capitulation to backwardness in the entire gamut of bourgeois nationalist reaction, and a name of loyalty to the Polish bourgeois rulers couldn't traditional code-phrase for anti-Semites. be in sharper contradiction to the "Transitional Pro­ The Mandelites have a long history of capitulation gram," which states: "The implacable exposure of racial prejudices and all to openly reactionary forces, including its continued forms and every shading of the nationalist boot and promotion of anti-worker, reactionary Solidarnosc as a chauvinism, particularly anti-Semitism, must become bona fide trade union (i.e., part of the workers move­ part of the work of every section of the Fourth Interna­ ment). In reality, neither Solidarnosc (nor its split-offs tio~al, ~s the .hi~hest educational work in the struggle agaInst Impenallsm and war. Our main slogan remains like Solidamosc 80 and August 80) are trade unions, -proletarians of all countries, unite!" but anti-communist, clerical nationalist organizations, While the Mandelites boast of selling their papers at saturated with anti-Semitism. anti-Semitic and fascistic rallies led by the likes of Not long after the fascistic Solidamosc demagogue Wrzodak (in the name of not "conceding the field to the Wrzodak led frenzied mobs through the streets of War­ extreme right"), we Communists, following Trotsky's saw chanting "SLD to the Gas Chambers!" seeking to "Transitional Program," call for workers defense guards channel workers' anger into poisonous racism and anti­ to sweep these vermin off the streets! Down with anti­ Semitism, NLR's paper Dale}! wrote: "People in fear of Semitism, tool of reaction! Stop racist deportations! For losing work are easy prey to the loud, neofascist dema­ worker/minority mobilizations to stop the fascists! gogy of Zygmunt Wrzodak. Among the thousand base slanders and stupidities Wrzodak has something very Defend Cuba! For Proletarian important to tell them, that their struggle to keep their Political Revolution! jobs is right" (Dale)! No. 25, Spring/Summer 1998). On the question of Cuba the Mandelite polemic lies Never once mentioning the word "anti-Semitism" in outright about our tendency's position: this article, the Mandelites strive to erase the class line "When the USA attacked Cuba (Bay of Pigs Invasion) the Spartacists' political forebears inside the Fourth which separates this racist bourgeois filth from the Int~rnation~, t? whom they trace their origin, declared workers movement. theIr neutralIty In the war between 'the bourgeois regime The writer is particularly outraged at the ICL expos­ of Fidel Castro' and the bourgeois USA." ing his organization's capitulation to anti-Semitism. In 1961, the year of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, our pred­ But during a public meeting on the recent international ecessors, the Revolutionary Tendency in the American financial crisis, the Mandelite speaker JS, never once Socialist Workers Party submitted a resolution which referring to Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of states that the duty of revolutionaries is: Capitalism, instead fulminated against global institu­ "(a) To exert the utmost effort to defend the Cuban Rev­ olution not only against the military and other attacks of tions transcending the "democratic control of inde­ US imperialism, but also against the political attacks of pendent nations" and attacking "speculative capital" in the social-democratic agents of imperialism. the person of George Soros (the American financier "(b) To struggle for the development and extension of whose Jewish background is underlined by all the the Cuban revolution and against the attempts of counter­ revolutionary Stalinism to corrupt it from within." forces of Polish reaction). This presentation, which The Revolutionary Tendency had its origin in the would have been warmly welcomed at any gathering of struggle against the SWP's grotesque prostration over reactionary Solidamosc, met with a sharp protest from Castroism, which represented a liquidation of the neces­ the SGP, which denounced the speaker for "beating the sity for a Trotskyist proletarian revolutionary party. drums of anti-Semitism." It is appropriate here, for its Beginning in the early '60s, under the impact of the vic­ educational value, to refer to the work On the Jewish tories of Castro's guerrilla army in Cuba and the Alge­ Question, A Marxist Approach by Abram Leon, the rian war of independence, a new generation of young young Belgian Trotskyist leader who recruited Ernest radicals impressionistically viewed the peasant guerrilla Mandel to Trotskyism before himself perishing in the road to power as a shortcut to and hands of the Hitlerites at Auschwitz in 1944: national liberation in what today is called the Third "[The petty bourgeoisie] wants to be anti-capitalist with­ out ceasing to be capitalist. It wants to destroy the 'bad' World. The American SWP proclaimed Castro an "un­ character of capitalism, that is to say, the tendencies conscious Trotskyist" and the Cuban Revolution as 16 equivalent to the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 basis for revisionist turning away from the perspective -a healthy workers state with a few "defonnations." and necessity of revolutionary working-class power, but rather it is a great vindication of Marxian theory and The common enthusiasm for Castro on the part of conclusions under new and not previously expected the SWP and Mandel's International Secretariat laid circumstances." the basis for their fusion to fonn the United Secretariat Our position on the Cuban Revolution also was dis­ (USec). In this period, the Mandelites were acting as tinct from the "inverted Pabloism" of Healy's Interna­ cheerleaders for Stalinist forces like Castro and Ho Chi tional Committee (IC), which responded to USec's revi­ Minh in Vietnam. Indeed, in the 1960s the Mandelites sionism by simply putting a plus where the USec put a were attacking our principled Trotskyist position as minus. To Healy's insistence that Cuba remained a "Stalinophobia." Two decades later, at the height of "capitalist state" albeit with a "weak bourgeoisie," we Cold War n, when they were marching in the ranks of pointed out: "If the Cuban bourgeoisie is 'weak,' as the anti-Soviet Social Democracy, they were denouncing IC affirms, it must be tired from its long swim to Miami, the same position as "Stalinophilia!" Florida." Scrapping the Trotskyist fight for proletarian leader­ Since the origins of our tendency, the ICL has been ship, the NLR polemic gives a good example of their consistent in its application of the Trotskyist approach tendency's method of tailing alien class forces: to the defonned and degenerated workers states, i.e., "Castro's petty-bourgeois nationalist guerrilla army was "the Russian Question." As was the case with the DDR, able to overthrow capitalism in Cuba (or rather cause capitalism to be overthrown acting as the spark igni~ing a Poland and the USSR, etc., as communists we defend social explosion), at the same time dealing a slap In the the Cuban defonned workers state unconditionally face to imperialist America. The anti-imperialist potential against imperialist attack and internal forces of capital­ of Fidel's movement, hatred for imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie grew over in the end into an anti­ ist counterrevolution while calling for proletarian polit­ capitalist revolution .... Fidel Castro understood this per­ ical revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy. fectly, and for this reason finally converted officially to Today, even more isolated as a result of the counter­ communism." revolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Dispensing with even the pretense of Marxist class (which the USec supported), the Cuban defonned work­ analysis the Mandelites' description of the Cuban Rev­ ers state is in deadly danger. This threat arises not only olution is a mirror reflection of the Castroite bureau­ from the economic blockade and open military threats cracy's own populist rhetoric, complete with deification of U.S. imperialism, but also from the forces of internal of the great leader, eliminating any independent role for counterrevolution, including key sections of the Castro­ the proletariat. (Also significantly omitted by the NLR ite bureaucracy, which has opened the country up to polemic on this question is the fonner Soviet Union, large-scale economic penetration, particularly from the whose existence guaranteed Cuba's economic and mil­ dominant imperialist powers of the European Union. itary security against U.S. imperialism for 30 years!) Question: what do the Mandelites have to offer Cuban In contrast to the Mandelites' tailing of Castro the workers in place of the Trotskyist program of proletar­ Revolutionary Tendency understood that the Cuban ian political revolution? Answer: printing an endorse­ Revolution had created a defonned workers state funda­ ment, written by two Catholic priests (!), of Castro's mentally similar to those in Eastern Europe and China. "alliance" with Karol Wojtyla, pope of counterrevolu­ In the Spartacist Statement to the 1966 Conference of tion (see: "The Pope in Cuba," Dalej! No. 25, 1998)! the International Committee (lC), headed by the British The ICL fights for building a Cuban section of the Socialist Labour League leader Gerry Healy, we wrote: reforged Fourth International to lead the proletariat as "1\vo decisive elements have been common to the whole series of upheavals under Stalinist-type leaderships, as the only possible guarantor of defense of the Cuban in Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Vietnam: 1) a civil war of Revolution, and struggles at the same time to build a the peasant-guerrilla variety, which first wrenches the Leninist vanguard party for the overthrow of U.S. peasant movement from the immediate control of imperi­ imperialism "in the belly of the beast." alism and substitutes a petty-bourgeois leadership; and then, if victorious, seizes the urban centers and on its own momentum smashes capitalist property relations, Pabloite nationalizing industry under the newly consolidating The NLR/USec's denial of the need for a Leninist Bonapartist leadership: 2) the absence of the working vanguard party is what leads it to repetitively tail after class as a contender for social power, in particular, the absence of its revolutionary vanguard: this permits an alien class forces. These forces have ranged from exceptionally independent role for the petty-bourgeois Cuban Stalinists to pro-imperialist social democrats to sections of society which are thus denied the polariza­ outright counterrevolutionaries like Polish Solidarnosc tion which occurred in the October Revolution, in which the most militant petty-bourgeois sections were drawn and Boris Yeltsin. This represents not isolated "errors" into the wake of the revolutionary working class. by Mandel and his followers, but the end product of "The petty-bourgeois peasantry under the mostf~vorable that current's decisive break from Trotskyism which historic circumstances conceivable could achIeve no occurred decades before. third road, neither capitalist nor working class. Instead all that has come out of China and Cuba was a state of In 1953 Trotsky's Fourth International was politically the same order as that issuing out of the political degen­ destroyed by Pabloism, a revisionist doctrine which eration of the political counterrevolution of Stalin in the took root in a section of the Fourth International's lead­ Soviet Union, the degeneration of the October Revolu­ ership. The latter had been decimated during the war, tion. That is why we are led to define such states as deformed workers states. And the experience since the and its main leaders, including Trotsky, murdered. Fol­ Second World War, properly understood, offers not a lowing WW II, Stalinist forces with the backing of the 17 Red Army succeeded in carrying out social revolutions front government in France. The slogan "Solidarity "from above" in Eastern Europe, abolishing capitalism with Solidarnosc" was the glue which cemented the in the wake of smashing Hitler's Third Reich. In Yugo­ Mandelites' unity with the capitalist order, reaching via slavia, China and later Cuba, similar overturns were Social Democracy to Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope. achieved by peasant-based Partisan armies. Pablo and his lieutenant Mandel answered these For a Leninist Vanguard Party! theoretical challenges with an anti-Trotskyist program Corresponding to the Mandelites' perpetual pursuit characterized above all by the rejection of the need for of alien class forces is their organizational Menshe­ proletarian revolutionary leadership and adaptation to vism. They sneer at our democratic centralist princi­ existing Stalinist, social-democratic and petty-bour­ ples, accusing us of being nonthinking automatons, geois nationalist leaderships. Projecting the imminent while falsely presenting Lenin as if he were some gar­ outbreak of a new world war, in which the Sino-Soviet den variety opportunist and unity mongerer: states would emerge victorious over capitalist imperial­ "The Spartacists boast of their unanimity. They accuse ism, Pablo anticipated that the Stalinist leaderships the Fourth International of not being unanimous. Mean­ while, a similar charge might be levelled against the would be "forced" by objective pressures to playa rev­ Bolshevik Party. Anyone the least oriented on this sub­ olutionary role in this struggle. Trotskyist parties could ject could draw up a whole list of situations in which thus do nothing other than enter the reformist parties in Lenin found himself with some opinion in a minority in relation to his party comrades. Even on the most key hopes of pushing them to the left. issue, on the question of revolution, there was no unity in Our tendency stands in solidarity with the struggle the Bolshevik Party. This didn't mean the necessity of a of James P. Cannon and others, who albeit in a limited split, but the necessity of a confrontation of the opposing and belated way, sought to defend the Trotskyist pro­ views at a party forum. An appropriate section on this can be found by the reader in Trotsky's brochure 'Les­ gram and party against Pabloite revisionism, splitting sons of October' ." with Pablo's outfit in 1953. In "Lessons of October" Trotsky describes how in the During the 1950s and '60s Pablo and his successor Bolshevik Party of 1917, there were two tendencies of Mandel became virtual press agents for a host of Stalin­ utmost principled significance: "The first and principal ist and petty-bourgeois leaderships ranging from Tito, tendency was proletarian and led to the road of world Mao, Algeria's Ben Bella to Fidel Castro and Ho Chi revolution. The other was 'democratic,' i.e., petty bour­ Minh. In the USSR and Eastern Europe, the Pabloites geois and led, in the last analysis, to the subordination called for "the self-reform" of the bureaucracy, for of proletarian policies to the requirements of bourgeois example politically supporting "liberal" Stalinist society in the process of reform. These two tendencies bureaucrats like Gomulka during the 1956 Poznan came into hostile conflict over every essential question uprising. Far from fighting for proletarian political rev­ that arose throughout the year 1917." Lenin intransi­ olution against Stalinism, they saluted "the leadership gently fought against those Bolshevik leaders like role played by the Gomulka tendency ... a centrist ten­ Kamenev and Zinoviev who opposed the struggle for dency nonetheless moving to the left." (Quatrieme proletarian power. Fearing that the central committee International, December 1956). was balking at organizing the insurrection, Lenin By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the USec was dis­ announced his willingness to split from it (which would covering "new mass vanguards" in the form of bour­ have been tantamount to splitting the party). In ''The geois feminism, environmentalism, and even student Crisis has Matured" (September 29, 1917) Lenin wrote: power and "red universities." In each case, the dynamic "I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Cen­ of the given movement was embraced by the Mandel­ tral Committee, which I hereby do, reserving for myself ites as "objectively anti-capitalist," independent of its freedom to campaign among the rank and file of the Party and at the Party Congress. openly stated program or leadership. As our comrade "For it is my profound conviction that if we 'wait' for Joseph Seymour pointed out during the 1994 debate: the Congress of Soviets and let the present moment pass, "The United Secretariat has always been and only we shall ruin the revolution." aspires to be a pressure group on various reformist, Lenin's views on the party question developed over a petty-bourgeois radical and bourgeois nationalist cur­ period of time, but he never shrank from splits when rents. In fact, over the decades Mandel tried literally necessary to defend the programmatic integrity of the everything except building a proletarian vanguard party." Bolsheviks. Lenin and the Bolsheviks waged a series As the spectrum of bourgeois politics moved sharply of hard political fights for the Marxist program, split­ to the right after the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Viet­ ting first with the Economists, then with the Menshe­ nam in 1975, the USec's field of candidates for "revolu­ viks, the Bund, then with the Otzovists and the Boy­ tionary leadership" began to include outright reaction­ cotters. (See Left Wing Communism, an Infantile aries. For example, even as Khomeini's Islamic guards Disorder.) Lenin recognized that fusions, as well as in Iran were hunting down and executing leftists, splits, are both valid methods of building the revolu­ including Mandel's own followers, the USec was still tionary party, as long as they take place on a principled praising the "revolutionary anti-imperialism" of the political basis. In 1917 the Bolsheviks fused with Ayatollah in the pages of its press. Trotsky's Inter-District Organization, providing a valu­ By the end of the 1970s, the USec was deeply liqui­ able increment of cadre. Many of the cadre in our own dated in the milieu of deeply anti-Soviet West Euro­ organization were won from other groups, including pean Social Democracy, led by Mitterrand's popular- the USec, through such fusions. 18 Only through relentless political struggle, both inter­ with Pablo's supporters in the American SWP in 1953: nally and externally, can the programmatic integrity of "Democratic centralism has no special virtue per se. the party be defended. For communists, internal debate It is the specific principle of a combat party, united by a single program, which aims to lead a revolution. is an essential means of arriving at political clarity and Social democrats have no need of such a system of educating revolutionary cadres. When the Mandelites organization for the simple reason that they have no denounce the ICL for "unanimity" they mean our prac­ intention of organizing a revolution. Their democracy tice of Leninist democratic centralism. When we arrive and centralism are not united by a hyphen, but kept in separate compartments for. separate purposes: ~e at a political line through internal discussion and democracy is for the social patnots and the centralism IS debate, it is the obligation of all members to defend it for the revolutionists." in public. The press carries one political line. The right -"Letter to Duncan Conway," Speeches to the Party (April 1953) to form factions, vital to a living communist move­ ment, is part of our organizational rules and our "Dec­ The social-democratic or Menshevik type of organi­ laration of Principles and Some Elements of Program." zation is, however, perfectly appropriate to the politics These are published and made available in Plat/onna of the USec and its Polish group. Capitulation to alien Spartakusowcow No.7 (special edition), Spring 1998. class forces in your own country is possible only if We uphold the principle of workers democracy, international ties have the character of a "lash-up," defending the right of all political tendencies within where the various national bloc partners agree to con­ the workers movement to present their point of view as fine their opinions to their own "national turf," and in an essential condition for the proletariat to reach polit­ particular agree not to interfere with the work of the ical clarity as to its tasks. other parties. In contradistinction, the very need for an international vanguard party is premised on the under­ All of this is alien to the USec, whose Menshevik standing that such a party is necessary in order to amorphousness is derived by aping its big brothers in the counter particular national pressures, recognizing that Social Democracy. Lenin rejected the Kautskyan "party all opportunism is nationalist. of the whole class," through which the vanguard of the As Trotsky once noted, those who are incapable of proletariat is necessarily submerged in a sea of political defending conquests already gained can never fight for backwardness. The USec welcomes everyone as mem­ new ones. The history of abdication by the Mandelite bers-as long as they are not revolutionaries. As many USeclNLR of the Trotskyist obligation of Soviet of our cadres know from personal experience, "democ­ defensism, and its active support for the forces of racy" is the permanent right of the opportunists to pub­ counterrevolution, translates into accommodation to licly say whatever they wish, while "discipline" is the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state, including in applied only against would-be leftist minorities. When Poland today. In contrast, we of the Spartacist Group decisive social struggles are raging, the USec has been of Poland, Polish sympathizing section of the Interna­ a seething mass of warring cliques and sections pursu­ tional Communist League, stand with American Trot­ ing counterposed lines. Thus, in Portugal in 1975, while skyist James P. Cannon in proclaiming: We are the CIA-financed Socialist Party-led mobs trashed CP party of the Russian Revolution. The ICL fights to headquarters and battled the Stalinists in the streets, build Leninist-Trotskyist parties, which are essential to some USec national sections were egging the SP on, bringing revolutionary consciousness to the proletariat, while other sections politically tailed the CPo to rearm it and lead it to its historic task-the fight for The purpose of Leninist organizational methods is new October Revolutions! simple: As James P. Cannon wrote during the struggle -14 March 1999

!::=~..... ~~. :.:=:~~.~~~~. o...... ~","--' .... U.s.JUNlNATO Fore.. Out 01 .. 8aIkaM Nowl ==-.. -o.c.....n ...... -~c:-.. _.-- ...... Organizational Rules and Guidelines ~~--~'"--I "~HQLa, Platforma Spartakusowc6w No. 10, Fall-Winter 1999 Spartacist No. 54, Spring 1998 Spartacist No. 55, Autumn 1999 $1 (28 pages) $2 (48 pages) $1.50 (56 pages) Order from/pay to: Sartacist Publishing Co. Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

19 ... I.~.ternatiQnal···.··OommullistLt!ague··· •. ·(FQurtb·/I.nlergaliQoilliSJJ): ..... :. M '.'". .w' •• : .,.",', ",. ,., .", ,., • ,"", Yo" ,"'. :.:...... '",. .":: ... : :: .:•. ".. . .. "." ...•..-: .•. ". '::: :.~~ ...: ," .. :.. : ," ::.: :'.": .., ... :.. '.: , "" ,-,., ,",' ", .:. ',:: , ..: ... :' ...... ," ,: ," .•...:., ", ., ..•.•:.:.::.. ~ ,:::;:~,~:<:, .. ,,' .. :.< ..,;.: :';"~" :.... ~:.~: ..:: ,.;.•.•. :' -.: ....·M .. ',< ..,. ':',. ,.,:.:; .. :...... • ,. ':" .... ,:: .<, ; ..•.: .. :.: : ,,':< >:Y.',M:·~., :,,", ,:w,·,'.·:;.:,';.;:L .. ,: h:.:~:. ..'.:,.;,. ~ International Center: Box 7429 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA Web site: www.icl-fLorg ------Spartacist League of Australia ------Lega trotskista d'ltalia Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co. Walter Fidacaro, C.P. 1591, 20101 Milano, Italy GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia [SPARTACO sPAirACIST ~ ~) Organo della Lega trotskista d'ltalia Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League of Australia Abbonamento a 4 + supplemento: L. 5.000 $5/4 issues (1 year) in Australia and seamail elsewhere Europa: L. 8.000 Paesi extraeuropei: L. 12.000 $7/4 issues-Airmail Spartacist Group Japan Spartacist League/Britain PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku, Kita-ku, Tokyo 115, Japan Spartacist Publications PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU, England

WORKERSIIAMMER~ Publication of the Spartacist Group Japan Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League/Britain Subscription (2 years): 500¥lnternational: 1000¥ £3/1 year International rate: £7-Airmail Europe outside Britain and Ireland: £4 Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico J. Vega, Apdo. Postal 1251, Admon. PalaciO Postal 1 Trotskyist League of Canada! C.P. 06002, Mexico D.E, Mexico Ligue trotskyste du Canada Spartacist Canada Publishing Association I fi:t!j;i me] Box 6867, Station A, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X6, Canada Publicacion del Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico Mexico: 4 numeros/$10 ISPARTACIST~~ Extranjero: US$4/4 (via aerea) US$2/4 (via terrestre/maritima) English-language newspaper of the Trotskyist League/ Ligue trotskyste $3/4 issues International rate: $8-Airmail Spartacist/Moscow Write to Le Bolchevik, Paris, France Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands SpAD, c/o Verlag Avantgarde I DtonrIereHb CnapTaKOB~eB I Postfach 5 55, 10127 Berlin, Germany i Spartakusowska Grupa Polski t :z,'ii 6' 3~i If.J Platforma Spartakusowc6w, Skrytka Pocztowa 148 Herausgegeben von der Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei 02-588 Warszawa 48, Poland Deutschlands Platforma , 4 Ausgaben: DM 8,- Auslandsabo: DM 15,- Ubersee Luftpost: OM 20,- SPARTAKUSOWCOW ~ Pismo Spartakusowskiej Grupy Polski Dublin Spartacist Group Cztery kolejne numery: 6,- zl PO Box 2944, Dublin 1, Republic of Ireland Spartacist/South Africa Ligue trotskyste de France Spartacist, PostNet Suite 248 Private Bag X2226 Le Bolchevik, BP 135-10, 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France Johannesburg 2000, South Africa U;BOLCIIEVI~ Spartacist League/U.S. Publication de la Ligue trotskyste de France Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA 4 numeros: 20FF Hors Europe: 30FF (avion: 40FF) Etranger: mandat poste international WIJIINEIII """'111) Biweekly organ of the Spartacist League/U.S. Spartacist Group India/Lanka $10/22 issues (1 year) Write to International Communist League, New York, USA International: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail Bulletin No.7 October 1992, $2 (24 pages) Bulletin No.1 0 January 1997, $1.50 (12 pages) "Real Trotskyist Platform or Spartacist Defectors, Renegades and Political Pirates: Platform": Contribution to the Debate with More on the Norden Group-from the Algerian PST Militants Bolshevik Tendency and the Workers - By Damien Elliott, editor of I'Egalite, newspaper of the League/Socialist Equality Party JCR, youth group of French section of the United Introduction Secretariat, August 1992 "Spartacist expels leading members-A "Open Letter to the JCR-J'Egalite" demoralized response to the breakup of - By the Ligue Trotskyste de France, 27 July 1992 Stalinism" - Reprinted from the International Workers Bulletin, 7 October 1996 Bulletin No.8 July 1993, $4 (137 pages) "Healyites of the Second Mobilization-Workers The Bolshevik Tendency: From the Snake Pit Vanguard De-Collectivized" of Anti-Spartacism - Photocopied from 1917, closing date 15 July 1996 Introduction Bulletin No. 11 October 1997, $1.50 (24 pages) "The Communist Workers Group: 'Bureaucratic Centralism in the IBT and the Intervention of the David North's "ICFI"- From Support to Working Committee'" (undated, published in Capitalist Counterrevolution in the USSR to May 1993) Great Russian Chauvinism Introduction Bulletin No.9 August 1996, $5 (96 pages) "Why Marxists Do Not Raise the Call 'Restore the Soviet Union'" The Norden "Group": Polymorphous -.Reprinted from Workers Vanguard Nos. 638 and 639, Opportunism 2 and 16 February 1995

Introductory Note "The Spartacists Reject the Slogan of the Restoration of the USSR" "After Spartacist League Purges Leading - Translated from Rabochii-Internatsionalist, bulletin of Cadres, ICL Flees from Class Battle in Brazil­ the Chelyabinsk Bureau of the ICFI, May 1996 From a Drift Toward Abstentionism to Desertion ''Afghanistan, Poland, Chechnya: from the Class Struggle" 'ICFJ'/Northites: Counterfeit Trotskyists" - Published by the Norden "Group," July 1996 - By the Spartacist League, 7 October 1997

Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA The Spartacist League Makes Available Hate Trotskyism, the Polemics of Its Opponents on the Left Hate the Spartacist League "He who takes somebody's word for it is a

- a bulletin series of oppoent material hopeless idiot who can be dispensed of with a simple gesture of the hand." -V.I. Lenin

• Bulletin No. 1 March 1975, $3 (58 pages) Bulletin No.5 July 1988, $2 (26 pages) Reprint of "Spartacist League: Anatomy of a Letter to Workers Vanguard by Cathy Nason for Sect" the Bolshevik Tendency, 8 April 1988 - From an "Education for Socialists' bulletin (June "BT Says Don't Hail Red Army in Afghanistan" 1974) nominally published by the Canadian Revolutionary Marxist Group in the interests of its - From Workers Vanguard No. 449, 25 March 1988 American cothinkers, the Internationalist Tendency "BT Protests Too Much" (reply from letters Reprint of the Spartacist League's critique column) "Mandelites Falsify History to Attack SL" - From Workers Vanguard No. 453, 20 May 1988 - From Workers Vanguard No. 59, 3 January 1975 ET Statement of 12 November 1983: "A Loss of Bulletin No.2 April 1975, $1.75 (34 pages) Nerve and a Loss of Will" - From Bulletin of the External Tendency of the iSt Reprint of "The Fall of Allende and the Triumph No.2, January 1984 of the Chilean Counterrevolution-the Spartacist League and the Strategy of "On the Slogan 'Marines Out of Lebanon, Abstentionist Putsch ism" Now, Alive': Reuben's Tangled Web" - Originally published by The Communist - From Bulletin of the External Tendency of the iSt Internationalist Group, November 1973 No.2, January 1984 Preface: Letter to Spartacist League Central "WV Flinches on 007: A Textbook Example" Office from Comrade Small, 12 February 1974 - From Bulletin of the External Tendency of the iSt No.2, January 1984 Bulletin No.3 August 1975, $2.75 (95 pages) "Challenger's 'Major Malfunction': No Disaster Reprint of "What is Spartacist?", for the Working Class" by Tim Wohlforth, Second Edition (June 1973) - From 1917 No.2, Summer 1986

Reprint of "The Wohlforth League: "Marxism and Bloodthirstiness" Counterfeit Trotskyists" - From Workers Vanguard No. 345, 6 January 1984 - From Spartacist No. 17-18, August-September 1970 Reprint of "The Workers League and the Bulletin No.6 March 1991, $2 (16 pages) International Committee: A Statement by Tim Wohlforth," 11 January 1975 "Bundestag Election '9O-What Do the Others Stand For?: The SpAD-Provocateurs Against Reprint of "Confessions of a 'Renegade': the Fourth International" Wohlforth Terminated" - Translated from Neue Arbeiterpresse No. 633, 23 November 1990 - From Workers Vanguard No. 61, 31 January 1975 "Statement of the Gruppe Spartakus on the Bundestag Elections: No Vote to the SPD/No Winter 1986, $1 (32 pages) Bulletin No.4 Vote to the PD8-Critical Support to the SpAD" 1917, Journal of the Bolshevik Tendency, No.1 - Translated from a leaflet by the Gruppe Spartakus, First issue of the publication of the Bolshevik German section of the International Bolshevik Tendency, formerly "External Tendency of the Tendency, 17 November 1990 Spartacist League," includes "'I Liked Gerry A Letter on "Spartacism" Healy.. .': The Robertson School of Party - Typescript of a letter by Barry Weisleder, longtime Building" and "SL's Cop-Baiting Celebrity: spokesman for the United Secretariat in Canada, 'Powerful Testimony' ... to the Police" 15 November 1990

- listing continues on inside back cover -