SPARTACIST Nov./Dee.1990 No.81 50ft L Y Leonidov V.1. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, leaders of the Russian Revolution, on its second anniversary in Moscow's Red Square. Resignation From Canadian CP ........... 3 Resignation From the YCl ................ 22 A Call To All Communists .................... 5 Dublin Spartacist Youth Group ....... , .. 24 Militants Split From Mandel's USec ..... 9 Trotskyist Fusion in Mexico ............... 25 Against United Secretariat Spartacist Group of ,Liquidationism-For Trotskyism! ....... .11 Poland Founded ............................... 32 2 SPARTACIST/Canada Introduction------ response to the Partisan Defense Committee's campaign to For Revolutionary Reg·roupment­ raise desperately needed funds for civilian victims of the bloody onslaught by the CIA-backed muja/!edin in the Afghan city of For Lenin and Trotsky's Communism! lalalabad, Literally tens of thousands of people around the world, particularly among immigrant communities and women In this issue of Spartacist Canada we are publishing the as well as dissident Stalinists who felt bitter and betrayed by statements and documents of militants who have recently been Gorbachev's withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, won to the banner of authentic Leninism as embodied in the gave to this campaign. Trotskyist program of the International Communist League. As we said at the time, better for the Red Army to have These include a group of comrades from the Young Left continued its honorable fight against imperialism in Afghani­ Movement of Poland, a tendency from the English-Canadian stan than to have to fight counterrevolution within the borders affiliate of Ernest Mandel's United Secretariat, a long-time of the Soviet Union. The bitter fruits of Gorbachev's policy member of the Communist Party both in Canada and Israel, of "appeasement" can be seen in the counterrevolutionary founding cadre of the Morenoite tendency in Mexico, and a nationalist movements in the Baltics who openly appeal to the group of young Irish revolutionaries who came over to our imperialists for assistance. Now, 700 miles from the borders politics, particularly in counterposition to the centrists of the of the Soviet Union the U.S. is heading a massive imperialist Irish Workers Group/Workers Power. expeditionary force in the Persian Gulf. And the Kremlin The collapse of Stalinist rule has caused a wave of confusion, criminally endorses the U.S.-led war moves against Iraq! demoralization and disintegration among the Communist The events of the past year, particularly the destruction of parties internationally who like the imperialists have long the East German deformed workers state, brought would-be equated "Communism" with the rule of the bureaucracy. At communists in other organizations face to face with the coun­ the same time it has demonstrated the complete bankruptc)' terrevolutionary implications of their politics, leading the of the various intcrnational pretenders to the program of comrades who have now joined our organization to look back Trotskyism whosc politics have, for at least the last decade, to the heritage of Trotsky's struggle to preserve and carry been animated by the Third Camp equation of Stalinism with forward the Bolsheviks' program of revolutionary internation­ imperialism. Caught in the grip of Cold War anti-Communism alism. Our intransigent defense of the gains of the 1917 Rus­ they championed every movcment hostile to the Soviet degen­ sian Revolution against the imperialists and their social demo­ erated workers state-from CIA-backed Islamic reaction in cratic lackeys and against the perversion and betrayal of the Afghanistan to SolidarnosC' counterrevolution in Poland. workers gains by the nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies im­ As we noted in May 1989 in declaring the founda tion of the pelled these comrades to see the ICL as the only authentic International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist): communists. • "Stalinism has created millions of anti-Communists and the In the early 1980s, decades of Stalinist lies, corruption and general level of identification of human progress with the idea bureaucratic economic mismanagement had driven the bulk of communism stands at a relative low point. Yet as the work­ (continued on page 31) ings of capitalist imperialism create millions of new subjective communists around the globe, the absence of genuinely com­ munist leadership is acutely felt by many and the program of Contact the Trotskyist League Leninist internationalism can be put forward with great im­ Correspondence for: Address to: pact." Our regroupment of militants who come from a variety Edmonton . .. RMT{fL of different backgrounds and political experience stands as powerful confirmation of the impact of this program. PSSE P.O. Box 9605 A key impetus in launching the ICL was the overwhelming Edmonton, AB T6E 5X3 (403) 436-5105 Moncton ............ P.O. Box 563 SPARTACIST CANADA Moncton, NB E1 C 8L9 Newspaper of the Trotskyist league, Canadian sympathizing section of the International Communist league (Fourth Internationalist) Montreal ............ C.P. Les Atriums I EDITORIAL BOARD: John Masters (Editor), Jane Clancy, Marie B.P.32066 Hayes, Maria lianos, Miriam McDonald, Oliver Stephens, Janet Yeung PRODUCTION MANAGER: Russell Stoker Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Arthur llewellyn Toronto ............. Box 7198, Station A BUSINESS MANAGER: M. McPherson Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. (416) 593-4138 Published quarterly by the Spartacist Canada Publishing Association, Box 6867, Stn. A, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X6. Printed in a union shop Vancouver .......... Box 2717, Main P.O. by union labor. Second Class Mail Registration 8161. Return postage Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 guaranteed. ISSN: 0229-5415 (604) 255-0636 Nov.!Dec. 1990 Date of issue: November 1990 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 3 --Resignation from the Canadian CP-­ "I Leave Because I Am a Communist" We reprint below a letter ofresignation from the Commu­ reunification of Germany (see page 4). Before resigning, he nist Party of Canada by Yossi Schwartz, a six-year CPC mem­ distributed a document he had fought for as a delegate at the ber in Toronto, distributed to delegates at the party's national Ontario provincial conference two weeks earlier titled "A Call convention on the weekend of October 5-8. to All Communists." We reprint this document as well, Following the line of CPC leader George Hewison, the beginning on pagc 5. Toronto convention votcd to abandon even a reference to The CPC today is a demoralized wreck, as much of the "Marxism-Leninism," and to single-mindedly focus on "left membership has simply voted with their feet in the past year unity" with the wretchedly right-wing social-democratic New and quit. What is left is rapidly on thc road to full-fledged Democratic Party. A "left" opposition around Ontario party social democracy. With Stalinism collapsing in its death agony, leader Liz Rowley expressed mild opposition to some of the the program of Trotskyism is ever more clearly the only road most blatantly liquidationist aspects ofHcwison's "new think­ to a communist future. ing," while veteran former CPC leader Bill Kashtan showed a bit more fight but offered only nostalgia for "better times" * * * * Toronto, October 7,1990 in the past. In contrast, Schwartz has been fighting for the revolutionary alternative of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevism. He had been Members of the Communist Party: a supporter of the international Spartaeist tendency (now I am resigning from the CPe. The shameful document "The International Communist Leaguc) for a period in the 1970s, Communist Party and A New Decade" is just another indica­ but then returned to the Stalinist fold. Recently, he became tion of the further degeneration of the CPC into the camp of prominent within the Canadian CP in opposing Gorbachev's social democracy. pro-capitalist'''market reforms" and appeasement of imperial­ I first joined the Communist Party of Israel in 1963. ism. In a letter to the CPC's Canadian Tribune (29 January), Throughout my time in Israel, I was an active defender of na­ Schwartz called for "a revolutionary working class party based tional rights for the Palestinian people. When the Communist on Leninist internationalist principles to replace both wings Party split in 1965 I went with the Sneh group, but when this of Stalinism" as the answer to escalating nationalist antago­ group supported Israel in the 1967 war I left the organization. nisms in the Soviet Union. The paper's Gorbachevite Moscow Following this, I investigated and was won over to the views correspondent Fred Weir responded by denouncing Schwartz's of Trotskyism. call for a return to Leninism as "ultra-left purism, voluntarism In 1980, I rejoined the Israeli CP and four years later joined and authoritarianism" (Canadian Tribune, 12 February). the Communist Party of Canada. The victory of the Vietnam­ In February Schwartz initiated a petition signed by 21 ese Revolution, despite its Stalinist leadership, had a great "members and friends of the Communist Party of Canada" de­ impact on my decision to rejoin the party. Although I was fully nouncing East German (DDR) prime minister Hans Modrow aware of the many betrayals of the working class that had been and his Socialist Unity Party (SED) for supporting capitalist (continued on page 4) Spartacist banner at East Berlin anti-fascist demon­ stration, 30 December 1989: "For the Commu­ nism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg! For a Leninist-Egalitarian Party!" Spartakist Workers Party of Germany uniquely fought against capitalist reunification. 4 SPARTACIST/Canada Petition Against the Sellout of East Germany: "For Workers Councils to Defend the DOH" The news that Hans Modrow, D.D.R. Prime Minister, in Berlin supporting Socialism. backed by the reformists in Moscow, announccd his party's These actions constitute vivid evidence that the political support for the reunification of Germany, and announced revolution in the D.D.R. can lead to a genuine worker a concrete plan for this idea on the condition that the new Democracy based on workers and Soldiers councils.