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[International Internal Discusison Bulletin Volume XIV Number 1, January of 1977.
Published as a fraternal courtesy to the United Secretaria of the Fourth International.]
Letter to the International Executive Committee
The signers below are carrying out an obligation to explain to the Fourth International the reasons that led them to decide to vote against the proposal of the LTF (Leninist Trotskyist Faction) on Portugal, to cease being part of the same, and to continue voting against the proposal of the Majority on the Portuguese revolution.
Brussels, February 1976
To the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International
The signers below, leaders of the Partido Socialists de Ins Trabajadores (Argentina), the Liga Socialista (Venezuela), the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Peru), the Liga Socialists (Mexico), the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Uruguay), are carrying out an obligation to inform you, and through you the entire Fourth International, that they have decided to break from the Leninist Trotskyist Faction because of disagreeing with the line developed in the resolution “The Key Issues in the Portuguese Revolution,” approved by the said faction (published in English in Intercontinental Press, No. 37 of 1975 and in Spanish in IDB No. 4 of the Argentine PST). The fundamental reason for this disagreement is the refusal of the comrades of the LTF, mainly the leaders of the Socialist Workers party of the United States, to agree with us that “the most important aspect of our activity should be to defend, expand, and centralize the germs of dual power and that “. . . the Portuguese masses know the names of the forms taken by these embryos.
They are the worker and neighborhood commissions, the occupation of business establishments and houses, and the soldiers assemblies and committees. Our major task is to develop and attempt to centralize these revolutionary organs and procedures.” (Letter from Nahuel Moreno to Joe Hansen, July 17, 1976, in the International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 1976.)
Despite constituting a broad majority within the LTF, we have decided not to challenge either its name or organization. This is because the faction was primarily the fruit of the efforts, unselfishness, and sacrifices of the leadership of the SWP (to maintain the formalities, it would be better to say a group of leaders of the SWP). As homage to such efforts, and in recognition of the leading role of these comrades, which resulted in such benefits for our international, we abstain from posing the formally “democratic” right that we could exercise.
As follows implicitly from this acknowledgment, we continue to maintain the same criticisms that we made of the majority faction at the time, criticisms that led us to vote to reject the “First Draft Theses on Portugal for the February 1976 Plenum of the IEC” (IDB of the PST, No. 5). We see no other alternative but to call for a meeting of all the leaders of the Fourth International who agree in principle with our criticisms of both documents to consider the advisability of constituting ourselves into a faction or tendency on the basis of a clear politico organizational program.
Signed:
Andrés (U), Andres (V), Antonio, Antonio Sa Leal, Arturo, Carlos, Capa, Eduardo, Ernesto, Eva, Fierro, Fernando, Julio, Maria Ester, Marcela, Miguel, Nora, Petiso, RamOn, Ricardo Hernandez, Tito, Tuco, Romero.
Later Comrade Ricardo of Mexico withdrew from the process of forming the Tendency and the following leaders of the Liga Socialista Revolucionaria (Spain), the Liga Operaria (Brazil), the Liga Socialista Revolucionaria (Italy), the Tendencia Internacionalista of Mexico, the Bloque Socialista (Colombia) joined in the convocation of a Constitutive Meeting:
Antenor, Camilo, Carlos, Chon, Dario (I), Dario (C), Edgar, Eduardo, EfIgenio, Felipe, Gladys, Gustavo, Jaime, Kernel, Lucas, Luis Carlos, Marcos, Mariano, Ricardo, Socorro, Telesforo, Zeze.
I. Let’s Save the International by Overturning the Majority’s Policies
The Significance of the Eleventh World Congress
The Eleventh Congress of our international, which has been called for next year, will be held in the context of a class struggle favoring our growth to a greater extent than at any time since our foundation. This context is marked by a spectacular upsurge of the masses combined with a grave general economic crisis affecting the entire capitalist world.
The qualitative element differentiating this upsurge that began with the Portuguese revolution on April 25, 1974, is that, after thirty years, the center of the world revolution is returning to the advanced countries and to the industrial working class. Besides Portugal, the Spanish masses, and, to a lesser degree, the Italian and French are moving onto the stage. Within the imperialist countries, the democratic struggles have gained in importance, principally those of the oppressed nationalities, owing to their proletarian weight, as in the case of the Catholics in Ireland and the Basques and Catalans in Spain.
At the same time, the upsurge in the colonial and dependent countries is continuing and deepening, the axis being Africa, and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East. In Africa, the victory of the MPLA in Angola gave a great impulse to the upsurge, reaching Rhodesia and mainly the giant that is South Africa where the class struggle is taking the classical forms of urban mobilizations. In the Middle East, the Lebanese revolution, with the immense mobilization of the masses it provoked, is directly influencing the Palestinians in Israel and in the zones occupied by the latter since the 1967 war. In addition, the internationalization of the conflict can carry the revolution into the other Arab countries, mainly Syria.
Despite the uncertainty of the reports, an increase in the anti-bureaucratic struggles is to be noted as a product of the world upsurge—such is the case in Poland—as well as the beginning of a crisis in the Chinese bureaucracy.
Also in Latin America, following a series of grave defeats on the Southern Cone, a resurgence of mobilizations is to be noted in the north of the subcontinent, in Central America, and, to a far lesser degree, in Brazil. In addition, in Argentina there are signs that the defeat of the proletariat was not complete.
As a direct consequence of this revolutionary upsurge, the different national parties of the Fourth International have been growing and becoming stronger in a continual process, marked by distinct stages, that has been going on since the mid 1960s.
Nevertheless, while it is certain that the objective situation in the class struggle and our concomitant growth have opened a favorable perspective for us, it is also certain that we are passing through a critical situation, the product of seven years of intense ideological, tendency, and factional struggle, which has cost us public polemics, splits of national parties, the disappearance of major sections, and which has presented us with the permanent danger of a split in our world party. When the Eleventh Congress is held we will have spent eight years dragging along in this chronic crisis.
In view of all the above, it can be seen that the agenda of the next congress has inadmissable omissions, which if they are retained would place in danger its real productiveness. We believe that it is imperative to introduce some modifications and to reorient accordingly the preparatory discussion, which has been lamentably delayed. The agenda is incomplete in relation to the key points in the class struggle; the indispensable analysis of the Portuguese revolution is not enough, it is necessary to incorporate a point on Spain and another on the revolution in southern Africa, beginning with the Angolan civil war. Likewise a discussion is urgent on Latin America and the past participation of the international there, since this postponed balance sheet would be very useful, both to arm ourselves for new struggles in this continent and to judge our current policies as a whole.
But the gravest omission, which practically invalidates the present agenda, is the one relating to the decisive point on the present crisis in our international and the policies needed to overcome it.
The Responsibility of the Majority
Our tendency holds that the responsibility for this crisis rests solely with the majority leadership of our world party. At the Ninth Congress it imposed on us its guerrillaist orientation and at the Tenth its policy toward the “new mass vanguard,” a euphemism behind which it hides its consistent ultra-leftism, an orientation and policy that has taken us away from the broad masses and led us to give up the Transitional Program and its method of mobilizing them. Owing to this, all the groups adhering to the IMT (International Majority Tendency) that had to confront the pre-revolutionary situation that appeared in their countries, as occurred with the sections in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile in turn, and as is now occurring in Portugal, suffered a total crisis. The current crisis of the demoralized French section, deeply divided into various tendencies, broke out just when a new rise of the workers movement demanded the utmost audacity and iron unity on our part so as not to miss the opportunity it opened up for us. We can already say: as a consequence of the policy of the IMT, our international, which is led by them, is unable to utilize the new struggles of the French proletariat to advance by a colossal leap in that country.
The majority within the Majority are trying to evade drawing up a balance sheet of these disastrous results by means of a “spectacular” maneuver, which consists of pursuing unification or reunification of groups claiming to belong to our international in some countries, in order to boast of the great “successes” of their “policy.” Parallel to this, they are making a change, more apparent than real, orienting toward the centrists, and accentuating their old councilist and workerist deviation, in order to better disguise their perennial vanguardism and ultra-leftism, thereby laying the basis for new crises and failures for our international.
Let no one try to avoid an accounting by claiming they were misinformed. It is necessary to demand of the Majority that they account for their “successes” in Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Portugal, the countries that have undergone revolutionary crises. The Eleventh Congress must consider the unifications that have occurred in recent months, but in addition it will be a propitious occasion to demand of the present leadership that they report on the fate of some of their fervent adherents, like the POR(C), the PRT(C), the official Chilean section, and the Portuguese LCI. The Eleventh Congress must likewise judge whether the present hght minded political turn of the IMT is an advance toward the solution of the crisis in the Fourth International or whether it is, as we think, a new danger to the development of our world party.
An Iron Dilemma: Either We Overturn the Orientation of the Majority Or the Crisis Will Deepen
The Bolshevik Tendency does not claim that the militants of our international as a whole agree with our analysis of the crisis. Nor do we expect that they will agree with the appraisals formulated in this document concerning our immediate past. Every self respecting militant has the obligation to defend the past, if he thinks it was correct, as well as the right not to make a judgment on it. But what we do demand of the IMT and LTF leaders and militants in positions of responsibility, mainly the former, is that they reflect deeply and seriously on the crises and tensions that currently exist both in the international as a whole as well as in various national parties belonging to it. We urge them to look at the present reality of the class struggle in Europe, the center of the world revolution. We invite them to follow the magnificent example of the leaders of the Chilean IMT, who have placed the interests of our world party above any factional interest, observing without fear the present reality, both its internal aspects as well as those of the class struggle, so as to draw progressive conclusions oriented toward overcoming the current crisis politically. Within the framework of this crisis, we note as an auspicious fact that sectors of the leadership of our dynamic and powerful French section, of the audacious leadership of the Spanish IMT, and of the leadership of the IMT itself have sought to open up for consideration by our parties in these countries a new policy, the axis of which is an orientation toward the broad Socialist and Communist masses. Unless this opening toward a new policy is concretized, unless we move completely away from flirting with, or speculating over, the “new mass vanguard” and the centrists, as well as any bending toward councilist workerism, and orient ourselves resolutely toward the European Socialists and Communists and the peoples of the oppressed nationalities struggling for national self determination, the road toward overcoming the crisis in the international will be blocked more and more.
The dilemma confronting the Eleventh Congress is clear, sharp, and plain to see: either the current councilist orientation of the IMT, directed toward the organizations of the centrist “vanguard,” will be ratified, thus deepening the bankruptcy and crisis of our world party as a whole and paving the way for new disasters like those provoked in Argentina, Chile, and Portugal; or this orientation will be defeated and our European parties will turn resolutely toward the broad Socialist and Communist masses and toward the oppressed nationalities in order to tear them out of the treacherous influence of the reformist leaderships and to construct Trotskyist parties with mass influence.
For a Minimum, Prinicipled Agreement to Save the International
In the face of this iron dilemma, the resolution of which will determine to a great extent the future of our international and the role it will play in this stage of a worldwide upsurge, the Bolshevik Tendency declares that without abandoning its invitation to all the militants to join up, it views adherence as secondary for the moment, since what is primary is to gain an agreement of leaders and militants around a common minimum program that would enable us to defeat, once and for all, the calamitous orientation laid out by the IMT for the international. This program cannot be anything but repudiation of the vanguardism, workerism, and councilism of the IMT and its new orientation toward the centrists, an implacable struggle to extirpate the strong vestiges of the Majority’s ultra-leftism and to eradicate the opportunist dangers of their policy; and, finally, a battle for a Trotskyist line centered on the broad Socialist and Communist masses and on the oppressed nationalities as the only possibility of winning them away from the treacherous leaderships and thus defeating the trap of popular frontism which they are proffering to them.
With this fundamental question clarified, all that remains is to explain the reasons that impelled us to organize a new tendency, the Bolshevik, and those that led us to believe that the optimum would be for all the conscious militants and leaders of our international to join it.
II. Seven Years of Unrelenting Internal Struggle
Let’s Apply the Marxist Method in Analyzing Our Recent History
We will not succeed in overcoming the current crisis and internal division unless we explain them in the light of a correct Marxist approach. Up to now, both the LTF and the IMT have shown themselves totally incapable of doing this.
For us, the only analysis through which we can correctly approach the past and the present, and prepare ourselves for the future, is the one founded on the class struggle and our ties to it. This is the “red thread” that must guide us in studying the divisions, reunifications, and struggles of tendencies: only by combining the situation of the workers and popular movement concretely with the strategy and tactics advanced by the international and its tendencies can we classify the distinct stages that have been lived through. The sectors that emerged with flying colors, strengthened by the tests, were always those that managed to remain linked to the movement of the masses, participating in their struggles, raising slogans that fit their needs and consciousness, and seeking to get them to advance toward the socialist revolution.
Thus, while it is true that the periods of retreat ended in a general weakening of our ranks that affected all the tendencies, revolutionary upsurges—as we have seen in the West beginning with the Cuban revolution—have to the contrary upheld and strengthened those of our sections that consistently stuck to an orientation aimed at responding concretely to the struggles that this upsurge placed on the agenda.
The reunification of the decade of the sixties, for example, which permitted the creation of the United Secretariat, was a direct consequence of the colossal impact of the triumph of the Cuban revolution in the Western world, and an indirect consequence of the Hungarian and Polish revolutions against the Soviet bureaucracy. The correct definition of the newly formed Cuban workers state and the correct policy adopted toward it, as well as the reaffirmation of the counterrevolutionary character of Stalinism and the insistence on the necessity of maintaining a completely independent policy, enabled us to properly arm ourselves to meet the different situations that the class struggle opened up for us at the time, leaving outside of the international, to fall behind more and more, the incurable sectarians (Healy, Lambert), and those opportunists (Pablo, Posadas) who, with an apparent concern for the mass movement and its dynamics, justified giving way to the reformist apparatuses or bourgeois nationalists.
The correct orientation laid out by us made possible not only the reunification on a serious programmatic basis but the colossal progress of our international in the United States—rooted in the movement in defense of Cuba, first, and against the war in Vietnam later—and in France as a consequence of May 1968. The correct policy of democratic mobilization of the student movement geared to the workers movement transformed the French League into the first Trotskyist party with more than a thousand militants, and by that into the most powerful party of the Fourth International at the beginning of the decade of the seventies.
Ultraleft Guerrillaism
Unfortunately what was a colossal advance for our international, the strengthening of the French League, was transformed into an obstacle. The couple of thousand comrades who joined our ranks in France brought not only their enthusiasm, spirit of self sacrifice, and talents, but also their political backwardness, their illusions, and their impressionistic methodology typical of university circles. Through this dead weight, the ultra-leftism of the European student milieu became disseminated in our world party. Starting with the glorification of “Che” Guevara and the Cuban revolution, they engaged in putting across the method of rural guerrilla focuses in “exotic” continents, mainly Latin America, the land of their heroes. This deviation would not have had the grave repercussions it did if it had not been combined with two other phenomena. A majority sector of the leadership of the international let itself likewise be influenced by the guerrilla “fashion.” Because of this, the understandable infantile extremism of the student milieu became fused with the improvised senile extremism of some of the old leaders, setting off a general guerrilla “eruption” in our whole European movement.
To this conglomeration was added—giving it encouragement and justification—an important sector of the Trotskyists in Argentina, Bolivia, and other countries of the continent, who transmitted into our ranks the pressure of the Latin American guerrilla vanguard, which in turn reflected the plebeian and petty bourgeois sectors radicalized by the revolutionary crisis.
In consequence of all this, the Ninth World Congress voted by a big majority for a guerrillaist orientation in Latin America, according to which the Trotskyist parties and nuclei had to prepare themselves technically, for a prolonged period, for rural guerrilla war on a continental scale (although the Colombian guerrillas, who did represent a real manifestation of the peasant struggle, were ignored). This orientation stood in flat opposition to the real course of the upsurge of the Latin American masses, which, beginning with the close of the decade of the sixties, proceeded by reanimating the workers movement in the big cities, the epicenter being the Southern Cone of the continent. In its practical consequences the common denominator was the predominance of ultra-leftism aimed exclusively at sectors of the vanguard, the systematic depreciation of the democratic struggles of the broad masses and an incapacity to utilize to the utmost all the legal openings won by the mobilization of the workers and the people from the different bourgeois regimes. This incapacity is aggravated by the fact that these legal interludes will always be very short, compelling us to utilize them intensely and with full audacity.
The clearest consequences emerged between the ninth and tenth congresses. Whereas in Bolivia the POR(Moscoso) maintained a proguerrilla and sectarian policy toward the first Popular Assembly and toward Banzer’s coup later, which led to its disappearance in fact, in Argentina Santucho’s PRT ERP, consistently developing the petty-bourgeois guerrillaist orientation, broke with the Fourth and took completely to populist terrorism. Despite every the Majority never acknowledged of its policy and the disastrous America stemmed from the resolution of the Ninth Congress on this continent. To the contrary, at the Tenth Congress they continued to insist on guerrilla war, although reducing it to terrorism and displacing it to the cities.
The Vanguardist Ultra-leftism of the Tenth Congress
The commencement of the mobilization of the students and workers in Europe opened the door to the extension of the errors of the IMT to this continent. Thus the Tenth World Congress voted to extend ultra-leftism in the European sections to the terrain of theory, strategy, and tactics.
The Tenth Congress should have played the role of arming our European sections to meet the capitalist offensive together with the workers movement; to combine this with the anti-imperialist struggle of the oppressed nationalities of the colonies and semicolonies of European imperialism; to confront the dictatorships of the continent with an essentially bourgeois democratic program of struggle; to understand the unequal development of the European revolutionary process, and thereby the impossibility of a single strategy and program for all of the countries of Europe. But, to the contrary, at the Tenth Congress the IMT demanded a single strategy for the whole continent: “winning hegemony in the broad vanguard”; and a single program of ten points for all the countries of Europe that ignored all of the foregoing guidelines.
In this program, as in the entire European document of the IMT, our activity was oriented toward the creation of organs of dual workers and popular power, mainly “workers control,” in the whole continent. Not content with this, the IMT contended that there were three tactics by which to construct a party: entryism, independent construction, and “winning hegemony in the broad vanguard” in order to transform it into an “adequate instrument” to lead the revolution. And it stated that the tactic for the construction of revolutionary parties in all of capitalist Europe was the latter, discarding both entryism and the independent construction of Trotskyist parties. The results of this orientation were not long in appearing.
A large number of young activists moving toward Trotskyism found in the policy of the Majority a guide to continue throwing themselves happily into their “exemplary” actions, together with the ultraleft vanguard from which they came, separating themselves more and more from the concrete problems facing the exploited masses of the continent. The search for the desired “socialist revolution” led them to forget the democratic struggles.
Thus it was that the possibility and real perspective of constructing strong Trotskyist parties through consistent work in the mass movement was watered down into hopes in the development of the “broad vanguard” and the supposed possibility of “winning political hegemony” within it.
The LTF, A Milestone
The guerrillaist orientation of the leadership of the international aroused a current of opinion that harshly criticized such deviations from the Trotskyist program and method. Finally, in March 1973, a minority of our world organization founded the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency. In view of the Majority’s persistence in following ultraleft errors, the LIT converted itself into a faction some months before the Tenth Congress.
The LTF was the correct reply and the reflection in our ranks of the Latin American upsurge, although in a very uneven way because of its extreme weakness in two of the key countries—Chile and Bolivia. It offered a political alternative to the international’s crisis in orientation and it outlined in a precise manner both the errors and deviations of the Majority as well as the disastrous consequences implicit in them. For the LTF, the strategy of Trotskyism continued to be the construction of Leninist combat parties based on the Transitional Program and its method and thereby oriented toward the movement of the workers and the masses. It was intransigent application of this policy that explains the strengthening of the LTF during this upsurge, which found its maximum expression in the PST, a party that, after the split with the guerrillaists in 1968 and the “Cordobazo” (which opened a pre-revolutionary situation in Argentina), correctly utilized the period of legality to work in the mass movement, steadily gaining in strength, as was recognized by the Tenth Congress which characterized it as the most powerful Trotskyist party in the world. If the anti-guerrillaist current at the Ninth Congress constituted a tiny minority, at the Tenth Congress the LTF included about half the militants of the entire international.
At the Tenth Congress, the LTF was able to politically and theoretically confront the IMT’s orientation toward the “new mass vanguard.” It pointed out that this orientation was the extension into Europe of the guerrillaist ultra-leftism of the Ninth Congress, which drew us away from work among the masses, from the possibility of mobilizing them and breaking them away from the leadership of the reformist parties, and prevented us from carrying out the task of constructing solid Trotskyist parties. It pointed out, too, that the IMT’s orientation was preparing the way for new and grave flascos for our world party. However, the warnings of the LTF were not listened to by the majority of the international, and the IMT’s document, Theses on Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe, was approved by the Tenth Congress.
In their draft of the European document for the Eleventh World Congress, voted for by the majority of the US, the IMT claims that its theses for the Tenth Congress were correct, and tries to have this affirmation voted for by incorporating it into the text of the draft. Thus it repeats the very grave error of the Tenth Congress which, against all the warnings of the LTF, endorsed the Ninth World Congress’s guerrillaist deviation in Latin America.
Every congress of our international has the obligation of drawing a balance sheet on the analyses and policies voted for at the previous congress in order to determine what was correct or in error in them. So as to avoid any equivocation, and so that every militant in a position of responsibility knows what stand to take, it is necessary for us to make a detailed analysis of the proposals that were presented by the IMT and the LTF at the Tenth Congress, mainly in relation to Europe, the center of the world revolution.
III. The Test of the Two Opposing Lines at the Tenth Congress
Which Program Was Correct for Portugal and Spain, the IMT’s or That of the LTF and the PST?
No one in our international denies that the center of the world revolution today is Europe, and, within Europe, Portugal and Spain. Consequently any analysis of the lines that were voted on at the Tenth World Congress must begin by asking what the IMT and LTF or some of their sectors said with respect to the policy to be applied in these countries, in order to compare it with the living reality.
The European document presented by the IMT at the Tenth Congress did not say a single word on policies for Portugal and Spain. Apparently these two countries were viewed as coming under the general ten point program for all of Europe, which did not pose a single democratic task.
In contrast to this absolute, total silence of the IMT, the document of the LTF on Europe said the following:
“The European document does not emphasize that the fight for democratic demands and basic civil liberties is an important task for revolutionary Marxists in our epoch, not only in countries like Spain and Greece, but in the bourgeois democracies as well.
“Concern for democratic demands and tasks is absent from the document on all levels. For instance, nothing is said about the role and importance of the struggles by oppressed nationalities from the Basques to the Laplanders. Ireland is not even mentioned in this regard.” (“A Criticism of the United Secretariat Majority Draft Resolution on ‘The Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe’—an Initial Contribution to the Discussion,” by Mary Alice Waters, published in the International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 3, March 1973, p. 21. Emphasis added.)
For its part, the document approved by the PST pointed out:
“The European document does not prepare our sections for this kind of situation. The document’s failure to raise the demand, ‘British troops out of Ireland, Portuguese out of the colonies!’ shows its indifference to basic democratic demands. This indifference leaves the Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese sections abandoned to semifascist regimes that have destroyed all democratic rights.
“What do we tell the workers in those countries? That they should struggle for ‘workers control’ or for our ‘socialist model’? Would it not appear much more correct to the comrades of the majority for us to put forward some specific democratic demand (constituent assembly, free elections, freedom for political prisoners, legality for political parties, or some other more suitable demand) as the main political demand for those countries?” (“A Scandalous Document—A Reply to Germain,” by Nahuel Moreno, published in the International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 4, January 1974, p. 63. Emphasis added.)
The Trotskyist militants, especially the Spanish and Portuguese, have a magnificent opportunity to check which of the opposing lines at the congress proved to be correct. The Portuguese comrades will be able to evaluate what results might have been obtained if the Fourth International had raised, one or two years before April 25, 1974, the slogans calling for the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops from the colonies, freedom for the political prisoners and a constituent assembly against Caetano, that is, the slogans proposed by the LTF and the PST.
For their part, the Spanish comrades can check both programs to see which of the two provided an adequate analysis and political reply to the Spanish revolutionary process. The IMT now tells us in its European document for the Eleventh World Congress that the Spanish masses have mobilized “. . . beginning from the conquest of democratic rights and the release of all the political prisoners, the dismantling of the repressive apparatus, and the fight for the right of self determination of the oppressed nationalities. . . “ (“Draft Theses on Tactics of the Fourth International in Capitalist Europe,” submitted by Aubin, Claudio, Duret, Fourier, Frey, Georges, Ghulam, Jones, Kurt, Otto, Roman, Walter, and Werner. International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 13, No. 3, November 1976, p. 5.) But all this is nothing more than the bourgeois democratic demands that were absent from the European document of the Tenth Congress and present in the documents of the LTF and the PST. The Spanish comrades, who have been able to evaluate the impact of the struggles for national self determination, particularly those of the Basques, on the revolutionary process in Spain, and who had the good judgment to raise an adequate slogan in this respect, should check which of the opposing policies at the Tenth Congress gave a correct orientation in this field. The comrades of the Spanish LCR, who are today raising the bourgeois democratic slogans of a constituent assembly and a republic, rectifying previous errors, should state whether the delay of several years in applying this line was related to the debate at the Tenth Congress, and should specify who best armed the Spanish Trotskyists to meet the course of the process: the IMT, which ignored these slogans, or the LTF and the PST, which raised them as one of the axes of its program for Spain and Europe.
Were the Portuguese Colonies Fundamental Elements or Otherwise in the European Revolutionary Process?
Today no one in our international questions the close relation between the revolution in Portugal and the struggle of the Portuguese colonies for national liberation. But many comrades have forgotten or never knew, because they are new recruits, that what is now accepted unanimously, gave rise to a sharp polemic before the Tenth Congress. At the time, both the IMT and the SWP refused to take into account this relationship and consequently refused to outline a policy in this regard for Europe. In fact, the European document of the IMT approved at the Tenth Congress does not even mention the struggle of the Portuguese colonies nor its direct relation to the European revolution.
In opposition to this, the European document of the PST characterized the document of the IMT with this subtitle: “A Document That Stands Mute Before the Vietnam of European Imperialism, the Portuguese Colonies.” The PST stated: “The program put forward by the majority in their document leaves out a fundamental point that reflects their evident forgetfulness about the imperialist character of Europe. They say nothing about European imperialism’s Vietnam: the guerrillas and the national liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies.” Later, in describing the war, the conclusion is definitive: “This is the reality of the class struggle in the Portuguese colonies; it is truly the Vietnam of European imperialism.” (“A Scandalous Document,” op. cit., pp. 57.58.) And the following question was asked: “Do the majority comrades perhaps believe they can ‘build revolutionary parties in capitalist Europe’ in this period without giving primary importance to the struggle against European imperialism, the assassin of the African people?” (Ibid., p. 58.) This query still remains valid, not only for the Portuguese Trotskyists, but for all the European Trotskyists. We repeat: What results might have been obtained in the development of all of our European sections if the Fourth had carried on a central, systematic campaign oriented toward a mobilization against Portuguese imperialism, for the withdrawal of its troops from the colonies and against the support forthcoming from the other bourgeoisies of the continent? The question likewise remains directed to the leadership of the SWP, which repeatedly refused to incorporate this document of the PST and the necessity of supporting the struggle of the Portuguese colonies in the official documents of the LTF.
The African anti-colonial struggle likewise furnished an opportunity to test the two different criterions advanced in relation to armed struggle, which were detailed in the two counterposed programs. Since the Ninth Congress, the IMT had pressed forward a suicidal line of small groups practicing a guerrilla strategy throughout Latin America; at the Tenth Congress, the IMT ratified this line, transforming it into a strategy of armed struggle in the abstract. The line was broadened and reinforced with a policy in Europe of carrying out violent “exemplary actions” jointly with the “broad vanguard”—” exemplary actions,” which, called by their right name, were concretely terrorist actions or other similar variants—and, consequently, the obligation was placed on our sections in this continent of “taking the initiative” in this sense, or, if they could not do so, at least preparing themselves for it as their central task.
Rejecting these Majority proposals favoring violent actions by minorities isolated from the masses, the PST, a member of the LTF, added a proviso of unconditional support to the armed struggle of the guerrillas of the Portuguese colonies, which did emanate from the masses. Thus it said the following in its European document: “Is it not notable that those who defend guerrilla war and armed struggle for Latin America do not even mention the heroic guerrillas in the Portuguese colonies? How can it be explained that they do not raise the need to defend these guerrillas against the brutal attacks of European imperialism? How is it to be understood that armed struggle is proposed for an entire period on a whole continent dominated by Yankee imperialism and not a single word is said about the armed struggle in countries dominated by their own imperialism?” (Ibid., p. 58.)
There are leaders of the IMT who want to play down the grave error in their analysis and policy by saying that if it is true that they did not speak of the Portuguese colonies in the European document, they did do so in the international document. To demonstrate this, they point to two quotations in their General Political Resolution: “The progress made by the anti-imperialist armed struggle in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau is beginning to weaken Portuguese colonialism.” They then described the consequences of this weakening without mentioning European and Portuguese imperialism, arriving at the conclusion that South Africa and Rhodesia might open a war against the Black movements, the “repercussions” of which “in South Africa, and in the United States, and for the world imperialist economy, would be laden with consequences.” (International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 20, October 1973, p. 11.) The other quotation is programmatic; among the more than thirty tasks laid out on a world scale by the IMT is the following:
international support for . . . “the revolutionary movements in the Portuguese colonies.” (Ibid., p. 18.)
These two quotations, the only ones on the Portuguese colonies in a world document, demonstrate unanswerably that the attack of the PST against the IMT was correct. In the two quotations there is not a single reference to the close relation that exists between the struggle of the Portuguese colonies for national liberation and the revolution in Europe, including Portugal. In none of the quotations is a single word said about the need to mount a centralized campaign in Europe appealing to the Lusitanian and European masses to mobilize “for the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops from the colonies.”
The comrades of the IMT do not want to listen to the grave charge that we are leveling against them. We are denouncing them for not having selected as the fundamental axis of our policy for Europe a campaign around the African anti-colonial struggle as the SWP did in the U.S. around Vietnam. Suppose that the SWP had done the contrary and had not advanced the slogan of withdrawing the troops from Vietnam; suppose that it did not mention this war in its documents for the U.S., or say a word about its policy concerning Vietnam. And suppose that when they were attacked for not having advanced this slogan, and not having taken the Vietnamese war as a fundamental axis for their activities in the U.S., the leaders of the SWP had replied, as the Majority does today: “This is false, since we said, in a sentence in our international document, that among the thirty tasks we propose on a world scale one offers ‘support’ to the Vietnamese fighters.” It would be a cynical and irresponsible reply to very grave political charges. This is what the IMT is trying to do with the two sentences we have cited.
So that we can end up by making ourselves understood, we ask the following questions: Which tendency pointed out, before April 25, that a campaign for the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops was a fundamental task for the European revolutionists? Which tendency said that these colonies were the “European Vietnam” and thereby ought to be taken as an essential axis of our policy in Europe? Only one: the PST, as part of the LTF. This is the plain truth.
Who Was Right on the Perspectives in Europe?
The IMT has initiated an oral campaign affirming that the Portuguese revolution and the Spanish upsurge have demonstrated the correctness of their forecasts at the Tenth Congress in contrast to those of the LTF. Nothing is falser. In their European document for the Tenth World Congress, the IMT prophesied that “If a new revolutionary leadership is not built in the time remaining to us, after successive waves of mass struggles . . . the European proletariat will experience new and terrible defeats of historic scope.” (“Theses on Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe,” published in Intercontinental Press, December 23, 1974, p. 1824.) And this “time remaining to us” as set forth in the document and in the report by Comrade Germain at the IEC meeting of December 1972 oscillates between three and six years “during which we must regroup the vanguard as a serious striking force within the workers movement in order to lead the masses in a global confrontation with capitalism that has the possibility of winning.” (Report by Germain, cited by Mary Alice Waters in “An Initial Contribution,” op.cit., p.12.)
Against this forecast by the IMT, Comrade Mary Alice Waters replied in the official document of the LTF: “How is the perspective in Europe to be estimated? Are we in a period marked by a new rise of workers struggles? Of course. Is it correct to say that such a period will not last indefinitely, that if wave after wave of struggle is defeated the bourgeoisie will succeed in forcefully imposing its solutions? Of course. Is it correct to project the possibility of explosive new pre-revolutionary crises and revolutionary upsurges in one or more countries in the next four to five years? Of course. Will such explosions have repercussions throughout Europe? Certainly. Are there exceptional opportunities before us in the coming period for party building? Absolutely. But this is not what the document says.” And she stresses: “It is particularly false and disorienting to project on a continental scale the idea that the decisive battles will be fought out by 1978 and that the relationship of class forces for the whole next historical period will be determined by them.
“Should the comrades in Sweden believe they have only four to five years before the decisive battles, and must they conduct themselves accordingly?
“On what basis do we decide that West Germany has four or five years, as opposed to eight or eleven, before a revolutionary crisis erupts? . . . Isn’t it possible that five years from now, Austria will not have experienced any qualitative transformation in the relationship of class forces?” (Ibid., pp. 12 13.)
Today, three years after the Tenth Congress, we are able to verify which perspective on the European revolution has been borne out. And we can state categorically that what is occurring is an uneven development of the revolution as the LTF foresaw, while neither on a continental scale nor in any of the countries of Europe have we seen the fundamental, “global,” and “decisive” struggles or the “terrible defeats of historic scope” predicted by the IMT.
What Type of Struggle Has Occurred in the Majority of the European Countries?
In Chapter II of the IMT’s European document approved by the Tenth Congress, entitled “Concrete Forms and Content of the Revoutionary Perspectives in Capitalist Europe,” it is stated that the perspective for all of Europe in the current period is “dual power,” From this analysis is drawn the general program for all of Europe, concretized in ten central tasks.
The axis of these tasks is to advance “a series of demands (essentially around the axis of the demand for workers control).” All the tasks are placed within an economic and organizational framework, mainly “workers control”; there is not one of a democratic character, and with regard to the anti-imperialist struggles they speak only of the need to “organize international propaganda around the themes of solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles.”
The comrades of the Fourth International, especially the Europeans, ought to compare this program with the reality of the class struggle in the continent and with their own real activity to determine if it was of any genuine utility. In how many countries of Europe was there an opportunity to raise in a concrete way, as a central policy, the slogans of dual power and “workers control”? As we know, only in Portugal and in an elementary way. Did the English, French, Italian, Spanish, German comrades have to face situations of dual power and “workers control”? Absolutely not. Consequently, was a document that posed dual power and “workers control” as central political situations for all of Europe useful to them?
Against this position of the IMT, the LTF, without rejecting “workers control,” placed it correctly within the context of the class struggle in Europe, which in most of the continent was defensive, and they agitated against the increase in the cost of living and unemployment; that is, they oriented toward defending the workers against the offensive directed against them by the bourgeoisie and its governments. Thus Comrade Mary Alice points out that “The basic program for any class struggle tendency in the factories and trade unions today would have to include propaganda advocating workers control, but it would have IV. The Portuguese, European, and to be much broader and more politically rounded. Workers African Revolutions Accelerate the control is a fundamental concept of our transitional Crisis in the IMT program, and a goal toward which we are trying to lead masses of workers in struggle. It is not the beginning and end of our class struggle demands. For example, the European document does not point to the problems of inflation and unemployment as being crucial economic problems of the working class. But they are. The transitional demand for a sliding scale of wages and hours should be a fundamental part of any class struggle trade union program in Europe today.”
And she remarks (after referring to a whole series of other demands): “But all these are among the demands that speak to the needs of the masses of workers we hope someday to lead in the struggle. They indicate the kind of platform on which we can build a class struggle tendency in the mass workers organizations. Struggles around any one of these broad range of demands can set off a process leading in progression toward workers control, dual power, and the socialist revolution. Any tendency to dissolve the richness of the Transitional Program into propaganda for workers control alone would be seriously disorienting.” (Ibid., pp. 16 17.)
The European Trotskyist comrades ought to verify whether this program of the LTF dovetailed, as we believe, with the class struggle in Europe and the tasks of our sections. The Portuguese comrades should say whether dual power and workers control were products of great mobilizations for democratic objectives and in defense of the standard of living and jobs of the working masses. Something similar occurred in Spain. The English, French, Italian, and German comrades ought to say whether in actuality the mobilizations that occurred in their countries centered around the struggle against low wages and unemployment.
With regard to the anti-imperialist struggles we will not stop to take up the question of the Portuguese colonies, since we dealt with it above. But we will point out that the LTF made the “defense of the Irish revolution” a matter of principle, while the IMT limited themselves to describing in two sentences “the centuries old struggle of the Irish people for unity and independence,” and, while they called for support to that struggle, they did not offer any concrete policy for it. The LTF, on the other hand, concretized its anti-imperialist policy in favor of Ireland in a demand for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Irish soil.
Finally, in relation to the democratic tasks and slogans, since we have dealt sufficiently with the Spanish and Portuguese experience, all that remains is to ask the Greek comrades, and those of West Germany—who are now facing repressive governmental regulations—and the comrades of many other European countries whether democratic demands merit the depreciation with which they were treated in the IMT’s European document prepared for the Tenth Congress, or whether to the contrary they were a fundamental instrument of struggle as the LTF maintained.
Another bit can be said with regard to the Vietnamese revolution; although the IMT also supported it, they did not in any way make it as did the LTF, into a central campaign of the European Trotskyists.
IV. The Portuguese, European and African Revolutions Accelerate the Crisi in the IMT.
The Upsurge in Spain and the Crisis of Trotskyism in That Country
The first expression of the problems in Europe that brought about the combination of the vanguardist orienta tion of the Tenth Congress and the revolutionary upsurge came in Spain. It could not be otherwise. The po’iitical formula is almost mathematical: the bankruptcy of the IMT is directly proportional to the intensity of the revolutionary crisis.
During recent years, the upsurge of the working class and its political revival, the passage of almost the entire middle class into the Opposition, the resurgence of the struggles of the oppressed nationalities, forced the Francoists to retreat so that the masses were able to win broader and broader legal openings. The reformists, especially the CP, were able to take advantage of this situation, strengthening themselves enormously. Thanks to an intelligent utilization of the widening legal openings (publication of semilegal journals, utilization of academic freedoms in the universities, taking advantage of the slightest new chink in the fascist union structure), combined with a policy of making bourgeois democratic demands, of working clandestinely in the mass movement, mainly the workers movement, and giving audacious impulsion to new organizational forms that permitted it to act as the inspirer of the Workers Commissions, the CP was able, in a little more than ten years’ to transform itself into a mass party.
The IMT, and the official section at the time, were incapable of doing what the CP did but in accordance with our revolutionary policy: The IMT comrades did not produce public journals, nor make use of the legal openings to give an impulse to the revolutionary mobilization of the workers and students, nor were the IMT and the official section the most ardent battlers for bourgeois-democratic rights.
In an exceptionally good situation for building a workers party, the IMT’s line proved to be a failure. After some early successes, the young Spanish section flew apart into two factions when the majority of the organization sought an alternative to vanguardist ultra-leftism and tried to find a line that would link it up with the mass movement.
Instead of providing a solution to the crisis, the leadership of the international carried the previous ultra-leftism to new heights: an obsession for armed struggle, support to the petty bourgeois terrorists, no understanding of democratic demands. And in its public declaration, “The Death Agony of Francoism,” it upheld the general strike and the unity of the revolutionists as a permanent, abstract strategy. This policy placed the Spanish IMT in a critical situation.
Centrist organizations (PTE, ORT, MCE), born at the same time as the Trotskyists, advanced day by day, accompanying the CP in its demand for freedom and democracy, although capitulating to the bourgeoisie along with the Stalinist leadership. Meanwhile, the organization of the IMT found itself isolated and falling behind. The preferred collaborators sought by the Majority opted for the company of the Stalinists!
After these failures, a process of empirical rectifications was initiated: more weight to democratic slogans, shading of the strategy of the general strike, first inclusion of the demand for a republic. But this was not accompanied by a self criticism of the past nor an explicit denunciation of the IMT’s policy, which arouses the suspicion that what is involved is tailing after the Spanish ultras, who are “republican.” Thus it is that the Spanish comrades find themselves without clear axes corresponding to the political situation. Lacking characterizations and a concrete program, the comrades are dragged along by events that are developing with increasing speed. The IMT is now trying to cover up the loss of this great historic opportunity by pointing to their growth. The Stalinists carried out the same maneuver in their time when they covered up great political failures by pointing to the quanti-tative growth of their parties or their electoral showing. Moreover, what the IMT should explain is the reason why this growth has been completely insufficient to modify the lack of weight and political presence of Trotskyism in the Spanish state.
All the groups of the left in Spain are growing as one more consequence of the upsurge of the mass movement. The Majority, like the LTF, is no exception. This affirmation might seem to deny what we said above, that the Majority has come into contradiction with every sharp revolutionary crisis (Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Portugal). That is not so, since it is necessary to distinguish between a revolutionary process or crisis and an upsurge of the mass movement. In Spain we have not yet undergone a genuine, sharp, revolutionary crisis, nor has one begun. To the contrary, what we are witnessing is an extraordinary upsurge of the masses that has not yet succeeded in overturning the post Francoist regime, which should certainly transform the upsurge into a revolutionary crisis. The IMT in Spain will continue to grow like every group of the left. But if in the next years, when the upsurge enters its most critical phases, it continues to apply the present workerist and councilist line oriented toward the vanguard and the centrists in place of a correct Trotskyist policy, it will meet disaster.
The Spanish comrades still have time to change this orientation, thus saving what they can from so many years of strenuous and honest, but mistaken, work, and begin to lay the basis for a genuinely Trotskyist Spanish section.
The IMT’s Total Failure in Portugal
We have to record that from the beginning a big majority of the Portuguese Trotskyists joined the IMT except for a small group of high school students, a dozen approximately, who lined up with the LTF belatedly. Nothing demonstrates more conclusively what we have been saying than the following: approximately a year after April 25, 1974, the pro Majority group was still publishing clandestine journals. In October 1973—six months before the beginning of the revolution—the same group published four different journals. In November 1973 they published the first number of Luta Proletaria, the official organ of the majority group. As against this, the first number of Combate Socialista, the organ of the PRT, which sympathized with the LTF, was published as recently as December 1974. The factions started off with a numerical difference of twenty or thirty to one in favor of the IMT. We will not take up a qualitative comparison—prestige, level in which the difference was much greater.
The time has come for our whole membership to ask the IMT what progress has been made in building the Trotskyist section led by them. They should tell us how many members they had at the end of 1975 and how many they have today. We urge them to say what the whole international knows: the supporters of the Majority are mired in a chronic crisis, with splits, sabotage of activities, bitter factional struggles, which has led to the collapse of the LCI aligned with the Majority. The splitters, when they have not abandoned all activity, have joined organizations that are enemies of the Fourth International. The membership of the international as a whole cannot permit the US to wash its hands of all responsibility for the disaster suffered by the LCI—as it did with the sections of Argentina and Bolivia in their time—for no other reason than the LCI’s applying the orientation of the IMT in what it said and what it did. Once again the revolutionary upsurge did not serve the Majority as a colossal lever to multiply and strengthen itself; to the contrary, the upsurge promoted its increasing bankruptcy.
This could not be otherwise, since the IMT clung stubbornly to its schema of directing work toward the ultraleftists (“new mass vanguard”), instead of orienting toward the mass movement and, in particular, toward the Socialist party majority movement. It was not capable, consequently, of taking into account the degree of radicalization and of class consciousness of these workers, linking up firmly with them and elaborating a tactic to mobilize them and bring them to break with their treacherous leadership. They did not even pose this problem—which is fundamental in the Portuguese revolution—since they were occupied with gaining unity of action with the Maoists, the centrists, and the progressive military figures of the MFA (the Portuguese expression of the “new mass vanguard”).
The Majority of the international, in bending itself into the tail end of the “new mass vanguard,” played along with the various maneuvers cooked up to delude and divide the Portuguese proletariat, as when it went along with the adventures of the FUR and contributed to sowing illusions among its own activists in the “revolutionary” officers of the MFA. The IMT did well in criticizing the FUR, but it forgot to acknowledge by way of self criticism that the Portuguese LCI did nothing else than carry out to its ultimate consequences the line formulated by the Majority of the international itself.
With regard to the regime, the IMT went way off base. During one stage of the revolution, the IMT refused to qualify the MFA and its government as the main enemy of the Portuguese proletariat, at the same time the IMT treated the embryos of dual power in a formalistic way by calling for them without simultaneously raising those democratic and transitional slogans that took into account the aspirations of the masses, principally the Socialists. The strengthening of workers democracy and the organs of the class was seen by the IMT as incompatible with the defense of bourgeois democratic rights. The lack of understanding of the role played by democratic struggles led the IMT into committing such errors as tail ending the Portuguese CP in the case of the daily Republica and of the Constituent Assembly and of ignoring the agrarian question in the north of the country, interpreting the role of the small peasants in this zone as solely that of supporting the counterrevolution.
The Majority characterized Soares as “public enemy No. 1” of the revolution, thereby losing any possibility of a dialogue with approximately 70 percent of the workers, and, to cap it off, the IMT presented him the gift of not disputing his role as “defender of democracy” against the marked Bonapartist tendencies displayed by the MFA, especially under the Vasco Goncalves regime.
For us, the current discussion in the French League and in the United Secretariat on the presidential elections in Portugal is only of tactical significance. Whoever limps after Otelo, claiming that he is a “nonbourgeois” candidate voicing the radicalization of the rank and file workers, without acknowledging that because of his populist, petty bourgeois, Bonapartist character and because of his independence from the workers movement he is an agent of the counterrevolutionary plans of the MFA and the bourgeoisie, is doing nothing more than being consistent with the tradition of the IMT, an ultraleft tradition with opportunist lapses, with an additional catch: that they publicly advanced this position when a “majority” group, the LCI, was orienting correctly toward supporting a working class candidate like Pato. In the same way it is not accidental that the IMT saw only the reactionary victory of Eanes and the SP in the results of the November 25 putsch. They refused to see the other face of the same phenomenon: the provocative role of the “new mass vanguard,” which was the protagonist, together with the CP, of the ultraleft putsch that the reaction utilized for a counterattack and initiation of its offensive against the mass movement.
The consequence of all these accumulated errors could not be anything but loss of a historic opportunity to build a great Trotskyist party rooted in the masses.
Capitulation to the Angolan MPLA
In accompaniment with its capitulation to the “progressive officers” of the MFA in Portugal, the IMT capitulated in a no less negative and opportunist way to the Angolan MPLA. The motivation was the same: orienting toward and tail ending the European and Portuguese ultraleft, which in turn was tagging behind Lusitanian Stalinism.
So long as the main enemy of the Angolan people continued to be Portuguese imperialism, and our program consequently had to bring all the nationalist movements together in a united front that would end up by expelling it, the IMT supported the MPLA in a fratricidal war that pitted it against the other two Black nationalist moveinents, mistakenly maintaining in unison with the MPLA that the main enemy was the FNLA UNITA.
That is why the IMT was incapable of denouncing the MPLA for the negotiations it conducted with the occupying Portuguese army to combat the FNLA and the UNITA. Leaders of the IMT raised the slogan that the Portuguese army, upon withdrawing, should turn its arms over to the MPLA, a position that denied the people of Angola the right to resolve their fate through a constituent assembly and free and democratic elections. Thus in Inprecor, Comrade Gabriel attacked the soldiers who refused to go to Angola to fight, saying: “And refusal to go to Angola directed ‘against imperialism and social imperialism obviously amounts to refusal to support the MPLA, which is implicitly designated as the ‘agent of Moscow.’ This position was also advanced by the LCI in Portugal at the time of the mobilizations of soldiers who refused to embark for Angola. The pronouncement of the IMT in favor of the MPLA against the FNLA UNITA signified a grave abandonment of the traditional policy of Lenin and the Third International, a policy that in this situation could have no other interpretation than to make an unflagging appeal to the Black movement as a whole to unite in a single, united, anti-imperialist front against Portuguese colonialists.
Later, beginning with September 1975 when the main enemy of the Angolan people was no longer Portuguese imperialism but American imperialism and its agent, the racist government of South Africa, the false position of the IMT was filled with a new content, since the FNLA and the UNITA became converted into allies of the new invaders. From that moment on, its position of giving military and not political support to the MPLA became correct, since the latter was the movement that was struggling arms in hand to defend Angola against the military colonialist front of the U.S., the South African government and army, and the FNLA UNITA.
But, as we shall see when we criticize the position of the SWP and the LTF in this stage of the Angola revolution, the lack of understanding of the policy of a united anti-imperialist front of the Black African and world masses led both tendencies to a false position with regard to the Black revolution as a whole.
V. The IMT’s Draft Theses for Europe, and the ‘Portuguese Laboratory’
The ‘Portuguese Laboratory’ and the Spanish One
The IMT’s draft theses offer a felicitous image in saying that the Portuguese revolution has been a laboratory. Actually, we think that Portugal has anticipated many of the essential features that the other European countries will have to adopt. Nevertheless, our agreement with the IMT begins and ends with the word “laboratory.”
According to the IMT, the Portuguese process “ . . . has been characterized by the spectacular weakening of the bourgeois state apparatus, the crisis of leadership of the bourgeoisie, the explosive character of class contradictions and antagonisms, the beginning of decomposition of the bourgeois army, tumultuous initiatives of the masses around the questions of workers control and factory occupations, and the emergence of bodies of self-representation of the masses of workers, poor peasants, and soldiers. All these factors . . . dominated the Portuguese scene . . . .” (“Draft Theses . . .” p. 4.)
This summary is no more than a joke in bad taste, since it describes, point by point, any revolutionary crisis in any country in the world, before or after the Portuguese revolution, while with regard to the latter, it stands in an Olympian way above characterizing it in specific terms. Thus it ignores the determining feature of the Portuguese process: its close relation with the anti-colonial war in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau; an omission so scandalous that, rather than being due to an oversight, it appears to be the result of pure imperialist prejudices, and involves nothing more nor less than a slap in the face to the Black anti-Portuguese fighters.
And this is not the only grave oversight, it does not mention the fundamental importance in the Portuguese process of democratic demands and tasks, such as the Constituent Assembly and liquidating the repressive apparatus, and the conquest and defense of bourgeois-democratic rights, especially with regard to the development of workers power.
This oversight is closely linked to another one: the IMT does not compare the courses followed by the revolutions in Portugal and Spain. From the description provided in the document, up to now the characteristic of the Spanish revolutionary crisis that stands out is its bourgeois-democratic trajectory.
Does this signify that the Portuguese and Spanish revolutions have followed diametrically opposite courses, or, as we think, quite comparable courses?
Other characteristics of fundamental importance in the Portuguese revolution likewise forgotten by the IMTare:
a. The appearance in Portugal of popular front governments that serve the bourgeoisie as reactionary weapons,
and the counterrevolutionary coups.
b. The decisive role played by the united front of the Communist and Socialist workers and their respective parties in the big leaps forward of the Portuguese revolution (April 25, 1974, and the two replies to Spfnola’s coups).
c. The strong growth in membership of the reformist parties as a product of the upsurge of the workers and the masses.
d. The counterrevolutionary role played by the Communist party, which served as an agent of the military governments of the MFA that tended toward Bonapartism; and the similar role of the Socialist party as an agent of the bourgeois democratic counterrevolution.
e. The provocative and ill fated performance of the “new mass vanguard,” especially in the November 25 putsch.
What these characteristics show as a whole not only contradicts the forecasts made by the IMT in their document for the Tenth World Congress, but in addition, and this is the worst, it openly refutes the analysis now offered for the Eleventh Congress. In the “Portuguese laboratory,” the historic development demonstrates irrefutably the bankruptcy of the analyses and policies of the IMT. The same is happening in Spain.
Changing Something So That Everything Remains the Same
A series of modifications were made in the draft of the document on Europe for the Eleventh Congress that the IMT presented initially to the United Secretariat, so that the definitive document that was finally adopted differs from the draft. Two of these changes are significant, and, consequently, it is instructive to underline them.
The first draft reverted back to stressing the same policy as the one voted for at the Tenth Congress when it spoke for “ ... the corollary of this central political project, namely the struggle for Marxist political hegemony within the broad vanguard . . .”
This “corollary” was eliminated in the final document, which is apparently an advance, but which is so in name only when all that is done is to merely erase a paragraph. It is indispensable, in addition, to draw up a balance sheet, placing before the entire Fourth International the results gained from having adopted at the Tenth Congress the central line of winning political hegemony in the “broad vanguard,” the successes that this orientation brought us, the number of our European sections that have actually succeeded in winning political leadership of the “broad vanguard,” the strengthening and the drive the Trotskyists have succeeded in gaining in sectors of the masses. If this balance sheet turns out to be negative, it is necessary to declare openly that the orientation voted for at the Tenth Congress was incorrect.
The other important change in the final draft is the addition of a whole subchapter dedicated to the possible formation of popular fronts, a topic that was totally ignored in the original. Likewise another new paragraph was added referring to the feminist movement.
Despite these changes, the new draft, analyzed as a whole, still carries the whole cargo of previous deviations. The apparent change results from the evolution of the ultraleft “vanguard” itself, which has been crystallizing into centrist formations. This obliges the IMT to orient directly toward the centrists, that is, toward the “new vanguard” in its present condition, abandoning the ultraleft organizations. If the IMT at the Tenth Congress oriented toward the ultra-leftist “broad vanguard,” for the Eleventh it is thinking of bending toward the centrists.
Save for this formal difference, the IMT is repeating for the Eleventh Congress the policy of councilism and of the abstract development of organs of power that it posed for the Tenth Congress, and is reverting to outlining a workerist program, with some modifications of importance in relation to the former. In sum, the current position of the IMT is characterized by a centrist orientation, an organizational policy for the organs of workers and popular power, and a workerist program.
An Orientation Toward Centrism Accompanying the ‘Evolution’ of the ‘Broad Vanguard’
After four years of failure in the attempt to win political leadership of the ultra-leftist “broad vanguard,” especially the Maoists, the IMT decided to “abandon” them to their fate. But, unfortunately, not for the preferable orientation toward the broad reformist masses and the oppressed nationalities, but to search for a new sector of the ultra “broad vanguard” with which to construct Trotskyist parties. The new companions of the IMT in this stretch of the road are the centrists.
The IMT affirms the existence of advanced social currents that have broken with Stalinism, and later with “Mao populism,” and that “In spite of an incontestable propensity toward centrism . . . can make an important contribution to the building of the revolutionary Marxist party.” (Ibid., p. 26.) Elsewhere the document clearly indicates that the political expression of these currents is organizations like Lotta Continua and the French PSU among others.
We disagree with this characterization of the evolution of the ultra-leftist “broad vanguard.” It is true that this sector took a progressive step in breaking with Stalinism and reformism, although it moved away from the latter only on very rare occasions. But this progressive period of moving toward us was notably brief and gave way to a process of degeneration that went through an ultra-leftist and then centrist stage. Save for the experiences in France and partially Spain, our international missed the opportunity to win these sectors to Trotskyism when they were ripe for it. Still worse: by capitulating politically to them, the IMT hastened their degeneration. Today’ far from a dynamic bringing them toward our positions’ they are moving further and further away from Trotskyism: they are crystallized centrist organizations orienting toward reformism, mainly its Stalinist variant.
Ignoring this reality with regard to the European centrist organizations, the IMT is not only directing itself to them but is posing a policy of common actions and programmatic debates, which it believes “could lead, at least in some cases, to the possibility of regroupments and fusions on the basis of the revolutionary Marxist program.” (Ibid., p. 22.)
Comrade Mandel, main theoretician of the IMT and editor of the European. document, goes still further in the same direction. In an interview conceded to the Spanish magazine El Viejo Topo [The Old Mole] (Barcelona, November, 1976, No. 2, pp. 5 9), Mandel upholds the following:
“In my opinion, the future of the revolutionary mouement lies in a type of groupings broader than those that define themselves as Trotskyist. Groupings that are uniting, nonetheless, with sections of the Fourth International. What is of interest to us is a program (classical communism), a strategy (permanent revolution and transitional program) and a democratic organizational structure (freedom of tendencies and of discussion, acceptance of factions, rejection of democratic* centralism, no repression of internal discussion not even of some public discussion). If there is agreement on all this, I do not see any reason why some comrades who share these fundamental points cannot constitute together with us a national party and an international. I am very optimistic with respect to the future of this unification: in many countries it is already under way and I hope that it will soon be in Spain.” (Emphasis added.)
With these affirmations, Comrade Mandel is opening wide the doors, not to the building of strong sections of the Fourth International, but of new POUMs in Europe and the entire world. The characteristic of the POUM was precisely to “agree” with Trotskyism on all these general programmatic questions, but to differ with Trotsky and the genuine Spanish Trotskyists on the burning political questions of the momemt. Any attempt to base the construction of a revolutionary party on these general agreements, leaving aside the big concrete political questions, actually leads toward “a type of groupings
[*This is the way the text actually reads in the original. We believe that a mistake in the transcription is involved and that Mandel must have said “bureaucratic centralism.”]
broader than those that define themselves as Trotskyist”; that is, to centrism, to the POUM. To make things worse, Comrade Mandel informs us that this tragic perspective is not a mere scheme: to the contrary, “in many countries it is already under way.”
We categorically deny that our sections can be built on the basis of “regroupments and fusions” with crystallized centrist groups that are moving toward. reformism, like the European groups toward which the IMT and Comrade Mandel are directing themselves. We affirm that we must orient our work fundamentally toward the oppressed nationalities (including the immigrant workers). We hold that the revolutionary upsurge will cause strong, highly progressive, centrist currents to rise within these mass movements and organisms, and that these currents cannot be mixed up—as does the IMT—with the crystallized centrism of the “broad vanguard,” since they come under opposing signs: the degeneration of the latter, while the former follows an objective dynamic toward Trotskyism.
We maintain that the centrist currents that will rise in the mass organisms will be fundamental in transforming our European sections into parties with mass influence; that we must work on them, developing their orientation toward revolutionary positions. This work also passes through unifications and fusions’ but not on the basis of mere general agreements; we can unify with these currents even when they do not agree completely with our program, so long as they are in agreement with our policy for the mass movement at a determined moment in the class struggle. This policy is the opposite of that posed by the IMT and implies that we abandon the current centrist organizations to their fate. This does not mean that on certain occasions and for tactical reasons, we would not work on them to divide them and attract some of their sectors to our positions. But this tactic cannot be elevated into a strategy for building our parties.
In standing for this policy, our Bolshevik Tendency assumes the duty of alerting the entire international. The IMT has not changed; what has changed is the “new vanguard.” When it was ultraleftist, the IMT was ultraleftist; now that it is centrist in the majority, with strong opportunist tendencies and clear sympathy for the Stalinists, the IMT is beginning to take steps in that direction. We must stop them before they fall into the same cycle that, to the misfortune of the Spanish revolution, trapped ex Comrade Nin!
The Real Contradiction Is Not the Ultra and Centrist ‘Vanguard’ Versus Reformist Parties, But Trotskyism Against Reformism, Ultra-leftism, and Centrism
Although the IMT no longer speaks about working on the “broad vanguard” as a central task, it maintains, both in its analyses and in the policy it proposes for the construction of our parties, a vanguardist deviation that amounts to the same as the previous one or worse.
Thus it transforms the “new vanguard” or “far left” into a fundamental category that includes the Trotskyists, converting this category into a socio political factor of the first magnitude, and putting it into opposition to reformism. It is not uncommon to hear the leaders of the IMT say that the situation in Spain is magnificent because the entire ultraleft and the centrists (including us, the Trotskyists) make up 25 percent of the workers commissions, confronting the Stalinists. The entire IMT document is filled with references making the point that the fate of the workers movement and the European revolution will be determined by the outcome of this battle of the “new vanguard” and the “far left” (Trotskyists included) against the reformist mass parties and the union bureaucracy.
Thus the IMT contends that “the capacity of our sections . . . to initiate some exemplary struggles . . . will deeply influence the further march of the class struggle” (“Draft theses,” op. cit., p. 24.); that “The broad vanguard and above all the revolutionary Marxists” have the possibility of “reducing the desynchronization” of the upsurge “in different parts of capitalist Europe” (ibid., p. 29); that “the emergence of a broad workers vanguard and the progress in the construction of the revolutionary party” can “lead as far as significant splits” within the traditional parties (ibid., p. 17); that “the weakness of the mass vanguard” is one of the decisive factors making “the outbreak of a pre-revolutionary crisis . . . less likely.” (Ibid., p. 5) Comrade Mandel, as we will show further on, even asserts that the vanguard can succeed in making the policies of the French Communist party revolutionary.
For us, all the processes mentioned by the IMT are of an objective nature; consequently, they are not determined by our parties or by the “vanguard.” Until we wield mass influence, the effect of our “exemplary actions” in “the further march of the class struggle” will be infinitesimal or negative. For the same reason, neither the revolutionary Marxists nor the “broad vanguard” have any possibility of “reducing the desynchronization” of the upsurge in Europe. Neither will the “significant splits” in the reformist parties come about because of our actions and those of the ultra vanguard; they will result from great mobilizations, provoked by the objective situation, bringing the masses into conflict with their leaders. Finally, against the opinion of Comrade Mandel, we maintain that no factor exists, still less the weight of a vanguard, that could make the policies of French Stalinism revolutionary.
The IMT’s idealization of the new vanguard does not stop here. The IMT affirms that the “emergence” of the new vanguard “accentuates the modification of the relationship of forces between the traditional bureaucratic apparatuses and the far left organizations within the working class and the trade union organizations.” (Ibid., p. 2.)
This illusion of the IMT is not new; at the Tenth Congress they held that” . . . the process of radicalization is already for the most part unfolding outside the traditional organizations”; and the number of French workers “who see Social Democratic ministers as forces capable of overthrowing capitalism” is “even smaller” [than the number of British workers]. (“Draft Theses,”International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 5, November 1972, p.19)
The facts refute in the most absolute way these affirmations made at the Tenth Congress and the analysis that the IMT proposes for the Eleventh. The number of French workers who have confidence in the Social Democracy has grown enormously since the Tenth Congress up to now. The “process of radicalization “ is not “unfolding outside the traditional organizations,” but inversely: the radicalization, a product of the upsurge, has brought great masses into the traditional organizations. Nor is it true that the “relationship of forces between the traditional bureaucratic apparatuses and the far left organizations” is inclining in favor of the latter while the former remain static. The multitudinous upsurge, which brought thousands of workers to the ultraleft, moved millions toward the reformist parties.
Likewise false is the affirmation of the IMT that “the development of a new mass vanguard. . . has powerfully stimulated the rise of workers struggles.” (“Draft Theses,” op. cit., p.1) For us it is sufficient to point to the example of Portugal to demonstrate that the political role of the “new vanguard” or far left is not to “stimulate the workers struggles,” but to aid the bourgeoisie in defeating them. The “overpowering action” that the Portuguese “vanguard” carried out November 25—the most important of its “autonomous initiatives”—served only to fortify the bourgeois reaction. In contrast to what the IMT maintains, the upsurge in workers struggles, the revolutionary conquests and the embryos of workers and popular power were “stimulated” when the Socialist and Communist masses struggled together; on the other hand, they suffered heavy reverses when the “new mass vanguard” took the “initiative” on November 25, 1975, hoping to “overpower” on its own account.
As can be seen, for the IMT the “new vanguard” or “far left” (in which the Trotskyists are included) is a fundamental factor in all fields. Nothing is impossible for it: from synchronizing the revolution in all the countries of Europe up to provoking splits in the traditional parties, along with “stimulating” the struggles of the workers, creating organs of workers power, detonating pre-revolutionary situations, etc. From this the IMT deduces that Trotskyism is merely a sector of this “new mass vanguard,” historically allied to the “far left,” of which it forms a part, engaged, together with this “vanguard,” in struggling against the reformists.
We disagree absolutely with this analysis, which leaves out all class considerations. The two fundamental currents within the mass movement have to be seen as being either with the petty bourgeoisie or with the proletariat. These currents consist, on the one hand, of the reformists and ultras (centrists included) which, although they have a workers base, reflect in their politics the petty bourgeoisie in all its variants as agent of the bourgeoisie; on the other hand, us Trotskyists who constitute the politically consistent workers current. If the IMT have another class definition for the far left and the centrists, let them say so; it would provide a solid theoretical basis for a polemic between tendencies. The workers who break with reformism, if they are not won by us, fall for other, pro-bourgeois politics—that of the ultras and the centrists.
This has been the traditional Marxist analysis of ultra-leftism and centrism; it was the one made by Trotsky of the POUM and Spanish anarchism. Here we have to make clear that the analysis of ultra-leftism in the Third International made in Lenin’s time is not the same as the one we are making of the ultra-leftism to be seen in the Fourth, which does not represent pro-bourgeois currents.
Every ultra-leftist or centrist current is progressive at the time it breaks with reformism and orients rapidly toward Trotskyism. When this does not occur, and it becomes stabilized in ultra or centrist organizations (as has occurred in Europe), it is converted into our enemy, into another petty bourgeois political barrier, which interposes itself between us and the mass movement. As such it has to be dealt with politically, the same as the traditional reformists and bureaucrats.
A False Definition of the ‘New Vanguard’
For the IMT, the “new mass vanguard” is made up of worker and student fighters who have broken with reformism and enrolled, in almost all countries, in ultra-leftist and centrist organizations. (In counterposition to this, the old vanguard would thus be reformist.) Starting from this, the Majority mixes up all the terms and defines as “far left” this whole celebrated “vanguard,” including those belonging to centrist organizations; this in itself is already an error, because for Trotskyism there are precise differences between ultra-leftism and centrism.
The definition given by the IMT to the “new vanguard” fails from the beginning when it includes only those who have broken with Stalinism and the Social Democracy. Every struggle of the masses has a vanguard composed of rank and file leaders, whatever their political definition may be. Consequently, these leaders (the vanguard) of the struggles can be reformists, ultra-leftists, centrists, syndicalists, apolitical, nationalists, or Trotskyists. In France, for example, the vanguard of the great student struggles at the end of the sixties were Guevarist in the majority. In Spain in the last ten years, the vanguard of the mobilizations and of the organization of the workers commissions has been mainly the young Stalinist workers. Thus the “new vanguard” is the one leading the “new struggles” although it is not of the “far left” (as the IMT maintains); in the same way the “old” vanguard was the one that led the former struggles, although it was not reformist (as an example we can cite the “old” French student vanguard, which was guerrillaist).
The IMT mixes up the class struggle with the politics to which the sectors involved in it adhere. To lead a social struggle, to be the vanguard of a demonstration or of a strike, does not signify favoring a more intransigent class struggle on the political plane. Generally the contrary holds true. The rank and file leaders of the mobilizations ordinarily are politically in favor of class collaboration, as occurs with the Stalinist, Socialist, centrist, or ultra-leftist fighters. That was the case with the latter in Portugal: the Maoists, for example, stood for a “national front against the imperialists”; in the elections, the major part of the ultra groupings supported Saraiva de Carvalho, a bourgeois candidate.
They can be very combative, then, in social struggles and very opportunistic politically. There were none more combative than the Asturian miners in 1934; yet nothing was more reformist than their adherence to the Spanish Social Democracy. This is precisely the contradiction that we have to meet (and know how to take advantage of) in the struggles of the masses and in dealing with their vanguard. The IMT rejects seeing this contradiction and deduces that those most combative among the rank and file are also so in the political field when in reality this does not hold: the ultraleft is opportunistic in all the fundamental political questions.
As we have already seen, the Majority orient all their work toward this (supposedly) new ultra and centrist vanguard; they do not combat it politically as required nor abandon it to its fate, but seek unity with it, thus isolating themselves from the great reformist masses and, consequently, from the majority of the European workers vanguard. They choose as the favored place of work for our parties those sectors where the influence of this “new” vanguard is most pronounced.
Our tendency, contrariwise, holds that we Trotskyists must orient our work toward the great struggles of the mass movement, no matter what the political sign of its vanguard may be. The location of the ultra vanguard (which the IMT denominates as “new”) does not put any place of work in a more favored position. Where great mass struggles explode or are on the point of exploding), we Trotskyists must intervene with all of our forces and our program of mobilization, whether the vanguard is Stalinist or Social Democratic. In the trade union field, we cannot give preference to the places where the ultra or centrist “vanguard” may be the strongest; preference must be given to the factories or branches of industry that are in battle (or are moving toward it), even if the vanguard is Catholic.
On the political plane, we will do the same: we will try to intervene in the great political struggles that drag along the reformist masses; not in the “overpowering” minority “initiatives” of the ultras and centrists. For example, in face of the danger of a coup d’etat against a popular front government, our work will center on the reformist masses in order to convince them that they should unite, mobilize, and arm themselves against this danger. We will not waste time with the “far left” or the centrists.
Within this trade union or political work, we will do everything possible to recruit to our parties the currents and leaders of these mass mobilizations (that is, the real vanguard of the struggles occurring at the moment). To accomplish this, we will combat the reformist, centrist, or ultra orientation of the parties to which this vanguard may belong, demonstrating in practice that their policies are disastrous for the development of these struggles of the workers and the masses.
For the Bolshevik Tendency, the party is not built by confronting reformism only, in alliance with a supposed ultra or centrist “new vanguard”; on the contrary, we will construct the party, battling, as Lenin said, against two enemies: reformism and the “far left.”
A ‘Councilist,’ Organizational Policy Separated From the Genuine Struggles of the Masses
The IMT’s draft theses for the Eleventh Congress carries further the organizational deviation of the Tenth Congress with regard to the organs of workers power when it maintains that to develop these organisms “the revolutionary Marxists . . . will successively emphasize” five tasks, all of an organizational character, in order to “move toward the exercise of functions of power” that “contest the power of the bourgeois state.” (Op. cit., pp. 8 9. Emphasis added.) This organizational character of the IMT’s conception is aggravated by maintaining that “the masses may create structures of self organization that progressively exercise the functions of power,” and by affirming that in Portugal “the emergence of a situation of dual power . . . came about progressiuely.” (Ibid. pp. 8 9. Emphasis added.)
We disagree with both aspects of the formulation: for us a “succession” of organizational tasks for the construction of organs of workers power does not exist; and these organs do not develop or exercise functions of power “progressively.”
The sample book of organizational generalities that the IMT presents us has no relation with the concrete situations that the movement of the workers and the masses are experiencing in Europe. It is useless for formulating policies in meeting the millions of workers, who, in voting for the CP in Italy or for the Union of the Left in France, create the conditions, not for realizing these “progressive” dreams about the organs of workers power, but for setting up popular front governments.
Nor does it correspond with the reality in Portugal and Spain, where organisms of this type have arisen or have tended to arise. In these countries, the development of the autonomous organizations of the movement of the workers and the masses—committees of workers, tenants, and soldiers in Portugal, and workers commissions in Spainhave not occurred through “successive” “extension” of organizational tasks, but, to the contrary, have developed, in the case or Portugal, in close linkage with the great democratic mobilizations and with the united front of the Socialist and Communist workers and their parties against Caetàno and Spinola, and, in the Spanish case, indissolubly linked to the massive economic and democratic struggles against Franco and the post Francoist dictatorship. By ignoring these facts, the IMT presents us with an evolutionary and organizational type of development of power separated from the great struggles of the masses.
Consequently, we are against our policy being that of getting the organs of workers power to undertake a series of organizational tasks in a fixed sequence. We Trotskyists must contribute to their development and extension by proposing that they undertake strictly those tasks that arise from the changing objective situation, that is, the political, economic, and organizational tasks that the masses are mobilizing for or are ready to mobilize for.
Nor do we agree with the affirmation of the IMT that the organs of workers power were progressively installed in Portugal, that they will become installed in the same way in Europe as a whole, and that they will progressively exercise functions of power. It is not permissible to speak of “progressive installation” of these organs, the most sensitive to ups and downs. These ups and downs have always been, and always will be, convulsive, and as a result the organs of power follow the same course, “installing” themselves or suffering heavy defeats in accordance with the outcome of the political confrontation between the classes.
In Portugal, the organs of workers power, which did not exist before the downfall of Caetano, arose in the following stage, disappeared almost completely during the Spinolist phase, arose again with greater force after Spinola’s attempts at a coup, and fell again palpably after the reactionary victory of November 25, 1975. Their “installation” then, was not “progressive” but convulsive, as it will likewise be in the rest of Europe.
We do not believe, finally, that it is true that organs of workers power will “progressively” exercise functions of power, that is, will tear more and more power away from the bourgeoisie until it completely appropriates it. The experience of the sole triumphant soviet revolution and that of the defeats has shown just the contrary: the organs of power undergo a series of oscillations in the period of dual power that culminates either by placing the whole power in their hands or in liquidating them with a counterrevoluton.
There is a final aspect of the reality that goes against the possibility of a “progressive” development of the organs of workers power. The IMT points this out correctly when it speaks of the ferocious opposition of the reformist parties to these embryos of workers and mass power, and when it succeeds in understanding that the ultraleft, with its criminally sectarian policies, always tries to transform them into collateral for its organizations, thus contributing to their rapid degeneration.
Nevertheless, the Majority does not draw a consistent political conclusion: that the defense and development of the organisms of workers power depends on the political battle waged by the Trotskyists against the reformist and ultraleft parties. That is, that the fate of these organisms depends not only on the results of the mass struggle, but also on the advances of the Trotskyists in the process of ridding the workers movement of the petty bourgeois currents: both the reformists and the ultralefts.
The action of these sworn enemies of genuine workers power and the weakness of the Trotskyists explain the embryonic, veiled, spasmodic character that workers power took in Portugal; these realities imply that no possibility exists for the “progressive” development of such organs of workers power; and they foreshadow a similar process at this stage in any country in Europe.
Nothing demonstrates this better than the current state of the Spanish workers commissions as organs with certain presoviet characteristics. They have had a tumultuous development because of the upsurge in the mass movement and the support given them by the Communist party. However, right now, when the course of the class struggle opens better perspectives than ever for them, the workers commissions are undergoing a critical relapse as a result of the criminal policies of the Communist Party, which is tending to transform them into trade union organisms. Their development is not “progressive,” but convulsive; with very pronounced steps backward provoked by the retrocessions of the workers movement or by the policies of the reformist parties.
A Workerist Program
With the eclecticism that characterizes it, the IMT falls into the same contradiction that it presented in its document for the Tenth: the deviation in the program is different from that in the text. For the Tenth Congress, the whole document was vanguardist and sovietist, while the program turned around economic and workers control demands. Now we are faced with a vanguardist and councilist text, which is followed by a program that does not say a single word about the vanguard or the organs of workers power, and that presents instead a workerist deviation.
The IMT’s “immediate action program” for Europe consists of nine points: (a) defense of the standard of living; (b) the “right of the trade unions to freely negotiate wages” without any parliamentary obstacle, and the “right to strike”; (c) a “freeze on the prices”; (d) “against unemployment”; (e) “against any attack on the rights that have been won in the realm of social security,” social services, pensions, etc.; (f) “against any discrimination against immigrant workers” and “for complete equality . . . for immigrant workers, with respect for their national specificities”; (g) the “nationalization” of all the big capitalist firms and their “management under workers control”; (h) “for the elaboration by the workers organizations of an emergency economic plan” that “must be centered on satisfying the priority needs of the masses.” (Ibid., pp. 18 19.)
Of these eight points, the first five are minimum ones, although some of them are combined with workers control. The latter slogan, which appeared as the axis of the program at the Tenth Congress, has now been reduced to second place without any explanation.
After all these economic and defensive tasks, the program poses, as its ninth and last point (1) the only political task, and this is neither more nor less than the “establishment of a workers government, the only government capable of implementing such a program.” This government must “immediately proclaim the independence of all colonial territories still ruled by the bourgeoisie” and “convoke a great European congress of labor to defeat all attempts at economic blockade by the international bourgeoisie and draw up before the world proletariat and the semicolonial peoples a project for the creation of the Socialist United States of Europe and the World.” (Ibid., p. 19.)
This program, typically workerist, nine tenths defensive, throws maximum tasks into the political arena, such as establishing a workers government, and delirious ones like proposing as a task for “immediate action” following the Eleventh Congress the convocation of a great “congress of labor” against the “economic blockade” by imperialism against the first workers state in Western Europe, a “congress of labor” to propose “the Socialist United States of Europe and the World.” We agree that our slogan for power must figure in every program, but what sense is there in posing in terms of “immediate action” a congress of labor to combat an imagined economic blockade against a hypothetical Western European workers state, when neither one nor the other exist, and there are no real immediate possibilities that they will exist?
The other face of this maximalism in the political slogans is the total absence of any that could actually serve for “immediate action” for the European workers and masses. It would appear that for the IMT the workers and masses have no political tasks until they succeed in establishing a “workers government,” and they must limit themselves to defensive economic struggles, combined with workers control, without intervening in politics until the eve of taking power.
As consolation for being left so helpless politically, we are told that when the program is finalized, it “must also contain a section devoted to demands concerning the major allies of the working class (youth, salaried petty bourgeoisie, peasant toilers,etc.) which we will not formulate here because the national situations are too diverse.” (Ibid., p. 19.) The same reference is applied to our intervention in the women’s liberation movement. However, these chapters, although they are necessary, do not fill the abyss left open between the first eight workerist points and the ninth, political but maximalist point, of the “program for immediate action.”
This absence of democratic and transitional political slogans characterizes not only the IMT’s program for Europe, but also the meaning of the policies of this tendency as a whole.
Not a Single Democratic Task
Blind to the Portuguese experience and what they themselves say about Spain, the IMT does not pose a single bourgeois democratic task in their program for immediate action in Europe, thus refusing to recognize the enormous importance of these tasks. The sole exception is in reference to trade union tasks, such as the right to strike.
The IMT ignores the two basic factors that give the bourgeois democratic tasks such an important place in the European revolutionary processes. One of these is the reformist education absorbed by the European working class during the past forty years, beginning with the popular fronts, which has impregnated it with a bourgeois-democratic conception that must indispensably be taken into fundamental account to mobilize it in an immediate way.
The other factor is the totalitarian tendency of contemporary imperialism. The resistance of the workers and the people to the Bonapartist tendencies, although correct, reinforces the development of the bourgeois democratic consciousness within the movement of the workers and the masses.
The enormous objective weight of these phenomena explains the predominant importance of these bourgeois-democratic tasks and demands in this period of the European upsurge, not only in the countries that have experienced fascist or Bonapartist regimes, but on the continent as a whole. Likewise it explains the leaps and bounds in the growth of the reformist parties as the first political product of this upsurge of workers and masses imbued with a democratic consciousness.
In addition to what we have pointed out in relation to the bourgeois democratic tasks in Portugal and Spain, it is worth adding, only as some examples, the following: the mobilizations of women for democratic objectives like the right to abortion and divorce, the bourgeois democratic struggles of the oppressed European nationalities, the battles of the Greek workers and people for bourgeois democracy, the democratic demands raised by the French soldiers, the beginning of resistance by the West German workers against the repressive laws of the bourgeois government, and a thousand other examples.
The IMT indicates some democratic tasks in their document (such as a constituent assembly), but do not specify that in this first period of the European upsurge the democratic tasks, together with the economic tasks, will be the driving force of the immediate mobilization of the masses.
We have disagreed with the LTF because from an established fact—the bourgeois democratic consciousness of the Portuguese masses—they have drawn a mistaken strategic and programmatic conclusion: that the Trotskyist program must center its axis on democratic demands and tasks. For us Trotskyists, the democratic demands are only “incidental and episodic,” and cannot be the backbone of our program. But the validity of this affirmation not only does not deny, but on the contrary, necessarily implies that we are able to recognize the current enormous importance of these demands that take into account both the reformist, bourgeois democratic consciousness of the European proletariat and the necessity of mounting resistance to the Bonapartist tendencies of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The IMT, in ignoring them, commits an error symmetrical to that of the LTF, and makes abstract and propagandistic its apparently correct program and its strategy for developing workers power.
A Policy and a Program That Stand Mute in Face of the New European Vietnam: the Basque Country
The program, and in general the whole IMT draft for Europe, falls into the same errors as the draft for the Tenth Congress. In the first place, they forget to underline the intimate relation between the anti-bureaucratic political revolution in the East and the socialist revolution in the West, which in the case of the German revolution is of immediate importance, since only the combination of both revolutions will be able to solve the problem of unifying this country.
In the second place, they ignore the imperialist character of Western Europe. The document for the Eleventh Congress deepens this error still further; in the one for the Tenth Congress they at least said it was necessary to “organize international propaganda around the themes of solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles” (“Theses on Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe,” Intercontinental Press, op. cit., p. 1828); today, the workerism of the IMT has brought it to not listing any anti-imperialist task in its program of action, and to omit from the list of “major allies of the working class” the anti-colonial revolutionists, like the Blacks of southern Africa and the fighters of the oppressed nationalities in Europe, beginning with the Basques and continuing with the Catalans and the Irish.
In fact, the only anti-imperialist task that is posed is relegated to the Greek calends, when the workers take power, since the IMT mentions the colonial problem only in saying that the “workers government” must “immediately proclaim the independence of all colonial territories.” Within this position is a paternalistic attitude toward the colonial and semicolonial peoples, who have never waited for the workers to take power in the country that dominates them before launching a struggle for their own liberation—as was seen most recently in the case of the Portuguese colonies—even gaining victory as in China, Cuba, and Vietnam. This error of the IMT is aggravated by their not mentioning the revolutionary Blacks of southern Africa, as if their struggle had nothing to do with the European revolution.
Even worse is the criminal silence around the struggles of the Basque country; this alone is sufficient to annul the whole document, since the struggle of the Basque people for their national independence from Spanish imperialism stands in the vanguard of the revolution in the continent: it is the current Vietnam of European imperialism. And will the Spanish LCR, adhering to the IMT, make their rank and file vote at the next World Congress for this document that does not contain as the basic programmatic axis of the European revolution support to the struggle of the Basque people? It would be a servile vote having nothing to do with the action and the experience of the Spanish Trotskyists.
For the proletariat, for our European parties’ and for “immediate action” it is a fundamental task to support the present. anti-imperialist struggles of the oppressed European nationalities and the colonial peoples subjugated by European imperialism. We must demand, in support of the
Black revolutionists, that all political, military, and economic interference by European imperialism in southern Africa be terminated. We must give top priority to the demand for self determination of the Basque country, and together with this, that of the Catalans and the Irish. We must call on the European proletariat to struggle themselves for these demands against the imperialist bourgeoisie of their own countries; and not suggest to them that they wait patiently until a “workers government” proclaims “the independence of all colonial territories.”
Against the IMT, our Bolshevik Tendency raises, as the fundamental, decisive political task for immediate action by the European Trotskyists, propagandizing and supporting the just revolutionary struggle of the Basque people against Spanish imperialism, and of the Black revolutionists of Africa against European and world imperialism.
Forgetting the Federation of Iberian Socialist Republics
Portugal is the only European country that has gone through a revolutionary crisis and that continues to be the center of the European revolution. The IMT acknowledges this tacitly but contradicts it when it concludes in an equivocal way that it is Spain, and not Portugal’ where the “center of gravity of the revolutionary process” passes. (Ibid., p. 5.) This contradiction originates in the desire of the IMT to minimize the importance of the Portuguese revolution so as not to be obliged to acknowledge the failure of its analyses and its policies in face of the only European workers revolution in the past four decades.
Despite this minimizing of the Portuguese revolution, the IMT coilld not do less than recognize its “interrelation” with the Spanish revolution. But the IMT stopped there and abstained from outlining an immediate policy for the Spanish and Portuguese Trotskyists based on this “interrelation.” Paradoxically, the IMT, which has a policy for a future government of the workers in any country in Europe, does not succeed in supplying itself with a policy and a slogan for immediate action that would organically and politically deepen the linkage between the two revolutions shaking the Iberian peninsula.
As Trotskyists we are in favor of the right of the Basque, Galician, and Catalan nationalities, oppressed by Spanish imperialism, to national self determination, but we also aspire to uniting, politically and economically, all the peoples against fragmentation of the peninsula into a mosaic of new states. That is why our Bolshevik Tendency raises the banner of “federation of Iberian socialist republics,” as the current, immediate slogan to be agitated for by our Iberian and European parties. This is the correct transitional slogan that combines the two contradictory tendencies—that of the unity of the Spanish and Portuguese workers revolutions and that of the bourgeois-democratic struggles for national self determination. It is the slogan that permits the bourgeois democratic struggles of the oppressed nationalities of the Spanish state to be integrated into the processes of the workers revolution. With this slogan, the Bolshevik Tendency calls for a united mobilization of the workers of the Iberian peninsula and the Basque, Catalan, and Galician peoples against the imperialist Portuguese, Spanish, and European bourgeoisie in general.
The Role of Popular Fronts and Reactionary Coups
In their European draft, the IMT refuse to point out that the Portuguese experience confirms one of the cardinal analyses of Trotskyism: in a pre-revolutionary or directly revolutionary situation’ the two main instruments of the bourgeois counterrevolution are popular front governments and reactionary coups. On the one hand, they do not characterize the governments that have appeared in succession in Portugal as popular front governments. On the other hand, they do not indicate how the popular front governments place themselves at the service of the bourgeois counterrevolution’ dissolving this definition in a series of very dangerous tactical considerations on how to confront this type of government.
In accordance with this line, the IMT do not specify that governments of the Union of the Left type in France, in which the shadow of the bourgeoisie is projected, have a popular front character, but dedicate themselves to making distinctions between class collaborationist governments in which a “substantial” bourgeois party participates and those in which this does not occur. The IMT do not give the categorically imperative definition specifically establishing that governments in which bourgeois and workers parties participate in periods of a strong upsurge are popular front governments and thereby agents of the counterrevolution, independently of how “substantial” the participating bourgeois sector may be.
The absence of this definition is complementary to the systematic omission of the characterization of these governments as imperialist. The IMT forgets that the popular front governments are not only agents of class collaborationism at times of sharp class confrontations but in addition have an imperialist aspect permeating them to the marrow and leading them to fight tooth and nail in defense of exploitation of the colonies and semi-colonies of their own imperialism.
The resolution predicts future class collaborationist governments in Spain, France, and Italy; the resolution responds equivocally to this threat, proposing, on the basis of the two great oversights noted above, a dangerously ambiguous strategy. Thus the resolution says that it is not necessary to “formally counterpoise these organs” of workers power to a reformist or popular front “government” “but counterpoise them to the bourgeois state, to the economic and political power of the bourgeoisie.” (Ibid., p. 14.)
It is obvious to us that this consideration seeks to justify the opportunistic policies of the IMT in Portugal, which in place of centering an attack against the bourgeois, popular front government of the MFA when Vasco Goncalves was in power, oriented against the bourgeois parties and the SP. It is an anarchist conception, since it is limited to attacking the state and the bourgeoisie’ abstaining from confronting its political representation, the government on duty for the time being.
Against what the IMT says’ our strategy of destroying the bourgeois state passes inexorably through denouncing and defeating the popular front, imperialist’ and counterrevolutionary governments that reign in turn, getting the working class to confront them by means of its organs of power until it overturns them. The workers revolution is not—as the anarchists believe—solely an economic revoluition against the bourgeoisie, and a social revolution against the bourgeois state, but it begins and is mediated by a fundamental political revolution against the government that heads this state. Every revolution must be propagandized for and prepared; this means that when a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary stage opens, the campaign against the bourgeois government—whether it is popular frontist, Bonapartist, or democratic—must be stronger than ever, thus paving the way for its overthrow.
This strategy also proceeds through a determined frontal attack against the reformist parties, which, taking part in the popular fronts, play the role of agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie, betraying the workers movement and exploiting the colonies and oppressed nationalities. It proceeds, finally, through taking advantage of the dual situation of these governments, which, although they are imperialist, are too weak and unstable to defend themselves in due form from the offensive of the nationalist movements. Thereby they facilitate the strengthening of their nationalist contenders, a circumstance that we must succeed in utilizing to support the struggles against French’ Italian, Spanish, and British imperialism.
But what tends to be opportunism in the strategy of the IMT in face of the popular front governments, is taken over the brink by councilist ultra-leftism in the terrain of tactics. The IMT correctly points out that there will be reactionary coups, and says that it is necessary to struggle against them, “counterposing” the organs of workers power “to bourgeois conspiracies against such governments” of a reformist or popular front type. And if these organs of workers power do not exist or are too weak as in Portugal? Would not a more adequate slogan be for a united front of the reformist parties to confront the danger of a reactionary coup? Would it not be precisely, as occurred in Portugal and in reverse to the reasoning of the IMT, the mobilization of the Socialist and Communist workers against the reactionary coup that would create the conditions for the development of the organs of power?
This policy of a united front against reactionary coups must always be accompanied by a warning, which the IMT likewise fails to make, that these workers will inevitably be for the politics and existence of popular front governments and the reformist workers parties that participate in them, demobilizing and disorienting the mass movement and serving the bourgeoisie.
Against the popular front governments and the counter revolutionary coups that will inevitably come, our Bolshevik Tendency stands for a policy that has nothing to do with the opportunism in strategy and the ultra-leftism in tactics proposed by the IMT. We call for “patiently educating” the masses against these governments, convincing them of their extreme weakness and their imperialist character, and bringing them to see that they are nothing else than agents of the bourgeois counterrevolution. Thus we seek to defeat these governments as rapidly as possible, counterpoising to them the organs of workers power and bringing these to assume power.
It is within this strategy, and solely within it, that all the tactics must be implemented, which will be left aside as soon as the masses, thanks to their mobilization and the policies of the Trotskyists, cease placing their confidence in popular front governments and understand the necessity of overturning them. With respect to the counterrevolutionary putsches, we must denounce these popular front governments for helping them with their policies, and at the same time we must advance the consistent line of a united front of the reformist parties and masses to confront them.
A United Front Policy Oriented Essentially Toward the Centrists
It is not accidental that the IMT wishes to counterpoise to the reactionary putsches nonexistent organs of workers power in place of a united front of the reformist parties and masses. This is in conformity with the fact that its favored interlocutor in concretizing a united front is the centrist organizations and not the reformists.
According to the united front policy presented to us by the IMT, what is imperative is a “unitary initiative” with the centrists and other sectors of the far left “to create a relationship of forces such that the problem of unity in action, and even of united front, with the reformist organizations is concretely posed.” (Ibid., p. 10.)
That is, for the IMT, we are obliged in general to first reach an agreement with the centrists to be able, on this basis, to pose a united front with the mass reformist parties. And as if this were not enough, they add that our “tactical initiatives” will be subordinated to “the relationship of forces between ourselves and the other far left organizations.”
According to the IMT, then, our whole attitude toward the reformist parties, that is, our whole policy toward the great Socialist and Communist masses of Europe, is mediated by our policy toward the centrists.
We are drastically opposed to this thesis. With the centrists or without them, with the far left or without it, our whole policy must be oriented toward the broad Socialist and Communist masses, as well as those of the oppressed nationalities, who, under a bourgeois or pettybourgeois, a bureaucratic or ultra-leftist leadership, are struggling for national self determination. We are against any “tactical initiative” that, dictated by our relations with the centrists or the far left, prevents us from carrying out this policy. If the centrists or the far left do not want to pose, together with us, a united front of the reformist parties, we will have nothing to do with them, nor will we subordinate our policy to theirs; we will march alone toward the broad masses, leaving the “new vanguard” in all its variants to their own sad fate.
We know that objective reality, and only this, provokes a united front of the reformist masses, and because of this, already at the Tenth Congress, we disqualified challenging it as subjective—the IMT’s plea that to concretize a united front between the reformist organizations and masses with our parties, a certain numerical “relationship of forces” was required between the far left including us—and the reformists.
In counter-position to this subjective deviation, our united front policy is instrumented on the basis of detecting the most immediate and urgent needs of the broad masses and of responding with a valid and understandable reply for unity in action. Portugal has proved that it is correctly pose