Thoughts of Chairperson Mikey

The Editorial

2010-03-02T00:47:00.000Z

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE IS LAUNCHED--reach for the stars

2010-03-02T00:45:00.000Z

International Correspondence

2010-02-27T00:47:00.002Z

There is a new magazine out this week, produced by my friends in the Fourth International.

More when it becomes available

An excellent new blog

2010-02-26T23:41:00.001Z

There is an excellent new blog on the blogosphere.

The worldwide socialist network is a group of socialists active in the labour movement, many of whom come from the former Militant tendency background.

Here is a short excerpt of what they stand for:

a worldwide network for socialists!

It has been reckoned that the world is effectively in the hands of some 6000 billionaires: that is to say that national governments, local authorities, trans-national bureaucracies such as the various commissions and agencies of the European Union and of the United Nations as well as the terrifying death-machines deployed by NATO and others exist primarily to serve the immediate needs of the biggest global businesses: hence perpetual never-ending wars – to grab the world’s diminishing non-sustainable resources from the hands of the people who live around them and to secure them from rival would-be super-powers: hence rising inequality everywhere, increasing misery, starvation and disease for the bottom 2/3rds of humanity and increasing exploitation, cheap marketing tricks, cuts in jobs, pay, unionisation, welfare and health, theft of pensions, privatisation of public services, utilities etc.,

All this for the immediate apparent benefit of one person in a million and their inevitable hangers-on.

Their returns are getting ever harder to be sure of: their capital is ever harder to dispose of profitably: investment goes increasingly to fantasy future schemes, speculation in food futures and all sorts of imaginary and invented ‘products’ – their system is breaking down: the world financial crisis is but one aspect.

Modern capitalism had shown a total incapacity to organise effectively against what all now know could lead to the destruction of much of life on the planet – even while it has given rise to the technical means potentially to ensure a comfortable and productive life for all. This is something they will and can not grant us. While they rule the world our prospects are dismal.

But theirs is not the only way. What they will not give us we must take. What is needed is a universal party run for, by and on behalf of all those who have no ‘independent means’, all those who work for a living. The workers of the world have no vested interest in the continuing destruction of civilisation. Today experience has given them the knowledge and experience, the imagination and enterprise, the sheer capacity for work to run the world a thousand times over. Could they only act decisively with one voice everywhere the path to a safe future could be carved out.

But for the workers of the entire world to come together in such a way would be a monumentally difficult task of coordination. Their trade unions and surviving political parties would have to be transformed top-to-bottom.
This site grew out an online discussion forum: socialistdiscussion@yahoogroups.com

Many shades of socialist thought are represented on this list. There is no ‘party line’ None of us believes that we are the force that will be able to re-form the workers’ movement. Nor are we even the embryo of such a force. But all are committed to do what we can to engage in fight-to-win campaigns on behalf of workers where we can and to promote the general ideas that we believe in.

Caroline Bedale and the Certification officer

2010-02-26T23:35:00.002Z

What a simply excellent decision!

It is good to know that the rules of the union apply equally to all union members regardless of which wing of the union you are on.

I hope that the leadership of the union now realise that baiting the left is not a useful pastime. I somehow doubt it though.

Well done Caroline.

Starting up again

2010-01-21T15:21:00.001Z

Well folks, we are back after an absence of some year...

now I have two children aged two and a half and a year old!!!

More later

Mikey

Terror in Gaza

2009-01-04T09:16:00.003Z

I shall be publishing some pictures of the demonstration yesterday, which came just as the terrible news of the land invasion of Gaza came through.

Comrades should listen to Ralph Schoenman's radio show, Taking Aim, for insight into the Hidden History of Zionism and world events. I think their comments are excellent.

see www.takingaimradio.com

Mikey

Rural TSC

2008-11-20T18:35:00.003Z

Ah well, this is what rural Terrington St Clement looks like! And that's on a good day!

Off to wild Norfolk

2008-11-20T18:29:00.004Z

We are off to the wilds of rural fen tiger land tomorrow to visit my poor old mum who lives in a care home, Terrington Lodge, in the village she grew up in, Terrington St Clements!

I am going to start blogging more regularly and about issues related to social care, as this is one person whom Direct Payments do not suit!

It will be Danny's first really discernable visit to the home of his father!

Stop the Witchhunt of Social Workers

2008-11-20T07:39:00.000Z

Baby P: Social work campaigners launch 'anti-witch hunt' petition

writes Louise Hunt

The campaigning body Social Work Action Network (Swan) has today launched its own petition to condemn the "witch hunt" against the profession fuelled by the Baby P case.

Swan said it was responding to "an unprecedented campaign in sections of the media against social workers in Haringey".

More than 200,000 people have so far signed The Sun newspaper's online petition, launched last week, calling for the government to sack all the social workers involved in the Baby P case and the council's director of children's services, Sharon Shoesmith. Other petitions have appeared on social networking sites.
Article continues below the advertisement

The Swan petition has already been signed by social workers from across the country.

Witch hunts don't address issues

Swan representative Dr Michael Lavalette, senior lecturer in social policy at the University of Liverpool, said: "Such witch hunts don't address any of the issues raised by the Baby P case - indeed they serve to cover up the real causes of the terrible tragedy: budgetary constraints, marketisation of care, social workers with excessive case-loads, child poverty, inequality - these are the issues we need to look at to reduce child harm."

Swan, which formed in March 2006, is an organisation of social work academics, practitioners, students and service users.
Have your say on the Baby P case and its implications on CareSpace.

Baby P: A Statement from the Social Work Action Network.

Stop the Witchhunt of Social Workers.

The awful death of the child named as “Baby P” at the hands of his mother and other carers is an up-to-date reminder of the challenge social workers and fellow practitioners face in seeking to safeguard children from harm.

Eight years after the death of Victoria Climbie it is clear that on a daily basis many children continue to experience harm, neglect and abuse – even where health and social care professionals are involved.

However, the outcry from politicians and the media against care professionals in general and social workers in particular is unwarranted and counter-productive.

Against the condemnation of social workers, we roundly condemn the abuse of press powers best exemplified by the actions of the Sun newspaper in mounting a national public petition for the sacking of social workers involved with the case of Baby P, and associated practitioners.

The publication of these individual’s photographs alongside requests for anyone who knows them to contact the newspaper represents a witchhunt and call to persecution that places them at direct personal risk.

The effect of such scapegoating will inevitably place more children at greater risk, having caused anxiety and demoralisation amongst key practitioners, and created additional barriers to positive and effective work with families where there are concerns.

The scapegoating also diverts attention from what we see as the three main contributing factors to such tragedies.

First, there is the underfunding of social work services. It is timely to observe that, whilst more than £500 billion has been dedicated to bail out the UK banking system, children’s services remain at spending levels proportionate to GDP of 1993.

Second, the past 10 years has seen the introduction of market forces into every area of social care. The result is that social workers are now pre-occupied with budgets rather than the needs of those they work with, and are forced to spend increasing amounts of time in front of computers rather than spending time with families who need support and help.

Finally, all of this takes place in a context where children in Britain are amongst the most disadvantaged in Europe with at least 1 in 4 children living in poverty, educational achievement among the poorest in the western world, and UK children last in the league for quality of life.

With the recession, including unemployment rising at an unprecedented rate, our great fear is that social work will be further eroded at a time of rapidly increasing deprivation and alienation.

Neglect of social services will result in more neglect of children.

(Iain Ferguson, Vassilis Ioakimidis, Michael Lavalette on Behalf of the Social Work Action Network)

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SIGN OUR PETITION

And the hat-trick...

2008-11-12T07:34:00.002Z

...and here's another

2008-11-12T07:29:00.002Z

and another piccy...from the UNISON pay strike earlier this year

Morning dose of Danno

2008-11-12T07:22:00.003Z

My Danny, 18 months on 4th november, was deeply thrilled today when he saw the dustcart. As I didn't get a piccy I shall put some others up here instead before work, while he's having his breakfast

More Danny

2008-11-10T22:05:00.000Z

Why We Left the Workers International League

2008-11-10T21:32:00.006Z

Below is a long piece explaining why my friends Bill leumer, Ann Robertson and others recently were forced out of the Alan Woods led IMT in the USA.
I have known them for a few years and they are some of the most dedicated comrades I have met

As is usual in these cases, the majority have written very little, but it is available on the Workers Action website, see link

I have also attached a piccy of Danny as well, but not for any real reason!!

Why We Left the Workers International League

We Left the Workers International League

INTRODUCTION

The entire Portland branch and the majority of the San Francisco branch recently submitted our resignations to the Workers International League (WIL). Many of us joined the WIL over two years ago because of our fundamental agreement with the International Marxist Tendency’s (IMT) analysis of the Venezuelan revolution. The WIL is a member of the IMT. We were enthusiastic and optimistic when we joined because we had been working with the WIL in the united front, Hands Off Venezuela, in which numerous political groups were involved and where we had all been instrumental in organizing very successful events. However, in the recent past, two major differences erupted within the WIL which opened an unbridgeable chasm. We left as a last resort only because we felt the WIL leadership was making it impossible for us to stay. Immediately below is a summary of our differences with the WIL which led to our departure. But we are also including the transcripts of both discussions so that the reader can judge for him or herself.

THE CINDY SHEEHAN FLIER

The first difference concerned the Cindy Sheehan campaign for Congress. Sheehan is running against Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, in San Francisco. The WIL had endorsed the campaign and had urged WIL members to become active in it. After joining the campaign, the San Francisco branch of the WIL produced a flier in support of Cindy Sheehan which was unilaterally rejected by the WIL leadership. There were many issues in dispute concerning our flier, but one in particular provides an especially helpful key to understanding the fundamental differences between those of us who left the WIL on the one hand and the leadership of the WIL, which is constituted by the Executive Committee (EC), on the other hand.

According to the WIL EC: “Most importantly, the draft leaflet [i.e., our Sheehan flier] does not mention the need for a mass party of labor as the only way forward for working people.”

Instead of mentioning the need for a “mass party of labor,” the flier described the Cindy Sheehan campaign as one seeking “to champion the rights and needs of the vast majority of us working people who are disenfranchised by a political system based on corporate money,” and urged the campaign to “use a Cindy Sheehan victory to turn the entire political system upside-down, given the corruptness of the system.” And it added: “But such a goal can only be achieved by launching a movement and bringing together the millions of ordinary people who have no voice in the current political system.”

In other words, our flier was designed with the hope of having a positive influence on the direction of the Cindy Sheehan campaign. We did not want the campaign to view itself merely as aimed exclusively at electing Cindy Sheehan to office, for such an orientation might risk the dissolution of the campaign after November. Rather, we wanted the campaign to see itself as starting a movement that would be sustained beyond November in order to build a political organization dedicated to defending and promoting the interests of working people. This would amount to taking the first step in the direction of creating a labor party. (We hope we have had some success in our attempts at influencing the campaign’s direction since the flier was posted prominently on the home page of the campaign’s web site for a short period so that it was the first thing viewers saw; it is now accessible on the labor section of the web site.)

For the WIL EC, on the other hand, these attempts to influence the Cindy Sheehan campaign were simply a matter of adapting to reformism since Cindy Sheehan is not a self-proclaimed revolutionary socialist but a candidate who is reaching out to defend the interests of working people. According to them, our flier should have established our own revolutionary credentials by boldly announcing the need for a labor party. In this way we could have recruited the most progressive elements of the campaign, according to them.

But there are two ways the demand for a labor party could have been raised:

(1) We could have raised it in the form of propaganda where we would have merely explained in a flier what a good idea a labor party is, and we all agree it is a good idea. But if this was the intent of the EC, then it would have been essentially telling us to refrain from trying to influence the direction of the Sheehan campaign, but rather offer helpful analyses from the sidelines and “markers,” as they like to put it, for future consideration.

(2) Or the EC could have wanted us to raise the idea of a labor party as agitation, in other words, as something that should be done immediately. In this case our flier would have been urging the campaign to create a labor party now.

We were unsure which alternative the EC had in mind (although the former is far more likely) because throughout much of the discussion it refused to distinguish between propaganda and agitation. However, we were convinced that both alternatives were equally flawed:

(1) If we had raised the idea of a labor party purely as propaganda, then we would have been relegated exclusively to the sidelines since we would not have attempted to influence the direction of the campaign. Rather we would have simply used the campaign to introduce progressive or revolutionary ideas and hoped a few of the campaign members might be attracted to us. Here we would be using the campaign primarily to build our own organization. The WIL EC has continually admonished us during the past several years that our first concern is to recruit the ones and twos, not to lead working class movements. We, on the other hand, saw ourselves as recruiting the ones and twos, and perhaps many more, precisely by leading workers in motion by introducing a class struggle perspective, which is the only way to make such struggles successful.

(2) If we had raised the labor party idea as agitation, meaning that we were urging the Sheehan campaign to organize a labor party at that time, then we would have appeared out of step with reality. The Sheehan campaign is not in a position to launch a labor party, given its meager resources. At the very least the trade unions would be required to take the lead in establishing a labor party because the trade unions have an organizational apparatus as well as money, both of which would be required to bring something as ambitious as a labor party into existence. But there is almost no movement within organized labor in favor of establishing a labor party at this time.

In our opinion, the best way to proceed in relation to the Sheehan campaign is to influence it as much as possible in a positive direction, that is, in the direction of creating an independent working class party with a revolutionary program. If the Sheehan campaign decides to maintain its existence after the November elections, then we believe that this would constitute a step forward for working people, provided that the campaign is specifically defined in terms of defending the interests of workers, not capitalists. We are not interested in promoting Ralph Nader’s campaign, for example, because he rejects a working class perspective. Under this condition, the Sheehan campaign could serve as a center of gravitation to attract the growing number of working people who are becoming increasingly disgusted with the Democrats, not to mention the Republicans. And this movement could then serve as the the first step in the direction of a labor party.

Such a movement would greatly enhance the prospects of our revolutionary organization. It would have the potential to change the political climate in this country by offering workers the first real political alternative on the horizon. We could easily reach out to the people in such a movement with our revolutionary literature, raise their consciousness, and hopefully win them to socialism. For this reason, we view the WIL EC’s choice to abstain from any attempt to influence the evolution of the Sheehan campaign as profoundly misguided. Although at times the WIL EC offers lip service to the idea of influencing the Sheehan campaign, it has never specified exactly how this should be accomplished other than by raising the demand for a labor party, which will not exert an impact on the direction of the campaign now.

TRADE UNION DIFFERENCES

The second difference erupted over the proper way to conduct trade union work. Here the differences between us and the WIL EC basically replayed the differences over our Sheehan flier.

The discussion began with a comrade from Portland reporting that his union, an SEIU local, was engaged in negotiations for a new contract. The employer, a company running a hospital, was playing hardball and rejected the union’s entirely modest demands for a wage raise, etc. In return, the union officials scaled back their demands, lowering what they described as a cost of living increase (which was one of several wage increases), for example, from 6 percent to 3 percent for the first year. The workers, however, overwhelmingly rejected management’s new offer of a 2 percent cost of living increase, so there was a remote possibility they might strike.

A leading member of the WIL, who has been working closely with the WIL EC, proposed that the Portland comrade put out a flier either by himself in the name of the WIL or, if possible, through a union caucus: “The flyer should put forward our perspective on what the demands SHOULD be in the negotiations...”[emphasis added]. He explained that we must oppose the union officials’ backpedaling and continued: “It is okay if only a few people, right now, would take our flier and be open to discuss it with us.”

In a second contribution to the discussion, the same comrade continued arguing in favor of the flier, adding that such demands as 30 hours of work for 40 hours of pay (30 for 40) or a full COLA (cost of living adjustment) are examples of demands that should have been raised to the workers at the hospital.” And he continued: “We must not tailor our demands to what is acceptable to the union leadership or what they make the mass of the workers think is attainable.” And then added that if our Portland comrade did not do this, then the WIL would not “be distinguishing ourselves in a political way from the union leadership.” He acknowledged that workers “who identify with the union leadership will see this [demands such as 30 for 40] as ‘pie in the sky’ and many workers may think ‘it is good, but it will never happen.’ That is OK. We need to put down a political marker, so that as our political analysis of this situation is shown to be correct, we can then make gains.”

Those of us in Portland and San Francisco found this approach misdirected, to say the least.

First, we found it stunning that the above comrade thought it was appropriate to tell the workers what their demands SHOULD be without any inquiry into the specific conditions of these workers, their level of consciousness, their economic position and their ability to carry on a protracted strike, their activity level in the union, the leadership qualities of the union officials in charge, or their lack of leadership qualities, how easy it would be to replace workers if they chose to strike, etc.

Second, the WIL comrade never bothered to inquire whether, if the Portland comrade had distributed a flier by himself in the name of the WIL, he would have completely discredited and isolated himself in relation to ALL his coworkers because of their misconceptions concerning socialist organizations. We are trying to break out of our isolation, not increase it. Many people in the U.S. identify socialism with totalitarianism and with paying people who are lazy and avoid work just as much as people who work hard. Nor did the WIL comrade inquire whether distributing such a flier might result in our comrade losing his job because of the anti-communism of the employer and union officials. These seemed to be inconsequential considerations for the WIL comrade.

Third, we thought it was striking that the WIL comrade argued that the only way to distinguish ourselves from the “union leadership” was by raising demands such as 30 for 40, etc. In other words, he did not entertain the possibility of our comrade at the hospital leading a militant strike where the labor bureaucracy’s partnership with the bosses would be severed, where real picket lines would be organized as opposed to the porous picket lines of the labor bureaucracy, and where the workers would be prepared to defy both court injunctions and cops and take on the capitalist state. The ONLY way in which the WIL leadership conceived of breaking with the union bureaucrats was by raising radical demands, which means they were not prepared to have our comrade lead a struggle or a strike but wanted him to sit on the sidelines.

Fourth, the WIL comrade thought it was entirely appropriate to aim our ideas about demands at only a few workers (at best) rather than try to unite all the workers and organize an effective strike. He said he did not think the demands should be tailored to what “the mass of the workers think is attainable” and acknowledged that the slogans he was proposing would only appeal to a few, but, as he said: “That is OK.” This is another indication that the WIL leadership was only interested in sitting on the sidelines, not in organizing a fight.

In contrast, we believe the correct approach to the question of demands is more complicated. Of course, when the demands are being formulated and discussed among the union membership, we would urge workers to include the appropriate demands, given their situation. But these demands are selected by the workers on the basis of how strong they think the union is, how strong they think the company is, and how much confidence they have in themselves to win what they want. The same demands are therefore not going to be appropriate for every work place. During this process, our role would amount not only to raising appropriate demands, but more importantly, to explaining to our coworkers how to organize an effective strike to win the demands, thereby raising their level of confidence. The creation of the list of demands consequently results from a dialectical process where all of the above considerations come into play. Adding demands to the list that workers believe are unattainable does not raise the workers’ level of confidence but will probably have the effect of reducing it.

The situation at the hospital, however, was not propitious in relation to a militant struggle. The union was very weak in large part because of the orientation of the labor bureaucrats who assume workers share common interests with the employers. The Local had an inadequate strike fund, especially for workers living paycheck-to-paycheck. While public outreach was strong, there had been no preparation for building mass picket lines capable of keeping scabs out and defying court injunctions. Striking workers could have been easily replaced because the work was to a large degree unskilled. And the struggle would have been waged in a general climate of demoralization in the U.S. labor movement as a whole. Nevertheless, with the right leadership and a membership mobilized to put up a fight, the strike could have been won by attracting tremendous community support, etc. In such a context, including the demand of 30 for 40 would have undermined the struggle. The community might well have looked on the demand as excessive and unrealistic and tempered its support for the workers accordingly. However, the union did in fact win community support for its original demand for a 6 percent wage increase.

In any case, when our discussion with the WIL leadership was underway, the workers were not opposing the union officials’ scaling down the 6 percent raise to a 3 percent raise. They were angry with the company for only offering 2 percent. Given that reality, we proposed that our comrade at the hospital consider leading his coworkers into a battle for their demands, even though they were extraordinarily modest. Had the union won a militant strike, their success could possibly have changed the consciousness of workers across the country. A weak union would have scored an earthshaking victory!

Yet because those of us in Portland and San Francisco were not prepared to raise 30 for 40, our approach was condemned once again by the WIL leadership as basically adapting to reformism. We believe that they were not prepared to have our comrade lead a strike because they would have viewed such a struggle as reformist in essence since it would only have been aimed at winning higher wages, etc. We regard the WIL leadership as advocating that we abstain and pass up opportunities to change the political landscape in this country. In fact, the National Secretary of the WIL asserted this unambiguously when he wrote to a Portland comrade: “Our goal in these struggles at this stage is not to lead them or to have a decisive influence over the ‘masses’ of the union, but to find the ones and twos for our own organization.” The only way in which the WIL leadership conceives of raising consciousness is by throwing out transitional demands at workers in movement, not by leading struggles. The same transitional demands are always raised in a purely mechanical way, regardless of the situation and regardless of the level of consciousness of the workers. And since these demands only resonate with one or two workers, if any at all, the WIL leadership believes it has succeeded in planting seeds for the future, or putting down markers, as they say. So if workers adopt these transitional demands in 30 years from now, the WIL will take credit.

AN ADDITIONAL PROBLEM

Throughout both the Cindy Sheehan flier discussion and the trade union discussion we believe that the WIL leadership was fundamentally unwilling to conduct comradely discussions. They would begin each dispute with a statement to the effect that the WIL’s position was clear on the issue in question. And when everything is clear, of course, there is nothing to discuss. Moreover, by saying everything was clear, those of us who were in disagreement with the leadership were essentially ruled out of order at the outset and made to look as if we stood outside the organization.

The leadership then proceeded repeatedly to distort the positions and arguments that were submitted by members of the Portland and San Francisco branches -- another sign that they were not interested in a comradely discussion because they were not prepared to listen to us carefully. And it should be noted that whenever there were substantive differences between either the Portland or San Francisco branches and the WIL leadership during the entire period of our membership, the WIL leadership would repeatedly distort what people said.

Then, when the National Secretary of the WIL, in relation to his earlier statement that our differences amounted to different interpretations of the trade union document we all voted for, asserted: “I therefore retract my implication that our differences are simply a matter of ‘interpretation’ or of how best to implement the decisions of the Congress,” we could only conclude that he was saying the discussion was over because there was no room for competing interpretations of our trade union document within the WIL.

Moreover, in relation to the trade union differences, the discussion commenced on an impossible presumption. Our Portland comrade had to confess to errors before the discussion could even begin. The leading WIL member who was urging him to produce a flier, said to him: “Everyone who gets in politics makes mistakes from time to time. This is normal. The issue is not making mistakes but recognizing them and correcting them for the future. However, we must admit the mistakes first; otherwise we cannot correct them.” In other words, the issue was not IF the Portland comrade made a mistake, but of RECOGNIZING the mistake he presumably committed. This is the kind of comment that is appropriate at the end of a discussion, not at the beginning.

This patronizing tone was repeated throughout the discussion, which degenerated even further when ad hominem arguments were introduced. In other words, people’s character, motive, position in society, or background became the focus rather than their arguments. For example, in relation to two San Francisco comrades, the same leading WIL comrade, after noting the San Francisco comrades could play a “tremendous role” in the organization, added: “However, in order to play this positive role, they must un-learn the sectarian methods they were trained in and learn the method of the WIL/IMT.” In other words, the “tremendous role” had nothing to do with political clarity, and anything the two San Francisco comrades had to contribute to the discussion could be dismissed in advance as invalid because of their background.

Another example of an ad hominem was introduced by the WIL National Secretary: “It seems evident to me that the approach advocated by these comrades is an approach they bring with them from their past experience in various Trotskyist groups.” Comments such as this are intended to end the discussion, not try to resolve the differences.

Throughout all our differences with the WIL leadership, we considered ourselves in fundamental agreement with the IMT. However, towards the end of the trade union discussion, a leading member of the IMT, after consulting with Alan Woods, etc. contributed his own reflections, making it crystal clear that the IMT entirely sided with the WIL leadership and saw nothing positive in the arguments of the Portland or San Francisco branch comrades. By implication he accused us of “opportunist adaptation” and also made a point of adding that in his opinion the discussion had “been conducted in a democratic and comradely manner.”

CONCLUSION

Trotsky once said: “To have an ear for the average worker in the factory, on the street, in the streetcar, in the cafe, in the family in order to know how he sees the situation, what hopes he cherishes, what he believes in -- to listen attentively to such a worker -- that is the first duty of a revolutionary organization...” (The Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1934-35). In our opinion, the WIL leadership was not interested in listening to the average worker or to us.

More recent and enlightening piccys

2008-11-10T21:24:00.003Z

Danny at Luci at the SF Bluegrass festival

Danno bigs it up with the leaders of US Trotskyism

2008-11-10T21:15:00.007Z

In this section we have piccys of Danno largeing it up with Bonnie Weinstein, Carole Seligman and Nat Weinstein of the Socialist Workers Organisation in the USA

He is also pictured with David Walters, Millie Phillips of Socialist Organizer/USA and with Mya Shone, former leader of that group as well

"Book em Danno!"

2008-11-10T21:09:00.003Z

As you have all been missing him...back from gardening leave by popular demand is "Danno"

New Danno piccy

2008-11-10T21:06:00.002Z

Danny the compu-nerd at 18 months...

John Percy, longtime leader of Australian DSP, announces formation of new organisation

2008-11-10T18:20:00.001Z

I publish below the statement from the website of the new socialist tendency in Australia, the RSP.
This does NOT indicate support for their policies on my part!!!

Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) launched and announces publication of Direct Action

The Leninist Party Faction, a dissident minority expelled from the Democratic Socialist Perspective on May 13, and Direct Action, an organisation established by former DSP members in Melbourne and Geelong after they left the DSP in June 2006, have united to launch a new party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), with members in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Geelong, Adelaide, Newcastle and Cairns, and others currently residing overseas.

This is a principled unification of our two organisations. Both the LPF and Direct Action support the Program of the Democratic Socialist Party, a program that the DSP remains formally committed to but which it is abandoning in practice. Together, LPF and Direct Action members waged a common struggle against the degeneration of the DSP until June 2006, when six LPF members decided to leave the DSP to establish Direct Action.

Both the LPF and DA seek to preserve the continuity of the revolutionary tradition of the DSP prior to its political and organisational degeneration in recent years, culminating in the wholesale purge of the LPF on May 13. The LPF and Direct Action share not only basic programmatic agreement, but also agreement on the main tasks and perspectives for regrouping and rebuilding the revolutionary Marxist current once embodied in the DSP and its predecessor, the Socialist Workers Party, founded in 1972. The RSP's strategic aim is to build a mass revolutionary workers party capable of leading the Australian working class and its allies to overthrow capitalism and, together with the working people of other countries, to build socialism, a global society of shared wealth and democratic planning to meet social needs. We recognise that we are not the only revolutionary socialist organisation in Australia, and that a future mass revolutionary socialist party will not be achieved solely through the incremental growth of any one of the existing far-left organisations.

Building towards the future mass revolutionary workers party will require a variety of tactics, among them efforts to unify the existing far-left organisations. But in today's conditions of continuing working class retreat, the creation of a broad left party of anti-capitalist resistance is simply not on the agenda. The necessary partners for such a party -- substantial new class-struggle forces and leaders -- do not yet exist, and will not come into existence until there is a sustained mass upsurge of working class resistance. The Socialist Alliance is not such a broad left party or even a modest step torwards such a party, but a front for the DSP. The RSP rejects any such sectarian attempt to masquerade as a broad left party. Rather, we seek to collaborate with all left and progressive organisations and individuals to achieve the maximum unity in action where we have agreement.

The RSP's ongoing campaign priority is to help build a broadly based solidarity movement with the Latin American socialist revolutions in Venezuela and Cuba. Building solidarity with the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples is the duty of revolutionaries everywhere, especially in an imperialist country closely allied with US imperialism. Moreover, the inspiration of these living socialist revolutions is key to winning a wider hearing for revolutionary socialist ideas among working people in Australia. The RSP seeks to build the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network as a democratically functioning national network of affiliated solidarity groups and individual solidarity activists.

Next week the RSP will launch a new monthly radical left publication, Direct Action. This new publication, and its associated website, will present the views of the RSP as well as encouraging constructive debate on the left and will seek contributions from a broad range of radical commentators, activists and organisations. The RSP will hold a delegated founding congress in early 2009.

May 28, 2008*

For more information:
RSP Perspectives Resolution

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After the House Rejection of the Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge: * Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall Street Blackmail

2008-11-10T18:16:00.001Z

After the House Rejection of the Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge:

* Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall Street Blackmail

* Labor Must Mobilize to Put a Full Stop to the $700 Billion Corporate
Bailout and Fight for an Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People

By ALAN BENJAMIN
(Editor of The Organizer Newspaper)

Sept. 29, 2008 -- The House of Representatives voted today to defeat the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan that had been worked out over the weekend at the insistence of President George W. Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The proposed plan aimed at nationalizing the debt of the bankers who profited from the home-mortgage speculative orgy of the past few years.

By a vote of 227 to 206, the House killed the bill -- with 94 Democrats and 133 Republicans voting against the bailout plan.

The vote stunned much of the media and establishment. Bush, Pelosi, and House Minority leader Boehner had aggressively pushed the revised bailout plan. A narrow YES vote was widely expected. So great was this expectation that Senate majority and minority leaders anticipated they would be voting today in the Senate to approve the agreement passed in the House.

Almost immediately, in reaction to the vote in the House, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 777 points Monday, its biggest single-day fall ever.

Soon after, in response to this stock market dive, Democrats and Republicans -- prompted by Bush, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Pelosi and Boehner -- pledged that they would try again to get a bailout plan passed in the House on Thursday, Oct. 2. It was agreed that the House would reconvene on Thursday, instead of adjourning for the year as planned.

Simply announcing that a new vote would take place on yet another bailout plan was necessary, Paulson announced, to "restore confidence" in the credit markets. Paulson then warned that the members of Congress had to go back to the drawing board. "We need to work as quickly as possible," he said. "We need to get something done. ... We need to put something back together that works."

Nancy Pelosi chimed in. "What happened today cannot stand," she said. "We must move forward, and I hope that the markets will take that message."

Pelosi was joined in her plea by Barack Obama, who stated, "Democrats, Republicans, step up to the plate, get it done." Likewise, John McCain urged Congress "to put partisanship behind them and vote a plan to rescue the credit markets and the economy."

So, why this defeat, when all the media pundits had predicted the victory of the bailout plan?

David Sirota wrote in his blog on Campaign for America's Future (Sept. 29) that, "the fear of being thrown out of office is forcing our politicians to at least consider what the public wants."

Sirota continued,

"Polls overwhelmingly show a public that sees voting for this bill as an act of economic treason whereby the bipartisan Washington elite robs taxpayer cash to give their campaign contributors a trillion-dollar gift.

"As just two of many examples, Bloomberg News' poll shows 'decisive' opposition to the bailout proposal, and Rasmussen reports that their surveys show 'the more voters learn about the proposed $700 billion federal bailout plan for the U.S. economy, the more they don't like it.' ... Any sitting officeholder that votes for this -- whether a Democrat or a Republican -- should expect to get crushed under a wave of [Left and Right] populist-themed attacks from their opponents."

Pressures Will Mount to Approve the Corporate Bailout on Thursday

Republicans who voted against the consensus plan -- the largest voting bloc against the plan -- blamed the Democrats for amending the bailout package with language calling for too much government intervention. Some called this "socialism." One Republican Congressman invoked the Bolshevik Party and its takeover of the "free-market" economy.

The crisis in the political summits, and corporate boardrooms, is reaching the boiling point.

The bankers and financial institutions have now warned that they will not sit back and permit a deal to fall through their fingers. The Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable immediately activated their lobbying of House Republicans and Democrats. They are hoping that the stock market "scare" today will prompt all members of Congress who voted against the bailout to re-think their vote.

At this writing, many analysts predict that some modifications will be made to the plan defeated today -- to appease the House Republicans. But given the "fragile nature of the compromise," one economist quoted on ABC TV stated, it is not likely that the changes will be that significant. Less Congressional oversight and fewer restrictions on the "golden parachutes" of the CEOs of the financial institutions are expected. Also possible is an apology by Pelosi for statements made prior to the vote that were considered "too partisan" and "too inflammatory" by 12 Republicans, who claimed that these statements prompted them to vote against the bill.

But all this only underscores one fundamental question facing working people across the country who have opposed any corporate welfare plan: They and their representatives in the House will be pressured -- blackmailed is more like it -- by the Wall Street speculators and told they must accept what is unacceptable to them.

We can expect a major push for "national unity" with the Wall Street thiefs in the coming days. We will be told to put all partisan concerns aside in the interest of the economy and the nation. Every argument imaginable will be brought out to drive the American people to accept this corporate welfare plan. What is good for Wall Street is what's good for Main Street, we will hear again and again.

This, of course, is one BIG LIE.

More than ever, working people, with the trade unions in the lead, need to mobilize massively to put a definitive stop to this corporate bailout ... and to demand a Workers Recovery Plan that bails out America's working people and the oppressed.

Putting forward an alternative plan is, in fact, becoming a burning necessity. We will be told by all the corporate-owned media that There Is No Alternative to their corporate heist. But there is an alternative -- one that bails out working people and the economy, not the speculators who got us into the mess we're in today.

An Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People and the Economy

What would such a plan look like? Here are five essential components (and there could be many more) which we in The Organizer newspaper submit for the widest discussion among unionists and activists:

1) Nationalize the Federal Reserve and Establish a Federally Owned, Public Banking System

This is necessary to make credit available for small businesses, homeowners, manufacturing operations, renewable energy and infrastructure investments.

This (re)nationalization should begin with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so that the government, through these two institutions, can stop all foreclosures.

Only through a State-run Emergency Board will the real economy be able to get back on its feet, removed from its addiction to war and speculation.

The "free market" is what has created the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The people who created this mess should not be allowed to continue to run the financial system.

2) End all Funding for the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Slash the Military Budget

All the funds that have been allocated to the U.S. wars and occupations around the world, and all the military bases needed to sustain these wars, must be re-oriented post-haste toward meeting human needs -- by funding public education, libraries, hospitals, roads, public housing, Reconstruction for the Gulf Coast, social services and more.

3) Moratorium on All Home Foreclosures, Utility Shut-Offs and Evictions

A genuine plan to protect homeowners could include the following points:

- enact a foreclosure moratorium now, before the next phase of ARM interest-rate increases take effect;

- refinance mortgages into 30- and 40-year loans at reasonable rates of interest -- but at the current market value of their homes, not the inflated prices of the boom;

4) Massive National Reconstruction Public Works Program

A WPA-type program is needed urgently to rebuild the nation's schools, hospitals and crumbling infrastructure and to put millions of people back to work, with a living (prevailing) wage and with the unfettered right to join a union and to wield their collective strength, including through strike action (for which the repeal of Taft-Hartley is essential), to press for better wages and working conditions

5) Sliding Scales of Wages to Keep Up with Inflation

This will be needed to enable working people to offset the rising cost of living produced by the "staglation" that has already reared its ugly head and is bound to increase in the coming weeks and months.

Not One Taxpayers' Dollar For the Wall Street Speculators!

Any plan that calls for using taxpayers' dollars to pay back the speculators must be stopped. Every dollar that goes to a speculator is one dollar less that could go to rebuilding the economy and putting millions of people back to work through a mass public works program. These speculators gambled and they lost. They are parasites. They are not needed. Their profits should be confiscated. There should be no pandering to them in the name of "helping Wall Street." Bailing them out is not necessary to stave off the financial crisis. On the contrary, it will only deepen the problem.

For our part, we in The Organizer newspaper pledge to do everything in our power to help build the most powerful labor-led fightback movement to stop this corporate assault. What's at stake is the fate of millions of working people at home and abroad.

----

Labor Must Take to the Streets Across the Country To Demand Bailout of Main Street -- Not Wall Street!

2008-11-10T18:11:00.003Z

Labor Can and MUST Stop Giveaways to Wall St. Bankers!

Labor Must Take to the Streets Across the Country
To Demand Bailout of Main Street -- Not Wall Street!

By the Editorial Board of The Organizer Newspaper

The massive rebellion by the American people against Wall Street's $1.3 Trillion "Grand Theft Bailout" forced a majority of members of Congress this past Monday to vote against this corporate heist.

Working people across the country were heartened by this defeat; with their millions of protest letters to Congress (one Congressman from South Carolina reported that 99% of the letters urged him to vote "NO" on the bankers' bailout), they had compelled the politicians in Washington to heed the massive outcry.

But now the politicians are gearing up their offensive to overturn this vote. The Senate is expected to vote a slightly amended version of the bill that was defeated in the House of Representatives. (The media reported that a few "sweeteners" were added to lure both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House into supporting this new bill.)

The ruling rich are hoping that a "YES" vote in the Senate will in turn compel the House to do the same when they reconvene on Thursday.

Across the country, unionists have continued to express their anger over this corporate welfare plan in demonstrations such as the one in New York City on Sept. 25, with letters to their members of Congress, and with letters to their union publications.

One such letter, posted to the ILWU members' listserv, captures this anger. It was written by the former ILWU Local 142 Contract Administrator. It states:

"I am outraged! The U.S. Senate is now scheduled to vote on the same Wall Street bailout package -- with minor modifications -- that was rejected by the House. According to news reports, the package is receiving bipartisan support, including that of Barack Obama.

"The modifications, as reported, include raising FDIC insurance for your bank accounts from $100,000 to $250,000 Š

"I am dumbfounded that everyone regards this situation as a crisis of immense proportions when 40 million Americans lack health insurance. Not a crisis? A public education system in collapse. Not a crisis? Deteriorating infrastructure. Not a crisis? An illogical and insane war in Iraq. Not a crisis? And the list goes on. ...

"I urge each and every one of you to write your Senators and implore them to oppose the Wall Street bail-out provisions."

More and more workers also realize that this Wall St. financial crisis won't go away even if $700 billion of our taxpayers' money is used to rescue the speculators who got us into this message. The press reports that more than 110 major financial institutions are facing bankruptcies. Meanwhile, 10 million families face foreclosure (mortgages amount to $14 trillion, according to reports earlier today on MSNBC). Where is the protection for them in the giveaway bill?

Nor are workers buying the idea that once bailed out, these banks will recapitalize and provide more low-interest loans and credits to consumers and businesses in this slumping economy. For too long, they have seen these speculators off-load their fraudulent securitieså and useless paper on the government, while shoveling the giveaways they get (with our tax money) into foreign currencies, gold, and Swiss bank accounts. To expect that the people who swindled us will help get the economy out of the slump is not only a pipedream, it's a cruel hoax.

And in the meantime, where will the funding come from to help those threatened with home foreclosures? Where will the money come from to stimulate the economy and provide jobs to the millions out of work or on the brink of losing their jobs?

You can't bail out Wall Street and Main Street at the same time. Those who say it can be done are lying through their teeth.

Unions across the country have demanded an economic stimulus package; money for jobs, not war; a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions; public works' programs to put the country back to work and to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

They're not going to get any of this from the deal worked out by Pelosi, Bush and Paulson.

The trade unions need to issue a call TODAY to mobilize their members in the streets in front of Federal Buildings or other appropriate sites across the country on Thursday and Friday (leading members of Congress have announced that no vote will be taken Thursday in the House on the new bailout plan). They need to hold press conferences immediately to let their representatives in Congress know that they will not be bullied or coerced into accepting a slightly warmed over version of the same slop.

The trade unions have the numbers and the potential power to stop this corporate theft once and for all -- and to demand a packet that bails out working people and the economy. Now is the time to reach out to labor's friends and allies and to the public as a whole. This is a moment for leadership, and masses of people will be gratified if labor provides it.

The time to act is NOW!

Historic November 4 Election: People's Demands for Change Must Now Be Heeded!

2008-11-10T18:07:00.001Z

Historic November 4 Election:
People's Demands for Change
Must Now Be Heeded!

(Statement by the National Committee of Socialist Organizer)

Hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of people took to the streets spontaneously across the country the night of Nov. 4 to celebrate the election of the nation's first Black president.

In Black and Latino neighborhoods, on college campuses, and in cities throughout the country, from North to South (including in states like North Carolina), there was a sense of euphoria not only because eight years of the Bush nightmare had come to an end but because Barack Obama, a Black man, had been elected to the country's highest office, something that seemed utterly impossible just a short while ago.

The tears in the eyes of Black activists in Chicago's Grant Park as Obama delivered his acceptance speech only begin to tell the story. The weight of 400 years of racist and national oppression of Black people -- from chattel slavery, to the betrayal of Radical Reconstruction, to Jim Crow segregation, to the warehousing of Black people in the prison-industrial complex today -- seemed to be lifted off of millions of shoulders, even if only for one night.

This was an historic election, not because electing the nation's first Black president signifies the end of racist oppression in this country, but because millions of Blacks, Latinos, youth, and working people of all backgrounds seized on this election to say: enough is enough, racism and oppression must end now. In the context of the deepening economic crisis, the election also was a cry from working people of all backgrounds: We cannot accept the destruction of our jobs, our homes, our public services and our communities -- this crisis is not of our making and we should not be made to pay for it.

Youth, particularly Black youth, told radio and TV reporters across the country that they had voted for the first time because they felt they could make a difference -- because Obama promised to create jobs for inner-city youth, to provide public funding so that every young person could go to college, and to end the war in Iraq so that the economic draft was not their only option.

One Black youth in Harlem, N.Y., who was interviewed on Democracy Now on Nov. 4 put the aspirations of millions of Black people best when he said: "With Obama, everything is going to change. We will finally be free and equal. We will finally get our dignity back!"

Bruce Dixon, managing editor of the Black Agenda Report, wrote in his recent editorial titled, "Cashing the Obama Check:"

"The first Black president carries with him into the Oval Office the hopes and dreams and aspirations of many people he will never meet, but who imagine they know his heart and intentions. Although these things were not on the ballot, and were kept largely out of the discussions by the media and the candidates themselves, the tens of millions who voted for Obama did so because in the main, they want an end to the war. They want to see the military budget and the prison population reduced. They want single-payer national healthcare. They want a more just economy and they objected strenuously to Bush's -- and Obama's bailout of Wall Street.

"Their expectations of social and economic justice at home and peace abroad are, in Dr. King's famous language, a gigantic and long-overdue promissory note. ... That is the change his voters believed in, that's what they expect to see." (BAR, Nov. 6, 2008)

Is a "National Consensus" in the Interest of Working People?

In his acceptance speech, Barack Obama spoke about the need for national unity between rich and poor, between a "thriving Wall Street" and a "revitalized Main Street."

The corporate elite who own and control most of the wealth in this country are deeply worried that the tide of Blacks, Latinos and working families of all colors that lifted Obama to power may be too difficult to contain and to redirect back into safe channels for the ruling class. They have loudly applauded Obama's call for a "national consensus" between workers and bosses, rich and poor -- but, in their own way, they understand that the workers and all the oppressed nationalities may not be so easily co-opted into accepting "common solutions" with the employers.

For the corporate elite "national consensus" means that working class organizations must give up their own specific demands and interests in the name of "national unity" and the "common good." This means bailing out the corporate elite, not addressing the pressing needs of working people and all the oppressed.

Hence their drive, which began the very moment the vote totals were announced on Nov. 4, to urge the American people to "lower their expectations."

Obama himself warned: "The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term."

Leon Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton, put it this way. "We've still got two wars to pay for and hundreds of billions of dollars committed to unfreezing credit. The new president will have to set the country on a course to fiscal discipline. Š That means back-burning most of the initiatives the winning candidate campaigned on." (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 5)

Of course, this would mean no "bailout" for working-class America - that is, no real jobs program, no genuine healthcare reform, no support for the main demands put forward by the organized labor movement, among other urgent items.

What Way Forward?

The country is confronted with a catastrophic situation. Since the beginning of the year, 1.2 million jobs have been lost and millions more are on the chopping block, more than 2 million people have lost their homes to foreclosure, social services are being dismantled left and right, and with the unfolding economic crisis even more severe attacks against working people are in store.

The current crisis is not a "market correction" or the result of the greed of a few bad apples in an otherwise pristine barrel, as we have been told. It is the expression of the failure of a "free market" economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production.

In the aftermath of the election, the question of what way forward for working people is posed immediately and urgently.

For the capitalist class the answer is clear: They must rescue the bankers and speculators to shore up their own class interests. They welcomed with great satisfaction the announcement of Obama's team of economic advisors, which includes, among others, Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve chairman; Warren Buffet, a man who made billions through Wall Street speculation; and Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury Secretary. The full list reads like a Who's Who of old guard Wall Street financiers.

Introducing his team of economic advisers in Washington, Obama reiterated this call for a "national consensus" with Wall Street, stating, "I know we will succeed if we put aside partisanship and politics and work together as one nation."

How Should the Working Class Respond?

For our part, we in Socialist Organizer have always held that the working class and the capitalist class have interests that are diametrically opposed; to defend their interests, working people must have their own independent class organizations and their own independent political expression. That is why, as supporters of the call for the labor movement to build its own Labor Party based on the unions and open to all the oppressed, we did not support Obama, who was the candidate of the Democratic Party, which is a capitalist party. Nor did we endorse the support of the working class organizations for the Obama candidacy.

Having said that, we believe it is very significant that the AFL-CIO, which was one of the main supporters of the Obama campaign, issued a statement following the election that raised the urgent need to promote the interests of working people.

On Nov. 5, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, issued a statement applauding the election of Obama and describing the major role played by the unions in electing the Democratic contender. Such a statement was not unexpected. What came as a surprise to the Big Business press, however, was Sweeney's strong insistence -- issued publicly just one day after the election -- that Obama must move ahead during the new administration's first 100 days to introduce legislation in support of the unions and working people.

After noting that "[t]he election is just Step One in delivering the change we need," Sweeney stated that "[w]e need changes attuned to today's world that are as bold and as visionary as the economic changes FDR made so many decades ago."

Sweeney continued: "In the short term, working people need an economic recovery package that will jump-start the economy and put America back to work. ... [W]e need an immediate investment to create jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads and schools and bridges."

Sweeney went on to urge a national healthcare plan for the "nearly 50 million people who have no coverage or for the millions more who lack adequate coverage." Sweeney then underscored the federation's most pressing demand: [O]ur top priority is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that will restore workers' freedom to bargain for a better life. In an economy that gives corporations far too much power, a union card remains the single best ticket into the middle class."

The Wall Street Journal ran a major story on Nov. 7 titled, "Labor Wants Obama to Take on Big Fight." The article noted that the labor movement is counting heavily on the president-elect to introduce the Employee Free Choice Act, which gives workers the choice of voting for a union by signing cards instead of through a secret ballot election. Such legislation is vehemently opposed by business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the United States, which has a staunch anti-union record, has been one of the most bitter opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's chief executive, told analysts that the change would result in "making this country less competitive" and "bringing coercion and force into the workplace." (The Times of London, Nov. 6)

North Carolina Senator John Edwards is quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that he expects "political World War III" between labor and business over this issue.

The Times of London also notes that the Business Roundtable has expressed strong concerns over Obama's position of "free trade," which included suggesting a renegotiation of NAFTA.

Clearly, a showdown between labor and important sectors of the corporate class is in the works if the unions stick to their guns -- which they must.

Socialist Organizer did not call for a vote for Obama. We believe that the Democratic Party is a capitalist party that is structured fundamentally to uphold the interests of corporations and the ruling elite, at the expense of working people. But we are unconditionally on the side of labor in this struggle for elementary labor and workers' rights, and we urge all trade union and labor rights activists to organize and mobilize to secure the main demands put forward by the labor movement in relation to union organizing, healthcare, a massive public works program, job protection, and more.

No Real Change Possible Under Paulson Bailout Plan

On Oct. 3, Democrats and Republicans -- working hand in hand with the Bush administration -- pulled off one of the greatest swindles in U.S. history when they gave away more than $1.3 trillion (including all funding prior to the Oct. 3 bailout plan) to the very Wall Street bankers who had profited from the home-mortgage speculative orgy.

The bailout had little support from working people. Despite the overwhelming endorsement and lobbying by Obama, Pelosi, John McCain and George W. Bush, the House of Representatives -- under immense pressure from an enraged public -- defeated the initial attempt to pass the bailout. The "NO" vote sent shock waves around the world.

It took a second round of intense lobbying by Obama and Pelosi, following a 776-point drop in the Dow Jones, to convince recalcitrant congresspeople to defy their constituents.

Working people were told that unless they forked over billions of dollars to the Wall Street tycoons, the economy would collapse. But even after the Wall Street bailout was passed, the economy has continued to plunge into a major recession, and the financial markets are still in sharp decline. In fact, even after Obama's victory, stock markets the world over plummeted sharply.

All this should come as no surprise: From day one, economists of all political stripes have warned that the Paulson bailout plan would not address any of the fundamental problems facing the economy.

Soon after the bailout vote was passed, Pelosi and Obama put out a call to sweeten the poison pill: They said they would come through with a $200 billion to $300 billion "economic stimulus plan" if the Democrats won the presidency and were given a majority in the Congress.

But on Nov. 6, two days after the election, Nancy Pelosi, true to form, back-tracked. She announced that in light of the "declining economy," it was necessary to back-pedal on the amount that could be allocated to such a plan. She is now talking about $50 billion, possibly less.

The truth is that under the Paulson Plan and its commitment to rescue the speculators and profiteers at the expense of the American taxpayers, it is not possible to enact any serious jobs-creation plan, let alone implement any of the other programs that Obama promised, such as expanding funding for education, healthcare, or clean energy.

Stop the Paulson Bailout Plan! Not One More Penny to the Speculators!

At this writing, only a portion of the $700 billion earmarked on Oct. 3 for the speculators has been paid out. The rest is to be distributed over a period of six months or more. The Financial Times (Nov. 7) noted as much: "Mr. Obama will inherit a $700 billion rescue plan and bank loan guarantee program. ... Nonetheless, the policy response remains only half-formed. Mr. Obama will have to decide how to reshape and manage the rescue plan."

To address the AFL-CIO agenda (which in large part is endorsed by the Change to Win trade unions) requires stopping the Wall Street bailout plan in its tracks. Not one more penny should go to the speculators and bankers!

The country needs a Manhattan Project-scale workers' recovery plan that preserves all current jobs and creates millions of new ones. But the precondition for implementing such a plan is to stop and reverse the Paulson bailout to the speculators. With a deepening economic and financial crisis worldwide, there simply is no leeway for the government to pay the speculators for their gambling losses and also finance any meaningful economic recovery plan.

Every dollar that goes to a speculator is one dollar less that could go to rebuilding the economy and putting millions of people back to work. These speculators gambled and they lost. They are parasites. Their profits should be confiscated. There should be no pandering to them in the name of "helping Wall Street." Bailing them will not solve the financial crisis. On the contrary, it will only deepen the problem.

Mobilizing to Demand Change

To meet the needs of the working class requires opposing the scapegoating of immigrants and other sectors of the working class, and putting an end to the war so that the needs of the people can be met.

The struggle of the undocumented immigrants is a major struggle that concerns all working people in this country. Tens of thousands of immigrant workers are being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials nationwide.

The only "crime" committed by undocumented immigrants is to work hard to support their families. The U.S. government and ICE are terrorizing and splitting up families across this country. The raids are a crucial component of the reactionary drive to scapegoat immigrants for the problems caused by the crisis-ridden economic system: rising poverty, job losses, deepening inequality, and lower wages.

Today, a broad coalition of immigrant rights activists is circulating a petition to Obama that states, in part:

"The ICE raids must end now! President-elect Obama: Latino and immigrant voters responded to the promise of change you made to our nation and voted for you by huge margins and in record numbers. We call on you to uphold that promise and honor our support by declaring an immediate and unconditional moratorium on ICE raids until just and human immigration reform is passed and implemented."

It is urgent that the labor movement, as well as the Black activist organizations and other fighting sectors, take up this call.

Likewise, in order to be able to fund the social needs of people in this country and to respond to the mass aspiration for peace worldwide, an immediate end to the war is needed.

A recent statement by the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations notes that the ANSWER Coalition has issued a call for united mass mobilizations in Washington, D.C. and other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami, on March 21, 2009 to mark six years of war and occupation and to Bring the Troops Home Now.

The statement also notes that the other national antiwar coalition, United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has issued a call for a week of Washington, D.C. mobilizations during the same period to demand an end to the war in Iraq now.

The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations is calling on "the movements for peace and social justice [to] work in concert to bring the full force of opposition to the government's criminal and destructive policies into the streets Š [by] coming together to act in a unified show of strength and determination in March."

Unity to Secure the Emergency Measures Needed to Address the Pressing Needs of Working People

The AFL-CIO is right to raise the specific demands of the working class in this situation. The time has come to implement an emergency plan to bail out working people -- NOT Wall Street.

Here are some proposed demands that could be included in such a plan:

* Put a halt to the Paulson bailout plan. Not one more penny should be earmarked to bail out Wall Street. It's time to bail out working people.

* Enact a moratorium on all home foreclosures, utility shut-offs, evictions and rent hikes.

* Enact the Employee Free Choice Act so that every worker can have union representation.

* Stop the layoffs in auto and other industries across the country.

* Stop the ICE raids and deportations.

* Enact a universal, single-payer healthcare plan.

* End all funding for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our troops home now. Redirect all war funding to meet human needs.

* Enact a massive national reconstruction public works program to rebuild the nation's schools, hospitals and crumbling infrastructure and to put millions of people back to work, with a living wage and with the unfettered right to join a union! Provide all necessary funding for a genuine Reconstruction program in the Gulf Coast.

These demands are not pie in the sky. They provide an urgent and positive response to the deep aspirations for change that were expressed by the working class majority on Nov. 4.

This is the proposal submitted by the Socialist Organizer National Committee.

At this historic crossroads facing our country, it is more urgent than ever to forge the broadest unity in action of the labor movement, Black and Latino organizations, antiwar and other social protest movements to secure the emergency measures needed to address the pressing needs of all working people and oppressed nationalities.

We call on activists and organizations who share these concerns to join with us in promoting a common labor/community campaign for united action around this over-arching demand: Bail out working people, NOT Wall Street!

(statement issued Nov. 10, 2008)

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[Note: If you agree with this statement and would like to work with us to promote this campaign, please contact us at P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140 or at 415-641-8616 or at . We also invite you to visit our website at www.socialistorganizer.org.]

2008-02-23T21:27:00.001Z

TRUTH AS CASUALTY – A RESPONSE TO CAROL BRIGHTMAN AND CARL OGLESBY ON THE SIXTIES

by Ralph Schoenman

In an article entitled “Carol Brightman on the Sixties” (Truth-Dig, January 3, 2008) Ms.
Brightman reviews three books, including Ravens In the Storm: A Personal History of the
1960’s Anti-War Movement by Carl Oglesby.
The article is replete with falsehoods and disinformation concerning the work of the
International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indo-China, of which I was Secretary-
General, and of my role within it.
Ms. Brightman’s errors, large and small, embellish the pattern of distortion in Mr.
Oglesby’s book. The most egregious of these fabrications concerns the views of Jean-Paul
Sartre, Executive President of the Tribunal and of other Tribunal members on the question
of genocide.
Ms. Brightman’s claims regarding her own role are instructive, not merely for their
petty misrepresentations but for what she conceals. She writes, “Early in 1967, I had gone
on the second of the tribunal’s two fact-finding teams to North Vietnam, the only American
and only woman.”
In fact, not two but six investigative teams were sent to Cambodia and North
Vietnam, with supplemental investigative work carried out in the liberated zones of South
Vietnam. Ms. Brightman was not the sole American on the second team, but one of three.
She omits to mention that members of these teams had been briefed about the
sensitivity of our work, notably in countries under agonizingly massive and continuous
attack by overwhelming U.S. air and ground assault.
Each potential participant had been vetted for their qualifications to examine evidence
pertaining to the issues at hand and, in particular, for responsible discretion with respect to
U.S. intelligence efforts to obtain information about Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian
logistics on the ground.
Visas for members of these teams were arranged with the authorities in these
countries based upon such assurances. To our dismay, when we boarded the plane in Paris
for Phnom Penh, accompanying Ms. Brightman was a man unknown to us who carried an
ABC television camera.
Ms. Brightman stated that this was her boyfriend, whom she had invited to join our
investigative team and participate in its work. We explained that this was not possible, that
he was unknown to us, had not been placed on the team and had not been approved for
visas by the governments of Cambodia and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. We
advised her that he would not be admitted to Phnom Penh unless he had a visa arranged
by ABC and that, regardless, he would have no part in our work.
On arrival, he gained entry by representing falsely that he was a late inclusion in our
investigative team. He shared quarters with Ms. Brightman, who attempted daily to
insinuate him in our work.
This was refused by the team collectively. Members of the investigative team met to
decide how to deal with this situation. The abiding sentiment was to remove Ms.
Truth as Casualty • page 2
Brightman from the team and exclude her from its work; there were concerns that we were
in the presence of a provocation intended to discredit the team itself.
It was agreed that I would consult the Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities and
describe the situation fully. We learned that Ms. Brightman’s friend had attempted to
interview officials and individuals, presenting himself as “Bertrand Russell’s
representative.”
He was asked by the Cambodian authorities to leave. He showed up in Saigon where
he conducted interviews with U.S. soldiers, later shown on U.S. television. These were
interviews sympathetic to U.S. policy.
The Vietnamese representatives in Phom Penh alerted Hanoi to the situation and it
was agreed that to avoid a public dispute deployed by U.S. media to undermine the work
of the Tribunal, Ms. Brightman would continue with us to Hanoi, but that she would not be
allowed access to any sensitive zone or area.
In her article, Ms. Brightman, describes “drinking and swapping stories” at the
Metropole Hotel in Hanoi. “Schoenman, it was said, had stood up at a dinner with North
Vietnamese leaders and rebuked them for thinking of peace. He raised his glass in a victory
salute; no one responded.”
The story is risible. I had been meeting with Ho Chi Minh, Pham Van Dong and party
and governmental figures over a period of four years to discuss how most effectively to
wage resistance to the U.S. war internationally, including our preparations for the Tribunal
that had been ongoing since 1963.
I was chair at the time of the Vietnamese Solidarity Campaign in Great Britain, with
sixty member organizations. Our public view, and that of Bertrand Russell during those
years, was that we must face U.S. rulers with the demand “Out Now,” not pressure the
Vietnamese victims of onslaught to make concessions to U.S. imperial policy in the name of
“peace.”
The occasion of these remarks by Ms. Brightman is an ostensible review of Carl
Oglesby’s memoir. Ms. Brightman quotes extensively from “Oglesby’s account” which, she
states, “gives a vivid portrait of Ralph Schoenman, the American expatriate and Russell’s
representative.”
Mr. Oglesby writes as follows: “Schoenman was about thirty, a tall man with broad
shoulders. He wore his black hair combed straight back and varnished down. His skin was
pale, his dark eyes nervous and darkly shadowed. He was always in a black turtleneck
sweater and dark blue blazer, always stiffly erect with his chest out …”
Mr. Oglesby’s self-description to the Tribunal was as “a playwright and political
essayist” and perhaps he thinks of himself as entitled to dramatic license.
My height is under 5’ 10” and I am of slender build. My shoulders are not broad nor
does my chest protrude. My weight was in the 150’s in 1967. It is 145 today. My hair is not
black, but medium brown. I have never combed it straight back nor plastered it to my
scalp. My hair was combed loosely forward, Beatles style.
My color now as then is pretty good. I have never been accused of suffering from
pallor. My eyes are light hazel with a touch of green, not black or even dark. I have never
owned a black turtleneck sweater nor attempted to wear one. My standard dress was a suit
Truth as Casualty • page 3
or a jacket, dress shirt and necktie. My preference in pullovers, worn occasionally in less
formal settings, has been those of light colors.
Mr. Oglesby may have someone else in mind. He writes, however, to Ms. Brightman’s
delectation:
“In one closed meeting of the tribunal during our second session in late November in
a town called Roskilde, about twenty miles from Copenhagen, Schoenman announced that
Russell wanted the tribunal to take an affirmative position on the genocide question, one of
several questions the tribunal was examining.
“The practical question was whether the United States was specifically targeting
Vietnamese population centers. Attacks on civilians constituted a crime of war, technical
genocide. Schoenman told us that Russell believed such attacks were happening and that
the United States was therefore guilty of genocide.
“Sartre disagreed. He saw American attacks on population centers as a consequence
of the fact that Viet Cong and North Vietnamese combat units often stationed themselves in
cities and villages. As Sartre saw it, such attacks were deplorable but nonetheless did not
constitute genocide. In Sartre’s view, one could not use that term without evoking
memories of Hitler’s assault on the Jews. Compared to the Holocaust, what the United
States was doing in Vietnam was just fighting an ugly war in an ugly way. If the United
States was in the wrong, he felt, that was because its effort to subdue the Vietnamese
resistance was in itself wrong, not because the United States was trying to exterminate the
Vietnamese people.”
The claim by Mr. Oglesby that U.S. saturation destruction of the civilian population of
Vietnam only occurred as an ancillary consequence of the deliberate placement by the
Vietnamese of their soldiers and armed forces inside population centers is not merely a
deeply reactionary and dishonest claim. It was the lying rationale of the U.S. State
Department and of the Pentagon.
Ms. Brightman writes that “Oglesby was a great admirer of Jean-Paul Sartre, who
together with Simone de Beauvoir and Vlado (sic) Dedijer, a World War II adjutant of
Tito’s and a hero of the Yugoslav anti-Nazi resistance, presided over the tribunal.
Schoenman represented Lord Russell, who remained a ghostly figure in Wales.”
Fathering this contemptible lie upon Jean-Paul Sartre is a strange form of admiration.
Mr. Oglesby, cheered on by Ms. Brightman in her review, imputes to Sartre a defense of
U.S. imperialism against the “baseless” charge of genocide.
He places in Sartre’s mouth the revolting rationale of U.S. rulers themselves that the
mass death of civilians in Vietnam was really the fault of the callous Vietnamese
communists who hid their armies within population centers to deploy massive civilian
deaths (now called ‘collateral damage’) as cynical propaganda.
Mr. Oglesby elaborates upon these presumptive views of Sartre, which he claims
Sartre set forth in indignant opposition to my assertions that genocidal attacks on the
Vietnamese population were taking place.
“All day long Schoenman would say, on the one hand, things like, ‘Lord Russell says
he expects the tribunal to find the United States guilty of genocide,’ where the subtext was
that Russell was paying for this damned thing and did not want to be unhappy with its
findings. And then on the other hand, when Sartre challenged him on the genocide issue,
Truth as Casualty • page 4
Schoenman would say, “ ‘Don’t expect me to defend Lord Russell’s positions because I
would not think of speaking for him.’ ”
This is bizarre. I had been speaking and writing for six years on the subject. The
Student Peace Union in the United States had published Bertrand Russell’s writing on the
genocidal war in Vietnam in 1963.
Bertrand Russell’s book War Crimes In Vietnam, written before the Tribunal took
place, set forth evidence we had made public since 1962. The first chapter, entitled “The
Press and Vietnam – March-July 1963” contains our exchanges with the New York Times
regarding our documented evidence of U.S. saturation bombing of the civilian populace
and of insidious chemical weapons, including gases that explode the pupil of the eye.
It cites our letter to the New York Times referencing “a year’s study … of the chemicals
sprayed in South Vietnam and their effect upon the health of human beings, animals and
crops.” It sets forth data concerning the use of “white arsenic, various kinds of arsenite
sodium and arsenite calcium, lead manganese arsenates, DNP and DNC (which inflame
and eat into human flesh); and calcic cyanamide … which has seriously affected thousands
of the inhabitants of South Vietnam; with having spread these poisonous chemicals on
large and densely populated areas of South Vietnam.
“ … The use of these weapons,” we stated, “napalm bombs and chemicals, constitutes
and results in atrocities and points to the fact that this is a war of annihilation.”
This chapter describes how the New York Times published this letter, while excising
the cited evidence and then accused Russell in an editorial of “spreading communist
propaganda, as he in his heart must know.”
It is instructive to note that Mr. Oglesby imputes to Jean-Paul Sartre the view that
Bertrand Russell and I were “following the line of North Vietnam” on the subject of
genocide.
War Crimes in Vietnam was published in 1967 by Monthly Review Press and by
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. It included a 48 page essay of mine containing a detailed eyewitness
account of the weaponry used and the effects on the population of North Vietnam.
It lists the members of the Tribunal. (Mr. Oglesby was not among them.) It describes
the planned convening of the Tribunal in London on November 13, 1966 “to announce its
structure, statement of aims and time table.” It specified five areas of inquiry for which
evidence would be assembled.
The fifth was “the pursuit of genocidal policies, including forced labor camps, mass
burials and other techniques of extermination in the South.” This issue and the evidence
pertaining to it was on the agenda in Roskilde, near Copenhagen.
As I described our work in Against The Crime of Silence, “We proclaimed our
conviction that terrible crimes were occurring and that we were in possession of evidence
of such magnitude that it was essential to investigate the charges of this accusation.
“Our evidence established that eight million people were placed in barbed wire
internment camps by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. It showed the systematic
destruction of hospitals, schools, sanatoria, dams, dikes, churches and pagodas. It
demonstrated that the cultural remains of a rich and complex civilization representing the
legacy of generations had been smashed in a terror of five million pounds of high
explosives daily.
Truth as Casualty • page 5
“Every nine months, this destruction is roughly equivalent to the total bombardment
of the Pacific theater in World War II. It is as if the Louvre and the cathedrals had been
doused in napalm and pulverized by 1000 pound bombs.”
Mr. Oglesby does not rest at fathering upon Jean-Paul Sartre a rejection of my
presumptive dogmatic insistence, allegedly without concern for evidence, that genocide
was occurring in Vietnam. Mr. Oglesby attributes a fundamental division on these matters
to the Tribunal members at large:
“Apart from the existential problems between Sartre and Schoenman, this split over
the question of genocide was the one serious split among the members of the tribunal. In
crudest terms, Russell wanted a guilty verdict on this question, but Sartre was determined
to let the evidence speak for itself. And as Sartre saw it, the evidence did not prove
genocide. He thought it essential that the tribunal demonstrate its independence by voting
to satisfy its own conscience. And he had let it be known that he thought Russell in the
wrong to push North Vietnam’s line.”
Ms. Brightman, typically, cannot resist embellishing this citation. The word
“propaganda” is not Mr. Oglesby’s but Ms. Brightman’s, who slips it into her citation of his
text, writing “North Vietnam’s propaganda line.”
Mr. Oglesby resumes his breathless account of a supposed envenomed exchange on
the subject between Jean-Paul Sartre and myself:
“Schoenman didn’t seem to care terribly about the quality of the evidence. He had
already harangued several closed sessions about this and was now doing it again.”
Ms. Brightman picks up the theme eagerly from Mr. Oglesby:
“Lord Russell was unhappy to hear of the recent attacks upon him by certain tribunal
members,” Schoenman said, “He is all the more distressed by these attacks in that they are
occasioned by large differences within the tribunal on the issue of genocide.’
“ ‘No one has attacked Russell,’ said Dellinger, who acted as the tribunal’s secretary
and occasional peacemaker. We simply disagree with him on this question. Why does he
consider disagreement a personal attack?’
“ ‘That is for Lord Russell to say,’ said Schoenman, ‘I would not presume to speak for
him. I am here only to say that Lord Russell believes the United States guilty of genocide in
Vietnam, and that he will be disappointed if the tribunal continues to attack him for this
view. He believes it imperative that …’
“ ‘Premiere!’ thundered Sartre. ‘Our findings will be significant only if they are
supported by facts. Deuxieme! It is you who are under attack, Schoenman, not Lord
Russell! Troisieme! You cannot both stand behind Lord Russell and put him in your
pocket!’ ”
Ms. Brightman then writes as follows:
“Schoenman bowed his head slightly but kept his composure. ‘I will see that Lord
Russell receives a faithful account of your statement.’ “It was not a ‘knockout’ as Oglesby
puts it.”
Revealingly, Ms. Brightman tampers with a quotation once again. Mr. Oglesby had
written actually, “It was not a knockout” with regard to the putative denunciation of my
views by Jean Paul Sartre.
Truth as Casualty • page 6
Ms. Brightman alters Oglesby’s text and places his “knockout” comment after my
presumptive rejoinder!
Mr. Oglesby’s breathless, blow-by-blow dramatization of this imputed conflict
between Jean-Paul Sartre and myself, unfolding as he recounts it in Roskilde, near
Copenhagen during the second session of the International War Crimes Tribunal, has one
fatal flaw to which your readers should be alerted.
I was never there!
The entire drama in Roskilde set forth by Mr. Oglesby never happened. Nor was my
inability to enter Denmark for the session of the Tribunal that Mr. Oglesby purports to
describe, something known only to insiders.
After my imprisonment in Bolivia immediately after the execution of Che Guevara
during October 1967, and following upon a five months sojourn in Nuancahuazu during
the time of Che Guevara’s Bolivia campaign, I had escaped, was recaptured and
imprisoned again.
After being deported to Peru, Panama and the U.S., my passport was nullified. The
State Department refused to issue another, despite legal intervention by Leonard Boudin,
General Counsel of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee.
I secured an international travel document from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
in a vain attempt to get to Copenhagen and Roskilde to resume my duties as Secretary
General of the Tribunal and to be present at the session.
My flight first landed in Amsterdam where I was taken into custody by airport police.
My Swedish lawyer, Hans-Joran Franck, who was an active part of the preparatory team of
the tribunal in Stockholm, arranged with the Swedish government to allow my entry into
Stockholm, whose good offices it was assumed would be invoked to facilitate my
admission into Denmark, albeit on a North Vietnamese travel document.
Instead, the Swedish police took me off the flight and into jail where I was roughed
up, my sternum fractured. I was then placed on a plane bound for Hamburg. Swedish
supporters called in a bomb threat to the plane and it was compelled to return to
Stockholm, to much fanfare in the European press.
From there, I was placed on a flight that stopped in Helsinki, where the police took
me into custody. The name of the interrogating officer was Kafka – a touch, one would
think, that would suit the theater of the absurd that so tempts Mr. Oglesby.
For several days I was a “flying Dutchman,” unable to land in any European country,
placed finally on a flight back to New York sandwiched between two U.S. federal agents.
All of this received ongoing notice in the media, particularly in Sweden and Denmark.
I was not permitted to enter Denmark and did not attend the Danish session of the
Tribunal nor engage in dialogue with any of its members.
Mr. Oglesby is not fazed. Describing further his “adventures” in Copenhagen, he
writes:
“Also sitting on the tribunal was the Polish historian Isaac Deutscher, author of major
biographies of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin…”
Unfortunately, my close friend, Isaac, died of a heart attack in Rome the previous
August 18th and, like me, was absent from the tribunal session in Roskilde.
Truth as Casualty • page 7
The second session of the Tribunal alone examined the sixth question, on which
evidence was presented during that meeting, namely: “Whether the combination of the
crimes imputed to the government of the United States met the general qualification of
genocide.”
This issue was discussed in Copenhagen, but without me.
What then of the actual opinions of Jean-Paul Sartre on the subject of genocide and on
the judgment appropriate to the Tribunal?
Did he espouse the views ascribed to him by Mr. Oglesby?
Fortunately, although Sartre is no longer with us, his views on the subject are
memorialized in his presentation On Genocide, published in Against The Crime of Silence:
Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal – Stockholm and
Copenhagen (Ohare Books, 1968), pages 612 to 626 and expanded upon by tribunal
member Lelio Basso in his Summation on Genocide, pages 626-643. They are entirely
consonant with those of Russell and myself.
Sartre’s On Genocide states, “The Americans want to show others that guerrilla war
does not pay: they want to show all the oppressed and the exploited nations that might be
tempted to shake off the American yoke by launching a peoples’ war, at first against their
own pseudo-governments, the compradors and the army, then against the U.S. Special
Forces and finally against the G.I.s. … To Che Guevara, who said ‘We need several
Vietnams,’ the American government answers ‘They will all be crushed the way we are
crushing the first.’”
He continues, “They do offer an alternative: Declare you are beaten or we will bomb
you back into the stone age. The fact remains that the second term of this alternative is
genocide. They have said: “genocide, yes, but conditional genocide.” Is this juridically
valid? Is it even conceivable?
“…. An act of genocide, especially if it is carried out over a period of several years, is
no less genocide for being blackmail. … And this is all the more true when, as is the case
here, a good part of the group has been annihilated to force the rest to give in.”
Sartre is clear, specific and passionate:
“In the South, the choice is the following: villages burned, the populace subjected to
massive bombing, livestock shot, vegetation destroyed by defoliants, crops ruined by toxic
aerosols and everywhere indiscriminate shooting, murder, rape and looting. This is
genocide in the strictest sense: massive extermination. … What are the Vietnamese people
to do to escape this horrible death? Join the armed forces of Saigon or be enclosed in
strategic or “New Life” hamlets, two names for the same concentration camps.”
Jean-Paul Sartre continues:
“As the armed forces of the United States entrench themselves firmly in Vietnam, as
they intensify the bombing and the massacres, as they try to bring Laos under their control,
as they plan the invasion of Cambodia, there is less and less doubt that the government of
the United States, despite its hypocritical denials, has chosen genocide.”
Despite the claims by Ms. Brightman, pace Mr. Oglesby, that Sartre rejected the
evidence of genocide marshaled at the International Tribunal, his actual words
demonstrate where their half-truths lie.
Truth as Casualty • page 8
Jean- Paul Sartre was unambiguous.
“The genocidal intent is implicit in the facts. It is necessarily pre-meditated. … The
anti-guerrilla genocide that our times have produced requires organization, military bases,
a structure of accomplices and budget appropriations. Therefore, its authors must meditate
and plan out their act.”
He continues as follows:
“When a peasant falls in his rice paddy, mowed down by a machine gun, every one of
us is hit. The Vietnamese fight for all men and the American forces against all. Neither
figuratively nor abstractly. And not only because genocide would be a crime universally
condemned by international law, but because little by little the whole human race is being
subjected to this genocidal blackmail piled on top of atomic blackmail, that is, to absolute
total war.
“This crime, carried out every day before the eyes of the world, renders all who do not
denounce it accomplices of those who commit it, so that we are degraded today for our
future enslavement.”
Here is how Sartre concludes his exposition “On Genocide”:
“In this sense, imperialist genocide can only become more complete. The group that
the United States wants to intimidate and terrorize by way of the Vietnamese nation is the
human group in its entirety.”
Mr. Oglesby and Ms. Brightman have imputed to Sartre an embrace of the rationale of
U.S. rulers for their genocidal war. In the process, they reinvent me as a catspaw in
furthering this farrago.
Late in 1968, well after the conclusion of the Tribunal sessions, the Stalinist regime of
Brezhnev invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the students and steel workers who fought to
reclaim the socialist ideal during the Prague Spring.
I flew to Rome to meet Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Hotel
Nazionale. We prepared a petition together to summon people to a defense of socialism
with democratic control and content.
Together, with Bertrand Russell, Antonin Liehm, C.L.R James and prominent others,
we prepared an international conference of socialists and anti-imperialists to defend the
Czech worker and student resistance.
That conference also took place in Stockholm – in early Spring 1969.
It is not the evil that is new; nor is it the crisis that has changed.
Today, forty-one years later, Ms. Brightman and Mr. Oglesby, reprise their political
role in these matters. In making truth a casualty to their predilections and petty ambition,
they evince, now as then, the dishonest lengths to which they are prepared to go and, in the
process, the limits of liberalism.
Ralph Schoenman
Vallejo, California, January 21, 2008

Former MP Harold Best

2008-02-09T23:26:00.000Z

I went with Luci and Danny, and Luci's mum Delia to visit old family friends: fomer lefty MP Harold Best who was elected in 1997 but stood down before the last election today.
I just wanted to say what a nice guy, and his whole family as well some of whom were round there at the time.

Mike

Toward a Balance Sheet of the Fourth International in the United States

2008-02-03T13:56:00.001Z

Toward a Balance Sheet of the Fourth International in the United States
Written by Alan Benjamin

Introduction

This text does not purport to be the official history of the Fourth International (FI) in the United States. Something of that magnitude is beyond the scope of this effort. Rather, what I have attempted to do here is highlight some of the major moments and political issues that mark the history of the FI in the United States—as a contribution to a much-needed and more complete balance sheet of our movement in this country. At the same time, this contribution is aimed at tracing the revolutionary continuity of Socialist Organizer—which represents the best traditions of the FI in the United States.

The SWP and Fourth International After the War
Unlike the majority of sections of the Fourth International—which were decimated by the war, with leading members killed on battlefields, in prison camps, or in gas chambers—the SWP emerged from the war relatively unscathed.

The SWP emerged from the war with well over 1500 members as one of the largest sections, if not the largest section, of the FI. It had deep roots in the working class and among Black workers in major cities across the country. It was the party of James P. Cannon, a historic leader of the early Socialist and Communist parties, who, in 1928, accidentally obtained a copy of Trotsky’s critique of Stalin’s program, read it, agreed with Trotsky, and went on to become a founder of the International Left Opposition and, later, the Fourth International. The SWP was the party that led the general strike in Minneapolis in 1934, and it played a central role in workers’ struggles in major cities all across the country during the Depression years.

For all these reasons and more, comrades of the FI in all countries looked to the SWP to play a leading role in building and strengthening the FI after the war. But the preparations for the Second World Congress of the FI, and the Congress itself, would reveal for the first time some major political problems in the functioning of the FI, as well as with the SWP’s attitude toward taking any direct responsibility for building the FI. The Congress was held in 1948, almost ten years after the founding congress of the FI. And these were not just any 10 years. The world had been shaken by wars and revolutions.

The mass revolutionary struggles following the war had not resulted in victorious proletarian revolutions in the advanced European countries—but the war, as Trotsky had predicted, did give way to mighty revolutionary mobilizations throughout Europe. It was only because of the role of the treacherous apparatuses of the labor movement—the Social Democrats and especially the Stalinists—that capitalism did not fall. Capitalism was rescued, but the mass workers’ struggles across Europe were able to wrest major victories for the working class—such as national public health systems, mass public education, mass public transit systems, major public services, generalized social and welfare programs. The ruling class was forced to make these concessions to preserve capitalism, which was under assault by millions of working people.

Sections of the Fourth International in Europe, by and large, were not prepared politically for this post-war revolutionary upsurge. They believed that the mass Social Democratic and Stalinist organizations had been so discredited because of their sell-out role before and during the war that the masses would bypass them and move directly to join the FI. This, of course, did not happen. The workers’ movement during this period of revolutionary upheaval swelled the ranks of the Social Democratic and Stalinist parties, seeking to advance their demands through their historic organizations. Stalinism, despite its history of betrayals, emerged from the war with great and newfound prestige—as it took the credit for the mass resistance of the Soviet workers to Hitler’s invasion, symbolized particularly in the Battle of Stalingrad.

But as Pierre Lambert, a young worker who joined the Movement for the Fourth International in 1936 in France and remains today one of the leaders of the FI, has pointed out on numerous occasions: “The sections of the FI—including the French section—were politically disoriented after the war. They had not assimilated Lenin’s and Trotsky’s Marxist methodology—particularly their admonition that the masses, in their first revolutionary movement, will always look for the most “economical” means of struggle—that is, they will always first look to their traditional organizations, seeking to imbue them with their revolutionary aspirations and demands. Failure to assimilate this fundamental lesson led to widespread demoralization among the leadership and ranks of the Fourth International. The masses hadn’t come knocking at the door of the FI in the immediate aftermath of the war, as many had predicted. Perhaps, some asked, our program no longer corresponded to the needs of the revolutionary struggle for socialism?”

The period between the first and second congresses of the Fourth International required a full and patient discussion within the FI to assimilate fully the lessons of these 10 years, and to draw a balance sheet on the basis of the program that could politically arm the sections and members to continue the difficult struggle for the FI and socialism. But there was no balance sheet. A deal was worked out between the Cannon leadership of the SWP and the leaders of the International Secretariat in Paris (Michel Pablo, Ernest Mandel, and Pierre Frank, in particular) so that there would be no real balance sheet. The report on the first 10 years of the FI was presented by SWP leader Morris Stein and took only 30 minutes, translation included. Not surprisingly, there was no real discussion following the report. All the political differences between the SWP and IS leaders were brushed under the rug. No one wanted to truly discuss and draw a balance sheet. They were happy to go through the motions of holding an International Congress of the FI but their intent was not to create a genuine framework for advancing the political thinking and organizational building of the sections of the FI. The operating motto was “live and let live”—as long, of course, as no one interfered directly in the affairs of anyone else in the FI.

Quite obviously, the lack of collective political discussion and clarification, and the lack of any balance sheet of the first 10 years of the Fourth International only fueled the demoralization at all levels within the FI. It is an axiom of revolutionary politics that when demoralization sets in, there is a natural tendency to look for political substitutes for the program—in this case, the program of the FI. This quest for political substitutes for the program and sections of the FI would be clearly evidenced in the years to follow.

The 1953 Split in the Fourth International
Beginning in the early 1950s, Michel Pablo and the other central leaders of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International based in Paris began to revise Trotsky’s fundamental analysis regarding the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism worldwide. Pablo argued that the extension of the workers’ states into Eastern Europe (and later China) following World War II demonstrated that Stalinism had a dual nature—that it could be pushed from below to become a revolutionary force in society—or, as Pablo put it, to “carry out socialism in its own way.” He developed this revision of Trotsky’s seminal analysis and formulated a new strategy for the Fourth International on the basis of this theory. It was now necessary for the Trotskyists to “dissolve” into the Stalinist parties for a prolonged period of time to help move them on a revolutionary course. This “entryism sui generis” (of a different type), as it was dubbed, was espoused by Pablo, Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank and other core leaders of the International Secretariat.

The majority of the French section of the Fourth International did not agree with this “revision” of the FI’s analysis of Stalinism. They explained that under certain exceptional circumstances, as Trotsky himself had noted in the Transitional Program, petty-bourgeois parties—and even Stalinists—could be compelled to go further on the road to a break with capitalism than their program had presupposed. But even in those circumstances, the French majority noted, the basic program of the Fourth International (workers’ democracy, extension of the revolutions through a process of Permanent Revolution, etc.) was needed to safeguard the gains made and to move forward toward socialism—which could not be established in only one (or a series) of countries, but which required supplanting capitalism on a world scale as a system of production and social relations. And to advance that program, it was essential that the Fourth International exist as an organized political force in every country.

The French majority argued vehemently against the “revisionism” and “liquidationism” advocated by the Pablo-Mandel-Frank majority of the International Secretariat. For expressing this political disagreement, the French majority was expelled from the Fourth International. Immediately, the French majority—this was in early 1952—appealed for help to James P. Cannon and the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. But the letters from the French majority to the SWP leadership requesting political support in the fight against “Pabloism” fell on deaf ears for more than 18 months—a period during which the International Secretariat’s “revisionism” caused great havoc and dislocation within the Fourth International.

It was only after the Mandel-Pablo majority began to interfere in the internal affairs of the SWP—seeking to fuel an internal faction against Cannon via the Clark-Cochran minority—that the Cannon leadership reacted sharply, to the point of embracing, belatedly, the political characterization of Pabloism as a “revisionist” and “liquidationist” current inside the Fourth International. The political offensive by Pablo-Mandel against the historic program of the Fourth International led to a major split in the International—a very damaging split that would dislocate the International for decades. In 1953, the Socialist Workers Party, the French majority (regrouped at the time in the PCI), the British Revolutionary Workers Party (then led by Gerry Healey) and other sections in a dozen or more countries constituted the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). They arose in opposition to the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) of Pablo-Mandel-Frank.

For 10 years, these two formations would exist side by side, each claiming to represent the continuity and mantle of the Fourth International. Looking back many years later on this period of the International Committee, Pierre Lambert noted that the French majority was gratified the SWP had joined them in 1953 in the struggle against Pablo. But Lambert went on to add that the SWP, which was the largest and most experienced section within the International Committee, refused to assume any leadership role within the IC.

“We argued it was necessary to conduct a permanent campaign to combat Pablo’s revisionism,” Lambert noted in an interview conducted for La Vérité/The Truth (the modern theoretical magazine of the FI), “but Cannon and the SWP leadership refused to wage that fight. It’s almost as if they thought this revisionist trend would go away on its own. Nor did the SWP play any role in building the ICFI as an international current. It reminded many of us of the correspondence between Trotsky and Cannon in the late 1930s. Trotsky had criticized the Cannon leadership for not paying its international dues to the International or devoting any leadership attention to the building of an International Center in Paris. There was a certain air of ‘American self-sufficiency.’ In word and deed, the SWP subordinated the fight to build the FI as the core of the world party of socialist revolution to the central task of building the FI in the U.S. This tendency toward ‘national Trotskyism was not unique to the SWP; we have seen it emerge periodically within the ranks of the FI. It was simply more pronounced in the United States because of the particular circumstances prevailing in that country. It was evident throughout the period of the International Committee but it surfaced throughout the entire history of the SWP. It was, unfortunately, one of the main factors leading to the degeneration of the SWP in the late 1970s.”

The “Reunification” of 1963

The Cuban Revolution of 1959-1961 formed the political backdrop in which an unprincipled “reunification” took place between the International Secretariat and the SWP. If you look at the official history of the SWP, you will read that toward the end of the 1950s, there began a political convergence between the SWP leadership, on the one hand, and the central leaders of the International Secretariat in Paris, on the other. This history claims that that the French OCI (the French affiliate of the International Committee previously called the PCI) “turned its back on the Cuban Revolution,” refusing to acknowledge the revolution and the creation of a workers’ state in Cuba. This assertion is simply not true. The OCI hailed the downfall of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba under the impact of the mass revolutionary struggles of the Cuban workers and peasants. It applauded the victorious Cuban Revolution, characterizing it as a decisive blow to U.S. imperialism in its very own backyard.

But this is where the political agreement ended between the OCI and the SWP leadership, which was joined on this score by Mandel-Frank and the IS. The SWP and IS leaderships did more than just support the revolution. The SWP and IS leaders proceeded to characterize Fidel Castro as a “natural Trotskyist” and to explain that the Cuban Revolution, which had overturned capitalist property relations by early 1961, heralded the first non-Stalinist anti-capitalist revolution with a leadership to be emulated. Accordingly, there was no longer any need to build a section of the FI in Cuba.

The OCI rejected this characterization of the leadership of the Cuban Revolution, holding to the formulation in the Transitional Program according to which petty-bourgeois political formations could, under exceptional circumstances, go further in their break with the capitalists than they had initially intended. Though this “paradox” was proving to be more commonplace than expected in the post-war period, the OCI explained, this did not invalidate the central need for sections of the Fourth International in every country, including Cuba. But the debate in the early years of the Cuban Revolution between the SWP and IS leaders, on the one hand, and the French OCI, on the other, was not about the assessment of the various stages reached by the Cuban Revolution. It was not about the imperative need for Trotskyists to be the best defenders of the Cuban Revolution against imperialism; on this there was absolutely no disagreement between the OCI and the SWP.

The debate in the FI was about something far more fundamental: Had the emergence of the Castro leadership in Cuba invalidated a founding principle of the FI, according to which the FI’s program—and therefore its organizational expression, the section of the FI—was imperative in every country? Would Castro promote the extension of the Cuban Revolution to the rest of the world with an orientation rooted in Permanent Revolution? Did Castro advocate the forms of workers’ democracy—soviet democracy—ushered in by the Russian Revolution of 1917, until the revolution’s degeneration under Stalin? Had Castro embraced the FI’s historic program? The SWP and IS leaders basically replied in the affirmative to these questions—and on the basis of this “political convergence” regarding the assessment of the Castro leadership, they began political discussions aimed at a political reunification of the International Secretariat and the International Committee.

The OCI argued that they were not opposed to a reunification—but they insisted that any reunification had to be premised on a full balance sheet of the root political causes that had led to the split in the FI in 1953—namely, the political adaptation to Stalinism and the quest for political substitutes to the program and section-building of the FI. They noted, moreover, that the “political convergence” between the SWP and IS leaders around Cuba reproduced many of the same political problems that had led to the split in 1953. Without such a balance sheet of the 1953 split, and without an in depth discussion of the fundamental political issues at the heart of the discussion around Cuba, any reunification, the OCI argued, would be “unprincipled.” Without such a balance sheet, they insisted, all the political problems that had caused such dislocation in the FI—problems that were being brushed under the rug in 1963—would re-emerge with a vengeance down the road in any “reunified” FI.

The request by Lambert and the OCI for a political balance sheet and organized political discussion about the Cuban Revolution was rejected by the SWP and IS leaders. Cannon, Joe Hansen, Farrell Dobbs and other central leaders of the SWP urged Lambert to back off from this request. They urged Lambert to join them in the reunification, arguing that they—the International Committee—would be a majority in a reunified FI, as the combined membership of the IC sections far outnumbered the membership of the IS sections. The OCI turned down this plea, explaining that it would only lead to more crises down the road. “There are certain levels of activity where it is legitimate to maneuver to advance your politics,” Lambert explained. “But you cannot maneuver when it comes to the founding program and principles of the Fourth International. Such an approach inevitably leads to disaster.”

In 1963, the SWP reunited with the International Secretariat to constitute the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USec.) The OCI in France, the RWP (led by Gerry Healy in England), the POR in Bolivia (led by Guillermo Lora) and a number of smaller sections in other countries refused to be part of such an unprincipled reunification, opting instead to maintain themselves as the International Committee of the Fourth International. The French OCI, however, continued to characterize the SWP as a Trotskyist organization—a label they did not apply to the International Secretariat or its sections around the world, which they called “Pabloists.” Despite the tendency toward “national Trotskyism” and the adaptation to the leadership of the Cuban Revolution, the SWP remained a Trotskyist organization in the eyes of the SWP because of its history, its roots and traditions in the American working class, and its continuity with Trotsky and the early International Left Opposition.

This political characterization would lead the OCI, ten years later, to re-establish political contact with the SWP at a time when a new and major crisis developed in the USec, (as the OCI had predicted)—this time over the orientation toward “guerrilla warfare” espoused by the USFI leadership of Mandel, Frank, and Livio Maitan. That crisis would witness the formation, at the initiative of the SWP, of the Leninist Trotskyist Faction (LTF) in the USec. The LTF was created to combat the petty-bourgeois “guerrilla warfare” orientation of the USec leadership—the latest form of their longstanding tendency to abandon the program of the FI in search of political substitutes.

The 1960s: The Antiwar Movement, the Labor Party and “Sectoralism”

The 1960s witnessed the spectacular growth of the SWP. The SWP began as a small minority in the fledgling antiwar movement of the early 1960s. They had to take on the Communist Party, which advocated support for “pro-peace” Democrats (from Eugene McCarthy to George McGovern) to derail the development of a mass movement in the streets against the war. They had to contend with the CP and the liberals, who promoted support for the Paris “Peace Talks” with the Vietnamese National Liberation Front—much like these same folks are doing today when they advocate UN troops in Iraq, to replace the U.S. troops (combined with their “Dump Bush”/Support Any Democratic candidate politics). But the SWP also had to contest for leadership in the youth movement with the Maoists and other ultraleftists, and with the left-Social Democratic leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The ultraleft groups, which succeeded in taking over SDS, advocated exemplary “minority actions” in direct counterposition to a mass-action strategy. And they advocated political support for the Vietnamese CP and NLF—marching with chants such as “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!”—referring to the Stalinist leader of the VCP.

The SWP and YSA advocated “U.S. Troops Out Now!” and “Bring Our Boys Home Now!” (There were no women in combat in those days.) With these united front slogans, and advocating mass action in the streets and democratically run mass antiwar conferences (with one person-one vote), the SWP and YSA were propelled into the leadership of the antiwar movement. Without a doubt, this was one of the proudest moments in the entire history of the SWP.

Also very important, the SWP oriented to the developing Black liberation struggle, and to Malcolm X in particular. In fact, Malcolm—after he broke with the Nation of Islam—spoke at various Forums organized by the SWP. The SWP published numerous pamphlets on the Black question and recruited for the first time since the immediate postwar period a significant layer of Black activists. But as the excellent article by Daniel Gluckstein titled, “Strengths and Weaknesses of Cannonism” (reprinted from La Vérité/The Truth) points out, the SWP in embracing the Black struggle went overboard and adapted to the political weaknesses of Malcolm and the Black nationalist movement—divorcing the struggle for independent Black political action from the struggle for independent working class politics as a whole; i.e., the Labor Party. This was linked, Gluckstein argues, to two political weaknesses on the part of the SWP:

The first weakness was the SWP leadership’s failure to fully assimilate the methodology Trotsky had proposed to the SWP in relation to how to advance the struggle for the Labor Party. In his discussions with SWP leaders in July 1938 in Coyoacán, Mexico, Trotsky insisted that it was not sufficient to carry out abstract propaganda for a Labor Party. What was necessary, Trotsky argued, was to “show concrete examples of success, and not limit ourselves to giving good theoretical advice in favor of a Labor Party.”
The second weakness was an adaptation to what the SWP itself, in a rare balance sheet conducted in the mid-1970s, characterized as their “sectoralism” of the 1960s. By this the SWP meant that during the 1960s, the SWP oriented to—and adapted politically to—all sorts of important social or “sectoral” movements of the working class (from the Chicano movement and La Raza Unida Party, to the Black nationalists, to the environmental movement, to the women’s movement, to the student movement) without tying these struggles together through a consistent orientation to the overall U.S. working class and its main battalions in the trade union movement. In other words, the SWP compartmentalized the working class into various, semi-autonomous or independent “sectors.”
Such a unifying political perspective, as Gluckstein pointed out in his article, would have been the fight for the Labor Party. But at no point during this period did the SWP seriously raise the perspective of the Labor Party. In fact, even during the 1946-48 period, when significant Labor Party movements were developing across the Midwestern states, many of them running local union-based LP candidates for public office, the SWP never oriented to these movements—let alone offer them a centralizing perspective of building a nationwide Labor Party. This orientation also predisposed the SWP to be extremely wary of, if not outwardly hostile to, any motion by a sector of the labor movement to talk about, or seek to move in the direction of, the Labor Party. Any such movement was viewed as a “maneuver” and therefore an obstacle to any real Labor Party. This attitude, in fact, was first expressed during Trotsky’s lifetime around the formation of the Labor Non Partisan League (LNPL) on the East Coast.

Trotsky told the SWP leaders in Coyoacán, Mexico, in 1938 that he felt the SWP should give critical support to the LNPL candidates in the 1940 elections. But Cannon and the SWP leaders strongly disagreed. Though the LNPL was led by the Stalinists with the very clear and conscious aim of channeling the mass Labor Party sentiment of the late 1930s back into the Democratic Party, Trotsky explained, they had to do so through what appeared to be an independent, non-partisan political instrument. The LNPL, moreover, had very strong trade union support, among the officialdom but also among the rank and file.

Trotsky argued that it would be far more effective for the SWP to involve itself in the fight for a Labor Party—that is, the fight to prevent the LNPL from supporting Democrats and for the LNPL unions to break with the Democrats—from within the movement. The call for the LNPL to break with the Democrats would find a positive response among the ranks of the LNPL, whose healthy sentiment was being misdirected by the Stalinists back into safe channels for the ruling class. The SWP’s objectives, Trotsky explained, would be better served through a policy of critical support and active involvement in the LNPL campaign. But Cannon and the SWP leadership disagreed, arguing that any involvement with this effort would only help the Stalinist misleaders in their drive to derail the fight for independent politics. This effort had to be denounced and exposed from outside, the SWP leaders contended.

This same approach is what would frame many years later Socialist Action’s—as well as many other radical organizations’—approach to Labor Party Advocates (1991) and the Labor Party (1996). This was not a real movement for a Labor Party, they argued. This was a “rump Labor Party.” While the Labor Party formed by Tony Mazzocchi has degenerated dramatically since its founding in 1996, the same question Trotsky brought up with the SWP leaders in 1938 still holds true: Was it better to attempt to build the Labor Party from inside this process—seeking to get the LP to launch its own LP candidates against the Democrats, seeking to push it step by step on an independent course—or was it better to sit back and denounce the process from the outside?

We in Socialist Organizer answered this question on the basis of Trotsky’s teachings: One had to fight for the LP from inside this process. (Socialist Action answered in the negative, much like Cannon did in relation to the LNPL.) While Socialist Organizer was not a large political formation and was not able to prevent the degeneration of the LP). We played a role we should be proud of. In fact, much of the work done by the LP helped pave the way for the formation of US Labor Against the War (USLAW). And Socialist Organizer’s ability to play a central role in USLAW was aided by all the work we carried out to build the Labor Party.

Supporters of Socialist Organizer helped to pass a resolution for running candidates at the 1998 LP convention. SO supporters helped to put together an “electoral caucus” with Baldemar Velasquez and other respected labor activists; and SO members were at the origin of the LP-endorsed Robin David for MUD (public power) campaign in 2001 in SF. These are just a few of the steps forward taken by the LP at our initiative. What we accomplished could have been magnified a thousand fold by a party truly rooted in the trade union movement and with cadre poised to challenge the misleaders of the Labor Party. The demise of the SWP in the late 1970s, in that sense, became an objective barrier to the development of what has been the most promising formation toward a Labor Party in the last 70 years.

Had there existed a collective and truly functioning Fourth International during the 1960s—one rooted firmly in the founding program of the FI and committed to a fully democratic, not top-down, method of discussion of political differences—there would have been a venue to discuss and correct this SWP drift toward “sectoralism” and this failure to use the openings, which did exist, to advance the fight for both the Labor Party and black political action. But that unified and principled Fourth International did not exist for the SWP. The Fourth International had been dislocated as an international center based on its founding program. The SWP was affiliated with the United Secretariat (or USec) of Ernest Mandel and Livio Maitan—an international construct that not only had dropped key tenets of our program but that, in the 1960s, had taken this “sectoralism” to its extreme conclusion—embracing the politics of “minority violence”—“new mass vanguardism”—and “guerrilla warfare”—all of which led thousands of young Trotskyists to their deaths and destroyed parties claiming the heritage of the FI in country after country. So bad were the politics of the USec that the SWP—which had been central to the founding of the USec in 1963—was compelled to organize its own international faction in the USec to counter the USec’s destructive influence/role the world over. This faction was the Leninist-Trotskyist Faction (or LTF). Though still wedded to the USec framework, the SWP would nonetheless undertake a struggle for Trotskyist politics through this important international formation.

The LTF of the 1970s, Its Dissolution in 1977-78 and the Break with Trotskyism Beginning in 1979 Obviously, it is not possible in this contribution to review all the heated political debates that pitted the LTF against the International Majority Tendency (IMT) of Mandel-Krivine-Maitan. I will cover only some of the debates—particularly those that revealed the re-emergence of political convergence between the LTF and the French OCI.

A. The Fight Against Guerrilla Warfare and Cuba

The fight against guerrilla warfare was the initial and dominant debate that prompted the SWP leadership, at the initiative of SWP leader Joe Hansen, to launch the LTF in 1969-70. The USec leadership had embraced the “guerrilla warfare” strategy promoted by many of the petty-bourgeois radical groups in Europe and Latin America. This strategy held that a small “foco” (or focal spark) initiated by new revolutionary vanguards could, through exemplary actions (kidnappings of officials, urban and rural armed struggle, etc.) propel the masses into motion against the ruling-class regimes. The method of the Transitional Program and the entire quest to forge united fronts in defense of workers’ interests was thrown out the window.

According to this “foquista” strategy—as it was also called—the working class, by and large, had become “bourgeoisified” and pacified. There was now a new “radicalization” of youth and the most oppressed sectors of society that had bypassed the organized working class and its traditional organizations. The working class, to the extent there was any hope for it, needed to be awakened from its passivity by the revolutionary actions of the few and committed. According to this view, the struggle around principled working class demands that would expose the inability of the capitalists to resolve workers’ basic needs, as the Transitional Program had charted, was outdated.

The result of the implementation of these policies by sections of the USec that followed by leadership of Mandel, Maitan and Krivine was disastrous. Under the leadership of Santucho in Argentina, hundreds of Trotskyists who joined the urban guerrilla warfare movement were assassinated by the police in senseless and counterproductive “military” actions. The same orientation was implemented in Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico—and even in various countries across Europe (although the repression in those countries was not as acute).

The SWP leadership reacted swiftly to this fundamental abandonment of Marxism. It denounced the adaptation to the “new mass vanguardism” that resulted from this impressionistic reaction to the radicalization of the 1960s. At home in the United States, the SWP also resisted the call of those who sought to lure the SWP into military actions—either via the Black Panther Party or the “radical” sectors of SDS.

The SWP during this period also produced some of its most critical articles of the leadership of the Cuban Revolution. The SWP criticized the Cuban leadership’s endorsement of this guerrilla warfare strategy and showed how, behind all the “radical” formulations of the Cuban CP, there was a consistent pattern of political support to bourgeois regimes across the Americas. (Ultraleftism and political opportunism were two sides of the same coin, the SWP explained.) Indeed, the Cuban CP and the Cuban government were among the staunchest supporters of the Mexican ruling class and PRI regime—to the point where Fidel Castro applauded the massacre of the student uprising of Tlaltelolco in October 1968 by the Mexican government—a massacre that left close to 1000 students dead or disappeared. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Cuban government was one of the main backers of the bloody junta in Argentina, which was responsible for the deaths and disappearances of tens of thousands of youth and activists.

B. The United Front in Portugal, Spain and France

The SWP and its international co-thinkers in the Leninist Trotskyist Faction—which included large groupings in France, Spain, Chile, India, Peru, Colombia and other countries—also rejected the USec’s abandonment of the united front approach to politics in Western Europe, particularly in countries where there were still large Communist and Socialist parties in the leadership of the workers’ movement.

The SWP and LTF affirmed the traditional position of the Fourth International—first elaborated by Trotsky in relation to France in 1936—of calling on the mass bourgeois-workers’ parties—the Communist and Socialist parties—to unite on the electoral level, without any bloc with bourgeois parties, to defeat the candidates of the bosses. (The CPs and SPs were characterized as bourgeois-workers’ parties because of their pro-capitalist leaderships but their mass working class base, history and traditions.) The governmental slogan of the workers’ government was most often concretized as “For a CP-SP Government Without Bosses!”

The USec sections rejected this united-front orientation, which they called “reformist,” preferring instead to forge electoral alliances of the “Left of the Left”—or far left. The united-front orientation by the SWP and LTF meant that LTF-affiliated currents in Western Europe often found themselves in political agreement with the French OCI and its international current, now reorganized as the Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI). In France, Spain, and Portugal—in particular—the LTF and OCRFI found themselves advocating the same positions in the class struggle, while the USec organizations remained mired in their ultraleft/opportunist “new mass vanguard” politics.

This common program and political activity would pave the way for the LTF affiliates in most countries around the world to leave the USec and to join up with the OCRFI in 1979. Given this political convergence on so many important questions of the day between the SWP and the OCRFI, it was not surprising that the SWP leadership invited Pierre Lambert and other leaders of the French OCI to attend their national conventions in Oberlin, Ohio, in the years 1974 through 1977. Many of us in Socialist Organizer who were members of the SWP in those years remember hearing Pierre Lambert and Francois de Massot address the SWP conventions. In fact, the USec representatives repeatedly protested the invitation extended by the SWP to the OCI leaders—and went so far as to refuse to send their own representatives to those SWP conventions as long as Lambert and the French OCI were invited.

Joe Hansen, Dissolution of the LTF and the Degeneration of the SWP

Throughout much of 1976 and 1977, Joe Hansen had written Pierre Lambert to urge him and the OCRFI to rejoin the USec—so as to help the SWP and LTF become the majority of the USec on the basis of orthodox Trotskyist positions. Lambert and the French OCI continued to put forward the position they advocated in 1963. They said they were open to a political unification, provided there was a serious and organized political discussion of the balance sheet of the 1963 split and the LTF experience. They said it would be counterproductive to pursue any “reunification” while brushing under the table, as had happened in 1963, the sharp disagreements over matters of political principle that had separated the various currents claiming to represent the FI.

Hansen and the SWP agreed initially to organize this political discussion of a balance sheet—which marked a major shift from its approach to the reunification in 1963. There was an international exchange of bulletins on this balance sheet in 1977, and there was even an organized meeting in France on such a balance sheet that involved LTF currents in various European countries and even drew in representatives from the United Secretariat. It appeared for a brief moment that a political reunification of the SWP/LTF and the OCI/OCRFI forces might be possible. But in 1977, SWP leader Joe Hansen—who was spearheading this discussion and possible reunification—became seriously ill and had to withdraw from all political activity.

With almost the entire Old Guard of the SWP out of the picture, the SWP leadership—which by now was under the full control of Jack Barnes and his clique—retreated abruptly from the traditional Trotskyist positions advocated by the SWP and LTF. To everyone’s great surprise, the Barnes leadership moved almost immediately and without any apparent political reason to disband the LTF, unilaterally and without consulting the Steering Committee of the International LTF. In the United States, the dissolution of the LTF began a process of political backpedaling and degeneration that would witness, in the matter of just two years, the renunciation by the SWP leadership of Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution and the endorsement of the entire political program of the Cuban Communist Party leadership.

Many years later, Pierre Lambert was asked why he thought the LTF was dissolved and why the SWP degenerated so quickly. He answered that “An axiom of revolutionary politics is that you cannot sit on the fence indefinitely; at some point you have to take a stand and make a move, or else you will simply fall flat on your face. The SWP had moved far during the LTF years toward upholding many of the traditional positions of the Fourth International. Joseph Hansen genuinely wanted a balance sheet discussion and a reunification with the French OCI. But the rest of the SWP leadership—particularly the new leadership around Jack Barnes—was not interested in such a balance sheet of the 1963 reunification, as they were still wedded to that reunification and to the politics of Castroism, despite the political struggle waged through the LTF.

At a certain point in the development of the LTF, there was no choice for the SWP, if it wanted to wage the struggle consistently for Trotskyist politics, but to engage in a systematic balance sheet discussion with the OCRFI aimed at a political fusion. The entire framework of the USec was one that destroyed Trotskyist organizations. Trotskyism and revisionism are incompatible. The SWP could not remain in the USec indefinitely as a Trotskyist organization. It would either have to break with the USec framework and become part of a genuine Fourth International committed to the founding principles of our movement, or it would degenerate. By the end of the 1970s, the SWP had gone as far as it could go as a Trotskyist organization within the USec. It was time to break with that unprincipled framework, or else that unprincipled framework would end up breaking the SWP. And that is what eventually occurred. With the dissolution of the LTF, the political pendulum swung back in the direction of abandonment of Trotskyism with a vengeance.”

A Watershed Moment in the SWP’s Retreat from Trotskyism

Much like occurred with the Cuban Revolution in 1959-60, the USec leadership of Mandel-Krivine-Maitan-BenSaid converged with the Barnes leadership of the SWP in supporting not just the revolution but also the government—a capitalist government—that was formed after the July 19th revolution in Nicaragua. Both the USec and Barnes leaderships embraced the Sandinista/Castroist strategy for revolution and took a major step in openly repudiating Permanent Revolution. But they did more than this: They supported the Sandinista-Chamorro government’s jailing of the Nicaraguan Trotskyists and their Colombian and Argentine Trotskyist cothinkers who had come to Nicaragua to help in the fight to overthrow the hated Somoza regime. These Trotskyists refused to give back their weapons to the bourgeois government, as demanded. They said that as long as the land had not been distributed to the peasants who made the revolution, these peasants and the fighting Sandinista brigades who had been the backbone of the revolution should keep their weapons.

The Sandinista government formed after July 19th pledged its support to a bourgeois constitution that reaffirmed the sanctity of private ownership of the means of production. It proceeded swiftly to disarm the Sandinista militias and to rebuild a traditional army under the political control of the new government. To do this, the new government arrested and imprisoned not only the Trotskyists but also leading activists and workers in other political formations. At any rate, the joint declaration in July 1979 by Peter Camejo on behalf of the Barnes leadership of the SWP and Alain Krivine on behalf of the USec in support of the Sandinista-FAO government and in support of their decision to jail the Trotskyists provoked a major split in the USec.

In the fall of 1979, the organizations that still claimed the mantle of the LTF—in France the 500 militants organized in the LCI or Internationalist Communist League, for example—were expelled from the USec. They were expelled, or otherwise simply walked out of the USec, for organizing rallies together with the French OCI and OCRFI sections in other countries to demand the release from the Nicaraguan prisons of the jailed Trotskyists.

The Struggle to Defend the Legacy and Heritage of the

SWP
In the United States, the period between 1979 and 1984 registered an intense political struggle inside the SWP in defense of Trotskyism. For five years—but especially from June 1982 till January 1984, when the mass expulsions of the minority supporters in the SWP took place—a wide-ranging discussion took place among the Trotskyist oppositionists about how best to fight the Barnes regime and about what common platform should be adopted to preserve the continuity of the Fourth International in the United States.

Toward the middle of 1983, when it seemed evident the Barnes leadership would not tolerate any opposition to its liquidationist course, the Fourth International Caucus drafted a series of documents and proposed them as the basis for a united opposition tendency in the SWP. The basic document, titled “28 Theses for Socialist Revolution in the United States,” reclaimed the best traditions of the SWP—the fight for a Labor Party based on the unions, the fight for united front coalitions to defeat the warmakers, the affirmation of the totally counterrevolutionary nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and much more. A conference was held of the unified opposition in Chicago in the fall of 1983. This meeting, of course, was unauthorized—as the SWP leadership had pretty much banned all possibilities for the opposition currents to express themselves inside the SWP. The conference delegates agreed to form a new organization—Socialist Action.

Socialist Action, represented the Trotskyist continuity of the Socialist Workers Party and had in its ranks many of the respected older worker militants of the SWP—such as Asher Harer and Jake Cooper amongst many others. SA published an attractive monthly newspaper and involved itself in the struggle against U.S. intervention in Central America, helping to initiate a broad, united-front antiwar coalition known as the “Mobe”—which stood for Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice.

The many international currents that claimed to represent Trotskyism all understood that SA, because it sought to uphold the defense of Trotskyism in the United States, was on a collision course with the USec and could not long survive as a political tendency unless it was part of an alternative international framework. Understandably, the ICRFI sent Daniel Gluckstein to meet and discuss with the SA leadership. Gluckstein was invited regularly, beginning in 1986, to meet with the SA leadership. He was even invited to attend a convention of Socialist Action. All this occurred even though SA was formally affiliated with the USec. The SA leadership understood that the USec had become an empty shell at best, with its only role being to mislead working people on every continent in the name of the FI.

In addition, Daniel Gluckstein and the ICRFI opened a political discussion with the SA leadership about the history of the SWP and the balance sheet of the 1963 reunification and other questions such as the fight for the Labor Party. Many of these questions resonated in the minds of many SA leaders and members who were struggling to figure out the roots of the degeneration of the SWP but also were acutely concerned about how to continue the struggle to build the FI in the United States. These SA leaders and members were greatly influenced by the political texts and discussions with the ICRFI representative. They also became increasingly disenchanted with the international allies of Socialist Action in the USec—particularly the Matti tendency in France and the Hudson tendency in Britain. These two tendencies were unwilling to wage the fight against the USec as an International Public Faction.

In light of all these developments—the successes of the initiatives undertaken in common between SA and the ICRFI, the deepening anti-Trotskyist evolution of the USec (which, today, has culminated with the participation of the USec in the capitalist government of Brazil)—many SA leaders and activists proposed that SA as an organization take the next in collaborating with the ICRFI by participating as observers in the Open World Conference of Barcelona in 1991. This conference was launched by the ICRFI with the purpose of constituting an International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples for a Workers’ International (ILC). Such a principled international class-struggle regroupment would permit the Trotskyists to break out of their relative isolation from the working class and build FI sections in the very process of building working class resistance to the ruling class drive toward heightened exploitation and war.

The aim of these SA leaders and activists was stated openly: As it became increasingly clear that the USec was a destructive center and that there were few, if any salvageable currents within it after so many decades of political miseducation and abandonment of the FI’s founding program, it was now necessary for SA to deepen its collaboration with the ICRFI—a political current that, indeed, represented the continuity of the Fourth International and stood firmly in support of the best traditions of the SWP itself. The SA minority argued, moreover, that to the extent SA remained wedded to the USec, it was bound to degenerate politically. It could not be otherwise. To believe it is possible to build a Trotskyist organization anywhere in the world divorced from the struggle to build the FI on an international scale is the worst form of “national Trotskyism.”

In January 1991, nine members of Socialist Action—including two National Committee members—traveled to Barcelona to Spain to participate as observers in the Open World Conference. Their trip to Barcelona was not authorized by the SA leadership. In fact, for making this trip to Barcelona, these SA members were expelled from the organization. The SA leadership argued that the struggle within the USec had not been concluded, and that it was adventurous to move away from the USec tradition to seek affiliation with the ICRFI. Not surprisingly, SA would undergo a series of damaging splits in the years to come that would leave the remnants of the old SA splintered, largely demoralized, and with no real political life or perspectives for building the FI in the United States or anywhere else. In February 1991, the expelled nine members and their supporters in SA went on to constitute a new organization: Socialist Organizer. In March of that year, the first issue of The Organizer newspaper was published.

The ILC and the Reproclamation of the Fourth International

A few brief points on the history of the struggle against revisionism should be made in order to understand the context of the reproclamation of the Fourth International in 1993:

After being expelled by Pablo in 1952, the French section was able to become the pole for the defense of FI’s program because it never fell into the trap of “national Trotskyism.” Because Lambert and the OCI always put the long and difficult struggle against Pabloism in a international perspective, they were able to not only group together all the defenders of the FI program in the International Committee and then the ICRFI, but were also able to escape the fate of turning into a sect. The evidence of the destructive influence of “national Trotskyism” can be seen in the degeneration of Healy’s RWP, Moreno’s MAS, and the SWP itself.
The validity of the IC and the ICRFI’s assessment of the incompatibility of Trotskyism and revisionism was proven by the evolution of the SWP: not only was the SWP never ever able to “take back” the USec from the revisionists, but the fact that the SWP remained in the framework of the USec was a principal cause of its own demise.
The Pabloist belief that substitutes existed for the FI in the fight for socialism was conclusively proven wrong by the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the political demise of all the USec’s so-called “natural Trotskyists.” Though the struggle to build a mass International capable of leading the emancipation of the workers was largely derailed by the crisis of 1953, the need for world revolution—and thus of the FI itself—was more acute than ever to keep humanity from sinking into barbarism.
Thus, the issue of reproclaiming the FI was brought to the fore in 1992 insofar as all of the healthy elements inside the USec had by now joined with the ICRFI and the Trotskyist program had been confirmed by events. In addition, the principled regroupment process initiated at the ILC conference in Barcelona one year earlier—a process that far exceeded the expectations of the ICRFI—required a reproclaimed and democratically centralized FI to meet the new challenges and opportunities.

In June 1993, Socialist Organizer took part in the World Conference of Sections of the Fourth International/ICR—at which sections from 44 countries voted to reproclaim the Fourth International on the basis of its founding text: the Transitional Program. The conference asserted that the building of the FI was inseparable from the campaigns of the ILC, which provide an international united working class front against war, privatization, and deregulation—and for the independence of the working class and its organizations. A resolution from the reproclamation conference explained: “We do not see the building of the Fourth International as a linear development that would result from the simple arithmetic growth of each of its sections. Rather we view this task in a far more dynamic way. We see the need to constitute a flexible yet principled framework for common action—the ILC—within which individuals, political currents, and even parties can get to know the Fourth International, interact with it, and consider affiliating with it following a protracted period of political collaboration. The only precondition for working together is the intransigent defense of the independence of the working class and the need to promote working class internationalism. It is precisely this principled framework that provides the terrain to recruit to the Fourth International.”

This is the transitional method: approaching the masses at their level of political awareness and understanding, whatever it may be, and helping draw them through progressive struggles and clarification to a point where their level of thought and action is more astute—that is, in the direction of socialist revolution.

The united-front campaigns and conferences of ILC—which have been waged in 92 countries—have been hugely successful in the United States. The high points include the Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights that took place in the year 2000, with the participation of 550 unionists from over 53 countries, as well as the current International Campaign Against the Occupation and for Labor Rights in Iraq, which the ILC is co-organizing with US Labor Against the War and the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions.

The ILC has provided a framework for the FI to link up with and gain influence in the fighting sectors of the labor movement, but what remains to be done in the U.S., which is true as well in the rest of the world, is to build the section of the FI into a mass party in this process of promoting the campaigns of the ILC.

Socialist Organizer: The Continuity of the Fourth International in the United States

It is not the purpose of this contribution to undertake a political balance sheet of the 12 years of Socialist Organizer. Without a doubt, SO has made a mark on the political life of the United States with its active participation in the fight for a real Labor Party; the fight against labor-management cooperation schemes in Decatur, Illinois; the countless campaigns conducted through the International Liaison Committee and the Open World Conference; the fight against NAFTA and the FTAA; and, most recently, the struggle to build US Labor Against the War—to name only some of its most important activities.

Socialist Organizer began the daunting task of rebuilding a section of the Fourth International in the United States in the aftermath of an extremely debilitating and lengthy crisis of the SWP. And in many ways, the American Trotskyist movement has come full circle; after all, our movement began in 1928 with only a little more than a handful of activists. And while it’s true that the struggle to reconstruct the FI in the U.S. will be not be an easy one, there is one simple reason to remain optimistic: we have learned some important lessons from our past.

We’ve learned that the fight to build the American section of the Fourth International cannot be separated from the struggle for a real Labor Party. We’ve learned that there’s no substitute for the Fourth International in the fight for the emancipation of humanity from capitalism. And perhaps most important, we’ve learned of the dangers of “national Trotskyism.” Our link with a real, functioning International—which now has sections in 48 countries—has provided the political and organizational basis for S.O. to rebuild the American Trotskyist movement.

Without a doubt, S.O. has played a pivotal role in ensuring the continuity of the Fourth International and its program in the United States. This is a credit to the organization and to the reproclaimed Fourth International, which has assisted every step of the way in building the section of the FI in the United States.

But the fact remains that Socialist Organizer has only begun the process toward rebuilding a party which can lead the American workers and youth out of the chains of capitalism. In the next period, the principal task of S.O. is to grow. Undoubtedly, the majority of the activists we recruit will be youth won to Trotskyist politics through our intervention in Revolution Youth, and a proper focus on youth work is a precondition for transforming S.O. into an organization capable of fulfilling its historic tasks. Hopefully, this text will enable many of these new activists to understand the history of our movement, our political traditions, and, therefore, why they should join S.O.

Key Dates:

January 1933: Hitler takes power. The German Communist Party—under Stalin’s orders—refuses to unite with the Socialists to fight the fascists. The International Left Opposition concludes that it is time to build a new workers’ international.
September 1938: The founding conference of the Fourth International takes place in Paris.
1939: World War II begins. By the end of the war, a large percentage of Trotskyists are murdered by either the Gestapo, the Stalinists, or the Vichy government.
1950-53: The ‘Pabloist’ crisis hits the Fourth International. The French section is expelled for refusing to capitulate to Stalinism. The Fourth International as an organization is dislocated.
1963: The unprincipled regroupment of the United Secretariat is formed and claims to represent the Fourth International. Today the USec is in the leadership of the Brazilian government, culminating its long history of betrayals.
June 1993: After more than forty years of reconstruction, the Fourth International is reproclaimed. Forty-four sections from different countries of the world participate in the world congress.

Pierre Lambert's funeral

2008-01-28T22:20:00.000Z

A video of lambert's funeral is at this site

Mike

THE HISTORY OF CERMTRI

2008-01-20T20:54:00.000Z

THE HISTORY OF CERMTRI

Having to suffer repression from three directions – the bourgeoisie, fascism and Stalinism – for more than fifty years of the labour
movement's history, Trotskyist and other revolutionary militant activists have always had to hide and sometimes even destroy part or all of
their archives.

Often, when those archives fell into the hands of reaction or the Stalinists, they were either pulped or hidden away. There is therefore the
risk that whole portions of the history of Trotskyism, of the world's revolutionary vanguard, could be missing.
Starting from this realisation, and being concerned to set down and develop the collective memory of the revolutionary vanguard, a small
team of militant activists decided in 1976 to prepare to set up the Centre for Study and Research on the International Trotskyist and
Revolutionary Movements (CERMTRI in French). They began to make enquiries, search, write, collect, and then classify and make an
inventory of the collection.

To the collections of archives and documents entrusted to the CERMTRI by the OCI (Organisation Communiste Internationaliste) came to
be added collections passed on by old militant activists who had often played or who were still playing an important role in the Trotskyist
and revolutionary movement, such as Jean Rous, Fred Zeller, Biline, Demaziere, Gérard Bloch, Louis Eemans and many others.
The CERMTRI's founding meeting took place on 26 November 1977, at which a 21-member Board of Directors was elected.

As stipulated in Article 3 of the Board's declaration dated 21 April 1978, “the CERMTRI is an association whose aim is to gather together
all documents dealing with the history of workers' movements, especially those dealing with the activity of the Trotskyist and revolutionary
organisations, and to place those documents at the public's disposal under conditions that will allow and facilitate research and study,
whilst at the same time ensuring the best possible conservation of the archival collections entrusted to it”.

Since those early years, the CERMTRI has therefore collected together archives, documents and publications of the workers' revolutionary
movement, and especially those of the Trotskyist movement since the days of the Left Opposition.
·It currently puts at the disposal of activists, historians and researchers
– over 22,000 books and pamphlets
– thousands of documents and newspapers

– the Cahiers du CERMTRI, a quarterly publication featuring unpublished texts or rare historical documents

·It publishes the Cahiers du movement ouvrier, a history review
·It organises conferences at its premises on subjects concerning the history of the labour movement.

THE CERMTRI HAS PUT TOGETHER
A UNIQUE COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL ARCHIVES

If you are a researcher, academic or labour activist, you will find important historical documents at the CERMTRI.

By entering your email address at the place indicated in our home page, you will be kept informed of the CERMTRI's activities and
initiatives, and you will begin receiving the CERMTRI's news bulletin from the next issue onwards.

CERMTRI
28 rue des Petites Ecuries - 75010 PARIS
Open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 1.30 pm to 6.00 pm
Telephone: +33 1 44 83 00 00 email: cermtri@wanadoo.fr

To all labour movement activists throughout the world

2008-01-20T20:49:00.000Z

A Blog worth looking at

2008-01-18T13:41:00.000Z

I know that the great guru of British trotskyism, Phil Hearse, will not thank me for this but I can thoroughly recommend his blog/website:

http://www.marxsite.com

Mikey

Pierre Lambert is dead

2008-01-17T16:05:00.000Z

Pierre Lambert, leader of the Fourth International, has died.
Lambert died yesterday and it is, of course, a great loss to the memory of world Trotskyism.

see
http://www.lepoint.fr/content/france/article?id=218894

Little Cub

2008-01-01T00:20:00.000Z

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T00:11:00.000Z

Happy new year to all my readers...

Mikey

Ripley--bookshop cat in San Francisco

2007-11-17T09:34:00.001Z

Danny Davin

2007-11-17T09:32:00.001Z

Danny and Luci

2007-09-09T09:51:00.000Z

we are back...full of baby pictures

2007-09-09T09:45:00.001Z

We are back in the blogosphere and will be publishing pics of the mighty Danny shortly.

Mikey

Danny ready for home

2007-05-14T06:05:00.001Z

Big Dan and his dad

2007-05-14T06:03:00.000Z

Daniel Patrick Ross Calvert Davin

2007-05-14T01:58:00.000Z

This is the first piccy on the internet of my son Daniel.
welcome to the world of blogging.
He was born at 4.29 on 4th May and discharged from the Whittington the next day. Sadly he was readmitted on Friday 11th and is still there.

We hope he and his mum, Luci--my partner--will be out soon.

Mikey

Going down for a while

2007-04-03T09:04:00.000Z

Friends, followers and foes

I am going to be not blogging for a few days due to the fact that my mum has been admitted to the hospital in Kings Lynn.

Poor old mum is in her mid seventies and lives on a nasty estate called the North Lynn estate in Kings Lynn, Norfolk.

When things like this happen, you understand that my feud with the Mickster is frankly nothing in comparison! I guess even the bear is human!

I am sure that Micky is surveying this blog and if he wants to phone me or e-mail me he is welcome to do so.

So I shall be off to Lynn for a while.

Mikey

Leadership of Islington UNISON hold Officers meeting

2007-03-30T18:37:00.000Z

Here is the first picture of the leading officers of Islington UNISON following our recent retreat. This was held at the Branch Davidian Church of Christ Apostolic, Lower Salt Lake City, Utah!

We held many discussions, including how to assume better false identities in public.

Mikey

By Any Other Name--wow!

2007-03-30T08:29:00.000Z

Loyal friends and followers!

I discover that the mighty Micky H of Scandal fax infamy has posted a whole long piece just about little old me and my political past...some of which is wrong, but only I know which bits and if Micky does then I must have talked in my sleep when he slept with me!

Wow, I didn't know I was that intriguing! And he got at 5.01 to write it...

Mikey

Socialism does not spring from atomic ruins

2007-03-27T20:31:00.000Z

Ah! The following piece of utter drivel met my eye as I perused the net looking for Micky H!
It is so mad it is beyond reality.

Enjoy the madness that is POSADAS

On the inevitability of the war.
J POSADAS

6th april 1978

The Soviet Review of the Italian Embassy, USSR OGGI (‘USSR TODAY’), says that “the ideologists of Trotskyism want a socialism built upon the atomic ruins”. This is not so. The comrades are mistaken. What we have said is that the war is inevitable; and that capitalism is going to launch it. We have also said that socialism will be built, in spite of the capitalist war. This is so, because socialism is a necessity of the development of human history, of science and of the economy; and above all, it is a necessity of human intelligence at the centre of which there is the function of the working class.

The atomic war is going to signify much death, hundreds of millions of dead people. But what it will only manage to destroy, however, is the material expression of progress and not the capacity nor the intelligence which have determined progress itself. This capacity and intelligence will remain. Capitalism is going to destroy people, buildings and machines; but not human capacity, human experience and human security. This is acquired!

Socialism does not spring from atomic ruins. This is not the way to interpret. The way to interpret is that it is capitalism that makes wars! It is not as if we had wanted the war. It is capitalism that does. Capitalism is going to resort to the war before being crushed because it has the means at its disposal. If capitalism was never to launch the war, all the better! For our part, we would be disposed to wait another 30 years for socialism in these conditions. But capitalism does not have any other option in history but to make it. War is part and parcel of private property. The same applies to the dispute between capitalists through economic competition. It is the same thing as the war which the capitalists make amongst themselves in their commercial, financial and armed competitions.

As for us, we do not want the atomic war; neither atomic, nor any other! The war is the consequence of the capitalist system. What we do in this matter is to interpret. We interpret this in the same way as we interpret things facing us like competition, unemployment and inflation; or what they call ‘overproduction’ - whilst the people have nothing to eat. Each one of these ills is the consequence of the capitalist market; each one is its own kind of antagonism with society ranging from ordinary competition between the capitalists to their resorting to war. It is enough to read history to see that the most outstanding activity private property has ever conducted, is war, war and war.
Therefore, it is not correct to say that we want to construct socialism on the atomic ruins. We have interpreted that the capitalists are going to make the war and cause very big destructions in human lives and resources; and that, in spite of them making the war, we will construct socialism. This is so because socialism is already a conquest of the consciousness of humanity and of its intelligence. There is not a person in any remote part of the world today in the Islands of Oceania, in remote places in Africa or in countries of Asia or Europe, who does not know what socialism is.

There is already in humanity, the certainty that the economy is not a mystery, that property plays no role in history and that intelligence is the product of the development of human relations on the basis of the economy; there is the knowledge that, once science has developed beyond a certain point, it surpasses the economy and allows the development of an objective kind of intelligence; and that when the proletariat became ruling class, it could not do it by generating new social classes but by liberating the whole of humanity. This is what the proletariat had to do, both to liberate itself as a class, and for itself to progress as a class. The instrument representative of the progress of history is the proletariat. These are historic considerations these Soviet comrades have not taken account of.

We are not giving here the précis of some political resolution. We are simply making analyses and drawing conclusions about the process of history. Quite apart from this, a glance suffices to realise that almost half of the capitalist riches go to war preparations. And not just only for military expenditures but everything that means war, like counter revolution, secret services and polices. It is some 40% of the riches in the capitalist world.

J POSADAS
6th April 1978

Imaginary Friends - and enemies - in the blog world

2007-03-27T17:52:00.000Z

I understand that some anonymous bloggers have been seen in the vicinity. Surely this is where they belong? (That’s a link to Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends for those whose computers may take an age to load it)

I often watch this show on the Cartoon Network with my young son and it is far more fun than most anonymous blogs I have read…

On a more serious note, let’s have open debate in the movement and let’s (please) not pretend that any of us have to be afraid of any others.

Those who won’t reveal their identity refuse to do so because they are not who they pretend to be. (Which means that when they hint at who they are, they are only winding up their readers Mike!!)

A Reply to Micky "H" --in a VERY personal capacity

2007-03-27T17:02:00.000Z

Micky H, the infamous anonymous blogger who spends his/her time attacking what they term the "vermin left" ( what he means are good, consistent and combative socialists who will not sell UNISON members and their interests down the river for the Kings shilling unlike some I might mention) has posted another anonymous attack on the Islington branch.
Whilst I am a leading officer of the said branch, I am writing these thoughts at home--at 6.29-- in my capacity as Mikey Calvert, not as Assistant Secretary of Islington UNISON

Micky "the anonymous for fear of retribution" H writes the following:

"The vermin left use this approach quite a lot, as though listing a whole bunch of lefty losers is going to influence anyone other than...other lefty losers. For example, the list of 'supporters' carried on the publicity for the Fighting (and losing) Unions conference held last year. Not much use to anyone other than those drawing up a trot hit-list, I'd imagine.

But what to make of all this 'in a personal capacity' (often abbreviated to 'pc') business? You know - where someone puts their name to a statement and then adds their title in the organisation, and it is followed by the disclaimer 'in a personal capacity'.

A bit like this lot below who have collectivised their personal capacities to hitch themselves to John '22' McDonnell's wagon:

"The following branch officers of Islington UNISON (in a personal capacity) would like to welcome and support your candidacy for Labour Leader and believe your policies and practices reflect not only our branches policy but also UNISON national policy.

Fiona Monkman, Branch Chair
Jane Doolan, Branch Secretary
Andrew Berry, Deputy Branch Secretary
Mike Calvert, Assistant Branch Secretary
Fred LePlat, Vice Chair
Keith Facey, Young Members Officer
Cliffe Obaseki, Black Members Convenor
Pam Woods, Labour Link Officer
Rosemary Plummer, Education and Schools Convenor
Denise Facey, Homes for Islington (ALMO) Convenor"

Clearly they need to state their roles in UNISON as otherwise who the flying ferret would have a clue who they were outside of the heated confines of the membership of UNISON United Lunatics?

And, in a way, that makes my point. They can't say they are doing it in an official capacity as it would be against UNISON's rules. So what do they do? They drag UNISON's name in as a kind of crutch for their identity, abusing our good name to cover their shame with a figleaf of credibility.

How about next time they leave UNISON out of it? They could always list their political parties and/or 'currents' instead.

But then we all know what kind of credibility that would muster!"

Well, Micky, the fact that you use the word credibility in the same breath as signing something anonymously is a little bit rich. Here are a number of points to correct your lies and distortions, written from home as Mikey, not in work time!

1. At least we--the officers named below-- all sign things we believe in, in our own names (whether we use the tagline Personal capacity or not) and will not hide behind pseudonymous anonymity!

2. We do not hide behind misogynistic attacks on female comrades as you do with Marsha-Jane. I am sure that she can defend herself and her own political integrity, but, we do not attack people anonymously! We are NOT snakes in the grass like you!

3. The majority of the people you have listed are not affiliated to any political group whatsoever, other than maybe the Labour Party. There is no secret that I support Workers Action, to my knowledge so does Andrew. I will concede there are not many of us and not much in the way of Action either,but hey ho!

There is no secret that Fred supports the Socialist Resistance current,and no secret that Pam Woods is a supporter of Socialist Appeal.

BUT...

4. Fiona, Jane, Keith Facey, Cliffe Obaseki, Rosemary Plummer, and Denise Facey, are not politically organised. Keith, Denise and Rosemary--I am sure that won't mind this-are salt of the earth working class Islington: not like you, some jumped up middle class interloper claiming that you once made the turn to industry--Fiona is a UUL supporter I(she may have once been in an organised political current but I don't think she is now) and some of the others may have been supported by the UL in Regional elections, but some haven't: so what?

5. Where does your "inside info" come from? It certainly seems like you have access to the UNISON membership lists. As I said before, if you do then naughty naughty! Do you?

5. I suggest that you keep taking the Tegretol mate! Me, myself and I have much better things to do than sparring with you.

MikeyBear

In a very personal capacity

Days of Yore in the IMG 2

2007-03-25T12:18:00.000Z

History of the IMG

Ah

Them days of yore!

I was trying to think who I knew in the South West London branch of the IMG the other day.
I can remember various people in the CC majority:

Bob Pennington and Janet Maguire, Greg Tucker,Graham Topley and Ann Potter, Steve Potter and Judith Arkwright, Val Coultas, Gill Lee and Peter Cooper.
Greg and Peter recruited me.

Then there were the supporters of the Grogan faction: Ray Davies, Connie and Alan Harris, Susan Elliott.

I am sure that there are many others, we were a big SW London branch. I am sure there are some people I didn't even know. I shall be adding those I knew in South East London as well real soon.

If you can remember anyone else or want to be on my list then write to me.

Mikey

Socialist Labour Group

2007-03-24T18:39:00.000Z

Socialist Labour Group

This was on Wikipedia, but I hasten to add that I did not write it...mysterious eh?

The Socialist Labour Group was a Trotskyist grouping in the United Kingdom.

The SLG originated in the 1971 split in the International Committee of the Fourth International. (ICFI), between Gerry Healy's British Socialist Labour League (SLL) and Pierre Lambert's French Internationalist Communist Organisation. Betty Hamilton, a Trotskyist since the 1930s and still formally an SLL member, had sided with Lambert since 1971 but remained isolated. John and Mary Archer, also Trotskyists since the 1930s, had split with the SLL in the mid 1960s, continuing to work in the Labour Party in North London. They were contacted in 1975 by Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins, both leading SLL members who had broken with Healy. Harry Vince and Ken Stratford had broken with the SLL in the late 1960s, joined and been expelled from IS and Worker's Fight (see Socialist Organiser) and discussed with the Militant and Chartists. They were in touch with the OCI from 1972 and in contact with Betty Hamilton from 1973.

In 1974 the two groupings, mainly based in London, the larger around Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins (perhaps 20 plus including associates in Reading and Swindon) and another around Harry Vince and Ken Stratford (perhaps 10 plus including associates in St Helens) began publishing the Marxist Bulletin. As a result, they became known as the Bulletin Group, aligned with Lambert's Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International. A heterogeneous tendency, they attempted to act as an 'external' faction of the SLL, with the aim of winning over more SLL members. Healy remained hostile to them, and accused the group of writing substantial sections of documents purported to be by SLL oppositionist Alan Thornett, who was soon to form the Workers Socialist League. Thornett did have contact with Blick and Jenkins from the Bulletin Group, who reached him via Kate Blakeney in Reading and Ray Howells in Swindon. The initial document upon which the Thornett opposition was founded was partly drafted by this Blick-Thornett nexus, but this did not lead to a long-term working relationship.[1]

Lambert wanted Robin Blick to lead the Bulletin Group as open supporters of the OCRFI but Blick and Jenkins, along with most of their supporters were moving away from Trotskyism by early 1976. The Archers regrouped some newer student members centred on John Ford, who had never been members of the SLL-WRP, and kept the name Bulletin Group. Some of them engaged in entrist work in the Labour Party. They continued with the publication of Marxist Bulletin until 1977 but its influence on the SLL had waned. Harry Vince moved to Ireland in 1975 and Betty Hamilton, Ken Stratford, Regis Faugier and their associates formed the British Committee for the Fourth International. The two small groupings were both affiliated to the Lambert OCRFI but had little relations with each other. In 1979 Vince moved back from Ireland at Lambert's request and the two groups joined together. Then this new grouping, which called itself the Socialist Labour Group, was strengthened in 1981 by a merger with a few supporters of Nahuel Moreno in the IMG, including Mike Phipps and affiliated to the Parity Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International when that was fomed.

The Socialist Labour Group remained active in the Labour Party, student unions and trade unions until 1986/7, publishing Unite and Fight, Socialist Newsletter and later Fourth Internationalist. However, differences between them and the leadership of the OCI appeared when Harry Vince along with 6 other members of Lambert's international leadership criticised Lambert's Fourth International - International Centre of Reconstruction (FI-ICR) for, among other things, proposing to proclaim itself the Fourth International, the continued Lambertist insistence on a decades long 'pre-revolutionary' period, {leading Francois de Massot to say that the British miners' strike was not a historic defeat) and corrupt methods within the OCI. In 1987, all but four of the SLG sided with the wing of the FI-ICR linked to Luis Favre, Camilo Gonzalez, Roch Denis, Carol Coulter and others. The SLG was briefly part of a Liaison Committee with those (in Brazil, Colombia, Quebec, Ireland, Sweden, Germany and France) who broke with Lambert in 1987. It also held discussions with Stephane Just, but by 1988 was discussing joining with the International Socialist Group (ISG) which was a section of the USec. The SLG dissolved itself in 1989 and its remaining members joined the ISG, although most of them left over the next few years. Harry Vince stayed outside the ISG and moved to Ireland.

The few members of the SLG who remained loyal to the OCI, centred on Charlie Charoulambous, had a tenuous existence for a year or so, but John Archer, who had joined the ISG, found it difficult to accept the ISG leadership and formed a small faction within the ISG supportive of the FI-ICR. In 1991 it split to form the British Committee of the European Workers' Alliance, a new Lambertist group in the Labour Party, around the Fourth Internationalist Bulletin. Mike Calvert (sometimes known as Frank Wainwright) worked closely with John Archer at that time but later had his own differences with the Lambertists. Today, led by Stefan Cholewka [2], a Labour Party member in Rochdale, it is the British Section of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International and publishes Workers' Unity and The Link. Regis Faugier is associated with this grouping.

Days of Yore in the IMG

2007-03-23T19:35:00.000Z

The following article comes from Wikipedia

There are many interesting things about the far left in this country. The fact that it is more fractured, split riven and so on than even that in France!

The following piece from Wikipedia.org is an interesting and partial concise history of the IMG up until the split that I was personally involved in that led to the formation of Phil and Dave's International Group (More of those days later).

THE IMG

The International Marxist Group (IMG) was a Trotskyist political party in Britain between 1964 and 1987. It was as the British Section of the reunified Fourth International. It is thought to have had around 1000 members in the late 1970s [1]. By 1983 its membership had fallen to around 700.

Origins
The IMG emerged from the International Group, a sympathising organisation of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (IS). Its founders, Pat Jordan and Ken Coates, had broken with the CPGB in Nottingham in 1956. They were briefly members of the Revolutionary Socialist League in the late 1950s: Jordan became organising secretary of the RSL. Eventually Jordan and his comrades founded the Internationalist Group which (like the RSL) affiliated to the IS.

After the ISFI became part of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the USFI advised the RSL and Internationalist Group to unite. An unity conference in September 1964, brokered partly by Pierre Frank and Jimmy Deane, voted for unity but the fusion was not accepted: RSL member Peter Taaffe recalls that he "led a walk-out of the Liverpool delegation, with the majority in Liverpool in support". Very soon the former Internationalist Group members left to form a new organisation, the International Group, together with some former members of the SLL who had opposed that organisation's refusal to take party in the 1963 reunification of the majorities of the Fourth International, including Charlie van Gelderen. The Group played a major role in raising Vietnam solidarity at the 1965 Labour party conference.

The 1965 World Congress of the USFI demoted the RSL to a "sympathising" group: the International Group was granted the same status. In the words of the RSL's Peter Taaffe "We decided that the time had arrived when we must turn our backs on this organisation." The RSL left the FI and continued on the road to becoming well known as the Militant Tendency.

The International Group started the production of a cyclostyled bulletin known as The Week. As it was engaged in entrism inside the Labour Party, this journal gathered a mixed bag of sponsors including Bertrand Russell, whose Russell Tribunal employed two imported Canadian supporters of the FI, Ernie Tate and Pat Brain. In early 1968, the International Group renamed itself as the International Marxist Group.

International Marxist Group
The IMG's activists published International, which was launched in May 1968 with IMG secretary Pat Jordan as editor and incorporated The Week. The successive tactics taken by the IMG were reflected in the series of newspapers it supported: The Black Dwarf; Red Mole, Red Weekly, Socialist Challenge and Socialist Action.

The Black Dwarf
The Black Dwarf was launched in May 1968 under Tariq Ali's editorship, with several other IMG members on its editorial board. Its creative and pluralist nature attracted a number of new activists to the group: John Lennon was friendly to the organisation.

While IMG members largely remained in the Labour party, including Charlie van Gelderen, International marked a break from 'deep entrism': "The Week was brought out in the expectation that a mass left would arise in the Labour party once labour was in power. [Its] main function was that of an organiser and co-ordinator [...] but this will be a by-product of the main function of International: the creation of a firm marxist core in the labour movement." Its campaigning was focussed on broader initiatives such as the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and Russell Tribunal, in which Ernie Tate was prominent and in which the RSL and Socialist Labour League did not work, the Institute for Workers' Control and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Front, in which Peter Gowan and Murray Smith were active. The agitational work of The Week was carried on in the The Black Dwarf and in Socialist Woman, launched in 1969. The Group gained some public prominence when Tariq Ali, who had joined in April 1968, was widely publicised in the media as a leader of protests against the Vietnam War.

After IMG became the British section of the USFI in May 1969, International started to be formally presented as the publication of the IMG. The group began to focus on work in the student movement and trade unions. It abandoned its earlier systematic entryist work within the Labour Party, although the IMG continuously operated a "fraction" to organise its members within the Party. This turn out from the party led to a small number of members, including Al Richardson, being marginalised: they went on to form the Revolutionary Communist League, better known as the Chartists.

The IMG was quickly noted for its energetic support for international solidarity campaigns concerning Vietnam, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, and its support for socialists facing repression in France, Bolivia and Mexico, support for which was organised through the Black Dwarf. International's May 1969 famous headline "Permanent Revolution Reaches UK" reflected its support for armed self defence against the British state's forces in Northern Ireland. It also supported, in orthodox Trotskyist fashion, the Communist-influenced struggles of the MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique and the ANC in South Africa despite the complete contempt of the Communist parties for Trotskyists: some opponents nick-named them 'MIGs', after the Soviet military MiG.

In domestic politics the early 1970s saw the IMG completely reject parliamentary politics. In 1970, the group used the general election as an opportunity to make revolutionary propaganda rather than canvassing for the return of a Labour government.

Red Mole

Red Mole supported the IRA's struggle against British occupationIn March 1970, The Black Dwarf's editorial board split over questions of Leninism. A second newspaper was established, Red Mole, which Tariq Ali edited alongside an editorial board with an IMG majority. Red Mole was a "revolutionary internationalist" paper that carried a broad range of left-wing opinion in its pages, including a famous interview with John Lennon. IMG members also took part in New Left Review: Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn, and Quintin Hoare were on its editorial board for much of the 1970s and subsequently.

Because Red Mole was used by the IMG as its main organ, articles were sometimes mistakenly though to indicate the positions of the IMG. For example, there was confusion after Robin Blackburn had written an April 1970 article titled "Let it bleed" for Red Mole, in which he argued that marxists should disrupt the campaigns of the Labour and Tory parties in the 1970 General Election. IMG secretary Pat Jordan replied a month later to explain why the IMG favoured a Labour victory. The group's general orientation at that time was summarised by Ali's book, The Coming British Revolution (ISBN 0-224-00630-4).

By September 1970, Red Circles had been set up to organise activists who supported the paper. Many went on to join the IMG. The IMG radicalised as it grew: Pat Jordan's leadership gave way to that of John Ross, who anticipated that the rising tide of class struggle could lead to a pre-revolutionary crisis in Britain. In August 1972, the IMG formally assumed control of the Red Mole and prepared to relaunch it as a weekly newspaper.

Red Weekly

The IMG used Red Weekly to launch a frequent theoretical & polemical suppliment, Battle of IdeasIn May 1973, the fortnighly Red Mole was replaced by Red Weekly. International's editors and editorial board included many of the organisation's leaders, including Tariq Ali, Patrick Camiller, Ann Clafferty, Gus Fagan, Peter Gowan, Quintin Hoare, Michelle Lee, Bob Pennington, John Ross, Tony Whelan and Judith White.

During the 1970s the organisation developed a number of fluid, competing factions and tendencies. The United Secretariat prepared theses on the situation in Britain and the tasks of the IMG in 1973, and again in 1976, to help orient the organisation.

The IMG came to the public attention in 1974 during Lord Justice Scarman's Public Judicial Inquiry into the violent disturbances known as the Red Lion Square disorders, which led to the death of Kevin Gately a University of Warwick student who was not an IMG member. Scarman found that the IMG had made a "vicious, violent and unprovoked attack on the Police" who were guarding Conway Hall to try and prevent access to the hall by the National Front who had booked it for a meeting to protest against the Labour Government's decision to grant an amnesty to illegal immigrants.

However by the time of the 1976 USFI World Congress internal disputes were becoming more difficult to reconcile as divisions became entrenched between supporters of the International Majority Tendency, led by Ernest Mandel, and the Leninist Trotskyist Faction, which was led by the Socialist Workers Party (US). Despite a 'truce' reflected by the establishment of Socialist Challenge, these divisions would result in the permanent splintering of the IMG's successor organisation, the Socialist League.

During this period, the small Marxist Worker group also joined the IMG.

This vigorous internal life did not impede its growth among students and workers. The IMG's grow was reflected when it established Red Books as its publishing house and bookshop. By 1977, when a new leadership team around Tariq Ali had started the organisation on the road towards Socialist Challenge, both International and Socialist Woman were well-produced quarterly journals.

Socialist Challenge

In June 1977, Socialist Challenge replaced Red Weekly. It raised two slogans.

Build a socialist opposition. The IMG's new leadership team was inspired by the success in France of a united slate of three Trotskyist organisations (the LCR, LO and OCT). It started to campaign for united electoral action in Britain, partly to confront the growth of the National Front. The IMG launched the Socialist Unity initiative for the 1979 general election, which Big Flame also supported. Socialist Unity stood ten candidates; its highest vote was 477 votes, for Tariq Ali in Southall.
For a united revolutionary organisation. The IMG argued that the forces of the far left should unite in a single organisation. This partly reflected growing openness of the USFI to regroupment, but also addressed the growth of the far left. The IMG proposed unity to the International Socialists (who had unsuccessfully made a similar proposal to the IMG a decade earlier). The IS turned them down flat although the manner of the IMGs approach, which reportedly described the IS as a centrist grouping, may have some relation to this decision on the part of the IS leadership.
In the 1979 the IMG grew to its highpoint of 758 members in good standing, and a total of 1,000 supporters.

In 1980, Tony Benn's campaign led the IMG to increase its focus on the Labour party. It developed a 'combination tactic' in which its fraction of members in the Labour party was boosted. By 1981 the IMG-organised youth organisation called Revolution Youth, organised its magazine Revolution, had entered the Labour Party Young Socialists in order to build it and won it to the IMG's politics. The IMG was soon to send a second wave of members into the Labour party, leading it to merge in 1982 with the League for Socialist Action, a small group of USFI members that had been engaged in entrism in the Labour party for at least five years.

Initially, IMG members in the Labour party continued to sell Socalist Challenge. They used it to argue that the Bennite left needed to organise together with the trade union left. IMG members, often describing themselves as 'Socialist Challenge supporters', supported the formation of Bennite organisations such as Labour Briefing and the Labour Committee on Ireland.

In mid-1982 its central committee started to discuss whether to announce that the IMG was dissolved in order to better facilitate its entry.

Socialist Action

In December 1982, the IMG rebranded itself as the Socialist League, while continuing to refer to itself as the IMG in internal documents [2]. The group had fully entered the Labour Party and began publishing the Socialist Action newspaper, by which name the League was often known.

Despite initial successes, Socialist Action was established at a time when the Bennite movement has started to suffer defeats. In 1983, the group's membership fell to around 700. Different tendencies developed in the organisation over how to relate to the political evolution of figures like Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill. At the same time, the Socialist Workers Party in the US, which influenced many of the group's members, started to withdraw from the International. This opened up the most bitter internal political struggle in the group's history. Under the pressures of the defeat of the 1984-1985 miners strike, the group fragmented into three organisations.

A minority, led by Phil Hearse, Dave Packer, Davy Jones, and Bob Pennington formed the International Group in 1985. In 1987 it merged with the Socialist Group to form the International Socialist Group and publish Socialist Outlook. The ISG was later recognised as the British Section of the USFI.

The remaining majority of the Socialist League consisted of two factions. The majority faction was led by John Ross. Ross' current was generally supportive of Livingstone and Scargill. The evolution of this group is discussed under its own entry, Socialist Action (UK). It eventually stopped the production of Socialist Action and withdrew from the USFI.

The third current was a faction led by Brian Grogan and Jonathan Silberman which supported the Socialist Workers Party (US). According to New International 11, it was expelled from the Socialist League in January 1988, one week before a conference at which its platform would have had the majority. Those expelled when ahead with the scheduled conference, which Ross's tendency had cancelled, and founded the Communist League, which is part of the Pathfinder tendency.

Boo cats together!

2007-03-22T20:21:00.000Z

Islington on strike 3

2007-03-22T20:15:00.000Z

Islington UNISON has been accused of not being democratic by some in the world of blogging!
Here are some more pictures of us on the picket lines around the borough over the last few years.
All taken by me.

Islington on strike 2

2007-03-22T20:10:00.000Z

Education and libraries on the picket lines

all pics by me...

Islington on strike

2007-03-22T20:06:00.000Z

Below are piccys of our days of strike in action in Islington

Micky uncovered

2007-03-22T19:21:00.000Z

At last, Micky H is uncovered!

Old Gits Reunited

2007-03-22T15:45:00.000Z

An Open Letter to Micky H from me!

Mikey--they all shout--stop arsing about and wasting your time!!

I am told by my friends--imaginary of course--that the race is on to find out who Micky H is.

S/T/he/y/it seems to be someone/thing that has many connections in some very, very low places!

Some of my friends like Jon, Andrew and Marsha say stop arsing about playing at being a detective, you are no good at it--and you are NOT Val MacDermid-- and you will soon be a dad so stop wasting your time. I though, am snared lke the rabbit in the headlight as to who this rather witty anti-lefty is, and now that my branch has been smeared I feel like I am on a quest to uncover who this mole is. If you peer beneath the shiny exterior veneer that Micky H puts up you will find something rather rancid underneath I fear!

If, it turns out that the Mickster has a connection--obtuse or otherwise--to Lambeth and my shady past there, then I will eat my proverbial Wolves scarf amongst other things. I for one, do not believe the oxygen of Micky H's own publicity.

The Mickster seems to have incredible amounts of time on s/he/their hands and be fairly well informed about matters of a regional nature, but when it comes to us fun loving so called "Capitalists" (I assume this is a reference to a Metropolitan, lefty, milieux within our union)who preside in the Archway/Angel/Highbury area of Islington s/he is singularly ill informed, in fact a few more facts and a little less insults would be in order! To be brutal her/his/their acid dripping sarcasm and ascerbic wit would be a little better placed in organising her/his/their members in whatever area of the NHS s/t/he/m happens to be responsible for, or local government, or the probabtion service, or the police or wherever!!!!

My contacts, amongst them the legendary Alan "No more marches" Nettles, Clara the great and "others" amongst them the great Arsenio "I have escaped tricky situations more times than the Krays" Houdini have informed me that the great "mole chase" is on to "out" the mole!

I am sure that I bumped me old pal Mr "Nettles" today in a particularly celubrious area of N1. Trouble is he doesn't know me.

Anyway, enuff fun and games for now, if it transpires that Micky H was once a Lambethista and smoked 20 Gauloises a day and I find out who he is I will ensure that the Director of Childrens Services in Lambeth issues a 40 page proclamation on the subject!!!!!!

A rattled Old Git to another rattled old git

A debate on 100 years of Labourism, response

2007-03-21T21:18:00.000Z

Another Marxism is possible
Richard Price responds to Mike McNair’s critique of Graham Bash and Andrew Fisher’s 100 Years of Labour. This article appeared in Weekly Worker 16 November 2006.

Mike McNair’s review of Graham Bash and Andrew Fisher’s 100 Years of Labour (‘100 years hard labour?’, Weekly Worker, September 28, 2006) is a thoughtful and detailed response, but one that is heavily distorted by its conclusion that the most effective way for socialists to exert influence upon Labour is through the building of ‘the unity of Marxists in a common party’ outside its structures.

A significant part of Mike’s review is devoted to a critique of the Perry Anderson/Tom Nairn thesis on the absence of a mass socialist or communist party in Britain, upon which, he argues, Graham and Andrew’s pamphlet is heavily reliant. I don’t hold any particular brief for Anderson or Nairn, but I do think it’s important to respond to what the authors have actually written, and not to infer what you think they may mean on the basis of a few footnotes.

So, for example, Mike, apparently criticising the pamphlet, argues that the aristocracy played no distinct economic or political role after the seventeenth century, and became ‘a segment of the capitalist class’. Hang on a minute! Bash and Fisher state – in opposition to crude accounts of the English Revolution of the 1640s – that it was ‘by no means a straightforward confrontation between a progressive bourgeoisie and an obsolete feudal aristocracy, but a far more indirect conflict mediated through the factional struggle of two sections of the same ruling class bloc’. And it is scarcely news that the British aristocrats, like the mining magnate, the Duke of Northumberland, were among the first in Europe to invest heavily in industry, while industrialists from the late nineteenth century onwards bought into land.

But Mike seems to veer towards an opposite error, in failing to recognise that the ‘landed interest’ was by no means always in step with the industrial capitalists. It had distinct economic interests of its own, and it occupied a leading role in politics until the turn of the twentieth century. How else are we to understand crucial clashes between different wings of the ruling class which gave rise to the large scale mobilisations that preceded the Reform Act of 1832 and the struggle between the Manchester School free traders of the Anti-Corn Law League and the landed aristocracy in the 1840s?

The New Domesday Survey of 1873 found that a quarter of England and Wales was still owned by 710 people. Between them, the Dukes of Sutherland and Buccleuch held nearly 1.5 million acres, and there were more than 40 other estates of more than 100,000 acres. The contradiction between the industrial and landowning wings of the ruling class continued through the agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century and was only resolved with the break up of many of the old landed estates – a process that gathered pace at the turn of the twentieth century and continued into the 1930s.

The 1832 Reform Act symbolised the entry of the new capitalist class into British politics, but the aristocracy continued to occupy its commanding heights for many decades. The second half of the nineteenth century may have been the era of Disraeli and Gladstone, but aristocrats occupied 10 Downing Street for more than three of these five decades.

Non-conformism and socialism
Mike argues against the view that there was a deep discontinuity in English working class politics in the four decades from the decline of Chartism at the end of the 1840s to the rise of New Unionism in the late 1880s. Far from there being a discontinuity in revolutionary ideas, he argues there was a ‘continuity of radical-Christian ideas’.

Aside from the fact that there isn’t necessarily a contradiction between these two propositions, a distinction must be drawn between ideas and the class struggle itself. To argue that the class struggle after 1848 didn’t take a long constitutionalist detour is to fly in the face of the evidence of the three preceding decades, which are studded with militant and semi-insurrectionary movements, often followed by harsh repression – the Peterloo Massacre (1819), the Cato Street Conspiracy (1820), the attempts to form general unions (1829-34), the Captain Swing agricultural disturbances (1830-31), the Merthyr Rising (1831), the campaign for the Reform Act (1831-2), the campaign against the ‘bastilles’ set up by the 1834 Poor Law, the campaign for the release of the Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834-36), the Rebecca Riots (1839-42), the Newport Rising (1839), the Plug Plot general strike of 1842, and physical force Chartism in the 1840s.

The principal reason why politics developed mostly through constitutional channels in the decades after 1848 isn’t hard to uncover. British manufacturing conquered the world, and the violent swings of the trade cycle, which had generated the most acute conflicts of previous decades, moderated. Real wages of the average manual worker rose by about 75 per cent between 1850 and 1900 – the largest percentage rise since the second half of the fourteenth century. Hours of work fell, factory conditions improved, and there were advances in public health. Affordable housing came within reach of better paid workers. Mass entertainment and spectator sports took off. The British ruling class learned to defuse class conflict by social reforms, urban improvement and judicious extensions of the franchise.

The point is not that the working class campaigns in the 1860s against slavery and in support of Polish independence, and the role of British trade unionists in the First International cited by Mike were unimportant. It is that they were an anti-climax in comparison, and didn’t lead to a mass radicalisation in political consciousness.

There were, for instance, only about 25 branches of the First International in Britain in the early 1870s, and their combined membership was numbered in hundreds rather than thousands. In 1872, a leader in The Beehive newspaper – closely associated with the International – complained that the working class’s ‘thoughts on labour questions are expressed solely by their trades, which are non-political’. Six years later, Lloyd Jones, the first secretary of the Labour Representation League, could still bemoan the fact that ‘the working men are shaping no questions for themselves, are considering no policy, are organising no party’. In 1890, Engels could write enthusiastically that the British working class was ‘newly awakened from its forty-years sleep’.

Was there a continuity of radical Christian ideas from the seventeenth century down to the rise of the Independent Labour Party in the 1890s? It has long been a commonplace that the British labour movement owes more to Methodism than it does to Marxism. There were strong echoes of Leveller demands in the People’s Charter, and at the time the ILP began to grow in the West Riding there were still old Chartists whose memories stretched back to the 1840s. Leading historians of the nineteenth century like Macaulay and Gardiner revived interest in Cromwell as a precursor of constitutional advance. A number of the non-conformist churches, like the Quakers, were founded in the 1640s. Christian socialist and radical liberal ideas certainly found their way into both the ILP and the trade unions via their common inheritance from non-conformism and Lib-Labism.

That being said, the religious revival of the later 1800s was a major obstacle to the building of a genuinely independent workers’ movement. The founders of the ILP included not only Catholics, Quakers and Methodists but also secularists and atheists. ‘The attempt to suggest that the ILP was founded by a slate of Methodist parsons and local preachers’ wrote E.P. Thompson, ‘is even more wildly inaccurate than the attempt to attribute it to the single-handed efforts of Engels and Aveling … if the socialists succeeded in sweeping whole chapel-fulls … into the movement, by their broad, unsectarian, ethical appeal, the credit is due to them, and not to the Nonconformist “Establishment” which fought the ILP every inch of the way’.

The non-conformist churches, with the honourable exception of the Primitive Methodists, were not normally on the side of the trade unions. They preached a gospel of class peace and acceptance of one’s place, and supported gradual civic ‘improvement’. Temperance movements, youth organisations with strongly religious overtones, like the Band of Hope, the Boys Brigade, and later the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, and welfare organisations like the Salvation Army all had mass memberships, often in the major industrial areas.

The message of hard work, prudence, sobriety, piety, self-reliance and self-improvement may have led a minority of non-conformists into the ILP. But many more remained loyal to the Liberals, or like my grandmother – a staunch Methodist born in humble circumstances, who signed the pledge in the early years of the last century – became loyal Tory voters. Non-conformism provided a significant part of the Birmingham power base of Joseph Chamberlain, whose name became synonymous with civic pride and urban improvement. He offered a potent mix of imperialism abroad, and social reform and protectionism at home.

Mike criticises ‘the common belief that the SDF was more middle class than the ILP’, arguing that, if anything, the reverse was true. But it’s not a belief shared by Bash and Fisher, who note that the Social Democratic Federation’s ‘rank-and-file membership was frequently active in the trade unions, playing a key role in the rise of “new unionism” after 1888’. Mike also points out that the ILP was stronger in the north, while the SDF was stronger in London.

But it isn’t true that the SDF was without any strength in the north. By 1893, the six branches of the SDF in and around Burnley claimed a combined membership of nearly 2,000, and in the 1906 general election, H.M. Hyndman, with ILP support, came within 356 votes of taking Burnley for the SDF, in a three-cornered contest. And while the ILP became a more middle class organisation in later years, its early Yorkshire strongholds were solidly working class mill towns, like Bradford and Halifax.

Socialist unity or mass party of labour?
Mike admits, somewhat grudgingly, that ‘With the benefit of hindsight, the 1901 decision of the SDF to pull out of the Labour Representation Committee can be seen to be a mistake’, though quite why – given his emphasis on the need for a united Marxist party – is not clear. Surely, the logic of his position should lead him to argue that the SDF’s project of socialist unity was correct as against the struggle to bring in the trade unions to provide a mass base.

At any rate, there were some within the SDF who thought it was wrong to leave the LRC. The Rochdale branch sent a motion to the SDF’s conference in 1905 calling for the SDF to re-enter the LRC, and in 1907, Hyndman, who had started a two year sabbatical from politics before the decision to split had been passed, began to raise the question of affiliation to what had now become the Labour Party.

Mike sets up a straw man when he claims that: ‘The Anderson-Nairn thesis, as applied by comrades Bash and Fisher, takes the case of German and Swedish social democracy, where the party created the unions, as the continental “norm” .’ In fact, the pamphlet doesn’t mention Sweden at all, simply compares the party-union relationship to Germany and Russia, and does not claim either as some kind of continental norm.

The review criticises the pamphlet’s contention that the affiliate structure has been central to Labour’s stability, instead arguing that: ‘The key is, rather, the first-past-the-post system of elections, which creates a substantial pressure towards a two-party system.’ But this is a very limited – and electoralist! – explanation of Labour’s stability.

It can’t, for a start, make much sense of the 1920s, when there was three-party politics; it ignores the role of the TUC in keeping the party together in the 1930s after the traumatic departures of Ramsay MacDonald and the ILP; it glosses over the trade unions’ role in the service of the wartime coalition, when they became the third pillar of state; and it leaves out the crucial role of the affiliate structure in more recent turning points, such as the Social Contract in 1976, and the victory of the Blairites in 1994.

Now, and only now, do we get to the main thrust of Mike’s critique – that the most effective way of influencing the Labour Party is via an avowedly revolutionary party from outside. He takes it as read that any Communist attempts at affiliation were doomed to failure in the 1920s. I’m more convinced by the idea (first put forward by Bob Pitt, so far as I’m aware), that had the British Socialist Party simply attempted to renew its affiliation, rather than do so in the name of a Communist Party bound by the 21 Conditions of the Comintern, it would have created some real problems for the Labour bureaucracy.

Instead, as the pamphlet correctly notes, ‘The CPGB’s application was couched in terms that were intended to provoke rejection’ – an error that demonstrated how little the sectarian and propagandist leaders of the CPGB understood how small groups of revolutionaries could win the confidence of broad masses of reformist workers.

Having set this precedent, it made things easier for the Labour leaders to defeat subsequent CPGB affiliation proposals. But Mike draws the conclusion that communist influence grew the more it was repelled by the bureaucracy, favourably contrasting the CPGB’s efforts with that of its affiliated predecessor, the BSP. But it’s hardly a fair comparison. The BSP’s affiliation was not accepted until 1916, by which time the party was split down the middle, for and against the war, and it had little time to develop unified and consistent tactics within the larger party. The CPGB, in contrast, held the British franchise of a successful revolution, as well as a great deal of Soviet financial backing, much of which was ploughed into sustaining CP-led front organisations and other organisations it was close to.

The Labour Party’s 1925 conference rejected CPGB affiliation for the second year running by a wide margin, banned communists from individual membership, and barred affiliated unions from sending communists as delegates to conference. One hundred constituency and borough parties, urged on by the CPGB, resisted the ban on communists, and about half of these joined the National Left Wing Movement when it was launched in December 1925. For a brief interlude it seemed that the antagonism of the right wing might assist the development of a CP-influenced left wing. The NLWM grew rapidly, and its paper, the Sunday Worker, claimed a circulation of 100,000.

But what is instructive is the comparative ease with which the bureaucracy outmanoeuvred the opposition by disaffiliating the rebel branches, and reorganising new official ones. Harry Wicks, who was a young communist member of the united Battersea Labour Party and Trades Council at the time, recalled: ‘Tragically, in the year after the General Strike, the disaffiliated party – which began with majority support – went down to defeat. Those who left it for the affiliated organisation were not necessarily right wingers. Far from it. Many of them simply could not bear disaffiliation.’

By the time of the NLWM’s second conference in September 1927, almost all of its participants were outside the official structures of the party, having been disaffiliated. Far from facilitating effective work being carried out in the Labour Party, maintaining an independent party was an obstacle. The Labour leaders could appeal to party loyalty on the one hand, and portray the NLWM as the creation of a hostile outside organisation on the other. By 1928, the CPGB had virtually no remaining influence within the Labour left, so that when it embarked upon the mad ultra-leftism of the ‘Third Period’, there were no bridges left to burn. So much for the high water mark of Mike’s preferred orientation.

Mike is correct when he points to some important omissions in the pamphlet – its ‘muted treatment’ of imperialism, and its inadequate account of local government. That being said, for long periods local government wasn’t a strong area for the left. The London County Council, for instance, was the power base of right winger Herbert Morrison during the inter-war years.

Partyism or the united front from within?
From here we fast forward to the 1970s and 1980s. Mike maintains that Militant became by far the most successful ‘entrist’ group, as a consequence of its high profile party-within-a-party approach. But while Militant was relatively successful in winning positions, notably in Liverpool, it came at a very heavy price. Its refusal to collaborate with other sections of the left and its dogmatic organisational and political style won it many enemies. While councillors like Ted Knight and John McDonnell pushed the rate-capping struggle as far as they could, Militant-led Liverpool became the city that dared to capitulate.

Like the CPGB, Militant walked away from its persecutors, with most of its members simply failing to renew their Labour Party membership, or in some cases where they were disciplined, not even bothering to appeal. Like the CPGB, Militant concluded shortly after it had broken all links, that Labour had ceased to be a workers’ party of any sort, and that it had become simply a third capitalist party. As I tried to show, in my article ‘Communists and the Labour Party 1927-29: a sense of déjà vu’, (Workers Action, No 17, Summer 2002), it’s a well-trodden road that leads to calls for trade union disaffiliation and ends in the political wilderness.

Mike, to be fair, does not hold that view, but tries to balance equally dogmatically mid-way, by upholding the need to influence the Labour Party, but only from outside – the very conditions that have failed so ignominiously and so often before.

Warming to his charge that Bash and Fisher underestimate both the positive impact of the CPGB in the 1920s and its more baleful influence in the 1970s and 1980s, Mike makes the case that the defeat of the Labour left since the 1980s is in large part the product of the collapse of British Stalinism. He points both to CPGB’s role in formulating the Alternative Economic Strategy, and to its significant industrial base.

But there are a number of objections to the causality Mike suggests. Firstly, the Labour left wasn’t completely dependent upon CPGB ideas. Many left wing MPs, like Eric Heffer from the older generation and Jeremy Corbyn from the new intake, came from strongly anti-Stalinist traditions. The GLC and other left wing councils had many left wing councillors who came out of student radicalism and Trotskyism. Andrew Glyn, who was around Militant, was a key figure in debates on the AES.

Secondly, the Labour left was at its peak of influence at the same time as the CPGB was descending into a terminal tail-spin. The Labour left, from the Benn for Deputy campaign down to the rate-capping debacle in 1985, posed a serious challenge to the right wing, and even after the defeat of the miners’ strike there were still significant numbers of left wing councillors. The CPGB surely reached its nadir when it tried to ban anti-Tory slogans from the People’s March in 1981. When the marchers reached London, they were greeted by the newly elected, Livingstone-led GLC, which proclaimed its defiance of the Tories across the river, day in, day out. Throughout the rate-capping crisis and the miners’ strike, the CPGB was consistently to the right of the Labour left. The main residual influence of the CPGB today seems to be the concentration of ex-Stalinists within the New Labour hierarchy, where their talent for suppressing internal democracy has finally found an outlet.

There was, therefore, no direct causal connection between the crisis in the CPGB and the subsequent crisis of the Labour left. Rather, both were affected by a crisis across the entire spectrum of the left, which began with the neo-liberal offensive of 1980s, and accelerated with the collapse of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-91. The Labour Party’s membership may have halved, but the membership of groups to the left of Labour has suffered a far higher percentage loss.

A party of warring sects won’t work!
The continuing crisis of the Labour left is, Mike argues, a strategic one: without the CPGB’s ‘British Road’ strategy to lean on, it can only rely upon ‘the pieties of the old Bennite left’. The problem, I would suggest, is much broader. While the far left in the 1970s loudly proclaimed that its aim was the armed seizure of power, the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism has seen all sorts of attempts at forming broader parties and groupings like the SLP, the SSP, the Socialist Alliance and Respect, which do not present themselves as openly revolutionary and fudge the issue of state power. Groups that would formerly have denounced Hugo Chávez as a bourgeois nationalist are booking their plane tickets to Caracas, where, despite impressive social reforms, ‘property rights and the structure of the economy remain intact’. (Guardian, November 14) Amidst the clamour on the far left for a new mass workers’ party, where is there a concise and credible perspective for the victory of socialist revolution? The far left has muffled the drums on the tricky issue of state power for the last 15 years. We are, it seems, all reformists now.

The reasons are not simply down to opportunism. While the collapse of Stalinism didn’t make the peaceful parliamentary road any more likely, it heavily discredited the idea that power – at least in the Western world – was likely to fall into the streets, that soviets would spring up, and a small revolutionary party would seize power in short order. Even those who thought it was possible often questioned whether it was desirable for small, unrepresentative ‘vanguards’ to seize power, and what implications this had for socialist democracy.

Where does this leave ‘the unity of Marxists in a common party’ that Mike sees as the precondition for any sustained socialist revival? The first problem is one of critical mass. If you gathered every last person that claimed allegiance to Marxism in the whole of Britain in a single organisation, you’d struggle to get to 10,000 members, and that would involve rubbing shoulders with quite a few, who in Alexei Sayle’s memorable phrase, think that in order to make an omelette it’s necessary to kill 20 million peasants.

But let’s just suppose you did manage to bring together all these completely incompatible sects and propaganda groups – and that itself takes a quantum leap of faith – what would be the first thing it would do? Split, of course! And that wouldn’t just be down to a higher than average demographic of misfits, movementists, cranks and dead-end sectarians, alongside a fair number of decent, honest comrades.

Such a party – just the sort of fusion of sects that Engels warned against – would almost certainly be based on a set of dogmatic programmatic ‘principles’, but it would lack a clear practical project. After all, it would include both those who are opposed to participating in mass reformist organisations full stop – and for some, that includes unions as well as parties – and the growing number of national union officials, for whom ‘Marxist’ politics is merely an add-on to their trade union activities.

And didn’t the Socialist Alliance founder for precisely these obvious reasons? It was too small to pose as a credible national alternative to Labour, and far from being a disciplined combat party, it was an umbrella of feuding sects, pulling in different directions. It is all very well to argue that the Socialist Alliance should have become a party. But that’s the whole point – building a genuine party out of such political material is excluded as a realistic possibility.

Which leaves us with the Labour Party. While you can debate new workers’ parties for years, there is a concrete struggle being fought right now to rally support for John McDonnell’s leadership campaign – one that both comrades Bash and Fisher actively support. How are the Marxists outside the Labour Party relating to that? One answer was given at the Organising for Fighting Unions conference on November 11, where delegates managed to applaud John McDonnell, and then cheer to the rafters calls to leave the Labour Party and disaffiliate the unions. When I asked an SWP member what this ‘support’ for John’s campaign amounted to in practice, he disarmingly told me, ‘Not much really’! Any united Marxist party in the foreseeable future will be united in one thing only – its sectarian attitude towards not only the Labour Party as a whole, but towards its left wing as well.

Although it is good that the Weekly Worker is supporting McDonnell, it is within the constituency parties, the trade unions and other affiliated bodies that the campaign will be fought. And while some will salve their conscience by supporting the campaign through their affiliated union, such are the vagaries of the electoral college that an individual member’s vote is worth about twenty times that of an affiliated trade unionist. If there are genuine Marxists out there, then this campaign would be a good starting point for unity in action around something of real, practical significance. We can debate the characteristics of future workers’ parties and where we’ve got to with the Marxist theory of the state while we’re walking down the road together.

If, however, you prioritise debating Marxist theory with rag, tag and bobtail Marxists over this simple, practical task then you will be repeating the mistakes Marxists have been making in relation to the Labour Party for the past century, but under conditions in which the Labour right wing can destroy what remains of a party of labour, and set the movement back a generation or more. It’s that serious.

A debate on 100 years of Labourism

2007-03-21T21:15:00.000Z

100 years hard labour?
Mike Macnair reviews Graham Bash and Andrew Fisher: 100 years of Labour (London 2006, pp80, £4). Available from www.100yearsoflabour.net

This pamphlet from Graham Bash and Andrew Fisher tries to do two things. It offers both an outline history of the Labour Party and an argument for leftwingers to commit themselves to membership of the party and the struggle against New Labour. The political perspective oscillates between traditional Labour left views and a very dilute form of Trotskyism - informed by the ‘Anderson-Nairn thesis’ of British backwardness, put forward by New Left Review in the early 1960s.

The pamphlet is a handy source of outline historical information about the Labour Party, and provides potted biographies of a number of important Labour figures and (slanted) sketches of several groups (Social Democratic Federation, Fabian Society, Independent Labour Party, Communist Party, Militant). Its nine chapters cover the origins of the Labour Party; its creation in 1900-06; its development down to 1931; its ‘nature’; the ‘second generation’ of leaders in the 1930s; World War II; the 1945 Labour government; “unresolved Labourism” - ie, the Wilson and Callaghan governments and the left of the 1970s; and “the end of Labourism?”, covering the last hurrah of the left in the 1980s and the rise of New Labour.

The authors argue that the Labour Party, in spite of its weaknesses, was a decisive step forward for the working class: a partial recognition of the need for class political independence and working class political representation. Its peculiar affiliate structure based on the trade unions, unlike continental socialist parties, has given it unique political stability, with the result that any attempt to bypass it on the left is illusory. If New Labour finally succeeds, the authors argue, the trade union link will be broken and the party will become a British equivalent of the US Democratic Party. The idea of class-political independence will be lost.

Hence the decisive battle is now on: the battle to preserve the trade union link and the partial socialist character of the party. If this battle is lost, they suggest, the elements of the left who refuse to fight it will have to take responsibility for a historical defeat for working class politics in Britain.

Comrades Bash and Fisher are a considerable step ahead of the majority of the non-Labour far left, who argue that Blairism has already broken the historical character of the Labour Party and turned it into a British equivalent of the Democratic Party. When Labour next loses office and suddenly turns left these comrades will abruptly reverse themselves: just as in the 1970s the advocates of ‘breaking Labour’s monopoly hold over electoral representation’ in the International Marxist Group became the most vigorous advocates of Labour Party entry in the early 1980s.

However, the account of the history of the Labour Party and the British workers’ movement given by 100 years of Labour is deeply misleading, and the conclusions drawn from it are false. Comrades Bash and Fisher attribute general features of capitalist politics, found globally (like the two-party system of government), and the results of international dynamics (like British world hegemony and its traumatic passing in 1914-45) to ‘peculiarities of the English’, which they exaggerate. In this they follow Anderson-Nairn.

Like most writers from the organised Trotskyist tradition, comrades Bash and Fisher massively underestimate the role of the old ‘official communist’ CPGB in the politics of the British labour movement; ignore the consequences of its destruction by the Eurocommunists in the 1980s; and fail to grasp the continuing ideological influence of the ideas of ‘official communism’ in the Labour and trade union left.

Anderson-Nairn and the Labour Party’s ‘special character’
The comrades’ reliance on the Anderson-Nairn thesis is no secret: the first work cited in the book is Nairn’s 1964 New Left Review ‘Anatomy of the Labour Party,’ one of the central works of the ‘Anderson-Nairn period’ of New Left Review. The story of the first two pages is the Anderson-Nairn narrative.

Anderson-Nairn set out to explain by English peculiarities the absence of a mass communist or socialist party in Britain, unlike continental Europe. In this story the English Revolution was early and ‘mediated’ and produced “a deformed constitutional heritage, with the survival of a constitutional monarchy and the House of Lords …. The early and gradual development of capitalism and the compromise between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie largely cut off the rising trade union movement in the first half of the 19th century from any revolutionary movement, tradition or consciousness” (quoted in 100 years p5).

There was Chartism; then nothing but craft conservatism until the new mass unionism of the 1880s. Even this did not trigger a working class political movement: the Labour Representation Committee emerged in 1900 not out of an offensive movement of the working class, but out of a defensive response of the trade unions to judicial attacks.

As a Marxist approach to British history, the Anderson-Nairn thesis is pretty dated and, frankly, fly-blown. As soon as the economic practices of the 17th to 19th ‘aristocracy’ were investigated in depth by historians, it became clear that this was a segment of a capitalist class - as should already have been apparent from the discussions of English history in volume I of Marx’s Capital. In The pristine culture of capitalism (1991), Ellen Meiksins Wood has turned the Anderson-Nairn thesis on its head. Far from the English political culture being imperfectly capitalist, it was the French post-revolutionary economy and culture which displayed pre-capitalist survivals.

Far from displaying gradual development and ‘historic compromise’, British political culture displays abrupt discontinuities across 1640-60 and across 1688-1714. Far from there being no inheritance of the revolutionary movement of the 1640s, the ideas, if not the names, of the Levellers and other interregnum radicals persisted in the radical movements of the 18th century; into Chartism; and beyond Chartism, into the early political culture of the Independent Labour Party and Labour Party. The Labour left has not been ideologically hobbled by discontinuity from the English revolutionary tradition, but, on the contrary, if anything by its continuity in the form of radical-christian ideas.

The story of discontinuity comes from Nairn, and from Anderson’s ‘Origins of the present crisis’ (New Left Review No23, 1964): “Chartism, its final, supreme effort, lasted for a decade. Wrecked by its pitifully weak leadership and strategy, in the end it collapsed without a fight. With it disappeared for 30 years the élan and combativity of the class. A profound caesura [gap] in English working-class history supervened.”1

But the “caesura” is in Anderson’s historical narrative, not in the actual history of the British workers’ movement. In 1862-65 the British workers’ movement participated in a large-scale campaign in support of the northern, anti-slavery, side in the American civil war. Without this campaign, and in particular the contribution of Lancashire cotton workers, it is very likely that Britain would have recognised the slaveholder confederacy and intervened militarily to break the union’s naval blockade. The 1860s also saw a large movement to extend the suffrage, in which Marx was closely involved. On the back of the anti-slavery solidarity campaign, the workers’ movement attempted to initiate a campaign in solidarity with the Polish national movement. Out of this attempt came ... the First International, whose backbone until the crisis of the Paris Commune was British trade unionists.

The defeat of the Commune led to a European-wide witch-hunt of the International; and the British trade union leaders who had participated in it capitulated in face of this witch-hunt. The trade union movement became dominated by ‘anti-politicals’ who, in reality, supported the Liberal Party. The larger political context was the extension of the suffrage in 1867 to a large body of male ‘respectable workers’ in the towns; and along with it the emergence of an explicit imperialist ideology of ‘British civilisation’.

Anderson, in fact, in ‘Origins of the present crisis’ recognised the role of British imperialist world hegemony in creating first a tame trade union movement and later a tame Labour Party. Comrades Bash and Fisher prefer the fictitious “profound caesura” to the plainly factual efforts of the capitalist politicians to promote imperialism as an alternative to social revolution. This choice is reflected throughout the pamphlet in the very muted treatment of the issue of Labour’s relation to the British empire and British imperialism. This appears in advance on the front page, where Martin Rowson’s cartoon presents Tony Blair as denying the Labour Party’s origins by his willingness to “crusade for imperialist adventures at the behest of American imperialism” (emphasis added). Labour’s British imperialist history has become less significant ... as it usually does with the Labour left.

Socialist groups and Labour origins
In spite of the right turn of the trade union leaders after the defeat of the Commune, socialist groups did begin to grow up, starting with Hyndman’s Democratic Federation in 1881, which turned itself into the Social Democratic Federation in 1884 on the basis of commitment to a dogmatic ‘Hyndmanite’ version of Marxism. A split in 1884 produced the anti-parliamentarist Socialist League led by William Morris (which was to be taken over by the anarchists in 1890), while the elitist Fabian Society also appeared in 1884.

In the late 1880s, a radical extension of trade unionism to ‘unskilled’ workers took place, producing the matchworkers’ strike of 1888 and gas workers’ and dockers’ strikes of 1889. In spite of the SDF’s general hostility to strikes in favour of propaganda and electoral campaigning, both SDF and SL members were heavily involved in these movements.

Keir Hardie’s (broadly christian socialist) Independent Labour Party, founded in 1893, was strong enough by 1895 to contest 28 seats. The common belief that the SDF was more middle class than the ILP is contradicted by research into its membership by David M Young published in 2005: 49% of SDF members were skilled manual workers and another 11% unskilled. Rather the groups were partially geographically separated, with the SDF being stronger in London and the ILP in the north, as well as separated by politics. The ILP was stronger than the SDF in parliamentary elections, but both groups had considerable success in local elections. By the time of the formation of the LRC, the ILP was slightly stronger than the SDF, with around 14,000 members to the SDF’s 9,000.

As comrades Bash and Fisher indicate in their box on the SDF (not in the main text), unitary work in local elections between the SDF and ILP prepared the way for the narrow defeat of the ‘anti-politicals’ in the 1899 TUC vote which led to the creation of the Labour Representation Committee. The LRC’s composition - seven places for the unions, two each for the SDF and ILP and one for the Fabians - reflected a real relationship of forces developed in local politics.

Again this failure to address local politics centrally signals an ongoing weakness in 100 years of Labour. The role of the campaigns to win local councils, and of the Labour councillors, in the party’s relationship to the broad masses of working class electors is downplayed. It surfaces momentarily in the honourable history of Poplar council in the 1920s, but then disappears again.

Nor did the LRC immediately leap to the status of mass party. It put up only 15 candidates in 1900, electing two MPs. Its election of 29 MPs in 1906 reflected a secret agreement with the Liberals. With the benefit of hindsight, the 1901 decision of the SDF to pull out of the LRC can be seen to be a mistake. But at least up to the point at which the Liberals decided to get the trade unions representatives back onside through the deals with the LRC, it was perfectly possible that the LRC would fail.

In this case, the growth of a workers’ party in Britain would probably have followed a more ‘continental’ path of the unification of Marxist and non-Marxist socialists, leading to a more ‘credible’ socialist party which could grow rapidly: like the unification of the Eisenachers and Lassalleans in Germany in 1875, of the Italian socialists in 1892, of the Guesdists and Possibilists in France in 1903. A wing of the ILP had this perspective in the 1900s, but it ended merely in a split from the ILP which joined up with the SDF to form the British Socialist Party. The Lib-Lab Parliamentary Labour Party was a stronger magnet for the majority of the ILP.

It is probably because they saw from the continent the possibility of socialist growth that the Liberals decided in 1906 to go for a deal with the trade union leaders, including the election of some LRC candidates and legislation to provide partial protection for trade unions against judicial attacks. But the Liberals’ cunning plan to incorporate the leadership of the workers’ movement in the architecture of capitalist politics was not in any way unique to Britain, though the process of incorporation took different forms elsewhere.

European social democracy
The Anderson-Nairn thesis, as applied by comrades Bash and Fisher, takes the case of German and Swedish social democracy, where the party created the unions, as the continental ‘norm’. In reality it was the exception. In France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands the unions were created independently of and against the ‘politicals’ who formed the socialist, etc, parties. They marched under one or another variant of the banner of anarcho-syndicalism. In Belgium, as in Britain, the Labour Party when it was created had a structure involving affiliated trade unions and the block vote.

But if pure syndicalism could present itself as, and at times be, well to the left of the ‘politicals’ and organise mass and militant action, it could equally become a force of political conservatism which addressed ‘employment issues only’, like the British anti-politicals. Even in Germany, the party-linked trade unions formed the main basis of the revisionist right, and were able in 1906-07 to insist on censoring Kautsky’s The road to power.

What was this revisionist right? The answer (which I have also argued in my long Weekly Worker series on strategy) is that it sought to achieve partial reforms through coalition with elements of the bourgeois parties. Marxism was to be rejected or discarded as obstructing this task. Precisely this politics was expressed in the ILP, and in the Lib-Labism of the 1906 LRC deal with the Liberals and of the PLP, created in 1906, down to the split of 1931. Tory dominance in 1931-45, and the split in the Liberals which accompanied the national government, rendered the issue moot down to the Labour victory of 1945, which for the first time made possible a majority Labour government. But by this time Labour had absorbed a good deal of the former Liberal Party, and the coalition became internal rather than external.

Was Labour saved from mass splits by its affiliate structure, as 100 years claims (p33)? The answer is fairly clearly not. On the continent, the French and German communists were willing to split not just the party, but also the trade unions; and trade union affiliation did not prevent what became large splits in Belgium. The key is, rather, the first-past-the-post system of elections, which creates a substantial pressure towards a two-party system. What holds British Labour together as a united party is thus the same thing that keeps US labour from breaking with the Democrats.

It should by now be clear that, though the Labour Party is a particular form, the content of this particular form expresses not English peculiarities, but the objective global dynamics of capitalist politics. Over time, the political style of other capitalist countries has become more Anglo-American. There is a tendency towards government by single persons, whether in the form of constitutional monarchy, executive presidency or direct election of prime ministers and party leaders. Efforts have been and continue to be made to limit the political representation of small parties and to design constitutions so as to force two-party or two-coalition systems like those in Britain and the US. The Anglo-American constitutional order is indeed “the pristine culture of capitalism”, not the product of an early or impure bourgeois revolution.

These tendencies have also promoted a trend towards a single dominant party on the left, linked to the trade union bureaucracy, and the marginalisation of alternatives. From the point of view of capital, it is obviously preferable that such a party should be like the US Democrats rather than one which ostensibly represents the interests of the working class. But US capital undoubtedly prefers the Republican Party to the Democrats ... and in today’s politics the German SPD, Italian Democratic Left, and Labour are a lot more like the Democrats or the old Liberals than the pre-1914 SPD. Nevertheless, capital rules through the two-party system; and it can rule as well through a Labour, SPD or Olive Tree/Gauche Plurielle coalition as through a Democratic Party.

The underlying tendency of the trade union bureaucracy to seek Lib-Lab and similar coalitions in order to obtain immediate reforms reflects precisely the role of the unions as bargaining organisations under capitalism; and of the bureaucracy as the institutional bearers of this role. A party which imagines its connection to the working class as running through the trade union link will therefore precisely be driven towards Lib-Labism. In reality, this was not the whole story of the Labour Party: local politics and the councils, which comrades Bash and Fisher downplay, also made the link between party and class.

And this politics, precisely because it was more political and involved more class-political independence than the ‘parliamentary representation of the trade unions’, formed the basis of Labour’s left: it has always been based in the constituencies, not in the unions. This was the case right down to the Kinnockite-Blairite revolution, which drew on Thatcher’s attack on local government and the unions, the organisational norms of Stalinism and the politics of Eurocommunism to smash the autonomy of the local parties and remake them in the Blairite image.

The Communist Party and affiliation
Before 1918 the Labour Party was not an individual membership party. It was made up of the PLP (which lacked practical autonomy from the Liberals beyond trade union issues) and local Labour Representation Committees (largely based on the ILP, but also in 1916-18 the BSP, and including local trade union and independent activists). In 1918 the PLP launched the Labour Party as a national, individual-membership party, with permanent constituency organisations, and a constitution including the famous clause four: “to secure to the workers by hand and brain the full fruits of their labour through the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and. exchange”.

The PLP’s problem was that its central leaders had been pro-war and had participated in the wartime coalition. But the ILP, which provided the bulk of the activists on the ground, was anti-war, as was the BSP. The BSP had split over the war, producing two pro-war minorities, Hyndman’s National Socialist Party and HG Wells’s Socialist National Defence League, but neither organised large forces. The 1918 ‘khaki election’ allowed the coalition to win a large majority, but in the workers’ movement the dynamic was the opposite. The union leaders’ support for the coalition and ‘industrial truce’ had produced the shop stewards’ movement, which was to send delegates to the 2nd Congress of the Comintern in 1920; and in June 1917, the Leeds Convention had called for workers’ and soldiers’ councils (100 years p20). In August 1917, PLP leader Arthur Henderson had been driven to resign from the cabinet.

The membership had failed the PLP, and it was necessary to elect a new membership; but in order to do so in the climate of 1917-18, it was necessary to make substantial ideological concessions to the socialists. Hence clause four.

After the foundation of the Comintern in March 1919, and therefore 18 months after the PLP and Fabians had begun their turn to electing a new membership, the BSP began discussion with the smaller groups of the far left and the left syndicalists with a view to creating a united Communist Party. The process was difficult and was not completed until 1921. The obstacle to unity was precisely the question: should the new Communist Party be affiliated to the Labour Party? The BSP was for it, most of the other groups against. Lenin in Leftwing communism (1920) argued for affiliation, and this position was adopted by a 2-1 majority at the 2nd Congress of the Comintern on August 6 1920. A few days before, the Communist Unity Conference which founded the CPGB (July 31-August 1) voted by 100-85 to seek affiliation.

Comrades Bash and Fisher write: “The CPGB’s application to affiliate was couched in terms that were intended to provoke rejection, and the Labour Party’s executive duly obliged” (p22). In fact, the political context makes perfectly clear that there was not the slightest chance of the Communist Party being allowed to affiliate, however diplomatic the language they used.

The whole point of the 1918 Labour Party constitution was for the leadership to create a new regime in which the PLP and union tops could, through the NEC, exercise more control over the constituency parties than they had been able to exercise over the ILP and BSP and the much looser local LRCs before it. The ILP, it was hoped, could be integrated into this regime (though in the end the demand that the ILP submit to the discipline of the NEC and the parliamentary whips forced them out of the Labour Party in 1931-32).

A Communist Party along the lines of the Comintern’s conception would be a wholly different matter. The name alone would probably have been enough to ensure disaffiliation for the BSP, if it had simply informed the NEC that it was changing its name (as Sean Matgamna has suggested). If the communists had been diplomatic enough in 1920 to actually achieve affiliation, it would either have resulted in a tamed group within the Labour Party, or a short-lived moment ending in expulsion on the ground that they had lied to gain affiliation.

Nor did the 1920 application and its rejection close the question. Though it never came close to a majority, allowing communist affiliation received substantial votes at Labour Party conferences through the 1920s. Communists continued to work as individual members of the Labour Party down to the ‘third period’ turn in 1928, though the Labour Party formally banned communists from individual membership in 1924. Communist influence on the Labour left and in the trade union movement was actually significantly stronger than that of the BSP or the smaller groups before 1920.

Political influence
The high point of communist formal influence in the Labour Party was the National Left Wing Movement (1925-28), which the CP wound up as a result of the ‘third period’ turn. But CPGB political influence in the Labour Party reappeared as political influence on the Socialist League led by Cripps in the 1930s.

In the Labour left as it developed in the 1950s to 1970s, Trotskyists were certainly present; but their ideas were in no sense dominant. The CPGB supplied the political ideas of socialism in a single country, peace campaigning and ‘advanced democracy’, and CP-influenced economists were heavily involved in the construction of the left Keynesian ‘alternative economic strategy’ of the 1970s. On the other side of the coin, the CP’s industrial cadre and the CP-led trade union broad lefts provided a link between the Labour left and the industrial movement. This link blocked a full reassertion of control by the PLP, the trade union tops and the party apparatus.

In the 1980s, however, the CP leadership moved sharply to the right with the help of the Marxism Today project. The internal factional struggle in the CP accelerated, giving rise to the split of the Morning Star; and in 1991 the Eurocommunist wing was to turn the party into the ‘Democratic Left’. The effects in the Labour Party were obvious. Former Eurocommunists and their fellow-travellers became prominent ‘soft lefts’ and are now prominent Blairites. The link between the constituency left and the trade union left evaporated. The Labour right now was able to regain control and remake the party.

Since the collapse of the ‘official’ CPGB, the Labour lefts have been at sea. They cling to strategic ideas which are, in reality, fragmentary and diluted forms of the CPGB’s British road to socialism. The non-Labour far left also clings to fragmentary forms of strategic ideas devised 40-odd years ago ...

Of course, the collapse of the CP reflects deeper processes: the collapse of the regimes of bureaucratic ‘socialism’; the turn of global capital to financialisation, with its accompanying negative impact on the British manufacturing heartlands of the trade union movement and positive impact on the suburbs and small towns; the specific offensive of Thatcherism; and the immediate defeats of the Labour Party led by Foot in the khaki election of 1983, and of the miners in the great strike of 1984-85.

Nor do I mean by this to prettify the politics of the CP. The point is a simple one. Bash and Fisher argue that the CP could have done better if it was willing to make whatever compromises were necessary to get into the Labour Party. For example, it could have dissolved its public, organised face, in order to rid itself of an obstacle to really influencing Labour Party members. This is what the Trotskyist groups which work in the Labour Party have done - comrade Bash’s own left Chartist Briefing included. But the political influence of the ‘outside’ CP on the Labour Party, at almost any period in its history, far outstripped the influence of the Trotskyist entry groups. Indeed, the most successful of the Trotskyist entry groups, Militant, was the one which was closest to having a public face and thus furthest from the advice of Bash and Fisher.

Strategy
The Communist Party influenced the Labour left primarily because it had an alternative strategic line to that of the Labour leadership, which the ILP lacked. The collapse of the ‘official’ CPGB is at the end of the day the collapse of that strategic line, which relied on and assumed the idea of the USSR as a shining example.

Briefing in the late 1970s to early 1980s also had a strategic line: the line of ‘Labour take the power’. This was a variant on the common Trotskyist strategy of the general strike leading to soviets: but for the Briefing comrades, it was the Labour Party general committees which would (because of the affiliate structure of the Labour Party) become soviets.

Somewhere along the road to 100 years of Labour, this line has gone missing, and what comrades Bash and Fisher present in its place is, by and large, the pieties of the old Bennite left, which would not have sounded odd from the ILP. It is the Labour left which has influenced the Trotskyists, not the other way round ... something of the same sort happened to Militant, with its ‘Enabling Act’ strategy.

The lessons of the origin of the Labour Party, and of the relation of the Communist Party to the Labour Party, are in fact fairly simple ones. Marxists certainly ought to engage with the internal politics of Labour and, so far as possible, fight for Marxist ideas within the Labour Party. But the precondition for doing so is not entry, as comrades Bash and Fisher argue. That leads, as it has led Bash and Fisher, to fighting for Labourite ideas.

On the contrary, it is the unity of the Marxists in a common party, based on a Marxist programme, which is the precondition for effective Marxist work in relation to the Labour Party.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note
1. Caesura: a pause in a line of verse. Anderson’s use of the word in this context to mean a historical discontinuity was an innovation. It has been mocked as deliberate obscurity, but also copied by later historians.

Brown and Stalin

2007-03-21T08:54:00.000Z

Hi Mike!

I was just going to pop over here to comment on how daft it is to compare Gordon Brown to Stalin – when I found it had already been done far better by Dave Osler.

Mind you maybe some of our friends in the movement do think Brown will follow in the footsteps of their hero?

Perhaps that explains their support for him…?

Long Live the Fourth International!

2007-03-20T20:29:00.000Z

Long Live the Fourth International!

Long Live the Fourth International

2007-03-20T19:31:00.000Z

Long live the Trots!

Corporate Affairs

2007-03-19T21:48:00.000Z

Islington Council's Corporate Services Committee meets in session

Luci in San Francisco

2007-03-19T21:38:00.000Z

Luci at Modern Times

2007-03-19T21:33:00.000Z

Luci at Modern Times in San Francisco

Dogg at concert

2007-03-19T21:29:00.000Z

A young dog at a Bluegrass concert in San Francisco

Boo cat wants a cuddle

2007-03-19T21:27:00.000Z

Boo cat in classic pose

Luci and Ripley

2007-03-19T21:24:00.000Z

Basic Brown Bear

2007-03-19T21:21:00.000Z

My Luci at Basic Brown Bear in San Francisco

Beautiful Boo-Katz

2007-03-19T21:18:00.000Z

My two beautiful boo cats...

Hoxha and Mao

2007-03-17T19:42:00.000Z

an interesting image...

Crazy World of Arthur Brown

2007-03-17T19:37:00.000Z

Does anyone out there remember Fire by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown?

Ripley, the Sphynx Cat from Borderlands-more pictures part three

2007-03-17T14:19:00.000Z

More pics of the fabulous Ripley cat, including with my Luci

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WRP FROM THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP

2007-03-13T23:26:00.000Z

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WRP FROM THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP AGAINST NATIONAL TROTSKYISM-FOR THE BUILDING OF THE FI

This was written back in 1986 when the WRP split in two and was written by Phil Hearse and Dave Packer for the IG (forerunner of the ISG, antecedent of the IMG)CC. I thought that some of the wild eyed-Trot spotters might be interested. It was given out at WRP meetings when a fusion was on the agenda.

Dear Comrades of the WRP,

At your November 1985 public meeting on the expulsion of Gerry Healy, Cliff Slaughter announced that you would carry out “a wide ranging discussion on the history of the Trotskyist movement and that all those who want to learn the lessons can certainly participate. We shall discuss all questions as Trotskyists.”

In this context we want to pose one question which is of particular import when discussing the tasks of the Fourth International-the existence of the FI and the thousands of militants struggling to build sections within the framework of the United Secretariat. We know full well that this is not the mass FI which Trotsky fought to build, but it is, whatever you think of it, the largest component of the world Trotskyist movement. We think that it is appropriate within the framework of making an historical balance sheet, to review the causes of your organisational separation from the United secretariat, especially in the light of your International Committee.

THE 1963 REUNIFICATION

The 1963 reunification of the FI by-passed the SLL and Lambert’s OCI in France. The central political question at issue was the refusal of Healy and Lambert to recognise the existence of a workers state in Cuba. This refusal flew in the face of reality. Today it is obvious that the social relations which exist in Cuba are in essence the same as those which exist in the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe and that indeed capitalism was overthrown in the 1959-61 period in Cuba. We ask again today: do you now recognise that after 1959 capitalism was overthrown in Cuba? And that a workers state, albeit with bureaucratic deformations, was established? What now is your balance sheet of this dispute, which was so central tot her refusal; of the SLL to participate in the reunification of 1963? And do you still agree with Healy’s statement at that time that “the time had come to put aside the characterisation of the Pabloists as a trend in the world Trotskyist movement?”

In our view, the 1956 workers uprising in Hungary, and the identical response to it by both the IC and the IS—that of supporting the workers councils and of calling for political revolution—put in question the 1953 split in eh International. It put in question whether anybody had “capitulated to Stalinism”. And it created the basis for opening of the discussions of reunifying the Fourth International. The attempt at reunification met active sabotage on the side of the IC from Healy, which was smatch3ed on the other side the activities of Pablo, initiating a political fight which eventually led to Pablo’s expulsion.

PABLOISM-WHO HAS CAPITULATED?

The fate of those who have led the struggle against the reunification of the FI: Healy and Lambert-is a sorry example of the fact that those who build their organisations on a basis of sectarian shibboleths are headed for catastrophe. Irony of ironies: those who made their claim to fame the relentless struggle against Pabloism turned out to be the biggest liquidators of all. There is nothing in the history of the USFI, despite all our mistakes, to compare to the craven capitulation of the Healy-WRP to bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalism in the middle east. Neither is there anything to compare with the degeneration of the Lambert sect in France, with its forning attitude to social democracy and the Force ouvriere bureaucracy sand abandonment of class struggle in favour of classless democracy. And, never despite all the myths to the contrary did the USFI ever effuse and enthuse over the Chinese cultural revolution and the Stalinists in the manner that Mike Banda did in the SLL’s Newsletter during the 1966-68 period.

The Healy-WRP persisted in characterising the USec as “Pabloites” and revisionists despite our expulsion of Pablo and our repudiation of his organisational and political methods. This was the consequence of Healy’s world view through sectarian spectacles—the continuous need to justify the WRP’s separation from the rest of the world Trotskyist movement.

We ask again, do you still characterise us as Pabloites and liquidators? and if so, how do you explain our adherence to the programme of permanent revolution and the revolutionary struggle against Stalinism? How do you explain our continued adherence to the fight for political revolution in the workers states? Our support for Solidarnosc in Poland and our efforts with the limited resources we have available to organise forces on eastern Europe and the soviet union for this programme? Finally how do \you explain that after decades of capitulating we have not actually succeeded in liquidating ourselves into anything and have built the largest component of the world Trotskyist movement—we must be the most incompetent liquidationists in history!

MIKE BANDA’S SCEPTICISM

Mike Banda has written a central text called “27 reasons why the IC must be buried forthwith”. The central thesis of this document is that the whole history of the WTM is a write off, and that after Trotsky’s death all his central followers turned out to be charlatans and frauds and capitulators!

Such arguments place in question the whole point of declaring and founding the International in the first place.

Elements of such a view are found in John Spencer’s piece an others who date the going off the rails as far back as world war two! In our view, such scepticism is harmful and places in the dustbin all the struggles of the Trotskyist militants over decades to build a revolutionary alternative ton Stalinism and social democracy over a fifty year period. This struggle was what kept revolutionary Marxism alive when the combined forces of imperialism and Stalinism threatened it altogether. If the trot organisations today are numbered in hundreds and thousands rather than in handfuls it is because of the battles waged against all the odds by FI supporters all over the world.

In our view, the thesis Banda puts forward is Anglo-centric and Healy-centric. There is a real danger in the discussion being discussed in terms entirely related to the history of the WRP and the IC, given the bankrupt outcome of such a discussion can easily lead to pessimism or even despair…if such a discussion is to be a serious one it can neither take the existence of Pabloism ore revisionism as a given. If everything is up for discussion then, it cannot go round the existing cadres of the Trotskyist movement. Neither can it avoid the question of overcoming the dispersal and fragmentation of Trotskyists worldwide. The time has come to pout aside epithets, innuendos, and character assassinations in relation to Trotskyist organisations. It is in his sense that we appeal to you to accept the participation of militants of the USec in your discussion.

Li'l Ole Red Mole

2007-03-13T20:58:00.000Z

Here is my favourite, enigmatic emblem...

Two Pints of Lager...and a Packet of Crisps...

2007-03-13T20:54:00.000Z

My fave TV show...

Ripley, the Sphynx Cat from Borderlands-more pictures

2007-03-13T20:44:00.000Z

I am very reluctant to put piccys of me on the blog but here goes, with my fave American Sphynx cat, Ripley, from Borderlands

Louis Proyect on French Trotskyism

2007-03-13T19:51:00.000Z

The following is a review of several books on French Trotskyism by American leftist Louis Proyect, father figure of Marxmail. I have nicked this from his own personal blog!

Although Trotskyism as an organized tendency has pretty much disappeared, France is one place where it still seems to have a presence based on the evidence of 12 new books on the topic ranging from memoir to scholarly (and less than scholarly) material published there recently. In an article that raises leftist-spotting to the level of the sublime, British SWP leader Ian Birchall reviews them in the latest HM magazine. With no particular ax to grind, a dry British wit, and a flair for the bon mot, Birchall is just the right choice for the assignment despite interjecting his own silly state capitalist prejudices from time to time.

A word or two of introduction might be in order. There are 3 significant Trotskyist currents in France. One is the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR) that is led by philosophy professor Daniel Bensaïd and that was a long-time supporter of the Ernest Mandel wing of the Fourth International. The next is the Courant Communiste Internationaliste, led by Pierre Lambert. During the 1950s, Lambert was allied with James P. Cannon and Gerry Healy against the Mandel forces, who they accused of adapting to Stalinism. The last is Lutte Ouvrière (LO), a group that has never made any attempts to project itself as part of a genuine Fourth International internationally and that has a strong orientation to trade unions that some might describe as “workerist”. In recent years, the LCR and LO have run joint electoral campaigns, capitalizing on the fact that about 10 percent of the French electorate show a willingness to vote for Trotskyist candidates.

Christophe Nick’s “Les Trotskistes” is a 583 page mess, from all appearances. It is filled with factual errors and misspellings. Max Shachtman comes out Max Chatman, which evokes for Birchall “the horrifying thought of a Shachtmanite chatroom.” Nick sounds basically like a David Horowitz clone, writing that “The Trotskyists are said to have placed their men in all the positions of power that seem to them to be of strategic importance.” Such an observation, and something that has a lot to do with the marketability of the books under review, would be borne out by the fact that Lionel Jospin was “exposed” as a member of the Lambertiste group while many of the editorial staff at Le Monde were members of the LCR in their youth.

Birchall describes Nick’s witch-hunting proclivities as follows:

“We are frequently reminded that we are never more than five metres from a rat. Apparently, the Trotskyists are nearly as close. (Rats are also reputed to be able to swim up sewers and bite our buttocks when we are sitting on the toilet; whether any Trotskyist group has yet perfected this technique is unclear.)”

Frederic Charpier’s “Histoire de l’extrême gauche trotskiste” is another redbaiting exercise with even more bizarre interpretations. Trotsky is depicted as doing “entryism” in the Bolshevik party, etc.

Despite having been a member of Lambert’s group for 5 years, Philippe Campinchi’s “Les lambertistes” is cut from the same cloth as Nick and Charpier’s books, while openly trying to cash in on the lurid “exposés” noted above: Birchall’s review copy had a bright red band around the cover marked ‘The former party of Lionel Jospin.’ Nearly everything that the Lambertistes are up to is regarded as sinister, including the posting of a security guard in front of their headquarters. Birchall notes that perhaps they do not want “simple citizens inflamed with curiosity by Campinchi’s books trampling through their offices.”

“Le veritable histoire de Lutte Ouvrière” is a series of interviews with LO leader Robert Barcia (alias Hardy). Barcia is an old-timer apparently, having spent time in prison during the German occupation. Although Birchall finds Barcia’s recollections of such events interesting, he is less taken with what he perceives as a tendency to cling to Trotskyist dogma. In particular, he takes umbrage at Barcia’s badmouthing of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group (Soub) that was led by Cornelius Castoriadis and that included Jean-Francois Lyotard in its ranks at one time. Soub’s sin, it seems, was clinging to the belief that the USSR was “state capitalist”.

It is not surprising that all of these Trotskyist groups suffer in comparison to Birchall’s:

Over thirty years ago, I attended part of an LO editorial board meeting, and I still recall Hardy haranguing members of his own leadership about how they did not appreciate what a hard time the working class had of it.

Hence the description of LO members as ’soldier-monks’ is not wholly unfair. For the revolutionary organisation is a necessarily small group of hyperactive militants. Necessarily small, because only in a revolutionary situation will the vast majority of workers abandon their everyday pursuits in favour of politics. The revolutionary organisation is not part of the class - ‘the companion in struggle’ as Tony Cliff argued that genuine Marxists should be - but is composed of outsiders, who support workers’ struggles, aim to educate the class, but remain separate from it. (A similar view prevailed in the Lambertist organisation, summed up by Benjamin Stora as ‘the mysterious world … of the party, separated from the rest of society, but able to enlighten and organise it’ [p. 65]. If this view of the party can claim support from the Lenin of 1902, it gets none at all from the Lenin of 1905 or 1917.)

This explains LO’s notorious position of discouraging its members from having children. As Hardy puts it:

“It is scarcely possible to rear children properly and give them the affection and attention they require while at the same time leading the life of a militant at a certain level of activity.”

I must add the American SWP, which long ago disassociated itself completely from the task of constructing a Fourth International, had informal anti-children policies even more draconian than LO’s: one woman was expelled for breast-feeding at a branch meeting and another was encouraged to get an abortion so that she would be free to do political work.

“Itinéraires” is a series of dialogues between Pierre Lambert and Daniel Gluckstein, his heir apparent. We learn from Birchall that the two are contemptuous of NGO’s, antiglobalization groups like ATTAC and the campaign for the Tobin tax but he criticizes them for refusing to engage with the people involved in such efforts. (Although I have respect for the British SWP’s antiwar work, I was far less impressed with their tendency–and that of the LCR–to tail “antiglobalization” campaigns, especially the ill-fated ultraleftism of the Black Bloc et al.)

There are also two books on the Trotskyist movement from the LCR and the Lambertistes respectively: “Les trotskysmes” by Daniel Bensaïd and “Le trotskysme et les trotskystes” by Jean-Jacques Marie. Bensaïd’s use of the plural is mildly provocative, according to Birchall. I myself find it in keeping with his generally donnish approach to politics, which is in full display in his response to John Holloway, also contained in the current HM. I remember reading translation of Bensaïd’s articles in the debates within the Fourth International in the 1970s and always wondered why he couldn’t express himself in a straightforward manner.

In Birchall’s view, Bensaïd comes across less dogmatic–no doubt a function of devoting four pages to a “generally fair summary” of Tony Cliff’s theory of state capitalism and insisting that it remains within the “parameters of Trotskyism”. In light of this, it should not come as a big surprise that the LCR and the British SWP have conducted some tentative regroupment type discussions. And not surprisingly, they have led nowhere.

Michael Lequenne’s “Le Trotskysme sans fard” (Unvarnished Trotskyism) focuses on the 1944 to 1960 period. Birchall regards his account of the 1952 split to be the most important part of the book even though Pablo’s famous “entryist” tactic into the French Communist Party was far less momentous than actually projected. After winning a battle to implement the line, only seven comrades were available to carry out the assignment. Birchall describes this as a “massive gap between grandiose perspectives and real capabilities”, which in some ways can be described as the epitaph of the Trotskyist movement.

Benjamin Stora’s “La derniére generation d’octobre” is a memoir of his life in the Lambertiste movement. Comrades might recall his name from a query posted to the list last year about histories of Algeria and the war of independence. Stora is considered one of the top scholars in the field. Frankly, it came as a bit of a surprise to learn that he was a full-time organizer for the Lambertistes in the 1970s since his book on Algeria seems fairly devoid of a sharp class analysis. This is not to say that he has turned his back on his past as his comments on the Jospin affair should indicate:

“Militancy remains a period of my life which I do not repudiate. I retain a nostalgia for these youthful commitments, as though they were a ‘paradise lost’…. Today I see my commitment as a mixture of idealism and blindness, of romanticism and a disturbing desire for purity, intelligence and dogmatism.”

Bensaïd has his own memoir, titled “Une lente impatience” (A Slow Impatience). It reveals living under the shadow of the Holocaust. (I was somewhat surprised to discover that he was Jewish since he was always understood by American Trotskyists as North African and presumably Moslem.)

As a clue to understanding the flirtation (but no consummation!) between the LCR and the British SWP, here’s Birchall’s account of a possible area of agreement:

“But Bensaïd is less helpful in disentangling the main lines of revolutionary strategy in the thirty-six years since 1968. Without raking over the debate about the class nature of Russia, he nonetheless believes that the events of 1989 were a ‘historic defeat for the working-class movement’ (pp. 370-1). And, despite a reference to Castro’s ‘outbursts of senile megalomania’, he still finds something progressive in Cuban society (pp’ 368-9).”

Senile megalomania?

Like this?

This insensitive world that spends one trillion dollars each year on the military –it’s already two trillion– this insensitive world that extracts various trillions of dollars a year from the impoverished masses, from the immense majority of this planet’s inhabitants, remains indifferent when it is told that around 100,000 people have died, among them maybe 25,000 or 30,000 children, or that there are 100,000 injured, and the large majority is suffering from bone fractures in their arms and legs of which barely 10% have been operated on, that there are children with mutilated limbs, and young people, women and men, old people.

This is the kind of world we are living in. It is not a world full of goodness, but a world full of egoism. It is not a world of justice, but one full of exploitation, abuse and pillage, where millions of children die every year –and they could be saved–, just because they are lacking a few cents worth of medicine, or some vitamins or re-hydration salts and a few dollars worth of food, enough for them to live. They die every year due to injustice, almost as many as died in that colossal war that I mentioned a few minutes ago.

What kind of world is this? What kind of world is this where a barbaric empire proclaims its right to launch pre-emptive attacks on 70 or more countries, and is capable of bringing death to any corner of the globe, using the most sophisticated weapons and killing techniques? It’s a world where brutality and force prevail, with hundreds of military bases on the entire planet. There is one of these on our soil, where they arbitrarily intervened after the Spanish colonial power could no longer stand by itself, and when hundreds of thousands of our country’s dearest sons –in a population of hardly a million– had perished in a long war lasting almost 30 years. And they left us with the revolting Platt Amendment, attached to an equally repugnant resolution that treacherously gave them the right to intervene in our country whenever they considered there to be a lack of order.

You know something, I am far more interested in hooking up with governments, parties and individuals who are inspired by the fact that a head of state utters such words than I am with people like Birchall and Bensaïd who regard them as “outbursts of senile megalomania”.

Shame on them.

Long Live Posadas

2007-03-13T19:32:00.000Z

J. Posadas

The following is a piece on Juan Posadas, which I thought might tickle you. It is not a sign of my declining sanity (although who knows?)...

J. Posadas (1912-1981) (occasionally referred to as Juan Posadas), was the pseudonym of Homero Romulo Cristalli Frasnelli, an Argentinian Trotskyist whose personal vision is usually described as Posadism.

Early life
Born in Argentina to Italian immigrants from the Southern town of Matera, he gained fame playing football for Estudiantes de La Plata in his youth. In the 1930s he worked as a shoemaker and organised a shoemakers’ and leather workers’ union in Córdoba, Argentina.

During this period he stood as a candidate for election in Buenos Aires province for the Partido Socialista Obrero. He then joined the Partido de la Revolución Socialista, which affiliated to the Fourth International in 1941.

In the Trotskyist movement
Posadas became the leader of the Latin America Bureau of the Fourth International and, under his guidance, the movement gained some influence in the region, particularly among Cuban railway workers, Bolivian tin miners and agricultural workers in Brazil.

When the Fourth International split in 1953, Posadas and his followers sided with Michel Pablo and the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. By 1959, however, he and his followers were quarrelling with the leadership of the ISFI accusing them of lacking confidence in the possibility of revolution. The also differed over the issue of nuclear war with Posadas taking the view that "War–Revolution" would "settle the hash of Stalinism and Capitalism" and that nuclear war was inevitable and desirable as a socialist society would rise from the ashes. Posadas and his international followers, who were concentrated in Latin America, split from the ISFI in 1962 prior to its rectification of the 1953 split with the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Nuclear war
The "Posadists" founded its own Fourth International in 1962, which started using the name Fourth International (Posadist) only at a later time (in the early 1970s). At their founding conference the movement proclaimed that “Atomic war is inevitable. It will destroy half of humanity: it is going to destroy immense human riches. It is very possible. The atomic war is going to provoke a true inferno on Earth. But it will not impede Communism.”

We are preparing ourselves for a stage in which before the atomic war we shall struggle for power, during the atomic war we shall struggle for power and we shall be in power]. There is no beginning… there is an end to atomic war, because atomic war is simultaneous revolution in the whole world, not as a chain reaction, simultaneous. Simultaneous doesn't mean the same day and the same hour. Great historic events should not be measured by hours or days, but by periods… The working class will maintain itself, [and] will immediately have to seek its cohesion and centralisation…
After destruction commences, the masses are going to emerge in all countries - in a short time, in a few hours. Capitalism cannot defend itself in an atomic war except by putting itself in caves and attempting to destroy all that it can. The masses, in contrast, are going to come out, will have to come out, because it is the only way to survive, defeating the enemy… The apparatus of capitalism, police, army, will not be able to resist… It will be necessary to organise the workers' power immediately.
Poasdas wrote that “Nuclear war [equals] revolutionary war. It will damage humanity but it will not – it cannot – destroy the level of consciousness reached by it… Humanity will pass quickly through a nuclear war into a new human society – Socialism.”

J. Posadas' enthusiasm for nuclear war and "worker's bombs" escalated in the 1970s with the Posadist movement issuing demands that the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China begin a "preventative war" against the United States in order to finish off capitalism.

Cuba
The Posadist group in Cuba gained importance due to the Cuban Revolution in which it had a minor role. Posadist guerrillas fought alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. When the Posadists split from the Fourth International in 1962 they took the Cuban section with them leaving meaning no other Trotskyist group was represented in Cuba in the 1960s.

In 1961 the Posadist section in Cuba argued that the Cuban government should forcibly expel the American military base at Guantanamo Bay. It organised workers in the town of Guantanamo to march on the nearby military base, a move which the Fourth International considered to be ultra-left. The demonstration irritated and alarmed some in the Cuban government which looked the other way when, in April 1961, a small Stalinist group, the Partido Socialista Popular, raided the headquarters of the Posadist group and smashed its printing press which was in the process of printing an edition of Trotsky's The Permanent Revolution.

Guevara, when asked in an interview about this event, commented:

"That did happen. It was an error. It was an error committed by a functionary of second rank. They smashed the plates. It should not have been done. However, we consider the Trotskyist party to be acting against the revolution. For example, they were taking the line that the Revolutionary Government is petty bourgeois, and were calling on the proletariat to exert pressure on the government and even to carry out another revolution in which the proletariat would come to power. This was prejudicing the discipline necessary at this stage."
The Cuban Posadist section became increasingly militant and was banned by the government, Castro denonunced them as "pestilential" at the Tricontinental Congress held in January 1966. Cuban Posadists went on to claim that Castro had Guevara killed when, it turned out, he was actually in Bolivia fighting with the guerrilla movement there. Conversely, after Guevara was executed by Bolivian authorities, Posadas claimed in 1967 that Che Gurevara wasn't actually dead but was being kept in prison by Castro's government.

UFOs
Beginning in 1968, Posadas also became known for his theories concerning UFOs. He believed that the existence of UFOs demonstrated the existence of socialism on other planets and that only a socialist society could produce the technology needed for interplanetary travel. Moreover, he argued that as the occupants of UFOs (who were either socialists from other planets or socialists from a future earth travelling back in time) were advanced communists they should be urged to help lead the terrestrial socialist revolution.

In his pamphlet Les Soucoupes Volantes, le processus de la matiere et de l'energie, la science et le socialisme (Flying Saucers, the process of matter and energy, science and socialism) Posadas speculated that the reason UFOs do not stay very long is because “Capitalism doesn’t interest the UFO pilots, which is why they do not return. Similarly, the Soviet bureaucracy (doesn’t interest them) as they don’t have perspective.” His work ends by pleading that "“We must call upon beings from other planets when they come to intervene, to collaborate with the inhabitants of the Earth to overcome misery. We must launch a call on them to use their resources to help us.”

The obsession of the Posadist movement with UFO's has led others to quip that while Trotsky argued against the theory of socialism in one country, Posadas argued against "socialism on one planet".

Long live Posadas!
Posadist newspapers such as Red Flag, published by the Revolutionary Workers Party (Trotskyist) in Britain ran headlines praising Soviet cosmonauts and the launching of Chinese rockets as well as articles on local industrial disputes.

Posadas was also thought to have a large ego as indicated by his habit of ending his articles by exclaiming "Long live Posadas!"

This actually stemmed from the way Posadas "wrote" his documents. They were usually the transcript of speeches delivered at party events, whether with a small group of closest collaborators, or larger activities. In the early years, after Posadas has ended his speech with some "Viva la Revolución Mundial!" and "Viva la Cuarta Internacional!" (he always spoke in Spanish), someone else would yell "Viva el camarada Posadas!" - all this would be duly reported in print. Later on, he actually started adding the "Viva!" to himself by himself.

In his later years Posadas led his movement into the development of various esoteric ideas that bordered on the New Age with writings about communicating with dolphins and humans giving birth under water. After his death in Italy in May 1981, Michel Pablo, his former mentor, wrote an obituary describing Posadas as “delirious” and “a preacher of the ‘permanent revolution’ simultaneously and everywhere, to the point of giving itself an interplanetary dimension.”

Days of Yore Hall of Lambeth fame

2007-03-13T18:45:00.000Z

Of course, if you were a Lambeth Labour Councillor you should also get a mention!

There were many:

Greg Tucker and Joan Twelves
Anne Hollifield--whatever happened to her?
Phyllis Dunipace
Linda Bellos
Sharon Atkins
John Harrison
Steve French
John Tuite
Rachel Webb

And many others too numerous to mention...and what about all those who didn't elected as well?

Mikey

Days of Yore Hall of Lambeth NALGO fame

2007-03-13T18:32:00.000Z

Hi there all you gals and guys in Blogdom!

I am seeking to link up with an old pal of mine, the ubiquitous Micky H! Yep, he of SCANDALFAX fame.

He has said some cool things about me and I about him. In my detective mode, being acquainted as I am with novelists such as Stephen Booth and Andrew Taylor, I am trying to remember who was on the Lambeth NALGO BC when I was.

A cool, clear air is brushing through blogdom as I seek him here and there. He may, of course, be a she!

The years:

1987-1993

The individuals I can remember from that time frame:

(Jolly)Jon Rogers
Nick Venedi
Jackie Lewis
Roger Lewis
Roy Beasley
Simon Bird
Sian Moore
Roy Beasley
Ed Hall
Andrew Tullis
Huge Alexander
Alex Owolade
Penny Wainwright
Jenny Nyman
I even remember Mike Waller
Margaret Carey
Amanda Baird

There are many others who will be added to the Days of Yore Hall of Fame in subsequent postings. If you are one of the above or want to be added, then let me know!

If you have tales or even tails, to tell, also let me know!

Mikey

Pierre Broue

2007-03-11T20:52:00.000Z

In Memory of Pierre Broué (1926-2005)
By Alan Woods
Monday, 01 August 2005

Pierre Broué, French historian, Trotskyist militant, and editor of the Cahiers Leon Trotsky, passed away in the early hours of Wednesday morning. His loss will be mourned by working class militants and revolutionaries everywhere.

Pierre Broué was internationally renowned as a historian of the international revolutionary movement. For 45 years he was active in Trotskyist politics in France and internationally. He wrote important works on the Bolshevik party, the German Revolution and the Spanish Revolution. He edited and prefaced an authoritative French edition of Trotsky's post-1928 writings, and was at the centre of Trotsky research in recent decades.

His histories of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist International, the Spanish Revolution, and above all his recent Life of Trotsky have been widely admired. This biography (Trotsky, Pierre Broué, Fayard, 1988) is a very healthy antidote to the superficial and pretentious philistinism of Isaac Deutscher. His latest book on the Left Opposition was yet another outstanding book by this celebrated Trotskyist writer. Tragically, it was to be his last.

However, Pierre Broué was not just an intellectual, somebody who wrote books for universtities and commented on events from the the comfort of his study. He was an active and militant revolutionary who dedicated his life to the fight for international socialism. In his youth, Pierre joined the French Resistance to fight against the Nazi occupation of France. He joined the Communist Party, but soon came into collision with the Stalinist leadership.

He later became a militant of the Fourth International and remained a dedicated Trotskyist for the rest of his life. He never wavered in his revolutionary belief in the socialist future of humanity. The day after his death, his close collaborator, friend and comrade, Jean-Pierre Juy wrote to tell me that he retained this revolutionary fervour right to the end.

I only got to know Pierre in the last phase of his life, when he was already engaged in his last battle – a life and death battle against cancer. But I was very well acquainted with his work and ideas, mainly through our mutual friend Seva [Esteban] Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson. Seva Volkov was a close friend of Pierre, for whom he had a boundless admiration and respect. Many years ago Pierre encouraged Seva to participate more actively in politics. He told me that this was one of the things he was most proud of. He was delighted to read the reports of Seva’s visit to the congress of the Struggle in Pakistan and at the conference of the International Marxist Tendency in 2003.

It was in 2003 that I visited Pierre when he was convalescing in the picturesque foothills of the French Alps. I found him lively and alert, with a sharp and very Gallic sense of humour. His revolutionary spirit shines through in every sentence. He was not very interested in the picturesque scenery. His mind was elsewhere: with the world revolution. He was like a tiger trapped in a cage, or rather an old warhorse, champing at the bit and straining to get back into battle.

I asked him if he was doing any writing. He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of impatience. "How can I write in this place? I do not have my books. I want to get out of here and get back to my library!" Evidently, the separation from his books was the worst form of torture for Pierre.

Pierre Broué and Alan Woods. Photo by Greg Oxley
The visit, on which I was accompanied by Greg Oxley, the editor of La Riposte, had very important results. Pierre Broué agreed enthusiatically to collaborate with our Trotsky Project, which has started to republish the works of Leon Trotsky. He told us: "The decision taken by In Defence of Marxism to republish the writings of Trotsky is therefore an excellent initiative, to which I give my wholehearted support. The youth must rediscover the extraordinary revolutionary traditions of the past."

I asked him how he came into contact with our tendency. He replied:

"When I read your material on the website, and on the website of La Riposte, I realised that we should have been in contact and that we should have been working together for a long time. I believe we are on the same wavelength politically. In terms of political analysis and theory, your tendency stands way above all the others. Unfortunately, now that we are finally meeting, I am rather ill, as you can see. I must get well as soon as I can. This is a new beginning for me in many ways."

Since then I have been in regular contact with Pierre by telephone and email. Despite his illness, he showed a stubborn determination (like all revolutionaries, he was a very stubborn man!). He sent us articles and wrote an introduction to the new edition of Not Guilty!, the summing up of the Dewey Commision on the Moscow Trials. He constantly apologised for not being able to write more and promised to do so as soon as his health permitted.

Pierre was a man of strong convictions. After breaking with the Lambertist tendency, he pursued an independent road, while consistently defending the ideas of revolutionary Marxism and internationalism – that is Trotskyism. He clearly understood the need for Marxists to orient to the mass organizations of the working class and to that end worked with left-wing elements in the French Socialist Party. No doubt some of them will try to claim that they have inherited the mantle of Pierre Broué, as will assorted sectarians and intellectual eunuchs, whose interest in Marxism extends no further than the university seminar. But the real Pierre Broué was not a left reformist, sectarian, or middle class academic.

Anyone who knew Pierre in the last period of his life knows perfectly well where his sympathies lay. Ever since he came into contact with the International Marxist Tendency and especially the Maxist.com web site, he made no secret of his admiration for our tendency. Whenever we discussed, he would always speak as a member of the organization. He would always talk about "us" – what plans we had, what was our perspective on … etc. He told me about a visit he had from some Argentinian Trotskyists (from the PTS, I think): "They seem to be good people," he said. "We should try to win them."

He followed the Marxist.com site very carefully every day and commented on it enthusiastically. He was particularly enthusiastic about our successes in Pakistan and above all about the work of our tendency in Venezuela. He poured scorn on the ultraleft groups for their incapacity to understand the Venezuelan revolution and their sectarian attitude to Chavez. He was delighted to read the report of my meeting with Chavez, whom he regarded as a sincere revolutionary. He told me on several occasions that he considered ours to be the only correct methods of work – methods that serve to connect the ideas of revolutionary Marxism with the real movement of the masses.

Pierre’s identification with our tendency caused him a few problems. He told me several times that he was having trouble with some of his old friends and comrades who were not at all happy about his relations with us. This did not worry Pierre in the slightest degree. "They are always ringing me up to complain," he told me. "They say: ‘What are you doing with the Grantists? They are very bad people!’" To which Pierre would answer: "You say they are bad people, but I do not see any bad people, only good comrades!"

As one of the foremost experts in the world on the history and political evolution of the Fourth International, Pierre had not the slightest doubt about the important role of comrade Ted Grant. He said that the history of the Fourth International would have been entirely different if it had accepted the positions defended by Ted and the British RCP. He had a very great respect and admiration for Ted. On the occasion of Ted Grant’s ninetieth birthday, Pierre said:

"Ted Grant is known to me for many years, of course. As we say in France, he seems to have been around since the days of Clovis [a medieval French monarch]! Unfortunately, I do not believe we have ever met, but we had a mutual friend in Raoul, who was a longstanding militant in the Trotskyist movement in France. He often spoke to me of Ted, and held him in very high esteem. However, for some reason, perhaps for fear of being accused of ‘factionalism’ or whatever - that's the way things happen in the organisation to which we both belonged at that time - he never showed me any of Ted's written material."

"Regrettably, I didn't make the effort to get in touch with him at the time. Only in the last few years I have been reading his material, which I found very interesting. Anyway, I am now very much looking forward to working together with your tendency. We must discuss politics, and methods of work, of course, and try to arrive at the fullest agreement. I believe this is quite possible."

Pierre sent a touching message to Ted Grant:

"Ted, you were always a fighter. You have been struggling for many years. You have always defended revolutionary ideas. This was very important work, and you accomplished a great deal. At ninety years old, you are not a young man any more, but I think I might yet be attending your 100th birthday party!"

Tragically, this meeting will now never take place. Pierre Broué is no longer with us. But his ideas and writings remain, a rich and undying source of inspiration to the younger generation of revolutionary class fighters of all countries.

In conclusion, I would like to reproduce the message that Pierre Broué sent to the world congress of the International Marxist Tendency held in Barcelona last year:

"To you, my friends and comrades, meeting in the second greatest city of the European working class after Petrograd in order to prepare a shining future, I send my affection and admiration for your work in the last century and the beginning of the new one.
"You are one of the best instruments of humanity, and possibly the best.

"Thank you for existing, for fighting and for providing help for all the class fighters of the world."

"Pierre Broué."

I write these lines from Barcelona, where a new conference has registered new and exciting strides forward for the Marxist Tendency on a world scale. Over two hundred class fighters from all over the world have once again assembled to defend the ideas that comrade Pierre Broué fought for all his life. This morning I made a brief homage to Pierre Broué and a minute’s silence was held to mourn his death and celebrate his life. As long as these forces exist, as long as we live, breathe and fight, Pierre Broué will never die.

We take our farewell from a great Marxist revolutionary:

Comrade Pierre,

Thank you for having existed, for fighting and for providing help for all the class fighters of the world.
Barcelona, 29th July, 2005.

Power to the People

2007-03-11T20:46:00.000Z

Here is a new character to the world of blogging:

Citizen Wolfy Smith!

John Archer

2007-03-04T12:51:00.000Z

In the next few weeks I am going to put up some correspondence that I had with my former mentor, John Archer.

Given the spate of left wing people and some former Trotskyists, who have recently joined Labour, eg Tami Peterson, Dave Osler, Louise Whittle, it is timely that some of this is published.

John wrote me many letters about his view on entrism within the Labour Party and how a Marxist current should function. This is for the benefit of those who may be remotely interested.

I start with a piece I wrote that appears in What Next.

John Archer, 1909-2000: A Personal Tribute to a Revolutionary Life
Mike Calvert
WHEN ANY revolutionary militant dies, it is a loss to the cause, but when it is someone you were very close to, and moreover someone who had accumulated many years of experience in the movement, the loss is even greater.

John Archer, a founding member of the Fourth International and a veteran of the Trotskyist movement in Britain, died on Saturday 23 December 2000. John had been a dedicated militant during a political life that spanned seven decades. He had been a member, and leader, of the Militant group in the 1930s. He attended the congress of the Fourth International in 1946 that was raided on the instructions of François Mitterand. In the 1950s he was a leading member of the "Club", the political tendency led by Gerry Healy. For most of that time he had his companion of many years, Mary, by his side helping in and also leading the work of the respective organisations. (She died in the mid-1980s and a tribute to her appeared in Socialist Newsletter, then the journal of the Socialist Labour Group, which they were both members of at the time.)

The Healy group made some important inroads in a number of local Labour Parties during that period. Leeds seems to have been an area of particular strength, with John and Mary Archer at the heart of it. It was in Leeds that John and Mary recruited Bob Pennington to the Trotskyist movement. And it was another member of the Leeds group, Dulcie Yelland, who seconded the Club-inspired unilateralist motion at the 1957 Labour Party conference.

John very much identified with the International Committee (IC) tradition of Trotskyism associated with James P. Cannon and Healy, rather than with the International Secretariat/United Secretariat wing associated with Pablo and Mandel. Having broken from the Healy-led tendency, he became a convinced partisan of the politics associated with the OCI (later PCI), a French political group in the IC tradition led by Pierre Lambert. In 1971, along with Betty Hamilton and others, John helped to establish the Bulletin Group, which followed the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI), the international tendency led by Lambert and François Demassott. The 1970s was viewed by John and Mary as perhaps the most important period of their work in the Trotskyist movement.

John and other comrades worked to bring about a fusion with supporters of Nahuel Moreno's international current, which resulted in the formation of the Parity Committee in 1980. This split within a few months when Moreno attacked the positions of the French PCI in relation to the perspective of the united front with the Socialist Party. John supported the forces that became the Fourth International/International Centre of Reconstruction (FI/ICR). In Britain these were organised in the Socialist Labour Group (SLG).

In 1986 some comrades in the SLG around Harry Vince began to become sceptical about Lambert's project of reconstruction and his declared intention to "reproclaim the Fourth International", which he had earlier pronounced dead as a result of the 1953 split between Cannon and Pablo. Vince and his supporters backed Luis Favre and other critics of Lambert within the PCI/OCRFI, who argued that there had been historical errors and that the time to rectify the 1953 split was at hand. At a congress in 1987 the SLG – John included – backed the Favre faction, establishing a Liaison Committee which eventually resulted in the dissolution of these forces.

In 1989, after protracted discussions, John and the SLG joined the British section of the United Secretariat (USec) – the International Socialist Group (ISG), which was itself the product of a fusion between an organisation originating in the Socialist League (formerly the International Marxist Group – IMG) and another grouping around Alan Thornett. John and some of his closest supporters were highly sceptical, but went along with the democratic decision of the whole group.

I first time I heard John speak was at Conway Hall in 1988 at a rally organised by the ISG to commemorate 50 years of the Fourth International, where the main speaker was USec leader Ernest Mandel. John had opposed the political thinking of Mandel for nigh on 40 years, and he made a contribution from the floor defending the traditions of the International Committee.

John and I first met at a meeting of the Lambeth branch of the ISG just after the Romanian revolution. In Housmans bookshop I had found a booklet on the fall of Ceaucescu published by La Vérité, the French language theoretical journal of the PCI, and John saw it in my bag. He was fascinated to find someone else in this new political organisation he had joined who was interested in the politics of the FI/ICR. So in the pub later we discussed our common views, and I met him at his tiny flat in Bromfelde Road in Clapham the next day. This was a fateful meeting for both of us. Here was this veteran of the movement, who had been involved in Trotskyism for fifty years and this whippersnapper looking for a mentor. We then decided that we would begin discussing with the PCI about the possibilities of political work with them, and how we could construct a section of the FI/ICR in Britain.

I was a residential social worker and a member of Lambeth NALGO at that time. I would bring round jars of coffee and milk and provisions after my shifts finished and we would get to work: discussing everything from the crisis of what we termed "Pabloism" to the state of the leadership of Lambeth NALGO, in which I was a very minor player, being a shop steward and branch committee member. John and I formed a tendency within the ISG, though at that point we had no formal links with the PCI.

Our politics were however very supportive of the positions of the FI/ICR and in particular of the Alan Benjamin group in the USA, who were able to establish a section of the FI/ICR there. I was privileged to attend and speak at its founding convention in 1992, and John helped me to prepare my speech. John himself spoke at one of their gatherings in 1995 – definitely one of the proudest moments of his life.

John and I had a meeting with François Demassott and Jean Pierre Barrois in a crowded night club in Brixton at which we decided to formally join the FI/ICR after breaking from the ISG. At the ISG's 1991 conference we made our contributions to the discussion, and split to establish the British section of the FI/ICR with three other members. Subsequently we both agreed we might have been wrong to leave the ISG in that manner, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. John and I then travelled to Paris to meet with Pierre Lambert, Daniel Gluckstein and other leaders of the FI/ICR such as Marc Gauquelin, Miguel Cristobel and Andreu Camps with whom we held extensive discussions.

Over the years that followed, John and I continued to work closely together, exchanging letters on every subject under the sun. He was the most dedicated militant of the Trotskyist movement that I have ever met. Although I only knew him in the last ten years of his life, during his eighties and nineties, he had a profound influence over my thinking. I have a fat file of about 120 items of correspondence from the last ten years. John would write, often on scrappy bits of paper, or he would type on his trademark old typewriter, sometimes as much as ten pages. Whether he was lamenting the latest crimes of the USec or the fact that he couldn't make us, his comrades, understand how to apply the entry tactic correctly, he would always have lots to say, but never in a way that made you feel inferior.

John used that typewriter for everything, including his many translations of books and pamphlets by Pierre Broué, an historian who was for many years a leading Lambertist. Professor Broué was a comrade John held in very high regard – even after Broué broke from the tendency that John was a part of. John was also tireless in translating the official documents of the FI/ICR into English so that they might be made available to young militants and answer the slanderers and detractors of Pierre Lambert and the FI/ICR, such as the infamous Christophe Bourseiller who wrote a 400-page book entitled The Mysterious Monsieur Blondel attacking Lambert and the Force Ouvrière trade union in France.

John was, as François Demassott observed, nothing if not an internationalist, and unlike many groups and individuals he was not afraid to admit mistakes. He did falter in the 1980s when he wasn't sure whether reproclaiming the Fourth International was the correct international strategy. But together we read the documents of our comrades in the USA in Socialist Action, and became convinced of the worth of the Open World Conference and the method of the Fourth International. In fact we convinced one another – it was not, as many comrades think, that John was always convinced. Even the thought of leaving the relatively large and open ISG – it had 380 members – to start again with just five of us, was not a problem. John said that if you believe you are right, and that it is the necessary step, then you must take it ... we did. So we set about building a section of the FI/ICR here all over again.

In spite of the fact that John was strongly identified with one particular part of the world Trotskyist movement, that part associated with the International Committee tradition, and in particular with the FI/ICR, the comrades who sent messages to his family, and also to myself, were from a diverse range of tendencies.

There have been messages from Alan Thornett on behalf of supporters of Socialist Outlook – the paper published by the British Section of the USec. There was a message of sympathy from Bernard Regan – a leader of the NUT left wing, the Socialist Teachers Alliance, who was himself identified with the USec for many years. Keith Sinclair sent a tribute, having known John as an historian primarily. Dave Osler, a left wing journalist who was also in the ISG, sent greetings. Pierre Broué, who had a special place in John's heart, sent his condolences, as did the group from France identified with the former PCI leader Stefan Just, known as Struggle for Socialism or CPS. Olivier Lestang, the editor of their bulletin, wrote: "We were very sad to hear of the death of the veteran comrade John Archer. Our thoughts are with his family. Please convey that to them."

Broué wrote as follows: "Dear Mike, Thank you for your messages. I could not answer, being blocked by a too long strike of my computer. But I was very moved by your help, assisting us in this bad moment. I loved John although I could not understand how he could return to an organisation of the worst type, worse than Healy's. I know it perfectly because I was a member during 49 years. (It is true that from London or Huddersfield, the reality is not the same than from France.) Anyway, don't forget in biographies that John was a delegate at the historic conference of April 1946."

A young comrade called Jonas Martinsson wrote from Sweden: "I am extremely sad to hear about John Archer, not just for his role in the movement, but I can understand the distress you feel about a valued friend."

John himself had never turned his back on comrades from other political tendencies. For example, he was always concerned with trying to unravel the mess the WRP got itself into. After the split in the 1980s, in order to answer the distortions peddled in the WRP paper, Workers Press, he spent a long time writing material on the dockers during the 1950s, which resulted in a pamphlet on the subject. John had a special interest in the WRP due to his role in seconding Healy's membership of the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s, so he was most anxious to help the militants find a way through the morass. John and I spent hours poring over long WRP texts and copies of Workers Press in Bromfelde Road trying to make sense of it all.

When Bob Pennington, the former IMG/ISG leader, died several years ago, John spoke at the memorial meeting in Leeds and recounted how Bob had lived in the Archers' attic for a while and had been very good to their two sons. Despite their being politically separated for thirty years, John still saw the positive side of Bob Pennington – the revolutionary "old sweat" as he put it. John was thrilled when comrade Bill Hunter, another "old sweat", published his autobiographical account of the early years of Trotskyism up to 1959, even though Bill was a supporter of the "Morenoite" current. John enthused that "this is how history should be written". When he saw Alan Thornett's book Inside Cowley, he was even happier, saying that "it stank of the factory floor".
As people commented at John's funeral, held in Huddersfield on 3 January, he was a man of high intellect and culture. He certainly bought a bit of culture and learning to my life and doubtless to many others. And, despite his commitment to politics, John was always concerned about the personal lives of his comrades, often offering almost fatherly advice. He continued to inquire about my health and relationship with my partner after he left London and moved to Huddersfield. John's own personal life took a welcome turn when he met his second wife, Win, and found happiness all over again at the age of 83 years. Although Win was definitely not a Trotskyist, they were obviously very happy together.

John Archer should be honoured and remembered by the movement. There should be big, open memorial meetings in both Leeds and London, if it is practical. There also ought to be a fitting and permanent tribute to him: a library of resources open to all Trotskyists, not just those in the FI/ICR. All the Trotskyist tendencies and groups should get together on this and try to find a suitable place for research and storage of such materials.

One of John's main concerns over the years that I knew and worked with him was to try and right the wrongs done to the Militant group of British Trotskyists during the 1930s that was led by Starkey Jackson and Denzil Harber. He believed that Al Richardson and Sam Bornstein had defamed the Militant group in their books on the history of British Trotskyism. He wrote a very long document on this subject that has never been officially published. We owe it to him and to the Trotskyist movement to make this piece, written in 1979, available in its entirety for the education of militants. I will strive to ensure that this text is published.

The thing that angered John the most, in addition to the fact that his former comrades, Harber and Jackson, were effectively dismissed from history, was that "Healy and the IMG have succeeded in rewriting the policy of entrism!" John wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject of entrism in the 1930s, and it is very necessary that revolutionaries today, especially with all the guff about Socialist Alliances and suchlike, should have access to and learn from it.

It is vital, and John and I always shared this view, that revolutionaries learn how to locate themselves within the mass movement of the working class: to engage not in leftist adventures, but in long term and patient work within the Labour Party. If we as revolutionaries are able to do that, then the legacy of John Archer will be preserved forever.

French socialists lose momentum

2007-03-04T12:45:00.000Z

French socialists lose momentum

This has been taken from Permanent Revolution http://www.permanentrevolution.net

If the latest polls are anything to go by, Ségolène Royal is fast losing her chances of becoming France’s first woman president. Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the right and current interior minister, is 10 points ahead of the Socialist Party’s candidate, at 55%, and likely to beat Royal in a second round run-off, writes Christina Duval.

Last weekend in Villepinte, a suburb north of Paris, Royal unveiled the Socialist Party’s presidential programme. Since then her campaign has been floundering badly. Not only has she to contend with falling support in the opinion polls, but also with a party apparatus which is clearly not behind her – last week Eric Besson, a leader of the Parti Socialiste (PS) and advisor on the economy, resigned his leadership position for “personal reasons”.

The programme outlined at Villepinte represented an attempt to mobilise the PS around her campaign, by straddling the two main trends of thought within the PS, the social democrats and the social liberals. However, as is normally the case with such compromises, Royal suceeded in pleasing no one. Despite a nod in the direction of the left, with measures such as free health care for the under 16s, free contraception for young women under 25, and a program of social housing, underpinning her speech was the oft-repeated appeal to accept and embrace business, presented as the risk-taking creator of jobs, to whom the French should be grateful.

Fortunately, her call to put an end to endless conflict will be roundly ignored by the French working class who regularly appreciate the need to withdraw their labour against attacks by the government and employers.Royal announced other measures which are mere sops rather than serious responses to social injustice.
None go anywhere near to dealing with the growing inequality that French workers and youth experience. In response to the burning problem of low wages, she proposed, a minimum wage of 1500 Euros gross (£1000) with no calendar set for its introduction.

Unemployment is to be dealt with by a conference of “social partners” – a powerless taking shop – which is unlikely to put an end to the continued state subsidies that employers receive whilst continuing to sack workers. For the education sector, more classroom assistants are promised, rather than investing in more teachers. For the youth, Ségo promised an “allocation d’indépendance”, a financial benefit, of no fixed amount as yet, in exchange for taking part in some form of training and actively seeking employment (i.e. being ready to take on any job, no matter how bad the conditions and pay), and the creation of 500,000 jobs for youth, the details of which are unclear. These “emplois-tremplins” are likely to imitate similar initiatives in socialist held regions of France, which, whilst they are permanent jobs (unlike the proposed Contrats Premiere Emplois or CPE which brought hundreds of thousands of youth out into to streets last year in protest), are nothing more than subsidised labour for the employers – only 10% of the wages in current “emplois tremplins” are paid by the bosses.

Royal made no mention of privatisation or the attacks on public services, which French workers have been taking to the streets against. Nor did Royal deal with the thorny question of pensions. Such omissions were conscious, since her speech was designed to appeal to bosses and workers alike…. by being vague. However, clearly the privatisations and attacks on public services will continue under a Royale presidency. How else will the meagre reforms outlined above be financed? In fact, Royal hinted as much when she pledged to put an end to “waste” in the public sector to release the funds necessary for her reforms. Her attacks on the “Jacobin”, centralised state and the need to encourage “civic responsibility” as opposed to state dependency are straight out of Blairite New Labour. Though, as workers in the UK know well enough, when it comes to the law and order side of state responsibility, the reverse is true for these half-hearted socialists.

In the absence of a united candidate arising out of the recent and ongoing struggles of French workers and youth, capable of raising demands that challenge the economic and political power of the French capitalist class, workers are faced with a PS candidate standing on a barely left reformist platform as their only rampart against the right.

The key task for the working class in such a situation is to create the organs of struggle necessary to take on whichever President they are saddled with, and in doing so take the next steps to create a workers party capable of uniting workers and youth around a programme of working class power.