Fraction Leninist-Trotskyist Founded Founding the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction

Origins and History

The CWG origins date from 1970 in NZ when a number of students active against the imperialist attack on Vietnam formed the Spartacist League. This group split in 1972 when one group led by Logan and Hannah joined the US Spartacists, while another led by Gager opposed fusion on the basis that the Spartacists had not completed their split from the SWP (US). In an article titled ‘James P Cannonism’ Gager argued that Cannon was a US chauvinist. The Gager group viewed both the International Secretariat and International Committee as having broken from Trotskyism in the early post WW 11 period. They took the position that the 4th International was dead from that time and that a 5th International must be founded. Gager moved to Australia in 1972 and formed the Communist Left of Australia (CLA).

In 1981, a small group of NZ comrades, who had meanwhile established fraternal relations in 1972 with the Revolutionary Communist Group (later Tendency then Party) of Britain, also formed fraternal relations with the CLA and became known as the Communist Left of NZ. We adopted the tradition and program of the CLA. Fundamental to this program was the 5th International position also shared by the RCP (Britain). For us the post-war Trotskyist currents had all abandoned Trotskyism. The cause was ‘empiro-centrism’, the class location of the Trotskyist currents in the imperialist countries were embedded in the labour aristocracy (those privileged layers of workers benefiting from the superprofits of imperialism) which was wedded to the privileges of social imperialism (‘socialism’ at home paid for by imperialism abroad).

Empiro-centrism spawned ‘national Trotskyism’ in the semi-colonies. National Trotskyists joined forces with national bourgeoisies against imperialism instead of going all the way to lead the national revolution to socialist revolution. Thus they were complicit in holding back the complete break from imperialism, thus serving the interests of social imperialism. The Gager group traced this abandonment of Trotskyism back to Cannon’s war-time deviation into US chauvinism (defeat Hitler first) and to Pablo’s view that Tito was an ‘unconscious Trotskyist’ in 1948. If Stalinists could become Trotskyists by some ‘unconscious’ transformation this dispensed with the need of a Trotskyist party and a Trotskyist international. The betrayal of the Bolivian revolution in 1952 by the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party (POR) under the leadership of Lora was the direct result of this process of degeneration.

We drew the conclusion that the way back from the historic defeat of 1952 was to rebuild Trotskyism in the semi-colonies and smash the social roots of the evil twins of empiro-centrism and national Trotskyism in the imperialist heartlands.

In the late 1980s CLNZ broke relations with the RCP (Britain) which had degenerated into a British chauvinist current, and fused with Workers Power (Britain) in 1992. In the discussions preceding fusion, we found WP to be a left moving centrist group that was making a strong break not only from Cliffism (i.e. from state capitalism to orthodox Trotskyism on the question of the ‘workers’ states’) but also from empiro-centrism. In our view the formation of the LCRI in 1990 from the MRCI was made possible by the influence of POB and POP the ex-Lora groups in Bolivia and Peru around Jose Villa. In adopting Villa’s analysis of Lora’s betrayal of the 1952 Bolivian Revolution, WP showed itself capable of learning the lessons of the post-war degeneration and the evil twins of empiro-centrism and ‘national Trotskyism’. For implicit in this lesson was the role of empiro-centrism in engendering the national Trotskyism of the Lora group that entered the popular front MNR Government. Yet, while the Villa group did not draw the conclusion that the 4th was dead, the majority of WP including the CLNZ did so and called for a 5th International.

WPs left moving centrism under the impact of the Villa groups’ break with Lora came to a halt and went into reverse with the collapse of the Stalinist states. WP began a rapid retreat into British or European social imperialism. It supported Yeltsin’s coup in 1991. The reunification of East with West Germany was welcomed. The NATO bombing of Serbian territory of Bosnia in 1994 was welcomed. It seems that whatever the ‘workers’ states were, they were not as progressive as ‘democratic’, preferably British, imperialism. Yeltsin’s ‘democracy’, West Germany’s ‘social democracy’ and NATO’s smart bombs, were better defenders of the ‘workers states’ than any brand of Stalinism. Just as Cannon said that imperialism was better than fascism, WP said that imperialism was better than Stalinism.

CWG, POP and POB split from WP in 1995 to form the CEMICOR (Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International). In desperation, WP entered discussions with the PTS of Argentina in 1996 which came to nothing. CEMICOR produced analyses (including a critique of the PTS –see below), political commentary and three issues of an International Bulletin, largely through the efforts of Jose Villa and the CWG, but POP and POB became inactive. By 2000 Villa had also become politically isolated and demoralised and CEMICOR was more or less defunct. It seemed that the CWG’s vision of building a 5th International in the Latin American semi-colonies was also at an end. We corresponded with the Revolutionary Workers Party (POR) of Argentina and reproduced some political statements with the POR. What we did not yet know was that a split in the PTS in 1998 produced the Workers International League (LOI-CI) in Argentina.

In late 2000 members of the CWG helped set up the Google group, Salta Solidarity which then became Argentina Solidarity in response to the revolutionary uprisings of that period. Among the contacts we made was Vicente Balvanera of the LOI-CI of Argentina who reported on the uprisings of the piqueteros in Salta. Balvanera left LOI in 2001 and was highly critical of it and full of praise for Altimira’s PO which he had rejoined. As a result of some frank exchanges, CWG was kicked off Argentina Solidarity. But more important, CWG made contact with the LOI-CI and began the collaboration that led to the foundation of the Committee for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists in December 2002.

The LOI-CI breaks with national Trotskyism

When the CWG (and POP and POB) split from the LRCI in 1995, almost immediately the LRCI began discussions with the PTS in Argentina. CEMICOR criticised the ‘parity committee’ that resulted as an unprincipled bloc. The PTS was an incomplete break from Morenoism holding still to the view that the IC and in particular Moreno had maintained a ‘continuity’ with the Trotskyist program until 1989 and only then, when the greatest betrayal led to the restoration of capitalism in the workers’ states, declared the 4th International in need of ‘regeneration’. The LRCI on the other hand considered the 4th International to be dead in 1951, although its members were split between ‘refound the 4th’ and ‘found the 5th’ positions.

In reality, however both tendencies shared a similar origin. The LRCI had its origin in Cliffism which in rejecting the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union was the most extreme liquidation of Trotskyism into the labour aristocracy in Britain. It moved left towards orthodox Trotskyism in the late 1980s but reversed direction in the early 1990s. The PTS was a split from Moreno’s national Trotskyism, itself a chauvinist mirror image of European and US imperialism. To what extent then, had the PTS remained trapped in national Trotskyism, and more important, to what extent was a break with national Trotskyism the basis of the split of the LOI-CI from the PTS in 1998?

Under the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc from 1989, the LRCI in imperialist Britain began to degenerate back into social imperialism which it justified in terms of ‘reformist resetting’. In Argentina, the PTS under the same pressure of events took a parallel course, reverting to the patriotic national front. The convergence of these two tendencies was expressed in 1995/6 by the formation of an unprincipled international bloc where political differences were buried for the sake of creating a new international tendency dominated by the LRCI. (see CEMICOR article ‘Another Rotten Bloc' in IB No 1)

The struggle of the LOI-CI (then the Trotskyist Proletarian Faction - TPF) inside the PTS was against the degeneration into national Trotskyism and its subordination to social imperialism. It objected to the PTS rightwing leadership’s adoption of the LRCI’s draft document on the world situation without discussion, and the LRCI’s concept of ‘reformist resetting’ In 1998 the TPF was bureaucratically expelled from the PTS and formed the LOI-CI/Workers’ Democracy to defend the program of the PTS before its post-1989 degeneration.

Both the CWG and the LOI were fighting rightward moving tendencies capitulating to the post-1989 defeats of the world working class. Despite our different origins and experience, we did eventually arrive at a common conception of the cause of this capitulation. The CWG originated in a British semi-colony and early took a 5th position because our first international experience was a fight with the Spartacists over the heritage of the SWP (US). By 1974 we had rejected the dominant imperialist based sections of the 4th as degenerate from 1946. Our analysis was that imperialist based Trotskyism had capitulated to the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy. Our experience of the UK imperialist based LRCI in the 1990s confirmed this analysis.

The LOI on the other hand developed out of Morenoism as a national Trotskyist tendency. As mentioned above we see national Trotskyism as the reciprocal semi-colonial ‘evil twin’ of imperio-centrism. It expresses the dominant interest of the imperialist ruling class by trapping the permanent revolution within the stageist schema of the national revolution. It forms patriotic popular fronts with petty bourgeois and ‘progressive’ bourgeois classes against imperialism and justifies this as the ‘anti-imperialist united front. As a result the working class remains trapped and incapable of carrying the national revolution forward to the social revolution.

But the PTS did not break from Moreno’s stalinophobia which included the Stalinists and Castroites as part of the counter-revolutionary imperialist front. In the 1990s this put the PTS into popular front alliances with right wing nationalists like Walesa, the Mujahedines and the Bosnian Muslims, against the Stalinist/imperialist front! When after 1989 the Stalinists restored capitalism and turned into the new bourgeois the PTS welcomed the end of Stalinism as the opening of a new revolutionary period! But like the LRCI, this revolutionary period was covering a rightward retreat into broad left social democracy.

The LOI-CI fought inside the PTS against this rightward movement, in particular against the turn towards social democracy. It opposed the anti-imperialist united front as a form of popular front. Since its expulsion it has taken this fight further. It recognized the roots of the PTS degeneration as ‘national Trotskyism’ which enters popular fronts with the national bourgeoisie, petty bourgeois governments like the MNR in Bolivia in 1952. Today is opposes Chavez’ Bonapartist regime in Venezuela, Morales popular front government in Bolivia etc. Against national Trotskyism that provides a left cover for these popular fronts, the LOI fights for an international regroupment of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary workers organisations to refound the 4th International and fight for the permanent revolution.

The Collective and the Liaison Committee

The form that this struggle for regroupment is taking is that of high level united fronts between principled Trotskyists of all currents in which programmatic agreement is the basis of joint action and the development of program, while at the same time programmatic differences are publicly debated. The Collective formed in December 1992 under the immediate impact of the Argentinazo and the US war on terror, began with the collaboration of the LOI-CI, the Group Bolshevik of France, and its sister organisation, Germinal in Spain, and the CWG, Lucha Marxista (Peru), (and a year later) the Poder Obrera Bolivia, all adherents of the defunct CEMICOR. We agreed on a program around the life and death struggles of the Iraq war, the popular front, united front, Leninist party and so on.

The Collective did not go beyond a fraternal federation and despite the high level of programmatic agreement, the BT, LM and POB resented the influence of the LOI in the Collective and accused it of using its funds to create an Argentinean ‘mother’ party and sending its cadres to infiltrate their organisations. These resentments developed into open hostilities and personal attacks on the LOI leadership as Argentinean chauvinist and domineering. In April 2004 these tensions came to a head and a split occurred.

Would a greater degree of democratic centralism have averted the split, or did the split represent an underlying difference over method and program? CWG thinks that the two are necessarily related. LM, BT and Germinal, and POP, read the LOIs drive to regroupment as predatory and sought defence in their national organisations – in the case of BT its residual Franco imperio-centrism, and LM and POB their respective national Trotskyisms. These organisations had failed the test of revolutionary regroupment by means of a dynamic struggle against national chauvinism in both its imperialist and semi-colonial forms. They could not break with the root cause of the degeneration of post-war Trotskyism and formed a propaganda bloc, the Permanent Revolution Collective.

After this split in the Colledive a Liaison Committee arose out of the originators of the Collective, the LOI-CI, the CWG, along with the POR Argentina and its Brazilian fraternal group, the FT, which had begun discussions with the Collective in 2003. It met for the first time in July 2004 when several other Brazilian groups, Marxist Workers Party (POM), Marxist Trench (TM), CCR, and Workers’ Opposition (WO) also took part. Within it, the LOI-CI, CWG and FT soon formed a left pole while the POR Argentina and CRI (Revolutionary Communist International) of France formed a right pole. POM, CCR and WO represented a centre group which since July 2004 has moved left from national Trotskyism around the questions of supporting and defending the Bolivian Revolution inside the Brazilian CONLUTAS. The left pole was prepared to form a fraction in January 2005 but delayed this until December to try to bring the center into agreement with its program. The Founding Documents of the FLT are published separately in the first issue of the Fraction Newspaper,

Long Live the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction and the fight for a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!


From Class Struggle 65 Feb/March 2006

Liaison Committee Documents: Before the 2nd Pre-Conference Feb 1-2.

Perspectives and Challenges facing the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations

THE masses that heroically resist the imperialist occupation of Iraq, and check the Ango-American imperialists, see today how the national bourgeoisies reach an agreement with the invaders to force the combatants to give up their arms. But the masses resist.

In the heights of Oruro, in Bolivia, the revolutionary students of the UTO revolt against the agreements signed by the bureaucratic leaders of the COB, and the COD, that with the aid of POR Lora want to concede the gains won by the students in their struggle.

In Argentina, the regime of the Social Pact closes down the remaining vestiges of the revolutionary process that began in December of 2001 with the fall of de la Rúa at the hands of the masses.
 
In Brazil, the pro-imperialist government of Lula, supported by the union bureaucracy, furthers the implementation of the plans of the IMF and imperialism, despite the growing resistance of workers and poor people with strikes like the that of the workers of the state unions, the strike of private and state banks, the heroic student fight in Bahia, among others, to which Lula and the employer's association responds with persecution and repression.

At each step, the struggle of the masses is contained and betrayed by its leaders, who tie their hands and stop them settling accounts with the imperialistic bourgeois regime. The liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism also do their worst, being subordinated to Castroism, Chavism, the union bureaucracies and the labor aristocracy, to social democracy, and all the reformist leaders assembled in the World Social Forum. They do not leave one stone in place of the theory and program of revolutionary Marxism. Their bankruptcy is total. The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the world proletariat continues to deepen.

Under these conditions, is born the Bulletin of International Discussion of the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations. This Liaison Committee was formed on the 10 and 11 of July, 2004 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, during the international Pre-conference summoned by the Coordinating Committee of all the Brazilian groups that have taken into their hands the revolutionary struggle for a an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and workers’ organizations. Proudly, in the Act of constitution of this Liaison Committee, we declared war to all the treacherous liquidator and renegade leaders that drag the flag of Trotskyism in the soil, and we raised the flag:

…To fight against the treacherous leaders of the working class, social democracy, stalinism, the labor bureaucracy and labor aristocracy, the great majority of grouped in World Social Forum, that tries to reform the capitalist state.

Against the popular front and the governments of the bourgeois-worker parties in power. Against all class collaboration. To denounce and to confront the counter-revolutionary role of the government of Lula, Castroism, and its continent-wide politics of containment with which they strangle the revolutionary fight of the masses of Latin America and keep in power the client governments and lackey regimes of imperialism.

 Confrontation and struggle against the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism. Against the pseudo-Trotskyist centrism that is actually subordinated to the reformist apparatuses, like for example, in Brazil, supplies ministers in the pro-imperialist government of Lula as does Socialist Democracy (United Secretariat of the Fourth International), or act as pressure groups on the government like the PSTU.

In that meeting there participated delegates of Marxist Workers’ Party (Partido Obrero Marxista - POM); the Trotskyist Fraction (FT, member of the TCI); Revolutionary Communist Group (CCR), Workers’ Opposition (OO); Marxist Trench (Trincheira Marxista – TM) and Revolutionaries in Struggle (Revolutas), all of Brazil. Also POR Argentina (member of the TCI); and the delegates of the Fti-ci, represented by the International Workers Group (Grupo Obrero Internacionalista -GOI) and the Trotskyist Workers’ Nucleus (Nu'cleo Obrero Trotskista - NOT) of Chile; the Organizing Committee of International Trotskyist League (Liga Trotskista Internacionalista -COLTI), of Peru '; the Fti-ci in Urus in Action, of Bolivia and Internationalist Workers League –Workers’ Democracy (LOI-CI) of Argentina.

After two days of rigorous, exciting and democratic programmatic debate, we collectively formed the Liaison Committee for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations, on the basis of clearly defined agreements, as well as the differences that exist which will be the reason for further deep discussion. The comrades of the Communist Workers Group (CWG) of New Zealand, despite not being able to be physically present at the meeting sent their enthusiastic greetings to the meeting and agreed to join the Liaison Committee.

Those of us who formed this Liaison Committee come mostly from the breakdown of the 4th International, and we are trying to regroup on the basis of the revolutionary lessons of the struggles of the masses and the betrayals they have suffered. In order to regroup the dispersed ranks of revolutionary internationalists, and stop the flags of Trotskyism falling into the hands of the liquidators and renegades who usurp them, we take on the task of convening an international conference on the basis of these lessons and around a revolutionary program, and of creating a transitional and democratic centralist International Center for the regroupment of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations on the way to re-building the World Party of Socialist Revolution.

The Bulletin of International Discussion that is today presented, has the objective of defending the common program agreed by the Liaison Committee, as a base line for the regrouping of revolutionary internationalists, and to make public a programmatic debate challenging the world workers’ vanguard and the currents who claim to be revolutionary Marxists, to throw light on the discussions among revolutionaries and to seek in the lessons and revolutionary program confronting the decisive events of the world class struggle the Marxist truth which clearly separates the reformists and centrists from the revolutionaries. The members that sign this Bulletin of International Discussion are also the Editorial Committee of the Bulletin.

A stop forward in the revolutionary struggle for an International Conference principled Trotskyists and workers’ organizations

The formation of the Liaison Committee and the publication of this International Discussion Bulletin are a great step forward that will allow us to begin to advance further the existing achievements of the Call for an International Conference and its program of 21 points.

Two years ago, towards the end of 2002, the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the exploited people of Argentina, the heroic revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian working class and people, the movement of workers all over the world to take an anti-imperialist stand against the colonial war that imperialism was preparing against Iraq, allowed those various healthy forces of Trotskyism, dispersed and seeking a revolutionary path, to recognize as revolutionary internationalists the lessons and the program posed by those explosive events, resulting in the formation of the Collective that put forward the call to the International Conference and its program of 21 points.

Subsequently, the defeat and crushing of the Palestinian workers and people at hands of the genocidal army of Sharon and Bush; the partial counterrevolutionary victories won by imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq; the imposition in Latin America of a containment policy and class collaboration imposed by the reformist leaders, meant that some members of this Collective retreated and it did not pass the test of the new acute events of the world class struggle, such as the rebellion of the Spanish working class after the attacks of Madrid; the electoral triumph of the PSOE, the upsurge in the Iraqi resistance, the situation in Bolivia, the elections to the European Parliament, among others.

In spite of this, the fight for the Call to the International Conference and its program of 21 points, were taken up the hands of new forces and groups greater than those who formed the Collective. Most of these forces we those that met in Brazil on the 10 and 11 of July 2004, forming the Liaison Committee.

Once again, here also, it was the heroic struggles of the working class and exploited people that allowed us to regroup, making sure that the continuation of the fight for the International Conference and for its program of 21 points as the basis for regroupment, was not lost. The rebellion of the Spanish workers; the intensifying of the resistance of the Iraqi masses against the imperialist occupation; the comuneros uprisings in Ilave, Peru, and in Ayo Ayo in Bolivia, alongside the struggle against the pro-imperialistic referendum of Mesa in Bolivia; the struggle of the miners of the Rio Tinto in Argentina; the fight against the pro-imperialist government of Lula-Alencar in Brazil, among other events, created water sheds in the ranks of the international Trotskyist movement, just as they created a demarcation line in all the discussions of 10 and 11 of July in Sao Paulo. The political discussion and debates for frank, fraternal and open in this meeting, allowing us to arrive at principled positions to mark the working class trench line in these events, and to launch the struggle against the treacherous leaderships and the renegades of Trotskyism, which are expressed by the Liaison Committee in the Act of this Pre-conference, advancing the Call for an International Conference.

Today, the Liaison Committee and its International Discussion Bulletin, are a weapon to create a new impulse to the fight for an International Conference that, on the basis of a sound program with clear majorities and minorities, can establish a democratic centralist International Center, for the purpose of regrouping principled Trotskyists revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations, on the road to the rebuilding of a World Party of Socialist Revolution, that centrists, opportunists, revisionists and Trotskyist renegades have subordinated to the treacherous leaderships for decades. Today, they act like a left wing of the World Social Forum, that gang of counterrevolutionaries that subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie and prevent the advance towards the proletarian revolution.

Thus, next to the recycled stalinists, and the labor aristocracy and labor bureaucracy of all stripes, the betrayers of Trotskyism constitute the "quarter" of that counter-revolutionary International, that is the World Social Forum, in the same way that Trotsky in the ‘30s called that opportunistic group that was the London Bureau of centrists, "the 3-and-a-quarter International". As Trotsky spoke on them:

… the bourgeoisie, the reformists and the Stalinists will continue to label these creators of the “Fund” as - “Trotskyists or “semi-Trotskyists.” This will be done in part out of ignorance but chiefly in order to compel them to excuse, justify, and demarcate themselves. And they will actually vow, with might and main, that they are not at all Trotskyists, and that if they should happen to try to roar like lions, then like their forerunner, Bottom the weaver, they succeed in “roaring” like sucking doves. The Fenner Brockways, the Walchers, the Brandlers, the Sneevliets, the Piverts, as well as the rejected elements of the Fourth International have managed in the course of many long years – for some decades – to evince their hopeless eclecticism in theory and their sterility in practice. They are less cynical than the Stalinists and a trifle to the left of the left Social Democrats – that is all that can be said for them. That is why in the list of the Internationals they must therefore be entered as number three and one-eighth or three and one-quarter. With a “fund” or without one, they will enter into history as an association of squeezed lemons. When the great masses, under the blows of the war, are set in revolutionary motion, they will not bother to inquire about the address of the London Bureau". (‘A Fresh Lesson – After the Imperialistic “Peace" at Munich, October 10, 1938’ in Writings [38-39] Pathfinder, p. 75)

The epoch of national programs is finished

This internationalist struggle is indispensable in order to regroup the healthy forces of Trotskyism to overcome the dispersion of groups country by country and to avoid being dragged into the degeneration by national isolation. The time of national programs is over. The world-wide policy and the economy dominated by imperialism makes a reactionary utopia of all intentions to create groups national that can orient themselves in a revolutionary way without being part of international revolutionary grouping.

Revolutionaries must try to lead the world struggles of the working class which now are made powerless by the counter-revolutionary leaders in the pay of international finance capital, in the same way as the labor aristocracies and bureaucracies.. Opportunists and centrists, swearing allegiance to the Transitional Program of the Fourth International, to the resolutions of the first four Congresses of Third International, have done no more than besmirch all the lessons of international Marxism in the decisive battles of the world class struggle.

How is it possible to make revolutionaries without the lessons of the revolution and the counterrevolution in the face of the most burning facts of the international class struggle? There, in those acid tests acid of class struggle, separates as white from black, those who speak in the name of Marxism and the revolution, and those who kneel before the treacherous leaderships.

The liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism, the new batch of Mensheviks that arose from the decades of decomposition of Fourth International, taking out the Transitional Program on holidays, never do more than fight for minimum programs, while proclaiming to the four winds that they fight "for socialism" and for "the dictatorship of the proletariat". For that reason, today along with 20th century Menshevism –Stalinism –they proclaim: "While fighting every day in order to relieve the toiling masses from the misery which the capitalist regime imposes on them, the Communists emphasize that final emancipation can be gained only by the abolition of the capitalist regime and the setting up of the dictatorship of the proletariat"

Against them Trotsky wrote:
“The Marxist political thesis must be the following: “While explaining constantly to the masses that rotting capitalism has no room either for the alleviation of their situation or even for the maintenance of their customary level of misery; while putting openly before the masses the tasks of the socialist revolution as the immediate task of our day; while mobilizing the workers for the conquest of power; while defending the working organizations with the help of the workers’ militia; the Communists (or the Socialists) will at the same time lose no opportunity to snatch this or that partial concession from the enemy, or at least to prevent the further lowering of the living standard of the workers.”” (‘Once Again, Whither France’, in Leon Trotsky on France, Monad Press, pp. 82-3)

The opportunists and centrists, renounce, in the same breath, the Transitional Program, at a time of crisis, abrupt and convulsive wars, revolutions, leaps forwards and backwards, that: "brings about an immediately revolutionary situation, in which the communist party can try to take power, or the victory of the fascist or semi fascist counterrevolution, or the provisional regime of the right (block of the lefts in France, entrance of the social democracy in the coalition in Germany, coming to the power of the party of MacDonald in England, etc.) to postpone the sharp contradictions which like a razor clearly pose the problem of the power "("Stalin, the great organizer of defeats", Leon Trotsky)

Centrism, as Trotsky said, is the most important factor of our time. Whoever does not have a policy to fight centrism, cannot find a way to the masses and, what is more serious, allows the centrists the room to exist, and so also becomes a centrist. Thus, "centrism very is keen to proclaim its hostility towards the reformists, but never mentions centrism. In addition, it considers our definition of centrism is "unclear", "arbitrary", et cetera; in other words, centrism does not like to be called by that name." (León Trotsky, "Centrism and the Fourth International").

To settle accounts with the liquidators of the Fourth International that every day cause the demoralization of the proletarian vanguard, it is necessary to find a way to the revolutionary masses that enter the struggle. Without this perspective, the small isolated groups that seek a revolutionary road, will only be able to repeat in a more bastardized way the construction of national Trotskyism, lost in the swamp of parliamentarism, and in the impotent trade union swamp.

To create revolutionary insurrectionary parties will be impossible without the fusion of revolutionary internationalists with the advanced workers who are looking for ways to break through in the struggle against opportunism, centrism, and against the treacherous leaders.

For that reason, the fight for an international regrouping on a principled basis, must condemn all types of diplomatic and opportunistic regroupings in the style of "International" federations of the Social-Democratic type, where each "national section" is boss in its country and no-one criticizes any other, or in the style of the Second or 2 and a half "International" where everything in general but nothing in particular is discussed. It must condemn all ‘centrist alchemy’, as Trotsky stated when he wrote: 

A Revolutionary resolution for which the opportunists could also vote was deemed by Lenin to be not a success but a fraud and a crime. To him, the task of all conferences consisted not in presenting a “respectable” resolution but in effecting the selection of militants and organizations that would not betray the proletariat in the hours of stress and storm.” (‘Centrist Alchemy or Marxism?’, Leon Trotsky, Writings [34-35] p. 260).

The experience of these centrist alchemies has already been condemned by history: the impotence of the International Committee in 1953 to defeat Pabloism that took over the Fourth International; the impotence of federations of small groups, have demonstrated and still demonstrate they have failed the most important tests of the international class struggle.

An international regroupment on a principled basis must also condemn all types of self-proclamation and ultimatism, whether it is of small groups that claim to be "the" International, or Trotskyists who build national ‘mother-parties’ with satellite groups in different countries.

The formation of the Liaison Committee and the publication of its International Discussion Bulletin, is therefore a step forward in this struggle. The forces that compose it, as we show in this Bulletin, have made fundamental agreements to debate publicly before the international workers vanguard, on the nature of the agreements and the differences among us, and to explore therefore the conditions that will make it possible to proceed to an International Conference to create a democratic centralist International Center for the regrouping of principled Trotskyists, that restores the continuity of revolutionary Marxism.

But to take a step in this sense from the Leninist point of view, will only be possible on the basis of the testing of the different positions, on the basis of a public and fraternal debate, in order to convince or to be convinced. We must prove the agreements and the differences that we have, in the face of the world-wide revolution and counterrevolution. There, in life, is, and will be the verdict.

Our Liaison Committee thus constituted with its foundations in revolutionary Marxism, is neither an "international brand" nor a base maneuver of a national group that breaks with the legacy of the Marxism.

The open and public debate, facing the world proletarian vanguard, and this Bulletin of discussion, alongside the evidence of life itself, will be the only arbiter of the currents that we dedicated to revolutionary Marxism.

New global class struggles; new tests for the revolutionary international movement

After the Preconference of July new class combats developed in Latin America and around the world – such as the referendum in Venezuela, the massacre in North Ossetia, as well as others from which it is necessary to give new answers and to extract new lessons and revolutionary conclusions. These are class combats with political and programmatic lessons that once more create watersheds - in the international Trotskyist movement, and also a new and higher challenge for those who are members of the Liaison Committee.

Two trenches have been formed: in one the working class and the exploited masses fight heroically with the principled Trotskyists next to them. In the other trench is imperialism, the subservient bourgeoisies and the treacherous leaders of the masses. Alongside them, are the renegades of Trotskyism and the liquidators of the Fourth International who have taken a further step in their subordination to the World Social Forum: in Venezuela they capitulate to Chávez, saying to the workers that they are in an "anti-imperialist camp" against Bush. They capitulate to the Castroite bureaucracy that introduces capitalist restoration in Cuba. They capitulate to the “democratic” imperialists of France, Germany, and Spain, and now also Kerry, with the argument that they confront the "fascist" Bush.

The liquidationist and revisionist currents of Trotskyism the regimes and the treacherous leaders, including ministers in the Lula government in Brazil that kills the landless farmers, as in the case of the Mandelist current. In Brazil, in Argentina, in France, in the United States, they act like pressure groups on the union bureaucracies.

They are responsible for keeping in power regimes and governments in crisis like that in Bolivia, where POR Lora is already betraying the third revolutionary attack of the workers and farmers in fifty years, supporting the truces of Castro, the Stalinist leaders and the petty bourgeois who support Mesa.

As Trotsky would say, the liquidationists and opportunists of Trotskyism speak of "socialism" and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" when the struggle for power is not yet on the horizon. And when it is on the horizon, when the working class faces the question of power, this new batch of Mensheviks only understands the language of negotiation, truces and pacts. They sing the wedding march at funerals, and the funeral march at weddings.

All the currents that claim to be revolutionary Marxists are being put on approval before the new events of the world-wide class struggle. This first number of the International Discussion Bulletin of the Liaison Committee expresses this fact, and to it we have dedicated a Dossier with articles and controversies on the elections to the European Parliament, the massacre in North Ossetia, and centrally, the challenge of the referendum in Venezuela and the policy of the Trotskyists in the workers defense of the Cuban nation and the program of political revolution against the Castroite bureaucratic restorationists, which is inseparable from the fight for the Latin American revolution and the proletarian revolution inside the United States. Only in the international political struggle of groups and tendencies to regenerate the revolutionary movement, is it possible to find the Marxist truth and to conquer the lessons and the revolutionary program necessary to confront these acute events of the world class struggle.

More advances combats are in preparation, then, in the arena of the struggles of the international working class. The Liaison Committee prepares a new Preconference to be held in January 2005 in Buenos Aires. Our objective until then is to deepen discussion to determine the extend of our political agreement to see if another period of additional discussion in the Liaison Committee is necessary, or if there is sufficient programmatic agreement to enables us to move towards setting a date for the International Conference and to create and International democratic centralist Center.

The Liaison Committee calls on all the healthy forces of Trotskyism and revolutionary workers organizations to join the campaign for an International Conference

The Liaison Committee takes up the challenge to fight for an International Conference to create a transitional and democratic centralist International Center to regroup the healthy forces of Trotskyism and revolutionary workers’ organizations. This regrouping becomes every day more urgent day, with the intensification of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, and every day more indispensable to challenge the liquidationists and renegades all over the world who steal the flag of the Fourth International. A regroupment is necessary as an instrument that creates, as a by-product of the political contest of groups and tendencies, the regeneration of the international revolutionary insurrectionist movement in all the many divided countries so that the proletariat and the exploited people can take the power.

The Liaison Committee calls on all the healthy forces of Trotskyism and internationalist revolutionary workers’ organizations who agree with the basic points, to join the Liaison Committee and to add to the debate and to the campaign for an International Conference. For this, it is a condition, as stated in the Act of the Preconference of the Liaison Committee (reproduced in this Bulletin), to pronounce oneself "on the original call of 21 points, on the points where there is agreement, on the differences and debates raised here, and to publish the 21 points in its printed materials", as well as "the defense of the principles and proletarian and revolutionary morality, as is stated in the 21 points, in particular point 19. It is fundamental that, for the development of a discussion which prioritizes workers’ democracy, all those who have become members of the Liaison Committee affirm that: "(...) to guarantee a democratic discussion, no current, group or tendency that, after the formation of this Committee, expels comrades who raise political differences that adhere to any position of other groups or tendencies of the Committee, can participate". (Act of the Preconference of Sao Paulo.)

The International Discussion Bulletin: the organizer of the debate towards the January 2005 Preconference in Buenos Aires

With the objective of organising the debate, then, we will publish three numbers of this International Discussion Bulletin before the Preconference of January 2005 in Buenos Aires. We put forward here the expected contents of the following numbers of the Bulletin that will continue order and express the debate towards Preconference of January 2005.

The second number of this Bulletin, whose publication is expected at the end of November, will be dedicated to the controversy around the Anti-Imperialist United Front, with texts presented by the TCI, Fti-ci, the POM and Marxist Trench on this question. It will also include the controversy on how characterize the state of the class struggle and how to define a revolutionary situation, developed by the comrades of the POM, the Fti-ci, the TCI and Marxist Trench.

A priority will also be the discussion on Brazil, on the situation in this country, the combat against the government of Lula-Alencar, the fight against the union bureaucracy, and the liquidators of Trotskyism, and on the transitional program of demands that form a bridge between the present needs of the masses and the insurrectionary struggle to take the power. It will also contain a key discussion on the situation in Argentina and the struggle against the government of Kirchner, servant of Bush, and his social pact regime.

We will also included in this number an article that the companions of the Fti-ci put forward for debate in the Liaison Committee, giving account of the advance of the process of the capitalist restoration in Cuba, and raising the program and the policy for the defense of the conquests of the Cuban Workers’ State and for the fight for a political revolution against the restorationist Castroite bureaucracy. As thus also all the contributions to the debate that make the other organizations.

The third number of the Bulletin of Discussion the International, whose publication is expected in mid-December 2004, will be dedicated to the controversy on the world the political situation, the balance of the events of 1989 and the restoration of capitalism, and the present character of the former workers’ states and the program in these states.

An important debate will be on the character of the revolutionary international which needs to be created, since among the forces that belong to the Liaison Committee, there are those who fight for the Fifth International, as is the case of the comrades of the CWG of New Zealand and Workers’ Opposition Brazil; others, fight for the reconstruction of Fourth International, like the comrades of POR Argentina, the FT and the POM of Brazil; whereas others, like the comrades of the Fti-ci fight for the regeneration and refoundation of the Fourth International.

Being the last Bulletin before the Preconference of 2005, it will include all the positions and political discussions and programmatic criticisms of the original program of 21 points, contributed by the different forces and groups that compose the Liaison Committee, as well as those that have joined in the debate since. It will also include the different proposals from resolutions to be debated in this Preconference, and will thus allow us to evaluate whether a further period of programmatic and political discussion is necessary, or if we have managed to conquer sufficient conditions and programmatic agreement to march onwards to the constitution of a Parity Committee that sets a date and puts out the call for the International Conference to create an international democratic centralist Center to work for the regrouping of principled Trotskyists and revolutionary internationalist workers’ organizations.

24 of October of 2004

Ft-vp (TCI) of Brazil; Workers’ Opposition of Brazil; CWG of New Zealand; GOI and NOT of Chile (Fti-ci); Co-lit of Peru (Fti-ci); Fti-ci Bolivia; DO (Fti-ci) of Argentina.

From Class Struggle 59 January-February 2005 

Liaison Committee Formed: For a New World Party of Revolution!

Liaison Committee formed

We reprint the (slightly edited) official statement of the Liaison Committee that was formed in Brazil, 10-11 July 2004. The Liaison Committee brings together different currents of principled Trotskyists including the CWGNZ, which despite their difference, agree to 5 basic programmatic points as a first step in a process of regroupment that we hope will lead to the formation of a new revolutionary international.

For a New World Party of Revolution!

Act of the pre-conference in Brazil 10 and 11 of July of 2004

Presentations of the attending groups: POM, CCR, FT (TCI), Workers Opposition, Marxist Trench, Revolutionaries in Fight, all of Brazil; POR Argentina; and (TCI) Bind Trotskista de Peru; Loi-ci of Argentina; COPOI (GOI/NOT) of Chile, FTI in Urus in Action in Bolivia, all members of the FTI-CI. (Trotskyist International Fraction – Fourth International).

Reading of messages of adhesion from the CRI of France and CWG of New Zealand. (see ‘Five Points for Revolution’ in Class Struggle #56).

Discussion began on the current world situation (conjuncture) and the 21 points document (see Class Struggle # 51).

From the communications of the different participants the following agreements arose:

(1) Facing the war in Iraq and the imperialistic war of aggression: we fight in the trenches alongside trench all oppressed nations attacked by imperialism, for their military victory and the defeat of imperialism. We fight for the revolutionary proletarian leadership of the national and anti-imperialist wars to transform them into the start of the socialist revolution in the oppressed country and in the aggressive imperialistic nation. Revolutionaries and anti-imperialists in the imperialistic countries are for the defeat of their own imperialism and of the victory of the working class and the nations oppressed by imperialism.

(2) To fight against the treacherous leaders of the working class: of social democracy, stalinism, the labour bureaucracy and workers aristocracy, the great majority of them grouped in World Social Forum.

(3) Against the popular front and the governments of the bourgeois-worker parties in power. Against all policies of class collaboration. To denounce and to face the conter-rrevolutionary role of the government of Lula, and Castrism, and its continental policy of containment which strangles the revolutionary struggles of the masses of Latin America and maintains the governments and client states of imperialism.

(4) Confrontation and struggle against the liquidators and renegades of Trotskyism. Against the pseudo-Trotskyist centrism that is subordinated to the reformist apparatuses, and that, for example in Brazil, is in alliance with ministers of the pro-imperialistic government of Lula as in the case of Socialist Democracy (United Secretariat), or who act like pressure groups on the same government like the PSTU.

(5) For the defense of the principles of proletarian and revolutionary morality: as it is stated in point 19 of the 21 points document: "the social democracy unions, stalinism and labour bureaucracies have eliminated the most elementary principles and working class morality. The liquidating centrists, revisionists and of Fourth International follow them to do the same. The proletariat is thirsty of frankness, honesty, devotion, and the fullest workers democracy. In order to discuss, to solve and to act, the workers and youth must renounce the workers organizations use leaders use the method of trying to dissolve or silence political differences inside the labor movement by means of the lies, distortions and the use of physical violence ".

In the debate, the following points also arose around which programmatic differences were expressed, that is to say:

(a) Method of understanding the current reality and to characterize the world-wide situation and concrete situations of the class struggle (Argentina 2001, Bolivia 2003) and tasks that derive from this method.

(b) In particular, in Iraq, divergences on the slogans ‘Arms for Iraq’ and ‘international workers’ brigades’.

(c) On the situation and the present program for Argentina. Precise divergences around the declaration on the massacre of the miners of Turbio River, as it is expressed in texts already written.

(d) On the tactics of Anti-imperialist United Front, expressed in the materials already written by the TCI, Fti-ci, Marxist Trench, POM, CCR, and on its application in Argentina; on the Proletarian Military Policy; the work inside the FFAA, [Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (in texts written of TCI and Fti-ci)

(e) On the position on the police, expressed in concrete discussions about events in Argentina, Brazil and Peru.

(f) On how the revolutionaries must act inside the unions.

(g) On Brazil, with respect to the characterization of the government of Lula, the divergence was over whether it is a pro-imperialistic bourgeois government in general, or if it expresses the characteristics of a popular front.

(h) A debate opened about what revolutionary program of action is necessary to intervene against governments, the capitalist state and all its institutions.

(i) All the participants agree to fight to construct Leninist parties with democratic centralism. Nevertheless, there is a debate opened about the conception of party and democratic centralism, as well as around the conception of constructing an international.

(j) It is necessary to deepen the debate on characterization of worker states, degeneration of such and capitalist restoration.

(k)There is a need to deepen the debate on the International Moral Court.

On the base of this development it was agreed that the present state of the programmatic differences and of the debate, and the fact that new organizations have only recently become involved in the formation of the committee, did not allow the constitution of a Parity Committee that could proceed to call an International Conference as had been anticipated for December of 2004 in Brazil.

Therefore, it was resolved to constitute a Liaison Committee on the basis of the points in agreements, and the recognised programmatic differences and areas of debate.

The Liaison Committee was charged to organize the debate with the objective to explore the possibility of increasing the programmatic agreements beyond those reached by the original organising groups, because the class struggle requires it, and to strike together with international campaigns, on those points where we have agreement.

Towards this end, the following resolutions were made:

(1) First, to communicate the resolutions of this pre-conference to the comrades of the CWG and the CRI, so that they can become members of the Liaison Committee.

(2) The production of a public Bulletin of common international debate of the member organizations of the Liaison Committee, in which all are committed to present their contributions in writing as briefly as possible.

(3) To invite to GB of France and the GG of Spain to join in this debate and the Liaison Committee, and to reverse their decision not to attend the Pre-Conference in Brazil, in spite of being specially invited, and in spite of being co-writers of the 21 points to convene the International Conference, turning their backs on the comrades who made a big effort to begin the task of building a new revolutionary international.

(4) To call on all groups to join the Liaison Committee and enter the debate if they agree with the 21 points, or agree on the five common points listed above in this document, and agree to the publication of the 21 points in its official materials.

(5) The members of this Liaison Committee are committed to guarantee a democratic discussion. Therefore, no current, group or tendency that is a member of the Committee can expel comrades who raise political differences that adhere to various positions of other groups, currents or tendencies of the same Committee.

(6) The Liaison Committee fixes its next meeting on 8, 9 of January 2005 in Buenos Aires, in order to make a balance sheet of progress over the previous six months of debate, and to explore if there has been a sufficient programmatic agreement to fix a date for an International Conference that, on the basis of a firm program with clear majorities and minorities, can form an International Center to advance the regroupment of principled Trotskyist and revolutionary workers’ organizations.

Approved international campaigns:

(1) For the freeing of comrade Tonhao, and his readdmissión to his work, as well as the other comrades sacked and persecuted by the bosses’ justice iin the fight against capitalist exploitation and the treachery of the labour bureaucracy.

(2) Campaign for the freedom of the political prisoners of Latin America and of the world.

(3) A tribute to the Trotskyist comrades who fell in the revolutionary fight, presented to the pre-conference of Brazil by comrades F and R

(4) International Campaign to call on the Brazilian workers to the fight against the Lula government that sells and sends arms to the imperialistic countries that massacre the Iraqi people, and to demand the removal of the Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean troops, and all the imperialistic troops, from Haiti.

Proposals of international campaigns for consideration, on the text base to present:

Proposal of the Fti-ci: International declaration against the popular front government in Brazil and with the program of action to face it in Brazil and its counter-revolutionary role in the continent.

Proposal of the Fti-ci: International declaration for the boycott to the referendum in Bolivia, and for a Congress of workers and farmers delegates of the COB and the organizations farmers.

Proposal of the Fti-ci: to all the constituent organizations of the Liaison Committee, to adhere and to work for international support of the declaration on the miners of Turbio River as has already been done by the FT and the POM of Brazil, the CWG of New Zealand and the Fti-ci.

Proposal of the Fti-ci: international declaration against the den of thieves of the European Parliament of the imperialistic oppressors, exploiters and murderers of the workers of the semi-colonies, the colonies and the oppressed peoples of the world, its own proletariats, and against all adaptation to the social-limperialist parties, as it is found in the texts of the CWG and the Fti-ci.

At the end of the pre-conference, all the participant organizations testified to the method of working class democracy that characterised the debates, and agreed that despite sharp political and programmatic discussions, nobody used moral accusations or lies or slanders to try to disguise political differences, setting a precedent for future meetings.

Editorial Board designated by Pre-Conference to consist of:

Gustavo Gamboa, Arg. (TCI) Antonio de Oliveira, POM Brazil; Andrade, CCR Brazil; Walter Towers, (delegated) FTI-CI; Otavio Lisbon, FT Brazil (TCI)

Act of the Pre-Conference in Brazil

10 and 11 of July 2004 

From Class Struggle 57 August-September 2004