"INTERNATIONALISM" AND THE ICFI: GATEKEEPING IN SERVICE OF OPPORTUNISM
By ICFI (1953) Supporters
Introduction
The main thrust of this document is that the modern ICFI, or International Committee of the Fourth International, has failed to build Trotskyist parties on every continent and in every country because, in part, elements among the leadership fear international scrutiny and control by the vanguard layers in different countries. This conclusion is reached through an analysis which shows a shift towards opportunism and away from a real struggle to build the movement throughout the world.
Such an analysis is not, and could not be, based simply on an evaluation of surface appearances, but rather through a thorough investigation into and critique of the work of the ICFI in recent decades. This work is a contribution to such an investigation.
ICFI (1953) supporters are confident that the production of this document and its distribution to the best elements amongst the working class and international Trotskyist movement will re-arm the movement with a more fully internationalist outlook, and will strengthen the basis for building our movement throughout the entire world.
(Authors Note: This document was originally planned for release after the campaign of Will Lehman for UAW President. We did not want to be seen as, in any sense, aiming for a disruption of this campaign. However, reports of the impending liquidation of the Young Guard of the Bolshevik-Leninists in Russia into the IYSSE has convinced us of the need to take urgent action. We are confident that this document will justify our concerns over this development, and we now understand our original thinking to be flawed, rooted in a sense of loyalty to the Party's primary campaign, placed above the other interests of the international working class. Further, to the extent that the Will Lehman campaign is less successful, we believe that this will have little to do with us and more to do with the campaign being hampered through starvation of sufficient financial, technical, human etc. resources. As with most campaigns in recent years it is carried out on a shoestring budget and therefore limited to reaching the "barest minimum" of workers.)
Below we will call attention to some examples of aspects of the work of the IC in recent years and decades that we consider problematic.
Opportunism
UK:
In response to criticisms of its demand to drive out the Labor Party right wing in 2018, the SEP(UK) accepted the counterposing of a turn towards leftward moving Labour Party members to an orientation towards the "raw mass" of the working class. This counterposition was, in fact, not valid. Only by intervening amongst workers in the Labor Party and turning them towards the mass of workers outside of Labour, and mobilizing their vast strength in a fight for socialism, could the working class have fought against the shift to the right. Instead, the SEP directed workers inward and deeper into the safe channels of Labour's internal politics, by calling on workers to "call branch meetings" and "Demand the implementation of socialist policies" by the bourgeois Labour Party.
This approach, of a distinctly right-centrist character, could only have been arrived at from a nationalist lens, ignoring the fundamental lessons accumulated in the past three decades by the movement internationally, in particular the understanding that the chain of betrayals accumulated by the old mass parties of the working class, and their transformation into right-wing bourgeois parties, had rendered untenable previous tactics such as demanding that these forces "implement socialist policies."
The international implications of this position were not explored. Further, this position clearly had a disorienting effect on supporters, many of whom articulated positions long rejected by the international Trotskyist movement in an attempt to defend the policy.
As one commenter on WSWS noted, there are parallels in this situation to the decision of the Socialist Labour League to form the Workers Revolutionary Party: "It was approached as a national endeavor unrelated to the international struggle against revisionism." Other commenters, including many with years of experience with the movement, also criticized the approach of the SEP (UK). We suggest looking at the comment sections below the following texts in particular on the WSWS for more thorough discussion of these issues: Reject the anti-Semitism slurs against Jeremy Corbyn! Drive out the Labour Party right wing!, followed by The Socialist Equality Party and the anti-Corbyn coup plot: A reply to a reader and Britain: No-confidence motions passed against leading Blairite MPs.
Sri Lanka:
While the ICFI has renounced the struggle to build or attain leadership in unions in every other country, members of the Sri Lankan SEP have for decades captured leading positions within the Sri Lankan Central Bank Employees Union (CBEU). It is possible to find scattered notes of this work that have been published on wsws.org.
Pointing this out is not a critique, per se, of the work of the SEP (Sri Lanka) in the CBEU. However, as Trotsky noted in his Open Letter [to the Italian Left Communists]:
"...you cannot possibly hold the view that the revolutionary principles which are good for the whole world are no good for [a particular country], or vice versa."
Additionally, it has been expressed to the authors multiple times by supporters of the ICFI that they do not feel the International provides enough support to the Sri Lankan comrades.
Australia:
Surprise and curious leadership changes, such as the "retirement" of Nick Beams in 2015, demand further investigation.
France:
The French SEP was formed in 2016 without undergoing a previous existence as a "Socialist Equality Group'' and without the publishing of a Foundations document of the kind published for other Socialist Equality Parties. The organization seems to have been formally established in haste for reasons known only to the ICFI leadership, possibly as part of some behind the scenes maneuver. There had been no prior reports documenting the preparations that had been underway to establish a new party in France. The party has never reported the hosting of a National Congress. While we do not intend to criticize the formation of new Parties, the manner in which the section was created by the IC expresses in its own way the lack of consistency involved in the effort to build new Socialist Equality Parties.
USA:
By creating a continuous stream of "rank-and-file committees" that in some cases exist only on paper, or which disappear as soon as struggles die down, and by publishing “self-selecting” reports of wildly successful interventions in the working class, the SEP (US) is able to create the impression to members of other sections and international supporters that the party is dizzy with success in organizing and agitating among workers. This semblance of organizing gives the impression that, unlike comrades in other countries, the American section is playing the leading role amongst Trotskyists internationally in charting a way towards the working class.
Further, from interviewing multiple ex-ICFI members internationally, it is clear that outside of North America the sections of the ICFI are very difficult to actually join. To the extent that this contradiction persists, increasing the numerical superiority of the US SEP in the movement, this only strengthens the US-centric aspects of the movement.
Despite the American party writing in it's perspectives resolution of 1993 "The Globalization of Capitalist Production and the International Tasks of the Working Class" that "In order to prepare the working class for the struggle against the bureaucracy, the party must strive to create new forms of struggle among these workers, including factory committees and even trade unions, organized independently and in opposition to the AFL-CIO" the SEP(US) has stood aloof from the struggles of sections of Amazon workers, fast food and retail workers, and others that have witnessed organizing efforts, allowing organizing campaigns to come under the leadership of pseudo-leftists and professional trade union bureaucrats.
Canada:
The Canadian section, partly resembling the French section, appears as a phantasm, and as an adjunct of the SEP (US). After approximately 27 years of existence as the Socialist Equality Party it has no publicly available Foundations document, does not appear to have undertaken any electoral campaigns, and has never reported the hosting of a National Congress.
Germany:
In 2017/2018, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) fought for the demand for new elections in response to the attempts to re-form a "Grand Coalition" of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and Social Democrats. Under conditions where the right-wing extremist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was positioning as the primary opposition party, where right-wing political forces were shaping events instead of the working class and in which the SGP did not have sufficient political support within the working class to present a serious alternative within new elections, and where multiple commentators were warning that new elections could lead to the strengthening of the AfD, this demand represented a shift towards adventurism and somewhat called to mind the WRP demand for the bringing down of the Wilson Government, or even the notorious "Red Referendum."
A graphic with the SGP call for new elections
The SGP wrote: "We demand fresh elections. Under present conditions, this is the only way in which the working class can intervene into political events. In the election campaign, the SGP would mobilise all of its resources to build a socialist alternative to capitalism, war and authoritarianism, and expose the bourgeois parties’ true goals." [emphasis added] "The only way"[?!] Never before has a healthy Trotskyist Party been so theoretically narrow as to claim that demanding and participating in elections is the only way for the working class to intervene in political life! This perspective was little more than bourgeois electoralism in the guise of Marxism.
Instead, the SGP should have waged a powerful campaign aimed at winning over oppositional elements among workers and youth, centered on a slogan such as "No to a grand coalition!" Such a campaign would have appealed not only to any leftward moving workers and youth within the Social Democrats who were opposed to such a coalition, but also workers who had recently become disillusioned with parties like the SPD. Had such a campaign been successful, it could have shifted the relationship of forces in favor of the working class and opened the door for the application of other tactics. It is difficult to know to what extent the failure of the SGP to carry out such a campaign allowed for the SPD, then resting on shaky foundations, to somewhat restabilize itself.
Internationalism:
The problematic policies and perspectives that we have already briefly addressed - here of a right-centrist character, there an ultra-left - are in themselves warnings of a slide towards the breakdown of genuine internationalism within the IC. However, it is in an analysis of the international questions and the task of building sections in every country in which this breakdown will become most clear.
IYSSE:
The ICFIs youth organization, the "International Youth and Students for Social Equality" (IYSSE) is not a genuine organization of revolutionary youth. The IYSSE is a mere front organization, controlled behind the scenes by the leadership. Many of the participants in IYSSE activities, particularly in the US, are neither youth nor students. This approach is in contradiction to the traditions of the Trotskyist movement. As Trotsky himself put it (in For an Independent Youth Movement): "It is my opinion that in the various directing bodies of the youth, national as well as local, there should not be more than one-third party members. These comrades should impose party decisions not by arithmetical predominance, but by discussion and conviction. We will never have a good youth movement if we deprive it of the possibility of independent development."
All Sections:
All sections of the movement have abandoned the classical Leninist recognition of "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination." As the ICFI noted in its monumental statement "Globalization and the International Working Class," invoking the "'right to self-determination' today is universally understood as the advocacy of national separation and the creation of a new state." However, this "linguistic" argument was ultimately only an argument against the use of "self-determination" as a slogan, and not an excuse to remove recognition of the democratic right to “self-determination” from the program of all of the IC sections, where it could be explained that it is meant in a "negative" sense, as Lenin understood it, and not as positive support for a bourgeois-separatist program. (In a very formal sense it actually appears that only the SEP in the US has a published program.) In this way, the modern ICFI approaches, in a de facto sense, the position criticized in the aftermath of the split with the WRP that had been pushed by Michael Banda in the early 70s upholding the viability and integrity of the bourgeois states in backwards countries. These positions initiated a cycle of confusion on the question of self-determination within the ICFI that remains unresolved to this day. [Edit: This confusion was compounded by Tim Wohlforth in his work on black nationalism, which made certain errors in regard to "the new nationalism" by conflating support for "national liberation" movements with recognition of the right to self-determination in some instances, although the overall thrust of his work stressed the "negative" understanding of the right to self-determination.]
To the extent that such opportunism develops within a section or sections in an International, the only check to this sort of shift is the presence of and scrutiny by healthier sections within the International. With this lesson in mind, the failure to build the ICFI throughout the world can be explained to a large extent as an obstruction of international growth as a means of preventing the emergence of counterweights to the present setup and genuine international control of the Trotskyist movement.
Further, as Trotsky noted in The Revolution Betrayed, "Freedom from control inevitably entails abuse of office, including pecuniary malfeasance." The dominant grouping provides no account of the ICFIs earnings and expenditures. Given its poorly funded campaigns, it can only be assumed that the greatest portion of donations are swallowed up by sections of the leadership. To paraphrase Trotsky: They will want to dispute this? Then let them give us the proof. Let them publish the income and expense book of the ICFI. Until they do, we shall hold to our assumption...
Following is an account of some of the efforts to "build" the ICFI in various countries outside of the "established" sections.
Building Trotskyist Parties in every country
A note to readers: The building of the International is not simply an "organizational" question, but a political one, that goes to the very heart of the program of socialist internationalism. The fight to build the International in every country is today more than ever the cutting-edge of the fight for world socialist revolution!
Ecuador:
In the wake of the split with the WRP in 1985 the ICFI published, in 1987, a statement by the "Comité Socialista," which was "a Trotskyist organization in Ecuador in solidarity with the ICFI." This statement appears to be the first and only document published by the group that is publicly available. We were not able to find any account given of the demise of the "Comité Socialista." In this it is similar to the curious case of “Marxist Voice,” which will be addressed later in this text.
Just a few years before the publishing of the above mentioned statement the ICFI had criticized the WRP in writing for similar behavior: "Promising sections in other countries were destroyed. A group of Portuguese members, who had come around the ICFI after the April 1974 Revolution, were lost without any explanation." [emphasis added] The experience with CS was perhaps the earliest sign that the lessons of the split with the WRP had not been assimilated to the maximum extent, creating the possibility that the opportunism that overtook the WRP could also overtake the modern ICFI.
India:
Around the time that the ICFI split with the WRP in Britain, a Trotskyist organization in India, the Socialist Labour League (SLL), came into the orbit of the ICFI and identified itself as being in political solidarity with the ICFI. Despite carrying out important work such as publishing translations of IC material, writing its own press, holding public meetings and participating in elections, establishing fractions in the unions and factories, and proclaiming its desire to "establish the party of the Indian proletariat," the SLL was never allowed to become a full section of the ICFI and after being strung along for decades was unceremoniously dissolved without explanation some time around 2008.
Article about 1990 SLL meeting
After the dissolution of the SLL, remaining ICFI supporters in India regrouped as the "ICFI/WSWS Supporters" group. The ICFI engaged in discussions with a larger group, a pro-ICFI faction of a project called "New Wave," lead by one-time WSWS reporter Rajesh Tyagi, about building a Trotskyist Party in India. The existence of these discussions was not reported publicly, and it is unclear what exactly happened as a result, but "New Wave" went on to form its own Party outside of the ICFI, known as the "Workers' Socialist Party" (WSP). In what will become a familiar pattern, the split with New Wave/WSP was not explained, the political issues were not addressed publicly, no polemics against the WSP were published, and no public appeal was made to its members to defend the line of the ICFI amongst its ranks and supporters. The existence of the WSP is not well-known even amongst many long-term ICFI members.
Hard-won experience has demonstrated that political clarification on fundamental issues is the most important aspect of any split. In the split with New Wave and other groups which we will discuss, leaders of the ICFI have demonstrated that they have lost sight of the lessons of the past that were emphasized in an earlier period and have revealed a slide towards political evasiveness and irresponsibility. Genuine international clarification is buried under a veil of silence.
Founding WSP conference in 2012
Russia:
Through the ICFI’s intervention in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Trotskyist movement was able to win over several important members and supporters, notably including Vadim Rogovin and Vladimir Volkov. Russian supporters of the ICFI were able to form a "Chelyabinsk Bureau of the International Committee of the Fourth International," which called for the reformation of the USSR, organized important interventions, and was able to produce a magazine for several years that included contributions by at least 20 Russian supporters, with the last posting in January 1999. This magazine included declarations such as a draft “Declaration on the formation of the Soviet section of the International Committee of the IV International.” In 1997, it was claimed that the ICFI was "better known in Russia than we are in the US."
In the 21st century there has been no thorough overview of the work carried out by Russian supporters during the 1990s and their inability to form a viable section of the ICFI, and the Chelyabinsk Bureau seems to have become the "Russian Bureau of the WSWS," consisting of Vladimir Volkov. With the last article by Volkov published in 2020, the final ember of the first attempt at forming a Russian group in solidarity with the ICFI seems to have burned out. This experience is of particular importance today, as a new Russian group identifying itself as the "Young Guard of the Bolshevik Leninists" has come into the orbit of the IC. In the latest development with this group, entirely unprecedented in the history of the Trotskyist movement, the Young Guard is to be liquidated into the “IYSSE,” rather than being transformed into a Socialist Equality Group/Party.
A further note about Vadim Rogovin: Approximately 24 years after his death, the ICFI has only completed the translation into English of four volumes of Rogovin's monumental 7 volume study of the Stalin era.
Vadim Rogovin
Nigeria:
In 1998 the ICFI republished some correspondence from and a statement written by the grouping "Campaign for Workers' and Youth Alternative of Nigeria." This group later became the Nigerian section of the so-called "International Marxist Tendency." As in other cases, the WSWS did not issue an appeal to that organization's members to fight for the positions of the IC, and there is no evidence of an attempt to win over elements within the group that were sympathetic to the ICFI.
Vietnam:
For many years and following the split with the WRP the ICFI printed a shameful book on Vietnam, titled "Vietnam and the World Revolution", written by a member of the US Trotskyist movement that glorified Vietnamese Stalinism and in true Pabloite fashion presented their struggle against imperialism as "confirmation" of a disembodied "Permanent Revolution" that forced the Stalinists to "br[eak] empirically" with Stalinism. The book included Stalinist slanders against the once powerful Trotskyist movement in Vietnam, such as the claim that it was smashed because it "had no base of support in the countryside," and denounced the Vietnamese Trotskyists for daring to "[press] ahead with strikes and demonstrations in Saigon" in opposition to imperialist occupation.
The authors could not locate any account by the ICFI as to how such Pabloite nonsense was reflected within the US section. It seems the book was eventually quietly removed from publication, and the author adopted a new pseudonym in the movement, under which they remained a leading member of the SEP(US). In more recent times little theoretical analysis has been devoted to Vietnam.
Brazil:
In 2005, a group known as the "Movimento Negação da Negação," (MNN), came into the orbit of the IC and proclaimed its solidarity with the ICFI. The existence of this group was more or less hidden from supporters of the ICFI except for a single article mentioning it in 2009 as "a socialist group which identifies itself with Trotskyism in Brazil." In exchange for providing articles and translations to the WSWS, the MNN was allowed to use the political prestige of the ICFI to cover its eclecticism and opportunism, until finally the WSWS was forced to denounce the group in 2013 over its uncritical support for Maduro in Venezuela.
Magazine produced by the MNN group
Besides that singular article, no further critique against the MNN (later to be called Socialist Transition) was forthcoming, and no apparent struggle was initiated amongst the MNN membership in defense of the positions of the ICFI. At no time did the WSWS publish an appeal to members of the MNN for support. For this reason, the Trotskyist movement would not have another group in solidarity with the ICFI in Brazil until 2020. The manner in which the WSWS broke off relations with the MNN calls to mind the hasty split between the SLL and OCI (see How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism, Conflict with the OCI [Many other chapters of this book also read as an indictment of the modern ICFI]), alongside similar incidents discussed in this document.
Liberia:
In 2010, the WSWS published a report by "our correspondents" in Liberia about student protests that mentioned "members of the International Students for Social Equality at the University of Liberia." This report was the only piece of writing dedicated to ICFI supporters in Liberia, and nothing was ever heard about these members again. Long-time readers of the WSWS will note that this is part of a familiar pattern: Various articles identifying "reporters," "members" and "correspondents," in other countries that seem to disappear without explanation. Numerous countries could be cited in this category, but for reasons of readability we will not include every one of these examples in this document.
Demonstration addressed by ISSE members in Liberia
Pakistan:
In 2011, the WSWS published a statement by "Marxist Voice," a Trotskyist organization in Pakistan seeking to build a section of the ICFI in that country. In its statement, "Build the Pakistani section of the International Committee of the Fourth International!" Marxist Voice claimed "With this statement, Marxist Voice is initiating the struggle to build the Pakistani section of the International Committee of the Fourth International."
For years following this statement, there was little indication that Marxist Voice still existed until an article in 2017 reported on its completion of an Urdu Translation of Trotsky's Lessons of October. (We will return to the topic of translations later.) There has been no further evidence of its continued existence as of the time of writing this document, and no representatives identified as being from the group have spoken at any of the "International May Day's" organized by the ICFI. While it can not be confirmed and we hope this is not the case, there is reason to suspect the group may have dissolved, again without explanation.
Turkey:
It is only through the heroic determination of Turkish comrades, notably including Halil Celik, that the Turkish Socialist Equality Group has been able to establish a place for itself within the IC. The path of the Turkish Comrades was not easy. After coming into the orbit of the IC in 2007, the group was, as in every other case, strung along for years and years as merely a group "in solidarity with" the ICFI. Its existence in its early years was more or less kept secret from followers of the WSWS, and international readers were not made aware of many of the Turkish comrades' contributions until 2021. We can only hope that the entrance of a healthy Turkish organization will contribute to the revitalization of internationalism amongst Trotskyists internationally.
Halil Celik in 2017
China:
There is little to indicate that there has ever been any effort made to build an organization of supporters in China. However, an interesting change in the line of the ICFI in 2012 is worth noting. For years prior to 2012, a series of articles, most prominently by authors David North and John Chan, revised the Orthodox Trotskyist categorization of the People's Republic of China as having been a "Deformed Workers State" and suggested instead that Stalinist China was better understood as always having been some sort of "bourgeois state." In 2012, without explanation, and without removing or addressing any of its old articles, the ICFI began to once again refer to the historical existence of a "Deformed Workers State" in China. Further, pieces of a near-Pabloite character - important in themselves for historical analysis - were republished uncritically after this belated overcorrection. There is no publicly available account of any of the discussion surrounding these issues or the political issues involved, and some of these articles still have a disorienting effect on various supporters and sympathizers internationally to this day.
Greece:
The ICFI has not had a section in Greece since 1985, and despite the immense struggles which the Greek proletariat has passed through, and despite reports from the characteristic ephemeral WSWS reporters/correspondents, there has been no successful attempt to establish a group of ICFI supporters in that country. Despite not even exposing WSWS readers to the historical heritage of the Greek Orthodox Trotskyists (this is the case also with Spain, Peru, Ireland and other countries where there were sections of the ICFI in past), the ICFI continued to blame its former Greek section, the now-irrelevant sect EEK, for the absence of a group in Greece - despite having had more than three decades to do something about it!
The 2015 statement posted on WSWS, The Political Lessons of Syriza’s Betrayal in Greece, devoted one-eighth of the statement towards attacking the EEK. To give an example of this bizarre attempt at absolution:
“The International Committee fought with every means at its disposal [?!] to make its perspective and analysis known to the Greek workers, and to warn them about the role Syriza would play. However, it did not have a section in Greece. Political responsibility for this lies with Savas Michael-Matsas, the general secretary of the Greek Workers Revolutionary Party (EEK).”
While it could be argued that due to the groups historical relationship with the Trotskyist movement the EEK was a reasonable subject of focus, it should be noted that the ICFI has not found it necessary to comment on the irrelevant, so-called WRP UK and its fake ICFI in decades.
This petty attacking and shifting of blame onto a sect with no influence in the Greek working class - in a statement ostensibly intended to analyze the pseudo-left SYRIZA - not only does nothing to build the Trotskyist movement in Greece, but actively pushes Greek workers away.
Mexico:
In 2019, the ICFI established a relationship with leading members of the militant workers group in Mexico called the Generating Movement (Generando Movimiento). Leading members of that group delivered contributions to a whole series of meetings organized by the ICFI. The militant group, which had about 35 workers as of September 15 2019, has since grown to include 2600 people in its Facebook group. Despite maintaining a relationship with this movement for years, the ICFI has not won over any Mexican workers and there is no ICFI / WSWS Supporters Group or Socialist Equality Group in that country. The ICFIs failures in Mexico are only the most concentrated expression of the failure to build any significant influence or organizations throughout the entire Spanish-speaking world, which has given birth to many of the mass “Trotskyist” parties that have existed.
Austria:
The authors of this document were exposed to the claim that a notable portion of Mehring Verlag's sales come from Austria, while the country also has a large WSWS readership. The ICFI however has not reported on any efforts to intervene in Austria and establish a group in the country.
Switzerland:
In contrast to Austria, the ICFI has attempted to intervene in Switzerland. In 2013, the ICFI held a meeting in Zurich on the 15 year anniversary of the WSWS. Later, in 2014, the ICFI campaigned in Zurich again amongst workers and youth for its International May Day online rally. The WSWS reported that the campaign "was met with interest, discussion, and comments of agreement." Despite this positive response, however, no further interventions in Zurich or Switzerland were reported until 2020, when a member of the PSG spoke at a rally in defense of Julian Assange. An ICFI / WSWS Supporters Group or Socialist Equality Group has not been organized in Switzerland.
The Arab World:
The ICFI has never had an Arab (or African) section, and no significant organizational efforts of note appear to have been directed towards achieving this goal.
In 2013 a member of a WSWS readers group from Tripoli corresponded with WSWS and commented that "We are a small group of readers here, who regularly read, discuss, summarize the articles." As the reader might expect by now, nothing was heard about them again. Perhaps anticipating the kind of criticism contained in this document, the correspondence section of WSWS was removed shortly thereafter.
East/Southeast Asia:
The ICFI has never had a section in these parts of the world, and no significant organizational efforts of note have been directed towards achieving this goal. [Correction: the ICFI did have a Chinese section prior to 1963.]
Various countries-I:
This document briefly touched on this issue previously with reference to Liberia, but it bears repeating. Long time readers of the WSWS will note that it frequently recruits small groups of people in various countries who write articles for a few years before disappearing, in some cases leading to protracted silence in foreign-language pages on the WSWS or in country-based website topics. A look at the Afrikaans section of the WSWS gives a flavor of this. It is unclear why none of these people are ever able to establish a formal organization in their countries, but we can analyze one aspect of this process.
Although the ICFI has a vast array of human, technical and financial resources at its service, internationalist supporters are forced to bear the brunt of providing unpaid translations to the foreign language pages of the WSWS alongside any other journalistic or other duties these comrades may have. This unnecessary burden, foisted onto internationalist comrades, distracts from the struggle to build groupings with viable roots and has contributed over the years to speakers of different languages being cut off from the traditions of Trotskyism (although as this document will note later, technology such as machine translation has come a long way.)
Further, various articles from the WSWS have been regularly re-posted in other languages in widely-read socialist/left/progressive etc. web sites and press in other countries, such as Poland, Namibia and Chile. What contacts were made through these situations and what resulted from any contacts that were made?
Various countries-II:
Over the years the WSWS has, at various times, become one of the most widely read news sources in countries experiencing social and political turmoil. In Uganda, around the time of various protests and demonstrations reported on by another soon to disappear "correspondent" in 2011, the WSWS was among the top 1000 most-read websites in Uganda. During the height of the Egyptian revolution, Facebook indicated that thousands were discussing the WSWS in Cairo. During more recent explosive unrest in Sudan, Alexa reported that a large share of WSWS traffic was coming from that country. Were any significant contacts besides the occasional vanishing "correspondent" made with people in these countries? What became of any such contacts? Why is the ICFI incapable of exploiting such promising conditions to establish groupings of even a few people?
Demonstrators in Uganda
In addition to what has been mentioned so far, readers of the WSWS will note from over the years the posting of various declarations of supporters around the world that, inexplicably, never materialize as members or groups. This quote is a typical example of the sort:
"The conference received greetings from Australia, Britain, Turkey, and Romania. Supporters from Pakistan, Romania, the Philippines, South Africa, Zambia, the UAE, Bangladesh, Haiti, Pakistan, Nigeria, Turkey, Palestine, Ghana and Venezuela expressed interest in attending, but were unable to come because of the high cost of travel and the difficulty of gaining entry into the US."
All of this potential does not appear to merit any noticeable action besides lifeless propagandist demands that workers in other countries build a section of the ICFI in their country. In contrast to this attitude, we re-affirm the declaration of the Third World Conference of the ICFI in 1966: "There is nothing spontaneous about the growth of a successful revolutionary movement to end the rule of the imperialists. The reconstruction of the Fourth International is a real task which must be consciously carried forward in every country." Without the real struggle to build such parties throughout the world, there is no genuinely anti-imperialist and Trotskyist policy.
The past fifteen years have witnessed multiple struggles in various countries that have posed the question of power. When questions are raised regarding the lack of IC activity in these countries, they are usually met with evasive answers or speculation, reflecting a shift away from internationalism reminiscent of the SLL/WRP, such as that these revolutions will first “pass through” the countries in which the ICFI does have sections, before the workers in those other countries can be victorious. Such a standpoint fails to incorporate an understanding that real work on the international front is a precondition for the revolution to be successful in any country.
From all that has been said above, we conclude that beginning as early as the closing of the 1990s, which coincided with an apparent peaking of activity by the Russian and Indian supporters of the ICFI, and deepening since the 2008 dissolution of the SLL in India, the task of building parties rooted in the working class in every country has become increasingly subordinated to the building of the Socialist Equality Parties in the ICFIs traditional "strongholds." The verbal optimism of 1997 that accompanied the proposal to form the WSWS was ultimately never realized. To the extent that Socialist Equality Groups "in political solidarity with the ICFI" have been allowed to form, this process reflects the internationalist pressure exerted on the ICFI by its rank-and-file members and supporters, pressures from its pseudo-left opponents (some of whom are part of tendencies with sections in 40+ countries), an attempt to pre-empt the kind of situations that emerged in the past with groups like the MNN and WSP, and the need for passive sources of political support for the activities focused on the few countries where there are SEPs.
A graphic showing unique readers of the WSWS in the first four months of 2020 demonstrates the potential attraction of workers in various countries to a Trotskyist Party in their country.
A further comment on the "optimism of 1997": The creation of the WSWS was, undoubtedly, a farsighted achievement. In the years since the ICFI has lost these visionary qualities. Youtubers, Twitch streamers, and others have established themselves as content creators with tens and even hundreds of thousands of viewers. The time and money invested into many of these productions is quite minimal. Many ICFI supporters have suggested over the years the production of something like a "World Socialist TV." The occasional videos uploaded to the WSWS youtube channel show that the capability for producing this sort of content exists. Why has the ICFI still not exploited the opportunities that exist for the production of frequent, high quality video content to accompany its text based reporting? Why has the ICFI abandoned the field to a whole host of WSWS plagiarists, horribly disoriented "dirtbag leftists," "red-brown" proponents, etc?
Philosophical Roots
While we must come to place primary emphasis on the social and class roots of the breakdown of genuine internationalism in the ICFI, we must also, as Trotsky did in "In Defense of Marxism," probe the philosophical roots of manifestations of opportunism.
The philosophical basis of opportunism within the ICFI is, in the final instance, subjective idealism. One does not have to consult the (buried and sorely neglected) philosophy page on WSWS for evidence of this, because this idealism infects even the most basic reports and declarations of the movement. To give but one example (of a flavor that all WSWS readers will be familiar with): "Only the International Committee of the Fourth International, organized in Socialist Equality Parties throughout the world, fights in every country on the basis of a revolutionary socialist perspective." [emphasis added] In this manner, 3+3 = 193. If the movement can materialize "fighters" for Orthodox Trotskyism in every single country through mere thought, what need is there to put any real effort into building the International?
For the group of cynical petty bourgeois who have infected some of the leading positions of the ICFI the most blatantly dishonest statements can become transformed into "objective political assessments," that do not need to be rooted in an honest chronicle of experience. If in the process of soberly analyzing objective reality these statements are found to conflict with the outside world, then that analysis will be derided as mere "impressionism." These ideas and language, rooted in the theoretical heritage of Marxism and the struggle against the errors of empiricism, are abused in the worst way.
The inevitable result of this outlook is that principles and objective truth will be thrown out the window and replaced by short-sighted considerations of what is profitable and expedient. Such subjectivism is a thoroughly individualist outlook that exalts the will of the leadership and the mere act of thinking, without the limitation of any external, material contingencies such as the failure to build parties internationally.
For those readers less philosophically inclined, a quote from George Orwell's 1984 may call to mind the dangers involved: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The functionary arrogance, bureaucratic cynicism, and blatant disregard for reality that newer members inevitably encounter from elements within the leadership reflects not only the reactionary philosophy of subjective idealism, but reveals the distinct markings of a middle class faction within the movement.
Ideological struggles, including the struggle manifested through the appearance of this document, ultimately reflect the clash of different class forces in society, and this is the case with all battles against opportunists, whose ideas reflect the dominance of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology over the working class and which find a fertile ground of support amongst more privileged layers. Such is the case throughout the history of the socialist movement - whether it is the revisionism of Bernstein, which nourished by the "labor aristocracy" and a complacent layer of petty bourgeoisie grew within the German SPD, or the Stalinist ideology of the privileged bureaucratic caste that came to lead the Soviet Union, or the revisionism of Pablo and Mandel in Fourth International, or the opportunist degeneration of the British WRP; all reflected, in the final analysis, the growth of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois social and ideological influence.
The flippant attitude towards the reality our movement confronts of the middle class faction that we hope to see reigned in through international control and a fight for a more thoroughly internationalist outlook can only contribute to a strengthening of bourgeois ideology within the working class, paving the way for kowtowing to the vicissitudes of bourgeois politics and, eventually, the worst sorts of betrayals.
As a further note on philosophy, one that we are not prepared to adequately explore within this document, the leadership of the ICFI has developed over time an increasingly rationalist streak. Attacks on the one-sidedness of empiricism, without the counterbalance of a Marxist critique of the one-sidedness of rationalism, becomes de facto support for rationalism. A search of the term "rationalism" on WSWS reveals that this word is only ever used insofar as the WSWS is defending rationalism and its progressive aspects, particularly in an earlier period, against the modern day irrationalism of postmodernism. This is in many ways understandable, as the campuses which provide the majority of the movement's recruits are dominated by such conceptions and this is certainly reflected in the mass of the Party.
To the extent that the authors of this document were able to find any critique of rationalism from a Marxist standpoint on the web site, it was a single sentence from latter-day critic Frank Brenner in the year 2000: "Marxism is profoundly opposed to rationalism as a philosophical tendency."
As Trotsky noted in regards to rationalism in Sectarianism, Centrism and the Fourth International: "The progressive stage of rationalism is repeated in every great emancipatory movement. But rationalism (abstract propagandism) becomes a reactionary factor the moment it is directed against the dialectic."
The class shift
The shift of the ICFI away from genuine internationalism and towards subjective idealism is not without deep social and class roots. The radicalized youth who were won to the perspective of Orthodox Trotskyism in the 1960s and 1970s, and who today continue to play such a leading role within the ICFI, have, to use a phrase from Trotsky, "become bearded and even bald."
In the decades since their youthful radicalism this layer has attained enviable material success, and have attained comfortable petty-bourgeois (and bourgeois) careers, attaining leading positions in capitalist industry, trade associations and even local government (this activity, like many things, is a dirty secret). In turn this layer has recruited into the party a layer drawn from the petty-bourgeoisie that is disconnected from the explosive struggles of the 60s and 70s but who share their "social profile", which today is one of cynicism and lack of revolutionary seriousness. Particularly in the US, some of these members are tied to the organization by relations of a commercial and monetary character.
Between the early 1990s, when the ICFI abandoned union work in response to the betrayals and collapse of unions, parties and even states that had commanded the allegiance of millions of workers (The breakup of the USSR, Yugoslavia, etc), events that disoriented and demoralized many of the more radical layers of the working class, and recent times, the weight of the working class in the organization declined dramatically, establishing the basis for an alarming rise in middle class influence in the Party. The turn away from workers internationally is bound up with a turn towards recruiting middle class elements nationally.
An astonishing example is given by the SEP (US) in Metro Detroit, where members were recently (in the period immediately preceding the Covid-19 pandemic) saying without shame to one of the authors of this document that the Party has not recruited or contained a single industrial worker in that area "in years," and were focusing all of their hopes on this rather modest goal, despite the fact that the Party relocated its headquarters to Detroit in 1978(!) to become "closer to the working class." The lack of many workers in the Party of the working class inevitably causes those workers who do stumble their way into the movement to feel like they are, ultimately, joining a class-alien body. This is reflected in the language of many members, who almost always refer to "the workers'' as something outside of themselves.
The increasing concentration of capital on a global scale and corresponding increase in the dependence of the middle classes on the transnational corporations and the state, and the outbreak of massive struggles around the world which have posed the question of power, particularly in the wake of the global economic collapse in 2008 and notably including the Arab Spring, have created unease amongst even professed Trotskyists drawn from the layers of the middle class from which the ICFI has recruited many of its members in the past fifteen years. The more the situation heats up, the further these elements draw inward towards the representatives of the middle-class faction within the movement. A shift towards opportunism within the movement is ultimately an expression of these processes and the consequent rightward shift of the middle classes internationally, rather than something peculiar to the Trotskyist movement.
Internationalism amongst demonstrators in Egypt
In 1995, a report to ICFI members in the United States raised the following in relation to the bureaucratic hierarchy of the AFL-CIO: "Just consider the following: in the course of the twentieth century there have been, I believe, eighteen presidents of the United States. There have been seven British monarchs. There have been, eight, or perhaps, nine, popes. But there have been only four presidents of the American Federation of Labor, including the two who have served since it merged 40 years ago with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. That is a measure of its isolation and alienation from the working class."
Today we can instruct our readers to consider this: Since its founding in 1964, the American section of the Trotskyist movement has had three de facto leaders. If we can permit excluding the brief leadership of the movement by Fred Mazelis for less than two years, this record amounts to two leaders over a roughly 57 year long period, and a single leader over a period of about 47 years. What is this record a measure of?
The Materialist/Technical Basis for an intensification of internationalism
The past fifteen years have witnessed explosive advancements in communications and social media technology. The growth of platforms and technologies like Zoom, Twitter, Discord, and Telegram to name but a few, provide the means for international collaboration and communication between the international working class that were only in their infancy in an earlier period of the ICFI in the aftermath of the split with the WRP and when the WSWS was first conceived and created.
Widespread usage of new technologies in language learning, such as Duolingo and Babbel, and easy access to machine translation have also lowered barriers to communication between the vanguard layers around the world.
As in the past, the internationalists must fight to see that the changes taking place today are reflected within the Trotskyist movement by bringing ourselves into alignment with the objective processes that are deepening the significance of and possibilities for internationalism before our very eyes. In line with these advancements, the international proletariat is beginning to step forward as a real force, and with this document it is waging its struggle on the highest level at which the global class struggle is waged: the fight for genuine proletarian internationalism within the revolutionary movement.
What progress that has been made in the ICFI towards building a real World Party, rather than a small confederation of national groupings, must be deepened. The authors of this text, necessarily adopting a harshly critical tone given the stakes involved, do not in any sense ignore all of the legitimate progress made by comrades internationally. As the ICFI wrote in 1986: “There are days when even a dying man displays a vigor that astonishes.” Realizing the perspective of constructing a genuine world party depends, however, as we have hopefully established for the reader, on a determined fight by the proletarian internationalists in the movement.
Conclusion
The contents of this document are not intended to promote demoralization or demobilization. The International Trotskyist movement has passed through the most extreme challenges in its nearly 100 years of struggle. Our movement can be rejuvenated, just as the internationalists have salvaged and rejuvenated it in the past, but this task requires that all Trotskyists take an honest look at this critical text and doubly commit themselves to a real struggle for a genuinely internationalist perspective aimed at building the Trotskyist movement in every country. Only when this is made the cornerstone of political work can genuine Marxism be victorious.
As a step in this direction we suggest embracing the following ideas:
The best and most committed internationalists amongst the present-day leadership of the Socialist Equality Parties should take up a renewed struggle for internationalism and the building of the Trotskyist movement worldwide.
Groups in solidarity with the ICFI in Brazil, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, Russia and possibly Pakistan should initiate the process of transforming themselves into Socialist Equality Parties and should be provided with every form of support, including financial, necessary to do so and to fully participate in the leadership of the international Trotskyist movement.
Supporters of the ICFI in other countries should form Socialist Equality Groups and request full membership in the ICFI.
Fight for International Control of the world Trotskyist movement by the international proletarian vanguard!
We call on all those who agree with this perspective to contact us through our contact form
No comments:
Post a Comment