SPLITS & FUSIONS
Socialist Challenge1970sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
In what circumstances is it correct for revolutionaries to split from or to expel a political current? DAVE PACKER and PHIL HEARSE examine the positions of Lenin and Trotsky, together with the historical experience of the world revolutionary movement, to argue that the recent split in the Fourth International was unprincipled.
THE TRAGIC split which has just taken place in the Fourth International has serious consequences for the revolutionary movement and the tasks that confronts us in building a world party of socialist revolution.
Since 1938, the year in which Leon Trotsky founded the FI, this objective has been confronted with many difficulties, not the least of which is the heritage of Stalinism and its organisational norms. The widespread confusion in the Marxist left over what constitutes the basis for splits and fusions has its origins in the dissemination of the Stalinist myth of the 'monolithic' party, and is an expression of a 'sect' mentality.
This mentality has its material roots in the isolation of those groups from the broad masses and their consequent remoteness from the immediate problems of constructing a mass party. Although the revolutionary movement has long ago passed through the 'dark tunnel' of retrenchment, during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the dead still weigh heavily on the living.
It is a tragedy that many currents, today and in the past, have justified their separation from the Fourth International by invoking Lenin's name and what they assume to be his and Trotsky's organisational methods. But the conception they hold of Lenin and Trotsky as inveterate 'splitters' cannot be upheld in any serious study of the fight by these leaders of the Russian revolution to establish a revolutionary party in Russia itself and internationally.
In the Trotskyist movement these wrong conceptions have been most systematically peddled by the 'Workers Revolutionary Party' in Britain, led by Gerry Healy; by Pierre Lambert's OCI (International Communist Organisation) in France; and Moreno's PST (Socialist Workers Party) in Argentina.
Tendencies
These tendencies have established a tradition of splitting on the basis of internal organisational sectarianism and tactical questions. They confuse all the distinctions drawn by Lenin and Trotsky between parties, factions and tendencies. The consequence of the unprincipled activities of these currents has been a serious fragmentation of the revolutionary movement and a weakening of the FI.
For its part, the International Marxist Group — the British section of the FI — has waged a struggle for an understanding of the programmatic basis of the party; for the principled fusion of all revolutionaries (that is, those who defend the historic interests of the working class in practice) into a single international democratic centralist organisation, no matter what positions are held on secondary questions or on tactics.
We are only in favour of parting company, if necessary by splitting, with those who definitively overturn these programmatic tenets, and who fail to defend the historic interests of the working class. This is not the nature of the differences in the FI over Nicaragua; therefore we characterise the split as unprincipled.
A failure to defend these Leninist principles of organisation both undermines the basis of unity of the party, and inevitably leads to a degeneration of internal democracy. If tendencies and factions are the basis for separation into different parties, then the result will be monolithic sects.
It is no accident that these organisations, which customarily react with mirth at the tendency and factional struggles inside the Fourth International, misunderstand such struggles within an organisation which has a living relationship to the world revolution, and habitually construct tin-pot monolithic regimes in their own (tiny) organisations.
As Trotsky once put it: 'Whoever prohibits factions thereby liquidates party democracy and takes the first step towards a totalitarian regime' ('Leon Trotsky on France').
Lenin himself was absolutely clear on the necessity of preserving party unity even where there were major disagreements of a tactical or even programmatic nature. Contrary, for example, to the popular misunderstanding that Lenin split with the Mensheviks in 1903, he in fact insisted on the Bolshevik faction maintaining unity in the same party with the Mensheviks until 1912.
This was despite the fact that the Mensheviks called for a vote for a bourgeois party (the Cadets) in elections. When the Bolsheviks did accept the split with the Mensheviks in 1912, this was because the Mensheviks announced that the Russian Social Democratic party was dead and actively disrupted it.
Re-unification
Politically, Lenin held the door open for re-unification with the Mensheviks until 1914; that is, until it had been shown in practice, through their support for the imperialist war, that the Mensheviks betrayed the historic interests of the working class.
Those who deride the Fourth International's conception of freedom for factions within a single party or international, also frequently challenge its conception of international democratic centralism. Organisations like Lutte Ouvriere in France and the International Communist League in Britain argue that in a real international the leadership would have authority over every aspect of the political life of all the national sections.
We disagree. The World Congress of the Fourth International decides the general political framework within which the sections work out their tactics, but the tactical line decided in each country cannot be overturned by the international leadership.
Democratic centralism in a particular revolutionary party derives from the need to take power. It poses the need for a party to be able to act against the capitalist state with the utmost unity and effectiveness, while basing its internal debates and election of leadership on the experience of struggle of all sections of the working class and oppressed people.
The task of a revolutionary international involves the elaboration of the programme of revolutionary Marxism, co-ordinating and unifying actions on an international scale, building new sections, and seeing that the interests of the movement as a whole prevail over national peculiarities.
Monolithic
Since it is impossible to take political power in every country simultaneously, the task of an international leadership is different from that of a national leadership; and it is inevitable that international democratic centralism will function in a far less immediate and rigorous way than democratic centralism on a national scale.
Once again, those who challenge the FI's conception of international democratic centralism in reality want a homogeneous and monolithic international, just as they want monolithic national parties. With such a conception perhaps an international sect like the Sparticist League is possible. Any steps towards a mass revolutionary international are impossible with such sect-like conceptions.
How do these positions relate to the disputes in the Fourth International over Nicaragua?
In Nicaragua a revolution is in the process of development. In such situations extremely complicated analytical questions are posed for revolutionaries, and it is not at all unusual to have disputes about the precise tasks to be carried out.
For example, in Russia between February and August 1917, Lenin held the position that the call for the immediate overthrow of the provisional government was ultra-left. He argued this despite the fact that the government was a bourgeois government; that the Bolsheviks were opposed to it; and that the government would ultimately be forced into repressive counter-revolutionary acts.
Lenin took the view that it was not yet possible to overthrow the provisional government, despite the existence of dual power in the form of soviets. He fought a dual battle against both the ultra-lefts in the working class base of the Bolsheviks who wanted the immediate overthrow of the government, and against the conciliators in his own party who wanted to give critical support to the government.
Indeed, before Lenin arrived in Petrograd in April 1917 the Bolsheviks did in fact adopt a conciliatory attitude to the government. But at no time did Lenin urge a split because wrong positions had been taken.
Tactical
In Nicaragua at the present time there is a government, the GRNN, which does indeed include bourgeois ministers, but the most powerful political force, which makes its own laws and gives its own directives, is the FSLN, based on local committees. Such a situation imposes massive tactical problems.
However, there is no doubt that before the split of the Bolshevik Faction and the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency, a clear majority of the membership of the Fourth International — as expressed through the recent voting at the pre-World Congress conferences by the national sections of the FI — was in favour of characterising the Nicaraguan government as a bourgeois government.
There was no possibility of 'betraying' the Nicaraguan revolution. These differences of assessment, even differences on the nature of the Nicaraguan government, do not at all amount to anything like the massive betrayal of the revolution in practice which is the only basis for splitting an international.
Lenin split from the Second International only after its historic betrayal of the world proletariat in 1914. Trotsky split from the Third International only when it had clearly in practice betrayed the German revolution in 1933, a decisive event determining the future of politics on an international scale.
Dead
The split from the Fourth International is to signify that from the viewpoint of revolutionary struggle it is a dead organisation. No such position can be sustained in relation to the FI's role over Nicaragua — on the contrary it is one of the forces which recognises a real revolution in the making, and responded rapidly to intervening within it. Thus the splitters are lightminded and irresponsible.
Despite these grave errors, we refuse to characterise either the BF or the LTT — or for that matter the factional plotters in the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International — as having gone over to alien class forces.
The overwhelming majority of the forces of the Fourth International have stayed loyal. We shall continue our fight for the Leninist position on the programmatic basis for unity. To all those forces who stand for the historic interests of the working class, and who are willing to participate in the framework of a democratic centralist international, the doors of the Fourth International remain open.