In my article of November 10, "The Split Between Healy and Lambert,"1 I summarized the attacks leveled by Healy against Lambert's policies and added that it will be interesting to read what Lambert writes in reply. The reply has been given in a statement dated November 21 signed by the Central Committee of the OCI [Organisation Communiste Internationaliste]. 2
A considerable part of this document is devoted to lodging the responsibility for the split on Healy, to answering this or that detail, things that are of interest only to the participants in the dispute. Healy is also accused of turning to the Fourth International and, in particular, of having addressed himself to it during the year 1970. We reported in our press at the time that Healy, speaking in the name of the SLL Socialist Labour League], had asked to meet with us. 3 In the talks that took place, he was accompanied by a member of the OCI. What he wanted was that our movements should open a discussion, which he said could lead to a reunification. The Fourth International —without rejecting in principle the question of a possible reunification - was of the opinion that the relations between our movements were such that a discussion could lead to nothing positive. In Lambert's document we learn that he was against this move, as I thought at the time.
As for the political content of the rupture, it must be stated right off that in face of Healy's vigorous political attack, Lambert's reply is largely defensive, has little substance, and in no wise engages in a criticism of Healy's politics.
In summarizing Healy's attack, I deliberately left aside Healy's main theme. He accused Lambert of more or less openly rejecting dialectical materialism. Ever since he read Trotsky's In Defense of Marxism, Healy has not been able to engage in a tendency struggle without bringing up this question. He forgets that Trotsky was polemicizing against Burnham, a professor of philosophy who openly rejected dialectical materialism, and Shachtman, who was utterly indifferent to it. Trotsky wanted to show that this "bloc in philosophy" corresponded to their bloc on the character of the Soviet Union, one arguing that it was not a workers state, the other that it was a question without any importance. Healy likewise forgets that Trotsky conducted other tendency struggles that were not less important without speaking about dialectical materialism. In any case, as soon as he sees a political disagreement, no matter how minor, Healy turns to philosophy and tries to prove that his adversary has idealist leanings. In his reply, Lambert has no trouble dealing with Healy's philosophical mania.
Aside from this, Lambert's reply does not take up the political issues properly speaking. On Bolivia he ducks the main accusation, that is, that in the Popular Assembly Lora followed a policy reminiscent of that of the Mensheviks or Bolshevik conciliators in the Petrograd Soviet in February-March 1917, collaborating with the pro-Moscow CP from the time Torres was installed in power, waiting for the general to arm the masses against the rightist officers.
As we wrote previously, it was above all Lambert's policies in France that Healy attacked. Lambert slipped on various questions-like the support he gave for a long time to Messali Hadj, like defeatism toward the Vietnamese revolution (see Berg's articles before the Tet offensive). He ducks the question of his having oriented his activities toward the backward sections of the French working class by asking Healy if the PS [Parti Socialiste and Force Ouvrière are not "workers' organizations," and leaving the impression that Healy's "preference" is the Stalinist bureaucracy.
Lambert displays his opportunism with notable clearness when in opposition to Healy he argues for his "united class front." This policy, he writes, "is a strategic line insofar as it is always (that is, without regard to the circumstances, the relationship of forces, etc. . . . forces, or tactical factors in the strict sense of the term) present in a revolutionary policy." He specifies further on: "And where the working class is under the leadership and control of separate organizations, this policy takes the form of a united front of all the organizations of the class." In other words, where the workers are organized and led by reformist organizations, a revolutionary policy would always include a united front of these organizations, "without regard to the circumstances, the relationship of forces, or tactical factors." This is monstrous! It means quite simply jumping on the bandwagon of these organizations when they are engaging in betrayals, for example in time of war or of movements like May 1968, without mentioning lesser occasions when the united front of these organizations is carried out in practice at the expense of the workers.
We will perhaps be told: you exaggerate; Lambert may have expressed himself badly; he has not forgotten the program. Let's see. He deals in his document with the May 1969 presidential campaign in France, forgetting quite like Healy the Trotskyist candidacy of Alain Krivine and overlooking the differences within the OCI on the vote (Defferre, Duclos, or abstention), but he cites and stresses these words by Just:
"But what about program? Didn't a single candidate put up by the workers' organizations need a program? What was it developing into? In these specific circumstances, the development of a program for a government of the united workers' organizations derived from this joint campaign."
In other words, through his campaign the single candidate would have given expression to this program.
A program emerging from an electoral campaign! When Lambert and Just go spontaneist, they don't do it by halves.
I don't know what imbecile in the OCI thought it possible to explain "Pabloism;" not by starting with the split of 1952-53 but by going back to the split of "la Commune" in 1935, in which I participated. In the Lambert organization the drums are beaten over an error committed in trying to organize groups in several areas to fight against fascism at a time when priority should have been given to leading the revolutionary socialist youth expelled from the SFIO (Social Democracy) to participate in forming a party on the program of the Fourth International. (Moreover, they forget to add that Lambert himself joined Trotskyism via the group that emerged from "la Commune.") But how pale this error was in contrast to a policy that envisions a class-struggle program emerging from a united front, even from an electoral agreement between the Communist and Socialist parties, without regard to the circumstances, the relationship of
Let us pause here in expectation of the next document announced by Lambert on "all the questions posed by the present stage for the reconstruction of the Fourth International." Meanwhile, we will observe how Healy and Lambert, each in his fashion, reconstruct the "International Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International."
Notes
1. See "The Split Between Healy and Lambert" in Intercontinental Press, November 29, 1971, p. 1045.
2. For an English translation of the full text, see "Lambertist 'Reply to a Splitting Act'" in Intercontinental Press, January 17, 1972, p. 46.
3. See "Healy's Request to Discuss Unification" in Intercontinental Press, July 27, 1970, p. 711.