[The following is a translation of an article scheduled for publication in Quatrième Internationale.]
For many years the stability of the large traditional workers' organizations and the monolithic character of the Communist parties gave rise to comments, often not very intelligent, on the contrast to the numerous splits among the Trotskyists. Many people, especially centrists who engaged in vain exertions to construct mass organizations, claimed that these splits expressed an inherent defect in Trotskyism.
In the last few years, the picture has changed considerably. It is rather hard to keep track of the splits in the various Maoist, spontanéist, etc., groups in the world, while the sections of the Fourth International have been registering substantial progress. Furthermore, since the Sino-Soviet dispute, Stalinist monolithism has been shattered beyond any possible repair. We have seen serious convulsions in some Communist parties in power (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia), even open splits in many other CPs (Spain, Greece, etc.).
Splits, therefore, no longer appear as the exclusive vice of the Trotskyists. In truth, the history of the workers' movement shows it to be, among other things, an incessant struggle of tendencies and groupings, entailing splits and reunifications. In fact, if there was ever anything that had hitherto been unknown in the workers' movement, it was the monolithic character imposed on workers' formations by the power of a bureaucratized workers state.
If the struggles of tendencies, splits, and regroupments have a varying importance on the general level of the struggle of the masses, they are rarely without some political significance that ought to be examined. This holds true likewise for the break that has just taken place between the French OCI-AJS [Organisation Communiste Internationaliste-Alliance des Jeunes pour Socialisme- Internationalist Communist Organization-Alliance of Youth for Socialism] on the one hand and the British SLL [Socialist Labour League] on the other. These two organizations| constituted the main components of an "International Committee" whose objective was the "reconstruction" of the Fourth International, which had, according to their account, been destroyed by "Pabloism."
On various occasions we have explained? that at the
1. For the sake of convenience, I will use the names of Healy and Lambert to designate these organizations.
among others, chapter six of my book la Quatrieme end of the second world war, immense new problems were posed; that differing responses to them on the part of revolutionary Marxists, combined with the effects of considerable centrifugal forces, had precipitated a period of splits within the Fourth International; that this period ended in 1963, when the principal Trotskyist organizations in the world wound up advancing identical answers to these new problems and reuniting. Some groups refused to take part in this reunification, thus enabling some people to claim that there were four international organizations, all asserting their right to the name of the Fourth International.
That the Stalinists indulge in amalgamating these diverse formations in order to fight Trotskyism is not surprising. But for other, politically experienced people to commit such an error betrays a lack of common sense.
In point of fact, it suffices to see things as they really are:
As far as the "Posadistas" are concerned, it is impossible, even displaying much good will, to consider them to be anything more than a screwball sect of no political interest.
The "Pabloites," who are numerically small but politically well-defined, have nothing at all in common with the Fourth International. They renounced it implicitly upon splitting, when they said they were leaving the "hardened champions of a dead past without a future." (This is the basic reason they did not want to remain in the reunified international.) Today, they implicitly recognize this in preparing to eliminate mention of the Fourth International from their name.
On the international scale, outside the Fourth International, there was only Lambert and Healy's joint "committee," consisting of two national organizations of some size, asserting adherence to Trotskyism, waging a fierce, virulent battle against the existing Fourth International, and claiming to be constructing, or reconstructing, one that would have absolutely nothing in common with "Pabloism." Crash! The "International Committee" is now split wide open, and Lambert and Healy are denouncing each other in terms no less virulent than those they used against the Fourth International; each even finding that the other has become infected with "Pabloism."
The public documents of this struggle issued up to now are as follows: a declaration signed by Lambert, Lora, etc., last October 12; a declaration of the SLI, etc., October 24; a reply by Lambert November 21.3 These documents do not provide complete clarity on the origins and basis of the break, but just the same they enable us to see, at least in part, what united Healy and Lambert and what led them to separate.
What United Them
For a long time their unity was cemented by a common hostility - which neither of them has lost, toward the Fourth International. But what is the source of this hostility? As Trotskyists both of them recognize in principle the necessity of a revolutionary Marxist international, functioning on the basis of international democratic centralism.
But for them, this is an abstract concept; and between this concept and what they actually do, there is a big gap. Each has a national domain in which he operates politically because they think above all in terms of tacties. They accept general analyses on a world scale only so long as these do not upset the policies they decide on on a national scale. This trait, already observable in them when they were still members of the Fourth International, could only become worse after their break with the latter in 1952-53.
This trait received formal status at their 1966 international conference, where they passed a motion according to which their committee was bound only by unanimous decisions. 4
They could not accept the reunification (in 1963), because they would have been in a minority. Not wanting to admit this openly, they concealed their fundamental hostility to a world party capable of interfering in their "national" affairs by denouncing the Fourth International as a "Pabloite" organization.
This became more and more ridiculous as time went on, for while they continually attacked Mandel, Maitan, Frank, Tariq Ali, Hansen, Krivine, etc., as "Pabloites," they never said a word about Pablo's current positions. The farce has reached the slapstick stage, now that they have discovered "Pabloism" in each other. Among them, this term no longer has any political content whatsoever. A Pabloite is any person who claims to be a Trotskyist but disagrees with them.
Along with this "national" trait, they both follow the same concept as to how to build an organization. Both of them are constantly cooking up gimmicks designed for no other aim but to recruit.5 Hence the slogans often having no direct relation to development of the class struggle at any given moment, but advanced in ways to pull in new members. One of the consequences of this style of operating, to take the Lambertists as an example, is that since May 1968 (in which they floundered completely) they have let the mass demonstrations go byin the demonstrations of solidarity with the Vietnamese people, they have not shown up; in the Burgos demonstrations they appeared belatedly after the Communist party was constrained to do something following the demonstrations of the far left; in the demonstrations of highthe Fourth International, they showed the true once outside nature of their "internationalism."
school students around the Guyot affair, they were not to be seen ...
What Divides Them
There were frequent disagreements between the Lambertists and the Healyites, especially in 1966, but they remained united. There was no split when Healy refused to defend the Lambertist dogma according to which the productive forces continued to stagnate following the second world war. What was the origin then of the crisis that led to an open split?
According to Lambert's November 21 document, the disagreements allegedly began in 1969, when they decided to prepare an international conference of their committee. These disagreements are said to have intensified during 1970, about the time Healy went to the Fourth International to ask that a discussion be opened with the perspective of possible reunification. 6
It was on the occasion of their rally at Essen (at the beginning of July 1971) that the conflict became public. Lambert rejected an amendment advanced at the rally by Healy. About three months later, the position taken by Lora during the Bolivian events precipitated the open break.
On the Bolivian question, Healy - aside from his usual excesses, such as comparing Lora with the Ceylonese Lanka Sama Samaja party ministers who participated in the repression in their country-criticized Lora for having followed a Menshevik policy in hoping, as he had himself written, that General Torres would arm the workers against the other generals. Lambert answered that the Popular Assembly had "become, through the intervention of Lora's POR, an organ of dual power," "an organism in which the hegemony of the proletariat is affirmed from top to bottom." How could a few speeches, which did not even call upon the workers to arm themselves, have created dual power?
On the other hand, after the split, Lambert condemned Healy for giving "critical support" to "the bourgeois Indian government"7 for its military intervention in Bangladesh. One can see that Healy and Lambert bounce the ball back at each other, trading charges of opportunism. Each sees the faults of the other. But for our "national Trotskyists," neither Bangladesh nor Bolivia is the determining factor in the split.
Although the causes are also not to be found in Lambert's policies in France, it is fitting to mention the criticism Healy advanced in his October 24 document and the defense made by Lambert in his November 21 reply to Healy. Here the opportunist politics of the OCI emerge in full clarity.
In the first place, Healy accuses Lambert of having drawn such pessimistic conclusions from de Gaulle's rise to power that he was incapable of preparing for May
1968 and that as a result he tail-ended during the events themselves.
"May-June 1968, with the French workers on General Strike, themselves striving for an alternative government, was the greatest testing time for the OCI. But what did the strike reveal?
"It revealed the theoretical bankruptcy and political impotence of the OCI whose leadership— guided by a superficial impressionist analysis of de Gaulle's coup in 1958- had exaggerated the strength and viability of the Fifth Republic, abandoned its revolutionary perspective and written off the revolutionary capacities of the French working class.
"This defeatist conception, which extended even to the
Vietnam war, was summed up in the rationalization of Lambert that the French working class was 'decisively defeated in 1958'. This pessimistic and essentially middleclass outlook expressed itself in all the organizational and agitational work of the OCI and the AJS before and after 1968. It is an undeniable fact that at no time during the General Strike did the OCI leadership advance a socialist programme. Nor did it attempt to undermine the political credibility of the Stalinist leadership by critically supporting the demand of the Renault workers for a 'popular government' by advancing the demand of a CP-CGT government. Instead the OCI leaders tail-ended the working class and restricted the political scope of the strike by demanding a central strike committee. This was a complete evasion of the political responsibilities of revolutionary leadership."
This same tail-ending tendency, Healy said, was shown in the 1969 presidential election. In practice the Lambertists split, some voting for Duclos, others for Defferre, and still others, like Lambert himself, abstaining.
"Even from this 1968 experience the lessons were not learned. In fact the abstentionist methods and omissions of the General Strike period were continued into the presidential elections of 1969.
"In the referendum in March of the same year, the OCI had correctly campaigned for a vote against de Gaulle, in contrast to the abstentionism of the Pabloites. However, the gains from this correct turn were lost in the presidential elections, the class character of which was ignored by the OCI. Basing themselves on their fraudulent theory of the 'United Class Front', the OCI leaders used the failure of the CP and Socialist Party to agree on a single candidate as a pretext for not supporting the CP candidate, Duclos, against Pompidou.
"The task of revolutionaries was to raise the consciousness of Stalinist rank and file by critically supporting Duclos and pointing out that the main enemy was Pompidou. The OCI should have campaigned throughout the labour movement to demand that the CP candidate be pledged to a socialist policy against the banks and monopolies. To carry forward this fight, while calling for a massive vote for Duclos, was the best way to exposing the Stalinists and their programme of 'advanced democracy' and fighting for alternative revolutionary leader-
Any other course leaves the Stalinist control ship.
also necessary to expose the undisturbed. It was SP candidate whose party refused to vote for Duclos in the second ballot and supported the bourgeois candidate, Poher.
Some
"The OCI leaders did none of these things. 244
members voted for Duclos, others for Deferre (SP) and others, including comrade Lambert, abstained. What was worse, the OCI attacked the Stalinists for having dared to stand a candidate in the elections despite the fact that the Stalinists in the previous presidential elections in 1965 did not do so and instead supported Mitterrand, a bourgeois politician."
In Healy's opinion, these were not accidental errors, because Lambert has oriented not toward the workers influenced by the Stalinists but toward the more backward ones following the Social Democrats: "At no time has the OCI been able consistently to put forward a policy and programme to bring it close to the mass of the French workers who vote for the Stalinists and are organized around the Stalinist-led CGT. Instead they have orientated towards those sections still supporting the social-democrats, primarily in the older industries."
This orientation toward the Social Democracy has recently been intensified. After all, isn't it necessary to "save" the Socialist party from Mitterrand?
After long denying all revolutionary perspectives, Lambert has now discovered "the imminence of revolution." This turn, which to my knowledge was made without any serious explanation, has not changed the Lambertist policy. As before, this policy still consists in calling for a "united class front." Healy denounces this as abandoning the perspective of building a revolutionary party:
"Now the OCI, using the formula, 'imminence of revolution', elaborating a schema of natural stages through which the working class passes on the road to power, distorting the tactic of united front of the working class, has taken the road of liquidationism laid down by these revisionists."
Earlier in the document, Healy says: "Within this framework the OCI's position on the 'united class front' beof the party and complete liquidation comes its subordination to the Stalinist and social democratic parties and union apparatus. Lenin and Trotsky saw the united front as a tactic and not a strategy as the OCI claim. They saw it as a relationship between mass workers' parties of a temporary character for the purpose of winning the masses to the Communist Party. The OCI has transformed this into an overall 'unity' of the class achieved on the basis of its present leadership, without the participation in the united front of our party. This 'united class front' more and more, in their theorizing and practice, takes over the role of the revolutionary party itself."
In his November 21 reply Lambert ducks questions such as 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 - which would be a manifestation of "Pabloism."
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 the relationship of forces, or tactical faccircumstances, tors 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 in clude 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!
Healy and Lambert had denounced Krivine's candidacy in the presidential election as being, among other things, a diversion from the "united front." Haven't they ever read Trotsky's pamphlet What Next?, written in January 1932 in powerful defense of the united front of Communists and Socialists against the mounting Hitlerite danger? In this pamphlet Trotsky denounced all the various centrists who proposed that the Communists and Socialists present a single presidential candidate. Here is how Trotsky expressed himself (the reader should bear in mind that at the time Trotskyists still considered themselves a faction of the Communist International and its sections):
"... in the sphere of propaganda... a bloc is out of the question. Propaganda must lean upon clear-cut principles and on a definite program. March separately, strike together. A bloc is solely for practical mass actions. Deals arranged from above which lack a basis in principle will bring nothing except confusion.
"The idea of nominating a candidate for president on the part of the united workers' front is at its root a false one. A candidate can be nominated only on the grounds of a definite program. The party has no right to sacrifice during elections the mobilization of its supporters and the census of its strength. The party candidacy, in opposition to all other candidates, can in no instance conflict with any agreement made with other organizations for immediate aims of struggle. Communists, whether official members of the party or not, will support Thaelmann's candidacy to their utmost. What we are concerned with is not Thaelmann but the banner of Communism. We shall defend it against all other parties. Breaking down the prejudices with which the rank and file of the Communists have been inoculated by the Stalinist bu- March 6, 1972
reaucracy, the Left Opposition will clear the road into their consciousness for itself."8
No comment is required on these lines.
The basis of the divisions that led to the Healy-Lambert split probably lie in the amendment Healy raised at Essen:
"There can be no revolutionary party without revolutionary theory. Behind every opportunist development in the history of the workers' movement, and especially of Stalinism, has been the revision of Marxist theory. The continuity of the struggle for revolutionary Marxist theory in the past, the struggle of the Fourth International and the International Committee, was the only basis for the initiatives which led to this rally and for the struggle to build the international revolutionary youth movement. Revolutionary youth everywhere must devote themselves above all to the task of developing Marxist theory through the struggle against bourgeois ideology in all the forms it takes in the workers' movement. This is the only basis for combatting the dangers of adventurism, activism and 'pure' militancy with which revisionists and Maoists mislead the youth, and which can only lead to historic defeats for the working class."
Lambert's refusal to vote for this amendment provoked two remarks from Healy. In the first place, this refusal showed that Lambert was guilty of underestimating, or renouncing, dialectical materialism. On this point we are faced with one of Healy's customs. Every time he engages in a tendency or faction struggle he believes it necessary to introduce the question of dialectical materialism. Why? Well because Trotsky dealt with this question in the struggle against Burnham and Shachtman in 1939. Trotsky did this because the question was introduced by his opponents, one totally denying dialectical materialism, the other declaring that it had no practical political importance. Trotsky conducted many tendency struggles without introducing this question; but that matters little for Healy. For him, every internal struggle cannot help but pose the question of dialectical materialism. And if no one else is inclined to raise it, he will never hesitate to do so.
Must we add that when Healy indulges in this bizarre idiosyncracy, he succeeds most often in making himself look ridiculous?
Healy's other comment is politically more serious. For him, the "International Committee" must be considered the embodiment of the "continuity" of the Fourth International. It is therefore around him (with the help of dialectical materialism) that the Fourth International must be "constructed."
For Lambert, the Fourth International has already been destroyed as a centralized organization. It must therefore be "reconstructed." This necessitates beginning by joining with all sorts of groups, forming a "youth international," fronts, etc.
Here, a certain rigidity on Healy's part and Lambert's unbridled opportunism appear to clash. It would not be surprising if the source of this clash lies in the internal situation in the two organizations and in the relation of forces between them.
At one time Healy carried more weight than Lambert in the "International Committee." Now it seems to be the other way around. Also, Healy's organization may be losing some of its steam. In that case, his rigidity could be explained as a means of halting this development. Lambert's document alludes to this fact: "Unless you start off from the political contradictions in which the SLL leadership' finds itself and its refusal to see them unraveled by discussion within the ranks of its organization. ..." Since both organizations are quite empirical, capable of making sudden political flip-flops, their documents do not allow us to probe more deeply into the question at the moment.
The Healy-Lambert Split and the Fourth International
Healy and Lambert will each continue, as the case may be, to "construct" or "reconstruct"
the Fourth International. Up to now they have counterposed their joint committee to the Fourth International. Today, thanks to Healy and Lambert, instead of one "committee" we have a "Committee of the Fourth International" and a "Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International." The defunct "committee" was able to deceive some people about what it really represented. The two present committees will more than ever appear as inventions of the OCI or the SLL, designed to give these groups a facade of international affiliation. The split between Healy and Lambert is not a new split in the Fourth International, but a split among its opponents. To divert attention from their split they will not fail — of this we can be sure - to redouble their crass attacks on the Fourth International. But from now on they will be even more incapable than in the past of blocking its progress.
Notes
1. Were there already differences between them? In any case,
2. See, Internationale.
3. Lambert and Lora's October 12 declaration was printed in Intercontinental Press, November 1, 1971, p. 942. The SLL's October 24 declaration can be found in Intercontinental Press, November 22, 1971, p. 1015. Lambert's response of November 21 was printed in Intercontinental Press, January 17, 1972, p. 46. - IP
5. On this point, see H. Weber's pamphlet Qu'est-ce que l'A J. S.? March 6, 1972
6. See Quatrieme Internationale, No. 45 (September 1970). Proposing possible reunification undermined their whole struggle against "Pabloism." In his November 21 document Lambert takes Healy to task for this maneuver, but at the time Lambert did not publicly disavow it.
7. Workers Press, December 6, 1971.
8. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, Pathfinder Press, New York, p. 204-5.