[The witch-hunters in the United States have not delayed long in trying to exploit the sensationalism surrounding the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping of Patricia Hearst. In a syndicated column that appeared in Chicago Today on March 22 and in many other papers across the United States around the same time, Victor Riesel, an old finger man for the congressional "investigating committees," tried to link the Trotskyist movement to terrorism in general.
[For this purpose, Riesel dragged in the Argentine Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores/ Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (Revolutionary Workers Party/People's Revolutionary Army) led by Roberto Santucho. First coming to prominence as the leader of a radical student group in the interior province of Tucumán, April 8, 1974
Santucho moved for a time in the direction of revolutionary Marxism, and his group fused with the Argentine Trotskyist movement. Later, under the influence of the protagonists of guerrilla war, particularly Che Guevara, he changed his course, turning more and more in the direction of terrorism. This led him to a complete break with the world Trotskyist movement.
[Riesel, as can be judged from the text of his column reprinted on page 432, does his best to utilize Santucho to smear the Fourth International and the Socialist Workers party. Santucho's own declaration breaking from the Fourth International, in which he also denounced the Socialist Workers party, should be sufficient to expose the falseness of Riesel's allegations. The full text appears below in English for the first time. It is taken from the issue of El Combatiente, the newspaper of the PRT-ERP, dated the last half of July 1973.
[It should be added that Riesel, who calls Santucho a "bandit," is apparently unaware of the fact that public sympathy in Latin America is on the side of heroic youths like Santucho who have fought, even with the most mistaken methods, against the U.S.- backed repressive regimes in Argentina.
[This sympathy, like the appearance itself of guerrilla or terrorist groups, is a sign of the deepening unrest visible not only in Latin America but elsewhere in the world.
[It can be expected that formations such as the one led by Santucho will be superseded before long by powerful mass movements committed to effective means of struggle.]
In its July meeting, the Executive Committee of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores voted, subject to a poll taken at our Sixth Congress, to sever our connection with the Fourth International.
So that our compañero readers can get a better understanding of this important decision, we want to sum up here the main things that led to it.
The Fifth Congress of our organization, voted, among other resolutions, to continue our membership in the Fourth International, although some delegates had spoken against it. Subsequently, so that the significance of this vote would be better understood, the Central Committee assigned Compañero Miguel to draw up a memorandum summing up the views put forward by the majority in the Congress discussion. It was included in a public pamphlet containing the resolutions of the Congress.
Here are some of the key paragraphs of this memorandum:
"Our point of view is that since the Leninist experience of the Third International, the need for an international revolutionary party capable of coordinating the struggle against capitalism and imperialism on a world scale has become clearer and clearer. This need is made more urgent every day by the features of the epoch in which we live. Capitalism is solidly centralized under the aegis of Yankee imperialism. Revolutionary struggle is developing in some theaters that is international in form and content (Southeast Asia). And there is an obvious reciprocal influence among the various anti-imperalist, anticapitalist revolutionary processes that are unfolding in every country, in every region, and on every continent."
"The Trotskyist movement, it has to be made clear, includes heterogeneous sectors, from counterrevolutionary adventurers prostituting its banners for their own profit to consistent revolutionists.
"... it must be kept clearly in mind that the Fourth International has enormous limitations and a tradition that we would hardly want to claim."
"We can sum it up by saying that the historic task of keeping Leninist internationalism alive, of preserving and developing the theory and practice 428
of permanent revolution, had to be assumed in conditions of absolute Stalinist dominance by small circles of intellectuals and revolutionists. Although these groupings made great efforts to root themselves in the workers vanguard and the masses, they were unable to overcome their isolation. Thus, they were prevented from proletarianizing themselves, and the Trotskyist movement took on a pettybourgeois character. This meant that by necessity the Fourth International's contribution to the world revolutionary movement was limited to preserving essential aspects of Marxism- Leninism that had been abandoned and trampled by Stalinism. This was a not inconsiderable contribution, but far from playing any major practical revolutionary role, the Fourth International fell at various times into reformist or ultraleft positions and even served as a refuge for all sorts of counterrevolutionary adventurers, which was a result in turn of the isolation we have spoken about."
"What is more, the process of renewal and development to which we have referred, which is showing signs of strong momentum, requires a transformation of the International and its component parties into a proletarian leadership. It requires a radical change in social composition and progressive abandonment of the pettybourgeois characteristics that are still dominant, along with full and active involvement in the various national revolutions. The future of the Trotskyist movement depends on the ability of the International and its national parties to fully understand the need for such a transformation and to carry it out in a conscious and orderly way." (Our emphasis- Combatiente.)
So the thing to do now is to analyze whether the International and its component parties have been able to understand the need for this transformation and carry it forward. But first let us go back briefly to the history of the International.
The Emergence of the Fourth International
After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1929, Leon Trotsky began to extend on an international scale the opposition that he had been waging against Stalinism.
We have to grant him the merit, in the work that the great revolutionary fighter carried on, of preserving the Leninist banners of revolutionary internationalism and proletarian democracy, developing a consistent and generally correct critique of the grave errors of Stalinism that helped to abort the revolution in Europe, and striving tenaciously to build a new proletarian vanguard. But we must also point out a crucial error in this work that contributed decisively to the failure of this attempt to build a new revolutionary vanguard on the world scale.
Bound to the revolutionary traditions of Marxism in Europe, Leon Trotsky did not fully realize the meaning of Lenin's explanation that "the chain of imperialism breaks at its weakest link." And he did not draw all the consequences from his own theory of permanent revolution. He did not understand, in a nutshell, that the axis of the world revolution had shifted to the colonial and dependent countries.
He did not understand that while the revolution was stagnating and retreating in Europe, in Asia on the other hand it was still strongly on the rise, led by parties and leaders who, while formally adhering to the Stalinist Third International, were able to keep alive the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, build solid proletarian vanguard organizations, take the lead of the oppressed masses in their countries, and lead them finally to victory over imperialist capitalism.
Several times, for example, his Chinese disciples drew his attention to Mao Tsetung's correct leadership of a revolutionary war supported by the oppressed peasant masses. But Trotsky placed all his hopes in the urban workers and had no confidence in the peasant armies led by the Chinese Communist party.
In Vietnam, there was a Trotskyist party that was relatively strong and well respected among the masses. In 1936, it participated in the elections in a united front with the Indochinese Communist party. However, shortly after that, a rupture occurred between the two parties, leading the Vietnamese Trotskyists into an open clash with the party of Ho Chi Minh at the very time it was starting guerrilla warfare.
Trotsky paid scarcely any attention to these important developments, while devoting an inordinate amount of time to the petty disputes and problems of his European supporters, in particular the French.
"Tiny groups which cannot hitch themselves to any mass movement are quickly soured with frustration. No matter how much intelligence and vigor they possess, if they can find no practical application for these, they are bound to use up their strength in scholastic squabbling and intense personal animosities, which lead to endless splits and mutual anathemas. A
amount of such sectarian certain wrangling has, of course, always marked the progress of any revolutionary movement. But what distinguishes the vital movement from the arid sect is that the former finds in time, and the latter does not, the salutary transition from the squabbling and splits to genuine political mass action." (Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, Oxford University Press, New York-Toronto, 1963, p. 58.)
"Similar dissensions, in which it is well-nigh impossible to disentangle the personal from the political, became a chronic distemper of most, if not all, Trotskyist groups; the French example was infectious if only because Paris was now the centre of international Trotskyism." (Ibid., pp. 59-60.)
Trotsky's principal biographer thus reflected with complete accuracy the characteristics of the Trotskyist movement in the period of its emergence, characteristics that were to constitute an endemic malady within it. What Deutscher failed to point out, although it clearly follows from what he says, is the class origin of these characteristics. They are a crystal-clear expression of the petty-bourgeois individuality typical of revolutionary intellectuals who have not been proletarianized through the development of the party. For this reason, as Deutscher correctly notes, we find such characteristies in the beginning of every revolutionary movement, when intellectuals make up most or all of the membership.
But when vanguard workers come into its ranks, putting their class stamp on it, the organization and its nonworker components become proletarianized and the "salutary transition ••. to political mass action" occurs.
The Trotskyist movement was unable to achieve such a transition for the reasons already noted. While Trot- April 8, 1974
and while ol his i Vienam sky concentrated his efforts on Europe and while "such trifles exhausted a large part of his time and his nerves," in China, in Vietnam, in Korea, the masses were fighting resolutely against imperialism, forging their proletarian organizations in war. How much more fruitful a contribution Trotsky could have made here, offering his invaluable experience accumulated in years of revolutionary activity, tempered in the October revolution and the civil war!
Thus, crushed by the triple weight of the ebb in the mass struggle in Europe, Stalinist persecution, and its own errors, the Trotskyist movement continued developing in isolation from the real practice of the class struggle.
And it was in these circumstances precisely that the Fourth International, founded in 1938, arose. Let's yield Deutscher the floor once again:
"Throughout the summer of 1938 Trotsky was busy preparing the 'Draft Programme' and resolutions for the 'foundation congress' of the International. In fact this was a small conference of Trotskyists, held at thehome of Alfred Rosmer at Perigny, a village near Paris, on 3 September 1938. Twenty-one delegates were present, claiming to represent the organizations of eleven countries." (Ibid., p. 419.)
"Naville delivered the 'progress report, which was to justify the organizers' decision to proclaim the foundation of the Fourth International. Unwittingly, however, he revealed that the International was little more than a fiction: none of its so-called Executives and International Bureaus had been able to work in the past few years. The 'sections' of the International consisted of a few dozen, or at most, a few hundred members each." (Ibid., p. 420.)
While Trotsky was alive, the Fourth managed to maintain a certain unity of action. After his murder on August 20, 1940, the disputes and splits became interminable and the organization fragmented.
the Twentieth
Nonetheless, after Congress of the Soviet CP, in which Khrushchev himself denounced the crimes of Stalin, Trotskyism experienced a certain revival.
In our Fifth Congress, we said: "The resurgence of Trotskyism following the disgrace of Stalin in the USSR has centered in the Fourth International, of which we are members, with almost all the adventurist and counterrevolutionary groups that claim to be Trotskyist remaining outside. The recognition of Stalin's negative features by the Communist party of the Soviet Union itself constituted a dramatic confirmation of the sound and correct bases of the Trotskyist movement. It promoted two simultaneous processes: a) the reunification of the Trotskyist movement (then quite fragmented, debilitated, and discredited), which was concretized in the Reunification Congress of 1963; b) the revitalization of the Trotskyist movement by a twofold process that involved revolutionary youth entering its ranks because of its new and more extensive prestige, and the transfer of the axis of struggle from confronting and denouncing Stalinism .•. to the problematic of revolution in our time." (The memorandum previously quoted.)
The hopes that we held at that time for the proletarianization and renewal of the Trotskyist movement have been disappointed. The clearest signs of the failure of these hopes are three: the class composition of the Fourth, the factional activity developed within our party, and the maintenance of theoretical positions that depart from Marxism-Leninism.
The Petty Bourgeoisie and Factionalism
The class composition of the Fourth can be easily gauged by the composition and political orientation of its two numerically largest parties: the Socialist Workers party (SWP) in the United States and the Ligue Communiste (LC) in France.
The SWP is a party that includes in its ranks a few thousand members of petty-bourgeois, intellectual, professional, and student origins. It has slight ties with the working class, if any, and its main activity is carried on in intellectual circles and "peripheral" movements, such as the women's liberation movement. For many years it has constituted the right wing of the International. Nor is it unworthy of note, moreover, that the strongest party in the International has developed in the world's most reactionary country, while the forces of the International are insignificant in all the colonial and dependent countries.
The LC is an organization of about
2,300 members. Some 10 percent are workers, 20 percent are white-collar workers and professionals, and 70 percent are students. Its only important intervention in the class struggle in France was in the mobilizations of 1968.
It was one section of the leadership of this party that conducted factional work against our organization from 1971 to 1972.* We will not go into this last question at length here, since we have already published an informational pamphlet on this theme.
It is sufficient to note that this factional activity culminated in theformation of the group that is now trying to appropriate the name of our party and of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, to which it adds the tail "Fracción Roja" [Red Faction].
What is more important to discuss here is the profound ideological differences that reflect the petty-bourgeois character of the Fourth International and constitute the background of its activities against our party, and at the same time show the impossibility of continuing to work within the framework of the Fourth to build a revolutionary, proletarian international.
A. Ideological Definition
We consider that scientific socialism, the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, was developed fundamentally by Marx and Engels. To this theory Lenin made essential contributions that justify calling scientific socialism by the name Marxism-Leninism.
Mao Tsetung, Ho Chi Minh, Giap, Le Duan, Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara have made great contributions to Marxism-Leninism in the course of their experiences as revolutionary leaders in their countries, especially in the theory of revolutionary warfare and building socialism. Leon Trotsky also made valuable contributions —in particular, his theory of permanent revolution, his characterization of the bureaucracy, and his analysis of fascism. Lesser contributions can be found in the work of Antonio Gramsci and others, in the work of all those who with both successes and errors have struggled and are struggling for the victory of the socialist revolution. But none of these contributions yet justifies changing the name of the scientific theory of the working class.
This is not a mere question of names. By claiming that Trotskyism "is the Leninism of our time," the Fourth International denigrates the contributions of other revolutionists and tries to apply Trotsky's thought as a whole, refusing to recognize his errors. Thus, Trotskyists lack a correct orientation on a number of.questions, in particular those having to do with armed struggle.
B. Characterization of the Vietnamese and Cuban Revolutionists
The Fourth International denies that the Cuban and Vietnamese compañeros have genuine and fully developed Marxist-Leninist parties. Our factionalists went to the extreme of characterizing their parties as "broadbased parties," on the order of the German Social Democratic party (!), while offering the Communist League in France as the model for building the party in our time. This obviously means disregarding the ABCs of Marxism, which bases every characterization on practice. And no one can hold the slightest doubt about what the Vietnamese and Cubans have done in the field of revolutionary practice.
C. Class Struggle in the Party
This is a complex and important point, in which are combined all the methods of building a genuinely proletarian organization, democratic centralism, and the party's methods of determining the truth.
Let us start with the last category. A revolutionary party, to be such, must understand the reality in which it moves. The source of this knowledge, as Marx, Lenin, and all revolutionists have taught time and time again, is practice, activity that changes the world. In the case of revolutionists, that means work designed to change the structures of society
Practice is, in turn, guided by theory, by Marxism-Leninism, which is simply the totality of practical revolutionary experience and the elements of the scientific analysis of society that flow from this complete body of social practice.
But, in turn, the theory, Marxism- Leninism, is not an abstract method, a tool for any use as, say, musical notes that can be used indiscriminately to record the score of a tango or a samba.
Correct use of the theory depends on the "standpoint" from which it is applied. Only by taking the standpoint of the proletariat, the class whose interests are reflected by the ideology and scientific theory of revolution, can you obtain a correct result.
When questions come up in the course of revolutionary activity, different opinions naturally arise among the compañeros. These differences of opinion reflect the different experiences of each compañero. It is quite natural for a worker in Tucumán to see things differently from a worker in Córdoba, for a worker in a big factory to have a different view than one who works in a small shop, for a worker in a packinghouse to have a different view from one who works in a chemical factory.
The confrontation of these differences of opinion through a frank and full discussion without restrictions of any kind will thus enable us to arrive at a common opinion that is richer, more correct, more accurate. This is why the party is called the "collective brain" of the revolution. This is the democratic side of democratic centralism, the aspect that makes possible correct elaboration of the party line with the help of the contributions of all the compañeros.
But this is on condition that the participants really "want" to arrive at a common view, that all those who participate in the discussion do so from "a working-class standpoint," in the higher interest of advancing the revolution.
When the discussion "gets bogged down," when the differences become irreconcilable and lead to bitter clashes of a personal nature, that means that one of the parties to the debate does not really "want" to arrive at agreement. And if someone does not want to achieve agreement, it reflects a "social interest," a point of view that is "nonproletarian," that has its material base in bureaucratic or petty-bourgeois interests that have been introduced into the organization by its nonproletarian elements, or in exceptional cases by worker elements who have become declassed. In this way, these elements become a transmission belt for alien class pressures that bear on a proletarian organization, so that the class struggle in society as a whole is reflected in a class struggle within the party.
When this point is reached, the contradictions within the organization can no longer be resolved in the customary way, by discussion, self-criticism, and criticism. They must be resolved by energetic measures to liquidate these nonproletarian currents. The first step is to defeat them ideologically and politically in order to "try to save the patient by killing the disease." If these persons persist in their antiworking-class positions, they must be expelled without any hesitation, just as a tumor is cut out to save the greater healthy part of the body from infection.
It is not always easy to perceive accurately and in time when differences of opinion become a class struggle in the party. You have always to be guided by the opinion of the workers, to consult the greatest possible number of people with different viewpoints in order to get a fuller and clearer view of the reality. And the touchstone for separating out currents of opinion from factionalist tendencies is precisely the practical work of the groupings involved, their respect for both sides of democratic centralism — wide freedom of discussion in elaborating policy and rigidly centralized discipline in action.
If in the case of an unusually complex problem a minority does nothave sufficient arguments to convince the majority of its positions and yet remains unpersuaded by the majority views, then the correct attitude is to accept the discipline of the organiza- April 8, 1974
tion, to continue tenaciously carrying out the line set for the time being by the majority.
In practice, then, the compañeros of the minority can test the validity of the different views, and if the majority's proves correct, they can rectify their own. On the other hand, the minority's opinion may be shown in practice to be correct, as has happened at times in the history of the revolutionary movement. In that case, it is likewise in practical work carried out in a loyal way and in respect for party discipline that the minority will find the opportunity to demonstrate the correctness of its position. And, in this way, it will be able in good time to rectify the orientation.
This is possible precisely on the basis, as we have pointed out, of a common proletarian point of view, where the intent of all, majority and minority, is to serve only the interests of the revolution.
It is only when one of the parties to the debate has a social interest alien to that of the working class, a nonworking-class standpoint, that differences crystallize into factionalist tendencies, party discipline and norms are violated, and class struggle is unleashed in the organization.
This is a brief summary of the Leninist position on class struggle in the party which our organization has consistently upheld in theory and practice.
The Fourth International, on the other hand, considers this position "bureaucratic" and "Stalinist"; its view is that the term "petty bourgeois" has been used as a label for persecuting compañeros in the party. They consequently claim the right to constitute permanent tendencies within the organization that would constantly put their different views before party "public opinion."
As these people see things, the touchstone for characterizing such currents is no longer the practical work of the organization but permanent debate, "continuous discussion of ideas," limited only by the formal submission of the minority to the majority. This was to go to the point even of public voicing of differences.
In line with this, our factionalists demanded that a condition for joining the party should be a high enough theoretical level to participate in its permanent internal debates. In this way, they put obstacles in the way of working-class cadres joining. For while these worker compañeros knew perfectly well through their practical experience what their class interests were and were ready to struggle for them, they could not have any great knowledge of theory before joining the party, because of the exploitation they suffered. It was only in the ranks of the party that they could acquire such understanding.
This position of our factionalists is not Marxism or dialectical materialism but idealism, and it has clearly pettybourgeois class roots.
Petty-bourgeois intellectuals who do not suffer exploitation directly and come to the revolutionary movement on the basis of a humanist position, impelled by ideas, have a tendency to become enamored of ideas for their own sake, to manipulate them in an abstract way in permanent discussion.
Workers, on the other hand, who experience exploitation every day, are, to be sure, interested in discussion and ideas, but in a concrete way - as a means of improving their practical work so that they can do away more quickly and effectively with the exploitation of their class and of all humanity.
D. Theoretical Elaboration
For us, as for any serious Marxist, theory in any field can arise only out of practice. Marx already pointed this out in his "Theses on Feuerbach": "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." (Thesis No. 11, published as an appendix to Engels's book Feuerbach and the End of German Classical Philosophy.)
Revolutionary theory, therefore, can arise only out of revolutionary practice, and it can be elaborated only in the revolutionary party.
The Fourth
International, on the other hand, places its stress on the analytical aspect, maintaining that theory can be known and elaborated in separation from practical work and that this precisely is the function of an international revolutionary leadership.
Of course, we also maintain that it is a revolutionary internationalist duty to familiarize ourselves with revolutions in other countries, to take positions on them, and to "intervene" in them, exchanging experiences as well as moral and material aid, coordinating the struggle against the common enemy. But this has to be based on the practical experience of the revolution in the other country.
That is, we are in a poor position to express opinions about the Congo, for example, if there is no Congolese fraternal party on whose practical experience we could base our knowledge and our views.
Conclusion
As we see, all the important differences pointed out have to do with crucial questions of revolutionary struggle. Moreover, they are all intimately related and have a single class origin- the petty-bourgeois character of the Fourth International and its refusal to proletarianize itself.
Taking this and all the other aspects that we have summed up here into account, our party has made the decision we mentioned at the beginning of this note.
This split does not weaken, but rather reinforces, our unshakable determination to struggle to build a new revolutionary international, contributing to this task all that is within our modest capabilities.
Notes
* Article 27 of the Statutes of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores adopted at its Fifth Congress reads: "The precongress period will open six months prior to the holding of the Congress. During that period party members have the authority to organize tendencies and factions to stimulate discussion in the party and to defend their positions. Precongress discussion should be carried on in a constructive, serious, and proletarian manner." The Santucho PRT, since its emergence in 1968-69, has suffered repeated splits in which the groups leaving have been denounced strongly as "petty-bourgeois." They in turn have denounced the Santucho leadership for arbitrariness. In general internal political democracy and free comradely discussion seem to have been absent from this organization. - IP 430