By Pierre Frank, Livio Maitan, and Ernest Mandel
[Continued from last week]
Rearguardism Against 'Vanguardism'
The question of the centrality of the struggle to create workers councils in a prerevolutionary situation rapidly growing over into a revolutionary situation is closely linked to another question that has played and is playing an important role in the internal discussion in the Fourth International.
Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack assert that their opposition to the line followed by the majority of the Fourth International "is in accordance with the stress on party building that our tendency (and later faction) has fought for within the world Trotskyist movement over the past seven years." (IP, October 13, p. 1357.) We strongly deny this. The majority of the Fourth International places no less "stress" on party building than the minority does. Further, the record shows that there has been no less practical and political success in this endeavor on the part of the majority than on the part of the minority, quite the contrary. What the debate is really about is how to build the party, what layers should be concentrated on in recruiting to the party, and what kind of party will emerge from these options.
The whole analysis of Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack was to orient toward the followers of the Social Democratic party, allegedly because this was the party of the majority of the working class. This concept is completely and disastrously wrong in revolutionary situations. It would have implied, to give but one example, that the German Communists in November 1918- November 1920 should have oriented toward the Social Democracy and not toward the centrist (and, at times, a bit ultraleft Independent Socialist party. For after all, the Social Democratic party still represented "the majority party of the working class" (it scored 44 percent of the popular vote in the January 1919 elections to the Constituent Assembly, a higher score than that achieved by the Portuguese SP in April 1975). But we don't know of a single communist who made such a preposterous proposal at the time. It seems obvious to us, as it did to Lenin and Trotsky, that the first task for revolutionary Marxists in a revolutionary situation is to attempt to assemble around their program and in their organization the most revolutionary-minded and most active layers of the working class. Only when this task is achieved can the subsequent task of winning the majority of the working class be successfully tackled. There are two reasons for this:
First, because it is ludicrous to believe that small nuclei of a few hundred, or even a few thousand, revolutionary Marxists could in one leap be catapulted into the leadership of millions of workers who would follow them politically and have confidence in them without these groups' first passing through the "stage" of becoming many thousands and fighting at the head of "only" tens of thousands. In a revolutionary situation, there are many opportunities to lead and recruit thousands of workers, provided you do not systematically and contemptuously turn your back on massive "vanguard struggles." Revolutionary cadres, especially during revolutionary situations, must possess not only organiza. tional capacities, but also and more particularly capacities of audacity, of taking revolutionary initiatives, of leading revolutionary mass strikes, revolutionary street demonstrations, soldiers' December 22, 1975
revolts. Generally speaking, these capacities are not to be found among the more moderate layers of members of the majority parties of the working class, but rather among "vanguard elements."
Second, because the masses learn very rapidly in revolutionary situations. The process of political differentiation, which in "normal" times involves only small segments of the class, begins to involve broader and broader layers. Consequently, although the majority parties continue to make gains (especially among sectors that previously did not even understand the necessity of becoming politically interested or active, the most moderate strata of the toiling masses, successive layers of the petty bourgeoisie in process of radicalization), the key sectors of the working class, those that have the greatest authority in the large plants, those that lead the great strikes and demonstrations "on the spot," tend increasingly to break with reformist and class-collaborationist policies and the moderate "majority parties." To win these working class leaders means to win the layers that are decisive in gaining mass influence; this is the indispensable springboard to winning the more moderate majority during the following phase.
In any case, that is how Trotsky saw the problem of party building under such circumstances. For example, in June 1936, speaking of the situation in France, he wrote:
"That leaders have come forward in the industries and in the factories is the foremost conquest of the first wave. The elements of local and regional staffs have been created. The masses know them. They know one another. Real revolutionists will seek contact with them. Thus the first self-mobilization of the masses has outlined and in part brought forward the first elements of revolutionary leadership. The strike has stirred, revitalized and regenerated the whole colossal class organism. The old organizational shell has by no means dropped away. On the contrary, it still retains its hold quite stubbornly. But under it the new skin is already visible." (The French Revolution Has Begun," in Whither France?, Pathfinder Press, p. 154.)
Lenin applied the same approach, and he was, after all, something of an expert in Leninist party building, as Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack will have to admit. In his very polemics against the ultraleftists among the young Communist parties of the West, he had this to say:
"The main thing-not everything, by a very long way— but the main thing has already been achieved in that the vanguard of the working class has been won over, in that it has gone over to the side of the Soviet power against parliamentarism, to the side of the dictatorship of the proletariat against bourgeois democracy. Now all efforts, all attention, must be concentrated on the next step-which seems, and from a certain standpoint really is, less fundamental, but which in fact is much closer to the practical carrying out of the task-namely, on seeking out the forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution.
*The proletarian vanguard has been ideologically won over. This is the most important thing. Without this, we cannot take even the first step towards vietory. But from this first step it is still a long way to victory. With the vanguard alone, victory is impossible. To throw the vanguard alone into the decisive battle before the whole class, before the broad masses, have taken up positions either of direct support to the vanguard, or at least of benevolent neutrality toward it and one in which they cannot possibly support the enemy, would not merely be folly but a crime." (V.I. Lenin: "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, emphasis added.)
The comrades of the minority of the Fourth International have accused us of advocating a "stage theory of party building" because we adhere to these Leninist principles. But isn't Lenin clearly defining two stages of party building, a first stage during which revolutionaries must win ideological hegemony and political leadership within the vanguard (educating the vanguard against bourgeois democracy, as Lenin says) and a second stage during which all efforts are concentrated on winning broader masses?
Indeed, it is criminal folly when ultraleftists plunge into a decisive test of strength between the class enemy and the still limited forces of the vanguard. But nothing is further from our mind. We have not and we are not calling for a Portuguese October, that is, for an insurrection. That would be a disaster at this point; it would represent putschism of the worst sort. All we are trying to do, modest and moderate as we are, is prepare for a Portuguese February, that is, a situation of generalized dual power. In such a situation, it becomes much easier to "win the broad masses" to the revolutionary party, for "soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat." In fact, history demonstrates that at least in imperialist countries it is only in such a dual power situation that this result can be achieved
The problem of choosing the right audience is especially important in Portugal today, because the unfolding revolutionary process in that country has strikingly confirmed one of the central points advanced by the majority in the discussion prior to the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International and contested by the minority tendency, with which Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack are in sympathy: The single most important change in the situation in West Europe since May 1968 has been the emergence of a new mass vanguard of increasingly proletarian composition, which, for the first time since the beginning of the degeneration of the Communist International, is capable of challenging in action the control over the working class still by and large exercised by the traditional bureaucratic, conservative, and counterrevolutionary apparatuses of the organized labor movement.
After the April 1974 coup, the Portuguese bourgeoisie followed a policy that was similar if not identical to that followed by the Italian and French bourgeoisie in 1944-47: avoid a victorious proletarian revolution, switch over to a bourgeois-democratic regime, grant some reforms to the workers, have the CP and the SP share in government responsibilities, and use the conservative bureaucracies of these parties to divert the revolutionary energy of the masses into channels compatible with the maintenance of capitalist property and the bourgeois state.
From an objective standpoint, the Portuguese bourgeoisie's chances of success with such a policy were greater than those of the French or Italian bourgeoisie at the end of the Second World War. The Portuguese army, though in deep crisis, was certainly not weaker than the French or Italian bourgeois armies in 1944-
45. The Portuguese proletariat had fewer arms than the French or Italian proletariat. Even the Portuguese economy was stronger than the Italian and French economies after the ravages of the war. The Portuguese working class was less numerous than the French or Italian, and it was certainly less experienced and educated politically. Finally, it would be hard to demonstrate that the Portuguese workers were any more militant than the French or Italian workers.
It is true that the Portuguese bourgeoisie received less help from international imperialism (primarily U.S. imperialism) than did the French and Italian bourgeoisie at the end of the Second World War. It is also true that world imperialism's capacity for direct 1830
and immediate military intervention is weaker today than it was at the end of the war. But this factor is certainly not important enough to offset all the other factors (except in the minds of the Stalinists, who have always claimed the presence of U.S. troops in Europe as an excuse for the abject betrayal of the interests of the working class in the immediate postwar period).
An inescapable conclusion flows from all this: The decisive factor that accounts for the success of the bourgeois political plan in France and Italy in 1944-46 and the failure, at least up to now, of that plan in Portugal lies in the difference in the working-class movement itself, that is, in the shift in the subjective factor. Again, it would be hard to prove that Soares and Cunhal are in any way "superior" to Blum and Thorez or Nenni and Togliatti. What has changed is their degree of control over the working class. For a variety of reasons, most of which were analyzed in the documents adopted by the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International, a broad vanguard emerged in the Portuguese factories barracks that opposed the basic classcollaborationist line of the CP and SP leadership ("bourgeois discipline," the "battle for production," recognition of authority, "no strike" pledges, etc.). This enabled significant sections of the working class to oppose the stabilization of the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state. This factor, and this above all, has made the Portuguese revolution follow a fundamentally different line (that is, a constantly advancing orte) from the one that was followed in France and Italy at the end of the Second World War.
In other words, when we talk about the "mass vanguard" in Portugal today, we are not talking about small revolutionary sects or groups of radicalized "ultraleftist" students, but working-class cadres and leaders who have led and are leading the major strikes, factory occupations, mass demonstrations, and soldiers revolts of the past months, the cadres who are the most active and dynamic both in leading the workers commissions, tenants commissions, and soldiers assemblies and committees and in trying to coordinate and centralize them. An important part of this layer has already broken politically with the CP and SP leadership. A second important segment, probably still a majority, remains in the CP, although with an increasingly critical attitude toward the leadership. A third, smaller, sector remains in the SP, also with increasing criticisms of the leadership.
We believe it is vital to win political and ideological hegemony in that working-class vanguard. In fact, without fear of being contradicted by history, we can say that if the revolutionary Marxists do not win political and ideological hegemony over these vanguard layers, no mass revolutionary party will be built in Portugal at the present stage and the Portuguese revolution will be doomed to defeat. That is what our "vanguardism" is all about.
We say: The Fourth International must win political and ideological hegemony within that vanguard. This means a dialectical policy of united action and merciless political and ideological struggle within this vanguard. This vanguard is very young and inexperienced politically. It makes many mistakes, both opportunist and ultraleftist. On many occasions it exhibits the greatest confusion, but it is also capable of magnificent and organizational initiatives. We must win this political vanguard to Trotskyism and to the Liga Comunista Internacionalista. That is the top priority in Portugal today. Obviously, we must conduct this struggle in such a way that it does not obstruct dealing with the subsequent task: winning the majority of the working class for a regime of workers councils. We must combat all forms of sectarianism toward the broad masses among vanguard elements; we must combat the stupid theories of "Soares-social fascism," "Cunhal=social fascism," "break Social Democracy in order to smash fascism," "CP, main agent of social. imperialism," just as we must combat the concepts of putschism or "workers councils without parties." The success of this struggle for a real mass line (and not a purely verbal or platonic one) will be measured by the number of revolutionary vanguard elements, of real working-class cadres, that are won over to the Trotskyist policy of united front toward the traditional mass political organizations of the working class. We must also understand the need for independent political initiatives by the LCI, including initiatives taken independently of the other far-left organizations, particularly when it is necessary to take initiatives that correspond to the needs of the masses and the need to radicalize the
"against the stream" of the mass movement but that go prevailing trends within the revolutionary vanguard
But in order to do that, we have to fight within the vanguard. Lenin was quite clear on this subject, too:
"It is better to be with the revolutionary workers when they are wrong on a particular or secondary point than to be with the 'official' Socialists or Social Democrats if they are not sincere and firm revolutionaries, if they do not want or are unable to conduct revolutionary action among the worker masses but have a correct tactic on this particular point." (Letter to Sylvia Pankhurst, August 28, 1919, in Collected Works, French edition, vol. 29, p. 567.)
And more precisely, in astonishing parallel to current developments in Portugal:
"Mssrs. Philistines •.• probably dream of a revolution (assuming that they have the slightest idea of revolution in their heads) in which the masses rise up in a sudden and perfectly organized fashion.
"Such revolutions do not exist and cannot exist. Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not maintain the immense majority of the masses of workers in oppression, brutalization, poverty, and ignorance. Capitalism cannot be brought down except by a revolution that through struggle awakens hitherto inactive masses. When the revolution rises, spontaneous explosions are inevitable. There has never been and there cannot be a single revolution without this.
"It is a lie that communists favor the spontaneous movement. ... a lie exactly identical to the one we have heard so often from the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Communists do not favor the spontaneous movement, are not advocates of dispersed outbreaks. Communists educate the masses for organized, coherent, unanimous, opportune, mature action. ...
"But the Philistines are incapable of understanding that communists consider it their duty (and they are perfectly right) to be with the fighting oppressed masses and not with the heroes of the petty bourgeoisie who stand aside in expectant cowardice. When the masses struggle, errors are inevitable; communists, while seeing these errors, explaining them to the masses, seeking to correct them, and struggling relentlessly for the victory of conscious action over spontaneity, remain with the masses. It is better to be with the fighting masses, who will progressively overcome their errors in the course of the struggle, than with the intellectual gentry, Philistines, and Kautskyites who stand apart waiting for "complete victory.'" (The Heroes of the Bern International, Collected Works, French edition, vol. 29, p. 401.)
Trotsky did not think otherwise. Here is what he had to say about the abortive and tactically incorrect uprising of the vanguard of the Petrograd workers and soldiers in July 1917:
"It was precisely the July defeat that accelerated the rise of the Bolsheviks, who were not only able to estimate correctly the situation without any illusions or embellishments but also did not break away from the masses during the most difficult days of failure, sacrifice, and persecution." ("Before the Second Stage," Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1935-36), Pathfinder Press, p. 63.)
The Lambertists apply these teachings to the Portuguese revolution in a very peculiar way. In the September 10, 1975, issue of Informations Ouvrières they boldly state that "the radicalization of the masses is going through the channel of the Socialist party." We ask: What radicalization is referred to here? Where, in what town, in what factory, in what barracks, have the militants December 22, 1975
of the SP advanced the revolution a single step toward soviets? Where have they developed the germs, buds, and shoots of dual power? Were not all the radical vanguard initiatives taken under the leadership of militants vehemently hostile to the Soares leadership? Isn't Informations Ouvrières confusing the vanguard with the rearguard? Or have the Lambertists reached the conclusion that in a revolutionary situation in an imperialist country it is not the generalization, coordination, and centralization of workers councils that is the key task, but rather the stabilization of organs of bourgeois parliamentary democracy? The least that can be said about such a position is that it is not exactly Leninist or Trotskyist.
Comrade Foley, with the obvious approval of Comrade Hansen, did not go quite so far in his articles as the Lambertists did in theirs. But he was not very far behind. In his article entitled "Why
" for example,
Portuguese Military Placed Troika in Power, published in the August 4 issue of Intercontinental Press, we read the following:
"What is certain is that the real vanguard of the Portuguese working class at the present time participated in the SP demonstrations. That proletarian vanguard is not to be found among the ultraleftists who followed a shadow of 'people's power' into isolation and even allowed themselves to be used by military demagogues as pawns in a campaign to rob the masses of their democratic rights. Nor were the most intelligent, class-conscious, and courageous sections of the proletariat with the Stalinist myrmidons who were mobilized to sing the praises of military rulers and help deny the majority of the working class the right to demonstrate." (p. 1114.)
Presumably, the "real vanguard of the Portuguese working class" is not the vanguard that has consolidated and spread the coordinating bodies of the workers commissions. It is not the vanguard that has extended workers control. It is not the one that has introduced massive "indiscipline" into the bourgeois army against the wrath of Soares and his lieutenants. It is not the one that has challenged the entire military hierarchy by raising the call for the election of officers and the formation of elected soldiers committees. No, the "real vanguard," we are told, is fighting for the "popular will" to be expressed by the Constituent Assembly, a really striking way of defending the "germs" of workers power. Here we have rearguardism in a nutshell. The correct Leninist position that the revolutionary vanguard fighting for soviet power against bourgeois democracy should patiently attempt to win over the less advanced masses who still hesitate and cling to bourgeois-democratic illusions is converted into its exact opposite: The hesitant, moderate layers become the "vanguard"; the real vanguard becomes an enemy to be despised and fought systematically, if not abandoned to repression. We have told the comrades of the minority before and we tell them again: It is but one small step from tail-ending the rearguard of the masses to tail-ending the reformist leaders. Once one succumbs to the logic of tailending, it is easy to take this step.
Comrade Foley carries his ideas through to the end. In the July 28 issue of Intercontinental Press he wrote:
The July 16
demonstration was a wild display of ultraleft fantasies. It further isolated the most radicalized elements and helped discredit the embryonic forms of workers power that have been developing After this, it will be hard for any workers or tenants committee to gain acceptance as a genuinely representative body that can unite workers and poor masses in struggle." (p. 1063.)
Will it now? How has this prediction stood up against the test of subsequent events? A few months later, these allegedly isolated committees in Oporto and Lisbon succeeded in bringing into the streets crowds just as large as those drawn by the massive SP demonstrations that excited such ecstasy in the hearts of Comrades Foley and Hansen. In fact, many Social Democratic workers actually participated in the massive demonstrations in favor of the SUV (Soldados Unidos Vencerão-Soldiers United Will Win). The difference was that these crowds-whatever the partially confused slogans some of them raised-had a much clearer consciousness and understanding of the next step forward than did the crowds mobilized by the SP: to generalize, coordinate, and centralize the organs of workers power, and not to transmit power to the Constituent Assembly. Which crowds represented the vanguard? Which the rearguard?
How far Comrades Foley and Hansen's blindness to the specific tasks in a revolutionary situation can go is revealed by Comrade Foley's article in the October 6 issue of Intercontinental Press, which criticizes the September 25 mass demonstration organized by the SUV, a demonstration that drew tens of thousands of people. This demonstration ended in a march to a military prison, where the first two soldiers imprisoned for leftist political activity (possession of leaflets, in this case) were being held. The march resulted in the release of the imprisoned militants. This was, Comrade Foley wrote, an ultraleft adventure:
*The political climate in the country was obviously still unfavorable to repression in the military. Thus, a broad campaign (?] could have forced the release of these two SUV activists. ... Instead, the September 25 demonstration isolated [!] the left still more within the armed forces and encouraged more dependence [?] on the demagogues of the MFA." (p. 1323.)
Comrades Foley and Hansen appear not to understand that if you let soldiers be kept in jail for breaches of discipline (and that would have been the objective result of organizing a "broad campaign") instead of freeing them immediately through mass action, you make the greatest possible contribution to the restoration of discipline in the bourgeois army. What other soldiers will dare to break discipline if the mass movement is unable to free the first victims? How does marching on a military prison along with tens of thousands of people demanding the release of imprisoned militants encourage dependence on the demagogues of the MFA? In fact, the victory won by the
"indiscipline"
September 25 demonstration helped spread throughout the army, far from helping to "isolate" the left. It helped spark the solidarity between the soldiers and workers in the occupied radio and television stations and helped spark and carry to victory the occupation of the RASP barracks (Artillery Regiment of Serro do Pilar) in Oporto. The "isolated" SUV brought tens of thousands of people into the streets in successive waves. All this is dismissed by Comrades Foley and Hansen as "ultraleft vanguardism." To stand with tens of thousands of revolutionary workers and soldiers, even if they commit some mistakes, is a piece of advice of Lenin's that Comrades Foley and Hansen now choose to dismiss, along with many other pieces of advice from the same source.
What characterizes Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack's position is a complete withdrawal toward propagandism, an abandonment of all sense of initiative in action, which presumably is to be a domain strictly monopolized by the leaders of the bureaucratized mass organizations that still "control the majority of workers." Here again, the analogy with Healy and Lambert is striking. With such an attitude, our French comrades could never have made their contributions to the barricades in May 1968 in Paris, which triggered a strike of 10 million workers. Nor, for that matter, could the comrades of the Socialist Workers party have initiated the mass antiwar movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Both would have had to limit themselves to propaganda campaigns calling upon the CP and SP bureaucrats in France and the trade-union bureaucrats in the United States to themselves initiate the struggle against the repression of the student movement or the struggle for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, struggles that would then never have begun in reality but would have remained buried in the pages of revolutionary newspapers.
On the Slogan: SP-CP to Power!
Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack make extensive use of a passage from an article written by Trotsky in 1931 in which he severely chides the Spanish anarchists and Stalinists for not calling for general elections in 1931. It is alleged that we are imitating that mistake in Portugal today, leaving the MFA a monopoly on the "national political questions." At the very least, these comrades claim, we are contributing to a situation in which the only "national political alternative" posed to the masses is one of various political coalitions between the working-class parties and wings or sectors of the bourgeois MFA. To this allegedly "anarcho-populist" position of ours, they counterpose the call for the CP and SP leaders to break with all bourgeois ministers (those of both the MFA and the PPD—Partido Popular Democrático, Popular Democratic party) and form a "workers and peasants government."
Contrary to what Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack allege, we do not "grudgingly" recognize that the call upon the leaders of the traditional bureaucratized workers parties to break with the bourgeoisie and take power in their own name is part of Leninist and Trotskyist tradition. We have used this propaganda slogan on many occasions, even in Portugal, from April 1974 to May 1975. We may well have to use it again. What we contest, and what Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack cling to, is the transformation of that propaganda slogan into a panacea applicable to all situations regardless of the relationship of class forces and the relationship of forces within the working class itself, regardless of the immediate priority tasks that are posed
In Portugal today the fate of the revolution depends on the capacity of the toiling masses to generalize, coordinate, and centralize the workers, soldiers, and poor peasants committees. If this centralization does not occur in coming months, the revolution will suffer a defeat that will be serious (although perhaps not as decisive as that suffered in Germany in January 1919).
Under such circumstances, to give the general propaganda formula "workers and peasants government" the specific form "SP-CP government" means to erect an additional stumbling block on the road to the formation of the national workers assembly (or national people's assembly), which is the next decisive step forward that must be taken by the Portuguese revolution. Given the present political line and orientation of the SP and CP leaderships, the masses cannot and will not understand the slogan "SP-CP government" in any other way than as a government based on the Constituent Assembly, that is, the reconstruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, of bourgeois "law and order." That is precisely the immediate goal of bourgeois counterrevolution; we must oppose it with all our strength.
Under the present circumstances, then, and as long as the situation remains at the present transitional stage (the transition from a prerevolutionary situation to a revolutionary one, from one of embryonic dual power to one of generalized dual power), we should formulate the government slogan in such a way as not to clash with the immediate central task at hand. What we must call for is a workers and peasants government based on a national workers assembly. When asked what political forces will compose that government, we answer: That will be determined by the composition of the assembly itself, that is, by the constantly shifting relationship of political forces within the mass movement. It is premature to lend this algebraic expression a precise arithmetical content. Rather, the emphasis must be placed on the program the workers and peasants government must implement to prevent an economic collapse and a rollback of the revolution as well as on the organizational form on which this government must be based: generalized self-organization and self-defense of the broad masses.
In general, the exact formulation of government slogans in an agitational form must be governed by the greatest flexibility. These formulations are conjunctural by nature, and they must reflect not only the general structure of the workers movement, the general level of class consciousness, and the relationship of particular layers of the working class to particular organizations of the class, but also and especially the key tasks of the moment, the specific stage of the class struggle, the main trend of development of working-class consciousness. From that standpoint, we have dropped the slogan "For an SP-CP-Intersindicalworkers commissions government" as a specific and conjunctural formula. We have not at all dropped it as a matter of "principle" or "strategy."
The formula "SP-CP to power" could again become appropriate in at least two, quite different cases:
• If a national workers assembly is actually convened and has an SP-CP majority; that is, in the event of a situation similar to the one in Russia after the convening of the First All-Russian Soviet Congress. In that case, the call for an SP-CP government would dovetail with the call for soviet power, as it did in Russia in April-July 1917, and would be entirely correct;
• If the revolution suffers a serious setback, if the "democratic counterrevolution" is triumphant and the embryonic organs of workers power are destroyed, but if, at the same time, the triumph of counterrevolution is limited and the strength of the working class, still undefeated overall, makes it impossible for reaction to crush the workers organizations, while the counterrevolution is feverishly preparing for taking on that task in the following stage. In such a situation, similar to the one that arose in Germany after the Kapp putsch of March 1920, the slogan of an SP-CP government would again be correct; the slogan would then be an instrument for broadening mass struggles and mobilizations independent of the bourgeoisie and for once again setting in motion a process of self-organization of the working class, which could once again lead to the emergence of bodies of the workers council type.
At the present stage, however, that slogan does not help the Portuguese workers understand what the next step forward must be. It diverts attention from that step, fosters dangerous illusions in the SP-CP leaderships, and tends to strengthen bourgeoisdemocratic illusions, which are already beginning to decline (although they could grow again, and powerfully, if the revolution suffers defeats).
Behind the reasoning of Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack is the assumption that the grip of the CP and SP leaders on their followers is so strong that their followers will not generalize the embryonic organs of workers power before first going through a parliamentary experience with an SP-CP government, or at least without a protracted campaign of propaganda and agitation around the slogan of an SP-CP government. We believe that this assumption is incorrect. We think it is rooted in an underestimation of the depth of the revolutionary process now going on in Portugal, of the depth of the crisis of the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state machine.
Under the dual impact of this crisis and the broadening mass struggles, it is perfectly possible that broader and broader layers of the Portuguese working class (including, in the end, the majority of the working class) will set up workers councils that function as soviets and will begin to coordinate and centralize them before they have gone through the experience of an SP-CP government based on the Constituent Assembly and before they have broken electorally with the SP or the CP. The history of all past proletarian revolutions in Europe confirms this.
Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack fail to understand the implications of the uneven development of class consciousness in revolutionary situations like the one now developing in Portugal. We do not agree with them when they say that "the key to building workers power is political" if what they mean by "building workers power" is the development of a situation of December 22, 1975
generalized dual power and not the actual conquest of power, which comes later. Far from being able to arise only out of "national political questions" and from agitation around slogans like "SP-CP government" or "For a sovereign Constituent Assembly," the real workers councils are now arising and will continue to arise around all the issues of immediate mass struggles. These struggles combine specific political issues-like the fight against fascist conspiracies, the defense of the political rights and activities of the soldiers, and the fight against government-imposed censorship—with issues that are also largely economic and social. The political synthesis will come at the end, not at the beginning.
To believe otherwise is to fail to take account of the uneven development of class consciousness and the initial weakness of the revolutionary party. It means, under the pretext of opposition to "anarchism," "spontanéism," and "gradualism," to once again cling to the rearguard, to be tail-endist, and to underestimate the growing capacity of revolutionary vanguard workers to draw their class comrades who still vote for the SP and the CP into the actual extension and generalization of dual power, even before they have broken with their bureaucratic misleaders.
If lending priority to the generalization, coordination, centralization of workers councils under given circumstances means "abandoning national political questions to the bourgeoisie," then several times in their lives Lenin and Trotsky were as guilty of that sin as we are now. It is easy to list a whole series of instances in which revolutionary Marxists did not advance a concrete government slogan: Russia between the July days of 1917 and the Kornilov uprising; Germany between the January 1919 defeat and the Kapp putsch in March 1920; France between the beginning of the revolutionary upsurge in 1935 and the outbreak of the general strike; Republican Spain between the dissolution of the Central Committee of the Militias and the new working-class upsurge of the beginning of 1937.' All these situations have one aspect in common: The immediate key task is the constitution (or political reconstitution) of organs of workers power. The similarity with the current situation in Portugal is striking.
The International Proletariat's Experience With Stalinism and the Struggle for Workers Democracy in Portugal
Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack strongly insist on the fact that it would be "abstract" to view the question of workers councils and workers democracy in Portugal independently of the experience of the international and Portuguese working class with Stalinism and the ruthless suppression of any form of workers self-organization or self-expression in those countries in which the Soviet bureaucracy rules. Undoubtedly, they have a point here.
It is not only anticommunist propaganda that makes the Portuguese workers and the workers of West Europe as a whole suspicious of the maneuvers and intentions of the Stalinists in the
4. Since its initial publication in 1937, Felix Morrow's Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain has been hailed as a Trotskvist classic. In 1974 it was reprinted by Pathfinder Press, without any criticism. Yet it contains a stinging attack on the POUM for having raised, in the revolutionary situation of March 1937, the slogan of a government of all working-class political and trade-union organizations without regard to the concrete conditions of the moment. (See pp. 134-5 of the 1974 edition.) Incidentally, in the same book, Morrow offers a description of the way workers councils arise; it completely conforms to our line and is in strong opposition to the line of Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack:
"One must never forget-what the Stalinists have completely buriedthat soviets do not begin as organs of state power. They arise in 1905, 1917, in Germany and Austria in 1918, rather as powerful strike committees and representatives of the masses in dealing with immediate concrete problems and with the government. Long before they can seize state power, they carry on as organs defending the workers' daily interests. Long before the workers', peasants' and soldiers' deputies have united in an all-national imperialist countries. That propaganda would not have even a small fraction of its impact were it not for the reality of the conditions of the working class in Soviet society and in those countries that live under the rule of the Soviet bureaucracy. Suspicion and reticence among the workers of the West was further strengthened by the brutal crushing of the "Prague Spring" by the invading armies of the states of the Warsaw pact.
The fact that wherever CP bureaucrats wield real power within the imperialist countries-that is, essentially within the trade unions-they have suppressed workers democracy and engaged in all sorts of bureaucratic manipulations and maneuvers fuels the fires of anticommunist propaganda and prejudices and increases the genuine and justifiable suspicions of the workers in the imperialist West toward the Soviet bureaucracy and the local CP leaderships.
If comrades in the Fourth International underestimate the importance of this factor, tend to dismiss it, or fail to take it sufficiently into account in their reportage and analysis of the political crisis in Portugal since May 1975, they are committing a serious mistake. In our writings we have always incorporated this factor into the analysis, and especially into the formulation of slogans and tasks. Nonetheless, we are prepared to take responsibility for insufficient rapidity and clarity in correcting these mistakes.
In our writings, we have repeatedly insisted that in reconstructing the unity in action of the Portuguese working class it was vital to avoid any step, any formula, or any mistake that could create the impression that we deny the Socialist party freedom of organization, freedom of the press, freedom of demonstration, or freedom to advocate and agitate for policies opposed to those of the CP, the revolutionary vanguard, or the Fourth International. Not to understand the vital importance of defending proletarian democracy in practice today, and in any revolutionary process, means to gravely underestimate the damage that has been done to the consciousness of large parts of the international proletariat by fifty years of Stalinism. In that sense, Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack misrepresent our position when they allege that we defended the right of the SP to its own free press only in a future, "ideal" workers state. We defended this right for Portugal today, not only in articles appearing in our own press, but also in daily and weekly papers with circulations of tens of thousands in Portugal itself. (Comrade Mandel's interview published in the weekly Sempre Fixe in August 1975 is an example.)
Any section, press organ, or representative of the Fourth congress there must have been formed the city, village, regimental soviets which are later to be united in a national organ. The way to begin getting such a congress is to begin electing factory, peasants' and combatants' committees wherever the workers can be taught to function through their own committees. The example of a few committees in a few factories and regiments will win the masses to this form, the most democratic method of representation known to mankind. Then, only, can one organize an allnational congress in a bid for power." (Ibid., P. 136, second emphasis added.)
Another "gradualist" sinner. And Comrade Hansen never noticed-in nearly forty years! Or perhaps this quotation confirms how much the position we defend is in the Trotskyist tradition and how much Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack are moving away from that tradition?
International committing a mistake on this question objectively serves the Stalinist and reformist attempts to dismiss workers democracy as irrelevant and places additional obstacles in the way of the return of the world revolution to the classical pattern of soviet power and soviet democracy based on a multiparty system. While the centrists and ultraleftists are a thousand times more guilty here than some Trotskyists, the program and tradition of the Fourth International are so clear and unblemished on this point that even the slightest ambiguity should not be tolerated from any of our comrades. (It ought to be noted in passing that Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack distribute blame on such matters in a rather uneven manner, correctly denouncing the Stalinists for accusing Soares of "social-fascism," but failing to mention the parallel and no less criminal stance of the Socialist party and the Maoist MRPP in calling Cunhal "social-fascist.")
But while Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack undoubtedly have a point in stressing the effects on working-class consciousness of the international experience with Stalinism, they transform this merit into a demerit and a disastrous mistake when they draw the conclusion that because of the impact of world Stalinism on current revolutions in the West, it is "abstract" and "ineffective" to counterpose workers democracy and workers councils to both Stalinist-type "people's democracy" and bourgeois democracy:
"Comrade Mandel in particular has offered blueprints of what ought to be done and could be done in cases like the seizure of República if the institutions of proletarian democracy were further advanced and if they adhered to the programmatic norms of Trotskyism.
"This purely propagandistic approach (Comrades Frank, Maitan, and Mandel might call it playing 'some propaganda game') was ineffective, since the number of countries that can be pointed to as upholding proletarian democracy is zero.
"To avoid appearing like utopian schematists, it was necessary for our comrades to show in action their capacity to defend whatever democracy existed, even if it was in the form of no more than pinched, narrow bourgeois democratic rights." (IP, October 13, p. 1389.)
Rather formidable conclusions follow from this line of argument. The "number of countries that can be pointed to as upholding proletarian democracy" will be zero right up until the first "pure" model of workers state arises. In the minds of Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack, the absence of such a pure model constitutes an insuperable obstacle on the road to the development of workers councils and workers democracy and transforms propaganda and agitation in their favor into a "utopian scheme." Doesn't that rule out any "pure" proletarian revolution anywhere, anytime, after the terrible experience of Stalinism? How can you have soviets without propagandizing for them? Is that propaganda condemned to remaining "utopian" and "abstract" as long as there is no model country that can be pointed to?
In fact, what Social Democrats, centrists, and Stalinists are saying today throughout West Europe is that the only realistic choice is between bourgeois democracy and reactionary dictatorship; workers democracy is "unrealistic," "abstract," and "utopian" (because it has failed in Russia and East Europe, say the Social Democrats; because it is impractical anyway, add the skepties; because workers consciousness is still insufficient, lament the centrists; because the "international relationship of forces" or the "backwardness of the working class" doesn't allow it, echo the Italian, French, Spanish, Belgian, West German, and Swedish Stalinists). So, all these gentlemen conclude: Bourgeois democracy? Yes. Advanced democracy? Yes. "Mixed economy?" By all means. But the democracy of workers councils? Impossible; utopian, abstract, ineffective, unrealistic. Have Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack now joined this international brigade, under the pretext of having thoroughly understood the effects of Stalinism?
We, while recognizing the additional obstacles that Stalinism has placed on the road to workers democracy, also note the additional strength this "schema" has acquired as a result of the growth of the proletariat in West Europe during the past twentyfive years, the spread of the concepts and practices of selforganization to other strata of the population, the further decay of bourgeois democracy and of bourgeois social relations in general, the increase in the cultural level, leisure, and skill of the laboring population, the growing conviction among many people that the democracy of workers councils is a step forward compared with parliamentary democracy, and the increasingly powerful instinctive thrust toward self-organization growing out of current workers struggles (elected strike committees, for example). If the damaging effects of Stalinism are weighed against the positive effects of these factors-not to mention the strength of the mass vanguard in West Europe, which has been largely won over to the concepts of workers power and workers democracy-the overall balance is decidely more favorable than Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack seem to believe. Whether in Portugal or Spain, France or Italy, the possibility of making workers democracy and workers councils credible and acceptable as a concrete alternative to millions of toilers does not depend essentially on the existence of a foreign model (a country that can be pointed to as upholding proletarian democracy"), but rather on the depth of the revolutionary crisis, the extent of mass action and mobilization, the size of the mass vanguard, the altered relationship of forces between that vanguard and the bureaucratic apparatuses of the traditional working class organizations, and the strength and influence of the revolutionary party.
We are deeply convinced that, especially since May 1968, the working class of West Europe is capable of creating a "model workers state" based on workers councils and workers democracy without any previously existing model; the resolutions adopted by the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International include that conviction. Indeed, it will be the working class of West Europe that will be the first to create these states-and in several countries. That is why we are so "obsessed" by the "concept of the self-organization of the proletariat." The formidable obstacles of anticommunist prejudices, bourgeois-democratic illusions, and genuine and justified suspicions toward Stalinist bureaucrats will be overcome in practice, in the actual process of building the workers councils, based on a jealous defense of workers democracy and a real respect for the pluralism of the various political organizations that represent the masses within the councils. History and history alone will settle the question of whether this
"utopian," "abstract,"
approach and this prediction are "ineffective" in Portugal. In point of fact, it is becoming less "utopian" every week. And we are rather confident that realism" and "effectiveness" will turn out to be on our side in Spain, France, and Italy as well.
The position defended by the Fourth International and the LCI offers the only possibility of reestablishing the unity in action of the whole class in practice. To the SP and CP workers, and to the workers who already follow the revolutionary left, we say: Obviously, we do not all agree on the Constituent Assembly, on "parliamentary" or "popular" democracy, on judgments about Social Democracy or Stalinism, or even communism. But prior agreement on such questions is not required before defending the revolution and bringing it a step forward. We all agree on the need to defend all the conquests our class has made since April 25, 1974, both the democratic ones and the anticapitalist ones. We all agree on the burning need to fight unemployment, inflation, factory shutdowns, bourgeois economic sabotage, censorship, curtailment of the democratic rights of soldiers. We all participate in committees on the factory, village, and barracks levels (yes, all, for many workers led by the SP participate as well) in order to December 22, 1975
further these goals. Let us coordinate our efforts at these levels where we are already active. Let us create a minimum of coordination and unity of action among us that will make us invincible, that will enable us to paralyze all our enemies and eliminate all our mutual suspicion and prejudice. Instead of convening separate conferences of MRPP and SP-led commissions, CP-led commissions, UDP-led commissions, MES-led commissions, let us call a single conference of all workers, soldiers, and peasants commissions of the entire country. This is the only practical way to restore the unity of the toiling masses, which has been broken since May 1975. Within this conference, all of us, Socialists, Social Democrats, Communists, revolutionary Marxists, anarchists, will be absolutely free to defend our positions and to agitate for the solutions we support. But we will do so while strengthening and not weakening the organization of the working class as a whole.
Such an appeal, which gives expression to the deeply felt desire for class unity that is always present among the working class, would draw a powerful response from the Portuguese masses. It would gain important political credit for the only current that is capable of actively defending a platform of unity in action against all splitters: the Trotskyist current, the current of the Fourth International.
Does this mean that we counterpose the "united front from below" to the "united front from above and below"? Not at all. It simply means that we do not consider an agreement between Soares and Cunhal (or between the revolutionaries and Soares and Cunhal) to be a precondition for setting this process in motion. In reality, the process has already begun spontaneously and is spreading as a result of vanguard initiatives. At each moment, around each specific problem, all the various factors must be weighed in order to decide whether public appeals should be addressed to the SP, the CP, and the Intersindical calling on them to support, participate in, or lead this or that additional initiative to raise the movement to a higher level of organization. Whenever this can be done credibly, that is, whenever a minimum of political preconditions exist, the vanguard and the LCI should by all means supplement the call to the masses with a call to the leaders of the mass organizations.
The Danger of Succumbing to Sectarian Subjectivism
There is a real danger that the method used by Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack in analyzing the revolutionary process in Portugal will play havoc with the politics of the SWP itself. For the ultimate result of that method can be seen in the evolution of the political analyses of the Healy and Lambert groupings. That end result is the dead end of sectarian subjectivism.
The characteristic of a sect of the Healy-Lambert type is its inability to view a political problem, especially a revolutionary process, in a rounded and all-sided way. In the hands of such sects, Marxism ceases to be an instrument for understanding reality in its totality and dynamic in order to achieve revolutionary change. Instead it becomes a dogma designed to verify, often against all objective evidence, the particular raison d'être of the sect in question, that sect's special shibboleth, the vehicle through which it justifies its separate existence from the organized current of revolutionary Marxism. Healy and Lambert each maintain a number of these shibboleths, some in common, some not, "Pabloite revisionism" being the most usual one. A rich, complex, and constantly changing reality is torn apart; some partial aspect of reality is extended out of all proportion until it becomes the "main trend" around which all comments and interventions must
"reorganized." Pronounced be centered; complex reality is subjectivism leads to dogmatism and an incapacity to intervene in the class struggle in any decisive way. With each new turn in the situation, regardless of the dismal balance sheet, the 1835
shibboleth is advanced again and again; in spite of the sect's failure to influence the course of the class struggle, it will try to stabilize itself by turning inward, particularly by launching a good old faction fight against the mainstream of Trotskyism, the "Pabloite revisionists" of the Fourth International.
The day-to-day politics of such a sect may be ultraleft or right opportunist. Its character as a sect is expressed in its subjective dogmatism, its refusal to analyze objective reality in its totality, its obsession with some particular aspect of reality that happens to be closely tied to the sect's self-justification.
A streak of similar irrational subjectivism can be detected in Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack's approach to the Portuguese revolution. Moreover, they have extended these traits, borrowed from the arsenal of Healy-Lambert, from the field of the analysis of the Portuguese revolution to the field of polemical methods within the world Trotskyist movement.
All the comments of Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack center around one aspect of Portuguese reality and one aspect only: the bourgeois character of the MFA, the key task of "destroying illusions" in the MFA, and the alleged softness of the majority of the leaders of the Fourth International on these subjects. Something has obviously gone awry here. Indeed, the struggle for the class independence of the proletariat in a revolutionary situation (or a prerevolutionary situation rapidly growing over to a revolutionary one) is a key task for revolutionary Marxists. But this can in no way be reduced to the "struggle against illusions in the MFA." The working class can be and has been tied to the bourgeoisie not only through governmental collaboration with bourgeois parties and ministers and illusions in "military demagogues," but also and even more so through illusions in bourgeois-parliamentary institutions and reformist politics in general. It is completely one-sided and subjectivist to regard "illusions in the MFA" as the main danger in Portugal today, as a greater danger than illusions in bourgeois democracy or reformism. "Reorganizing" the reality of the revolutionary process around this particular shibboleth leads to wrong and Iudicrously misleading analyses, such as interpreting the forms of coordination of the nuclei of workers power, which have arisen spontaneously, as the product of "demagogic maneuvers" by "bourgeois officers," or such as condemning a mass action to release imprisoned soldiers as an "ultraleft adventure" that only enabled Carvalho to make a demagogic gesture. The objective impact of these events and processes becomes unimportant or secondary. (Healy even calls it "diversionist.") The "essence" of the matter is that under no conditions should Carvalho be allowed to gain additional prestige.
We have never left any room for doubt about our position on the bourgeois character of the MFA, the Portuguese state, and the Portuguese government. We have not been and we are not now "soft"" on these questions. Any claim to the contrary can be based only on distortion or deliberate slander, as is the case with the Healyites." But we have refused and will refuse to view all events of the struggle in Portugal through the prism of whether or not they could be "exploited" by "demagogic officers." We view them from the standpoint of their overall impact on the class struggle. From that standpoint, and in view of the depth of the revolutionary crisis and the degree of decomposition of the bourgeois state, we put the main emphasis on the building and centralization of workers councils and on the arming of the working class. To close one's eyes to the disintegration of the army and the deep divisions in the officer corps that arise from this disintegration under the impact of the extreme polarization of class forces is to become a prisoner of subjectivism of the Healy-Lambert type.
our references to the divisions in the army as meaning that we "really think" that a socialist revolution could be led to victory by the left wing of the MFA. (Workers Press, October 7) 1836
Not to understand that on the eve of a civil war, when both class camps are preparing for the decisive test of strength, it makes some small difference whether an officer distributes machine guns to the workers or tries to give them to the fascists is to fall into hopeless sectarianism. It would be wiser for Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack to abandon that dogmatic-sectarian stance and listen to what Comrade Trotsky had to say on the subject:
"During the revolution, inevitable oscillations will occur in the army, an internal struggle will take place. Even the most advanced sections will not go over openly and actively to the side of the proletariat unless they see with their own eyes that the workers want to fight and are able to win. The tasks of the Fascist detachments will be to prevent the rapprochement between the revolutionary proletariat and the army. The Fascists will strive to annihilate the workers' insurrection at its outset in order to destroy among the best sections of the army any idea of the possibility of supporting the insurgents. At the same time the Fascists will come to the aid of reactionary detachments of the army to disarm the most revolutionary and the least 'reliable' regiments.
"What will be our task in this case?
"It is impossible to tell in advance the concrete course of the revolution in any given country. But we can, on the basis of the entire experience of history, state with certainty that the insurrection in no case and in no country will assume the character of a mere duel between the workers' militia and the army. The relationship of forces will be much more complex and immeasurably more favorable to the proletariat. The workers' militia-not by its armaments but by its class consciousness and heroism—will be the vanguard of the revolution. Fascism will be the vanguard of the counter-revolution. The workers' militia with the support of the entire class, with the sympathy of all the toilers, will have to smash, disarm and terrorize the bandit gangs of reaction and thus open up the avenue to the workers for revolutionary fraternization with the army. The alliance of workers and soldiers will be victorious over the counterrevolutionary section. Thus victory will be assured." ("Once Again, Whither France?" in Whither France?, Pathfinder Press, pp. 95-96.)
Understand, exploit, and take account of the inevitable divisions of the bourgeois army through a daring policy of independent revolutionary mobilization and class action: That is the course Trotsky urged upon the French revolutionaries in March 1935, when the bourgeois army was far more stable than it is in Portugal today. We can turn Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack's question back at them: Was Trotsky right, wrong, or irrelevant?
Despite the façade of their "mass approach," Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack's handling of the key tasks of the Portuguese revolution is marked by frightful sectarian ultimatism toward the masses. The main task for revolutionary Marxists, we are told, is to destroy illusions in the MFA. The MFA, however, counterposes the workers councils to the Constituent Assembly. Thus, to place any confidence in the workers councils is to place confidence in the MFA, which is exactly the opposite of what must be done. Hence, we revolutionary Marxists forbid the workers to build workers councils until illusions in the MFA have been eliminated If the workers and soldiers do not follow our advice and are "ultraleft" enough to set up councils despite our warnings, we simply decide that we will not recognize these organs as genuine soviets. Instead, we will defend only the "expression of popular will," that is, a bourgeois parliament, against the councils.
The real Leninist and Trotskyist approach, of course, is diametrically the opposite. We revolutionary Marxists, while fighting against any illusions the masses still have in the MFA, in an SP-CP "popular front" policy, in parliamentarism, and in reformism, will support and push forward all attempts at selforganization of the masses. Any committee or council elected is a practical step toward overcoming these illusions, a step that is a thousand times more effective than any propaganda campaign, no matter how well carried out. It is through the establishment, extension, generalization, coordination, and centralization of these committees that the credibility and possibility of a workers and peasants government will be understood by the broad masses in a revolutionary situation like the one now developing in Portugal. That is the way the masses will break any stranglehold of the MFA in practice. One has only to read Trotsky's article "For Committees of Action, Not the People's Front" (November 1935) to see how far removed Trotsky was from the sectarian ultimatism of the Foley-Hansen-Novack type.
When turned toward inner-party polemies, subjectivism leads to blind factionalism. One-fourth of Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack's article is devoted to obscure and tedious polemies around quotations from press organs of the Fourth International in more than half a dozen different countries, polemics that are completely beside the point. What is disturbing about these polemics is the fact that, aping the method of Healy and Lambert, they do not ask such questions as, What is the actual line of Red Weekly, Rouge, or Rood on the MFA or the tasks of revolutionary Marxists in Portugal? No, they airily dismiss as irrelevant dozens of articles and published resolutions voted by leading bodies that clearly state the positions of these comrades on the bourgeois nature of the MFA and the fifth and sixth provisional governments and instead "infer" an opposite position from some isolated sentences taken out of context or from "facts" such as the absence of comments about what Coutinho says in an interview with Alain Krivine. In the same way, one could "infer" from the Militant's publication "without comment" of an interview with a spokesman of the bourgeois el-Fateh that the newspaper had abandoned the theory of permanent revolution and had endowed the national bourgeoisie with the capacity to lead the Palestinian revolution to victory. In fact, such accusations have been directed against the SWP by some sectarians. Why dip your cup into this poisoned well, Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack?
The Real Record of the LCI
But Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack have one last ace up their sleeves:
"The comrades of the Liga Comunista Internacionalista, who are directly involved in the situation and who are seriously trying to apply the orientation that Comrades Frank, Maitan, and is ta tum have been tall
Mandel have helped to give them, ... ended up tail-ending the ultraleft and centrist groups. These groups in turn have been tailending the Portuguese Communist party. The outcome represents a grievous political setback for the LCI and also for the Fourth International.
"In fact, the recent errors of the LCI are sadly reminiscent of those of the POUM in Spain in which the majority of the Trotskyist forces were lost to the Fourth International and its program.
"The POUM began by capitulating to the anarchists and ended up in fact capitulating to the Stalinists when the anarchists, because of their political confusion, were drawn into the wake of the Communist party." (IP, October 13, p. 1389.)
Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack try to make factional use of the fact that the leadership of the LCI signed a statement (on August 25) that was politically wrong, a statement that was signed in common with the CP and some centrist formations. The trouble is that everything is wrong in the contorted manner in which Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack try to make use of this incident.
In the first place, the comparison with the POUM is especially revealing and inadmissible. The POUM crossed class lines by joining a popular front with bourgeois parties and then by December 22, 1975
entering a bourgeois coalition government in Catalonia. The LCI made a bloc with working-class parties, albeit opportunist, centrist, and ultraleftist ones. But there is no principled ground on which to object to that. It does not represent crossing class lines. The important thing is whether the objectives and platform of the bloc are correct or not. We believe they were not; the leadership of the LCI believed they were. This is a difference in tactics, not principles. The question of joining a bloc with bourgeois parties is a matter of principle, not of tactics. It means crossing over from a position of class struggle to a position of class collaboration. That is what the POUM did by joining the Popular Front. The LCI has done nothing of the kind. Once again, Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack have shown how easily they abandon the class criterion.
Second, even though they know better, Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack write that the "comrades of the LCI ...
[are]... seriously trying to apply the orientation of Comrades Frank, Maitan, and Mandel," who thereby are allegedly responsible for the mistake of the CI's signing the August 25 declaration. This is completely untrue. The second congress of the LCI was held in early August. There were four tendencies at that congress, one of which, by agreement of the congress as a whole, received an absolute majority of members of the Central Committee, although this tendency represented only a plurality and not a the majority of the delegates to the congress. At the congress, comrades who lead this tendency expressed views on the CP and the SP with which the representative of the international leadership strongly and clearly expressed disagreement. The comrades who lead this tendency are in no way members of the international majority tendency, nor are they "products," either direct or indirect, of the education of the present leadership of the Fourth International. They disagree with us on a number of important points, and we disagree with them.
Although we expressed our misgivings about the line of the tendency that was elected as the majority of the leadership at the second congress of the LCI, we also expressed confidence in the capacity of that young organization to correct any mistakes that would be made, to correct them through a process of democratic and constructive internal debate in consonance with a rhythm imposed by the revolutionary process itself. This confidence has not shown itself to be unfounded. An extraordinary congress of the LCI has been convened by the Central Committee for December 1975. All indications tend to confirm that a majority of the members of the LCI, including all the cadres who are "seriously trying to apply the orientation that Comrades Frank, Maitan, and Mandel helped to give them," have come out against the mistake of signing the August 25 declaration. On this occasion, the education and leadership they had received proved to be not as "ineffective" or "disastrous" as Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack presume.
Third, the leadership and press of all the sections of the Fourth International that are in agreement with the "orientation that Comrades Frank, Maitan, and Mandel helped to give them" immediately and unanimously condemned the August 25 declaration. Thus, the conclusions that flow from this incident are rather the opposite of those Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack try to insinuate. In fact, the "education" received from us old sinners inoculated the majority of the Fourth International, including in Portugal, against opportunist mistakes of the kind Comrades Foley, Hansen, and Novack are eagerly trying to uncover in our camp.
Fourth, simultaneously (or within twenty-four hours) as they mistakenly signed the August 25 declaration, the comrades of the LCI leadership publicly condemned any support to the bourgeois MFA. But the comrades of the PRT (Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores-Revolutionary Workers party) had this to say in a "public self criticism" published on July 10, 1975, and never corrected since then:
Notes
5. It should be added, however, that in this the Stalinists are only imitating the example set by the reformist labor fakers and Social Democratic bureaucrats. Soares is an enthusiastic believer in the "right of tendencies" within the Intersindical in Portugal, because he happens to be in a minority there. But in countries in which they control the trade unions, the Social Democratic bureaucrats, far from applying workers democracy and respecting the right of tendencies, often exercise a regime of expulsions of "leftists," trample on the democratic rights of the membership, institutionalize bureaucratic rule (sometimes years go by between general assemblies of members), and generally conduct themselves no differently from the Stalinist bureaucrats who lead mass trade unions in other places in the capitalist world.
6. In face of all evidence to the contrary, the Healyite Workers Press continues to "interpret"