[The following article appeared in the August 28 issue of Direct Action, a weekly newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, that reflects the views of the Australian Socialist Workers Party J
SYDNEY - Meeting on August 16-18, the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party voted unanimously to withdraw from the Fourth International, the main international organisation of Trotskyist parties, to which the SWP had been affiliated for about 15 years.
The decision followed a report presented on behalf of the National Executive by Doug Lorimer, one of the party's delegates to the twelfth world congress of the Fourth International. The congress was held in Europe earlier this year.
The SWP representatives presented two resolutions to the congress: The Cuban Revolution and its Extension, and the Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch. (Both are available as books from Resistance Centres. Addresses, page 22.)
Both resolutions were opposed by the two major factions in the International; the majority group based mainly on leaders of the European parties, and a minority consisting of followers of the United States Socialist Workers Party.
An obstacle
The experience of the congress, said Lorimer, had convinced the Australian delegates that the Fourth International's "very existence is an obstacle to the revolutionaries who are in it participating fully in the process of building a new international revolutionary movement - one with mass influence.
"It is counterposed," he added, "to the mass international revolutionary movement that already does exist and that is developing, particularly in Latin America."
As with previous world congresses at which SWP delegates had been present, a considerable amount of time was taken up with organisational disputes, said Lorimer. And the political discussion at times had little point.
Fortunately, said Lorimer, the world congress was not a reflection of the daily functioning of many parties in the Fourth International: "More and more comrades are less and less interested in the interminable discussion of what appears to them as very abstract programmatic issues and the organisational wrangling that has tended to dominate the political life of the international.
"They are interested in general programmatie debates only insofar as they have relevance to the practical political work of party building."
Incessant factionalism
"But the domination of discussion by rarefied theoretical questions, and the incessant factionalism, are inevitable products of the way the Fourth International came into existence — as an international organisation based on small propaganda groups united around a precise program, strategy and tactics, rather than around big mass struggles.
*The tendency to elevate written programmatic positions above practical activity in the class struggle continues to dominate the thinking and approach of the Fourth International leadership.
"This could be seen in the majority's approach to the Central American revolutions and the question of building a mass international revolutionary movement."
The congress report on Central America, said Lorimer, contained little "that we would have substantial disagreement with. " But it left out the role of Cuba: The example Cuba and its Marxist-Leninist leadership sets for anti-imperialist fighters throughout the world. "It was clear that the majority at the congress wanted to avoid the Cuba question.
"The report made only one brief reference to the Cuban leadership. It noted that the leaderships in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba represented the overcoming of the crisis of revolutionary leadership in that area.
"This attitude demonstrates the most glaring problem with the outlook and approach of the Fourth International majority. Here we have a congress of a small international revolutionary organisation — an organisation whose proclaimed goal is to help overcome the crisis of revolutionary leadership, and to make revolutions.
"And on the other hand, we have the overcoming of the crisis of leadership in a part of the world in which revolutionary developments are having tremendous repercussions on Latin American and world politics. But what do these momentous developments mean for the role of the Fourth International? Apparently, very little at all."
Discussing the congress in the June 17 International Viewpoint, Daniel Bensaid, a leader of the Fourth International, said: "In a way the Nicaraguan revolution represents a challenge for us. It is a revolution made by others, and at the beginning we understood it badly."*
Why did the Fourth International understand the Nicaraguan revolution "badly," asked Lorimer. Couldn't the reason be that it had a wrong policy? The problem certainly wasn't lack of information, as there were supporters of the international in Nicaragua almost from the beginning.
"How does the Fourth International propose to respond,
," to revolutionary developments in Central and Latin America? *They say they must "participate fully in these processes,' but at the same time 'keep our sights on the need for the Fourth International' and the need to defend its program, since this has supposedly been proved right — though not by the Fourth International leading revolutions, but by other people doing this with a different program.
"The comrades refuse to see that by continuing to keep their sights on building an international organisation on a program that is different from those of the people who have made revolutions they are blocking any possibility of participating fully in the process of building new parties in Latin America and elsewhere.
Bensaid described the Fourth International as "a historic current that preserves one little thing in particular, an international view of revolution, and which from its origins has represented an alternative view of Stalinism."
"But," said Lorimer, "the international revolutionary movement that the Cuban Communist Party and the Nicaraguan FSLN represent has done far more than 'preserve an international view.' It has promoted the actual international extension of the revolution. It has presented an alternative to Stalinism in practice. The failure of the Fourth International majority to see this shows that for it, words are more important than deeds.
"We think organisations like the Cuban Communist Party, the FLN, El Salvador's FMLN, and the Vietnamese Communist Party are dealing with present political developments most dynamically and creatively. There is no need to build a political current separate and distinct from them," added Doug Lorimer.
"If the revolutionary cadres who constitute the Fourth International are really going to participate in the process of building new mass parties and a new mass revolutionary international movement, they must break with the idea that having an alternative view of Stalinism justifies being in a separate historic
*This interview also appeared in the August 5 issue of Intercontinental Press. - IP 570
current.""
Politically narrow
"New mass revolutionary parties will not be built through the Fourth International," said Lorimer. "This is not only because it is too small, but because it is too politically narrow. It is built around a program containing key elements that have been repeatedly proven wrong by the revolutionary victories that have occurred this century.
The Socialist Workers Party "could continue to argue for our views within the framework of the Fourth International," Lorimer added, "but we don't think this would be of much value. If the shock of the Nicaraguan Revolution is not enough to cause the Fourth International majority to reconsider its fundamental course, no amount of argument on our part will change
Leaving the Fourth International does not reflect a turn away from internationalism, said Lorimer, "in fact, we are turning towards a more real internationalism.
"Our conception of internationalism involves developing international collaboration. It involves comradely exchanges of views and experiences, based on a willingness to learn from others while thinking for ourselves."
While the SWP has ended its participation in the Fourth International, added Lorimer, "we want to have relations with anyone who is prepared to exchange views and experiences with us, including parties remaining in the Fourth International."
Discussing Doug Lorimer's report, SWP national secretary Jim Percy commented: "In the end, our political position is a total negation of the whole reason for the existence of the Fourth International.
"Consider the impact of the Nicaraguan Revolution on the Fourth International: It forced the key leaders of the Fourth International today to distort Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution."
In the discussion at the world congress, leaders of the international majority faction claimed that Trotsky accepted the need for two stage revolutions in colonial countries.
In fact, beginning in 1905, Trotsky argued that there was only one stage - the socialist stage. Lenin pointed out that revolutions in the colonial world must first pass through a democratic stage.
"Because the leaders of the Fourth International want to respond genuinely to the Nicara-
Revolution, they have to distort guan Trotsky's theory very much, to say it's no different to Lenin's view. Okay, we could say that's optimistic. Who cares what we call it? Call it Trotsky's theory, or Lenin's theory, what's in a name.
"But there's another problem. The problem of where the thinking stops. It stops at the borders of Nicaragua. It can't cross the Caribbean to Cuba.
"The reason it can't get to Cuba is not because of Cuba. What they're really worried about is the Soviet Union. The Trotskyist view of Stalinism stands in the way of understanding the importance of what is happening in Cuba.
"There are other problems too. Trotskyist politics leads to the most terrible organisational mess, rottenness, blunders. The crisis in the Fourth International will continue. The present bloc between the European and United States factions is quite cynical. It will probably fly apart.
"But there are revolutionists in the Fourth International, and there are revolutionary organisations in it.
"We must have a certain modesty about what we are doing," added Jim Percy. "Leaving the Fourth International in itself solves nothing for us, it merely removes an obstacle to our development of relations with other revolutionary forces. It certainly doesn't present us with any magical, overnight solutions to the problems we face in trying to build a revolutionary party.
"Saying the Fourth International is an obstacle doesn't mean that all of its parties are also. There's nothing better than the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire in France, or the Socialist Party in Sweden, or the Revolutionary Workers Party in Mexico. But insofar as they think the Fourth International is real, they miseducate their comrades. They don't provide a revolutionary perspective that allows them to see the real development of the world situation.
Vietnam, Cuba
"In the end we're leaving for a combination of political and organisational reasons. I think it was wrong to form the Fourth International in the first place, although we're not voting on that.
"In the end the organisational form cut off Trotsky and the Trotskyists from any other possibility of development of the Communist movement. And some parties, as we know now, for instance the Vietnamese Communist Party, did develop in a revolutionary direction, made revolutions.
'It was wrong in the 1960s, with the Cuban ‹evolution. not to lundamentally reorient th Fourth International then.
"Then there was the Vietnamese Revolution. If we hadn't had these blinkers about Stalinism, that massive struggle (which the Fourth International did a great deal of work to defend), should have been enough to make us understand that a Communist party doesn't go through that unless there's something good about it," said Jim Percy.
"This is not a cavalier decision," he added. "Over 15 or so years we've devoted a lot of resources to trying to strengthen the international centre, to traveling to Fourth International functions, to collaborating with other parties in the international.
"Later, we put a lot of energy into trying to convince others of our views. Now, we have other things to do. It would be quite irresponsible not to take this step."
The full text of Doug Lorimer's report will be available from Resistance Centres in a few weeks.