To properly judge the resolution that has been placed before the congress, and in particular the arguments made by Comrade Roman, the reporter for the International Executive Committee Majority Tendency, who went beyond Latin America— citing events elsewhere in the world— to bolster his arguments on the "programmatic clarification" offered by the resolution, it is necessary to consider the document in relation to the position on this question held by the Fourth International since it was founded in 1938.
The fundamental position of the Fourth International on armed struggle proceeds from the view that the socialist revolution, unlike all previous revolutions, is a conscious action carried out by the masses —by the masses in their millions and tens of millions — under the leadership of the proletariat. This sounds simple; and it is simple —but it is also very profound. It constitutes the basic frame of revolutionary Marxist politics, distinguishing us from all other tendencies in the radical movement. We proceed from this view in trying to solve the key problem that faces us as revolutionary Marxists today: how to bring the program of socialism to the masses so that they adopt it as their own program and set out themselves to realize it in life. This is very clearly shown by the way Trotsky, in his final programmatic state ment on the question of armed struggle, handles the subject in the Transitional Program.
He begins with mass actions; in this instance with a wave of sit-down strikes and occupations of factories. That is the proper way to begin from the Marxist point of view. Then he proceeds to the probable response by the bourgeoisie — the use of violence. This in turn impels the workers to act in self-defense. Measures of self-defense, worked out by the masses and put into effect by the masses, sharpen the class struggle, as Trotsky outlines the likely course of events. The bourgeoisie, as has been seen in many a bitter strike struggle, resorts to the use of armed thugs, to private armies, in addition to the ordinary use of the police and army. As the struggle sharpens, the bourgeoisie inclines more and more toward a fascist take-over. Or, if you wish to look at it in the context of many areas today, including Latin America, the bourgeoisie inclines toward a military coup and the establishment of a repressive military regime.
And so to defend themselves in the most powerful way open to them, the masses mobilize in their millions. Their self-defensive measures — as Trotsky continues the logical sequence-become broader, sharper, and increasingly effective through the organization of armed workers detachments. This involves, as Trotsky stresses, tens of millions of toilers. In dealing with armed struggle, Trotsky al ways speaks in terms of the masses —of the vast majority of the population. The battle begins in the plants, Trotsky says; in the plants where the workers are. It ends with the masses flooding the streets as the contending class forces confront each other in mounting clashes.
The nuclei in this area of the class struggle consist of strike pickets. That's the point of departure. For the workers, self-defense begins with pickets. These develop at a later stage, as Trotsky visualized the sequence, into a workers militia. Trotsky emphasizes, moreover, that as the struggle proceeds, the advances always occur on the basis of the experience of the masses themselves. He is simply stating the most elementary proposition of Marxist politics. Our politics is the politics of the mass movement, of mass struggles.
Here is Trotsky's summary on the question of armed struggle:
"Engels defined the state as bodies of armed men.' The arming of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle for liberation. When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and the means to arming. In this field, also, the leadership falls naturally to the sections of the Fourth International." What is the essence of this position, of this revolutionary Marxist political position? It is the mobilization and organization of tens of millions of people. The concept is one of immense boldness-a perspective of organizing the masses by the millions. Considering the small forces that we start with, what perspective could be bolder than that?
By what strategy is this aim to be achieved? It is through the construction of a mass revolutionary party, an instrument interlocked with the masses and thereby in position to provide them with leadership at each stage of the struggle. Consider more closely Trotsky's sentence on how the proletariat is to be armed. This is Trotsky speaking: "When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and the means to arming."
Does this mean that Trotsky was a spontaneist? Few today would call Trotsky a spontaneist. In 1938 that position was called having confidence in the initiative of the masses. Initiatives in action, if you please.
Trotsky was not an advocate of violence. He said more than once that it would be preferable to avoid violence. He pointed out, however, that the decision on this question rested with the bourgeoisie, and that history teaches us that the bourgeoisie will resort to minority violence if they believe their rule to be seriously endangered. The majority then has no choice but to defend itself against the violence of the small minority hanging on to power against the will of the people.
Trotsky insisted on the importance of the distinction between majority and minority. In the case of the civil war in the United States and again in Spain, it was the reactionary minority that resorted to violence in hope of frustrating the will of the majority. The majority had no choice but to respond in kind.
Trotsky's rejection of a course that
This counterreport was made by
Joseph Hansen in behalf of the
Leninist-Trotskyist
Faction. The vote was for 118, against 143, abstentions 6, not voting 3. would have involved our movement in the use of "minority violence" cannot be ascribed to pacifism, tail-endism, or right opportunism on his part. In the last years of his life, as is well known, he was greatly concerned about the mounting threat from native fascism in the United States itself. Against that threat, Trotsky counseled his followers in the United States to use their influence to help the trade unions and other mass organizations initiate the organization of workers defense guards. What Trotsky said on this question in the last years of his life is especially important. He was voicing his considered judgment based on the entire experience of the revolutionary movement, including what he had learned in the Russian revolution and in the struggle against the rise of fascism in Europe. In the Transitional Program he condensed the valid positions of the first four congresses of the Communist International. Besides that, Trotsky left us rich observations on this question in his History of the Russian Revolution.
What is the conclusion of the Leninist- Trotskyist Faction on this point? Briefly, that there is no need for a new resolution on armed struggle. We already have a rounded programmatic position on armed struggle. What we leave open is its tactical application. That has to be determined by the concrete circumstances at a given moment in the class struggle. If any resolution is required it ought to be one reaffirming the Trotskyist position against the challenge offered by the new rise of individual terrorism in many countries.
The resolution of the IEC Majority Tendency does the opposite. It revises the Trotskyist position. It reaffirms the guerrilla orientation adopted at the 1969 congress. At the same time it seeks to make that orientation more palatable. It could be said to mark the completion of the turn adopted by the majority at the last world congress. The resolution reduces guerrilla warfare to but one form of "armed struggle." Or, looked at from another angle, it generalizes guerrilla war. Instead of a particular form we have been presented with the general form.
What is referred to in the resolution, it must be emphasized, is not armed struggle as initiated and carried out by the majority of the population but violent actions initiated and carried out by small groups. Such actions are supposed to serve as examples to the masses. And this is obviously how the term "armed struggle" will be understood by every guerrilla fighter, every practitioner of "minority violence" in the world.
Some of the flaws in the resolution, as it stands, should be noted. In the very first sentence a contradiction appears: "For a number of reasons that were spelled out in the resolution on Latin America at the Ninth World Congress and that are peculiar to that continent at this stage, any turbulent rise of the mass movement must soon confront a resolute attempt by the army to crush it and to establish a military dictatorship." According to that, "armed struggle" is confined to the continent of Latin America. Yet the stated conditions hold generally for all continents. They hold even for industrially advanced countries. It can be safely predicted that any turbulent rise of the mass movement anywhere in the world today faces the danger of "a resolute attempt by the army to crush it and to establish a military dictatorship."
That was the experience in Indonesia, which is hardly a part of Latin America. Wasn't a turbulent rise of the mass movement there met with the establishment of a ferocious military dictatorship? If it is true that the bourgeoisie will grant concessions in face of small mobilizations, as the resolution states elsewhere, but will seek to smash big mobilizations, doesn't that hold for Western Europe and for the United States? Consequently, even though we consider his conclusions to be wrong, it was correct of Comrade Roman to consider the question on a world scale and not merely in reference to Latin America.
In fact it would appear that the references in the resolution to Latin America represent nothing but bits of the shell in which the new orientation on "armed struggle," or guerrilla war, was presented at the last world congress.
There are other flaws. The resolution singles out "armed struggle," as an entity existing in its own right, a phenomenon to be considered by itself. Abstracting the question in this way shows that the authors of the resolution have isolated it from the struggle of the masses.
Further proof, if proof is needed, is the emphasis on the action of miniscule groups. In reality that is all the resolution deals with —the action of miniscule groups isolated from the masses.
Along with this goes unrealistic schematization, an abstract set of rules as to when and where "armed struggle" is to be used, in what forms the miniscule groups should apply it; that is, whether as guerrilla war, as armed detachments of the party, as initial pilot projects, etc. The fatal flaw in this approach is that the concrete reality is always richer than the best-laid schema. Concrete reality always proves to be richer than it can be imagined in advance. Thus the tactical prescriptions advanced in this resolution can prove to be deadly traps.
Our movement has had some bad experiences in this respect. Wasn't that one of the reasons why the sections of the Fourth International in both Bolivia and Argentina followed courses out of consonance with the reality, thereby suffering serious setbacks?
This is not all. The resolution offers a caricature of the position outlined in the Transitional Program. Then it combines this caricature with the Transitional Program.
What this means in practice is shown by what the Bolivian comrades told us happened in Bolivia. They succeeded in getting important union bodies there to vote for the Transitional Program. Then they discovered that this was not enough because later on they still had to confront the problem of "armed struggle." So they "attached" armed struggle to the Transitional Program.
The most important aspect of the Transitional Program, however, is the method it offers — a method to be used by the revolutionary party in advancing the class struggle. This method applies to all aspects of the class struggle, including the periods in which the masses resort to arms in self-defense against the attacks of the bourgeoisie. The point is that revolutionists should master this method so that they can utilize it in concrete situations no matter how unexpected these situations may be in their actual form. To have unions vote for the Transitional Program can be meaningless, if not worse.
The Bolivian comrades believed, of course, that they had carried out their duty and had scored a success in getting powerful unions to vote for it. After this success they turned to other tasks. And what happened? They were left defenseless before the pressure of Castroism.
The resolution submitted by the International Executive Committee Majority Tendency follows essentially the same course. The majority comrades emphasize that they are all for the Transitional Program; but they propose to combine something with it that goes directly against Trotsky's basic concept of armed struggle as arising from within the mass movement itself.
On the theoretical level such an attempt represents an absolute collapse of serious thought.
The orientation on rural guerrilla war adopted at the last world congress reflected the pressure of Castroism on our movement. In some circles of what the majority calls the "new mass vanguard," it is thought that the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions were touched off by small groups through pedagogical armed actions.
If you believe that this model is valid for the coming revolutions, then the majority resolution follows logically. But it is the logic of Castroism — a quite obsolete logic, it ought to be added. The fact is that this model is far removed from the real course of those revolutions.
On top of that, the revolutionary upsurge developing internationally today is more and more approximating the model of the Russian revolution.
Castroism has been ebbing for some time. How then are we to explain the pressure within the Fourth International for continuing the guerrilla orientation, the pressure for deepening it, for generalizing it, for experimenting with new variants of it? The explanation remains the same as the one offered by the minority at the 1969 congress. The fact is that the memory of the impact of the Russian revolution, of its pattern, of the methods used by its leaders, and what a mighty role can be played by a Bolshevik-type party has grown dim. It remains a living concept only among the older generations, along with young comrades who are really willing to study it in depth and to transport themselves in mind to that titanic event.
Many youths have come into the Fourth International under the influence of the Cuban, Chinese, and the Vietnamese revolutions. They have not yet outgrown that influence. At best the Russian revolution is to them one among other revolutions, one model among others; and they have not yet grasped its central political lesson. And sadly enough, some of the older leaders of the Fourth International, rather than seeking to overcome the ultraleft bias of these new recruits, bent to the pressure. As in the way they handled the non-Trotskyist PRT in Argentina, these leaders drifted. Still worse, they pampered the ultraleft prejudices of these recruits. These are the main sources of the pressures within the Fourth International that have led to the continuation, deepening, and generalization of the "armed struggle," or guerrilla, line as codified in this resolution which is now before us.