(A meeting of "sympathizers" called together through their paper.)
Wednesday, December 9, 1953 witnessed a meeting of sympathizers of the French Pabloite group (Frank-Mestre-Privas), an information meeting on the recent rupture of the SWP majority with the Pabloite International Secre. tariat.
Eighteen persons, including myself, were present at the meeting, which was gloomy and dejected from beginning to end.
Privas was the first to take the floor, dwelling on the "painful" character of this split. Many people smiled, said he, saying that the Trotskyists are in a perpetual crisis. But one must be serious in dealing with a question of this importance. And, no doubt by way of making a serious analysis, Privas explained that the bourgeois parties and the Stalinist parties were experiencing crises in comparison to which the crisis of Trotskyism was of the least moment —"the crisis in the USSR is far greater than that in the Fourth International." He had, however, to get to the bottom of the subject and try to justify the Pabloite policy. As painful as this crisis was — explained
Privas —it was not a defeat, it was only a stage in the building of the Fourth International: Junking left sectarianism, Stalinophobia of impotent grouplets. We have taken our place foursquare in the camp of the Revolution. Since the Third World Congress we have clear perspectives, we have a political line adapted to the new situation. Today, and since the Second World War, a shift in the relationship of forces on an international scale has taken form to the benefit of the proletariat. "The Revolution will be made utilizing the apparatuses bequeathed from the past." That is why we "must carry out a non-sectarian penetration into the mass movement as it is," the Stalinist leaderships must be pushed onto the road of revolution. Only thus can the revolutionary party be built.
There being nothing but generalities in all this, Michelle Mestre thereupon took the floor to develop a whole series of questions.
To begin, she stated that it was not entirely exact to speak as Privas did of the crises of the bourgeois parties and of the Stalinist parties on the same plane as the
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Trotskyist crisis. For, she said, the Trotskyist party, the world party of revolution, ought not to meet up with crises inasmuch as it defends the common program of revolutionary workers of the whole world. Now it is facing a crisis, that is indisputable. Why? Because certain sections are abandoning internationalism for nationalist positions. This is verified particularly in the case of the SWP split. "Obviously it is easier to be a Trotskyist in Belgium than in the USA. In Belgium, there is no McCarthyism." In the United States, there is a terrible pressure against the workers, a McCarthyite repression. And the betrayal — for "we shall not mince words, we are dealing here with nothing short of a betrayal" the betrayal of the Cannonites traces back to their falling into anti-Stalinism, an easy thing to do, of course, in the US. They have given away to bourgeois pressure. They have denounced the minority loyal to the International, the minority which is for the united front with the Stalinists. That, in the USA, is equivalent to a denunciation to the police.
But this minority which includes in its ranks "a third" of the party takes with it all the workers in the SWP. It represents the future whereas the Cannonites represent nothing more than the dead past. They vulgarize Trotskyism in the USA; they have thus played out their role. Their task is now finished and they will be swept from the scene. Their abrupt turn in relation to the Lambert Bleibtreu clique only reveals to the full their ignominy.
In their only internal political text document, one of unusual poverty, all their discussions completely ignore the war now in preparation. It is certainly easy to do this in the USA, but one cannot have a Trotskyist position without some appreciation of the totally new situation flowing from the war question.
Moreover, the Cannonites evade this problem by putting a question mark over centralism, in favor of federalism. They substitute for the International some notion of an axis allegedly formed by the SWP and Leon Trotsky which is supposed to have constituted the pivot of the International. In itself, this is not incorrect, but the SWP was no more Trotsky's chosen party any more than any other party in the International. They go so far as to criticize the Comintern for its centralism, in what was its good period. "How can one discuss on that level?"
Subsequently analyzing the SWP document published by La Verite (Bleibtreu-Lambert tendency) Michele Mestre violently criticized the "subjectivist" conception the SWP allegedly has of the revolutionary party, saying: "It is not true that there can be no revolution without a party. Quite a few revolutions have taken place without a revolutionary party, the (Paris) Commune, the Spanish revolution, the Greek revolution." That is all the more true as at the present time revolution is on the agenda and the bourgeoisie is incapable of pushing it back. Even in Greece there is no truly fascist regime. Fascism is a product of the period between the two world wars and can no longer take place. And we must not forget that it is the masses who make the revolution and not the party.
Going on further then to the passage in the SWP declaration entitled, "An Infamous Leaflet," Mestre said: "The Bleibtreu group gave out leaflets saying that the general strike was the revolution. This, about the August 1953 strike in France. That is not true, it was not the revolution. It wasn't even a general strike." It is absurd to attack the Stalinists during the August strikes. One has to be "mad,"
"sectarian," "utopian" to do that It is not possible at the present juncture to build a revolutionary party as the war is too near. Besides it is wrong to put on the same footing the betrayal of the Stalinists and that of the Social-Democrats. "To accuse the CP leadership at Renault, as did the people of the Bleibtreu-Lambert group, that is abominable." "That means throwing the workers back into the arms of the CP and the Stalinist bureaucracy. Besides, following up on this leaflet, the CGT bureaucrats could afford themselves the luxury of getting approved an excellent resolution on democracy* against two votes, those of the 'Trotskyists' of the Lambert-Bleibtreu splinter. We didn't denounce those people, we simply stated that they had been expelled from the Fourth, and that is a state ment we will make again and again."
Finally Michele Mestre ended on the revolutionary upsurge reaching the USSR itself and forcing concessions from the bureaucrats, and reaffirmed her faith in the victory of Trotskyism.
With the discussion opened, I took the floor as a "sympathizer" to pose several questions:
The relationship of forces which has shifted in favor of the proletariat, what will be the reaction of the bureaucracy in such a situation, more and more difficult for it?
M. Mestre wrote in Verite des Travailleurs: "The masses are ahead of their leaderships." Isn't it precisely the role of revolutionary leaderships to accelerate this advance of the masses in showing them in action the betrayal of their leadership?
Privas said: "The revolution will be made utilizing the apparatuses of the past." Does this mean that the revolutionary mass movement will not turn against their treacherous leaderships?
"We must carry out a non-sectarian penetration in the mass movement as it is." Does this mean that the mass consciousness will not change in the course of the movement, more precisely that it will remain unchanged, the way it was?
Won't the Stalinist and reformist leaderships more and more brutally apply the brake to mass actions to the degree that the revolutionary upsurge becomes concretized? More precisely, won't they in the course of the revolutionary upsurge be led to unmask their reactionary role more and more clearly to the eyes of the masses?
If the CP leadership can, under pressure from the masses, play a revolutionary role, what need then is there for a Fourth International? One need only join the CP.
Is the war fatally doomed to break out before the revolution, or rather cannot the Stalinist bureaucracy, through concessions, delay the outbreak of war to a certain point, the revolution then breaking out before war preparations are completed?
To these questions, M. Mestre answered by justifying the policies of the CP and the bureaucracy, explaining that before the "true" revolution, we would see a whole series of deformed states (such as China) which would rise up in the course of the war, which would be a war of classes. Above all we must not let ourselves be cut off from the revolutionary mass movement represented by the CP.
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Finally, a woman comrade sympathizer, former member of the International, intervened to reaffirm the role of revolutionary leaderships, the role of the revolutionary party in the revolution. It is, she said, precisely because there was no reliable revolutionary leadership that the Spanish revolution misfired.
Michele Mestre closed this hardly lively debate answering that, of course, the revolutionary party must be built, but the moment for that was not yet at hand, that the main task for the time being was to not get cut off from the masses.
* The resolution which M. Mestre regards as "excellent" is a resolution which censures our comrades (and a communist militant, cosigner with them of the motion) for having submitted to the Renault CGT Convention a motion on orientation without having previously submitted it to the union bureau. This resolution in defense of the bureaucrats is naturally entitled: "Resolution on Union Democracy."