[p. 68]
The F.I. in its August 1959 issue carried an Open Letter to the Socialist Labour League in which it presented its viewpoint on three important issues under discussion in the international Trotskyist movement. Of the three, the discussion on tactics was acclaimed as the most important.
The F.I. completely agreed with the Labour Review statement that the building of an alternative leadership of the proletariat is the main goal, but it was asked as to, "how we are going to attain these goals in practice." (p. 60)
The F.I. proudly announces:
"For the first time in its history, the Fourth International had tried to work out a rounded theory of the concrete way to build revolutionary mass parties in various parts of the world. To this, Burns [Healy] has nothing to oppose but slanderous invectives and empty phrases." (p. 62)
[p. 69]
The material out of which this theory has been constructed is stated to be a "a huge body of experience in this matter." (p. 60) One of the experiences quoted is in respect of the British CP in the Third Period (1928-33) when in spite of quite courageous examples of militancy among the organized workers and the unemployed in the period of great economic crisis, the trial balance at the end showed that the Social Democratic Labour Party had grown stronger than the CP. It adds that similar experiences were gathered from many of the European countries and refers to the experiences of building mass CPs of Germany, Italy and France and of failure to build CPs of Great Britain, etc.
The conclusion drawn is that in countries with an old-established political mass movement to which the overwhelming majority of the workers give political allegiance no alternative leadership will be built up essentially through leading militant strike actions on the economic front.
This conclusion is emphasized further in the portion of the letter discussing the SLL turn and tracing the history of the left movement in Britain.
The result of the experiences is stated as follows:
If they act in an intelligent way, individual revolutionaries (like individual Stalinists) can win very strong positions in this way as shop stewards or even as union leaders on a regional or national scale. But this nowise means that the workers who follow them in a strike or a militant action against union bureaucrats are ready to follow them politically into a new party, group or league. And those who follow them there will not stay long, if they remain outside the organized mass of labor.
If we follow carefully the words "essentially militant strike actions on economic front" and if we remember the example of the Stalinist militancy in the Third Period, we have no disagreement with the conclusion drawn.
Militancy of the Stalinists
The militancy of the Stalinists in the Third Period—at other times they were more efficient class-collaborators than social democracy—is not an example of militancy but of adventurism. To base any conclusion on such facts is only to live in self-deception.
Examples of such militancy can be gathered in abundance even in India. Red-dressed CP militants of the Red AITUC [All India Trade Union Council] went on work in the factories with an air of a "great mission," ready to pick up a quarrel with the jobber or the supervisor on any count, ready to engineer a strike just on the pretext of some bad behavior of some officer. Tridib Chaudhury, in his book Swing Back, quotes circulars directing communists in a similar Randive Period in 1948-51 as to how quickly to "develop" struggles into strikes. In this period-Zhdanov Thesis was in force-Telengana peasants took arms under CP leadership and fought unsupported by the peasants in other parts of India. An all-India railway strike was to take place which was withdrawn by its reformist leader JP. The CP not only protested against the withdrawal, which was right militancy, but also gave a call to the railway workers to ignore the withdrawal and go on strike and the CP WORKERS DID GO ON STRIKE. The result was that other workers, though not satisfied with the withdrawal, could not understand this militancy and stood aloof. The dismissal of CP workers made them shrink and further isolated the CP.
In its zeal of militancy the CP split the TU movement during such periods. In the Third Period it was in minority and hence it split off to form a Red AITUC and carry on its adventures. In the Randive Period it was in majority and practically excluded every other tendency undemocratically and pushed them out with its adventures. The four trade-union organizations centrally owe their existence because of this fact, also.
Examples of such militancy cannot be found wanting in Europe.
Such militancy cannot but isolate the petty-bourgeois idealists, cynics and hysterics, that the CP now is, from the sober-headed, slow-paced mass movement. The martyrdom of CP adventurists creates armchair devotees who relish the stories of adventures and rejoice in the singing of the British poem: "Into the valley of death, rode the six hundred." It cannot impress activists who seek to strengthen the movement and not their personal glory.
The FI movement has very emphatically denounced such militants-along with other sectarian and left adventurers—in the very first document: Transitional Program:
Sectarian attempts to build or preserve small revolutionary unions, as the second edition of the party, signify in actuality the renouncing of the struggle for the leadership of the working class. It is necessary to establish this firm rule: Self-isolation of the capitulationist variety from mass trade unions, which is tantamount to a betrayal of the revolution, is incompatible with the membership in the Fourth International.
The theory that the later FI leadership rounded out from the rich experiences of the past history of the building of CP somehow ignored what the Founding Congress of the FI had to say. The later leadership felt like making a history in making some observations "for the first time" from experiences which had already been before the Founding Congress. The Founding Congress in 1938 declared that the platform of the FI concentrated "the international experience of the revolutionary Marxist movement and bases itself upon all of humanity's progressive social experiences." This declaration was not empty, nor has any new situation arisen. The lesson drawn by the Founding Congress as above, was and is the only correct lesson drawn from the experiences.
Militancy on the Economic Front
The fact that militancy on the economic front alone cannot form a mass party is true not on the basis of the experience of the militancy of the Stalinist parties but on other grounds-ground which the Transitional Program took due notice of.
In the days of progressive capitalism, the Social Democracy could afford to divide its program into two parts: Maximum and Minimum. Its work in the unions limited itself to the minimum program, i.e., to reform within the framework of bourgeois society. Militancy paid rich dividends and firmness and stiffness of the leaders of the working class brought better terms. Workers liked and followed militant leaders—which usually came from the CPs in the twenties. The top leadership of the unions in that period developed powerful tendencies towards compromise with the bourgeois democratic regime. "In periods of acute class struggle the leading bodies of the trade unions aimed to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless." Militancy against the compromisist top leadership won the adherence of ranks easily.
[p. 70]
All this is gone now, for capitalism has entered its decadent stage. In this epoch of decaying capitalism, "there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and raising of the masses' living standard; . . . every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state." (T.P.)
Militancy, now, only brings in its train more direct and open state intervention. Compromisists avoid struggle and have to bear the dissatisfaction of the masses. The militants, however, are, more often than not, defeated and disorganized and smashed today and the ranks are again thrown to the compromisists. The hold of the bureaucracy on the unions gets only strengthened.
Militancy on the economic front alone cannot help us now—just as it did not help the CPs in the late twenties or after. That is why the Transitional Program observes the futility of pursuing this path of Social Democracy and summed up all the failures of the CP by noting that "the Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism." (ibid, p. 9)
Yet the TP did not decry the economic struggles. It cautions us not to minimize the importance of the daily work and observes:
However, the achievement of this strategic task-overthrow of capitalism—is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups, should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but that it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution. (Transitional Program)
In other words, the Fourth International was directed by the Founding Congress to combine this economic program with a political content—which was called the Transitional Program. It was the originality of the FI and it was supposed that we were not only going to carry on a hairsplitting discussion on what Marxism is but that we are going to leave the old methods of work which have been tried again and again by the Social Democracy and Stalinism and start out on a new path.
Henceforth, there was no question of economic militancy alone for us. In repeating this conclusion the FI leadership of today only shows that it has not grasped the significance of the observations of the Founding Congress.
Insofar as it was a new program, new method of work, new tactics, the task of the later congresses lay in analyzing the world situation with this view and define specifically the Transitional Program for each section for the period ahead. This has been ignored and new tactics substituted for it.
The Founding Conference thought it had paid its most considered attention to all, even: small and partial questions of tactics but the later leadership found that it had ignored the rich experiences of party building since the end of the first world war.
Militancy on the Political Front
Parenthetically, it may be said that essentially by political militancy alone also it is not possible to build a working-class mass party.
The Transitional Program notes a "contradiction between the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard" (p. 8-9) and took as its starting point "today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class."
This consciousness is not class consciousness but a petty-bourgeois idealism. The "confusion and disappointment of the older generation and the inexperience of the younger generation" which at first dimmed the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat has by now begun to take a clear-cut petty-bourgeois trend under the opportunist leadership of Social Democracy and Stalinism. All sorts of misconceptions rule the proletariat and recruit its cadres from the working class to petty-bourgeois political activity and spasmodic working-class actions also have lost their independent status. Seemingly bold and revolutionary political activity attracts devotees from the working class also, but it cannot win the mass of the working class unless it is related to their daily struggle. The urgency of weaving together of the maximum and minimum programs of old has made itself felt albeit in a different and more interesting and unforeseen way.
The predominantly economic nature of the struggle for existence has busied the working class now mainly with its own economic struggles. The disintegrating capitalism is shifting its burden of militarism, of crisis, of the disorganized monetary system on to the workers in the shape of automation and back-breaking work on the one hand and ever decreasing share of real wages on the other. Its cadres, even advanced sections, are no longer interested in any maximum program or any ideological hair. splitting discussion, or any sacred or idealist struggle for socialism, peace, and progress unless they can see directly and clearly how these struggles are going to help them in their immediate survival. Gone are the days when the Sunday speeches on socialism could win adherents or the authority of the October Revolution and purity and sanctity of an ideology could draw militants to the ranks of a party irrespective of who controlled the union. The only slogans which can find echo in the widest sections of the working masses are economic which have to be indissolubly linked with the political perspective of revolution.
No revolutionary politics is thinkable now without being based on the Transitional Program.
We have had enough proof of this important fact in recent history. No party, no political tendency has had such jolts in its history as Stalinism has had. Exposure of Moscow Trials repelled intellectuals. The revelations of Stalin's terror, of Stalin's anti-Semitism and the political stench from the Soviet crushing of the political revolution in Hungary weakened Stalinist hold on the intellectuals. Many of them left the CP. These events shook the faith of the worker-militants also but they still stick to CP. Daniel Roberts has very aptly pointed out why it is so. It is so because, in spite of all political failures of the CP, the worker-militants of the CP find it still much more militant than the other parties. They did not find economics indissolubly linked with politics of the CP. They preferred economics and left politics to take its own course.
[p. 71]
The compulsion of the advanced decay and disintegration of capitalism is that the Transitional Program is no longer discretionary; it is imperative.
This also proved from the FI observation that the workers prefer to stay in their mass political organizations.
The struggle for survival between the employers and the workers has become very acute and any militant, who strays and strolls singly away from the mass organizations of the working class is victimized by the employers easily. The workers cannot afford to be politically so militant as to lose the protection of the union leadership. If we have to win him politically, we have to surround him with a movement on economic grounds which can mobilize the widest possible layer of the working class and engulf him with this support on all sides. On the wave of this movement, he will always be ready to clash with the union bureaucrats.
No political militancy can succeed independent of economic militancy now.
I do not yet know the thinking behind the formation of the SLL but this is the only way to combine economic militancy with political militancy and envelop the militants with a political support sufficiently strong to defend them against their bureaucrats in the factories.
Entry Tactics
The Open Letter to the SLL draws a correct conclusion that in the present epoch, entry has to be an important tactic for our movement. It says:
In all countries with organized mass parties of the working class, to which the majority of the class gives allegiance, no mass revolutionary party will be built mainly by individual recruitment (winning over, through propaganda or the example of militant actions, individual members of the mass party, or groups of four, five, ten or twelve members at a time.)
It just means that the main strength of a mass revolutionary party in such countries will come from the former ranks of the older parties who desert the older parties and join the new party en bloc. In a period of crisis this does happen so and is the main source of our strength today. But whether the main activity of our national sections has to be the winning of such split-off sections from the organized mass movement of the working class—or else to seek for such splits-remains a very doubtful proposition, not necessarily following the first premise. This main strength of the national section may come suddenly and in a short time without giving any indication at all from beforehand how is it to come and hence the main activity of the section, i.e., most of the time of a section has to be devoted to individual recruitment.
That was the principle of the application of entry tactics in Social Democratic parties in the thirties when Trotsky was alive. That was why and how the French section first and then the American section entered the SP. They were mainly built in this process and yet it was a very short time affair. The respective national section decided to enter when the rift in these parties had become quite acute and when it was possible for them to carry on a full propaganda of Trotskyist principles inside those parties. They went in for a short measure and did not stay to create more rifts and splits and draw away majority or significant minority with them.
Ever since the tactics of entry has remained the watchword of our movement and organizational flexibility our main quality.
The present entry tactics of the FI leadership differs from the old in that it does not depend on any precondition. It is only by implication that we guess that the mass character of a reformist or a Stalinist party itself is a condition for entry. The rift is not to be there from beforehand. It is to be created, developed and organized so that the majority or a strong minority is in it. It is a matter for a guess for anyone whether the decision to set up independent national sections in these countries was a mistake in 1938 or is a mistake now.
The FI says:
Revolutionary mass parties will be built through splits inside the reformist (or Stalinist) mass parties . . . splits which draw away the majority (or a very strong minority) of all the politically conscious members of these parties.
This is one of the possibilities, no doubt, and if it does occur the revolutionary parties will draw their main strength from such splits. In case such an eventuality presents itself and the conditions for entry are ripe, no national section can hesitate to enter the parties and draw away whatever is possible. But if somebody tells us it must happen so, we beg to differ with all respects due to the genius of the man or the authority of the organization. Yet this is what the present leadership of the FI says. Their argument for this-must-happen—so attitude is so slippery and scanty that they have to beat about the bush and call for the assistance of all historical experiences which prove nothing but which confuse the lesser guys quite strongly.
A split is likely only when a crisis suddenly threatens a country, or a very serious crisis develops. Before it so happens, its slow march will cause a slower or a faster disintegration of the established mass political organizations also. This may result in a slower or a faster growth of an independent organization or else in political apathy of the working people. Fascists and Stalinists are the two open centers of attention in a polarizing society-one based on intense nationalism bordering on fanaticism and the other based on the spell of the strength of the workers' state. (The recent growth of the American CP and of the Italian CP shows that the CP has adjusted itself and new sections of power-worshipping petty bourgeoisie are filling them now.) The Stalinists-rather Khrushchevites-will carry on the impossible game of introducing socialism through parliament until either a structural assimilation takes place or else they are overthrown. If that happens so, seriousness of the crisis will only expedite this process. The presence of revolutionaries by the side of such militants who keep on whispering "world revolution" will not alter this process a whit for it can neither resist fanatic nationalism nor the spell of the workers' state. Only a strong working-class movement will do it.
Entrism sui generis, by a publication of the proposed Trotskyist organ, cannot provide that alternative. It will be just one of the already too many such groupings then in existence in that country. The situation can change only when all the Trotskyist forces, or at least their main strength, carry on independent activity and on the basis of a movement or transitional program has drawn the attention of the working-class movement and of the petty bourgeoisie. Entrism sui generis keeps only a token force independent and that too to help the forces inside. Full independent activity may keep token factions inside other parties and that too to carry on the propaganda of the transitional program being already carried outside.
[p. 72]
We have seen slow transformation of parties—of SP in India into PSP and of the SDP of Germany into a similar left face of the bourgeoisie. A slow disintegration of the militants from the party may also end the party as that and then we shall have the same balance before us that the British CP had—the right has gained more than the left.
This cocksure prophecy about the inevitable split towards the left is based on conceptions of irreversible march of world revolution. It is admitted that this irreversibility is only general and taken for a whole period. But when the FI leadership begins to calculate on the irreversibility it takes it as absolute with no possibility of reversibility for a shorter or a longer period in this or that country. And then the strength and the speed of this march is also taken to be irresistible so that nothing but what the FI charts must happen. Consequently the FI holds that the left tendency must win and it must cut right across the bureaucratic leadership who can do nothing except gaze on helplessly. It is perhaps presumed that they cannot strike back and smash the revolutionary militants who enter the party.
We have had the Indian experience. Our leaders well realized that an incautious step may well destroy us in the party we have entered. Gossips about rifts and dissension continued but we were always too cautious to attract the notice of the dissidents. When we split last we found that all our leaders had become worthless for our movement and lost faith in it. Ranks disintegrated. Those who came back can only chant the poem "Charge of the Light Brigade" and say "Into the Valley of death, Rode the six hundred."
In cases of long entry the pressure of the petty-bourgeois milieu of the other party is one factor which is to be counted and it is to be remembered that even the Trotskyists are men of flesh and blood and are likely to succumb to this pressure.
It is, therefore, much better to wait until a rift develops and all the conditions for entry are fulfilled.
Engineering Splits from Within
Because many mass CPs were built from splits, the FI has set itself the task of engineering splits from within the established mass political parties of the working class. But the splits which have provided this inspiration to the FI do not shed any light on whether splits can be engineered from within or not.
The splits which helped in the building of mass CPs in Italy, Germany, France and Czechoslovakia resulted from crises in the SD parties in the situation of grave social crisis without asking. The progress of the split-away section towards revolutionary path depended on the capacity and halo of the Communist International and the authority of the October revolution. Both these things had a powerful influence on the minds of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie in the twenties and worked from outside the SD parties. If a political revolution does occur in any country under CP rule, this attraction can once again be felt and splits sparked off in the direction of Marxism. All this proves the necessity of keeping the outside magnet sufficiently strong but proves nothing about whether the splits can be created, developed and organized from within in the absence of such outside magnets.
The only experience that we have had of engineering splits from within has been that of the BLP [Bolshevik Leninist Party] in India which must be discussed whether it was a failure or not.
We could not do it in India. Our failure was not due to the failure of our leaders but due to the objective situation existing in the host party and in the country. We lost whatever we had in the final analysis although like the FI we also had reported success in the initial stages in getting ourselves integrated in the mass movement, but when it came to the development of a broad left current it failed. Whatever splits sparked off during our existence inside the host party ignored us completely, even though in the most recent splits—SP of Lohia from PSP and of the Raju group from the Lohia's SP—our former leaders were in the leading staff.
The FI record does not present a different picture. Pablo's report to the 5th World Congress informs us that during the period between 1953-57, the first stage of entrism has been carried out and our cadres occupy a place in the mass movement. This is yet no political work, which is to come in the second stage when a broad left current is to be stimulated, and partly led, by our nuclei. Yet that is the real work of entry. The FI leadership plunged in this work without thinking what new problems could arise and how we had to tackle them. The solution suggested is that of sui generis entry, i.e., an entry which combines independent activity with entry properly so-called by publication of 100 percent Trotskyist literature, alongside an internal press for the expression of the left tendency. Struggle again tends to develop between the glare of the strength of, the workers states whose spokesman CPs remain and our small skeleton of 100 percent Trotskyist press or the FI and there is little doubt as to which glare will prove stronger. As to the internal press, it is sufficient to state that the militants who begin to be dissatisfied shall have all their own presses and those who are disgusted with a party shall not feel necessarily bound by one of its oppositional left press.
Here too the experience of the BLP of India participating in the split of Aruna's group is significant. As for the split of Sheila's group in 1954, it is important to note that in spite of an organ, Socialist Appeal, in the early stages we failed to retain whatever non-Trotskyist element broke with us.
In this stage the discreetness necessarily imposed on us makes our role appear secondary and we are unable to control the centrifugal tendencies that begin to appear in this left current. We also ignore slower or faster disintegration that goes on in the attempt to get the bigger fish and slowly the whole party is so transformed—as happened in the case of conversion of SP into PSP in India—that the hope of the bigger fish itself is lost.
All this uncertainty can be avoided and could be avoided if we believed a little less in the absolute irreversibility of the march of revolution and waited from outside, sympathetically dealing with the internal ranks from outside, until a rift actually developed and the condition for our entry matured.
As for numerical growth inside the host party, we have others' experience in India. We found that the socialist faction of the Congress made its exit in 1947 only depleted in strength and deflated in spirits and many of its stalwarts preferred to remain in the Congress. The same thing was repeated in our case and the stay of our renowned Ajit Roy in the PSP is an example. It will be unfortunate if our militants in the host party prefer to remain there at the time of the split so that they retain the integration with the mass movement achieved with so much personal work. We know from our own experience and also from the report of Pablo that this winning of positions was not made possible because of political influence. It was possible due to personal hard work in some cases, by clever maneuvering between erstwhile leaders and groups, in other cases.
[p. 73]
Return to the Transitional Program
There is no alternative except to return to the path outlined by the Founding Congress of the Fourth International in the Transitional Program, which we have unfortunately forgotten in our attempt to strike out a new path. The highest development of Trotskyism lies there. The ideological clarity that Trotsky gave in the theory of the permanent revolution and in the analysis of the phenomena of Stalinism and fascism outlined certain tasks for us. The Transitional Program told us how to weave all these ideological contributions and tasks and carry them through. This is the mightiest glare that we possess and the mightiest weapon that we have to guide and build the working-class movement with. The workers confused by social democracy and Stalinism can be mobilized and led on the path of revolution only through movements organized on the basis of those demands.
In our own times, we have seen CPs gathering strength by building a peace movement based on feelings emanating from human mind in its present state of consciousness. They did it on a non-class basis which we cannot do. But we have plenty of class movements in which we can throw all our energy and resources and build them. The movement for a 40-hour week in Britain is just this movement and it is gratifying that our British Trotskyists have thrown in all their resources and energy in building it through the Socialist Labour League—a bigger organizational framework which can include all the shades of political opinion. When this movement gathers momentum, all other shades of opinion will get absorbed in it without the Socialist Labour League becoming Trotskyist or taking political functions, in a free play and democratic discussion. With the growth of this movement and with the prospect of its clash with the present socio-economic setup, all other parties will drop out leaving only the Trotskyists to champion this cause. It is this movement which will fascinate the working class and put Trotskyism in the forefront. It will be thus that the leadership of the proletariat will be won.
A short-term entry did not put us out of our main work for long and because of the seriousness of the crisis with which our host party is busy, our activities of such kind are necessarily freer. A long term entry which takes years in our integration in the mass movement confines us to economic militancy alone in the first years. When we attempt to set a broad left current going, we graft on it political militancy separated from the economic work in the style of the Social Democracy and Stalinism (like championing of the colonial revolution by the metropolitan workers). We depend on the intellectual assimilation of our program by the workers and the petty-bourgeois idealists. As in Britain, our entrist faction will delight in participating in discussion with the left intellectuals in the party but will not dare to goad the labor bureaucracy by its participation in the movement based on transitional programs in opposition to the bureaucracy. The Transitional Program thus lies buried all the time by a movement which was created in 1938 only to implement it.
Propaganda of what Trotsky said is as ineffective as the other Sunday preachings on socialism are now. We cannot build an alternative leadership unless we initiate movements on the basis of the Transitional Program in combination with all those workers, ranks and leaders of different parties and organizations which can support it. A political propaganda, now, has effect only when it is backed in action and based on daily struggle. In abstract political discussion we cater to the intellectuals who look upon the working class only skeptically. In concrete political actions based on the Transitional Program, we may not attract the intellectuals due to its colorlessness, but we can definitely build a workers movement and win their leadership.
The long-term entry ignores the Transitional Program completely. On the other side, it is possible to follow the developments inside a party through fraction work, while building a movement on the basis of the Transitional Program. No one prevents us from having as strong a faction inside the "host" party as possible or as required by the circumstances, while our main work of building movements around the Transitional Program goes on outside. Here our main attention is outside and our inside or entrist activity is geared to our independent work. In sui generis our main work is internal and our outside press only helps in the carrying out of this tactic. (It is no wonder why our present FI propaganda makes concessions to Stalinist opinions and to the claims of and versions of workers bureaucracy and adapts its interpretation of Marxism to the Chinese CP practical method of "fight, guerrilla, fight.") A whole attitude differs in independent activity and basing movements on the Transitional Program.
By the combination of independent work in normal and relatively peaceful times when internal conflict in a party is still very obscure, with a short-term entry—a dive-in-and-come-out-affair—we can strengthen our independent movement.
The struggle for the leadership of the proletariat demands a return to the Transitional Program.