03.12.1998

Call for open debate

The Communist Party of Great Britain and the Democratic Socialist Party (Australia) have exchanged the following correspondence

No constructive purpose

To: Communist Party of Great Britain, Provisional Central Committee

November 16 1998

Dear comrades,

We have received a request from one of your members, Marcus Larsen, to attend our 18th national conference next January. Since he states that he would like to attend as a “formal representative of the CPGB” we assume that his request is made with your knowledge and approval.

Our policy with regard to the attendance at our decision-making conferences of members of other parties is that we only invite the attendance of members of parties that are interested in developing collaborative relations with our party.

Up to now relations between the DSP and the CPGB have been limited to the exchange of public literature (public political documents and press). We have had no indication from you that you wished to develop any level of political collaboration with our party.

To the contrary, a number of the public criticisms that you have made of our party in your press have obviously been aimed at encouraging an attitude of political distrust and hostility toward our party among your members and other readers of the Weekly Worker. Thus in an article on political developments in Indonesia in the May 28 issue of your weekly, you made the following comment on our party: “Given its influence with the PRD, of concern is the DSP’s abandonment of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution in the early 1980s in response to the victory of the Sandinistas and other Latin American struggles. The DSP comrades now seem to favour a two-stage theory for the underdeveloped world. This should sound warning bells for all of us - Trotskyite or non-Trotskyite.”

It is true that our party abandoned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution in the early 1980s. It is also true that we “favour a two-stage theory for the underdeveloped world” - the two-stage theory of uninterrupted revolution advocated by Lenin. However, the point of the above quoted comment was clearly not intended to inform your readers of what our position is on revolutionary policy in the underdeveloped countries, which you could easily have done by quoting from our party’s programme (see Program of the Democratic Socialist Party p21), or even to express any disagreement with that position. Rather, it was to aimed at giving the impression to your readers that we adhere to the Menshevik-Stalinist policy for underdeveloped countries of subordinating the worker-peasant masses to the nationalist bourgeoisie. This is what is mistakenly understood by Trotskyists and most non-Trotskyist leftists by the phrase ‘two-stage theory’.

In an article in the July 2 Weekly Worker, you again seek to give the impression to your readers that we are some sort of Stalinist outfit. You imply that our lack of public criticism of the PRD is a product of “the good, old-fashioned ‘diplomatic internationalism’ of the old ‘official communist’ parties”: ie, the Stalinist parties. It appears to be beyond your comprehension that we have not found anything in what the PRD has done that warrants public criticism on our part.

Indeed, you seem incapable of conceiving of international relations between revolutionaries being based on mutual solidarity and comradely discussion. Instead, such relations are viewed only through the sect-like prism of factional intrigues and the creation of monolithic toy-internationals. This factional mentality is reflected in your reporting of the development of collaborative relations between our party and the Pakistan section of the CWI (relations that we had, unsuccessfully, sought to develop with all of the CWI organisations, including its section in Australia). Thus in the October 15 Weekly Worker you refer to the “Pakistan group ... being circled by a hopeful Australian Democratic Socialist Party”. What purpose is served in describing our relations with the Labour Party of Pakistan in this way? - other than to give your readers the impression that we are some sort of international political ‘predator’ which views the Pakistan group as our next factional ‘meal’.

In the light of the complete lack of any indication on your part that you want to develop collaborative relations with our party, we do not see any constructive purpose would be served by having your comrade participate in our party conference. We believe that relations between our parties should therefore remain at the existing level of exchange of public documents and press.

Yours comradely,

Doug Lorimer

for the Democratic Socialist Party national executive

Air our differences

To: Democratic Socialist Party, national executive

December 2 1998

Dear comrades,

Thank you for the letter of November 16. We regret that you see no “constructive purpose” in a representative of our organisation attending the DSP’s 18th national conference. We would ask you to reconsider in order that we may initiate the “comradely discussions” to which you refer.

Far from “encouraging an attitude of political distrust and hostility toward [your] party” within the pages of the Weekly Worker, we have attempted to critically engage with the politics of the DSP in order to help clarify a number of issues - not least of which is the unfolding revolution in Indonesia. Our paper - which is widely read throughout the revolutionary left - has been unique in the coverage it has given your organisation and the role it plays in the movement in Australia and Indonesia. We believe the DSP is the most important revolutionary organisation in Australia to engage with, both in order to criticise the political shortcomings which exist and to learn from its activity and ideas.

You seem to have considered our reporting to have been inaccurate for some time. Neither myself nor my comrades want to misrepresent the DSP’s politics - indeed, our whole culture is one of open debate, and we welcome corrections and responses. Unfortunately however, it seems you consider public criticism to somehow contravene “mutual solidarity and comradely discussion”. This is reminiscent of “diplomatic internationalism”. We hold the opposite view - open criticism is an obligation and prerequisite for “mutual solidarity and comradely discussion”. Rather than writing in a comradely way and correcting what you hold to be inaccuracies, you have chosen to interpret our criticisms as an attempt to create hostility. This is not the intent.

Your letter raises two main issues. One concerns the supposed distinction between Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’ and the Leninist theory of ‘uninterrupted revolution’. The other issue raised indirectly concerns the struggle to build an international. Specifically, the differences between a Marxist concept of the international and the Trotskyite-Cannonite approach.

On permanent revolution/uninterrupted revolution and the Menshevik-Stalinite two-stage revolution, perhaps there is common ground between us. We reject the Stalinite-Menshevik theory of two stages in the so-called ‘third world’ which politically subordinates the working class and its revolutionary-democratic allies to the counterrevolutionary liberal bourgeoisie. Likewise, in the ‘first world’, we reject as economistic the Trotskyite version of revolution which in practice means trade unionist politics in the here and now and abstract socialism for tomorrow - there are no burning democratic tasks. Instead we advocate a revolutionary-democratic theory of uninterrupted or permanent revolution.

Perhaps, you concur. Yet - in what is admitted to be an initial and by no means thorough analysis of your position - the DSP appears to have adopted a rightist and selective take on the theory of uninterrupted revolution.

My article ‘Reformasi Total!’ in Weekly Worker (November 19) does quote the DSP’s programme and compares it to the practice of the PRD in Indonesia - an organisation which has a different political programme, but is nonetheless influenced by the DSP. In the article I expressed a concern that the DSP programme “allots the bourgeois nationalists an anti-imperialist - ie, progressive - role”. I then noted the PRD’s stated perspective of a government which includes counterrevolutionary forces such as Rais and the PDI’s Megawati. I believe the call wrong. While the article contains several reservations, I am expressing my opinion, given the facts at my disposal. Is this so terrible? If I am wrong, please enlighten us.

You say the DSP has abandoned Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ for Lenin’s ‘uninterrupted revolution’ (yet they are to all intents and purposes the same - whatever the rival Stalinite and Trotskyite mythologies claim). Nevertheless, one of the common mistakes in reading both these variations on Marx’s original theme is the category of ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’. A thorough reappraisal of this theory is vital if our movement is to advance. The way that this fixed and ahistorical category is used effectively splits the world in two and separates democratic and socialist tasks, inferring that there are no further democratic tasks to be undertaken in the industrially developed world. We, on the other hand, insist that the method of revolutionary democracy is applicable in all countries.

I hold that a mistaken reading has been carried over into your organisation’s programme. Even so, for the CPGB and myself, this is no barrier to engaging in cooperative or “collaborative” relations, let alone constructive discussions. (We have just received a copy of comrade Lorimer’s pamphlet Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution: a Leninist critique,and I look forward to studying your position further.)

For you, however, the main barrier to collaborative relations seems to be that we are criticising the DSP per se. This fear of openness is fundamentally anti-Leninist. While you boast that the DSP has broken from Trotskyism in terms of permanent revolution, it is clear that you have not adopted a Leninist or Marxist understanding of party-building. Indeed, you firmly adhere to the method advocated by James Cannon, which treats internal differences as something to be hidden. Public debate is considered likely to confuse the masses and the open expression of differences viewed as a declaration of war.

Lenin did not consider internal differences to be the secret preserve of revolutionaries. Both as a majority and a minority he considered openness an essential aspect of Party culture. He famously wrote: “There can be no mass Party, no Party of a class, without full clarity of essential shadings, without an open struggle between various tendencies, without informing the masses as to which leaders and which organisations ... are pursuing this or that line” (VI Lenin CW vol 13, p159). In other words, for Leninists it is only this open struggle - not diplomatic silences and truces - that can build real and lasting unity.

You clearly believe that polemics should not be conducted in public. Again, Lenin thought differently. Take the example of the famed Iskra: “We do not reject polemics between comrades, but, on the contrary, are prepared to give them considerable space in our columns. Open polemics, conducted in full view of all Russian social-democrats and class conscious workers, are necessary and desirable in order to clarify the depth of existing differences, in order to afford discussion of disputed questions” (VI Lenin CW vol 4, p320).

It is not the CPGB’s approach to relations between revolutionaries which should be “viewed through the sect-like prism of factional intrigues and the creation of monolithic toy-internationals”. On the contrary, it is the closed method, which treats differences between organisations as a diplomatic issue, that by definition adds to “factional intrigue”.

How do we know that the DSP has developed “collaborative relations” with the Labour Party of Pakistan? It is through reading leaked documents from the Committee for a Workers International, not your Green Left Weekly. But when it has suited the DSP’s needs you have sent us your own internal bulletin, The Activist, to expose the secret on-off negotiations between yourselves and Militant in Australia. What are we to make of this?

On “toy-internationals” - or ‘oil-slick internationals’, as I call them - the DSP and the CPGB seem to have a similar disdain for such formations, which merely export a sect. They are certainly not the basis for a world party. We have no interest in any such projects.

Again, the CPGB asks the DSP to reconsider your decision. We no doubt have much to learn from one another. Both the DSP and the CPGB hold that we have criticised our pasts and opted for Leninist politics. Yet clearly differences remain. Far from hiding these differences, we should openly air them. It is not the end result of political debate which the working class needs for self-liberation; it is the mastery of political method. And that can only be developed through thorough-going debate.

What do we have to hide?

Yours comradely,

Marcus Larsen

for the Provisional Central Committee, CPGB