30.05.2001

Notes on regroupment

The starting point for our approach to regroupment is the new situation created by Seattle and the development of the anti-capitalist movement internationally. As I argue in my document, this conjuncture is creating the conditions for a major revival of the left. Political currents must be judged less on the basis of their history and more on their response to the post-Seattle movement.

It is clear that a process of political realignment is underway. We can see this in Britain with the Socialist Alliance, where very positive working relationships have developed between the SWP and comrades from other Trotskyist tendencies (for example, the ISG and some ex-Militant cadres).

This is one facet ? intensified by the impact of New Labour on the left and the working class movement in Britain ? of a much broader process. We approach the question of regroupment with the framework of our understanding of revolutionary internationalism. The experience of the early Comintern is our model of how a real International develops. It shows how major upheavals in the class struggle and the break by substantial sections of workers with reformism are necessary conditions for any attempt to create an international revolutionary organisation. Our criticism of the FI and of Trotsky before it has focused on the attempt to ?declare? an International in the absence of these conditions (they were, of course, completely missing in 1938; the upturn of 1968-76 provided at best the first of these conditions and certainly not the second).

The experience of the Comintern also shows how a genuine International must be a coalescence of currents with different histories ? in that case, for example, the Bolsheviks, Luxemburg and her supporters in Germany and Poland, North European left radicals, currents influenced to a greater and lesser extent by anarchism and syndicalism (Gramsci and Ordine Nuovo in Italy, ex-Wobblies in the US), centrists and left reformists (the USPD majority). Of course, we don?t think that 1917-23 is going to repeat itself in any simple way ? a new revolutionary period will take different forms, and we are far from uncritical of the Third International even in its early years (see especially Cliff Lenin Vol 4), but the three elements I have referred to ? social upheaval, big splits in the reformist parties, and the fusion of diverse political traditions ? would, we believe, be features of any future International worthy of the name.

You said that we have moved from a pluralistic conception of the International to one that is much more centralised than certainly the USFI now accepts. As evidence for our earlier views, you cited the article Pete Goodwin and I wrote for the 11th Congress of the FI in 1979. I had forgotten what we said so I had to reread the article. What we argued against then was the strategy that then seemed to prevail in the FI of a regroupment of the international far left based on the orthodox Trotskyist currents. We called this a ?dogmatic and triumphalist approach? both because it overestimated the virtues of various orthodox Trotskyist tendencies (we mentioned the Lambertists, but our reservations also applied to the American SWP, then of course still affiliated to the USFI), and dismissed the Mao centrists (International Socialism 2.6, pp110-11). This argument still seems to me correct: one of the key developments of the IS Tendency was winning OSE (now SEK) in Greece, whose key leaders had been strongly attracted towards Avanguardia Operaia during the 1970s.

The IS Tendency developed as a serious current after this debate, during the 1980s and 1990s. I am attaching a note I wrote on the history of the Tendency for Cliff?s autobiography, A world to win (you will also find it, with other information on our international work, in that book). It is quite a politically homogenous grouping, for two reasons: (1) the different groups largely originated in the same theoretical tradition, defined in particular by Cliff?s theory of state capitalism; and (2) we came together, meeting annually from the mid-1980s, because we had converged (partly independently, partly through mutual influence) on the same propaganda perspective as a way of addressing the international downturn in class struggle. Therefore our meetings have always discussed not simply broad issues of analysis and strategy, but more concrete questions of perspective.

In consequence, the IST has gone through a series of reorientations based on quite sharp debates, notably over our attitude to the final phase of the first Gulf War (1987-88) and our response in 1993-94 to what we saw as a new period of class polarisation in Europe that developed in the wake of German reunification. Nevertheless the IST is a political current uniting autonomous organisations on the basis of shared theory and not a democratic centralist international organisation: the line taken at its meetings do not bind individual groups, even though the discussions have tended to influence their approach. It should be clear from my remarks in para 2 above that we do not regard the IST as an embryonic International.

The Tendency, at least in Europe, has developed a higher profile over the past couple of years. This is partly because it now comprises, in addition to the SWP in Britain, a number of substantial organisations ? notably in Germany, Greece, and Ireland. But this development has also reflected events that have required a more concerted international response ? first the Balkan War and then Seattle and the crystallisation of the anti-capitalist mood. The result has been the IST mobilisations for Prague, Nice, and Davos, and those we are preparing for Gothenburg, Barcelona, Salzburg, and Genoa.

This evolution shows how wrong Mandel was to criticise the SWP as recently as 1992 for ?national communism? (see International Socialism 2.56). In any critical balance sheet of the performance of various international currents in this period, we would want to point to what we regard as the defensive and hesitant response of the LCR and other USFI groups to the Balkan War, and to the LCR?s failure to mobilise seriously for Prague and even for Nice.

It has been against this background of the IS Tendency?s clear emergence as a major international revolutionary current that the differences developed over the past two years between the ISO (US) and the rest of the IST. In themselves these disagreements over perspective would not justify a split, but it became increasingly clear that they were the symptom of a more fundamental divergence. Faced with a new period, most organisations in the Tendency have fought to reorient themselves; the ISO, by contrast, has retreated into an increasingly sectarian approach which differs not simply from the trajectory of the rest of the IST, but represents a break with its own past. This has been accompanied by the consolidation of a quasi-Healyite internal regime.

The expulsion of IST supporters in the US and the ISO?s role in provoking a breakaway from SEK faced us with a choice: either accept a continuation of this faction fight, which would mean the progressive internalisation of the IST as the two sides struggled for influence within individual groups (we had in mind the unhappy example of the struggle between the IMT and the LTF within the FI during the 1970s), or make a break with the ISO, with the implication that this would mean starting again in the US. In taking the second course, the leaderships of the SEK and SWP have had the support of the other main organisations in the Tendency.

We do not believe the conditions currently exist for an authentic International. Nevertheless, we believe that the present situation makes it worthwhile exploring the possibilities of international regroupment. The established revolutionary organisations will prove whether or not they are alive by how they respond to the post-Seattle new left. The split with the ISO has shown us that past track record and even correct theoretical stance doesn?t guarantee that an organisation will necessarily pass this test. Currents from an FI or ex-FI background have reacted better to the post-Seattle period than our former American confr?res.

This does not mean that we think that the historical divergences within the Trotskyist movement have simply become irrelevant: the theoretical understanding of Stalinism provided by Cliff?s analysis allowed the IST to resist the wave of despondency that swept over the left after 1989 and to grow very substantially in the 1990s (in addition to our European growth, the decade saw the emergence of important sister organisations in the third world: for example, in South Korea and Zimbabwe).

Nor have various related issues disappeared ? for example, what we regard as the tendency of orthodox Trotskyists to search for substitutes for working class action (eg, left governments) and the question of the class-struggle leftwing approach versus our rank and file strategy in the trade unions. But we wish to explore, with open minds and without making these divergences a barrier, the possibilities for closer cooperation between revolutionaries from different traditions.

One issue that we will have to confront is our differing understandings of democratic centralism. The USFI has developed a conception of revolutionary organisation as involving permanent tendencies that we reject. We believe that this approach tends to institutionalise a government-versus-opposition regime that encourages members to interpret specific issues in the light of the factional struggle. We permit factions only during periods of pre-conference discussion.

This does not mean we are hostile to internal political debate: one of our main reasons for breaking with the ISO is its suppression of such debate. We have a tradition of vigorous political argument both within the SWP and in the IST more generally. But we think such argument is effective when it arises from the specific issues at hand rather than reflecting long-term divergences between institutionalised factions.

Alex Callinicos
April 2