Introductory Note:There was a debate within the FLTI regarding China, between a minority consisting of HWRS and the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (CWG), and a majority consisting of the Latin American sections of the FLTI and the WIVL in South Africa. The July 2009 FLTI Congress agreed to continue the debate on China publically, before the global workers’ movement, pending further discussion at a future congress. This document, adopted by HWRS in November 2009, is a response to a November 2009 letter from the International Secretariat of the FLTI (the SCI), regarding issues related, albeit indirectly, to the China debate. It was generated as an internal document, and has not been edited for grammar and style.
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A Critique of the SCI’s Method
Dear Comrades of the FLTI,
The explosive discussion in the FLTI has clearly erupted because the organizations inside the FLTI come from different traditions. This results in frictions that are not as of yet overcome. We need to seriously deal with the problems which hopefully will result in a higher synthesis and clearer Marxist method for our international. For it is unlikely we will survive if every political discussion degenerates so quickly.
Behind the SZ affair
Here I deal with the political questions that are involved. In my opinion when SZ’s questions were forward to the SCI in regard to the JRCL(RMF), there were no moral questions involved at all. Unfortunately the moral problems were made up by the SCI due to left-over baggage from Morenoism, which I will discuss later. The SCI rejected SZ’s two main claims: 1) that JRCL(RMF) calls him a CIA agent, and 2) the claim by SZ and JRCL(NC) that JRCL(RMF) betrayed the critical railroad strike in 1985. I agree with WIVL’s characterization of SZ as a right-wing centrist and a syndicalist, and, of course, I don’t have the slightest sympathy for SZ. But that does not mean that his claim that the JRCL(RMF) calls him a CIA agent is a lie, and therefore the SCI does have a moral issue with SZ. The SCI has not produced the slightest proof that SZ is lying. By calling somebody a liar without producing any proof, the SCI ultimately created a moral problem against themselves, in the case that the SCI is wrong and the JRCL(RMF) did indeed call SZ a CIA agent. Thus the “moral” question was created by the SCI. The SCI could have avoided the morals issue by sending the JRCL(RMF) a simple letter asking if there is truth in SZ’s allegation. Instead the SCI chose the road of “moral” hysteria by condemning SZ as a liar and a provocateur without any proofs. It is like saying in a court that the person is guilty until he/she proves that he/she is innocent. This certainly would not stand in a workers’ court although it is often the prevailing practice in a Stalinist or fascist kangaroo court. By dismissing SZ’s proof that he was called a CIA agent as irrelevant without first checking with the JRCL(RMF) to find out if it is a fabrication or not, the SCI abandoned basic investigatory honesty and instead engaged in moral hysteria without any proof. In fact, the SCI made things worse by pronouncing that SZ is a provocateur without a providing the slightest proof.
This foolishness took the SCI down a hole full of contradictions of their own invention. First a provocateur is someone who works for the bourgeoisie against the workers movement. Well, on one hand the SCI claims that SZ lied about the JRCL(RMF) document which states that he is a CIA agent, implying that he is not a CIA agent, while in the same breath the SCI says that he is a provocateur, implying that SZ is an agent of the capitalist state. So is SZ an agent of the capitalist state, or is SZ is not an agent of the capitalist state, comrades of the SCI? Or perhaps he is a double agent, working for the CIA and the Stalinists? (We heard these kind of slanders from the [Healeyites] against the SWP) Because of your false accusations and method you just get yourselves into contradictions that any formal logic can tear apart. I said before there were never moral questions involved here. It was created by the SCI for political reasons that we’ll deal with later. Yet to avoid this trap and the crisis in the FLTI, all the SCI had to do was just to write the JRCL(RMF) and ask.
The same applied in regard to the claim about the railroad strike. SZ just repeated what the JRCL(NC) has been saying for years. Instead of creating moral hysteria around this political question, the SCI could have written the JRCL(RMF) asking about what happened and request documents to prove what the JRCL(RMF) wrote and did during the railroad strike. But again by claiming that SZ is lying without any proof, the SCI manufactured another “moral” question, and if SZ is right about the strike and being called a CIA agent by the JRCL(RMF), he can turn the tables and accuse the SCI of moral crimes. In reality there were no moral questions, because before we accuse someone (and it does not matter if he is a rotten centrist or reformist) in front of the workers’ movement of breaching workers’ morality we need to have proofs. Without proofs we cannot raise the moral questions, and thus the questions at hand are political.
SCI’s method of approaching the JRCL(RMF)
So why has the SCI became hysterical and why have they thrown the entire FLTI into a crisis about something which should have been a small episode of factual investigation of SZ’s information? The truth may be complex but it is concrete and very clear to us. The SCI did not want to ask JRCL(RMF) the two questions that SZ raised because after the FLTI congress the Asia and JRCL(RMF) “offensive” became somewhat opportunistic. To begin with it is opportunism together with the SCI’s hysteria that has raised up the JRCL(RMF) to become a sacred cow. And now, in turn, if you raise any doubts that there may be some truth in SZ’s allegations, you are a Stalinist!!!!!! We don’t know if the JRCL(RMF) betrayed the 1985 strike. But why should it be out of the question? The JRCL(RMF) is an amalgam of reformism and centrism. The program of JRCL(RMF) is semi-pacifist and anti-Marxist. Other organizations with roots in the working class with a similar program betrayed the working class. So why is it out the question that the leadership of the JRCL(RMF) also can betray? But according to the SCI it is out of the question and even to ponder the possibly accusatory evidence is a betrayal of our Asian offensive. This sounds somewhat opportunistic to me. We need to make a balance sheet of our approach to the JRCL(RMF). In all the tons of material that we distributed in Japan I could not find one word of criticism of the JRCL(RMF). Martin gave a fine speech, but he did not, in his reports, give any clear indication that he had the needed sharp discussions on the deep principled differences that separated the FLTI and the JRCL(RMF). There is a word in the Marxist dictionary that described such an “offensive;" it is called opportunism. I am not saying that there was any conscious opportunistic approach by the SCI, but an objective Marxist cannot avoid noticing the connection between the mild (white glove) approach toward the JRCL(RMF) (with no public criticism,) and the refusal of the SCI to ask the JRCL(RMF) about the 1985 strike.
I applaud comrade CM for allowing comrades from the minority (Dave and Dov) to be a majority in the JRCL(RMF) commission. We were planning to make some sharp criticisms of the JRCL(RMF) program and method. But now with the crisis exploding in our face, I think that our criticism will be better if we know the truth about the strike and the opponents' accusations.
The JRCL(RMF) are far from being angels. From their rabid anti-Stalinism it is far from clear whether they defend the workers’ states, and whether they supported counter-revolutionaries like Yelstin during the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Many Stalinaphobic currents did support Yelstin. So we do not know if the JRCL(RMF) supported Yelstin and the so-called “democrats”. Well, perhaps we should find out by asking them. The JRCL(RMF)’s position in regard to the defense of North Korea as a DWS is far from clear. The key note speaker for the Anti-War Assembly this year said, “With anger we denounce the Kim-led North Korean government's policy of brinkmanship, including nuclear testing and long-range missile launches." They clearly mixed up their pacifism with the unconditional defense of a workers’ state, regardless how horrible are the Stalinist rulers. This statement that calls de-facto for North Korea to disarm its nuclear weapons leaves North Korea defenseless against massive imperialist attacks. And the main slogan of the JRCL(RMF) is “Oppose the newly started nuclear arms race between the US and China-Russia!” This is, of course, a pacifist and reformist slogan, not a Marxist Revolutionary approach. The other two slogans were not much better “Stir up the flames of international antiwar struggle to shatter the newly started nuclear arms race between the US and China-Russia! Rise up worldwide against war by exposing the duplicity of the US-Russia disarmament talks!” What all these slogans do not say clearly is that only the proletariat with its socialist revolution can disarm the capitalists and the imperialists. These are the kind of pacifist politics that Lenin and Trotsky denounced frequently. Because the JRCL(RMF) rejects Trotskyism and the transitional program in particular, the key note speaker at the anti-war assembly had no program with which to fight imperialism. He or she mentioned the need for international proletarian struggles against wars. But beside that he or she had nothing to say about the program of the proletariat to stop the wars and overthrow capitalism and imperialism.
Because of the tremendous efforts of the FLTI, Martin’s speech is the first speech on the JRCL(RMF) anti-war assembly website. But they also put on their website speeches of other “friends” of the JRCL (RMF,) and some of the “friends” are reformist and pacifist to the core, including a speech by the Socialist Party of the second international. There is no criticism of any of the speeches by the JRCL(RMF), which is the typical opportunistic approach toward “friends." In addition the JRCL (RMF) have confused, abstract politics like calling the present government “neo-fascism with a friendly face." Thus, this shows that they do not understand what is fascism.
Comrades of the SCI, I am just scratching the surface about the JRCL(RMF)’s politics. The approach of dealing with this reformist/centrist formation with white gloves must end. It yields nothing. If we want to win a group in Japan and if we want to split the JRCL(RMF) we need to understand the full scale of their politics and their history, including the railroad strike. Then we need to deal with them with a Marxist scalpel, not with white gloves. We must sharply expose their leadership and thereby possibly win a real group of revolutionary Marxists in Japan. This is the Marxist method. Instead of applying it, the SCI creates hysteria to avoid receiving information critical of the JRCL(RMF) history. The JRCL(RMF) is not a sacred cow, but a party that we want to intervene in and win over the best militants from. We cannot do it without a harsh exposure of the leadership, its program, method and history.
On the so-called moral question
I agree with WIVL’s criticism in regard to the complete separation between morality and politics by the SCI. Once again it reflects the different traditions that we come from. It was never the Marxist method not to discuss politics until the “moral” differences are settled. The Marxist method is to find the truth and to tell it to the masses. When the SCI declared that all political discussions and inquires about the 1985 strike must end until the “moral” problems of SZ are settled, the SCI was acting in an infantile and irresponsible way to shut down the political discussions. I have already shown that there were no moral issues involved and that the SCI made them up to stop inquiry into the JRCL(RMF) history. This is a terrible method. Can anyone imagine Trotsky announcing after he called for the Dewey commission that “I (Trotsky) announce that until the Dewey commission cleared the moral changes by Stalin against me, I will stop any political criticism of Stalinism because I cannot talk about the politics of Stalin until the moral questions are cleared up by the Dewey commission”. Of course Trotsky would never dream of saying anything like this. And of course he kept up his sharp criticism of Stalinism while he was waiting for the Dewey commission. Anything else would amount to total opportunism by Trotsky.
Trotsky and Lenin never separated the political and the moral questions with an undialectical wall. The Stalinists’ slanders against Trotsky were deeply connected to their counterrevolutionary politics and Trotsky never separated them. On the contrary, he always demonstrated that Stalin’s slanders came from Stalin’s politics. He denounced Stalinism constantly on both fronts: the political and the moral front.
That does not mean, of course, that when a formal moral commission investigates a comrade who, for example, is accused of stealing money from the organization, the commission should mix the comrades politics with the matter at hand: stealing money from the organization. The two should be separated when the commission is established. But what if the commission found out that the accused comrade is an agent of an opponent organization? And that the accused supports, outside the formal sessions of the moral commission, the politics of the other organization? Do you think that the politics of the other organization will not be discussed? Of course they will be discussed, because in real life there is no separation between politics and morality. This is indeed the A from the ABC of dialectics: One thing is not separated from the other. The proletariat needs to know the full truth. The proletariat needs to know the morality and how it is connected to the politics of any organization that claims to represent the workers and the oppressed. Artificial separation that claims that no political discussion can be conducted until all the “moral” questions are clear does not come from the revolutionary tradition, but from a counterrevolutionary, reformist and bureaucratized centrist traditions. In such traditions the leaders scream that the opposition breaches “morality” to stop discussion about the political questions that the opposition is raising.
I don’t say that the SCI is counterrevolutionary. But I know, unfortunately, that this tradition of complete separation between morality and politics comes from the Morenoites. The LOI (CI) developed from an earlier split from the Morenoites. While the comrades broke with the Morenoite politics they did not break from this (“morality”) segment of the Morenoites’ legacy.
Two of the main cadres of HWRS know the Morenoite methods thoroughly. I spent Three years in the IWP(LIT) from 1983 to 1986 when it was led by Carlos Pettroni who came from Moreno’s close circle. I am sure that CM knows Pettroni since CM was one of the PST (LIT) leaders before Pettroni came to the US. In a factional fight in which we exposed the entire rotten method and program of Morenoism, Pettroni dealt with us as if we were the worst scum on earth, providing one slander after another to the point that the atmosphere between the factions was so poisoned, tense and hysterical that no real political discussion was possible. So that’s how I learned how a faction fight in the Morenoite movement is conducted.
The SCI must break from any leftover baggage from their Morenoite past, and that applies in particular to comrade CM. The minority sees what is happening and that it has got to stop. During the China debate in July the majority accused the minority of the worst things thinkable. The minority according to the majority were total revisionists who broke from Trotsky, Lenin and Marx. With such absurd accusations that created a very tense emotional atmosphere; the comrades from the majority were not willing to listen with an open mind to the minority arguments, that is, why should they listen given that the minority were a bunch of revisionists who revised all the Marxism of Trotsky, Lenin and Marx himself. And yes comrades, I went through this shit before in the IWP (Morenoites) in the US.
So I believe that CM and the SCI should think carefully if this is a right method to build a healthy international. I see the Morenoite method is being repeated in regard to SZ and the JRCL(RMF). If the SCI wants I can fight to the bitter end and produce very powerful documents to show that this method comes from Morenoism. I could also take the SCI letter about SZ, the Peace and Freedom Party and Charles and tear each sentence in it to pieces (showing its contradictions, etc.). But I do not want to take this road and I don’t think that the SCI wants it either (it would be far too embarrassing for you).
The truth is that we are all good revolutionaries who come from different traditions. Our traditions have strengths and weakness. We are far from perfect and we need to work hard and be patient in resolving the differences and establishing a healthy and a strong revolutionary international that will have the authority, the method, and the program to re-establish the 4th International.
So I have proposals for the SCI that can end the crisis in the FLTI
:
1. We have to recognize that we have differences about how the moral questions are related to the political questions. We don’t have to agree but we should respect the different approaches. We should wait until the atmosphere in the FLTI calms down and then conduct a calm, objective and productive discussion about this.
2. That all the slanders from all sides stop at once. It is still necessary for the SCI to recognize that they went too far in attacking comrade Charles (calling him a Stalinist and a supporter of the Moscow trials and other slanders in the letter about the Peace and Freedom Party). Thus the SCI and comrades R and M need to retract the accusations. The SCI should stop calling SZ a liar and a provocateur without proofs. There is no way that HWRS will call someone a liar and a provocateur in front of the workers’ movement without proofs. This is a basic breach of revolutionary morality, and it is a principled question for us.
3. That the SCI will send a letter to the JRCL(RMF) and ask about the 1985 railroad strike and ask for documentation to refute SZ. The SCI can write this in a context of saying that SZ is spreading JRCL(NC) propaganda on what happened in 1985 throughout the US, and we need to know what really happened to expose SZ.
4. That we wait for the JRCL(RMF) reply as well as objective and independent data that gives us a better understanding of what really happened in 1985. That until we get this info we should stop any factional debate about the balance sheet of our work with the JRCL(RMF), because that information makes any debate more objective and productive. At the same time the JRCL (RMF) commission will continue to function and finish the answers to the JRCL(RMF) letter.
5. That we conduct a calm and productive Congress in which the discussion on China and the international perspectives will be a central point. This and discussions on the consolidation of our International will be the center of the Congress.
6. (While this is optional I still think that it is important). That the Congress will move to February. To begin with a Congress every six months is draining too many resources. Why do we have IEC if we have such short periods between Congresses? By arguing (last Congress) for such short periods between Congresses the SCI centralized itself, because with this method it is difficult to establish a real integrated leadership via IEC’s meetings. The IEC should meet at least once according to Leninist criteria and the basic principles of democratic centralism. Yet the SCI ignored my requests that the IEC meet before the next Congress. That by itself tells me that there are serious problems with the SCI. It keeps the leadership of the International very centralized and prevents the development of a real international leadership, that truly represents the different groups in the international. Thus it is very difficult to overcome the frictions of different traditions in the international. Dec. 10th is less than a month from now. February gives us more time to defuse the tension, and as I wrote before (and again the SCI did not bother to reply) it will allow more real pre-congress discussions and will allow the majority to give the minority a serious reply on China.
In order to do this I believe that the SCI will have to admit that they made mistakes in handling the SZ JRCL(RMF) matters. A leadership that admits that it made mistakes is not a weak leadership, but a leadership that is maturing, learning and strengthening itself. It is much harder to admit mistakes than getting exasperated over them and aggravating them. But admitting such mistakes will show that we have strong and mature leaders, not weak leaders.
This is what we need to avoid:
“Mechanical centralism is necessarily complemented by factionalism, which is at once a malicious caricature of democracy and a potential political danger.” (Trotsky, The New Course, http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/quotes.htm)
And this is what we need to do:
“It is necessary, of course, to fight against every individual mistake of the leadership, every injustice, and the like. But it is necessary to assess these ‘injustices’ and ‘mistakes’ not in themselves but in connection with the general development of the party both on a national and international scale.” (Leon Trotsky, On Democratic Centralism and the Regime, 1937,http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/democent.htm)
Revolutionary Greeting,
Written by Dave Winter
Adopted unanimously by HWRS 11/11/09