- Ashish Devrari, Anurag Pathak, Sourav Bhattacharya/ 27.10.2018
Through its recent post, 'Second part of our reply to the WSP's answer to our 'Open letter to the members of WSP', Revolutionary Regroupment, Brazil, continues its diatribe against the WSP, resorting to lies, slanders and libels against its leaders, that it had initiated behind the excuse of a dialogue.
Through its recent post, 'Second part of our reply to the WSP's answer to our 'Open letter to the members of WSP', Revolutionary Regroupment, Brazil, continues its diatribe against the WSP, resorting to lies, slanders and libels against its leaders, that it had initiated behind the excuse of a dialogue.
The malicious campaign of RR, this time goes beyond the frontiers of WSP to consciously drag within its sphere, for no reason, other Trotskyist groups like ICFI/WSWS, within its sweep, demeaning them of being ‘defenders of rapists’. RR reproaches ICFI for its opposition to ‘metoo’ campaign alongside WSP that has supported the tirade.
In its earlier posts, RR has made similar abased remarks and accusations against WSP and its leaders, only to retreat in silence, after challenge from the WSP. It invented the fiction of ‘Comrade V’, pretending that he/she is ‘incharge of international affairs’ of WSP. One can only laugh at the maneuver!
Unable to understand the programmatic foundations of WSP and to undermine its legitimacy, it attempted earlier, but in vain, to hit at the propositions advanced by WSP on the National as well as the Trade Union question, on flimsy grounds. The explanations by the WSP, in response, put it on backfoot.
The disputes it continues to raise now, include: Our attitude to organization of the International, Character of the Stalinist regimes in Russia, East Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam and N.Korea and Homosexuality. Internal working of the WSP is yet another issue for RR which it leaves to its ‘Com.V’ to make further low in the smear campaign initiated by it earlier.
To the ‘internal working’ of WSP which RR says ‘Com.V’ will expose, we ask them that they ask their ‘Com. V’ first as to when he/she was admitted to WSP, made incharge of its ‘International Affairs’ and if ever a single line was written by him/her disputing any position or working of WSP. If not, then leaving aside the imposters like ‘Com.V’, the RR must publicly apologise for its posts. On our part, we assure you that no Com.V, was ever admitted to or ousted from the ranks of the WSP for expressing any opinions.
RR criticises the positions of WSP on homosexuality. It says that the WSP opposes only the persecution of homosexuals at the hands of the state. It is incorrect and a deliberate lie. WSP opposes the persecution of any and all forms of sexual relationships, including homosexuality, by the state or by the society, without any rider. RR ignores this and opens its debased attack against WSP.
Next, RR claims itself, not only in support of ‘freedom of the choice in sexual relations’, as the WSP does, but supports the homosexuality itself as free choice of free man. In this, it criticises the proposition of WSP that homosexual relations are part of innumerable sexual perversions created by the malformations and distortions of sexuality of the man and woman over centuries and taken to their next high by the multiple alienations under capitalism. However, WSP opposes the social or state persecutions of sexual groups of different shades for that it deems them to be victims of social conditions that had been beyond their control.
Contrary to this, RR, joins the bandwagon of bourgeois apologists for these perversions, who call them- ‘free choice of the free man’. Bourgeois ideologues refuse to accept that their society is marred with such perversions more than any other society that existed prior to them in history of mankind. They term sexual options of man and woman in the society as ‘free choice’. They cannot cover up the filth of bourgeois society except through police methods or claiming it to be ‘natural’. RR joins them. We ask- What homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, orgies, drug addiction and all the crap stands for, if not perversion? Where are reflected the deformities of pre-capitalist and capitalist societies, in sexual relations if not in the crap that includes homosexuality?
Opposition to persecution of homosexuals, who are victims of the social conditions that are beyond them, is one thing and advocacy of homosexuality, that RR does, is another thing.
Laughably, RR cites the persecution of sexual groups under Stalinist regimes to counter us. This shows total inability of RR to understand the most fundamental point. In its very first statement, WSP has declared itself against any such persecution. So, its stance is miles away than that of Stalinist regimes.
RR tells as that the monogamous heterosexuality is the basis of bourgeois family. Here it unwarrantedly qualifies heterosexuality with monogamy to blur the issue. Monogamy is another issue that is related to ‘sex-love’ relation between man and woman and constitutes the highest form of sex and love in recorded history. But let us not deviate. The issue here is homosexuality.
Homosexual relations are not specific to bourgeois society. They only acquire ever new high in bourgeois societies as these societies take various social alienations to their zenith. These perversions grow alongside with the decadence of society and continue to grow till the sick society is overthrown by social revolution. Even in the new society, these perversion that had become part of the habit in the past, do not die down easily.
RR writes, “The fact is that WSP’s official opinion on homosexuality amounts to capitulation to bourgeois moralist conservatism and provides moral support for homophobic attacks against homosexuals.” Its wrong to the core! Bourgeois liberal ideologues everywhere are supporting and propagating homosexuality as ‘normal human behaviour’. It is not only legalised in major capitalist countries but finds favour with widest sections of libertards, RR among them. Bourgeoisie is divided as to what measures be taken to tackle the growing menace of social perversions. A section of it recommends outlawing and police persecution while the other a more sophisticated strategy of covering up this menace as ‘natural’. RR belongs to the camp of the second. It is obvious that WSP belongs to none of them and opposes both.
Claim of RR that the stance of WSP that homosexuality is a perversion, a disease, created and sustained by the inhuman, repressive social conditions, supports the homophobic attacks or stigmatises homosexuals, is most vile assertion. When we put prostitution on the same pedestal to say that prostitution is a disease and perversion, by stretch of no imagination do we stigmatise the prostitutes but only indicate their abominable conditions inside the sick society and lay down the primary and essential basis for their liberation by recognising the social reality that is beyond their control.
RR criticises us for having in our program a critique of big bang theory. For it, it relies upon the information of its ‘Comrade V’. Where and when did the WSP put anything of the sort in its program? It was only a post on the demise of Stephen Hawkings where we relied upon Alfven’s theory of cosmology that defies not only the big bang fantasy but innumerable mythological stories too. Alfven is closest to dialectical method of understanding the universe. If RR is blind to it, its their fault! We also are at loss to understand when did IMT wrote on Hawking’s death putting Alfven against him!
RR disputes the positions of WSP on the character of the states in China and Cuba and practically all other satellite states in Eastern Europe, N.Korea or Vietnam. For WSP, these states are bureaucratic states, with Bonapartist regimes under them, but for RR they are ‘Deformed Workers States’. We asked RR if the regimes that were set up in 1949 in China or 1960 in Cuba, were the Workers’ Dictatorships? What does a ‘Worker State’ means if not a dictatorship? Beating about the bush, RR evades the question and tells us that a state can be carved out not only by revolution but by armed force of the victorious proletariat also. To us, these are only two aspects of a revolutionary conquest and the extension of revolution, provided at the centre of the process stands a revolutionary workers’ state. To blur the vision of the reader, RR mingles the two different phases of this armed intervention by the Soviets- the one under Lenin and Trotsky and the other under Stalin and his successors! The early incursions of the Soviet State into Europe were the revolutionary interventions that created workers’ states, but the degenerated bureaucratic state under Stalin could not have created workers’ state elsewhere, as it was crushing the working class in Soviet Union itself. The purpose of armed intervention of Soviets under Stalin in Europe, was not the creation of “workers’ states” but to prevent of the working class from taking to power in Europe that Stalin looked upon as a threat that may dismantle his regime. Take for example the instance of Spain. Armed intervention of Soviets did not intend to establish a workers’ state but to prevent the Spanish working class from taking to power. RR makes no distinction in the two phases. For it, the intervention of Red Army is revolutionary, under Stalin too. RR argues that Stalinists created deformed workers’ states, not the bonapartist bureaucratic states.
Trotsky characterised the USSR under Stalin as a degenerated workers’ state. This implied, a workers’ state produced by the October Revolution degenerating under Stalin. No other state, including China or Cuba, in the first instance qualified the criteria of a workers’ state, leave aside its deformation or degeneration. In none of these countries, did working class took to power. None of the parties that came to power in these countries, represented the interests of the working class.
Even USSR could not have degenerated infinitely, it fell apart and its fragments took not only to capitalism but even to fascism (Ukraine!). Overthrow of Soviet Union in 1991 came at the fag end of a long drawn and comparatively silent degeneration over decades. Similarly, China and Cuba continued to decay into their own shells not as workers’ states but the States led by the Bureaucracy that only feigned itself Red, in the image of Soviet Union under Stalin. The satellite states created by Soviet Union in Eastern Europe after WWII carried on all minuses of the Stalinist SU and none of the conquests of October.
In so far as socialised property is concerned, it is not the degenerated workers’ state under Stalin, but even the bourgeois States like India and Indonesia that had introduced these forms of property from which bureaucracy had derived its lifeblood for decades and continues to do so. Socialisation of property on limited or unlimited scale, does not determine the character of the state. It leads only to state capitalism.
To qualify for a workers’ state, the state must come through the action of the working class and must base itself upon that class. This includes the victory of Red Army formed on different land where proletariat has taken the power earlier. For example, the incursion by Red Army of Baltics under Lenin and Trotsky, is an example of it.
RR does not want to face this question. It brushes aside the question of the character of the state controlling the Red Army. The armies under Stalin could not have created a workers state, through their conscious action.
RR challenges us on our statement that the bureaucratic states that include China and Cuba have degenerated silently and have become props of world capitalism. The challenge bases itself on the very same bogus premise that these states were sometime back a workers’ state. This is not the case. These bonapartist regimes, were governed by a bureaucracy that was bound up with sections of world bourgeoisie and was destined to grow over to sit on the tail of world bourgeoisie, sooner or later. This however, does not impact the bureaucratic character of these states in China and Cuba. Alongside degeneration of Stalinist states, capitalism and the class of bourgeoisie continued to grow and become stronger over decades. This bourgeoisie had strong bonds with the world bourgeoisie and was a section of it.
RR fails to understand that even in USSR things do not stand where they stood in times of Trotsky. Explaining the degeneration of Soviet Union, Trotsky compared it with a person who is poured over his head, with paint. The pain comes down slowly covering different limbs of the man but finally the man would stand fully covered from tip to toe at some point. USSR achieved this decades ago and in 1991 fell apart.
This applies to all other bureaucratic states in East Europe and elsewhere, that were created in the formal image of USSR, sans its early emergence as a workers’ state through October.
RR claims, “He who asserts that the Soviet government has been gradually changed from proletarian to bourgeois is only, so to speak, running backwards the film of reformism.”
What does this ‘gradually’ mean? Doesn’t RR take note of the 1991 overthrow of Soviet Bureaucracy and falling apart of Soviet Union under Yeltsin? Obviously this transition includes not only the violent spree of counter-revolution under Stalin and then his heirs upto Yeltsin, but the almost peaceful coup of 1991 too. Even a blind can see that Soviet Union evaporated without a major military intervention after decaying for long under Stalinist counter-revolution.
RR is not blind to this! It quotes the events of 1989-91, but only to slip the essential conclusions from it. Explaining the dissolution of Soviet Union, RR says, “During the acute socio-political crisis of 1989-91, …….……they managed to polarize and split the weakened state apparatus, isolating without armed struggle the sections of the bureaucracy which wanted some form of resistance but could organize none, as there was no one among the apparatus and the masses who were willing to defend the status quo.”
Now see friends, firstly, RR refers to the Soviet State of 1991 as the “bureaucratic dictatorship” and not the “deformed workers state”! Next it itself argues that the overthrow was almost peaceful!
Amazingly, after telling us about the ‘peaceful transition’ of Soviet State into a bourgeois state in 1991, RR next accuses WSP of stating a ‘peaceful transition’ of these countries under bureaucratic states to capitalism! RR says, “WSP position that these states all transitioned to capitalism peacefully is not only a capitulation to reformism in general, but also a capitulation to the dominant forms of faux-Trotskyist revisionism in particular.”
Who is revisionist? The RR who is arguing that the Stalinist states are workers states that created revolutions during upheavels or the WSP that argues that these Stalinist states were bureaucratic props of world capitalism?
And here comes the real bombshell of the Pabloite RR!
RR says, “You can ask: Will you tell us that the Stalinist parties, that is to say, petit-bourgeois socialist parties, carried out proletarian revolutions? Yes.”
Note friends! Stalinist Parties and Petty Bourgeois Socialist Parties, carried out Proletarian Revolutions according to RR!
Quoting from Transitional Program of Fourth International, RR attempts to explain it, leaving no corner for doubt in its wisdom, “Under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty-bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie.” The next lines in the program, which RR has not quoted deliberately, read: "even if this highly improbable variant, somewhere at some time becomes a reality.....". RR omits the preceding lines too, that put the citation in correct context: "Under these conditions the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!” is an extremely important weapon for exposing the treacherous character of the parties and organizations of the Second, Third and Amsterdam Internationals. The slogan- workers’ and farmers' government- is thus acceptable to us only in the sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e. as an anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogan. but in no case in that 'democratic' sense which later the epigones gave it, transforming it from a bridge to Socialist revolution into the chief barrier upon its path". It further says, "Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers’ organizations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is, to say the least, highly improbable."
Where Trotsky merely refused to deny in advance in 1937, i.e. on the eve of WWII, the 'theoretical possibility, yet immediately terming it "highly improbable" even under influence of very special circumstances- that the Stalinist parties and the petty bourgeois parties may be forced to go further than they wish on the road to break with the bourgeoisie- RR transforms and materialises the same into a reality of infinite magnitude, extending it further to claim that the Stalinist Parties had 'carried out proletarian revolutions'!
The disputes it continues to raise now, include: Our attitude to organization of the International, Character of the Stalinist regimes in Russia, East Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam and N.Korea and Homosexuality. Internal working of the WSP is yet another issue for RR which it leaves to its ‘Com.V’ to make further low in the smear campaign initiated by it earlier.
To the ‘internal working’ of WSP which RR says ‘Com.V’ will expose, we ask them that they ask their ‘Com. V’ first as to when he/she was admitted to WSP, made incharge of its ‘International Affairs’ and if ever a single line was written by him/her disputing any position or working of WSP. If not, then leaving aside the imposters like ‘Com.V’, the RR must publicly apologise for its posts. On our part, we assure you that no Com.V, was ever admitted to or ousted from the ranks of the WSP for expressing any opinions.
RR criticises the positions of WSP on homosexuality. It says that the WSP opposes only the persecution of homosexuals at the hands of the state. It is incorrect and a deliberate lie. WSP opposes the persecution of any and all forms of sexual relationships, including homosexuality, by the state or by the society, without any rider. RR ignores this and opens its debased attack against WSP.
Next, RR claims itself, not only in support of ‘freedom of the choice in sexual relations’, as the WSP does, but supports the homosexuality itself as free choice of free man. In this, it criticises the proposition of WSP that homosexual relations are part of innumerable sexual perversions created by the malformations and distortions of sexuality of the man and woman over centuries and taken to their next high by the multiple alienations under capitalism. However, WSP opposes the social or state persecutions of sexual groups of different shades for that it deems them to be victims of social conditions that had been beyond their control.
Contrary to this, RR, joins the bandwagon of bourgeois apologists for these perversions, who call them- ‘free choice of the free man’. Bourgeois ideologues refuse to accept that their society is marred with such perversions more than any other society that existed prior to them in history of mankind. They term sexual options of man and woman in the society as ‘free choice’. They cannot cover up the filth of bourgeois society except through police methods or claiming it to be ‘natural’. RR joins them. We ask- What homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, orgies, drug addiction and all the crap stands for, if not perversion? Where are reflected the deformities of pre-capitalist and capitalist societies, in sexual relations if not in the crap that includes homosexuality?
Opposition to persecution of homosexuals, who are victims of the social conditions that are beyond them, is one thing and advocacy of homosexuality, that RR does, is another thing.
Laughably, RR cites the persecution of sexual groups under Stalinist regimes to counter us. This shows total inability of RR to understand the most fundamental point. In its very first statement, WSP has declared itself against any such persecution. So, its stance is miles away than that of Stalinist regimes.
RR tells as that the monogamous heterosexuality is the basis of bourgeois family. Here it unwarrantedly qualifies heterosexuality with monogamy to blur the issue. Monogamy is another issue that is related to ‘sex-love’ relation between man and woman and constitutes the highest form of sex and love in recorded history. But let us not deviate. The issue here is homosexuality.
Homosexual relations are not specific to bourgeois society. They only acquire ever new high in bourgeois societies as these societies take various social alienations to their zenith. These perversions grow alongside with the decadence of society and continue to grow till the sick society is overthrown by social revolution. Even in the new society, these perversion that had become part of the habit in the past, do not die down easily.
RR writes, “The fact is that WSP’s official opinion on homosexuality amounts to capitulation to bourgeois moralist conservatism and provides moral support for homophobic attacks against homosexuals.” Its wrong to the core! Bourgeois liberal ideologues everywhere are supporting and propagating homosexuality as ‘normal human behaviour’. It is not only legalised in major capitalist countries but finds favour with widest sections of libertards, RR among them. Bourgeoisie is divided as to what measures be taken to tackle the growing menace of social perversions. A section of it recommends outlawing and police persecution while the other a more sophisticated strategy of covering up this menace as ‘natural’. RR belongs to the camp of the second. It is obvious that WSP belongs to none of them and opposes both.
Claim of RR that the stance of WSP that homosexuality is a perversion, a disease, created and sustained by the inhuman, repressive social conditions, supports the homophobic attacks or stigmatises homosexuals, is most vile assertion. When we put prostitution on the same pedestal to say that prostitution is a disease and perversion, by stretch of no imagination do we stigmatise the prostitutes but only indicate their abominable conditions inside the sick society and lay down the primary and essential basis for their liberation by recognising the social reality that is beyond their control.
RR criticises us for having in our program a critique of big bang theory. For it, it relies upon the information of its ‘Comrade V’. Where and when did the WSP put anything of the sort in its program? It was only a post on the demise of Stephen Hawkings where we relied upon Alfven’s theory of cosmology that defies not only the big bang fantasy but innumerable mythological stories too. Alfven is closest to dialectical method of understanding the universe. If RR is blind to it, its their fault! We also are at loss to understand when did IMT wrote on Hawking’s death putting Alfven against him!
RR disputes the positions of WSP on the character of the states in China and Cuba and practically all other satellite states in Eastern Europe, N.Korea or Vietnam. For WSP, these states are bureaucratic states, with Bonapartist regimes under them, but for RR they are ‘Deformed Workers States’. We asked RR if the regimes that were set up in 1949 in China or 1960 in Cuba, were the Workers’ Dictatorships? What does a ‘Worker State’ means if not a dictatorship? Beating about the bush, RR evades the question and tells us that a state can be carved out not only by revolution but by armed force of the victorious proletariat also. To us, these are only two aspects of a revolutionary conquest and the extension of revolution, provided at the centre of the process stands a revolutionary workers’ state. To blur the vision of the reader, RR mingles the two different phases of this armed intervention by the Soviets- the one under Lenin and Trotsky and the other under Stalin and his successors! The early incursions of the Soviet State into Europe were the revolutionary interventions that created workers’ states, but the degenerated bureaucratic state under Stalin could not have created workers’ state elsewhere, as it was crushing the working class in Soviet Union itself. The purpose of armed intervention of Soviets under Stalin in Europe, was not the creation of “workers’ states” but to prevent of the working class from taking to power in Europe that Stalin looked upon as a threat that may dismantle his regime. Take for example the instance of Spain. Armed intervention of Soviets did not intend to establish a workers’ state but to prevent the Spanish working class from taking to power. RR makes no distinction in the two phases. For it, the intervention of Red Army is revolutionary, under Stalin too. RR argues that Stalinists created deformed workers’ states, not the bonapartist bureaucratic states.
Trotsky characterised the USSR under Stalin as a degenerated workers’ state. This implied, a workers’ state produced by the October Revolution degenerating under Stalin. No other state, including China or Cuba, in the first instance qualified the criteria of a workers’ state, leave aside its deformation or degeneration. In none of these countries, did working class took to power. None of the parties that came to power in these countries, represented the interests of the working class.
Even USSR could not have degenerated infinitely, it fell apart and its fragments took not only to capitalism but even to fascism (Ukraine!). Overthrow of Soviet Union in 1991 came at the fag end of a long drawn and comparatively silent degeneration over decades. Similarly, China and Cuba continued to decay into their own shells not as workers’ states but the States led by the Bureaucracy that only feigned itself Red, in the image of Soviet Union under Stalin. The satellite states created by Soviet Union in Eastern Europe after WWII carried on all minuses of the Stalinist SU and none of the conquests of October.
In so far as socialised property is concerned, it is not the degenerated workers’ state under Stalin, but even the bourgeois States like India and Indonesia that had introduced these forms of property from which bureaucracy had derived its lifeblood for decades and continues to do so. Socialisation of property on limited or unlimited scale, does not determine the character of the state. It leads only to state capitalism.
To qualify for a workers’ state, the state must come through the action of the working class and must base itself upon that class. This includes the victory of Red Army formed on different land where proletariat has taken the power earlier. For example, the incursion by Red Army of Baltics under Lenin and Trotsky, is an example of it.
RR does not want to face this question. It brushes aside the question of the character of the state controlling the Red Army. The armies under Stalin could not have created a workers state, through their conscious action.
RR challenges us on our statement that the bureaucratic states that include China and Cuba have degenerated silently and have become props of world capitalism. The challenge bases itself on the very same bogus premise that these states were sometime back a workers’ state. This is not the case. These bonapartist regimes, were governed by a bureaucracy that was bound up with sections of world bourgeoisie and was destined to grow over to sit on the tail of world bourgeoisie, sooner or later. This however, does not impact the bureaucratic character of these states in China and Cuba. Alongside degeneration of Stalinist states, capitalism and the class of bourgeoisie continued to grow and become stronger over decades. This bourgeoisie had strong bonds with the world bourgeoisie and was a section of it.
RR fails to understand that even in USSR things do not stand where they stood in times of Trotsky. Explaining the degeneration of Soviet Union, Trotsky compared it with a person who is poured over his head, with paint. The pain comes down slowly covering different limbs of the man but finally the man would stand fully covered from tip to toe at some point. USSR achieved this decades ago and in 1991 fell apart.
This applies to all other bureaucratic states in East Europe and elsewhere, that were created in the formal image of USSR, sans its early emergence as a workers’ state through October.
RR claims, “He who asserts that the Soviet government has been gradually changed from proletarian to bourgeois is only, so to speak, running backwards the film of reformism.”
What does this ‘gradually’ mean? Doesn’t RR take note of the 1991 overthrow of Soviet Bureaucracy and falling apart of Soviet Union under Yeltsin? Obviously this transition includes not only the violent spree of counter-revolution under Stalin and then his heirs upto Yeltsin, but the almost peaceful coup of 1991 too. Even a blind can see that Soviet Union evaporated without a major military intervention after decaying for long under Stalinist counter-revolution.
RR is not blind to this! It quotes the events of 1989-91, but only to slip the essential conclusions from it. Explaining the dissolution of Soviet Union, RR says, “During the acute socio-political crisis of 1989-91, …….……they managed to polarize and split the weakened state apparatus, isolating without armed struggle the sections of the bureaucracy which wanted some form of resistance but could organize none, as there was no one among the apparatus and the masses who were willing to defend the status quo.”
Now see friends, firstly, RR refers to the Soviet State of 1991 as the “bureaucratic dictatorship” and not the “deformed workers state”! Next it itself argues that the overthrow was almost peaceful!
Amazingly, after telling us about the ‘peaceful transition’ of Soviet State into a bourgeois state in 1991, RR next accuses WSP of stating a ‘peaceful transition’ of these countries under bureaucratic states to capitalism! RR says, “WSP position that these states all transitioned to capitalism peacefully is not only a capitulation to reformism in general, but also a capitulation to the dominant forms of faux-Trotskyist revisionism in particular.”
Who is revisionist? The RR who is arguing that the Stalinist states are workers states that created revolutions during upheavels or the WSP that argues that these Stalinist states were bureaucratic props of world capitalism?
And here comes the real bombshell of the Pabloite RR!
RR says, “You can ask: Will you tell us that the Stalinist parties, that is to say, petit-bourgeois socialist parties, carried out proletarian revolutions? Yes.”
Note friends! Stalinist Parties and Petty Bourgeois Socialist Parties, carried out Proletarian Revolutions according to RR!
Quoting from Transitional Program of Fourth International, RR attempts to explain it, leaving no corner for doubt in its wisdom, “Under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty-bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie.” The next lines in the program, which RR has not quoted deliberately, read: "even if this highly improbable variant, somewhere at some time becomes a reality.....". RR omits the preceding lines too, that put the citation in correct context: "Under these conditions the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!” is an extremely important weapon for exposing the treacherous character of the parties and organizations of the Second, Third and Amsterdam Internationals. The slogan- workers’ and farmers' government- is thus acceptable to us only in the sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e. as an anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogan. but in no case in that 'democratic' sense which later the epigones gave it, transforming it from a bridge to Socialist revolution into the chief barrier upon its path". It further says, "Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers’ organizations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is, to say the least, highly improbable."
Where Trotsky merely refused to deny in advance in 1937, i.e. on the eve of WWII, the 'theoretical possibility, yet immediately terming it "highly improbable" even under influence of very special circumstances- that the Stalinist parties and the petty bourgeois parties may be forced to go further than they wish on the road to break with the bourgeoisie- RR transforms and materialises the same into a reality of infinite magnitude, extending it further to claim that the Stalinist Parties had 'carried out proletarian revolutions'!
Neither Trotsky claimed that the Stalinist Parties or the Petty Bourgeois Socialist Parties would or can 'carry out a revolution', nor the history during or after the WWII confirmed this theoretical possibility, that even Trotsky himself termed as 'highly improbable' in 1937, while merely refusing to deny it in advance as a 'theoretical possibility'. RR makes a fetish out of the same to impart a revolutionary character to the Stalinist and Petty Bourgeois Parties and the regimes under them!
Trotsky is advocating the slogan: "Break from the bourgeoisie" as a maneuver to expose the treacherous, centrist parties and leaders, while RR is using it to create illusions in the centrist leadership!
Here lies the nub of the matter!
RR is parroting Pabloism, its central argument, that the conditions of war and revolution would force the Stalinists and petty bourgeois socialists to 'create the revolution'.
Contrary to assertion of RR, all history of revolution flies in face of this Pabloist proposition, that gives a definite, concrete character to a theoretical possibility that Trotsky termed as highly improbable even in 1937, but merely refused to deny in advance. History showed us that the deepening crisis to war and revolution, in fact, disarmed the centrists and drove them away to the arms of reaction.
No proletarian revolution was ever created by any Stalinist or petty bourgeois party. These parties, whenever they succeeded to seize the control of revolutions, they put brakes on it and prevented the proletariat from taking to power. They constituted themselves into state bureaucracies and set out to reverse all important gains of the revolution.
By assigning a radical role to Stalinist and Petty Bourgeois parties in times of war and revolutions, RR has exposed its rooting in Pabloism!
If RR is finding socialism and the existence of workers’ state in the left over socialised property in Russia or say for example Vietnam, it will sure find the same in socialised property in India and Indonesia too.
What an idiocy it would be to defend China, Cuba, DPRK or Vietnam of today as workers states! Far from being the workers’ states, these bureaucratic states have been hostile to the working class, which need be overthrown by it in a socialist revolution.
Let us now turn to the issue of organizing an ‘International’ that stands grossly misunderstood by RR. Let us quote from the write up of RR, to expose its very limited, bogus, nationalist viewpoint. RR says, “Marxist parties are function primarily on a national level for the very simple reason that its the main boundary of political events.”
We seriously dispute this and reject this nationalism that RR professes in open. Primary arena of function of a Marxist Party is not the ‘National level’ as RR claims. It is primarily the international and only secondly the national, as part of and only subordinate to the international. In fact, this flawed understanding of RR drags it again and again in opposition to internationalism and its proponents like WSP.
When we talk of a Marxist Party of the working class today, its has to base itself upon not only the internationalism in the first instance but upon the international working class that has emerged and integrated more and more on world scale as a new class, transcending all national divisions. The International can be forged only upon this transcendence and not upon the national divisions. If it has to be founded upon the national divisions with its primary area of working inside the national frontiers, as RR claims, the very purpose of forging an International would stand defeated. An International, for us is not a sum total or collage of Nationals but an integrated whole, representing the interests of the most advanced sections of the world proletariat- the international working class. In this, we have to march forward even from the Third and Fourth Internationals as they had marched ahead of the First and Second. The world as a whole and the working class particularly, is integrated on a world scale today, far more than ever.
The national sections, are, at the most a surreal partition of the Marxist Party for convenience of its functioning, like its sections in various cities. In no case, the primary arena of work can be national. The fact goes that there are no ‘national’ issues. Take for example, the anti-outsourcing maneuvers of the US. If a party looks upon it from a ‘primarily a national work’ approach, it is doomed to fall prey to the policy regime of US bourgeoisie, as most of the TU bureaucracies and Stalinist Parties are doing. It is only when we look, primarily not from a national but an international viewpoint, only then can we conceive the meaning of it and can mobilise the support for it among the working class not in Brazil or Nepal but in US too.
As we have pointed out, we consciously rejected the sort of formula advanced by RR to organize the International based on its claim to be a Brazilian and WSP an Indian group. No Party of the Proletariat, that in our times can only be an International, can be formed by making a collage of Nationals. For this, the Comrades who enter the WSP, consciously renounce their nationality and reject all suggestions that they belong to or represent any particular nation. In the given historic conditions, it is possible that the core of an International Party of the working class remains confined to this or that pocket or pockets on the globe, while at the same time nationalists may get themselves organized on international scale. This was the case in 1914 when Internationalists under Lenin, as a party, were confined to Russian Empire and the nationalists under Kautsky were organized globally in Second International. This sort of collage of nationals hardly solves the problem of organizing an International.
RR says that WSP is the Party of India. Immediately it refreshes its memory conceding that WSP has intervened in Nepal through its articles. RR is still far away from the truth. Contrary to claims of RR, the writings of WSP however encompass the political affairs from Sri Lanka to Cuba and from South Africa to US. Its writings include the revolutions in Russia, China, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, Chile and so on. RR simply dodges this all to claim that WSP is the Party of India and RR of Brazil!
Contrary to RR, the WSP has its political origins not in India or Pakistan, but in the struggle of Fourth International and its world movement. We thus reject all nationalist overtures with phony claims to internationalism.
RR counters WSP’s claim to Internationalism as ‘Cosmopolitan Moralism’ and substitutes it with ‘Solidarity with the struggles of the workers and the oppressed in other countries’. Solidarity, is not internationalism, but a ‘benign’ form of nationalism that sits at the doorstep of national bourgeoisie, waiting for its turn to enter. No International can be founded upon this understanding.
RR says, “WSP is a national organization; it functions within the very definite borders of one nation.”
What real rubbish! When the world is divided into nations, obviously the working of Internationals will be automatically refracted through this division, but how does that mean that this working or functioning would make the organisation a national one? With this, RR is denunciating the First International a European Party and Bolshevism a Russian Party. What an absurd understanding!
In boasting that the primary arena for Marxist party is national, the RR in fact abrogates the very foundations of proletarian internationalism.
To our utter surprise, RR quotes Trotsky, where Trotsky openly speaks in our favour, “Only by being indissolubly tied together, only by working out answers jointly to all current problems, only by creating their international platform, only by mutually verifying each one of their steps, that is, only by uniting in a single international body, will the national groups of the Opposition be able to carry out their historic task.” (Open Letter to All Members of the Leninbund, 1930).
RR misses here the real point and that real point is ‘indissolubly’! Trotsky is addressing the fragments of left-opposition in 1930 that still were parts of the Third International, exhorting them to form into a new, separate International, ‘indissolubly’. This is not a call for making a collage of ‘Nationals’, Messers nationalists of RR! It’s a clarion call to fragments of an international for forging themselves ‘indissolubly’ into a new international.
What politically myopic RR fails and refuses to see is the emergence of an International working class, consolidation of whose advanced elements into a world Marxist party, remains the first challenge in our times.
Politics of RR is not oriented to organisation, but in fact disorganisation of the International that WSP is organising around itself, and its liquidation into nationals that according to it are the primary players in politics as the world remains divided among bourgeois nations.
Criticising the claim of WSP as to its being the nucleus of an International, RR says, “Revolutionary Regroupment does not proclaim in an ultimatistic manner that it is the international which everyone should join.” If you do not make a claim that you are the nucleus of an International which others must join, what do you stand for then? You must dissolve immediately. Absence of this claim demonstrates your political vacillation and bankruptcy. This means that you are unsure of your program and your organisation!
No comments:
Post a Comment