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In defence of Marxism

Theoretical journal of the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency

Written: 1992.
First Published: October 1992.
Source: Published by the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency.
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In defense of Marxism
Number 1 (October 1992)

The Preparatory Committee and Southern Africa

In this section, we present contributions to an analysis of the Preparatory Committee. The most important criticisms of that objectionable organisation are highlighted in the first document, The Preparatory Committee and continuity of International Committee degeneration, which also serves as the authors’ introduction to the main document in this section. The main document, The South Africans’ response, makes numerous references to Marxism versus alchemy (not included here) which was the first attempt by the South African comrades at a critique of the Preparatory Committee and its bogus theory of continuity. A Preparatory Committee reply to Marxism versus alchemy was published in Tasks of the Fourth International No.7, March 1990.

The Preparatory Committee and continuity of International Committee degeneration

The document [The South African’s response, see below] in response to the Preparatory Committee’s resolution of September 13, 1989 was produced by us – South Africans based in Britain, part of a Trotskyist group in South Africa. From its third meeting we began to participate openly in the Preparatory Committee, the forerunner of the organisation called the Workers International for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International. In November 1989, in our absence, we were expelled from the Preparatory Committee, without being given a chance to challenge the decision. Subsequently, after much discussion with a number of other Trotskyist groups and a crisis and split within our own organisation, we entered into close political collaboration with the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT) and its British section, the Workers International League (WIL).

Our response was the outcome of a heated struggle inside the Preparatory Committee. We had begun to question a number of aspects of the entire project of the Preparatory Committee, including the notion of ‘continuity’, the designation of Stalinism as counter-revolutionary ‘through and through’, the abandonment of the idea of an international Trotskyist conference, their sectarian method and the opportunist character of their relations with the Liga Internacional de los Trabajadores (LIT). With the benefit of hindsight, and after a few years of discussion and experience outside the Preparatory Committee, we now realise how ignorant we were at the time we participated in the Preparatory Committee. Today we also have a much better grasp of the significance of the kinds of questions we raised during this entire experience.

In spite of its inadequacies, in all essentials we stand by what appears in the document. The kind of destructive action we were subjected to by the leadership of the organisations within the Preparatory Committee has a long history. We are convinced more than ever that what we were exposed to was not the ‘continuity’ of revolutionary Marxism but, as we state in the document, the ‘continuity of the International Committee’s sectarian degeneration’.

EspeciaIly through our collaboration with the LIT and the WIL, the validity of our suspicions and half-grasped criticisms of the Preparatory Committee has been fully confirmed. We now believe that the International Committee (IC) did not even represent what we then called a ‘one-sided’ fight for continuity against so-called Pabloism. It is no accident that Cliff Slaughter and the other leaders of the Workers International have to this day failed to produce a balance sheet of the IC. If they did their whole notion of ‘continuity’ would stand exposed as a massive fraud. So they can only play the ostrich and hope that the truth will go away.

As we have explained elsewhere, the seeds of political degeneration were sown well before the split with Pablo in 1953. In no less damaging a way than the International Secretariat / United Secretariat (the ‘Pabloite’ wing of the split), the IC committed all the cardinal sins of ‘Pabloism’ in the first decade of its existence. Whether in the form of capitulation to Stalinism (Titoism and Maoism), reformism (Healy’s deep entrism in the Labour Party) or bourgeois nationalism (political support for Messali Hadj in Algeria), ‘Pabloism’ was rife within the IC and its leading national affiliates.

This profound political degeneration excluded the possibility of a fight for revolutionary Marxism within the Fourth International. There was no democratic centralism in the IC and there was no firm political or organisational basis for combatting ‘Pabloism’.

We believe that our position on Namibia was neither an expression of ‘Pabloism’ nor an explicit abandonment of the permanent revolution. Whether the comrades in Namibia carried out the position in an adequate way is a different question. In the wake of the split in the South African organisation we were part of, it has been difficult to ascertain exactly how the comrades conducted themselves. However, the fact remains that the Preparatory Committee was prepared to expel us without seriously responding to our document.

Even if we had been rotten ‘Pabloites’, the method used by the Preparatory Committee had nothing to do with Bolshevism. Instead of conducting a serious written polemic, if not to persuade us with Marxist arguments then to strengthen the political understanding of their own rank and file, these seasoned ‘Trotskyists’ remained true to their anti-Marxist IC heritage. After all, the ‘great’ split of 1953 occurred without a serious fight; and subsequently, all internal opposition and criticism had been bureaucratically expunged rather than openly and honestly fought on a Bolshevik basis. Politically and organisationally, the 1953 split was the precedent for an endless series of pre-emptive splits and expulsions.

To avoid a discussion of the substantive questions we had raised and to curry favour with the Namibian comrades, the PC leadership summarily booted us out. When we attempted to attend the following scheduled meeting of the Preparatory Committee, we were told that the Secretariat had decided that we were no longer welcome to attend. ‘Without giving us a hearing?’, we asked; ‘Yes’, was the reply.

The fruits of this kind of opportunism were glaringly exposed in Namibia. In the period leading up to the election, the hastily cobbled together and recently launched Workers Revolutionary Party of Namibia entered into an obscenely rotten popular-frontist electoral alliance called the United Democratic Front, led by longstanding puppet-collaborators of the apartheid bourgeoisie. Elements of this alliance were funded by the South African government.

The sole basis for this bloc was a call for a NO vote for the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and a campaign to expose the atrocities perpetrated by the SWAPO leadership against its own members in detention camps in Southern Africa. The election campaign was not fought on the basis of the kind of Trotskyist programme of action we had proposed and for which we were condemned as Pabloite revisionists. Instead, it was fought on an anti-Marxist ‘single-issue’ basis, in alliance with mortal enemies of the oppressed masses. This was done on the basis of the position of the Preparatory Committee leadership that SWAPO was a Stalinist organisation and Stalinism was the most counter-revolutionary force on the planet. In its first significant test, the self-proclaimed Fourth International raised the dirty and tattered banner of the IC; and the masses, let alone the vanguard workers, were not impressed.

We hope that the present members of the Workers International will be prompted by the material in In defence of Marxism to examine the history of the Preparatory Committee and to consider afresh its method and politics. In the future we hope to publish a balance sheet of our experience with the WRP / Workers Press and the Preparatory Committee. We can only warn those comrades who are not aware of the real history of the forerunner of the Workers International: the Fourth International will not be rebuilt on the basis of the sectarian and opportunist history and politics of the present ‘defenders of continuity’ of the IC. We urge those keen to uncover the truth to read our documents and publications and reach out to us for serious and honest discussion.

Resolution from the Preparatory Committee Secretariat *

At its last meeting the Secretariat passed the following resolution which it will place before the next meeting of the Preparatory Committee.

1. That the SA cdes [be urged to withdraw]** the journal that they have recently issued. The Secretariat considers this publication to be an attack on Trotskyism and a blow against those involved in the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International. The article on Namibia in particular constitutes an explicit attack on the theory of Permanent Revolution. At one point the article says: amongst other things ‘what is therefore crucial in this period is to ensure that SWAPO is transformed into a genuine fighting organ of the masses. In the course of this struggle the working class must assume political leadership of the mass movement as a whole, relying on the support of the poor peasants. But working class leadership will not emerge spontaneously. There must be a conscious struggle for a genuine socialist leadership to emerge inside SWAPO. A consistent revolutionary Marxist opposition must crystallise in opposition to those petty bourgeois nationalists who are willing to compromise and sell out the struggle for Namibian self-determination.’ This is not a matter of a ‘few words’ but goes to the very heart of the struggle for Trotskyism against Stalinism. In the event of the refusal of the cdes to withdraw this journal, the Committee resolves that it will give no support to its production, circulation etc. We need to know the position of the cdes from SA by the time of the next meeting, when in any case we propose that the PC confirms this decision.

2. In the light of information now made available from our Namibian comrades, the Committee will launch an immediate campaign to expose the nature of the SWAPO leadership – its resort to murder and torture etc., against opponents in its own ranks. Some details of this regime are now beginning to appear in the British and European press. We have already raised this matter in the City AA Group and propose to organise a press conference in the coming week to further this campaign.

3. In the light of the above, the Committee views with deep concern the failure of the SA members of the Prep Cttee to make available to the Committee this information about the SWAPO leadership – despite the fact that we now know that it has been in their possession for some considerable time.

4. The Committee must issue a statement on the situation in Namibia exposing the counter-revolutionary role of the SWAPO leadership and its relationship to Stalinism.

5. That the application of the Workers Revolutionary Party of Namibia to become a full member of the Committee be accepted.

* This resolution is reproduced with no editorial changes.
** In the final version, these words were replaced with ‘correct the political position of’, in recognition of the ridiculous nature of a request to withdraw a journal which was already in circulation.

The South Africans’ response

This is a reply to both the resolution of the Secretariat of the Preparatory Committee dated September 13, 1989 and the discussion on it in the meeting of September 16, 1989.

To grow more rapidly during the period of flux, during the preparatory period, one must know how to find points of contact in the consciousness of wide circles of workers. It is necessary to establish proper relations with the mass organisations. It is necessary to find the correct point of departure corresponding to the concrete conditions of the proletarian vanguard in the person of its various groupings. And for this it’s necessary to see oneself not as a makeshift for the new party, but only as an instrument for its creation. In other words, while preserving in its totality an intransigence on principle, it is necessary to free oneself radically from sectarian hangovers which subsist as a heritage from a purely propagandist period. (‘The Present Situation in the Labour Movement’ in Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement (1934-40), Pathfinder 1979, p. 534).

Alien to sectarian self-immersion, the revolutionary worker-Marxists must actively participate in the work of the trade unions, educational societies, the Congress Socialist Party and, in general, all mass organisations. Everywhere they remain as the extreme left-wing, everywhere they set the example of courage in action, everywhere, in a patient and comradely manner, they explain their programme to the workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals. Impending events will come to the aid of the Indian Bolshevik-Leninists, revealing to the masses the correctness of their path. (‘India faced with imperialist war’ in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), Pathfinder 1973, p. 34).

A Marxist party should, of course, strive to full independence and to the highest homogeneity. But in the process of formation, a Marxist party often has to act as a faction of a centrist and even a reformist party. (‘Principled considerations on entry’ in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), Pathfinder 1975, p. 84).

. . . unless the ‘orthodox Trotskyists’ struggle against the anti-Marxist method of the IC, the PC is doomed to repeat the sectarian errors of the IC. (Marxism versus alchemy, March 1989).

Over the past months the conduct of the majority within the Preparatory Committee towards ourselves has been consistently hostile. The method used against us has been one of sniping, insinuation, abuse and slander rather than that of a serious and consistent political fight. Amongst other things, we have been called ‘despisers of the working class’, ‘a lousy petty bourgeois bunch’, ‘blackmailers’, ‘slanderers’ of the North and Hyland type. As Trotsky says: ‘For analysis of reality the sectarian substitutes intrigue, gossip and hysteria’ (‘Sectarianism, Centrism and the Fourth International’ in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1935-36), Pathfinder 1977, p. 154). Be it on South Africa or Namibia, the majority on the Preparatory Committee proceed to pontificate and denounce on the basis of enormous ignorance. The document Marxism versus alchemy in which we set out our fundamental differences with the method and politics of the majority of the Preparatory Committee, after over six months, has still not been responded to in writing as requested. We do not think that the silence is accidental. Rather we believe that it flows out of the fundamentally flawed method and politics of the majority of the Preparatory Committee.

The latest episode in the consistent application of an anti-Marxist political orientation is the resolution tabled by the Secretariat of the Preparatory Committee at the expanded Secretariat meeting on Namibia. Instead of a timeously written, serious and substantial response to the differences we raise with the majority of the Preparatory Committee, we get a three-quarter page of sectarian hysteria. We believe the Resolution is a scurrilous document, an unprincipled provocation aimed at ourselves, the sole intention of which is to rubbish us politically and to drive us out of the Preparatory Committee. We represent a political thorn in the flesh of the majority self-proclaimers of the Fourth International. The self-proclaimers want to proceed in an unfettered fashion with their sectarian project. So, according to their warped understanding of ‘Marxist’ politics, we must go. In the words of Geoff Pilling, ‘there is no place for you in the Fourth International’.

We will not ape the sectarian methods of the majority of the Preparatory Committee. We will take up the criticism of our position on Namibia and show that the ‘position’ of the majority is inextricably bound up with its sectarian anti-Marxist perspective. The majority in the Preparatory Committee, rather than representing the continuity of Trotskyism, in fact represents, in a new form, the continuity of the degeneration represented by the International Committee (IC). After a brief leftward evolution in the wake of the explosion in the WRP, the leadership of the Preparatory Committee has settled back into a sectarian method and approach that in essence is no different from that which it practised or was party to within the SLL / WRP and the International Committee.

If the WRP / Workers Press is to make a step forward it has to reject the idea that the International Committee represented any real continuity of Trotskyism, and it has to recognise that it has to break with the method and practice of the IC. We believe that any serious balance sheet of the history of the IC has to come to the conclusion that the fight against Pabloism, despite its vital necessity, was only one-sided, and thereby ‘cannot be characterised as continuity’ (Marxism versus alchemy). The WRP leadership has not proceeded with a proper balance sheet, and yet they, more than most, are duty bound to execute such a task. The silence on David North’s distorted account (in his The Heritage We Defend) is astounding. We stand fully by the political conclusions in our ‘Brief Political Balance Sheet of the IC’, which we set out in Marxism versus alchemy. And we believe that in all essentials the Preparatory Committee is still haunted by the ghost of the IC. This conclusion has been confirmed by the entire course taken by the majority of the Preparatory Committee up to the present. Insofar as the other comrades in the Preparatory Committee have fully endorsed the position of the WRP leadership or unanimously propagated the same position and conducted themselves along the same lines, our criticism is directed against them as well.

The differences on Namibia throw fresh light on all the major questions raised by our paper Marxism versus alchemy. The response of the majority of the Preparatory Committee reveals all the hallmarks of the sectarianism we attack in the paper.

The majority in the Preparatory Committee regard themselves as constituting the Fourth International. What they understand by this is nothing but the same anti-Marxist conception that the International Committee held for decades. Rather than identifying the stage we are passing as necessarily one of acting as an ‘instrument for the creation of independent parties’ and the Fourth International, it considers itself and acts as if it is the Trotskyist party (or parties) and the Fourth International already. By this it means that it represents ‘the truth’ to which all others have to bow or be condemned, or the sectarian defence of some notion of ‘“pure” orthodox Trotskyism’ (Marxism versus alchemy) against the threat of Stalinist or Pabloite encroachment.

In our paper we argue that the IC’s idea of its task was to ‘. . . preserve pure Trotskyism and anybody who has strayed from the path of orthodoxy for one unguarded moment must be driven out of the Fl’ (ibid.). This is exactly what the Secretariat resolution is all about. The IC’s defence of ‘orthodoxy’ against Pabloism was correct, even though the fight was conducted one-sidedly and therefore not on a Bolshevik basis. The correctness of the case of the majority of the Preparatory Committee is far from proven, yet our bearers of the IC continuity conduct themselves fully in the tradition of the IC.

The Secretariat urges us to withdraw our journal because it considers it ‘an attack on Trotskyism and a blow against those involved in the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International.’ No need to explain the charge by way of a careful Marxist analysis and explanation. A simple assertion it appears is enough to justify us withdrawing our first publication. No doubt the eighth volume of Trotskyism versus Revisionism will be especially thin.

Without itself proceeding with a serious Marxist analysis of the situation in Namibia, and the political tasks that are therefore necessary, it determines not only that our article on Namibia is ‘an explicit attack on the theory of the Permanent Revolution’, but also that we ‘withdraw the journal’ in which it appears. The arrogance no doubt goes with the assumption of being the Fourth International.

This is a religious conception of politics. Here there is no room for uncertainty or misunderstanding. Here there is no scope for explanation, discussion and polemics. The evil of ‘Pabloite liquidationism’ has been identified and so an act of exorcism has to be performed by the high priests of truth. This replicates exactly the role that the International Committee played for most of its rotten history. If the majority in the Preparatory Committee were serious, if they honestly and genuinely want to overcome what they euphemistically refer to in the Expanded Ten Points as the ‘weaknesses’ and ‘inconsistencies’ of the International Committee, then they would submit a critique of our article in which they make explicit their own position. But no, the resolution simply offers a quotation from the article, which is supposed to prove the necessity for the high-handed and bureaucratic action proposed. You see, the ‘prestige’ and ‘purity’ of the Preparatory Committee has to be protected and the devil is at work trying by association to undermine them.

The charge is a joke both formally and in content. It appears to have been made more ‘for effect’, more as a provocation, than in seriousness. What constitutes an ‘explicit’ attack on the theory of the revolution? Do we explicitly reject the Permanent Revolution conception and instead call for an intermediate stage, an equivalent of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ in Namibia? I have read our article over and over again and I can find no evidence that we explicitly, or even implicitly, do so. In fact we explicitly reject the two-stage conception and call for ‘the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government as the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Workers Revolution No.1, August 1989, p. 31).

There is absolutely no hint that we are for a democratic revolution as a stage separate from the socialist revolution. There is no trace of us giving any support to the bourgeoisie, white or black, in Namibia. There is no way that we can be accused of supporting the bourgeoisie via supporting its petty bourgeois nationalist or Stalinist agencies. This denial we will substantiate:
* We explicitly attack the pro-capitalist two-stage position of the SWAPO leadership.
* We explicitly brand this position as ‘fraudulent’ and ‘treacherous’ and call for it to be ‘decisively challenged and fought’
* We explicitly state that the ‘stranglehold of international finance capital and its chief regional gendarme and economic mainstay, South African imperialism’ must be broken, and that the Namibian working class must seize hold of ‘the ownership and control over the commanding heights of the economy’
* We explicitly attack the SWAPO leadership’s promotion of the idea of a mixed economy which we regard as a euphemism for a ‘continued capitalist economy which is dominated by finance capital’.
* We explicitly attack the stated policy of the SWAPO leadership of ruling out ‘large scale nationalisation and expropriation’.
* We explicitly attack the SWAPO leadership’s rejection of nationalisation of the land and the reactionary idea of paying compensation even to parasitic absentee landlords.
* We argue explicitly that the ‘interests of both the farm-workers and the poor and landless peasantry will not be served unless the power of the capitalist landlords is broken’.
* We explicitly state that ‘the land question will not be solved unless a genuine workers’ and peasants’ government is established’.
* We explicitly call for a ‘break with the bourgeoisie!’ (Another one of J’s jokes is that this call cannot be applied to Namibia. This joke is much like his other speciality – shared by other members of the majority on the Preparatory Committee – that the united front policy cannot be presently applied to South Africa).

It would be tedious to exhaust our defence against the ridiculous charge by further references to the article. The onus is on the majority of the Preparatory Committee, especially the Secretariat who drafted the resolution, to explain how they arrive at the conclusion that our article is ‘an explicit attack on the theory of permanent revolution’.

Our entire programme of action is based on the method and content of the Transitional Programme and Trotsky’s writings on backward and colonial countries. It is aimed at the systematic mobilisation of the masses, on the basis of democratic and transitional demands, for the socialist revolution. The onus is on the majority on the Preparatory Committee to disprove this.

Our perspective is an entirely internationalist one. There is an explicit attack on ‘socialism-in-one-country’ and we state unambiguously that, ‘the fate of the Namibian working class and that of the South African working class is inseparable’ and that both share ‘. . . the same apartheid capitalist enemy . . . (and are) ensnared in the same rotting imperialist system’. Moreover the crowning internationalist slogan (a slogan of the permanent revolution) in the article on Namibia, is for ‘a federation of Southern African socialist states’ (ibid.). The onus is on the majority on the Preparatory Committee to prove that our perspective in the article is not an internationalist one.

J irresistibly has his own little joke as well. In support of the resolution of the Secretariat of the Preparatory Committee, he says we ‘do not mention the permanent revolution explicitly’. Here is an example of formalist stupidity if ever there was one. Trotsky, the leading proponent of the theory of permanent revolution wrote dozens of articles on the permanent revolution in relation to backward capitalist countries without using the term ‘permanent revolution’. Lenin’s adoption of the permanent revolution perspective in April 1917 did not force Lenin to use the term at all. Trotsky, and this ought to be the ABC of every Trotskyist, explains in his work Permanent Revolution that the drafting of this crucial text was forced on him by Stalin’s resurrection of the slogan ‘the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ in order to precipitate a struggle in defence ‘Leninism’ against ‘Trotskyism’. From April 1917, through to 1924, the perspective of the Comintern under Lenin and Trotsky was one of permanent revolution. This is despite the fact that the term, to my knowledge, is not used in one single document of the Comintern in this period. Does J dare to attack Lenin, Trotsky and the entire Comintern during the period of the first four Congresses for ‘explicitly attacking the theory of the permanent revolution’?

Cyril Smith’s attack on us is both inimitable and unforgivable. He says our journal and the Namibian article contains ‘not an ounce of Marxism’, and that it is ‘just words’. Comrade Smith, we view your observations with utter contempt. From the safety of your university campus and your bourgeois democratic society, it is easy for you to make your sick jokes. But we have had enough of them. The last time you used your carefully chosen phrase ‘not an ounce of Marxism’, we told you that the document you derided was written in blood. Even more so is our journal. What you call ‘just words’ is in fact, amongst other things, an open declaration of war against the Stalinists and the petty-bourgeois nationalists. More and more, the long knives are being drawn against us. You have not even begun to grasp what this means. Reality consists of the ideas and abstractions you have in your head. We realise that for this reason you are incapable of conducting a serious and open political fight. To this extent, you have not stopped being a hatchet man for Healyism. Your ravings are what Trotsky said of the Oehlerites (who incidentally accused Trotsky and those who advocated the ‘French turn’ as ‘betrayers’), nothing but ‘sectarian childish babble’.

But, jokes and jokers aside, does the quotation that condemns us stand up to the charge that there is at least an implicit attack on the theory of permanent revolution? We have not heard one single argument that makes any Marxist sense, but it seems that the fact that we do not explicitly call for a Trotskyist party in Namibia, not merely implies that we reject the theory of Permanent Revolution, but indeed is an ‘explicit attack’. Here lies the rub!

Our position and orientation on Namibia is informed by an understanding of the Bolshevik method, which we believe was absent for most of the history of the IC. The question of how to build the Fourth International and how to build sections in every country was not addressed in a Bolshevik manner. The seven volumes of Trotskyism versus Revisionism are barren and sterile in this respect. The leadership of the majority who were also the leadership of the IC simply never seriously asked or addressed certain basic questions related to party building. There were any number of pet formulations and taboos but the question of how to build the party within the working class was understood and answered within a severely limited sectarian and propagandist framework. Now when confronted by such questions on new political terrain, in Namibia and South Africa, the same sectarian-propagandist method is proposed. In defence of the Bolshevik method we put forward the following perspective. You have the opportunity to counterpose our perspective with yours. But you have not done so. We do not believe that we are capitulators that have not just unconsciously abandoned the theory of permanent revolution but indeed, according to your charge, explicitly attack it. We believe that we are building the party in Namibia and South Africa on a Bolshevik basis guided by the writings of Lenin and Trotsky. We are not lightminded and fickle about the business of building the party. Our comrades are busy literally laying down their lives. So if you are going to expose our supposed political bankruptcy then do so seriously, without resorting to the kind of high-handed, bureaucratic and ultimatist method that you have.

We believe that the implementation of Resolution 435 is counter-revolutionary in character and intention. But as materialists we have to respond to the real situation. The run-in period to the elections must involve a struggle for the oppressed Namibian masses to come to life politically. The success of this depends vitally on the action and initiative of revolutionary socialists. Despite the reactionary terms of 435, for the first time the colonially oppressed masses have an opportunity to vote and elect the political leadership that they believe will represent their interests. In other words, there is both the focus and the scope for the masses to openly articulate and struggle for their political interests. The imperialists and the apartheid bourgeoisie, backed by the Stalinist bureaucracy, and relying on the compliance of the SWAPO leadership, have taken a calculated risk. The task confronting Trotskyists is to take the lead in the fight to raise the temper of the masses and thus to take up an active struggle to realise their own interests.

This struggle can and must be concentrated around the call for a Revolutionary Democratic Constituent Assembly. ‘Revolutionary Democratic’ insofar as the aim of the call is to ensure that the masses shed their faith in bourgeois democracy in a struggle for 100% democracy, i.e. on the basis of their own strength and power. There must be an all-out battle to break out of the fraudulent and thoroughly undemocratic character of the Resolution 435 framework. The armed masses themselves must both determine that the elections are free and fair and convene the Constituent Assembly. ‘Forward to a Revolutionary Democratic Constituent Assembly!’ must be the rallying call of the oppressed masses during this period.

The main question is to arm the oppressed masses with the political programme of action of transitional demands and with the organisational means for taking the struggle forward at this crucial stage.

For us the central site of this struggle is inside SWAPO and its affiliate organisations. We do not believe that at this stage the political awakening of the masses will occur in any significant manner spontaneously or even via conscious organisation outside SWAPO. SWAPO has been and still is regarded by the vast majority of the oppressed masses who want to struggle as their organisation, as the organisation that will guarantee national self-determination.

The struggle for a class-conscious revolutionary socialist vanguard inside SWAPO is for us a necessary tactical orientation to ensure the construction of an independent Trotskyist party. Our forces are the nucleus of such a party and from the start are struggling to recruit vanguard elements to our organisation.

We do not believe that SWAPO can be transformed into a revolutionary vanguard party. Only under the leadership of a Trotskyist party will the Namibian working class seize power and establish its class dictatorship. The SWAPO leadership, under the pressure of imperialism, has attempted, and with growing fury will continue to attempt, to obstruct and sabotage all the efforts to develop a vanguard of the working class that takes the political initiative and struggles on the basis of the permanent revolution for the seizure of state power by the working class. Our prognosis is that in the course of the coming battles, if the efforts of the Trotskyists inside SWAPO are successful, SWAPO will be split in two parts – on the one hand a reformist wing, under the continued influence of the reactionary leadership and, on the other hand, a revolutionary wing. Trotskyists must be struggling now for the political and organisational crystallisation of such a revolutionary socialist wing. This will provide the basis for the formation of a Trotskyist vanguard organisation, deeply rooted in the working class, and capable of challenging the current political and organisational hegemony of the SWAPO leadership.

This does not mean that the present Trotskyist forces, which are pitifully small in numbers and politically still weak, must hide their politics. Our article sets out what we regard as a Trotskyist programme of action for the working class and oppressed masses of Namibia. It is on the basis of this system of transitional demands that Trotskyists must fight inside SWAPO.

At the same time, the struggle to win the confidence of the honest working class militants and socialists in SWAPO necessarily means a certain measure of adaptation to the regime inside the SWAPO organisations. Only sectarian idiots will fail to recognise what this means. In entering SWAPO we cannot simply proceed openly to condemn SWAPO as an organisation and call for the building of an alternative revolutionary organisation. We enter in order to, in Trotsky’s words, ‘defend Leninist ideas with patience, energy and tact’. Yes our small forces have to be as patient and tactful as they are Leninist and energetic. It is with this understanding that our article was written.

Our theoretical and political understanding of the need for an independent Trotskyist party, a section of a reconstructed Fourth International, must be introduced at first secretly to the most trustworthy elements that accept that we are serious and honest revolutionary fighters and not ‘smash and grab’ opportunists bent solely on blowing up the organisation that they built up and still have faith in. By a combination of activities – by revolutionary example, by persuasion, by propaganda, by individual recruitment to our organisation – we must struggle to win the best, most advanced elements to Trotskyism. Our ‘argument’ for the Fourth International and a section in Namibia will be most persuasive if we take the lead in providing the masses, and especially the working class, with a clear programme of action that connects directly their real and especially pressing needs and interests.

No doubt there are dangers that the Trotskyists who enter the ranks of SWAPO and its affiliates will buckle under the pressure of the leadership. But we believe that history has provided us with no choice but to audaciously take up the fight. At the same time we believe that we face an opportunity that we must seize with both hands.

Now is the time to seize the initiative inside SWAPO. The existing leadership is especially vulnerable. Its programme of popular frontist passivity and ‘national reconciliation’ flies directly in the face of the real political needs of the masses. The disappointment and disillusionment of the rank and file in the SWAPO leadership, in the light of its criminal policy statements and orientation to the elections, and, not least of all in the light of the exposure of the atrocities in the guerrilla camps, must be transformed into a positive force. This must include a struggle to democratise SWAPO structures; to make the leadership fully accountable for all its actions (its pro-capitalist orientation, its conciliationist and passive election policy, its criminal role in the camps, etc.); for the creation of a revolutionary socialist leadership; for a programme of action.

Now let us make our position clear, in the face of the insinuations of the majority of the Preparatory Committee: we support the idea of an international labour inquiry into the atrocities. In Namibia itself we believe that the exposure of the leadership must be taken up centrally inside SWAPO and inseparably from a revolutionary programme of action and a campaign to secure a two-thirds majority for SWAPO in the elections for SWAPO.

We do not believe that SWAPO can be transformed into the revolutionary Trotskyist party. But we do believe, at this point, that Trotskyists must fight for SWAPO to be transformed into a fighting organ of the masses. In the same way that Trotskyists under different circumstances fight for a fighting united front of workers’ organisations, for a united front of action and struggle based on a clear class programme, we must fight for SWAPO, in and through its affiliate organisations, which have an overwhelmingly proletarian base, to take up an open fight on the basis of the programme of action we propose in our article.

A central aspect of this struggle to transform SWAPO into a fighting organ of the masses will be the battle to overcome the inevitable resistance of the existing SWAPO leadership to this entire orientation. To the extent that revolutionary socialists are successful in inspiring the masses to struggle, to the extent that SWAPO affiliate organisations and structures begin to swell with workers, youth, and students who are ready to do battle, to the extent that committees of action are formed and begin to act, to the extent that the masses in growing numbers are galvanised around our programme of transitional demands, to this extent the best elements, the most honest working class fighters will crystallise into a revolutionary socialist left wing in growing opposition to the reactionary SWAPO leadership. And this left wing will provide the basis for formation of a genuine Trotskyist party in Namibia. This is our perspective.

And what is the perspective of the WRP of Namibia? It is one of political hopelessness, confusion and defeatism. For H, Resolution 435 and its implementation according to the desires and schemes of the counter-revolutionary SWAPO leadership and its bourgeois masters, has already triumphed. The WRP of Namibia has no programme of action for the masses under the present circumstances. Its main aim during the elections, according to comrade H, is to secure a ‘no vote’ for SWAPO. The main question is exposure of the SWAPO leadership and its criminal role in the atrocities committed against PLAN guerrillas. By his own admission, despite the efforts of both the WRP and the other black parties, as well as the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, SWAPO is still likely to get 50% of the vote. He claims that most of the other votes will be tribally based. In other words, at the very moment when the expectations of the masses reach the highest point for decades, the WRP will seek to demoralise, disillusion and disorientate the masses further by calling on them not to vote for SWAPO, the organisation that they helped to build and that they have hitherto believed would lead them to freedom. This is a disgraceful policy. It is not even the case of the WRP contesting the elections itself. It does not seriously believe that workers in any significant numbers will vote for the other parties ‘left’ of SWAPO. If H’s analysis and prognosis is correct, viz. that dissatisfaction for SWAPO will lead to a tribalist vote, then the position of the WRP (Namibia) is even more bankrupt. For the tribalist leaders are reactionary and heavily under the influence of the apartheid state and the leading white ‘settler’ party the DTA. No matter for H. For him an anti-SWAPO vote is better than a pro-SWAPO vote. What crass anti-Marxist reasoning. This is not a serious perspective of struggle. It is a criminal adventurous course based on a defeatist policy that offers the masses only demoralisation. Embodied here is the narrow, sectarian and anti- Marxist understanding of the majority of the Preparatory Committee of the struggle being centrally one of ‘exposure’. The way to win workers to Trotskyism for them is essentially to expose the Stalinists and the other rotten leaderships of the masses.

Our orientation is different. For us the struggle is to arm the proletariat with the means to execute the proletarian revolution. An important part of this struggle is the exposure of the existing leaderships. But ours is an active orientation of direct and consistent engagement within the working class and all the mass organisations, rather than a passive orientation of sectarian propagandism. This is the fundamental weakness in the approach of the WRP (Namibia) to the tasks at hand in Namibia.

Despite the proclamation of a Workers Revolutionary Party of Namibia on 1 May 1989, there is no Trotskyist party in Namibia, it still has to be built. It is this question, the fact that an independent vanguard party of the working class does not exist, that must be seriously addressed. Our article is based on what we believe is the best perspective for addressing this crucial question.

Why do we say that despite the proclamation of the WRP (Namibia) a genuine Trotskyist party does not exist? The assumption of the title of a party is itself evidence of the failure to understand things as they really stand. This is the mimicking of the sectarian practices and approach of the International Committee. It is no accident that it has adopted the title of its British ‘section’.

The WRP (Namibia) has clearly been founded on a particularly weak political basis. It is, to say the least, an embarrassment to Trotskyism in Southern Africa to have the ‘first legal Trotskyist party in Southern Africa’ publicly producing a draft manifesto in one issue of its newspaper and then renouncing it in the next. The lack of political clarity and seriousness that this displays is self-evident. The banner of the Fourth International is raised, then lowered and ‘replaced’ with a second one within the space of weeks. Both banners are not Trotskyist banners. Secondly, the proclamation of a Trotskyist party is nothing if not an act of complete adventurism. Yes, Trotskyism is nothing if not audacity, but audacity and irresponsibility are not the same thing. The weak political basis and the extreme vulnerability of the WRP (Namibia) from the side of the imperialist bourgeoisie (be it in the form of the apartheid state, the fascist thugs, etc.) and the SWAPO leadership together make this act of self-proclamation indefensible. Furthermore, their refusal to work inside SWAPO criminally cuts them off from access both to the militants inside SWAPO as well as the masses who still overwhelmingly support SWAPO.

We call on the majority of the Preparatory Committee to make their position explicit. What was said by individual members of the Preparatory Committee in the meeting on Namibia was not only riddled with contradictions and confusion (for all the appearance of speaking with one voice) but, worse, it showed complete political bankruptcy on a crucial political question for Trotskyism and the working class in Namibia.

The majority expressed their outrage when I suggested that the full revelation of the atrocities did not by any means lead us to the conclusion that we should change our basic orientation. The majority in the meeting clearly substituted subjective emotionalism for objective Marxist criteria.

At the same time H, on more than one occasion, said that he did not have any principled objection to entering SWAPO. In fact he said that up until 1986, he still believed it was correct to work inside SWAPO, as he had previously done over many years. This was despite the fact that he, better than most, had direct knowledge of the atrocities and their extent.

Geoff Pilling introduced the scurrilous resolution by saying that the question of entering SWAPO was not on the agenda. Not a single member of the Preparatory Committee majority was prepared to commit themselves on this question despite our insistence that this was a fundamental political question for Trotskyists in Namibia at this juncture. Cyril Smith was honest and stupid enough to say he has no interest in tactical questions, he was ‘only interested in Marxism’.

We note that Cliff Slaughter was supposed to draft a Preparatory Committee statement on Namibia over two and a half months ago. Nothing has been forthcoming. Nor is there any indication that the Secretariat has any clear ideas on the question. In our paper Marxism versus alchemy, we attack the pure propagandist orientation of the IC in all the important political episodes of its history. We specifically note that in all these instances there was ‘. . . not one alternative (emphasis in original) practical programme for the reconstruction of the FI or for building national sections which could be contrasted to the Pabloist revisionists’. In the case of Namibia, we hope, history is not going to repeat itself in tragic (or farcical) fashion, although there are strong signs.

The majority on the Preparatory Committee and especially the Secretariat have to explain a few important things in this connection:
* Does it support the public founding of the WRP (Namibia)?
* Does it believe it was founded on an adequate political basis?
* Does it agree with the WRP (Namibia)'s political orientation?
* On what political basis does it accept ‘full membership’ of the WRP (Namibia) on the Preparatory Committee?

We urge you to write about these things, so that we can understand what your position is.

The account that Comrade H gave of developments in Namibia was just that – his account. It was an account that the majority on the Preparatory Committee revelled in. The aim was simply to rub our noses in the dirt. The least that the Preparatory Committee could have done was to wait for the other side of the story. But no, it was content with one side because it accorded with the sectarian needs of the majority on the Preparatory Committee. I recall quite clearly that almost exactly a year ago both Michel Varga and Cliff Slaughter were not prepared to discuss J and the case that we had against him in his absence. But then, we suppose, you only apply your principles to those you agree with politically, and therefore not to us.

Our comrades in Namibia, and I told Cliff Slaughter this two-and-a-half months ago already, are relatively young and are operating in a new and especially harsh political terrain. Our organisation is also young and struggling against great odds. We will make numerous mistakes, and therefore we will have to correct numerous mistakes. We are struggling to proceed on a principled basis to build a Trotskyist party in both Namibia and South Africa. We remain firm in our conviction that our political line is the best under the circumstances. Moreover, we are more than keen to learn from other serious and honest Trotskyist organisations and their experiences.

But we doubt that we have much more to learn from you insofar as your entire approach is a sectarian and anti-Marxist one. Your approach obstructs you both from being able to learn and being able to teach. Your religious conception of politics dooms you to repeat the sectarian excesses of the IC. Trotsky wrote much about the barrenness and sterility of the sectarian politics you practise. But sectarians find it hard to recognise themselves for what they really are. They live in a world of formulas and abstractions that increasingly stand in the way of an analysis of reality. They know only black or white, or good or bad. There are no transitions, no processes, no dialectical contradictions. Of course, there are sectarians and there are sectarians. But we believe an especially virulent form exists within the leadership of the majority of the Preparatory Committee.

We chose not to be part of the democratic-centralist ‘Centre for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International’. We will take on board your criticisms and respond to them. But we reject with profound contempt the method and approach you have adopted towards us. We are not optimistic about a positive political evolution of the majority of the Preparatory Committee, i.e. away from the deep-seated anti-Marxist method and politics you practise. We stand by every single one of our criticisms. You might exclude us from your self-proclaimed Fourth International (there is no place for us in the Fourth International, according to Geoff Pilling), but we will continue the fight for a Fourth International that is reconstructed on a genuinely Marxist political basis that is quite different from yours.

At the same time we call on the majority of the Preparatory Committee to take up seriously every one of the political questions that we have raised. We call on them to submit in writing:
* A balance sheet of the history of the International Committee.
* An analysis of the Namibian situation and clarification of the tasks of Trotskyists there.
* A full explanation of how our article is ‘an explicit attack on the theory of permanent revolution’.
* A full explanation of why our publication is ‘an attack on Trotskyism and a blow against those involved in the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International’.
* A full explanation for why it responded to our magazine, and especially the article on Namibia, in such a high-handed, bureaucratic and ultimatist fashion, rather than in engaging in a serious discussion.

On the question of the supposed ‘failure of the South African members of the PC to make available to the Committee this information about the SWAPO leadership’, we must remind the majority on the Preparatory Committee that the information came from Paul Henderson (a WRP CC member at the time) to Wayne Poulsen (a WRP CC member at the time) to J who gave a report. Are you accusing them too as you do us of ‘suppressing’ information? The real situation we believe is more complex than that.

Lastly, for reasons that are obvious, we reject your ultimatum that requires us to withdraw our publication. We have given our political reasons. But even if we were to take your ‘request’ seriously, please explain to us what it means.

In defence of Marxism Index (1992-1996)

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