[June 1981, Reprinted in Bulletin of Marxist Studies, Summer 1985. It was wrong to label women’s liberation, black liberation or gay liberation as middle class or liberal issues. Not the issues, but the approach of several groups is middle class or liberal]
In his document submitted to the International Forum, comrade GM raises a number of fundamental divergences with the theory and practise of Marxism. Nevertheless, his document can provide a useful basis upon which to conduct a discussion in Sri Lanka and internationally on the strategy, tactics and policy of the Marxists, and in particular, of the attitude of Marxism to the sects.
GM complains that no work has been done on answering the arguments of the sects, whom he dubs mistakenly as ‘Trotskyists’, in the works of the Marxists. This is entirely false. Mandel, Pablo, Healy, Hansen, Maitan and the rest of this sorry crew, ruined the enormous ideological resources that were created by Trotsky in the period before the Second World War. Where in the world have they succeeded on the basis of 40 years work in building a mass revolutionary party? They have succeeded in building mainly petit bourgeois groupings without any real significance in the life of the workers movement of any country. Only in Sri Lanka on the basis of the theory and ideas of the Marxist tendency has a mass party of the working class been built.
In India, 40 years ago, the Mandelists claimed 1,500 to 2,000 members. Now they have nothing in India, not even a handful of half a dozen.
In the USA, the petit bourgeois sect of the Socialist Workers Party ignored completely Trotsky’s material and his strictures for the Party to be proletarian in composition and policy. Indeed Trotsky must have had a foreboding of the way in which the SWP could degenerate. Today this petit bourgeois sect is overwhelmingly middle class in composition. Even the SWP’s leader, Barnes, reported to the so-called United Secretariat of the Fourth International’s 1979 World Congress that „our movement’s current social composition is totally abnormal. This is a historical fact’? (Congress Report, page 44). This referred not only to the American SWP, but the entire USFI!
The American SWP exaggerates support for liberal middle class issues which, incidentally, in countries like Britain are also supported by the right wing of the labour movement like Roy Jenkins, who is now one of the leaders of the new Social Democratic Party. They emphasise such liberal political issues as „women’s liberation“ and „gay liberation“. It is, of course, correct to fight against any persecution of homosexuals and to work for equal rights for women. But it is necessary to fight for working class women’s struggles and to concentrate on the working class issues as the main work of Marxism in creating cadres. In the same manner the American SWP stands for „black liberation’, thereby placing themselves on the right wing of the American Black movement, and call for the formation of an „independent black party“ (‘A Transitional Program for Black Liberation’, 1969 SWP Convention). The equivalent demand in Sri Lanka would be to call on Tamil workers not to join the Marxist Party, but to form a Tamil party with a radical programme.
After having failed to build their strength by decades of ‘single issue’ campaigns among the students, women, gays and blacks, the American SWP and the rest of USFI have formally decided at their 1979 Congress to ‘turn to industry’. In other words to send their middle class members into the factories. Like the Russian Narodniks they are ‘going to the people’. But this will only result for them in the loss of their middle class supporters while repelling workers with their arrogant postures.
The American SWP is utterly incapable of genuinely penetrating the working class and have shown that they cannot understand the enormous possibilities which exist in the United States within the trade unions and the working class generally at the present time.
The British ‘section of the USFI,’ the IMG remains a piddling little sect which constantly splits, then unifies and then splits again, much like the amoeba. It has been mainly student orientated in outlook, membership and in policy.
In Latin America the USFI has built nothing and in fact lost most of its support to another sect in a 1979 split. In Peru, they have 2 MP’s based on the peasants and not on the working class.
In most places of the world, their sections are a fiction, or constitute only a handful of people. In over 40 years they have failed to build anything but phantom revolutionary parties.
Leaving aside the fundamental political errors which they have committed, which are analysed in documents such as „Programme of the International’, one of the main reasons, of course, for this failure was the objective situation which existed in the world. The post-1945 revival of capitalism had as a side effect the rebuilding of the parties of Stalinism and Reformism.
All history demonstrates that the masses do not adopt new political ideas without first of all going through the old traditional organisations of the working class. Only when none of the old traditional organisations existed, as in the colonial world, for instance China, Indonesia and India, did the organisations of the Communist International start from scratch. In fact the reason why Trotskyism was so acceptable in Sri Lanka in the early days before the war was that it began on virgin soil, where there was no Stalinist tradition and only a very weak reformist party.
Comintern’s mass forces formed in existing organisations
One of GM’s main mistakes is to regard things from a purely narrow national point of view on the basis of Sri Lanka and even of the experience of the colonial world. Nowhere where mass organisations of the working class have existed were new organisations established which did not at least come in part from the old organisations of the working class.
Even in Russia the Bolsheviks stemmed from the old Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Bolshevism only became an independent separate party in 1912 when it had the support of 80 per cent of the organised workers. Even after the first February revolution there were only about eight thousand members of the Bolshevik Party. But despite the urgency of the problems which faced the Russian proletariat and despite Lenin’s work in creating an independent party of Bolshevism in 1912, after the February Revolution the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in many, if not most, of the areas of Russia were joined together right up until July 1917!
It was only in Petrograd and in Moscow that the forces of Bolshevism were separate right from the early days of the revolution. Even there, as we know, Stalin and Kamenev were in favour of unity with the Mensheviks. This did not drop out of a clear sky, but out of the history of the Russian movement itself.
On the other hand, the parties of the Communist International in the main were formed out of the old existing organisations of the working class, in France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, the United States and in other countries. The new organisations grew out of the womb of the old organisations.
We have seen that this now applies to the colonial countries, first of all, in the experience of Sri Lanka. Now we see that in India, because of the criminal incapacity of the Mandelists to develop a Marxist orientation and Marxist work (leaving aside for the moment their political errors) the forces for a new movement developed first in the old Communist Party of India, leading to a split and the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and then a further split in the CPI(M) which formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). The tragedy in India was that there was no grouping, no nucleus of Marxists which could have taken advantage of the enormous discontent caused by the reformist policies of the Communist Party of India in order to create a genuine Marxist tendency. As a consequence, new centrist, later to become reformist, organisations were created in the CPI(M) and even more tragically an adventurist Maoist terrorist organisation was created in the CPI(M-L).
These lessons indicate that no new organisations of the working class will be formed unless the masses have tested again and again out of their own experience the incapacity of the old organisations of the proletariat to solve the problems of the working class.
The complete failure of Mandel, Hansen, Healy, Lambert and company to build anything viable and their continual splintering into dozens of futile sects, as the experience of Sri Lanka itself demonstrates, comes first of all out of the lack of understanding of the fundamental ideas of Marxism (explained in the document of the ‘Programme of the International’) and the complete lack of understanding of how to orientate the work in relation to the strategy and tactics in building the movement.
Keynesianism, East Europe, China— Perspectives after the war
They have completely failed to understand the nature of the epoch which followed the Second World War. No one in the early stages could have blamed them for failure to build mass revolutionary parties under very difficult conditions. Generals, in war, cannot win if they have not got the forces and are sometimes compelled to retreat. In the war of the classes also, sometimes the generals of the working class have got to retreat. But a good general will retreat in good season, a bad general will turn a retreat into a rout and a catastrophe, which is what happened, particularly with the Mandelites, but also with the other sects.
During and since the Second World War they have been utterly incapable of orientating to the new political situation which has developed. We can only mention the main points without developing them. These are developed quite exhaustively in the document referred to above. They completely failed to understand the results of the Second World War. They declared that only Bonapartist regimes could be established in Western Europe. There was no possibility of a re-establishment of bourgeois democracy. They said that with purely diplomatic pressure alone it would be possible for Anglo-American imperialism to restore capitalism in Russia! Regularly since 1945 they have been beating the tom-toms of World War Three!
After the Second World War they declared that no economic recovery of capitalism was possible. When this was shown to be obviously wrong, they declared that there was a „ceiling on production“ and the production of 1938 was the highest that could be reached under capitalism!
From this hare-brained idea of alleged Marxism the „leadership“ accepted as good coin the hare-brained ideas of Keynesianism. Declaring that there was a new stage of „neocapitalism“ in the world since the Second World War and that the capitalists had „learned“ how to avoid and cure slump, they said that, with Keynesian methods the capitalists could succeed in overcoming the crisis of capitalism! In this they, in company with the Stalinists and reformists, reflected the pressure of capitalism.
In fact the further degeneration of the Second International and of the Communist Parties was due to this economic upswing of capitalism. The degeneration of the old LSSP can be traced to two factors. One was the complete incapacity of Mandel, Healy, Cannon, Hansen and company to give a lead internationally to the Sri Lankan comrades, and second was the pressure of the development of capitalism itself.
On the question of Stalinism, the record of this sorry crew is not much better. They declared in the post-war period that ‘*state capitalism“ had been established in the countries of Eastern Europe while Russia remained a deformed workers’ state! But after denouncing at their 1948 World Congress the genuine Marxists in Britain as capitulating to Stalinism because they declared that both in Eastern Europe and Russia there were deformed workers’ states, they did a 180 degree somersault after the Stalin/Tito split. They found in Yugoslavia a „healthy workers’“ state! By some mysterious means a ‘state capitalist’ country had become overnight a ‘healthy workers’ state’ though nothing fundamental had changed. Thus they did a 180 degree turn over the heads of the Marxist wing of the movement. In China, right up until 1951 they declared that Maoism was state capitalist on the basis of the false position of the Chinese „Trotskyists“ of those days. Then in 1951 they did a new somersault and declared that in China there was now a „healthy workers’ state“. The American SWP claimed that China was State Capitalist right up until 1953! in fact, the dispute over China and Maoism was one of the reasons why they expelled the Marxists from their ‘International’ in 1965.
The American SWP in 1947-8 had adopted the position that Mao represented state capitalism and would capitulate to Chiang Kai-Chek and would never cross the Yangtse River! A position which, as always happens with these people, was contradicted later.
This was the position of James Cannon, Hansen and the other leaders of the SWP in America. Cannon and the American SWP also had the position that the war was still on after 1945! This was part of their delusion of an immediate war between the capitalist powers and Russia. They completely misunderstood the effects of the Second World War and the possibilities that for a temporary period there would be a consolidation of Stalinism.
All these tendencies, Healy, Mandel, Pablo and Hansen, capitulated to the Maoist idea of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China. They declared that this was a „new version of the Paris Commune“.
Their failure to analyse their mistakes on this and other questions is the main reason why they were utterly incapable of building even a caricature of what could be termed a Marxist tendency anywhere in the world.
The USFI’s failure to understand the colonial revolution is shown by their 1979 congress declaration that Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique are ruled by the ‘nationalist petit bourgeois. . .(who are) a culture medium for the development of a propertied indigenous bourgeois class“ (Congress Report, page 19). Thus they make in essence the same mistakes as they did in the early days after 1945 regarding Eastern Europe. To this day the American SWP still declare Cuba to be a healthy workers’ state and the 1979 USFI congress decided to leave the question open (Congress Report p. 67)!
Their policy of „deep entrism“ in the Socialist and Communist Parties was an absolute disaster. They lost many of their members to the reformist organisations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and in other countries. From opportunist work in the workers’ parties they passed to adventurism by supporting guerrillaism in Latin America, Ireland and elsewhere.
It is an absolute scandal, for which these gentlemen can never be forgiven, that they supported the adventurist and terrorist ERP in Argentina which prepared the way for the disaster of the coming to power of the military dictatorship in Argentina. In Uruguay, they supported the Tupamaros and as a consequence must bear some responsibility for the debacle there and the coming to power of a military dictatorship. This led to the situation where a quarter of the population actually emigrated from Uruguay! The ERP was set up 1970 as the military wing of the PRT (Combatiente), the official organisation of the Mandelists in Argentina from 1969 until July 1973 when they walked out of the USFI. This is an abomination, a scandal and an absolute travesty of everything that was taught by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky on how to build the revolutionary party. The sectarians have no principles and no worked out policy, but stagger from sectarianism to opportunism and back again.
# A catalogue of mistakes
Guerrillaism as Lenin explained is the method of the lumpen proletariat and of the peasants. While there is some justification for the guerrilla movements in countries where there is virtually no proletariat, there can be no justification whatsoever for urban guerrillaism! Peasant wars even if victorious can only lead to the victory of Bourgeois or Proletarian Bonapartism. They can never result in the victory of a socialist revolution in the classical form which requires a conscious movement by the proletariat. Urban guerrillaism tries to replace the movement of the proletariat by students, lumpens and even some de-classed workers and is absolutely against all the teachings of Marxism. Invariably it has ended in disaster. That has been the experience in Latin America and in other continents.
The Mandelists have gone from opportunism to adventurism and back again, usually succeeding in combining the two! They, in common with the rest of the sects, remain a poisonous clique of petit-bourgeois who even if they succeed in winning stray workers, here and there, studentise them instead of proletarianising their student supporters.
These sects are incapable of building a Marxist current even under the most favourable conditions. All that they do is to try and find some individual or group which will give them a short-cut to establishing themselves a credible phenomenon. In the colonial countries they drag at the tail of the guerilla wars. In the metropolitan countries they dragged at the tail of the student movement which developed in the 1960’s.
Their position was that there had been an „Americanisation” of the proletariat in Western Europe. And as a consequence of this „Americanisation“, the proletariat had become corrupted and incapable of any movement for fifty years! In this respect they adopted the ideas of the petit bourgeois ‘sociologist’ Marcuse.
One month before the May French General Strike and occupation of the factories in 1968 at a meeting in London, where Pierre Frank and Mandel spoke, they declared that nothing would happen in France or Western Europe for 30 to 50 years!
They had declared before that De Gaulle’s coming to power in 1958 was a decisive victory of reaction equal to the defeat of the German proletariat by Hitler!
This petit-bourgeois current, like the rest of the sects, looked to classes other than the proletariat—the students, petit-bourgeois and peasants, as a basis for achieving a new society.
They adopted at one stage illusions in the self reform of the Yugoslav, Chinese and even the Russian Bureaucracy! They were always looking for short cuts and for ‘saviours’: Tito, Gomulka, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Che Guevara, Mao, Khrushchev, Dubček, etc. All tendencies make mistakes, but mistakes become a crime when an analysis is not made of these mistakes and due conclusions drawn from them. When blunder after blunder is made and a zig-zag course from opportunism to adventurism and back is adopted over decades then it is no longer a question of isolated mistakes, but of an organic tendency which is incapable of reforming itself and adopting correct Marxist policies.
Nothing has come from the sects, except demoralisation, disintegration and putrefaction. The reason why Marxism has had a certain success in Britain, Sri Lanka and in other countries is by decisively turning its back on the sects and looking towards the fresh workers, the fresh active workers in the mass organisations: the trade unions, the traditional mass workers’ parties and in industry generally.
Young elements of these sects can possibly be won on the basis of successes achieved by the Marxists: so it has been in Sri Lanka, Britain and in other countries. But usually it requires years of re-education to retrain the elements in the sects which have been mis-educated. Only the younger elements are able to be saved in this way on the basis of demonstrating in action the superiority of the ideas of Marxism.
Fatal to waste time on sects
On this very question Engels wrote to Bebel on June 20th 1873: „When, as in your case, one is to a certain extent in the position of a competitor to the General Association of German Workers, one can easily be too considerate of one’s rivals and gets into the habit of always thinking of them first. But both the General Association of German Workers and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party together still form only a very small minority of the German working class. Our view, which we have found confirmed by long practice, is that the correct tactics in propaganda are not to entice away a few individuals and local groups here and there from one’s opponent, but to work on the great mass, which is not yet taking part in the movement. A single individual whom one has oneself reared from the raw is worth more than ten Lassallean turncoats, who always bring the germs of their false tendency into the Party with them. And if one could get only the masses without their local leaders it would still be all right. But in fact one must always bring the whole crowd of these leaders into the bargain, who are bound by their previous public utterances, if not by their previous views and who must now prove above all things that they have not deserted their principles but that on the contrary the Social Democratic Workers’ Party preaches true Lassalleanism. This was the unfortunate thing at Eisenach, which perhaps could not be avoided at that time, but these elements have certainly done harm to the Party and I am not sure that the Party would not have been at least as strong today without the accession. In any case, however, I should regard it as a misfortune if these elements were to receive reinforcements.”
It would be fatal for Marxists to waste time on the sects. Far more than in Engels’ day when he gave this advice to the German Social Democrats not to waste time on the Lassalleans but to look towards the mass movement of the working class, it remains incomparably true with regard to the insignificant sects of today, which have no basis in Marxist theory, no mass support and who are utterly incapable of developing a viable tendency. Most of the elements that they have grafted together are human rubbish. Outside the labour movement, history demonstrates, nothing will be achieved.
Now comrade GM is demanding a cook book of rules on how to overthrow the capitalists. As Trotsky long ago explained, no cook book of recipes for this purpose exists. A Marxist position is founded on the basis of the work of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and the work of the Marxists in the course of the last four decades. This material is what should be studied by comrades like GM if they wish to have an understanding of the tactics which should be adopted.
The rise in terrorism in developed capitalist countries has been a consequence of the mis-education which was produced by the mass peasant guerrilla movements, (which have a certain justification in some backward colonial countries), on the one hand and the weakness of Marxism on the other. The rise of Stalinism, the reinforcement of reformism is what has given rise to the despair of the frenzied petit-bourgeois students and intellectuals who take the ‘easy’ and ‘heroic’ way of terrorism, dragging behind them in many cases mis-educated working class youth. But terrorists, as Trotsky explained, are merely liberals with bombs. On the road of terrorism there can be no way to the socialist revolution.
Only the petit bourgeois Mandelists could seriously discuss the seizure of power without winning the majority of the organised workers. It is entirely ludicrous to imagine that the task of creating mass parties can begin before the cadres have been assembled within the framework of the mass organisations of the working class.
The sketchy outline is amplified in other Marxist material. It is not necessary to go into further detail here.
The broad panorama of the class struggle is indicated in other documents and reports. If GM would take the trouble to read the resolutions of the first four Congresses of the Communist International and the works of Lenin and Trotsky, he would see that the method of analysis and perspectives which was adopted by the Marxist tendency is the only method to prepare the way for cadres. On the basis of broad perspectives, it is then possible to decide strategy and tactics to be consciously applied in each country where Marxists are working.
The assembling of the cadres is the vital task which stands before the Marxists of all countries. Everywhere, even in Sri Lanka, where there is a mass party, it is nevertheless necessary to assemble the cadres. In Sri Lanka the Marxists have passed beyond the stage of a small propaganda group and many valuable lessons can be learned by the Marxists internationally of how to build a mass party by participating in the class struggles and gaining mass support. Of course, in all countries, there must be participation in the class struggle. Two hundred or four hundred pages could be devoted to the experiences which were undergone by the Marxist tendency in Britain. But it is sufficient merely to refer to other documents where these are developed over a series of years.
GM says, „There was no discussion on the short-term strategy of the working class seizing power and overthrowing capitalist rule. Nor was there any discussion of the independent line which should be followed in different countries in relation to the class struggle in them.“ This has been sufficiently answered in previous material and it is not necessary to go into it any further in any detail.
United Front— Mass Organisations for Mass Activity
It is true that in Sri Lanka the tasks are different to those in other countries. In all countries it is necessary to participate in the class struggle of the masses in order to gain their support. But it is done in an entirely different way once a party has been created, rather than for isolated individuals of a small tendency. In the recent local elections in Britain, which resulted in a victory for the Labour Party on a national scale, the only alleged workers’ groupings putting up candidates against the Labour Party—the Communist Party, the Workers Revolutionary Party and the tiny Revolutionary Communist Tendency—got ludicrous votes.
The process of change and development of the mass movement has been explained only by the Marxist tendency. We saw the process in 1968 in France, after the most magnificent general strike and occupation of the factories in the history of the working class in any country of the world. A general strike which lasted for about a month, involving about 10 million workers. In those events in France, and also in other countries the sects were and are incapable of winning support on the basis of the mass movement of the working class. It will not be different in any mass movement of the working class in any country of the world. This haughty, arrogant and ignorant sect of the Mandelists actually issued a leaflet to the workers in France at the time of the general strike saying that the workers could not understand socialist theory and required the students to explain theory to them! Only the tolerance of the working class prevented them from getting a richly deserved beating. This false theory, reeking with contempt for the working class; is only the other side of the coin of their support for urban guerrillaism.
The Mandelites fantasised after the occupations in 1968 about an immediate new revolutionary upsurge, without attempting to explain that the working class would have to go again and again through the experience of betrayal by the existing mass organisations before they would turn towards a new organisation. Incidentally, even a few thousand people are not a mass basis, generally a mass basis would involve hundreds of thousands of people. The target is first of all to gain the dozens, then the hundreds, then the thousands and then the tens and hundreds of thousands. These can only be won within the mass movement itself through the experience of the working class, plus the ideas of Marxism. These two things taken together will have the effect of building the mass Marxist tendency.
In France the sects, and they are large sects unfortunately, declared that the Socialist Party was finished. In the election of 1969 the Socialist Party secured only 5 per cent of the vote. Yet thirteen years later, we see the victory of the Socialist Party in the Presidential elections! The Marxists however, predicted a re-alignment of the working class around the Socialist Party, and in the future around the Communist Party, unless a Marxist alternative was created.
Comrade GM complains that all the other „Marxist“ organisations are characterised as sectarian. This is perfectly true. The Marxists gladly and enthusiastically answer „guilty“ to this charge put forward by GM. These organisations will swing from opportunism to sectarianism and back without the mass basis which is possessed by the reformists or the Stalinists. They are utterly incapable of educating cadres to prepare the way for the future. They have wrong principles, wrong policy, wrong strategy and wrong tactics. Therefore they will never create a movement that could have any significant effect on the lives of the working class in any country.
In so far as the sects have any viability within the framework of the trade unions, for example where individual workers, particularly in the white collar unions, might be poisoned with their ideas, Marxists do not exclude them from general united front activity in „Broad Left“ currents, etc. Fortunately they cannot do much damage as the Marxists generally succeed in isolating them. Wherever they have had some sort of success it has been disastrous for the development of an organised left wing in the unions. But where it is possible to collaborate with ultra-lefts and opportunists of this sort for the benefit of any immediate gain that can be made by the working class, then it is certainly undertaken.
However, GM has a most peculiar idea of the United Front. Lenin and Trotsky explained that the United Front is not a front of insignificant cliques such as those that exist and unfortunately have had a marginal effect on the movement in Sri Lanka, Britain and in other countries. A United Front is an agreement of mass organisations for mass activity on the part of the proletariat. It is meaningless when it is suggested that tiny organisations such as these who represent nobody but themselves, should be drawn into a United Front. In a sense, in Britain and in other countries with mass reformist organisations, Marxists carry out united-front style work within the framework of the mass organisations themselves. Where the sectarians stray into the political organisations of the class they do damage which has to be counteracted by the ideas and activity of the Marxists. They have taken to heart, on the basis of experience of the last 45 years, the advice of Engels, to turn their backs on the sects and to face towards the working class.
To argue that there should be agreements with the miniscule organisations which have no importance whatsoever for the life of the working class and that Tribune „is not important’, as GM does, is almost incredible. Tribune is a very important left reformist tendency within the British trade unions and Labour Party.
GM writes „The biggest left party in England is the Socialist Workers Party. Apart from that the main left organisations are CP, IMG, WRP. These apart, there are other organisations. Within the Labour Party the Tribune Group exists. It is a very loose group. They are also big. As an organisation it is not very important.“ Every one of these lines is a mistake. The SWP have no importance whatsoever in the life of the working class. The Communist Party is far bigger. Wherever the SWP have succeeded in gaining support within the unions and the factories, it has always ended in catastrophe and disaster for the workers. That is why, far from developing in the last period, the SWP has probably lost its entire base in industry as the struggle of the working class has developed. The IMG, WRP and other organisations have already been dealt with. We have concentrated mainly on the Mandelists because of the importance this organisation assumes in the eyes of GM
The situation in Ireland will be dealt with in more detail, because here incontestably is shown the reactionary attitude of the sects and their lack of a Marxist understanding, on the one hand, and the need for a flexible Marxist approach, on the other hand. Nowhere in the world, except in Sri Lanka, is there a mass revolutionary party. There are mass reformist and Stalinist parties, and without winning the active layers from these parties, no revolutionary work of any fundamental importance is possible. Unfortunately, revolutionary opportunities have been lost in India, Italy, France and in other countries because of the lack of a Marxist nucleus at work within the mass organisations of the class or where the Marxists have been bureaucratically expelled, to orientate towards the mass organisations.
‘Patiently Explain’
How can GM expect the more active masses to understand instantly, without the guidance of Marxist cadres and Marxist activity the reformist policies of the trade union leaders on the one hand and of the Socialist and Communist parties on the other hand. If this applies to the active layers of the working class, then it applies a thousand times more to the inert mass who support Reformism and Stalinism in the different countries. It is events plus Marxism which will succeed in laying the foundations for the development of the Marxist tendency in all the mass parties of the working class at one pace or another. The workers in the mass parties and the trade unions, the active workers and even more the inactive workers will not even notice the fussy activities of the loonies building imaginary revolutionary parties outside of the mass movements!
Before revolutionary activity can even be considered except theoretically, it is necessary to assemble the cadres of Marxism on the lines of the activity and the material sketched out by the Marxists.
GM’s lifeless attitude is shown by his approach to the Labour Party in Southern Ireland for example. „The biggest left party is the Labour Party (in Ireland). There is a great deal of bureaucracy within the Labour Party. Although it is called the Labour Party it is not a revolutionary party based on the working class. It has become completely reformist. During the coalition regime the Labour Party had become very unpopular“. No doubt the policy of the Irish Labour Party is reformist, but that is not preventing it being the only working class party in the south of Ireland of any significance whatsoever. The Irish Communist Party is a tiny sect. The political sectarians who did exist have practically disappeared although they too have been busy during the course of the last decade or so inventing phantom mass revolutionary parties.
A little bit of history would indicate the difference between the Marxist approach on the one hand and the approach of the sects and of GM on the other hand. The Irish Labour Party in 1970 decided in principle to participate in a coalition government. Paddy Healy by that time had assembled a group of about 75 within the framework of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, in a trip to Britain in the 1960’s Paddy Healy had been convinced of the necessity to work within the Irish Young Socialists and the Irish Labour Party. And on this basis he had a certain modest success in view of the fact that there was no alternative. Then at its 1970 conference the Labour Party decided to go into coalition with the right wing bourgeois party, Fine Gael. Like the sects in Sri Lanka in 1964, Paddy Healy declared that this was a question of principle, denounced the Labour Party leadership as traitors and in 1971 walked out of the Labour Party with his seventy-five members. Now Paddy Healy has been reduced to leading a tiny sect which trails behind the Provisional IRA. Most of the supporters that he gathered together have been dissipated.
It was obviously necessary to criticise the coalition, but it was necessary to go through the experience of the coalition with the active rank and file of the Labour Party before anything could be accomplished in the South of Ireland. Because the few Marxists were not cursed with the infantile ultra-left diseases of the sects they understood that it was necessary, in Lenin’s words to „patiently explain“ to the members of the Labour Party and go through the experience with them.
Unfortunately, reformism and Stalinism are one long history of betrayal over several decades. Paddy Healy imagined that simply on the basis of the latest betrayal, it would be possible to construct a mass revolutionary party in Ireland on the basis of „correct principles“. In actual practice it merely resulted in the collapse of his forces and of course his illusions. The fact that reformist organisations are in coalition with bourgeois parties, for instance in West Germany, does not mean that it would be possible to proceed immediately to construct a mass revolutionary party, independent of what happens within the Social Democracy and the trade unions!
Reformism and Stalinism a history of betrayal
The masses will go through the experience again and again, and again, until first cadres and then a mass tendency is built. Only with the aid of such a mass tendency within the framework of the organisations of the proletariat is it possible to construct a viable alternative to the reformist policies of the Socialist and Communist Parties. Far from aiding in this task, the activity of the sects just adds further confusion and succeeds in demoralising the mainly student and middle class elements that they win to their banner. The lesson of Sri Lanka, the lesson of Ireland and innumerable other lessons indicate that it is absolutely vital to remain as part of the organised movement of the working class, without which any tendency is doomed to futility.
It is ironical to note that from a tiny handful it is reported that the Marxists in the Irish Labour Party now have hundreds of supporters. That’s the difference in their tactics and the tactics of all other tendencies which oppose the Marxists.
Marxists have to convince the mass of the active layers of the working class in the trade unions and labour parties of their arguments and by experience together in the same mass organisations. Tiny organisations outside the framework of the mass movement will not get the ear of the masses who will not even notice, never mind listen to the arguments which they put forward.
It is not only the active layers of the class, but the inactive layers of the class who can be affected by such activity. The masses, especially of the youth, awakening to political life, overwhelming move towards the mass organisations of the class. They will not even notice the phantom revolutionary parties built by the various sects.
The paradox is that it is not only the workers active in the movement that are going to be affected but in order to build from the workers outside the mass organisations, it is necessary to approach them from within the mass organisations of the class!
Trotsky’s comments in the period before the war are of exceptional importance at the present time. He said that the prewar Trotskyists unfortunately had grown up „outside the labour movement“. One of the great advantages of the present epoch is that Marxism, in Sri Lanka, Britain and in other countries has grown up as an organic part of the mass labour movement.
Everywhere it is necessary to grasp that the elementary understanding of how to approach the masses is completely lacking in the sects because of their lack of experience in the mass movement. It is no accident that all the sects without exception have a contempt for the working class.
They ascribe their own failure to the bankruptcy of the workers and not to their own bankruptcy. The Marxist tendency is the only one which has explained the developments in China, Eastern Europe, Ethiopia, Syria and other countries. They are the only tendency which can look with pride at their documents over 40 years. They can still publish their old documents without blushing unlike the sects. They explained bourgeois Bonapartism, proletarian Bonapartism, the question of guerrillaism and all the class forces involved in the post-war period.
The Marxist tendency has explained the permanent revolution under modern conditions. They have insisted in Sri Lanka on the linking of the Sri Lankan revolution and the Indian revolution.
The sects in effect participate on the basis of the ideas of „socialism in one country“. They have not understood to this day that it was not possible to develop a socialist society except on an international basis.
The new document of the Marxists, continuing the traditions of its predecessors, deals with the crisis of the three sectors of the world: the underdeveloped world, the Stalinist world and the developed world. Here is an analysis of the class forces involved and an explanation that all other developments precisely are determined by the lack of the subjective factor, the weakness of Marxism.
On the underdeveloped countries, GM says, „there was no discussion about the coalition experience in countries such as Ceylon and the deep crisis of coalition formations internationally in this period“.
Everything cannot be crammed into one discussion. It is not necessary at every Forum to go into the question of Popular Frontism. It would be ridiculous to discuss exactly the same thing at every meeting. Nevertheless the Marxists have produced a mass of material on Popular Frontism in Chile, Spain and other countries, and therefore the argument of GM on this question is entirely incorrect.
It is true that with the new epoch of the decay of capitalism and of Stalinism which has opened on a world scale all the bourgeois regimes in the ex-colonial world, Bonapartist, democratic, coalitionist, conservative, radical and so on have been affected. And in the case of all of them only the Marxist tendency has made an analysis and explained events.
GM’s statement is entirely incorrect, that „there was no discussion of the immediate tactics of the working class relating to the overthrow of the capitalist regimes and the seizure of power. There was only a discussion on the present breakdown of the world economy. But in the context of such a breakdown there was no discussion of the revolutionary interventions—i.e. of the subjective factor“.
Events plus Marxism will build movement
In fact this sounds like rather an unpleasant joke. The entire discussion of the Marxists over the past 45 years has been on how to build the subjective factor. Declaring a „party“, means declaring a party in words if there are no mass forces. It is entirely meaningless to ‘proclaim the party’. As the experience of the Healyites, the Mandelites, the Samarakkodyites, the British SWP, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all has shown, it does not make the solution to the problem of finding mass forces any easier. On the contrary it confuses things even more. How ridiculous the Sri Lankan Marxists would have been if they had declared ‘a party’ before winning the mass of the old LSSP.
It was and is necessary to intervene in the real processes taking place in the world. Firstly Marxists must describe the objective situation of capitalism, the tasks of the working class and the real process taking place in the mass organisations of the class. It is necessary to be where the masses are, not with the Mandels and the others. In this connection it is interesting to note that Mandel expelled the Marxist opposition from the USFI in 1965 because they had „a poorly functioning organisation“. At least that was how the expulsion was explained! That is the most amusing joke of all. History has played some nasty jokes on Mandel. He imagined that he had a mass organisation in Britain because they had succeeded in the late 1960s in building a student movement, by the way not on the question of Marxist principles, but purely on the issue of opposition to the war in Vietnam. Now the Mandel tendency is shattered and in disarray, while according to all reports the Marxists are building support everywhere, especially in Sri Lanka and Britain.
How can the breakdown of capitalism mean the „intervention of the subjective factor“? On the contrary, the breakdown of capitalism is a means of creating the subjective factor and then on that basis having the forces to intervene. One does not create a mass tendency by papal thunderbolts.
Unfortunately, Marxists don’t make the world as they would like it to be. With the exception of Sri Lanka, mass revolutionary parties don’t exist anywhere, nor can they exist given the history of the last five or six decades. The revolutionary crisis organically affects the mass movement and the active workers in the Socialist Parties, trade unions and mass Communist Parties.
Marxists explained the crisis in Italy, France, Sri Lanka, India, Africa, Asia, the Soviet Union and in other countries. They explained how to intervene directly not by imagining that it is possible to create a movement outside the mass organisations themselves. In the last nine months in Poland, with a Marxist nucleus, it would have been possible to construct a mass revolutionary party. In the last 15 years in Italy, it would have been possible to create a mass movement, initially within the framework of the trade unions, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Under these circumstances, the workers would be challenging for power.
It is not a question of the mysticism of phrases about creating a mass movement, creating revolutionary parties and so on, but on the basis of correct theory, correct tactics, correct strategy and correct perspectives preparing the Marxist nucleus that later can prepare the way for mass movements of the class.
Self-Determination for National Minorities
Only the Marxist tendency has put forward a correct position on the national question in Ireland, Sri Lanka, India and throughout the world. In order to understand the problem of Ireland perhaps it is necessary to restate some of the fundamental principles of Marxism on the national question.
But at the same time it is not enough merely to repeat the correct ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, it is necessary to „expand“, „deepen“, „intensify“, „concretise“ from the treasury of their works and of course the Marxist material of the last 50 years. The whole work of the Marxists has been to concretise the works of these great teachers.
Every sectarian would be a Marxist master strategist, in the words of Trotsky, if all that was necessary was to repeat like parrots some of the phrases of Marxism. That is why it is necessary to develop the theory of Marxism on the basis of the mass movement and on the basis of the experience of the Marxists.
The sects on the other hand, instead of developing the fundamental principles of Marxism, follow in the footsteps of the petit bourgeois nationalists in one country after another. They have not in the least understood the fundamental principles on which Lenin’s policy on the national question was formed. One of Lenin’s great contributions was his work on the right of self determination of all nations, the right of secession of oppressed nations within the framework of the different national states.
However, Lenin laid down stringent conditions on this question. A national minority constitutes a nation, with the right to self-determination, if its constitutes a majority in a certain territorial area, has a common language, and a national culture and consciousness. It is on that basis that we fight for self-determination for the Tamils in the North of Sri Lanka. So in the same way we have this attitude towards the Basques and Catalans in Spain and the Kurds in the areas of Turkey, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East where they form a majority.
The proletariat and the Marxist tendency must fight for the right of self determination, but at the same time, for the unity of the proletariat under one banner, with implacable hostility to the poison of the small nation mentality and to the poison of national chauvinism, in the words of Lenin. The majority has the right to separate if they so decide, if they so opt for it. But Marxists, as in Britain, in Sri Lanka and in Spain, will nevertheless, fight for the unity of the working class and the unity of the country on a socialist basis, in the form of federation or union. The decision rests voluntarily in the hands of the national minority itself.
This would probably be for a Federation in these countries, although Engels and Lenin regarded this as rather a clumsy form of State. Nevertheless in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and in all other countries it would be on these lines on which the movement would succeed.
In Russia too, under the Stalinist tyranny, there must be a right of self determination for the masses in the Ukraine, in Georgia, in Azerbaijan and in other areas where the national minorities are oppressed by the Great Russian bureaucracy. Marxists stand for an independent Socialist Soviet Ukraine, with the idea that once it has been established, on the basis of a democratic Socialist Soviet Russia, it would link together all the other independent Soviet states to form a Federation of Democratic Soviet Socialist States.
This situation has only developed because of the Great Russian national oppression of these nationalities.
This position on the national question does not prevent Marxists from standing for a Democratic Socialist Federation of Asia, Europe, Africa, or of Latin America, all linked together in a World Socialist Federation—the final aim, at least so long as states continue to exist.
This dynamic and dialectical conception of the national question was put forward by Lenin and Trotsky.
However, Lenin stood inflexibly for the unity of the workers’ organisations, for the unity of the proletariat and of the trade unions in one organisation, throughout the length and breadth of the Russian Empire. For instance in Russia, the same Lenin who stood inflexibly for the right of self determination nevertheless stood just as inflexibly for one Marxist organisation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of the Georgian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Russian and the Tartar workers. For example, Lenin was opposed to a separate organisation for the Jews, although he accepted the autonomy on cultural questions of the Jewish masses in Russia.
This is in complete contrast to the monstrous position of the Mandelists and other sects in America, Britain and in other countries, of setting up separate organisations of women, blacks and Chicanos with separate caucuses in the trade unions and even their own political parties! All this allegedly in the name of Lenin and Trotsky, who would regard such formations as an utter abomination, particularly as they are organisations of the petit bourgeois in practically all cases and not at all organisations of workers. This is a complete travesty of the ideas of Marx and Lenin on the national question. In every trade union the workers must be organised in one trade union and one workers’ party, that was the position of Lenin on the question. If historically there is a separation of the reformist and Stalinist parties, the Marxists have to accept the existence of separate parties on these lines in certain countries. There they put forward the idea of the united front between these parties in the struggle for the aims and interests of the working class. In the activity of Marxists in all countries it is not possible to create the subjective factor, which GM has spoken about, except in the mass movements.
By the way, GM’s assertion is completely untrue that the trade unions are not affiliated to the Labour Party either in Ireland or Britain. In fact in both the Irish Republic and Britain the mass industrial trade unions are affiliated to the respective Labour Parties. In the case of Britain, and partly also in Ireland, the Labour Parties are the creation of the trade unions! Without the trade unions there would not have been any Labour Party either in Britain or in Ireland.
It is quite interesting to note that in Britain, the SWP, Bernadette Devlin and others, demanded that British troops be sent to Northern Ireland to protect the Catholics in 1969! It is a matter of historical reality, that the only tendency in Britain or Ireland which opposed the sending of British troops to „protect the Catholics“ and put forward a working class alternative, was, of course the Marxist tendency.
The mechanical repetition of correct ideas leads to incorrect conclusions and incorrect policies. In order to understand the Irish question we have to understand it historically. Lenin and Trotsky were categorically opposed to the partition of Ireland in the interests of British imperialism. This partition was undertaken in order to disrupt the social revolution developing in Ireland after the First World War. In the same way, the Marxists were opposed to the British imperialists partition of the living body of India in 1947 into India and Pakistan and they were opposed implacably to the partition of Palestine on the same lines after the Second World War. The policy of British imperialism has always been that of divide and rule.
Legacy of British Imperialism
Take the example of India where the Punjabis, who were exactly the same nation and the same people speaking exactly the same language, were divided on the basis of the British imperialist dictates in 1947 into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. These two nations of exactly the same people with different religions, had been artificially divided. This division was effected through the uprooting of tens of millions in the greatest population shift in history, and the slaughter of millions in bloody religious conflicts. British imperialism had ruled India for hundreds of years by artificially dividing the Muslims and Hindus. Now they created a Muslim Punjab and Muslim Bengal as a rickety structure. On to Muslim Punjab was grafted a Muslim bourgeoisie which had not existed before the formation of Pakistan. The Bengalis also were divided on these religious lines, but here of course, the Punjabi overlords dominated the Bengalis as well as the Sindhs, Pathans and Baluchis in West Pakistan.
This division took place in a nightmare fashion with the massacre of millions and the exchange of tens of millions of people. Marxists were implacably opposed to the reactionary policy of divide and rule and this reactionary creation of the theocratic state of Pakistan. But if now, the Hindus of Bangladesh or the Hindus of Pakistani Punjab demanded unity with the Indian Bengalis and the Indian Punjabis on the basis of urban guerrillaism, a war of so-called national liberation, Marxists would oppose such a war.
Marxists are in favour of a socialist Pakistan with full rights of self determination of the Baluchis, the Sindhs and of the Pathans who are oppressed by the new master-race of the Punjab Muslims. Marxists were in favour of the self-determination of the Bengalis of Bangladesh.
But it would be entirely reactionary and self-defeating to adopt a position of a forcible federation on the basis of the Hindus’ demands in Bangladesh and the Punjab.
It would be entirely impossible for the Indian bourgeoise, although this is their dream, to re-unite the sub-continent. Only the working class armed with Marxist policies, would be able to re-unite the sub-continent on the basis of a Socialist Federation of Pakistan, a Socialist Federation of India and the two linking together in a Socialist Federation of the Indian sub-continent From this point of view it would be immaterial whether the socialist revolution begins in Pakistan or in India. It would have an enormous attraction for the masses in either country.
It is now more than 50 years since the partition of Ireland, and in the same way as in India and Pakistan, it is not possible today to adopt exactly the same stance and the same policy which Marxists would have had at the time of the partition of Ireland. There are a million Protestants and half a million Catholics in Northern Ireland, both overwhelmingly working class in composition.
In order to understand the situation in Ireland, we have to remark that the national origins of the Catholics and of the Protestants are different, unlike the situation in Punjab and Bengal, where it is purely a religious difference. In the North of Ireland the Protestants have their origin in settlers from England and Scotland. The Catholics are descended from the native Irish who were oppressed by British imperialism over a period of about 700 years. It would take too much space to go into the details over the history of Ireland, but this is the position.
The situation in the North today is entirely different to what it was at the time of partition. Partly on the basis of gerrymandering, and partly on the basis of an artificial division of the country and the different provinces of Ireland, a Protestant majority in the North was engineered. In the North the Protestant population forms two-thirds of the population. And unlike the Punjab and Bengal, the overwhelming majority of Protestants are industrial workers, just the same as the majority of the Catholics in Northern Ireland are industrial workers.
Of course for decades, undoubtedly, there has been a national oppression of the Catholic minority in the North. Just the same as a national oppression still continues of the Hindus in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. For decades the Catholics have been discriminated against to a certain extent, mainly on the question of jobs and housing. The developments over the last 12 years in Ireland have been due to the intimidation and the open domination of the North by the Protestants with the so-called Protestant „Ascendancy”.
Marxists were against the partition of Ireland and were for the unification of the country. But such a unification is impossible on the basis of a bourgeois Southern Ireland. GM has forgotten the elementary lessons of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. In the modern epoch the bourgeoisie is utterly incapable of carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. According to the theory of Trotskyism in countries where the proletariat plays a decisive role, only the proletariat can carry through the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution – and then carry through the socialist revolution. Now historically, since the Second World War it has been demonstrated that under certain conditions the peasants and the petit-bourgeoisie in a caricatured form can carry out, in part, the bourgeois democratic revolution and then pass on to a part of the socialist tasks. But this results only in a deformed workers’ state, as we see in China, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Cuba and in the other countries of Proletarian Bonapartism.
The Irish bourgeoisie is utterly incapable of uniting Ireland. Southern Ireland, in the eyes of the Protestant masses in the North, is a priest-ridden regime with inferior social services, higher unemployment, no contraception rights , no abortion rights and no divorce. It has no attraction whatsoever to the Protestant masses. They realise that if there was a unification of the country they would then become an oppressed minority within a bourgeois united Ireland as the Catholics are an oppressed minority in the North.
The biggest irony of the position of the sects, which is echoed by GM, is that the historical, social, economic and military-strategic reasons for the British bourgeoisie’s division of Ireland have long since disappeared. British imperialism in reality would like a united Ireland! British capital dominates the economy of the South as it dominated the economy of the North. At the height of the disturbances in Northern Ireland we saw the symbolic unification of the stock exchanges of Southern Ireland and Britain. British imperialism has a crushing domination economically over both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.
The strategic reason for maintaining control of the North— fear of war with Germany and the consequent need to secure the naval bases in the north—has now disappeared. In any event reunification with the South would now guarantee bases both in the North and in the South!
In fact now, with both Britain and Ireland in the Common Market it would be economically sensible for the countries to be united into one economy.
In addition, Northern Ireland is now an enormous burden on the British exchequer. The troops that have to be retained in the North cost British capitalism £1,200 to £1,500 million. There are also payments for the social services and unemployment which would easily double that bill.
British imperialism has weighed in cold calculation all the possibilities and advantages of a unification of Ireland.
They not only would like a unification of Ireland, but they would like to withdraw the troops and leave Ireland to its fate, as they were compelled to withdraw troops from Egypt, Aden, India, Africa and from other parts of the world. The cost is not worth the tribute that they draw from these countries. British imperialism would like to withdraw their troops. But why then do they not do it?
The reason is that it would be impossible to do so, without provoking a massacre of the Catholics in the North. The fate of Ireland would be the fate of the Lebanon. In the same way as there was a struggle between the Christians and the Muslims, as a consequence of French imperialism’s policy of divide and rule in Lebanon, so British imperialism is now suffering the effects of the three century old artificial creation of sectarianism in Ireland.
The National Question and the Permanent Revolution
There are 100,000 armed Protestants. In addition there is the Royal Ulster Constabulary which is the armed police and also the Ulster Defence Regiment which are both composed overwhelmingly of Protestants. Under the circumstances of a British withdrawal, under present conditions, there would be a massive destruction, resulting in immediate civil war and a brushing away of the Irish army. It would be a similar situation to that which developed in Palestine, when British imperialism withdrew from the country in 1948 and allowed the Arabs and Jews to settle the issue by force of arms. Despite the fact that the armies of the entire Middle East Arabs were used to crush the Israelis, as is known the Israelis emerged victorious from that conflict. As a consequence of a withdrawal from Ireland, there would not be a unification of the country, but most likely two military dictatorships, a Protestant military dictatorship in the North and a Catholic military dictatorship in the South.
On the other hand if we examine the origin of the Provisional IRA and the struggles that they have waged, then we will see that this has nothing in common with the Marxist approach to national liberation. The Civil Rights movement began in 1968/69 without socialist slogans and purely on the basis of narrow democratic rights. As a consequence they could not gain the support of the Protestant workers in the North. It did not appeal to their material interests in any way. By the way, legislation at this late hour has been introduced making it completely illegal in Northern Ireland for employers to discriminate against any section of the population. Of course, this is discrimination of Protestant employers against Catholic workers.
The Provisionals began as a split in the IRA. The IRA had been captured by a pro-Stalinist tendency. The. Provisionals, representing a more nationalist and reactionary section broke away from the Official IRA. Because at that time there was an enormous movement of the workers in the south of Ireland, some capitalist politicians in the south, particularly the recent Prime Minister Haughey and Nial Blaney, secured money from big business interests in the South for the purpose of financing an armed IRA campaign in the North. Hundreds of thousands of pounds were raised. This was intended deliberately as a diversion from the socialist struggle which was being waged by the workers in the South at that time with strikes on a bigger scale than had been seen in Ireland in the whole of its history. The one condition that was made by big business was that the struggle should be limited to the North and should not be extended to the south of Ireland.
The Provisionals began their struggle on the basis of „urban guerrillaism“. From a Marxist point of view this is the height of madness. A chosen few, an elite, undertake on behalf of the masses to „‘liberate Ireland“. Marxists have always explained against the sects, and apparently it is necessary to reinforce this lesson for the benefit of GM, that guerilla war is the weapon of the peasants and the lumpen proletariat. Never of the working class.
Marxists always proceed on the basis of educating and organising the proletariat to proceed as a mass to the overthrow of capitalism. Only in this way can the mass movement of the working class, through its struggles, transform society and create a new society. Marxism, as explained by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, organises a conscious movement of the mass of the workers, moving into action a great part, particularly of the youth, but with the support of the overwhelming majority of the working class. Only in that way can the socialist revolution be accomplished.
In Ireland, North and South, the working class is in the overwhelming majority. In the North the majority are Protestant workers, but also with a minority of Catholic workers. The working class in both areas of Ireland are now the overwhelming majority. That provides the basis for the socialist revolution which is the only way in which the unification of Ireland could be accomplished. A unification which would proceed from the point of view of a Socialist United Ireland, linked to a socialist Britain.
As the Marxists explained in relation to Sri Lanka, it would be impossible for the Sri Lankan proletariat to take power without the aid, support and victory of the workers in the mainland of the continent of India. Otherwise the revolution in Sri Lanka would be doomed to destruction by the intervention on the part of the troops of Indian capitalism. In the same way, it would be impossible to establish a Socialist Ireland without involving the active support and movement of the British workers in sympathy and later in action. Therefore the Marxists understand the need not only for a united Socialist Ireland, but for a Socialist Ireland linked to a Federated Socialist Britain.
Urban guerrillaism is a modern form of petit-bourgeois insanity which arises out of the weakness of Marxism and because of the betrayal of reformism and of Stalinism. Trotsky concluded that terrorist organisations would not arise because of the strength of the Communist International when it was still a revolutionary Marxist International. It is the failure of the Communist International and also the effect of the guerrilla wars which were victorious in Vietnam and in China that have led to the petit-bourgeois students and intellectuals taking to the short cut of urban guerrillaism. They wish to replace the movement of the proletariat with the movement of an elite doing the job for the proletariat.
In Argentina the Mandelist ERP proceeded from the point of view of this madness, substituting themselves for the working class. This criminal policy can never be forgiven for the Mandelist so-called International. Instead of basing themselves on the working class of Argentina, which was involved on many occasions in general strikes, they sought to substitute the movement of the working class by their own movement. As a consequence they played a part in preparing the eventual victory of the generals and of the military dictatorship in Argentina. There lies exposed their share of the crime before the court of history. In Uruguay they supported the Tupamaros in the same way, and as a consequence helped prepare the victory of the military dictatorship in Uruguay as well. They must take responsibility for this in so far as they supported the stupidity of the petit-bourgeois Tupamaros who behaved in this way. Utterly incapable of organising or winning a majority of the working class they tried to substitute their movement for the movement of the working class, and prepared the way for a disaster in many of the countries of Latin America.
In Ireland at least the Provos split from the Official IRA as prisoners of Irish history. While we can understand the reasons for their actions, nevertheless they are to be condemned from the point of view of the effects that they have on the struggle of the workers both in Northern and Southern Ireland and on the workers’ struggle in Britain.
While Marxists fight against this perversion of urban guerrillaism in Ireland and Argentina, India, or wherever this method is used, the sects can never be forgiven for their crime in supporting guerrillaism in these and other countries. At least rural guerrillaism has some sense in it, in those countries where the peasants are the overwhelming majority of the population. But urban guerrillaism, terrorism within the cities, which has been supported by all sects, is absolute madness from the point of view of Marxism.
The sects provoked disaster in Argentina, now they want to play the same role in Ireland. Fortunately, they have not even got the support in Ireland that they had in Argentina. They are a negligible force in Britain and hardly exist either in the South or the North of Ireland. Whatever forces they once had have been frittered away as an accomplishment of their stupidity.
The worst fate which could befall them would be if they were powerful enough to secure a withdrawal of the British troops on their terms. Their support of the Provisional IRA has had its effect in Glasgow and other cities of stirring up long dead embers of religious sectarianism which existed in Britain in the past. The Protestant Orange Order, which exists in the North of Ireland also existed in Britain. In fact Baldwin, the Tory leader in the 1920s, once boasted that at least a third of the seats in Parliament were controlled by the Orange vote. That has ceased precisely because of the development of the labour movement and the working class in Britain.
The sects are demanding the immediate withdrawal of troops from Ireland. The irony is that the Provisionals do not demand an immediate withdrawal! The Provisionals understand very well that that would result in a complete catastrophe for them. Therefore, they want their enemies to oblige them! They demand not a withdrawal of troops, but a „phased withdrawal*’ of troops to proceed over a number of years so that the country could be handed over to them against the wishes of the majority of Protestants. This of course is entirely impossible.
The sects actually out-Provo the Provos! Under these circumstances they cannot be taken as serious people who really reflect the ideas of Marxism and an understanding of the situation which has developed in Ireland.
The Provisionals were compelled to deliberately base themselves on the ideas of religious sectarianism, on a split between Catholics and Protestants. In the early stages of disturbances in Ireland, in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, where there were joint patrols of Catholic and Protestant workers and shop stewards to make sure that no communal strife would take place, the Provisionals deliberately killed some of the stewards, to deliberately break this class unity down and provoke a communal struggle in the Ardoyne area. They deliberately set on fire Protestant workers’ houses in or around Catholic areas. This provoked a shift in the population greater in proportion than any in post-war Europe. This was viewed with satisfaction by the Provisionals, because they wanted safe havens. Thus, the Provisionals deliberately inflamed the religious divide for the purpose of getting safe areas for themselves in their urban guerrillaism.
All history demonstrates the madness of guerrilla wars on this basis. Even if a majority of Catholics in the North and not a tiny minority of the population, was actively involved in the struggle of the Provisionals it would not be possible to gain a victory. A guerrilla war cannot succeed unless it has the support of the overwhelming majority of the population. The reason for the failure of the guerrilla campaign in Malaysia was – that British imperialism rested on the Malays and Indians and | played them off against the mainly Chinese guerrillas. The Chinese guerrillas found only mass support in the Chinese areas of Malaysia and as a consequence were routed by the forces of imperialism. In China and of course South Vietnam, they had the support of the overwhelming majority of the peasants in their struggle and therefore basing themselves on the peasant masses they were victorious. As Mao explained, the guerrillas have to work like fish in the sea, with the population as a whole providing the support. Of course, this has important social consequences, which have been explained in the many documents of the Marxists. Even if victorious, as in Vietnam and in China, a guerrilla war can only lead to a regime of monstrously deformed proletarian Bonapartism, and not at all to a workers’ democracy preparing the way to move towards socialism.
However, urban guerrillaism, as the whole of history demonstrates cannot be successful. By its very nature it can only help in enormously strengthening the military apparatus of the bourgeois state and prepare for the collapse of the forces which are aimed against it, as the example of Argentina, Uruguay and other countries demonstrate.
Finding themselves frustrated in Britain and having a limited: understanding of the social consequences it would involve, the Provisionals began a bombing campaign in Britain. In 1974, for example, they bombed two Birmingham pubs, killing 19 workers, both Irish and English. A wave of revulsion spread within the working class in Britain and Ireland. It resulted in raising religious strife where none had existed for generations in Britain. It was only the discipline of the workers and the intervention of the shop stewards in many factories in Birmingham which prevented physical fights. Some fights did take place between Irish workers and British workers but fortunately the class conscious shop stewards restored order and prevented an actual pogrom against the Irish workers taking place as a consequence of the bombing.
Marx had already explained the stupidity of the 1867 Clerkenwell bombing by the forerunners of the Provisionals, the Fenians. At least that was not a bombing of innocent men, women and children, but was an attempt to break down a jail and release Irish Prisoners. But even this was condemned by Marx, who wrote to Engels on December 14 1867 that „the last exploit of the Fenians in Clerkenwell was a very stupid thing. The London masses, who have shown great sympathy for Ireland, will be made wild by it and driven into the arms of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.”
The IMG and the IRA
If Marx condemned in such strident terms the Clerkenwell bombers, what would he have said today about the monstrous crimes of the Provisionals both in the North and South of Ireland and in Britain? The sects excel at the gentle art of making friends and influencing people! Of course in the opposite sense! Sheer desperation resulted in the Provisionals undertaking this bombing campaign.
The Birmingham pub bombing created enormous trouble for the British Mandelists, the IMG. They rushed out a statement attempting to deny their previous support for the IRA. The IMG paper stated that ‘“The IMG has never, and does not now, support the IRA by material, financial or by any other means“ (Red Weekly, December 5 1974). But in fact throughout 1971 the IMG had moved closer and closer to the Provisional IRA, after earlier in 1970 having illusions in the socialist phrases of the Stalinist inclined Official IRA. The IMG paper of that time, Red Mole, relected this development through a series of headlines like „Support the Armed Actions of the Irish People’? (March 23rd, 1971); „For the IRA“(August 1971); „*Solidarity with the IRA!“ (October 20th, 1971) and finally *‘Victory to IRA“ (November 15, 1971). In fact during 1972 they in effect, acted as a spokesman for the IRA, for instance the main front page headline in the August 7 1972 issue of Red Weekly was „IRA: We will stay and we will win.“? Even when forced after the Birmingham bombing to distance themselves from the Provisionals the IMG refused to condemn outright the bombing saying it was merely „a tragic error’ (Red Weekly, December 5 1974).
It is interesting to note the revulsion that these bombings had not only in Britain, but in the North and South of Ireland as well. For example, the workers at Dublin airport in the South refused to handle IRA coffins of bombers that were killed in the attempted bombings in Coventry and in Birmingham because of their revulsion at the Birmingham bombers. There is a tradition in Ireland of handling the dead with care, but they refused to handle these dead bodies. And this attitude on the part of the airport workers in Dublin was shared by the working class generally throughout Britain and Ireland. They blacked the coffins of the IRA!
In Northern Ireland itself in January 1976, as a reprisal to sectarian murders by the bigoted Protestant paramilitary gangs of five Catholics, the Provisional IRA murdered in Bessbrook ten Protestant workers coming home from work in a mini-bus from the factory. In reply there were strikes not only of Protestant, but of Catholic workers as well, to protest at the sectarian strife.
In the North of Ireland the only organisations which are noncommunal and unite both Protestant and Catholic workers are the trade unions. These are the only non-sectarian organisations and wherever there have been strikes by Catholic or Protestant workers religious sectarianism has not been able to be introduced. On the contrary, they have supported each other. For example when there was a milkman’s strike and a Catholic worker picket was shot in the foot by a Protestant religious sectarian, there was a strike by the Protestant workers in a nearby dairy in a demonstration of class unity against this sectarian attack on a fellow trade unionist. The Belfast busmen have engaged in many strikes whenever bus workers have been assassinated by whichever sectarian groups.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The sects have fallen to pieces in Ireland, while the Marxist tendency has built up a modest, but substantial support both in the North and South of Ireland on the basis of their tactics, strategy and ideas.
The IRA would have collapsed long ago if it had not been for the stupidity of British imperialism. In January 1972 when the support for the Provisionals was waning the murder of thirteen workers by the paratroopers in Derry resulted in a General Strike in the south and the burning down of the British Embassy in Dublin. It gave the Provisionals a new lease of life for a number of years.
Again the issue of prisoners’ rights which has been taken up fervently by the Marxists in both Britain and Ireland, is an issue on which the Provisionals have managed to maintain a precarious support over the period of the last few years. The last Tory Government under the Minister Whitelaw conceded what amounted to political status for the prisoners in the Maze prison in Ireland. This was granted in 1972 as a result of a hunger strike on the part of some of the prisoners there. It was the stupidity of certain right wing Labour Ministers, Roy Mason and Merlyn Rees, in withdrawing the special category status in 1976 which gave an issue to the Provos to build up support among the population.
The Southern Irish bourgeois defused this issue in the South without openly recognising political status by conceding the right to the prisoners to wear their own clothes, to assemble, to have their own food if they wished and so on. As a result the Provisionals support waned in the South of Ireland.
The Provisionals in the Maze prison in the North began a protest, refusing to wear prison clothes. When the warders refused to allow them to go the toilet without prison clothes, they responded with the „dirty protest“, that is to say urination in their own cells, smearing excreta on the walls of the cells as a reprisal against their treatment by the warders. There again it demonstrated the stupidity and lack of tactical sense by the Provisionals because a strike of this character would provoke a certain revulsion among the population in the South, in the North and in Britain rather than support for the Provisionals.
The Marxists gave support to the demand for prison reform but they explained that undoubtedly this was a stupid tactic. The Provisionals did not work out their tactics; after 4½ years they blundered on to a correct tactic from their point of view on this question. They began a hunger strike in March 1981 with Bobby Sands and as a consequence, using this as a humanitarian issue, gained support. There were possibly 100,000 people at the funeral of Bobby Sands who died as a consequence of the hunger strike. Undoubtedly, as in Derry in 1972, when there was the murder of 13 workers, again this resulted in the momentary revival of nationalist fervour. But now despite several deaths resulting from the hunger strike, support for the protest has waned to a pathetic level. The national question, the difference of national origins of Catholics and Protestants and the oppression of the Catholics that has taken place during the last five or more decades obviously underlines the division of Catholics and Protestants.
In any event the tactics of the Provisionals have resulted in a gulf even wider opening between the Protestant workers and the Catholic workers in the North. It is complete lunacy to imagine that it is possible to bomb and assassinate the Protestants into unity with a capitalist Southern Ireland.
Lenin always explained that class issues are more important than national issues, although it was Lenin who worked out the correct Marxist position in relation to support for national liberation struggles.
Only Marxism can win Protestant workers
The job of Marxists is to raise the level of consciousness of the masses, and first of all of the advanced workers to the tasks that are posed by history.
Marxists cannot be swayed by episodic moments of history. They have to understand that the main task is the building of Marxism in Britain, Ireland and throughout the world. This can only be done on the basis of raising the class issues and not subordinating themselves to purely national issues, not to immerse and drop Marx’s class analysis on the basis of sentimental attitudes on the question of nationality. That same history which gives the Provos their basis, also dooms them to defeat, because of their incapacity to win the confidence of the Protestants in the North.
Only Marxists in the North and South of Ireland and in Britain can break the vicious circle of repression, oppression and nationalist antagonism by unifying the mass of the working class on the issues which underline the problems of nationalism in reality—the issue of jobs, houses, of bad conditions and so on.
Ireland can only be united under a socialist banner. It will only be united on the basis of a United Socialist Ireland linked to a socialist Britain.
This can only be done through a conscious movement of the working class in the North and South of Ireland on issues which affect the workers. A movement in the direction of the socialist revolution in the south of Ireland or a movement in the direction of the socialist revolution in Britain, will have immense repercussions in the North of Ireland, cutting across the sectarian divide. Even though the Provisionals have succeeded in deepening the gulf between Catholics and Protestants in the North, they will not succeed in their sectarian frenzy.
A united socialist Ireland would not succeed unless it received the support of the British working class in and out of uniform on a class basis.
When the soldiers went in originally into the North of Ireland they had sympathy for the Catholic population of the North. It would have been impossible to use them in the way in which they have been used against the Catholic population in particular if it had not been for the campaign of individual assassination which was carried out by the IRA on the basis of urban guerrillaism A class appeal in the North of Ireland, a movement of the mass of the working class in demonstrations and so on, on the basis of the ideas of socialism appealing to the workers in uniform would undoubtedly mean that the imperialists would find it impossible to use troops in Northern Ireland. Thus, as Lenin and Trotsky long ago explained, the fate of Ireland is determined by the fate of Britain, as the fate of Britain is also determined by the fate of workers in Ireland itself.
The question of a workers’ defence force, which is not raised by GM—except to say incorrectly that Marxists demand that the workers’ defence force should be set up before there should be the demand for the withdrawal of troops from the North of Ireland—nevertheless preserves an enormous importance in this regard. The first armed workers’ defence force in the world was actually formed in Ireland. Apparently GM is not conscious of this fact. It began with the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. It grew out of the need to fight against strike-breakers in the 1912 strike in Dublin. This strike, incidentally, had the overwhelming support of the workers in Britain.
Class action has always provoked a movement for solidarity in the North, the South and in Britain itself. We have the stupidity of the IMG in particular who actually put forward the idea that the Protestants should be driven into the sea, that the Protestants cannot be won for socialism in the North. As if it would be possible to gain national unification or a victory of the socialist revolution – without the support of the mass of Protestant workers in the North, as well as in the South. In fact, the idea that unity between the Protestants and Catholic workers is not possible, is entirely false. On many occasions during the history of the last 50 years there have been united struggles of Protestant and Catholic workers, spontaneous expressions of support, even of solidarity, including during the course of the Provisionals’ campaign during the last 12 years.
The idea of the workers’ defence force arises naturally out of the situation which exists in the North itself. For example at the time when the death of Bobby Sands was drawing near, fear of religious sectarian attacks in the Catholic areas drew the population around the Provisionals and fear of attacks from the IRA drew the Protestants behind the UDA and the Protestant paramilitaries in their areas.
The only unarmed organisations in Northern Ireland are those of the working class. In this situation it is clear that the fears of the Protestant and Catholic workers of sectarian attacks would only be laid to rest by the organisation of defence by the trade unions which would combine Protestant and Catholics. Such a defence force would guarantee, in the event of forcing British withdrawal—which could only be undertaken under such circumstances on the basis of the movement towards socialism both in the North and South—the solidarity of the Catholic workers and Protestant workers which in turn could guarantee the support of the British workers in uniform as well. They don’t like the job that they have to do in Ireland and would be only too grateful if this task of defence against sectarian attack would be undertaken by Irish workers on the basis of the union of Protestant and Catholic workers together. Thus out of the very situation of sectarian conflict itself, arises the need for defence forces.
In Russia the defence organisations of the Bolsheviks were formed when attempts were made by the Tsarist forces to organise pogroms against the Jews. An armed defence force in its turn would succeed in preparing the way for the socialist revolution in Ireland. The fact that the political sects are opposed to the idea of a trade union non-sectarian defence force shows the complete lack of understanding of the history of the working class not only in Ireland but internationally. It is unfortunate that GM should give credence to a reactionary idea of this sort.
This document has only touched on the main issues and dealt quite at length with the situation in Ireland in order give comrades internationally a background to explain the situation in Ireland and how it illustrates the attitude of Marxism towards the sects.
George Edwards June 1981
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