lettre du swp a la lcr

[Nestor Cerpa]

qelqu'un peut il me faire une traduction???


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Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party

To Daniel Bensaid, Leon Cremieux, Francois Duval, and
Francois Sabado

Dear Comrades,

Much has happened since you wrote your letter to us in
December 2002. Faced with the most gigantic
international protest movement in world history, the
United States and Britain - in defiance, not just of
the anti-war movement, but of the opposition of most
of the world's ruling classes, headed by France,
Germany, and Russia - have succeeded in conquering
Iraq and are now subjecting the country to what
amounts to a colonial occupation and threatening to
attack neighbouring states such as Iran and Syria.

The stakes in global politics have become very high.
Of course, the influence that small revolutionary
organisation can have on these developments is small.
It is not, however, completely negligible. For our
part we have played a leading role in the Stop the War
Coalition in Britain: we have also been heavily
involved in the networks of anti-capitalist activists
that developed the call for 15 February as an
international day of protest against war on Iraq,
first, at Florence, on a European level, and then, at
Porto Alegre, on a global scale. For your part, we
know that you have been heavily involved in the
anti-war movement in France and in the struggles
against the Chirac-Raffarin offensive against
pensions. We also appreciate the significance of the
role that your comrades in the Fourth International
play in other countries: we have, for example, worked
very well with activists in Bandiera Rossa, the
Italian section of the Fourth International, in the
European Social Forum process.

Facing the same way

Against this background, your letter marks a potential
watershed in the relationship between our two
currents. In the first place, you offer an
appreciation of the overall situation that does not
differ in its fundamentals from ours. We both
recognize that, with the movements against capitalist
globalization and imperialist war, we have entered a
phase of political radicalization that means that, as
you put it, `there are now new horizons opening up for
the revolutionary left. Our assessments are not
identical. It is fair to say that you tend to
accentuate the negative more than we do. Thus, you
add, after the phrase we have just quoted. '..[1]. but
in a context where the spiral of defeats hasn't been
broken'. ' There are certainly differences of emphasis
between our appreciations of the evolution of social
democracy, for example. Nevertheless, we are facing in
broadly the same direction.

Secondly, you very pertinently stress that `the gap
between the social mobilizations ... and political
recomposition remains immense'.[2] This became very
clear at the height of the political crisis in Britain
this spring. The anti-war movement could bring two
million people onto the streets of London on 15
February, but what was its

political representation in the national arena! To a
large extent, left-wing labour MPs whose opposition to
the war - with a few very honourable exceptions, first
and foremost among whom was George Galloway - crumbled
once the Blair government had won the House of Commons
vote on the war on 18 March (a victory that itself
depended on the immense gullibility and capacity for
self-deception of many of those who identify with `Old
Labour'). For us this experience has confirmed the
importance of bring together a broad coalition of
diverse forces that can project itself - as the
Socialist Alliance has only succeeded to a limited
extent in doing - a left wing alternative for the
millions disillusioned by New Labour's commitment to
neoliberalism and war.[3]

You too stress the potentialities for realignment of
the left.:

The end of an entire historical and political cycle of
the workers' movement -the collapse of Stalinism and
the social-liberal transformation of social democracy
- puts on the order of the day a reorganization of the
workers' movement and gives all its relevance to the
construction of a new political force, of a force that
seeks to break with the capitalist system.[4]

You say that such a force would be a Party with
incomplete strategic delimitations': its programme
would leave open 'the forms and modalities of the
political conquest of power'. You believe, however,
that in France there are at present no `crystallized
currents or groups of activists who are ready to
engage in such a process'. Therefore, you will
continue to build the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire
while waiting for better conditions for `the
construction of a new party, of a large party' to
develop. [5] We are more optimistic about the
short-term possibilities of launching a broader left
coalition here in Britain. Certainly, given the
potential forces involved, such a coalition would
certainly have `incomplete strategic delimitations' in
the sense of leaving open the question of reform and
revolution. But for us participation in such a
coalition would not be a substitute for, but rather a
means toward, building a mass revolutionary party.
This is a question to which we return below. [6]

Thirdly, you believe that the FI and the International
Socialist Tendency have an important contribution to
make to the broader process of left realignment: `in
the face of the new situation that has opened up in
the past ten years, nothing in our view justifies a
separate organizational existence between our two
currents, above all if we wish to offer an example and
open the way to larger realignments, between currents
coming from different histories and cultures'.[7] This
is a very important statement. For all our numerous
weaknesses, the FI and the IST are the only two
revolutionary Marxist currents with anN scnou%
pretensions toy operating on a global scale. A
convergence between us would have an impact well
beyond our ranks. We too are committed to exploring
the possibilities for working together with
revolutionaries from other traditions. We are against
making historical disagreements - for example, over
the class nature of Stalinism - an obstacle to this
process of mutual exploration. And we are open to
organizational fusions. This is shown by the decision
of the SWP in Scotland to join the Scottish Socialist
Party, by our invitation to the International
Socialist Group (British section of the FI) to join
the SWP, and by the application by our comrades in
France, Socialisme par en bas, to join the LCR.

But - alas there is a `but' - the ISG decided to turn
down our invitation, and instead helped to form a
regroupment, Socialist Resistance, that involves
forces hostile to the SWP and in some cases to the
project of a revolutionary party, in effect taking a
step away from us; meanwhile, the Central Committee of
the Ligue has deferred a decision on SPEB's
integration till September. It would be fruitless to
discuss the details of these particular decisions.
What would be helpful is to consider the broader
political issues at stake. You say that there are
`obstacles between us' and that these `focus above all
on the question of the relationship between party
building and mass organizations'. In the first place,
your claim that our practice fails to respect the
autonomy of mass movements. Secondly, we have `a
conception of the party that does not integrate the
possibility of an organised pluralism'. Thirdly, there
is a contradiction between our commitment to socialism
from below and what you call 'the functioning of a
strongly verticalist party in its relationship with
the unitary movements'. [8] These criticisms provide a
useful framework for a discussion in which we shall
take the opportunity to address more concrete
questions about the development of the broader
movements in which our two organizations are involved.

Party and movement

So what's the problem with the SWP's approach to
`unitary movements'? You say that we build `mass
organizations clearly aligned a priori with the
general conceptions of the SWP'. The only concrete
example you give is of Chris Nineham's speech at the
session on parties and movements at the European
Social Forum in Florence: `he began his speech in the
name of Globalise Resistance and more or less by
calling for building the revolutionary party!' [9]
Let's recall the context. The role played by political
parties is one of the most controversial issues within
the movement against capitalist globalization. The
World Social Forum Charter of Principles formally
excludes parties from participating. This has various
motivations including the kind of autonomist
anti-politics that we both reject. The ban has not
prevented both the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) and
the French plural left from exploiting Porto Alegre
for their own purposes. Within the ESF process we have
criticized this hypocrisy and argued for the
participation in Social Forums of all parties that are
demonstrably opposed to neo-liberalism and war, a
position that clearly has a resonance with many
European networks even though it has been resolutely
opposed by the leadership of ATTAC France.

The session on parties and movements al Florence was
one of a series of attempts at a compromise. Among
those participating were Fausto Bertinotti for the
Partito dclla Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) in Italy,
Oliver Besancenot for the LCR, and Bernard Cassen for
ATTAC. Chris Nineham was speaking on behalf of GR, but
he is also a leading member of the SWP. In his speech
he concentrated on the potential for building the
movements and only in this context discussed the
contribution that parties of the radical and
revolutionary left can make to this process. What was
he supposed to do: simply to duck this absolutely key
question and say nothing about the necessity of
revolutionary parties within the movement? This would
have simply been to collude in the hypocrisy that has
bedevilled this issue. It also would have amazed the
non-SWP activists who played a crucial role in GR -
none of whom made any complaint about Chris's speech.
He was simply honestly saying what he believed about a
crucial debate. We should add that the only negative
reactions we have received about his speech came from
activists in France. The huge audience mainly of young
Italians received all the `pro-party' speakers very
well. This session - the biggest meeting at the ESF -
was one of the events that marked Florence as `red'.
The open fusion of the anti-capitalist movement and
radical left in Florence represented an important step
forward - which is why, as you well know, the right
wing of the movement, particularly in France, reacted
so furiously to it.[10]

We return below to the question of political
differentiation within the anti-capitalist movement.
Let us say first that it is complete nonsense to
accuse the SWP of trying to build movements 'clearly
aligned at priori with the general conceptions of the
SWP'. GR is a united front that brings together
members of the SWP with activists with other political
perspectives - for example, progressive Muslims and
comrades influenced by the disobbedienti. We are
working hard to involve the left unions and NGOs: the
recent GR conference, which was addressed by, among
others, Billy Hayes, general secretary of the
Communication Workers Union, marked an important step
in this direction. But there is a rather more
important example. SWP members (among them Chris
Nineham, who has been the chief steward of the great
anti-war marches) play a leading role in the Stop the
War Coalition. Is this a movement 'clearly aligned a
priori with the general conceptions of the SWP'? If
so, we are rather more important than we realized. The
StWC organized the biggest demonstration in British
history. It has held two large delegate conferences
this year. Is all this just an SWP front? We should be
so lucky.

In fact, of course, the StWC is a mass united front
that has at its core revolutionary socialists, Labour
MPs, left trade-union leaders, and progressive
Muslims. Its political basis is simple: opposition to
the 'war on terrorism' and to the associated attacks
on civil liberties and asylum seekers. Far from
imposing our 'general conceptions' the SWP has fought
against the efforts of sectarian far left groups to
commit the StWC to a full blooded anti-imperialist
programme and also to exclude Muslim organizations. It
is because of this approach that we have been able
both to mobilize on such an enormous scale and not to
capitulate or seek to liquidate the movement in
response to the Anglo-American conquest of Iraq. The
openness of the Coalition to Muslims -including
bourgeois-led organizations such as the Muslim
Association of Britain -meant that we have been able
to build a very broad anti-war movement that has drawn
in very large numbers of Asians and Arabs under the
leadership of the predominantly and secular, radical
left. If you won't take our word for it, consider the
assessment of the StWC by Terry Conway of the ISG.
which. though by no means uncritical of us, notes that
`overall the balance sheet of the role of the SWP as a
lynchpin of the coalition has to be an
overwhelminglypositive.' and stresses: `The
revolutionary left in general, and the SWP in
particular, have been at the core of the most
successful campaign again the central project of
imperialism ever.'[11]

The StWC is simply the latest - though also the most
important - example of the SWP's practice of building
mass united fronts. Historically perhaps the most
important previous example is that of the Anti-Nazi
League, which - working very closely with Labour MPs
and other activists - built a 60,000-strong Unity
March against the headquarters of the British National
Party in October 1993. Given the importance of such
united fronts in the history of the SWP, what is the
real source of our disagreements on this question with
the LCR? Let us reply by turning to the famous
question of the autonomy of the social movements. This
has, in our opinion, nothing to do with differences in
national political culture or the Charter of Amiens or
whatever. If anything the British trade unions, though
usually affiliated to the Labour Party, have been less
politicized and more jealous of their autonomy than
French or Italian unions where alignments between
union federations and political parties have
historically often been important.

Despite diverting us with this side issue a couple of
times you rightly say 'it must nevertheless be
possibly yo disengage the great principles of the
independence of trade unions and social organizations
in relations to parties, of' respect for their
plurality and their internal democracy.' [12] We
agree: moreover, we endorse these principles. This is
not simply a formal stance. As you note, the IS
tradition takes as its main reference point the idea
of socialism from below, or, as Marx put it, of the
self-emancipation of the working class. Revolution is
for us a radically democratic process driven by
self-activity and self-organization from below.
Luxemburg's pamphlet The Mass Strike has always been
one of our key reference-points. Without trying to
raise old ghosts, this is why we always resisted the
idea that capitalism could have been overthrown by
forces other than the democratically organized working
class, whether these be the Red Army in Eastern Europe
or rural guerrillas in China, Cuba, and Vietnam. This
conception of socialism has informed our practice
especially in the trade unions. Rather than rely on
the election of left-wing union officials (though of
course, we always stand alongside the left bureaucrats
in their struggle with the right), we have sought to
build rank-and-file organizations within the unions
that would allow ordinary workers to fight
independently of the trade-union bureaucracy. When
struggles take place we argue for democratically
elected strike committees rather than reliance on the
officials.

So we are strongly committed to the democratic
self-organization of trade unions and other social
movements. Does that mean that &e are for the
autonomy of the movements'? Yes and no. Yes, in the
sense that we are in favour of what one might call the
organizational autonomy of movements - that is, they
should make their own decisions on the basis of
democratic procedures that maximize the participation
of the membership and officials, delegates,
committees, etc., should be held democratically
accountable to the members. No, in the sense that we
do not believe that trade unions and the like can be
politically and ideologically autonomous. If they
were, this would mean that movements could formulate
their perspectives unaffected by the wider currents in
society, This is the aspiration sometimes expressed by
calling the new movements against capitalist
globalization 'non-ideological'. But this an illusion:
there is, indeed, nothing more ideological than the
belief that one is `beyond' ideology. Capitalist
society is a field of antagonistic forces whose
conflict generates different perspectives - what
Gramsci called `conceptions of the world'. Any
movement, however limited its aspirations, implicitly
defines itself with respect to these forces and
perspectives. The idea that a movement can effectively
be autonomous of the struggle between social classes,
political forces, and ideologies is simply a Utopian
dream.

If this is true - and we can't imagine that as
revolutionary Marxists you would deny it - then it has
concrete political implications. It means that the
contemporary movements against capitalist
globalization aren't simply networks through which
resistance can be discussed and organized. They are
also fields of struggle between rival ideologies and
strategies. This is precisely what we see happening
around us. There are a number of different
politico-ideological poles within the movement. One is
represented by the disobbedienti and theoretically
canonized in the writings of Negri, Hardt, and
Holloway: it is verbally very radical, but - because
it does not recognize the central role of the working
class as the agency of social transformation - it can
slide from ultra-left to gesture politics to reformist
practices, positions that both leave in place the
dominance of the workers' movement by social
democracy, or worse - the experience of Argentina is a
case in point. But there also is a reformist wing
within the anti-capitalist movement. You baulk at
identifying this with the leadership of ATTAC France,
apparently because `frankly moderate and reformist
currents, and of radical and revolutionary currents'
co-exist within ATTAC. [13]

Perhaps this was an arguable case back last December,
but it is no longer tenable now. Of course ATTAC is a
politically heterogeneous movement. Nevertheless, the
dominant forces within it are a right-wing axis
Joining Bernard Cassen and his allies with elements
associated with the French Communist Party (PCF) and
the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), for
example, the ATTAC president Jacques Nikonoff . These
forces have done their utmost bureaucratically to
control the preparations for the next ESF at Paris-St
Denis in November. Linked up via the PCPs intellectual
front Espaces Marx and the European network Transform
to the rump of the old Communist Parties, the right
have made plain their intention to ensure that nothing
like Florence happens again, and that the radical left
is marginalized in Paris-St Denis. As to the politics
of this axis, it is well expressed in Cassen's recent
paper where he muses: `how, in France, to support
Chirac abroad while fighting Raffarin at home?' He
goes on to wonder whether (or not ATTAC should support
the proposals for European defence put forward by
France Germany, and Belgium. `Confronted with an
American strategy based on the discretionary use of
force,' Cassen argues, `the movement for another world
can't practise an ostrich-like policy with regard to
defence.' [14] In other words, the anti-capitalist
movement should be backing European imperialism as a
counterweight to US imperialism. This amounts to the
effective ceding of political leadership in the
struggle against the Bush war-drive to
Chirac-Raffarin.

In this situation, where the movement is demonstrably
polarizing politically, the radical -and certainly the
revolutionary left should be organizing as well. To
say this is not to argue for splitting the movement or
(what would amount to the same thing) trying to turn
it into a far-left front. Our practice in the united
fronts we are involved in here in Britain shows how
alien either of these alternatives is to us. But what
organizations such as the LCR and the SWP should be
doing is openly and robustly challenging the right and
putting forward their own alternative strategy for the
movement.

If we don't do this then two things will happen.
First, the right will start setting the agenda of the
movement in a way that they were unable to in the
lead-up to Florence. As the prospect of war on Iraq
came to predominate last year, activists from Italy
and Britain led an argument- against, it has to be
said, bitter opposition from ATTAC France - for making
the war central at Florence. The fruits were the one
million strong demonstration on 9 November and the
much greater global day of protest on 15 February. But
such past successes will not be repeated automatically
in the future, without determined intervention by the
radical left. The experience of the past two years -
from Genoa to Florence to Evian - shows that this
intervention takes place in the favourable terrain
provided by the continuing radicalization of the
movement at the base, which has forced the right onto
the defensive. Secondly, precisely because of this
radicalization, the political vacuum that right wing
dominance of the movement would create would drive
tens of thousands of youngsters all over Europe into
the arms of the disobbedienti. All Daniel's fine
theoretical critiques of Hardt-Negri and Holloway will
lack real force unless we can show in practice that
revolutionary Marxists offer a radical alternative to
both Cassen-Nikonoff and the autonomists.

The revolutionary party today

In a way, all this analysis of the political
differentiation developing within the anti-capitalist
movement does to reaffirm an old truth long ago stated
by Lenin: mass movements do not spontaneously
gravitate in the direction of revolutionary socialist
politics. Periods of radicalization such as the
present open young and old activists alike to new
perspectives, but there is nothing automatic about the
best perspective prevailing. On the contrary: look at
how destructive forms of Maoism were the main - though
ephemeral - beneficiaries of the last great wave of
politicization in the United States at the end of the
1960s. To win over the new generation revolutionary
socialists have to make themselves part of the
movement and demonstrate concretely the pertinence of
our ideas. This is precisely what we have been arguing
ever since Seattle. We judge different currents on how
they measure up to this task. As much as anything else
it has been the deep implantation of LCR comrades in
ATTAC and the WSF that has drawn us towards you.

But, of course, implantation is not enough. You
yourselves underline the gap between the mass
mobilizations and their political expressions.
Political organization is necessary. The classical
case for the revolutionary party is that it
generalizes the experiences of particular struggles,
on the basis of this generalization formulates a
programme and strategy for taking the movement
forward, and intervenes in an organized manner to
translate these broad conceptions into reality. When
things go well - and they have gone better for us in
the anti-war movement than anything has for many years
- a mutually enriching process takes place in which
revolutionaries learn from the movement but also help
to strengthen it and give it direction.

What are your objections to the SWP's approach to
party-building? You warn that `we must make ourselves
distinguish (which isn't always easy) the important
from the secondary, strategic questions from tactical
ones, under the pain of remaining trapped in a
sectarian logic of fragmentation to infinity on the
basis of divergences that, with a few years (even a
few months) of reflection, appear of a very relative
importance'. You give as examples the 1971 split in
the Ligue that led to the formation of the
OCT-Revolution and the more recent break between the
American ISO and the IST. This logic is, you argue, a
consequence of `the identification of the construction
of a tendency or a faction with that of the party'.
The alternative to this destructive approach is a
pluralistic conception of the party which
institutionalises tendency rights and, if necessary
(though you emphasize this is not the most desirable
situation) `a regime of permanent tendencies'.[15]

Let us say first that if you are claiming that the
`sectarian logic of fragmentation to infinity' is a
consequence of the SWP's method of party-building,
then you must provide evidence to support this
proposition. The last, and much the most serious split
in the history of the SWP took place in 1975. The
American ISO's exclusion from the IS Tendency was far
and away the most significant split that our
international current has experienced. You say that
the differences over Seattle and the anti-capitalist
movement weren't 'enough it to precipitate such a
brutal and precipitate break'.[16] We agree
completely: please communicate your views to the
leadership of the ISO (US) and their Greek allies in
DEA (the Internationalist Workers Left). It was the
ISO Steering Committee that in early 2001 translated
the international disagreements over political
perspectives into an organizational break by first
expelling ISO members who agreed with the rest of the
IS Tendency and then publicly supporting the breakaway
by DEA from our Greek sister organization, the
Socialist Workers Party (SEK): the latter was a
particularly discreditable affair since the ISO's
Greek allies resigned en masse from SEK without
putting their differences to debate at the party
conference. The IST's decision subsequently to exclude
the ISO (US) was a defensive measure to prevent this
`sectarian logic of fragmentation' from spreading more
widely through the Tendency - something that,
fortunately, we have been largely able to achieve.[17]

Despite this, you accuse us of confusing `party' and
`faction'. This is a charge that has more meaning in
the distinctive kind of political discourse that the
FI has developed since the 1970s than it has on the
left more generally. We take you to mean that, as a
matter of principle, any party of the left, whether
revolutionary or reformist, should be able to contain
within it distinct, ideologically coherent, and
persisting currents. For us, however, the political
nature of the party makes an enormous difference here.
In a broad workers' party with a non revolutionary
programme - as the PT is and the SSP aspires to be -
it is indeed essential to insist on the party's
ability to accommodate different currents and
therefore to defend the rights of tendencies. The more
a party claims to reflect the workers' movement in all
its diversity, the more important it is that it allows
different socialist groupings to organize and express
their views within it.

But a revolutionary party does not aim to represent
the working class in its entirely. Rather, it seeks to
organise those who are more or less fully committed to
a revolutionary socialist programme in order to
intervene in the struggles and movements of the day
and draw wider layers of the working class and other
oppressed sections of society towards that programme.
Its function is not representative but
interventionist. [18] Daniel Bensaid puts very well
when he writes that, for Lenin, the party `becomes a
strategic operator, a sort of gearbox and points-man
of the class struggle' grappling with a history that
is `a broken time, full of knots and wounds pregnant
with events'. [19] Performing this function requires a
relatively high degree of ideological coherence.
Without the cohesion provided by a shared
understanding of the world, a revolutionary
organization may, at what Lenin called `sharp turns in
history', find itself paralysed by internal
disagreements and factional manoeuvres.

It is important to understand that, to be effective,
ideological cohesion cannot be administratively
imposed. For a revolutionary party rooted in the
Marxist tradition, how to continue that tradition is
always a matter of choice. History does not offer
itself up unambiguously, commanding one self-evident
interpretation. Bringing Marxism to bear on current
circumstances involves both a selection from the vast
resources of that tradition - a decision about which
of its aspects are most relevant to the present - and
a development of the tradition that means going beyond
it in a way that can always be contested. Debate and
discussion are inherent in this process, which is
itself inseparable from the assessment of the concrete
experiences of intervening in struggles that the
organization has undergone. It is therefore always
possible - particularly when the party is confronted
with a break in the situation, one of Daniel's `leaps'
- that the debate will be developed into a factional
polarization. The history of the SWP has been
punctuated with such crises, as - on, of course, a
much grander scale - was that of the Bolsheviks.

Daniel uses a very similar conception of the
interaction between party and situation to support the
case you have been arguing:

If politics is a matter of choice and decision, it
implies an organized plurality.

This is a matter of principles of organization. As for
the system of ,_

organization, this may vary according to concrete
circumstances on the

condition that it does not lose the guiding thread of
principle in the labyrinth

of opportunities. Then even the notorious discipline
in action seems less

sacrosanct that the golden myth of Leninism would have
it. We know how

Zinoviev and Kamenev were guilty of indiscipline by
publicly opposing the

insurrection, but the N were not permanently removed
from their

responsibilities. Lenin himself, in extreme
circumstances, did not hesitate to

demand a personal right to disobey the party. Thus he
considered resigning his

responsibilities in order to resume 'freedom to
agitate' in the rank and file of

the party. At the critical moment of decision, he
wrote bluntly to the central committee, `I have gone
where you did not want me to go (to Smolny).
Goodbye.'[21]

Daniel is absolutely right to say that any
revolutionary party worth the name will contain at any
given time a plurality of different view. Homogeneity
is a relative concept. A revolutionary organisation
may have a high degree of ideological cohesion
relative to other currents on the left, but - partly
for the reasons given above, partly as a result of the
ways in which the broader pressures of the social
context are filtered into the organization, and partly
because individuals have different class positions,
characters, histories, and perspectives - there are
always different nuances in how to approach specific
problems. As we have already said, particularly at
`turning points in history', hitherto microscopic
differences in emphasis may develop into polarized
confrontations. When that happens, there is nothing to
be done but to argue out the disagreements openly
inside the party, if necessary through the vehicle of
formal or informal factional groupings. Recognizing
that revolutionary organizations are, to this extent,
pluralistic does, however, not require us permanently
to institutionalize the differences that inevitably
develop within them.

Daniel refers to the Bolshevik Party's fractious
internal history, but one of the striking things about
this history is how it involved shifting and
cross-cutting alliances. Lenin and Trotsky, for
example, were united in support of the October 1917
insurrection (though they disagreed significantly over
precise tactics), in conflict over whether to sign the
Brest-Litovsk Treaty and later over invading Poland in
the summer of 1920, bitterly at loggerheads over the
trade union question in the lead-up to the 10`h
Congress in March 1921. but simultaneously in
agreement over NEP and the need to fight the
ultra-leftism displayed in the March Action. The
party-faction distinction fails to capture the subtle
interplay of different contexts and considerations at
work in these convergences and divergences - let alone
the much more complex picture that arises when we take
into account the shifting positions of other Bolshevik
leaders such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and
Stalin and the broader currents inside the party.

So revolutionary organizations necessarily involve
plurality; moreover, democratic debate is the
indispensable mechanism through which perspectives and
circumstances are calibrated and crises are overcome.
In our view, however, the kind of principled
distinction that you draw between party and faction
and the right of members to form permanent tendencies
that you infer from this distinction are an obstacle
to internal discussion playing this role. If comrades
identify themselves as members of factions that have a
continuous identity they are likely to approach
concrete issues and debates through the prism of the
faction's general perspective. Issues are unlikely to
be discussed on their merits but approached rather
from the point of view of their impact on the internal
balance of factional forces. Daniel's `organized
plurality' then risks degenerating into something like
the pluralism that American political scientists claim
for their society - pragmatic competition and
bargaining between interest groups. Indeed a cynic
might sat that the metaphysics of party and faction
was developed by the FI in the 1970s to legitimize
precisely such a factional stand-off between the
different currents that the USec either embraced or
sought draw in - the European `majority', the American
SWP, the Morenoites, and the Lambertists (Daniel
himself wittily describes the 11th Congress of the FI
in 1979, intended to witness the culmination, but in
fact marking the collapse of this policy, as
`consecrating a marriage of convenience lacking in
true amorous passion' [21]).

You imply that in rejecting permanent tendencies we
are committed to a bureaucratically imposed cohesion
that necessarily leads to splits: `if crystallized
divergences express a rnalaise or a crisis,
organizational separation is no more always the best
way of overcoming them by re-establishing party
"homogeneity".' [22] In our experience, the best way
of addressing 'crystallized divergences' is through
political debate. We have been able to do so with
remarkably few splits in our history. Though you
accuse us of having a `verticalist' method of
organizing, the number of times that individuals have
been expelled from the SWP over the past 25 years
because of political disagreements as opposed to
personal misconduct has been extremely small.[23] What
you refer to as our `verticalism' is better described
as our capacity to intervene in a highly disciplined
and concerted way. But the basis of this discipline is
not bureaucratically imposed homogeneity but the
mutual confidence that comes from a shared political
understanding rooted in the Marxist tradition
sustained by a tradition of open debate and by the
experience of working together within the framework of
the same organization.

The differences in our conceptions of party
organization are, of course, not simply academic
matters. They have practical consequences. One great
advantage of the development of an international
anti-capitalist movement is that we now operate, in
part, on a common terrain where we can (and do)
co-operate, and also observe each other's practice.
This is a great step forward, but it can bring
significant divergences into the spotlight. Thus you
have been vocally critical of how we behaved in
Florence. Equally, we have problems with how you
operate in the movement. Our criticisms are based on
how LCR comrades operate in the ESF process. This may
not be representative of your practice within the
unions, for example, about which know we much less -
though we are eager to learn more.

Nevertheless, we have been struck by the absence of
anything amounting to a coherent LCR intervention in
the ESE process. In a series of tough right-left
confrontations within the European anti-capitalist
networks, a leading LCR member has been one of the
main individuals fronting the positions taken by ATTAC
France -as we have already said, the leadership of the
right inside the anti-globalization movement in
Europe. Other well-known LCR comrades have either
pursued their own individual projects or, when they
have intervened in the debates between right and left,
have done so in a relatively equivocal way. To begin
with we wondered whether this disarray was merely
accidental or a product of disorganization. After all,
we don't always get our act together effectively. But
it seems to be a pattern.

Moreover, we were struck by the fact that the LCR
Central Committee, when it resolved to defer a
decision on SPEB's integration, reaffirmed, as a
`position of principle': `the choice of the LCR to
refuse to impose "party discipline" on its militants
within mass organizations (trade unions, associations)
must be clearly understood as a will to respect the
autonomy of the social movements, according to their
own frameworks and their own rhythms of elaboration
and decision'. [24] This seems to us a bizarre
position. Of course, if by `party discipline' you mean
subjecting members to the will of the organisation by
instructions and the threat of expulsion, then resort
to such mechanical procedures is, at best, an
admission of failure - though not something that can
therefore be ruled out a priori: trade-union activity,
for example, is full of temptations that occasionally
can only be dealt with by disciplinary measures. But
for us much more important is political discussion
involving the leadership and the comrades directly
concerned to hammer out what the party should be
pushing for in the union or movement in question. The
alternative is a dispersion of forces, and at worst, a
situation in which members of the same party are
openly pressing for divergent positions.

The problem with the latter situation isn't just that
it makes revolutionary Marxists look silly and
diminishes our effectiveness. Much more serious is the
danger that, the ineffectual behaviour of
revolutionaries can weaken the left and strengthen the
right. The right are quite happy to pay lip service to
`the autonomy of the social movements' while
ruthlessly and unscrupulously fighting for their own
positions. This is very clearly what the right wing
inside ATTAC are doing at the present time. The
tragedy is that the left can, by binding itself to
respecting a unity that the right cynically uses for
its own purposes, end up doing the right's dirty work.
There is a very clear danger of this happening to some
comrades, among them LCR members, in ATTAC. As we have
already said, to counter the right, the left has to
organize. Revolutionaries - because of the consistency
and radicality of their politics - should be playing a
central role in this process. It is indispensable to
strengthening the movement. To perform this function,
revolutionary Marxists should be organizing themselves
to intervene effectively. Isn't that why we are in a
revolutionary organization in the first place'?

Reform and revolution

Informing the tensions between left and right inside
the anti-capitalist movement is the ancient question
of reform and revolution. It is characteristic of the
ATTAC leadership, for example, to deny the pertinence
of this question. For example, Pierre Khalfa argues
that the movement has been able to maintain its unity
because,

nlike past movements for emancipation, the movement
for another globalization doesn't seek power, it
situates itself in the sphere of counterpowers. It has
therefore been able to avoid a number of strategic
debates, such as that on `reform and revolution', that
have profoundly divided movements for emancipation in
the past. Hence the problem posed by the presence of
parties, even leaving aside the orientations they can
take, and the difficulty of thinking how to relate
with them, and more generally with the political
sphere, apart from adopting a stand of distrust. This
distrust is all the more important since the movement
for another world is obliged to rely on political
parties with which it disagrees to implement its
proposals. [25]

This passage is an interesting example of how
autonomist rhetoric can validate reformist politics.
The anti-capitalist movement belongs to `the sphere of
counterpowers' and regards politics with disdain. The
practical consequence is that, while political parties
- particularly those of the plural left, presumably -
are formally excluded from the Social Forums, we have
no alternative but to rely on them when it comes to
getting our reforms passed into law. This is a formula
for transforming the movement into a kind of loyal
opposition to, a pressure group on the parties of
social-liberalism.

Resisting this reformist logic requires clarity about
what is involved in adopting a revolutionary
perspective. Indeed, you pose this question: `What
does it mean to be a revolutionary at the threshold of
the 21s` century . .. ?' Your answer is somewhat
oblique, distinguishing `three current meanings of the
world "revolution"'. First, there is `a very ancient
hope for liberation and repletion'. Secondly, and you
suggest, `most clearly relevant' today, there is the
notion of an `opposition between two antagonistic
social logics. Thirdly, there is revolution in the
`strategic sense', expressing `a series of experiences
and themes ... strategy and tactics, war of position
and war of movement, general strike and insurrection,
dual power, etc.' These themes played a major role in
the history of the workers' movement in the Short
Twentieth Century (1914-91), but became `obscured', as
the `strategic debate ... sunk to degree zero (in
Europe)' from the end of the 1970s onwards. [26]

These clarifications are useful, but, it seems to us,
incomplete. The greatest difficulty concerns the
connection between the second and third means of
`revolution'. We agree that the notion of a systemic
transformation -- the replacement, as you put it, of
one social logic by another of an economy driven by
competitive accumulation by one based on the
democratic determination of individual and collective
needs -remains of fundamental political importance
today. But this conception of revolution leaves quite
unspecified the political forms it might take. Kautsky
and left social democrats more generally championed
`social revolution' - the economic expropriation of
the bourgeoisie - but argued that it could come within
the framework of parliamentary democracy. The decisive
strategic specification that Lenin gave to the concept
of revolution lay in the proposition that the
overthrow of capital would require the forcible
dismantling of the repressive apparatuses of state
power by the workers and oppressed self-organized
through some version of council democracy. You say
that `the content of the [strategic] concept is
obscured, certainly because of the defeats we have
suffered, but also thanks to modifications in the
strategic coordinates of which, at the beginning of a
new cycle of experiences, we have hardly begun to take
the measure'. [27]

It is true that, participating in the construction of
a new movement, there is an enormous amount that
remains open and that can only be determined in the
course of future struggles. All the same, some
`strategic coordinates' seem to us unchanged. Lenin's
proposition seems to us one of them. Indeed, the
greater global integration of capital over the past 25
years surely increases the probability that any
movement of reform will face the most intense
resistance from the bourgeoisie - resistance that can
only be overcome by organized mass mobilizations that,
among other things, seek to break the state's monopoly
of the means of coercion. Recognition of this truth is
essential to any effective response to the
autonomists, who seek to legitimize their own
non-strategy precisely by evading the question of
political power. Of course, there is plenty of scope
for discussion about the forms in which such a
confrontation with the capitalist state could unfold -
the working class of today is very different from the
one that drove the lust upturn of struggle in the late
1960s and early 1970s, let alone the proletariat at
the heart of the great revolutionary experiences of
the early 20th century - though, as you imply, more
than anything else we need new experiences to give our
speculations concrete shape. Nevertheless, what you
call the 'regulative idea' of revolution can only be
given coherence if it incorporates the key strategic
lessons for which we remain in Lenin's and Trotsky's
debt.

You say that `the revolutionary perspective' serves as
`a guiding thread ... that allows us ... to separate
out necessary and acceptable compromises from
unacceptable betrayals, to distinguish what takes us
closer to the final goal from what draws us further
away from it'.[28] In other words, revolutionary
socialism doesn't just commit us to some long-term
abstract ideal - it has concrete political
implications in the present. Two examples. First,
there is a connection between Cassen's reformism and
his support for European militarism. If you believe
that systemic transformation is impossible and that
the best we can hope for is some more regulated
version of capitalism, then you are likely to be
sceptical about mass mobilization as an answer to the
military might of American imperialism. Given this
perspective, it is entirely natural to seek a
counter-weight to the US within the existing system -
and the obvious candidate for this role is the
European Union. Only a revolutionary perspective that
targets the entire imperialist system, not simply the
most powerful actor in that system, provides a
principled basis for resisting this logic.

The second illustration is provided by the Lula
presidency in Brazil. This is a huge subject in its
own right that requires detailed analysis and
discussion. Plainly what is happening in Brazil is an
enormously important experience for the workers'
movement and the left internationally. A party that is
the product of some of the most important social
movements of the past generation now holds office in
one of the powerful states in the South. And yet -
under the pre-emptive pressure of the financial
markets (preventive war takes more than one form) long
before the presidential elections last October - the
Lula team dumped the PT's programme and embraced the
neo-liberal agenda. The Financial Times reported at
the end of Lula's first hundred days in the
presidency:

Only about six months ago, it was generally feared
that Brazil ... was drifting inexorably on to the
rocks of debt default and financial collapse. Almost
the opposite has occurred: Brazil has come into
fashion on Wall Street. Traders and investors who
shunned it last year are now scrambling to buy
Brazilian bonds and equities ...

Why has this happened? A rapid change in the politics
of the governing Workers' party (PT) is one of the
biggest reasons. Having vote in December 2001 for a
`rupture' with the `neo-liberal' economic model
introduced by former President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, the party has rowed back towards the centre
of the political spectrum with astonishing speed ...
In some areas the government has been even more
austere than its predecessor, raising the target for
the primary fiscal surplus - before debt repayments -
from 3.75 percent to 4.25 percent of gross domestic
product. Mr Henrique Meirelles, formerly of Bank
Boston of the US, has raised interest rates in order
to combat inflationary pressures unleashed by last
year's devaluation of the Real. Mr Lula da Silva hits
embraced much, of Mr Cardoso's reform a enda and is
now accelerating planned reform of the tax and pension
system. [29]

In the light of this evolution, we have no doubt that
it was a mistake for a member of Democracia Socialista
(DS), the Brazilian section of the Fourth
International, Miguel Rossetto, to accept the
portfolio of Agrarian Development in Lula's
government. We have great respect for the DS comrades
that we have encountered at Porto Alegre: undoubtedly
the DS is a serious organization of revolutionary
militants. We are not interested in a politics of
sectarian denunciation or in metaphysical arguments
over whether or not the Brazilian government is a
popular front. We understand that it is not a simple
task to relate to the broad consciousness that Lula's
victory was that of the masses while resisting his
policies. All the same, for a revolutionary to take
office in a government committed to a neo-liberal
programme is something that `draws us away' from `the
final goal'. This is particularly so given the
government's attacks on pensions and the disciplinary
action taken or threatened against parliamentarians
belonging to far-left tendencies within the PT who are
standing up for the party's December 2001 programme -
for example, Luciana Genro of the Movement of the
Socialist Left (MES) and Heloisa Helena of the DS
itself. We were shocked to learn that the DS deputies
voted for Luciana's suspension from the PT
parliamentary group. 30 The task of revolutionaries,
in Brazil and elsewhere, should be defend the PT left
from the leadership's attacks and to help them,
together with movements such as the MST, to build
support for a real break with neo-liberalism.

This examples illustrate how being a revolutionary
Marxist today is not a matter of commitment to some
abstract dogma, but of real engagement with the
movements that are developing around us. As we have
said before, we do not claim exclusive property of the
classical Marxist tradition. We seek dialogue and
cooperation with revolutionaries from other currents
who are also seeking to continue this tradition while
participating in the movement of movements. We should
perhaps emphasize that we do not regard this process
as one of 'Trotskyist regroupment' - something that
has been often tried in the past but that usually (as
the example we gave earlier illustrates) leads to
rapid divorces than real fusions. We do not foreclose
the possibility of drawing closer to some of those who
come from a Stalinist background. We have worked well
with comrades from the Communist Party of Britain in
the antiwar movement. On the international front, we
have had very productive contacts with the leadership
of the PRC in Italy. Elements stemming from the
Marxist-Leninist organizations in the South may prove
to be valuable partners. The pursuit of dialogue

with such a wide range of forces does not imply an
unprincipled avoidance of arguments. It is plain that
even between two organizations with as much in common
as the LCR and the SWP there are important points of
divergence. But our debates must develop in the
context of an open-minded exploration of the bases for
deeper collaboration.

Here our two organizations have an especial
responsibility. For what it is worth, we are the two
leading revolutionary Marxist organizations in Europe.
We also have a relatively high international profile,
in part because of the role we play in our respective
currents. We are geographically close and have a
growing experience - whatever tensions and
disagreements this may generate - of working together
practically. We agree completely with Ollivier when he
said at the recent Fl World Congress: `The unity of
revolutionaries is only meaningful when it is turned
towards the overall tasks of mobilization and
political reorganization of the social movement.'[31]
We have already suggested that the LCR and the SWP
should initiate an international conference of the
radical left, possibly within the framework of one of
the next two World Social Forums - in Bombay in
January 2004 or back in Porto Alegre in 2005. In the
short term, it is imperative that we should work
together to ensure that there is as strong as possible
a radical-left presence at the European Social Forum
in Paris-St Denis in November. We hope that you will
respond positively to these suggestions. We will be
judged harshly if we fail to fulfil at least some of
the expectations that our dialogue has already begun
to raise.

With best wishes,

In comradeship,

Alex Callinicos,

for the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers
Party





1 D. Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades', IST
Discussion Bulletin, no. 2, January 2003, p. 13. 2 2]
2. Lc.

3 J. Rees, `The Conquest of Iraq', Socialist Review,
May 2003.

4 Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades', p. 16.

5. L.c.

6 See A. Callinicos, `Regroupment, Realignment and the
Revolutionary Left', IST Discussion Bulletin, no. 1,
July 2002, and `Regroupment and the Socialist Left',
ibid., no. 2, January 2003, and J. Rees, `The Broad
Party, The Revolutionary Party and the United Front',
International Socialism 2.97 (2002).

7 Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades', p. 18.

8. Ibid., pp. 18, 19. See also L. Aguirre, `Mouvement
altermondialisation: Retour sur Florence', Rouge, 19
December 2002, and the exchange between Alex
Callinicos and Leonce Aguirre and Francois Duval,
`Mouvement social et partis politiques', ibid., 6
February 2003.

9. Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades', pp.
18, 15.

10 See notably L. Caramel, 'Forum de Florence:
Offensive de la gauche radicale', Le Monde, 16
November 2002

11. T. Conway, `We are the Majority: Lessons of the
Anti-War Movement', International Viewpoint, 349, May
2003.

12 Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades', p.
18.

13 Ibid., p. 19 n. 5.

14 B. Cassen, `Trois questions pour ATTAC'
ww.attac.org

15. Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades', p.
18.

16 L.c.

17. For more background, see A. Callinicos, The
Anti-Capitalist Movement and the

Revolutionary Left (London, 2001).

18 See C. Harman, `Party and Class', in T. Cliff et
al., Party and Class (London, 1997).

19 D. Bensaid, `Leaps! Leaps! Leaps!', International
Socialism, 2.95 (2002), p. 76.

20 Ibid., p. 79.

21 D. Bensaid, Les Trotskysmes (Paris, 2(1(12), p.
108.

22. Bensaid et al., `A Letter from LCR Comrades,'.
p.18.

23 There were some large scale expulsions in the
mid-1970s that reflected serious political
divergences. Whether this was the best way of dealing
with these disagreements is undeniably open to
discussion, but it is important to see that these
cases are very much the exception in a history that
now stretches over more than fifty years

24 `Resolution adopte par le Comite Central de la
LCR', 19 January 2003.

25 P. Khalfa, `La Guerre en Iraq, et apres'?', Le
Grain de sable, no. 422, 9 May 2003; there is a
(rather rough) English translation in Sand in the
Wheels, 28 May 2003; http://www.attac.org

26. Bensaid et al., 'A Letter from I.CR Comrades', p.
17.

27. L.c.

28 Bensaid et al., 'A Letter from LCR Comrades', p.
17.

29 R. Lapper and R. Collitt, 'Lulu's 100 Days: Can
Hunger Plans and Consensual Politics Keep the
Honeymoon Going?', Financial Times, 8 April 2003.

30 See the statement by Luciana Genro elsewhere in
this Bulletin.

31 F. Ollivier, `Introductory Report on the World
Political Situation', 15th World Congress of the
Fourth International, International Viewpoint, 349,
May 2003.

[Barnabé]

Je suis en train de traduire...

[Barnabé]

carramba je suis battu

[Barikad]

CITATION (Caupo @ jeudi 10 juillet 2003, 22:54)Moi, des lettres aussi longues me semblent suspectes dès le début. Si c'eétait pour raler parce que la Ligue ne laisse pas rentrer les Par en Bas ^plus vite et en passant ecorcher toute la politique de la Ligue, ils pouvaient faire plus court.
[/quote]
He, camarades, les 4 pages de la lettre de LO à la LCR te semble pas trop longue ? .
Plus serieusement, les critiquent que formulent le SWP (qu'il vaut mieux lire en VO, je trouve ca plus clair que la traduction automatique) me semble assez juste...

[Louis]

c'est rien par rapport aux 10 pages de réponses... 8)

Ben on va trouver ca drôle, mais moi je trouve que le swp se trompe complétement et que la critique que nous avions faite de son fonctionnement (qui combinait un opportunisme total et un sectarisme extreme) était bien venu, d'ou la réaction acerbe des camarades...

[stef]

Le document initial (celui de la LCR) est-il disponible ?

[Screw]

CITATION (LouisChristianRené @ vendredi 11 juillet 2003, 11:01)Ben on va trouver ca drôle, mais moi je trouve que le swp se trompe complétement[/quote]
N'est-ce pas un peu rapide?
Et sur le comportement de DS et l'attitude des camarades éminents dans ATTAC?

[Louis]

pour connaitre l'original (la lettre de la lcr au swp) il faudrait que je retrouve le Critique communiste n° 167 :
Dossier : Nouvelles gauches radicales en Europe (y'a un peu le bordel sur mon bureau)