[page 53]
We aim here, not to provide a full account of all the controversies within the revolutionary movement to which we refer, but simply to illustrate the extra-ordinarily light-hearted fashion in which the SLL approaches the history of these controversies, and the theoretical gains made by the Marxist movement during them. We shall also touch on, in more detail than previously, two aspects of the SLL which we have already mentioned: its methods of lying and distorting in the course of polemics, and its insular nationalism.
The United Front
Most people on the left will be aware of the failure of the SLL to participate in the work of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, even to the extent of attacking the October 27th, 1968 demonstartion which had been called for by the Vietnamese. It is worth examining their justification for this, which consists of specious arguments to the effect that the V.S.C. is not a United Front.
Thus it is pointed out that the organisations participating in V.S.C. are "small" - though very few in the SLL appreciate the growth undergone these past few years by the groups they attack, particularly the IS. It is pointed out that the United Front Tactic was elaborated by Lenin and Trotsky for mass revolutionary parties, and that these groups are not parties. [1]
That is true; what the SLL fails to grasp is that what was called for, after the degeneration of the Communist International and the founding of the Fourth, was the development (not ossification) of Marxist theory; among other problems, it was necessary to work out tactics for building the revolutionary groups of today into the mass revolutionary parties of tomorrow. The development of the tactic of the United Front of revolutionary groups and tendencies is a case in point, as was the entry tactic.
"They use for this purpose the Marxist-sounding phrase 'united front', the favourite device of Tate, Jordan and the 'Unified Secretariat' clique.
"This is a crude and deliberate distortion.
"Lenin, Trotsky and the Communist International elaborated the tactic of the united front in the years after 1920, when it was essential for the newly-formed Communist Parties to find a road to those masses of workers still under the influence of the social-democratic parties.
"By putting forward a platform of demands to meet the elementary needs of the masses, from living standards and employment to democratic rights, the Communist Parties would give the class the opportunity to unite, which many workers desired, and at the same time expose the reformist leaders who would either refuse the united front, or stop short of the steps necessary to realize its aims.
"This bears no relation whatsoever to the so-called 'united front of individuals and groups' who are in solidarity with the Vietnamese, as the policy statement of the VSC says, and is the opposite of the unprincipled banding together of small propaganda groups in VSC's National Council."
We'll return to this question later, in the light of the latest turn, not to say zig-zag, of the SLL. But we can't help wondering whether Slaughter considers it is no longer necessary "to find a road to those masses of workers still under the influence of the social-democratic" and Communist Parties. That would explain a lot!
[1] For example, Cliff Slaughter in his pamphlet "A Balance Sheet of Revisionism", reprinted from The Newsletter of late 1968, on p.6:
[page 54]
But the dishonesty of such an attack is quite remarkable. For let us admit that the SLL was probably larger in 1964 than it is now, though smaller than the IS is now. It remains for the PC of the SLL - and in particular the chief theoretician Cliff Slaughter, who surely knows the SLL has never been a mass party - to explain their adopting, on 11/12th January 1964, a resolution - subsequently passed by the March 1964 Congress of the SLL - which said:
"Our 'entry' in the Labour Party has reached a new stage. On the basis of the radicalisation of working class youth and the fight against revisionism, for a revolutionary attitude to entrism, we have reached a position where the united front from within can be posed at the level of mass campaigns and direct struggle under our leadership against the existing leadership" (original emphasis,[2]),
and attacked
"revisionist tendencies such as that of Germain, with his perspective of mass leftward moving centrist parties to be infiltrated and even led by Trotskyists [3]. This type of entrism has nothing to do with Trotskyism and serves to protect the bureaucracy from the resistance of the working class to imperialism's latest contradictions. In Britain the Pabloites capitulate to the bureaucracy and 'unite' with opportunists and fellow-travellers of all kinds. Instead of leading struggles behind the banner of the Transitional Programme and the United Front, they are content to mobilize pressure for more progressive Labour policies."
What a nightmare world the leaders of the SLL live in! In 1964, the SLL could itself have a united front with the Labour Party, and denounce the "Pabloites" for not being "behind the banner of the Transitional Programme and the United Front"; in 1968 no United Fronts are possible and "the Pabloites" are damned for imagining that they are engaging in them.
Historical Questions
(a) The Belgian General Strike of 1960-61.
The Newsletter, in 1961, published an account by Tom Kemp of the Belgian General Strike, in which some violent attacks were made on Ernest Mandel. The burden of these attacks was that he was putting forward certain specific policies rather than "building the alternative leadership"; anyone who cares can check the details in Kemp's pamphlet "Class Struggles in Belgium", in which his articles are reprinted.
In our opinion, this attack is indicative of the initial degeneration of the SLL: it is one of the first signs we can detect in its press of the process which has culminated in its substituting, for policies and tactics designed to build the revolutionary movement, the mere propaganda slogan: "Build the Alternative Leadership." Ever since that time, the SLL has attacked the perfidious Pabloite revisionists for what they did in the Belgian general strike and later.
One example of such attacks is to be found in Cliff Slaughter's articles "Trotskyism versus Revisionism" in The Newsletter [4].
"Germain prefers to select certain issues, particularly Cuba, Ceylon, and Negro nationalism, with some shorter references to
[2] This formula is repeated on p.8 of G. Healy's pamphlet "Problems of the Fourth International".
[3] We don't claim that was Germain's perspective! -TW.
[4] Issues of 8th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 22nd, 25th Feb, 1st, 4th, 8th March 1969. These articles, billed up to and including 4th March as a series in seven parts, are an attempted reply to E. Germain's pamphlet "Marxism vs. Ultraleftism". Though it must be said that, in order to avoid most of the issues raised by Germain, Cliff Slaughter uses the following formula:
[page 55]
In the second of these articles Slaughter quotes from an article by Ernest Mandel in the Belgian paper La Gauche of 24th Dec 1960:
"In 'La Gauche' we have proposed a clear formula: A government of the workers supported by the trade unions."
He then quotes terms on which Mandel said the Belgian Socialist Party might form a coalition, and cites the verdict of his French cothinker Gerard Bloch: Mandel "substituted an alternative both of the terms of which amounted to vulgar reformism, vulgar parliamentarism."
Now we don't know all the details of the Belgian General Strike; it was a bit before our time, though judging by, in particular, Tom Kemp's pamphlet, Mandel's line was generally correct. But we do know that Slaughter's "critique", symptomatic of a certain infantile disorder, can only disorient those - presumably his followers - whom he is trying to educate.
For Slaughter attacks Mandel's "advocacy in Belgium of a coalition government under pressure of the masses", an attack which seems to reveal more Slaughter's than Mandel's mistakes. May we remind him: since the collapse of the Third International, there have not been mass revolutionary parties [5] in the advanced capitalist countries. What there have been are revolutionary organisations, the nuclei of future revolutionary parties. As he is discovering, the tactical problems of building these parties, in a workers' movement dominated by reformism and Stalinism, are considerable. And yet, arguing on the level on which he operates, one could denounce the Bolshevik Party for putting forward, in 1917, the slogan "Down with the Ten Capitalist Ministers". [6]
'united fronts' and to the nature of Soviet society. Each is, of course, a vital question, but they have meaning only in the whole development of world revolutionary strategy and tactics; they can be understood by Marxists only in direct relation to the revolution in the advanced countries."
We note also that virtually none of Slaughter's reply is original; he serves up mainly a stale diet of either reprints or paraphrases of previous "exposures" of Germain/Mandel.
[5] In all probability the SLL will soon change its name to Revolutionary Communist Party. That will merely indicate its delusions of grandeur.
[6] If the SLL reply to this pamphlet, they may point out that the Bolsheviks also had the slogan "All Power to the Soviets". We know that. Indeed, the mention of it raises an interesting little episode. The SLL's Fourth International, Vol. 4, No. 3, Nov 1967, carries an interesting series of articles about the Russian Revolution, in which the authors can be seen unconsciously groping in the light (for them, darkness) of the Russian Revolution for a justification of their present-day sectarianism. This is particularly marked in Slaughter's article, and also one by two other leaders of the SLL, Cdes. "Robert Black" and "John Crawford". The latter insist (pp. 103,104) on the correctness of the withdrawal, by the Bolshevik Party, of the slogan "All Power" after the July days. Now we think the question is open to discussion, but we would have the decency to refer our readers to Trotsky's History, in which he argues that the withdrawal was a mistake. The episode is made all the more curious when one knows that Cde. "Black" once wrote a review of the History. Like most of the material in that particular issue of F.I., this particular curiosity is probably an ideological reflection of the growth of the SLL's sectarianism, dogmatism and organisational rigidity.
[4, continued from the previous page]
[page 56]
(b) The 1953 Split in the Fourth International
One of the issues used by the leadership of the SLL to convince its rank-and-file of the hideous nature of the "so-called 'United Scretariat of the Fourth International'" and of the American SWP is the treatment of the majority of the French section by M. Pablo and the SWP during the 1953 split.
Thus Tim Wohlforth, an American sympathiser of the SLL, gives in The Newsletter of 22nd July 1969 a long account of the split, accusing the SWP of supporting Pablo's allegedly bureaucratic measures against the French majority, etc. Now in due course the sections and sympathisers of the Fourth International will have to go over again the experience of that split, and see what can be learned from it. What we want to do now is not to comment on it, but to indicate the perfidy by which the SLL leadership keeps its members, most of whom joined during the 1960's and have no independent knowledge of the split, in a political ghetto.
For Wohlforth's account of the split is, shall we say, incomplete. While the SWP is denounced at great length, the actions of the European Trotskyists, who were on the scene and could be expected to know much better than the SWP what was going on in the French section, are unmentioned. With good reason: For the facts of the matter are that many European Trotskyist leaders, including the damnable Ernest Mandel, opposed Pablo's suspension of the leadership of the PCI, but the SLL supported it, voted for it, and a prominent leader of the SLL even spoke at the PCI's congress against the majority. [7]
(c) "Pabloite Revisionism"
Tim Wohlforth, in a series in The Newsletter in July 1969 which we have already mentioned [8], argues (July 15th) as follows:
"The very first paragraphs of the resolution [9] ("The New Rise of the World Revolution" adopted by the 9th Congress of the Fourth International) establish the central theoretical outlook which has marked Pabloite resolutions since the Third Congress. This makes clear than while Pablo, the man, left the United Secretariat several years ago, Pabloism as a revisionist method remains at the very heart of the world outlook of the United Secretariat and its supporters."
that is his justification for calling the Fourth International "Pabloite" throughout his articles.
Let's refer him to Tom Kemp's introduction to the SLL's 1963 edition of "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain" by Felix Morrow. On p.xi thereof can be found the following:
"First of all we must understand that we exist in a world dominated by capitalism. Capitalism is a world system which covers almost the entire face of the globe, having an impact, as we shall see, even within those countries which have established workers states",
Wohlforth does not see fit to give his readers the paragraphs concerned.
[7] To be fair, G. Healy mentions this, very briefly, on p.6 of "Problems of the F.I.". But that was mid-1966 - a long time ago in terms of the rate of turnover of membership of the SLL.
[8] This amusing series entitled "Revisionists in Crisis" can be found in the issues of July 12th, 15th, 19th, 22nd, and 26th 1969, and also in Wohlforth's paper Bulletin for July 28th and August 25th 1969.
[9] While finding space to deliver himself of such profundities as:
[page 57]
" (H. Thomas) produces the following curious piece of reasoning: 'Although not Trotskyist in the sense of being strict followers of Trotsky (they were not affiliated to the Fourth International), these men could justifiably be regarded as such since they were Marxist opponents of Stalin who shared Trotsky's general views: permanent revolution abroad, working class collectives at home.' The POUM leaders did not regard themselves as Trotskyists, nor did the Trotskyists outside Spain regard them as such, therefore... therefore, Thomas accepts the Stalinist characterization of them as Trotskyists."
Now, Comrade Wohlforth, you are aware that "Pablo, the man, left the United Secretariat several years ago"; that is to say, that neither do the F.I. leaders regard themselves as Pabloites, nor do the "Pabloites" (including Pablo). Don't you think that your argument also, is rather "curious"?
France in 1969
Needless to say, the role of the Fourth International in the May-June days in France, and in the French Presidential elections of 1969,is looked down on from the heights of Clapham High Street. For example, Tom Kemp, in The Newsletter of June 7th, 1969, says:
"Alain Krivine was a leader of the now-banned Jeunnesses Communistes Revolutionnaires, an advocate of 'student power', who took a part in the happenings in the Sorbonne in May-June 1968.
"His political antecedents are no secret. He is an offspring of the revisionist split from (sic) the Fourth International, a protege of the Pablo, Frank, and Mandel group (a "curious" list, Comrade Kemp) who, under the name of Trotskyism, abandoned its programme.
"For all its revolutionary phraseology, this current can be regarded as a petty-bourgeois centrist trend.
"Its main support comes from sectoons of the students and a kind of beatnik fringe. It has never carried out serious and sustained work in the working-class in France.
"Its policy has been characterized by a complete lack of consistency and principle.
"Krivine's candidature can thus only contribute to further confusion and division." [10]
Or an anonymous writer in the same paper on June 14th:
"For all his six hours of radio and TV propaganda Krivine was only able to obtain a fraction over 1 per cent of the votes. On this showing, his impact was practically negligible.
"With a surer class instinct the striking workers of May-June, 1968 preferred Duclos." [11]
"...it is clear that the Communist Party is not able to pull in all the working-class votes...Duclos fell short of the maximum percentage which the party has obtained in general elections....
"In other words, many of those who took part in the May-June, 1968, strike, or who would have followed a decisive lead from the left, have not broken electorally from the bourgeois parties." (our emphasis - T.W.)
[10] Despite Kemp - who favours a united working class candidate - being forced to admit: "What (the bourgeoisie) feared most of all was the appearance of a single working class candidate supported by all the working class organizations. The heaviest burden of responsibility obviously lies on the shoulders of the leaders of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party", about half his article is devoted to an attack on the Krivine candidature.
[11] This comment illustrates the sheer irresponsibility with which the SLL puts malicious factionalism above theory and scientific analysis; in the same issue of The Newsletter Tom Kemp correctly writes:
[page 58]
Tim Wohlforth, in The Newsletter of July 19th, explained what the Ligue Communiste should have done:
"Thus they ignored the central task posed after the resignation of de Gaulle - the development of a strategy aimed at breaking the Communist Party rank and file from its Stalinist leadership. This required first a 'no' in the referendum, as the workers understood it (?), then a call to vote for Duclos, posing to the Communist Party a socialist programme as an alternative to Gaullism and capitalism. This would have begun the process of exposing the Communist Party before the mass of French workers who still look to this party for leadership in their struggles against the capitalists."
From these quotations and the rest of the accounts published in The Newsletter, one may be forgiven - as the SLL's militants must, in many cases, be forgiven - for thinking that the SLL's French 'cothinkers' of the OTF actually did all that. Not so! They called on the workers to vote for "any workers' candidate", and thoughtfully specified that Duclos (of the French CP) and Defferre (of the Socialist Party) were workers' candidates, but that Krivine, and Rocard of the PSU, were "petty-bourgeois". For which, however, they came in for heavy attack from their "comrades" in the leadership of the SLL, who agreed with Wohlforth.
Rebuilding the Fourth International
We don't wish to go here into the more sordid details of the "International" work of the SLL, but the world-wide fight against Pabloite revisionism has featured in their press during 1969, as prominently as ever, and it will be worth our while to puncture one or two claims, and to indicate the "theoretical" level, and some other qualities, of the individuals concerned.
Workers Press has just carried a report that a Conference of the "International Committee of the Fourth International" will take place in February 1970: we should note, therefore, that of the eight sections of the original International Committee, six participated in the Reunification of the Fourth International (in and after 1963), only the Healy and Lambert groups refusing (see, e.g. Germain's pamphlet). and that the SLL's appropriation of the label is a fraud. However, since they consider themselves justified in it, we must, as serious students willing to learn, try to follow the reasoning they adopt.
Looking, therefore, at one of the few publications in which they have offered the world anything approaching a serious evaluation of the state of Trotskyism today - G. Healy's pamphlet - we find (p.32) that they consider "the present international committee...constitutes the sole organised successor to the Trotskyist movement." At first sight, this strikes one as incredible: in 1963, when they refused to reunify, they had negligible support outside of two West European countries, namely Britain and France. But a further study of the documents available produces a clue: while we intend to go into details elsewhere, the evolution of the "critique" of the Fourth International by the I.C. follows a certain pattern - at each stage the F.I. is attacked for not doing what the SLL imagines itself to be doing successfully in Britain. [12] (As in the case of the United Front above)
[12] Reading the SLL's documents of the early 1960's - which, we sometimes suspect, Banda-Healy-Slaughter find little time to do - we are struck by the fact that, larded though they are with denunciations of "impressionism" and pragmatism, they usually indicate that the SLL believed that what it was, at that moment, doing in Britain, which was working, was the only thing Trotskyists might do at any point in space
[page 59]
This is , of course, the inevitable consequence of the domination of the fraudulently self-styled "International" Committee by Cdes. Banda, Healy and Slaughter; it does, however, make one wonder who exactly these people in other countries who support them, nay, prostrate themselves before them, may be. To shed some light on this question, and also on the SLL, let's consider Cliff Slaughter's reply to Germain's pamphlet.
We have seen how Slaughter evades a real discussion (though he's quite prepared to claim to want, or at least to have wanted one): the questions raised by Germain "can be understood by Marxists only in direct (?) relation to the revolution in the advanced (sic) countries". It's hardly worthwhile dismissing this parochialism: in fact, revolutionary Marxists working for the overthrow of capitalism in the advanced countries will only succeed if they understand those questions, rather than the reverse as Slaughter seems to think. But what were the questions raised by Germain, and so imperiously dismissed by Slaughter?
According to the latter himself, they were "Cuba, Ceylon and Negro nationalism,... 'united fronts' and the nature of Soviet society". As a matter of fact they were more precise: 1. the class nature of the Cuban state; 2. The alleged responsibility of the Fourth International for the LSSP entering a bourgeois coalition; 3. The SLL's refusal to support black nationalism in the USA; 4. United Fronts in Ceylon and in Britain; 5. The role of foreign trade in the economic and social development of the USSR.
Now Slaughter says nothing about the class nature of the Cuban state - while his position on that question, which occupies about 1/4 of Germain's pamphlet, remains a mystery, he contents himself with references to the undoubtedly incorrect positions of Fidel Castro on May-June 1968, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia. This is most extraordinary, since the SLL, correctly, regards the Ulbricht regime, which did not support the French General Strike of May-June 1968, and whose troops invaded Czechoslovakia, as a workers' state but refuses to commit itself - see Germain's pamphlet pp.46 to 49 - on the class nature of Cuba. One can hardly believe that his reply is written in good faith.
The same comment applies to his cavalier treatment of questions 2, 3, 4: he must know, for example, that The Newsletter's obituary comment on Malcolm X was directly the opposite to what he writes now, or it had written before [13]. His ideas may have "developed", but he should at least know of their development, and in a serious polemical article he ought, one would have thought, to account for it.
But we have a certain respect for Slaughter which we don't have for some of this cothinkers, so it was with great pleasure that we noticed he maintained total silence on the subject of Soviet foreign trade. For, while he is co-editor of the journal - Fourth International - in which one of the worst expositions of the SLL's position on the question [p. 60] was perpetrated [14], the main "development of theory" had been done by the SLL's allies, leaders repectively of the "Hungarian Section" and the "American Cothinkers" of the International Committee, Comrades Michel Varga and Tim Wohlforth. And we were led by Slaughter's silence to hope that, at least behind the scenes, he had tipped them off to the fact that their position was untenable; perhaps, even, he might have remonstrated with them that their polemics against Ernest Mandel and the rest of the Trotskyist movement should be less ludicrous in future.
[13] We hope to treat of this rather shabby episode on another occasion.
[12, continued from the previous page] or time. (See especially F.I. Vol 1, No 1, Cliff Slaughter's article; reprintd in Vol 6 No 2). The Fourth International is, essentially, identified with its self-styled British section.
Unfortunately, our hopes that, if only in this small way, the top leadership of the SLL were pushing through a measure of self-reform proved unjustified. Tim Wohlforth's articles "Revisionists in Crisis", pushed the same old line. Since Wohlforth, in particular, is a fairly prominent ally of the SLL - that is to say, we have heard of Americans who have heard of Wohlforth - and since the SLL sells his pamphlets and publishes his articles, let's look at some of them and see what we shall see.
As we said, "Revisionists in Crisis" repeats the line - exploded once-for-all, we had hoped, by Germain - on Soviet foreign trade:
"Precisely, at this point (God knows what point -T.W.), where the workers' states reach a level of economic development which requires of them greater integration into the world market if the economies are to move forward, the world market is marked by the fiercest international competition since the 1920s. The ruling bureaucracies are forced to discipline their own working class in a futile attempt to raise the level of productivity to a point where competition is possible, thus intensifying the conflict between the working class and these bureaucracies."
Exactly what this means is unclear; apparently Wohlforth imagines that Soviet enterprises, or perhaps the whole Soviet economy, "compete" with imperialist concerns in the same way that General Electric of Britain competes with General Electric of America. One interesting aspect of the quote is that it is far closer to the position of 'state capitalist revisionism' - which the SLL professes to reject - than to that of Trotskyism [15]. We don't really pretend to understand what all the mutually contradictory articles produced by Wohlforth, Varge & Co. mean, but we do demand of the SLL, since those are the people with whom they are collaborating in the "Rebuilding" [16] of the Fourth International, that they explain, in the light of Germain's critique, what their own position is. [17,18]
[14] "Marxist Political Economy and the 'Socialist World'" by Michel Varga, Fourth International Vol 3 No 1, Jan 1966. See also Germain's pamphlet, and other references given there.
[15] Compare with M. Kidron's formulations in "Maginot Marxism: Mandel's Economics", in International Socialism No 36, April/May 1969. Kidron, of course, is a "state capitalist" leader of IS. See also Mandel's critique of Kidron in "The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism".
[16] An interesting point: the SLL describes itself as the British Section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, while their French cothinkers constitute a section of the International Committee For the Reconstruction of the F.I. So the SLL blithely reproduces OTF or ex-OCI material under the banner: French Section of the I.C. (For the Reconstruction) of the F.I., demonstrating how easily, with two brackets, one may become all things to all men.
[17] After all, Varga, at least, corrected very promptly his "errors" at the 1966 Conference of the I.C.
[18] Workers Press of 25th Oct '69 leads us to suspect the SLL agrees
[page 61]
But we have not finished with Wohlforth's "Revisionists in Crisis"; readers are invited to submit answers to the question: Did Wohlforth support Dubcek in August 1968 on the basis of the following quotation:
"Our (i.e. Wohlforth's) position was one of opposition to the Soviet intervention, but refusal to give any political support whatsoever to the Dubcek section of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Czechoslovakia. Instead we relied on the independent struggle of the working class of Czechoslovakia and called for the creation of a section of the Fourth International to take this struggle forward to the political revolution. We gave critical support to Dubcek only insofar as he resisted the Soviet invasion."
Of course, this is, as many interested Americans know, only an extreme example of Wohlforth's agility in changing his position - though to do so in three consecutive sentences is unusual even for him. But his strange acrobatics in 1958-62 on the Algerian and Cuban Revolutions, on the desirability and possibility of reunification of the International, etc., are an enlightennng precedent, and some at least have, we believe, been discussed publicly by the Spartacist League (Robertson group) in the USA (19). We don't say: people are not permitted to change their positions. We just ask, in vain, for them to account for the changes...
Other aspects of this international work have been taken up by Germain and also by Hansen; we content ourselves with one further point. In his reply to Germain, Slaughter devotes a large amount of space to "proving" that the Fourth International is on the point of uniting, in Britain and France, with the "anti-communist" IS and ex-Voix Ouvriere. He was wrong of course...and there's one experience, which he ought to have recollected and mentioned, which ought to have enabled him to understand some things about unity. For he somehow contrives to omit the fact that unity negotiations between his French cothinkers and VO went so far that the latter attended his April 1966 International Conference - only to withdraw in horror.
Arrogance, Lies, Nationalism
The SLL has been attacked many times for an article published in The Newsletter in December 1964, written by one P. Desai, which criticised Congolese revolutionaries for taking white hostages and shedding innocent blood. In our opinion, that abominable article was not representative of the SLL's line on the question - Bill Hunter, for example, wrote an excellent denunciation of it, which was published in The Newsletter. Moreover, P. Desai was soon to leave the League (mid-'65), and the probable explanation of its being printed is that Mike Banda, the paper's editor, just failed to read it thoroughly.
But there can be no doubt that even the writing of such an article, by [p. 62] a regular correspondent of The Newsletter, was indicative of something wrong with the SLL. In our opinion, two of the trends in the League's thought which it both exemplified and followed from were their arrogance and their insular nationalism - which are, of course, related. The first is indicated by the way the SLL haughtily dishes out instructions to revolutionaries all over the world, frequently (as in that case) bad instructions; the second by its negative, abstentionist attitude to the colonial revolution - it sees its first task as criticism, its second as campaigning (often only in a formal, propaganda way) for solidarity. Both of these trends have been frequently noted, especially the League's arrogance. But it will nevertheless pay us to look at them further.
[19] Alternatively, see "Unprincipled Combinationism- Past and Present" by Tom Kerry, S.W.P. Discussion Bulletin, Vol 24 No 15, May 1963.
[18, continued] with Wohlforth. The case of the Soviet Union is probably another example of the way in which some "development of theory" is carried out by some "theoretician" - in this case Varga - and is then uncritically accepted by the rest of the international leadership, and consequently by their followers, as part of the body of given truth which is not to be criticised or questioned. This sort of approach is evident in the SLL's Fourth International and in their miserable student journal Marxist, which few of them defend. Both of these - Marxist in every issue - appeal for discussion and polemic. But very little takes place...The most outrageous case of the "body of truth" approach is the habitual lying of the SLL-OCI about the attitude of the F.I. to the Hungarian revolution. How many 'critics' have read the F.I.'s documents?
We have already noted the tributes the SLL exacted - characterised by both arrogance and nationalism - from its allies in 1964. That same year, the SLL's theoretical journal Fourth International (Vol 1 No 1, Spring 1964) explained that "(from late 1963) the International Committee of the Fourth International was called upon to assume the leadership of all those Marxists throughout the world who are fighting to build revolutionary parties". Discussing its fitness to carry out this task, it remarked that Fourth International - edited by Cliff Slaughter and Tom Kemp - had "an editorial board which includes the most advanced international thinkers in the Marxist movement today".
Let us repeat our previous question: why does the SLL give itself such airs, and exact such tributes from its allies? Moreover, why do the latter put up with it? While awaiting a reply, let's investigate the problem ourselves.
As we have said, the SLL leadership was hypnotized by its recruitment in 1960-64. They believed that this had taken place "on the basis of the radicalisation of working class youth", which was hardly true. During a four-week campaign in 1963 over the Profumo affair they had recruited 250 members on top of their previous recruitment targets. They had won the majority on the YS NC.
Drinking deep of this heady wine, and unrestrained either by the S.W.P. - long their closest allies in the world Trotskyist movement - or by the Fourth International (they broke with both of them in 1963, when the Reunification of the Fourth International took place), they developed the belief that their proportionately large, but absolutely small, numerical gains, had occurred because of the serious crisis of British capitalism, which was worse than that of any other advanced capitalist country.
Thus the resolution of the Nov 28th 1964 Conference of the SLL has a long section explaining that "Britain constitutes 'the weakest link in the chain' at the latest stage of development of capitalism". (20) This invocation of Lenin's analogy about the Russian Revolution can have only one meaning! And indeed it did mean to the SLL leadership precisely that they were going forward to the overthrow of British capitalism. So the same conference adopted an unpublished resolution which concluded:
"We shall, therefore, work for a fusion between the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League which will enable us to change the name of the League to that of a Party and to maintain the Young Socialists as that of its youth section."
We ourselves have heard Gerry Healy say - in 1967, not recently - that "Britain Will Be Next!"
The main effect of this nationalism has been to reinforce their sectarianism, [p. 63] in relation to the solidarity movements with the colonial revolution in particular. Another effect has been to render them totally incapable of understanding the dialectics of world revolution today; the interaction of struggles in different countries or of different sections of the oppressed masses, the interrelation of the world economy and its national sections, all these are completely misunderstood by the SLL (21).
[20] The Newsletter, Dec. 5th 1964. The Manifesto of that Conference, in the same issue, was fairly good - unfortunately the SLL didn't follow its own advice: "All workers, young and old, must start this fight now inside the factories, trade unions and local Labour parties."
In particular, they have failed completely to understand the tempo of developments in Britain. Which brings us to the next point: lies and distortions. For what do they do? They distort their critics' arguments and call those who draw attention to past mistakes by all manner of uncomplimentary names. All this is familiar to most non-members of the SLL; we suggest that members should study Ernest Germain's pamplet "Marxism versus Ultraleftism" and Cliff Slaughter's above-mentioned reply.
What the critics have failed to remark so clearly is the way in which the SLL lie about their own activities: usually to proclaim as a success what was an abject failure. Whether the top leadership really believe in all these successes we cannot say. All we can do is call attention to their press, and other activites, and form our own judgement.
To give one example - and it is really sufficient - consider the following quotations, all from Aileen Jennings, editor of Keep Left:
"What we did in 1966 we will improve upon. The circulation of our paper topped the 14,000 mark with the launching of a 12-page paper; let us make that figue 20,000 in 1967." ("(1967)AGM - Keep Left starts 1967 with huge success - 800 unanimous to boost sales to 20,000"in the Feb. 1967 edition)
"We call upon everyone to support this campaign and to build up the circulation to 25,000 a month in the next year." ("Good news from the Editor at the (1968) AGM - Paper gains support in 1967" in the Feb. 1968 edition)
"...we were able to announce (at the 1969 AGM) that our circulation is only a few hundred short of the 20,000 target we set ourselves at the 1968 Annual General Meeting." ("1969 - a year of revolutionary decision". Keep Left Feb. 1969)
"This global conflict is then broken up (by the Pabloites) into sectors, thus obliterating the essential unifying forces of capitalist relations on the one hand and the working class as an international class on the other. At the same time the material foundations of the class struggle rooted in the crisis of world capitalism are either ignored altogether or seen as only one among many factors affecting the imperialist sector of the schema" (July 15th 1969. Does that second sentence mean anything?),
while part 2 continued says (original emphasis):
"The only uniting force between international sectors or these sectors of struggle within a country is the revolutionary party and its programme." (July 19th 1969)
Even published in two parts, an article containing such formulations makes an inestimable contribution to the development of Marxist theory!
[21] To give one example, on the first point. Tim Wohlforth's articles "Revisionists in Crisis" attempt to clear this one up. Thus part 2 says (our emphasis):
[page 64]
Lastly, let us give an example of how, behind a screen of verbal protestations of Marxism, some curious things are taking place. Cliff Slaughter, by training a social anthropologist, is a leading theoretician of the SLL. He has written many articles and documents criticising the SWP for abandoning dialectical materialism and Marxism. Would he, as a revolutionary, a former secretary of the International Committee, an opponent of reactionary middle-class protest politics, and - dare we say it? - one of the 'most advanced international thinkers in the Marxist movement today', care to comment on the following quotation, which is taken from a speech by Gerry Healy published in Keep Left, February 1968.
"We must proceed as internationalists (sic) firm in our conviction that we are not alone, that we have allies in all the countries where capitalism exists (sic again), that there are only two classes in society covering the capitalist world - the working class and the capitalist class."