I´m not
sure if I can write a meaningful review of this material. “In Defense of the
Trotskyist Program” is a bulletin published by the small Bolshevik Tendency,
today known as the International Bolshevik Tendency (and probably even
smaller). The pamphlet contains a polemical exchange between the BT (based in
the United States) and a competing Trotskyist group, Workers Power (based in
Britain). Workers Power had tried to recruit a third small group, the LTT, to
its international network, then called MRCI. The LTT had fused with the BT
instead, but subsequent political haranguing from Workers Power made the
LTT-ers backslide and eventually join the MRCI. Today, nobody gives a damn, and
very few people gave a damn even at the time. I have to say that sectarian
Trotskyism is so far from my current preoccupations that I wonder whether this
blog post serves any kind of purpose whatsoever, but since I review virtually
anything, I decided to sink my teeth into this one, too!
The
bulletin (published in 1988) contains three pieces. The first is the BT-LTT
fusion platform, simply titled “For Trotskyism!” The second is Workers Power´s
criticism of the platform and hence of the BT´s ideological positions in
general. The third article is the BT´s belated response to the polemic, which restates
the points already raised in the fusion document. I admit that the texts *do*
give a clear overview of the political differences between the two groups, with
the BT playing the “sectarian”, “Stalinophile” and “imperialist economist”
role, similar to that of its parent group, the Spartacist League, from which the
BT is a split. I obviously don´t support any side in this conflict, but if
forced to chose, I would go with Workers Power, which were more tactically flexible
and decidedly less pro-Stalinist. The MRCI backed Solidarnosc in Poland, while
the BT (just like the Spartacists) supported Jaruzelski – surely a bizarre
position for a Trotskyist!
I got two
impressions from reading the BT´s side of the polemic. First, the group tries
to play down the most “reactionary” traits of the Spartacist positions, without
actually jettisoning them. Thus, the Spartacist League, perhaps uniquely on the
left, opposed mass immigration from Third World nations to Western nations,
arguing that such immigration could wipe out the identity of small countries
such as Belgium and Netherlands. Imagine preaching this today! It was a hard
sell on the hard left already back in the days, since both Belgium and
Netherlands – while small compared to the US – had been colonial powers and
were affiliated with NATO (they still are). The BT also oppose open borders,
but mostly because it´s a “utopian” demand under capitalism and because oppressor
nations such as the Han or the French could take over colonized territories
using mass immigration as a tool. But the Spartacist League didn´t care about
the Tibetans or the Kanaks – they were more interested in defending poor little
Belgium. The BT has similar problems with the intractable Spartacist position
concerning “interpenetrated peoples”. In its original version, this was really
a defense of the national rights of peoples usually seen as colonial settlers
by leftists: Jews in Palestine, Protestants on Northern Ireland, and in some
formulations even Whites in South Africa. The BT, while keeping the theory of
interpenetrated peoples, soften it considerably by offering “military support”
for the IRA or the PLO against their respective enemies. However, they still
uphold some other “pro-imperialist” positions of the Spartacists: neutrality
during the “squalid” Falkland-Malvinas War (really a pro-British position since
the BT explicitly defends British possession of the islands) and the (surreal)
opposition to the 1979 Iranian revolution, which both the SL and the BT
identifies solely with Khomeini and his fanaticized Islamists, as if the rest
of the Iranian people weren´t at least tangentially involved.
The other
thing that struck me was the strongly “ideologistic” tendency of the fusion
platform – I use that word for lack of a better one. The BT are a propaganda
group, and they seem to view ideas and abstract ideology as paramount in a way
that sounds almost idealist, although I don´t think this is their intention,
being dogmatic Marxists. I was reminded of Frank Richards´ RCP in this respect.
It´s almost as if the BT wants to say “Before the working class can get up on the
barricades, we [the small group propagandists] have to start winning the battle
of ideas”. Bourgeois ideology is said to be the main bulwark of capitalist
rule, and the most important task of revolutionaries is therefore to fight said
ideology in the workers´ movement and inside the revolutionary party itself.
Since the BT hardly has a union presence, this really means fighting other
leftist groups by “exposing” them ideologically through literary polemics. Bourgeois
ideology in the form of sectoralism is also strong within the Black, women´s
and gay movements. So once again the BT´s most important task is to argue
against Black nationalism, feminism and such – another de facto intra-mural
leftist conflict. The constant emphasis on Stalin´s theory of “Socialism in One
Country” also sounds ideologistic, as does the opposition to voting for
reformist workers´ parties participating in popular fronts, since this supposedly
suppresses the contradiction between their “bourgeois” leadership and the
proletarian base. It doesn´t of course – to a Marxist, that contradiction is a objective
material fact, but BT´s strongly sectarian propaganda apparently cannot
intersect it if a popular front is formed.
The BT´s
defense of the International Committee against the International Secretariat
(the two competing wings of the Trotskyist world movement during the 1950´s and
1960´s) is also premised on a kind of ideologism. The BT is impressed by the
IC´s doctrinaire verbiage, and also by their defense of independent Trotskyist
organizations as against the “entryism sui generis” of the more openly revisionist
IS. Of course, in order to spew purist ideological propaganda, one needs an
independent “vanguard”, hence the BT´s siding with the IC (also, the Spartacist
League came out of the IC tradition). Ironically, on this basis it becomes
impossible to explain why the BT split from the Spartacist group, since the
programs of the two groups are very similar! The BT-ers left the Spartacist
tendency when its leader maximo James Robertson turned it into a kookish cult,
but still with the same revolutionary program. Thus, the BTs left the Sparts because
they (the BTs) were psychologically sane individuals, while the Robertson
faithful were either super-cynical or downright mad. This eminently sensible
line of action, alas, doesn´t square with the ideology-centered approach of the
BT worldview…
The BT has
quote-mined Trotsky and Cannon for proof-texts which sound just as sectarian as
BT´s own politics. I say they are quoting the Old Man and his bulldog out of
context! Still, the quotations *are* interesting. Here is James P Cannon, the
long-time American Trotskyist leader:
“On the basis of a long historical experience, it can be
written down as a law that revolutionary cadres, who revolt against their
social environment and organize parties to lead a revolution, can—if the
revolution is too long delayed—themselves degenerate under the continuing
influences and pressures of this same environment....
"But
the same historical experience also shows that there are exceptions to this law
too. The exceptions are the Marxists who remain Marxists, the revolutionists
who remain faithful to the banner. The basic ideas of Marxism, upon which alone
a revolutionary party can be constructed, are continuous in their application
and have been for a hundred years. The ideas of Marxism, which create
revolutionary parties, are stronger than the parties they create and never fail
to survive their downfall. They never fail to find representatives in the old
organizations to lead the work of reconstruction.
‘‘These are the continuators
of the tradition, the defenders of the orthodox doctrine. The task of the
uncorrupted revolutionists, obliged by circumstances to start the work of
organizational reconstruction, has never been to proclaim a new revelation—there
has been no lack of such Messiahs, and they have all been lost in the
shuffle—but to reinstate the old program and bring it up to date.’’
Hallelujah! If taken at face
value, Cannon is saying that Marxists are exceptions to the historical laws,
that the revolutionary program exists sui generis in a Platonic world of ideas,
and that the orthodox faction can draw it down von oben by constructing a new
exceptional organization. And while this is explicitly said not to be
Messianic, that´s exactly what it is. Cannon is sounding like a Baptist
preacher here. Somehow, I doubt Cannon really believed this.
The BT just might.
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