Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Written: 1996.
First Published: May 1996.
Source: Published by the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency.
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Last year we anticipated in this journal the likelihood, given the failure of much of ‘world Trotskyism’ to reorient itself after the collapse of Stalinism, that the coming period would see further fragmentation on the left, with attempts by the larger currents to offset this by increasingly desperate attempts at opportunist regroupment.
Nothing that has happened since then leads us to believe this prognosis to be false. On the contrary. There have been more splits in the sections of the International Socialism tendency led by the SWP (Britain). The United Secretariat, while it staved off the threat of meltdown which many predicted would be the outcome of its last world congress, seems doomed. Hence the USec’s ongoing flirtation with Militant Labour and its Committee for a Workers’ International. In Argentina, the MAS – which in the late 1980s could reasonably claim to be the largest Trotskyist party in the world – is a fraction of its former size, having suffered a series of splits. The Liga Internacional de Trabajadores, to which the MAS is affiliated, has itself fractured along several lines, and has attempted to overcome its crisis via discussions with the WRP / Workers International and Militant. The WRP, for its part, appears to have softened its previously hostile attitude towards Militant.
This far from exhaustive list has something in common. None of these possible and probable realignments within what is loosely termed Trotskyism is based on an honest accounting of what led up to this crisis, but are in fact an opportunist response to a period fraught with difficulties. Difficulties, moreover, which most of the larger currents have been consistently denying existed over the past seven years! Organisations which previously would not pass the time of day together are now discovering virtues in each other, as they survey the wreckage of one set of perspectives after another. At all costs, the apparatus and the headquarters must be preserved!
It is necessary to distinguish between the sincere desire of rank and file members of centrist organisations to rise above petty sectarian squabbling on the one hand, and the opportunist manoeuvres of discredited and tired centrist leaderships on the other. The latter are trying to sweep their accumulated problems under the carpet. Theory and programme take a back seat, while the latest tactical lurch is optimistically justified by reference to the latest set of pre-selected phenomena. Particularly amusing is the spectacle of such leaders, accustomed for many years to shouting ‘sectarian’ at anyone who dared to defend revolutionary Marxism, now deserting the class to engage in get-rich-quick, ‘build your own workers’ movement’ schemes.
Our method in the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency has been very different. While defending everything which remains progressive in the Trotskyist tradition, we have not been content to remain ‘orthodox’ dogmatists. The LTT, which includes former members of a number of tendencies, including the International Committee, the USec, the ICL (Spartacists), the RWP (Sri Lanka) and the Moreno-Lambert Parity Committee, has had to learn from hard experience the bankruptcy of much of the ‘Trotskyist movement’. It has been necessary to subject much of its theory, perspectives and programme, not to mention its history since Trotsky’s death, to searching re-examination. At the same time, we have resisted all those who have urged an end to party building in favour of passive theorising. In a generally unfavourable situation in the class struggle – although the explosive strike movement in France at the end of 1995 may mark the beginning of a significant turn – it is an elementary duty of revolutionaries to remain with their class.
This fourth issue of In defence of Marxism contains three related documents approved by the LTT’s first international congress in 1995. They mark the political consolidation of the tendency on a number of central tactical and programmatic questions which vitally affect the day-to-day struggles of workers and the oppressed on an international scale. As always, we welcome constructive and comradely criticism from other revolutionaries. Only through such patient struggle, can the goal of regrouping genuinely revolutionary forces be advanced against those who prefer rotten centrist blocs.
In defence of Marxism Index (1992-1996)
Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive