The United Irishmen uprising reflected the influence of the French Revolution on Irish politics. This was reflected also in the fact that the Irish tricolour flag was modelled on the French tricolour. The French Revolution cleared the way for the development of capitalism in France which was a historically progressive development, overturning, as it did, the feudal ancien regime. The victorious bourgeois revolution in France gave an impulse to the struggle against British colonialism in Ireland. Wolfe Tone and his comrades wanted to make Ireland a republic on French principles and to break the connection with monarchist England. There was strong support for this movement not only in the south centred on Wexford, but also among the Protestant Presbyterians. A French fleet with Tone aboard arrived at Bantry Bay, but bad weather prevented it landing. The uprising was crushed and resulted in the Act of Union of 1880 in which Ireland lost its Dublin parliament and came under direct rule from Westminster.

Fifty years later, the Communist Manifesto was written in the year 1848, which witnessed revolutionary developments in France and Prussia. The greater weight of the urban proletariat in the years since the French Revolution of 1789 meant that the Prussian bourgeoisie of 1848 was no longer able to lead a full scale revolution against the old regime, since it saw, for the first time, the working class developing its own independent class movement in the course of the unrest generated by its conflict with the monarchy. At the critical moment it was obliged to form an alliance with this same monarchy to prevent the working class from overthrowing all the propertied classes including the bourgeoisie.

The Communist Manifesto, for the first time in history, posed the necessity of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to take power in its own hands and to establish itself as a new ruling class. The temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the majority of workers over the minority of propertied classes, was necessary to effect the transition from the revolution to a classless society in which the coercive workers’ state would become unnecessary. Note that Marx’s notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat was not envisaged as taking the form of the dictatorship imposed by the Stalinist regime. Marx’s conception was that of workers’ democracy, exercised through workers councils, forcibly preventing the propertied classes from reimposing the rule of the wealthy over the poor, on a temporary basis (e.g. the Paris Commune, and the October Revolution). Stalinism, on the other hand, was a degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat, an unelected workers bureaucracy forcibly repressing both the old regime and the vanguard of the working class. Having said that, it is interesting to note, however, that Trotsky still considered the Stalinist regime as a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat:

"...we may say with complete justification that the dictatorship of the proletariat found its distorted but indubitable expression in the dictatorship of the [Stalinist] bureaucracy." ("The Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism", in Trotsky, Writings 1934-35, Pathfinder, p173).

Marx’s conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat was rescued from its detractors by Lenin in his famous book State and Revolution, written on the eve of the October Revolution. This outlined the real aim and intention of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. Those who say that Leninism led to Stalinism are unable to explain why, if this was the case, Lenin should have written such a work on the eve of the Russian Revolution. The reality of the history of the Russian state in the 1920s was one of suppression of a relatively small number of reactionary elements who wanted to restore capitalism (if not feudalism) during 1917-24 to one of suppression of a relatively large numbers of the vanguard of the working class from the late twenties onwards.

Turning to more recent happenings, at a time when quite a few Trotskyist organisations in Britain are either collapsing or moving rightwards, abandoning democratic centralism as they move away from Trotskyism, it is good to know that there is an attempt under way to regroup Trotskyism as part of a process of reconstructing the Fourth International.

The extent and suddeness of the collapse is quite extraordinary. The Workers Revolutionary Party/Workers Press has simply liquidated. The ex-Healyite, Workers Internationalist League has collapsed organisationally and abandoned key elements of Trotskyism: its members have expressed cynicism towards the Trotskyist tradition embracing instead the petit-bourgeois politics of academic post-Marxism and "red-greenism". Various splinters from the British section of the USFI, the International Socialist Group, such as the Phil Hearse grouping around Socialist Democracy, and the Peter Purton grouping, have effectively abandoned Trotskyism in favour of "green-leftism", repudiating also the notion of democratic centralism. The now dissolved ex-USFI majority Fourth International Supporters Caucas (FISC) in the SLP has liquidated, serving as left-apologists for Scargillism on the SLP NEC. Workers’ Power has repudiated the historic cornerstone of Trotskyism, the defence of the workers’ states (even before the collapse of Stalinism), as it drifts back towards state capitalism. This amounts to the collapse of a significant part of British Trotskyism. By comparison, the ex-Stalinist CPGB/Leninist/Weekly Worker group, which emerged from the Communist Party in the early 1990s (and which rejects Trotskyism) seems more Trotskyist than the "Trotskyists". At the recent SLP congress they were, ironically, denounced by the ex-Trotskyist (former WRP) Bull group as "trots"! Such is the state of the British left!

As readers of earlier issues of In Defence of Marxism will know, the Liason Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI) opposed the rightward lurch of Workers Power and its international co-thinkers and were expelled for their troubles in the mid-1990s. Since then they have consistently exposed the degeneration of Workers Power under the new Harvey leadership. While we have some important differences with the LCMRCI, we welcome any stance in defence of Trotskyism in a period when many tendencies, such as Workers Power, are in headlong flight away from it. We see the need for a bloc of Trotskyist organisations which are resisting this gallop to the right. The ITO and the LCMRCI in Britain recently planned to publish a joint SLP opposition bulletin , but this project was not realised owing to lack of resources. However, rather than see it go unread, we are including much of the material intended for this bulletin in this issue of In Defence of Marxism. As a result, this issue of IDM almost has the character of a joint ITO-LCMRCI discussion bulletin. If the result of this is to give the impression of a united front of the ITO and the LCMRCI in defence of Trotskyism in Britain against those who are abandoning it, while at the same time promoting a much-needed discussion of current events, nationally and internationally, then this would be no bad thing. While being in agreement about the need to defend Trotskyism, the British ITO and LCMRCI have political differences on a number of questions. The British ITO does not necessarily agree with all the positions argued by the LCMRCI in the articles printed here. As with the PO/Argentina and its international co-thinkers, we will respond to their positions in due course, in a subsequent issue. We see this as a dialectical process of striving for political clarity in the context of a struggle for Trotskyist unity. We do not accept that it is necessary to wait for 100% agreement before any form of unity can be contemplated, in formalistic fashion.

The International Trotskyist Opposition, which exists in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, and the USA, has been having periodic international discussions over the past two years with other Trotskyist organisations with the aim of reconstructing the Fourth International in mind. The organisations include Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party) of Argentina, the Partido Causa Operaria of Brazil and their co-thinkers in Bolivia and Uruguay. These organisations were expelled from the Lambertist organisation along with the POR of Bolivia (led by Guillermo Lora) in 1979. The discussions have also included the Workers Revolutionary Party of Greece. While these organisations do not consider that they have enough agreement to form a common international tendency, they are agreed about the urgency of the need to reconstruct the Fourth International.

The first international meeting took place at Detroit, USA in the Summer of 1996. At a follow-up meeting in Genoa, Italy in the Spring of 1997, it was agreed that there would be a common approach to other international Trotskyist organisations to put the case for broadening the base of the movement to reconstruct the Fourth International. Meetings with Lutte Ouvriere/ICU in Paris and the Socialist Party/Committee for a Workers International took place immediately after the Genoa meeting with this end in mind. While there was no immediate agreement reached about the way forward, the meetings were useful and a dialogue was initiated which is on-going. Since then, there has been an exchange of correspondence between LO and PO, and the ITO was invited to attend the CWI IEC in January 1998. At a further international meeting in São Paulo, Brazil in November 1997, further discussions took place between the ITO, PO and its co-thinkers, and the WRP of Greece. It was agreed to meet with the leadership of the International Workers League (LIT), whose largest section is in Brazil, and a meeting did in fact take place which established that there was a parallel attempt by the LIT to reconstruct the Fourth International. They were planning to call an international conference to take a step forward in this process and the other parties present expressed a willingness to attend such an event. We publish overleaf the declarations of the Genoa and São Paulo meetings. The Genoa declaration and the accompanying resolution on the Albanian crisis, which was taking place as we met, were not signed by the British Supporters of the ITO. This was because we did not accept the declaration’s clauses on the irreformability of the USFI. We think it is premature to make this assessment. On Albania, at the time of the meeting, we had not had a chance to study the situation and wanted time to arrive at a position.