Response to Chris Edwards: The character of the agreement between LO and the LCR of France

By Jorge Altamira

The article of Chris Edwards is, why not?, admirable. Writing to denounce the position of Partido Obrero in relation to the electoral union between Lutte Ouvriere and the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) of France, the author does not say a word on the issue but resorts to the only sport that he believes to know and practice for the devil: that is to say, pick up all the possible quotations of Trotsky on centrism in order to justify his obstinate tailing of the of the Unified Secretariat.

As many will have read in Prensa Obrera (17 and 24/12/98), or will do in the current edition of this magazine, the two mentioned organizations concluded an agreement in order to form a common list with a view to the European elections of June next, that constitutes a true political attack against the historical interests of the working class. In the analysis of the programme of the agreement, we have called attention to several aspects of the programme of that agreement, like the proposal for controlling speculative capital with a special tax, already expounded by wide sectors of the world imperialist bourgeoisie; the absence of the denunciation of the Jospin government as pro-imperialist and even the absence of a slogan of power that calls to the workers' organizations to break the governmental cohabitation with the Gaulist Chirac; denunciation, not of the imperialist attempts that implicate the European Union, but of the Maastricht and of Amsterdam treaties, that establish budgetary, monetary and juridical rules in order to adhere to the EU; the denunciation, not of capitalism but of "liberal logic; etc. The point that condenses the character of the programme and the strategy of the signatories, is the proposal for building a democratic Europe "where the people control the decisions", which is equivalent to proposing the substitution of the institutions foreseen in the mentioned treaties, that are characterized by the absence of responsibility before the electorate, by which they govern in the current national imperialist states of Europe.

For comrade Chris Edwards all this would not be more than the political "shortcomings of the agreement". This position is inadmissible; the comrade has taken to the extreme his blind tailing of the Unified Secretariat, to which is affiliated the LCR (although the opposite is more correct).

But the "democratic Europe" is something more than a demand in the framework of imperialism; it is also functional to the capitalist restoration in eastern Europe and the former Soviet states inside the programme of the European Union. The extension of formal democracy towards the east means the imposition of the state of law and the rights that correspond to this state; in first place the right of property, with the consequent freedom of trade and capital; that is to say, of "neo-liberal logic". It is the crowning of a political process that is already in progress for some time and that began, not with the Amsterdam or Maastricht Treaties, but with that of Helsinki in 1975, under the indisputable reign, at least in appearance, of the Stalinist bureaucracy and its satellites.

For Chris Edwards this would not be very important, if in general he would agree with the criticisms, something that is not explicit; because, he says, "The alliance has generated a high degree of enthusiasm, energy and hope in the French far left". So reasons our wise strategist. What will he say later, we wonder, when the consequences of this democratist political adaptation to imperialism is made more and more evident and causes the demoralisation of the "French far left?"

Since imperialism was imposing its project of European unification, toward the middle of the 1960s, the Socialist United States of Europe was for the USFI a limited demand, as it was also for the bourgeoisie, in Western Europe. It is a matter of a deep distortion of the founding position of the Fourth International, which by its concrete historic character included all the countries that had played a leading role in modern European history, that is say, capitalist, which is to say, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The position of the Fourth International was a materialization of the position of permanent revolution referred to Europe and it was an exploitation of the European capitalist impasse, expressed in two wars and in their setback and international division, and of a frontal attack at the same time against "socialism in one country", which was the politics of Stalinism. Disguised by the term, "socialism" the slogan of the Socialist Union of Europe, referred to the environment of unity then "possible", that is to say, permitted, that of Western Europe, it was no more than an adaptation to the imperialist union of the European bourgeoisie in the framework of the division of Europe determined by the "cold war". Now that this the "cold war" no longer exists and that the juridical-military division has been largely extinguished, the proposal of European union includes, for the bourgeoisie, all the border countries of Russia. Coincidently with the change of the historic situation, that is say the collapse of the USSR and the capitalist annexation of Germany, and with the consequent change of scope of the unionist proposals on the part of the European and world bourgeoisie, the USFI no longer expounds any more a unity restricted to the West, but instead of the United Socialists States, it demands, together with Lutte Ouvriere, the Democratic Union of Europe. This second adaptation to imperialism (in fact it is a sequal to the first without solution of continuity), means an adaptation to the plans of capitalist restoration in progress. The USFI has continued the twists and turns of the European bourgeoisie like a shadow of the body, always reflecting the state of ideas (état d¹esprit) of the academic petite bourgeoisie of the Sorbonne, Laussane and of the British "new left". Comrade Chris acts in the same way, but in relation to the USFI.

But it is not only that the comrade has remained [obnubilado?] by the unity of the Trotskyists to the point of Olympically ignoring the political bases of the agreement. As he himself says, the French "far left" has no room for joy before the promise of an electoral result that ties with, or surpasses, that of the Communist Party, to the extent that the programme has not been given a single line of consideration. But did Marx say by chance that "a step forward for the real movement is better than a dozen programmes?" For what reason then detain ourselves with the programme of the LO-LCR? Neither the "far left" in question, nor the same Chris, make allusion to it, nor say that they propose to overcome it. They are concerned, yes, but for another thing; what perturbs them is that it is a matter of a mere incidental agreement, that it is not strategic; an organization, Voix gives Travailleurs, wants it to lead to the unity of all the far left with a perspective of a future "broad workers party". They do not propose, then, to overcome this programme; they want to set it in marble; they want to untie a dynamic starting from it of complete liquidation of the Fourth International. That the Partido Obrero denounces this, comrade Chris finds naturally a clear manifestation of "organisational sectarianism". It does not matter, clearly, that the denunciation begins from the militant of a group which from several years ago is not able to overcome the number of half dozen of members.

We said in Prensa Obrera (17/12/98) that "Lutte Ouvriere has every right to establish an electoral agreement with the League, but not to prostitute the revolutionary programme." We maintain also this right with regard to the Communist Party or to the Socialist Party, that is to say whenever it is useful to have a united front of the masses against capital. It for this reason that it is necessary to establish a reduced series of demands; when in place of this concessions of principles are made, the electoral agreement becomes the pretext for a political liquidation. Is this so difficult to understand comrade Chris? Of course Chris would be able to [retrucarnos?]: but do you not say perhaps that "Lutte Ouvriere should reject this anti-socialist agreement?" (Prensa Obrera, 17/ 12/ 98). So it is. But this means that it is necessary to say yes to the possibility of an electoral agreement and no to the programme. What maybe Chris didn't take into consideration, or maybe took it thoroughly, is that if it is not with this programme the League could for example not be in agreement with continuing with the electoral front. In this case, Chris would consider that continuing at length is the lesser evil; we think that that would be a crime and that the lesser evil is to break. And we say that to break is a lesser evil and not a colossal success, because we could not assume no responsibility by having permitted things to arrive to this point, that is to say, by not having exercised a campaign in favour of electoral unity with correct political methods. For all this Marx completes his position mentioned before adding that there is not anything, however, that could justify the sacrifice of the revolutionary programme.

This text of Chris Edwards lays bare what he understands by the centrism of the USFI, because he simply ignores the adaptation of this to European imperialism. In fact, the only centrist that remains in place in all this history is the same Chris, who oscillates between and USFI and our positions, with marked tendency towards the USFI this without any kind of jealousy. In this point the comrade is sending a political manoeuvre that it would be inadmissible to ignore, because he proposes that he criticizes that the USFI could not be regenerated or reformed for a revolutionary cause, it is not the PO, but rather was voted in the international meeting of Génova of March of 1997, on the basis of a composition made by the representatives of the fraction to which the same Chris belongs, the ITO. That is to say that the comrade wants to liquidate the agreements reached in the meeting of Génova and ratified in San Paulo in 1997 and in Buenos Aires in May of 1998. The declaration that is approved unanimously caused, it is true, a very strong crisis in the delegation of the ITO, which, from can be seen, comrade Chris would want to re-open. In that declaration there is not declared any kind of "scepticism" on the irrecuperability of the USFI, but rather it is affirmed without leaving any place for doubts. The comrade should make clear if he continues subscribing or not to the declarations that form the basis of the fight for the immediate refoundation of the Fourth International.

But the whole history that Chris weaves on centrism has neither foot nor head, for that reason he appeals like an addict to long quotations from Trotsky that he himself has not understood. Whatever is the final destination of a centrist organization (or including counterrevolutionary; we are referring always to the workers or proletarian camp), regeneration is not one of them, this because we cannot overcome their limitations on the basis of their own political programme. For a centrist organization, that is to say which oscillate between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary tendencies inside the working class, to overcome that condition, it is necessary that it break relations with its programme and with its strategy and adopt the revolutionary or counterrevolutionary. In that case it will be destroyed as a centrist organization. If under the pressure of historical determining events even one counterrevolutionary organization could transform itself into a centrist one, what to say of the possibility of a centrist becoming revolutionary, and that therefore even the first finishing up being revolutionary. Even if it is admitted that the USFI has broken relations with Marxism and with the proletarian revolution, that it becomes counterrevolutionary, one cannot deny the possibility that certain historical factors might convert it at some time into revolutionary. But that would only be possible by means of the destruction of its centrist or counterrevolutionary positions. Denying these possibilities on principle means denying (to limit a priori) the very possibility of change; denying the possibility that human subjectivity could be altered by the catastrophes they are obliged to live; or considering that the route of history has traced a single road. But neither is the possible always probable, nor the probable always sure; what, certainly, is very sure is that that change means the destruction of the antirevolutionary positions by the combined effect of historical factors and of the intervention of the revolutionary vanguard. Here there is not any kind of regeneration; even the workers that have belonged to those organizations would not consider that they have been regenerated in anything, because, like such workers, they always considered themselves faithful to their class, with independence of the illusions or the veils that limited their political activity until that moment. Having abandoned Marxism completely, the USFI is counterrevolutionary; its international politics is democratist, that is to say pro-imperialist, as is clearly proved by their political adhesion to the Sao Paulo Forum; it is a factor of dislocation of the elements of the vanguard that they aim to emerge to world politics; their presence is a dead peso for the international workers' vanguard; one could not reconstruct the Fourth International if it is not on the cadaver of the USFI. In French politics, however, it occupies a right centrist position between the PC and the PS on one side and the left centrists and revolutionaries on the other, and is going decisively to be dissolved in the counterrevolutionary bloc (it at least is their current tendency); it is for this reason that an electoral front with the LCR could still be attractive. But to believe that the LCR "will regenerate" on the basis of the "dynamic or impulse ('momentum' in the original) of the process", as the comrade says, involves at the same time a programmatic basis of adaptation to imperialism, this is a complete tailist politics, which has more possibilities of leading, not to the "regeneration" of the LCR, but to the degeneration of Chris Edwards.

In Brazilian politics, the fraction of the USFI is not centrist, because the bourgeoisie militates in a united front with the apparatus that controls the PT and, now, with the very apparatus of the state, and it has been made the political police voting for the expulsion of the far left of the party or turning a blind eye to the separation of other tendencies like the current PSTU. But the characterization of centrist, as a concrete political category, there is not reason to limit it to the Trotskyists that are put forward as candidates for "regeneration", because it could also apply to Communist Refoundation of Italy, which oscillates between the former Stalinists of the PDS and the Trotskyists of that peninsula; a characteristic that has been accentuated after the separation of the right wing of Cossuta. But inside RC we also have three blocks: one pro-popular front, another centrist, another revolutionary. The Fourth International will win 10, to 30 or 60% of RC for the world socialist; revolution; which won't happen as a consequence of a natural evolution of the RC starting from its present political basis.

From this description arises the following: The USFI is characterized for us as counterrevolutionary in relation to the historical programme of the proletariat, that is to say, because it has turned its back on it. In national politics it could occupy several places, which does not depend so much on its positions as on the political framework of the country in question. It is unquestionable that for Lenin, after 1914, Kautsky was a counterrevolutionary, nevertheless, starting from 1916, he belonged to the centrist fraction of German social democracy.

The text of comrade Chris makes countless historical errors when he refers to the crises in the Trotskyist movement in the years 52-53, 63 or 71, but which he uses with all intention in order to reinforce a position of total adhesion to the Pablo-Mandel principal political current that preceded the current of the USFI. It ignores the fact that Partido Obrero did not emerge from the Lambertist current but rather it arose with complete independence of this or, for that matter, of any another current, nor that neither was it founded when it acted in the Committee of Organization for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International. This organization was the first that expounded the necessity of proceeding to that reconstruction.

What it is necessary to say in order to finish is that the strugglers of the whole world will evolve appropriately in the framework of the exceptional current historical moment, but it is on the basis of the refoundation of the Fourth International, and that this refoundation is incompatible with the USFI, and not only this that the USFI is its main obstacle. The programme of the LO-LCR agreement is a closing demonstration of the correctness of this proposal; the revolutionary movement in France has taken a step backwards. That step backwards is going to become more evident if the so-called far left in France is able to advance in electoral or organisational terms on the Communist Party, practical advance is the strongest argument that its partisans wield. Because it is precisely progress that is made toward a revolutionary situation that puts most in evidence the historical drama of the lack of revolutionary programme and of the sacrifice that has been made of the preceding revolutionary conquests.