…And Pigs Fly

A Response to Jorge Altamira

Chris Edwards

Jorge Altamira is most upset by quotations from Trotsky it would seem. And Leon Trotsky is unpopular, apparently, in fashionable Buenos Aires these days. Perhaps a quotation from comandante "Che" Guevara might have been more to his taste? At least the contents of the PO literature table at the Sao Paulo meeting might lead one to suspect this. And yet partisans of Partido Obrero have the brazen nerve to accuse others of "pabloism" (Oviedo) and "centrism" (Altamira). Yes, indeed. And pigs fly.

Altamira's spends most of his document stating the obvious as though we were all born yesterday. Let us quote what he says (quotations from Altamira are OK).

"For a centrist organization, that is to say which oscillates 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 programme." ("Response to Chris Edwards").

Well, we never would have guessed this; we really must make a note of it. The message presented throughout the whole document is that only Altamira "understands" these things. The ITO, which has struggled in practice within the USFI against the centrist politics of its leadership since 1984 knows nothing of it, if you please. Altamira who has ducked this fight, while shouting from the sidelines, presumes to lecture the ITO on the subject. And he accuses those who have struggled of being "USFI tailists" and "centrists".What a nerve.

His ridiculous insinuations that the ITO wishes to avoid challenging the centrist politics of the USFI will not detain us here and will be treated with the contempt that they deserve. They are eloquently refuted by the Left Tendency documents from the last two USFI World Congresses, which are available for all to see (including Altamira) on the ITO web-site, and which have been there for the past year. Altamira has uttered not a word of criticism of these documents. And he is in no position to lecture the ITO about them either since he has evaded this struggle in the USFI. And he intends to continue evading it now in the project to "refound the FI".

But then Altamira knows he would not be taken seriously for one moment by any one in the USFI with his present method. He would be a laughing stock with his preposterous characterisation of the USFI as "counterrevolutionary" throughout its whole history. So he does not even try. The Revolution Tendency in the LCR would not even see him in Paris. And Lutte Ouvriere gave him short shrift.

We are not numerically strong enough or geographically widespread enough by ourselves to "refound" or "reconstruct" (my preferred term) the Fourth International at this time. To make propaganda for it and to lay the groundwork for it, yes. To immediately proclaim it, no. The USFI is the largest organization to emerge from Trotsky's Fourth International with sections in many countries. Reconstructing the FI is unthinkable without an attempt to intervene politically into this organization in order to gather the forces necessary to really "refound" the Fourth International and not just another small international organization to clutter the landscape.

Whether an organization has six member or six hundred, in real terms they are both little sects. There is not a single Trotskyist organization in the world that is not a little sect on the margins of the labour movement. And they always will be unless we overcome the narrow organisational egoism of the tin pot despots that lead most of them. We certainly will not achieve the reconstruction of the FI if we rule out the largest international organization emerging from Trotsky's Fourth International in advance. If we do not even try. Altamira is mule-headedly unyielding on this. Historic antipathies and prejudices die hard. So much the worse for all those in the world who are seeking answers to their political demands in the ex-Eastern bloc and the Third World.

Altamira's method is further evident when he disingenuously asks whether Chris Edwards agrees or disagrees with his criticisms of the LO-LCR agreement. We will answer by quoting from the document he was polemicising against.

"While making many correct criticisms of the political shortcomings of the agreement, Altamira concludes by calling upon LO to break the agreement with the LCR. This is a wrong and sectarian conclusion to a correct analysis of the political problems of the agreement." ("Response to Partido Obrero", emphasis added)

There are none so blind as those who do not want to see.

On the agreements of Genova, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, the British ITO signed nothing (and, incidently, the documents of PO and its co-thinkers are wrong to assume that it did by appending its name to the published Sao Paulo agreement). Our position is a minority one within the ITO which we have never hidden. We continue to argue our position while accepting that we are a minority. We made our differences known in Genova and since then in writing to En Defensa del Marxismo.

And yes, the ITO does have disputes within its delegations. Remarkable, is it not, comrade Altamira? No doubt the very idea is anathema in the PO delegation where Altamira's arbitrary views seem to be accepted as gospel and no one speaks out of turn.

The proto-ITO came into being in opposition to a would-be guru who was overly fond of the sound of his own voice in meetings, who liked to have his own way all the time, and who made sure the political trains ran on time in "his" organization. Those who dared to express a dissenting opinion could expect browbeating, mockery, ridicule, attempts at humiliation aimed at demoralising individuals and silencing them etc., and if this failed (as it did with us) administrative action. Most of the time the latter was not necessary. The easy, self-assured, smug, overconfidence of the would-be guru was enough to "slap down" any individual who took the rhetoric about internal democracy too seriously. This, alas, is the standard practice in too many Trotskyist organizations today, is it not comrade Altamira?

Comrade Altamira's method in our international meetings needs to be exposed. He likes to play little boys' games. The name of the game is how to force one's views down someone else's throat under pressure, when they do not really agree with them. How to impose one's politics on someone else through yelling and shouting (does he think we are all deaf?), bluster, sophistry, mockery, and prolonging negotiations endlessly in the hope that his target will be driven to concede through exhaustion. It is a kind of male virility contest. He then spends the next meeting accusing others of departing from his own perversely narrow interpretation of the agreement, which was extracted with these methods. Every discussion is a discussion under duress from this kind of hectoring methodology.

To those of us who have attempted over the years to make our organizations habitable to the specially oppressed members of the working class, who have sought to curb the excessive "overconfidence" i.e. arrogance, of the white, male, straight, middle-class labour aristocracy and the petit bourgeois intelligentsia, Altamira's conduct reminds us all that we have not even begun to scratch the surface of this problem.

As to Altamira's musings on centrism, likewise, I am unable to make head or tail of what he says. He tries to blur the distinction between the very different characterisations of "centrist" and "counterrevolutionary." The USFI is, apparently, "counterrevolutionary" as a whole because it abandoned the revolutionary programme, the French LCR is "right centrist", while the Brazilian USFI section is counterrevolutionary, if you please. And presumably the Calcutta branch of the USFI section is revolutionary? Or not? Take your pick comrades. Altamira is all things to all men.

"Having abandoned Marxism, the USFI is counterrevolutionary", he says. No, it does not necessarily follow. It is perfectly possible to abandon Marxism and be centrist. There is not a necessary relation between abandoning the programme and the general characterisation of counterrevolutionary, which implies consistent betrayal, consistent support for reformist methods and consistent opposition to all revolutionary methods, entering a bourgeois government, voting for imperialist war credits, physically repressing the working class, or politically endorsing similar practices by others. The USFI, or sections of it, may end up like this, but it is clear that this description does not fit the USFI in general as we know it today. It is ludicrous to insinuate that it does.

But this discussion is now sterile. It matters little whether Altamira thinks the USFI is centrist, counterrevolutionary or whatever. He has made it crystal clear that he will not change the way he relates to the USFI. And without an attempt to involve the USFI, in other words being open to the possibility of at least partial regeneration, regroupment with its best elements etc, the current project will be unlikely to succeed in its aim. It will be seen as a narrow, factional vehicle for the PO and the ITO etc., which is interested only in cutting off its nose to spite its face by indulging and parading its sectarian prejudices in public.

28 February 1999