THE SPLIT IN THE INTERNATIONAL TROTSKYIST COMMITTEE

Introduction Adopted by the International Executive Committee of the Faction for the Trotskyist International 25 January 1992

On 27 August 1991 the International Trotskyist Committee (ITC) split. After six months of escalating confrontation, the International New Course Faction (INCF) found itself at an impasse in its fight against the degeneration of the ITC into a sectarian cult! . Unable to obtain conditions democratic enough to continue the struggle in a unified organization, the INCF left the ITC.

The INCF took with it nearly half the ITC membership, including all the Italian and Danish comrades -- the comrades who initiated the struggle to build a Left Tendency in the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) -- one-third of the Revolutionary Workers League of the US (RWL/US), and one-third of the Revolutionary Internationalist League of Britain (RIL/Britain).

The comrades who left the ITC are now supporters of the Faction for the Trotskyist International (FTI), a faction of the Fourth International and the USFI, not the ITC. We are continuing the ITC's original fight for the political regeneration and organizational reconstruction of the Fourth International, now effectively abandoned by the rump ITC. The ITC was founded in 1984 as a democratic-centralist international current. Its founding documents included "The Programmatic Principles of the International Trotskyist Committee" and "The Crisis of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Consistent Trotskyists."

These documents and the "Statutes of the International Trotskyist Committee" were amended versions of documents written by the ITC's Italian comrades, now with the FTI. The FTI has reclaimed these documents and updated them to reflect the current state of the world Trotskyist movement, including the demise of the ITC as an international organization of consistent Trotskyists.

The ITC was the successor organization to the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee (TILC), which had been formed in 1979 to establish the programmatic, methodological and organizational bases for a democratic-centralist international Trotskyist faction. This project, abandoned in 1983 by the TILC's leading section, the Workers Socialist League of Britain (WSL/Britain), was completed the following year by the remaining TILC supporters in Italy, the US, Britain and Denmark.

The ITC's founding documents described it as a tool for the struggle to politically regenerate and organizationally reconstruct the Fourth International. For seven years the ITC served reasonably well as a tool, making few gains but defending a correct method.

The ITC achieved its most important successes during its last year: the first steps toward building a Left Tendency in the USFI at the February 1991 USFI World Congress; the activity of the ITC sections during the Persian Gulf war; the intervention of the ITC's Italian comrades in the Fourth International Association (AQI, the Italian section of the USFI) and the Movement for a Communist Refounding (MRC); and new recruitment in the US, Britain and Italy.

These successes did not result from an improvement in the objective situation, which remained quite unfavorable: the prolonged ebb in the workers' struggle worldwide, the retreat of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and the subsequent crisis, the collapse of! the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, the capitalist reunification of Germany, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the imperialist victory in the Gulf war, and so on. But elements of the proletarian vanguard reacted against the temporary restabilization of capitalism by reaffirming socialism, and some began looking to Trotskyism for answers to their questions.

The ITC's generally principled, nonsectarian policy positioned it to take advantage of opportunities in the political vanguard. But the contradiction between the ITC's gains, modest though they were, and the working-class retreat provoked a crisis in the ITC. A section of the ITC leadership panicked and began looking for shortcuts to avoid the difficult and complex task of rebuilding the Fourth International as the world party of socialist revolution. The new trend emerged during the Gulf war and quickly revealed itself to be well along in a process of multifaceted political degeneration.

The interconnected elements of this degeneration, summarized in the accompanying INCF declaration, included a top-down, cultist conception of democratic-centralism; repression of internal dissent; voluntarism and idealism in place of Marxist analysis; a sectarian and opportunist tendency to reduce the ITC's programmatic intervention to a single, provocative slogan; the programmatic revisionism that follows from such reductionism; a sectarian and opportunist abandonment of the united-front policy; and a linear and ultimately national-Trotskyist model of party-building.

The political discussion and factional struggle in the ITC lasted six months. It followed the course of most intense factional struggles, beginning with an important partial question but quickly expanding to include each side's general political method and eventually its program and class orientation.

The INCF's struggle began as a dispute over workers' democracy in the RWL, but the fight quickly became international and expanded to include all the interconnected elements listed above. Trotsky and the Left Opposition continued their struggle for the political regeneration of the Communist International for ten years, despite not only violations of their internal democratic rights but also expulsions, violence, jailings, exile and even murder. The INCF, however, left the ITC after a six-month discussion, because it could not obtain conditions democratic enough to let it struggle against the ITC's degeneration on an equal basis with the narrow leadership majority. Why the difference? The difference is the difference between the ITC in 1991, a small and relatively isolated propaganda group, a faction of the Fourth International, and the Communist International in 1923, the mass international party of the proletarian vanguard. FTI comrades have used an analogy to clarify the difference. If a worker's car breaks down, he or she usually tries to repair it, at least until it becomes clear that repairing it is impossible or too costly. But if a wrench breaks, the worker usually discards it and gets another.

The ITC, unfortunately, was a wrench, not a car. The loss of the ITC is extremely unfortunate. Of all the international Trotskyist currents, the ITC was the most politically consistent. Its independent organizations in the US and Britain and its supporters in the USFI in Italy and Denmark fought for Trotskyism over a period of seven years. Now half those who fought are lost, at least temporarily. The FTI remains firmly committed to the ITC's original program and perspectives, summarized in the ITC's and now the FTI's founding documents.

The First International Conference of the FTI in January 1992 decided to shift the center of gravity of the FTI's work to the USFI, making the FTI as much as possible a faction within the USFI. This orientation recognizes not only the FTI's limited resources and need to prioritize its work but also the USFI's centrality in the world Trotskyist movement. The USFI is the largest and most important international Trotskyist organization. It is the formal continuator of the Fourth International and in the political vanguard usually is regarded as the Fourth International. It has supporters in many countries and in that sense is an international organization, despite its federalist character, whereas most of the other Trotskyist tendencies are essentially regional or national. As a result, the USFI is able to attract not only individual Trotskyists but also Trotskyist groups, even relatively large ones.

The USFI is present in the countries where the FTI has supporters and generally has enough internal democratic space so that the FTI can struggle for its views there. The period ahead will be difficult, but the FTI approaches it with cautious optimism. Despite the temporary capitalist restabilization, the crisis of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the imperialist victory in the Gulf war, the international working class has not been decisively defeated. The world capitalist economic crisis will deepen, the social contradictions will intensify, and the workers and the oppressed will struggle. The key problem will be the lack of a consistently revolutionary leadership. The task of Trotskyists is to solve this problem.

Declaration of the International New Course Faction: Faction in Defense of the ITC Marco F., Franco G., Jette K. and Peter S., ITC International Executive Committee 24 August 1991

1. The International Trotskyist Committee (ITC) is in crisis. The "Tendency for a Proletarian Party" (TPP) faction led by International Secretary Leland S. is diverting the ITC from its fight for the political regeneration and organizational reconstruction of the Fourth International. The International New Course Faction: Faction in Defense of the ITC (INCF) has been formed to continue the struggle of the New Course Faction (NCF) in the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) to put the ITC on a new political course -- our original course out! lined in the founding documents of the ITC, "The Programmatic Principles of the International Trotskyist Committee" and "The Crisis of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Consistent Trotskyists."

2. The crisis that erupted in the RWL after Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf war and quickly spread to the rest of the ITC is both an expression within the ITC of the general intensification of the crisis of the Fourth International over the last few years and a development of the particular contradictions of the ITC. The key external events precipitating the crisis in the ITC were the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the imperialist victory in the Gulf war, which confirmed the unfavorable balance of class forces internationally but also provoked anger and thought in the political vanguard. Ironically, the key internal developments precipitating the crisis were consequences of our success in taking advantage of these events to raise our political profile and to recruit.

3. The INCF demands the removal of International Secretary Leland S. and the reorganization of the International Secretariat. This is essential because Leland has failed to perform his duties as International Secretary and has paralyzed the functioning of the International Secretariat. The problems are political as well as technical, and under the ITC's current circumstances can be solved only through Leland's removal. The Secretariat has produced no International Trotskyist Review with new material in six years and only one with old material. It produces an International Information Bulletin only once every few years, just before a major ITC meeting. It does not correspond or exchange documents with other groups and rarely even posts a letter to another group. It does not put out international mailings of Fighting Worker and other materials from the sections. And international telephone contact is mainly between Detroit and London.

4. The political crisis in the ITC began as an organizational crisis in the RWL, a crisis over the character of the RWL's democratic-centralism. This crisis had profound political implications in itself and, as is often the case with crises that begin over organizational questions, quickly developed into a general political crisis. Increasingly frustrated by the slowness of the period and bitter about the failure of the RWL and the ITC to grow over the 1980s, Leland S. -- National Chair of the RWL as well as International Secretary of the ITC -- began a demagogic campaign against the RWL Detroit "senior comrades," the RWL Ann Arbor and Bay Area locals, and the leaders of the other ITC sections. Leland developed his demagoguery into an organizational method, a top-down, cultist conception of democratic-centralism in which the "great leader" -- Leland -- communicated his ideas to the other RWL and ITC leaders, the leaders communicated his ideas to the ranks, and the ranks presumably communicated his ideas to the working class. He persuaded himself that his domination of the RWL and the ITC was essential to their success and the success of the world revolution. The top-down, cultist view of democratic-centralism promulgated by Leland and his supporters in the RWL Political Committee could never be the basis for more than a small, sectarian circle. By the time the envisaged one-way transmission from the "great leader" to the lesser leaders to the ranks to the politically advanced workers to the mass of workers reached the organization's borders, no one would be listening. Moreover, without the corrective of a reverse transmission, the circle would soon be following the "great leader" off into political la-la land. This was the course of degeneration of the Spartacist League (SL).

5. Once Leland and his supporters in the RWL Political Committee made their views public in the RWL, a section of the leadership, including National Secretary Peter S. and Central Committee members Judy L. and Ron L., went into opposition. They feared that the RWL was in the early stages of a process of SL-type degeneration. But hoping this was not the case, they attempted to work out a compromise. The Political Committee majority refused to compromise, however, and soon resorted to administrative measures to repress the dissent. The RWL leadership majority clearly intends to drive the opposition out of the RWL and is resorting to bureaucratic means to do so. This would have a chilling effect on those who remain in the RWL, as they saw what happens to those who dissent. The INCF demands that the repression in the RWL stop.

6. As the RWL leadership majority hardened its cultist conception of democratic-centralism and tightened its control over the organization, it began losing its grip on political reality. Moving away from dialectical materialism toward voluntarism and idealism, it began substituting its wishes for Marxist analysis. This first became apparent during the last few weeks of the Persian Gulf war. The RWL's and the ITC's central slogan during the Gulf war -- supported by all sides in the present factional struggle -- was "Victory to Iraq! Defeat US [or US/UK] imperialism!" The ITC sections -- and the ITC itself in the Left Tendency document on the world situation for the February 1991 World Congress of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) -- explained that this desirable outcome was possible only through ! the development of a revolutionary war of Arab national liberation against the US and the other imperialists, Israel, and the Arab regimes collaborating with imperialism. Effectively abandoning the perspective of permanent revolution, Leland argued throughout the last weeks of the war that Iraq might succeed on a purely military basis. The problem was not just that this was a wrong assessment. The problem was that it was an assessment based on a wrong method: substituting for the truth what the leadership wishes were true or thinks the organization needs to hear. After the war Leland generalized his "optimism" into a voluntarist and idealist method summarized by the slogan, "The RWL/US places the revolution on its agenda again." The RWL leadership majority's slide away from Marxism was confirmed by two documents it submitted for the June 1991 RWL National Conference, whose titles were variations on this slogan.

7. As the RWL leadership majority consolidated its cult control of the organization, it began to abandon the transitional method in ways that are both sectarian and opportunist. This, too, first became apparent during the Gulf war. From August 1990 to January 1991 the RWL centered its antiwar work on the slogan "Defend Iraq against US imperialism! For workers' revolution throughout the Middle East!" The RWL explained in Fighting Worker, forums, studies and contact work that it defended Iraq unconditionally -- despite Saddam Hussein -- independently, and by its own methods -- through permanent revolution in the Middle East and workers' action in the US and the other imperialist countries. When the US and the other imperialists began bombing Iraq in January 1991, the RWL changed its central slogan to "Victory to Iraq! Defeat US imperialism!" This was a change in slogans, corresponding to the war situation, but not a change of position. The RWL continued to defend Iraq against imperialism unconditionally, independently, and by its own methods. The RWL had a correct overall policy and by-and-large implemented the policy correctly. By the end of the war, however, a serious problem began to emerge -- the RWL leadership majority's tendency to reduce the RWL's position on the war to the slogan "Victor! y to Iraq!" This tendency transformed a programmatically and pedagogically correct slogan -- in the context of action and other partial and transitional slogans -- into a "single slogan" that neither defined a Trotskyist position nor persuaded the unpersuaded. The RWL leadership majority's "single-sloganism" was sectarian, since -- in the absence of action and the transitional program -- it was not part of a serious effort to win antiwar militants to the RWL's perspective. The "single-sloganism" was also opportunist. It tended to reduce the Trotskyist program to a single demand, dropping the linkage among transitional demands which is central to the Transitional Program. It also tended to reduce the RWL's "fight" for its program just to yelling "Victory to Iraq!" in meetings and getting thrown out -- rather than arguing for the program. The intervention of the Revolutionary Internationalist League (RIL) into the Hands Off the Middle East (HOME) committee was more effective, since HOME involved political groups other than the RIL. But some tendency toward programmatic reductionism existed there too.

8. The RWL leadership majority's new "method" of reducing the RWL's programmatic intervention to a single provocative slogan put forward as a moral ultimatum will lead it to programmatic revisionism, just as it did the Robertson leadership of the SL. The RWL opposition predicted this would begin happening, based on the majority's use of the slogan "Victory to Iraq!" during the Gulf war. Events since then have proved them right. At the beginning of July 1991, four months after the Gulf war ended, the RWL leadership majority resurrected the slogan "Avenge Iraq!" for a counterdemonstration against a patriotic parade in Detroit welcoming home the troops from the Gulf war. The RWL opposition objected that "Avenge Iraq!" is a deficient slogan, because -- unlike "Victory to Iraq!" -- it has no clear meaning and can be misunderstood as implying adventurism and individual terrorism. The slogan may have been acceptable in the first few weeks of March, but four months later it was not. "Avenge Iraq!" could not reach anti-imperialist antiwar activists anymore. It only expressed the moral outrage of petty-bourgeois radicalism, a kind of "verbal terrorism" -- within the RWL. The political distance between Trotsky's slogan "Defend the USSR! For socialism! For the world revolution! Against Stalin!" and "Avenge Iraq!" is immense. But the political distance between "Avenge Iraq!" and "Hail Baathist army in Kuwait!" is not so great. Moreover, the road between the two slogans has been taken before, by another "great leader" who got carried away with self-importance -- Gerry Healy.

9. The RWL leadership majority's slide away from the transitional method entailed a slide away from the united-front policy as well. The slide was sectarian in that it involved a deemphasis of united-front action and opportunist in that! it involved a deemphasis of RWL propaganda and recruitment. During the Gulf war the centrists, including most Trotskyist-centrists, claimed to be for a US defeat and an Iraqi victory and to want action to bring that about. But they were unwilling to break with the liberals enough to build an anti-imperialist wing of the antiwar movement or to organize mass, militant action or any other action, when the liberals held back. Trotskyists needed to apply the united-front policy to exploit this contradiction for two purposes. First, to get action of all kinds -- mass action, militant action, workers' action, student action, anti-imperialist action. Second, to demonstrate the political superiority of Trotskyism, set the ranks against the leadership in the centrist organizations, and build a Leninist-Trotskyist party through a process of revolutionary regroupment -- splits and fusions, as well as individual recruitment. Over the course of the war, the RWL leadership majority shifted its focus almost exclusively to the RWL-dominated National Anti-Imperialist League (NAIL) and its local affiliates. This meant effectively abandoning the struggle for genuine united-front action, deprioritizing the RWL's Trotskyist propaganda around the perspectives of permanent revolution in the Middle East and revolutionary defeatism in the US, and turning NAIL into a propaganda bloc around the "Victory to Iraq!" slogan. The RWL leadership majority's developing practice during the war -- which Leland generalized into a "method" afterwards -- was sectarian, since it treated NAIL as a united front from below and gave an ultimatum to antiwar activists: "Join us." But it was al! so opportunist, since it minimized confrontations with the leaderships of the broader antiwar movement and tended to liquidate the RWL into NAIL. he RWL leadership majority substituted for the active slogan of the united front, "March separately, strike together," the passive slogan of a propaganda bloc, "March together, don't strike."

10. During the Gulf war the RWL leadership majority tended to liquidate the RWL into NAIL, but it also tended to view NAIL as the means by which the RWL would "get rich quick." This is the method of "the mini-mass party," the method of a small organization that does not comprehend or forgets the dialectical process of party-building. The RWL is not the vanguard party in the US, except that it is a little too small, nor is the ITC the world party of socialist revolution, but for size. More to the point, a mass revolutionary party in the US will not be built through the linear growth of the RWL, nor will the Fourth International be rebuilt through the linear growth of the ITC. To begin with, history does not give us enough time to build mass parties that way. The American and international working class will be in motion, and the political vanguard will be trying to lead it to victory, long before the RWL and the ITC could individually recruit enough members to challenge and defeat the reformist and centrist misleaders. Trotskyists cannot rely on graduations from the RWL "school of communism" in Detroit to resolve the crisis of proletarian leadership. Even more, the method of rebuilding the Fourth International through the linear growth of the RWL and the ITC is wrong. In party-building too, quantity must turn into quality, steps must be followed by leaps, evolution must become revolution. That requires a process of revolutionary regroupment -- the political development of the proletarian vanguard in the course of mass struggles, retreats as well as advances, intervention by consistent Trotskyists, leftward movement of Trotskyist-centrists and non-Trotskyist centrists, and organizational splits and fusions. The role of the ITC in this process is that of an international fighting propaganda group, a democratic-centralist international faction fighting in an exemplary way for leadership of the struggles of the workers and the oppressed, putting forward Trotskyist propaganda, and trying to bring about a revolutionary regroupment on the basis of consistent Trotskyism.

11. The RWL leadership majority sees the development of the ITC in the same terms as it sees the development of the RWL, as a process of linear growth, the development of "our own" forces, section by section. The RWL leadership majority's conception is that the RWL is the tutor to the ITC and the other national sections. This follows from its cultist view that consciousness springs from Leland's brow and is transmitted outward and downward from there. Internationally, the conception has clear national Trotskyist implications, since the cult leader happens to reside in a particular country -- "the leading country of imperialism," no less. In the past the ITC has benefitted from an active and equal collaboration among the national sections and in the leading bodies -- at least during meetings. The ITC needs to be "tighter," that is, better organized internationally, more active, more democratic, and more politically centralized. The INCF is fighting for this kind of

democratic-centralism. The RWL leadership majority's conception of "tightening" the ITC is quite different, however. Its "tightness" would mean subordination of the ITC to its "leading section," the RWL, which, in turn, is subordinated to its "great leader." Under these conditions, the ITC would cease to provide an international balance to the national distortions of its sections, particularly its US section. This would almost guarantee that the whole ITC would be lost, since the "leading section" would take its "international" satellites with it as it went down in flaming, sectarian glory.

12. The sectarian, cultist degeneration of the RWL leadership majority is unmistakable. Particular elements of the degeneration might be explained away, but the overall pattern and the interconnection among the elements of the pattern are irrefutable -- the top-down, cultist conception of democratic-centralism; the repression of dissent; the voluntarism and idealism in place of Marxist analysis; the sectarian and opportunist tendency to reduce the RWL's programmatic intervention to a single provocative slogan; the programmatic revisionism that will follow the reductionism; the sectarian and opportunist abandonment of the united-front policy; the linear, cultist and ultimately national-Trotskyist model of party-building. The ITC is in grave danger. Its only hope now is a change of leadership and a change of political course -- back to the course outlined in the founding documents of the ITC. The International New Course Faction: Faction in Defense of the ITC will try to bring about this change of leadership and course at the August 1991 International Executive Committee meeting. If the INCF wins a majority at the August International Executive Committee (IEC) meeting, we will reorganize the International Secretariat, replacing Leland S. as International Secretary. We will focus more of the ITC's resources on the ITC's most important arena of intervention at present, the USFI. We will transfer the resources essentially squandered now to the production of the International Trotskyist Review, ITC statements on issues before the workers' movement internationally, the International Information Bulletin, communication among the ITC sections, and correspondence and exchange of documents to build the Left Tendency in the USFI and the ITC generally. More than that, if the INCF wins a majority at the August IEC meeting, we will have set back the sectarian, cultist trend in the RWL and the ITC. No organizational move alone can prevent political degeneration, but we will have bought time. If the policy of turning the ITC outward succeeds, we will draw in new forces and resolve the contradiction between our very small size and our immense tasks without an explosion of the ITC.