Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The articles reprinted here should have more than a historical value for those struggling for independent working class politics. 'Our tasks and methods' ('OTAM") and The question of the International' were the first serious attempts in the post-war period to explain the weaknesses of the revolutionary movement. These articles sought both to assess the past experiences of what is loosely called the revolutionary left' and to demonstrate the way in which these weaknesses were rooted in the material conditions of the period. They thus provide a critique of radical politics in the Marxist sense of the term: they offer a critical assessment of past experiences of struggle from which central political lessons are drawn.

'OTAM' was the product of a major political debate inside the International Socialists (IS, now the Socialist Workers Party — SWP). The comrades on one side of this debate sought to re-establish the Marxist approach on such fundamental questions as the party, the programme, reformism and the crisis. The IS leadership cut short this debate by expelling from the organisation the comrades who had brought these issues into the open. ''OTAM', which was written in response to this debate, was an attempt to use this important political experience to understand the mistakes of the left as a whole.

The main contribution of 'OTAM' to working class politics is that it approaches the problem of building a revolutionary party in a materialist fashion. Rather than discussing partybuilding in general terms, it relates it to past experiences of the working class and to the specific obstacles facing Marxists today. It isolates two major problems that must be resolved in winning workers to revolutionary communism development of a programme and the barrier of reformism.

'OTAM' and the article on the International both draw attention to the problem of developing a programme adequate to today's conditions. They show how the left in the post-war period failed to establish the programmatic basis for defending working class interests. The left did not understand that the defeats suffered by the working class at the hands of fascism and Stalinism had meant the liquidation of Marxism as a living force in the working class. This failure to understand changing material conditions and their effect on working class consciousness took two separate, but inter-related, which still persist today. Organisations such as the Workers Revolutionary Party, the Workers Socialist League and the International Spartacist Tendency simply restate the programmatic positions of Lenin and Trotsky. Unable to develop a programme independently, these organisations repeat past positions in the hope that they will work today. This dogmatism leads in practice to the rejection of Marxism as a living science and reduces it to a formula.

The second political trend identified by 'OTAM' regards the repetition of past positions as inadequate for mastering changing material conditions. However, instead of drawing the conclusion that they must develop Marxism and Leninism, these organisations (today's RCG, the International Marxist Group (IMG), and the SWP) reject the past gains of the Bolshevik movement altogether. They substitute vulgar "realism' of these empiricism for Marxism. While the organisations contrasts with their more dogmatic counterparts, they are none the less the product of past defeats of the working class and of independent working class politics.

'OTAM' represents a break from the dogmatic/empiricist tradition of the British left. It calls on revolutionaries to develop Marxist theory as part of the process of building a fighting organisation in the working class. Theory is not a cumbersome extra — it constitutes an essential component of cadre training. programmatic development and draws out the consequences of rebuilding Marxism in the working class. It indicates the questions that need to be resolved and offers an organisational framework for theoretically realising this objective.

The second important contribution of 'OTAM' is on the problem of reformism. It shows that the failure of workers to break from reformism cannot be explained as the result of a series of betrayals, but that it has firm roots in the traditions of the labour movement. As a method of challenging reformism the radical left's customary denunciations of trade union bureaucrats are insufficient. A precondition for defeating reformism is the existence of a vanguard that can give a conscious expression to the day-to-day experiences of the working class. Workers will not spontaneously see reformist politics as the cause of their defeats. This has to be demonstrated in practice by a working class leadership.

The question of class leadership is presented by 'OTAM' in a way that differs fundamentally from its presentation by the organisations of the radical left. Organisations like the SWP and the IMG believe that there is a ready-made vanguard. For such organisations, to be a revolutionary it is sufficient to feel a gut revulsion against capitalism and display class hatred for the bosses. 'The question of the International' shows that, at different times and in different circumstances, various social strata have been presented as a vanguard. For the SWP, shop stewards or rank and file militants may play this role, needing only to be organised in order to become a revolutionary force.

The IMG in the past has depicted students, women, blacks, youth and gays as a revolutionary force. 'OTAM' argues against such wishful thinking that a vanguard does not arise spontaneously, but has to be trained around the struggle for a Class anger and hatred of oppression are essential for build- But these spontaneous ing a revolutionary movement.

responses do not yet constitute revolutionary consciousness.

The anti-capitalist potential contained within them has to be transformed into independent class politics. The struggle for ideological independence is one of the major pre-requisites for building a working class vanguard.

One of the clearest expressions of the RCG's abandonment of the orientation of 'OTAM' is likewise its rejection of the Leninist concept of the vanguard. Referring to black and Irish workers, the RCG calls on the 'revolutionary movement' to 'consolidate the vanguard which already exists in Britain and is now fighting the British state' (Revolutionary Communist, No 9, June 1979, pб). Nobody, whether they are black, white, female or Irish, arrives at class consciousness spontaneously The RCG is merely following in the footsteps of the radical left which is willing to portray any oppressed stratum as the van- 1

guard. In doing so it gives up any attempt to provide revolutionary leadership and abandons the struggle to transform the response to an immediate experience into a class conscious understanding of capitalist society.

The political strategy contained in 'OTAM' has contemporary relevance. The absence of a revolutionary vanguard means that the British working class has yet to learn the lessons from five years under a Labour government. Many workers knew that Callaghan and Healey had betrayed their interests.

But their disgust with particular Labour leaders in no way undermines the credibility of reformist politics. Many of the same workers who are disillusioned with the Labour leadership look to the left reformists within the party for an alternative.

Predictably, the radical left ignores the task of confronting Labourism as a way of training a vanguard. Instead it chooses the easy road of denouncing the Conservative Government, hoping to capitalise on the anti-Tory sentiments that prevail in the labour movement. The working class does not need to be told that the Tory Party is the party of the bosses. Its class hatred has to be directed at the present leadership of the working class in order to defend the proletariat. The radical left's narrow concept of the vanguard means that it adapts to existing militant consciousness and hence can never challenge 'OTAM' relates the problem of party-building to the issues facing the working class today. It rejects the spurious notion of mass work and demonstrates that before mass agitation can be pursued a vanguard has to be built. This means that revolutionaries must address not the whole of a heterogeneous working class, but those who have begun to doubt their existing leadership and are open to a political alternative to reformism.

Since 'OTAM' was written the RCT has developed this approach further. To build a class leadership, revolutionaries must raise questions that pose the necessity for a break with reformism in the sharpest possible way. How can this be done?

Militant opposition to incomes policy, for example, can be conducted from a variety of viewpoints. While revolutionaries assert the need to smash all forms of incomes policy and to direct opposition against the state, class lines may still be unclear. Workers may oppose incomes policy and yet still retain illusions in the Labour left or other reformist tendencies.

However, by raising political questions such as opposition to British imperialism's oppression of Ireland, or the demand to smash all immigration controls, it is possible to draw clear class lines in struggle. Unconditional support for the struggle against British imperialism in Ireland or unequivocal rejection of immigration controls implies a direct challenge to the state and to reformist politics. Today the RCT is actively engaged in opposition to the Irish War and racial oppression with the obiective of transforming the existine consciousness of the working class. By selecting the issues which most clearly reveal the necessity for a break with reformism our recent work has "The question of the International' complements and extends the arguments put forward in 'OTAM'. It critically examines the historical evolution of the Marxist movement which Trotsky consolidated, locating the deformations suffered by the various sections of the Fourth International in the material conditions of the post-war period. It shows how the programmatic degeneration of the Fourth International was moulded by these conditions. One of the most significant problems brought to light by the analysis is the inability of the Fourth International to learn from past mistakes. As a result its commitment to communism has been constantly undermined by its programmatic decay.

2 This process has accelerated during the present crisis.

Today, the Fourth International's radical rhetoric barely conceals its opportunism. For example, the British section, the IMG, pursues a political strategy which places it on the left wing of Labourism. The article shows why this degeneration is a necessary consequence of an inability to develop a Trotskyist programme. Since these documents were written the RCT has developed revolutionary politics further. Readers of this reprint and of Revolutionary Communist Papers and Revolutionary Communist Pamphlets will find that the publications of the RCT contain a cumulative programmatic development based on theoretical work and a critical assessment of working class struggles. We hope that readers who are committed to building a revolutionary movement in Britain and internationally will see in these articles and in the politics of the RCT the way forward to the construction of a working class party. Your next be to join the struggle for revolutionary step should communism. Political Committee of the RCT July 1979 The articles below are reprinted from Revolutionary Communist. 'Our tasks and methods' is taken from Revolutionary Communist No 1, January 1975 and 'The question of the International from Revolutionary Communist, No 2, May 1975. • 'OTAM' was the founding document of the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), formed by a section of those expelled from IS in 1974. In November 1976 the majority of the RCG leadership rejected the orientation of this document, thereby precipitating a split in the organisation. The minority formed the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT), which based itself on the gains expressed in 'OTAM.

REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PAPERS No 1 The first issue of the RCT's theoretical journal contains an analysis of the issues which led to its formation. One article deals with the political degeneration of the ACG which resulted in the split of November 1976. The other, through a critique of the RCG's adaptation to Stalinism, provides a theoretical understanding of the communist parties today.

If you want further information about the Revolutionary Communist Tendency and its activities please write to: Revolutionary Communist Tendency BM RCT, London WC1V 6XX.

sections of the class are beginning to break in a fragmented IS's rejection of the concept of the imperialist epoch.