Clearing away obstacles

Now, it’s a feature of Trotskyism to say: Yes, everyone else commits errors but we’re the genuine, true one of the 57 varieties. And you can always define a slightly different mix for every Trotskyist current. Some didn’t do this, some weren’t so Stalinophobic. If you’ve got 57 varieties, you’re going to get a fair range of these errors, mixed in different proportions and different ways. There’s one thing for certain: Everyone thinks they’re the real one, they’re the best one — they’re the only one, usually. What about us? Are we just doing the same thing? Is this just our own revised Trotskyism — junk Trotsky and here we go?

It’s true that our resolution is in the same mould of bringing our theory up to date. We are getting rid of as much of Trotskyism as we’re currently capable of seeing is wrong, reviving our understanding of Leninism and Marxism as a whole. But what we insist on is that we’re engaged in a learning process. Nicaragua began the process of breaking us free, the process of bringing down the whole superstructure we’d built up. Because we were very, very good systematisers. I remember, as a party, at the time of the 1970s faction fight in the Fourth International we wanted to go the whole hog. We wanted a line and a principle on everything. We started to take it to its logical conclusions as far as we could.

Now most of that superstructure is crashing down. That’s good.

What’s the next step? We have to remember we’re still tiny. We’ve solved nothing fundamentally. All we’ve done is clear the debris out of the road. The real question is how do we build parties. The resolution makes this point:

While an understanding of these mistakes is helpful, they are not to be overcome primarily by refining programmatic documents. Without the immersion of sections in the day-to-day battles of the class struggle, the attempt to correct errors will lead only to new programmatic distortions.13

That’s still the case. We’re only at the threshold, we’re getting rid of the superstructure, we’re clearing the debris. We’ve been getting a better understanding in order to move ahead. The resolution is a first stab. We still haven’t discussed thoroughly at all many of the lessons of the most recent phase of the world revolution. We haven’t discussed that thoroughly, haven’t assimilated many of the lessons of the Nicaraguan revolution for instance, an understanding of how revolutionary unity is achieved, of how you build a revolutionary party.

As we learn, we’re also learning to demystify the Russian Revolution — the view that the Bolsheviks started out with this perfect, finished program, and so the masses naturally came flocking in. Demystifying the past helps us to learn about it. But also there are new lessons we haven’t assimilated from the revolutions that are occurring today.

So by no means do we now have the lessons necessary for final victory. All we’ve done so far is get back on the board. But I think we do have the lessons needed for the next steps. We can affirm something very clearly out of all that we’ve seen, all that we’ve learned. Nothing we’ve learned detracts from the pressing necessity of continuing to try to build a revolutionary vanguard party. I want to affirm that very strongly in the process of this preconference discussion.

That’s the heart of our program. Why do we say that? Because if you say that you need to build a revolutionary party, you are saying that it’s possible, that this is the epoch of revolutions. You’re saying that building a revolutionary party is relevant because we can and must proceed towards the socialist revolution, and secondly, that that process needs to be prepared through the party training a vanguard capable of leading their class. That’s the heart of our program still: We’re revolutionists. That’s our strategy for revolution. It doesn’t solve the bigger problem of how to build it, obviously, but you have to start there.

In the past there have been three methods or approaches to building a revolutionary party. This is a little schematic, but by trying to pull out the features of each one, perhaps we can get an idea of mistaken approaches.

One is the programmatic proclamation method. That was a feature of us in the past. We were quite marked by this; some would still criticise us as being too much marked by it. Of course, this was not all we did — we were always an activist party, leading struggles and so on. But you’ll see in our resolutions that we’re marked by that as well, even though we don’t have as bad a dose of that as some others. The method is simple: You proclaim yourself the one revolutionary party, with the one true revolutionary program. You proclaim it, therefore you are. That’s overwhelmingly the method of an ultraleft or dogmatic sect. One of the things we’re trying to do in the election campaign is shift away from that method of proclamation and get involved in building something real.

The second approach is the passive waiting method, the our day will come method: Once something else happens in the class struggle, then we’ll start to grow. This view usually implies a very narrow conception of the mass movement; it’s usually associated with workerism or some other schema of that sort. The De Leonists had the most classic case of this — it’s not a new deviation. But it’s one you can always fall prey to: History is on our side, all we have to do is march with our class, get with our class, eventually, as history matures, it will sweep us forward and so on. I think this characterises the Socialist Workers Party in the United States today.

The US SWP today has it all worked out: Once there’s an invasion of Central America, then the working class will begin to build a “real antiwar movement”, they will be in the trade unions, therefore they will lead this “real antiwar movement”, their day will come. There’s no understanding of the motion that’s there today, and that has to be led today. At whatever level of struggle the masses are today, we have to attempt to lead that struggle. Be part of that. It’s in that process that the party proves its relevance.

The latter is the third method, the genuinely Leninist method. It’s more difficult to understand. It’s not so simple. It’s much more difficult to do. We seek to understand it better. Of course, many stupidities have been committed in the name of Leninism, but I think that this is the approach.

What are some of the lessons we need to talk about, what are some of the new emphases, some of the new changes we want to make? Where are some of the problems we still have to investigate, still to solve in this process? Now part of the problem is, of course, that we don’t yet know all the questions to ask. So any discussion like this is always provisional. We’re not going to find the finished way of doing this; we have to keep probing away at it, picking away at it.

We’re seeking to build a vanguard party. There are some lessons from the past we can say are still relevant. The vanguard party will relate to all sectors of the mass movement, not just the most oppressed — it will also seek to lead in the labour aristocracy, the white collar unions, in bourgeois arenas, in every area. It’s going to be an independent party, that is, it will maintain a class independence, though this idea can be misinterpreted. For example, in the document that we wrote four years ago, we said:

Moreover, the very conception of a party as the proletarian vanguard presupposes its full and unconditional independence from all other organisations. This means that whatever blocs, coalitions, compromises, or tactical manoeuvres it carries out are permissible so long as it always puts forward its own positions clearly and in its own name and explains the aims and limits of temporary manoeuvres and agreements.14

That’s dead wrong. That would not have allowed us to have a discussion with the Socialist Party of Australia. That’s another example of seeking to limit what tactics are permissible in the construction of a party, making another abstract principle so we can keep our purity and not have to worry about things like that. It doesn’t work. We should have no preconceptions, about what we can and must do to build a party. We’ll find more and more things we have to do to help us move forward. Think of Lenin’s method, of what he did to build a party and when and why and how.

But we’re an important nucleus. It’s very important, in fact it’s essential, that we don’t waste what we’ve done so far, that we preserve and develop the cadre that we’ve created. A party is essential, and we’re one component of that. We must estimate the start we’ve made very realistically. We’re not the essential component till we’ve won, at least in part, the vanguard in this country, the social vanguard — until we’re starting to win more and more of the people who are fighting back. We shouldn’t pretend that we’ve made more of a start than we have. We must be quite realistic; quite cold, about that process. We know we need to continue with our patient political work, building the party and its institutions.