This 'more real internationalism' is just a vain attempt to impress. Australian SWP leaders know this perfectly.
*Fraternal exchanges of views experiences' with some organisations is limited in practice to an exchange of ideas without any commitments. It is difficult to envisage the Sandinistas, not to mention the Cuban CP leaders, getting enthusiastic about the Austra-
SWP's experience or even being interested in it. This 'exchange' will inch because the SWP has broken with the Fourth
On the other hand, the Australian exchange it had - on equal footing - revolutionary Marxist organisations in a large number of countries, members of the Fourth International. It loses the chance to dialogue with and influence thousands of activists its ideas, an opportunity that remained open even after it set out on its revisionist course. At the Twelfth
Congress the Australian SWP in excess of their numerical influence in the Congress or in the International. Our organisation scrupulously respects to its cost that this is not the case with any of the organisations to whom it wants vainly to get closer at the present time. (20)
*Revolutionary really extending the world socialist revolution' referred to by Lorimer -this means specifically the Cuban CP, the Vietnamese CP and the Philippine CP - are only present in a few countries of the world - and in no imperialist country. Therefore the real exchange of experiences with revolutionary forces that certainly smaller but are really present in countries similar to Australia and whose daily activity in the workplaces, in the trade-union moveanti-war movement and in the anti-imperialist solidarity has been a source for learning and real strengthening of the
SWP, will be replaced by
Furthermore, to whom the Australian SWP is trying to get closer are limited by severe constraints in their willingness and their ability to extend their internateconomic dependence of most of them on the Soviet bureaucracy does not enable them to play an independent international geographical area. The fragility of their situation obliges them to become part of manoeuvres in which the interests of the workers' movement of a lot of countries - if one thinks of some of big Latin American countries,
Spain or France, not to mention
Poland! - have to be traded on the altar of 'state diplomacy'. In addition their particular brand of seriously limits their understanding of social, economic and political which they and massively involved. But listen to Lorimer waxing indignant:
• "It is not for us to retreat at a time like that!" Bensaid exclaims.
our heads or eat humble pie when history proves
*Just think what he's saying: Other people have made revolutions, but history has proved the Fourth International right. That such an attitude can be expressed by someone who considers himself a Marxist, a Leninist, is what really should cause us to "hang our heads."
It apparently doesn't even enter his head to ask: If the Fourth International is and has always been right why hasn't it led any revolutions?' ( The SWP and the Fourth International, p 50)
Percy and Lorimer do not seem argument is and break their extrapolate from the same line of reasoning and apply it to Maoist might indignantly insist:
'Just think what you are saying with your criticisms of the Maoists. Mao led a victorious revolution in the most populated country of the world. And you lot who have not
La revolution, you have not conquered power in your own country, and yet you have the gall to say he was wrong and you were right on a whole series of problems?'
A pro-Moscow CP supporter in turn echo this hard Maoist criticism:
'Just think what you are saying with your criticisms against comrades Khrushchev and Stalin. These comrades
Nazi imperialism. have maintained the socialist state (to use your own term) in the 150 million people in Eastern Europe. They are in the process of extending it in Afghanistan. But you, who conquered power starting with Australia, you dare to proved themselves in the international since they have won and consolidated power
An Australian Labour Party (ALP)
supporter might cynically follow suit
La case of combatting revolutionaries in their own country, bureaucrats do not worry that much about political logic):
what you are your criticisms against citizen ALP leaders up a powerful mass party. They have
20. We might add that the policy of the SWP leaders already goes hand in hand with a restriction of members democratic rights. The question of membership of the Fourth International was neither discussed previously by the members or submitted to a congress It is simply decided by the Central Committee. The request of the Fourth International to be able to defend its views in front of the
SWP members in the same way as the
SWP was able defend its opinions at our World Congress, received no response
23
CAMPAIN FOR THE RELEASE OF
EELAM POLITICAL PRISONERS IN SRI LANKA away from the direct representatives of Big Capital and the Rich. But you, who have never built a mass party, who have never even won a single in Parliament, any real damage to the big bourgeoisie, you are so such successful leaders through a current like the SP it is pure suicide to toady to the 'reality of power' and to deny any validity to the those who have never conpower anywhere. It the SWP likes it or not this branch is its political and programmatic specificity and not some sort power that it does not possess. does not have this any more than
Fourth International has, and it not acquire this by trying to bask indirectly (and to small effect) in the reflected powers of others, such as the Sandinistas, Tamils campaign for the release of political prisoners (DR) post-Stalinist bureaucrats, mention ALP bureaucrats. The Sandinistas and Fidelistas certainly have revolutionary credentials lacking comthe post-Stalinists trade-union bureaucrats. But to impart have to talk precisely about politics not power for its own sake. all of Lorimer's homily against the 'Fourth International which does not the right to put forward melts away
This line of reasoning is in case pure demagogy. It expresses blind adoration of 'power for power's sake' to the point of becoming naive.
rationalises historical tendencies on the that they are not yet fully developed. say: what right did Marx and Engels have to give lessons to everybody in
Manifesto, they only represented a few hundred people? What right did Lenin have to on about building the party in What Is To Be Done at a time when he did not have more than 500 supporters? What right did Rosa Luxembourg have to condemn a party of one million members for voting for the 1914 military budgets, when she was not even able to bring out a weekly?
The Marxist approach, that is, the approach of scientific socialism not vulgar pragmatism, is of course quite different. We begin by asking whether their analyses of the key tendencies of social, economic and false, whether the proposals they made for the proletarian class struggle were
For not with class whether the tendencies they criticised were erecting serious obstacles against the emancipation of the proletariat, whether they had a practice that would sooner or later enable them to fuse with the real mass movement of mobilisation and self-emancipation of the proletariat.
If the answer to this question is positive then their ideas were correct, and they were a thousand times right to formulate irrespective of
"breakthrough' achieved thirty or forty or fifty years later. If the answer to these questions negative then they were wrong. not because they had not conquered power at hour x on day y, but because and practice did not correspond to the interests of the working class and therefore to those of the world revolution.
The capability or incapability of the Fourth International power can only be tested when the three following conditions exist:
the outbreak of a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary crisis in a country where our current has already been present for a sufficient time; beyond the threshold of accumulation of cadres rooted in the working class, grouped in an organisation recognised as such national political intervention, before the breakout of the crisis;
the ability to intervene on a
The first two conditions are very much independent of our will and of the role of the Fourth International as such. They reflect the uneven process of emergence of cadres and proletarian class consciousness on a world level, which it is not possible to artificially produce in such and such a country. Our current, in the broadest sense of the world, is already present in sixty or so countries. That is a lot for a current that can only rely on the amounts to still not half of all coun effort can fundamentally change this criticise us for not having taken power in countries where we did not even exist at the beginning of revolutionary processes; it is like severely criticising the Sandinistas because they did not seize power in Portugal!
person can reproach us for tionary crisis in which we start out
The three above-mentioned conditions have existed up to only a single country - in Sri Lanka the 1953-1964 period with the experience of the LSSP. This party undeniably failed and betrayed. The consequences have been disastrous for the Sri Lankan working class. We have made a detailed critical analysis of the bankruptcy, which incidentally have nothing to do with
'specificities'
But this experience is clearly too limited for us to conclude that there is of Trotskyism to 'seize power'
In a certain number of countries the pre-conditions for reaching second and third set of circumstances mentioned above are gradually devel
- although we are still a long way away from reaching the critical International Viewpoint 24 February 1986