The Primacy of Politics

14 July 2024

Comrades:

As you will undoubtedly agree, the present historical moment offers significant opportunities for the growth of a revolutionary Marxist current within the international workers’ movement. Yet the forces upholding the tradition of genuine Trotskyism are far too small to be able to take full advantage of current possibilities. We think that a unification of the cadres of the BT with your larger and more influential (although still very modest) organization could represent a step in the right direction.

We have long regarded the IG as the organization with which we have the highest degree of formal programmatic agreement. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that the major article we published on Gaza is complemented by your piece on developments in the ILWU regarding labor action to defend the Palestinians. We appear to share an essentially identical analysis of China’s current economic and foreign policies as well as a common attitude toward revisionist notions regarding contemporary Russian “imperialism.” Over the years we have found ourselves in fundamental political agreement with the vast majority of the articles that have appeared in The Internationalist, as we imagine you are with most of what we have published in 1917 and now Bolshevik.

We consider it significant that this level of programmatic agreement is not a recent development. In 1987 we wrote “For Trotskyism” which summarized the distinctive positions of the Spartacist tendency in its revolutionary period as part of a fusion with a left-Morenoist grouping in the Bay Area. The British Workers Power organization responded with a sophisticated left-centrist critique of our document to which we replied in considerable detail. The whole exchange was published as Trotskyist Bulletin No. 3 some 36 years ago, but we still stand on every word today. In 1998 we published an edition of the Transitional Program to document the exemplary revolutionary activity of Spartacist trade-union supporters in the US workers’ movement during the 1970s. We are confident that you will have no significant differences with either of these elaborations of our common political heritage.

On virtually every major global issue the IG and BT currently defend the same fundamental positions. We agree on the need to create transitional organizations for work among the specially oppressed as well as the conception of seeking to build trade-union caucuses committed to fighting for leadership on the basis of the Transitional Program. We have the same analysis of major events in the history of the communist movement—from Lenin’s split with the Mensheviks to the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist degeneration of the USSR. We also share a common estimate of the history of the Fourth International, and in particular the significance of the 1953 split. We both recognize the vital importance of the RT’s struggle against the SWP’s 1963 reunification with the Pabloites as well as the value of Robertson’s intervention at the 1966 London conference. Perhaps most importantly, we both uphold the uniquely revolutionary character of the Spartacist tendency of the 1960s and 1970s (the decade in which the founding cadres of both the IG and BT originally joined). After that it seems that our evaluations diverge although we have not seen sufficient documentation of your views to know exactly the extent of our differences.

Last year, when we both intervened in Berlin at the congress of the left-Stalinist Kommunistische Organisation (KO), we were identified as two separate groups but many participants probably noticed that we had essentially the same political line. This was also the case at the LO Fête in May where our contributions to each others’ Gaza forums were broadly supportive of the presentations. This was of course for the very good reason that we are in agreement on most of the vital questions facing the international working class today. In our view, this points to the importance of exploring the possibility of joining forces, rather than continuing to operate as competing groups.

In the recent debates with the Spartacist League (ours in London and yours in New York) the fundamental agreement between us on most substantial issues was also evident (you were not in London but you must have noted how closely our arguments paralleled your own recent writing on NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine). In the leaflet we distributed at your New York debate with the SL we highlighted SL positions from the 1980s that we think are in error—and which we consider evidence that the process of political disorientation which eventually destroyed the revolutionary capacity of the SL was already well underway in that period.

We have often criticized the IG’s unwillingness to seriously address the extent of the SL’s degeneration during the time your leading cadres were still members. We attempted to initiate a discussion on this with the lengthy letter we wrote a few months after your departure from the ICL in 1996. We have traced the initial definitive symptoms of the SL’s decline to the WV “ed board blow-out” and “clone” purge of 1978, as well as the Logan show trial the following year. After the SL’s sectarian attempts to derail the 1984 anti-apartheid cargo boycott by the ILWU in the Bay Area, we concluded that it was no longer possible to regenerate that organization and therefore set out to build a competing tendency. A dozen years later the IG’s founders reached the same conclusion after being driven out in a bureaucratic purge.

Yet despite the considerable differences in our assessment of SL history we recognize that during its 28-year history the IG has consistently tended to advance positions substantially similar to our own on major political issues. In many cases we have advanced parallel criticisms of SL deviations—e.g., calling for the defeat of US/NATO in Afghanistan; opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and denouncing the SL’s wretched 2010 capitulation in Haiti. (There have been only very few exceptions to this pattern—the most recent, your initial failure to take a Russian defensist position over NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, has since been corrected.)

We are seeking to regroup with you comrades not because we have abandoned our criticisms of the SL’s various political errors in the 1980s, etc., but because we view them at this point as questions that are chiefly of historical significance which therefore do not present a serious obstacle to creating a viable and sufficiently politically homogenous organization. We anticipate that a fusion would result in an organization with a somewhat broader geographical extension and deeper literary and political resources; such a development might also serve as a potential rallying point for other historic Spartacist cadres and/or anyone else who takes seriously the RT/SL tradition.

Solid programmatic agreement on major principled issues is the only basis upon which a viable revolutionary organization can be built. In our view the outstanding differences between us which are not of an essentially historical character are ones that can be contained within a single organization. We recognize that the preponderance of members in a unified group would be from the IG and we are of course prepared to publicly defend the position of the majority on all questions. We are fully committed to the Leninist principle of the subordination of minority to majority in all public activity, just as we are to its corollary—that minority comrades on any issue should have the opportunity to put forward their views internally in order to attempt to win the support of a majority.

In our view the most politically substantive difference between us at this point is the issue of independence for Quebec. We consider that the SL was correct in the 1970s to recognize Quebec’s inalienable right to self-determination while not advocating its immediate exercise. The IG, as we understand it, adheres to the ICL’s 1995 line change and calls for immediate independence for Quebec.

Another significant historic difference involved the behavior of our former comrade Jim Creegan during the New York cleaners’ strike in 1996. Jim told us that his union (the UAW) had ensured that no scab cleaners would be admitted to the Village Voice premises where he worked and that no one would perform the work of the striking cleaners. He also reported that the cleaners were in full agreement with this policy and happily stood aside for everyone entering the building. Based on this information we concluded that the actions of Jim and his colleagues represented a material contribution to the victory of the strike. Some twenty years later, after discovering that Jim C. had lied to us about performing struck work, we repudiated our previous position and agreed that we should have prohibited him from going to work on pain of expulsion.

In every other similar situation over the past forty odd years we have rigidly adhered to the traditional proposition that “picket lines mean don’t cross.” Several times comrades risked their jobs by defying instructions to report to work in such situations. As far as we are concerned, we have no operational differences on this issue.

We view our potential unification with the IG as a step in the direction of creating a somewhat stronger, more effective organization. As a first step in this process we propose an in-person discussion between representatives of both groups in New York; we stand ready to send a delegation on short notice if you indicate an interest in exploring the possibilities. If there are issues that you wish to discuss or clarify prior to such a meeting we are of course entirely willing to do so, as well as to consider any alternative procedure you may suggest.

Comradely,

Tom Riley
for the BT