The lonely road to
* DESPITE the best efforts of generations of dedicated trotskyist activists to win forces to their banner, most working class militants still know little or nothing of the politics of trotskyism.
What they do know is likely to be most influenced by two factors: their reaction to occasional witch hunting against trotskyism in the tabloid press; and whether they are deterred by their first impression of a trotskyist movement chaotically and destructively divided into countless warring factions and currents.
The taunts of "57 varieties' and the old Stalinist jibe that 'whenever there are 3 Trots in a room they are just waiting for the split' have more impact when so few people understand anything of the political background to the splits and organisational problems that have befallen the trotskyist Fourth Interational since it was founded 50 years ago.
The snide jokes also hit harder because despite the constant exlemal pressures on the trotskyist movement, many of the most grievous wounds it has suffered have been inflicted by its own forces: a key factor in many cases has been the divisive role of sectarian
Of course it is not necessary to be left wing or sectarian in the marxist sense of the term to suffer damaging splits: the abject confusion of the former SDP/Liheral Alliance, and the trench warfare hetween rival factions from the oncemonolithic British Communist Party show that. Indeed some splits are the result of healthy organisations expelling sectarian forces, or impatient sectarians finding an excuse to walk out and form something smaller and more
However many of the problems faced by trotskyism are traceable to the continuing tendency towards sectarianism - a term which when properly used is much more than a handy insult to throw at opponents. Sectarianism is a term to describe the relationship of a would-be "marxist' organisation to the mass of the work-
The first sects were of course the warring religious factions within, and then the many breakaway movements from the catholic church. "Sectarianism' is still often osed in this way in the media, especially when referring to
nowhere
T 01 ASIC S violent clashes between different communities which reporters classify simply in terms of religion - in the six counties of Ireland, for example.
The marxist use of the term focusses on the inward looking, divisive aspect of the sects, which cut themselves off from rival schools of
Leon Trotsky, fighting for the reconstruction of the Bolshevik revolutionary tradition, spelled out in 1935 what for marxists is the damaging essence of sectarianism: an indifference to the actual development and struggles of the workers' movement, a substitution of mere slogans and propaganda for active inter-
*E is not enough to create a correct programme. It is necessary that the working class accept it. But the sectarian, in the nature of things, comes to a stop upon the first half of the task. Active intervention into the actua] struggle of the workers' masses is supplanted for him [sic] by an abstract propaganda for a marxist programme...
The sectarian looks upon the life of society as a whole as a great school, with himself as a teacher there. In his opinion the working class should put aside its less important matters, and assemble in solid rank around his rostrum: then the task would be solved." (Writings 1935-6
Trotsky goes on to cxamine sume of the symptoms of sectarianism, one of the most common of which is to sink into conservative repetition of fixed, ready-made formulae rather than developing a living analysis of changing reality. He shows that this weakness is in part the distorted outcome of the exteral pressures on the isolated, minority forces of the interational Left Opposition as they battled for survival agninst the rising repressive tide of Stalinism and against social democratic and trade union breancracies:
'How could an element of sctarianism have failed to manifest itself in an ideological movement which stands irreconcilably opposed to all the the dominant organisations in the working class, and which is subjected to monstrous, absolutely unprecedented persecutions all over the world?
In part the emergence of dogmatic, wooden sectarian politics is the negalive side of dogged. ly independent militants sticking to basic principles and refusing to bow the knee:
'Reformists and centrists readily seize upon every occasion to point a finger at our "sectarianism"; and most of the time they have in mind not our weak but our strong side: our scrious attitude toward theory; our effort to plumb every political situation to the bottom. and to advance clear-cut slogans, our hostility to "easy" and "comfortable" decisions which deliver from cares today, but prepare a catastrophe on the morrow. Coming from op portunists, the accusation of sectarianism is most often a compliment.
However sectarianism in its various forms has been a real and persistent problem in the Fouth International. Among its symptoms: •A wooden 'orthodox" dogmatism, expressed by political currents which have sought to "explain" everything in the post-war period by quotations and references to Trotsky's pre-war analysis. This has obstructed any serious or sys: tematic development of the trotskyist programme to meet a host of new challenges, The most conspicuous weakness arising from this has been the lack of any colerent analysis ar response to the complex role of post-war Stalinism in Eastem Europe and elsewhere: but this rame problem has also brought confusion and divisions on how to respond to many of the petty bourgeois led revolutionary nationalist movements that have emerged since World • Linked to the damaging impact of dogmatist has been the pernicious view that political differences could be 'resolved' by organisational splits. This approach helped set the scene for
Marxism means learning from the class struggle: here Trotsky in 1940 meets with
American trotskyist Harry De Boer, picket captain in the massive trotskyist-led
Minneapolis Teamster strikes in the mid 1930s. the traumatic 1953 split which dealt a hammer blow to the Fourth International and stunted the political development and organisational growth of both the resulting rival factions. The same political method has spawned a host of similar, smaller scale splits and ever-smaller groupings (accounting for several dozen of the '57 varieties") as sectarian forces chase the Hely Grail of political purity through organixa•The isolation and persecution of trotskyist forceshas always tended to restrict the numbers involved, and therefore to foster conservative methods of small group politics in which tiny organisations would get an inflatod idea of their importance, and prioritise their own narrow concers above the requirements of the work-
Under these conditions, personal links and non political factors tended to play an unheal thy role, and the significance of individual leading members tended to grow out of all proportion to their political strength, leading to bizarre 'cull" deformations revolving around particular 'guru" figures - and occasional splits between
Though there is no comparison between the relatively tiny and financially squeezed trotskyist movement and the vast bureaucratic machineries created hy the social democrutic and Stalinist parties, the relatively privileged position of some full-time leaders of secturian groupings, Logether with the lack of a suffi. ciently independent minded memhership, have given rise to bureaucratic even despotic and violent - internal regimes designed to repress any opposition. This can in tum open the door to a total abandonment of political principles.
The most grotesque example of this was perhaps the two decades of political and financial corruption, sexual violence and personal intimidation which was eventually exposed hy the expulsion of Gerry Healy, former general secretary of the British Workers Revolutionary Party, whose politics exhibited all of the most classic symptoms of sectarianism.
Howeverother sectarian currents, particularly those coming, like the WRP, from the post1953 International Committee tradition, and based on charismatic "guru"-style leaders backed hy a dominant central bureaucratic clique, also display serious deviahons from Bolshevik principles of intemal democracy. •The more bizarre the politics, odious the regime, dogmatic and cliched the rhetoric and wild-eyed the followers of any given sect, the fewer workers it will attract, and the further it will fall into the grip of radicalised elements of the petty bourgeoisie, drifting away from any Link to the actual struggles and concerns of the working class,
•Occasionally excited to new ultimatistic slogans by a rise in the tide of class struggle, sectarians flourish most readily during periods of relative downtum of the workers* move: ment, devising slogans and propaganda which they believe to be panaceas, or secking to substitute their own activity ("Building the Party") or tiny front' campaigns, for the mobilisation of the working class. •However sume quite large organisations appear to maintain much more of a connection with the working class, while claining a strongly soctanian orientation, In Britain the Militant current has comparatively large working class support, but makes no effort to convert its programme into more than a few propaganda demands, and furs its back quite Jeliberately on ilmost any serious day-to-day work in all but one or two selected trade unions.
Similarly the british Socialist Workers Party is a relatively big sectarian organisation, which not only abstains from any fight lo win leading positions in the unions, but also opposes any serious fight in the ranks of the Lahour Party thus reducing itself to the role of sideline critics on the main political insuce facing the British working class.
Seclananism is not cured by organisational means - eitber by growth or by splits and expulsions: if is not the product of smallness as such or evil individuals, bur the outcome of constant material and ideological pressures on the forcer of the marxist left.
The fight against sectarianism is as old as the fight for n marxist organisation. Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto insisted that "The Communists (ir) have no interests acparate and apan from the working class as a whole. They do a set up any sectarian principles of their own by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.'
Lenin, recognising the need to combat ultraleft sectarianism, insisted upon distributing a copy of his key text Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder to every delegate to the second congress of the new Third (Communist)
Trotsky constantly wamed against sectarian deviations as the new Fourth International took shape in the 1930s, The fight against sectarianism must continue as part of the fight to defend and extend the traditions and programme of marxism.
Supporters of Socialist Outlook believe that sectarianism can be comhatted only by development of a scrious, rounded programme for the class struggle, coupled with a constant fight to direct the attention and energies of militants and marxists towards the central political problems and class batiles confronting the organised working class and the masses of the oppressed. This must run alongside a consistent fight to uphold marxist principles of democracy and accountabulity.
By nur efforts to reverse the pattern of splits that hascharacterised post-war British marxism we hape to create a consciously anti-sectarian, internationalist current within the otherwise confused currents of the British hard left.
Harry De Boer SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 11 December 1988/January 1989 Page 35