In a recent article, the Argentine Workers Party (PO) sadly attempts to disqualify the recent agreement between the ISL, the L5I and the ITO for an international regroupment of revolutionaries,[1] They say it has “dubious paperwork.”[2]
In this response, we refute the PO, a national-Trotskyist party that debates vulgarly and has dubious internationalist principles, not just on paper. This article appeared on the LIS website on December 7, 2024 here.
By Pablo Vasco
Taking into account that currently the far right is advancing throughout the world and, unfortunately, the most frequent events across the Trotskyist arc are crises, divisions and ruptures, the PO should reflect less lightly on the beginning of a process that seeks a fusion between three international revolutionary tendencies. First, because such an event rarely occurs and, therefore, deserves attention from the entire left, working-class and young activists. And second, because, even maintaining its political differences, the PO could take the opportunity to raise its level of debate a little.
It is well known that, if well developed, debates can be enriching and clarifying. Otherwise, if disqualifications are placed above arguments, they can be harmful, especially to those who behave this way. For example, referring to currents that have organized militant work in over 40 countries across five continents as “three groups” is a typical attempt to disqualify someone else’s advances. These harmful habits should be shunned by the left and among revolutionaries.
“The document draws a brief, bird’s-eye view of the issues on which they agree,” describes PO. And then it limits itself to polemicizing about the war in Ukraine. It is pure reductionism. Actually, the agreement between the International Socialist League (ISL), the League for the Fifth International (L5I) and the International Trotskyist Opposition (ITO) outlines not one but several principled political agreements on the central events of the class struggle. That is, on the analysis of the world situation, the unequal polarization, the crisis of revolutionary leadership, the need for a new international, the characterization of China, Russia and the inter-imperialist conflict, revolutionary politics for Ukraine and Palestine. These are not minor agreements by any standard.
Ukraine, once again
As for the war in Ukraine, the agreement reaffirms that “a revolutionary policy implies supporting the resistance for it to win and defending the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people, as well as of the Donbass, and at the same time confronting Zelensky’s anti-workers policies and fighting for the dissolution of NATO.” But the PO once again resorts to the childish method of cutting our quote in half to hide that second part…
In addition, they say that “there is not a shred of evidence of an independent Ukrainian popular resistance.” And why this condition? If an imperialist power invades a semi-colonial or intermediate capitalist country, we do not require its resistance to be independent of the government in order to support it: it can be independent, it can be combined or it can only have a regular army. Our support at the military level must always go to the invaded country, regardless of who governs and where it obtains its weapons, while maintaining complete political independence from that government.
The PO would do well to review some of Trotsky’s many texts on war:
“We do not and never have put all wars on the same plane. Marx and Engels supported the revolutionary struggle of the Irish against Great Britain, of the Poles against the tsar, even though in these two nationalist wars the leaders were, for the most part, members of the bourgeoisie and even at times of the feudal aristocracy… Lenin wrote hundreds of pages demonstrating the primary necessity of distinguishing between imperialist nations and the colonial and semicolonial nations which comprise the great majority of humanity. To speak of “revolutionary defeatism” in general, without distinguishing between exploiter and exploited countries, is to make a miserable caricature of Bolshevism and to put that caricature at the service of the imperialists.
In the Far East we have a classic example. China is a semicolonial country which Japan is transforming, under our very eyes, into a colonial country. Japan’s struggle is imperialist and reactionary. China’s struggle is emancipatory and progressive.
But Chiang Kai-shek? We need have no illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class of China, just as Marx and Engels had no illusions about the ruling classes of Ireland and Poland. Chiang Kai-shek is the executioner of the Chinese workers and peasants. But today he is forced, despite himself, to struggle against Japan for the remainder of the independence of China. Tomorrow he may again betray. It is possible. It is probable. It is even inevitable. But today he is struggling. Only cowards, scoundrels, or complete imbeciles can refuse to participate in that struggle.”[3]
Of course, the fact that China received the better part of its weapons from the US, an undoubtedly imperialist country, did not prevent Trotsky from positioning himself clearly in the Chinese military camp.
In order to justify its distortion, the PO evokes the correct policy of revolutionary defeatism adopted by Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg… in the First World War. The “small detail” PO overlooks is that this was a war between imperialist powers, not between an invading imperial power and an invaded country. Proposing revolutionary defeatism in the current Russia-Ukraine war, as the PO does, denies the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination and, indeed, supports the Russian imperialist invader by capitulating to Putin.
On Russia, words and principles
Our agreement states:
“We agree on the characterization of China and Russia as emerging imperialist powers that are beginning to compete with a Western imperialism that is still hegemonic but in decline. We see a dynamic of a sharpening of the global inter-imperialist dispute between the US and China and their respective allies, which will lead to increasing friction, conflicts and regional and proxy wars.”[4]
That is to say, there is coherence between a common characterization of Russia and the policy to be followed.
On the contrary, according to PO, Russia is not only not an imperialist country or a regional imperialist power, but the process of capitalist restoration has not even been completed there. That is why they consider Putin’s a restorationist bureaucracy[5] since Russia would still be a deformed workers’ state or a semi-colonial country,[6] definitions that we consider highly erroneous. However, what is most striking, given its lack of seriousness, is that they “agree” on the policy towards this conflict with the SEP of Turkey… which defines Russia as an imperialist country. Now that is an unprincipled agreement, with the sole objective of showing some kind of international relationship.
Bleeding from the wound
The PO article criticizes our agreement because “the position that they set on it [the war in Ukraine] is sufficiently demonstrative of the orientation of the entire document.” However, a couple of paragraphs later, on the situation in the Middle East, it recognizes that we stand “for the defeat of the State of Israel and in favor of the resistance of Palestine, Lebanon and all people attacked by Zionism. That is, against NATO.” So which is it, PO? Didn’t Ukraine demonstrate the orientation of the entire document?
Finally, instead of positively evaluating that the agreement points out that “the international currents we… come from have not been exempt from mistakes that we intend to correct,” a practice the PO ignores, it closes its article with another taunt, accusing us of being “the zillionth collection of labels and groups, without a solid political base, and therefore an apparatus based… opportunistic organizationalism.”
In a way, PO is “bleeding from its wound.” The PCL-ITO comrades maintained a political link with them over many years, but they grew apart some time ago when they reached the conclusion that it was impossible to advance with the PO – which filters everything through its national optics – and now they are an active part of our international regroupment. On the other hand, the PO’s lack of understanding of the vital need to build an international revolutionary leadership makes it fall into national Trotskyism, a deviation that clashes with all the lessons of Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism. So this is not a “gathering,” of “labels,” with “no solid political base.” Quite the opposite. The process of convergence that the ISL, the ITO and the L5I are committed to is based on principled political and methodological agreements and we work to achieve the fusion of our currents. This would be a new and significant advance in the international regroupment of revolutionaries, which is more necessary than ever today. Along this path, we develop politics from a revolutionary and militant praxis in dozens of countries, including our sections in Ukraine and Lebanon. National optics never lead to a good end, less so from a single country.
Notes
[1] https://lis-isl.org/en/2024/11/21/for-a-regroupment-of-revolutionaries/
[2] https://prensaobrera.com/internacionales/un-reagrupamiento-flojo-de-papeles
[3] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/10/sino.htm
[4] https://lis-isl.org/en/2024/11/21/for-a-regroupment-of-revolutionaries/
[5] https://po.org.ar/comunicados/guerra-a-la-guerra-fuera-la-otan-y-el-fmi-abajo-la-burocracia-restauracionista-de-putin/
[6] Their article goes so far as to claim that “NATO… seeks to colonize Russia.”