Zimbabwe - September 29th, 2020
Once again a polemic with the ISO of Zimbabwe
An attempt to show the program and policy of Mensheviks’ and reformists’ like the one of the IV International and Bolshevism in the 20th Century
Comrade Lance,
We appreciate your message and your criticism of our positions. We want to tell you that we do not agree with you. But the debate between socialists is surely the way that would train the workers as revolutionaries and it is them who will define their positions with their own head.
I anticipate that we have already responded to your criticisms in an extensive work by the FLTI regarding your support for the MDC in the last elections, that is, the support for the other end of the rope of the bourgeoisie and imperialism with which, together with ZANU-PF, they strangle the working class and the poor of Zimbabwe.
Well, I am sending you this statement, the link of which is: http://www.flti-ci.org/ingles/africa/agosto/balance_elecciones_23gosto2018_polemica_iso.html that responds to your criticisms.
I already anticipate that all your quotes about the experience of the 1905 revolution and that on the struggle against fascism in Germany are totally inaccurate, which shows that the ISO is in a campaign against a supposed “ultra-leftism” of the Trotskyist revolutionaries to cover up their own opportunist policy of supporting -as the Stalinist parties do- what they call "progressive bourgeoisie", that is, the "democratic" executioners of the working class. There will also be sometime on an opportunity to deepen this topic, but here I will answer you about your position on Russia in 1905 and Germany in the 1930s.
Your position that the Bolsheviks supported the priest Gapon in the Russian action days of 1905 is not only an inaccurate one, but it totally changes the history of the Russian revolution of 1905 and demonstrates a total ignorance and misrepresentation from the ISO about it, aimed to carry out a reformist course in its politics.
In 1905, Lenin's party boldly intervened in an action by the workers' councils (soviets) led by a Bulatovist current, which tied the lot of the workers to the tsarist regime. It was Bulatovism and the priest Gapon who tried to ride on the workers' revolution of 1905. And it was the workers, led by the Social Democrat Worker Party of Russia, who got rid of them.
Never have the Bolsheviks called on to support Father Gapon like you did to the MDC, a bourgeois party. The Bolsheviks were at the head of the 1905 revolution to expel the priests who led the unions of the workers' curia created by the autocracy, and make them independent from it.
In Germany in the 1930s, the united front policy between the Social Democracy and the Communists to fight fascism had the aim of arming the workers, crushing fascism and exposing the Social Democracy. I don't see what this workers' united front policy of the Marxists has to do with supporting a pro-imperialist bourgeois party like the MDC, or the English Labor Party's coming to the government to run the Anglo American business in England, as does the SWP, your sister group in that country, openly supporting the pirate Corbyn.
The revolutionary policy in the 1930s against fascism in Germany or against Francoism in Spain was to "defend democracy and democratic freedoms against fascism with the method of the proletarian revolution and not of the bourgeoisie." Actually, democracy and fascism both come out of the same sewer, which is this rotten capitalist system.
In Spain, the revolutionaries fought militarily on the republican front, but they never politically supported the republican bourgeoisie. They called for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in each liberated zone to take control of the war against fascism and defeat the bourgeoisie in the rear.
You are misrepresenting and taking as "ultra-left" the Bolsheviks in the 1905 revolution and the Trotskyists and the combat of the Fourth International in the revolutionary processes in Germany and the Spanish civil war of the 1930s.
As Karl Liebknecht would say, between the working class and the bourgeoisie there is a river of blood. The revolutionary fire of the masses and the water thrown by the bourgeoisie cannot be combined!
You are debating against a current like ours that has intervened within the unions to fight for a revolutionary leadership that defeat the social pacts and the policy of class collaboration of the ZCTU leaders. We have fought tooth and nail to unite and coordinate the struggles, which most of the union and left leaderships have left isolated, and have not unified into a national struggle coordinator. We fight uncompromisingly for the political independence of the workers, without which they will not be able to free themselves or our oppressed nation from the clutches of imperialism.
If the ISO as a workers party stood for elections independently of the bourgeoisie in order to use the parliamentary platform to develop the struggle of the masses, we would call to vote your election ballot, albeit with our own program. You have confused and are confusing, from the camp of reformism, the revolutionary program, which you want to pass off as an ultra-leftist one. In the same way, calling them "sectarians", Mensheviks fought Bolsheviks and Stalinism fought Trotskyism.
Passing off the Bolsheviks as Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution is a historical misrepresentation of socialism. As you know, then it was Stalinism that led and continued this policy of class collaboration at the international level, opening the way to a trend of betrayed revolutions.
Well, the debate is open.
It would be very important, if you and your current agree, to organize a fraternal debate between us, which is public before the masses. We are totally ready for it.
We could even call a Zoom where all the groups and currents that claim to be socialist and embrace militant internationalism could intervene in this debate. Send this proposal to the ISO leadership.
We could start with a debate on the history of the Russian Revolution, which you use to quote so much. That would be important, because it shows with total clarity that the policy of the Bolsheviks was the intransigent struggle to separate the working class from the Cadet party, that is, from the liberal bourgeoisie, which they never called to vote for in any election of the Tsar Duma and much less to make political blocks with it. Neither with the priests, nor with the liberal bourgeoisie.
Thus was Bolshevism able, while fighting against the imperialist war, to lead a working class that took power, with the cry of "Out with the capitalist ministers of the government!" "No support for the bourgeoisie!" Thus they won the majority in the soviets created in February to seize power in October.
Comrade, the fraternal debate is open. Advanced workers must know the history of the revolutions in which our class succeeded or was defeated.
Welcome to the debate.
A solidarity and socialist greeting
James Sakala |
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09/28/2020
Letter from the leadership of the
ISO to the WIL of Zimbabwe
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2018: The army in the streets of Harare
Fascists in Germany during the '30s
German revolution in 1918
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Poster in Madrid against fascism
They shall not pass!
Russian revolution in 1905
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