Group Lucha Socialista from México

Eclecticism in a wrong way to conquer a Marxist program

January 16 2016

Comrades of Socialist Struggle Group,

Hello. How are you? 
We received your note dated January 12 2016. Of course we have very much in our mind the need for meeting each other personally; certainly we have a broad agenda in common to debate with you.
But first and foremost we want to clarify what is possibly a misunderstanding with regard to our intervention in the discussions between the RCIT and POS and sponsored by you.

In this regard you have raised the following question: "we think it wrong that you notify us your non-participation a day before the debate and not in the moment we sent you our invitation, since you had told us you were participating...”
First and foremost, we want to clarify this issue so no problem of method stands in the political and programmatic discussions which are for us fundamental for the political relationship which has made us approximate one another, i.e. the Syrian issue and the struggle for the political prisoners at the international level.
In our view, in your assessment on the method for carrying on an international discussion, a political difference has emerged around how to conquer a revolutionary program in the struggle of the international Marxist movement. Then let’s open a joint consideration.

Let's go to the grain of the matter.
Please note we had told a day earlier that we would not take part in the Conference on Skype called by you for December 20, because this Conference turned out to be a debate between POS and RCIT, sponsored by you, something we were never informed; those are the facts.
We were who learned by chance the character of your Conference a day before it, as it was when chatting with your companion while testing the condition of the Skype connection on December 19.
There and at that time we learned that we were not facing a talk-debate with Socialist Struggle in which other currents would intervene, but a debate between POS and the RCIT to which FLTI would incorporate; you would not be participating in the debate but overseeing, coordinating and organizing it. We learned one day before that this was so. Your call had been somewhat confusing.
In particular, your companion informed us eventually and a day earlier that the December 20 Conference via Skype was really a debate between the POS, the RCIT and the FLTI, and we insist, which you would supervise.
We reiterate; it was not this which we had been invited to. We are sure you will understand this: if we had known from the beginning that this was the case, we would have raised the same thing we told you on December 19 and tell you now.
You sent notes on 14 and 15 December proposing we enter into a debate with you, in which other currents would intervene but in your international debate, to help you define yourselves and bring contributions to your proposals and positions.
So you say in your invitation on Dec 14 the following: "this discussion will be also attended by comrades from the RCIT and the POS of Mexico".
This means that you invited us to a debate with you in which other currents would also intervene; this is written by you and so we have interpreted.
In a note dated December 5 you had already stated the same. There you announced the date (Dec 20) for the international debate.

Well colleagues, in order to clarify more on the methodological issue that you opened, in a note on December 11 you added the following "…we want also to remind you about the next debate that we will develop with comrades from the RCIT and the POS of Mexico...". 
Please, read what you said prior to the December 20 Conference; we beg you to reread it.
So, there you invited us to participate in the debate which you were conducting with the companions of the RCIT and the POS of Mexico. According to your note, you discuss with them. That is the invitation you made us: TO INTERVENE IN THE DEBATE THAT YOU ARE CARRYING ON WITH THE RCIT AND THE POS. This is a very important issue for us, and one that would have allowed us to know you in political struggle with currents that claim of Trotskyism but which we consider are openly breaking with the Marxist program. So we decided to intervene. (We believed) It was a political struggle among parties and currents in which there was clearly established who is who.

This is not the same as a debate between the RCIT, POS and the FLTI win which you only hear, as we were incidentally informed by your companion when we were testing Skype on December 19..

You should know that in our opinion, both UIT and RCIT have long broken with the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International and its revolutionary program.
It is not the same as the own POS and RCIT think, nor is it your opinion about them.
You must see this difference to propose an organizational policy.

Since we have that characterization, we are not going to any Conference either personally or by Skype, to discuss the Marxist program for the socialist revolution with currents we believe don't fight for it, and which have long broken with the revolutionary program, as the Morenoite and the same RCIT.
We are not fond of centrist Alchemy, since that would be whitewashing those currents and treat them as internationalist Trotskyists, since for us they are not. And this conclusion is a byproduct of years of political struggle in Marxism.
Well, you are making your experience and that is all right; but you should note that this is a fact.
Either with POS, UIT or RCIT we only discuss our political differences publicly and before the masses. As well as we make them permanently proposals of unity of action and united front that serve the working class to take steps forward. Though you should note that is not the same as engaging in programmatic discussions.

In order to have a revolutionary position, you are debating with currents that you still have not characterized, but which for us have become in currents responsible for liquidating the Fourth International. If you establish relationships with us, we insist, you should start with this fact.
Moreover what is striking us, is that Socialist Struggle has not yet set any (at least one which we knew) position before and characterization of currents it has already started several conferences with.

Lenin claimed that when revolutionary currents were approaching each other they had to take principles into consideration. It was crucial to characterize the current they have in front of them, to clearly define the differences, even if they were minimal. Moreover, to make a principled rapprochement among Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries they have to discuss that 1% of difference 99% of the time.

Talking about this Lenin’s position, Trotsky used to say that Stalin was the opposite; he approached any international current with any program that served the interests of the Moscow bureaucracy.
This conclusion is a great contribution to both of us, on how currents that claim to be revolutionaries should approach each other so to be known and recognized as such by the other one. So we have just asked which is your characterization on the RCIT and the POS, because you have already had two conferences and hold a fluid relationship with them; and what your characterization is also on us and our positions, since you are also following us for quite some time.

When a relationship between revolutionaries is on course they cannot afford to use diplomacy of any kind.
Comrades, we invite you to please inform us which your characterization on these currents is.
This is for us a key way to characterize your current as you are doing with us. Now, we ask you a response on this issue.

It seems to us that for Socialist Struggle it is normal to call an international conference in which there are 3 currents debating while you listen to form your opinion, because you so believe you are going to define yourselves politically.
We do not agree with this. We do not agree with conferences in which people discuss about everything but no one is bound to do anything and assume a responsibility, not even to define a position on the characterization of those who enter the debate and much less take any course of action with respect to the masses. We don’t agree with that road to get to the Marxist truth and thus we’ve made you know already.

As we have already said we have already discussed extensively with RCIT and POS; positions are now clear. As these positions have been written you may define yourselves on them without watching us argue for twenty minutes. 
Now comrades we invite you to debate on positions which you have not yet expressed, and also offer you to elaborate them in common.

The starting point in common that we have on the Syrian issue is not negligible.
We want to know your position on the Cuban issue, on the Castro brothers handing out Cuba to imperialism. We want to know your position on the handing out of socialist revolution in Latin America by the Bolivarians.
We want to know your position or elaborations that you are carrying out on Syriza and the popular front which is strangling the Greek and Ukrainian revolutions.
We want to know your position on the China issue and on the Conference of Vienna, from which the powers and their agents are conspiring against the revolutions in Maghreb and Middle East and the massacre of the Syrian people is organized.

Comrades, you militate, struggle and fight in Mexico and have much to contribute with your experience. You have released a document on Mexico that we want to discuss. For us it is somewhat anomalous that you invite us to a Conference on December 20 in which you do not put your document on Mexico to consideration. Moreover you announce that you will only go to hear the positions of RCIT, POS and FLTI. 
Though, the FLTI wants to discuss with you your position on Mexico. The positions on Mexico by POS, RCIT and UIT we know well as we have already discussed with them.

Lenin said that to be internationalist was also, in the first place, fighting your own bourgeoisie. We believe that in Mexico it has begun a situation of revolt by workers and peasants; this issue should not be left out of a debate on the international situation; and much less so, when the fate of the Mexican working class and peasants is bound to the destiny of the working class of the United States.
We see again a bronco Mexico emerging from disasters that the masses are endeavoring there. The ordeal of the teaching school students and their families is the ordeal of all the Mexican exploited. We see peasant battles in Chiapas, teachers and students struggling in Guerrero, Michoacan and Oaxaca, and laborers in the maquilas of Chihuahua have gone out on strike.
In the background of this are the underwater rocks that the Mexican State has crashed, and that is nothing more than the blows of the global crisis that will quickly put to test all classes in Mexico and also the Marxist program.

The China crisis pushes a monumental crisis in the oil and steel industries that will hit hard the Mexican proletariat and its more concentrated sectors, causing tens of thousands of layoffs.
We would like to know what appreciation you have of the current situation in Mexico. It is a central issue for internationalist Marxists. For this reason we cannot understand that you want to open a debate on the international situation, disregarding international obligations all of us have also now before the Mexican working class.
This is crucial since Castroism, populism and imperialism are playing a fundamental role in dissociating the working-class struggle from the peasant struggle and isolate each one of them from the others, and Zapatistas have been the guarantor of this division in the most important fights.

In any case, if you don't have a full position on all these issues, we also want to know your elaborations to know and reflect on them so we are able to discuss them with you. RCIT, UIT-CI and POS positions on all these questions we know perfectly. We want to hear from you.

You should know that from our 1988 split with the LIT, we have edited and published hundreds of documents; we have also issued many documents about our discussions with the UIT that the POS surely knows as it has initiated a debate with the former since 2006-2007. We don't know what you are discussing with them, as nothing has been written so far.
But UIT is within the FIT in Argentina, which we consider a class-collaborationist front that is moreover a “left leg” of the Argentinean semi-colonial bourgeois regime.
In Venezuela the UIT has supported Chavezismo for years as its left appendix. In the same way it supports FSA bourgeois generals, so betraying the Syrian resistance. These are the central questions that must be defined and discussed at the international level and we think you must take a position on the matter. Our positions are written and known by everybody.

With regards to RCIT, our debates lasted a short time since they claim to have a party in the Zionist State of Israel, which for us is equivalent to recognizing Zionism that has grabbed and usurped the Palestinian nation.
Our current only discusses with LIT, UIT or RCIT points for concrete and precise campaigns of action, as we do with any current that claims to be for the revolutionary struggle of the masses. Our discussions are public and face the advanced workers.
To give just one example, in the case of LIT we carried out a campaign in common for the defense of Syrian writer Abu Baraa, co-author of the book "Syria under fire"; he was refused visa in Argentina and Brazil when he tried to give lectures to express the voice of the Syrian resistance around the world. That was a huge step in common front. 
UIT with which the POS is discussing not even condescend to answer our call for carrying this fight out in common.

Then in a public letter on November 18 2015 –please see it in our newspaper and our web page- we proposed the LIT a common call for setting up an international campaign for the refugees and in defense of the Syrian revolution against the Vienna Conference, calling to organize, without delay, a counter-Conference of all worker and popular organizations that support the Syrian revolution against the genocide by Bashar Al-Assad.
To date LIT has failed to answer us, though they sealed an agreement last June with 70 trade unions that had signed a statement calling to support the Syrian revolution. Our colleagues are on Lesbos Island with hundreds of workers and ordinary people from Europe who go there in solidarity to rescue and give support to refugees drowning at sea, and daily collide openly with the Greek Government and Navy.

The Grand Coalition is already preparing to increase and worsening their massacre on the Syrian masses; the 70 unions that issued a declaration of support in general, on paper, to the latter, however have not taken any concrete action in the forefront of the battle to stop this brutal genocide.
We say that any currents that consider themselves as internationalist should be asked for their passport; first of all we want to know what international obligations they are undertaking in the world working class.
“International” conferences, in our opinion cannot be a place where in the name of socialism some currents wash the dirty laundry of their everyday betrayals to the international working class.

Please note that in the case of the UIT, you already know they fervently support Kurdish YPG and PKK which have a pact with Al-Assad and correspondingly conceal the massacre to the Syrian people.
How is it that you ask us to discuss with these currents on the "international situation and the struggle for socialism today", while ignoring to discuss all these issues?
As you can see, we firmly believe that you have chosen the longest road to define yourselves politically about what should be your fight for setting up the international revolutionary party.
We are making this debate without any diplomacy or small organizational maneuvers by which sects are cooked in their own sauce. We strive to position ourselves first and foremost according to the needs of the international working class and from there we have established and continue establishing political relations with the currents that assert themselves as Socialists.

Socialist Struggle and us are getting to know each other. Yours is a young current that is entering the fight of the revolutionary movement.
In our view, what has started between you and us is a strategic, programmatic and theoretical discussion on the struggle to rebuild the international Marxist movement, and from our point of view it must be based on the most important lessons of the revolutionary processes at the international level.
We have a point of agreement that is fundamental for us: both of us feel part in Syria of the same trench and flesh of the Revolutionary youth who fights and dies for the socialist revolution and that is no little thing.

Comrades, you are aware, we do not know any positions from POS or UIT –with which you are discussing- or from RCIT, paying tribute to the Trotskyist fighters who die in Syria, not even condolences to their family and fellow combatants.
The first thing you should do is demanding them they decide quickly on this issue, since if they don’t we can’t even start to discuss with them a Socialist program for the world revolution.

We here want to make clear we do not share your policy to conquer a Marxist program because this is never armed with scraps of what each current says which claims to belong to the revolutionary movement without passing the program and practice of these currents by the standards of revolution, counter-revolution, wars and evaluating their intervention in these processes.
What you in fact proposed to us for the December 20 conference was a meeting of all the currents with which you have relationship, including us so everyone discusses with each other, as in a sort of "exhibition" of general truths taken from different Trotskyist forces’ program... and you merely watch as spectators. We do not consider it appropriate or correct.

There are hundreds of currents, ours included, in the international Marxist movement that have been discussing in harsh political struggles regarding to which you must define yourselves. It is your responsibility to do so as you are for "Socialist Struggle" and call to fight for the revolution; that has been also our responsibility in years of political struggle to rebuild the Fourth International.

In your last note we turn to be invited to a third Conference for January 31st, but you have not worried, or felt the obligation you have, to tell us what political and programmatic conclusions were reached at the first two conferences and what policies for international action you defined with RCIT and POS.
Minimally, for the sake of a fraternal relationship between currents which claim to be revolutionary, you have to inform us what has been discussed and debated so far.
When we were invited to your second Conference on December 20 you not even informed us what had been discussed and resolved in the first one. We are not to endorse that.

We ask you to tell us about this; if not, we don't know what Conference you are inviting us to... With currents that are discussing what? To do… what?
We strive to have a proletarian method in the debate. Workers do not go to an Assembly to discuss positions “in general” of what all currents say without resolving anything.
We fighters of the world working class meet and discuss to resolve a course of action or at least to define what this should be. We call you to reflect on this question we are here stating.

Again on the call to General conferences that do not constrain its participants at all to do the walking and not only the talking

We remind you that for decades such so-called Trotskyists used to meet in major international forums and congresses where they swore loyalty to the Transitional Program to Socialism discussed the international situation in leafy documents and then returned to their countries where they openly capitulated to the treacherous leaderships of the proletariat that served the bourgeoisie. As Pablo in 1953, they entered the Communist parties, supported Tito, Mao, etc., and also supported Paz Estenssoro in the 1952 Bolivian revolution; they betrayed the Hungarian and Polish revolutions, the 1968 French May, the 1974-75 revolution in Portugal and led the Fourth International to its liquidation.
Those were conferences and meetings of international debate where no one committed to anything except to do what they pleased in their own countries without any control.

If necessary, some more. If you read this letter carefully you will see what our participation in this January 31 Conference would be; it would not last even three minutes.
We insist, with the POS-ITU and RCIT already we have opened and closed debates, our positions are public. Unless they raised us what new discussions they want to open that we have not yet made and there we would study the issue. That’s why on Dec 19 we asked your comrade to tell RCIT and POS to communicate with us. They agreed (had the chance to agree) on us going to debate with them. Though, we never accepted that. If they want to open a debate with us they must tell us previously what they want to discuss, and in that case we organize in common the order of the day. That is democratic; together we decide the character of the Conference or meeting.
On the other hand, you who go to a Conference without any commitment to fix opinion are who decide how it is organized. That is not democratic.  We insist, please reflect on what we tell you here.

In this respect we say once again, our delimitation with the ITU and the RCIT has already been completed. What would we debate with them? A Socialist program in general, so washing their dirty clothes in particular?  Programmatic discussion would not last a minute with them.
We would ask them to break with the FSA bourgeois generals surrendering Syrian revolution, to denounce the Conference in Saudi Arabia where the resistance is betrayed. And we would require them to make a campaign against genocide and win the streets around the world for it.
With RCIT also the debate would last a minute. We would tell them again what years ago we have been telling them, which is in our documents that you already have. We would say to them that the numbering of the Internationals have nothing to do with any whim of any group but with the program those Internationals have contributed to the world proletariat.

The Fifth International already exists; it is the WSF sinking in the mud of the history.
And when 20 seconds were missing to the minute we would ask them to disavow that Zionist group in the Zionist State, which says that it adheres to RCIT international current. We would ask them to reject the Zionist State and build a Palestinian group. There the discussion would end.
Because, what more can we continue debating if we don't have agreement on those points?
We are respectful with the currents that claim of the working-class, you are determined to follow a path to seek the truth and be defined politically. But what we are saying is to help you; if we participate in this Conference, as you have it organized, this would be broken in five minutes. We are very far from having that intention. We don't have to do it, you should make your experience with the different trends of the Marxist movement, and we invite you also to make it with us discussing the agenda that we propose here.

That’s why comrades today we also invite you, that take months of debate with these currents, to give us your opinion about RCIT and POS positions on the Syrian, Palestinian issues and their policy towards Syriza in Greece. You are already months debating with them. You will surely have points of agreement and differences with them. We insist, you have to tell us what those points are.

Comrades, so that you understand what we are raising here, we make you a latest proposal with regard to the conferences that you call. 
Genocide in Syria deepens and sharpens and enters its defining stage. The outcome of this war will define the future of the working class and the struggle for socialism.

In the new session of debate on January 31st 2016, will RCIT and POS attend? We propose to change the order of the day so that it becomes a meeting of unity of action of all currents declaring to support the Syrian revolution in which the attendants take concrete decisions on the matter. Also by making an extensive and non-sectarian invitation we could invite forces who claim the working class to find a way to free political prisoners in the world, since the prisons are filled every day with the best fighters of the world proletariat. You can then continue on another date your discussions with POS and RCIT.

Don’t you think that the international development in Syria where imperialism has launched the operation massacre against the masses deserves it?  We propose only two points for January 31st:

• The struggle for setting up the International Network for the freedom of prisoners, starting with the Palestinians, the Greek rebel youth, the Basque fighters imprisoned by the Bourbon monarchy. International network which have already been called to publicly by the Palestinian Prisoners Club, the comrades from the Cells of Fire of Greece and the convicted oil workers of Las Heras.
• The other point that we propose for this appointment on Skype is against the Vienna Covenant and the FSA bourgeois generals in Saudi Arabia; to build an international campaign by setting up a Committee to collect weapons, drugs, and send volunteers and organize the solidarity to the thousands of Syrian refugees who today are once again under the imperialist countries barbed wires.

Of course, this would not be a forum for international discussion, but a meeting of unity of action and united front to punch as a single fist depending on the current needs of the masses. We invite all the currents that agree to fight for those two points.
We insist, with you comrades, we are open to discuss and advance in the international debate since both of us have already pronounced and are together in the same trench of the Syrian revolution and have the same martyrs.

On our trip to Mexico, you should know that we have focused our efforts in the struggle to shape the International Network for the freedom of political prisoners in the world. We have devoted the bulk of our forces to Palestine and the Greek prisons from where the network has already put standing along the comrades of Las Heras.
We enclose statements by Greek youth who are in prison and a letter from the Palestinian Prisoners Club calling to build up the international network.

As you may have seen in our newspapers and materials, the massacre in Syria is thoroughly exposed in the open air; the Grand Coalition headed by US imperialism has launched the final battle against the masses that resist. FSA, coming to meet the Saudi bourgeoisie in that country, along with representatives of the imperialist powers, is surrendering all the liberated areas, leaving the resistance without supplies and at the mercy of the army of murderous Al-Assad and his mercenaries. A brutal silence of the treacherous leaderships of the world proletariat is again traveling the world and building a new fence around the Syrian masses for imperialism to be able to carry out its "final solution".

Against this siege and silence, and the words-only "support" to Syrian resistance and the refugees in Europe - as the LIT’s, that have not taken even a single action in their favor in spite of having the major chance of developing a big one as their CONLUTAS is a member of the  International Union Network together with the Solidarity Central Trade Union of French NPA-, we are promoting an International Conference of the working class and anti-imperialist organizations struggling to vote a concrete support and active solidarity with the Syrian masses and the refugees with food, medicine, and international brigades to fight alongside the resistance. This fight has literally consumed the scarce physical forces of our Organization.

In Colombia and Venezuela we are also driving these two fights.
We are just flying to Spain for an urgency, as the Basque people there are just rising up for the freedom of their political prisoners, since they and comrade Alfon, who is held in jail, have called to organize the international network.

We insist, in Greece different collective of rebellious youth are issuing declarations in answer to the Syrian question and for the call for an International Conference.
Cells of Fire militants imprisoned in Greece insist to be at the forefront of the struggle for the freedom of all political prisoners and the Syrian issue in the world.
For this January all our forces will be devoted to these huge tasks. We know that the relatives of the Mexican 43 have begun a caravan from North to South in your country in search for their children.
We want to reach them with the international network for the prisoners already strengthened since we believe that this is the best contribution we can give them.
About the families of the Mexican 43, the convicted oil workers of Las Heras are in permanent contact with them. 
Our visit to Mexico, if no new changes in the world situation happen, is scheduled for mid or late February. 
Anyway, if you want to have a Skype conference with the FLTI to exchange views on the development of these international issues we are ready whenever you want.

Laura Sanchez
Julián Juarez  
In representation to the international secretariat of the FLTI

PS: We are sending you a documentary video of the massacre to Marikana workers. Leaving aside its directors and editors’ points of view of, it has the courage to report what really happened: a brutal massacre of workers in struggle by murderous police. This massacre will not go unpunished. As in Syria, the leftists in the words only, who are really servants to the bourgeoisie in the facts, remain silent; they want to hide that Obama-US and the UK imperialism are the major terrorists and the heads of all murderers in the world. There will be no oblivion; those who leave isolated and encircle in a wall of silence the sufferings of the masses of the world will nevermore be allowed to speak in the name of socialism.

PS 2: we are forwarding you also the appeal of the Brigade Leon Sedov you probably already have, and the letter from the Palestinian Prisoners Club calling for an international network.