[fse-esf] Statement of those expelled from the L5I

[Daveesterson at aol.com]

The split in the League for the  Fifth International (LFI)  
On Saturday 1 July 33 members of  the LFI in Britain, Australia, Ireland and 
Sweden (30% of the LFI membership)  were expelled by the International 
Secretariat (IS) of the League. They were all  members of an International Faction 
(IF) that had been formed in the run up to  the League’s 7th Congress in July. 
The formation of the IF was a  culmination of a two year long struggle 
beginning in Workers Power Britain (WPB)  and extending into the League. That 
struggle was around perspectives and  tactics. The majority perspectives adopted at 
the 2003 congress, and many of the  tactics deployed by the organisation on 
the basis of these perspectives, were  wrong, especially around the use of the 
slogan of a Fifth International within  the anti-capitalist movement.  
The errors in those perspectives  became glaringly apparent in the years 
following the Congress. Yet the majority  clung to them as though they were 
articles of faith. Perspectives were being  transformed into doctrine and real 
developments in the class struggle and the  economy were ignored wherever and 
whenever they contradicted the majority’s  “perspective”. The political struggle 
to correct these errors became  increasingly bitter, especially in WPB. That 
struggle has resulted in the  current split. 
Differences over  period 
The 2003 Congress of the LFI  decided that globalisation had exhausted all of 
its economic potential, that  world capitalism had entered a phase of 
stagnation and that the political  situation could be characterised as a worldwide “
pre revolutionary period”. The  IF challenged this view, arguing that world 
capitalism was benefiting from the  collapse of the Stalinist states and the 
consequent opening up whole new markets  and cheap labour for imperialist 
exploitation in China, Central Europe and  Russia.  
This had allowed imperialism, in  the age of globalisation, to offset the 
structural crises of capitalism. We  pointed out that global GDP had doubled in 
the last ten years and that the  upward swings of the business cycles since 
1993 had been strong, while the down  phases had been relatively shallow and 
unsynchronised – hardly symptoms of  crisis and stagnation.  
For our part, we do  not believe that capitalism has overcome its tendency to 
structural crisis. We  continue to assert that imperialism is the epoch of 
wars and revolutions. We  do not, and none of our members has ever advocated 
Kondratiev's long waves, as  the LFI statement of 1st July asserts. But following 
Trotsky we do  recognise there are longer periods in the world economy, which 
decisively shape  the  duration, length and depth of  the business cycle. 
We recognised the  need to open and develop a discussion about world 
capitalism today since it so  clearly bore little resemblance to the picture painted 
in the majority’s  political perspectives. Unfortunately this attempt at a 
scientific debate was  greeted with insults – we were “pessimists” who “welcomed 
good news for  capitalism”.  
We also argued that the working  class, internationally, had moved from a 
period of  international defeats (1980-95) to a period of recovery. But we did 
not mistake  a period of recovery for a period of rude health. We recognised 
that in major  sections of the international workers’ movement militant 
organisations had not  yet been rebuilt. Traditions of struggle and solidarity had not 
yet been become  widespread. The legacy of the former defeats was still a 
weapon used by the  reformist bureaucracies to hinder or hamper the struggles of  
today. 
In short we believe  that we are in a period of transition in world politics. 
We think the recovery  has been uneven. In parts of the world, Japan, 
Britain, USA, Scandinavia,  Russia, the trade unions and workers have remained on the 
defensive. In other  areas – Latin America, France, Greece, the Middle East 
the struggle against  neoliberalism, war and oppression has taken on major 
proportions. Unevenness and  recovery have marked the world class struggle and 
these differing class struggle  situations could not be swept away by simply 
declaring “a world  pre-revolutionary situation”. 
Because we were  prepared to say this, the Majority yell in their 1st July 
statement:  “they systematically ignored or grossly underestimated the strengths 
and scale  of the movements resisting neo-liberalism and imperialist war, 
regarding them as  dead or as good as dead”. This gives a flavour of the 
caricatures and  histrionics that marked the leadership’s polemics against us in the 
latter  period of the political struggle in the LFI. 
The anti-capitalist movement and  the fight for the new international 
Central to the 2003 Congress  perspective was the idea that the “flowering of 
the anti-capitalist movement”,  marking the new pre-revolutionary period, 
made the founding of a new Fifth  International an immediate prospect. It meant “
forming the new International as  soon as possible – not in the distant future 
but in months or years”. The  vehicle for this became the World Social Forum 
and its regional bodies, like the  ESF, and a local social forum movement 
modelled on Italy. This was where  “important elements of the new International 
were taking  shape”. 
In the years that followed 2003  this proved to be a completely wrong 
perspective. The anti-summit protests went  into crisis after the repression of 
Gothenburg and Genoa (2002), the Italian  social forum movement collapsed. In the 
two years following the Florence ESF in  2002, the WSF and the ESF turned 
further right under the leadership of the  Brazilian PT, Italian RC, the PDS of 
Germany, (parties that joined or ran  neo-liberal national or local governments). 
 
These parties  blocked all attempts to turn the ESF/Assembly of Social 
Movements into a  co-ordinating body of struggle, let alone into a new revolutionary 
 international. The Majority refused to recognise that the ESF/WSF has become 
an  obstacle, not a vehicle, for the construction of a revolutionary 
International.  Indeed it declared that, “We will not demand that the mass 
organisations within  the ESF and allied international forums must first ditch their 
reformist and  post Stalinist leaders before they can form a new international.” A 
new  revolutionary international led by the likes of the Rifondazione’s  
Bertinotti! 
In truth the task of  the day was to rally the best revolutionary elements, 
especially from amongst  the radicalised youth and militant union organisations 
in this important  movement, against the leadership and against very purpose 
that the reformists  had now established for the WSF/ESF – an international 
talking shop which they  could use to refurbish their left credentials. The 
Majority could not say this  because they thought it was an embryonic 
international, they could not fulfil  the Marxist duty to say “what is” – that this 
movement had to be split into  competing trends if a revolutionary international 
was to come about.   
Instead the LFI  leadership declared that “we were nearer the tasks Marx 
faced at the beginning  of the First (international) than Trotsky in 1938.” That 
is, nearer to  refounding the International as a united front with reformist 
leaders, but in  this case where the revolutionary Marxists were an 
insignificant minority with  little influence. The analogy with the First International 
was laughable. What  was being proposed was an echo of the call made in the 
1980s for a new  international in which Trotskyists would be in the minority, a 
call popularised  by the Argentinean centrist leader at that time, Nahuel 
Moreno.   
This new strategy  for the LFI was accompanied by a turn away from argument 
and discussion with  leftward moving groups, often from the Fourth 
International tradition, and from  the fight for revolutionary regroupment. The LFI was no 
longer interested in the  “tiddlers” and “sectarians” who did not recognise 
the potential of the WSF/ESF.  It was now able to address the masses 
gathering in an embryonic  international. 
But the LFI was a  tiny organisation with little implantation in the global 
workers’ movement. The  masses at the WSF/ESF had not responded to its shrill 
calls to form the Fifth  International in the months or years following the 
2003 call. Indeed no allies  amongst other organisations had been found to unite 
with to fight for the Fifth  International – or even take the next step in 
that direction. The leadership  ignored these stubborn facts. It was now 
substituting delusion and schema for  accurate perspectives and revolutionary tactics. 
 
The perspective of a  pre-revolutionary period and the assembling of forces 
for a new international in  the ESF movement in the short term, led the 
Majority declaring that the London  ESF in 2004 would present “unparalleled 
opportunities to transform, radicalise  and re-organise class politics in Britain”. We 
said it wouldn’t, especially  given the weakness of the anti-capitalist 
movement in Britain and the low level  of trade union and class struggle. We were 
proved right but the Majority pressed  on.  
Building “local  social forums in every town and city” (social forums were 
seen as part of the  fight for proto soviet organisations in the pre 
revolutionary period worldwide)  became a “key slogan”. The social forum “movement” – 
which didn’t actually exist  – nevertheless became a key area of work. 
Even after the  dramatic decline of the mass anti-war movement in Britain the 
majority retained  the slogan of building social forums. It had no resonance 
and was a complete  failure wherever we tried to implement it. This slogan, 
along with the call for  a National Social Forum, was only dropped after the 
small turnout at the  Gleneagles G8 summit siege showed how weak the movement was 
in Britain. But even  at the point the LFI majority leaders insisted we had 
been wrong to oppose the  slogan. The majority could not accept that the 
minority were right on anything.  They were becoming impervious to all criticism. 
The Workers’ Party and tactics  towards reformism 
Another area of difference, one  that primarily affected the British section, 
concerned tactics towards  reformism.  
WPB had historically taken a  critical electoral support position towards the 
Labour Party. We regarded  Lenin’s description of the Labour Party as a “
bourgeois workers party” – a party  with a bourgeois reformist programme and 
leadership but with a working class  base mainly through the affiliated trade 
unions – as correct and still accurate.   
The united front – placing demands  on Labour, trying to win its working 
class supporters to struggle and  revolutionary politics, and mobilising reformist 
workers in a fight with their  leaders, inside and outside the Labour Party – 
is still a crucial tactic in our  view. Critical electoral support was part 
of this tactic – gaining a hearing  with reformist workers, putting their party 
to the test of office, winning these  workers to a revolutionary alternative. 
This was a tactic not a strategy –  if we had been larger we would have stood 
revolutionary candidates against  Labour. We supported “class struggle 
candidates” where workers in struggle  represented a real break from Labour and 
stood against the party. We actively  supported and helped build the Socialist 
Alliance (SA). One of our faction’s  members was a parliamentary candidate for it 
in Greenwich while another was on  the SA’s executive. 
Part of this struggle against  Labour reformism was a fight to democratise 
the political fund. This was  designed to break Labour’s monopoly hold on TU 
political funds and allow unions  nationally and locally to fund and support 
other working class political parties  as well as Labour – like the SSP in 
Scotland. This was the position WP argued  for in the SA and was a tactic the 
Alliance used with some success with many  faction members playing a leading role in 
mobilising a thousand strong trade  union conference on the issue.  
In the last two years, against our  opposition, WP has abandoned all of these 
positions. It now calls on trade  unionists to disaffiliate from Labour even 
though there is no “workers’ party”  to affiliate to. This is a recipe for 
encouraging the growth of apolitical trade  unionism – a danger that now faces 
the FBU since its disaffiliation from Labour.  The WPB leadership calls for a 
general abstentionist position in elections –  calling on workers not to vote 
is somehow “relating to the vanguard”. Worse, in  one document they went so 
far as to say WPB was not “putting demands on Labour  in this conjuncture.” So, 
no demands on them to repeal anti-unions laws,  anti-asylum seeker laws and 
so on? This was getting ludicrous.   
Rejecting critical electoral  support was even the case where there was a 
real threat of fascist gains. While  the UAF called on people to vote anyone but 
the BNP, WPB tells workers  threatened with a fascist council election victory 
not to bother to vote at  all! 
Of course, we don’t think voting  Labour will defeat fascism. We need to 
defeat them on the streets and through a  fight for a real revolutionary 
alternative to capitalism. But we do think it is  necessary – indeed it is an 
elementary united front tactic – to block them  building an electoral base for fascism 
wherever we can. If a revolutionary  candidate or a serious candidate of 
struggle is not standing we should  critically support Labour under such 
circumstances. 
The Majority’s statement on the  split tries to make out that because we take 
this position we are “soft on  Labour”. Far from it. The argument over the 
workers’ party was about how to  relate to both the vanguard who are deeply 
disillusioned with Labour and, at the  same time, to the mass of organised 
workers and trade unionists who still vote  Labour against the Tories. Many of these 
workers have illusions in Gordon Brown  or other left figures and campaigns 
in the Labour Party. The RMT, for example,  which has been kicked out of the 
Labour Party nevertheless continues to support  politically and financially left 
wing Labour MPs. 
With the collapse of the Socialist  Alliance, the diversion of many of its 
militants into a populist, non-socialist  alternative, Respect, and a continuing 
low level of trade union struggle in  Britain, we did not think the workers’ 
party tactic was a central one to use in  the current situation. In the 
absence of substantial organised trade union  forces driving for a new party we 
thought it would have little resonance as an  operative tactic – no more resonance 
in fact than the clear and straightforward  idea that the party that workers 
needed was a revolutionary party. There was no  short cut to this goal, no 
quick fix via a “new mass workers’ party”, and it  remained vital to engage with 
vanguard militants on the need to join with us in  the fight to build a 
revolutionary party. 
We think the severely muted  response, around the country, to the launch of 
the Socialist Party’s Campaign  for a New Workers Party (barely a regional or 
town meeting over 60 people and  often a lot less) confirms that this tactic is 
not useful for revolutionaries at  the moment. Yet this has now become the 
central, “over-arching” campaigning work  of WPB, the key, unifying element of 
the group’s  agitation. 
The IS asserts that because we  opposed the new workers’ party tactic 
politically, the IF in WPB “boycotted  the areas of work that they did not approve 
of, like campaigning for a new  workers’ party.” In fact at union national 
conferences (Unison, NUT, Natfhe, for  example) it was IF members who loyally 
pressed the case, and faction members  initiated or were involved in campaign 
launches in Sheffield, South Wales and  south London. 
Finally and ironically, abandoning  critical support was never applied to LFI 
sections in Sweden or the Czech  Republic where the League continued to 
advocate a vote for neo-liberal social  democratic parties that have been in power 
for many years. 
The new turn to  agitation 
The Majority paints a picture of  the IF resisting a new turn to agitation, 
that we “attempt  to move the League firmly in the direction of passive 
propagandism and a  discussion circle existence.” Moreover, we are an “embittered” 
group of  trade unionists who are unable to recruit to WPB.  
Of course any revolutionary trade  unionist will tell you that after the 
defeats of Thatcherism, the shrinking of  the unions and the strengthening of the 
reformist union bureaucracy via the anti  union laws, it is not easy to win 
recruits to revolutionary politics. This is  even more the case in a period like 
today of very low levels of trade union  struggle. If it was as easy to 
recruit in the unions as the leaders of the LFI  think the far left would not be so 
much smaller, and, frankly more marginal, now  than it was even 10 years ago. 
We recognised many years ago that  there was a radicalisation amongst youth 
and it is through Revolution youth work  that WPB has recruited. And all the 
faction supported this work. Indeed we  helped build it.  However, as the  
political struggle deepened the majority began to exclude faction supporters  from 
youth work. They created or maintained separate youth branches and cells,  
even where those branches were patently failing to build independent Revo  
groups, as in London, for example. The youth branches and cells were used as  
exclusion zones by the majority - a purely factional decision by them to reduce  our 
influence amongst a layer of their supporters who by this time were being  
systematically miseducated. 
Yet we never learned from the  majority what their new turn to agitation 
consisted of. For WPB it seemed to  come down to “a few more stalls, more 
leafleting, more nights of activity” and  some talk about using the methods of Revo to 
attract workers – campaigns, street  theatre etc. The only political campaign 
mentioned was the Campaign for a New  Workers’ Party – hardly a roaring 
success in getting workers along to meetings,  let alone recruiting them to 
revolutionary politics. 
The IS  says the IF “favour of a tailist and routinist perspective in the 
trade unions.” The irony is that it  is the trade union members of the faction, 
the bulk of the trade union base of  WPB just expelled, were the ones who 
undertook some of the most political  actions in the last period and demonstrated 
what real revolutionary agitation  was. Our teachers, for example, were 
instrumental in bringing out their schools  on strike in London, bringing pupils and 
parents onto the streets, the day Blair  invaded Iraq. These were some of the 
only trade union actions against the war in  the country. 
What the Majority leadership  objected to, in their impatience and 
voluntarism, was that to rebuild confidence  and organisation amongst workers and to 
begin to build a militant leadership in  a workplace takes a lot of ordinary, 
everyday, union work, alongside communist  work. Unfortunately the Majority duped 
a lot of young members with little  experience of workplace and union work 
into going along with them on this,  dubbing such work “routinism” reflecting a 
“conservative  outlook”. 
International youth  work and democratic centralism 
We are accused of attacking “the  youth work that was so successful in 
Britain and Austria” in the LFI statement.   
WPB had moderate success for a  small group in this area of work. Revolution 
has been very good at drawing young  people into WPB, less successful in 
establishing a genuine independent youth  movement. Its annual national conferences 
have hovered around 40-50 people. But  only in one town, Leeds had we managed 
to established a self–sustaining active  Revo group.  
In Austria results are disputed,  as half the organisation, mostly young 
members, left shortly after the Athens  ESF leaving only five members in the 
section. The comrades who left claim the  success of the Revo work in Austria is 
much exaggerated by the full-timer and  International Secretariat member there. 
The IF certainly thought that the  rush to push the international Revo 
groups, which were often struggling to  establish themselves nationally, into a 
fully blown international democratic  centralist structure – while not wrong in 
principle – was premature. It flowed  from the IS’s desire to prove that not 
only a new Fifth international was on the  cards but that we were on the way to 
building a youth international as well. In  fact despite the occasional 
successful youth meeting at ESFs we had discovered  few co-thinkers willing to join 
us in this task. 
A Revolution International  Committee (RIC) was set up, and a Bureau to meet 
in between. Neither functioned  very well and at the first sign of differences 
a tendency, described by the IS  as “libertarian”, in the German and Swiss 
Revo groups, were suddenly being  denounced as people who “flouted” democratic 
centralism. We said that this  problem demonstrated that the drive towards 
democratic centralism should be  reconsidered. We were duly denounced as “
effectively surrendering to the  libertarian and anarchising trends that are trying 
to split Revo in Germany,  Czech Republic and Switzerland away from its 
association with the  League.” 
We replied: “Whatever happened to the idea that we were trying to build  
broad, fairly loose Revo organisations that might contain members of other  
tendencies, including libertarians? Genuinely independent organisations, in  their 
majority under our political leadership, a leadership not imposed but won  
through argument and activity?”  
No, for the super  centralists of the LFI majority all Revo groups must 
immediately follow to the  letter the directions and campaigns decided by the RIC 
and a new two person  bureau (of LFI members) in Leeds. This is a recipe for 
driving young people into  the arms of libertarians, and for splits. It is 
completely inappropriate for the  current stage and state of Revolution 
internationally. It is destroying it as an  organisation. 
The internal  struggle and the expulsions 
The LFI, WPB and most other  sections, have a strong tradition of democratic 
debate, of political tendencies  forming and dissolving and of a collective 
leadership representing various  strands of opinion. This has been increasingly 
undermined over the last two  years. 
In WPB we were forced to turn from  a tendency to a faction in order to 
guarantee our proportional representation on  the National Committee at our 
national conference last March. As a result of us  taking this justified action the 
NC majority immediately barred us from  representation on the Political 
Committee (PC), the weekly meeting executive.  This was despite the fact that two 
minority Tendency members had worked loyally  on the PC for the entire preceding 
year without incident. From that moment the  PC became a weapon in the hands 
of the majority faction to be used,  systematically, against the minority 
Faction. 
Soon disciplinary commissions were  hunting down those suspected of talking 
to outsiders about the political  divisions in the group (invariably faction 
members). Despite the Majority’s  efforts no evidence was ever found – because 
there wasn’t any. The Manchester  branch was unconstitutionally split with a “
youth cell” being formed reporting  directly to the PC – a measure about to 
be challenged at our National Committee  before our expulsion. 
When a crisis broke out in the  Austrian section – leading to the 
resignations of half of the organisation - the  IF was immediately accused by the IS of 
meddling in it and using it for  factional advantage. There was no evidence for 
this, but just as truth was no  longer getting in the way of the majority’s 
political perspectives it was now  also no barrier to their organisational 
offensive against the faction. Indeed  such was the scale of the witch-hunt 
against us that all personal e-mails  between comrades in the League which even 
mentioned the Austrian crisis were  demanded to be handed over to the 
International Secretariat on pain of  discipline. The aim was a trawling expedition to “
pin something” on the IF.  These outrageous demands imposed on the Austrian 
opposition undoubtedly helped  to drive the young comrades away from the League. 
All factional struggles can lead  to a breakdown in comradely relations. 
These measures contributed to a breakdown  of trust of comrades in the LFI 
leadership.  
By the time WPB assembled for its  pre-congress aggregate in June the IF had 
been denounced as “passive  propagandists”, “a petit bourgeois formation”, “
a clique” and “liquidationists”.  The leadership clearly thought it was re 
fighting the 1940 Cannon-Shachtman  struggle in the US SWP with quotes flying 
around from “From a scratch to the  danger gangrene” – second time round this 
really was  farce. 
The Majority had made clear that  whatever the support the IF had at Congress 
they would keep control of all of  the executive committees – the 
International Secretariat and the WPB PC were by  now virtually one and the same thing 
with overlapping membership. Given the IF’s  experience of what this factional 
control meant it was no surprise that  discussions started on whether we would 
be better taking our differences and our  politics into the class struggle 
outside of the framework of the  League. 
Recently we started polling  members of the IF on the question of whether we 
should resign as a block before  or after the congress. The vote was never 
completed before the IS gained access  to (or hacked into) the Faction e-list and 
proceeded to expel everyone in the  faction whatever their opinion on this 
matter. On the very day of the expulsions  members of the IF were working 
loyally on the July issue of WPB’s newspaper,  carrying out the discipline of the 
group as they had done for the whole two  years they were in opposition. 
The Majority are publishing their  side of the story – which the outside 
observer will note involves an awful lot  of insults against this or that faction 
member but not very much about the  politics of the dispute. We on the other 
hand have chosen to highlight the  political character of our struggle inside 
the LFI. The reason for this is that,  above all, we are political activists, 
now, in the past, and for many years to  come. We don’t feel personally 
injured, embittered or demoralised by the  political fight we waged in the LFI. 
It is time to move on and we will  leave the screaming and shouting to those 
who have expelled us. We will move on  to the formation of a new organisation 
to continue our struggle and to the  production of a new magazine in Britain – 
Permanent Revolution. We will  be bringing into it the core of the 
established leadership of WPB and almost  half the membership of WPB, including most of 
its trade unionists. We bring into  it the Australian section of the League, 
WPA, plus comrades from Ireland and  Sweden.   
We are confident that our new  organisation will press forward and win more 
adherents. We are ready to face our  new challenge.  
3rd July 2006   
Contact us  at: 
_prtendency at btinternet.com_ (mailto:prtendency at btinternet.com)  
_www.permanentrevolution.net_ (http://www.permanentrevolution.net/)   (under 
construction) 
The  following members of the LFI have been expelled. 
Adrian  S (WPB) – member since 1984 
Alison  H (WPB) - 1989  
Andrew  J (Dublin) - 2004 
Andy  J (Galway) - Founder member Irish Workers Group 1975 
Andy  S (WPB) - Founder member WPB 1975 
Bill  J (WPB) - 1986 
Carlene  W (WPA) - 1991 
Dan  J (WPB) - 2002 
Dave  A (WPB) - 1993 
Dave  E (WPB) – 1986 
Dave  G (WPB) – 1992 
George  B (WPB) - 1986 
Helen  W (WPB) - 1979 
James  T (WPB) - 2003 
Jason T (WPB) -  2001 
Joel  B (AM) - 2002 
John  C (WPB) - 1993 
Jon  B (WPB) - 1984 
Kate  (WPB) - 1984 
Kath  (WPA) - 2002 
Keith  H (WPB) - 1979 
Kirstie  P (WPB) - 1989 
Kr  (WPA) - 2004 
Lisa  F (WPA) - 1994 
Mark  H (WPB) – 1977 
Maureen  G (Galway) - 1985 
Michelle R (WPA) -  2002 
Pauline  A (WPB) - 1980 
Pete  A (WPB) - 1981  
Rekha  K (WPB) - 2002 
Steve  F (WPB) - 1995 
Stuart  K (WPB) - Founder member WPB 1975 
Yuen  C (WPB) - 2002 

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