A few months back, the IMG launched the first issue of its 'new! journal 'Socialist Challenge'.
The aim of this journal was, according to its editor Taria Ali, "to place the question of revolutionary unity at the centre of our political tasks today". There is no doubt that the IMG is trying to address itself to a serious problem.
Over the past decade or so, the opportunities opening up before the Trotskyist movement have rapidly grown. The wide-scale radicalisation of the late sixties - symbolised in the growth of the Women's Liberation, Black and student movements - has more recently been given a central thrust by the deepening 'politicisation' of the labour movement. This politicisation, creating a major crisis in the Labour Party, has drawn thousands into challenging the 'strategy! of the reformist Moreover, the Communist Party is unable to 'take advantage' of the situation since it has become increasingly rent with internal divisions stemming from the contradictions facing Stalinism as a world movement. The attempt to disass -ociate themselves from the worst crimes of the Soviet bureaucracy to gain increased 'electoral support' has already led to a significant split in their own ranks which lessens their credibility among wide layers on the left.
The possibilities before the Trotskyist movement of reaching out and winning large layers disillusioned with the role of reformism and of Stalinism is greater today than ever before. The main obstacle to this remains - as the IMG correctly notes - the fragmentation of the left which confuses and disillusions those who could be won to revolutionary positions.
How to overcome this iragmentation - how to create a unity which can pose as a real alternative before those thousands beginning to break from the reformist and Stalinist strangle-holdremains the major task in the period ahead. Fragmentation A pre-requisite for beginning such a process of regroupment is understanding the causes and roots of the present fragmentation. It is hardly enough, as the IMG seem to think, to issue 'proclamations! for unity in order for such unity to be established. Such short-cut methods - ignoring the nature of the differences between the left tendencies and how these differences arose -can only repeat the mistakes of the past and lay the basis for the splits of the future.
In many ways, the present 'confusion' can be traced back to the discontinuity of the Trotskyist movement created, in the early sixties, the serious degeneration of the SLL (now the WRP). This degeneration - symbolised most of all in its hostile attitude to the Cuban revolutioncreated a major vacuum on the British left.
Such a vacuum was rapidly filled by the growth of groups such as the SWP who, cut off from the traditions of the Trotskyist movement or conssciously rejecting them, were incapable of relaiing to the complex and uneven development of the „class struggle over the past decade or so.
Their lack of political 'method' was manifested, most clearly, in their constant tendency to adapt to the milieu in which they were working. explains their often abrupt changes in position -particularly on the Labour Party - as the milieu in which they were operating changed.
Adaptationism of this sort meant that the recrruitmeni to these groups was never based on a common understanding of the way forward. While the momentum of the class struggle was on the increase, the internal differences were held together but - the moment it slowed up - they burst forth with dramatic clarity. The recent 'splits', divisions and expulsions that have littered the left are, in a very real sense, the price the left is having to pay for its earlier lack of political The positive aspect of this process is that it, at least, shows growing numbers have begun to probe the inability of groups such as the SWP or IMG to relate to the real dynamic of the struggle as it has unfolded over the past decade Programme Such an inability has been revealed in two main ways. First, it is reflected in the leconomism' of the British left which has rendered it incapable of coming to grips with the complex (and often new) forms of struggle that have emerged during the past period such as the rise of feminist or nationalist consciousness in Ireland, Scotland & SOCIALIST ACTION
Refusing often to support and pioneer these struggles has not only alienated wide layers from socialism but has afforded the 'right' the opportunity to launch offensives to divide and weaken the labour movement. The left's response to the racist witch-hunt of last year, the anti- abortion campaign of SPUC or the continued presence of troops in Ireland has been pathetic.
Their virtual abstention on these issues - while making a 'token' gesture in their direction in the odd article in their press - represents an accommodation to the backwardness of the labour movement. It reveals an inability to understand that taking up such issues is not only key in pioneering the rights of the doubly-oppressed but also in rooting out of the labour movement those prejudices which the ruling class will play on in the period ahead to divide & weaken working people.
Secondly, this 'economism' has been complem -ented by an inability to view these struggles as part of a broader strategy of struggle within the labour movement against its reformist leaders. Groups such as the IMG - and still today the SWP - believed it was possible to 'bypass' the Labour Party without building a serious opposition against its right-wing leaders.
The sectarian 'antics' of the SWP seeking to counterpose itself to the Labour Party - and the accommodation to this position by the IMG in its attempts to gain common 'electoral fronts' with the SWP - represents a diversion from such a The 'fragmentation! that exists today is not, therefore, accidental. It stems from the political confusion of the left over the past period creasing numbers - questioning the limitations of their groups - have split, been expelled or created internal tendencies.
Overcoming such a 'fragmentation! cannot be achieved, as the IMG leadership would like to think, by waving a magical 'unity' wand ignores the serious differences that exist around strategic aspects of the class struggle within Britain and internationally. Attempts to create a unity on an unclear programmatic basis will. only result in a unity built on sand that can 'crumble! away at any time.
The only way that the present fragmentation can be overcome in the period opening up - and it is an urgent task - is by adopting a perspective that combines:
a) engaging in a serious political debate among the left to clarify points of agreement and disagb) creating as much unity as possible among the left on key issues - such as Ireland, abortion or the present Immigration laws - which can provide layers outside the organised left with a perspective for struggle.
It is in the process of working together around concrete issues and carrying on a serious debate on major programmatic questions that the basis for a possible regroupment will be opened up. Such a regroupment will emerge out of a unity forged at the level oi both theory and practice. This is the perspective of the LSA.
Debate It is in this spirit that the LSA has published its current Perspectives Document. Such a document does not aim at a detailed 'conjunctural' analysis. Its aim is to draw up a balance sheet of the dynamic of the class struggle over the past decade or so and to project, on the basis of that analysis, a programme of action for socialists in the period ahead.
Such a document, accepted by the LSA at its last conference, is offered as the basis for a serious discussion. The LSA welcomes both individuals and groups who would like to 'contributel to that discussion & will print all contribut -ions in the forthcoming issue of Socialist Action. We believe that such a debate - taking up the most urgent issues facing the left - is the most fruitful way today of beginning to overcome the fragmentation that exists.
Such an approach lacks the 'gimmicks' and 'get rich quick' solutions of the IMG. The LSA is convinced, however, that the building of a serious revolutionary party cannot be achieved by these methods but only by agreement on a concrete programme rooted in the method of Trotsky's Transitional Programme.
23.7.1977.