If we consider the history of Lenin's organisational positions prior to 1914, we see that in neither of the major cases of "splits' in which he was involved did he favour a split of the Party on political grounds. In 1903 he carried through a faction struggle against the Mensheviks but opposed any split in the Party. In 1912 he supported expelling Mensheviks from une Party - DUE because they refused to submit to Party discipline. At this point in time, advocacy of the political line of Menshevism within the Party was perfectly permissible provided that it accepted organisation and discipline taction of pro-Party Mensheviks within the Party.
None of this should lead to the view that Lenin (of all people!) was unprincipled or 'soft' on questions of organisational principle or political struggle. It means merely that he considered the differences at this period as differences within the Party objects of a faction struggle but not a split in the Party. FINAL BREAK When it comes to 1914, however, we find Lenin demands an absolute split into separate parties. What had previously been deviations within the Party - over Menshevism. Bernsteinism. economism cic. — were now aermacy sown in une areatest events or me class struggie to be oursiae the working class and its Party.
Lenin s reaction was immediate. His very tirst statement on the war declared: "The betrayal of socialism by most leaders of the Second International (1889-1914) signifies the ideological and political bankruptcy of the International ..... It must be the task of the future International resolutely and irrevocably to rid itself of this bourgeois He declared that international Menshevism had definitively passed to the historical camp of the bourgeoisie, and that their parties, although com- hence the party?" (10). SWP] Trotsky also pointed out: In conducting the policy of a faction and educating its cadres on the experience of this policy, the Left Opposition, however, did not hide from itself nor from others that a new defeat of the proletariat, resulting from the poncy or centrisin, would meviably acqure a decisive character and would demand a drastic review of our position on the question: faction or As a final check on Trotsky's method, consider the last great political struggle of his life - against the Burnham-Shachtman-Abern opposition in the SWP. This was a tendency whose leading members carried through open revisions of Marxism in their rejection of dialectical materialism and their charac terisation of the Soviet Union as bureaucratic coll ectivist'; and Trotsky characterised the opposition as a whoic as petty bourgeos PARODY On the Healyite method, of course, there is no doubt what to do witnese people them. Cliff Slaughter, in his introduction to the WRP's edition of In Defence of Marxism, states: 'Cannon and the SWP majority leadership fought tenaciously to defend and build the Party and to tractable to every attempt to win them to revolutionary positions' (page xi).
Once again, Healyism decides to render Trotsky more protound: nere is what trotsky, as opposca te Slaughter, had to say on this question. Far from being an advocate of 'driving people out', he was a relentless opponent of a split:
'Dear Friend [John G Wright-a leader of the about the necessity for a firm, even implacable endorse completely your opinion theoretical and political fight against the petty bourgeois tendencies of the opposition. You will