One of the main ideological themes used by the dominant class during the 1990s, in order to maintain its ideological domination over society, was the supposed economic health and prosperity of its system. According to this fable, following the recession of 1990-91, the American economy enjoyed the longest period of recovery in history. For some years capitalist acolytes even declared that, thanks to the new communication technologies, their system had arrived at an era of permanent prosperity, and that the so-called "business cycle" had been definitively surpassed.

Then, in 1997-98, the explosion of the once exemplary economies of the East Asian "tigers" and "dragons" sent shock waves across the globe. Tales of capitalism's imminent collapse and an open world recession filled the media. Nevertheless, the main capitalist countries-with the exception of Japan-managed to stay out of recession for a couple more years giving some continued credence to the tale of a booming capitalism.

Today there is no more chatter about the wonders of the "new economy" energized by the "internet revolution." It seems so long ago that Bill Clinton bragged: "America's economy is the healthiest in a generation and the strongest in the world." By all accounts, world capitalism is experiencing once again a new fall into the abyss of its chronic economic crisis. All the major economies of the world are officially in open recession or just limping by.

At the center of this new downfall of world capitalism is the American economy-by far the biggest in the world. In the summer of 2001, after months of warnings about a possible economic slowdown, the bourgeoisie suddenly recognized that its economy had been in recession since March of that year. Skyrocketing unemployment and the wave of corporate bankruptcies made it impossible for the bourgeoisie to continue preaching the fiction of a healthy economy, even though by its own account, the economy had still not qualified for an official recession, which the economists define as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Then in the winter of 2001-02, the bourgeoisie suddenly had a change of heart, and magically the recession was officially over as a new myth was born: the US economy has just gone through its shortest and mildest recession in history!

However, no amount of optimism and economic manipulation can hide the severity of the recession that the US is currently experiencing. Even the normally deceiving economic indices that the bourgeoisie uses to evaluate the state of its system don't leave much room to brag about the health of the economy. There are so many black spots that some economists are talking of the dangers of a "double dip recession". For instance:

• Unemployment: The economists can talk all they want about the ongoing recovery, but for people that have lost their jobs and can't find a new one it feels like a recession. According to the Labor Department, there are almost 3 million people nationwide that have been out of work for at least 15 weeks, up more than 50 percent from a year ago. From this 3 million, half have not worked in at least 6 months. The difficulty in finding a new capitalist willing to exploit you once the previous one has decided to "let you go" is not a new phenomenon, but has been a general trend of the last 30 years of chronic economic crisis. When the jobless rate was around 6 percent in 1970 and during the 1980's, as it is supposed to be today, the average length of unemployment was 10 to 12 weeks. In August, according to the Labor Department the average length of unemployment was 16.2 weeks. The impact of this growth in long-term unemployment is causing financial havoc for the laid-off workers. Many who have not worked for months have begun spending retirement savings that were already diminished by the stock market's fall. Others are considering taking low-wage jobs at a fraction of their old pay. Moreover, as usual, the bourgeoisie severely underestimates the number of workers out of a job. Officially, the unemployment rate is floating around 6 percent of the labor force. But, by the "official" bourgeois definition, a worker is only consider unemployed if he/she is receiving unemployment benefits, or is actively looking for a job. Thus, by their own account, 2 million appear to have dropped out of the labor force in the last two years, no longer looking for work and thus not counted as unemployed.
• Fall In Industrial Production: Industry-the real heart of the capitalist economy-has been, according to the economists' statistics, the sector of the economy hardest hit by the recession. Much of the talk about "recovery" has been based on industry's sluggish, but steady rise since last January. Thus, when the Federal Reserve reported that industrial growth stumbled in August, some economists could not avoid talking about the dangers of falling back into recession.
• Fall In Consumer Spending: Just a month ago, a New York Times economic reporter claimed: "One big reason economists remain optimistic that neither the national economy nor manufacturing will backslide into recession is because consumers, whose spending accounts for two-thirds of economic activity, have been holding up amid the economic turbulence." However, although consumer spending is not at all a reliable measure of the state of the economy-individual spending can often be buttressed by consumer debt that will never be repaid- it is symbolic that even this economic indicator is headed downward. Officially, there is a slump in retail sales. In August, retailers announced one of the worse "back-to-school" sale seasons ever, raising worries about the upcoming holiday season. Meanwhile, the real estate market-after a growing wave of speculation that has seen housing prices skyrocket-is starting to cool off amid rising fears of an unavoidable bust of the real estate bubble.
• Stock Market Instability: Ever since the stock market speculation bubble burst over two years ago, things have not been going well for this sacred symbol of capitalism. Last July, the overall market hit a five-year low; and to this day, it has not recovered its previous value, prompting some economists to compare the present stock market slump to the days of the Great Depression.
• Corporate Bankruptcies: The list of bankruptcies is quite long: first were the once celebrated start-up "dot-coms"-many of which never had more than a "virtual" existence. Then came a number of filings in the technological and communications sector. Moreover, in the months following the Enron collapse, many of the titans of American capitalism have been toppled, while others are struggling to avoid bankruptcy. Over 1000 American companies have now restated their earnings since 1997, admitting in effect that they had previously published wrong or misleading profit statements. The existence of these phony accounts means that much of the profit growth of the late 1990s, the ostensible justification for Wall Street's celebrated heights, was equally phony. It would be a mistake to think that this malaise is due only to the greed and "corporate irresponsibility" of a few bad CEOs. In fact, what these so-called "corporate scandals" reveal is a widespread attempt to cheat capitalism's law of value, the very fundamentals of the bourgeoisie's own economic system.
• The Return of the Federal Budget Deficit: Driven largely by the recession and the so-called sluggish recovery, the Federal Budget deficit is projected to reach 1.5% of GDP this year. And as the price-tag of the permanent war in which the American bourgeoisie is currently embarking escalates, the myth of balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility-which the whole bourgeoisie was so fond of just over a year ago-will continue to go up in smoke.

However most of these "economic indices" say little of the impact of the crisis in the working class and other non-exploiters strata, which are really as always bearing the brunt of the economic difficulties of the bourgeoisie. By the bourgeoisie own account "the recession that began in March 2001 has reduced the earnings of millions of Americans -Census Bureau annual report on income and poverty NY Times 9/250-." Of course not every body is suffering the same because while the working class has seen its salaries decline "the gap between rich and poor (has) continued to grow -ibd-."

This document also says that the number of so-called poor Americans rose last year to 32.9 million, an increase of 1.3 millions, reaching 11.7 percent of the total population of the country.

Marxist revolutionaries have repeatedly insisted that so-called recessions are not just a bump in the road of an otherwise healthy economic system, the downturn of the so-called "business cycle." For us, recessions today are nothing more than a particular moment-one more step into the abyss-of the chronic economic crisis of overproduction that a decadent capitalist system, unable to create sufficiently solvent markets for its products, is condemned to suffer. Moreover, coming in the wake of all the propaganda of the 1990s about the "exuberant American economy", this recession is quite important. In particular, it lays bare the feeble basis upon which the prosperity of that decade was built: the stock market speculation; the explosion of personal debt in order to stimulate a consumer binge that allowed overproduction to be hidden to some extent; and the corporate debt that financed a spree of investments in communication technology that have proven to be, to a good degree, useless; being but the most obvious examples of the palliative measures that the bourgeoisie has been forced to adopt.

The stock market bubble: a symbol of the veritable "casino-economy" that characterizes, not the health of capitalism, but its total bankruptcy.

Despite all the talk of "recovery" the fact is that all of the bourgeoisie's attempts to invent various "medicines" with which to revive its economy have been largely ineffectual. Despite the Federal Reserve having lowered its prime interest rate to historic lows, there has not been a revival of the credit market. The effects of the "shot in the arm" given to the economy by the Bush administration's engineered tax cuts, have been, in the long-term, inconsequential. Further, the effects of the rise of military spending necessary to prosecute its "war without end," have yet to hit the economy with their full force.

ES, February 2003.

Introduction

This is the second installment in our two-part series on the historical lessons of the Kronstadt revolt, presented in response to a pamphlet published by the Chicago Revolutionary Network (CHIREVNET) that takes an anarchist perspective on Kronstadt and at the same time seriously misrepresents the ICC's analysis of the events. As we wrote in the introduction to the first part of this article, we have never claimed-contrary to the assertions of CHIREVNET's pamphlet-that the Bolshevik repression at Kronstadt was in any way a "tragic necessity." In sharp contrast, the ICC has always maintained that the repression was a "tragic mistake" that hastened the worldwide counter-revolution against the global revolutionary wave of 1917-1927, and was a major step into the abyss for the Bolshevik Party, a process which led to its eventual betrayal of the working-class and its integration into the state apparatus as the manager of the Russian national capital.

Nevertheless, as we explained in our last issue, even if we recognize the Bolsheviks' grievous error in their conception of revolution, a conception that was used to sanction violence within the working-class as a means of solving the inevitable differences that may arise in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, we do not join CHIREVNET in their anarchist contentions - that if the Bolsheviks committed this terrible repression, this fact-by itself-is evidence that Bolshevik party never stood in the vanguard of the revolution, that it was always a murderous state-capitalist clique destined to usurp the revolution to its own alleged purposes of grabbing state power. CHIREVNET's historical methodology is not a Marxist, not a materialist, one. Instead, it reflects the essentialist moralizing attitude of anarchism that cannot situate historical events in their context, and evaluates historical actors based on how well they live up to, or stray from, preconceived moral precepts divorced from history.

If CHIREVNET is serious about this methodology, we can only ask that it be consistent. As we will see in Part II of our article below, the Bolsheviks were not the only ones holding a flawed conception of the relationship between party and class, and a mistaken position on violence as a means to solve disputes within the class during the period of transition. If CHIREVNET thinks the Kronstadt repression is evidence of Lenin and the Bolsheviks' inherently counter-revolutionary nature, then it should equally denounce the Left Communists of the day, and certain anarchists as well, many of whom mistakenly supported the repression at Kronstadt. Moreover, if substitutionism alone is evidence of a counter-revolutionary nature, as CHIREVNET asserts, it would then also be obliged to denounce Marx and Engels themselves, for they were known to take certain "substitutionist" positions at times - a mistake we in the ICC have never been shy in criticizing.

Thus, we can see how the methodology CHIREVNET-and anarchism and councilism in general-tends to employ only leads to obfuscation of the central historical lessons of Kronstadt, as well as the proverbial, "throwing away of the baby along with the bath water." The ICC agrees with CHIREVNET that Lenin and the Bolsheviks demonstrated, in certain of the their theoretical and political conceptions, a number of profound non-proletarian confusions, distortions and weaknesses. These flaws were a definite factor leading to an, at times, even more flawed political practice in the course of the Russian Revolution. Chief among these errors was the idea that the party should act in the name of the class and should assume control of the state in the period of transition. But as we will show below, this was an error shared by almost the entirety of the workers' movement at the time. In fact, this is one of the real lessons of Kronstadt and the Russian Revolution itself, the lesson that such a conception can lead to an identification of the party with the state, and eventually to the idea that if revolts against the state take place, then these revolts must be counter-revolutionary and thus must be suppressed. This conception was a key factor in the mistaken repression of the Kronstadt revolt: a revolt that, despite its anarchist confusions, and manipulation by counter-revolutionary elements, expressed a real attempt by the working class to reinstitute the workers councils as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In another example of CHIREVNET's oversimplified moralism, it glorifies the Kronstadt revolt unconditionally (employing all types of simplistic leftist phraseology and rhetoric, replete with copious use of the exclamation points even!) refusing to acknowledge or address its confusions and its manipulation by the counter-revolution.

Nevertheless, this picture of the Bolsheviks only gives part of the story. What about their unconditional defense of internationalism in 1914? Or Lenin's work in setting up the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915, the Bolshevik's call to "turn the imperialist war into a civil war," and Lenin's leadership in 1917 in calling for the insurrection against any compromise of the revolution with the bourgeois Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries? Were Lenin and the Bolsheviks counter-revolutionary in these events as well? Were all these exemplary examples of proletarian internationalism just a vicious ploy to seize state power years later? We await CHIREVNET's answer to these questions. The key to examining any period in history from the Marxist perspective is to situate the events in their totality and to draw the lessons this methodology allows. In this regard, it becomes clear that substitutionism and a failure to resist the use of violence within the working class, were failings of this entire historical period in the workers' movement, not the "original sin" of Lenin and the Bolsheviks alone. The task of revolutionaries today is to learn from these mistakes so as not to repeat them in the future, not to engage in a masochistic-moralist attack against the most visible figures, flawed as they were, of this period.

Our intent in publishing this article is to contribute to the process of debate and political clarification within the North American political milieu on what is a very important historical issue for the working-class and its revolutionary minorities. We were thus pleased to receive a response from CHIREVNET to the first part of our article in the form of a flyer. Nevertheless, the content of this flyer is basically a rehashing of the same moral condemnation of Lenin and the Bolsheviks that their original pamphlet espoused, and as such does little to advance the debate. It also criticizes our position as "centrist" and "erroneous," as a blatant exercise in excusing the Bolsheviks'-a part of the ruling class in CHIREVNET's opinion-hijacking of the authentic proletarian revolution of 1917. We certainly welcome the opportunity to continue this debate as part of the process of the working class coming to grips with its own history. However, we must also insist that the debate be carried out in accordance with certain proletarian principles of sincerity and an honest representation of one's opponent's views. In this regard, CHIREVNET's flyer is unfortunately notable for what it doesn't say. Despite our reproach to them for misrepresenting our views on Kronstadt,-an honest mistake we assumed-in writing that the ICC views the repression of Kronstadt as a "tragic necessity," when in fact we have repeatedly criticized groups that defend that position, CHIREVNET fails to clearly retract its previous misrepresentations and set the matter straight with its readers and contacts. Furthermore, CHIREVNET continues to distribute its original pamphlet-uncorrected we assume since we haven't been informed otherwise-where this mistake is printed.

We understand that sometimes in the heat of debate mistakes and errors may be made in representing an opponents' view. But when this happens, the responsible thing for any group or organization to do is to openly admit its error, retract its misrepresentation in a conspicuous way, i.e., in print, and adjust its polemic to account for what the other side really said. CHIREVNET has failed to issue a conspicuous retraction so far, despite the clear and voluminous evidence we gave it that it misrepresented our views. Thus, we must conclude this introduction by calling on CHIREVNET to conspicuously retract its original misstatement of our views in print, and to circulate this retraction to all its regular subscribers and contacts. This would be in continuity with the principles of debate that proletarian organizations have followed in the past.

Moreover, we must also take notice that in responding to Part I of this article, CHIREVNET, in addition to its flyer, also sent us a copy of the Los Angeles Workers Voice's (LAWV) (now calling themselves "United States Workers' Voice" (USWV) article on Kronstadt that cites CHIREVNET's original pamphlet on this question in order to denounce the ICC as "counter-revolutionary" for what is a completely mistaken representation of our views. This is not the place to recount LAWV's current parasitic attack on the groups of the Communist Left (readers can see the article in this issue, as well as Internationalism # 122 and 123). Nevertheless, we also call on CHIREVNET to stop distributing the LAWV article containing a blatant misstatement of our views, a misstatement that CHIREVNET itself is responsible for propagating, and which is now being used by LAWV/USWV, not in a spirit of debate and the open exchange of ideas between revolutionaries, but in a parasitic denunciation of the groups of the Communist Left.

CHIREVNET can be contacted at Perry Sanders, POB 578042, Chicago, IL 60657-8042 (diannas@msn.com [2]). - Internationalism Against the Anarchist Theses: The Lessons Drawn From Kronstadt By the Communist Left.

The only current, while defending the October Revolution, at the same time rejected and condemned the repression of the Kronstadt revolt was the anarchist current. Nevertheless, it is necessary to distinguish among the various tendencies that comprised this current at the time. Certain anarchists, notably the immigrant anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were very close to the Bolshevik Party (and they gave it their full support in October 1917 contrary to other anarchists emanating from the intelligentsia or declassed elements whose anti-Bolshevism clearly expressed the reactionary conceptions of the petty-bourgeoisie).

It is without a doubt that numerous anarchists are correct in their criticisms of the Cheka (the party's political police) and the crushing of the Kronstadt Revolt. The anarchists' problem though, is that their conceptions offer no method for understanding the historical meaning of these events: as witnessed by the analysis of Voline: "Kronstadt is a luminous beacon that lights the way (?) At once the full liberty of discussion, of organization and action was definitively achieved by the laboring masses themselves, along the true route of independent popular production, the rest flows automatically from these acquisitions." (Voline, The Unknown Revolution).

Thus, according to Voline, it is sufficient for the Kronstadt Revolt to be victorious for the rest to "follow automatically." In reality, though, even if the revolt had spread to the rest of Russia, even if the Kronstadt insurgents had won their battle, this would have done nothing to solve the essential problem of this epoch: the international isolation of the soviet bastion to one country. (However, it is true that in the logic of the anarchists, as one can see demonstrated in their analysis of the "proletarian revolution" in Spain of 1936, the Marxist analysis according to which communism cannot be established except at the international level is always a secondary concern.) Such an underestimation of the difficulties and of the necessity of a rapid international extension of the revolutionary process is a real poison for the consciousness of the proletariat, which masks the first and most important lesson of the Kronstadt revolt, a comprehension of the fact that any revolution that remains isolated in one country is irredeemably doomed to failure. 1. The Proletarian Revolution Must be International Or It Is Nothing

The proletarian revolution can only succeed at a global level. It is impossible to abolish capitalism or "build socialism" in one country, but only by the extension of proletarian political power across the entire planet. Without this extension, the degeneration of the revolution is inevitable, regardless of whatever changes are effected in the economy. This was exactly Lenin's point when he declared in 1918 that the Russian proletariat waited with impatience for the extension of the revolution in Europe, because if the proletariat of Western Europe did not quickly come to the aid of Soviet Russia (which had begun to be asphyxiated by the economic blockade of the world bourgeoisie) the latter would be condemned.

For the anarchists, the Bolsheviks were determined to crush the workers and sailors of Kronstadt because they were, according to the terminology of Voline, "statist, authoritarian Marxists." In reality, what Voline and the whole anarchist current have never understood, is that the disappearance of workers' democracy, which bled the soviets of any real proletarian life, was the direct consequence of the tragic impasse in which the Russian revolution found itself trapped. It is from this incomprehension of the real movement and the general historical dynamic of the world proletariat that the anarchists rewrite and interpret history in their own fashion through their old anti-Marxist, anti-party and "anti-authoritarian" theoretical frame. In this manner, the anarchist ideology provides more ammunition for the anti-communist campaigns of the bourgeoisie, which have as their objective to perpetuate, before the proletariat, the lie that there exists a pretend "continuity-theoretical, practical and historical" between Lenin and Stalin, between the Revolution of October 1917 and the Stalinist counter-revolution. Because Marxism defends the formation of a proletarian political party, calls for the centralization of the proletariat's forces and recognizes the inevitability of a state in the period of transition to communism, it is condemned, according to the anarchists, to conclude in the execution of the masses. Such "eternal truths" have no utility for the understanding of the real historic process and for drawing out the lessons that must be stressed to the future revolutionary movement.

In this context, we must now ask; what were the real lessons of the tragedy of Kronstadt drawn by the Communist left? 2. Violence Can Never Be a Means to Solve Disputes Within the Working Class Itself.

Revolutionary violence is a weapon that the proletariat is forced to use in its fight against the capitalist class. However, in regards to disputes within the proletariat, violence can have no place, as it cannot but destroy the class' unity, its solidarity, its cohesion and engender demoralization and a loss of hope.

Under no pretext, can violence serve as an instrument within the working class because it is not a method for the acquisition of consciousness. The proletariat cannot acquire the latter except through its own experience of the class struggle and the constantly self-critical examination of this experience. This is why violence within the working class, whatever its immediate motivation, cannot but serve to interfere with the masses own self-activity; and, in the end, constitute the most profound hindrance to its acquisition of class consciousness, which is the indispensable condition for the triumph of communism. In this sense, even if certain fractions of the working class demonstrate errors or confusions, the "just line" cannot be imposed upon them by the force of arms by another fraction, even if it is the majority. The uprising at Kronstadt did, in fact, constitute a weakening of the proletarian bastion, at the level of its cohesion and unity. However, the repression of Kronstadt constituted a weakening even more profound and dangerous and hastened the degeneration of the revolution altogether. 3. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat Is Not That of A Party:

The tragedy of the Russian Revolution, and in particular the massacre of Kronstadt, was that the entirety of the workers' movement of the day lacked clarity regarding the role of the party in the exercise of proletarian power. In fact, within the workers' movement the idea that, as in the bourgeois revolution, it was the party that must exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat in the name of the working class, still held currency. However, contrary to other revolutions in human history, the proletarian revolution requires the constant active participation of the whole of the working class. This means that under no circumstances can it tolerate, under the threat of immediately opening up a course of degeneration, neither the "delegation" of power to a party, nor the substitution of a body of specialists or any fraction of the working class-as revolutionary as they may be-for the whole of the working class itself. It is equally due to this reason that when the state raises itself up against the working class, as it did in the case of Kronstadt, the role of the party-as an emanation from, and the vanguard of, the proletariat-is not to defend the state against the working class, but to lead the struggle on the side of the latter against the state. 4. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat Cannot Be Identified With the State:

At the time of the Russian Revolution, there existed a general confusion in the workers' movement, which identified the dictatorship of the proletariat with the state that appeared following the overthrow of the Tsarist regime. This state came to be represented by the All-Russian Congress of Delegates of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants' Soviets. Proletarian power, instead of being manifested through the specific organs of the working class (factory assemblies and workers' councils) was identified with the apparatus of the state (territorial soviets, emanating from all the non-exploiting social strata).

Yet, as clearly brought to the forefront by the Italian Communist Left at the end of the 1930's and the Gauche Communsite de France following that, in drawing the lessons of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, the autonomy of the proletariat means that, under no circumstances, can the unitary and political organs of the working class subordinate themselves to state institutions, as that can only have the effect of diluting these proletarian organs and cause them to abdicate their communist program, which is their proper subject and their real concern. Holding these conceptions that plagued the workers' movement of the day (the idea of a "proletarian state") any resistance on the part of the workers against the state apparatus could only be considered as "counter-revolutionary." At no moment, can the proletariat relax its vigilance vis a vis the state apparatus, as the events of Kronstadt and the Russian experience as a whole have shown that the counter-revolution can very well manifest itself through the channel of the post-insurrectional state and not merely in the form of a bourgeois aggression from the "exterior".

As tragic and as devastating as the Bolshevik mistakes were, it is not the latter, but really the isolation of the Russian Revolution, that was the basis for its degeneration. If the revolution had been able to spread, in particular in the form of a victorious insurrection in Germany, it is highly probable that these errors could have been corrected in the course of the revolutionary process itself. This possibility is witnessed by the positions defended by Lenin in the debate of 1920-1921 in which he was opposed to Trotsky on the question of the unions (a debate that transpired at the 10th Party Congress at the same time as the Kronstadt events unfolded). Thus, just as Trotsky defended the idea that the unions must become an apparatus for the instruction of the working class by the "proletarian" state, Lenin-in disagreement with this analysis-argued that the workers must defend themselves against their "own state", particularly in his estimation that the soviet regime had become no longer a proletarian state but a "workers' and peasants' state" with "profound bureaucratic deformations."

Elsewhere, in 1922, in a report presented to the central committee of the party, it was in these terms that Lenin began to perceive that the counter-revolution had raised its head within Russia itself and that the party apparatus, bureaucratized as it had become, was headed in the wrong direction in regards to the real interests of the proletariat: "The machine is in the process of evading the hands of the conductor: in fact, one could say that there is someone at the controls, who manages this machine, but this manager follows another path from that which is required, it is driven by some invisible hand (…) Only god knows to whom this hand belongs, perhaps a speculator, perhaps a private capitalist, or perhaps both at the same time. The fact is that the machine does not go in the direction of the requirements of those whom are supposed to be in control and, sometimes, it goes-in fact-in the opposite direction." B and C From Revolution Internationale # 310, March 2001.

Internationalism, February 2003.

The November 2002 issue of Internationalist Notes (publication of the newly constituted Internationalist Workers Group regrouping the remaining sympathizers of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP) in the US and Canada) rejects the ICC's expression of solidarity in the face of the Los Angeles Workers Voice's (LAWV) parasitic attacks against the IBRP(see Internationalism 122). Readers will recall that in that article we not only defend the IBRP against the ludicrous LAWV accusation that it was no longer a working class organization, but also supported the IBRP's criticism of LAWV's reprehensible behavior on the organizational level and its headlong retreat from the political legacy of the communist left. Calling our article an "unfortunate intervention," IN criticizes specifically our criticism of the LAWV for violating revolutionary principles of fraternalism and organizational functioning because "they held secret and private political and organizational discussions in Los Angeles." Dismissing our expression of solidarity, IN writes:

"As usual with the ICC there is always a clear lack of proportion in their accusations. Though the LA group is clearly localist, the ICC needs to add accusations on its effort to characterize them as parasites so as to give support to their own sectarian theory of parasitism. How else could the LA people meet other than privately as the closest IBRP supporter was many hundreds of miles away? This has permitted the LA group to respond to the ICC accusation in a way that can imply that the IBRP could have demanded some kind of mandatory observation at those meetings."

Of course, we're not so stupid or naïve that we don't recognize that geographically dispersed militants in revolutionary organizations normally meet without the physical presence of comrades from other geographical locales. However, we are well aware that geographically dispersed militants in revolutionary organizations communicate with each other through letters, documents, texts, minutes, etc. and have a responsibility to keep each other and the rest of the organization informed of discussions and decisions, which are taken within a shared framework. Our point was that these "private" meetings in LA were held secretly, that they violated earlier collective decisions and were deliberately hidden from the other comrades - just as the comrades who recently split from the ICC held secret meetings hidden from the organization, in gross violation of our statutes.

Just for the record, the "unfortunate intervention" we made in Internationalism 122 in regard to these "private" meetings was the following:

"The LAWV carried out political intrigue and maneuvering within the IBRP, holding secret and private political and organizational discussions in Los Angeles, without the participation, or even the knowledge, of AS, or the rest of the IBRP. They disregarded the rules and mode of functioning in revolutionary organizations, and of the comportment of comrades within a proletarian organization. The fruit of this bourgeois leftist mode of operation was the unilateral taking of organizational decisions, and eventual announcement of abrupt changes in basic class line positions without even a murmur of discussion within the organization. When criticized for these gross organizational violations, the LAWV responded with personalized attacks against AS, and with slanders against the IBRP. A group of individuals who carry on secret, clandestine political decision-making within the organization had the temerity to denounce the organization as being undemocratic!!!"

We are of course a bit baffled by IN's apparent complete turn around on LA's comportment, for our comments in that article were merely a paraphrase of what the IBRP and the militants of IN themselves had already published on this episode. The defense of "private" discussions in Los Angeles in the November Internationalist Notes constitutes a retreat from the clarity of the IBRP's own previous analysis and description of the situation in its external press and on its web site, upon which Internationalism drew heavily in writing our previous article.

For example, in the "Statement Regarding the Relationship of Los Angeles Workers Voice (LAWV) with the IBRP", which was originally published on the IBRP web site, and which IN republishes as part of the November 2002 article, "The IBRP, Internationalist Notes and the US Workers Voice," the IBRP explained unprincipled secret behavior of the LAWV in these terms:

"Thus, although LAWV formally agreed to work in tandem with the Bureau the differences between us were growing rather than diminishing. Rather than tackle these differences politically as they emerged, LAWV preferred to pretend they did not exist and instead produced a smokescreen of diversions and virulent attacks on the IBRP comrade elsewhere in the USA, including demanding his expulsion from the Bureau."

"…they agreed to take on the work of publishing Internationalist Notes Volume 3. When it finally came out, however this was labeled 'US Workers Voice magazine' and all reference to the existence of other IBRP supporters in the US was omitted, including acknowledgement of the articles contributed. All this was no accident. To the criticisms that there should be a collective discussion of all US comrades on the contents of the publication, LA replied that from now on 'the majority' (i.e. themselves) would decide. This is their idea of resisting 'authoritarian' practice! Theoretically there was little to distinguish this effort as a publication o the communist left."

"Now post hoc (since it was never part of the discussion)…LA now find that the Bureau is 'non-working class', not to mention favoring Bolshevik methods of 'top-down elitism and commandism.'…LA are now resorting to slanders, which pre-empt all further discussion".

A similar point of view on the danger of the so-called private discussions in Los Angeles, also appeared in the article "The Debate Among IBRP Sympathizers in the US," by AS.This article presented very persuasively and correctly the argument that the regroupment in April 2000 of militants in Los Angeles and Wisconsin (now Indiana) as a sympathizing section of IBRP meant that the comrades were "obligated to openly discuss and inform each other and the Bureau of proposed decisions that affect our activity…" But instead of functioning according to the principles of a revolutionary organization, AS's article points out:

"The comrades of Los Angeles Workers' Voice made a decision privately amongst themselves when they changed the rate of publication in Internationalist Notes without open discussion. They also adopted the organizational name of "US Workers' Voice" without open discussion. They discarded the agreement that we made regarding the joint publication of IN. They refused to answer any questions regarding their actions preferring to make accusations and recriminations. We cannot claim to be a sympathizing section of the Bureau if we are not willing to work with the comrades of the Bureau and definitely not if we are not willing to work together as a group….a vote cannot just be taken in private without allowing a minority voice to be heard. The process of how revolutionaries make decisions involves much more than simply taking a vote. The first thing that revolutionaries do is to open a debate and try to reach a consensus through this debate. If all else fails then we make decisions by means of a majority vote."

So, it seems a bit disingenuous of IN to chastise the ICC for agreeing with and reaffirming the IBRP's own earlier criticism of the "private" meetings of the LAWV. In this apparently sectarian brush off of our expression of solidarity and our theory of parasitism, IN seriously underestimates the danger posed by LAWV (now calling itself USWV) to the workers movement. Previously, as the quotations reprinted from the IBRP above demonstrate, the IBRP and IN saw the LAWV as guilty of comportment totally at odds with the tradition and principles of the workers movement, of abandoning fundamental class positions, and publishing a journal which as the IBRP put it contains "little to distinguish this effort as a publication of the communist left," and slandering the IBRP as "non-working class." But as of November, IN now sees the main problem with LAWV is that it is localist. But in fact LA's localism is the least of their shortcomings, as the IBRP and IN themselves previously pointed out.

The small forces of left communism in North America now face a very serious problem. As we noted in Internationalism 122, "now we are confronted with the presence of a parasitic group of former leftists, with only a half-baked comprehension of communist left positions, heavily imbued with an amalgam of localist, immediatist, activist, and stalinist ideological conceptions from their past, and libertarian distrust of centralization and the Russian Revolution, affirming themselves as spokespersons of the communist left in America." The LAWV (USVW) actively distorts the positions and political traditions of left communism and now denounces the two most important organizations of the international left communist movement, the IBRP and the ICC, as non-working class and irrelevant.

After we expressed our solidarity with the IBRP, LAWV turned its venom on the ICC, distorting our views - for example literally lying about what we have written in our press on the Kronstadt rebellion. To their credit, IN notes this outrageous slander by their former Los Angeles comrades in their article, but makes an egregious error when it basically equates the ICC and the LAWV, essentially saying "a pox on both your houses." In this sense, IN announces that the political struggle against LAWV "is of no interest to the revolutionary movement and the international working class," as if the parasitic attacks and political distortions of the LAWV will disappear if they are ignored. It is critical that IN resist any sectarian biases against the ICC, and join with us in countering the confusions and distortions of revolutionary principles being peddled by the Los Angeles group. Even if they don't accept our theoretical understanding of political parasitism, surely IN must understand that against the LAWV attack against the very idea of a revolutionary Marxist organization, against the conception of the revolutionary party, against their rejection of the Russian Revolution, against their rejection of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, against their ridicule and denunciation of the organizations of the communist left, we share a common bond and common struggle. This is especially true since the IBRP and IN bear a particular responsibility for the fact that the LAWV gained a certain aura of legitimacy as partisans of the communist left because of their sojourn as members of an IBRP sympathizing section, despite their inability to deal with and break with their leftist past. It is impossible to "go forward" as IN wishes to do without taking up the responsibility to defend the communist left against a monster they helped to create, even if at the same time they are aware of political disagreements between the organizations of that milieu.

JG, 12/16/02.