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“Moreover, in our opinion, on the international level there has as yet been insufficient political clarification and organizational preparation for the International Committee to proceed to transform itself into a competing, formal F.I. Rather if the SWP-Pabloite unity goes through, we conclude that the IC forces should go along. They should openly transform themselves within the ‘united’ F.I. into the nucleus of a Bolshevik (i.e., proletarian-revolutionary) international tendency struggling to lay the foundations for a real Fourth International at the next stage.” (p. 9)

The proposal of unity is a farce that only confuses the ranks. In the current crisis, Democratic Power must advocate the expulsion of the nano-bureaucracy and not a unity to prove that Democratic Power can be sacrificed as a means of moving the nano-bureaucrat to the left on some position. Attempts to create a false unity will put excessive demands on Democratic Power, when the onus of responsibility should fall on the nano-bureaucracy to admit guilt or remove itself gracefully.

“The general, but not sole or universal, perspective which the present world juncture demands, in our opinion, is one which places major emphasis on propagandistic work toward the crystallization of Trotskyist cadres. Today in most parts of the world our task is to lay down the foundations for revolutionary parties, not to pretend they already exist and declare ‘they’ should struggle for hegemony over the mass movement.” (p. 10)

This crystallization process sets a dangerous precedent of burying the new recruit under a pile of paperwork or placing him or her under immense pressure of some sort. In fact, such crystallization occurs with ideas buried in the minds of leaders well versed in the leadership crisis. This must happen in conflict with the ideas confronted by an active participant influencing the class struggle on behalf of revolutionary theory and the revolutionary party organization. The basic ideas of a revolutionary socialist movement should not give cause for complications. These have existed and stood the test of decades. Only the hesitancy to join and participate in an openly revolutionary movement should give rise to new theoretical conflicts of seeming opposites. Out of these the gems of argument. Professionalism comes from answering naive doubts at their root and in timely fashion so that work continues apace.

“It constitutes a denial of a decisive role in the victory of the Negro struggle by both the working class and its revolutionary party.” (p. 10)

The working class must struggle for the construction of a socialist state, but first it must bring down the old capitalist state. For this reason, it must make real concessions to black nationalism, such as a referendum on black national independence or other demands for black separatism based on the defense of national culture, history, and self-determination. These concessions, however, do not represent a retreat from the political values of socialist revolution, since these demands arise out of the necessity for the overthrow of the imperialist system as the final phase of world capitalism. A world government arising from world revolution could do more to defend endangered or oppressed cultures and languages once the mono-culture of the monopoly and its imperialist drive for private profits dies and the provision for social needs, such as diversity, grows in its place.

“The essential barrier to reunification or collaborative activity is that for our part we aim to create an alternative, politically and organizationally, to the existing Majority party leadership. But you have defined yourselves, spoken and acted, as closer to the party Majority than to us. That has been the insuperable obstacle between us.” (p. 11)

This “closer to the party Majority” minority or “further from the party majority” minority has no use due to its vagueness. Democratic Power must demand fair representation and then move immediately towards a majority, since the two are inseparable. Stacked committees cannot remain unchallenged, as this connects to the remarkable foundations of the Fourth International already established by Trotsky in his struggle with Shachtmanism and before through the struggle of the Left Opposition and Left Communism with Stalinism and the Soviet and Party bureaucracies.

Healy to Farrel Dobbs, SWP leader after Cannon and through unification with Pabloism:

“Early in January 1961 we opened a written discussion with you. This discussion was entirely a one-sided affair. An examination of the records shows that not only did you not submit our documents over this period for the consideration of your membership, but you failed to reply to us on the important questions which we raised.

“By February 1962, it became clear that to all intents and purposes the policies of the SWP were indistinguishable from those of Pablo and his group.” P. 17

This letter Dobbs by Healy perfectly exposes the nano-bureaucracy’s tactics. The context shows that these tactics do not arise accidental but as part of a political shift no different in content from the reunification with Pabloism.

“What was needed and what we still feel is needed most in the international movement is not a combination of blocs and alliances for limited factional purposes between the tendencies but a discussion which will reach into the ranks and encourage new leaders to come forward within the international movement, thus assisting those who have borne the brunt of this work since the end of the war.” P. 17-18

This last quote and the one before it made it Twitter to emphasize their immediate relevance in the struggle against the nano-bureaucratic political trend towards reunification not specifically with Pabloism but anyone who dismisses the long history of struggle for Marxist leadership in the development of revolutionary movements. Pabloism specifically ignored the crimes of Stalinism, but before Stalinism we had Menshevism, opportunism, and a host of other varieties of diversions from revolutionary leadership based on positioning for personal comfort by the agents of capitalism and the capitulation within the revolutionary movement. To unite with anyone that elevates ignorance and enforces silence on these issues above thorough study and active presentation of these lessons threatens the revolution not only intellectually but physically as well.

“We saw the international discussion not as a medium for creating new divisions or for making it impossible to effect a serious unification, but as a medium whereby the problems of the world movement as a whole would be brought up for review in a way that would facilitate the emergence of a new leadership.” P. 18

Healy expresses the standpoint of Democratic Power in its struggle against nano-bureaucracy. We want the discussions, as with Dan Conway and Colin O’Malley, to clarify the shortcomings of nano-bureaucracy and elevate the new leadership to a higher standard so that they may be fit to take the power and rule judiciously on behalf of the working class.

It seems strange that when comrades of all tendencies are seriously striving to organize an international discussion which would lead to agreement on world problems you should now embark on a course in relation to comrade Wohlforth and others that will not only confuse the political questions but may well lead you to take organizational measures against them.

If you persist with your present course then we shall refer the matter to the Parity Committee so that a sub-committee can be set up to investigate your actions. P. 20-21

Here we arrive at the precise position of Democratic Power in relation to the nano-bureaucracy. In no uncertain terms, Gerry Healy, the leader of the SLL of Great Britain refers the matter of the actions of Farrel Dobbs, leader of the SWP in the US, to a committee for investigation. No weaker position must come out of the conflict between Democratic Power and the SEP nano-bureaucracy in the US. The contexts as well have a parallel. Not only do they take place 20 years after WWII and the collapse of the USSR, they take place a few years before the emergence of workers’ uprising that could unseat the US government. The SEP must take these issues seriously and investigate its leaders’ actions, assist its legitimate leaders, and prepare a new leadership to win over the coming uprising to the perspective of international socialism.

The SEP nano-bureaucracy has come to depend so heavily on “organizational measures” that it has ceased to function as a political leadership. It no longer has to justify its course with reference to any authority but simply proceeds subjectively. This subjectivity, unchecked, becomes not the subjectivity of the Marxist leadership of the working class but of individuals defending their positions and careers within an abstract organization, their investments in the news organization or political campaigns and such. The check comes from the legitimate demand of members to review and receive a report on both political statements and “organizational measures”. In the case of Democratic Power, a real case involving a punitive damages settlement must remain on the table, with discussions overseen and documented by attorneys within the party with an obligation to defend one side or the other.

On page 23, Healy defends Robertson from accusations and affirms he is a member in good standing. This proves the unity of the Sparticist League and the SEP. This proves, further, that the SEP today, although organizationally separate from the Sparticists still includes the same element, which seeks to divide and fuse endlessly without regard for the hardship this causes for the greater movement, the advanced workers, the new leadership, and intellectuals in general that attempt to follow the squabbling and flirtation. Their underhanded methods always find justification in their philosophy, which proves to them the necessity of “organizational measures” or whatever measures satisfy their appetite for the destruction of revolutionary cadre.

“The response of the majority leadership to our political proposals has been a wholesale and uncontrolled factional attack of such a nature as our movement has never seen. No serious answers are put forward to our political criticisms–only heated factional attacks on the members of our tendency, their nefarious pasts, their bad writing styles, etc., etc. Everything is done to confuse and obscure our political positions and an atmosphere is being created where serious discussion of any issue is made all but impossible.” P. 25

These detailed breakdowns of the SWP nano-bureaucracy prove that little has changed in terms of the basic economic foundations of capitalist society. The same influences play upon the party today as they did in the 1960s, and Gerry Healy described them so as to warn all future generations of the danger they posed. Still, the nano-bureaucracy has managed to silence all discussion of the party’s past and present with relation to Democratic Power, a marked decline from the days of Healy, when discussion took place as a matter of course because the leadership saw it as a means to the end of training leaders and involving the advanced working class in shaping its own future. Such concerns mean relatively little to the nano-bureaucracy, which assumes that since it can hold its position in the movement, it can dominate whatever movement comes up with relative ease. It must only erase the history of the movement and its unity in opposition to “organizational measures.” The only way to stick it in their memory is for Democratic Power to call for a punitive damages and the expulsion of career nano-bureaucrats hardened in their ways at least into a separate faction removed from majority faction privileges such as holding any national office or delivering speeches to their supposedly adoring crowds, who gathered only in support of the revolutionary cause and not any nano-bureaucrat in particular.

The following quotes come from a joint statement of the Revolutionary Tendency, consisting of both the Sparticists and the SEP. They show the reluctance on the part of both groups to deal directly with the problem of bureaucracy or even acknowledge its existence within Fourth International. They show a degree of helplessness before the attacks, which would prevent any systematic retaliation in order to bring said bureaucracy under control. Only such a system of reprisals, fees charged, for instance, as penalties for every instance of verbal abuse, would teach them to accept that they do not manifest themselves as revolutionary divinity but instead mere bureaucratic animals conditioned to behave as such by society.

“Perhaps if the majority leadership felt that our group threatened to seize control of the party nationally one could understand the intensity of the factional attack… All we have is our political ideas and a bare scattering of people who support them… Then why the attack? Why the intense heat, the personal acrimony, the vicious polemic? We can only conclude that it is that one strength we do have, our political ideas, which is cutting too deep into the central weakness of the majority, its political confusion…” P. 25

Democratic Power cannot argue that its strength draws its enemies in to fight against it. We do not cut deep into the weakness of a confused majority. We represent that majority’s real interests and our enemies hide in fear. This does not threaten but strengthen the party leadership. Our conclusion is in line with Lenin, who accuses the leadership of vacillation, a petty-bourgeois reaction to their own enhanced strength as party officials, a strength that benefits and increases exponentially with the participation of Democratic Power. The bourgeoisie scares them more, but the workers will increasingly demand a leadership that actually takes the power, official state power, and proceeds to establish a socialist economy and politics. The task cannot wait any longer. Democratic Power must remain committed to this task, even when nano-bureaucracy abandons it, and it must present a clear assessment of the strengths and failures of the nano-bureaucratic organizational leadership.

“We do not wish to dump anybody. All we want is a discussion of our political point of view. Along the same lines is Comrade Dobbs’ suggestion that we wish to fight the ‘bureaucratic jungle.’ We do not consider the party a bureaucratic jungle nor are we interested in organizing battles against the leadership. We have sought to the best of our ability to assiduously avoid such battles and have disassociated ourselves from those interested in such a course.”

We have important differences around three central questions before the convention. Primary 1 for some time has been the inter-national question.P. 26

The bureaucratic jungle of the party has an ominous second meaning when considered in the larger context of the period. Dobbs and Hansen visited Cuba in 1960 and at that point turned against the Trotskyist perspective of a workers’ revolution led by the Fourth International. In exchange, Dobbs and Hansen could use “organizational measures” to isolate and force genuine Trotskyists into the “wider communist movement”, meaning into rebel bases in the jungle controlled by Stalinists. This now constituted legitimate tactics for the leadership of the SWP in its fight against the uprising against its own turn to Pabloism, i.e. the idea that Trotskyist leaders should make peace with Stalinism and fight their own party’s membership.

The Reorganized Minority makes three political stands against Dobbs’ majority.

Number one:

“The Pabloite outlook seeks to substitute reliance upon petty bourgeois forces–such as the Stalinist parties, centrist groups, and ‘sui generis jacobins’ in the colonial areas–for the struggle of the proletariat itself under Marxist leadership in the revolutionary process.”

You can see how the Reorganized Minority’s position matches the Democratic Power position of today. The party has switched over to a de facto reliance on petty bourgeois forces by refusing to cooperate with Democratic Power to organize a party in South America, where official SEP parties do not exist. This de facto reliance on the part of the nano-bureaucracy does not occur unconsciously or subconsciously. The party consciously decides to substitute for Democratic Power whatever other group comes up and claims to represent the working class. The nano-bureaucrats then debate the bourgeois or Stalinist party’s history and speculate about their nature in a debate with those same forces. This speculation seeks to cover over for the party’s conscious refusal to support a separate ICFI-linked organization and participate in mass demonstrations, like those in Colombia that included 15 million demonstrators in a country whose population numbers 50 million. It has also taken a hostile approach towards BLM and #MeToo, which threaten, through their galvanization of the masses to interrupt ‘party building’ among the petty-bourgeoisie.

Number two:

“Today our cadre devotes its greatest efforts to ‘party building’ work far removed from the masses and to work in petty bourgeois circles…

…In the first place we doubt if the party will seriously turn towards real intervention in depth in the Negro movement when it maintains an outlook of limiting our approach to the mass movement as a whole to a ‘general propaganda offensive.’”

The Reorganized Minority here takes the same position as Democratic Power. It wanted to orient towards the BLM and George Floyd protests of their day. The Dobbs Majority argued in a similar way to the nano-bureaucracy, who have only found a new way to express the same thing:

“Finally, while correctly assessing the progressive aspects of the growing nationalist sentiment among the Negro people, the resolution fails to see a need for working class leadership of the Negro movement itself. Rather many comrades are now putting forward the concept that the present petty bourgeois Negro leadership will be ‘impelled’ to go over to socialism and thus will not need replacing at all. This is a deep distortion of our theory of the permanent revolution which sees national struggles going over into socialist struggles ,only under proletarian leadership.”

Rather than explain the historical basis for a separate struggle by African Americans and their need for national independence, the party hands the entire movement over to petty-bourgeois leadership, arguing that the entire point of the George Floyd protests is only to offer positions in law enforcement to black people or positions in the government and corporation to black members of the petty-bourgeoisie. This failure to think in a historical materialist, Marxist way in order to provide leadership to these protests ends up giving the power over the protests to precisely those petty-bourgeois reformists and deal-makers. They will use the protests for these ends, but because the ICFI has ceded leadership to them and turned its backs on the mass movement.

Democratic Power must add that this turn towards the petty-bourgeoisie in order to ‘build the party’ actually does not arise from choice but from a definite need of the nano-bureaucracy, namely to fight the growing influence of Democratic Power or in those days, the power of the Reorganized Minority and the SLL. By turning to the petty-bourgeoisie, they can convince them that the purpose of the party is only to maneuver against other revolutionaries for a position in a new state formed by the workers but conquered by the party. The accusations against BLM and #MeToo actually betray the true motive of the petty-bourgeoisie that the nano-bureaucracy has carefully trained to defend its official positions and evade mass struggle, aiding the petty-bourgeoisie further in those separate political struggles. Democratic Power must combat this by forcing the party to limit its recruitment among the DSA and other groups which it appeals to for their petty-bourgeois outlook. A certain ratio should exist to insure that movements like the George Floyd protests form a greater proportion of the new leadership.

The RM came to the following conclusion:

“This document reaffirmed our loyal support to the party and our conviction that the party as a whole could be won over to a correct political perspective precisely through a process of its healthy growth.”

To this we would add that healthy growth of a membership in an organization under the tyranny of a nano-bureaucracy would allow that membership to imagine a day when the tyranny gave way to a factional democracy according to the principles of the Left Opposition, Trotsky’s organization until the 1938 founding of the Fourth International.

“It became clear to us that a section of our tendency had simply written off the party as a whole without a serious struggle to reorient over a period of time the best working class cadres of the party.”

Democratic Power will not have this problem, since the situation has progresses to the point where the nano-bureaucracy cannot in good faith call itself a majority. Its grip over the party does not depend as much on votes as the absence of votes. The votes cannot be considered as such, since the party organization does not show any interest in finding out where the membership really stands. This is not leadership but a clear stand against leadership, producing “leaderless” movements that fail, even with the odds in their favor, because the nano-bureaucracy has taken such a strong stance against leadership. Furthermore, Democratic Power can rely on the nano-bureaucracy itself to create a split, likely over petty matters. In that instant, the membership will have to come forward and debate among themselves and take sides. In this situation, Democratic Power will have prepared to clarify matters and settle them clearly in the favor of the interests of the membership, the advanced sections of the working class, and the revolutionary international working class as a whole. Leadership, far from a simple angry and threatening command on a semi-imaginary battlefield, requires serving the larger group, calmly putting its interests first, and seeing the rewards only down the line as a product of the success of the larger group.

The Reorganized Minority quotes its International Resolution:

“Everywhere and in all countries our cadres must break away from the routine habits of propaganda group existence and reach out, no matter how meager our forces may be, to establish contact with the masses themselves on whatever political level this can be done.” P. 32

By refusing to coordinate activity with Democratic Power, the nano-bureaucracy has show its determination to function as a propaganda group targeting people for political assassination rather than follow the correct course established by the history of the revolutionary movement. This means developing contact with the masses and setting limits on factional “organizational measures” against cadre with the aim of building the party in a healthy way. This healthy growth alone will allow for corrections to aberrations in political formations and a direct course based on established and agreed upon strategy.

“Today our common bloc of the reorganized minority is based on deep agreement on precisely these questions of class party. In the period prior to last November it was revealed that there was no agreement on these critical questions and without hesitation we split with half of our tendency. Should our theoretical differences lead to a difference on class and party we would not hesitate to split again. But this is not on the agenda precisely because the comrades involved in our tendency have proved their seriousness on this score through long years of work in building our party in the class itself.” P. 35

Here, some of Healy’s theoretical errors and those of the RM reveal themselves. The party does not build itself within the class but rather opens (or closes when overcome by nano-bureaucratic weakness) the door to the class to enter and build it. The working class builds the party when its objective situation convinces it of the necessity of revolutionary politics. If, when the objective situation reaches such a point, the party closes its doors to the working class, then it gives the reaction every opportunity to break up and divide the newly formed groups of workers, peasants, and students.

The party should have let them in and helped them participate on a national and international scale through the higher level organization provided by the party. As Lenin argued, the specific form in which the collapse of capitalism takes determines the tactics of the armed insurrection and the revolutionary movement as a whole. This may mean that workers in public and private industries, peasants and indigenous people, and students from various institutions can find different ways to participate in the actual struggles of their class. Their decision to split “without hesitation” with half of their own tendency shows a callousness towards the working class and great deal of violent sentiment towards the advanced workers and their representatives within the party.

Conscious of the one-sideness of their defense of the split, the RM emphasized the correct approach to theoretical differences:

Comrade Philips’ full state capitalist position is available in two long bulletins issued in 1957. Comrade Philips is presently working on a reevaluation of position but the pressures of his trade union work have not given him the necessary time to complete it. Do the comrades suggest he abandon this trade union work in order to work on a new thesis? In any event, even if Comrade Philips were to maintain every word of the position he put forward in 1957 his role as a part of the reorganized tendency is perfectly in order and principled. P. 35

The state-capitalist position lead to a great deal of division with the Trotskyist movement and represented a break from the principled defense of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers’ state. Still, in the interest of maintaining the work of the party among the working class so as to elevate the working class as a whole and welcome new waves of revolutionary workers, the theoretical differences remained within the party. With the nano-bureaucracy of today, we have an entirely different approach to theoretical differences. Rather than allowing members to resolve their differences through participation in the work of the party, they have abandoned this approach for an actual scorched earth policy using theoretical differences as a means of defending their factional tyranny.

“These ex-Shachtmanites sure are devious… Very, very devious people indeed!” P. 35-36

The description of the ex-Shachtmanites fits exactly into the nano-bureaucratic model of seeking contacts with the DSA and its leader, Svart. On the contrary, the jokes about wishing for another assassination of Trotsky really should earn them a criminal investigation for terroristic threats. This should come with charges of restitution. The Marxist-Leninist Party, the Trotskyist Party, participates in elections because it wants to offer the revolution a legal form of political representation. The party should also have a legal strategy with regard to fighting terrorism from the right and the pseudo-left. Instead, the party pursues a dialogue, with the DSA menace itself of all people, encouraging workers throughout the country to trust DSA operatives and value conversations with them instead of outreach directed towards the unorganized working class. This is a very devious attempt by the nano-bureaucracy to suppress its own membership and the Democratic Power faction using a section of the Democratic Party.

We quote at length as the RM expresses the difficulty of the Democratic Power position:

“Perhaps comrades who never have been in a minority do not realize it, but this is not an easy thing to do. It is much easier to give up your ideas and ‘live and let live’ in the party or to write off the party and retreat into a little circle. We have insisted all along, despite the difficulties involved, on energetic party building world and political struggle against a political line in our party which we feel is doing real deep harm to our party.

“This has been our perspective and it will continue to be our perspective. To even raise such questions about our comrades is to us simply uncontrolled factionalism.”

“Our position on a split from the party is equally clear. We have fought ardently against such a course and have broken with anyone who considers such a course. We hope that those comrades who now question us on this point are not doing so because they wish in fact we would split. Certainly the factional tenor of the discussion seems to be aimed at pushing us to that conclusion. Well, we simply are not going to be pushed by anyone. The comrades can say what they will, We still intend to stay in the party and loyally work to build it–no matter what. If we are ever thrown out of this party it will be because of our political ideas–not our actions. This is something that every party member who knows us, knows. P. 36

Not only do they know this about us, they know also know that they cannot ignore these political ideas. For this reason, they resort to organizational measures, then political assassination, then, when this fails, alliances with such organizations as the DSA to fight the Democratic Power faction using the DSA.

Once there is a total identification of loyalty to a party with loyalty to a particular political leadership of a party, then democratic centralism ends–there is no real possibility of loyal opposition to the policies of the leadership. That is not our tradition. P. 37

The Reorganized Minority here unites the important ideas of a loyal opposition, the historic position of Trotskyism, and Democratic Centralism, the historic position of Leninism. To break from tradition, to form a politics of identity between party loyalty and loyalty to a particular political leadership of the party, to take these nano-bureaucratic positions and turn them into the functioning principles of party work threatens the entire party as well as the entire revolutionary tradition outside the party and among advanced workers. This threat forms the groundwork for the fascist uprising, as seen on January 6th. The nano-bureaucracy bears direct responsibility for narrowing the scope of revolutionary work, isolating the revolutionary movement, and giving the initiative to the petty-bourgeoisie where the working class should dominate.