1.

I agree that the WSWS has crossed the line and sided with imperialism on numerous occasions. The solution should be to join the ICFI and form factions, elevating a revolutionary faction to the leadership of the party. This would allow the ICFI to unite all the Trotskyists excluded from party membership by the bureaucratic assault on workers’ political liberty. We should also have (1) net worth caps for party executives to prevent the bourgeoisie from entering into the party and controlling its executive positions using capital. On top of this, I also propose a (2) party constitution and annual financial report that enumerates the rights of members, congresses, and the executive committee while accounting for the activities and spending of the leadership. Finally, I propose a (3) standardized test for all members to prove their competence to the organization.

By denying a hearing to these proposals, the ICFI Nanobureaucracy proves its allegiance to the bourgeoisie and clears the way for a political assault on its entire leadership to clear the way for the members to choose leaders from amongst themselves. We should see this as an inevitable outcome of the class struggle, and something for which we can prepare by building a faction with help from Spartacists and all Trotskyists committed to protecting the revolutionary working class from abuse by the criminal elite. I think that the best way to conduct this struggle is to show, as Healy did in the 1964 split when he argued (which you as Spartacists supported) that Cannon’s capitulation to Pabloism arose from errors in the early part of his career, that David North’s capitulation to Neo-Malthusianism and Positivism arose from his errors early in his career, which he never corrected.

We can protect our members from the bourgeois courts by studying the Marxist theory that brought David North into the ICFI in the first place. His book on Wohlforth (the original leader of the ICFI’s Workers’ League in the US who had partnered with Robertson and other Spartacists against the Dobbs-Cannon leadership) reveals his deep connection to Alex Steiner, whom he claims to oppose. Steiner’s own anti-Marxist positions reveal North’s true feelings about the International, which he sees as a vehicle for an individualist, patriarchal leader in the mold of the utopian socialist James Owen or the semi-terroristic Louis Blanqui, rather than the product of the working class in its revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state.

To get to the point, this intervention of North into the affairs of the ICFI coincided with the split along national lines of the SLL and OCI-aligned parties. No international factions divided the national parties along political lines, as Marxists have argued for since Marx’s time. This resembles the split of the Second International along national lines, with Lenin’s Zimmerwald Conference and his “Zimmerwald Left” offering a unifying third way. The 1971 split between the chauvinists coincided with the split of the Spartacists and the ICFI. North’s role was to silence opposition to the manner in which Healy divided the Fourth International along with Lambert to secure their own respective positions. The Spartacists did not see it this way, and merely broke down the organizational “missteps,” as if the bureaucrats had no independent, anti-worker political agenda driving them.

The utopian socialist also had to silence opposition in his ranks, since he maintained private ownership of the land and factory where he introduced the 8 hour day and other socialist reforms. North maintains private ownership of the party, stolen from Healy, which Healy stole from Grant with help from Pablo. In order to free the party from private ownership, we must turn it into two organizations: a non-profit news website and a political organization. Both must reduce the Nanobureaucracy from owners and appointed board members in partnership against the working class to public servants with elected positions, 2-year terms, 2 term limits, and specific duties and responsibilities to the membership for which they can be held accountable in cases of neglect.

If we combine these proposals into a program for the International with a study of North and Steiner’s early attacks against Marxist philosophy, we will have the foundation for a group to unite all Trotskyist parties and all workers united for world revolution under one political organization: a responsible, legal, and professional Fourth International.

2.

I want to make this point also: the bureaucrats have to act in the way they do. Just like Lenin pointed out that capitalist governments must pursue an imperialist course, so do Nanobureaucratic leaders necessarily follow a bureaucratic and nationalist course in opposition to world revolution. Only a Fourth International based on a system of international political factions, factional democracy, can defend against this tendency produced by the impact of the class conflict on the revolutionary leadership. For this reason, it would be wrong to criticize Healy endlessly and never take his side against the liquidation of the Fourth International organizations while opposing him over his use of nationalist bureaucracy and private ownership of the party.

3.

Also, one more question about the article you sent: (https://www.internationalist.org/how-world-scab-web-site-serves-the-bosses-2101.html)

“In the late 1970s, his outfit, then called the Workers League, sponsored a lawsuit trying to get the bourgeois courts to oust the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party.”

From what I read, the point was to restore the rights of Alan Gelfand, who had been forced out of the party. It was also meant to reveal the presence of political police within the party, especially agents directly connected to the assassination of Trotsky. I had not seen anything proving that the point was to oust the SWP leadership using bourgeois courts. Can you send me some information to show that that was indeed their point?