Permanent Revolution - Category

“The workers... battle-cry must be: 'The Permanent Revolution.'” — Marx and Engels, 1850

home | action | about us | sitemap | publications | recent | all | feed

Sun 31, August 2008 @ 14:52

Barbaric Trotskyism: a history of Morenoism - 1941–1978 (1991)

It is little more than a decade since Nahuel Moreno’s Argentinean party (then the PST) declared itself to be “the largest Trotskyist party in the world”. Despite the possible objections to this claim we must accept that the International Workers League (LIT),

Tue 05, August 2008 @ 15:33

The History of the Fourth International index

1923 - 1933: Collapse of the Third International

Trotsky's defence and development of the communist programme, 1933-1940

The epigones destroy Trotsky's International, 1940-1953

The degenerate fragments of the Fourth International, 1953 -1983

After the splits the splinters, 1961-1983 - pt 1

After the splits the splinters, 1961-1983 - pt 2

Mon 03, March 2008 @ 19:55

RESPECT - Another short cut, another dead end (PR7)

The collapse of Respect, just over a year after the fatal split in the Scottish Socialist Party, should cause left activists to look again at what sort of party the British working class needs. Here Mark Hoskisson argues that coalition parties of the left are not the answer to the political crisis confronting the British working class and that a democratic centralist revolutionary party need not be a monolithic prison house of notions

Mon 03, March 2008 @ 18:07

After Respect – what sort of renewal? (PR7)

When the autumn issue of Permanent Revolution led on the headline “Respect staring into oblivion” we debated whether to put a question mark after it. We didn’t – because it was pretty obvious given the forces involved, that once George Galloway had dared to criticise the Respect and SWP National Secretary John Rees, and by implication the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party, there would be no going back. A split was inevitable.

Tue 10, July 2007 @ 23:42

Militant’s peaceful parliamentary road - PR (first series) 1989

“We have proclaimed hundreds, if not thousands of times that we believe that, armed with a clear programme and perspective, the labour movement in Britain could effect a peaceful socialist transformation.” Peter Taaffe, editor of the Militant

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 20:10

Militant after Grant: the unbroken thread? - pt 2

By March 1990, through an energetic campaign directed at large working class estates and housing schemes across Britain, Militant stood at the head of a mass movement of up to eight million people committed to non-payment of the tax. Though the movement was condemned by Labour and TUC leaders alike, and was given only the most half hearted support by the Labour Left and Communist Party, it was able to organise Anti-Poll Tax Unions in every major town and city. It mobilised 250,000 people to demonstrate in central London on 31 March 1990.

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 20:07

Entryism and the collapse of British Trotskyism - pt 2

This article, in our continuing series on "Entryism", looks at the "Socialist Outlook" venture by Gerry Healy in the 1940s and 1950s. With the arrival of yet another "non-sectarian" paper for the labour left - "Socialist Action" - it is timely to look at the errors of a previous similar venture.

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 20:04

The SWP (US) in the American Century: A Case Study of 'Orthodoxy' - pt 2

Cannon himself was quite alert to the dangers of opportunism with this tactic, having seen what the then right centrist CPUSA did with it in the 1920s. In the name of this tactic this party attempted to form a cross class party, a farmer-labor party, and ended up tailing populist bourgeois politicians.

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 20:02

Twenty-five years of centrism; The USFI 1963-88 - pt 2

The growing leftism in the USFI

Despite both Hansen and Moreno’s great hopes for the OLAS Castro’s left turn was only to be short lived. The 1967 Havana conference was the first and last meeting of the OLAS. By October 1967 Che Guevara had been hunted down and killed in the jungles of Bolivia, the guerrilla “foco” smashed.

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 19:58

Centrism in its dotage: USFI 1980-1991 - pt 2

The SWP(US): from gangrene to self-amputation

The degeneration of the 1980s within the majority of the USFI was bound to have consequences in two directions. On the one hand, the most rightist elements would draw the conclusion that there was little point in staying within the “Fourth International” with these politics. On the other hand, the pace and scope of the degeneration was inevitable going to spawn some oppositional disquiet. The best example of the former development was provided by the SWP(US).

Sun 19, November 2006 @ 19:30

Trotsky's critics: recycled rubbish - 1998

In late 1998, Resistance Books published Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, A Leninist critique. The book's author, Democratic Socialist Party veteran Doug Lorimer, claims to subject Trotsky's writing to a "sustained critique" and show that "Trotsky's theory is wrong on the fundamental questions" of revolution in colonial and semi colonial countries.

Sun 22, October 2006 @ 20:26

Breaking from Morenoism: The PTS and Argentine Trotskyism - 1997

Trotskyist International No. 21, January - June 1997

The Partido de los Trabajadores por el Socialismo1 (PTS) originates in the expulsion of 400-600 members from the Moviemiento Al Socialismo2 (MAS) in 1988.

Mon 09, October 2006 @ 18:47

Socialist Action and the myth of the USFI left wing - 1995

There’s a rumour going around the circles of dissidents within the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI). The word is that there is a new left wing, spearheaded by the Socialist Action group in the United States of America. The hope that goes with this rumour is that Socialist Action may just be able to rally the left for a fight at the forthcoming USFI 14th World Congress. But, as Mark Twain once said, a rumour is half way round the world before the truth has tied its bootlaces. In an attempt to catch up and overtake the rumour Mark Harrison sets the record straight.

Sun 01, October 2006 @ 21:54

Barbaric Trotskyism: a history of Morenoism - 1941-1978

“I believe that we have made many more mistakes than Trotsky or the Bolsheviks. When I say that ours has been a barbaric Trotskyism it is because I believe it to be the harsh truth and I am not being demagogic.”1

Sun 01, October 2006 @ 21:49

The Heritage we renounce

A review of a new history of the Fourth International

The heritage we defend: A contribution to the history of the Fourth International by David North, Labor Publications, Detroit, 539 pp $12.95

Sun 10, September 2006 @ 12:47

Workers Power critique of the LTT/IBT fusion 1987

A notable feature of the split between L5I and the PRT was the attempt of the L5I to separate organisation from politics. They proudly proclaimed that the expulsion of nearly a third of their group was "organisational" not "political." In this letter written to the IBT and LTT, Mark H explains how althought the IBT "You have extensive criticisms of the SL's organisational methods and of Robertson in particular, but you do not critically re-examine the political basis of the Robertson cult. The regime question is, as you say, a political question, but it is so in the sense that regimes are the product of definite politics, definite programmes. Rotten programmes breed rotten regimes. You approach the regime question as though it existed separately from the SL's programme." They failed to go beyond these criticisms to reveal the political root of the Spartacists degeneration.

And in explaining that root Mark goes on to outline many key features of our revolutionary method which we fully stand by and retain today.

Mon 28, August 2006 @ 11:59

Militant after Grant: the unbroken thread? - pt 1

“No other tendency of the right or the left has had the same honest, earnest and open approach to discussion. In contrast to the Stalinists and the ultra left sects, all of whom have made an industry out of hiding their previous mistakes and theoretical somersaults, there are none of the writings or speeches of Ted Grant that the author would not be prepared to re-issue and debate”

Wed 09, August 2006 @ 13:23

IWL: Opportunism and failed manoeuvres - 1992

In January 1982 the International Workers’ League (Fourth International) (IWL) was founded at a conference of twenty delegates, held in São Paolo, Brazil and presided over by its leader, Nahuel Moreno.1 The foundation of the IWL completed the transformation of “Morenoism” into an independent and clearly defined international tendency. Previously it had constituted a primarily Latin American adjunct to one or other of the major international centrist tendencies claiming the mantle of Trotsky’s Fourth International (FI). 2

Sun 06, August 2006 @ 19:55

Centrism in its dotage: USFI 1980-1991 - pt 1

Of all the international tendencies claiming to be “the” Fourth International (FI), the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) has the best claim on at least one score. All the other tendencies (the Lambertists, the Morenoites and the Healyites) are rooted in a national leadership that either left or was expelled from the FI during the period between 1951 and 1963. The USFI can claim an international leadership with a substantial continuity—at the level of personnel—with the young militants grouped around Michel Pablo who carried out the post-war reconstruction of the Inter-national.

Sun 06, August 2006 @ 18:06

Twenty-five years of centrism; The USFI 1963-88 - pt 1

Twenty-five years of centrism; The USFI 1963-88

Trotskyist International No. 02, Winter 1989

Part one; from unification to the Tenth World Congress, 1963-74

Sun 06, August 2006 @ 18:00

The SWP (US) in the American Century: A Case Study of 'Orthodoxy' - pt 1

The SWP (US) in the American Century: A Case Study of 'Orthodoxy'

Permanent Revolution No. 7, Spring 1988

In 1953 the Fourth International split in two. One of the main protagonists in the split was the Socialist Workers Party of the United States (SWP (US)). In the name of Trotskyist ‘orthodoxy’ it launched the International Committee (IC) as a rival to the ‘revisionist’ International Secretariat (IS) led by Michel Pablo.1 The SWP had been the largest national section when the FI was founded in 1938. Its decision to publicly split the FI had profound repercussions throughout world Trotskyism.

Mon 31, July 2006 @ 17:58

Entryism and the collapse of British Trotskyism - pt 1

This article in our continuing series on the tactic of "entryism", looks at the role that the misapplication of this tactic played in the collapse of British Trotskyism in the 1940s. This period of British Trotskyism is an under explored one. Leaders of left groups today like Ted Grant of the Militant, Tony Cliff of the SWP and Gerry Healy have more interest in obscuring the history of this period, in which they were participated than shedding any instructive light upon it.