June 10th
The point of view of a Chilean worker on the pseudo-theories of the Marxist revisionist
Comrades,
Last Thursday June 7th I was part on a meeting on “Leon Trotsky’s Marxism: a period of war, crisis and revolutions” done by PTR (sister party of PTS of Argentina) in USACH ( University of Santiago)
The meeting started with a presentation of the PTR leader which lasted long enough. Two leaders talked for over an hour on the history of the twentieth century and the need to "regenerate Marxism with a strategic vision", finally they stated that the problem "of historical causation, as Trotsky said, was the subjective problem" . Even, they addressed the issue of capitalist restoration in USSR and other workers' states in the 89 without even mentioning the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism (the same "red cops" who every day the workers and students from Chile fight against when we fight). And immediately afterwards they raised the loss of the workers' states had meant a "shock" to the masses, that had led to a "political immaturity" because after that "no one spoke of socialism”.
After this tedious intervention (where even the very PTR rank and file understood very little their leaders) they gave the space for other to intervene. But nobody wanted to talk. Everything had become confused, because we were there to discuss about the positions of the revolutionary Marxism, but the people who spoke did not define it at any time.
A student who was present asked what we should do in order to move forward. At that moment there were the interventions of two comrades of POI-CI who were at the meeting. They posed that the spekers of the meeting had omitted that Lenin defined a key feature of the imperialist epoch is that the bourgeoisie bought a section of the working class. This was the labor aristocracy and, at the same time, it became the social base of the labor bureaucracy and reformism. They said that it was not an “ideological” problem the reformism, but material. And exposed PTR leaders, saying that they forged Lenin because they were talking on the “subjective problem” and “the political inmaturity of the working class” and Trotsky made several polemics about the lessons of the Spanish Revolution in 30s against the group Que Faire which had the same method of talking on the subjectivity in general of the working class as PTR. The comrades made clear that this was an old trick in order to pass the responsibility for the defeats of the masses and thus save the life of the treacherous leadership, conscious and bought by the great capital to betray. It was for that reason they “omitted" talking of the Stalinism betrayal in 89 and never raised the historical premise that founded the 4th International, that is, the crisis of the revolutionary leadership, which was not merely the absence of a revolutionary party, but the overabundance of traitors and lackeys of the bourgeoisie within the labor movement, who must be defeated in theory, programatically and even physical.
Everything became clear when the comrades of POI-CI told to PTR made responsible for the defeat of the world proletariat the "backwardness of consciousness" of the masses in general and not the treacherous leadership meanwhile they serached unsuccessfully a "perfect maturity” of the masses, thus denying the conditions of decay and putrefaction of capitalism. And that was not Trotskyism.
This was posed by the comrades in the middle that the PTR leaders were trying to shut up them several times,but many of the ones there prevented it.
When the intervention finished, silence returned to the room. All the PTR members looked at each other and did not answer until one of the top leaders intervened saying that in Spain in the 30 there were the law of leadership crisis because there were a revolution, but 89 was so tough that the "crisis of conscience overpassed as a key factor the leadership crisis", to finish sinking even more stating that after the Second World War there was development of productive forces. At the end they asked to POI-CI to be less "dogmatic with Trotskyism".
They did not allowed the comrades to intervene again, and shouting they response that the leadership crisis is a historical premise for the entire imperialist epoch, and not for a historical moment as he said, and '89 had deepen the leadership crisis and had not abated.
The PTR leader tried to answer them again suggesting that Libya was shown that the bourgeoisie expropriated the revolution, and POI-CI comrades insisted again, rightly, "Wasn’t it for leadership crisis that the militias did not take power?”. The one of PTR changed the subject again maqking a mess he concluded that “in Chile last year there were no advanced due to leadership crisis, but only in Chile”. All falsehoods and lies. They were deepen with other 7 cadres trying to "convince" POI-CI that "Spain was a long time ago". This was until a worker who had been in the industrial Chains ended with all this tangle with low level and he said that POI were right, because "we have to see the impact and consequences of the treasons of reformism." And there they all made silence.
In short I wrote it in this meeting, where supposedly PTR was going to talk about "Marxism of Leon Trotsky", I saw how your organization in Chile, proving to be a genuine Marxist current, demolished all the arguments of PTR that could not respond not even one of the criticism of POI comrades who defended the positions of Trotsky and the 4th International
This meeting aalow me to see clearly who is who among the currents that claim to be Trotskyists in Chile. I realized that PTR is just a neo-Stalinist current, that has nothing to do with Trotskyism. Indeed, I was surprised that all the PTR militants were at the meeting and any of them was a worker, they were all activists from the student movement and the middle classes. And the other thing that really surprised me was the arrogance and pedantry with which they spoke, especially it noticed the low level they have to respond to the questions of socialism and Marxism.
However, this meeting was very useful because I ended to define and go fully for the 4th International.
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