International Correspondance inside the FLT on the discussions with ITC-

SF
Extract of letter of the SCAI

5/06/09

1) As regards GB offensive over Gerry (from SF), is necessary to start a big

offensive, using all the political “artillery” we have. “Valentina Cohen” is Philippe’s
nickname (in France, men use women names and the other way round). We are not
surprised with the dirty methods that GB is using trying to poison Gerry against the
LTF: they are re-taking the lambertist methods, from where they come. These are
the inevitable consequences of their servant policy at the foot of the labour
aristocracy and bureaucracy, and very close to social imperialism. We think that we
have to counterattack: we need to send Gerry and all SF comrades –at least in
Spanish - all the documents of the Collective crisis and our split from that lambertist
current led by GB and their partners of Lucha Marxista.

We have to tell Gerry we are not surprised that GB and VC (Philippe), even before
beginning the discussion, are already covering in mud the scenario with Stalinist
amalgams and accusations bordering moral –as for example, calling CM “a
gangster”. We need to tell them that the discussion within the old Colectivo started
when Sergio Bravo and Lucha Marxista expelled Roque Sanchez –who had political
differences with LM and, even when we did not know it, he had adhiered the old
COTP-CI policy-; they expelled him by the Stalinist method of calling him “crazy”.
We are looking for old articles to send you, so you can send it to Gerry and SF.

2) We insist on it, the lambertists of Philippe and company are the expression of not
only their old policy but also their current one. We are sending in Spanish, the GB´s
leaflet of last march 17th, two days before the March 19th general strike in France,
also when the Guadalupe, Maritinca, Guyana and Reunion Island were at their
highest point.

You will see that, as regard social-imperialism, GB´s position is similar to CLAIRE
and NPA. As we said in our short note a few days ago, the one where we attach the
articles in polemic with GB and the split from Collective, it was clear then and it is
also now, that GB is a defender of the interests of worker aristocracy and
particularly of those of the social-democracy, as lamberts have always been. It is a
petty-bourgeois group (Trotsky said that labour aristocracy was a petty bourgeois
layer) that has nothing to do with the class struggle. That is why it is not rare their
social imperialist position about Guadalupe and Martinique and a classic social-
democrat position in France, –“wage increase and worker government”-, i.e.
minimum and maximum program, today in a pre-revolutionary situation.

GB´s position, in Guadalupe and France, is not difference to that of CLAIRE

tendency in relation to the pivertist policy and the role they have as blockage
group to hold every radicalization process that may go left to the reformist
leadership of NPA: the only difference is that CT is inside and GB keeps out siden
and for that reason, it is the fifth whell –as such useless- of NPA.

GB made a left turn in 2001-2003 with Palestine and Argentinean revolutions and
went back to the right in 2003-2004 and have become a blockage group that is
preparing to be the “left wing” of NPA; the same way we saw Brazilian POM made a
left twist in 2003-2004 with the Bolivian revolution and now is going even further to
the right preparing to be “the left wing” of CONLUTAS bureaucracy and keeping
their apparatus linked to homeless families association they lead and related
directly with Diadema town council, i.e. the bourgeois state. As we will see ahead,
we think that ITC is also facing an iron alternative: internationalist Trotskyism or end
as a blockage group at the “left” of SWP and the “anti-capitalist” currents of Great
Britain.

But let’s see the GB´s leaflet on March 17th. First of all, they don’t pass the III
International’s 21 conditions, as we said in our polemic with CT, they state that the
first duty of communist parties in imperialist countries is “has the obligation of
exposing the dodges of its 'own' imperialists in the colonies, of supporting every
liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds, of demanding
that their imperialist compatriots should be thrown out of the colonies”, etc.

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We say this because as you will see, GB leaflet on general strike in 19/03/09 in the
metropolis, does not even say a word demanding the immediate and unconditional
national freedom of Guadalupe, Martinique and the rest of French colonies around
the world. Not even a word that the French workers –i.e. in the metropolis- have the
duty of fighting for imposing the expulsion of all French troopes that occupy the
colonies. They don’t fight either for the expropriation without payment and under
workers´ control of Totalfina and French monopolies which sack Guadalupe,
Martinique and other colonies; they don’t say a word either about defeat the V
French imperialist Republic, etc. We don’t want to repeat all the arguments that we
use in our polemic with CT that also fit to GB.

They are so servants of the V imperialist Republic that in their leaflet mention
Guadalupe’s and Martinique’s general strikes as other fact of the combat of the
French working class and youth. Thus, under the subtitle of “The working class
and youth want to defend from the bosses and the government at their
service”, they mention the struggles carried out by the French exploited masses
since December 2008 and close the paragraph saying “Guadalupe and then
Martinique workers imposed on the unions the general strike and got a part of their
reivindications”: As if Guadalupe and Martinique were French! As if they were not
proletarians of direct colonies, that is, of occupied nations oppressed by the guns of
French imperialism! GB, as CT and their NPA “fathers”, consider -in fact- that the
West Indies are other “region” of France, which is part of their “Domains and
Territories overseas” (DOM-TOM). GB, Philippe and his group, say nothing about it,
because as CT –even when GB does it from the outside of NPA and CT from the
inside- has the same role: covert with one finger the social-imperialism of NPA.

That is why they don’t mention the NPA in their leaflet and the disastrous role they
played in Guadalupe –as the rest of the fake trotskists as LO and lambertism. They
say nothing about Besancenot trip to Guadalupe when the negotiation of 200€ wage
increase was finishing. He said the same that Sarkozy did: that the French
imperialist state won’t guarantee the raise, but the private bosses. Besancenot
showed their complete social-imperialism when said that “metropolis´ citizens” are
not the ones that have to pay “from their pockets” the wage rise for the colonial
slaves of the West Indies.

3) But GB´s leaflet about general strike on March 19th in France proves that they
keep talking about the “Marxist program”, “Bolshevik policy”, “Permanent
Revolution” and “Transitional Program” at party days, and have abandoned for
ever, precisely, the Marxist program and Bolshevik policy. Lets remember that in
January 29th there was a general strike and in March France was shocked by a brutal
wave of layoffs and factory clousures, and as an answer the workers started taking
control of the factories with the bosses as hostages, like in Caterpillar, Toyota 3M,
Continental, etc.

Thus, all GB policy in a situation where the bourgeoisie discusses whether it is a

revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation (Le Figaro, for example, headlined on
one of their editions “The French insurrection”, while SP newspaper, Libération,
alerted in the March 20th editorial that Paris´ demonstration ended at La Bastille and
that “was a symbol” ) was to say… that the key was to impose on the union leaders
to break with the government and call the general strike to conquer “the banning of
sackings”, raise of 200€ for all, reduce labour hours, etc.

As far as we know, the IV International transitional program raises a clear program

for situations as the one France is living: it doesn’t say “ban the sackings” –which is
the same slogan than Brazilian PSTU rises to put pressure on Lula-Alencar
government, When they had already fired 2 million workers!- but it says sliding
scale of wages and sliding scale of hours. The transitional program raises the
struggle for workers control and to finish with the business secret. It says “the
workers would demand resumption, as public utilities, of work in private businesses
closed as a result of the crisis”. In France, in 2009, during a huge industrial crisis
and mass factory closing, in the middle of the factory occupations, the so-called GB
Bolsheviks don’t say any of that, they don’t raise the nationalization without
payment and under workers control of every company that closes, fires or
suspends, etc.

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Against the bailingout of French state of their banks and companies, against
“nationalizing the loss and privatizing profit”, GB two days before the national strike
“forgets” transitional program (the one they sign in holidays) which says
“Expropriation of Separate Groups of Capitalists” without compensation, which
needs to be linked “with that of seizure of power by the workers and farmers”;
Expropriation of the Private Banks and State-ization of the Credit System”.

Rare “Trotskyists” are the ones of GB who spent decades talking about the
Transitional Program and, when after 30 years a pre-revolutionary situation starts
they hide the program and replace it by reformist chatters of “sacking ban”,
“reduction in labour hours” and “a decent house for all”. What a shame!

It is more than clear in France that those “leaders of trade unions and reformist
parties” about whom GB rants and raves, are in charge of throwing water into the
fire and trying to control the workers who occupy factories and take bosses as
hostages. This situation tends to be spread and also is supported by all the working
class, who sees that occupying the factories and taking the bosses as hostages, is a
just and legitimate defence of workers facing the bosses´ attack. But GB in its
leaflet says nothing about it. How can they call themselves “Bolsheviks” !–especially
in France where 1936 revolution began with a wave of strikes and factory
occupations- and not place in the centre of the program and agitation (two days
before a national strike) “Long live to the occupied factories with the bosses as
hostages!” “Workers: occupy all the factories, not just those that close or are in
crisis, but all of them, first of all those that give profits all over the country!”? If this
is not the way, can GB tell us which the way would be to “impose on the union
leadership” the general strike?

Finally GB denounces that Sarkozy`s government attacks the immigrants,

democratic freedoms and “represses and intimidates the strikers and
demonstrators using cops and courts”. Of course! That is why the bourgeois state
exists precisely! To face the state transitional program says: “The Picket Line,
Defence Guards/Workers’ Militia and the Arming of the Proletariat”. In Trotsky’s
text, “A program of action for France” written in 1934, he says clearly: “All the
police executors of the capitalist will, of the bourgeois state, and its cliques of
corrupt politicians must be disbanded. Execution of police duties by the workers'
militia. Abolition of class courts, election of all judges, extension of the jury for all
crimes and misdemeanours; the people will render justice themselves.”

But GB, what do they say in the leaflet, two days before the national strike –when
there were in France a couple of occupied factories- and the workers already have
had some confrontation with the police? Absolutely nothing: just like TC, Philippe
and GB are a bunch of PA-CI-FISTs that say that it is possible a general strike,
“defeat Sarkozy-Fillon government and kick them out”, “open the way to a workers
government and the United Socialist States of Europe”… pacifically. That is why we
discuss against the GB position in 2004 as regards “Pacific way to the United
Socialist States of Europe”!
GB has nothing of “Bolshevik”: they bury the lessons of the pre-revolutionary
situation in France 1934-35, when Trotsky and the bolchevick-leninnists prepared
themselves for the beginning of the French revolution with a revolutionary action
program articulated with the general strike, workers control and workers militia.

4) So far I wrote about French GB. We will start studying all their position from their
website, so we can collaborate with you in the political struggle against this
lamberts group and servants of the social democracy. As we said we are translating
SF position on Palestine. I read it in English and I was shock by the reactionary
character of what they say, specially compared with the correct position, as regard
the principles, let aalone if we compare it with the correct principled position they
pose about the national question on Ireland.

It is a reactionary position, servant of the imperialist policy of “two nations, two

states”, even if SF says that “solution” is impossible and poses the slogan for “A bi-
nation worker state”. This slogan makes no sense, the only objective is to hide the
implicit recognition to the existence of “a Jewish Israeli” nation and the right to have
its own state. There can not be a “bi-national” working state: the Bolsheviks in the
October revolution proved it, raising the right to self-determination of all the
oppressed nations by czarism, even separation, and building a Federation of

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Socialist Soviets Republics: but they did not raise a “Plural-national Worker
State!”

“Bi-national Worker State” cannot hide SF program. They consider that after 60
years of occupation, there is an “Israeli nationality” and that “Israeli Jews have
become a nation with a national language (Hebrew)”. I. e. not only they legitimize
the occupation but also they recognise to the occupants “adquire rights” –as if just
the time would have annulated the fact of occupation and colonization!- and they
also affirm that in fact imperialist, creating the Zionist-fascist state of Israel
fictitiously, was able to solve the Jewish question transforming in a nation the
“Israeli Jews”. This is open revisionism, pure counter-Leninism! Because if
imperialism was able to solve the Jewish question progressively, then imperialism
would be no longer reaction at all along, i.e. capitalism would have a progressive
role to play in history. That is the revisionist base of SF position, as all the social-
imperialists’ base; from the old social-democracy and Stalinism to the new
emergent reformist gang who are the renegades of Trotskyism.

There is no slogan that can cover SF policy and we have to say it clearly: on
Palestine question SF is in the same trench that ONU resolutions of 1947 and 1949
about Palestine partition , resolutions planned by Roosevelt, Churchill and their
lackey Stalin in Yalta conference in 1943. They are in the opposite trench of the just
combat of the Palestine working class and people for their national freedom, i.e. for
the destruction of Zionist-fascist state of Israel and for a non racist, democratic and
secular Palestine State from the river to the sea, which can only be guarantee by a
workers and peasants government of the Palestine masses organized and armed.

Even more, SF explicitly says that “one nation ‘secular democratic state of
Palestine’, from ‘the river to the sea’ because, a) it implicitly denies the existence of
a Jewish nation…”. They try to cover their reactionary position saying that they are
“unconditionally for the Israel state destruction” but that doesn’t mean that “in a
future workers state would seek to deny the national rights of anyone”. Nice
euphemism! On behalf of the “wonders” of an utopia and future “bi-national
workers state”, the truth is that today SF denies the national rights to “someone”:
to the Palestine nation, 9 million people who live in concentration camps in Gaza
and the West Bank, or as slaves in what SF calls “Israel State” or in the refugees
camps in Jordanian, Lebon, Syria and Egypt. It is a huge concession to Zionism,
imperialism and UNO! So inorder not to “damage national rights” of the so called
“Israeli Jew nation” and its so called “Israeli working class” (that arrogant labour
aristocracy armed, which as SF recognizes 80% of them are fanatically Zionists), SF
buries the legitimate national right and the struggle of 60 years of Palestine workers
and people for the freedom of their occupied land!

5) We should ask SF so, which is their position on Falkland Islands, Argentinean land
occupied and colonized by British imperialism over a century ago; it is an imperialist
enclave as Gibraltar, or like the Zionist state of Israel itself. According to SF logic,
we should say that after 100 years of British occupation, Falklands are no longer
Argentinean, because there are 7 or 8 generations of “native” kelpers with a native
language (English) different from Spanish we talk in Argentina. So, why do not we
claim Falklands as legitimite British territory? Even more, since “kelpers” feel like
“second hand citizens” of British imperialism, why don’t we raise the defence of the
right to kelpers’ national self-determination, so these “legitimate citizens” of
Falkland Islands who decide whether they want to be part of the British empire, or
they want autonomy, independence, etc.

SF comrades will have to explain their position about Palestine and also it would be
good to know their position about Falkland Islands and which was/is their position
on the war in 1982 between Great Britain and Argentina.

6) SF position asks for “cooperation” between the fascist Histadrut and PGFTU led
by Al Fatah; to “have faith in the Israeli working class in the revolution” and
“despite the 80% approved Gaza war” and they clarify that they are against any
attack on the Israeli nation without differenciating classes. That is, when the
soldiers of the Zionist army entered Gaza killing women, children, old people
shouting out “if we kill a Palestine pregnant woman, we will kill two with a single
bullet”, the combatants of the Palestinian resistance before shooting had to “cease
fire” and asked the Zionist attakers: “Who are the bourgeois and who the

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“workers”? So that we may distinguish between the two and do not kill the “Jewish
working class” because they are our “class brothers and sisters”?

I apologize but I have to exaggerate and say that SF position on Palestine makes me
sick. Above all, because this cynical position, servant of Zionism, is more in
evidence in comparison to the correct SF position of principles facing Irlanda, that
is, for pushing out British imperialism and for a worker and independent united
Irlanda.

What would SF think about a so-called Trotskyist current that facing Ireland
question would affirm that after so many years of English oppression and
occupation over Ireland, the “national rights” of the English people that live in North
and South Ireland cannot be denied, let alone, “the national rights” of the entire
protestant sector in the South of Ireland who want to continue being part of the
Britain imperialism, and thus, instead of fighting for a worker independent united
Ireland, now there is to fight for “ an English/Ireland bi-national worker state in
Great Britain”? Surely, SF would say that it is a socialimperialist current, servant of
the Britain crown. Unfortunately, such smock applies SF comrades on Palestine:
servants of the Zionist state, that gendarme of imperialism.

7) Well, from now, these are some fruitful contributions to become offensive against
the aberrant position of SF on Palestine. On this last question, there are more points
that we could critize and without doubt, when all the FLT comrades can read the SF
position on Palestine in Spanish there will be new arguments for the debate. But we
believe it would be important to prepare a first official letter to SF – asking them to
publish it in their next press as they have published our letter on their position on
the reactionary strikes and Philippe letter of GB-, including these first principled
questions on Palestine.
Our characterization is that today SF comrades are at a crossroads: they are with
one foot in GB preparing themselves to become a blockage group, “sucker traps”,
that may be useful for the “left wing” of SWP and a future “new capitalist party” in
England; and the other foot in the debate with FLT that states an opposite way to
advance towards internationalist Trotskyism.

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It’s hardly surprising that Socialist Fight moves closer GB: do not forget that when
from the FLT we critized fraternally its position on the reactionary strikes in England,
we centralized our criticism around two questions:

a) They do no raise the struggle for the expropriation of the Britain enterprises and
companies in the colonies and semi-colonies and the defeat of the Britain troops in
Afghanistan, etc.; nor the fight for the sliding scale of wages and labor hours
…..Coincidentally, just in the same way GB did it in its lefleaft dated on 17/03/09.

b) We alerted them that the strikebreaker politic of the labor aristocracy and
bureaucracy is expressed not only under the shape of reactionary strikes like in
England but also as a way to “regulate the crisis” like happened in France where the
politic of the union bureaucracy and their servants the renegades of Trotskyism was
to make the working class accept the “sliding scale of suspensions, layoffs of
immigrant or hire workers, increasing in the labor hours and productivity and salary
reduction” with the argument that in that way they would achieve to preserve the
jobs of the payroll employees and keep the factories open.

This alert was not by chance: the lefleaft of SF against the reactionary strikes said:
“When similar demands were made on the French TU leadership they immediately
rejected them as reactionary chauvinism and insisted on the demands like ‘we will
not pay for the bankers/capitalism’s crisis’. This means to wash the hands of the
treacherous French bureaucracy that is strangling the the way to the general strike
in France and it places itself openly in the trench of the V Republic facing the
uprising of the peasants and exploited masses of the Antilles and French colonies.

Today we may say that the SF moving closer to GB is not by chance: both currents
capitulate to the labor aristocracy and bureacracy. GB does it openly on
Guadoulupe question and in the own France. And SF adapts to the arrogant Zionist
labor aristocracy and fascist Histadrut, and it is “admirer” of the reformist and
conciliating policy of the labor aristocracy in the French unions against the open and
brutally reactionary politic of the English Trade Unions.
We believe there are two trenches and they have to choose consciously: SF is on
the side of Zionism and all its supporters or you are with the Palestinian people.
Today, they are in the opposite trench of that of the Palestinian people: they must
choose. We cannot make any concesion of proncipled: we are for regrouping the
real internationalist Trotskyists and those servants of Zionism are not that.

There is to state this question clearly to the SF comrades, and that they cannot
continue having a foot in the blockage groups, the fifth wheel of the NPA; and the
other foot in an internationalist current, healthy and independent like the FLT. There
is to tell them that if they choose to keep their aberrant position on Palestine and
regroup together with GB, they will meet the same fate of POM and the “Pre-
conference “ POM calls with a program so general that it can be signed by any
renegade of Trotskyism. That is, SF would suffer the same fate of those centrist
chickens that sit on duck eggs and then, they regret when their littles ducks swim
away from their “II ½ “ nest to make a name in the vast reformist lakes. We have
to tell them that they have to choose: in the trench of the Palestinian working class
and people and the struggle for an international regrouping of the truly principled
international Trotskyists able to surpass the hot questions of the world class
struggle; or at the foot of Zionism and the labor aristocracy ready to be the fifth
wheel of the “new anti-capitalist party” that will come to England (it doesn’t matter
with which shape) by the hand of GB and company who are the fifth wheel of the
socialimperialist NPA.

8)Well, we would like to know if with the arguments against GB that her we put in
short, and the Palestinian question, we could prepare an official letter of the FLT to
ITC (SF). You have already received the International Correspondence nº35, and you
will find there the last letter of Tavares of Brazil, where he adhieres (joints-NT) FLT
considerenceing himself a militant for the congress of July. A new small victory –
after the agreement with WIVL and the support of the HRS comrades to the 23
points- towards the way for regrouping the principled Trotskyists in the world.

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9) Next week we will be responding to the ITC on the Jew question and their
shameful recognition to the Israel State, this imperialist gendarme and the ex
Stalinist bureaucracy with which the oppressed nation is massacred and occupied.
And what it is even worst, it is based on the time that this occupation has been
taking place, giving a prescription right because of the time that has elapsed during
the Zionist genocide occupation on the Palestine State. The HRS comrades have
already answered correctly to that question in their adhesion letter.

In addition to that, we will respond to the shameful position of GB on Guadalupe,

where they have the same policy as the social imperialist of Lutte Ouvrier, TC and
the French NPA. They refused to raise the unconditional right to the independence
of Guadalupe and demand the expulsion of the foreign French imperialist troop
legion. As we can see, on Guadalupe question and the other French colonies, the
same as the Israel State question, “as the butcher French imperialist have spend
several years on the occupation”, they recognized the right to oppress that nation
which belongs to the Antilles, Caribe and all Latin America, and it is an extra pearl of
exploitation and sacking of the French butchers, as it was yesterday the Batista
Cuba (the US brothel) and today the martyr Haiti on the part of the UN troops,
which occupy the territory

In the same way we will respond the shameful policy to call to vote for the Labor
Party, today in the English Imperialist government, for the EU elections. That is to
say, ITC (Socialist Fight) yesterday bravely condemned the pro imperialist strikes of
the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy and today it calls to vote for the party of the
English imperialist bourgeois government in order to represent the working class in
the EU. And this is called class independence! It is a social imperialist shameless to
vote for a bourgeois-workers’ party that is in the power, the manager of the
business of the English Imperialist butchers. It is shameful at the same level as Alain
Krivine, Besancenot and other fake Trotskyists, servants of the international
financial capital. That is to say, ITC votes for the Imperialist English government
with the excuse of having an independent class tactic, and this is called for ITC “to
have a policy as the one applied by Trotsky and his tactic of the Worker United
Front between the CP and SD so that the first one could lead the workers militia in
the United Front to squash Hitler’s fascism, in the way towards the proletariat
revolution”. It is a real lie. Never the revolutionary Marxism had claimed the Worker
United Front with worker parties in power, except rare situation, supporting “as the
rope supports the hanged man” (Lenin), when Kornilov attacked Petrogrado, that it
did not mean give him political support, but close workers file to squash Kornilov.

This swerve off the road on the part of the ITC in Israel and England ties its fate to
GB, that at the same time it is tied to the French NPA, who has tied the fate of the
revolutionary events in Guadalupe and the factory occupations of the French
workers not to the forces of the revolution and the proletariat but to the
maintenance of the imperialist capitalist status quo.

SCAI of FLT