This was written just after the departure of the Riely’s faction to point out the factual faults of their resignation letter, "Farewell Comrades." But it was refrained by the Imps.
It
is an unexpected letter to us so that we were a bit shocked. But in this
comment, we’d like to only point out the things that we think you comrades
misunderstand or misinterpret the facts in the letter.
1.
“The failure to reach agreement on
the 2016 coup in Turkey (and its analogue in Egypt three years earlier) was a
significant factor in this decision. While seemingly unrelated to the
difference over “Russian imperialism,” the factional lineup once again found
former ET/BT cadres on one side and former PRG comrades on the other.”
“But there was no evidence
that any Imps did any serious research.”
“The comrades who consider
that Russia is imperialist were uniformly of the view that we should defend
Erdogan’s regime against the coup.”
You
describe that the debate on Turkey and Egypt was between “nimps” and “imps”.
But it was not. As you could not deny, we are nimps and perhaps we are the most
radical in that position.
2.
“It seemed pretty obvious that the
comrades did not consider it necessary to seriously engage on the issue
because, having counted the votes, they knew they had a solid majority due to
the support of comrade Mikl et al.”
We
are not ‘passive’ or ‘auxiliary’ supporters on ‘Turkey and Egypt’ issue. We had
initiated the position from the outset until the other comrades finally
supported the position to reach the majority in the last conference.
3.
“The axis of the internal discussion
chiefly involved differing assessments of the extent to which democratic rights
for the workers’ movement were at stake in the two coups.”
“In my remarks to the conference I
complained that the comrades who earlier rejected the comparison on the grounds
that Khomeini’s regime in 1979 was an Islamist dictatorship, while Erdogan’s in
2016 was an attenuated bourgeois democracy, ignored the carefully researched
document I submitted early in the pre-conference discussion period which proved
that there had been considerably more democratic space in the early days of the
Iranian Islamic Republic than in contemporary Turkey.”
The
debate was not only on ‘democracy’ but also ‘imperialism’. Actually, the main
reasoning of our position, at least of EA, was not on democracy but on
imperialism. While you stressed on ‘democracy’ ignoring imperialist motives in
those events in Turkey and Egypt, we strongly and consistently emphasized
imperialist factor. We see that social disturbances in Libya, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey,
Syria and Venezuela are of the results of the crash between imperialist regime
management and the domestic people. Of course, 1979 Iran event was too.
Maneuvers to change the regimes which do not serve the interest of imperialism,
to build the puppet regime and to defend it from working people’s insurgence.
*
* *
--It
seems that you have a tendency to politically dismiss EA comrades, distorting
the details of the history and neglecting our contributions.
--We
think that the axis which penetrates the two issues (Russia/the coups in Egypt
and Turkey) which made the deep crack between 3 factions in the IBT is
imperialism. Not the old formations of 28 years ago, but the question of
imperialism, the greatest pressure which diverges almost all kind of
opportunism in the last hundred years of capitalism.
7th Oct
Comradely,
EA
