It’s now clear. Once providing a revolutionary platform with considerable revolutionary program, the IBT has succumbed to imperialist pressure and lost its revolutionary ability. It is no longer possible to be a revolutionary pole.
It has flinched from the struggle against imperialism, particularly the USA. The ‘Defenders of Seymour’s Marxism’(we are calling both of Tom Riely and Bill Logan’s faction because they identified themselves to defend Seymour’s formula on national question as a precious revolutionary ‘tradition’ in the debate against us.) are seeking the line of least resistance, revising Lenin and Trotsky’s lessons.
They are defending the treacherous position, especially for the colonial people, as ‘tradition’. They have showed cynical and bystander’s attitude on the events of imperialist ‘regime change’ and national liberation. The persistent abstentionist arguments from both factions covered by ultra-radical phrases “dual defeatism”, from the argument that “Russia was and is imperialist.” just after the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 to the neutralist position on the coups in Egypt in 2013 and in Turkey in 2016, were the result of the subordinating attitude before the imperialist pressure. (This attitude is also related with Iran, Libya, Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela.)
The main political axis of both is not of revolutionary vanguard but of opportunist petty bourgeois discouraged by imperialist pressure, as described by Trotsky.
“Theoretical Bewilderment and Political Abstentionism…Throughout the vacillations and convulsions of the opposition, there is a second general feature intimately bound to the first, namely, a tendency to refrain from active participation, a tendency to self-elimination, to abstentionism, naturally under cover of ultra-radical phrases. You are in favor of overthrowing Hitler and Stalin in Poland; Stalin and Mannerheim in Finland. And until then, you reject both sides equally, in other words, you withdraw from the struggle, including the civil war. Your citing the absence of civil war in Finland is only an accidental conjunctural argument. Should the civil war unfold, the opposition will attempt not to notice it, as they tried not to notice it in Poland, or they will declare that in as much as the policy of the Moscow bureaucracy is “imperialist” in character “we” do not take part in this filthy business. Hot on the trail of “concrete” political tasks in words, the opposition actually places itself outside the historical process.”―Trotsky, In defense of Marxism
Imperialism is the main origin of almost all opportunism in this epoch since the first world war and many of the individuals and groups, once revolutionary, have been victimized by the imperialist pressure and have become a part of the ‘tradition’ of opportunism.
We have done our best in the last decade to prevent the political degeneration, to keep the Lenin and Trotsky’s guidelines, and to clarify the differences. However, the IBT has become one of the parts in the opportunist tradition. Including Riely’s group that abruptly ran out before us for absurd reasons, “to undo the 1990 fusion”, the IBT no longer be a carrier of revolution, but became the first chain, like Kautsky, which transmits the imperialist pressure to the working class.
28th Oct 2018