Marxists and the British

Labour Party

Two Trends: The Political Roots Of The Breakaway

Majority Document

Undialectical approach

Increasingly, EG, usually supported by AW, took an absolutely dogmatic, black and white, undialectical approach towards political phenomena, both in Britain and on an international scale.

Combined with EG's attempt to exercise a political veto over the leadership, this would have had disastrous effects for our development, unless countered. EG's spear carriers have incredibly sought to argue that the majority was 'saved' from blunders by timely interventions by EG.

On the contrary, the real history of the last ten years has been characterised by the increasingly dogmatic and intolerant approach of EG, usually toned down, amended, and sometimes opposed within the NEB and International by other comrades. EG and AW, in the complex new world and national situation, demonstrated an atrophy of thought processes. Old formulas were trotted out which flew in the face of current developments. A kind of veiled political struggle took place in the higher bodies of the tendency.

Comrades could object: why didn't the present majority leaders bring this out earlier? There is a very simple reason. We had drawn the conclusion long ago that EG, and increasingly AW, on many issues took a one-sided, undialectical approach towards events. However, any attempt to publicly differ fundamentally from EG would have resulted in precisely the situation that we have faced over the last ten months. A split, because of the intolerance of EG, would have taken place at an earlier stage when the tendency was less capable of recovering from such a damaging development.

Stock exchange crash

But the latter part of the 1980s brought this veiled conflict more and more into the open. For instance, a bitter clash took place at the level of the IS and the NEB on the issue of the 1987 world stock exchange crash. PT was ill at home and was astonished to learn from other NEB members that EG, in the wake of the crash, was predicting a world economic slump, within six months, along the lines of 1929-1932. This approach was vigorously opposed by other comrades in the EB, particularly by PT and LW, and by PT, TS and BL in the International. AW slavishly supported EG.

No dialogue took place with EG. Instead there were bitter denunciations of BL, for instance, for daring to question this analysis, earning BL the reprimand from EG that he "did not understand the ABCs of Marxism." In EB discussions PT and LW argued that the huge reserves of Japan and West Germany could allow the bourgeoisie, at the cost of storing up the difficulties for later, to temporarily bail out the American economy and thereby world capitalism. This was met by EG with bitter denunciations of this "anti-Marxist" approach.

LW, in agreement with PT, took this opposition to the level of the NEB. We pointed to the careful, balanced approach of Trotsky at the time of the October 1929 Wall Street crash. Trotsky dealt with this in The Third Period of the Comintern's Errors, written in December, 1929, in which he advanced the prognosis that there were at that time four possibilities in the economic sphere: a slow-down in the rate of growth, a recession with a small drop in production, a severe slump, or a combination of these three! Trotsky did not come down for any one of these variants. In the minority's eyes, he is an "empiricist" and "eclectic"!

Marxism is a science, but science is based on the analysis of real processes - not a priori predictions made with the false confidence of an astrologer. Yet it was approached in precisely this fashion by EG and AW. Not satisfied with a broad analysis of the major trends, they attempted to impose an insane timescale of six months for the coming slump. This was even carried over into the written material of EG both in Britain and on an international scale. When the long-predicted slump failed to materialise this undoubtedly disorientated a whole layer of comrades in Britain and internationally.

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