Anatomy of a sect: ICFI expels a leading member of French section

French workers demonstrate against police violence, Sept 2023.

Note: On April 1, 2024, the Parti de l’égalité Socialiste (PES), The French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI or IC) expelled one of its leading members, Samuel Tissot, at a jerry-rigged “trial”.  Tissot’s “crime” was that he raised concerns about the direction of the organization and its political line and dared to express his agreement with a number of criticisms of the ICFI that have been published on this website.

Tissot was one of the leaders of the French section of the ICFI and a major contributor to the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), the online journal of the ICFI. He was one of the featured speakers at the 2023 Summer School sponsored the U.S. Socialist Equality Party. You can find his talk here: The Continuing Struggle against Pabloism: The Centrism of the OCI.

Previous to his work in the PES Tissot was active in the U.S. Socialist Equality Party and was an active member for the past 6 years.  We are publishing Tissot’s account of his expulsion and the political and theoretical differences that led up to it. None of the questions and concerns Tissot expressed were ever addressed by the leadership of the PES and ICFI. Instead, he was vilified, slandered, portrayed as an enemy of the party and turned into a persona non grata in party activities literally overnight. The PES leadership even attempted to intimidate Tissot into signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in which he promised to never publicize his differences with the party for the remainder of his life, irrespective of his party status. This is perhaps a first in the history of internal struggles within sectarian groups.  We are publishing here, in addition to Tissot’s analysis of his expulsion, the complete correspondence between Tissot and the leadership of the PES and ICFI. While it would be a gross understatement to say that the pea-sized PES is an insignificant player in the politics of the Left in France, the theoretical and political issue raised by Tissot are nevertheless of great importance for those seeking to build a revolutionary leadership in France or anywhere else. We are reproducing the original documents of the correspondence as they were written with a few minor corrections to spelling and typing errors: Link to Full Correspondence 

ICFI Expels leading member of French section after months long smear campaign

by Samuel Tissot

I am an ex-member of the ICFI and its French and US sections. I was a member for six years across these two countries. My work for the ICFI included writing over 150 articles for the World Socialist Website (WSWS) and delivering a lecture at the ICFI’s 2023 summer school, as well as the regular political work carried out by the French and American sections.

 

On June 19, my expulsion from the ICFI and its French section, the Parti de l’égalité Socialiste (PES) was finally confirmed after months of political isolation and a smear campaign against me on the part of the leadership. Remarkably, my expulsion was not a product of any action. I had not broken any party rules, I had not worked with forces external to and hostile to the party nor had I refused to carry out any aspect of party work. Instead, the official justification for my expulsion was that I had stated the PES leadership’s attitude toward internal party differences was alien to “the historical continuity of Trotskyism” in a private letter. The leadership claimed such a remark was unconstitutional, but no article of the party’s constitution was cited to justify this claim.

 

Attached to this piece are a series of letters between myself and the National Committee (NC) of the PES concerning my raising of political differences within the party, my efforts to have a discussion within the party and my eventual expulsion. Also included are two letters surrounding an appeal against my expulsion I made to the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

 

The letters sent to me from the PES were written in the name of the NC but it is clear that the NC’s letters were composed almost entirely by the hand of PES National Secretary Alex Lantier. Here I will introduce these letters, give a short overview of how I came to be expelled from the ICFI and discuss the political conclusions that must be drawn from this affair.

 

Across the record of the letters related to my expulsion, the ICFI shows it bears little resemblance to the international working class party it claims to be. The conduct of its leadership at both a national and international level shows it is a sick political organization that has far more in common with the sectarian outfits Trotsky struggled against in the 1930s than the revolutionary traditions defended by the great Marxists. 

 

Undoubtedly, I will be denounced as a subjective idealist and “embittered” ex-Trotskyist if the ICFI’s leading figure, David North, Lantier or anyone else from the organisation ever decides to react to the publication of this piece. However, I urge the reader, particularly any from the ICFI, to read what I have written with an open mind before lining themselves up with such a smear campaign.

 

What were my political differences?

 

Before I give an overview of the correspondence, I will briefly introduce the issues that the PES’s leadership was so reluctant to discuss. Throughout the PES NC’s letters, I am repeatedly accused of failing to raise substantial political criticisms. This was even repeated by the ICFI political secretary Peter Schwarz in his letter rejecting my appeal against my expulsion (Appeal Letter, May 7). However, from the beginning of this episode I raised concrete political concerns, and I referred back to many of these regularly throughout the correspondence.

Alex Lantier

 

Here are the eleven points I raised in the call where I first  expressed my concerns to PES National Secretary Alexandre Lantier[1]:

 

1.  Concern that the party has a sectarian conception of political work: as long as we are correct on the WSWS, the objective situation will get bad enough that people will start to queue up to join.

2.  Questions over the [David North’s] delineation[2] of the fifth phase of the Trotskyist movement. The other phases were marked by major internal struggles of the Trotskyist movement whereas the fifth was just declared.

3.  Uncertainty about “the decade of socialist revolution”[3] [The ICFI’s theory of the 2020s]. Our conception seems to be that if we can just raise the party’s work to a quantitatively higher level and raise the morale of the cadre, strategic and tactical questions about how to rise to the decade of socialist revolution don’t need to be discussed.

4.  Confusion over our reasoning on the Will Lehman campaign. We don’t see the main arena for our work in the trade unions as was traditionally the case in the Trotskyist movement. We have to struggle against the union bureaucracy, but it feels like we do this shouting from the sidelines.

5. Concern over the founding of the International Workers’ Alliance of Rank and File Committees (IWARFC). What is it, who leads it, how do workers elect delegates to it, how do you become a member? The same questions can be asked of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality [the youth movement of the ICFI].

6.  The PES feels more like the Paris bureau of the WSWS in our day-to-day practice.

7.  Raised questions over the term “pseudo-left”, even if we are irreconcilably opposed to these forces, pseudo-left is an epithet that often replaces a careful analysis of who these forces are and what they do.

8.  Raised questions over our carpet ban on entry work in organizations and discussion of this as a tactic.

9.  Concern over the implications of the degeneration of trade unions after the 1970s. Did this mean we shouldn’t do work within them? Also trade unions have been highly degenerate at other periods of working class history but we [Trotskyists] worked within them then.

10.  Concern as to why are we unable to win over students and workers.

11.  Found some of Steiner and Brenner’s arguments quite convincing and some of the      methodology we use against them unconvincing.

While it might be fair to say that these concerns are not fully worked out, it is clear that they touch on a number of fundamental political and programmatic issues. If anyone is to be blamed for a failure to fully work out these differences, then it is the leadership of the ICFI. It was my hope to discuss these points in much more detail, but as the leadership systematically blocked a discussion of my differences, they did not allow for this to happen.

 

How my differences arose

 

In February of this year I initially raised concerns about the inability of the party to make any in-roads into the working class or youth in France amidst a European political situation described as ‘objectively revolutionary’ by the ICFI’s publication WSWS.org[4]. This declaration had been made amidst the massive pension struggles in France. Alongside this, in the last two years Lantier repeatedly insisted that the revolution could be with us in six months and that the party was on the cusp of massive gains. A similar fever surrounded the party’s intervention into the protest movement against Israel’s genocidal campaign against the population of the Gaza Strip. In reality, despite our persistent intervention in these struggles, neither our party nor its standing amongst the French working class had grown one iota.

 

There was no effort to discuss the results – or lack thereof – of the party’s activities during this time. Instead, meetings would consist of comrades assuring themselves over-and-over that the party line had been proven correct by events and that sooner rather than later this would compel the working class to join the PES en masse. Having passed through two major political protest movements without winning any hearing in the working class despite the sustained efforts of our cadre led me to reflect on deeper political questions. This disconnect between experience and the party line exposed that the latter was not based on a sober analysis of the political challenges and opportunities before it but was simply crisis mongering[5].

 

It was in this context that I read criticisms of the WSWS by Alex Steiner and Frank Brenner published on the Permanent-Revolution.org website, particularly, the book-length analyses of the ICFI’s political record Downward Spiral of the ICFI series and Marxism without its Head or its Heart (MWHH).

 

On a closer reading of these criticisms of the ICFI’s political perspectives and activities, I felt that the ICFI’s responses were inadequate and in some cases outright false - particularly the response of WSWS Editorial Chairperson David North to MWHH in his volume The Frankfurt School, Post Modernism and the Pseudo-left, which I had previously only read without verifying North’s claims about Steiner and Brenner’s political positions. Furthermore, I was concerned that Steiner’s Downward Spiral series had been completely ignored by the ICFI’s leadership. It was at least an objective and wide-ranging critique of the ICFI. I thought that even if it was wrong, it was the sort of document a Marxist party ought to respond to.

 

After reading these texts I raised the above list of political concerns with PES National Secretary Alex Lantier. These concerns were raised honestly as a result of my day-to-day experience of the party in France and internationally. I raised them internally and, in line with the party’s Principles and Constitution, and I did not discuss them with anyone else until after my expulsion. I was a full member of the party, and I had never violated the party’s rules. As such, while mindful that raising differences would distract from the party’s work, I expected my concerns to be taken seriously.

 

As we shall see below, when I raised these concerns internally to the party leadership I was immediately slandered and denounced in vicious terms. I was labelled a supporter of Stalinism, Pabloite political forces, the Democratic Party (including its support for Zionist crimes), and Imperialism. After having worked closely with Lantier for over two years and within the IC for nearly six, as soon as I raised my political concerns I was immediately accused of dishonesty, “hating the party” and being subjectively motivated. I was later accused of seeking to “operate as a disloyal informer inside the PES and collaborator with the opponents of Trotskyism” (Letter 5,March 7). During my efforts to negotiate a discussion with the leadership I was completely frozen out of political life in the PES and the IC, ejected from party group-chats and secretly recorded at an unofficial party meeting. I have not seen Lantier, with whom I was a close personal friend, nor any other leading comrades once since I first raised my concerns.

 

I do not raise these points hoping to arouse sympathy from the reader but instead to expose the completely unprincipled manner in which the IC deals with internal dissent.

 

Behind their mudslinging and intrigue was the leadership’s paranoid belief that I was involved in some plot against the ICFI. The only “evidence” they had for this was that I had political concerns, and I agreed with some of the analyses of Steiner and Brenner. In fact, I did not contact anyone outside the ICFI until after my expulsion from the PES and ICFI. On reflection, it is clear that this conclusion was reached the moment I raised differences. Throughout the exchange the leadership claimed that anything I said was really a manifestation of my desire to dissolve the IC. This meant my right to a discussion could then be dismissed with the justification that the IC’s existence was not up for discussion. On reflection, it is clear that from the moment I raised differences my expulsion was only a matter of time.

 

If there is anyone we should feel sorry for it is the leaders of the IC, who despite haughty declarations of self-importance and decades of political experience cannot even put together a coherent political response to a member’s political concerns.

 

Overview of the Correspondence

 

What follows is a brief overview of my correspondence with Lantier and the political issues raised within it. This is not an exhaustive review, and many additional political points made in the letters were excluded here in the interest of length. Various arguments, claims and quotes from the letters are cited throughout the summary. More detail on these points can be found in the relevant letter. There are 11 letters. As a general rule those sent by Lantier on behalf of the NC are odd numbered and my replies are even numbered. Letters 1-9 chart how negotiations for holding a discussion of my differences then led to my expulsion. Letters 10 and 11 concern my appeal to the ICFI after my expulsion from the PES. For the sake of clarity, I have provided short summaries of the calls and meetings that were not part of the recorded correspondence below (a more in-depth description of these events can be found in the “How Did We Get Here?” section of Letter 6).

 

My break with the ICFI began when I told Lantier I was highly stressed and struggling with political work in a phone call on Feb 26. In this call I told him I believed my stress was the result of political concerns but that I wanted time to work them out. However, he insisted I disclose these there and then, leading to the list reproduced above. Although Lantier remained polite and courteous during this call I already had the impression at the end of this phone call that Lantier was quite shaken by my concerns and particularly by my mention of Steiner and Brenner.

 

Lantier suggested an informal meeting with himself and two other leading comrades, Gnana and Kumaran scheduled for February 28. This was originally scheduled to be in-person but was moved online at the last minute. It was at this meeting that Lantier’s slander campaign against me was launched. Immediately my honesty was questioned. Lantier opened the call with the rhetorical question “are you even serious?” and then launched into a rant that included the accusation my differences arose from emotional issues. I was then denounced as a Stalinist, pro-Imperialist and a de facto supporter of the Israeli genocide in Gaza through my alleged desire to join the Democratic Party. I protested that my words were being twisted and I did not defend any of these positions but was repeatedly talked over by Lantier. At one point I was even told I should leave the party immediately if I was going to refuse to drop these concerns. This was the last time I would speak directly- even by phone- to Lantier or anyone else from the National Committee before my expulsion meeting.

 

On March 5, I met an elder comrade in-person sent on behalf of the NC (but not a member of that body) with whom I agreed to prepare a document for discussion before the party. Later that evening I received a letter from the NC which repeated Lantier’s slanders and continue to attribute political positions to me that I had never defended. This included a lengthy discussion of “the allegation against North” I had apparently made “dishonestly.” I had told Lantier that I believed North had falsely accused Steiner and Brenner’s of supporting Syriza in the Greek crisis of 2015. Lantier assures us that he had “carefully reviewed the analysis made by North and the WSWS of the response of Steiner and Brenner to the election of Syriza. There is not a single incorrect statement to be found in any of our articles.” Even though he lauds North’s “scathing and entirely accurate analysis,” none of the material he cites shows Steiner or Brenner supported Syriza. Lantier’s argument consists of citing North’s version of events[6] and insisting they are true. There is no reference to what Steiner and Brenner said on the issue at all. In this letter Lantier also noted my “extraordinary attack on the PES for not agreeing to a discussion of dissolving our party into the French Morenoite RP [the Révolution Permanente group]” which was a position I never defended. This would become his primary justification for the denial of my right of discussion throughout the rest of the correspondence. (Letter 1, March5).

 

I responded by pointing out my political differences had either been ignored or mischaracterised, in particular the accusation that I was really campaigning to dissolve the IC. I therefore requested more time to prepare a document to clarify my differences precisely (Letter 2, March 6). In response to this the NC suddenly placed conditions on any discussion of my differences before the party, this included an unlimited Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) which would apply even if my membership in the party was to be terminated (Letter 3, March 7). This letter also revealed that I had been quoted verbatim in the previous letter, which can only have been possible for the phone call of February 28 was recorded secretly and transcribed by the leadership.[7]

 

In response to these conditions for a discussion I accepted the first two, which were a reassertion of my loyalty to the IC and adherence to its constitution. These were two commitments I upheld until my expulsion. However, I refused to accept the third condition that included the NDA. The reasons for this are explained in greater length in the correspondence (specifically in the “Why the Leadership’s Third Condition is Unacceptable” section of Letter 6, March 13), but essentially, under the impression the leadership was already planning to expel me, an NDA would allow them to do this without being held accountable later on. It could have also made me liable to legal action after my expulsion from the party if I ever wished to publicly protest my expulsion. This letter is also the first of three times across correspondence that I ask for the transcript of the February 28 call to be shared with the entire party. This would have revealed Lantier’s bullying approach to differences and that his arguments were based on falsifications of my actual political positions. This time, as with each of the following, this request was completely ignored by the leadership (Letter 4, March 8).

 

The NC’s response to this letter characterised it as an “open declaration of disloyalty” and justified the NDA on the basis this was a regular practice for employers. This latter statement perhaps gives away more than intended about the way the IC leadership views its members. I was then posed the ultimatum to either accept this NDA or face expulsion (Letter 5,March 10).

 

I rejected the ultimatum, but at this time I felt that I ought to write a much longer letter to explain how my political differences arose and to protest against the completely unprincipled way the leadership had prevented a discussion. In this letter, I outlined the leadership’s actions up to this point of the exchange and demonstrated how they were inimical with Trotsky’s understanding of Bolshevism and democratic centralism. I also discussed the ahistorical analogy between the current situation and Trotsky’s struggle against the Socialist Workers’ Party Minority in 1939-1940. This included an analysis of the leadership’s one-sided quotations from James Cannon, which were a transparent attempt to add a veneer of legitimacy to its conduct (Letter 6, March 13). 

 

In the NC’s response, an overview of my political history was given[8]. This was followed by another round of inaccurate characterisations of my positions, including my supposed rejection of internationalism, the role of the vanguard party and the revolutionary role of the working class in capitalist society. The actual political content of the points I had raised was wholly ignored. Instead, orthogonal issues such as the short period in which I developed my differences (which was continuously over-exaggerated by the leadership) and the “pathetic petty-bourgeois” Steiner’s “connections” to Savas Michael Matsas were introduced. According to the PES NC, because Steiner once hosted a meeting with Michael means he is organically incapable of making any principled criticisms of the ICFI. By extension my support for any of his positions could be dismissed without actually addressing any of the political arguments made. Lantier also made the conspiracy-theory-like argument that I must already be working with Steiner and Brenner because I had written the phrase “so be it” (which had appeared in a letter written by an ex-US SEP member in 2021[9])! In reality, I had no contact whatsoever with Steiner or Brenner until after I was expelled from the ICFI. All of this supposedly proved Lantier’s point that my criticisms were simply a manifestation of my desire to dissolve the ICFI. The previous ultimatum proved to have been hollow, and now a new offer was put forward by the leadership. This was that I go on political leave until July 1 to privately study the history of the ICFI, with the stipulation of course that I was not in contact with anyone outside the party[10]. If, after this period of study of the ICFI’s approved texts, I recanted all of my differences, then I would be allowed to resume party life (Letter 7, March23).

 

In response I stated that this proposed period of isolated study was a cowardly diversion on the part of the leadership: either they were prepared to have a discussion or they weren’t. If they weren’t then I stated that they cannot claim to be a party within the Trotskyist or Bolshevik tradition. I wrote, quoting Lantier’s own remark in letter 7, “Your central point is that I have ‘concluded the ICFI historic identification as the continuity of revolutionary Marxism has been refuted [sic].’ Unfortunately, I have reached this conclusion, although I hope it can still be proven to me that I am incorrect” (Letter 8, March 27).

 

This conditional remark would be seized on to justify my expulsion. In this letter, I once again took up the accusation that I wanted to dissolve the IC. I defended Steiner’s characterisations of North’s history of the Frankfurt school as ‘crackpot philosophy’ and North’s slander campaign against him as ‘gutter politics’[11]. I also took up the paranoid accusation that I was a hostile agent secretly working on behalf of Steiner and Brenner within the party[12]. I then repeated that the constitutional basis for my threatened expulsion had not been specified and asked this be explained in reference to the constitution. Of course, it never was.

 

The final letter from the PES leadership informed me that a vote was to be held on my expulsion in the NC on April 1. The specific charge against me was that I had denied the IC and PES represented the “historical continuity of Trotskyism.” Lantier wrote at length to justify this. The same slanders and accusations were repeated while my response to them in previous letters were completely ignored. A large part of the letter was taken up by 4 pages of lengthy quotations from articles I had written a few months prior for the WSWS in which I had defended the line of the IC as well as a lecture in which I quoted extensively from David North. Apparently, my questioning of some of these positions exposed my “intellectual superficiality and political instability” and meant I am “not a politically serious person.” What is remarkable is the complete lack of political argumentation presented here, the only point made is that I had changed my positions. Of course, Lantier was not at all interested in my explanation for why; he had concluded as soon I dared to question the failure of the ICFI to grow at all in France that I was a political scoundrel of the highest order! This was all topped off with an arbitrary comparison with Keir Starmer, whose steps from a student radical to the leading representative of British Imperialism I was supposedly tracing by daring to question the ICFI. (Letter 9, March 31).

 

The online expulsion meeting would be my first and last official party meeting since I first raised objections in mid-February. This meeting had more in common with a Stalinist show trial than a genuine examination of whether my political record had violated the party’s statutes. In the meeting Lantier asked me if I would withdraw my positions and I said I would not. I then tried to explain that I was not calling for the dissolution of the IC, that many of the other accusations made against me were false and that, even if the leadership’s claims about my beliefs were true, I had not broken any section of the party’s constitution. However, after around a minute of speaking I was cut off by Lantier who moved the meeting straight to a vote. I was then expelled by a vote of 6-0 by the NC.

 

My appeal to the ICFI

 

A day later I received a short phone call from Lantier in which he explained that I had the right to appeal my expulsion from the PES to the IC. I asked what exact body of the IC I would be appealing to and the details of how and when the appeal would take place. In response, Lantier said that he could not speculate on how the ICFI would decide to deal with the process[13]. As we will see, this vague response was a cover for a completely arbitrary process.

 

I then wrote an appeal letter to ICFI Secretary Peter Schwarz in which I protested my expulsion. I explained, “The assertion that the ICFI embodies the historical continuity of Trotskyism cannot be reconciled with its national sections refusing to recognize the rights of members to discuss political differences within the organization, attempting to force a member to sign an NDA or levelling slanderous political accusations against a member. Either the ICFI represents the historical continuity of Trotskyism, or it is an organization based on centralism without democracy in which the leadership has no accountability. Both cannot be true at the same time... as long as there is no room for discussion of political differences in the PES and this is unopposed internationally, it is inconceivable that the ICFI actually represents the historical continuity of Trotskyism. I was hoping to be proven wrong and I still hold out that hope, which is why you are receiving this appeal.”

 

I then asked two direct questions of the IC leadership. These were:

 

“Does the ICFI believe that its members have the right to express political disagreement with its leadership? Do they also have the right to ask for a discussion of pressing political concerns?”

 

And,

 

“Does the ICFI endorse the PES leadership’s view that its embodiment of the “historical continuity of Trotskyism” is valid regardless of the principles and practice of the party?” (Appeal Letter, May 7).

Peter Schwarz

After over a month of waiting, Peter Schwarz responded to me on behalf of the ICFI on June 19. The ICFI had concluded that, “the actions of the PES were politically justified and constitutionally correct. We therefore reject your appeal.” This letter repeated the unfounded accusations of Lantier that my sole goal was the dissolution of the IC, that I had not made any substantial political criticisms and that I had violated the US SEP’s Statement of Principles[14] (again, exactly which part of this document I had violated was not cited).

 

In the ICFI’s official response, Schwarz took up the first question by just repeating the claim I only wanted to discuss the dissolution of the IC and that the right for internal discussion does not extend to that. In response to the second question Schwarz stated, “By continuity of Trotskyism we do not mean apostolic succession, but the defence and development of the political principles and perspectives historically fought for by the Trotskyist movement” (ICFI Appeal Verdict, June 19). And with that, my six-year association with the organisation came to a close.

 

The Continuity of Trotskyism

 

My denial of the IC’s possession of the “historical continuity of Trotskyism” was the final justification for my expulsion. In the correspondence I compared this conception to the “Divine Right of Kings” (Letter 8, March 27). I made this analogy on the basis that this doctrine held monarchs were not accountable to any earthly authority, just as the IC’s leadership invoked its “continuity” to place itself beyond criticism from the membership or external forces. An equally suitable historical analogy could also be the Catholic Church’s doctrine of Papal Infallibility, meaning the pope is incapable of doctrinal mistakes when he speaks in the name of the church due to his lineage back to Saint Peter. Schwarz seems to have picked up on the Papal analogy in his letter backing my expulsion from the IC. In any case, both analogies point to the same underlying conception that the ICFI has an incontestable monopoly on political truth. Schwarz denied this, however, dismissing my analogy as “cynical” and stated that the IC’s invocation of the continuity does “not mean apostolic succession” (IC response to Appeal, June 19).

 

On closer inspection, however, it is clear that if it is legitimate for the IC leadership to simply expel someone for denying this ‘continuity’ without any discussion then they must conceive of themselves as possessing a God-given monopoly on the heritage of Leon Trotsky and the traditions of Bolshevik Internationalism.

 

Schwarz simultaneously claims that “continuity” arises from “defence and development of the political principles and perspectives historically fought for by the Trotskyist movement” but also that it is legitimate to expel someone for questioning whether an action or political perspective falls within this tradition. Therefore, the IC has the right to expel anyone who questions it before their arguments have even been heard. 

The real question here is who determines whether the IC is engaged in the “defence and development” of the Trotskyist tradition? Either the “continuity” is proven in the political perspectives and struggles of the party, and can therefore be legitimately questioned, or the IC leadership alone has a monopoly on determining this. If the latter is the case – and Schwarz’s response shows it is – then we end up back with the very apostolic succession the ICFI Secretary denies.

 

In the correspondence I argued it was legitimate to accuse the PES leadership of acting outside of the traditions of Trotsky and Bolshevism. I wrote “you claim to embody the historic continuity of Trotskyism but you clearly have no trust in the membership of the Trotskyist party. This is a violation of the basic spirit of Bolshevism (although you accuse me of not referring to Trotsky at all, I quoted him[15] to prove that this was a basic concept of the Bolshevik Party in my previous letter). The fact you didn’t respond to this charge shows you think this is either unimportant or that you are justified in treating an individual who has worked loyally for the party for six years as a pariah for internally raising political differences in a loyal and deferential manner. Either option is sufficient to show the IC leadership has drifted from the Trotskyist conception of building a vanguard party of the working class” (Letter 8, March 27).

 

Another example not discussed in the previous quote was Lantier’s repeated threats to immediately expel me from the party. The first of these was right at the beginning of this dispute. This clearly contravenes Cannon’s notion of party members’ rights during the struggle against the Shachtmanites (I discuss this in the Section headed “Ripping Cannon out of Historical and Textual Context”, Letter 6, March 13).

 

Even if we put aside the historical struggles of the Trotskyist movement, it is clear that the ICFI cannot even stay true to the principles outlined in its US Section’s Statement of Principles, which states there are “no restraints, other than those indicated by the party’s constitution, are placed on internal discussion of the SEP’s policies and activities.” I asked on multiple occasions throughout the correspondence for the part of the party’s constitution I was violating to be disclosed and it never was.

 

Furthermore, if I was incorrect on these points and even if I’d violated the constitution, why did I have to be expelled? I was quite open to being proven wrong on every concern I raised including on my conception of democratic centralism and whether the party’s conduct fell within its guidelines. Could a discussion on the basis of an honest analysis of my concerns not have shown the IC leadership was in fact correct?

 

In the case of my expulsion the question of whether the IC is “the continuity of Trotskyism” was really a loyalty test and the loyalty in question was not to the programme and principles of Trotskyism, but to the leadership of the ICFI.

 

What does this correspondence tell us about the ICFI?

 

The immediate political issue raised by my expulsion is the ICFI’s incapacity to respond to internal disagreement. My case is hardly the first to show this[16], but because I did not perform any action that the leadership could seize on to expel me instantaneously the PES leadership was forced to concoct an arbitrary case in order to throw me out, as is documented in this correspondence.

 

As far as I’m concerned none of the political points I raised have been responded to at all adequately in the letters[17]. Despite the aforementioned list of political concerns I put forward in my first phone call with Lantier and the multiple instances in the correspondence I expanded on these or introduced other issues, the PES and IC leadership ignored this and continued to claim I had not raised any significant political issues.

 

The ICFI leadership’s endorsement of Lantier’s smear campaign against me confirms that total disregard for democratic centralism is the norm within the ICFI. A healthy international organisation would have heavily sanctioned a national leader for such an unprincipled response to internal dissent, but the ICFI’s leadership backed Lantier’s anti-Marxist conduct to the hilt.

 

Whether in the French, American or Sri Lankan sections, the ICFI’s only response to internal questioning is to divert attention away from the issues raised through character assassination and to attempt to bully the dissenter back into line through various forms of political intimidation and isolation. In those cases where these measures do not work, then the individual is expelled.

 

Many of the ICFI’s members in other sections believe they are part of a politically dynamic, principled and independent international organisation that stands above national parties. However, my expulsion shows they are thoroughly incorrect. In reality, it is a sectarian organisation based on clique ties of a small leadership around David North. This is shown at multiple points in the correspondence.

 

This small bureaucracy has an iron-tight grip on the ICFI and maintains this through unprincipled clique ties. There is a secretive atmosphere in the ICFI surrounding the leadership, even amongst experienced members. While it is generally known that North is a businessman within the party, the fact that other party-leaders used to or still hold executive positions in his businesses is not. Many leading members of the IC are personal friends with North, sit as executives in his private companies and hold leading positions within the SEP and ICFI. While there is no evidence of outright corruption, this clear conflict of political, personal and financial interest is never disclosed, let alone discussed, amongst the SEP membership or delegates of the ICFI. These clique relations, and the desire to keep the membership in the dark about them, are undoubtedly the principle causes of the intolerant and arbitrary internal regimes that pervade the ICFI’s national sections.

 

It is unclear if an individual can even join the ICFI leadership except through bureaucratic promotion by the leadership of a national section with the permission of North and company. Toward the end of my time in the IC, I would occasionally participate in international editorial discussions and on ICFI initiatives such as the 2023 Summer School or the US presidential campaign.[18] No one in France ever voted for me to have this position (I was not even an official member of the NC in France). My access to international discussions and contributions to the WSWS was simply a product of my close relationship with Lantier, who after years as North’s personal secretary, was in his circle of trust and vouched for my reliability.

 

The experiences I discuss in the letters demonstrate that the ICFI’s claimed commitment to internationalism is a fiction. The founding of new international groups or the affiliation of individuals or groups to the IC are based principally on their capacity to be amplifiers for the WSWS and bolster the internationalist credentials of the IC. The French section may be the worst of these Potemkin villages, with Lantier and a couple of regular writers for the WSWS masquerading as a full-blown party vying for leadership of the French working class! In reality these “parties” are little more than international WSWS offices and are isolated from the working class. It is also not clear if “parties” other than the US SEP in the ICFI are financially independent or if the illusion of an independent ICFI is maintained thanks to the financial support provided by the businesses centered around North. 

 

There are also a number of instances in the correspondence where Lantier exhibits cult-like behaviour. The designation of a political groups as a 'cult' is often thrown around by anti-communists to smear Marxist groups. However, this does not mean it cannot be an accurate description of groups characterised by a hostility to internal criticism, hagiography toward a leader and an internal regime based above all else on personal loyalty. In an earlier point of its history the IC criticized the Spartacists, various Maoist groups and, of course most infamously, the Larouchites on this basis. And while it would be inaccurate to claim the IC’s paranoia and personal veneration of North has descended to the level of the followers of the late Lyndon Larouche or Bob Avakian, there are troubling examples of uncritical defense of North and intimidation against questioning members in the correspondence.

 

We see in multiple letters that criticism of North’s work or even alleging a potential mistake is unforgivable. It is taken instantly to expose extreme hostility toward North and the entire IC. Why is it not possible for David North to be mistaken and unprincipled on certain questions while correct on others? This all-or-nothing approach to North’s work and politics are another way the IC intimidates those with differences into keeping quiet - either you hold your tongue, or you are accused of having completely repudiated the IC's entire political outlook no matter how small or large your differences.

 

Some of my criticisms of North may well be incorrect, but the IC’s only response is to initiate smear campaigns composed of ad hominem attacks and arguments from guilt by association. Similarly, the letters reveal that leaders of the ICFI have a tendency to see intrigue and conspiracy where there is no evidence for it - including when it involves people they have trusted and worked with closely. An all-or-nothing approach toward political questions, a paranoia that extends to conspiracy theories and smear campaigns against dissenters are cult-like features that have no place in a genuinely revolutionary organisation.

 

The strikingly vitriolic tone throughout Lantier’s letters is also revealing. It is ironic that Lantier accuses me of hating the ICFI while he throws every accusation under the sun at me, accuses me of being a spy and rabidly denounces anyone whose arguments I evince sympathy for. In reality, my concerns about the ICFI’s political prospects do not result from a subjective hatred toward the ICFI, but a sober reflection on its political weaknesses and how out of touch these are with its self-aggrandizing rhetoric.

 

How do we explain such venom toward someone who was a close comrade just weeks earlier? Such anger is a tell-tale feature of the sectarian, who cannot help but rage at their inability to win political influence amongst the working class. The more the ICFI’s isolation from the working class collides with their pretense to be leaders of a growing international revolutionary movement the more their frustration at the situation, themselves, and the amorphous bogeyman of the pseudo-left grows. The highest level of contempt is reserved for members or ex-members who dare point out these shortcomings such as myself and the “wretched”, (Letter 9, March 31) “middle-class nobodies” (Letter 7, March 23) Steiner and Brenner.  In the all-or-nothing approach of the IC, showing sympathy for these forces is just as bad as being the men themselves and therefore the highest degree of contempt is in order. Scorn of this sort has no place in a Marxist analysis of individuals or political tendencies. As Trotsky himself asked of the sectarian we can ask of Lantier; “Who slipped him the salt?”[19]

 

I believe that the issues discussed above follow from the failure to face up to many of the fundamental issues of the ICFI’s politics that arose in the 1985/86 split. This has condemned North’s organisation to continue to embody some of the most unhealthy and politically disastrous aspects of Healy’s legacy (as well as forgoing some of the more positive ones, like a genuine connection to sections of workers).  One would not be far off the mark to describe the modern ICFI as Healyism-lite. While it would be inaccurate to accuse the leadership of descending to the same depths as Healy and his clique at the top of the WRP in the 1980s, without an accountable leadership which defends both democracy and centralism within the party there is no way the ICFI will lead a mass revolutionary movement.

 

In response to criticisms of its internal regime, the ICFI’s claims that such questions are purely organisational and that any serious critique of it must start with its political analyses. Firstly, I – and many others before me – did try to discuss the ICFI’s political analyses within the party but this was arbitrarily blocked by the leadership. More fundamentally, however, the ICFI’s hard dichotomy between organisational and political issues is false and self-serving. It allows the ICFI’s leadership to avoid the critical question of the real-life application of democratic centralism and the role Lenin’s dialectical conception of the party played in the Russian Revolution. It was the political struggle conducted frankly and openly within the ranks of the Bolshevik party that allowed it to develop the correct political line and orientation leading up to and during the critical months of 1917. In contrast, the IC seeks to nip all such struggles in the bud, confident there is never any need to correct or even discuss the line of the leadership. While many times in his political career Lenin even found himself on the losing side of an inner party vote, it is my impression that since North took over the ICFI he has never done so! It was this openness to the discussion of differences, even sharp ones, internally that allowed Lenin to develop a cadre capable of revolutionary success. On the other hand, North’s top-down methods can only assure failure.[20]

 

This is not to deny that some activities initiated by the ICFI, and even the PES, are capable of certain limited achievements, such as the WSWS’s volume of coverage or the Will Lehman campaign for the United Autoworkers’ Presidency. However, a news website and good publicity are not sufficient conditions for a revolutionary party capable of embedding itself within and leading a mass working class movement.

 

The organisation will perhaps continue to be attractive to a small layer of students, such as my younger self, and maybe even some workers who are looking for an alternative to the rotten politics that dominates the left and are impressed by the IC’s claims to be a party of history and defenders of orthodox Marxism. It is possible it could even grow substantially amongst students and young people amidst a deep social and political crisis, as happened to the WRP in the 1970s. However, with an intolerant internal regime, a bureaucratic approach to international organisation and the incapacity to critically review its experiences, it will be unable to grow into the party of the working class required to rise to the challenges of the epoch.

 

Having passed through this experience my first piece of advice to such individuals, as well as any principled members within the ICFI, would to consider whether they are getting an honest and full account of the party’s history in the ICFI’s official works and whether its program and practices really align with those traditionally associated with Trotskyism, in particular on the question of the unions, transitional demands, the defence of women, its attitude toward democratic centralism and Trotsky’s struggle against sectarianism - which most readers of the WSWS would be forgiven for not knowing it existed.

 

I can only urge these individuals to think independently and to engage in particular with the work of Steiner and Brenner, who have produced the only extensive critique of the ICFI in the 21^st Century. This work has either been misrepresented or has gone unanswered. North’s work The Frankfurt School, Post-Modernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-left is not a “scathing and entirely accurate analysis” (Letter 1, March 5) as claimed by Lantier but a smear campaign aimed at dissuading IC members from engaging these critiques of the ICFI’s work in good faith. In reality, North has been unable to honestly answer the critiques put forward in MWHH and – the book which North won’t even acknowledge exists – Downward Spiral of the ICFI. These works are thoroughgoing critiques of its perspectives, its philosophical outlook and its political record which cannot be ignored by a serious Trotskyist organisation.

 

If you are a current or former member of the ICFI and would like to discuss any of the issues raised in this piece or the ICFI’s wider politics please do not hesitate to reach me at: samtissot01@gmail.com

Notes

[1]    These points are based on notes taken during the phone call by Lantier himself, which he later sent to me.

[2]    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/03/icfi-a03.html

[3]    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/03/pers-j03.html

[4]    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/11/per1-f11.html

[5]    This is not to say that events of revolutionary proportions are not arising in certain parts of the world, but that they need to be viewed soberly and from the point of view of how the consciousness of the international working class can be raised to prepare for a genuinely revolutionary mass movement. This form of crisis mongering to avert discussion of political problems or to shore up comrades flagging morale - once a target of North’s criticism - is another habit of Healy that has resurfaced in the modern ICFI.

[6]    The North passage cited by Lantier is the following, “Steiner and Brenner take responsibility for nothing. In order to justify their support for a bourgeois political party and the government it leads, they invoke the “experience” of the working class as if it were an unfolding stream of purely psychic phenomena, unaffected by class forces, which one must observe passively, in respectful silence. Above all, they insist that the conscious activity of the revolutionary party – the critical element of negativity as the ”moving and generating principle” in the dialectic of the objective historical process – must be excluded from the unfolding social experience. Steiner and Brenner argue, in effect, that it is impermissible to intrude upon that blessed psychic state of virgin innocence with critical analysis and discordant exposures. Experience must not be “denigrated.” Rather, the “experience” must be allowed to take the workers wherever it will – that is, to defeat. “A polite way of describing this passage is that it is a bunch of hot air. Steiner and Brenner did not claim that “experience” was independent of class forces, nor that it should be “observe[d] passively, in respectful silence.” As for North’s accusation they “insist that the conscious activity of the revolutionary party… must be excluded from the unfolding social experience” Steiner and Brenner write the exact opposite at multiple points through their analyses of the Syriza crisis in Greece. This is just one example of Steiner’s analysis of Syriza and the tasks its inability to fight austerity place before the Greek working class, “One has to acknowledge that any such program [for socialism] cannot under any circumstances be implemented by Syriza, not only because Syriza is wedded to a program of reforms within capitalism despite its rhetoric, but also because by its nature the transition to socialism cannot be entrusted solely to the vehicle of parliamentary politics. It will require action from the ground up, by the masses taking their destiny into their own hands and creating their own forms of organization. It is also inconceivable that such actions can succeed without a trained revolutionary leadership.”

The quote is taken from: http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2015/03/plan-c-socialist-alternative-for-greece.html. This makes clear that Lantier’s accusation of dishonesty is completely hollow, and if anyone is going to be subjected to that accusation then it ought to be North.

[7]    These quotes were indeed what I said and, contrary to Lantier’s argument that I was disputing this (March 7 letter), I never denied this was the case. I only denied that these quotes proved my desire to dissolve the IC and that I supported Stalinism, Imperialism, the Democratic Party etc. It is quite clear that to reach the conclusion that I support these forces based on these quotes requires a number of leaps in logic.

[8]    This actually contains some inaccuracies, which is remarkable because one of David North’s major criticisms of Steiner was that he mixed up the year of his party application to the IC. Apparently, this harmless mistake betrayed his light-minded petty-bourgeois approach to the Trotskyist movement. One of the major ironies with the IC’s tendency to label every little mistake or mistaken political conception of the manifestation of a deep-seated petty-bourgeois worldview is that it often makes those very same errors itself!

[9]     This quotation is taken from Shuvu’s letter to the US SEP’s New York Branch in 2021, which was latter published here: http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/p/initial-letter-from-shuvu-to-new-york.html

[10]   This presumably extended to comrades in other sections of the IC as well. After all sharing unapproved political ideas outside of his branch was the “crime” that led to Shuvu Batta’s expulsion in 2021.

[11]   Above I have already discussed one example of North’s straw-manning against Steiner and Brenner. I will not go into other examples here, but I would advise anyone interested to review North’s writings in The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left and compare them to what is written in Downward Spiral of the ICFI particularly on questions of the relationship between the Frankfurt School and Post-Modernism discussed in chapter 5 of the latter work.

[12]   Elsewhere, Steiner has in many places described the ICFI’s approach to politics as “conspiracism.” This is not to deny real conspiracies do exist, but points to the tendency to see conspiracies everywhere, whether there is good evidence for them or not. Here we see a clear example of this tendency in Letter 7 which shows the ICFI goes as far as assuming its own members are involved in organised conspiracies when they develop political differences. 

[13]   This gives the dishonest impression that the IC meets as an official body and seeks to remove personal and clique interests from its disciplinary decisions. In fact, Lantier controlled all communication to and from the IC about my differences throughout this episode, even to the point that I was instructed to send my appeal letter to the ICFI through him first! Lantier is a close personal friend of many leaders of the ICFI and of course receives a party salary as a result of his position. It should be evident that Lantier's financial dependency on North predisposes him in a directly material way to react negatively against any comrade who expresses a strong criticism of North.  Any political organization with a shred of integrity is obligated to eliminate personal interests from its disciplinary procedures.  Lantier's very obvious conflict of interests in this matter should have caused him to recuse himself from the disciplinary procedure against me. 

[14]   The US SEP’s Statement of Principles were used as the French section does not have its own.

[15]   In Letter 6 I quoted the following remarks from Trotsky in the New Course: “You cannot demand of the party confidence in the apparatus when you yourself have no confidence in the party. There is the whole question. Preconceived bureaucratic distrust of the party, of its consciousness and its spirit of discipline, is the principal cause of all the evils generated by the domination of the apparatus.”

[16]   Two other recent expulsions from the ICFI are particularly noteworthy. In 2021, the US section arbitrarily expelled Shuvu Batta, a member, and Peter Ross, a provisional member, for questioning the party’s line on the unions. The details of their unprincipled treatment can be found here:  http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2021/04/socialist-equality-party-national.html. Meanwhile, across 2022 and 2023 at least a dozen comrades who protested the party’s abstentionism during the mass movement to overthrow the Rajapaksa government were expelled from the Sri Lankan section. It would be interesting to know how many of the ICFI’s members are aware of this purge, its scale and the issues bound up in it. While I was aware of issues in the Sri Lankan section, the mass expulsion of 12 comrades and many others who resigned in the last two years was never discussed in the PES or any international meetings of the ICFI I have attended. More details of these disputes can be found at https://www.thesocialist.lk/the-fight-for-principles-and-leadership-of-the-working-class-how-sep-sl-bureaucracy-expelled-revolutionaries/ and other articles on this site published by expelled comrades.

[17]   The only one Lantier does try to respond to is my concern about the primacy of daily WSWS coverage in a tiny party’s work (the PES boasts less than a dozen truly active members). However, this was not a reasoned argument about why our party in the current conditions would most benefit from regular news articles on the WSWS but was instead just a quote from the US Socialist Equality Party’s Statement of Principles stating the site is a primary vehicle for the party’s work.

[18]   Other parties in the IC were expected to orient their own campaigning behind the SEP’s US presidential campaign for this election year as part of an ‘international’ initiative. This is just one example of how the real political function of the IC sections is to bolster the US SEP rather than actually grow organic working class parties in other parts of the world.

[19]   https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/10/sect.htm

[20]   A particularly striking summary of the role that sharp internal struggles played in the Bolshevik party’s capacity to lead the Russian working class to revolutionary success can be found in Chapter 5 of Trotsky’s work the New Course: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/ch05.htm. This is in sharp contrast to the decades-long (!) unanimity of party resolutions at every SEP conference reported on the WSWS.