For Political Discussion (2024–2025)
[If not otherwise noted, comments in square
brackets were part of the original anti-chronological submission to the
leadership while I was still a member. GL 20.09.2026]
2 October 2025
Dear Comrades,
I
am sending you the current state of my thoughts on the Secretariat’s text of November 2024. Unfortunately, due to wage
labour, I have not yet been able to finish it. What is contained in it, however, corresponds to my current views.
The
texts attached to it serve as a supplement to the correspondence between the
Secretariat and me, which has already been shared within the Political
Committee, as well as to the documents concerning the discussion in the South Berlin Branch. The texts
should be read in a common context.
The aim of this compilation is to contribute to the political clarity of the
Political Committee.
Furthermore,
this is intended to take into account the criticism that the development of my
positions should be presented systematically.
However,
there is no claim to completeness. Further contributions to the discussion [by
other comrades, GL 24 November 2025] may be reproduced by the comrades
involved.
With
socialist greetings, Gregor
***
When we attack empiricism we
attack that method of approach which says all statements, to be meaningful, must refer to observable or
measurable data in their immediately given form. This method insists that any
‘abstract’ concepts, reflecting the
general and historical implications of these ‘facts’, are meaningless. It
neglects entirely that our general concepts reflect the laws of development and
interconnection of the process which these ‘facts’ help to constitute. (…)
Like all statements about social
phenomena, these are meaningless unless they are demonstrated to have specific class content, for class struggle
and exploitation are the content of all social phenomena. (…) All this argument
that ‘the facts’
are the objective reality and that
we must ‘start from there’
is a preparation to justify
policies of adaptation to non-working-class
leaderships.
SLL National
Committee, 1963
***
Current
State of a Reply to the Secretariat’s Text of November 2024 [Feedback Welcome]
Dear Comrades
of the Secretariat,
thank
you for your detailed reply of 8 November 2024. I would like to respond to your
text in greater detail here. I think that only through a principled discussion,
such as the one we are conducting here, can the uncertainties, questions and differences of opinion that have arisen be clarified. I share your view
that the discussion must be based on the heritage of our movement and must be
tested against our practice and our political line published on the WSWS.
I
think that your reply contributes considerably to our common clarity. I found
it helpful in better understanding which points involve “misunderstandings” and
where there may possibly be actual differences of opinion. In particular, I
think that the text deepens the analysis of the relationship between Germany,
the USA and other imperialist powers.
At
the same time, you formulate clear criticism of my text, which I would in turn
like to answer.
At
the beginning, you concede that I have addressed “important points”, but
subsequently write categorically that my “positions are wrong and would lead to
the disorientation of the party”.
First
of all, I hope that this does not refer to my position that, with the approach
of revolutionary class struggles, “the struggle against centrism and every
tendency towards national opportunism is decisive for the building of the
revolutionary party and the success of the revolution”. For this position is
part of the Historical Foundations of our party.
Our
foundational document places “particular emphasis (…) on the role of centrist
parties”, writes Comrade Peter in the foreword, “for they played a major role
in paralysing the working class at decisive historical turning points. The
development of a revolutionary
Marxist tendency took place in a struggle against centrism and at its expense.”
The
founding of the Fourth International, too, was only possible through a
consistent struggle against the different varieties of centrism. We quote
Trotsky: “The new International will have to develop mainly at the expense of
the centrist tendencies and organisations that predominate today. At the same time, the new International
cannot emerge in any other way than through a consistent struggle against
centrism.”
Centrism,
Trotsky continues in Centrism and the
Fourth International (1934), “is characterised rather by what it lacks than
by what it contains”. “It avoids theoretical obligations wherever possible and
is (in words) inclined to give ‘revolutionary practice’ preference over theory,
without understanding that only Marxist theory is capable of giving practice a
revolutionary direction.” It “repeats the old Menshevik arguments (of Martov,
Axelrod, Plekhanov) – usually without being aware of it”, while “blunting the
edge” of Marxist criticism.
You
might object that there are no signs whatsoever of a centrist tendency in our
work and political line – rather, it is my criticism that is an expression of such a tendency. I formulate
the sentence as a supposition because you do not explicitly address the
question of centrism in your text. You
do, however, write that I take an “abstentionist” position and spread
conspiracy theories. I believe it is not quite that simple. While I can concede
that my criticism may be immature, unfinished, perhaps also misguided or
“exaggerated” in parts, in my view Trotsky’s struggle against centrism
nevertheless retains a real practical relevance for our work. Precisely because
this danger is also acknowledged by you on various occasions in personal conversations, I would like to put it
explicitly on the party’s agenda.
With
this preliminary remark, I would now like to address your points of criticism individually.
“An
underlying problem with your document is that, contrary to what was agreed, you
do not systematically develop the positions you advocated in earlier
discussions and contrast them with our perspectives, or acknowledge false
positions, but instead ignore the course of the discussion and often formulate
your positions in such a way that they appear less far-reaching.”
It is somewhat unclear to me what this criticism is supposed to mean.
You seem to suggest that I
proceeded dishonestly or improperly in drafting my text. But I did indeed try
to “systematically develop” my positions and to compare them with our
perspectives – that is the essential content and purpose of my text.
You then write that I ignore the course
of the discussion and fail to acknowledge my own false positions. In this context,
you quote a message from me to Christoph in which I expressed the view that the Putin regime
in the Ukraine war is not among the victims, but among the perpetrators. This message was a reaction to the fact
that the Putin regime had been described as a “victim” in oral discussions. I
stand by the position in my message and am not sure to what extent it casts my
arguments in a bad light.
If
the Putin regime is a victim of imperialism, one could also say that the Stalin
regime was a victim of imperialism. But from the standpoint of the working
class, this would be superficial: From the standpoint of the proletariat, the
Stalin regime was an agency of imperialism against the revolution and
alternatingly placed itself at the service of one imperialist power or another.
Conversely,
Hitler’s war of annihilation, in all its bestiality, was directed not primarily
against Stalin’s regime, but against the Soviet working class. Today, the war
policy of the Putin regime is not aimed at
striking a blow against the system of
world imperialism, but at gaining a greater share in it itself.
Conversely, NATO’s campaign is directed not primarily against the existence of
the Putin regime, but against the living conditions of the Russian and
Ukrainian working class.
The
most recent events show how easily Putin could be transformed from an “enemy”
of the USA into an apparent ally.
Ironically, it is you who provide an example here of how an earlier oral
position (“victim”) is reformulated in such a way that it appears “less
far-reaching” (“target”).
Be
that as it may – I simply did not quote the message because it referred to an
informal discussion and not to the line that we advocate on the WSWS. There, we
rightly have nowhere described Putin as a victim of the war.
“But
if the Putin regime is not the target of the imperialist powers and the USA and Germany are not fighting on the same
side of the trench in this war, then this means that our assessment of this war
as a proxy war by NATO against Russia is wrong and that it is instead a proxy
war between the USA and Germany, with Russia as Germany’s proxy. You underscore
this point once again when you assume that Germany wants to make use of the
deployment of Russian nuclear weapons and could ‘instrumentalise’ the Russian
military for its interests.”
To
this it must be said: All the
regimes involved, as you yourselves also write, pursue national capitalist
interests. They do this not only against their formal opponents, but also
against their formal allies.
We
have – among other things in Thirty
Years’ War, and drawing on
Trotsky’s writings on the relationship between America and Europe – stated
several times that the USA is attempting to postpone its economic decline at
the expense of the European capitalist powers as well.
On
p. 6 you correctly state: “Of course, on the part of the USA, the Ukraine war
is also a means of weakening Europe and Germany in particular.”
My
point is that this is not a one-way street. From the standpoint of the European
powers, or Germany, conversely, the Ukraine war is also a means of weakening
the USA and Eastern Europe. If the Ukraine war were, for example, to lead to
the insolvency of the USA, this could increase
the relative international weight of the euro. If the USA were
forced to withdraw from Europe, this could potentially have advantageous consequences for the agenda of
German hegemony over Eastern Europe.
In
this sense, my remark is to be understood that, in their strategic diplomacy,
the German elites are attempting to
“instrumentalise the Russian military apparatus for an anti-Eastern European and anti-American agenda”
– for example, by invoking
the “Russian threat” towards countries such as
Lithuania or Georgia in order to drive them into the arms of the EU or directly under Germany’s military
control.
The
question “What means should Germany use to instrumentalise Russia’s nuclear weapons?” misses the core of the question,
which is rather: Is it advantageous for the strategy of the German elites at
the present time if Russia appears
as a threat to Eastern Europe?
Russian
nuclear weapons are “instrumentalised” in the sense that Germany, for example,
signals to Lithuania: “Place yourself under our protection, otherwise you will
face the same fate as Ukraine.” (In a similar way, Trump “instrumentalised”
Russia’s nuclear weapons against Ukraine when, during Zelensky’s visit to
Washington at the beginning of the year, he accused him of “risking World War
III”.)
Thus,
particularly for Germany, it is not only a question of the subjugation of
Russia, but also of the subjugation
of Eastern Europe. “Subjugation” should here be understood in the sense of the
theory of Permanent Revolution: It does not mean that the local bourgeoisie is
eliminated, but that it re-orients towards the “subjugators”.
I
did not deny that “the German government is currently actively fighting against
Russia in Ukraine on the side of the USA” or say that the Ukraine war is
essentially a “proxy war between the USA and
Germany”. I also did not say that the war in Ukraine is not a proxy war between
Russia and the NATO powers.
What
I argued for was to understand the conflicts of interest between the Western
powers – within NATO and the EU – as essential driving forces of the war and
not to analyse them as subordinate to their supposedly common conflict with
Russia (“division of the spoils”).
Unlike
Kautsky, we do not hold the view that the antagonistic interests of the
imperialist powers have receded into the background. The quotation from our
2016 statement, which played an important role in my political development,
expresses this attitude very well:
The European and Japanese
imperialists (…) pursue the no less predatory and reactionary interests of
their own ruling classes. They are all attempting to exploit the excessive
American claims in their own interests, which has degenerated into a bitter struggle
for the global redistribution of economic and political power. (…) As Lenin
explained during the First World War, the imperialist powers are ‘entangled in
a web of secret treaties which they
have concluded with each other, with their allies and against their allies’.
Clara
Weiss’s series of articles from 2016 makes exactly the same point that I have
tried to emphasise: Germany and the USA are pursuing opposing interests in
Eastern Europe.
I
am not attacking these views from 2016 – on the contrary: I see precisely in
our present-day perspectives a certain tendency to move away from them.
For
example, you write that the German elites see “the war also as an opportunity
to put their massive rearmament plans into practice, to dominate Europe
militarily, in order to be able in the
future to offer greater resistance also to the USA (…)”.
This
leaves open whether Germany is currently pursuing objectives in Ukraine that
are directed against US interests. In contrast, I would insist that the German
elites are participating in the war precisely in order to “offer resistance” to
the USA as well.
You
write that Clara’s “analysis of the conflicting interests does not, however,
exhaust the imperialist world situation”.
Germany is not only a competitor of
the USA, “it is also
dependent on it”, and I eliminate “the contradictory nature
of the relationship between the USA and Germany” when I “regard any
reference to this as an adaptation to the circles of German nationalism”. “Every capitalist country
always acts according to how it can best assert its interests.” I do not
dispute the latter point, but emphasise it – particularly with regard to the opposing interests of the NATO
powers.
What
is the political content of the question of “dependence” that you raise? What
is the political content of describing a country as “dependent”?
If it is merely a matter
of examining a particular
international aspect, then there is nothing objectionable about this word. One
can say: Germany is militarily
dependent on the USA, Russia is financially dependent on the
West, the USA is economically dependent on the world market, etc.
But
what does it mean politically when one says: “Imperialist country X is not
capable of offering resistance to imperialist country Y”? Would we also say that France “is not capable of offering resistance to the
USA”? And Japan? Where is this
supposed to lead? If one follows the thought through
to its conclusion, from my point of view this can only lead to a
conception bearing strong resemblance to Kautsky’s “Ultra-imperialism”.
The
war in Ukraine is a proxy war by NATO against Russia; it is at the same time a
war to maintain US influence in Europe; at the same
time, a war over the question of how the
spheres of influence between the European powers are to be distributed going
forward; at the same time, a war by Russia for access to the Black Sea; and at
the same time an attempt by “smaller” powers such as Poland, Austria and
Ukraine itself to make strategic gains.
Message to Christoph, March 23, 2025
[reproduced here for the Political Committee
in the interests of transparency regarding my positions and open questions.
Christoph’s response would have to be provided separately, if needed.]
Hello Christoph,
I
have started to sort out my thoughts on your text and to write something about
it. The conflict between the USA and the European powers is now being
brought more clearly to the centre of attention on the website, which I consider important and take as
encouragement.
The
attempt by the European elites to achieve “independence” from the USA means enormous additional dangers for the
working class.
From
my point of view, complex political questions remain. You write in your text
that my positions are wrong and would lead to the disorientation of the party.
But did you also mean my position that the struggle against centrism is
becoming ever more decisive? This position is
anchored in our historical foundations.
Recently,
I have tried to read more closely into the discussion of 2003–2008. There are
still some questions that are unclear to me at present – for example, whether
there was an adaptation [to nationalism, GL 20.09.2026] during the Iraq War or
how we conduct the struggle against bourgeois philosophical tendencies such as
empiricism and positivism.
With
regard to the current article on Alex
Steiner, I am unsure whether the serious accusation that Steiner and Tissot
were indifferent to Bogdan’s fate is really supported by the political facts.
I
still regard the expulsion of Samuel Tissot from the party as a mistake that
caused damage to party building. I
also find it problematic that our Political Committee was not consulted.
It
also seems to me that we reject any responsibility on our part for the
reactionary political development of Daniel Reznik / Bukvasevich, even though
he was an important international contact with whom we worked relatively
closely for several years. What lessons do we draw from this experience?
Finally,
another question concerns the New Year perspective. There we explain that trade
unions can once again become an instrument of the class struggle. But did the
US section not expel two comrades from the party at the time because they
advocated this position? Have we changed our position? These are some of the
points I am thinking about.
To be
honest, I perceived our last meeting as brusque and politically unproductive.
But if you have an idea of how we can move forward together, I would be happy
to meet, for example on Sunday.
I
would like to participate in branch meetings again. So far this has been
difficult because I translated after work on Mondays. Perhaps I can take on
another day.
***
Contribution to the Branch Discussion, January 2025
[introduced and defended, shared
with the branch. Serves as a supplement to the compilation by the Branch
Executive, in which this text is missing]
Dear Comrades,
I
very much welcome the political discussion in our branch. In the following, I
would like to respond to the Branch Executive’s reply (7 December 2024) to the
questions raised by Comrade [redacted, GL 20.09.2026].
The
essential problem I see in the Branch Executive’s text is contained in the
following sentence, which in my view also makes clear the core of the
disagreement:
“With
the objection that one cannot speak of ‘the Palestinians’, it is simultaneously
being said that the national question, i.e. the subjugation of colonial and
semi-colonial peoples, no longer exists today.”
I
ask myself: Why should the recognition of the working class in an oppressed
country “simultaneously” imply that the “national question does not exist”
there?
This statement only makes sense
if one starts from a two-stage conception according to which,
in a colonial country, the national
liberation struggle must first be
recognised and waged before – at some later point – the working class is placed
at the centre. But in my view, this can in no way be our conception.
We
are here confronted directly with the question: Permanent Revolution or
Two-Stage Theory?
As
we know from history, only the working class can lead the colonial uprising to
victory. It can in turn do so only to the extent that it achieves its political
independence from the nationalists. We obstruct this process if we refuse to
name the nationalists as opponents of the working class.
Of
course, we “defend” Hamas in the sense that we condemn in the strongest
possible terms the cowardly drone and missile killings of Hamas leaders by the
Israeli armed forces and advocate that the working class in Israel and in the
West stop these attacks – which are directed to a far greater extent against
the working class of Palestine than against the nationalists.
We
clearly distinguish between the reactionary Hamas leadership and workers or
peasants who are supporters of Hamas or another nationalist organisation.
But
we do not “honour” the “example” of a bourgeois nationalist without knowing, or
even just asking, in whose interests he acted and how many murders of
socialists, workers and Trotskyists he was responsible for.
The
experience of countries such as Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Cuba shows that
nationalists and Stalinists are entirely capable of persecuting and murdering
socialists and revolutionary workers – precisely also despite and during an
ostensibly common struggle against national oppression.
In
Vietnam, the Việt Minh
collaborated with French colonial troops in order to massacre supporters of rival Vietnamese nationalist movements and the Trotskyists in 1945–1946.
Between
the end of August and December 1945, workers and peasants in the province of
Tonkin, under the decisive leadership of the Trotskyists, had established their
own organs of power and a workers’ government.
After
the Revolutionary Committee of Saigon called for the expropriation of the
factories, the Vietminh government ordered the disarmament of all
non-governmental organisations and welcomed the arrival of Allied troops in
Vietnam.
The
popular organs of power were liquidated by the government, members of the
Trotskyist LCI as well as hundreds of workers were tortured, murdered and
buried in mass graves.
The
Stalinists subsequently signed an agreement handing control of the country over
to the French troops.
The architect
of the murder of the Vietnamese Trotskyists was Ho Chi Minh.
In
Cuba, the Trotskyists were likewise ruthlessly persecuted by the regime around
Castro, their members thrown into prison and their press destroyed.
Comrade Bill Van
Auken writes in an article from 2019:
“When
Leon Trotsky’s murderer, Ramon Mercader, an agent of the Soviet secret police
GPU, was released after his imprisonment in Mexico in 1960, he immediately flew
to Cuba, where Che Guevara received
him at the airport and Fidel
Castro warmly welcomed
him. He regularly travelled
between Moscow and Havana, where he died in 1978.”
In
Sri Lanka, bourgeois nationalists even murdered our own comrades during and
after the civil war.
What is decisive is that the working class is not politically subordinated to the nationalists.
This
begins with recognising that workers and nationalists, including in the
oppressed countries, have opposing class interests and that the former
therefore need their own organisations, their own political leadership and
their own slogans.
But
when we say that the distinction between Palestinian workers and Palestinian
nationalists denies the legitimacy of the national liberation struggle, this
appears to me unmistakably as a concession to Pabloist positions that we have
always rejected.
From
this standpoint, I fully agree with the following passage from the Branch
Executive’s reply:
The rise of Hamas, too, is
ultimately a result of the crisis of leadership in the working class. The WRP
bears a considerable share of the blame for this. Our task is to resolve this
crisis and build a new revolutionary leadership at the international level. The
prerequisite for this is an absolutely uncompromising anti-imperialism.
However,
the passage immediately following this once again illustrates the problem by
lumping Palestinian workers and nationalist leaders together:
If, in this situation, we were
to weaken or even abandon the defence of the Palestinian masses and the
leadership they currently have, then we
would be striking our colours from the outset. We would withdraw from the
struggle and, in the name of ‘criticism of Hamas’, switch to the camp of the
bourgeoisie with many learned ‘Marxist’ words.
(Emphasis added)
I think that conceptions left behind by the WRP still
play a role here.
***
Excerpt from Notes on the New Year Perspective 2025
[last edited on 9 January 2025,
shared with UR; not completed, links in the running text in the original]
My
main criticism of the first part of the New Year Perspective is that the crisis
of the imperialist world system is considered almost exclusively from the
standpoint of the struggle against US imperialism. The conflicts between the
imperialist powers are underestimated or analysed insufficiently. The specific
international role of the European powers and their respective geopolitical
objectives are not outlined. But this is necessary in order to equip the cadre
against any concessions to the Lafontaine-Wagenknecht line, according to which
Germany and Europe are vassals of the Americans.
It
would therefore be good to underpin the New Year Perspective with further
analyses of the crisis of, for example, German, French, Italian and Japanese
imperialism. (...)
On 5.: “Collapse of the imperialist world system
divided into rival nation-states” – What does it mean to say that the imperialist world system is collapsing?
In my view, it means that the state
of relative strategic equilibrium between the imperialist powers has come to an
end, i.e. that a period of open
conflicts between the imperialist powers has begun. These conflicts, however, are not analysed, but disappear completely in formulations such as “Third World War between NATO and Russia”
(Alex Lantier, 6 March 2024). (…)
In
an article for Internationale Politik,
Zeit editor Jörg Lau criticises the
German government for having incorporated the “multipolar world order” into the
National Security Strategy. He writes:
The concept of multipolarity was
introduced into international politics in May 1997, through a letter from the
Russian and Chinese ambassadors to the UN General Assembly. This was directed
against “Western hegemony” after the end of the Cold War – specifically against
the EU and NATO. Russia and China were striving for a new order in “Eurasia”,
explicitly anti-Western, against Washington and Brussels.1
But
in fact, the conception of a multipolar world order does not originate with
Russia and China, nor does it date back to 1997. As far as I know, it first appears with Helmut Schmidt and Henry
Kissinger. Thus the former Federal Chancellor, revered by the SPD, AfD and
Bundeswehr, writes in his introduction to Kissinger’s book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy2:
The world was bipolar,
militarily as well as politically, when Nuclear Weapons and Foreign
Policy appeared. In the almost two
decades since then, this has changed, and once again Henry Kissinger was among
the first strategic thinkers not only to investigate the causes of this change,
but also to clearly recognise its results. The result, for example, that the
era of the superpowers was approaching its end and that
1 https://internationalepolitik.de/de/wir-leben-einer-multi-polaren-welt
2 Henry Kissinger, Nuclear
Weapons and Foreign Policy, 2nd edition 1974. Introduction and reading
sample: https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9783486817300_A39108472/preview9783486817300_A39108472.pdf
the military bipolarity that
still prevailed did not prevent political multipolarity, but on the contrary
even promoted it. And what must have concerned him, first as a thinker and now as the politician Kissinger, is
the fact that this multipolarity does not necessarily bring with it a guarantee
of stability.
One
could add to the sentence in the NYP: “The end of the Eastern European
satellite regimes of the USSR gave
German imperialism the long-awaited opportunity to rise to become the ‘power at
the centre’ (Münkler) of Europe and to expand the European Union eastwards.”
This
took place in confrontation with the other powers of Europe, particularly
France and Great Britain, which have
traditionally rejected a position of German predominance in Europe. To what extent did the diplomats
succeed in coordinating these
conflicting interests?
Among
the results of these conflicts, one probably has to count the changed military
alliances in Europe, including
Britain’s withdrawal from the EU and the Treaty of Aachen between Germany and
France. Austria, too, has benefited
from the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe and appears to attempt to
re-establish a military alliance within the borders of the Habsburg Empire
(Central European Defence Cooperation, CEDC).
The
historical analysis of the conflicts between the imperialist powers in the past
period is still too short overall in the NYP and should be supplemented by
documents from the international sections. This also concerns, for example, the role of countries such as Japan,
South Korea and Italy.
On 9.: The United States
attempted to use its geopolitical advantage to attain
global hegemony on a level that had been denied to it after the Second
World War as a result of the decisive role of
the Soviet Union in the
defeat of Nazi Germany as well as the wave of anti-colonial mass movements.
Washington was convinced that, through its military power, it could finally
reorder the world economy under its control.
To
what extent did this succeed? To
what extent was Washington’s bid for world power thwarted by its imperialist
rivals?
An
article in the Washington Post from
1990 by Gary Milhollin, an advocate of US imperialism, criticises West Germany
for having armed India and Pakistan with nuclear weapons. Milhollin also
directs similar accusations against Norway for having helped Israel with its
nuclear weapons programme.
Opinion
| ASIA'S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE THE GERMAN CONNECTION - The Washington Post
Similar
questions also arise with regard to Iraq. Here I have an uncertainty regarding
what our position is. Are we saying
that Iraq at no point had ambitions to produce weapons of mass destruction,
such as nuclear weapons, or are we merely saying that the US casus
belli of wanting to eliminate such alleged weapons was based on lies? Some
interesting indications concerning the history of the Iraqi nuclear programme
and its presumed military component can
be found online. Here too, European forces (France, Germany, Switzerland)
apparently played a key role.
Iraqi nuclear programme:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121025124825/http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/SV/Invo/factshe et.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/18/iraq.germany https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2174842_The_origin_of_Iraq's_nuclear_weapons_program_Technical_reality_and_Western_hypocrisy
https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/npr/102mull.pdf
On 11.: “The USA and its allies see their hegemony
challenged by China as well as by other recalcitrant nation-states whose
interests conflict with Washington’s ‘rules-based’ imperialist order.”
This
sentence should not be interpreted in a way that ascribes an anti-imperialist
role to the regimes of China, Iran, etc. They partly oppose Washington’s
interests, but overall play a serving role for world imperialism. One need only
think of the profitable business dealings of (West) Germany with these
countries.
To
the extent that they are able to act “recalcitrantly” towards Washington, this
merely underscores the lack of unity among the imperialist powers. Formats such
as BRICS and perspectives such as “multipolarity” do not derive from the
“recalcitrance” of the bourgeoisie of these countries, but from the fact that the
existing balance of world imperialism is no longer profitable for them. But this does not mean that they are capable
of politically attacking
imperialism as such.
On 13.: “Although US-NATO imperialism has almost
completely bled Ukraine dry, it has so far failed to achieve a victory on the
battlefield.”
The fact
that “US-NATO imperialism” has not achieved a victory in Ukraine also shows
that there is considerable disagreement among imperialist strategists as to
what should actually be regarded as a “victory”. NATO consists of rival powers.
(…)
On 25.: “China is attempting to counter the
unrelenting pressure of US imperialism by seeking a reorganisation of the
ruling geopolitical and economic institutions that have hitherto depended on
the US dollar as the cornerstone of world trade and financial transactions.”
This “aims at a reorganisation of the current global balance of forces”. (…)
The
most significant step towards “de-dollarisation” was probably the introduction
of the euro. The introduction of the
euro should be analysed once again against this
background.
https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/verliert-der-us-dollar-den-status-derweltleitwaehrung_id_259486823.html https://www.bundesbank.de/de/aufgaben/themen/aus-unserem-archiv-der-blessing-brief--615876
***
Draft of
a Further Contribution to the Discussion to the Political Committee, November
15, 2024 [not delivered]
I
wanted to return once again to the discussion on October 25 about the question
of the class antagonism between the Hamas leadership and the Palestinian
working class.
I
support many of the remarks made by comrades during the discussion. At the same time, I felt that some
remarks missed the core of the question.
[For
example, it was suggested that my position amounted to rejecting uprisings and
even strikes as long as they do not take place under our immediate leadership.]
Ultimately,
the question is how we can help the Palestinian masses win their struggle
against Zionist oppression and how, in the course of this, we can build a
bridge to the struggle for the socialist revolution. I think that a central
component of this assistance consists in exposing the class antagonism between
the Hamas leadership and the Palestinian working class and explaining why the
struggle against Zionism and imperialism is incompatible with the glorification
of bourgeois nationalists.
I
had posted an article3 from the New
York Times in the Political Committee room entitled “Hamas Is Surviving War
With Israel. Now It Hopes to Thrive in Gaza
Again” because, in my view, the class antagonism is made quite clear in
it.
First
of all, it is noteworthy that after more than a year of genocidal war, which
was and is being waged by the Israeli armed forces under the lying banner of
the “fight against Hamas terror”, the organisation in question is not lying in
ruins, but can hope to “thrive”, as the title puts it. One wonders whether the
result of the murder of 200,000 people in Gaza—predominantly women and
children—could really be that a nationalist leadership “thrives”? I think this
must not be allowed to happen.
As
the article reports, however, this is indeed the perspective of the Hamas
leader interviewed in Qatar. Unlike
the millions of workers and young people who have demonstrated worldwide for
“Ceasefire Now”, occupied universities and gone on strike, Hamas leader Meshal
explains that they are “not in a hurry” to “negotiate a ceasefire”. An analyst
quoted by the newspaper confirms: “They totally feel like time is on their
side.”
From
the standpoint of the Hamas leadership, then, the war is, all things considered, proceeding positively. It expects to
benefit politically from Israel’s genocide. It calculates that the bombs
and hail of bullets fired by the Israeli armed
forces will continue
to drive Palestinian workers
into the arms of its organisation, because no one else seems to be visibly
present to fight for them. The Israeli armed forces may have killed hundreds of
thousands, but “we” will “have the upper hand”, because our support is “thriving”—such
is their inhuman logic. Their implicit motto
seems to be: The greater
the suffering and despair of the
Palestinian masses, the greater their dependence on us, the fighters for their rights.
“They think they're the only game in town”, the article states in this
regard.
It
follows from this reactionary logic that the Israeli regime will not “destroy”
Hamas even if hundreds of thousands
more people are murdered in Gaza—which
is why Israel will sooner or
3 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/hamas-gaza-israel-future.html
later
have to take one or another wing of Hamas seriously as a negotiating partner.
And indeed, the article reports that this conclusion has now even been reached
by sections of the Israeli army.
“They’re
practically recognizing Hamas”, the Hamas leader exults, and assumes that his
organisation will also “play a decisive role in Gaza after the war”.
The
Hamas leadership apparently aims to be recognised (again) as Israel’s junior
partner in the further oppression of the Palestinian masses.
***
Contribution to the Discussion
to the Political Committee [approx. mid-to-late October 2024]
Comrades
have asked me to explain my thoughts on Hamas once again because I take a
critical view of a formulation used by David in Frankfurt.
I
am opposed to “honouring” the Hamas leader as someone who “has fought against
oppression all his life”.
First of
all, I think that the Hamas leadership consists of enemies of the Israeli and
Palestinian working class and enemies of socialism. There is no doubt that it
is a bourgeois-reactionary organisation that exploits the Palestinian working
people’s striving for freedom and seeks to subordinate it to a
religious-capitalist programme.
This
applies above all to the leaders of this organisation. Their role is not to
conduct a political struggle against Zionist oppression, but to obstruct this
struggle and politically poison it.
Marxists
do not base their politics on the immediate appearance of political events, but
on an examination of the tasks facing the working class.
The
task of Palestinian workers is not to honour the role of the Hamas leaders, but
to politically emancipate themselves from them.
In
contrast to the Pabloites, we do not ascribe a progressive role to the national
bourgeoisie of oppressed countries.
Several
comrades have expressed the concern that I would want to condemn Hamas as
strongly as Israel or represent the standpoint of those who do not distinguish
between the violence of the oppressed and that of the oppressors.
My
point is not to “condemn both sides” in an abstentionist manner, but to
emphasise that Hamas is Israel’s junior partner when it comes to oppressing the
Palestinian masses. After all, Israel is not primarily
conducting a campaign
against the Hamas
leadership (most of whom
are based in Qatar and are enjoying their lives), but is above all waging a
campaign of extermination against the Palestinian working people.
On
the contrary, the Israeli intelligence services even played an important role
in building up Hamas, which at the time was justified on the grounds of
weakening Fatah.
As
the New York Times also reported at
the beginning of December 2023, the Israeli side had already been informed in
detail about the plans for the uprising more than a year before October 7,
based on informants from within Hamas. Even if one assumes that the Israeli
side was taken by surprise by the events, this makes clear that there is no
absolute dividing line between Hamas and the Israeli intelligence services.
One
can also safely assume that Hamas is an intelligence target of other
intelligence services, such as those of
Egypt. What I mean by this is that Hamas’s claim to represent the “Palestinian people” should be critically questioned.
In
the case of Hamas leader Sinwar, various reports indicate that this individual
had more Palestinian blood on his hands than Israeli blood. In other words,
even if one applies such a crude yardstick, the Hamas leader proves to be more
of an enemy of the Palestinian working people than a fighter against Zionist
oppression.
Whoever says that the Hamas leadership is waging a “struggle against
Israel’s oppression”, but does
not connect this struggle with the conflict between
Hamas and the working class, could just as well say that al-Qaeda is waging a struggle
against America or that the Querdenker are waging a struggle
against the federal government, and that one must therefore “honour” them. Such
statements would be misleading because they obscure the analysis of the
fundamental class conflicts.4
I
am thus concerned with highlighting the antagonism of class interests between
Sinwar and the Palestinian working
people. Sinwar’s murder is a crime, but from my perspective the real tragedy at
present is that, after more than a year of bloodshed, it is Palestinian
nationalism rather than proletarian internationalism that threatens to emerge
strengthened. We should clearly recognise this danger and actively counter it.
Following Lenin, we should strive to transform the ethnic-racist mass murder
into a class conflict.
For me, this is incompatible with “honouring” right-wing
nationalists.
What
we should honour is the tragedy of Palestinian workers who were delivered
defenceless to the Zionist regime by
Hamas. We break through this tragedy by making no concessions to the
nationalists, but by exposing their treacherous limitations.
We combine this with the mobilisation of the Israeli
and international working
class.
This
requires that we do not conceive of “the Palestinian population” in class-neutral terms as a homogeneous group, but as a unity of
antagonistic class interests.
***
4 Comment: While I still consider
the basic idea of this paragraph to be correct,
the reference to the Querdenker and al-Qaeda is inappropriate
insofar as both have significantly less support among the working class than
Hamas, and the former act in the immediate interests of an imperialist
bourgeoisie. GL, September 21, 2025
Thoughts on Sam Tissot’s
Expulsion from the Parti de l’égalité socialiste
(PES)
[Message to the Branch Executive
Committee via AR, October 1, 2024]
From
my perspective, Sam’s expulsion from the PES is a setback for the French and
international working class and a mistake that
should be criticised and, if
possible, reversed.
The
substantive questions raised by Sam are undoubtedly of far-reaching
significance. This makes it all the more important to present them with
complete clarity and then address them seriously. Such a principled approach is
of essential importance for the building of the revolutionary socialist
movement in France, Europe and beyond.
As I understand it, Sam’s concerns essentially consisted
of:
·
carrying out a joint political assessment of the
PES’s interventions over the past period,
·
using this as a basis for discussing the question
of what tactics can be used to free workers from the dominance of the trade
union bureaucracy and combat the influence of petty-bourgeois groups such as RP
among the youth,
·
deepening the substantive discussion of Steiner’s
and Brenner’s documents,
·
and clarifying questions concerning the nature
and construction of IWA-RFC and IYSSE.
A discussion of these questions would not
have entailed the liquidation of the PES, but, on the contrary, could even now
contribute to strengthening the firmness of the international party cadre and
its capacity to act. Instead, a promising young cadre was driven out of the
party without his concerns being substantively addressed.
I
think that the PES leadership proceeded in a politically false and hysterical
way, at times argued dishonestly, and thus acted to the detriment of the party.
In particular, it was wrong to advise Sam in informal discussions to leave the
party before any clarification had taken place; to intimidate him through isolation; and to deny him the
opportunity to submit his criticism to the NC in a developed form.
The
NC’s responses also contain serious false statements, unsubstantiated
insinuations and dishonest amalgamations that do not contribute to clarifying
the questions raised, but instead obscure them. These include:
·
the claim that Sam had proposed dissolving
sections of the ICFI,
·
the claim derived from this that Sam wanted to
impose Stalinist or Pabloite positions on the ICFI,
·
the suggestion that Sam had begun the discussion
with the conviction that the PES did not represent the historical continuity of
Trotskyism,
·
the insinuation that he was acting out of subjective hatred of the IC,
·
the unsubstantiated supposition that Sam was acting on Steiner’s behalf.
I
therefore think that the PES leadership’s actions were not principled and
caused considerable damage to party-building in France and internationally.
I
also find it troubling that there was no prior discussion in the SGP Political
Committee about the expulsion of a leading cadre.
After the decision had been made, there was not even a report
on it for more than five months. In a
sense, the Political Committee
had to learn about the events “from
the press”, from an opposing blog.
The
accountability of the party leadership to the Political Committee was thus
grossly neglected. When would we have learned about it if Sam had not published
the correspondence?
At
the same time, I also consider Sam’s decision to publish his political
statement at the beginning of September on Steiner’s blog—an ardent opponent of
the ICFI—to have been detrimental to the party. I do not share the embittered
conclusions he draws from the matter. The danger now is that the questions
connected with the crisis of the French section will not be clarified in a
principled manner.
Gregor
***
Thoughts on the Development of Our Political
Line and Our Work
[Letter to the Secretariat, Summer 2024]
***
Original
Memo on the Conflict between the Hamas Leadership and the Palestinian Working
Class [WSWS Editorial Board, October 10, 2023]
I think that the events in Israel/Palestine confront
us with the task of striving for the
leadership of the Palestinian masses. This requires a systematic and
uncompromising polemic against their present
leadership—Hamas. Of course, always from the standpoint of bringing the democratic and national aspirations of the oppressed
Palestinian masses to fruition.
The
present crisis in the region is very specific. All the more must we base our
line on the firm foundation of our historically developed position towards the
national liberation movements. For this reason, I would be pleased if comrades
could explain our position with reference to the important text below. I think
that this could contribute a great deal to clarifying how we fight for the
leadership of the proletariat and the building of socialism in Israel and
throughout the region.
It [the working class] is the only social force that can
realise the right of nations
to self-determination. However, it does this not as an appendage to the
national bourgeoisie, but rather as its implacable enemy. It fights for
self-determination with its own weapons and on the basis of its own program,
rallying behind it all the oppressed masses of the villages and countryside.
Self-determination is achieved as a by-product
of the socialist revolution, led by the proletariat (…)
Specifically with regard to Sri Lanka: “[The statement] also pointed out that the defence of the rural masses against state terror
was indissolubly bound up with the struggle to overthrow bourgeois rule and
establish a workers and peasants government, in the form of a United Socialist
Republic of Sri Lanka and Eelam.”
Wije Dias:
The question of national
democratic rights has to be approached by revolutionaries as part of a world
socialist program, for which the Marxist movement—the Trotskyist
movement—fights. We have always stressed
that these democratic tasks can be realized only as a by-product of the
socialist revolution. Therefore, national democratic rights can
only be realized as a by-product of the world socialist revolution. There is no national path to achieving national democratic rights. There are no national
roads to national emancipation or liberation.
Arguing for a change in the
ICFI’s attitude towards the slogan of “self-determination,” under conditions of
the vast transformations in the world situation, David North declared:
Communal, ethnic and chauvinist
movements hide behind democratic phraseology—the slogan of self-determination,
national liberation—while they pursue a policy
whose economic content is the renewed enslavement of the broad masses by
imperialism. They are directed not toward national liberation, in the sense
that this term was understood in an earlier historical period, but to wipe out
even the limited gains that were previously made by the masses.
Through the political and
theoretical clarification achieved in the course of this discussion, the ICFI
decided that, in order to fight to unify the working class, it must take a
critical, even hostile, attitude towards the emergence of various national
separatist movements and their advocacy of “the right to self-determination,”
to justify the formation of separate bourgeois states—in most cases, statelets
(…)
I
consider the last point to be central: Hamas is not fighting for national
liberation in the sense in which this
was understood in an earlier period. Rather, with its nationalist perspective,
it is promoting a development that “means the re-enslavement of the
broad masses by imperialism”.
Only under the leadership of the working class can the national questions be
resolved, and we must fight for this leadership by attacking the present
leadership.
Memorandum on Natural Science,
Imperialism and Dialectical Materialism [Excerpt, Autumn 2023, addressed to the
Secretariat, typos corrected]
The more science learns about
matter, however, the more “unexpected” properties of matter it discovers, the more zealously
does the decadent
philosophical thought of the bourgeoisie try to use the new properties or manifestations of matter to
show that matter is not matter. The progress
of natural science
in the mastering of matter
is paralleled by a philosophical struggle against
materialism. Certain philosophers and even some scientists have tried to utilize the phenomena of radioactivity for
the purpose of struggle against materialism:
There used to be atoms,
elements, which were the basis of matter and of materialist thinking, but now
this atom has come to pieces in our hands, has broken up into electrons, and at
the very beginning of the popularity
of the electronic theory a struggle has even flared up in our party around the
question whether the electrons testify for or against materialism. Whoever is
interested in these questions will read with great profit Vladimir Ilyich’s
work on Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In fact neither
the “mysterious” phenomena of radioactivity nor the
no less “mysterious” phenomena of wireless transmission of electro-magnetic
waves do the slightest damage to materialism.
– Leon Trotsky,
Radioactivity and Materialism (1923)
If historians still look back in
anger on the last century, it is because mankind is still fighting—in the
spheres of politics, economics, philosophy, and even art—its undecided battles.
– David North (2014)
The political development of the
party as a whole—of both older and younger members—the raising of its
theoretical level to meet the intensifying political challenges, requires the
interaction of an intense engagement with contemporary developments and the
identification and critical analysis of the historical processes that
constitute the essential content of the “present.”
– David North (2019)
***
On
September 27, a discussion took place at the party office dealing with the
development of natural science and technology in the twentieth century and some
related political and theoretical questions. In my view, it demonstrated that a
continuous struggle for dialectical materialism is also necessary in the field
of natural science and technology. The discussion already provided significant starting points for this offensive.
However, it also pointed to some
important ambiguities within the cadre that must be eliminated in order for us
to jointly fulfil our historical responsibility.
Johannes,
Christoph and I took part in the discussion. Other discussions had already
preceded it (with Christoph
individually, as well as with Peter at the end of 2022), the content of which is also reproduced here without in any way
intending to distort any positions as a result.
The
reason for the discussion is that for some time I have been trying to gain
clarity about the truthfulness and class content of a number of
narratives/conspiracy theories that have gained increasing political
significance in recent years. Just as the anti-vaccination politics was
catapulted to the centre of bourgeois-right-wing politics in the course of the
Covid-19 pandemic, it must also be assumed that other seemingly marginal views
can become an important factor in the class struggle and—if left unresolved—a
weapon in the hands of our class enemy. In the interests of the working class,
we should anticipate this and develop our position as early as possible so that
valuable time is not lost. We are entering a period characterised by explosive
social developments, including scientific revolutions. The alternatives of
“world war” or “world revolution” are becoming clearly apparent. Therefore, the clarification of these and other
questions is of very great objective significance.
Christoph
warned that a critical examination of the development of science and technology
must not lead to an anti-scientific relativism that casts doubt on scientific
findings and denies the fact that scientific progress has also taken place
under conditions of the death agony of capitalism. To speak of a “crisis in the
natural sciences”, as I have sometimes done, was a far-reaching statement that
should not be made lightly or in blanket terms.
Christoph
also warned that confronting reactionary physicists and their idealist
conceptions could entail the danger of making concessions oneself to an
“esoteric worldview”. One must always distinguish between science and
“pseudo-science”. Johannes emphasised that the Marxist movement has always
fought against conspiracy theories and defended science.
I fully agree with these remarks and would briefly explain how I understand them.
We still live in the epoch characterised by Trotsky as
the death agony of capitalism. This means that a materialist understanding of the “present” and its revolutionary potential can only be
developed to the extent that the fundamental conflicting tendencies of
development of this epoch are taken into account. This applies to the
development of natural science and technology just as it does to all other
social processes.
Marxists
have the task of analysing this contradictory process, explaining it materially
and thereby laying bare the historical interests of the proletariat. Our task
is not to passively applaud the socially embedded activity of natural
scientists. Instead, our task is to defend the standpoint of the working class
also in the arena of the philosophy of nature and in this way intervene in the
social struggles taking place there.
At
the latest since the beginning of the Second World War, groundbreaking
scientific insights have quite often been developed by individuals who played a
profoundly reactionary role in the
class struggle. Insight and mystification often followed one another
immediately in the thinking of bourgeois natural scientists, particularly in
Germany.
Thus,
after the Second World War, Werner Heisenberg—who had played a central role in
Hitler’s uranium project—exclaimed that “the smallest units of matter” were
“not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms,
structures, or, in Plato’s sense, ideas”.
His successor
Hans-Peter Dürr, who at the beginning of his career conducted research together with Edward Teller into
the military applications of antimatter, drew the glorious conclusion from his
studies that “matter does not exist at all”. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and
Pascual Jordan—two physicists who were very active in the political development
of the Federal Republic and, like Heisenberg, had also worked on Hitler’s
atomic programme—were notorious throughout their lives both for their profound
religiosity and for their German-nationalist politics. Weizsäcker, who went on
to become a leading figure of the West German “peace movement”, had already
filed a patent for the
plutonium bomb during
the Second World War.
One
might perhaps say that in hardly any country is hostility towards materialism
so deeply rooted in bourgeois thinking as in Germany.
The role
of these individuals and the broader social tendencies they expressed must be
investigated and understood. Only in this way can their objective contributions
to a deeper understanding of the world be properly appreciated in the first
place.
The
conception of the unfinished twentieth century offers, in my view, a very
fruitful framework for such an investigation.
My
motivation in this is to gain a Marxist understanding of the development of
natural science and technology over the last century. In my view, it is
necessary to build on the relevant work of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky (see, for
example, the quotation above).
That
the natural sciences as well as other areas of culture are, in a certain sense,
“in crisis” is, in my view,
indisputable and obvious. The more interesting question is what this crisis consists of and how it manifests itself.
Peter
said, for example, that militarism was one of the main driving forces behind
scientific and technological development in the
past century. I agree with this assessment, but what tasks follow from this for us? This
question demands an answer. Christoph said in a similar context that we have
“respect” for natural scientists (unlike for the majority of scholars in the
humanities, as he added). But what exactly does this mean?
Of
course, we recognise the scientific achievements of the great natural
scientists and technicians. But our attitude is not exhaustively characterised
by the term “respect”. In Germany, as socialists, we have different attitudes
towards opponents of Nazism such as Einstein and Schrödinger, on the one hand,
and Nazi doctors such as Sänger and Mengele, on the other. In the United
States, whatever “respect” the comrades may feel for natural scientists such as
Edward Teller and John von Neumann will undoubtedly be clouded by the latters‘
indispensable contribution to the military hegemony of US imperialism.
Peter
and Christoph have further stated that the conception of the unfinished
twentieth century does not extend
to the natural sciences. But the consequence of this outlook
can only be that, in the last century,
the natural sciences
developed in a separate universe
that was unaffected by the development of society.
Christoph
also expressed vehement doubts as to whether it is possible today to carry
forward work such as is contained in Dialectics of Nature or Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. The
natural
sciences have simply become too complex to develop an understanding that could
in any respect be described as “comprehensive”.
In
my view, this contains a mistaken conception that underestimates the product of
a materialist analysis and tends to make concessions to bourgeois currents such
as empiricism and positivism.
As
for the term “conspiracy theories”, we do not simply understand this to
designate speculations in the spirit of a research hypothesis that must be
tested and, if necessary, rejected as false. In the Marxist sense, conspiracy
theories refer to ideologies that aim to divert attention from national class
antagonisms towards a fictitious “external” or “hidden” enemy and attribute the
blame for the national crisis to it. In this respect, they are closely
connected with war propaganda.
Typical
of right-wing conspiracy ideologies is that they ascribe an independent role to
international bourgeois forums (“World Economic Forum”, “Bilderberg”, “Club of
Rome”, “IMF/WHO/UN”), overestimate the specific influence of individual
bourgeois forces (“the Vatican”, “the US intelligence services”), or mystify
the class enemy (“Illuminati”, “globalists”). The probably worst and most
consequential conspiracy theory in history was developed by the White Armyists and the Nazis with their agitation
against “world financial Jewry” and “Jewish Bolshevism”.
It
is not, however, an expression of belief in conspiracy theories to speculate
that, from the standpoint of the
bourgeoisie, large-scale research facilities
such as the National Laboratories of the United States or the
European nuclear research centre CERN primarily serve military or geostrategic
purposes. The same applies to speculation about corporate or state-led military
secret programmes, as long as such speculation is carefully identified as such
and rests firmly on the basis of
generally recognised historical facts.
(…)
***
No comments:
Post a Comment