Dear Samuel Tissot,
The International
Committee of the Fourth International has reviewed your appeal of your
expulsion from the Parti de l’égalité socialiste and your correspondence
with the French section. It has concluded that the actions of the PES were
politically justified and constitutionally correct. We therefore reject your
appeal.
The one question that your appeal never
addresses, let alone answers, is why you want to be a member of the PES. To the
extent that an answer to this question can be inferred, it is that you seek
membership only for the purpose of campaigning inside the party for the
dissolution of the ICFI and the French section.
You have advanced the proposition “the
ICFI’s historic identification as the continuity of revolutionary Marxism has
been refuted,” and demand that it enter into a discussion whose only purpose is
to convince the party to dissolve itself. This means that you believe the ICFI
should not exist.
In your appeal you demand a discussion on
this very question. But the ICFI will never agree to a discussion about whether
or not it should exist.
The constitution of the SEP and of the PES
make agreement with the “Statement of Principles” the prerequisite for
membership. You agreed to this when you joined the SEP. You have, of course,
the right to change your mind, but then you can no longer be a member of our
party.
The historical identification of the ICFI as
the continuity of revolutionary Marxism has nothing to do with “the Divine
Right of the Kings”, as you cynically remark in one of your letters. 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. If you claim that the ICFI does not
embody the continuity of Trotskyism, you are obligated to demonstrate how our
politics deviate from these fundamental programmatic positions.
Remarkably, your attack on the ICFI does not
reference any political events, nor do you demonstrate how the political line
of the International Committee contradicts programmatic principles and policies
historically associated with the Fourth International. All but ignoring
contemporary political events, you do not even attempt to demonstrate that the
ICFI has advanced an incorrect analysis and false political line.
This absence of a
critique of the ICFI’s program and policies stands in sharp contrast to the
traditions of the Trotskyist movement, dating back to Trotsky’s Critique of
the Draft Program of the Communist International in 1928. More recently,
the documents written by the Workers League and International Committee between
1982 and 1986, exhaustively documented the Workers Revolutionary Party’s
descent into opportunism.
The sole basis for your claim that the ICFI
has broken with Trotskyism is organizational: that is, that the PES and ICFI is
violating your democratic right to argue for the dissolution of the ICFI. In
fact, no such right exists.
The ICFI took note of the fact that you
rejected out of hand the PES’s offer of a leave of absence to consider your
position more carefully.
It also found your insistence on your
“right” to publish internal documents to be clear evidence of a rejection of
democratic centralism and an unprincipled attitude to political discussion
within the movement. It is evident that your documents would be written in bad
faith, i.e., not for the clarification of the party membership but for future
use by the opponents of the ICFI and PES.
Finally, one cannot avoid being struck by
the objective context of your sudden shift in political orientation. Against
the backdrop of the Gaza genocide, the escalation the US-NATO war against
Russia, and, now, the call for new elections in France, you raise the demand
for the dissolution of the PES and ICFI. What are the implications of your
repudiation of the ICFI and PES at the very point when Melénchon – trained in
the reactionary centrist politics of Lambert – is calling for the resurrection
of a Popular Front, which can be nothing but a death trap for the working
class?
If you fail to reevaluate your position and
find your way back to Trotskyism, you will inevitably drift ever further into
the camp of the enemies of socialism and the working class.
Fraternally,
Peter Schwarz
International Committee
Secretary
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