DEMONSTRATE AGAINST THE EEC LONDON Sat. 31 May 2.00pm, Hyde Park, Speakers Comer The wrong position which the ICL took on the rest of the left, the failure to see that a whole series of disagreements can exist and yet remain within the framework of revolutionary Marxism, inevitably had its effect on preventing any real democracy within the ICL. A serious Marxist analysis leads to the conclusion that the development of the revolutionar movement will always be accompanied by tendency fights. These tendency fights can occur within the framework of Marxism. As Trotsky put it:
*The entire history of Bolshevism was one of the free struggle of tendencies Bolshevik Central Committee never dreamed of demanding that an opponent "abandon factional methods", if the opponent held that the policy of the Central Committee was false. Patience and loyalty toward the opposition were among the most important traits of Lenin's leadership.' (9)
However, if you conclude, on the method of the Workers Fight leadership of the ICL, that any political difference (or at least the type of political annerences wmen exist on tae brush icit are nor afferences among revolutionaries but differences between revolutionaries and "centrist obstacles" or 'political suicides, then very different methods of internal regime flow. Lenin wasn't for 'patience" or "loyalty' with "centrist obstacles' or "political suicides" but for their smashing. If anyone who disagrees with you is seen not as a revolutionary but a 'Brandler-ite centrist', a 'political suicide', a 'deserter' or whatever, then obviously the appropriate organisational methods flow. No one is going to treat a revolutionary in the same way as a 'political suicide! The ICL leadership's sectarianism towards other groups is completely and logically linked to its suppression of internal democracy.
Results Unfortunately Workers Power, instead of combatting the thoroughly wrong political premises which led to the ICL leadership's suppression of internal democracy, actually lent their agreement to these sectarian methods. Not merely did they agree to the resolutions which defined all other organisations on the left as non-revolutionary, but they accepted the organisational conclusions of this - agreeing in the founding resolution of the ICL that the fact that the IMG allowed a serious discussion and struggle of tendencies made it 'a rotten bloc". We hope that the comrades of Workers Power, after their experience of the organisational conclusions of sectarian politics, will understand why the IMG is determined that there will continue to be serious democracy and the right of tendency inside its own organisation.
What the split in the ICL demonstrates is that a rejection of sectarianism, principled politics, and internal democracy are inseparable. Once a concession is made on any of these, inevitable results follow What the split in the ICL demonstrates in real life is not the futility of regroupment but the futility of sec tarianism which regards all forces with which disagreements exist not as revolutionaries but as centrists or reformists. If Workers Power draws this conclusion, and enters into serious rather than "short