Nahuel Moreno

Speeches in the Second Congress of the MAS

Nahuel Moreno

Speeches in the Second Congress of the MAS

1985

First Spanish Edition: Editorial Crux, Buenos Aires, 1991

English translation: Daniel Iglesias

Cover and interior design: Daniel Iglesias

www.nahuelmoreno.org

www.uit-ci.org

www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar

Copyright by CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales

Buenos Aires, 2017

cehus2014@gmail.com

Table of Contents

Initial Report 1

Main report 3

Reply to Comrade Broquen 17

Second National Congress of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) of Argentina (1985)

Initial Report

The emotional part of Congress has ended. Let’s begin to think, to work with a cool head. The time has come for us to think well, to reflect and to bring resolutions adjusted to reality.

In my report, I will essentially answer the questions that have been raised about the International Theses within the Argentine party. Although there are more or less similar issues, explained or substantiated from other points of view, by other parties — Brazil, the United States — and other comrades from abroad; I am not going to answer those questions because the report would be very long. We reserve this for what we will be discussing at the Congress of the IWL–FI.

From the national criticisms that have been made to the Theses [I am going to respond to] the most abundant, which are the ones the Comrades of Convocatoria1 have done, both in their specific document regarding the international issue, as well as in their national document, in the part in which they refer to the existence or not of revolutions of a political character. If I have time, I will also respond to Comrade Gallego and some other questions raised both in written and oral form, by different comrades. [For example] the question of relative and absolute surplus value. [Repeatedly I have asked these comrades to send me in writing] their tight, very interesting and deep observations. I do not know why none of them expressed them in writing; perhaps because of the tremendous activity for the preparation of this Congress. Other well-formulated problems were also raised in the Party Cadres Schools.

1 Convocatoria was an opinion group formed during the discussion for the Second Congress of the Argentine party, the MAS. It presented and defended its documents during the pre-Congress discussion, presented a counter report to the Congress and it dissolved afterwards.

With regard to the Convocatoria, [I wish to clarify that] the attitude of the comrades regarding the Credentials Committee, and the note that they sent, made me change a little the focus of my answer. I was seeing them as already disillusioned comrades, forming [what is described by] that sad but happy metaphor of the Socialist Workers Party’s leadership: the “broom” groups or tendencies, that is, [those that] take away what is no longer useful, they sweep. The disciples of Cannon used to say that in every well-organised party, [this phenomenon] took place every four or five years. Well, that’s not my opinion. Comrades who have had the courage to acknowledge mistakes or exaggerations in the polemic are comrades who deserve the deepest respect, and in this sense, I will discuss with the comrades. Not only for being comrades, for which they deserve all our respect; but because, after that attitude of the comrades, it is really good that we begin to think that we are deeply united in the prospects of the party although we disagree deeply on many issues.

It seems to me that Convocatoria is a clearly sectarian group. In everything — in the method, in the way of facing all the criticisms, in their conceptions.

First, the method. I thought whether it was good to touch a problem as abstract as the problem of method, and I came to the conclusion that it was indispensable. Trotsky himself, arguing against the ultra-leftists about Spain, began a very deep discussion of politics [starting] with the method. Well, I believe [it convenient to do] the same thing.

The comrades have several methodological characteristics antagonistic to our method and very dangerous. The first is the negation of contradictions — Trotsky pointed to this as characteristic of the ultra-leftists, and perhaps of the sectarians. That is, to take a true element of reality to separate it from it, to enlarge it enormously and to believe that it is all reality. For example, comrades believe that the imperialist counter-offensive throughout the world is the whole reality. It is as if the masses did not fight or have victories. The entire description they make is the same as ours. They themselves take our document and say, “Yes, the Theses say this, this and this; which shows that imperialism is winning colossally throughout the world”. And they forget the other side of the Theses and the other side of reality, which is that [although] imperialism does all that, the masses do things as well, greater than what imperialism itself does.

For us dialecticians, Marxists, reality is a combination of many elements, different elements, in the struggle. The sectarian has the mania of taking only one element. For example, a sectarian is the one who goes to a strike where one has to fight and make armed pickets and he says: “The strike is useless because the true solution is socialism”. And it is true that the true solution is socialism, but it is also true that the reality of that moment is a strike, and the reality of that moment is that it is necessary to make an armed picket.

From the entire reality, the comrades have separated and taken only one element: the imperialist counter-offensive. This is the first very serious deficiency of the comrades. The second deficiency is what Comrade Broquen calls “Talmudic” [method] — Comrade Broquen advises them very well; I do not think he answers well but the advice is very good — that is, to analyse Marxism as if it were the Bible, a fierce struggle of quotation after quotation. Think through quotations and discuss quotations with quotations. I brought, for example, some quotations — I do not want to bore you, they are very long — of Marx and Engels about Bismarck. They are almost from the same time; in them, Marx says one thing and Engels another. Engels says that Bismarck made the greatest bourgeois revolution and Marx says it is feudal. Can you imagine the mess the comrades would have? Look what a mess!

The comrades forget the main Marxist law. And the main Marxist law is that every quotation is wrong because Marxist thought is relative. Every law, true as it is, has errors.

And the other great Marxist law is that reality is superior to any schema, even to Marxist schemas. For example, the comrades quote Lenin about Russia, and I have here a multitude of quotations in which Lenin says that Tsarism was already the government of capitalism…

[Here Moreno was forced to interrupt his report because of an indisposition.]

Main report

[This report was presented by Nahuel Moreno to the Second Congress of the Argentine party by means of a recorded tape, because his state of health prevented him from doing so personally, after having tried twice. All notes are by the Editor.]

After two failed attempts to speak before this Congress, due to the heat and some slight health deficiencies that I have — according to what my doctors report — and the advice of comrades in the leadership of the Party, I have chosen to do the report through this means. I beg the comrades to excuse the inconvenience of having to pay much more attention to a report transmitted by this means. It is doubly regrettable that I had to use this technique because this means is intimately linked to dire pages of national politics since it was the traditional means of communication by Juan Domingo Peron.1 As I don’t intend to keep using it, I hope it will be further proof that the crisis of Peronism is irreversible and that we do not copy anything from them.

1 Juan Domingo Peron lived in exile for 18 years, after he was overthrown by the military coup of 1955. From abroad he sent his instructions to the Peronist party and the union bureaucracy by means of recorded tapes.

Comrades, in my report I will respond specifically to the most general objections and criticisms that have been made within the Argentine Party, and not to those that have been made in other International Worker’ League (IWL)2 parties. I plan to reserve in my report to the IWL my response to these comrades.

2 Following on Moreno’s death in 1987, the International Workers League – Fourth International (IWL-FI) went into crisis and in 1990 it began to split. Currently, Moreno’s followers in that organisation, and the keepers of the web page www.nahuelmoreno.org, are grouped in the International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU–FI).

The most extensive criticisms that have been made of the International Theses are those made by the comrades of Convocatoria. There are other written or oral criticisms of the Theses, especially that of Comrade Gallego to our characterisation of the Israeli State. There has been much criticism to the problem of absolute and relative surplus value in terms of the methodology of over-exploitation of imperialism, and some other partial criticisms. However, I am going to deal just with the majority of the criticisms that have been made to us, which are those by the comrades of Convocatoria.

I have to admit that, specifically starting with Convocatoria’s third document, the comrades raise themselves to a whole conception, to a whole theory of international and national reality, and even relative to our own Report on Activities, coherent and therefore respectable and worthy of being taken into account, even if the comrades of Convocatoria were very few — as they are — or were many, or even if it were a single comrade. Specifically, the comrades have risen to what we might call a Marxist elaboration. All the previous documents, the first two, are not worthy of being taken into account in serious Marxist literature.

Well, comrades, for me Convocatoria as a whole is characterised by being a clearly and totally sectarian opinion group which, like any sectarian organisation, has strong opportunistic features. As they demonstrated in the first document, which I do not want to take into account, these opportunistic features are clear, almost scandalous, as far as the organisational problem is concerned. Also, they demonstrate it in the last proposals — they continue with the same position although they have changed the appearance.

But in all the rest the comrades are sectarians. This sectarianism is reflected as much in the method with which they judge the problems, by how they analyse them, as in their own conceptions. In my opinion, this has been exhaustively demonstrated in the discussion on the national issue when it was shown that the comrades do not see the total crisis of the country. In this sense, we have to recognise they practically hold a record, because they must be the only ones in this country who believe the country is not in a total crisis, absolute, not just economic, political, social, cultural, police, public security, etcetera, and etcetera. They are unique. It’s a record. Their sectarianism acquires almost tragicomical characteristics.

All this is due to the method of the comrades. Trotsky had already pointed out this method when criticising the ultra-leftists in Spain. The comrades deny the essence of the dialectic, which is the science of the concrete, of what is studied, of the present. Dialectics tells us that the concrete is a combination of abstractions. This is why it is very difficult to be a good Marxist analyst. Because first, you have to take, to discover the infinity of elements, of characteristics that every phenomenon has present, and then see how they combine. It has two difficulties — one of an analytical type, and another one subsequent, how to combine what has been analysed.

The comrades make the very serious mistake that Trotsky points out. It is necessary that we agree once and for all on this methodological question, because otherwise in all the Congresses we will have discussions with comrades who do not finish assimilating Trotsky. They take a single element of reality, sometimes even very important; they separate it from the context, do not combine it with any other element, and believe this is the whole of reality.

For example, it is a fact that the bourgeois counter-revolution exists in the world, but the bourgeois counter-revolution in the world is not the reality of the world today, it is an element, and for us, it is not even the most important. Much more important is the revolutionary rise and the revolutionary struggles of the masses.

Another example: What would you say, comrades, if someone comes and defines Trotsky saying “He is a man who has clear blue eyes”? You would laugh at him. This is not what defines Trotsky. What defines Trotsky is the combination of the infinity of characteristics he has and makes him a unique Trotsky. Even defining him by saying “Trotsky is a genius” does not define absolutely anything unless we start by saying that he is a revolutionary politician, we [add] he is great and we do not clarify well why he is great. That is to say, a Marxist always defines by combining infinity of characteristics and noting what relationship they have with each other.

The comrades have another serious deficiency that combines with the previous one and truly makes their method a catastrophe — the mania to strictly conform to certain quotations. I insist, I emphasise “certain quotations”, because the comrades are not scholars either who take all the quotations and make a historical analysis of the context of the different quotations, but they take only one or two. Comrade Broquen advises his comrades well — although later he does not apply this advice to himself — when he tells them not to make a Talmudic discussion, as if it were a Bible, as to whether such a quotation applies or not to reality. I am going to dwell a little on this problem of quotations, because it is praiseworthy to handle the quotations, as long as it is done with extreme care.

With quotes and facts, you can prove absolutely any theoretical position, or explain any reality because there are quotes and facts to explain everything. For example, we can say that the economic situation in Argentina is exceptional because it has reversed the agrarian crisis of 1930, in the sense that increasingly more grain is produced and exported. That is a truth as big as a mountain. We can give facts, quotations, statistics, everything. However, we think that, despite that, if we take all the factors of the economic situation, the Argentine economic crisis is total, tremendous.

Let us now turn to the problems caused by wanting to prove only through quotations. Within Marxism the definition of Bismarckism is a very serious issue, also it is so for us. We have defined a senile Bismarckism, which means to have well defined or specified what Bismarckism is because we have added that qualifier. Let us suppose that a Marxist scholar resolves — like the comrades of Convocatoria — that this quotation is the desideratum, that is, the beginning and the end of everything. First he would find the most famous quote by Marx [regarding Bismark], as a definition: “Nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with a feudal admixture, already influenced by the bourgeoisie and bureaucratically carpentered, and then to assure this state into the bargain that one imagines one will be able to force such things upon it ‘by legal means’!” [K. Marx, “Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers’ Party”, in Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875.] (It is no coincidence that Rosa Luxemburg loved this quote because it is the most literary of definitions.) As we see, it has many adjectives and few precisions. But if there is any precision it is that it is feudal.

If this studious, scholarly comrade continues with the works of Marx and Engels, he will find that Engels was diametrically opposed to Marx. The quote, categorical and now of social type, fundamental, Marxist, without adjectives, is as follows: “Bismarck recognised the German civil war of 1866 for what it was, namely, a revolution, and that he was willing to carry out that revolution with revolutionary methods” [F. Engels: The role of force in history, December 1887–March 1888]. That is to say, in Germany, there was a bourgeois democratic revolution, made by Bismarck no less than in the year 1866. The feudal elements disappeared, not even as pressure.

On the other hand, I point out that this quote was the one I had kept for those who told me that there is no revolution if there is no destruction of the Armed Forces of the regime, because in this case, Engels speaks of a colossal revolution with the Armed Forces of the feudal regime that make, without touching anyone, a bourgeois revolution. In this case, this quote was my secret, the ace up my sleeve, for those who also wanted to fight me with quotes regarding this characterisation of the revolution. But it doesn’t matter.

Notice then the troubles in which those who work only with quotations get into.

But let us now go to the favourite quote by the comrades — that of Lenin where he says that the revolution of February was indeed a revolution because it shifted the power from one class to another. Well, with Lenin also there are quotes for everything. In general, he has defended the position that tsarism was an essentially feudal power. But since the reform of Stolipyn,3 there was a whole stage of Lenin, in which he considered the possibility of a process similar to the Prussian process, considering it was a disgrace. Even at the time when he held that it was feudal, there was a moment when Lenin argued that the tsarist government was not feudal but in fact bourgeois. And even in 1917, shortly before returning to Russia to make that great revolution, which according to the comrades is revolution because it was a bourgeois revolution against an absolutist feudal regime, when saying farewell to the Swiss workers, Lenin pointed out that the bourgeoisie had already economically directed to the country for a long time. By this, I do not mean that the comrades are not right in arguing that Tsarism was a feudal absolutism and [that] what existed was a bourgeois democratic revolution. But we could look for quotations to show that it was a bourgeois revolution within a bourgeois regime.

3 Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (1862–1911), chairman of the Council of Ministers, served as Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire from 1906 to 1911. His tenure was

Let me clarify that this is a very serious problem in the debate. For example, there is a very serious and very deep historical school, closely linked to Marxism, which holds that the English Revolution was not [anti] feudal because before the revolution itself all feudalism had already turned to capitalism. This does not mean this interpretation is correct. The only thing I want to point out is you can search for quotes to prove any issues, also with facts.

Well, comrades. But the problem of quotations involves other very serious problems of the Marxist method; very serious because they can educate the comrades poorly, taking away from the comrades the essential vision of what is the Marxist method. The Marxist method is the method par excellence that relativises absolutely everything. It is the method of relativity, of relationships, of changes. Marxism holds that there is no absolute truth. All [truth] is relative. And the quotes are also relative, comrades. Marxism, dialectics, holds that every truth, like every true quotation — and the true quotation is part of the truth — is relative. This means it has a part of falsehood, a part of the error. In everything, there is an element of truth and an element of error. We say it is true because it weighs the most, but not because there is no error. And quotations, less than anything, cease to belong to that fundamental law of Marxism.

That is why, together with this principle of the relativity of everything, beginning with truths and Marxist quotations, Marxism — taking into account the relativity of the subjective, of schemata, of laws, of quotations, of definitions — formulates as one of its most absolute principles, another principle that is almost a Marxist axiom: that reality absolutely surpasses any schema. This happens in medicine, in all sciences. But more than anywhere else in the historical process, because the historical process is an endeavour, that is, what is going to happen in history. I am not talking about history but about the historical process. History can come to truths because it judges the past. But [in] what is to be done and has not yet been done, reality will always be completely superior, different to all the schemas that have been made, however perfect they may be. We have already discussed this in the Activities Report, in relation to the achievements and goals. It is an expression of this infernal dialectic that reality always surpasses absolutely any schema.

There is another already concrete, very Trotskyist issue. This was advised by Trotsky not only in regard to quotations but [also] to definitions, even in respect of the richest, most abstract, and most enduring of Marxism: the theory. Trotsky says that every new revolution enriches the theory; it doesn’t close the theory; [rather] it opens infinity of new quotations and destroys infinity of quotations, changes them, modifies them. We have to get a good feel about this.

We make all these very general criticisms of our comrades because we are terrified; on the one hand they tell us, rightly so, that a true revolutionary militant is a rebel, argues with his leadership, argues with Trotsky, argues with Lenin, argues with everyone; and then they call us to a passive, total submission to an absolute servility, not to all the quotations of Marxism (because they would be in a mess when finding that there are all kinds of quotes and contradictory), not to the Secretary General, but to two or three quotations.

And I say that the one who lives wrapped up on two or three quotations is a bureaucratic mental servant. And I say this because the famous quotation of Trotsky4 that they have given and which the comrades abide by is one of the greatest crimes. Abiding to this quotation resulted in us arguing that the Chinese Revolution was not a revolution, that the Yugoslav Revolution was not revolution, comrades.

4 This discussion refers to Trotsky’s definition of a revolutionary situation. One of the versions of this definition is the one that exists in the “Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Revolution” (Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky [1939–1940], Pathfinder Press, Second Edition, New York, 1973). There Trotsky defined a situation with “the basic conditions for the victory of the proletarian revolution” like that one in which the following conditions occurred: 1) the bourgeois impasse and the resulting confusion of the ruling class; 2) the sharp dissatisfaction and the striving towards decisive changes in the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, without whose support the big bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself; 3) the consciousness of the intolerable situation and readiness for revolutionary actions in the ranks of the proletariat; 4) a clear program and a firm leadership of the proletarian vanguard – these are the four conditions for the victory of the proletarian revolution”.

In 1948 we held they were counter-revolutions because they did not follow the four conditions that the comrades point out. It is the greatest shame of the Fourth International. In 1949, Hansen, Pablo, and I were the ones who started to say that we had to throw the quotations away because they prevented us from seeing the greatest revolutions of the century.

The same happened to us in the Second Congress of the Fourth International — the first of the post-war period — which I was lucky enough to attend. When the Czechoslovak CP seized power, which began the expropriation of all capitalism no less than in Eastern Europe, we were meeting. We did not give it any importance, it was not even an agenda item, because what could that mean? Nothing at all, the four conditions of Trotsky were not present. We quietly followed the sessions of the Congress [taking this news] as we would take a police news item.

And in general, taking into account the era, the last 40 years, taking the quotations from the Theses of the Permanent Revolution and everything we said (a library of quotations): didn’t we always say that there was no possibility of not even solving the problems of bourgeois-democratic revolution in any country if the proletariat, led by a revolutionary communist party, did not lead the revolution? Or do they forget the Theses [of the Permanent Revolution] and all that Trotskyism said about it? There are hundreds and thousands of quotations written by Trotsky and all the Trotskyists, by all of us, [saying,] I repeat, that no fundamental problem of the bourgeois-democratic revolution could be solved without the leadership of the proletariat and a revolutionary communist party.

Against these thousands of quotations there is only one quotation given in passing in a program, which said that as a huge exception, almost impossible to happen, due to the revolutionary rise of the masses, and a terrible crisis, it could be that the opportunist parties would beyond what they wanted and that they would take power and go against the bourgeoisie.

I ask the comrades to tell me: on balance, what is useful? The thousands and thousands of quotations or that exception we almost certainly were not going to see? Reality shows that we have to throw away thousands and thousands of quotations. Reality destroyed all these quotations, burned them, incinerated them; and transformed, on the contrary, the other, the exception, into the only true law. Reality wrote millions of times the exceptional quotation and burned all the other millions of quotations we gave [on the necessity] of the revolutionary party to solve the bourgeois-democratic tasks.

Notice what it cost us the mania of sticking to quotations and not seeing reality, not seeing the great revolutions. That is why, in 1949, a movement led at that time by Comrade Pablo, Comrade Hansen, and myself began in the Fourth, saying that we had to see reality, that Trotsky would be proud that we burned his quotations that did not conform to the reality, and that we had to see the reality of the great world revolution that was taking place. And the reality was more Trotskyist than Trotsky had believed. The revolutionary rise was so powerful; the permanent revolution was so intertwined with the development of the mass revolutionary movement that reality had been far superior to Trotsky’s quotations. That is, reality had been much more Trotskyist than Trotsky himself had written. That was our conclusion.

This is not to say that quotations and definitions are not of enormous importance. But they have it in order to discuss them, adjust them, modify them, and above all to know that they are tools to understand reality, and not tools higher than reality.

The principles indeed are very important. Principles are issues that can be discussed, like any other issues. But they require already deep discussions, serious and long because they are the pillars. Quotations, such as what is or isn’t a revolutionary situation, are not pillars of the revolutionary process, they are not pillars of our program. Instead, principles are pillars of the program and can only be modified when an exhaustive demonstration allows us to show that some of our principles are wrong.

Let us now proceed to study in some detail the analyses and positions of the comrades regarding the current reality of the world. The comrades say, when beginning their work on the concept of revolution and reform published in Discussion Bulletin No 6, that “to speak of revolutionary situation it is necessary for our understanding to define what we mean by revolution”. I think it is a theoretical success of the comrades. (Unfortunately they raise it in the national discussion, but it involves all this international discussion.) I believe exactly the same as the comrades. They do very well in linking the two phenomena; although in the international thesis they do not stop on this theoretical problem of substance. Then the comrades quote Lenin and rely on him, with that famous quotation where he says that “the passage of power from one class to another is the first, main and basic symptom of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific sense of this concept as in the political-practical sense”.

The comrades make these quotations with the aim of demonstrating that we are completely confused when we call political revolutions those that have happened in different parts of the world with the fall of genocidal dictatorships, including Argentina, Bolivia, Portugal, Greece, we do not know whether Nicaragua, etc.

For us, this is indeed a substantive discussion; which has to do not only with the revolutionary situation but also with the character of the own period in which we are living. It is a much deeper problem yet.

Well, in addition to discussing fundamental methodological issues, everything I said earlier about quotations had the obvious goal of preparing all of you so that you would not be impressed by the quotation from Lenin. In other words, with one quotation, nothing is proven. I do not know whether I have achieved it. If I have not succeeded with everything I said before, I hope to see if I succeed in destroying with everything that follows the “quotationist” mania once and for all.

The issue is whether or not we can call a revolution to changes of regimes. The comrades categorically say no, there is a revolution only when power passes from one class to another. The comrades are a little inconsistent because they have a very serious problem. Here too there is a very orthodox quotation that makes to the essence of Trotskyism. If the comrades are consistent with Lenin, either we start to farewell them from the Fourth, or they stay, but clarifying that they completely disagree with the Fourth International and with a quotation as large as a monument. That quotation does not fit in this building, because that quotation is almost all the Fourth, and says exactly the opposite of Lenin. [I refer] to the quotation made by Comrade Trotsky, and all the Trotskyists of the world, who says that in the USSR all that needs to be done is a revolutionary change of the political regime. Trotsky called it political and not social revolution; because the power doesn’t pass from one class to another.

If we are not among charlatans who try to win with quotes, the comrades, in all honesty, have to define Trotsky as they define us — as revisionists of Lenin. How many quotations do you want us to provide them to say that all Trotskyism thinks that in the USSR what we have to do is a political revolution and not a social revolution? How many do you want? Ask, we will give them to you. One thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand, one hundred thousand of all Trotskyist literature. Yes or no? Quote against quote, already falls by the base.

Also, taking now the reality, the problem is very serious. Because Angola was freed after more than 10 or 15 years of civil war. And everyone, all world Marxism, except Convocatoria, speaks of the colossal colonial revolution of Angola, or of Mozambique, or of Guinea-Bissau, or of hundreds or tens of revolutions of this character. For Convocatoria, it was a reform, because — as far as we know — the property regime did not change, the class did not change, nothing changed. In these and in all the other countries the political regime changed, from colonial to semi-colonial. And we call it a “great revolution”.

Another revolution — so far all Marxism has been structured [pointing out] that in 1910 there was a colossal revolution, which was the Mexican Revolution. More than that, we denounce — if it may be denounced, because these are limitations of them — that the great crime of European Marxism, including Lenin and Trotsky, is that it never studied this revolution. We consider it as great as the Russian. And because the Russians did not study the Mexican Revolution, because Trotsky did not study it, he did not write anything about guerrillas in the Transitional Program. A serious crime for the quotation of Trotsky, because the greatest revolutions were made with guerrillas that we never quote. And we do not quote them because we did not study the great Mexican political revolution. Because in Mexico in 1910 the regime of ownership of the land did not change. It changed much later. Nor was imperialism expropriated. Only the regime of electing president changed. The [re-election] was liquidated. It was an entire revolution so that the presidents could not be re-elected. It was for a change of institution — from re-election to no re-election. This belongs to the first course on the Mexican Revolution of the first grade of civic instruction of all the Central American countries. What do the comrades call it? “The Mexican Reformation”? Please! Do not make everyone die laughing! “Mexican Reformation” with tens and tens of thousands of dead? It was a revolution.

The comrades are also wrong about the revolution of 1890. According to the oral tradition, Engels wrote deep letters to the engineer Lallemant, who was in Argentina, commenting on the Revolution of 1890. Thanks to you we have learned that the Revolution of 1890 was a social revolution. Until now we believed that it was a political revolution, for imposing the right to free voting.

And the national war of Urquiza against Rosas in Argentina, was it a social or a political revolution? And the revolution of 1848 in France, and all the revolutions that Marxism studied saying they were political revolutions, that it was one class sector against another, to change a structure, what were they?

In brief, comrades, they exist. During these decades there were colossal colonial revolutions, colossal democratic revolutions like the Mexican. And there were also colossal social revolutions like those of China, Cuba and Eastern Europe. All these revolutions existed and exist. That is to say: that quote of Lenin categorically does not help. And if it helps, the Fourth is ill-founded, because it was founded to make the political revolution and not the social revolution [in the USSR], as one of its most important tasks.

Here we must speak clearly. There’s no need to resort to little manoeuvres against the leadership if you hate the leadership and love Trotsky. You have to be clear. In this, the leadership is with Trotsky and against Lenin. We think that in the USSR indeed there is no social revolution because in many places there are no social revolutions. What we do say is that every political revolution within the capitalist regime, in essence, is socialist. It’s another problem altogether. But [the political revolution] exists.

We also say something else that would be very interesting for the comrades to discuss. We say that a new type of democratic revolution has emerged, which is the anti-colonial, or nationalist, democratic revolution. They are democratic revolutions against capitalism. For example, we believe that the struggle of the Basques in Spain today is not an anti-feudal but anti-capitalist struggle. And we also believe there are democratic revolutions of a political kind, that is when a genocidal dictatorship is overthrown. As we also believe that a new phenomenon has emerged, that is the counter-revolutionary dictatorships of the bourgeois type. That is why Mexico is so fundamental in the history of the world revolutionary process. What is the struggle against Porfirio Diaz, a great bourgeois dictator? Porfirio Diaz is not feudalism, he is bourgeois. And this phenomenon, so complicated from the Marxist theoretical point of view, was not analysed by the European Marxists because for them every democratic revolution was anti-feudal. They did not grasp the sense that on the periphery there were anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist democratic revolutions against capitalist governments. That is why they did not grasp that there were three types of revolutions, and not just two, as the theory of the Permanent Revolution suggested. And today we have more than two or three types of revolutions.

The entire European Marxism was made around two kinds of revolutions. For the twentieth century, two types of revolutions were posed — the capitalist social revolution against feudalism, and the socialist revolution against capitalism. And they did not see the revolutions against the bourgeois counter-revolutions, [which are] a third type of revolution, whether they are colonial or semi-colonial. It was a third kind of revolution, and they did not see it. And that’s why they did not see the guerrillas. That is why they wrote nothing [about] the guerrillas. Because if they had studied Mexico they would have seen that it was a type of revolution in which the axis was the guerrilla and the popular mobilisation, with different sectors, without having the proletariat as a vanguard.

And the same thing happened, by the dozens, in this postwar period.

This is closing the eyes to the fact that there are several models of revolutions — some are political, others are social, and there is also a political [revolution] against the workers’ bureaucracy, which is also a new kind of revolution. The comrades refuse to see the richness of reality and our blindness, that of the Marxists. A blindness which doesn’t happen for being Marxists, but because we are conditioned by the same environment. European Trotskyists saw the European revolution thoroughly and theorised about it.

We do not deceive anyone. I insist; we purport, that yes, we have incorporated a new type of category of political revolution, which in the end is also socialist; it is part of the permanent revolution. What is this new democratic political revolution that is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist (and for me anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist is the same) and not anti-feudal? [This revolution] exists and is political in its first effects; it is “Down with Somoza”, it is “Down with Videla”, it is “Down with the Tsar”. But “Down with the Tsar” was “Down with feudalism.” When we say “Down with Videla” or “Down with Somoza”, we are saying: Down with the counter-revolutionary expression of capitalism, not feudalism.

That is to say, there has been a change, and it must be reflected. We must enrich our Theses of the Permanent Revolution, incorporating the political revolution against the bureaucracy and these political revolutions that are fundamentally socialist, because it is the masses that are defeating the most important bastion of capitalism, which is its counter-revolutionary political regime. [We agree] that they should not stop there, but they do exist. And the existence of this democratic revolution is very important, as important as the existence or not of the bourgeois-democratic revolution [in its time], because [denying it was to be] ultra-leftists. The ultra-leftists considered that in countries like Russia, the only thing that was raised was the socialist revolution. And the theory and the Theses of the Permanent Revolution insist that the bourgeois-democratic revolution exists. We are for the permanent revolution because we think that it is combined with another revolution — in the process, they are the same revolution. But the bourgeois-democratic revolution existed — it was “Down with the Tsar.”

We say the same thing now — the democratic revolution exists. To make Angola stop being a colony was a revolution in itself — a democratic revolution, which is not the same as expropriating landlords and capitalists, although it initiates the dynamics towards the expropriation of landlords and capitalists. It is a fundamental historical task — the Angolans have to rule Angola, “Out of Angola the Portuguese governor”. [It is a task] as historic as “Out with the Tsar”, only that its class dynamics are different. “Out with the Tsar” was “Out with feudalism”; “Out with the Portuguese governor” was “Out with the government of imperialism, of capitalism”.

This is why for us there are revolutions of all kinds. About [the revolution] being only social, I already gave the comrades the quotation on the political revolution in the USSR.

But the comrades do not take into account our insistence on the February revolution. The Mandelists have laughed much about it and are polemising. Mandel, who lives revising all Trotsky, in this case he wants to be a maniac [of Trotsky]. At the risk of this reaching the Mandelists — because of the mania existing within the left of talking so much — I make it clear that, as I have a categorical quotations of Engels on Bismarck, I have two quotations -— not one — categorical, brutal [of Trotsky on the revolutions of February] that destroy not only Mandelism but all the schematic speculations of this type. (I make it clear that I am not at all uniting the comrades of Convocatoria with Mandelism.)

Trotsky defined the great French general strike with factory occupations [of 1936] as a February revolution, that is, as a revolution. And on another occasion, he says the same thing about great workers’ mobilisations — that they are February revolutions. Do you want to explain to me what class change that general strike caused? It caused absolutely nothing. It confirmed the popular front government in France. And furthermore, Trotsky said that with this general strike the revolution had begun in France. Of all the things you apply [to define] revolutionary situation and revolution, what does it apply there? A general strike with the occupation of factories that consolidates the government of popular front. Everybody is for the popular front. [And yet] Trotsky says, first, that the revolution began in France, and second, that the February revolution began. In which way does it agree [with what you pose]? In nothing. Instead, with our characterisation — that there are different types of revolutions, infinite types of revolutions; even democratic revolutions of a new character, because they are against the bourgeoisie, and are revolutions because they throw down a regime and inaugurate another regime — the concept of revolution is indeed enriched enormously.

All this must be incorporated into the theory of the Permanent Revolution. But it must be done thinking about the enormous richness the epoch gives.

The other very serious shortcoming of the comrades [is that] this discussion is unilateral if we do not specify well the character of the epoch. What epoch have we been living since 1943 to date? And if it’s still the same epoch, what does it have to do with this? We are not sure what definition the comrades have. I begin to be terrified we have an abysmal difference with respect to the character of the epoch. This is much more serious than [the definition of] revolutionary situation and everything else.

We believe that from 1943 to the present, we have lived through an epoch of revolutionary and mass multitudinous mass rise at the global level, and of systematic and incessant revolutionary triumphs. I insist and emphasise this point of systematic and incessant. It is directly the opposite of the previous epoch, from 1923 to 1943, which is the epoch of the triumphs of the world bourgeois counter-revolution. It is the opposite by the vertex.

This has to do with our discussion with Lambertism about the imminent revolution. We found this category of Lambertism of imminent revolution, which is very beautiful, and with a terrible mess, that they had. They did not know at what date to define that the era of the imminent revolution had opened. Stéphane Just, as he hates Stalinism the most in the world, was of the opinion that the counter-revolution had advanced colossally until 1953, the year in which the revolutionary process had begun because the first great movement against the Stalinist bureaucrats took place in East Berlin. He took the Chinese Revolution and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in one-third of the world as great triumphs of the world counter-revolution. (This incredible discussion, worthy of a comedy magazine, not of a serious magazine or discussion, is recorded.) Stéphane Just’s hatred of Stalinism may be justified, but what is not justified is that all his analyses have to do with his hatred of Stalinism.

Lambert was of the opinion that [the rise had begun] in 1968.

For us the category [of imminent revolution] was very good, but if it was perfectly well placed. It is the expression that in 1943 an epoch began in which revolutions explode everywhere and many of them triumph. As simple as that. For us, the epoch of the imminent revolution was the one that began since the year 1943. That is to say: the time where the revolutions triumph. As simple as that. And the best example is that the revolution triumphed in China, the most populated country in the world, almost a quarter of humanity. This has to do with the revolutionary triumphs.

In the previous postwar period there was only one revolutionary triumph — Russia — and a few revolutions: Hungary; Germany; China; very relatively in Italy, for the strike with occupation of factories; and we can say with Trotsky that a revolution was initiated in France, the Spanish Republic and a few more, as far as we know.

As an aside, we do not know how the comrades define the Spanish Republic — whether it was a political or social revolution. [We would like you to explain to us] how the King of Spain was representative of feudalism and what came was representative of capitalism. This discussion would be very interesting.

All these revolutions failed, led to the triumph of the bourgeois counter-revolution. Only one remained, the USSR, but also with a colossal counter-revolutionary triumph that did not bring the bourgeoisie to power but did lead to bureaucracy and a totalitarian regime to power.

Instead, what has happened in this postwar period is incredible, comrades. During World War II the whole world — except England and six or seven countries — was fascist. All of Europe [was fascist]; all Africa was a colony]; all of Asia was colonial — including its half, the richest part of China. The rest was semi-colonial, dominated, and in almost all of Latin America, the governments were fascist, semi-fascist, or reactionary oligarchic. Well, if today we look at the map of the world, we see that there are 16 more workers’ states. According to the data that a newspaper gives today, there are 70 colonies which were freed, they are independent. All of Europe is democratic, whereas before it was all fascist. The trusts and imperialism say they achieved it. I believe that comrades of Convocatoria will accept that it is a by-product of the revolutionary process. They managed to stop it there, but it is a colossal triumph.

Contrary to what the comrades may say, the Portuguese Revolution is a colossal revolution that won a colossal victory too, although the only thing achieved was a change of regime, from fascist to bourgeois-democratic. Nowadays the whole world and almost all of Latin America is bourgeois-democratic. We do not believe this is so because it was granted by imperialism or that is a reform. We believe it is a colossal triumph of the revolutionary rise of the mass movement. All Latin America today is in a revolutionary situation.

The character of the epoch and the character of the revolutions — and for us all these are revolutions — are now discussed; we can now discuss whether or not there is a revolutionary situation.

There is a question of method. There are two ways of defining [the situation]. The traditional, Marxist way is to take the structure, the situation and the dynamics, that is whether there is a colossal crisis of the world capitalist regime and whether there is a colossal rise of the world revolutionary mass movement. Not whether it is so in America or in the USSR, but as a whole, everywhere, and whether the dynamics are increasingly worse.

We believe that yes, there is a colossal crisis of all kinds. It starts with a tremendous economic crisis, and we think it gets worse. It is a social, economic, moral, and political crisis of all kinds and in all parts of the world: The whole world is in this situation, with growing misery, in an impasse. And we believe that along with this there is a colossal revolutionary rise of the masses; which is uneven, very uneven, according to the Marxist law that everything is uneven. But what takes precedence, the essential element, is the revolutionary rise of the mass movement; and what takes precedence at the other pole is a growing crisis. Within the dynamic, we hope that America, which is the exception, which is the only one that relatively has no economic crisis, will also exploit economically.

This is the whole key to the discussion that we have with the comrades in terms of definition. For them, there is only a colossal development of the counter-revolution. They do not believe like we do, that what takes precedence in this epoch and also at this stage are the revolutionary triumphs. We believe that the revolution has been winning, winning and winning for the last 40 years. Not to the extent of having defeated imperialism, but that is another issue.

The epoch is revolutionary and has not yet closed. It is only going to close with the defeat of imperialism; and as long as imperialism is not defeated, there will always be counter-offensives. This is also inevitable. It’s a fight. And there is also the historical possibility we may win. We are not fatalistic, but what takes precedence is the revolutionary rise of the mass movement and the crisis of imperialism, which cannot fix anything. Instead, the comrades say that on a world scale, imperialism dominates over the socialist revolution. This is for them what takes precedence. Their position is given through a question: “Is or isn’t this a symptom of imperialism’s world-class domination of the socialist revolution?” Frankly, we are stunned.

This discussion is similar to whether or not Alfonsin5 dominates the national economy and politics. It seems that the companions have a mania with the word “domination”. Let us see with an example whether imperialism dominates world politics. I get the impression that Reagan wants another government in Nicaragua. He’s a very bad actor. But I do not think he’s doing a great theatre play — he [actually] loves the Sandinista government and he’s doing all of this as a rehearsal for a new policy in which he plays the role of a bad guy or something similar. And if he were doing a theatre play, we would realise this, precisely because he is a very bad actor. We believe that Nicaragua is an expression of world revolution and that it is not dominated by imperialism.

5 Raul Ricardo Alfonsin (1927–2009) was an Argentine lawyer and politician leader of the Radical Civic Union (UCR). He was the president of Argentina, between 10 December 1983 and 8 July 1989, following the military dictatorship.

[The same thing must happen], I have a very slight impression, with the Colombian guerrilla, with Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] and the Salvadoran guerrilla. But after reading Convocatoria, I begin to doubt everything. He must be a colossal actor, a fanatic of Sendero Luminoso, which he dominates and orders it to do everything it does. And the guerrillas who did not enter the truce in Colombia [did not do so because they] received a telegram from Reagan, and have very subtle contacts with the Salvadoran guerrilla, to which it has given the line of bursting Duarte as much as possible. Or this is false. That is, [imperialism] does not dominate the socialist revolution on a world scale. Or perhaps, are El Salvador, Sendero Luminoso, the Colombian guerrillas and the Nicaraguan government, with all the criticisms we made to them, not an expression of the socialist revolution? And if they are an expression of the socialist revolution, are they an expression of imperialism’s class domination over them?

What about Lebanon? This great actor sent the marines to Lebanon to get them out three months later. And he gave the order that every time in Lebanon there will be a bigger mess, that they burst the Israeli army. Because I believe that the Lebanese masses are part of the world revolution, and here I am told that Reagan, imperialism, on a world scale dominates the socialist revolution. And as I consider [the Lebanese masses] part of the world revolution, thanks to the analytical depth of the Convocatoria comrades, I have learned that Reagan supports the Lebanese masses with weapons to bust the Israeli army in the south [of Lebanon]. And thanks to them I also learned that Reagan’s murderous hand was behind the three Sikhs who killed Madame Indira Gandhi in India, and who is also with the Filipino guerrillas.

And Bolivia? Bolivia is the masterpiece of actor Reagan. The comrades say that in Bolivia there is a revolutionary situation. But Bolivia must be the only place where Reagan does not dominate, I do not know. Thanks to the comrades I realise, in addition, that in the [mining] strike against Thatcher, Reagan is a great traitor to his great friend. And his great friend is a complete idiot — she does not realise that for a year Reagan has been paying the miners to destroy her. I say this because I think the English miners are part of the world socialist revolution, and [the comrades’ quotation] says that Reagan dominates the world socialist revolution.

Well, I think that’s delusional. As delusional as saying that Alfonsin dominates the strikes and everything; as delusional as to believe that Alfonsin made the concertation so that on the same day there is a strike.

We have to take into account the dynamics of the current situation. And everything seems to point out that the dynamics inevitably goes towards an economic crisis in America, which will accelerate even more the process of class struggle.

In addition, the comrades do understand about the imperialist counteroffensive. They quote everything we say about this counteroffensive, but they do not quote what we have called the “crazy firefighter’s law”, that is, the mass movement’s response to this counter-offensive, how they systematically defeat it, and how, as we say, the class struggle, the struggle between the counter-revolution and the revolution is increasingly tense. This is what they do not understand — how can the situation become increasingly tenser.

Nor do they understand the law of the crazy firefighter — how imperialism is in a crisis so acute, so tremendous, that whatever counter-offensive it does, it turns against it; the masses end up defeating it.

The best example of this — to take one directly linked to Argentina — is that of the Malvinas. Malvinas meant a colossal counter-revolutionary triumph for Thatcher. However, nowadays the mining strike has recovered with interest all the successes that Thatcher had achieved. They have been on of strike for almost a year, they have her almost on the canvas, the prestige of the Thatcher is at ground level, at any moment she can be defeated, fall. What the Argentines did not achieve in Malvinas, is being achieved by the English proletariat in England. The comrades do not see this dialectic, this unity of the world revolutionary process.

Nor do they see [the relationship] between the economic and the political. Economically, until the proletariat achieves socialism in the world, there is no guarantee that its triumphs will mean more or less permanent economic improvement. It is even possible that there will be tremendous sacrifices.

For example — the comrades give Bolivia as an example of a revolutionary situation. For us, it is a totally misleading definition because what there is in Bolivia is much more than a revolutionary situation. There is an acute and almost chronic crisis of a revolutionary nature. It is another distinct phenomenon, similar to 1918-1919 in Germany. This category of “chronic” revolutionary crisis we have coined ourselves when seeing the Bolivian situation. Because that is not a revolutionary situation, it is a revolutionary crisis. That is to say — in Bolivia, you can take power or start the revolutionary struggle to take it, in a minute. That is a revolutionary crisis. That is to say — in minutes, in days, the power is taken.

But in Bolivia, the economic is increasingly catastrophic. And according to the definition of the comrades, it is where the least you can speak of revolutionary crisis or revolutionary situation, neither pre-revolutionary nor non-revolutionary. What we have is a counter-revolutionary situation from the economic point of view. Because we do not see in the whole world a working class that, as a dynamic, is being starved every day more. Statically there may be others who live in a worse misery, but that every six months their standard of living gets dropped 70 percent or 80 percent, we do not think there are any.

If you define only by this element [you fall] always in the sectarian method of isolating a fact from reality and transforming it in general — if the economy goes wrong, everything goes wrong. It’s the other way around. The economic problem exacerbates the political struggle and the social struggle and exacerbates further the revolutionary process. How could it not? Perhaps there will be a defeat. But for now this is the reality of Bolivia and it causes colossal political triumphs of the mass movement, as it was they stopped many times the paquetazos,6 etcetera, although later they were re-imposed. Today, the International Monetary Fund dominates Bolivia. It is a lie that it isn’t being paid. The International Monetary Fund gets along very well with the Bolivian government, and they agree in common. Precisely the contradictory economic-political issue is the characteristic of every revolutionary process. That is, there is no possibility of overcoming the economic situation until power is not seized in a country. And after taking power in a country there can also be a bigger famine than ever before. Imperialism can block us, creating us a disastrous situation. And none of this means that there is no revolutionary situation or revolution.

6 Paquetazo, Spanish for a set of neoliberal policies.

In closing, I will touch on the problem of the revolutionary united front.

First, whether or not it is propagandistic is a false discussion. We say it is concrete. And it will be more concrete to the extent that there is a crisis of the traditional apparatuses of the mass movement. The condition of the revolutionary united front is that there is a colossal crisis of the revolutionary apparatuses of the mass movement. We shouldn’t forget this objective condition. The revolutionary united front is propagandistic in a country where the mass movement is totally controlled by a party, which happens increasingly less because there is a general crisis. In this sense, it is a policy to be implemented.

We also see a false debate as to whether the great task is to consolidate the party or to make the revolutionary united front, together with another false discussion which is the one that from Leeds7 until now we have been raising the revolutionary united front, and in fact almost never it has been put into practice, almost never has it been applied.

7 In 1958 a Conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International was held in the British city of Leeds, in which Moreno presented a paper that has become known as “Thesis of Leeds”, and is available for download on www.nahuelmoreno.org/en/texts.shtml.

I do not see an antagonism between the revolutionary united front and the revolutionary party; rather I see two complementary tasks. The revolutionary party is fortified with the revolutionary united front. The problem that I do see is that the revolutionary united front opens the possibility of parties of mass influence different to ours, by us joining other currents. If it is interpreted that the mass revolutionary party in Argentina, Colombia or Brazil will be our own parties growing, with regular Congresses, etcetera, and not the product of mergers, then we have an abysmal difference. And indeed the revolutionary united front will be a theoretical-political discussion of the first order because it will not be so. Not even the Bolshevik Party itself, which was a power, seized power alone, but it joined the Inter-District Organisation, which was a very strong working-class organisation. And to seize power it joined the left of the Socialist Revolutionaries. That is, it was not the same Bolshevik Party that existed until 1917. There was no merger, but there was a massive inflow to it from every other political organisation, without taking into account the number of anarchist groups that entered the Bolshevik Party.

The other discussion is whether or not the revolutionary united front is useful, given that in these twenty-something years it has not worked. This is like asking whether our great slogan of making Trotskyist parties with mass influence is useful or not. If one line was given 25 years ago and the other 50 years ago, and so far neither has taken place, then neither one would be useful. And I believe both are magnificent lines that complement each other and are for the practice and not for propaganda. The issue of the times has to do with the situation of the crises of the apparatuses. That is to say, as long as there is not a brutal crisis of the bureaucratic apparatuses of the mass movement, there is no possibility of making Trotskyist parties with mass influence or of making the revolutionary united front.

This particular discussion on the revolutionary united front, now, at this time, at the time of the IWL Congress, is very important, and it has already enriched us. It has allowed us to make some reflections that lead us to redouble our conviction of the revolutionary united front as an issue not only strategic but tactical, and which has to do with reality.

The apparatus that has practically been pulverised, disappeared, is Maoism. Stalinism is in a tremendous crisis but it still survives. It is strong in some countries, as in Italy. It still has structural apparatus, it survives.

For now, this colossal crisis of the apparatuses, and the crisis of leadership — perhaps because Stalinism is still strong — are reflected rather in the emergence of groups, of individuals, of small sectors that question everything. We are at a stage in which the crisis is expressed rather than by strong national, centrist, and progressive type tendencies, but by the existence of groups and organisations rather partial that arise, limited, questioning the opportunist leaderships.

This means that we have to adapt our policy of revolutionary united front to these groups. We must be the great interlocutors, with enormous and long-term patience, to all groups and organisations that outline positive positions in any sense. As in Colombia, when we defined that a wing of independent trade unionism was deeply revolutionary, despite sometimes taking positions with which we completely disagreed. We took the line of having a fraternal attitude — for years we have been having it — starting from the premise that, in the sense of the struggle, everything united us and nothing separated us, and that in the struggle itself we were going to keep consolidating the programmatic agreements that would first lead us to a revolutionary united front, and later to a single revolutionary party.

Because the revolutionary united front is a tactic in the path of building revolutionary Marxist parties with mass influence, and within the strategy of building a revolutionary International with mass influence, Trotskyist or non-Trotskyist. This problem of the revolutionary united front is crucial to combat sectarianism in every way; as the leadership has tried to fight it and discuss it throughout this Congress.

I do not want to dwell on the history of our tendency, the number of militants and all that that the comrades touch on.8 It is overwhelmingly supportive of us. Nothing of what the comrades say is true. We are maniacs against inflating. We are maniacs for exact figures. And we have overwhelming documentation. For example, all the cases of inflating that have taken place in Argentina were made by that scoundrel Ruben. We have the reports in his own hand. And we fought all those reports. But we do not want to dwell on that. Not even whether we thought that the FI-IC [Fourth International–International Committee] would have 20,000 militants and the IWL–FI has less. It is logical: FI-IC was much stronger than IWL, 20 times stronger. It was logical that we should give bigger figures. We do not understand where the criticism is on this problem.

8 Convocatoria pointed out that the numbers of militants of the Argentine party and the International had been magnified by the leadership of the International.

I want to touch Israel in passing. First, to make a self-criticism — Israel is not a fascist state but, in the sense we define it, it is Nazi. Nazism brings methods of civil war, not only against the proletariat but also against the races, especially the Jewish and Slavic races. It is one of the greatest monstrosities of imperialism. I do not want to devote myself to the historical problem; that Nazism has given everything that is possible in the future of mankind if capitalism succeeds. From the point of view of the monstrosity, the Nazi dynamics are brilliant because it is the attempt to transform the exploited into different species, into different races. The monstrosity of capitalism, in this sense, aimed perfectly well. In human monstrosity, there can be no biggest — the attempt to divide humanity into sectors that will end up in different species; some working and others living at the expense of the others. That is why the methods of civil war against races existed, not just against the working class.

This is the whole discussion with Comrade Gallego,9 who understands absolutely nothing of that.

9 Comrade Gallego had questioned the definition of the State of Israel as fascist, alleging that there were political and union liberties, among others things.

We know perfectly well that the working class of Israel — especially the Ashkenazi [i.e., Jews of European origin] — are not prosecuted; we know they have Histadrut [the trade union centre], they have everything. Comrade Gallego almost treats us like mental retards, believing that we do not know that there are parties. What we denounce is that there is a systematic genocide of a racial type. This is typical of Nazism rather than of fascism. That’s why I am self-critical.

We did not fathom the depth of this that we have now learned. Also one of the greatest Israeli jurists, a member — if I remember correctly — of the Supreme Court, said that Israel was Nazi. We changed and said that it was fascist, without [grasping] how deep he was. He understood better than we did, and he even knew that as a member of the Supreme Court he could afford to say that Israel was Nazi, he was free to say so. He was right; it was Nazi in that sense — the methods of civil war against a race. Where a race is persecuted with methods of civil war, there are Nazi methods, because they are methods of civil war.

Well, comrades, that’s all.

Reply to Comrade Broquen

Unfortunately, I could not be present when Comrade Broquen had the floor. I only read his document, and when I saw that he proposed the model of organisation for our party had to be [the model of] the Catholic Church, I was horrified. I thought he had let go such a barbarity in his eagerness to write an answer quickly. But afterwards, I was told that the comrade, orally, has defended this position. So I asked for the floor to explain, not only this question — which Comrade Aldo answered very well — but a more fundamental problem, which is the method.

The method of Comrade Broquen [is expressed] both in the first document of Convocatoria —- of which he is responsible, regardless of whether he signed it or did not sign it — [as] in this second document of his; [it becomes clear] even in the deep methodological differences existing in Convocatoria when it is with Broquen and when it is without Broquen. Subsequent documents [to the first] of Convocatoria, for example, are clear, incisive political documents. In that sense, they are within our method. I think that they do not pose any correct position and that, as I said yesterday, the position of the Convocatoria comrades is [politically] sectarian and organisationally opportunist. [But it is] very clear, and the discussion is categorical.

Instead, the first document of Convocatoria and this second document of Comrade Broquen use [the same method]. First, we have to understand it and be patient with Comrade Broquen. And then to repudiate it totally and absolutely, because it is the [method] of trying to cover the backside and gaining prestige. (Later on, I will say why we have to understand him.)

What is the document like? It is a document of “addition and subtraction”, [a definition] that many years ago we learned from a great English Marxist. What does “addition and subtraction” mean? Pablo, for example, to maintain his prestige as a leader of the Fourth, always wrote thus: “There will never be a revival of the capitalist economy, never again, [the economy] will be in stagnation and atrophy, it will be a disaster, we have coming 50 years of uninterrupted crisis and growing misery of the masses; but it is not ruled out that the capitalist economy will rise and that the economic situation of the masses will improve much more”… “It is not ruled out that the Cuban leadership is the greatest revolutionary leadership in the whole world, but it is not ruled out that it will betray”.

This I tell you is true. All his documents were like this: all were long, full of “buts”. They were given the name of addition and subtraction documents because the second part of all sentences subtracted everything that the first part said, and always remained at zero.

Comrade Broquen is a champion — he far surpassed Pablo and Mandel. Read it for yourself: “The leadership is very great, made this great party”. And then read the second part: “did not hit one, nothing”. But if it does not hit one, it is not great; it’s terrible. And [Broquen does] also the same with respect to the party, because in one part he says that it has to be like the Church and elsewhere it says that it has to be as the Third International said, which is the opposite of the Church. He has already [prepared] his defence.

Why is this so, comrades? Comrade Broquen is new to Trotskyism. Comrade Broquen comes from the Social Democracy. You cannot remove the vices of 50 years of Social-Democrat, and in Social-Democracy it is discussed in this way. In this sense, Comrade Broquen is different from Ricardo Napuri, or Ruben Visconti. Napuri is a colossal figure of the Latin American revolutionary movement; he led large parties. You have the misfortune of not seeing him here. He is old, like Comrade Broquen, but [if he were here] he would say: “I am old as a revolutionary but new as a Trotskyist; almost everything I’m going to say is an atrocity”. Broquen’s crime is that he uses age to make believe that what he says is worthy, instead of saying, “I have 50 years of the wrong method, of betrayals, on my back; I am learning from you and every day I say more atrocities than anyone else”.

Well, this is the only thing I wanted to say to make my little methodological contribution. That’s all, comrades. §