A Hard Look at Recent Party Work and Current Tasks

Spartacist League 12th National Conference

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 841, 4 February 2005.

The Spartacist League/U.S. held its 12th National Conference last summer in the New York City area. Attending were elected delegates and members from every SL local, members of the Spartacus Youth Club, and also members of the Labor Black Leagues, which are associated with the SL. The SL is the U.S. section of the International Communist League, to which it is subordinate. The conference was immediately preceded by a meeting of the ICL's International Executive Committee (IEC). Conference delegates heard politically rich greetings from representatives of every ICL section.

As the highest decision-making body of the SL/U.S., the National Conference is charged with reviewing the work and decisions of the organization since the previous conference, assessing the current political situation and our interventions into various milieus, charting the organization's tasks for the coming period and electing a new Central Committee to lead the work of the party between conferences.

This National Conference was particularly significant since it continued the work begun at the ICL's Fourth International Conference in the autumn of 2003 in critically assessing the internal fights and public interventions of our organization over the past period (see "The Fight for Revolutionary Continuity in the Post-Soviet World," Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 58, Spring 2004). In the immediate aftermath of the International Conference, a member of the IEC posed the tasks facing us:

"We need to ensure that we don't lose our programmatic bearings by inventing a ‘new world reality.' We need to examine particular political questions on the basis of the fundamentals of Marxist theory combined with our already developed positions, taking into account a concrete examination of the issue in question.... Moreover, we need to intervene in the world as much as possible to test our program and be able to make assessments of our work. This requires a knowledgeable and thinking cadre who speak up."

And the cadre certainly spoke up! The three-month period of pre-conference discussion produced an outpouring of documents by comrades critically evaluating past campaigns and aspects of our work, necessitating the production of seven internal discussion bulletins on top of many more international and SL/U.S. bulletins from preceding months.

The conference served to politically arm our organization by sharpening our interventions into struggles against U.S. imperialism and in defense of working people and the oppressed—politically combatting our opponents and winning new adherents to Marxism and the fight for socialist revolution. Shortly after the conference, we carried out a very successful Workers Vanguard subscription drive (see article in WV No. 836, 12 November 2004). More recently, the annual Partisan Defense Committee Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners drew record audiences and in particular highlighted the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal (see "Thousands Raised for Class-War Prisoners," WV No. 840, 21 January).

This was a delegated conference, for which one delegate represented five members of the SL. Elections for delegates took place on the basis of agreement with a written political position. A draft conference document titled "Reconstructing a Damaged Party" was submitted by the Central Committee. That document, as amended, as well as a separate "Tasks of the Spartacist League/U.S." document, was adopted by the conference. Putting the party's problems and tasks in the political context of the post-Soviet world, the conference document asserted that the experience and aims of the 1917 October Revolution must remain our guide, a compass against which to measure our positions.

The Fight for Revolutionary Continuity

The onset of the "post-Soviet" period required open and wide-ranging debate in our organization and its leadership. We are confronting a fundamentally changed world political situation, conditioned by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, we face genuine objective problems that no Trotskyist group has heretofore faced. The period of the collapse of the Soviet Union coincided with a shift in the resident central leadership of the SL/U.S. Under a different, somewhat insecure leadership, the difficulties in grappling with the new political terrain were magnified.

On the one hand, we recognized the retrogression of proletarian consciousness internationally—that militants no longer identify struggles against exploitation and oppression with the goal of communism—and that this regression required propaganda different from that we had previously produced. Thus, we published the series of articles on "Marxism vs. Anarchism" precisely because we anticipated and saw a resurgence of anarchist ideology among left-wing youth.

On the other hand, the leadership in the ICL and SL centers seized on instances of social protest to project opportunities for large-scale recruitment of youth and others, out of all proportion to the real situation. As the conference document put it: "Abstract recognition of the retrogression of consciousness and dealing with its concrete manifestations are not at all the same thing."

Most of our cadre joined in a period when Marxism was hegemonic on the left. Thus, the bulk of the leadership assumed we would recruit from the pseudo-Trotskyists and Maoists those people who thought they joined authentic Trotskyist or Marxist-Leninist organizations. Today, Marxism is no longer what motivates the overwhelming majority of young radicals, including those won to our ostensibly socialist opponents. However, we were still searching for some kind of genetically programmed Marxists. Lenin came from another school: he understood that the hegemony of Marxism among politically advanced workers and leftist intellectuals wasn't a natural condition of the modern world but had to be fought for.

What we are faced with is the hard task of explicating the basic principles and worldview of Marxism, as did Georgi Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labor group in late 19th- and early 20th-century Russia. Lenin himself came to political consciousness at that time, when his beloved older brother was executed for participating in a failed plot by revolutionary populists to assassinate the tsar. Lenin became a Marxist only through a prolonged period of internal development and struggle in which he transcended the revolutionary populist outlook and program then hegemonic among the Russian leftist intelligentsia.

A high point of the conference was an educational given by comrade Joseph Seymour on "How Marx Became a Marxist" (see part one of the educational in WV No. 840, 21 January). The class traced Marx's development from a radical bourgeois intellectual to a proletarian revolutionary communist. It was especially helpful in assisting comrades to understand that we now confront tasks in some ways akin to those of the Emancipation of Labor group which found it necessary to defend the scientific basis of Marxism against various expressions of left-radical bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.

During Cold War II, beginning in the late '70s, our tendency resolutely and uniquely defended the Soviet Union and the East European bureaucratically deformed workers states against imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary forces. In the name of "democracy" and "anti-Stalinism," the various pseudo-Trotskyist groups and almost all other self-described leftists enthusiastically supported those very forces, from Solidarność in Poland to Boris Yeltsin and his supporters in Russia. Their open support to counterrevolution was presaged by their cheerleading of the U.S.-backed Islamic mujahedin in Afghanistan.

Trotsky warned his supporters that in the wake of the defeat of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, the negative confirmation of the Left Opposition's political line against Stalin and Bukharin would at best result in the recruitment of handfuls of militants, whereas a victory for the revolution would have radicalized masses internationally and led to the recruiting of many tens of thousands.

But while this lesson was stated by us in relation to the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state, it was not fully understood. Since the results of counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and East Europe substantiated our political struggle during Cold War II against both the Stalinists and anti-Soviet "Third Camp" socialists, many comrades thought we would be able to confidently announce "we told you so" and reap immediate recruits from our opponents. And had the Russian workers fought in 1991-92, even short of victory, we would have been in a far better position to make that argument. However, counterrevolution triumphed and, not for the first time, revolutionaries were abused by history—an important objective source of the frustration and concomitant political and organizational departures by elements in our leadership, both internally and externally.

As detailed in the Spartacist article on the ICL Conference, matters came to a head in the summer of 2003. An internal fight broke out in the wake of the decision by some members of Workers Vanguard Editorial Board and Political Bureau, along with comrades in the International Secretariat (I.S.), to excise from the published version of a letter by the International Bolshevik Tendency (BT) a postscript grotesquely and falsely accusing SL/U.S. National Chairman James Robertson of "vulgar chauvinism." The smear—originated by renegades who fled our organization at the onset of the anti-Soviet Cold War II—was designed to invalidate our history and imply that ICL members are dupes and/or racists. By excising the "P.S."—an omission which the BT immediately exploited—WV essentially pled Robertson guilty as charged, putting into question the ICL's programmatic continuity and indicating agnosticism on our very existence.

The BT excision provoked outrage throughout the ICL, exposing political disorientation within the central administration of the ICL and SL/U.S., an administration that was becoming politically erratic and beginning to exhibit corollary bureaucratic practices. Increasingly, such practices began to erode our party's self-correction mechanism by stifling debate and discussion—not mainly through formal measures but rather through a marked tendency to elevate disputed questions, including minor tactical differences, into questions of principle and regime.

The ability to frankly assess our work and correct our mistakes is a critical weapon for Leninists to maintain the integrity of the revolutionary program against the pressures of reactionary capitalist society. It provides the party with the capacity to test its leadership, strategy and tactics in light of experience and our revolutionary principles. Ultimately, this is expressed in the right to form factions when serious questions of program and principle need to be thrashed out. Such struggle is crucial to maintaining our revolutionary continuity with the early American Trotskyists, from whom we derive, and with Lenin and Trotsky's Bolsheviks.

The Russian Question and the Fight for New Octobers

We have often described ourselves, in the words of James P. Cannon, founder of American Trotskyism, as "the party of the Russian Revolution." At the crucial hour, in stark contrast to most of the left, the ICL stood at our post in defense of the gains of the October Revolution. Amid the incipient proletarian political revolution in East Germany (the DDR) in 1989-90, we threw all our resources into this struggle, fighting against capitalist reunification and for a "Germany of workers councils." Of four reporters to the main conference session on "Reconstructing a Damaged Party," one concentrated on the lessons of our intervention into the DDR where, for the first time in our history, we intervened directly in world-historic events.

We also fought against capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union, establishing a station in Moscow. This work cost the life of our comrade Martha Phillips. The aftermath of Yeltsin's August 1991 countercoup, in the absence of working-class resistance, saw the final undoing of the workers state issuing from the October Revolution. We published our seminal article, "How the Soviet Workers State Was Strangled," which explained why Trotsky's prognosis that capitalist restoration would require a civil war had not materialized.

Yet the ICL failed to conduct a synthetic assessment of either our intervention in the DDR or the work of Moscow station. The failure to critically evaluate these interventions helped set a pattern over the next period that major party interventions did not have to face real scrutiny inside the organization. The ICL Conference devoted considerable attention to correcting and honing our understanding of the situation in China—the "Russian question" today. The International Secretariat is orchestrating a full assessment of our work in the DDR and in Russia, beginning with a three-part educational review in all the sections. This is key to strengthening the party in our fight for unconditional military defense of and proletarian political revolution in China and the other remaining deformed workers states—Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea.

Communist Intervention in Bush's America

The conference took place months before the U.S. presidential elections, when "Anybody but Bush" sentiment had become dominant among the left and activist youth milieus. Addressing the high level of polarization in the American electorate, despite the few substantive policy differences between the Republicans and Democrats, a leading comrade warned in a letter quoted in the conference document:

"If we simply focus on the narrow programmatic differences between the Democrats and Republicans, then we cannot address the intense mutual hostility of their supporters. And if we simply focus on the hatred felt by many black working people for the Republicans, we are likely to exaggerate the differences between the GOP and the Democrats."

The document notes that while such groups as the Communist Party and Democratic Socialists of America openly support the Democratic Party, Workers World Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party "channel opposition to the crimes of the imperialist rulers into liberal antiwar, pro-civil liberties coalitions (ANSWER, NION) whose bottom line is ‘anybody but Bush.' We have found that many self-described anarchist youth, lacking any class understanding, see no reason in principle not to support the Democrats."

Delegates spoke to how the call raised by SL/SYC contingents in the Iraq antiwar protests to "Break with the Democratic Party of War and Racism—For a Workers Party That Fights for Socialist Revolution!" attracted militant youth repelled by the protest organizers' liberal pressure politics. Our call to defend North Korea and its right to nuclear weapons was also polarizing, as many "antiwar" Democrats railed that Bush's obsession with Iraq was steering attention away from going after the North Korean deformed workers state. Most protesters, however, did not automatically see how our call to "Defend Iraq Against U.S. Attack," i.e., standing for the defeat of U.S. imperialism, was counterposed to such pacifist slogans as "no to war"—a slogan pushed by the liberals and reformists in order to pressure the capitalist parties to adopt more pacific, "humane" policies.

Much of the political discussion on our propaganda and intervention into the antiwar and anti-globalization milieu took place at the Youth Commission at the conference, composed of SYC members from around the country. The SL was represented by a delegation elected by the conference. The gathering revealed a growing youth component of our common movement, including the recruitment of a number of minority and working-class youth over the last few years; it voted to expand the national Youth Commission in charge of producing the Young Spartacus pages that appear in WV every month. The Commission also discussed the then-upcoming protests against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, addressing the need to politically take on the reformist lefts' pandering to the "Anybody but Bush" sentiment.

At the final session of the conference, a senior party comrade and veteran youth activist spoke to the need for a "carnivrous leadership of the youth": "It's very good for a party leadership to have some carnivores on their trail. And in order to become a youth organization that wants to get the party leadership, you have to publish a newspaper, get an office, collect money—youth never have any problems about collecting money when they've got a reason for it—go on national tours, set up local branches, participate in campus struggles, and all the other things you have to do to get the party leadership."

Iraq War and Occupation

A separate conference agenda point was devoted to the Iraq war and occupation. Prior to the conference, a dispute broke out over what slogans best encapsulated our proletarian internationalist defense of the Iraqi peoples against U.S. occupation. This discussion was driven by a number of important factors, including the ethnic/ religious divisions (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd) within Iraq, which was arbitrarily carved out by the British imperialists following World War I, and the fact that many of those who are fighting the American occupation forces appear to be reactionary Islamic fundamentalists who also attack other ethnic/religious groupings in the country.

Much of the debate revolved around how one can make clear that every blow struck against the American-led occupation is in the interests of working people across the world while also underlining our opposition to the reactionary social and political positions of those now fighting the U.S. Some comrades tended to underestimate the reactionary politics of the "resistance," while others tended to over-emphasize it at the expense of the primary issue, opposition to the American occupation.

By the time of the conference the differences had narrowed considerably, though the debate helped to sharpen our line and hone our propaganda. The conference affirmed as our central slogan complex, "U.S. and Allied Forces Out of Iraq Now! Down With the Colonial Occupation! For Class Struggle Against U.S. Capitalist Rulers at Home!" In order to make clear our side in the occupation, as we did during the war with our call to defend Iraq against imperialist attack, we also raise the slogan "Defend the Iraqi Peoples Against U.S. Imperialist Butchers!"

While affirming that we will continue to raise the call for a Socialist Republic of United Kurdistan, we noted that at this particular conjuncture, in Iraq—and only in Iraq—the Kurdish question has become decisively subordinated to the colonial occupation, in the sense that the Kurdish political parties and their military forces are an integral part of the occupation forces.

Fighting Domestic Repression

In our conference deliberations, we tried to clearly face the political reality in which we function and the problems—ranging from critical to trivial—we have encountered. As Marx put it, "the point is to change" the world and to change it you've got to recognize it. The conference document dealt with the intensified bourgeois reaction in the U.S. that "took full flight after the September 11 attacks. Perceiving few obstacles in the way of its global ambitions, U.S. imperialism has extended its military power to Central Asia and the Near East while carrying out a series of repressive measures domestically that spell a qualitative diminution of democratic rights."

The document also dealt with a major problem with our propaganda in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when our party press failed for a full month to publicly state that Marxists draw a distinction between attacks on institutions like the Pentagon—which directly represents the military might of U.S. imperialism—and random and criminal terror against innocent civilians, as in the case of the World Trade Center. Unlike the World Trade Center, the Pentagon is the command and administrative center of the U.S. imperialist military, and as a military installation the possibility of getting hit comes with the territory. That recognition does not make the attack an "anti-imperialist" act, nor does it change the fact that terrorism almost always gets innocent people—in this case, the passengers on the plane as well as the maintenance workers, janitors and secretaries at the Pentagon.

The party can be proud of the steps we have taken in fighting the government's assault on the rights of the population. In February 2002, the Partisan Defense Committee and Bay Area Labor Black League for Social Defense initiated a labor-centered united-front protest in Oakland, California in defense of immigrant rights and against the USA-Patriot and Maritime Security Acts. That was the first union-centered protest in defense of immigrant rights in the U.S. after the September 11 attacks.

In 2003, the PDC and SL filed "friends of the court" briefs on behalf of Jose Padilla, an American citizen seized in Chicago by the government as an "enemy combatant" (see Class-Struggle Defense Notes No. 31, Summer 2003). The detention of Padilla without any charges or access to legal counsel or recourse represents an attack on the very right of citizenship, concretizing what we have stressed from the beginning of the "war on terror": that the measures enacted first against immigrants would not be so limited but would be used against citizens as well, particularly the black population, and in the long run the left and labor movement. Legal and social defense will continue to loom large as a task of our common movement in the period ahead.

The Fight to Free Mumia and Abolish the Racist Death Penalty

One of the conference reporters angularly characterized the problems with the SL/U.S. work over the last period as "stodgy demoralized sectarianism alternating with get-rich impressionism." For example, our sectarian position to not sell at the 1999 Seattle protests—painting all the protesters with the brush of the AFL-CIO labor tops' grotesque anti-Chinese, anti-Communist protectionism—cost us precious political capital. The decision to boycott the protest against the World Trade Organization meant that we left the field free for our reformist political opponents and lost an important opportunity to engage with and learn more about the youthful anti-globalization and anarchist milieus.

At roughly the same time, when we applied the united-front tactic in the 23 October 1999 labor/black united-front mobilization against the Ku Klux Klan in New York City, this success was followed by a highly unrealistic, exhausting campaign to recruit large numbers of "young black workers." October 23 was an important defensive struggle, initiated by the PDC and heavily built by the SL and SYC, in which some 8,000 people turned out to stop the fascists. The resident party leadership, however, confused this successful defensive action with a generalized leap in proletarian consciousness, especially among New York's black working class. The fact that only two months after the anti-Klan mobilization, New York City's transit workers stood down from their strike threat in the face of company/government union-busting moves should have been cause to review the post-October 23 policy.

Reviewing this work cast light on our struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE organization and award-winning journalist who has been on death row since 1982 on false charges of killing a policeman. First taking up Mumia's cause in 1987, the Partisan Defense Committee did trail-blazing work to publicize his case and his powerful writings, helping to expose the racist railroading of Mumia by the cops, District Attorney's office and courts. The PDC initiated united-front defense rallies for Mumia, seeking in particular to mobilize labor support for him and demanding abolition of the racist death penalty. For a time, PDC counsel served on Mumia's legal defense team.

Our work was crucial in making Mumia known to a national and international audience, including trade unions. In the summer of 1995, after a death warrant was signed against him, a powerful movement demanding that Mumia's life be saved erupted across the U.S. and around the world. His scheduled execution was stayed by the courts in August of that year. And while we succeeded in our efforts to galvanize much larger social forces to fight on behalf of Jamal, we recognized that those same forces were far removed from our communist outlook and would inevitably seek to marginalize our involvement in this struggle.

However, this correct observation became a rationale for increasingly withdrawing from political combat with groups such as Socialist Action and the Workers World Party who tailored their appeals to liberals who were agnostic on Mumia's innocence and thus would not rally around a call to free him. Accordingly, the reformists purposefully subordinated the call to free Mumia to the demand for a "new trial." Our disengaging from political combat with these forces meant we were not as effective as we could have been in exposing their demobilization of support for Mumia.

We correctly decided against endorsing protests which were called around the "new trial" demand, such as the "Millions for Mumia" demonstrations on 24 April 1999. But we wrongly concluded that we were precluded, on grounds of political principle, from marching in these demonstrations. We should have made clear our political opposition by organizing "Free Mumia" contingents in the demonstrations organized by liberals and reformists. Instead we refused to march in these demonstrations at all, even while organizing full mobilizations of our members to attend them to sell our paper. This policy wrongly equated endorsement of an action, which implies political agreement with the demands, with organized participation in the event itself.

Our policy of not marching on 24 April 1999 played a role in our attitude toward a stop-work meeting called by the West Coast ILWU longshore union in defense of Jamal the same day as those marches. We noted the move by ILWU Local 10 bureaucrat Jack Heyman to organize a union contingent that included the slogan to free Jamal at the same time that he motivated the ILWU to endorse the April 24 "new trial" rally, and correctly underlined that this provided a left cover for those who did not want to call for Jamal's freedom. However, rather than commending the ILWU stop-work action as an important statement of the kind of social power needed for Jamal's defense, we effectively equated the action with Heyman's pandering to the call for a "new trial."

A resolution passed at the conference underscored the need for our work and press to highlight the fight for Mumia's freedom. This is all the more urgent today given that few youth know who he is, much less see the significance of his struggle in the fight against black oppression. The success of the recent PDC benefits is testimony to both the appeal of Mumia's case among many black, youth and trade-union activists and the sense that much more needs to be done in the fight for his freedom.

Intervening in American Society: Black and Union Work

Among the decisions of the conference was to form a national Black Commission, whose purview will include the Black History and the Class Struggle pamphlet series. This Commission will also monitor national developments of importance in the fight for black rights, including in the South, and coordinate the work of the Labor Black Leagues, which work in conjunction with most of our party locals.

The conference agreed on the need for more articles in WV on the fight against black oppression, and many delegates spoke to the need to continue addressing the increased acceptance of the "N" word particularly among black ghetto youth, an expression of internalized oppression based on their enforced segregation at the bottom of society.

The Black Commission, which met during the conference, voted to encourage the Labor Black Leagues to add a demand to their ten-point program expressing opposition to laws against prostitution as well as the other "crimes without victims," such as pornography, gambling and drugs. This demand, subsequently adopted by the LBLs, is particularly important in addressing the contradiction that much of the black population—which often constitutes the most militant fighters in the workers movement—is politically advanced in awareness of the draconian state repression and brutal oppression that characterizes American society, but at the same time tends to be politically backward on social questions like abortion and gay rights, due in part to the continuing, weighty influence of the black churches.

Another issue that received considerable attention was how we conducted our debate with the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP) in May 2003. The LRP leadership cadres are the direct descendants of Max Shachtman, who split from the Trotskyist movement in 1940, refusing to defend the Soviet Union. But their views were also centrally shaped by the 1960s New Left, and thus their politics are defined not simply by "State Department socialism," but also by cheerleading for petty-bourgeois "Third World" nationalism abroad and tailing black nationalism while accommodating white racism at home. Delegates were angry at the decision of several comrades in the central party leadership to take the "high road" with the LRP in our debate presentation. Thus, we did not thoroughly enough lambaste the LRP for, e.g., their opposition to busing to achieve school integration, though our speakers from the floor at the debate did this.

At its meeting, the Trade Union Commission stressed the need for increased attention to the party's trade-union fractions and discussed the work of our locals, analyzing the successes and problems. The Commission took up the Million Worker March, called by the more left-wing trade-union leaders to corral dissatisfied workers to vote for the Democrats. As well, the Commission reviewed our propaganda on labor struggles, raising several questions that require further discussion and recommending one correction.

Thus, on the recommendation of the Commission, the conference adopted a correction to a sectarian error concerning a September 1997 "community picket line" at the Port of Oakland that aimed to stop the unloading of the scab ship Neptune Jade in solidarity with the Liverpool dock workers strike in Britain. While we actively participated in the subsequent defense of the picketers, the ILWU and the Inlandboatman's Union against the port bosses, we dismissively declared in WV No. 681 (2 January 1998) that "ILWU officials refused to picket out the Neptune Jade because they fear retaliation by the PMA [the employers' Pacific Maritime Association]. Covering for the bureaucracy's capitulation to the bosses' rules, the protest organizers substituted a demonstration organized by leftists for a real picket line." As the conference document notes, "While this picket line was not officially sanctioned by the union, it allowed longshoremen to refuse to cross the line (under a contractual agreement that the situation created a ‘health and safety hazard'). In fact, the ship was never unloaded in Oakland (or Vancouver or Japan) and was reportedly eventually sold in Taiwan with all its cargo on board."

Another issue addressed by the delegates was the need for systematic education in the fundamentals of Marxism, which the "Tasks" document underlined. Responding to widespread demand for more Marxist education of our newer members and cadre, a group of comrades set up an informal Education Commission at the conference, whose meetings were flooded with delegates and guests.

A Step Forward

In a vibrant if somewhat chaotic process, delegates submitted numerous amendments to the main conference and "Tasks" documents. Amendments were voted up or down by the delegates, with some substantial controversy on a few of them. The amended versions of the conference and "Tasks" documents were adopted unanimously. Delegates decided to continue the discussion begun at the ICL Conference on whether or not Marxists should run for executive office (e.g., mayor, governor, president) in bourgeois elections, and the section of the document on this question was removed.

In a final session, closed to all but elected and fraternal delegates, the conference discussed a slate for Central Committee, which had been proposed by the outgoing Central Committee and then amended by a Nominating Commission based on the recommendations of individual delegates. After debate and further nominations, a new CC was elected and met following the conference to elect national officers and the Political Bureau, a resident body subordinate to the CC, and to assign comrades to various commissions.

The 12th National Conference represented a significant step forward. It reaffirmed the importance of maintaining our international flagship publication and central tool for intervention in the U.S., the bi-weekly Workers Vanguard. Our test now is how we deal with questions, opportunities and dangers as they arise, including those we cannot now predict.

Our opponents may well be tempted to take heart (and some cheap shots) from our own frank assessment of the party's problems. Unfortunately for them, the purpose of our rigorous internal accounting and making such public corrections as we deem necessary has to do with the fact that we are serious about our tasks and historic responsibility, including undertaking more effective combat against our opponents. Comrade Lenin did not spare Bolsheviks from withering criticism when departures within the party threatened to undermine its revolutionary purpose.

For our opponents, "sectarianism" is an all-purpose epithet aimed at denigrating the struggle to forge a revolutionary party that embodies and applies the lessons of past proletarian struggles. Comrade Trotsky, vilified as sectarian by those "socialists" who had made peace with their own bourgeois rulers, wrote in a 1935 article, "Sectarianism, Centrism, and the Fourth International":

"Reformists and centrists readily seize upon every occasion to point a finger at our ‘sectarianism.' Most of the time they have in mind not our weak but our strong side: our serious attitude toward theory; our effort to plumb every political situation to the bottom, and to advance clear-cut slogans; our hostility to ‘easy' and ‘comfortable' decisions, which deliver from cares today, but prepare a catastrophe on the morrow. Coming from opportunists, the accusation of sectarianism is most often a compliment."

We have made our share of errors. And we have fought to rectify and reconstruct. As the ICL Conference document stated:

"What is critical is that future workers revolutions must have a Bolshevik political arsenal; their cadres must be educated in the experiences of the Bolshevik Revolution, the early Communist International, Trotsky's Fourth International and our own ICL. New gains will be won only by those who prove able to fight to defend past gains. The ICL tenaciously fights to uphold the banner of new Octobers."