For a working class youth organisation

Public statement on the split in REVOLUTION, International Council, 10th October 2006
In Berlin on 7th October a grouping of former comrades of REVOLUTION completed the process of splitting from the organisation. This process began at the end of June when a minority of delegates to REVOLUTION's International Conference walked out before the conclusion of the meeting.

They went on to form the "Independent Revolution" tendency (iRevo) and publicly declared their hostility to the conference, refusing to recognise any of its decisions, or the leadership it elected. To make matters worse the majority of German REVOLUTION, who were responsible along with the tiny and moribund Australian REVOLUTION for initiating the split, expelled two supporters of the international majority in German REVOLUTION.

The split in REVOLUTION follows shortly after the split in the League for the Fifth International (L5I), a revolutionary cadre organisation with which REVOLUTION fights in solidarity.

The split in the L5I led to the formation of the Permanent Revolution Network. The walkout at the conference was sparked by a decision to de-section the very small Australian REVOLUTION group following statements by its majority comprised of Permanent Revolution members - that revealed they had no intention to build the organisation.
The politics of the split however are distinct from the split in the League.

The struggle in REVOLUTION that resulted in this split was around whether a revolutionary youth organisation should be organised on the basis of democratic centralism, whether it should struggle in political solidarity with the L5I and whether it should adopt a fighting, active and campaigning approach to its revolutionary work.

The iRevo grouping in classic petit-bourgeois fashion opposed democratic centralism, rejected the need to fight alongside the L5I and adopted an entirely passive and intellectualist approach to building REVO.

Here we examine the terrain of the debate and look forward to the future.

The Australian Permanent Revolution Group
The initial pretext for the launching of the split campaign was the decision by the conference to de-section the Australian REVOLUTION group. The splitters claimed this was a 'de facto expulsion' but this is simply a lie. All the conference had done was to refuse to recognise AR as a functioning REVO group. This was not because of their failure to build a Revolution group beyond merely four people, but rather because, as a result of the split in the League, their true intentions with regard to the organisation had come to light.

The trigger for the split in the League was a set of leaked documents revealing that its International Faction (now Permanent Revolution "Network" (PRN)) were planning to cause the maximum possible damage to the organisation before splitting on the eve of its' Seventh Congress. The same emails revealed the Australian delegate to the conference had the intention to cause 'maximum damage and disarray' in Revolution and, critically, said that what were then Workers Power Australia (now part of PRN) had no intention of building REVOLUTION in Australia but only "intervening" internationally in order to "cause mayhem in the ranks of REVO".

Despite this evidence the conference did not expel the Australians from REVOLUTION or their delegate from the conference. Neither did they forbid the comrades or those who supported them from continuing to argue their political positions. Instead, we asked them to show in practice that they wanted to build REVOLUTION by undertaking campaigning work, publishing a paper, and so on. As the first step towards regaining section status, we asked them to submit a plan for their work to the International Council. No such plan was ever received giving negative confirmation that the conference had come to the right decision. The Australian REVOLUTION website carries little evidence of any activity, with only an article on their so-called "expulsion" and a link to the website of the Permanent Revolution "Network" and links only to those REVOLUTION groups who stand in solidarity with iRevo.

It was not their low numbers that caused the International Delegate Conference to de-section them. You can be a section of REVOLUTION with only four members who are active and trying to increase their numbers. But you definitely can't be a section of REVOLUTION if you have no intention of further building the organisation - a revolutionary organisation is worth nothing if it is not willing to do this. The former Australian section was never willing to do this, but was - and still is - a cynical front organisation of the Permanent Revolution "Network". The comrades in Australia are a perfect example of a dependent youth organisation.

Democratic Centralism
In the last three years REVOLUTION internationally has taken a series of steps forward in our international organisation agreeing a common manifesto and establishing our first elected international leadership and decision-making structures. We held our first International Delegate Conference in Vienna in 2005 as part of this process. There we took the decision unanimously to make a move towards a democratic centralist leadership.

In the subsequent year, despite a number of national successes in the sections, we had not been successful in developing an international leadership. At the same time a grouping of comrades in the Czech Republic and Germany, who were later to split, had become opposed to international democratic centralism. This was the first major issue around which the struggle in REVO that led to the split formed; it led to a heated debate at the International Conference prior to the walkout.

The documents for the conference developed a clear Marxist argument on the need for democratic centralism in the context of our tasks. Our tasks document argued that the radicalisation of young people resisting neo-liberalism provided an obvious area to fight for a mass revolutionary youth international and it is this context that makes urgent the development of a working democratic centralism. It continued:

"It is the fight for this political programme and policy internationally that necessitates the development of an international leadership that can act with political authority in discussions with other groups and tendencies, and, indeed, can be held to account over the success or failure of the implementation of a political strategy agreed by the international delegate conference.

The development of our leadership has not been without problems of organisation and communication. Nevertheless, it is a course we should continue, as democratic centralism is a form of organisation that, by uniting our sections in a common unified struggle, gives us the best opportunity for victory against the forces of capital."

The opposition, rather than citing a lack of centralism in the work of the group for the problems encountered internationally, argued that the leadership had been guilty of "over-centralism". The only example brought forward was its intervention into disputes between the Austrian and German REVO groups.

The ideological leader of the oppositionists from Germany left the L5I in autumn 2005, having developed the "theory" that democratic centralism should not apply to pre-party organisations like the L5I. However, he and his supporters proceeded to make a number of zigzags on the issue under the pressure of the majority's Marxist arguments.

Initially, they proposed a return to the "assemblies" at REVOLUTION's international summer camps which, they argued, were more 'legitimate in the eyes of REVO members" despite only giving a voice and a vote to those members that could afford to attend them.

However, following the walkout of four delegates from the conference, the grouping of Czech, German and Swiss comrades that was to split from the organisation formed iRevo. Their founding statement conceded that 'democratic centralism was the only form of organisation for Marxists' - paraphrasing documents from the conference majority. But in direct contradiction to this, in the same document they rejected the authority of the conference and refused to recognise its leadership. Why? Because it had made a democratic decision that they did not agree with. In doing so, they were in practice rejecting the key principle of democratic centralism: the common implementation of majority decisions.

They proposed instead, despite their supposed adherence to democratic centralism, federated structures with a representative of each national section appointed by the section themselves (so that a national section with 60 members would have no more representation than a section with 5 members), and no regularly meeting secretariat. Such federal structures would have been advantageous to iRevo given the lack of a body with the authority of monitoring the work and ensuring it was carried out in the spirit of the decisions REVOLUTION had made as an international organisation at its international conference.

This grouping of splitters was therefore from the outset highly eclectic and inconsistent in its arguments. As they became increasingly defeated on the strategic question of the need for democratic centralism, they focused more and more on the relationship between REVOLUTION and the L5I to justify their opposition to carrying out majority decisions.

The relationship between the L5I and REVOLUTION
Their arguments centred on a supposed lack of independence of REVOLUTION from the L5I. iRevo demanded that the L5I's members within Revolution "cease to act as a secret faction." This demand is of the same order as "have you stopped beating your wife." A "yes we will" or "no we won't" suggests the League members in Revolution are guilty of doing something they have never i.e. acted as a secret faction. L5I members are publicly clear on their membership of the League. Indeed, they have good reason to be proud of it given the support the L5I has given REVO since its inception.

Together REVOLUTION and the League have participated actively in the European Social Forum in Florence, Paris, London, Athens as well as sending representatives to the World Social Forum in Mumbai and Porto Alegre. At every point the League gave its political advice openly and honestly for example in the drafting of REVOLUTION's manifesto and its adoption of the call for the Fifth International and a revolutionary Youth International, and last but not least in pressing for the creation of a truly independent political leadership at an international level in 2004-06. These were positions of the L5I and its members argued them across REVOLUTION's independent democratic structures.

REVOLUTION is an independent organisation - it makes its own political and operational decisions and elects its own leaders by majority vote. This is a principle, developed in the work of Lenin and Trotsky. At the same time the members of the League in REVOLUTION a clear minority in the majority of national sections do indeed argue for the politics of the League on major issues of principle and for the broad outline of tactics they believe will aid REVO to grow and succeed.
There is nothing secret or factional about this, as Trotsky said in relation to the same question of youth-party organisation relationship in 1938:

"The Party members are party members. If they work in the youth we cannot give them the right to vote in the youth against the decisions of the National Committee. Of course the National Committee should not commit the mistake of adopting obligatory resolutions too early, especially concerning the youth, but if such a resolution is adopted with the full understanding of the party they must vote in the sense of the party." (L. Trotsky, 1938, "Towards a Revolutionary Youth Organisation", Writings 1938 1939)

Like Trotsky the L5I insists on a Leninist approach to discipline, while at the same time accepting that it should not, to coin a phrase, "micromanage" the affairs of REVOLUTION. Indeed, the L5I pressed hard for REVOLUTION to create a strong and effective international leadership, precisely so that it would not have to continue act as its de facto coordinating body. The leadership of the L5I had done this on several occasions in the early days when there were only national REVOLUTION meetings and occasional "gatherings" at REVO camps.

Already we are seeing the practical benefits of the decisions of the very international conference that iRevo argues should be completely rejected. We are now able to have fortnightly or even weekly secretariat meetings, we have increased the number of statements we put on the international website, our contact work is more professional and we are now able to monitor the work of the different sections and are trying to give positive input into their work.

If, as iRevo claims, all the work and decisions of the International Council are decided a priori by the League (and more specifically by its leadership) would we really bother going to such trouble to set up these independent structures? Would we really have weekly or fortnightly secretariat meetings if all decisions are already made for us? Of course we would not, and iRevo never mustered a riposte to this most elementary of arguments.

In addition to iRevo's proposal for nationally-centred federal structures, the abolition of the non-existent 'secret L5I faction', and the ending of Revo's political solidarity with the L5I (the only organisation with which it shares its programmatic goals!) , iRevo, for good measure, demanded the immediate minoritisation of members of the L5I on the International Council.

In doing so they claimed to represent the views of 'independent' REVOLUTION members. This argument was always a complete fraud. iRevo does not have the universal support of 'independent' Revolution members, who have the right to elect a leadership with a majority of League members if they so wish and indeed have done in some sections.

Furthermore, iRevo's struggle to break political solidarity with the League was not simply a formal question of independence of youth vis a vis an older cadre party, nor one of democracy, but raised much more profound questions of how we fight for communism in contemporary conditions.

What communist strategy and organisation are needed to defeat capitalism?
In our programme, the Road to Revolution, we argue explicitly that young people cannot change the world alone:

"The youth alone do not have the power to overthrow the capitalist system. For this the working class is essential. For this reason, we support efforts to build new mass working class parties that fight openly for a programme of revolution and socialism."

This short quote makes clear the necessity of the revolutionary communist programme and the need for working class organisation.

It is this that provides the political foundations for REVOLUTION's solidarity with the L5I. The latter has developed, since its break with the International Socialists in the 1970s, a political programme that consciously seeks to re-elaborate the classical ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky in conflict with those groups that have revised and distorted them. Furthermore, they constitute an organisation of revolutionary Marxist fighters from which young people organised in REVOLUTION have much to learn. Of course, so too has the L5I learnt from its experience of building REVOLUTION and the process works both ways.

The German REVOLUTION group, under the leadership of iRevo members, has become over the last year an organisation that in no way acts in political solidarity with the L5I. Its main leaders resigned from the L5I in the Winter of 2005 and since this time, their politics has moved in an increasingly non-revolutionary direction that has led to relations between the L5I and REVO becoming at first strained and then in outright hostility to one another.

German REVO has developed more and more in the direction of a political discussion group for young adults rather than a fighting youth organisation. It has completely lacked any agitational and campaigning focus to its work, focusing purely on the production of a newspaper (naturally a vital task alongside systematic campaigning but insufficient alone) and political discussion circles. This was not simply a lack of campaigning initiative but also an increasing aversion to the making of concrete demands; articles in the paper combined condemnation of capitalism with abstract calls for communism. There was little in the way of concrete demands that present a strategy to link one to the other.

At the REVOLUTION conference in the spring 2006 a paper was brought proposing a 'campaign' around education, but this was conceived in a highly propagandistic manner: merely as six political discussions on the youth oppression and education, rather than a schedule of campaigning work. Furthermore, a large chunk of the focus for these discussion circles dealt with the oppressive effects of education superstructures on the individual psyche, rather than elaborating a Marxist strategy for the transformation of education that started with the concrete struggles of today (against privatisation, etc) and sought to turn them into a struggle for workers' and students' control, against capitalism and for socialist transformation.

This focus on "individual" psychological oppression led the main ideological leader of iRevo to flirt with the idea that the main cause of the failure of the German working class to stop Hitler was the Communist Party's (KPD) moralistic adaptation to the bourgeois family, because it created sexual repression and therefore, he argued, made party cadre's more psychologically subordinate to authority. In a highly idealist fashion the broader social context for the KPD's wrong policy of refusing a united front with social democracy was ignored in an idealist telescoping of the cause on to the psychological suppression through sexual repression of KPD members.

This theme of the need for individual self-expression, liberation, etc, goes someway to explaining the rejection of democratic centralism in the L5I and REVOLUTION and the focus on a propaganda circle existence in which ideas were freely expressed without concrete social application. It also led to a libertarian rejection of the need for political leadership within REVOLUTION.

German REVOLUTION had been built primarily through an orientation to the autonomist movement and the Berlin left scene. There was nothing wrong with this in itself, so long as communists actively challenge the ideas and tactics advocated within this movement (e.g. little orientation to the working class, sectarianism towards social democracy, illusions in anarchism, etc) and combine this work with trying to get more anchorage amongst the working class youth, rather than solely orienting towards the left scene. As a result of their individualist understanding the German REVOLUTION group however made little intervention into this movement as an organisation, but rather its members participate as individuals.

German REVOLUTION does not intervene into the movement as an organisation with a communist programme to defeat fascism, thereby its members end up accommodating politically with other political forces. Taken to its extreme this has led to the crazy scenario of some German REVO members being in an Antifa group with "anti-German" activists: a pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist movement with a record of attacking the anti-imperialist left.

The weaknesses of the German REVO politics can be seen most clearly the recent school student strike. iRevo did a lot of hard work, had a leading role in the organising committee of the strike and a high public profile.

This provided a real chance to build roots in the schools i.e. creating REVO branches/cells their. But, this would have required for REVO DE do go beyond a merely a propaganda youth group existence, and to start organise raw but determined activists on the basis of ongoing campaigning and Marxist education. It would have required that the core of the existing REVO membership set itself the task to give leadership to the newly created branches and direct and form than to a revolutionary communist fashion.

iRevo missed a major opportunity in its work in the school student strikes. Despite, having a profile within the campaign (one of their members was even the publicity spokesperson) they failed to realise the opportunity to organise the most radical section of 14 15 year old school students. Worse still, some of their members referred to a joint contingent of organised by the expelled German REVO group in collaboration with a school student committee as "the kindergarten", an incredible comment for a group that claims to want to give young people an independent political voice. It further illustrates their slide into petit bourgeois student intellectualism.

In their approach to the independence of the youth organisation, this abstention from political leadership is erroneously linked to Trotsky and Lenin's position on allowing independent youth organisations to make mistakes. In their last polemic prior to the conference in which they chose to split from the organisation, the iRevo co-ordination argues that the L5I misunderstand the tasks of a youth organisation:

"which cannot obstinately repeat "old truths" (as correct as they might be), but rather must develop itself and the entire movement. In this sense a mistake young people make themselves, from which they can learn, can be a hundred times more useful than a "correct" decision which is imposed by someone else."

It was never the position of Lenin or Trotsky to push the programmatic heritage of the revolutionary party to one side in this way. Indeed, Trotsky went to great lengths in his discussions with the American SWP to stress the educative role of the revolutionary party. In writings of the same year, responding to philistine attacks on Marxism by Latin American bourgeois democrats, he declared "ignorance is not a revolutionary instrument".

Too true, and indeed, it is the most elementary principle of Leninism that revolutionary consciousness cannot merely develop spontaneously and must be introduced into the movement by a revolutionary cadre organisation. The youth must be free to learn through struggle and be in complete control of their own organisation, but so too must the revolutionary cadre fight for a correct policy and not make a dangerous fetish over the need to make mistakes!

Just such a "mistake" as this has been made before in a youth organisation -the right wing of the SWP (US) in the 1950s. This is shown in documents that interestingly enough are quoted favourably by the German REVOLUTION leadership. For instance Murray Weiss, on the right wing of the SWP, argued that SWP cadre in the youth organisation should be free to argue as they wish:

"The SWP youth have every reason to want to participate in such a development on equal terms with other left wing comrades. It doesn't want to take up the ridiculous and self-defeating position that it expects everyone to participate in such a promising development of ideological life with an open mind, but as for the SWP membersthey will merely state what the official views of the party may be and expect everyone to accept that." (M. Weiss, "Letter on PC Youth Policy", 1957)

You would be forgiven for thinking that the revolutionary Marxist programme and the tactics of the Leninist cadre organisation were irrelevant to the success of the youth organisation, as they are brushed aside with such flippancy by Weiss. This is because Weiss and iRevo make fundamental mistakes on the question of communist organisation (both in a revolutionary cadre organisation and amongst youth).

In their whole approach to the youth organisation, as we have seen, iRevo negate the idea of it as an active campaigning group in favour of a discussion circle existence, and they adopt this same idea, if not to a greater degree, in reference to a revolutionary organisation. Their leading members have argued that the latter should mainly be made up of theoreticians making propaganda for Marxism. They deny the fighting and agitational aspects of the revolutionary organisation, and have made various attacks on the Austrian L5I for being too activist focused.

Taken together this eclectic mix of petit bourgeois politics opposition to democratic centralism, passive propagandism, lack of political leadership, libertarianism and individualism amount to a thorough rejection of Leninism. Lenin argued that communists must form revolutionary organisations that fight for the leadership of the working class and oppressed. To resist the attacks of capital effectively means carrying revolutionary consciousness into the working class.

It seems that iRevo has forgotten this principle of Marxism. Karl Kautsky, when he was still a Marxist, wrote: "Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without and not something that arose within it spontaneously. Accordingly, the old Hainfeld programme quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat (literally: saturate the proletariat) with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle."

In contrast to this iRevo adopt a form of what Lenin called "economism". On the one hand they believe that revolutionary consciousness will develop spontaneously in a youth organisation completely free of the influence of a communist cadre organisation, and therefore able to make many mistakes(!) On the other hand where they conceive an adult revolutionary organisation they present it as merely needing to produce theoretical ideas. Their rejection of democratic centralism for this propaganda group means that it does not fight an ideological struggle in the working class around its agreed programme and tactics but rather merely has an open discussion circle existence.

Conclusion
For all these political differences it could have been quite possible to accommodate iRevo in REVO's ranks if it chose to work under our discipline and within our structures, but instead it worked from the
outset to split the group.

We had no objection to iRevo forming a tendency to oppose the decisions of the international majority, but we did insist that this democratic right had to come with the responsibility of working to implement majority decisions and work under the International Council. However, in their founding documents, iRevo made a principle of completely rejecting the international conference, its decisions and the leadership it elected.

We patiently argued against their politics and called on them to re-establish unity with us. At no point did we say they had to agree with us and at no point did we threaten them with any disciplinary action. We even asked them to send a representative from iRevo in Germany, Czech Republic and Switzerland to participate with full rights on the International Council. Our aim was the re-establishment of unity within REVOLUTION so as it could get on with fighting effectively for its programme.

Instead of accepting our proposals and uniting with us, iRevo launched its attacks on us publicly in the form of a new website and articles in the German REVO paper. These acts alone - renouncing all Revo's democratic structures and publicly attacking and criticising the organisation - would be enough to demonstrate that they were trying to split it.

But then, in addition to this, the German REVOLUTION leadership made their intentions obvious by expelling two supporters of the international majority from German REVOLUTION for raising political criticisms against the leadership. This method is entirely alien to a Trotskyist organisation and has more in common with Stalinism. It has an added irony given that iRevo claimed to be fighting for democracy within REVOLUTION.

Even in the face of these expulsions the International Council sought over the course of nearly three months to bring them back into the organisation. Meanwhile, iRevo claimed to be against a split while, at the same time, splitting the organisation in Germany, launching a public website for its group, establishing a new leadership and rejecting collaboration with any of REVOLUTION's international structures.
Now, following the decision made at iRevo's international conference to "reject the ultimatum" of the RIC, i.e. our final request for them to put an end to the split and integrate themselves into our international organisation, we are obliged to recognise they have split from REVOLUTION. We will naturally treat them with the hostility such unprincipled splitters deserve.

We will now continue the work of rebuilding German and Czech REVOLUTION as sections of our international organisation. Already our expelled members have had good successes in the school strike movement Berlin, in contrast to iRevo, and we now have a functioning group there and embryonic groups in two other cities. Of course, we will cooperate with our German and Czech former comrades in all practical issues of the class struggle on a loyal basis - in mobilising for the anti-G8 protests in Heiligendamm, in anti-fascist or anti-racist actions and so on. Should any or all these comrades come to recognise their mistake then we can and will be willing to consider their re-entry into Revolution.
Alas, we expect them to continue to move further away from revolutionary Marxism in the building of their petit-bourgeois youth group. This is their loss and not ours.

We are going forward in building an international revolutionary youth movement. Successful struggles, like the struggle in France against the CPE, prove that we live in a period that makes an activist and outward orientated direction absolutely necessary for building a revolutionary youth organisation. New challenges like the anti-G8 mobilisations in Heiligendamm are awaiting us. The never ending "war against terror" and a possible next war against Iran make a revolutionary party and also a revolutionary youth organisation of the oppressed an unalterable necessity.

Forward to a revolutionary working class youth organisation and a new world party of social revolution a Fifth International!