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CRP en el Perú

From: Collective Permanent Revolution

To: ITC Britain

Date: 20 June, 2009

Copy to: GKK (Austria), LSI (Argentina, Brazil), MpI (Spanish state)

Object: Relations between ITC & Collective

Dear comrades,

It is through the Groupe Bolchevik (France) that we became aware that you appeared.

The Permanent Revolution Collective was born as an international gathering based on a meeting in 2002 at the LOI (Argentina) Congress. A few months later, the latter tried to destroy the Collective in pretending, without any shift in the orientation of its former partners, that the Peruvian, French, Bolivian and Spanish groups of the Collective suddenly became “polpists”, “workers’ aristocrats”, “defenders of the peaceful way to socialism”…

In getting rid of the Collective, the latter being too independent and too critical, the leadership of the LOI felt free to turn back to its utopia, the “reconstruction of the 4^th International” (which means that it is unable to politically assess the Morenoist variant of Pabloism and to break the legacy of the revisionism of the LIT and with the opportunism of the MAS, that were never fought by the current leaders of the PTS and of the LOI when Moreno was still alive), to its perspective for “new Zimmerwald” (which was explicitly condemned by the 4^th International when Trotsky was still alive, and which corresponds with the “half way house” that you denounce on a national level in the point 10 of your platform). It felt free to hide its fluctuations between spontaneism and opportunism through a “third period” kind of rhetoric, to substitute to concrete analyses some delirious inventions and slogans that it does not implement in Argentina.

A detailed balance sheet of its practice in the face of the revolutionary eruption in Bolivia in 2003-2004 was made by former LOI members (ER, Clase, partido y dirección en la revolución boliviana, 2004; A propósito de la revolución boliviana y el rol del partido revolucionario ante la insurrección y la toma del poder, 2006). To this orientation corresponds a disgraceful behaviour, such as you may be aware of by Munzer’s circular to the LTF.

Now the Collective is limited to militants in France (the GB, whom you met when you were at the LO Fête), in Peru (who publish “Lucha Marxista” leaflets and who intervene in the TC group) and in Austria (who are building the GKK). It has discussed, with no result, with the IBT. The L5I split never replied to our proposal for a meeting. The Collective currently studies the possibilities for getting closer with the LSI, consisting of the LOI (Brazil) and the PRS (Argentina).

Still, it has allowed some militants, who are coming from different traditions (LRCI-CEMICOR and International Committee-OCRFI) to elaborate and intervene together for more than five years, as the following documents show:

• Charter of the Collective, 2004,

• Manifesto for the Socialist united states of Europe, 2005

• Statement for socialist revolution in Bolivia, 2005

• Statement for the freedom of Iraq and of Afghanistan, 2005

• Statement against the invasion of Lebanon, 2006

• Letter to the GRA (Austria), 2006

• Statement for the socialist revolution in Mexico, 2007

• 1^st of May Address, 2007

• 1^st of May Address, 2008

• Theses on China, 2008

• Statement in support of the Palestinian people, 2009

• 1^st May Address, 2009

The Collective highly appreciates your first public appearance with a clear and firm position against demonstration of jingoism, some strikes against the hiring of foreign workers, that were encouraged not only by the ruling class (which ideology is normally ruling, including in the working class) and the demagogy of its fascistic wing, but also by the role of the workers’ bureaucracies, which have been helped for decades by the epigones of the 4^th International. The union leaderships, the traditional reformist party and the former Stalinist party several times sabotaged the remarkable class struggles of the British proletariat, they ruled sometimes s for the bourgeoisie, they have educated workers into social-imperialism and social-chauvinism.

Within the circumstances of serious defeats by the world proletariat and of an incredible decay of the workers’ movement, including the liquidation of the 4^th International and the degeneration of former Trotskyist sections, your platform seems promising. Yet, we have reservations, among which the main ones are:

• The point 4 does not mention explicitly the need to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus.

• The point 7 is not complete and it does specify that the nationalizations of banks must be done without compensation.

• The point 10 does not explain that it is necessary to build a workers’ revolutionary party which is distinct from reformism and from centrism.

• The point 15 forgets the demand for an immediate retreat of your imperialism’s troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

• The point 18 starts from the unacceptable behaviour of the so-called “Trotskyist groups”, in reversing the communist method which starts from the political program to understand the organisational practice.

• The point 19 is even less materialist, since he gives to the ITC the objective of reconstructing an organization that was destroyed almost sixty years ago, without being able to rest upon an international fraction who would have been assuring its continuity, nor at least a section which would have survived the destruction of the 4^th International by its own leadership.

• The point 19 also explains that the majority of the forces that present themselves as Trotskyists are centrist, but also that they tend to be faithful to the Transitional Program. It is centrism, but a reactionary one, going from communism to reformism (and not from reformism to communism). Indeed, the main currents came from the destruction of the 4^th International and from the revision of its program. They occasionally use some orthodox or radical slogans in order to betray their own activists and the vanguard workers, in order to hide the fact that they align with non proletarian forces.

We regret that you did not reply to the proposal of the GB, done with the approval of the Collective, for the elaboration of an international position of the communist groups on the continent for the elections in the European Parliament. We think that a methodical and serious discussion between your group and our international organisation is useful. A meeting with the European members of the Collective’s bureau, during the GB Journées d’études, could be the opportunity to define how to proceed.

With our internationalist greetings

The political bureau of the CoReP