Pabloite revisionism

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 12 Jan 1996, Doug Henwood wrote:

> And what about the dread Pabloite heresy, which I'm always reading about in
> Workers Vanguard?
>

Louis: Pablo was the "party name" of Michael Raptis, the head of the
Fourth International after WWII.

He believed that the CP's were shifting to the left under the impact of
the cold war and advocated that Trotskyists become more friendly to them
politically.

For this, he was bitterly attacked by the American SWP and the English
Trotskyists under the helm of the late Gerry Healy, erstwhile guru to
Vanessa Redgrave, and certified nut-job. They called Pablo a "liquidationist"
for wanting to abandon the Fourth International. A split took place in
the early 1950's and the Americans and the English formed something called
the International Committee for the Fourth Internationa [IC]. Pablo's
followers remained in the International Secretariat [IS].

Pablo went overboard in his enthusiasm for the Algerian revolution and, I
believe, took a cabinet level post in the FLN government. He was shown to
the door by Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank and Livio Maitan, who assumed the
new leadership of the IS.

After the Cuban Revolution, the IC and IS discovered that they shared an
enthusiasm for the Castro leadership. This laid the groundwork for a
reunification. Some IC'ers who regarded Castro as being nothing
different than the Algerian revolutionary leadership didn't go along with
this, especially Gerry Healy, and they remained apart.

In this country, some members of the SWP formed a political alliance with
Healy. Tim Wolforth and Jim Robertson were their main leaders. Robertson
immediately ran afoul of the tyrannical Healy and formed his own group, the
Spartacist League.

Wolforth remained allied with Healy and formed something called the
Workers League. Wolforth was deposed by Healy in the 1970's after the madman
raised charges that Tim was an FBI agent! For an account of these
misadventures, I recommend Tim's "Prophet's Children", a gothic tale that
describes his involvement with Social Democrat and Trotskyist politics over
the decades.

I myself am an extreme Pabloite. I advocate liquidation of the Fourth
International (if one could only find it nowadays). The only difference
between me and Pablo is that I would have liquidated it back in the late
1930's, when it was just being formed. It was not what was needed.


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