Re: [Marxism] Yes, forming a Trotskyist group is sectarian

[Lance Murdoch <lancemurdoch@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/10/05, Joaquín Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Moreover, it is in violation of the only precept Marx and Engels ever
> formulated on organization, namely that Communists do not form parties
> opposed to other working class parties and the political approach behind
> that precept, which is laid out at the beginning of the section of the
> Communist Manifesto on the relationship between Communists and
> Proletarians:
>
> "In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a
> whole?
>
> "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other
> working-class parties.
>
> "They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat
> as a whole.
>
> "They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to
> shape and mould the proletarian movement."
>
> Nor is there any mystery to exactly what Marx and Engels understood by
> this approach, it is clear from the political line that they followed in
> their practical activity.

I'm not sure I totally agree with this.  In September 1864, Marx was
present at the founding of the International Workingmen's Association,
and he came to have a dominant role in the organization.  In a
non-sectarian move, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy
asked to join the IWMA in 1868.  Marx's IWMA said that the group could
not join, only national groups could join.  So the individual national
groups of the IASD joined the IWMA individually.  In 1872, Marx led a
motion to toss these IASD groups out of the IWMA, which won by a
motion of 40-24.

Marx preferred complete control over the IWMA to losing two fifths of
its membership.  The two-fifths IASD'ers went to Saint-Imier to form a
rival organization, and Marx had his ideologically pure IWMA, which
then moved its headquarters to New York City and then fell apart.  Now
whoever was wrong or right in this dispute, it does not really jibe
with the idea of "they do not set up any sectarian principles of their
own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement."  At the
first major junction where Marx could choose between an inclusive
working class organization, or a smaller ideologically pure
organization, he chose the latter.  Then there's the question of
whether this was the right or wrong thing to do, but that's beyond the
current question regarding sectarianism,  broad working class
organizations versus smaller ideologically pure organizations and so
forth.

Lance

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