[Marxism] Ken McLeod on the IMG

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Ken writes science fiction for a living.)

http://www.kenmacleod.blogspot.com/
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Posted 10:37 AM by Ken

The IMG remembered

Whenever he made a speech, the late Tony Cliff looked and sounded like a 
mad scientist, explaining how his apparatus of cogs, wheels, 
transmission belts and rank and file movements was about to transform 
the diaphanously-draped damsel of trade union reformism into the 
capering chimpanzee of revolutionary socialism. There was no personality 
cult of Cliff, but his personality left an imprint on the party he 
founded. The same was true of all the grand old men of British 
Trotskyism. It's no surprise, as John Sullivan puts it somewhere, that 
the SWP is excitable, Militant long-winded, and the Healyites [redacted] 
had anger management issues.

In the 1970s I was a member of the International Marxist Group. It was 
the largest British Trotskyist group not led by one of the grand old men 
of British Trotskyism. This was less of an advantage than might be 
supposed. Lacking a grand old man the IMG settled for a squabbling 
coalition of alpha males (and females). The resulting frenzy of 
competitive nit-picking has often stood the group's ex-members in good 
stead in their later careers. It also helps to explain why the 
intelligence of so many of the group's individual members seldom showed 
itself in the group's political line, which lurched hither and yon as 
the squabbling alphas wrested the joystick from each other. Opening the 
weekly bundle of the group's newspaper was always a thrill. One week 
there was a supplement on surrealism; the next, the editorial office had 
been briefly occupied by feminists and an apology inserted for the 
sexism of the surrealists. People familiar with the IMG only from its 
press, or hearing of its political interventions, could be forgiven for 
thinking that its members were half-wits. Who can forget the argument of 
the IMG's Women's Liberation Commission that the demand of South African 
mineworkers for a family life was reactionary?

The IMG had a great deal of similarly helpful advice (worked up by the 
Colonial Revolutions Commission) for every national liberation movement, 
except those directed against the USSR and its allies. They supported 
every anti-Soviet-bloc movement without offering any advice. To orthodox 
Communists this seemed senseless, if not suspect, but there was a logic 
to it. The Fourth International hoped to displace the Communist parties. 
So, in the case of an anti-imperialist national movement, the point was 
to criticise its Communist component for peaceful co-existence/guerrilla 
tactics/popular frontism/whatever. In the case of a national movement 
opposing a Soviet or Soviet-aligned state, the point was to criticise 
the Communists who ruled or supported that state for their incorrect 
handling of the national question. The movement itself could be relied 
upon to be, or to become, socialist and progressive without any advice 
from the IMG. This needs a little further explaining.

The Fourth International, of which the IMG was the British section, 
maintained that was worth defending in the then-existing socialist 
states was state ownership and planning, and what was not to be defended 
but attacked was the bureaucratic dictatorship. What the planned 
economies needed to overcome their well-advertised deficiencies was 
democracy. Any movement, therefore, that did not inscribe upon its 
banners the privatization of heavy industry was not 
counter-revolutionary, but instead ('objectively') revolutionary. After 
all, it was not directed against 'the economic foundation of the 
workers' state', but against its bureaucratic and tyrannical 
superstructure. This applied to almost every anti-Soviet (etc) movement 
and dissident, so the Fourth International hardly ever regarded any of 
them as counter-revolutionary. To be fair, when the Australian section 
started sharing platforms with a local offshoot of the Ustashe, this was 
considered a mistake.

The Fourth International was taken completely by surprise when the 
overthrow of the Communist dictatorships was followed in short order by 
a nationalist welter and a complete dismantling of the bureaucratically 
planned economies. After thinking about it for a year or two, the IMG's 
successor, the ISG, brought out a pamphlet with the title 'Socialism 
After Stalinism'. Its front cover consisted of a portrait of Stalin. Say 
what you like about the grand old men, they always kept a watchful eye 
on the printshop and wouldn't have countenanced something as stupid as that.

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