[Marxism] Respect, a united front?!?!

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a rather long explanation for the crisis in Respect by the SWP.

http://www.swp.org.uk/respect_cc.php

It describes their goal with respect to Respect as building a "united 
front". I might find time later today to explain why this is such a 
wrongheaded approach. Just let me say at the outset that a united front 
was meant as a way of uniting with the reformist parties in order to 
eventually supersede them.

===

TROTSKY: To be sure, Jouhaux shattered the unity by the expulsions of 
the communists. That’s just where the meaning of the united front lies. 
In our struggle against the reformists, against the dissidents, as you 
named them, the syndicalist-reformists, social-patriots, etc., we must 
make them responsible for the split, we must continually force them to 
express themselves on the possibility of a joint action on the basis of 
the class struggle. They must be faced with the necessity of stating an 
open “No” before the entire working class.

If the situation is favorable for the demands of the working class, we 
must push these gentlemen forward. In two years, let us assume, we shall 
have the revolution. Meanwhile, we will have an ever increasing movement 
of the working class. Do you think that the Jouhauxs and the Merrheims 
will remain as they are today? No, they will always try; they will take 
one or two steps forward and, since there will always be people in their 
camp who refuse to follow them, they will experience a new split. We 
will profit by it. That is naturally a tactic of movement, a very 
flexible tactic, but at the same time a thoroughly energetic one, for 
the leadership remains firmly in our hands. And when great events occur 
– here I am fully in accord with comrade Terracini – the unity of action 
will be established by itself. We will not prevent it. But, comrade 
Terracini tells us, at the given moment there are no great events and we 
have no reason for proposing the united front ...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1922/02/uf.htm

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