[Marxism] From the LCR into the NPA

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://links.org.au/node/835
France: From the Revolutionary Communist League to the New 
Anti-Capitalist Party
Alain Krivine, Paris, May 1968. The LCR was the ``fusion of a current of 
Trotskyism with the youth radicalisation of the 1960s''

This contribution was written as part of preparations for the January 
2009 congress of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). The congress 
agenda includes the political “self-dissolution” of the LCR, to set the 
stage for the new challenge of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). The 
authors of this piece belong to the generation of activists from the 
1960s and 1970s; so while principally addressed to members of the LCR, 
it may be of interest to many others. It first appeared in the January 
2009 International Viewpoint, the magazine of the Fourth International.

* * *

By Daniel Bensaïd, Alain Krivine, Pierre Rousset, François Sabado and 
others

December 15, 2008 -- For 20, 30 or 40 years now, we have built the 
Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). Today, we are fully part of the 
constituent process leading to the launch of the New Anti-Capitalist 
Party (NPA). We approach this new enterprise with confidence thanks to – 
and not in spite of – what the LCR has accomplished over these past few 
decades. This is a momentous development; the LCR’s decision to dissolve 
itself in order to take up a broader challenge is a rather exceptional 
event in the history of the French working-class movement.

We are able to take this gamble because we are not beginning from 
scratch. It is no accident that — of all the groups within the French 
and even international revolutionary left – it is the LCR that has taken 
such an initiative. We are the product of a particular history of the 
revolutionary movement – the fusion of a current of Trotskyism with the 
youth radicalisation of the 1960s. We are a non-dogmatic current of 
revolutionary Marxism that has been able to preserve fundamental 
elements of continuity in the history of the working-class movement, 
particularly in relation to Social Democracy and Stalinism. These 
include the defence of a program of demands that are both immediate and 
transitional towards socialism; a united-front policy that aims for mass 
mobilisation of workers and their organisations; a policy of 
working-class unity and independence against any type of strategic 
alliance with the national bourgeoisie; opposition to any participation 
in governments in the advanced-capitalist countries that merely manage 
the state and the capitalist economy; and unfailing internationalism.

Unlike other currents, we have endeavoured to incorporate a wide range 
of new factors into our political tradition: the post-war evolution of 
capitalism; active solidarity with the anti-colonial revolutions and 
with the anti-bureaucratic movements in the Eastern bloc; an analysis of 
the new social movements such as the women’s movement and, today, 
growing eco-socialist awareness in the face of the ecological crisis; 
and, above all, ongoing examination and enrichment of one of the key 
points of our program, socialist democracy.

This is a trademark of the LCR. The LCR has been able to ensure the 
continuity of the Left Opposition’s struggle against Stalinism. What is 
more, unlike most currents of the revolutionary left in France and in a 
whole host of countries, it has also upheld the principles and practical 
application of democratic and pluralistic organisation and functioning. 
Throughout its history, taken together, our sensitivity to this question 
and our democratic and pluralistic internal functioning have enabled the 
LCR to provide a home for a series of currents and organisations with 
different origins and political cultures. And it has meant that the LCR 
is now in a position to build something with other forces and to embrace 
the new challenge of the NPA.

The NPA is the result of the political work of recent years, especially 
of our contribution to the renewal of the social movements and of the 
success of the presidential campaigns of 2002 and 2007 around Olivier 
Besancenot. But the idea goes back much further than that.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the collapse of the USSR and of the 
Eastern-bloc countries, combined with neoliberal capitalist 
globalisation, brought one historical cycle to a close and opened 
another. “New epoch, new program, new party”: this was a three-pronged 
approach towards thinking about the new historical period. Political 
action would be framed by a new set of parameters. It would henceforth 
be possible to overcome the divisions that had separated the many 
revolutionary and anti-capitalist currents born in the 19th and 20th 
centuries.

Of course, we were uncertain about the new organisational forms, 
characteristics, limits and dynamics. But the question was posed, on 
both the international and national level. Internationally, we took 
initiatives through international conferences and went through a number 
of experiences, each with its own specificities: the PSOL in Brazil, 
after the experience of the Worker's Paerty (PT); Sinistra Critica in 
Italy, after the experience of Rifondazione Comunista; Respect in Great 
Britain and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), before the splits in 
these two organisations; the Left Bloc in Portugal; and the Red-Green 
Alliance in Denmark.

In each one of these processes, some questions were settled – especially 
around the matter of the relationship with political power and 
participation or not in centre-left and social-liberal governments. 
These questions led to the split of PSOL from the PT and Sinistra 
Critica from Rifondazione Comunista. They also underlie our differences 
with the leadership of Die Linke in Germany, which has declared its 
support for parliamentary and governmental alliances with Social Democracy.

The NPA will be clearly defined politically. Its preliminary documents 
set out some unmistakable terms: class struggle and support for all the 
struggles of the exploited and oppressed; unity in action of workers and 
their organisations; a break with the capitalist system; an 
eco-socialist project; opposition to any policy of managing the 
capitalist economy and the central executive powers of capitalist 
institutions; the struggle for a workers’ government; the revolutionary 
transformation of society; socialist democracy; and an internationalist 
program and practice. To be sure, a number of questions will remain 
open: the nature of revolutions in the 21st century; problems of the 
transition to socialism; and a whole range of other questions having to 
do with the reformulation of the socialist and communist project. But we 
are not beginning from scratch; and the NPA will collectively determine 
its own positions on the basis of new common experiences.

It is therefore not a matter of building a revamped LCR. We don’t only 
want to build a broader party; we want to build a party that is a new 
social and political reality. It will be pluralistic. It will take the 
best of all the revolutionary traditions of the working-class movement 
and of other movements such as eco-socialism. Its goal is to bring all 
anti-capitalists under one roof.

The NPA will be an internationalist organisation, in charge of its own 
policies on international matters. It will not be a section of the 
Fourth International (which is a specific international political 
current). As a pluralistic party, the NPA cannot join the Fourth 
International (FI) as such. The process of building a new international 
– which has always been and remains our goal – will be long and 
complicated. The building of anti-capitalist formations in individual 
countries will not take place in synch with the building of a new 
international grouping. As allowed for by its statutes, we remain 
members of the FI, with ties to the LCR comrades elected to its 
leadership bodies. Given the role the LCR plays within the FI, we have 
proposed that the NPA continue to shoulder a number of tasks for which 
the LCR was responsible within the FI.

We are also proud to have passed on to a new generation not only a part 
of our political heritage but also the full range of leadership 
responsibilities – without the turmoil and crises of succession that 
most parties experience. Credit for this goes equally to the older 
generation, the youth and those somewhere in between. As the LCR 
dissolves into the NPA, though, we make a specific appeal to the sense 
of responsibility of LCR members. Their experience and training are 
vital to the building of the NPA. They are among the preconditions for 
the new party’s success, and for the successful synthesis of new and 
old. Everyone should get fully involved, as we have decided to do 
ourselves. Without a doubt, this will be a remarkable exercise in 
learning to speak with broader sectors, in paying special attention to 
the vocabulary we use, in learning to listen to and respect others, and 
in learning from them without underestimating what we bring to them 
ourselves. After the NPA founding conference, every comrade from the LCR 
should get involved in building this new project, for which we have 
fought for so many decades.

[Translated by Raghu Krishnan. Daniel Bensaïd is one of France’s most 
prominent Marxist philosophers and has written extensively. He is a 
leading member of the LCR (French section of the Fourth International). 
Alain Krivine is one of the main spokespersons of the French Ligue 
Communiste Revolutionnaire. Pierre Rousset is a member of Europe 
Solidaire Sans Frontiers (ESSF). He has been involved for many years in 
Asian solidarity movements. François Sabado is a member of the executive 
bureau of the Fourth International and of the national leadership of the 
LCR.]

----

 From Bert Cochran's "Our Orientation", 1954

The very formulations of the International Resolution must lead us to 
the conclusion that the revolutionary parties of tomorrow will not be 
Trotskyist, in the sense of necessarily accepting the tradition of our 
movement, our estimation of Trotsky's place in the revolutionary 
hierarchy, or all of Trotsky's specific evaluations and slogans. We in 
the United States had precisely this experience where Trotskyists fused 
with the small Muste organization to form the Workers Party in 1935. The 
fusion occurred only after we had overcome considerable resistance in 
the Musteite ranks to accepting the special characteristics of 
Trotskyism by assuring them that we had no special sectarian axes to 
grind. How much more operative will this be when the left wing develops 
through its own specific experiences and the merging of different 
currents and groups inside the big centrist or reformist mass movements.

Our analysis and our tactical orientation would remain like a knife 
without a blade if we do not follow through with the necessary 
conclusion. And this conclusion is that in the present historical 
conditions, our cadres have to take the whole body of Marxist theory and 
struggle, including Trotsky's contributions to it and translate them 
into the language of our lifetime, and into the language of the existing 
movements of the various countries in which we are situated.

The worst error is to think this mainly a job of clearer language, or 
for our cadres to start masquerading as simple homespun mechanics who 
have none too secure a mastery of grammar or syntax. What is involved if 
we are to integrate ourselves in the mass movement and to begin 
functioning effectively as its Marxist wing, is that we have to rid 
ourselves of all faction spirit and too narrow understanding of the 
Marxist's role in the centrist and reformist milieus of our time.

Our purpose is to bring our ideas into the mass movement, and to 
gradually raise the consciousness of the ranks to the historic tasks. 
But the last thing in the world we should attempt is to inculcate the 
ranks with the necessity of adopting our specific tradition, and 
impressing upon them the truth of all the evaluations and proposals 
broached by Trotsky from 1923 on. The thought that in the coming period 
of our activity we have to go out of our way to mention the name and 
work of Leon Trotsky, and the name and the existence of the Fourth 
International, shows how far all of us have become infused with narrow 
group thinking, and organizational fetishism, how far we have traveled 
from the outlook of Frederick Engels, who warned the Socialists in 
America not to publish the Communist Manifesto, as it was based on 
old-world experiences, and that the American labor movement, developing 
under different conditions, would not understand it, and would not know 
what Marx and Engels were talking about. Why isn't it possible for us to 
take this simple thought of Engels and apply it to ourselves and our 
work? If Engels didn't think this was putting a question mark over his 
revolutionary integrity, why should we?

We said before that only by integrating ourselves within the existing 
movements could our cadres survive and fulfill their mission. We will 
now add to that proposition this corollary: Only by dropping all 
sectarian notions of imposing our specific tradition upon the mass 
movements which developed in different circumstances and under different 
influences, can our approach register successes and guarantee the future 
of our precious cadres. What is involved, it is dear, is not any 
modification of programmatic essence, but a sharp reversal of 
organizational concepts and perspectives on the nature of the 
development of the mass revolutionary parties of tomorrow.

full: http://www.marx.org/history/etol/document/ibt/ibt08.htm

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