Issuing body: PCI majority tendency (Bleibtreu-Lambert-Renard-Garrive)
Declaration of the Bleibtreu-Lambert Tendency on the Agreements Reached at the Tenth Plenum of the IEC (Unpublished text)
As early as the CC [Central Committee] meeting of 19 and 20 January, the majority of the CC had affirmed that it was ready to put into effect the tactical turn defined by the bureau of the IS [International Secretariat]. In this way it once again demonstrated its will to discipline, a discipline which was, in every circumstance, total and unfailing with regard to the decisions of the World Congress and of the French Commission of the World Congress, notwithstanding the strange accusations of "a will to indiscipline" levelled by the bureau of the IS.
But the CC of 20 January refused to bow before the bureaucratic measures taken by the bureau of the IS in violation of the statutes of the International, for the purpose of these measures was to prevent a serious discussion from being opened on the problems raised by an entrist tactic, to oppose the holding of an extraordinary congress, and to destroy every guarantee of democracy within the party.
We condemn without reservation the bureaucratic methods employed by the bureau of the IS, methods which the IEC [International Executive Committee] was unable to approve but could only understand, methods which are the opposite of what a leadership confident in the rightness of its positions ought to do. Such methods are the price paid for political confusion and express the logic of a revisionist tendency within the international leadership, one that calls into question the programmatic positions of Trotskyism. In this respect, the political document adopted by the IEC is not free of confusion and contradictions, especially as regards the problem of Stalinism. Despite the confusions and dangers of this text, the majority of the CC will apply the discipline of the IEC, because it is convinced that this discipline remains compatible with the defence, safeguarding, and reaffirmation of the programmatic ideas of Trotsky and of his Transitional Programme; because it is certain that the Fourth International as a whole will inevitably react against the threats of revisionism, as is normal for an organization representing the sole programmatic and political capital of the proletarian revolution. In such an organization, passing aberrations and errors have no objective root from which to flourish.
The IEC's organizational resolution on the French question contains within it a partial confirmation of this view. On several points it is an implicit condemnation of the ultimatism of the bureau of the IS. It is a formal repudiation of it when it decides to hold an extraordinary congress that will discuss the problems raised by entrism, without any prior censure striking members of the leadership. It does not call into question the necessity that the party be led, in practice, by the militants in whom it has political confidence.
But on several points, very grave sacrifices have been imposed on us. The first and most serious is the renunciation of the right of the central committee elected by the Seventh Congress to designate its own political bureau. A political bureau has been imposed on us which grants a member of the IS, appointed by the IEC for six months and answerable to the IEC, a casting vote that puts him in the position of arbiter on every disputed question. This is equally true as regards the composition of the secretariat. Moreover, the appointment of Pierre Frank as political secretary was imposed on us against our will, and we continue to regard it as mistaken for numerous reasons.
These measures were taken because the IEC, which was able to hear only two of the sixteen suspended comrades speak, was not sufficiently informed of the reality concealed behind the accusation of "a will to indiscipline" and gave credence to the thesis of the IS, which invoked "exceptional circumstances" to justify itself.
Our acceptance of the decisions of the IEC is itself the demonstration of the tendentious and erroneous character of the accusation of "a will to indiscipline." How can it seriously be maintained that a leadership representing the essential living forces of the party, its great proletarian majority, seriously threatened the policy and discipline of the International in January, and then in February accepts decisions that differ from the demands of the bureau of the IS only in the guarantees of discussion within a democratic congress that they include? One can take this story of "threat" seriously only if one now believes that democratic discussion of tactical turns is a danger to the international leadership.
The majority of the CC of the PCI has once again demonstrated its unshakeable will to preserve the unity of the party within the International, to oppose splitism, even at the price of heavy concessions. As for its political discipline, it did not have to prove it, for no precise accusation could be made against it! It nonetheless affirmed that even had the IEC, by accepting measures of expulsion and split, formally placed it outside the International, it would have continued to apply the political line of the Third World Congress and of the bodies elected by it.
The crisis brought to a close at the Tenth IEC is not an internal crisis of the PCI, but a conflict that has arisen between a disciplined section of the International, on the one hand, and Pabloism on the other, which is exploiting the confusions and contradictions of the World Congress — where it was unable to impose itself — in order to try to assert itself after the World Congress. Responsibility for the conflict rests entirely with those who, on the occasion of a tactical turn, called into question the programmatic foundations of the International, and engaged in attacks against the Transitional Programme and against the fundamental affirmations of Trotskyism on the nature and role of the Soviet bureaucracy.
We remain and shall remain within the International. We shall continue to fight within it for the defence of the programme and founding principles of our International, world party of the revolution.