LQB Reply to ICL on Breaking Fraternal Relations

Volta Redonda, 4 July 1996
To the International Communist League

Comrades,

After receiving the 17 June 1996 letter signed by Parks, breaking Fraternal Relations between the ICL and the LQB, the comrades of our organization were in a state of shock. The disloyal break came like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky. Now we are analyzing and studying the situation. When Cirrus handed the letter to comrade R., on the 18th, she did so without saying a single word, and he only learned of its content on his way back to Volta Redonda. This not only goes against our hopes of a Trotskyist fusion with the ICL, but, as the ICL representatives were fully aware, the day you cut off relations was one day before the union assembly called to separate the guardas from the municipal union! Everything indicates that the ICL did this in such a hurry because it wanted to cut any association with the LQB before that meeting. It is still hard for us to believe that you have done this, but we must face reality squarely.

Yet this shock did not cause an irresponsible and desperate short circuit. We were obliged to keep a cool head, particularly in the current situation of hard-fought struggle to separate the municipal guardas from the municipal workers union (SFPMVR).

This struggle is even harder-fought now, since the bourgeois courts have suspended Geraldo from his post as president of the union, due to his struggle for the separation of the guardas. This suspension was requested by the pro-police faction led by Artur Fernandes, using as a pretext the cost of the April 11 bulletin with the excellent article by Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Police: Part of, or Enemies of, Labor?” whose 10,000-copy press run exceeded the 3,000 copies normally distributed by the union.

Comrades, we went over your June 11 and 17 letters again and observed that they were written as if our campaign to separate the police from the union were non-existent. The ICL encouraged this struggle and we took it on. Now you pretend that it is not even happening. In the days before the letter of June 17 we spoke with ICL representatives about this struggle and Arturo said we should leave the union, a position which we unanimously rejected.

Eight days after delivering the letter breaking relations, Cirrus asked I. what he thought of the June 17 letter. He answered: “We think that the breaking of Fraternal Relations is a grave error which will harm the cause of the international working class.” We would add, also in his words (as he wrote in his July 1 report): “for us the breaking of fraternal relations ONE DAY BEFORE THE MEETING TO THROW THE GUARDAS OUT OF THE UNION is an act of cowardice, and we feel stabbed in the back.”

It was necessary to have in-depth, ongoing discussions about whatever differences existed, in order to arrive at a principled fusion, without allowing these discussions, however tense they might have been, to lead to hysteria or precipitous actions by either side. We of the LQB thought we were fighting together with you to reforge the Fourth International. The ICL dealt a heavy blow to that task when it broke relations; when we protest against that blow, this is part of the struggle to reforge the Fourth International.

Before the June 17 letter, there was a series of important advances in the Fraternal Relations (as attested to in several prior letters). Thus we thought we were on the road to a fusion. We were very proud and hopeful to have established Fraternal relations with an international organization with the heritage of James P. Cannon, Richard Fraser (who formulated revolutionary integrationism) and fighters like Martha Phillips. This was a victory against the petty-bourgeois nationalism, prejudice, belief in the myth of Brazilian “racial democracy,” male chauvinism and popular-frontism of organizations like Causa Operária, the T-POR, LBI/PBCI, Morenoites and others.

We also believed that the hard-fought political struggle for the disaffiliation of the municipal guardas from the SFPMVR would bring our organizations closer together, on the road to fusion.

But now you have abandoned us, without a discussion, without the possibility of a debate over this break, since it is presented as a fait accompli. “We are radical and we don’t turn back,” Cirrus told M.C. on the telephone a day after the June 19 meeting. But what you did was not “radical” at all. It was running away from the class struggle on the question of the police, a question which has importance for the entire working class, not only in Brazil but throughout the world, since in a very concrete way it shows the need for total independence from the bourgeois state, the struggle for the revolutionary political independence of the working class, as well as a class-struggle fight against the oppression of blacks and other oppressed groups. We are sure that proletarian revolutionaries like Cannon would have condemned the type of cowardly abandonment that you have now carried out.

In his discussion with us, the ICL’s Arturo brandished his sword as a scholar of Latin American Trotskyism, saying the fraternal relations between the ICL and the LQB were a “precipitous” product of Abrão’s [Negrete] and Norden’s search for “success,” since only “syndicalism and nationalism” are to be found in Latin America. It seems Arturo used this sword to help cut fraternal relations. In Latin America, pseudo-leftist, populist and reformist rhetoric have been dominant, serving as a kind of opiate to conceal the oppression and exploitation of the masses. The ICL could advance politically in the world, including on this continent, only by putting into practice its revolutionary and internationalist discourse. This is the opposite of breaking fraternal relations in the midst of the bitter struggle for the separation of the police from the SFPMVR. This posture may remain indelibly in the memory of the international working class, and cannot be covered over by self-justifying rhetoric from an organization that says it wants to forge the vanguard of the international working class.

Surely Menshevik organizations like the LBI/PBCI, CO, the PSTU, the Loraites, centrists around the world, the “Bolshevik Tendency” and other opportunist anti-Spartacist groups will try to exploit the ICL’s flight for their own objectives, seeking to discredit the genuine Trotskyist program. It seems Causa Operária already knows about the break carried out by the ICL, since two days ago a CO member tried to talk to comrade J., asking if it was true that the LQB and Spartacists are no longer together. It is regrettable that the ICL’s shameful action has helped these popular-frontists, who seek to sow confusion and opportunism. We must also ask: What impact will this have on those who, after serious discussions, joined the international campaign for “Police, Hands off the SFPMVR”? You speak of the “trade-union opportunism” of the LQB (as if we were a group of union bureaucrats, when in reality we have been under heavy fire from the bourgeoisie and their agents for months because we fight for Marxist principles) and its non-Bolshevik practices. But these statements will not go beyond liquidationism when you have abandoned the struggle on the question of the guardas and have broken the effort which we jointly undertook to forge a Trotskyist party. That, comrades, is not a Bolshevik practice. The Marxist struggle of the LQB speaks louder than rhetoric. Everyone knows what it means to struggle politically to throw the Brazilian police out of the unions. “Trade-union opportunists” occupy themselves with tasks that involve greater rewards and fewer dangers.

In your previous letter, dated June 11, Parks wrote that Norden and Abrão wanted to destroy the LQB’s Fraternal Relations with the ICL. Then on June 17, six days later, you wrote to break the Fraternal Relations!!

All ICL members should ask: Why were relations broken on that day? The answer is to be found not only in the content of the June 17 letter but also in the declarations which the ICL representatives made to us during meetings on June 15 and 16. They repeatedly talked about the union meeting planned for June 19. They said that we had to abandon the work in the SFPMVR, and that is the meaning of what you wrote in the motion of June 5 and subsequent letters. ICL representative Arturo said we were “putting in danger” the LQB, the union itself and the ICL’s possibilities in Brazil. He spoke of the danger of a “bloodbath,” the possibility of a “confrontation,” etc., etc.

But the reality is that there was no bloodbath on the day of the union assembly called to disaffiliate the guardas. The meeting was carefully prepared. We fought to increase the ranks’ consciousness of this question, which has been strengthened even further now that the workers observed how the guardas harassed union meetings and acted as strikebreakers during the June 21 general strike. On June 13 a union conference was held, to which delegates had been elected on the slogan (among others) of disaffiliating the cops. The SFPMVR received the support of other unions and thousands of union leaflets have been distributed weekly, to keep working-class public opinion alert. (Now the expense for printing leaflets has been used by Artur Fernandes’ pelega [sell-out bureaucrat] faction to get the bourgeois “justice” system to suspend Geraldo.) The leaflets are distributed in the SFPMVR, to workers at CSN, city workers in Belo Horizonte (where, as Workers Vanguard reported, police murdered street children as a “protest against low wages”) and five universities in this region, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

When the attempt was made to carry out the June 19 union assembly, Artur’s faction yanked away the microphone when comrade Geraldo was reading the resolution from the union conference calling for the disaffiliation of the guardas. The police, “invited” by Artur and sent in by the municipal Popular Front government, closed the Municipal Chamber where the meeting was to be held. The class struggle is not an easy matter; it means an effort to advance the working-class program. But not only was there no bloodbath, there were not even any arrests that day.

On June 21, the day of the general strike, our comrades led the strike in Volta Redonda, where the SFPMVR was the only union that stopped work. Because of his courageous action of leading 150 workers that were blocking the municipal garage, our comrade M. was arrested, but he was released within a couple of hours. As we mentioned, the workers observed how the municipal guardas and police acted as strikebreakers, and this strengthens the struggle to separate the cops from the union. We are going forward with this struggle, which now includes fighting the suspension of Geraldo and the court intervention into the union. At this very moment we are mobilizing union assemblies to carry out this historic step of disaffiliating the guardas, but without your help.

On the same day that Artur Fernandes got the “justice” system to suspend Geraldo and intervene in the union, Artur went on the radio attacking the LQB and the “Police Out of the Unions” campaign, reading an article from the LBI’s “Luta Operária” newspaper, which calls the “Police Hands Off the SFPMVR” campaign a farce. In other words, the LBI is advising Artur Fernandes, who provokes attacks, and now court intervention, against the union. These facts must be publicized to the entire revolutionary movement to unmask the centrists of the LBI and PBCI. You should have been participating in that struggle against them. But you have fled, fearing a “bloodbath” and that problems could be posed for the work of the ICL.

While in the class struggle one cannot guarantee that the bourgeoisie will not carry out repression, since if that were so it would not be the class struggle, as revolutionaries it is our duty to do everything possible to minimize the dangers. That is what we are seeking to do, on the basis of our experience in the strikes at CSN, the municipal workers’ strikes, etc., and our study of Marxism. Why didn’t you measure seven times before cutting? Why didn’t you investigate the situation for yourselves before drawing such fundamental conclusions? You pretend you had to break with us over questions of “opportunism.” But the facts show this is only “leftist” rhetoric to cover up a rightist action. The previous letter from Parks (June 11) points out that the ICL correctly spurred the struggle for the separation of the guardas, but it is written cynically as if we were doing nothing about this question, and this when the ICL knows that is not true. We are struggling because we agree with carrying out the programmatic point made by Trotsky and the ICL on this basic question.

This has appeared in many LM/LQB leaflets and also in those of our companheiros who are members of the SFPMVR. A few examples: the May 6 leaflet by the MEL, with a headline in large letters saying “The Ranks Are Deciding: Police Out of the Union, A Reaffirmation of the Municipários em Luta Program!” The text of the leaflet begins: “On Monday 6 May 1996 at 6:00 a.m., the Garage workers decided unanimously at their assembly that: The police should not be part of nor interfere in the SFPMVR and the workers movement in general. Because they are the armed fist of the bourgeoisie.” (How would this be possible if we really had “no base” in the union or the city of Volta Redonda?) The leaflet for the June 13 conference, point 7 of which was on the municipal guardas. The leaflet of June 18 which reported on the conference, unmasking the Popular Front and the centrists, called for a “revolutionary workers party” that “would have to be internationalist with a multiracial composition of men, women and youth” in the struggle for socialism, explained the campaign for “Police Hands Off the SFPMVR and the Workers Movement” and said that one of the main programmatic points is “the complete independence of the workers movement, and thus the unions, from the bourgeois state and its state apparatus.”

Also: the June 28 leaflet which called for mobilizations because the “Artur faction, the Popular Front, Military Police and the municipal guardas are trying to suspend Geraldo and destroy the SFPMVR,” reported the June 20 provocation by the Artur faction and stressed that “among the main points” of the union conference was “Disaffiliating the municipal guardas from the SFPMVR, since they are not part of the working class” and that “police (any kind of police) are not part of the workers movement” but rather repressors against workers and blacks. The leaflet calling today’s assembly against the suspension of Geraldo finishes with the following slogans: “The union is ours, not theirs! For the class independence of the workers! Out with the bosses’ intervention and repression! Down with the suspension of Geraldo! Bosses’ courts, Military Police and guardas: get out of the SFPMVR! Defeat the intervention provoked by Artur’s coup faction! Respect for the ranks and the workers! Workers of the world, unite! Bourgeoisie, hands off our union!”

That is in the SFPMVR. And what do our enemies, like Artur’s faction, have to say? They attack the June 13 conference and the June 19 assembly and “members of Luta Metalúrgica” for demanding the “disaffiliation of the municipal guard, etc.” (June 1996 leaflet published by Artur’s faction).

In addition, you have the three LM/LQB leaflets on these questions.

We want the unity of words and deeds. But in reality, you comrades are saying one thing and doing another.

The discussion on the police was initiated by Abrão in 1994 and led to a very strong political fight against the opportunists of the LBI in Fortaleza on this question. In London Abrão and comrade J. stressed the position that the separation of the cops should be achieved as quickly as possible, a correct fight. Later there was discussion on tactics: a letter from the LQB to the ICL dealt with these concerns. Artur Fernandes’ faction carried out, and continues, the worst kind of provocations against the LQB to derail the struggle (slanders about a plan to pay “ten minimum wages” when there was no agreement or attempt to receive anything, the staging of an “assault,” etc.). Without fearing the immense obstacles, we are involved in that struggle at this very moment, with the help of the international solidarity campaign you initiated, and we believe this struggle is very important for bringing revolutionary consciousness to the working class here and internationally, since in many countries the opportunists have the position of supporting the police as part of their reformism, and this struggle is part of the fight against pro-capitalist trade-unionism. It could have been the pride of the whole ICL to move forward in Latin America—where the left has backed the police—through a struggle of this importance. It would also have repercussions around the world, for example in South Africa, the U.S., Europe, etc.

But when it came down to the wire you had an attack of nerves and erroneously broke Fraternal Relations, an action which when it comes down to it means no solidarity, fraternity, support, etc. It is not logical to make (correct) criticisms about the way the MEL slate was put together and to say (correctly) that, while the MEL program originally talked about the question of the police in general, it did not explicitly call for the disaffiliation of the guardas, and then run away from the struggle when we try to improve the MEL program and put the program of the ICL and Trotsky on this question into practice.

Marxism teaches that before drawing major conclusions it is necessary to seriously study the facts. This is part of dialectical materialism. But we believe that in Parks’ draft letters there were many affirmations that were not based on facts, together with many furious statements (psychological pressure techniques frequently used by Causa Operária, we can cite their polemical documents against LM), without a Marxist consideration of the situation. But not only that. In the draft letters, and in recent letters sent to us, we see deductions which are drawn from a “reality” that does not exist. There is a name for this: idealism, or even illusionism. Every Marxist must face the reality of the class struggle which, like a “Twister”-type tornado, will shatter the glass houses of those who try to hide from it.

In Parks’ letter of June 11 she writes that various comrades thought that the draft letter “was not very good.” That is true enough, since in that and other documents (including the motion of June 5 which evidently served to prepare the break) we have seen the repetition of lies and slanders against us, including some from the bourgeois press (Artur’s absurd slander about the “ten minimum wages”), others made by Cirrus and Adam, etc., etc. And we must say that, yes, in the workers movement this practice is “not very good.”

Why didn’t you ask us about the facts? Because you wanted to break relations and the facts were an obstacle to that objective? It has been said that we are ignorant of Marxism (something Causa Operária also liked to say), but we have the following quotation from Trotsky, which might be useful for comrades who write about things that don’t exist:

We are writing systematic accounts of the facts, based on documents. For the moment we think it is very important for all ICL members to know the following:

• It is not true that we are “trade-union opportunists” or “nationalists.” We are internationalist communist revolutionaries who are fighting to implement this program. That is why we are under constant attack from the bourgeoisie and its popular-front agents, the centrists and also types like Artur Fernandes. These attacks have included many slanders, and we are very shocked that you have repeated some of those slanders.
• Not only did we not receive any payment from the SFPMVR, there was never any agreement or attempt on our part to receive anything, and Cerezo never asked for anything! You already have the transcript of Geraldo’s radio interview (March 18) where he clearly declared, against Artur’s lies, that Cerezo’s actions as an advisor were “free advice” and “without any charge.” (In the same interview Geraldo emphasized that he supports LM’s class-struggle program.) Geraldo repeated this fact in his July 2 declaration where, besides writing about his support to the LQB program and about the question of the cops, he stated that “brother Cerezo and Luta Metalúrgica do not receive and have never received payments of any type from the union” (attached find the declaration of the union accountant backing this up), and that statements about a formal or informal agreement for such payments, or any attempt by LM/LQB to receive them, “are LIES and SLANDERS.”
• We are not carrying out an irresponsible and adventurist “confrontation” on the question of the guardas in the SFPMVR. Neither is it true that what is going on is a vulgar “struggle for power within the union,” or a struggle to maintain an official union position as “advisor” (which has not even existed since February, see the March 1996 leaflet by Artur’s faction regarding the February 20 executive board meeting and Geraldo’s March 18 radio interview). Our struggle is for class-struggle positions, among other things to throw the guardas and police out of the unions, against the popular front, for internationalism, for a revolutionary workers party, against the oppression of blacks and women, etc. You have spoken of taking these struggles to the union ranks. This is exactly what we are doing (for example with the election of delegates for the June 13 conference, the June 19 assembly, today’s assembly of 150 workers, leaflets, etc.) and that is what you have abandoned.
• It is not true that the LQB “doesn’t have members” in the SFPMVR, as affirmed in the June 5 motion of the ICL’s International Secretariat, which you gave to us.
• It is not true that the work in the SFPMVR is “the only current public work of the LQB/LM.” Besides recruitment and work among other sectors, we have distributed the three Luta Metalúrgica leaflets, plus the MEL leaflets on the question of the cops, at several universities as well as other locations. We are studying Marxist texts and will continue with the publication of a newspaper, despite the damage done by your breaking of relations.
• On the same point, it is not true that we did not want to publish a newspaper, because even before Adam left Brazil we were already dealing with the layout.
• We had no unity discussions or negotiations with the bigoted opportunists of the LBI.
• Etcetera.

Thus, there have been many false declarations, so many that we believe they must have served a harmful political objective contrary to the interests of the fight for the international party of the proletariat.

Despite the breaking of Fraternal Relations, we are interested in reestablishing the truth.

Comrades Adam, Cirrus and Arturo asked us several times what we thought of the struggle with Norden, Abrão and other comrades. We answered that before judging, we wanted to see all the documents, since critical analysis is a part of daily life for all Marxists. You refused, arguing that these documents were internal to the organization, and you only sent copies of decisions after the accomplished fact. But then why ask our opinion about things we couldn’t investigate? Reading those documents now (after the accomplished facts), we observe that the LQB occupied at least 60 percent of the discussions. Events around Germany, which supposedly involved democratic discussions, spilled over as a contentious precedent, projected onto the LQB as if we had been contaminated by the hands of the comrades recently expelled from the ICL (one of whose major sins was supposed to be their work for a fusion with the LQB). This suggests a spirit of revenge, and this impression is reinforced by the enraged polemic against Norden and Abrão. This is the idea we get from reading and investigating the documents on the expulsion process.

Now we have come to a strong conclusion: it seems to us that there was a relation between the comrades’ expulsion and the breaking of Fraternal Relations. Not only that: the fight against these comrades was in large part due to the fact that they protested against accusations concerning the LQB—accusations they said were false. And we know that those accusations are indeed false and are lies, and that several political positions drawn from them are absurd (like to hide the fraternal relations and international affiliation, to leave Volta Redonda instead of maintaining work here while extending it to the large cities, and many other things). After having seen how this method was used with us now, we must have strong doubts about the other “fights with Norden and Abrão” which you mention as part of their supposed “desertion from Trotskyism.” Especially when, in the literal sense, it is you who have deserted from a very important class struggle to put into practice the slogan (crucial for workers, blacks, women, landless peasants and all the oppressed) that the police must not be part of the workers movement.

For your information: those comrades never tried to communicate with us during those fights, until after they were expelled. But now we are discussing with them and we have observed that while they continue to insist on debating all principled questions for the Leninist party, they have not abandoned us.

We have learned much through the discussions, debates, struggles and work with the ICL! We repeat: when you abandoned the joint effort with us to go forward to a fusion, this caused harm to the proletariat and to genuine Trotskyism. We continue to base ourselves programmatically on the Declaration of Fraternal Relations and the programmatic conquests of the ICL (which must be political conquests of the whole international proletarian vanguard) on proletarian opposition to the popular front, on the Russian Question, the “Tribune of the People” (particularly the black and woman questions, central to the question of permanent revolution in Brazil), the struggle for the Leninist party as part of the fight to reforge the Fourth International. We must continue to seek a principled fusion with the ICL at the same time as we explain the errors and fight against incorrect methods (breaking of fraternal relations when we are under attack from the bourgeoisie, lies, expulsions, running away from the struggle to separate the guardas, etc.).

In her letter, Parks proposes that we carry out common work. We hope the ICL will continue with the international “Police, Hands Off the SFPMVR!” solidarity campaign, which is even more important now. We would like to do joint work on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

We believe it is very important to discuss, in a calm and rational way, the breaking of fraternal relations, the real political reasons for this profound error, and our responsibilities in the world struggle to reforge the Fourth International. We will go forward.

We await your reply. Revolutionary greetings,
[signed]
Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

P.S.: This letter was written before we received the translation of the Workers Vanguard article (delivered by Cirrus) on the breaking of relations, which we will analyze over the next days.

We attach some of the reports and documents on the facts*, others will be sent in the next days.