No to the Purge of Norden and Stamberg!

The following was mainly written before I was informed late this afternoon that, due to the statement by Norden and Stamberg that they would not attend their “trial,” a meeting of the Political Bureau will be held tonight instead. I have read the “Reply to a Frame-Up ‘Trial’ ” by Norden and Stamberg, which B. has faxed to me for translation. The thrust of my letter stands despite the change in procedure. The International Secretariat should withdraw its disgraceful frame-up charges, and the SL/U.S. PB should immediately reinstate these comrades as full members and restore them to the posts to which they were duly elected. All ICL comrades must struggle to put an end to the anti-Leninist methods which are damaging our party.

Comrades:

I am writing this because of the urgent situation in our international party. In light of this urgency, the fact that I have again been placed on leave—despite my request not to be—is no obstacle to the party circulating this letter for discussion.

I have learned of the upcoming trial of Norden and Stamberg, and have spoken to Norden, who informed me of the charges against him and comrade Stamberg. These charges make a point of referring to “calls with Negrete” as well as to supposed “indiscipline” on Norden’s part for “not reporting” a call with me when the I.S. delegation was in Mexico. Are discussions between party members—including between members of the ICL’s highest elected bodies—now to be screened, and “unauthorized” ones forbidden? I also consider it highly significant that this new trial is the immediate aftermath of another sharp exchange on the Brazil work, in which the I.S. secretary made a new round of incorrect and damaging statements—including the assertion that we should never set foot in Volta Redonda again, and that all “economically viable” members of Luta Metalúrgica should leave VR. When challenged, she sought to shield herself behind slanders of “cop-baiting,” wrecking, potentially putting comrades in danger, etc. Now the formal charges against Norden and Stamberg include smears such as possible receipt of outside funding and political collaboration with unknown outside forces. I reject these slanders with disgust, noting that Norden’s and Stamberg’s 24 years of service to our movement are the most powerful evidence against these smears.

Enough! Trotsky taught us to call things by their right names. The so-called “Brazil/Mexico discussion,” also officially called the “fight against Negrete and Socorro,” was based on a series of outright fabrications and lies. In the course of this, young comrades were grotesquely taught that they were “anti-internationalists” if they did not accept falsehoods because a list of important people told them to, and that they would be capitulators to Latin American nationalism and caudilloism, as well as cliquists and splitters, if they continued to speak out about what they knew to be the truth. This can only undermine real internationalism and eventually lead to a genuinely nationalist, anti-Leninist reaction.

The involuntary “leave” I was put on in Mexico was an explicit attempt to silence me and cut me off from the Mexican comrades. The false charges against Socorro were a continuation of the drive to defame us and destroy our credibility with the comrades. That drive culminated in a purge which threw us out of the Mexico office, precipitously threw us out of the country, and has now excluded me from all aspects of this work. Even repeated requests to be allowed to translate materials for the Brazil defense work are ignored (even though I am one of the very few comrades able to translate Portuguese)! The purge continued with another dangerous innovation: throwing me off the IEC, to which I was elected by the 1992 international conference. Then we had a further escalation—the “trial” of Socorro, a sick and shameful travesty of elementary Leninist justice. Gross political distortions and character assassination can only harm our party. And now we have yet another trial, with charges that put forward grotesque slanders, and the name for this is: a frame-up.

The present campaign, driven by elements of the central leadership, has seriously damaged work in Mexico and Brazil, inculcated methods counterposed to elementary Leninist practices, whipped up a hate-filled climate in the party, punitively threw comrades off leading bodies to which they were duly elected, and now pushes to expel the editor of the ICL’s flagship publication (Norden) and a comrade who has played central roles in party work for decades (Stamberg). While the hysterical charge was made that an “undeclared faction” was engaged in a “wrecking operation” in the party, the real damage is being caused by this irrational, dishonest, expensive and destructive campaign.

The Norden/Stamberg trial, scheduled for tomorrow morning, represents yet another major step-up in the frenzied campaign of the recent period. I intend to write detailed documents on the avalanche of false statements in the Brazil/Mexico discussion, as well as on the “Socorro trial.” Yet having gone through these events, it is my immediate responsibility to make these observations, relevant to the new trial.

To the organizers of this frame-up: Be advised that I will not cooperate or collaborate with it in any way. The SL/U.S. Central Control Commission thoroughly discredited itself by its disgraceful, flagrantly unfair behavior in the Socorro “trial.” The International Secretariat is discrediting itself by its repeated use of slander and punitive measures in the place of the honest, angular political discussion needed to hammer out the party’s urgent tasks. If you demand that I “testify,” write depositions or turn over materials for this frame-up trial, I will not comply. Moreover, I state clearly that it is the duty of all Spartacist comrades to oppose the escalating purge and to struggle as Leninists against this drive, which is accompanied by a series of political mistakes and, as the experience of the past weeks makes clear, points in the direction of the bureaucratization of the party.

A Chain of Willful Fabrications

Having gone through the “Brazil/Mexico fight,” I can state categorically that the current campaign involves a chain of willful fabrications. The fight blew up when Camila and I had questions about significantly inaccurate statements on Brazil in an I.S. mailing cover letter. At the same time as some of these statements were then explicitly corrected, a story was fabricated that I had behaved as a “sexist bully” towards Camila (which Camila herself denied was true) and browbeaten her into posing the questions she put in writing. When witnesses said and wrote that this is not what happened, not only was the content of what they said ignored, but they were smeared as cliquists, personalists and anti-internationalists.^* At the same time as requests by Socorro and myself for a formal investigation of the charge were rejected out of hand, the lie was not only repeated but inflated into a supposed pattern.

The “discussion” then leapt to a series of assertions that I had tried (with Norden’s backing) to stop or derail discussion and fights in Brazil over the cops, the courts, Marxist education, youth work, propaganda, etc. Not only was it documented in each case that these assertions were false, and that I sought to push these discussions, but in most cases I actually started them. Despite copious documentation (which I can cite to any comrade who wishes to investigate this), these false assertions are now repeated as unquestionable “truth,” and served as stepping stones to new areas of the frame-up campaign.

In mid-April, an I.S. delegation was sent to Mexico, ostensibly to pursue the Brazil discussion as well as to combat the imaginary threat of a “split against the international.” Rather than discussing Brazil, the delegation whipped together a series of allegations about the Mexican section in order to present an entirely new accusation: that the evil Negrete and Socorro (with that mastermind of evil, Norden, in the background) had led the section into an adaptation to Latin American nationalism, caudilloism and an anti-internationalist split perspective. On the round, several young members spoke to oppose the charge of nationalism, to characterize the delegation’s statements as inaccurate, grotesque, personalist, etc. But by the end of the meeting only Socorro and I voted against the delegation’s main motion (while three youth members abstained). Why? Because members were fed the line that if they insisted on saying that they knew the picture was untrue, then they were counterposing themselves to the international and defying the authority of a list of members of the I.S., IEC, etc. If you want an example of genuine unprincipled browbeating, you have it right there. While some leading members soon began yelling that we would not be allowed to “drag this discussion out,” the fact is that the “discussion” of these ridiculous accusations on Mexico lasted less than one day before culminating in sweeping, incorrect motions and punitive measures.

Once again the grossly distorted picture was backed up by a series of demonstrably false statements. Yet each falsehood, once it collapsed, gave way to a new one. It was false that the IEC memorandum was not translated, that it was not distributed, that it was not discussed, that it was discussed only once. It was false that the Germany fight was covered up, that it was discussed only once, that it was discussed very briefly, etc. The treasurer and H. both stated it was false that I had yelled at the treasurer about my SP. It was false that the fight in France, the fight in Italy, the “unlimited general strike,” the fight with Y. Rad, the fight over Quebec, etc., were not discussed, that discussions did not occur in meetings, that materials were not translated (dozens were), etc. It was false and absurd to state that I cited “cultural differences” as an argument for building a different, non-Leninist type of party in the Third World. The statement that the “Negrete regime” did not tolerate debate or criticism is as patently false as the idea that the section was anti-internationalist, when it is well known that, despite its tiny size, the GEM was in the front ranks of a series of international campaigns.

It was false that Arturo’s notorious “Multivac” document was not circulated, was not sent to New York, was not discussed formally by the GEM, that it was discussed formally only once by the GEM, etc. It was false that he was denied the standard ability to conduct internal contact sessions, that he was called a Maoist (in fact it was reading entire texts out loud in classes that was first called a “Maoist practice,” and that was subsequently withdrawn), etc. It was false that there were no Cannon books in the Mexico office, as Parks claimed at the 17 April I.S. meeting. The discussion of “Negretesque attitudes” was totally distorted and taken out of context. It was slanderously false that Socorro abused her post as office manager (note that Parks’ 16 November 1995 report on her Mexico trip cited Socorro’s “critical work” as office manager as an example of good functioning). And so forth. It was totally false—as everybody who visited Mexico knows—that there was a poisonous atmosphere in the section, squelching the development and education of young comrades, particularly women. Again, Parks’ report on her “tour of inspection” last fall states the exact opposite.

The above is only a sample of the false statements piled one on top of the other in that fight. Yet a number of well-meaning comrades have urged that all these “details” be overlooked in favor of the “big picture.” But first of all, the rules of the Fourth International tell us to “be true in little things as in big ones.” And secondly, in this case the “big picture” is made up of a lot of “little” lies and fabrications, which keep getting bigger.

The Trial of Socorro

This pattern was escalated with the Socorro trial, held on 12 May. I want to go into this because it gives a picture of what party disciplinary proceedings have recently become. While I do not have access to the depositions and tapes from the trial, I do have extensive notes and a vivid recollection of this outrageous event.

The political accusations against Socorro and myself, and the conclusions drawn from them, were not holding up—from the allegation that I had blocked discussion of the cops and courts and opposed Marxist education in Brazil, to the flash flood of statements about suppressing documents, abusing posts, isolating the section and fostering anti-internationalism in Mexico. This “big picture” kept shifting like a kaleidoscope precisely because each allegation or “hypothesis” failed the most basic tests cited from Lenin (rather than “taking somebody’s word,” calmly examine the documents) and Trotsky (base yourself not on “psychological divinations” but on objective verification).

Given the pattern of making, and then tacitly vacating, political accusations; given the trouble with getting everyone to swallow the ridiculous picture of the Mexican group as an anti-internationalist caudillo-ridden “boot camp”; given that the two leading Mexican comrades had initially opposed key statements regarding the “regime”; that several Mexico youth members had denounced accusations sprung on the section at the 14 April meeting and three had abstained on the final vote—given all this, the trial makes a kind of sense. The ground was to shift to disciplinary action. The objective was not to find facts but to build a “case.” In line with that, the trial body itself never posed a single question that was not part of the prosecution’s case. Everything that went against this case was ignored or dismissed. In this sordid procedure, the “prosecution” and the trial body broke the organization’s rules, acted in a brazenly unfair way, and based themselves on bald-faced, proven lies.

The trial was set in motion when a false report that Socorro had violated discipline and security on May Day was presented by Camila. When Socorro found out about this on 2 May, her request to attend the exec point scheduled to discuss this was flatly denied. The two leading members of the exec then refused to read her written statement on the events before voting for a motion against her based on the false report. During the trial, Arturo testified that this was because of being “eager” to get the situation over with. When Socorro insisted that the allegations were false, she was put on trial.

To my knowledge, the only other trials in our tendency’s history were those of the brutal wife-beater S. Green and the vicious psychopath Logan. Socorro was supposedly put on trial for insisting—with first-hand knowledge by witnesses to back her up—that it was false that she had willfully become separated from the sales team she was linked with (at a march of a quarter million people traversing a long stretch of central Mexico City), that she had argued with Camila over the phone and that she had sought to set up a meeting with an ex-member. Other false accusations were later added, and she was denounced because she asked me to carry her bag at May Day when I had been placed on “leave” (against my will). While Socorro was put on trial for asserting that she told the truth about May Day, I was not put on trial despite the fact that I asserted exactly the same thing and demanded to be put on trial with her.

The body formally pressing charges against Socorro was the executive committee of the Grupo Espartaquista de México. The body initially scheduled to try Socorro was the GEM membership—yet all but one of the members of the GEM sat on the exec which brought the charges against Socorro in the first place! When Socorro objected to this, the venue of the trial was simply abruptly moved to New York. When I pointed out to Arturo that this would preclude her being able to question most of the witnesses, he yelled “You don’t understand this is a fucking political question and a fight!” In other words, the “trial” was admittedly a continuation, in juridical guise, of the “political question” of what was called the “fight against Negrete and Socorro.” In this context, it is noteworthy that, while Parks’ 16 November 1995 Mexico report had stated that the GEM functioned like a “good old-fashioned Spartacist League local,” by the 14 April meeting Arturo was declaring: “Negrete represents the old school, which we want to combat and destroy.”

When the trial venue was moved, the trial date was changed in a way that blatantly violated the SL/U.S. organizational rules, which state that the accused shall be given seven days’ written notice of the trial date and charges (in order to be able to prepare). The new trial date was four days and one hour after we were notified of that date; we received notice one hour before Wednesday, 8 May. Since in the course of Socorro struggling to be allowed to have me as her counsel, we had just been told to consult party bulletins as well as historical sources, on Wednesday evening we went to the Mexico office largely to do so. We were abruptly thrown out, with no justification whatsoever. On Thursday we traveled for ten hours from Mexico to New York, arriving just before 3 a.m. Friday. On Saturday we attended a grueling nine-hour I.S. meeting focusing heavily on our supposed crimes in the Brazil and Mexico work. On Sunday there was the nine-hour trial (videotaped over Socorro’s objections). On Tuesday there was the heated New York local meeting.

Representatives of the trial body were told of Socorro’s documented medical condition (post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD, a condition repeatedly referred to in WV articles on Geronimo Pratt], caused by being abducted, raped and having her life repeatedly threatened, which led to a trial several years ago whose preliminary stages she had to attend). We noted that this condition, together with the need for preparation time, were powerful reasons to grant Socorro’s formal request that the trial be postponed. Yet this request was flatly denied—even a one-hour postponement was refused!

Depositions from witnesses in Mexico were solicited by the prosecution without the defense having the opportunity to pose crucial questions. When we asked to do so in writing, our entire series of questions for those eight witnesses was thrown out by the trial body, at the same time as it continued to solicit depositions for the prosecution even while the trial was going on. Throughout the proceedings, this body acted with undisguised bias against the defendant, brazenly leading the two prosecution witnesses, who dutifully said “yes” to ever-wilder assertions regarding Socorro’s supposed actions and motivations. Close to half the defense questions for these two witnesses were squelched. With bald-faced lying and repeated self-contradictions from their witnesses, the prosecution/trial body finally cut the process short, pulling the second of their witnesses off the stand.

As a last-ditch effort, the prosecution/trial body whipped up the pure fabrication that there was a secret “signal” (nodding the head) that meant “leave the Angel Monument,” and that Socorro willfully disobeyed this signal. Yet there was no such agreed-upon signal! Moreover, Arturo’s written deposition made no mention of such a signal, instead reporting that he had instructed C. to tell Socorro the team was leaving the monument (which all accounts, including César’s written deposition, agree he did not do). C.’s second statement, solicited by phone towards the end of the trial to prop up this weak reed of the prosecution’s “case,” was thoroughly confused and did anything but confirm this tawdry after-the-fact invention.

Written depositions and oral testimony clearly showed that, rather than abandoning the sales team led by Arturo, she was left at the Angel Monument without being informed, and then the team failed to wait at the Red Tubes building as arranged. Upon finding nobody waiting at the Red Tubes checkpoint, Socorro called in to the office, and testimony by the witnesses from the GEM exec at the trial stated that Arturo had been informed that Socorro had called in and been instructed to proceed to the next checkpoint (the Hemiciclo). Why did the trial body not pursue this point, which gives the lie yet again to the claim that Socorro was AWOL for two hours? Far from refusing to follow the instruction to proceed from the Red Tubes—which Arturo’s team had left shortly after arriving there, despite the arrangement to wait—to the Hemiciclo, she did so forthwith, arriving there with a number of other comrades.

Far from disappearing for two hours, Socorro was seen and greeted along the march route during that period by a whole series of comrades, including members of Arturo’s sales team. Far from hiding the fact that she had seen the Morenoite Enrique, Socorro reported it to Arturo, and Arturo as well as other leading members had seen him themselves; in fact Arturo said there was no problem.

Far from having me present in defiance of instructions, my presence at the march was known to Arturo and Camila from the beginning. Moreover, at the Hemiciclo Arturo explicitly told Socorro and me to proceed alone to the Zócalo—in doing so we were following instructions, not breaking them. Even the GEM motion passed after the events, while criticizing after the fact the duration of my presence, states “Negrete could certainly go to the demonstration.” (Moreover, the trial verdict characterizes the 2 May GEM exec motions as “correct.”)

Far from seeking to meet with the ex-member P.—who she and I were instrumental in having dropped after he went AWOL for weeks—she told him she was too busy and asked him to speak to Arturo, which he did. And so it went with all the allegations. The fact was that P. had been with the party throughout May Day; he was at the office before the march, sold during the march, returned to the office afterwards and talked with many comrades, including the leadership. Yet again, the trial body never followed this up in its questioning. To portray things as if Socorro was trying to set up a secret meeting with him is simply absurd. Regarding the phone call with Camila: in its verdict the trial body simply “takes Camila’s version” as true—without ever mentioning that I was present next to Socorro during that phone call and upheld her version.

The real evidence showed Socorro was telling the truth. This included information in written depositions by H. (“We underscored that it would be safer if she was somewhat independent”), V., C. and Arturo himself, as well as the fact that B., Ca. and others (including I. and I., members of Arturo’s brigade) saw Socorro along the march route between the Angel and the Hemiciclo. In the teeth of the evidence, the trial verdict cynically asserts the opposite of the truth on every point. At the same time it invents out of the whole cloth the statement that Socorro engaged in “ruses” in order to carry out supposed “plans” to carry out the supposed crime of…having me present at May Day. That this is a chain of fabrications will be proved again, ten times over, as soon as one of the weaker links breaks and one or more of the fabricators decide to spill the beans.

That the formal sentence at her trial was to reduce Socorro to candidate for 18 weeks (one for each year of membership) was in fact a ploy: this supposedly made the whole travesty “all right,” nothing to get upset about, even trivial—a line of argument remarkable for its cynicism, particularly in light of the great amount of energy, time and money spent on this violation of elementary Leninist justice. The damage was done—and not just to Socorro (who was expelled a day later when, after being pushed beyond endurance, she made an angry and highly incorrect comment which she soon withdrew in writing). Above all, the damage was done to the party itself.

For comrades who were not present at the 11 May I.S. meeting, the 12 May trial and the 14 May New York local meeting, a flavor of the atmosphere can be had through a small sample of some remarks. At the I.S. meeting, a member of and reporter for the I.S. delegation to Mexico screamed at Socorro: “You hate the party’s iron boot on your neck!” Iron boot? Another comrade, arguing for the existence of this “faction,” quoted the famous McCarthy-era adage that “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.” F. from Washington ranted that Socorro was a nationalist from “Aztlán” and race-baited me as a white Quetzalcóatl teaching the Indians what to do. [Etc.] Listen to the tapes and ask yourself if this was a rational, communist political discussion.

In her role as prosecutor at the trial, Spencer went red in the face screaming invective against the defendant and me. (She displayed a particular obsession with calling me Socorro’s “burro,” a term bizarrely reproduced in the verdict itself.) While waiting for the final verdict, we asked Spencer where the trial body was. Her answer was “They’re out digging your grave.” Spencer then “justified” this as “feeding your paranoia.” At the New York local meeting two days later, discussion was punctuated with hate-filled screams of “shut up” and “get out.”

No, Socorro’s trial was not a trivial event. It was not just a bad taste left in your mouth that will eventually go away. That it was part of the escalation of an irrational vendetta is shown for all to see by the staging of another trial in less than a month.

What Is Real Loyalty to the Party?

There is little to say to those who are self-conscious fabricators and liars; they know who they are in any case, and some even boast of it. To those who go along with these events or wish to overlook them, it is imperative that they stop and think. I know that some comrades are aware that what is happening is wrong, or have serious doubts, but are going along with it anyway. This is a disservice to the party and to yourselves as revolutionary militants; it can lead only to cynicism and demoralization. Moreover, as has already been shown, those who are pushing this drive will demand more of you than passive acceptance; you will be asked to show your “100 percent agreement” through active participation in this dirty campaign. Comrades: the methods of dishonesty, character assassination and toadying are counterposed to the basic tenets of Leninism and to the rules of the Fourth International as stated in the Transitional Program reproduced on the back of the SL/U.S. membership card. Only the truth is revolutionary.

At the trial of Socorro, the prosecution made lengthy speeches (one posturing peroration lasted 18 minutes), while the accused was repeatedly shut up and denied the chance to make a statement. Yet after the shameful “verdict” was read, Socorro made a courageous and powerful statement insisting that she had not broken discipline and that she had told the truth, as a Leninist. Her statement ended with a quotation from a speech by James P. Cannon. (The speech is “Internationalism and the SWP,” which was previously misused by Kidder in the most absurd way to argue that in a party fight…facts don’t matter!) Cannon notes:

He stresses that while abiding by revolutionary discipline,

The hysterical campaign underway within the organization is counterposed to this tradition of Trotsky and Cannon upon which our organization is based. This campaign has brought repeated violations, by the frame-up organizers, of the basic rules of Leninist democratic centralism. It is counterposed to the construction of the healthy revolutionary party, based on the ICL’s program, that the world’s proletariat and oppressed so desperately require.

It is time to call a halt, and for each comrade to think about where these events are leading. It is not for nothing that Marxist Bulletin No. 3 (Part II) begins with this quotation from comrade Trotsky:

Loyalty to our international party means breaking away from the false methods used in this frame-up campaign, so as to adhere to and push forward the revolutionary program of Trotskyism that our tendency has advanced over the course of more than three decades. For these reasons, I state again that it is my duty as a communist to refuse to comply, collaborate or cooperate with this frame-up trial and that I call on all those who are devoted to the principles upon which our party was built to oppose these destructive, anti-Leninist methods.

Down with frame-ups and witchhunting methods!

For the communism of Lenin and Trotsky, long live the ICL!

Negrete