Report on the Bureaucratic Purge of IG Founders and the Break in Relations with Luta Metalúrgica

The ICL’s Eighth International Conference adopted the document “The ICL’s Post-Soviet Revisionism” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 68, September 2023), which traced our tendency’s political disorientation and loss of revolutionary purpose in the face of U.S. imperialism’s liberal triumphalism coming off the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991-92. As part of this critical examination, the split in the ICL that gave rise to the Internationalist Group (IG) was determined to have no principled political foundation. At the time and for many subsequent years, the ICL and IG were “two satellites in the orbit of liberalism.”

This split was precipitated by the ICL, which expelled four of its members—Norden, Negrete, Stamberg and Socorro—in the first half of 1996. Shortly after being expelled, they went on to found the IG. Our Eighth International Conference mandated an investigation of the organizational measures taken against these comrades, as well as an accounting of the related break in fraternal relations with Luta Metalúrgica/Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (LM/LQB):

The above-cited Spartacist article elaborates our present political understanding of the split, whereas this report, in line with the Conference’s instructions, focuses on the organizational measures taken by the ICL at the time.

After a thorough review of the extensive documentary record, it is abundantly clear that the 1996 fight against the IG’s future founding cadre was a bureaucratic frame-up that sharply escalated over the course of its brief, six-month time span, itself a comment on the haste to get rid of these comrades. This bureaucratic purge began in early 1996, growing out of an unprincipled political fight against Norden centered on his work as part of the International Secretariat (I.S.) in the ICL’s German section, the Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands. It was capped by the one-sided dissolution of relations with our fraternal comrades in Brazil.

Taking responsibility for these abuses and renouncing the break in relations is necessary and important. They cloud the clarification of the political differences between our two tendencies and have been damaging to the Marxist movement more generally and the fight to reforge the Fourth International. To this end, we sought to leave no stone unturned.

Demotion of Norden from Full IECer

The opening shot of the bureaucratic organizational measures against the four comrades was Norden’s demotion from full to alternate member of the International Executive Committee at its January 1996 plenum for his alleged “destructive role in the German section.”¹ The plenum report motivating his demotion alluded to what Norden himself later described as his “one significant error”² in the period under investigation: directing the SpAD Central Committee (CC) in April 1995 to vote a definitive position on an issue in dispute in both the section and the IEC immediately prior to an upcoming German national conference.

The disputed issue was whether or not the article “PDS Party Congress: Anti-Communists Welcome!” (Spartakist No. 117, March/April 1995) glorified Stalin by referring to him as the commander-in-chief of the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz. Norden, who was the I.S. rep to the SpAD at the time, defended the article against the charge of Stalinophilia advanced by other IECers—and he would continue to do so after his expulsion. The SpAD CC motion of April 2 not only upheld the article, including the controversial reference to Stalin, but also characterized two documents by SpAD comrades opposed to this formulation as capitulatory toward “the popular-frontist politics of our opponents.”

While Norden never considered himself to be wrong on the substance of the matter, he agreed that having the SpAD CC render a verdict when it did effectively pre-empted the internal discussion process, thus “violating the basic substrate of democratic-centralist functioning,” in the words of an I.S. motion of July 5. Norden acknowledged this error and his role in it both before and at the July I.S. meeting. Generally speaking, the party leadership should allow sufficient time for political discussion to clarify differences before making a ruling.

But deciding when this point has been reached can be a judgement call in and of itself; in this case, the SpAD CC vote was preceded by over a month of written discussion, with a number of documents contributed by both sides. Moreover, although said to have pre-empted pre-conference discussion in particular, the vote took place well outside of a formal pre-conference period. The SpAD conference call was not issued until October, half a year after the fact. Plus, under the norms of democratic-centralist functioning, a national conference always has the right to review and overturn any position of its sectional CC, no matter when it was taken.

The ICL did not have international organizational rules at the time, but neither those later adopted nor the Spartacist League/U.S. organizational rules then available contain any provision for the demotion of members of party leadership bodies. Stripping Norden of his full vote on the IEC was a political measure taken “to reflect his diminished authority” coming off his interventions in the German section.³ In the event of serious differences within the IEC that lead a majority to want to significantly shake up its composition because an IEC plenum has not resolved a political issue, the normal procedure is to call an international conference and elect a new leadership.

Separate and apart from the particular dispute surrounding the April 1995 SpAD CC motion is the question of whether Norden’s role in the German section was destructive more generally. Notably, he had played his part in a nasty fight stretching over several years against a layer of individual SpAD comrades deemed to have adapted to German social democracy. But in doing so, he was only implementing a policy stemming from the ICL’s Second International Conference document—the very basis on which the IEC had been elected.

On this score, the Second International Conference document (1992) endorsed a fight over sending comrades to the economically devastated city of Halle in what had been East Germany. In a completely moralist and personalist fashion, they were stigmatized as living comfortable lives in the west. The conference document approvingly quoted a SpAD document characterizing these comrades, who were blamed for sabotaging the party’s perspectives in Halle, as “a social-democratic bulge in the organization that is unwilling to confront head-on the hardships engendered by counterrevolution.”

But in a 16 January 1996 document against “Norden’s Role in Germany” released just before the plenum where Norden was demoted, IEC member St. John (who had voted for the Second International Conference document) uniquely ascribed to Norden the “Healy-like ‘theory’” that the SpAD’s problems were attributable to “conscious sabotage by a social-democratic ‘underground opposition’.”⁴ As for the “bulge” itself, no subsequent internal fight or review ever showed any evidence of its existence, and we note that a number of comrades suspected of being part of it are still ICL members today. Although Norden was charged with poisoning the SpAD’s internal life in party bulletins covering this period, we found no evidence that he went behind the back of the national or international party leadership or acted at variance with the Second International Conference document—or even that his way of intervening in the German section differed much from general I.S. practice at the time.

Even though the offending SpAD CC motion had been put in abeyance for a decision by the then-upcoming national conference, it was cited in the memorandum for the January 1996 IEC plenum where Norden was demoted as primary evidence that “the norms of democratic centralism were violated” in the German section under Norden in the service of “a witchhunt against perceived opponents within the SpAD.” But the motion itself bears none of the hallmarks of a witchhunt: it sharply characterizes documents, not comrades.⁵ Furthermore, we found no evidence of the suppression of documents or any other patent violation of comrades’ rights that would constitute the violation of democratic-centralism.

In short, Norden was demoted for carrying out the decisions of the Second International Conference as he legitimately understood them, not for having broken any organizational rule—e.g., refusing to carry out an assignment. Norden’s demotion was wrong, and it cleared the way for the increasingly harsh measures that led to the expulsions of himself and the other three comrades.

Witchhunt in the Mexican Section

In March 1996, shortly after Norden’s demotion, the frame-up found its legs. Comrade Camila returned to the Grupo Espartaquista de México from a trip to Brazil and voiced some differences with a letter by I.S. secretary Parks over her characterization of the MEL slate put together by our LM/LQB fraternal comrades in Brazil for local municipal workers union elections. Negrete, the GEM’s leader and one of Norden’s closest collaborators on the IEC, expressed agreement with Camila on the question. This occasioned letters by SL/U.S.-based IECers Nelson, Foster and Tanner attacking Negrete as abusive on the grounds that he had browbeaten Camila, a female comrade, into writing to Parks. Nelson argued that Negrete’s conduct was an “act by a political coward and sexist bully,” while Foster and Tanner asserted that Negrete had a reputation for patronizing attitudes toward women. It was also posited that Norden and Negrete were soft on LM/LQB.

The first round of written accusations against Negrete for his behavior in the GEM largely came from comrades outside the Mexican section. In response, some GEM members openly defended Negrete against the charges. Twice, Negrete and Socorro, his partner who was then also a leader of the Mexican section, requested an official investigation into the abuse allegations; both times, the I.S. denied the request. As a result, we have no way of judging their validity today.

Instead of initiating a proper investigation, the I.S. sent a delegation to Mexico to line up the GEM against Negrete and Socorro. By the time of its arrival, on April 11, Negrete was also being faulted for having an anti-Leninist “star conception” of party leadership. At its April 14 meeting, the GEM unanimously passed a motion that denounced Negrete for having resisted bringing “Bolshevik organizational norms to the GEM,” which was said to represent an adaptation to bourgeois nationalism. The motion continued:

It also stated that Negrete had humiliated and stripped a leading GEM comrade of authority for failing to get Negrete’s approval for something.⁶

The validity of the latter two accusations is an open question. On the one hand, we found no written documentation to substantiate either, and the leadership’s refusal to investigate is suspicious. On the other hand, the first of the two was verbally confirmed by a comrade who witnessed the incident, and the specificity of the details gives the charges some weight. In short, this is a classic case of “justice deferred is justice denied.” Compounding the problem, some GEM comrades wrote documents in defense of Negrete one day and charged him the next with the same allegations. It is impossible today to sort out which version is more credible.

Over the next month, numerous bureaucratic organizational measures were taken in rapid succession. The GEM motion requested that Negrete and Socorro be transferred to New York City immediately. The I.S. placed Negrete on administrative leave and then reduced him from full to alternate on the IEC. Trampling on the right of any ICL member to talk or write to any other, privately or collectively, I.S. motions were passed condemning Norden for communicating with Negrete and denouncing Norden’s sending a document to the SpAD as “permanent factionalism”.⁷

The escalating organizational abuses made clear that the ICL leadership was hell-bent on getting rid of Norden and his collaborators in an all-out regime fight. From here on out, the underlying assumption of I.S. motions and communications is that Norden and Negrete were in an oppositional bloc out to gain control of the I.S., sections like the SpAD and GEM and relations with the fraternal comrades in Brazil. Regarding the latter, there is no evidence that Norden or Negrete made any attempt to communicate with the LM/LQB independently of the I.S., and the LM/LQB corroborated that there was no communication with them.⁸

Trial and Expulsion of Socorro

A new front in the bureaucratic attack was opened on May Day. An accusation was raised against Socorro that she “broke, on various occasions, democratic centralist discipline and belittled the authority of the head of the sales team, manifesting in deeds a liberal attitude with respect to the state” as the GEM exec voted the day after the massive May Day march.⁹ In particular, she was said to have lost contact with the rest of the sales team and also to have helped Negrete violate the terms of his leave by allowing him to accompany her and carry her camera bag.

In response, Socorro provided a credible counter-report refuting the charge that she went AWOL during the march or showed any light-mindedness toward security questions.¹⁰ She asked to be present in the GEM exec meeting, but her request was denied. The above-quoted exec motion was based on documents written by GEM comrades Camila and Arturo, but we found no solid evidence in the paper trail that invalidates any of Socorro’s account of events.

Soon after, on May 6, the GEM called for a trial to take place on May 18 because Socorro had rejected the validity of the exec motion “orally and in written form, putting in question the reports of Camila and Arturo” and accused “the leadership of the GEM of systematic lying in its motion over the facts of 1 May.”¹¹ The next day, I.S. secretary Parks sent a letter by fax informing Socorro that the trial would take place in NYC on May 12. The I.S. only passed a motion to that effect two days after Parks wrote her letter. In this May 9 motion, the I.S. declared that it “hereby assumes the responsibilities initiated by the GEM executive committee with their call for a trial served to Socorro.” At the I.S. meeting, a motion by Norden to convene a commission of inquiry was voted down.¹² Negrete and Socorro moved to NYC on May 10 and participated in a very lengthy I.S. meeting on May 11.

The manipulation of the situation by the I.S. is obvious. For example, on April 18 the I.S. passed a motion mandating that Negrete transfer to NYC within two weeks, only to have Parks later deny Socorro’s request for a short delay of her May 12 trial on the grounds that Negrete and Socorro had supposedly themselves decided to move that week. This refusal to postpone was made despite the fact that the I.S. had not even allowed for the seven-day period between the call for a trial and its commencement as stipulated in the SL/U.S. organizational rules.

Socorro’s trial occurred on May 12, as the I.S. demanded, and was as much of a sham as the events leading up to it. Her request to pose additional questions to GEM comrades for the trial was denied—even though the defense could not call any witness to interrogate in person due to the trial’s move.¹³ Socorro herself was denied the right to make a statement during the proceedings.¹⁴ The decision of the trial body is testimony to the underlying personalism and highly undemocratic process. For example, it ruled: “Right before our intervention that day, she used the ruse of lacking film to go off independently […]. This allowed her to set in motion her plans to (1) get Negrete to the demo (to bring the ‘forgotten’ lens); and (2) to keep him there as her pack-horse and/or bodyguard.”¹⁵

In the heat of an NYC local discussion of her trial just two days after on May 14, Socorro made an angry outburst that her rapists of some years past had gotten more justice in the bourgeois courts than she had at her party trial. Although she retracted these internal remarks in writing the next morning, the SL/U.S. Political Bureau (PB) expelled Socorro later that day for having made a statement deemed incompatible with party membership. When considered in context—beginning with the fact that her trial was a travesty of justice—expulsion for this outburst was a perversion of Leninism and the crowning act of an unrelenting two-week bureaucratic hit job.

Expulsions of Norden, Stamberg and Negrete

After Socorro’s expulsion, condemnation of her comment was turned into a club against the other three comrades (Norden, Negrete and Stamberg) and an oath of loyalty to the party regime. At a May 28 Bay Area District Conference meeting,¹⁶ party leaders (Robertson, Kendall and Nelson) instructed anyone who might go so far as to raise a question considered sympathetic to Socorro to exit the party. This was especially problematic because comrades had not had much opportunity to explore the differences, such as they were.

Moreover, Nelson projected that longtime Workers Vanguard editor Norden, Negrete and Stamberg (Norden’s partner and close collaborator in WV) would soon blow out of the party as well. This was, under the circumstances, not so much a prognosis based on a political trajectory as a statement of the party leadership’s bureaucratic intent. When the three refused to leave the party of their own accord, reasons were fabricated to kick them out.

On May 11, the day before Socorro’s trial, an I.S. meeting posited that Norden and Negrete had conciliated the Brazilian LM/LQB’s “trade-union opportunism”¹⁷ and differences on the state and party question. There is no evidence of any such conciliation or even that LM/LQB had differences on these questions. The I.S. passed a lengthy motion about document distribution that seemed designed to prevent the translation and circulation of some of the documents by Norden, Negrete, Stamberg and Socorro. It also commissioned an IEC poll to drop Negrete from the IEC altogether given his “hostile, destructive and underhanded machinations in the Mexican section” and “willful violation of the terms of his leave.”¹⁸ At the subsequent I.S. meeting, yet another motion was passed to prevent the circulation of some of the four comrades’ documents.

At the I.S. meeting after that, Norden was removed from the I.S. based on an exchange over a draft letter to LM/LQB by Parks and fellow IECer Adam. In the days prior, this draft had been circulated to the I.S. for feedback, and Norden submitted some comments. While we have been unable to find this material, Parks wrote a May 26 letter in response to those comments that provided the rationale cited in the I.S. motion for the removal: “Now Norden has gone one giant step way out of bounds in accusing the party of siding with a police agent against our fraternal comrades and of abandoning our fraternal comrades when they face state repression.”¹⁹

But Norden’s May 28 reply to Parks, which states exactly what he was objecting to in the draft letter, makes clear this claim is false. In fact, it appears that the I.S. had simply accepted the validity of statements to the bourgeois media by Artur—a member of an opponent organization and agent of the police in the local municipal workers union—that LM/LQB leader Cerezo was a paid union functionary. Norden stated:

In addition to stripping Norden of any role in the administrative leadership of the ICL, the I.S. also recommended that he be removed as WV editor, which the SL/U.S. PB proceeded to carry out. Norden was also removed from the PB itself.

With the party leadership not wasting a moment in the conclusion of this bureaucratic purge, on May 29 at 11:20pm comrades went to Norden and Stamberg’s home and confiscated their party-supplied computer and fax machine, as well as their office keys. On May 30, the final ax dropped.

2:15pm: Norden received a phone call from the treasurer demanding he turn over his phone bills; he refused to comply. At the time, it was common practice for party functionaries to submit their phone bills for reimbursement of the expense of calls made in the furtherance of the organization’s work.

4:30pm: Norden, arriving at the office, was escorted in and informed that he was suspended while awaiting trial.

8:30pm: Stamberg refused to bring in the phone bills after being instructed to do so and was also suspended while awaiting trial.

The next day, Norden and Stamberg were handed the “Call for a Trial.” As the two wrote in their “Reply to a Frame-Up ‘Trial’”:

Our investigation concurs in full with this assessment. Norden and Stamberg’s decision to stop seeking phone bill reimbursements was seized on to lay a bureaucratic trap by sensationalizing the sudden decrease in the total from earlier bills as proof of plotting with outside forces. The record bears out as true the answer provided by the two comrades: The decrease corresponded to their demotion and removal from areas of responsibility for party work, not least in the International. At the time, international phone calls could be very expensive. In any event, Norden and Stamberg were under no obligation whatsoever to turn over their phone bills for reimbursement. The party and its leadership do not have carte blanche to intrude into a comrade’s personal political life and finances.

Democratic-centralism rests on the party’s monopoly over the political expression of its membership in the public arena. This monopoly exists to protect the party against concrete acts of indiscipline damaging to its purpose—e.g., a section taking a public line counterposed to that of the International or a comrade solidarizing against the party with an opponent group at a public meeting. In the case in question, the manner in which the charges were brought—based on (entirely unfounded) suspicions—opens the door to internal political regimentation, which is just as damaging to the party’s purpose as the aforementioned hypotheticals, if not more so.

After Norden’s suspension for refusing to turn over the phone bills, the Central Control Commission (CCC)—which has full authority to investigate any individual or circumstance affecting the SL/U.S.—intervened to demand them from Stamberg. In doing so, the CCC abandoned its independent role—necessary to adjudicate internal organizational disputes in the best interests of the party—and actively sided with the party leadership’s bureaucratic frame-up. Then, when Stamberg, like Norden, refused to turn over the phone bills, she was charged with impeding the work of the CCC. Norden and Stamberg were completely correct to call all this a “fishing expedition” and principled in their refusal to comply.

Comrades have every right to discuss disagreements with one another and to privacy in those discussions. In the face of their own expulsions and with the party leadership demanding the loyalty of the membership writ large—like at the May 28 Bay Area District Conference meeting—Norden and Stamberg’s refusal to turn over their phone bills was a reasonable measure of protection of those comrades with whom they had spoken. For some time, the party leadership had considered Norden, Negrete, Stamberg and Socorro an “undeclared faction” as a way to draw a circle around them, while failing to extend them factional rights or even the basic rights of party democracy accorded to all ICL members.

The failure to grant the four comrades factional rights, despite their being perceived as a faction, flew in the face of historic party practice. For example, to facilitate full and open political debate on the disputed issues in the Ellens-Turner fight in 1968, the minority was bestowed the rights of a faction without having so declared themselves. In contrast, the fact that the four comrades here never declared a faction (for which there was no programmatic basis) was used to deny their basic rights as members—making it as organizationally difficult as possible for them to win supporters to their views, whether or not they formed a faction.

Norden and Stamberg were expelled for not appearing at their frame-up trial, and Negrete was then expelled for not signing a statement that he would have no contact with them. From beginning to end, the 1996 fight against Norden, Negrete, Stamberg and Socorro was an exercise in bureaucratic abuse. We recommend that the IEC repudiate in no uncertain terms all the organizational measures taken against them in the period under investigation.

Dissolving Fraternal Relations with LM/LQB

The ICL formally dissolved fraternal relations with LM/LQB on June 17, just over a week after the expulsions of Norden, Stamberg and Negrete. This timing was no accident. The break in relations was not only politically unprincipled, but also a direct consequence of the regime fight against the “Norden group.” Norden and Negrete had authored the “Declaration of Fraternal Relations” in September 1994 and were centrally involved in discussions with the Brazilian comrades through the January 1996 IEC plenum, the first ICL gathering attended by an LM/LQB representative.

Up until the expulsions, fraternal relations had been proceeding, not without the usual ups and downs, but proceeding nonetheless around an agreed-upon program and perspectives. In particular, LM/LQB was pursuing a campaign, initiated and strongly encouraged by the ICL, to get the cops (guardas) out of the municipal workers union in Volta Redonda and collaborating with the ICL on the publication of a broader propaganda organ.

To be clear, the ICL leadership had declared four months prior: “We take this question very seriously. Real agreement in practice on a fight for the class independence of the workers and to separate the cops from the union must be the basis for continuing fraternal relations and a fusion perspective” (emphasis in original).²² It was the ICL that not only in practice failed to “take this question very seriously,” but also in fact sabotaged this principled fight. As agreed, though, the Brazilian comrades made this effort the center of their activity and propaganda in the municipal workers union (see, for example, the May 6 bulletin of the LM/LQB-supported incumbent MEL caucus, which featured the article titled “The Rank-and-File Is Deciding: Police Out of the Union; Reaffirmation of MEL’s Program”²³). They persisted and made headway despite the open hostility of the cops and their allies.

Right after Norden, Negrete and Stamberg had been expelled, the ICL sent a team to Brazil, allegedly to help LM/LQB with the production of its newspaper, which was nearly completed:

However, the main purpose of that delegation proved to be the delivery of an ultimatum to LM/LQB to pull out of the municipal workers union. The rationale for the ultimatum was the supposed need to break LM/LQB from trade-union opportunism and unprincipled combinationism. But the main alleged examples cited of each had long since been resolved. The appointed post of official union advisor (attributed to trade-union opportunism) had not been held by LM/LQB since February. Around the same time, the original MEL slate (unprincipled combinationism) had irrevocably fractured over the issue of the police in the union into an LM/LQB-led majority and a minority headed by pro-cop provocateur and Liga Bolchevique Internacionalista supporter Artur Fernandes.

Issuing the ultimatum could not possibly have served the declared purpose of facilitating a break with trade-union opportunism and unprincipled combinationism, even if this was called for. The only way to truly establish a common basis for principled work in the trade unions is political struggle in the course of a practical effort in that arena to advance the interests of the working class—for example, the campaign to remove the cops from the municipal workers union. The proposed organizational measure—to force LM/LQB to leave the unions for the campuses—was counterposed to clarifying differences in union work and correcting any opportunism that might have existed.

Another rationale provided for the ICL ultimatum was the threat of murderous state violence against the ICL, LM/LQB and municipal workers. This concern was far from unfounded in light of various cop provocations over the preceding months. But the conclusion that the only option was for the ICL to vacate altogether the very struggle it had set in motion while knowing the risks—and the insistence that LM/LQB had to follow suit—was highly damaging to the very project of party-building that the ICL claimed to be its motivation.

A reader of the ICL’s International Bulletin No. 41, “The Fight for a Trotskyist Party in Brazil,” could be forgiven for thinking the ICL leadership had experienced a collective psychotic breakdown. Up until page 147, the ICL appears invested in making the fraternal relations bear fruit. The contributions discuss the contents of the LM/LQB newspaper and also how to combat centrism and handle the problems of their trade-union work. The June 11 letter by Parks still offered:

And LM/LQB was and would continue doing something about it. This letter makes clear that the ultimatum on union work was intertwined with another one, which was kept implicit: LM/LQB was supposed to condone the expulsions of Norden and Negrete. Four pages of the June 11 letter are dedicated to the Norden issue, i.e., more than twice the amount dedicated to LM/LQB’s priorities. (This seven-page letter contains only four paragraphs on LM/LQB, two on pages 4-5 and two at the very end.) In other words, the main issue was Norden’s expulsion, not the SFPMVR municipal workers union intervention and even less LM/LQB’s newspaper.

But LM/LQB was completely engaged in the municipal workers union, centrally the campaign to oust the municipal cops from the union. The comrades understood that they could not pull out at this juncture without betraying their supporters in the union, and they suspected that the ICL “didn’t want to get involved in real union work where real struggle exists,” as LM/LQB leader Cerezo said in preliminary discussions on June 15 between LM/LQB and an ICL delegation.

The intertwined ultimatums pushed LM/LQB not only into refusing to pull out of the union, but also into refusing to condone the Norden expulsion. LM/LQB was principled on both accounts, unlike the ICL. We demanded they commit a class betrayal along with issuing an oath of loyalty to the ICL’s anti-Norden majority. When they rebuffed us, we broke with them on June 17. The events of the very next day were a sharp rebuke of the ICL’s unprincipled maneuver: The section of the municipal workers union leadership aligned with LM/LQB held an assembly for the membership to vote to disaffiliate from the cops.

In effect, the ICL had urged the Brazilian comrades to undertake dangerous but necessary and principled measures vis-à-vis the police, and once things got really hot—a distinct possibility recognized from the get-go—we walked away while LM/LQB courageously pursued the fight. The IG and LM/LQB then correctly accused the ICL of “pulling its hands out of the boiling water.” To top it off, despite pledging to “continue to defend LM and its supporters against attacks by the bourgeois state and pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy,”²⁵ the ICL for all intents and purposes dropped any such defense; the record shows one pro forma WV article on the matter in August 1996.

Tellingly, the ICL’s public announcement, “A Break in Fraternal Relations with Luta Metalúrgica” (WV No. 648, 5 July 1996), declared: “The dissolution of fraternal relations with Luta Metalúrgica is also a political consequence of the defection of our former comrades Norden and Negrete.” The two are blamed for having poisoned fraternal relations due to their role in everything from crafting the initial declaration to supposedly blunting subsequent political fights with LM/LQB.

The authorship of the declaration was immaterial. What mattered was the formal agreement of all the parties involved and the testing of that agreement through the struggle to implement the program in practice. The IEC majority and Norden and Negrete agreed on all the essentials of program for Brazil and perspectives for common work with LM/LQB, from the start of fraternal relations until Norden and Negrete’s expulsions. The dissolution of fraternal relations indicates as much, beginning: “For many months now the ICL has fought to bring the actual practices of Luta Metalúrgica/LQB into accordance with the revolutionary political program expressed in the Declaration of Fraternal Relations endorsed by both of our organizations in September 1994.”

As for the claim that Norden and Negrete uniquely blunted fights with LM/LQB, it does not survive scrutiny. The two are said to have waged a false fight with LM/LQB over syndicalism, but the ICL’s International Bulletin No. 41 includes a polemic by the I.S. secretary against LM/LQB’s perceived conciliation of syndicalism. Norden and Negrete are also charged with hiding the fight against themselves from LM/LQB. But the IEC majority had put Norden and Negrete in a Catch-22 by proscribing their communication with LM/LQB.

In assessing the campaign to remove the cops from the municipal workers union, the WV article acknowledged: “Since the battle was brought to LM, they have waged a principled and difficult struggle against the police presence in the union.” So, even if the view that Norden and Negrete had corrupted fraternal relations held any water, it begs the question of why the ICL, having rid itself of the alleged malefactors, would not wage whatever political fights were still deemed necessary to ensure a revolutionary regroupment. The answer is clear: Fraternal relations had been completely subsumed by the push to rid the organization of Norden and Negrete and any perceived supporters of theirs.

Despite the unprincipled nature of the ICL’s break at a critical moment in the union campaign—which LM/LQB described as “a disloyal break” that “came like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky” in a July 4 letter to the ICL—they proposed to give fraternal relations a second chance:

This proposal went unheeded, and the letter went unanswered by the ICL. In fact, there is no evidence the letter was ever translated into English for internal distribution beyond the I.S., much less seriously discussed by the ICL leadership.

Instead, by early July the I.S. had dispatched a team to Brazil to sift through court records to find evidence that LM/LQB, as part of its defense against the pro-cop backlash, had filed a lawsuit against the union. The only thing ever found was an initial filing that was never pursued—easily explained as the handiwork of an overzealous lawyer who did not share LM/LQB’s opposition to dragging the bourgeois courts into union affairs. But the ICL had found its “proof” of LM/LQB’s trade-union opportunism and branded them irredeemable union-suers, thereby driving the final nail in the coffin of fraternal relations.

After a careful review of all relevant material, we recommend that the IEC renounce the ICL’s unilateral break in fraternal relations as a bureaucratic organizational maneuver counterposed and corrosive to the vitally necessary cohering of revolutionary forces under one banner. We also recommend the repudiation of the slander of LM/LQB as union-suers. The ICL’s abandonment of LM/LQB was an ignominious chapter in its history—the very antithesis of revolutionary leadership.

Note

Our research was extensive. We reviewed all of the internal bulletins from the period under investigation, especially International Bulletin Nos. 38 (all editions), 41 and 42. We combed through back files on Germany, Brazil and Mexico among other relevant I.S. files, listened to tapes and transcribed portions of them and examined all of the I.S. and PB minutes from the time. We carefully read the expelled comrades’ bulletin From a Drift Toward Abstentionism to Desertion from the Class Struggle (July 1996) and the IG pamphlet Dossier: Class Struggle and Repression in Volta Redonda, Brazil (February 1997). We also read all of the published articles from the ICL and IG that referred to the disputed questions. In addition, we translated select leaflets from LM/LQB and conducted a few interviews.