https://iclfi.org/spartacist/en/2024-kbg-letter

After first holding discussions with the ICL five years ago, the Korean Bolshevik Group (BG) late last year wrote to us with extensive critical comments on our Eighth International Conference. This led to a new series of written and verbal exchanges, which are described in the letters printed below.

These exchanges made clear that our fundamental differences centered on the question of revolutionary leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle. The discussions reached an impasse when the BG persisted in its view that workers in the imperialist centers or in imperialist-aligned countries must suffer “retribution” from the oppressed before they could be broken from social-chauvinism. As our second letter stresses, this is a totally reactionary position that can only strengthen imperialism by dividing the world proletariat and undermining any political struggle to split workers from their social-chauvinist leaders.

The letters have not been edited except to correct obvious typographical mistakes and to add bracketed insertions.

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Letter to the International Communist League

28th Nov

We Bolshevik Group decided to split after a bitter factional struggle within the IBT [International Bolshevik Tendency] in 2018 (see “Our split from the IBT and the Continuation of Revolutionary Ideology”). A year earlier, your organization had released a lengthy document of International Conference called “The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra,” which helped us understand how “Anglo-chauvinism” systematically affected the ICL and the IBT and IG [Internationalist Group], which broke away from it.

Of course, that document has the limit that it focuses on national questions mostly within imperialist countries, centered on Canada, and does not adequately address the conflict between imperialism and colony in general. However, the ICL’s self-criticism in 2017 was significant in that it marked a return to Leninism. This shift in position caught the attention of us who had been taking serious issues with the IBT’s “Anglo-American chauvinism” and tracing its roots.

Therefore, in March 2019, we held a discussion in Seoul with ICL comrades who responded to our request. The discussion was conducted in mutual respect, but the ICL comrades still adhered to their previous neutral stance mainly on imperialism vs colony question, such as Iran from 1979 to 1983, and we parted ways without being able to narrow mutual distance on these issues.

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Then, in December 2019, we asked the following questions on Facebook about the article from Workers Vanguard #1167. But we never heard back.

Our Questions on ICL’s position on Syria: reading 13 December 2019

“These warring sides have received support from foreign imperialist or regional powers. For example, Russia and Iran have backed Assad, while the Pentagon and CIA have armed and financed various Sunni forces fighting the regime.”

The ICL raises the support of imperialist or regional powers by both sides who took part in the so-called “civil war” as a basis for neutrality.

So,

1) Can “regional powers” be equated with imperialism?

2) Is Russian and Iranian intervention imperialistic?

3) Is “Syrian civil war” a competition or proxy war between imperialist rivals?

Marxists should not only present the phenomena as they are, but also explain the real foundation, or nature. But the ICL does not explain why the conflict, which it describes as a “civil war or communal war” (that does not express an imperialistic character at all), and why the imperialist U.S. and regional powers Russia and Iran are involved.

4) What is the background of imperialism and local powers’ involvement in this conflict, which is nothing but a “civil war”?

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“Though it has intervened in Syria, the U.S. has not decisively entered the civil war with its own armed forces to remove Assad. If Washington were to launch a direct attack or invasion of the country, Marxists would take a military side with Assad’s forces against imperialist assault while maintaining our political opposition to his rule.”

During the past eight years of war, behind the “civil or communal war”, the United States has not only provided financial, military, and PR support to the anti-Assad rebels, but has also staged various military operations, staying within Syrian territory. Nevertheless, the ICL says, “If Washington was to run a direct attack or an investment of the country. Marxists would take a military side with Assad’s forces against imperialist assault while maintaining our political opposition to his rule.”

So. 5) what does the “direct attack or involvement” mean to ICL? How do you define it?

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Fortunately, your organization woke up after a long period of silence.

In September 2023, you published the 68th Spartacist, covering the Eighth International Congress. This issue contains a number of self-critical articles on the abstentionist and Anglo-American chauvinist attitudes on the national question that the so-called “Spartacist Family” starting with ICL has expressed as a proud revolutionary tradition. We read those documents with great attention, and we were interested to see the change of positions, especially on Iran, which were stubbornly maintained at the last meeting in 2019.

We, Bolshevik Group, read and discussed the following articles:

소련 붕괴 후 ICL의 수정주의 (The ICL’s Post-Soviet Revisionism)

ICL은 왜 붕괴했고, 어떻게 재건할 것인가? (Why the ICL Collapsed & How We Reforged It)

코민테른 제2·4차 대회를 옹호하며 (In Defense of the Second and Fourth Comintern Congresses)

연속혁명과 여성해방 (Permanent Revolution & Women’s Liberation)

말비나스 전쟁 :　주적은 제국주의였다 (Malvinas/Falklands War: The Main Enemy Was Imperialism)

연속혁명을 옹호하며 : 반제투쟁의 공산주의 지도부를 위하여 (In Defense of Permanent Revolution: For Communist Leadership of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle!)

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Today, we will focus only on the articles related to the theme of “Imperialism, National Liberation Struggles and Socialist Revolution” to share our impressions.

First, “The ICL’s Post-Soviet Revisionism” is one of the documents adopted by the ICL’s 8th International Congress. It is summarized as follows:

The ICL’s understanding of the post-Soviet epoch was wrong. We thought the end of the Cold War would lead to intensifying imperialist rivalries, but in fact it created a period of relative geopolitical stability in which the imperialist powers jointly plundered the world under the umbrella of American hegemony. It also dismisses liberal influence as insignificant and portrays liberal demands as revolutionary. In the IG’s split from ICL, we were unprincipled and sectarian, and some of IG’s criticisms of ICL are valid. Nonetheless, the IG shares the bulk of the ICL’s totally wrong analysis of the world. Like the ICL in the past, the IG expresses sectarian hostility to national liberation movements of oppressed peoples. The ICL is committed to conducting serious political clarification and debate with the IG and engaging as much as possible in common action to defend the basic interests of the workers movement. The destruction of the Soviet Union posed a major turn for the ICL. The party’s historic cadre proved incapable of correcting our trajectory. Yet the ICL was not dead. We still managed to recruit a few handfuls of cadres internationally attracted to the ICL by its revolutionary past.

This article is encouraging in that it recognizes that abstentionism on the national question is wrong.

Next, “In Defense of the Second and Fourth Comintern Congresses” defends the theory of national liberation adopted by the second and fourth congresses of Comintern, refuting the revision of Leninism that had been carried over from the iSt [international Spartacist tendency] years.

ICL has always claimed adherence to the first four Congresses of the Comintern, but we took exception to the Second and Fourth Congresses in regard to the colonial revolution. For the ICL, Stalin and Bukharin’s betrayal was there in embryo at the Fourth Congress. The ICL viewed communist participation in the democratic struggle, a deflection from “the class question”, as a “Menshevik deviation”. The 1922 Theses polemicize directly against the program and methodology of the ICL: “Any refusal of Communists in the colonies to take part in the struggle against imperialist tyranny, on the excuse of supposed ‘defence’ of independent class interests, is opportunism of the worst sort that can only discredit the proletarian revolution in the East.” The anti-imperialist united front was essential then and still is today in all countries where the national liberation struggle is in the hands of the bourgeoisie. To break the bourgeoisie’s influence on the struggle, communists must not remain suspended in the air as immaculate critics on the margins of the struggle, but place themselves in the midst of the melee.

“Malvinas/Falklands War: The Main Enemy Was Imperialism” reverses the ICL’s 1982 neutral stance on the Malvinas War, arguing that the ICL should have defended the neo-colonial Argentina.

For the British imperialists, the war was intended to defend their colonial possession. But Argentina’s victory would have been in the interests of the working class. It would have been a step in the direction of national emancipation in Argentina and an insurrection of the working class in Britain against British imperialism. At this Congress we rejected the past position of dual defeatism. We should have competed with the bourgeois nationalists for the leadership of the national liberation struggle. Communist leadership is essential to defeat imperialism. The only way to overthrow British imperialism was through an alliance of workers in both countries. Nationalism is an obstacle to the struggle.

“In Defense of Permanent Revolution: For Communist Leadership of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle!” can roughly be summarized as follows:

Revolutionary parties in the oppressed nations, in leading the struggle against imperialist oppression, must educate the toiling masses in the spirit of revolutionary unity with the proletariat of the oppressor nations. SL rightly opposed the argument that the “objective process” would force bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist leaderships toward socialism, but it moved toward a rejection of Permanent Revolution. The ICL saw the national question as something that to be “removed” from the agenda and rejected Palestinian/Irish national liberation by creating an “interpenetrated peoples” theory. It ignored the progressive nature of the anti-Shah struggle in Iran in 1979. The ICL also says “the main enemy is at home” for workers of oppressed nations, which is wrong. In a colony, the main enemy is imperialism. National development of subjugated nations is a historically progressive. The ICL took wrong position in opposing Trotsky’s call for the independent Soviet Ukraine. Edmund Samarakkody correctly identified our failure to distinguish between oppressed and oppressor nations, our “one-sided identity of interests between the imperialists and the native bourgeoisie”.

This article is a self-critique of the ICL’s slide from criticizing Pabloite right-wing opportunism to a sectarian position. In particular, the revision of position on the Iranian revolution is completely in line with what we have been advocating all along.

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The ability to reflect on past missteps and return to the right position is an important measure of an organization’s vitality. In this respect, the result of the ICL’s 8th Congress is very encouraging. In our judgment, the ICL has not yet fully departed from the revolutionary continuity and, therefore, has not yet exhausted its organizational life.

However, despite these significant changes, the ICL does not appear to have fully liberated itself from its previous inertia. While it has changed its previously criticized positions on Iran and Malvinas, it still seems to be on the same page on current events. In particular, on the war in Ukraine, they still insist on the defeat of both sides thus denying national self-determination and right to self-defense of Russia and people of Donbass. On the Syrian civil war, it does not say whether it remains “neutral unless the U.S. directly intervenes militarily,” or whether it has reversed its neutral position. We wonder if we will ever hear a response to the questions we sent in December 2019.

We would also like to point out that the ICL’s October 10 statement, “Only Death and Defeat with Hamas; A Revolutionary Road for Palestinian Liberation” bears the legacy of ultra-leftist abstentionism from the past that the ICL has yet to clean up. In this statement, the ICL calls for the “defense of Gaza” in the abstract manner, but refuses to provide military support to Hamas, the only meaningful defense force in Gaza, rendering “defense of Gaza” and “liberation of Palestine” meaningless.

A key reason ICL rejects military support for Hamas is that it is “targeting Israeli civilian.” We addressed this issue on our article (“On the war in Palestine”) published on October 14.

From a military perspective, the prevailing view is that the Hamas-led raid was reckless. As it can be seen now, Hamas is militarily overwhelmed by Israel which is backed by the superpower, the US. But just as even earthworms squirm when stepped on, this counterattack is a reaction and a struggle of the Palestinian people who are on the brink of death. The British-US imperialism and Israel have been strangling the Palestinian people for a long time, and a strangled opponent can only resist in any way possible. We recognize that resistance as a just self-defense for life and honor.

The imperialist media accuses Palestinian militants of indiscriminately attacking civilians, but the Palestinian Arab people do not have the sophisticated and powerful weapons which the US and Israel have. They do not have the capacity to attack while distinguishing soldiers and civilians and still win. Meanwhile, imperialists have carried out massive massacres and detentions of civilians in Palestine and elsewhere in the world with impunity, but the imperialist media has shamelessly turned a blind eye to the innocent deaths of colonized peoples around the world, even now.

And the Israeli “settlers” who have been closing in on Palestinian Arab neighborhoods are the direct beneficiaries of Palestinian expulsions and settlement expansion. Not only that, but they are also active agents of Israel’s ethnic oppression.

Here’s what we said on this question in 2021.

“Being a tribune to all oppressed people, the socialist-oriented world working class will never tolerate the sacrifice of innocent people. However, if the people who serve as supporters of imperialism confront the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle, we recognize that the retribution against them is justified. Only the working people in oppressing countries, actively fighting for the liberation of the oppressed people against their own invader government, would be considered on the same side. We consider them the only innocent citizens who have nothing to do with imperialism. Only they can be granted the right to live in peace and safety.”

Nowhere is the need for an “anti-imperialist united-front” more urgent than in Palestine. We hope that ICL comrades join this “anti-imperialist united-front” in time. Syria and Ukraine as well.

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Letter to the Bolshevik Group

23 December 2023

Dear comrades of the Bolshevik Group,

We were glad to receive your letter reviewing our 8th International Conference. In light of our current understanding of permanent revolution it is clear that previous exchanges between our two organizations were fundamentally flawed. We are happy to renew discussions with your group and possibly meet in person again.

The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony and Korea

According to your letter, you have not yet reviewed our main conference document, “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power.” In this document we show how globalization and the dominance of liberalism in the post-Soviet period are rooted in the hegemony of U.S. imperialism. From this we argue that the task of Marxists following 1991 was to fight to break the international working class from its liberal leadership whose politics reflected the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie. However, instead of doing this the Marxist left made a purely liberal critique of imperialism, denouncing its worst excesses based on the moral principles peddled by the bourgeoisie itself, and not on the material interests of the proletariat. In no way did the ICL, IBT or any other organization show how and why advancing the immediate interests of the working class and oppressed required a class break with bourgeois liberalism. It is this failure that explains the crisis plaguing the left in the last 30 years.

We have very limited knowledge of Korea. However, our document does develop a basic insight which we believe is important. Countries such as South Korea have seen substantial economic development and, since the 1980s, an undeniable democratization while at the same time witnessing a retreat in the political strength of the working class. This is a big contradiction, which we expect has fueled important illusions in bourgeois democracy among the working class. A Marxist party in Korea must be built on a materialist refutation of such reformist illusions. In Part III of our conference document under the subhead “The Countries Oppressed by Imperialism,” we provide the following general explanation for the political developments of the ‘80s and ‘90s in countries such as South Korea:

“On the political level, the international convergence toward liberal democracy was partly the result of U.S. foreign policy, which increasingly saw democratic reforms as an optimal way to stem social upheaval. But the internal regimes of neocolonial countries were also greatly affected by the weakening of the workers movement internationally. The elites were more confident in their position, allowing them room for concessions, while the oppressed had a weaker hand, increasing the pressure on them to give up on radical change. This reduced the sharpness of domestic contradictions, allowing countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and South Africa to replace quasi-totalitarian dictatorships with a measure of bourgeois democracy.”

More generally, we believe that the entire post-WWII history of South Korea can only be understood when seeing it as a frontline state of the U.S. world order. First, mainly as an anti-communist bastion against the North. Then, as the Cold War was coming to an end and it became possible to loosen the chokehold on the South Korean masses without endangering private property, its role started to take on a new dimension. In the post-Soviet period, South Korea was fully integrated into the liberal world order, adopting a democratic facade and becoming one of the most important beneficiaries of increased international trade and liberalized capital flow. All this while remaining dependent on and oppressed by imperialism (as shown by the 1997 crisis). As the U.S. world order crumbles, this process will inevitably reverse and bring about extremely sharp class conflict, both within South Korea and with the North.

These observations are of course very broad, general and conditioned by our lack of knowledge of Korea. That said, we believe that our outline of the post-Soviet period is not only applicable to the Korean context but essential to orienting a Marxist vanguard. We would be very interested in knowing what you think of our document and how you understand the post-WWII history of Korea, its relation to U.S. imperialism and the central obstacles to advancing working-class revolution in the peninsula.

Revolutionary Leadership

Based on an initial look at your recent propaganda and the factional documents published after your split with the IBT, we think that the central difference between our two tendencies lies in the question of revolutionary leadership.

This question has been central to our whole reorientation. We could not have rearmed without being guided by the purpose of revolutionary intervention into events. Marxism is first and foremost a guide to action and Marxist analysis has a revolutionary character only when it is wielded against the obstacle holding back the march of socialism—the current leadership of the working class. The ICL’s rejection of this ABC of Marxism was at the root of its disorientation in the post-Soviet period.

Our initial impression is that your propaganda shares a similar non-revolutionary, rigid formalism which we ourselves had to break from. Your organization takes clear positions on specific questions, but we notice an absence of any concrete course of action for the proletariat, whether it is in broad strategic terms or in the more short-term immediate sense. Based on the articles we have consulted thus far, we do not think you provide an answer to the question: “what is to be done?”

While you accurately relate many of the points in our new issue of Spartacist, the question of revolutionary leadership—the backbone of the whole issue—is singularly absent. For example, you do not mention that at the heart of our correction on permanent revolution is the question of communist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle. To reject previous capitulations to western social democracy was only the first step in reasserting the revolutionary Trotskyist strategy for the neocolonial world. The fight against imperialism must be at the center of this strategy, but to be victorious it is necessary to break the hold of the national bourgeoisie which holds back national and social emancipation. This is the key strategic problem for revolution in countries oppressed by imperialism.

This is all to say that in discussing the various points of disagreements between our two organizations, our starting point is always to advance today the fight for a revolutionary leadership of the working class against their current misleaders, whether they are social-democratic, Stalinist or Islamist.

Iran

In our previous exchanges we were wrong to uncritically defend the iSt’s intervention in Iran in the late ‘70s. That said, we do not agree that our re-evaluation of the question is “completely in line” with what you have been advocating all along.

Our recent International Conference criticized our previous approach because the “entire framework denied the fact that the struggle of the Persian masses to free themselves from the imperialist chokehold was a progressive struggle.” The struggle against imperialist oppression was central to the upheavals of the time, but the iSt simply dismissed this fact and characterized the upsurge in the petty bourgeoisie as simply reactionary. This is similar to the criticism you have made.

However, this is where our agreement ends. You state in your 2018 document that:

“It [the Iranian revolution] was not destined to but was morphed into Islam revolution after a series of power game in a couple of years of time with Mujahedin, fedayeen and Tudeh which Khomeini faction won, in the situation of war with Iraq, the hostility policies of the US against it, passive and defensive policy of the Soviet and popular front position of the Tudeh. The Khomeini’s taking power was not resulted from their political ability but from domestic and international situation and the inability of the leadership of the working class, as like Kerensky took the power.

True enough, but you say nothing about what the tasks of communists were at the time. What should communists have done in Iran and internationally to prevent the Iranian revolution from leading to the triumph of Islamist reaction? This is the whole question. Since you provide no answer to this, you are left with choosing the lesser evil between the Shah and the Mullahs.

You write that:

“Even though it failed to go further to socialism and degenerated into and set in Islam revolution, it brought meaningful reforms to Iranian people and gave serious blow to imperialists especially the USA. The US lost one of their reliable bridgeheads and Iran became an opponent in that strategic region. So Iran revolution in 1979 was positive one for world working class which we should have sided with against Shah and imperialist.”

It is true that the ousting of the Shah was a major blow to U.S. imperialism. But the starting point for Marxists is not simply to inflict blows against imperialism, but to defeat imperialism through socialist revolution. If we evaluate the events as Marxists, we must ask not whether or not imperialism was dealt a blow, but whether or not the position of the international working class was strengthened. According to this criterion, it is clear that the answer is no. Working class organizations were crushed, Islamic law imposed, and women and minorities to this day suffer brutal oppression. In fact, by decapitating the powerful Iranian proletariat, the Khomeini regime inflicted a major blow to the fight against imperialism in the entire region.

This method is not our invention. In the admittedly very different context of the intervention by the USSR in Poland in 1939, Trotsky warned against looking solely at the question of property relations abstracted from the general advance of class struggle.

“The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organization of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character.”

You only need to substitute “transformation of property relations” with “blows to imperialism” and “Moscow” for the “Mullahs” for this reasoning to apply to the so-called Iranian revolution.

While our correction on Iran remains partial and falls short of a full evaluation, we do outline a basic approach for what was needed at the time:

“Our task was to explain that as long as it [the anti-imperialist struggle] remained in the grip of the mullahs, it would necessarily be directed against national and other minorities, leading to their persecution and at the same time undermining the liberation of the Persian majority itself. The only way to break the hold of the mullahs was to show concretely how their leadership was an obstacle to the legitimate and progressive aspirations of the masses to be free from the Shah and imperialism.”

It is because you lack this crucial element—an independent path for the working class—that you must downplay the disastrous effects of Khomeini’s triumph in the name of “fighting imperialism.” As we shall see, this is a constant problem in your propaganda.

Russia-Ukraine War

You argue that when it comes to current events we are “still on the same page,” i.e., we maintain our previous revisionist program. To support this, you state that our position on the Ukraine war insists “on the defeat of both sides thus denying national self-determination and right to self-defence of Russia and people of Donbass.”

First, it is not true that we deny the right of self-determination of the Russian people of Donbass. Since 2014 the population of Donbass has been moving towards wanting integration into the Russian federation. If the current war was simply about the self-determination of Donbass, we would have no problem in having a military side with Russia. The problem is that in the current context the national conflict between Russians and Ukrainians cannot simply be resolved through the victory of one side. Whichever side wins, the result will be the national oppression of the other side.

While there was an armed uprising in support in Donetsk and Luhansk following the Maidan coup, this was not the case in the other regions which Russia now claims. At the very least, the sentiment in these regions is contradictory. Even if one is to believe that there was no manipulation of the 2022 annexation referendum results—which would indicate blind faith in the Kremlin—it is impossible to deny that these referendums only took place in the Russian-occupied parts of these territories—in which much of the population has been displaced—and cannot be considered a clear representation of popular sentiment. Even if Russia does not occupy all of Ukraine, it aims to occupy large portions of territory whose prewar population did not want to be part of Russia. Let’s be clear, comrades: Russia’s considerations are first and foremost strategic; it is not elaborating its military plans according to the democratic aspirations in Ukraine.

This brings us to the nature of the conflict, which is not fundamentally a national war for the liberation of Russian minorities, but first and foremost a proxy war between NATO and Russia over whose influence will predominate in Ukraine. The expansion of NATO influence to Ukraine, a country Russia considers to be in its sphere of influence, has been at the root of the conflict from 2014 and beyond. From February 2022, the war aim of Russia has not been to simply support the Donbass republics but to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine. This clearly implies installing some kind of pro-Russian regime in Kiev. It is not a democratic right of Russia to change the regime of a foreign country, even if this regime is backed by imperialism. How does the march of the war not fall in line with what you yourselves warned against at the outset of the conflict?

“In this regard, if the Russian army tries to continue its military occupation to establish a pro-Russian regime, it would be a dangerous gamble and would not be beneficial to the working class. It would be an infringement of the Ukrainian right to self-determination. It is likely to stimulate the right-wing nationalist sentiment among the working people in western Ukraine, thus intensifying national hostility between two countries.

In your article “Ukraine war, Opportunism and the Working Class,” you simply dismiss the ICL’s position by saying that it is a “bizarre sophistry that says, ‘Russia is not fighting imperialism, but Ukraine’.” This is not sophistry. One must totally deny reality to think that there is not a qualitative difference between NATO launching a direct war against Russia—which would pose its national survival—and a proxy conflict with Ukraine, which does not. There is no denying the predatory ambitions of the U.S. and its appetites to weaken and subordinate Russia. But there is a difference between what it wants to do and what is happening currently in Ukraine.

What you totally disappear from our position is our main slogan, “Turn the guns around.” This is a not a call to be “neutral” as you claim, but a call to unite the Ukrainian and Russian workers in revolutionary struggle against their own governments and imperialism. Only then can the national question be resolved in a just manner. Only then can imperialism be dealt a fundamental blow. It is not an abstract call, but one that offers a road forward for Ukrainian workers who are sent to the slaughter in the name of Wall Street, and Russian workers who must risk their lives for Putin’s great Russian chauvinism, which explicitly denies that Ukraine (and other minorities) have the right to self-determination.

Your article and letter also say nothing about the work the ICL has done internationally to fight to break the hold of the pro-imperialist leaders of the working class (see for example “Throw the EU/NATO Supporters Out of the Left!” in Spartacist English edition No. 67 and “Stop Arms Shipments to Ukraine!”, 8 September). It is one thing to have a paper position for defeatism or for defense of Russia, but the crucial test is to actually fight against social-chauvinism in the workers movement on one’s national terrain. This is what we have sought to fight for to the extent of our ability. However, this does not seem to factor in your evaluation of our position or of that of other left groups.

Once more, the fundamental problem with your position is that you do not indicate in any way how it serves to advance the struggle for social revolution in Ukraine, in Russia, in Korea or anywhere else. Any serious revolutionary organization must be able to answer the following questions in the context of the current war:

1) How to forge unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers?

2) How to advance international socialist revolution in the context of this conflict?

3) How to break the working class from its social-chauvinist leadership, in Ukraine, Russia and the rest of the world?

We believe you that you do not provide an adequate response to any of these questions.

Israel/Palestine

On the question of Israel and Palestine, we would like to start by stating that we agree with many of the criticisms made of the Spartacist tendency in your article “Palestinian Liberation and ‘Social Patriotism’.” We thought it was prescient on your part to point to the 1973 exchange with Samarakkody. Our international would certainly have gained from considering your arguments on the question more seriously in our previous discussions.

In your recent letter you state that the position laid out in our Spartacist statement “Only Death and Defeat with Hamas: A Revolutionary Road for Palestinian Liberation” is essentially the same as previous articles written by our tendency on the question. This is based on the claim that we supposedly refuse to take a military side against the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. It is true that we do not use the specific formulation you raise in your letter. This is because it would only serve to make us targets of state repression while having zero practical implications in our current situation. That said, our statement cannot be considered neutral in any sense. From the second sentence we state that Palestinians have “every right to defend themselves, including through force” and later in the article we state that “on the military level, it is necessary to exert the maximum pressure on the IDF to show Israeli society that Palestinian oppression comes at an unbearable cost.”

The true nature of our disagreement lies not in taking a military side against Israel in general but rather on the specific targeting of civilians in the 7 October offensive of Hamas. You correctly identify the targeting of civilians as a difference, but then wrongly present this as the grounds for our supposed refusal to take a military side in general. This distorts our position. Let us focus on the actual difference: the targeting of Israeli civilians.

The basis for your position is clearly explained in your 2021 document:

“However, if the people who serve as supporters of imperialism confront the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle, we recognize that the retribution against them is justified. Only the working people in oppressing countries, actively fighting for the liberation of the oppressed people against their own invader government, would be considered on the same side. We consider them the only innocent citizens who have nothing to do with imperialism. Only they can be granted the right to live in peace and safety.”

We believe this position to be extremely wrong. It is imbued with bourgeois moralism, holding the entire Israeli population responsible for the chauvinist program promoted by the capitalist class and its labor agents. It is particularly false if applied to Korea. According to your position the working class of South Korea would be legitimate targets in a war with North Korea in the name of fighting for national liberation from imperialist subjugation. What about a nuclear strike on Seoul? Would this be justified retribution for South Korea’s support to imperialism? Clearly you can never win the support of the Korean proletariat to this position. Moreover, in blindly targeting civilians, how would one distinguish between those who have “nothing to do with imperialism” and those who do? For example, the Israeli leftist Hayim Katsman was killed in the 7 October Hamas attack. He may not have been a revolutionary, but he was an opponent of Palestinian oppression. Was his killing justified simply because he lived near Gaza? (See “Hayim Katsman, an Israeli Murdered by Hamas, Envisioned a Democratic Israel/Palestine,” Jacobin, 9 November.)

Whether it be Israel, Korea or 1944 Nazi Germany, we oppose the specific targeting of civilian populations irrespective of how imbued they are with chauvinism at a particular time. This position is not rooted in liberal bourgeois morality but in our aim to advance the class struggle as outlined by Trotsky:

“Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the ‘leaders’.”

In no way do Hamas’ methods correspond to the above principles.

The targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas does not advance the liberation of Palestine. It serves only to further consolidate the support of the Israeli population to the oppression of Palestinians. The strong popular support for the current bombing of Gaza in Israel—as opposed to the 1982 intervention in Lebanon, for example—shows this clearly. So long as Israel is united internally, it cannot be defeated militarily. Any serious strategy for Palestinian liberation must seek to exploit and deepen polarizations within Israel. The Israeli working class may be deeply imbued with chauvinism, but its own condition is undermined by the oppression of Palestine. It has an objective interest in joining together with the Arab masses against the Zionist ruling class and imperialism. This is the only road. But it has no chance of success if the so-called Marxists do not fight for this perspective and leave the leadership of the Palestinian struggle in the hand of Islamists who paint all of Israel with one brush.

Did Hamas’ offensive advance the cause of the Palestinians on a military level? Clearly not. As you state yourselves: “Hamas is militarily overwhelmed by Israel which is backed by the superpower, the US.” It is certainly true that the Hamas attack was a reaction to the inhumane oppression that Palestinians suffer under the Zionist and imperialist boot. But it is a reaction which sets their liberation backwards.

To justify your support for the actions taken by Hamas, you make a rather pathetic attempt at arguing that they have no other choice given the inaccuracy of the military technology at their disposal. A machine gun at point-blank range in a crowded festival is very accurate. But why do you even raise this argument? According to your position, it would be justified to target any number of Israeli citizens no matter the weapons available.

In a similar vein, you raise that Hamas does “not have the capacity to attack while distinguishing soldiers and civilians and still win.” A Hamas fighter can certainly win an encounter with an unarmed civilian in a kibbutz, but how does this advance Palestinian liberation and the fight for socialism? This brings us once more to the crux of the question: how to win? In your writings on Palestine, you offer no perspective on how to concretely advance the struggle for national liberation. If you were to engage on this road, you would quickly see that the strategy followed by Hamas is the main political obstacle holding it back. If the ICL focuses its fire against the strategy of Hamas, it is not because we are bending to imperialist propaganda (as we are often accused) but because we are desperately seeking to guide the struggle for Palestinian liberation on a victorious path. What is criminal is to see the current impasse of the movement and do nothing to redirect it onto a different, revolutionary road.

It is striking that you do not say a word about the class struggle strategy for Palestinian liberation outlined in our Spartacist article. It is precisely this aspect which is fundamentally different from anything our tendency has written on the question before. We do not advocate a unity of Jews and Palestinians on the basis of rejecting the legitimate national aspirations of the oppressed, but rather put the question of Palestinian liberation at the center of our strategy. We do not promise that all will be well in a socialist future but put forward a strategy for today which can actually lead to defeating the Zionist state and imperialism.

For all your strong words in defense of Palestine, we must ask once more, comrades: “what is to be done?”

Syria

We have not yet had the chance to review our position on Syria. That said, we have no doubt that it shares all the faults of our previous approach, both regarding permanent revolution and in providing communist leadership. We are more than happy to engage in further correspondence and discussion with you on this matter. However, as with other questions, we must agree on the fundamental starting point. A correct approach to the conflict in Syria must necessarily start from the perspective of advancing the struggle for international revolution, not simply choosing the lesser evil. I want to be clear that I am not denying the importance of taking a side in this or any given conflict, but only that such a side must be informed by a revolutionary strategy.

For example, in the Spanish Civil War Trotsky certainly took a side with the Republicans. But this was subordinate to his overall aim of advancing and guiding the Spanish revolution. To discuss what side to take in the civil war divorced from this consideration inevitably brings you to the position of the popular front, which in the end decapitated the revolution and lost the civil war.

Conclusion

There are numerous other questions from your propaganda and ours which are well worth discussing. However, this letter is long enough as it is and should offer plenty of material to start off with. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I will once more urge comrades to look at our propaganda with an eye to the question of revolutionary leadership. For a condensed elaboration of our views on this question you should consult our article “What Is Revolutionary Leadership?” in Spartacist No. 68.

In our previous exchange, we insisted on class independence and you on the struggle against imperialism. This led to a circular discussion in which neither side made headway. In our recent propaganda, the ICL has combined anti-imperialism with class independence. This dialectical synthesis can be achieved only by seeking to guide the struggles of the working class in a revolutionary direction starting from current conditions. Without this starting point, one is condemned to one of two pitfalls: abstract class purity that renounces the centrality of the anti-imperialist struggle, or capitulation to the current nationalist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle. We believe that previously we fell into the former and you the latter. These trends are two sides of the same coin and have plagued the Trotskyist movement since the death of its founder. A revolutionary answer to both is essential to reforging the Fourth International.

We look forward to engaging in further discussions with your organization.

---

Letter to the International Communist League

January 12, 2024

Dear comrades of the ICL,

We are serious about building an international revolutionary leadership. We believe that leadership building begins with the Program. We admire the seriousness of the ICL comrades’ response.

“The Struggle Against Liberalism”

“According to your letter, you have not yet reviewed our main conference document ‘The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power’. In this document we show how globalisation and the dominance of liberalism in the post-Soviet period are rooted in the hegemony of U.S. imperialism. From this we argue that the task of Marxists following 1991 was to fight to break the international working class from its liberal leadership whose politics reflected the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie.”

Our main interest was the change in ICL’s perspective on ‘Imperialism-National question-Anglo chauvinism’. So, as a comrade pointed out, “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power” were not examined. We read it again this time. It is a fairly extensive article that analyzes the situation after the collapse of the Soviet Union from various angles.

However, we still don’t understand the concept and use of the word “liberalism”, which is repeated about 100 times in the paper. In our view, the substance of this word is unclear.

Soviet Union, the international labor-capital relationship of force changed dramatically, which led to a major change in the ‘facial expression’ of the ruling class, i.e., in the way it governed and its attitude. In the absence of a powerful opponent, it felt like it had the world at its feet and became more belligerent in its colonization of the world. Meanwhile, within the imperialist bloc, including the U.S., the labor aristocracy that surrendered to capital grew even larger.

But we don’t think it’s anything more than a change in the attitudes of the ruling class as a result of a change in power relations, and yet, for the 100th time, the paper describes it as if a new ideology or ruling class has emerged. We are not sure ‘liberalism’ is the right word. We think it would be closer to the truth to describe it as a struggle against ‘the tendency of the labor aristocracy to support its own imperialism within imperialism’.

Class-versus-class Politics and the Bolshevik Group (BG)

“This is a big contradiction which we expect has fueled important illusions in bourgeois democracy among the working class. A Marxist party in Korea must be built on a materialist refutation of such reformist illusions.”

‘Class-versus-class Politics’ is one of iSt’s most cherished traditions. It has also been one of the central themes of our propaganda over the past two decades. Here is one of them.

‘Cups and Balls’ of the Capitalist Rule & ‘Friends of Capitalism’ within the Working Class

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&document_srl= 14964

Situation on the Korean Peninsula

“We would be very interested in knowing what you think of our document and how you understand the post-WWII history of Korea, its relation to U.S. imperialism, and the central obstacles to advancing working class revolution in the peninsula.”

We introduce two papers that present our analysis and position on this issue.

The Essence of Conflict on the Korean Peninsula and the Response of the Working Class

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?document_srl=9380&mid=board_ArAZ48

Our Position on 17th presidential election of South Korea

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=3&document_srl=6758

Groundless and Unreasonable Criticism

“Our initial impression is that your propaganda shares a similar non-revolutionary, rigid, formalism which we ourselves had to break from. Your organisation takes clear positions on specific questions, but we notice an absence of any concrete course of action for the proletariat, whether it is in broad strategic terms, or in the more short-term immediate sense. Based on the articles we have consulted thus far, we do not think you provide an answer to the question: ‘what is to be done?’

While you accurately relate many of the points in our new issue of Spartacist, the question of revolutionary leadership—the backbone of the whole issue—is singularly absent. For example, you do not mention that at the heart of our correction on permanent revolution is the question of communist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle.”

These are abstract criticisms without any basis. Since then, this kind of illogical and reckless criticism has been repeated several times. This type of illogic was also used by the two factions in the IBT before 2018 and the RR [Revolutionary Regroupment], when they were arguing against us. We judge it to be illogical because it could not find any significant logic to defend itself. If not, please provide reasons. Meanwhile, throughout this reply, we will refute the comrades’ criticism by providing evidences.

“To reject previous capitulations to western social democracy was only the first step in reasserting the revolutionary Trotskyist strategy for the neo-colonial world. The fight against imperialism must be at the centre of this strategy, but to be victorious it is necessary to break the hold of the national bourgeoisie which holds back national and social emancipation.

This is the key strategic problem for revolution in countries oppressed by imperialism. This is all to say that in discussing the various points of disagreements between our two organisations, our starting point is always to advance today the fight for a revolutionary leadership of the working class against their current misleaders, whether they are socialdemocratic, Stalinist, or Islamist.”

Presumably, with this reference, the ICL wants to paint us as having a ‘tendency to support local bourgeois forces politically as long as it is a national liberation struggle against imperialism’. This is repeated over and over again in subsequent letters.

The politics of class versus class is central to the victory of the working class revolution. That is why, where necessary, we have placed this issue at the forefront of our propaganda. This point is not missing from our propaganda not only in South Korea, but also in Palestine, Iran, Niger, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, etc.

Palestine

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=2&document_srl=11574

Kazakhstan

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=2&document_srl=12339

Ukraine and Russia

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&document_srl= 14582

Iran

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=3&document_srl=7351

Niger

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&document_srl=15316

Myanmar

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=2&document_srl=11491

Hong Kong

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?document_srl=7467&mid=board_ArAZ48 https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?document_srl=8155&mid=board_ArAZ48

Belarus

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?document_srl=11046&mid=board_ArAZ48

Venezuela

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?document_srl=7117&mid=board_FKwQ53

Iran

“You say nothing about what the tasks of communists were at the time. What should communists have done in Iran and internationally to prevent the Iranian revolution from leading to the triumph of Islamist reaction? This is the whole question. Since you provide no answer to this, you are left with choosing the lesser evil between the Shah and the Mullahs.”

It’s a ridiculous slander. The rebuttal and answer to this are contained in our article introduced above. Quotation is a bit long.

“Our position on the invasion, aimed at regime change in Iran, is almost the same as the situation in Venezuela: ‘Regardless of who leads that resistance, Iran and the world’s working class fight for the defeat of the U.S. imperialism and the victory of Iran. But the Iranian people’s will to oppose imperialism and to defend Iran can only be maximized in the socialist prospect. At the same time, the people of Iran and the oppressed nations can realize the dream of fundamental liberation from imperialistic barbarism only in the prospect of socialism. In this regard, the working class cannot have any political expectations or illusions on the present Islamic regime, the gatekeeper of capitalism.

The role of the pro-imperialist colonial system is to keep the excess exploitation and looting of imperial financial capital safe. As it is a parasitic and dependent regime from the very start, it is exceptionally corrupt and anti-democratic. Excess exploitation and tyranny inevitably produce resistance. Social discontent that had been accumulating exploded in the people’s uprising in 1978-79, which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty.

The victory gave the Iranian people a strong chance to move on to socialism. The Iranian working class was not a spectator in the uprising. The general strike of Iranian key industrial workers, led by the oil industry, has become a decisive lever in the overthrow of the dynasty. Shuras, a national strike committee established in the course of the revolution, was a bud of the worker’s Soviet. If there had been a leadership providing revolutionary guidance like Russia in 1917, Iran could have moved on to the socialist revolution following the overthrow of the pro-imperialist dynasty.

…It was necessary for the Iranian working class to get rid of its illusion on Khomeini and to clearly recognize the fact that he was the enemy of the class. It had to be politically prepared for the forthcoming class rift and struggle. It was a goal that could only be achieved by building a revolutionary vanguard like Russia’s Bolsheviks in 1917.

The reactionary nature of the Islamic regime

Iran’s Islamic regime emerged in the wake of the national liberation struggle of the colonial working class [and] the oppressed people, it is a Bonapartist capitalist government that seeks to block the socialist revolution and compromise with imperialism. It is a tyrannical regime that oppresses the working class and brutally suppresses political freedom. It is a theocratic state that enforces feudal lifestyle to women, as symbolized by hijab coercion. We do not have any political expectation that this Islamic regime could do anything for the interest of the working class. Though it is now slightly hidden in the face of imperialist aggression, but a more fundamental adversary lies between classes. As history shows in the 1970s and '80s, Iran’s Islamic regime is engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle today, like Venezuela’s Maduro regime, but the very fact that it is the head of the capitalist order will soon erode or interrupt the struggle. That is why Iran’s working class must launch an organizational and political armament for the future overthrow of the bourgeois system, along with engaging in a joint military front today.

To realize that prospect, the condition of the Leninist-Trotskyist revolutionary leadership formed by the program of the permanent revolution, which uncompromisingly maintains the principle of ‘class-to-class’ and guides the energy of the anti-imperialist liberation struggle to the socialist revolution, must be met.”

“It is true that the ousting of the Shah was a major blow to U.S. imperialism. But the starting point for Marxists is not simply to inflict blows against imperialism, but to defeat imperialism through socialist revolution. a) If we evaluate the events as Marxists, we must ask not whether or not imperialism was dealt a blow, but whether or not the position of the international working class was strengthened. b) According to this criterion, it is clear that the answer is no. Working class organisations were crushed, Islamic law imposed, and women and minorities to this day suffer brutal oppression. In fact, by decapitating the powerful Iranian proletariat, the Khomeini regime inflicted a major blow to the fight against imperialism in the entire region.”

“It is because you lack this crucial element—an independent path for the working class-that you must downplay the disastrous effects of Khomeini’s triumph in the name of “fighting imperialism”. As we shall see, this is a constant problem in your propaganda.”

Although they say they have reflected on their past mistakes, ICL still thinks with wrong inertia. The pressure of the past has weakened, but the pressure of the present is strong. In the critical situation of 1979, the ICL chose a neutral/abstentionist stance on the Iran issue, ultimately siding with imperialism. Today, the ICL still defends itself with a seemingly plausible ultra-leftist position and tries to attack ours, that is, the tactics of Lenin and Trotsky.

In Russia, the February Revolution created a situation that could lead to the October Revolution. However, without the right tactics for the July period, the Kornilov coup in August, and the October uprising, the working class’s seizure of power was impossible.

In Iran, the overthrow of the Shah’s dynasty in 1979 and the collapse of the military on February 11 raised the question of which class would take power in Iran. However, class collaborationism handed power over to the capitalist class, that is, Islamists, in the subsequent power struggle.

The Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973 and the coup in Egypt in 2013 were events that occurred in a similar relationship of forces as in August 1917 in Russia.

Although it faced a favorable situation created by the radical advance of the working class, it subsequently lost the power struggle due to the absence or incompetence of the working class leadership. Russia was the only exception. As a result, the working class that advanced suffered a severe blow and retreated.

So what is the cause? We look to the working class leadership who lost the class struggle. The capitalist class, which came to power due to the incompetence of the working class leadership, cannot be held responsible for counterrevolutionary policies. This is because it is quite natural for counter-revolutionary forces to pursue counter-revolutionary policies. This is the ABC of Marxism.

Nevertheless, ICL and others still use this absurd logic. This is because there is no other way to hide one’s opportunism in important political situations by equating the oppressor and the oppressed camps and abstaining.

Ukraine

“First, it is not true that we deny a) the right of self-determination of the Russian people of Donbass. Since 2014 the population of Donbass b) has been moving towards wanting integration into the Russian federation. If the current war was simply about the selfdetermination of Donbass, we would have no problem in having a military side with Russia.

It is impossible to deny that these referendums only took place in the Russian-occupied parts of these territories—in which much of the population has been displaced—and cannot be considered a clear representation of popular sentiment.”

The ICL seems to imply that self-determination in Ukraine’s Donbas region is the result of Russian oppression. Therefore, ICL seems to argue that a) and b) are different.

Just as Lenin compared the ‘right of national self-determination’ to the right to divorce, self-determination is also the ‘right to self-defense’ to escape from unhappy and violent situation. Would the ICL support the 2008 South Ossetia’s right to secede from Georgia, the 2014 decision to annex Crimea to Russia, and the 2014 secession of the Donbass regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, when Russian military did not occupy, from Ukraine? And whose side will the ICL stand when the Georgian or Ukrainian governments in Kiev violate their national self-determination?

“The problem is that in the current context the national conflict between Russians and Ukrainians cannot simply be resolved through the victory of one side. Whichever side wins, the result will be the national oppression of the other side.”

By concealing the imperialist rule hidden behind the ethnic conflict, the oppressed and the oppressed forces are mixed together. This logic is a typical way to hide opportunism, especially Anglo-chauvinism, that is subservient to one’s own imperialism. That logic is being repeated again.

“What you totally disappear from our position is our main slogan “turn the guns around”. This is a not a call to be “neutral” as you claim, but a call to unite the Ukrainian and Russian workers in revolutionary struggle against their own governments and imperialism. Only then can the national question be resolved in a just manner.”

It’s not that we don’t know. We are well aware that the iSt tradition frequently refers to Lenin’s dual defeatist policy. We know very well that the revolutionary line applied in the fight between ‘imperialism and imperialism’ was applied to the conflict between ‘imperialist and colony’ and that the iSt tendencies often took the side of imperialism.

The following introductory article is a document containing criticism of it.

“Worst Enemy of the Working Class” Capitulation to Imperialism, Neutrality and ‘BT’

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=2&document_srl=11718

In addition, you should also refer to “Ultralefts in General and Incurable Ultralefts in Particular” and “On the Sino-Japanese War” introduced in this document.

“Once more, the fundamental problem with your position is that you do not indicate in any way how it serves to advance the struggle for social revolution in Ukraine, in Russia, in Korea, or anywhere else. Any serious revolutionary organisation must be able to answer the following questions in the context of the current war: 1) How to forge unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers? 2) How to advance international socialist revolution in the context of this conflict? 3) How to break the working class from its social-chauvinist leadership, in Ukraine, Russia and the rest of the world?”

“We believe that you do not provide an adequate response to any of these questions.”

Let’s point out two things. First, the unreasonable generalizations and childish logic that are almost rude. Second, we wonder if these comrades have actually read our writings on Ukraine.

We hope that many ICL comrades will read our article, find our actual errors, and criticize us based on evidence.

Ukraine war, Opportunism and the Working Class: Disruption of the Imperialist order and the Reorganization of the International Proletarian Leadership

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&document_srl=14582

Palestine

“On the question of Israel and Palestine we would like to start by stating that we agree with many of the criticisms made of the Spartacist tendency in your article “Palestinian Liberation and ‘Social Patriotism’”. We thought it was prescient on your part to point to the 1973 exchange with Samarakkody. Our international would certainly have gained from considering your arguments on the question more seriously in our previous discussions.”

We have conducted considerable research since 2013 to find the roots of the IBT opportunism. And the results of the research, lots of documents were written. It is good to hear the approval and praise of you comrades. We think it is a bit of compensation for the arduous, even painful research.

“The true nature of our disagreement lies not in taking a military side against Israel in general, but rather on the specific targeting of civilians in the 7 October offensive of Hamas. You correctly identify the targeting of civilians as a difference, but then wrongly present this as the grounds for our supposed refusal to take a military side in general. This distorts our position. Let us focus on the actual difference: the targeting of Israeli civilians.”

When the colonial people resist imperialist invasion, we stand on the side of victory for the colonial people, regardless of who leads the resistance. This is a tactic learned from Lenin and Trotsky, and consistent with the historical and international cause of the working class.

However, the title of ICL’s document on the Palestine war on October 10, 2023 is “Only death and defeat with Hamas!”

In any case, Hamas is leading the local people’s resistance against imperialism, just like the Ethiopian Selassie (1936), the Chinese Chiang Kai-shek (1937), and the Brazilian quasi-fascist Vargas (1938, Trotsky). And the number of Israeli citizens targeted by Hamas is very limited in number and lethality.

In our view, Palestinian Hamas appears no more harmful or evil to its “citizens” than Selassie, Chiang Kai-shek or Vargas.

And suddenly, the comrade asks, “What about a nuclear strike on Seoul?” In what context would such a nuclear strike be likely?

In 2017, North Korea, cornered by U.S. imperialist pressure, mentioned nuclear weapons as a means of defense. There is virtually no reason for North Korea to use nuclear weapons preemptively. However, if the U.S. imperialists are really strangling North Korea to kill it completely, North Korea, in a life-or-death crisis, could send nuclear weapons to Washington, New York, or Seoul (although Pyeongtaek, home to the world’s largest U.S. military base, seems like a better target). If you fall into the water, grab at straws. Any creature on the verge of death uses any means possible. It is not a matter of reason or morality. By what justification can it be prevented?

“Whether it be Israel, Korea, or 1944 Nazi Germany, we oppose the specific targeting of civilian populations irrespective of how imbued they are with chauvinism at a particular time.”

And who is innocent? The Israeli people, who are proud of the first-class citizen status they gained through the US and their own invasion of Palestine, and who support a government that plunders the lives, land, and resources of Palestinian Arabs? What about the Israeli settlers who arm themselves and take over the land after when the military evicts the local population? Those who cheer while watching the shelling of Gaza from a hill? Those who enjoyed festivals while mocking the local residents who originally lived on land acquired through invasion?

Which citizen are you talking about? Can you say that you know and sympathize with imperialist invasion, over-exploitation, and massacre, that you base your life on the kingdom built by imperialist invasion, that you are satisfied with it, and that you support your country’s victory, and that the invaders are not exploiters just because you are the working class? Are the European social democrats and the working class of 1914 and the American Shachtmanites and the working class who sympathized with them in the late 1930s innocent?

Through whose eyes do you comrades view the conflicts?

If you were the leader of the Palestinian resistance, what tactics would you choose?

“The targeting of Israeli civilians by Hamas does not advance the liberation of Palestine. It serves only to further consolidate the support of the Israeli population to the oppression of Palestinians. The strong popular support for the current bombing of Gaza in Israel-as opposed to the 1982 intervention in Lebanon for example-shows this clearly. a) So long as Israel is united internally, it cannot be defeated militarily. Any serious strategy for Palestinian liberation must seek to exploit and deepen polarisations within Israel. b) The Israeli working class may be deeply imbued with chauvinism, but its own condition is undermined by the oppression of Palestine. c) It has an objective interest in joining together with the Arab masses against the Zionist ruling class and imperialism. This is the only road.”

Once again, you interpenetrate the oppressor and the oppressed through superficially radical rhetoric.

a) It is not true. Israel could be defeated. The U.S. military was powerful, but it lost wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan (2021). If imperialist support is cut off, Israel will soon become isolated and the possibility of defeat will rapidly increase. The same goes for Ukraine.

b) Explain how its own condition is undermined. And when a war is tilted toward defeat, like the Vietnam War or the Algerian War, we will finally realize the “objective interests” mentioned in c).

The awakening of American workers finally became a reality when 50,000 soldiers returned from the Vietnam War dead. The awakening of the French working class was finally heightened when France was losing its colonies after being defeated in the Algerian War.

Comrades shout, “Only death and defeat with Hamas!” But we shout, “Palestine Arab’s victory against imperialist and Israeli aggression!” A military victory for Palestine, currently led by Hamas, would accelerate the awakening of the Israeli working class and unite the two working classes. It will encourage the anti-imperialist resistance of the oppressed people and promote the global socialist struggle.

“In our recent propaganda, the ICL has combined anti-imperialism with class independence…. Without this starting point, one is condemned to one of two pitfalls: abstract class purity that renounces the centrality of the anti-imperialist struggle, or capitulation to the current nationalist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle. We believe that previously we fell into the former and you the latter.”

As explained before, this is unreasonable logic. Comrades are baseless. Because it can’t be found. To attack us, you would have to deny both Lenin and Trotsky at the same time. And in fact, on the ‘issues of imperialism—national liberation—permanent revolution’, the iSt tradition has denied the Lenin and Trotsky traditions for decades. It has succumbed to the sentiments and pressure of the labor aristocracy within imperialism and has consequently adopted a policy of surrender to imperialism.

---

We believe that ICL’s 2017 and 2023 conferences provide clues to reflection on past mistakes. And we believe that self-criticism provides the possibility for Marxists in the imperialist opportunism to return to the revolutionary camp. That is why we are serious about our debate with the ICL.

Lastly, we introduce The Exchanges with Revolutionary Regroupment: Imperialism, National Liberation and Permanent Revolution

https://bolky.jinbo.net/index.php?mid=board_ArAZ48&page=2&document_srl=9417

The article contains our analysis of the theme of ‘imperialism, national liberation and permanent revolution’ and our refutation of the core logic of the iSt tradition. We think it also will be meaningful in the debate with IG on the 13th.

If possible, we hope that this document we are sending today will enable us to participate in the discussion 13th Jan.

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Letter to the Bolshevik Group

11 March

Dear comrades,

Following our initial exchange of letters, we have had three lengthy discussions which focused on the questions of Ukraine and Palestine. At the end of our last discussion, we both agreed that we are at an impasse. The following are our views on the nature of our disagreements and the obstacles to further discussions.

Our many differences with the Bolshevik Group of Korea (BG) all stem from our different approach to revolutionary leadership. We both agree that the fight against imperialism must be at the center of our perspective. But for us the main impediment in neocolonial and other nationally oppressed countries to advancing the struggle for national liberation is the bourgeois nationalist leadership of these movements. Their nationalist program holds back and betrays the struggle for national emancipation, from Palestine, Kurdistan and the Donbass to Korea. That is why we direct most of our efforts towards breaking the influence of nationalism on the working class, to unchain the struggle for national liberation. This is the task of revolutionary leadership in the neocolonial world according to us.

While we focus on providing a revolutionary path for national liberation, you focus solely on the objective process. For you, dealing blows to imperialism stands above the methods and principles of the class struggle. Whether it is in Palestine, Ukraine, Iran or anywhere else, you can state that the nationalist leaderships are reactionary but cannot show how their program restrains and betrays the anti-imperialist struggle. Your fundamental mistake is that you do not see how the principles of the class struggle are essential not only for the ultimate defeat of world imperialism but for dealing the harshest blows to its ambitions in the here and now.

This different starting point does not per se preclude holding further discussions; indeed it is the same difference we have with most parties and groups in the neocolonial world. For us the impediment to pursing discussions is rather your explicitly anti-proletarian and nationalist position most clearly expressed in the following statement:

“Being a tribune to all oppressed people, the socialist-oriented world working class will never tolerate the sacrifice of innocent people. However, if the people who serve as supporters of imperialism confront the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle, we recognize that the retribution against them is justified. Only the working people in oppressing countries, actively fighting for the liberation of the oppressed people against their own invader government, would be considered on the same side. We consider them the only innocent citizens who have nothing to do with imperialism. Only they can be granted the right to live in peace and safety.”

In your letter of 12 January and in our discussions, comrades of the BG asserted that our charges of bourgeois nationalism were baseless and demanded we provide proof to substantiate our claim. The above quote is all the proof we need: you cannot defend it and be a Marxist. By justifying “retribution” against the entire “people” of imperialist and imperialist-aligned countries, you explicitly repudiate the most basic principle of internationalism: “workers of the world unite.” Your position makes the entire working class of the West (and all their allies) responsible for the crimes of their social-chauvinist leaders and bourgeois rulers.

The Marxist position seeks to break the working class politically from its social-chauvinist leaders. In contrast, you argued in our calls that social-chauvinism can only be defeated by inflicting “retribution” or “blows” on the people of imperialist countries. This is entirely consistent with the above quote. Your comrade T put it most crudely when he stated that “they [workers of oppressor countries] must face the consequences.” This utterly reactionary position can only strengthen social-chauvinism, divide the proletariat and benefit the imperialists! For us, a rejection of the above position is a precondition for further discussions.

For Leninists, it is ABC that the world proletariat can only unite if the proletariat of an oppressor nation stands for the full national liberation of the people under the boot of its “own” ruling class. But there is another side to the question: the proletariat of the oppressed countries must strive for full unity with the proletariat of oppressor countries. This is how Lenin explained the question:

“The Socialists of the oppressed nations, on the other hand, must particularly fight for and maintain complete, absolute unity (also organizational) between the workers of the oppressed nation and the workers of the oppressing nation. Without such unity it will be impossible to maintain an independent proletarian policy and class solidarity with the proletariat of other countries in the face of all the subterfuge, treachery and trickery of the bourgeoisie; for the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations always converts the slogan of national liberation into a means for deceiving the workers; in internal politics it utilizes these slogans as a means for concluding reactionary agreements with the bourgeoisie of the ruling nation (for instance, the Poles in Austria and Russia, who entered into pacts with reaction in order to oppress the Jews and the Ukrainians); in the realm of foreign politics it strives to enter into pacts with one of the rival imperialist powers for the purpose of achieving its own predatory aims (the policies of the small states in the Balkans, etc.).”

There is not the slightest shadow of this perspective in your propaganda. And how could there be? How could you talk of unity with the proletariat of oppressor countries if you think that “blows” against the working class of an oppressor nation are the only way to break the hold of social-chauvinism?

As in all questions, your approach is objectivist and doctrinaire. You observe that the working class in imperialist countries supports social-chauvinist leaders (in fact, this is the case in all countries!) and that this support has a material basis in the superprofits drawn from imperialist exploitation. From this you conclude that only a change in objective circumstances (“blows”) can break the chains of social-chauvinism. From a correct observation you draw sweeping conclusions which disappear that there remains an irreconcilable conflict between the working class and the bourgeoisie despite the imperialist superprofits given to the labor aristocracy. In fact, the world situation makes clearer every day that the working class in the West (including its upper layers) is itself suffering economically and facing disaster from the actions of its imperialist rulers.

The task of revolutionaries in imperialist countries is to exploit the contradiction between the fundamental interest of the working class—which is to overthrow imperialism—and the program of the social-chauvinist leaders of the working class—which through the short-term corruption of certain segments of the workers movement subordinates the entire proletariat to imperialism. Since you do not think that political struggle is the decisive factor in breaking the proletariat of the West from social-chauvinism, you put all your eggs in the basket of the nationalist bourgeoisies of oppressed countries dealing “blows” to imperialism. That is why you have no strategic differences with the Kremlin or Hamas in the conduct of their respective wars.

At bottom, you reject the fundamental conclusions Lenin drew from the betrayal of the Second International. When most working-class parties of Europe lined up behind their own bourgeoisies in the carnage of World War I, Lenin did not conclude that the workers of imperialist countries needed to suffer “retribution” but that the workers movement needed to split from social-chauvinism politically and organizationally. It is to effectuate this split that he founded the Third International, to unite the proletariat of the world in struggle against imperialism. It is this perspective that the ICL follows.

We sincerely hope that you will reconsider your views. If you reject your reactionary anti-internationalist stance, we would be happy to renew and broaden our discussions. But until then we see no point in pursuing discussions with a group that in the name of anti-imperialism justifies indiscriminate “retribution” against the entire people of imperialist and imperialist-allied countries.