International Summer School in Australia

"The school will be a milestone in the international renaissance of Marxism"

Interview with Australian Socialist Equality Party National Secretary Nick Beams

From Saturday January 3 to Saturday January 10, 1998, the Socialist Equality Party of Australia will host an International Summer School, bringing together leaders of the Fourth International from around the world to deliver a series of eight lectures on the critical political and social questions that confront mankind at the end of the 20th century. In the following interview, SEP National Secretary Nick Beams outlines the scope and significance of the School.

Could you explain the aim and purpose of the International Summer School?

The title of the School -- Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century -- expresses our aim: to undertake the political rearming of the workers' movement through an understanding of the strategic experiences through which it has passed in this century of wars, revolution and counter-revolution.

This century has been described as the bloodiest and most tumultuous and convulsive in the history of mankind. Yet it is clear that none of its problems have been resolved. All the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist mode of production that have given rise to war, massive unemployment, social inequality, national and ethnic conflicts, to name just some of the myriad of problems that beset mankind, are maturing and sharpening once again.

At the same time, the political and intellectual scene is marked by a tremendous crisis of perspective. Broad masses, whether in the advanced countries -- facing downsizing, cuts to social welfare services, hospitals, schools and education -- or the workers and oppressed masses in the backward countries and former colonies, have no coherent programme with which to fight the devastation being imposed upon them.

In the advanced capitalist countries and the oppressed countries alike all demands for social improvement or even the maintenance of existing living standards are met with the same reply: there is no alternative to what is taking place, this is what the market deems necessary.

Is there an alternative to the present order? How are the interests of broad masses to be taken forward? What are the origins of the present crisis of political perspective and indeed of thought itself?

These are the issues which will be addressed at this school.

What is the relationship of the Trotskyist movement to this crisis and how does it envisage the working class overcoming the political problems it confronts?

In the recent period we have been subjected to a massive ideological campaign by the bourgeoisie and its apologists. From the academic rostrum to the pulpit, in newspaper columns or on television shows, they declare that Marxism is dead and finished.

But nowhere do they ever explain what it is about Marxism that is no longer relevant or has died. This is because as soon as one examines the present crisis one finds the most profound historical verification of Marxism. Let me point to just a few examples.

Marx explained in Capital that the progress of capitalist production was marked, inevitably and inexorably, by the fantastic accumulation of wealth at one pole and the accumulation of poverty, misery and degradation at the other.

For decades this general tendency was covered over, but today this growing social polarisation is the most dominant feature of economic and social life the world over. It is commented upon in an endless stream of economic reports from the United Nations and other institutions.

Marx also explained that the inevitable tendency of capitalist production was to turn the mass of the world's population into proletarians, that is wage workers, with nothing to sell but their labour power. This prediction has certainly been fulfilled in the last decades.

We now have a truly international working class which works for the same companies, whose lives are dominated by the same financial institutions and whose labour is intimately connected in a way never seen before in history.

The programme and perspective of Marxism have been carried forward in this century above all through the struggle of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and then Leon Trotsky.

Leon Trotsky is in many ways the most decisive figure of Marxism this century because he had to deal with and tackle the problem of the growth and development of bureaucracy in the workers' movement. Lenin only saw the beginnings of that problem in 1923-24. It was Trotsky and the International Left Opposition who took forward the struggle against Stalinism from 1923 onwards.

We are told that Marxism has died because the bureaucratised regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe disintegrated. In fact, their demise is not the refutation of Marxism but its most powerful vindication.

For many decades, the Trotskyist movement, on the basis of a Marxist analysis, explained that these national-based regimes and their programme of "socialism in one country" were inherently unviable and would either be overthrown by the working class or would collapse and open the way for the restoration of capitalism.

The school will begin with an assessment of the role of Leon Trotsky because the problems faced by the working class, the crisis of political perspective, are first and foremost a direct product of the violent suppression of Marxism and the destruction of its cadre carried out by the Stalinist apparatus.

The murder of the Marxist intelligentsia during the 1930s, culminating in the assassination of Trotsky himself, had incalculable consequences. What would have been the consequences for modern physics if figures like Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein had been murdered? What would be the state of theoretical physics today had they and countless others been eliminated?

But the leading intellectual and political representatives of Marxism, the flower of a whole generation, were murdered and this has had the most far-reaching consequences for the development of political perspective and the intellectual climate in general.

The resolution of this crisis of political perspective requires the most thorough examination of the experiences of this century on the basis of the programme of Marxism, carried forward today by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Why should working people and youth attend this school?

This school is not some kind of academic event. It is concerned with the most decisive and important problems that confront the working class and youth all over the world.

There are no short-cuts or easy solutions to these problems. They will not be resolved through a few cheap slogans or clever tactics. The school will tackle the most central problem of all -- the lack of a political perspective and historical understanding among broad masses.

It is clear that the working class all over the world will be faced, in the coming period, with enormous social and political upheavals.

This is already apparent in the crisis of governments around the globe and in the crisis of the international financial system, which breaks out periodically -- whether it be in the Mexican peso crisis, nervousness on the stock exchanges, the collapse of the South East Asian currencies, banking crises, the breakdown of the welfare state and so on.

There are many indications of the instability of the entire capitalist order. Enormous social upheavals are on the agenda. The truly critical question is what will be their outcome?

That will depend on how they are assessed and the extent to which class conscious workers and youth are able to bring a socialist perspective and outlook to the struggles into which they will inevitably be thrown.

At the heart of this perspective must be the understanding that all the problems confronting the working class are international in scope. Not only are there no solutions within the framework of the national state, the nation state system of capitalism is at the root of the crisis.

Therefore, the School will in every sense of the word be an international event. We already know that visitors and delegations are coming from other parts of the world and their presence and participation will be extremely valuable in developing the work of the School.

Could you tell us something about the lectures?

The opening lecture, to be given by David North, National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, will establish the framework for the whole of the school. It will deal with Leon Trotsky and the fate of Marxism in the 20th century. North is uniquely qualified to speak on this subject. He has an intimate knowledge of the history of the Marxist movement and is the author of The Heritage We Defend, an in-depth study of the history of the Fourth International.

The second lecture on the globalisation of production and its historical significance, which I will be giving, will examine the historical development of capitalist economy in this century and draw out how the economic processes that we now see unfolding -- broadly described as globalisation -- are laying the foundations for a new period of socialist revolution.

A further lecture by David North will examine the lessons of the century-long conflict between reform and revolution. At the end of last century, Edward Bernstein, one of the leaders of German social democracy, advanced the proposition that Marxism had to abandon its theory of the breakdown or crisis of capitalism and confine itself to a programme of social reform. The opportunists have added nothing new to this thesis in the past 100 years, but the experiences through which the working class has passed in this time provide the basis for a thorough-going assessment of this issue.

Peter Schwarz, the Secretary of the International Committee, will give an important lecture on Stalinism, in particular, the rise and fall of the East German Stalinist regime, the DDR. He is the author of a book on this subject and participated directly in the events of 1989-1990. His lecture will bring first hand insights into this decisive question.

Two lectures will review the significance of one of Trotsky's greatest contributions to Marxism -- the theory of permanent revolution, first advanced in 1905. Coincidentally it was put forward the same year as Einstein published his relativity theory.

Just as Einstein's theory transformed physics, the theory of permanent revolution was no less decisive for the science of Marxism. It encompasses the most basic issues of a socialist perspective.

The school will undertake an assessment of the experiences of India and China -- 50 years after independence in India and the coming to power of the Maoist forces in China. This lecture will be given by the General Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka, Wije Dias, a comrade with more than three decades' experience in the Trotskyist movement and who has taken part in all the major struggles of the working class in Sri Lanka and the Indian sub-continent.

We will also be drawing an historical balance sheet of petty-bourgeois nationalism, above all the theories of Castroism, which claimed to offer an alternative or substitute for Marxism.

Today in Australia we find the Democratic Socialist Party and the Green Left Weekly, together with the Stalinists of The Guardian newspaper, promoting seminars and celebrations of Che Guevara. Bill Vann, the international editor of the International Workers Bulletin in the US will give a lecture on Castroism and the other radical nationalist movements in Latin America.

He is thoroughly familiar with the history of all these tendencies and the disastrous consequences which the theories of Castroism and petty-bourgeois guerrillaism have produced for the working class and oppressed masses of Latin America.

The question of the relationship of the arts to socialism and to the striving for a better world, and the relationship of the arts of this century, particularly film, to socialist revolution are no less significant issues.

The crisis of intellectual thought is not confined to politics, but extends to the arts. There is a profound connection between social and political struggles and the achievements made in all the artistic fields. These questions will be the subject of a lecture to be given by David Walsh, the arts editor of the International Workers Bulletin.

The final two lectures at the school will concern crucial questions of programme and perspective. They will be given by David North. The first will be an assessment of the 150 year history of the trade unions. Workers everywhere are confronted with the following question: what is the root cause of the betrayal of their old organisations and above all the trade unions? Why is it that the trade unions not only do not even defend workers' wages, social and working conditions, but play the most active role in destroying and undermining them?

To any worker who thinks about this issue, the crisis goes far beyond the rottenness of this or that individual leader. This rottenness is an expression of more profound objective processes which have to be examined.

The school will conclude with a lecture on social equality and the programme of the revolutionary party and will take up very concretely the programmatic demands of the International Committee of the Fourth International and the Socialist Equality Party.

It will deal with the struggle for socialism, its relationship to the fight for social equality, the advancement of struggles around immediate demands of the working class and their relationship to the fight for political power and the establishment of a socialist society.

The task of the school, at every level, will be to arm a new generation of socialist fighters with a clear perspective. All the lecturers are actively involved, day in and day out, with the fundamental problems of the working class in their role as leaders of sections of our movement around the world.

In that capacity they will bring to this school tremendous insights into the problems confronted by the working class and the richness of the entire experience of the international Trotskyist movement.

We believe, therefore, that the school will be a milestone in the international renaissance of Marxism which is essential if the political, economic and social crisis confronting the working class is to be resolved.

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