Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency

by Samuel Trachtenberg

Posted 12/28/08.

The following resignation letter was sent on 9/25/08. It has been slightly edited for spelling and grammar.

Comrades,

This resignation letter should not come as a surprise for you. While I have had problems with and criticisms of the IBT leadership in past years, for well over a year now I have been constantly butting heads with it over the past and future development of the IBT, and it's unending streak of cliquism, intriguing, maneuvering and overall disloyal methods through which the troika (Riley, Logan, and Hannah) has kept it's control of the group for all these years.

I remain convinced of the necessity and possibility of overthrowing capitalist society, but that possibility can only be achieved through regrouping the subjective revolutionaries around the world on a sound programmatic basis to rebuild the Fourth International. However formally correct it's paper program may be for the moment, history has shown that the sort of group which the IBT has developed into, a static, stagnating group dominated by a Machiavellian, deeply entrenched permanent leadership, can never have younger comrades grow, develop, and therefore play little role in that process. (We lost the Argentine comrades primarily for those reasons, and it's only a matter of time that the groups current Latin American sympathizers will discover this for themselves.) Daniel De Leon was also quite "orthodox" in his day, but he lead a rigid hyper-centralized authoritarian sect whose contribution was a mainly literary one. It was not an accident that very few from an SLP history participated in founding the CPUSA.

In that light perhaps the situation of New Zealand is most instructive. From being the largest ostensibly Trotskyist group it [the New Zealand section] has dwindled to 4 semi-active geriatrics. I suspect the reason being that it's reputation is such that most NZ activists would not want to touch it with a ten foot pole. Logan's and Hannah's past reputation as SL leaders, combined with their apparent failure to fully break from their past practices (as expressed by the atrocious Comcrit sessions and Peter De Waal purge (see appendixes 1 and 2)) are widely known in NZ left circles and discussed on various discussion groups etc. While initially there was some protest amongst the ranks when these incidents occurred, they were able to get away with it, and the leadership's ability to get away with subsequent atrocious treatment of other critics, whether one agrees with their criticisms or not, set a bad pattern which the group lives with today. I strongly urge comrades to read documents on the Bay Area purge (which they can order from the SL as #8 in their Hate Trotskyism series), one does not need to be a fan of Gerald or Fred to be disturbed at the Zinovievite manner the leadership dealt with them. Trotsky dealt with such things radically differently, as anyone who reads "Struggle in the French Section", where similar issues of "popular" press combined within discipline was in controversy, can see.

But while some of these developments happened even before I was in, I can still say that the IBT today is a radically different group than the one I joined in 1994. Until 1998, when our last factional struggle happened, the IBT was a group brimming with debates and line-ups. At the North American conference I attended after joining Tom and Bill were in a minority on many questions even. But it has been 10 yearssince our last factional struggle with Jim Creegan's followers and Ian Donovan.

This is how the group viewed the issue in the past when it happened to the SL

"In the shadow world which increasingly constitutes the real internal life of the SL/US the leadership occasionally feels it necessary to reply to doubts, questions and criticisms which have never been explicitly articulated by anyone but which are thought to lurk in the minds of many. In the aftermath of the Gordon affair, Seymour churned out an internal article entitled "Comrade Robertson and the Spartacist tendency" in which he took up the thorny question of why the last faction fight in the SL occurred in 1968. Seymour asserts that "In a homogeneous organization factional struggle almost always occurs only when changed objective circumstances require a fundamental change in political line or organizational perspectives. " (SL IDB No. 30, page 44). He uses the example of the Bolshevik party which was "demonstratably not a cult nor personalist organization. At every major turn Lenin encountered resistance or outright opposition from among the leading cadre." The fact that this has not been the case in the SL/US for ten (now fourteen) years asserts Seymour:

"is conditioned by the absence of objective circumstances which required major changes or breakthroughs in political line or unanticipated organizational turns....

"Our tendency has existed in an organizational framework which has limited it to propagating the Trotskyist program and worldview... . [the SL/US] has never seriously challenged, even episodically, the bureaucratic leadership of the working class...."

"Very neat....all factional struggles in the iSt await the day when the organization wins a mass base in the working class."

http://www.bolshevik.org/ETB/ET_Declaration.html

Yet when I raised this issue (along with many other similar ones) comrades give the same response Seymour did, combined with a gross campaign to convince me that my criticisms stem from mental illness.While I have a history of depression I am not insane and am perfectly capable of recognizing reality and the leaderships attempt to use the same devices it's used with others. Ian Donovan, who raised unsupportable criticisms on the issue of the popular front was treated to a similar ploy. After leaving our group when the leadership undemocratically announced his views would not be discussed for 2-4 years until our next conference, we responded with snide insinuations externally, and explicit ones internally, that his report of what happened was also a product of mental illness. Yet his report was accurate and while Ian had a history of anger management problems, he also was not insane. One of the leaderships corrupt hatchet men, Jason Wright, himself had a history of his previous group, the Revolutionary Workers League, campaigning to convince him his correct criticisms were a product of mental illness (see appendix 3). How he can look at himself in the mirror today being complicit in a similar campaign I do not know. The term for such practices is "gaslighting" and I'd urge comrades to do a Google search on it. The fact that Bill Logan, a mental health "professional" , has used his credentials for such disgusting factional purposes magnifies the corruption involved.

The incident that finally forced me to confront the issue head on happened two weeks ago. I received an e-mail from Tom telling me he wanted to talk to me. Since I was quite angry over the iec's [International Executive Committees's] last provocation in attempting to bring me to heel, I told him to send me an e-mail and that I would respond, that I was overwhelmingly stressed at the moment and didn't want to deal with more of it needlessly. Tom's response was to inform me that I did not make the rules, he did, and that I was under discipline to call him. I responded that I assumed this involved some security issue or something similar that could not be discussed via e-mail, since otherwise the demand did not amount to any sort of legitimate operational discipline but an exercise in establishing psychological obedience of the sort the SL engaged in, and that otherwise it would be smart for him to e-mail me, since it's never a good idea for those who have lost all moral authority to engage in threats. He responded by continuing to demand I call. When I did he informed me that if he, Mr. Big Shot "Leader"", told me to call, I better call, and proceeded to arrogantly inform me that I "shouldn't be too surprised if in the not too distant future" I see myself "forced to leave the group" followed by one of his snide "heh heh"s. Whether the intent was to provoke me to quit, engage in bureaucratic intimidation, or most likely a statement of future intent made in a moment of uncontrolled bureaucratic arrogance, it forced me to personally confront the fact that if such an abusive piece of garbage could be the main undisputed and unquestioned leader of a group, it meant it had no revolutionary future. In the end the issue he had to discuss could have been e-mailed. His response was that "he didn't feel like it."

I deeply value the past historical contributions of the IBT and would seek to continue it's work. But a continuation is not a repetition and the group that I (and others) will be forming will be careful to not repeat it's mistakes. Comrades can read more on the web site www.regroupment. org which will be online shortly. I call on others in the IBT to join me since I do not believe that the IBT leadership is reformable at this stage, nor do I believe that the deeply necessary rank and file insurrection the group needs is likely in historical junctures like ours, these occur usually as a reflection of rising class struggle in the broader society, just like the pacification of the IBT ranks reflect that difficult period through which the IBT has suffered in it's 27 years of inability to break out of it's hyper-marginalized existence. But for those who disagree I invite you to attempt one. If you succeed before the rot reaches it's formal program I and others who join with me will be quite happy to fuse our forces. More likely the leadership will marginalize you through it's incessant behind the scenes maneuvers and whispering campaigns, combined with organizational repression until you leave demoralized and broken, which Jim Robertson used to say explicitly was the way to deal with oppositionists. Those who try and like me remain determined to be revolutionaries are invited to contact the new group I will participate in forming. I am confident of it's future.

Samuel Trachtenberg

P.S. While the new group will have a polemical focus, it will not be a narrowly IBT centered one. I will not be forming an "external tendency." While such an orientation made sense for a mass party involved in day to day combat like the Communist International, it doesn't for a purely literary group with under 40 people worldwide. That orientation did not make sense for a group like SL either and we've never been able to break that narrow focus. That is a lesson I have learned. But I will write polemics with the IBT when the need arises and certainly respond to any accusations. A larger historical analysis than the one presented in this letter will be forthcoming.

Appendix 1: Posting on alt.politics.socialism.trotsky

Appendix 2: Exchange between the International Communist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency

Appendix 3: letter (circa 1998) by the IBT's Jason Wright documenting his leaving the Revolutionary Workers League

Appendix 4: Bureaucratic Centralism in the International Bolshevik Tendency (15 mg file)  http://www.archive.org/download/BureaucraticCentralismInTheInternationalBolshevikTendency/Rileyville.pdf.PDF