1- The MAIS leadership sent us a resolution in which is states that “there is a split in fact between the MAIS and the IWL-FI”, and that it “decided to formally suspend the MAIS condition of sympathizer of the IWL-FI” and route the formal decision to the MAIS Congress, which will take place in a few months.
We confirm, then, that the MAIS leadership, by unanimity, decided to break with the IWL-FI. Despite the formal decision being routed to their Congress, the confirmation of the “break between the MAIS and the IWL-FI” and the immediate suspension of the relations by the MAIS leadership are the concretion of this split.
Before such decision, we have the duty of giving our opinion on the reasons and prospects regarding this decision. After all, the MAIS did gather some hundreds of comrades in the organization, among them a group of leaders and cadres with a long trajectory in the PSTU and the IWL.
2- It is important to remember that during its combat in the PSTU, the comrades raised questions about the internal regime as an something essential . They alleged lack of democracy and accused the PSTU leadership and the IWL of “exaggerating the differences”. Now, the comrades affirm in their letter that the “backdrop of this situation are the political, programmatic and theoretical differences accumulated (nationally as much as internationally) since the last IWL World Congress” [our highlight], and they add that in front of the events of the class struggle there would be “a consolidation of a programmatic revision by the ‘leftist’, sectarian and self-proclamatory”IWL.
But this was not what the MAIS leadership said during the PSTU and IWL Congresses nor when it left the PSTU. This comrades owe an explanation to the IWL and its militants, as they used to say the PSTU and IWL leaderships exaggerated the differences and now they justify their political because of the level of “political, programmatic and theoretical differences.”In reality, the PSTU and IWL Congress showed that the comrades had all democratic space and guaranties regarding internal debate. But when they saw they were a minority in the PSTU, they decided to split the Brazilian party before the PSTU and IWL Congresses. And it was still after the PSTU Congress, in the eve of the World Congress, that they were accepted as guests to participate of the last IWL Congress, in June last year. Back then, the comrades still defended to remain as a sympathizer organization of the IWL, and despite splitting the main Trotskyist party of Brazil and main section of the IWL, their request to be sympathizers was accepted in this Congress.
3- Despite being accepted as a sympathizer organization of the IWL, the MAIS never acted as such. They never sold nor distributed the IWL publications; they never sent internal documents; they never contributed with or even made a financial commitment, as all sections and groups that make part of our IWL do. Now they are part of a unification process –as they stated in their site- with an organization called NOS, without the international having had any reports on the agreements and debates between them nor which is the definition –if there is one- of the relationship that the future organization would have with the IWL.
4- To our understanding, it is impressive the depth and speed of the programatic and political decline and of conception of party since of the comrade since they split with the PSTU until today, less than a year after. The reason of being of revolutionary Marxists –Trotskyists- is the imperious necessity of constructing a revolutionary International.
As our teachers taught us, From Lenin and Trotsky to Moreno, without a democratically centralized international, a national leadership is condemned to opportunism and/or sectarianism by inevitably falling into national-Trotskyism. This conception used to be shared by the MAIS leadership during the years they made part of the IWL and the PSTU. Now, the MAIS leadership decided to split the IWL without pointing out any international project in the resolution. And they break with the IWL justifying this by political, programmatic and theoretical differences –which definitely exist- after avoiding the confrontation of the discussion of those differences in the frame of the International. They just left.
And by breaking with the IWL, they went to be part of the hundreds of groups that call themselves “Trotskyists” but do the opposite of building a revolutionary International, democratically centralized. These tendencies claim to be internationalists, but such internationalism does not go beyond the establishment of relationships with other groups or calling an international conference now and then; never to build a world party. In other words, the comrades left the IWL to go to another type of project, national-Trotskyism.
5- Currently, the comrades are trying to arrange its affiliation, as internal current, to the PSOL, a reformist party with one specific characteristic: to be a front-party; this is to say they are a party conformed by several organizations whose only common interest is electoral participation. It is an electoral party, thus the militancy of the PSOL is organized around the bourgeois elections. The PSOL has nothing to do with the old socialist-reformist parties in which Trotsky tried the tactic of entrism during the 30s to intervene in a live process of growth and dynamics of the young, militant workers who were looking for an alternative.
The PSOL elected some deputies and councils and might grow electorally. This is the real motive of the organizations within it. When the MAIS decided to become a internal tendency of the PSOL, the only goal they used to justify such decision is the electoral participation. They are going to the PSOL to be one more internal tendency of the Front, as currently the MES, the US, Insurgencia, the LSR, etc.
They have no concern in approaching segments of the working class or revolutionary activists to convince them and strengthen their organization as much as they have in the electoral possibilities. Just like all the mention tendencies of the PSOL. The PSOL is similar to Syriza and Podemos, which have the same nature: parties with no political life outside the electoral process.
The traditional criteria of the Third International, that the activities of a revolutionary party should be focused in direct struggle of the masses, and that elections are a secondary supporting point, were left aside by the comrades, and this is where their growing opposition to the Leninist criteria comes from. Thus, they considered that by defending the criteria of Lenin’s III International, the IWL, had made a “leftist, sectarian, self-proclamatory” turn.
In our opinion, this growing involution is what took them to consider their permanence in the IWL as an obstacle to their project. To stay in the IWL, which proposes the direct dispute of the mass movement leadership and to build among the working class through confrontation with reformist leaderships, when their concrete project is going in the opposite direction – of being part of such leaderships and electing parliamentarians and win chairs, caused them a major contradiction. This is the deep meaning of the MAIS decision to split.
We want to finish with a warning:
Since the split of the PSTU by the MAIS, we were still debating with the comrades. We discussed honestly with that their position was taking them to an adaptation to neo-reformism, hit by the electoral processes. Now, we confirm that the comrades did not only ignore our criticism and warnings as they also deepened their setback so much that they split the IWL without looking to build a democratically-centralized, revolutionary international. They are abandoning a vital definition for a Trotskyist current. A national party that is not part of an international leadership, as weak as the latest can be, is condemned to a programmatic setback, to abandon Trotskyism and degenerate into something else.
We will try to maintain a clear relationship with the comrades, as they asked for in their resolution. In this regard, they should be present in the next EIC to formalize this. But, to our understanding, the first commitment is to give a clear explanation to the members of the International, and also to the activists that work with us, on the political reasons and our conclusion of the process that led to this split.
International Secretariat of the International Workers’ League – Fourth International (IWL-FI).
On the MAIS Resolution of February 14, 2017
