Marxist.net

December 2018

At the recent meeting of the International Executive Committee (IEC), twenty four comrades took the very considered decision to declare a faction in the CWI. This important step was not taken lightmindedly but because we believe that there was no alternative, given the deep political differences that were revealed in the highest level of the leadership of the CWI, the IEC.

Peter Taaffe for the International Secretariat (Majority), 14/1/19

January 2019

It is necessary to call things by their right name. Barely a month has passed since the IEC and yet it is already quite clear that the CWI faces an opposition to the policies and programme of the CWI with tendencies towards petty bourgeois Mandelism. This opposition originated with the leadership of the Irish section, but it is also present in the leadership of a number of sections of the CWI who support them. This is most prominently displayed in the recent lengthy Greek Executive Committee’s resolution written by Andros P, which represents an open political retreat from the policies and analysis of the CWI.

Tony Saunois for the ‘In Defence of a Working Class, Trotskyist CWI’ Faction

March 2019

Since the establishment of the International Faction ‘In Defence of a Workers’ and Trotskyist CWI’, at the IEC meeting, held in December 2018, the exchanges in the CWI have confirmed our analysis of the development of two main trends. At root, the cause of this crisis has been the objective pressures arising from the contradictory and complex conjuncture bearing down on the relatively small forces of a revolutionary organisation and our respective reactions to it.

Tony Saunois for the IS majority

May 2019

Six months after the November IEC meeting, the ‘Non-Faction Faction’ (NFF) finally managed to assemble together a political platform (‘The world at a crucial conjuncture: new phenomena and tasks – the crisis in the CWI’). The document is, in part, a combination of truisms and generalisations. Taken, as a whole, it confirms, as we have consistently argued; the NFF represents an opportunist right-ward departure from a Trotskyist method and programme. Like those from a ‘Mandelite’ trajectory, it includes insurance clauses of correct points but then defends opposing or contradictory ideas.

Hannah Sell for the International Secretariat

November 2018

Introduction

This brief document is dealing specifically with issues relating to how we take up identity politics in Ireland and internationally, which the IS thinks needs to be discussed. It does not attempt to give an overview of our general position on a Marxist approach to the oppression of women. Most recently this was summarised in the resolution unanimously agreed at the 2016 World Congress, which can be found here: http://www.socialistworld.net/index.php/other-topics/women/7485-CWI-11th-World-Congress-2016–Women-and-oppression-in-class-society. 

Peter Taaffe, Hannah Sell, Judy Beishon England and Wales IEC members

January 2019

This document briefly summarises the CWI’s analysis of and approach to movements against women’s oppression. Unfortunately, the dispute that erupted at the 2018 IEC meeting revealed a retreat from this approach, which is based on the need to build a revolutionary party with a programme centred on the role of the working class as the key agent for the socialist transformation of society as the only means to lay the basis for the ending of gender oppression. The clearest and most developed example of this retreat is in Ireland, where, as we will explain, the majority of the leadership of the section have moved towards seeing struggles around gender oppression as central to the struggle for the transformation of society. Linked to this their interventions into concrete struggles for women’s rights – in particular the abortion referendum – have not  used the transitional method, raised a socialist programme or pointed to the role of the working class in fighting for women’s rights. At the IEC and since, however, a number of IEC members have uncritically defended the erroneous stance taken by the Irish majority to movements on women’s oppression.

Peter Taaffe

March 2019

Trotsky commented in the 1930s following the defeat of the Spanish revolution how ideological consciousness had been thrown back, not only in the mass organisations but even in the small ‘Marxist’ and ‘Trotskyist’ organisations.

The international debate within the CWI has unfortunately already revealed the same tendencies, particularly in the arguments of the ‘Non-Faction Faction’ on crucial issues such as the consciousness of the working class today, and the approach and attitude towards their own class organisations, the trade unions.

Published by the International Secretariat of the Committee for a Workers International

July 2019

1. The CWI has faced a political division and split with those who have capitulated to the pressures of opportunism, identity politics and turned away from systematic consistent trade union work. Identity politics is a weapon of world capitalism to divide the working class by reinforcing separatism. This has posed the need to reconstitute the international organisation on a firm Marxist and Trotskyist basis. This is an historic task which confronts us in preparation for the eruption of big class battles in the coming period as a consequence of the profound crisis facing global capitalism.