June 19, 2009
different from that of Jews in other parts of
SF comrades,
1) When we sent you our last letter, on June
10, we asked you to set a position on the
moral charges without a proof that GB had
launched against our current treating
comrade CM of being a “gangster”, which
prepares the ground and creates the
conditions for renewed physical attacks
against us, of the same kind as that launched
on us by the Argentinean PO in 2002, beating
and handing over to the police and to
bourgeois justice one of the LOI-CI leaders; or
that more recently launched by Brazilian PSTU
and its thugs of Qilombo Urbano against our
FT comrades.
This letter of ours crisscrossed your own June
10 letter, in which you further develop and try
to give a fundament to your position on
Palestine.
On June 14, CWG comrades sent you a note
also asking you for your statement before the
moral attack by the GB. From the SCAI of the
FLT we shared and supported in a 100% the
wording of that note. But as our mutual letters
crisscrossed on June 10, we found it necessary
to send you this present and last letter in
which we aim to complete our position about
your stand.
2) As about your June 10 letter, some
further arguments:
The resolution of the 24th national convention
of the SWP of august 1971 that you quote as a
basis for your position that there would be an
“Israeli Jewish nation” and hence it should
have a “right to a national self-determination”
in a “future bi-national worker state”, actually
asserts exactly the contrary of what you say:
The SWP resolution says:
“Two of the key arguments used by Zionists in
defending the Israeli state are: (1) The Jewish
people, an oppressed nationality throughout
the world, have a right to self-determination.
The existence of the Israeli state is the
realization of that right Because of the
historical oppression of the Jewish people, the
right to maintain the Israeli state supersedes
the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs;
(2) However one may disagree with the
present policies of the Israeli state or the
manner of its creation, the Israeli state must
be defended against the Arab peoples,
because a victory for the Arab revolution and
the destruction of the Israeli state would
result in genocide, mass expulsion, or the
oppression of the Jews presently living in
Israel.
“Both of these arguments are false to the
core.
1
“The situation of the Israeli Jews is essentially
the world. The struggle against anti-Semitism
and the oppression of Jews in other countries
is a progressive struggle directed against their
oppressors. In some circumstances the
demand for self-determination for oppressed
Jews, directed against the oppressor nation,
could become appropriate. (…) However, the
oppression of Jews in other countries does not
justify the creation and maintenance of the
existing Israeli state at the expense of the
Palestinians, who were not and are not
responsible for the oppression of the Jews.
There, the situation is the reverse. The Israeli
Jews form an oppressor nationality of a
settler-colonial character vis-a-vis the Arab
peoples. The Israeli state is the means by
which this oppression is maintained.
“From the point of view of the Leninist
concept of the right of nations to self-
determination, the key fact is whether the
given nationality is an oppressed nationality
or an oppressor nationality. Revolutionists call
for the right of self-determination for
oppressed nationalities, those that are being
denied their democratic rights through
national oppression. This demand means that
the oppressed nationalities have the right to
decide to form a separate state, or to exist in
a unitary or federated state alongside a
former oppressor nationality, or to adopt
some other form of self-determination, as the
oppressed nationality so chooses.
The oppressor nationality has no right to
decide this question. The purpose of
fighting for the right of self-determination for
oppressed nationalities is to guarantee them
whatever state forms they believe are
necessary to end their oppression. In the
epoch of imperialism, the national liberation
struggles of oppressed nationalities tend to
merge with the world socialist revolution
against imperialism through the process of
permanent revolution.
“This revolutionary dynamic is entirely
missing from the concept that the Israeli Jews
—an oppressor nationality vis-a-vis the Arab
peoples—have a right to a separate state.
Proletarian internationalism includes the
recognition that the struggles of the
oppressed nationality and the toiling masses
in the oppressor nationality have the same
enemy.
But it does not at all endorse the
concept that oppressed nationalities
must support the right of self-
determination of the oppressor
nationality. (…)The second argument of the
Zionists is equally false. It is not justifiable to
assume that a likely development of the Arab
revolution will be the future oppression of the
Israeli Jews. (our bolds)
we could go on quoting from the 6 pages of
the document: not even a single line gives
your position a backing. On the contrary, each
word of this resolution is an argument in favor
of the position we hold in the FLT. Of course,
we in the FLT do not at all endorse each and
every position of the SWP in the ‘70s, when
this party and the whole of the Fourth
International were blowing to pieces, splitting
into centrist, or opportunist, currents; but it is
undeniable that this declaration of the SWP on
the Palestinian question of 1971 reaffirmed a
correct position. That was because in those
years, the currents of the then Trotskyist
movement, even being centrist or opportunist
hadn’t yet dared to defend the right to its
existence for the state of Israel, not even
under the “euphemism” of “the right to the
national self-determination of the Israeli
Jewish people”. In those old years only
Stalinism supported overtly the State of Israel
on the basis of the “national rights of the
Jewish people”. Such was this situation that
the SWP declaration is straightforwardly
discussing against a position similar to that of
yours in the present. Hence it says:
“Within the revolutionary movement there
have been some different but nevertheless
mistaken positions regarding the right of the
Israeli Jews to self-determination. Some of the
spokespeople for the Israeli Socialist
Organization have raised these arguments in
the most clearly developed form. (…) Their
reasoning goes along the following line:
“The Israeli Jews form a new Hebrew
nationality separate and distinct from the
Jewish people in other parts of the world. After
a victorious socialist revolution, this minority
nationality within the Mideast should have the
right to self-determination. In such a
revolutionary context, self-determination for
the Hebrew nationality would not result in a
Zionist-type settler state opposed to the Arab
revolution. Although this demand is not meant
to be applied now, and is not designed to
imply support to the maintenance of the
Zionist state, it should be raised now as part
of a revolutionary program for the Mideast in
order to facilitate the process of winning the
Hebrew masses away from Zionism.
“This argument is wrong.
(…) To Leninists, the right of self-
determination is not an abstract moral right
belonging to all nationalities at all times and
under all circumstances. It is a political
demand for oppressed nationalities that is
raised for the following purposes: (a) by
guaranteeing them whatever state forms they
feel are necessary to end their national
2
oppression, it mobilizes the presently
oppressed nationalities in struggle against
their oppressors; (b) it mobilizes the working
class of the oppressor nations to struggle
against its own ruling class on this question;
(c) in this way it lays the basis for forging a
genuine internationalist alliance between the
national liberation struggle of oppressed
nationalities and the class struggle of the
working masses in the oppressor countries.
“These are the main reasons why the self-
determination struggles of oppressed
nationalities lead in the direction of a socialist
revolution, which will eventually lead to the
abolition of the nation-state. These three
factors are all missing from the demand
for self-determination for oppressor
nations.
“Even if the demand for self-determination for
the present oppressor nationality—the Israeli
Jews—is to be implemented only after a
socialist revolution, the raising of it at the
present point can only be interpreted as
directed against the presently oppressed
nationality—the Arab peoples. As such,
there is no revolutionary thrust to this
demand. (our bolds)
Contrary to what the SWP states, you
recognize the right to national self-
determination for an oppressor nation, for a
colonial state of occupiers, of settlers,
because that is what the Zionist state is, a
state invented by US-UK imperialists and their
lackey Mr.Stalin as part of the deals of Yalta
and Potsdam. As we told you in our letter of
June 10, your intent of justifying your position
in the fact that there have been already 60
years of occupation and thus some
generations of “Israeli Jews” have emerged,
amounts to a defense of the right to pass
private property to the heirs, a right that we
as Marxists have never and should never
recognize.
It is very clear for us that the 1971 resolution
of the SWP that you quote to back your
position, actually rejects it, moreover, it
specifically considers it an erroneous position.
But we –contrary to what the GB does- are not
going to say that you “falsify” it, or “concoct
an amalgam”, not even that you “calumniate”
when quoting that resolution by the SWP.
Contrariwise, this is for us a political problem.
You interpret, quote and utilize the resolution
of the SWP as you like and is more convenient
for you to try to justify an unjustifiable
position of holding the “right to national self-
determination for the Israeli Jewish people in a
future bi-national worker state”, a position
that, as the SWP says “can only be
interpreted as directed against the presently
oppressed nationality”, that is against the
Palestinian people, and consequently, in
favour of the Zionist state that occupies their
nation and oppresses them. Therefore, your
method is only the reflection of your political
position. One that serves Zionism, and
nauseates us.
b) But the 1971 SWP’s position was nothing
more than the continuity of the position of the
Fourth International that in November-
December 1947 issued a statement entitled:
“The Partition of Palestine”, which said: (allow
us to translate freely from French to English,
as we have not and original English text
available)
“The Zionist leaders all over the world have
celebrated with joy the proclamation of the
miniature (Zionist) state as a great victory.
What a miserable mistake! The trap that
Palestine, in the words of Trotsky, constituted
for Jews, has just been closed around them.
Without a radical change in the world
situation and without a receding of
Zionism in the ranks of the Jewish
worker movement in Palestine, the
complete extermination of the Jewish
people during the eruption of the Arab
revolution will be the price that the Jews
are to pay for their sad success in Lake
Success (a place near New York where in
1947 the UNO negotiated the statutes for
Palestine NR, our bolds). (…) The position of
the Fourth International regarding the
Palestinian question remains as clear as
in the past. It will be at the vanguard of
the combat against the partition, for a
united and independent Palestine, where
the masses will determine in sovereignty
their destiny through the election of a
Constituent Assembly. Against the
effendis (in reference to the Arab bourgeoisie
in Palestine, NR) and the imperialist agents,
against the maneuvers of the Egyptian and
Syrian bourgeoisies that try to deviate the
struggle for the emancipation of the fighting
masses against the Jews, it will call to the
agrarian revolution, to the anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist struggle that are the essential
drives for the Arab revolution. But it cannot
wage this combat with a probability of
success unless it takes an unequivocal
position against the partition of the
country and against the establishment of
a Jewish state.
“More than ever, it is necessary at the same
time to call the toiling masses in America, UK,
Canada and Australia, to the working people
in each country, to the fight for the opening of
the borders of their respective countries to
the refugees, to the displaced persons, to all
the Jews that with to emigrate, without
discrimination. Only if we carry on both
3
effectively and successfully this combat, we
will be able to explain the Jews why they
should not go to the Palestinian trap. The
terrible experience waiting for the Jews
in the miniature State creates at the
same time the premises for the breaking
of the ample masses with criminal
Zionism. If that breaking up does not
occur in time, the “Jewish State” will be
drowned in blood”. (Always our bolding).
It is very clear, then that even the Fourth
International in 1947, which had already
“changed course” and become in centrist,
dared to recognize that alleged “right to the
national self-determination of the Israeli
Jewish people”. We attach to the present
letter this declaration of the Fourth
International, complete in French) as well as
the Thesis of the Palestinian Trotskyist group
in 1948 (also in French) that illustrate very
clearly the terrible defeat that the partition of
Palestine and the creation of the Zionist State
meant for the exploited masses of Arab East.
3) Last but not least, we have to say that
the discussions taken place 13 years ago to
the interior of the current from which you
come –where you reproduce positions of
comrades that nobody knows who are nor
what was their later evolution, or which is
their current political position- included in the
attachments to your letter of June 11, do not
contribute in anything to the present
discussion save for reflecting the confusion
that already in that moment you had within
your ranks about the Palestinian question.
Also it contributes to make the present
exchange of opinions even more confusing
and that is highly unfortunate.
4) Now, with this letter we complete our
position in response to your letter of June 10.
From now on, it is up to you to pronounce
before the moral attack by the GB on our
current. The re-establishing of our mutual
relationship within a healthy political
environment, for healthy political debates
depends upon that.
We are looking for your prompt response,
Silvia Novak
Por la FLT
PS1: As we have already told you, we do not
and won’t conduct any political discussion
with the GB, which has launched moral
accusations without proofs against a comrade
of our current. Moreover, now the Professor
Couthon and the GB say that when we tell
they are “social-imperialist” we are running
“slanders”. That is a typical Lambertite
method of confusing and filling the ground
with filth so that no clean political discussion
is made possible. To call “social-imperialist” a
current is not a “slander”: it is a political
characterization that, on the other hand, we
from the FLT have demonstrated with detail
by examining and analyzing the official
positions written by the GB as in the case of
the Antilles.
The letter sent by Couthon to NRI comrades,
and at the same time, to the different currents
of the Trotskyist renegades in Argentina only
days ago, only serves to confirm that the GB
are a group lackey to the French Fifth
Republic and of the labour aristocracy.
Because in that shameful letter about the
rebellion of the worker youth in the Cites in
late 2005, Couthon affirms that who staged
that rebellion was not the worker and
exploited youth but “students” –as if the
teenager children of the workers weren’t
worker and exploited youth because they
study!- but what is even worse: Couthon says
that they were simply young troublemakers
from the “ethnicities”… and he is angry
because they had burnt cars, buses, schools,
etc. “Ethnicities”? What an elegant
euphemism to hide that the rebellious youth
of the Cités are the children, grandchildren
and great grandchildren of the African, West-
Indian, Magrebi, Arab, etc. Workers from the
French colonies and semi colonies, whom
French imperialists had brought to Franc to
make them work in menial jobs for a
miserable pay –not very differently as being
slaves- while French imperialism and the
bloodthirsty governments and regimes it
supports, oppress, massacre and starve the
workers and the exploited in those nations!
Only a current that is flagrantly a servant of
French imperialism and of the most stale,
“republican, secular and cult” white Gallian
labour aristocracy dares to write such filthy
brutalities!
It is the same with Couthon’s revolting before
our vindication of the war cry of that exploited
youth that said “every night we will make
Paris a Baghdad!”. According to Messieur le
Proffesseur that war cry never existed, but,
how can it succeed the heroic resistance of
the Iraqi people if it is not by synchronizing
itself and synchronizing its struggle with the
uprising of the working class in the imperialist
powers, as US, France, etc? How was the
Vietnamese people able to triumph if not
because of its heroic resistance that sent to
the US thousands and thousands of corpses
(body bags) of invaders, that is of US soldiers,
a Vietnamese resistance which synchronized
with the uprising of the own US masses? The
explanation of this attitude of Professor
Couthon is hat for him there is not in Iraq an
heroic mass resistance, but only “inter-racial
and inter-religious terrorism”. This is the way
he finds to try to justify that the GB has
4
abandoned the fight for the military defeat of
the imperialist troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
and for the victory of the resistance of the
Iraqi masses through a “New victorious
Vietnam” (as the 21 points of the Collective
for an International Conference of the
Principled Trotskyists and the revolutionary
worker organizations read in August, 2003).
He has changed for the pacifist slogan of
pressuring the imperialist governments for
the “withdrawal of the troops”.
We certainly have the least doubt that the
same as today he denies that the worker and
exploited youth of the Cites cried “we will
make every night a Baghdad in Paris”,
tomorrow if the present revolutionary struggle
of the Greek working class and youth –that
was precisely catalyzed by the not at all
“indirect” murder of young Alexis
Grigoropoulos by the police- is thoroughly
suppressed or contained, Professor Couthon
say that the slogan of the revolutionary Greek
masses that says “A spark in Athens, a fire in
Paris. It’s insurrection coming!” has never
existed and is some of FLT’s inventions.
That is because every lackey of the labor
aristocracy and of his own imperialist regime,
trembles in rage, gets afraid, etc when the
most extended exploited masses –those “poor
devils” of which the Transitional Program
speaks, who lay forgotten and abandoned by
labor aristocracies and bureaucracies…
because he knows that his privileges, his
armchairs before a fireplace, his entire quiet
and comfortable life would be at risk and
questioned.
PS2: Professor Couthon is obfuscated because
from the FLT we say that his position on
Guadeloupe and Martinique is social-
imperialist only based on a GB leaflet before
the general strike on March 19, 2009 in
France, and as a proof of “internationalism”
the GB sends to everybody an article of
February 28 about the Antilles… that is even
more social-imperialist and reformist if that is
possible. Let’s see two or three shameful
“pearls” of that necklace…
a) Says the leaflet: “Their exploitation and
their misery (referring to the working class
and youth form the Antilles, Ed.) result from
the economic dependence from the French
imperialism and from the continuing of the
propriety of the main means of production
and of distribution in the hands of the Bekes,
the descendants of the slave-owners”.
What? How is that “economic
dependence”?!!! Guadeloupe, Martinique,
Guyana, the Reunion Isles, Polynesia, Corsica,
etc., are not semi colonies –that is “having
solely economic dependence from
imperialism” though formally and from the
point of view of the bourgeoisie being February 2009 is, no doubt, the quintessence
“politically independent”, with their own of that old “peaceful way to socialism”.
national constitution, their own government, d) And last but not least –and please forgive
their own army, etc. They are French us for expanding so much this post-script- we
colonies, they are nations occupied by cannot leave alone the last social imperialist
French imperialism, in where the national “pearl” of the GB. Says the article: “The
oppression is sustained not only by the economy of Guadeloupe and Martinique
“economic dependence”, but instead at cannot live in isolation: for the establishment
gunpoint, with occupation troops; in those of a collaboration on an equal basis with
colonies the French constitution of the 5th France …”. This is incredible! So Professor
Republic is in full validity. This position of the Couthon thinks that a Guadeloupe and a
GB is reiterated all along the text, when they Martinique (very tiny isles, now enslaved
speak about the “departments of outremer” French colonies) under a workers and
(districts or provinces of the other side of the peasants’ government will be able to establish
sea) “emerged from the colonial empire of an economic “collaboration” on an equal basis
France”… as if the French colonial empire was with… imperialist France, the fourth world
a thing of the past! The French colonies, direct GNP!!!! How ridiculous! The only way in that it
colonies, amount to more than 11 million would be possible an economic collaboration
square kilometers of land and sea, and place on an equal basis between the Antilles and
France as the second maritime power in the France, is if the proletariat takes power in
world after the US and in the same conditions France itself and build up its own proletarian
as Great Britain… and please, Messieur le dictatorship.
Professeur Couthon! You cannot argue that
you don’t know that! Montaigne, that well-known French thinker
said: “No one is free from the peril of
The article of GB also says: “The bourgeois expressing nonsensical ideas; what is terrible
order, including its colonial aspects, so is to tell them emphatically”. Professor
archaic and disgusting…”. Oh, la la! “”Colonial Couthon not only repeats nonsense after
aspects”? So “archaic”?; the Antilles, the nonsense, but he does it with unrestrained
Guyana, Reunion Isles, Corsica, Polynesia, are and uncontrollable emphasis. And even worse,
direct colonies of the French colonial empire he gets crazy when somebody discovers him.
that is live and well and has nothing of
“archaic”, but is a cruel reality that the
workers and exploited youth of those colonies
feel every day in their bones, in their flesh and
blood! Of course, that this is not what
Professor Couthon feels, when comfortably
seated in the armchairs of the white Gallic,
Francophone labor aristocracy!
d) Moreover though, the article of the GB is a
“pearl” of that necklace that we could call
“the peaceful way to the worker-peasant
government”. It says that “we mustn’t doubt
in expropriating the Bekes and the capitalist
groups”; it calls to the “workers’ and popular
control”; it raises “Out with the repressive
forces!”, “factory, administrations, city and
neighborhood committees that designate
their representatives to the collective of each
isle” and “for a workers and peasants
government on that basis”. Everything very
beautiful, but… how would that be achieved?
The GB itself says that the general strike
cannot last indefinitely… so that? For the GB,
one can achieve the workers and peasants
government… without arming the proletarians
to smash and expel the forces… not “of
repression”, but of imperialist occupation! In
the Antilles; without the preparation and
organization of a victorious workers and
peasants insurrection that destroys the
colonial French state. The article of the GB of