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Editorial

Why We're Not Too Fond Of The Trotskyites

Actually, we don't hate the trots, at least no more than we hate all revisionists. Revisionists are self-proclaimed socialists who divert people's attention from the struggle against the Number One enemy. United States Imperialism, to side issues like 'building the Soviet economy', or 'exposing the Stalinist leaders of China'. Russian leaders since Kruschev, and the world Trotskyite movement are typical modern revisionists.

In fact an excellent case could be made out that we are a pro-Trotskyite paper, God forbid. If, as the pundits say, all publicity is good publicity, then it's time we sent the Trots a bill for all the rubbishing we've given them. It should also be known that we have not printed many of the antiTrot articles we've received.

Since Trotskyism first emerged as a political force in Russia, it has been criticised by Marxists such as Lenin and Stalin as being revisionist. While these criticisms are still valid today we have specific objections to the Socialist Action League of New Zealand and its campus crabs, the Young Socialists.

In the first place they are not socialists. Since the group's formation in 1969 the Socialist Action League has concentrated on building up single-issue protest movements, like the abortion movement. Bui the S.A.L. has never bothered to draw these protests together, and develop an overall socialist critique of New Zealand society.

The S.A.L. is preoccupied with universities and students, a fact that reflects the predominance of white, middle-class students in its ranks. Like other Trotskyite groups all over the world the S.A.L. has little contact with the trade union movement and the working class. The few workers ever connected with the league left at the same time the S.A.L.'s founder. Hector MacNeill, was forced out.

Internationally the S.A.L. is aligned with the most right-wing part in the world Trotskyite movement — the Socialist Workers Party of America. Trotsky's Fourth International is now divided into four squabbling factions which spend more time in anti-communist raves against the socialist states and other socialist parties than in attacking monopoly capitalism.

The greatest fault of the S.A.L and the Y.S. is that all their blathering is divorced from the test of all theories — social practice. The Trots talk about the Indochina situation, promote marches but do nothing about medical aid. All they've ever sent the Vietnamese has been copies of their rag. Socialist Action. They no doubt fool themselves that the mobilisation of fifty people on a Y.S. march stopped the tour, but they gave scant support to Hart pickets aimed at pointing out New Zealand's economic links with apartheid. The Trots talk about "the brown proletariat" and other terms unfamiliar to Maori radicals, but they are ignorant of Maori problems, and uninvolved with any solutions. And they have made scarcely more than a peep about the housing situation.

All this is not to claim that we, or the radical groups we associate with are perfect. It is to claim that the S.A.L. and the Y.S. are a negligible pack of hypocrites in all the issues they talk about. The fact that they are divorced from social practice makes them worse than apathetic students who are simply ignorant of the economic forces that shape their lives. Such students' only delusion is to think that they have free will. The Trots delude themselves into believing that they are left-wing activists, and that their policies are correct. They ain't neither.

What has particularly bugged Salient this year is the number of half truths the Y.S. has propogated to hide their hypocrisy. They said we rejected their copy "because of its content". That's half the truth. They didn't quote our full statement that the content was a political advertisement rife with misleading statements.

Peter Rotherham in particular has claimed that we refused to print his letters. The only letter of Rotherham's we rejected was his courageous attack on H. T. Lee, which was circulated as soon as Lee had been forced to leave the country, and was unable to defend himself.

The Trots talk of the disruption of a University Feminists' A.G.M. yet justify their objections to men being at the meeting on the grounds that the A.G.M. had finished and the meeting was back in committee. Make up your minds girls. Their paper reports that they handed us a letter with 16 signatures on it protesting the disruption. We still have the letter here. We can see one signature, but have yet to spot the other 15.

We could go on and on about all the petty and the huge lies the Y.S. and S.A.L. have told. Yet despite its seriousness, it's a boring topic of debate. One of the Trots more amusing perversions is their paranoia. We only had to put a pickaxe in our window and the Trots photographed it and ran an article in Socialist Action saying they knew it was intended to terrify them. And so is our picture of Stalin, apparently.

Certainly we've lately taken to laughing at the Trots, indulging in a joke or two. But does a so-called socialist group which seriously believes that it will conquer the commanding heights of capitalism from its "red bases" among white middleclass students, deserve any more serious attention?

We have published this statement to explain our differences with the S.A.L. and the Young Socialists. We do not claim to have a monopoly of truth. We do, however, think we're justified.

— Roger Steele & Peter Franks