What are The Differences Between the RCIT and the DSM/CWI?

The SF/LCFI has differences with both the SDM/CWI and the RCIT (Workers Power Britain/LFI expelled the comrades who went on to form the RCIT in 2011, they agree on almost all political issues up to that point, so criticisms of WPB are criticisms of the RCIT also. The basis for the expulsion was tactical rather than principled. The RCIT asked too many questions).

The SF/LCFI has assessed the politics of the CWI in the document “The CWI and IMT: Right Centrists heirs of Ted Grant” and agrees with the RCIT (and its parent group WPB) that the DSM/CWI have reformist positions on the state; it is terribly wrong for the DSM/CWI to characterise the police and army as “workers in uniform” – was it the working class that massacred the Marikana miners or the counterrevolutionary murderous thugs of the capitalist state led by the ANC and supported by the leaders of the NUM/Cosatu and the SACP? As Trotsky says a worker who dons a police uniform is no longer a worker but a bourgeois cop. We have quoted approvingly on from WPB on this in tour own document. It is an outrageously reformist position of defence of the capitalist state against the organised working class for revolutionaries to take and the comrades of the DSM and WASP should repudiate it immediately.

This reflects the historic weakness of the CWI on the state and on Imperialism in general. We go on the expose its position of support for the Loyalists and British state in the north of Ireland in that long historic struggle, their support for the British task force in the Malvinas war of 1982 – as we quote them their position was: “A Labour government could not just abandon the Falklanders and let Galtieri get on with it. But it would continue the war on socialist lines” – a clear social imperialist position. Likewise their position on Israel/Palestine and their position on the Imperialist-sponsored “revolutions”in Libya and Syria, refusing to call for the defeat of the proxy-armies sponsored by Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy/Hollande. As we lampooned their line on Libya when they said a: “victory for the Libyan people was also a success for Imperialism.” We know that was what they said on the TV comrades but it was a lie. You cannot advance Imperialism’s victory and the victory of the working class at the same time, they are mutually exclusive, and one must advance at the expense of the other, a ‘zero sum’ rather than a ‘win-win’ situation we would suggest.

On the issue of the Imperialist-sponsored wars in Libya and Syria the RCIT are clearly to the RIGHT on the CWI as our second document “For the Political Regeneration and Reconstruction of the Fourth International” reveals. They are far more uncritical of the “rebels”, refusing to listen to all the evidence that they were sponsored by the CIA/Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Turkey etc. No, they were all genuine “revolutionaries, as position that the SF/LCFI and CWI can easily expose as nonsense. This is what their leader Peter Main said in March 2011:

“Victory to the Libyan Revolution!” “The rebellion against Gadaffi’s dictatorship deserves unconditional support and that is not altered by the UN decision. Those who oppose powerful states have the right to get hold of arms wherever they can and to take advantage of any weaknesses in their oppressors’ situation. That remains true even where the weaknesses are the result of Imperialist action. If, under cover of the no-fly zone, Libyan insurgents and revolutionaries can retake positions, undermine the morale or the loyalty of Gadaffi’s troops and even advance on the capital, Tripoli, that is a step forward for the Libyan revolution and should be welcomed.”

We all know what happened to the“revolution”; were we all supposed to cheer along with Cameron and Sarkozy when the latter two went to Tripoli to celebrate the victory of their “revolution”and must we forget about all the black immigrant workers the “rebels” lynched as soon as their “revolution” began in Benghazi – see “Libyan rebel ethnic cleansing and lynching of black people” http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/2011/07/07/libya-ethnic-cleansing/