Proposed line of amendment to section of text dealing with entry of our European sections into mass reformist or centrist parties¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter digest presents a conference resolution defending the continued relevance of the entrist tactic for European sections of the Fourth International in the post-war period. The core argument is a polemic against two opposing conceptions: first, that entry into mass reformist or centrist parties is now practically excluded; second, that entrism is a tactic appropriate only for periods of working-class retreat and defeat. The conference rejects both as a priori dogmas that would lead to missed revolutionary opportunities.
The resolution grounds its argument in the historical precedent set by Trotsky himself. Entrism was first proposed in France in 1934, on the eve of the revolutionary upsurge culminating in the 1936 sit-down strikes, and in Spain during the upswing of the Spanish Revolution—both periods of rising, not falling, working-class militancy. This directly refutes the claim that entrism belongs only to epochs of defeat. The text further argues that the objective conditions for entry are not determined by abstract arithmetical calculations of which party holds a majority of workers. In 1934 France, the SFIO held only a minority of the working class, yet entry was correctly advocated. The decisive factors are concrete: the country must be entering or just entering a period of pre-revolutionary political crisis; a process of differentiation must be underway within the mass social-democratic party, creating a centrist current, especially among the youth; and the revolutionary party must be completely isolated from the real elements of working-class political life, incapable of growth or influence except through the mass reformist organisation.
While the conference cannot assert with certainty that these conditions will prevail across Europe in the coming period, it insists the situation is such that they cannot be excluded, even if only in individual countries. The resolution is thus a defence of tactical flexibility against sectarian rigidity. The footnoted references indicate the resolution is situated within a factional struggle inside the Fourth International, drawing on the writings of Ted Grant and Trotsky to counter the perspectives of figures like Felix Morrow, Gerry Healy, and Max Shachtman, as well as the ultraleft ‘Oehlerism’. The polemic is directed against those who would foreclose the entrist road in the name of a false revolutionary purity, arguing that such an approach risks isolating the revolutionary vanguard from the mass movement precisely when it is most needed.