Have a a great and productive time in GREECE Tom Harris Beth Redmond Liam McNulty Ruth Cashman Jamie Green James McAsh Katie Kokkinou Gordon Maloney Shelly Asquith Seth Wheeler Ce McVey among others. When you come back you can all be precious human resources in the fight to build solidarity with a left government in Greece against the European ruling classes and I hope also the left wing of Syriza in their fight to help the Greek workers mobilise. A quote for you (Trotsky was talking about the Belgian Labor Party and the workers movement gathering around its Labour Plan in the 30s): First, to explain to the advanced workers the political meaning of the plan... secondly, to show in practice to possibly wider circles of workers that insofar as the bourgeoisie tries to put obstacles to the realisation of the plan we fight hand in hand with the workers to help them make this experiment. We share the difficulties of the struggle but not the illusions. Our criticism of the illusions must, however, not increase the passivity of the workers and give it a pseudo-theoretic justification but on the contrary push the workers forward. Under these conditions, the inevitable disappointment with the Labor Plan will not spell the deepening of passivity but, on the contrary, the going over of the workers to the revolutionary road. If we had to present a plan to the Belgian proletariat, this plan would have had an altogether different aspect. Unfortunately, the Belgian proletariat gave this mandate not to us but to the Belgian Labor Party [POB], and the plan reflects two facts: the pressure of the proletariat on the POB and the conservative character of this party... When we say to the masses that to realize this imperfect plan it is necessary to struggle to the end, we are far from covering up the deception; on the contrary, we are helping the masses to expose it by their own experience... The leaders of the POB do not want a struggle. But they are caught in the wheels of the crisis of capitalism and of reformism. They were forced to proclaim the plan and even to make it the platform of the Belgian proletariat. It is a fact. What is our task? To help the workers to turn the wheels into which the opportunist leaders have been forced to thrust their hands.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 23:49:57 +0000