This was originally published as the platform of the Trotskyist Faction within Socialist Fight, our predecessor organisation. It has now been edited to remove personal and factional references, but is otherwise politically identical to the original. It certainly encapsulates what we stand for. The original is reproduced below this version.

Our platform is Trotskyist and stands on orthodoxy as elaborated in the article The Marxist Theory of the State on the concrete nature of post war Stalinism, the need for defence of the degenerated and deformed workers states against imperialism combined with political revolution to bring the proletariat to command of the workers state politically, while opposing counterrevolution. We saw and see today the proletariat as the only force that can defeat the counterrevolution whether emanating from the bureaucracy or elsewhere, with particular regard to the two remaining deformed workers states in Cuba and North Korea.

We are defenders of semi-colonial countries, including Russia and China, against imperialism. We support the unification of Ireland and a single multi-ethnic state of Palestine, in the context of permanent revolution and in the case of the Middle East, a regional revolution centred on the Arab workers and leading to liberation of the Palestinians from Zionism.

Regarding Zionism and its international manifestation we endorse the 2014 Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism, and note that this was the basis for our tendency’s activity in Britain on this question over the last five years. We think this was fundamentally correct and principled, and is the only materialist explanation for the very visible and powerful role of Zionism in Western imperialist politics.

We still stand for the historic politics of our tendency in Britain on special oppression with regard to oppression based on perceived ‘race’, sex or sexual orientation. We stand for workers defence guards and a workers’ militia to crush fascist threats to workers and the oppressed, and we advocate that the workers movement take independent armed action to suppress fascist political activity, which is never about persuasion but mobilising for murder, as a matter of physical self-defence.

We reject male chauvinist, homophobic and transphobic ideology and stand for the liberation of women and also oppressed sexual minorities through socialist revolution. We reject both all kinds of sexual abuse of youth, and moral guardianship of youth by bourgeois and reactionary moralists. We reject all state interference in the personal lives of consenting adults.

We stand as did Trotsky for the renewal of trade unions through rank-and-file activity and the advancement of new militant leaders against the bureaucracy, and the sensitive, tactically intelligent use of the transitional programme and the transitional method to build a revolutionary opposition in the trade unions.

Likewise we endorse the Trotskyist approach to bourgeois workers parties and class independence embodied in the approach of the Trotskyist movement, as maintained in our previous practice and the material we published and republished rejecting the anti-Marxist, sectarian distortions of the Spartacist tradition.

We condemn Brexit as fundamentally anti-immigrant and we stand for the abolition of all anti-immigrant laws and controls. We endorse Trotsky’s 1923 essay calling for a United States of Europe and seek to apply this transitional approach to the current situation.

We also endorse the corrective on the question of the right of public criticism put forward by our tendency previously, to the errors of the 3rd and 4th internationals regarding such criticism, which ultimately led to phenomena like Healyism, ie. to sects and cults which disgrace the name of Trotskyism, to its fragmentation and degeneration.

On this and on all other outstanding questions which cannot be addressed in full here, we stand on the politics of Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism, which we consider to be the same movement. We therefore defend the programme of our tendency in Britain.

Platform of the Trotskyist Faction

22 Jan 2020

This platform is based on the proposition that the politics of Socialist Fight between 2015 and the beginning of 2020 were fundamentally correct, though obviously we cannot claim perfection.

We reject current attempts to fundamentally change them and consider the trend of some in SF to join in the demonisation of Jewish and Israeli-derived critics of the activities of the Zionist-lobby and its Jewish bourgeois material basis, and even more mainstream figures on the Jewish left, to be a capitulation to Zionism and a betrayal of the anti-imperialist programme of SF.

In common with SF generally we are defenders of semi-colonial countries, including Russia and China, against imperialism. We support the unification of Ireland and a single multi-ethnic state of Palestine, in the context of permanent revolution and in the case of the Middle East, a regional revolution centred on the Arab workers and leading to liberation of the Palestinians from Zionism.

Regarding Zionism and its international manifestation we endorse the 2014 Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism, and note that this was the basis for SF’s activity on this question over the last five years. We think this was fundamentally correct and principled, and is the only materialist explanation for the very visible and powerful role of Zionism in Western imperialist politics. We note that those who seek to junk it do not have an alternative materialist analysis.

We stand for the historic politics of SF on special oppression with regard to oppression based on perceived ‘race’, sex or sexual orientation. We stand for workers defence guards and a workers militia to crush fascist threats to workers and the oppressed, and we advocate that the workers movement take independent armed action to suppress fascist political activity, which is never about persuasion but mobilising for murder, as a matter of physical self-defence.

Likewise we endorse the Trotskyist approach to bourgeois workers parties and class independence embodied in the approach of the Trotskyist movement, as maintained in the practice of SF and the material we published and republished rejecting the anti-Marxist, sectarian distortions of the Spartacist tradition.

We also endorse the corrective on the question of the right of public criticism put forward by SF, to the errors of the 3rd and 4th internationals regarding such criticism, which ultimately led to phenomena like Healyism, ie. to sects and cults which disgrace the name of Trotskyism, to its fragmentation and degeneration.

Platform of the Trotskyist Faction

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