As I predicted, the full details of the shenanigans of the Revolutionary Communist International vis-a-vis its Brazil section have been exposed. In the statement I have linked, the former members of the Brazilian section explain how the leadership of the organisation manuevered over the course of many months to undermine the leadership of the section and force them out of the organisation. The same old stories of bureaucratic manipulation, slanders and division that we have all been familiar with have been brought to light.
Within the Brazilian section, a faction emerged that was loyal to the line of the organisation’s international leadership on various issues. This faction, with the encouragement of the organisation’s leadership, is said to have worked to undermine the elected leadership of the Brazilian section:
The faction within the OCI began to use slanderous accusations against the organization’s leadership, persistently approaching members across the country outside the elected bodies and responsible committees, sending documents to comrades in different cells without the knowledge of the leadership, thereby openly breaking with democratic centralism. Despite all this, the faction received full support from the leadership of the RCI.
The organisation’s leadership went as far to issue a resolution affirming all the actions of the Brazilian rebels up to this point:
On September 13, the International Executive Committee (IEC), in an emergency meeting, approved a resolution that adopted as “truths”, and as the official position of the International, the slanders, spurious methods, and practices alien to the workers’ movement carried out by the faction.
The former RCI members in Brazil responded in kind:
In response to that resolution, the majority of the Central Committee approved a resolution calling for an Extraordinary Congress in October, the political basis of which was the break with the RCI. This resolution, approved by the CC majority, was submitted to all militants for a final decision at an Extraordinary Congress, in which both sides could defend their positions democratically and could even, in principle, defeat the proposal for the OCI’s withdrawal as the Brazilian section of the RCI.
However, at the end of the vote, Jordi Martorell, acting as a representative of the IS, declared: “This body is no longer the Central Committee of a section of the RCI,” and left the meeting, followed by Fred Weston of the International Secretariat. All CC members (full, invited, and alternate) belonging to the faction left immediately afterward, organizing, that same evening, a meeting of the faction’s members, which convened an emergency RCI conference in Brazil, and, in turn, called for a “Refounding Congress” of the section.
Notice how, according to the RCI’s account, is is rather the opposition who took the initiative to split, whereas in this account, it is the RCI leadership that took the initiative in splitting the organisation. Notice also how we are always told that these bureaucratic methods are ‘alien’ to Marxism. Now, since every since Marxist and Trotskyist political entity from the First International onwards has seen the use of bureaucratic methods of this kind, I think we are going to have to accept that bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug, of Marxist politics. This is clearly inherent to the political tradition. The only way out is abandoning the stupidity of Marxist politics altogether, for that way lies only disappointment.