The League for the FIfth International attempts to expel RIO members from the New Anticapitalist Left (NAL) of the Czech Republic

The Prague group of the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization (RIO) formulated an open letter which named the current problems of the New Anticapitalist Left (NAL) in the Czech Republic. Our aim was to start a constructive debate about the future direction of the NAL and the work of all left-wing groups (RIO and also the League for the Fifth International, LFI) in this organization.

This letter was sent on January 15 and published on the RIO website one day later. We got an answer from the LFI almost immediately. But we didn’t receive a letter. Instead, they attempted to expel one RIO member, who is also a member of the NAL leadership, from the organization. He was elected at the NAL conference in November, i.e. at the highest body of the organization, by an overwhelming majority of the membership. (Another member of RIO and the NAL leadership has also been threatened with expulsion.)

For several weeks, the LFI members had organized a campaign claiming that RIO was damaging the NAL. These efforts continued at the NAL leadership meeting on January 16, where they voted for the expulsions. But only 3 of 7 members of the NAL leadership voted for this proposal (2 of them were from the LFI). Moreover, any kind of serious political discussion was blocked. For these reasons, RIO Prague does not recognize these expulsions.

We see this bureaucratic initiative by the Czech members of the LFI, who are organizationally and politically dissolved in the NAL, as a clear rejection of our proposal for a discussion about the NAL’s future direction. Instead of a constructive debate, the LFI members prefer this bureaucratic coup, hoping to take over the remains of the NAL.

The official reason for the expulsion (that RIO did not hand out NAL flyers at the public sector strike in December, since we did not agree with these flyers politically) is clearly ridiculous. Therefore, we call on the remaining members of the NAL to reject this bureaucratic maneuver and to fight against the expulsion of RIO members. We also call on other left-wing organizations in the Czech Republic and other sections of the LFI to condemn this practice.

In the immediate future, we propose to hold a new, extraordinary conference of the NAL, which must clarify the direction of the organization. Since the last conference (only two months ago!), much of the right wing has left the NAL for the Stalinist KSCM, and now the revolutionary Marxist wing represented by RIO is to be excluded. The NAL’s political crisis cannot be solved by administrative methods. We want to point out that in the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France, which many NAL members see as a model, the leadership accepts the existence of a revolutionary tendency (at least for now).

In the meantime, RIO plans to continue to participate in the work of NAL and fight within it against political degeneration and opportunism.

RIO Prague, January 23, 2011