J. Posadas

Homero Rómulo Cristalli Frasnelli (January 20, 1912 – May 14, 1981), better known under the pseudonym J. Posadas or sometimes Juan Posadas , was an Argentine Trotskyist whose personal vision is usually described as Posadism. Originally a collective pen name of the leadership of the Grupo Cuarta Internacional (GCI) in Argentina in the 1940s, it was also used by Dante Minazzoli initially.

Early life Born in Argentina to Italian immigrants from the Southern town of Matera, Cristalli grew up in intense poverty in Buenos Aires with at least nine siblings. Under his guidance, the movement gained some influence in the region, particularly among Cuban railway workers, Bolivian tin miners and agricultural workers in Brazil.

When the Fourth International split in 1953, Posadas and his followers sided with Michel Pablo and the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. By 1959, however, he and his followers were quarrelling with the leadership of the ISFI accusing them of lacking confidence in the possibility of revolution. They also differed over the issue of nuclear war with Posadas taking the view that "War–Revolution" would "settle the hash of Stalinism and Capitalism" and that nuclear war was inevitable as a socialist society would rise from the ashes.

With Luis Naguill, Posadas directed the "subversive apparatus" founded according to instructions from the Tri-Continental – the Peasant Workers Alliance in 1966.

Conflicts between Posadas and the ISFI started to get worse. Cristalli, who is known as Posadas today, received his new name as it was used as the penname for the letters written to the ISFI. In those letters, Posadas and his followers made bold criticisms such as Trotskyist movements worldwide were largely influenced by the Bureau of Latin America (BLA) of the Fourth International at that time, and that the Europeans had become a passive force. Despite the alleged efforts of both the BLA and ISFI to reconcile, in the April of 1962, Posadas made a daring move as he called for a congress and completely reorganized the executive committee of the ISFI, now led by BLA leaders. The ISFI responded to this action in June by suspending BLA from the Fourth International.

Posadista Fourth International The "Posadists" founded their own Fourth International in 1962 after having called an Emergency Conference.

Atomic war At their 1964 "Seventh World Congress" the following resolution was adopted:

“We are preparing ourselves for a stage in which before the atomic war, we shall struggle for power, during the atomic war we shall struggle for power and we shall be in power, and immediately after the atomic war we shall be in power. There is no beginning, there is an end to atomic war, because atomic war is simultaneous. Simultaneity doesn't mean the same day and the same hour. Great historic events should not be measured by hours or days, but by periods. The working class alone will maintain itself, will immediately have to seek its cohesion and centralization".

Posadas vocally opposed the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, believing that a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union was inevitable and desirable, and would create the conditions for socialism, with the "workers' states" winning and resetting society.

Outlook towards the Soviet-Bloc regimes The Posadists held to mainstream Trotskyist notions of describing the Soviet Republics that were established with the end of World War 2 as "deformed workers' states" based on the existence of generally nationalized means of production, but unlike the rest of the Trotskyist movement, Posadas went further, declaring other Regimes (such as "Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Mali, Guinea, Congo Brazzaville etc.") – sometimes with, sometimes without clarifying adjectives – to be "workers' states".

Cuba

The Posadist group in Cuba, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) or POR(T), gained importance due to the Cuban Revolution, in which it had a minor role. Posadist guerrillas fought alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. When the Posadists split from the Fourth International in 1962, they took the Cuban section with them, leaving no other Trotskyist group represented in Cuba in the 1960s.

In 1961 the POR(T) argued that the Cuban government should forcibly expel the American military base at Guantanamo Bay. According to state media, the Posadists organised workers in the town of Guantanamo to march on the nearby military base. The POR(T) denied the allegation, but it was repeated by the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the US, which was pro-Castro and denounced the Posadists as ultra-left. Cuban officials affiliated with the Popular Socialist Party, then raided the headquarters of the Posadist group and smashed its printing press, which was in the process of printing an edition of Trotsky's The Permanent Revolution (1930).

Guevara, when asked in an interview about this event, commented:

The Cuban Posadist section became increasingly militant and was banned by the government; Castro denounced them as "pestilential" at the Tricontinental Conference held in January 1966. Cuban Posadists went on to claim that Castro had Guevara killed when, it turned out, he was actually in Bolivia fighting with the guerrilla movement there. Conversely, after Guevara was executed by Bolivian authorities, Posadas claimed in 1967 that it was unclear how Che Guevara was killed.

Extraterrestrial life Beginning in 1968, Posadas also became known for his theories concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial life. If anything like UFOs existed, they could demonstrate the existence of agents able to master a very sophisticated technology, something that would be compatible with what in this planet was advocated by socialism. If UFOs existed, they could be allied in addressing some of the major problems in the earth.

One of his most well-known works is a 1968 pamphlet called Les Soucoupes Volantes, le processus de la matiere et de l'energie, la science et le socialisme (Flying Saucers, the process of matter and energy, science and socialism). Here, he connects the existence of extraterrestrial life and UFOs to communism. He argues that the UFOs being spotted at that time indicates the advancements of life in other planets and that that can be only possible due to communist ideologies. He also writes that capitalism tends to make people self-centered and focus on profits, rather than work on the scientific and civilizational progress of mankind. Since extraterrestrial beings have developed technology advanced enough to visit other planets, this indicates that they have surpassed the bane of a capitalistic society. Along with that, they have also surpassed their impulsion – the need to kill or control to assert dominance. Posadas shows enthusiasm to collaborate with extraterrestrial beings. He writes, "We must appeal to the beings on other planets, when they come here, to intervene and collaborate with Earth's inhabitants in suppressing poverty." Joan Benevant, an Argentine militant, compared the organization to a church where Posadas acted as "the pope". Several member nations quit, the prominent ones being Brazil and Argentina. With the loss of several members and lack of support from scholars, Posadas continued to practice his principles nonetheless. Many scholars during at that time viewed his work in a satirical way, as seen in Teresa Hayter's autobiography Hayter of the bourgeoisie, where she describes Posadas as "the craziest of all deviators from Trotskyism". A work on Posadism was written by A. M. Gittlitz called I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism. The author reviews the history of Posadism and its ultimate collapse, and analyzes the significance of the current rise of interest on this topic. Taking the theme of approaching Posadism as a "crazy subfield" of Trotskyism like earlier scholars, Gittlitz expands on it by exploring the current thoughts on Posadism, how that has changed from its previous cult-like nature in the late 20th century.

Publications Articles Fourth International (Amsterdam), no. 2 (March 1958), pp. 17–21. Full issue. Fourth International (Amsterdam), no. 10 (June 1960), pp. 28–31. Full issue.

Pamphlets Les soucoupes volantes, le processus de la matière et de l’énergie, la science, la lutte de classes et revolutionnaire et le future socialiste de l’humanité. [] (in French). Paris: Éditions Réed (June 26, 1968). Audiobook available. Translated into English and transcribed by David Broder.