On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, nada wrote:
>
> Shactman's orientation, or rather the Workers Party industry
> orientation was not motivated for the same reasons the SWP did this.
> For the WP it was *exclusively* toward defense industries whose
> unionized members were exempt from the draft and wouldn't have to
> fight. The WP orientation was motivated by it's opposition to World
> War II, essentially.
>
And the SWP was opposed to the war also, which is why they basically
dropped the PMP when its problematic aspects became clearer, though in
theory and on paper it was still part of the SWP platform.
In fact, the SWP's opposition to US imperialism overseas was *more
effective* than that of the WP, because SWP'ers correctly *did not*
engage in draft resistance, and there were many SWP'ers in the army.
BTW, the Sparts of course oppose the PMP. But during the Vietnam War,
they also basically opposed draft resistance, though defending
resisters of course. I have an old issue of Spartacist lying around
somewhere, whose headline is "You Will Go." They sponsored a newletter
for anti-war soldiers called "GI Voice," I think I have a copy
somewhere in my files.
Because of the continual US military victories during WWII, the SWP
couldn't agitate effectively against the war during the actual combat.
But after Hitler surrendered, SWP soldiers were able to agitate quite
effectively for the troops to go home and demobilize. The US army was
swept by a wave of powerful demands to bring the soldiers home
immediately, which Truman had to bow to, putting a serious crimp in
postwar imperial plans, tremendously benefitting colonial revolutions
and the Soviet Union as well.
> At the end of the war, the WP did an *****sment and noted that while
> few of their members got drafted, they recruited few workers and were
> still largely confined to cities in the northeast of the US. They did
> recruit one farmer in Missouri, however! Contrast this with the SWP
> recruitment of *thousands* of new blue collar worker, leading sitdown
> strikes against the Stalinist/FDR imposed "No Strike Pledge" the
> difference becomes obvious.
It should be said that, although they had little or no luck
recruiting, the WP'ers in industry were effective agitators, and led
some strikes themselves. In auto in particular they were probably more
effective than the SWP'ers.
Why couldn't they recruit? Well, workers could easily figure out why
it was all those ex-college students were in the factories instead of
in the army overseas. So they'd accept their leader****p sometimes, but
ultimately did not respect them.
Basic sociology plays a big role here. The SWP really was a
working-class group, just like Trotsky and Cannon insisted, and the WP
really was a student-petty bourgeois group. And workers understood
this. So they were much more likely to join a radical group that was
more like them.
-jh-
>
> David
> I say "thousands" because in fact thousands did join but they only
> "kept" about 1500 more than a few years.
>
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