BEGIN QUOTED MATTER
Toward a Balance Sheet of the Fourth International in the United
States
Toward a Balance Sheet of the Fourth International in the United
States
Written by Alan Benjamin
Introduction
This text does not pur****t to be the official history of the Fourth
International (FI) in the United States. Something of that magnitude
is beyond the scope of this effort. Rather, what I have attempted to
do here is highlight some of the major moments and political issues
that mark the history of the FI in the United States=97as a contribution
to a much-needed and more complete balance sheet of our movement in
this country. At the same time, this contribution is aimed at tracing
the revolutionary continuity of Socialist Organizer=97which represents
the best traditions of the FI in the United States.
The SWP and Fourth International After the War
Unlike the majority of sections of the Fourth International=97which were
decimated by the war, with leading members killed on battlefields, in
prison camps, or in gas chambers=97the SWP emerged from the war
relatively unscathed.
The SWP emerged from the war with well over 1500 members as one of the
largest sections, if not the largest section, of the FI. It had deep
roots in the working class and among Black workers in major cities
across the country. It was the party of James P. Cannon, a historic
leader of the early Socialist and Communist parties, who, in 1928,
accidentally obtained a copy of Trotsky=92s critique of Stalin=92s
program, read it, agreed with Trotsky, and went on to become a founder
of the International Left Opposition and, later, the Fourth
International. The SWP was the party that led the general strike in
Minneapolis in 1934, and it played a central role in workers=92
struggles in major cities all across the country during the Depression
years.
For all these reasons and more, comrades of the FI in all countries
looked to the SWP to play a leading role in building and strengthening
the FI after the war. But the preparations for the Second World
Congress of the FI, and the Congress itself, would reveal for the
first time some major political problems in the functioning of the FI,
as well as with the SWP=92s attitude toward taking any direct
responsibility for building the FI. The Congress was held in 1948,
almost ten years after the founding congress of the FI. And these were
not just any 10 years. The world had been shaken by wars and
revolutions.
The mass revolutionary struggles following the war had not resulted in
victorious proletarian revolutions in the advanced European countries=97
but the war, as Trotsky had predicted, did give way to mighty
revolutionary mobilizations throughout Europe. It was only because of
the role of the treacherous apparatuses of the labor movement=97the
Social Democrats and especially the Stalinists=97that capitalism did not
fall. Capitalism was rescued, but the mass workers=92 struggles across
Europe were able to wrest major victories for the working class=97such
as national public health systems, mass public education, mass public
transit systems, major public services, generalized social and welfare
programs. The ruling class was forced to make these concessions to
preserve capitalism, which was under assault by millions of working
people.
Sections of the Fourth International in Europe, by and large, were not
prepared politically for this post-war revolutionary upsurge. They
believed that the mass Social Democratic and Stalinist organizations
had been so discredited because of their sell-out role before and
during the war that the m***** would bypass them and move directly to
join the FI. This, of course, did not happen. The workers=92 movement
during this period of revolutionary upheaval swelled the ranks of the
Social Democratic and Stalinist parties, seeking to advance their
demands through their historic organizations. Stalinism, despite its
history of betrayals, emerged from the war with great and newfound
prestige=97as it took the credit for the mass resistance of the Soviet
workers to Hitler=92s invasion, symbolized particularly in the Battle of
Stalingrad.
But as Pierre Lambert, a young worker who joined the Movement for the
Fourth International in 1936 in France and remains today one of the
leaders of the FI, has pointed out on numerous occasions: =93The
sections of the FI=97including the French section=97were politically
disoriented after the war. They had not assimilated Lenin=92s and
Trotsky=92s Marxist methodology=97particularly their admonition that the
m*****, in their first revolutionary movement, will always look for
the most =93economical=94 means of struggle=97that is, they will always
first look to their traditional organizations, seeking to imbue them
with their revolutionary aspirations and demands. Failure to
assimilate this fundamental lesson led to widespread demoralization
among the leader****p and ranks of the Fourth International. The m*****
hadn=92t come knocking at the door of the FI in the immediate aftermath
of the war, as many had predicted. Perhaps, some asked, our program no
longer corresponded to the needs of the revolutionary struggle for
socialism?=94
The period between the first and second congresses of the Fourth
International required a full and patient discussion within the FI to
assimilate fully the lessons of these 10 years, and to draw a balance
sheet on the basis of the program that could politically arm the
sections and members to continue the difficult struggle for the FI and
socialism. But there was no balance sheet. A deal was worked out
between the Cannon leader****p of the SWP and the leaders of the
International Secretariat in Paris (Michel Pablo, Ernest Mandel, and
Pierre Frank, in particular) so that there would be no real balance
sheet. The re****t on the first 10 years of the FI was presented by SWP
leader Morris Stein and took only 30 minutes, translation included.
Not surprisingly, there was no real discussion following the re****t.
All the political differences between the SWP and IS leaders were
brushed under the rug. No one wanted to truly discuss and draw a
balance sheet. They were happy to go through the motions of holding an
International Congress of the FI but their intent was not to create a
genuine framework for advancing the political thinking and
organizational building of the sections of the FI. The operating motto
was =93live and let live=94=97as long, of course, as no one interfered
directly in the affairs of anyone else in the FI.
Quite obviously, the lack of collective political discussion and
clarification, and the lack of any balance sheet of the first 10 years
of the Fourth International only fueled the demoralization at all
levels within the FI. It is an axiom of revolutionary politics that
when demoralization sets in, there is a natural tendency to look for
political substitutes for the program=97in this case, the program of the
FI. This quest for political substitutes for the program and sections
of the FI would be clearly evidenced in the years to follow.
The 1953 Split in the Fourth International
Beginning in the early 1950s, Michel Pablo and the other central
leaders of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International
based in Paris began to revise Trotsky=92s fundamental analysis
regarding the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism worldwide. Pablo
argued that the extension of the workers=92 states into Eastern Europe
(and later China) following World War II demonstrated that Stalinism
had a dual nature=97that it could be pushed from below to become a
revolutionary force in society=97or, as Pablo put it, to =93carry out
socialism in its own way.=94 He developed this revision of Trotsky=92s
seminal analysis and formulated a new strategy for the Fourth
International on the basis of this theory. It was now necessary for
the Trotskyists to =93dissolve=94 into the Stalinist parties for a
prolonged period of time to help move them on a revolutionary course.
This =93entryism sui generis=94 (of a different type), as it was dubbed,
was espoused by Pablo, Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank and other core
leaders of the International Secretariat.
The majority of the French section of the Fourth International did not
agree with this =93revision=94 of the FI=92s analysis of Stalinism. They
explained that under certain exceptional cir***stances, as Trotsky
himself had noted in the Transitional Program, petty-bourgeois parties=97
and even Stalinists=97could be compelled to go further on the road to a
break with capitalism than their program had presupposed. But even in
those cir***stances, the French majority noted, the basic program of
the Fourth International (workers=92 democracy, extension of the
revolutions through a process of Permanent Revolution, etc.) was
needed to safeguard the gains made and to move forward toward socialism
=97which could not be established in only one (or a series) of
countries, but which required supplanting capitalism on a world scale
as a system of production and social relations. And to advance that
program, it was essential that the Fourth International exist as an
organized political force in every country.
The French majority argued vehemently against the =93revisionism=94 and
=93liquidationism=94 advocated by the Pablo-Mandel-Frank majority of the
International Secretariat. For expressing this political disagreement,
the French majority was expelled from the Fourth International.
Immediately, the French majority=97this was in early 1952=97appealed for
help to James P. Cannon and the leader****p of the Socialist Workers
Party in the United States. But the letters from the French majority
to the SWP leader****p requesting political sup****t in the fight
against =93Pabloism=94 fell on deaf ears for more than 18 months=97a
period
during which the International Secretariat=92s =93revisionism=94 caused
great havoc and dislocation within the Fourth International.
It was only after the Mandel-Pablo majority began to interfere in the
internal affairs of the SWP=97seeking to fuel an internal faction
against Cannon via the Clark-Cochran minority=97that the Cannon
leader****p reacted sharply, to the point of embracing, belatedly, the
political characterization of Pabloism as a =93revisionist=94 and
=93liquidationist=94 current inside the Fourth International. The
political offensive by Pablo-Mandel against the historic program of
the Fourth International led to a major split in the International=97a
very damaging split that would dislocate the International for
decades. In 1953, the Socialist Workers Party, the French majority
(regrouped at the time in the PCI), the British Revolutionary Workers
Party (then led by Gerry Healey) and other sections in a dozen or more
countries constituted the International Committee of the Fourth
International (ICFI). They arose in opposition to the International
Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) of Pablo-Mandel-Frank.
For 10 years, these two formations would exist side by side, each
claiming to represent the continuity and mantle of the Fourth
International. Looking back many years later on this period of the
International Committee, Pierre Lambert noted that the French majority
was gratified the SWP had joined them in 1953 in the struggle against
Pablo. But Lambert went on to add that the SWP, which was the largest
and most experienced section within the International Committee,
refused to assume any leader****p role within the IC.
=93We argued it was necessary to conduct a permanent campaign to combat
Pablo=92s revisionism,=94 Lambert noted in an interview conducted for La
V=E9rit=E9/The Truth (the modern theoretical magazine of the FI), =93but
Cannon and the SWP leader****p refused to wage that fight. It=92s almost
as if they thought this revisionist trend would go away on its own.
Nor did the SWP play any role in building the ICFI as an international
current. It reminded many of us of the correspondence between Trotsky
and Cannon in the late 1930s. Trotsky had criticized the Cannon
leader****p for not paying its international dues to the International
or devoting any leader****p attention to the building of an
International Center in Paris. There was a certain air of =91American
self-sufficiency.=92 In word and deed, the SWP subordinated the fight to
build the FI as the core of the world party of socialist revolution to
the central task of building the FI in the U.S. This tendency toward
=91national Trotskyism was not unique to the SWP; we have seen it emerge
periodically within the ranks of the FI. It was simply more pronounced
in the United States because of the particular cir***stances
prevailing in that country. It was evident throughout the period of
the International Committee but it surfaced throughout the entire
history of the SWP. It was, unfortunately, one of the main factors
leading to the degeneration of the SWP in the late 1970s.=94
The =93Reunification=94 of 1963
The Cuban Revolution of 1959-1961 formed the political backdrop in
which an unprincipled =93reunification=94 took place between the
International Secretariat and the SWP. If you look at the official
history of the SWP, you will read that toward the end of the 1950s,
there began a political convergence between the SWP leader****p, on the
one hand, and the central leaders of the International Secretariat in
Paris, on the other. This history claims that that the French OCI (the
French affiliate of the International Committee previously called the
PCI) =93turned its back on the Cuban Revolution,=94 refusing to
acknowledge the revolution and the creation of a workers=92 state in
Cuba. This assertion is simply not true. The OCI hailed the downfall
of the Batista dictator****p in Cuba under the impact of the mass
revolutionary struggles of the Cuban workers and peasants. It
applauded the victorious Cuban Revolution, characterizing it as a
decisive blow to U.S. imperialism in its very own backyard.
But this is where the political agreement ended between the OCI and
the SWP leader****p, which was joined on this score by Mandel-Frank and
the IS. The SWP and IS leader****ps did more than just sup****t the
revolution. The SWP and IS leaders proceeded to characterize Fidel
Castro as a =93natural Trotskyist=94 and to explain that the Cuban
Revolution, which had overturned capitalist property relations by
early 1961, heralded the first non-Stalinist anti-capitalist
revolution with a leader****p to be emulated. Accordingly, there was no
longer any need to build a section of the FI in Cuba.
The OCI rejected this characterization of the leader****p of the Cuban
Revolution, holding to the formulation in the Transitional Program
according to which petty-bourgeois political formations could, under
exceptional cir***stances, go further in their break with the
capitalists than they had initially intended. Though this =93paradox=94
was proving to be more commonplace than expected in the post-war
period, the OCI explained, this did not invalidate the central need
for sections of the Fourth International in every country, including
Cuba. But the debate in the early years of the Cuban Revolution
between the SWP and IS leaders, on the one hand, and the French OCI,
on the other, was not about the *****sment of the various stages
reached by the Cuban Revolution. It was not about the imperative need
for Trotskyists to be the best defenders of the Cuban Revolution
against imperialism; on this there was absolutely no disagreement
between the OCI and the SWP.
The debate in the FI was about something far more fundamental: Had the
emergence of the Castro leader****p in Cuba invalidated a founding
principle of the FI, according to which the FI=92s program=97and therefore
its organizational expression, the section of the FI=97was imperative in
every country? Would Castro promote the extension of the Cuban
Revolution to the rest of the world with an orientation rooted in
Permanent Revolution? Did Castro advocate the forms of workers=92
democracy=97soviet democracy=97ushered in by the Russian Revolution of
1917, until the revolution=92s degeneration under Stalin? Had Castro
embraced the FI=92s historic program? The SWP and IS leaders basically
replied in the affirmative to these questions=97and on the basis of this
=93political convergence=94 regarding the *****sment of the Castro
leader****p, they began political discussions aimed at a political
reunification of the International Secretariat and the International
Committee.
The OCI argued that they were not opposed to a reunification=97but they
insisted that any reunification had to be premised on a full balance
sheet of the root political causes that had led to the split in the FI
in 1953=97namely, the political adaptation to Stalinism and the quest
for political substitutes to the program and section-building of the
FI. They noted, moreover, that the =93political convergence=94 between the
SWP and IS leaders around Cuba reproduced many of the same political
problems that had led to the split in 1953. Without such a balance
sheet of the 1953 split, and without an in depth discussion of the
fundamental political issues at the heart of the discussion around
Cuba, any reunification, the OCI argued, would be =93unprincipled.=94
Without such a balance sheet, they insisted, all the political
problems that had caused such dislocation in the FI=97problems that were
being brushed under the rug in 1963=97would re-emerge with a vengeance
down the road in any =93reunified=94 FI.
The request by Lambert and the OCI for a political balance sheet and
organized political discussion about the Cuban Revolution was rejected
by the SWP and IS leaders. Cannon, Joe Hansen, Farrell Dobbs and other
central leaders of the SWP urged Lambert to back off from this
request. They urged Lambert to join them in the reunification, arguing
that they=97the International Committee=97would be a majority in a
reunified FI, as the combined member****p of the IC sections far
outnumbered the member****p of the IS sections. The OCI turned down
this plea, explaining that it would only lead to more crises down the
road. =93There are certain levels of activity where it is legitimate to
maneuver to advance your politics,=94 Lambert explained. =93But you cannot
maneuver when it comes to the founding program and principles of the
Fourth International. Such an approach inevitably leads to disaster.=94
In 1963, the SWP reunited with the International Secretariat to
constitute the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USec.)
The OCI in France, the RWP (led by Gerry Healy in England), the **** in
Bolivia (led by Guillermo Lora) and a number of smaller sections in
other countries refused to be part of such an unprincipled
reunification, opting instead to maintain themselves as the
International Committee of the Fourth International. The French OCI,
however, continued to characterize the SWP as a Trotskyist organization
=97a label they did not apply to the International Secretariat or its
sections around the world, which they called =93Pabloists.=94 Despite the
tendency toward =93national Trotskyism=94 and the adaptation to the
leader****p of the Cuban Revolution, the SWP remained a Trotskyist
organization in the eyes of the SWP because of its history, its roots
and traditions in the American working class, and its continuity with
Trotsky and the early International Left Opposition.
This political characterization would lead the OCI, ten years later,
to re-establish political contact with the SWP at a time when a new
and major crisis developed in the USec, (as the OCI had predicted)=97
this time over the orientation toward =93guerrilla warfare=94 espoused by
the USFI leader****p of Mandel, Frank, and Livio Maitan. That crisis
would witness the formation, at the initiative of the SWP, of the
Leninist Trotskyist Faction (LTF) in the USec. The LTF was created to
combat the petty-bourgeois =93guerrilla warfare=94 orientation of the USec
leader****p=97the latest form of their longstanding tendency to abandon
the program of the FI in search of political substitutes.
The 1960s: The Antiwar Movement, the Labor Party and =93Sectoralism=94
The 1960s witnessed the spectacular growth of the SWP. The SWP began
as a small minority in the fledgling antiwar movement of the early
1960s. They had to take on the Communist Party, which advocated
sup****t for =93pro-peace=94 Democrats (from Eugene McCarthy to George
McGovern) to derail the development of a mass movement in the streets
against the war. They had to contend with the CP and the liberals, who
promoted sup****t for the Paris =93Peace Talks=94 with the Vietnamese
National Liberation Front=97much like these same folks are doing today
when they advocate UN troops in Iraq, to replace the U.S. troops
(combined with their =93Dump Bush=94/Sup****t Any Democratic candidate
politics). But the SWP also had to contest for leader****p in the youth
movement with the Maoists and other ultraleftists, and with the left-
Social Democratic leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS). The ultraleft groups, which succeeded in taking over SDS,
advocated exemplary =93minority actions=94 in direct counterposition to a
mass-action strategy. And they advocated political sup****t for the
Vietnamese CP and NLF=97marching with chants such as =93Ho, Ho, Ho Chi
Minh!=94=97referring to the Stalinist leader of the VCP.
The SWP and YSA advocated =93U.S. Troops Out Now!=94 and =93Bring Our Boys
Home Now!=94 (There were no women in combat in those days.) With these
united front slogans, and advocating mass action in the streets and
democratically run mass antiwar conferences (with one person-one
vote), the SWP and YSA were propelled into the leader****p of the
antiwar movement. Without a doubt, this was one of the proudest
moments in the entire history of the SWP.
Also very im****tant, the SWP oriented to the developing Black
liberation struggle, and to Malcolm X in particular. In fact, Malcolm=97
after he broke with the Nation of Islam=97spoke at various Forums
organized by the SWP. The SWP published numerous pamphlets on the
Black question and recruited for the first time since the immediate
postwar period a significant layer of Black activists. But as the
excellent article by Daniel Gluckstein titled, =93Strengths and
Weaknesses of Cannonism=94 (reprinted from La V=E9rit=E9/The Truth) points
out, the SWP in embracing the Black struggle went overboard and
adapted to the political weaknesses of Malcolm and the Black
nationalist movement=97divorcing the struggle for independent Black
political action from the struggle for independent working class
politics as a whole; i.e., the Labor Party. This was linked,
Gluckstein argues, to two political weaknesses on the part of the SWP:
The first weakness was the SWP leader****p=92s failure to fully
assimilate the methodology Trotsky had proposed to the SWP in relation
to how to advance the struggle for the Labor Party. In his discussions
with SWP leaders in July 1938 in Coyoac=E1n, Mexico, Trotsky insisted
that it was not sufficient to carry out abstract propaganda for a
Labor Party. What was necessary, Trotsky argued, was to =93show concrete
examples of success, and not limit ourselves to giving good
theoretical advice in favor of a Labor Party.=94
The second weakness was an adaptation to what the SWP itself, in a
rare balance sheet conducted in the mid-1970s, characterized as their
=93sectoralism=94 of the 1960s. By this the SWP meant that during the
1960s, the SWP oriented to=97and adapted politically to=97all sorts of
im****tant social or =93sectoral=94 movements of the working class (from
the Chicano movement and La Raza Unida Party, to the Black
nationalists, to the environmental movement, to the women=92s movement,
to the student movement) without tying these struggles together
through a consistent orientation to the overall U.S. working class and
its main battalions in the trade union movement. In other words, the
SWP compartmentalized the working class into various, semi-autonomous
or independent =93sectors.=94
Such a unifying political perspective, as Gluckstein pointed out in
his article, would have been the fight for the Labor Party. But at no
point during this period did the SWP seriously raise the perspective
of the Labor Party. In fact, even during the 1946-48 period, when
significant Labor Party movements were developing across the
Midwestern states, many of them running local union-based LP
candidates for public office, the SWP never oriented to these movements
=97let alone offer them a centralizing perspective of building a
nationwide Labor Party. This orientation also predisposed the SWP to
be extremely wary of, if not outwardly hostile to, any motion by a
sector of the labor movement to talk about, or seek to move in the
direction of, the Labor Party. Any such movement was viewed as a
=93maneuver=94 and therefore an obstacle to any real Labor Party. This
attitude, in fact, was first expressed during Trotsky=92s lifetime
around the formation of the Labor Non Partisan League (LNPL) on the
East Coast.
Trotsky told the SWP leaders in Coyoac=E1n, Mexico, in 1938 that he felt
the SWP should give critical sup****t to the LNPL candidates in the
1940 elections. But Cannon and the SWP leaders strongly disagreed.
Though the LNPL was led by the Stalinists with the very clear and
conscious aim of channeling the mass Labor Party sentiment of the late
1930s back into the Democratic Party, Trotsky explained, they had to
do so through what appeared to be an independent, non-partisan
political instrument. The LNPL, moreover, had very strong trade union
sup****t, among the officialdom but also among the rank and file.
Trotsky argued that it would be far more effective for the SWP to
involve itself in the fight for a Labor Party=97that is, the fight to
prevent the LNPL from sup****ting Democrats and for the LNPL unions to
break with the Democrats=97from within the movement. The call for the
LNPL to break with the Democrats would find a positive response among
the ranks of the LNPL, whose healthy sentiment was being misdirected
by the Stalinists back into safe channels for the ruling class. The
SWP=92s objectives, Trotsky explained, would be better served through a
policy of critical sup****t and active involvement in the LNPL
campaign. But Cannon and the SWP leader****p disagreed, arguing that
any involvement with this effort would only help the Stalinist
misleaders in their drive to derail the fight for independent
politics. This effort had to be denounced and exposed from outside,
the SWP leaders contended.
This same approach is what would frame many years later Socialist
Action=92s=97as well as many other radical organizations=92=97approach to
Labor Party Advocates (1991) and the Labor Party (1996). This was not
a real movement for a Labor Party, they argued. This was a =93rump Labor
Party.=94 While the Labor Party formed by Tony Mazzocchi has degenerated
dramatically since its founding in 1996, the same question Trotsky
brought up with the SWP leaders in 1938 still holds true: Was it
better to attempt to build the Labor Party from inside this process=97
seeking to get the LP to launch its own LP candidates against the
Democrats, seeking to push it step by step on an independent course=97or
was it better to sit back and denounce the process from the outside?
We in Socialist Organizer answered this question on the basis of
Trotsky=92s teachings: One had to fight for the LP from inside this
process. (Socialist Action answered in the negative, much like Cannon
did in relation to the LNPL.) While Socialist Organizer was not a
large political formation and was not able to prevent the degeneration
of the LP). We played a role we should be proud of. In fact, much of
the work done by the LP helped pave the way for the formation of US
Labor Against the War (USLAW). And Socialist Organizer=92s ability to
play a central role in USLAW was aided by all the work we carried out
to build the Labor Party.
Sup****ters of Socialist Organizer helped to pass a resolution for
running candidates at the 1998 LP convention. SO sup****ters helped to
put together an =93electoral caucus=94 with Baldemar Velasquez and other
respected labor activists; and SO members were at the origin of the LP-
endorsed Robin David for MUD (public power) campaign in 2001 in SF.
These are just a few of the steps forward taken by the LP at our
initiative. What we accomplished could have been magnified a thousand
fold by a party truly rooted in the trade union movement and with
cadre poised to challenge the misleaders of the Labor Party. The
demise of the SWP in the late 1970s, in that sense, became an
objective barrier to the development of what has been the most
promising formation toward a Labor Party in the last 70 years.
Had there existed a collective and truly functioning Fourth
International during the 1960s=97one rooted firmly in the founding
program of the FI and committed to a fully democratic, not top-down,
method of discussion of political differences=97there would have been a
venue to discuss and correct this SWP drift toward =93sectoralism=94 and
this failure to use the openings, which did exist, to advance the
fight for both the Labor Party and black political action. But that
unified and principled Fourth International did not exist for the SWP.
The Fourth International had been dislocated as an international
center based on its founding program. The SWP was affiliated with the
United Secretariat (or USec) of Ernest Mandel and Livio Maitan=97an
international construct that not only had dropped key tenets of our
program but that, in the 1960s, had taken this =93sectoralism=94 to its
extreme conclusion=97embracing the politics of =93minority violence=94=97=
=93new
mass vanguardism=94=97and =93guerrilla warfare=94=97all of which led
thousa=
nds
of young Trotskyists to their deaths and destroyed parties claiming
the heritage of the FI in country after country. So bad were the
politics of the USec that the SWP=97which had been central to the
founding of the USec in 1963=97was compelled to organize its own
international faction in the USec to counter the USec=92s destructive
influence/role the world over. This faction was the Leninist-
Trotskyist Faction (or LTF). Though still wedded to the USec
framework, the SWP would nonetheless undertake a struggle for
Trotskyist politics through this im****tant international formation.
The LTF of the 1970s, Its Dissolution in 1977-78 and the Break with
Trotskyism Beginning in 1979 Obviously, it is not possible in this
contribution to review all the heated political debates that pitted
the LTF against the International Majority Tendency (IMT) of Mandel-
Krivine-Maitan. I will cover only some of the debates=97particularly
those that revealed the re-emergence of political convergence between
the LTF and the French OCI.
A. The Fight Against Guerrilla Warfare and Cuba
The fight against guerrilla warfare was the initial and dominant
debate that prompted the SWP leader****p, at the initiative of SWP
leader Joe Hansen, to launch the LTF in 1969-70. The USec leader****p
had embraced the =93guerrilla warfare=94 strategy promoted by many of the
petty-bourgeois radical groups in Europe and Latin America. This
strategy held that a small =93foco=94 (or focal spark) initiated by new
revolutionary vanguards could, through exemplary actions (kidnappings
of officials, urban and rural armed struggle, etc.) propel the m*****
into motion against the ruling-class regimes. The method of the
Transitional Program and the entire quest to forge united fronts in
defense of workers=92 interests was thrown out the window.
According to this =93foquista=94 strategy=97as it was also called=97the
working class, by and large, had become =93bourgeoisified=94 and pacified.
There was now a new =93radicalization=94 of youth and the most oppressed
sectors of society that had bypassed the organized working class and
its traditional organizations. The working class, to the extent there
was any hope for it, needed to be awakened from its passivity by the
revolutionary actions of the few and committed. According to this
view, the struggle around principled working class demands that would
expose the inability of the capitalists to resolve workers=92 basic
needs, as the Transitional Program had charted, was outdated.
The result of the implementation of these policies by sections of the
USec that followed by leader****p of Mandel, Maitan and Krivine was
disastrous. Under the leader****p of Santucho in Argentina, hundreds of
Trotskyists who joined the urban guerrilla warfare movement were
assassinated by the police in senseless and counterproductive
=93military=94 actions. The same orientation was implemented in Guatemala,
Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico=97and even in various countries
across Europe (although the repression in those countries was not as
acute).
The SWP leader****p reacted swiftly to this fundamental abandonment of
Marxism. It denounced the adaptation to the =93new mass vanguardism=94
that resulted from this impressionistic reaction to the radicalization
of the 1960s. At home in the United States, the SWP also resisted the
call of those who sought to lure the SWP into military actions=97either
via the Black Panther Party or the =93radical=94 sectors of SDS.
The SWP during this period also produced some of its most critical
articles of the leader****p of the Cuban Revolution. The SWP criticized
the Cuban leader****p=92s endorsement of this guerrilla warfare strategy
and showed how, behind all the =93radical=94 formulations of the Cuban CP,
there was a consistent pattern of political sup****t to bourgeois
regimes across the Americas. (Ultraleftism and political op****tunism
were two sides of the same coin, the SWP explained.) Indeed, the Cuban
CP and the Cuban government were among the staunchest sup****ters of
the Mexican ruling class and PRI regime=97to the point where Fidel
Castro applauded the massacre of the student uprising of Tlaltelolco
in October 1968 by the Mexican government=97a massacre that left close
to 1000 students dead or disappeared. In the 1970s and =9180s, the Cuban
government was one of the main backers of the bloody junta in
Argentina, which was responsible for the deaths and disappearances of
tens of thousands of youth and activists.
B. The United Front in ****tugal, Spain and France
The SWP and its international co-thinkers in the Leninist Trotskyist
Faction=97which included large groupings in France, Spain, Chile, India,
Peru, Colombia and other countries=97also rejected the USec=92s
abandonment of the united front approach to politics in Western
Europe, particularly in countries where there were still large
Communist and Socialist parties in the leader****p of the workers=92
movement.
The SWP and LTF affirmed the traditional position of the Fourth
International=97first elaborated by Trotsky in relation to France in 1936
=97of calling on the mass bourgeois-workers=92 parties=97the Communist and
Socialist parties=97to unite on the electoral level, without any bloc
with bourgeois parties, to defeat the candidates of the bosses. (The
CPs and SPs were characterized as bourgeois-workers=92 parties because
of their pro-capitalist leader****ps but their mass working class base,
history and traditions.) The governmental slogan of the workers=92
government was most often concretized as =93For a CP-SP Government
Without Bosses!=94
The USec sections rejected this united-front orientation, which they
called =93reformist,=94 preferring instead to forge electoral alliances of
the =93Left of the Left=94=97or far left. The united-front orientation by
the SWP and LTF meant that LTF-affiliated currents in Western Europe
often found themselves in political agreement with the French OCI and
its international current, now reorganized as the Organizing Committee
for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI). In France,
Spain, and ****tugal=97in particular=97the LTF and OCRFI found themselves
advocating the same positions in the class struggle, while the USec
organizations remained mired in their ultraleft/op****tunist =93new mass
vanguard=94 politics.
This common program and political activity would pave the way for the
LTF affiliates in most countries around the world to leave the USec
and to join up with the OCRFI in 1979. Given this political
convergence on so many im****tant questions of the day between the SWP
and the OCRFI, it was not surprising that the SWP leader****p invited
Pierre Lambert and other leaders of the French OCI to attend their
national conventions in Oberlin, Ohio, in the years 1974 through 1977.
Many of us in Socialist Organizer who were members of the SWP in those
years remember hearing Pierre Lambert and Francois de Massot address
the SWP conventions. In fact, the USec representatives repeatedly
protested the invitation extended by the SWP to the OCI leaders=97and
went so far as to refuse to send their own representatives to those
SWP conventions as long as Lambert and the French OCI were invited.
Joe Hansen, Dissolution of the LTF and the Degeneration of the SWP
Throughout much of 1976 and 1977, Joe Hansen had written Pierre
Lambert to urge him and the OCRFI to rejoin the USec=97so as to help the
SWP and LTF become the majority of the USec on the basis of orthodox
Trotskyist positions. Lambert and the French OCI continued to put
forward the position they advocated in 1963. They said they were open
to a political unification, provided there was a serious and organized
political discussion of the balance sheet of the 1963 split and the
LTF experience. They said it would be counterproductive to pursue any
=93reunification=94 while bru****ng under the table, as had happened in
1963, the sharp disagreements over matters of political principle that
had separated the various currents claiming to represent the FI.
Hansen and the SWP agreed initially to organize this political
discussion of a balance sheet=97which marked a major ****ft from its
approach to the reunification in 1963. There was an international
exchange of bulletins on this balance sheet in 1977, and there was
even an organized meeting in France on such a balance sheet that
involved LTF currents in various European countries and even drew in
representatives from the United Secretariat. It appeared for a brief
moment that a political reunification of the SWP/LTF and the OCI/OCRFI
forces might be possible. But in 1977, SWP leader Joe Hansen=97who was
spearheading this discussion and possible reunification=97became
seriously ill and had to withdraw from all political activity.
With almost the entire Old Guard of the SWP out of the picture, the
SWP leader****p=97which by now was under the full control of Jack Barnes
and his clique=97retreated abruptly from the traditional Trotskyist
positions advocated by the SWP and LTF. To everyone=92s great surprise,
the Barnes leader****p moved almost immediately and without any
apparent political reason to disband the LTF, unilaterally and without
consulting the Steering Committee of the International LTF. In the
United States, the dissolution of the LTF began a process of political
backpedaling and degeneration that would witness, in the matter of
just two years, the renunciation by the SWP leader****p of Trotsky=92s
theory of Permanent Revolution and the endorsement of the entire
political program of the Cuban Communist Party leader****p.
Many years later, Pierre Lambert was asked why he thought the LTF was
dissolved and why the SWP degenerated so quickly. He answered that =93An
axiom of revolutionary politics is that you cannot sit on the fence
indefinitely; at some point you have to take a stand and make a move,
or else you will simply fall flat on your face. The SWP had moved far
during the LTF years toward upholding many of the traditional
positions of the Fourth International. Joseph Hansen genuinely wanted
a balance sheet discussion and a reunification with the French OCI.
But the rest of the SWP leader****p=97particularly the new leader****p
around Jack Barnes=97was not interested in such a balance sheet of the
1963 reunification, as they were still wedded to that reunification
and to the politics of Castroism, despite the political struggle waged
through the LTF.
At a certain point in the development of the LTF, there was no choice
for the SWP, if it wanted to wage the struggle consistently for
Trotskyist politics, but to engage in a systematic balance sheet
discussion with the OCRFI aimed at a political fusion. The entire
framework of the USec was one that destroyed Trotskyist organizations.
Trotskyism and revisionism are incompatible. The SWP could not remain
in the USec indefinitely as a Trotskyist organization. It would either
have to break with the USec framework and become part of a genuine
Fourth International committed to the founding principles of our
movement, or it would degenerate. By the end of the 1970s, the SWP had
gone as far as it could go as a Trotskyist organization within the
USec. It was time to break with that unprincipled framework, or else
that unprincipled framework would end up breaking the SWP. And that is
what eventually occurred. With the dissolution of the LTF, the
political pendulum swung back in the direction of abandonment of
Trotskyism with a vengeance.=94
A Watershed Moment in the SWP=92s Retreat from Trotskyism
Much like occurred with the Cuban Revolution in 1959-60, the USec
leader****p of Mandel-Krivine-Maitan-BenSaid converged with the Barnes
leader****p of the SWP in sup****ting not just the revolution but also
the government=97a capitalist government=97that was formed after the July
19th revolution in Nicaragua. Both the USec and Barnes leader****ps
embraced the Sandinista/Castroist strategy for revolution and took a
major step in openly repudiating Permanent Revolution. But they did
more than this: They sup****ted the Sandinista-Chamorro government=92s
jailing of the Nicaraguan Trotskyists and their Colombian and
Argentine Trotskyist cothinkers who had come to Nicaragua to help in
the fight to overthrow the hated Somoza regime. These Trotskyists
refused to give back their weapons to the bourgeois government, as
demanded. They said that as long as the land had not been distributed
to the peasants who made the revolution, these peasants and the
fighting Sandinista brigades who had been the backbone of the
revolution should keep their weapons.
The Sandinista government formed after July 19th pledged its sup****t
to a bourgeois constitution that reaffirmed the sanctity of private
owner****p of the means of production. It proceeded swiftly to disarm
the Sandinista militias and to rebuild a traditional army under the
political control of the new government. To do this, the new
government arrested and imprisoned not only the Trotskyists but also
leading activists and workers in other political formations. At any
rate, the joint declaration in July 1979 by Peter Camejo on behalf of
the Barnes leader****p of the SWP and Alain Krivine on behalf of the
USec in sup****t of the Sandinista-FAO government and in sup****t of
their decision to jail the Trotskyists provoked a major split in the
USec.
In the fall of 1979, the organizations that still claimed the mantle
of the LTF=97in France the 500 militants organized in the LCI or
Internationalist Communist League, for example=97were expelled from the
USec. They were expelled, or otherwise simply walked out of the USec,
for organizing rallies together with the French OCI and OCRFI sections
in other countries to demand the release from the Nicaraguan prisons
of the jailed Trotskyists.
The Struggle to Defend the Legacy and Heritage of the
SWP
In the United States, the period between 1979 and 1984 registered an
intense political struggle inside the SWP in defense of Trotskyism.
For five years=97but especially from June 1982 till January 1984, when
the mass expulsions of the minority sup****ters in the SWP took place=97a
wide-ranging discussion took place among the Trotskyist oppositionists
about how best to fight the Barnes regime and about what common
platform should be adopted to preserve the continuity of the Fourth
International in the United States.
Toward the middle of 1983, when it seemed evident the Barnes
leader****p would not tolerate any opposition to its liquidationist
course, the Fourth International Caucus drafted a series of do***ents
and proposed them as the basis for a united opposition tendency in the
SWP. The basic do***ent, titled =9328 Theses for Socialist Revolution in
the United States,=94 reclaimed the best traditions of the SWP=97the fight
for a Labor Party based on the unions, the fight for united front
coalitions to defeat the warmakers, the affirmation of the totally
counterrevolutionary nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and much
more. A conference was held of the unified opposition in Chicago in
the fall of 1983. This meeting, of course, was unauthorized=97as the SWP
leader****p had pretty much banned all possibilities for the opposition
currents to express themselves inside the SWP. The conference
delegates agreed to form a new organization=97Socialist Action.
Socialist Action, represented the Trotskyist continuity of the
Socialist Workers Party and had in its ranks many of the respected
older worker militants of the SWP=97such as Asher Harer and Jake Cooper
amongst many others. SA published an attractive monthly newspaper and
involved itself in the struggle against U.S. intervention in Central
America, helping to initiate a broad, united-front antiwar coalition
known as the =93Mobe=94=97which stood for Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and
Justice.
The many international currents that claimed to represent Trotskyism
all understood that SA, because it sought to uphold the defense of
Trotskyism in the United States, was on a collision course with the
USec and could not long survive as a political tendency unless it was
part of an alternative international framework. Understandably, the
ICRFI sent Daniel Gluckstein to meet and discuss with the SA
leader****p. Gluckstein was invited regularly, beginning in 1986, to
meet with the SA leader****p. He was even invited to attend a
convention of Socialist Action. All this occurred even though SA was
formally affiliated with the USec. The SA leader****p understood that
the USec had become an empty shell at best, with its only role being
to mislead working people on every continent in the name of the FI.
In addition, Daniel Gluckstein and the ICRFI opened a political
discussion with the SA leader****p about the history of the SWP and the
balance sheet of the 1963 reunification and other questions such as
the fight for the Labor Party. Many of these questions resonated in
the minds of many SA leaders and members who were struggling to figure
out the roots of the degeneration of the SWP but also were acutely
concerned about how to continue the struggle to build the FI in the
United States. These SA leaders and members were greatly influenced by
the political texts and discussions with the ICRFI representative.
They also became increasingly disenchanted with the international
allies of Socialist Action in the USec=97particularly the Matti tendency
in France and the Hudson tendency in Britain. These two tendencies
were unwilling to wage the fight against the USec as an International
Public Faction.
In light of all these developments=97the successes of the initiatives
undertaken in common between SA and the ICRFI, the deepening anti-
Trotskyist evolution of the USec (which, today, has culminated with
the participation of the USec in the capitalist government of Brazil)=97
many SA leaders and activists proposed that SA as an organization take
the next in collaborating with the ICRFI by participating as observers
in the Open World Conference of Barcelona in 1991. This conference was
launched by the ICRFI with the purpose of constituting an
International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples for a Workers=92
International (ILC). Such a principled international class-struggle
regroupment would permit the Trotskyists to break out of their
relative isolation from the working class and build FI sections in the
very process of building working class resistance to the ruling class
drive toward heightened exploitation and war.
The aim of these SA leaders and activists was stated openly: As it
became increasingly clear that the USec was a destructive center and
that there were few, if any salvageable currents within it after so
many decades of political miseducation and abandonment of the FI=92s
founding program, it was now necessary for SA to deepen its
collaboration with the ICRFI=97a political current that, indeed,
represented the continuity of the Fourth International and stood
firmly in sup****t of the best traditions of the SWP itself. The SA
minority argued, moreover, that to the extent SA remained wedded to
the USec, it was bound to degenerate politically. It could not be
otherwise. To believe it is possible to build a Trotskyist
organization anywhere in the world divorced from the struggle to build
the FI on an international scale is the worst form of =93national
Trotskyism.=94
In January 1991, nine members of Socialist Action=97including two
National Committee members=97traveled to Barcelona to Spain to
participate as observers in the Open World Conference. Their trip to
Barcelona was not authorized by the SA leader****p. In fact, for making
this trip to Barcelona, these SA members were expelled from the
organization. The SA leader****p argued that the struggle within the
USec had not been concluded, and that it was adventurous to move away
from the USec tradition to seek affiliation with the ICRFI. Not
surprisingly, SA would undergo a series of damaging splits in the
years to come that would leave the remnants of the old SA splintered,
largely demoralized, and with no real political life or perspectives
for building the FI in the United States or anywhere else. In February
1991, the expelled nine members and their sup****ters in SA went on to
constitute a new organization: Socialist Organizer. In March of that
year, the first issue of The Organizer newspaper was published.
The ILC and the Reproclamation of the Fourth International
A few brief points on the history of the struggle against revisionism
should be made in order to understand the context of the
reproclamation of the Fourth International in 1993:
After being expelled by Pablo in 1952, the French section was able to
become the pole for the defense of FI=92s program because it never fell
into the trap of =93national Trotskyism.=94 Because Lambert and the OCI
always put the long and difficult struggle against Pabloism in a
international perspective, they were able to not only group together
all the defenders of the FI program in the International Committee and
then the ICRFI, but were also able to escape the fate of turning into
a sect. The evidence of the destructive influence of =93national
Trotskyism=94 can be seen in the degeneration of Healy=92s RWP, Moreno=92s
MAS, and the SWP itself.
The validity of the IC and the ICRFI=92s *****sment of the
incompatibility of Trotskyism and revisionism was proven by the
evolution of the SWP: not only was the SWP never ever able to =93take
back=94 the USec from the revisionists, but the fact that the SWP
remained in the framework of the USec was a principal cause of its own
demise.
The Pabloist belief that substitutes existed for the FI in the fight
for socialism was conclusively proven wrong by the fall of the Berlin
Wall as well as the political demise of all the USec=92s so-called
=93natural Trotskyists.=94 Though the struggle to build a mass
International capable of leading the emancipation of the workers was
largely derailed by the crisis of 1953, the need for world revolution=97
and thus of the FI itself=97was more acute than ever to keep humanity
from sinking into barbarism.
Thus, the issue of reproclaiming the FI was brought to the fore in
1992 insofar as all of the healthy elements inside the USec had by now
joined with the ICRFI and the Trotskyist program had been confirmed by
events. In addition, the principled regroupment process initiated at
the ILC conference in Barcelona one year earlier=97a process that far
exceeded the expectations of the ICRFI=97required a reproclaimed and
democratically centralized FI to meet the new challenges and
op****tunities.
In June 1993, Socialist Organizer took part in the World Conference of
Sections of the Fourth International/ICR=97at which sections from 44
countries voted to reproclaim the Fourth International on the basis of
its founding text: the Transitional Program. The conference asserted
that the building of the FI was inseparable from the campaigns of the
ILC, which provide an international united working class front against
war, privatization, and deregulation=97and for the independence of the
working class and its organizations. A resolution from the
reproclamation conference explained: =93We do not see the building of
the Fourth International as a linear development that would result
from the simple arithmetic growth of each of its sections. Rather we
view this task in a far more dynamic way. We see the need to
constitute a flexible yet principled framework for common action=97the
ILC=97within which individuals, political currents, and even parties can
get to know the Fourth International, interact with it, and consider
affiliating with it following a protracted period of political
collaboration. The only precondition for working together is the
intransigent defense of the independence of the working class and the
need to promote working class internationalism. It is precisely this
principled framework that provides the terrain to recruit to the
Fourth International.=94
This is the transitional method: approaching the m***** at their level
of political awareness and understanding, whatever it may be, and
helping draw them through progressive struggles and clarification to a
point where their level of thought and action is more astute=97that is,
in the direction of socialist revolution.
The united-front campaigns and conferences of ILC=97which have been
waged in 92 countries=97have been hugely successful in the United
States. The high points include the Open World Conference in Defense
of Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights that took place in
the year 2000, with the participation of 550 unionists from over 53
countries, as well as the current International Campaign Against the
Occupation and for Labor Rights in Iraq, which the ILC is co-
organizing with US Labor Against the War and the International
Confederation of Arab Trade Unions.
The ILC has provided a framework for the FI to link up with and gain
influence in the fighting sectors of the labor movement, but what
remains to be done in the U.S., which is true as well in the rest of
the world, is to build the section of the FI into a mass party in this
process of promoting the campaigns of the ILC.
Socialist Organizer: The Continuity of the Fourth International in the
United States
It is not the purpose of this contribution to undertake a political
balance sheet of the 12 years of Socialist Organizer. Without a doubt,
SO has made a mark on the political life of the United States with its
active participation in the fight for a real Labor Party; the fight
against labor-management cooperation schemes in Decatur, Illinois; the
countless campaigns conducted through the International Liaison
Committee and the Open World Conference; the fight against NAFTA and
the FTAA; and, most recently, the struggle to build US Labor Against
the War=97to name only some of its most im****tant activities.
Socialist Organizer began the daunting task of rebuilding a section of
the Fourth International in the United States in the aftermath of an
extremely debilitating and lengthy crisis of the SWP. And in many
ways, the American Trotskyist movement has come full circle; after
all, our movement began in 1928 with only a little more than a handful
of activists. And while it=92s true that the struggle to reconstruct the
FI in the U.S. will be not be an easy one, there is one simple reason
to remain optimistic: we have learned some im****tant lessons from our
past.
We=92ve learned that the fight to build the American section of the
Fourth International cannot be separated from the struggle for a real
Labor Party. We=92ve learned that there=92s no substitute for the Fourth
International in the fight for the emancipation of humanity from
capitalism. And perhaps most im****tant, we=92ve learned of the dangers
of =93national Trotskyism.=94 Our link with a real, functioning
International=97which now has sections in 48 countries=97has provided the
political and organizational basis for S.O. to rebuild the American
Trotskyist movement.
Without a doubt, S.O. has played a pivotal role in ensuring the
continuity of the Fourth International and its program in the United
States. This is a credit to the organization and to the reproclaimed
Fourth International, which has assisted every step of the way in
building the section of the FI in the United States.
But the fact remains that Socialist Organizer has only begun the
process toward rebuilding a party which can lead the American workers
and youth out of the chains of capitalism. In the next period, the
principal task of S.O. is to grow. Undoubtedly, the majority of the
activists we recruit will be youth won to Trotskyist politics through
our intervention in Revolution Youth, and a proper focus on youth work
is a precondition for transforming S.O. into an organization capable
of fulfilling its historic tasks. Hopefully, this text will enable
many of these new activists to understand the history of our movement,
our political traditions, and, therefore, why they should join S.O.
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