On Jul 19, 2:50=A0am, stephen <srdiam...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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
peri=
od
> 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
therefor=
e
> 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
th=
e
> 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
canno=
t
> 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
USe=
c
> 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
Boy=
s
> 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)
point=
s
> 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
thou=
sands
> 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
an=
d
> 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
o=
f
> 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
figh=
t
> 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
an=
d
> 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=92=
s
> 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.
>
> END QUOTED MATTER
Reformist, anti-communist garbage. Revolutionary youth looking for a
Trotskyist alternative needs to check the League for the Fourth
International not the social-democratic "Lambert" current. ONLY THE
REVOLUTIONARY TENDENCY IN THE US SWP UPHELP GENUINE LENINISM-
TROTSKYISM. ALL OTHERS ARE CENTRIST MISLEADERS!!!!!!!!
WWW.INTERNATIONALIST.ORG
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