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[Resolution of the Fourth Internationalist Caucus in the National Committee, submitted to the February-March 1982 plenum]
“The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” With these words Leon Trotsky began the Transitional Program and founding document of the Fourth Inter national, which he believed would be the organizational vehicle for over coming that historical crisis.
In the United States, the Socialist Workers Party has been the only organization to understand the full meaning of these words, and of the revolutionary program which they introduce. It has always been one of our basic precepts that our party and our program were destined to play the decisive role in resolving that historical crisis of leadership in this country, and thereby contributing indispensably to the international struggle for socialism.
This concept, which has guided the work of the American Trotskyist movement since its inception, was explicitly codified for the first time in 1946, at the 12th national convention of the SWP which adopted the “Theses on the American Revolution.” The last two paragraphs of this historic document read as follows:
The revolutionary vanguard party, destined to lead this tumultuous revolutionary movement in the U.S., does not have to be created. It already exists, and its name is the Socialist Workers Party. It is the sole legitimate heir and continuator of pioneer American communism and the revolutionary movements of the American workers from which it sprang. Its nucleus has already taken shape in three decades of unremitting work and struggle against the stream. Its program has been hammered out in ideological battles and successfully defended against every kind of revisionist assault upon it. The fundamental core of a professional leadership has been assembled and trained in the irreconcilable spirit of the combat party of the revolution.
The task of the Socialist Workers Party consists simply in this: to remain true to its program and banner, to render it more precise with each new development and apply it correctly in the class struggle; and to expand and grow with the growth of the revolutionary mass movement, always aspiring to lead it to victory in the struggle for political power (The Struggle for Socialism in the “American Century,” pp. 270-271).
In two reports on the American Theses James P. Cannon, one of its authors, reiterated and amplified this idea:
The point about the assertion of the role of the SWP, I think, follows from everything written in the document before. I think nothing condemns a party more than a lack of faith in its own future. I don’t believe it is possible for any party to lead a revolution if it doesn’t even have the ambition to do so. That is the case with the Shachtmanites and the case with Goldman and Morrow. The Shachtmanites assert that neither their party nor ours is the party of the future revolution. Somewhere, somehow, out of something or other, it will arise, they hope.
We must assert as a matter of course that our party is going to lead the revolution (“Report on 'The American Theses' to the PC,” ibid., p. 281).
The rest is our part. Our part is to build up this party which believes in the unlimited power and resources of the American workers, and believes no less in its own capacity to organize and lead them to storm and victory (“The Coming American Revolution,” report to the 12th convention, ibid., p. 304).
And who will make that party? Will somebody make it for us? Will we find it somewhere already created? Will it spring up spontaneously? In other words, the great unsolved problem of history—will somebody else solve it for us? No, said Trotsky, in his great speech to the Tenth Anniversary Celebration of our party and for the Conference of the Fourth International. He said, “Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves.” If we have the confidence and the faith and the courage to do that, then we will build the party and the party will lead the workers and the workers will make the revolution and nothing will stop them (“Summary Speech on 'The American Theses,'” ibid., p. 318).
Following the adoption of the American Theses our party consistently maintained this perspective of our leading role in the American socialist revolution. It has been a constant feature running through all of our political perspectives. Cannon himself returned to this theme during the fight with the Cochranites, a liquidationist faction in the party, in the 1950s. In his report to the July 1952 convention he explained:
Within the broad movement of the new radicalization, the struggle of tendencies for leadership will be irreconcilable. The party must recognize that and be ready for it. With the beginning of the new radicalization, the party will confront its great opportunity to leap from a propaganda circle to a party of the masses, as the Russian Bolsheviks did in 1917. Our effectiveness in this surging movement, our prospects for a great leap forward, will depend upon how sharply we demarcate our program from all the others, and — as things look now, and as far as we can see—it will depend upon how firmly we maintained our own independent party organization and press.
Any doubt on this score, or any ambiguity, would be far more than a false tactic based on a misreading of reality. It would strike directly at the right of the party to exist, at its historic role in the American revolution. The testing time for the SWP in this respect is right now, and in the period just ahead (“What Must Lead to a New Labor Upsurge?” Speeches to the Party, pp. 34-35).
In 1969, as the new radicalization which Cannon had foreseen was expand ing and deepening, fueled by the Black liberation movement and the struggle against the Vietnam war, the 23rd party convention adopted a resolution entitled “The Course of U.S. Imperialism and the Revolutionary Struggle for a Socialist America.” This asserted:
From its inception, the American Trotskyist movement has been dedicated to bringing about this colossal change at the first historic opportunity. In collaboration with its cothinkers in the Fourth International it has concentrated on the one key element that can be prepared in advance by conscious effort — construction of a leadership of the political caliber required to achieve success (ISR, Vol. 30, No. 6, Nov.-Dec. 1969, p. 3).
In his report on this resolution to the SWP National Committee, Jack Barnes declared:
It is important that we remember two aspects of the combat party. We are not only a party that intends at some stage to go into combat as the leadership of the masses against the ruling class, but we are a party that acts today in such a way that it is continuously preparing and deepening its ability to do just that when the time comes (IIB, No. 5 in 1970, p. 14).
This point with a slightly different emphasis, was repeated in the 1971 resolution, “Perspectives and Lessons of the New Radicalization”:
In the final analysis, the decisive question is the construction of a mass Trotskyist party. We proceed from the recognition that the SWP is not yet that mass party. We are a small but growing nucleus of cadres formed around the revolutionary-socialist program necessary to build such a party (SWP Discussion Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 13, June 1973, p. 40).
And in the report on this resolution, again to the SWP plenum, Comrade Barnes explained:
We know there are no gimmicks or substitutes for the construction of a party.... It must be a party with the perspective to lead the working class and its allies in massive revolutionary mobilizations (SWP DB, Vol. 29, No. 1, April 1971, p. 31).
In 1975, in the resolution “Prospects for Socialism in America,” our party again reaffirmed this traditional understanding of our role in the coming American revolution:
The “Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Revolution,” drafted by Trotsky in May 1940, outlines the following basic conditions for the victory of the proletarian revolution:
“(1) the bourgeois impasse and the resulting confusion of the ruling class; (2) the sharp dissatisfaction and the striving towards decisive changes in the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie, without whose support the big bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself; (3) the consciousness of the intolerable situation and readiness for revolutionary actions in the ranks of the proletariat; (4) a clear program and a firm leadership of the proletarian vanguard.”
The manifesto points out that the main reason for the defeat of so many revolutions is that these four conditions rarely attain the necessary degree of maturity at one and the same time.
In the period now opening, we can clearly see the forces building on a world scale that will bring these conditions to maturity in the United States. But the central question, the one over which we will have a decisive say, is that of gathering together the forces that are committed to forging a revolutionary party in time (The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, p. 337).
The political resolution adopted at our convention in 1981 lacked a clear reaffirmation of this decisive role of our party and our program in resolving the crisis of revolutionary leadership in the United States. It is appropriate now to restate this once again.
We are not, of course, organizational fetishists. We understand that the development of the revolutionary vanguard party will require all sorts of varied approaches, including splits, fusions, entries, as well as simply organic growth through recruitment. No particular form or blueprint is set in advance. But we also recognize that throughout this process the history and experience of the revolutionary movement — from the time of Marx and Engels, through the Russian Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Trotsky, through the Left Opposition, and the Fourth International — must be cherished and preserved. All the lessons of that history — the victories and the defeats — are irreplaceable acquisitions of the working class movement, which must be studied and absorbed by the vanguard to the marrow of its bones if it has any hope of leading the American working class to victory.
As a new layer of proletarian leadership arises to fill the void left by the default of the old, the best of them will begin to draw revolutionary, class struggle conclusions as a direct result of their experiences in confronting the bosses and the bourgeois state apparatus. But unless they come to a thorough understanding of Marxism, the scientific study of the history of the working class struggle for power, they will inevitably be diverted down one false trail or another. This has happened time and again in the twentieth century.
This is what we mean when we declare that the role of the SWP and of our program will be decisive in leading the working class to power in this country. We represent the conscious memory of the revolutionary workers’ movement and embody its history and traditions. Our program and method incorporate all of the lessons history has taught at such a great price in human suffering. It is this essential revolutionary tool that we bring as we join forces with the new wave of leadership that will emerge as the class struggle heats up.
This is why we resolutely restate our conviction in the future of our party. We confidently reaffirm the words of the American Theses: “The revolutionary vanguard party, destined to lead this tumultuous revolutionary movement in the U.S., does not have to be created. It already exists, and its name is the Socialist Workers Party.” And we state our unequivocal agreement with the words of Cannon: “Nothing condemns a party more than a lack of faith in its own future.... We must assert as a matter of course that our party is going to lead the revolution.”
Submitted February 22, 1982
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