Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page
|
A Fourth International Tendency (FIT) pamphlet, February, 1988. Used by permission.
|
U.S. imperialism is in trouble here “in the belly of the beast” and it is in trouble around the world. The draft political resolution [see Appendix, p.35] describes specific current crises arising out of the general contradictions of capitalism outlined by Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and the further development of these contradictions as later described by Lenin in Imperialism – The Highest Stage of Capitalism. The first section of our draft resolution notes these crises in a brief review of the general economic and political situation in the United States.
That is what Marxists begin with: an examination of the capitalist system as it exists. This kind of survey is only the beginning of our responsibilities as revolutionary socialists. We try to understand and explain what is happening in society in order to play a role in changing it. We look to the working class as the major force in the modern world with the power to transform the existing disorder and create a new social order on a planet-wide basis, to meet the needs of all humanityn – all, that is, except the tiny number who profit from the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority.
Because we see the working class as the force for fundamental change in society, we carefully observe what is happening to working people and how they respond to their conditions of life and labor. We see that the working class faces a crisis of leadership, that it lacks a leadership armed with a program and a strategy to answer both the day-to-day needs and the longer-range interests of working people.
We pay special attention to the role of leadership in the historic process because the changes we are seeking will not come about spontaneously or by chance. A socialist society with workers’ democracy will be the result of conscious, organized, collective, and persistent action led by a revolutionary party. We don’t agree with the idea that some kind of new force will emerge out of the present crisis or the idea that maybe a party will be needed at the moment of revolution but is not necessary today. We reject the idea that we should bring people together right now on the basis of a minimal set of issues which may lead-somehow, someday-to a full revolutionary program and an organization. We disagree with those who say now, as others said in the 1960s, that the “old” ideologies and the “old” parties are no longer relevant to the new realities of today’s world.
We reaffirm that a mass revolutionary party is required to challenge the most powerful ruling class in the world.
There are many parties in the United States today striving to be the party of the coming American revolution or claiming to represent the best interests of workers and oppressed groups. They are all competing with each other for influence in the working class and its allies. The draft resolution focuses on the three parties currently representing the main ideological currents which have dominated all others during this century: the Democratic Socialists of America representing the ideology of Social Democracy, the Communist Party representing Stalinism, and the Socialist Workers Party representing revolutionary socialism.
Despite splits and resplits, despite past betrayals, despite changes in influence over the years, these are the three main ideological currents in American radical political life.
We are not neutrals in relation to these three ideologies and the parties which express their viewpoints. We are revolutionary socialists and we state our allegiance to the Socialist Workers Party which has represented revolutionary socialism for over fifty years in the United States. We state: The SWP “despite its continuing programmatic and organizational crisis remains the political party that embodies the heritage of the Russian revolution.”
We are especially concerned with the crisis affecting the SWP. We are trying to help resolve that crisis. Unlike others who have been expelled or forced out of the SWP, we have neither denied the need for a revolutionary party nor have we aimed to be a revolutionary party. We have not proposed any steps to form a replacement for the SWP. We have fought for and will continue to fight for the reintegration of Fourth Internationalists within the SWP. The political positions we present in the draft resolution are ones that should be included in a political resolution of the SWP. We describe political responsibilities which can only be carried out by a revolutionary party – not by a tendency which was established with the goal of reforming the SWP. We are not competing with the party – as other groups are – but we are competing with the current party misleadership. It’s appropriate, therefore, that most of our draft political resolution is devoted to our alternative to the theoretical fallacies, programmatic revisions, and strategic errors of the Barnes faction which has monopolized all leadership positions in the SWP.
If we had been in the party for the preconvention discussion in 1984, we would have submitted a counterresolution to the Political Committee’s resolution. Of course, a major reason we were purged was so that we would not have any voice in the preconvention discussion. The political resolution adopted at the 1984 national convention was edited and resubmitted to the special convention in January of this year – and will be resubmitted to the SWP for a third time to the national convention coming up this summer. That’s a rather extraordinary procedure for a political resolution! It reminds me of the apparitions in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Conventions Past and the Ghost of Conventions Future.
The analysis and perspective in our draft political resolution takes up eight issues in the debate we have been carrying out with the Barnes faction both here in the United States and internationally. These eight issues are: anti-imperialism and the class struggle; the revolutionary victories in Central America and the Caribbean; the vital importance of political revolution in the deformed workers’ states of Eastern Europe and the degenerated workers’ state in the USSR in particular, the continuing revolt in Poland; the development of the Cuban revolution and the Castroist current; the turn to industry as originally projected by the SWP in 1975 and then reshaped by the Barnes faction in 1978; the labor party question in the United States and how revolutionary socialists work for this needed political formation; the kind of election campaign which should be pursued by the SWP; and, how the SWP should be involved and should be presenting the transitional program within the struggles of oppressed minorities, women, and youth.
As stated in our draft: “None of these points represent any new thinking or change from what our movement has said in the past.” It’s also true that none of these points represent any new thinking or change from what the Fourth Internationalist Caucus of the SWP National Committee said in the past nor what the Fourth Internationalist Tendency has said since we were formed in February 1984.
These points were first raised because comrades saw the danger signs, these points were reraised because the Barnes faction pressed forward on its disastrous course, and we now raise these points again because they remain pertinent to the significant openings and opportunities for revolutionary socialists in the United States right now. The anti-intervention/antiwar movement successfully held the first national day of mobilizations since the time of the Vietnam war. The April 20 marches and rallies were large, broad, spirited, and effectively demonstrated the massive opposition to U.S. government intervention in Central America. The anti-apartheid movement has swelled in size and breadth. It involves Blacks, Latinos, sections of the organized labor movement, and students. The women’s movement is once again taking the initiative to defend abortion rights in the streets, spurred on by the attacks on clinics across the country. Various unions are resisting the employers’ efforts to housebreak the working class. This resistance is uneven, sporadic, isolated in most cases – but it is taking place. It’s more apparent on the local level than on the national. Probably all of us could cite some local examples of fightbacks.
We are not the only ones noting and participating in these developments. All the political groups – including the Socialist Workers Party – are competing for influence among these activists. There are marches, rallies, picket lines, sit-ins, demonstrations, meetings, discussions. A lot of political activity is going on right now. What we see, however, is that there is a crisis of leadership in all of these movements at this time.
One of the comrades in Los Angeles made some cogent and interesting remarks about this at our last LOC meeting. She is a leading person in the January 22nd Coalition for Reproductive Rights; it was formed in response to the attacks against abortion clinics. She told us that when this group was first set up, it was expected that a few actions would be organized and that would be it. What has happened, however, is that the coalition is continuing to function, the meetings have gotten a little larger, all the radical groups are showing up now, new people are getting involved, more actions are being planned. There was obviously a vacuum of leadership in the women’s movement. NOW was not filling the role. CLUW was not filling the role. This ad hoc formation has taken on a life and breadth that surprised its founders.
A similar situation could be seen in the students’ anti-apartheid actions that have taken place on almost all Los Angeles campuses after the initiatives taken on the East Coast. The student group that originally called for and organized the sit-in at UCLA, for example, suddenly announced one night that it had made an agreement with the administration that the sit-in would end after so many days and the moment had now come to pack up and depart. A heated debate erupted on the spot and about half of the students decided to continue the sit-in. The original leaders walked out. Almost all of the students who remained were completely inexperienced. They didn’t know what to do at that point. One of them, however, had a little political background and dashed out and made some phone calls, trying to reach someone who could give them advice, help them organize their protest, provide them with literature, and so on.
I was contacted because of my work around the Emergency National Conference and in the April 20 coalition. I talked with this student, found out what was needed, and I made some phone calls which resulted in people going to UCLA to join the sit-in.
My little brush with the student demonstrators is an example of an important feature of what is happening today: the various activists are reaching out, joining together in common efforts, making connections. A dramatic example of this was the linking up of two demonstrations on May 7. The UCLA students, protesting South African apartheid, held a mock funeral on campus. They carried coffins in a procession around campus, went to the chancellor’s office to make a statement, and then marched over to the Westwood Federal Building to join a couple of hundred people demonstrating against the embargo of Nicaragua. The combined forces held a very spirited picket line and rally.
The developments I have just described don’t conform with the scenario presented in the political resolution written and edited by the SWP leadership. We explain in our draft resolution, “The political resolution endorsed by delegates to the 1984 SWP convention with virtually no prior discussion, and adopted at the 1985 special convention, is a departure from the Marxist method of political analysis.”
The methodology employed by the Barnes leadership is pragmatism. This methodology is described by George Novack in his book Pragmatism versus Marxism. Novack didn’t mean to apply this description to the Barnes faction but, as the saying goes: if the shoe fits, wear it.
What is pragmatism? First, pragmatism is what pragmatism does. It is the habit of acting in disregard of solidly-based scientific rules and tested principles. In everyday life, pragmatism is activity which proceeds from the premise (either explicit or unexpressed) that nature and society are essentially indeterminate. Pragmatic people rely not upon laws, rules, and principles which reflect the determinate features and determining factors of objective reality, but principally upon makeshifts, rule-of-thumb methods, and improvisations based on what they believe might be immediately advantageous. Such is the kind of practice out of which the theorizing of pragmatic philosophy has grown. (p.17)
Pragmatism has been summed up very briefly in the question, “Does it work?” If it works, the pragmatist plunges ahead. If it doesn’t work, the pragmatist tries something else. As Novack explains: “makeshifts, rule-of-thumb methods, and improvisations based on what they believe might be immediately advantageous.”
The Barnes faction drowns the membership in quotations about Bolshevik principles. A waterfall of Marxist phrases about the laws of history pours out of their mouths, typewriters, and word processors. But that’s all superficial. What the SWP leadership says and publishes is not necessarily what it practices. They can write something one day, get it adopted the next week, and then do the opposite a month later – and then rewrite history in the hopes that no one will remember that they haven’t practiced what they preached. That’s how pragmatists function.
The Barnes leadership is impressionistic, intellectual grasshoppers leaping from one scheme to another. They rely on selected quotations and recite formulas instead of applying the materialist method to history. They ignore facts which don’t fit into their preconceived notions of the way things should happen, and they play up facts which seem to bolster their pronouncements about the course of history.
Here are some examples from the final version of the political resolution published in New International magazine (Spring 1985).
The turn to the industrial unions has been equally decisive to placing the party in a position to act effectively in the class battle in the United States over the deepening imperialist war against the workers and peasants of Central America and the Caribbean. (p.27)
Basing the party in the industrial unions is essential to meet the political challenge posed by the need to draw the labor movement into a fight against the war U.S. imperialism is waging today. (p.28)
These statements are made by people who employ formal logic, not Marxist logic. According to formal logic: the working class is the force which will transform society; the industrial unions are the most powerful organized section of the working class; it will take a very powerful force to halt U.S. imperialism’s war drive against Central America; therefore, if we are in the industrial unions, we will be able to “draw the labor movement into a fight against the war U.S. imperialism is waging today.”
Actually, you don’t necessarily have to be a Marxist to see the fallacy of this kind of thinking. A poet could do it; to modify the famous line by Gertrude Stein: a fact is a fact is a fact.
The fact is there was a very impressive involvement of labor in the April 20 demonstrations. There were labor endorsers, labor chairpersons of committees and coalitions, financial contributions from unions, labor contingents in the marches, labor banners and signs, labor speakers at the rallies. In comparison with the movement against the war in Vietnam, this was a very substantial and significant new element in the anti-intervention/antiwar movement.
The fact is the SWP was not responsible for all this labor involvement – not even responsible for most of it or a large part of it. Having nine national industrial fractions – in and of itself – did not make a significant difference. Of course, the reasons for this could be listed and explained hut this is not the place to do that. I only want to draw your attention to the simple fact that the logic given for the turn to the industrial unions in terms of fighting against imperialist war does not correspond with the realities of what actually happened within the April 20 coalitions and, before them, last September’s Emergency National Conference Against U.S. Military Intervention in Central America/the Caribbean. In addition to having comrades in industrial unions, it’s necessary to have the correct strategy and tactics. It’s impossible to figure these things out when you are proceeding from formalistic and false premises. The SWP leadership eclectically picks up a fact here and a fact there, an assumption here and a contradictory assumption there, a conclusion here and an opposite conclusion there.
On one page, therefore, we read, “Over the past decade the employers’ anti-labor offensive has escalated from selective assaults on particular unions ... into a sustained, generalized attack on the largest and strongest industrial unions.” (p. 48)
The resolution doesn’t list actual attacks on “the largest and strongest industrial unions” but it does note – on the same page – important strike battles: Greyhound, General Motors in Canada, Phelps Dodge copper mines in southern Arizona, AP Parts in Toledo, Ohio. This is hardly proof of a “sustained, generalized attack on the largest and strongest industrial unions.”
You don’t have to be a Marxist to know which unions are being hit by the employers’ anti-labor offensive. All you have to do is read the newspapers or watch the television news programs to find out that the employers are attacking any union they can. The SWP pragmatists, however, need to assert some profound-sounding analysis in order to justify the fetish they have made of their rigid scheme of NINE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL FRACTIONS.
The party leadership doesn’t apply the method of the transitional program but they sprinkle their political resolution with the language of the transitional program. “Our candidates explain various immediate, democratic, and transitional demands, presenting these in such a way as to respond to the pressing immediate needs of the exploited and oppressed in this country, while pointing toward a revolution to establish a workers’ and farmers’ government in the United States.” (p. 73)
When it comes to actually applying demands put forward in the transitional program, the Barnes faction has an attack of amnesia. For example, here’s what the transitional program advocates for ballot propositions dealing with questions of imperialist war:
... the Fourth International supports every, even if insufficient demand, if it can draw the masses to a certain extent into active politics, awaken their criticism and strengthen their control over the machinations of the bourgeoisie.
From this point of view, our American section, for example, critically supports the proposal for establishing a referendum on the question of declaring war. No democratic reform, it is understood, can by itself prevent the rulers from provoking war when they wish it. It is necessary to give frank warning of this. But notwithstanding the illusions of the masses in regard to the proposed referendum, their support of it reflects the distrust felt by the workers and farmers for bourgeois government and Congress. Without supporting and without sparing illusions, it is necessary to support with all possible strength the progressive distrust of the exploited toward the exploiters. The more widespread the movement for the referendum becomes, the sooner will the bourgeois pacifists move away from it; the more completely will the betrayers of the Comintern be compromised; the more acute will distrust of the imperialists become. (The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, by Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder Press, p.90)
A completely different attitude is taken by the writers of the SWP political resolution. In their effort to expose and combat the evils of “electoralism,” they state:
Even the radicals who refuse on principle to vote for a candidate of the Democratic or Republican parties are often quick to jump head over heels into bourgeois politics in the form of electoralist campaigns around initiatives and referenda, which are on the ballot in state and local elections year in and year out. These measures are touted as examples of “direct democracy” by many radicals, who sometimes even present them as vehicles for independent working-class political action.
But initiatives, referenda, and recall campaigns are part of the bourgeois electoral setup, from which they cannot be separated and within which they have to be approached. (p.68)
I won’t comment on this; you can read my answer in the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism [No.16] which published my article on the Los Angeles Jobs with Peace initiative.
So far, I’ve discussed Marxist methodology in relation to producing political resolutions. Of course, the Marxist method is applicable to other aspects of the SWP – including the central leadership of the party.
We can employ Marxist methodology to understand how and why the Barnes faction developed inside the SWP, how and why this faction became the dominant leadership in the SWP. Frank [Lovell] raises a thought-provoking point about this in his preconference discussion article. He wrote, “Our broader task, in conjunction with our struggle against the Barnesites in the SWP, is to assemble the forces for a revitalized Marxist vanguard. This requires an explanation of what has happened to American radicalism. We will show that out analysis of the Barnesite syndrome is applicable to the radical movement generally.”
All of us have had informal discussions about, “Why did it happen?” We need to deal with this question more seriously. It will take many of us to put the pieces of the puzzle on the table so they can be linked together to give us a fuller picture. No one person has all the facts. We’ve all had different experiences inside the party. We all have pieces of information which must be collected and presented in a way that will help us figure out this question. In the past, comrades have analyzed and explained the genesis and development of groupings in the party which led to splits such as the one in 1940 and the one in 1953. We need to do the same in regard to the emergence and dominance of the Barnes faction.
We have written about what this faction has done and is doing. We have noted its many errors. We really haven’t explained it, however. Frank has begun this task by writing a two-part article entitled Behind the Crisis of Leadership in the SWP which will be published in the June and July issues of the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism (issues No.19 and 20). The first part takes up the historical and political roots of this leadership crisis in the SWP, and the second part covers the party leadership’s loss of confidence and abandonment of Marxism. I’ve started writing an article about the YSA, about its history and the role played inside the youth organization by Barnes, Sheppard, Stone, Waters, Jenness, Seigle, and the many others who are now central and secondary leaders of the SWP. Other comrades should start adding their contributions.
It’s through our collective efforts that we end up with the dearest, fullest, most balanced, and most accurate analyses and perspectives. The contributions made by comrades in preconference discussion articles – and the comments which will be made here at this conference – will improve this draft resolution.
The national coordinators agree that the final resolution should be edited according to the suggestions made by Frank on the first page of his discussion article. Jean [Tussey] has proposed some good amendments and formulations which will remove ambiguities and clarify important points. The political resolution which comes out of this conference should leave no doubts or misunderstandings about our view, our direction, our aims.
We stated in our founding platform and we reaffirm now: “Our purpose is to defend, maintain, enrich, and apply the programmatic foundations of the party – the scientific acquisitions of the working class.”
That’s what we were trying to do with this resolution submitted to you: defending, maintaining, enriching and applying the programmatic foundations of revolutionary socialism.
Main Document Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 28.12.2002