Main ISR Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialist Review, Vol.20 No.4, Fall 1959, pp.98, 127.
Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
We go to press on the eve of a New York conference initiated by the United Independent-Socialist Committee to consider policy in the 1960 elections. The conference promises to be of lively interest to the radical movement nationally, although, unlike the conference of June 1958, it is not seeking to reach agreement on a united course. The sponsors realize that the limited unity attained in 1958 is not feasible at this time and accordingly are only attempting to clarify differences.
It is noteworthy that the committee agreed unanimously on an open conference. The radical parties have been invited to send representatives and every tendency wishing to take the floor has been assured a welcome. While it is doubtful that the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation or the Socialist Labor party will accept the invitation, it appears that both the Communist party and the Socialist Workers party will be represented.
The conference is another welcome indication of the revival of the democratic tradition of honest debate and full discussion of disputed questions in the American radical movement. This is quite a change from the decades of atomization when the views of some socialists were proscribed. As we indicate in our editorial, Three Years of Regroupment, it will doubtless require vigilance to maintain the practice of democratic discussion as a generally accepted mode of conduct. But the UI-SC Conference is a good sign that the practice of Debs’ time has again taken root.
The summer issue of the UI-SC Newsletter presented the preliminary positions on the 1960 issue. Subsequently the National Guardian, the Militant and the Worker reported and discussed the views of the committee members.
As the contributions to the Newsletter showed, serious differences exist among the members of the UI-SC on what course to follow. On one side Dr. Annette T. Rubinstein, in a statement that was concurred in by William A. Price and Fred Mazelis, argues that it is both a duty and an opportunity to run a united socialist ticket in 1960 no matter how limited it may be because of practical difficulties.
Muriel McAvoy believes that an independent ticket is desirable and that the evolution of the two capitalist parties leaves no other real alternative. However, she fears that supporters of an independent ticket will prove too few and too weak to get the movement off the ground.
Elinor Ferry likewise favors an independent ticket and expresses unwillingness to depend on the “H-Bomb liberals.”
Tom Kerry and Murry Weiss, who are members of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers party as well as the UI-SC, favor an independent socialist campaign and oppose “all forms of coalition politics involving collaboration with or support of candidates of the two capitalist parties.”
A different view is taken by John T. McManus, candidate for governor of New York in 1958 on the Independent-Socialist ticket. Although he favors efforts to place independent candidates on the ballot, he thinks that the “advantages” of such candidacies “must inevitably be weighed against the necessities, under some circumstances, of independent-radical collaboration with labor and liberal forces on certain immediate objectives which may arise in 1960.”
He sees the following possible instances of such “necessities”;
- If Nixon were the Republican nominee: “I would propose foregoing an independent presidential campaign for the purpose of joining with the broad forces of all description throughout the country, including the labor movement, who will insist on Nixon’s political annihilation.”
- If Kennedy or Johnson are the Democratic candidates opposing Nixon: No choice exists but to seek a third electoral alternative.
- In a Kennedy-Rockefeller contest: “I would advocate independent-radical collaboration to place an alternative on the ballot wherever possible.”
- If Stevenson were Democratic candidate: “I believe Stevenson has matured so as to be a potentially constructive candidate for 1960. Indeed I believe he could not get the nomination other than as a candidate advocating world understanding, an end to nuclear war preparations; and racial, political and economic security at home. Radicals could best advance their own immediate objectives in 1960 in helping Stevenson win on such a program.”
This is clear enough notice that McManus is prepared to back the Democratic party if it nominates a liberal on a New Dealish platform.
Morris Goldin, a former leader of the American Labor party and an initiator of the discussions that led to the Independent-Socialist ticket in 1958, holds a similar position although he is more cautious about supporting candidates of the Democratic party. Goldin also said that “socialists whose pet project is intervention in the Democratic party as the only means through which political expression can be made, will not win the allegiance of many socialists ...”
The Worker (Sept. 20) printed an article on the discussion under the heading, Crisis in the UI-SC. The author, William Albertson, Executive Secretary, New York State Communist Party, depicts the differences in the UI-SC as “a struggle on policy between, on the one hand, the Trotskyites, and, on the other hand, a number of other UI-SC leaders such as John T. McManus of the National Guardian, and Morris Goldin, former ALP leader, who are endeavoring to develop a policy which will result in establishing some contact with the mass movement.”
Albertson views the discussion as a “struggle to defeat the Trotskyite sectarian policies ... a welcome development.” Unfortunately for those who confine their reading to the Worker, Albertson’s report suffers from lack of accuracy. He fails to show the real division in the committee which is far from confined to “Trotskyites” versus “non-Trotskyites.” Certainly the position of Dr. Rubinstein, Muriel McAvoy, William A. Price, Elinor Ferry and Fred Mazelis is not the same as that of the Socialist Workers party. None of them share the SWP view that it is impermissible in principle for a socialist to support a capitalist party candidate.
Dr. Rubinstein and the others strongly favor a united independent socialist ticket in 1960. They do so, however, simply on the practical basis that they see no other way of advancing the program of independent political action except by running socialist candidates against the two capitalist parties. This was the position they took in 1958 together with McManus and Goldin. As a matter of fact McManus and Goldin may well reach this conclusion again in the 1960 elections.
Dr. Rubinstein, it appears to us, is correct in seeking independent political action in 1960. Our difference is that we would not limit this course to a specific date. We think it should be held as a rule – and no exceptions. Making it a principle in this way, as Marxist theory and experience teach, helps exclude the ruinous alternative of postponing independent political action to the distant future while backing this or that promising capitalist demagogue right now.
Albertson ignores the position of independents like Dr. Rubinstein. As noted, according to him, the “Trotskyites” favor an independent-socialist ticket and the “non-Trotskyites” oppose it. The fact that an important group of independents also favor a socialist ticket in 1960 from a standpoint of their own disturbs this picture (and Albertson’s need for a “Trotskyite” bogey) and is therefore not mentioned.
In the inimitable style favored by the Worker in handling the “great conspiracy” theme, Albertson cites the SWP’s position on regroupment, “proving” that the Trotskyists, in seeking to help unite socialists in a common party, favored united socialist electoral campaigns. Ordinary radicals may wonder why such “proof” is needed. If socialists could unite on a common program in elections, wouldn’t that help pave the way for a new, unified party of socialism?
But it would also help break the CP’s monopoly on radicalism. The extremes to which the Communist party went in supporting the red-baiting, cold-war Democrat Harriman against the Independent-Socialist candidate McManus shows how nervous the CP leadership was in 1958 about the possibility of a new socialist organization emerging from the regroupment process.
For its part the SWP worked for re-groupment by pressing for discussion of basic principles. Its view was that the foundation of a viable party is commonly held principles that meet the test of reality. The SWP also proposed common action on given issues where agreement could be reached. After thorough exploration of the possibilities during the past three years, the SWP leadership acknowledged at its recent convention that organizational fusion was not in prospect and that for the moment the relation of forces among the basic tendencies in the radical movement appears to be relatively fixed.
In line with this estimate, the convention reiterated its long-held view that the Communist party, because of its suvservience to the Soviet bureaucracy, is incapable of developing a revolutionary working-class leadership in America. The convention said again that the Soviet bureaucracy’s greatest crime against the world socialist movement is its continued imposition of opportunist policies.
“Until the Kremlin bureaucracy is overthrown by a workers’ political revolution establishing socialist democracy in the Soviet bloc, the American CP will remain a rival against which the SWP must wage unremitting combat ...”
This passage is quoted by Albertson.
He asks rhetorically:
“Can true friends of peace, security and socialism unite with the Trotskyites whose basic aim is such ‘unremitting combat’? Shall socialists unite with Trotskyites to help bring about counter-revolution in the socialist lands?”
The distortions involved in these “questions” are in the tradition of the crudest Stalinism. First, the “basic aim” of the SWP is to help mobilize workers for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The need for unremitting combat against the CP arises from the fact that, along with the labor bureaucracy, the CP leadership has repeatedly derailed this struggle, taking those sections of the working class most ready for independent political action and revolutionary socialist struggle back to support of capitalist candidates and capitalist political machines.
Secondly, advocacy of a “workers’ political revolution establishing socialist democracy in the Soviet bloc” is not the same as advocacy of “counter-revolution.” One can disagree with the SWP view on this question, but to substitute “counter-revolution” for “workers’ political revolution” is not in the tradition of reasoned argument; it is in the tradition of the infamous school that perpetrated the Moscow frame-up trials.
Finally, the issue at the conference and for the coming year is not whether all socialists should unite with the SWP or even agree with its views on the Communist party and the Soviet bureaucracy. The issue is: what should socialists do in the 1960 elections?
The SWP proposes to fight the capitalist parties and their bipartisan cold-war program. The SWP proposes to urge the Negro people and the labor movement to break from the Democratic party and organize a labor party. The SWP proposes an end to the demoralizing, self-defeating policy of “working within the Democratic party.”
Main ISR Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on: 2 May 2009