Class Collaboration Makes a Recruit

by Sam Ryan, Los Angeles.

First published in the Socialist Workers Party Internal Bulletin, August 1953. Republished in and scanned from the LRP publication “Bolivia: The Revolution the ‘Fourth International Betrayed.”  

“Without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary practice.”

— Lenin

1. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT BOLIVIA?

It is now sixteen months since the Bolivian revolution began. It is sixteen months since this little nation, of three and one-half million people, presented the Fourth International the opportunity of proving that Marxism — Trotskyism — can conquer the masses and thereby lead them to victory.

Considering the fact that a Trotskyist mass party, the POR, is involved in a revolutionary situation, we should expect by this time to have a mass of information from Bolivia, such information as would immeasurably enrich, deepen and concretize our Marxist theory.

How has the POR gone about the task of winning the massesfrom the NNW from the labor-fakers of the Lechin stripe?

How has the POR dealt with the various concrete questions which arise with the various stages of the struggle?

Who controls the COB? What is the strength of Lechin? of the POR? of the Stalinists? How has their strength varied in the course of the past sixteen months?

What about the curve of strike struggles? How has the strength of the POR varied with it? Have political strikes been increasing in intensity? If not, why? What has been the role of the POR? of Lechin?

Have any disputes arisen within the POR? Or has the POR, in a revolutionary situation, been completely monolithic?

These are just a few of the many questions on which we should by this time have a rich treasury of information.

Actually we have been given practically no information on the situation in Bolivia — the one revolution in which the Trotskyists play an important role.

It is not true, however, that we know nothing at all about what is going on in Bolivia. For the past month detailed reports have been circulating about the activities of the POR. According to these reports received from non-Trotskyist sources, the POR is accepting posts in the governmental machinery; Guillermo Lora, former Secretary of the party, has been appointed [to] the Stabilization Office; Comrade Moller, present Secretary of the POR, is director of the Workers Savings Bank, which is controlled by Juan Lechin, a member of the Cabinet; Allayo Mercado, another POR leader, is a member of the Agrarian Commission. In the face of these reports the silence of the PC of the SWP and of the International Secretariat should cause deep concern to all comrades.

Silence is acquiescence. And those who remain silent before a policy which politically disarms the workers and peasants before their class enemy must share the responsibility for the inevitable results.

The reports of coalitionism and class-collaboration by the POR do not come as a bolt from the blue. This is the direction the political line of the POR has taken, with the encouragement of the leading comrades of the International, since the April 9th, 1952 revolution.

In May, 1952 the paper carried an interview with Comrade Lora. I wrote a letter to the PC, which was printed in the June 1952 Internal Bulletin, expressing sharp disagreement with Lora’s political line. I stated then that I thought it was a conciliationist and class-collaborationist line, rather than the line of revolutionary Marxism; and I asked whether this was the line of the POR. The PC replied that this was “obviously a difference of opinion between you and Comrade Lora,” and it, the PC, was in no position to participate in the discussion.

Now we have the official position of the POR, in the form of an unsigned article in the magazine ( “One Year of the Bolivian Revolution” [Fourth International, Jan.-Feb. 1953]). This article, continuing Lora’s line, unmistakably lays the basis not for leading the proletarian revolution but for propping up the bourgeois state. Immediately on reading the article, I prepared a criticism, intended for the Internal Bulletin. On hearing of the actual steps the POR has taken toward getting into the government, I refrained from sending in my article, waiting for a denial, or an explanation, or a criticism, by the PC or the IS. However, no comment has up to now been forthcoming; and this fact is in itself a harsh indictment not only of the policy of the POR, but also of the line of the IS and of the PC.

2. A “CLASSICAL” REVOLUTION — AN UNCLASSICAL POLICY

Since the Second World War, the International has been in the habit of finding “exceptional” situations in which, “exceptionally,” the “classical’ laws and traditions of Leninism do not hold. In Eastern Europe the denial of the revolution-war character of the Soviet-German war led the International to see the establishment of workers’ states without proletarian revolution. In China the International sees a transitional state, neither bourgeois nor proletarian, baptized dual power and “workers and peasants government.” Furthermore, the International sees the Chinese Stalinist party reformed into a party that it expects will lead “the demonstration of proletarian power’; the role of Trotskyism is reduced from the struggle for power to that of “pushing” the CP and the masses. For these “exceptional” situations the International has adopted the concepts and methods of reformism. But a reformist course once embarked upon, cannot be confined; it is not at all difficult to see every situation as “exceptional”.

But the article (“One Year of the Bolivian Revolution”) notes that we have here no exceptional situation. It sees the close resemblance of the course of the Bolivian revolution to that of the Russian revolution. One would think that much could be learned by studying the strategy and tactics — above all, the conceptions — of the Bolsheviks in the February-October period.

The political line of the POR, however, is not that of Lenin but that of his class-collaborationist opponents, Kamenev and Zinoviev. The latter, in fact, did not go as far as the POR; they did not accept posts in the bourgeois government.

“If that policy (of Kamenev and Zinoviev) had prevailed,” says Trotsky, ‘die development of the revolution would have passed over the head of our party and, in the end, the insurrection of the worker and peasant masses would have taken place without party leadership; in other words, we would have had the repetition of the July days on a colossal scale, i.e., this time not as an episode but as a catastrophe. It is perfectly obvious that the immediate consequence of such a catastrophe would have been the physical destruction of our party. This provides us with a measuring rod of how deep our differences of opinion were.”

The same measuring rod should indicate to us the very serious penalty our movement will incur as the result of a wrong policy. Let me cite the three central paragraphs of the magazine article:

“The POR began by justifiably granting critical support to the MNR government. That is, it desisted from issuing the slogan down with the government’; it gave the government critical support ll against attacks of imperialism and reaction, and it supported all progressive measures. But at the same time it avoided any expression whatever of confidence in the government. On the contrary, it propelled the revolutionary activity and independent organization of the masses as much as it could.

“The POR limits its support and sharpens its criticism insofar as the government proves itself incapable of fulfilling the national-democratic program of the revolution, insofar as it hesitates, capitulates, indirectly plays the game of imperialism and reaction, prepares to betray and for this reason tries to harry and deride the revolutionists.

“The POR has been applying this flexible attitude which requires a carefully considered emphasis at each moment, one that is not confused but neither is it sectarian, and in applying this attitude the POR is demonstrating a remarkable political maturity. The POR has adopted an attitude of constructive criticism toward the proletarian and plebeian base of the MNR with the aim of facilitating a progressive differentiation within it.

Every sentence in these three paragraphs contains at least one assault on the theory and practice of revolutionary Marxism; the policy outlined is the direct opposite of the one carried out by Lenin. It has become -the fashion here in Los Angeles to point out that Lenin is dead; but we can easily judge with what choice and pithy characterizations ations he would have answered anyone who called any kind of support of a bourgeois government’ justifiable.”

“‘Why didn’t you arrest Rodzianko and Co.’ (the Provisional Government)? he bitterly flung at the Bolshevik leaders on his arrival in Petrograd. The next day he wrote: ‘No support whatever to the Provisional Government.’ In the mass demonstrationtion toward the end of April the Bolsheviks raised the slogan: ‘Down With the Government’.”

Lenin withdrew the slogan “Down with the government.” But this had nothing in common, as Trotsky points out in “Lessons of October,” with the position of Kamenev that the slogan itself was an adventuristic blunder.

“Lenin, after the experience of the reconnoiter,” says Trotsky,

“withdrew the slogan of the immediate overthrow of the provisional government. But he did not withdraw it for any set period of time — for so many weeks or months — but strictly in dependence upon how quickly the revolt of the masses against the conciliationists would grow The oppositionists, on the contrary, considered the slogan itself a blunder. (They favored critical support of the provisional government—S.R.) In the temporary retreat of Lenin there was not even a hint of change in the political line. He did not proceed from the fact that the democratic revolution was not completed. He based himself exclusively on the idea that the masses were not at the moment capable of overthrowing the Provisional Government and that, therefore, everything possible had to be done to enable the working class to overthrow the Provisional Government on the morrow. ‘

Lenin’s “flexibility” in tactics has nothing in common with the flexible attitude” of the POR toward the MNR government. Lenin was not at all flexible but very rigid in his attitude toward the Provisional Government. All of Lenin’s flexible tactics were part of one unchanging line: overthrow of the Provisional Government.

Lenin reposed no confidence at all in the Provisional Government, nor in the parties that composed it; his confidence was entirely, reserved to the Bolshevik party. This statement is a truism, almost a tautology. The magazine, however, feels constrained to protest that the POR  “avoided (!!) any expression of confidence in this government.” What is this but the purely formal language of diplomacy? And like all diplomatic language, this passage is more useful in hiding than in clarifying the thought behind it.

What does this sentence mean? That the POR never said: “We have confidence in the government”? But there are many way to express the essence of confidence, above a in action, while “avoiding” the form. First of all, in the April 9,1952 revolution the POR, rather than striving for power for itself, for the working class, proposed that the MNR take power; that is, the POR proposed to maintain the bourgeoisie in power.

If confidence is not placed in the working class and its party, that they can take and exercise power, it is thereby given, like it or not, to the bourgeois government. Lenin understood this. When, in answer to his demand that the bourgeois government be overthrown, the Mensheviks asked the, to them, rhetorical question — Who among us will form a government and rule the nation? — Lenin shouted out — “We will!” And he was answered by derisive laughter, for the Bolsheviks were but a small minority in the Soviet and in the country.

The magazine article itself exposes the glaring contrast between the attitude of the POR and that of Lenin.

“The The direction of the Bolivian revolution up to now confirms step by step the general line of this type of classic development of the proletarian revolution in our epoch. It bears more resemblance to the course of the Russian revolution, although in miniature, than it does to the Chinese revolution, for example. It began by lifting the radical party of the petty bourgeoisie to power (as was the case with the Russian revolution in a particular stage before October) with the support of the revolutionary masses … and of the still revolutionary party of the proletariat, the POR.”

This is not “avoiding any expression of confidence in the MNR government”! Furthermore, it is arrantly false to imply that the Bolsheviks gave any support to any”radical party of the petty bourgeoisie” which ruled Russia ‘in a particular stage before October.”

3. WHITEWASHING THE LABOR LIEUTENANTS

Could the working class have taken power in April, 1952? The above-quoted paragraph implied that a proletarian revolution was not possible. But this is a hopelessly formalistic view of the matter. The working class was armed and had defeated the army and the police. Nothing prevented it from taking power except its own illusions and its own capitulationist leadership. Exactly as in Russia! the power of the working class is shown by the fact that it was able to force the MNR to admit two of its leaders into the government.

Nothing at all is said about this in the magazine article. The author speaks of a future differentiation with the MNR, of a future revolutionary wing emerging from the MNR, but he says nothing at all of the fact that this differentiation is already over a year old; that what the masses supported in April, 1952, was not the MNR but its proletarian (class-collaborationist) left wing. What were, and are, the relations between the POR and this already-existing left wing? This question is not even discussed. The article “avoids” mentioning the “expression of confidence” which the POR extended to the class-collaborationist labor leaders (and to the government) when it supported ttheir entry into the government. And to this day the POR has not raised the demand that the labor leaders break with the bourgeois government and take power.

The decisive question of the revolution is not even mentioned! The struggle of the POR for power is concretely embodied in its struggle with the MNR left wing for leadership of the workers and peasants. Before the Marxists can take power they must defeat the Compromisers ideologically and politically. This is an integral and unavoidable part of the class struggle; the Compromisers embody the influence of the enemy class within the working class.

How did the Bolsheviks defeat the Russian Compromisers? The Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries also had the support of a majority of the workers and peasants. They also entered the bourgeois government. The Bolsheviks mercilessly attacked the Compromisers for their class treachery. They intransigently opposed the collaboration of the Mensheviks and SRs in the bourgeois government. When the Bolsheviks were in a small minority they insistently demanded that the Mensheviks and SRs break with the bourgeois politicians and take power, and not some time in the future, but now, immediately. Even if the Mensheviks and SRs had taken power in the spring of 1917, that would not have won them the confidence of the Bolsheviks, nor a governmental coalition with them; the Bolsheviks promised only to overthrow them peacefully, insofar as that should be possible.

How is the POR going to expose and defeat the Bolivian compromisers? Far from attacking their class treachery, the POR demanded their inclusion in the MNR government. Far from calling on them to break with the MNR and take power (establish a “workers’ and peasants’ government”) ) the POR relegates the workers’ and peasants government to “the final aim of the struggle.” The POR speaks of the “collaboration of a revolutionary wing emerging from the MNR in a future workers’ and peasants’ government. It has thus solved the problem — verbally. If the future left wing is revolutionary, all we have to do is merge with it and form a bigger revolutionary party. But to grapple with the present reformist left wing? This the POR fails to do.

The assumption that a POR government was inevitable is an attempt to whitewash the false and treacherous leaders of the working class by blaming their class treachery on the “backwardness” of the masses.

4. CRITICAL SUPPORT AND CLASS COLLABORATION

The question of critical support has become a difficult thing to discuss in our party; its meaning has become obscured since the International decided to give critical support to the Mao government in China and to the MNR government in Bolivia. Is critical support political support? Is critical support material defense against armed counter-revolution? Is critical support of a government merely support of its progressive measures? All these definitions are included in one brief and very confused passage in the magazine article.

In the Spanish civil war the Trotskyists were quite clear about the distinction between material aid and critical support. We gave material aid to the bourgeois Loyalist government; but we gave it no hint of critical support. Shachtman was sharply rebuked by Trotsky for proposing it. Our attitude toward the working class parties, including the POUM, the most left of them all, was the same; we refused to give them critical support.

Lenin likewise drew a sharp line between defense and support. At the time of Kornilov’s attempt to overthrow Kerensky he wrote:

“We ought not even now support the Kerensky government. This is unprincipled. You may ask ‘Ought we not to fight against Koraov?’ Yes, of course, But these are two entirely different things. A boundary line divides them which some Bolsheviks transgress and fall into conciliationism, allowing themselves to be carried away by the flood-tide of events.”

Lenin’s defense of Kerensky was an integral part of his struggle to overthrow Kerensky.

In the conception of the POR, as exemplified by the magazine article under discussion, the word “defense” as applied to the bourgeois government is nowhere to be seen. The word “support” is applied indiscriminately to mean both political support and material defense. Besides being an impoverishment of our theoretical heritage, this confusion gives aid and comfort to all the compromisers.

“The POR limits its support and sharpens its criticism insofar as the government proves itself incapable of fulfilling the national-democratic program of the revolution, insofar as it hesitates, capitulates, indirectly plays the game of imperialism and reaction, prepares to betray and for this reason tries to harry and deride the revolutionists.

What is this but political support — that is, support of the policy of the MNR government, insofar as it does carry out the national- democratic. program of the revolution? How reminiscent of the “insofar” as of Stalin and Kamenev, who, before Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd, proclaimed their readiness to support the Provisional Government “insofar as it fortifies the conquestsrevolution. `insofar as ” it fortifies the conquests of the revolution.”

What is wrong with both examples of “insofar as”? Just this — to correlate “support” and “criticism” means that our support is political; how can you correlate physical defense with political criticism?

If, however the POR means that we “limit” our material defense of the treacherous ally depending on their political policy or there attitude toward us, then this could only result in sectarian isolation and passivity at the very moment when material defense is necessary. This is another instance of the well-known fact that opportunism and sectarianism are carried in the same theoretical shell. Let us remember that Kornilov’s attempt on Kerensky came in August, precisely during Kerensky’s repression of the Bolsheviks; Trotsky was in prison, Lenin in hiding. Kerensky had certainly “proved proved himself incapable of fulfilling the national-democratic program of the revolution”‘; he was certainly “harrying and deriding the revolutionists.” Furthermore, Kerensky was actually plotting with Kornilov to destroy the Soviets. Wasn’t this the ideal time for Lenin to “limit his support”? Yet if he had taken such “revenge” on Kerensky the revolution would have suffered a smashing defeat.

Before the recent plenum of our National Committee, the Los Angeles Local held a discussion in which the question of critical support of the Mao Tse-Tung government figured prominently. “Critical support,”  said Myra Tanner, “is not political support”. “Critical support”, said Murray Weiss, also a supporter of the IEC position, “is political support.” And he castigated the Vern tendency as hopeless sectarians because they oppose giving critical support to a working class party which has led a revolution. Together with Comrade Vern I have written a reply to this position, which has been submitted but not as yet published in the Internal Bulletin (“Open Letter to the National Committee ). [This Open Letter was published in the same issue of the SWP Internal Bulletin as the current document.]

But the argument of Murray Weiss does not apply to Bolivia; and this was pointed out several times in the course of the discussion. When we asked “What about Bolivia?” our only answer was an embarrassed silence. And this silence has been maintained by Murray Weiss and all the comrades supporting the position of the IEC all through the discussion and to this very day!

The question whether critical support is political support could only arise because the traditional Trotskyist position on critical support has been overthrown. The question could not arise in the past because Trotskyists have never before given critical support to a party  or a government. We have never hesitated, however, to give critical support to all progressive actions of any party, any government. Giving critical support to President Truman’s suggestion for an increase in the minimum wage, for example, did not imply critical support to the Democratic party, and did not raise the question whether or not we were giving political support to the government.

5. DOES THE THIRD CAMP RULE BOLIVIA?

Is the Bolivian government a bourgeois government? Does it serve one of the two major contending classes of modern society? On this question too the POR has abandoned the traditional and principled position of Marxism. And in making this “exception” it finds support in the other “exceptions” found by the International in the “intermediate status” of Eastern Europe in 1945-48 and in the “workers’ and peasants’ government” the IEC sees in China.

“The MNR, says the POR, “is a mass party, the majority of its leadership petty-bourgeois but fringed with a few conscious representatives of the nascent industrial bourgeoisie, one of whom, for example, is very probably Paz Estenssoro himself” And the government is, naturally, characterized as a “petty-bourgeois” government “fringed with conscious agents of the native feudal-capitalists and of imperialism.” The agents of imperialism and of the capitalist class are on the fringes of the party and of the government. Such a ludicrous assertion is possible only in an atmosphere poisoned with neo-reformism. The bourgeois politicians are on the fringes of the MNR in exactly the same sense in which Henry Ford is on the fringe of the Ford Motor Co.

How do the leaders of the POR account for the fact that these agents of the bourgeoisie and of imperialism control the government, including in their ranks that prominent inhabitant of the “fringe,” the president of Bolivia? Every successful and unsuccessful revolution since 1917 teaches us that the petty-bourgeoisie (and this applies doubly to the urban petty bourgeoisie) cannot have a party of its own; cannot establish its own government. This is the cornerstone of the Permanent Revolution.

Contrast the superficial approach of the POR with that of Trotsky:

“The revolution,” he says in “Lessons of October,” “caused political shifts to take place in two directions; the reactionaries became Cadets and the Cadets became Republicans against their own wishes — a purely formal shift to the left; the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks became the ruling bourgeois party — a shift to the right. These are the means whereby bourgeois society seeks to create for itself a new backbone of state power, stability and order.”

We should not forget that the counterpart of the Mensheviks and SRs is not the MNR, but its labor left wing. Trotsky does not fail to characterize those Bolsheviks who favored critical support to the government:

“But at the same time, while the Mensheviks were passing from a formal socialist position to a vulgar democratic one, the right wing of the Bolsheviks was shifting to a formal socialist position, i.e., the Menshevik position of yesterday.

6. THE MNR IS OUR DEADLY ENEMY!

Why is it so important to understand that the MNR government is a bourgeois (and not a petty-bourgeois) government? Because the Trotskyists must be absolutely clear that the government is their deadly enemy. And the Trotskyists must be the deadly enemy of the MNR and its government. This is not the conception of the POR.

“In a more advanced stage of the revolution, says the magazine article, “it (the Paz Estenssoro government) will fall under the drive of the right seekingking to impose a military dictatorship, , or of the left to establish the genuine workers’ and peasants’ government, the dictatorship of the proletariat allied to the peasant poor and the urban petty-bourgeoisie.”

What will the MNR do? Will it wait to be overthrown?

No. The MNR will tie the hands of the working class, entangle it in bourgeois legalism and red tape, using its labor lieutenants for this purpose. It will persecute the revolutionary militants, disarm the workers politically (again, using its labor lieutenants), then physically.

And the forces of “the right, seeking to impose a military dictatorship,” who are they? With what will they impose this military dictatorship? Aren’t they the officers, the general staff, of precisely this “petty-bourgeois” government? Don’t the petty-bourgeois democrats always, like Kerensky, like Azana, like Paz Estenssoro, build up and conspire with their own generals? Kornilov was Kerensky s chief of staff. Franco was Azana s mllilitary ruler of North Africa. And let us not forget that most left of democrats, the darling of the Stalinized Comintern, Chiang Kai-shek, who was his own Kornilov, That the future would-be military dictator of Bolivia is at present preparing himself and his forces under the protection of Paz Estenssoro is indicated by the recent attempt at a coup d’etat by army and police officers.

The MNR government is the deadly enemy of the working class. Its overthrow is an urgent necessity.

7. CONSCIOUS PLANNING OR FATALISTIC OPTIMISM?

One of the most striking features of the POR line is its fatalistic optimism. One example:

“The urban petty bourgeoisie,” says the magazine article, “is divided between a very poor majority, highly radicalized because of its unstable conditions and always available (my emphasis—S.R.) as an ally of the revolutionary proletariat…”

But the impoverished petty bourgeoisie is not always available as an ally of the revolutionary proletariat. One of the major lessons of the Russian October, and of the aborted German revolution of 1923, and of the rise of Hitler, is exactly this: The radicalized petty bourgeoisie, and the working class for that matter, cannot be regarded as so much bullion, always available to the Party once they have been convinced of the necessity for a revolutionary change. They have turned first to the social reformists. Disappointed in Marxists critically, suspiciously. If the Marxists prove timorous, hesitate in carrying out their allotted task of overthrowing the bourgeois government, the support of the masses will quickly melt away. The radicalized petty bourgeoisie then become easy prey for a fascist demagogue; the petty bourgeoisie is then “available” not for revolution but for counter-revolution.

That is why the insurrection is so very necessary a part of the revolution. That is why the moment of insurrection is the decisive moment in the life of the revolutionary party. That is why Lenin was so insistent that the Bolshevik Central Committee treat insurrection as an art.

“The persistent, tireless, and incessant pressure which Lenin exerted on the Central Committee throughout September and ctober arose from his constant fear lest we allow the propitious moment to slip away.” This is Trotsky speaking, in “Lessons of October.” “What does it mean to lose the propitious moment? …the relation of forces undergoes change depending on the mood of the proletarian masses, depending upon the extent to which their illusions are shattered and their political experience has grown; the extent to which the confidence of intermediate classes and groups in the state power is shattered; and finally, the extent to which the latter loses confidence in itself During revolution all these processes take place with lightning speed. The whole tactical art consists in this: that we seize the moment when the combination of circumstances is most favorable to us… Neither the elemental disintegration of the state power, nor the elemental influx of the impatient and exacting confidence of the masses in the Bolsheviks could endure for a protracted period of time. The crisis had to be resolved one way or another. It is now or never! Lenin said.”

There is nothing of this sense of urgency in the line of the POR, as expressed in the magazine article. “The final aim of the struggle strygle” is expressed as:I

“the formation of a genuine workers’ and peasant’s government. This government will not arisemechanically but dialectically, basing itself on the organisms of dual power created by the mass movement itself..” “The workers’ and peasants’ government will appear tomorrow as the natural emanation of all these organisms on which it will base itself.”

All the expressions used — “formation,” “arise dialectically,” “appear” — can describe an evolutionary process. The decisive question, however, is not how the workers state will appear, arise, or be formed, but how it will take power, become the ruler of the nation. What is missing is the consummation of the revolution, the consciously organized insurrection.

One possible reply to my criticism (if it is answered at all) may be that I am too critical of the POR; that the leaders of the POR know what has to be done in a revolution; that they simply do not want to tell all their plans.

Unfortunately, such reasoning, alluring as it may appear, demands an exercise of faith rivaling that of the believer in the Immaculate Conception. For it is not the subjective intentions of the leaders of the POR which are at issue (I admit they are only the best), but the objective results of their neoreformist conceptions.

It is a very difficult thing to shift a party’s line from peace to war, from critical support to revolutionary overthrow. Even if the POR had the line of irreconcilable opposition to the government from the very beginning, the change from preparation to actual overthrow would bring with it a crisis of leadership, such as plagued the Bolsheviks in October, when a section of the Central Committee, led by Kamenev and Zinoviev, came out in public opposition to insurrection.

“Each party,” says Trotsky, “even the most revolutionary party, must inevitably produce its own organizational conservatism; for otherwise it would be lacking in the necessary stability… We have already quoted the words of Lenin to the effect that even the most revolutionary parties, at a time when an abrupt change occurs in a situation and when new tasks arise as a consequence, frequently pursue the political line of yesterday, and thereby become, or threaten to become, a brake upon revolutionary development. Both conservatism and revolutionary initiative find their most concentrated expression in the leading organs of the party.”

In overcoming the opposition of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Lenin had this advantage: the publicly-stated party line was on his side. Six months before, in April, Lenin had rearmed the party; he had decisively defeated those who wanted to give critical support to the Provisional Government. Since then the party had openly agitated for the prepared the overthrow of that government.

8. THE SEED AND THE FRUIT

Who will have the advantage in the POR — the partisans of conservatism, or the partisans of revolutionary initiative? The question is already answered. the POR is to the right of the right-wing Bolsheviks who, as Trotsky says, adopted a formal socialist position.

The POR occupies, on all major questions, the positions occupied by Menshevism in the Russian revolution, and by Stalinism in the Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27.

The POR, in its reformist conceptions, its conciliationist attitude, and its class-collaborationist methods, bases and supports itself upon the neo-reformist position adopted by the International since the Second World War. Such is the theory adopted by the International in explaining the transformations in Eastern Europe. This theory, which since its adoption has received no defense in our press, either public or internal, holds in effect that reformism worked in Eastern Europe; that the class nature of the state was changed without proletarian revolution, by manipulations in the top circles; that the state for three years was in an intermediate status. This revision of Marxism had its roots, like all revisionism since 1917, in the Russian Question; and inability or unwillingness to see the Soviet-German war as a class war — that is, as revolution and counterrevolution.

The political line of the International in China brings its neoreformism down from the realm of theory (or terminology ), to that of political activity. The idea of a transitional state, a state that is neither a bourgeois nor a workers’ state, is made more explicit; through “critical support” of the Mao government the leading role of Stalinism is affirmed, while the crucial necessity of Marxist consciousness, embodied in the Trotskyist party, is thrown overboard. Revolutionary consciousness is to be replaced by the “pressure of the masses.”

The POR has introduced nothing new. It is applying in Bolivia the revisionist line of the International — moreover, with the support and encouragement of the International.

I have no doubt that a majority of the comrades are uneasy over the course being pursued in Bolivia; that they do not agree with the line of the POR. But an embarrassed silence is not enough. Those who remain silent for the sake of a false harmony cannot escape responsibility for the consequences of a wrong political line.

A Letter on the Bolivian Revolution

by Sam Ryan

First printed in the Socialist Workers Party Internal Bulletin, June 1952. Republished in and scanned from the LRP publication “Bolivia: The Revolution the ‘Fourth International Betrayed.”

The Secretariat, SWP

June 1, 1952

Dear Comrades,

This letter is a request for clarification on the program and policy of the POR of Bolivia. The POR has been presented the opportunity of leading a revolution and thereby rendering a great service to our international movement. Our movement, and not least the SWP, has the duty of giving the Bolivian comrades all possible aid, both material and political. It is only natural that we in United States should be extremely anxious that the Bolivian comrades pursue a policy that will bring them success.

The interview with Comrade Guillermo Lora, carried in The Militant of May 12 and May 19, raises some serious questions about the program and policy of the POR which, I believe, should be resolved as soon as possible. The questions raised in the interview, and not satisfactorily answered by Comrade Lora include:

1. The class character of the government;

2. The character of the MNR;

3. Our attitude toward the compromisers;

4. The revolutionary transitional program for Bolivia.

Let me comment briefly on the manner in which Comrade Lora appears to answer these questions.

1. THE CLASS CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT

I think it is incontestable that the present Bolivian government is a bourgeois government, whose task and aim is to defend by all means available to it the interests of the bourgeoisie and of imperialism. It will, if it can, harness and disarm the working class, smash its revolutionary vanguard, and rebuild the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which has been shaken but not destroyed by the first phase of the revolution. This government is therefore the deadly enemy of the workers and peasants, and especially of the Marxist party.

Comrade Lora does not take up explicitly the question of the class character of the government. The closest he comes is the following:

“The Paz Estenssoro government, dominated by its reactionary wing, shows all the characteristic features of ‘Bonapartism, operating between the proletariat and imperialism. “

Does this imply the bourgeois character of the government? Perhaps. I hope so. But this is question that will have to be answered, and not by implication or inference but directly.

One thing does appear clearly: Comrades Lora does not regard this government as an enemy of the working class and of the POR.

“One cannot exclude the possibility,” he says, “that the right wing (of the government) faced with the sharpening of the mass struggle against it, will ally itself with imperialism to crush the so-called ‘Communist’ danger.

This formulation is wrong, very wrong! This is an error which, if it actually represents the position of the POR, can have tragic consequences for the very physical existence of the cadres of the Bolivian Trotskyist party.

This is the warning the leaders of the POR must give the working class and above all its own supporters: We must expect with absolute certainty (not merely “not exclude the possibility”) that the government (not merely its right wing) will ally itself with imperialism and try to crush the mass movement and first of all its vanguard, the POR which is the real (and not “so-called”) communist danger.

“It is beyond doubt,” concludes Comrade Lora, that the new government is now being subjected to enormous pressure by the feudal bourgeoisie (this term is no doubt the result of a faulty translation) and by imperialism to make it capitulate or to destroy it. Under such conditions the POR defends the government with all its strength and by means of mobilization of the masses … Today, far from succumbing to the hysteria of a struggle against the MNR, whom the pro-imperialists have baptized as ‘fascists,’ we are marching with the masses to make the April 9 movement the prelude to the triumph of the workers and peasants government.

Three separate questions seem to be mixed up here:

a. The Marxist political opposition to a bourgeois government; a government which, because of its weakness, is forced to maneuver with the working class and appear to have not yet “capitulated” to the bourgeoisie. Comrade Lora seemingly is taken by the appearance of impartiality.

b. The opposition of the more open pro-imperialists to the government as “fascist.” This opposition aims at strengthening the hand of the government against the working class or at overthrowing the government or both. This opposition has nothing in common with the Marxist opposition from the left; and Comrade Lora is guilty of a serious error confusing the two when he says that the POR is “far from succumbing to the hysteria of a struggle against the MNR.”

c. The technical and material cooperation and aid which Marxists would give the MNR government against a Kornilov or Franco-type coup. This must be sharply differentiated from political support, which we would never give. We would continue to struggle against the government — with means suited to the situation, naturally — even while striking together with it against a military overthrow

This confusion by Comrade Lora of two different types of “opposition” and two different types of “support” appears to parallel the potentially disastrous March-April (1917) policy of the Bolsheviks, who in the absence of Lenin declared their support against reaction or counter-revolution. I ~ But it does not appear to parallel the policy of Lenin in the struggle against Kornilov, Lenin wrote:

“It would be the profoundest mistake to imagine that the revolutionary proletariat is capable, so to speak, out of ‘vengeance upon the SR s and Mensheviks, of refusing to `support them against the counter-revolution … We ought not even now to support the government of Kerensky. That would be unprincipled. You ask: But mustn’t we fight Kornilov? Of course, yes. But that is not the same thing. There is a limit here. Some of the Bolsheviks are crossing it, slipping into compromisism, getting carried by the flood of events.”

2. WHAT IS THE CHARACTER OF THE MNR?

Comrade Lora answers this question as follows: “The MNR is a petty-bourgeois party which bases itself on the organizations of the masses.” I think this is wrong, and is the basis for a conciliationist attitude toward the MNR. The MNR is a bourgeois party, which politically exploits the masses. The majority of its members, as in all mass parties, are no doubt workers and middle-class elements; but that does not determine its class character. It is controlled not by its majority but by its tiny minority, and the absentee controllers, the capitalist class. How else explain the composition of the government which, as Comrade Lora says, “is weighted with the most reactionary elements of the MNR and particularly the Freemasons… the most effective agents of imperialism”?

Is this the type of government the POR meant when it raised the slogan: “The MNR to Power”? The composition of the government is in complete conformity with the character of the MNR. I think it was wrong to raise this slogan. Unless our comrades retrieve their error by reconsidering their characterization of the MNR, they will inevitably suffer along with the MNR when the masses, through their own experience, begin to see the real class character of this bourgeois party.

3. OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE COMPROMISERS.

Toward the labor leaders in the government, Comrade Lora takes an unequivocal attitude; he supports them, and presents no criticism of their role. The textile workers, he recounts, obliged the MNR to accept working-class elements into the cabinet. Did the POR support this demand? The presumption is strong that it did. Comrade Breitman quotes the New Leader as saying that Comrade Lora is Lechin’s Secretary; and Breitman does not contradict this report. If true, would not this place the POR as a subordinate, ex-officio member of the bourgeois coalition government? And if the report is not true, the situation is not decisively different. Suppose the POR had been strong enough to force its way into the cabinet? Suppose, as we all hope and envisage, the POR gains more mass support in the future, will it then enter a bourgeois coalition government? This is the logic of the position outlined by Comrade Lora.

The Marxist attitude has always been and will continue to be one of hostility toward the compromisers; to call on them to break with the bourgeois politicians and form a workers’ and farmers’ government. According to late reports, Lechin is capitulating to the right wing of the government on the question of nationalization of the mines. This should be no surprise to us. It was inevitable. How much would the POR have gained in the confidence of the masses if it had predicted this capitulation? How much has it lost by its support of the compromisers?

Of course the POR would thereby have lost Lechin’s friendship. But Lechin’s is a treacherous, and undependable friendship. Lechin will capitulate again, and again. He will help disarm the workers. He will help smash the POR, no matter how it may try to placate him. And Lechin’s betrayal will facilitated if the POR continues to support him.

4. THE REVOLUTIONARY TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM.

The independence of the revolutionary party is an absolute law in a revolutionary situation. But this does not fall from the sky. It arises out of the Marxist theory and the program of the party. The central slogans put forward by our party, according to Comrade Lora, were as follows:

“1. Restoration of the constitution of the country through the formation of an MNR government which obtained a majority in the 1951 elections.

“2. Struggle for the improvement of wages and working conditions.

“3. Struggle for democratic rights.

“4. Mobilization of the masses against imperialism, for the nationalization of the mines, and for the abrogation of the UN agreement.

Points 2 and 3 are clearly insufficient to differentiate our party from other tendencies in the labor movement. They are too general. The question how we carry on the struggle must be elaborated, and in such a way as to form a part of the revolutionary transitional program.

Is the demand for nationalization sufficient to differentiate the Marxist program from those of all other tendencies? I don’t think so. Both the right and left wings of the MNR are for nationalization. And there is no compelling reason to suppose the MNR cannot accomplish it to one degree or another. Cardenas, Mossadegh, Peron, have carried through nationalizations without thereby giving up an iota of their bourgeois character.

Nationalization does not change the class character of the state. Nationalization itself has a class character, deriving it from the class character of the government that carries it out. Of course, we don not oppose such nationalizations; we defend them against imperialism. But the decisive question remains: Which class has political and military control? Is the state power in the hands of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat? And the bourgeois power can be removed only by proletarian revolution.

Comrade Lora apparently does not draw this sharp line in the class character of the state. By his designation of the present government as “Bonapartist”  operating between the proletariat and imperialism, by characterizing the MNR as a petty-bourgeois party, and by his emphasis on nationalization, he seems to regard the present regime as a transitional regime having no fixed class character.

“It is now necessary”, says Comrade Lora, “to fight for the nationalization of the mines, the key industries, and the land. This struggle will be intimately connected with the development of the mass upsurge, with the involvement of new working-class sectors in the struggle in such a way that it assumes nationwide scope, and finally with the constitution of a workers’ and farmers’ government.

An elaboration of this statement would of course result in the projection of a transitional program. I hope it will be so elaborated.

But how does this square with the demand for restoration of the bourgeois constitution? I well remember how sharply the French right-wing Trotskylsts were castigated (and very correctly) for voting for a bourgeois constitution. They defended themselves by pointing to the fact that the working-class organizations were for it, while the reactionaries were against. Is this the justification of the POR? This would make Marxist policy very simple: Look at what the extreme right is doing and do the opposite.

But the masses were fighting under the slogan of restoration of the constitution? Marxists can participate in the struggles of the masses without their wrong slogails. True, they would then be a minority; but that is the penalty we must pay for pointing out the objective necessities which the masses do not yet completely understand. The Marxists must patiently explain.

Comrade Lora points to the influence which the POR gained in the leftwing of the MNR. Worthless influence, it appears to me, if it is achieved by adopting the program of the MNR. A united front with a bourgeois party with the aim of establishing a bourgeois constitution and placing the bourgeois party in power is not a united front but a peoples front.

The united front that the Marxists advocate aims to unite the workers and peasants on a minimum program embodying a stage of the revolutionary transitional program. This united front, in a revolutionary situation, turns into the workers and peasants soviets. And even in the soviets the struggle goes on. Far from accepting the conciliationist program which may be imposed on the soviets, the Marxists advocate their own program, calling on the soviets to break with the bourgeoisie, their parties and their government, and take the complete power, establishing a workers’ and peasants’ government.

But Comrade Lora does not raise the question of a break with the bourgeois government. The workers and peasants government he advocates appears as some ultimate conclusion to a gradual reshuffling of the personnel of the bourgeois government, whereby the right wingers will be forced out and the cabinet take on a more and more left tinge.

In a revolutionary situation the slogan of a workers’ and farmers’ government is not an ultimate goal but an immediate demand, inseparable from a break with and overthrow of the bourgeois government. The workers’ and farmers’ government can be realized in actuality only as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

This letter, comrades, is based on one interview with one leader of the POR. I realize — rather fervently hope — that I have not a sufficient basis to characterize the policy of the POR. I have therefore restrained the tone of my criticism to the utmost. But there is a danger, or at least the possibility, in the midst of a great struggle, of being carried away by the flood of events. Without dictating to the Bolivian comrades their specific tactics, the leaders of our party must help the POR base its tactics strictly on the revolutionary Marxist program, the only hope of victory.

I hope you view this letter in the spirit in which it is written: more an inquiry than a criticism.

Centrist Debacle in Bolivia

Originally published in Workers Vanguard No. 3 (December 1971). First posted online at http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/05/1971-dec-centrist-debacle-in-bolivia.html  

The issue of the role of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario in the recent Bolivian events has become inevitably a factional football in the power fight between the Healyite (SLL-WL) and Lambertiste (OCI) wings of the now split International Committee. But in addition to providing a test of, the revolutionary capacity of both wings of the IC, the lessons of Bolivia are important in their own right, as a verification, in the breech, of the lessons of the October Revolution of 1917. The POR is an avowedly Trotskyist organization under the leadership of Guillermo Lora, which since 1970 has claimed agreement with the anti-revisionist avowals of the IC. Despite its opportunist policy following the 1952 Bolivian uprising in Conciliating the left wing of the bourgeois nationalist MNR government of Paz Estenssoro, the POR is an organization which must be, treated seriously because of its considerable implantation in the most militant sector of the Bolivian proletariat, the tin miners.

People’s Assembly

The POR played an active role in the People’s Assembly which came into existence under the bonapartist regime of left militarist General Juan Jose Torres, which was overthrown by the rightist coup of General Hugo Banzer in August. The People’s Assembly was composed of a majority of representatives from working-class organizations and included representatives of the significant left political organizations. The basis for adherence to the People’s Assembly was defined as support to the Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Central Obrera Boliviana, the main trade union federation, which is heavily influenced by left nationalists and Stalinists. The People’s Assembly pledged to lead the struggle against imperialism and for socialism:

“The People’s Assembly is a revolutionary anti-imperialist front led by the proletariat, constituted by the Central Obrera Boliviana, the trade union confederations and federations of a national character, the people’s organizations and the political parties of revolutionary orientation. It recognizes as its political leadership the proletariat and declares that its program is the Political Theses passed by the Fourth Congress of the COB, held in May 1970….

 “The People’s Assembly constitutes itself as the leadership and unifying center of the anti-imperialist movement and its fundamental goal consists in attaining national liberation and the establishment of socialism in Bolivia.

(from the statutes of the People’s Assembly, reprinted in the POR organ Masas of 13 July 1971)

According to the POR, the People’s Assembly was a body of the soviet type which had the potential to become an institution of dual power – i.e., that it was an embryonic workers government within and in contradiction to the bourgeois government under Torres. Masas engaged in occasional sharp criticism of the CP for pursuing a “rightist and pro-government line” in the Assembly but did not systematically expose the CP and the other reformist parties for their betrayal of the working class in attempting to subordinate the Assembly to Torres, devoting at least as much emphasis to praising the Assembly and defending it against “leftist” detractors.

Centrist Vacillation

Even on the basis of insufficient documentation, what emerges clearly is a pattern of centrist vacillation on the part of the POR. For example, in an article written by Guillermo Lora after Banzer’s coup is the admission:

“At this time [October 1970] everybody thought – including we Marxists – that the arms would be given by the governing military team, which would consider that only through resting on the masses and giving them adequate    firepower could they at least neutralize the gorila right. This position was completely wrong….”

 (Bulletin, 27 September 1971)

To have placed any confidence in Torres to arm the masses shows the most severe disorientation on the part of the POR over the crucial question of the class nature of the state. Torres was a bonapartist seeking to balance between the working class, roused by a foretaste of power and eager to struggle for its own, class rule, and the reactionary generals – at the head of a bourgeois state. Although forced to grant concessions to the masses, Torres, as Lora points out:

“…preferred to capitulate to his fellow generals before arming masses who showed signs of taking the road to socialism and whose mobilization put in serious danger the army as an institution.”

The issue is clear, but the attitude and role of the POR is not. For in the 31 May 1971 issue of Masas we find a call for the formation of independent workers and peasants militias and the categorical assertion that: “General Torres Will never arm the workers and peasants militias. “

An article in the SLL’s Workers Press of 24 August quotes POR leader Filemon Escobar:

 “…we will work for political objectives that help radicalize the present process – for example, worker-participation in COMIBOL [Bolivian Mining Corporation].”

And Lora’s Bulletin article speaks of “the danger to the state that majority working class participation in COMIBOL would mean.” Yet a major article in the 31 May Masas exposes the plan for “worker-participation at COMIBOL as the point of departure for the bureaucratization and political control over the ‘worker-managers’ on the part of the state,” counterposing to this the demand for “workers control – with veto rights” and pointing out that workers control does not obviate the class struggle.

A severe blunting of a hard Leninist edge is apparent in an article in the 9 May Masas which states:

“…the fundamental contradiction in Bolivia is nothing else than that which exists between the proletariat and imperialism.”

Our question is simple: what role does the national bourgeoisie play in this schema? For the fatal illusion fostered by the nationalist-Stalinist cabal was precisely the conception of the “anti-imperialist” bourgeoisie as an ally. What was required of the POR was precisely to break the working class from subordination to the “revolutionary,” “anti-imperialist” regime of Torres. To Marxists, the counterposed class forces are the working class supported by the peasantry on the one side and the bourgeoisie – both the puppets of imperialism and the “progressive” nationalist wing – on the other.

The OCI’s response to the grave accusations levelled against the POR is an attempt to bluff it out. The 19 September statement declares:

“…the coup d’etat organized by the CIA and the military dictators of Brazil and Argentina and facilitated by the action of the Torres government is the proof that the policy carried by the POR was fundamentally based on the interests of the Bolivian proletariat…

 “… All those who attack the POR through this, represent the enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They take the sides of imperialism and Stalinism. They are agents of counterrevolution and are enemies, conscious or unconscious, of the Fourth International.”

This kind of argumentation can simply be dismissed out of hand. As Trotskyists, we have listened too many times to the hysterical accusations of Stalinists of all stripes along the same lines: the ferocity of U.S. imperialism’s aggression against the NLF and the North Vietnamese regimes proves that their leaderships have not sold out; all those who attack Chairman Mao are taking the side of imperialism; Trotsky was a conscious or unconscious agent of fascism; those who stand in opposition to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, ad nauseam. We only that this “defense” of the POR says nothing about the POR but a great deal to the discredit of the OCI.

The OCI asserts that the People’s Assembly was “under the leadership of the Trotskyist party, the POR.” This statement is open to question. In an interview in the 9 August Bulletin, POR leader Victor Sossa States that “the POR represented only around 20 per cent of the delegates, perhaps a little more.” Yet he expected that the Assembly, still predominantly influenced by Stalinists, bourgeois nationalism and “ultra-left adventurist petty-bourgeois groups, ” to do the following:

“In the case of a coup the People’s Assembly will call a general strike, will assume the military and political command of the masses. The decision to go over to the systematic organization of militias is geared to this perspective and prepares the working class for the inevitable confrontation, the fight to fully install its own government, the workers and peasants government.”

The question here is not whether the POR had already established its hegemony over the workers organizations, but whether it was struggling to do so – whether the POR’s perspective was to expose the reformists’ and nationalists’ treachery before their supporters by demanding that the Assembly counterpose itself to the regime, breaking all ties with the regime and struggling to establish a workers and peasants government – i. e. the dictatorship of the proletariat. It would appear that the POR placed political confidence in the Assembly under its existing leadership.

Soviets: Form vs Content

What was the role of the POR within the People’s Assembly? The OCI notes that:

“…the setting up of the People’s Assembly expresses the fundamental trend of the period, the will of the proletarian and peasant masses to enter into the struggle for power.”

But Allende’s Popular Front government in Chile, for example, also without doubt represents “the will of the proletarian and peasant masses to enter into the struggle for power” – yet we know that the Chilean masses have been terribly deceived and they are likely to pay for their misleaders’ promises in blood. The willingness of the working masses to struggle is not in dispute. In Bolivia, as in Chile, Spain, Vietnam and dozens of other instances, the question is whether their combative heroism has been betrayed.

The OCI declares:

 “It is the unity in and around the People’s Assembly, organ of dual power, which under the leadership of the Trotskyist party, the POR, dominated the whole revolutionary process before and after the confrontations of August 20-23.”

What does it mean to acclaim the “unity in and around the People’s Assembly”? If the People’s Assembly was indeed an embryonic soviet form, how was the struggle for its leadership carried out? A soviet is a united front of the working class raised to the level of struggling for power. There is nothing sacred about the soviet or any other united front form. Soviets arise, even spontaneously, in revolutionary crises as the proletarian axis in the dual power situation, with the potential under revolutionary leadership to oust the bourgeois state power and become the agency of working-class rule – i.e. to consummate the revolution on the national plane. They are the best arena in which the Bolsheviks can demonstrate their superiority in carrying forward the tasks implicit in the soviet as an embryonic form of the state of a different class: the seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A Menshevik-led soviet, for example, may indeed be an authentic soviet – but it will inevitably betray. Thus a Leninist call for the formation of soviets, for power to the soviets, must contain within it the perspective of struggle within the soviet: in order to demonstrate to the workers that it is they, unlike the revisionists and reformists, who have nothing to fear from soviet power and that only their policy can achieve and defend it. The existence of a soviet is in itself no guarantee of revolutionary principle. (Even the Stalinists have called – bureaucratically, to be sure – for the formation of soviets in their “left” zigzags, after having doomed the workers in advance by their policies – policies which guaranteed the ruin of the soviet.) Without the presence of revolutionaries intransigently struggling at every point to expose before the working class the traitorous misleaders within its ranks, the People’s Assembly offered no more promise for the Bolivian proletarian revolution than George Meany’s AFL-CIO raised to the political level. Does the OCI really want to boast that the POR expounded “unity in and around the People’s Assembly”?

When questions of power politics between the wings of the IC were not so clearly and ultimatistically posed, the OCI was willing to take a more critical attitude toward the POR on precisely this question. A letter to the POR leadership dated 30 July 1970 and later published in the Lambertistes’ public theoretical magazine discussed the COB Theses which the POR had helped prepare and voted for. The sections of the COB document singled out for sharp criticism by the OCI include the following:

“In order to attain socialism, it seems necessary first of all to make a unity of all the revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces. The people’s anti-imperialist revolution is linked to the struggle for socialism. The people’s front is an alliance of related classes, and the unitary instrument for making the revolution. The expulsion of imperialism and the realization of national and democratic tasks will render possible the socialist revolution.” (La Verite, October 1970)

What this paragraph sets forward is the Menshevik theory of stages, pure and simple – first national liberation, then socialist revolution. It is the classic reformist rationale for class collaboration, which has led to the most bitter and bloody defeats for the working class. And yet the POR supported this resolution and continued to acclaim it in Masas. Instead of struggling around this question, the POR compromised around a contradictory hodge-podge document which contained affirmations of internationalism, condemnations of class collaboration alongside praise of the so-called “socialist” nations and clear popular frontism.

It speaks well of the Lambertistes that they were willing to raise to the POR and subsequently make public their criticisms of the POR’s departure from principle. Now, however, the OCI’s opportunism has gained the upper hand, and so all critics of the POR become “agents of counterrevolution”!

And what of the POR’s conduct since the coup? The 6 December issue of the SWP’s Intercontinental Press reprints a declaration signed by the POR – along with the Communist Party, the “POR” of the Moscoso Pabloists, left nationalist groups and General Torres himself! The document again pays lip service to “the leadership of the proletariat, the ruling class of the revolutionary process” but the tone of the document is nationalist-populist (“revolutionary priests,” “revolutionary officers,” “patriots,” “the power is now in the hands of foreigners,” etc.) and its core is the following:

“Therefore the need is undeniable to build a fighting unity of all the revolutionary democratic and progressive forces that the great battle can be begun in conditions offering a real perspective for a popular and national government….

“This is not a battle that concerns only one sector of the exploited people, or one class, institution or party. … Any form of sectarianism is counterrevolutionary. Let us be worthy of the sacrifice of those who fell August 21 defending Bolivia.” (our emphasis)

In fact, the declaration is a classic popular front which subordinates the working class to alien class forces and ideologies to which it is in fundamental and irreconcilable opposition.

Healyite Pop Frontism

For the political bandits of the Healyite SLL-WL, the OCI’s decision to march in lockstep behind the POR is a godsend, a cheap way to assert their Leninist orthodoxy and cast themselves as the principled left wing in the IC split. But the real difference between the Healyites and the POR on proletarian policy toward a “leftist” bourgeois government is that the POR has had the opportunity to wreck a pre-revolutionary situation and the Healyites have not. Healy-Wohlforth have seized on Bolivia as a pretext for ridding themselves of the OCI, which was increasingly playing a dominant role in the IC — and that’s all. For although they would now prefer to bury it, the Healyites have a shining example of how they would deal with a Popular Front bourgeois government: Chile.

The 21 September 1970 Bulletin advised the workers of Chile:

“There is only one road, and that is the revolutionary road of the October Revolution…. as a step in this understanding the workers must hold Allende to his promises….”

Wohlforth’s road is not that of the October Revolution, but of those Bolsheviks, Stalin prominent among them, who very nearly ruined the chances for October by their policy – denounced by Lenin and Trotsky – of support for the bourgeois Provisional Government “insofar as it struggles against reaction or counterrevolution.” Wohlforth’s statement parallels the notorious Pravda articles capitulating to Menshevism in February and March of 1917, filled with statements like the following:

“The way out is bringing pressure to bear on the Provisional Government with the demand that the government proclaim its readiness to. begin immediate negotiations for peace.”

Against this policy Lenin declared: “To turn to this government with a proposal of concluding peace is equivalent to preaching morality to the keeper of a brothel,” And Trotsky, in Lessons of October, said:

“The programme of exerting pressure on an imperialist government so as to ‘induce’ it to pursue a pious course was the programme of Kautsky and Ledebour in Germany, Jean Longuet in France, MacDonald in England, but never the programme of Bolshevism.”

One must be sharply critical, as was Trotsky, of those Bolsheviks who would have let slip a revolutionary opportunity if it had not been for the sharp correction of Lenin. But more than criticism is merited by the Healyites, who claim to stand on the shoulders of the Bolsheviks, to have assimilated the “lessons of October.”

Lenin expressed his policy in an uncompromising formula:

“Our tactic: absolute lack of confidence; no support to the new government; suspect Kerensky especially; arming of the proletariat the sole guarantee;. . . no rapprochement with other parties.”

Against Lenin’s policy stand both the centrism of the POR-OCI and the Healyite pseudo-Leninist posturing.

And now the Healyites sanctimoniously denounce the POR-OCI for the same kind of Pop Frontist capitulation which they themselves espoused for Chile!

Healy lawyers for the LSSP

But perhaps an even purer example of Healyite hypocrisy is the question of Ceylon. The 30 August Bulletin declares:

“…Though less known than the evolution of the LSSP in Ceylon, the role of Lora and the POR has been no less treacherous and important.”

For years, in endless articles, the Healyites have used the betrayal of the Ceylonese masses by the LSSP – which tail-ended the bourgeois nationalist party of Mrs. Bandaranaike and when it came to power in 1964 entered the government – as an expose of the United Secretariat Pabloists, who covered for the LSSP until the last moment. (The Bulletin has just concluded yet another four-part series on the subject.) And rightly so, for their role over Ceylon was an important verification of the SWP-United Secretariat’s departure from Trotskyism. But what the Healyites are unlikely to mention is that they themselves are tarred with the same brush!

In May 1960 the SWP, then affiliated with the IC as was Healy’s SLL, began to get increasingly nervous about the line and conduct of the LSSP. On 17 May Tom Kerry addressed a letter on behalf of the SWP’s Political Committee to the LSSP. It states:

“We are greatly disturbed by the parliamentary and electoral course now pursued by the leadership of the LSSP….

“Your policy of working for the creation of an SLFP government appears to us to be completely at variance with the course of independent working class political action which you have always promoted in the past as a matter of principle….

“Your new political course also appears to us to be a form of ‘popular frontism’ of the kind promoted in many countries by the Stalinists since 1935 – that is, class collaboration between the working-class parties and a section of the bourgeoisie….”

Despite their concern the SWP leadership hesitated to raise this betrayal in the public press.

On 8 August James Robertson, then a member of the SWP, wrote to the Political Committee:

“I am addressing you on the matter of our party’s public silence concerning the recent and continuing betrayal of the Ceylonese working class and of the world Trotskyist movement by the, Lanka Sama Samaja Party. I refer, of course, to that party’s entry into a ‘Popular Front’ electoral pact with the Stalinist party and with the left bourgeois nationalist party represented by the widow Bandaranaike.

“In raising this matter privately with several members of your body I was told that letters have been sent the Ceylonese and that your view is that for the present a greater advantage is to be gained by revolutionary Marxists in the LSSP through our remaining publicly silent, I must disagree and urge you to reconsider…”

The letter concludes:

“Comrades, that you condemn the Ceylonese ex-Trotskyist I have no doubt, but your failure to raise this publicly and with great seriousness does the movement internationally a disservice.”

And what was the position of Gerry Healy, who now proclaims himself the world’s only consistent anti-Pabloist After having written to the SWP that delicate maneuvers among the Pabloists were required in Ceylon, Healy on 14 August wrote to the SWP’s Joe Hansen:

“We discussed at some length… the proposition concerning the situation in Ceylon. We think that it is necessary to write again asking for the fullest possible information concerning the present situation in the party in Ceylon.

“There is no doubt that they are in a severe crisis but if we take their situation and recent events in Europe it is not improbable that there will now be important developments inside the Pablo camp, This is all the more reason for us to proceed with caution – as you have in the past so rightly insisted.

“We are going to cable them tomorrow for information and we suggest you do likewise and hold up for the time being publication of anything in the Militant “

Rebuild the Fourth International!

It is their own sordid history which gives the lie to the Healyites’ claims of internationalism and anti-revisionism. If the Lambertistes – who in 1952 launched the struggle against Pabloism never transcended centrism and have now hardened themselves in opportunism – their line on Bolivia and their conduct at Essen, the Healyites’ pretensions of principle have always rested on sand.

Only the Fourth International – rebuilt in the process of struggle against all varieties of Pabloist revisionism, including the inverted Pabloism of the IC – can provide the way forward toward the decisive victory of the international working class.

Militant Longshoreman

No #7  January 5, 1984

Re- Elect Keylor (36-A) to Executive Board

Build A Fighting Union

“What’s going to happen with our contract?”

That’s the question asked dozens of times a day on the waterfront. Everyone sees the U.S. employers demanding and getting wage cuts and contractual take-sways all dot-in the line. The army of unemployed remains at a high level, no end of the depression is in sight, and the visciously anti-labor Reagan administration seems determined to make workers and minorities pay for the depression. On the other hand the organized labor movement, which has declined to less than 20% of the work force, has given only isolated and sporadic resistance to emnloyer/government attacks.

The real question that needs to The asked (and answered) is, “What, is the state of our union and what can we do about it?” Let’s start by taking a quick look at the record for 1983. This newsletter neinted out last car that one of the most alarming symptoms of our weakness was the PMA’s increasingly blatant violation of the contract on the job. At that time, 1982, the officers had tried in a limited way to resist employer contract violations. But no sooner were they re-elected when our officers appeared to collapse; now almost no resistance is offered. Tn fact, inexcusable concessions violating the contract are frequently granted, such as permitting PMA companies to work past the contractual shift quitting time.

PMA ran two big tests on us this year, one coastwise and one locally. Coastwise occured when the reconvened Negotiating Committee met with PMA to discuss the continuous 3-shift proposal. PMA dropped the three shift idea and proposed to reconstruct PGP eligibility and earnings so that a longshoreman’s PGP would be based on his individual earnings. This divisive move, which would have drastically cut PGP for San Francisco longshoremen, was just, narrowly rejected. PMA will undoubtedly try gain this year.

Locally PMA demanded, and it looks like they will get, a drastic cut in gangs. This attack on the gang system came at the same time PMA was bypassing the gangs by ordering “unit gangs” or” make-up gangs” at the last minute on break bulk cargo. Instead of exposing PNIA’s sabotage of the gang system by refusing to dispatch these non-contractual “unit” and “make-up” gangs, the officers attempted to “negotiate” concessions and finally arbitrated the issue. Instead of defending the gang system so that we could go over to the offensive in 1984 and demand that gangs be used on container ships, the formula agreed to by the officers and the Executive Board spells the end of gangs in San Francisco.

The International and the Coast Committee gave no leadership or help to the local in resisting PMA during 1983. When they weren’t “unavailable” their “advice” was usually limited to telling the local to put it in the grievance machinery. We all know what that means — let the arbitrator decide!

RICHMOND PARR 5 – THE MEMBERSHIP WILL FIGHTI

A year ago we warned in Militant Longshoreman #5 that Levin’s threat to our job jurisdiction could only be met by shutting down the port, mass picketing of Paar 5 (old Richmond Yard 1), getting support of other maritime unions, and ignoring injunctions. When the membership saw the threat to their jobs materialize that’s exactly what they did! Levin was stopped cold in their attempt to take auto, container, and break bulk cargo out from under our jurisdiction. Local 10 membership proved that when they see a threat clearly they stand ready to put. up one hell of a fight.

As the Militant Longshoreman has been pointing out (and the Longshore Militant before that) the union lacks and needs a class-struggle leadership that knows what needs to be done, has a strategy for getting it, and has confidence in the rank and file to fight. Our local officers, who probably had good intentions when they started, lack any of these qualifications and have failed dismally to give any real leadership. Just for example: Our local President Brother Carr showed his lack of confidence in the membership by ruling “out of order” more Executive Board and membership motions than any other presiding officer that the author can ever remember seeing in the ILWU. Brother Carr clearly feared the membership’s judgement.

WHO CAN I VOTE FOR?

The above is the second most frequent question asked this season. Maybe the easiest way to approach an answer is to describe the main parts of a candidate’s program that shows if he has some idea of what it takes for a union even to defend its’ members, let alone wage an offensive battle for what workers need.

First – the union has to be willing to break out of the hand-cuffs and leg-irons imposed on us, take job action and strike action that may violate the work-now – arbitrate later provisions of the contract. Ask your favorite candidate whether he agrees that we have to be ready to defy court injunctions when the chips are down. Most of them — if they are honest– will tell you that they don’t want to go to jail.

Second – Labor unity: No union can win alone. We have to rebuild the kind of, labor unity that enabled unions in the 30s to organize millions of workers in the face of massive opposition from employers. That means mass picketing and refining to handle seat, or struck cargo.

Third – International working class solidarity. Corporations are organized worldwide but the labor movement is divided up by national boundaries. We need to take concrete actions to support workers outside U.S. borders. Your officers didn’t even tell you about the Canadian longshore strike (and that is the same union) where cargo was being diverted to the Puget, Sound area.

Fourth – Labor can only depend on its own working class strength and power. The government is hostile to labor and only grants concessions (unemployment insurance, Social Security etc.)) to “keep the peace”. law suits that bring the courts and government into the union are extremely dangerous. At best they end up with a pro-capitalist judge rewriting your contract. At worst they can permanently strangle unions’ ability to take the necessary strike actions to wring concessions from the employers.

Fifth – Workers need their own political party. None of our problems can be permanently solved under capitalism. But tailing after the Democrats, as our local and International officers do, leads them to avoid strikes and try to win a few crumbs from the pro-capitalist politicians.

When you look around the hall you see a bushel basket of candidates for union office who either duck these questions or come down on the wrong side of a winning class-struggle program. That’s why the Militant  Longshoreman is making no endorsements at this time.

OUR PROGRAM – 1984 CONTRACT

Before the February round of elections, which will elect Caucus delegates, another issue of this newsletter will describe what we will have to defend, what we need, and how we can get it. The program printed on the back page describes very briefly the position of Howard Keylor on the main issues facing longshoremen and other workers.

STAN GOW – WHAT NEXT?

We can expect Stan Gow and the Longshore/Warehouse Militant Caucus to again come out just before the election with a leaflet entitled “No Vote for Keylor – the fink, racist, would-be bureaucrat, Nazi lover, wife beater etc….”. The union faces threats far too serious to waste much paper and ink in a pissing contest or to try eternally to deny and refute slanders and lies. We’ve already devoted more than enough newsprint to this purpose. Enough said.

KOREAN/CIA SPY PLANE

JIMMY HERMAN FLINCHES

Reagan is driving whole-hog toward a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. labor bureaucrats are falling right in line behind the anti-communist hysteria  generated by Reagan’s provocations toward the U.S.S.R. Our union in the past (1950 – Korean war – for example) stood almost along at times, resisting anti-communist war hysteria. But when the 007 Korean passenger plane (spy plane) was shot down President Herman flinched badly when he said in effect that the Soviet Union doesn’t have the right (and the obligation) to defend it’s most important Far Eastern military bases from provocative incursions. Instead of condemning the log Angeles Local 13 Longshore leadership which refused to work a Russian ship and instead of attacking Reagan for trying to precipitate World War III, Jimmy gave backhanded support to Reagan’s anti-Soviet crusade painting the Soviet Union as a brutal, satanic, evil empire. To their credit Canadian and Mexican longshoremen continued to work Russian ships.

We would remind Jimmy Herman that PATCO’s kissing Reagan’s ass didn’t save the Air Controllers union from being smashed and its’ leaders from being jailed.

MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN PROGRAM

1. DEFEND OUR JOBS AND LIVELIHOOD – Six hour shift, no extensions, at eight hours pay. Manning scales on all ship operations; one man, one job. Full C.O.L.A. on wages. No cap, weekly PGP; no 25%  “coding out” rule; no further restrictions on PGP eligibitity. No “take back” on travel time.

2. DEFEND THE HIRING HALL – Use regular gangs  on container ships; no dispatch of “unit gangs”. Prepare the union for a coastwise fight to eliminate 9.43, S.E.O., and crane supplement from the contract.

3. DEFEND UNION CONDITIONS AND SAFETY THROUGH JOB ACTION Stop PMA chiseling on the contract. Elminate “work as directed”, “no illegal work stoppage”, and arbitration sections from the contract. Mobilize to smash anti-labor injunctions.

4. DEFEND OUR UNION – Eliminate class R registration category from the contract – promote all class B to class A coastwise. Keen racist anti-labor government and courts out of the union. Support all ILWU, locals’ resistance against court suits and government “investigations”. Union action to break down racial and sexual discrimination and employer favoritism on the waterfront.

5. BUILD LABOR SOLIDARITY – against government/employer strikebreaking. No more PATCOs. Honor all picket lines. Don’t handle struck or diverted cargo. No raiding of other unions. Organize the unorganized and the unemployed. Labor strikes to stop cuts in Social Security, Medical, Medicare.

6. STOP NAZI/KLAN TERROR through union organized labor/black/Latino defense actions. No dependance on capitalist police or courts to smash fascists.

7. WORKING CLASS ACTION TO STOP REAGAN’S WAR DRIVE AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION – Oppose reactionary boycotts against Soviet and Polish shipping. Labor strikes against military litary blockades of Cuba or Nicaragua. Boycott military cargo to Chile, South Africa, El Salvador, Israel, and Turkey.

8. INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY – Oppose protectionist trade restrictions. ILWU support to military victory of leftist insurgents in El Salvador. Defend the Palestinians – U.S. Marines out of Lebanon -by all means necessary.

9. BREAK WITH DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES – Start now to build a workers Party based on the unions to fight for a workers government which will seize all major industry without payment to the capitalists and establish a planned economy to end exploitation, racism, poverty, and war.

Militant Longshoreman

No.2, January 29, 1982

Build A Fighting Union

ELECT KEYLOR AND GOW CAUCUS DELEGATES

Brothers may be surprised that Howard Keylor and the MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN urge Local 10 members to vote for Stan Gow after his hyster­ical, leaflet of January 6 attacking the editor. The MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN supports candidates for union office on the basis of their program, not on their tactical sense or their effectiveness. I hope that Local 10 longshore­men will again follow my advice, as they did January 8 when they reelected both Keylor and Gow to the Executive Board with the highest percentage vote we’ve ever received.

SETBACK FOR BUILDING ALTERNATE CLASS-STRUGGLE LEADERSHIP

Their is no denying that the attempt of the LONGSHORE – WAREHOUSE MILITANT CAUCUS to destroy and discredit Keylor represents a setback in the struggle to promote those principles of Militant Trade Unionism which can help to build the alternative class-struggle leadership our union so desperately needs. The frantic and dishonest misrepresentation of Keylor’s positions on a whole range of important issues tends to discredit the Cau­cus, the LONGSHORE MILITANT, and Brother Gow and makes it increasingly un­likely that they will be able to build an alternative leadership.

KEYLOR’ S NON-EXISTENT “DIFFERENCES”

It’s impossible to completely counteract the lies and distortions about my positions that are contained in the MILITANT CAUCUS leaflet. For every word of slander I would have to use 10 words of factual description in order to set the record straight. Nevertheless, it could be useful to describe some of the background to my resignation from the MILITANT CAUCUS in November 1981.

Stan’s leaflet says that “Keylor no longer supports the MILITANT CAUCUS prograrn!” The fact is that until the November 1981 Caucus meeting where the votes had been lined up to pass a motion forbidding me to run for reelection to the Local 10 Executive Board and the Coast longshore Caucus, none of the issues dealt with in Stan’s leaflet were raised or discussed in a Caucus meeting: No differences on program between myself and the Caucus existed then or exist now!.

So what is behind this hysterical attack on me? I had developed differ­ences early last year with same Caucus members on issues which did not involve the union or the Caucus program. Those differences led the Caucus leadership to engage in a campaign of character assassination outside the Caucus, leading up finally to the meeting where they demanded that I cooperate in my own polit­ical suicide in the union. At that meeting I told the Caucus that I could best advance the program of the Caucus by running independantly for reelection and. continuing to argue for those principles and actions that could defend the union and advance working class solidarity.

KEYLOR FOUGHT FOR CAUCUS PROGRAM IN 1981 CONTRACT

It would be much easier to set the record straight if Stan and I had been permitted to issue a LONGSHORE MILITANT after the April contract coast caucus, which formulated contract demands and than turned them over to the Negotiating Committee. Keylor was successful at the April Caucus in getting motions on the floor for debate and a vote on a whole range of issues vital to the union in­cluding:

100 % Cost of Living formula in pension contract
Abolish all Master Contract sections allowing steady equipment operators
Honor all union picket lines
Abolish “work as directed” and arbitration sections of the contract grievance procedure
Abolish 20.61 allowing PMA to cancel PGP for alleged union actions

I argued after the April Caucus that it was vital to issue a LONGSHORE MILITANT warning the membership that the coast caucus had failed to put togeth­er a contract program which could unite the membership for a strike to get what we need and that in fact the caucus had left everything (including the right to extend the contract past July) in the hands of a Negotiating Conmittee dominat­ed by 6 International officers. I wrote an outline fora leaflet but the MILITANT CAUCUS refused to. allow it to be printed. The Caucus leadership dismissed the outline with the cynical comment “we’re not. an informational bureau, besides it’s boring.” This was the first tine in the history of the LONGSHORE MILITANT that we had not issued a leaflet to prepare the membership in advance for a contract fight.

LONGSHORE MILITANT SILENT ON INTERNATIONAL -CONVENTION

After the June International Convention  in Hawaii I wanted to issue a LONGSHORE MILITANT, warning the membership that the union leadership was falling in behind Reagan’s anti-Soviet war drive, refused to support military victory for the worker and peasant supported leftist insurgents in El Salvador, continued to rely on the capitalist courts and cops to stop the KKK and Nazis, and blocked even a floor discussion on the need for a workers’ party. Again the Caucus re­fused to issue a leaflet leaving the membership in the dark about the direction the union was taking.

It’s apparent now that the real reason for the refusal to issue leaflets on the caucus and convention was to “disappear” Keylor as much as possible, making it easier to rewrite later the history of Keylor’s role as Local 10 delegate.

HOW TO DEFEAT THE SEO CANCER – ACTION OR ABSTRACTION

Keylor was the only Local 10 delegate to vote against attempts to modify  the SEO system at the April Caucus. Brother Gow has been making a big thing out of the fact that in Item 1 of my program I demand: “Call all SEO men back to the hall. Dispatch all skilled equipulent jobs from the hall.” Is Brother Gow, oppos­ed, to this action? Does he advise us to wait until the contract is open in 1984? Doesn’t Stan remember that in previous non-cmtract years we, the LONGSHORE MILITANT, advised smashing this section of the contract in practice rather than suf­fering three more years?

After the September membership meeting I realized that I had made a mistake when I said that I would probably vote for Brother Reg Theriault’s motion to limit SEO men from driving rolling stock against the ship. At that meeting I argued (to a lot of applause) that it was impossible to simply modify the system; that any fight could only succeed if it upped the ante to call all SEO men back to the hall. I spoke before Brother Gow whose comments were largely unintelli­gible, so I don’t know what he said. After that meeting I argued that when the issue came before the Executive Board, we should vote against Brother Theriault’s motion and came up with a practical alternative motion to call SEO men back to the hall.

POLAND – INTERNATIONAL OFFICERS LINE UP WITH COUNTERREVOLUTION

Brother Gow’s January 6 leaflet tries. to link Keylor’s June 1981 position on Poland with Reagan’s anti-Soviet war drive. But it is unclear from his leaf­let how Brother Gow sees the International officers December 21 statement deploring the Polish Anny’s smashing of Solidarity’s moves toward counterrevolution.

I have no intention of ducking the issue of Polish Solidarity. It is a tragedy that the bulk of the Polish working class was led by their hatred of the incompetent, repressive, Polish government bureaucracy to support the clerical-nationalist moves to take Poland out of the Warsaw Pact and lay the basis for the restoration of capitalism. The Polish. workers would have been in far worse shape if Solidarity had brought the Polish economy under western capitalist control, and a civil war had developed, in which the most right-wing catholic-nationalists had seized political power.

KEYLOR AND THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLER’S STRIKE – A DELIBERATE LIE

It’s painful to have to say that Brother Gow’s January 6 leaflet lies when it says that Keylor was for consumer boycotts and against labor solidarity ac­tion to shut down the airports. At strike support meetings, at Executive Board meetings, and elsewhere Keylor argued vehenently that only the united power of mass labor picket lines could shut down the airports and win the strike of the air traffic controllers.

MILITANT CAUCUS ATTACK ON KEYLOR – THE REAL PURPOSE

Some Brothers commented that the famous January 6 MILITANT CAUCUS attack on Keylor sounded unbelievable and at times incomprehensible.

That’s right – the leaflet was not written for longshoremen! The leaflet was written for a wider audience than Local 10; it was designed to be reprinted and quoted from in publications addressed to the left in Chicago, Toronto, Melbourne, Hamburg, Paris and London. The lies and distortions contained therein could be used to discredit Keylor outside the union. Waterfront workers know enough about these issues to detect the inaccuracies strained arguments and conclusions.

RUN OFF ELECTION – NO CHOICE

The January primary election showed that none of the leading contenders for full time union office have anything approaching a real mandate from the member­ship. This is not surprising, since none of the leading candidates or groups competing for office have a program to unite the membership, in defending us against the employers and their government.

THE GIBSON CASE – COAST UNITY AGAINST THE CAPITALIST COURTS IS THE ISSUE

Brother Gow in his election leaflet ducked the question of the Gibson case, where the issue is coast longshore unity against lawsuits, which threaten our hiring hall. The Local 10 politicians have cynically created such anger and hysteria around this issue that it’s not surprising that Brothers who know better have hidden out on this question. I hope Brother Gow will see fit to publicly support a move for local 10 to pay our share of the coastwise costs of this anti-union lawsuit.

WHERE IS THE MILITANT CAUCUS GOING?

The LONGSHORE – WAREHOUSE MILITANT CALICUS, appears to be giving up on the task of building a principled class-struggle caucus in longshore. Their atti­tude towards Keylor reveals a position that no one who does not subject himself to the discipline of the MILITANT CAUCUS can provide honest leadership to the union – that anyone who finds it counter-productive to militant trade unionism to remain in the Caucus must be discredited and destroyed.

We still face the task of building the core of an alternative class-strug­gle leadership in the ILWU.

Fourth Congress of the Communist International

The Black Question

30 November 1922

Copied from http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/4th-congress/blacks.htm

1 During and after the war a revolutionary movement began to develop among the colonial and semi-colonial peoples and this movement is still successfully challenging the domination of world capital. Therefore, if capitalism is to continue, it must come to terms with the increasingly difficult problem of how to intensify its colonisation of the regions inhabited by black people. French capitalism clearly recognises that the power of pre-war French imperialism can only be maintained by creating a Franco-African empire, welded together by a Trans-Saharan railway. American finance magnates (who already exploit twelve million blacks in their own country) have begun a peaceful invasion of Africa. The extent to which Britain, for its part, fears any threat to its position in Africa is clearly shown by the extreme measures it took to suppress the strikes in South Africa. [This refers to the Rand Strike of 1922, an all-white affair conducted under the slogan: “For a White South Africa”. The Communist Party supported the strike movement, while calling for the unity of black and white workers] While competition between the imperialist powers in the Pacific has grown into the threat of a new world war, imperialist rivalry in Africa, too, is playing a more and more sinister role. Finally, the war, the Russian revolution, and the powerful anti-imperialist rebellion among the Asiatic and Moslem peoples have awakened the consciousness of millions of blacks who for centuries have been oppressed and humiliated by capitalism, in Africa, and probably to an even greater degree in America.

2 The history of the American blacks has prepared them to play a major role in the liberation struggle of the entire African race. 300 years ago the American blacks were torn from their native African soil, transported to America in slave ships and, in indescribably cruel conditions, sold into slavery. For 250 years they were treated like human cattle, under the whip of the American overseer. Their labour cleared the forests, built the roads, picked the cotton, constructed the railroads – on it the Southern aristocracy rested. The reward for their labour was poverty, illiteracy and degradation. The blacks were not docile slaves; their history is full of revolts, uprisings, and an underground struggle for freedom, but all their efforts to free themselves were savagely suppressed. They were tortured into submission, while the bourgeois press and religion justified their slavery. When slavery became an obstacle preventing the full and unhindered development of America towards capitalism, when this slavery came into conflict with the slavery of wage labour, it had to give way. The Civil War, which was not a war for the emancipation of the blacks but a war for the preservation of the industrial hegemony of the North, confronted the blacks with a choice between forced labour in the South and wage slavery in the North. The blood, sweat and tears of the ‘emancipated’ blacks helped to build American capitalism, and when the country, now become a world power, was inevitably pulled into the World War, black Americans gained equal rights with the whites … to kill and to die for ‘democracy’. Four hundred thousand coloured proletarians were recruited to the American army and organised into special black regiments. These black soldiers had hardly returned from the bloodbath of the war before they came up against racial persecution, lynchings, murders, the denial of rights, discrimination and general contempt. They fought back, but paid dearly for the attempt to assert their human rights. The persecution of blacks became even more widespread than before the war, and the blacks once again learned to ‘know their place’. The spirit of revolt, inflamed by the post-war violence and persecution, was suppressed, but cases of inhuman cruelty, such as the events in Tulsa, [City in Oklahoma. Scene of a pogrom in 1921 which turned into a veritable race war] still cause it to flare up again. This, plus the post-war industrialisation of blacks in the North, places the American blacks, particularly those in the North, in the vanguard of the struggle for black liberation.

3 The Communist International is extremely proud to see the exploited black workers resisting the attacks of the exploiters, since the enemy of the black race and the enemy of the white workers is one and the same – capitalism and imperialism. The international struggle of the black race is a struggle against this common enemy. An international black movement based on this struggle must be organised: in America, the centre of black culture and black protest; in Africa, with its reserve of human labour for the further development of capitalism; in Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Nicaragua and the other ‘independent” republics), where American capitalism rules; in Puerto Rico, Haiti, San Domingo and the other Caribbean islands, where the brutal treatment of our black brothers by the American occupation has provoked a world-wide protest from conscious blacks and revolutionary white workers; in South Africa and the Congo, where the growing industrialisation of the black population has led to all kinds of uprisings; and in East Africa, where the inroads of world capital have led to the local population starting an active anti-imperialist movement.

4 The Communist International must show the black people that they are not the only ones to suffer capitalist and imperialist oppression; that the workers and peasants of Europe, Asia and America are also victims of imperialism; that the black struggle against imperialism is not the struggle of any one single people, but of all the peoples of the world; that in India and China, in Persia and Turkey, in Egypt and Morocco, the oppressed non-white peoples of the colonies are heroically fighting their imperialist exploiters; that these peoples are rising against the same evils, i.e., against racial oppression, inequality and exploitation, and are fighting for the same ends – political, economic and social emancipation and equality.

The Communist International represents the revolutionary workers and peasants of the entire world in their struggle against the power of imperialism – it is not just an organisation of the enslaved white workers of Europe and America, but is as much an organisation of the oppressed non-white peoples of the world, and so feels duty-bound to encourage and support the international organisations of the black people in their struggle against the common enemy.

5 The black question has become an integral part of the world revolution. The Third International has already recognised what valuable help the coloured Asiatic peoples can give to the proletarian revolution, and it realises that in the semi-capitalist countries the co-operation of our oppressed black brothers is extremely important for the proletarian revolution and for the destruction of capitalist power. Therefore the Fourth Congress gives Communists the special responsibility of closely applying the “Theses on the Colonial Question” to the situation of the blacks.

6 i) The Fourth Congress considers it essential to support all forms of the black movement which aim either to undermine or weaken capitalism and imperialism or to prevent their further expansion.

ii) The Communist International will fight for the racial equality of blacks and whites, for equal wages and equal social and political rights.

iii) The Communist International will do all it can to force the trade unions to admit black workers wherever admittance is legal, and will insist on a special campaign to achieve this end. If this proves unsuccessful, it will organise blacks into their own unions and then make special use of the united front tactic to force the general unions to admit them.

iv) The Communist International will immediately take steps to convene an international black conference or congress in Moscow.

Malcolm X [Obituary]

[First printed in Spartacist #4, May-June 1965]

Of all the national Negro leaders in this country, the one who was known uniquely for his militancy, intransigence, and refusal to be the libberals’ frontman has been shot down. This new political assassination is another indicator of the rising current of irrationality and individual terrorism which the decay of our society begets. Liberal reaction is predictable, and predictably disgusting. They are, of course, opposed to assassination, and some may even contribute to the fund for the education of Malcolm’s children, but their mourning at the death of the head of world imperialism had a considerably greater ring of sincerity than their regret at the murder of a black militant who wouldn’t play their game.

Black Muslims?

The official story is that Black Muslims killed Malcolm. But we should not hasten to accept this to date unproved hypothesis. The New York Police, for example, had good cause to be afraid of Malcolm, and with the vast resources of blackmail and coercion which are at their disposal, they also had ample opportunity, and of course would have litle reason to fear exposure were they involved. At the same time, the Muslim theory cannot be discounted out of hand because the Muslims are not a political group, and in substituting religion for science, and color mysticism for rational analysis, they have a world view which could encompass the efficacy and morality of assassination.

No Program

The main point, however, is not who killed Malcolm, but why could he be killed? In the literal sense, of course, any man can be killed, but why was Malcolm particularly vulnerable? The answer to this question makes of Malcolm’s death tragedy of the sharpest kind, and in the literal Greek sense. Liberals and Elijah have tried to make Malcolm a victim of his own (non-existent) doctrines of violence. This is totally wrong and totally hypocritical. Malcolm was the most dynamic ntional leader to have appeared in America in the last decade. Compared with him the famous Kennedy personality was a flimsy cardboard creation of money, publicity, makeup, and the media. Malcolm had none of these, but a righteous cause and iron character forged by white America in the fire of discrimination, addiction, prison, and incredible calumny. He had a difficult to define but almost tangible attribute called charisma. When you heard Malcolm speak, even when you heard him say things that were wrong and confusing, you wanted to believe. Malcolm could move men deeply. He was the stuff of which mass leaders are made. Commencing his public life in the context of the apolitical, irrational religiosity and racial mysticism of the Muslim movement, his break toward politicalness and rationality was slow, painful, and terribly incomplete. It is useless to speculate on how far it would have gone had he lived. He had entered prison a burglar, an addict, and a victim. He emerged a Muslim and a free man forever. Elijah Muhammad and the Lost-Found Nation of Islam were thus inextricably bound up with his personal emnacipation. In any event, at the time of his death he had not yet developed a clear, explicit, and rational social program. Nor had he led his followers in the kind of transitional struggle necessary to the creation of a successful mass movement. Lacking such a program, he could not develop cadres based on program. What cadre he had was based on Malcolm X instead. Hated and feared by the power structure, and the focus of the paranoid feelings of his former colleagues, his charisma made him dangerous, and his lack of developed program and cadre made him vulnerable. His death by violence had a high order of probability, as he himself clearly felt.

Heroic and Tragic Figure

The murder of Malcolm, and the disastrous consequences flowing from that murder for Malcolm’s organization and black militancy in general, does not mean that the militant black movement can always be decapitated with a shotgun. True, there is an agonizing gap in black leadership today. One the one hand.there are the respectable servants of the liberal establishment; men like James Farmer whose contemptible effort to blame Malcolm’s murder on “Chinese Communists” will only hasten his eclipse as a leader, and on the oher hand the ranks of the militants have yet to produce a man with the leadership potential of Malcolm. But such leadership will eventually be forthcoming. This is a statistical as well as a social certainty. This leadership, building on the experience of others such as Malcolm, and emancipated from his religiosity, will build a movement in which the black masses and their allies can lead the third great American revolution. Then Malcolm X will be remembered by black and white alike as a heroic and tragic figure in a dark period of our common history.

Bay Area Spartacist Committee

2 March 1965

Militant Longshoreman

No. 17,  January 2, 1987

1987  COAST CONTRACT

NO CONCESSIONS — NO TAKEBACKS

Six months before the coast contract runs out the most common question that brothers in Local 10 are asking is’ “Do you think PMA is going to demand concessions?” Three years ago the question most often asked was *What are we going for in this contract?” It’s just possible that PMA will miscalculate the mood of longshoremen and insist on concessions – “take aways” in either conditions or money. We know that the waterfront employers want more “flexibility”, that they want to eliminate categories and assign men to any jobs. We also note that, PMA is demanding that the dispatch hall be moved to Oakland and all travel time be done away with.

What PMA may not figure on is that Longshoreman know that we gave the employers major concession many years ago, lost thousands of jobs as a result, and got very damn little in return. Bridges and Goldblat’s two M and M agreements 1961/1966 gave up manning and allowed massive mechanization. The 9.43 -skilled steadyman section drove a wedge in the union, undermined the hiring hall, and gave Bay Area PMA the highest coastwise production on container ships. Longshoremen are in no mood for concessions; if PMA doesn’t understand that they could walk into a strike situation. Just recently PMA came very close to precipatating coastwise work stoppages over their refusal to employ partially disabled longshoremen in three different ports and their demand that these men be deregistered.

WHAT IS PRESIDENT HERMAN’S STRATEGY?

International President Jimmy Herman seems to be pushing a strategy of trying to buy off PMA by offering a long-term contract in exchange for a status quo agreement with “modifications”. Look out for those “modifications”! There are two things wrong with long contracts. First of all, too many of us remember how the employers ran wild, tearing up job conditions during Harry Bridge’s two 5 year contracts 1961-1971. With no strike threat, at the end of a contract facing them PMA, backed up by a tame arbitrator and a timid international could go even further than they already have in undermining job conditions and weakening the union.

Second- many powerful unions tried to hold on to wages and conditions in the face of capitalism’s anti-labor offensive by signing long term contracts. What happened? Their employers arbitrarily violated the terms of the agreement, demanded contract reopeners, and cut wages and benefits mid-way during the contracts.

We have to get the union ready for a strike even to keep what we have contractually. Our weakest link is the International. Even before going into a strike we have to demand that the strike and negotiations be run by a broad rank and file strike committee based on locally elected strike committees. If negotiations and strike strategy are left in the control of the Coast Committee we’ll be in deep trouble.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ILA?

The disastrous erosion in their jurisdiction that overwhelmed the ILA in their contract this year made a deep impression on our ILWU brothers. After non-union stevedoring companies successfully wrested more than half the work away from the Gulf and South Atlantic ILA, those locals signed special contracts with massive take-aways in wages, benefits, and manning. Then when the ILA international called a union-wide strike following stalled negotiations for their master contract, the Gulf and South Atlantic Ports kept working! Result- New York and the North Atlantic ILA made major concessions in manning and wage guarantees.

NO PLACE TO HIDE

The growing international crisis of capitalism and the weakness and disunity of the trade union and working class political movements leave ILWU longshoremen with no real economic security. Even those of us approaching retirement know that our pensions and social security are no more secure than this rotting economic system from which our union wrested these gains in earlier decades. Our appeals for the ILWU to take the lead in organizing a workers party to expropriate basic industry and finance capital aren’t just utopian demands; we’re simply describing the only way out for the working class here and internationally.

One way our union can try to influence events is to reaffirm and send to the coast longshore caucus the resolution we sent to the last international convention; a resolution calling for a 48 – hour coast longshore protest strike if Reagan takes military action against Nicaragua.

CROWLEY DEMANDS 33% WAGE CUTS/ELIMINATE THE HIRING HALL

12 Crowley contracts with the IBU-ILWU (INLAND BOATMEN’S UNION) are up on Feb. first, next year. Crowley is demanding 33% wage concessions and an end to the union hiring hall. These contracts cover tug and barge work from Alaska to Los Angeles. Crowley is a PMA member and has contracts with the ILWU longshore division in Hawaii and the northwest. Full longshore support to the IBU-ILWU to defeat Crowleys takeaway demands would be a signal to PMA to back off on any concession  demands. But don’t forget; several years ago Jimmy Herman ordered Local 10 longshoremen to cross an IBU picket line against a Crowley scab barge at the army base I

MILITANT LONGSHOREHAN PROGRAM 

1. DEFEND OUR JOBS AND LIVELIHOOD – Six hour shift, no extensions, at eight hours pay. Manning scales on all ship operations, one man – one job. Weekly PGP. Full no – cap C.0.L.A. on wages. Joint maritime union action against non – union barge, shipping, and longshore operations. No chest riders or witnesses. Ho long term contracts.

2. DEFEND THE HIRING HALL – use regular gangs on container ships; no dispatch of “unit gangs”. Call all 9.43 men back to the hall. Stop work action to defend the hiring hall and older and disabled men.

3. DEFEND UNION CONDITIONS AND SAFETY THROUGH JOB ACTION Stop PMA chiseling on the contract. Eliminate “work as directed”, “no illegal work stoppage”, and arbitration sections from the contract. Mobilize to smash anti-labor injuntions. No employer drug or alcohol screening.

4. DEFEND OUR UNION – No Class B or C longshoremen. Register directly to Class A. Keep racist anti-labor government and courts out of the union and BALMA. Support unions resistance against court suits and government “investigations”. Union action to break down racial and sexual discrimination and employer favoritism on the waterfront. Organize for a coastwide strike to get what we need – No concessions – no give backs.

5. BUILD LABOR SOLIDARITY – against government/employer strikebreaking. No more defeated PATCO or HORMEL strikes. Honor all class struggle picket lines – remove phony, racist, anti-working class picket lines. Don’t, handle struck or diverted cargo. No raiding of other unions. Organize the disorganized, and the  unemployed. Defend IBU – ILWU (INLAND BOATMEN) against Crowley union busting.

6. STOP NAZI/KLAN TERROR through union organized labor/black latino defense actions. No dependence on capitalist police or courts to smash fascists..

7. WORKING CLASS ACTION TO STOP REAGAN’S WAR DRIVE – Labor strikes to oppose U.S. military actions against Cuba, Nicaragua, or Salvadoran leftist insurgents. Boycott military cargo to Central America. Build labor action to smash the apartheid injunction.

8. INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY – oppose protectionist trade restrictions – for a massive trade union program of aid to help non-U.S. workers build unions and fight super-exploitation by the multi-national corporations – Defend undocumented workers with union strike action.

9. BREAK WITH THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES – Start now to build a workers party based on the unions to fight for a workers government which will seize all major industry without payment to the capitalists and establish a planned economy to end exploitationo racism, poverty, and war

Militant Longshoreman

No #8  February 3, 1984

NO GIVE-AWAYS! — NO TAKE-BACKS!

MANNING SCALES!

8 HOURS PAY FOR A 6 HOUR SHIFT!

HOWARD KEYLOR 33 – B

CAUCUS & CONVENTION

PREPARE FOR A STRIKE IN 1984!

Local 10 will elect 10 Caucus delegates this Friday, February 10. These delegates (plus the Local President) will represent the Local at a Coast Contract Caucus, probably in March. That Caucus will put together contract demands and strategy for the 1984 negotiations with PMA. After negotiations the Caucus will recommend either acceptance or rejection of the proposed contract. Which levers you pull for this office is about the most important vote a member can cast in affecting his and the union’s future.

WILL PMA DEMAND TAKE-AWAYS?

It’s too early to predict whether PMA will follow the national pattern and demand direct give-backs in contractual guarantees on wages, seniority, job security etc. However, there are four areas in which the editor thinks. that PMA will press hard to undermine our union.

PMA will undoubtedly reintroduce their demand that a longshoreman’s PGP will be based in the future on his earnings for actual jobs worked in a previous base period (like unemployment insurance). This would put a real hardship on ports like San Francisco. Even if all dispatch categories were abolished and all longshoremen were availble 7 days a week, the lack of jobs (and earnings) would still result in reduced PGP payments in San Francisco to all except steady killed men. The most immediate result of such punitive contract lanuage would be PMA pressure to reduce categories (combine Dock and old Borads for example) and increase compulsory availability (signing n the hall every day – no stop line).

Partially disabled and older longshoremen would be the first to suffer since to maintain their maximum earnings (and PGP) these men would be compelled to accept steel and lashing jobs or suffer a drastic cut in heir own individual PGP.

A BUY-OUT?

Along with reduced PGP partially disabled men will probably be faced with pressure to accept a cash payment (Buy-out) to give up their books. Just as in U.S. capitalist society as a whole, where 25% of the workers including a high proportion of blacks) are being more and more openly treated as unwanted, excess human beings, PMA wants to get rid of older and disabled welfare recipients (men drawing PGP) in the longshore work force .

TRAVEL TIME/HIRING HALL IN DANGER

There are also signs that PMA wants to eliminate most travel time by demanding an East Buy dispatch hall. We can also expect PMA to bring up their demand for a fully computerized dispatch eliminating any possible choice or selection of job, virtually abolishing union control of dispatch.

FUTURE TAKE-AWAYS ALREADY IN THE CONTRACT!

Many brothers ask the honest question, “If we can keep our contract as It is, without any give-backs, won’t we be ok?”. That’s whistling in the dark brother. PMA already has contract language that allows continuous future give-aways in manning, jobs, conditions, and earnings. For over 20 years language surrendering manning (1961), equalized earnings (1966 – steady skilled men – 9.43), “PGP abuse”, “work as directed” and other sections have been added to the contract to give PMA all the weapons they need to continue taking away jobs and conditions. To add insult to injury Local 10 has been singled out to bear the full brunt of  the worst PMA stooges as arbitrators, Barsamian and Sutliff. That’s why we urge Local 10 delegates to go into the Caucus with contract demands to take-back for the union powers that we once had to protect our members. Eliminate steady skilled men, “PGP abuse”, work, now -arbitrate later” contract sections. Restore manning scales on all ship operations.

WANTED – A  FIGHT FOR JOBS

“Bay Area Tonnage UP – Jobs and Earnings of Longshoremen Down!”

That could be the headline on a yearly “state of the union” report. And it’s not what some demagogic politicians shouted in the past: “Los Angeles is taking our world”, “All the ships are going to Seattle!” Brother Harry Bridges gave away manning, the stevedoring companies mechanized, the world’s shippers went over to bigger and ever more efficient (less men) container ships. The hour is getting damned late for us. If we don’t get manning and a shorter work shift in 1984 the next contract could see us facing a lay-off.

PRESIDENT JIMMY HERMAN – RUNNING SCARED

Anyone who pays close attention to Brother Herman’s editorials and speeches can see that he’s running scared. Jimmy has done everything possible to avoid a conflict with the employers. Meanwhile he f/’es around making militant sounding speeches threatening to shut down the country. Probably. the most disgusting picture in the editor’s mind Is Jimmy Herman standing in front of the door of Greyhound on December 3 in San Francisco trying to disperse an angry crowd of pickets.

TO STRIKE OR NOT TO STRIKE

Brothers ask us “Why do you say in your election card ‘Prepare for a strike in 1984’ when you know we don’t have any leadership?” These brothers remember how Brother Bridges and the international officers sabotaged the 1971/1972 strike. What these brothers forget is that the 1971 Caucus in its last minutes turned over all powers to run the strike to the Negotiating Committee dominated by Bridges, Herman and the International officers! If you’re really serious about defending your jobs and your union you have to be willing to prepare for a strike. That also means taking control of the strike away from the mis-leaders in the International and the Local. We will have more to say later about elected strike committees and how to win a strike. The defensive victory we won last June at Richmond Levin Terminals Paar 5 shows what can be accomplished when the membership begins to organize.

NO CONTRACT EXTENSIONS – NO MASTER CONTRACT UNTIL ALL MISCELLANEOUS CONTRACTS SIGNED WITH PMA

We’ve gotten damned little in our local miscellaneous contracts with -IMA. Linemen, gearmen, coopers, sweepers, baggagemen haven’t made any -eal gains in years-why? Because the International hastens to sign the Master contract with PMA beforelocal agreements are reached leav- Ing us with no strike power to compel PPIA concessions. The only way to creak out of this no-win strategy is to start local negotiations early, flien PMA stalls tell them: “No contract extensions of local or master, last July 11No contract – no work! No Master contract signed until Local contracts agreement reached!” Only by linking Local and Coast  contracts together with the threat of a strike can we get PMA to negotiate seriously on the miscellaneous contracts.

STAN GOW – WHAT NOW!

Last month we made no written endorsement of Brother Stan Gow for Executive Board. After we had published issue No. 7 of this Newsletter Brother Gow distributed his campaign leaflet which completely omitted for the first time since 1974 any itemized program for the union. When Gow was asked whether his program was dropped in order to duck the question of whether he still opposes law-suits against the union Stan (and the organizer of the Militant Caucus, Brother Woolston) replied that Stan still opposes bringing the capitalist government, courts, and agencies into the union.

On that basis we advised members to vote for Brother Gow even though we remain increasingly critical of his actions. Howard Keylor will vote for Stan Gow for Caucus Delegate. We recommend that while brothers also vote for Stan that they urge him when elected to work with Brother Keylor at the Caucus in fighting for local 10 and the Longshore Division membership’s needs.

Militant Longshoreman

No #15  January 25, 1986

[This issue was reprinted in 1917 #2,  Summer 1986. First posted online at http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no2/no02bafs.html ]

BAFSAM’s Impotent Tactics

Reprinted below is the text of Militant Longshoreman No. 15, which was distributed to participants in a impotent BAFSAM-initiated ‘‘picket’’ of Pier 80 last January.

BAFSAM (Bay Area Free South Africa Movement) has had a leaflet out calling on enemies of apartheid to ‘‘Stop Nedlloyd Ship at Pier 80—Saturday, January 25 at 5 p.m.’’ People who respond to this call thinking that they are supporting a labor boycott of South African cargo may be surprised to find no ship with South African cargo docked at Pier 80. So what is BAFSAM doing? Is this just incompetence? Ever since the 11-day longshore boycott in 1984, BAFSAM has pulled a series of small, ineffective picket lines at Pier 80 in San Francisco, sometimes cynically picketing the entrance even when no Nedlloyd Line ship was docked there! Meanwhile BAFSAM has continued its lunchtime picket line in uptown Oakland at Pacific Maritime Association offices.

BAFSAM Strategy—A Total Failure

Last fall at U.C. Berkeley, BAFSAM spokespersons reported that their ‘‘Peace Navy’’ and picket lines had stopped South African cargo in the Bay Area. The truth is that in the Bay Area not one ship carrying South African cargo has been delayed in either docking, discharging or loading. Free South Africa Movement token picket lines in other West Coast ports resulted in at most a single 10-hour delay of one ship in Vancouver, WA. In every case arbitrators ordered longshoremen to work the cargo; orders promptly obeyed.

BAFSAM has refused to build a picket line big enough and militant enough to shut down Pier 80 when a Nedlloyd ship is in port; meanwhile they have ignored the ten US Lines and three Lykes Lines vessels carrying South African cargo calling at least weekly in the Bay Area. BAFSAM has been at Pier 80 in order to whore off the credit gained by S.F. longshoremen’s history making 11-day political strike. These friends of Archie Brown’s are the same people who later went on to organize BAFSAM. They are the same misleaders of the working class who helped the S.F. police to break up a picket line at Pier 80 on Dec. 4, 1984—the picket line which had temporarily halted work on the Nedlloyd Kimberley the day after the Federal Court injunction against Local 10 longshoremen.

If BAFSAM had just held demonstrations off to the side of the pier entrance while issuing their appeals to the ‘‘individual consciousness of longshoremen,’’ they would have been guilty of liberal ineffectiveness and political impotence. By putting up token picket lines they have prostituted this traditional trade-union weapon. Their actions are counter-productive; the only result is to train longshoremen to go through and work South African cargo behind picket lines. These cynical and irresponsible picket lines are only making it harder to organize a new longshore boycott. Clearly, the last thing BAFSAM wants is well organized and effective labor solidarity actions with the embattled black masses in South Africa.

BAFSAM’s Real Strategy—Beg the Capitalists…

BAFSAM’s presence at Pier 80 has nothing to do with working-class or trade-union action against apartheid. This was made very clear at a West Coast Labor Conference against apartheid called by BAFSAM in August last year. The underground South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU—supported by the ANC [African National Congress]) had just issued an appeal to trade unions, especially transport workers, in North America and Europe urging them to refuse to handle cargo, mail, communications to or from South Africa. One of the conference workshops introduced a motion to send delegates to the various labor union bodies in the Bay Area urging a union-organized two-week boycott of South African cargo during the forthcoming national period of protest against apartheid. Franklin Alexander and the other BAFSAM spokesmen demagogically attacked this motion for concrete action and were successful in getting it defeated.

Instead of labor action the conference passed a carload of liberal motions for letters to Congress, appeals to local government bodies, petitions to Port Commissions, and research into constitutional law. Their strategy is dead set against real actions of labor solidarity, and is centered on making liberal moral appeals to the consciousness of the capitalists and their political flunkies. During the Vietnam war these same people refused to even try to organize labor strikes against the war. They were conspicuous in the ineffectual pacifist peace crawls. It was the courageous struggle of the Vietnam workers and peasants against U.S. imperialism that led the U.S. to finally pull out of Vietnam. It’s not liberal appeals to the non-existent ‘‘moral consciousness’’ of capitalists that is causing banks and corporations to pull out of South Africa; it is the revolt of the black masses which is making their investments in apartheid too risky to continue.

* Smash the apartheid injunction through a mass labor boycott of South African cargo!

Militant Longshoreman

No. 19,   March 13, 1987

Herman, Liddle, Estrada
Endanger Inland Boatmen’s Strike
Against Crowley!

Going into the fourth week of their strike against Crowley’s union busting the IBU-ILWU has stopped most of Crowley’s struck West Coast operations. With the help of longshoremen and clerks all Crowley tug docking and undocking and bunkering of ships worked by ILWU members has been stopped cold. A major victory was won when two struck Crowley barges brought from Hawaii by scabs sat idle in Oakland when longshoremen and clerks refused to work behind mass IBU pickets. On March 4 Coast arbitrator Sam Kagel upheld the union’s contention that Crowley had extended the struck site to his barges even when they were docked at Howard Terminal and Berth 10, and that the contract picket line language precluded PMA from forcing us to work the struck barges.

The main danger that threatens the Boatmen’s strike is the apparent fear of Jimmy Herman, Don Liddle, and the IBU leadership that a tough, effective militant strike will antagonize Crowley and make it impossible to “cut a deal” with the company. The IBU leaders tried to stop or delay a coastwise strike, kept vital information from the rank-and-file, and threw militants off the strike committee in Puget Sound and the Bay Area. IBU Regional Director, Rich Estrada, suppressed information that the two Hawaii Marine Lines barges had-been loaded in Hawaii when the longshoremen capitulated to a court injunction. We still don’t know whether Herman and Liddle ordered IBU pickets of the barges in Hawaii after the injunction came down; but you can be damn sure that Herman ordered the longshoremen to load those scab barges. IBU rank-and-filers have been unable to find out to what extent the struck Crowley barge trade to Alaska is still operating. Estrada dragged his feet, held back the documents and paperwork on the barges and handicapped the Local 34 and Local 10 officers in preparing for the arbitrations when PMA ordered clerks and longshoremen to work behind IBU picket lines.

Estrada Purges Strike Committee

Finally, on his own “authority”, Estrada removed George Gutekunst and Jack Heyman from the elected strike committee in spite of the widely recognized fact that they had organized an unusually effective strike in the Bay Area and had built excellent working relations with the clerk and longshore locals. The IBU Regional Executive Board ordered new elections and Gutekunst and Heyman were re-elected with the highest votes from their units.

One sinister and alarming result of the recent IBU elections is the placing of Estrada’s ally Doug Crute on the strike committee. Doug Crute  is the former regional Director of the IBU who was censured by his own membership for grossly racist remarks at a membership meeting. Is this an attempt to disrupt longshore local 10’s support for the boatmen’s strike?

Liddle’s Pipe Dream —Cut A Deal With Crowley

Herman, Liddle, and the IBU leadership are trying to strangle and defuse the membership’s determination to win this strike, and to save their jobs and their union. Crowley openly advertised for and hired scabs days before the strike and has made no bones about his intention to gut the union. The IBU leaders had by their own admission 15% concessions on the table when the strike broke out and have given every indication that they are willing to go even further in a desperate attempt to cut a deal. They, are afraid that militant strike tactics will escalate the conflict to where Crowley will not be open to even major give-aways.

Nice Guys Don’t Win!

What the IBU membership needs to understand is what we in longshore learned decades ago. The only way to protect the membership is to be willing to go as far as necessary to economically hurt the employer when he’s trying to smash you. It’s all a question of power – not wheeling and dealing. Crowley has departed from the fourty years of class collaboration since Taft Hartley that has dominated maritime labor relations. Crowley defeated the ILA in three ports on the Gulf and South Atlantic wiping out longspore union jurisdiction on his barge operations. When he bought Delta Lines he fired the entire Master, Mates and Pilots crews, ordering them hauled off ships by Federal Marshalls. Crowley will only sign acceptable contracts with the IBU if he’s hurt economically!

George Gutekunst and Jack Heyman issued a joint election statement which has most of the ingredients for what they call a “Program for Victory”. A) Winning support and cooperation from longshoremen and clerks. B) Mass Picketing to stop scab operations. CJ Defiance of court injunctions, that would limit mass picketing or allow scab operations.

Tell the Truth:
Herman and Liddle Will Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of Victory!

Unfortunately, the two brothers did not clearly warn their membership in their election statement that Herman, Liddle, Estrada and their cronies will sabotage such a winning strategy short of victory, because they don’t believe it’s possible to win in open battle. Gutekunst and Heyman failed to advise the IBU membership that they, the rank-and-file, will have to control the strike, overrule or replace their leadership when they try to sow confusion and demoralization in the ranks. Even if the ranks didn’t like to hear this necessary criticism of their leadership they must be told the truth if the strike is to be won.

After he purged the strike committee and took over its functions Estrada failed to inform Local 10 officers that three more H.M.L. barges had been loaded in Hawaii and were headed for the West Coast, and that Crowley had gone to the NLRB to get a Federal Court order overruling the ILWU-PMA contract grievance procedure and ordering longshoremen and clerks to work the scab barges! Crowley scab barges will shortly be tied up in three areas on the West Coast. If the IBU and the long-shore division capitulate to court injunctions it will be a major blow to an otherwise effective strike. We can expect no help from Herman and the Coast Committee. In both the Richmond Levin action and the Longshore South African cargo boycott the International sided with the PMA in finding Local 10 in violation of the contract leaving us open to legal actions.

Mass Picket Lines to Smash Court Ordered Scabbing!

If injunctions come down longshoremen and clerks will have to pull everyone out and join the IBU picket lines coastwise. If Crowley breaks the IBU he’s sure to ignore our jurisdiction and start working barges (and even ships) at so-called industrial docks utilizing non-ILWU workers at 1/4 to 1/3 our wages and benefits!

Theses on Ireland

[reprinted from Spartacist no 24, Autumn 1977. Originally posted online athttp://www.workersrepublic.org/Pages/Ireland/Trotskyism/thesesonireland2.html ]

The theses on Ireland reprinted here were adopted by the International Executive Committee of the international Spartacist tendency on 5 August 1977.

1. The current situation and social configuration in Ireland is the result of centuries of brutal British imperialist domination. It contains features characteristically associated with the former multi-national states of Eastern Europe, as well as with both the colonial settler states which established their own political economy by excluding or destroying native populations, and colonies in which the native population is exploited and oppressed by a relatively thin colonial hierarchy.

In the absence of any significant section of the Irish working class historically freed from national/communal insecurity, the result is a seemingly intractable situation in which prospects for the development of a genuine class-struggle axis and for an end to the interminable cycle of imperialist exploitation/repression and inter-communal violence appear remote. The strong possibility remains that a just, democratic, socialist solution to the situation in Ireland will only come under the impact of proletarian revolution elsewhere and concretely may be carried on the bayonets of a Red Army against opposition of a significant section of either or both of the island’s communities.

Nevertheless, no matter to what extent a bleak immediate prognosis is justified, the conflict in Ireland presents a crucial test of the capacity of a revolutionary internationalist tendency to provide a clear analysis and programme and to confront the national question in the imperialist epoch. For revolutionists, who refuse to deal in the simplicities (ultimately genocidal) of the nationalists, the situation in Ireland can appear to be exceedingly complex and intractable. The ‘Irish question’ provides a strong confirmation of the unique revolutionary potency and relevance of the international Spartacist tendency’s understanding of Leninism, particularly in relation to geographically inter-penetrated peoples.

2. An essential element of our programme is the demand for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of the British army. British imperialism has brought centuries of exploitation, oppression and bloodshed to the island. No good can come of the British presence; the existing tie between Northern Ireland and the British state can only be oppressive to the Irish Catholic population, an obstacle to a proletarian class mobilisation and solution. We place no preconditions on this demand for the immediate withdrawal of all British military forces or lessen its categorical quality by suggesting ‘steps’ toward its fulfilment (such as simply demanding that the army should withdraw to its barracks or from working-class districts).

At the same time we do not regard the demand as synonymous with or as a concrete application of either the call for Irish self-determination (that is, a unitary state of the whole island) or for an independent Ulster – two solutions which within the framework of capitalism would be anti-democratic, in the first case toward the Protestants and in the second toward the Irish Catholics. Nor is the demand for the withdrawal of British troops sufficient in, itself, as though it has some automatic, inherent revol-utionary content or outcome. As the eminent British bourgeois historian AJP Taylor observed in an interview:

‘ I don’t know what the term bloodbath means. If it means people will be killed, they are being killed all the time. The alternative is not between an entirely peaceful Northern Ireland in which nobody’s being killed and a Northern Ireland in which a lot of people will be killed. If the British withdraw some sort of settlement would be arrived at. You can’t tell what it is because the forces in play can’t be judged until they can operate….

‘ … the presence of the British Army in Ireland prolongs the period of conflict and uncertainty…

‘ This [possibility of a united Ireland] is a matter of relative strength. Owing to the history of the last thirty years or perhaps longer, owing to history since 1885, when Randolph Churchill – Winston’s father – first raised the cry of ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right’ – in the past ninety years the Protestants of Northern Ireland have been taught to think of themselves as a separate body, almost separate nationality within Ireland, and have established now a longterm domination of Northern Ireland, partly, because of their superior economic strength, partly because of the backing they have received from the British Government, and partly because they are, or up to now have been, the more determined. For them, Protestant domination is the answer to the situation in Northern Ireland.’
Troops Out, No. 2

As historically demonstrated by examples such as India, Libya, Cyprus and Palestine, the withdrawal of British imperialism, while a necessary objective of the communist vanguard, in itself does not automatically ensure an advance in a revolutionary direction. Thus, the demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British army from Northern Ireland must be linked to and constitute a part of a whole revolutionary programme.

3. As Leninists we are opposed to all forms of national oppression and privilege and stand for the equality of nations. Writing in 1913 Lenin succinctly set forth as follows the fundamental principles underlying the revolutionary social-democratic position on the national question:

‘As democrats, we are irreconcilably hostile to any, however slight, oppression of any nationality and to any privileges for any nationality. As democrats, we demand the right of nations to self-determination in the political sense of that term … i.e., the right to secede. We demand unconditional protection of the rights of every national minority. We demand broad, self-government and autonomy for regions, which must be demarcated, among other terms of reference, in respect of nationality too.’
‘Draft Programme of the 4th Congress of Social Democrats of the Latvian Area,’

Collected Works, Vol. 19

Thus, the right to self-determination means simply the right to establish a separate state, the right to secede. We reject the notion that it means ‘freedom from all outside interference and control’ or entails economic indepen-dence. In the general sense the right to self-determination is unconditional, independent of the state that emerges or its leadership.

However, for Leninists this right is not an absolute demand, a categorical imperative, to be implemented at all times and everywhere there is a nation. It is only one of a range of bourgeois-democratic demands; it is a part, sub-ordinate to the whole, of the overall programmatic system. When the particular demand for national self-determination contradicts more crucial demands or the general needs of the class struggle, we oppose its exercise. As Lenin notes:

‘The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now, general socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so, it must be rejected.’ [emphasis in original]
‘The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up,’ Collected Works, Vol. 22

In particular, in the case of interpenetrated peoples sharing a common territory, we oppose the exercise of self-determination by one nation where this flatly conflicts with the same right for another nation. In this situation the same general considerations apply, namely our opposition to all forms of national oppression and privilege, but in such circumstances the exercise of self-determination by one or the other people in the form of the establishment of their own bourgeois state can only be brought about by the denial of that right to the other. Under capitalism this would simply be a formula for reversing the terms of oppression, for forcible population transfers and expulsions and ultimately genocide. It is a ‘solution’ repeatedly demonstrated in history, for example in the cases of India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine and Cyprus.

In general our support for the right to self-determination is negative: intransigent opposition to every manifesta-tion of national oppression as a means toward the unity of the working class, not as the fulfilment of the ‘manifest destiny’ or ‘heritage’ of a nation, nor as support for ’progressive’ nations or nationalism. We support the right of self-determination and national liberation struggles in order to remove the national question from the historic agenda, not to create another such question. Within the framework of capitalism there can be no purely democratic solution (for example through universal suffrage) to the national question in cases of interpenetrated peoples.

The same general considerations apply not only to ‘fully formed’ nations, but also to nationalities and peoples which may still be something less than fully consolidated nations, for example the Eritreans in their struggle against Amharic domination or the Biafrans at the time of the Nigerian civil war. Indeed, not infrequently the historical formation of nations is tested and completed in the process of struggles for self-determination. Our opposition to the exercise of self-determination by an interpenetrated people would also apply where one or more of the groupings, though not a historically compacted nation, has sufficient relative size and cultural level that the exercise of self-determination could only mean a new form or reversal of the terms of oppression.

4. Concretely, in Ireland the question of Irish national self-determination was not fully resolved by the establish-ment of the Republic of Éire. But to demand ‘Irish self-determination’ today represents a denial of the Leninist position on the national question. It is incumbent on revolutionists to face up to exactly what the call for ‘self-determination of the Irish people as a whole’ means.

Obviously the call is not one for the simultaneous self-determination of both communities, an impossibility for interpenetrated peoples under capitalism. In another sense the demand is about as meaningful as calling for ‘self-determination for the Lebanese people as a whole’ in the middle of last year’s communal bloodletting. In the case of Ireland such a demand utterly fails to come to terms with the question of the Protestant community of Ulster, comprising 60 percent of the statelet’s and 25 percent of the whole island’s population. Such a demand is a call for the formation of a unitary state of the whole island, including the forcible unification of the whole island by the Irish bourgeois state irrespective of the wishes of the Protestant community. It is a call for the Irish Catholics to self-determine at the expense of the Protestants. It is a call for the simple reversal of the terms of oppression, an implicit call for inter-communal slaughter, forced population transfers and ultimately genocide as the way forward to the Irish revolution.

5. The present six-county enclave in Northern Ireland is a ‘sectarian, Orange statelet,’ the product of an imperial-ist partition. Prior to the partition revolutionaries would have opposed partition, striving to cement revolutionary unity in the struggle for independence from British imperialism. However, with the partition, the accompanying communal violence and demographic shifts, and the establishment of a bourgeois republic in the south it was necessary to oppose the forcible reunification of the six counties with the rest of Ireland. At the same time the present statelet guarantees the political and economic privileges of the Protestants. We oppose the Orange state and the demand for an independent Ulster as forms of determination for the Protestants which necessarily maintain the oppression of the Irish Catholic population of Ulster, an extension of the Irish Catholic nation. Since they are the local bodies of the British repressive state apparatus and the training ground for the present Protestant paramilitary groups and a future reactionary Protestant army, we demand: Smash the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).

6. There is a series of urgent democratic demands that apply to the situation of the oppressed Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland. We demand full democratic rights for the Catholic minority and an end to discrimination in housing and hiring. But such demands must be linked to class demands which transcend the bounds of bourgeois democracy. Without the demand for a sliding scale of wages and hours, for example, the call to end discrimination will simply imply leveling in an already economically depressed situation. The relevant partial, negative, democratic and economic demands must be integrated into the revolutionary transitional programme which transcends the capitalist framework of economism and democratic reformism.

7. Historically the Protestants of Ulster were an extension of the Scottish and English nations. The 1798 United Irishmen uprising was led by the Protestant middle class and reflected the impact of the French and American bourgeois revolutions on the nascent capitalist class (overwhelmingly Protestant) in Ireland. This insurrection against British imperialism, which was defeated in part by development of the reactionary sectarian Orange Order and the mobilisation of the peasantry by Catholic priests, was the opportunity for the establishment of a modern nation of the whole island. Since that time, though the most modern capitalist sectors remained Protestant for a long period, the Protestants have acted for the most part as loyal and fervent defenders of the union with British imperialism. The bigotry and discrimination among the Protestants toward the Irish Catholic nation necessarily exceeds the worst excesses of Irish Green nationalism, and most of the sectarian murders in the current period have been carried out by Protestant paramilitary groups.

Though not yet a nation, the Protestants are certainly not a part of the Irish nation and are distinct from the Scottish and English nations. Presently their separate existence is defined in large part as against the Irish Catholic nation and at the ideological level is expressed in religious terms. With their own social and cultural fabric (epitomised in the Orange Order) and history of opposition to the Irish nationalist cause, they have therefore acted as the ‘loyalist’ allies of British imperialism. At the same time, in this century the allegiance has been more a means than an end, demonstrated, for example, by the willingness of Sir Edward Carson to seek German aid if British imperialism would not fulfil the Ulster Protestants’ demands and by the 1974 Ulster Workers Strike.

In all likelihood, a definite resolution of the exact character of the Ulster Protestant community will be reached with the withdrawal of the British army and will depend on the circumstances surrounding this. The particular conditions will pose point-blank their future and the ‘solution’ to the Irish question. The solution posed by AJP Taylor is but one possibility.

‘The question is whether the Irish nationalist majority is strong enough to expel the Protestants. If they are, that is the best way out’
quoted in the Guardian [London], 13 April 1976

At the same time the social organisation, weaponry, military expertise and alliances of the Protestants, make a ‘Zionist’ solution entirely conceivable. On the other hand, if the withdrawal of the British army was in the context of massive class mobilisations, opportunities would undoubt-edly arise for a class determination of the question.

8. Attempts to ignore or deny the separate identity and interests of the Ulster Protestants through the familiar liberal plea that British or other socialists cannot ‘tell the Irish how to wage their struggle’ or the argument that only oppressed nations have a right to self-determination can be rejected easily on general theoretical grounds. The Protestants are neither a colonial administration (as were the British in India) nor a closed colour caste (as are the whites in South Africa). Arguments that the Protestants have no legitimate claim because they were originally settlers and the present statelet is an artificial imperialist creation are based ultimately on notions of nationalist irredentism and ‘historical justice.’ Although sometimes expressed as the demand that the Protestants go ‘home,’ such arguments are in the last analysis genocidal. Also inadequate is the explanation of the Protestants as simply a backward sector of the Irish nation, whose loyalism/Orangeism is purely an imperialist ideology given a certain nationalist tinge in order to attract a mass base.

9. Protestant communalism does have a material basis in the marginal privileges enjoyed by the Protestant workers. The most explicit attempt to confront and discount the Protestant community’s separate identity in ‘Marxist’ terms is the description of the Protestant work-ing class as a ‘labor aristocracy.’ This explanation is similar to the New Left theories about the American white working class and involves an attempt to broaden the term so as to destroy its original meaning, while failing to recognise that the Protestant community extends through all classes and strata of society. Even to claim that the entire Protestant working class of Northern Ireland is a labour aristocracy is a gross distortion of the term. The Northern Ireland working class as a whole has some of the worst wages, unemployment and housing in the British Isles. Moreover, wage differentials between Protestant and Catholic workers are not so marked that the two communities have significantly different living standards.

10. From the point of view of the general interests of British imperialism the border between Ulster and the Republic is now anachronistic:

‘United Kingdom soldiers and officials and money are heavily deployed in Northern Ireland because Westminster has clear obligations there. English Governments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries planted the garrison-colonists whose descendents’ presence has been the principal source of Ireland’s twentieth century distress; and London is the seat of such authority as the Province knows To withdraw that authority now would intensify the problem of public order without in the least advancing a settlement of the central political question. The search for an acceptable local administration would simply continue in worsened circumstances. Britain’s strategic interest in Northern Ireland is dead, and its economic interest is all on the side of withdrawal; but moral as well as practical considerations demand that British resources should remain engaged until both the political and the public order problems are at least within sight of resolution.’

Observer [London], 1 February 1976

While historically British imperialism has used the sectarian divisions, played the ‘Ulster card’ to its own advantage, it is not now committed to the preservation of the Orange statelet and would prefer a settlement which would remove its direct political responsibility on the island. With the decline of Ulster industry and the growth of investment opportunities in the south, the border is an obstacle to its overall intentions. But at the same time as it adopts various schemes to this end British imperialism is constrained to maintain capitalist law and order and prevent a complete breakdown in the social order. The increase in independence talk by Ulster Protestants, the Ulster Workers Strike of 1974 and the significant number of Protestants imprisoned for political offences do not reflect mere ‘tactical’ differences between the imperialists and their subordinates, but rather a divergence of interests between genuinely distinct forces.

11. We reject the argument that Protestant workers are so reactionary that only force will convince them and that theprecondition for winning them is the destruction of the Orange statelet. The understanding that the current partition is inherently oppressive is perverted into a conception of a ‘two-stage’ revolution in which the socialist tasks can only follow the completion of Irish national unity on the whole island. Sometimes linked to this is the claim that it is ‘naïve’ to expect the Protestant and Catholic workers to unite on ‘economic’ issues, since it is these that divide them. By analogy, no working class could ever transcend its sectional interests. Economism is the political expression of the failure of the working class in the absence of a revolutionary leadership to reject bourgeois ideology and place its revolutionary class interests above particular, sectional or apparent needs or desires. The above argument is based on the central premise of economism – that the working class cannot transcend its immediate sectional interests and identify with all oppressed and the future of humanity. Such ‘anti-economism’ is in fact a denial of the pertinence of the Transitional Programme in the service of the nationalism of the oppressed.

12. The Protestants feel legitimately threatened by the proposal for a united (bourgeois) Ireland, that is, their forcible absorption into an enlarged version of the reactionary clericalist state of Éire. The communalism/nationalism of the Protestants has a defensive character and is not the chauvinism of a great power. A united bourgeois Ireland would not provide a democratic solution for their claims and we must therefore reject such a solution. Such a state would necessarily be sectarian, and the Protestants will not voluntarily enter such a union.

The difficulties of such a solution are indicated in the earlier experience of the Bolsheviks. At the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 the Ukrainian delegate Merejin observed in an amendment to the ‘Theses on the National and Colonial Questions’:

‘The attempt made to settle the relationship between the nations of the majority and the minority nationalities in territories of mixed population (Ukraine, Poland, White Russia), has shown that the transfer of the power of govern-ment from the hands of the big capitalists to the groups of petty bourgeoisie constituting the democratic republics not only does not diminish but, on the contrary, aggravates the friction among the nationalities. The democratic republics oppose themselves to the proletariat and attempt to convert the class war into a national one. They become rapidly impregnated with nationalistic exclusiveness, and easily adapt themselves to the practices of the previous dominating nations, which fermented discord among the nationalities, and organised pogroms, with the assistance of the government apparatus, to combat the dictatorship of the proletariat.…’

The present Irish bourgeois republic is a clerical reactionary state in which the Roman Catholic Church enjoys considerable real and latent powers. An essential aspect of this is not the current level of religious persecution or discrimination (though the current repressive measures directed mostly against the IRA are an indication of the Irish bourgeoisie’s intentions), but the relationship of Roman Catholicism to Irish nationalism, especially as it helps to define the divisions between the two communities.

Leninism and nationalism are fundamentally counterposed political viewpoints. Thus, while revolutionists struggle against all forms of national oppression, they are also opposed to all forms of nationalist ideology. It is a revision of Leninism to claim that the ‘nationalism of the oppressed’ is progressive and can be supported by communist internationalists. In one of his major works on the national question Lenin stressed:

‘Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the “most just,” “purest,” most refined and civilised brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism….’

‘Critical Remarks on the National Question,’ Collected Works, Vol. 20

To attempt to dismiss the above-mentioned features of Irish nationalism and the Irish Republic, to suggest that somehow these matters are not important, is to imply that Irish nationalism and capitalism are in some way ‘progressive’ and (unlike all other nationalists and capitalists) will not promote racial, sexual and communal divisions in the working class, in particular will not discriminate and persecute non-members of their national grouping.

13. Ireland, like other situations of interpenetrated peoples as in the Middle East and Cyprus, is a striking confirmation of the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution. The inevitable conclusion is that while revolutionists must oppose all aspects of national oppression, they must also recognise that the conflicting claims of interpenetrated peoples can only be equitably resolved in the framework of a workers state. We struggle for an Irish workers republic as part of a socialist federation of the British Isles. while the establishment of a united workers state of the whole island may be preferable, the above demand is algebraic, leaving open the question of where the Protestants fall. This recognises that the nature of the Protestant community has not yet been determined in history. As such, it is counterposed to calls for a ‘united workers republic’ or for a ‘united socialist Ireland’ (where this demand is not simply an expression for left/nationalist or Stalinist two-stage theories). Placing the demand in the context of a socialist federation has the additional advantage of highlighting the essential relationship of the proletarian revolution in the whole area and the virtual impossibility of the resolution of the Irish question on a working-class basis outside this framework. This, and the strong representation of Irish workers in the working class in Britain, points to the demand for a British Isles-wide trade-union federation as a method of promot-ing joint struggle and cutting across the divisions in the working class in Ireland.

14. Particular emphasis must be placed on the demand for programmatically based anti-sectarian workers militias to combat Orange and Green terror and imperialist rampage. The British bourgeois press and the local imperialists’ bloodstained henchmen in the British Labour Party responded hysterically to a composite motion at the 1976 BLP Conference demanding the withdrawal of British troops and the formation of a trade-union based militia, despite the fact that the motion was the inadvertent result of right-wing culling of motions expressing ersatz Irish nationalist positions and a mealy-mouthed resolution from the Militant grouping. Our demand is not the same as that of the deeply opportunist and BLP-entrist Militant group, which links its call for trade-union militias to the call for troop withdrawal in a way that makes the existence of trade-union militias a precondition for troop withdrawal and which sees the militias as growing organically out of economist struggles. In Ulster the problem is not that the workers are not armed. Such militias will need a broad and strong programmatic basis if they are not to be derailed or co-opted. They cannot develop just out of trade unionism but fundamentally require the existence of a strong and authoritative revolutionary cadre. Each militia unit would need at least one member of each community and the presence and strong influence of trained revol-utionary cadre. Consequently, the demand for an anti–sectarian workers militia is closely linked to the growth of a Leninist party based on a developed revolutionary programme. Without being based on the demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British army and without our analysis of terrorism, for example, such workers militias would simply be the armed adjunct of the women’s peace movement.

15. In military conflicts between Irish nationalist organisations and the British army/state authorities we defend the actions of the former since this is still a struggle of an oppressed nationality against imperialism, even though their struggle may be associated with a programme which, if accomplished, would violate the democratic rights of the Protestants. This stance implies nothing about the programme of these groups, which can range from those similar to the Zionist Stern Gang and Grivas’ EOKA to more radical ‘socialist’ nationalists.

Outside this military struggle with British imperialism and its direct agents, in the conflict between the Irish Catholic and Protestant communities and their respective organisations, the national/communal aspect transcends any formal left/right differences. Such violence is frequently directed against symbols of non-sectarianism (for example, pubs where both Catholic and Protestant workers socialise) and is an obstacle to any form of integrated class struggle. Terrorist acts directed against the Protestant community by organisations of the oppressed Irish Catholic community are in no way a blow against imperialism, not justifiable as the ‘violence of the oppressed’ and are no more ‘progressive’ or defensible than similar acts by Protestant paramilitary groups. Thus, while attacks on British army posts or the bombing of Aldershot military barracks are politically defensible acts, the pub bombings (both in Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods), the London underground bombings, the South Armagh shootings and other such acts of indiscriminate terrorism are completely indefensible, in no way representing a blow against imperialism. Such acts, based as they are on nationalist and genocidal premises, can only deepen com-munal divisions and erect barriers to working-class unity.

In such circumstances we recognise the right of both communities to self-defence. Simply because an org-anisation claims to be fighting on behalf of the oppressed and against imperialism does not make all its acts defens-ible. If this were so, then revolutionists would be com-pelled to defend the actions of both the EOKA in Cyprus and the Zionist Stern Gang in Palestine (organisations to whom the Provisional IRA are akin), not only when they attacked British imperialism but respectively in their attacks on the Turkish community and the Palestinians (at Deir Yassin, for example). Only with this understanding of terrorism can the workers militias in Northern Ireland be armed against capitulating to a blanket approval of the terrorism of the oppressed or becoming a mask for the machinations of imperialism.

16. In the history of the Irish labour movement there have been examples of significant workers’ solidarity which have temporarily cut across the sectarian divisions. Invariably, as in the case of the 1919 Belfast engineers’ strike and the mass unemployment marches in the 1930s, they have been countered with massive sectarian mobilisations intended to wipe out the fragile proletarian unity. In the absence of a revolutionary party, there can arise examples of transitory unity, albeit on pacifist or reformist grounds. A sequel to the South Armagh shootings was joint marches of Protestant and Catholic workers; but they marched to demand the strengthening of the RUC, which must be smashed.

Even such examples indicate the potentiality for workers unity. The instances of class solidarity are not proof of a deep-seated strain of class unity or that the situation is not poisoned by sectarian hatreds, but indicate that the opportunity can arise for a revolutionary organisation, though perhaps hitherto isolated, weak and small to intervene, altering the course of the conflict toward a class determination and proletarian revolution.

For the Immediate and Unconditional Withdrawal of the British Army!
Smash the RUC and the UDR!
Down with the Prevention of Terrorism Act and all Other Special Powers Acts in Britain and Ireland!
Full Democratic Rights for the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland!
No Discrimination in Hiring and Housing! For a Sliding Scale of Wages and Hours!
For a Programatically Based Anti-Sectarian Workers Militia To Combat Orange and Green Terror and Imperialist Rampage!
For a British Isles-Wide Trade-Union Federation!
Forward to the Irish Section of the Reborn Fourth International!

Militant Longshoreman

No #14  January 3, 1986

Re-Elect Keylor to Executive Board

A few days ago a brother approached the editor and asked, “Are you still going to run for office on that pie in the sky program? Stan [Gow] doesn’t print up a program any more. You know the union is going down hill fast and these guys won’t fight PMA – and sure not the government.” This leaflet will try to respond to these questions.

First a few obvious examples why this brother is so pessimistic. The 1984 contract settlement allowed PMA to code hundreds of men out of PGP. The local was unable to stop many of these brothers from losing health and welfare benefits.

The increasingly desperate job squeeze for older men led to a dangerous confrontation between Locals 34 and 10 over the extra clerk jobs. At one point the Local 10 Executive Board seriously debated taking our sister local to court — a clear invitation to the capitalist courts to “administer” our contract. One of the few positive events this past year is that this issue was finally resolved, leaving our two locals free to fight PMA instead of each other.

The decline in traditional winch and lift skilled jobs due to containerization and the monopoly of better paid skilled jobs by 9.43 men means that a longshoreman in San Francisco has to spend 20 years working on the hold board. During the last couple of years we’ve seen continued attempts to wipe out seniority in promotions and skilled dispatch categories. Fortunately the membership recognized that seniority is the only remaining protection we have for older and partially disabled longshoremen, and voted these motions down.

DRUG & ALCOHOL SCREENING
COAST COMMITTEE ACTS AS PMA COPS

Those members who were at the November meeting got a real shock when it was reported that the class collaboration policies of the International has reached a new low. The union side of the Coast Committee has agreed with PMA to a “screening program” for alcohol and drug use. Applicants for registration and longshoremen being promoted will be subject to a screening or check for drug and alcohol use — supposedly to make the waterfront a safer place to work. This cynical and hypocritical demand from PMA should have been summarily rejected by the union side with the counter demand that the employers stop their speed-up, unsafe work practices, and short manning that create unsafe working conditions on the waterfront. For instance: In 1984 PMA adamantly refused to even consider updating the safety code to provide for safety conditions working aboard container ships that have been in effect in Asian and European ports for years. This is just another move by the stevedoring companies to try to make the individual longshoreman legally responsible for the high accident rate in the industry.

Think about it: How will this “screening” for drug and alcohol addiction take place? This program makes all arrest and legal actions and all medical records outside the job evidence that can be used against a longshoreman. There are two outstanding dangers here. “Evidence” accumulated in this way could be used by employers to get out of paying claims to longshoremen injured on the job. Even more sinister is the danger opened up by the Coast Committee grant of approval to PMA for the acquisition of this kind of information, thereby giving the bosses another weapon to use against union activists and militants!

Almost all unions have resisted employer drug testing programs, pointing out among other reasons the notorious unreliability of these “tests”. For example: A person who never uses marijuana but happens to be in a room or enclosed space where someone else is smoking a joint will test out as a user for up to 30 days afterwards. Our local Caucus delegates must go into the February Coast Caucus and demand that the Coast Committee reverse their decision to act as cops for PMA.

There is a traditional union solution to the problem of brothers who use substances that affect their functioning. In the earlier history of the union, before Harry Bridges and his buddies surrendered so much union power and control back to PMA, the union handled such problems internally. But when our local tries to exercise union discipline as part of the effort to help our brothers overcome their problem, PMA has rushed in to stop us. Our union must reassert this right and exercise internal union discipline and control.

WHY A CLASS-STRUGGLE PROGRAM?

Most brothers and sisters see no way out of the weakness, decline and isolation of our union. We say that the history of the working class and of our union has valuable lessons that show the way for workers to protect themselves and finally seize control of society. The MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN program, printed at the end of this issue, tries to apply these lessons to our own union as a guide to those things we should fight for, and the tactics we have to use to get them. That’s why we call for concrete acts of workers’ solidarity, from joining other unions on their picket lines to political strikes against U.S. imperialist intervention against Central American revolutionary movements. Unless we break out of our isolation and help to build ties with other workers, our isolation will lead to even more defeats.

We should be ashamed that, except for a tiny handful of longshoremen, the Restaurant workers on strike for months just a couple of blocks from our hall got no help from our local. While Chilean longshoremen are in a desparate strike to defend their union, ILWU locals continue to unload cargo from that country, while the International issues mealy-mouthed statements of support. No group of workers can even defend and preserve their hard-won gains without working class solidarity. Those who forget this lesson lead the working class into one defeat after another.

INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION:
LOCAL 10 DELEGATES SURRENDER TO HERMAN

Local 10 sometimes takes very good positions on paper, but doesn’t follow through. Last April our local went into the International Convention having .unanimously passed two historically important resolutions for working class solidarity. One resolution called for union wide boycott of South African cargo demanding the International organize the action, and urging other locals to make the same demand of the International. The second resolution  called for a 48-hour coastwise longshore strike if Reagan intervened militarily in Central America. [Stan Gow opposed both of these resolutions in the Executive Board — probably because Keylor proposed them.] But what happened then? Our convention delegates sat on their hands and failed to put up a fight for these resolutions allowing Jimmy Herman to line up his cronies and handraisers and defeat the proposals in the Resolutions Committee — thus preventing these issues, from even coming up on the floor for debate. Keylor was not a delegate, having failed to be elected in the February 1985 election Local 10 and our union appear even further away than in previous years from developing a class-struggle leadership — but the need is even greater. No other candidate for office besides Keylor has a program that answers the needs of our union. No other candidate is committed to such a program.

DON’T MISS THE NEXT MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN 

In February we will deal with the coastwise erosion of our jurisdiction and the sub-standard longshore contracts being negotiated by the International. We’ll try to describe an alternative to this no-win strategy to stop nonunion longshore operators.

We’ll also deal with the danger to workers posed by protectionism, union busting and the growing racist and fascist movements.

MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN PROGRAM

1. DEFEND OUR JOBS AND LIVELIHOOD – Six hour shift, no extensions,at eight hours pay. Manning scales on all ship operations; one man, one job. Weekly PGP, eliminate all “coding out” rules. Full-no-cap C.O.L.A on-wages.  Joint-Maritime union action against non-union barge operations.

2. DEFEND THE HIRING HALL – Use regular gangs on container ships; no dispatch of “unit gangs”. Call all 9.43 men back to the hall. Stopwork action to defend the hiring hall, the stop line, and older and disabled men.

3. DEFEND UNION CONDITIONS AND SAFTEY THROUGH JOB ACTION – Stop PMA chiseling on the contract. Eliminate “work as directed”, “no illegal work stoppage”, and arbitration sections from the contract. Mobilize to smash anti-labor injunctions. No employer drug or alcohol screening.

4. DEFEND OUR UNION – Eliminate class B registration category from the contract – promote all class B to class A coastwise. Keep racist anti-labor government and courts out of the union. Support union resistance against court suits and government “investigations”. Union action to break down racial and sexual discrimination and employer favoritism on the waterfront. Organize now for a coastwise contract fight to get what we need.

5. BUILD LABOR SOLIDARITY – against government/employer strikebreaking. No more PATCOs. Honor all picket lines – remove reactionary ones. Don’t handle struck or diverted cargo. No raiding of other unions. Organize the unorganized and the unemployed. Labor strikes to stop cuts in Social security, Medical, Medicare and Workmen’s Compensation.

6. STOP NAZI/KLAN TERROR through union organized labor/black/Latino defense actions. No dependance on capitalist police or courts to smash fascists.

7. WORKING CLASS ACTION TO STOP REAGAN’S WAR DRIVE AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION – Oppose reactionary boycotts against Soviet and Polish shipping. Labor strikes to oppose U.S. military actions against Cuba, Nicaragua, or Salvadoran leftist insurgents. Boycott military cargo to Chile, El Salvador, Israel and Turkey. Defy the apartheid injunction. Boycott all South African cargo.

8. INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY – Oppose protectionist trade restrictions. Defend undocumented workers with strike action. ILWU support to military victory of leftist insurgents in El Salvador.

9. BREAK WITH THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES – Start now to build a workers party based on the unions to fight for a workers government which will seize all major industry without payment to the capitalists and establish a planned economy to end exploitation, racism, poverty, and war.

When Anti-Negro Prejudice Began

by George Breitman

[From Fourth International, Vol.15 No.2, Spring 1954. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/breitman/1954/xx/prejudice.htm ]

IT IS now common knowledge even among conservative circles in the labor movement that race prejudice benefits the interests of the capitalist class and injures the interests of the working class. What is not well known – it still comes as a surprise to many Marxists – and should be made better known is the fact that race prejudice is a uniquely capitalist phenomenon, which either did not exist or had no perceptible influence in pre-capitalist society (that is, before the sixteenth century).

Hundreds of modern scholars have traced anti-Negro prejudice (to take the most important and prevalent type of race prejudice in the United States) back to the African slave trade and the slave system that was introduced into the Americas. Those who profited from the enslavement of the Negroes – the slave traders and merchant capitalists first of Europe and then of America, and the slaveholders – required a rationalization and a moral justification for an archaic social institution that obviously flouted the relatively enlightened principles proclaimed by capitalist society in its struggle against feudalism. Rationalizations always become available when powerful economic interests need them (that is how most politicians and preachers, editors and teachers earn their living) and in this case the theory that Negroes are “inferior” followed close on the discovery that Negro slavery was exceptionally profitable.

This theory was embraced, fitted out with pseudo-scientific trappings and Biblical quotations, and trumpeted forth as a truth so self-evident that only madmen or subversives could doubt or deny it. Its influence on the minds of men was great at all levels of society, and undoubtedly aided the slaveholders in retarding the abolition of slavery. But with the growth of the productive forces, economic interests hostile to the slaveholders brought forth new theories and ideas, and challenged the supremacy of the slaveholders on all fronts, including ideology. The ensuing class struggles – between the capitalists, slaves, workers and farmers on one side and the slaveholders on the other – resulted in the destruction of the slave system.

But if anti-Negro prejudices and ideas arose out of the need to justify and maintain slavery, why didn’t they wither away after slavery was abolished? In the first place, ideas, although they must reflect broad material interests before they can achieve wide circulation, can live lives of their own once they are set into motion, and can survive for a time after the disappearance of the conditions that produced them. (It is instructive to note, for example, that Lincoln did not free himself wholly of race prejudice and continued to believe in the “inferiority” of the Negro even while he was engaged in prosecuting the civil war that abolished the slave system – a striking illustration both of the tendency of ideas to lag behind events and of the primacy of material interest over ideology.)

This is a generalization, however, and does not provide the main explanation for the survival of anti-Negro prejudice after the Civil War. For the striking thing about the Reconstruction period which followed the abolition of slavery was the speed with which old ideas and customs began to change and break up. In the course of a few short years millions of whites began to recover from the racist poisons to which they had been subjected from their birth, to regard Negroes as equals and to work together with them amicably, under the protection of the federal government, in the solution of joint problems. The obliteration of anti-Negro prejudice was started in the social revolution that we know by the name of Reconstruction, and it would have been completed if Reconstruction had been permitted to develop further.

But Reconstruction was halted and then strangled – by the capitalists, acting now in alliance with the former slaveholders. No exploiting class lightly discards weapons that can help maintain its rule, and anti-Negro prejudice had already demonstrated its potency as a force to divide, disrupt and disorient oppressed classes in an exploitative society .After some vacillation and internal struggle that lasted through most of Reconstruction, the capitalist class decided it could make use of anti-Negro prejudice for its own purposes. The capitalists adopted it, nursed it, fed it, gave it new clothing, and infused it with a vigor and an influence it had never commanded before. Anti-Negro prejudice today operates in a different social setting and therefore in a somewhat different form than a century ago, but it was retained after slavery for essentially the same reason that it was introduced under the slave system that developed from the sixteenth century on – for its convenience as an instrument of exploitation; and for that same reason it will not be abandoned by the ruling class of any exploitative society in this country.

But why do we speak of the introduction of anti-Negro prejudice in the slave system, whose spread coincided with the birth of capitalism? Wasn’t there slavery long centuries before capitalism? Didn’t race prejudice exist in the earlier slave societies? Why designate race prejudice as a uniquely capitalist phenomenon? A brief look at slavery of both the capitalist and pre-capitalist periods can lead us to the answers.

Capitalism, the social system that followed and replaced feudalism, owed its rise to world dominance in part to its revival or expansion of forms of exploitation originally developed in the pre-feudal slave societies, and to its adaptation and integration of those forms into the framework of capitalist productive relations. As “the chief momenta of primitive accumulation” through which the early capitalists gathered together the capital necessary to establish and spread the new system, Marx listed “the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins.” The African slave trade and slavery produced fortunes that laid the foundations for the most important of the early industries of capitalism, which in turn served to revolutionize the economy of the whole world.

Thus we see, side by side, in clear operation of the laws of uneven and combined development, archaic pre-feudal forms and the most advanced social relations then possible in the post-feudal world. The former were of course in the service of the latter, at least during the first stages of their co-existence. This was not a mere repetition of the slavery of ancient times: one basic economic difference was that the slave system of the Americas produced commodities for the world capitalist market, and was therefore subordinate to and dependent on that market. There were other differences, but here we confine ourselves to the one most relevant to the subject of this article – race relations in the early slave societies.

For the information that follows we are indebted to the writings of an anthropologist and of a sociologist: Ina Corinne Brown, Socio-Economic Approach to Educational Problems, 1942, chapter 2 (this government publication, the first volume in the National Survey of the Higher Education of Negroes sponsored, by the US Office of Education, is now out of print, but the same material is covered in her book. Race Relations in a Democracy, 1949, chapter 4); and Oliver C. Cox, Caste, Class, and Race, 1948, chapter 16. [1] Dr. Cox’s treatment is fuller; he also has been more influenced by Marx.

This is what they write about the ancient Egyptians:

So many persons assume that racial antipathy is a natural or instinctive reaction that it is important to emphasize the fact that race prejudice such as we know did not exist before the modern age. To be sure there was group antipathy which those who read history backwards take to be race prejudice, but actually this antipathy had little or nothing to do with color or the other physical differences by which races are distinguished. For example, the ancient Egyptians looked down upon the Negroes to the south of them. They enslaved these Negroes and spoke scornfully of them. Many writers, reading later racial attitudes into the situation, have seen in this scorn a color prejudice. But the Egyptians were just as scornful of the Asiatic sand dwellers, or Troglodytes as Herodotus called them, and of their other neighbors who were as light or lighter than the Egyptians. The Egyptian artists caricature the wretched captives taken in the frequent wars, but they emphasize the hooked noses of the Hittites, the woolen garments of the Hebrews, and the peculiar dress of the Libyans quite as much as the color or the thick lips of the Negroes. That the Egyptians mixed freely with their southern neighbors, either in slavery or out of it, is evidenced by the fact that some of the Pharaohs were obviously Negroid and eventually Egypt was ruled by an Ethiopian dynasty. (Brown, 1942)

There seems to be no basis for imputing racial antagonism to the Egyptians, Babylonians, or Persians. (Cox)

On the Greeks:

One frequently finds mention of the scornful way in which Negro slaves were referred to in Greece and Rome, but the fact is that equally scornful remarks were made of the white slaves from the North and the East. There seems to be no evidence that color antipathy was involved, and of the total slave population the Negroes constituted only a minor element. (Brown, 1942)

The slave population was enormous, but the slave and the master in Greece were commonly of the same race and there was no occasion to associate any given physical type with the slave status. An opponent of Athenian democracy complained that it was impossible in Athens to distinguish slaves and aliens from citizens because all classes dressed alike and lived in the same way. (Brown, 1949.)

… we do not find race prejudice even in the great Hellenistic empire which extended deeper into the territories of colored people than any other European empire up to the end of the fifteenth century.

The Hellenic Greeks had a cultural, not a racial, standard of belonging, so that their basic division of the peoples of the world were Greeks and barbarians – the barbarians having been all those persons who did not possess the Greek culture, especially its language … the people of the Greek city-states, who founded colonies among the barbarians on the shores of the Black Sea and of the Mediterranean, welcomed those barbarians to the extent that they were able to participate in Greek culture, and intermarried freely with them. The Greeks knew that they had a superior culture to those of the barbarians, but they included Europeans, Africans, and Asiatics in the concept Hellas as these peoples acquired a working knowledge of the Greek culture.

The experience of the later Hellenistic empire of Alexander tended to be the direct contrary of modern racial antagonism. The narrow patriotism of the city-states was given up for a new cosmopolitanism. Every effort was made to assimilate the barbarians to Greek culture, and in the process a new Greco-Oriental culture with a Greco-Oriental ruling class came into being. Alexander himself took a Persian princess for his wife and encouraged his men to intermarry with the native population. In this empire there was an estate, not a racial, distinction between the rulers and the un-Hellenized natives. (Cox)

On the Romans:

In Rome, as in Greece, the slaves did not differ in outward appearance from free men. R.H. Barrow in his study of the Roman slave says that “neither color nor clothing revealed his condition.” Slaves of different nationalities intermarried. There was no color barrier. A woman might be despised as a wife because she came from a despised group or because she practiced barbaric rites but not because her skin was darker. Furthermore, as W.W. Buckland points out, “any citizen might conceivably become a slave; almost any slave might become a citizen.” (Brown, 1949)

In this civilization also we do not find racial antagonism, for the norm of superiority in the Roman system remained a cultural-class attribute. The basic distinction was Roman citizenship, and gradually this was extended to all free-born persons in the municipalities of the empire. Slaves came from every province, and there was no racial distinction among them. (Cox)

There is really no need to go on quoting. The same general picture is true of all the societies, slave and non-slave, from the Roman empire down to the discovery of America – in the barbarian invasions into Europe, which led to enslavement of whites, in the reign of the Moslems, in the era of political domination by the Catholic Church. There were divisions, discriminations and antagonisms of class, cultural, political and religious character, but none along race or color lines, at least none that have left any serious trace in the historical materials now available. As late as the middle of the fifteenth century, when the West African slave trade to Portugal first began, the rationalization for the enslavement of Negroes was not that they were Negro but that they were not Christian. Those who became Christians were freed, intermarried with the Portuguese and were accepted as equals in Portugal. Afterward, of course, when the slave trade became a big business, the readiness of a slave to convert to Christianity no longer sufficed to gain his emancipation.

Why did race prejudice develop in the capitalist era when it did not under the earlier slave systems? Without thinking we have in any way exhausted the subject, we make the following suggestion: In previous times the slaves were usually of the same color as their masters; both whites and Negroes were masters and slaves; in the European countries the Negroes formed a minority of the slave population. The invidious connotations of slavery were attached to all slaves, white and Negro. If under these conditions the notion of Negro “inferiority” occurred to anyone, it would have seemed ridiculous on the face of it; at any rate, it could never have received any social acceptance.

But slavery in the Americas became confined exclusively to Negroes. [2] The Negro was distinguished by his color, and the invidious connotations of slavery could easily be transferred to that; it was inevitable that the theory of Negro “inferiority” and that anti-Negro prejudice should be created, that they should be extended to other non-white people who offered the possibility of exploitation, and that they should be spread around the globe.

Thus anti-Negro prejudice was not born until after capitalism had come into the world. There are differences of opinion as to the approximate birthdate. M.F. Ashley Montagu, discussing the “modern conception of ‘race’,” says:

“Neither in the ancient world nor in the world up to the latter part of the eighteenth century did there exist any notion corresponding to it … A study of the cultures and literatures of mankind, both ancient and recent, shows us that the conception of natural or biological races of mankind differing from one another mentally as well as physically, is an idea which was not born until the latter part of the eighteenth century,” or around the French Revolution. (Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race)

Cox says that if he had to put his finger on the year which marked the beginning of race relations, he would select 1493-94 – when the Pope granted to Catholic Spain and Portugal jurisdictional control over, and the right to exploit, all of the (pre-dominantly non-white) heathen people of the world and their resources. He sees “nascent race prejudice” with the beginning of the slave trade: “Although this peculiar kind of exploitation was then in its incipiency, it had already achieved its significant characteristics.” However, he finds that “racial antagonism attained full maturity” only in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Whichever century one chooses, the point is this: Anti-Negro prejudice was originated to justify and preserve a slave-labor system that operated in the interests of capitalism in its pre-industrialist stages, and it was retained in slightly modified form by industrial capitalism after slavery became an obstacle to the further development of capitalism and had to be abolished. Few things in the world are more distinctly stamped with the mark of capitalism.

The implications of this fact are so plain that it is no wonder it has received so little attention in the schools and press of a country dominated by capitalists and their apologists. Anti-Negro prejudice arose out of the needs of capitalism, it is a product of capitalism, it belongs to capitalism, and it will die when capitalism dies.

We who are going to participate in the replacement of capitalism by socialism, and who have good reason to be curious about the first stages of socialism, because we will be living in them, need have no fear about the possibility of any extended lag with respect to race prejudice. Unlike the capitalist system that dominated this country after the Civil War, the socialist society will be free of all exploitative features; it will have no conceivable use for race prejudice, and it will consciously seek to eradicate it along with all the other props of the old system. That is why race prejudice will wither away when capitalism dies – just as surely as the leaf withers when the tree dies, and not much later.

Footnote

1. Neither of these would claim they were the first to discover this historical information, and it may well be that other scholars unknown to us preceded them in writing about this field in recent years; all we know is that it first came to our attention through their books. Historical material often lies neglected for long periods until current social and political needs reawaken interest in it. These writers were undoubtedly stimulated into a new and more purposeful interest in the subject by the growth of American Negro militancy and colonial independence struggles during the last 15-20 years.

2. Slavery was not confined to Negroes at the beginning. Before the Negro slave on the plantations, there was the Indian slave and the white indentured servant. But Negro slave labor proved cheaper and was more plentiful than either of these, and eventually they were abandoned. The most satisfactory study of this question is in the excellent book by Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 1944. Williams writes:

“Here, then, is the origin of Negro slavery. The reason was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor. As compared with Indian and white labor, Negro slavery was eminently superior … The features of the man, his hair, color and dentifrice, his ‘sub-human’ characteristics so widely pleaded, were only the later rationalizations to justify a simple economic fact: that the colonies needed labor and resorted to Negro labor because it was cheapest and best. This was not a theory, it was a practical conclusion deduced from the personal experience of the planter. He would have gone to the moon, if necessary, for labor. Africa was nearer than the moon, nearer too than the more populous countries of India and China. But their turn was to come.”

Militant Longshoreman

No #13   January 7, 1984

Re-Elect Keylor (40-D) to Executive Board

From Defending Our Jobs at Levin to Opposing the Contract to Boycotting South African Cargo He’s Had A Strategy to Win!

Local 10 Shows the Way

Our eleven day boycott of South African cargo has done this Local proud. We pointed the way to effective international labor solidarity by reviving the “hot cargo” tactic. The unions used this tactic throughout the organizing drives of the 1930s and the bitter battles in 1946-48 to isolate struck employers. By refusing to transport or handle cargo from an anti-union employer workers even thousands of miles away and at widely dispersed locations could exert pressure to help other unions or oppressed workers. That’s why the infamous Taft-Hartley law passed in 1947 made “secondary boycotts” illegal. Our dramatic and effective action brought hundreds down to the docks in our support. We won the admiration of tens of thousands, showing that when the labor movement acts against apartheid the black community and trade unionists will rally to its support. We sparked a wave of anti-apartheid protests in the Bay Area which are still continuing, and we proved that concrete labor solidarity can have vastly greater impact than picketing embassies. Our union’s action was the longest political strike in memory on the West Coast. When the next ship carrying South African cargo comes in; if Reagan invades Nicaragua; or the next time the bosses try to break a union like PATCO or the Hotel and Restaurant workers, we should wage a solidarity strike again, appealing to other unions to join us in mass strike action. Actions which defend other workers give us strength and make real the ILWU motto “An Injury to One Is An Injury to All”.

At the same time, we should face squarely the shortcomings in the boycott, particularly since the Local is about to elect its officers for the next year. The South African cargo was finally unloaded, the Local lost PGP, ILWU-IBU member Jack Heyman was suspended by Crowley Maritime for approximately two weeks as a result of his participation in the embargo, and Local 10 is under a preliminary injunction which will be used against us when we act again.

WE COULD HAVE DEFEATED THE INJUNCTION

None of this had to happen. If Local 10 had officers and an Executive Board worthy of our fighting  membership, officers willing to risk jail if necessary, we could have won outright. From the moment the membership voted to act, our officers should have been inviting union and community support and publicly demanding that International President Herman sanction the action and extend it coastwise. Instead, our officers were telling the media that our action was unauthorized and individual. Our officers should have sent delegations to the other ports to meet with other local officials and-to appeal directly to all longshoremen to refuse to work the blood stained cargo. When PMA proposed to unload the Nedlloyd Kimberley in Stockton, Local 54 told them to go to hell. With support like that, and backed by the thousands of Bay Area residents who wished us success, we could have defeated the injunction, like we did at Levin. Instead, the officers and the Executive Board caved in and ordered us to work the Nedlloyd Kimberley.

Make no mistake about it: the PMA and the capitalist government were scared. They recognize how deeply blacl Americans feel about the oppression in South Africa and how popular our union action was. That’s the main reason why they were so slow in arbitrating and imposing an injunction, and that’s why so far the fines/damages have been suspended. When the continuing rebellion of the black trade unions and the South African masses stirs us to act collectively again, it is precisely that community support, properly organized in our defense, and spread to other unions which can help us smash the injunction.

Some union members, particularly Brothers Leo Robinson and his closest supporter, Dave Steward, who played an important role in the boycott, honestly believe that Local 10 has no choice but to give in to the injunction. The difference hereis that they don’t understand that the working class’ ability to stop the economic machinery of the capitalist system and their government makes us uniquely powerful, whether in the U.S. or in South Africa. Leo and Dave have a commitment to individual acts of consciousness and a belief that community action can force the multinational corporations to forgoe their enormous profits extracted from the super exploited black South African workers. This belief is combined with a lack of confidence that the organized labor movement can lead political struggles to victory, and can be won to successfully defy and defeat government/court repression.

For the same reason, during contract fights over the past ten years brother Leo Robinson in particular has failed to go beyond calling for a no vote, and has refused to advocate organizing coastwide strike action to defeat bad contracts and get what we need.

PEOPLE’S WORLD NO-WIN STRATEGY

If Leo and Dave want to engage in something more effective than symbolic acts of protest, they should reexamine their strategy and especially that of their allies around Archie Brown and the People’s World. Their strategy of pressuring the liberal Democratic wing of the capitalist class rather than trying to overturn the capitalist system has led the working class to disastrous defeats for the past 50 years. The People’s World played a large role in sabotaging an attempt to continue the boycott by other means after the Local Executive Board had agreed Monday night, December 3, to capitulate to the injunction. When I and others encouraged the several hundred supporters present at Pier 80 Tuesday morning to set up an effective picket line and shut down the pier, Franklin Alexander panicked the crowd by telling them that they faced 6 months in jail. People’s World supporters acted in conjunction with the SFPD to open up the picket line when we had the trucks stopped and the pier effectively closed. They managed to turn the picket line into an impotent demonstration, and thereby destroyed it.

JIMMY HERMAN STABS LOCAL 10 IN THE BACK – AGAIN!

International President Jim Herman should be thrown out of office for his back-stabbing. During the Levin strike, he sided with the employers. During the ILWU-IBU tankerman’s strike, he ordered longshoremen to cross the picket line. During the South African boycott he agreed with the PMA that our action was an “illegal work stoppage” in violation of the contract, and thereby Herman laid the legal basis for PMA being able to get  their apartheid injunction. Recently, in describing Herman’s disapproval of cargo boycott actions, the Pacific Shipper (December 24, 1984), an employers magazine, said: “Despite the fact that it was a local of his union that ignited the controversy in the Bay Area, Mr. Herman believes that the ‘proper place’ for demonstrations against South African apartheid are at that nation’s consulates, or by way of organized public demonstrations of limited duration.” We haven’t noticed him getting arrested along with the other labor “leaders”. While all actions against the apartheid regime are welcome, particularly those in support of the labor movement, it’s clear that many of the congressmen, clergymen and labor bureaucrats picketing the embassy are motivated by a desire to clean up the image of the Democratic Party after the Mondale fiasco.

DIVESTMENT AND PROTECTIONISM

As I said in Militant Longshoreman No. 12: “Some brothers favor a policy of divestment of shares of corporations which invest in South Africa, Personally I regard this as ineffective and potentially even counterproductive. It also creates the illusion that the big banks and investments houses, which make billions of dollars of blood-money from the racist exploitation of black labor in South Africa, can be pressured into becoming friends of the black masses in that racist hell-hole. The only kind of ‘divestment’ which I’m interested in pushing is the divestment of the white supremacist rulers and their international investors by the black workers of South Africa and the establishment of a black-centered government.

“Protectionism” is another issue where there are differences. Some brothers think that we shouldn’t unload South African steel because so many American steel workers are laid off. This action is aimed solely at providing a blow against the apartheid regime. That is why we shouldn’t unload that steel. The answer to the unemployment of U.S. steel workers is not to side with the shareholders of U.S. Steel etc. to export unemploy merit, and thus divide American workers from workers of other countries. It is by fighting with steel workers and other sections of the labor movement against the banks and the corporations for a shorter work week at no loss in pay. Nonetheless, despite my differences with other members of the committee on these and other questions, we can all agree to work together to build this fight and spread it coastwise.”

STAN GOW CALLS LONGSHOREMEN “SCABS”

Finally, Stan Gow merits special mention. As ILWU members are aware, Stan and I worked together for years. Until now, I have urged longshoremen to vote for him despite my criticisms, because on paper his program was largely correct. However, his actions during the boycott have drawn the line. Together with Peter Woolston and other Militant Caucus supporters in Local 6, and fully backed by the Spartacist League, Stan did everything he could to divide, confuse and disrupt our action.

We noted in Militant Longshoreman No. 4 that Stan and the Militant Caucus had begun to abandon their orientation to the organized working class. During his El Salvador stunt Stan substituted himself for the union with his one-longshoreman picket line, a sign of growing disorientation and disbelief that union members could be won to action. But at least he was on the right side on the El Salvador question, and I defended him. Now his actions served to split and confuse the most important political Strike in years.

On Saturday night, November 24, he and a handful of others piceted the Nedlloyed Kimberly despite the mebership’s decision to work the Australian cargo. When Keylor originally opened the discussion on the South African boycott he urged that longshoremen refuse to work the ship, but when it became clear that the overwhelming majority consensus of the membership was to not work the South African cargo he found that quite supportable, and actively worked to make the boycott a success. Stan says that’s “treachery”! Success is treachery! — Sabotage is militance! Stan and the Militant Caucus attempted to counterpose their fake-militant picket line to the real activity of the union. Stan and his friends were aiming to split the union action that should have been automatically supported by all genuine labor militants. In fact, the Militant Caucus and Spartacist supporters became so deranged that they called the unionists who came out to carry out the South African boycott “scabs”, and those in the crowd who were supporting them “racists”. Stan’s attitude was: adopt my program or I spit on you — even though you’ve stopped the South African cargo cold. Then when the injunction came down, after a lot of bluster about defying the injunction, Stan and his cohorts refused to join the picket line which I and many others had established in order to try to force the Nedlloyd Kimberley to leave port.

Stan makes much of the difference between working the cargo and working the ship. Why? He knows it’s just a matter of tactics. The membership decided on what they thought would be most effective. After two days the ship sat perfectly idle anyway. In 1974 the union refused to handle Chilean cargo but worked the ship. Stan and I helped to initiate the action and considered it a real victory. In 1977 we argued for more extensive action but still supported and helped build the South African cargo boycott. What’s new this time?

SLANDERS AND LIES

Similarly Stan accused the union, and me in particular, of treachery around the Nedlloyd Kyoto off-loading pig iron at Richmond Yard 1. First of all, the ship was, diverted, and we didn’t know it was arriving until two hours prior to starting work. Secondly, when you are planning a battle, you pull it where you are strongest. The ILWU has full and uncontested jurisdiction at Pier 80, San Francisco. At Richmond/Levin we had to wage an all out battle just to reestablish our toe hold, and the right to ghost riders when the dockside cranes are used. If we had had sufficient time we could have appealed to the Operating Engineers to stop the cargo at Levin’s, but in San Francisco we were able to rely on our own forces. Without adequate preparation the Local’s action could very easily have ended as unsuccessfully as Stan’s isolated attempts.

What lies behind this sorry story is that Stan’s Militant Caucus has given up on the working class. In 1974 and 1977, during the Chile cargo boycott and the first South African cargo boycott Stan, the Militant Caucus, and the Spartacist League played a principled role in trying to support the ILWU action and extend it coastwise. This time shamefully, they tried to wreck it. No vote for Stan Gow.

STOPWORK ACTION TO DEFEND THE HIRING HALL AND OLDER/DISABLED MEN!

CANCEL THE CONTRACT!

By now, six months after the disastrous 1984 contract was imposed on us, everyone should be able to see that business as usual won’t preserve our union or our jobs. We’re going to have to carefully pick the issues and take arbitrary stopwork action outsidethe contract grievance procedures. Whether it’s PMA coding older and disabled men out of PGP, arbitrarily mis-ordering men, working in violation of the contract, or tampering with the dispatch system and hiring hall, we must be prepared to go to the mat, any not simply knuckle under to Sutliff or Edwards.

If we do it right we can lay the basis for a coastwise movement to cancel the contract, and go for what we all need. In spite of repeated indications that the mebership is ready to fight, neither the officers nor the Executive Board have been willing to even systematically discuss a program of action to resist PMA. None of the many brothers running for office have developed and come forward with a program that can even be seriously discussed as to whether the brother merits electoral support. For that reason the Militant Longshoreman makes no endorsement of any candidate for local office.

We appeal to brothers and sisters to carefully read the program printed below, and vote for Howard Keylor.

MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN PROGRAM

1. DEFEND OUR JOBS AND LIVELYHOOD – Six hour shift, no extensions, at eight hours pay. Manning scales on all ship operations; one man, one job. Full- no-cap C.O.L.A. on wages. Weekly PGP, eliminate all “coding out” rules. No restrictions on PGP eligibility. No “take back” on travel time.

2. DEFEND THE HIRING HALL – Use regular gangs on container ships; no dispatch of “unit gangs”. Call all 9.43 men back to the hall. Stopwork action to defend the hiring hall, the stop line and older and disabled men.

3. DEFEND UNION CONDITIONS AND SAFETY THROUGH JOB ACTION – Stop PMA chiseling on the contract. Eliminate “work as directed”, “no illegal work stoppage”, and arbitration sections from the contract. Mobilize to smash anti-labor injunctions.

4, DEFEND OUR UNION – Eliminate class B registration category from the contract – promote all class B to class A coastwise. Keep racist anti-labor government and courts out of the union. Support union resistance against court suits and government “investigations”. Union action to break down racial and sexual discrimination and employer favoritism on the waterfront. Lay the basis for cancelling the contract and waging a coastwise fight for what we need.

5. BUILD LABOR SOLIDARITY – against government/employer strikebreaking. No more PATCOs. Honor all picket lines – remove reactionary ones. Don’t handle struck or diverted. cargo. No raiding of other unions. Organize the unorganized and the unemployed. Labor strikes to stop cuts in Social Security, Medical, Medicare and Workmen’s Compensation.

6. STOP NAZI/KLAN TERROR through union organized labor/black/Latino defense actions. No dependance on capitalist police or courts to smash fascists.

7. WORKING CLASS ACTION TO STOP REAGAN’S WAR DRIVE AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION – Oppose reactionary boycotts against Soviet and Polish shipping. Labor strikes to oppose U.S. military actions against Cuba, Nicaragua, or Salvadoran leftist insurgents. Boycott military cargo to Chile, El Salvador, Israel and Turkey. Defy the apartheid injunction. Boycott all South African cargo during periods of intense struggle and repression.

8. INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY – Oppose protectionist trade restrictions. Defend undocumented workers with strike action. ILWU support to military victory of leftist insurgents in El Salvador.

9. BREAK ‘WITH DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES – Start now to build a workers party based on the unions to fight for a workers government which will sieze all major industry without payment to the capitalists and establish a planned economy to end exploitation, racism, poverty, and war.

Coletivo Lenin/Brazil breaks relations with the International Bolshevik Tendency

December 2010

With the following statement, the Coletivo Lenin/Brazil publically breaks off relations with the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) and establishes fraternal relations with Revolutionary Regroupment, an IBT split from 2008.

I – The origins of our contact with the IBT 

The Coletivo Comunista Internacionalista – CCI (forerunner of the Coletivo Lenin) was set up in October 2006 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We were a Trotskyist group of a few militants who were sure of one thing: we could never remain a national organization. For Trotskyists, it is necessary that a revolutionary organization to belong to a world party or strive to build one. We therefore, from the very beginning, we made a serious attempt to study the different political currents which claimed the legacy of Trotskyism. We conducted research into 27 organizations that had their origins in the Fourth International, studying their documents on the internet having meetings with those organizations that had sections in Brazil. We looked to join an organization whose political understanding was closest to our own. At that time our three main criteria were:

1)     That the current considered the destruction of USSR and the deformed workers’ states in East Europe as counterrevolutionary defeats. That consequently, it would have been necessary to have temporarily entered into military blocs with those sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy opposed to capitalist restoration whenever they showed any resistance.

2)     That the current should recognize the politically strategic importance of fighting against all forms of special oppression (such as sexism, racism and homophobia) for a successful socialist revolution. That the current therefore prioritize recruiting workers who suffer those forms of oppression, who are also usually the most exploited workers under capitalism.

3)     That the current should reject the notion that the productive forces had ceased developing in the imperialist epoch, since only through such a rejection was it possible to make a coherent analysis of contemporary capitalism.

We discovered that those currents which traced their political origins to the early Spartacist League/USA (SL/USA) most closely fit that criterion. They were the Spartacist League (and its international co-thinkers in the International Communist League) itself and two splits – the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) and the Internationalist Group (IG). In the course of studying their documents, the issues they were arguing over appeared small, but they were also over many questions and issues that were completely new to us.

We learned that the SL had taken up a variety of strange positions by the end of the 1970’s. In 1979, while correctly siding with the Soviet Army against CIA backed Islamic fundamentalists, their response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was to also raise the uncritical slogan “Hail Red Army!” Similar pro-Stalinist adaptations followed, such as organizing a contingent at a protest named the “Yuri Andropov Brigade” after the leader of the USSR at the time, and responding to criticisms by then printing a poem in his honor on the front page of their newspaper following his death. Adaptations to US national chauvinist pressures were also expressed such as the 1983 failure to militarily side with forces in Lebanon struggling to drive out the US Marines occupying their country. When a bomb then exploded at the Marine barracks the SL raised the call “Marines Out of Lebanon, Now, Alive.” These criticisms were raised by the IBT. A criticism raised by both of the split groups was the bureaucratic organizational degeneration the SL had gone through by that point. The SL was transformed into an organization with little internal life; the leadership was in the hands of a bureaucratic clique which suppressed its internal critics and stifled debates through threats, intimidation and repression. Through such methods all critics were effectively driven out or, when that failed, expelled.

That was why we were repulsed by the SL and felt closer to the IG and IBT from the very start. At this point we established discussions with both groups with the objective of studying the degeneration of the Spartacist League, whose earlier politics we were in close agreement with and believed (and still believe) provided an important programmatic foundation for rebuilding a revolutionary Fourth International.

We engaged in personal meetings and online chats with Bill Logan and a few other IBT members and had personal meetings with the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (LQB), the IG’s Brazilian comrades in the League for the Fourth International. We also had some personal meetings with IG’s main international leader, Jan Norden. After a period, we realized that the IBT’s analysis of the SL’s degeneration was more coherent than the IG’s. For example, the IBT argued that the SL’s deliberate destructions of their trade union caucuses in early 80’s was a clear demonstration that the organization’s leaders main priority was keeping the ranks under tight control rather than building a base in the working class. The IG on the other hand argued the SL’s degeneration only began from the point they were pushed out in 1996. The very similar organizational measures through which several future members of IBT were driven out or expelled in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s were ignored, denied or defended in their analysis. The IG also defended all the SL’s positions (including the mentioned positions on Afghanistan, Yuri Andropov and Lebanon) before the period of their expulsion as well.

One question that the IG sought to use against the IBT was the scandal surrounding Bill Logan. Bill Logan (who had been a prominent leader of the Spartacists in New Zealand and Australia during the 1970’s) was expelled from the International Spartacist Tendency on grounds of being a “sexual psychopath” who suppressed his internal critics and psychologically manipulated his ranks. We were aware that Logan, like most other SL leader, was guilty of bureaucratic abuses and organizational crimes. But we also knew that the IG was looking to exploit the scandal surrounding Logan to deflect from responding to the IBT’s criticisms of their politics. Unfortunately, at that time we also took the IBT at their word that they had not inherited any of the SL’s bureaucratic organizational methods and that Logan personally had profoundly changed his ways.

In the aftermath of Bill Logan’s visit to Brazil in October 2007, we decided amongst ourselves on a perspective of fusing with the IBT. We believed our few outstanding differences and questions were insufficient for continuing to remain a separate group for too long. We hoped in time many of these differences would be resolved through discussions and were willing to co-exist in a common group as disciplined comrades. What actually occurred during the entire subsequent period though was the consistent frustration of attempts at discussions by the IBT’s leadership, whose ultimatums and stalling tactics towards discussing our differences were very apparently geared towards wearing us out and demoralizing us into complete submission as the price for fusion. It gradually became obvious that the IBT’s leadership was not looking for political fusions with militants who, while sharing their political analysis, also had secondary political and tactical differences to debate internally, but rather looking to transform us into docile pliant hacks who could then be organizationally absorbed into a group where their absolute control was fully safeguarded from future challenges.

Our relations with the IBT in many ways paralleled early Spartacist relations with Gerry Healy’s International Committee during the 1960’s. Healy similarly feigned interest in a loyal fusion while in reality engaging in a variety of unscrupulous tactics designed to psychologically break a young group of revolutionaries. Like us, along with substantial political agreement, the Spartacists also had their own analytical appreciations of different questions and expressed an apparent capacity to stand up to and challenge Healy’s authority. Following the final breaking of relations in 1966, the Spartacists commented:

“The reason for the behavior of the SLL leadership toward the Spartacist delegation is not hard to find. You obviously wish to create a Trotskyist movement in the U.S. which would be completely subservient to the SLL leadership…  You were not interested in creating a movement united on the basis of democratic centralism with strong sections capable of making theoretical contributions to the movement as a whole and of applying Marxist theory creatively to their own national arenas. You wanted an international after the manner of Stalin’s Comintern, permeated with servility at one pole and authoritarianism at the other.” 

II – Three years of stalling and stagnation 

We ended our engagements with the IG in January 2008. In our last discussions with them, we were appalled to hear from Jan Norden himself that the IG/LFI not only defended the SL’s adaptations to the Stalinists and failure to advance a revolutionary program during fall of the Soviet bloc, but was also intent on repeating their political behavior if the opportunity arose in the future. We also recognized the bureaucratic nature of IG’s League for the Fourth International. The IG in the US was the leadership responsible for formulating all the political decisions and the Brazilian and other sections would simply execute them. This did not correlate with our understanding of Leninist democratic centralism. Our contact with the LQB and the IG’s Jan Norden reinforced our decision to seek a fusion with the IBT.

In the course of further relations with the IBT, we were able to identify and correct many of our previous political and organizational misconceptions. From reading their literature we were able to establish a more precise understanding of the nature of the united front tactic (see our document “Leninism, United Fronts and Propaganda Blocs”, available on our web site in Portuguese), develop a more coherent analysis of political developments in Brazil, and learn how to apply the Transitional Program in our daily political work. Studying the history of the Trotskyist movement we expanded our appreciation of the historic significance of the early SL, which sought to uphold the Trotskyist program after the political destruction of the Fourth International and the US Socialist Workers Party by Pabloite revisionism. We started to understand the nature of a propaganda perspective for a small revolutionary organization of our size which, along with engaging in exemplary mass work, would initially need to grow by focusing on winning the politically conscious vanguard to our programmatic conceptions through polemically engaging with other ostensibly revolutionary currents. Most of our political and theoretical direction since early 2008 had been informed by the IBT’s historic writings and perspectives, making us believe we were very methodologically and programmatically close.

At the same time, we also had our own unique theoretical understanding of certain questions that we potentially differed with the IBT on. We sought to discuss these with them as (we thought) we were making progress towards becoming their Brazilian section. Our differences were the following: [*]

1)     We shared with Rosa Luxemburg her theory of capital accumulation, with its conclusion that capitalism is leading society to barbarism. This position didn’t lead to any practical differences, but simply called attention to our intent to discuss the Leninist understanding of imperialism.

2)     We were influenced by the theories of Brazilian Marxist Rui Mauro Marini. We regarded countries such as Brazil, India, Israel, Russia and South Africa as sub-imperialist countries rather than dominated neo-colonies. In these countries, the fusion of national and foreign capital establishes a base for them to control and exploit other countries within their region of influence. That would be the case with Brazil and its relationship to other South American countries for example. Therefore, in a hypothetical war between Brazil and Bolivia, we would militarily side with Bolivia against its regional oppressor. We also recognize that sub-imperialist countries are at the same time also dependent countries and would therefore, in turn, defend them against imperialist military attacks. We know that ultimately any real freedom from imperialist oppression, for either the neo-colonies or sub-imperialist countries such as Brazil, can only be achieved through world socialist revolution.

3)     Like most Latin American organizations, but unlike the IBT and possibly other smaller propaganda groups based in the more economically developed capitalist countries, we have traditionally accepted comrades with religious beliefs into our membership. Since a requirement of membership is agreement with the organizations political positions (including the defense of science, separation of church and state, defending the rights of women, gays and lesbians and other similar questions), we believe this represents the religious comrades’ personal contradiction as long as they maintain the organizations collective discipline. As Marxists we remain materialists and defenders of science, recognize the historic role that organized religion has played in serving the interests of the ruling class and struggle to educate all our militants in that spirit.

4)     While we argue that the Chinese state is still a deformed workers’ state, we also recognize that large sections of China’s economy have been allowed by its Stalinist rulers to become privatized. These measures have in turn strongly undermined and placed in question the dominance of its traditional (bureaucratic) planned character. We believe these measures initiated by the bureaucrats currently ruling China create large openings and dangers for the victory of capitalist counterrevolution. We also see strong historic parallels with the NEP period of the Soviet Union during the 1920s. There the lack of a developed planned economy combined with a temporary reintroduction of capitalist measures placed in strong question the nature of the dominant economy, but, similarly, was also not decisive in determining the class character of the state.

5)     We believed that the IBT was overly focused on continuing to organizationally pursue its historic differences with the SL to the detriment of what should be the main responsibility of a Trotskyist propaganda group, looking to engage with the more dynamic groups that were either in leftward motion or had an active animated rank and file. While we recognized the historic significance of the early Spartacist League and the importance of educating militants about its history and were not arguing for completely ignoring them, the truth is the contemporary Spartacist League (and its co-thinkers in the International Communist League) has for many years now been a shrinking stagnating organization that along with being in rightward political motion had a largely depoliticized rank and file. For what appeared to be similar reasons of continuing to pursue historic differences from their personal pasts, the IBT’s leadership planned for us to mainly focus on organizationally pursuing Jan Norden’s followers, who, at least in Brazil, have also visibly shrunk and aged over the years. At the same time it seemed to us the IBT had shown far less interest in pursuing groups whose membership can actually play a role in rebuilding the revolutionary movement. We saw this as a tactical difference perhaps arising from the IBT leadership being stuck in a political time warp, without yet fully understanding the reasons for such passivity and routinism.

The IBT’s leadership continued to postpone clarifying these issues with us through written discussions over the next two years. They would only, at our insistence, agree to briefly touch on these questions in the course of our online chats dealing with other issues.  At the same time they argued for resolving these differences as a precondition for merger. We believed these minor theoretical and tactical differences should not be a bar to unity, since they paled in significance next to our areas of important agreement.

On Luxemburg’s accumulation theory and Marini’s sub-imperialism, the IBT leadership expressed a total lack of interest in understanding our concerns. We tried summarizing our views on these complex theories and referred them to documents for a deeper study, but they never followed up. On the tactical question involving their focus on the SL/IG and our view on China, the IBT acknowledged that in principle they should not necessarily prevent a fusion, while at the same time they made “resolving” these issues a precondition for organizationally moving forward. On the question of our religious members, the IBT seemed uncertain as they never argued for excluding religious members as a principle, while continuing to use this issue as a barrier to further progress. They seemed uninterested in investigating the experience of the different political culture in Latin America, where members of ostensibly revolutionary organizations have historically been permitted to hold private religious views.

It is important to reiterate that during this entire period we were willing to accept the position of being a disciplined minority on these questions inside the IBT’s ranks, since we seemed to have reached agreement on the major issues. By demanding these issues previously be resolved, while barring their resolution for either side by stalling for years on engaging in written discussions, the IBT made moving forward, in practice, impossible. At the same time we were kept in limbo through constant assurances they took the prospect of fusion with us seriously.

For almost three years, we used an adaptation of the IBT document “For Trotskyism!” as our main programmatic statement. We regarded and publically argued (until two months ago) that the IBT represented the programmatic continuity of Trotskyism on our website and in our activities in the workers’ and students’ movement. We translated all of the documents they used for the Portuguese language section of their web site. Despite this, the IBT refused to publically acknowledge having any relations with us or even our existence. We considered their behavior strange since public recognition of fraternal relations is usually a first step for a future fusion perspective with another organization.

In December 2008 we wrote a letter to IBT demanding a discussion of our outstanding differences and asking them to take practical measures to facilitate the possibility for a future fusion. At that point we began suspecting that perhaps the IBT, despite its claims, had no interest in fusing with us. That they would only fuse with groups who would previously renounce all differences and independent opinions. Such a monolithic “fusion” would require that we first be psychologically broken, thereby ceasing to be revolutionaries.

In early 2009, the CCI became the Coletivo Lenin (CL) following a fusion with a group of comrades who had resigned from the Brazilian PSTU, associated with the late Nahuel Moreno. This represented a qualitative leap in our group’s capacities. With some organizational advice from the IBT, we established more intelligent organizational priorities, improved our finances, and established a regular press. We elected a National Leadership, since we were now present in two cities. We also saw the need for the comrades in the newly fused group to start engaging in common work. One way of doing this was to choose to center our work in Rio de Janeiro with a homeless organization, the Internationalist Homeless Front (FIST). It was an opportunity to work with radicalized militants from one of the most exploited and oppressed sectors of Brazilian society

The IBT responded in a harshly sectarian manner towards our tactical choice. They appeared to believe a propaganda group should completely focus their entire work on other left groups, particularly the Brazilian Nordenites in our case, to the total exclusion of all other possible arenas. We were falsely accused of being movementists who were looking to recruit politically raw people.

In response, some of our comrades began considering the possibility that our differences with the IBT could be more significant than appeared on the surface. The IBT seemed to be extremely passive and conservative, not only in moving forward towards fusing with us but also to trying to do any broader mass work. Because of this we wrote a formal letter to the IBT in October 2009 discussing the recent reorganization of our work and demanding they state more forthrightly their views on the prospects of a fusion and how to proceed towards it. Another letter from February 2010 explained our work in FIST and responded to their criticisms and misconceptions about it.

That letter for the first time elicited a written formal response from the IBT since it stated our refusal to continue engaging in online chats until we receive a document responding to our concerns. Though their answer only strengthened our suspicions that they had a passive/organizationally conservative attitude towards party building, we agreed to have their representative visit us and attend our first conference to be held on August 2010. Up to this time we still believed they were open towards fusing with us.

III – The IBT’s conduct at our conference: bureaucratic maneuvers

As part of the process of further consolidating our organization, we organized our first conference with the goal of mapping out the Coletivo Lenin’s perspective for the following two years. As is common in any healthy democratic organization in a pre-conference period, three different internal factions arose inside CL. On our relations with IBT, the decisive majority supported continuing to work for a fusion, while a minority, concluding that the IBT was sectarian and passive/ conservative, was opposed. As was already our established custom, we shared all our internal documents and opened our internal life to the IBT, (a practice which the IBT never reciprocated on during the entire time). As a result, the IBT became very close to one of the three internal factions.

During the conference (which the IBT’s representative participated in) two of the internal factions and the majority of CLers supported fusing with the IBT. The Coletivo Lenin decided to continue pursuing a fusion and requested that the IBT finally start responding to our differences (whose resolution they had always insisted was a precondition for further progress in relations) within the next month since we were also all frustrated and anxious to move forward after three years of stagnating relations. The newly elected leadership was an expression of this decision: it was composed of those comrades who were supporters of fusing with the IBT. At the same time, the CL also decided to take a firmer attitude on ending the 3 years of IBT inaction in further developing relations with us. We asked for concrete proof of the IBT’s sincerity in wanting relations to move forward – a statement publically acknowledging our relationship (which the IBT subsequently decided to not do).

The IBT’s immediate response stunned us all greatly. After phoning in a report to his leadership, the IBT representative informed us their evaluation was that the CL was organizationally unstable and that the CL was politically moving away from the IBT (after we had just voted for a direct fusion proposal!). It was true that a minority consisting of one comrade was moving away from the IBT, but the majority’s commitment was firm. As for the CL being unstable, our organization had (and still has) an internal life where differences arise and are therefore debated, as we believe every Bolshevik organization should have. That doesn’t mean we are organizationally unstable or undisciplined. We now know that for the IBT (which had its last organized faction in late 1997), any serious internal differences with the leadership is a sign of dangerous “instability”. Fusing with us represented a danger for a bureaucratic leadership whose primary objective is absolute control over their organization, rather than building a group that can grow, develop and be capable of acting as a vehicle for advancing working class revolution.

The worst, however, was still to come. The day after the conference, while still claiming to desire moving towards a fusion, the IBT secretly “invited” a couple of comrades from the faction closer to it to resign from CL and become the IBT’s representatives in Brazil. It is important to look at their decision more closely. First, this indicated to us that all of the differences that the IBT pretended to feel so strongly about (our willingness to accept religious members, sub-imperialism, their SL centered focus) during this entire time was actually meaningless to them, since the comrades they tried to split had the same positions as the rest of the group on these issues. Secondly, it indicated the organizationally unscrupulous character of the IBT’s leadership. While claiming to have close comradely fraternal relations with us, they were secretly maneuvering to split us, treating us in reality as a hostile enemy. Thirdly, it displayed a great lack of confidence in their politics and organization which also no doubt reflected a deeper demoralization. While a majority of the CL was not only willing but actively supporting a fusion they preferred to attempt to split our group instead of moving further with us. Fortunately, the comrades turned down their offer and reported it to the rest of Coletivo Lenin.

The impact of the IBT leadership’s bureaucratic and disloyal cowardice increased with the passage of time, as our comrades sought to process the recent turn of events and make sense of it in light of all their previous dealing with them. That action on their part made clear to us that the IBT was not willing to fuse with our organization, despite their disingenuous claims to the contrary, but only maneuvering us to try to win a minority of our youngest and least inexperienced militants. They assumed it would then be easy to absorb and assimilate these comrades into their bureaucratized internal culture and convince them to abandon their differences. We were still puzzled though as to why the IBT would behave in a manner so at odds with their professed politics and their past criticisms of their parent organizations bureaucratism.

IV – Revolutionary Regroupment

A few weeks before our conference, we had our first contact with Revolutionary Regroupment’s Sam Trachtenberg who split from the IBT in the fall of 2008. The IBT had chosen to never inform us of his resignation and decision to set up a competing organization. Trachtenberg gave a Marxist explanation for the IBT’s behavior in his resignation letter entitled “The Road Out of Rileyville”. He also developed some of that explanation in the course of a brief correspondence we had before our conference. At that point we unfortunately did not give his analysis the sufficient attention it deserved, since we were very eager to carry out a fusion with a group whose positions, on paper, seemed so close to ours and in whom we had already invested three years of work. One of the topics discussed in the conference was a proposal to establish relations with Revolutionary Regroupment. The proposal was rejected, but no doubt also impacted the panicked attempt to wreck our organization by the IBT’s leadership. But the analysis (and future predictions) we received from Revolutionary Regroupment fit our experience with the IBT like a glove.

As explained by RR, the IBT over the years had become transformed into a bureaucratized organization controlled and manipulated by a clique of “permanent leaders”. Those leaders place their ability to control their organization above their professed claims to want to see the group grow and develop into an instrument for socialist revolution. The IBT was at this stage narrowly dominated by a leadership clique consisting of those who previously also had corrupt histories as SL leaders before being purged by their fellow bureaucrats. With the passage of time, the other senior members (without such corrupt previous histories) who helped found the group either left or were driven out, while the remaining leadership was never replenished by younger comrades, becoming smaller in composition and acting as a tight self-protective unit in all their dealings with the rank and file.

Meanwhile, after almost 30 years of existence, much of the ranks also aged and grew increasingly tired and passive in reaction to the lack of any significant organizational breakthroughs. This allowed the remaining leadership to feel fewer and fewer constraints in their ability to use the corrupt unscrupulous methods they had previously wielded in their careers as SL leaders. These methods, along with some newly developed ones, were used on the IBT’s membership, sympathizing groups and peripheries for the purpose of maintaining their absolute control. Abandoning any hopes for growth and breakthroughs in the class struggle, the IBT (like its parents inside the SL) has instead opted to preserve internal order and allow itself to “die with dignity.

The IBT’s main role is to protect and preserve the personal legacies of its aging leadership (now all well into their 60’s) rather than seek to use their group as a vehicle for building a revolutionary party. Under such circumstances, any serious expression of differences inside the organization is seen as a threat to the stability of the organization and its new unstated purpose, rather than as an opportunity to correct errors and theoretically develop its membership. Fusion with our organization therefore, which roughly equals a third of the IBT’s current membership and which would eventually be included within the leadership of the fused organization, posed a threat to the IBT’s leaders’ current unchallengeable status. Our ability to differ with them may have also have re-politicized and set an example for others inside the IBT’s ranks to begin to speak up their minds. That is why the IBT chose to attempt to wreck our group rather than fuse with it.

In his resignation letter Sam Trachtenberg argued: “However formally correct its paper program may be for the moment, history has shown that the sort of organization which the IBT has developed into, a static, stagnating group dominated by a Machiavellian deeply entrenched permanent leadership, can never have younger comrades grow, develop, and therefore play little role in that process [of rebuilding the Fourth International].” Defense (or rather “preservation”) of the IBT’s history and program has thus become divorced from being an organic expression of the groups revolutionary aspirations and is instead used as a mechanism to transform the group into an authoritarian sect. The sects leaders become “guardians” of the “program” (or rather their own personal historic legacies). Along with the IBT, this has previously happened to the Spartacists and others. In the previously cited 1966 document on their split with Gerry Healy’s International Committee, the Spartacists explained;

“Under conditions of pronounced isolation of the world movement from the working class, the revisionists abandoned a working-class revolutionary perspective for an orientation toward petit-bourgeois formations such as Stalinist bureaucrats, social-democratic labor bureaucrats, and the nationalist leaderships of the colonial countries…  The British leaders seem to have responded to the “theoretical, political, and organizational crisis” of Trotskyism by retreating into “orthodoxy,” Their reaction to revisionism seems to have been that of high priests entrusted with the protection of holy writ; thus the emergence of an iron-fisted, authoritarian leadership.”

V – Final Attempt

In September, the CL’s newly elected leadership, that is those comrades inside our group who had previously been the most ardent in their desire to fuse with the IBT, reacted to the turn of events by convincing others of the need to re-establish contact and engage in discussions with RR. We had not, however, fully decided to close the door to the IBT yet. We wanted to be absolutely sure of any decision we were going to make. So we continued discussing with the IBT and communicated our reactions to their underhanded dealings with us in the hope they may be pressured to acknowledge wrongdoing and change their methods. The IBT’s response was to rationalize their behavior, disingenuously deny any wrongdoing, and attempt to convince us we were reacting in a paranoid manner. That was received by our members as an insult to our intelligence.

In a desperate attempt to deflect our course towards RR, the IBT sent us a limited selection of internal documents involving the departure of Trachtenberg from its ranks. Remarkably, the IBT leadership seemed deluded enough about their practices to think the documents put them in a good light. However, even the selection of documents they chose to send us showed a generalized pattern of the criminal bureaucratism that we experienced in our own relationship with them. In these documents, the leadership simultaneously denied and explicitly defended the use their use of bureaucratic procedures against past internal critics. They defended (secretly) withholding internal organizational information from their internal critics (including those who formally held positions of leadership before exiting), and attempts to prevent internal debates by putting the rest of the organization under informal discipline not to discuss their differences. This in effect transformed those comrades membership into a fiction. The IBT leadership argued that it was correct to use the same kinds of dishonest methods on members of their organization who they decide are in “rapid political motion” and sympathizing groups (not to mention others on the left) that they would use with opponent or enemy organizations.

The internal documents showed the leadership defending their right to use both “formal and informal sanctions” against members who present “opportunist politics”. Outside the fact that “opportunist politics” implies simple disagreement with the leadership rather than any actual organizational wrongdoing, the use of “informal sanctions” is an implicit defense of the bureaucratic leaderships right to pursue such “sanctions” informally, that is without ever formally pressing any charges or even informing the comrade as part of their effort to either break them or drive them out without, at the same time, leaving any record of bureaucratic wrongdoing on their part.

The document also showed similar methods used to drive out Trachtenberg, one of the few remaining IBT comrades with a record of opposing the leadership on many questions (which included their initial attempt to have the IBT support voting for Hugo Chavez to stay in in office during the 2004 recall referendum in Venezuela). Even the partial record they sent us showed a pattern of attempts to demoralize him and, as with others, transform his membership into a fiction. The leadership also attempted to exploit his history of depression by frequently alluding to the possibility that his criticisms of their organizational methods were due to a “mental disorder.”

The IBT’s leadership tells their members that groups, such as ours, who decide to end contact due to such bureaucratic methods in reality do so due to hidden opportunist disagreement. The IBT has attempted to publically rewrite history by making similar claims about a fraternal Argentine group which translated most of the documents currently on the Spanish section of their sites.

“A less public, but more significant, setback was our failure to successfully regroup with a small circle of Argentine comrades who appeared to be rather close to us programmatically. This is partly attributable to language difficulties, but a more important factor was a gap in political culture manifested in differences over the tasks and priorities of a micro-propaganda group.”

http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no28/no28IBTConference.html

But the documents they sent us indicate the Argentine group broke contact due to the sort of dishonest behind the scenes manipulations we ourselves have experienced and their own selection of documents verify they’ve used with so many others. We have little reason to not assume that similar false explanations will be given about our decision. While we have been informed by recent ex-IBT members that most of the IBT’s ranks have been given very little information by their leaders about us for the past 3 years, it is their responsibility to face the painful reality and recognize that our experience with their organization follows a long pattern that will continue to be repeated.

VI – Conclusion

We have not abandoned our revolutionary program! We continue to defend the political legacy of the Spartacist League and the political legacy of the International Bolshevik Tendency until their respective bureaucratic degenerations. We will not be demoralized by this experience! We will not draw false conclusions on the impossibility of re-building a revolutionary Fourth International, or rationalize the situation publically by changing our politics as the IBT’s bureaucratic leadership hopes. We have only concluded that the contemporary IBT can no longer contribute to rebuilding a revolutionary workers movement.

We will continue to critically analyze the IBT’s history to better understand the reasons for its degeneration, as well as the degeneration of its predecessors. We will continue seek out comrades and groups interested in rescuing the important contributions of organizations which once represented Trotskyist continuity, rather than looking to defend the histories of leaders who themselves played a role in their degeneration. Our objective is to build a party capable of leading a revolution – which means being unafraid of taking organizational risks when necessary and maintaining a healthy internal life where critics are treated in an honest loyal manner, and are able to challenge long held orthodoxies without persecution. A party that can swim against the stream in defending temporarily unpopular ideological conquests as well as be capable of reviewing previously held positions if they have been shown to be wrong.

Therefore, we declare our fraternal relations with Revolutionary Regroupment. We invite those IBT militants and ex-militants who remain uncorrupted by their experience, as well as others who may agree with our political objectives, to discuss with Revolutionary Regroupment and with the Coletivo Lenin on how to go forward.

Saudações Comunistas!

Coletivo Lenin/Brazil

December 2010

[*] Note from Revolutionary Regroupment: Although we maintain what we see as the central elements of the Lenin Collective program, from the first moment after our separation we abandoned most of the positions described in the first four points (except for the characterization of China as a deformed workers state, but without the undue comparison with the Soviet NEP). Even within CL, these were unconsolidated positions among most members, reflecting a certain programmatic looseness.

Bolshevism and Trotskyism

Defending our history

[First Printed in Marxist Bulletin #8, February 1999. Copied from http://www.bolshevik.org/mb/8trotskyism.htm ]

In the middle of last year, Marxist Bulletin supporters received a document from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) which stated their desire to ‘clarify the attitude of a number of Trotskyist organisations and individuals towards the project of revolutionary unity at this stage’.

The CPGB are advocating a process of ‘rapprochement’, which consists of attempting to convince other groups on the left to join with them in the ‘Communist Party’ and argue out political differences within that framework.

The International Bolshevik Tendency has a different project. We believe that shared organisational frameworks and communist discipline grow out of fundamental programmatic agreement and cannot precede it. Building such programmatic convergence in a party with the strength to implement its programme is the historic task of communists today – but we cannot take shortcuts by simply bringing larger numbers together.

The CPGB say that they had been asked to ‘provide a “collective position” on Trotskyism by some comrades’ to help in that process. While stating that they were incapable of coming to a collective position (and could not even understand why they should even try) they did provide a set of ‘brief notes’ to act as a ‘gateway to exchange’. Apparently this document has also been sent to a number of other ‘Trotskyist’ organisations.

These eight points were indeed brief on one important thing – the closest they came to addressing the political and programmatic differences between Trotskyism and Stalinism was in point 5 which mentioned internationalist opposition to socialism in one country along with other unspecified positions.

For a group breaking from Stalinism this is hardly a serious approach to an analysis of Trotskyism and shows a weakness in understanding the centrality of programmatic clarity to Bolshevism. The CPGB need to explain where they stand on the central programmatic distortions of Bolshevism by the Stalinists and the defence of that Bolshevik programme by Trotsky (programmatic distortions which lead, where they had any significant influence, to real material disasters for the working class). One would have thought that this was particularly important in a letter specifically aimed at persuading groups who call themselves Trotskyist to enter serious discussions. It is incumbent on the CPGB to show that they have truly broken from the political revisionism of Stalinism.

In the interests of political clarity and debate we reproduce the letter from the CPGB and our reply, as first printed in the Weekly Worker of 16 July 1998.

……….

Frozen in dogma

Notes by Mark Fischer in consultation with PCC members

1. Leon Trotsky was a great intellect of the 20th century, one of the two towering figures of the Russian Revolution. The calumny heaped onto the head of this revolutionary should be rejected with contempt by all partisans of the working class.

2. Despite this, Trotsky’s contribution to the revolutionary workers’ movement did not constitute a qualitative development of the theoretical categories of Marxism, an extension according to its own logical laws of development. In this sense therefore, there is no ‘Trotskyism’ in the same way there is a ‘Leninism’.

3. In the struggle against the rising bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky and the left (and later, the united) opposition defended many positions of orthodox revolutionary Marxism, centrally the need for world revolution. However, Trotsky made numerous tactical errors in the inner-party struggle, blunders that contributed to eventual defeat. Crucially, Trotsky failed to correctly estimate the potential strength of the Stalin centre, based on the Party apparatus. In this error, he evidenced a tendency to mechanically collapse political forces into social base. This combined with a certain technocratism contributed to the eventual political fragmentation of the opposition, with many capitulating to Stalin after 1928.

4. Trotsky’s analysis of the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party and the social consequences of the USSR’s isolation contained many brilliant insights. Yet it must be taken as the product of the provisional working categories of a brilliant Marxist attempting to understand the laws of motion of a totally unprecedented social formation in the very process of its emergence and consolidation.

5. Thus, to the very end of his life, Trotsky’s thought revealed development and dynamic tensions within itself. This is true despite a certain degeneration of his thought conditioned by the intense pressure of Stalinism and his personal isolation. It is entirely possible that – given the developmental logic of his ideas before his assassination – Trotsky would have been able to resolve the contradictions in his analysis positively, to critique and outgrow his conditional category of ‘degenerated workers’ state’.

6. Trotsky’s followers subsequently froze his method and these provisional categories into dogma. This was evident in the immediate aftermath of World War II and was a characteristic of both sides in the 1953 split in Trotskyism. Trotskyism thus emerged – in contrast to the method of Trotsky at his best – as sterile sectarianism.

7. We observe that today Trotskyism in Britain is embodied in general in two degenerate forms. First, there are the tiny, biblical sects engaged in squabbles over the letter of Trotsky’s work, not his method and its results in the real world. Second, where Trotskyist groups have attempted to relate to the mass, they have adapted to social democracy and become practically indistinguishable from left social democrats.

8. The place for all revolutionaries and communists is in a single revolutionary party. Trotskyists committed to the creation of a mass revolutionary workers’ party should begin immediate discussions with the Provisional Central Committee with a view to the reunification of Trotskyism with the Communist Party of Great Britain.

……….

Lenin’s Heir

Reply by supporters of the Marxist Bulletin/IBT

We have recently received a document from the CPGB presenting some views on Trotskyism and asking for a response. While we do not think this is a subject that can be adequately covered in a short exchange, we would like to make a few essential points in defence of Trotskyism.

You suggest that, unlike Lenin, ‘Trotsky’s contribution to the revolutionary workers’ movement did not constitute a qualitative development of the theoretical categories of Marxism’. However, it is not clear what ‘theoretical categories’ of Marxism you mean, and what contributions to their development you ascribe to Lenin. In our view, Lenin’s most important political contribution to the Marxist tradition was on the Party question – rejecting the social democratic notion of a party of the whole class in favour of a disciplined, democratic-centralised combat party composed of only the most advanced workers. Some of Lenin’s other important contributions are his analysis of the nature of the imperialist epoch, his programme for addressing the national question, his development of the tactics of the united front, and his recognition of the importance of the proletarian vanguard championing the interests of the specially oppressed.

Trotsky was Lenin’s continuator on all these questions – not merely in the abstract but in politically combating the revisionism of the bureaucratised CPSU led by JV Stalin. In addressing the central political questions that arose in the 1920s and 30s, Trotsky certainly extended and deepened Lenin’s programme ‘according to its own logical laws of development’. The Trotskyists upheld the internationalist traditions of Marx and Lenin against the narrow Russian nationalism of ‘socialism in one country’. Against the criminal sectarianism of the Stalinised Comintern’s denunciations of social democrats and other members of the workers’ movement as ‘social fascists’, the Left Opposition advocated the creation of a united front to smash the Nazis, modelled on the Bolshevik Party’s united front with Kerensky to defeat Kornilov in 1917.

In China, Trotsky counterposed a policy of working class political independence to the Comintern leadership’s disastrous policy of capitulation to the ‘anti-imperialist’ bourgeoisie. The Trotskyists opposed the Comintern’s turn to the popular front (i.e. overt class collaboration) in the mid-1930s. The Comintern’s popular front policy in Spain succeeded only in beheading the Spanish revolution and directly resulted in Franco’s victory. During World War II in the ‘democratic’ imperialist countries, the cadres of the Fourth International upheld the Leninist position that ‘the main enemy is at home’, while the Stalinists poisoned the workers with social-patriotism.

Trotsky brilliantly analysed the social roots of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. He located the profound contradiction embedded in the degenerated Soviet workers’ state between the proletarian property forms and the political monopoly of the parasitic caste headed by Stalin. Trotsky’s prediction – that if the Soviet workers did not rise in a proletarian political revolution to overthrow the Kremlin oligarchy, the Soviet Union would ultimately succumb to capitalist restoration – has (unfortunately) been fully vindicated by history.

The designation ‘Trotskyism’ is important precisely to distinguish Bolshevism from Stalinism – the ideology of the gravediggers of revolution. But one cannot counterpose Leninism to Trotskyism, any more than one can counterpose Marxism to Leninism. Of course Marx, Lenin, Trotsky (and countless others) addressed different questions and made distinctive contributions, but they are all contributors to the development of humanity’s ‘positive self-consciousness’.

Trotsky is no more responsible for the multiplicity of ‘Trotskyists’ who prostrate themselves before Lech Walesa, Ayatollah Khomeini or Tony Blair than Marx or Lenin are for the crimes of ‘Marxist-Leninists’ like Stalin or Pol Pot. (The history of the Trotskyist movement after Trotsky can only be understood in the context of the struggle against the Pabloist revisionism that destroyed the Fourth International.)

A revolutionary party can only be created by embracing the living tradition of Leninism – and that must mean a decisive rejection of Stalinism. Instead of ‘socialism in one country’ – world revolution; in place of the minimum/maximum programme – a revolutionary transitional programme of the sort advocated by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A ‘reunification’ of the Trotskyist and Stalinist traditions would be just as retrograde as a reconciliation between Leninism and Kautskyism.

On Sunday July 19 we will be speaking on the subject of the transitional programme at a CPGB seminar in London. We will also be presenting the Trotskyist view on the Soviet Union at your ‘Communist University’ in August. We hope that these discussions can help further clarify the differences between our two organisations. Perhaps a process of discussion and debate can narrow the political distance between us. In any case we think it would be a mistake to paper over these differences in the interest of promoting the appearance of ‘revolutionary unity’ where there is none. For the question of Trotskyism versus Stalinism is not merely a historical question – it poses issues of methodology and programme that are crucial to building a viable international revolutionary movement today.

A Communist Perspective

for Student/Educational Struggles

[The following is a slightly edited English translation of “A New Political Group at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University: Join the Hora de Lutar [Time to Fight].” The statement was distributed to students on August 2010 at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University as an introduction to the Coletivo Lenin’s student group on campus..]

Hora de Lutar [Time to Fight] was formed by the Coletivo Lenin in the aftermath of the last student union elections. It was necessary to form a new group which was politically independent of existing student organizations, and which based itself programmatically on orienting students to the working class.

An alliance with the working class is essential for winning even the smallest steps towards the goal of a free quality university education, since the working class produces all the wealth in society and compromises the majority of the population. Student struggles will therefore only be effective and have lasting long-term value if they are linked to a working class political strategy. Only when the working class takes power and establishes its democratic political rule can we ensure that the wealth it produces be used to meet society’s needs. Otherwise, even the very small and specific temporary reforms that have been won under capitalism remain fragile and reversible with a change in the correlation of forces. This will remain true as long as the capitalists and their political agents continue to rule society. In this statement, we offer students a brief political evaluation of other left groups active at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University and some of our main programmatic proposals related to current campus struggles.

***

Elections for the Rio de Janeiro Federal University student union are a time when many questions get debated and help highlight and clarify the differences between competing political groups. The left groups who ran in the last elections all opportunistically lowered their politics and limited themselves to demands they believed would win them more votes.

In their initial slate meetings, Correnteza [Stream], student group of the orthodox Stalinist Partido Comunista Revolucionário, put forward a highly advanced program of an alliance with workers which included a call for a universal free quality education. But as the campaign developed, they politically retreated from that initial platform, chose to drop the call for open admissions and limited themselves to defending the currently existing affirmative action programs.

A Plenos Pulmões [With All the Strength of Lungs], student group of the formerly Morenoite Liga Estratégia Revolucionária – Quarta Internacional, took a similar political turn. Their slate also limited themselves to only defending racial quotas, even though they frequently claim to be militant fighters for open admission, instead choosing to leave the demand for their “Sunday Socialism” speeches and articles. Calls for solidarity with and permanently hiring the campus’s grossly underpaid and predominantly black and female temp agency workers were similarly scrapped. While these issues were at first prominently raised in their initial leaflets, they were simply disappeared from subsequent statements once the campaign was in progress.

Despite having many serious political differences between themselves (including whether or not to break away from the National Student Union), student supporters of the Morenoite Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado and the Mandelite Enlace chose to run as part of a common slate which mostly did not go beyond advocating increasing the school budget and some other minor reforms. The minimal low level quality of the politics put forward was necessary to ensure the participation of both groups, who could only run as part of a joint slate by publically burying their existing differences. Both groups could have raised the level of political discourse and clarity amongst both students and their own supporters had they chose to openly debated these issues instead

We support participating in united fronts with other groups around specific issues and campaigns we may agree on. While engaging in joint struggles, everyone would maintain their political independence and be free to raise disagreements and express their full politics. On the other hand, opposing groups which choose to participate on a common political platform, such as an election slate, are forced to dishonestly water down and hide their politics in order to get elected. Besides, there is no purpose for socialists to be in the students’ union leadership unless it is to openly lead their struggles in a socialist direction.

While the working class taking state power can guarantee free access to and make vast improvements to social programs such as education, health, housing and transportation, this would simply not be possible for any government tied to the capitalists and their system. The last 8 years of Brazil being governed by Lula and the PT [Workers Party] has amply demonstrated this. Unfortunately, large sections of the student movement are under the direct influence and control of this very government. Even while defending REUNI and PROUNI, government programs designed to attack public universities by transferring large chunks of their budgets to fund private universities, student supporters of the PT [Workers Party] and PCdoB [Communist Party of Brazil] formed a common electoral slate and were able to reach second place.

Despite its bureaucratic leadership, the UNE is still the largest student union federation in the country. It is therefore necessary to participate in it while maintaining a perspective of fighting against students illusions in the government and its supporters in the leadership. We believe those groups who call for abandoning the UNE to create a new federation (such as the PSTU-controlled ANEL [Free Students National Assembly]), are therefore making a serious tactical mistake. We are not for abstaining from ANEL either, but as participants also oppose the politics of its leadership and argue for ending the organizational division amongst student unions.

We invite those who agree with our aims to join our new organization. Along with the selection of demands raised in the charter below we also fight for others, including – free childcare and cafeterias open to students, teachers and all workers; down with the super-exploitation of female and black workers – equal pay for equal work; for the integration of temp agency and other part time workers into the permanent workforce; and for student/ campus-worker control of the universities.

HORA  DE  LUTAR Charter

I) Our group’s central task is in politically connecting student’s struggles to those of the working class. Most of us will either become workers in the future or already work to pay for our education. So we either already now, or will upon graduation, share the same interests as the rest of the working class. The values and ideology of exploitation are also deeply integrated into the present educational system, whose main purpose is to instill them into students from the earliest age as a way of politically and socially conditioning us in preparation for our future roles as disciplined workers in a capitalist society.

II) We oppose all policies aimed at the super-exploitation of young people at the workplace. We oppose poorly (or non) – paid internships/apprenticeships where the real aim is more frequently to exploit rather than teach us. We are opposed to poor starting salaries and the lack of job security for less experienced workers, which particularly effect youth and force them to the bottom of the job market.

III) We fight for a truly free and universal higher education, which must include financial assistance that would cover all living expenses, including food, transportation, housing, textbooks as well as leisure and cultural needs. Such assistance must also allow students to attend school without the obligation of working to support ourselves and studying at the same time, which frequently damages our academic progress and leads many to drop out of college.

IV) Education can only be free if it is accessible to everyone. Thus we fight for an end to admission tests. We are for the expropriation of all private universities and vastly expanding and improving the quality of the public university system.

V) We defend affirmative action as a partial gain, while also recognizing it’s inadequacy in addressing racial inequality for more than a minority. So while defending affirmative action, our main demand is for free tuition and open admissions for all, which would permanently end the universities status as the elite racist institutions they currently are.

VI) We fight against every form of oppression, such as sexism and racism, mechanisms for increasing capitalist profits through the super-exploitation of the oppressed, and for hindering the organization and dividing the struggles and of workers and students.

VII) We are opposed to the state and its armed bodies (such as the police and the military), which exist to serve the interests of the ruling class. We oppose the Brazilian military’s international presence, as in Haiti, where it suppresses black workers and helps maintain order to protect the property interests of the Haitian and international bourgeoisie.

Then, As Now, CLC Tops Were Main Obstacle to Victory

The 1934 San Francisco General Strike

[First printed in Workers Vanguard #109, 14 May 1976]

The recently defeated San Francisco craft workers’ strike induced many comparisons with the S.F. general strike of 1934. International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (lLWU) leader Harry Bridges, who played a key role in sparking the 1934 strike, remarked ironically at one point: “Well. I came in during a general strike, and it looks like I may be going out with one.” Although this year’s conflict never reached the proportions of the earlier struggle which proved the major event in making San Francisco into a union town for several weeks it teetered on the brink of becoming a general strike. It was above all the actions-and inaction of Bridges and his cronies that stood in the way,

The most important of the lessons of 1934, confirmed this year as well, is the need to defeat and take leadership away from the treacherous pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. In 1934 Teamster president Michael Casey and Central Labor Council head Edward Vandeleur sold out the general strike. If the struggle for union recognition did not suffer an irremediable setback it was only because the leadership of a key section of the workers– the maritime workers– was in the hands of rank-and-file militants who were able to at least conduct an orderly retreat. In 1976 every union was controlled by hardened bureaucrats– from CLC head John Crowley to Harry Bridges, the completely domesticated militant of yesteryear– and there existed no elected strike committees at all, a fact which is central in explaining the total rout of the workers. The whole bunch of labor fakers, moreover, give political support to the Democratic “friends of labor” who are among the most dangerous leaders of the union-busting crusade.

How It Began

The general strike of 1934 grew out of the shipping companies’ determination to smash the reviving dock workers’ union. In the years since the destruction of the AFL longshoremen’s union in 1919, employers had a free hand in dictating working conditions on the waterfront. Longshoremen were forced to join a company union to get work, militants were blacklisted, the speed-up was grueling, and bribery and favoritism were the rule in the daily “shapeup.”

By the middle of 1933, however, partly under the impetus of the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA), of which section 7(a) purported to guarantee the right of union organization, there was a mass influx of longshoremen into the virtually defunct AFL union, the International Longshoremen’s Association (lLA).

The union’s demands, which were circulated up and down the Coast and used as the basis for recruiting new members, included: union recognition, union-controlled hiring halls with preference for ILA members (closed shop), a six-hour day /30-hour week, and a wage increase from 85 cents per hour to $1 (with $1.50 for overtime). By early March 1934 the employers had already decided to oppose these demands unconditionally, provoke a strike and break the union. After an initial delay, a coastwide longshore strike began on May 9 and rapidly gained support from the other maritime trades, tying up shipping on the entire coast.

The shippers retaliated by using oldline AFL leaders, principally ILA president Joseph Ryan, to compel arbitration of the key issues. When that failed, they attempted to open the S.F. port by force. But the strike held solid for 80 days. When police killed two strikers and the governor sent in the National Guard, the result was a three day general strike in San Francisco.

These events did not occur spontaneously, however. Supporters of the Communist Party and the” Albion Hall” group (named after their meeting place) around Harry Bridges, provided the driving force behind the struggle to build the union. It was these militant trade unionists who, while unable to present a program of consistent class struggle, pushed the strike forward. Their serious errors led to the betrayal of the general strike by the treacherous AFL misleaders, but without these militants the strike probably never would have happened in the first place,

The Communist Party, by that time a pliant tool of the Stalinist counterrevolutionary bureaucratic usurpers in the Kremlin, was still operating on the basis of the ultra-left sectarian “Third Period” line laid down by Stalin in 1929. Following this policy both the New Deal and the AFL union tops were denounced as “fascist” and dual unions were the order of the day, The Stalinist dual union on the West Coast waterfront was the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), composed of both seamen and longshoremen.

After 1933, however, the Stalinist line began to shift in an empirical reaction to Hitler’s unopposed march to power in Germany. Already preparing to build “popular-front” alliances with liberal bourgeois politicians, the Stalinist parties began to reconsider working in the unions dominated by old-line bureaucrats. Thus when longshoremen flocked to their historic AFL union in 1933-34, CP cadres followed and were thus able to link up with Bridges’ group, rather than being totally isolated in their own sectarian “red” union.

The longshoremen who began joining the ILA in 1933 faced difficulties at once. The employers defended the “Blue Book,” a company union formed after the defeat of the 1919 strike, and fired workers for wearing ILA buttons on the job or for not having their “Blue Book” dues paid up. The newly elected ILA leadership advised workers to refer such disputes to the NRA administration, which promptly ruled that the “Blue Book” was a bonafide union! It was the “Albion Hall” group which actually built the AFL union by organizing job actions and a successful strike against Matson Lines in 1933, to reinstate four fired workers.

Membership dissatisfaction with NRA stalling was evident and a coastwide ILA convention was called for February 1934. Bridges prepared for it by making a tour of the Northwest ports, discussing the issues and urging the election of militant delegates from the ranks. As a result, the convention adopted a democratic constitution and called for the federation of all unions in the industry, which drastically cut across craft-union prejudices. The interunion solidarity prepared for by the militants at this convention was critical: seamen had crossed longshoremen’s picket lines in 1919, while the longshoremen scabbed on seamen in 1921.

Following the employers’ flat refusal to bargain- based largely on the assessment that the West Coast union was in the hands of radicals who had to be smashed- and the taking of a coastwide strike vote, Bridges initiated an elected strike committee in the San Francisco Bay area. Delegates, who were elected from the docks and gangs on both sides of the Bay as well as from casuals totaled nearly 50 in number. The need for such a measure became even clearer when the head of the ILA Pacific Coast District. “Burglar Bill” Lewis, unilaterally called off the strike in March on a request from F.D.R.

The Key: Inter-Union Solidarity

The strike finally got under way on May 9, and inter-union solidarity of maritime workers was the key to its initial success. The MWIU led its members off the ships as they hit port. This sparked general walkoffs of seamen, even from foreign ships, and the eventual sanctioning of the strike by the AFL seamen’s union. Other maritime crafts also walked off in sympathy and a joint strike committee, as called for by the ILA convention, was set up, with each union pledging not to return to work until the others had settted. Shipping on the entire West Coast was halted.

Despite this militant maritime solidarity, support from truck drivers remained critical to the success of the strike. The shippers immediately recruited scabs ·-many of them students from the University of California dubbed the “scab incubator”- to unload the ships, while police armed with an anti-picketing ordinance kept the strikers at a distance. Over the vigorous objections of its president, Michael Casey, however, the S. F. Teamsters local voted not to move scab goods off the piers. By May 27, there were at least 25,000 workers out, and the San Francisco port alone was losing $100,000 per day because of the strike.

While maritime workers were marching on the Embarcadero, ILA president Ryan, a fossilized craft unionist who defended the “shape-up” system against hiring halls, flew into town at the request of government mediators and attempted to convince longshoremen to arbitrate wages and hours and accept a jointly controlled hiring hall (i.e., leaving control in the employers’ hands) with no closed shop provision. Though roundly voted down in all ports, he proceeded to sign an agreement to this effect about two weeks later in San Francisco Mayor Rossi’s office, pledging the longshoremen’s compliance with the agreement. But the dockers rejected the deal, and Ryan was booed off the platform in the San Francisco local. More importantly, Ryan’s treachery made the need for militant leadership clear, and the joint strike committee established earlier was empowered by the ranks to replace the regular executive board in handling negotiations.

At this point, city rulers represented by the S. F. Chamber of Commerce and the Industrial Association decided to open the port by force. Trucking goods from the piers to the warehouses was the employers’ immediate tactical objective, so they focused on breaking Teamster support for the strike. Police formed cordons for scab trucks and attacked strikers. For two days clubs flailed, and on “Bloody Thursday,” July 5, two strikers were’ killed by police bullets. The port was immediately occupied by the National Guard.

Bridges and the Communist Party (CP) had already begun agitation for a general strike in response to the employers’ “open the port” declaration, and now the movement mushroomed, although stalling AFL leaders prevented immediate action. Bridges and 1,000 longshoremen and seamen were present at a July 11 Teamster meeting, despite protests from Casey and CLC president Vandeleur, who argued vigorously against the strike. Through rank-and file pressure, Bridges was allowed to address the Teamsters, and an overwhelmingly pro-strike vote was taken following his speech.

Similar delegations of up to 75 strikers were sent to other unions throughout the city, with similar results. Sympathy strikes were declared by ship boilermakers, machinists, welders, butchers and laundry workers. By July 13, 32,000 workers belonging to 13 unions were on strike. Some of them, like the Market Street streetcar employees, put forward their own contract demands.

The Central Labor Council was rapidly being forced to revise its tactics under this intense pressure. Earlier in June it had passed a resolution demanding that the ILA “disavow all connections with the communistic element on the waterfront.” However, to undercut the rising general strike sentiment after “Bloody Thursday” the CLC set up a Strategy Committee, which stalled for a week while supposedly “studying” the possible implementation of a general strike. The CLC also sent a whining telegram to the governor, saying that the National Guard wasn’t necessary because the city police were well-equipped to do their job. And this, after they had just murdered two strikers!

General Strike!

The maritime strike committee had called a mass meeting for July 7, to which all Bay Area unions had been urged to send delegations for the purpose of implementing general strike action and forming a broad strike leadership. The support for a general strike was solid, but when the establishment of the officials’ Strategy Committee was announced the maritime committee decided to postpone action in order not to undercut the CLC which was apparently taking steps toward a general strike. This deferral by Bridges and his CP supporters to the Labor Council bureaucrats handed the strike leadership to labor fakers whose sole aim was to betray the strike. This was the critical mistake of the militants, from which disastrous consequences inevitably followed.

The CLC began to feel an increasing pressure for strike action. Finally, the Strategy Committee asked all city unions to send five delegates each to a meeting July 14, at which a vote of 315 to 15 authorized a general strike for July 16. A strike committee was appointed by the Labor Council, consisting for the most part of salaried union officials who were chummy with the top AFL bureaucrats.

On Monday, July 16, the city was seriously crippled, but the CLC began to sell out the general strike from the very first day. Employees of the Municipal Railway (Muni) were told to return to work on the grounds that striking would jeopardize their civil service status. Phone, telegraph and power workers were never called out on strike, leaving communications in the grip of the bourgeoisie. Printing union leaders dangled the restoration of a 10 percent pay cut before the eyes of union members, convincing them to stay at work. Moreover, since the CLC did not publish a central strike bulletin, the city’s workers were totally dependent for news on the bosses’ press, none of which supported the strike. A publisher’s committee censored all newspapers to make sure the strike was slandered and red-baited from every column. The Hearst papers in particular were so vicious that several unions took boycott action and their members refused to read them!

Sheet metal workers were told by the CLC to repair police cars, a traitorous act providing direct aid to the military fist of the class enemy. While originally only a few services, such as hospitals and milk deliveries, were allowed to function, permits were soon given to hundreds of owner-operators of trucks, amid charges of scandals in issuance of permits. Numbers of restaurants were allowed to open, feeding the rich, while many small groceries were kept closed.

In addition, squads of police agents, posing as dissatisfied workers, were organized to carry out a vicious witchhunt. On the second day of the strike (and with at least tacit support of the AFL bureaucracy), these provocateurs went on an anti-communist rampage, smashing the offices of the CP’s Western Worker, the IWW and the MWIU. The police who “mopped up” after them arrested more than 300 “radicals” in one day. Militants were even pulled out of picket lines and victimized. These activities had a demoralizing effect on the strike, and the CP’s isolation from the labor movement plus its tactical sectarianism made it difficult to mobilize a broad defense against these “red scare” attacks. Meanwhile, Bridges’ strike committee had already undercut the defense by affirming that, while it was willing to accept support from any source, it was an “anti-communist” organization (Charles Larrowe, Harry Bridges, 1972).

Bureaucratic Sabotage

On July 17 the CLC strike committee presented a resolution to the city unions calling for arbitration of all issues in dispute. This passed the assembled body of delegates, over the protests of the maritime unions, by a hand vote of 213 to 180. The labor brass then met with General Hugh Johnson, head of Roosevelt’s supposedly “pro-labor” National Recovery Administration, who had just denounced the strike in violent terms. With such “leadership,” it was easy to call off the general strike only three days after it began. Even so, the vote was close and the ranks never voted to return to work.

With the general strike over, the Teamsters could then be pressured to end their strike on July 20, but only after verbal assurances from Casey that this would not mean handling scab cargo. Yet the next day truck drivers found themselves going through picket lines under armed guard, while Casey’s goons helped police protect them from the strikers! This final blow forced the longshoremen to vote to accept arbitration on July 21 and return to work ten days later. In the intervening period, however, they provided a dramatic display of solidarity to other maritime unions. Although they had voted to go back, the longshoremen honored their commitment to stay out until all other maritime unions had also voted. When the maritime workers returned, they all marched across the Embarcadero together, as an unbroken group.

Although the general strike was sold out and the dockers were forced to accept arbitration of all their demands, the workers had built powerful union organizations and decisively smashed the company unions. The strikes strengthened the entire Bay Area labor movement with an influx of new members. And in the following months, maritime workers (both longshoremen and seamen) were able to establish the closed shop and union-controlled hiring halls through militant job actions, despite the fact they they lost on these points under the arbitration award.

Although the leadership provided by the Albion Hall group and CP was decisive at several points in preventing defeat of the 1934 strike at the hands of ILA chief Ryan and his cronies- and in laying the basis for the later creation of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific- both faiIed at the critical point to prevent domination of the general strike by the AFL bureaucrats. The AFL tops, in turn, after spending months trying to cram arbitration by Roosevelt’s NRA down the throats of the longshoremen, only took over leadership of the general strike because they were afraid of losing control of their organizations.

The Communist Party admitted shortly afterwards that:

“The Party. at the decisive moment when the bureaucrats stood isolated and the workers were rallying for the General Strike in the first meeting at which the General Strike leadership was elected, did not develop a struggle against the misleaders and saboteurs. It allowed them through this course to place themselves at the head of the General Strike and overcome their isolation by feigning support for the General Strike.”

-“Lessons of the Recent Strike Struggles.” CP Central Committee, 5-6 September 1934

Thus at the same time as it was victimized for its ultra-leftism, the CP adapted opportunistically to trade union militants within the maritime unions. The politics of the CP longshore fraction was indistinguishable from “rank-and-file” activists like Harry Bridges, who strongly distrusted the AFL bureaucrats but shrank from the task of challenging them for leadership at key points. Though militant, Bridges was never more than a practical trade unionist, ready to check the AFL leaders, but lacking a full political program for smashing the bureaucracy by building a class-struggle leadership.

Throughout the entire strike, although it lambasted the AFL, the CP refused to criticize Bridges’ conciliationist failures. And within a few short months, the “fraternal” alliance between Bridges and the CP became part of the Stalinists’ trade-union back-up for a “popular-front” alliance with Roosevelt, under which it ceased to play a militant role even on a trade-union level. Though persecuted for years as an “alien” and “Communist,” Bridges was soon transformed into a trade-union bureaucrat.

1934 and Today

The few general strikes that have broken out in the history of the U.S. labor movement have been of a localized and defensive character. This was true of San Francisco in 1934 and characterizes the situation today as well. Responsibility for the defeat of these strikes lies squarely with the reactionary leadership of the unions.

This year’s craft workers’ strike proves once again the treacherous role of the legalistic and cowardly union bureaucracy, which acts as the labor lieutenants of capitalism in sacrificing the most fundamental union gains and betraying the most bitterly fought struggles. These class traitors’ support for the bourgeoisie extends from obstructing the movement for a general strike to opportunistically seeking to take it over for the purpose of derailing it.

The task of revolutionaries is to begin now to lay the groundwork for ousting these dangerous fakers, by educating the working class in the need for uncompromising independence from the capitalists, exposing the betrayals of the present misleaders and providing militant leadership for the workers movement in its vital struggles. Only a strategy of consistent class struggle can lead to victory—the “realistic” conciliators have nothing to offer but defeat.

The Spartacist League, the Minority and Voix Ouvriere

By Liz Gordon

[Key internal factional document with supporters of the Voix Ouvriere/ Lutte Ouvriere group in France. First printed in Spartacist League Internal Bulletin #7, December 1968. Reprinted and scanned from the SL publication “Lutte Ouvriere and Spark: Workerism and National Narrowness”.]

While the Turner-Ellens-Stoute Mi­nority faction has not, at least yet, taken a formal position on the Voix Ouvriere group, the organizational meth­ods of VO, at least as described by Comrade Ellens, have played an important role in the present factional dispute in the SL. Presumably the Minority has chosen not to take a position as a fac­tion on the questions raised by Ellens’ report of 8 April 1968 on “Organiza­tional Methods” of a European Trotskyist group which was circulated by Comrade Ellens nationally. The group in ques­tion, the French “Union Communiste,” has since been dissolved by government de­cree as a result of the May general strike and its organs, Voix Ouvriere and the bilingual Lutte de Classe/Class Struggle, no longer appear. (The docu­ment submitted by Turner on 17 July 1968 is-the first document to be signed by the Minority comrades collectively.) At the same time, the tendency of which Comrade Ellens is a leading spokesman has concentrated its fire heavily on questions of organization and so-called “Leninist functioning.” Comrade Ellens’ first documentary contribution to the discussion was an attachment to the PB minutes of 25 March 1968, as a statement qualifying her vote in favor of Comrade Robertson’s motions on how we seek to function politically and organizational­ly. These motions were presented and motivated in the PB meeting of 4 March. Her entire statement was, “The three motions on organization do not take into account that we are not functioning in a Leninist manner. This must be done in their implementation.” While Comrade Ellens’ justification for having circu­lated her report on VO’s organizational methods herself and over the head of the PB was that the report was not a fac­tional document, her use of the time allotted her during her recent July trip to the Bay Area for a factional presen­tation to present the organizational ideas of VO has made it clear that VO is being used as a major factional issue by the Minority. This makes it necessary that the Majority respond to the issues raised.

It seems clear that the Minority, or Comrade Ellens at least, has been at­tempting to sell VO’s successes and impressive aspects, especially in lieu of a more concrete schema of proposals by them for what the SL should seek to be and to do. This is not to say that there has been no political basis of real differences in the founding of the Minority tendency. The general proposi­tion of “getting to the masses” and an implied policy of proletarianization as the solution to the SL’s ills has become more and more clear, and poses legiti­mate political questions which must be discussed in their own right. But the question of VO and its organizational methods has been a second current running through the proselytizing of Com­rade Ellens and, further, is one which ties in well, at least superficially, with the expressed concern with “getting to the working class,” since VO is pre­sented as being the model of a proletar­ian Trotskyist organization with proper “Leninist functioning” which the SL should emulate. VO has been used as a prime recruiting device of the Minority and is therefore de facto part of the Minority’s program for change.

It is in a way unfortunate that VO has become a factional football. The necessity of answering the attributions and attacks of the Minority makes us insist here on the weak sides of VO. The comrades must keep in mind that VO is in many respects a fine and Trotskyist organization, and it is not an accident that the SL has chosen to maintain fra­ternal relations between our two groups. Further, VO has behaved towards the SL and the IC (the two opportunities we have had to observe VO most closely) in a serious, comradely and scrupulous manner. Likewise, the comrades must keep in mind that, despite the Minority’s attempt to suggest an implicit identity between itself and VO, the Minority is not VO. In choosing to wear the mantle of VO, Ellens is implicitly assigning to VO her opinions of the SL and her con­cept of what VO is. A VO’er, for ex­am]ile, might choose to accentuate some of its disagreements with the SL over political questions which Comrade Ellens has not chosen to treat in her represen­tation of what is basic to that organi­zation. For another example, Comrade Ellens has stated that VO’s position against having full-time political func­tionaries is not very important and flows from a specific difference between French and U.S. conditions, i.e., the allegedly greater ease of getting a part-time job in France. Judging from the whole of VO’s organizational out­look, it seems likely that VO itself considers this question of considerable importance and strongly disapproves of having full-timers whose only political assignment is party work. In short, we cannot exclude the possibility that VO views itself differently from the way Comrade Ellens views it and/or that she has chosen to emphasize those ideas and aspects of VO which would be most “sale­able” to SL’ers, in order to recruit to her faction. Similarly, we have had rather little day-to-day contact with VO’s actual functioning and cannot judge whether Ellens’ picture of VO’s effi­ciency is idealized. One SL’er whose contact with VO was much more limited than Comrade Ellens’ points out that, despite Ellens’ assertion that “meetings start on time,” those which she [this other SL’er] attended started late, monthly meetings 45 minutes late, classes less so. Trivial reminders like this may serve to keep us within the bounds of reality. But the most impor­tant point, of course, is that we must not be misled by the spectre of VO being raised to lend weight to the arguments of the Minority; if Comrade Ellens has received the VO “franchise,” we are not aware of it.

False Comparison

One obvious point to be made about the use of VO as a factional point by Ellens is that the comparison is not particularly fitting. While the organi­zational theories of VO are certainly relevant points to be debated, as are VO’s political differences with the SL, VO certainly cannot be used as a measure of efficiency or effectiveness. Accord­ing to Comrade Ellens’ report, the VO organization has four times as many full members as the SL, four times as many candidate members and again four times as many organized sympathizers. Using our membership criteria, this would give them eight times as many members as we have (we do not distinguish in counting our members between fulls and candi­dates) and four times as many of a cate­gory for which we have no equivalent, but would be roughly whatever close contacts we have regular working rela­tions with in arenas and, in addition, have sufficient agreement with us to work with us to some extent as the SL, circulating the paper and the like. Thus the SL has at this point roughly one-twelfth VO’s strength in members and contacts. Clearly our existence is much more tentative, our standards for what makes a minimally acceptable member somewhat lower by necessity, and our expected efficiency of functioning in no way comparable. Further, while VO’s membership is overwhelmingly concen­trated in Paris, ours is very lightly spread over an area which, translated into French terms, extends over the equivalent of Paris to the. Sahara to the Urals. Hence the effective force we can bring to bear on the main American cen­ter, New York, is in the range of one one-hundredth of VO’s sheer numerical impact in Paris! It is clear that the burdens on our national center include not only maintaining local functioning in the political center of the country with far less concentrated forces but. also attempting to service a national organization with local groups thousands of miles away. While we must concern ourselves with VO’s theories of organi­zation, we must realize that to reduce them in our minds to being identical with VO’s more efficient functioning is to render them absurd.

Selection of Leadership

The actual organizational structure of VO is, in our terms, rather fright­ful. According to the information in Comrade Ellens’ written organizational report and verbal presentation to the PB of 30 January 1968, VO’s structure may be described as federated in the choos­ing of a national political leadership. (“Federated” in this context should not be taken to mean that locals are autono­mous in their coordination with each other or with the central leadership.) Members of the VO equivalent of the Central Committee are chosen on the following basis: one member of each cell is elected by the cell to serve on the higher body. This is not necessarily undemocratic (cells are undoubtedly of roughly equal size; this system is not equivalent to our having, for example, one representative apiece from Berkeley and Austin) but it is most certainly not Leninist. In a Leninist organization like the SL, the central political lead­ership is chosen by the membership as a whole irrespective of what local they come from, on the basis of political positions. Attempts to make VO’s system more workable in practice (for example, by having a second CC-level person from a cell choose to attend CC meetings as an observer, or juggling the membership in the cells to be sure that there is somebody qualified in each one–and who would get to gerrymander the cells in this way anyway?) may rectify individual inequities but are in principle not enough to reconcile this structure with Leninist principles of organization. Such a selection of national leadership on the highest bodies of the organiza­tion is clearly incompatible with proportional representation for national minority factions. If one cell is in its majority in opposition on some question, it can of course send somebody repre­senting its particular views to the CC. But what if a minority view is spread across several cells, without a majority in any? The selection of a leadership geographically, rather than on the sole basis of political views, does a funda­mental injustice to the right of fac­tional democracy in a Leninist organiza­tion. The right to factions is key in the Leninist method of determining the line of the organization. While it is quite likely that minority elements are given some leeway in the VO organi­zation–we have no knowledge of VO’s provisions for internal discussion–and may well be positively encouraged by the leadership, VO’s structure means that any representation of minority views necessarily has the character of a privilege, not a right. To be permit­ted–if they are permitted–to discuss differences internally is not enough; part of the Leninist concept of internal discussion is the right to stand for election on the basis of views, have representation proportional to the strength of those views in the entire organization, and seek to become a majority and determine the line of the organization. Minority views should not simply be aired as criticisms; there must be a mechanism for their competing with the majority line, which means ultimately the right to elect leaders embodying the line.

A further aspect of the selection of the political leadership is even strang­er. Three particular leading VO’ers are automatically put on the CC-type body, without standing for election by the membership in the cells or otherwise. While we have no evidence to indicate that the co-option of these particular leading comrades is anything but in accord with what would be the result if these designated leaders stood for elec­tion on the same basis as the others, it is certainly clear that such a provision leaves the door open to bureaucratic abuse of the worst sort. At best this feature is a kind of benevolent despo­tism, even if it is never abused.

Contact Work and Education

Other features of VO’s organiza­tional practice are quite good. These features are not so much structural as practical, although there are theories behind the emphasis they are given. Undoubtedly the most touted of these practices has been VO’s systematic con­tact work. Another is the heavy emphasis on internal Marxist education of mem­bers. I would hope it is clear that the SL is strongly in favor of both these practices. Energetic pursuit of contacts and an attempt to make high Trotskyists of all members are mainly just common sense. The New York local has adopted a motion in favor of energetic and sus­tained contact with contacts, and has put Comrade Ellens in charge of this aspect of functioning. The local has also nominated Ellens for local orga­nizer on two occasions in order to assist her in putting into action what­ever practical improvements in function­ing she had learned from VO or could think up. (She has repeatedly refused to accept the post, perhaps to avoid taking responsibility for making her schemas live up to the implied promises.)

At the same time there are features of VO’s emphases on systematic contact work and internal education which are not wholly positive. In our discussions in the PB following Comrade Ellens’ presentation, some comrades felt that the extreme emphasis on individual con­tacting seemed to produce an excessively linear assessment of tasks. A process of individual members discussing with indi­vidual contacts can proceed almost independently of the course of development of objective situation and struggle; each member should recruit a certain number of contacts per year by individu­ally convincing individuals. Such a conception leads to a kind of theory of stages; everybody recruits contacts until we reach a size of x members, then we move on to a different stage. (There is no room in such a conception for the possibility that under some circum­stances a group might get smaller rather than ever and automatically larger.) PB comrades also feared that such an ap­proach, if overemphasized, could lead to VO’s ignoring political struggle with competing organizations and leftward-moving sections of other groups, the possibility of splits in opponent groups on the basis of Bolshevik politics. The struggle to become the vanguard party entails not only increasing one’s own forces but also combating whatever “os­tensibly revolutionary organizations” are competing for the banner of revolu­tionary Marxism, by exposing them and seeking to win individual members and sections of such groups to one’s own program. Otherwise, all groups might grow by linear contacting, with little progress being made toward political clarification and the crystallization of a vanguard party.

Regarding internal Marxist education and a disdain for coffee-klatch, cafe-society politicking, this indicates first of all VO’s concern with being serious. But VO’s method of putting this desire into practice can be criticized. One of the features considered by VO, according to Comrade Ellens, as integral to this approach is the organizing of people according to their levels of commitment. The resulting division into full and candidate member cells has something of a hierarchical character. In the candidate member cells, each of which contains one full member assigned to it, a kind of student-to-teacher relationship could develop; instead of all members being considered as equals, the newer members would be second-class citizens. Great stress is put by Comrade Ellens on the advantages this type of organization offers for education and re-shaping the minds of new members in an anti-petty-bourgeois direction. How­ever, such a concept of education is a very formalistic one. With the exception of the monthly political meetings and the contact with the one assigned full member, the candidate members are iso­lated from working contact with the real cadres of the organization on the living political questions. In addition, the Leninist concept of education is that the most important way in which comrades are educated is through internal fac­tional struggle. Purely on educational grounds, then, the lack of this basic Leninist practice renders the VO concept of education purely formal in character. Education means to a Leninist far more than the study of texts.

Organization Tied to Politics

The function of organizational structure and methods is to safeguard against bureaucratic abuse and political stultification. While the leading cadre of VO may well lean over backwards to prevent these faults, whatever internal democracy exists in VO exists in spite of and not because of VO’s much-touted organizational procedures. We want our members to have rights, not to be con­stantly granted privileges by a benev­olent and paternalistic leadership.

Thus we have severe criticisms of VO’s organizational practices. Before going on to examine VO’s intimately related theoretical positions on organi­zational and political questions, we would like to establish that they are extremely relevant to the present dis­pute within the SL. No doubt the Minor­ity would like to disclaim responsibil­ity for VO’s positions, pointing out that they have never tried to defend all of VO’s views. In fact, our Minority would probably like to avoid defending any of them. Our Minority would like to stand entirely on the basis of VO’s functioning. And certainly, if one seeks only to demonstrate that VO is a more effective organization than the SL (i.e., visits more contacts, holds more classes, has more union fractions, has a better publication schedule) then one need not defend VO’s theories. But, as shown above, to show that an organiza­tion twelve times the size of another is more effective is not very startling, and cannot exhaust the relevance of the VO example in the eyes of the Minority. In having made VO a factional point, Comrade Ellens has made it incumbent upon her faction to show 1) that the SL’s weaknesses relative to VO are a result of the SL’s political line and/or its organizational practices, and 2) that the Minority’s program and pro­posals have the answer. So far, with the exception of the question of energetic contact work (which suggestion has been widely accepted by the organization and the leadership), no other specifics of VO’s practices have been frankly sug­gested for the SL out of the totality of the VO example. Yet this cannot possibly exhaust the criticisms of Comrade Ellens or explain why she felt it necessary to make an extended report on VO’s func­tioning as part of the time allotted her in the Bay Area for a factional presen­tation. It is hardly necessary to form a faction in order to argue for systematic contact work. What Ellens seeks to capi­talize on through raising the issue of VO is the non-success of the SL over the past year or so, during which time mem­bership size has been about constant. The Minority attempts to lay these dif­ficulties at the door of 1) our alleged­ly non-proletarian orientation and, 2) our allegedly non-Leninist mode of func­tioning. Both Ellens and Turner have submitted documents dealing with the first point; VO has been offered as the model of what we should be if not for the second. But to select a few gimmicks (e.g., systematic contacting) out of one’s model is not enough. Since VO is irrelevant as a quantitative measure of the SL (i.e., efficiency in function­ing), the Minority must mean VO to be a qualitative measure–i.e., relevant for its principles of organization, its politics, since the question of who has the right line is always relevant to any organization no matter what its size. The theories and practices of VO form an integrated whole, and the Minority must take responsibility for the organiza­tional and political theories of VO, not simply seek to take credit for its efficiency and its practical features.

Theory Behind Organizational Emphasis

Underlying VO’s emphasis on organi­zational methods is the proposition,. with which we heartily concur, that organizational questions are not sepa­rate from politics and that organiza­tional theories are themselves political questions. According to Ellens, the con­cern with organizational questions began during and after the second World War, when the individuals who were to form VO reacted against the increasing social-patriotism of the formerly-Trotskyist organizations in France. VO’s founders sought to determine what practices and concepts of functioning had facilitated the deterioration into revisionism. From Ellens’ representation to the PB of 30 January 1968: “They decided that the policies taken by the other groups had come about in the absence of contact with working-class areas, as a way of meeting widespread petty-bourgeois sen­timent. They wanted to avoid themselves coming under such strong petty-bourgeois influences. They saw that groups could change their policies very easily under pressure and concluded that this was a function of a lack of basic education and training and an attitude toward being a lifetime Trotskyist revolution­ary….” Ellens’ presentation to the PB of 6 May also dealt with this point and stressed VO’s determination to avoid functioning like an unserious, dilet­tantish discussion group. Ellens’ or­ganization report of 8 April deals with the necessity of rooting out petty-bourgeois hang-ups, proletarianization of the organization and of the minds of petty-bourgeois recruits and deepening seriousness and commitment. Through its internal education and organizational methods, VO, according to Ellens, is frankly trying to prevent the seeds of political degeneration from springing up in their organization.

At the London Conference of the IC in April 1966, the VO comrades submitted several documents dealing with the ques­tion of Pabloism and the Fourth Interna­tional. Their view was that this revi­sionism stemmed primarily from the petty-bourgeois composition of the Trot­skyist movement. To quote from their documents:

“…the the failure of the Fourth Inter­national was due to the refusal of its militants and of its leaders …to admit that the social compo­sition of the sections in majority petty-bourgeois, intellectuals, necessitated strict political and organization measures to keep out corrupt elements, and, as far as possible, to escape from the influ­ence of petty-bourgeois ideology by making a maximum effort to recruit within the working-class, and by obliging elements of petty-bourgeois origin to tie themselves to work in the factories…. Pabloism, in the form of liquidationism, was but the finished expression of this petty-bourgeois opportunism of all the sections of the International…. Pabloism was not the cause of the failure and the demise of the Fourth International; it was its product.”

And later:

“Our organization was born precisely of the necessity to separate physi­cally from the petty-bourgeois envi­ronment with its Social-Democratic practices which made up the Trotsky­ist organizations in France at the beginning of the war, to be able to recruit, educate and form cadres capable of putting into practice Leninist and Trotskyist organiza­tional principles and which were not content with ‘Bolshevik’ verbiage covering up opportunist practice. It is because we ran up against the sarcasm and incomprehension of the militants of the Fourth Interna­tional with respect to these ques­tions that we had to carry on an activity separate from the Fourth International, although we have always upheld its ideas and its program.”

Another document makes it clear that “petty-bourgeois ideology” is defined by VO by the class composition of those who hold the ideas; in another document they speak about seeing “the Pabloite degen­eration as an elaborated form of the ideology of certain strata of the petty-bourgeoisie influenced by the apparatus of imperialism and of the bureaucracy” (our emphasis). In our opinion, Pabloism is a petty-bourgeois ideology because it denigrates the idea of a proletarian class party and a proletarian revolution in favor of revolutions made by petty-bourgeois or bureaucratic strata in the interests of a class other than the proletariat–e.g., Negroes as a multi-class nationality, peasants in Latin America, a petty-bourgeois bureaucratic elite. On the question of the roots of Pabloism, see Spartacist No. 6, the statement of the SL delegation to the IC conference. While one may argue with merit that the lack of deep roots within the working class is a built-in source of weakness and can in changing circum­stances reinforce and even produce deep disorientation and a tendency to shift the axis of the party away from a revo­lutionary line, should one then conclude that a super-proletarian orientation is a safeguard against political error and revisionism? A number of questions are raised: Should one expel one’s members of petty-bourgeois origins? This would undoubtedly reduce the size and effec­tiveness of the organization, but surely it is preferable to have a small organi­zation with the right line than a large group which is necessarily centrist. How completely can one revamp the conscious­ness of one’s petty-bourgeois members by formal Marxist education? Or, alternate­ly, are one’s members of petty-bourgeois origins still petty-bourgeois despite having chosen to become “class traitors” in favor of the cause of the proletar­iat? What of Lenin’s concept of de­classed professional revolutionaries? With such an analysis, how does one ex­plain the conservative tendencies that have developed in the Russian Bolshevik party, or the CPUSA, or the SWP, among the party’s trade unionists? (Regarding the latter, see Cannon’s article on the Cochran group, “Trade Unionists and Revolutionists,” Fourth International  magazine, Spring 1954.) Or, on the most serious note, what do you do in.an ob­jective situation (which includes your size, composition and roots) in which you are not likely to have great success in reaching and recruiting workers? .

The Politics of VO

Continuing with the correct proposi­tion that politics and organization are intimately related, we come to the po­litical positions of VO. Let us note first of all that we are dealing here with the positions of difference between VO and the SL, which is to say, in our terms, with their wrong positions; we must continue to keep in mind that many of VO’s positions are correct. The Minority, ignoring the intimate con­nection between organizational and political questions, has chosen re­peatedly not to deal with VO’s political differences with the SL. They have not chosen to defend VO’s positions; neither have they put themselves on record as being opposed to them. In fairness to the Minority, this should be taken to constitute not necessarily agreement on VO’s politics, but rather an elaborate non-concern over political questions. Yet we must assume that VO itself, unlike the Minority, would agree that political questions are important in evaluating an organization. And perhaps this document will at least cause our Minority to tell us where they stand on VO’s political differences with the SL.

In general, VO’s emphasis on class composition is indicative of its semi-syndicalist deviation from Trotskyism. In a letter to a comrade in Europe on 20 January 1967 I characterized VO as having “an excessive concentration on ‘the point of production”‘ and as having “semi-syndicalist tendencies.” This leads them to a de-emphasis of the importance of Marxist theory and the con­sequent over-emphasis on organization. It is not an accident that in the “Out­line of Study-Week Session” reproduced in the Ellens document, of the 13 num­bered points 11 of them, in her words, “elaborate points on organizational methods.” VO seems to feel that it is defined primarily as a tendency by its organizational theories rather than by its politics; and in the sections quoted above from the documents presented to the IC conference VO frankly defines its modes of functioning as the basis for its separate existence.

VO’s semi-syndicalist deviation from Trotskyism (which is not to say that VO has a semi-syndicalist perspective or that it is not Trotskyist) is the main methodological point which produces both VO’s political strengths and its politi­cal weaknesses. In its domestic line, VO was the only left-of-Stalinism organiza­tion with a significant base in the working class, but was limited in its influence in the radical student move­ment. Unlike the SWP’s orientation ex­clusively to the petty bourgeoisie, excessive concentration in the working class cannot be defined as a political sellout, but may well be a tactical error. When elevated to the level of a theory, it is a theoretical one.

In its international line, VO does very well indeed whenever the working class is a real factor in the situation; VO’s line on, for example, the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” made its primary insistence, correctly, on the need for the working class to act as a class in its own interests and the need for a Trotskyist vanguard party. Unlike the Healyites, Pabloites, Posadasites and their ilk, VO knew that the Shanghai general strike was important, that the working class is not a fascist class, that the Cultural Revolution is directed against the workers. They were not about to give any quarter to the enemies of the Chinese working class.

Yet in situations in which the as­cension of the working class to power does not seem to be an immediate possi­bility, VO is disoriented. Their strong proletarian class instinct (the positive aspect of their emphasis on working-class composition and work in the mass movement) is not a sufficient substitute for consistent Marxist theoretical anal­ysis in such cases. On a whole series of issues involving what seem to them to be national questions or sections of the population other than the working class (U.S. Negroes, Latin American peasants, petty-bourgeois guerrilla movements, the Viet Cong) VO’s line and essential meth­odology is not qualitatively different from that of the Pabloists.

VO on the U.S. Negro Question

Regarding the Negro Question, Class Struggle/Lutte de Classe of October 1967 (No. 8) stated: “If a Trotskyist organi­zation appears within the black popula­tion this could, through a quirk of history, and our epoch abounds in such quirks, bring down the international citadel of capitalism through a class struggle in which the national and ra­cial factor is predominant at the begin­ning.” VO here sees the Negro Question as a legitimate national question, al­though they nonetheless view the na­tional question as ultimately secondary to the class question. Further, we have here the possibility that the black movement, or, by implication, any move­ment, can spontaneously generate a Trot­skyist leaderhsip. In methodology, this is not different from the Pabloists’ abdication.

To quote further, “The white popula­tion can learn to forget its racism, half through solidarity with people who know how to defend themselves and half through fear.” Of the two criteria here, the first is sensible—i.e., respect. The concept of the white population’s increasing fear having any progressive, anti-racist aspect is wishful thinking and is dangerously wrong. White working-class racism can only be eroded by the opposite of fear, the realization of common interests with the black workers. Race fear, on the contrary, has only reactionary effects. In Algeria, the increasing predominance of the race-nationality question ended by the total eclipse of the class question and caused the total demise of the communist move­ment which had previously had strong holdings among the white workers in Algeria. The classic response of the racial or national grouping which is “on top” in the society to fear of the other race is a massacre. A fear reaction can only strengthen a reactionary solution. It is the recognition of common class interests which alone can heighten the tempo and intensity of class struggles and increasing consciousness on the part of the whites.

VO goes on, “The oppressed must build their own power to free them­selves.” The lesson drawn by us here is an anti-nationalist one, the fight against lumpenization of the ghetto masses. To the extent that the Negroes have no economic power through unions and the possibility of strikes, etc., they become increasingly vulnerable to a fascist solution, in the worst case, of concentration camps, deportation, exter­mination. VO continues, “The most radi­cal among the present leaders of the black movement [i.e., H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael] have already pro­gressed a great deal. Will they, in the course of the struggle, come to a so­cialist consciousness, a clear vision of the antagonistic classes…? One cannot say.” Again the possibility of sponta­neous development of socialist con­sciousness without the intervention of the Trotskyists is raised. Continuing, “The first necessary step is to create a black revolutionary organization, strictly independent on a national basis on all levels from American organiza­tions including whites. It is not a matter of creating a mass organization. It is a matter of creating a Trotskyist revolutionary party, an authentic orga­nization of the struggle of American blacks, since the black population has the highest level of consciousness.” This is a frank statement of a dual vanguardist position.

Examining VO’s conclusions, we find: “If the Trotskyists are incapable of taking the head of the black movement, as it is now constituted, and in a man­ner appropriate to the movement, they have only several years, if not several months, left before they can do nothing but support Carmichael and Brown uncon­ditionally, attributing to them an un­conscious and transcendent socialism in order to appease their own conscience. At the present time, the actions of Brown and Carmichael must be physically supported, while their limits must be pointed out unhesitantly.” Thus, to the extent that the present leaders are not supplanted, they must be supported. Having nothing to offer as transitional demands, with the exception of the question of self-defense, it is hard to see how VO could avoid this position which is essentially liquidationist and capitulatory to Black Nationalism. An active VO’er, informed on American conditions, with whom we discussed, agreed with our criticisms of this line and said that it flowed simply from lack of knowledge of the U.S. situation. Yet this issue is not the only example of .such disorientation.

VO took a position of support to the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict. To be sure, their line was less obnox­ious and more honest than that of the Pabloists; VO denied that there was any such animal as the “Arab Revolution.” Yet VO’s position, while more honest and therefore less consistent, shows again the inability to respond in a correct manner in a situation where the class question seems immediately less promi­nent than some other question, i.e., the national question. It is worth noting here that at that time Comrade Ellens held the VO position on this question. Despite the PB having raised political criticisms of this and other political positions of VO at two times (PB meetings of 30 January and 6 May), Comrade Ellens is evidently so little interested in VO’s politics that there has been no way to tell whether she still holds her former position on this question; she has never bothered to say.

VO on the Soviet Bloc

As VO would no doubt be quick to say, the Russian Question is paramount for Trotskyists. And on this question, VO has shown itself unable to develop and apply Trotskyist theory to the East European Soviet bloc countries, China and Cuba. As all comrades should already be aware, VO recognizes the Soviet Union as a deformed or degenerated workers state and China, Cuba and the East Euro­pean Soviet bloc countries as capital­ist. (From the logic of their analysis, they should not recognize the Soviet Union as a deformed workers state ei­ther.) The methodology here is again that of the Pabloists, with the impor­tant difference that VO chooses to take essentially a revolutionary state capit­alist position while the Pabloist posi­tion is liquidationist of the Trotskyist vanguard party and essentially a capitulation to Stalinism regarding political revolution.

The underlying methodology of the VO position is made clear in VO’s comradely and serious critique of the SL’s Guer­rilla Warfare Theses (Spartacist No. 11) which appeared in Class Struggle No. 15, May 1968. This critique is mainly con­cerned with the question of Cuba. VO shares with the Healyite IC the view that Cuba is a capitalist state, and for much of the same reasons. The view seems to be that if we grant that Cuba is a deformed workers state, there is no more reason for a Trotskyist party; if the petty bourgeoisie can ever be forced to break with the capitalist economic sys­tem and establish what is viewed as a deformed kind of socialism, Trotskyists can have no perspective except to become a left pressure group seeking to push the Stalinists to the left. A few quota­tions will make their position clear.

“In the last analysis, such a state will be a workers’ state only if the working class seizes power and builds its own state apparatus. And this holds true whatever the extent of the economic reforms carried out” (page 13). “And to consider that this state interference has the slightest ‘workers’ or ‘socialist’ character leads directly to abandon­ing the proletariat in favor of other social groups supposed able to play the same historical role. Indeed, this conception leads to openly admitting that bourgeois organizations (or petty-bourgeois organizations) can, by leaning on certain petty-bourgeois and in any case non-proletarian social layers, create workers’ states, even de­formed ones, and lay the bases for significant economic progress in the underdeveloped countries. This is the very negation of the Communist Manifesto. It is also the negation of the reasoning which led Trotsky to characterize the USSR as a ‘de­formed workers’ state’ because of the particular and decisive role played by the proletariat in its creation” (page 14).

It is clear that a kind of healthy attitude leads VO to this analysis: they fear that to grant Cuba (and by implica­tion East Europe or any place where the workers never took power) a characteri­zation of “deformed workers state” will cause them to sell out. And they don’t want to sell out. This is admirable. However, this position also leads them to deny reality. The East European states, and Cuba, and China, are identi­cal in qualitative terms to what now exists in the Soviet Union as a result of its degeneration. The power of theory and a dynamic and creative approach to a changing world is that it is not necessary to falsify history in order to reach a revolutionary conclusion.

The basis of VO’s theoretical in­capacity over these questions is a too close identification between a “workers state” and a “deformed workers state.” It is this error which leads the Pablo­ists to liquidationism: if the Stalin­ists or the petty bourgeoisie can ever, under the pressure of one of the two contradictory forces operating on them, actually create something which is “pretty good,” then what role is there for the Fourth International? What the VO comrades forget here is that in order for the Soviet Union to go from being a workers state, however seriously threat­ened and in crisis, to a deformed work­ers state, it required a political coun­terrevolution and the physical extermi­nation of the old Bolshevik party. VO and the Pabloists see only a quantita­tive difference between the victorious Russian workers state and the product of its degeneration.

The Spartacist analysis has two virtues: it leads us to a revolutionary conclusion, and it is correct. We concur wholeheartedly that “such a state will be a workers state only if the working class seizes power and builds its own state apparatus.” But the VO comrades apply this same criterion to a deformed workers state. Is this criterion true now for the USSR? Certainly not. Yet VO considers it a deformed workers state. Their only reason must be that in the USSR the working class once did hold political power. This can be only a sentimental reason for characterizing the Soviet Union as a deformed workers state. Further, to hold that such a state does not have the slightest “work­ers” or “socialist” character is over-simplistic, and denies the fundamental contradiction facing the bureaucracies: that they are both the enemies of the working class in their own countries and internationally and at the same time rest on top of a state in which the economic system and the formal ideology constantly pose the issue of workers control. The renunciation of the recog­nition of this fundamental contradiction has been the basis for all third camp theories–Shachtman’s bureaucratic col­lectivism and J.R. Johnson’s or Tony Cliff’s state capitalism. Finally, VO’s semi-syndicalism leads them to write off the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie (for example, in the Cuban case) as fundamen­tally irrelevant to Marxists. In fact, the cause of intermediate classes can at times overlap to some extent the inter­ests of working-class revolution; in such cases we will conclude an uneasy alliance with these forces–for example, the slogan of a workers’ and peasants’ government. Where we agree with VO is that the working class must maintain hegemony over the peasants and that the vanguard party is absolutely not a two-class party, but a party of the proletariat.

Further, let us not be too bemused by the fact that VO’s analysis is at present both incorrect and episodically revolutionary. Incorrect analysis takes its toll, and we may in the future find our positions dramatically counterposed. VO would critically defend the Soviet Union against imperialist aggression. But what line would they take in a war between East and West Germany? Let us hope that VO would find some inconsis­tent excuse to avoid being neutral about the reintroduction of capitalism into the deformed workers states. Or, what was their line on the India-China border war? Here is a clear case in which the logic of their position must lead them to be neutral.

The “Trotskyist Family”

Another political weakness of VO has been a too-fraternal and non-combative attitude toward other formally “Trotskyist” groups. At the London Conference in 1966 we raised the criticism that VO seemed to have a conception of a “Trot­skyist family” (see Spartacist No. 6), that they seemed to have the conception that all groups calling themselves “Trotskyist” were actually Trotskyist. This criticism, at least, of all the ones we have raised, has been disputed by Comrade Ellens as a question of fact. She has stated that VO only recognizes a certain responsibility to new members of “Trotskyist” groups who may have joined such groups on the basis of their formal “Trotskyism” rather than their opportun­ist practices. If this is the case, of course, the SL has the same view, in insisting on the necessity for a contin­ual struggle to expose the Pabloists and others as not really Trotskyists and for clarification and polarization in groups which are the only representatives of formal “Trotskyism” in their countries and therefore may include members who would choose a revolutionary position. Yet the present rather disturbing course of VO lends some preliminary support to our criticism of their “Trotskyist fami­ly” orientation.

Re-Unification with Pabloism?

Much concern has been voiced within the SL over the unity-of-action pact signed between the Pabloists and VO, and later also signed by the Pablo Pablo­ites, who are insignificant in France. The text of the pact is:

“In view of the development of the present situation, which cruelly points up the absence of a revolu­tionary leadership, and considering that it is essential to unify the struggle carried on by the organiza­tions claiming to be Trotskyist, representatives of the Union Commu­niste [VO], the Parti Communiste Internationalists [Pabloist] and the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire [Pabloist youth] met on Sunday, May 19, 1968, and decided to form a permanent coordinating committee for their three organizations. This coordinating committee now calls on all organizations claiming to be Trotskyist to join in this move. The three organizations advise their members everywhere to come together to coordinate their activity.” –Reprinted in Intercontinental Press, 3 June 1968

While initially it was not clear whether VO viewed this agreement as the beginning of a reunification of the “Trotskyist” movement, the Healyites in their denunciations and the Pabloists in their applaudings of the pact certainly view it as such. Several comrades in the PB raised the fear that VO had been dis­oriented by finding itself on the same side of the barricades with the Pablo­ists and were reacting in an over-fraternal manner to this, and perhaps also as a reaction to the inability of the leftists to bring France past the negative situation of a general strike into a positive struggle for workers’ power. It was decided after discussion in the PB and NYC local to raise in the article for Spartacist No. 12 on the French events the criticism that VO had chosen the wrong axis to capitalize on the French events and the exposure of the PCF-CGT; that the comrades should have called upon all those who stand in favor of workers’ committees and work­ers’ power to come together to form the needed new vanguard party of the working class–that is, for regroupment based on the Bolshevik program, not only the basis of the formal protestations of Trotskyism of the various groups, which latter axis might include some who actu­ally stood outside the actual basis for the formation of a new revolutionary party and might exclude sections of groups who had moved left under the pressure of the events and now stood for workers’ power. Although we consider it highly unlikely that VO now wishes con­sciously an unprincipled unification with the Pabloists, a group such as VO which has functioned on the basis of subjective revolutionary class instinct without much theoretical capacity could well find itself in such a situation despite its intentions.

Concern over this point has been strengthened considerably by the front-page editorial in the new Lutte Ouvriere No. 4, dated 17 July 1968, entitled “Towards the Revolutionary Party.” The article states:

“May ’68 has been a forceful demon­stration of the validity of revolu­tionary ideas…. The future now depends on the capacity of the revo­lutionary movement to capitalize on this acquisition of confidence…. We have already written and repeated several times in our columns that this is only possible if the revolu­tionary movement is capable of sur­mounting its division into multiple indifferent tendencies however dis­trustful each is of the others…. To struggle for the fusion of the forces which, until now, have been fighting dispersed, and to surmount for that the obstacles, the mis­understandings, the dangers, this is the most imperative duty of all revolutionaries at this time. The objection which one meets most fre­quently among even those revolution­aries who are most sincerely desir­ous of seeing the far left possess­ing the organization strength equal to its ideas concerns the seeming incompatibility between effective­ness and the absence of centralism, the latter being understood as mono­lithism…. However it is not only that the unity of action doesn’t exclude the free confrontation of ideas= this is even the condition for action to stand on a sane base. The bolshevik party…has known in the course of its history numerous tendencies and sometimes even fac­tions. Its militants have by all means the right and even the duty to publicly defend their own ideas even when [the ideas] are in contradic­tion with the official positions of the Party. (?)… Also it is not a question of hiding that the politi­cal differences which separate the revolutionary tendencies are impor­tant and sometimes grave… It is the experiencing of action and ex­perience (of the facts) which will be charged with selecting the ideas. But in order for that to bet it is necessary that the revolutionary  movement have a stake in the events  and that will not really be the case unless they are united. What seems  the most difficult [problem] to sur­mount is that the differences are not only political, but concern,even the conception of the Party. But even that is up to experience to determine, for if the different revolutionary currents wait, before uniting themselves, to convince one another only by the discussion, they can wait a long time. Events, by contrast, do not wait. Certainly the unification of the existing revolu­tionary forces will not give [us] ipso facto a party capable of lead­ing the struggle of the proletariat to victory. Such a party will be forged through long years of strug­gle…. Unification is not an end, it is a beginning…. Revolutionary militants that are separated by important differences learned to struggle together in the factories, in the neighborhoods, in the differ­ent committees, and to make a common front against their common enemies. They discover, through the daily combat that they lead together that, although what separates them is sometimes very important, what unites them is fundamental” (our emphasis).

This seems to be a call for a unifi­cation among the ostensibly revolution­ary organizations. Parenthetically, one might note that the most serious diffi­culty is conceived to be differing con­cepts of the party, i.e., of organiza­tional questions, rather than political differences. No demands are raised as to the basis of such a unification–unifi­cation on the basis of what political program, workers power? formal Trotsky­ism? being left of CP?–except that all the revolutionary organizations (in this conception, there seem to be lots of them) should unite in order to make their combined force strong enough to influence the events. From having called for all Trotskyist organizations to get together on no particular basis except an implied opposition to the CP’s ref­ormism (in the original unity-of-action pact), there is now a move to call for all “revolutionary” groups to get to­gether on no basis whatsoever. Judging from VO’s past history of principled (and perhaps too standoffish) behavior towards other groups, we find it likely that Trotskyists will pull back from the present course before such a unification, or at least find itself compelled after such a unification to split out and reaffirm a program which is to be found nowhere in this editorial and a commitment to Trotskyism which is to be found nowhere in this publication.

What is pervasive to VO’s political errors is the syndicalist-related feel­ing (and resulting practice) that the working class is immune from anti-revo­lutionary deviations and a kind of nar­row “workerism” which leaves them with­out a revolutionary line towards other struggles (U.S. Negroes, the Arab peas­ant masses) and without any axis towards social transformations in which the working class has been largely absent (East Europe, Cuba). This “workerism” is a current in the Bolshevik movement which has been fought since the Leninist amplification of Marxism, e.g., in “What is to be Done?”, written by Lenin in 1902. The working class is our class because it is the only class capable of decisively smashing the capitalist sys­tem and laying the basis for social progress in our epoch. The working class is not, however, a magic talisman to ward off evil and bring automatic suc­cess to the socialist movement.

The Minority and VO

As pointed out above, the Minority as a faction has not embraced the Ellens VO document as they have the Turner document. At the same time it is clear that VO is being used by Comrade Ellens as an at least informal recruiting device and an implicit comparison with the SL. Yet, Ellens has steadfastly refused to deal with VO in a serious and political way. She has sought to sell VO’s successes as a plank in the Minority’s program for the SL, but only covertly. She has created the image (perhaps some­what idealized) of VO as an eminently serious (which it is) and efficient organization through propagandizing VO’s gimmicks–systematic contacting, orderly meetings, internal Marxist educational programs, proletarianizing the psyches of petty-bourgeois members–while only tacitly accepting VO’s essential and theoretical organizational precepts and ignoring VO’s politics. We are tacitly promised that we can be “as good” as VO if we will support the Minority, but since neither the organizational philo­sophy nor the politics is frankly pushed, her assurances can mean only that an organization of our size can be as effective as one twelve times larger through the institution of systematic contacting and the like. Ellens has sought to concentrate on the gimmicks of VO and ignore the basic questions. Fur­ther, the strengths of VO are certainly not employed and embodied by the Minor­ity–any VO’er worth his salt would be horrified with the proposition that the situation for the SL in the New York hospital workers’ union was essentially unchanged by the departure of both party members in the union. If there is one thing which epitomizes VO’s strength it is the desire to be involved in real struggle, to have a caucus-building perspective in unions, to be above all serious and responsible in its work in the mass movement. Finally, there is no indication that a VO’er in the SL would concentrate so exclusively on the tech­niques of organization; in short, VO is not as non-political as our Minority.

The Spartacist League has very grave weaknesses–in its functioning, its re­sources, its human material. And it has a strength–its uniquely correct politi­cal line. It is the particular political ideas of the SL which justify its exis­tence as a separate organization. Let us not be so eager, as is the Minority, to sell our strength down the river in ex­change for phantom schemes and implied promises which cannot solve our prob­lems. Those who support the Minority are headed for a political destination which they perhaps do not know yet, but which is liquidation of Trotskyism.

–6 August 1968

Militant Longshoreman

No. 5 February 4, 1983

Re-Elect Keylor

Caucus and Convention Delegate

No Give – Backs. No Lay – Offs

In the last Militant Longshoreman the editor wrote about the critical state of the union, the need for an offensive program to save our jobs, and the danger of further disastrous concessions. These questions will come to a focus at the Longshore Division Caucus and the International Convention in April of this year. This issue of the Militant Longshoreman will talk about the two most critical dangers to the Longshore Division: 1) loss of jurisdiction through a combination of raiding and hiring non-union scabs and 2) lay-offs.

Given the economic crisis, the decline in foreign trade, and the cut-throat competition in shipping, we can expect an attack on our waterfront jurisdiction loading and unloading ships and barges. At Richmond Yard 3 last December, Operating Engineers Local 3 collabor­ated with Levin Terminals to raid our jurisdiction. We stood help­lessly out in the muddy street while a barge was unloaded and load­ed by non-ILWU and non-union people working unsafely and at sub­standard wages. But the stakes in Richmond are much higher than one or more barges. Construction at Yard 3 is rapidly nearing com­pletion as a coal exporting facility and Levin management is up front that the ILWU has no place in their plans. Utah, Wyoming, and Nevada coal shipments out of Northern California are expected to increase enormously during the next few years. Selby (among other places) is being talked about for building more loading fac­ilities. The various companies getting into this lucrative bus­iness will be encouraged to bypass the ILWU if Levin gets away with it at Richmond. It’s reported that Levin will start handling coal within 30 to 60 days; around 16 full-time jobs are immediately at stake.

Looking further down the road, we can expect businesses owning private docks to look around for non-PMA stevedoring outfits (or create them!) to load and unload vessels with non-ILWU and non-un­ion labor. The jurisdiction sections of our contract protect our jobs only where PMA member companies are involved.

THE BEST WEAPONS: MASS PICKETING AND UNION SOLIDARITY

How can we protect our jurisdiction? Mass pickets to stop scab­bing and union solidarity to avoid isolation are the only weapons that will work. A handful of token “informational pickets” help­lessly standing in the street while scabs drive past splashing mud on them won’t protect our jobs. But (we are told) if we do try to stop scabs the courts will issue injunctions limiting us to a few token pickets and the cops will beat on us while, they escort scabs past us. For the last 35 years the Taft-Hartley law has given jud­ges the right to issue “restraining orders” against mass picketing and “secondary boycott” picket lines. Thousands of strikes have been lost when workers obeyed strike-breaking, union-busting court orders.

This doesn’t have to go on. Even the government has been known to back off when faced with massive union action. Several years ago the State of Washington tried to break the Inland Boatmen’s Union manning Puget Sound Ferries. A state-wide strike of all ILWU locals supported by the IBT shut down Puget Sound, made the State back down and saved the IBU. We must organize now for just such port-wide strike action the minute another non-ILWU cargo operation (barge or ship) begins in Richmond. The full power of our union to shut down the port and put thousands of men on the picket line will be necessary to make clear to the murderous Richmond cops that union busting and scabherding will not be permitted.

Even our token picketing last December hurt Levin; Teamster truck drivers refused to go through our picket lines. Several months earlier Teamster warehousemen at the giant Sealand CFS in Oakland went on strike and picketed the Sealand piers at 14th St. When the ILWU honored the picket lines, Sealand had to capitulate. We must take the lead in initiating and building such joint support actions to defend each other against take-aways and union-busting. When the ILA negotiates a contract this fall, we must make it clear that we will honor their picket lines like we did in 1977 but that this time we won’t permit the courts to bust our solidarity action.

NO MORE TAKE-AWAYS! NO GIVE-AWAYS

The editor warned in Militant Longshoreman #4 last month that it looks like we are being softened up for concessions. Our Internat­ional officers have “negotiated” wage freezes in Warehouse and in Hawaii. They have alibied and justified two of the historic betray­als in longshore: M&M, in which we gave up manning scales and job action, and 9.43 where we allowed PMA to undermine the hiring hall. Herman and the other officers have no program to meet the jobs cri­sis in longshore; they can only point to PGP and the “no-layoff” clause of the contract. Contractual guarantees sure didn’t pro­tect the auto workers from wage and benefit cuts and Supplement III provides for layoffs “…should unusual circumstances develop…” The unusual circumstances are already herel After haunting the hall for four to five days without getting a job, longshoremen are begin­ning to mutter “we have too many men”. Our leaders are not shouting as they should be “we have too few jobs”. In the past they co-oper­ated with PMA’s attempt to export poverty by forcing hundreds of longshoremen to transfer out of this port. Now they squash and ridicule any aggressive program for jobs (manning scales, shorter work shift), leaving the field open to debating which concessions like lay-offs we should swallow.

Strike action will be necessary just to block takeaways. We ought to take a lesson from the Canadian Chrysler workers who three months ago struck on their own against give-backs. The UAW US-Canadian brass sabotaged and isolated the strike. Nonetheless, they and Chrysler were forced to reopen negotiations. Many of the proposed benefit cuts were withdrawn and Chrysler was forced to of­fer a substantially better although still inadequate wage package.

NEEDED: A PROGRAM TO UNITE TRADE UNIONS, UNEMPLOYED, BLACKS, RETIRED

Not even the most aggressive trade union program has a chance of success unless the unions take the lead in defending the livelihood of the 80% of unorganized workers, the over 10% who are unemployed, and the millions of retired, disabled and destitute who are suffering from cutbacks in social benefits.

The employers will try to hire the unemployed and destitute as scabs unless the unions organize them first. When the ILWU was foun­ded in the strikes of 1934, the union took action successfully to win over casual dock workers who could have been recruited to scab. The six hour day was demanded and won not to give overtime pay for the last two hours but to provide jobs for all who had fought in the str­ike. The union controlled hiring hall was the membership’s guarantee to each other that there would be no discrimination on the basis of race, religion, age, political beliefs, union loyalty, etc.

The Teamster strikers in Minneapolis in 1934 went even further. They won the unemployed to their side by organizing IBT auxiliar­ies of unemployed workers and workers on federal public works re­lief projects. These auxiliaries, backed by Teamster solidarity act­ions , fought for higher relief benefits for the unemployed and liv­ing wages for federal WPA workers.

That’s the basis for Point 5 of the Militant Longshoreman program which calls for: “Organize the unorganized and the unemployed. Labor strikes to stop cuts in Social Security, Medical, Medicare.”

Keylor will argue for such a program at the International Conven­tion. It is a key for union survival and will be a critical step in forging an alliance between the employed and the poor. Such an al­liance must be carried forward under the leadership of a workers party based on the unions to an actual fight to establish a workers govern­ment which will provide jobs for all through a planned socialist econ­omy.

VOTE FOR STAN GOW BUT WATCH WHAT HE DOES

I had hoped Stan would think about what I’d said last month. In­stead, he defended the new policies being pursued by the Militant Caucus and criticized his own fighting instincts. As I said, the Militant Caucus in Local 6 is largely pursuing extra-union issues and is paying less and less attention to union problems. Apparently dis­couraged by the near paralysis of Local 6, the constant giveaways en­gineered by the leadership (the last Master Contract included a 6 month wage freeze), and the inability of the membership so far to org­anize to halt these sellouts, the Caucus is turning its attention elsewhere, largely abandoning workers who are still employed and in the union. Recognizing the danger posed to our survival by Reagan’s drive toward nuclear war and by the growth of the fascists around the fringes of U.S. society, the Militant Caucus is beginning to look for shortcuts. Downgrading the fact that the most effective  opposition to the native fascists in the 1930’s and to Roosevelt’s war drive which brought the U.S. into World War II came from within unions led by class-struggle Trotskyist militants centered in the Teamsters in Minneapolis, the Caucus and their co-thinkers in Workers Vanguard are increasingly directing their organizing activity away from the unions and towards the unemployed, particularly in the ghettos.

THE UNION CAN BE CHANGED BUT THE MILITANT CAUCUS DOUBTS IT

Rather than openly stating their reorientation and defending it politically, they are trying to camouflage it by extending their cor­rect historic opposition to the union bureaucracy into a blanket con­demnation of the union. For example, they now say that because cer­tain sections of the ILWU leadership are racist that it’s OK to give backhanded support to court suits against the union (the Gibson Case). (Why didn’t Stan say he’s for defending the hiring hall against the government and that instead of longshoreman fighting longshoreman over ever fewer jobs, we should strike together coastwise for 6 for 8, all skill jobs through the hall, manning scales on container ships and full A status to all B men now?) Also, Stan now says that the union is so rotten that he’s just running for Caucus and Convention to expose Herman and the Caucus delegates rather than trying to win sections of the coast delegates over to a fighting program. Similar­ly the Militant Caucus doesn’t want to fight for d South African cargo boycott because they think a limited strike would only serve to re­build Herman’s credentials.

SELF IMPOSED ISOLATION

Equally dangerous is the Militant Caucus’ developing posit­ion that anyone is a hopeless case who is at this time pro-Demo­cratic or supports the strategy of pressuring the Democratic Party. That makes it OK to boycott their activities (the anti-Nazi march in Oroville) or even to urge workers not to demonstrate against Reaganism under the present pro-Democratic Party union leadership. Stan’s statement that “it was a bad thing that thousands of workers were out there that day because it strengthened the hands of our enemies” summarizes this developing abstentionist position. In ef­fect Stan and the Militant Caucus have said: accept our leadership’ or we’ll have nothing to do with you. This policy is out and out self-isolating sectarianism.

Until recently the Militant Caucus and.their co-thinkers would have been in Oroville, (as I and other longshoremen were), carrying signs aimed at winning the anti-Nazi demonstrators over to the winning strategy of labor/black/latino defense guards instead of essentially abandoning Oroville’s black community by dismissing their misdirect­ed efforts at self-defense as “an adventure” (remember Taft, Califor­nia, 1975?). Until recently the Caucus would have been in the labor parade with signs calling for a break with the Democrats and for a workers party as they did in last year’s SF Solidarity Day with PATCO labor parade. This year Stan marched with the 50-70,000 other unlonists who deeply resent Reagan’s policies which breed unemployment, cuts in medical care, cuts in care for the aged, etc., but he march­ed with no sign distinguishing him from the pro-Democratic “Vote Labor for Jobs and Justice”; and when I was subjected to an anti-communist exclusion for carrying a sign calling for a workers party and specif­ically for a vote for the Spartacist candidates for SF Supervisor, Stan kept right on marching without a word of protest.

REDBAITING

MY ASS!

Now on the subject of “redbaiting”. Many union members in both Local 6 and 10 know that Stan and I have long been supporters of the political program of the Spartacist League and its paper the Workers  Vanguard, and know that in the past we were both supported by it. Last year in Militant Longshoreman #2 I referred to “differences… with some Caucus members on issues which did not involve the union or the Caucus program.” These differences did involve the WV and the Spartacist League whose program I support but of whose practices I am increasingly critical.

Much of what Stan writes was, in the past, and is now influenced by the views of the WV. WV reports extensively on Stan’s leaflets. I support their right to report on and attempt to influence the ILWU as I support this right for any tendency in the workers movement. But I don’t support WV when they distort things in a misguided ef­fort to make their organization and its genuinely socialist program look better any more than I support the People’s World (with its reformist program and apologias for the liberal capitalists and their labor lieutenants) when the PW distorts things to make their organi­zation look better.

STAN SHOULD FIGHT

I urge you to vote for Stan again for Caucus and Convention dele­gate — but watch what he does. Stan and the Militant Caucus have shifted ground but they have by no means broken clearly from class struggle politics. Stan is still running on a supportable class struggle program. To regain his orientation toward fighting for a new leadership to build a fighting union which will work in the in­terests of all workers he’ll have to fight first within the Militant Caucus and with their political co-thinkers in WV to return to their old policies. I hope he does fight and I hope that he succeeds.

MILITANT LONGSHOREMAN PROGRAM

1.DEFEND OUR JOBS AND LIVELIHOOD – Reopen the contract if PMA cuts the PGP. For six hours work at eight hours pay; manning scales on all ship operations; one man, one job. Call all SEO men back to the hall. Prepare the union for a coastwise fight to delete 9.43, SEO, and crane supplement sections from the contract.

2.DEFEND THE HIRING HALL – No, surrender of union control over registra­tion.

3.DEFEND UNION CONDITIONS AND SAFETY THROUIGH JOB ACTION – No dependance an arbitrators. Mobilize to smash anti-labor injunctions.

4.DEFEND OUR UNION – No second class B or C registration lists. Full class A status for all B men coastwise. Keep racist anti-labor government and courts out of the union. Support all ILWU locals against court suits and government “investigations”. Union action to break down racial and sexual discrimination on the waterfront.

5.BUILD LABOR SOLIDARITY – against government/employer strikebreaking. No more PATCOs. Honor all picket lines. Don’t handle struck or di­verted cargo. No raiding of other unions. Organize the unorganized and the unemployed. Labor strikes to stop cuts in Social Security, MediCal, Medicare.

6.STOP NAZI/KLAN TERROR through union organized labor/black/Latin de­fense actions. No dependance on capitalist police or courts to smash fascists.

7.WORKING CLASS ACTICN TO STUD YONCMS WAR DRIVE AGAINST IM SOVIET UNION – Oppose reactionary boycotts against. Soviet and Polish ship­ping. Labor strikes against military blockades of Cuba or Nicaragua. Boycott military cargo, to Chile, South Africa, El Salvador and Israel.

8.INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY – Oppose protectionist trade restricttons. ILWU support to military victory of leftist insurgents in El Salvador. Defend the Palestinians – U.S. Marines, Israelis, French and Italian troops out of Lebanon.

8. BREAK WITH DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES – Start now to build a workers party based on the unions to fight for a workers government which will seize all major industry without payment to the capitalists and establish a planned economy to end exploitation, racism, poverty and war.

The ‘X’ That Won’t Go Away

[First printed in 1917 West #3 December 1992 http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/West/1917%20West%20%233.html

A phenomenon has swept large parts of the United States. There has been a proliferation of people wearing the letter X, the symbol of Malcolm X, on pants, shoes, shirts, caps, etc. Many celebrities, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and even Arsenio Hall have appeared on national television with the X on their baseball caps. Something is definitely going on when Hall, who once shamelessly bragged about having told a friend to “put his Malcolm X tapes away,” now proclaims in an interview with Denzel Washington that people should read the Autobiography of Malcolm X! Many People are wondering if this is just a fad.

While it is true that many people are walking around with the X on their clothing but little of Malcolm’s story or ideas inside their heads, there is evidence that this is more than a fad. Fads generally do not enjoy four or five years of rising popular interest; the increased sales of Malcolm X books and speeches reveal the interest in Malcolm is beyond the visible fashion image. On a recent tour with Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, Yolanda King, Martin Luther King’s daughter said on national television she was more in agreement with Malcolm X’s philosophy than that of her father.

Why has there been such a resurgence of interest in a man who has been dead for almost twenty-eight years and who was vilified by the bourgeois media during his lifetime? Perhaps the most important reason is the realization by black people that the struggle for liberation in the U.S., which began the slave rebellions of the last century, is not finished. Malcolm, a key figure in the 1960s, made many important statements, observations, and predictions that are still relevant today. For instance his prediction that the mainstream civil rights organizations’ strategy of seeking to integrate black Americans into the existing social order would fail has been powerfully vindicated, and even many of Malcolm’s detractors, like Louis Lomax, have had to concede this.

Although the bourgeois media ignored or slandered Malcolm X during his lifetime, and was much more favorably disposed toward Dr. King because of his preaching of nonviolence and belief in the system, large numbers of black people, for good reason, looked upon Malcolm as an honestly committed man to be respected and revered for his fiery drive for black liberation. Black people know that these qualities are necessary for a successful liberation struggle and, as long as the need to struggle exists, Malcolm X will not fade away.

Great Man

By being sincere and dedicated to the ordinary black people who comprised his audience, Malcolm X built up a trust with his followers that neither the U.S. government nor his detractors were able to take away. He was a brilliant, eloquent and charismatic man who could break down and communicate his ideas on important issues to his audience. He harnessed these abilities and worked to enhance them. For instance, he learned to speed read, which enabled him to expand his knowledge more quickly. His prison transformation from “Detroit Red,” hustler, to Malcolm X, fiery orator, should be an inspiration to all.

With a burning desire, fearless spirit, and tireless energy he played a major role in building the Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (NOI—or “Black Muslims”) from about 5,000 members nationwide to 100,000 between 1954 and 1960. Although the Muslims played no significant role in the political and social struggles against racial oppression that were building during this period, their appeal—as a black-separatist self-help organization—lay not in their apolitical religious cultism but rather in their strident denunciation of the racist reality of American society.

Differences With Elijah Muhammad

For most of his time in the NOI Malcolm was a loyal and uncomplaining follower of Elijah Muhammad. After Malcolm had gained considerable notoriety for the NOI through his columns in Harlem’s Amsterdam News and the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, he did not object when these columns were appropriated by Elijah Muhammad. Nor did he complain when Muhammad Speaks, which he had started from his own basement in New York, containing mostly his own copy, was taken from him and placed under the administration of John Ali in Chicago.

As the NOI grew, a layer of members centered in Chicago around Elijah Muhammad’s family developed a vested interest in the considerable real estate holdings and commercial enterprises which had been financed by the contributions of the membership. Although the enterprises were owned by the NOI, which was tax-exempt because of its status as a religious organization, it was common knowledge that most of them benefitted Elijah Muhammad’s immediate family and their business partners. At the time of his death Elijah Muhammad had amassed a fortune of $25 million (Emerge, April 1992). Elijah Muhammad and his inner circle felt threatened by Malcolm X and his attempts to politicize their organization.

There was an uproar in the black community of Los Angeles when the cops shot down several unarmed Muslims, killing one and paralyzing another, on 27 April 1962. Malcolm saw this as the moment to “go out there now and do what I’ve been preaching all this time,” which was to organize the NOI with all black people against this barbaric attack. He also had strong support from local churches, community activists, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in what was to be mass protest action. Elijah Muhammad stopped all the protest campaigns. According to Louis Lomax, “Malcolm began to smart under charges from militant blacks that he and his group were all talk and no action” (To Kill a Black Man). The fact that no legal assistance was provided by the NOI to the four Black Muslims that went to prison as a result of this incident made matters worse.

Louis Lomax pointed out that:

“Malcolm was consistently pressing Elijah Muhammad for permission to become involved in demonstrations. Each time Malcolm received a flat and unequivocal ‘No!’ It finally came to the point that Elijah ordered Malcolm not to raise the matter again. Malcolm obeyed.”

Black Nationalism Makes Strange Bedfellows

There was a perverted logic in the NOI’s self-satisfied desire to maintain the status quo. Malcolm X explained that in December 1960:

“I was in the home of Jeremiah, the [NOI] minister in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m going to tell you the truth. I sat at the table myself with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan, who at that time were trying to negotiate with Elijah Muhammad so that they could make available to him a large area of land in Georgia or I think it was South Carolina. They had some very responsible persons in the government who were involved in it and who were willing to go along with it. They wanted to make this land available to him so that his program of separation would sound more feasible to Negroes and therefore lessen the pressure that the integrationists were putting upon the white man. I sat there I negotiated it. I listened to their offer. And I was the one who went back to Chicago and told Elijah Muhammad what they had offered.”

    —Malcolm X: The Last Speeches

Malcolm X concluded: “From that day onward the Klan never interfered with the Black Muslim movement in the South.”

This was not the first time that black nationalists, who claimed they were acting on behalf of the persecuted black masses, have made common cause with the most deadly enemies of black people. Marcus Garvey created an uproar in his Universal Negro Improvement Association, when he visited the Ku Klux Klan in June of 1922. In 1985 Louis Farrakhan, Elijah Muhammad’s successor, personally invited Tom Metzger, former grand dragon of the California KKK, to a rally in Los Angeles at which Metzger donated $100 as “a gesture of understanding;” and today in South Africa we witness the grotesque alliance between Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha and the fascist Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB).

How can these black nationalist misleaders justify fraternizing with the avowed enemies of black people? If they really believe all white people are devils, or some equivalent, that means there are no significant political differences between whites, at least as regards blacks. The logic of this is that a marriage of convenience with white fascists is no worse than an alliance with any other whites. White racism, which justifies and advocates systematic oppression, should not be equated with black nationalism, which is a response to that oppression. There is nevertheless a strange symmetry between the objectives of black nationalists, who want a separate black “nation” and white supremacists pushing segregation.

The FBI and Malcolm X

As chief spokesperson for the NOI, Malcolm had attracted the attention of the FBI. He and many others were aware of the FBI’s surveillance of him and the NOI, but few people are aware of the extent of that surveillance (over 3,600 pages)! Clayborne Carson has contributed a useful and informative service to the public by gathering and compressing a selection of documents from Malcolm X’s enormous FBI file.

In a report dated January 10, 1955 the FBI interviewed Malcolm X and asked him if he would defend the U.S. in the event of a foreign attack. Malcolm X declined to answer. He also declined to answer whether of not he considered himself a citizen of the U.S. (Malcolm X—The FBI File). In contrast to the belly-crawling, flag-waving official leadership of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X was no flag-waving patriot of U.S. imperialism.

In a July 2, 1958 account the FBI, which recognized Malcolm X’s desire to play a leading role in the black movement, designated him a key figure in the NOI (Ibid, p 149). Later that year it had noticed that older members of the NOI were fearful of Malcolm’s radicalism. They even went so far to claim in a statement dated November 17, 1960 that Malcolm X was forming a nucleus within the NOI to take it over.

Elijah had declared that any NOI member that participated in the 1963 civil rights march on Washington would be suspended for 90 days. Malcolm went further: he denounced the march as the “farce on Washington,” taking King and other liberal civil rights leaders to task for making sure that the march was a tame event, in no way hostile to the Kennedy administration. When Malcolm responded to the assassination of John F. Kennedy by noting that it was a case of “chickens coming home to roost,” Elijah Muhammad suspended him from the NOI.

Exit From the Nation of Islam

During his time in the NOI Malcolm tried to close his eyes to the contradiction between the need to struggle against racist injustice and the passive acceptance of the status quo preached by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X, to his credit, finally recognized that if he was going to play a leading role in the black liberation struggle it would have to be outside the NOI.

Initially his break with the Muslims was cloudy. At the March 1964 press conference he called to announce his departure from Elijah Muhammad’s organization he said: “I still believe that Mr. Muhammad’s analysis of the [race] problem is the most realistic, and that his solution is the best one.” He did not go into the reasons that compelled him to leave the NOI, and expressed reluctance at having to make the move. In an interview with Les Crane on December 12, 1964 he said that he didn’t think he would “contribute anything constructive to go into what caused the split.” Far from encouraging other members to follow his example, he explicitly stated: “my advice to all Muslims is that they stay in the Nation of Islam under the spiritual guidance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. It is not my desire to encourage any of them to follow me,” (Malcolm—The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America, Bruce Perry).

Such statements could only confuse and disorient people who may have looked to Malcolm X for leadership. The rebellious black urban youth who knew of and respected Malcolm X were not about to join any religious sect. They wanted a fighting organization.

But Malcolm X at this time had not developed an understanding of the importance of a clear revolutionary program to attract and organize the most conscious layers of the black liberation movement. This was clearly revealed in his assertion that:

“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”

    —Malcolm X: A Man and His Time

Build a Workers Party!

After leaving the Muslims, Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Mecca and toured various newly independent African states. While he was in Africa he commented that:

“The U.S. Peace Corps members are all espionage agents and have a special assignment to perform. They are spies of the American government, missionaries of colonialism and neo-colonialism.”

    —Malcolm X: The FBI File

It was statements like this, along with his attempts to enlist the support of African heads of state to denounce the U.S. government in the United Nations for its mistreatment of American blacks, that led to the FBI’s push for the use of the Logan Act to put Malcolm X behind bars—again. Unfortunately, while Malcolm was correct in situating the black struggle in the U.S. in an international context, he also displayed a certain amount of disorientation on this issue. His faith in the UN, which at the time was seeing an influx of black African states, was totally unjustified. It should have been obvious that the UN was dominated by world imperialism and could take no decisive action against the interests of the U.S. ruling class. Likewise he overestimated the ability of the petty-bourgeois leaders of the new African states to influence or oppose U.S. policy. Despite their claims to independence and even “socialism,” these regimes were never really able to escape the control of the imperialist powers.

Probably the most significant result of Malcolm’s trip to Mecca was the recognition that he had been mistaken to assume that all whites were necessarily and automatically evil and racist. This discovery opened the door to redefining the struggle against racist oppression and, potentially, connecting it to struggle against the capitalist system which produces it. In the last year of his life Malcolm paid tribute to the great abolitionist fighter, John Brown, and stated his willingness to ally with whites like him.

Malcolm’s attempts to build a new organization after his break with the Muslims led Louis Farrakhan to threaten that, “Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.” But it was not just Elijah Muhammad’s followers who wanted Malcolm out of the picture. Once Malcolm was independent of the Muslims and their religious dogma, he was perceived as a much greater potential danger to the status quo.

For all his talents as a thinker and an inspirational orator, Malcolm X left very little in terms of a tangible political legacy. Because he was in political motion at the time of his death, the legacy of Malcolm X has been claimed by everyone from the ex-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party to black conservatives such as Clarence Thomas.

Liberation for black people cannot come about within capitalist society, which needs and breeds racism as a mechanism of exploitation and control. Black capitalism, advocated by the likes of Farrakhan, is no alternative. Religion is a distraction from the struggle for equality. The creation of a society without racism and exploitation requires a force with the social weight to bring it about. No individual, no matter how serious or talented, can act effectively alone. Black nationalism, which can have a certain appeal in times of social reaction, offers no solutions for the oppressed black masses. Blacks in the United States are not a nation, but rather a color caste forcibly segregated at the bottom of this society. Only the working class which, because of its position in capitalist society as the creator of wealth, has both the social weight to overthrow capitalist rule and an objective interest in doing so.

The working class must have its own revolutionary party to accomplish its historic task through linking workers’ struggles to those of other people oppressed by capitalism, including blacks. Such a party must in turn be armed with the correct program, a road map pointing the way forward. As great an individual as V.I. Lenin was, he would not have led the overthrow of capitalism in czarist Russia if he were not part of a mass-based workers party, the Bolshevik Party, with a collective leadership and a program that answered the needs of the masses.

The Bolshevik Tendency, is committed to the task of building such a party, the American section of a reborn Fourth International, the party of world-wide socialist revolution. Our program for black liberation includes calls for a struggle against all manifestations of racism and all racial discrimination; for workers’ defense guards to stop racist violence and to smash the Nazis and Klan; for an end to unemployment through a fight for decent jobs for all; for special worker-run programs to upgrade the positions of women, blacks and other specially oppressed minorities; for open admissions to colleges and universities along with well-funded teacher-student-run programs to guarantee an education to everyone who wants one. As revolutionary socialists we call for a complete break with the Democratic and Republican Parties, the twin parties of capitalism; the expropriation without compensation of basic industry under workers control, and the establishment of a workers state with a democratically planned economy.

We urge all workers, blacks, women, youth and other oppressed peoples inspired by Malcolm X’s heroic fight for black liberation to consider seriously the political program and ideas put forward by the Bolshevik Tendency. Capitalism is in an international depression, and the U.S. economy, which is in a fairly advanced state of decay, is being hit particularly hard. The election of Bill Clinton, the governor of a “right-to-work” state, who interrupted his campaign for the Democratic nomination to preside over the execution of a brain-damaged black man, will not improve the lot of ordinary people in this country, regardless of color. Capitalism has long outlived its usefulness and can only offer oppression, environmental deterioration, racism, sexism, poverty, hunger and, eventually, world war. We are in complete solidarity with Karl Marx who said at the end of the Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

Brandon Gray’s Resignation Letter from the International Bolshevik Tendency

For the interest of our readers we are posting Brandon Gray’s 7/17/10 resignation from the International BolshevikTendency (7/17/10). Copied from

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34713289/Resignation-From-the-International-Bolshevik-Tendency

While we do not agree with all the arguments made here, it presents a truthful picture of the current state of the IBT. We will be posting a more in depth commentary on it. Please check back soon.

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I hereby resign from the International Bolshevik Tendency. I have considered this action carefully and have concluded that it is no longer possible for me to remain under the discipline of the organization.

Our organization was guilty of abstentionism towards the solidarity demonstrations occurring throughout the city following the G20 Summit. This came on the heels of our cowardly performance on Saturday 6/26/10 at which we failed to distinguish ourselves from the trade union bureaucrats by passively standing by as they worked with the police to isolate the more militant activists committed to confronting the security fence. Contrary to the leadership’s hyper-cautious approach, it was an acceptable risk to participate in the solidarity demonstrations and at past protests we did not automatically flee when police started using repression against protesters. Nearly all the Left groups and trade union bureaucrats marched around mindlessly in a circle and then went running to their homes Saturday afternoon when the police attacked our basic bourgeois democratic rights. As a result the best and brightest youth suffered with little to no tactical or political support and were needlessly isolated. A smart and full engagement by our organization could have created real opportunities for us in the future to win over activists and youth to the banner of socialist revolution. Instead, by abstaining, we damaged our reputation in the eyes of the very people we need to win over to build a revolutionary party.

Contrary to the contentions of other comrades, there was never supposed to be a police line at Queen Street and when the TU march reached the intersection at Spadina Avenue. Comrades later noted that they saw individuals trying to pass by the line, as well as a commotion and several people screaming to not return to Queen’s Park, but instead to remain at the line. Despite being near the head of the march, under Tom Riley’s tactical leadership we failed to utter so much as a peep of protest against the TU bureaucrats’ immediate retreat. We were in a valuable strategic position that may have allowed us to agitate amongst the crowd, and encourage people to stay at the intersection and tie up the bulk of the riot police while the full 25,000 people streamed by us. Our contingent would not have been exposed as we filtered out the good from the bad and established a contingent at the police line that could have pushed the line or joined the breakaway protest as we did in Quebec City in 2001. In our local meeting before the protests it was acknowledged that we would be facing such a decision and were supposed to prepare for it. We did nothing but obediently follow the TU bureaucrats and as a result the breakaway march went it alone and was more vulnerable to identification and arrest upon reaching Queen’s Park where many, including us, had already dispersed.

Our chant “2, 4, 6, 8, We don’t want a police state” was taken up by many protesters, the bourgeois press reported this, and in protests later that week it had made it onto the chant sheets that were distributed to all protesters by liberal organizers. This, along with the general notion that many wanted to march south of Queen Street, indicates that it was not unreasonable to argue we may have influenced many to form a sizable contingent capable of playing a role in the more militant demonstrations, and assisted our comrades elsewhere.

In response to Canadian Labour Congress President Ken Georgetti’s pro-police letter condemning ‘vandals’ who left their march, about 250 officials, stewards, retirees, and rank and file activists published their own letter condemning Georgetti. They stated that after, “the ‘Peoples First’ march, many of us remained on the streets throughout the weekend contesting the unprecedented militarization of our city and the G20 neoliberal agenda.” Sadly, in this particular instance, the IBT is not in this camp, but rather, that of Georgetti. They note that, “thousands mobilized in front of police headquarters on June 28th in solidarity with the hundreds of activists still being detained and our unions and union flags were absent.” Of course, as our comrades well know, our placards were also absent. Even the overtly opportunist Socialist Action (Usec) displayed their banner. The union members’ retaliatory letter ends with a concluding statement that the IBT comrades should take to heart, “we will not and cannot win the struggle we face against the violent onslaught of neoliberalism by abandoning our allies and our communities in the wake of a massive crackdown on dissent.” That is exactly what Georgetti and the IBT have done and the refusal to acknowledge this error speaks volumes about our organization.

Several groups ranging from Anarchist to Maoist to the liberal NOII had publicly called for all to breakaway from the TU march and confront the fence which our IEC were well aware of. After testing the line in several places as we marched west on Queen Street and upon the bulk of the TU march reaching the intersection, the breakaway demonstration doubled back down Queen Street where there were less riot police and cut a path close to the fence before circling back to Queens Park. We contributed to their isolation by not doing our job of exposing TU bureaucrat betrayal and the riot police were able to close in on them as they reached the park. At the time I was severely disappointed as we marched up Spadina Avenue away from the best militants, but followed my leaders due to misplaced confidence in their experience and skill, despite their approach being, as our most senior comrade, HK, later described, as “conservative to the extreme.” However, I no longer will be making that mistake again. The continued abstention throughout the following week further deepened my dismay.

On my own personal initiative I and other activists spent Tuesday 6/29/10 supplying political prisoners with food and drink as they were released on bail. None of the Toronto left groups were there. Later the next day I learned via email that our main international leader Tom Riley spent that evening playing baseball with conservative gentlemen that were quite upset about how the police brutally trounced on civil rights, wanted to talk politics and had been phoning politicians. While this was taken as a reminder that “almost anything is possible”, it still did not dawn on him to leave the baseball game and join me to help those continuing to suffer under such repression. While comrades are entitled to their personal time, this sort of charge has been used against others inside and outside the group and therefore Riley should be held to his own standards.

Our characterization of the breakaway protesters was aimed at discrediting them by writing them off as powerless youth looking for a quick solution and undertaking isolated, individualist acts of brainless symbolic violence. I think this is satisfying to our leadership because it excuses their own abstention. I think our group is all too content with sitting at home regurgitating “For Grynszpan” for its seemingly Trotskyist orthodoxy regardless of whether it has any bearing on the tactics used. These protesters hurt nobody while Grynszpan shot a man dead. Equating the breakaway protest with ‘left-wing-terrorism’ by any stretch was dangerous, stupid and should have never happened. While this kind of direct action protest is insufficient to “pave the way” to revolution on its own, it does work to a limited extent in popularizing a subjectively revolutionary perspective for many young people. I do not think that any of the breakaway protesters thought that smashing some bank windows and torching cop cars was going to create an overthrow of capitalism nor was it done because it was emotionally satisfying. Rather, I think that those youth did what they felt was necessary at the time, however poorly conceived, despite being terrified throughout the ordeal. Our leadership’s failure to recognize this is endemic of a larger problem.

At every step of the way the immediate impulse by leading members of the group was to write off any potential gains that would be had by intervening vigorously in the Toronto G20 demonstrations and merely retreat to the safety of home.

Our silent and quick retreat Saturday and subsequent abstention is in stark contrast with our performance at the April 2001 FTAA summit in Quebec City during which we fully engaged with the breakaway protest that confronted the fence and stood shoulder to shoulder with those young militants as an incredible barrage of gas was fired on the crowd. At the time we denounced the Trade Union tops and media who “by playing up distinctions between the ‘violent’ protesters at the fence and the far more numerous ‘peaceful’ ones in the official march, the media sought to marginalize the young radicals who stood up to the cops.” [1] This time we found ourselves dutifully following the bureaucrats and internally scorning the breakaways as childish adventurists bent on mindless violence. One must therefore begin to draw the conclusion that our group has suffered significant degeneration during the decade or so since.

When I raised these serious criticisms, all but our comrade in Ireland immediately and mindlessly lined up behind our leadership before even addressing my points. A variety of personal slanders was used to discredit my opinion and I was shocked at how the overwhelming majority of our group could only view dissent as anger and hostility toward our dear leader Tom Riley. Any attempt to sympathize with my perspective was hedged in the conception that I was childishly fetishizing arrest and confrontation with the police despite making it clear that I was doing no such thing. Such unhealthy internal life confirmed my worst suspicions about our organization.

I formally joined the IBT in the spring of 2009 after being a sympathizer working with the group for two years in Toronto. The high level of programmatic education earned my confidence and respect despite the small size of the group relative to others. However, when the resignation of Sam Trachtenberg [2] in New York came to light I took some time to investigate his case and delayed applying for full-time membership. The political criticisms raised by Sam. were never explained to me. Instead, damning personal attacks were made against his credibility. Personal health issues were ruthlessly exploited and distorted in order to discredit him and avoid articulating any of his criticisms. Unable to recognize these attacks for what they were, I submitted my application and after being accepted, I brought up the fact that I had taken a good look at Sam’s case before finalizing my decision to join. I was told he was paranoid and delusional, and that it was a good thing he left so the leadership didn’t have to work even harder to push him out. I regret that I did not contact Sam, at the time to get his side of the split but in my defense, my personal ties to the younger comrades in the TBT local influenced me to leave the issue in the past though I kept my suspicions in the back of my mind for a day when more information would come to light.

At a 15 April 2010 local meeting it was suggested that a comrade who roughly fit my own description in terms of my limited relationship with Sam “befriend” him on a social media site in order to monitor him and relay information back to the leadership. I was the only person to comment on that point, stating that I would be the best candidate for such a job but that I don’t feel comfortable with it; that it felt dishonest and wrong. Riley merely shrugged and dismissed my objections by saying it wasn’t so bad and I shouldn’t have a problem with it. This was another weird side of the organization to which I responded with dismay. Could Samuel Trachtenberg be accurately describing the internal workings of my group? The validity of his case had grown with time and now a concrete example of unhealthy leadership practices had been demonstrated to me. I must now conclude that a disgusting campaign of lies and slander was used against Sam in order to push him out after he made various correct criticisms of the leadership. I now agree with Sam’s criticisms and urge comrades to look at them with open eyes.

As everyone in the IBT knows, membership has continued to decline since Sam in New York left the group. The dropping off of long-time supporters such as L. in NYC and the dismissal of W.’s attempt to transfer to our local was merely brushed aside because they were “old” and “useless.” An appropriate political explanation was not given. Our London local is constantly trashed for various reasons that seem unfair to me. More recently it has been announced that we should expect the “likely” loss of A. in Ireland who is a long-time comrade of the group and probably one of our most energetic members in terms of adapting to tactical realities and functioning with keen initiative. I recognized at the time that it was no accident that yet another of our most energetic, engaging and least abstentionist comrades who was working outside of the direct supervision of either Riley or Logan had become a target for being pushed out. The only value this comrade had according to our local and international leader was that he is one of our few comrades who can maintain the website, hence, he will be kept around as long as is convenient. It is also no coincidence that he was my only supporter when I raised my criticisms.

After recruiting a couple members in recent years, in large part due to the interventions of their youngest comrades, the TBT local is now shrinking back down in size and everywhere else our membership continues to contract under the burden of a bureaucratic leadership. Contact sessions have consistently broken down after initially showing promise and there seems to be little expectation of winning over Toronto leftists to the group in the foreseeable future. Our performance during the G20 protests has only made our prospects worse.

Some time ago, when it was indicated that the fusion talks with a group of contacts in Latin America were probably not going to work out because the contacts had demanded we do what our leadership described as “OCAP-type entry work” I was unsure if this was inevitable. As a rank and file member of the IBT I was never privy to any discussions with these comrades and news of our progress with them only came from our senior leaders who constantly portrayed them less as dedicated revolutionaries, and more as naïve children with silly ideas floating around in their heads, despite the fact that they were working under much harsher conditions than us. This is an even more bureaucratic repeat of the way our leadership botched similar fusion talks in the past.

It is amazing how much the 9/5/81 resignation letter to the Spartacist League by HK [3], our most senior comrade, applies to our situation

“For about a year I have been moving toward the conclusion that distortions in the leadership of sections, locals, and fractions have developed and matured–at least in part from an internal life characterized by a defensive, hierarchical regime combined with a personalistic, Jesuitical method of internal argument and discussion. This process is advanced to the point where the S.L./S.Y.L. membership is increasingly composed of “true believers” or cynics. I suspect that the incidents of political and tactical incompetence in the S.L. are connected with this deterioration of internal life. I think the central leadership has consciously and cynically concluded that the membership of the S.L. is too weak politically and personally to allow even the slightest disagreement with the leadership. There is an implied arithmetical equation: disagreement with the leadership equals hostility to the leadership equals disloyalty equals betrayal. Carried further, these trends will see the S.L. come to resemble less a principled, proletarian combat organization than a theocratic, hierarchical, political cult.”

When internal critics struggling to give criticism in order to better build the organization are branded as traitors and apolitical slanders are used to discredit them, honest revolutionaries cannot continue to remain silent.

There is an obvious pattern of degeneration present in the tradition of Jim Robertson’s brand of Trotskyism that we stand in. After abortion rights in Pennsylvania were restricted by Governor George Casey amidst the presidential elections of 1992, New York’s Village Voice newspaper gave Casey a platform to explain how a liberal can be anti-abortion. About one hundred angry protesters, including the now defunct New York Bolshevik Tendency, confronted Casey in order to disrupt his reactionary diatribe and draw attention to the legal lynching of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal who continues to sit on death row in Pennsylvania. The IBT wrote the Spartacist League a letter criticizing them for sending a sales team to sell at the door for half an hour before leaving, without ever entering the building. The protest successfully called attention to Mumia’s case and stole the spotlight from Casey. Our letter asked the SL “how could you have passed up such a perfect opportunity to demonstrate in action the politics you profess on paper?” to which we provided our own explanation:

“We have noted in the past that the SL’s autocratic internal regime has created organization ‘permeated with servility at one pole and authoritarianism at the other,’ (as Harry Turner characterized Gerry Healy’s organization in 1966). Such organizations produce people accustomed to operating according to a script, in situations where all the variables can be controlled. When they venture into the big world, where events can sometimes take an unexpected turn, the limitations of such training are thrown in sharp relief. Did you shun the protest against Casey for fear of participating in an action you could not fully control? Or perhaps because the presence of other left groups would have prevented the Spartacist League from claiming exclusive credit? And does Workers Vanguardignore the events of October 2 out of embarrassment over this shameful abstentionism? [4]

Considering this in light of our performance during the Toronto G20 protests, one has to wonder how we can also find ourselves at the end of such charges.

During the CUNY student protests of 1995-7 [5], another symptom of organizational degeneration was demonstrated by the Spartacist League in a tactical betrayal of working-class youths on 23 March 1995. Roughly 15,000 students of all ages, including our NYC branch, demonstrated in front of City Hall and suffered mass arrests and high volume pepper spray to prevent them from then marching to Wall Street. As the confrontation rapidly heightened and the predominantly black and working class students began staging a mass sit in inside City Hall Park, the Spartacist League’s sales team quickly packed up their lit table and fled. This cowardly flinch was widely noted and commented on amongst CUNY’s student activists, ruining the SL’s reputation for years to come.

The “staid Marxists” of the Spartacist League forced us to address their “Politics of Chicken” yet another time [6] when they abstained from the 1984 anti-Moral Majority protests in the Bay Area;

“We will explain that, fearful of state repression, you were too cowardly to join the thousand or more anti-Falwell protesters; that we are the ones who put forward the Trotskyist program to those who had assembled to oppose this sinister rise of the reactionary “Moral Majority.”

If history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, then what do we say about the third and fourth time? At minimum there is an unhealthy pattern occurring that stretches back through the IBT and into the SL. Lifelong permanent leaders grow to dominate the organizations they create which they take down with them. This is a problem that cannot simply be remedied by creating a new copy of the old group.

Sadly, our own outgrowth from Robertson’s school of party building has followed the same path as each subsequent challenger to Riley and Logan’s leadership fell away over the past decades. While Robertson had his style, his protégées carry on the tradition of manipulation and maneuvering in their own personal style of “informal sanctions” and behind the scenes maneuvers against opponents to retain control of the group. While Robertson’s group managed to partially break out of their marginalization in the early 1970s, our own group has not and almost 3 decades later our publications have been plagued with the same sort of publication infrequency and delay found in the early years of the Spartacist League as the leadership control and monopoly of even the most minor detail of organizational life has suffocated and stifled the ability of new comrades to learn and develop.

It is far past due for every honest comrade to speak out against the organizational degeneration inside the International Bolshevik Tendency. I hope I will not be the last to do so.

-Brandon Gray

[1] FTAA Demonstration in Quebec: For Socialist Globalization!; 1917 No. 24, 2002

http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no24/socialist_globalization.html

[2] The Road Out of Rileyville; 9/25/08

[3] Resignation from the Spartacist League

[4] A Letter WV Didn’t Print; by Jim Cullen 11/02/92

http://www.bolshevik.org/Leaflets/WV%20letter%201992.html

[5] IBT CUNY Documents 1995-1997

[6] ET Protests Moral Majority—SL Abstains: A Case of Mistaken Identity, ET Bulletin #4, May 1985

http://www.bolshevik.org/ETB/ETB4/ETB4.htm#Identity

Black Family Firebombed in Chicago

UAW Local Sets Up Labor/Black Defense Guard

[Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 67, 25 April 1975]

CHICAGO, April 18 — C. B. Dennis, black UAW union member, has been trying to move into the white neighborhood of Broadview. His house was firebombed and stoned repeatedly. But tonight, like every night for the past week, the Dennis family home is being protected by an integrated defense guard of his union brothers. Local 6 of the United Auto Workers, International Harvester, voted unanimously at the membership meeting Sunday to set up the defense guard.

At a time when there is a dramatic increase in racist terror against blacks all across the country, the UAW local’s action is a powerful example of what can be done to stop the night riders. And it is the best possible answer to those who preach reliance on the bourgeois cops by hiding behind the despairing lament, “workers won’t defend blacks against racist attacks — there’s no solution except to call on the troops”!

The attacks, which have caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the house and prevented the family from moving in, are part of a pattern of terror against blacks in white areas here, where right-wingers have been trying to stir up race hatred. In another neighborhood on the Southwest Side, four black families have been forced to live under a virtual state of siege, with the National Socialist White People’s Party (Nazis) all but taking direct credit for the firebombings (see article in this issue).

The first volunteers from Local 6, including Local president Norman Roth, were at posts outside the damaged house within hours of the union meeting. C. B. Dennis, who is a repairman at the Melrose Park IH plant and has been working there for 15 years, was interviewed at the house by Workers Vanguard. He said he had been unable to get adequate police protection.

“They said they would come by 20 minutes out of the hour. But that’s no protection at all,” Dennis told WV, observing that patrols had been by only once in two hours that night. “This is the best thing we could do,” he said, referring to the volunteer guards, “I was really proud of the union today. I think it’s a good thing.” An older black worker who was listening agreed, saying he could recall no similar action by the Local in its history. He likened it to the defense activities of the anti-eviction campaigns in which he had participated in the 1930’s.

The UAW Local’s defense action received considerable attention in Chicago. Articles appeared in both daily papers on Monday, and Dennis and Local 6 officers were interviewed on two television stations Monday evening. At least three radio reports were also made.

On the second night, the union guards were heckled by passers-by in the area, and a neighbor two doors down shouted at them to “get the hell out” of there. Another white resident, however, had earlier come over to talk to Dennis for 20 minutes, expressing sympathy and pointing out that some of the rocks had hit his house as well.

It is clear that the racial polarization runs deep but the entire neighborhood has not been terrorized. Local 6 defense volunteers speak in terms of the need to prevent another Boston-type racist mobilization in Chicago. There have been no new attacks as the teams of union volunteers have been guarding the house daily. Members vow the guards will remain “as long as necessary” to ensure that the family is safely moved into the house.

The attacks on black families have mounted during an organizing offensive by fascist and racist groupings in Chicago. Besides the attacks on four black families on the Southwest Side, there were earlier attacks on other families in Broadview. The Nazi Party ran candidates for alderman in five wards in the last elections, and the Ku Klux Klan has also been actively organizing lately.

These scum thrive on the despair generated by heavy inflation and unemployment in the working class, and their efforts to divide the workers along race lines can only benefit the employers. Resolute action such as that undertaken by Local 6 could, if followed through and adopted by the rest of the labor movement, prevent future attacks and quickly lay the tiny but deadly dangerous fascist movement in the grave where it belongs.

The third attack on the Dennis house, which occurred two days prior to the union meeting, particularly incensed many members of the Local. The motion to set up the volunteer union defense guards was made by a member of the Labor Struggle Caucus, which had distributed a newsletter in the plant before the meeting calling for a militant response to the wave of racist terror. The Labor Struggle Caucus is a grouping in Local 6 with a class-struggle program which has recently been active in successful struggles against a company leafleting ban in the plant and against a move to extend terms for local union officers to three years. Its resolution at the Sunday meeting supported the “struggle for integration of blacks in housing, education, and jobs,” as “vital interests of the entire working class,” and denounced reliance on the police, who “serve the employers and cannot be depended upon to defend the rights of blacks or of the trade unions.” The motion also called for defense activities to be extended to the black families on the Southwest Side, as well as Broadview.

Following the meeting, the Local issued a special number of its newsletter. Although this was reportedly not very well distributed, a special meeting held Tuesday night for volunteers was attended by 25 members from all political groupings in the Local, as well as by a television crew, which filmed the entire proceedings. President Roth chaired and took a lot of criticism for the inefficient distribution of the special Local newsletter which, it was said, kept the meeting from being larger.

He also relented under pressure on his earlier objection to the formation of a special committee to organize the defense guards. A steering committee was then set up under the chairmanship of the by-laws committee chairman. It includes two members of the Labor Struggle Caucus, a member of the syndicalist Workers Voice group, and other Local members. Members of the steering committee immediately began signing up volunteers in the plant.

Support for the defense activity was forthcoming, at least verbally, from the UAW officialdom in the area, including regional director Robert Johnston. The special Local newsletter asserted, “These efforts are in accord with our UAW principles and policies.”

On the other hand, the UAW officials seemed primarily concerned to get government officials to intervene, thereby relieving the union of its responsibility. At the Dennis house on Sunday night, Roth told WV of his intention “to exert every political pressure possible to try to get the authorities to do something.” He further claimed that “In some instances, the police have given some protection.”

Roth, who is a prominent supporter of Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy, the trade-union group backed by the reformist Communist Party, not surprisingly places confidence in the bosses’ state. Yet neither courts, cops, troops nor National Guard will protect blacks against racist victimization. This can be clearly seen in the Boston situation, where the courts are conciliating the racists and have taken a giant step backward on the busing plan.

In Boston there have been two sharply counterposed lines on how to defend the endangered blacks from racist attack. On the one hand there are the liberals, joined by the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party, who have called for federal troops. Against this dead-end reliance on the armed forces of the capitalist state, the Spartacist League has called for integrated working class defense. Both in Chicago and Boston or elsewhere, labor/black defense guards could quickly eliminate racist terrorists, neutralize wavering elements in the white population and eventually defuse racist mobilizations.

The Local 6 action could be the start of a general initiation of militant, class-struggle response to racist terror in the Chicago area, but only if the whole Local, leadership included, works to undertake it seriously and spread the idea to other locals. If the Local 6 leadership instead spreads illusions in the state, the way will be left open for a worsening racial polarization. The guard must not be ended prematurely, on the advice or promise of the cops or city officials that defense will be provided by the state.

The recent action of the Local 6 members stands as an inspiring example for all trade unionists and black militants: black and white workers can unite and organize to fend off racist terror. It will take an all-sided fight for class struggle policies and leadership throughout the labor movement to turn this example into the rule. But an important beginning has been made.

Seize the Opportunity!

Revolutionary Regroupment

[First printed in Spartacist # 14, November-December 1969]

The pressing need in this country for a united Leninist vanguard could never be more heavily underscored than at the present moment. In the past two years, it is clear, the major direction of social motion has been toward the right, with political and ethnic-racial polarization increasing. The country is perhaps more sharply divided now than at any tIme since the  early years of Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” Flag-waving patrIotism with its blatant racist overtones is back in style; the Nixon administration has reassembled the Bourbon Dixiecrat/reactionary Republican alliance; “law and order” is the catchword; and the Black Panther Party faces a government attempt at root-and:branch destruction. All sections of society are deeply split over Viet Nam policy, giving rise to the seeming abberation of the anti-war bourgeoisie’s Viet Nam Moratorium. In the midst of thIs deepening polarization the the working class, rebellious and in motion, is turning to reactionary demagogues lIke Wallace for lack of a revolutionary alternative.

In general, the U.S. left-wing movement, pragmatic and opportunist, has moved to the right in keeplng with the general drift. However, in reflexIve reactIon to the prevaling mood, an impulse to the left has found expression within most. of the organized radical groups. Much recent evident fracturing has resulted from leftward-moving internal forces clashing with stand-pat or opportunist groupings with-In their organizations. The Spartacist tendency itself crystallized in opposition to the Socialist Workers Party’s capitUlation to Castroism, Black Nationalism and middle-class politics which marked its transformation from revolutionary Trotskyism to revisionism. In fact right/left tensions have recently appeared even in the remains of such fossilized reformist groups as the Socialist Party and Communist Party and even the Socialist Labor Party has had two recent substantial breakaways.

But perhaps the clearest expression of social motion refracted into left-wing politics is the SDS split in Chicago. The split took place over perhaps the two most fundamental issues facing revolutionaries today -the Black question and an orientation toward the workmg class. The result was a right/left split which has driven home to thousands of would-be revolutionaries the imperative necessity of political struggle and clarification. The winner in the SDS dispute was the Boston SDS, whose non-exclusionism embodied a recognition of this basic principle of political conduct. However, the behavior of the right wing-already split into violently hostile rival factions, the “RevolutIonary Youth Movement” and the “Weathermen” has undoubtedly served to disorient and demoralize many young radicals and drive them out of political activity.

Groupings like the Boston SDS and its Worker-Student Alliance caucus, and left tendencies in other organizations, are open to revolutionary politics. But, simple gut-level “leftism” and a crude working-class perspective only pose the question. Both major factIons in SDS have attempted to go beyond mindless activism toward a Marxist programmatic solutIon, yet large sectIons of them appear unable to reach beyond an arnazed rediscovery of the arch betrayers of the communist movement, Stalin and his various epigones! Nor was this abysmal nonsense separated out by an otherwIse clarifying, if unfortunate, split: the class-conscious WSA is led by the ProgressIve Labor Party, whose ambIvalence toward its most recent impulse toward a proletarian revolutionary line- places it in the excruciating. contradiction of maintaining Mao and Stalin as official heroes while often surreptitiously (and opportunistically) sweeping into the dustbin the grosser revisionist practices most characteristic of these self-same idols! (e.g., the bloc of four classes, the theory of the two-stage revolution, peasant-oriented “Third Worldism,” the popular front, violence. against left critics). An oscillation between a proletarian impulse and the tired old politics of Stalinism is the inevitable result of seeking a revolutionary practice in the anti-revolutionary dogma of Maoism. In fact, in the idiocies of Rudd’s Weathermen or Avakian’s Revolutionary Union, PL can see the journey to the Maoist shrine down the same path PL once unambiguously walked, and only marvel that these new Red Guards are more orthodox than they!

But PL is by no means the only organization with contradictions in its make-up. A group like the “third camp” International Socialists, like its sometime ally the Labor Committee of L. Marcus, can draw in young radicals on the basis of a revolutionary facade, although in essential thrust both groups might be best described as the extreme left wing of social democracy.

Left-Communist Regroupment

It would be sectarian and blatantly anti-Leninist to passively accept a situation which allows would-be Marxists to persist in following a program which falls qualitatively short of a revolutionary line. To reverse this process, we call for political and theoretical polarization of the ostensibly revolutionary groupings, leading ultimately to a left-communist regroupment of all organizations, factions, tendencies and individuals who stand on an anti-revisionist Marxist program, toward the formation of a Leninist vanguard party. The objective preconditions for such a process are, we believe, abundantly fulfilled; however, the subjective desire to transcend the existing organizational lineups is manifestly lacking on the part of many of those who should seek such a regroupment. And the opportunity is transitory.

What “Regroupment” Means

It should not be thought that a call for regroupment means a cessation of political and theoretical struggle; on the contrary, only a conscious strategy of increased polarization separating the future cadre of the Marxist movement from the opportunists and garbage will make any future unity feasible. By analogy, we might say that perhaps the most deserving victim of the SDS split was the postulate-an ideological cornerstone of the New Left-that fundamental political divisions of an earlier era and other movements could be casually relegated to the scrap heap.

For ignoring history carries no guarantee history will reciprocate in like manner! After the Communist Party of France sold out the revolutionary upheaval of May 1968, many of the outlawed groups to the left of the CP felt the need for unity to counterpose a mass working-class party to the Stalinists. At this juncture a great opportunity was derailed, as the Lutte Ouvriere tendency compromised themselves fatally. Rather than proposing unity on the basis of a proletarian Marxist program (that is, the Leninist method of splits and fusions) they retreated to a search for the lowest common denominator, gratuitously abandoning their political positions in favor of the hoped for programless collective. Rather than unity this brought chaos and a swelling of the ranks of the revisionists within the Trotskyist movement; in the bargain LO actually placed themselves to the right of the revisionists.

Mutual Amnesty

Such a “unity” is of course no unity at all, but merely an ultimately defective strategy for an unprincipled coalition for the purpose of dodging political issues, a mutual amnesty from the testing in practice of competing theories and programs. Speaking of his own struggle within the Russian movement between his own faction and a grouping of “pro-party Mensheviks,” Lenin stated that the task facing his group was to organize militants around “a definite party line.” “Unity,” he said further, “is inseparable from its ideological foundation.” The political differences which had formerly existed between Lenin and the “pro-party Mensheviks” were resolved in the course of extended common work and theoretical struggle, as he had anticipated. And while Plekhanov and a few other unreconstructed leaders of this Menshevik grouping soon broke with the Leninists, the bulk of its rank and file came over squarely to the revolutionaries. It was precisely this fusion in 1912 which hardened the political separation and forged the revolutionary faction into the Bolshevik party. This fusion was not different in kind from the infinitely more famous entry of Trotsky’s Mezhrayontsi (InterDistrict group) into Lenin’s party in the summer of 1917, which set the stage for the successful October Revolution which followed it.

United Front Tactic

In the past few months the left has found itself bombarded with calls for “united actions,” for a lessening of “factionalism” and, so far as SDS is concerned, an end to the pitched battles between competing tendencies. It is ironic but no doubt typical that such calls for an increase in political consqiousness have emanated from exactly those people who have done their damnedest over the years to ridicule and destroy that consciousness whose lack they now bemoan (as, for example, the Guardian, whose shameless “reportage of the SDS split continued their whitewash of earlier efforts by the old SDS leadership to purge PL from their organization).

“Unity of action” among left orgaizations-when there is a real basis of political agreement on the specific issue-is essential to the crystaIlizatiod of a revolutionary vanguard. United fronts as formulated by Lenin and Trotsky had as their main goal the regroupment of both the cadre and the rank and file of non-communist workers’ organizations into the communist party, by demonstrating in action that only the communists were willing to carry the struggles through to the end. The slogan of the united front was “march separately, strike together” meaning that these groups cooperate against the common enemy, but were not politically subordinated either to each other or to a common organization.

The class line is decisive here. Revisionists try to subordinate the working class to the liberal bourgeoisie or other sectors of the ruling class by means of popular fronts. Thus the CP, under the slogan of an “anti-monopoly coaIition, has fought the emergence of a labor party by supporting liberal Democrats against “reactionaries”; the Black Panther Party, panicked and disoriented by fierce government repression and lacking the bulwark of ideological clarity, calls for a “united front against fascism,” a cover for capitulation to the CP in order to seek as allies the “respectable” liberals-that force which willingly abets and apologizes for their persecution!; the SWP ferociously opposes the introduction of anti-imperialst, pro-socialist politics into their seemgly endless aggregate of classless “peace” actions while throwing open the door to politicians like McCarthy and Lindsay. The purpose of all such popuar fronts is to blur political issues. A revolutionary regroupment must forthrIghtly stand on a decisive repudiation of these and like betrayals.

Political Basis

As our contribution to furthering a process of principled regroupment of revolutionaries, we raise the following political points as the basis of such a reegroupment:

1. For Democratic Rights Within the Workers’ Movement!

The task of the left is to fight for working-class consciousness. Consistent with thIs aim must be the repudiation of gangsterism, which substitutes physical for political confrontation. Exclusionism (and the “cult of violence” so typical of the frenzied petty-bourgeoisie) exposes its practitioners as afraid that their politics will not stand the test of open poItlcal debate and competition in action.

Concommitantly, the left must repudiate the method of oversimplification and slander against ideological opponents. To attack those with different programs as subjectively “racist,” ‘counter-revolutionaries” “police agents” “proto-fascists” etc. is to obscure the issues and play into the hands of the anti-communists _ e.g., social democrats, pro-capitalist liberals etc.- whose pet attack against the ostensIble revolutionaries has always been that the pro-Leninist left is “as bad as the right wing,” “only the reverse side of the coin,” etc. This is not to downgrade the necessity to struggle against wrong politics, which certainly serve objectively to disorient and weaken the revolutionary cause. But it is a far cry from this to the allegation -always so appealing to those whose political educatlon has been in the Stalinist movement -that opponent organizations and indivlduals are subjectively trying to do the work of the enemy. Likewise, regardless of political disagreement, all honest militants must mobilize for the defense of other left-wing tendencies against reactionary terrorism or bourgeois repression.

Revolutionaries must fight the imposition of organizational separations where political differences no longer hold sway. All organizations claiming adherence to revolutionary principles must declare their willingness to participate in and actively initiate united actions where political agreement exists, and must refuse to permIt necessary political polemic and criticism to be construed as a bar to principled united fronts.

2. For a ‘Working-Class Orientation!

The basis of a revolutionary perspective must be the reaffirmation of Lenin and Trotsky’s understanding ofproletarian revolution as the only feasible model. Would-be revolutionaries must forthrightly reject the GuevarIst-type “peasant guerrilla road to socialism” and the petty-bourgeois nationalism of bureaucratic Stalinist leaderships.

The central tactic in fighting for communist hegemony in the working class must be an orientation toward buildingfractions within the trade union movement, rather than toward the doomed sterile approach of abstract propagandism from the outside propounded by the SLP, Marcus’ Labor Committee and others. The concept of transitional demands- i.e., demands whIch lead to revolutionary consciousness and are realizable only through struggle- is vital here in avoiding the otherwIse inevitable frantic oscillation between minimal economist tail-ending of the labor bureaucracy and face-saving ultra-revolutionary rhetoric. RevolutIonarIes must fight, against the intervention of the capitalist state in the trade unions, both directly (as an “ImpartIal” arbIter of disputes between the corrupt labor bureaucrats and the rank and file) and indirectly through the class collaborationist of the bureaucrats. The reliance of the workers, on supposedly “prolabor” capitalist politiclans must be broken by fighting. for independent working-class politIcal actIon.

3. Defeat Black Nationalism by Class Struggle Politics!

Several. groupings on the left found themselves in substantIal agreement in condemning the recent pro-CP turn of the Black Panthers. In general these groups have also come – unwillingly and after a hIstory of opportunism on the questIon- to a realization of the necessity to break with the dead end Black Nationalism of the sort slavishly tail-ended by RYM and the SWP. The petty-bourgeoIs separatIst, anti-class approach of these demagogues has assisted in compoundmg the racism of the white working dass and drIving natural class allies further from each other. Likewise the classless demand of “community control does not remain classless in a class society and can be infused with simple reactionary content as well as gutless Populism.

Yet aspiring revolutlonarIes must utilize in the struggle against Black Nationalist illusions the recognition of Lenin’s dictum that the chauvinism of the oppressed is not IdentIcal to the chauvinism of the oppressor. Revolutionaries must transcend any impulse toward colorblind, oversImplIfied “workerism” in favor of a sensitivity to the pervasive special oppression of black workers.

4. For a Class Line on the War!

In the past virtually every orgamzatlon has climbed on the bandwagon of opportunist, middle-class anti-war politics, although none has exceeded the shameless machinations of the ex-Trotskyist SWP. Similarly, the left let itself be intimidated by the overwhelming mood of moralistic, anti-draft “resistance” confrontationism, refusing to raise the alternative of anti-war struggle in the army among working-class draftees until the creation willy-nilly of massive anti-war sentiment among G.I.s themselves forced the issue.

Those who are sincere in their anticapitalist intentions must break from their past mistakes as they would have the working class break from its misleaders. They must learn from the spectacle of avowed revolutionaries demanding a classless “peace” and catering to the social chauvinism of “Bring Our Boys Home Now” the necessity for a policy of revolutionary defeatism toward imperialism and a strategy’ of linking the so-called “war madness” to an understanding of the capitalist system with a program of workingclass- oriented anti-war demands, to break anti-war militants from middle class liberalism to proletarian intransigence.

5. For Internatioinalism!

Those who recognize the nature of capitalism as an international system must give more than’ lip service to the need for an international revolutionary movement to fight it. They must condemn the pragmatic know-nothing anti-internationalism of such groups as the Labor Committee, and also the slavish worship of what is which leads the RYM-Weatherman mob to betray those they profess to “serve” by issuing blank checks to the Stalinist mis-leaders of the “Third World.” They must carry further their condemnation of revisionism and recognize it as the inevitable result of a belief in “Socialism in One Country,” as the national bureaucracies desperately bargain away other revolutions in exchange for temporary curtailment of imperialism’s appetites toward the gains of their own. The urgent need for communist unity against imperialism presupposes political revolution in the deformed workers states to replace Stalinist nationalism with the revolutionary will of the international working class.

6. For a Vanguard Party!

The theoretical and organizational continuity of ‘the revolutionary movement cannot be preserved except through a Leninist vanguard. Without an internationalist vanguard party the spontaneous revolutionary aspirations of the working masses cannot effect the overthrow of capitalism. Class-conscious revolutionaries agreed on the essentials of principle and program must agree to join together in a democratic and’ centralist collective of those united in struggle on the basis of the above points.

Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay

by Leon Trotsky (1940)

[First Published in English: Fourth International [New York], Vol.2 No.2, February 1941, pp.40-43. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm ]

(The manuscript of the following article was found in Trotsky’s desk. Obviously, it was by no means a completed article, but rather the rough notes for an article on the subject indicated by his title. He had been writing them shortly before his death. – The Editors of FI)

There is one common feature in the development, or more correctly the degeneration, of modern trade union organizations in the entire world: it is their drawing closely to and growing together with the state power. This process is equally characteristic of the neutral, the Social-Democratic, the Communist and “anarchist” trade unions. This fact alone shows that the tendency towards “growing together” is intrinsic not in this or that doctrine as such but derives from social conditions common for all unions.

Monopoly capitalism does not rest on competition and free private initiative but on centralized command. The capitalist cliques at the head of mighty trusts, syndicates, banking consortiums, etcetera, view economic life from the very same heights as does state power; and they require at every step the collaboration of the latter. In their turn the trade unions in the most important branches of industry find themselves deprived of the possibility of profiting by the competition between the different enterprises. They have to confront a centralized capitalist adversary, intimately bound up with state power. Hence flows the need of the trade unions – insofar as they remain on reformist positions, ie., on positions of adapting themselves to private property – to adapt themselves to the capitalist state and to contend for its cooperation. In the eyes of the bureaucracy of the trade union movement the chief task lies in “freeing” the state from the embrace of capitalism, in weakening its dependence on trusts, in pulling it over to their side. This position is in complete harmony with the social position of the labor aristocracy and the labor bureaucracy, who fight for a crumb in the share of superprofits of imperialist capitalism. The labor bureaucrats do their level best in words and deeds to demonstrate to the “democratic” state how reliable and indispensable they are in peace-time and especially in time of war. By transforming the trade unions into organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new; it merely draws to their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in imperialism.

Colonial and semi-colonial countries are under the sway not of native capitalism but of foreign imperialism. However, this does not weaken but on the contrary, strengthens the need of direct, daily, practical ties between the magnates of capitalism and the governments which are in essence subject to them – the governments of colonial or semi-colonial countries. Inasmuch as imperialist capitalism creates both in colonies and semi-colonies a stratum of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, the latter requires the support of colonial and semicolonial governments, as protectors, patrons and, sometimes, as arbitrators. This constitutes the most important social basis for the Bonapartist and semi-Bonapartist character of governments in the colonies and in backward countries generally. This likewise constitutes the basis for the dependence of reformist unions upon the state.

In Mexico the trade unions have been transformed by law into semi-state institutions and have, in the nature of things, assumed a semi-totalitarian character. The stateization of the trade unions was, according to the conception of the legislators, introduced in the interests of the workers in order to assure them an influence upon the governmental and economic life. But insofar as foreign imperialist capitalism dominates the national state and insofar as it is able, with the assistance of internal reactionary forces, to overthrow the unstable democracy and replace it with outright fascist dictatorship, to that extent the legislation relating to the trade unions can easily become a weapon in the hands of imperialist dictatorship.

Slogans for Freeing the Unions

From the foregoing it seems, at first sight, easy to draw the conclusion that the trade unions cease to be trade unions in the imperialist epoch. They leave almost no room at all for workers’ democracy which, in the good old days, when free trade ruled on the economic arena, constituted the content of the inner life of labor organizations. In the absence of workers’ democracy there cannot be any free struggle for the influence over the trade union membership. And because of this, the chief arena of work for revolutionists within the trade unions disappears. Such a position, however, would be false to the core. We cannot select the arena and the conditions for our activity to suit our own likes and dislikes. It is infinitely more difficult to fight in a totalitarian or a semitotalitarian state for influence over the working masses than in a democracy. The very same thing likewise applies to trade unions whose fate reflects the change in the destiny of capitalist states. We cannot renounce the struggle for influence over workers in Germany merely because the totalitarian regime makes such work extremely difficult there. We cannot, in precisely the same way, renounce the struggle within the compulsory labor organizations created by Fascism. All the less so can we renounce internal systematic work in trade unions of totalitarian and semi-totalitarian type merely because they depend directly or indirectly on the workers’ state or because the bureaucracy deprives the revolutionists of the possibility of working freely within these trade unions. It is necessary to conduct a struggle under all those concrete conditions which have been created by the preceding developments, including therein the mistakes of the working class and the crimes of its leaders. In the fascist and semi-fascist countries it is impossible to carry on revolutionary work that is not underground, illegal, conspiratorial. Within the totalitarian and semi-totalitarian unions it is impossible or well-nigh impossible to carry on any except conspiratorial work. It is necessary to adapt ourselves to the concrete conditions existing in the trade unions of every given country in order to mobilize the masses not only against the bourgeoisie but also against the totalitarian regime within the trade unions themselves and against the leaders enforcing this regime. The primary slogan for this struggle is: complete and unconditional independence of the trade unions in relation to the capitalist state. This means a struggle to turn the trade unions into the organs of the broad exploited masses and not the organs of a labor aristocracy.

* * *

The second slogan is: trade union democracy. This second slogan flows directly from the first and presupposes for its realization the complete freedom of the trade unions from the imperialist or colonial state.

In other words, the trade unions in the present epoch cannot simply be the organs of democracy as they were in the epoch of free capitalism and they cannot any longer remain politically neutral, that is, limit themselves to serving the daily needs of the working class. They cannot any longer be anarchistic, i.e. ignore the decisive influence of the state on the life of peoples and classes. They can no longer be reformist, because the objective conditions leave no room for any serious and lasting reforms. The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination and disciplining of workers and for obstructing the revolution, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

* * *

The neutrality of the trade unions is completely and irretrievably a thing of the past, gone together with the free bourgeois democracy.

* * *

From what has been said it follows quite clearly that, in spite of the progressive degeneration of trade unions and their growing together with the imperialist state, the work within the trade unions not only does not lose any of its importance but remains as before and becomes in a certain sense even more important work than ever for every revolutionary party. The matter at issue is essentially the struggle for influence over the working class. Every organization, every party, every faction which permits itself an ultimatistic position in relation to the trade union, i.e., in essence turns its back upon the working class, merely because of displeasure with its organizations, every such organization is destined to perish. And it must be said it deserves to perish.

* * *

Inasmuch as the chief role in backward countries is not played by national but by foreign capitalism, the national bourgeoisie occupies, in the sense of its social position, a much more minor position than corresponds with the development of industry. Inasmuch as foreign capital does not import workers but proletarianizes the native population, the national proletariat soon begins playing the most important role in the life of the country. In these conditions the national government, to the extent that it tries to show resistance to foreign capital, is compelled to a greater or lesser degree to lean on the proletariat. On the other hand, the governments of those backward countries which consider inescapable or more profitable for themselves to march shoulder to shoulder with foreign capital, destroy the labor organizations and institute a more or less totalitarian regime. Thus, the feebleness of the national bourgeoisie, the absence of traditions of municipal self-government, the pressure of foreign capitalism and the relatively rapid growth of the proletariat, cut the ground from under any kind of stable democratic regime. The governments of backward, i.e., colonial and semi-colonial countries, by and large assume a Bonapartist or semi-Bonapartist character; and differ from one another in this, that some try to orient in a democratic direction, seeking support among workers and peasants, while others install a form close to military-police dictatorship. This likewise determines the fate of the trade unions. They either stand under the special patronage of the state or they are subjected to cruel persecution. Patronage on the part of the state is dictated by two tasks which confront it.. First, to draw the working class closer thus gaining a support for resistance against excessive pretensions on the part of imperialism; and, at the same time, to discipline the workers themselves by placing them under the control of a bureaucracy.

* * *

Monopoly Capitalism and the Unions

Monopoly capitalism is less and less willing to reconcile itself to the independence of trade unions. It demands of the reformist bureaucracy and the labor aristocracy who pick the crumbs from its banquet table, that they become transformed into its political police before the eyes of the working class. If that is not achieved, the labor bureaucracy is driven away and replaced by the fascists. Incidentally, all the efforts of the labor aristocracy in the service of imperialism cannot in the long run save them from destruction.

The intensification of class contradictions within each country, the intensification of antagonisms between one country and another, produce a situation in which imperialist capitalism can tolerate (i.e., up to a certain time) a reformist bureaucracy only if the latter serves directly as a petty but active stockholder of its imperialist enterprises, of its plans and programs within the country as well as on the world arena. Social-reformism must become transformed into social-imperialism in order to prolong its existence, but only prolong it, and nothing more. Because along this road there is no way out in general.

Does this mean that in the epoch of imperialism independent trade unions are generally impossible? It would be fundamentally incorrect to pose the question this way. Impossible are the independent or semi-independent reformist trade unions. Wholly possible are revolutionary trade unions which not only are not stockholders of imperialist policy but which set as their task the direct overthrow of the rule of capitalism. In the epoch of imperialist decay the trade unions can be really independent only to the extent that they are conscious of being, in action, the organs of proletarian revolution. In this sense, the program of transitional demands adopted by the last congress of the Fourth International is not only the program for the activity of the party but in its fundamental features it is the program for the activity of the trade unions.

(Translator’s note: At this point Trotsky left room on the page, to expound further the connection between trade union activity and the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. It is obvious that implied here is a very powerful argument in favor of military training under trade union control. The following idea is implied: Either the trade unions serve as the obedient recruiting sergeants for the imperialist army and imperialist war or they train workers for self-defense and revolution.)

The development of backward countries is characterized by its combined character. In other words, the last word of imperialist technology, economics, and politics is combined in these countries with traditional backwardness and primitiveness. This law can be observed in the most diverse spheres of the development of colonial and semi-colonial countries, including the sphere of the trade union movement. Imperialist capitalism operates here in its most cynical and naked form. It transports to virgin soil the most perfected methods of its tyrannical rule.

* * *

In the trade union movement throughout the world there is to be observed in the last period a swing to the right and the suppression of internal democracy. In England, the Minority Movement in the trade unions has been crushed (not without the assistance of Moscow); the leaders of the trade union movement are today, especially in the field of foreign policy, the obedient agents of the Conservative party. In France there was no room for an independent existence for Stalinist trade unions; they united with the so-called anarcho-syndicalist trade unions under the leadership of Jouhaux and as a result of this unification there was a general shift of the trade union movement not to the left but to the right. The leadership of the CGT is the most direct and open agency of French imperialist capitalism.

In the United States the trade union movement has passed through the most stormy history in recent years. The rise of the CIO is incontrovertible evidence of the revolutionary tendencies within the working masses. Indicative and noteworthy in the highest degree, however, is the fact that the new “leftist” trade union organization was no sooner founded than it fell into the steel embrace of the imperialist state. The struggle among the tops between the old federation and the new is reducible in large measure to the struggle for the sympathy and support of Roosevelt and his cabinet.

No less graphic, although in a different sense, is the picture of the development or the degeneration of the trade union movement in Spain. In the socialist trade unions all those leading elements which to any degree represented the independence of the trade union movement were pushed out. As regards the anarcho-syndicalist unions, they were transformed into the instrument of the bourgeois republicans; the anarcho-syndicalist leaders became conservative bourgeois ministers. The fact that this metamorphosis took place in conditions of civil war does not weaken its significance. War is the continuation of the self-same policies. It speeds up processes, exposes their basic features, destroys all that is rotten, false, equivocal and lays bare all that is essential. The shift of the trade unions to the right was due to the sharpening of class and international contradictions. The leaders of the trade union movement sensed or understood, or were given to understand, that now was no time to play the game of opposition. Every oppositional movement within the trade union movement, especially among the tops, threatens to provoke a stormy movement of the masses and to create difficulties for national imperialism. Hence flows the swing of the trade unions to the right, and the suppression of workers’ democracy within the unions. The basic feature, the swing towards the totalitarian regime, passes through the labor movement of the whole world.

We should also recall Holland, where the reformist and the trade union movement was not only a reliable prop of imperialist capitalism, but where the so-called anarcho-syndicalist organization also was actually under the control of the imperialist government. The secretary of this organization, Sneevliet, in spite of his Platonic sympathies for the Fourth International was as deputy in the Dutch Parliament most concerned lest the wrath of the government descend upon his trade union organization.

* * *

In the United States the Department of Labor with its leftist bureaucracy has as its task the subordination of the trade union movement to the democratic state and it must be said that this task has up to now been solved with some success.

* * *

The nationalization of railways and oil fields in Mexico has of course nothing in common with socialism. It is a measure of state capitalism in a backward country which in this way seeks to defend itself on the one hand against foreign imperialism and on the other against its own proletariat. The management of railways, oil fields, etcetera, through labor organizations has nothing in common with workers’ control over industry, for in the essence of the matter the management is effected through the labor bureaucracy which is independent of the workers, but in return, completely dependent on the bourgeois state. This measure on the part of the ruling class pursues the aim of disciplining the working class, making it more industrious in the service of the common interests of the state, which appear on the surface to merge with the interests of the working class itself. As a matter of fact, the whole task of the bourgeoisie consists in liquidating the trade unions as organs of the class struggle and substituting in their place the trade union bureaucracy as the organ of the leadership over the workers by the bourgeois state. In these conditions, the task of the revolutionary vanguard is to conduct a struggle for the complete independence of the trade unions and for the introduction of actual workers’ control over the present union bureaucracy, which has been turned into the administration of railways, oil enterprises and so on.

* * *

Events of the last period (before the war) have revealed with especial clarity that anarchism, which in point of theory is always only liberalism drawn to its extremes, was, in practice, peaceful propaganda within the democratic republic, the protection of which it required. If we leave aside individual terrorist acts, etcetera, anarchism, as a system of mass movement and politics, presented only propaganda material under the peaceful protection of the laws. In conditions of crisis the anarchists always did just the opposite of what they taught in peace times. This was pointed out by Marx himself in connection with the Paris Commune. And it was repeated on a far more colossal scale in the experience of the Spanish revolution.

* * *

Democratic unions in the old sense of the term, bodies where in the framework of one and the same mass organization different tendencies struggled more or less freely, can no longer exist. Just as it is impossible to bring back the bourgeois-democratic state, so it is impossible to bring back the old workers’ democracy. The fate of the one reflects the fate of the other. As a matter of fact, the independence of trade unions in the class sense, in their relations to the bourgeois state can, in the present conditions, be assured only by a completely revolutionary leadership, that is, the leadership of the Fourth International. This leadership, naturally, must and can be rational and assure the unions the maximum of democracy conceivable under the present concrete conditions. But without the political leadership of the Fourth International the independence of the trade unions is impossible.

America and the Negro question

by John Reed

Speech at 2nd Congress of Comintern, July 25 1920. Copied from http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch04.htm#v1-p121

In America there live ten million Negroes who are concentrated mainly in the South. In recent years however many thousands of them have moved to the North. The Negroes in the North are employed in industry while in the South the majority are farm labourers or small farmers. The position of the Negroes is terrible, particularly in the Southern states. Paragraph 16 of the Constitution of the United States grants the Negroes full civil rights. Nevertheless most Southern states deny the Negroes these rights. In other states, where by law the Negroes possess the right to vote, they are killed if they dare to exercise this right.

Negroes are not allowed to travel in the same railway carriages as whites, visit the same saloons and restaurants, or live in the same districts. There exist special, and worse, schools for Negroes and similarly special churches. This separation of the Negroes is called the ‘Jim Crow system’, and the clergy in the Southern churches preach about paradise on the ‘Jim Crow system’. Negroes are used as unskilled workers in industry. Until recently they were excluded from most of the unions that belong to the American Federation of Labour. The IWW of course organised the Negroes, the old Socialist Party however undertook no serious attempt to organise them. In some states the Negroes were not accepted into the party at all, in others they were separated off into special sections, and in general the party statutes banned the use of Party resources for propaganda among Negroes.

In the South the Negro has no rights at all and does not even enjoy the protection of the law. Usually one can kill Negroes without being punished. One terrible white institution is the lynching of Negroes. This happens in the following manner., The Negro is covered with oil and strung up on a telegraph pole. The whole of the town, men, women and children, run up to watch the show and take home a piece of the clothing or the skin of the Negro they have tortured to death ‘as a souvenir’.

I have too little time to explain the historical background to the Negro question in the United States. The descendants of the slave population, who were liberated during the Civil War, when politically and economically they were still completely underdeveloped, were later given full political rights in order to unleash a bitter class struggle in the South which was intended to hold up Southern capitalism until the capitalists in the North were able to bring together all the country’s resources into their own. possession.

Until recently the Negroes did not show any aggressive class consciousness at all. The first awakening of the Negroes took place after the Spanish-American War, in which the black troops had fought with extraordinary courage and from which they returned with the feeling that as men they were equal to the white troops. Until then the only movement that existed among the Negroes was a semi-philanthropic educational association led by Booker T. Washington and supported by the white capitalists. This movement found its expression in the organisation of schools in which the Negroes were brought up to be good servants of industry. As intellectual nourishment they were presented with the good advice to resign themselves to the fate of an oppressed people. During the Spanish War an aggressive reform movement arose among the Negroes which demanded social and political equality with the whites. With the beginning of the European war half a million Negroes who had joined the US Army were sent to France, where they were billeted with French troop detachments and suddenly made the discovery that they were treated as equals socially and in every other respect. The American General Staff approached the French High Command and asked them to forbid Negroes to visit places used by whites and to treat them as second-class people. After the war the Negroes, many of whom had received medals for bravery from the English and French governments, returned to their Southern villages where they were subjected to lynch law because they dared to wear their uniforms and their decorations on the street.

At the same time a strong movement arose among the Negroes who had stayed behind. Thousands of them moved to the North, began to work in the war industries and came into contact with the surging current of the labour movement. High as they were, their wage rates trailed behind the incredible increases in the prices of the most important necessities. Moreover the Negroes were outraged by the way all their strength was sucked out and the terrible exertions demanded by the work much more than were the white workers who had grown used to the terrible exploitation in the course of many years.

The Negroes went on strike alongside the white workers and quickly joined the industrial proletariat. They proved very ready to accept revolutionary propaganda. At that time the newspaper Messenger was founded, published by a young Negro, the socialist Randolf, and pursuing revolutionary propagandist aims. This paper united socialist propaganda with an appeal to the racial consciousness of the Negroes and with the call to organise self-defence against the brutal attacks of the whites. At the same time the paper insisted on the closest links with the white workers, regardless of the fact that the latter often took part in Negro-baiting, and emphasised that the enmity between the white and black races was supported by the capitalists in their own interests.

The return of the army from the front threw many millions of white workers on to the labour market all at once. The result was unemployment, and the demobilised soldiers’ impatience took such threatening proportions that the employers were forced to tell the soldiers that their jobs had been taken by Negroes in order thus to incite the whites to massacre the Negroes. The first of these outbreaks took place in Washington, where civil servants from the administration returning from the war found their jobs occupied by Negroes. The civil servants were in the main Southerners. They organised a night attack on the Negro district in order to terrorise the Negroes into giving up their jobs. To everybody’s amazement the Negroes came on to the streets fully armed. A fight developed and the Negroes fought so well that for every dead Negro there were three dead whites. Another revolt which lasted several days and left many dead on both sides broke out a few months later in Chicago. Later still a massacre took place in Omaha. In all these fights the Negroes showed for the first time in history that they are armed and splendidly organised and are not at all afraid of the whites. The results of the Negroes’ resistance were first of all a belated intervention by the government and secondly the acceptance of Negroes into the unions of the American Federation of Labour.

Racial consciousness grew among the Negroes themselves. At present there is among the Negroes a section which preaches the armed uprising of the Negroes against the whites. The Negroes who returned home from the war have set up associations everywhere for self-defence and to fight against the white supporters of lynch law. The circulation of the Messenger is growing constantly. At present it sells 180,000 copies monthly. At the same time, socialist ideas have taken root and are spreading rapidly among the Negroes employed in industry.

If we consider the Negroes as an enslaved and oppressed people, then they pose us with two tasks: on the one hand a strong racial movement and on the other a strong proletarian workers’ movement, whose class consciousness is quickly growing. The Negroes do not pose the demand of national independence. A movement that aims for a separate national existence, like for instance the ‘back to Africa’ movement that could be observed a few years ago, is never successful among the Negroes. They hold themselves above all to be Americans, they feel at home in the United States. That simplifies the tasks of the communists considerably.

The only correct policy for the American Communists towards the Negroes is to regard them above all as workers. The agricultural workers and the small farmers of the South pose, despite the backwardness of the Negroes, the same tasks as those we have in respect to the white rural proletariat. Communist propaganda can be carried out among the Negroes who are employed as industrial workers in the North. In both parts of the country we must strive to organise Negroes in the same unions as the whites. This is the best and quickest way to root out racial prejudice and awaken class solidarity.

BT/LTT Fusion Document

For Trotskyism!

[The following document was adopted by the fusion conference of the Bolshevik Tendency and the Left Trotskyist Tendency on November 1986 as a codification of the programmatic agreement reached by the two organizations. It was originally printed in 1917 #3, Spring 1987. This version copied from  http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no3/no03btlt.html]

1. Party and Program

‘‘The interests of the [working] class cannot be formulated otherwise than in the shape of a program; the program cannot be defended otherwise than by creating the party. ‘‘The class, taken by itself, is only material for exploitation. The proletariat assumes an independent role only at that moment when from a social class in itself it becomes a political class for itself. This cannot take place otherwise than through the medium of a party. The party is that historical organ by means of which the class becomes class conscious.’’

—L.D. Trotsky, ‘‘What Next?’’ 1932

The working class is the only thoroughly revolutionary class in modern society, the only class with the capacity to end the insanity of capitalist rule internationally. The fundamental task of the communist vanguard is to instill in the class (particularly its most important component, the industrial proletariat) the consciousness of its historic role. We explicitly reject all stratagems put forward by centrists and reformists, lifestylists and sectoralists which see in one or another non-proletarian section of the population a more likely vehicle for social progress.

The liberation of the proletariat, and with that the elimination of the material basis of all forms of social oppression, hinges on the question of leadership. The panoply of potential ‘‘socialist’’ leaderships are in the final analysis reducible to two programs: reform or revolution. While purporting to offer a ‘‘practical’’ strategy for the gradual amelioration of the inequities of class society, reformism acts to reconcile the working class to the requirements of capital. Revolutionary Marxism, by contrast, is based on the fundamental antagonism between capital and labor and the consequent necessity for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat as the precondition for any significant social progress.

The hegemony of bourgeois ideology in its various forms within the proletariat represents the most powerful bulwark to capitalist rule. As James P. Cannon, the historic leader of American Trotskyism, noted in The First Ten Years of American Communism:

‘‘The strength of capitalism is not in itself and its own institutions; it survives only because it has bases of support in the organizations of the workers. As we see it now, in the light of what we have learned from the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, nine-tenths of the struggle for socialism is the struggle against bourgeois influence in the workers’ organizations, including the party.’’

The key distinction between a revolutionary organization and a centrist or reformist one is found not so much in abstract statements of ultimate goals and objectives, but in the positions which each advances in the concrete situations posed by the class struggle. Reformists and centrists tailor their programmatic response to each new event in accordance with the illusions and preconceptions of their audience. But the role of a revolutionary is to tell the workers and the oppressed what they do not already know.

‘‘The program must express the objective tasks of the working class rather than the backwardness of the workers. It must reflect society as it is and not the backwardness of the working class. It is an instrument to overcome and vanquish the backwardness….We cannot postpone, modify objective conditions which don’t depend upon us. We cannot guarantee that the masses will solve the crisis, but we must express the situation as it is, and that is the task of the program.’’

—Trotsky, ‘‘The Political Backwardness of the American Workers,’’ 1938

We seek to root the communist program in the working class through building programmatically-based caucuses in the trade unions. Such formations must actively participate in all struggles for partial reform and improvements in the situation of the workers. They must also be the best upholders of the militant traditions of class solidarity, e.g., the proposition that ‘‘Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!’’ At the same time they must seek to recruit the most politically conscious workers to a world view that transcends parochial shopfloor militancy, and addresses the burning political questions of the day in a fashion which points to the necessity of eliminating the anarchy of production for profit and replacing it with rational, planned production for human need.

Our intervention in the mass organizations of the proletariat is based on the Transitional Program adopted by the founding convention of the Fourth International in 1938. In a certain sense there can be no such thing as a ‘‘finished program’’ for Marxists. It is necessary to take account of historical developments in the past five decades and the need to address problems posed by specific struggles of sectors of the class and/or the oppressed which are not dealt with in the 1938 draft. Nonetheless, in its essentials, the program upon which the Fourth International was founded retains all its relevance because it poses socialist solutions to the objective problems facing the working class today in the context of the unchanging necessity of proletarian power.

2. Permanent Revolution

Over the past five hundred years, capitalism has created a single world economic order with an international division of labor. We live in the epoch of imperialism—the epoch of capitalist decline. Experience this century has demonstrated that the national bourgeoisies of the neo-colonial world are incapable of completing the historic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. There is, in general, no path of independent capitalist development open for these countries.

In the neo-colonial countries the accomplishments of the classical bourgeois revolutions can only be replicated by smashing capitalist property relations, severing the tentacles of the imperialist world market and establishing working class (i.e., collectivized) property. Only a socialist revolution—a revolution carried out against the national bourgeoisie and big landowners—can lead to a qualitative expansion of the productive forces.

We reject the Stalinist/Menshevik ‘‘two-stage’’ strategy of proletarian subordination to the supposed ‘‘progressive’’ sectors of the bourgeoisie. We stand for the complete and unconditional political independence of the proletariat in every country. Without exception, the national bourgeoisies of the ‘‘Third World’’ act as the agents of imperialist domination whose interests are, in a historic sense, far more closely bound up with the bankers and industrialists of the metropolis than with their own exploited peoples.

Trotskyists offer military, but not political, support to petty-bourgeois nationalist movements (or even bourgeois regimes) which enter into conflict with imperialism in defense of national sovereignty. In 1935, for example, the Trotskyists stood for military victory of the Ethiopians over the Italian invaders. However, Leninists cannot automatically determine their position on a war between two bourgeois regimes from their relative level of development (or underdevelopment). In the squalid 1982 Malvinas/Falklands war, where the defense of Argentine sovereignty was never at issue, Leninists called for both British and Argentine workers to ‘‘turn the guns around’’—for revolutionary defeatism on both sides.

3. Guerrillaism

Our strategy for revolution is mass proletarian insurrection. We reject guerrillaism as a strategic orientation (while recognizing that it can sometimes have supplementary tactical value) because it relegates the organized, politically conscious working class to the role of passive onlooker. A peasant-based guerrilla movement, led by radical petty-bourgeois intellectuals, cannot establish working-class political power regardless of the subjective intent of its leadership.

On several occasions since the end of the Second World War it has been demonstrated that, given favorable objective circumstances, such movements can successfully uproot capitalist property. Yet because they are not based on the mobilization of the organized working class, the best outcome of such struggles is the establishment of nationalist, bureaucratic regimes qualitatively identical to the product of the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution (i.e., Yugoslavia, Albania, China, Vietnam and Cuba). Such ‘‘deformed worker states’’ require supplementary proletarian political revolutions to open the road to socialist development.

4. Special Oppression: The Black Question, The Woman Question

The working class today is deeply fractured along racial, sexual, national and other lines. Yet racism, national chauvinism and sexism are not genetically but rather socially programmed forms of behavior. Regardless of their present level of consciousness, the workers of the world have one crucial thing in common: they cannot fundamentally improve their situation, as a class, without destroying the social basis of all oppression and exploitation once and for all. This is the material basis for the Marxist assertion that the proletariat has as its historic mission the elimination of class society and with that the eradication of all forms of extra-class or ‘‘special’’ oppression.

In the United States, the struggle for workers power is inextricably linked to the struggle for black liberation. The racial division between black and white workers has historically been the primary obstacle to class consciousness. American blacks are not a nation but a race-color caste forcibly segregated at the bottom of society and concentrated overwhelmingly in the working class, particularly in strategic sectors of the industrial proletariat. Brutalized, abused and systematically discriminated against in the ‘‘land of the free,’’ the black population has historically been relatively immune to the racist imperial patriotism which has poisoned much of the white proletariat. Black workers have generally proved the most militant and combative section of the class. The fight for black liberation—against the everyday racist brutality of life in capitalist America—is central to the construction of a revolutionary vanguard on the North American continent. The struggle against the special oppression of the other national, linguistic and racial minorities, particularly the growing Latino population, is a question which will also be key to the American revolution.

The oppression of women is materially rooted in the existence of the nuclear family: the basic and indispensable unit of bourgeois social organization. The fight for complete social equality for women is of strategic importance in every country on the globe. A closely related form of special oppression is that experienced by homosexuals who are persecuted for failing to conform to the sexual roles dictated by the ‘‘normalcy’’ of the nuclear family. The gay question is not strategic like the woman question, but the communist vanguard must champion the democratic rights of homosexuals and oppose any and all discriminatory measures directed at them.

In the unions communists campaign for equal access to all jobs; union-sponsored programs to recruit and upgrade women and minorities in ‘‘non-traditional’’ fields; equal pay for equivalent work and jobs for all. At the same time we defend the seniority system as a historic acquisition of the trade-union movement and oppose such divisive and anti-union schemes as preferential layoffs. It is the historic responsibility of the communist vanguard to struggle to unite the working class for its common class interests across the artificial divisions promoted in capitalist society. To do this means to advance the interests of the most exploited and oppressed and to struggle relentlessly against every manifestation of discrimination and injustice.

The oppressed sectors of the population cannot liberate themselves independently of proletarian revolution, i.e., within the framework of the social system which originated and perpetuates their oppression. As Lenin noted in State and Revolution:

‘‘Only the proletariat—by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production—is capable of being the leader of all the toiling and exploited masses, whom the bourgeoisie exploits, oppresses and crushes often not less, but more, than it does the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation.’’

We live in a class society and the program of every social movement must, in the final analysis, represent the interests of one of the two classes with the potential to rule society: the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. In the trade unions, bourgeois ideology takes the form of narrow economism; in the movements of the oppressed it manifests itself as sectoralism. What black nationalism, feminism and other forms of sectoralist ideology have in common is that they all locate the root of oppression in something other than the system of capitalist private property.

The strategic orientation of the Marxist vanguard toward ‘‘independent’’ (i.e., multi-class) sectoralist organizations of the oppressed must be to assist in their internal differentiation into their class components. This implies a struggle to win as many individuals as possible to the perspective of proletarian revolution and the consequent necessity of an integrated vanguard party.

5. The National Question and ‘Interpenetrated Peoples’

‘‘Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the ‘most just’, ‘purest’, most refined and civilised brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism….’’

—V.I. Lenin, ‘‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’’

Marxism and nationalism are two fundamentally counterposed world views. We uphold the principle of the equality of nations, and oppose any privileges for any nation. At the same time Marxists reject all forms of nationalist ideology and, in Lenin’s words, welcome ‘‘every kind of assimilation of nations, except that founded on force and privilege.’’ The Leninist program on the national question is primarily a negative one designed to take the national question off the agenda and undercut the appeal of petty-bourgeois nationalists, in order to more starkly pose the class question.

In ‘‘classic’’ cases of national oppression (e.g., Quebec), we champion the right of self-determination, without necessarily advocating its exercise. In the more complex cases of two peoples interspersed, or ‘‘interpenetrated,’’ throughout a single geographical territory (Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Palestine/Israel), the abstract right of each to self-determination cannot be realized equitably within the framework of capitalist property relations. Yet in none of these cases can the oppressor people be equated with the whites in South Africa or the French colons in Algeria; i.e., a privileged settler-caste/labor aristocracy dependent on the super-exploitation of indigenous labor to maintain a standard of living qualitatively higher than the oppressed population.

Both the Irish Protestants and the Hebrew-speaking population of Israel are class-differentiated peoples. Each has a bourgeoisie, a petty bourgeoisie and a working class. Unlike guilty middle-class moralists, Leninists do not simply endorse the nationalism of the oppressed (or the petty-bourgeois political formations which espouse it). To do so simultaneously forecloses the possibility of exploiting the real class contradictions in the ranks of the oppressor people and cements the hold of the nationalists over the oppressed. The proletarians of the ascendant people can never be won to a nationalist perspective of simply inverting the current unequal relationship. A significant section of them can be won to an anti-sectarian class-against-class perspective because it is in their objective interests.

The logic of capitulation to petty-bourgeois nationalism led much of the left to support the Arab rulers (the embodiment of the so-called ‘‘Arab Revolution’’) against the Israelis in the Mid-East wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973. In essence these were inter-capitalist wars in which the workers and oppressed of the region had nothing to gain by the victory of either. The Leninist position was therefore one of defeatism on both sides. For both Arab and Hebrew workers the main enemy was at home. The 1956 war was a different matter; in that conflict the working class had a side: with Nasser against the attempts of French and British imperialism (aided by the Israelis) to reappropriate the recently nationalized Suez Canal.

While opposing nationalism as a matter of principle, Leninists are not neutral in conflicts between the oppressed people and the oppressor state apparatus. In Northern Ireland we demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British troops and we defend the blows struck by the Irish Republican Army at such imperialist targets as the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the British Army or the hotel full of Conservative cabinet ministers at Brighton. Similarly, we militarily side with the Palestinian Liberation Organization against the forces of the Israeli state. In no case do we defend terrorist acts directed at civilian populations. This, despite the fact that the criminal terrorism of the Zionist state against the Palestinians, like that of the British army and their Protestant allies against the Catholics of Northern Ireland, is many times greater than the acts of communal terror by the oppressed.

6. Immigration/Emigration

Leninists support the basic democratic right of any individual to emigrate to any country in the world. As in the case of other democratic rights, this is not some sort of categorical imperative. We would not, for example, favor the emigration of any individual who would pose a threat to the military security of the degenerated or deformed worker states. The right of individual immigration, if exercised on a sufficiently wide scale, can come into conflict with the right of self-determination for a small nation. Therefore Trotskyists do not raise the call for ‘‘open borders’’ as a general programmatic demand. In Palestine during the 1930’s and 1940’s, for example, the massive influx of Zionist immigration laid the basis for the forcible expulsion of the Palestinian people from their own land. We do not recognize the ‘‘right’’ of unlimited Han migration to Tibet, nor of French citizens to move to New Caledonia.

The ‘‘open borders’’ demand is generally advocated by well-meaning liberal/radical muddleheads motivated by a utopian desire to rectify the hideous inequalities produced by the imperialist world order. But world socialist revolution—not mass migration—is the Marxist solution to the misery and destitution of the majority of mankind under capitalism.

In the U.S., we defend Mexican workers apprehended by La Migra. We oppose all immigration quotas, all roundups and all deportations of immigrant workers. In the unions we fight for the immediate and unconditional granting of full citizenship rights to all foreign-born workers.

7. Democratic Centralism

A revolutionary organization must be strictly central ized with the leading bodies having full authority to direct the work of lower bodies and members. The organization must have a political monopoly over the public political activity of its members. The membership must be guaranteed the right of full factional democracy (i.e., the right to conduct internal political struggle to change the line and/or to replace the existing leadership). Internal democracy is not a decorative frill—nor merely a safety valve for the ranks to blow off steam—it is a critical and indispensible necessity for the revolutionary vanguard if it is to master the complex developments of the class struggle. It is also the chief means by which revolutionary cadres are created. The right to internal factional democracy, i.e., the right to struggle against revisionism within the vanguard, is the only ‘‘guarantee’’ against the political degeneration of a revolutionary organization.

Attempts to gloss over important differences and blur lines of political demarcation internally can only weaken and disorient a revolutionary party. An organization cohered by diplomacy, lowest-common denominator consensus and the concomitant programmatic ambiguity (instead of principled programmatic agreement and the struggle for political clarity) awaits only the first serious test posed by the class struggle to break apart. Conversely, organizations in which the expression of differences is proscribed—whether formally or informally—are destined to ossify into rigid, hierarchical and lifeless sects increasingly divorced from the living workers movement and unable to reproduce the cadres necessary to carry out the tasks of a revolutionary vanguard.

8. Popular Fronts

‘‘The question of questions at present is the Popular Front. The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or even as a technical maneuver, so as to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the Popular Front. In reality, the Popular Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism.’’

—Trotsky,‘‘The POUM and the Popular Front,’’ 1936

Popular frontism (i.e., a programmatic bloc, usually for governmental power, between workers organizations and representatives of the bourgeoisie) is class treason. Revolutionaries can give no support, however ‘‘critical,’’ to participants in popular fronts.

The tactic of critical electoral support to reformist workers parties is premised on the contradiction inherent in such parties between their bourgeois (reformist) program and their working-class base. When a social-democratic or Stalinist party enters into a coalition or electoral bloc with bourgeois or petty-bourgeois formations, this contradiction is effectively suppressed for the life of the coalition. A member of a reformist workers party who stands for election on the ticket of a class-collaborationist coalition (or popular front) is in fact running as a representative of a bourgeois political formation. Thus the possibility of the application of the tactic of critical support is excluded, because the contradiction which it seeks to exploit is suspended. Instead, revolutionists should make a condition of electoral support the breaking of the coalition: ‘‘Down With the Capitalist Ministers!’’

9. United Fronts and ‘‘Strategic United Fronts’’

The united front is a tactic with which revolutionaries seek to approach reformist or centrist formations to ‘‘set the base against the top’’ in situations where there is an urgent felt need for united action on the part of the ranks. It is possible to enter into united-front agreements with petty-bourgeois or bourgeois formations where there is an episodic agreement on a particular issue and where it is in the interests of the working class to do so (e.g., the Bolsheviks’ united front with Kerensky against Kornilov). The united front is a tactic which is not only designed to accomplish the common objective but also to demonstrate in practice the superiority of the revolutionary program and thus gain new influence and adherents for the vanguard organization.

Revolutionists never consign the responsibility of revolutionary leadership to an ongoing alliance (or ‘‘strategic united front’’) with centrist or reformist forces. Trotskyists never issue common propaganda—joint statements of overall political perspective—with revisionists. Such a practice is both dishonest (as it inevitably involves papering over the political differences separating the organizations) and liquidationist. The ‘‘strategic united front’’ is a favorite gambit of opportunists who, despairing of their own small influence, seek to compensate for it by dissolution into a broader bloc on a lowest common-denominator program. In ‘‘Centrism and the Fourth International,’’ Trotsky explained that a revolutionary organization is distinguished from a centrist one by its ‘‘active concern for purity of principles, clarity of position, political consistency and organizational completeness.’’ It is just this which the strategic united front is designed to obliterate.

10. Workers Democracy and the Class Line

Revolutionary Marxists, who are distinguished by the fact that they tell the workers the truth, can only benefit from open political confrontation between the various competing currents in the left. It is otherwise with the reformists and centrists. The Stalinists, social democrats, trade-union bureaucrats and other working-class misleaders all shrink from revolutionary criticism and seek to pre-empt political discussion and debate with gangsterism and exclusions.

We oppose violence and exclusionism within the left and workers movement while upholding the right of everyone to self-defense. We also oppose the use of ‘‘soft-core’’ violence—i.e., slander—which goes hand-in-hand with (or prepares the way for) physical attacks. Slander and violence within the workers movement are completely alien to the traditions of revolutionary Marxism because they are deliberately designed to destroy consciousness, the precondition for the liberation of the proletariat.

11. The State and Revolution

The question of the state occupies a central place in revolutionary theory. Marxism teaches that the capitalist state (in the final analysis the ‘‘special bodies of armed men’’ committed to the defense of bourgeois property) cannot be taken over and made to serve the interests of working people. Working-class rule can only be established through the destruction of the existing bourgeois state machinery and its replacement with institutions committed to the defense of proletarian property.

We are adamantly opposed to bringing the bourgeois state, in any guise, into the affairs of the labor movement. Marxists oppose all union ‘‘reformers’’ who seek redress from bureaucratic corruption in the capitalist courts. Labor must clean its own house! We also call for the expulsion of all cops and prison guards from the trade-union movement.

The duty of revolutionists is to teach the working class that the state is not an impartial arbiter between competing social interests but a weapon wielded against them by the capitalists. Accordingly, Marxists oppose reformist/utopian calls for the bourgeois state to ‘‘ban’’ the fascists. Such laws are invariably used much more aggressively against the workers movement and the left than against the fascistic scum who constitute the shock troops of capitalist reaction. The Trotskyist strategy to fight fascism is not to make appeals to the bourgeois state, but to mobilize the power of the working class and the oppressed for direct action to crush fascistic movements in the egg before they are able to grow. As Trotsky remarked in the Transitional Program, ‘‘The struggle against fascism does not start in the liberal editorial office but in the factory—and ends in the street.’’

Leninists reject all notions that imperialist troops can play a progressive role anywhere: whether ‘‘protecting’’ black schoolchildren in the Southern U.S., ‘‘protecting’’ the Catholic population in Northern Ireland or ‘‘keeping the peace’’ in the Middle East. Neither do we seek to pressure the imperialists to act ‘‘morally’’ by divesting nor by imposing sanctions on South Africa. We argue instead that the ‘‘Free World’’ powers are fundamentally united with the racist apartheid regime in defense of the ‘‘right’’ to superexploit black labor. Our answer is to mobilize the power of international labor in effective class-struggle solidarity actions with South Africa’s black workers.

12. The Russian Question

‘‘What is Stalinophobia? Is it hatred of Stalinism; fear of this ‘syphilis of the labor movement’ and irreconcilable refusal to tolerate any manifestation of it in the party? Not at all….

’’Is it the opinion that Stalinism is not the leader of the international revolution but its mortal enemy? No, that is not Stalinophobia; that is what Trotsky taught us, what we learned again from our experience with Stalinism, and what we believe in our bones.

‘‘The sentiment of hatred and fear of Stalinism, with its police state and its slave labor camps, its frame-ups and its murders of working class opponents, is healthy, natural, normal, and progressive. This sentiment goes wrong only when it leads to reconciliation with American imperialism, and to the assignment of the fight against Stalinism to that same imperialism. In the language of Trotskyism, that and nothing else is Stalinophobia.’’

—JamesP. Cannon, ‘‘Stalinist Conciliationism and Stalinophobia,’’ 1953

We stand for the unconditional defense of the collectivized economies of the degenerated Soviet worker state and the deformed worker states of Eastern Europe, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, China, North Korea and Cuba against capitalist restoration. Yet we do not lose sight for a moment of the fact that only proletarian political revolutions, which overthrow the treacherous anti-working class bureaucrats who rule these states, can guarantee the gains won to date and open the road to socialism.

The victory of the Stalinist faction in the Soviet Union in the 1920’s under the banner of ‘‘Socialism in One Country’’ was crowned with the physical extermination of the leading cadres of Lenin’s party a decade later. By counterposing the defense of the Soviet Union to the world revolution, the Stalinist usurpers decisively undermine both. The perspective of proletarian insurrection in order to reestablish the direct political rule of the working class is therefore not counterposed but inextricably linked to the defense of the collectivized economies.

The Russian question has been posed most sharply in recent years over two events: the suppression of Polish Solidarnosc and the intervention of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. We side militarily with the Stalinists against both the capitalist-restorationists of Solidarnosc and the Islamic feudalists fighting to preserve female chattel slavery in Afghanistan. This does not imply that the Stalinist bureaucrats have any progressive historical role to play. On the contrary. Nonetheless, we defend those actions (like the December 1981 suppression of Solidarnosc) which they are forced to take in defense of the working-class property forms.

13. For the Rebirth of the Fourth International!

‘‘Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival, of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practised in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International.’’

—JamesP. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the revolutionary Marxism of our time—the political theory derived from the distilled experience of over a century-and-a-half of working-class communism. It was verified in a positive sense in the October Revolution in 1917, the greatest event in modern history, and generally negatively since. After the bureaucratic strangulation of the Bolshevik Party and the Comintern by the Stalinists, the tradition of Leninism—the practice and program of the Russian Revolution—was carried forward by the Left Opposition and by it alone.

The Trotskyist movement was born in a struggle for revolutionary internationalism against the reactionary/utopian conception of ‘‘Socialism in One Country.’’ The necessity of revolutionary organization on an international basis derives from the organization of capitalist production itself. Revolutionists on each national terrain must be guided by a strategy which is international in dimension—and that can only be elaborated by the construction of an international working-class leadership. To the patriotism of the bourgeoisie and its social-democratic and Stalinist lackeys, the Trotskyists counterpose Karl Liebknecht’s immortal slogan: ‘‘The Main Enemy is At Home!’’ We stand on the basic programmatic positions adopted by the 1938 founding conference of the Fourth International, as well as the first four congresses of the Communist International and the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky.

The cadres of the Fourth International outside of North America were largely annihilated or dispersed in the course of the Second World War. The International was definitively politically destroyed by Pabloite revisionism in the early 1950’s. We are not neutral in the 1951-53 split—we side with the International Committee (IC) against the Pabloite International Secretariat (IS). The IC’s fight was profoundly flawed both in terms of political framework and execution. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, the impulse of the IC to resist the dissolution of the Trotskyist cadre into the Stalinist and social-democratic parties (as proposed by Pablo) and its defense of the necessity of the conscious factor in history, made it qualitatively superior to the liquidationist IS.

Within the IC the most important section was the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP). It had also been the strongest section at the time of the founding of the International. It had benefited by the most direct collaboration with Trotsky and had a leading cadre which went back to the early years of the Comintern. The political collapse of the SWP as a revolutionary organization, signalled by its uncritical enthusing over Castroism in the early 1960’s, and culminating in its defection to the Pabloites in 1963, was therefore an enormous blow to world Trotskyism.

We solidarize with the struggle of the Revolutionary Tendency of the SWP (forerunner of the Spartacist League/US) to defend the revolutionary program against the centrist objectivism of the majority. We stand on the Trotskyist positions defended and elaborated by the revolutionary Spartacist League in the years that followed. However, under the pressure of two decades of isolation and frustration, the SL itself has qualitatively degenerated into a grotesquely bureaucratic and overtly cultist group of political bandits which, despite a residual capacity for cynical ‘‘orthodox’’ literary posturing, has shown a consistent impulse to flinch under pressure. The ‘‘international Spartacist tendency’’ today is in no important sense politically superior to any of the dozen or more fake-Trotskyist ‘‘internationals’’ which lay claim to the mantle of the Fourth International.

The splintering of several of the historic pretenders to Trotskyist continuity and the difficulties and generally rightward motion of the rest opens a potentially fertile period for political reassessment and realignment among those who do not believe that the road to socialism lies through the British Labour Party, Lech Walesa’s capitalist-restorationist Solidarnosc or the Chilean popular front. We urgently seek to participate in a process of international regroupment of revolutionary cadres on the basis of the program of authentic Trotskyism, as a step toward the long overdue rebirth of the Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution.

‘‘On the basis of a long historical experience, it can be written down as a law that revolutionary cadres, who revolt against their social environment and organize parties to lead a revolution, can—if the revolution is too long delayed—themselves degenerate under the continuing influences and pressures of this same environment….

’’But the same historical experience also shows that there are exceptions to this law too. The exceptions are the Marxists who remain Marxists, the revolutionists who remain faithful to the banner. The basic ideas of Marxism, upon which alone a revolutionary party can be constructed, are continuous in their application and have been for a hundred years. The ideas of Marxism, which create revolutionary parties, are stronger than the parties they create and never fail to survive their downfall. They never fail to find representatives in the old organizations to lead the work of reconstruction.

‘‘These are the continuators of the tradition, the defenders of the orthodox doctrine. The task of the uncorrupted revolutionists, obliged by circumstances to start the work of organizational reconstruction, has never been to proclaim a new revelation—there has been no lack of such Messiahs, and they have all been lost in the shuffle—but to reinstate the old program and bring it up to date.’’

—James P. Cannon, The First Ten Years of American Communism

Healyites, Messengers of Qaddafi

[First printed in Workers Vanguard No. 158, May 20, 1977. Copied from http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/07/messengers-of-qaddafi-200577.html ]

Something stinks in News Line, daily garbage organ of the British Healyite Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) -and it’s not simply that it continues these political bandits’ unsavory record of sectarianism, Stalinist gangsterism and egregious opportunism. Ever since News Line’s inception on May 1976, it has been a mouthpiece for the megalomaniacal ravings and “people’s democracy” pretensions of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. Month after month articles in News Line have lauded the dictator in weirdly shameless fashion, hailing his “agricultural revolution,” his support to the “Arab Revolution,” detailing his every attack on the “high treason” of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, and so forth.

Thus a brief article in the 26 February News Line hailed the London publication of the Libyan strongman’s Green Book as “an uncompromising rejection of parliamentary democracy in favour of ‘the authority of the people’.” Two Labour MP’s who pushed the book were taken to task for giving it “a patronizing send-off”; their praise of the Green Book as “challenging, stimulating, moral” is evidently insufficiently fulsome for the WRP’s taste. Qaddafi’s Healyite press agents complain that his “writings and his drive towards people’s democracy hardly received the attention they deserve.”

The WRP has in the last year been making up for that with a vengeance. Over 20 articles on Libya have appeared inNews Line, not to mention a considerable increase in “special reports” from Tripoli and attacks on Sadat’s Egypt. News Line’s castigation of Egypt, described as “near bankruptcy,” for its repression of leftists is completely in accord with Qaddafi’s feud with Sadat – and contrasts sharply with the Healyites’ silence on repression in Libya.

An article in the 14 October 1976 News Line, for instance, discussed a BBC television interview with Qaddafi and dismissed the interviewer’s inquiry into political prisoners in Libya as one of the bourgeois media’s “stock-in-trade questions.” News Line smugly added, “Gaddafi was unmoved, saying that they were ‘enemies of the revolution’.” The Healyites praised the program for having “broken at least part of the Gaddafi enigma and answered some of the US State Department and Zionist lies,” but complained that the interview was not shown on prime time:

“Miss Kewley’s profile rightly belonged in the BBC’s prestige slot, ‘Panorama’.
“It is a measure of the censorship on television that it was squeezed into the ‘religious programmes’ department where it could not do justice to the subject of Islam or its leading advocate.”

What is perhaps most curious is that Workers Press, the previous Healyite daily –which folded in February 1976 with the presumption of “lack of funds” – paid little or no attention to Qaddafi and his so-called “Revolutionland.” In the six months prior to its collapse, we could locate only one article in Workers Press dealing specifically with Libya, and this was implicitly critical of Qaddafi, reporting a protest by Libyan students in London against the police slaughter of “at least 16 students” at a demonstration at Libya’s Benghazi University (Workers Press, 14 January 1976). On 8 September 1976 News Line carried a centerfold spread on Tripoli’s “anniversary celebration” of Qaddafi’s military coup. Boasting huge photos and snide comments about the bourgeois press’ lack of coverage of the glorious event,News Line’s spread on “Libya’s Day” was a sharp departure from the silence of Workers Press the year before. Something has changed, and it wasn’t the Qaddafi regime.

“Revolutionland”

We are more than happy to give Qaddafi’s policies “the attention they deserve.” Qaddafi is fanatical in his devotion to the Koran, which sanctifies the feudal enslavement of women and prescribes legal punishments such as cutting off the tongues of liars and the hands of thieves. At least 700 political prisoners have been reported held in Libyan jails. Regarding one trial of 17 prisoners (acquitted in 1974) against whom Qaddafi personally intervened to impose new sentences of life imprisonment and death, Amnesty International recently noted: “The accused were allegedly Marxists, Trotskyists, and members of the Islamic Liberation Party” (Intercontinental Press, 4 April I977). Qaddafi’s 1973 “cultural revolution” laid out his “Five Principles,” including:

“We must purge all the sick people who talk of Communism, atheism, who make propaganda for the Western countries and advocate capitalism. We shall put them in prison.”

And:

“We live by the Koran, God’s book. We will reject any idea that is not based on it. Therefore we enter into a cultural revolution to refute and destroy all misleading books which have made youth sick and insane.”

– New York Times, 22 May 1973

Qaddafi’s idea of “refutation” is simple: he ordered “the burning of books that contain imperialist, capitalist, reactionary, Jewish or Communist thoughts” (New York Times, 18 April 1973).

Grotesque

The sordid history of the Healyites is replete with examples of slavering enthusiasm for left-talking “Third World” nationalists and Stalinists. Workers Press gratuitously proffered “leftist” cheerleading to assorted petty-bourgeois anti-working-class formations, from the Maoist Red Guards to the Angolan MPLA. But the WRP’s pandering to Qaddafi is surely a new low.

Perhaps the most disgusting was a full-page “special News Line interview” with Hamied Jallud, general secretary of the “Libyan trade union federation, equivalent of the British TUC” (14 September 1976). To News Line questions about collective bargaining and the right to strike, the Qaddafi bureaucrats replied, “The role of the trade unions in socialist countries is completely different from capitalist countries”! After all, “the responsibility of the trade unions is to educate the workers and increase production”; Qaddafi’s “General People’s Congress” will look after the workers’ interests. The WRP’s shameless presentation of Qaddafi’s repression of the Libyan working class leaves no doubt of its utter subjugation before this capitalist dictator.

News Line hailed the “General People’s Congress” held in early March in Shebha, a small desert village distinguished by Qaddafi’s having gone to school there. Fidel Castro was the guest of honor as the “Congress” renamed Libya the “People’s Socialist Libyan Arab Public” (sic) and kicked off Qaddafi’s “Third Universal Principle” which he modestly claims solves “the problem of democracy.”

The Healyites have had some “problems” with “democracy” themselves; their solution has generally been to beat up political opponents. Qaddafi, who-unlike the WRP-holds state power, has worked out a more elaborate schema. His little Green Book explains that “both administration and supervision become popular” through “committees everywhere” – while Qaddafi becomes head of the “General People’s Congress” which runs everything and is so “popular” that it meets once a year. The sinister meaning of this “solution” comes out in the slogans pasted up around Shebha: “Parliaments are defunct.” “representation is a fraud” and “Parties are treason” (London Guardian, 3 March 1977).

“Parties are treason” – what about the Workers Revolutionary Party? In this “People’s Public” where communists are to be jailed and butchered and their books burned, ostensible leftists would have to do some pretty peculiar things to survive – and News Line has made it clear the WRP would be more than willing to do them. The London Times (6 September 1976) reported:

“The repression… in Libya has not, of course, weakened the interest of left-wing groups in other countries. Representatives of Miss Vanessa Redgrave’s Workers’ Revolutionary Party, for instance, have visited Libya three times in the past twelve months. Nor has it diminished the affection of those countries like Malta, which feel, with some reason, that Colonel Qaddafi has proved to be their only friend.”

Malta’s reasons are obvious. About to be impoverished by the closing of NATO bases, Malta is now dependent on Qaddafi’s aid to remain solvent. The mendicant guerrillas who flock to Tripoli seeking Soviet-made arms and Libyan oil money reportedly have included Muslim secessionists from the Philippines and Ethiopia, opponents of anti-Qaddafi Arab regimes (Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco), the Provisional IRA and various Palestinian organizations. Naturally, such groups do not bite the hand that feeds them and have accorded Qaddafi a high place in the pantheon of “anti-imperialist” leaders.

Corrupt

Workers Press, which folded on 14 February 1976, titled itself the “Daily Organ of the Central Committee of the Workers Revolutionary Party.” Heavy publicity in the preceding months for the paper’s “Crisis Fund” and dire warnings that “the future of the paper is in doubt” would lead to the presumption that it closed up shop for lack of funds. Yet the “Final Edition” Editorial Board statement does not explicitly say so; instead, the Healyites tersely announce that their printing firm, Plough Press, will cease operations.

The Healyites, normally so fond of denying inconvenient reports on the grounds of their bourgeois sources, hid behind an abstract and irrelevant set of statistics from one of the great bourgeois interests, the British Printing Industrial Federation, on “rises in general expenses” increasing printing costs. For two and a half months no Healyite newspaper appeared. Then News Line sprang to life – but not as any kind of party organ – with a format which included paid advertising. At about that same time Healy was replaced by Mike Banda as WRP general secretary.

The WRP ranks have been kept busy with the usual treks across England – and lately the “Children’s Crusade” across Europe – designed in part to keep them too exhausted to notice their corrupt leaders’ maneuvering. But even a cursory look at News Line’s year-long pandering to the oil-rich Qaddafi forces the observation that there is indeed something very rotten in the state of Denmark.

Related

More from Healy, Messenger of Qaddafi
Workers Vanguard No. 174 (23 September 1977)

Ten Years After Assassination

BOURGEOISIE CELEBRATES KING’S LIBERAL PACIFISM

[reprinted from Workers Vanguard #207, 26 May 1978]

Ten years after he was assassinated in Memphis nearly every black ghetto in the U.S. has its renamed Martin Luther King Avenue, its King school and asphalt playground. The day of his birth is now institutionalized as a national holiday. Young black school children are carefully taught the political gospel of M.L. King, Jr. as the martyred embodiment of the civil rights movement- the prophet of “nonviolence” and “patient moderation” which all black people who yearn for equality ought to follow.

It is no wonder then that the tenth anniversary of his murder has been the occasion for further mythology. It does not seem to matter to the mythmakers that the ghetto school named in his honor is probably less integrated today than it was ten years ago, that the parents of its black schoolchildren are more likely to be unemployed, that their housing is even less habitable and more expensive: and most of all, that the future of these ghetto youth in racist capitalist America appears even more desperate as their jobless rate climbs above 50 percent.

While the anniversary of the King assassination is the perfect occasion for mythologizing, it is indicative that this year the festivities were actually smaller than ever. The purpose of the celebrations has always been to dilute the memory of that original “Martin Luther King Day” which sent shivers of fear through America’s ruling class: the ghetto explosions which swept the country upon the news of his death. On the night of 4 April 1968 hundreds of thousands of black people took to the streets, leaderless and without political focus, in outrage over the cold-blooded murder of the man who was seen as the leader of blacks in struggle against their oppression. A nervous bourgeoisie once pushed this holiday as a diversion and cheap concession to an enraged minority population. But as the spectre of a political mobilization of the ghetto masses against their oppressors has grown dimmer, even “saints” like Martin Luther King become expendable.

The ten-years-after assessments are not able to completely cover up reality, so they have sounded this refrain: King brought us a long way-we’ve got a long way to go (presumably along that same “glory road”). The major chord is that King and the liberal civil rights movement won increased democratic rights, and the minor chord is the rendition of the “economic miracle” of a racially harmonious “New South.” Thus the New York Times (3 and 4 April) published a two-part article entitled, “The Legacy of Martin Luther King,” in which the “New South that King made” is presented as a bouquet of fresh liberal magnolias and black elected officials:

‘”A street named for Dr. King in Selma, racial harmony in Birmingham. burgeoning black power in Atlanta: These are the triumphs of political change in the South.”

The important and real partial gains made for blacks during this period exist largely in the realm of formal democratic rights-resulting in desegregation of public facilities, voter registration as well as a degree of school integration. But even the liberals must acknowledge that these real gains have not eliminated the “handicap” of being black in white capitalist America. Down the street from the office of Atlanta’s black mayor, Maynard Jackson, the unemployed still hang out in doorways. And as a veteran civil rights activist interviewed for the New York Times “Legacy” article bitterly remarked, “What good is a seat in the front of the bus if you don’t have the money for the fare’!”

The fact is that the “social miracle” of the “New South” is based on the old refrain of the “community of interest” between oppressor and oppressed, one which harks back to the days when the plantation owners insisted that, unlike cutthroat Northern capitalists, they “took care” of their slaves. More currently the working premise is that what is good for business is good for the poor. If Jimmy Carter is the supreme being of the “New South,” and Martin Luther King its messiah, the non-union led workers remain outcasts in this land of milk and honey. “Racial harmony” is today enforced by “black power” Mayor Jackson who smashed the 1977 strike by Atlanta’s largely black sanitation workers with a brutality that rivaled Bull Connor.

Self-serving King mythmaking is by no means restricted to the liberals whose purpose is rather obvious. Reformists on the left have joined this pilgrimage to the King shrine to stay in close touch with the “progressive forces” they tailed then and now. They add left “miracle stories” to the case for liberal canonnization. And there is an odd intersection of the liberal and reformist myths with regard to King’s assassination. For different reasons they both agree he died just in time.

Certainly the most cynical statement on the subject was made by the purest product of that movement-the King aide who made it to the top as black front man for U.S. imperialism. As Andrew Young said in a 1977 Playboy interview about King’s assassination:

“He was fortunate … really…. It was a blessing… Martin had done all he could…. He was misunderstood…. God decided Martin had had enough. It was time to go on home and claim his reward.”

Of course, Andy Young (whose readiness to sellout was so famous that even King jocularly called him “Tom”) claimed his reward in a more temporal realm, at the doorstep of the capitalist class. For the liberals King’s murder makes it somewhat easier to blame the failure of the civil rights movement on an assasin’s bullet rather than on their own political misleadership. After all, what kind of symbol would King have made had he lived on? His pacifism was utterly discredited by the ghetto explosions, his preaching of reliance on the capitalist state was exposed as the federal troops bloodily suppressed these upheavals. As a preacher of poisonous bourgeois ideology King had lost his credibility and thus outlived his usefulness to the ruling class.

For its part the reformist left has a different reason tor feeling it was a blessing King died when he did. The Communist Party (CP), for instance, claims that King was shot down just as he was embarking upon a revolutionary course. His last trip to Memphis to support the sanitation workers strike and his opposition to the Vietnam War are cited as proof positive of his growing partisanship on the side of the working class. King did come out against the war. if only for a negotiated settlement, and that opposition was to cost him his privileged relationship with LBJ. Undoubtedly King was feeling pressure from more militant black SNCC youth who saw Vietnam as a racist war. However, he anticipated the important current of bourgeois defeatism in demanding that the guns for Vietnam be replaced by government butter for the black poor. “The Great Society has been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam,” he said in New York City.

But to hear thc CP tell the story, you would think King was some sort of crypto-Marxist by the time he goes to Memphis:

“He guided the movement for liberation… He began to see the relationship between the class struggle and the struggle for equal rights. He also saw these struggles as part of the worldwide struggle against imperialism. US imperialism in the first place.”

Daily World, 1 April 1978

This sounds more like the M.L. King of J. Edgar Hoover’s imagination than the one who actually existed. In fact, King would be no more suitable for such an honored place in the “progressive pantheon” than is Ralph Abernathy had he lived to slosh around in the mud in front of the Capitol in the “Poor People’s Tent City.” The fact is that the civil rights movement had died when King was shot. This is what makes his death so “timely” for Andrew Young, the CP and others who want to cash in on the moral capital of the “good old days” without taking responsibility for the failure of that movement.

The central theme of the bourgeoisie’s hosannahs to Martin Luther King is to present him as the symbol of a civil rights movement that went from success to success by the good old American way of pressure politics. The present condition of the ghetto populace is sufficient proof of the emptiness of this fairy tale. In fact King produced defeats every time he directly confronted the economic roots of black oppression. And from early on the preacher of nonviolence and reliance on the liberals was challenged bv more militant forces in “the movement.” The tragedy was that none of the forces in the emerging left wing of the civil rights movement had grasped a political program which could mobilize a united proletarian army to liberate all the oppressed, by smashing the capitalist system which forges the chains of their oppression.

Docu-lie

By far the most publicized media event was Abby Mann’s King, broadcast last February over national TV for six hOllrs on three successive nights. Evcn belore it was shown, objcctions to the program were heard from disciples who feared the King image was not heing properly worshipped. Along with Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) president emeritus Ralph Abernathy. Hosea Williams objected to his diminished role and tried unsuccessfully to organize a national boycott of the production. Supporters of Mann’s version included Andrew Young, Coretta King and her lawyer, Stanley Levison. all of whom are portrayed as playing key roles in the TV “docudrarna.” But for all the squabbling there was no disagreement over what ought to be the purpose of the program. As Williams said, “Our preoccupation is that King be presented as the greatest peaceful warrior of the 20th Century. That’s aH” (Po/itiks, 14 Fehruary).

That’s all? Mann’s failure to take into account the left wing of the civil rights movement brought more serious objections from a number of ex-Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) memhcrs. Mann said he “understands” thc criticisms made by the former SNCC members (who organized some of the projects Mann attributes solely to King). But he added in his defense: “This is the kind of film Martin Luther King wanted” (New York Times, 16 February). He’s probably right about that.

Certainly the TV “docudrama” is the appropriate genre for slickly packaged contemporary myth making. Its discomfiting mix of fact and fiction, data and impression, history and fantasy all serve to hlur rather than clarify an already obscured reality. It captures the cymclsm of post-Watergate liberalism with its syndrome of exposure and cover-up and ultimate unanswered questions. King focuses on the government’s targeting of black leaders, particularly the FBI’s criminal COINTELPRO program whose first commandment was: “Prevent the rise of a black messiah.”

In Ahby Mann’s King the liberal view of the FBI is given melodramatic import with J. Edgar Hoover portrayed as the arch-paranoid villain sitting stone-stiff in a dark room clenching his teeth and planning to get King. No doubt this is true. As FBI agent Arthur Murtaugh of the Atlanta field office later told Kennedy assassination buff Mark Lane (in an interview for his book, Code Name “Zarro”): “The concentration of effort against King was grea ter than any single investigation that I saw take place at the bureau and I saw a lot of them in twenty years.”

But it is not the whole truth. Relying on Lane’s research and theories, Mann paints a dark picture of the FBI to whitewash the role of the liberal government. In an early segment when then-president John Kennedy is asked what the government will do about attacks on civil rights activists, he says: “We’ll do what we always do. Nothing.” Fair enough. But by the end of the program John and his attorney general brother, Bobby, have been cast as warriors against Hoover, the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan. This post-Watergate convention of the mortal combat between Hoover and Camelot is phony in King and in history.

Far from being reluctant “good guys” the liberals differed with Hoover over tactical assessments on how to best contain the struggle for hlaek equality. The government’s attack on the hlack movement, particularly against its most militant sectors such as the Black Panther Party, was so intensive and widespread that to suggest it was done without the knowledge of Kennedy or Johnson is ludicrous. Indeed, liberal columnist Carl Rowan wrote that Hoover had leaked word to the press that Bobby Kennedy had authorized wiretaps on King’s phone, a charge he repeated in a 19 June 1968 interview in the Washington Star. But while for Hoover the “black messiah” had to be stopped by any means necessary, the liberals increasingly saw King as the man most capable of containing the civil rights movement within the bounds of liberal pacifism. The more the masses thrcatened to break out of these bonds. the more the liberals supported King against spokesmen for more militant strategies.

Yet by the late 1960’s the mood of the black population had become so explosive that a fearful bourgeoisie tended to allow Hoover a freer hand. After Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit went up in flames, any black leadership began to seem a threat. And so they were systematically put out of action or simply “eliminated.” Malcom X had already been assassinated; SNCC leader Rap Brown was in jail; within a Yiar Chicago Black Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton would he murdered in their beds, while Newton. Cleaver aild Seale were hounded with arrests.

We may never know how much of the post-Watergate liberal speculation ahout FBI involvement in the King assassination is fact and how much conspiratorial paranoia. But it is certainly proper to make thc sinister connection with the government’s search-and-destroy missions against the black movement. We demand to know the whole truth about the King assassination, the murder of Malcom X and the all-out secret police war against the Black Panther Party! Instead we arc  dished up post-Watergate apologia for pacifist liberalism.

From Montgomery to Washington

The Mann docudrama presents its hero as the leader of a long march of stunning victories for the hlack masses. But the truth is that Martin Luther King did not hegin the civil rights struggle in the U.S. And he certainly did not make possible the partial gains that characterize its tarly years. After World War II. the government found formal Jim Crow segregation increasingly embarrassing. It stood in stark contradiction to the integration of masses of hlack workers into the industrial proletariat of the cities; and it exposed U.S. pretensions as champion of a “Free World” both in the Cold War with Russia and in the jockeying for inlluenee in decolonizing Africa. By 1’147 the U.S. military and all departments of the fedcral govcrnmcnt were desegregatcd, and when black soldiers came back from integrated units ill Korea they sworc they would no longer submit to Jim Crow. Even before the 1954 Brown VS. Board of Education decision, the National Association for the Advanccment of Colorcd People (NAACP) had won a number of legal victorits for school desegregation in the South.

It was with the arrest of Rosa Parks in Montgomery. Alahama in 1955 that the movement that became known as the civil rights movement dramatically overtook NAACP legalism and led to the )Tar-Iong bus boycott. It was also the event that thrust Martin Luther King to center stage as a national spokesma n of pacifist Hd ircct act ion” for hlack equality. Contrary to popular myth it was not King. hut Ralph Abernathy. a less polished Montgomcry preacher at a less esteemed church. who was the d riving force hehind the hoycott. Ahernathy, E. D. Nixon (of the local NAACP and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and others pushed King, the “new hoy” preacher of the prestigious Dexter Avenue Church into the leadership of the hoycott for reasons of security. As he himself confirmed in his hook, ,.,'(ride Toward Freedoll1, “I neither started the protest nor suggested it,” adding in messianic terms, “I simply responded to the call of the people for a spokesman.”

Rather than a spokesman for the people, in Montgomery King became the spokesman for the policy of reliance on the federal government with a new cover of Gandhian passive resistance. As religious philosophy it is claptrap, hut in the mouth of a Gandhi or King it was the bleating of the .I udas goat. King wrote in the mid-1950’s:

“I he Ncgro all ovcr the South must comc to the point that he can say to his \\hite hrother: ‘We will match your capacity to inflict suttering with’ our eapacit~ to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul lorcc. We will not hate vou, hut we will not ohey vour evil law~. We will soon wear y,iu’ down hy purc capacity to sutkr’.”

–quoted in David L. I.ewis, Aing. A Critical m()grall/7I’ 1(70)

While King preached that the nonviolent resister had “cosmic companionship” in his struggle for justice, it was clear that he saw as temporal political companions the liberal capitalist government and its courts. After a year of unyielding struggle by Montgomery’s blacks, it must have seemed to King part of the cosmic order of justice when the Supreme Court declared the local laws re4ulring segregated seating on buses unconstitutionaL A voice from the hack of the adjournment proceedings is reported to have cried out, “God  Almighty has spoken from Washington, D.C.”

In Abby Mann’s King the Montgomcry hus boycott ends victoriously with the hero stepping aboard the newly integrated hus and the “New South” takes off. Coretta King’s voice is heard as the hus pulls away:

“When Martin hoarded that hus-the tirst integrated hus–hc felt as though he were Columhus discovering America. It seemcd to him then, anything was possihle.”

King was riding high with his sermons on “soul force” and t he “capacity to suffer,” but Montgomery blacks were left to face the racist flak-courageously, but tactically, politically and morally disarmed. Following the Supreme Court decision the racist terrorists crawled from their rat holes, put on their sheets and picked their black targets. The KKK staged a provocative nighttime torchlit procession into the black neighborhoods. Black churches were burned to the ground. Buses were attacked and burned in a campaign of terror. Even King’S house was dynamited; but angry blacks who rose to his defense (and their own) calling for protest action were told by King to love their enemies.

!t was in Birmingham in 1963 that the pacifism of King and the SCLC was exposed in blood and death. Mann’s King recreates the indelihle images of that time-Bull Connor and his stormtroopers; the police dogs set loose upon the crowd; the firehoses set at pressures sufficient to strip off tree bark, hurling children up against the walls. But these dramatic scenes are only part of the story. Mann glosses over the black population’s fighting response to Connor and the racist thugs. In Birmingham King’s nonviolent philosophy was junked by the black masses who with sticks, rocks, knives and bottles fought back against the racists in the streets. It was at that moment-and not before that Kennedy sent troops to bases outside the city and announced that he had taken steps to federalize the Alabama National Guard.

In Birmingham, pacifist persuasion was put away, but not before that tragic Sunday morning, 15 September 1963, when a bomb exploded in the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church that would put four little black girls into their graves. For his part, King remained loyal to his god and his saviors in the government. And the government recognized it had a loyal representative in the field. Even when his brother’s home was bombed, King continued to “marvel” at how blacks could express “hope and faith” in moments of such tragedy.

Just how loyal King was to the Democratic Party was proved that summer in the fabled March on Washington. In Mann’s King and all King mythology the March on Washington is taken as the victorious high point of “the movement.” In fact it was here that King helped engineer a “mass” political defeat for the cause of black liberation, treacherously tying it to the Democratic Party. The numbers were certainly impressive, and so was the participation of every important civil rights organization along with the liberal wing of the union bureaucracy, most notably Waiter Reuther’s United Auto Workers. Marxists call for mobilizing the power of the organized working class as key to winning democratic rights for the oppressed. But this was not what the March on Washington was about. Rather it was an attempt to channel the movement into pressure politics for the passing of the civil rights bill and to cement ties with the Democratic Party.

Even the most conservative civil rights leaders initially saw the march as a means to put the heat on the Kennedy administration, which was dragging its heels on the bill and other antidiserimination legislation. But when Kennedy called in the “representative leaders” for a conference, they quickly changed their minds. They changed their destination from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial, issued a new march handbook deleting a “statement to the president” and the call to confront the Congressmen. They specifically denied partIcIpation to “subversive” groups and censored all speeches. Although John Lewis of SNCC was invited to speak, he was pressured into deleting from his prepared text the following sentence: “We cannot depend on any political party for both Democrats and Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.”

Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a supportable declaration of minimal democratic rights, the march was meant to build support for precisely that party whose purpose was to sabotage any attempt by blacks to gain those rights. Characterizing the march as the “Farce on Washington,” Malcolm X wrote of the period which King came to see as the high point of his career:

“In ‘6.1 it was the march on Washington. In ’64, what was it” The civil rights bill. Right after they passed the civil-rights bill they murdered a Negro in Georgia and did nothing about it: murdered two whites and a Negro in Mississippi and did nothing about it. So that the civil-rights bill has produced nothing where we’re concerned. It was onlya valve, a vent, that was designed to enable us to let 011 our frustrations. But the bill itself was not designed to solve our problems.”

~George Breitman. ed.

Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

It was the felt need for a program to “solve our problems” which led to the emergence of a left wing in the civil rights movement which challenged King.

Civil Rights Movement Divided

One of the more pernicious aspects of the King myth is the treatment of the civil rights movement as a continuous parade of victories with little or no challenge to King’s leadership and philosophy of nonviolence. Here Abby Mann makes a most worshipful offering to that idol of liberalism at the expense of truth. ror Mann the entire political struggle against liberal pacifism is reduced to an anachronistic dialogue between King and Malcolm X in which the latter is portrayed as a charming demon of defeat while King is the inchby-inch realist. Basically, the liberals put into the mouth of Malcolm a strategy for race war and allow King to point out that such a strategy would amount to race suicide. In fact it was not race war. but collective self-defense that was the issue for Malcolm X, for Robert Williams, the Deacons for Defense and many others.

Through “creative editing,” King fails to show that not only was its hero opposed by more militant, courageous activists, but that he was also pushed by the left wing of the civil rights movement into many actions for which he is now given credit. Mann gives SNCC the most cursory mention, buried under a mountain of King rhetoric, as the militant wing of the civil rights movement. And the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). which organi7ed the first freedom rides, is not mentioned at all.

Hut history is different from “docudrama” and the developing split was to become all important to the fate of the civil rights movement. The fight was only partly generational, and at root ideological. Certainly at the beginning SNCC was a creature of the SCLC and (as its name clearly indicates) accepted its nonviolent strategy. But unlike King many of the SNCC. CORE and NAACP youth council members were not committed to nonviolence as an inviolable religious principle. They tended to accept King’s strategy as good coin. and while they had illusions in the federal government. their real commmitment was to the struggle for democratic rights for black people. Thus from the same events they learned different lessons from the preachers! When the social explosions of the mid-1960s occurred they identified with the aspirations of the black masses while King feared for the bourgeois order.

As early as the April 1960 Raleigh, North Carolina youth conference-out of which SNCC would emerge–King was already warning that “the tactics of nonviolence without the spirit of nonviolence may become a new kind of violence.” And by the following year during the confrontation in Albany, Georgia (“one of the meanest little towns” in Carter country) King had even more reason to be suspicious of the students–and they of him.

It was here that the students ~aw that despite King’s capacity to land thousands of activists in the jails, he was unable to dent the stone wall of racist reaction. I n midsummer 1961, after sustained and repeated racist attacks, with 3.000 Klansmen massed outside town, the protesters began to fight hack. As he did so often in the future. King called for a “moratorium” on -action. And the militant black youth began to refer to him derisively as “De Lawd.”

Hut it was at Selma, Alabama in 1965 that the tensions came to a head on the Pettus Hridge. In the face of King’s betrayal the song. “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round,” rang with painful irony for the returning marchers. Responding to Justice Department pressure, King stopped the Selma-toM ontgomery march, knelt in prayer and turned it around. With Selma there was open talk of King as sellout and coward. To the song “We Shall Overcome,” the young militants began to counterpose, “We Shall Overrun.”

King Goes North

It was in Chicago in 1966 that the premises of the liberal civil rights movement came most clearly into explosive collision with economic and social reality. Northern ghetto blacks had lived with “equality under the law” for years and it was abundantly clear that King had no program to fight the causes of racial discrimination rooted deep in the economic and social structure of capitalist society. And despite the reformists’ claim that King was moving left when death overtook him, what grew out of the Northern experience was not a turn toward the working class, but Jesse Jackson’s “Operation Breadbasket,” the quintessence of black capitalism.

By the time King arrived in Chicago the civil rights movement was already irreversibly divided, not the least over the ghetto upheavals which had burst upon the political scene. The emerging black nationalists were enraged by the support King and the preachers gave to the vicious police repression. As King said of Watts, “It was necessary that as powerful a police force as possible be brought in to check them” (Nell’ York Times, 16 August 1965).

While talking in vague terms about attacking economic problems, King simultaneously launched an attack against his left flank, striking out against “violence” in the black movement. He had already directed his fire at CORE’s stall-in at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and a trip to Harlem that year had resulted in his car being pelted with rotten eggs while the crowd chanted, “We Want Malcolm.” He knew he would not get much besides suspicion from CORE and SNCC in his Palmer House negotiations with Mayor Daley.

The most subtle apology for King’s liberalism comes from those who agree that the civil rights movement was finished in the North, but attribute the failure to the unbreachable divide between the ethnic white neighborhood and the black ghetto. Nationalism politically tied blacks into the ghetto, despairing of a successful struggle against the segregation of minorities at the bottom of the economic ladder. Yet in the North was also the integrated workplace, the integrated union, the possibility of an alliance with other exploited sectors against the common cnemy. But this fighting alliance did not mean the empty “unity” of black liberals with liberal labor bureaucrats. In Chicago the struggle for racial quality meant directly confronting the Daley machine. and the Reuthers, Rustins and Randolphs were not about to mount a campaign against this Democratic Party kingpin. What was needed was a proprogram of class struggle; what King offered was a program of class collaboration.

Chicago blacks were presented with the choice of two dead ends: the liberal pacifism of King or the no less defeatist ideology of Carmichael and the black nationalists. Both failed to see the need to mobilize the power of the unions, through challenging the racist, procapitalist labor bureaucracy: King and the SCL.C because they were committed to the Democratic Party; Carmichael and the black nationalists because with the defeats and sellouts of liberal pacifism, they had taken the road of black separatist militancy which ignored the “white working class.”

The situation came to a head with the projected march into the lily-white suburb of Cicero. King was under pressure to make a show of militancy; SNCC was anxious to show its mettle; the racists got ready. Nazi leader George Rockwell came to town amidst considerable fanfare to recruit among the Cicero residents. The white working class communities had already made clear that they would not allow blacks to march through their streets when King was stoned to the ground earlier in Marquette Park. No one doubted the racist terror that would meet the planned King-SNCC march. But two days before it was to occur King signed the Palmer House “Summit Agreement” and backed off in exchange for a formal agreement on housing.

For the militant wing of the civil rights movement it was Selma all over again. SNCC on its own led a march of 200 people into Cicero on September 4. There were triple that number of Chicago police and thousands of National Guardsmen. The marchers were courageous and sustained many injuries and arrests, but they had lost. It was all over long before it began. The racists had out-mobilized them in the streets. Nearly a decade later busing was defeated in Boston for much the same reason: the labor movement was not brought into the struggle on the side of integration. Responsible for these defeats were the labor bureaucrats, the black liberal leadership and the seudosocialistswho tail after them.

Class Power and Civil Rights

King and the coalition of black ministers of the SCLC had never intended to unleash a movement of the black masses. Their civil rights movement was meant as a gesture by the “talented tenth” to pressure the capitalist government for legal reform. They saw the Democratic Party as the natural political vehicle for legislative pressure and black political expression. They saw the courts as their main ally and ultimate battleground. But when the black, masses moved onto the stage of U.S. history, the SCLC’s role became one of fearful containment.

It was different for SNCC whose young activists identified with and encouraged the organization of black social power. An orientation toward different class forces began to show early, if only sociologically, as SNCC turned toward “grass roots” local organizing and King continued his reliance on the federal government. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)-which grew out of the SNCC voter registration campaigns-revealed all of the contradietions of a militant civil rights organization lacking revolutionary programmatic alternatives. The MFDP shared King’s illusions in the party of Kennedy and Humphrey, illusions it paid for at the 1964 Atlantic City convention when the Johnson/Humphrey machine crushed its attempt to unseat the Jim Crow Mississippi delegation. Out of this experience the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom Organization was formed with a political thrust independent of the capitalist parties.

In the end no sector of the civil rights movement was able to decisively break out of the confines of liberal politics. Yet throughout this period literally thousands of its left-wing militants were in rapid political motion. That this motion was not intersected by communists with a program to broaden the fight for democratic rights of blacks into a struggle for black equality through united class struggle was a major setback for the U.S. proletariat.

In the early 1960s the predecessor of the Spartacist League, the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) within the Socialist Workers Party (S WP), fought for just such an active intervention into SNCC and other components of the left wing of the civil rights movement. The RT saw the crucial opportunity for the crystallization of a black Trotskyist cadre. Its 1963 opposition document, “The Negro Struggle and the Crisis of Leadership,” read in part:

“The rising upsurge and militancy oft the black revolt and the contradictory and confused groping nature what is now the Ieft wing in the movement provide the revolutionary vanguard with fertile soil and many opportunities to plant the seeds or revolutionary socialism …. We must consider non-intervention in the crisis of leadership a crlme or the worst sort.”

In part it was for this fight that the RT was expelled from the SWP while that already degenerated party continued its criminal abstentionism. Within a few years the opportunity would be lost–with the hardening of the black nationalist mood, the terrain would be sealed off to communists for severaI years, with many thousand of black radicals lost to the revolutionary movement.

Far from being a transcendental leader of a united movement, King was one of the political poles against which the left wing of the civil rights movement was defined. Yet there are those on the left who still yearn for the “good old days” of a “united” civil rights movement, and toward that end they falsify the movement and the man who symbolized its liberal, religious wing.

It is ironic that the rehabilitation of King within the left was begun by the black nationalists on the basis that “no whites ought to criticize” any black. But the present reformist stance toward King is dictated by desires to once again get close to the liberals. Thus the SWP, for instance, in the most cynical fashion not only talks about a “New Civil Rights Movement” as it tails after the moribund hyper-legalist NAACP, but at the same time it continues to support the residues of the black nationalist wave. In fact, both movements are dead, but these shameless reformists continue to support all of their most treacherous aspects–calls for federal troops to “protect” black schoolchildren, reliance on “peaceful, legal” means to pressure the capitalist state, support for government union-busting “Affirmative Action” schemes in the name of civil rights.

Marxists must not disguise King’s liberal pacifism and the dead end it represented in the struggle against racial oppression. We must break through the myths of “passive resistance,” crack the mask of “King the Peaceful Warrior,” and present a revolutionary analysis of the failure of the civil rights movement to provide a program for fighting the social and economic oppression of blacks under American capitalism. It is not through liberal “docudrama” that the new generation of youth will discover the true story of that period. While the reformists cover for King to camouflage their own treacherous tracks, the task of creating a black communist cadre requires destroying politically the exalted symbols of passive defeatism and reliance on the bourgeois state which led to the death of the civil rights movement.

Rise and Fall of the Panthers: End of the Black Power Era

[First printed in Workers Vanguard No. 4, January 1972. Copied from http://www.bolshevik.org/history/MarxistBulletin/MB5_05.html ]

The spectacular and violent split in the Black Panther Party can be viewed as the symbolic end to a period in American radical politics. The impact of the Panthers, in vast disproportion to their actual size and strength, indicated the pervasive black nationalist mood of which they were the most militant expression. Following the collapse of the liberal-oriented civil rights movement, virtually all U.S. radicals saw the struggle of black people against racial oppression as the central and overriding contradiction within American capitalism. The Panthers’ popularity, enhanced by the vicarious black nationalism of white-guilt liberal circles, coincided with the rejection by impatient petty-bourgeois radical students of a perspective based on the revolutionary role of the working class, black and white. The current split, with tragic implications for the defense of jailed Panthers, certainly gladdens the hearts of racists and cops, but has far-reaching implications for the left as well. No longer can the Panther leadership use unquestioned moral authority to claim automatic allegiance from militant black youth and uncritical support from radical whites regardless of their particular experiences and views.

It is important to recognize that the Panthers came into being at the ebb of the mass black civil rights movement, as a selection of the best black militants in the battles waged over the corpse of the movement. The particular character of the Panthers was shaped by two interrelated developments which marked the death of the respectable civil rights movement of King, Farmer and the early SNCC. One was the movement’s obvious failure to change the living conditions of the black masses–in particular, its inability to do anything about the terrorization of the ghetto population by the cops, the armed force of the bourgeois state. This point was driven home by the anti-cop “riots” that swept the ghettos from 1964 to 1967, which proved that militant blacks were through with the non-violent reformism of the SCLC and CORE. The other major development was wholesale ruling-class purchase of black leaders–not only moderates like Farmer but also self-styled black power advocates. The sordid fate of the black power movement was personified in individuals like Roy Innis, who drove the whites out of CORE and later hustled tickets for the Frazier-Ali fight in partnership with General Electric. Another example is LeRoi Jones, black power ex-beat poet, who became aide to His Honor Mayor Gibson and prominently assisted in his attempt to destroy the Newark Teachers Union. The Panthers were thus defined negatively, in reaction against the dying civil rights movement on the one hand and the rise of “pork chop” nationalism on the other.

Ghetto Uprisings and the Myth of Urban Guerrilla Warfare

It was clear to all that the ghetto uprisings, which began in Harlem in 1964 and continued with undiminished intensity until Newark in 1967, marked the end of the old civil rights movement. What was not clear was how the uprisings affected the future of the black movement. Rather than recognizing the ghetto outbursts for what they in fact were–the final spasm of frustration and fury in the wake of a movement that had raised great hopes and activated enormous energy only to accomplish nothing–the left wishful-thinking saw in the ghetto-police battles the beginning of mass revolutionary violence which presumably had merely to be organized in order to be made effective. The notion that the ghetto was a base for urban guerrilla warfare was common not only among black nationalists, but was accepted by most of the left, from serious Maoists like Progressive Labor to the pundits of Monthly Review. The Panthers were outstanding in their willingness to face jail and even death for their theory.

The ghetto uprisings did not give the black masses a sense of their own power. They did just the opposite. During the rioting, it was blacks’ own homes that were burned down and the cops who went on a killing rampage. The riots proved that police brutality was not an isolated injustice that could be eliminated through militant action. The cops are an essential part of the armed force of the state; if defeated locally, they came back with the National Guard or Army. To drive the cops out of the ghetto and keep them out was equivalent to overthrowing the American state; thus as long as the majority of white workers remained loyal or only passively hostile to the government, black activism could not liberate the ghetto. It was not their lack of formal organization but a sense that they really could not win that gave the ghetto uprisings their spontaneous, consciously self-sacrificing character.

The Panthers chose to make a stand on their ability to purge the ghetto of police brutality when experience had shown the black masses that this could not be done given the existing over-all balance of political forces. The Panthers, realizing that the masses could not be organized to aggressively confront the police, developed a conscious policy of substituting their own militants for the organized power of the masses. In so doing, they developed a self-image of a band of warrior-heroes avenging the historic injustices visited upon the downtrodden black population. Adventurous black youth joining the Panthers did not see themselves as building a successful social revolution, but anticipated “leaving the Party in a pine box” with a dead cop to their credit, having done their share to avenge the centuries-old oppression of their people.

The Panther leadership knew they were standing up to the cops in isolation from the black masses. In his essay, “The Correct Handling of a Revolution,” Huey Newton contended that armed Panthers would set an example which the rest of the black people would follow. Written after thousands of blacks had battled the cops and lost in Harlem, Watts and Chicago, Newton’s argument had a forced and unreal quality. History was about to give Newton a swift and deadly counter-argument.

The Panthers Pick Up the Gun and Are Defeated

Taking advantage of California’s liberal gun laws, the Panthers applied their theory. At first their tactics appeared successful. Newton’s armed patrols in Oakland went unmolested. The Panthers held an armed rally in Richmond commemorating the murder of Denzil Dowell by a deputy sheriff, and faced the cops down. Most spectacularly, Bobby Seale led a group of armed Panthers to the State Capitol during a debate on gun control, and received only a light prison sentence. Taken aback by the Panther flamboyance, and uncertain how much support they had in the ghetto, the authorities at first demurred. But beginning with the wounding and jailing of Newton in October 1967, and gaining steam with the killing of Bobby Hutton and the arrest of Cleaver in April 1968, a coordinated national campaign to wipe out the Panthers was launched by local police and the FBI operating in many cases with the assistance of cultural nationalist groups (the murder of Los Angeles Panthers by members of Ron Karenga’s US). Over the past few years, the murders of Panthers have continued and virtually the entire leadership has been imprisoned on capital charges.

Contrary to Panther theorizing, the crackdown on them did not provoke mass ghetto rebellions. In fact, the Panthers’ real weakness can be seen by comparing the response to their persecution with the spontaneous eruptions of ghetto rage at the assassination of Martin Luther King.

The Panthers’ feeling of desperate isolation as the police rifle sight zeroed in on them is expressed in a moving account by Earl Anthony, a former Deputy Minister of Information who later split from the Party in the direction of mainstream nationalism. Writing after the Battle of Montclaire, where three Panthers were killed by the cops in Los Angeles, Anthony reflects:

“I kept thinking to myself. . . about the ease with which the Panthers were being killed, and I couldn’t do anything about it, and nobody I knew could do anything about it. And I thought about the thousands upon thousands. . . of black people who have been murdered, and nobody could do anything about it…. What really burned me inside was that I was forced to realize the untenable position the Party and other blacks who dare to put their toe to the line are in. I knew that white people didn’t really care that Little Tommy, Captain Steve, and Robert were gone, or that the pigs were scheming the murder of the rest of us…. I had learned to accept that attitude from whites. But the painful reality was that many blacks had it too. When you got down to it, we were pretty much alone. Not many people really cared….”

-Earl Anthony, Picking Up the Gun, pp. 138-39.

The Panthers Defend Themselves and Move Right

Isolated, with repression bearing down on them, the Panthers shifted the focus of their activities to legal defense work in an effort to gain the broadest possible support. The Panther alliances with white radicals were not motivated by any realization that American society could only be revolutionized by an integrated working-class movement, but by the material needs of their defense campaign. As Seale openly admitted, the Panthers’ support for the ill-fated Peace and Freedom Party was not based on a desire to establish an integrated radical third party, but by a belief that the PFP was a convenient vehicle in gaining left liberal support for defense of Newton. The other widely divergent groups supporting the PFP, such as Progressive Labor and the Independent Socialist Clubs (now the International Socialists) were no less opportunistic, although in their case the motivation was chiefly a desire for a recruiting vehicle.

The Panthers’ tendency to move closer to liberalism, implicit in their support of the liberal program of the PFP, was made explicit in the equally abortive United Front Against Fascism, launched in 1969. Guided by the Communist Party’s legal apparatus, the UFAF was an attempt to create an alliance of everyone to the left of Nixon-Agnew on an essentially civil libertarian basis. The UFAF’s main programmatic demand–community control of the police–combined liberal illusions over the nature of the bourgeois state with black nationalist illusions that the oppression of black people can be ended through “control” of ghetto institutions.

The Panthers’ overtures to the liberals were not very successful since the Panthers were too notorious for defense by bourgeois politicians. A few West Coast black Democrats, like Willy Brown and Ronald Dellums, protected their left flank by coming out for the Panthers. Some politicians like Cleveland’s Carl Stokes, questioned whether the police might not have actually violated the Panthers’ rights! The Panthers were somewhat more successful in garnering support and money from the cultural wing of the liberal establishment, as indicated by Leonard Bernstein’s famous party where the “beautiful people” met the Panthers and paid handsomely for the titillation of exposing their bourgeois sensibilities to the black revolution in safety, an expensive delight somewhat recalling the Roman arenas. But despite their efforts to present themselves as simple anti-fascists, the heat continued to come down on the Panthers.

Although the Panthers since 1969 have clearly given up street patrols in favor of defense rallies and soirees, they have not officially abandoned their claim to be the vanguard of urban guerrilla warfare. In the current split, the Cleaver wing points to this contradiction and claims with some truth that Newton’s Oakland group has deserted the original Panther banner.

Along with their turn toward the liberals, the Panthers launched a series of ghetto social work programs, exemplified in their “breakfast for children” drive. The new activities were designed to gain support from the black masses who had not rallied to the confrontationist image, as well as give the Panthers a more humanitarian image when facing white middle-class juries. Thus, Panther attorney Lefcourt forced the undercover agent in the New York 21 case to admit that the defendants spent most of their time doing good works in the community and not plotting to blow up buildings.

The “breakfast for children” program is also a rather ridiculous attempt to apply literally the standard Maoist “serve the people” strategy. While Mao’s Red Army could give some real material aid to the Chinese peasants in protecting them from rapacious landlords, helping with the harvest and the like, the notion that the Panthers could compete with the Welfare Department or the Baptist Church in feeding the ghetto poor is simply ludicrous. But the fundamental flaw in the “serve the people” line is not that it doesn’t work, but that it strengthens the paternalistic character the Panthers already present in their self-image as avenging angels of the black masses seen as grateful clients of a revolutionary organization, not as potential conscious revolutionists in their own right.

The Panthers’ need for activities like the “breakfast for children” program to improve their image in the ghetto destroys the myth that they are a spontaneous expression of black militancy. Some radical groups–notably the International Socialists, who followed the Panthers right up to the gates of Peking Stalinism–contended that one should support the Panthers regardless of their politics because they were the highest organic expression of ghetto political consciousness. In contrast, the Panthers have always regarded themselves as a highly self-conscious vanguard tendency. On the one hand, they sought to win the loyalty of the ghetto youth from competing groups, mainly the cultural nationalists. On the other, they beat the ghetto life style out of their new recruits (while glorifying it in their press), recognizing that a lumpenized life style is incompatible with serious and sustained revolutionary activity. The contention that lax political standards should be employed in judging the Panthers because they are an authentic cry from the soul of the black masses is not only factually false but reflects a patronizing attitude toward blacks that borders on racism.

Glamor and Terror

The Panthers’ serious internal difficulties, manifested not only in the present decisive split but also in the endless series of expulsions, reflects the impossibility of building a revolutionary organization with street gang methods. Because the Panthers recruited adventurous youth without a stable axis, they could only prevent the disintegration of their organization into competing warlordisms through the imposition of a kind of military terror. New recruits were assigned fifty push-ups for failing to memorize the Panther program, and pressure was put on them to do two hours of reading a day. It is argued that such coerced internal political life is necessary in any radical organization not composed primarily of middle-class intellectuals. But the history of the proletarian socialist movement in the U.S. and elsewhere yields many examples of organizations in which articulate and politically able industrial workers though often lacking formal education, shaped policy, and did not merely memorize a program by rote, like a prayer. This was possible because the socialist movement recruited workers to a comprehensive program for long-term political goals. The Panthers, on the contrary, recruited on the basis of a radical street gang mentality, with its attendant personal, ethnic and geographical loyalties. The Panther program did not shape their organization and its activities, but was treated as a decoration like icing on a cake.

The Panthers’ concept of rule through terror, and its application to internal factional struggles as well as relations with other radical groups, can no longer be ignored by the opportunists who tailed after the Panthers and their popularity, hoping it would rub off. In discussing the factional struggle with Cleaver, Newton simply said “We’ll battle it out” and “… I have the guns,” to which Cleaver replied, “I got some guns too, brother” (Right On!, 3 April 1970). In a like manner, the Panthers responded to criticisms of their “United Front” with the CP and liberals by physically throwing the critics out of the UFAF conference (see Spartacist West, No. 18) and making repeated public threats against all left critics. At no time has the Panther leadership reacted to criticism by seeking to politically discredit their opponents within the radical constituency. At no time have they recognized that building a revolutionary party requires methods in any way different from conducting a street gang rivalry.

Apart from terror, the main element holding a street gang together is a power mystique, manifest in the warrior-hero cult of the Panthers. Seale testified to the importance of glamor to the Panthers in noting that a number of members left the Party when ordered not to wear their uniforms except on Party assignment. The best expression of Panther glamor-mongering is the ascending order of hero worship, culminating in the cult of Huey Newton which appears even more absurd than the Stalin and Mao cults because of its imitative character.

The disastrous effect of building an organization through hero worship is apparent in the split, which has been dominated by personal rivalries and clique politics. The split originated not in clear political differences, but in accusations that Chief of Staff David Hilliard was playing favorites in allocating defense funds and expelling out-of-favor Panthers, like “Geronimo” Pratt, to avoid the responsibility for their defense. But there are political differences implicit in the split. Each faction occupies one of the two poles around which Panther politics have revolved. The Cleaver group represents the anti-cop confrontationism characteristic of the early Panthers while Newton’s group reflects the liberalism and social-work do-goodism of the defense campaigns. In terms of internal dynamics, the Algiers group tends toward reconciliation with mainstream Black Nationalism, while the Oakland group has gravitated toward liberal reformism sometimes more naked than that of the Communist Party. The actual faction fight has touched these differences only marginally, and has been conducted almost entirely in terms of competing heroes, character assassination and counter-retailing of atrocity stories (e.g., the claim that Cleaver is keeping his wife prisoner, the accusation that Hilliard is doping Newton). The main programmatic demand of the Algiers group is a call for collective leadership and an attack on the personality cult, while the Newton group has defended itself by asserting the personality cult, namely Newton’s own.

Sections of the left have of course attempted to find a qualitative political superiority of one wing over the other, as a rationale for drawing close to it. Perhaps the crudest attempt to paint one of the wings as “Marxist” or close to it was that of the assertedly Trotskyist “Workers League” of Tim Wohlforth. Wohlforth hailed Newton’s proclaimed embracing of the dialectic in a fit of organizational appetite early last year. Newton very soon thereafter announced his peace with black capitalism and the church, teaching Wohlforth again that “dialectic” is a word of four syllables and “method” of two, and that it takes much more than the mouthing of the two words to make a Marxist, or even a potential Marxist. To make his short-lived praise of Newton more grotesque, Wohlforth printed fulsome praise and carefully selected revolutionary proletarian quotes from Newton in the same article in which he defended, against SWP-YSA criticism, his view of the New York police “strike” as “a reflection of a very general, deep and profound movement of the working class”! (15 February Bulletin) “Only the Workers League”… dares to suck up to the Panthers and defend the “job action” of their mortal enemies, the cops, in the same issue of the same publication.

Hero worship is one of the ways bourgeois ideology enters the revolutionary movement and destroys it. Its corrupting nature is evident in Huey Newton’s $650 a month penthouse, paid for out of Party funds raised in defense campaigns, while rank-and-file Panthers hide from the police in rat-infested hovels. The Panther paper justifies Newton by noting that he had “stood up and faced the pigs (from which he was wounded and spent two years in prison)” and that he had “put his life on the line in the fight to end this racist, exploitative system.” The paper went on to state: “Huey and his generals of staff should have the best as they plan their party’s strategy.” (The Black Panther, 27 February 1971) The belief that the pest sufferings of militants entitle them to the good life at rank-and-file expense is an important subjective justification for bureaucracy in the labor and radical movement. Moreover, left-wing leaders can continue to enjoy the good life only with ruling-class cooperation, obtainable by holding back the organizations they are supposed to lead against it. Many present leading AFL-CIO bureaucrats were beaten, shot at and jailed in their youth. Newton’s penthouse and the Party’s defense of it indicate a deeply anti-socialist attitude. The revolutionary movement is not like a medieval joust where the best knight gets the castle. Its purpose is to destroy the castle.

Lumpens, Hippies and New Left Ideology

An analysis qualitatively superior to the Workers League’s general pattern of alternating denunciation and grovelling before the Panthers was written by “Lil Joe” for the 15 March 1971 Bulletin. The author, no longer with the Workers League, well analyzed the tension between the “national” and “class” orientation of the Panthers:

“The Black Panther Party was organized as a nationalist organization. Unlike the other nationalist groups, however, it was organized for the most part, by ghetto Blacks–the most oppressed sections of the ghetto youth–the unemployed and if employed, employed in low paying industry. As nationalism is a middle class ideology of ‘unity of race or nation’ rather than ‘unity of class,’ the Black Panther Party, organized by and for Black working class youth necessarily took on a class character.

“Hence in its earliest development the Black Panther Party was thrown into conflict with nationalism itself. The Black Panther Party, however, externalized this struggle by declaring itself ‘Revolutionary Nationalist’ as in primary opposition to that which they described as ‘Cultural Nationalism.’

“What the Panthers would not do was confront the fact that ‘cultural nationalism’ and ultimately ‘Black Zionism’ under the guise of ‘Pan Africanism’ was the logical conclusion of Black nationalism by virtue of the fact that Black people in America share not a national, but a cultural or racial identity.

“By externalizing their struggle against ‘Black nationalism’ or ‘cultural’ nationalism, the Black Panther Party was able to prolong, to ‘put off,’ an inevitable explosion within the Black Panther Party itself. While denouncing ‘Cultural’ nationalism and maintaining itself as a racial rather than a class organization—‘Revolutionary Nationalist’–the Black Panther Party was able to make criticisms of sorts, while at the same time bowing to the pressures of the Black middle class ‘nationalists’ themselves.”

To avoid the Marxist contention that the organized working class is the key revolutionary element, the Panthers came up with the theory that black lumpens are the revolutionary vanguard, and that all employed workers, black and white, have been bought off by the ruling class. The Panthers’ “theory” of lumpenism is a mixture of self-aggrandizement and impressionism. Its role is similar to the theories of “student power” and the “new working class” that were popular in SDS a few years ago: our revolutionary organization consists largely of lumpens (or students); therefore lumpens (or students) must be the vanguard of the revolution. This kind of “theorizing” unfortunately does not merit serious consideration.

A lumpen life style has very different social roots among ghetto black youth and middle-class whites; but in both cases youth rebel against the prospect of holding down a meaningless job, raising a family and suffering a deadly “respectable” life. Such rebellious attitudes are not merely justified, but are the subjective raw material out of which revolutionary consciousness is made. No one will be a revolutionist who does not hate a society that makes life for working people boring, trivial, deadening and often heartbreaking. But a political movement which isolates itself in a social milieu hostile to normal work-a-day society must become irresponsible, individualistic and ultimately cynical and contemptuous of the mass of working people. It is precisely that task of revolutionaries to penetrate the mainstream of social and economic life and explode “normal work-a-day” society on the basis of its terrible oppressiveness–the very oppressiveness which drove individuals to become revolutionaries in the first place.

The Left’s Panther Cult

The Panther split is another nail in the coffin of the New Left. For years, the U.S. left has defined itself in terms of supporting this or that militant action or opposing particular acts of oppression and injustice. Within the issue-oriented movement, support for the Panthers has been one of the few common elements that prevented the left from fragmenting completely through “doing one’s own thing.” The net effect of the Panther influence on the left was negative, not only because the Panthers’ own politics never transcended black nationalism and crude Stalinism, but because Panther-worship and uncritical concentration on their defense campaigns prevented the political interaction essential to revolutionary program and strategy. It was Cleaver’s presence at the head of the ticket that enabled the PFP to bring together a collection of left McCarthyites, Yippies, orthodox Maoists (Progressive Labor) and “third campers” (IS) into an unprincipled, liberal-program “unity” for a time. In a like manner, uncritical support for and from the Panthers was one of the few concrete issues the diverse anti-labor elements in the old SDS could unite around in expelling the “Worker-Student Alliance” tendency. The Panther split proved once again that hero worship and tail-ending are no substitute for the struggle for Marxist clarity as a foundation of a revolutionary party.

Since their inception, the Panthers have been a test for the predominantly white American left as a whole–a test of its ability to apply Marxist analysis, and a test of its consistency and courage. The absence of a Leninist vanguard party made the ruin of the Panthers likely if not strictly inevitable. Lacking a link to the revolutionary party of the working class, organizations fighting special oppression stand isolated from the rest of the working class and endangered by the problems and backwardness of their particular, isolated areas of struggle. The extreme result of such a situation is “self-determination for everybody” with every organization and particular struggle competing for a larger share of the capitalist pie.

It is important to note the significance of how the Panthers were defeated. That the Panthers were defeated physically by the state rather than politically through the intervention of the vanguard party means, in effect, that many of the lessons of their demise will surely be lost. It means that more despair and less consciousness of what went wrong has been created in many of the best subjectively revolutionary elements. On a smaller scale, the difference is not unlike that between the destruction of a bureaucracy like, say, the North Vietnamese by American tanks and bombers instead of by the North Vietnamese workers in political revolution.

But did any of the various left organizations show by their attitude toward the Panthers the fitness, the right (or for that matter even any intention) to construct the vanguard party which was lacking? Nearly all self-proclaimed Marxist organizations failed the test, most of them repeatedly on a variety of issues and occasions. The gutless IS, loudly proclaiming their anti-Stalinism, tailed the Panthers throughout the process leading to their embrace with the Stalinists and their liberal allies in the United Front Against Fascism. The SWP-YSA, the most vociferous “Marxist” proponent of black nationalism, consistently ignored the Panthers’ systematic errors and violations of proletarian ethics until, we presume, they became scared. They refused to sign a protest issued by the Spartacist League against the beating and exclusion by the Panthers of radical tendencies selling their literature outside a Panther “Birthday Party” celebration in Berkeley, California, in February 1970. Their proclaimed reason for refusal was their unwillingness to intervene in Panther internal affairs–as if physical attacks on competing radical tendencies were an “internal affair”! But they were shortly to repudiate the Panthers as part of their general “orthodox” shying away from the guerrilla warfare line they had preached–for others–for years. (See Spartacist No. 20, April-May 1970, “World Trotskyism Rearms” for an analysis of their newly-discovered Leninist opposition to guerrilla warfare strategy when their European co-thinkers proposed that the U.Sec. implement its pro-guerrilla stance.) The SWP’s new criticism of the Panthers whom they supported for so long, is fundamentally criticism from the right, expressed CP-fashion in orthodox-sounding rhetoric about the need to rely on the movement of the masses. The SWP criticized the Panthers also for not being nationalist enough; the scattered references in Panther leaders’ speeches to class struggle (of which the Workers League briefly made so much) were too much for the thoroughly reformist SWP to swallow. In an article “Which Way for Black Liberation” in the December 1969 Young Socialist, the YSA leadership condemned the Black Panthers for “waving the little red book, or calling this the year of the gun” instead of “reaching out to the broadest masses of the community” around “the questions of black control of the schools, ending police brutality, better jobs”–precisely the issues the liberals can campaign on. The YSA’s critique is thus not a critique of the crude Panther brand of Maoism, but an attack on their attempt to popularize their conception of communist consciousness as opposed to the SWP’s classless community reform line.

From Black Power to Communism

If the Panther split is disorienting for the “white” radical movement, it is devastating for the black radical movement. With the demise of the Panthers as a united organization, no national black organization exists which can claim the allegiance of large numbers of radical blacks. The civil rights movement, which attracted young militants through its social activism and a sense that it was engaging in decisive political battles, is long dead and buried. The mainstream black nationalists are openly and unashamedly on the payroll of “the man.” Localized ad hoc groups like black student unions or tenants’ unions cannot have serious revolutionary pretensions, whatever their members might think. The Panthers were the only organization which could seriously claim to be both black and subjectively revolutionary. And now the Panthers are no more. Two competing apparatuses exist in disarray, stripped of moral authority. The only black organization now existing which can claim both a degree of militancy and rudiments of national structure is the Black Workers’ Congress. BWC leader James Forman, assertedly converted to anti-imperialism from his SNCC liberalism, expounds a policy of separate organizations of black workers and a view of Marxism as [a] handbook of how-to-run-an-organization-and-be-serious. The BWC appears at this time to be capable of sowing considerable revisionist confusion especially among unionists, but not likely to acquire the widespread moral authority enjoyed by the old Panthers. There is now no place for a black revolutionist to go … except the integrated proletarian socialist movement.

The shriveling of the civil rights movement in the fires of Watts and Detroit, the rise of pork-chop nationalism and the external and internal destruction of the Panthers cannot be explained in terms of the problems of particular organizations and the defections of particular leaders. Rather, these developments prove the impossibility of building a black liberation struggle independent of the rest of American society. The civil rights movement failed because the oppression and degradation of black people is deeply rooted in the American economy and society and cannot be eliminated through legalistic reforms. Only a socialist economic system can lift the ghetto masses off the bottom of the economic order. That the black power protests of H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael produced a movement of Uncle Toms in dashikis and professional strike-breakers was not because the movement was always composed of corrupt opportunists. The black power advocates realized the ghetto was not economically viable. If black power meant more black principals, welfare department heads and police chiefs, then only the ruling class could finance a substantial increase in the black bureaucracy. And the ruling class always demands a return on its money. The Panthers could not defeat the cops because the cops are an essential part of the capitalist state and the Panthers could not defeat that state. Given that fact, the Panthers could only alternate between the bitter consequences of heroic adventurism or appealing to the liberal establishment.

The oppression of the black people cannot be ended by black activists alone, but only by the working class as a whole. The breakup of the Panthers’ organization and authority creates greater opportunity–but only opportunity–for the struggle for an integrated proletarian socialist vanguard party. The process is in no sense inevitable; there will always be plenty of hustlers and romantic rebels to attempt endless repetition of the old mistakes and betrayals. But the intervention of Leninists among radical blacks can stimulate the understanding that the liberation of black people will be both a great driving force of the American proletarian revolution, and a great achievement of the revolution in power. That revolution will be made, not in the name of black power, but of working-class power–communism.

[Appendix 2 to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg]

Exchange between the International Communist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency

Excerpted from http://www.bolshevik.org/TB/TB5html.html

A report from the Permanent Revolution Group (published as part of the Riker/Smith document collection reprinted in Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spartacist League No. 8) gives evidence that Logan is up to his old tricks. This report positively describes a “communist criticism” session, in which “all comrades were expected to comment openly and frankly on the good and bad characteristics of other comrades..” At the end of this torment—which lasted three days—the organizer, who had a young baby, resigned for not showing enough “vigour and consistency.” Such “methods” were used for years to break critics and mold mindless hacks in Stalinist organizations, and they were also adopted by the moralists of the New Left. But they are antithetical to the training of critical Leninist cadres. And look who’s calling us a “cult”!

No. 58

The PRG “commcrit” exercise in early 1993 was perfectly innocuous. The organization was overdue for adjustments to the division of labour, and one result of the exercise was the election of a new organizer. Having spent a number of years in this demanding post, the PRG organizer was interested in changing his role in the organization. There was no question of any loss of political authority.

Beyond such normal organizational adjustments, it was also necessary to address the fact that the political functioning of some comrades had begun to slip. There were various other symptoms of political demoralization and expressions of dissatisfaction which also had to be dealt with. These ranged from criticisms of the operation of the group as a whole and the performance of various members (particularly leading comrades) to calling into question the fundamental programmatic basis of the Marxist movement.

Initially the PRG executive had intended to raise its concerns with the functioning of various comrades as personnel points in the regular Wellington branch meeting. But it was subsequently proposed that the essential points could be made equally well if, instead of simply focusing on the shortcomings of a few, the discussion were broadened to include the functioning and political development of the group as a whole, from the leadership down to the most recent recruit.

The exercise, which was always projected as a “one-off” event, took place over three branch meetings. While some comrades (including some leading comrades) found it a bit uncomfortable at points, everyone, including the (now ex-) comrades who had been the initial source of concern, felt that it was a positive experience and had helped to clear the air.

Commenting on the SL’s allegations that these meetings were about “breaking critics” and “molding mindless hacks,” comrade Marcus Hayes remarked:

“I can’t see any objection in principle, and the only question to me then is: was the actual event in practice abusive and unhealthy? It’s entirely a contingent question….

“Concerns based on what the exercise might have been like in other circumstances, or what these things can sometimes turn into, etc., etc., in fact assume circumstances different from what we actually had, that is, something less than a healthy regime.”

By projecting their own internal life onto us, the SL scribes conjure up a truly nightmarish scenario. Their conviction that it must necessarily have been an abusive psychological torture session is presumably grounded in their own experience. In a similar fashion many ex-Communists concluded that Lenin’s democratic centralism led inexorably to Stalin’s gulag.

But in politics the truth is always concrete.

[Back to Letter of Resignation]

[Appendix 4 to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg]

Letter (circa 1998) by the IBT’s Jason Wright documenting his leaving the Revolutionary Workers League

The following letter (circa 1998) by the IBT’s Jason Wright (seehttp://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no28/no28NewOrleans.html) documenting his leaving the Revolutionary Workers League is appendix #3 to Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg. In it Wright documents the RWL’s leadership’s history of attempting to neutralize internal critics (including eventually himself) by seeking to convince their followers that criticisms of themselves must reflect mental illness. a tactic now also used by the leadership of the International Bolshevik Tendency. In the letter Wright documents his own previous history of acting as a “handraiser” and unscrupulous hatchetman against the RWL bureaucrats opponents (a role he has now chosen to reprise inside the IBT), before receiving a bit of karmic justice in eventually getting the same treatment himself from his masters. In the experience of all social movements, it almost seems that some people are destined to be perpetual hacks. The IBT previously itself quite accurately described a similar regime loyalist hack inside the Spartacist League, a universal type most activists will recognize having encountered at one time or another.

” [Al] Nelson’s detractors may grumble that he’s rather dull, very insecure, has a tendency to be a bully and is sometimes a bit unstable. But they ignore his other qualities: he has a certain base cunning, and, more importantly, he is thoroughly, deeply, unremittingly loyal to Robertson. Robertson is well aware of Nelson’s limitations and has occasionally had to jerk his chain—-but one needs to do that with pit bulls.

“Workers Vanguard De-Collectivized”, 1917 #18, 1996

………………….

Edward,

Thanks for your note. I found your message very disturbing but not particularly surprising. In fact the RWL in Detroit has had a long history of attempting to have its disaffected members or individuals attempting to organize oppositions, committed into mental institutions. I speak from experience, having been committed in the Capitol District Psychiatric Center at Shanta’s instructions about 48 hours before I quit the RWL in an attempt to prevent me from attending a Central Committee meeting (which I was entitled to attend as an observer) in Detroit. I was very fortunate in that my Mother, with whom I had been on bad terms since joing the RWL, came to my rescue and threatened to sue CDPC if they did not release me. The first document we published when founding the MEG was Don’s resignation statemment. He devotes several paragraphs of this to what can only be called the RWL’s “tactical policy” of attempting to institutionalise any leading cadre who threaten to oppose the RWL PC and show the least sign of depression. I had been reluctant to mail you the MEG back materials right away because I think they contain a few imperfect formulations that I would not stand behind today. In reading them today, I as their primary author, would desperatly want someone to view them in the context of Don and my movement at that time, ie. a course we charted away from the RWL and toward an orthodox anti-revisionist Trotskyism. This or that formulation I would have today developed differently, though on the whole I think what little original MEG literature there was represents a vast improvement over that of the RWL. If you would like to see it I would be happy to mail you copies so that you can see that this is not a fundamentally new development.

It is so old in fact that I remember the SL in the early 80’s ran an expose on a comrade the RWL had attempted to institutionalise when she quit the organization. That the SL, well on the “Road to Jimstown” still felt comfortable denouncing the cultism of the RWL shows how unhealthy the RWL’s internal life was even at that time. Heather herself had a similar experience to this before. The incident was perhaps one of the most critical ones in my decision to leave the RWL. In Decemeber of 1993 she began a secret relationship with Luke behind the back of her then boyfriend,Sheldon, a young black worker from Detroit. When Sheldon discovered Heather’s “infidelity” in January of 1994 he attempted to kill himself. I was in Detroit at the time for some sort of winter school or conference (I don’t recall exactly right now.) While most of the time when visiting Detroit I was put up at either Luke’s apartment or George and Eileen’s house, on this occassion there were so many comrades in town that I stayed in Heather and Sheldon’s apartment. Sheldon was supposed to walk me to Wayne State University where the RWL was meeting the next day. When we woke up however Sheldon told me he wasn’t feeling well and gave me directions to the campus instead. I and the other comrades who had crashed in that apartment proceeded to the RWL or NWROC event. During the lunch break Shanta approached me, concerned by the fact Sheldon had not some with us. Evidently she was aware of the recent turbulance in Heather and Sheldon’s relationship and had an inkling of what had happened. After we left the apartment I am told Sheldon swallowed a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of draino.

The PC, which included Luke, met in special session that evening. At night a special meeting of all RWL candidate members and members currently in Detroit and Ann Arbor was convened. Leland presented a motion, endorsed by the PC, to censure Heather, Luke and Jodi, who at that time was Heather’s best friend and a former lover of Luke’s. The accusation against Jodi stemmed from the allegation that she had, with deliberate malice and forthought, made possible the relationship between Heather and Luke, knowing that the results would be disasterous and that they would reflect badly on Luke as a member of the PC. Everyone, including I am ashamed to say myself, voted for the PC’s resolution.

Luke made a speech that reaked of Maoist self-criticism, stating that the struggle for revolutionary consciousness under capitalism was a constant battle to assert true, revolutionary consciousness over the false consciousness imposed by capitalism. A struggle between our best aspects and our worst. Luke felt that in succumbing to his attraction for Heather he had capitulated to his worst side which prided personal pleasure and sexual satisfaction over the welfare of the organization. He made a statement that as the person who had been most responsible for developing Sheldon as a contact of the organization, he knew better then anyone the profound mistrust Sheldon had of all white people and the lingering influence of Black Nationalism on his consciousness. Luke stated that his actions had been absolutely inexcusable. Heather and Jody then made similar self criticisms about themselves.

While the general pattern in the RWL was one of ushering comrades into mental wards,they did everything in their power to see to it that Sheldon’s hospital stay was as short as possible. The stated reason was that the RWL wished to minimize the risk of a scandal in either the bourgoise press or the workers movement. Specifically Leland, in a private conversation that same weekend, told me he was terrified of Workers Vanguard getting a hold of the information and printing it. While the SL went through its own string of suicidal comrades in the 80’s Leland believed they would not hesitate to make ammo of this. For both Leland and Shanta, the recruitment of Sheldon, a black worker, represented exactly what the organization “needed” and they were scared shitless that they would gain a reputation of being a cult that drove such individuals to suicide.

To this end the RWL organized “private care” for Sheldon. At first this took the form of Heather being ordered to break off all relations with Luke and make herself available to administer to all Sheldon’s needs. I suspect it may also have involved the pilfering of some form of psychotropic or anti-depressent drugs from the hospital in which Shanta and others worked and the RWL administering them to Sheldon on their own authority. I had not heard the rumor about the drugs before leaving Detroit, but the policy of chaining Heather to Sheldon’s bedside had already been decided upon by the time I had that private meeting with Leland.

I had had an argument nearly a year earlier over the attempt by the leadership to dictate comrade’s private lives. In that instance it had involved the RWL denouncing a lesbian couple, Liv and Andi, who had founded the RWL operation in Albany, when they refused to take complete financial responsibility for supporting their housemate (also now an RWL member) Tanya. Tanya had been unemployed for some time and Andi and Liv had carried most of the bills. When Tanya found a job they asked her to pay some of the money back. A short time before Liv had dropped out of active membership and Shanta had begun “suggesting” that Andi break off their relationship. In fact Andi did break off her relationship with Liv around that time. Andi was then told that they did not have the right to expect any financial renumeration from Tanya, she was told they should both kick Liv out of the apartment and expect her to swallow most of the expenses. When Andi sided with Liv in this financial argument pressure was put on her which, among several other factors, led to her leaving the organization.

Shortly after Andi quit I was in Detroit as an invited guest observer at a Central Committee meeting, the same one in which Kieth H., who was shortly to defect to the SL, objected to Leland’s position on the Russian question. After the meeting I approached Shanta and expressed the opinion that Andi had been unjustly pushed out of the organization. Foolishly, I belived at that time that I was within my rights to raise such a criticism (in private no less). The experience disavowed me of the notion. Shanta began shrieking that I was a racist (Tanya is black while Andi and Liv are white) in the middle of the room attracting the attention of numerous other comrades in the room. the experience was thoroughly humiliating and damaging and taught me to keep my mouth shut when it came to directives emerging from the PC.

The experience had a somewhat scarring effect on me in that it showed a number of comrades, already possesing a certain appetite for Stalinist style beuracratism, that I was fair game for criticism in the leaderships eyes. As such my political life was for several months very difficult in Albany. Sarah W. and Yvette F. were continually denouncing me for one thing or another and I was held at candidte membership for an extended period of time.

This changed only because of an anti-Operation Rescue campaign organized by the Albany local in Philladelphia. Luke was sent out from Detroit to head the operation. Yvette was the tactical leader while I ended up by being left behind in our Motel room because some prior arrests whose trials were pending made the lawyers feel it was unadvisable for me to risk a further arrest. As such I headed the mobile office, which involved preparing studies for contacts we had brought with us, taking clippings from local papers and ultimately writing propaganda in the form of an NWROC newsletter called “The Organizer.” Because the org devoted so few resources to Phillie, and there were so many abortion clinics and we never knew which one would be hit, I proposed we institute “flying pickets” just as the American trotskyists had done with the Teamster strikes in the 1930’s. A comrade was assigned to watch each clinic and report back to me at the office and I acted as a dispatcher. Because everyone was calling in to report as soon as we knew where a hit was happening I would tell the other comrades calling in to go to the clinic under seige.

Philadelphia marked a shift of wind for me that made me think that I could continue in the RWL. Leland and Luke, impressed by my writing, study preperations and tactical suggestion “advised” the Albany local to elect me to the executive committee and make me a full member. It also strengthened an alliance between Leland and myself that persisted throughout most of the time I remained in the RWL.

I think this digression is significant in order to point out why I was a hand raiser during the self crit session, but why I thought in private I might be able to reason with Leland. Before leaving Detroit in January of 1994 I suggested, in my private conversation with Leland, that it was psychological torture to “chain” Heather B. to Sheldon’s bedside. That the org had no right to order her to play nurse maid to man who she had a relationship with that had obviously been heading toward a break up. Leland said that of course I was “theoretically” right, but that certain exceptional circumstances justified an exceptional course of action. that the health of the RWL had to be placed above the personal welfare of individual members. I was relieved that he did not denounce me as a racist, but he did tell me that if I objected to the PC’s handling of the case the moment I should have raised the criticisms at the special session called immediately after the event and that the matter must now be formally considered closed. Of course in a sense this itself was a warning to me, I knew, and Leland knew I knew, that had I raised criticisms at that public meeting I would have been driven to capitualate or quit the org then and there. In fact, no doubt Luke would have denounced me at that moment for defending him.

Later handling of the Sheldon case proceeded from bad to worse. I was told by Luke that there was a second failed suicide attempt and I later learned from Don that after I left the organization there was a period in which Sheldon’s “private treatment” ammounted to the RWL keeping him under a form of “house arrest” with comrades standing guard 24 hours a day. The PC did reverse itself shortly thereafter on the need for Heather to remain as Sheldon’s compainion. Instead it decided to move her as far from Detroit as possible, reassigning her to the BA Local. Outside his self-criticism, Luke’s part in the affair was quickly forgotten and never-again (to the best of my knowledge) held against him. You would be in a better position then me to know what ever became of Sheldon. I did hear a report from a former European supporter of the ITC that he attended (as a guest observer) a National Conference in Detroit, where a working class black man stood up and decalred that he was “all better now” and “would try to never cause the RWL such problems again.” I am assuming this was Sheldon though I have no way of verifying it.

It was just a few months later that I quit the RWL. The events that led to my quit began with the submission of a minority tendency document called “For a Democratic Centralist RWL” to an RWL CC meeting I attended on November 21, 1993. This document, co-authored by Lisa W. and Marty S. (who now run the Marxist Workers Group an ostensibly Trotskyist Organization that exists almost exclusivly in their rich imaginations and the ethers of the internet). In the end I was not in agreement with this document. But I was appalled when the leadership attempted to prevent them from distrubuting it and tried to recollect the copies they had handed out to mebers. I was one of several comrades who hid the copies I had been given and lied saying I had not recieved it. Eventually several of us met secretly to discuss the document, we thought it’s over all political orientation was flawed but that certain fundementals (drift toward sectoralism and New Left style multi-vanguardism, lack of a pledge schedule, inadequate attempts to politically educate comrades, the disorganization of our office) were supportable. We agreed not to join the Lisa/Marty faction, but that I would meet privately with Leland on our behalf to outline what parts of this paper we believed to be accurate.

My meeting with Leland was a disaster. In retrospect I think it was when the leadership made up its mind to break me or drive me out trying. Leland fumed that I knew nothing about Marxism, that I was a petite-bourgoise dilletante and that Lisa and Marty’s criticism’s were correct only in the manner that a broken clock is right at least twice a day. I foolishly alluded to having several comrades (including one in the BA) behind me, but nevertheless did not name several comrades who were fence-sitters in order to protect them. Leland worked very hard to convert us to the leadership side and met with each of us for hours to convince us we had to back the leadership and give things time, that a mojor split would be disasterous and that the course could be changed and our grievences redressed if we backed Leland. I think we reluctantly bought into this. The comrade from the BA and I both returned to our locals as “experts” on the Lisa-Marty tendency and gave classes on why the document was wrong and why no-one should support them. It was a bold move on Leland’s part of course to attempt to convert people who peripherally supported the dissidents into their main denouncers. Lisa and Marty through their sectarian intrigues which were wretched even then,made this slightly easier to do. We didn’t really want to line up behind them. And we had tremendous faith in Leland’s revolutionary integrity.

Nontheless I can’t helping feeling in retrospect that I did absolutely the wrong thing at that moment. I had one foot on the road to becomeing a part of beuracratic time-serving apparatus, inenouncing Lisa and Marty without expressing my own reservations I was standing somewhere apart from the best traditions of Trotskyism. My personal low point is perhaps epitmoized by the fact that I was of the few who knew that the allegations contained in Marty and Lisa’s January 27, 1994 letter accusing “A member of the [ RWL of being] caught stealing private correspondence from the mailbox of one of our members, and sending it to the RWL Political Committee (PC)” (An Open Letter to the RWL/U.S. from the Communist Internationalist Organizing Committee) was true, it happened in the BA on the intsructions of the PC. I think I had a number of doubts at that time, reservations which centred on the fact that “Democratic Centralism” as practised by the RWL had more in common with the politics of Zinoviev or German Social Democracy than those of Trotsky and Lenin. I loved reading history, and in all the histories of the Bolsheviks I had read I could see nothing comparable in their best period to the politics of the RWL. In fact in both programme and internal life I began to recognize more then a smattering of third period stalinism about the RWL.

I never believed the problem stemmed from democratic centralism itself, but rather the RWL’s perversion of democratic centralism. I could see that the degree of rigid centralism dictated by the RWL’s PC was more then would likely be necessary even in a revolutionary, military situation (a situation we were as far from then as today) and tha it strangled any sort of healthy political functioning. This was the reason I decided not to attempt to initiate a faction fight, despite the fact I felt we should formally retract our wrong Solidarnost position, reopen discussion on the current nature of the Soviet Union, critically examine our attitude toward the rest of the left and adopt some of the policies Marty and Lisa had in passing suggested. Odd as it may sound, I simultaneously felt I could pressure Leland to chart a better course, and that there was too little democratic functioning to launch any sort of fight.

Two years of continual lumpenization in the RWL had meanwhile taken a toll on my mental health. While formally enrolled in college I neither attended classes nor worked. The RWL did not have many paid staffers, nonetheless I was subsidised (in an extremely minimal manner) by the organization in order so that I could work for the org. full time. I was constantly broke, without money for books or an adequate diet, couch surfing at various comrades apartments. I was devoting my every waking moment to an organization in which I sensed, with growing alarm, that something was fundementally wrong. I was heading for a break down.

This was exacerbated by a relationship I was in with a young female contact. Because this was against org. rules they argued for Stacey to be moved to Detroit, saying her political development would be greatly accelerated if she were not constantly forced to function in my shadow. I privately endorsed this just as Luke, Heather and Jody had publicly endorsed the RWL’s verdicts on their private lives. This only served to heighten the conflict that raged within me. I fell into a deep depression.

Luke was sent out to Albany to work with me on a special project we were then involved in. I welcomed this because I thought it was Leland’s delivery of his promise to reform the RWL’s internal structure. Luke was also very depressed at this time. After endless hours of political work, at the end of each night we would stay up pouring our hearts out to each other about Heather and Stacey. I expressed all of my concerns regarding the RWL to Luke, I felt we had established a deep rapport and that our side was one and the same. Shortly thereafter Luke began asking me if I had considered suicide at all. He informed me he had had a number of self-destructive impulses since his enforced seperation from Heather. I admitted that suicide had entered my mind, at least in an abstract sense. Luke spent several nights encouraging me to talk along these lines as well as to share my criticisms of the organization with him.

I told Luke that at the upcoming CC meeting (called for the day before a joint Albany/Detroit anti-Klan action in Indiana), just a few days ahead, I intended to assert myself much more forcefully in the RWL’s decision making process. I did not want to keep my criticisms to myself any longer. The day before I was due to leave for Detroit Leland called me up and told me I was not to be allowed to attend the CC meeting because of my depression. I was informed that the PC thought that a visit to Detroit and Stacey might send me “over the edge” and they could not afford a repeat of the the incident involving Sheldon. I firmly informed Leland that it was my right as an alternate memebr to attend any sitting meeting of the CC and that I would appeal Leland’s decision to the next full conference of the RWL, I was shocked by Luke’s betrayel of my trust and that Leland was perpetrating the same heavy handed tactics I had come to identify with Shanta.

Leland backed off somewhat (or so I thought) and suggested that if I got a psychiatrist’s approval (!) I would be allowed to attend the CC meeting. I pointed out that it was then Friday night and that the possibility of me seeing a therapist before our cars caravaned out to Detroit the next morning was next to impossible. Leland then promised to help me by arranging the matter if he could. He asked me to put Luke on the phone, which I did, after which Luke and Leland had a long private conversation.

After that Shanta must have phoned up Mark A. (who I understand you knew in the BA local) who was the senior comrade living in Albany, which was otherwise exclusively a youht local. Luke told me that Leland and Shanta were having Mark come over to pick me up and drive me to CDPC where I could be admitted to the 24 hour suicide crises center. I was told that Leland and Luke had decided that if the therapists at CDPC gave me a clean bill of mental health I would be allowed to attend the CC meeting.

When Mark and I arrived at CDPC Mark went off and had a private discussion with one of the doctors. Later I gathered from the doctor who spoke to me that Mark had told him I had attempted to kill myslef several days before and was threatening to do so again now. The clinic refused to allow me to leave, asking me to voluntarily commit myself, which would give them the right to hold me for a couple of weeks. I was informed that if I did not commit myself voluntarily they would be forced to commit me and that I would be held until they felt I was “better” or until I obtained a court order for release. I was horrified, I never felt so trapped against my will. In all the times in the RWL that I had been arrested I always felt confident that George or Eileen was waiting in the Police Station with bail and that the RWL would never leave me to rot in prison. Now they had dragged me to a mental hospital and arranged for me to be held there against my will. After Mark left I managed to call my Mother, who I had not spoken to in months, but who nevertheless arranged my release.

My traumatic personal experience confirmed, beyond any lingering personal loyalty, all my doubts that the RWL in any way represented a continuation of the policies of the Fourth International. I made up my mind there and then that I could not remain in the ITC. But I was concerned about my lover, Stacey, who was in Detroit. In knew from watching the RWL’s handling of Liv and Andi (and also my friends Ben and Venessa, another excellent couple who quit) that as soon as the RWL learned I was quitting Stacey would be subjected to incredible pressure to distance herself from me in every way.

I telephoned her as soon as I got back to my Mother’s house. My worst fears were confirmed. She informed me that Shanta had told her I was in the hospital because I had tried to kill myself and that it was obviously in both our best interests if she ended our relationship. Stacey told me she had not believed Shanta and wanted to know what was going on. I told her that I was coming to Detroit and that I would tell her everything that had happened. I let her know I was planning on leaving the RWL and made her promise not to divulge this information to anyone else. I told her we could discuss the whole matter in Detroit and that I wanted her to know I loved her wether she remained a supporter of the RWL or not, but that my own mind was made up.

I then proceeded to return to the apartment where Luke was staying in time to catch the car to Detroit. Needless to say Mark and Luke were stunned to see me. I told them that CDPC had told them I was fit to travel to Detroit and that I fully expected to be seated in the CC meeting. More hurried discussions with Leland and Shanta in Detroit occurred. It was decided I would be allowed to travel to Detroit after all. I was a bit nervous that once in Michigan they would attempt to commit me again, but I was desperate to talk to Stacey and share with her both the personal and political reasons why I was about to leave the RWL. My fear and my decision to leave prevented me from raising the criticisms I had intended in the CC meeting, which must have been a source of great relief to Leland et al.

Stacey agreed to flee the RWL with me. She told them her grandmother was very sick and that she would have to return to Albany for a week (this was the weekend before Easter weekend) and that she would come back to Detroit after Holliday. The RWL must have sensed somehting was amiss, but nonetheless approved her leave. From that moment on we were never left alone together. But at the same time the leadership was reluctant to share with the comrades they stuck around us the reasons why we were not to be left alone. At one point, when we were left with only a recent member, Dwayne and a contact Don (who later co-founded the MEG with me) Stacey and I emptied our luggage of all our least valuable belongings and packed anything she cared about into our luggage. Despite our attempt to be discrete I am certain Don and Dwayne saw what we were up to. But a sort of wink and nod passed between us, without speaking they knew what was going on and they let us know in essence that they would not rat us out. I can divulge that much now since both Don and Dwayne were later to leave the RWL expressing criticisms very similar to my own.

The next day we attended the anti-Klan demonstration in Indianapolis. When the demonstration began to dissolve I headed for the car returning to Albany. Stacey was seated in the car while I was informed I would not be immediately returning to Albany, but would be going back to Detroit in Luke’s car in order to meet with Leland. I was told I’d be put into a car going from Detroit to Albany on Monday instead. All my fears about another attempt to commit me erupted again. But I felt that without money I was at the mercy of the RWL. My options as I saw them then were either go back to Detroit with Luke or stay behind in Indianapolis and they were practically put to me in those terms. I actually considered staying in Indianapolis, knowing that my step-fathers parents lived somewhere in the suburbs and that if I found them I might be able to get busfare back to Albany. But I ultimately decided to return to Detroit. I was actually paranoid Luke might try to leave me on the road somewhere or might ask me lots of probing questions to flush out my intentions. Thinking quickly I encouraged our contact Don, who was also returning to Detroit for a day of studies, to come with me in the car so we could talk about the campus work he was involved in. I don’t know if this was necessary, but I was relieved that Don’s presence provided me with a witness and prevented Luke and I from engaging in an internal discussion.

Upon arriving in Detroit I attended a debriefing meeting in the office attended by members and close supporters, we were told it was alright to speak as if this were an internal meeting. When Shanta gave her opening speech, which as usual hailed RWL action as a great victory (regardless of the outcome) and portrayed us on the road to a pre-revolutionary situation, I objected. I criticised the RWL’s direction (in exceedlingly soft terms) for being more interested in limited tactical victories then in the real task before us of building a revolutionary party. The impetus for my change of heart was that I at last recognized that my best defense might not be in hiding and playing it safe, but rather in letting people kniow that I was being put through the political meat-grinder because I had objections to the course away from Marxism and towards cultism that was constantly steered by the leadership. I hoped if I was institutionalised others would see that it was a way of politically removing me from the party. The fact that people the RWL was hoping to recruit in the near future witnessed my attack gave me reason to hope. These individuals were not so totally locked in and the RWL would miss loosing them if they were seen to treat me in too heavy handed a manner.

The next morning I met with Leland. I was attacked for my performance the night before. I was told that I was mentally unhealthy. I was ordered to resign from the local exec and disengage from all practical work and forfeit my seat as a CC alternate. I was not surprised, knowing I would be out of the org or back in a mental hospital by the end of the day I agreed. I agreed to everything Leland said. There was no point in arguing with him. I respected how widely he had read and how much he knew, but I had little respect for him as a political leader anymore. Perhaps I even saw him with a glimmer of sympathy, I saw him as being something of a hostage to Shanta’s hyper-activity and penchant for military adventures. There was nothing left to discuss. When he told me I would be allowed to remain on the Fighting Worker editorial board (a body I had recently been co-opted onto) I spoke as if I thoroughly intended to stay in the organization. Was I a coward? I don’t know, after everything I went through even today I don’t feel certain of what the RWL is or isn’t capeable or willing to do.

As soon as I was safe in Albany I quit. To the RWL’s consternation I did not drop out of politics. In fact I stood on a joint electoral slate with them (something we had already established prior to my quit) in student government elections and several months later I tried to start acting (with occassional assistance from Stacey) as an external tendency pressuring the RWL to the left and trying to win supporters out of their organization. The RWL asked me to rejoin at one point, at the price of signing a letter denouncing myself for quitting the organization which they could distribute to members. Outside the cultish pressures I laughed at this tranparent trap presented to me by Mark A on behalf of the PC. But I aslo engaged in a great deal of self questioning, afraid that outside the RWL I was worthless, outside the class struggle and abandoning my meaningful commitment to scientific socialism. I had to wait almost a year for the first real breakthrough, that was Don U’s resignation statement which outlined the history of abuses perpetrated by the RWL against its membership.

Your story about Heather brings all the old anger and pain back to me like it was yesterday. The RWL’s internal life has only a few of the most formal similarities to what structure is like within a healthy revolutionary organization. The RWL in no way practices democratic centralism. I feel quite confident that you will find no example in the history of Lenin’s Bolshevik party where comrades were forced to “voluntarily” admit themselves to psychiatric hospital. Heather’s affair with Luke, wether it was ill advised or not, was in no way the business of the party. Her sexual relations with Sheldon and her growing seperation from him, like her growing involvment with Luke were her personal affair. It is only in occassional, exceptional cirumstances (almost unthinkable in this period) that the party would have any business in dictating comrade’s sexual relations. If Heather were sleeping with a member of the KKK this would be a reason for the party to act, but to abandon one comrade for another may be personally painful to the individuals involved and may impair for a time their functioning, but it is not a concern of org policy.

In the early Trotskyist movement, while nothing that I know of compares to the RWL, there were some sections (notably the Chinese and the French) where rearrangements of peoples sleeping partners caused subsequent tensions and personal/political splits. It is a proud legacy of the U.S. section that it generally towered above this, being a sizeable disciplined party with good leadership it was not buffeted about by petty arguments over who was sleeping with who. In the RWL the situation is amplified because the funtioning is just the opposite. It was also exagerated because of the youth of all the parties involved. In all the relationships I have mentioned (Liv and Andi, Ben and Venessa, Sheldon, Luke, Heather, Stacey and myself) we are dealing with people who at the oldest end (Luke) were 25 and at the youngest (Stacey) were 16. Capitalism plays a distorting and deforming role on all relationships and the pressures of a cultish party like the RWL only increase that distoriton. Young people, falling in love and breaking up for the first time place a great deal of stress on such events, not necessarily amplifying them but rather having not become yet used to them they often have much greater problems dealing with the powerful emotions unleashed. But even that does not make them primarily the responsibility of the organization.

Luke and I and no doubt the others involved were genuinely depressed. But ultimately the RWL, cyncically or sincerly, took advantage of my depression to have me committed in what can really only be read as a political move. For a lonmg time I have pondered wether I or not I really was in need of psychiatric therapy at that time. Nver before and never since have I experienced such dark bouts of depression. I believe psychiatry under capitalism is still in its infancy, which does not mean that comrades should not have the option of resorting to it when necessary. Even a treatment in an experimental stage is often an improvement on no treatment at all. But the RWL, in ordering comrades to undergo treatment, is utilizing a form of bourgoise medical process to marginalize inactive or oppositional cadre and isolate them from the party. This is horrible.

I have kept silent on many of these affairs in order to a degree to protect the RWL from bourgoise authorities. As a part of the workers movement (however deformed they are) I have not wanted to risk bringing state repression to bare on their group because of my stories. I have shared them only with other ex-RWL members, a handful of my closest friends and a few of the American IBT comrades. But I now want to commit these experiences to the record before they’re forgotten, to let you and Heather and others know that this sort of thing is not the healthy functioning of a revoltuionary organization, it has nothing in common with the manner in which the IBT operates, and is enough alone (without even addressing the plethora of RWL programmtic deviations) to insure they have no right to claim the mantle of Trotskyism.

fraternally,

Jason

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