The Fourth International and the Socialist Workers Party (USA): Introduction

[p009] on in the Fourth International, the organisation of revolutionaries in each country who fight to build Marxist parties in continuity with the struggles of Lenin and Trotsky and their comrades. In that year, the Socialist Labour League of Britain addressed to the leadership of the Socialist Workers’ Party of the USA a letter (Document No. 1 in this issue) drawing attention to the dangers of revisionism in that Party. Specifically, it was a matter of insisting upon a detailed and long discussion of our political and theoretical standpoints: the SLL considered that the earlier split in the International with the followers of Michel Pablo (1952-53) was along fundamental lines, and that this was clearly revealed in the revisionist politics and theories of the Pablo group; the SWP leaders, on the other hand, looked for possibilities of ‘reunification’ on the grounds that the differences were narrowing. To our insistence on discussion before consideration of unification, we were met first with silence and then with manoeuvres, with a token discussion carried on. Eventually the SWP leaders collaborated with the Pabloites in supporting a unification without discussion in 1963. In their support for the formation of this ‘Unified Secretariat’, they were especially insistent-upon the evaluation of the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro as a workers’ state, since this was supposed to define more sharply than anything else the prospects of ‘unity’. All theoretical dis- cussion, all analysis of the full meaning of the 1953 split, of the reasons for the split, were cast aside on the grounds that the concrete issue of Cuba was the most important one, revealing the ‘great opportunities’ before Trotskyists and overshadowing all discussion of differences. Since the ‘reunification’ one disaster has followed another for the ‘unifiers’. Pablo himself, with his faction, has been suspended from the leadership of the ‘Unified Secretariat’. In a number of countries new splits have taken place. A whole group of leading spokesmen of this tendency have written publicly in agreement with left social-democratic reformists in the European press. And above all has come the disaster of the entry of the ‘Trotskyist’ ministers into the coalition government in Ceylon. It was this latter affair which exposed the completeness of the degeneration of the spurious International in Paris. The record of their responsibility has been fully documented (see Ceylon, The Great Betrayal, published by The Newsletter, 1964). Their protestations that they in fact supported the left wing in the LSSP (Ceylon Trotskyist Party) were exposed as lies by the publication in The Newsletter of extracts from their internal discussions, in which they warn of the ‘divisive’ dangers of opposition to the rightward course of the LSSP leadership. Now their chosen emissary to the LSSP (Revolutionary section), Osmund Jayaratne, has announced his disagreement with opposition to the Coalition. This unprecedented betrayal of the working class by spokesmen of

[p010] . 6 FouRTH INTERNATIONAL, SUMMER 1965 Trotskyism brought to a head all the dangers of which the International Com- mittee was aware when it insisted upon a discussion of fundamental principles before consideration of ‘unification’. The insistence upon characterisation of Cuba as a workers’ state was a smokescreen behind which discussion was avoided and the Ceylonese capitulation prepared. The latest issue of the magazine of the SWP, International Socialist Review, contains a vitriolic attack on the politics of the International Committee, taking the form of an attack on Gerry Healy, Secretary of the Socialist Labour League (‘The Test of the Cuban Revolution’, by Joseph Hansen, ISR, Winter 1964). Avoiding all discussion of Ceylon, in which all the practical and class implications of the theoretical differences are starkly revealed, Hansen scurries back to the issue of the Cuban revolution, hoping there to find some more favourable ground. His excursion into politics (as compared with his usual light-hearted comments from afar) is highly unfortunate, but it gives us the opportunity to return to the question of the ‘Cuba’ discussion of the past three years in the light of what has happened in the interim. Hansen gives the impression that the SLL has avoided a real discussion on the implications of the Cuban revolution. We therefore reproduce here some of the documents of our contribution to the discussion in the International Committee. From these detailed documents it will become very clear that, far from avoiding a discussion on the theoretical implications of Cuba, we insisted precisely upon the deep methodological revisions of Marxism by the SWP in their approach, and the dangers which these implied for the future of the Fourth International. After all it was the International Secretariat, and not us, who addressed a communication to the LSSP, on the subject of their proposed United Left Front with the MEP and the Stalinists, in the course of which they held out the prospect: ‘Ceylon can provide another Cuba or Algeria and prove to be of even greater inspiration to revolutionary minded workers throughout the world.’ The documents reproduced here are the following: l. The letter of the National Committee of the SLL to the leaders of the SWP, in which the first attempt was made to open a discussion on our differences (January 2, 1961). 2. Extracts, particularly concerning Cuba, from the document ‘Trotskyism Betrayed’, addressed to the SWP leadership by the National Committee of the SLL (July 21, 1962). 3. ‘Opportunism and Empiricism’. A reply to Joseph Hansen’s ‘Cuba, the Acid Test’, in which he elaborated on the arguments in his recent JSR article. ‘Opportunism and Empiricism’ was adopted by the NC of the SLL on March 23, 1963.. Appended to this document are: (a) the letter of F. Rodriguez on the Cuban state, dated February 1963, and (b) the revealing letter of James P. Cannon on the missiles crisis in Cuba (dated October 1962).

[p011] INTRODUCTION 4. Letter addressed by the SLL to the NC of the SWP after the SLL Conference in June 1963. Besides important references to the situation in Cuba, this letter draws attention to the traitorous course of the LSSP leadership. 5. ‘From Revisionism to Opportunism’, Resolution of the Conference of the SLL, March 1, 1964. These documents provide an invaluable record of our insistence upon principled discussion and they completely expose the attempt of Hansen to distort our position. The fact is that, whereas he and his supporters refused a discussion in their haste to ‘reunification’, they are now forced by the objective realities to publicly discuss with the International Committee; the fact that they must now do this under conditions much less favourable for themselves only provides another lesson in the impossibility of defying the laws of objective reality exposed by scientific analysis. That the avoidance of discussion until now has brought the calamity of Ceylon in the meantime indicates only the important truth that this is no abstract discussion, but the central core of the active struggle to build the revolutionary International of the working class. In addition we reprint here the following background documents to the discussion. 6. ‘A Letter to Trotskyists throughout the World’ (1953), the famous ‘Open Letter’ from the SWP, making public the split with Pablo revisionism. - 7. ‘Pablo “Answers” the Open Letter’ (1954). A reply to Pablo published in the organ of the SWP, The Militant.

[p012] 8 DOCUMENT No.