Trotskyism in the United States: statement of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League

[p050] Statement i. - the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour. League FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, JANUARY 1966 United States on only a very small scale, but already, in conditions of high boom, this limited application has brought back the phenomenon of the capitalist ‘reserve army of unemployed’ on a new and expanding scale. This introduction of automation into an un- planned economy is producing the most violent social struggles, especially as it coincides with the historical legacy of one of the main preconditions of American capitalist wealth, the super-exploited Negro population, America’s ‘internal colony’. The actual content of the insurrection in Los Angeles, the riots in Chicago, the self-arming of Negro workers throughout the United States, is the incompatibility of American capitalist social relations with the new productive forces. The impact of the Vietnam war, which U.S. business finds so necessary to maintain a high level of government spending, as well as to assert its leading international role on behalf of capitalism, is thrusting hundreds of thousands of young American workers and students into struggle against the system, a struggle which they will very soon learn in experience is the same as that of the Negroes. All the struggles of the colonial peoples, in which the blood of millions has been shed since the Second World War, and the struggles of the workers in Russia and Eastern Europe against the bureaucracy, which came to a head in 1956, and are now surging forward once more, has as a precondition of success the coming forward of a revolutionary leadership for the workers thrown into struggle in the advanced capitalist countries. This has always been the standpoint of Trotsky- ism: it is possible, as in Russia, for the workers and peasants of a backward country to overthrow the: native capitalist state, but for the victory of socialism in these countries the struggle must go forward to success in the main centres of advanced capitalism. For this reason, Trotsky paid _ particular attention to the class struggle in the United States, and not at all only because his years of exile ended near the borders of that country. Trotsky was in essence the real founder of the Socialist Workers’ Party of the USA. But there will be no successful building of a revolutionary party in the USA unless it is based upon a full appreciation of the consequences of the revisionism and capitulation to the class

[p051] DOCUMENTS enemy of the party founded by Trotsky. The SWP has, in recent years (though the roots of the process are much farther back*) abandoned the internationalist positions of Trotskyism. Internationalist politics in our epoch are the politics of the working class. All other classes have particular stakes in the ‘national interest’ and are unable to carry out a consistent inter- nationalist line. Insofar as the working class has become affected by this national opportunism, it has been the result of the creation of a specially privileged minority of the class on the basis of colonial super-profits. The revisionists, those who abandon the construction of the revolutionary party of the working class, are representatives of these alien class influences. The SWP has arrived at a position where its political line is determined, not by the class struggle and the need of the working class for a strategy, but by estimations of the movements of middle-class national political trends. Insofar as the workers are considered at all, it is as some sort of ‘pressure group’ to give weight to one or other of these surface tendencies in the ‘radical milieu’ inhabited by middle-class _re- formers. When Kennedy was assassinated, there is not the slightest doubt that there was an_ event absolutely indicative of the Watts rebellion in Los Angeles. It should have sharpened the class perspectives of all Marxist revolutionaries. What was the response of the SWP? Its General Secretary, Farrell Dobbs, sent a telegram to the widow of this millionaire President, expressing the condolences of the Party! At that time there was drawing to a close another phase of SWP activity which in its own way proved just as fatally the degeneration of the SWP. The members of the Party had _ their attention turned almost exclusively not to the explosive changes in American society, which were given peculiar expression in the Kennedy assas- sination, but to the revolution in Cuba. Solidarity with the revolutionary people of Cuba was certainly an outstanding task of revolutionaries in the United States, but the SWP leadership made sympathy for the Cuban revolution the be-all and end-all of party activity. The ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committees’ in which they enthusiastically participated fell around their ears once the heat was turned on by the U.S. government. As always, peace movements not based on the preparation for working-class * See Fourth International, Summer 1965. 43 power capitulated to the enemy once the first shot was fired. Earlier the SWP had failed miserably in its attempt to ‘regroup’ the left after the crisis of Stalinism in 1956. Here again there was an attempt at compromise, an attempt to trim principles in order to attract those moving away from Stalinism. Thus it was in this period that Hansen and others first publicly made concessions to the idea that the Stalinist bureaucracy might reform out of existence the negative features of Soviet society. Eventually, in 1963, the SWP leaders acknow- ledged the source of the degeneration of their politics by supporting the so-called reunification with the Pabloite ‘United Secretariat of the Fourth International’, from which they had broken in 1953, on the grounds of its capitulation ta Stalinism. This ‘reunification’ was made the excuse for suppression of principled discussion of the previous split. Those who demanded dis- cussion on this, and later on the consequences of it in the Ceylon betrayal of N.M. Perera, were summarily expelled from the Party. The recent Convention of the SWP confirmed all these developments, virtually liquidating the political line of the Party in the ‘broad’ anti-war movement. The Party’s newspaper reports the Convention’s call on this question without a trace of analysis of the specific line and struggle of the revolutionary party, to build the movement which will take power from the capitalists as the only answer to war. Outside of this, ‘internationalism’ is only a series of pious references to the identity ot the struggle all over the world, which is exactly what Joseph Hansen provided. It was fitting that alongside these political conclusions went the refusal of any right of appeal to the revolutionary minorities expelled from the SWP since its last Convention. By a_ small majority, these rights, never revoked in the history of the Trotskyist movement, were refused to those ex-members at present working in two groups, the American Committee for the Fourth International and the ‘Spartacist’ group. - The above account should make it perfectly clear that the sources of the present position of the SWP are political and international. Not only have the steps in degeneration been intimately linked with the struggles against revisionism inside the international Trotskyist movement; the political ideas at the base of the degeneration are part of an international tendency in the movement, the tendency of Pabloite revisionism and liquida- tionism.

[p052] 44 If this is clearly understood, then the pre- conditions for a struggle to build a genuine Trotskyist party can quickly be grasped. From this point of view, the personal evolution of this or that individual in the SWP leadership, the special combinations and cliques in the leadership, etc., are seen to be purely incidental to the main point. , The recent Convention of the SWP must be analysed from this internationalist viewpoint, otherwise there will be nothing but disorientation and confusion, and no possibility of potentially revolutionary elements in the SWP being attracted to the politics of the International Committee. This raises the question of the responsibility of revolutionary Marxists in the United States. Not only the American Committee for the Fourth International, but also the ‘Spartacist’ group, has expressed agreement with the main lines of the International Committee’s draft resolution for the 1966 international conference. What is now necessary is the working out of a revolutionary perspective for the struggle of the American working class. With such a perspective, American Trotskyists will be able to carry forward the work of Trotsky in developing Marxism in an everyday connection with the living movement. Only in this way can a successful battle be waged against the prag- matism which permeates every aspect of American philosophy and politics. On this basis, as the International Committee has rightly insisted, unification of al! those who accept our international perspectives is essential. , The bedrock of this unity must be, we insist once more, the recognition of the international roots of the SWP’s political degeneration. It is in no way a question of counting heads, but of insisting on Trotskyist principles as our starting- point. Only in this way will American Marxists uphold the traditions of the revolutionary move- ment. With this as starting base, a correct attitude to the current crisis in the Socialist Workers’ Party is necessary and can be worked out. It is dangerous in the extreme to ignore the potential FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, JANUARY 1966 of the youth recruited in the recent period tu the SWP. They are not simply errand boys and voting fodder for the Dobbs-Kerry leadership. What is happening is something more pro- found, and if this is not grasped, or is obscured by one-sided commentaries which concentrate on the line-up of internal party groups, then American Trotskyists will be hopelessly left behind by events. In the ironical sense which history so often gives to such processes, it is inevitable that the most profound degeneration of the SWP coincides with the most agitated ferment among American youth. This ferment will develop at a very rapid rate, and will bring to a head very quickly the contradiction between the degeneration of the SWP and the objective needs of the American working class. The latter contradiction is only the manifestation of the sharpened international crisis of centrism and revisionism, in face of the working-class offensive. The first responsibility of those in the United States who adhere to the positions of the Inter- national Committee will be to ensure the political clarification of these young workers and students who have joined the SWP. Without tackling this necessary political task, it will not be possible to fully prepare for the tasks in the trade unions and the Negro movement. Here again, this clarification will require a correct international starting point. It will not be possible for them to understand and change the situation in the SWP without this inter- nationalist perspective. These remarks on the SWP illustrate a general truth which must be burned into the consciousness of every American Marxist: nothing will be solved in the USA without a recognition of the international source of the internal political problems of the USA and of the Trotskyist movement in that country. We are confident that Marxists in America will be able to unite their forces in the common struggle with us to rebuild the international revolutionary movement. Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League 9/10/65.

[p053] DOCUMENTS INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH