PROBLEMS OF THE

THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE delayed its political break from the Socialist Workers' Party until the end of 1960. We wanted, if possible, to have a serious discussion inside the International Committee in order to educate our comrades around the nature of the differences. We even arranged a special trip to Canada early February, 1960, in order to meet the main leaders of the SWP to see if there were some common grounds to heal the breach between the two sections. There were none. In our opinion they were moving more and more towards a public acceptance of Pabloite revisionism.

Still we hesitated. When we finally wrote concerning the differences to their National Committee early in January 1961, we hoped that there would still be a discussion under circumstances where the differences would be eventually clarified. We had no such discussion. Apart from a few brief letters of acknowledgement of correspondence between the SWP and the SLL the months dragged by without any discussion, either written or oral.

Cannon shows his hand Suddenly the whole shabby business became clear. A letter from Cannon in Angeles instructing the SWP national office in New York not to have any discussion the Socialist Labour League, came into our possession.

The political degeneration of the SWP was out in the open. Here was a party claiming to be Trotskyist, whose leaders had pioneered the Trotskyist movement, the most controversial Marxist movement in the whole of history, deliberately evading discussion.

How was it possible to educate anybody with such a method?

How was it possible to build the Fourth International in this way?

Cannon knew full well that if he began a discussion with the SLL his so-called cadre would fall apart. After all, there had been close on 20 years' collaboration between leading members of the SLL and the SWP.

But Cannon, starting from his pragmatist relation with Trotsky, was by now an opportunist and a political coward.

He took full advantage of the insular 'all American way' in which the leaders in the SWP had been educata. His argument was, by implication: 'Don't discuss with the leaders of the SLL, they are "sectarian" and "insular"?

In other words he fell back on the arguments which the Stalinists had been using against us for almost 30 years in order to defend and justify capitulation to the pressures of American imperialism.

Hansen

His story describing how Cannon left New York is a masterpiece of journalistic bootlicking.

'As the crack train gathered speed along the banks of the river, the man soon to be locked in a cell because of his beliefs leaned back in his seat watching the barren trees and the ice-fringed water skim by.

The pillars of a famous geologic formation moved in stately procession into the past— scenes of the Hudson warmed by the winter sun for this socialist fighter to remember in the hard days ahead. The sun fell on his hair as the train leaned round a curve and the iron gray waves lighted up luminously. Jim's lips moved;

The Palisades are beautiful' Hansen's From then on Hansen had and has today a special role inside the SWP leadership. As a member of this leadership once said:

'When it comes to normal polemicising against opponents there are all sorts of comrades who can undertake this task, but when Cannon wants to sharpen things up, with a real dirty below the belt job, all eyes on the Committee turn automatically in the direction of Joe Hansen.' Los with highly qualified intellectuals and workers in the mass movement broke away from the Communist party. The break was programmatic, entailing a thorough review and study of the very "Stalin-Trotsky" dispute which Cochran and his collaborators Who Joseph Hansen? put in the same category as the Dempsey-Tunney fight. Among those in Britain who bave broken definitively with Stalinism there has been impressive ideological I ferment. A significant group, having studied the pro"grammatic issues to the end, turned towards fusion with the British Trotskyists. This resulted in formation of the Socialist Labor League, a group within the Labor Jarty and the unions dedicated to advancing the Marxist view.

'As an organizing centre of both class struggle action by militant unionists and theoretical struggle for Marxism, the SLI has been selected as a target for witch-hunting. The British capitalist press and the right-wing trade union bureaucrats are displaying the keenest alarm over the fact that the SLL has become an inspiring and attractive force for radical youth, for trade union militants for the entire left wing in the Labor Party. The SLL is in the forefront of every struggle to unite workers, students and intellectuals in the fight against British imperialism, for withdrawing British troops from every part of the world, for ending the H-bomb tests, strengthening the socialist program of the Labor Party and defeating the right wing's attempts to scuttle the party's stand in favour of public ownership.

"The SLL is taking the lead in the fight for full democracy in the unions, the Labor Party and in every aspect of British life. The SLL has shown its fighting mettle in beating back racist attempts to whip up a lynch movement against Negro workers in London.

"Where did this magnificent movement come from? It is obviously without a trace of sectarianism or disdainful aloofness from the actual movement and life of the working class. It is popular energetic and colorful in its public appeal.

"The real secret of the strength of the SLL is its concern for the theoretical basis of social. ism, its "preoccupation" if you please with the "old disputes" and its rejection of every attempt at lightminded improvisation in the field of principle. This is true of the SLL and its leadership as a whole, both those who came recently from the Communist Party as well as the older Trotskyist cadre.

"The British Trotskyists prepared for the opening of the kind of opportunities prevalent in their country today and that will surely confront us in the US tomorrow by struggling against their own Cochran faction, the Lawrence group, back in 1953. They faced the same problem as the American Trotskyists in coping with destructive factional intervention on the part of Pablo. They too, had to overcome the effects of a split that was unnecessarily deep due to The fourth of a series of articles National Secretary Socialist Labour League Pablo's influence. Their success in overcoming the internal dispute in a principled way, in strict accordance with Leninist tradition, is what prepared them to play their magnificent role today?

Had not Hansen himself publicly endorsed in the pages of the weekly 'Militant' the statement of the Socialist Labour League_on the expulsion of Peter Fryer and four of his cronies in the autumn of 1959, after they had publicly attacked the League?' Of course, and • every informed comrade in the international movement knows this. Hansen had to invent his stories about the British Trotskyists and we will deal fully with these in the next issue when we speak about the movement here. Hansen gets busy Hansen set about his task in two ways.

Firstly, there was the issue of Cuba. Hansen, of course, as well as the rest of the SWP leadership, got off to a very slow start so far as Cuba was concerned. The revolution was nearly two years old before they began to discuss it.

Indeed it was Henry Gitano, a supporter of Murry Weiss, who first started the ball rolling with an article also in the Spring issue of International Socialist Review'. This was followed up with another piece from Hansen himself.

Around that time Dobbs and Hansen visited Cuba and reported favourably on what they saw there.

But Cuba itself did not become an issue of difference between the SLL and the SWP until after we opened up the discussion early in 1961.

For two whole years after the Cuban revolution the SLL and the SWP were able to collaborate with each other despite the implications of the Cuban revolution. Now, however, when Cannon wanted to avoid a discussion on Pabloism, things took a different turn.

Together with the Pabloites, the SWP almost instantaneously, after having ignored the Cuban revolution for two years, now recognised Cuba as a workers' state.

This was the first major public turn towards Pabloite methods.

Hansen, who under instructions from Cannon in 1953-54 castigated Pablo for such methods, now became the most devout supporter of them. He argued with equal vehemence in favour, just as he was arguing a few years before against them.

Hansen got busy with his slander. Was it not US imperialism which oppressed the Cuban peoples? Of course it was, and if the SLL hesitated in characterising Cuba as a 'workers' state', did not that automatically mean that the SLL was an ally of US imperialism?

This was the story which he peddled around the SWP in order to poison the political atmosphere against the SLL with whom they collaborated for 20 years.

Alongside all this, members of the SWP were organised to go to Cuba so they could see the 'land of socalism' for themselves.

Coming from the USA and its anti-red, witch-hunting atmosphere, everything which they saw in Cuba seemed fine from the tourist point of view, the one difficulty being that they were there only for a short time.

Nevertheless, it served Hansen's purpose. When the American and Canadian tourists returned he was saying 'Now you see how the SIL helps US imperialism. Don't bother to read their bulletins, Jim Cannon is right not to have discussion with 'supporters of US imperialism, is he not?'and they in turn, unfortunately said 'Yes' to what was nothis ing more than shades of Stalinist distortion of Trotskyist method.

Cuba-a cover for a right-wing turn The issues, however, were quite different.

The SLL was not necessarily opposed to the designation of Cuba as a 'workers' state'.

We wanted to keep an open mind until after we : had an objective discussion with those in the SWP we believed to be our co-thinkers.

They didn't want such a discussion because they were deserting to Pabloism. They were in fact rapidly turning towards the right and to liquidationism into the pacifist movement within the USA. Cuba was just a cover for the project.

For example, in discussing the class nature of the Chinese state in the years 1954-1955, Hansen himself circulated memorandum to the SWP National Committee 'suggesting a state capitalist theory for China' (see 'Struggle for Marxism in the US', Fourth International, No. 3).

If it was permissible to have such a discussion inside the SWP in the middle fifties, why not between the SWP and the SIL on Cuba in 1962, especially since we had not characterised •Cuba as 'state capitalist' and we were open to be convinced by those whom we believed to be our collaborators?

We wanted discussion over the class nature of the Cuban state—the SWP did not beIn Pao the ing to the liquidationist policy cause they were busy capitulatTheir turn to the right wing and the pacifists had now begun in earnest. At all costs they had to break from the Sut in order to get closer to their real international allies— the right wing Pabloites.

But how can such methods build the Fourth International in the revolutionary way that Trotsky wanted it to be built?

The short answer is that they cannot.

That is also why the split between the International Committee and the Pabloites of the Unified Secretariat cannot be healed in such an unprincipled way. Cannon, Dobbs and Hansen prevent international discussion In the autumn and winte r of 61 Hansen was sent ol ur of Latin America in der to confuse and disorient those sections supporting the International Committee.

He utilised the 'workers' state' theory in Cuba to the full in order to separate them from the SLL.

Once again the pragmatic SWP was using the international movement to turn towards Pablo just as it had tried to use it in 1953 against him.

Understandably, the Cuban revolution made a big impact on the Latin American comrades, especially Chile and the Argentiacit but the practice placing ready-made labels, such as 'workers' state without adequate international discussion such developments is not only dangerous but downright opportunist.

It politically suited the SWP but it greatly weakened the comrades in Latin America.

The 'workers' state' theory in Cuba was the vehicle which finally dragged the SWP back into the Pabloite camp. Behind this theory was essentially the idea that a revolutionary party was not necessary.

It met with immediate response from the disorientated petty bourgeois inside the SWP. Led by Hansen and fortified by tourist trips to Cuba, they. were ready to believe anything they were told about the SLL.

Cannon gradually dropped his support for the Murry Weiss faction and switched it to Dobbs. Weiss, in turn, resigned and opened a bookshop.

Cannon, it is reported, sent him, a donation SO that he could buy some books, with a comforting letter saying that he understood how he felt.

After that the road was clear for Dobbs. Hansen naturally fell into line, voting with both hands for Dobbs.

Everything was set for the second stage of the campaign of slander against the SLL.

Early in February 1962 Hansen arrived in Europe for the funeral of Natalia Trotsky.

During his stay he visited England and attended a Central Committee meeting of the Socialist Labour League. On his return to the USA he immediately began a slander campaign against leading members the SLL around gossip he picked up from renegades, although he never at any time opened his mouth when he was here.

At the meeting we briefly discussed the differences between the SLL and the SWP Hansen freely admitted that he was a consistent empiricist.

Our next experience with him came later on in 1963, negotiate closer relations e to when he arrived in Europe the Pabloites.

During the summer of 1962 the International Committee icceptins the recommenda ions of the Socialist Labou tions witopened the Pabloite Inter- up negotia. national Secretariat for discussion on the disputed questions. found it absolutely impossible This was decided after to draw the SWP into the open as regards their political positions.

Since we knew we felt that an international involved would help move. ment re-organise itself, clarifying the issues.

But the SWP were dead against such a discussion.

They formally agreed with Williams the negotiations we had started because it provided them with organisational reasons to collaborate more openly with the Pabloites.

But now, as in the past, they wanted this collaboration to proceea as it the split in 1953 had never taken place.

Just as discussion was about to open and documents were exchanged, Hansen suddenly announced that a unification had been arranged between a minority of the International Committee affiliates, namely the small Swiss and Canadian sections, supported by the Chinese Peng who represented no-one but himself.

We appealed to them to proceed with the discussion but it fell on deaf ears.

Then in May 1963, just before this farcical unification, Ernest Germain, a leading Pablo man, came to England and told the SLI that irrespective of unification the negotiations would go on with those sections of the International who desired discussion before unification.

He repeated the same proposal when he spoke to our summer school two months later in early August. There are hundreds of comrades who heard him say these things.

After the unification Hansen returned to the USA for further instructions. He arrived back in Europe late in August and immediately told the Pabloites that the SWP was opposed to any discussion with the International Committee, so all negotiations were immediately broken off.

How the 'no discussion' decision applied in Ceylon The most disastrous side of this decision was that it prevented all discussion inside the Pabloite ranks about what was happening in Ceylon, where already the majority of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party were preparing to enter the coalition government.

By preventing such a discussion they also prevented the revolutionary minority of the LSSP from waging an all-out political fight against the opportunist majority.

They were silenced by orders of Hansen and Co. right at the time they should have been fighting tooth and nail to clarify the party.

Hansen, Cannon, Dobbs and Co. had achieved what they set out to achieve.

Once more the small Pabloite rump in Paris, now masquerading as the 'Unified Secretariat' became the cover for their 'Fourth International' Thus they were able to turn to the pacifists inside the USA without fear of international criticism.

The pragmatic methods flowing from nationalism had now merged with the completely opportunist Pabloite currents. This was essentially Hansen's contribution towards . the destruction of Trotskyism, especially in the US and Ceylon.

Next week: 'The good name of Trotskyism in Britain'