The SWP (US) in the American Century: A Case Study of 'Orthodoxy' - pt 2

Cannon himself was quite alert to the dangers of opportunism with this tactic, having seen what the then right centrist CPUSA did with it in the 1920s. In the name of this tactic this party attempted to form a cross class party, a farmer-labor party, and ended up tailing populist bourgeois politicians. In 1948 he saw the same danger facing the SWP when sections of it tried to paint another bourgeois politician who had broken from the two big capitalist parties, Wallace, and the movement that supported his campaign for presidency, as a potential basis for the labor party. Cannon warned:

‘I have felt that our rather one sided emphasis on the necessity of forming a labor party, without at the moment stressing too much the programme and our fight against the bureaucracy, may have given rise to some illusion and conciliationism in the ranks of the party, particularly among the newer members, as to labor partyism and labor reformism.’36

It had indeed, and this conciliationism was to deepen in the 1950s.37 For example, in spring 1952, the Seventh Annual Convention of the New England district of the CIO United Packinghouse Workers voted, with only one abstention, to endorse the formation of a labor party at the earliest possible date. The Militant editorial said:

‘The actual process through which a labor party can be built is seen in the case of Packinghouse Local 245 of the New England District. Local labor candidates, sponsored by city labor movements, can prove that there is an alternative to capitalist politics, and can fire the ranks with enthusiasm for independent labor politics.

The British Labour Party, today the most powerful force in Britain, was only a tiny minority party before world war one. Even in 1918, it elected only 57 members to Parliament, running a very poor third after the Tory and Liberal parties. But only five years later, in 1923, the British Labour Party got almost 4.5 million votes, elected 191 members of Parliament, and by the January of the next year had formed the first Labour government. Rapid as this development was, it is nevertheless low compared to the possibilities of an American labor party. The US labor movement is far more powerful now than the British was then. In addition, all events developed at a slower pace in those years than today.’38

This is not simply a pedagogical device to show American workers how rapidly things can change. It contains the clear implication that the labor party the US workers need will be like the British Labour Party, and it will gain power through elections! There is not one word about a revolutionary programme anywhere in the editorial. The stock phrase ‘an alternative to capitalist politics’ was used by all and sundry at the time to denote a third party, based on the unions and hence independent of Republicans and Democrats, and no way meant to the average Militant reader that a revolutionary party was needed. The SWP’s opportunist appetites turned a principled position into a centrist one. This slogan, which is undoubtedly central to intervention in the US working class, was denuded of its revolutionary element by the SWP’s concern to adapt to the ‘great and good American people’. By presenting ostensibly revolutionary politics in this light, the SWP certainly achieved their avowed aim of ‘eliminating all externals which are unnecessary roadblocks in our path’. Unfortunately, the key ‘roadblock’ for the SWP appears to been the revolutionary programme!

This adaptation afforded them little and the SWP was ‘stagnating’, as Cannon put it. Given the witch-hunt, the consequences of long-term prosperity and the SWP’s apparent difficulty in differentiating themselves from other radical tendencies in the US labour movement, this is not surprising. Unlike the CP, they were for a clear break with the Democratic Party, but were evasive about the nature of any future labor party. And in evading the revolutionary answer, they left the field wide open for the reformist illusions already present in the advance workers who were their target.

Cannon was once again obliged to warn against opportunism on this front. In the witch-hunt—which, let us remember, the SWP viewed as a struggle against fascism—the party posed the labor party as the means for securing victory. Cannon urged caution:

‘The assertion that the labor party “will stop McCarthyism”, which makes its way into our agitation now and then, is an oversimplification that ought to be guarded against.’39

Far from being guarded against, this oversimplification, became ingrained into the agitation of the SWP as its slide into opportunism gathered speed. The weaker it became in the unions the more the labor party appeared as a panacea, removing at a stroke the SWP’s isolation from the masses.


The SWP and the trade unions

The early 1950s were a difficult period for trade union militants in general, and for revolutionaries in particular. The situation in the unions had changed substantially from that of the mid-1930s. The trade union bureaucracy had grown apace since the days of the CIO upsurge, and had increased its influence over the mass of workers through the growth of the unions and the role of union leaders at the highest levels of government. As the unionisation of the working class grew, and in the absence of a successful fight by revolutionaries, the crystallisation of a trade union bureaucracy was more or less inevitable. However, this was not foreseen by the SWP, and the extent of the already-existing influence of the trade union bureaucracy was not understood by the SWP in the 1946 Theses. Indeed, they proclaim that ‘The American workers have the advantage of being comparatively free, especially among the younger and most militant layers, from reformist prejudices’40, whilst acknowledging in the subsequent thesis that the predominant consciousness of the American working class was trade union consciousness!

The mistaken concentration on reformist consciousness being its overt, party political expression is at least partially due to the absence of any mass reformist workers’ party in the USA. But the Theses misunderstand the impact of the pre and post-war unionisation waves on the working class. These effects can be summarised in two ways: firstly, the advanced layers of the working class had a reformist, trade union consciousness; secondly, the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the unions meant that the kind of breakthrough that the revolutionaries were able to make in Minneapolis in 1934 was going to be a lot more difficult.

Militants were also faced with the penetration of the witch-hunt into the labour movement. ‘Anti-communism’ was used as an extra weapon by the union bureaucracy to attack dissidents, and Taft-Hartley explicitly attacked revolutionaries within the unions. In spring 1953, UAW-CIO boss, Reuther, joined with McCarthy’s ‘House Un-American Activities Committee’ (HUAC) to red-bait the largest union branch in the world (80,000 members!), Ford Local 600 (River Rouge plant). This branch had long been a thorn in Reuther’s side, fighting for a sliding scale of wages during the post-war strike wave, and in 1953 holding out for ‘30 for 40’ (30 hours work for 40 hours pay) and against Reuther’s agreed five-year contract with the Auto companies. Although Local 600 was able to beat off Reuther’s attack (partly by use of Reuther’s own response to a red-baiting attack on him in 1937) the difficulties of revolutionaries in smaller union branches were obviously far greater than for us in Europe today.

The SWP’s overall perspective, as codified in a May 1953 NC resolution was as follows:

‘Participation of the comrades in union activity is almost wholly—and rightly—confined at present to issues which remain within the framework of official policy and do not bring them into direct conflict with local and international officials.

However, it is possible, and advisable, within these restrictions to carry on certain types of work: to circulate the paper, fight shop grievances, oppose the witch-hunters, improve their own political education, contact the best militants and recruit them into the Party.’41

However, despite this ‘heads down’ approach, reflecting the real weakness of the left, never mind the Trotskyists, the SWP’s perspective was, as ever, highly optimistic. As they put it in a PC Draft Resolution, ‘Class struggle policy in the unions’ (1954):

‘In the coming radicalisation the struggle of tendencies will have the double aspect of a fight for leadership of the vanguard and of the broad mass movement. The contest will occur between three forces: the union bureaucracy, the Stalinists and the Socialist Workers Party. Of these tendencies only the SWP will constitute a vital historic force. Neither the union bureaucrats nor the Stalinists have any progressive historical mission, both are transitory obstacles to be overcome on the road to socialism.’42

As in the 1946 Theses, the problem of how to overcome the influence of the reformists today is side-stepped by the inclusion of the epochal and optimistic truth that the Stalinists and the bureaucracy are ‘transitory obstacles’. ‘Transitory’, maybe, but enormous nonetheless! Whilst such stuff may have given the SWP rank-and-file a bit of Dutch courage, it did nothing to orient and guide them in the everyday struggles in which they were engaged. Rather, its consequence was to reinforce the routinist elements already present with the confidence that the revolution would come, in its own time, and that there was no real need to organise a fight against the reformists, because they were only ‘transitory obstacles’.

While Militant’s reportage of the industrial scene was extensive and informative, the paper did not advance a coherent strategy to take struggles forward. It confined itself to echoing demands workers were already raising. A clear example being in the 1950 Chrysler strike. In January, as part of a long-running pay dispute, 89,000 Chrysler workers ‘hit the bricks and brought 25 plants to a standstill’.43 Although Reuther argued for strikers to stay at home, the Militant meekly replied:

‘Workers instinctively are turning out to picket, to maintain soup kitchens and help out the strike . . . mass picketing and mass meetings help build morale, strengthen the hand of union negotiators and ensure membership control of the strike.’44

The only other demands they raised—again in an oblique fashion—were:

‘All out on the picket lines to keep ALL OUT of the plants . . . Militants feel that closing off plants to all help and holding mass meetings would ensure more membership participation and control, and gain victory.’45

This is a far cry from the SWP’s bold and decisive programme for the Minneapolis Teamsters in 1934! By the 1950s there was no attempt to focus militants’ attention on the question of bureaucratic leadership and how to fight it, nor did they bring to the fore the question of flying pickets to shut down all plants and ensure a 100% strike, nor of the necessity for solidarity action form other workers. Even basic trade union demands were dealt with in the most obtuse and delicate fashion. ‘Pedagogic adaptation’ would perhaps be the SWP’s reply. But if they were happy enough to ‘shock’ their readers by declaring the USA to be a ‘police state’, why not openly call for mass meetings to control the strike (not to ‘strengthen the hand of union negotiators’!); for the necessity of strike committees and of rank and file organisation to prevent a bureaucratic sell-out? In this case, as in so many others, the SWP’s ‘pedagogy’ got in the way of a clear presentation of a revolutionary strategy.

Much the same thing happened in the 1952 seven week steel strike, which involved 650,000 workers. This dispute loomed several times during 1952, as management and union bosses failed to agree on the terms of a new contract. The bureaucrats, led by Murray, managed to head off the strike each time including stopping a national strike movement after four days at the beginning of May!

Truman, extremely worried by the possibility of a steel strike in the middle of the Korean War, had seized the steel plants when the prospect of a strike at the end of April became unavoidable. This action was finally ruled illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June 1952. The steel strike, having been put off for more than six months and postponed six times, began on 3 June.

Three weeks into the strike, John L Lewis, the miners’ leader, organised $10 million of credit for the steel union. Murray, of course, did not use this gesture as the starting point for solidarity with the strike. His main concern was to keep the movement as weak as possible whilst at the same time negotiating a not-too-tough settlement with the bosses. Agreement was reached at the end of July, with a reduced pay offer from management being coupled with attacks on working conditions and the green light from the Truman administration for price increases.

The SWP’s line on the strike was as before: picketing can win, and for an all out strike. This was coupled with a complete lack of understanding of the role of reformist misleadership:

‘The only way the steel workers can win their demands is to keep the mills shut down tight . . . “No contract, no work” is still the best programme for the steel strikers’46; ‘If the workers stay out, and refuse to accede to any tricks or pressure, then victory will be theirs’47

In the last days of the strike they called for a nationwide conference of all unions to ‘prepare a national labor holiday’ of 24 hours as a solidarity demonstration; and to organise ‘a vast solidarity fund’.48 However, as in the demands raised in the election programme, there is no sense of how these things are to be achieved or of what dynamic they will have, The idea of rank and file control of the strike is virtually absent (all the more important given Murray’s manoeuvres), and there is never any clear presentation that would guide militants in their strike.

These are not two isolated examples; they are representative of the SWP’s method at this time and it does not represent a healthy revolutionary tradition.

Korea

At the level of world politics the most important challenge to the SWP in the early 1950s was the Korean War. At one level it was a godsend. It appeared to justify the FI’s post-war perspectives which predicted a drift in the short term, to a new world war (what Pablo was to turn into the perspective of ‘war-revolution, revolution-war’—an automatic and, it would seem, autonomous process). It was no such thing. It was an early example of US imperialism’s role as world gendarme against not only the USSR but also any movements for national liberation in the semi-colonial world. The real significance of the war from the point of view of the SWP’s politics, however, was not its perspectival relevance, but the spotlight it shone on the SWP’S tendencies towards a social pacifist form of opposition to imperialist war.

On 25 June 1950, President Truman sent US troops, aeroplanes and ships to Korea in a ‘police action’ to ‘establish a free, independent and democratic Korea’. This undeclared war lasted three years, involved five million troops and produced 150,000 US battle casualties. Over five million people were killed, 80% of them Korean civilians. The war was the most unpopular in US history to that date. Although there was no mass anti-war movement as in the 1960s and 70s, the feeling of discontent was strong. Opinion polls repeatedly showed a majority of the population against the war and in favour of immediate troop withdrawal. The difference with World War Two is palpable: the number of days ‘lost’ due to strike action was four times higher during the Korean War years than in 1941-45, and was not significantly lower than the level in 1947-49.49

The initial response of the Militant leaned toward the academic. Although the front page article denounced US imperialism, the inside articles were lack-lustre. Breitman,(the editor at the time) said that the paper:

‘. . . made a serious mistake . . . [that] arose primarily out of ignorance about Korea, failure to realise that its basic character was civil war, lack of all information about the mass movement in North Korea etc.’50

Cannon and various Los Angeles NEC members moved to get the position changed, which it duly did at a PC meeting on 22 July 1950. The outcome was the first of Cannon’s ‘Open Letters’ to President Truman. Cannon later described the response to the SWP’s campaign as follows:

‘That letter was reprinted with acclaim in the press of the Fourth International throughout the world, as evidence of the revolutionary struggle of the American Trotskyists in the stronghold of their own imperialism . . . The consistent week-by-week campaign of our paper since that time has been an inspiration to all parties of the Fourth International throughout the world, and has been regarded by them as a model for courageous and effective agitation.’51

Let us examine Cannon’s claim. The main question that needs to be addressed is, did the SWP’s position on Korea amount to a principled defeatist stand? The fundamental position of the SWP is contained in Cannon’s three ‘Open Letters’ to Truman and Congress52:

‘The American intervention in Korea is a brutal imperialist invasion . . . It is outrageous, it is monstrous . . . The right in this struggle is all on the side of the Korean people . . . The American people will remember the War if Independence from British tyranny. In the spirit of this revolutionary and democratic tradition of ours, I call upon you to halt the unjust war in Korea. Withdraw all American armed forces so that the Korean people can have full freedom to work out their own destiny in their own way.’ (31.7.50)

‘This great and good American people abhor militarism and war. They love the ways of peace and freedom. They are trying to tell you their will. Stop the war now!’ (4.12.50)

‘1) Withdraw all American troops.

2) Recognise the government of New China.

3) Let the issue of war and peace be voted on in a national referendum of the entire American people.’ (7.5.51)

This last series of propositions was repeated virtually every week in the Militant during the war. These examples show that the SWP took a clear anti-war position, demanded the withdrawal of troops, and also raised the question of popular approval for any war. Although they occasionally foraged further into the arsenal of Marxism on war (e.g. ‘Hands off Indo-China! Not a cent, not a gun, not a soldier for the criminal war against the Indo-Chinese people!’53), they never ventured as far as defeatism.

In any conflict between the USA and another country, the SWP had a duty to clearly explain to the vanguard of the US working class that the defeat of the US imperialists as a consequence of continuing the class struggle was of far greater benefit to the US working class than ‘victory’ at the expense of social peace. Furthermore, in the case of the Korean war, the ‘enemy’ were clearly in the right. Revolutionaries were for their victory against the USA.

The SWP certainly did not advocate ‘social peace’, that is, an end to the class struggle for the duration, as was the case with much of the Second International during the first and second world wars, and with the Stalinists in the allied imperialist counties after Hitler’s attack on the USSR. Their continued propaganda and agitation around the dozens of major strikes that occurred during the war years are adequate testimony of that.

However, there is a clear tendency, in their presentation of the war towards pacifism, (the pacificism of the masses, it should be added). This was true of the ‘Open Letters’ and of the Militant. While the SWP could not be justifiably criticised for not raising ‘defeat’ in every article, we are justified in castigating them for never doing so! Cannon’s ‘great and good American people’ may have hated war and loved peace, but the SWP gave them no clear defeatist position, never once raised the question of the defence of the USSR in their Korea coverage, and never once made any concrete proposal for workers’ action against the war, not even for a demonstration. Peace remained a pious goal instead of an objective to be secured against the will of the US bourgeoisie and through the methods of implacable revolutionary struggle. Peace, on a just basis, could only be achieved by the defeat of US imperialism in Korea and at home. Yet the SWP failed to chart this revolutionary defeatist course.

This centrist error of the SWP was not new. They made precisely the same adaptation to the consciousness of the US workers in World War Two. And, as was the case then, they were not criticised for it by any section of the FI. Munis’ critique of Cannon’s 1941 Minneapolis trial testimony54 mentions defeatism, but does not centre the argument around it (even more interesting is that this is the one point Cannon ignores in his reply!). With regard to Korea, no one in the SWP ever criticised the line after the 22.7.52 PC meeting.55

The enthusiasm for the SWP’s position, as Cannon pointed out, extended onto the international arena. Mandel said at the Third Congress (August 1951) ‘By a remarkable press campaign, by the three open letters of Comrade Cannon to President Truman and by their electoral campaigns centred around the withdrawal of American troops form Korea, our friends in the USA defended the revolutionary line.’56

Mandel was wrong. The SWP did not defend a revolutionary line. They put forward an anti-war position that clearly evaded the central question of defeatism. Their line was not distinguishable from that of the pacifists. This lack of political clarity, mingled with their taste for populism, led to a position that did not correspond to the needs of the Korean workers and peasants, or to the necessary political education of the vanguard of the US working class. As in World War Two, the SWP made a political error in the name of pedagogical adaptation.


The faction fight: 1951-54

The years of decline inevitably produced internal tensions and, eventually, a bitter faction fight inside the SWP. The Cannon majority’s analysis of the Pablo-sponsored Cochran-Clarke faction in the SWP was partly correct. The minority was an unprincipled bloc between the Cochranites, tired trade unionists, routinised during the years of prosperity, and now wanting to be left alone to plough their furrow, and the Clarkeites—born-again Pabloites who had heard the IS’s Stalinophile gospel and were going for it.

The Clarkeites were Stalinophiles, in that they wanted to orient to the Stalinist milieu, especially around Monthly Review, with the intention of liquidating the party à la Pablo. Although this is basically true, the irony is that the Clarkeites were more correct in their estimate of the potential for numerical gains that could be made in this period, and therefore of the importance of an orientation toward the Stalinist and semi-Stalinist circles in the USA. The truth of this eventually dawned on Cannon, who spent much of his time in 1954-55 trying to convince the SWP leadership of this fact and to encourage work in this milieu.57 Had his Stalinophobia and blind factionalism not deterred the SWP against such an orientation in 1952-53 real gains might have been made.

The two components of the faction had different social origins, different methods, and different orientations. Both, however, had strong liquidationist tendencies, and it was on this point that the majority concentrated presenting themselves as defenders of ‘the party’. Whilst this argument was important, it was not sufficient to guide Cannon, Hansen et al to the roots of the problem on an international level. The majority of the SWP were never able to come to terms with the origins of ‘Pabloism’ in the FI as a whole, or to squarely face their own errors in the post-war years.

The differences over Stalinism and trade union work had existed between the majority and the minority from 1951 onwards. Cannon warned of the probability of a split at a March 1952 PC meeting, and was ready to launch a faction fight if Pablo interfered in SWP internal affairs.58 The factional differences grew over the next year, until a ‘truce’ was declared at the May 1953 Plenum. However, this merely masked the differences and the Cochranites, propelled by Pablo, rapidly broke the truce at the same time as Cannon was planning an international faction fight. In particular, the minority were extremely disloyal to the organisation, for example using Clarke’s position as editor of Fourth International to publish, without the agreement of the leadership, an editorial proposing a reform perspective for the Soviet bureaucracy. Relations deteriorated in early Autumn 1953, as first Pablo, and then the Majority, looked for a split. This was formalised at the 25th Anniversary rally in New York on 30 October 1953, when the Cochranites boycotted the event.

The SWP(US) first raised their differences with the Pablo-Mandel international leadership in June 1951, in the document Contribution to the discussion on international perspectives. This document is in no way a revolutionary critique of the leadership line. It shows rather the essential continuity between IC one-sided ‘orthodoxy’ and centrist FI ‘flexibility’:

‘The possibility and probability that the mass movements in some countries may sweep over the heads of the Stalinist parties opens up two variants of development. If such parties go along with the masses and begin to follow a revolutionary road this will inescapably lead to their break with the Kremlin and to their independent evolution. Such parties can then no longer be considered as Stalinist, but will rather tend to be centrist in character, as has been the case with the Yugoslav CP. Those parties, however, which in conditions of mass upsurge remain totally tied to the Kremlin will unfold their counter-revolutionary role to the full.’59

The first substantial, if flawed, critique of Pablo-Mandel in the FI was raised by Bleibtreu, the political leader of the majority of the French PCI, who circulated Where is Comrade Pablo going? in June 1951. Despite suggestions to the contrary, the SWP(US) leadership should have been fully aware of Bleibtreu’s positions. If they said nothing at the time, it was because they were prepared to ignore such differences as long as they didn’t affect the SWP.

This is shown by Cannon’s reply to the leading PCI member, Renard, in Spring 1952. Renard had written to Cannon on 16.2.52, appealing for help in beating off the bureaucratic manoeuvres of the IS Bureau (Pablo-Mandel-Frank) against the PCI and assistance in launching a political counter-offensive.60 Cannon studiously avoided replying for three months, by which time the expulsion of the French majority was about to be officially sanctioned. When Cannon finally did reply, abiding by the unstated mutual non-aggression pact with Pablo worked out at the March PC meeting, he wrote: ‘I think the Third World Congress made a correct analysis of the new post-war reality in the world and the unforeseen turns this reality has taken’. Of the documents of the Congress he said: ‘We do not see any revisionism there. All we see is an elucidation of the post-war evolution of Stalinism and an outline of new tactics to fight it more effectively. We consider these documents to be completely Trotskyist.’61

However, not only did Cannon express his political solidarity with the Third Congress documents, he also expressed his solidarity with Pablo and the IS against the PCI majority, which was being bureaucratically expelled. Cannon later commented ‘I think that’s the first time I ever answered a political letter and just pretended I hadn’t read certain sections’.62

The problem with the SWP majority’s line on ‘Pabloism’ was that they failed to get the true measure of the beast. They actually held to the fundamental tenets of the Pablo-Mandel method. However, like Bleibtreu, they baulked at the logical conclusion of the third Congress view of Stalinist parties becoming transformed into centrist ones (e.g. Yugoslavia, China), that is, entry into the CPs. They therefore concentrated their fire on the most striking yet superficial aspect of ‘Pabloism’, which for them ‘boils down to one point and its concentrated in one point . . . the question of the party’.63 They argued that the Third Congress documents were fine, but that Pablo had introduced something new since. Whilst it is true that the perspective of widespread deep entry into the Stalinist parties is not spelt out in the Third Congress documents, the political basis of such a tactic is clearly there, and was shared by the SWP and the whole of the FI, as we have explained. Indeed they charged the PCI with sectarianism for not entering the PCF in the 1951-52 period.

Although there were undoubtedly strong liquidationist tendencies in the Pablo-Mandel wing of the FI, and even more so in the Cochran-Clarke faction of the SWP, the ‘orthodox’ Trotskyists of Healy went for over two years without a paper, whilst the ‘liquidationist’ Pabloites produced Fourth International! The praise heaped by both sides on the British section shows that the question of ‘deep entry’—and hence of ‘the Party’—was not, at root, a matter of dispute. It was rather a question of where to liquidate the Party. Neither the British, the French nor the SWP wanted to have anything to do with entry work in the Stalinist parties. Once Pablo made it clear to Clarke that he should organise a faction inside the SWP on pro-Stalinist lines Cannon’s attitude miraculously changed, for the worse.

The French majority had been expelled in the summer of 1952. Healy, once Pablo’s British henchman, had turned against his erstwhile master following the IS’ support for the Lawrence faction inside the British section. Coupled with the SWP faction fight, the basis was laid for the ill-starred ‘International Committee’. A month before the SWP published its ‘Open Letter’ (November 1953), a meeting took place in London between representatives of the French, Swiss and British majorities, to prepare an international faction fight. (The Swiss had long been in opposition to Pablo on the basis of their state capitalist positions. They voted against the Yugoslav resolution at the Third Congress on these grounds.)

At the beginning of November, Dobbs proposed to Healy that a pre-emptive split should take place by simply setting up the IC ‘as the centre of the Fourth International (Trotskyist)’.64 Healy did not agree with this perspective,65 but the SWP bounced the embryonic international faction into a split by the publication of their ‘Open Letter’. ‘By adopting an open manifesto against Pablo at our Plenum’ wrote Dobbs, ‘we will be putting the gun to the head of his Cochranite supporters in our party’.66 In fact, the publication of the ‘Open Letter’ and the adoption of ‘Against Pabloist revisionism’67 were an open declaration of split, clearly outlined beforehand in Dobbs’ correspondence with Healy. The ‘gun’ was as much against Healy’s head as it was against Cochran’s. And the reason for such a pre-emptive action? ‘They will not permit a democratic Congress’ bleated Dobbs.

Using the cover of Pablo’s bureaucratic manoeuvres, the defenders of ‘orthodox Trotskyism’ ran away from the fight. Like the French majority before them, the SWP played right into Pablo’s hands. By not fighting inside the International—even in the context of Pablo’s manoeuvres and bureaucratic faction-mongering—the IC cut themselves off from the majority of the International and gave Pablo the opportunity to cry ‘splitters!’. Again, like the French majority, the SWP allowed a split to take place without having prepared the International for it. Although SWP members were aware of the growing international dimension to the internal faction fight, this was not the case of the Militant readership or for the International as a whole, who were suddenly faced with the ‘Open Letter’ and then, in subsequent weeks, with pages of polemic against Pablo.

As stated in The Death Agony of the Fourth International, the 1953 split was both too soon and too late. Too late, because the fundamental political issue—that of the nature of Stalinism—had already been agreed at the 1951 Congress. That had been the moment to launch a fight. Too soon, because the differences between the IS and the IC were not fundamental, and the International had in no way gone through a thorough faction fight. Pleas about bureaucratic manoeuvring count for nothing: the Left Opposition tried repeatedly until 1933 to rejoin the Communist International, despite Stalinist manoeuvres that make the centrist FI look like a kindergarten. At root the SWP and Pablo had the same desire: an international organisation of ‘co-thinkers’ with a minimum of debate, and, in the case of the SWP, the minimum of ‘interference’.

The split therefore served them both. It did not serve the cause of revolutionary communism. The period immediately after the split was the source of much of the ‘anti-Pablo’ demonology with which we are still sadly familiar. In a series of bewildering headlines (‘Pablo’s slander against the SWP’, ‘Pabloism—first vote—then discuss’, ‘Pablo begins to take off his mask’(!), etc, etc68), the SWP concentrated its fire on ‘Pablo’. M. Weiss, a leader of the majority, pointed out the curious effects of this obsessive campaign on a somewhat bemused contact whom the SWP had met through their equally demonological anti-McCarthy campaign: ‘I think I know who McCarthy is, but I can’t figure out who this guy Pablo is’ he said.69

Having run out of anti-Pablo headlines, which as Cannon put it, ‘can impress the average reader as an exotic business’70 the SWP ceased all polemic with ‘the Pabloites’ after Hansen’s article of 19.4.54. And as ‘Pablo’ disappeared (for the SWP) into the dustbin of history, so too did all mention of the FI. The only time the IC was mentioned in the Militant over the next twenty months was when its statement on Algeria was reprinted in November 1955. Some time later the theoretical journal was renamed International Socialist Review. The ‘Americanisation’ of the SWP was complete. The Party as a whole tended to agree with Cannon, who welcomed the break from international questions in order to devote himself to ‘a discussion of our own backyard, which is where I really live and feel most at home.’71


Conclusions

The survey of the SWP presented here is clear in its major implication: the SWP in the 1950s was not immune from the centrist errors of perspective and programme that characterised the whole of the FI. Despite the real desire on the part of its rank and file and the bulk of its leadership to lead the American Revolution, the SWP, like the rest of the FI, was unable to measure up to the problem of re-applying Trotsky’s method to the post-war world. In every aspect of the programme and practice presented here, there are major centrist flaws which must lead us to reject any view which sees the SWP or Cannon as revolutionary communists in the post-war period. This was not the ‘golden age’ of US Trotskyism.

Cannon’s position on the International goes a long way to explaining how the centrist errors, for example the SWP's adaptation to defencism in World War Two, became systematic in the 1950s. It was a position which was essentially nationalist and federalist. If the international existed, and could offer ‘international collaboration’ all well and good. But, as he repeatedly said, there was no question of ‘Comintern-like’ centralism in the FI:

‘The most important party in the entire world is the Socialist Workers Party. It is the party with the greatest historical mission ever given to a group of people on this planet.’72

This kind of messianic tub-thumping, which was coupled with some of his more unpleasant anti-International demagogy, speaks volumes in terms of Cannon’s limitations as a real revolutionary leader at this time. The message was plain:

‘We believed it would be absolutely wrong to try to imitate a highly centralised international organisation when we were so weak, when the ability to send delegates from different parties for common consultation was so limited, and when we could communicate only by correspondence. Under these conditions, we believed it would be better for the centre there to limit itself primarily to the role of ideological leader, and to leader, and to leave aside organisational interference as much as possible, especially outside Europe . . ’73

Translated, this means ‘“No interference” for the SWP. For the Europeans—fine’. Yet another version of ‘American exceptionalism’. So instead of constructively trying to overcome the real problems posed by trying to operate on a democratic centralist basis in the FI the SWP’s response was ‘You can’t do that’74. The reason for this negative approach was that the SWP didn’t want to be a ‘branch office’ of the FI, as Cannon put it. The ‘most important party in the world’ was, after all, the SWP and not the FI!

When Trotsky was in constant collaboration and contact with Cannon and the SWP he always fought against every sign of 'American exceptionalism' and political rather than pedagogical adaptations to the consciousness of the US working class. Once Cannon progressively 'released' the SWP from its obligations to the International in the late 1940s and early 1950s these adaptations became the defining feature of the SWP's politics and programme.

Every investigation into the history of the FI, and especially into the mythology of the ‘International Committee’, only reinforces the major conclusions of The Death Agony of the Fourth International.75 The FI, and all its sections, had developed an engrained centrist method by the 1951 Third Congress. Despite the 1953 faction fight, despite the partially correct criticisms that the IC and the SWP made of Pablo, the overall balance-sheet we must draw is negative. In making such a judgement we in no way disown all the work they did, but we have a well-founded critique which enables us to show the centrist limits of their political activity.


NOTES
1 See supplement to Workers Power No 81
2 All quotes from J P Cannon, The struggle for socialism in the ‘American Century’, (New York 1977) p256-71
3 Art Preis, Labor’s Giant Step, (New York 1972) p420
4 J P Cannon, The struggle for socialism in the ‘American Century’, op cit, p287
5 See E A Brett, The World Economy Since The War (London 1985)
6 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, (New York 1973) p238
7 Militant, 26 May 1952
8 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p29
9 J P Cannon, Speeches for Socialism, (New York 1971) p335
10 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p26
11 One of the most famous cases was that of disabled SWP member James Kutcher, who was fired from a minor state clerical post in 1948 because he was in the SWP. His ten year campaign against the witch-hunt is recounted in his highly recommended The Case of the Legless Veteran.
12 McCarran, Kilgore, Mundt and Richard Nixon were the most prominent.
13 New York Times, 22 August 1950
14 Militant, 11, 18, 25 September 1950
15 E.g. the attacks against President Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the election of Jefferson in a move against these measures; the movement against the Fugitive Slave law of the 1850s
16 Militant, 2 October 1950
17 The First Amendment to the Constitution, insisted upon by Jefferson who disagreed with its omission from the Constitution
18 L Trotsky, Preface to 1936 French edition of Terrorism and communism, (London 1975) p13
19 SWP(US) Internal Bulletin Vol 13 No 1 p8. The designation ‘Trotskyist’ came back into use, especially as the faction fight hotted up in 1953. The pictures and quote never returned.
20 J P Cannon, The Communist League of America 1933-34, (New York 1985) p281
21 Mandel in his report to the Third World Congress (August 1951)
22 J P Cannon, The struggle for socialism, op cit, p303
23 Militant, 10 April 1950
24 Ibid, 10 April 1950
25 Ibid, 7 April 1953
26 See Fourth International, Winter 1955, p3
27 SWP Discussion Bulletin A-26, December 1954, p6
28 Ibid, p11
29 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p199
30 SWP Discussion Bulletin A-26, op cit, p12
31 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p31
32 Ben Stone, Memoirs of a radical rank and filer, (New York 1986) p69
33 See for example, May 1952 NC resolution on 1952 Presidential elections in Militant 26 May 1952
34 Militant, 24 July 1950
35 J P Cannon, Speeches for Socialism, op cit, p342
36 J P Cannon, ‘Aspects of socialist election policy’, Education for Socialists, p27 (New York 1971)
37 Only on one occasion was the tactic posed in an unambiguously revolutionary manner. See Militant, 7 November 1955
38 Militant, 14 April 1952
39 J P Cannon, Notebook of an Agitator, (New York 1973) p355
40 J P Cannon, The Struggle For Socialism....op cit p267
41 Fourth International, July/August 1953
42 SWP Internal Bulletin, Vol 16 No 2, August 1954, p15
43 Militant, 6 February 1950
44 Ibid
45 Militant, 13 February 1950
46 Militant, 23 June 1952
47 Militant, 30 June 1952
48 Militant, 4 August 1952
49 Art Preis, op cit, p420
50 SWP Internal Bulletin, Vol 15, No 11, May 1953, p15
51 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p114
52 J P Cannon, Notebook of an Agitator, op cit, p185-912
53 Militant, 21 January 1952
54 Reprinted together with Cannon’s reply in Socialism on Trial, (New York 1973 p117-27)
55 J P Cannon, Speeches to the party, op cit, p114
56 International Information Bulletin, December 1951, p7
57 J P Cannon, Letter to Farrell Dobbs, 19 March 1954, International Committee Archives, CERMTRI, Paris
58 See J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p226-27 for Cannon’s view and p340-41 for the Cochranites estimate
59 Despite this fundamental identity, the alleged ‘anti-Stalinist’ bent of their critique so ‘ashamed’ George Clarke, the SWP(US)’s pro-Pablo delegate to the Third Congress, that instead of presenting the document, he burnt it! It is hard to know which is more staggering: Clarke’s childish behaviour or the fact that the SWP leadership didn’t discipline him for it! Further, they only ‘found out’ when Clarke told them in 1953. No one appears to have asked what happened to the document at the Congress! See International Committee documents 1951-54, Vol 1 (New York 1974)
60 Ibid, p20-23
61 Ibid, p23-24
62 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p80
63 Ibid, p181
64 International Committee Documents op cit, Vol 2 p124
65 Ibid, p125
66 Ibid, p123
67 See Trotskyism versus Revisionism, Vol 1, (London 1974) p298-314
68 Militant, 25 January, 22 February, 5 April 1954
69 International Committee documents, op cit, Vol 4, p232
70 Ibid
71 Letter to Farrell Dobbs, 2 February 1954, in the International Committee Archives, CERMTRI, Paris
72 J P Cannon, Speeches to the Party, op cit, p166
73 Ibid, p74
74 Ibid, p73
75 Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group, The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists today, (London 1983)

Thu 30, November 2006 @ 20:04