Markin comment:
In the introduction to a recent posting that started a series entitled From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.) I noted the following that applies to this series on the roots of the American Communist Party as well:
“In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive…..”
I am continuing today in that vane in what I also anticipate will be an on-going series on the early days of the American Communist party from which we who are students of Leon Trotsky trace our roots. Those roots extend from the 1919 until 1929 when those who would go on after being expelled, led by James P. Cannon, to form the Socialist Workers Party which also is part of our heritage. That is not the end of the matter though as the American Communist Party also represented a trend in the 1930s, the Popular front strategic policy, that has bedeviled revolutionaries ever since in one form or another. Those 1930s issues need to be addressed as well.
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Additional comment on this article-Markin
A certain amount of caution is needed in dealing with the Stalinized American Communist Party, as with the Communist International, because the Stalinists, then and now, were more than happy to slander political opponents on their left, and to rewrite history for their own purposes. Hardly a new idea among those who “win” whatever battle they are fighting. But a little bit tough on those of us who are trying to draw the lessons of the past for today’s left-wing militants. This series starts with the reflections of that early Communist leader mentioned above, James P. Cannon, who had his own axes to grind politically, no question. However, as Theodore Draper who wrote the definitive study on the history of the early American Communist Party in two volumes noted, of all the people whom he interviewed for the his books James Cannon was the one that stood out as wanting to remember as truthfully as he could that early history. I will use that statement as the touchstone for using Cannon’s work first. William Z. Foster, Earl Browder and the others will get their chance later.
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James P. Cannon
Letters to a Historian
(1954 – 1956)
* * *
These articles from the magazines Fourth International and International Socialist Review are based on letters Cannon wrote to Theodore Draper who was then researching his two-volume series on the history of the US Communist Party
Written: March 1954 to February 1956.
Published: Fourth International, Summer 1954–Spring 1956, & International Socialist Review, Summer 1956–Spring 1957. Source: Original bound volumes of Fourth International and International Socialist Review and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive
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James P. Cannon
Early Years of the American Communist Movement
Letters to a Historian
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Notes and Sidelights on the Year 1927
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Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.17 No.4, Fall 1956, pp.127-130.
Original bound volumes of International Socialist Review and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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July 26, 1955
Dear Sir:
In his sorry memoir called I Confess, Gitlow reports that my original discussions with Weinstone in 1926-1927 concerned a division of party offices – with me as Chairman, Weinstone as General Secretary and Foster as head of the trade-union department (page 405). This is merely a sample of Gitlow’s method of reporting his own suspicions for facts. Weinstone and I never discussed party offices at all before the death of Ruthenberg, and then only the post of General Secretary, which had become suddenly vacant. Our dealings with Foster then concerned only the single question of the secretaryship, which we assumed had to be decided right away. The office of Chairman, had been abolished, if I remember correctly, when the Ruthenberg faction was installed as a majority by the Comintern cable and the vote of P. Green (Gusev), Comintern representative, after the 1925 Convention.
Gitlow was conditioned by his association with Lovestone to assume, as a matter of course, that whenever two or more people got their heads together something was being cooked up for their personal advantage. His whole account is studded with such reports of his suppositions as facts.
* * *
Gitlow’s report that, after Ruthenberg’s death, Weinstone wobbled over to Lovestone’s side, on the promise of the secretaryship, does not correspond to my recollection. I was in close communication with Weinstone during all that period. He reported to me all his discussions with the Lovestoneites. As far as I know, he never wavered at all on the basic position we had agreed upon – to oppose the domination of the party by either of the other factions – until after the 1927 Convention. I do not believe that he was primarily interested in office at that time; or that it was ever his principal motivation, as Gitlow surmises.
Weinstone’s importance in the situation in that period derived from his personal popularity in New York, his strategic position as Secretary of the New York District, and the unquestionable sincerity of the non-factional position he had arrived at. The fact that Stachel also went along with Weinstone at first, was particularly disturbing to the Lovestoneites. Weinstone also had some support among the youth; Sam Don, who later became an editor of the Daily Worker, was with him all the way in that period. Weinstone also had the support of a group in the South Slavic Federation.
I suppose this is the only place in the whole printed record you have examined, where you will find a good word by anybody, however qualified, for Stachel. But the truth is that in 1926-1927, Stachel, who was Organizational Secretary of the New York District in Weinstone’s administration, was actually won over to Weinstone’s nonfactional policy and carried it out in practice until some time after the death of Ruthenberg. I recall Krumbein, New York leader of the Fosterites, telling me that he had “never seen such a change come over a man,” and that his changed demeanor had greatly moderated the factional situation in the New York District.
Stachel participated in many of the early discussions that I had with Weinstone and expressed full agreement with our program. At one time he proposed that I come to New York as District Secretary, to carry through the program in New York if Weinstone went into the National Office. After several months of persistent effort Lovestone finally got Stachel back into line. But there was one brief period in the life of this man, which seemed to be otherwise devoted exclusively to vicious factionalism, when he responded to higher considerations of party interests.
As for Wolfe, neither Weinstone nor I had any confidence in him nor in his professions of sympathy for Weinstone’s program. I remember Weinstone telling me that Wolfe was Lovestone’s agent all the time; that he had come along in pretended sympathy for a short time only to keep hold of Stachel and hold him back and to use Stachel to hold Weinstone back. Such a complicated Machiavellian maneuver would be right in character for Lovestone. But I still do not believe that Stachel was a conscious party to it, although Wolfe almost certainly was.
* * *
Ballam came along with Weinstone at that time and remained with us in the opposition bloc all the way through the 1927 Convention. That was a twist in the situation that I will admit I never understood. Ballam was one of a number of people in the party at that time who just lacked something of the qualities of leadership, and who made a political living, so to speak, by factionalism – not as leaders, but rather as henchmen of one faction or another. Since away back I had regarded him as a cynic, and I think everybody else did too.
He had been the “English” mouthpiece of the Russian Federation faction, after they split with Ruthenberg in 1920 and lost all their more capable and influential “English-speakers.” He held that position with the Federation leftists all through the fight over party legalization, up until their debacle in 1922-1923. Then he was rehabilitated and legitimatized by Pepper and became his factional henchman, continuing with the Pepper-Ruthenberg-Lovestone line-up for four years until he broke loose and took his stand with Weinstone in 1927. Ballam had a bad reputation in the party, and very little, if any, personal influence. Our people felt a bit uneasy when they heard that he was coming along with Weinstone in the new grouping. But he seemed to accept our whole program and we had no ground to exclude him. I was frankly puzzled by Ballam’s stand at that time. I could easily imagine him in any kind of a faction except a faction to end factionalism. But in intimate discussions at that time he expressed the same sentiments as ours, to the effect that the factional fight had brought us all into a blind alley and that we would have to find a new way for a while.
I remember asking him at one time how he thought things would turn out, and he said: “I have absolute faith in the Communist International.” Nevertheless, he went along with us after the Comintern decision-up to the Convention. After that he seized the first opportunity to slip back into the Lovestone caucus.
* * *
Weinstone did the same thing, but the motivations of the two should by no means be equated. I think Weinstone came to the conclusion that the Comintern decision and the Lovestone victory based on it, had destroyed the possibility of unifying the party along the lines we had projected and that the “hegemony” of the Lovestone group would have to be accepted. But he never became a “Lovestoneite” in the sense that most of the others in the faction did: As soon as Lovestone got into trouble with the Comintern in 1929 Weinstone was one of the first to break with him and support the new line of the Comintern.
* * *
The United Opposition Bloc. As I recall, the bloc was formed when we were in Moscow in 1927, not before. Previously there had been merely a touch-me-not agreement on the support of Weinstone as General Secretary. The new combination was demonstratively called a “bloc” to signify that there was no fusion into a single faction, as Foster would have preferred. Neither Weinstone nor I had any sympathy for the idea of Foster dominating the party, nor of getting into a single faction with him where we might possibly be controlled by a majority vote. Everything that was decided in the course of our relations during that period had to be done by agreement each time, rather than by majority vote.
The essence of the situation, as we saw it, was that none of the factions had a recognizable difference of political position on questions of capital importance at that time. That was the “political basis” for our contention that the old factions should be dissolved. But the other factions demanded of us what they did not demand of themselves. Since we did not bring forward a new political platform we were accused of having “no political program.” When we formed the bloc with Foster, the Lovestoneites raised the same hue and cry against the bloc. This throws an interesting sidelight on the prevailing psychology of the old factions in those days. The two old factions, the Fosterites and the Lovestoneites, were taken for granted, having a right to separate existence as established institutions. But a third group, or a new “bloc,” was required to have a new “political basis.” Factionalism carried out too long after the original “political basis” has been outlived can produce some queer thinking.
The bloc was formed to try to prevent the Lovestoneites from dominating the party with a clear majority. We didn’t doubt that Foster had ideas of dominating the party himself, but also we knew he couldn’t do it without our support. That we never intended to give him. Foster had more rank-and-file backing than we had. But we had the majority of the more capable cadres, and Foster was compelled to agree to a 50-50 basis in all agreements we made regarding representation, up to and including the representation of the bloc as a minority in the new CEC, elected at the 1927 Convention. Of the 13 minority representatives on the new committee, we got 6 and the Foster group got 7, giving them the odd one.
The opposition bloc seemed to grow out of the logic of the situation as it developed in Moscow in 1927. But I believe it would be fair to say that Foster pressed hardest for it and made the most concessions. It did not signify that Weinstone had become a Fosterite in any sense whatever or that our 1925 split with Foster had been healed. It was more of a marriage of convenience.
The Eighth Plenum of the Comintern, Summer of 1927. Weinstone and I traveled to Moscow together and arrived on the last day of the Plenum. We had no part in any of its proceedings or in the voting, as I recall, as this right was reserved to members of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. We were in Moscow, not as delegates to the Plenum but only on a special mission on the American question.
The German Ewart (Braun) was in charge of the American Commission. Ewart impressed me as an honest, straightforward communist, a former worker who was one of the second and third-line men who eventually were brought into the leadership of the German party after the Comintern demolished, first, the traditional leadership of Brandler-Thalheimer, and then that of the leftists – Fischer-Maslow – who succeeded them. I don’t know how he happened to get chosen for the job of heading the American Commission. I think he was close to Bukharin and carried out Bukharin’s wishes in the matter.
I do not remember that Weinstone and I saw any of the top leaders of the Russian party on that occasion. In general Lovestone was far ahead of us in playing the Moscow game in that period. To begin with he had the help of Pepper, who was ensconced in the apparatus of the Comintern, and knew all the angles and prevailing winds and whom to see and whom to keep away from.
Here I might as well frankly state that I never was worth a damn on a Mission to Moscow after my first trip in 1922. Then everything was open and above board. A clearcut political issue was presented by both sides in open debate and it was settled straightforwardly, on a political basis, without discrimination or favoritism to the factions involved, and without undisclosed reasons, arising from internal Russian questions, motivating the decision and determining the attitude toward the leaders of the contending factions. That was the Lenin-Trotsky Comintern, and I did all right there. But after 1924 everything was different in the Comintern, and I never seemed to be able to find my way around.
I detested the business of going around to see one person after another like a petitioner, and sort of groping in the dark without knowing what was going to be decided by others without our participation. The only time I ever felt at ease in Moscow was in the Commission meetings where the representatives of different factions could confront each other in open debate. But by the time the Commission meetings got under way they were mere formalities. Everything had been settled behind the scenes; the word had been passed and all the secondary leaders and functionaries in the Comintern were falling into line.
I felt, with considerable reason, that I was no good in that whole business. I left Moscow each time with a feeling of futility, and my resistance to going again increased steadily until in 1928 I at first flatly refused to go. It was only the insistent urging and pressure of factional associates that finally induced me to give it one more try in 1928. I was then already deeply troubled by the developments in the Russian party, but did not expect that anything would be done to change anything at the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. I had no idea that I would be propelled into the fight and come out of it a convinced Trotskyist, breaking all previous relations and connections on that issue.
* * *
I think the Ruthenberg-Lovestone group gained their initial advantage in Moscow by jumping earlier and more enthusiastically into the fight against Trotskyism, way back in 1924, and that this was always in the minds of the Russian leaders in the subsequent years. Foster and Bittelman did everything they could to make up for the earlier sluggishness of the Foster-Cannon faction on the Trotsky question, but I never did anything but go along silently. This may have been noted in Moscow and may account in part for my disfavor there, but I am not sure about that.
You are right in your “impression that there was literally no one in the American party in 1927 who might be considered a ’Trotskyite’ or even a sympathizer of Trotsky’s position.” I know of no one who openly took such a position in the party prior to my return from the Sixth Congress in 1928. I personally had been deeply disturbed and dissatisfied by the expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev, but I could not have been called a “Trotskyite” or even a sympathizer, at that time. And the atmosphere in the party was such that it was not wise to express such sentiments or disgruntlements unless one intended to do something about it. By that time the issue of Trotskyism posed the immediate threat of expulsion in all parties of the Comintern.
After our expulsion we did discover a small group of expelled Hungarian communists, headed by Louis Basky, who had previously adopted the platform of the Russian Opposition on their own account. But they had come to this position after their expulsion, which had taken place on some other grounds, trumped up in the course of the Lovestoneites’ campaign to cinch up their factional control in the Hungarian Federation. The Hungarian comrades were a great comfort and strength to us in the difficult and stormy pioneer days of our movement under the Trotskyist banner.
Lore was never a Trotskyist in the political sense and never cooperated with our group after we were expelled. The first American Trotskyist was undoubtedly Max Eastman, but he had never been formally a member of the party. On his own responsibility as an individual he published a book called The Real Situation in Russia, by Leon Trotsky, in 1928. But this came out about the time we were in Moscow at the Sixth Congress and I did not see it until our return. It contained the Platform of the Left Opposition in the Russian party and a number of other documents of the Left Opposition. Eastman cooperated with us and gave us quite a bit of help in the first days of our existence as an expelled group publishing The Militant.
* * *
The Comintern decision in 1927 did not specifically provide that the Lovestoneites should have a majority in the next CEC. All the successive decisions and cables were slanted to aid that result but did not specifically provide for it. What Lovestone got from the Comintern on this occasion was the help he needed to secure a majority but not enough to enable him to exterminate or exclude the minority. Moreover, the slanted support he got was accompanied by a provision that the party must be united and peace established.
That’s the sense in which Ewart, the Comintern representative, acted during his stay in this country at that time. After the Convention – and of course within the framework of its decisions – he seemed to work always for peace and moderation, and we never found any reason to complain that he was unfair. It may be assumed that he was working according to instructions but such conduct would have been natural for him. He was undoubtedly a sincere communist; my memory of him is not unfriendly.
I believe it would be correct to say that Lovestone was given conditional support from Moscow in 1927; that he was put on trial, so to speak; and that provisions were made to conserve the minority, in case the experiment did not work out to the satisfaction of Moscow. As previously stated, the American question was not decided at the Comintern Plenum at that time at all. Everything was done afterward – formally through the American Commission, but actually in behind-the-scene arrangements among the Russian leaders.
* * *
A Note on Zinoviev
I have long been thinking and promising to write an appreciation of Zinoviev in the form of a condensed political biography. A comrade who is thoroughly familiar with the Russian language and the history of the Russian movement has promised to collaborate with me in preparing the material. [This refers to John G. Wright, who had begun work on this project before his recent untimely death. – ISR editor.] But I don’t know when, if ever, we will get around to it. It is too big and serious an undertaking to sandwich in between other tasks.
I was greatly influenced by Zinoviev in the early days of the Comintern, as were all communists throughout the world. I have never forgotten that he was Lenin’s closest collaborator in the years of reaction and during the First World War; that he was the foremost orator of the revolution, according to the testimony of Trotsky; and that he was the Chairman of the Comintern in the Lenin-Trotsky time.
It was Zinoviev’s bloc with Trotsky and his expulsion, along with Trotsky, that first really shook me up and started the doubts and discontents which eventually led me to Trotskyism. I have always been outraged by the impudent pretensions of so many little people to deprecate Zinoviev, and I feel that he deserves justification before history.
I have no doubt whatever that in all his big actions, including his most terrible errors, he was motivated fundamentally by devotion to the higher interests of the working class of the whole world – to the communist future of humanity. I believe that his greatest fault as a politician was his reliance on maneuverism when principled issues were joined in such a way as to exclude the efficacy of maneuver.
I do not think Zinoviev capitulated to Stalin either out of conviction or for personal reasons, but primarily because he thought he could serve the cause by such a stratagem. He wanted himself and the other opposition leaders to live and be on hand when a change in the situation would create a new opportunity for the overthrow of Stalin and the restoration of a revolutionary leadership of the Russian party and the Comintern.
In the exigencies of the political struggle it has not been convenient for the Trotskyist movement to make a full and objective evaluation of this man’s life; and others have shown no interest in it. But historical justice cries out for it and it will be done sometime by somebody. In spite of all, Zinoviev deserves restoration as one of the great hero-martyrs of the revolution.
As far as I know, Zinoviev did not have any special favorites in the American party. The lasting personal memory I have of him is of his patient and friendly efforts in 1925 to convince both factions of the necessity of party peace and cooperation, summed up in his words to Foster which I have mentioned before: “Frieden ist besser.” (“Peace is better.”)
Yours truly,
James P. Cannon
Saturday, December 25, 2010
**Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- All That Glitters Is Not Gold-For K.R.
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the American short story writer, O.Henry
Markin comment:
The substance of this tale, the details of which were recently related to me, is worthy of the great American short story teller O. Henry. Or, hopefully, it will be in that ball park by the time I get done with it. O. Henry, for those who do not know, made a literary career out of short stories, stories about working people and other down and outs of society in the early 20th century and putting a little twist, ironic, sardonic or tragic on them, the stories that is, although now that I think about it maybe the people too. Probably the most famous one, The Gift Of The Magi, is, as I recall from the distant past, about a young down and out married couple at Christmas time who are so broke they can’t put two dimes together. But they are in love and love has this funny habit of making you do, well, off-hand, off-the-wall stuff, praise be. In their case they sold what was most precious to each (she, her big hair, he, his watch) in order to buy each other Christmas presents (she a chain for his watch, he a comb for her big hair). Nice twist, right? I hope I can hit that mark here:
I have spent reams of cyberspace telling one and all that I grew up and came of age in “the projects” in the 1950s American night. For those three people who do not know what “the projects” are I will just tell you they are places, public housing, good, bad or indifference, but mainly in the long, bad, at least for my family and some others that I know of, for the poor, the working poor and the drifters, grafter, and midnight sifters of the world to “make due” in. The particular one that I grew up in started out as a stepping stone, kind of a half-way house, for returning World War II veterans like my father who couldn’t afford that little white house with the picket fence of post-war dreams without some help. That was the idea anyway, if not the reality. But enough said of that, I will speak of that another time, because this is not really meant to be a “treatise” on class injustices and societal indifference but a “love story.”
The love story part, just like in O. Henry’s The Gift Of The Magi could happen to rich and poor alike, although perhaps the circumstances for the rich would work out differently. I have never been close enough to that social class and their predilections to make comment here. What I can comment on is that “projects” boys, and in the case of the subject of this story a “projects” girl, have as much right to dreams of getting out from under as anyone else. Literature is filled with tales of such escape by the timely presence of a “prince charming,” or some other good fortune. And so it transpired here.
The way that the story came to me is that our “projects” princess, Cathy, somehow caught the eye of a rich gilded youth, Robert, from the other side of town, the other side of the tracks. Apparently (I am a little sketchy on the details, but no matter) this young princeling was so smitten with his princess that he wanted to buy her expensive gifts to show his devotion. One of the first things in his seemingly endless arsenal was to present a bottle of Chanel No. 5. Not the toilet water or eau whatever stuff but the real stuff, and a big bottle as well. Not bad right? Now I don’t know much about perfume and I prefer, much prefer, not being put in a situation where I have go to a store and buy such an item but as a fellow “projects” denizen this is a young man that I would not give the air to out of hand. And if Cathy had asked my counsel I would have said the hell with poverty, go for it. But our fair working class maiden was betwixt and between on this, and we will leave her that way for a moment.
Why? Oh I “forgot” to tell the other part of the story. Oops, sorry. Seems our Cathy had another boy, a poor boy, Jimmie, who was “courting” her as well. So while our young prince was showing his love with barrels of gifts her poor boy was hard pressed to give her a simple Woolworth’s 5&10 cent store bracelet. This is definitely a “no-brainer.” Order the tuxedos and gowns for the royal wedding now. Robert and Cathy sounds right, right?
But wait just another minute. What if I told you, as was told to me at an earlier time, that that poor boy, that mad man Johnny, that cheapo bracelet giver had shown his love in another way. And suppose I told you that this is the very guy who in another story I called “bicycle boy” actually swam across a dangerous river channel, against the odds, to be with his “projects” princess. Well, now all bets are off. Throw that ne’er do well, grasping, shallow, callow gilded youth Robert to the sharks in that channel. And his cheap jack Chanel No. 5, 10, 15 or 20 too. Bicycle boy it is. And guess what, our “projects” girl, through thick and thin and in honor of that long ago flame, and his deeds, still has that bracelet snuggly wrapped around her wrist.
Markin comment:
The substance of this tale, the details of which were recently related to me, is worthy of the great American short story teller O. Henry. Or, hopefully, it will be in that ball park by the time I get done with it. O. Henry, for those who do not know, made a literary career out of short stories, stories about working people and other down and outs of society in the early 20th century and putting a little twist, ironic, sardonic or tragic on them, the stories that is, although now that I think about it maybe the people too. Probably the most famous one, The Gift Of The Magi, is, as I recall from the distant past, about a young down and out married couple at Christmas time who are so broke they can’t put two dimes together. But they are in love and love has this funny habit of making you do, well, off-hand, off-the-wall stuff, praise be. In their case they sold what was most precious to each (she, her big hair, he, his watch) in order to buy each other Christmas presents (she a chain for his watch, he a comb for her big hair). Nice twist, right? I hope I can hit that mark here:
I have spent reams of cyberspace telling one and all that I grew up and came of age in “the projects” in the 1950s American night. For those three people who do not know what “the projects” are I will just tell you they are places, public housing, good, bad or indifference, but mainly in the long, bad, at least for my family and some others that I know of, for the poor, the working poor and the drifters, grafter, and midnight sifters of the world to “make due” in. The particular one that I grew up in started out as a stepping stone, kind of a half-way house, for returning World War II veterans like my father who couldn’t afford that little white house with the picket fence of post-war dreams without some help. That was the idea anyway, if not the reality. But enough said of that, I will speak of that another time, because this is not really meant to be a “treatise” on class injustices and societal indifference but a “love story.”
The love story part, just like in O. Henry’s The Gift Of The Magi could happen to rich and poor alike, although perhaps the circumstances for the rich would work out differently. I have never been close enough to that social class and their predilections to make comment here. What I can comment on is that “projects” boys, and in the case of the subject of this story a “projects” girl, have as much right to dreams of getting out from under as anyone else. Literature is filled with tales of such escape by the timely presence of a “prince charming,” or some other good fortune. And so it transpired here.
The way that the story came to me is that our “projects” princess, Cathy, somehow caught the eye of a rich gilded youth, Robert, from the other side of town, the other side of the tracks. Apparently (I am a little sketchy on the details, but no matter) this young princeling was so smitten with his princess that he wanted to buy her expensive gifts to show his devotion. One of the first things in his seemingly endless arsenal was to present a bottle of Chanel No. 5. Not the toilet water or eau whatever stuff but the real stuff, and a big bottle as well. Not bad right? Now I don’t know much about perfume and I prefer, much prefer, not being put in a situation where I have go to a store and buy such an item but as a fellow “projects” denizen this is a young man that I would not give the air to out of hand. And if Cathy had asked my counsel I would have said the hell with poverty, go for it. But our fair working class maiden was betwixt and between on this, and we will leave her that way for a moment.
Why? Oh I “forgot” to tell the other part of the story. Oops, sorry. Seems our Cathy had another boy, a poor boy, Jimmie, who was “courting” her as well. So while our young prince was showing his love with barrels of gifts her poor boy was hard pressed to give her a simple Woolworth’s 5&10 cent store bracelet. This is definitely a “no-brainer.” Order the tuxedos and gowns for the royal wedding now. Robert and Cathy sounds right, right?
But wait just another minute. What if I told you, as was told to me at an earlier time, that that poor boy, that mad man Johnny, that cheapo bracelet giver had shown his love in another way. And suppose I told you that this is the very guy who in another story I called “bicycle boy” actually swam across a dangerous river channel, against the odds, to be with his “projects” princess. Well, now all bets are off. Throw that ne’er do well, grasping, shallow, callow gilded youth Robert to the sharks in that channel. And his cheap jack Chanel No. 5, 10, 15 or 20 too. Bicycle boy it is. And guess what, our “projects” girl, through thick and thin and in honor of that long ago flame, and his deeds, still has that bracelet snuggly wrapped around her wrist.
**From The Partisan Defense Committee- 25th Annual Holiday Appeal- Honor Class-War Prisoner Lynne Stewart
Click on title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.
The following is passed on from the PDC concerning the 24th Annual Holiday Appeal and applies this year as well
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Free All Class-War Prisoners!
Build PDC Holiday Appeal
“The path to freedom leads through a prison. The door swings in and out and through that door passes a steady procession of ‘those fools too stubborn-willed to bend,’ who will not turn aside from the path because prisons obstruct it here and there.”
—James P. Cannon, “The Cause that Passes Through a Prison,” Labor Defender, September 1926
Twenty-four years ago, the Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—revived a key tradition of the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary: sending monthly stipends to those “stubborn-willed” class-war prisoners condemned to capitalism’s dungeons for standing up against racist capitalist repression. We are again holding Holiday Appeal benefits to raise funds for this unique program, calling particular attention to the fight to free America’s foremost class-war prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who remains on death row in Pennsylvania.
Our forebear, Cannon, also affirmed a basic principle that should be no less applicable today: “The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem…. The victory of the class-war prisoners is possible only when they are inseparably united with the living labor movement and when that movement claims them for its own, takes up their battle cry and carries on their work.”
The PDC calls on labor activists, fighters for black and immigrant rights and defenders of civil liberties to join us in donating to and building the annual Holiday Appeal. An injury to one is an injury to all! We print below brief descriptions of the 16 class-war prisoners who receive monthly stipends from the PDC, many of whom were denied parole over the last year for refusing to express “remorse” for acts they did not commit!
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” This past April, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily threw out Mumia’s efforts to overturn his frame-up conviction based on the racist exclusion of black jurors from his 1982 trial. Ominously, this same court has yet to rule on the prosecution’s petition to reinstate the death penalty. The Philadelphia district attorney’s office states that, whatever the Supreme Court decides, it will continue to push for Mumia’s execution.
December 9 is the 28th anniversary of Mumia’s arrest for a killing that the cops know he did not commit. Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But to the racists in black robes, a court of law is no place for evidence of the innocence of this fighter for the oppressed.
While others plead with the current U.S. president and his attorney general to “investigate” violations of Mumia’s “civil rights,” the PDC says that Mumia’s fate cannot be left in the hands of the government of the capitalists. The racist rulers hate Mumia because they see in him the spectre of black revolt. The stakes are high and the situation is grim, but any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on a class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent black man for more than half his life.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up trial, for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted “We can’t prove who shot those agents” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 65-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Outrageously, in August, the U.S. Parole Commission again turned down Peltier’s parole request and coldbloodedly declared they would not reconsider his case for another 15 years.
Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 32nd year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops. This year, again, after more than three decades of unjust incarceration, nearly all of these innocent prisoners had parole hearings, but none were released.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison. They were convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.
The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now served more than 37 years in jail. This year, the Nebraska Supreme Court denied Poindexter a new trial despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a long-suppressed 911 audio tape, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Hugo Pinell is the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole this year. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California.
Jamal Hart, Mumia’s son, was sentenced in 1998 to 15 1/2 years without parole on bogus firearms possession charges. Hart was targeted for his prominent activism in the campaign to free his father. Although Hart was initially charged under Pennsylvania law, which would have meant a probationary sentence, Clinton’s Justice Department intervened to have Hart thrown into prison under federal law. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals has turned down Hart’s habeas corpus petition, and he has faced myriad bureaucratic obstacles and racist targeting throughout his incarceration.
Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
The following is passed on from the PDC concerning the 24th Annual Holiday Appeal and applies this year as well
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Free All Class-War Prisoners!
Build PDC Holiday Appeal
“The path to freedom leads through a prison. The door swings in and out and through that door passes a steady procession of ‘those fools too stubborn-willed to bend,’ who will not turn aside from the path because prisons obstruct it here and there.”
—James P. Cannon, “The Cause that Passes Through a Prison,” Labor Defender, September 1926
Twenty-four years ago, the Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—revived a key tradition of the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary: sending monthly stipends to those “stubborn-willed” class-war prisoners condemned to capitalism’s dungeons for standing up against racist capitalist repression. We are again holding Holiday Appeal benefits to raise funds for this unique program, calling particular attention to the fight to free America’s foremost class-war prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who remains on death row in Pennsylvania.
Our forebear, Cannon, also affirmed a basic principle that should be no less applicable today: “The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem…. The victory of the class-war prisoners is possible only when they are inseparably united with the living labor movement and when that movement claims them for its own, takes up their battle cry and carries on their work.”
The PDC calls on labor activists, fighters for black and immigrant rights and defenders of civil liberties to join us in donating to and building the annual Holiday Appeal. An injury to one is an injury to all! We print below brief descriptions of the 16 class-war prisoners who receive monthly stipends from the PDC, many of whom were denied parole over the last year for refusing to express “remorse” for acts they did not commit!
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” This past April, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily threw out Mumia’s efforts to overturn his frame-up conviction based on the racist exclusion of black jurors from his 1982 trial. Ominously, this same court has yet to rule on the prosecution’s petition to reinstate the death penalty. The Philadelphia district attorney’s office states that, whatever the Supreme Court decides, it will continue to push for Mumia’s execution.
December 9 is the 28th anniversary of Mumia’s arrest for a killing that the cops know he did not commit. Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But to the racists in black robes, a court of law is no place for evidence of the innocence of this fighter for the oppressed.
While others plead with the current U.S. president and his attorney general to “investigate” violations of Mumia’s “civil rights,” the PDC says that Mumia’s fate cannot be left in the hands of the government of the capitalists. The racist rulers hate Mumia because they see in him the spectre of black revolt. The stakes are high and the situation is grim, but any real fight for Mumia’s freedom must be based on a class-struggle opposition to the capitalist rulers, who have entombed this innocent black man for more than half his life.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up trial, for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted “We can’t prove who shot those agents” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 65-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Outrageously, in August, the U.S. Parole Commission again turned down Peltier’s parole request and coldbloodedly declared they would not reconsider his case for another 15 years.
Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 32nd year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops. This year, again, after more than three decades of unjust incarceration, nearly all of these innocent prisoners had parole hearings, but none were released.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison. They were convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.
The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now served more than 37 years in jail. This year, the Nebraska Supreme Court denied Poindexter a new trial despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a long-suppressed 911 audio tape, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Hugo Pinell is the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole this year. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California.
Jamal Hart, Mumia’s son, was sentenced in 1998 to 15 1/2 years without parole on bogus firearms possession charges. Hart was targeted for his prominent activism in the campaign to free his father. Although Hart was initially charged under Pennsylvania law, which would have meant a probationary sentence, Clinton’s Justice Department intervened to have Hart thrown into prison under federal law. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals has turned down Hart’s habeas corpus petition, and he has faced myriad bureaucratic obstacles and racist targeting throughout his incarceration.
Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)-“Resolution on Military Policy,”submitted by the Workers International League and the Trotskyist Opposition of the Revolutionary Socialist League (1944)
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
*******
Markin comment on this series of Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) articles:
Coming out of the radical wing of the Vietnam War anti-war movement in the early 1970s, and having done military service as well, I was intrigued when I first read about the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP-U.S.) Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) as propounded by that party just before and during World War II. The intriguing part, initially at least, was the notion that radicals could have a democratic propaganda platform to work off of in bringing their fellow soldiers around to an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist by proposing to control the then much less powerful American military through democratic methods like election of officers, etc..
And then life intruded. Or rather I reflected on my own somewhat eclectic anti-war military work and, as well, of various schemes by reformists to “control” various aspects of bourgeois society without having to take power and replace those institutions. In short, take political responsibility for the current regime. In the year 2010 we, after years of defeat and decline, are quite used to reformists and others putting forth all kinds of nice schemes for turning swords into plowshares by asking the bourgeois state to take the war budget and create jobs, better educational opportunities, provide better health care, you name it all without, seemingly, positing the need to change the state.
A classic and fairly recent example of that, in the aftermath of the Professor Henry Louis Gates arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the renewed call for “community control of the police.” And of course, come election time, the willingness, sometimes without even the caveat of refusal to take office if elected, of all and sundry leftists to run from the executive offices of the bourgeois state. Thus, by standing for those offices, exhibiting a touching “innocence” on the question of responsibility for the administration of the capitalist state. To my mind, the PMP is on that order. The idea, the utopian idea, when you talk about the central organs of bourgeois state power, the armed forces, the police, the courts and the prisons that something short of the struggle for power will do the trick. The hard, hard reality is otherwise, as we are also too well aware of every time we get a little uppity.
Reflecting on my own military experience about what can and cannot be done in order to influence soldiers and sailors and fight for an anti-war perspective military does not mean that nothing can be done short of taking take power to do so. The real problem with the PMP, and it may have reflected a lack of knowledge of wartime military possibilities, cadre familiar with the then peacetime volunteer military, and the “weak” military presence in pre-World War II America was that it was trying to project a positive program where what was called for, and is usually called for in war time conditions, were defensive measures such as creation of rank and file servicemen’s unions that fight for democratic right for soldiers, essentially the right to organize, and against victimizations of both radicals and others that get into the military’s cross hairs. The other key policy was to link up the civilian political anti-war opposition with the soldiers through the vehicle of coffeehouses or other off base places and soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. Late in the Vietnam War period those effects were beginning to have effect as rank and file disaffection with that war almost split the soldiery. Certainly it was a factor in Vietnamization of the war as the American army became more unreliable as a tool to carry out imperial policy.
As the material presented notes, especially in the introduction, the SWP never, as far as I know, repudiated the PMP (it kind of drifted away as World War II entered its final phases.) This, perhaps, reflected a certain “softness” as also noted on the question of running for executive offices of the bourgeois state which that party did after the war and revolutionaries’ relationship to that state in the struggle for power. As well it is not clear how much Leon Trotsky’s posthumous residual authority, who pushed the PMP as much as anybody else, played in this whole mess. Read this material as a modern Marxist primer on the bourgeois state.
“Resolution on Military Policy,”
submitted by the Workers International League and the Trotskyist Opposition of the Revolutionary Socialist League
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: 1944
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The text of this resolution is taken from three undated, mimeographed pages entitled “Conference Discussion Material.” The resolution was adopted by the March 1944 founding conference of the British Revolutionary Communist Party.
1. The Second World War into which capitalism has plunged mankind in the course of a generation, and which has been raging for more than four years, is the inevitable outcome of the crisis of capitalist methods of production, long predicted by the revolutionary Marxists, and is a sign of the impasse out of which capitalism cannot lead the mass of humanity.
2. The war of the British ruling class is not an ideological war fought in the interests of democracy against fascism. This has been demonstrated clearly by their support of Hitler against the German working class; their acquiescence to the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia; by their cynical policy of non-intervention in Spain which enabled Franco to massacre hundreds of thousands of Spanish anti-fascist proletarians; and by their support of Darlan in North Africa and Badoglio and Victor Emmanuel in Italy. The British ruling class is waging the war to maintain its colonial plunder, its sources of raw material and cheap labour, its spheres of influence and markets, and to extend wherever possible, its domination over wider territories. It is the duty of revolutionary socialists to patiently explain the imperialistic policy of the ruling class and expose its false and lying slogans of the “War against Fascism” and the “War for Democracy.”
3. The victory of German fascism and Japanese militarism would be a disaster for the working class of the world and for the colonial peoples. But no less disastrous would be a victory for Anglo-American imperialism. Such a victory would perpetuate and intensify the imperialist contradictions which gave rise to fascism and the present world war and will inevitably lead to new fascist and reactionary regimes and a Third World War.
4. The British working class, therefore, cannot support the war conducted by the ruling class without at the same time opposing its own class interests on a national and international scale. Our party is opposed to the war and calls upon the working class to oppose it. Only by overthrowing the capitalist state and taking power into its own hands under the leadership of the Fourth International, can the British working class wage a truly revolutionary war and aid the German and European working class to destroy fascism and capitalist reaction.
5. By their support of the war the Trade Unions, the Labour Party and the Communist Party, with their satellite organisations, have betrayed the historic interests of the working class and the interests of the colonial masses oppressed by British imperialism. It is the duty of revolutionary socialists to mercilessly expose the leadership of these organisations as agents of the ruling class in the ranks of the workers and to win over the broad mass of the workers from the leadership of these organisations to the party of the Fourth International.
6. The outbreak of the war created a new objective situation in which the revolutionaries had to conduct their political activity. Millions of workers—men and women—the most youthful and virile section of the population, are conscripted into the armed forces. The war not only changed the way in which millions of workers are forced to live, but also their level of political consciousness. War and militarism has penetrated every phase of, and become the basis of, their lives.
7. It would be a mistake on the part of the revolutionary socialists to lump the defencist feeling of the broad mass of the workers together with the chauvinism of the Labour and Stalinist leadership. This defencism of the masses stems largely from entirely progressive motives of preserving their own class organisations and democratic rights from destruction at the hands of fascism and from a foreign invader. The mass chauvinistic enthusiasm of the last war is entirely absent in the present period. Only a deep-seated suspicion of the aims and slogans of the ruling class is evident. To separate the workers from the capitalists and their lackeys, is the principal task of the revolutionary party.
8. The policy of our party must be based upon the objective conditions in which we live, including the level of consciousness of the masses, and must help the masses in the process of their daily struggles along the road to the seizure of power.
9. In the present period all great social changes will be made by military means. Our party takes the capitalist militarisation of the millions, not merely as the basis for the restatement of our fundamental principles and aims, but for the purpose of propagating positive political ideas and policies in the ranks of the working class as an alternative to the class programme of the bourgeoisie. This necessitates the supplementing of our transitional programme with a policy adapted to the needs of the working class in a period of militarisation and war. Our attitude towards war is not based merely on the rejection of the defence of the capitalist fatherland but on the conquest of power by the working class and the defence of the proletarian fatherland. From this conception flows the proletarian military policy of the Fourth International.
10. In the last war socialist pacifism and conscientious objection were progressive and even revolutionary in opposition to the policy of national unity and support for capitalist militarism which was advocated by the chauvinists. But thirty years of class struggle have clearly and decisively demonstrated that such policies act as a brake on the socialist revolution and serve only to separate the conscious revolutionaries from the mass of the working class caught up in the military machine. To this negative policy must be counterposed a positive policy which separates the workers from their exploiters in the military organisations.
11. The working class and the revolutionary socialists are compelled to participate in the military organisations controlled by the capitalist state. But to the capitalist militarism for capitalist ends, the revolutionary socialists must counterpose the necessity of proletarian militarism for proletarian ends. Our military policy defends the rights and interests of the working class against its class enemy; at every point we place our class programme against the class programme of the bourgeoisie.
12. The Labour Party, the Communist Party, the I.L.P. and the sectarians have also policies for the workers in arms. But these policies are reformist, based upon the perspective of the continued control of the state in the hands of the bourgeoisie. These policies contain only a series of minor democratic and financial reforms which do not lead to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the conquest of power by the working class.
13. Our party is for the arming of the working class under the control of workers’ organisations, the trade unions, workers’ committees and political parties.
We are against the special schools controlled by the capitalists for the training of their sons and agents for the highest posts of command and technicians of the military arts.
We are for state-financed schools, controlled by the trade unions and workers’ organisations for the purpose of training worker-officers, who will know how to defend the interests of the working class.
We are against the selection of the officers in the armed forces, including the Home Guard, by the bourgeoisie and its state machine. This selection takes place on the basis of class loyalty to the capitalists and hatred of the working class. We are for the election of officers in the armed forces by the men in the ranks.
These are the positive steps which our party advocates in its proletarian military policy, and which supplements our general transitional programme in the struggle for power. Such a policy, not only caters for the needs of the workers in uniform in their day to day struggle against the reactionary officer caste, but by its thoroughly anti-pacifist character, prepares the working class for the inevitable military attacks which will be launched against it by the exploiters at home, and for the defense of the proletarian fatherland against reactionary war of intervention.
****
“On National Defence”
submitted by the Militant Group of the Revolutionary Socialist League
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: 1944
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The text of this resolution is taken from a bulletin entitled “Resolutions submitted by the Militant Group (R.S.L.) to the R.S.L.-W.I.L. Fusion Conference,” dated March 1944.
1). This Conference declares that there must be no room for ambiguity in our organisation with regard to our attitude in the event of the invasion of imperialist Britain by the forces of a rival imperialist power. Our attitude is determined by our estimation of the war as an imperialist one. In such a war, “national defence” means defence of colonial booty and imperialist exploitation. Furthermore, defeats of British Imperialism, by weakening it, facilitate its overthrow at the hands of the revolutionary proletariat.
2). As Lenin put it, “We will not become partisans of national defence until after the seizure of power by the proletariat, until after the offer of peace....Until the moment of the seizure of power by the proletariat, we are for the proletarian revolution, we are against the war, we are against the ‘defencists’.” (August, 1917)
3). Consequently, we must reject, on grounds of revolutionary principle, all policies stating or implying that the British proletariat should resist a foreign imperialist invasion before it, the British proletariat, has obtained state power. We reject such policies, regardless of whether they advocate class-collaboration in an open form, e.g., working-class support for the bourgeois state against invasion, or in a concealed form, e.g., “independent” working-class military struggle against invasion within the bourgeois state, that is, before the proletariat has seized power.
*******
Attitude of the Proletariat Towards Imperialist War”
submitted by the Left Faction of the Revolutionary Socialist League
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: 1944
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The text of this resolution, which was submitted to the March 1944 founding conference of the British Revolutionary Communist Party by the Left Faction of the former RSL, is taken from six unsigned, undated pages headlined only with the title of the resolution.
I. The Validity of Leninist Policy
This Conference declares that the policy of revolutionary defeatism as laid down by Lenin during the First World War is entirely applicable to the present conflict. No new factors have arisen which can justify a departure from this fundamental proletarian policy towards Imperialist War.
The view that the rise of fascism constitutes a new factor warranting the abandonment of the policy of revolutionary defeatism and the adoption of a defencist policy is a manifestation of petty-bourgeois ideology and is irreconcilable with the profession of socialist internationalism. The policy of revolutionary defeatism is applicable in all belligerent imperialist powers irrespective of the state form—whether fascist or democratic.
The existence of the Soviet Union warrants only tactical changes. It cannot justify an abandonment of the basic expression of the class struggle in war time—the policy of revolutionary defeatism.
II. The Fundamental Premise of Revolutionary Action in War Time
The policy of revolutionary defeatism constitutes an assurance that there will be no capitulation to bourgeois ideology. It guarantees that the struggle for socialism will be carried on unaffected by fears of it facilitating “national disaster.”
The fear of “National disaster” is the main weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the maintenance of its hegemony in war time for it is the source of all opportunist (chauvinist) deviations, hence the Leninist axiom—“A revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but desire the defeat of its own government” constitutes the premise of every truly revolutionary action in war time.
Such a desire and only such a desire is compatible with genuine class struggle. Revolution in war time is civil war, and the transformation of war between governments into civil war is on the one hand facilitated by military reverses (defeats) of governments, on the other hand it is impossible really to strive for such a transformation without thereby facilitating defeat.
The desire of defeat must not be relinquished even where it is clear that such defeat carries with it the military victory of the enemy bourgeoisie. Defeat, even though it be by a “fascist” country, demoralises not the proletariat but the bourgeoisie hence such a defeat constitutes not an aid but an obstacle to the victory of fascism.
Fascism can in no wise be imposed by an army of occupation. Fascism is based on the demoralisation of the working class and the destruction of its organisations and must not be confused with a military dictatorship. The demoralisation of the proletariat which is the fundamental condition for the victory of fascism can derive only from its failure to achieve socialism after a favourable opportunity has presented itself. Then and only then does the “initiative” pass to the frenzied petty bourgeoisie—which acting as agents of the big bourgeoisie, vents its despair—in the form of hate, upon the proletariat. Under a military occupation the petty bourgeoisie is more inclined to direct its hate against the foreign army, not against the proletariat. Fascism can only be “home grown.” Nor is the victory of democratic imperialism in any way other than that of disintegrating and demoralising the bourgeoisie whose power is exercised through a fascist state, conducive to the restoration of “democracy.”
In the conditions of imperialist war the distinction between decaying democracy and murderous fascism disappears in the face of the collapse of the entire capitalist system. From the point of view of the British Workers the victory of German Imperialism is preferable to the victory of “democratic” Britain and conversely from the point of view of the German workers the victory of Britain is preferable to the victory of “fascist” arms. The class conscious proletarian sees in such victories only the defeat and humiliation of his own exploiters which he ardently desires.
The proletarian does not regard imperialist war as simply a war between governments hence he does not consider that to desire the defeat of one’s own government is the same as desiring the victory of the “enemy” government. In a war between governments he is neutral, but imperialist war is a manifestation of the class conflict within society consequently he is not neutral towards his own bourgeoisie, he is not impartial towards the military fate of his own oppressor but desires the defeat of his own ruling class—the class which directly exploits him.
To his own bourgeoisie he is related by the fact of direct exploitation, to the enemy bourgeoisie he is related on the one hand by the fact of it being the enemy of his own bourgeoisie in a war between governments, and by the fact of it being the oppressor of his class brother—the proletarian of the “enemy” country. Thus his only real enemy (sole enemy if allied countries are excluded) is his own bourgeoisie, in relation to the imperialist war he is neutral to the enemy bourgeoisie (desiring neither victory nor defeat), but of course desires its defeat by his brother proletarian. Thus also is it impossible for the proletariat to strike a blow in war time at the enemy bourgeoisie without striking at the proletariat of the “enemy” country and aiding its own bourgeoisie.
International action in war time is directed solely against one’s own bourgeoisie.
Lenin’s axiom is the prerequisite for serious revolutionary action, not because revolution is impossible without military defeat, history proves only that defeats are more advantageous to the revolutionary proletariat than victories, but because the proletariat and in particular the vanguard of the proletariat is rendered impotent unless it desires the defeat of its own government.
III. Application of the Policy of Revolutionary Defeatism
Revolutionary defeatism counterposes to the bourgeois necessity of achieving victory the necessity of the proletariat desiring the defeat of its own government. To the bourgeois lie that the enemy country is the cause of the war it counterposes the concept of our own bourgeoisie bearing to us sole responsibility for the war and its effects. To hatred of the enemy—fraternisation, to imperialist war—civil war for socialism. The task of the revolutionary party is to destroy the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the masses and to impose a socialist ideology upon the struggles of the proletariat. In war time the most pernicious and dangerous illusion is defencism. Defencism is a manifestation of nationalism—revolutionary defencism of national socialism. It is an insuperable obstacle to fraternisation and the achievement of international socialism. Hence the substitution of defeatism for defencism is of vital importance. The destruction of the elements of chauvinism can be accomplished only by counterposing the class needs of the masses to the national needs—the needs of the bourgeoisie.
The defencism of the masses is mixed with many progressive sentiments and class instincts. The development of these features into a socialist consciousness cannot be accomplished simply by supporting the progressive features for to the masses they are inextricably mixed with the defencist illusions, but only by counterposing the one to the other.
Failure to bring the class features into opposition to the nationalistic features means to give a “left” covering to patriotism. This is the role of charlatans. Attempts to capture the leadership of the workers on any other basis than that of revolutionary defeatism will lead to social-patriotism, to the destruction of the Revolutionary Party. This is not to say that the masses can be won to the banner of the Fourth International on the slogans of “turn imperialist war into civil war,” etc., but slogans which are evasive and ambiguous with regard to the proletarian attitude to the war are a betrayal of socialist internationalism.
The value of all slogans, demands, etc., must be measured by the extent to which they enlighten the masses, destroy bourgeois ideological influence, raise socialist consciousness. During an imperialist war—especially prior to the revolutionary upsurge this means above all the raising of the internationalism of the workers. Therefore it is necessary to patiently explain the nature of the war, its incompatibility with working-class interests, and the necessity of fraternisation with the workers in the “enemy” country on the basis of class struggle each against his own ruling class. At first the Revolutionary Party can expect only to swim against the stream, but on its ability to do this depends its whole future. If it makes the smallest concession to defencism and fails to correct it, it is irretrievably lost.
IV. Revolutionary Defencism
Revolutionary Defencism constitutes an attempt to reconcile the socialist tasks of the proletariat with the bourgeois task of resisting defeat. It is an expression of petty-bourgeois ideology. Revolutionary Defencism seeks to present the revolution as a means of defeating the imperialist enemy, or of opposing defeat of one’s own country by the enemy. The socialist revolution is not a means of solving bourgeois national problems, but of resolving the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeois nationalist problems of the imperialist belligerents were solved nearly a century ago. The policy of revolutionary defencism might possess some justification in a colonial war, at least if undertaken in a spirit of internationalism, but its application to an imperialist war is nothing but the policy of the social-chauvinist Kautsky, the “internationalism” of which serves only to justify the working class in every country with the defence each of its own fatherland. It is a betrayal of international socialism.
Such a policy, notwithstanding its “revolutionary” flavour, cannot advance the working class one real step forward. Defencist illusions do not constitute a means of achieving the socialist revolution, they only bar the way to an internationalist attitude which is the prerequisite for fraternisation and the transformation of imperialist war into civil war.
Revolutionary defencism has found numerous specious formulations—telescoping the tasks of winning the war and the revolution, defeating one’s own bourgeoisie first. The use of such general formulas as “The workers everywhere are the enemies of the bourgeoisie everywhere and working-class action in our own country encourages working-class action in the enemy country,” serve as a cover for defencism. The former as a justification of “neither victory nor defeat,” and the latter to justify a desire for the military defeat of the enemy. Even fraternisation has been presented as a weapon, not against our own bourgeoisie but against the enemy bourgeoisie also. The practical results of this “internationalism” in the spirit of Kautsky have been the American Military Policy, demands for efficient military equipment, deep shelters, better rationing, increased production, etc. Slogans which can only drive the workers further into the blind alley of defencism, into disillusionment and demoralisation.
The American Military Policy (Chicago Conference Policy) is not a working-class policy but a petty-bourgeois hotch potch. It represents a fundamental departure from the traditions of the Fourth International. It adopts the view that this imperialist war would be progressive if it were under workers control, “we never...give them (the capitalists) any confidence in their conduct of the war.” As a general formula it is true a workers state wages progressive wars but we are confronted with specific conditions—not abstractions. This war is an imperialist war in which millions of workers are engaged in the slaughter of their class brothers at the behest of their own exploiters. It is reactionary to demand that this bloody slaughter, this crime should be conducted “under workers control.” Moreover the fact of the workers in each country demanding of its own bourgeoisie that it be made responsible for the slaughter of its fellow-workers cannot lead to international socialism, hence the “workers control” can never be realised, it remains an empty phrase. All that remains is support of the imperialist war.
The American Military Policy advocated that the workers should “fight against sending of worker-soldiers into battle without proper training and equipment.” This is alleged to be a translation of Trotsky’s Military Policy. However the class-conscious proletarian can distinguish between not wishing to permit one’s own bourgeoisie recklessly to squander the lives of workers even though it be in the slaughter of brother workers and demanding the efficient prosecution of that slaughter.
The demand for deep shelters—a specific demand which flows from acceptance of the American Military Policy can only be distinguished from the demand for superior weapons of war by drawing an absolute distinction between offence and defence and between military personnel and civilians. The demand springs from the masses because they accept the necessity of winning the war and desire to protect their lives. The necessity of winning the war is a product of bourgeois deception and is reactionary. The desire to protect one’s life is not specifically working-class—nor for that matter specifically human. It becomes specifically working-class only if it means protection of working-class lives (soldiers no less than civilians) from the attacks of one’s own bourgeoisie, i.e., if one’s own bourgeoisie is held responsible for the war and its effects (bombing); but in this case the demand for shelters is nonsensical. The demand for shelters is in fact directed only in form against one’s own bourgeoisie, in essence it is an act of aggression against the proletariat of the “enemy” country. It is a betrayal of international class solidarity.
Similarly the demand for “increased production” springs from the desire to “defeat fascism,” i.e., German imperialism and as such it possesses no progressive content. The addition of the words “under workers control” does not alter the general character of the slogan. It only adds a “socialist” covering to the bourgeois lie of “defeating fascism.” The outcome of bourgeois lies can never be socialism, not any step towards it. The demand for “increased production” to aid the Soviet Union did possess a certain progressive feature—the desire to aid a workers state. But this feature could possess no value to the workers despite its class nature until it was counterposed to the defencist—i.e., bourgeois features. Failure to counterpose the desire of the workers to aid a workers state to their desire to prevent the defeat of “their own” country, e.g., by demanding that all existing arms be sent from Britain without regard to the interests of national defence, left the workers at the mercy of the Stalinists. In a slogan such as “Total Aid to the Soviet Union,” the addition of “under workers control” would not be a deception of the working class.
The demand for the ending of the Party truce may be progressive or reactionary. Progressive if counterposed to the bourgeois task of winning the war, reactionary if advanced as a means to the better prosecution of the war.
In circumstances in which the masses are dominated by defencist illusions it is valueless to adopt slogans which fail to oppose such illusions. It is necessary to place the working-class necessity of ending the truce in as sharp opposition as circumstances will allow to the “national interest,” to “winning the war.”
The idea that to call upon the workers to seize power can never be reactionary whatever the purpose is in its very essence unmarxist. No slogan can possess an intrinsic progressiveness. The call to the workers to seize power must be evaluated not in accordance with some Kantian virtue of the “slogan in itself” but by the purpose—the aim for which the slogan is advanced. “To seize power in order to defeat fascism” is in existing circumstances no more progressive than support of the imperialist war. The aim of “defeating fascism” is the aim of our own bourgeoisie even though the original deception practised by the bourgeoisie is cloaked by a “socialistic” demand to “seize power.” A slogan cannot alter the character of the imperialist war.
V. Defencism of the Leaders and of the Masses
Defencism is a manifestation of bourgeois ideology. It infects the Revolutionary Vanguard through the capitulation of the masses to the intense ideological pressure exerted by the bourgeoisie through the instrumentality of the reformist leadership. But a “Revolutionary Vanguard” which succumbs to such influences and is unable to extricate itself is worthless. A failure of a “leadership” to resist an alien ideological pressure implies a failure to analyse the class origin of this pressure, that is, that it adopts a non-marxist, non-proletarian standpoint. It is petty-bourgeois. The masses on the other hand slowly but surely overcome their defencist illusions. The ideological pressure of the bourgeoisie is counteracted by the demands made by the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat. The sacrifices made by the workers in the interests of winning the war so sharply conflict with their class interests that the desire for the defeat and humiliation of their exploiters becomes the dominating factor in their attitude to the war. It is entirely untrue that the masses are unable to comprehend and accept the Leninist policy of Revolutionary Defeatism. The masses can assimilate every marxist theoretical question, but they do it in their own way, by testing it “under fire,” in the same way they test the Revolutionary Leadership. Those “leaders” who have been unable to swim against the stream, who have capitulated to defencism and been unable to extricate themselves, are lost to the movement. The masses will never accept them as the Revolutionary Vanguard.
VI. Defencism and the Fourth International Leadership
Defencist tendencies in the Fourth International have manifested themselves most markedly in precisely those countries in which the proletariat has more than its chains to lose—those countries which possess or possessed at the outbreak of the war colonial empires on the basis of which the bourgeoisie could grant its proletariat a privileged position. Hence it is not surprising to find that one feature of this defencism is expressed as a desire to “defeat fascism”—i.e., as opposition to the loss of a privileged position—as a pampered slave.
Such opportunism must inevitably infect and is in fact infecting every aspect of Fourth International policy. In America and Britain the Fourth International is following in the footsteps of the 2nd., and 3rd., Internationals and it is useless to attempt to appeal to the absence of a distinct social strata in the Fourth International as the basis for degeneration. “History knows degenerations of all sorts” and the ideological influence of a “parasitic” proletariat may yet provide the basis for the death of Trotsky’s International.
If the Fourth International is to live it must purge its ranks of all defencists. Not the slightest concession must be made to revolutionary defencism. At the core lies the need for a firm internationalist leadership which can resist the pressure of alien interests. This, not “objective conditions,” is the only guarantee that the Fourth International can fulfill its historic role.
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In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
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Markin comment on this series of Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) articles:
Coming out of the radical wing of the Vietnam War anti-war movement in the early 1970s, and having done military service as well, I was intrigued when I first read about the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP-U.S.) Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) as propounded by that party just before and during World War II. The intriguing part, initially at least, was the notion that radicals could have a democratic propaganda platform to work off of in bringing their fellow soldiers around to an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist by proposing to control the then much less powerful American military through democratic methods like election of officers, etc..
And then life intruded. Or rather I reflected on my own somewhat eclectic anti-war military work and, as well, of various schemes by reformists to “control” various aspects of bourgeois society without having to take power and replace those institutions. In short, take political responsibility for the current regime. In the year 2010 we, after years of defeat and decline, are quite used to reformists and others putting forth all kinds of nice schemes for turning swords into plowshares by asking the bourgeois state to take the war budget and create jobs, better educational opportunities, provide better health care, you name it all without, seemingly, positing the need to change the state.
A classic and fairly recent example of that, in the aftermath of the Professor Henry Louis Gates arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the renewed call for “community control of the police.” And of course, come election time, the willingness, sometimes without even the caveat of refusal to take office if elected, of all and sundry leftists to run from the executive offices of the bourgeois state. Thus, by standing for those offices, exhibiting a touching “innocence” on the question of responsibility for the administration of the capitalist state. To my mind, the PMP is on that order. The idea, the utopian idea, when you talk about the central organs of bourgeois state power, the armed forces, the police, the courts and the prisons that something short of the struggle for power will do the trick. The hard, hard reality is otherwise, as we are also too well aware of every time we get a little uppity.
Reflecting on my own military experience about what can and cannot be done in order to influence soldiers and sailors and fight for an anti-war perspective military does not mean that nothing can be done short of taking take power to do so. The real problem with the PMP, and it may have reflected a lack of knowledge of wartime military possibilities, cadre familiar with the then peacetime volunteer military, and the “weak” military presence in pre-World War II America was that it was trying to project a positive program where what was called for, and is usually called for in war time conditions, were defensive measures such as creation of rank and file servicemen’s unions that fight for democratic right for soldiers, essentially the right to organize, and against victimizations of both radicals and others that get into the military’s cross hairs. The other key policy was to link up the civilian political anti-war opposition with the soldiers through the vehicle of coffeehouses or other off base places and soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. Late in the Vietnam War period those effects were beginning to have effect as rank and file disaffection with that war almost split the soldiery. Certainly it was a factor in Vietnamization of the war as the American army became more unreliable as a tool to carry out imperial policy.
As the material presented notes, especially in the introduction, the SWP never, as far as I know, repudiated the PMP (it kind of drifted away as World War II entered its final phases.) This, perhaps, reflected a certain “softness” as also noted on the question of running for executive offices of the bourgeois state which that party did after the war and revolutionaries’ relationship to that state in the struggle for power. As well it is not clear how much Leon Trotsky’s posthumous residual authority, who pushed the PMP as much as anybody else, played in this whole mess. Read this material as a modern Marxist primer on the bourgeois state.
“Resolution on Military Policy,”
submitted by the Workers International League and the Trotskyist Opposition of the Revolutionary Socialist League
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Written: 1944
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
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The text of this resolution is taken from three undated, mimeographed pages entitled “Conference Discussion Material.” The resolution was adopted by the March 1944 founding conference of the British Revolutionary Communist Party.
1. The Second World War into which capitalism has plunged mankind in the course of a generation, and which has been raging for more than four years, is the inevitable outcome of the crisis of capitalist methods of production, long predicted by the revolutionary Marxists, and is a sign of the impasse out of which capitalism cannot lead the mass of humanity.
2. The war of the British ruling class is not an ideological war fought in the interests of democracy against fascism. This has been demonstrated clearly by their support of Hitler against the German working class; their acquiescence to the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia; by their cynical policy of non-intervention in Spain which enabled Franco to massacre hundreds of thousands of Spanish anti-fascist proletarians; and by their support of Darlan in North Africa and Badoglio and Victor Emmanuel in Italy. The British ruling class is waging the war to maintain its colonial plunder, its sources of raw material and cheap labour, its spheres of influence and markets, and to extend wherever possible, its domination over wider territories. It is the duty of revolutionary socialists to patiently explain the imperialistic policy of the ruling class and expose its false and lying slogans of the “War against Fascism” and the “War for Democracy.”
3. The victory of German fascism and Japanese militarism would be a disaster for the working class of the world and for the colonial peoples. But no less disastrous would be a victory for Anglo-American imperialism. Such a victory would perpetuate and intensify the imperialist contradictions which gave rise to fascism and the present world war and will inevitably lead to new fascist and reactionary regimes and a Third World War.
4. The British working class, therefore, cannot support the war conducted by the ruling class without at the same time opposing its own class interests on a national and international scale. Our party is opposed to the war and calls upon the working class to oppose it. Only by overthrowing the capitalist state and taking power into its own hands under the leadership of the Fourth International, can the British working class wage a truly revolutionary war and aid the German and European working class to destroy fascism and capitalist reaction.
5. By their support of the war the Trade Unions, the Labour Party and the Communist Party, with their satellite organisations, have betrayed the historic interests of the working class and the interests of the colonial masses oppressed by British imperialism. It is the duty of revolutionary socialists to mercilessly expose the leadership of these organisations as agents of the ruling class in the ranks of the workers and to win over the broad mass of the workers from the leadership of these organisations to the party of the Fourth International.
6. The outbreak of the war created a new objective situation in which the revolutionaries had to conduct their political activity. Millions of workers—men and women—the most youthful and virile section of the population, are conscripted into the armed forces. The war not only changed the way in which millions of workers are forced to live, but also their level of political consciousness. War and militarism has penetrated every phase of, and become the basis of, their lives.
7. It would be a mistake on the part of the revolutionary socialists to lump the defencist feeling of the broad mass of the workers together with the chauvinism of the Labour and Stalinist leadership. This defencism of the masses stems largely from entirely progressive motives of preserving their own class organisations and democratic rights from destruction at the hands of fascism and from a foreign invader. The mass chauvinistic enthusiasm of the last war is entirely absent in the present period. Only a deep-seated suspicion of the aims and slogans of the ruling class is evident. To separate the workers from the capitalists and their lackeys, is the principal task of the revolutionary party.
8. The policy of our party must be based upon the objective conditions in which we live, including the level of consciousness of the masses, and must help the masses in the process of their daily struggles along the road to the seizure of power.
9. In the present period all great social changes will be made by military means. Our party takes the capitalist militarisation of the millions, not merely as the basis for the restatement of our fundamental principles and aims, but for the purpose of propagating positive political ideas and policies in the ranks of the working class as an alternative to the class programme of the bourgeoisie. This necessitates the supplementing of our transitional programme with a policy adapted to the needs of the working class in a period of militarisation and war. Our attitude towards war is not based merely on the rejection of the defence of the capitalist fatherland but on the conquest of power by the working class and the defence of the proletarian fatherland. From this conception flows the proletarian military policy of the Fourth International.
10. In the last war socialist pacifism and conscientious objection were progressive and even revolutionary in opposition to the policy of national unity and support for capitalist militarism which was advocated by the chauvinists. But thirty years of class struggle have clearly and decisively demonstrated that such policies act as a brake on the socialist revolution and serve only to separate the conscious revolutionaries from the mass of the working class caught up in the military machine. To this negative policy must be counterposed a positive policy which separates the workers from their exploiters in the military organisations.
11. The working class and the revolutionary socialists are compelled to participate in the military organisations controlled by the capitalist state. But to the capitalist militarism for capitalist ends, the revolutionary socialists must counterpose the necessity of proletarian militarism for proletarian ends. Our military policy defends the rights and interests of the working class against its class enemy; at every point we place our class programme against the class programme of the bourgeoisie.
12. The Labour Party, the Communist Party, the I.L.P. and the sectarians have also policies for the workers in arms. But these policies are reformist, based upon the perspective of the continued control of the state in the hands of the bourgeoisie. These policies contain only a series of minor democratic and financial reforms which do not lead to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the conquest of power by the working class.
13. Our party is for the arming of the working class under the control of workers’ organisations, the trade unions, workers’ committees and political parties.
We are against the special schools controlled by the capitalists for the training of their sons and agents for the highest posts of command and technicians of the military arts.
We are for state-financed schools, controlled by the trade unions and workers’ organisations for the purpose of training worker-officers, who will know how to defend the interests of the working class.
We are against the selection of the officers in the armed forces, including the Home Guard, by the bourgeoisie and its state machine. This selection takes place on the basis of class loyalty to the capitalists and hatred of the working class. We are for the election of officers in the armed forces by the men in the ranks.
These are the positive steps which our party advocates in its proletarian military policy, and which supplements our general transitional programme in the struggle for power. Such a policy, not only caters for the needs of the workers in uniform in their day to day struggle against the reactionary officer caste, but by its thoroughly anti-pacifist character, prepares the working class for the inevitable military attacks which will be launched against it by the exploiters at home, and for the defense of the proletarian fatherland against reactionary war of intervention.
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“On National Defence”
submitted by the Militant Group of the Revolutionary Socialist League
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Written: 1944
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
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The text of this resolution is taken from a bulletin entitled “Resolutions submitted by the Militant Group (R.S.L.) to the R.S.L.-W.I.L. Fusion Conference,” dated March 1944.
1). This Conference declares that there must be no room for ambiguity in our organisation with regard to our attitude in the event of the invasion of imperialist Britain by the forces of a rival imperialist power. Our attitude is determined by our estimation of the war as an imperialist one. In such a war, “national defence” means defence of colonial booty and imperialist exploitation. Furthermore, defeats of British Imperialism, by weakening it, facilitate its overthrow at the hands of the revolutionary proletariat.
2). As Lenin put it, “We will not become partisans of national defence until after the seizure of power by the proletariat, until after the offer of peace....Until the moment of the seizure of power by the proletariat, we are for the proletarian revolution, we are against the war, we are against the ‘defencists’.” (August, 1917)
3). Consequently, we must reject, on grounds of revolutionary principle, all policies stating or implying that the British proletariat should resist a foreign imperialist invasion before it, the British proletariat, has obtained state power. We reject such policies, regardless of whether they advocate class-collaboration in an open form, e.g., working-class support for the bourgeois state against invasion, or in a concealed form, e.g., “independent” working-class military struggle against invasion within the bourgeois state, that is, before the proletariat has seized power.
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Attitude of the Proletariat Towards Imperialist War”
submitted by the Left Faction of the Revolutionary Socialist League
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Written: 1944
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
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The text of this resolution, which was submitted to the March 1944 founding conference of the British Revolutionary Communist Party by the Left Faction of the former RSL, is taken from six unsigned, undated pages headlined only with the title of the resolution.
I. The Validity of Leninist Policy
This Conference declares that the policy of revolutionary defeatism as laid down by Lenin during the First World War is entirely applicable to the present conflict. No new factors have arisen which can justify a departure from this fundamental proletarian policy towards Imperialist War.
The view that the rise of fascism constitutes a new factor warranting the abandonment of the policy of revolutionary defeatism and the adoption of a defencist policy is a manifestation of petty-bourgeois ideology and is irreconcilable with the profession of socialist internationalism. The policy of revolutionary defeatism is applicable in all belligerent imperialist powers irrespective of the state form—whether fascist or democratic.
The existence of the Soviet Union warrants only tactical changes. It cannot justify an abandonment of the basic expression of the class struggle in war time—the policy of revolutionary defeatism.
II. The Fundamental Premise of Revolutionary Action in War Time
The policy of revolutionary defeatism constitutes an assurance that there will be no capitulation to bourgeois ideology. It guarantees that the struggle for socialism will be carried on unaffected by fears of it facilitating “national disaster.”
The fear of “National disaster” is the main weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the maintenance of its hegemony in war time for it is the source of all opportunist (chauvinist) deviations, hence the Leninist axiom—“A revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but desire the defeat of its own government” constitutes the premise of every truly revolutionary action in war time.
Such a desire and only such a desire is compatible with genuine class struggle. Revolution in war time is civil war, and the transformation of war between governments into civil war is on the one hand facilitated by military reverses (defeats) of governments, on the other hand it is impossible really to strive for such a transformation without thereby facilitating defeat.
The desire of defeat must not be relinquished even where it is clear that such defeat carries with it the military victory of the enemy bourgeoisie. Defeat, even though it be by a “fascist” country, demoralises not the proletariat but the bourgeoisie hence such a defeat constitutes not an aid but an obstacle to the victory of fascism.
Fascism can in no wise be imposed by an army of occupation. Fascism is based on the demoralisation of the working class and the destruction of its organisations and must not be confused with a military dictatorship. The demoralisation of the proletariat which is the fundamental condition for the victory of fascism can derive only from its failure to achieve socialism after a favourable opportunity has presented itself. Then and only then does the “initiative” pass to the frenzied petty bourgeoisie—which acting as agents of the big bourgeoisie, vents its despair—in the form of hate, upon the proletariat. Under a military occupation the petty bourgeoisie is more inclined to direct its hate against the foreign army, not against the proletariat. Fascism can only be “home grown.” Nor is the victory of democratic imperialism in any way other than that of disintegrating and demoralising the bourgeoisie whose power is exercised through a fascist state, conducive to the restoration of “democracy.”
In the conditions of imperialist war the distinction between decaying democracy and murderous fascism disappears in the face of the collapse of the entire capitalist system. From the point of view of the British Workers the victory of German Imperialism is preferable to the victory of “democratic” Britain and conversely from the point of view of the German workers the victory of Britain is preferable to the victory of “fascist” arms. The class conscious proletarian sees in such victories only the defeat and humiliation of his own exploiters which he ardently desires.
The proletarian does not regard imperialist war as simply a war between governments hence he does not consider that to desire the defeat of one’s own government is the same as desiring the victory of the “enemy” government. In a war between governments he is neutral, but imperialist war is a manifestation of the class conflict within society consequently he is not neutral towards his own bourgeoisie, he is not impartial towards the military fate of his own oppressor but desires the defeat of his own ruling class—the class which directly exploits him.
To his own bourgeoisie he is related by the fact of direct exploitation, to the enemy bourgeoisie he is related on the one hand by the fact of it being the enemy of his own bourgeoisie in a war between governments, and by the fact of it being the oppressor of his class brother—the proletarian of the “enemy” country. Thus his only real enemy (sole enemy if allied countries are excluded) is his own bourgeoisie, in relation to the imperialist war he is neutral to the enemy bourgeoisie (desiring neither victory nor defeat), but of course desires its defeat by his brother proletarian. Thus also is it impossible for the proletariat to strike a blow in war time at the enemy bourgeoisie without striking at the proletariat of the “enemy” country and aiding its own bourgeoisie.
International action in war time is directed solely against one’s own bourgeoisie.
Lenin’s axiom is the prerequisite for serious revolutionary action, not because revolution is impossible without military defeat, history proves only that defeats are more advantageous to the revolutionary proletariat than victories, but because the proletariat and in particular the vanguard of the proletariat is rendered impotent unless it desires the defeat of its own government.
III. Application of the Policy of Revolutionary Defeatism
Revolutionary defeatism counterposes to the bourgeois necessity of achieving victory the necessity of the proletariat desiring the defeat of its own government. To the bourgeois lie that the enemy country is the cause of the war it counterposes the concept of our own bourgeoisie bearing to us sole responsibility for the war and its effects. To hatred of the enemy—fraternisation, to imperialist war—civil war for socialism. The task of the revolutionary party is to destroy the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the masses and to impose a socialist ideology upon the struggles of the proletariat. In war time the most pernicious and dangerous illusion is defencism. Defencism is a manifestation of nationalism—revolutionary defencism of national socialism. It is an insuperable obstacle to fraternisation and the achievement of international socialism. Hence the substitution of defeatism for defencism is of vital importance. The destruction of the elements of chauvinism can be accomplished only by counterposing the class needs of the masses to the national needs—the needs of the bourgeoisie.
The defencism of the masses is mixed with many progressive sentiments and class instincts. The development of these features into a socialist consciousness cannot be accomplished simply by supporting the progressive features for to the masses they are inextricably mixed with the defencist illusions, but only by counterposing the one to the other.
Failure to bring the class features into opposition to the nationalistic features means to give a “left” covering to patriotism. This is the role of charlatans. Attempts to capture the leadership of the workers on any other basis than that of revolutionary defeatism will lead to social-patriotism, to the destruction of the Revolutionary Party. This is not to say that the masses can be won to the banner of the Fourth International on the slogans of “turn imperialist war into civil war,” etc., but slogans which are evasive and ambiguous with regard to the proletarian attitude to the war are a betrayal of socialist internationalism.
The value of all slogans, demands, etc., must be measured by the extent to which they enlighten the masses, destroy bourgeois ideological influence, raise socialist consciousness. During an imperialist war—especially prior to the revolutionary upsurge this means above all the raising of the internationalism of the workers. Therefore it is necessary to patiently explain the nature of the war, its incompatibility with working-class interests, and the necessity of fraternisation with the workers in the “enemy” country on the basis of class struggle each against his own ruling class. At first the Revolutionary Party can expect only to swim against the stream, but on its ability to do this depends its whole future. If it makes the smallest concession to defencism and fails to correct it, it is irretrievably lost.
IV. Revolutionary Defencism
Revolutionary Defencism constitutes an attempt to reconcile the socialist tasks of the proletariat with the bourgeois task of resisting defeat. It is an expression of petty-bourgeois ideology. Revolutionary Defencism seeks to present the revolution as a means of defeating the imperialist enemy, or of opposing defeat of one’s own country by the enemy. The socialist revolution is not a means of solving bourgeois national problems, but of resolving the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeois nationalist problems of the imperialist belligerents were solved nearly a century ago. The policy of revolutionary defencism might possess some justification in a colonial war, at least if undertaken in a spirit of internationalism, but its application to an imperialist war is nothing but the policy of the social-chauvinist Kautsky, the “internationalism” of which serves only to justify the working class in every country with the defence each of its own fatherland. It is a betrayal of international socialism.
Such a policy, notwithstanding its “revolutionary” flavour, cannot advance the working class one real step forward. Defencist illusions do not constitute a means of achieving the socialist revolution, they only bar the way to an internationalist attitude which is the prerequisite for fraternisation and the transformation of imperialist war into civil war.
Revolutionary defencism has found numerous specious formulations—telescoping the tasks of winning the war and the revolution, defeating one’s own bourgeoisie first. The use of such general formulas as “The workers everywhere are the enemies of the bourgeoisie everywhere and working-class action in our own country encourages working-class action in the enemy country,” serve as a cover for defencism. The former as a justification of “neither victory nor defeat,” and the latter to justify a desire for the military defeat of the enemy. Even fraternisation has been presented as a weapon, not against our own bourgeoisie but against the enemy bourgeoisie also. The practical results of this “internationalism” in the spirit of Kautsky have been the American Military Policy, demands for efficient military equipment, deep shelters, better rationing, increased production, etc. Slogans which can only drive the workers further into the blind alley of defencism, into disillusionment and demoralisation.
The American Military Policy (Chicago Conference Policy) is not a working-class policy but a petty-bourgeois hotch potch. It represents a fundamental departure from the traditions of the Fourth International. It adopts the view that this imperialist war would be progressive if it were under workers control, “we never...give them (the capitalists) any confidence in their conduct of the war.” As a general formula it is true a workers state wages progressive wars but we are confronted with specific conditions—not abstractions. This war is an imperialist war in which millions of workers are engaged in the slaughter of their class brothers at the behest of their own exploiters. It is reactionary to demand that this bloody slaughter, this crime should be conducted “under workers control.” Moreover the fact of the workers in each country demanding of its own bourgeoisie that it be made responsible for the slaughter of its fellow-workers cannot lead to international socialism, hence the “workers control” can never be realised, it remains an empty phrase. All that remains is support of the imperialist war.
The American Military Policy advocated that the workers should “fight against sending of worker-soldiers into battle without proper training and equipment.” This is alleged to be a translation of Trotsky’s Military Policy. However the class-conscious proletarian can distinguish between not wishing to permit one’s own bourgeoisie recklessly to squander the lives of workers even though it be in the slaughter of brother workers and demanding the efficient prosecution of that slaughter.
The demand for deep shelters—a specific demand which flows from acceptance of the American Military Policy can only be distinguished from the demand for superior weapons of war by drawing an absolute distinction between offence and defence and between military personnel and civilians. The demand springs from the masses because they accept the necessity of winning the war and desire to protect their lives. The necessity of winning the war is a product of bourgeois deception and is reactionary. The desire to protect one’s life is not specifically working-class—nor for that matter specifically human. It becomes specifically working-class only if it means protection of working-class lives (soldiers no less than civilians) from the attacks of one’s own bourgeoisie, i.e., if one’s own bourgeoisie is held responsible for the war and its effects (bombing); but in this case the demand for shelters is nonsensical. The demand for shelters is in fact directed only in form against one’s own bourgeoisie, in essence it is an act of aggression against the proletariat of the “enemy” country. It is a betrayal of international class solidarity.
Similarly the demand for “increased production” springs from the desire to “defeat fascism,” i.e., German imperialism and as such it possesses no progressive content. The addition of the words “under workers control” does not alter the general character of the slogan. It only adds a “socialist” covering to the bourgeois lie of “defeating fascism.” The outcome of bourgeois lies can never be socialism, not any step towards it. The demand for “increased production” to aid the Soviet Union did possess a certain progressive feature—the desire to aid a workers state. But this feature could possess no value to the workers despite its class nature until it was counterposed to the defencist—i.e., bourgeois features. Failure to counterpose the desire of the workers to aid a workers state to their desire to prevent the defeat of “their own” country, e.g., by demanding that all existing arms be sent from Britain without regard to the interests of national defence, left the workers at the mercy of the Stalinists. In a slogan such as “Total Aid to the Soviet Union,” the addition of “under workers control” would not be a deception of the working class.
The demand for the ending of the Party truce may be progressive or reactionary. Progressive if counterposed to the bourgeois task of winning the war, reactionary if advanced as a means to the better prosecution of the war.
In circumstances in which the masses are dominated by defencist illusions it is valueless to adopt slogans which fail to oppose such illusions. It is necessary to place the working-class necessity of ending the truce in as sharp opposition as circumstances will allow to the “national interest,” to “winning the war.”
The idea that to call upon the workers to seize power can never be reactionary whatever the purpose is in its very essence unmarxist. No slogan can possess an intrinsic progressiveness. The call to the workers to seize power must be evaluated not in accordance with some Kantian virtue of the “slogan in itself” but by the purpose—the aim for which the slogan is advanced. “To seize power in order to defeat fascism” is in existing circumstances no more progressive than support of the imperialist war. The aim of “defeating fascism” is the aim of our own bourgeoisie even though the original deception practised by the bourgeoisie is cloaked by a “socialistic” demand to “seize power.” A slogan cannot alter the character of the imperialist war.
V. Defencism of the Leaders and of the Masses
Defencism is a manifestation of bourgeois ideology. It infects the Revolutionary Vanguard through the capitulation of the masses to the intense ideological pressure exerted by the bourgeoisie through the instrumentality of the reformist leadership. But a “Revolutionary Vanguard” which succumbs to such influences and is unable to extricate itself is worthless. A failure of a “leadership” to resist an alien ideological pressure implies a failure to analyse the class origin of this pressure, that is, that it adopts a non-marxist, non-proletarian standpoint. It is petty-bourgeois. The masses on the other hand slowly but surely overcome their defencist illusions. The ideological pressure of the bourgeoisie is counteracted by the demands made by the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat. The sacrifices made by the workers in the interests of winning the war so sharply conflict with their class interests that the desire for the defeat and humiliation of their exploiters becomes the dominating factor in their attitude to the war. It is entirely untrue that the masses are unable to comprehend and accept the Leninist policy of Revolutionary Defeatism. The masses can assimilate every marxist theoretical question, but they do it in their own way, by testing it “under fire,” in the same way they test the Revolutionary Leadership. Those “leaders” who have been unable to swim against the stream, who have capitulated to defencism and been unable to extricate themselves, are lost to the movement. The masses will never accept them as the Revolutionary Vanguard.
VI. Defencism and the Fourth International Leadership
Defencist tendencies in the Fourth International have manifested themselves most markedly in precisely those countries in which the proletariat has more than its chains to lose—those countries which possess or possessed at the outbreak of the war colonial empires on the basis of which the bourgeoisie could grant its proletariat a privileged position. Hence it is not surprising to find that one feature of this defencism is expressed as a desire to “defeat fascism”—i.e., as opposition to the loss of a privileged position—as a pampered slave.
Such opportunism must inevitably infect and is in fact infecting every aspect of Fourth International policy. In America and Britain the Fourth International is following in the footsteps of the 2nd., and 3rd., Internationals and it is useless to attempt to appeal to the absence of a distinct social strata in the Fourth International as the basis for degeneration. “History knows degenerations of all sorts” and the ideological influence of a “parasitic” proletariat may yet provide the basis for the death of Trotsky’s International.
If the Fourth International is to live it must purge its ranks of all defencists. Not the slightest concession must be made to revolutionary defencism. At the core lies the need for a firm internationalist leadership which can resist the pressure of alien interests. This, not “objective conditions,” is the only guarantee that the Fourth International can fulfill its historic role.
*******
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-"The Internationale"- A Working Class Song For All Seasons
Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of a performance of the Internationale.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
********************
The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]
Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'Internationale
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain
Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud
L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.
Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux
Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Die Internationale
Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!
Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht
Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!
In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The English version most commonly sung in South Africa. )
The Internationale
Arise ye prisoners of starvation
Arise ye toilers of the earth
For reason thunders new creation
`Tis a better world in birth.
Never more traditions' chains shall bind us
Arise ye toilers no more in thrall
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We are naught but we shall be all.
Then comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Zulu) i-Internationale
n'zigqila zezwe lonke
Vukan'ejokwen'lobugqili
Sizokwakh'umhlaba kabusha
Siqed'indlala nobumpofu.
lamasik'okusibopha
Asilwise yonk'incindezelo
Manj'umhlab'unesakhiw'esisha
Asisodwa Kulomkhankaso
Maqaban'wozan'sihlanganeni
Sibhekene nempi yamanqamu
I-Internationale
Ibumb'uluntu lonke
*****
British Translation Billy Bragg's Revision[16] American version
First stanza
Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!
Away with all your superstitions,
Servile masses, arise, arise!
We'll change henceforth the old tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize!
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.
So come brothers and sisters,
For the struggle carries on.
The Internationale,
Unites the world in song.
So comrades, come rally,
For this is the time and place!
The international ideal,
Unites the human race.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
********************
The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]
Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'Internationale
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain
Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud
L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.
Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux
Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Die Internationale
Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!
Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht
Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!
In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The English version most commonly sung in South Africa. )
The Internationale
Arise ye prisoners of starvation
Arise ye toilers of the earth
For reason thunders new creation
`Tis a better world in birth.
Never more traditions' chains shall bind us
Arise ye toilers no more in thrall
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We are naught but we shall be all.
Then comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Zulu) i-Internationale
n'zigqila zezwe lonke
Vukan'ejokwen'lobugqili
Sizokwakh'umhlaba kabusha
Siqed'indlala nobumpofu.
lamasik'okusibopha
Asilwise yonk'incindezelo
Manj'umhlab'unesakhiw'esisha
Asisodwa Kulomkhankaso
Maqaban'wozan'sihlanganeni
Sibhekene nempi yamanqamu
I-Internationale
Ibumb'uluntu lonke
*****
British Translation Billy Bragg's Revision[16] American version
First stanza
Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!
Away with all your superstitions,
Servile masses, arise, arise!
We'll change henceforth the old tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize!
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.
So come brothers and sisters,
For the struggle carries on.
The Internationale,
Unites the world in song.
So comrades, come rally,
For this is the time and place!
The international ideal,
Unites the human race.
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-"Christmas In The Trenches" (World War I)
Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of a performace of Christmas In The Trenches.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*********
Christmas In The Trenches lyrics
My name is Francis Tolliver.
I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung.
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
when across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound.
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
as one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singin' bloody well you know",
my partner says to me.
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony.
The cannons rested silent.
The gas cloud rolled no moreas Christmas brought us respite from the war. As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent.
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht".
"Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
and in two tougues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried.
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side.
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
as he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night.
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
with neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand.
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
and in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
these sons and fathers far away from families of their own.
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
this curious and unlikely band of men.
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more.
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war.
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung.
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
had been crumbled and were gone for ever more.
My name is Francis Tolliver.
In Liverpool I dwell.
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well.
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
and on each end of the rifle we're the same.
-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches"
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*********
Christmas In The Trenches lyrics
My name is Francis Tolliver.
I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung.
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
when across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound.
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
as one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singin' bloody well you know",
my partner says to me.
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony.
The cannons rested silent.
The gas cloud rolled no moreas Christmas brought us respite from the war. As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent.
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht".
"Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
and in two tougues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried.
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side.
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
as he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night.
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
with neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand.
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
and in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
these sons and fathers far away from families of their own.
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
this curious and unlikely band of men.
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more.
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war.
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung.
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
had been crumbled and were gone for ever more.
My name is Francis Tolliver.
In Liverpool I dwell.
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well.
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
and on each end of the rifle we're the same.
-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches"
Friday, December 24, 2010
*From The Archives Of The American Communist Party-James Cannon On The Early Days Of The Party -After Ruthenberg (Early Party General Secretary)
Markin comment:
In the introduction to a recent posting that started a series entitled From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.) I noted the following that applies to this series on the roots of the American Communist Party as well:
“In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive…..”
I am continuing today in that vane in what I also anticipate will be an on-going series on the early days of the American Communist party from which we who are students of Leon Trotsky trace our roots. Those roots extend from the 1919 until 1929 when those who would go on after being expelled, led by James P. Cannon, to form the Socialist Workers Party which also is part of our heritage. That is not the end of the matter though as the American Communist Party also represented a trend in the 1930s, the Popular front strategic policy, that has bedeviled revolutionaries ever since in one form or another. Those 1930s issues need to be addressed as well.
*********
Additional comment on this article-Markin
A certain amount of caution is needed in dealing with the Stalinized American Communist Party, as with the Communist International, because the Stalinists, then and now, were more than happy to slander political opponents on their left, and to rewrite history for their own purposes. Hardly a new idea among those who “win” whatever battle they are fighting. But a little bit tough on those of us who are trying to draw the lessons of the past for today’s left-wing militants. This series starts with the reflections of that early Communist leader mentioned above, James P. Cannon, who had his own axes to grind politically, no question. However, as Theodore Draper who wrote the definitive study on the history of the early American Communist Party in two volumes noted, of all the people whom he interviewed for the his books James Cannon was the one that stood out as wanting to remember as truthfully as he could that early history. I will use that statement as the touchstone for using Cannon’s work first. William Z. Foster, Earl Browder and the others will get their chance later.
********
James P. Cannon
Letters to a Historian
(1954 – 1956)
* * *
These articles from the magazines Fourth International and International Socialist Review are based on letters Cannon wrote to Theodore Draper who was then researching his two-volume series on the history of the US Communist Party
Written: March 1954 to February 1956.
Published: Fourth International, Summer 1954–Spring 1956, & International Socialist Review, Summer 1956–Spring 1957. Source: Original bound volumes of Fourth International and International Socialist Review and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive
******
James P. Cannon
Early Years of the American Communist Movement
Letters to a Historian
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After Ruthenberg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.17 No.3, Summer 1956, pp.89-92, 107.
Original bound volumes of International Socialist Review and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 22, 1955
Dear Sir:
The sudden death of Ruthenberg in March 1927 upset the shaky equilibrium in the party, and called forth the second direct intervention of the Comintern to thwart the will of the party majority and to determine the composition of the party leadership over its head.
Ruthenberg had always played a big role in the party, and he had seemed to be perennially established in the office of General Secretary. His death in the prime of his life really shook things up.
The two “big names” in the party at that time were those of Foster and Ruthenberg, and the prestige of both had been well earned by their previous record of constructive activity. Foster was renowned for his work as organizer and leader of the great steel strike of 1919 and his subsequent achievements as organizer of the TUEL; Ruthenberg for his heroic fight against the war and his outstanding activity as a pioneer communist, and also for his prison terms, bravely borne. The party members were well aware of the value of their public reputations and, by common consent, the two men held positions of special eminence as party leaders and public spokesmen for that reason. Factional activity had added nothing to the prestige of the two most popular leaders; if anything, it had somewhat tarnished it.
Of all the leading people in his faction, Ruthenberg had by far the greatest respect and personal influence in the party ranks. The faction was demonstratively called the “Ruthenberg Group” in order to capitalize on his prestige. But the Ruthenberg group, with Ruthenberg, was a minority in the party, as the hard-fought elections to the 1925 Convention had clearly demonstrated.
At the time of the 1925 Convention the “cable from Moscow,” as interpreted by the Comintern representative on the ground, had abruptly turned this minority into a majority and left the party members, who had innocently voted for their choice of delegates to the party convention, looking like fools who had mistakenly thought they had some rights and prerogatives in the matter of electing the party leadership.
Another “cable from Moscow” worked the same miracle of turning a minority into a majority in 1927. Supplementary decisions along the same line gradually bludgeoned the party members into acquiescence and reduced their democratic powers to a fiction. The role of the Comintern in the affairs of the American Communist Party was transformed from that of a friendly influence in matters of policy into that of a direct, brutal arbiter in organizational questions, including the most important question, the selection of the leadership.
Thereafter, the party retained only the dubious right to go through the motions; the decisions were made in Moscow. The process of transforming the party from a self-governing, democratic organization into a puppet of the Kremlin, which had been started in 1925, was advanced another big stage toward completion in 1927. That is the essential meaning of this year in party history. Everything else is secondary and incidental.
* * *
The shaky formal “majority” of the Ruthenberg group had been upset even before Ruthenberg died by the defection of committee members Weinstone and Ballam. Then came the sudden death of Ruthenberg, to deprive the faction of its most influential personality and its strongest claim to the confidence of the party ranks. How then could such an attenuated minority faction, without Ruthenberg, hope to “control” the party and avoid coming to agreement for cooperation with the other groups who constituted the majority in the Central Executive Committee?
We took it for granted that it couldn’t be done, and proceeded on the assumption that a rearrangement of the leading staff had to follow as a matter of course. But it didn’t work out that way. The cards were stacked for a different outcome; and we were defeated before we started. All we had on our side were the rules of arithmetic, the constitutional rights of the majority of the Central Executive Committee, the logic of the situation, and the undoubted support of the majority of the party at the time. All that was not enough.
On his side, Lovestone had his own driving frenzy to seize control of the party, regardless of the will of the majority, and the support of Moscow. These proved to be the ace cards in the game that was drawn out over a period of six months to its foreordained conclusion. Lovestone came out of the skirmish of 1927 with the “majority“ – given to him by the Comintern – and held it until the same supreme authority decided to take it away from him two years later.
* * *
Lovestone took the first trick by having himself appointed by the Political Committee to the post of General Secretary, vacated by Ruthenberg’s death. Constitutionally, this was out of order. The right to appoint party officers belonged to the full Plenum of the Central Executive Committee, the Political Committee being merely a subcommittee of that body.
We demanded the immediate calling of a full Plenum to deal with all the problems arising from Ruthenberg’s death, including the appointment of his successor in the post of party secretary. Weinstone and I had come to agreement with Foster that Weinstone should become the new party secretary; and since we represented a majority of the Plenum, we expected to execute the decision.
Then came trick number two for Lovestone. The Comintern cabled its decision that the Plenum could meet all right, but it could not make any binding decisions on organizational questions pending a consideration of the whole matter in Moscow. All the leading representatives of the factions were to come to Moscow for that purpose. Since the chief “organizational questions” were the reorganization of the Political Committee along the lines of the Plenum majority, and the appointment of a new party secretary, this cable of the Comintern, ostensibly withholding judgment, actually left Lovestone in control at both points – de facto if not de jure.
The meeting of the sovereign Plenum of the Communist Party of the United States, forbidden in advance to make any binding decisions, was made even more farcical by the failure of Lovestone to show up for the second session. He and Gitlow had abruptly departed for Moscow, where the decisions were to be made, without so much as a by-your-leave or goodbye to the elected leading body of the party to which they, like all other party members, were presumably-or so it said in the constitution-subordinate.
In a moderately healthy, self-governing party, involved in the class struggle in its own country and functioning under its own power, such reckless contempt for its own leading body would no doubt be sufficient to discredit its author and bring prompt condemnation from the party ranks. Nothing like that happened in reaction to the hooligan conduct of Lovestone on this occasion. The majority of the Plenum blew up in anger. Foster fussed and fumed and gave vent to his indignation in unparliamentary language. But there was nothing that we, the duly elected majority, could do about it; we could not make any “binding decisions” on any question – the Comintern cable had forbidden that.
Since 1925 the party had gradually been acquiescing in the blotting out of its normal rights as a self-governing organization until it had already lost sight of these rights. Lovestone’s scandalous action on this occasion only underscored the real status of the party in relation to the Moscow overlords.
* * *
There was nothing to do but head for Moscow once again in order to try to straighten out another supposed “misunderstanding.” Viewed retrospectively, our credulity in those days passeth all understanding, and it gives me a sticky feeling to recall it. I feel a bit shy about admitting it even now, after the lapse of so many years and the occurrence of so many more important things, but Weinstone and I went to Moscow together full of confidence that our program for the rearrangement of the leadership on a collective basis, and the liquidation of the old factions, would receive the support of the Comintern.
Since neither of the other factions claiming the right to control and “hegemony” in the leadership could muster a majority in the Central Executive Committee, while we constituted a definite balance of power, we believed that the other factions would be compelled to acquiesce in our program, at least for the next period.
We ourselves did not aim at organizational control of the party, either as a separate faction or in combination with one of the others. Our aim was to loosen up all the factional alignments and create conditions in the leading committee where each individual would be free to take a position objectively, on the merits of any political question which might come up, without regard to previous factional alignments.
In discussion among ourselves, and in our general propaganda in the party, we were beginning to emphasize the idea that political questions should take precedence over organizational considerations, including even party “control.” There were no irreconcilable political differences between the factions at the moment. That seemed to favor our program for the assimilation of the leading elements of each faction in a collective leading body. We believed that the subordination of political questions to organizational considerations of faction control – a state of affairs already prevailing to a considerable extent – could only miseducate and corrupt the party membership as well as the leadership.
For my part, I was just then beginning to assimilate with full understanding, and to take in dead earnest, the Leninist principle that important political considerations should always come first. That marked the beginning of a reorientation which was eventually to lead me out of the factional jungle of that time onto the high road of principled politics. I did not see how the Comintern, which I still regarded as the embodied representative of the principles of Lenin, could fail to support our stand.
* * *
Sharp practices in many factional struggles have given rise to the skeptical saying: “When one accepts a position ’in principle’ it means that he rejects it in practice.” That is not always true, but that is what we got in Moscow in 1927 – an acceptance of our program “in principle,” with supplementary statements to vitiate it. We found agreement on all sides that the factions should be liquidated and the leadership unified. But this was followed by the intimation in the written decision that the Lovestoneites should have “hegemony” in the unification – -which was the surest way to guarantee that the “unification” would be a farcical cover for factional domination.
The official decision condemned “the sharpening of the factional struggle“ – which the Lovestoneites had caused by their conduct at the party Plenum – but blamed the “National Committee of the Opposition Bloc” for this “sharpening.” The decision incorporated our formula that “the previous political and trade union differences have almost disappeared.” Then it went on to condemn “factionalism without political differences as the worst offense against the party” – which was precisely what the Lovestoneites’ attempt to seize party control consisted of – but blamed this “offense” on the “Opposition Bloc.” The Comintern decision on the “American Question” in 1927 is a real study in casuistry for those who may be interested in that black art.
There was nothing clear-cut and straightforward in the Comintern decision this time, as had been the case in earlier times over disputed political questions. The moderation of factional struggle, party peace, unity and cooperation were emphasized. But the official decision was slanted to imply – without anywhere clearly stating – that the Lovestone faction was favored in the coming election of delegates to the party convention. That made certain that there would be no unity and cooperation, but a factional gangfight for control of the convention, and a factional regime in the party afterward if the Lovestoneites gained a majority.
* * *
We knew that we had won no victory at Moscow in 1927. But the acceptance of our “general principles” encouraged us to continue the fight; we knew that these general principles did not have a dog’s chance in the party if the Lovestone faction established itself in control with a formal majority at the Convention.
It was only then, in the course of the discussion in Moscow and after the formal decision, that the bloc of Weinstone-Cannon with Foster was formally cemented to put up a joint slate in the pre-convention struggle for delegates to the pending party convention.
Previously there had been only an agreement at the Plenum to vote for Weinstone as party secretary. Now we agreed to unite our forces in the pre-convention fight to prevent the Lovestoneites from gaining factional control.
That six-months period, from the death of Ruthenberg to the party convention at the end of August, was an eye-opener to me in two respects. First, clearly apparent changes had taken place in the party which already then aroused in me the gravest misgivings for the future. The party had started out as a body of independent-minded rebels, regulating its internal affairs and selecting its own leaders in an honest, free-and-easy democracy. That had been one of its strongest attractions.
But by 1927 the Communist Party was no longer its original self. Its membership was visibly changing into a passive crowd, subservient to authority and subject to manipulation by the crudest demagogy. This period showed, more clearly than I had realized before, the extent to which the independent influence of the national party leaders, as such, had been whittled down and subordinated to the overriding authority of Moscow. Many party members had begun to look to Moscow, not only for decisions on policy, but even for suggestions as to which national leader or set of leaders they should vote for.
Secondly, in 1927 Lovestone became Lovestone. That, in itself, was an event boding no good for the party. Previously Lovestone had worked under cover of Ruthenberg, adapting himself accordingly and buying the favor, or at least the toleration, of the party on Ruthenberg’s credit. In those days, even the central leaders of the factions, who encountered Lovestone at close quarters and learned to have a healthy awareness of his malign talents, never saw the whole man.
We now saw Lovestone for the first time on his own, with all his demonic energy and capacity for reckless demagogy let loose, without the restraining influence of Ruthenberg. It was a spectacle to make one wonder whether he was living in a workers’ organization, aiming at the rational reorganization of society, or had wandered into a madhouse by mistake.
The death of Ruthenberg was taken by everyone else as a heavy blow to the faction he formally headed. But Lovestone bounded forward from the event as though he had been freed from a straitjacket. Beginning with the announcement, before Ruthenberg’s body was cold, that he had expressed the dying wish for Lovestone to become his successor in office, and a simultaneous appeal to Moscow to prevent the holding of a Plenum to act on the question, Lovestone was off to a running start in the race for control of the party; and he set a pace and a pattern in party factionalism, the like of which the faction-ridden party had never seen before.
* * *
Many critical observers were amazed and depressed by the cynical efficiency with which Eisenhower and Nixon were packaged and sold to a befuddled electorate in the last presidential election. I was perhaps less astonished by this slick and massively effective manipulation because I had seen the same kind of thing done before – in the Communist Party of the United States. Allowing for the necessary differences of scale and resources involved, Lovestone’s job of selling himself as the chosen heir of Ruthenberg and the favorite son of Moscow, in the 1927 party elections, was no less impressive than the professional operation of the Madison Avenue hucksters in 1952.
The sky was the limit this time, and all restraints were thrown aside. The internal party campaign of 1927 was a masterpiece of brazen demagogy calculated to provoke an emotional response in the party ranks. The pitch was to sell the body of Ruthenberg and the decision of the Comintern, with Lovestone wrapped up in the package. Even the funeral of Ruthenberg, and the attendant memorial ceremonies, were obscenely manipulated to start off the factional campaign on the appropriate note.
Lovestone, seconded by Wolfe, campaigned “for the Comintern” and created the atmosphere for a yes or no vote on that question, as though the elections for convention delegates simply posed the question of loyalty or disloyalty to the highest principle of international communism. The Comintern decision was brandished as a club to stampede the rank and file, and fears of possible reprisals for hesitation or doubt were cynically played upon.
These techniques of agitation, which, properly speaking, belong to the arsenal of fascism, paid off in the Communist Party of the United States in 1927. None of the seasoned cadres of the opposition were visibly affected by this unbridled incitement, but all along the fringes the forces of the opposition bloc gave way to the massive campaign. New members and weaker elements played safe by voting “for the Comintern”; furtive careerist elements, with an eye to the main chance, came out of their hiding places and climbed on the bandwagon.
The Lovestone faction, now headed by Lovestone, perhaps the least popular and certainly the most distrusted man in the party leadership, this time accomplished what the same faction, formerly headed by the popular and influential Ruthenberg, had never been able to do. Lovestone won a majority in the elections to the party convention and established the faction for the first time in real, as well as formal, control of the party apparatus.
* * *
Lovestone sold himself to the party as the choice of Moscow. He couldn’t know at that time, and neither could we, that he had really oversold himself. The invocation of the authority of Moscow in the internal party elections, and the conditioning of the party members to “vote for the Comintern,” rebounded against Lovestone himself two years later, when the same supreme authority decided that it was his time to walk the plank. Then it was easily demonstrated that what the Lord had given the Lord could take away.
The “majority” he had gained in the party was not his own. The same party members whom Lovestone had incited and conditioned to “vote for the Comintern” responded with the same reflex when they were commanded by the Comintern to vote against him. By his too-successful campaign “for the Comintern” in 1927, Lovestone had simply helped to create the conditions in the party for his own disaster.
Yours truly,
James P. Cannon
In the introduction to a recent posting that started a series entitled From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.) I noted the following that applies to this series on the roots of the American Communist Party as well:
“In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive…..”
I am continuing today in that vane in what I also anticipate will be an on-going series on the early days of the American Communist party from which we who are students of Leon Trotsky trace our roots. Those roots extend from the 1919 until 1929 when those who would go on after being expelled, led by James P. Cannon, to form the Socialist Workers Party which also is part of our heritage. That is not the end of the matter though as the American Communist Party also represented a trend in the 1930s, the Popular front strategic policy, that has bedeviled revolutionaries ever since in one form or another. Those 1930s issues need to be addressed as well.
*********
Additional comment on this article-Markin
A certain amount of caution is needed in dealing with the Stalinized American Communist Party, as with the Communist International, because the Stalinists, then and now, were more than happy to slander political opponents on their left, and to rewrite history for their own purposes. Hardly a new idea among those who “win” whatever battle they are fighting. But a little bit tough on those of us who are trying to draw the lessons of the past for today’s left-wing militants. This series starts with the reflections of that early Communist leader mentioned above, James P. Cannon, who had his own axes to grind politically, no question. However, as Theodore Draper who wrote the definitive study on the history of the early American Communist Party in two volumes noted, of all the people whom he interviewed for the his books James Cannon was the one that stood out as wanting to remember as truthfully as he could that early history. I will use that statement as the touchstone for using Cannon’s work first. William Z. Foster, Earl Browder and the others will get their chance later.
********
James P. Cannon
Letters to a Historian
(1954 – 1956)
* * *
These articles from the magazines Fourth International and International Socialist Review are based on letters Cannon wrote to Theodore Draper who was then researching his two-volume series on the history of the US Communist Party
Written: March 1954 to February 1956.
Published: Fourth International, Summer 1954–Spring 1956, & International Socialist Review, Summer 1956–Spring 1957. Source: Original bound volumes of Fourth International and International Socialist Review and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive
******
James P. Cannon
Early Years of the American Communist Movement
Letters to a Historian
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After Ruthenberg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.17 No.3, Summer 1956, pp.89-92, 107.
Original bound volumes of International Socialist Review and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 22, 1955
Dear Sir:
The sudden death of Ruthenberg in March 1927 upset the shaky equilibrium in the party, and called forth the second direct intervention of the Comintern to thwart the will of the party majority and to determine the composition of the party leadership over its head.
Ruthenberg had always played a big role in the party, and he had seemed to be perennially established in the office of General Secretary. His death in the prime of his life really shook things up.
The two “big names” in the party at that time were those of Foster and Ruthenberg, and the prestige of both had been well earned by their previous record of constructive activity. Foster was renowned for his work as organizer and leader of the great steel strike of 1919 and his subsequent achievements as organizer of the TUEL; Ruthenberg for his heroic fight against the war and his outstanding activity as a pioneer communist, and also for his prison terms, bravely borne. The party members were well aware of the value of their public reputations and, by common consent, the two men held positions of special eminence as party leaders and public spokesmen for that reason. Factional activity had added nothing to the prestige of the two most popular leaders; if anything, it had somewhat tarnished it.
Of all the leading people in his faction, Ruthenberg had by far the greatest respect and personal influence in the party ranks. The faction was demonstratively called the “Ruthenberg Group” in order to capitalize on his prestige. But the Ruthenberg group, with Ruthenberg, was a minority in the party, as the hard-fought elections to the 1925 Convention had clearly demonstrated.
At the time of the 1925 Convention the “cable from Moscow,” as interpreted by the Comintern representative on the ground, had abruptly turned this minority into a majority and left the party members, who had innocently voted for their choice of delegates to the party convention, looking like fools who had mistakenly thought they had some rights and prerogatives in the matter of electing the party leadership.
Another “cable from Moscow” worked the same miracle of turning a minority into a majority in 1927. Supplementary decisions along the same line gradually bludgeoned the party members into acquiescence and reduced their democratic powers to a fiction. The role of the Comintern in the affairs of the American Communist Party was transformed from that of a friendly influence in matters of policy into that of a direct, brutal arbiter in organizational questions, including the most important question, the selection of the leadership.
Thereafter, the party retained only the dubious right to go through the motions; the decisions were made in Moscow. The process of transforming the party from a self-governing, democratic organization into a puppet of the Kremlin, which had been started in 1925, was advanced another big stage toward completion in 1927. That is the essential meaning of this year in party history. Everything else is secondary and incidental.
* * *
The shaky formal “majority” of the Ruthenberg group had been upset even before Ruthenberg died by the defection of committee members Weinstone and Ballam. Then came the sudden death of Ruthenberg, to deprive the faction of its most influential personality and its strongest claim to the confidence of the party ranks. How then could such an attenuated minority faction, without Ruthenberg, hope to “control” the party and avoid coming to agreement for cooperation with the other groups who constituted the majority in the Central Executive Committee?
We took it for granted that it couldn’t be done, and proceeded on the assumption that a rearrangement of the leading staff had to follow as a matter of course. But it didn’t work out that way. The cards were stacked for a different outcome; and we were defeated before we started. All we had on our side were the rules of arithmetic, the constitutional rights of the majority of the Central Executive Committee, the logic of the situation, and the undoubted support of the majority of the party at the time. All that was not enough.
On his side, Lovestone had his own driving frenzy to seize control of the party, regardless of the will of the majority, and the support of Moscow. These proved to be the ace cards in the game that was drawn out over a period of six months to its foreordained conclusion. Lovestone came out of the skirmish of 1927 with the “majority“ – given to him by the Comintern – and held it until the same supreme authority decided to take it away from him two years later.
* * *
Lovestone took the first trick by having himself appointed by the Political Committee to the post of General Secretary, vacated by Ruthenberg’s death. Constitutionally, this was out of order. The right to appoint party officers belonged to the full Plenum of the Central Executive Committee, the Political Committee being merely a subcommittee of that body.
We demanded the immediate calling of a full Plenum to deal with all the problems arising from Ruthenberg’s death, including the appointment of his successor in the post of party secretary. Weinstone and I had come to agreement with Foster that Weinstone should become the new party secretary; and since we represented a majority of the Plenum, we expected to execute the decision.
Then came trick number two for Lovestone. The Comintern cabled its decision that the Plenum could meet all right, but it could not make any binding decisions on organizational questions pending a consideration of the whole matter in Moscow. All the leading representatives of the factions were to come to Moscow for that purpose. Since the chief “organizational questions” were the reorganization of the Political Committee along the lines of the Plenum majority, and the appointment of a new party secretary, this cable of the Comintern, ostensibly withholding judgment, actually left Lovestone in control at both points – de facto if not de jure.
The meeting of the sovereign Plenum of the Communist Party of the United States, forbidden in advance to make any binding decisions, was made even more farcical by the failure of Lovestone to show up for the second session. He and Gitlow had abruptly departed for Moscow, where the decisions were to be made, without so much as a by-your-leave or goodbye to the elected leading body of the party to which they, like all other party members, were presumably-or so it said in the constitution-subordinate.
In a moderately healthy, self-governing party, involved in the class struggle in its own country and functioning under its own power, such reckless contempt for its own leading body would no doubt be sufficient to discredit its author and bring prompt condemnation from the party ranks. Nothing like that happened in reaction to the hooligan conduct of Lovestone on this occasion. The majority of the Plenum blew up in anger. Foster fussed and fumed and gave vent to his indignation in unparliamentary language. But there was nothing that we, the duly elected majority, could do about it; we could not make any “binding decisions” on any question – the Comintern cable had forbidden that.
Since 1925 the party had gradually been acquiescing in the blotting out of its normal rights as a self-governing organization until it had already lost sight of these rights. Lovestone’s scandalous action on this occasion only underscored the real status of the party in relation to the Moscow overlords.
* * *
There was nothing to do but head for Moscow once again in order to try to straighten out another supposed “misunderstanding.” Viewed retrospectively, our credulity in those days passeth all understanding, and it gives me a sticky feeling to recall it. I feel a bit shy about admitting it even now, after the lapse of so many years and the occurrence of so many more important things, but Weinstone and I went to Moscow together full of confidence that our program for the rearrangement of the leadership on a collective basis, and the liquidation of the old factions, would receive the support of the Comintern.
Since neither of the other factions claiming the right to control and “hegemony” in the leadership could muster a majority in the Central Executive Committee, while we constituted a definite balance of power, we believed that the other factions would be compelled to acquiesce in our program, at least for the next period.
We ourselves did not aim at organizational control of the party, either as a separate faction or in combination with one of the others. Our aim was to loosen up all the factional alignments and create conditions in the leading committee where each individual would be free to take a position objectively, on the merits of any political question which might come up, without regard to previous factional alignments.
In discussion among ourselves, and in our general propaganda in the party, we were beginning to emphasize the idea that political questions should take precedence over organizational considerations, including even party “control.” There were no irreconcilable political differences between the factions at the moment. That seemed to favor our program for the assimilation of the leading elements of each faction in a collective leading body. We believed that the subordination of political questions to organizational considerations of faction control – a state of affairs already prevailing to a considerable extent – could only miseducate and corrupt the party membership as well as the leadership.
For my part, I was just then beginning to assimilate with full understanding, and to take in dead earnest, the Leninist principle that important political considerations should always come first. That marked the beginning of a reorientation which was eventually to lead me out of the factional jungle of that time onto the high road of principled politics. I did not see how the Comintern, which I still regarded as the embodied representative of the principles of Lenin, could fail to support our stand.
* * *
Sharp practices in many factional struggles have given rise to the skeptical saying: “When one accepts a position ’in principle’ it means that he rejects it in practice.” That is not always true, but that is what we got in Moscow in 1927 – an acceptance of our program “in principle,” with supplementary statements to vitiate it. We found agreement on all sides that the factions should be liquidated and the leadership unified. But this was followed by the intimation in the written decision that the Lovestoneites should have “hegemony” in the unification – -which was the surest way to guarantee that the “unification” would be a farcical cover for factional domination.
The official decision condemned “the sharpening of the factional struggle“ – which the Lovestoneites had caused by their conduct at the party Plenum – but blamed the “National Committee of the Opposition Bloc” for this “sharpening.” The decision incorporated our formula that “the previous political and trade union differences have almost disappeared.” Then it went on to condemn “factionalism without political differences as the worst offense against the party” – which was precisely what the Lovestoneites’ attempt to seize party control consisted of – but blamed this “offense” on the “Opposition Bloc.” The Comintern decision on the “American Question” in 1927 is a real study in casuistry for those who may be interested in that black art.
There was nothing clear-cut and straightforward in the Comintern decision this time, as had been the case in earlier times over disputed political questions. The moderation of factional struggle, party peace, unity and cooperation were emphasized. But the official decision was slanted to imply – without anywhere clearly stating – that the Lovestone faction was favored in the coming election of delegates to the party convention. That made certain that there would be no unity and cooperation, but a factional gangfight for control of the convention, and a factional regime in the party afterward if the Lovestoneites gained a majority.
* * *
We knew that we had won no victory at Moscow in 1927. But the acceptance of our “general principles” encouraged us to continue the fight; we knew that these general principles did not have a dog’s chance in the party if the Lovestone faction established itself in control with a formal majority at the Convention.
It was only then, in the course of the discussion in Moscow and after the formal decision, that the bloc of Weinstone-Cannon with Foster was formally cemented to put up a joint slate in the pre-convention struggle for delegates to the pending party convention.
Previously there had been only an agreement at the Plenum to vote for Weinstone as party secretary. Now we agreed to unite our forces in the pre-convention fight to prevent the Lovestoneites from gaining factional control.
That six-months period, from the death of Ruthenberg to the party convention at the end of August, was an eye-opener to me in two respects. First, clearly apparent changes had taken place in the party which already then aroused in me the gravest misgivings for the future. The party had started out as a body of independent-minded rebels, regulating its internal affairs and selecting its own leaders in an honest, free-and-easy democracy. That had been one of its strongest attractions.
But by 1927 the Communist Party was no longer its original self. Its membership was visibly changing into a passive crowd, subservient to authority and subject to manipulation by the crudest demagogy. This period showed, more clearly than I had realized before, the extent to which the independent influence of the national party leaders, as such, had been whittled down and subordinated to the overriding authority of Moscow. Many party members had begun to look to Moscow, not only for decisions on policy, but even for suggestions as to which national leader or set of leaders they should vote for.
Secondly, in 1927 Lovestone became Lovestone. That, in itself, was an event boding no good for the party. Previously Lovestone had worked under cover of Ruthenberg, adapting himself accordingly and buying the favor, or at least the toleration, of the party on Ruthenberg’s credit. In those days, even the central leaders of the factions, who encountered Lovestone at close quarters and learned to have a healthy awareness of his malign talents, never saw the whole man.
We now saw Lovestone for the first time on his own, with all his demonic energy and capacity for reckless demagogy let loose, without the restraining influence of Ruthenberg. It was a spectacle to make one wonder whether he was living in a workers’ organization, aiming at the rational reorganization of society, or had wandered into a madhouse by mistake.
The death of Ruthenberg was taken by everyone else as a heavy blow to the faction he formally headed. But Lovestone bounded forward from the event as though he had been freed from a straitjacket. Beginning with the announcement, before Ruthenberg’s body was cold, that he had expressed the dying wish for Lovestone to become his successor in office, and a simultaneous appeal to Moscow to prevent the holding of a Plenum to act on the question, Lovestone was off to a running start in the race for control of the party; and he set a pace and a pattern in party factionalism, the like of which the faction-ridden party had never seen before.
* * *
Many critical observers were amazed and depressed by the cynical efficiency with which Eisenhower and Nixon were packaged and sold to a befuddled electorate in the last presidential election. I was perhaps less astonished by this slick and massively effective manipulation because I had seen the same kind of thing done before – in the Communist Party of the United States. Allowing for the necessary differences of scale and resources involved, Lovestone’s job of selling himself as the chosen heir of Ruthenberg and the favorite son of Moscow, in the 1927 party elections, was no less impressive than the professional operation of the Madison Avenue hucksters in 1952.
The sky was the limit this time, and all restraints were thrown aside. The internal party campaign of 1927 was a masterpiece of brazen demagogy calculated to provoke an emotional response in the party ranks. The pitch was to sell the body of Ruthenberg and the decision of the Comintern, with Lovestone wrapped up in the package. Even the funeral of Ruthenberg, and the attendant memorial ceremonies, were obscenely manipulated to start off the factional campaign on the appropriate note.
Lovestone, seconded by Wolfe, campaigned “for the Comintern” and created the atmosphere for a yes or no vote on that question, as though the elections for convention delegates simply posed the question of loyalty or disloyalty to the highest principle of international communism. The Comintern decision was brandished as a club to stampede the rank and file, and fears of possible reprisals for hesitation or doubt were cynically played upon.
These techniques of agitation, which, properly speaking, belong to the arsenal of fascism, paid off in the Communist Party of the United States in 1927. None of the seasoned cadres of the opposition were visibly affected by this unbridled incitement, but all along the fringes the forces of the opposition bloc gave way to the massive campaign. New members and weaker elements played safe by voting “for the Comintern”; furtive careerist elements, with an eye to the main chance, came out of their hiding places and climbed on the bandwagon.
The Lovestone faction, now headed by Lovestone, perhaps the least popular and certainly the most distrusted man in the party leadership, this time accomplished what the same faction, formerly headed by the popular and influential Ruthenberg, had never been able to do. Lovestone won a majority in the elections to the party convention and established the faction for the first time in real, as well as formal, control of the party apparatus.
* * *
Lovestone sold himself to the party as the choice of Moscow. He couldn’t know at that time, and neither could we, that he had really oversold himself. The invocation of the authority of Moscow in the internal party elections, and the conditioning of the party members to “vote for the Comintern,” rebounded against Lovestone himself two years later, when the same supreme authority decided that it was his time to walk the plank. Then it was easily demonstrated that what the Lord had given the Lord could take away.
The “majority” he had gained in the party was not his own. The same party members whom Lovestone had incited and conditioned to “vote for the Comintern” responded with the same reflex when they were commanded by the Comintern to vote against him. By his too-successful campaign “for the Comintern” in 1927, Lovestone had simply helped to create the conditions in the party for his own disaster.
Yours truly,
James P. Cannon
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