From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle 

From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America)- Some Lessons of the Toledo Strike

Frank Jackman comment:

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. A recent example of that linkage in this space was when I argued in this space that, for those who stand in the Trotskyist tradition, one must examine closely the fate of Marx’s First International, the generic socialist Second International, Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Revolution-inspired Communist International, and Trotsky’s revolutionary successor, the Fourth International before one looks elsewhere for a centralized international working class organization that codifies the principle –“workers of the world unite.”

On the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I am speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, 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 made up the organization under review, the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Beyond that there are several directions to go in but these are the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s. If I am asked, and I have been, this is the material that I suggest young militants should start of studying to learn about our common political forbears. And that premise underlines the point of the entries that will posted under this headline in further exploration of the early days, “the dog days” of the Socialist Workers Party.

Note: I can just now almost hear some very nice and proper socialists (descendants of those socialism for dentist-types) just now, screaming in the night, yelling what about Max Shachtman (and, I presume, his henchman, Albert Glotzer, as well) and his various organizational formations starting with the Workers party when he split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1940? Well, what about old Max and his “third camp” tradition? I said the Trotskyist tradition not the State Department socialist tradition. If you want to trace Marxist continuity that way, go to it. That, in any case, is not my sense of continuity, although old Max knew how to “speak” Marxism early in his career under Jim Cannon’s prodding. Moreover at the name Max Shachtman I can hear some moaning, some serious moaning about blackguards and turncoats, from the revolutionary pantheon by Messrs. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. I rest my case.

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Trotskyist Work in the Trade Unions

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by Chris Knox

Part 4 of 4

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Stalinism and Social-Patriotism

With the onset of World War II and the wave of jingoism which swept away their trade-unionist allies of the prewar period, the Trotskyists were forced to retreat. They adopted a "policy of caution" in the unions, which meant virtual inaction, especially at first. Although the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was driven from its main base in the Minneapolis Teamsters through a combination of government persecution and attack by the Teamsters bureaucracy and the Stalinists, in general the "policy of caution" had the desired effect of protecting the trade-union cadre from victimization.
However, the "policy of caution" had another side to it. With the rupture of their alliances with the "progressive" trade unionists, the Trotskyists had not dropped their reliance on blocs around immediate issues in the unions. They merely recognized that with both the Stalinists and "progressives" lined up for the war, Roosevelt and the no-strike pledge, there was no section of the trade-union bureaucracy with which they could make a principled bloc. Thus their inaction was in part a recognition that any action along the lines to which they were accustomed in the trade unions would be opportunist, i.e., would necessarily entail unprincipled blocs and alliances. Any action not involving blocs and alliances with some section of the trade-union bureaucracy was virtually inconceivable.
At first, the rupture of the earlier alliances and enforced inactivity had a healthy effect, exposing the limitations of such alliances and enforcing the recognition that in trade-union work as in all other spheres of party-building, only principled political agreement assures permanence:

"There is only one thing that binds men together in times of great stress. That is agreement on great principles....

"All those comrades who think we have something, big or little, in the trade union movement should get out a magnifying glass in the next period and look at what we really have. You will find that what we have is our party fractions and the circle of sympathizers around them. That is what you can rely on.... The rule will be that the general run of pure and simple trade unionists, the nonpolitical activists, the latent patriots--they will betray us at the most decisive moment. What we will have in the unions in the hour of test will be what we build in the form of firm fractions of convinced Bolsheviks."

--James P. Cannon, "The Stalinists and the United Front," Socialist Appeal, 19 October 1940

As the war dragged on, however, opportunities for activity mounted as the workers chafed under the restrictions imposed upon them by their leaders in the name of the imperialist conflict. Rank-and-file rebellion, in the form of unauthorized strikes, broke out in a mounting wave starting in 1942. These led to mounting opposition to the solid, pro-war bureaucratic phalanx. For the most part, the SWP went very slow on participation in these struggles. It wasn't until 1945 that a formal change of policy was made, although exceptions to the rule began earlier.
While seeking to preserve their precious trade-union cadre through a policy of inaction within the unions, the Trotskyists concentrated on public propaganda and agitational campaigns aimed at the unions largely from the outside, through the party press. The campaign against the war centered largely on the defense case of the Minneapolis 18--the 18 Trotskyists and leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters who were railroaded to jail under the Smith Act.

Minneapolis Defense Case

The 18 were the first victims of the Smith Act of 1940, which was the first law since the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 to make the mere advocacy of views a crime. Initiated in 1941 directly by Roosevelt (ostensibly at the request of Teamsters President Tobin), the case was an important part of the drive by the bourgeoisie, working hand-in-hand with its agents, the labor bureaucrats, to "purify" and discipline the work force for subordination to the imperialist war. The legal persecution consummated Tobin's attempts to get rid of the Trotskyists in Minneapolis, which had coincided with the lining up of the bureaucracy for the war.
However, because of its clear and open contradiction with the stated principles of bourgeois democracy, and thus with the stated goals of the war, the Smith Act prosecution of the Trotskyists caused a rupture within the bureaucracy and became a point of opposition to the government throughout the labor movement. Publishing the testimony of the chief defendant, James P. Cannon, and the closing, argument of the defense attorney, Albert Goldman, as pamphlets (Socialism On Trial and In Defense of Socialism), the SWP exploited the case heavily as a basic defense of socialist ideas and principled opposition to the imperialist war. Though they failed to prevent the destruction of the militant Minneapolis Teamsters local under the combined hammer blows of Tobin and Roosevelt, the Trotskyists' propaganda campaign around the case had a significant impact and aided party recruiting.
The vicious treachery ot the Stalinists was underlined and exposed to many by their refusal to defend the Trotskyists against this persecution by the class enemy. Despite the fact that the CP was still opposed to the entry of the U.S. into the war at the time (during the Hitler-Stalin Pact period, 1939-41), it leapt at once onto the prosecutor's bandwagon.

"The Communist Party has always exposed, fought against and today joins the fight to exterminate the Trotskyite Fifth Column from the life of our nation."

--Daily Worker, 16 August 1941

More than any other force on the left, it was Stalinism, through such fundamental betrayals of class principles as this, which poisoned class consciousness and undermined the fighting ability of the proletariat. Later, during the cold-war witchhunt, when the CP was the victim of the same Smith Act and bureaucratic purge, the militant workers were so disgusted with its role that they were mobilized by anti-communist bureaucrats who smashed virtually every last vestige of class-conscious opposition in the labor movement. Despite its strong position within the CIO bureaucracy in 1941, the CP was unable to prevent the CIO and many of its affiliates from denouncing the Minneapolis prosecution; in 1949, however, the CP's betrayal of the Minneapolis defendants was held up to it by opportunists in the CIO as an excuse for not defending it against the witchhunt. The Trotskyists defended the CP in 1949, but the CP refused their help, wrecking its own defense committees in order to keep Trotskyists out.

Defense Policy Criticized

While the conduct of the Trotskyists' defense in the Minneapolis trial was a good defensive exposition of the ideas of socialism, it was clearly deficient in not taking an offensive thrust, in failing to turn the tables on the system and to put it on trial. The Spanish Trotskyist Grandizo Munis raised this criticism, among others, of the SWP leaders' defense policy. Although he failed to take sufficiently into account the need for defensive formulations to protect the party's legality, Munis correctly complained of a lack of political offensive in Cannon's testimony.

"It was there, replying to the political accusations--struggle against the war, advocacy of violence, overthrow of the government by force--where it is necessary to have raised the tone and turned the tables, accuse the government and the bourgeoisie of a reactionary conspiracy; of permanent violence against the majority of the population, physical, economic, moral, educative violence; of launching the population into a slaughter also by means of violence in order to defend the Sixty Families."

--"A Criticism of the Minneapolis Trial"

In his reply, Cannon condemned Munis for demanding ultra-left adventurist "calls to action" instead of propaganda, but he failed to adequately answer the charge of political passivity and of a weak, defensive stance. His reply ("Political Principles and Propaganda Methods") overemphasized the need to patiently explain revolutionary politics to a backward working class, lacking in political consciousness. After the war, when the shackles of war discipline were removed from the working class, this error was inverted in an overemphasis of the momentary upsurge in class struggle.

Lewis and the Miners: 1943

Most of the opportunities for intervention in the unions during the war consisted in leading rank-and-file struggles against a monolithic, pro-war bureaucracy. The exception to this pattern was Lewis and the UMW. Having broken with Roosevelt before the war because of what he felt to be insufficient favors and attention, Lewis authorized miners' strikes in 1943 which broke the facade of the no-strike pledge. This galvanized the opposition of the rest of the bureaucracy, which feared a general outpouring of strike struggles. Not only the rabidly patriotic, pro-war CP, but other bureaucrats as well, heaped scorn on the miners, calling them "fascist."
While the SWP was correct in its orientation toward united-front support to Lewis against the government and the bulk of the trade-union bureaucracy, the tone of this support failed to take into account the fact that Lewis was a reformist trade unionist, completely pro-capitalist, who therefore had to betray the eager following he was gathering by authorizing strikes during the war. He did this, performing what was perhaps his greatest service for capitalism, by heading off the rising tide of sentiment for a labor party. Focusing opposition to Roosevelt on himself, Lewis misled and demoralized masses of workers throughout the country by advocating a vote for the Republican, Wendell Wilkie, in the 1944 elections. Instead of warning of Lewis' real role, the Militant appears not only supportive but genuinely uncritical during the 1943 strikes.

"[Lewis] despite his inconsistencies and failure to draw the proper conclusions...has emerged again as the outstanding leader of the union movement, towering above the Greens and Murrays as though they were pygmies, and has rewon the support of the miners and the ranks of other unions."

--Militant, 8 May 1943

Though written from the outside, and therefore unable to intervene directly, the articles on the 1943 miners' strikes by Art Preis nevertheless reveal an unwarranted infatuation with Lewis which was evoked by the SWP's over-concentration on blocs with left bureaucrats, to the detriment of the struggle for revolutionary leadership.
The struggle against the no-strike pledge reached its highest pitch in the United Auto Workers, which had a militant rank and file and a tradition of democratic intra-union struggle not because of the absence of bureaucracy, but because of the failure of any one bureaucratic tendency to dominate. Despite their fundamental agreement on the war and no-strike pledge, the counter-posed tendencies continued to squabble among themselves as part of their endless competition for office. The wing around Reuther tried to appear to the left by opposing the excesses of the Stalinists such as the latter's proposal for a system of war-time incentive pay to induce speed-up, but in reality was no better on the basic issue of the war.

Auto Workers Fight the No-Strike Pledge

The struggle reached a peak at the 1944 UAW convention. Debate around the issue raged through five days of the convention. The highly political delegates were on their toes, ready for bureaucratic tricks. On the first day, they defeated by an overwhelming margin a proposal to elect new officers early in the convention and insisted that this be the last point: after positions on the issues were clear. The Reuther tendency dropped to its lowest authority during the war because of its role in saving the day for the no-strike pledge, through proposing that the pledge be retained until the issue could be decided by a membership referendum.
The convention was marked by the appearance of the Rank and File Caucus, an oppositional grouping organized primarily by local leaders in Detroit. It was based on four points: end the no-strike pledge, labor leaders off the government War Labor Board, for an independent labor party and smash the "Little Steel" formula (i.e., break the freeze on wage raises). This caucus was the best grouping of its kind to emerge during the war. A similar local leadership oppositional grouping in the rubber workers' union was criticized by the SWP for its contradictory position: while opposing the no-strike pledge and War Labor Board, it nevertheless favored the war itself (Militant, 26 August 1944).
The SWP's work around the UAW RFC was also a high point in Trotskyist trade-union work. Though representing only a partial break from trade-union reformism by secondary bureaucrats, the RFC was qualitatively to the left of the bureaucracy as a whole. Its program represented a break with the key points upon which the imperialist bourgeoisie relied in its dependence on the trade unions to keep the workers tied to the imperialist aims of the state, The SWP was correct to enter and build this caucus, since pursuance of its program was bound to enhance revolutionary leadership.
The SWP's support, however, was not ingratiating or uncritical as was its early support to Lewis. As the caucus was forming before the convention, the SWP spoke to it in the following terms, seeking to maximize political clarity:

"This group, in the process of development and crystallization, is an extremely hopeful sign, although it still contains tendencies opposed to a fully-rounded, effective program and some who are still reluctant to sever completely their ties with all the present international leaders and power cliques.

"There is a tendency which thinks that all the auto workers' problems will be solved simply by elimination of the no-strike pledge. They fail to take into account the fundamental problem: that the basic issues confronting the workers today can and will be solved, in the final analysis, only by political means."

--Militant. 2 September 1944

UAW leaders in 1945: (from left) Frankensteen, Addes, Thomas, Reuther. SWP trade-union policy concentrated on blocs with bureaucrats, rather than building revolutionary pole, first backing Reuther, then Thomas-Addes.

The article went on to advocate a labor party based on the trade unions with a "fundamental program against the financial parasites and monopolists." The caucus adopted the demand for a labor party. It led the fight against the no-strike pledge at the convention and made an impressive showing, although it failed to secure a majority in a direct vote against the pledge.
Despite encouraging developments such as this, the SWP did not formalize a general return to activity in the unions until 1945, when it made a belated turn to a perspective of "organizing left-wing forces" around opposition to the no-strike pledge, War Labor Board, and for a labor party. In 1944, a small oppositional grouping was formed in the SWP by Goldman and Morrow based on Stalinophobia and a perspective of reunification with the Shachtmanite Workers Party, which had split off in 1940. On its way out of the SWP, this grouping was able to make factional hay out of the "policy of caution." Referring to the SWP's inactivity, a member of this faction asked pointedly, "When workers do move on a mass scale, why should they follow anyone who did not previously supply some type of leadership?" (A. Winters, "Review of Our Trade Union Policy," Internal Bulletin Vol. VI, No. 9, 1944).
Replying to the Goldman-Morrow group, the SWP majority specifically ruled out caucuses such as the RFC as a general model, claiming that the left wing could not be built by presenting the masses with a "ready-made" program, but only by working within the existing caucus formations. Since the RFC was led primarily by politically independent secondary UAW leaders, "existing caucus formations" could only mean a policy of entering the major bureaucratic power groupings, which is exactly what the SWP did on its return to activity after the war. Despite the comparative impotence of the trade-union bureaucracy and different nature of the tasks in the early thirties, the Minneapolis experience was cited as an example in defense of a policy that emphasized blocking with sections of the bureaucracy and avoiding the presentation of a program independent of, and counterposed to, the bureaucracy in the unions.
This was the perspective followed by the SWP in the post-war period. In the brief but extensive post-war strike wave--the most massive strike wave in U.S. labor history--the SWP emphasized its enthusiasm for the intense economic struggles and under-played its alternatives to the bureaucracy. Against the Goldman-Morrowites, the majority explicitly defended a policy of avoiding criticism of UAW leadership policy at the beginning of the 1946 GM strike in order to maintain a common front with the bureaucracy against the company. For a small revolutionary force of only 2,000 (this figure represented rapid growth at the end of the war period) to take such an attitude toward the vast trade-union bureaucracy simply served to weaken the forces which could have built revolutionary leadership by struggling against the inevitable bureaucratic betrayals.

Leaders of SWP and Local 544 imprisoned in 1941 Minneapolis Smith Act trial. Standing, from left: Dobbs, DeBoer, Palmquist, Hamel, Hansen, Coover, Cooper. Sitting, from left:Geldman, Morrow, Goldman, Cannon, Dunne, Skoglund, Carlson.

The relative pessimism of 1941 as to the backwardness of the working class gave way in the post-war period to the optimism of "Theses on the American Revolution," the political resolution of the 1946 SWP convention. The "Theses" ruled out a new stabilization of capitalism and saw an unbroken development of the SWP into the vanguard party standing at the head of the revolutionary proletariat. The "Theses" underestimated not only the ability of capitalism to restabilize itself but also the relative strength of the trade-union bureaucracy and of Stalinism. Despite degeneration and decline, the CP still had 10,000 members at the end of the war.
This revolutionary optimism was not matched in the trade unions by the open preparation of revolutionary leadership through "third group" caucuses, however, but by an orientation first toward the more progressive bureaucratic reformists who were leading strike struggles or breaking with their previous allies, the discredited Stalinists. Later, as the cold war set in, the SWP broke with its allies and oriented more toward the Stalinists. As in the late thirties, these orientations tended to be based not on maximum political clarity but on the trade-union issues of the moment. Unlike the late thirties, however, the situation changed rapidly into a general purge of reds and hardening of a conservative bureaucracy, with which no blocs were possible. Furthermore the united fronts of the post-war period tended to take the form of critical support for one faction over another in union elections. Besides having a demoralizing effect on the ranks of the SWP's trade-union cadre, the Trotskyists' failure to present a hard, distinctive revolutionary alternative in the unions in this period thus contributed to the formation of the new bureaucratic line-up and thereby to the eventual cold-war defeats.

Critical Support for Reuther: 1946

Again the UAW is the most important example, since in 1946 in that union the SWP had perhaps its best case for a policy of blocs. After the war, Reuther began a drive for domination of the union with a show of militancy. He led a 113-day strike against General Motors on the basis of the three-point program: open the books to public inspection, negotiations in public and wage increases without price increases. Though he made his basic support of capitalism and the "right" to profits clear, he was able to mobilize militant sentiment with this program, strike a left posture at the 1946 convention and win the presidency of the union from the Stalinist-backed R.J. Thomas.
Reuther, however, made no effort to fight for and deepen the "GM strike program" at the convention. Though he won most of his votes on the basis of this militant strike program, his real program was opposition to the CP. This appealed to militants also, of course, since the CP had been completely discredited by its thoroughly right-wing role during the war (which it had incredibly attempted to extend into the post-war period--the so-called permanent no-strike pledge--on the basis of the Soviet bureaucracy's hopes for post-war peaceful coexistence with its capitalist allies). However, Reuther's caucus also attracted conservative anti-communists such as the American Catholic Trade Unionists (ACTU). The Militant exposed Reuther's basic conservatism even on trade-union issues by pointing out that he had devised the "one-at-a-time" strategy (isolating strikes against one company at a time); that he had endorsed the introduction of the "company security" clause into the Ford contract and had capitulated to Truman's "fact-finding" panel in the GM strike against the will of the elected negotiating body (23 March 1946). It also pointed out that his written program was no better than the Stalinist-backed Thomas-Addes caucus program "except for language and phraseology" (30 March 1946). Nevertheless, the Trotskyists critically supported his campaign for president because of the fact that the militant workers were voting for him on the basis of the GM strike program.
With skillful demagogy, Reuther had successfully coopted the militant wing of the union, including the earlier Rank and File Caucus (which had dissolved into the Reuther caucus). An approach to this militant wing which would have driven a wedge between the militants and Reuther was,needed. In 1944 the SWP had argued "that the time was not ripe for the independent drive of the RFC--despite the fact that these "unknowns," only running one candidate and without any serious effort, had secured 20 percent of the vote for president at the 1944 convention (Fourth International, October 1944). Yet the SWP had not hesitated to raise programmatic demands on the RFC as it was forming, in order to make its break with the bureaucracy complete. In 1946, however, despite criticisms of Reuther, in the last analysis the SWP supported him simply on the basis of his popularity and without having made any programmatic demands whatsoever on him (such as that he break with the conservative anti-communists as a condition for support).

Critical Support for Thomas-Addes: 1947

An independent stance might have left the SWP supporters isolated at the 1946 convention, but the establishment of such a principled pole would have helped recruit militants by the time of the next convention in 1947. Instead, the SWP simply tailed the militants--or thought it tailed the militants--once again. In the interval between the two conventions, Reuther consolidated his position on the basis of anti-communism--including support for Truman's foreign policy--and bureaucratic reformism. At the 1947 convention, the SWP switched its support to the Thomas-Addes caucus, on the grounds that the militants were already fed up with Reuther and an attempt had to be made to halt the latter's drive toward one-man dictatorial rule. For this bloc, there wasn't even the pretense of a programmatic basis. Despite the shift of Reuther to the right and the phony "left" noises of Thomas-Addes and the Stalinists, however, Reuther's complete slate was swept into office largely because of the discredited character of the previous leadership. Only after this debacle did the SWP put together an independent caucus. If such a course had been unrealistic before, after the 1947 convention it was more hopeless than ever. By that time, however, there was no other choice.
The SWP's course in other unions was similar. In the National Maritime Union, for instance, the SWP supported Curran when he broke from his former Stalinist allies on the basis of democracy and militancy, even though he was already lining up for Truman's foreign policy and letting the Stalinists get to the left of him on militancy. Later, the SWP had to support the Stalinists against his vicious, bureaucratic expulsions.

Cold War and Cochran-Clarke

In 1953 the SWP was racked by a faction fight and split which in part reflected the penetration into the party of the kind of trade-union "politics" it had been pursuing in the unions. What had looked like a hopeful situation in the immediate post-war period had turned rapidly into its opposite. The betrayals and self-defeating policies of the Stalinists had combined with "reformist trade-unionist illusions to allow not only the consolidation of a monolithic, conservative trade-unidn bureaucracy, but the successful purge of reds from the unions and the nurturing of right-wing anti-communism within the working class, which made the international cold-war drive of U.S. imperialism virtually unopposed at home.
The purge and pressure of the cold war caused a section of the SWP trade-union cadre to become disillusioned and give up on the perspective of building a vanguard party in the U.S. This defeatism was organized into a tendency by Cochran, on the basis of liquidation of virtually all public party activity in favor of a "propaganda" orientation which would have left the Cochranites, many of whom were officers in the UAW, free to make their peace with the Reutherite bureaucracy.
The Cochranites made an unprincipled combination with forces in New York around Bartell, Clarke and others who considered themselves the American representatives of the Pablo leadership of the Fourth International. Objectifying the post-war creation of deformed workers states in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia into an inevitable, world-historic trend, the Pablo leadership proposed, in essence, that Stalinist and reformist leaderships could be forced to the left by the pressure of their mass base into creating more such states in a situation in which the imminence of World War III made the creation of independent Trotskyist parties impossible: the Trotskyist task, therefore, was to liquidate into the Stalinist and social-democratic parties. It was this essentially liquidationist perspective which brought Cochran and Clarke together into a temporary amalgam in the SWP.
While defending the twists and turns of the SWP trade-union policy, Cannon nevertheless indicated that these twists and turns might have had something to do with the degeneration of the cadre into material for Cochranite liquidationist opportunism:

"Factional struggles in the trade unions in the United States, in the primitive, prepolitical stage of their development, have been power struggles, struggles for office and place, for the personal aggrandizement of one set of fakers and the denigration and discreditment of the other side....

"Cochran's conception of 'power politics' in the party; his methods of conducting a factional fight--come from this school of the labor fakers, not from ours."

--"Some Facts About Party History and the Reasons for its Falsification," Internal Bulletin, October 1953

The main cause of Cochranite liquidationism lay in the pressures of the cold war and wittchhunt, which had of course, been completely beyond the control of the SWP. Howevers Cannon's own documents defending the party against trade-unionist combinationism and liquidationism make clear that the party's position in the trade unions had been insufficiently distinct from "struggles for office and place," just as it had been insufficiently distinct from blocs with progressive Rooseveltians before World War II.
In the course of pursuing a trade-union policy based almost exclusively on making blocs on the immediate trade-union issues, the SWP had gradually adapted to trade unionism and become less discriminating in whom it blacked with and why. Unlike the Stalinists and Shachtmanites, the Trotskyists maintained their class principles by refusing to make unprincipled alliances or by breaking them as soon as they became untenable. (Thus the SWP switched sides in the UAW in 1947 while the Workers Party of Shachtman pursued Reuther et. al. into the arms of the State Department.) In the final analysis, the SWP remained a principled party of revolutionary socialism by struggling against the fruits of its trade-union work internally and accepting the split of 20 percent of its mem= bership in 1953 rather than making further concessions to trade unionism.

Spartacist League: Learn and Go Forward

The policy of making united fronts in the trade-union movement around the immediate issues is not in itself incorrect. What the SWP did wrong was to see this as its exclusive policy for all periods, except those in which no blocs could be made without gross violations of principle, in which case the answer was to do nothing. In any period of normal trade-union activity, blocs can be made around immediate issues. The task of revolutionists is to forge a cadre, within the unions as well as without, armed with a program to break the unions from their role as instruments for tying the workers to capitalism and imperialism. Such a program must go beyond immediate issues and address all the key political questions facing the working class and provide answers which point to a revolutionary policy and leadership.
While the Trotskyists advanced the struggle for revolutionary leadership dramatically with the right united front at the right time, as in Minneapolis in 1934, they more often tended to undermine their own party building with an exclusive policy of blocs, some of which had little or no basis for existence from the standpoint of revolutionary politics. By presuming that it was necessary for a small force to prove itself in action against the class enemy before it could present itself independently to the workers as an alternative leadership, the Trotskyists' united fronts tended to increasingly take the form of promoting someone else's leadership.
The Spartacist League sees as the chief lesson from this experience not the need to reject united fronts, occasional blocs or the tactic of critical support in the trade unions, but the need to subordinate these tactics to the task of building a revolutionary political alternative to the bureaucracy within the unions. A bloc or tactic of electoral support which fails to enhance revolutionary leadership through undermining the bureaucracy as such can only build illusions in reformism. The central conclusion is that there is no substitute for the hard road of struggle to inject a political class perspective of proletarian internationalism into what is normally a narrow, nationalist and parochial arena of struggle. Especially in the initial phases of struggle when the revolutionary forces are weak, it is necessary to make an independent pole as politically distinct as possible, so that the basis for future growth is clear. To this end, the SL calls for the building of caucuses based on the revolutionary transitional program.

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Stop the Climate Change Catastrophe! By Toya Chester and Jess Spear Subscribe to Socialist Alternative newspaper Join today! Socialist Alternative and the People's Climate March! September 20th and 21st New York City     The People's Climate March in New York City on September 21st will be the biggest convergence on the issue of the environment in history. Climate groups, students, unions and folks from around the US will converge during the weekend of the UN Climate Summit to demand an immediate end to the destruction of the planet. Socialist Alternative branches from up and down the East Coast, including Boston, will be mobilizing to the March to make the biggest impact possible in trying to steer the movement in a direction saying that we need system change in order to stop climate change! Join Socialist Alternative in Boston this week with meetings at Northeastern University on Tuesday, 9/16 and UMass Boston on Thursday, 9/18, to talk about a socialist strategy for the environmental movement and how you can ride with SA to the Climate March. Join us at Northeastern Join Us at UMass Boston In New York, Socialist Alternative member and Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant will be appearing on a forum featuring Bernie Sanders, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges on the night before the March, Sept. 20th. Also keep an eye out for the Socialist Alternative contingent. RSVP for the Forum! Join Socialist Alternative on the March!

Statement by UJP opposing a major new US war in the Middle East

Sept. 13, 2014

 

• no US military intervention or bombing of Syria and Iraq!
• bring all the troops home
• no arms or training to parties in the conflict
•  support a political solution including all concerned parties and governments based on self- determination of the people
• support genuine and neutral humanitarian aid such as UN efforts endorsed by the entire Security Council; oppose false aid used as a cover for military intervention
  
  Here we go again -- has the US government learned nothing from the disastrous Iraq war? The brutal US intervention and occupation of Iraq destroyed Iraqi society and is the principal cause leading to the current violence and chaos.  Why would anyone think that another US intervention would be anything but another disaster?  Such a war as called for by our president will cost a huge amount of money undercutting education, health and other programs that all Americans need and exacerbating racial and social tensions at home.
  
  Over the past 13 years our country has already spent one trillion, five hundred billion dollars for war in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia. These military actions have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and have drained our country of the resources needed to create jobs and support a well functioning society. And yet, according to our leaders, the crisis in the Middle East is even more dangerous than before we got into these wars. The destruction and chaos caused by our Iraq war, for instance, has directly led to the emergence of an extremist group called ISIS.
  
  Perhaps war is not the best “solution” to the tragic and complex developments we are now seeing in the area, especially in Iraq, Syria and Gaza. But war seems to be the only thing that our leaders know how to do.
  
  In response to the US decision to bomb them, ISIS has beheaded 2 American journalists. Now these brutal acts are being used in the US to whip up war fever once again. In its sweep through Syria and Iraq ISIS is using modern American weapons that we sent into the region during previous military actions that we were promised would bring stability. Instead they are being used by ISIS to conquer large swaths of territory. ISIS’ success has also been possible because of the brutal policies against its own people of the Iraq government that we armed to the teeth, but which refused to fight when challenged by ISIS.  A war on ISIS coordinated by the United States may or may not stop ISIS, but what new horrors will emerge in response to still another military incursion by foreign “Crusaders”?
  
  The United States does not have an answer to the turmoil in the Middle East, a turmoil which we helped to create starting with our military support to Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. But perhaps we can play a role in promoting peaceful solutions over time and supporting humanitarian aid to war victims through international institutions.
  
  We oppose a new 3-year US war in the area even with the promise of limited troops on the ground coordinating the war and directing our air strikes. We oppose continued US support for dictators in the area, threats against Iran, and growing Israeli expansion into Palestinian territory. Instead of keeping the war cauldron boiling, we call for a new US policy toward the area which includes support for full independence for Palestinians.
  
  It’s time to change course and that change begins with the policy: No US War in Iraq and Syria. We promote this policy because we are horrified by the suffering now occurring in the area, and also because we know that any real solution must come from the peoples of that region themselves, not from a new US war.

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice.

please support House Concurrent Resolution 114 (read H Con Res 114here).

CALL TODAY.
thanks
bonnie
On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:01 AM, Andrea Miller and Conor Boylan <info@pdamerica.org> wrote:


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National Day of Action
Prevent War in Iraq and Syria
Dear Bonnie,

PDA Round Table
Wednesday, Sept 17th
1 pm ET/10 am PT

Special Day of Action Update Given by Stephen Miles
Win Without War
Do you want to go to war? If not, then you need to call (855) 68 NO WAR or click here to email your member of the US Houseand ask them to support House Concurrent Resolution 114 (read H Con Res 114here). This resolution, introduced by Representatives Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, and Barbara Lee calls on Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility to debate and vote on any use of military force in Iraq and Syria. Additionally, today, Congressional House members Alan Grayson, Peter Welch, Peter DeFazio, Jim McGovern and Keith Ellison have also signed on.
Here is why you need to contactyour House Representative...
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday hearings will take place in Washington on the situation in Iraq and Syria. But why is Congress merely briefed, and ultimately left out of decisions to go to war?

We must return Power to the People!
The fact is, the American people do not want to participate in another war. We cannot bomb our way to peace through air strikes. Peace can only be achieved through humanitarian aid, careful diplomacy, and assistance with economic development. Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 16th call (855) 68 NO WAR or email your House memberduring the National Day of Action. Tell them to support humanitarian aid and diplomacy. Tell them to support H Con Res 114, so that our elected representatives can be actual deciders of whether or not we go to war, and bring the voice of the people to the table.

Join the National Day of Action and tell your House member that you want PEACE! Call the switchboard at (855) 68 NO WAR and click here or on the "Take Action Now"button. Tell your representative you want PEACE and you want them to vote yes on H Con Res 114.
Power to the People!
Andrea, Conor, Mike H, Jeanne, Judy, Mike F, Janis, Deb, and Kim
Along with the End War and Occupations Team
Sally Weiss, Marc Levin, Ingrid Monkiewicz, Rich Gardner, and Rob Hansen
Update Your PDA Profile
Find out more about Progressive Democrats of America

________________________________

Wed, Sep 17, 2014 09:00 AM

Today is a national call in day to question the U.S. government’s ISIS strategy organized by two dozen groups including MoveOn, Peace Action, Veterans for Peace and Friends Committee on National Legislation (which provided the toll free number).  With Members of Congress participating in Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) hearings over the next few days and a vote likely Wednesday on providing arms to Syrian fighters, now is the time to be heard. Call Now!  Congressionals switchboards are open between 9am and 5pm, eastern time.  (855) 68 NO WAR (66 927 toll free)   First, ask for your Representative, when finished call both of your Senators.  Tell them: “I am a constituent and I question whether there is a military solution to the ISIS problem. I also want my Congressperson to vote against arming Syrian fighters.” The United States is rushing headlong into another open-ended war in the Middle East.  We know from the past disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan that war isn’t the answer.  Even President Obama has said that there is no military solution to ISIS.  Among other actions, organizing regional diplomacy, cutting off oil income from sales to ISIS, and getting the UN to restart talks to end the Syrian civil war are more likely to achieve success over bombing and spreading weapons that might end up in the wrong hands.  For more on nonmilitary solutions see our action alert from last week.  Pick up your phone!  (855) 68 NO WAR (66 927 toll free)  First, ask for your Representative, when finished call both of your Senators.  Use the above script. As I mentioned, it seems Congress will vote tomorrow to send more weapons into Syria.  Already ISIS is using U.S. weapons against us,  and garnered from Syria and Iraq.  Sending more weapons into the Middle East is like pouring gasoline on a fire.  Congress should vote no. Make Three Calls Now!  (855) 68 NO WAR (66 927 toll free)  First, ask for your Representative, when finished call both of your Senators.  Use the above script. Your calls today are essential because, as we mentioned, this week the House and Senate are holding hearings with experts like Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry and General Martin Dempsey. And know that your calls are being amplified by supporters of over twenty organizations that are calling Congress as you read this. Standing together with you for peace and justice, Shelagh Foreman Program Director P.S. - Today is a national call in day organized by a few dozen groups to question the U.S. strategy on ISIS.  Call now!  (855) 68 NO WAR (66 927 toll free)  First, ask for your Representative, when finished call both of your Senators.  Tell them: “I am a constituent and I question whether there is a military solution to the ISIS problem. I also want my Congressperson to vote against arming Syrian fighters.” After calling, please forward this important email.  Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today!   Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income.  Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions.  Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2015!  Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe

People's Climate Has One Final Question: Are You In?

The international climate justice movement says the march in New York and mobilizations worldwide will be historic, but that these events are just the beginning

by

Jon Queally, staff writer

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This weekend is not singular,' say organizers. 'By joining this People’s Climate Mobilization you will be standing alongside thousands, perhaps millions of others around the globe at a critical moment.' (Image: peoplesclimate.org)

Just days away from what's been billed as the "the largest climate mobilization in world history," organizers behind the People's Climate March & Mobilization are putting the final details in place while asking people across the planet the simple question: Are you in?
On Sunday, September 21, just two days before a United Nations Climate Summit, a mass march is being planned for New York City that is expected to attract tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of people. On the same day, for people not in proximity to Manhattan, a global mobilization will see coordinated actions in thousands of locations across the globe where people and communities will voice their call for immediate and aggressive action to tackle the threat of a warming planet and the destruction stemming from humanity's fossil fuel addiction.
According to 350.org, one of the lead organizers for the march and global mobilization, at least 2,500 events have been confirmed in more than 155 countries, offering opportunities for millions of people to plug into the message and participate. (To see the event/action(s) closest to you, check out this page.)
"It is true that this one day will not be all it takes to get our governments to act at the scale that science and justice demand," admitted 350 campaigner Eduardo Santaela in a message to the group's members on Wednesday. "No single action or mobilisation is enough for that. But this weekend is not singular. By joining this People’s Climate Mobilization you will be standing alongside thousands, perhaps millions of others around the globe at a critical moment."
For the march in New York City on Sunday, the schedule and route details follow:

Assembly Location: Central Park West, between 65^th and 86^th streets.

•Marchers may enter on 65^th, 72^nd, 77^th, 81^st, or 86^th street.

March Start:

•The march will begin at 11:30 am.
•March down Central Park West and go east on 59^th Street
•Turn onto 6^th Ave. and go south to 42^nd Street
•Turn right onto 42^nd Street and go west to 11^th Ave
•Turn left on 11^th Ave. and go south to 34^th Street

End Location: 11^th Ave. in the streets between 34^th Street and 38^th St

The march has been endorsed by thousands of local, national, and international groups, including environmental organizations, social and economic justice campaigners, Indigenous groups and First Nations, organized labor, and many others.
As Naomi Klein—activist and author of the new book on climate change, This Changes Everything—stated in an open invitation to the march:

“To change everything, we need everyone,” goes one of the slogans of the People’s Climate March, and that is absolutely right: our movements and solutions must be as varied and numerous as the depth and scope that this crisis demands. We need everyone in the climate fight—the labour movement, health care workers, teachers, farmers, everyone defending the public sector and community values and solidarity where they live. We’re not there yet, but powerful glimpses of the kind of deep and diverse movement we need are starting to appear.
That is what this march is about for me: it is an expression of how profoundly the climate movement has changed since the days of elite summit hopping and the inside-game of beltway cap-and-trade fights. Indeed the People’s March is the physical convergence of many new and resurgent climate movements, united in their firm belief that the time to confront the climate criminals in now.

All members of the organizing committee of the march have also —with the stated purpose of creating an inclusive, family-friendly, and safe environment for all—agreed to the following set of guiding principles for the march:

• We will use no violence (physical or verbal) towards any person.
• We will not destroy or damage property.
• We will promote a tone of respect, honesty, transparency, and accountability in our actions.
• We will not carry anything that can be construed as a weapon, nor possess (or consume) any alcohol or drugs.
• We will all hold each other accountable to respecting these agreements.

The organizers encourage people to march as individuals, with friends and families, or to gather with those marching under specific banners or contingents, listings of which can be found here.
In addition, the march itself will been organized into six sections, or themes, all of which present a particular viewpoint, or message, related to the climate crisis. The sections include: Frontlines of Crisis, Forefront of Change; We Can Build the Future; We Have Solutions; We Know Who Is Responsible; The Debate Is Over; and To Change Everything, We Need Everybody—and will be organized according to this map:

In addition to Sunday's events in New York and around the globe, there are numerous events planned both before and after September 21. On Saturday, for example, an all-day climate convergence is planned for student and youth climate activists. Also, on Monday, a large-scale direct action will take place in the financial district under a call to 'Flood Wall Street.' For a full listing of events and activities throughout the week, go here.
And on Twitter, the #peoplesclimate hashtag is being used to share info, updates, and emerging developments surrounding the events both in New York and

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938

 

 
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):

Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had  also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21^st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward. 
 **************

Founding Conference of the

Fourth International

1938

---

Resolution On Youth

The Capitalist Impasse

1) Capitalism, Whether it be authoritarian or liberal, admits the inability to bring the slightest relief to the misery and sufferings of working class youth. The young want a trade, and when (rarely enough!) it consents to give them one, it is only to chain them the better to a machine which tomorrow will stop and let them starve beside the very riches they have produced. The young want to work, to produce with their hands, to use theft strength, and capitalism offers them the perspective of unemployment or of “the execution of work in conditions other than the normal conditions of production,” according to the excellent hypocritical definition of labor camps by the League of Nations, or of armament production, which engenders destruction rather than improvement. The young want to learn, and the way to culture is barred to them. The young want to live, and the only future offered them is that of dying of hunger or rotting on the barbed wire of a new imperialist war. The young want to create a new world, and they are permitted only to maintain or to consolidate a rotting world that is falling to pieces. The young want to know what tomorrow will be, and capitalism's only reply to them is: “Today you've got to tighten your belt another notch; tomorrow, we'll see . . . . In any case, perhaps you're not going to have any tomorrow.”

Give Youth a Future Give the World a Future

2) That is why youth will rally under the flag of those who bring it a future. Only the Fourth International, because it represents the historical interests of the only class which can reorganize tile world upon new bases, only the Bolshevik-Leninists can promise youth a future in which it can put its abilities to full use. Only they can say to the youth: “Together with you, we want to make a new world, where everyone works and is proud to work well, to know his job down to the smallest details; a world where everyone will eat according to his hunger, for production will be regulated according to the needs of the workers and not those of profit; a world where one must constantly learn, in order the better to subordinate the forces of nature to the will of man; a world where, by ceaselessly extending the domain of the application of science, humanity’s theoretic knowledge will be daily increased; a new world, a new man who can make real all the hopes and powers he bears within him” It is under the banner of a new world and a new humanity that the Fourth International and its youth organizations must go on to win the working class youth; it is under that banner that they will win that youth.

The Struggle for a Future the Struggle for Bread

3) The promise of a better future would be only demagogy if the Bolshevik-Leninists were not fighting for an immediate improvement in the situation of working class youth, if they were not formulating youth’s immediate demands, if they were not spreading word of the necessity for working class youth to fight by class struggle methods for the satisfaction of these demands, and if, through this struggle and on the basis of the experience gained therein, they were not demonstrating to exploited youth that its demands could be finally satisfied only by establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, that the struggle for these demands must be transformed into a struggle for power by means of a struggle for the control and management of the economic system.

We Demand the Right to Work!

4) For the young workers engaged in production the Bolshevik-Leninists put forward slogans with the aim of a) measuring the work done by the young not according to the desire to drag as much profit as possible out of it, but, on the contrary, according to their degree of physical development; b) assuring them of a standard of living equal to that of adults, by that very fact assuring them of economic independence; c) raising their technical qualifications as far as possible; d) against the equal opportunity for young and old to be exploited in, capitalism, setting up their equal rights.
For the young under twenty, they also formulate the following demands:
Reduced working week, with schedules allowing young workers to engage in sports in the open air;
At least one month’s paid vacation per year;
The organizing, by factories, or groups of factories, of training courses, at the bosses’ expense and under workers’ control;
Hours of craft training taken out of the working week, and paid for at regular rates;
Application of the principle “equal pay for equal work” under workers’ control;
The fixing of a minimum living wage for young workers; fixing of the wages of young workers under the control of all the workers taken as a whole;
Prohibition of night work, of overlaborious, unhealthy, or unwholesome tasks; workers’ control over the use of young labor.
Equality for Youth in Social Legislation

All Together for the Struggle!

5) In order to take the defense of their demands into their own hands, the young workers should have the right to choose their own delegates, whose task is above all to draw the attention of the adult delegates and of the workers in general to youth’s specific demands, to tie up the struggle for these particular demands with the struggle for the general demands of the working class. In the same way, in all branches of trade union organizations, union youth commissions must be created and imposed upon the trade union bureaucracy, whose task shall be to study the demands of the youth, and to recruit and educate young workers. The task of the Bolshevik-Leninists is to take the lead in the organization of such commissions.
In order to throw trade union doors wide open to exploited youth, the Bolshevik-Leninists demand the establishment of reduced dues for young workers.

We Want a Trade!

6) In the fight against unemployment the slogans raise the school age, organize apprenticeship, make sense only to the extent that the weight of this must be borne not by the working class but by the big capitalists. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninists owe it to themselves to formulate the demands of working class youth in this field as follows:
Prolongation of the school age to 16, with a grant for family support in working class and small farmer families.
Reorganization of the school in cooperation with the factory:
the school should prepare children for life and work; it should weld the youth to the older generations; hence the demand for control by workers’ organizations over technical education.
Reduction of the period of apprenticeship to a maximum of two years.
Forbidding of all work not connected with the actual apprenticeship.
The setting up, at the expense of the bosses, in connection with every business or group of businesses engaged in manufacturing, mining, or trade, of apprentice schools, with an attendance of at least 3 percent of the personnel employed in the business or group of businesses.
Choosing of the instructors by the labor unions.
Control of these schools by a mixed commission of workers’ delegates and delegates of the apprentices themselves.

We Demand Our Right to Live!

7) The task of saving the unemployed youth from misery, despair, and fascist demagogy, of working them back into production and thereby binding them closely to the working class, is a vital task for the future of the proletariat. Revolutionaries must struggle to force capitalism (a) to undertake to work the unemployed youth back into production through the organization of technical education and guidance; (b) to put the unemployed youth back immediately into productive activity; (c) to organize such work not according to semimilitary methods but on the basis of regular wages: Down with labor camps, either voluntary or obligatory!; (d) to furnish youth, which it is throwing into misery, the wherewithal to live. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninists put forward the following demands:
Unemployment benefits on the adult scale for all young unemployed, manual or intellectual, immediately upon their finishing school;
Forcing the big bosses to open technical reeducation centers under workers’ control;
Technical reeducation organized according to the needs of production, under the general control of the trade unions and. the congresses of workers’ delegates;
Reopening of the shutdown factories;
Commencement of large-scale public works (hospitals, schools, lowcost housing projects, sports fields, stadiums, swimming pools, electric power stations), paid at trade union scales and under workers’ control from top to bottom.
For Our Brothers on the Farms! 8) The misery of the farm youth is no less than that of the industrial youth. For farm youth the Bolshevik-Leninists formulate the following general demands:
Strict application of all the above named laws and social measures in the country just as in the city;
Suppression of the domestic exploitation of young children;
Particularly strict application of the principle: “Equal pay for equal work";
District organization of technical education at the expense of the big finance capital farm owners;
Healthy food and lodging for young farm workers living in their bosses’ houses;
Cheap credit for small-scale farmers, and especially for small-scale farmers with family responsibilities.

For Our Countryside

9) The industrial and farm youth are the most exploited part of all working class youth. The youth organizations of the Fourth International must draw particular attention to the following demands: Strict application of the principle “Equal pay for equal work!";
An extra day off per month;
The right to voluntary maternity;
A six month leave of absence for maternity;
Maternity grants for young mothers.

Open the Schools and Universities!

10) One of the necessary conditions for the progress of humanity is that large sections of working class youth should have access to culture and science. The Bolshevik-Leninists put forward the following slogans:
Open the schools and universities to all the young who are willing to study.
Free education and support for workers’ and farmers’ sons and daughters. Bread, Books, and Civil Rights for Coolies!
11) In colonial and semi colonial countries, laboring youth are the victims of a double exploitation capitalist and patriarchal. In these, and in imperialist countries, the defense of the demands of the young colonial workers and peasants is the first duty in the fight against imperialism. This fight is carried on around the general slogan: The same rights for colonial youth as for the youth of the imperialist capital city.
Organization of hygiene and similar care in all villages.
Organization of homes for young workers, peasants, and coolies, under the control of labor and nationalist organizations.
Schools for native children; teaching in the native language.
Open the government administration to native language.
Open the government administration to native intellectuals.
Take the necessary financial credits from the war and police budgets and imperialist privileges.
12) The bourgeoisie recognizes working youth’s right to be exploited; but refuses it the right to have anything to say about that exploitation, and deprives it of all political rights; in certain countries it even forbids youth under eighteen to have any political activity whatever. The working class replies to these measures by saying: Whoever has the right to be exploited has also the right to struggle against the system which exploits him. Full political rights to young workers and peasants!
The right to vote beginning at 18, just as much in legislative and municipal elections as in the election of delegates.
Abolition of special laws forbidding youth to engage in political activity.

We Demand Our Right to Happiness!

13) Working class youth’s need for relaxation is utilized by the bourgeoisie either to stupefy it or make it submit to an even tighter discipline. The duty of the working class is to help create a youth that is strong and capable of throwing all its physical and mental strength into the fight against capitalism; to aid it in using what leisure capitalism gives it to learn to understand the world better, in order to be better able to change it. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninists demand:
Free access to all sports fields, stadiums, museums, libraries, theaters, and movies for all young workers and unemployed;
The ordering of their leisure by the young unemployed themselves;
The using of young unemployed intellectuals for the organization of lectures and discussions, etc. on physics, chemistry, mechanics, mathematics, political economy, history of the labor movement, art, literature, etc.;
The establishment of homes open to the working and unemployed youth, where the young will not only have the opportunity to be amused and instructed, but can also study out for themselves the social problems with which they are faced; these homes to be managed by working class youth itself under the supervision of the local trade union organizations.

The Revolutionary program

14) The struggle for these demands cannot be separated from the struggle for the demands of workers as a whole, both employed and unemployed. The final disappearance of unemployment among the youth is closely linked to the disappearance of general unemployment. The struggle for raising the school age and for compulsory technical reeducation is closely linked with the struggle for the sliding scale in wages and in working hours. The straggle to drag out of capitalism those reforms which aim at developing the class consciousness of working youth is closely linked with the struggle for workers’ control of industry and factory committees. The struggle for public works is closely linked with the fight for the expropriation of monopolies, for the nationalization of credit, banks, and key industries. The struggle to smash back all efforts to militarize is closely linked to the struggle against the development of authoritarian state tendencies and against fascism, the struggle for the organization of workers’ militias. It is within the framework of the transitional program of the Fourth International that the present program should be developed and applied. It is under the banner of the proletariat fighting for power that the Fourth International will win the demands of exploited youth.
The International Conference of the Youth of the Fourth International
Lausanne, September 11, 1938