Click on title to link to American Socialist Workers Party founder and Leon Trotsky co-thinker James P. Cannon's appreciation of the life of Trotsky at a memorial meeting held in New York City in 1940 immediately after the assassination of Trotsky by a Stalinist agent.
Showing posts with label socialist workers party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialist workers party. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *The ABC's Of Socialism- From American Socialist Workers Party Founder James P. Cannon
Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.
BOOK REVIEW
NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.
The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.
It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.
I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.
Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.
I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2006. That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
*********
Intellectuals and Revolution
James P. Cannon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, Oct.-Nov. 1992. This 1961 letter to George Novack was found among the papers of the late George Weissman. The “M.” referred to is the well-known radical sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). Mills was the author of numerous works including The Power Elite (1956) and The Marxists (1962). The book discussed here is his controversial best seller, Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1960).
Published in Building the Revolutionary Party, © Resistance Books 1997 Published by Resistance Books 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale NSW 2008, Permission for on-line publication provided by Resistance Books for use by the James P. Cannon Internet Archive in 2005.
Transcription\HTML Markup: Andrew Pollack
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear George:
This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter and Evelyn’s lively note of February 9 about your meeting with M. This is certainly interesting and important news. It is also gratifying to hear that a conversation between us about M. a year or so ago led, in a chain of actions and reactions, to your visit at his home.
But you are not quite accurate when you attribute my earlier suggestion that you undertake a serious and critical evaluation of M.’s work to my “customary generosity.” This explanation is a bit too generous on your part. The truth, which I began to love and revere in my earliest youth and which, in my later years, I am beginning to worship, compels me to admit that my motive was a little more complicated and devious than you make it. If I had anything to do with it, two other reasons for my proposal strike me as more plausible and closer to the truth.
In the first place, I recognized that you had studied M.’s writings and related material more attentively and thoroughly than I had and were better qualified as a Marxist scholar to analyze them. In the second place, when there is a big job of work to be done my lifelong reflex has been to look around for someone else to do it. In this instance, as in many others, you happened to be the one I pointed at. Now don’t get the idea that this disclaimer is another example of my well-known modesty. My general procedure in these matters is just a sly, Irish trick of turning the defects of ignorance and laziness into merits. I have been getting away with this sort of thing for years and years. And, strangely enough, the movement has benefited most of the time, while I have acquired a reputation as a nice guy who finds jobs for other people. In addition, as a sort of bonus, I have had the special indulgence to loaf and ruminate without being harried too much by my Irish conscience.
* * *
I think I agree entirely with everything you say in your letter in evaluation of M. He is different. As you know, I have always had a low, not to say contemptuous, opinion of the contemporary American intelligentsia. And that is not simply a carryover of the anti-intellectualism of my young Wobbly days. After I became a communist and recognized that the thinkers and leaders of the Russian revolution, like their own mentors before them, were all intellectuals, I made a serious effort at “thought reform” on the subject. But I must say that the intellectuals of our time in this country, particularly those who have made pretensions to radicalism, have done their best to keep me from going overboard.
Experience and observation over a long time have taught me two things about the American intellectuals in general, and the academicians in particular. They lack modesty, which is the precondition for learning things they don’t already know, especially about the dark interiors of social problems which have been explored by others but remain an undiscovered country for them. Supplementary to that defect, and holding them back from serious exploration, is the plain and simple fact that they have no guts. They want to keep out of trouble.
In the book of Catholicism, which I studied as a boy, there are three types of sins. The first are venial (small) sins, such as my own—work-dodging, procrastination, self-indulgence, shooting pool on Sunday, etc.—which are easily forgiven and which one can even forgive oneself after a few prayers, if a priest isn’t available. Then there are mortal sins, such as murder, blasphemy, adultery, etc. These can be forgiven by a priest if serious penance is done, but the mortal sinner must still serve time in purgatory before entering heaven. The third sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost. For that there is no forgiveness, and there is no place to go but to hell. Well, cowardice is a sin against the Holy Ghost! Or, to turn it around and switch from the catechism to Ben Johnson: “Courage is the first virtue, because it is the condition for the exercise of the other virtues.”
* * *
For quite a while I have regarded M. as a maverick on the academic range; his manifest courage and honesty seemed to separate him from the herd. Then his book about Cuba showed another and most attractive side of his character. I read it attentively, and kept assessing it as I went along, on two levels.
On one level it is an absorbing and moving exposition of the revolutionary process in Cuba, as the leaders of the revolution see it. And, to my mind, reading between the lines of their letters transmitted through M., they see more, and have studied and thought and reflected more about what they are doing, than they explicitly acknowledge in the letters.
They explain that they represent a new generation, starting from scratch, without the weariness and disillusionment that paralyzes the older generations of the radical movement. But they couldn’t have said that if they had not previously thought and reflected about it. They must have noticed that their youth gave them the energy and drive that youth alone can give, and that their simple ignorance, in contrast to the miseducation and disillusionment of their elders, had a certain positive side. They had less to unlearn.
They frankly say they are improvising as they go along. But the remarkable thing is that they have made the right improvisations almost every time, and keep in step with the revolution as it continues to develop. And this course has been continued since the book was written. Castro’s speech at the United Nations on the mainsprings of imperialism was the speech of a man who has picked up Lenin’s theory somewhere; maybe from the book itself. Then, in the press reports the other day Castro was quoted as saying—for the first time explicitly, as far as I know—that the socialist system is superior to the capitalistic system, and that in a resumption of normal diplomatic relations the United States would have to take this Cuban position into account.
From all this I got the impression that the Cuban leaders knew more about revolutionary theory than they claimed to know when they were talking with M., and that they know even more now, and are still learning.
* * *
On the other level, M. revealed himself as a man more clearly in this book than ever before. I kept saying to myself as I turned the pages from his introduction to his summary: “This intellectual really cares about the hungry people of the world. He worries, as he says himself, not about the sweeping revolution, but with it. He is even capable of anger—that holy emotion of rebels and revolutionists—about injustice, oppression, lies, and hypocrisy. What a dangerous wild man to be running loose on the American campus!”
His book moved me deeply. I kept thinking of writing him a note of thanks and appreciation. But with my usual procrastination and bashful reluctance to intrude on strangers, I put it off.
* * *
I would like here to make a brief comment on the important point dealt with inconclusively at the end of your talk with M. For convenience I will first quote a paragraph from your letter:
“If the Soviet economy is more productive, is it not then historically superior?” I asked. “What do you mean by historically superior?” he asked. “That it can produce more goods, more wealth, in less time with less labor per person.” “Yes, I think it can be more efficient but that is not for me the only test of historical superiority. More important is the moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority.” The discussion ended when I added that without a superior capacity for material production there couldn’t be a superior cultural superstructure.
I don’t think the apparent disagreement should be left in that stalemate. The question is more subtle, more complicated. And, for my part, I can see merit in both your criterion and that of M. They should be reconciled, not contrasted.
It is elementary that “a superior capacity for material production is the necessary basis for a superior cultural superstructure.” Even the Cuban leaders, who don’t profess to be practicing Marxists, know that and are working night and day to improve productive capacities to provide the means for all the other things. But in my opinion, there is also merit in M.’s concern for “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority,” because it cannot be taken for granted that this will follow automatically from the reorganization of the productive system. This aim must be deliberately stated and consciously fought for all the time.
The fullest democracy in the transition period, institutionalized by forms of organization which assure the participation and control of the working people at every stage of development, is an indispensable part of our program. This has to be not merely stated, but emphasized. It distinguishes us from, and puts us in irreconcilable opposition to, the “economic determinists” and the totalitarians. It is the condition for the most efficient and rapid development of the new productive process.
And no less important, perhaps even more important: This full and free democratic participation of the working people, in all stages and all phases of the social tranformation during the transition period between the old society and the new, is the necessary condition for the preparation of the people for citizenship in a genuinely free society. It is not enough to learn to read and write and produce material things in abundance. That’s only the starting point. People have to learn how to live abundantly. That means they have to learn how to be free in body, mind, and spirit. Where else can they learn that but in the school and practice of ever-expanding democracy during the transition period?
In view of the way things have turned in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, this part of our Marxist program—workers’ democracy as the only road to preparation for the socialist society of the free and equal—must be given particular emphasis in all our propaganda and all our arguments with people who are dissatisfied with capitalism, but don’t want to exchange it for totalitarian slavery.
If we fail to emphasize this fundamental feature of our Marxist program; if we omit it or slur over it in our expositions of the superiority of nationalized and planned economy; if we neglect to speak of freedom as the socialist goal—we will never win the American workers and the new generation of intellectuals for the revolutionary fight. And we won’t deserve to.
* * *
My thoughts have turned increasingly to this side of the problem of social transformation in recent years. My speech on “Socialism and Democracy” at our 1957 convention (later repeated at the West Coast Vacation School and subsequently published as a pamphlet) was a first response to the questions troubling many people shaken up by the Khrushchev speech and the Polish and Hungarian events. Our discussion of the Chinese revolution during the past two years has pushed me to think more deeply on the subject, and I will probably have more to say later.
Here I will briefly state my settled conviction, as an orthodox Marxist, in one question and one answer: Will the development of the productive forces by a system of planned economy, under a totalitarian regime of regimentation and thought control, automatically lead to the socialist society of the free and equal? My answer is No, Never! The workers must achieve their own emancipation; nobody will do it for them and nobody can. If anybody is looking for a fight on this basic postulate of Marxism, just tell him to knock the chip off my shoulder. From this point of view, it appears to me that M.’s concern, which I fully share, for the “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority” of the new society—and by that I have to presume that he means a free society—contradicts his denial of the role of the working class as the decisive agency of social change. This stands out all the more glaringly if we recognize that the transformation of society is not accomplished by the single act of revolution, but requires a transition period during which people change themselves while they are changing society.
If the workers are unable to carry through this historical task, it has to be assigned to some kind of elite. But then we come to the embarrassing questions: Will this uncontrolled elite be benevolent? Will it extend freedom, purely from goodness of heart and nobility of intentions? Or will it curtail freedom until it is stamped out entirely? Experience so far in the history of the human race in general and of this century in particular, speaks powerfully for the latter assumption. I don’t know whether George Orwell’s 1984 was intended as a prophecy or a warning. But if one grants or assumes that the workers are unable to take control of public affairs and keep control, it is most logical to assume that Big Brother will eventually take over. This is not a new thought of mine, or even of Orwell’s. Trotsky bluntly posed this alternative twenty-one years ago in In Defense of Marxism.
He didn’t believe it would happen that way, and neither do I. The working class cannot be written off until it has been definitively defeated on a worldwide scale. That hasn’t happened yet in Europe and America, or in the Soviet bloc, as the events of 1956-57 gave notice.
In this country, where the issue will finally be decided, the working class in basic industry, previously atomized and without experience in organization, showed great power in the thirties. That is too recent to forget. The uprising which culminated in the constitution of the CIO was a semi-revolution. It could have gone much farther if there had been adequate leadership. The workers—who need an “elite” to lead, but not to substitute—have marked time and even lost some ground since then; but they have not been defeated in open conflict.
In my opinion, it would be rash and “unscientific” to assume, in advance of the showdown conflict, that they will be defeated. But if one does assume that, he should not shrink from recognizing the horrifying alternative which first Trotsky, and later Orwell, posed—and quit talking about the future good society of the free and equal. Under such a regime it would be unlawful even to think about such things.
Fraternally,
James P. Cannon
BOOK REVIEW
NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.
The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.
It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.
I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.
Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.
I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2006. That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
*********
Intellectuals and Revolution
James P. Cannon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, Oct.-Nov. 1992. This 1961 letter to George Novack was found among the papers of the late George Weissman. The “M.” referred to is the well-known radical sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). Mills was the author of numerous works including The Power Elite (1956) and The Marxists (1962). The book discussed here is his controversial best seller, Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1960).
Published in Building the Revolutionary Party, © Resistance Books 1997 Published by Resistance Books 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale NSW 2008, Permission for on-line publication provided by Resistance Books for use by the James P. Cannon Internet Archive in 2005.
Transcription\HTML Markup: Andrew Pollack
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear George:
This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter and Evelyn’s lively note of February 9 about your meeting with M. This is certainly interesting and important news. It is also gratifying to hear that a conversation between us about M. a year or so ago led, in a chain of actions and reactions, to your visit at his home.
But you are not quite accurate when you attribute my earlier suggestion that you undertake a serious and critical evaluation of M.’s work to my “customary generosity.” This explanation is a bit too generous on your part. The truth, which I began to love and revere in my earliest youth and which, in my later years, I am beginning to worship, compels me to admit that my motive was a little more complicated and devious than you make it. If I had anything to do with it, two other reasons for my proposal strike me as more plausible and closer to the truth.
In the first place, I recognized that you had studied M.’s writings and related material more attentively and thoroughly than I had and were better qualified as a Marxist scholar to analyze them. In the second place, when there is a big job of work to be done my lifelong reflex has been to look around for someone else to do it. In this instance, as in many others, you happened to be the one I pointed at. Now don’t get the idea that this disclaimer is another example of my well-known modesty. My general procedure in these matters is just a sly, Irish trick of turning the defects of ignorance and laziness into merits. I have been getting away with this sort of thing for years and years. And, strangely enough, the movement has benefited most of the time, while I have acquired a reputation as a nice guy who finds jobs for other people. In addition, as a sort of bonus, I have had the special indulgence to loaf and ruminate without being harried too much by my Irish conscience.
* * *
I think I agree entirely with everything you say in your letter in evaluation of M. He is different. As you know, I have always had a low, not to say contemptuous, opinion of the contemporary American intelligentsia. And that is not simply a carryover of the anti-intellectualism of my young Wobbly days. After I became a communist and recognized that the thinkers and leaders of the Russian revolution, like their own mentors before them, were all intellectuals, I made a serious effort at “thought reform” on the subject. But I must say that the intellectuals of our time in this country, particularly those who have made pretensions to radicalism, have done their best to keep me from going overboard.
Experience and observation over a long time have taught me two things about the American intellectuals in general, and the academicians in particular. They lack modesty, which is the precondition for learning things they don’t already know, especially about the dark interiors of social problems which have been explored by others but remain an undiscovered country for them. Supplementary to that defect, and holding them back from serious exploration, is the plain and simple fact that they have no guts. They want to keep out of trouble.
In the book of Catholicism, which I studied as a boy, there are three types of sins. The first are venial (small) sins, such as my own—work-dodging, procrastination, self-indulgence, shooting pool on Sunday, etc.—which are easily forgiven and which one can even forgive oneself after a few prayers, if a priest isn’t available. Then there are mortal sins, such as murder, blasphemy, adultery, etc. These can be forgiven by a priest if serious penance is done, but the mortal sinner must still serve time in purgatory before entering heaven. The third sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost. For that there is no forgiveness, and there is no place to go but to hell. Well, cowardice is a sin against the Holy Ghost! Or, to turn it around and switch from the catechism to Ben Johnson: “Courage is the first virtue, because it is the condition for the exercise of the other virtues.”
* * *
For quite a while I have regarded M. as a maverick on the academic range; his manifest courage and honesty seemed to separate him from the herd. Then his book about Cuba showed another and most attractive side of his character. I read it attentively, and kept assessing it as I went along, on two levels.
On one level it is an absorbing and moving exposition of the revolutionary process in Cuba, as the leaders of the revolution see it. And, to my mind, reading between the lines of their letters transmitted through M., they see more, and have studied and thought and reflected more about what they are doing, than they explicitly acknowledge in the letters.
They explain that they represent a new generation, starting from scratch, without the weariness and disillusionment that paralyzes the older generations of the radical movement. But they couldn’t have said that if they had not previously thought and reflected about it. They must have noticed that their youth gave them the energy and drive that youth alone can give, and that their simple ignorance, in contrast to the miseducation and disillusionment of their elders, had a certain positive side. They had less to unlearn.
They frankly say they are improvising as they go along. But the remarkable thing is that they have made the right improvisations almost every time, and keep in step with the revolution as it continues to develop. And this course has been continued since the book was written. Castro’s speech at the United Nations on the mainsprings of imperialism was the speech of a man who has picked up Lenin’s theory somewhere; maybe from the book itself. Then, in the press reports the other day Castro was quoted as saying—for the first time explicitly, as far as I know—that the socialist system is superior to the capitalistic system, and that in a resumption of normal diplomatic relations the United States would have to take this Cuban position into account.
From all this I got the impression that the Cuban leaders knew more about revolutionary theory than they claimed to know when they were talking with M., and that they know even more now, and are still learning.
* * *
On the other level, M. revealed himself as a man more clearly in this book than ever before. I kept saying to myself as I turned the pages from his introduction to his summary: “This intellectual really cares about the hungry people of the world. He worries, as he says himself, not about the sweeping revolution, but with it. He is even capable of anger—that holy emotion of rebels and revolutionists—about injustice, oppression, lies, and hypocrisy. What a dangerous wild man to be running loose on the American campus!”
His book moved me deeply. I kept thinking of writing him a note of thanks and appreciation. But with my usual procrastination and bashful reluctance to intrude on strangers, I put it off.
* * *
I would like here to make a brief comment on the important point dealt with inconclusively at the end of your talk with M. For convenience I will first quote a paragraph from your letter:
“If the Soviet economy is more productive, is it not then historically superior?” I asked. “What do you mean by historically superior?” he asked. “That it can produce more goods, more wealth, in less time with less labor per person.” “Yes, I think it can be more efficient but that is not for me the only test of historical superiority. More important is the moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority.” The discussion ended when I added that without a superior capacity for material production there couldn’t be a superior cultural superstructure.
I don’t think the apparent disagreement should be left in that stalemate. The question is more subtle, more complicated. And, for my part, I can see merit in both your criterion and that of M. They should be reconciled, not contrasted.
It is elementary that “a superior capacity for material production is the necessary basis for a superior cultural superstructure.” Even the Cuban leaders, who don’t profess to be practicing Marxists, know that and are working night and day to improve productive capacities to provide the means for all the other things. But in my opinion, there is also merit in M.’s concern for “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority,” because it cannot be taken for granted that this will follow automatically from the reorganization of the productive system. This aim must be deliberately stated and consciously fought for all the time.
The fullest democracy in the transition period, institutionalized by forms of organization which assure the participation and control of the working people at every stage of development, is an indispensable part of our program. This has to be not merely stated, but emphasized. It distinguishes us from, and puts us in irreconcilable opposition to, the “economic determinists” and the totalitarians. It is the condition for the most efficient and rapid development of the new productive process.
And no less important, perhaps even more important: This full and free democratic participation of the working people, in all stages and all phases of the social tranformation during the transition period between the old society and the new, is the necessary condition for the preparation of the people for citizenship in a genuinely free society. It is not enough to learn to read and write and produce material things in abundance. That’s only the starting point. People have to learn how to live abundantly. That means they have to learn how to be free in body, mind, and spirit. Where else can they learn that but in the school and practice of ever-expanding democracy during the transition period?
In view of the way things have turned in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, this part of our Marxist program—workers’ democracy as the only road to preparation for the socialist society of the free and equal—must be given particular emphasis in all our propaganda and all our arguments with people who are dissatisfied with capitalism, but don’t want to exchange it for totalitarian slavery.
If we fail to emphasize this fundamental feature of our Marxist program; if we omit it or slur over it in our expositions of the superiority of nationalized and planned economy; if we neglect to speak of freedom as the socialist goal—we will never win the American workers and the new generation of intellectuals for the revolutionary fight. And we won’t deserve to.
* * *
My thoughts have turned increasingly to this side of the problem of social transformation in recent years. My speech on “Socialism and Democracy” at our 1957 convention (later repeated at the West Coast Vacation School and subsequently published as a pamphlet) was a first response to the questions troubling many people shaken up by the Khrushchev speech and the Polish and Hungarian events. Our discussion of the Chinese revolution during the past two years has pushed me to think more deeply on the subject, and I will probably have more to say later.
Here I will briefly state my settled conviction, as an orthodox Marxist, in one question and one answer: Will the development of the productive forces by a system of planned economy, under a totalitarian regime of regimentation and thought control, automatically lead to the socialist society of the free and equal? My answer is No, Never! The workers must achieve their own emancipation; nobody will do it for them and nobody can. If anybody is looking for a fight on this basic postulate of Marxism, just tell him to knock the chip off my shoulder. From this point of view, it appears to me that M.’s concern, which I fully share, for the “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority” of the new society—and by that I have to presume that he means a free society—contradicts his denial of the role of the working class as the decisive agency of social change. This stands out all the more glaringly if we recognize that the transformation of society is not accomplished by the single act of revolution, but requires a transition period during which people change themselves while they are changing society.
If the workers are unable to carry through this historical task, it has to be assigned to some kind of elite. But then we come to the embarrassing questions: Will this uncontrolled elite be benevolent? Will it extend freedom, purely from goodness of heart and nobility of intentions? Or will it curtail freedom until it is stamped out entirely? Experience so far in the history of the human race in general and of this century in particular, speaks powerfully for the latter assumption. I don’t know whether George Orwell’s 1984 was intended as a prophecy or a warning. But if one grants or assumes that the workers are unable to take control of public affairs and keep control, it is most logical to assume that Big Brother will eventually take over. This is not a new thought of mine, or even of Orwell’s. Trotsky bluntly posed this alternative twenty-one years ago in In Defense of Marxism.
He didn’t believe it would happen that way, and neither do I. The working class cannot be written off until it has been definitively defeated on a worldwide scale. That hasn’t happened yet in Europe and America, or in the Soviet bloc, as the events of 1956-57 gave notice.
In this country, where the issue will finally be decided, the working class in basic industry, previously atomized and without experience in organization, showed great power in the thirties. That is too recent to forget. The uprising which culminated in the constitution of the CIO was a semi-revolution. It could have gone much farther if there had been adequate leadership. The workers—who need an “elite” to lead, but not to substitute—have marked time and even lost some ground since then; but they have not been defeated in open conflict.
In my opinion, it would be rash and “unscientific” to assume, in advance of the showdown conflict, that they will be defeated. But if one does assume that, he should not shrink from recognizing the horrifying alternative which first Trotsky, and later Orwell, posed—and quit talking about the future good society of the free and equal. Under such a regime it would be unlawful even to think about such things.
Fraternally,
James P. Cannon
Friday, October 19, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *From The Archives- The Slip-Slide From Revolution To The Embrace Of 'Democratic' Imperialism- A Case Study-Albert Glotzer
Click on title to link to the Albert Glotzer Internet Archive for samples of his writing while he was a leader in the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s and later after he split from that party in the famous Shachtman-led exit in 1940 over the question of defense of the Soviet Union (to form the Workers Party and it subsequent organizational forms that led back, ultimately, to the right-wing of the Social Democratic movement). That was the touchstone issue for his, and later generations, and one can see in the later writing the slip-slide into the defense of "democratic" imperialism. A cautionary tale, for sure.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *Ex-Trotskyist (American Socialist Workers Party) Albert Glotzer's Political Obituary- A Cautionary Tale
Click on title to link to the World Socialist Web Site's political obituary for Albert Glotzer in 1999 mentioned in an entry posted today concerning Glotzer's view of American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon. This is provided for informational purposes only, as the article hits the highlights of his political rise and fall.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- THE FIGHT FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE IN HARD TIMES
THE FIGHT FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE IN HARD TIMES
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES TO THE PARTY; JAMES P. CANNON, WRITINGS AND SPEECHES, 1952-54, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question that has underscored my previous reviews which detail earlier periods in Cannon’s political career and does so here as well. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show?
The period under discussion- the early 1950’s- is essentially the swan song of his role as the central leader of the organization. Fortunately, Cannon had one last fight in him and went out swinging. However, unlike previous fights in the party he was slow to pick up the gravity of the implications of the opposition’s positions, in the party and internationally in the Fourth International, for the future revolutionary perspective. That said, Cannon did fight, if partially and belatedly, and that accrues to his merit as a revolutionary. Revolutionaries too get old and tired and do not always live in revolutionary times so they can show what they are made of. I will repeat here what I have mentioned in earlier reviews. One thing is sure- in his prime- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
Let’s face it, the post-World War II period, after an initial outburst of class struggle, was not a good time for revolutionaries in America. As a victor America became the dominate economic and military power in the world. That coupled with an out and out ‘red scare’ witch hunt backed by most elements of the ruling class forced revolutionaries to duck their heads and hope for better days. This is the background to the fight which Cannon led against those who wanted to negate the role of the revolutionary party or to liquidate its public tasks.
No political person wants to be isolated from the arena of their work and that applies to revolutionaries as well. Feeling irrelevant has the same effect. Those conditions inevitably lead a revolutionary party inward. Cannon, having experienced about every trial and tribulation a revolutionary could face in a bourgeois democracy, actually felt the fight coming. Cannon stated he had put a question mark over the party’s existence as a revolutionary organization in 1952. He believed that he might have to start over with the youth out in Los Angeles (where he was living at the time). Given that prospect, Cannon, as they say, got his Irish up.
As to the particulars of the fight, known in radical history as the Cochran-Clark fight, there were two trends. The main one represented by Cochran, a leading party trade unionist in the automobile industry, under the pressure of the witch hunt essentially wanted to reduce the organization down to a propaganda circle and liquidate any revolutionary perspective. The other represented by Clark ,which also was reflected internationally in the Fourth International, was to orient to the Stalinist milieu essentially refurbishing the credentials of the American Communist Party in light of Stalin’s death and revolutionary developments in Eastern Europe. This was a different form of liquidation of the revolutionary perspective which the Socialist Workers Party had fought over the, at that time, 25 year history of its fight against Stalinism.
An interesting note about this faction fight is that unlike most such fights in leftist organizations the key elements of the opposition here are the party trade unionists. Usually it is the volatile petty bourgeois elements that develop political differences when times get tough or when the petty bourgeois milieu turns hostile, for example, in 1939 with the Hitler-Stalin Pact which was the immediate prelude to World War II. Party trade unionists, reflecting immediate practical pressures historically tend to be the right wing of revolutionary parties-but they stay in the party. For revolutionaries, this trend is sometimes frustratingly so, as occurred in the American Communist Party in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact mentioned above. Thus, mark it down that a revolutionary party is in trouble when the trade unionists begin to balk. In any case, Cannon was able to pull the majority of the trade unionists back. While the future developments of the party in the 1960’s and 1970’s, after Cannon left the day to day operations, might make one wish that he did take those youth out in California and start over this writer is glad that he fought this fight. Thanks- James P. Cannon.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *A Model Socialist Orator- The Socialist Workers Party's Founder James P. Cannon
Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES FOR SOCIALISM- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
This volume is a compendium of Cannon’s speeches over most of his active political life beginning with his leadership role in the early American Communist Party and his secondary role in the Communist International. Some of the selections are also available in other parts of the series mentioned above. I would also note here that in contrast to his "Notebook of an Agitator" (also reviewed in this space) the pieces here tend to be longer and based on more general socialist principles. The socialist movement has always emphasized two ways of getting its message out- propaganda and agitation. The selections here represent a more propagandistic approach to that message. Many of the presentations hold their own even today in 2006 as thoughtful expositions of the aims of socialism and how to struggle for it. I particularly draw the reader’s attention to "Sixty Years of American Radicalism" a speech given in 1959 in which Cannon draws a general overview of the ebbs and flows of the socialist movement from the turn of the 20th century until then. At that time Cannon also predicted a new radical upsurge which did occur shortly thereafter but unfortunately has long since ended.
Cannon’s speech correctly marks the great divide in the American socialist movement at World War I and the socialist response American participation in that war and subsequently to the Russian Revolution. Prior to that time socialist activity was a loose, federated affair driven by a more evolutionary approach to ultimate socialist success i.e. reformism. That trend was symbolized by the work of the great socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. While that approach had many, ultimately, fatal flaws it did represent a solid attempt to draw a class struggle line for independent (from the capitalist parties) political action by the working class.
Drawing on those lessons the early Communist Party, basing itself on support of the Russian Revolution, became dominant on the American left by expanding on that concept. That is, until the mid-1930’s after it had already long been an agency under orders from Moscow in support, by one means or another, of the Rooseveltian Democratic Party, a capitalist party. That was fatal to long term prospects for independent working class political action and Cannon has harsh words for the party’s policy. He also noted that the next upsurge would have to right that policy by again demanding an independent political expression for the working class. Unfortunately, when that radical upsurge did occur in the 1960’s and early 1970’s the party that he formed, the Socialist Workers Party, essentially replicated in the anti-Vietnam War movement and elsewhere the Communist Party’s class collaborationist policy with the remnants of American liberalism. Obviously, as a man in his sixties Cannon was no longer able or willing to fight against that policy by the party that he had created. Thus, the third wave of radicalism also ebbed and the American Left declined. Nevertheless this speech is Cannon’s legacy to the youth today. A new upsurge, and it will come, must learn this lesson and fight tooth and nail for independent political expression for the working class to avoid another failure.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
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American Radicalism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
James P. Cannon, International Socialist Review
Winter 1960
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From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.1, Winter 1960, from Tamiment Library microfilm archives
Transcribed & marked up by Daniel Gaido and Andrew Pollack for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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This speech was given at the West Coast Vacation School and Camp, Labor Day, 1959. James P. Cannon is the National Chairman of the Socialist Workers party. He was a founder of the Communist party of the United States and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International until 1928 when he supported the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. Before World War I, Cannon was active in the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist party.
The biographical information which the Chairman provided in his introduction doesn’t necessarily qualify anyone to give a coherent account of what happened in the past fifty years or so in the movement of socialist and labor radicalism. The woods are full of people who have been through at least a large part of this experience, but their accounts of it may vary widely. The stormy events of American radicalism during this century may be compared to a long series of explosive and catastrophic experiences after which every survivor tells a different story.
It is not only necessary to have been a participant and an observer to explain the ups and downs of American radicalism in this century. It is equally necessary to have understood what was happening in the world over that period, and to relate it all to a consistent historical theory. You’ll be better able to judge at the end of my speech than at the beginning whether I, in part at least, meet those qualifications.
This is a very big and complicated subject to be compressed within an hour or so. But we need a general view of the preceding events of the present century as a means of giving us some perspective on the years that remain in it.
The Great American Contradiction
Let’s begin with the present reality, with what might be called the great American contradiction. Here we live in the most advanced country in the world from the point of view of its technological and industrial development and its productivity. Because it is the most advanced country in these respects, it is the country where the material conditions and foundations for the socialist transformation of society are prepared to a degree not yet existing anywhere else in the world.
Marx explained that capitalism not only greatly advances the forces of production and is therefore a more progressive stage of society than the feudal past, but, in developing the forces of production and proletarianizing the great mass of the population, capitalist society prepares its own gravediggers in the person of the industrial proletariat. That also has been provided in the United States to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. The gravediggers of capitalism are more numerous here, and, in some respects, better organized than elsewhere on a trade union level. It is potentially the most powerful working class in the entire world.
The contradiction to all these prerequisites for the socialist transformation of society is the other side of the picture which we all have to recognize. We have here the most conservative political climate of any country in the world, at least among the great powers, and the weakest movement of labor radicalism and socialist consciousness. Despite all the rich experiences of the working people in the rest of the world which should have come to our aid and eventually inevitably will—despite all the favorable developments for socialism on a world scale, the situation of American radicalism today, from the point of view of socialist consciousness, socialist organization and socialist morale is worse than it was thirty years ago. It’s even worse than it was sixty years ago at the turn of the century, when the first modern movement of socialist and labor radicalism in this country began to get a popular hearing.
There are objective causes for this tremendous depression of the radical movement at the present time. They are well known and don’t need to be elaborated here. The unprecedented boom, a prosperity based on war expenditures and preparations for war and so forth, have had a tremendously conservatizing influence. In any case, radicalism would very likely be on the defensive in this country under such conditions. But our concern today is not with these objective causes of the present conjuncture in the development of the historical movement toward socialism. I propose to deal mainly with the subjective causes of the present weaknesses of American radicalism: above all, the failure of leadership which has made conditions ten and a hundred times worse than they needed to be, and which makes our problem of preparing the great socialist revival more difficult.
The present situation which I have briefly sketched can change very rapidly into its opposite. That’s what happened in the thirties, in the decade following the first postwar boom of American capitalism with the concomitant decline of radicalism in the twenties. Very few of you may remember that we went through a period in the 1920’s after the rise of radicalism in the first twenty years of this century, when the unprecedented boom of American capitalism on the one side and the inadequacies of the revolutionary leadership on the other produced a collapse, and almost dispersal, of the previous radical movement. But within the next decade that entire situation turned upside down in a few years’ time.
The subjective reasons for the current depression of United States radicalism cannot be understood without a critical analysis of the inner history of the American socialist and labor radical movement in the sixty years since the turn of the century. We can learn something from this review of the past that will be useful both for the present and for the future. Of course, in a single lecture we can only hit the high spots and must omit many interesting and significant details. But such a condensed review may make the main aspects of the historical development stand out more clearly.
In our century we have seen two widespread and popular movements of socialist and labor radicalism. If we examine what they were, how they came into existence, what they did and failed to do, and what happened to them—we can draw some useful conclusions about the prospects of a new revival of American radicalism and about the nature of our problems and our tasks in preparing the way for it.
The Debsian Movement
At the turn of the century, there was a great upswing of radicalism in this country prompted by the objective conditions of the time—the accelerated development of industrial and monopolistic capitalism, the dispossession of small businessmen and farmers, the unbridled exploitation of the workers who were without organization, and so forth. This rebirth of American radicalism got its big impetus in 1901 with the formation of the Socialist party of America as a fusion of different socialist currents, which up to that time had been isolated groups without any wide popular influence. The distinctive factor which made possible the development of this new socialist movement at that time was the turn of a number of influential individuals and groups away from the policy of class collaboration in politics to the policy of independent socialist action.
Many of you have heard of the great role played by Debs and the Appeal to Reason, the socialist agitational paper which had a half million and more circulation. What is perhaps not so well known by comrades of the younger generation is that Debs, the Appeal to Reason and a very large percentage of the people who were influential in giving the Socialist party its start in the first years of this century had previously been Populists. They had supported the Populist movement and then in 1896, when the Populist party was swallowed by the Democratic party, they went along with it. Debs, the Appeal to Reason, Victor Berger and others who promoted the formation of the Socialist party in 1901, had supported Bryan and the Democratic party in 1896. But by the turn of the century, they broke out of that blind alley and had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to have an independent socialist position. That’s what made the big difference.
The most significant change in the attitude of these influential people, and of tens of thousands of others who supported them, which made possible the emergence and growth of the Socialist party in the first years of this century, was their break with capitalist politics altogether and their espousal of socialism. They emphasized and acted on the fundamental principle that a socialist movement must have its own party and its own candidates and cannot combine with or support any capitalist party, whether Republican, Democratic, Progressive or Populist. This new revelation inspired the emergence for the first time of a popular socialist movement in this country.
The Socialist Labor party and other socialist sects which had existed prior to that time had never gained a popular hearing. But the Socialist party brought into its ranks a great number of people who had had their fill of experimentation in one form of capitalist party politics or another. They gave a great impetus to the new Socialist party. So much so that, by 1912, the Socialist party of the United States had a hundred thousand members and got almost a million votes in the Presidential election. That was before women’s suffrage, and was about six percent of the total vote cast. This would be equal to between three and a half and four million votes at the present time. That gives you an idea of the popular appeal of the Socialist party in that period.
The IWW, which was a very militant organization on the industrial field, was a part of this first popular movement of American radicalism. It is important to recall that the IWW was founded by socialists. At the Founding Convention in 1905 all the leading figures were from a socialist background: they came from the Socialist party, the Socialist Labor party, some Anarchists and other kinds of radicals. This sentiment predominated in the IWW throughout its first twenty years of existence. It called itself not merely an industrial union, but a revolutionary industrial union.
In these early years of our century socialist and labor radicalism attained some proportions of a mass character in this country. The movement had its weak sides. In the course of its electoral activities, as we look back on it now, we can see that it placed too much emphasis on municipal politics and reform. The reformist tendency within the Socialist party was quite strong, although I believe a fair assessment of the history would show the majority were revolutionary.
The composition of the party was also unfavorable in some respects. Comrade White told us last night that the Populist movement in the South was deflected into a reactionary channel. But there was another part of this Populist movement which was drawn into the Socialist party. The Socialist party in many parts of the country consisted of a very large percentage of former Populists. The composition of its membership in the western part of the country was very heavily weighted on the side of the petty bourgeoisie in the cities and in the countryside. At one time the largest single state membership of the Socialist party, and, if I’m not mistaken, the largest socialist vote proportionally, was in the state of Oklahoma. In the other western agrarian states also the hard-pressed tenant and mortgaged farmers and desperate petty bourgeoisie streamed into the Socialist party from the Populist movement and swelled its ranks. So the class composition of the party was not as proletarian as an ideal Socialist movement should be.
Another terrible defect of the socialist and radical movement of that time came from the weakness of the organized labor movement. The great mass production industries in this country were completely without trade union organization. Trade unions were limited almost entirely to the skilled crafts, and were very weak in many places even in that field. Outside of the mines and the railroads, it was very hard to find a single union in the big industries. As I listened the other night to the report about the present steel strike, a general strike shutting down all the mills of the country, with the union so strong it doesn’t need to send more than token pickets—I recalled a very different steel strike in 1913 that I participated in as an IWW organizer. There we ran up against company thugs dressed up in police uniforms who sometimes outnumbered the pickets. And that was a single local strike on the ore docks in Duluth and Superior.
This was a common experience of the IWW and socialist attempts to organize in the steel industry or any place else. The most you could do was conduct a guerrilla attack at a single locality. The idea of a general strike, which was our ideal and our program, was far from realization. Yet that’s taken as a matter of course today.
This weakness of the trade union movement naturally was a weakness also of the socialist movement of the time. Without a strongly organized working class in the basic industries, it is quite futile to expect a socialist and revolutionary transformation of society. The IWW which had played a prominent part in the general radicalization of the period, turned to Syndicalism and that was a big defect of the movement too. The unfavorable class composition of the Socialist party, the weakness of the trade union movement, the mistakes of Syndicalism and reformism—all these defects prepared the way for the decline and eventual collapse of the first big experiment in socialist labor radicalism after twenty years of upswing.
The real trouble began with the First World War and then with the Russian Revolution. The movement as a whole proved unable to assimilate the lessons of these world-shaking experiences. They produced a deep division in the socialist movement, a split in 1919, the formation of the Communist party as a separate organization and the great weakening of what was left of the Socialist party.
This split in the forces of American socialist and labor radicalism, beginning with 1919, was followed by the tremendous post-war boom of the twenties.
The Communist Party in the Twenties
Of course this wasn’t anything like the current boom. But considering the conditions that had previously been known in the country, it was pretty lush. From the end of the war in 1918, up until the stock market crash in 1929, there was a continuous upswing of production, interrupted only by a recession in 1921, which was overcome within a year. And, for the first time in this country, there was year after year of almost full employment, fairly good wages, lots of overtime, and all the rest. Some workers even began to own automobiles. That was a sign of what we called their “bourgeoisification.” Everything is relative—and relative to the previous period, the automobiles of the twenties were a sign of workers’ prosperity.
The big boom of the twenties was interpreted by all kinds of learned people as the final solution of the contradictions of capitalism. Then as now that was a common theme of the economists and intellectuals: Karl Marx was out of date. His theory of the cycle of boom-and-bust had been overcome by the genius of American capitalism. We were going to have ever-rising permanent prosperity from now on. A great many people, including workers, believed that, and radicalism lost its previous attraction.
The result was that by the end of the twenties the original movement had become dispersed. At least ninety percent of the people who had been active socialists and labor radicals in the two decades before had fallen aside. There was nothing left except a weak and rotting right-wing Socialist party and the Communist party, with a greatly reduced membership.
That was, you may say, the end of the Debsian movement. It had lasted twenty years. What remained after that was merely a hangover, a survival of remnants—never the dynamic center of radicalism as it had been before. But despite that eventual failure of the movement, I think the over-all judgment of the Debsian period must be favorable, because out of this movement came the cadres and some of the main ideas for the second big upsurge of American labor radicalism in the thirties.
There never could have been a Communist party in this country in the twenties if there had not been a socialist movement in the twenty preceding years. This first big experiment in socialist and labor radicalism failed in its ultimate mission. But it left behind—and this is what we should remember in our historical appraisal, because it is so pertinent for today—it left behind a residue, in the form of cadres, ideas and attitudes which continued and advanced the socialist tradition. What was left from that older movement eventually became the leaven in the movement of the thirties.
After the split of 1919, the new Communist party took over and rapidly displaced all other contenders for supremacy in the field of radicalism, as the Socialist party had done in the preceding two decades. What was the Communist party like in the twenties? I was there, and I remember, and in the light of later thought and study, I think I understand it and can report it truthfully.
The CP in its early years had certain basic characteristics. Its cadres, formed in the previous radical movement, consisted of younger comrades who were conditioned to irreconcilable struggle against capitalism. It was inspired by the Russian Revolution and was the carrier of its ideas as well as it understood them. Its message was revolutionary, not at all moderate, not in the least conciliatory, or liberalistic, or conciliationism. The idea of class collaboration was simply anathema. Its guiding doctrine was the class struggle.
One of the main slogans of the Communist party in that period was: “Organize the Unorganized!” That was a bold program that only revolutionists could take seriously. If you think it is tough in the steel union or any other union today, look back to those days. Steel, rubber, auto and every other big industry had no unions at all, or company unions, controlled by the companies and led by company stooges. The Communist party conducted a struggle against company unions for bona fide unions of the workers, under the slogan: Class Struggle vs. Class Collaboration! That was a revolutionary slogan for the time, and it did a lot to prepare the great upsurge of union organization in the next decade.
In the main the composition of the Communist party in the twenties was young. The age level of the Communist party today, or what’s left of it or its peripheral circles doesn’t resemble what the Communist party was in the twenties. That was a young movement, as dynamic revolutionary movements always are.
At its inception the “old men” of the party among the leaders were Ruthenberg, Bedacht, Wagenknecht, Katterfeld, later Foster—they were all turning forty years old. A second layer of leaders, represented by Earl Browder, Bill Dunne, Arne Swabeck, myself and others, were turning thirty. And a third layer of the top leaders, represented in the Central Committee and the Political Committee by Lovestone, Weinstone and Wolfe, were in their early twenties—fresh out of college.
That was the composition of the leadership. The ranks, I believe, were even younger. The old men of the Socialist party—of the period before the split—did not come with the Communist party. It took the youth to understand the war and the Russian Revolution and to make the new movement fit for new times.
Maintained Class-Struggle Policy
This Communist party held the line of class struggle and revolutionary doctrine in that long ten-year period of boom, prosperity and conservatism before the crash of 1929. It was in that period—fighting for revolutionary ideas against a conservative environment as we are trying to do today, refusing to compromise the principle of class independence—that the Communist party gathered and prepared its cadres for the great upsurge of the thirties.
Not more than ten percent was left from the old prewar movement. Although the Communist party itself continued to recruit individuals from day to day and month to month, it also continued to lose people and its over-all membership declined. The left wing leaders in the Socialist party had claimed, with some justification, that they had 60,000 votes supporting them in the Referendum of 1919—shortly before the split. But then followed the Palmer Raids, the witch hunt, the deportations, the illegality of the party, and the long boom. It was tough going.
By the time of the stock market crash in 1929, which ended the myth of permanent capitalist prosperity, the Communist party had under 10,000 members. Ninety percent of these were foreign born. But it was a young movement—and primarily proletarian.
That was what the CP had to start with at the end of the twenties. It was up against the fact that the trade union movement was even weaker than it had been at the beginning of the twenties. A peculiar phenomenon was recorded: for the first time in modern history a protracted period of prosperity with its increase of production and increase in the size of the proletariat didn’t increase the size of the unions. On the contrary, it depleted and replaced them in many instances by company unions. The country was so conservative, the bosses were in such firm control, the union leadership was so weak, and its craft form of organization was so inadequate, that the trade unions embraced not more than three million at the time of the 1929 stock market crash. As far as CP influence in the unions was concerned, it was pretty well purged out, except in the garment trades and among the miners.
Although the CP wasn’t in first-class shape in those earlier days, it was young, confident and revolutionary—even ultra-radical at times. The Socialist party and the IWW had withered on the vine. In the Communist party itself, the corruption of Stalinism had already started but as yet had not deeply affected the consciousness of the rank and file. Despite its reduced membership, the Communist party entered the thirties—the period of the great radical revival—as the dominating center of American radicalism. It had no serious contenders. It had to its left only the dissident group of the Trotskyist, who were numerically small and isolated. The right wing group of Lovestoneites was equally weak; the attenuated and decrepit Socialist party offered no real competition; and the IWW had fallen victim to its Syndicalism dogmatism and become a sect. That was the shape of American radicalism when the thirties began.
Then the situation changed, almost overnight. The terrible financial and social crisis really shook up this country—and the workers. The radicalism produced by this shake-up was far stronger than the radicalism of the previous two decades. It had a much firmer social composition. This time the industrial workers in the main centers were the spearhead of the radicalism and gave the new movement a class composition of invincible power. It had the advantage of a more advanced ideology. The inspiration and ideas of the Russian Revolution permeated the Communist movement of that time and gave it a tremendous advantage over all other tendencies.
And then, in the changed situation in the thirties the impossible was accomplished. The impossible task of organizing the automobile industry, the rubber industry, the electrical manufacturing industry, the steel industry, the maritime industry—and actually bringing the monopolistic powers of American capitalism to the point where they had to recognize the unions—all that was accomplished in the great days of the CIO uprising in the thirties.
Along with that there was a growing sentiment for a Labor party which under proper leadership could have brought this whole movement of labor radicalism toward a glorious new epoch of independent class political action in this country. But that didn’t happen. And the main reason it didn’t happen was that the Communist party, which was the main leader of this new movement of labor radicalism, failed in its mission, even more shamefully, even more disgracefully than the Socialist party of the previous two decades. And more catastrophically, because it was not defeated in battle; it was corrupted from within. The Communist party has left less behind it from the great radical movement of the thirties than the Socialist party left in the beginning of the twenties.
You know the CP expanded its organization and influence in all directions in the thirties. Why did it collapse so miserably in the fifties? In fact, it had collapsed before then, but we have only seen in recent years how catastrophic it has been. Although many like John Gates, ex-editor of the Daily Worker, (I use him only as a symbol, because his name is legion) went through the experiences of the thirties, they didn’t understand what happened and they can’t make a true report about what they saw. They attribute the successes of the CP to the party’s cleverness in putting on the mask of “progressivism,” supporting Roosevelt and the New Deal in the late thirties and in the war period. And, conversely, they think the collapse of the CP has been caused by sectarianism, which is the way they describe the policy of class struggle and revolution.
The Big Appeal of the Communist Party
But that’s a complete misunderstanding of what really happened. The main cadres of the Communist party, which played such a big role in the second big wave of American radicalism in this century were forged, as I said before, in the twenties. Then they were renewed and greatly expanded in the early thirties by the policy of the class struggle. (In fact, during the first half of the thirties the Communist party was devoted to what we called ultra-leftism, ultra-radicalism, not at all “progressivism.” It did not maneuver with capitalist politics.)
In 1932, the Communist party nominated a Negro, James Ford, for Vice-President with Foster. And the slogan of their 1932 campaign was: “Class against Class.” There was no mealy-mouthed “progressivism” about that. With this slogan and the spirit emanating from it, the main cadres of the young unemployed workers of that time, the student youth without prospects, and, for the first time in the history of American radicalism, significant numbers of Negroes—thousands of them—and displaced intellectuals in droves—were recruited to the party. In this early period of the depression they were not repelled by the party’s radical and revolutionary aspect, but were attracted precisely because of it. Not in spite of its appearance as the representative of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, but, in large measure, because of it.
That was the big appeal of the Communist party in the first years of the thirties. The discontented turned to the most radical and aggressive movement they could find, and thought they had found it in the Communist party. In that, I think, is a lesson for the future. In times of social crisis, when the workers, the Negro people, the troubled students and the intellectuals of many kinds see no prospect in capitalism, they want to hear the word of a radical social transformation and a new beginning. That’s what the Communist party represented in the eyes of these people; and that’s why it grew.
In the early years of the thirties, the program and tradition of independent class politics completely dominated the Communist party and its tremendous periphery. So strong was this principle and this tradition that it couldn’t be changed abruptly. The rank and file of the movement, educated in the principle of the class struggle—which has its highest and sharpest expression in independent socialist political action—had to be corrupted gradually, a step at a time. The snuggling up to Roosevelt and the Democratic party couldn’t be presented directly to the Communist party membership and its supporters in the middle of the thirties. It had to be presented as a maneuver to fool the class enemy.
“The Mask Becomes the Face”
Of course, it was really a Stalinist maneuver to fool the communist workers; they were the real victims. This new turn was inspired and directed by the Stalinized bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, and designed to use the promising movement of American radicalism as a pawn in its diplomatic game. The leaders in Moscow were concerned with the short-term interests of their foreign policy, and not at all with the American workers and the American revolution. Roosevelt had recognized the Soviet Union, and the Stalinists, in turn, decided to recognize Roosevelt. They looked upon the great movement of American radicalism as something to be expended cheaply. They diverted it, through the leadership of the Communist party, into the Roosevelt camp. They steered it away from the movement for an independent Labor party, which was called for by the conditions of the time and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of workers. The big switch in policy, from class struggle to class collaboration, was made in the shortsighted temporary interest of Stalinist diplomacy.
That’s the great divide between the rise and the decline, and the eventual complete collapse of the radical movement of the thirties and of the Communist party that led it. The big turn-around began with disguise and double talk. Just think what was done and how it was done in 1936! There was a Presidential election. The Communist party leadership didn’t yet dare to endorse the candidates of a capitalist party. They had a grand convention and nominated their own candidates, Browder and Ford, as independent candidates of the Communist party. This was a concession to the traditional purpose of a socialist or communist party. Then came the double talk. They said: We’re nominating our own candidates, but—“Socialism is not the issue!”
This crooked formula was the great contribution of Browder, as the agent of Stalin, to the betrayal of American radicalism. “Socialism is not the issue?” Well, people might logically ask, if socialism is not the issue, what in the hell are you nominating a socialist candidate for? The Stalinist leaders didn’t answer that question directly. They worked their way around it deviously.
They didn’t call for people to vote for the Communist party candidates. And they didn’t come right out for Roosevelt. They conducted the campaign on the slogan—what do you think? Well, by now you know it happens in every election—“Beat Landon at all costs!” That was the slogan of the Communist party in 1936, in the middle of the social crisis, when the possibility of a ringing campaign to further radicalize the workers was on the agenda. “Beat Landon at all costs!” meant of course, “elect Roosevelt at all costs!” That’s what such a slogan always means in reverse.
It was supposed to be a very slick maneuver to fool everybody. “No, we’re not voting for Roosevelt, we’re putting up our own candidates.” But all the trade unionists who were under the influence of the CP got the word: “Vote for Roosevelt.” It was presented to the communist workers as a maneuver, to fool the class enemy. But those who started out that way, thinking to outwit the class enemy by supporting him, eventually became victims of their own deception. They began to play the capitalist party game in earnest.
The most incredible thing, for one who has been raised in the old socialist tradition, is to run into people by the score, and, if you look around for them, by the hundreds and thousands, who have been educated in the Communist party of recent years, who think they should play the Democratic party game for keeps. They believe in it. The mask has become the face. The dupers have become the duped.
Of course, the Stalinists didn’t capture the Democratic party. I can tell you that, in case you have any doubts about it. But class collaborationist politics did capture the Communist party. The Stalinists went to work, running errands and ringing doorbells in order to beat some capitalist political faker at all costs in order to elect some other capitalist political shyster at all costs. Over a period of time the program of the class struggle and independent class politics was lost sight of altogether by the bulk of these people. The Communist party members and sympathizers forgot the ABC of socialism which Debs understood sixty years ago. They continued to support the Democratic party long after the Democrats had no further need of them and gave them the boot.
Of course, there were other causes for the catastrophic decline and disgraceful collapse of the Communist party and its peripheral movement. But that’s the basic cause, because it goes right to the fundamental class issue of independent politics. That’s the basic cause of the defeat, demoralization and dispersal of the great movement of labor radicalism generated by the crisis of the thirties.
In the thirties and since, the Communist party, as the leading center of the new radicalism, directly reversed the trend of their predecessors of the turn of the century. That unspeakable betrayal stands out strikingly as you see it in historical perspective. Debs and Wayland, who had supported the Populist party and the Democratic party, turned around and led the movement forward from Populism and the Democratic party and all kinds of class collaborationist politics. The Stalinists reversed this whole trend and led communist and socialist workers back from independent class politics, back to class collaboration, back to support of capitalist politicians.
The leading forces of the Debsian period had the benefit of far less experience and far less study. Yet they did far better than their successors of the thirties. That’s a striking historical fact that ought to induce younger people to study the history of the movement. In this study of history they will see how colossal has been the loss of the tremendous potentialities of the radical movement of the thirties under the Stalinist leadership.
The Lost Generation of Radicals
If we’re going to make a new start and prepare for the next wave of radicalism in this country, there’s only one way to begin. We have to return to fundamentals. At least, to the one big fundamental of class politics. If some people, who still call themselves socialists or communists, can’t go directly to Marx and Lenin in one bound, they ought at least, for a start, to try to go back to Debs and the Appeal to Reason when they broke with the Democratic party in 1900.
The great movement of socialist and labor radicalism that was generated by the crisis of the thirties has completely spent itself. That’s what we have to understand if we are going to get a realistic picture of the actual situation. Due to the combination of circum¬stances, the objective difficulties, plus the corruption of leadership, this movement is worn out. All that remains of it, outside the cadres of those who remain faithful to the fundamental ideas of socialism, is a big lost generation of radicals.
They’re numerous in this country. But when I see these people, or hear about them which is more frequent, who have fallen out of the Communist party by the tens of thousands, who still want to consider themselves socialists and even communists, who want to gather every now and then to have a discussion—providing you don’t bring up any fundamental questions or propose any action—they strike me as people suffering from political amnesia. They can’t remember where they came from—from that revolutionary movement of the early thirties. They have a nostalgia for the big masses and big deals, but they’ve forgotten that that mass movement was produced by policies of the class struggle, not by class adaptation.
The radicalism generated by the social crisis in the thirties is not a total loss by any means. Like its predecessor of the Debsian time, the new movement of the thirties left something behind it to build on. First of all, and this is a tremendous thing, out of that great upheaval of the thirties came the CIO movement and the organization of the big industrial unions in the mass production industries. They have softened UP, shackled by government controls and saddled with a conservative, capitalist-minded bureaucracy. But the unions as organizations have survived. We see them in action every once in a while, as in the present steel strike. And they remain a great potential power.
It needs just a little shift in the situation to bring it forth. We got a slight intimation of this a year ago when the bosses went a little bit too far and attempted to pass “right to work” laws. They could have passed them in the twenties without any strongly organized opposition. When they tried it in 1958, they were suddenly made aware of the fact that a seventeen million strong trade union movement, created by the upsurge of the thirties and inspired by radicals, didn’t want to be broken up by “right to work” laws. That was a sort of political uprising, a portent of things to come, that upset all the calculations of the capitalist politicians.
Right now they’re probing again, provoking the steel workers, and provoking the unions generally with the Landrum-Griffin anti-Labor law. Let them go a little bit too far, let a political aggressiveness of the capitalists coincide with some social disturbance and workers’ discontent, and you’ll see what a colossal power this seventeen million strong trade union movement really has. And what a hearing you’ll get from workers then if you speak the true and honest word of class struggle against class collaboration! There’s an immense reservoir for genuine radicalism in this great trade union movement. That’s something left behind from the uprising of the thirties.
Something no less important, perhaps even more important in the long run, are the surviving cadres of class conscious revolutionists who preserve and represent the ideas, who are the continuators of the doctrine and the tradition of socialism. They are important because without the ideas, without the cadres, even though small, you can’t hope to build a consistent revolutionary movement. And the conjunction of a cadre of class conscious revolutionists who have assimilated the experience of the past with a new upsurge of labor militancy, will release a great power.
It is another advantage of great import for the future, that this surviving nucleus of the continuators is organized and active, and is recruiting, even though slowly, but quite consistently and noticeably, a new cadre of young revolutionists. That is the touchstone. That is ground for confidence. The living movement always appeals to the young, and the mark of a living movement is its ability to attract the young. Wherever you see a party anywhere that has no young people, you can say for sure that its prospects are dim. The experienced troops of every army, even the best, always need renewal and replenishment.
“The Party of the Youth”
Here is the central point I have been building up to. The radical movement of the thirties, with all its grandeur, glory and power, has spent itself. Individuals and small groups of the old, fallen-away radicals may be reactivated under new conditions; but the main forces of the new movement of American socialist radicalism have to come from a new generation. There is no room for doubt or misunderstanding on this score. The evidence of the recent years is conclusive. Our task is to hold the line and help the process along, provide some of the ideas, and make room for the new contingents of young militants.
That was Lenin’s idea a long time ago. Only, he was more radical about it than we are today. The New Republic a few weeks ago carried a review of a history of the Russian Komsomol—the Russian Young Communist League. Here’s a quotation from it:
“At the outset of a history of the Soviet Young Communist League or Komsomol, the author, Professor Fisher, cites a remark of Lenin’s made long before the Revolution to someone who complained that the Russian Social Democrats were mostly mere youths. Lenin said. ‘It’s perfectly natural that youth should predominate in a revolutionary party, since this is the party of the future, and the future belongs to the young ... We will always remain the party of the youth, of the most advanced class, i.e., the working class’.”
We have the same general idea and we take the attraction of the upcoming young rebels to our banner as a sign of things to come.
As Marxists, we count on the objective developments to prepare the ground for a great new movement. Trotsky, like all Marxists, based his revolutionary optimism on the contradictions of capitalism generating a revolutionary movement. So do we. In 1931, in the second year of the crisis, Trotsky wrote about America as follows:
“In the past, America has known more than one stormy outburst of revolutionary or semi-revolutionary mass movements. Every time they died out quickly. Because America every time entered a new period of economic upswing and also because the movements themselves were characterized by crass empiricism and theoretical helplessness. Those two conditions belong to the past. A new economic upswing, and one cannot consider it excluded in advance, will have to be based not on the internal equilibrium, but on the present chaos of world economy. American capitalism will enter an epoch of monstrous imperialism, of an uninterrupted growth of armaments, of intervention in the affairs of the entire world, of military conflicts and convulsions.”
Remember, this was written in 1931 when the official policy of the United States was isolationism.
Then Trotsky continued:
“On the other hand, in the form of communism, the American proletariat possesses, rather could possess, provided with a correct policy, no longer the old mélange of empiricism, mysticism and quackery, but a scientifically grounded up-to-date doctrine. These radical changes permit us to predict with certainty that the inevitable and relatively rapid revolutionary transformation of the American proletariat will no more be the former easily extinguishable bonfire, but the beginning of a veritable revolutionary conflagration. In America, communism can face its great future with confidence.”
The first part of Trotsky’s prediction about the militaristic eruption of American capitalism has been confirmed to the letter. The second part was only partly carried out; the revolutionary prospects of the upsurge of the thirties were not realized. But even there, Trotsky had qualified his prediction. He said, the American workers could possess a scientific guide in the form of communism provided its representatives had “a correct policy.” The American Communist party failed to provide that correct policy. Trotsky saw both the transformation of American capitalism into a world-embracing imperialist power on the one hand, and a revolutionary proletariat on the other, as a possible outcome of the thirties. And it really was possible. For the reasons we have cited, that possible outcome was lost the first time. We owe that failure, above all, to Stalinism. But the prospect remains fully valid for the next upsurge. The movement of revolutionary socialism has a great future in this country. And if we face it with confidence, and put our trust in a new generation, the future will become the present all the sooner.
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES FOR SOCIALISM- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
This volume is a compendium of Cannon’s speeches over most of his active political life beginning with his leadership role in the early American Communist Party and his secondary role in the Communist International. Some of the selections are also available in other parts of the series mentioned above. I would also note here that in contrast to his "Notebook of an Agitator" (also reviewed in this space) the pieces here tend to be longer and based on more general socialist principles. The socialist movement has always emphasized two ways of getting its message out- propaganda and agitation. The selections here represent a more propagandistic approach to that message. Many of the presentations hold their own even today in 2006 as thoughtful expositions of the aims of socialism and how to struggle for it. I particularly draw the reader’s attention to "Sixty Years of American Radicalism" a speech given in 1959 in which Cannon draws a general overview of the ebbs and flows of the socialist movement from the turn of the 20th century until then. At that time Cannon also predicted a new radical upsurge which did occur shortly thereafter but unfortunately has long since ended.
Cannon’s speech correctly marks the great divide in the American socialist movement at World War I and the socialist response American participation in that war and subsequently to the Russian Revolution. Prior to that time socialist activity was a loose, federated affair driven by a more evolutionary approach to ultimate socialist success i.e. reformism. That trend was symbolized by the work of the great socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. While that approach had many, ultimately, fatal flaws it did represent a solid attempt to draw a class struggle line for independent (from the capitalist parties) political action by the working class.
Drawing on those lessons the early Communist Party, basing itself on support of the Russian Revolution, became dominant on the American left by expanding on that concept. That is, until the mid-1930’s after it had already long been an agency under orders from Moscow in support, by one means or another, of the Rooseveltian Democratic Party, a capitalist party. That was fatal to long term prospects for independent working class political action and Cannon has harsh words for the party’s policy. He also noted that the next upsurge would have to right that policy by again demanding an independent political expression for the working class. Unfortunately, when that radical upsurge did occur in the 1960’s and early 1970’s the party that he formed, the Socialist Workers Party, essentially replicated in the anti-Vietnam War movement and elsewhere the Communist Party’s class collaborationist policy with the remnants of American liberalism. Obviously, as a man in his sixties Cannon was no longer able or willing to fight against that policy by the party that he had created. Thus, the third wave of radicalism also ebbed and the American Left declined. Nevertheless this speech is Cannon’s legacy to the youth today. A new upsurge, and it will come, must learn this lesson and fight tooth and nail for independent political expression for the working class to avoid another failure.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
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American Radicalism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
James P. Cannon, International Socialist Review
Winter 1960
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From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.1, Winter 1960, from Tamiment Library microfilm archives
Transcribed & marked up by Daniel Gaido and Andrew Pollack for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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This speech was given at the West Coast Vacation School and Camp, Labor Day, 1959. James P. Cannon is the National Chairman of the Socialist Workers party. He was a founder of the Communist party of the United States and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International until 1928 when he supported the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. Before World War I, Cannon was active in the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist party.
The biographical information which the Chairman provided in his introduction doesn’t necessarily qualify anyone to give a coherent account of what happened in the past fifty years or so in the movement of socialist and labor radicalism. The woods are full of people who have been through at least a large part of this experience, but their accounts of it may vary widely. The stormy events of American radicalism during this century may be compared to a long series of explosive and catastrophic experiences after which every survivor tells a different story.
It is not only necessary to have been a participant and an observer to explain the ups and downs of American radicalism in this century. It is equally necessary to have understood what was happening in the world over that period, and to relate it all to a consistent historical theory. You’ll be better able to judge at the end of my speech than at the beginning whether I, in part at least, meet those qualifications.
This is a very big and complicated subject to be compressed within an hour or so. But we need a general view of the preceding events of the present century as a means of giving us some perspective on the years that remain in it.
The Great American Contradiction
Let’s begin with the present reality, with what might be called the great American contradiction. Here we live in the most advanced country in the world from the point of view of its technological and industrial development and its productivity. Because it is the most advanced country in these respects, it is the country where the material conditions and foundations for the socialist transformation of society are prepared to a degree not yet existing anywhere else in the world.
Marx explained that capitalism not only greatly advances the forces of production and is therefore a more progressive stage of society than the feudal past, but, in developing the forces of production and proletarianizing the great mass of the population, capitalist society prepares its own gravediggers in the person of the industrial proletariat. That also has been provided in the United States to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. The gravediggers of capitalism are more numerous here, and, in some respects, better organized than elsewhere on a trade union level. It is potentially the most powerful working class in the entire world.
The contradiction to all these prerequisites for the socialist transformation of society is the other side of the picture which we all have to recognize. We have here the most conservative political climate of any country in the world, at least among the great powers, and the weakest movement of labor radicalism and socialist consciousness. Despite all the rich experiences of the working people in the rest of the world which should have come to our aid and eventually inevitably will—despite all the favorable developments for socialism on a world scale, the situation of American radicalism today, from the point of view of socialist consciousness, socialist organization and socialist morale is worse than it was thirty years ago. It’s even worse than it was sixty years ago at the turn of the century, when the first modern movement of socialist and labor radicalism in this country began to get a popular hearing.
There are objective causes for this tremendous depression of the radical movement at the present time. They are well known and don’t need to be elaborated here. The unprecedented boom, a prosperity based on war expenditures and preparations for war and so forth, have had a tremendously conservatizing influence. In any case, radicalism would very likely be on the defensive in this country under such conditions. But our concern today is not with these objective causes of the present conjuncture in the development of the historical movement toward socialism. I propose to deal mainly with the subjective causes of the present weaknesses of American radicalism: above all, the failure of leadership which has made conditions ten and a hundred times worse than they needed to be, and which makes our problem of preparing the great socialist revival more difficult.
The present situation which I have briefly sketched can change very rapidly into its opposite. That’s what happened in the thirties, in the decade following the first postwar boom of American capitalism with the concomitant decline of radicalism in the twenties. Very few of you may remember that we went through a period in the 1920’s after the rise of radicalism in the first twenty years of this century, when the unprecedented boom of American capitalism on the one side and the inadequacies of the revolutionary leadership on the other produced a collapse, and almost dispersal, of the previous radical movement. But within the next decade that entire situation turned upside down in a few years’ time.
The subjective reasons for the current depression of United States radicalism cannot be understood without a critical analysis of the inner history of the American socialist and labor radical movement in the sixty years since the turn of the century. We can learn something from this review of the past that will be useful both for the present and for the future. Of course, in a single lecture we can only hit the high spots and must omit many interesting and significant details. But such a condensed review may make the main aspects of the historical development stand out more clearly.
In our century we have seen two widespread and popular movements of socialist and labor radicalism. If we examine what they were, how they came into existence, what they did and failed to do, and what happened to them—we can draw some useful conclusions about the prospects of a new revival of American radicalism and about the nature of our problems and our tasks in preparing the way for it.
The Debsian Movement
At the turn of the century, there was a great upswing of radicalism in this country prompted by the objective conditions of the time—the accelerated development of industrial and monopolistic capitalism, the dispossession of small businessmen and farmers, the unbridled exploitation of the workers who were without organization, and so forth. This rebirth of American radicalism got its big impetus in 1901 with the formation of the Socialist party of America as a fusion of different socialist currents, which up to that time had been isolated groups without any wide popular influence. The distinctive factor which made possible the development of this new socialist movement at that time was the turn of a number of influential individuals and groups away from the policy of class collaboration in politics to the policy of independent socialist action.
Many of you have heard of the great role played by Debs and the Appeal to Reason, the socialist agitational paper which had a half million and more circulation. What is perhaps not so well known by comrades of the younger generation is that Debs, the Appeal to Reason and a very large percentage of the people who were influential in giving the Socialist party its start in the first years of this century had previously been Populists. They had supported the Populist movement and then in 1896, when the Populist party was swallowed by the Democratic party, they went along with it. Debs, the Appeal to Reason, Victor Berger and others who promoted the formation of the Socialist party in 1901, had supported Bryan and the Democratic party in 1896. But by the turn of the century, they broke out of that blind alley and had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to have an independent socialist position. That’s what made the big difference.
The most significant change in the attitude of these influential people, and of tens of thousands of others who supported them, which made possible the emergence and growth of the Socialist party in the first years of this century, was their break with capitalist politics altogether and their espousal of socialism. They emphasized and acted on the fundamental principle that a socialist movement must have its own party and its own candidates and cannot combine with or support any capitalist party, whether Republican, Democratic, Progressive or Populist. This new revelation inspired the emergence for the first time of a popular socialist movement in this country.
The Socialist Labor party and other socialist sects which had existed prior to that time had never gained a popular hearing. But the Socialist party brought into its ranks a great number of people who had had their fill of experimentation in one form of capitalist party politics or another. They gave a great impetus to the new Socialist party. So much so that, by 1912, the Socialist party of the United States had a hundred thousand members and got almost a million votes in the Presidential election. That was before women’s suffrage, and was about six percent of the total vote cast. This would be equal to between three and a half and four million votes at the present time. That gives you an idea of the popular appeal of the Socialist party in that period.
The IWW, which was a very militant organization on the industrial field, was a part of this first popular movement of American radicalism. It is important to recall that the IWW was founded by socialists. At the Founding Convention in 1905 all the leading figures were from a socialist background: they came from the Socialist party, the Socialist Labor party, some Anarchists and other kinds of radicals. This sentiment predominated in the IWW throughout its first twenty years of existence. It called itself not merely an industrial union, but a revolutionary industrial union.
In these early years of our century socialist and labor radicalism attained some proportions of a mass character in this country. The movement had its weak sides. In the course of its electoral activities, as we look back on it now, we can see that it placed too much emphasis on municipal politics and reform. The reformist tendency within the Socialist party was quite strong, although I believe a fair assessment of the history would show the majority were revolutionary.
The composition of the party was also unfavorable in some respects. Comrade White told us last night that the Populist movement in the South was deflected into a reactionary channel. But there was another part of this Populist movement which was drawn into the Socialist party. The Socialist party in many parts of the country consisted of a very large percentage of former Populists. The composition of its membership in the western part of the country was very heavily weighted on the side of the petty bourgeoisie in the cities and in the countryside. At one time the largest single state membership of the Socialist party, and, if I’m not mistaken, the largest socialist vote proportionally, was in the state of Oklahoma. In the other western agrarian states also the hard-pressed tenant and mortgaged farmers and desperate petty bourgeoisie streamed into the Socialist party from the Populist movement and swelled its ranks. So the class composition of the party was not as proletarian as an ideal Socialist movement should be.
Another terrible defect of the socialist and radical movement of that time came from the weakness of the organized labor movement. The great mass production industries in this country were completely without trade union organization. Trade unions were limited almost entirely to the skilled crafts, and were very weak in many places even in that field. Outside of the mines and the railroads, it was very hard to find a single union in the big industries. As I listened the other night to the report about the present steel strike, a general strike shutting down all the mills of the country, with the union so strong it doesn’t need to send more than token pickets—I recalled a very different steel strike in 1913 that I participated in as an IWW organizer. There we ran up against company thugs dressed up in police uniforms who sometimes outnumbered the pickets. And that was a single local strike on the ore docks in Duluth and Superior.
This was a common experience of the IWW and socialist attempts to organize in the steel industry or any place else. The most you could do was conduct a guerrilla attack at a single locality. The idea of a general strike, which was our ideal and our program, was far from realization. Yet that’s taken as a matter of course today.
This weakness of the trade union movement naturally was a weakness also of the socialist movement of the time. Without a strongly organized working class in the basic industries, it is quite futile to expect a socialist and revolutionary transformation of society. The IWW which had played a prominent part in the general radicalization of the period, turned to Syndicalism and that was a big defect of the movement too. The unfavorable class composition of the Socialist party, the weakness of the trade union movement, the mistakes of Syndicalism and reformism—all these defects prepared the way for the decline and eventual collapse of the first big experiment in socialist labor radicalism after twenty years of upswing.
The real trouble began with the First World War and then with the Russian Revolution. The movement as a whole proved unable to assimilate the lessons of these world-shaking experiences. They produced a deep division in the socialist movement, a split in 1919, the formation of the Communist party as a separate organization and the great weakening of what was left of the Socialist party.
This split in the forces of American socialist and labor radicalism, beginning with 1919, was followed by the tremendous post-war boom of the twenties.
The Communist Party in the Twenties
Of course this wasn’t anything like the current boom. But considering the conditions that had previously been known in the country, it was pretty lush. From the end of the war in 1918, up until the stock market crash in 1929, there was a continuous upswing of production, interrupted only by a recession in 1921, which was overcome within a year. And, for the first time in this country, there was year after year of almost full employment, fairly good wages, lots of overtime, and all the rest. Some workers even began to own automobiles. That was a sign of what we called their “bourgeoisification.” Everything is relative—and relative to the previous period, the automobiles of the twenties were a sign of workers’ prosperity.
The big boom of the twenties was interpreted by all kinds of learned people as the final solution of the contradictions of capitalism. Then as now that was a common theme of the economists and intellectuals: Karl Marx was out of date. His theory of the cycle of boom-and-bust had been overcome by the genius of American capitalism. We were going to have ever-rising permanent prosperity from now on. A great many people, including workers, believed that, and radicalism lost its previous attraction.
The result was that by the end of the twenties the original movement had become dispersed. At least ninety percent of the people who had been active socialists and labor radicals in the two decades before had fallen aside. There was nothing left except a weak and rotting right-wing Socialist party and the Communist party, with a greatly reduced membership.
That was, you may say, the end of the Debsian movement. It had lasted twenty years. What remained after that was merely a hangover, a survival of remnants—never the dynamic center of radicalism as it had been before. But despite that eventual failure of the movement, I think the over-all judgment of the Debsian period must be favorable, because out of this movement came the cadres and some of the main ideas for the second big upsurge of American labor radicalism in the thirties.
There never could have been a Communist party in this country in the twenties if there had not been a socialist movement in the twenty preceding years. This first big experiment in socialist and labor radicalism failed in its ultimate mission. But it left behind—and this is what we should remember in our historical appraisal, because it is so pertinent for today—it left behind a residue, in the form of cadres, ideas and attitudes which continued and advanced the socialist tradition. What was left from that older movement eventually became the leaven in the movement of the thirties.
After the split of 1919, the new Communist party took over and rapidly displaced all other contenders for supremacy in the field of radicalism, as the Socialist party had done in the preceding two decades. What was the Communist party like in the twenties? I was there, and I remember, and in the light of later thought and study, I think I understand it and can report it truthfully.
The CP in its early years had certain basic characteristics. Its cadres, formed in the previous radical movement, consisted of younger comrades who were conditioned to irreconcilable struggle against capitalism. It was inspired by the Russian Revolution and was the carrier of its ideas as well as it understood them. Its message was revolutionary, not at all moderate, not in the least conciliatory, or liberalistic, or conciliationism. The idea of class collaboration was simply anathema. Its guiding doctrine was the class struggle.
One of the main slogans of the Communist party in that period was: “Organize the Unorganized!” That was a bold program that only revolutionists could take seriously. If you think it is tough in the steel union or any other union today, look back to those days. Steel, rubber, auto and every other big industry had no unions at all, or company unions, controlled by the companies and led by company stooges. The Communist party conducted a struggle against company unions for bona fide unions of the workers, under the slogan: Class Struggle vs. Class Collaboration! That was a revolutionary slogan for the time, and it did a lot to prepare the great upsurge of union organization in the next decade.
In the main the composition of the Communist party in the twenties was young. The age level of the Communist party today, or what’s left of it or its peripheral circles doesn’t resemble what the Communist party was in the twenties. That was a young movement, as dynamic revolutionary movements always are.
At its inception the “old men” of the party among the leaders were Ruthenberg, Bedacht, Wagenknecht, Katterfeld, later Foster—they were all turning forty years old. A second layer of leaders, represented by Earl Browder, Bill Dunne, Arne Swabeck, myself and others, were turning thirty. And a third layer of the top leaders, represented in the Central Committee and the Political Committee by Lovestone, Weinstone and Wolfe, were in their early twenties—fresh out of college.
That was the composition of the leadership. The ranks, I believe, were even younger. The old men of the Socialist party—of the period before the split—did not come with the Communist party. It took the youth to understand the war and the Russian Revolution and to make the new movement fit for new times.
Maintained Class-Struggle Policy
This Communist party held the line of class struggle and revolutionary doctrine in that long ten-year period of boom, prosperity and conservatism before the crash of 1929. It was in that period—fighting for revolutionary ideas against a conservative environment as we are trying to do today, refusing to compromise the principle of class independence—that the Communist party gathered and prepared its cadres for the great upsurge of the thirties.
Not more than ten percent was left from the old prewar movement. Although the Communist party itself continued to recruit individuals from day to day and month to month, it also continued to lose people and its over-all membership declined. The left wing leaders in the Socialist party had claimed, with some justification, that they had 60,000 votes supporting them in the Referendum of 1919—shortly before the split. But then followed the Palmer Raids, the witch hunt, the deportations, the illegality of the party, and the long boom. It was tough going.
By the time of the stock market crash in 1929, which ended the myth of permanent capitalist prosperity, the Communist party had under 10,000 members. Ninety percent of these were foreign born. But it was a young movement—and primarily proletarian.
That was what the CP had to start with at the end of the twenties. It was up against the fact that the trade union movement was even weaker than it had been at the beginning of the twenties. A peculiar phenomenon was recorded: for the first time in modern history a protracted period of prosperity with its increase of production and increase in the size of the proletariat didn’t increase the size of the unions. On the contrary, it depleted and replaced them in many instances by company unions. The country was so conservative, the bosses were in such firm control, the union leadership was so weak, and its craft form of organization was so inadequate, that the trade unions embraced not more than three million at the time of the 1929 stock market crash. As far as CP influence in the unions was concerned, it was pretty well purged out, except in the garment trades and among the miners.
Although the CP wasn’t in first-class shape in those earlier days, it was young, confident and revolutionary—even ultra-radical at times. The Socialist party and the IWW had withered on the vine. In the Communist party itself, the corruption of Stalinism had already started but as yet had not deeply affected the consciousness of the rank and file. Despite its reduced membership, the Communist party entered the thirties—the period of the great radical revival—as the dominating center of American radicalism. It had no serious contenders. It had to its left only the dissident group of the Trotskyist, who were numerically small and isolated. The right wing group of Lovestoneites was equally weak; the attenuated and decrepit Socialist party offered no real competition; and the IWW had fallen victim to its Syndicalism dogmatism and become a sect. That was the shape of American radicalism when the thirties began.
Then the situation changed, almost overnight. The terrible financial and social crisis really shook up this country—and the workers. The radicalism produced by this shake-up was far stronger than the radicalism of the previous two decades. It had a much firmer social composition. This time the industrial workers in the main centers were the spearhead of the radicalism and gave the new movement a class composition of invincible power. It had the advantage of a more advanced ideology. The inspiration and ideas of the Russian Revolution permeated the Communist movement of that time and gave it a tremendous advantage over all other tendencies.
And then, in the changed situation in the thirties the impossible was accomplished. The impossible task of organizing the automobile industry, the rubber industry, the electrical manufacturing industry, the steel industry, the maritime industry—and actually bringing the monopolistic powers of American capitalism to the point where they had to recognize the unions—all that was accomplished in the great days of the CIO uprising in the thirties.
Along with that there was a growing sentiment for a Labor party which under proper leadership could have brought this whole movement of labor radicalism toward a glorious new epoch of independent class political action in this country. But that didn’t happen. And the main reason it didn’t happen was that the Communist party, which was the main leader of this new movement of labor radicalism, failed in its mission, even more shamefully, even more disgracefully than the Socialist party of the previous two decades. And more catastrophically, because it was not defeated in battle; it was corrupted from within. The Communist party has left less behind it from the great radical movement of the thirties than the Socialist party left in the beginning of the twenties.
You know the CP expanded its organization and influence in all directions in the thirties. Why did it collapse so miserably in the fifties? In fact, it had collapsed before then, but we have only seen in recent years how catastrophic it has been. Although many like John Gates, ex-editor of the Daily Worker, (I use him only as a symbol, because his name is legion) went through the experiences of the thirties, they didn’t understand what happened and they can’t make a true report about what they saw. They attribute the successes of the CP to the party’s cleverness in putting on the mask of “progressivism,” supporting Roosevelt and the New Deal in the late thirties and in the war period. And, conversely, they think the collapse of the CP has been caused by sectarianism, which is the way they describe the policy of class struggle and revolution.
The Big Appeal of the Communist Party
But that’s a complete misunderstanding of what really happened. The main cadres of the Communist party, which played such a big role in the second big wave of American radicalism in this century were forged, as I said before, in the twenties. Then they were renewed and greatly expanded in the early thirties by the policy of the class struggle. (In fact, during the first half of the thirties the Communist party was devoted to what we called ultra-leftism, ultra-radicalism, not at all “progressivism.” It did not maneuver with capitalist politics.)
In 1932, the Communist party nominated a Negro, James Ford, for Vice-President with Foster. And the slogan of their 1932 campaign was: “Class against Class.” There was no mealy-mouthed “progressivism” about that. With this slogan and the spirit emanating from it, the main cadres of the young unemployed workers of that time, the student youth without prospects, and, for the first time in the history of American radicalism, significant numbers of Negroes—thousands of them—and displaced intellectuals in droves—were recruited to the party. In this early period of the depression they were not repelled by the party’s radical and revolutionary aspect, but were attracted precisely because of it. Not in spite of its appearance as the representative of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, but, in large measure, because of it.
That was the big appeal of the Communist party in the first years of the thirties. The discontented turned to the most radical and aggressive movement they could find, and thought they had found it in the Communist party. In that, I think, is a lesson for the future. In times of social crisis, when the workers, the Negro people, the troubled students and the intellectuals of many kinds see no prospect in capitalism, they want to hear the word of a radical social transformation and a new beginning. That’s what the Communist party represented in the eyes of these people; and that’s why it grew.
In the early years of the thirties, the program and tradition of independent class politics completely dominated the Communist party and its tremendous periphery. So strong was this principle and this tradition that it couldn’t be changed abruptly. The rank and file of the movement, educated in the principle of the class struggle—which has its highest and sharpest expression in independent socialist political action—had to be corrupted gradually, a step at a time. The snuggling up to Roosevelt and the Democratic party couldn’t be presented directly to the Communist party membership and its supporters in the middle of the thirties. It had to be presented as a maneuver to fool the class enemy.
“The Mask Becomes the Face”
Of course, it was really a Stalinist maneuver to fool the communist workers; they were the real victims. This new turn was inspired and directed by the Stalinized bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, and designed to use the promising movement of American radicalism as a pawn in its diplomatic game. The leaders in Moscow were concerned with the short-term interests of their foreign policy, and not at all with the American workers and the American revolution. Roosevelt had recognized the Soviet Union, and the Stalinists, in turn, decided to recognize Roosevelt. They looked upon the great movement of American radicalism as something to be expended cheaply. They diverted it, through the leadership of the Communist party, into the Roosevelt camp. They steered it away from the movement for an independent Labor party, which was called for by the conditions of the time and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of workers. The big switch in policy, from class struggle to class collaboration, was made in the shortsighted temporary interest of Stalinist diplomacy.
That’s the great divide between the rise and the decline, and the eventual complete collapse of the radical movement of the thirties and of the Communist party that led it. The big turn-around began with disguise and double talk. Just think what was done and how it was done in 1936! There was a Presidential election. The Communist party leadership didn’t yet dare to endorse the candidates of a capitalist party. They had a grand convention and nominated their own candidates, Browder and Ford, as independent candidates of the Communist party. This was a concession to the traditional purpose of a socialist or communist party. Then came the double talk. They said: We’re nominating our own candidates, but—“Socialism is not the issue!”
This crooked formula was the great contribution of Browder, as the agent of Stalin, to the betrayal of American radicalism. “Socialism is not the issue?” Well, people might logically ask, if socialism is not the issue, what in the hell are you nominating a socialist candidate for? The Stalinist leaders didn’t answer that question directly. They worked their way around it deviously.
They didn’t call for people to vote for the Communist party candidates. And they didn’t come right out for Roosevelt. They conducted the campaign on the slogan—what do you think? Well, by now you know it happens in every election—“Beat Landon at all costs!” That was the slogan of the Communist party in 1936, in the middle of the social crisis, when the possibility of a ringing campaign to further radicalize the workers was on the agenda. “Beat Landon at all costs!” meant of course, “elect Roosevelt at all costs!” That’s what such a slogan always means in reverse.
It was supposed to be a very slick maneuver to fool everybody. “No, we’re not voting for Roosevelt, we’re putting up our own candidates.” But all the trade unionists who were under the influence of the CP got the word: “Vote for Roosevelt.” It was presented to the communist workers as a maneuver, to fool the class enemy. But those who started out that way, thinking to outwit the class enemy by supporting him, eventually became victims of their own deception. They began to play the capitalist party game in earnest.
The most incredible thing, for one who has been raised in the old socialist tradition, is to run into people by the score, and, if you look around for them, by the hundreds and thousands, who have been educated in the Communist party of recent years, who think they should play the Democratic party game for keeps. They believe in it. The mask has become the face. The dupers have become the duped.
Of course, the Stalinists didn’t capture the Democratic party. I can tell you that, in case you have any doubts about it. But class collaborationist politics did capture the Communist party. The Stalinists went to work, running errands and ringing doorbells in order to beat some capitalist political faker at all costs in order to elect some other capitalist political shyster at all costs. Over a period of time the program of the class struggle and independent class politics was lost sight of altogether by the bulk of these people. The Communist party members and sympathizers forgot the ABC of socialism which Debs understood sixty years ago. They continued to support the Democratic party long after the Democrats had no further need of them and gave them the boot.
Of course, there were other causes for the catastrophic decline and disgraceful collapse of the Communist party and its peripheral movement. But that’s the basic cause, because it goes right to the fundamental class issue of independent politics. That’s the basic cause of the defeat, demoralization and dispersal of the great movement of labor radicalism generated by the crisis of the thirties.
In the thirties and since, the Communist party, as the leading center of the new radicalism, directly reversed the trend of their predecessors of the turn of the century. That unspeakable betrayal stands out strikingly as you see it in historical perspective. Debs and Wayland, who had supported the Populist party and the Democratic party, turned around and led the movement forward from Populism and the Democratic party and all kinds of class collaborationist politics. The Stalinists reversed this whole trend and led communist and socialist workers back from independent class politics, back to class collaboration, back to support of capitalist politicians.
The leading forces of the Debsian period had the benefit of far less experience and far less study. Yet they did far better than their successors of the thirties. That’s a striking historical fact that ought to induce younger people to study the history of the movement. In this study of history they will see how colossal has been the loss of the tremendous potentialities of the radical movement of the thirties under the Stalinist leadership.
The Lost Generation of Radicals
If we’re going to make a new start and prepare for the next wave of radicalism in this country, there’s only one way to begin. We have to return to fundamentals. At least, to the one big fundamental of class politics. If some people, who still call themselves socialists or communists, can’t go directly to Marx and Lenin in one bound, they ought at least, for a start, to try to go back to Debs and the Appeal to Reason when they broke with the Democratic party in 1900.
The great movement of socialist and labor radicalism that was generated by the crisis of the thirties has completely spent itself. That’s what we have to understand if we are going to get a realistic picture of the actual situation. Due to the combination of circum¬stances, the objective difficulties, plus the corruption of leadership, this movement is worn out. All that remains of it, outside the cadres of those who remain faithful to the fundamental ideas of socialism, is a big lost generation of radicals.
They’re numerous in this country. But when I see these people, or hear about them which is more frequent, who have fallen out of the Communist party by the tens of thousands, who still want to consider themselves socialists and even communists, who want to gather every now and then to have a discussion—providing you don’t bring up any fundamental questions or propose any action—they strike me as people suffering from political amnesia. They can’t remember where they came from—from that revolutionary movement of the early thirties. They have a nostalgia for the big masses and big deals, but they’ve forgotten that that mass movement was produced by policies of the class struggle, not by class adaptation.
The radicalism generated by the social crisis in the thirties is not a total loss by any means. Like its predecessor of the Debsian time, the new movement of the thirties left something behind it to build on. First of all, and this is a tremendous thing, out of that great upheaval of the thirties came the CIO movement and the organization of the big industrial unions in the mass production industries. They have softened UP, shackled by government controls and saddled with a conservative, capitalist-minded bureaucracy. But the unions as organizations have survived. We see them in action every once in a while, as in the present steel strike. And they remain a great potential power.
It needs just a little shift in the situation to bring it forth. We got a slight intimation of this a year ago when the bosses went a little bit too far and attempted to pass “right to work” laws. They could have passed them in the twenties without any strongly organized opposition. When they tried it in 1958, they were suddenly made aware of the fact that a seventeen million strong trade union movement, created by the upsurge of the thirties and inspired by radicals, didn’t want to be broken up by “right to work” laws. That was a sort of political uprising, a portent of things to come, that upset all the calculations of the capitalist politicians.
Right now they’re probing again, provoking the steel workers, and provoking the unions generally with the Landrum-Griffin anti-Labor law. Let them go a little bit too far, let a political aggressiveness of the capitalists coincide with some social disturbance and workers’ discontent, and you’ll see what a colossal power this seventeen million strong trade union movement really has. And what a hearing you’ll get from workers then if you speak the true and honest word of class struggle against class collaboration! There’s an immense reservoir for genuine radicalism in this great trade union movement. That’s something left behind from the uprising of the thirties.
Something no less important, perhaps even more important in the long run, are the surviving cadres of class conscious revolutionists who preserve and represent the ideas, who are the continuators of the doctrine and the tradition of socialism. They are important because without the ideas, without the cadres, even though small, you can’t hope to build a consistent revolutionary movement. And the conjunction of a cadre of class conscious revolutionists who have assimilated the experience of the past with a new upsurge of labor militancy, will release a great power.
It is another advantage of great import for the future, that this surviving nucleus of the continuators is organized and active, and is recruiting, even though slowly, but quite consistently and noticeably, a new cadre of young revolutionists. That is the touchstone. That is ground for confidence. The living movement always appeals to the young, and the mark of a living movement is its ability to attract the young. Wherever you see a party anywhere that has no young people, you can say for sure that its prospects are dim. The experienced troops of every army, even the best, always need renewal and replenishment.
“The Party of the Youth”
Here is the central point I have been building up to. The radical movement of the thirties, with all its grandeur, glory and power, has spent itself. Individuals and small groups of the old, fallen-away radicals may be reactivated under new conditions; but the main forces of the new movement of American socialist radicalism have to come from a new generation. There is no room for doubt or misunderstanding on this score. The evidence of the recent years is conclusive. Our task is to hold the line and help the process along, provide some of the ideas, and make room for the new contingents of young militants.
That was Lenin’s idea a long time ago. Only, he was more radical about it than we are today. The New Republic a few weeks ago carried a review of a history of the Russian Komsomol—the Russian Young Communist League. Here’s a quotation from it:
“At the outset of a history of the Soviet Young Communist League or Komsomol, the author, Professor Fisher, cites a remark of Lenin’s made long before the Revolution to someone who complained that the Russian Social Democrats were mostly mere youths. Lenin said. ‘It’s perfectly natural that youth should predominate in a revolutionary party, since this is the party of the future, and the future belongs to the young ... We will always remain the party of the youth, of the most advanced class, i.e., the working class’.”
We have the same general idea and we take the attraction of the upcoming young rebels to our banner as a sign of things to come.
As Marxists, we count on the objective developments to prepare the ground for a great new movement. Trotsky, like all Marxists, based his revolutionary optimism on the contradictions of capitalism generating a revolutionary movement. So do we. In 1931, in the second year of the crisis, Trotsky wrote about America as follows:
“In the past, America has known more than one stormy outburst of revolutionary or semi-revolutionary mass movements. Every time they died out quickly. Because America every time entered a new period of economic upswing and also because the movements themselves were characterized by crass empiricism and theoretical helplessness. Those two conditions belong to the past. A new economic upswing, and one cannot consider it excluded in advance, will have to be based not on the internal equilibrium, but on the present chaos of world economy. American capitalism will enter an epoch of monstrous imperialism, of an uninterrupted growth of armaments, of intervention in the affairs of the entire world, of military conflicts and convulsions.”
Remember, this was written in 1931 when the official policy of the United States was isolationism.
Then Trotsky continued:
“On the other hand, in the form of communism, the American proletariat possesses, rather could possess, provided with a correct policy, no longer the old mélange of empiricism, mysticism and quackery, but a scientifically grounded up-to-date doctrine. These radical changes permit us to predict with certainty that the inevitable and relatively rapid revolutionary transformation of the American proletariat will no more be the former easily extinguishable bonfire, but the beginning of a veritable revolutionary conflagration. In America, communism can face its great future with confidence.”
The first part of Trotsky’s prediction about the militaristic eruption of American capitalism has been confirmed to the letter. The second part was only partly carried out; the revolutionary prospects of the upsurge of the thirties were not realized. But even there, Trotsky had qualified his prediction. He said, the American workers could possess a scientific guide in the form of communism provided its representatives had “a correct policy.” The American Communist party failed to provide that correct policy. Trotsky saw both the transformation of American capitalism into a world-embracing imperialist power on the one hand, and a revolutionary proletariat on the other, as a possible outcome of the thirties. And it really was possible. For the reasons we have cited, that possible outcome was lost the first time. We owe that failure, above all, to Stalinism. But the prospect remains fully valid for the next upsurge. The movement of revolutionary socialism has a great future in this country. And if we face it with confidence, and put our trust in a new generation, the future will become the present all the sooner.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *A Different View On James P. Cannon- From The Workers Party's Albert Glotzer Archives
Click on title to link to Albert Glotzer's Internet Archives for a 1945 article for the break-away Workers Party on James P. Cannon, a name that should be familiar to readers of this blog. I have touted the abilities of ex-Wobblie, ex- American Communist Party leader and founding Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party leader (along with Glotzer under the party name Albert Gates) Cannon. Glotzer provides a very different view. Compare, but also read Glotzer's obituary also posted on this date to see the curve of his political trajectory. It was not pretty.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- The Struggle To Win The Youth-Founding Conference of the 4th International (1938): "Resolution on Youth"
Founding Conference of the 4th International: "Resolution on Youth"
Introduction from Revolutionary Communist Youth Newsletter, No. 17, May-June 1973
Trotsky was always keenly aware of what he called the problem of generations. He began the New Course (1923), his opening shot in the struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with a discussion of the "question of the party generations," and in the most important document among the founding resolutions of the Fourth International (FI), The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, Trotsky stated the problem of generations in the following way:
"When a program or organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past… Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution."
—p. 45, Pathfinder Press edition
Trotsky had not forgotten the lesson of the collapse of the Second International and the building of the Third. When the leading parties of the Second International capitulated to the national chauvinism of WWI, it was the militants primarily concentrated in the Socialist youth and women’s groups (representing a more oppressed stratum of the working class than the privileged labor aristocracy—the most influential component of the Western European Socialist parties) who carried the banner of internationalism against the tide of national chauvinism. It was these militants who, under the impact of the Russian October, provided the precious founding cadre for the new Communist International (CI), With the destruction of the CI as a world revolutionary party under the heavy blows of the failure of the German Revolution, the bureaucratic degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of fascism and the impending renewal of imperialist world war, the tasks of creating a new international were placed on the agenda. Trotsky, one of the creators of the CI who had authored its founding manifesto, turned to the generation of young workers, unscarred by the defeats and betrayals of the past. Hence, the founding manifesto of the FI ends with a clarion call to "Open the Road to the Woman Worker! Open the Road to the Youth!"
The seriousness with which Trotskyists undertook this necessary historical exhortation to find the road to the next generation of revolutionaries was displayed by the fact that—though the founding of the FI took place under the most difficult conditions requiring careful preparation and secrecy, at a time when the Trotskyists had meager resources and were being hounded throughout the world by the police and agents of all wings of the bourgeoisie from the fascists to the most "democratic" and, with special vehemence, by Stalin’s secret police—nonetheless the Founding Conference was followed one week later by the "World Youth Conference of the Fourth International." Both Conferences were held in September 1938; the former was attended by 21 delegates representing 11 countries, while the Youth Conference was attended by 19 delegates from 7 countries (Poland, Austria, Belgium, Holland, England, the U.S. and France). There was a considerable overlap in delegations and, in addition, the International Bureau of the FI, elected at the party Conference, sent three delegates to the Youth Conference. Besides adopting the "Resolution on the Youth," the World Youth Conference endorsed the Transitional Program and voted to affiliate as the official youth section of the FI.
As Nathan Gould, the youth delegate from the U.S., reported in the weekly organ of the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Appeal (22 October 1938):
"The resolution on relations between the youth and adult Internationals accepted the classical Leninist concept of these relations. The Youth International, which accepts the proletarian revolutionary international leadership of its adult body is to be politically subordinate to and organizationally autonomous of the Fourth International."
Gould then stated that all decisions and resolutions of the Youth Conference, including the "Resolution on the Youth" flow "from and are subordinated to the demands of the theses on The Death Agony of Capitalism." Indeed, the capitalist death agony developed with such rapidity and acuteness that the "youth question" was soon superceded by the "military question." The principal concerns of working-class youth in civilian life under capitalism—the lack of jobs, education and social equality, problems with which the "Resolution on the Youth" were mainly concerned—were soon to be transcended as imperialist war gave these youth the "jobs," "education" and "social equality" of the barracks. Within the context of universal militarism, the Trotskyists conducted themselves with exemplary valor, e.g., building revolutionary cells within the German Army. But the objective conditions forced the FI to temporarily abandon the tasks set out in the "Resolution on the Youth" and the struggle for a Trotskyist youth international.
Rise of Pabloism
After WWII, the Trotskyist movement, decimated by fascism and Stalinism, tried to regroup and reorient itself. However, the destruction of a whole generation of Trotskyist cadre, including Trotsky himself, left the FI theoretically unarmed and isolated from the working class. The untested and inexperienced cadre that rose to the leadership of the FI, personified by Michel Pablo, were overtaken by the post-war pre-revolutionary upheavals whose course their weak forces could not significantly influence. These cadre were further disoriented by the apparent stabilization of capitalism on the one hand, and the growth of Stalinism and social democracy on the other (see "Genesis of Pabloism," Spartacist No. 21). Pabloism meant the abandonment of the struggle to build independent Trotskyist parties and the liquidation of Trotskyist cadre into the existing Stalinist and social-democratic formations which were seen as playing an eventual revolutionary role under the impact of the "objective process." The corollary for Trotskyist youth was the command that they should bury themselves in the Stalinist and social-democratic youth groups and wait for the "objective process" to unfold.
Thus the "Resolution on the Youth" and the prospects for a Trotskyist youth international were abandoned when the FI succumbed to Pabloism. Although many of the specific demands and slogans of the "Resolution on the Youth" are clearly dated, the resolution possesses more than just historical interest. The document, especially section 14 entitled "The Revolutionary Program," is a valuable reaffirmation of the programmatic criteria governing youth work as Lenin, Trotsky and the early CI and FI conceived it. Such a reaffirmation is particularly important today when so many political tendencies claiming to be Trotskyist display the most elementary confusion on this question. The early CI and Young Communist International, and the Founding Conference of the FI and corresponding Youth Conference were explicit and insistent that the Leninist-Trotskyist youth group must be a section of the vanguard party which embodies the continuity, tested political leadership and developed programmatic clarity of the revolutionary movement. The program of the youth section must be developed within the framework of the party’s program, as the "Youth Resolution" states: "It is within the framework of the transitional programme of the Fourth International that the present programme should be developed and applied." "Youth" is not a class, there is no "youth program" as such. The program which addresses itself to the objective needs and special oppression of youth is part and parcel of the program for proletarian power. "The struggle for these demands cannot be separated from the struggle for the demands of workers as a whole, both employed and unemployed" ["Youth Resolution"].
Youth Vanguardism From the SWP to the WL
The various pretenders to the banner of Trotskyism all reject Trotsky’s class approach to the youth question—namely, that the question of special oppression and needs of youth must be subordinated to and integrated into the revolutionary program for the working class, the Transitional Program. Modern Pabloism, embodied in organizations like the SWP, the International Marxist Group in England, the Ligue Communiste in France, and personified by "theoreticians" like Ernest Mandel and "activists" like Tariq Ali, after years of self-internment in reformist organizations, have recoiled from entrism and have tried, in their various ways, to jump on the bandwagon of the "international youth radicalisation." Starting from the proposition that we live not in the era of capitalist decay but in the era of "neo-capitalism," i.e., capitalist crises stabilized by state intervention into the economy (e.g., debt expansion), they come to the conclusion that therefore the "epicenter" of world revolution has shifted from the industrial to the colonial countries, or from the industrial working class to more peripheral "sectors" of the work force such as white-collar workers and white-collar "apprentices" (i.e., students). They see the industrial working class as hopelessly bureaucratized and bourgeoisified, only approachable from the "peripheries" of guerrilla warfare in the colonial countries and youth and petty-bourgeois vanguardism in the industrial countries. The SWP has surpassed Pabloism in adopting a non-proletarian ideology. It has lifted the "cultural autonomy" slogan from the Austro-Marxists and applied it to the present by having each oppressed "sector" of the population independently "self-determine" itself, into that pure realm of freedom which is, of course, obtainable only on the gilded comfort of the college campus. Each "sector" of society (students, blacks, Chicanos, women and yes, even the working class) is provided by the revisionists with its very own "transitional" program.
Departing from Trotskyism and proletarian revolution on another road, a road akin to "third-period" Stalinism, is the Socialist Labour League, its gang in the U.S., the Workers League, and their corresponding youth groups, both called "Young Socialist." Starting from a radical perspective—that capitalist productive forces can no longer grow and, therefore, capitalism can no longer grant long-lasting reforms—they draw a reformist conclusion, i.e., that the struggle for such reforms is inherently revolutionary. In fact, this is simply inverted social democracy—that socialism can be won through piecemeal reform struggles. The Transitional Program on the other hand, raises demands that flow from the real objective needs of the proletariat, but also prepare and mobilize the workers for the revolutionary struggle for proletarian power.
The WL’s treatment of the youth question is completely opportunist: Ignoring the heterogeneous social composition of youth, the WL calls upon youth (all youth) to pressure union bureaucrats to build a labor party, and presents transitional demands for youth, as an undifferentiated mass, to carry out. The WL’s line embodies classless youth vanguardism. The irony of the WL’s constant exhortations to the "youth" to build a labor party, create general strikes, etc., is that in the WL’s propaganda to the working class (e.g., in their auto program for 1973, Bulletin, 12 February, p. 18) it often "forgets" to mention the labor party as well as other key transitional demands like nationalization of industry under workers control. Its youth group, furthermore, has no internal political life but is a front group manipulated by the WL.
The Revolutionary Communist Youth, as the youth section of the Spartacist League, continues the traditions of the early CI and FI, the traditions of Lenin and Trotsky, that the youth section must be programmatically linked and united to the vanguard party ("politically subordinate and organizationally autonomous"), that the special demands which address themselves to the problems of the youth must flow from the Transitional Program and must link the struggles of youth to the struggle of the proletariat for power.
—RCYN Editorial Board
******
Resolution:
The Capitalist Impasse
(1.) Capitalism, whether it be authoritarian or liberal, admits the inability to bring the slightest relief to the misery and suffering 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 their 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 of 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 the 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 ensign 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 ensign 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 by capitalism, setting up their equal rights.
For the young under 20, 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 "for equal work, equal pay," 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 over-laborious, 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, these must be created, and imposed upon the trade-union bureaucracy, union youth commissions, 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% 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 pro1etariat. 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 semi-military 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 re-education centers under workers’ control;
Technical re-education organized according to the needs of production, under the general control of the trade unions and the congresses of workers’ delegates;
Reopening of the shut-down factories;
Commencement of large-scale public works (hospitals, schools, low-cost housing projects, sports fields, stadia, 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: "For equal work, equal pay."
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 principle: "For equal work, equal pay!";
An extra day off per month;
The right to voluntary maternity;
A 6-months’ leave-of-absence for maternity;
Maternity grants for girl-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 is the victim 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 18 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 to 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, stadia, museums, libraries, theatres, and cinemas, 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 re-education is closely linked with the struggle for the sliding scale in wages and in working hours. The struggle 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 programme of the Fourth International that the present programme should be developed and applied. It is under the ensign 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, 11 September 1938
Introduction from Revolutionary Communist Youth Newsletter, No. 17, May-June 1973
Trotsky was always keenly aware of what he called the problem of generations. He began the New Course (1923), his opening shot in the struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with a discussion of the "question of the party generations," and in the most important document among the founding resolutions of the Fourth International (FI), The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, Trotsky stated the problem of generations in the following way:
"When a program or organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past… Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution."
—p. 45, Pathfinder Press edition
Trotsky had not forgotten the lesson of the collapse of the Second International and the building of the Third. When the leading parties of the Second International capitulated to the national chauvinism of WWI, it was the militants primarily concentrated in the Socialist youth and women’s groups (representing a more oppressed stratum of the working class than the privileged labor aristocracy—the most influential component of the Western European Socialist parties) who carried the banner of internationalism against the tide of national chauvinism. It was these militants who, under the impact of the Russian October, provided the precious founding cadre for the new Communist International (CI), With the destruction of the CI as a world revolutionary party under the heavy blows of the failure of the German Revolution, the bureaucratic degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of fascism and the impending renewal of imperialist world war, the tasks of creating a new international were placed on the agenda. Trotsky, one of the creators of the CI who had authored its founding manifesto, turned to the generation of young workers, unscarred by the defeats and betrayals of the past. Hence, the founding manifesto of the FI ends with a clarion call to "Open the Road to the Woman Worker! Open the Road to the Youth!"
The seriousness with which Trotskyists undertook this necessary historical exhortation to find the road to the next generation of revolutionaries was displayed by the fact that—though the founding of the FI took place under the most difficult conditions requiring careful preparation and secrecy, at a time when the Trotskyists had meager resources and were being hounded throughout the world by the police and agents of all wings of the bourgeoisie from the fascists to the most "democratic" and, with special vehemence, by Stalin’s secret police—nonetheless the Founding Conference was followed one week later by the "World Youth Conference of the Fourth International." Both Conferences were held in September 1938; the former was attended by 21 delegates representing 11 countries, while the Youth Conference was attended by 19 delegates from 7 countries (Poland, Austria, Belgium, Holland, England, the U.S. and France). There was a considerable overlap in delegations and, in addition, the International Bureau of the FI, elected at the party Conference, sent three delegates to the Youth Conference. Besides adopting the "Resolution on the Youth," the World Youth Conference endorsed the Transitional Program and voted to affiliate as the official youth section of the FI.
As Nathan Gould, the youth delegate from the U.S., reported in the weekly organ of the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Appeal (22 October 1938):
"The resolution on relations between the youth and adult Internationals accepted the classical Leninist concept of these relations. The Youth International, which accepts the proletarian revolutionary international leadership of its adult body is to be politically subordinate to and organizationally autonomous of the Fourth International."
Gould then stated that all decisions and resolutions of the Youth Conference, including the "Resolution on the Youth" flow "from and are subordinated to the demands of the theses on The Death Agony of Capitalism." Indeed, the capitalist death agony developed with such rapidity and acuteness that the "youth question" was soon superceded by the "military question." The principal concerns of working-class youth in civilian life under capitalism—the lack of jobs, education and social equality, problems with which the "Resolution on the Youth" were mainly concerned—were soon to be transcended as imperialist war gave these youth the "jobs," "education" and "social equality" of the barracks. Within the context of universal militarism, the Trotskyists conducted themselves with exemplary valor, e.g., building revolutionary cells within the German Army. But the objective conditions forced the FI to temporarily abandon the tasks set out in the "Resolution on the Youth" and the struggle for a Trotskyist youth international.
Rise of Pabloism
After WWII, the Trotskyist movement, decimated by fascism and Stalinism, tried to regroup and reorient itself. However, the destruction of a whole generation of Trotskyist cadre, including Trotsky himself, left the FI theoretically unarmed and isolated from the working class. The untested and inexperienced cadre that rose to the leadership of the FI, personified by Michel Pablo, were overtaken by the post-war pre-revolutionary upheavals whose course their weak forces could not significantly influence. These cadre were further disoriented by the apparent stabilization of capitalism on the one hand, and the growth of Stalinism and social democracy on the other (see "Genesis of Pabloism," Spartacist No. 21). Pabloism meant the abandonment of the struggle to build independent Trotskyist parties and the liquidation of Trotskyist cadre into the existing Stalinist and social-democratic formations which were seen as playing an eventual revolutionary role under the impact of the "objective process." The corollary for Trotskyist youth was the command that they should bury themselves in the Stalinist and social-democratic youth groups and wait for the "objective process" to unfold.
Thus the "Resolution on the Youth" and the prospects for a Trotskyist youth international were abandoned when the FI succumbed to Pabloism. Although many of the specific demands and slogans of the "Resolution on the Youth" are clearly dated, the resolution possesses more than just historical interest. The document, especially section 14 entitled "The Revolutionary Program," is a valuable reaffirmation of the programmatic criteria governing youth work as Lenin, Trotsky and the early CI and FI conceived it. Such a reaffirmation is particularly important today when so many political tendencies claiming to be Trotskyist display the most elementary confusion on this question. The early CI and Young Communist International, and the Founding Conference of the FI and corresponding Youth Conference were explicit and insistent that the Leninist-Trotskyist youth group must be a section of the vanguard party which embodies the continuity, tested political leadership and developed programmatic clarity of the revolutionary movement. The program of the youth section must be developed within the framework of the party’s program, as the "Youth Resolution" states: "It is within the framework of the transitional programme of the Fourth International that the present programme should be developed and applied." "Youth" is not a class, there is no "youth program" as such. The program which addresses itself to the objective needs and special oppression of youth is part and parcel of the program for proletarian power. "The struggle for these demands cannot be separated from the struggle for the demands of workers as a whole, both employed and unemployed" ["Youth Resolution"].
Youth Vanguardism From the SWP to the WL
The various pretenders to the banner of Trotskyism all reject Trotsky’s class approach to the youth question—namely, that the question of special oppression and needs of youth must be subordinated to and integrated into the revolutionary program for the working class, the Transitional Program. Modern Pabloism, embodied in organizations like the SWP, the International Marxist Group in England, the Ligue Communiste in France, and personified by "theoreticians" like Ernest Mandel and "activists" like Tariq Ali, after years of self-internment in reformist organizations, have recoiled from entrism and have tried, in their various ways, to jump on the bandwagon of the "international youth radicalisation." Starting from the proposition that we live not in the era of capitalist decay but in the era of "neo-capitalism," i.e., capitalist crises stabilized by state intervention into the economy (e.g., debt expansion), they come to the conclusion that therefore the "epicenter" of world revolution has shifted from the industrial to the colonial countries, or from the industrial working class to more peripheral "sectors" of the work force such as white-collar workers and white-collar "apprentices" (i.e., students). They see the industrial working class as hopelessly bureaucratized and bourgeoisified, only approachable from the "peripheries" of guerrilla warfare in the colonial countries and youth and petty-bourgeois vanguardism in the industrial countries. The SWP has surpassed Pabloism in adopting a non-proletarian ideology. It has lifted the "cultural autonomy" slogan from the Austro-Marxists and applied it to the present by having each oppressed "sector" of the population independently "self-determine" itself, into that pure realm of freedom which is, of course, obtainable only on the gilded comfort of the college campus. Each "sector" of society (students, blacks, Chicanos, women and yes, even the working class) is provided by the revisionists with its very own "transitional" program.
Departing from Trotskyism and proletarian revolution on another road, a road akin to "third-period" Stalinism, is the Socialist Labour League, its gang in the U.S., the Workers League, and their corresponding youth groups, both called "Young Socialist." Starting from a radical perspective—that capitalist productive forces can no longer grow and, therefore, capitalism can no longer grant long-lasting reforms—they draw a reformist conclusion, i.e., that the struggle for such reforms is inherently revolutionary. In fact, this is simply inverted social democracy—that socialism can be won through piecemeal reform struggles. The Transitional Program on the other hand, raises demands that flow from the real objective needs of the proletariat, but also prepare and mobilize the workers for the revolutionary struggle for proletarian power.
The WL’s treatment of the youth question is completely opportunist: Ignoring the heterogeneous social composition of youth, the WL calls upon youth (all youth) to pressure union bureaucrats to build a labor party, and presents transitional demands for youth, as an undifferentiated mass, to carry out. The WL’s line embodies classless youth vanguardism. The irony of the WL’s constant exhortations to the "youth" to build a labor party, create general strikes, etc., is that in the WL’s propaganda to the working class (e.g., in their auto program for 1973, Bulletin, 12 February, p. 18) it often "forgets" to mention the labor party as well as other key transitional demands like nationalization of industry under workers control. Its youth group, furthermore, has no internal political life but is a front group manipulated by the WL.
The Revolutionary Communist Youth, as the youth section of the Spartacist League, continues the traditions of the early CI and FI, the traditions of Lenin and Trotsky, that the youth section must be programmatically linked and united to the vanguard party ("politically subordinate and organizationally autonomous"), that the special demands which address themselves to the problems of the youth must flow from the Transitional Program and must link the struggles of youth to the struggle of the proletariat for power.
—RCYN Editorial Board
******
Resolution:
The Capitalist Impasse
(1.) Capitalism, whether it be authoritarian or liberal, admits the inability to bring the slightest relief to the misery and suffering 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 their 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 of 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 the 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 ensign 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 ensign 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 by capitalism, setting up their equal rights.
For the young under 20, 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 "for equal work, equal pay," 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 over-laborious, 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, these must be created, and imposed upon the trade-union bureaucracy, union youth commissions, 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% 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 pro1etariat. 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 semi-military 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 re-education centers under workers’ control;
Technical re-education organized according to the needs of production, under the general control of the trade unions and the congresses of workers’ delegates;
Reopening of the shut-down factories;
Commencement of large-scale public works (hospitals, schools, low-cost housing projects, sports fields, stadia, 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: "For equal work, equal pay."
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 principle: "For equal work, equal pay!";
An extra day off per month;
The right to voluntary maternity;
A 6-months’ leave-of-absence for maternity;
Maternity grants for girl-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 is the victim 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 18 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 to 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, stadia, museums, libraries, theatres, and cinemas, 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 re-education is closely linked with the struggle for the sliding scale in wages and in working hours. The struggle 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 programme of the Fourth International that the present programme should be developed and applied. It is under the ensign 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, 11 September 1938
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