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The Life of the Party: Barry Sheppard, the SWP & the 1960s
by Joe Auciello
& Jeff Mackler / August 2006 issue of Socialist Action
Barry Sheppard, “The Socialist Workers Party
1960-1988, A Political Memoir,” Volume 1: The Sixties, (Resistance Books: Chippendale,
Australia,
2005), 354 pp., $16.
At a certain point in a person's life there comes a need
for reflection and assessment. Socialist veteran Barry Sheppard developed
that impulse into an insightful and instructive book that should be
required reading for any young revolutionist who wants to learn from the
successes and failures of the "Sixties Generation."
But this volume will not only appeal to the young. An
older generation, participants of that era, will find in this book a
stirring reminiscence of the social rebellion and the political battles
that formed the very center of their lives.
Sheppard was a leader of the Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) for three decades, from the 1960s to the early 1990s. The story of
the SWP's demise and Sheppard's role in it is promised in the author's
sequel, or Volume II. The present volume steers clear of this tragic period.
During the time covered by this book, 1960-1973,
Sheppard, as part of the SWP's leadership team, contributed to the party as
the editor of its newspaper, The Militant, as the SWP's fraternal
representative in Europe to the Fourth International (the world party
founded by Leon Trotsky), and as its national organizational secretary.
In the 1980s, Sheppard had been a central player in the
undemocratic expulsion and driving out from the SWP of close to 200
members. The majority of the expelled members, who had fought to retain the
SWP’s Trotskyist tradition, formed Socialist Action at the end of 1983 and
the Fourth Internationalist Tendency in 1984.
Sheppard himself was expelled from the SWP seven years
later. Soon afterwards, and with profuse apologies for his past conduct, he
joined Socialist Action—only to lead a bitter faction fight and split a
year later. He immediately joined the Committees of Correspondence (a group
that had broken from the Communist Party), and later joined a diffuse
"socialist regroupment" formation called Solidarity.
By this time, the Barry Sheppard that is described in
this personal memoir and mini-history had gone on to reject major portions
of the revolutionary program of Trotskyism, which for 50 years had placed
the SWP in the vanguard of revolutionary organizations. This was the SWP
that first attracted Sheppard, along with an impressive layer of
revolutionary-minded youth, to a party with a proud tradition going back to
the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Sheppard's book is distributed in the U.S.
by supporters of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose
members have organized a number of his speaking engagements to promote it.
As well as being close to the ISO, Sheppard has over the
past several years been a supporter of the reformist Green Party and the
electoral campaigns of former SWPer, now California Green Party candidate
for governor, Peter Camejo. The Barry Sheppard whose political life and
contributions are related in "The Party" would have then denied
that the road to the construction of the future mass revolutionary party
(which Sheppard still hails) would pass through the Greens or any other
brand of middle-class radicalism.
"Important lessons" for the future
"The Party" successfully blends several
genres, so that the sum is greater than its individual parts. Sheppard
combines political history, personal memoir, and occasionally adds
contemporary commentary—with the advantage of hindsight. His effort
includes several succinct and highly valuable explanations of complex ideas
that were hotly debated in the radical movement of his time.
Newcomers to revolutionary politics will appreciate his
sharp expositions on the revolutionary nature of the Black nationalism of
Malcolm X, the class nature of the former Soviet Union,
and the importance of the Cuban Revolution.
Sheppard effectively relates how the SWP played a
critical role in engaging the party ranks with the principled politics that
made the SWP a major force in the united-front coalitions that mobilized millions
against the war and, along with the courageous struggles of the Vietnamese
people, forced the U.S.
to withdraw. The SWP is perhaps best known for this effort, still a model
for the construction of a politically independent struggle against imperialist
war.
In his preface, Sheppard rightly stresses what is
valuable in his book: "[T]here are important lessons for the present
and future in the experience of the SWP·" These
lessons would include how the SWP contributed to the protest movements of
its time, especially the 10-year fight against the Vietnam War, and how the
SWP functioned internally as a democratic and centralist organization.
Certain chapters in this work help put to rest old
suspicions that have resurfaced as new polemics (see the review of Manning
Marable's "A Living Black History" in the March 2006 issue of
Socialist Action). Various writers from across the political spectrum have
viewed the SWP's relationship with Malcolm X as exploitative and
self-serving. These charges have been motivated more by misunderstanding
and political bias than by an open-minded assessment of the factual
evidence.
In a chapter on Malcolm X, Sheppard concisely outlines
the turning points of Malcolm's life and explains "the revolutionary
response of the Socialist Workers Party to the rise of Black nationalism
and the revolutionary development of Malcolm X." "The Militant
newspaper," he points out, "when it did not print Malcolm's talks
and statements outright, "reported the content of his speeches
honestly, in contrast to the daily press and most publications on the left."
Malcolm spoke at three SWP forums and gave interviews to
The Militant and The Young Socialist, newspaper of the Young Socialist
Alliance (YSA). Shortly before his assassination, Malcolm agreed to a
nationwide speaking tour sponsored by the YSA. Naturally, the YSA would
attempt to gain the widest sponsorship possible for each speaking
engagement, but, Sheppard states with justified pride, "Malcolm
replied that even if only the YSA sponsored the speaking tour, it would be
OK with him."
In short, relations between the SWP/YSA and Malcolm X
were characterized by mutual respect, deepening understanding, and
cooperation, based on shared values and overlapping political goals.
Sheppard adds a personal note to the record of the SWP
and Malcolm X. Writing with unabashed admiration, he
concludes the chapter with a heartfelt and powerful statement:
"Malcolm X was the greatest person I have ever met."
Sheppard's book, again, is a "personal memoir,"
and therefore its range is not encyclopedic. The perspective of personal
history is both its strength and weakness. Readers will encounter
contemporary events and gain the insight of a participant but will, at the
same time, be limited to what that one person actually saw and heard and
what that person chose to report.
Party of professional revolutionaries
In the spring of 1969, as a member of an SWP delegation,
Sheppard traveled to Italy
to attend the Ninth World Congress of the Fourth International and in the
summer toured through Asia to meet with
like-minded Trotskyist comrades. Though this trip makes interesting reading
for SWP members and FI supporters, it was hardly the typical experience of
a Sixties radical, who was far from the professional revolutionary that
Sheppard chose as his vocation.
The SWP was a party of professional revolutionaries and
disciplined and dedicated comrades. Sheppard relates this well. His book
explains the rise of the Socialist Workers Party into a significant force
on the American left after long years of relative isolation during the
McCarthy-era witch hunt.
The previous generation of SWPers, whose central
leadership core had been imprisoned for 18 months as the first victims of
the reactionary 1940 Smith Act, hailed from the great labor struggles of
the 1930s. In 1934, the SWP (then called the Communist League of America)
helped set the standard for class-struggle unionism by leading the historic
Minneapolis Teamster strike, one of the three general strikes that paved
the way for the formation of the CIO.
Sheppard's book is laced with references to SWP founder
James P. Cannon and to other central leaders of the SWP from the earlier
generation. At times he goes into great detail to explain little known
conflicts between Cannon and Farrell Dobbs, co-leader with Cannon of the
SWP and the party's first presidential candidate in 1948. Woven into these
accounts is Sheppard's negative assessment of the grouping in the party led
by Murray Weiss.
Sheppard is often critical of Cannon's close relations
with the Weiss group. He states without equivocation that Cannon erred on
several occasions by essentially promoting his trusted Weiss supporters at
the expense of undermining the authority of the Dobbs leadership. He refers
to still unpublished material written by Dobbs in this matter that would
undoubtedly be of great interest to students of revolutionary politics and
party-building.
The transition in leadership
Of even greater interest, however, are those internal
party disputes that begin to provide an explanation for the demise of the
SWP.
The transition from the leadership team of 1930s
class-struggle fighters such as Cannon, Dobbs, and Tom Kerry to the
youthful leadership of Sheppard and Jack Barnes, the present SWP national
secretary, was not without conflict. Sheppard provides many of the details.
But left out is an assessment of the effect on the SWP of a relatively
rapid leadership transition necessitated by the inevitable aging of one
generation and its replacement by another.
The old leadership had been tested in the mass struggles
that built the CIO. They fought for revolutionary socialism against a mass
Stalinized Communist Party and a ruling class that feared revolution was on
its doorstep. It was replaced largely by a middle-class layer of college
students—with some experience in the antiwar movement and other
contemporary movements perhaps, but with no organic connection to the
class-struggle battles that had forged the SWP's program and practice.
The tiny layer of older SWPers who had been recruited in
the relatively barren McCarthy era, during which time the SWP was reduced
to a few hundred, was largely bypassed. This generation gap—the lack of
experienced revolutionary leadership due to the long period of relative
working-class quiescence—offers the beginnings of an explanation of why and
how the SWP was fundamentally transformed into a grotesque caricature of
its former self.
Today, the SWP stands in opposition to or essentially
abstains from the very political movements that in the past it would have
championed. Its erroneous political line and horrendous internal practices
have reduced it to an irrelevant sect or cult.
Sheppard's first volume is silent on this evolution, and
painfully restricted to the highpoints of his experience. At a number of
public presentations of his work, however, he has frankly admitted that he
played an important role in facilitating the SWP's demise.
Volume I is
perhaps in the way of an apology of sorts; it contains short, sprinkled,
and favorable references to a number of Sheppard's former comrades who
opposed his course inside the SWP and who he had previously held in
contempt, if not expelled. Their names and a line or two about their
contributions, mention of which is virtually banned in the SWP today, have
been restored for the record, albeit far too late and with little import
other than to assuage a conscience that had previously been but dimly
present.
Sheppard now has largely retired from party-building
work but hopefully not from his stated pledge to shed light on the
disintegration of a party that thousands of youthful comrades and lifelong
revolutionaries devoted their lives to. Others,
however—more closely connected to the present struggle for socialist
revolution—are eminently more qualified to take on this task. In time, they
will step forward to unravel the tragedy of the SWP's degeneration and
thereby provide solid ground to avoid its repetition.
"The Party" can be obtained in the United
States through Haymarket Books. Or send
$21 to Socialist Action Books. (Our price includes shipping and handling.
California residents, please add $1.35 sales tax.)
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