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Below is an open letter that was issued by Socialist
Action on November 18, 1983 to members of the Socialist Workers Party
shortly after SA was founded.
Dear comrades,
We are writing
to inform you of the founding of Socialist Action, a public faction of the
Socialist Workers Party, formed by party members undemocratically expelled
by the SWP leadership since the 1981 convention. By our count, some 39 comrades have been expelled from the
party on trumped up charges, most of them in the last six months. The United Secretariat of the Fourth
International at its meeting in late October branded these expulsions as
politically motivated and not, as claimed by the Barnes leadership, based
on violations of party discipline.
It announced that these expelled party members, and those who
resigned in reaction to this purge, retained their right to fraternal
participation in the International on the same basis as that enjoyed by members
of the SWP. In keeping with this
decision, we have formed a national organization through which we can
maintain our activity in U.S. politics, retain our right to participate in
the internal life of the Fourth International within the limits prescribed
by U.S. law, and seek a reversal of the undemocratic expulsions and a
reunification with our comrades in the Socialist Workers Party.
We will include in future mailings several documents
submitted by minority National Committee members to recent NC plenums which
explain the principled political basis of our public faction. These include the “28 Theses on the
American Socialist Revolution and the Building of the Revolutionary Party,”
and the “Platform of the Bloc” (both from May 1983), and “New Norms vs. Old”
written for the post-Oberlin plenum.
These documents it appears, in light of the suspensions of the four
minority National Committee members at Oberlin, the one-year postponement
of the party convention, and the purge of the party ranks now underway, that
if we do not take the step of circulating these materials to you, party
members will be denied their democratic right to hear any point of view
aside from that of the Political Committee majority.
The politics of this fight are plain enough. In the pre-convention discussion of
1981, Steve Clark, speaking for the Political Committee majority, swore
that the leadership remained committed to the Trotskyist movement and to
Trotsky’s ideas, particularly the theory of permanent revolution.
The very day after the convention ended – when the
internal bulletin would be closed for two, and now three, years – the leadership
revealed that its affirmation was false.
Barnes, Jenness, and Clark made reports to an expanded PC meeting
revealing that they rejected Trotsky’s basic strategic ideas. This led finally to the publication of
Jack Barnes’ article in the Fall 1983 issue of New International
repudiating Trotsky’s ideas and ridiculing the Fourth International as
composed seventy to ninety percent of “irreformable sectarians” (p. 69).
At the October 1983 meeting of the United Secretariat,
the SWP’s fraternal representatives announced their intention to submit
these views in writing to the pre-World Congress discussion, and also
indicated that documents would be forthcoming revising sections of the Transitional
Program. Yet there has been no
democratic discussion of these proposed changes at any level of the party. While the leadership has instead
systematically conducted a series of anti-Trotsky “Lenin classes,”
published a number of signed articles revising our long held positions on
this and related subjects, and organized the past two Oberlin Educational
Conferences to line up comrades in support of their “new” ideas, they have
placed a virtual ban on any comrades who seek to defend our traditional
positions and program.
In the last two years we have witnessed an increasingly rapid
evolution away from Leninist positions by the Barnes majority. This was initiated by the revival of the
old two-stage theory of revolution discarded by the Bolsheviks on 1917,
which almost led to the destruction of the Bolshevik high command after the
February revolution. To reimpose
this concept on Lenin despite the diametrically opposite direction of all
of his post-1917 writings, not to mention the whole body of Trotsky’s
writings in exile which confirm this point, can only be regarded as a deep
programmatic concession to Stalinist presentations of Bolshevik
history. This estimate is confirmed
by the publication of the 1979 article by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez in the New
International with an endorsement by Jack Barnes.
It may be that Rodriguez plays a benign role in the
present day revolutionary Cuban government, but he was a member f the
Stalinist Popular Socialist Party for more than 30 years before he became a
supporter of Castro, and it is from these origins that the politics and
specific arguments of his article come.
The politics implied historically in the rejection of
Trotskyism and of Lenin’s post-1917 writings are reflected in every aspect
of the SWP’s current world political line.
Its line, above all, lies in adapting to any government more or less
in conflict with imperialism – a two-class camp strategy much like that of
the Marcyite Workers World sect. There
is no serious presentation in our press of the facts of repression of the
socialist Left and of the working class in “anti-imperialism” states such
as Iran, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
Even defense of Soviet political prisoners has disappeared from Intercontinental
Press, as has any perspective in defense of the Polish working class.
On a world scale this line is an abrupt desertion of the
perspective of defending proletarian democracy. It is not convincing even in that region where the party’s
course has the most to recommend it – in Central America and the Caribbean,
where nonbureaucratized revolutionary movements have led a resurgence of
anti-capitalist struggle. The events
in Grenada tell us that the failure to institutionalize workers’ democracy
is a deadly weakness for a revolution.
This is true even where it occurs with the best intentions under a
leadership that is close to the masses and not afflicted by special
privileges as in the Soviet Bloc.
The internecine warfare that left Maurice Bishop dead and the
supporters of the revolution demoralized opened the door for the U.S.
invasion.
The invasion was a criminal act. But the military coup within the
revolution, a coup that flowed from the absence of institutions by which
the Grenadian workers and peasants could elect and depose their leaders and
thus resolve the conflict between Bishop and Coard democratically, did
lasting damage to the cause of socialism in Grenada and elsewhere. It does not fit neatly into the good
guy-bad guy schema Barnes has used as his guide in world politics – and in
internal SWP politics – since he broke with Trotsky’s proletarian orientation,
and orientation intrinsically tied to socialist democracy.
Organizationally, the Barnes reorientation could not
help but have immediate consequences.
One is the virtual cold split between the SWP and the Fourth
International, marked by the withdrawal of a day-to-day party
representative in Europe shortly after the 1981 party convention (another
policy change that was never candidly put before the membership for
approval). Within the party it
meant getting rid of most of the older generation of Trotskyists, who could
not reasonably be expected to accept this new line.
This campaign began before Barnes even knew who
specifically was going to disagree.
It was not based on a fight with a definite minority grouping. The first victims of the purges were
Theodore Edwards (Edmund Kovacs) in Los Angeles and Asher Harer in San
Francisco. They were used by Barnes
to concoct the lie that the older generation had inexplicably become
violent and irrational. This
slander was later extended to Jimmy Kutcher, a sad target for such a
preposterous accusation.
Next we saw the campaign against “experts,” much in the
way that the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China raised the
slogan “Better Red than Expert.”
Mao’s slogan meant in practice much the same as did Barnes’. In the SWP we were told ad nauseum that
we did not want any “experts” to tell us how to read Lenin. “Experts” was a code word for
Trotskyists. Most of the veteran
members of the party were explicitly excluded from teaching classes in the
Lenin series. As in China this
meant that the leadership did not have the facts on their side, and
therefore preferred ignorant followers over informed ones. (We apologize if any comrade is offended
here. The fact remains that the
leadership took advantage of the party membership’s lack of information,
fostered by the leadership’s own downgrading of education for a prolonged
period before it launched its anti-Trotsky campaign.)
We are convinced that many revolutionists remain in the
SWP. Despite the very sharp
departures from Leninist program and organizational norms it is not
excluded that a combination of resistance from the rank and file and
important events in the world class struggle can depose the Barnes
leadership and bring the SWP back to genuine participation in the world
Trotskyist movement. What is needed
now is an intransigent fight for the historic program of the party. Without this, there is little doubt that
the SWP will be destroyed as a revolutionary organization.
Our intention is to wage this political fight as a
public faction of the SWP. However,
we do not believe that this struggle, as important as it is, can be the
only, or even the main preoccupation of serious revolutionaries. Those of us who have been placed outside
the party will continue to advance the cause of revolutionary Marxism in
the class struggle in the United States.
Even though our forces are small, we believe that we can have some
impact, particularly in comparison to the current work of the SWP. One of the central characteristics of
the Barnes group has been an almost unbroken record of abstention from
every aspect of political life in the U.S. for at least the last four
years.
Part of the consolidation of an anti-Trotskyist
leadership has required downgrading the membership’s respect for
alternative sources of information.
This involved disparaging the SWP’s own past as “semi-sectarian,”
derogating the tens of thousands of comrades of the Fourth International,
many of whom have shown in life that they know how to build a party, and
labeling almost all other Marxists and radical activists as “petty
bourgeois.” This treatment was used
to isolate the party ranks from U.S. radical public opinion, which was
uniformly denounced as capitulating to imperialist pressures. Thus the party withdrew systematically
from women’s liberation work, and it declared the anti-nuclear movement to
be “pro-war” through a logic that defies analysis. The bureaucratization of the unions was
used to preclude comrades from taking even the most minimal formal responsibilities
in these basic organizations of the working class.
The result is that for four years the party has done
little but self-generated activity such as Militant sales and
election campaigns. This is a key
reason for the steady demoralization and decline in the SWP membership,
which as dropped from some 1700 four years ago to less than 1000
today. (Other groups on the Left
are growing, both to the right and left of the SWP, including the Communist
Party, Democratic Socialists of America, and even the Morenoites, who in
Los Angeles, the second-largest center of the SWP, have a branch as large
as that of the party!)
Even in the one acceptable area for outside work,
Central American and Caribbean anti-interventionism, the party has a very
mixed record. Some branches, such
as Pittsburgh, do good work – although expelling two leading solidarity
activists did not help. Other
branches, such as Los Angeles, abstained for several years. The attempt to reestablish such work as
a norm early this year around the World Front adventure proved to be quite
damaging to the party. The SWP
tried to walk in from the outside and virtually take over the solidarity
movement, all on the basis of a mysterious “mandate” from Mexico that never
materialized. The result was the
arousal of deep suspicions against the party in radicals who had long been
active while we had not. In the
name of a proletarian orientation, the SWP has in practice abandoned the
key struggle to build a broad-based, united front, anti-intervention
movement. Leafletting a handful of
co-workers has become a substitute for working with others to mobilize
hundreds of thousands (the bulk of whom would be workers) against a U.S.
war threat more immediate than ever.
Jack Barnes and the undeclared faction he leads allege
that the expulsions have taken place because individuals no longer accept
the discipline of the party. This
is false. Never in the history of
the Leninist movement in any healthy party have expulsions been carried out
on grounds such as those used by the present SWP majority. In Pittsburgh, Dianne Feeley, member of
the National Committee, was expelled for participating in planning meetings
for an International Women’s Day action to which she had been assigned by
the party. The excuse was given
that the action was at odds with the party’s line for the women’s movement,
but afterward the Militant praised the demonstration. Paul LeBlanc, Dianne’s companion, was
expelled because, although he agreed to accurately report Dianne’s
expulsion and not to defend her in public, he refused to agree to actively
vilify his companion to nonmembers, saying correctly that this went beyond
the obligation of upholding majority decisions.
On the Iron Range, former Pathfinder Press staff member
Anne Teasdale Zukowski was expelled for declining to give a majority report
to a YSA discussion. She refused to
discuss, with the YSAer who had approached her, any differences she had
with the SWP majority. The YSAer
lived with the party organizer and had attended plenum reports, so she knew
very well that Anne was a supporter of the Fourth International majority
and disagreed with the Barnes leadership.
In no Leninist party has it been a requirement of membership that
minority supporters falsify their own views by giving lengthy political
reports for positions they do not agree with. That is the a caricature of democratic centralism appropriate
only to a monolithic organization, not a revolutionary party.
In San Francisco, Carole Seligman, a longtime leader of
the party’s women’s liberation work, was expelled for asking a party member
in the hearing of a YSAer if he had heard that Dianne Feeley had been
expelled (Dianne was the comrade’s former stepmother). Surely once a comrade is expelled, the
mere fact of the expulsion is then public knowledge, since they are no
longer a party member!
Also in San Francisco, Roland Sheppard was expelled for inactivity
despite the fact that the had been playing a leadership role in an ongoing
(and ultimately successful) strike.
What better method could have been used to sour workers to an
organization that ostensibly strives to be their vanguard!
In Los Angeles, five veteran members of the party,
including Les Evans, former editor of the International Socialist Review,
and Leo Frumkin, a leader of the party’s anti-war work in the 1970s, were
expelled for an alleged conspiracy to boycott activity and finances with
the aim of destroying the party.
Even was completely unemployed, not recieiving unemployment compensation,
and attending night school as a condition of changing jobs from a
non-targeted industrial job to student-teaching work. The majority had to argue that he had
boycotted finances not by withholding money, but because he had quit his
job to go to school and had hence placed himself in a position where he did
not have any money. Such an
objection, of course, would not have applied if the comrade involved had
had plenty of money to begin with.
Thus the argument of the trial committee rested on a class bias
which should be intolerable in a workers’ organization.
Recently in Washington D.C., Jay Fisher was
expelled. He had worked a double
shift and dozed of during a forum afterward. Called to account by a zealous leadership, he defensively
joked that he had only slept through the party he disagreed with. That cost him his membership in the
party.
In New York City, Jimmy Kutcher, the party’s “legless
veteran,” who successfully fought the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the 1950s
when they tried to fire him from his job in the Veteran’s Administration
for his socialist ideas, fell victim to the Barnes witch-hunt and was
recently expelled from the party.
Jimmy was falsely accused of striking a woman comrade with his case –
actually Jimmy, since he lost both his legs in World War II, has been in
the habit of giving people a light tap to let them know that he is behind
them and trying to get by. The woman
comrade denied that Jimmy had struck her.
The branch rushed to trial though while Jimmy was out of town and
not present to defend himself. They
settled there for a censure, then demanded that Jimmy come in for an interrogation. Frightened, he requested a copy of the
report made against him. This was
promised, but the promise was never kept.
While trying to reach an agreement on this matter, Jimmy was
expelled for allegedly refusing to meet with the trial body.
Walter Lippman in Los Angeles had a private discussion
with a party member in the headquarters after a forum. No one claimed that any nonparty person
had heard anything Walter had said, only that it was conceivable that they
might have done so – not giving either Walter or the majority comrade to
whom he was speaking the credit that they would have stopped their
discussion if anyone had sought to listen in. The branch found Walter guilty of indiscipline but refused to
expel him. Overturning the branch
majority took the convening of the State Committee and the personal
intervention of Barry Sheppard.
This list could be expanded to virtually every one of
the more than thirty expellees, one charge being as flimsy as the
next. It is crystal clear, and this
was the decision of the United Secretariat, that these comrades have been
expelled for their ideas and not for acts that could reasonably be called
violations of party discipline. For
this reason the United Secretariat does not recognize the validity of these
patently political expulsions.
We of Socialist Action have but two conditions for
rejoining the SWP. The Political
Committee must reverse the expulsions of the last two years, and must
restore the democratic norms of a Leninist party, particularly the right of
rank and file members to form tendency and faction caucuses. We must never again have the sorry
spectacle of comrades such as Harry DeBoer, Jake Cooper and Gillian Furst
expelled from the party for forming a faction.
In the meantime, Socialist Action will maintain
fractions in areas of mass work, including the trade union and the anti-war
movement. We are actively
participating in defending the striking Greyhound workers and their union
in the best traditions of the SWP only a short time ago. We will publish a newspaper, pamphlets,
and a theoretical magazine. We will
engage in public forums and classes, and recruit new members on the basis
of their agreement with the program of the Fourth International.
We are aware that many party members agree with our
criticisms of the party leadership, and do not wish to see the SWP leave
the Trotskyist movement. We urge
you to fight for these ideas inside the SWP, to struggle to win back the
democratic norms that once characterized the party, to demand that we be
readmitted to the organization, and to call for a full discussion and
convention to freely debate the “new” ideas that are wrenching the SWP away
from its genuine continuity with Leninism.
We urge comrades who are expelled in the future to join
us. Do not allow the experience of
the SWP to drive you away from the revolutionary movement. We have watched as seven hundred or more
party members left the SWP in the past few years. The overwhelming majority of these comrades were majority
supporters who felt uneasy about one or another aspect of the party’s
activity but who could not fully express what troubled them. Only recently has the party leadership’s
hidden agenda begun to be fully revealed.
But this has led to the emegence of an opposition committed to
defend the proletarian program and traditions of the Socialist Workers
Party.
Comrades should note from the list appended to this
letter that virtually all of those expelled from the party on political
grounds in the last two years have adhered to Socialist Action and did not
leave politics as did many of the majority supporters who left the party
during the same period.
The construction of a mass revolutionary party in the
United States remains a pre-condition for real human progress in our
epoch. The bureaucratic purge of
SWP oppositionists, coupled with the wholesale assault on the party’s
program, is an important setback for the revolutionary movement, a setback
which you can be certain that Socialist Action is committed to reversing.
Expellees who have
joined Socialist Action:
Steve Ashby
Steve Bloom
Glenn Campbell
Dave Cooper
Jake Cooper
Larry Cooperman
Rod Estvan
Les Evans
Dianne Feeley
Carl Finamore
Jay Fischer
Leo Frumkin
Sheavy Geldman
Milt Genecin
Tybie Genecin
Norine Gutekanst
Mojgan Hariri-Vijeh
Lynn Henderson
Mary Henderson
Don Harmon
Mike Kramer
Jimmy Kutcher
Paul LeBlanc
Bill Leumer
Walter Lippman
Frank Lovell
Don Mahoney
Ann Menasche
Andy Pollack
Shirley Pasholk
Pat Quinn
David Rossi
Karen Shieve
Carole Seligman
Roland Sheppard
Shannon Sheppard
Nat Weinstein
Sylvia Weinstein
Anne Teasdale Zukowski
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