[1978 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the emergence…]

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1978 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the emergence of the Trotskyist movement United States. The Socialist Workers Party which today claims to represent that tra offers no more than a hollow mockery of the fighting spirit of that early movemen article is the first in a series in Socialist Press which will examine the early history SWP, the party so central in the 1930s to the launching of the Fourth International.

Painting of striking coal miners, metal miners, steel Jot ana disı thi: the the Wc An led ou' un hu fol Ma un: tas ing PaI for IPTI ha. do chi jus La frc thi voi rar an! for his exi The October 1917 Russian Revolution marked a turning point for the American Radical movement.

The Bolsheviks had proved in action the possibility of the conquest of power by the working class and the validity of Marxism within the class Before October 1917, the American Radical movement had been dominated by tendencies who had turned their backs on the class struggle and Marxist the The Lassalleans had split on the eve of the Great Rail Strike of 1877 from the Working Men's Party of the United States and the First: International of Marx and Engels, to seek reform by the ballot box.

The Anarchists, (disciples of Bakunin and Nechayeff) had also split from the First International and founded the Anarchistic International Working People's Association-known as the "Black Collapsed Under the leadership of in Most, who prefered irchistic terror tactics and carded Marxist theory, s grouping collapsed after.

: arrest and hangings of : Haymarket martyrs.

The International ›rkers of the World (the 'obblies) who advocated archo-Syndicalism had great strikes and carried t tremendous struggles of ionisation. They had ndreds of thousands of lowers but rejected irxist theory. They were able to grasp the political iks involved in overthrow; capitalism.

By 1912, the Socialist rty left wing, which stood r industrial unionisation, I lost ito mainrite to the portunists, who saw an ictoral road to political ange. The rght wingit as their forerunners the ssalleans-turned • away ›m the class struggle, in eir quest for votes.

Class struggle

Eugene B. Debs, who iced the opinions of the ik: and file more than yone else, always stood i the class struggle. But all ; energies were devoted to ternal agitation; he never Graham used his influence in the internal struggle against the right wing.

Debs did not believe in factions. Yet the left and right wings of his party were in a perpetual fight over conflicting which expressed conflicting class interests.;

Workers who had joined the Socialist Party in good. faith were becoming demoralised by the growth in the dil ion This of the WE. 417% -'do irkers and railroad worker of the middle class invasi They left the Socialist Pa in their thousands.

As James P. Cannon s in his pamphlet "E.V. De the Socialist Movement His Time". • page 25: ion. irty said abs, of "The strength of capitalism is not in itself and its own institutions; it survives only because of barriers of support in the organisations of the workers. As we see now in the light of what we have learned from the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, nine-tenths of the struggle for socialism is the struggle against bourgeois influence in the workers' organisations, including the Party"

At the 1912 convention, the Socialist Party right wing led a witch-hunt against left wing radicals and pushed through an amendment to the constitution:

"Any member of the Party who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation shall be expelled from membership of the Party.

"Political action shall be construed to mean participation and administrative work along the lines of the Socialist Party platform."

divisions Prior to the Russian Revolution these: two tendencies had dominated thè American radical movement. They had been separated organisationally and had sharp divisions in their activities and fields of work.

The revolutionary left wing of the Socialist Party was strengthened overnight by the Bolshevik Revolution.

The American Socialist Party found its ranks swelled by thousands of militant workers. Many of them came from the IWW, with their eyes on the Soviet Republic which had shown a way out of capitalism's system of wage slavery.

All the genuine militants rallied behind the writings of Lenin and Trotsky.

They had their own official organ called "The Revolutionary Age" which expounded the works of Bolshevism. Its editor was Louis Frainer.

John Reed, an American enrialict inuralist tonk part in the Russian Revolu- DUVALLO 10Cg tion, and reported its events in a book callea len ays That Shook the World. Reed also popularised the revolution to a much wider public field in The Liberator.

The majority of the membership of the left-wing of the Socialist Party were foreign born. Under the impact of October 1917 the •foreign language socialist movement within the USA grew rapidly.

The Red Guard detachment The foreign born of the Socialist Party were organised into Language Federa-. tions which were almost autonomous. There were as many as 30,000 Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Finns, etc. At their head was Frainer, N. Hourwich and C.E. Ruthenberg.

Because of their autonomous nature the Federations did not want centralised Party, or even to be organised into loca branches without a national structure or autonomous rights.

Minority

Such an arrangement would mean they would lose the block votes of the Federations and thus the control of the Socialist Party left wing.

The native Americans were in a minority which was led by J. Reed and B. Eitlow.

In September 1919 at the underground national convention of the Socialist Party left wing a three-way split took place.

The Federationists who wanted control formed the Communist Party of the United States. Native born Americans who stood for a more Americanised party with an indigenous leadership, formed the Communist Labor Party. This split with the Socialist Party cut the two Communist Parties off from thousands of radical socialists who were revolu= tionary in their sentiment but not yet ready to follow the left wing in a split.

These forces did not stay with the right wing either. They dropped out in discouragement at the three way split.

The two Communist Parties emerged with identical programmes. To make matters worse they now both felt the brunt of the persecutions of the American bourgeoisie.

Deported

During the Palmer raids thousands were arrested and imprisoned and thousands of foreign-born revolutionaries were deported.

The two Communist Parties were forced underground, which cut them off from the working class.

In aroneranco with the VY LULL LILL decision of the Executive Committee of the Communist International the two parties held a joint underground convention in Bridgeman, Michigan in the Spring of 1920.

The CPUS united with the CLP to form the United Communist Party, and sent a declaration to the Second Congress of the Communist

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Diego Rivera's mural showing Lenin and Trotsky with delegates to the "The First Ten Years of American Communi by James P. Cannon, Pathfinder Press, 1962. "The History of American Trotskyism"

James P. Cannon, Pathfinder Press. "Trotskyism Today" supplements forefront as the real CP in convention of the ComThe question now arose- April 1923.

"1. To work together at he Congress as a single group.

2. To ask the ECCI to instruct the elements who refuse to recognise a complete unification to unite on the bases of the Communist International.

3.. To subordinate ourselves on the question of unification to the decisions of the ECCI."

Because of their isolation from the working class in the underground movement there was a development towards sectarian positions.

A strong anti-parliamentary and anti-trades union faction was developing.

The 1920 convention adopted a resolution on the trade union question which called for the boycott of the American Federation of Labout.

It said:

"Any member who had to join the AFL should work in it as a communist worker in a bourgeois congress-not to build it but to break it up."

Many of these ideas were inspired by Frainer who was an influential spokesman, allied with the Dutch and German ultra-lefts.

Third International.

Lenin launched an attack upon these concepts with his pamphlet Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder , in which, should chapter Revolutionists. Werk in Reactionary Trade Unions?" he said:

66 •.. The struggle against Gomperses, against Messrs.

Jouhaux, Henderson, Merrheim, Legien and co. in Western Europe is much more difficult than the struggle against our Mensheviks who represent an absolutely homogeneous social and political type.

"This struggle must be waged ruthlessly and it must unfailingly be brought as we brought it-to a point when all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social chauvinism are completely discredited and driven out of the trades unions."

The American unification, on the insistence of the ECCI, was complete by the following year, in the Spring of 1921.

Ruthenberg and Gitlow were in prison. Frainer, Reed and other leading members were at the Second Congress of the Communist International.

James P. Cannon, who was elected at the previous convention, was joined on the Central Committee by Jay_ Lovestone, Winstone and Bittelman.

Legalisation

This new leadership began a struggle for the legalisation of the movement.

This was the only way to reach the American working class. But the resistance of the foreign born members was too great for this to happen overnight.

They formed legal groups for holding lectures. To organise these groups, the party was affiliated to the American Labor Alliance, which became the legal platform for the UCP.

In 1921 William Z.

Foster joined the UCP. He was a former IWW syndicalist and secretary-treasurer of the National Committee for Organising Iron and Steel Workers.

Foster had practically led the great steel strike in 1919. He had also gained much influence in the AFL.

Foster began to develop the trade union activity on a broad scale under the name of the Trade Union Education League, financed by the Profintern.

Cannon, Lovestone, Bittelman and Winstone came to an agreement with the remainder of the Socialist: Party left wing who had since formed the Workers Council-to form the Workers Party, which became the legal expression of the UCP.

But some of the diehard undergrounders could not accept legal work through the Workers Party. 3,000 of them left to form the Proletarian Party.

This departure did not heal the rift. There was still a strong sectarian influence in the party ranks which developed into the "Goose Caucus". This caucus gave support to the forming of the Workers Party. But they would not accept it as the legal expression of the Com. munist Party.

In November 1921 under the guise of the Workers Party Benjamin Gitlow stood for Mayor ol New York City.

After six months effor ...aar..s. he was ruled off the ballot by the Board of Elections, because he was serving a jail sentence.

The American economy was now on the upturn. It was the beginning of a period of boom which was accompanied by a political relaxation. Persecutions were over. A more liberal mood prevailed in the USA.

With the programme of the Communist Party, the Workers Party came to the fact, if not in name.

did they need an illegal Jay Lovestone Communist Party? The Cannon-Lovestone leadership thought not. They became known as the 'liquidators faction'.

Both Cannon, representing the liquidators and Katterfeld for the Goose caucus (who got their name by cackling like geese at meetings) went to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International and were both afforded equal representation on the American commission. The Russian delegation consisted of Zinoviev, Bukharin and Radek.

Turning Cannon, who was chairman of the Workers Party, managed to meet Trotsky for one hour, to put forward the case for the liquidators.

This, according to Cannon was the great turning point in the long struggle for legalisation of the Party.

At the end of the meeting Trotsky said he supported the liquidators and was sure Lenin and the other leaders would do the same.

The result of discussion on the "American Commission was unanimously in favour of the liquidators.

They also recommended that the party advocate work for the construction of a labor party based on the trade unions.

In August-September John Pepper arrived from the Hungarian Communist Party and was assigned to work with the Hungarian Federation of the US party.

He began on the editorial board of the Hungarian Federation of the Party and was not long in assuming complete control. By February 1923, Pepper dominated the American CP.

Pepper manipulated everyone who stood in his way. He gained credibility by by rehabilitating most of the defeated undergrounders, and welded them together into a faction to serve his own ends.

With a faction behind him, Pepper was now in a position to deal with the other leaders-Lovestone, Kuthenberg (now out of prison) and Foster who had now come into the leadership. Cannon was still at the Comintern.

The third national munist Party was held on 7 A formal communication was sent to the Workers Party to the effect that the Communist. Party had decided to dissolve itself because the Workers Party had developed into the Communist Party. (It was not until 1925 that the name "Workers Party" changed to Communist This gave them legal status.

Now the "United Front" tactic which until then had been for American Communists an abstract literary exercise could be put into practice in the fight within the emerging "Farmer While the Communist Party had been struggling for nearly four years for legalisation, the AFL had organised the Labor Party of Cook County and in 1919 had polled 50,000 votes for John Fitzpatrick.

He was president of the Chicago Federation of Labor and chairman of the National Committee for Iron and Steel Workers.

It was Fitzpatrick who in November 1919 took the initiative in calling for a national conference in Chicago out of which emerged the American Labor Party in 1920.

• The Farmer Labor Party was created in 1922. Seeking a broader base, the FLP sent out an appeal to trade unions and leftist political parties.

The Workers agreed to attend its convention in Chicago on July 3, 1923.

But after four years of struggle against sectarianism and fighting for legalisation the Party now went overboard wholesale towards adventurism. Under the leadership of Pepper and the influence of Foster-who had worked with Fitzpatrick in the steel strike of 1919-they jumped in at the deep end of the Farmer Labor. Party convention.

By hook or by crook they made sure they had the majority of delegates at the Chicago convention. FURTHER READING William Z. Foster They even sent some of their members posing as Flower Arrangement Society delegates delegates from Health and Sports Societies and Dance and Choral Societies.

At the Convention the AFL trade union delegates representing sections of workers found themselves in the minority-outnumbered by a flood of disguised communists.

Fitzpatrick repudiated the conference but the Workers Party took over.

The result of this Pyrrhic victory was to send a chastised Fitzpatrick back to join a block with the labour bureaucracy and to destroy the tolerance of the AFL for the Workers Party:

The developments which came out of this escapade threw into question the Workers Party's whole method of work and how Communists should approach American workers.

The protracted struggle on this question was to last six years. It reflected the contradictions of different class forces and political factions.

The struggle was one between the petty bourgeois and the proletarian tendency Pepper, Ruthenberg and Lovestone represented the New York intellectuals, without experience in the class struggle.

Severe consequences Foster and Cannon, however, were both formerly WW members representing the workers of the midwest.

But no sooner had some headway begun to be made on this front, with the growing dominance of the Cannon-Foster camp, than developments within the international class struggle intervened.

Within the isolated Soviet state a bureaucratic caste around Stalin was consolidating its grip. on political power. In doing so these bureaucrats set out also to transform the Comintern into a tool for their opportunist manoeuvres-with severe.

consequences for American communism.

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WESTER INDUSTRIAL WORKERS DE THE WORLD