[1978 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the emergence…]

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1978 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the emergence of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. The Socialist Workers Party which today claims to represent that tradition offers no more than a hollow mockery of the fighting spirit of that early movement. This article is the fifth in a series of seven being published by Socialist Press which examine the early history of the SWP, the party so central in the 1930s to the launching of the Fourth The development of the Marxist movement in the United States has at each point been bound up with international developments.

This was equally true when in 1933 the crushing of the German working class by Hitler caused the Trotskyist movement to reassess and change its tactics in relation to the Stalinised Communist Parties in each. country.

The German CP's ultraleft policy of branding the mass Social Democratic party as "social fascist" and refusing to form a united front with it for joint action against the Nazis, led to a fatal split in the ranks of the German working class in the face of a ruthless enemy.

The "social fascism" line had been dictated to every national Communist Party by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Kremlin.

It reflected the complete inability of the ruling clique in the Soviet Union-preoccupied as it was with preserving its own power and privileges-to analyse the class struggle or offer revolutionary leadership to the international working class.

Catastrophe But the final symptom of bureaucratic degeneration in the ranks of the Communist International was the complete failure of any section of the Comintern to respond to the German catastrophe.

Not one section of the supposed Communist International in any way questioned the disastrous policies and leadership that had allowed the most powerful CP outside the Soviet Union and the best organised proletariat in Europe to fall victim to fascism without so much as a finger lifted in resistance by the CP leaders.

Trotsky pronounced first the German CP and then the entire "Communist" International as "dead for the purposes of revolution"

In place of the five year struggle by the Left Opposition to reform the Comintern, Trotsky declared it was now necessary to build new Communist Parties, and a new International to take forward the principles and the revolutionary heritage which had brought about By John the October 1917 Revolution in Russia.

The International Left Opposition changed its name to the International Communist League and changed its orientation from propaganda work aimed exclusively at the Communist Parties to the building of independent revolutionary parties in every country.

In the United States this turn coincided with an abrupt turn in the class struggle itself-the end of a period of relative quiescence and demoralisation within the working class and the start of a period that was to bring monumental unionisation struggles and the building of the great industrial unions.

The year. before 1933 brought the supposed "New Deal» offered by Roosevelt's capitalist administration in which inflationary public spending programmes were launched to create low-paid work for less than a quarter of the 12 million unemployed.

"Arbitration"

The programmes were designed specifically to head off riots, demonstrations and unrest among the unemployed.

For the remaining 9-10 million jobless workers there was nothing other than state and local relief agencies, which in many cases were unable even to provide dole.

But the appearance such a "liberal" administration immediately won over the AFL trade union bureaucracy which declared its support to Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA).

"Right to organise

Section 7(a) of the NRA supposedly granted workers the "right" to organise in unions. But this was little more than a sprat to catch a mackerel.

In exchange for the feeble "protection" offered Pickets confront police in by Section 7(a) union officials pledged themselves to stand by the extensive system of "arbitration" and state interference in union organisation.

But the rank and file membership were not so easily bought off. In six months in 1933, 1695 strikes took place, involving over one million workers.

In the foretront of these struggles were workers in the car industry, as employers, driven on by the capitalist crisis, attempted to impose savage wage cuts.

In Detroit and in California a rash of strikes broke out. The Detroit strikers at first turned for leadership towards the Communist Party, whose ultra-left attempts to form a "red' trade union grouping in the largely unorganised car industry had little to offer.

Disillusioned by the defeat suffered under such leaders, the best layers from this pioneering strike wave turned towards the new Conference of Progressive Labor Action (CPLA), headed by A.J. Muste.

The CPLA later became the American Workers Party. And it was able to offer a principled and resolute lead to an even more decisive battle a year later, when in April 1934 the historic Toledo AutoLite strike began.

The Toledo strikers brushed aside the wrangling and stalling of Roosevelt's arbitration bodies, and walked out on April 13, 1934.

Minneapolis Teamsters strike Their AFL union leaders at once capitulated to a court order to restrict picketing.

Not so the workforce. Led by members of the American Workers Party, and backed by the AWP-led Lucas County Unempioyment League, they launched a campaign of mass picketing on an unprecedented scale.

In six weeks the picket lines had grown to 10,000strong, and on May 23 a pitched battle opened up as armed county deputies and police attempted to escort scabs out of the plant.

As Max Lewis recounts in the booklet From Sit-Down to Lordstown:

"For the next 15 hours thousands of pickets laid seige to the plant by improvising giant slingshots from inner tubes.

"They hurled whole bricks through the plant windows, disabling the light system. The scabs inside cowered in the dark...

"It was not until the arrival of 900 National Guardsmen 15 hours later that the scabs were finally released, looking a "sorry sight"

"Then followed one of the most amazing battles in US labor history. With bare fists and rocks the workers fought a six day pitched battle with the National Guard.

"They fought from rooftops, from behind billboards and came through alleys to flank the guardsmen.

"On May 24, the guardsmen fired point blank into the Auto-Lite strikers' ranks, killing 2 and wounding 25. But 6,000 workers returned at dusk to renew the battle.

"On Friday May 31, the battered troops were ordered to speedily withdraw ... As the dust began to settle 98 out of 99 AFL locals in Toledo voted for a general strike the next day "By June 4, the company capitulated, and signed a six-month contract including 5% wage increase, naming Local 18384 as the exclusive bargaining agent." (p.10).

This major victory was to signal a series of new inroads by unions into the auto industry.

But while the American Workers Party was playing a key role in these struggles, the Trotskyists of the Communist League of America were also active.

The turn to mass work in the building of an independent party meant the utilisation of any and every opening for revolutionary intervention into workers' mass struggles.

Thus in early 1934 moves in New York towards hotel unionisation provided an arena of work which was developed by a member established in the industry with the unlikely aid of an intellectual whose principal asset was that he could speak fluent French and thus conduct political discussion with the French chefs!

General secretary

This intellectual, B.J. Field, became general secretary of the union. All of a sudden he, and the CLA itself, found themselves at the head of a mass movement of catering workers fighting for trade union organisation.

All-out strike An all-out strike began in New York in January 1934 and James P. Cannon was assigned full-time by the CLA to work on the struggle, backed up by a further group of CLA members.

The CLA's weekly paper, The Militant, was brought out three times a week to capitalise to the maximum on the events of the strikepreviously only the crucial German events of 1933 had merited such treatment.

Cannon, Field and others addressed rallies and demonstrations, one, in Madison Square drawing an audience of some 10,000.

But though devoting the entire resources of the CLA to furthering the strike, the US Trotskyists knew that the paramount question was the building of a Bolsheviktype party with firm discipline and absolute dedication to principle.

Dobbs Field was carried away by the apparent power of his official position in the union.

He began to defy the CLA and reject its policies and discipline, despite continuous efforts to bring him back into line.

We apologise for a misprint in Part 4 of this series. On page 9 the paragraph reading:

"It seems to us that Cannon did not wish for a rapprochement (but it is not possible to say) and that Weisbord: was simply prevented from entering the ranks of the Left Opposition." should have read:

"It seems to us that Cannon did not wish for a rapprochement but it is not possible to say that Weisbord was simply prevented from entering the ranks of the Left Opposition."

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Police beat unemployed demonstrators in New York. 1934 Field's attempts to break matum for the employers to rom the party led at the comply with the deal.

The CLA took the neces- force and mass arrests in ary action. Field was unsuccessful efforts to ummonsed to a disciplinary break the action, before, on learing and expelled from August 22,, the employers ame time to growing weaklesses in the strike itself he League in the he strike.

CLA The Trotskyists had rublicly demonstrated that or them, principle, programme and party disciiline could not be ignored iy individual members, no hatter what the apparent rade union standing such nembers may have.

Though the strike itself vas sold out, the experience s a whole substantially trengthened the CLA both Irganisationally and politiclly, and helped lay the lasis for the splendid ictories in the Minneapolis leamster strikes.

The first preliminary ction had taken place in lebruary 1934, and won mited material gains as yell as striking the first low for union recognition gainst "open-shop" tradiRoosevelt taking the oath in 1933 In the strike which followed police used armed Inally caved in and signed an agreement conceding all the main union demands.

Trotskyists had shown themselves capable of mobilising and leading the masses in all-out confrontation with the employers.

They had shown themselves aware of and prepared to fight the conservatism and class collaboration of every level of bureaucracy in the labour movement.

They had demonstrated the necessity for a perspective of mass struggle if union rights and improved conditions and wages were to be won.

Their forces grew from each of these struggles, drawing in qualitative new forces including Farrell Dobbs, later to become ‚National Secretary of the 'SWP, and, as a Trotskyist, • foremost leader of the great Teamster organisation drives from 1934-39.

But, following the international orientation of the Trotskyist movement towards the building of independent parties, the CLA was impatient to grow even faster, to sink roots more deeply into the unions and establish a wider base for mass work.

Critique

The obvious seriousness and abilities of many of the worker members of Muste's American Workers Party had been demonstrated in the Toledo Auto-Lite The AWP had originated as groupings of militant trade unionists, who had subsequently moved towards understanding the need for a political party.

As early as November 1933 the CLA had shown its estimation of the CPLA by publishing in The Militant a critique of their positions and an invitation that they discuss with the Trotskyists the question of a united party.

In particular the CLA criticised the national limitations of the s CPLA's perspectives.

in January 11934 a further open letter was sent by the Trotskyists proposing discussions on unity with this formation.

Such approaches met a cool response from the AWP's leadership, but were more enthusiastically welcomed by the party's most important element: the militant worker members.

A further initiative by the CLA finally forced the leaders into opening discussions in Spring 1934.

Within the leadership of the AWP were a bizarre mixture of former clergymen, radical petty bourgeois and left' trade union bureaucrats. Many of them were far from keen to unite with the stern, disciplinarian Trotskyists of the CLA. were resolved; and in the meantime the discussion on a united programme had been pressed without relent by the Trotskyists.

Cannon tells us that the final draft, ratified at a joint convention, was applauded by Trotsky as "a rigidly principled programme"

In December 1934 the two organisations fused to form the Workers Party of the United States-the first unification of forces thar had taken place in the American movement for more than a decade.

Critical There had undoubtedly been gains.

But we should also see that the mass work of the CLA-and also of the AWPhad, for all its strengths, carried over a critical weakness.

In line with Trotsky's own position in the early 1930s the CLA had not incorporated into any of its mass agitation the call for the building of a Labor Party-a workers' party independent of Roosevelt's early work of the US Trotskyist movement must itself be understood historically.

It arose from the distorted and faction-ridden early years of growth in the American CP, in which the syndicalist heritage of the Wobblies and a strong streak of ultra-left sectarianism had played a role.

Abrupt turn

During the propaganda period of the early Left Opposition in the US from 1928-1933 there had been little call to examine such questions of programme when the main issue was the unrelenting struggle to win the most principled elements away from the degenerated Communist And as the abrupt turn to mass work was made by the CLA the explosive development of the American class struggle seemed to offer a real perspective of directly recruiting mass forces to a revolutionary party without the need for any intermed1alt