[fiftieth anniversary of the emergence of the Trotskyist…]

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fiftieth anniversary of the emergence of the Trotskyist movement in the Socialist Workers Party which today claims to represent that tradition 1 a hollow mockery of the fighting spirit of that early movement. This 1 a series of seven being published by Socialist Press which examine the SWP, the party so central in the 1930s to the launching of the Fourth 1978 marked the United States. The offers no more thai article is the sixth ir early history of the "The task of the revolutionist-even if the march of events obliges him to work in the same organisation with the reformists, those political exploiters of the proletariat-consists not in taking the attitude of a disciple and of pretending to maintain friendship toward the agents of the bourgeoisie but of opposing, as clearly, as harshly, as unremittingly as possible the opportunists, the patriots, the absolutely bourgeois 'socialists'. , before the reformist masses" [Trotsky: Crisis in the French Section.

In Trotsk! Plenum ional League Fourth discuss 711..October 1934 convened a of the Internat(the embryonic International) to the 'French unis was the name given to the tactical manoeuvre through which the French Trotskyists were to enter the Socialist Party (SFIO) in order to work within the left-wing of social democracy.

Their objective was to win those elements who opposed the Stalinists and who could be broken from reformism to the revo. utionary programme of pr ›etarian internationalism.

Principled line

Trotsky himself was prevented from attending the Plenum (neld in faris) by close police surveillance, but the man he chose to lead the fight for a principled line on the entrist tactic was US Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon.

Cannon succeeded in putting to the Plenum a resolution entitled "The Present Situation in the Labour Movement and the Tasks of the BolshevikLeninists', which effectively answered the sectarian critics of the 'French turn' The degree of Cannon's success can be seen in the bitterness with which Molinier (leader of one faction 1n the French section) referred to "the secrel рютасу carrica vul here by, your representative Cannon" cannon ın a leuer lo Trotsky.

Cannon's role in 1934 is vital to an understanding of the formation off the Workers Party in America at the end of 1934 when the US Trotskyists fused. with the American Workers Party (see last week's Socialist Press).

And it is also central to the workforce.

Wage cuts were common as the capitalists attempted to introduce work sharing with loss of pay. Speed-up, mechanisation and mass redundancies were rife.

Violence by the bosses and wholesale indifference and corruption on the part of union leaders ensured that a mere three million workers were unionised in 1935 (out of a possible 35 million).

Faced with this situation a tide of working class militancy began to gather strength.

The great Minneapolis strikes of 1934 (in which the Trotskyists had played a leading role) were among the first indications.

Torrent of strikes

Then a whole torrent sinkes anu occupauons in 1936 and 1937 showed the pent up trustrauon ana ine determination of the working class to fight.

The old American Federation of Labour (AFL), long since fossilised into bureaucratic impotence, was challenged by the new Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO).

By 1940 nearly 11 million US workers were But as the Third Int national became more ¿ more discredited in the e of the international work class and the malign: tumour of Stalinism spre into the affiliated CPs, the reformist parties bef to attract new member particularly amongst youth.

Militancy

In America this coupled with the object conditions of a rising tide militancy. As Cant explains in his History American Trotskyism:

"As the Commu Party became more : more bureaucratised, as expelled more and m honest workers and clo the door to others, Socialist Party began experience a revival.

'Its loose and der cratic structure attracter 1° a de dea whole new stratum workers who had ne before been in a politi movement."

By 1933, the Socia Party had over 25,0 members and had develo an increasingly acl centrist left wing.

Even during the creat of the Workers Party lats

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ard management thugs beat up a union organiser in Detroit, 1937 1934 Cannon was looking and removing the SP as a SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday January 10 1979. Sit-down strikers in Flint, 1937 against the Oehlerites.

When Muste was exposed as unwittingly tail-ending a group of Stalinists in Allentown he was finally discredited.

Driven out of politics by the sharpness of Trotskyist criticism, he renounced Marxism and regressed to the leadership of a pacifist Christian group-much later to reemerge in protests against the Vietnam war.

Colourful

The second stage before entry was the actual negotiations with the leadership of the SP 'lefts'. , a group for whom Cannui: reserves his most colourful prose:

"the negotiations with these papier-mache heroes were a spectacle for gods and men ... I believe in all my. long and somewhat checkered experience I never encountered anything A strike wave was sweeping America as the CIO emerged; in France there were a whole series of massive strikes; and in Spain the Civil War was beginning.

Advice

Trotsky kept in close touch with Cannon throughout the period and consistently gave advice on tactical questions.

Within the SP the exWorkers Party faction concentrated on four main issues: the organisation of the Trotsky Defence Committee to. counter the slanderous frame-up of the Moscow Trials; the Spanish question; the great California seamen's strke; and the question of the need for a Labor Party in the US to represent the independent interests of the workers.

And the work on the seamen's strike established a significant cadre on the western seaboard.

The Trotskyists in California set up their own paper The Socialist Appeal (the official SP organ was The Socialist Call).

This was supplemented by a weekly Labour Action. As the SP leadership and right-wing , became increasingly disturbed by all this, and the Stalinists qualled; Cannon and Schachtman organised a national Socialist Appeal Conference on the programme of the Fourth Suppressed This move provoked Norman Thomas and his cohorts of reformists and talkers to suppress The Socialist Appeal and start the process of expelling the Trotskyists.

Trotsky himself, just as in his advice to the French section on their work within the SFIO, counselled Cannon not to be unnecessarily procovative, but at the same time, to go onto the offensive wherever possible.

A system of duplicated letters took the place of a newspaper, and by the time Thomas and his fellow "democratic socialists" tried to pass a "gag law" suppressing all internal discussion of controversial issues the Trotskyists were ready to confront them head-on.

Growth

The ex-Workers • Party cadres and the layers drawn towards them during the period of entry were bureaucratically expelled in time as a serious obstacle to the US working class.

With its best elements gone, it rapidly declined even further into a purely bourgeois formation, and Norman Thomas became a political joke, patted on the head by the capitalist press each time he stood for the Presidency (six times in all!)

The effectiveness of the Trotskyists' entry job on the SP is attested by Thomas' own biographer, Murray Seidler:

"The Trotskyites did succeed in doing real damage to the SP. When they entered it some hundred persons belonged to their sect; but when they. were expelled they took with them over a thousand.

"Especially disastrous was the Trotskyites success in drawing many of the party's younger people into their fold"

Even anti-Trotskyist historian Daniel Bell in The Development • of Marxian Socialism in the US is forced to admit the "Cannonites" success, especially in New York, California and Chicago.

Conference

On December 31 1937 a "Conference of the Expelled Branches"

was convened.

From this the Socialist Workers Party was formed on January 1, 1938 as dominant section of the Fourth International.

The post-war degeneration of the American SWP into its present morass of reformism, civil libertarianism and opportunism another story.

In 1938 its formation represented a massive gain