MIA: History: ETOL: Documents: International Communist League/Spartacists—PRS 5
Marxist Politics or Unprincipled Combinationism?
Internal Problems of the Workers Partyby Max Shachtman
Written: January 1936
Source: Prometheus Research Series No. 5, Prometheus Research Library, New York, September 2000
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
Introduction
The national tour of all the important party branches which I completed several weeks ago brought me face to face with a number of questions and problems which arose in the course of discussion with numerous comrades. These discussions firmly convinced me of the urgent necessity of putting before the entire membership of the party and the Spartacus Youth League a detailed record of what has happened in the year of the party’s existence. The ignorance of the party situation which the Oehler and the Abern-Weber groups have vied with each other to preserve in the party’s ranks, and the systematic confusion and direct falsifications which they have, each in its own way, disseminated from coast to coast, demand that such a record be set down in writing for the information of the membership. The present document, however, pursues no mere informational ends; it is not intended to substitute for a history, properly speaking, of our movement. It does aim to extract from the record of the party’s history some of the essential and highly illuminating political lessons which our present situation dictates must be drawn if we are to progress along revolutionary lines.
To draw together what seems to be loose ends; to place men and things in their proper place so that an otherwise incomprehensible jumble begins to take on the appearance of a coherent and significant picture; to draw up a balance sheet of ideas, proposals, events, progress, retreats, at every stage of the development of the movement; to compare what was predicted with what finally took place, what was adopted with what results it yielded, what was proposed with what the situation showed was required; to trace a complicated situation back to its causes; to test and check men and groups and ideas on the touchstone of practice—these are elementary obligations of every revolutionist. But these obligations cannot be properly discharged without a simple working knowledge of the facts. Lies, rumor and gossip are as misleading a factor in casting up a political balance sheet as forged checks would be in casting up a bank balance. And what a mass of political forged checks are afloat in our party! One has only to go through the country and discuss our political problems with an average group of comrades to be overwhelmed by the realization that a prerequisite for the further progress of our movement is the clear establishment of those facts of party history which are necessary for that balance sheet, that accounting, that report of stewardship which the membership has the right and duty to demand of the leaders at the coming national convention.
“A revolutionary organization,” wrote Trotsky on February 17, 1931, in his comments on the crisis in the German Left Opposition, “selects and educates men not for corridor intrigues but for great battles. This puts very severe obligations upon the cadres, above all on the ‘leaders’ or those who lay claim to the role of leaders. The moments of crisis in every organization, however painful they may be, have this positive significance, that they reveal the true political physiognomy of men: what is hidden in the soul of each of them, in the name of what he is fighting, if he is capable of resistance, etc.”
Our party is at present in a crisis. It can emerge from it healthier and stronger than ever only if the nature and cause of the crisis is understood. The politically primitive mind, shallow or entirely empty, or the philistine dilettante who dabbles in revolutionary politics on Monday and retires with a discouraged sigh on Tuesday, can see only the fact that “the leaders are squabbling again.” Truax, for example, a former member of our National Committee, who represents the first type referred to, resigns from the party because, he writes, there is “too much factionalism” in it. In the big political disputes agitating the party, all he can see is “factionalism.”
This document is not addressed to dilettantes, dabblers and blatherskites. It is meant for the serious revolutionists in the party, both “advanced” and “backward.” It is meant above all to address the militant, knowledge-hungry youth of our movement. In a sense it is dedicated to them. In the strictest meaning of the word, they are the hope of tomorrow. The devastation of the Stalinist and social-democratic parties has virtually wiped out the bulk of the war and post-war generation. Just as the communist movement was built, between 1914 and 1919, primarily on the young generation, so the movement for the Fourth International must draw most of its troops from the young generation of today, those not yet corrupted by the virus of political decay.
But precisely because of that, the youth must be trained in the spirit of revolutionary Marxism, of principled politics. Through its bloodstream must run a powerful resistance to the poison of clique politics, of subjectivism, of personal combinationism, of intrigue, of gossip. It must learn to cut through all superficialities and reach down to the essence of every problem. It must learn to think politically, to be guided exclusively by political considerations, to argue out problems with themselves and with others on the basis of principles and to act always from motives of principle. And in order to think and act correctly, the youth (the adults as well!) must always have the facts before them; and if they do not have them, they must demand them.
This document, therefore, pursues a purely political aim. If the reader grows impatient at this or that point with the multitude of details, he will have to bear in mind that we desire to present all the facts that have a bearing on those questions in dispute which have engendered our present party crisis. We are loath to leave anyone a reasonable basis for arguing that we have neglected to reply to one or another point or to throw light on one or another dark corner. We are experiencing, in our opinion, a crisis of growth. We are experiencing what Zinoviev once pithily described as the “birth pangs of a communist party.” In the field of obstetrics as well as in the field of politics, these birth pangs can be moderated, and finally eliminated entirely, not by an amateurish approach, not by a futile wringing of hands and whining and whimpering, not by prayer, but by increasing our fund of knowledge.
In the present case, this document aims to contrast two main lines of thought and action: the line of revolutionary Marxian politics—principled politics, which make possible a consistent, firm and progressive course; and on the other side, personal combinationism, cliquism and unprincipled politics, which can produce only an inconsistent, weak-kneed and essentially reactionary course. The first is the line for which our group has fought, first in the Communist League of America and for the past year in the Workers Party of the U.S. The second is the contribution made by the Abern-Weber group.
The contrast can be made only by presenting the two lines, by describing them, by recording what each of them looked like in theory and practice at each stage of our development, by checking them with the results they yielded. In order that the contrast may be scrupulously exact, we have preferred to present not merely our opinions, but indisputable factual material: minutes, convention records, theses, resolutions, motions, statements, letters, etc. Without them, no objective judgment of the party situation is possible. The work of our coming convention, which has the task of making just such a judgment, will, we hope, be facilitated by this compilation.
Max Shachtman New York,
January 20, 1936
Two Lines in the Fusion
The Workers Party has its roots in the two groups that came together to found it in December 1934, the Communist League of America and the American Workers Party. If we deal, at least at the outset, primarily with the former, it is not out of narrow patriotism for the organization to which many of us once belonged, but for these reasons: firstly, because an account of what occurred within the CLA, especially in the last year of its existence, is indispensable to an understanding and illustration of the political course of our group; and secondly, because the internal struggle of the same period in the CLA is, in any case, reproduced on a more extensive scale in the WP today.
The CLA was built up in the course of a protracted struggle for the principles of revolutionary Marxism. Occurring as it did in the face not only of the most violent opposition of the powerfully organized Stalinist apparatus, but of a series of discouraging defeats of the proletariat on a world scale, and in a period of social and political reaction, this struggle necessarily limited the scope of the League’s expansion and influence. Understanding the nature of this struggle, the leadership of the League set itself firmly against any illusions of an early “mass influence.” The main work of the League was conceived to be of a propagandistic nature: the presentation and development of the ideas of the International Left Opposition, and the formation of a solid cadre of revolutionists capable of defending these ideas.
In this respect the CLA was far from unique in the history of the movement. It was merely passing through the first of what may, roughly speaking, be called the three stages of the evolution of the revolutionary organization: a propaganda group which concentrates on hardening the initial cadres on the basis of clearly defined principles; then a more active group in the process of transition to a mass movement, which concentrates on presenting its formerly elaborated principles to the masses in the form of agitational, day-to-day slogans, but which is not yet strong enough to step very far beyond the boundaries of literary and oral agitation; finally, the larger movement, which not only calls itself a party but which can discharge the responsibilities incumbent upon an organization claiming to defend the daily as well as the historical interests of the proletariat, which can actually set masses into motion—in other words, a party of action.
The objectively unwarranted attempt by numerous wiseacres who refused to understand this process of evolution, and who pursued “the masses” without “wasting time” on forging the instrument—cadres—without which systematic revolutionary work in the class struggle is inconceivable, always ended either in opportunism or adventurism. The chief protagonists of such attempts in this country, Weisbord and Field, ended up, as is known, without “mass work” and without cadres. These furious critics of our “sectarianism” finished with the most miserable and sterile of all sects.
The position of the CLA was complicated, moreover, by its position as a faction of the Third International, operating outside of it. Like its propagandistic position in general, this was not a matter of choice, but a condition dictated by a series of objective circumstances, primary among which was the fact that the Comintern had not yet exhausted its possibilities as a revolutionary Marxian organization, and that it was impossible to establish, a priori, whether or not it could be brought back to the road of proletarian internationalism by a combination of our work and the pressure of events themselves.
With the accession to power of the Hitlerites, and the unanimous endorsement by the Comintern sections of the treacherous capitulation of the Stalinists in Germany, the International Left Opposition voted to cut loose from the Third International. The slogan was issued: Build the Fourth International! Build new communist parties in every country! This decision could not but have profound effects on every section of the Left Opposition movement, and, in turn, upon the revolutionary movement in general.
In every country, at least in the important ones, the sections of the ILO (International Left Opposition) were confronted with the imperative need of making a decisive turn. The role of a faction of the Third International had to be given up, and the road taken towards an independent movement for new parties and a new International. A tremendous historical task by its very nature, it could neither be decreed nor accomplished overnight. Everywhere, the ILO entered a transitional stage, between a propagandist group (a faction) and an independent mass organization (a party). This stage was represented by the interval between proclaiming the need of a new International and new parties and their actual establishment. It was not enough to proclaim the need of the new party, nor even to recognize the gap referred to. The essence of the problem was: how, in each country, to bridge this gap in the briefest possible time allowed by the concrete conditions prevailing in the land and the relationship of forces in the working class and revolutionary movements.
That is to say, the general acknowledgment of the need of the new party related essentially to the reasons for its formation; it was not yet sufficient as the instrument for forming it. The instrument was (and is) the strategy and tactics that must be applied in each specific country in order to arrive in the swiftest and solidest manner at the goal.
In arriving at the strategy and tactics to be employed in the United States for attaining our goal, we were fortunate in having at our command the rich treasure trove of experience of the revolutionary movement for decades back. We invented no new method, because none was needed. We did not have to wonder and fumble, because we were provided by Marxism (i.e., by the distillation of living experience) with the key to our problem. But in no case is this key already completely grooved for every situation. Revolutionary politicians—like locksmiths—must take the broad, blank key which is already generally outlined by Marxism and adjust it to the grooves of the concrete situation; otherwise the door to the problem will not yield to our efforts.
In addition to wanting to build something, one must know how. And in the case of building the revolutionary party, alas! there is no simple, universal, rigid formula. The First International, for example, was unevenly developed and heterogeneously composed. The Communist Manifesto was written as the program of the (non-existent) International Communist Party, but it was compelled to set down different tactical approaches to the problem of creating this party in the various countries: to revolutionary democrats, militant nationalists, trade unionists, social reformists, etc. The Third International, which marked the second attempt to form the International Communist Party, came into being after the Russian Revolution, which gave it incalculable advantages over its predecessor. Yet even its task was no easy one, and its development was far from uniform. It is sufficient to mention the fact that from October-November 1914, when the need for the Third International was first proclaimed, until the formal founding of the International in March 1919, four and a half years elapsed. And even then, at the First Congress, the International was little more than a name and an idea outside of Russia.
The parties themselves were built differently in different countries. In Spain with the revolutionary syndicalists and the young socialists. In Germany by a fusion of the tiny Communist Party with the large left wing of the Independent Social Democratic Party. In England by a merger of four communist groups (plus one socialist temperance society). In France and the United States by winning the majority of the official Socialist Party. In Italy by breaking off a minority of the official Socialist Party, and then by fusing this minority with a subsequent communist majority of the same SP. In Norway by the direct affiliation to the CI of the federated Labor party. In Czechoslovakia by the affiliation en bloc of the official social democracy. In China by the direct transformation of a propagandist group of students and intellectuals into a proletarian communist party.
In a word, there was and could be no universal formula, applicable everywhere and under all conditions. More accurately, if there was a universal formula, it was this: the small propagandist groups of communists must convert themselves into mass communist parties by winning to their side the militant workers who are moving, however uncertainly and hesitantly at first, in the same general direction.
In the work of building the American section of the Fourth International, the leadership of the CLA derived its “national” line from the international line. Six years of intensive assimilation of the ideas of proletarian internationalism as set forth in the programmatic material and defended in the struggles of the ILO (now the ICL [International Communist League]) had prepared the CLA to act automatically in that spirit. The international line was dictated to us by a universal turn from propaganda groups or sects to the mass movement, to the masses, towards the formation of independent parties internationally. In this sense, the turn of the ICL was basically an international turn. (Only because it has entered into our current jargon shall we speak henceforth of a “French turn” too; in essence it is really a misnomer, for the tactic employed by the French Bolshevik-Leninists was merely an application, in the field of concrete French political realities, of the international turn from propagandist faction to independent party.)
Because conditions differ in each country, because the relationship of forces is different, the tactical line that must be applied to reach the goal of the new International and new parties must also, of necessity, differ. At this point, one can establish the difference between the sectarian idealist and the active, Marxian materialist. The former proceeds from an idea, rigidly conceived and unadjustable to concrete material realities. Wherever the latter fail to conform to his preconceived idea, he turns his back contemptuously and angrily upon them and enters a world of fantasy which corresponds to his idea. That is why sectarianism means isolation, unreality. The Marxian materialist not only derives his ideas from the material and concrete reality, but bases his activities upon it, and, taking things as they actually are, plunges into the living world in order to shape it into “what it should be.” If the Marxian philosopher must not only interpret the world, but also change it, it is necessary, in order to accomplish the latter, to approach it first as it is in reality, and not as if it was already “what it should be,” as if it was already changed.
That is why the Marxists in every section of the ICL applied the international turn concretely, i.e., in different ways in each country, differing in accordance with the realities of the organized social and political life of the working class, and yet were able to endorse each other’s tactics without, by that fact, revealing any difference in principle or strategy. In France, the tactic used to carry out the international turn carried the Bolshevik-Leninists into a section of the Second International. In England, it made them a faction of a centrist party affiliated with none of the Internationals. In Holland, it carried them to a fusion with a leftward-moving centrist organization—the OSP [Independent Socialist Party]—for the purpose of forming an independent revolutionary Marxian party of the Fourth International. In Australia, it carried them to their self-transformation into an independent party—as it did in Chile and elsewhere. In other countries, the international turn did not (nor, given the concrete conditions, could it as yet) change the organizational position of the section of the ICL. Widely though the tactics differed in each country, the CLA leadership and membership were able to support them all, with understanding and enthusiasm, because there was no conflict in the various tactics pursued so far as intelligent Marxists were concerned.
In carrying out this international turn from a faction to an independent party, the ICL underwent an acute crisis.* This crisis has more than a purely “historical” significance, because at bottom the problems involved are identical with those which underlie the present situation in the Workers Party.
* Not the ICL alone, to be sure. The debacle in Germany left no section of the labor movement unscathed. If it necessitated the turn of the ICL which thereupon produced a crisis in its ranks, it should not be forgotten that it also produced the complete upsetting of the “Third Period” philosophy in the Third International and the still far-from-ended convulsions in the Second International. The CPLA, for example, also felt its effects, for what happened in Germany and subsequently precipitated the movement for a new party in the ranks of this semi-trade union, semi-political organization and led to the formation of the American Workers Party in Pittsburgh in December 1933, an event of signal progressive importance. In the CPLA (1933-34) the effects of the world crisis in the labor movement manifested themselves in an almost exclusively progressive and healthy manner.
At every turn in world politics, especially when it is an abrupt turn, the revolutionary movement experiences a crisis of greater or lesser acuteness. It may be characterized as the crisis engendered by the need of adaptation to the new situation or the new requirements. In this period, two currents tend to crystallize in the movement. One, represented by the conservative, sectarian element, clings to the yesterday, which the new situation has rendered obsolete. The other, the progressive element, brings over into the tomorrow only that part of yesterday which fits the new situation. In a small propaganda group, a sect (be it in the best or the worst sense of the term), the crisis seems to assume particularly acute forms. The group is rigidly trained, and this is its great positive side because it steels a firm cadre. But inevitably some, instead of becoming steeled—that is, firm but flexible—become petrified and are unable to bend to the requirements of the new situation. Therein lay the essence of the crisis of the ICL, which produced rifts in a number of its sections.
Politics and the class struggle are hard taskmasters. They command and we must jump. Else we remain marking time, on one spot, and the living movement leaves us behind. The group, instead of contributing its trained cadres to the living movement, becomes a reactionary obstacle to proletarian progress. On the whole, it may be said that the years of training the cadres prepared the CLA for the “jump” from a faction to a party. But it would be blindness to deny that, in another sense, the past of the CLA—its isolation from healthful contact with the mass movement—was a heavy heritage. Its leadership was composed not of “group people” but of “party people,” founders and builders of the Communist Party in this country and even of the revolutionary movement before it. They did not “choose” the group existence; it was forced upon them. They could not arbitrarily or artificially break out of the circle existence whenever they wanted to (as Weisbord and Field tried to do with such fatal results). They had to wait for the proper moment and the propitious situation. The international turn of the ICL was the indication that the moment and the situation had arrived.
But it cannot be underscored sufficiently: the whole history of the labor movement reveals an iron law operating in the evolution of such groups. Under certain conditions, they—and they alone—play a consistently progressive role. Under other conditions, they may be converted into their opposite and play a reactionary role. Under the new conditions of the struggle, the CLA leadership (Cannon, Shachtman, Swabeck), in harmony with the decisive elements of the ICL, declared: If we do not break out of our sectarian, propagandistic existence, we are doomed! This formula we repeated and repeated until it became part of the living consciousness of the bulk of the CLA membership and thus prepared them for the big step forward that had to be taken.
This indisputable formula encountered, however, not a little resistance. We who had stood firmly by the principles and organization of our movement for years, resisting successfully every effort to dilute them in an opportunistic sense, undisturbed by the superficial critics of our intransigent and stubborn adherence to fundamental principle (which they erroneously labelled “sectarianism”), were suddenly, but not unexpectedly, confronted by comrades who had gotten a rush of organizational patriotism to the head—at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and in the wrong way. What? We are doomed, you say? “Cannon and Shachtman have no faith in the CLA”—“The CLA is not just a ‘nucleus’ of the new party”—“The CLA is not a swamp or a sect”—“They are preparing to liquidate us into some centrist morass or other”—and more of the same.
Yet, our formula remained indisputable. A propaganda group which, when the situation demands a turn to the masses, does not make this turn, and make it resolutely and decisively, is doomed to hopeless sectarianism and SLPism in various degrees of disintegration. Witness Lhuillier in France, Weisbord in the United States—to go no further back into the history of the revolutionary movements. The idea that under such conditions the menace of disintegration can be shouted away by patriotic declamations or decreed away by law, is infantile. That such infantile ideas actually existed in the CLA is attested by the fact that, in the course of the negotiations between us and the AWP, a motion was introduced into our New York branch “rejecting” the “theory (!) that the League must disintegrate if the fusion between the two organizations is not consummated.” The adoption of such a resolution, especially if it were done by unanimous vote, would undoubtedly have been a great help...something like a witch doctor’s incantations against evil spirits.
These general considerations determined the line of the CLA leadership in carrying out the international turn in the United States. We started from the premise that the CLA was not the new party, but one of its component parts—not a small or insignificant one, but still only a part. Our problem, essentially, was to find that particular link in the chain which, when grasped, could pull along as large a part of the chain as conditions permitted. Our task was to grasp the link closest at hand.
Our first approach was to the Gitlow group, not because we were groping about uncertainly, nor yet because together we could launch the party. Gitlow was then closest to our position, and our plan was to establish with his group a cohesive principled bloc with which to approach other, larger groups. With Gitlow, we were infinitely more intransigent and curt than subsequently with the AWP, just because, formally speaking, Gitlow was closer to our views than the AWP. The apparent contradiction is resolved by this consideration: The Gitlow group was composed of a handful of members, politically already matured, and not representing a movement, both from the standpoint of forces and of direction. The negotiations with Gitlow failed because of his opportunistic position, from which he could not be swayed for the essential reason that he did not base himself upon any movement that could be gotten to exert pressure upon him in our direction. The negotiations with the United Workers Party, also undertaken by the CLA at about the same time, likewise failed, because of the UWP’s ultraleftism.
Our attitude towards these little groups was not arbitrarily determined, and we did not bring our negotiations with them to a speedy conclusion out of caprice or neglect. Our conduct here, as in the case of our totally different conduct towards the AWP, which was, programmatically speaking, to the right of these groups, was determined entirely by a thought-out political line. As we wrote in the pre-convention thesis of the CLA concerning the difference in attitude:
As with the Gitlow-Field clique, so with Weisbord, any more time spent in considering collaboration or unity would be so much time wasted, and wasted just when we require it most. If we turn our backs completely upon this perfidious sect (read also: UWP, etc.) which is “closer” to us, and at the same time approach the AWP which is “not so close” to us, there is nothing arbitrary in our respective attitudes. It merely means that just because we are engaged in dealing and possibly fusing with a group which contains centrist trends, it is necessary for the Bolshevik-Leninist group to be firmer, more homogeneous, and to resist every effort of disloyal phrasemongerers to disrupt our ranks. Any other attitude would not be serious.
At the same time, by our brief negotiations with these groups, by “skirmishing” with them first, we disposed of them, that is, we exhausted them as possibilities for the new movement.
It was the development in the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) which presented the CLA with the first serious movement for the new party. In December 1933 the CPLA, at its Pittsburgh convention, converted itself into the American Workers Party, separate and apart from the SP and the CP, and elected a Provisional Organizing Committee [POC] to prepare a convention for July 4, 1934, at which to launch the new party definitely.
The task of a leadership is to be on the alert for developments, to take the initiative, to foresee, to act in time, in a word—to lead. Because we had seriously adopted the orientation towards a new party, and refused to console ourselves with the ridiculous and misplaced patriotic cry—“We must have faith in the CLA”—the AWP occupied our attention from the very first day—and even before then! On November 23, 1933, we adopted a motion in our Resident Committee which read: “That we confer with C. of the CPLA attempting to get him to take up the fight definitely for the New International at the convention and that we also communicate with Allard to the same effect.” After the Pittsburgh convention, the January minutes of the Resident Committee of the CLA read: “Reports by Shachtman and Swabeck: A lengthy discussion ensued on the AWP at the end of which it was agreed that the emergence of the AWP is to be given the most serious attention since it is the strongest single group which has come out for a new party. It was further agreed to address an open letter to the AWP the purpose of which is to involve them in a discussion on the principled foundation for a new revolutionary party in America. Cannon, Shachtman and Swabeck assigned as a subcommittee to draft this open letter, which is to be based upon the general conclusions of this discussion.”
The open letter to the AWP, which inaugurated the discussions that finally led to the fusion, was not sent on the assumption that the AWP was a communist organization which stood on the same principles as the CLA. Our conception was that the AWP represented a centrist formation with highly significant left-wing elements in it and even more left-wing potentialities. Left “to itself,” the AWP might develop into a considerable centrist force in the United States and seriously impede if not entirely prevent, for a period of time, the crystallization of the revolutionary Marxian party. And the problem of building the revolutionary Marxian party is today, for the Workers Party, just as much a problem of preventing the growth of a strong centrist party in this country, as it was a dual problem two years ago when the CLA first approached the AWP.
We analyzed the AWP not only as it was, but as it was becoming, that is, in the process of its development, which revealed the great capacities it had for moving to the left, along the line of revolutionary Marxism. We did not—we had no right to—condemn it because it was a centrist organization and not yet a full-fledged communist movement. None of us had been born “Trotskyists”; all of us had had to go through more than one stage of development before reaching the position we then occupied. It would have been, and it still is, the height of sectarian insolence on our part to “forbid” anyone else the possibility of developing—at a later stage than we—in the same direction. Precisely because we had no sectarian prejudices we conceived it our revolutionary duty and task to facilitate the further development to the left of the scores of revolutionary militants who had grouped themselves around the AWP.
Our approach to the AWP was therefore calculated to facilitate contact with it, to begin to break down not only those prejudices which naturally existed between the two groups, but also those which were shrewdly cultivated in the ranks of the AWP by such incorrigible right-wingers as Salutsky-Hardman. We counted firmly upon the inherent potential strength of those elements in the AWP who really wanted a Marxian party, in contrast to the Hardmans who were striving to establish an “American” centrist organization.
In all our dealings with the AWP, therefore, our tactics contained this highly important ingredient: to crystallize the left wing, to strengthen its hand, to heighten its consciousness and to isolate the right wing. How strengthen the left, itself not very mature? By depriving the right wing of one after another of its demagogic and reactionary arguments, by preventing them from playing on the prejudices of the backward elements, by making it possible—by our own conduct—for the left wing in the AWP to continue the fight for unity with the CLA. Ultimata, peremptory demands for a “complete program,” intransigent tones and demands would have played right into the hands of the right wing. Any indication that we were merely interested in a “clever maneuver,” in chipping off a few left-wing members, of not being seriously concerned and determined about the fusion, would have amounted to so many gifts to the right wing.
It should be remembered that, ostensibly, this right wing was powerful. At the Pittsburgh convention of the AWP, Salutsky was the dominant figure, the political keynoter and tone-setter. Yet, it was precisely our estimate of the AWP as a movement which caused us so little apprehension about his significance. We judged him to be—and correctly—an accidental and not an “indigenous” element in the AWP, composed as it was of proletarian militants who wanted to be revolutionists, and not clever Menshevik politicians like Salutsky. We believed (and in this we showed far more “faith” in the CLA and its forces than all the clamorous pseudo-patriots in our own ranks) that, step by step, and not ultimately, at one blow, we could bring the decisive forces of the AWP to the position of unity with the CLA on a revolutionary platform and reduce the right wing to insignificance and impotence. But this could only be accomplished by an at once firm and flexible policy, above all by a positive policy which drove consistently in one direction.
In one direction? Then you had no alternative variant? How many times we heard this “criticism” in the CLA from the Oehlerite and Weberite opponents or skeptics of the fusion, most of whom were so sure that there would never be a fusion that they kept demanding another variant! But this possibility was also taken into consideration by us, for, unlike our opponents, we tried to think things out to the end—always a good procedure in politics.
“The AWP is a centrist party, with a centrist program and a centrist leadership,” we wrote in our pre-convention thesis for the CLA.
What is important in our approach to it, however, is the fact that it is moving in a leftward direction and is the only one of the sizable groups to record itself for a new party. Our attitude toward the AWP must be based upon the dynamics of its evolution and not the statics of its program or leadership. It must be based upon the realization that the steps to the left already taken officially by this party must reflect a growing left-wing pressure exerted not only by ourselves and by events from the outside, but also by forces within its own ranks or sympathetic with it. It must especially be based upon the conception that our task is not only to help in the formation of the new communist party but also to prevent or to impede the formation of a new centrist party....
If we do not succeed in adopting a jointly satisfactory program and the fusion does not take place at the present time, our fundamental attitude toward the AWP does not change, at least not for the next period. Should it hold its own convention and officially launch its own party, it cannot but be a centrist party. Under such circumstances, we would continue, still from the outside, and in close collaboration with all sympathetic elements within, to put forward our demands for fusion on a principled basis, always preceding from the standpoint that our object is not only the formation of a new communist party but also to prevent or hamper the formation of a centrist party.
It is in the sense indicated in this thesis that there was at least one kernel of truth in the famous motion presented in the New York branch of the CLA “rejecting the theory” that the CLA must disintegrate if there is no fusion. If the failure to fuse could be placed at the door of the right-wing leaders of the AWP, it would disintegrate, and not the CLA. But if the failure to fuse was due to the stupidity or sectarianism of the CLA, not even a motion of the NY branch could have prevented it from falling apart. We pursued such a policy as made it impossible for the right-wing opponents of fusion in the AWP to pull their organization away from the unity. And the results of our policy, in contrast, as we shall presently see, to Oehler’s, put the AWP right wing in a position where they could not move effectively against the unity.
No clearer confirmation of the correctness of our course is required than the elaborate minutes of the special POC meeting of the AWP held in New York, a few short weeks before the fusion convention—November 6, 1934—when the right wing made a desperate last-minute effort to sabotage the unity. The dilemma into which we had put the right wing was expressed by several of the POC members: “Some people have been attracted by talk of merger,” said Budenz, “and not going through with it would be hard to explain away.... Those who oppose merger must make plain who will preserve the AWP and what we’ll use for material resources, because if we change our minds now we’ll seem to oppose unity and we’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”
Precisely! That is precisely what we meant when we wrote in our pre-convention thesis about the eventuality of no immediate fusion; that alone would suffice to answer all the triumphant questions about the “second variant.” “If merger is called off now,” added Karl Lore, “we’ll be called traitors and fakers, but that doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is that we’ll get the horse-laugh. We can stand practically anything but being thought damned fools; that’s hard to live down.” Although Lore exaggerates a little here, he is essentially correct in revealing the position the AWP would have been put in if it decided to face the CLA with the need of dealing with the “second variant” so dear to the Oehlerites and Weberites.
By following an elaborated political line, thought out to the end and uninfluenced by any accidental or episodic phenomena—which threw our CLA critics into a panic or a frenzy every other week during the course of the negotiations—we succeeded:
In involving the AWP so thoroughly in discussions of the fundamental principled questions that it was politically impossible for the right wing to pull the AWP out of the negotiations;
In having the AWP drop the idea of formally launching their party, by themselves, at the originally proposed July 4th convention;
In helping to crystallize and strengthen the hand of the left wing around West, Hook and Ramuglia;
In driving a deep wedge between the militants in the field and the right-wing politicians at the center (Salutsky & Co.);
In accomplishing a progressive improvement of the program, by means of one revision after another—by means of public criticism in our press and comradely discussion in the negotiations—until the final adoption of the Declaration of Principles;
In involving the AWP to a certain extent in joint practical work (anti-war, unions, unemployed, mass meetings, joint statements, etc.) so as to establish harmonious contact between the ranks and to diminish the chances for a rupture of the negotiations;
In completing the isolation of the right wing and the total elimination, in the end, of its most dangerous spokesman, Salutsky.
And finally, in actually consummating the fusion on a “rigidly principled basis,” as Trotsky puts it.
The policy was not carried out by the CLA leadership without opposition—now overt, now covert—in the ranks. That iron law of which we spoke above operates not only with organizations as a whole, but more specifically it affects individuals and sections or groups in them. At the time the sharp turn becomes imperative to the progress of the movement, they find themselves unable to accommodate themselves to the new situation. They cling to the past, to the comforts—physical as well as political—of a circle existence, to ideas and phrases learned by rote, important enough in themselves but no substitute for the living movement. They translate their sterile sectarianism into a strident radicalism, their conservatism into an ultra-revolutionary intransigence, their inertia into a suspicion of every step forward as “opportunism” and “liquidation.” To be sure, nobody was opposed to the fusion explicitly. But that was little consolation, for even Bismarck knew that the most effective way to oppose an idea is to favor it “in principle.” What is politically important is that tendencies were clearly evident in the CLA which objectively opposed the fusion. Some manifestations of these tendencies were:
The League should immediately declare itself the party.
“Just look at who is leading the AWP: Salutsky, Muste, Budenz!”—the tendency that saw this or that or those leaders, but not the ranks.
“The AWP has no membership anyway; there isn’t a single AWPer in Chicago”—a complete failure to see the significance and importance of the organization, of the movement.
“We can’t fuse unless we go into the new party as a faction”—the assumption that the new party would be centrist.
“After they agree to our program, we should refuse to unite with them until a long period of practical collaboration during which we’ll test them.”
And more of the same.
The most consistent spokesman of all these anti-fusion tendencies, the rallying center for them, was the Oehler-Stamm faction. At no time did Oehler reveal that he had the slightest understanding of the problem involved, of the strategy and tactics to be pursued, any more than he showed an understanding of the simple, clear-cut tactic adopted by our French comrades in entering the SP. In both Oehler’s case and ours, the problem in both countries was fundamentally the same; only we approached the problem from the standpoint of living Marxism and Oehler from the standpoint of ossified sectarianism.
“The decisive question to determine a Marxian party and non-Marxian party or group today,” read Oehler’s motion in our Resident Committee, February 26, 1934, “revolves around the question of the permanent revolution and the theory of socialism in one country.... The Left Opposition will not compromise on principle to form a new party. We will not enter a party that has a non-Marxian program through omissions. Compromise on other questions only on the basis of a fight for these points first.”
The Oehlerite conception, therefore, was that the new party could be formed by a fusion between the CLA and AWP only if the latter agreed to the theory of the permanent revolution and included it in the program—it and a few dozen other things, for “we will not enter a party that has a non-Marxian program through omissions.” Sinful opportunists that we are, we had an entirely different conception. In the first place, we do not believe that a national section of the Fourth International can write its own program; that is the work of the International, for our program can only be the world program; a declaration of principles or platform is adequate for the time being. Secondly—O sin of sins!—we were prepared to fuse with the AWP even if we could get no agreement on the declaration of principles, to fuse on the basis of a concrete program of action for the next period which did not stand in conflict with our principles, and to depend upon joint collaboration and discussion during the course of it to bring closer the day when a Marxian platform or program could be adopted by the united party. From the very beginning, therefore, we found ourselves in irreconcilable conflict with the Oehler standpoint, the adoption of which would have made fusion impossible from the start.
Oehler’s attitude towards the famous first draft of the declaration of principles drawn up by Shachtman and Muste again indicated his purely negative position. This draft, inferior though it was from a Marxian standpoint to the second (final) draft, was quite sufficient—assuming an immediate improvement had not been possible—for unity. On the fundamental questions, it took the correct position. Oehler denounced it as centrist “through and through” and rejected it as a basis of fusion. Yet, it was precisely this draft which made it possible to drive deeper the wedge between Muste, who then occupied an intermediate position, and the left wing of the AWP on the one side, and the Salutsky right wing on the other. By isolating the right wing on the basis of the first draft, the hand of the pro-fusion and left-wing elements was so strengthened that the reinforcement and clarifications of the second draft were made possible in the subsequent negotiations. Oehler simply did not understand that every successive blow at the right wing facilitated the advancement and joint adoption of a more thoroughgoing and comprehensive Marxian position. The difference between this “radical” and us “opportunists” was that his policy would systematically play into the hands of Salutsky.
Oehler’s attitude towards the discussion of organizational questions with the AWP again betrayed his fundamentally anti-fusion position. As late as October 22, a few short weeks before the fusion convention was scheduled to convene, when it was essential to discuss the distribution of positions, merger of the press, etc., etc.—all those questions without which the very next step on the fusion agenda could not be taken—Oehler voted in our Resident Committee against dealing in organizational questions with the AWP representatives. And on the very eve of the fusion convention, November 19, 1934, Oehler “withholds” his vote on the organizational proposals jointly arrived at by the negotiators. It is evident that to have attempted to come to a fusion convention without common agreement, not only on principled, but on organizational questions, would have been equivalent to calling off the fusion convention entirely.
Towards the very end, the convention city took on an unusual importance. Our proposal was to hold the separate conventions of the AWP and CLA simultaneously, in the same city, and at the adjournment of the individual conventions to reconvene in the joint fusion assembly. We knew that the AWP’s right wing was trying desperately to stall off the unity at all costs and by any means. The old CLA decision in favor of Chicago as the convention city was out of the question for two reasons, one practical (the Chicago organization could not house anything like all the delegates) and the other political (the AWP would not consider Chicago as the convention city, and that for legitimate and convincing reasons). In spite of the obvious wisdom in our proposal, Oehler insisted on Chicago.
Finally, to climax a course that would mean blowing up the fusion for the coming period, Oehler proposed that we hold our own convention at the same time as the AWP held its gathering, but instead of reconvening into a unity convention immediately upon adjournment, the delegates should be sent home to “discuss” the question of fusion (we had been discussing only for a year!) and then come back, a month later, to a unity convention! Not only was this an infuriatingly irresponsible proposal to sabotage the unity, but it was the direct counterpart of the AWP right wing’s plan for disrupting the fusion! Almost at the very moment that Oehler was making this scandalous proposal in the CLA committee, the right-wingers were mobilizing (fortunately in vain, but not through any fault of Oehler’s!) at the special POC meeting of the AWP on November 6. The crucial significance of the Oehler proposal may be judged from the minutes of this POC meeting.
“I would like us to discuss the proposition that talk of joint convention be suspended till the AWP convention passes on it,” said Salutsky-Hardman. “We must have separate conventions so that if merger fails to go through the reaction will be as slight as possible,” said Budenz. “I propose that we call off all negotiations for the time being to give our members a chance to study the matter and prepare for the AWP convention,” argued another worshipper of democratic formalities and opponent of fusion, McKinney, and he added: “I think...that the CLA is rushing things. In my opinion there’s no hurry about this merger, and all negotiations towards a unity convention must be suspended.”
Again, Hardman: “Motion to instruct negotiating committee to continue to discuss programmatic and organizational questions but to postpone the joint convention till the AWP convention passes on it.” The proposal to postpone the joint convention was being fought for in order to stall the fusion, to strengthen the factional fences of the right wing, and eventually to defeat the fusion. As Arnold Johnson put it: “We can talk of postponement in hope of defeating merger, or of merging later on. I believe we are too far committed to withdraw. The AWP is only provisional and we have no right to insist that others join us. The time to vote No was at Valencia. I understood the Valencia decision to mean that we merge as soon as possible.”
As can be seen, the question was not at all of a technical order, but of signal political significance. The Oehler line, at every stage, would have played right into Salutsky’s hand. Nor is this astonishing. It would not be the first time that sectarian rigidity feeds right-wing opportunism and is fed by it. The revolutionary Marxian line cuts across them both. The spokesman for this line summed up the Oehler position in the Resolution of the Nineteen (Shachtman, Cannon, Swabeck, Lewit, Borkeson, Carter, Wright, etc., etc.) to the New York membership meeting to elect delegates to the CLA convention:
In the United States, the policy of the Oehler group would have made it impossible for the League even to approach the AWP and to influence its evolution in a progressive sense; at best it would have reduced the whole problem to the level of a mere maneuver, barren of any serious political results, and would have totally excluded the possibility of bringing the AWP and the CLA to the present point of agreement on a Declaration of Principles and the holding of a fusion convention. The adoption of the Oehler policy, even at this late date, would directly jeopardize the completion of the fusion. By its formalistically rigid and negative approach to the problem, the Oehler group would deprive the CLA of that combination of firmness and flexibility which is necessary to the final adjustment of the extremely difficult organizational arrangements still pending. The manifest aim of the Oehler group to maintain a permanent faction and to carry its struggle against the National Committee and the International Secretariat into the new party carries with it a direct threat to the success of the new party and to its normal evolution towards a firm Bolshevik position. The emphatic rejection of the position of the Oehler group by our national convention is a prerequisite for the successful development of the new party and the increasing influence of the Bolshevik-Leninist kernel within it.
But that is precisely what the national convention of the CLA failed to do in the explicit, clear-cut Bolshevik way that the situation demanded of it. And it failed to do it because the resolution of Cannon and Shachtman was voted down by a combination of Oehlerite and Weberite delegates, so that Oehler was able to enter the new party without the CLA convention characterizing his political line on the fusion. And as will be seen, this was not the last time the Weberites played their role of shields for Oehler.
What was the Weberite position towards the whole fusion movement? Contrary to all the expectations of the critics, the unity negotiations were so patently successful and our line so unassailable, that even though Weber refused to characterize the political line and tendency of his ally Oehler, he was nevertheless compelled to present a motion endorsing the “main line of the National Committee in the course of the negotiations as basically correct and making possible the realization of the fusion.” All the skeptics, the opponents of all varieties and degrees, suddenly became not only warm supporters of the fusion but in their tardy enthusiasm and zeal soon talked as if they had always been heartily in favor of it.
“We (we!) were always in favor of fusion on a proper basis (as we would be with any socialist left wing that agrees to a Marxist program),” writes Weber virtuously, in his December 29, 1935, letter to the International Secretariat of the ICL. “We may add that it was after discussion with Comrade Weber and on the latter’s suggestion that Comrade Shachtman introduced the first motion into the NC of the CLA to start negotiations with Comrade Muste and the AWP. Our (our!) attitude towards the fusion was never lukewarm—nor on the other hand was it uncritical.”
Not uncritical, to be sure. And the criticism? That is also recorded. “We took issue with the Cannon group on the question of fusion,” said Gould at the New York membership discussion meeting on July 27, 1935, in a speech circulated throughout the country as a Weber caucus document. “We did not stand opposed to the fusion, nay we were wholeheartedly for it.... Cannon saw no future in the CLA. He lost faith in it and felt that without a fusion we would perish. Hence he proceeded to rush the party (Gould means the CLA—MS) into the fusion. His policy was fusion willy-nilly. It was not the rapidity with which the fusion was effected that was here objected to. It was the fact that the membership was not properly educated or prepared for the fusion. It was a top fusion, typical of the Cannon method.”
For a leader of the group which recently fused “at the top” with the Muste group on the basis of purely “top” discussions between 2-3 Weberites and 2-3 Musteites, presumably on the French turn, Gould is obviously the person chosen by nature and destiny to polemicize against “top fusions typical of the Cannon method.” But let us put aside for a moment this school-boyish objection to “top fusion” which reveals such a thoroughgoing ignorance of politics, strategy, tactics, tact and plain common sense, to say nothing of a cavalier contempt for facts. Let us concentrate instead on the other contentions.
According to Weber, “we” were always in favor and “our” attitude was never lukewarm. He echoes Glotzer, who makes the same assertion in his letter to the I.S. And Glotzer merely echoed Gould, according to whom “we” were not merely never lukewarm, but were wholeheartedly for it. Bear in mind these vehement protestations and then compare them with the truth, which is not established by the above assertions (it is brutally violated by them!) but by facts and documents.
The trouble with us, do you see, was that we saw no future for the CLA, we had lost faith in it and “felt that without a fusion we would perish”; so we rushed the CLA headlong into the fusion, because we favored it “willy-nilly.” It is futile to ask for facts to sustain these assertions; none will be forthcoming, for the simple reason that none exist. But Gould’s very criticism betrays his position. It was merely one side of the coin on whose obverse side was imprinted the policy of the AWP right wing.
Gould’s arguments against us (made six months after the fusion; imagine how much sharper they must have been—and were!—six months before the fusion) are simply identical with the arguments made by Salutsky, Howe, McKinney, Cope and Budenz against the fusion with the CLA! Let us refer again to those highly instructive minutes of the special meeting of the POC of the AWP already referred to. We have already quoted from them to show who was opposed to the Cannon-Shachtman line when, as Gould puts it, they “proceeded to rush the CLA into the fusion,” and why they opposed us. Now let us quote some more to show that, just as Gould (unlike the faithless Cannon) had faith in the CLA, there were others who “had faith” in the AWP; that just as Gould did not think we would perish if there was no fusion, there were similars in the AWP who had the same view; that just as Gould merely wanted to prepare their membership for the fusion....
McKinney: I propose that we call off all negotiations for the time being to give our members a chance to study the matter and prepare for the AWP convention.... I don’t believe that we must necessarily build our party on the merger of groups. I think also that we must not ignore the past of the CPLA and that the CLA is rushing things. In my opinion, there’s no hurry about this merger, and all negotiations toward a unity convention must be suspended.... If we don’t merge with the CLA I think we’ll get their good people anyway.
Howe: It is often said or implied by certain comrades that we are lost unless we fuse; do you agree?
McKinney: I think we’re more likely to lose out if we do fuse. Fusion doesn’t matter in Pittsburgh. We’d get perhaps 8 more members. Why, we can get 8 or 28 without fusing.
Cohen: Why don’t you?...
Howe: The AWP is not bankrupt and merger if proposed as a last resort is based on a false premise. I see no sign of revolt in the CLA (Howe had evidently not heard of Gould!—MS) but I see no reason either to merge the bankrupts or to merge a healthy AWP with a bankrupt CLA....
Cope: There is a feeling that without the CLA the AWP can’t exist. That means we started out bankrupt or got that way in the past year. I disagree. What strength will we gain? What material advantage is there?
But let us examine even more direct evidence of what “we” were always in favor of and how “our” attitude looked, not in the hazy post-fusion memories of the recently converted zealots, but in reality. “We” evidently means the leaders of the Weber caucus: Weber, Abern, Glotzer. Let us take them one by one.
On the question which revealed the basic divergence between our conception of the fusion and Oehler’s, manifested in the Oehler motion of February 26 on “not entering a party that has a non-Marxian program through omissions” (referred to above), the Weberite caucus organizer and spokesman in the Resident Committee, Abern, declared “that he will reserve his vote for a subsequent meeting.” Two meetings later, Abern, according to the records of March 21, 1934, requested that he be “recorded as voting for Oehler’s motion in minutes No. 210 (that is, the February 26th meeting—MS) dealing with position in regard to the negotiations with the AWP.” The March 21 meeting was the one at which Glotzer, just back from Europe with the latest dope on what to do and what not to do with centrists, made his international report. Abern’s vote for Oehler was therefore cast after consultation on the question with Glotzer. And more specifically what Glotzer’s views on the fusion were, we shall soon see.
The key importance of the connection between the simultaneous separate conventions and the immediately following joint fusion convention, has already been discussed. What was Abern’s position on this crucial point? Let the CLA committee minutes for October 22, 1934, supply the answer. Swabeck had just reported the AWP proposals for the convention:
Motion by Shachtman: On the question of the unity city we orient on the following basis, the League and the AWP hold their conventions simultaneously and in the same city and at the adjournment of the regular business of the two organizations, the joint fusion convention shall thereupon take place.
Motion by Oehler: The CLA hold its convention in Chicago as previously agreed 3 times by the full NEC. That if the AWP cannot arrange its convention in the same city then we hold the joint convention later in another city, suitable to both organizations. That we endeavor to have at least a month minimum between the conventions, to enable the League delegates to return to our own branches following the CLA convention with the League convention report for branches to assimilate and to enable one or more issues of the Militant to follow up our own convention before we dissolve the League.
Cannon being out of town, the Resident Committee voted as follows: Shachtman and Swabeck for the former’s motion; Abern and Oehler for the latter’s motion! This alarming deadlock was of course broken by Cannon’s subsequent vote, much—should Salutsky’s eyes ever peruse these pages—to the latter’s chagrin. But let us imagine that in addition to Abern, there had been another Weberite on the committee that evening who was just as “wholeheartedly” in favor of the fusion. The deadlock would have been broken...the other way, Oehler’s way! Let us imagine that the other Weberite was Glotzer. Being among those whose attitude was never “lukewarm” on the question, whose line would he have supported? Let us read his own words. They are just as long as they are wrong. And what is important in them is not only that they reveal a line on the fusion just a few shades more incorrect than Oehler’s, more sterile in their pseudo-intransigence, but also a general line of thought which has manifested itself since the consummation of the fusion on other questions, and is manifesting itself at this very writing on the key question now before the movement. And here is again an indication that we are dealing not with faded reminiscences of the past, but with political lines that relate to our present-day problems! But back to wholehearted Glotzer of 1934:
What I told the European comrades and LD [Trotsky] was, I found out later, my own opinion and not the opinion of the National Committee. I told LD that our aim in addressing the statement to the Muste party was for the purpose of forcing a discussion in this centrist organization with the aim of winning the best elements to our point of view. I told him further that we regarded Muste, and not alone him but the entire leadership of the AWP, as a typical centrist leadership, people who will never become communists (What power of prediction! What penetration! What analysis!—MS).... I don’t think that anyone raises objections (continued Glotzer in this letter, written March 26, 1934—MS) to negotiations or discussions. What is objectionable is the perspective of the committee, which has already put upon the agenda the question of fusion.... I told the committee that the perspective of fusion in the immediate future or at the next convention is not correct. That is not the first step.
The next step after an agreement on fundamentals is a protracted period of collaboration in order to determine the meaning of the change on the part of the centrists. If after such a period of collaboration it is seen that these people have seriously made a step towards communism and are developing in our direction, then, of course, the question of fusion can be taken up, but by no means to now discuss “practically” how the fusion will be carried through. You undoubtedly will understand that Oehler supported the remarks I made in the committee meeting. (“Undoubtedly understand” is hardly the word!—MS)...Why has our NC acted in this way? Here is my opinion. Our committee has no confidence in the organization....
I don’t regard the League as a “swamp” whose only hope is fusion with the AWP. Anybody who feels that way should draw the conclusions of that position or perspective and act on the basis of this opinion. The League is no swamp. The League is healthy in its ranks, it has vitality, it has power, it has every possibility of forging ahead. (Follows more patriotic pathos—MS)...The lunge for the AWP on the part of the NC must be described politically (and actually you know this to be so) as a lack of confidence in the organization. That is why Cannon said at the NY functionaries’ and membership meeting that our hope lies in the fusion with the AWP. Do I have to add that I do not agree with that?
I think if you were to complete your national tour* and continued to follow the line that you are presenting, you may convince half or the majority of the organization because the matter more or less is in your hands. That is the occasion for my letter. I want to ask you to please consider very seriously what I say and change your approach on this question. I don’t propose that you speak against the negotiations because they are absolutely correct. What I propose is that you do not prepare the membership for a fusion but, quite the contrary, prepare them for ensuing conflicts. I think you should tell the membership that if we do get a fundamental agreement there, the next stage is a protracted period of collaboration on practical questions in order to prove these people. Only such a period of collaboration can determine the question of fusion. To assume that the Musteites or Muste himself actually accept, believe and will work for our point of view or, say, for a communist point of view, is assuming entirely too much and is overlooking the fact that these people are centrists and not communists.
*Shachtman was then making a national tour for the CLA, reporting also to the membership in every branch on the facts and perspectives of the fusion, i.e., contrary to the absurd falsehood of Gould, he was seeing to it that the membership was properly educated and prepared for the fusion.” Gould’s trouble then, like the trouble of all the Weberites (with the prominent exception of Satir, who understood the line of the NC and agreed with it), was that he refused to be educated and prepared in favor of the fusion. He was “wholeheartedly” in favor of it...just like Glotzer.
One cannot but feel that this is enough for the day to prove to the hilt Gould’s contention that Cannon’s crime was that he didn’t prepare or educate the membership for the fusion, and that therein and only therein lay “our” difference with Cannon. Ah, what a fatal day it was for some people when the typewriter was invented! If this was Glotzer’s opinion when he was “not lukewarm” but “wholehearted” in his support of fusion, what in god’s name would it have been if he were lukewarm, or—heaven forbid!—if he were downright cold toward it? But this was in March, it will be said, and anybody can err. In the first place, a revolutionist should not conceal so serious an error of judgment; in the second place, he should not condemn those who failed to make his error but who had, instead, the correct line; and in the third place, the error was not fleeting in duration. On July 4, 1934, Glotzer still writes: “I am inclined however to think that even now, after all that has happened, you cling falsely to the hope that anything may come out of the negotiations. I am more and more convinced that there is nothing to be gained from them either in repute or in numbers. And I wonder whether you agree with Jim who says: We have got to unite with the AWP.”
But couldn’t this have been an aberration of an isolated Weberite, not infused with the same limitless enthusiasm for the fusion that made, let us say, Weber himself such an ardent and uncontrollable supporter of the fusion? The idea is preposterous. Glotzer complained at the CLA convention at the end of the year that we had not received any information about the fusion from the Resident Committee. However that may be (and it does not happen to be the case), he did receive plenty of “information” and views upon which he based the line of his letters, from his caucus colleagues, Weber and Abern. He was merely expressing the common opinion of the national Weber caucus—defended by Abern and Weber in New York, Glotzer in Chicago, Rae Ruskin in Los Angeles. What Weber thought of the question—we will not allow ourselves to quote from memory his week-in-week-out sniping attacks on the National Committee line in New York branch meetings—he put down in black on white. In his statement in favor of the French turn, written, not in March and not in July, but on August 20, 1934 (printed in the CLA International Bulletin No. 17), he wrote:
There remains the question of the international effect of this movement in France.... It does not follow that we must pursue the same tactics now or necessarily orient our sections everywhere for the same policy. Yet such a merger carried out in France creates a predisposition in favor of the same kind of merger. Given the development of the same situation—and we see this on the way in America too—here, we are prepared to pursue the same policy that we urge on our French comrades.
Was our difference with the Weberites, therefore, over the question of our “bureaucratic indifference” towards preparing the CLA membership for the fusion, as it is put by Gould and other Weberites, who foolishly think that nobody will trouble to read what they would like to forget? Not in the least! It is characteristic of the Weberites that after they have taken an “independent” political line, and this line has proved to be wrong a dozen times over, they seek to conceal their debacle by insisting that they were always in political accord with us but that they differed with us merely on some organizational defect of ours.
Our line was to drive for the fusion and prepare the membership for it; their line was to prepare the membership against it. Our perspective, in February, in August, in November, was that the next step to be taken in forming the revolutionary Marxian party was the fusion with the AWP; their perspective, as late as the end of August, did not even mention the AWP, but envisaged the development of a situation—“we see this on the way in America too”—in which the CLA would emulate the French Bolshevik-Leninists, that is, enter the American Socialist Party. (I say “their perspective” and not merely Weber’s, because all the Weberites on the NC—Spector, Abern, Glotzer and Edwards—voted without reservations to endorse the Weber statement.) And yet, since we are neither Oehlerites nor Weberites, we did not foam at the mouth and break out into a hysterical rash at the “liquidators” and “opportunists” whose perspective it was to “dissolve the independent” organization into the SP. We voted against the Weber statement and attempted to argue it out objectively. We burned no crosses on the hills to call together the paladins of the clan to protect the sanctity of our independence from the “Weberite liquidators.” We leave that kind of politics to the old women from whom nothing better can be expected.
One of the favorite accusations made against us by the Abern-Weber faction, spread down the corridors and along the national grapevine, and repeated constantly among themselves between sighs and moans over the sad state of the nation, is that we are “tail-endists.” More will be said on this score later on. Suffice it for the moment to remind the reader: During the whole year of 1934, when the strategy and tactics of the fusion with the AWP were being elaborated in the committee and discussed—in New York almost constantly—not one single leader of the Weber group made a solitary positive proposal on the matter; not one single idea was contributed by it that would advance the fusion; on not a single occasion did any of them take the initiative in the great work which, at the convention, they grudgingly acknowledged had been accomplished. Nothing, literally nothing!
Where they couldn’t give direct support to the Oehlerite agitation, they remained silent entirely. Where they contributed an idea, it was not towards fusion, but like Glotzer, against the fusion, or like Weber, for the perspective of entering the SP and letting the fusion with the AWP go hang. The initiative at every stage, the tactics, the complicated and delicate work of negotiation, the work of educating, enlightening and rallying the membership, fell exclusively to the lot of the bureaucrats, opportunists and men of little or no faith, Cannon, Shachtman and Swabeck. And by some miracle, compared with which the transformation of the wafer and the wine into the body and blood of Christ is a commonplace occurrence, the fusion was accomplished on a sound, satisfactory, revolutionary basis—as Gould, Glotzer and Weber will eagerly explain to you—in spite of everything Cannon and Shachtman could do to stop it.
One important stone is still missing from the mosaic of this instructive chapter of the record. In reply to a copy of Glotzer’s letter of March 26, 1934, to Shachtman, a leading European comrade whose opinions Glotzer elicited wrote to him on April 10, 1934:
There must be revolutionary elements in the AWP who are pushing toward us, for otherwise it would be incomprehensible why the leadership has committed itself so far. This situation must be utilized. If we declare ourselves ready for the fusion and the right wing of the AWP then puts on the brakes or prevents it entirely, we then have a very favorable point of departure toward the left wing.... We must not only understand and criticize centrism theoretically, not only submit it to political tests, but we must also maneuver organizationally towards it. Under certain conditions, fusion is the best maneuver. Only the fusion should not be superstitiously regarded as the termination of the process (that is, of the struggle against centrism—MS). The fusion can, under certain conditions, only yield better conditions for the continuation of the struggle against centrism. Naturally, the methods of the struggle must then be adapted to the united party.
It would surely have been regarded as a libel on the already harassed Glotzer to have predicted at that time that, not much more than a year later, he and his caucus colleagues would be first in a bloc and then in a single faction with those whom Glotzer himself designated as “people who will never become communists”—a faction whose primary aim is the smashing of those communists with whom Glotzer has always protested his fundamental solidarity in principle. But these miserable clique maneuvers, the politics of unprincipled combinationism, deserve more ample and searching treatment.