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From New Militant, Vol. II No. 22, 6 June 1936, pp. 1 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THE Cleveland convention of the Socialist Party finally smashed the Old Guard domination, and the Old Guard withdrew. By rejecting the Old Guard, the convention ratified the slogan of an inclusive, democratic party, open to all who stand for the goal of socialism and who are willing to work loyally within the framework of the party.
From these two significant developments we draw two conclusions:
Acting on these conclusions, the National Committee of the Workers Party, exercising the authority expressly given to it by the party convention, has formally dissolved the organization and all its members are joining the Socialist Party. The Spartacus Youth League has taken similar action to join the Young People’s Socialist League.
These conclusions, and the actions proceeding from them, are the
result of a careful and concrete analysis of the course of
development of the Socialist Party during the last two years.
The Detroit convention of the Socialist Party in 1934 marked a decisive turning point in the history of the movement. The Declaration of Principles then adopted, despite the ambiguity and confusion of its formulations, made a sharp break with the classical reformism of the post-war Social Democracy, and gave evidence of a determination not to repeat the terrible mistakes and crimes of the parties which had led the Austrian and German masses to the yoke of Fascism. The Waldmans, Pankens and Oneals rightly characterized the document as a break with “democratic Socialism”, i.e., the cowardly and treacherous Social-Democratic reformism of the war and post-war years.
Though the leftward tendency of the Socialist Party has not
achieved programmatic clarity and, in some respects, retrogressive
steps were taken at Cleveland, nevertheless the general trend of the
party, as measured by the activities of its membership and the
increasing violence of its collisions with the extreme right wing of
the party, is undoubtedly progressive. This is to be seen, for
example, in the fruitful work of the Socialist militants among the
unemployed – a field completely neglected in the past; in the
tendency to coordinate the work of Socialists in the trade unions,
despite the resistance of party reactionaries allied with the trade
union bureaucracy; in the firm stand of the Left Wing in breaking
with the hidebound reactionary opposition to the United Front; and in
the steadily increasing interest of the party membership in the
fundamental questions of the revolutionary program, above all in the
consistent development within the Socialist Party on the question of
the struggle against war.
War is the most crucial issue of this epoch. On this question the Social-Democracy foundered and collapsed in 1914. On this question, today, both the international Social Democracy and the degenerate Third International reveal their ideological bankruptcy and their readiness to betray the working class to the imperialists. It is this question that divides the proletariat today into the two camps: those who will and those who will not fight against imperialist war.
Alone of all the important parties in the Second International, the Socialist Party of America took a firm and courageous stand against capitalist government “sanctions.” Alone of all these parties, the American party repudiated the fictitious distinction between “peaceful” and “aggressive” capitalist nations. In spite of the terrific barrage of Stalinist pressure, the Socialist Party has continued to develop more clearly and decisively toward a genuinely revolutionary conception of the nature of the proletarian struggle against war. In this field the Cleveland convention made its most important theoretical contribution, adopting a detailed resolution which goes further in the direction of a Leninist position against war than any Socialist party has ever done.
Naturally, it remains to be seen to what extent this developing
position on war has been and will be assimilated by the party
membership. Undoubtedly, this position will not become fully
integrated into the actions of the Socialist Party without a
systematic educational campaign. Such an educational campaign will
scarcely be complete unless it involves all the basic questions which
are inextricably involved in the war question – the
international nature of the class struggle, the road to power, the
nature of the workers’ state, etc. – questions on which
clarity in the Socialist ranks lags considerably behind the
development of the war issue.
Indeed, the most basic and far-reaching gains made by the Socialist Party do not yet lie in the realm of theoretical clarification. The revolutionary potentialities in the Socialist Party have been best expressed by its break with the ossified Old Guard. We have often pointed out what, in our opinion, has constituted the main weakness of the fight against the Old Guard: it was permitted to look like a purely organizational fight between groups contending for power, while the basic programmatic issues underlying that struggle were not clarified. Fighting for corrupt and reactionary principles the Old Guard, nevertheless, has formulated the issues more clearly than its opponents. But, fortunately for the future of the working class movement, the break was irrevocably made at Cleveland and the Socialist workers are free to develop their destiny without the deadening influence of the Old Guard.
And what a noxious, poisonous influence the Old Guard was! What a debilitating influence the Waldmans and Pankens exerted on a generation of Socialist workers! In ideological solidarity with the Scheidemanns and Noskes who slaughtered the German revolutionists and delivered the European working class back into the hands of capitalism; repudiating every vestige of Marxism which remained imbedded in the Social Democracy even in its opportunist years preceding the war; either part of or allied with the class- collaborationist trade union bureaucrats – not to speak of all the outright racketeers among the Old Guard. – and even now trailing Dubinsky and Hillman into the
Roosevelt camp; comfortable, aging Philistines, stern and
implacable only against revolutionists and militants, – for a
decade and a half these traitors poured their poison into the minds
and hearts of Socialist workers. The socialist worker, seeking a way
out from capitalism, could find guidance, in all those years, only in
the venal and corrupt Jewish Forward or its English version,
the New Leader. The worker or student seeking to learn
something of scientific socialism was delivered into the hands of the
Algernon Lees and the Rand School! Groups of workers engaged in
struggle against repressive administration in their unions, if they
were naive enough to bring their problems to the Julius Gerbers, were
betrayed to the bureaucrats not only by being restrained from
struggle, but also by the direct process of stool-pigeoning. The Old
Guard gave aid to not a single one of the important struggles for
democratic rights on behalf of political prisoners! They did not lift
a finger to aid the organization of the millions of unemployed. Under
their regime, the Socialist Party had all the vices of the European
Social Democracy without even the advantage of being the party of the
masses.
Now the Socialist workers are freed of this horrible, parasitic excrescence. At first thought, indeed, it appears incredible that thousands of militant workers and youth could have joined the Socialist movement while the Old Guard ruled the party. They joined, of course in spite of the Old Guard. The main influx has come since 1928. That influx was only possible because of the degeneration of the Communist Party.
The revolutionary workers have been joining the Socialist Party since 1928 because the relative autonomy of state and local organizations made it possible for them to function in it, even though under fearful handicaps. In the Communist Party, they could not function at all. It is no mere coincidence that the Socialist Party has grown precisely in the years since the Communist Party, yoked to the “national Socialism” of Stalin, ceased in actual fact to be a party. It is no accident that the growth of the Socialist Party began in the same year that we, then the Left Opposition, were expelled from the Communist Party.’ The C. P. became nothing more than a rigid apparatus-clique; even the memory of party democracy disappeared; scoundrels and nonentities were appointed by Stalin and consecrated overnight as “beloved leaders”; party policies are infinitely closer to those of the Old Guard than to those of militant Socialism. From this repellent caricature of a revolutionary organization, an organization neither revolutionary nor a party, thousands of revolutionary workers recoiled. Instead, they joined the Socialist Party. From the first they chafed at the Philistine passivity imposed by the Old Guard, and now they have smashed through the Old Guard.
It is extraordinary, indeed, to contemplate the dialectics of this
swift development. The Socialist Party is left an empty shell by the
surge of revolutionists to the Communist Party in 1919. But the
Communist Party becomes a stifling apparatus. Workers recoil and
enter the Socialist Party and give it new life. But in the process
they have also transformed the party and driven out the Old Guard
Democrats who controlled it. Thus the drive of the proletariat to
revolutionary organization asserts itself in spite of all
obstacles.
That drive is, of course, not completed. It is just beginning and will not end this side of the American proletarian revolution. The Socialist workers are now in a state of evolution toward a consistent Marxist conception of their tasks. Not the least of the forms that dialectics takes is the conflict, the give and take, of ideas about theory, strategy and tactics. Only that which is dead – like the prison regime of the Old Guard and the caricature of monolithism which is the Communist Party – provides no arena for ideological differentiation. The mature revolutionist seasoned in the front lines of the class struggle, conscious of the manifold practical problems of the party and the significance of the day to day drudgery, knows very well what a powerful aid to these tasks is the clarifying word, the sharp arrow pointing out the road ahead. Theory and practice go hand in hand in a healthy revolutionary movement. Naturally, there are differences that arise at every crucial turning of the road. These differences must be threshed out by free discussion among the membership, and not decided by bureaucratic decrees of self-constituted Popes. A party without democracy is not a party. The best and, indeed, the only guarantee for a normal solution of disputed questions is the fullest democracy in educational work and discussion, coupled with an attitude of responsibility and discipline. There is only one cure for the terrible blight of mental stultification which Stalinism and Old Guardism have brought into the labor movement: we must recapture, and make a living part of the heritage of the revolutionary movement, the Marxist principle that the free discussion of ideas is the only method whereby the proletarian vanguard can collectively hammer out the correct program that it needs if it is to work out the salvation of the human race.
We are confident that in such an atmosphere of democracy and discipline, the Socialist Party will grow as never before. Already, with the ousting of the Old Guard in New York and the simultaneous influx of revolutionary elements the party has taken a swift leap forward in membership and activity. The party is still in relation to the American working class, in its practical impact upon it, primarily a propaganda organization. But it is today the party that can, given the correct developments within it, become the party of the masses. We revolutionary Internationalists who are called “Trotskyites” begin our work in the Socialist Party with the fullest confidence in the outlook for the future.
We are not afraid of isolation. There are times when the revolutionists, if they are to remain true to their principles, have no other alternative. For more than seven years we endured repression and slander, contumely and physical assault, in an isolated struggle for principle. We survived. We are proud of our struggle. We retract nothing and repent nothing. We are not afraid of isolation when circumstances impose it. But no less courage is required to turn away from isolation and move toward the mass party when conditions open the way for such a step. It would be sectarian folly to reject the opportunity to participate in a broader movement, bringing to it all our heritage and all our ideas, which have been confirmed by every development in the international working class movement.
Joining the Socialist Party as we are, with our ideas and traditions, we urge all revolutionary workers to do likewise and to add their energies to the efforts of the many thousands of socialist workers in a common struggle to build a powerful party of revolutionary Socialism.
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