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.From New Militant, Vol. II No. 15, 18 April 1936, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In the recent New York State Primaries, both in New York City and upstate, the Militant Socialists won a substantial and decisive majority over the Old Guard. This result is particularly important in its prophecy of an equally progressive outcome to next month’s national convention of the Socialist Party. Prom every forward-looking point of view, this repudiation of the Old Guard represents a genuine step in advance not merely for the Socialist Party itself, but for the developing labor movement in this country as a whole.
The extent of the victory of the Militants exceeded most predictions, even those of the Militants themselves. It is important and necessary to understand what accounts for the result.
Basically – as we have on numerous occasions pointed out – the factional struggle within the Socialist Party reflects new processes of ferment and differentiation which have been taking place within the advanced sections of the working class as a result of the Spanish, German, and Austrian events, the intensification of the war crisis, and the character of the post-1929 economic crisis. The ferment and differentiation are not, of course, confined to this country, but are reproduced in an analogous manner on an international scale. The central lesson drawn from the world events, with varying degrees of clarity, by increasing sections of workers within the orbit of the Second International has been: traditional social-democratic reformism is bankrupt, and serves only to lead the working class to disaster, and to sacrifice the working class to finance-capital in every crisis – to fascism as readily as to imperialist war.
This is, it will be observed, the negative half of the lesson which must be drawn if the full positive potentialities of these developments are to be achieved. It is necessary not merely to understand that social-democratic reformism is bankrupt ; but, positively, to break sharply from Social-democracy; and this sharp break can be decisively accomplished only by embracing and adhering firmly to the principles of revolutionary Marxism. Half-way measures and ambiguities can provide a partial and temporary solution, can make possible even certain victories on the road; but anything less than the full conclusion will in the end cut short the progressive development, will route the advancing workers back to reformism, aside into the death-house of Stalinism, or down into futile isolation.
At each stage of the development, the basic underlying process
appears only to a limited and to some degree distorted extent on the
surface. The political differentiation takes on in the struggle an
organizational form; and for a while it is the organizational contest
which appears as paramount over the political issues – though
it is the latter which in the long run determine the organizational
expressions. The opposing slogans hide as often as they reveal the
basic questions. Nevertheless, the process and the movement continue,
and gradually re-shape the slogans.
The New York Primaries fight, itself a stage in the larger struggle, is highly instructive as an aid to our understanding of the process as a whole, if we examine the specific and immediate factors which account for the sweeping victory of the Militants, the following two seem to have been decisive:
The character of the struggle of the Old Guard is very strikingly
shown by the issue of the New Leader (dated April 11) which
followed the Primaries. Indeed, this issue sums up in brief the whole
nature of the Old Guard. Significantly, we find a repeated insistence
that their fight is a fight “for principle”; and repeated
references to themselves as “Social Democrats” and to
their principles as the principles of “Social Democracy.”
Their fight, they make clear, is absolutely uncompromising and
intransigent.
“The voice of Social Democracy,” they threaten, “will be heard in Cleveland” (at the national convention). “The Social Democrats in the party,” they warn, “know no surrender. They have just begun to fight.” In an editorial headed Our Eight for Principles they herald the approaching end of the present struggle – “The long struggle of the New Leader for fundamental principles and policies is drawing to a close ...”
The feature article on the New Leader’s Anniversary Banquet quotes from the speech of Louis Waldman:
“Ours was not a fight, as some tried to make people believe, for the continuance in power of our side of the Socialist Party but for the fundamental program of Social Democracy. From that program we shall not recede, no matter who is in control of the Socialist Party.”
This issue of the New Leader, furthermore, makes entirely
clear what the Old Guard understands the fundamental program of
Social Democracy to be. No opportunity is overlooked to crack down on
“dictatorship” and to uphold “democracy”:
that is, to attack the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, and
to announce the adhesion of the Old Guard to the bourgeois-democratic
state, whose agents in the working class the Old Guard prides itself
on being, and aims to continue to be.
The biggest display of the entire issue is given to the speech of William Green, the guest of honor at the Anniversary Banquet – Green, whose long record of thorough-going reaction and treachery in the trade union movement has been climaxed during the past year by his firm resistance to every progressive development, by his bitter fight against the industrial unionists, by his dictatorial brutality in connection with the automobile workers, the rubber workers, the teachers, and the radio workers, by his pitiful cringing before the government on every possible occasion. Vladeck, at the banquet, paid fulsome “tribute to Mr. Green for his constructive leadership of the American labor movement and for his conduct as the champion of the oppressed.”
The other featured trade-unionist among the speakers at the banquet was Matthew Woll, partner of Ralph Easley for years in the National Civic Federation, Hearst’s chief red-baiting rival. Another leading article, proudly displayed in a box on the front page, is by Abraham Lefkowitz, co-leader of the Teachers’ Guild, splitter of the Teachers’ Union, and active dualist to the A.F. of L. The Old Guard, of course, is a great denunciator of “dual unionism” – except, naturally, when more “basic” issues are involved.
The strategic aim of the Old Guard is also given:
“Confident,” said Waldman at the banquet, “in the conviction that we represent on the political field the same program, the same principles, the same loyalty to labor exemplified in the British Labour Party, we are equally confident that with our allies of the labor movement the future belongs to our type of socialism.”
Abe Cahan looked forward to “the rapid development of fraternal relationship between the Socialist and labor movements in this country similar to that existing between the British Trades Union Congress and the Labor Party.” The visit of Herbert Morrison of the British Labour Party to this country is hailed and advertised. And well might the Old Guard greet its British brothers: has not the British Labour Party set them grandiose examples in the technique of representing the interests of finance-capital within the working class? Was it not through the British L.P. that national unity was achieved in the last war? that the General Strike was broken? that the budget is balanced at the expense of the British workers? that British imperial policy is now being put across to the masses in the present war crisis?
Yes, the Old Guard knows where it stands. It stands for the tried
and sure methods for bringing defeat and disaster to the working
class; for the policies that assembled the workers for imperialism in
1914; the policies that defeated the revolution in Germany; the
policies that greased the ways for Hitler, that shed the despairing
blood of the workers in Austria and Spain. These policies it
inscribes on its banner, and displays proudly and openly to the
world.
Nor is it to be imagined that these policies are defeated by the victory of the Militants in the Primaries, or by their probable victory at the national convention. The Old Guard looks ahead. It realizes that a broad rank and file is not vital to its plans. It sees the “model of the British Labour Party”. And it aims, together with the trade union bureaucrats, to head off the development of the revolutionary party in this country, during the years after 1936, by harnessing the leftward movement of the workers into a reformist Labor Party controlled by it and the bureaucrats, together no doubt with various of the “progressives” and liberals. And it is confident that this is the kind of Labor Party which could alone be built on a mass basis in this country. And it understands that, under present conditions, the Labor Party agitation can be utilized as by far the most effective weapon against the progress of revolutionary ideas among the masses and the strengthening of revolutionary organization.
The Old Guard, then, is fighting a principled and uncompromising
tight. On the whole, it has been a well-fought fight. The occasional
slanders and exaggerations are perhaps the inevitable concomitants of
such political struggles. The trouble with their fight has been not
the lack of principled character, but that their principles were
wrong. And, in this case, not merely wrong from the point of view of
the historical interests of the working class, but also out of line
with the wishes and opinions of the majority of Socialist Party
members and enrolled voters.
But, in spite of the fact that the Militants won in the Primary contest, there are lessons for the Militants to learn from the general character of the fight which the Old Guard conducted. The campaign of the Socialist Call compares in many respects unfavorably with the campaign of the New Leader. During the months preceding the Primaries there was only one substantial article published in the Call making a principled political attack on the Old Guard. In the time intervening before the national convention, the Call has a chance to remedy this defect by setting itself the task of clarifying political issues, of stating and exposing before the party membership the precise political character of the Old Guard and its policies, of lifting the struggle determinedly from a merely personal and organizational plane. Only in this way will the factional struggle be in the fuller sense educational and invigorating, instead of petty and disintegrating, for the party as a whole. And only in this way will the Militants lay the firm basis for broader and deeper leftward developments in the days ahead.
For this reason, there is occasion to be concerned over references
to possibilities of “conciliation with the Old Guard’’
which have been made since the Primaries. Naturally, individual
workers who hold reformist positions are and should be eligible for
Party membership, if – from whatever motive – they are
prepared to work loyally within the framework of the Party. But here
it is a question of the Old Guard as such. The Old Guard, it is true,
makes clear that the only possible “conciliation” from
its point of view would be triumph for itself and its ideas; and
consequently there is little probability that any kind of actual
organizational conciliation could be arrived at under any formula.
But the real danger in talk of “conciliation” is not an
organizational question.
The real danger is that behind such talk there can readily creep a tendency to conciliate with Old Guard ideas and policies, a tendency to retreat from the leftward front so far won, and march back along the road of disaster. What has been won can be held only by boldness, not by timidity; social forces are in continual motion, and positions can be maintained only by further advance and attack, never by resting in the trenches. The Old Guard has suffered a severe setback organizationally; now is exactly the time to follow the blow up with others still stronger, and to add to the organizational the more powerful and more lasting political weapons.
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