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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 52, 27 December 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
American capitalism’s two-party system of political rule received serious shocks in the past year, but remains virtually intact thanks to the timely repair work of the old-line union leaders.
Prior to the national political conventions, the sentiment for a labor party was mounting. The Democratic Party was in disrepute and torn with internal dissension, while Truman had earned the contempt of millions of workers through his brutal strikebreaking. The Republican Party bore the stigma of avowed reaction.
Henry Wallace, the millionaire political adventurer, had split off a section of the Democratic leftwing over the question of how best to deal with Stalin in the interests of American imperialism. Aware of the widespread disgust with both major parties, Wallace, with the Stalinists as his chief supporters, set up a third party devoted to “progressive” capitalism and posing as the anti-war party.
At the Democratic convention, the ultra-reactionary “white supremacist” right-wing walked out and subsequently set up the so-called States Rights Party, with strong bases in several Southern states and an outright fascist program.
The labor movement was confronted with a magnificent opportunity to set up a labor party and run its own candidates with every possibility of getting tremendous support in its very first campaign. But the capitalist-minded union leaders, CIO and AFL, brushed this opportunity aside.
At first they tried to get a new and less discredited candidate to offer the workers. They freely predicted Truman’s defeat if nominated. But when Truman won the nomination, most of the union leaders announced their support for the greatest presidential strikebreaker in American history.
Truman campaigned in the most demagogic fashion, promising repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, housing, civil rights, etc. The Wallaceites complained he was “stealing” their program, including Wallace’s single-plank foreign policy of “man-to-man" dealings with Stalin. The union leaders, primarily through CIO-PAC and the newly-formed AFL Labor’s Political Education League, spent millions in Truman’s behalf.
The most significant event of the election campaign, however, was the emergence of the American Trotskyists – the Socialist Workers Party – as a national political factor. After 20 years preparation, the SWP entered its first national election campaign, with Farrell Dobbs and Grace Carlson as its presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
For the first time in nearly three decades, the authentic voice of international revolutionary socialism summoned the American workers in a presidential election campaign: Millions, who had never heard of the SWP, learned for the first time of the existence of a genuine Marxist party, opposed to the Kremlin-puppets of the Communist Party and the fake-socialist party of Norman Thomas.
Despite small forces and financial poverty, the SWP placed the Dobbs-Carlson ticket on the ballot in 11 states. By dint of much pressure, the SWP obtained six national broadcasts and a number of local broadcasts. The SWP candidates campaigned for the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government to end the threat of imperialist war and fascism and to build a socialist society. When the campaign ended, the SWP had won recognition as the genuine revolutionary socialist left of American politics.
Truman won an unexpected victory by a plurality, although he failed to gain a popular majority of all votes cast. The support of the unions proved decisive.
The workers, deprived by the union leaders of the chance to vote for a party and candidates of their own, by and large voted for Truman as the “lesser evil” to Dewey, who openly endorsed the Taft-Hartley Act.
In this indirect and misguided fashion, the workers overwhelmingly demonstrated their opposition to reaction. The arrogant Republicans, who had misjudged the times, suffered a disastrous set-back that has inspired a crisis in their ranks.
The Wallace movement, tainted with Stalinism and lacking a real labor base, suffered a debacle. Many of its ex-Democratic elements are deserting it, leaving the Stalinists as the hardened core inside the Progressive Party.
Some union leaders like Walter Reuther had talked about a third party “after the elections.” They have ceased such talk now. The labor leaders have effected a Peoples Front-type coalition with, the Truman forces.
Like its Stalinist-inspired European prototypes, this coalition is highly unstable. Truman is already hedging on promises, appeasing Big Business and resuming full force his militarist Warmongering program. In the next period, Truman and his party will expose themselves completely. The workers will push forward toward class political action. Their pressure will split the new coalition and place on the order of the day the building of labor’s own class party.
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