The Militant launched this column last week as part of preparing for these events. The first column reprinted an excerpt from “A Short History of The Militant,” which first appeared in 1968 on the occasion of the paper’s 40th anniversary.

In that article Joseph Hansen explained how leaders of the Communist Party launched the paper “in opposition to the Stalinist faction that had been placed in command of the Communist Party under a Kremlin ukase.” A key aspect of this was the publication of suppressed documents by Leon Trotsky and other leaders of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. From the beginning, Hansen wrote, the editors aimed to maintain the Militant as a “fighting paper integrated with the supreme task of our times—to build a combat party of the working class in the tradition of Leninism.”

Hansen was a longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party and, at various times, the editor of the Militant. The second half of his article appears below.
 

When promising leftward moving currents appeared in the Socialist Party shortly thereafter, the new organization sought another fusion. To accomplish this it was necessary for the entire Trotskyist tendency to join the Socialist Party as a group. This operation was carried out openly and in agreement with the main leaders of the Socialist Party, who at the time stood for, and advocated, an “all-inclusive” party, even going so far as to extend an invitation to all other currents to join. The Socialist Party leadership, however, under pressure from the right wing, placed rather onerous conditions on the Trotskyists, the worst being an ultimatum to give up publication of our newspaper. This was acceded to, although with great reluctance. The last issue of the New Militant (June 6, 1936) announced the decision and, under the terms of the invitation that had been extended by the leadership of the Socialist Party, appealed to all revolutionary-minded militants to join the “all-inclusive” set up.

The fusion between the left wing of the Socialist Party and the American Trotskyists proved to be profitable so far as the Trotskyists were concerned. Very shortly it became possible to provide an avenue for expressing the revolutionary socialist views of the new combination. A weekly newspaper, Labor Action, was founded in San Francisco as the official organ of the Socialist Party of California and James P. Cannon was invited to become its editor. The first issue appeared on November 28, 1936, during the general strike of the West Coast maritime unions.

Within the Socialist Party, however, the very success of the Trotskyists made it increasingly difficult to speak out freely on some truly crucial issues of the time, particularly in relation to the Spanish Civil War, in which the policies of the Stalinists, the Social Democrats and the Anarchists were paving the way for the disaster that eventually befell that very promising revolution. The right wing of the Socialist Party became more and more fearful of the left wing’s growing influence and strength, and initiated steps to contain and, if possible, shatter it. What the right wing intended was clearly signaled by efforts to muzzle the Trotskyists in particular. The Trotskyists therefore prepared for a factional struggle in which a split appeared inherent from the very beginning in view of the gravity of the differences.

Labor Action, which really represented a continuation of The Militant, became a casualty in this struggle, the last issue appearing on May 1, 1937.

In the Chicago area, the Trotskyists were joined in the fight by Albert Goldman, a prominent labor attorney, former member of the Communist Party and then of the Trotskyist movement, who had gone into the Socialist Party on his own several years earlier. He edited an officially recognized bulletin in the Socialist Party, the Socialist Appeal. When the National Executive Committee voted the Socialist Appeal out of existence, this provocative action was countered in New York. The Socialist Appeal was adopted by the Socialist Party of New York, Left Wing Branches, as an official weekly organ and reissued in New York beginning August 14, 1937.

The struggle within the Socialist Party came to a conclusion at an Emergency Convention of the Left Wing which opened in Chicago on December 31, 1937. The delegates founded the Socialist Workers Party and named the Socialist Appeal as its official weekly organ.

This name remained on the masthead until the issue of February 1, 1941, when the name, The Militant, was resumed. The lead editorial in that issue explained why the change had been made:  
 
‘Uncompromising struggle’
“By returning to this name, we symbolize before the workers of America and the revolutionary proletariat throughout the world that our party proclaims today that program of uncompromising international class struggle which we inscribed on our banner from the first moment of our existence.

“The Socialist Workers Party has also been compelled by a reactionary federal law, the Voorhis Act, to discontinue its organizational affiliation with the World Party of Socialist Revolution, the Fourth International.

“But by this banner, The Militant, we make known to the revolutionary vanguard everywhere that we remain loyal to our common goal.”

It can be truthfully said that, in the years since then, The Militant has remained loyal to the program with which it began, although some of those who served on its editorial board did fall by the wayside.

On December 13, 1944, another change was made that should be noted. The Militant ceased to be the official organ of the Socialist Workers Party. An editorial announced that it was to be published “henceforth solely upon the responsibility of The Militant Publishing Association, its owner and publisher.” The editorial specified that all statements in that and future issues of The Militant represented the views of the officers and editors of The Militant Publishing Association.

This measure was taken because of the witch-hunt whipped up by the Government against those who opposed World War II as another imperialist carnage. The Socialist Workers Party had already been singled out by the witchhunters for special attention. The party leaders were tried in 1941 under the Smith “Gag” Act, being the first victims of that infamous law against freedom of thought and the press. Later, when the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal, they had to serve prison sentences because of their views. The Militant came under heavy pressure because of its role in seeking to popularize the program of the Socialist Workers Party and printing the speeches and articles of its leaders opposing the war aims of U.S. imperialism. Issues of The Militant were held up by the censors, and for a time it appeared that the Roosevelt administration would even seek to deprive The Militant of its second-class mailing rights.

The Militant, as I indicated, began as a partisan political newspaper directed primarily to the cadres of the Communist Party. Its audience was thus necessarily a limited one. This is reflected in the nature of the articles it featured, dealing with what many persons at the time thought were highly abstract and even hair-splitting questions, such as the difference between Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and Stalin’s concept of “socialism in one country” and how this difference had become involved in the revolutionary struggles of our time—and what it signified for their success and for the defense of the USSR. These questions turned out to be very concrete. Looking back now, some of these articles, many of them bearing the signature of Leon Trotsky, still remain among the most interesting and thought-provoking published over the years. Revolutionists of today will find much in them bearing on their own problems, even though much has changed in the intervening years.  
 
Change in orientation
In 1933, however, when it became clear in the light of the events in Germany (in which the Communist Party permitted Hitler to walk into power without a fight) that the Communist International and its sections were beyond hope of reform, the Trotskyists changed their orientation. Instead of addressing themselves mainly to the cadres of the Communist Party, they turned directly to the broad layers of the American working class. This was reflected, of course, in The Militant. It sought a more popular appeal. Strike struggles, union problems, activities of the mass organizations—all these became of primary concern. The Militant began to establish a reputation for the honest and uncompromising way in which it covered the unemployed movement, labor’s battles and the struggle for black liberation. Its pages over the years thus constitute excellent source material for studies of these struggles, particularly as they were estimated by the Trotskyists from their international Marxist point of view. The Militant also contains an immense amount of first-hand information from participants in major battles of the working class over the years.

In making this turn, The Militant never lost sight of the revolutionary Socialist goals to which it had been dedicated from the beginning. It continued to provide analyses, special reports and a Trotskyist political orientation on all major developments in the world. It remained preeminently a paper with an international outlook.

Besides its record in World War II, the case of the Korean war offers a good example of the standard maintained by The Militant. It was the first newspaper in the United States, to my knowledge, to come out in complete opposition to Truman’s course of involving America in the civil war in that land. There was no ambiguity about the unconditional support it offered to the Korean people. Its exposure of what it saw as the imperialist aims of the U.S. and what its military machine did to the Korean people in that war provides a model of revolutionary journalism.

The Militant has followed the same basic policy in the Vietnam war, defending the right of the Vietnamese people to determine their own fate without interference from the United States or any other power. Thus The Militant was instrumental in popularizing the slogan, “Bring the GI’s home, now.”

The Militant has always been particularly attentive to the struggles of peoples in the colonial world, and has a proud record in this respect, as can be judged from the way it reported and defended the Chinese revolution, the Algerian revolution and above all the Cuban revolution with its special meaning for the working class in the United States as the opening of the socialist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

¹James P. Cannon was a founding leader of the communist movement in the United States and a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party until his death in 1974.  
 
 
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