The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 72/No. 42      October 27, 2008

 

 80 Years of Communist Continuity in the United States 

The founding of the Socialist Workers Party
Forging a proletarian party on the eve of the second imperialist world war
(feature article)
 
BY BEN JOYCE  
On Jan. 1, 1938, the Socialist Workers Party was founded at a national convention in Chicago. The emergence of the new party registered the consolidation of the gains of the previous two decades and the opening of the road forward along the same lines of communist continuity.

In the years leading up to the founding convention, the cadre of the communist movement made a series of organizational shifts along the way to take advantage of timely political openings. In late 1934, the Communist League of America had just come out of the tremendous experience of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes earlier that summer and was taking advantage of openings in the mass movement as the labor radicalization deepened. Seeing the new opportunities opening up in the U.S. class struggle, the Communist League made a proposal for fusion with the American Workers Party (AWP), led by A. J. Muste.

The AWP was not a homogenous organization, but a section of the rank-and-file membership were genuine militant workers recruitable to the communist movement. A major contribution of the AWP to the mass movement was the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, Ohio, in the spring of 1934, one of the most powerful in the strike wave that year. It showed for the first time the great role the organization of the unemployed can play in militant labor battles. The fusion of working-class militants from both the Minneapolis Teamsters and the Toledo Auto-Lite strikers presented a uniquely powerful opportunity for class-conscious proletarian leadership to advance in the United States.

Muste, who was the national secretary of the AWP at the time, represented the majority sentiment that favored unity with the Communist League. The two organizations were then fused in a joint convention on Dec. 2, 1934, as the Workers Party of the United States.

The Workers Party had barely begun its political work when a new left-wing in the Socialist Party began to take shape under the impact of developments in the international class struggle. In the United States, militant labor battles were on the rise and the Congress of Industrial Organizations went through two massive upsurges. In France, a prerevolutionary situation arose in the form of mass sit-down strikes throughout the country. The Spanish civil war had brought new prospects of proletarian victory to Europe. The rise of fascism in Germany put additional pressure on the workers movement worldwide. Under these conditions, the left-wing of the SP grew in numbers.

Leaders of the WP, particularly James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman, took particular notice and explained that this new left wing represented a layer that had no continuity with the betrayals of the SP during the first world war and were looking for genuine revolutionary leadership. Despite initial resistance and eventual split by some of the leadership in the WP, the new party seized upon the recruitment opportunities and entered the Socialist Party in June 1936.

The comrades joining the SP went up against a right-wing leadership and presented a line of revolutionary struggle for political power. They printed and distributed their own press, Socialist Appeal. Eventually, the conservative leadership persecuted them, expelling a number of branches in which the communists had influence. Over the course of the year and a half within the SP, the communists had doubled their forces. In late December a convention of the expelled SP branches was held in Chicago and culminated in constituting the Socialist Workers Party on Jan. 1, 1938. A second convention was held July 1-5, 1939.

The founding conventions of the SWP discussed and adopted many resolutions based on the continuity and experience of the working-class movement internationally and developed a genuine Marxist program. A resolution on the Russian situation was adopted, calling for a political revolution against the bureaucracy and affirming the unconditional defense of the Soviet workers state. Another resolution was passed on the Spanish civil war. This resolution condemned the class-collaborationist tactics of the Stalinists and Social Democrats, who sold out the working-class fight against fascism for a bloc with the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, leading to a bloody defeat of the workers and the rise of fascism.

Other resolutions were passed that included a demand for Puerto Rican independence, a demand for allowing Jews persecuted by the Nazis to emigrate to the United States, and a resolution on the Black struggle in the United States, explaining the vanguard role that Black workers will undoubtedly play in the coming American revolution.

Collaboration with the international movement was central to the forging of the party’s program. The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution was a document drafted by Leon Trotsky, principal leader in the fight to maintain Lenin’s communist course. It outlined strategic demands to win mass consciousness to the camp of proletarian revolution. The document was approved by a national party referendum and reaffirmed at the SWP’s second convention.

Through the following year and a half, the SWP continued along the course laid out by the founding conventions. It continued to build the party through its trade union work and other aspects of the mass movement. However in August 1939, shortly after the second convention, a factional struggle began to emerge that would become the most programmatically decisive factional struggle in the history of the SWP.

Under the pressure of the Stalin-Hitler pact and the beginning of the second world war, a petty-bourgeois section in the party began to reject the theoretical foundations, political principles, and organizational methods that form the basis of the communist movement. An unprincipled combination led by James Burnham, Martin Abern, and Max Shachtman began an attack on the party’s position concerning defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack. Bending to bourgeois public opinion, they subsequently went on to combat many of the party’s long-standing Leninist principles—from the question of party democracy and democratic centralism, to the dialectical method of thought and political practice.

Cannon became the principal leader of the proletarian majority around these questions and countered the revisionist attacks from the petty-bourgeois opposition. Leon Trotsky aided the side of Cannon and the majority, extensively clarifying the Marxist position and explaining the class basis of the factional struggle. Trotsky and Cannon explained at great length that the alien class pressures being transmitted into the party through a petty-bourgeois layer could only be fought by incorporating more workers into party ranks and deepening its orientation to the industrial working class. The political fight that erupted is contained in two volumes: Cannon’s The Struggle for a Proletarian Party and Trotsky’s In Defense of Marxism (See ad on page 8).

The internal party conflict continued until early 1940 when the minority group split from the party. Though a substantial portion of the membership left with the split, the party’s proletarian integrity and Marxist program was preserved, allowing the party to strengthen itself and advance along the lines of genuine communist continuity. Over the course of the following decades, the firm adherence to the party’s proletarian Marxist principles was vindicated through concrete experience in the class struggle.
 
 
Related articles:
Economic crisis spurs interest in ‘Militant’
SWP Party-building Fund is off and running, slightly behind  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home