Vol. 72/No. 49      December 15, 2008

BY BEN JOYCE  
The 1974-75 economic downturn was the deepest—and the first worldwide—recession since the 1930s, leading the bosses and their government to accelerate their attacks on workers’ standard of living. Responding to the political opportunities created by this situation, the Socialist Workers Party initiated a turn to the industrial unions in 1978, getting the big majority of its membership and leadership into the industrial workforce and unions, where they continue to concentrate their political work today.

As part of this effort, the party took steps to strengthen its theoretical foundations and train its cadre in Marxist theory and strategy. Systematic, in-depth study of fundamental writings of leaders of the communist movement became more indispensable as the party deepened its political activity in the working class.

In 1980 the Socialist Workers Party established a Marxist leadership school. This gave the opportunity for party leaders to step back from day-to-day activity in the movement and participate in a rigorous, several-month-long study of fundamental political works of Marx and Engels—in chronological order, as the founders of the modern communist movement developed their views.

The school aimed to deepen the students’ understanding of theory and strategy so they could more effectively apply a proletarian course and explain it to fighting co-workers. It was organized in tandem with study in all party branches of writings by Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin on the 1917 Russian Revolution and the early years of Soviet power and the Communist International.

In 1983 the communist movement further codified its political and theoretical conquests by launching New International magazine. The purpose of this new tool, as the first issue explained, is to “present political, theoretical, and historical material related to the most important questions of program, strategy, and organization confronting those building communist parties in North America and around the world.”

The lead article in the inaugural issue of New International is “Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today,” by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes. It is an appraisal of the contributions of Leon Trotsky, a principal leader alongside Lenin of the Bolshevik Party and the October 1917 Russian Revolution. Trotsky led the fight to maintain Marxist leadership in the face of the counterrevolutionary degeneration of the Soviet Union and the Communist International under the rule of a rising bureaucratic caste led by Joseph Stalin.

The article also looks at political differences Trotsky had with Lenin around important strategic questions and explains how the revolutionary victories in Nicaragua and Grenada of 1979 help demonstrate that Lenin’s views were correct.

Many other important contributions, worked out through experience in the international communist movement over the past two and a half decades, have been presented in New International, now also published in Spanish and French, with selected issues in Swedish and Icelandic, and several articles published in Farsi and Greek.

New International has taken up questions of political economy, the role of exploited farmers in the fight for socialism, why U.S. imperialism lost the Cold War, the place of workers and farmers governments, and other strategic questions for the working class in its line of march toward taking power.

The latest issue, number 14, features the article “Revolution, Internationalism, and Socialism: The Last Year of Malcolm X.” It explains the political evolution of Malcolm X and his convergence with the communist movement.

Local branches of the Socialist Workers Party also continue to organize regular educational programs where such questions are studied and discussed together in the course of carrying out political activity. Weekly classes, summer study programs, and special educational weekends are held to help communist workers effectively participate in the class struggle and build a proletarian revolutionary movement capable of leading workers and farmers to power.
 
 
Related articles:
SWP fund set to go beyond $90,000 goal
$90,000 SWP Party-Building Fund: week 8 of 9  
 
 
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