Revolutionary Discontinuity: An Answer to Jack Barnes

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Lenin and Trotsky -co-leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Cliff Conner is a former Associate Editor of International Socialist Review. He joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1967 and was a founding member of its Atlanta branch. A victim of the recent purge of oppositionists, he was undemocratically expelled from the party in December 1983.

When the first issue of the Socialist Workers Party's New International came off the press in August, it wasn't just the periodical that was new. An 80-page article by party leader Jack Barnes announced to the world that the SWP has a brand-new ideology as well.

Barnes' article, Their Trotsky and Ours, will undoubtedly shock those who are accustomed to thinking of the SWP as "Trotskyist." Its central focus is a scaling down of Leon Trotsky's stature as a leader of the Russian revolution, a refutation of his theory of permanent revolution, and a broadside attack on the international organization he helped to found, the Fourth International.

Barnes acknowledges that "the shift I am proposing is one of the biggest changes in our movement since we first emerged, more than a half century ago, as a distinct political current in world politics. Since that time, permanent revolution in all its meanings has been a guiding concept of our entire world movement, including the SWP." But now, Barnes argues, "Our movement musi discard permanent revolution" because "it is an obstacle."

The Guardian newspaper gleefully commented on a preliminary version of Barnes' new line' that "the SWP has been quietly dropping overboard some of its Trotskyist baggage." Obviously, the party's political opponents have been able to discern that a fundamental revision of the SWP's historical program is underway.

Finding Lenin Barnes attempts to justify his theoretical revisions on a number of levels. The most superficial version has it that the SWP is merely "returning to Lenin." Trotsky and his permanent revolution theory, according to this view, represented a wrong turn away from the road of continuity with the Bolshevik revolution. As a corrective, Barnes says, "We launched an intensive reading and study of Lenin's political writings in every branch of the SWP."

"And we discovered a Lenin and a political continuity we had not known."

How was this heretofore unknown Lenin able to lie undiscovered among his collected works throughout more than half a century of the SWP's existence? How could he have gone undetected by party leaders and educators such as James P. Cannon, the Dunne brothers, Editor's Note: This article by Cliff Conner was written before the latest wave of political expulsions from the SWP which followed the November 1983 SWP National Committee meeting. Since that plenum an additional 50 to 60 people have been expelled. John G. Wright, Carl Skoglund, Farrell Dobbs, Tom Kerry, George Novack, Joseph Hansen, George Breitman, and even Jack Barnes himself until just recently?

Barnes has an answer: It was Trotsky's fault. He misled them all.

But in fact, the "Lenin" that Barnes claims to have uncovered anew wasn't hidden at all. The interpretation of Lenin that he now champions has been familiar to our movement for decades. As we shall see, it is none other than the one that Stalin's "theoreticians" developed in order to justify their turn away from Lenin's revolutionary policies.

Without a Discussion, Without a Vote As noted earlier, Barnes concedes that his theoretical revision amounts to "one of the biggest changes in our movement" in its history. How did this change come about? Leninist organizational principles—summarized in the formula "democratic centralism" — would require that it could only be accomplished through a thorough discussion and democratic decision of the entire party membership. But in fact, the ranks of the SWP only learned about this revision of our program by reading it in the public press. When dissatisfaction with the new line became manifest, Barnes and his allies launched a purge of dissident members and, in violation of the SWP constitution, cancelled the party convention that had been scheduled for August-1983.

Victims of the purge have included not a few of the SWP's best-known public spokespersons and former National Committee members, such as Peter Camejo (who was the party's 1976 presidential candidate), Frank Lovell, Dianne Feeley, Lynn Henderson, Les Evans, Gerry Foley, Nat Weinstein, Steve Bloom, Ray Markey, and Milton Alvin.' In a category by itself was the disgraceful expulsion of a genuine American working-class hero, James Kutcher, who fought and won one of the most celebrated civil liberties cases against the U.S. government during the McCarthy era. Although he is now 70 years old, attends meetings in a wheelchair, and is virtually physically helpless, he was put on trial in the SWP on a charge of "violence" for allegedly punching another comrade. In spite of the fact that the "victim" denied being punched, Kutcher was found guilty nonetheless. A month later he was tried a second time and expelled for failing to attend a meeting he had been ordered to attend.

Aside from the correctness or incorrectness of the SWP's new line, it is illegitimate because it has been handed down from above. It has been imposed without a discussion and without a vote, in violation of the democratic norms of Leninist organization that had prevailed in our movement from its inception in 1928 until recently.

Discarding Permanent Revolution But the new line's correctness or incorrectness, of course, is the most important question. It is summed up in Barnes' previously cited assertion that "our movement must discard permanent revolution."

This is not a musty historical question of interest only to scholars. It is a challenge to the foundation upon which the party's program stands, and therefore affects every aspect of the SWP's political existence from its long-range strategy to its day-to-day activities.

"Permanent revolution" is a shorthand formulation for a theoretical view of how revolutions unfold in the twentieth century, especially in economically underdeveloped countries. Like all catchy phrases or slogans, its brevity leaves it open to easy misinterpretation. The most vulgar version, promulgated by capitalists and Stalinists alike, has it that Trotsky was a left-wing fanatic with an insatiable appetite for the shoot-'emup and turmoil of insurrection and hence advocated "permanent revolution."

The straw-man version of permanent revolution that Barnes sets up to attack is less crude, but no less false. In essence, Barnes portrays permanent revolution as a doctrine calling for instant dictatorship of the proletariat, instant socialism, instant abolition of capitalism, instant nationalization of the economy.

To bolster this interpretation and attribute it to Trotsky, both Barnes and his mentor, Cuban vice-president Carlos Rafael Rodriguez (whose 1970 article Lenin and the Colonial Question also appears in the New International's first issue), make extensive use of a single sentence extracted from a book-length document written by Trotsky in 1928:

"The third Chinese revolution... will not have a 'democratic' period, not even such a six month period as the October Revolution had (November 1917 to July 1918); but it will be compelled from the very outset to effect the most decisive shake-up and abolition of bourgeois property in city and village."* It would appear from this sentence that Trotsky did, indeed, call for the instant "abolition of bourgeois property." Did Trotsky really believe, as he seemed to imply here, that socialist property relations could be instituted by decree on Day One after the seizure of power? If so, Barnes would surely be correct in his condemnation of this "ultraleft view" of Trotsky's.

But it is impossible to make the case that this one sentence represents Trotsky's ideas of how revolutions are made. It contradicts what he wrote in dozens of other books before and after 1928 and it contradicts what he actually did as a leader of the Russian revolution in its early period following October 1917. Barnes therefore qualifies his judgment by noting that Trotsky's later articles indicate he "no longer held the ultraleft view."s Barnes' larger point, however, is that the 1928 document served as the original programmatic foundation of the Trotskyist movement, and that organized Trotskyism has been tainted ever since by "leftist biases and sectarian political errors" born of Trotsky's momentary lapse.

"In combatting Stalin's rightist errors," Barnes writes, "Trotsky in 1928 injected some leftist errors." How neatly symmetrical: Trotsky on one side balancing Stalin on the other! Imagine someone with Jack Barnes' background passing off Stalin's criminal betrayal of the Chinese and world revolutions as "Stalin's rightist errors"!

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Socialist Action January 1984 5

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...Answer to Barnes (Continued from page 5)

In reality, Trotsky's views had nothing in common with the caricature presented by Barnes and Rodriguez; not in 1928 or any other year. Honest accounts of what Trotsky really stood for can be found in innumerable books published by our movement over the past half century. For one example, here is a paragraph from a 19/4 article by a prominent party journalist:

"Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution," wrote David Frankel, "simply stated that the capitalist system could no longer carry out the tasks originally accomplished during the capitalist revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries: land reform, the conquest of national independence for colonies and semicolonies, and the establishment of stable democratic regimes. If the tasks associated with the rise of capitalism could only be carried out through the socialist revolution in the less-developed countries, then there was no basis for a capitalist stage to the revolutions in those countries. This was the theory, advanced by Trotsky in relation to Russia in 1906, that was proved correct in 1917"6 Frankel went on to illustrate how Stalin and his allies responded to Trotsky, citing this 1924 statement by Kamenev: "Ignoring the peasantry and not giving any consideration to the decisive question of the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, this theory of 'permanent revolution' places the workers' government in Russia in exclusive and complete dependence on the immediate proletarian revolution in the West."' In this single sentence, Kamenev anticipated by almost sixty years all of the key points of Jack Barnes' arguments against Trotsky, including the notion that Trotsky's sole program was "immediate proletarian revolution." As David Frankel explained, "Trotsky was portrayed as an adventurist intent on involving the Soviet Union in dangerous schemes to extend the revolution."

But this claim, which Jack Barnes echoes with his charge of "leftist biases and sectarian political errors," was a red herring raised by Stalin to obscure the substantive issues in dispute. "The real debate," Frankel correctly concluded, was "between the policy of revolutionary internationalism advocated by Trotsky and the policy of narrow-minded nationalism represented by Stalin and the bureaucracy that stood behind him." Can anyone who has objectively studied the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian revolution deny Frankel's assessment?

Underestimating the Peasantry

A major theme of attacks on permanent revolution has to do with Trotsky's assessment of the role played by the to the Editor San Diego, Calif.

Dec. 21, 1983 Dear editor, Just received the first issue of Socialist Action. The paper has the look of "professionals at work who know what they are doing." Good balance of material-trade union, PLO, unemployment, Grenadian revolution, Why Socialist Action was formed, etc. Well written. Pithy and punchy. This means that the regeneration of the party is beginning. Now we must do everything to ensure that this seedling is watered, fertilized and nourished to give it the strength to grow straight and strong.

Warm comradely greetings for 1984.

Ted and Dot Selander (Note: Ted Selander was a leader of the Toledo Autolite strike of 1934.

He joined the Trotskyist movement in 1935 and was a founding member of the SWP where he remained for many decades.)

6 Socialist Action January 1984 peasants in the Russian revolution. "To the extent that Trotsky's strategy differed from Lenin's," Barnes writes, "it undervalued the workers' alliance with the peasantry as a whole.... "

Nor was this an atypical mistake of brief duration: "During some fifteen years of activity prior to 1917, Trotsky made important political errors on the agrarian program of the revolutionary proletariat.... ", For anyone even superficially familiar with the historical polemics within the international working-class movement, these statements should set bells ringing.

The classical Stalinist cliche holds that "Trotsky underestimated the peasantry."

That, in a nutshell, is what Barnes is charging, too. And of course, the Stalinists have always posed as defenders of Lenin's pro-peasant views against Trotsky's anti-peasant heresy.

Barnes is now echoing the accusations leveled by Kamenev that Trotsky erred in "not giving any consideration to the decisive question of the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry." According to this view, Lenin understood that the workers couldn't make a revolution without the peasants' support; Trotsky didn't understand this and urged the workers to go it alone, an ultraleft line that would have led the Russian revolution to defeat.

The historical truth is that no intelligent Marxist-least of all Trotskycould have conceived of a Russian revolution that didn't involve the majority of the population. Doug Jenness, in a 1970 essay, accurately summarized Lenin's and Trotsky's real views:

"Although Lenin was in total accord with Trotsky's analysis that the capitalist class could not lead the Russian Revolution, before 1917 he believed that the revolution would be 'democratic' rather than socialist, i.e., that it would not go beyond the bounds of bourgeois democracy. In addition, his justified emphasis on the importance of the peasantry in the Russian Revolution led him, in describing the dynamics of the revolution, to put forward an intermediate formula ascribing to the peasant allies of labor a joint leadership role they were unable to assume. He called for a 'democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry' and not, in Trotsky's correct formulation, a dictatorship of the working class supported by the peasantry."

That Trotsky's position had nothing to do with "underestimating the peasantry" was made abundantly clear by two subsequent events: (1) In April 1917, Lenin, too, unambiguously raised the call for a socialist revolution to establish the dictatorship of the working class, and he won the Bolshevik party to that position; and (2) the October Revolution did, in fact, establish a dictatorship of the working class supported by the peasantry.

Setting Lenin Against Trotsky?

The differences between Lenin and Trotsky prior to April 1917 do not justify Barnes' attempt to pit the two revolutionists against each other. The founder of our movement, James P. Cannon, responded harshly to an earlier endeavor of this sort by Max Shachtman:

"He (Shachtman) wants to set Lenin against Trotsky, to make a division in the minds of the radical workers between Lenin and Trotsky, to set himself up as a 'Leninist' with the sly intimation that Leninism is not the same thing as Trotskyism. There is a monstrous criminality in this procedure. The names of Lenin and Trotsky are inseparably united in the Russian Revolution, its achievements, its doctrines and traditions, and in the great struggle for Bolshevism waged by Trotsky since the death of Lenin. 'LeninTrotsky'-those two immortal names are one. Nobody yet has tried to separate them; that is, nobody but scoundrels and traitors. "99 The unmistakable parallels between Barnes' new line and classical Stalinist falsifications does not mean that Barnes is now a Stalinist or that the SWP has become a Stalinist party under his tutelage. Such conclusions are unwarranted. It is, nonetheless, undeniable that the source of his arguments against permanent revolution is none other than the Soviet bureaucracy's half-century campaign of vilification against Trotskyism.

Marx ism, Barnes points out, is a living system of thought and practice, not an ossified orthodoxy that can never be modified. But it is one thing for a Marxist organization to adjust its course in response to the ever changing reality of the class struggle; it is another thing for the SWP to abandon the program it has developed over five decades in favor of the opposite program that it has fought against.

What's In a Name?

Barnes states that "a substantial number of organizations that label themselves Trotskyist are hopeless, irredeemable sectarians." This is, unfortunately, true. The Spartacist League and the Workers League leap quickly to mind. But it is not true, as Barnes further alleges, that "probably 80 percent of those on a world scale who present themselves as Trotskyists—maybe it's 70 percent, maybe 90 percent-are irreformable sectarians." The magnitude of this estimate implies that Barnes is not only including opponents of the Fourth International, but also national sections of the Fourth International that refuse to fall in line under his leadership. This is made explicit by his reference to the "sectarianism and ultraleftism" of "currents in the Fourth International."

Barnes predicts—and obviously hopes-that the SWP will soon drop the "Trotskyist" tag in favor of "communist." But his rationale-that many of those who "label themselves Trotskyists" are sectarians—reveals a surprising new attitude toward those who "label themselves" communists and Marxist-Leninists.

This latter category represents quite a broad political spectrum, from revolutionary Trotskyists and Castroists to the counterrevolutionary Stalinists in the Kremlin. It also includes the majority of nutty ultraleft groups in this country and around the world. Some of these are proPeking, some are "gang of four" partisans, one even holds that Albania is the only truly socialist country in the world, but all are "communists" and "MarxistLeninists." If you don't believe it, just ask them!

But more serious than the ultraleft sideshow is the attempt to blur the distinction between the SWP and the vast majority of those who "label themselves" communists. To paraphrase Barnes, probably 80 percent of those parties on a world scale that present themselves as Marxist-Leninists-maybe 90 percent— are irreformable Stalinists.

Furthermore, by specifically denying that a Castroist current exists as a distinct tendency in world politics, '° Barnes also throws the revolutionary leaderships of the Caribbean and Central America into the same pot with Stalinists. By lumping the Castroists and Stalinists together in an "anti-imperialist" front, Barnes by implication portrays the Soviet bureaucrats (not to mention the likes of General Jaruzelski, Kim II Sung, et al) as defenders, rather than betrayers, of the world revolution."

What's the Motive?

By now, some perplexed readers may be wondering: Why? What is the motive? Why would Jack Barnes and the group of party leaders around him be interested in destroying the revolutionary party-by jettisoning its program-that they have served throughout most of their adult lives? One clue is to be found in the final section of his article, entitled "Revolutionary Convergence." Another clue is the presence of the Rodriguez article in the same issue.

The SWP leadership's primary aim with its new line is to ingratiate itself with the leaders of the Cuban Communist Party. Barnes apparently nurtures the quixotic notion that the Cuban and JUST OFF THE PRESS Socialist Action Information Bulletin Vol. 1, No. 1. January, 1984 This 45-page bulletin contains the founding documents of Socialist Action: "A Platform to Overcome the Crisis in the Party" and "28 Theses on the American Socialist Revolution and the Building of the Revolutionary Party." An introduction on the recent wave of expulsions from the SWP and two older key documents are also included.

Price: $2.00 (includes mailing cost).

Can be ordered from Socialist Action 3435 Army St., Rm. 308 San Francisco, CA 94110 AVAILABLE SOON "In Defense of Revolutionary Continuity"

by Dianne Feeley and Paul LeBlanc This 80-page pamphlet is a response to SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes' attack on Leon Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. It surveys the history of the Marxist movement and present day realities, demonstrating the relevance of Trotsky's ideas in the "age of permanent revolution.

Price: $4.00 (includes mailing cost)

Available mid-February. Can be ordered from Socialist Action 3435 Army St., Rm. 308 San Francisco, CA 94110

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Nicaraguan leaders will someday "converge" with him to form a new international revolutionary movement. (Hence the new magazine's name: New International.)

By adopting elements of Stalinist ideology and expelling dissident party members, Barnes makes it tempting to leap to the conclusion that he has become a Stalinist. But it is more scientifically accurate to describe his present policies as Stalinist conciliationism—an adaptation to Stalinism, and even then an indirect adaptation, via the Cuban connection.

While it is necessary to recognize that the Cuban leaders are revolutionists and not Stalinists, it is undeniable that their political line is distorted by an adaptation to Stalinist ideology.

The Castroists extend their revolutionary solidarity in action to most of the oppressed workers of the world-most notably to their co-revolutionists in the Nicaraguan government and to the rebels in El Salvador. But their Marxist internationalism is incomplete. They have failed, for example, to champion the courageous struggle of the Polish workers, and have even provided political support for the Stalinist oppressors in that country.

The degree to which the SWP has adapted to the Castroists can be gauged by comparing the party's "before and after" views on anti-Stalinist struggles in Eastern Europe. In 1974, Fred Feldman wrote that Fidel Castro's support of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia "placed him on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between the workers and the bureaucracy." But in ances with procapitalist political forces, nor does it demand immediate socialism at the moment the workers take power. But it does rule out giving political support to governments such as those headed by Allende in Chile, •Manley in Jamaica, Bouterse in Suriname,' or Khomeini in Iran. These are but a few of the bourgeois regimes in which the Castroists have publicly expressed political confidence in recent years. ("There are bourgeoisies and bourgeoisies," explains Carlos Rafael Rodriguez.) Small wonder that Barnes feels permanent revolution to be an obstacle to his convergence plans.

Where Is the SWP Going?

The line of the Barnes faction in the SWP and Fourth International can be summed up in two classical Leninist formulations: opportunism and liquidationism. It is opportunistically forfeiting its principles and politics in hopes of achieving a "breakthrough" in relations with the Cubans; and it aims to liquidate the Trotskyist movement into the Castroist milieu.

Ironically, Barnes himself warned against such a development in a 1974 speech. "We have to describe where and how Trotskyists can go wrong," he said "It is the only way to avoid repeating the errors." He described how "whole sections of the American and European left adapted to Maoism and Castroism. And the logic of adaptation is to lose our most precious assets: clarity on principles, the transitional approach, and the strategy of constructing Leninist party." The SWP has already lost more than half of its membership through expulsions and resignations. If Barnes's liquidationism wins out, the SWP will cease to exist as a revolutionary party. The disappearance of the revolutionary party in the world's foremost imperialist powerin the "belly of the beast," as Che Guevara put it—would be a tragedy of historic proportions. The Barnes faction's slide to destruction must be stopped and turned around. Now is the time for all who defend the historic program to come to the aid of their party.

AUTH Underground Solidarnosc spreads its roots (DR)

"Bouterse, a left-wing demagogue who heads a procapitalist military regime, originally professed friendship toward the Cuban revolution. When it came to light in December 1982 that his government had organized a death squad to get rid of its critics, the cuban press unfortunately rallied to his defense. Even more unfortunately, the Militant followed suit. In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Grenada, Bouterse showed his true colors by turning bitterly on the Cubans, accusing them of murdering Maurice Bishop and planning the overthrow of his own regime.

cif.,