Response to SWP Can the antiwar movement defeat U.S. war drive?

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i79t am:311VOTE SOCIALIST WORKERS IN 68 ROTE SOCIALIST # Socialists played a major role building the movement against the Vietnam war. Today, the lessons from that chapter in the struggle against war and militarism are being discussed and debated in the movement against U.S. military intervention in Central America.

An unfortunate aspect of the debate in the anti-intervention movement is the fact that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a leader of the Vietnam antiwar movement, is today carrying out a policy at odds with its previous stand.

Instead, the SWP, once the major proponent of independent mass action (demonstrations and marches), now tailends those forces in the movement which oppose a strategy of mass action to counter the escalating U.S. terror against the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran peoples.

The SWP, during the Vietnam war, was the principal advocate of the policy of the united front—a policy which dates back to the early Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky.

The tactic of the united front is based on the recognition that revolutionists are a small minority seeking to galvanize the majority of the people into action as well as to spread revolutionary ideas.

By proposing joint actions to the leaderships of larger organizations and social forces, the common goal of all participants can be furthered because larger, more effective actions become possible.

The April 20 antiwar demonstrations in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and other cities were true examples of the united front. Revolutionists sought to broaden the mobilizations by drawing in organized labor and the oppressed nationalities alongside the traditional peace and solidarity activists.

The transitional method During the Vietnam war the SWP made exemplary use of the transitional method in organizing antiwar actions. The transitional method consists in approaching the general populace at its level of consciousness with ideas and proposals leading to action. Through mass mobilizations-independent of the capitalist parties-the social and political consciousness of the workers and oppressed is increased.

In the Vietnam period the SWP promoted the idea that GIs were not the enemy of the antiwar students, but were also victims of the war. "Bring our Boys Home" was a slogan that made it clear that ending the war with a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was in the interests of the American soldiers and their relatives at home. Of course, the withdrawal of U.S. troops and materiel was a prerequisite for the Vietnamese to obtain their self-determination.

The SWP's leadership role was such that it was able to convince the entire movement to adopt this slogan as the main theme for most of the larger actions. Use of the transitional method by revolutionaries in the antiwar movement not only helped mobilize massive numbers of people in action against the war but caused many to question the whole nature of the U.S. government and society for the first time.

Today, the slogan of "no intervention" is widely accepted. But what is missing is the understanding that mass mobilizations are the most effective instrument for spreading the antiwar message and staying Washington's hand. Street mobilizations, moreover, crystallize the independence of the mass movement from the political machinery dominated by the two capitalist parties.

Program no longer intact Before their expulsion in 1983, oppositionists in the SWP criticized the party leadership for failing to take a more active role in the movement against U.S. intervention in Central America. They warned that the leadership had begun to discard the transitional method and the tactic of the united front. The result was the self-isolation of the SWP from the movement.

The SWP has sought recently to end its self-imposed isolation. But it has not re-entered the movement with its revolutionary program intact.

Cover of February 1968 Young Socialist Socialist Alliance, the youth organization in Workers Party.

Of course, the political resolution recently adopted by the SWP (published in the Spring 1985 New International magazine) continues to defend the Cuban and Central American revolutions. And, to its credit, the SWP refused to be sucked into Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, which many radicals saw as a "realistic" vehicle for halting U.S. intervention in Central America.

The resolution rightly analyzes the drift of many of the leaders of the anti-intervention movement toward lobbying and backing the Jackson and Mondale campaigns as a reflection of their inability to see the U.S. working class (allied with women and the oppressed minorities) as a social force capable of turning back the capitalist offensive The resolution correctly points out that the SWP's strategic aim in the anti-intervention movement is to draw the labor movement—the organized expression of one of the two fundamental class forces in capitalist society—into the struggle to thwart the efforts of big business to maintain its political and economic hold over Central America.

Yet the SWP has failed in its avowed role of leading the effort to create a movement on this basis. Hence its resolution-ostensibly a guide for political intervention over the next two yearsoffers no more than vague generalities in place of concrete suggestions for creating and building an antiwar united front. It fails, for example, to analyze the potential for union involvement in the anti-intervention movement.

Pessimism of SWP leaders The reason, verified by its practice, is that until April 20, the SWP pessimistically believed that nothing could be done in the short run to curb Washington's aggression.

Prior to the April 20 actions, the SWP on the whole turned its back to the existing anti-intervention and solidarity movement, which were said to be magazine published by th e Young political solidarity with the Socialist "petty-bourgeois." It didn't attempt to involve the organized labor movement.

Instead, the SWP counterposed the self-isolating "strategy" of "talking to co-workers. " Since a mass movement could not presently be built, the party leaders reasoned, they should set their sights on smaller targets—individual sympathizers.

The SWP thus pooh-poohed the first Emergency National Conference on Central America-which began to draw in organized labor behind a call for an anti-intervention April 20 action—as merely a coalition of bureaucrats and left sects.

The response of numerous organizations to the April 20 call took the SWP by surprise. But after significant social forces, including a section of organized labor, joined the movement toward coordinated national demonstrations, the SWP began to participate in the united-front coalitions which sprang up.

In the aftermath of April 20, the SWP began to correct its earlier analysis. At its May convention, the SWP's SOCIALIST ACTIO youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), correctly called for "nationally coordinated local actions in the fall'" which "would again provide a focus for new and existing antiwar forces to concentrate their forces."

The YSA pledged to call on the April Actions Coalitions to organize such demonstrations. The SWP supported the call for nationally coordinated mass fall actions at the May 30 national meeting of the April Actions Coalition.

Some results on action proposal Unfortunately this shift was merely a flash in the pan. By the time of the June 29 meeting of the National Steering Committee of the April Actions Coalition in New York, the SWP had somersaulted, backing a proposal by the Administrative Committee to endorse the events of other groups without itself calling a fall demonstration.

The decision of the April Actions leadership to forego fall demonstrations reflected the desires of some of its major components to concentrate on lobbying and waiting to see if new life could be breathed into the Rainbow Coalition.

Yet the lesson of the Vietnam antiwar movement was that only mass mobilizations in the streets, independent of the capitalist political apparatus, could bring decisive pressure to bear on the warmakers.

The shift in line was hinted in a May 27, 1985, editorial in the SWP magazine Intercontinental Press. The editorial gave the impression that a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua was inevitable. This implied that no matter what is done here to oppose U.S. intervention, the U.S. rulers could not be stopped. Thus, in New York, the SWP decided to endorse the hesitant course of the New York April Actions leadership.

The irony of tailending a leadership the party had previously denounced as "petty-bourgeois" passed without notice as the SWP abdicated its responsibility to lead in defending the Central American revolution in deed as well as word.

A belated self-criticism In a public self-criticism published in the July 22, 1985, issue of Intercontinental Press, the SWP now says that it was wrong in believing that a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua is inevitable. It belatedly states that "what we do can and will make a difference." Unfortunately, the damage is already done in terms of helping to unify the whole movement in coordinated fall actions.

The SWP's erratic shift from sectarian abstention to tailending the April Actions' leaders has revealed the Achilles' heel of its leadership. It has no confidence in its ability to decisively influence the movement.

With this attitude, the SWP finds itself led by whatever political forces seem to dominate a particular conjuncture. They no longer have an independent orientation of trying to influence events to meet the objective needs of the Central American people and the North American workers.

A revolutionary leadership would have attempted to broaden the pro-demonstration forces, particularly by drawing in organized labor, and led these forces in putting pressure on the more recalcitrant elements in the anti-intervention movement to bring about fall actions.

Fortunately, the SWP supports the call for antiwar actions in the spring of 1986—like the other components of the April Actions Network. The earlier the movement unifies around the building of this action the better.

NOVEMBER 1985 5

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The following is an interview with

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BRING THE CAS HOMEOWN THE ENEMY IS AT HOME

young FEBRUARY 1968 socialist ALIVE! ME