A message to our readers

Scan page 13

Some of our readers have written letters asking about our relationship to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in this country. We are reprinting a statement adopted by the Political Committee of Socialist Action on May 5, 1986, 10 explain our views on this question.

Socialist Action was formed in October 1983 by individuals who had been undemocratically expelled by the SWP leadership. The SWP leadership broke with the party's democratic traditions. It resorted to bureaucratic expulsions of its members rather than allow the membership to carry out a democratic political debate on the central questions of revolutionary strategy which the leadership sought to discard. -The expelled members, organized today in Socialist Action branches across the country, sought to defend the historic program of the Trotskyist movement in the United States-the program previously defended by the SWP.

They also sought readmission into the SWP, with the democratic rights that were denied them, in order to fight for this program. They were denied readmission. Since that time, many people who were never in the SWP have joined Socialist Action.

In the past, Socialist Action has used the term "public faction" to describe its relation to the SWP. This term followed the language used by the SWP's predecessor organization, the Communist League of America, which was formed by the early supporters of Leon Trotsky in the U.S. Communist Party who were expelled from that party in 1929.

The term "public faction" was never used to connote an organizational connection to the SWP. Socialist Action is not-and has never been-connected to the SWP.

Since its formation, Socialist Action has been in political solidarity with the Fourth International, as has been the SWP-but there is no organizational connection between the SWP and Socialist Action.

Socialist Action bases itself on the historic revolutionary program and practice of the SWP prior to 1979, the year which marked a turn by the SWP leadership away from its Marxist heritage.

The program and activities of Socialist Action are determined by its membership. All aspects of the program and functioning of the SWP are determined by its membership. Neither organization takes responsibility for the program or practice of the other.

Scan page 14

a labor party fail to state forthrightly that the blame for this should be placed at the doorstep of top union leaders, Stalinists and Social Democrats, all of whom—with few exceptions-have tied themselves to the Democratic Party. The exceptions have done no better by supporting the Republican Party.

Union leaders of the 1930s, such as John L. Lewis, made a contribution to unionism by helping to build the CIO. However, they gave back a good deal by keeping the unions in a coalition with the Democratic Party instead of forming a labor party. At that time, there was considerable support for the idea of workers forming their own party.

None of the authors deal with the main problem. That is the nature of the present union leadership, which does not believe that class struggle is the basis of the divisions in present-day society.

The most influential union leaders look to cooperation between workers and employers to solve problems. But this perspective is a utopia that can never come to pass. These leaders' class collaborationist views—and their resulting conservatism and unwillingness to struggle-make it impossible for them to lead the union movement out of the present crisis.

This leadership (more accurately a "misleadership") must be replaced by new people, those who are ready to lead a fight.