'The SWP election platform... is oriented primarily toward defending the interests of

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American workers in the face of the ongoing attack of the capitalist class.' SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1988 constructing an independent working-class party based on the unions, it is retreating from this principled stand internationally.

The SWP began its break from its revolutionary origins when in 1981 it publicly repudiated Leon Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, the highest theoretical expression of revolutionary Marxism today, and embarked on the road toward Stalinist "theoretical" rationalizations for postponing the socialist revolution to the distant future.

Leon Trotsky, who was along with V.I. Lenin one of the two principal leaders of the Russian October Revolution, has been reduced by the current heads of the SWP to the status of a secondary figure in Russian and world history and a virtual non-person in the history of the SWP.

Trotsky was the intransigent opponent of the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union and the founder of the Fourth International. He had adopted the SWP as his own party while in exile in Mexico, helping to educate the founding leaders of the SWP.

Even James P. Cannon, the undisputed central leader of American Trotskyism and Halstead (continued from previous page)

presidential campaign was to convince the antiwar movement in this country that the great majority of soldiers wanted out, and could be the best and most effective allies of mass demonstrations centered around the slogans "Bring the Boys Home" and "Out Now!"

Handbook for antiwar movement A decade later, in 1978, Pathfinder Press published the book "Out Now!" written by Fred Halstead. The book is subtitled: "A Participant's Account of the American Movement Against the Vietnam War." But it is much more than that.

Halstead's book is the only carefully researched and complete account of what happened from the first 1965 teach-ins until the end of the war in 1975.

These 10 years constituted one of the most dramatic decades in U.S. history. It book on the subject, "South Africa: White Rule, Black Revolt," by Ernest Harsch, has been revised in accord with its new line. The original version published in 1980 before the SWP's break from its past, has since been republished, under the same title with a diametrically opposed political line.

The SWP has backslid further by supporting class collaboration in the Philippines, where it gave de-facto political support to bourgeois President Corazón Aquino, and to the popular frontist (pro-capitalist) formation in Peru, the Izquierda Unida.

The contradiction between the SWP's support to class collaboration abroad and class independence at home cannot be maintained for long. They are mutually was a time when millions of citizens took to the streets with hope and determination to directly influence the course of history. In his book, Fred explains the social forces at work in this process, and in this way he was able to tell how and why it all happened the way it did.

Others who participated with Fred Halstead in the leadership of the antiwar movement dislike his account because he describes the divisions that developed in political terms that everyone can understand.

The result is a most useful handbook for those of the present generation who are trying—under vastly different circumstances-to understand and influence the course of history and stay the military might of U.S. imperialism.

During the last 10 years of his life, Fred Halstead, while continuing to serve on the national committee of the SWP, gradually identify the economic interests of the workers in their plant, or local, or industry, or city, or country with "their" employers' economic interests. This takes the generalized form of subordinating working-class interests to the bosses' "right" to make a "reasonable" profit.

The theoretical justification for this policy is based on the fallacy of a community of interest between capital and labor. Such a concept of "partnership" flies in the face of the most elementary facts of economic life: Since all profits are subtractions from the surplus value produced by workers, a rise in wages tends to reduce profits, and a lowering of wages tends to increase profits. In short, what's good for the boss class is bad for the ceased to play a prominent role in the affairs of the party. From time to time, however, he was called upon to advise in some area of SWP activity, and he occasionally wrote well-researched pamphlets on areas of work the party was involved in.

For example, after the Three Mile Island nuclear-power disaster in the spring of 1979, Fred wrote an educational pamphlet titled "What Working People Should Know About the Dangers of Nuclear Power." He also played a leading role in thinking out SWP activity in the anti-nuclear power movement that developed in 1980.

During the 1985-86 Hormel strike, Fred went to Austin, Minn., and turned out a competent report on the events there, which appeared as the pamphlet "The 1985-86 Hormel Meatpackers Strike in Austin, Minn." This pamphlet is informative reading, but it scrupulously avoids drawing any political lessons about a strike struggle that was ultimately defeated by the nationality—in a common struggle for common class interests.

For us in Socialist Action, class independence and proletarian internationalism are not mere abstract principles to be honored ceremonially only during election periods.

They are indispensable guides for effective day-to-day action on the job, in our unions-and when action is necessary in the streets of our cities to oppose capitalist war, racism, sexism, and economic and social injustice. In short, the strategy of class collaboration must be replaced by the strategy of class struggle.

This is why we remain committed to the goal of breaking labor from the strategy of partnership with capitalists and their political representatives. This is why we remain champions of the formation of a working-class party based on the unions—a labor party.

This is why we urge working people to take a small step forward this November by voting for independent working-class candidates for president and vice president, James Warren and Kathleen Mickells.

employers.

This was no accident of omission. By this time, the SWP had dropped what the Jack Barnes leadership considered its old "Trotskyist" baggage. Unfortunately, Fred went along with these new revisions, rationalizing them with the need for party stability and the lack of an alternative leadership.

He was present at the meeting of the SWP national committee in August 1983 when four members of that leadership body who had tried to defend the basic Marxist principles that Trotskyism stands for were suspended, gagged, and eventually expelled.

But Fred Halstead will be remembered primarily for his contributions. And that's how it should be. His role in the anti-Vietnam War movement, his excellent book on that struggle, his role as educator-and ultimately, his loyalty and devotion to the cause of liberation of the working class—are irrefutable testimony to a life full of meaning and fulfillment.