Barry Sheppard's resignation from the Socialist Workers Party: Former SWP leader criticizes party policies and methods WORKERS! COPS OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS FOR BOUTELLE!

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National Secretary Jack Barnes, one of the most authoritative of the party's national leaders coming from the generation that had been recruited to the SWP in the early 1960s. This new layer of youthful recruits to Trotskyism was rapidly incorporated into every level of party leadership by the older party cadres, who enthusiastically welcomed this influx of fresh forces.

The Barnes leadership gradually gained dominance in the party as the older generation of party leaders died off or were eased out of the party's central leadership.

Between 1978 and 1983, the new leadership grouping formed a secret faction to overturn the fundamental theoretical and programmatic bases upon which the party was founded. They carried out this political overturn behind the backs of the party membership-denying that they were changing the program. The 1983 SWP convention, where these questions would have been taken up, was undemocratically cancelled.

A monolithic regime was decisively consolidated by the end of 1983 with the expulsion of the remaining cadre still loyal to the founding program of the party. The expelled members went on to form Socialist Action.

In his letter, Barry Sheppard relates a series of organizational attacks on him, which he attributes to the Barnes leadership, that led to his resignation from the SWP. He goes on to explain the underlying political differences which lay behind the "administrative" measures taken against him.

Barry Sheppard makes many criticisms of SWP policy over the last 10 years that confirm the position of Socialist Action's founders before their expulsion from the SWP. His letter is a powerful vindication of Socialist Action's defense of the historic program of American Trotskyism.

Excerpts from Barry Sheppard's letter to the SWP Political Committee appear below:

"Behind the growing hostility of the central leaders in New York towards myself, as evidenced in the above episodes [organizational disputes], were simmering political differences.

"At the 1979 World Congress of the Fourth International, Jack Barnes made a report on the turn to industry, which was adopted. The decade that has since passed has confirmed the correctness of the general line of this report and the correctness of the turn. But it contained one argument in favor of the turn which has turned out to be incorrect. That was the prediction that on a world scale and including in the imperialist countries, 'a political radicalization of the working class—uneven and at different tempos from country to country—is on the agenda.' "This was not some unfortunate phrase that crept into the report. On the contrary, it was the bedrock of our political analysis of the stage of the class struggle in the U.S. and the other imperialist countries. This sentence was also very precise—it predicted a political radicalization of the working class, not just increased economic struggles but a turn by workers on a mass scale toward seeking radical solutions in the political arena. It was also not meant as a vague Marxist commonplace that sooner or later the working class would radicalize politically, but that this was on the agenda.

"Not only was this prediction wrong, but things evolved in the opposite direction in the imperialist countries, including in the "The failure to hold a convention in 1983 to clarify the issues in dispute reversed the correct U.S. This fact does not invalidate the turn. There were many other valid reasons for the turn given in the 1979 World Congress report. But for years we have acted on the assumption that the political radicalization of the working class was beginning or just about to begin, which has led to ultraleft errors in our political work in the factories, and an organizational 'tightening up' in the branches in preparation for the political radicalization that always seemed to be just around the corner.

"An example of such unrealistic tightening up was the establishment of the norm of membership that every comrade would participate in weekly plant gate sales. This 'norm' never became established in fact, and the reason was that there was never the kind of sustained response to these sales that would have happened if we really were entering a period of working class radicalization. ...

"In pointing out these mistakes, I am aware that I participated in the making of many of them. It was only after I got into industry that I began to have doubts about our characterization of the period, and began to raise some of these points in a partial way.

"In any case, the gap between reality and our rhetoric fed a kind of paranoia in the central party leadership, that any questioning of 'the political radicalization of the working class is on the agenda,' was tantamount to betrayal of the turn to industry. [Barry Sheppard and his companion, Caroline Lund, have been steelworkers in the Pittsburgh area for the past few years.] "Increasingly the central leadership (of which I was no longer a part by 1985) adopted a kind of siege mentality in the face of the decline in party membership fed by the actual objective situation. All this has fostered a factional atmosphere in the party, which was bolstered by some very destructive mistakes we made during the split. [This refers to the expulsion between 1982 and 1984 of the cadre that founded Socialist Action.] "In the summer of 1987, I helped lead a class in the Pittsburgh branch on "In DeBarry Sheppard fense of Marxism" by Trotsky and "The Struggle for a Proletarian Party" by Cannon, about the 1940 split in the SWP. I became increasingly uncomfortable with the contrast between how the SWP majority and Trotsky acted in that situation and how we acted in the course of the 1980-84 struggle.

"One of the central lessons of the 1940 split contained in these two works is that in any such struggle political clarity must take priority over the organizational questions. But this the majority failed to do. The political questions in dispute-the nature of the turn to industry, the Polish events, the nature of the Nicaraguan state and government, the role of the Cuban leadership, and the theory of the permanent revolution-were not clarified fully at all.

"The worst error the majority made in this regard was to not hold a convention in 1983, although one was constitutionally due. ...

"A result was that the majority was not educated in the issues either. I know from personal discussion that many leading young comrades do not know what the theory of permanent revolution is and what the party thinks is wrong about it.

"Small wonder, when there has never been a position on this question adopted by the party, even though the theory of the permanent revolution was part of our programmatic foundations until the early 1980s.

"What we have instead is a speech by Jack Barnes, 'Their Trotsky and Ours,' which contained certain corrections to Trotsky's theory—corrections that I agree with. But without the full discussion that should have been held in the party and in the Fourth International there is confusion on it.

"This confusion was further confounded at the 1985 World Congress [of the Fourth International, with which the SWP is in political solidarity, having been barred from membership by the reactionary Voorhees Act]. The question of permanent revolution was on the agenda, and we were given time to present our position. Instead, we took this time to explain the workers' and farmers' government, which was an evasion of the issue.

"The failure to hold a convention in 1983 SOCIALIST ACTION Barbara Perkus to clarify the issues in dispute reversed the correct priorities between the organizational and political questions, directly contrary to the lessons drawn by Cannon and Trotsky in the above mentioned books. This not only taught the exactly wrong lesson about those priorities, it also reinforced the atmosphere inside the party of fearfulness and factionalism when confronted with any 'differences' raised by comrades....

"An example [of the atmosphere of fearfulness and factionalism] occurred in the [Pittsburgh] branch in February 1988. We were discussing support to the Paperworkers' strike, and a comrade raised the question... about the Corporate Campaign line the union had embarked upon.

"I made a short remark to the effect that the strike had already been defeated on the picketline by the police, that production was not stopped, and the factories were running with scab labor, and in that context, the "corporate campaign" was not leading the workers towards a winning strike strategy.

"While we wanted to solidarize with the outreach efforts the paperworkers were making, we also wanted to find a way to begin discussing with them the kind of strategy needed to win when the bosses and government resort to open strike-breaking tactics.

"The 'discussion' in the branch consisted of heated assertions such as that I had the mentality of a trade union bureaucrat, that what I was saying was that strikes could never be won, that it was 'unscientific' to say that the strike had been defeated when the workers were still trying to fight even if only with the 'corporate campaign,' that the 'corporate campaign' could win the strike....

"I do not think that the political and organizational differences I have outlined here politically justify my resigning from the party, or for not being allowed to be a supporter of the party. If my temperament were different, I could have stayed and fought on these questions. But I became demoralized by the acts taken against me, and decided to resign.

"After the year that has passed, I now feel I can take on the responsibilities of an active supporter of the party, and ask that you consider me as such."

[Attachments include Statement to Pittsburgh Branch on Paperworkers Strike, and Letter of Resignation from the SWP.] Editor's note: A copy of Barry Sheppard's letter and attachments, along with a selection of documents outlining the political basis of the 1979-1984 struggle in the SWP can be obtained by sending $2.00 for the Socialist Action Educational Bulletin "On the Continuing History of American Trotskyism-The Struggle in the SWP" to: Socialist Action, 3435 Army Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Also available are six issues of the Socialist Action Information Bulletin published in 1984 containing the major resolutions and documents of the oppositionists inside the SWP. These can be obtained for $12 (includes postage).

SEPTEMBER 1989 13

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priorities between the organizational and politica questions, directly contrar to the lessons drawn by Cannon and Trotsky...