Evolution of the SWP over the past decade: The pitfalls of using organizational methods to settle political disputes

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"The attempt to impose hierarchical committee discipline ... is the most reprehensible practice imaginable. It is right out of the Stalinist book....

"IT)he imposition of National Committee discipline is a sure way to deprive the rank and file of any real opportunity to weigh and consider possibly differer opinions, or shadings of difference, and thereby deprive them of any real opportunity to form their own deliberate opinions before taking a vote.

"Trotsky once said, 'honest information is the first prerequisite for democratic discussion.' One of the most important elements of honest information in a discussion by the party membership consists of the opinions of all leaders who are familiar with the — James P. Cannon, founder of the SWP-from Sept. 5, 1953, letter to a British cothinker 8 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1990

BARRY SHEPPARD

Last month's issue of Socialist Action reported that the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party has launched a campaign against Socialist Action (SA) among the SWP's members and supporters, charging that SA members are "finks." To the workers' movement a fink is a police informer or professional strike-breaker.

The ostensible grounds for this charge is the distribution by SA of a bulletin put together by Malik Miah. This bulletin provided the rank-and-file supporters and members of the SWP with the full record of Miah's recent expulsion from the SWP. The SWP top leadership had wanted to keep this hidden from the ranks.

For this "crime," the SWP Political Committee (PC) labels Socialist Action and its members as finks, who are "not to be treated as fellow workers." It also states that it will not "accept" the distribution of Miah's bulletin to its rank-and-file members and supporters, and further threatens SA with unspecified "consequences" of "any continuation of this course.

Working-class militants have always regarded finks as class enemies who were to be dealt with accordingly. The SWP PC's threats imply that "anything goes" in dealing with SA.

This attempt to put a "fink jacket" on another organization in the workers' movement and the scarcely veiled threat of the use of violence is unprecedented in the history of the SWP. In and of itself it indicates the depths of the degeneration the SWP has undergone in the past decade-that is, under the stewardship of SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, unchecked by the presence of the older, working-class central leaders of the party who have passed from the scene.

This is the first in a series of articles in which we will analyze the political and organizational evolution of the SWP during this period.

This first article will trace the rupture with the SWP's organizational principles that began in 1981, which has culminated in the current ominous campaign by the SWP leadership to read SA out of the workers' 1981 SWP Convention During the preparatory discussion in the SWP leading up to the 1981 convention, political differences appeared over the evaluation of the Nicaraguan revolution and its leadership, the FSLN, as well as over tradeunion work and the party's attitude towards the Castro leadership of the Cuban revolution.

These differences stemmed from the SWP leadership's new interpretation of Leon Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. [See accompanying article on Trotsky's theory.] One of the minority tendencies that had formed during the preconvention discussion predicted that the majority was in the process of abandoning permanent revolution.

At the end of that convention, representatives of two minority tendencies announced that they would abide by the decisions of the convention and await the next appropriate opportunity, according to the party's organizational principles, to raise their points of view.

One of the minority tendencies announced its intention to continue its existence in order to organize its participation into the written discussion prior to the World Congress of the Fourth International, scheduled to open in early 1982. All members of the SWP had the right to contribute to this discussion.

National Secretary Jack Barnes also spoke. His remarks were in the spirit of a "Catch22." In essence Barnes said that the SWP's organizational principles allowed the continuation of factions or tendencies following a convention, but that it disallowed such forBarry Sheppard and Malik Miah are former central leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. They have recently joined Socialist Action.

James P. Cannon in 1970 questions under discussion."

mations to function in any way until the next preconvention discussion period opened.

This statement by the National Secretary represented a break with the SWP's organizational principles in two ways.

First, while this statement was made during a session of the convention, no vote by the delegates was taken for or against it. It was merely assumed that a statement by the National Secretary was party law.

Never before in the history of the SWP was any individual, including one holding the most important post in the party, ever given such individual powers. This was a reflection of the fact that the leadership of the SWP was becoming more and more a one-man band.

Second, Barnes' statement represented a new interpretation of the party's organizational principles, which had been most recently recodified in 1965. Never before had any such interpretation been made of those organizational principles. The 1965 resolution nowhere says factions or tendencies must dissolve following a convention or that they cannot meet and discuss among themselves.

On the contrary, the 1965 resolution guarantees the "unconditional" right to form factions and tendencies. It does state that this right must not be misconstrued to try to keep discussion going in the branches on disputed questions once a convention decision has been reached.

It also states that the party as a whole, through majority vote, has the right to regulate the conduct of tendencies and factions. But this right was never before taken to mean that a majority had the right to regulate a minority faction or tendency out of existence.

Moreover, there is no case of either Marx or Engels, or of the Bolsheviks, ever resorting to such an interpretation. The banning of factions in the Soviet party towards the end of the civil war has nothing to do with the current situation in the SWP. It was taken as an extraordinary and temporary measure.

Political discussion was vital The practice of forcing tendencies and factions to disband following a convention is harmful to the democratic functioning of any revolutionary organization. The reason this is so, is that any time sharp differences appear in a revolutionary organization, sharp enough to warrant the formation of factions or tendencies, the situation cannot be resolved through organizational suppression of the minorities, but only through political While minorities must be disciplined and not try to reopen disputed questions until the proper time, it is unrealistic to try to force them to dissolve, and any such attempt only drives such formations underground. Political discussion retreats into the corridors.

It disrupts party life if minorities form secret factions, but it also disrupts party life and is not in the best interests of a productive discussion for majorities to outlaw tendencies or factions.

Following the 1981 convention, the political and programmatic differences deepened inside the SWP. The majority leadership, which had supported Trotsky's concept of the permanent revolution up through the 1981 convention, came out against it immediately following the convention. This was no small matter. Permanent revolution had been a fundamental part of the party's program since its founding in 1938.

[At the end of 1982, in fact, Jack Barnes presented a speech at a convention of the Young Socialist Alliance, titled "Their Trotsky and Ours," which made explicit the rejection of permanent revolution.] In the face of this change in position by the majority following the convention, the minorities protested and soon formed a bloc to defend the historic positions of the SWP On the basis of the new interpretation of the party's organizational principles—which had never been discussed or voted on but was now assumed to be party law by virtue of the fact that the National Secretary said it was—the leaders of the minority tendencies were convicted of functioning as a faction and censured by the National Committee early in 1982.

SWP cancels national convention The SWP constitution stipulates that a party convention should be held at least every two years, and since its founding, this had been the practice of the SWP except in the most unusual circumstances. Thus, a convention was due to be held in 1983.

But in the spring of 1983 the SWP leadership proposed to the membership to postpone the convention, and took a membership poll which approved this postponement. Various arguments were advanced by the leadership about why a convention should be postponed.

One was that attention had to be paid to the Gelfand trial, a suit brought against the SWP by a member of the Workers League named Gelfand, which sought to use the courts to put a "fink jacket" on the party.

The SWP leadership later dropped the rationale of the Gelfand trial, which was of course an important task of the party. But it insisted the party needed to turn away from internal debate and outward towards public political activity before holding another convention.

The leadership, however, made a grave error in proposing to cancel this convention. The party National Secretary had made a speech that codified a major change in the party's program. This change was resisted by a sizeable section of the party. In addition, the two minorities were in disagreement with the majority on much ongoing work of the party in relation to the trade unions, Nicaragua, Grenada, and the Fourth International.

By cancelling the 1983 convention, the party leadership violated one of the most important acquisitions of the SWP, which was to bend over backwards on all organizational questions during a political dispute in the party in order to reach the greatest political clarity in the discussion. This is important not only for any minority to have its democratic right to present its views to the party as a whole, but also for the majority to clarify its positions in the course of the debate.

This was the central lesson heretofore taught party cadres. It had been reinforced during the debate and split in the SWP that took place in 1940. Two books, which had been bibles of party organizational methods and its basic principles, came out of that split: "Struggle for a Proletarian Party," by James P. Cannon and "In Defense of Marxism, " by Leon Trotsky.

In fact Cannon always credited Trotsky with teaching the American comrades the Bolshevik principle that political clarity took precedence over organizational questions. Now those priorities were reversed by the Barnes leadership.

The minorities were confronted with a worsened violation of the party's organiza(continued on next page)

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tional principles. By ukase of the National Secretary, they weren't allowed to even meet and discuss among themselves except during preconvention periods. (It is a norm of democratic centralism for minorities to wait until preconvention discussion is opened to present their views to the membership as a whole.)

But the cancellation of the convention, which came after fundamental positions of the SWP had been changed without any discussion by the party as a whole, further barred discussion indefinitely.

So nothing was clarified, either for the majority or the minorities.

Minorities expelled from SWP Then, with the 1983 convention cancelled, the majority used the fact that the minorities continued to exist to bring various supporters of the minorities up on charges of violating the organizational principles of the party and expelling them. Finally, all the remainder of the minority supporters were expelled in early 1984.

The majority interpreted actions by the minority as violations of party norms. But by cancelling the 1983 convention in the face of deep divisions in the party, the majority leadership taught the deeply erroneous lesson that the way to deal with political differences is through administrative means.

It is in this context of a major and inex(continued from previous page) bers from bookstores and public meetings was a rationalization, because we know the real reason, which was explained by Jack Barnes to a meeting of the SWP National Committee we were members of.

Barnes explained that if he sees a member of one of the expelled minorities on the street, he won't even acknowledge their existence. He "looks right through them." This was said to give us the idea of the "proper" way to deal with these comrades, and we were supposed to help lead the ranks in conducting themselves in the same manner.

In other words, the ban on these former members attending SWP public meetings or entering bookstores was meant to be a kind of "shunning" that some religious sects engage in with "heretics." Once again, the lesson was driven home that the best way to deal with political problems in the workers' movement is through organizational means rather than politically.

Depoliticization of members

The party launched its turn to get the majority of party members into industry in the late 1970s with high hopes that a political radicalization of the working class in the United States and throughout the world was on the agenda. This turned out not to be the case in the United States.

In a future article we will discuss the evo1980-85 period, characterizing it as a "rout" of the labor movement that had now been broken. This position was never written in a resolution, however.

Subsequently, we saw the extension of the meatpackers' struggle, the paperworkers' strike, miners' strikes at Massey and Pittston and elsewhere, the Eastern strike, and others. Most of these struggles were defeated. But there was not a single political resolution on the development of the class struggle in the United States produced by the SWP leadership in the five-year period from 1984 to 1989 to analyze these struggles and to critically examine party policy in light of these events.

Nor were there any resolutions on the important world developments in this period, including the great changes taking place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, China, or even Cuba.

In fact, with the exception of a short special convention to prepare for the World Congress of the Fourth International early in 1985, no conventions were held by the SWP until the summer of 1988. And that convention considered only part of a political resolution, on the state of the world capitalist economy, and had no political evaluation of events in the class struggle in the United States or worldwide.

There is an SWP convention scheduled for to the membership as extremely serious issues, and to be on the "wrong" side of one of these questions means you are not a true "proletarian," or you are said to be "on your way out" and often given an assist to make sure you are out.

All this is called "conquering the norms of a proletarian party."

Another new "proletarian" norm has been established in cases involving the authors of this article. In 1987, Barry Sheppard raised a difference with a position adopted by the National Committee about a report which was to be given to a membership conference. The National Committee adopted a motion that all members of the NC had to support the report adopted by the NC at the conference if they were present.

This conference was open to all members of certain branches, including the one Sheppard was a member of. At the opening of the conference, the chairperson stated that a free and open discussion by all present was what was wanted, and that at the end of the conference a straw vote would be taken on the report. No mention was made of the fact that any NC members present would have to support the report, whether they agreed to it or not, both verbally and by voting.

The National Committee has every right to determine how its positions will be reported to the party. But it is a violation of