SWP in the 1980s: How wishful thinking can lead a party astray

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(Second of a series)

and BARRY SHEPPARD The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is one of the oldest organizations claiming to be socialist in the United States. Its record in the labor, Black, women's rights, and other social movements for most of its existence has been impeccable. Beginning in the early 1980s, however, the SWP leadership initiated a sharp break with the party's past program and politics.

In last month's issue of Socialist Action we discussed how the SWP began to use administrative methods to deal with political differences. We traced the SWP leadership's rupture with its organizational principles since 1981. In this article we'll review the SWP's analysis of the objective political situation in the United States.

"Labor at center stage"

The SWP's analysis of the current situation is summarized in the first part of a draft "World Political Resolution" adopted at its June 1990 convention. Under the headline, "Labor movement remains at center stage of U.S. politics," it states:

"A more than 10-year offensive by the employers has failed to drive the labor movement from the center stage of politics in the United States. The labor movement remains where it has been since the second half of the 1970s when it fought its way back to center stage, from which it had been driven nearly three decades earlier (our emphasis)."

The labor movement's fight to regain center stage occurred, the resolution states, when the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union won an important nationwide strike in 1977-78, and a movement for union democracy in the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) was built around the Steelworkers Fight Back campaign in the USWA's national elections in 1976.

The entire perspective of the SWP in U.S. politics, particularly in the labor movement is based on this erroneous view that the trade unions are at the center stage of U.S. politics today.

The SWP's 1975 political resolution, "Prospects for Socialism in America," explained that a new stage of political radicalization of the working class was on the agenda: "The effects of the combined social and economic shocks of the last half-decade, coming on top of the changes in attitudes wrought by the movements of social protest and the radicalization of the 1960s and 1970s, have brought us to the threshold of a new period in the transformation of the political consciousness of the American working class." (See page 19, "Prospects for Socialism in America," Pathfinder Press.)

Jack Barnes, SWP National Secretary, in a report on the resolution, stated, "We are at the beginning of the radicalization of the American working class. A corner has been turned in the objective circumstances, and the door has been opened for a new step forward in class consciousness and in the transformation of the political consciousness of American labor." (Ibid, page 82.)

The "turn in the objective circumstances" was the 1974-75 recession, the first worldwide recession since the 1930s. The capitalist class stepped up its attacks on labor that began in 1971 with Nixon's wage-price freeze. The ruling class was driven to do this in order to try to shore up a declining rate of profit in a situation of intensified competition with its imperialist rivals.

The post World War II "agreement" between the employers and the trade union officialdom to keep "labor peace" was now over as far the capitalists were concerned. The world capitalist crisis was deepening. Direct attacks on the industrial workers, the source of most profit, could be expected to intensify. Attempts to qualitatively weaken the industrial unions were in the offing, 12 SOCIALIST ACTION which could even major unions.

Barnes, in a 1979 report, further elaborated on what the SWP meant by the working class moving to center stage in U.S. politics. "When we say that American workers are moving to center stage," he told a leadership meeting, "we mean two closely intertwined things. First, the industrial workers are the central target of the rulers' offensive....

"Second, we mean that the working class is moving to the center in the resistance to the offensive in the fightback. We're pointing to the impact of the 1974-75 depression on the consciousness of millions of young workers. We're talking about the skirmishes with the bosses that continually break out. We're talking about new moods, new attitudes. " (See page 92, "The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, " Pathfinder Press.)

As the industrial workers moved to the center of the resistance to the capitalist offensive, the trade union bureaucracy would divide and shatter, the SWP explained, under the blows of the employers' attacks and the fightback by the workers, and a class-struggle left wing would emerge to lead the labor movement forward.

Based on that perspective, the SWP correctly focused its union activity around three strategic ideas: the fight for union democracy; national and international solidarity; and political action centered on the need for the unions to end their support to the Democrats and Republicans and form an independent Labor Party. All the party's work in the unions combined joining struggles and strikes with raising this strategic perspective to build a fighting union movement.

The quote above from Jack Barnes in 1975 makes it clear that this concept of the industrial workers moving to center stage of U.S. politics was intertwined with another prediction: "We are at the beginning of the radicalization of the American working class."

In 1979, in a report that was adopted by the Fourth International, Jack Barnes extended this prediction to include the entire world, including the imperialist countries: "a political radicalization of the working class—uneven and at different tempos from country to country-is on the agenda." (Ibid., p. 36).

The basic analysis the SWP made in this period was correct. The world capitalist economy had reached a stage where an employer offensive against the industrial workers and their unions was inevitable and had begun here and in the other advanced capitalist countries. But the expected political radicalization of the working class, and the industrial unions moving to center stage of politics in the advanced countries, has yet to occur. The processes that will lead to this have been more drawn out than we all hoped.

Did the 1977-78 coal strike and the earlier Steelworkers Fightback campaign actually mark the movement of the industrial workers to the center of American politics? At the time, they were central to politics in the United States.

This was reflected in the bourgeois news media. This was especially true for the miners' strike because it came into direct conflict with the White House and successiully defeated the attempt by President Carter to force the miners back to work under TaftHartley. At the time, it was not unreasonable to conclude that the industrial unions had indeed moved to center stage.

But this turned out not to be the case. The miners successfully defeated the attempt by the coal operators and the federal government to impose major concessions on the UMWA. A key factor in this victory was that the UMWA, in distinction from every other union, had undergone a rank-and-file revolt—Miners for Democracy-that enabled the rank and file to use the measure of union democracy they won to mobilize and exert their power.

This victory turned out to be an exception, however, and not the beginning of a new JULY 1990 stage of union struggle, as union after union accepted concession contracts without a fight.

Likewise, the Steelworkers Fightback campaign for union democracy lost. Most activists in that campaign became demoralized or absorbed back into the union bureaucracy. No significant divisions have arisen in the AFL-CIO unions since then.

In addition, here and internationally in the ON STRIKE Joseplı Ryan/Socialist Action advanced capitalist countries, the 1980s did not see the political radicalization of the working class. In fact, it was a decade of political retreat.

Turn to industry

While the projected political radicalization of the working class has yet to materialize, the overall analysis of the 1975 and 1979 political resolutions and reports was correct. It was on that basis that the SWP decided to make a turn to the industrial unions and center its political activity in the labor movement. Within a few years a majority of party members were in industrial unions.

The 1979 political resolution explained the decision to turn to the industrial unions as a life-or-death question to build a revolutionary party in the United States.

For 30 years this was not politically advisable. The pact between the labor bureaucracy and the employing class since World War II allowed "labor peace." The unions did not play an active role in the big battles between working people and the rulers-the fight against racism and Jim Crow segregation, opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam, the fight for women's rights, and many other social questions. If anything the AFL-CIO bureaucracy actively opposed these progressive battles.

The SWP correctly referred to this threedecade period as a "detour" (political retreat) for the working class movement. The objective situation had not put a political radicalization of the labor movement on the agenda yet. The focus of the party's activity was in the mass movements outside the labor unions.

The result of 30 years of class collaboration were weak unions. When the employers launched their attacks on organized labor beginning in the 1970s, the trade unions were unprepared. They suffered major setbacks and defeats.

The unions now represent 16 percent of the working class. Increasing sections of basic industry are non-union, including major TRIKE Impact Visuals DEAP Business Week auto plants, airlines, coal mines, and oil re fineries.

But resistance to the employers attacks did take place in the 1980s, and continues. Major concessions have been imposed on workers in steel, meatpacking, airlines, paper, and numerous other industries. But the unions have not been destroyed. The rank-and-file, in fact, are more and more asserting themselves in strike battles.

Bigger confrontations are inevitable. The employers must increase the exploitation of working people to shore up their rate of profit. More workers, after taking two or three rounds of concessions, are now saying, "Enough."

Strikes over the last period have been defensive battles by workers who see striking as the only realistic alternative to giving concessions without a fightback. The industrial working class and its unions, under the new situation of the employer offensive, have neither gone back to the quiescence of the 1950s or 60s, nor have they yet politically radicalized and moved to center stage of U.S. politics.

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It is out of these strike battles that class and political consciousness will arise in the labor movement. It is among these fighters that a new leadership will be forged.

But this is not automatic. Reaching class-struggle, and revolutionary, consciousness takes more than fighting back.

The challenge for revolutionary socialists is to recognize this process and help advance a program in these fights that advances the political consciousness of workers and wins the best to class-struggle ideas. But to do this, we have to start with the objective situation as it is and not as wishful thinking would like it to be.

Rout of the working class?

Although the facts clash with its views, the SWP leadership has reinterpreted events over the past decade to reaffirm that the labor movement is at center stage. They now write that the labor movement was being routed by the employers from 1980 to 1985, as it position sufficiently to be able to buy off a large layer of the working class."

The idea of the rout of the unions by the employers contradicts the argument that the working class already had "fought its way back to center stage."

But the idea of the "rout" not only is contradictory with the rest of the SWP analysis, it is another exaggeration. The setbacks suffered by the unions in the 1980s explained by the new SWP resolution reflect the success of the ruling class offensive and the failure of the industrial workers to move to center stage. But what's most significant about the 1980s, is that a growing layer of workers, through their unions, did fight back. They did wage defensive strike battles. Workers did reach out for solidarity.

Unfortunately for labor we have not yet won a major victory. The rulers continue to dominate the terrain of the class struggle.

The beginning of the end of the rout, the SWP argues, was in 1985 when meat packers at Hormel in Austin, Minn., began a militant strike. The strike, while at one Carl Finamore/Socialist Action 1 SAM. methods did not begin in the early 1980s.

In the context of a leadership showing itself incapable of leading a fight, a section of the workers began to resist the takeback deals in the 1980s. Unfortunately most fought alone and without sufficient active solidarity from the labor movement as a whole, or others.

Decade of resistance

A quick review of some of the most significant strike battles confirms this point.

In 1981 the relatively high-paid air traffic controllers organized by PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) went on a nationwide strike against the government, its employer, over safety and working conditions as well as wages. In spite of a threat to fire them all, which happened, if they did not buckle to the government, they stayed out.

Broad support was won for the strike from many unions, but only on paper. Most signficant, the other airport unions, the pilots, the Machinists and the flight attendants didn't support the strike by not crossing the picket lines. Such support could have won the battle, and the decade of the 1980s would have been very different.

The strike lost because most of the unions did not see the writing on the wall yet. The PATCO strike happened two years after Chrysler workers accepted a concession pact without a fight. But they struck anyhow. They felt they had no choice. A lesson many other workers later drew was the need for la•What is most striking about this list of strike battles from 1981-1990 Hormel battle, there was a wave of meatpacker strikes, which also lost. Flight attendants at TWA struck and lost. Paperworkers struck and lost. Cannery workers in Watsonville, Calif., and western coal miners did strike and win.

In 1989 a wave of strikes occurred at Eastern Airlines, Pittston, New York hospitals, ATT and the baby Bells, and Boeing. The Pittston strike was won after a hard-fought battle. The miners set an example in organizing the rank and file and their families in militant picket action, and in winning active solidarity from other unions through the setting up of Camp Solidarity and other ways.

What is most striking about this list of strike battles is that from 1981 to 1990 there were militant defensive strikes almost every year-during and after the so-called rout. The strikers of 1989 and 1990 were encouraged by these earlier battles. They all suffered two or three concession pacts before deciding to fight. That's why they are ready to strike even if they may not win. They are ready to see "their" company go bankrupt first.

What hasn't happened yet is a turning point victory like what occurred in 1934 that opened the door to mass struggles by working people and the formation of the industrial union movement. That's why the employers continue to press ahead unabated. They still hold center court, not labor.

At the same time lessons are being learned by a layer of workers who are involved in strikes. One lesson is that effective solidarity is the key to winning-that is, stopping the employers from using scabs and shutting down production. Other workers now see the need for real union democracy to organize effective strikes. But few workers, unfortunately, have yet drawn the conclusion that the overall political policy of the officialdom of class collaborationism, both with individual employers and politically through support to the capitalist parties, is a dead end.

The result of holding onto the erroneous view that the workers were beginning to radicalize (and not only on the economic front, but politically) and the assertion that the industrial unions are at center stage could only take its toll on the SWP. Everyone makes mistakes. But to cling to mistaken views when the reality clearly shows them to be wrong results in twisting reality to suit your preconceptions. A kind of panic set in

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(counterclockwise: Paperworkers, PATCO, Greyhound workers, Eastern machinists, and Hormel meat packers) is that there were defensive strikes almost every single year.'