Marxist Bulletin No 3 Part IV
Conversations With Wohlforth
Spartacist-ACFI Unity Negotiations
Eighth Session 8 October 1965
- Present:
- Spartacist: Robertson, Nelson, Stoute; (Harper,
Secretary).
- ACFI: Mazelis, van Ronk, Michael.
Meeting convened at 8:40 p.m. Chairman: van Ronk
- Agenda:
- 1: Discussion on Split and Past Differences
- 2. Good and Welfare
1. Split and Past Differences:
Mazelis: The issue is not whether we can agree on all past
differences but whether we can understand or communicate with one another. If
we can, unity will still be possible. The 1962 split was principled because
your tendency showed a complete lack of understanding of the ABCs of struggle
inside the SWP, and we have no regrets. Behind our tactical difference lay a
fundamentally different method, a different approach on how to build a
revolutionary party. Impossible to function as a common faction barring your
agreement with us on the statement of reorganization of the tendency--this was
an absolute minimum, non-negotiable. We had no choice and have no regrets. The
evolution of certain members of your group has confirmed to a large extent our
initial feelings on the nature of your group and the way it was headed toward a
split and away from serious struggle in the SWP. After these people left, your
group then pulled back from a split. We of course made mistakes, and had to in
order to learn. We were feeling our way. The central difference between us is
that we seriously struggled and developed and you did not. Our approach to the
1963 Convention was basically very good, although our submitting material
relating to our split in 1962 to the Majority was a blunder, as we have
acknowledged. We are proud of the Convention material itself. We learned a lot
later in the struggle against Philips and his Economism and Cannonism. It is
easy for you to say you were right about the SWP because it continued to
degenerate, but you should have struggled against this degeneration. Summing
up: You failed to break from the method of the SWP Majority; you prematurely
wrote off the party in 1962; you supported the Majoritys economic
analysis in 1963; you refused to vote against the reunification itself; and you
were commended by Hansen for this and for your Cuba position; the main fire at
the 1963 Convention was against us as agents of the SLL, while you prided
yourself on separating yourself from the SLL; your subjective, empirical
approach is shown by your line on the history of the SWP and our methodological
differences, and finally by your attitude toward the Marcus document, rejecting
the ABCs of Marxism itself. Three times in three years we have addressed
ourselves to the American Question, but you have refused to submit a
contribution to the IC Congress. You attack the Marcus document but have
nothing to offer as an alternative. You justified your counterposition on the
Negro question rather than the American Question in 1963 by the attention the
Majority gave this question; however, we must choose our grounds, and the
American Question is decisive. You are orthodox rather than Marxist in a real
sense. You dont apply Marxist method but work out an orthodox line. You
are politically Cannonites, like the WP of 15-20 years ago. You share the
weaknesses the SWP had then, but not its strengths, its proletarian character.
We have learned that a different approach is needed, that it is necessary to go
beyond Cannons unbelievable theoretical backwardness. In conclusion, the
obvious question is why are we trying to achieve unity? Situations change. The
methodological differences we had in 1962 paralyzed our functioning. Because we
face different tasks today than we did then, we must explore working
relationships and attempt to resolve our important differences. If we are to
unify, it must be with the understanding we will not fall apart at the first
tactical difference; therefore we want to learn beforehand as much as we can
about you and your working. If we can get assurance we can struggle together,
then unity could be attempted. Unity should be approached within the framework
of international discussion leading to the International conference. These
discussions have been fruitful despite some very difficult moments. We should
continue to work together in outside arenas and test our level of agreement in
practical work. [This presentation was read from Mazelis prepared
statement.]
Robertson: That was a rather imaginative re-creation of the
history of the evolution of the two groups; however, the real history is
a matter of documentary record which we have done our best to reproduce (see
Marxist Bulletins 1, 2, 3 and 4). Your method can be described only as
mindless, empirical zig-zagging--chasing after one will-o-the-wisp after the
other, then bounding off again. During that time we have been bruised by you
three times in passing: the documents are (1962) Towards the Working
Class; (1963) Party and Class; and (1964) your 12 August
reply to our letter suggesting unity was the order of the day. The present
discussion must be examined in the light of these contributions. What separates
us and poisons the prospects for unity is the profoundly unprincipled blows we
have received at your hand. Over the past year our political differences
have tended to narrow (not that they were ever wide, e.g., PL, nationalism and
the Negro question, but we still face problems in terms of working together. If
you state 1962 is your model, then we know you are not serious in talking about
a unification. Each of the three documents I mentioned was written in a
deliberately fraudulent manner, yet every so often Wohlforth turns around and
gives a precise and exactly correct appraisal of our positions, so we know that
he is fully aware of our correct positions. Your position in 62 was a
closed and consistent work of art, perfectly reminiscent of the Stalinists in
Stalins day who dealt with Trotskyists by claiming they were simply
agents of a fascist power and conscious enemies of the Soviet Union. Thus
Comrade Wohlforth consciously falsely described our position in his conclusion:
To state it openly and plainly, theirs is a
split perspective [italics in original]. A tendency which rejects party
discipline even if only partially, and party building, which seeks to sneak
people into the party, which functions in part as an independent entity, which
carries on an organizational faction war within the party, which in violation
of party statutes includes non-party members, which is so deeply alienated and
isolated from the party ranks that it has in fact already split in content if
not in form, such a tendency is going down a road that must inevitably lead to
a split from the party."
This was created out of the whole cloth, and when the other
comrades in the tendency outside New York had a chance to measure whether or
not we had proposed to violate party statutes, they did not believe you people.
Some of these, especially those who were politically neutral between us, were
demoralized by the split and dropped away, and you advance this as proof that
we were close to splitting from the party! Not a single one of those who from
our viewpoint understood what the fight was about dropped away; those that did
were your people on the West Coast who quit when they found out you had
been lying to them. And tonight you say that the proof we were planning a split
was that people like Jim P. and those in S.F.--who supported your
political analysis--dropped out! Which side is creating castles in Spain?
Wohlforth, in both his 62 and 64 documents, suggested we saw as the
root cause of the SWPs degeneration their 1940 loss of the Shachtmanites.
The single sentence that this is taken from read
approximately that in 1940 the SWP suffered a double blow, that half the party
split and Trotsky was murdered. This stunning double blow to the SWP is passed
off by Wohlforth as Robertson weeps tears over the split with the
Shachtmanites, suggesting that something very different was meant by us.
Something else thats funny: I was condemned in these documents by
Wohlforth for suggesting that one of the things that kept the SWP from going
off the rails at this time was James P. Cannon, and this was condemned as
outrageous subjectivism, to attribute this great a role to a single individual.
Yet this same Wohlforth two years later sees Cannon as the SWP for 35
years! Talking about method, in 1962 a big argument was waged over
whether the SWP possessed a Proletarian Core. We said this was nonsense, that
the partys working-class backbone had been broken up and driven out
during the early years of the witchhunt. Wohlforth insisted (Toward the Working Class) that the
proletarian core existed, and that the failure of Robertson-Ireland to see its
weight in the party proved their petty-bourgeois nature. Toward the
Working Class was the only effort made by Wohlforth over what was to him
then a very serious question, that the proletarian core of the SWP was
everything. We brought in several documents, especially Irelands
What the Discussion is Really About,
where we analyzed the possible ways you can speak of a proletarian
core. We never got an answer to anything--all we got was a split.
You didnt have it so good in 1963. In Party and
Class you made it clear you were addressing yourselves to the party
Majority so that it could fight us politically rather than
organizationally, implying that they should get us, but
politically. But a big hole had opened up in your past thesis that we were hell
bent on a split (your whole justification for splitting with us). This is the
fact that we were still in the party! You had to admit that your story
of our split perspective was cooked up. In 1962 in your circular
faction letter to Bertha, you said:
therefore under no conditions, since we disagree on the most fundamental
question of all, the party, can we have anything to do with
Robertson-Mage. Five months later we got an offer of
collaboration--though it was simply an invitation to us to support your
Convention document. We then recruited the intermediate people between us,
comrades Chatham and Turner. I remember when Wohlforth leaped up and said,
But Robertson thinks the party is centrist. They already
knew this, and joined our tendency. You say you took the brunt of the
1963 Convention? Have you really forgotten that Convention, that hate-filled
atmosphere when I took the platform after having been called a
Negro-hater? We attacked the party where it was doing the rottenist
thing on the American Question, throwing away the American Negroes, which you
theoretically endorsed with only tactical amendments to their document.
Something else to set the record straight--we fought long and hard against
For Early Reunification and voted against it. You are distorting
the fact that we abstained on an oral motion, read to us once, that we would
accept the Majority decision on this question. We voted against the
positions of the Majority contained in their document, but did not vote against
accepting the already-adopted Majority line. Your distortion of this is another
example of your fakery. After unity was also adopted by a majority of the IC
sections, we criticized Healy for not turning up at the unity conference on
the grounds that it should be made into a good, clear split. Obviously the SLL
and French would never have gotten in, but things would have been clearer then.
Hansen outmaneuvered Healy tactically and split the IC. That you didnt
argue with us about--you were just interested in trying to make out we were
against the IC. Over this period (1962 to the present), on the Negro question,
PL, the proletarian core, your line towards the SWP--you see yourself simply as
developing while we see you as oscillating and zig-zagging. Take your line on
the SWP for example. All through 1962 Wohlforth oscillated back and forth,
doing something very peculiar to the word centrist. Centrist means
nothing if not flux, change, motion, heterogeneous elements lumped together.
You insisted that centrism was a finished category, and to say the party is
centrist is to say its finished, that everyone in it is a centrist. Yet
centrism means that in the minds of the members are all sorts of contradictory
ideas. You made a mockery of the meaning of centrism for the sake of polemical
convenience, at the same time carefully avoiding comrade Dobbs. You labeled
Weiss and Swabeck the main enemy in the SWP, aided and abetted by the hirelings
Hansen and Warde, but not the central party leadership itself, not Cannon and
Dobbs. You worked this angle for only a little while, until the fall of
63. Since nothing happened in the SWP between the spring and fall of
63 you became dispirited and ready therefore to walk out of the
party (maybe you decided the party didnt have a proletarian core after
all). Eventually you precipitated your own exodus by violating a standing
(though not justifiable) party regulation, knowing that it would lead to your
expulsion. Wohlforth doesnt lead his people but maneuvers them
into positions, assuming they arent going to see things clearly and act
on that basis. His method is to figure out a way to stampede his own people so
as to carry along the weaker and otherwise resistant elements (the same
technique he tried, unsuccessfully, to use against us in 62). This is not
our method.
On the 62 split: We made it clear that had the IC simply
issued orders to us we would have accepted the line, as we would accept it
again. But you wanted to break us, wanted us to sign a statement of
agreement to a policy, not simply to carry out the policy. This was
deliberate, because you wanted a purge. A shabby split was carried out by
Wohlforth for organizational and personal reasons. Healy should have known
better. Healy moved in an unprincipled way; he tried to purge this section and
to break its back. It was not a question of discussion and a vote somewhere,
then our carrying out the line, but of breaking us. We were asked not to
accept but to affirm our agreement with something we did not agree with;
Even if only two people sign, they will be the tendency. Comrade
Wohlforth immediately ran down and told Dobbs (see Wohlforths
Letter to Bertha), told his leader.
Youve talked at great length about your struggles in the
SWP. The Majority raided a tendency meeting of ours, and we responded very
correctly by defending the right of factions to exist. You had not a word to
say at the time, this was only an organizational squabble.
Youve always been very cavalier toward organizational questions--when
its worked to your advantage. Now the Bulletin is filled
with material about how the SWP has done away with inner party democracy and
factions and the rest. But we fought against it in the party while you were
silent. We always compelled the Majority to reveal themselves. Thus they
expelled us for no deed on our part but for our bad
attitude, and they had to put out five internal bulletins to justify it,
and theyve had to adopt a new special resolution which bans factions.
Now, where do we go from here in the light of your actions against
us? (we regard you as a gang of organizational wreckers). Mercifully
youre an appendage of the British who are a stable political
formation--otherwise you would have blown away long ago. However, you are so
appended, you have people of talent among you, youre situated in this
country and you hold a general political line similar to ours despite your
excesses. What we want to know is the possibility of honest
collaboration on your part--thats why this extremely squalid history
has meaning to us. We want to know whether your past method is a
model, to be repeated. If we are to unify, we want to know whether, for
example, you are prepared to accept (not agree with) membership in an
organization which has the position ours would on our own common history, for
we must educate our members and were not going to burn our existing
Marxist Bulletins (the best thing of course is that new alignments would
develop within the new organization). As far as we are concerned these unity
negotiations have not been particularly fruitful and havent taught us
much we didnt already know--things are about as we thought they were. We
think unity is indicated providing you are not laying down the basis
already for preparation for a new split. We want to be able to function and
thats why we want democratic centralism. Normally, if we werent
going to have a session up North in a couple of weeks, we should at this point
go over the 10 points raised in your initial letter where you suggest
were pro-India, pro-Chiang, white-chauvinist, etc. What wed like to
see (after the Northern conference) is examination of a number of transitional
measures towards a joint national conference following the IC Conference. If
the Northern meeting and IC Conference make explicit an acceptance of a united
group as an IC section, then we would be in favor of a joint convention, in the
meantime bridging the gap with a series of parity committees coordinating our
public activities. But what we want to know in the meantime is whether you can
accept life in an organization which makes an evaluation of the 1962 split as
being unprincipled. If progress toward unity goes well, the question tends to
become increasingly academic. So, we still think unity is possible, though
these negotiations have not been particularly encouraging. You have fastened
ever harder to your position that the 1962 split was great. If that was really
so, we shouldnt be sitting here now. And thats what we said at the
time. Not that much has changed in the two year interval since, except that a
few verifications have come in (we predicted the outcome in the SWP). One more
thing about your then position on the character of the SWP (which you now say
was never really revolutionary!). Within one month after our
split came pretty good verification of the essentially centrist character of
the central party leadership (their reaction to the Cuban missile crisis). And
within a year their reaction to the Kennedy assassination showed they were far
more rotten than most classic centrists. This was a matter of a year--not the
12 packed years 1922-1934 in the Soviet Union. The majority of our tendency was
willing to abide by your position if we could only argue and be voted
down. Or, if Healy had sent us an order--do this--we would have done it, as
long as we did not have to personally affirm it within the tendency. But
you wanted to get rid of us. You say it was necessary as we wanted to split
from the party, but you were dead wrong, and by word and deed on our part you
have been shown to be wrong. But you are so blind, so obsessive, that you
wouldnt see it and havent seen it through tonight.
Stoute: In assessing common histories since the split, one
thing stands out--there would be big differences now had the split taken place
over a real political difference. At the time we had a political difference on
the nature of the SWP and a tactical difference on how we should function in
it. Now you should be able to look back on your position of the time and
recognize you were wrong. This is important because we do not want to repeat
the unprincipled split, to unify now and then have the same thing happen again
in a year or two over a similar matter. We struggled to exist in the SWP as an
organized political tendency, whereas your policy was to minimize political
struggle and also one that would tend to lead toward the dissolution of the
tendency. You also used to charge we wanted to avoid mass struggle and merely
have a study circle. Yet as soon as we were thrown out of the SWP
we were told we were doing too much mass work and not enough theoretical work,
that now we need method. A few months before the split Wohlforth
said, The SWP is centrist through and through, but at the time of
the split said that the SWP is revolutionary through and through. And
now your position is that the SWP has never really been
revolutionary! This kind of zig-zag makes me feel that we are not dealing with
real political questions, and that it is somewhat unreal to discuss what are
the political lines and differences of the two groups, because your political
positions always hinge on some kind of maneuver. All this is reflected
in the big organizational problem which is now posed: the problem of democratic
centralism. We dont want to see the same thing over again. On our
handling of the Negro Question in 1963, it is artificial to separate the
American Question and the Negro Question.
Mazelis: What did you submit in 1963 on the Negro Question?
Stoute: We submitted the article
For Black
Trotskyism and a statement of our critical support to the Fraser
resolution (Revolutionary Integration, 1963).
van Ronk: Leading up to the 63 Convention I was
formally uncommitted within the party, though my sympathies were with the
Minorities. When the Convention itself came up I found myself in a position
where I had either to vote for political documents or make vague gestures. It
was not that I felt the documents of the Reorganized Minority Tendency were
perfect, but they gave me something on which to take a political stand, though
at the time I was more sympathetic with Robertsons position on the party.
You did not give me anything on which I could take a stand politically, and
this was crucial at the time. The Committees view on the party has been
borne out. You viewed the party as centrist, i.e., a finished product, but it
was the Committee that struggled at the Convention politically while all
Spartacist did was submit an amendment or two and a statement on which there
was no vote.
Robertson: We submitted two resolutions.
van Ronk: You submitted no resolution on the American
Question and that was the key. You abdicated the struggle. I felt a hard
struggle should be made. Your analysis that the party was a finished, hardened
centrist thing harkens back to the period when you were in extreme opposition
but submitted no documents on the key questions. This is true of your group
today - you have strong political positions, but submit few documents to the
world at large. This is because you have nothing to say, and the reason is that
you take your politics as given. This is not Marxism. The conclusions of Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Trotsky are extremely important but we cannot simply take
them as given, and you do. We on the other hand have a large literary output.
This is because we are in the process of examining a lot of things, reexamining
all kinds of things, and we are struggling towards method--this
is what method is, actually, and not what Jim [Robertson] said, deriving theory
from program (good grief, man). Yes, there were political differences then,
even though we didnt fully understand them. If we had, then certainly we
would have had a much more fruitful political discussion then, and perhaps be
spared this. There were political differences; there are political differences;
the essential nature of that split was principled.
Nelson: When you place the minutes of these negotiations
side by side with the actual documents of 1962, then you explain to us
how the split was principled, because they dont say the same thing--not
at all. Compare Toward the Working Class with the statements by
comrade Fred [Mazelis] that it was simply a matter of your not being willing to
abide by positions that a majority of the Tendency held ... that there was a
split in the offing and therefore you werent willing to abide by
decisions. You coolly explained that this was something set up a long time
before October--a cynical but fairly accurate description of the process that
preceded the split. You were quite frank a couple of sessions ago, and
thats not whats in Toward the Working Class. This is
what we are jumping on, not the positions, because all the positions then were
phony--you attacking positions you knew werent ours, and
presenting in some ways positions that werent yours. You can say a
thousand times that 1962 was principled, but the record says different, in
black and white. You cant explain Toward the Working Class in
light of the proceedings of our negotiation sessions. Fred [Mazelis] said in
his presentation that Party and Class was a blunder.
Mazelis: I didnt say Party and Class was a blunder. I
said submitting the Appendices was a blunder.
Nelson: The part of your document that referred to our
positions, then, was, you admit, a blunder. The point Im making is that
the common denominator of Toward the Working Class, Party and
Class and the August 12 letter is that they are a pack of lies.
Toward the Working Class was designed to stampede the out-of-town
comrades into a vote for you and against us. But they recognized this on the
West Coast. Fox went out there and spoke to them on what was printed in
Toward the Working Class, and he got thrown out of town with a 17-0
vote. How do you explain that in terms of principled splits? The same with the
12 August letter. Each of these documents ascribes to us positions by innuendo
and outright lies. Talk about method. Political methodology doesnt stand
apart from theoretical underpinnings, and the political methodology that is the
common denominator of all these documents is the lie. Its one thing to
fight hard for a political position, but when youre lied to and
shafted--that doesnt go away. Its happened three times. First it
caused a split in our tendency. The second time it caused our expulsion from
the SWP. And now it appears to be preventing our unity. Van Ronk, you once
said, We finked on you. You finked on us. We were both wrong, so
lets forget it. But there is an essential difference between the
intentions and results of Party and Class and what you claim was
our finking, ie, the material presented by comrade Myra Weiss to the 63
Plenum which indicated the relationship between the Reorganized Minority
Tendency and the SLL. Party and Class was designed to get us
expelled from the party. It was deliberately submitted to the Discussion
Bulletin too late for us to reply, and it was only by the accident that I
was working in the national office that enabled us to see it in time for us to
reply contrary to your intentions. This was a knife in the back. You say the
1963 Plenum equals Party and Class and therefore cancels it. But
comrade Healy had already written Dobbs earlier in 1963 saying that Tim
[Wohlforth] was a representative of the IC, or words to that effect. Healy
exposed Tim, at the time that you were playing the role of Loyal Opposition in
the SWP. What Myra presented was to offset the slanders you presented to the
party, and not designed in order to get you thrown out. You werent thrown
out on this basis, while we were thrown out on the basis of what you did.
Speaking of methodology, lets take a case in
point. In 1961 Wohlforth thought we should make a power play in the YSA in
order to fight the party. When the YSA was lost Tim turned his back on it--the
partys the real thing, when a few months before the YSA was the end-all.
A big blunder, then overcorrection. Then, in May 1962 the document On
Orientation characterized the party as containing elements of centrism.
In October 1962 the party was dominated by a centrist tendency. A few weeks
later the party was still revolutionary--this at a time when an enormous
centrist development had clearly taken place--the capitulation over Cuba. The
SWP ceased to be a revolutionary party at that time, and was already preparing
unification with the Pabloites. The capitulation to Black Nationalism was the
final manifestation that they had abandoned any perspective of building a
revolutionary party in the U.S. Yet at that time you said the party was still
revolutionary and possessed a solid proletarian core. We dont want you to
grovel, but to judge your positions politically. On every single point your
tactics were widely at variance with the reality of the partys behavior.
Van Ronk, when you said that at least the ACFI comrades were struggling in 1963
you missed the last session when Wohlforth admitted an analysis of the party
contained in the ACFI American Question document was largely incorrect, i.e.,
this oversimplified position of Philips that all that is needed to regenerate
the party is to get its feet back in the working class. To wind up, its
not so much our particular positions, but the profound political instability
exhibited by your tendency and your demonstrated willingness to lie and to
resort to the unprincipled methods more appropriate to bourgeois politics, and
such as the SWP uses. You say we havent outgrown the SWP, but you
havent broken with them yet in that sense
your whole past three
years is nothing but a kind of fiction in terms of the written word.
Michael: You comrades seem to have characterized the SWP at
the time as being rotten, non-proletarian to the core, and a diseased shell.
Yet you maintain you wanted to remain in the party in order to recruit to your
tendency. Your documents stress work where the Majority isnt working, you
refuse to carry the blame for the things the Majority was saying--well, how
could you have reached people in the party with such an attitude? Its
obvious that you would alienate these people. They still believe in the party
and theyre not going to see you working seriously to build it. When you
label a group, you tend to represent all the people in the group as having the
same characteristics. Since you viewed the party as worthless, there would be a
tendency to view all the comrades in the party as worthless. At the last
Convention it was our comrades that waged a political struggle, not yours. We
had a discussion last week on the Marcus document which we feel is a
continuation of our work on developing the American Question. But you
didnt reply to it in a serious way. You made jokes about it. Your
approach to the Garment Center Vietnam Committee was the same. This approach
tends to alienate people. Even in your current work the same sort of approach
is evident.
Mazelis: Michael hit on a couple of very important points I
was going to make. Robertson, youre bookkeeping again. On the question of
who left the party after the tendency split, we are talking about who were your
comrades after the split, not before. Then Petras was not with us. A section of
your group was looking for an out, and you catered to these people. Peter and
Roger dominated the tone of your group. Cary left, Edith left, Cowley left. We
continue to feel exactly what we felt then--were not ashamed of what we
said in Toward the Working Class. At the same time were very
proud of the fact that what were saying now is not what we said then. We
have developed, theres nothing wrong with that. Comparing Toward
the Working Class with what we say now shows we were fundamentally
correct then, yet we have developed. Our understanding was not complete at that
time, either of your group or of the nature of the party. Our basic approach
was correct--we wanted to struggle, we werent giving up, and you were. On
our position on the working-class core of the SWP, were not ashamed of
that either. Were not saying that this wasnt overstated to some
extent. But if youre going to say who was more correct, it was us.
Following our break with you we continued to collaborate with these people and
developed through this a whole grouping in the proletarian cadres in the SWP.
The fact that we werent able to continue working with them after a
certain time doesnt mean that the work we did with them was worthless. We
are very proud that we went through that process with them. After we broke with
Philips and his group we continued to be able to reach a layer of people
completely unreachable by you, among the older cadres of the party. I
dont see how it can get us very far simply to throw around the word
lies. Ive thought about the question of the proletarian core
and there were perhaps 50 people, 15% of the party, that we were able to
connect up with on one level or another and have an exchange with them. You
couldnt do anything with these people--you could only affirm your own
purity and orthodoxy, and explain how rotten the SWP was. You can do a lot of
good things, and have shown that as an organization. But you cannot struggle
together with others, you cannot struggle in other organizations, and this is a
very, very important weakness. The basic difference between us is on how to
build a movement, a basic methodological difference. The whole composition of
the party is changing, but to you all that matters is this question or that
question. You fix a label and put a date on. Cuba is a deformed workers state
and thats that. Thats not the way we approach things. The fact was
that the older cadre of the party was leaving, had to be struggled for. This
was important to us, and thats the thread running through our work from
1962 to the present, thats why its not a question of zig-zags,
thats why we think we were right then. Weve developed; its
not a question of zig-zags. How can we explain Toward the Working
Class in light of the partys position on Cuba? That document showed
we wanted to struggle and reach people in the party, and you did not. This is
precisely what we want to explain in these sessions, how to build a movement. I
dont see any contradiction.
Who took the brunt in 63? You gloated that we werent
going to get thrown out, and that is obviously a way of saying we took the
brunt. You attacked the SLL in no uncertain terms at the Convention precisely
at the time you should have been cutting the ground from under the Majority
notwithstanding whatever differences you had with the International. About your
accepting the reunification, we never said we werent going to carry out
the decisions of the Convention. You chose the technical point of acceptance to
show very clearly to the Majority that you were differentiating yourself from
the IC at a time when you should not have. You didnt have to do that to
remain in the party. They didnt throw us out for voting against the
reunification. We felt you should have voted with us against the reunification
itself. We never said that you didnt state your opposition to
reunification in other senses, as in your resolution. You accuse us of lying
when that is not the case at all. This is an indication of a very casual
attitude toward theoretical struggle on your part, as is your statement that
you havent learned anything from the negotiating sessions. The Negro
Question and the American Question are not the same, and in any event you took
a very abstract and incorrect theoretical line. You made no attempt to analyze
the crisis of capitalism as it revealed itself at that time.
You inform us you are interested in working in unions, but you
have not analyzed the situation in the labor movement. You share an empirical
disdain for an arena where not much is happening. Theres no getting
around it--you havent devoted any attention to the American Question.
Your politics are given--it doesnt matter that from 1961-1965, the whole
life of your tendency, you had nothing to say on this question. Weve
waged a very serious struggle inside the SWP, hammering away at them on the
American Question. We didnt want to write off the SWP prematurely without
a struggle, didnt want to place premature labels. This was tied in with
the fact that the SWP did not formally break with the IC until 1963, although
it was of course clear where they were heading. Instead of struggling against
all this, above all over the American Question and exposing the Majority on
that level and showing how revisionism had eaten into their line at home, you
ignored this and simply fixed a label. This was part of your alienated attitude
which made it impossible for you to reach or relate to anyone in the SWP, just
as you havent been able to relate to anything in PL. You saw our serious
orientation as playing around. Show us where we adapted to PL or anybody else
the way the Majority adapts in their opportunist little zig-zags which we are
not guilty of. We went after PL knowing exactly what we were doing, and we
succeeded in part because of that, we internalised the struggle in PL, and that
struggle is still going on. If we had been working together in PL we would have
had the exact same problems we had in the SWP. You accused us of selling out by
distributing the PL leaflet calling for a boycott of the presidential election.
To this day we have not the slightest guilt about this, not the slightest guilt
whatsoever. This ties in with other things I will mention. We would have no
objection as part of a struggle in a living movement to distribute this welfare
workers committee leaflet calling for negotiations or indicating some
confidence in the U.N., as part of a struggle, making it clear where we stand
but not refusing to go along with these people. The same thing goes in part for
the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade next week. The same thing goes far PL. The same
thing goes for the Garment Center committee. These are things that tie together
some of the problems. If you study the way the SLL has struggled in the YS and
Labour Party, I think you could not with your line have done that and still
have been part of the struggle. Because that struggle entails a lot of
distributing leaflets we dont like. You take an Ohlerite line on tactics.
This sums up our differences. I would conclude by reaffirrning the points made
before. Our record both in the SWP and PL is one we are proud of, that we feel
confirms the points we have been raising. Our group sees the need for a serious
relation to these various movements and a serious struggle within them. This
relates precisely to your seeing theory derived from program. This
relates precisely to the point we made about how you viewed the SWP.
Youre acting the way the SWP did at that period when it had practically
nothing to do with outside organizations, concentrating on shopkeeping,
building the party, etc. The whole situation of the SWP shows that this
attitude is not enough, that you have to struggle in a living movement.
Robertson: I had hoped there might be some reply to my
perspectives. My initial presentation had two parts: (1) a running critique of
our past; (2) where we stand today and, if you people opt for unity on the
basis I indicated, how we can go forward. If someone at a public meeting should
ask, you people have just united--why did you split? we couldnt just have
a free-for-all.
Mazelis: This is something the exact handling of which
would have to be discussed--its obviously a problem.
Robertson: Its a question of accepting rather than
agreeing--something that does seem to be an obstacle. In reply to comrade van
Ronk on was the American Question the key in 1963? No. You have an obsessional
notion that no matter what the relationship of forces or the motion of the
class or what is happening that in a given country at any particular time the
national question must dominate. This is an oversimplification. In 1961 and
1963 this was simply not true. We were in a party whose revisionism was
expressing itself stage by stage in those areas where there was motion and
struggle in the world. This is where the inner-party struggle took place.
Philips sounded fairly ridiculous by saying the Majority has forgone a
proletarian perspective, therefore we must turn immediately to the mass of the
American workers. That is posing the whole question quite irrelevantly. The big
exception was the Negro struggle in the North and South--and this was the area
we picked up on, oriented to theoretically and practically--indeed it would be
hard to improve on that one-page amendment we introduced as an outlook on the
American scene. Another problem is that ACFI is an excessively literary
tendency, that you dont really mean it if you dont say it in 50
pages. Where comrade Trotsky was seeking to develop an international propaganda
group between 1928-34, he listed a half dozen key points in the crystallization
of left oppositional cadres around the world, and they were on an international
basis. Our situation is no better than Trotskys was at that time.
Obviously, for a mass party how one responds on the domestic terrain is
decisive. But to say this is always true of very small propaganda groups,
including the SWP, is a vast oversimplification. You charge we have a low
literary output because we have nothing to say. There are two sides of this:
(1) we arent a predominantly literary tendency, and (2) Wohlforth can
turn out with the least amount of effort the largest number of words this side
of Joe Hansen, and Marcus is no mean man with a pen either (though perhaps it
would be wiser if he could be placed in some kind of restraint or under
sedation). Nor do we consider ourselves a finished or closed tendency, or a
systematically all-sided propaganda group even. We are a part of a
propaganda group in two senses: (1) we are involved in this country; (2) we are
politically part of the International Committee--this is part of the reason we
are interested in the organizational side of unification. You on the other hand
are almost exclusively a literary tendency, with everything poured into that.
But if you compare us and yourselves with most Trotskyist sections of our size
over the past 30 years, you will get an idea of a fairly normal balance between
activity and propaganda that much more closely corresponds to ours. On any
topic you can drop 50 dubious, embarrassing pages. It doesnt matter that
you havent any involvement in the arena or may know nothing about it--but
by God youve got those 50 pages! Your American resolutions are of that
sort.
What is the relationship between theory and program?
Program is decisive. Theory is a part of program. By program we mean the
steps in the taking of power by the working class. Since you are facile at
writing, you inflate the essence of writing, i.e., method and theory, into the
whole. Youve turned inside out, whereas the Philips-Wohlforth tendency
used to say that class orientation and rooting oneself in the class was the
all-decisive thing. Before that it was the party, being at one with
the party. Now its method. Michael talks about working with
the Majority. Alas, he obviously never read comrade Harpers
document which pointed out that in the course of mass work where you have
fractions it has been found easier to do ones work where the Majority
presence was not overwhelming. This was turned inside out by the Control
Commission which expelled us, operating on the paraphrase of a quotation from
that document by comrade Wohlforth. The idea of working where the Majority
wasnt overwhelming was presented as just running amok. Dobbs presented
your interpretation very well. Such a thing isnt possible, much less to
be desired. But we found we could function more easily where there was a fairly
proper mix, where we didnt have a little Sylvia running to bring the
Majority down on our back as at CCNY (she wasnt very powerful herself,
but could always bring in the Majority). You see, the Majority
wasnt a loyal Majority. The Majority consciously tried to prevent
our recruiting people to the SWP because from the extent you draw people around
you and bring them into the party they are predisposed to then consider your
positions after they join the organization. Therefore the Majority tried to
keep us out of mass activity. So, Michael, you should carefully consider
whether the phrases that got us thrown out of the SWP were not really
paraphrases with new meanings, or whether they were what we had really said.
On the more minor question of who dominated our group and whether
we intended to split from the SWP or not, Petras is cited. He left several
months after the split, but never had anything to do with our political
viewpoint, always having agreed with Tim [Wohlforth], and was demoralized by
the split and his loss of faith in Tim. You cant name a single person
central to our tendency and who agreed with us on the nature of the SWP that
left the party. Those who dropped away were those you had won or were orienting
to, and they did drop away--as a result of the split which you made. Those who
dominated our tendency were those that wrote the documents: Robertson, Harper,
Ireland, Mage, Stoute and White. Theyre all still functioning, even
Ireland whos been out in the boondocks all this time. Even he whod
been the least active of our cadres bitterly defended his party membership. In
the SWP we always made it clear we had fundamental agreement with the IC-SLL,
but we were perfectly prepared at any time to indicate we were not at one with
them, because we were not and are not now at one with them. We have
basic political agreement, but not exact, and theres no reason we
or they should take such responsibility. If you dont like it, thats
too bad, but thats the way its been. Weve been the ones
whove opposed that, wanted an organizational common front; but the one
thing the IC cant have is its cake and eat it too. It cant keep us
at arms length and at the same time expect total defense where we
disagree. Until there are organizational bonds, thats not even a
question. At present theres no reason to subordinate organizational
considerations where a political matter is relevant and where we think the SLL
has a short-sighted position. Its enough to get hung for our own
positions, not those of others.
Finally, and this is probably most significant, in relation to
Freds [Mazelis] remarks about passing out the PL leaflet calling for an
election boycott, the welfare anti-war committee leaflet that called for
negotiations and U.N. intervention, the Parade which you comrades continue to
be sponsors of, under the slogan Stop the War Now-- these reveal a
systematic rightist bias on the part of your comrades. And you just pass this
off by saying everybody has to do things they dont like! Its
possible to work in a group without voluntarily doing those things you
profoundly disagree with. Dont tell me that the SLL comrades got out
there and pushed Gaitskills right wing garbage and the rest of it. They
did whatever minimum tokenism they had to in order to stay in. No one made you
stay in the Parade Committee, no one would have been thrown out of that Vietnam
committee for not passing out that leaflet. Your remaining in PL didnt
depend on your handing out that leaflet. No matter what your position is,
youll always find someone to the left and someone to the right. You have
to use judgment, judgment on whether to voluntarily pass out anti-working-class
lines, opportunist lines. It is hypocritical to on the one hand make the record
by calling in your paper for a vote to the SWP and being actually indifferent
to the question so that you will for convenience sake pass out a leaflet
calling for boycott. This is a very severe political criticism of you, mainly
reflected organizationally. The political expression has been suppressed by
your ties with the British. But the way they function toward the CP and the BLP
is very different from the way you function toward the SWP and PL. Youve
always shown a far more conciliatory (politically and personally) ingratiating
quality in the course of your work than we--strikingly so. If the bond were
ever severed between you, we would be concerned about the loss of a small
number of radical comrades. The question of these three leaflets, these three
incidents, was of a profound, not an episodic character. This is not a
generalization of atrocity stories. Wohlforth and I had a similar problem some
years ago when we were deciding whether the SWP leadership was right or whether
Healy was right. Eventually it became possible independent of the
circumstances to determine a profound opportunism on the part of the
English Pabloites, endorsed by the Pabloite International Secretariat. This was
when they circulated, without comment, in their public internal bulletin the
documents of some purely and characteristic Mensheviks who had broken from the
predecessor of the SLL. But as for us in this room, we know the circumstances
also, and we can say, yes, theres a right-left difference showing
up between us. I dont care whether you call it left and ultra-left, but
its a right-left difference.
Mazellis: Thats right, we agree on one thing.
Robertson: Thats right.
Stoute: At the time the split took place, and prior to it
when we were discussing the nature of the SWP Tim [Wohlforth] accused us of not
doing enough shop-keeping at the SWP headquarters. Now were being
accused of just proclaiming our purity and not actually working in mass arenas.
But were also criticized for doing only mass work and not concentrating
on theory and method. All this seems very contradictory. To me it proves you
are not proceeding from any consistent analysis. The SWP Majority wanted to get
rid of us partly because we wanted to work in mass arenas, and not
solely around party headquarters. They tried to keep us out of areas of
struggle because they didnt want us to recruit anyone. If we hadnt
been interested in recruiting there would have been no problem. Regarding the
way you have worked in PL and in the Parade Committee, and in light of the
right-left difference that has shown up here tonight and the points Mazelis
raised about the way in which you work with people, Im beginning to
wonder if you see working with us in the same light.
van Ronk: Im glad were getting out of the
archaeology and into current politics. One thing thats been very grating
in these sessions is the sort of ledger-keeping you engage in, Robertson:
In document 21a you said so and so. In 37c you said so and so. We, on the
other hand, never change our positions. As a matter of fact I remember
you once said to me, I havent changed an essential political position in
the last 10 years. Well, I have! At the 1963 Convention the essential thing I
thought Wohlforth and Co. had was that they took the leadership of the
opposition; they did not tail-end, and your amendment on the American Question
was a tail-end. I was attracted on that basis, on the need to intervene
politically. As far as the content of the Wohlforth American Question
document, there are things in the document that I ... I blanch as a matter of
fact. (We had our showdown with Philips later and we learned something from
it.) The content that I disagreed with in the document was mostly expunged from
the politics of our present organization in the process of our dispute with
Philips, which was very fruitful. If I were at the 63 Convention today I
would still choose Wohlforth and Co., because now I would be able to see how
you people equivocated very badly on the international question, which, as I
see things now, is far more central. Its hard work to do the literary
work we do, but its necessary to keep abreast. We dont believe in a
dichotomy between mass work and literary work. If youre not in the mass
movement, your literary work wont be worth a damn; but youve got to
documentarily evaluate your work in the mass movement also. So we criticize you
on the one hand for your high-bred purism and on the other for your WPA-type
activity. There is no inconsistency in our point of view. In Marxist method,
the two criticisms are not mutually exclusive. You say you havent done
much work on the American Question per se but have done a lot on the
Negro Question which is the same thing. I think youve got the order
reversed, for the Negro movement is responding to pressure of American and
international world capitalism as a whole, and this requires evaluation on all
levels to be able to accurately pinpoint any single question. Its
commendable that youre doing work on the Negro Question, particularly if
youre involved in the field, but to view the American Question as an
appendage to the Negro Question--I cant believe my ears. You say, we
derive our method from our program; again youve got it reversed.
Methodology is an understanding of how things actually work in intervals,
concretely. From this we derive program. From this we understand what
programmatic demands are necessary, then proceed. Then we proceed to the
question of power. On the leaflets weve distributed that were
discussed--first of all this is not what we conceive of ourselves as having
been created by history to do. If you could take our Bulletin and could
show me concretely in black and white, as youve done in our discussions,
that were incipient right-wingers, Id be disturbed. But I think
youre nit-picking. Youve got to view who and what we are, as
youve been saying, over a period of time. Finally, as to what has been
gained from these sessions. Just from the discussion tonight, I question your
ability to learn. Your politics are given. Youre not attempting to keep
up (youve got to keep applying method). Marx never had Marx to
read--Marxism is a method. We dont see evidence of your applying it, we
dont see the essential literary output. Perhaps we put too much effort
into literary output, but there has to be more than you do. Your nonchalant
intellectual attitude towards these sessions raises the question in my mind,
Can these comrades learn? Or is it all already known?
Nelson: Im afraid Im going to resort to some of
that hard ledgerkeeping again. Going back and evaluating what
people said at certain points is called archaeology by comrade van
Ronk but its called theory and preservation of history by others. As to
who took the brunt at the 63 Convention, at that time it was very easy to
be for Black Nationalism, and your tendency was at that time for Black
Nationalism and its theoretical implications. The only amendment you put
forth on the Negro Question was an action amendment. Comrade Mazelis explicitly
wrote that he supported the theoretical foundations of the partys
position on Black Nationalism. Im not saying you embraced it fully
but it was easy to be for it at that Convention. Once outside the SWP and away
from the pressure of the Majority you changed your position on both Black
Nationalism and PL. There was no fight inside the party on the American
Question. In 1963 it was only a minor point on the Convention agenda. The tough
question in 1963 was the Negro Question. The whole party was running around
beating themselves with sticks, ashamed they were white and the SWP was a white
party, and anyone who thought differently was some kind of racist. We were
under extreme pressure for months; our position was repugnant to the Majority,
while yours was sort of ho-hum. Robertson has characterized your
tendency tonight as having a certain rightward bias. On thinking back, you
backed up on your position towards Black Nationalism--after the fight
was over. But when the screws were on your attitude was conciliatory. In the
general context of the SWP you always had a conciliatory attitude toward the
Majority and on occasion actually worked in bloc with them against us. You were
the loyal oppositionists.
Mazelis says how can we accuse you of being opportunist towards
PL. It was us at the 1963 New York Branch Conference that introduced the
memorandum on PL. And it looks damn good today. Your comrades got up on the
floor and denounced it along with the Majority--PL was just a bunch of
Stalinist adventurers--we had to fight both you and the Majority on that view.
At the time the Majority was coming up with one atrocity story after another on
PL, because they didnt want anything to do with PL, they wanted to avoid
confrontation with PL, and you joined them in this. After you split from the
party and faced the big, cruel world--then PL looked a little better to you.
You call this learning from mistakes. But it reflects the fact that
your tendency has been very susceptible to pressures and tends to move
organizationally to the right, and politically to the right in the process,
where desirable. On the Parade Committee, having been caught with your pants
down, I thought youd back up--but youre defending your role!
Dont you know what you signed your name to, what was in that
Call? Its the State Department position. Its the SANE
position--this war is not in the interest of national security. We
broke from the Committee, not because we couldnt have a speaker, but
because we couldnt go along with their discipline. We werent going
to carry their signs or take responsibility for their political line. You
comrades did, along with the SWP that played the broker. Youre in the
same barrel. On the matter of small lies being part of the big lie, as a
method, there are a couple of small things. In Party and Class
Wohlforth quotes from a letter that was never actually sent from Robertson on
our attitude towards your Convention material. The first sentence stated,
We see one essential defect in your Convention material ... and
characterized this as the overstatement by Philips on the task of the party to
do all things simultaneously everywhere. In the next sentence in your document
Tim [Wohlforth] turns this on its head when he says, It is clear from the
above that Robertson sees his differences with us on this point as
essential. This was an entirely different meaning. In the 12 August
letter there is a sentence that refers to difference of a methodological
character, etc. Tim [Wohlforth] is affirming that we
felt then and we feel now that if we could reach a firmer agreement on the
Marxist method, then these tactical questions would resolve themselves. But if
we cannot, the growing disparity between our two groups cannot help
but be more and more accentuated. That growing disparity that
you quote was the growing disparity in size
between our groups! This method of distortion is used consistently in all your
documents. You fake things. Revolutionists are supposed to be honest.
Mazelis made a big point that a number of our people allegedly
left the SWP though our tendency itself did not split. What is the record? On
our Declaration On the Cuban Crisis
30 November 1962, our first document following our internal split, 24 comrades
signed. Of that 24, 14 are still with us, 4 are active sympathizers, 3
were West Coast comrades who were driven out as a result of your split, and 3
were minimal comrades who can be chalked up as minimal attrition. Thats a
damn good record. And this was three years ago, before the pre-Convention
discussion, before the Convention, before the Control Committee hearings, and
before the SWP and YSA expulsions. And 14 are still active members.
On our position that theory is part of program and that program is
the road to power--I dont see how you can abstract methodology from the
whole question of theory and program. All depends on how you view your
role in the revolutionary struggle. What are we getting out of these
sessions? It comes down to honesty of intention. The purpose of these
discussions was supposedly to explore whether or not there was in fact a basis
for unity, a probe. By the 5th or 6th session Wohlforth conceded he was ready
to go back to his organization with the recommendation that there was a
principled basis for unity. But the main point is that this was known
beforehand. Wohlforth knew all along where we stood on every issue, and
Im sure other ACFI comrades knew also. On your allegation that we do not
develop theory, we view our analysis of the process which created deformed
workers states in Cuba and China as a major theoretical contribution to the
world movement, while Tim [Wohlforth] harks back to the structural assimilation
theory, largely lifted from the 1946 discussion material of Germain. Our
position resolves the question of China which the SLL has not yet resolved--the
contradiction of their positions on Cuba and China, the former being capitalist
and the latter a deformed workers state. The French comrades and the VO group
have not resolved this question either. And weve made other theoretical
contributions. Im annoyed by Mazelis comment that weve
consistently attempted to avoid struggle. If there is one single characteristic
of your group in terms of performance, it has been the tendency to avoid
struggle, to avoid confrontation. In 1962 you were afraid of being a minority
in the national tendency so you took the easy way out, getting an ultimatum
from Healy expelling the majority. In the SWP it was us who were the strong
tendency. We consolidated our forces despite what was designed to
organizationally kill us in 1962. We fought the party politically. In 1963 we
had a major document on the international question, an amendment to the PC
resolution on the American Question, and documents on the Sino-Soviet and Negro
Questions. At each point where theres been a test of the fiber of our
respective groups in coming to grips with issues in struggle, youve slid
off to the side, ducking a harder fight. The right way is usually the difficult
way. Weve attempted to engage PL politically, to win over a chunk of
their organization. All youve done is inoculate PL against Trotskyism,
encouraging an organizational rather than a political response.
Michael: Some of the things you people write are pretty
impressive. Your characterization of PL three years ago is pretty sharp, and
the ACFI people may have disagreed with you then, but I think one can attribute
their change in line to a certain growth. The approach ACFI used to PL was
different. A comrade was sent to the Lower East Side club to do work, passed
out right-wing leaflets or leftwing leaflets however you want to characterize
them, sold Challenge, delivered it to newsstands, participated in
demonstrations and impressed people as being very serious and interested in
building the organization. At the same time this comrades line and what
he believed in were easily distinguished. He didnt do this by going in
and screaming Trotskyism all over the place. He did it by getting
involved in discussions that involved PL and counterposing PLs line with
a line that didnt necessarily have to be labeled Trotskyist but which in
fact was Trotskyist. If a committee were working in happens to take a
line were not happy with, we dont just walk out and demonstrate
across the street and counterpose it. Well stay with these people, but
theyll know what we stand for. We agree with you in many things, e.g., we
certainly dont want the anti-war campaign to continue behind rabbis and
ministers and we will fight that inside these committees, but were not
going to reach these people by simply marching out. Well make it clear
where we stand.
2. Good and Welfare:
Robertson: I have three points: (a) A letter from Bill W.
to be read at his request. (b) Copies of our press release on the split with
the Parade Committee. (c) The minutes of the 5th session are now ready, and the
6th session minutes will be ready shortly.
Mazelis: The joint election leaflets are ready to be picked
up.
Meeting adjourned.
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