The Party, the Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, Volume II
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THE PARTY: THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY 1960-1988 VOLUME 2: INTERREGNUM, DECLINE AND COLLAPSE, 1973-1988 A POLITICAL MEMOIR Barry Sheppard 2 INTERREGNUM, DECLINE AND COLLAPSE, 1973-1988 Resistance Books would be glad to have readers’ opinions of this book, and any suggestions you may have for future publications or wider distribution. Our books are available at special quantity discounts to educational and non-profit organizations, and to bookstores. To contact us, please write to: Resistance Books PO Box 62732, London, SW2 9CQ Email at [email protected] This book is copyright © of the author. Graphic design © Resistance Books. Front cover photo: Sandinista fighters entering Managua July 19, 1979 greeted by mass outpouring. © Corbis. Back cover photo: Caroline Lund working at her automobile factory. Photo by co-worker. ISBN: 978-0-902869-59-2 Printed in Britain by Lightning Source THE PARTY: THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY 1960-1988 3 THE PARTY: THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY 1960-1988 VOLUME 2: INTERREGNUM, DECLINE AND COLLAPSE, 1973-1988 A POLITICAL MEMOIR Barry Sheppard Resistance Books 4 INTERREGNUM, DECLINE AND COLLAPSE, 1973-1988 Contents INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 6 Part One: Interregnum, 1973 - 1979 ........................................... 9 CHAPTER ONE: THE EBBING OF THE RADICALIZATION ........... 10 CHAPTER TWO: THE MILITARY COUP IN CHILE ......................... 21 CHAPTER THREE: ARAB-ISRAEL WAR ......................................... 32 CHAPTER FOUR: THE FACTION STRUGGLE IN THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL DEEPENS ........................................................... 36 CHAPTER FIVE: THE EXPULSION OF THE INTERNATIONALIST TENDENCY ........................................................................................ 43 CHAPTER SIX: TWO VIEWS OF INTERNATIONALISM ................. 57 CHAPTER SEVEN: POLITICAL FERMENT ..................................... 62 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BOSTON BUSING WAR ............................. 73 CHAPTER NINE: REVOLUTION IN PORTUGAL ............................ 92 CHAPTER TEN: NEW CAMPAIGNS ................................................ 104 CHAPTER ELEVEN: CONTINUED GROWTH ................................ 115 CHAPTER TWELVE: A NEW SITUATION IN THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ............................................................................. 125 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: REBUILDING THE INTERNATIONAL .... 130 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: DISTURBING DEVELOPMENTS ............ 135 CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE TURN TO INDUSTRY .......................... 139 CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION ..................... 143 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: REVOLUTION IN NICARAGUA ............ 179 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE 1979 WORLD CONGRESS ................ 193 Part Two: Decline and Collapse, 1980 - 1988 ............................ 198 CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE DRAFT, THE PRDF SUIT, AND A NEW BLACK PARTY ................................................................................... 199 THE PARTY: THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY 1960-1988 5 CHAPTER TWENTY: THE EMERGENCE OF A CULT ................... 207 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: AFGHANISTAN ................................... 212 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: IRAN .................................................... 220 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: POLAND ......................................... 232 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: GRENADA ......................................... 242 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: WAR IN NICARAGUA ........................ 251 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE TURN DERAILS ........................... 267 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: AN ALTERNATIVE PATH FOR THE TURN ................................................................................................. 274 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: FACTION FIGHT AND SPLIT ......... 278 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MY CULPABILITY ............................. 297 CHAPTER THIRTY: I LEAVE THE LEADERSHIP ......................... 302 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: CAROLINE AND I LEAVE THE SWP .. 313 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: CONCLUSIONS .................................... 321 APPENDIX: AN EXAMPLE OF WORK IN THE UNIONS .............. 331 Index ……………………………………………………………………………………..337 Table of Acronyms…………………………………………………………………..344 Notebooks for Study and Research……………………………………………347 Forthcoming Books…………………………………………………………………348 6 INTERREGNUM, DECLINE AND COLLAPSE, 1973-1988 INTRODUCTION This is the second volume of a two-volume book. The first volume, which covered the period of the radicalization of “The Sixties,” 1960-1973, should be read in conjunction with the present volume.* My main conclusion here is that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was transformed into its opposite in many essential ways from what I describe in the first volume. The present volume is divided into two parts. The first part I call an “interregnum,” because it forms a bridge from the first volume to the second part of this one, and covers the period from 1973 through the end of 1979. In these years the SWP remained active in the broader class struggle at home and abroad. We took important initiatives, including launching a lawsuit against the government for its undemocratic “dirty tricks” against us and by implication against the wider movements for social justice. There was also an important intervention in a struggle to desegregate the public school system in Boston. The SWP, together with other parties and leaders in the Fourth International, put a great deal of energy into a struggle to reverse the ultraleft course adopted by the International in 1969. This was described in Volume One. For a time the resulting factional struggle intensified, and then was resolved. The initiative for this resolution came from the other side, the leaders of the International Majority Tendency, through a “self-criticism” of the 1969 turn. Our position was vindicated, and opened the way for a rebuilding of the Fourth International, which my companion Caroline Lund and I were intimately involved with. In 1978-1979, the SWP projected a course to widen its field of activity through a reorientation to the industrial work force and to embrace the revolutions in Nicaragua and Grenada, which we saw as extensions of the Cuban Revolution. In addition, we were deeply involved in the debates concerning the Portuguese revolution of 1974-1975 and the Afghani revolution that began in 1978. During the 1978-1979 revolution in Iran we worked with Iranian comrades to try to build a socialist alternative, a project I was involved with. But also from the mid-1970s on, there were negative developments in the party leadership, which began to take shape in an incremental fashion. In the period covered by the second part of this volume, 1980-1988, these negative developments came to dominate. The result was an accelerating decline of the SWP both politically and organizationally. From the vibrant interventionist party of “The Sixties,” the SWP degenerated into an abstentionist THE PARTY: THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY 1960-1988 7 sect, walling itself off from the wider class struggle and the rest of the left, shrinking by 1988 to less than 50 percent in size from its high point in 1976-1978. This trend has continued in the decades since. The first chapter in Part Two concerns U.S. politics, and is a continuation of similar chapters in Part One. The second chapter discusses what I mean when I say the SWP became a cult. There is what may appear to be a digression, a discussion of defeats of revolutions in Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Poland. But these defeats weighed heavily on the SWP, and form part of the objective situation the party faced in the 1980s. This book in two volumes is a political memoir about my time in the SWP beginning in November 1959. In July 1988, my companion Caroline Lund and I resigned from the SWP. I call it a political memoir of this nearly 30-year period for two reasons. One is that it is not a personal memoir. My personal life wasn’t much different from the hundreds of thousands of my generation radicalized in “The Sixties,” and doesn’t shed much light on what we were like as members of that generation that hasn’t been written about extensively elsewhere. I only refer to my personal life insofar as it affected my political life. The second reason is that these volumes don’t purport to be a comprehensive history of the SWP from 1960 through 1988, nor of the broader political context domestically or internationally. But because I was a central leader of the SWP for most of this time, and of the Fourth International for much of it, my political memoir touches on much of this history. One theme of this volume is that the collapse of the SWP was not inevitable. As the radicalization of “The Sixties” receded, the objective situation made it increasingly difficult for a small Marxist organization to grow. But with a more correct orientation the SWP could have survived and remained an important force on the left. It would have been able to play a role in building a revolutionary alternative in the wake of the greatest crisis of the capitalist system since the Great Depression, beginning in 2007. Without the SWP, rebuilding the socialist movement in the United States has been made more difficult. The decline of the left in general following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the restoration of capitalism in China has meant no other organization has been up to the task. The discredited Communist Party is no longer the obstacle it once was, clearing the field. There are other revolutionary socialist groups and individuals, and perhaps a new beginning can