The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth
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LABOR PUBLICATIONS The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth The Struggle for Trotskyism in the United States LABOR PUBLICATIONS ©Copyright May 1984 by Labor Publications, Inc. All rights reserved What Makes Wohlforth Run? was first published in pamphlet form in July, 1975 by Labor Publications, Inc. The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth by David North and Alex Steiner was first published in pamphlet form in 1976 by Labor Publications, Inc. Printed in the United States of America Published by Labor Publications, Inc. 11 Grand River, Detroit, MI 48226 Distributed in Great Britain by New Park Publications Ltd. 21b Old Town, Clapham, London SW4 OJT CONTENTS Foreword— Ten Years Since the Split with Wohlforth i What Makes Wohlforth Run? 1 The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth Introduction 71 The Wohlforth School of Falsification 75 In the Footsteps of Kant 83 The Long Road Back to Pablo 113 Reform or Revolution? 131 A Subjective Idealist on War 143 The Boston Stranglers of the Working Class 151 An Aging liar Peddles His Wares 163 The Accomplice of Joseph Hansen 179 Whither Wohlforth?^ 191 Correspondence From G. Healy to the ACFI - November 24, 1966 209 From G. Hcaly to Tim Wohlforth — June 7, 1971 212 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth - June 8, 1971 215 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth — June 17, 1971 217 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth— June 24, 1971 219 From Dany Sylveire to Tim Wohlforth — January 19, 1972 221 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth - February 8, 1972 224 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth - September 25, 1^72 226 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth - December 22,1972 228 From Mike Banda to Tim Wohlforth — February, 1973 233 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth — June 4,1973 238 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth — July 9, 1973 243 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth — July 18,1973 245 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth - July 23,1973 247 From G. Healy to Tim Wohlforth — August 10,1973 248 Wohlforth's Letter of Resignation — September 29, 1974 250 From Cliff Slaughter to Tim Wohlforth — October 6,1974 258 From Fred Mazelis to Tim Wohlforth — October 30,1974 265 From Cliff Slaughter to Tim Wohlforth — January 22,1975 266 Statements Findings of Commission of Inquiry- November 9, 1974 269 An Answer to the Slanders of Robertson and Wohlforth Workers League Political Committee Statement — February 21,1975 273 Behind Wohlforth's Resignation Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International — March 22,1975 277 Wohlforth Joins the SWP Letter to Barry Sheppard from Tim Wohlforth — January, 1975 287 Letter to Jack Barnes from Tim Wohlforth — June 24, 1975 288 Memo to Jack Barnes and Joseph Hansen From Tim Wohlforth — December 13,1976 292 Letter to O. Sklavos from Tim Wohlforth — March 20,1977 Statement by Tim Wohlforth — January 19, 1977 Letter to Jack Barnes from Tim Wohlforth — June 26, 1977 Wohlforth — On to the Platform of Shame By David North - January 13,1977 Appendix Max Shachtman and American Pragmatism An Obituary by Tim Wohlforth — December 4, 1972 Glossary of Names FOREWORD Ten Years Since the Split with Wohlforth The documents in this volume comprise the record of a fun damental and crucial chapter in the history of the struggle for Trotskyism in the United States — the fight against the renegade, Tim Wohlforth. At issue in this struggle, waged by the Workers League in solidarity with the International Com mittee of the Fourth International, was the defense of the revolutionary party of the working class — its traditions, history, principles, organizational security, and, at the most es sential level of theory, the dialectical materialist method that is the foundation of cadre-training. The publication of this volume is testimony to the fact that the lessons of the struggle against Wohlforth, despite the pas sage of ten years, have lost none of their political urgency. On the contrary, it is now more clear than ever that the issues raised by Wohlforth's desertion from the Workers League in September 1974 were profoundly related to the development of a new stage in the world capitalist crisis and the most fun damental political, theoretical and historical questions confron ting the Trotskyist movement on a world scale. This is proven by the historical fact that the immediate events which directly precipitated the split with Wohlforth led inexorably to the monumental political struggle of Security and the Fourth International, which culminated in the decisive ex posure of imperialist agents operating in the top leadership of i ii The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth the Socialist Workers Party. The extraordinary intervention of the late Joseph Hansen, long-time SWP leader, in defense of Wohlforth's flagrant violation of the Workers League's security — his failure to report the family connections of his personal companion, Nancy Fields, to leading CIA personnel — raised under new historical conditions all the unresolved questions surrounding the assassination of Leon Trotsky in August 1940. In the course of this intervention initiated in May 1975 into the circumstances of Trotsky's death — Security and the Fourth International — it became clear that there had been nothing accidental about Hansen's defense of Wohlforth. Documents obtained by the International Committee un covered the fact that Hansen, who had worked as one of Trot sky's secretaries in Coyoacan, Mexico between 1937 and 1940, entered into a secret and confidential relationship with the US State Department and FBI little more than a week after Trot sky's death. The subsequent development of this investigation would ultimately establish the connection between Hansen's recruitment as an agent and the Government's ultimate takeover of the SWP. The unmasking of Hansen and his proteges in the present SWP leadership was an immense historical achievement by the International Committee. But it was prepared and arose out of the protracted struggle for Marxist theory with which this volume is essentially concerned. There is no greater challenge to the development of Marxist theory than the dialectical materialist training of revolutionary cadre in the center of world imperialism, the United States. At the heart of this training is the struggle against pragmatism, the national ideology of the American bourgeoisie. It was Trotsky who first brought this to the attention of his followers in the United States. His first words to the American Trotskyists who greeted him as he got off the boat in Tampico in January 1937 were on the need to "inoculate'' the youth against the disease of empiricism and pragmatism. Three years later, as the newly-formed Socialist Workers Party was torn by a bitter internal factional struggle, Trotsky passed from the Foreword iii concrete organizational and political questions to the fun damental theoretical issues at stake in the fight against the pet ty-bourgeois opposition led by James Burnham, Max Shacht- man and Martin Abern. Trotsky wrote to James P. Cannon, leader of the SWP: "Not all comrades possibly are content with the fact that I give the predominant place in the discussion to the matter of dialectics. But I am sure it is now the only way to begin the theoretical education of the Party, especially of the youth and to inject an aversion to empiricism and eclectics." fin Defense of Marxism, New Park Publications, p. 120) In his polemic against James Burnham, Trotsky noted the examples of American radicals who "began with a philosophical struggle against the dialectic but finished with a political struggle against the social revolution" (p.60) and poin ted out that "Anyone acquainted with the history of the strug gles of tendencies within the workers' parties knows that deser tions to the camp of opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently with rejection of the dialectic." (Ibid., p.94) Trotsky's warnings were of an almost prophetic character. The ink on Burnham's documents attacking dialectical materialism was barely dry before he deserted not only the Socialist Workers Party but the working class movement itself. From there he passed immediately into the camp of imperialist reaction, became a neo-fascist ideologue and advocate of nuclear war against the Soviet Union, and in 1982 was awarded the "Medal of Freedom" by an ardent admirer, Ronald Reagan. As for Max Shachtman, his evolution proceeded somewhat more slowly but still in the same anti-communist direction. From a position of indifference toward the dialectic, claiming there existed no fundamental relationship between "abstract" questions of theory and "concrete" political questions, Shacht man evolved after 1940 into the political godfather of all sorts of reactionary "new class" and state capitalist tendencies which reject the defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist at tack. From the man who had played a decisive role in the foun ding of the Trotskyist movement and the building of the Fourth iv The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth International, Shachtman became, by the time he died in late 1972, a supporter of the imperialist war against Vietnam. Trotsky's warning to Shachtman — "The dialectic of the historic process has more than once cruelly punished those who tried to jeer at it" — was vindicated in the starkest political terms. (Ibid., p. 129) While Trotsky's criticism was directed principally against Burnham and Shachtman, he was well aware of the fact that pragmatism was not simply the problem of the minority faction. Without his intervention, the SWP majority led by Cannon could not have prevailed. In the course of this struggle, Trotsky confessed to feeling "somewhat abashed over the fact that it is almost necessary to justify coming out in defense of Marxism within one of the sections of the Fourth International^ (Ibid., p.