Genesis of Pabloism

The Road from the SWP to Trotskyism . .. page 2 The Faces of Economism ... page 24 NUMBER 21 FALL 1972 25 CENTS I Tile SWP tint! tile Fourtll Interntltiontl/, 1946-54: Genesis of Pabloism The American Socialist Workers Party and the European Military Policy" which called for military training under, Pabloists travelled at different rates along different paths to trade union control, implicitly posing the utopian idea that revisionism, to converge in uneasy alliance in the early 1960's U.S. workers could fight German fascism without the in an unprincipled "reunification," which has now broken existence of a workers state in the U.S., through "control- down as the American SWP has completed the transition ling" U.S. imperialism's army. British Trotskyist Ted Grant from Pabloist centrism to outright reformism. The "United went even further, in one speech referring to British Secretariat" which issued out of the 1963 "reunification" imperialism's armed forces as "our Eighth Army." The teeters on the edge of an open split; the "anti-revisionist" German IKD returned to outright Menshevism with the "International Committee" fractured last year. The collapse the'ory that fascism had brought about the need for "an of the various competing pretenders to the mantle of the intermediate stage fundamentally equivalent to a democratic Fourth International provides a crucial opportunity for the revolution." ("Three Theses;' 19 October 1941) reemergence of an authentic Trotskyist international tenden- The French Trotskyist movement, fragmented during the cy. Key to the task of reconstructing the Fourth Internation- course of the war, was the best example of the contradiction. al through a process of splits and fusions is an understanding One of its fragments subordinated the mobilization of the of the char'acteristics and causes of Pabloist revisionism and working class to the political appetites of the Gaullist wing of the flawed response of the anti-Pabloists who fought, too imperialist bourgeoisie; another grouping'renounced any little and too late, on national terrain while in practice struggle within the resistance movement in favor of work abandoning the world movement. exclusively at the point of production and, not recognizing World War II: U.S. and France the existing level' of reformist consciousness among the workers, adventurously attempted to seize the factories Before the onset of the war, Trotsky and the Fourth during the "liberation" of Paris while the working masses International had believed that decaying capitalism and the were out on the streets. The February 1944 European rise of fascism removed the possibility, for reformism and Conference document which was the basis for a fusion therefore for bourgeois-democratic illusions among the between two French groupings to form the Parti Com- masses. Yeti they could not but become Increasingly aware muniste Internationaliste characterized the two groups: that the revulsion of the working class against fascism and the threat of fascist occupation gave rise to social chauvinism "Instead of distinguishing between the natioO'alism of the defeated bourgeoisie which remains an expression of its and a renewal of confidence in the "democratic" bourgeoisie imperialist preoccupations, and the 'nationalism' of the permeating the proletarian masses throughout Europe and the masses which is only a reactionary expression of their U.S. Faced with such a contradiction, the powerful pressures resistance against exploitation by the occupying imperial- of nationalist backwardness and democratic illusions in the ism, the leadership of the POI considered as progressive working class tended to pull the sections of the Fourth' the struggle of its own bourgeoisie ...." International apart, some adopting a sectarian stance, others "the CCI ... under the pretext of guarding intact the capitulating to the social patriotism which was rampant heritage of Marxism-Leninism, refused obstinately to among the masses. The SWP briefly adopted the "Proletarian (Continued on page 4) The Case of Bola Tampoe Suppressed Documents Expose United Secretariat PAGE 14 4 SPARTACIST .. SWP .. Pabloism (Continued from page 1) 4. The declaration that the Cuban Revolution had pro- distinguish the nationalism of the bourgeoisie from the duced a healthy workers state without the intervention of resistance movement of the masses." the vanguard Leninist (i.e. Trotskyist) party represented a poli tical denial of the need for such a party. This denial is L SWP ISOLATIONISM outright political Iiquidationism. We declare that the current Cuban state is a deformed workers state and has been so European Trotskyism and American Trotskyism respond- from the very instant of its existence. In order for Cuba to ed in initially different ways to different tasks and problems become a healthy workers state, a political revolution is re- following World War II. The precarious internationalism of quired just as in the degenerated workers state of the Soviet the American SWP, maintained through intimate collabora- Union and the deformed workers states such as China and tion with Trotsky during his exile in Mexico, did not survive the Eastern European states. Such a political revolution has the assassination of Trotsky in 1940 and the onset of world as its most important task the establishment of institutional- war. The American Trotskyists retreated into an isolation ized forms of workers democracy and the political destruc- only partially forced upon them by the diSintegration of the tion of the Stalinist theories of socialism in one country and European sections under conditions of fascist triumph an4 peaceful coexistence. ilIegaliza tion. Anticipating the difficulties of international coordination 5. The party majority has come more and more to base its during the war, a resident International Executive Committee program on bourgeois ideologies (such as nationalism and had been set up in New York. Its only notable achievement, feminism) within the workers' movement. While we support however, appears to have been the convening of an "Emer- the liberation of women and of the various national, ethnic, gency Conference" of the International, held 19-26 May and racial groups oppressed by U.S. capitalism, we believe 1940 "somewhere in the Western Hemisphere," "on the that such liberation will only be achieved by a successful initiative of its U.S., Mexican and Canadian sections." A proletarian revolution within the United States. While the rump conference attended by less than half of the sections, party's current feminist politics imply that women-as-women the "Emergency Conference" was called for the purpose of can end their oppression, and its nationalist politics imply dealing with the internatiortal ramifications of the Shacht- that nations as nations can end national oppression, we say man split in the U.S. section, which had resulted in the that this is a poly-vanguardist approach. Only the working defection of a majority of the resident IEC. The meeting class, organized as a class and led by the vanguard party can solidarized with the SWP in the faction fight and reaffirmed liberate all humanity. Consequently, our most important task its status as the one U.S. section of the Fourth International. is to further the development of class consciousness which The conference also adopted a "Manifesto of the Fourth will link all sectors of the working class in a common struggle International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian against the oppression that the various groups within the World Revolution" written by Trotsky. Following Trotsky's class currently face. We do not simply oppose such ideologies death, however, the resident IEC lapsed into oblivion. as feminism and nationalism. Rather, the nationalists and At least in hindsight, the American section of the Fourth feminists are conscious of their oppression, but with a false International should have initiated a clandestine secretariat in consciousness (i.e., an ideology). What is necessary is to a neutral country in Europe, staffed by qualified SWPers and utilize the strategy contained in The Death Agony of Capi- emigres from other sections, to centralize and directly talism and the Tasks of the Fourth International to destroy supervise the work of Trotskyists in fascist-occupied coun- this false consciousness and replace it with its opposite by tries. But the SWP ',·,f,S content to limit its international raising it to a qualitatively higher level-from bourgeois activities during the war to the publication in its internal ideology to revolutionary class consciousness. bulletins of letters and factional documents from European Trotskyists. The passage of the Voorhis Act in 1941 6. While we give unconditional support to the military inhibiting U.S. groups from affiliation with international battle being waged by the Vietnamese against United States political organil'ltions-a law which to this day has never imperialism, a revolutionary defense of the Vietnamese Rev- been tested-also gave the SWP a -rationalization for down- olution requires both its defense against the Stalinist bureauc- playing its international responsibilities. racy as well as U.S. imperialism. Such a defense requires the The SWP's work during the war did evideuce an interna- preparation of the proletariat for its historic task of seizing tionalist perspective. SWP longshoremen used the opportuni- state power. The party approaches the question of the war in ty of ships from Vladivlostok docking on the West Coast

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