Revolutionary Tendency (SWP)

Last updated

The Revolutionary Tendency within the American Socialist Workers Party was an internal faction that disagreed with the direction the leadership was taking the party on several important issues. Many groups and movements would have their roots in the RT, both in the United States and internationally, including the Socialist Equality Party and the world Spartacist and LaRouche movements and their various splinters.

The Revolutionary Tendency first crystallized around opposition to the SWP's line regarding the Cuban Revolution. The leadership regarded the Cuban regime as a full blown workers' state deserving unqualified defense by the Party. The RT rejected this because of the revolution's "petty bourgeois" leadership, and the absence of a vanguard party prior to the overthrow of the authoritarian government of Fulgencio Batista on 1 January 1959. The RT also objected to the moves of the SWP toward leaving the International Committee of the Fourth International and joining the "Pabloite" International Secretariat of the Fourth International. They also saw a danger of Pabloism within the SWP as well, because of what they regarded as a downplaying of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism. All of these positions were spelled out in a document called "In Defense of a Revolutionary Perspective - A Statement of Basic Positions", drawn up be Tim Wohlforth and others and presented to the SWP national committee in March 1962. [1]

The tendency was concentrated among members who had been in the left wing of the Young Socialist League who had rejected merger into the Young People's Socialist League when Max Shachtman, leader of the parent Independent Socialist League had merged with the YPSL's parent group, the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation. This group had subsequently been recruited by the SWP and were instrumental in founding the SWPs new youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance in 1960. [2]

The initial membership of the tendency was quite small, about 35 in October 1961, with clusters in New York and Bay Area of about 15 each. Subsequently the tendency grew with cadres in Detroit, Philadelphia and New Haven, Connecticut. The RT initially controlled the National Committee of the YSA, but the SWP leadership was able to out them. [3]

On November 1, 1963 the Political Committee adopted a resolution suspending James Robertson, Shane Mage, Larry Ireland, and Lynne Harper. Two months later the Committee voted 18-1 to expel these members entirely. Early the next year the first issue of Spartacist appeared dated "February–March 1964" and published by "the supporters of the Revolutionary Tendency expelled from the Socialist Workers Party". The paper announced that the group would continue publishing "pending our re-admission to the SWP and resumption of our proper role within it." The expelled members appealed their expulsion to the Fourth International (FI). They sent a letter dated February 23, 1964 to Pierre Frank requesting the FI to express their opinion regarding their organizational rights. On April 17 Frank replied, enclosing a resolution of the FI condemning the Spartacists. The expelled group tried one last time to appeal its expulsion. In May 1965 Harry Turner requested that the USFI allow it to present its case to its World Congress scheduled for that June. They were again rebuffed, claiming that since the SWP was not an official section of the FI they had no jurisdiction in the matter. [4]

Reorganized Minority Tendency

In 1962 the RT itself splintered. A section that called itself the Reorganized Minority Tendency, which included Wohlforth, Albert Philips, Fred Mazelis and Lyndon LaRouche, split off. This group was more vocal in its adherence to the International Committee, and to the line led by Gerry Healy and the British Socialist Labour League. They also rejected the RTs characterization of the SWP as centrist, which they regarded as "giving up the political battle before it has begun". They were adamant against splitting the SWP, and obeying internal party discipline.[ vague ] At the 1963 SWP convention the Party decided to join the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and remove Wohlforth, who was already taking instructions from Healy, from his position on the Political Committee. The RMT members were expelled in early 1964 after disagreeing with the position the Party took with regard to the actions of the Trotskyist party in Ceylon. The expelled members reorganized themselves as the American Committee for the Fourth International. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fourth International</span> Revolutionary socialist international organization

The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of world socialism via international revolution. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938, as Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Communist International as effectively puppets of Stalinism and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own competing Fourth International.

James Robertson (1928–2019) was the long-time and founding National Chairman of the Spartacist League (US), the original national section of the International Communist League. In his later years, Robertson was consultative member of the ICL's international executive committee.

The Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established in 1973 and disbanded in 1989.

Timothy Andrew Wohlforth, was a United States Trotskyist leader. On leaving the Trotskyist movement he became a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented non-fiction.

The Trotskyist International Liaison Committee was the international organisation established by the Workers Socialist League in Britain and its international co-thinkers in Italy, Denmark, the US and Turkey. It was founded in 1979.

The Socialist Union of America, also called American Socialist Union, Socialist Union or Cochranites were a Trotskyist group that split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1953 and disbanded in 1959. It included most of the SWPs trade union base, as well as others sympathetic to the "Pabloist" line of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International, though it was never recognized as a section of the ISFI.

Richard S. Fraser was an American Trotskyist and the principal theoretician of the doctrine of revolutionary integrationism in the 1950s within the Socialist Workers Party (US), against George Breitman's advocacy of support for black nationalism. He joined the Trotskyist movement in 1934, and was a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the US. He made a study of the black question in the late 1940s, after the Party began to lose hundreds of black recruits. This was due not only to the rise of McCarthyist repression of the SWP, but also, of the party's burgeoning opportunism on the question of black nationalism. Informally, the leadership had even begun discouraging white and black members from forming interracial couples.

The Trotskyist Organization of the United States was a small Trotskyist group active in the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s. The group was founded by two dissident factions which had emerged at the Socialist Workers Party's 1971 convention.

Under a variety of names and within a number of organizations over at least 17 years, the group around Harry Turner, or Turnerites was a presence within Trotskyism in the United States.

The Revolutionary Workers League is a small Trotskyist group formed in the United States in the late 1970s. The RWL still has about 20 active members.

The Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party was an attempt to set up a "united front" of several dissident American Trotskyist groups in the 1980s.

The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping which is the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.

The Lega trotskista d'Italia of Trotskyist League of Italy is an Italian Trotskyist group. It is the Italian section of the International Communist League, or "Spartacist" tendency within international Trotskyism.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Equality Party (United States)</span> Trotskyist political party

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States, one of several Socialist Equality parties around the world affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The ICFI publishes daily news articles, perspectives and commentaries on the World Socialist Web Site and maintains Mehring Books as publishing house.

The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat and the International Committee, reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International. In 2003, the United Secretariat was replaced by an Executive Bureau and an International Committee, although some other Trotskyists still refer to the organisation as the USFI or USec.

The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), earlier known as the International Spartacist tendency is a Trotskyist international. Its largest constituent party is the Spartacist League (US). There are smaller sections of the ICL (FI) in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom.

Michel Pablo was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis, a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a Trotskyist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.

Orthodox Trotskyism is a branch of Trotskyism which aims to adhere more closely to the philosophy, methods and positions of Leon Trotsky and the early Fourth International, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx than other avowed Trotskyists.

References

  1. ↑ Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 pp.864-865
  2. ↑ Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 pp.847-848, 864
  3. ↑ Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 pp.865-866
  4. ↑ Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 pp.917-918
  5. ↑ Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 pp.923-924
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.