Page Auto Workers Listen Vainly to Lewis TWORKERS on FORUM SOCIALIST APPEAL APRIL 13, 1940 pudiated these bankrupts who Warning About Funds equally with the Stalinists, For Anti Nazi Work were responsible for the triumph of Hitler. All money received by the Vorwaerts peoEvery local and central body ple is expended outside Ger(Continued from Page 1)
to earn a living. The workers is the only union in the industry workers are capable of starting affiliated to the AFL is now re many for their clique. the greatest productive wealth instinctively felt Lewis was pro. He spoke vaguely about and winning a fight against the ceiving letters from the Federa Vorwaerts is published freely aver accumulated by mankind. mising the war mongers the un tion, signed by Green, calling up in Paris today, when all other the workers cheered that, but for imperialist slaughter, if only gave not a shadow of indication quent testimony to the militaney American labor guaranteed annual wage but corporations.
The 1937 sit downs are the eloo all affiliated unions to back Gerntan refugee organs there their cheers were snuffed out as the American capitalists would how the union was to take de and determination of the auto the underground German labor are suppressed, as are sup Lewis gave no direct word how give bribe to labor now.
movement, morally and financialpressed all the anti war papers to win jobs and decent living for finite organizational steps to a workers. What more do the leadly of French labor. That alone the millions of locked out toilers. Silent On Labor Party chieve this demand. He mentioned ers want?
tells the story. Reading Vor Lewis pointed out that there splendid idea! International the back yard of their home here the 30 hour week at 10 hours pay, Avenge the Death of on Solvay Avenue, after he slash solidarity! Support the German Lewis attacked the old parties, but did not explain the program Ordinary Demands Pointless waerts is like reading commu are 4, 000, 000 families in America Democrats and Republicans alike. of action to win this fundamental niques of the French war pro with an income of about 26 a But the workers listened in vain and necessary demand from the today that to achieve any kind This Auto Worker! ed his wrists, and he hanged him. revolution!
All auto workers are convinced self to be sure of finishing the But alas, it turns out that the paganda machine. In a word, month, and another 6, 000, 000 for him to bring them to their corporation Editor: job. His 26 year old son, Frank money is to go to the Vorwaerts these socialists fight Hitler families with an income of 63 feet with a declaration announeof security in the planta the or with French bayonets, and a month. But he carefully avoiding the launching of a labor parFrank Clus was 58 years old, Jr. came home and he saw a trail group, that is, the official leadWorkers Mean Business dinary demands of seniority, wage father of six children. He was an or blood through their home and ership of the Social Democratic their sole perspective is to ed saying a word about how these ty, Independent of both boss par.
march home behind these bay millions of families are to fight ties, a party which labor and only demonstration of the situation daily introduction of new maThe mass meetings were a ficient in themselves. With the increase, and the like are not sufauto worker, a good one. He had he followed the trail of blood and party of Germany, who publish Paris. It is onets the pleasure of making a home at the end of it he found his the Vorwaerts now and win from the multi billionaire labor controls.
true that before Hitler suppressed For the purpose of making the share of the national wealth.
that has prevailed in the auto in chines, new methods of decreasfor his children, there was a gar father, dead.
Then Lewis skirmished with dustry for some time. The rank ing the need for labor, the corage in the backyard. When the Frank, the elder, was a fine it, Vorwaerts was the official or principle stand alone. do not gan of the German labor unions add the names of those groups Two faced On War every major problem facing the and file auto workers are eager porations are displacing more 1929 crash came and the layoffs began, Frank was lucky. He did. man. He done his duty to socle as well as of the Social Democ collecting money for anti Nazi The founder of the CIO warned labor movement, but for none of and anxious to fight for and with and more workers, condemring t go in the first layoffs, or the ely. God knows, raising a family racy, but it is also true, and eas work within Germany which are the workers that there are many these problems did he point the CIO. But the leaders are heat them to permanent unemploytant and afraid to direct the ment.
second or third. But in 1931 he of six children. And his reward Aly verifiable: worthy of support groups which who would like to see the Amer way out.
workers militancy in a definite did go.
was to die in that horrible state Not a single group of socialists are genuinely anti war against ican workers shed their blood in Reuther No Better direction, in an organized camEvery year the auto worker He never got his job back. Not of loneliness that must be the lot or trade unionists which re the French too. hope, however, an imperialist war and the auto Walter Reuther, Executive paign to win security for the produces more and more. The mained in Germany to carry that have indicated the principle workers massed and jammed in in nine years, for never during all of suicides. Is there any reason profits of the corporation get bigthat time did all the workers go why his children, and on the struggle against Hitler by which these groups should be the halls roared their hate of war. Board member of the UAW CIO workers from the huge profits ger and bigger with fewer and. worker has recognized the leadership judged before one gives them But the auto workers became spoke in precisely the same man the corporations.
fewer men in the plants.
of the Vorwaerts group. On the money little older and they took back to avenge him?
uneasy and silent when Lewis ner as John Lewis. He pointed The auto workers have demonThere is a way out only the strongest. So yesterday Unemployed Auto Worker contrary, all those who manGerman Socialist said: If you want the workers out only what is known to every strated over and over that despite And that way is ACTION on Frank went into the garage in Detroit, Mich.
aged to get word out have re New York City to fight, first give them a chance auto worker, that the UAW cro the vacillation of the leaders, the the 30 hour week at 40 hours pay!
Minority Resolutions On Organization, Rejected by Party Convention the party and its leading committees, must not be used as a pretext for suppressing discussion on the demagogic grounds that there is work to be done. All party work will be done belter and more effectively and correctly if party democracy 18 jealously maintained. The revolutionary party cannot be a discussion club, but neither must it be converted into Stalinist monolithie organization. Only a rich inner life can make possible a fruitful life of activity in mass work. The party must therefore adopt the following rules. a) an internal party bulletin shall be published regularly and be made available to the membership for the discussion of daily problems party work and policy. b) the party leadership shall be bound to open the columns of the Socialist Appeal from time to time for the discussion of new policies of the party, not in the sense of a factional dispute, but in order to acquaint the sympathizers of the party, with our problems and the manner in which we solve them; in such discussions, party sympathizers should be invited to take part; in pre convention periods, the Appeal should be thrown open to a discussion of all convention problems, with a censorship exercised essentially only over confidential party affairs or irresponsible ternational Semical exaggeration. c) the pages of the New Inbe open the year round to discussions of theoretical and scientific problems of Marxism, of such questions as, for example, dialectical materialism, or the class nature of the Soviet state discussions in which, it goes without saying, the party shall expound and defend its own view on all those questions on which it has adopted an official position.
pendently of the ques The special technical preparation of the party for war, though decided upon some time ago, has gone the way of most of our decisions, more accurately, it has remained a decision on paper, Regardless of what else is done, the first blows of the war can scatter us all in a hundred directions unless this preparation is actually set on foot. Collectively and individually, from top to bottom, the party and youth membership must be impressed with the key importance of this question, and be given the necessary preliminary training and instructions.
MINORITY RESOLUTION ON THE ORGANIZATION AND TASKS OF THE PARTY (REJECTED BY THE CONVENTION. The main task of the party in the present period has been and remains to organize and orient itself in such a manner as to enable it to meet most effectively the decisive test of the war.
The party, and above all the party leadership, has thus far failed to carry out this task.
The present party leadership revealed a complete failure to respond to the problems created by the outbreak of the war. Although the war has lasted for more than six months, this failure has yet to be overcome. For the proposal to set the party in motion on a new footing, corresponding to the new situation, the leadership substituted the policy of dead calm and indifference which has kept the party in a state of paralysis for half a year.
The proposal for a plenum of the National Committee to meet the war situation promptly was resisted for weeks on the most absurd of pretexts. At the plenum and since it was held, not a single serious step has been taken to adjust the outlook and activity of the party to correspond to the war situation. The party press has virtually ignored the Second World War, has given no analysis of it, no analysis worthy of the name of the new Stalinist turn, no analysis of the succession of steps taken in the war by the Soviet Union. It is significant that of all the important radical labor organizations, our party is virtually alone in not having issued a manifesto on the war to this very day. To all intents and purposes, the party continues along its road as if the Second World War had not broken out at all.
This entirely negative reaction to the war crisis has clearly disclosed the existence of a party leadership permeated with routinism and conservatism. This spirit is communicated to the ranks with demoralizing effects. It is reflected in the passivity or rather in the haphazard direction and general lack of initiative of the leadership. It is concerned more with the preservation of its authority and with acting as a court of appeals over the branches than with launching and carrying through systematieally the indicated campaigns of the party.
It displays sensitiveness to healthy criticism from the ranks and little sensitivity to political events. It leaps readily from its state of passivity whenever is confronted with such criticism.
The painful but all important process of making the turn from the past of the movement as a propagandist group to a movement seeking to exert growing influence among the masses, is confinec episodic advances isolated situations and, above all, to resolutions which remain on paper. The Transitional Program, upon every single letter of which the present leadership insisted when it was formally adopted, has been put into effect spasmodically or not at all. The taking of bold steps calculated to speed the party intervention in political events, is frowned upon. All tendencies in that direction are usually attacked as ultra leftist and adventurist, although these are scarcely the most dangerous or widespread tendencies in the party. All the failures and shortcomings of the party are usually attributed to the objective situation.
The results have been a condition that is little better than stagnation in the party, which would be worse were it not for the numerical contributions to party membership made by the youth, and a state of constant friction and bad relationships between the members of the party (and especially of the youth. and the party leadership, which resents all serious criticism and resists it with the stubbornness of a petty bureaucracy.
The more serious the criticism of the party leadership. Its policy and its regime, the more clearly does reveal that it is dominated in actuality by a clique which was never elected by the party membership and which has not justified its existence by a separate political platform of its own. Convinced that its permanent domination of the party leadership is for its best interests, and is predestined, regardless of the political or organizational question under discussion at any given time, it consequently pays only a verbal respect to party democracy and readily violates it when it conflicts with its own clique interests.
It is necessary for the party to lay the greatest stress upon this situation, not to the exclusion of or for the purpose of minimizing the importance of other defects and evils, but precisely in order to proceed to their correction. Without eleminating the stranglehold of bureaucratic cliquism which has imposed the present regime upon the party, it is impossible to adopt and carry out correct policies, to improve the composition and functioning of the party, or to remedy any of the other serious shortcomings of the party.
Only if the party is organized and oriented along the lines indicated in this resolution will it be able to pass the test of the war crisis and utilize it to build up the mass revolutionary party of socialism. indispensable to their own development and at the same time become the most effective organizers for the movement.
II PARTY OF ANTI WAR AGITATION The idea of facing towards the unions and the factories can become as it has been too often in the past meaningless without a party activity which would realistically make possible contact with and success in these fields. Party activity in the trade unions means not so much the elaboration of grandiose trade union policies and maneuvers with other union groups we are far too weak as yet to entertain such ambitions but the popularization of our immediate demands and slogans among the masses of the workers. Chief among these must be, in the coming period, those demands and slogans which are directly related to the war danger which is so keenly and deeply felt by the working masses and the youth. This means the revival and extension of the campaign principle of party activity. It means, above all in the present stage, concentration upon the printing and distribution on a large scale of the simplest and most popular leaflets and cheap pamphlets, each confined to a single slogan expressing and popularizing our program. These must be written and disseminated with an eye towards the industrial workers, and be calculated to arouse them to political consciousness and action and above all to the consciousness that our party is the only militant anti war organization. If the activity of the party and youth membership, and the columns of our press, are organized in this spirit, we shall accomplish far more towards rooting the party among the industrial workers than a dozen formal and detailed resolutions on trade union work. This is especially true of the work among the Negroes as a group which, as the most downtrodden and oppressed, must find in the party a consistent champion. The actiyity of the Negro Department has already shown how fruitful this work can be for the party, and the weak support thus far given the Department must be greatly increased.
III CAMPAIGNS AND RECRUITMENT Because of its essentially propagandistic past, which has fostered corresponding habits, the party has not developed the practise or technique of recruiting. Hand in hand with a far too high standard of political requirements for membership which has served to limit recruiting possibilities, has gone a low standard of activity requirements for those already in our ranks. The campaign principle of party activity can degenerate into a purely literary effort unless it is integrally coupled with systematic recruiting efforts. These efforts, in turn, would be nullified unless we eliminated from our minds the sectarian rigidity with which we tend to approach the potential recruit, that is, again, the far too high standard of political and theoretical qualifications we set for party membership. The development of the average recruit towards a full fledged revolutionary position will take place during his membership and activity in the party rather than prior to it. It is not so much the program as it is written down in our fundamental documents that must or can attract recruits to the party, but the program as translated in the daily political activity of the party that will accomplish this end. In this sense the campaigns of the party must be recruiting campaigns as well. It is in this sense that the mass actions of the party must be conceived. An attitude of alertness and boldness, of seizing on appropriate occasions, can often make such mass actions possible and fruitful. This was demonstrated during the anti Coughlin, anti Bund campaign of the party. Such an attitude should not be decried as baseless in the present objective situation or as adventuristic, but should rather be encouraged.
IV. BUILD UP THE YOUTH MOVEMENT The most important single section of the movement in this country is our Youth organization. The fact that the party leadership has never paid attention to the problems and development of the Youth save, in most recent times, for purposes of factional advantage, is a standing indictment of this leadership. The importance of the Youth organization may be understood not only in the light of its comparatively large membership and the fact that it contributes the overwhelming majority of the party new membership, but above all by the fact that it representa the generation that will do the fighting in the war and, therefore, constitute the main reservoir of revolutionary mass strength.
The party must devote a hundred times more attention in the future than it has in the past to building and strengthening the Youth organization. This requires not an ignoring of its mis takes and defects, but, among other reasons, in order to remedy these mistakes and defects, a comradely and serious attitude towards it and its problems. Up to now the party leadership has had a bureaucratic and contemptuous attitude towards the on those occasions when it has bothered to concern itself with the organization. The critical attitude of the youth towards the political and internal problems of the party has been generally healthy and progressive, which is added reason why this attitude should be encouraged instead of rudely denounced and attacked. party leadership can establish its authority with the Youth, and with the movement generally, only by a patient attitude and one which welcomes criticism. This in turn will enormously facilitate its task of educating and training the Youth for the revolutionary proletarian movement, its task of correcting the mistakes and straightening the line of the Youth POLITICAL EDUCATION OF THE PARTY The course of the present discussion in the party has revealed the need of greatly intensifying the work of revolutionary Marxian education in fundamental principles among the party membership. The educational work of the party has declined notice.
ably in the past couple of years, which is capecially dangerous in view of the newness of many party members and the prospect of gaining still other new members. The ability of the party leadership to base its case to so large an extent upon appeals to prejudice, to faith, as well as the injurious effects of the party leadership theoretical and political helplessness in dealing with new problems or new manifestations of old problems, would be greatly reduced by planned training of all party and youth members in the basic principles of revolutionary Marxism, including, especially, the question of the nature of the party and its role in the revolution. The discussion has also revealed more clearly the ever latent danger of the tendency to regard politics and political or theoretical discussion as a luxury, particu.
larly as a luxury which is counterposed to practical work.
At bottom, this expresses the tendency to remove the practical, daily activity of the party membership, especially in the mass organizations, from political direction and control, which can only mean in the last analysis from the direction and control of the party. While such a tendency is often understandable, in that it represents a reaction against dilettantism or permanent discussionism, it is nevertheless necessary, by combatting the latter, to resist and overcome the tendency referred to. It cannot be resisted, however, by demagogic attacks upon the democratic right, and need, of discussion which only fosters this tendency.
PARTY DEMOCRACY AND COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP The pressing problems of the party cannot be solved indethe question of the party leadership and its regime.
Rather, the first big and serious step towards solving them can be taken only frankly and fearlessly facing the question of the party regime and by changing this regime.
The passivity, routinism and conservatism of the party regime, its political helplessness which borders on paralysis, is only the other side of its bureaucratism. The party leadership is concerned above all else with its authority and prestige.
It seeks maintain these primarily by a clique formation which sedulously nurtures the reactionary idea of the Leader cult, presumably on the theory that an outstanding leader is superior to a collective leadership. Leadership is tested not so much and not in the first place by its policies and actions but, in this conception, by the degree of loyalty to the individual leader. Leading committees officially and solemnly installed by the representative institutions and bodies of the party become hollow and decorative, and have a function only in so far as they agree with or accept the policies of the clique. In consequence, criticisms of the leadership, regardless of their degree of validity, are fiercely rejected as personal attacks upon the clique, above all, on its leader. healthy relationship between the party membership and the party leadership is impossible under such conditions. Equally impossible is the normal and healthy elaboration, application, checking and revising of party policy. Under the best conditions, party democracy thus becomes a set of essentially meaningless formulas.
The sound principle of democratic centralism has been perverted in practise into a super centralism in defense of the party leadership, that is, the clique which dominates it, and anything but centralism in the direction of the daily activity of the party.
The best traditions of the revolutionary Marxian movement in this realm, especially the traditions of Lenin, are defied in the name of a Bolshevism which is equated with the particular interests and needs of the dominant clique.
PROTESTS LIMITATION OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION The preservation of democratic centralism, of party democracy, requires the free and collective elaboration of party policy by the entire membership and a correspondingly free selection of a collective leadership, and, in turn, complete solidarity and cipline in action once a policy is decided upon. The present party leadership has repeatedly violated the principle of democratic centralism. The auto crisis in the party, for example, revealed the existence of a closed clique actually dominating the party leadership, deciding party policy and organization, and making it clear that the regularly elected leading committee was essentially decorative and formal. The suppression of the point of view of the minority in the present dispute, by excluding it from the regular pre convention discussion in the columns of the Appeal, and also from the pages of the party theoretical organ, is a violation of the best traditions and practises of our movement, representing at bottom a bureaucratic fear of confronting a revolutionary opponent before the militant workers.
It is imperative that the deadly grip of this group, which 18 a typical clique because of the fact that, apart from the present dispute, it has continued to maintain itself without a separate political platform, be broken in the party, It monopolistic control of the party leadership eliminated, and the regime it has established replaced by a regime of party democracy. Collective leadership in the party is a meaningless phrase in the present concrete circumstances unless these steps are taken.
Above all, these steps are unpostponably urgent in view of the war danger. The war will put the party to decisive tests.
Among them will be the test of the leadership ability and desire to maintain the utmost loyalty, and the utmost party democracy compatible with war conditions. The party and youth membership must have a greater assurance than it now feels that its leading committees will not abuse their positions and power and reduce genuine party democracy to an even greater mockery than it is today, in time of peace. The elimination of the dominance of the present clique leadership, or its replacement by the minority faction, is not sufficient. It is necessary to introduce into the leadership fresh elements, primarily genuine proletarians and the most qualified youth; and we must not substitute for genuine industrial workers those who, on the most superficial grounds, try to parade as such merely on the grounds that they are part of the proletarian faction in the party.
WANTS DISCUSSION TO BE ENCOURAGED It is necessary, furthermore, to have more specific assurances in the party that discussion in the party, far from being curtailed and looked upon as a luxury, will be encouraged in the future. The fact that discussion must always be regulated by MINORITY RESOLUTION ON PARTY UNITY (REJECTED BY THE CONVENTION)
The dispute and discussion on the Russian question has revealed the existence of two politically frreconcilable tendencies in the party. As the discussion develops in other sections, it is clear that these two tendencies exist throughout the Fourth In.
ternational.
In the Socialist Workers Party, the struggle between the two groups has led to accusations by each side that the other is preparing a split. Whatever opinions may be on the validity it these accusations, it is quite clear that the danger of a split in the American section of the Fourth International is a real one.
It is also clear that a split would prove disastrous to the American section and to the International whole. Every possible political and organizational step, compatible with the fundamental principles of the Fourth International, must therefore be taken to avert such a split. Despite the sharpness and profundity of the differences, it is still necessary to allow the further intervention of events to exert an influence on both groups, to test their positions, and thus to make possible a much closer political and organizational collaboration at a subsequent stage without the risk of a split in the meantime.
It must, however, be recognized that the nature of the differences is such that it does permit of solution merely by the procedure, normal in the movement, of having the convention minority submit to the convention majority. Although both groups acknowledge the irreconcilability of their positions, they both nevertheless declare that the conflicting tendencies are compatible with membership the Fourth International, that is, neither group proposes to expel the other for its political views.
MINORITY WANTS ITS OWN PUBLIC PAPER to take an exceptional measure in order to preserve the unity of Under these exceptional conditions it is therefore necessary the party. The party must extend to whichever group is the mi nority at the convention the right to publish a public journal of its own, defending the general program of the Fourth International and at the same time presenting in an objective manner the special position of its tendency on the disputed Russian question. Under the conditions of the present factional fight, that is given the views which each faction holds concerning the other, such a journal can only be published upon the responsibility and under the control of the tendency itself While recognizing that this is an exceptional measure, the party, which has nothing in common with Staliniat monolithism, must call attention to the fact that the Leninist party and our own Fourth International has on similar exceptional occasions found it necessary to take such a step in the attempt to preserve the unity of the movement. Minorities of the Bolshevik party, both before and during the first World War, exercised this right under unusual conditions, thus often reducing the danger of split; the history of the Fourth International contains many similar instances, most recently in the case of the French section.
Such a solution of the threat of a violent split in the American section is the only concrete one that can be made in the present factional fight.
ve Youth, The Second World War, the war danger in the United States, and the struggle against it these must constitute the central axis around which all our work revolves. The party must be or ganized and oriented in this spirit, because it must stand out in the eyes of growing numbers of workers as the party of militant struggle against war. It is therefore necessary to proceed along the following lines: ROOT THE PARTY AMONG THE WORKERS The change in the social composition of the party cannot be achieved by the mere assertion that such a change is needed.
It is realizable only by planfully directing every branch, and every member in it, to concentration on the trade unions and other mass organizations, and on the factories. In this respect, the youth movement is our most important single instrument. It is composed of comrades with a relatively high political education who, unlike the youth of the prosperity period, are revolutionary minded, militant and devoted to the cause. Despite the evident difficulties, they must be systematically directed to enter industry, in which they can acquire an experience and training