The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party Index  |  Main Document Index  |  ETOL Home Page


 

Introduction to Preliminary Documents section

The three documents in this section focus on two key questions that played an important role in the struggle to defend American Trotskyism against the Barnes faction in the SWP: 1) the role of the Castro leadership in Cuba, and 2) respect for a pluralistic, democratic functioning inside the revolutionary party. In an important sense, these problems are closely related. The admiration that was developing among central leaders of the SWP for the Castroist-type party — one which functioned without any real commitment to or understanding of the importance of rank-and-file participation in decision making — translated itself into a sense of smug self-satisfaction about aspects of functioning in the SWP that should, in fact, have been cause for concern. The party leadership began to view the rank and file more and more as simply a group whose main responsibility was to carry out decisions made from above, rather than as people who had a responsibility to think and act for themselves.

The real ideological struggle that this book chronicles would not break out in earnest until the 1981 SWP convention. And the intention of the party leadership to abandon all reference to their Trotskyist heritage would not become clear until later. But there can be no doubt that the discussion about Cuba which began in 1978 — that is, even before the Nicaraguan and Grenadian revolutions in 1979 which strengthened the Barnes group's impressionistic infatuation with Castroism — shows that the storm clouds were already gathering on the horizon.

In this discussion the Barnes grouping asserted that the Castro leadership should be characterized as a “revolutionary” current, without qualification. George Breitman disagreed. He countered that it would be better understood as a centrist current. To understand this distinction it is important to appreciate how the term “centrism” has generally been used by the revolutionary Marxist movement. It is applied to many different kinds of currents within the workers' movement. All of them have two aspects in common: 1) they are clearly to the left of outright reformism, but 2) they still lack the necessary ideological commitment or strength of character to act in a consistently revolutionary way.

What is most important here is not the terminological discussion between Breitman and the party leadership per se. Breitman did not receive any support from others in the SWP for his centrist characterization during this debate — including those who would shortly become leaders of the opposition to the Barnes faction, and who even then would probably not have agreed with Breitman that Castroism was best defined as “centrist.”

What is essential is the scrupulously honest methodology with which Breitman approaches this subject. That is something which consistently distinguished his approach from the theoretical improvisations of the majority SWP leadership. Breitman's purpose was to understand Castroism clearly — what was positive about it, what was negative, and what was ambiguous. He was not interested in shading the truth to satisfy some preconceived ideological necessity.

The Barnes group, on the other hand, consistently used their “revolutionary” characterization of Castroism to blur essential distinctions — especially those theoretical points that differentiated this current from Trotskyism. That kind of obfuscation became a hallmark of the leadership faction throughout the subsequent struggle, during which Barnes strove to maintain a pretense that he was not really changing anything fundamental about the SWP's traditional revolutionary Marxist program and method. On both political and organizational questions the leadership faction claimed to be upholding the traditional political outlook of the SWP. That was essential in order to bring less experienced party members along with them, and to keep a layer of others from looking seriously at the criticisms made by the opposition.

The third item in this section, remarks by Tom Kerry in 1979 at a meeting of the SWP San Francisco branch, were first published in a 1984 bulletin for members of Socialist Action, one of the groups created after the purges of Trotskyists from the SWP. The circumstances of Kerry's remarks were explained in the SA publication:

Shortly after the 1979 [SWP] convention, about a week before the SF city election, the branch was informed by the Political Committee that the branch's position on two city referenda — endorsed by the Bay Area district committee — had been reversed by the PC. This was the first such reversal of a branch action in the history of the SWP. PC member Larry Seigle was flown out to deliver the mandate of the NO. In the discussion which followed a number of comrades objected. In response, a leading San Francisco comrade stated that this expression of difference with the PC indicated a “class division” inside the party. This comment flowed logically from the notion advanced in the tasks and perspectives report to the SF branch, inspired by PC pronouncements, that teachers of classes in the branch's educational program had to be “industrial workers” — irrespective of individual capability.... It was in this context that Kerry took the floor.

Kerry's remarks are included here because they reveal aspects of the devious organizational practices of the Barnes clique at an early stage before its political differences with Trotskyism had become clearly formulated. This accounts for his frustration with what he encountered in the San Francisco branch at the time. Kerry later was a delegate to the 1981 SWP national convention from Los Angeles and a leader of the Trotskyist Tendency, which was formed at that convention.


The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party Index  |  Main Document Index  |  ETOL Home Page | Marxists’ Internet Archive