Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
First, thanks to the Marxist Internet Archive for putting this resource on line. The Bulletin in Defense of Marxism (or “BIDOM” as we always called it) was never a mass circulation journal. Its press runs were in the hundreds, not in the thousands. It nevertheless engaged in a political discourse on essential issues at a key moment in the history of the Fourth Internationalist movement in the USA which, I would like to suggest, should be of considerable interest to anyone who wants to study the history of revolutionary thought in this country. /p>
The journal was the brainchild of Frank Lovell, a leading figure in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for many decades, and begun by Frank almost single-handedly—handedly—though he did consult with George Breitman, Sarah Lovell (Frank's wife), me and a few others before he began. The first issue appeared in December 1983, produced on the kitchen table of Frank and Sarah's apartment on the Lower East Side of New York, after Frank was expelled from the party earlier that year along with three other dissident members of the SWP National Committee(Nat Weinstein, Lynn Henderson, and me—more on that below).
A little background on what happened in the SWP, the largest and most influential organization by far in the US that identified with the Trotskyist tradition, along with the political divisions within the expelled opposition will be useful at the outset, therefore, in order to understand the birth of BIDOM.
The degeneration of the SWP
The ideology of the SWP had always been based on a defense of Trotskyism as the continuation of revolutionary Marxism after the establishment of the Stalinist dictatorship in the USSR. The party had been founded on this political understanding, its cadre recruited and trained based on that history and that tradition.
In the early 1980s, however (in the aftermath of the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979) the leadership core of the party, centered around Jack Barnes, began to question the theoretical foundations of Trotskyism. In particular they determined that the theory of permanent revolution, which had always been understood (correctly) as at the heart of a Trotskyist analysis, was wrong and needed to be discarded.
This is not the place for a detailed discussion of permanent revolution. (You will find considerable material in the pages of BIDOM itself.) Allow me, however, to note one fundamental tenet of that theory here, so it isn't a meaningless term for readers who may not already be familiar with it:
* A revolution in the twentieth century can and often will begin as a revolution for national self-determination. It can only achieve national self-determination in its fullest sense, however, if it also becomes a revolution to overthrow capitalist rule and establish a workers' state.
This was the key foundation of the SWP's ideology which the Barnes leadership began to reject.
There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with the leadership of any revolutionary organization coming to the conclusion that one of its theoretical principles is wrong and ought to be changed. In my view it is, in fact, a hallmark of revolutionary thought that it continually seeks to revolutionize itself, to supersede previous theory with new and better theory. Revolutionaries who fail to engage in this process tend to turn themselves rapidly into sectarians.
The problem in the SWP, however, was that the Barnes faction did not engage openly and honestly with the party as it attempted to transform the party's theory. Instead Barnes began to change the programmatic foundations of the SWP by stealth, without acknowledging what he was doing. An article was written that left out some important aspect of a particular question, or a statement was issued with formulations that weren't as clear and precise as they ought to be—all the while asserting a complete allegiance to the party's historic traditions.
Little by little the things left out and the imprecise formulations became more and more apparent to more and more people.
One low point in this process was reached in late 1982 when The Militant newspaper published a long article by Doug Jenness commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of October 1917, in which Jenness did not mention Trotsky's name as a participant in the Russian Revolution, merely as an individual who wrote a history of those events. When some party members asked how this could happen, the reply from the Militant editors and other party leaders was: It was a signed article by Jenness, and therefore only his opinion. It was not an official statement by the party and any misstatements or omissions in it were, thus, of no concern.
Most SWP members were not well enough versed in the relevant theory and history to understand how the omissions and imprecise formulations amounted to an undermining of programmatic fundamentals. They accepted the assurances from the Barnes leadership that nothing had changed in the party's theories, that all the objections and complaints were just a smokescreen by a few dissidents who were disgruntled, but who had no legitimate grounds for their objections. Yet even before the publication of Jenness's article enough people had begun to take notice of what was happening for an opposition to develop. It remained a relatively small minority of SWP members, but it included some prominent historical leaders, one of whom (in addition to Frank Lovell) was George Breitman.
In the lead up to the party convention in August of 1981 Breitman proposed a set of amendments to a resolution on Cuba that was being presented by the Barnes leadership. These amendments were not yet explicitly focused on the question of permanent revolution. Breitman's objections to the text offered by the majority were still dealing with aspects that had been omitted from the document and imprecise formulations. But I will argue in hindsight, and I doubt if there are many who will contradict me, that the question of permanent revolution was the issue underlying Breitman's sense that something was deeply wrong with this document, and that it therefore needed correction.
Frank Lovell and I were elected convention delegates from the Brooklyn branch of the SWP in support of the “Breitman Amendments” in 1981, and three other delegates were also elected from around the country.
At this point George was extremely sick due to his debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, a condition he had suffered from for many years. He did not feel capable of serving another 2-year term on the party National Committee. He asked me to make the report for our caucus to the convention, and then to take the position on the National Committee of the party which, by right, we would be entitled to based on the votes his amendments received from convention delegates. As a result Frank and I were both elected to the NC at that convention.
Soon after our election (December 1981) the two of us announced that we were forming a caucus in the NC—based on our concern about a pattern of mistaken positions taken by the party leadership that went well beyond Cuba—which we called the “Fourth Internationalist Caucus.”
The “Opposition Bloc” and the party purge
There was another opposition developing in the party at the same time (actually even before our grouping that consolidated itself around the Breitman amendments), centered in the San Francisco branch. It had two strong proponents on the NC—Nat Weinstein from San Francisco and Lynn Henderson from Minneapolis. Nat and Lynn formally constituted a caucus in the NC too, which they called the “Trotskyist Tendency.” Like the FIC the TT also raised issues related to the theoretical traditions of the party, but it was more focused on immediate questions of the class struggle in the USA, the unions in particular, where the Barnes faction had taken a turn toward decidedly abstentionist politics. The TT advanced its own distinctive position with regard to revolutionary struggles in the Central American countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador, more critical of the Sandinistas, for example, for not taking vigorous steps to introduce a socialized economy after overthrowing Somoza.
Frank and I soon came to the conclusion that Henderson and Weinstein were right about the politics of the Barnes group in relation to the US class struggle, and this created the basis for an alliance between all those in opposition on the NC. We announced the formation of an “Opposition Bloc” [link to platform of OB on MIA] in early 1983, in anticipation of the party convention scheduled for that Summer (which never took place as we will soon discover).
A significant difference of emphasis still separated the two currents within this Opposition Bloc, however: whether the theoretical abandonment of Trotskyism or the immediate question of the US class struggle was most central to the debate with the majority. In addition, as noted, while the FIC believed that policies of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were perfectly consistent with the theory of permanent revolution, the TT insisted that this was not the case. Also, around the same time the Opposition Bloc was forming, the party leadership began expelling individual dissidents on the flimsiest of trumped-up charges. Our difference of assessment within the Bloc also manifested itself in a disagreement about how to respond to the purge of party members that had begun.
The approach taken by Weinstein and Henderson was that the Barnes faction had definitively consolidated its control of the party and could not be effectively challenged. Further oppositional activity would only result in comrades being expelled anyway. And those who remained in the SWP were effectively hamstrung if they wanted to do productive work in any mass arena. From this point of view we would be better off outside the party, where comrades could at least proceed with their mass work unimpeded.
Frank and I had a different approach. We argued that the party leadership was expelling dissidents precisely because it was afraid of a real discussion of the theoretical issues, which would expose their abandonment of a Trotskyist program. The theoretical debate which was so essential could not take place until the opening of the next preconvention period because the party's rules were being rigidly interpreted to prohibit any conversation in any form about party policy by rank and file members outside of a formal preconvention discussion. The greatest need we had, therefore, was for as many members as possible to survive the purge until May of 1983 when discussion would again be authorized. That would allow us to present the strongest possible defense of the SWP's historic program.
So while we had a substantive agreement on most political questions within the Opposition Bloc, Nat and Lynn were relatively indifferent to the purge, even at times encouraging individuals to act in ways that were likely to get them expelled if it was thought that this would make an effective political statement, while Frank and I were encouraging everyone we had any influence over to do whatever they had to do to remain party members until the next preconvention discussion period arrived.
It all came to a head at an NC plenum in May of 1983, when the party leadership found a flimsy pretext for postponing the constitutionally mandated convention (which was a requirement once every two years at a minimum) until the summer of 1984. In canceling the 1983 convention, of course, the preconvention discussion was canceled too. And by the beginning of 1984 the Barnes faction was able to complete its purge of all dissidents, thereby side stepping any meaningful political debate about its programmatic changes.
Part of the process of completing the purge was the expulsion of the four members of the Opposition Bloc itself during an NC meeting that took place in August 1983, when the convention would ordinarily have been in session had the party's constitution been followed. Formally the four of us were only “suspended” since that constitution also prohibited the expulsion of an NC member except by a convention. But in reality we were excluded from all aspects of party life from the moment of our “suspension” in August 1983.
The founding of Socialist Action and the emergence of BIDOM
In the fall of 1983 expelled members of the SWP met in Chicago to discuss what to do. There were two perspectives presented to that gathering, which ran parallel to the division I spoke about above within the Opposition Bloc about how to respond to the political purge of the party. Frank and I supported a motion to constitute ourselves as an expelled public faction with the explicit goal of “finishing the fight with the majority leadership of the SWP” on all outstanding theoretical questions. The primary audience of our faction would be the remaining party members, appealing to them for a proper discussion of the programmatic issues.
The majority of the Chicago meeting rejected that approach, however, and voted for an alternative proposal: To launch a new public newspaper and a new revolutionary organization, which those gathered decided to call “Socialist Action.” Still, everyone pledged that we would make room for both tendencies in the new organization, accommodating those in Chicago who wanted to pursue the programmatic and ideological struggle with the Barnes faction while prioritizing the launch of a new revolutionary collective.
That pledge would soon be put to the test. Shortly after returning to NY from Chicago, Frank Lovell submitted a proposal to the newly-elected Political Committee of SA to publish a bulletin that would address itself directly to those who remained in the SWP. That bulletin would simply reproduce documents that the party membership had been prohibited from reading by the Barnes faction in the period since the 1981 convention. These texts ranged from resolutions that the Fourth Internationalist Caucus and Opposition Bloc had introduced into the NC to a critique of the by-then infamous Doug Jenness article on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Such a bulletin, Frank suggested, was a project he and a small group of interested SA members could produce without taxing any human or financial resources that would otherwise go toward implementing the Chicago decision to launch a new organization.
The PC of SA replied to Frank with a flat rejection of his proposal. The predictable result was that Frank resigned from the new organization and launched BIDOM as his own personal project. As it turned out, the first issue came out only a matter of weeks before the SWP leadership went around the country (in January of 1984) systematically expelling all remaining party members who were known to hold dissident views.
After witnessing the way Frank's proposal for a bulletin addressed to SWP members was summarily dismissed by the leadership of Socialist Action, George Breitman, in particular, was not inclined to join that organization when he was expelled from the party. He had concluded that SA was developing an organizational culture based on the same arbitrary majority leadership style as the SWP. He therefore convinced a group of cothinkers to appeal directly to the Fourth International for recognition as an independent expelled faction of the party, which they called “The Fourth Internationalist Tendency” (FIT). I was not among those involved in that founding of the FIT because I had decided not to resign from SA with Frank. I remained a member, attempting to convince the SA leadership to change its approach and, in fact, live up to the pledge made in Chicago for an inclusive internal functioning for the new organization. It soon became clear that this was a fruitless endeavor, however, and I resigned from SA to join the FIT a few weeks after the FIT was actually formed.)
As one of its first acts, the FIT adopted BIDOM as an official publication, and appointed an editorial board that included both Frank and me. The first issue that names the FIT as the organization publishing BIDOM was No. 4 in March 1984. From then on it was, for the most part, a collective project anchored by the two of us.
Acknowledgements and items to note
I have already mentioned Sarah Lovell and George Breitman as key individuals who helped to conceive and launch BIDOM/FIT in addition to Frank Lovell. There are others who were intimately engaged in these early days—all of whom appear at some point as authors of articles in the journal, but who also deserve an acknowledgment as part of this introduction: Bill Onasch in the Twin Cities and Evelyn Sell in Los Angeles who, along with me, served as the first national coordinators of the FIT. Jean Tussey in Cleveland, Adam Shils in Chicago, Rita Shaw in Seattle, Larry Stewart in New Jersey, David Weiss in Brooklyn, Haskell and Naomi Berman in Philadelphia, and Tom Bias also in New Jersey (who was not among the expelled SWP members but soon joined our project). I have surely left someone, or more than one, off this list since it was more than a quarter century ago and I am at least partly working from memory. My apologies to anyone I should be acknowledging but have failed to mention.
I should also say that in the Twin Cities it was more than just Bill. Seven comrades all together were expelled en-bloc by the Minneapolis branch of the SWP, most of whom subsequently affiliated with the FIT. Dave Riehle and Melanie Benson in particular played important roles in helping Minneapolis to become our strongest base of support outside of New York. And extending my acknowledgment of those who were involved in the early process just a bit further in time, I also want to mention the contributions of Paul LeBlanc and Carol McAllister who joined the project at the end of 1985 and the beginning of 1986 respectively—adding Pittsburgh to the list of cities where the FIT had a meaningful presence.
In a somewhat different context, I also want to mention the Milwaukee branch of the SWP. It was our practice to mail a copy of BIDOM to each branch of the party in hopes that someone might actually take a look at it and pay attention, though of course we had no idea whether that was actually happening anywhere. As it turned out the magazine was being read with interest in Milwaukee, something we discovered only in 1991 when, following the dissolution of the SWP Milwaukee branch, Bill Breihan got in touch with us to let us know that a number of former members were proposing to join the FIT. That experience deeply reinforced my faith in blind faith: Even when there is no visible sign you are having an impact with your ideas, it's worth assuming that you are and not giving up. Jean Tussey used to consistently remind me during this period: Don't forget the molecular processes, which are going on all the time even though you cannot see them.
Some pen names for you to be aware of: Chester Hofla was George Breitman. Stuart Brown was me. Samuel Adams was Jerry Gordon. June Martin was Marilyn Vogt-Downey. Albert Harris was Paul Le Blanc. Barbara Wentworth was Carol McAllister. Claudio Mangani was Livio Maitan. David Seppo was David Mandel. Rafael Sabatini was Keith Mann. David Jones was David Riehle. Melana Marchant was Melanie Benson.
A word is in order about the name Frank selected for the journal. It comes from the title of a book called In Defense of Marxism, which collects all of Trotsky's articles and letters written during 1939 and 1940 in support of a political program in defense of the Soviet Union in World War II, against those who called for the establishment of a “third camp” that proposed to take a stand against both imperialism and Stalinism during the war. Naming the journal after this collection of writings by Trotsky was Frank's way of making a reference to this previous moment in the history of the SWP when a current arose which challenged programmatic fundamentals and threatened to lead the party away from a Marxist method.
Finally, as you read the material in this collection you will see that the early issues of BIDOM were consumed with doing what Frank originally projected in his proposal to the Socialist Action PC: documenting the struggle in the SWP, combating the purge in the party and the specific anti-Marxist methodology of the Barnes faction. Little by little things began to change, as BIDOM increasingly concerned itself with issues in the US class struggle—the union movement, the struggle against war, for Black and female equality—along with international events. There were many important contributions to this process, but I want to single out one for special attention: the work Marilyn Vogt-Downey did to translate a manuscript she had discovered, called “Notebooks for the Grandchildren,” by Mikhail Baitalsky from Russian so we could serialize publication in the journal. Baitalsky's work constituted a stirring and poetic tribute to those who were the victims of the Stalinist purges in the USSR. It still stands out for me as I think back on all that BIDOM stood for and accomplished as one of our most outstanding achievements—giving us a literary component that few if any other left journals at the time could match.
Last updated on 31 May 2020