John: I share, unfortunately, a pessimism that the SWP will recover its communist continuity. The work it and its supporters carry out does include some good — such as digitizing its publications going back to 1928. However this only serves to illustrate the rightward direction it takes today.
I do, however, cling to the concept of some groups being “part of the workers’ movement”. This refers to their roots and history, rather than them having weight in today’s working class. Social Democrats and Stalinists, blood dripping from their hands, nevertheless do have an origin in the working class. In recent years the SWP itself does not speak of, and rarely directly polemicizes against, other groups that call themselves socialist and communist. The SWP insists it is not part of the “left”. This sounds super-revolutionary, but its effect is to cut off any real political discussion with any newly radicalizing workers or youth.
A self-confident revolutionary group would be trying to get to know, and win over, some of the considerable number of young people that have been attracted to the Democratic Socialists of America in recent years, or even some anti-capitalists who have been attracted by smaller radical groups. Instead, the SWP views them as hopeless apostates, much as the medieval popes viewed the Lutherans. This super-hostility to all opponent groups has been a first step of a number of degenerations, from the NCLC to the SLL. I sincerely hope that the not the course of the SWP.

On a different subject, can you recommend any thoughtful articles on the national oppression of Quebec today? The CL/SWP considers this national question to be resolved. They seem to consider the decisive change to be the elimination of the difference of income. The Militant of 26 May 2014 had a major article:
https://www.themilitant.com/2014/7820/782050.html

Obviously, economic exploitation is a major part of national oppression, but is it the whole picture? I don’t know if the average income of the Ukrainian in 1917 was lower than that of the Russian. But Ukraine was still an oppressed nation. The denial of self-determination itself made it oppressed. Maybe your Socialist Voice blog had coverage of this issue. I do not seem to recall that. I would appreciate your opinion.

Richard, Thank you for your comments. You’ve convinced me that the term “part of the workers’ movement” falls short of grasping the reality of the U.S. SWP. .

You also object to my statement that the SWP is “deeply conflicted”. I was referring here above all to the fact that the SWP supporters’ group, which overshadows its formal membership in numbers and impact, has been for many years committed to a vast digitization project promoting materials that run counter to the party’s present political course.

I am pleased that Fred was so honoured. He deserved that. He was the salt of the earth.

I don’t see here a mention/link to the small memorial for Fred held in NYC three weeks ago; video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn4qg5iZ-E0&feature=youtu.be

I tried unsuccessfully to leave a comment at that youtube site. I may not know how to do it; i still don’t see any other comments there. Here is the brief comment i wanted to add (partly an implicit response to some of the comments in the video:

Thank you for organizing/creating and documenting this celebration honoring Fred Feldman. I got to know Fred a little bit in the fall of 1971 when our paths crossed in northern California. As a relative rookie i appreciated Fred’s friendly and always educational interactions with me; he wasn’t that much older than me chronologically but he was miles ahead in political experience, knowledge and wisdom. My strongest personal memory of Fred is of him working to construct the towering high stage used for the November 6 antiwar rally in San Francisco. I learned that the stages had been taken over by ultraleft groups disrupting every previous large antiwar rally in the Bay Area (i knew that was the case at the previous huge April 24, 1971 rally). My long-held perception and recollection is that Fred’s role in that construction project was akin to a working ‘foreman’; he was physically adept and had ‘blue collar’ construction smarts. The November 6 rally went on successfully, uninterrupted.

There is an aspect to this that you revealed in your account of how Fred was expelled from the SWP in the late 1990s. That the Barnes leadership could so arbitrarily terminate Fred’s membership – and get the membership, in convention, to endorse that entirely undemocratic action – all on the basis of a typically ironic (and I must say perceptive) comment by Fred, doesn’t this speak volumes about not only the regime but the state of mind that prevailed in the party by that point? That surely deserves some reflection; I have my own theory but will address it in some other context.

You don’t say more, nor was there any need to do so in that context. But not surprisingly, your article has elicited some useful comment on the SWP in response. However, I find it hard to accept some of your assertions here.

You say: “The SWP’s… online archive confirms that the party itself remains part of the workers’ movement.” Surely an archive does not prove that the party is today a “part of the workers’ movement,” nor does it prove anything else about the actuality of the party. With much greater justice it could be said that a comparison of today’s remnant of a party with its history up to the 1980s, as documented in that archive, confirms that the present outfit bears little resemblance to its predecessor.

A “part of the workers’ movement”? We used to say that about the Social Democrats and Stalinists, referring to the fact that they acted within the workers movement (not just the trade unions), albeit as counter-revolutionary tendencies. They at least represented real forces and they often played contradictory roles within the movement. Knowing how to analyze and cope with them presented revolutionary socialists with some major challenges. For an excellent discussion of this, see J.P. Cannon, “American Stalinism and Anti-Stalinism,” available on-line.

It is hard to see how today’s SWP (perhaps I should say The Militant since the party is unique in not even having a web site) maintains any kind of presence in the workers’ movement. You say it is “deeply conflicted,” but you provide no evidence. The outstanding feature of the group still calling itself the SWP is that it opposes just about everthing that goes on in the workers’ movement. This is the ultimate sectarian reflex, a forced attempt to differentiate itself at all costs from the militants in those movements – from the BDS movement to (in the Canadian context) Québec solidaire, an anticapitalist party that just scored a major advance in the general election but which The Militant condemns as “pettty-bourgois” or worse.

If it is “conflicted,” it is a conflict between what the party says today (I can’t say it does anything) and what it stood for in a now-distant past. But the remaining handfuls of members, whom one may occasionally encounter, do not appear to be “conflicted” about anything. They live in a bubble of their own convictions that they alone have the TRUTH, as laid down by Barnes and his inner circle. That “truth,” of course may vary from week to week, depending on whatever the helmsman read most recently. Lately, it has entailed a grotesque adaptation to Trumpism. Is that what you mean by “conflicted”?

As you note, Fred’s expulsion liberated him; it brought him back into contact with the really existing workers’ movement, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and until his health gave out it led to some of his best writing. But a precondition for this was his expulsion from an organization by then far beyond its “best before” date.

I refer, sort of, to the “Barnes Cult” thesis. I was deeply immersed in the LSA/RMG fusion and its aftermath. I was seconded to the Central Committee from the Young Socialists but had no ties with either camp. It became obvious to me – from my perspective – that the LSA leadership was a clique posing as a faction. The Canadian franchise of the SWP leadership. The contest was just nacht und nebel. People did or would not see how their conduct was corrupt. The RMG lot lacked such cohesion though given time… Able comrades could not summon up the necessary clarity and discipline to rein themselves in. All the politics, the words (and they were often brilliant), statements, had the substance of Philby’s Section V reports.

So, sadly, Fred et al were the enablers of their own destruction. They waited too long, were blind and held in thrall until it was too late. You too John. Trotsky also failed to understand the corrupting power of clique self interest. He did not see its subtle yet relentless modus operendi at work. He did learn though. So much opportunity lost. So many comrades alienated.

Fred Feldman deserves to be honoured. That he might have human failings does not detract from his due. But Fred failed to see clearly alongwith a whole generation, and together that is a tragic failure.

The reasons — excuses is perhaps a more honest term — for our silence then is a separate discussion. Like you, I want nothing to do with what you term the ““What went wrong with the SWP?” [that] has become a massive industry, with most of its product self-sensitive self-important nonsense.”

There are however many former cadres who have never been animated by hostility to the SWP or its leadership, who are interested in how what we fought so long to build, seems to have lost its way so very badly today.

John, again I hope I am not diverting the thread to subjects other readers do not want to dwell on. If so, you let me know. You, or anyone else, can privately email me at m_boyers@yahoo.com. I have been mutely following your page for quite a while now. Your work on the Comintern, with the resources of Pathfinder, is very impressive. Continuing, with the help of Mike T and others, on a non-institutional basis is downright unbelievable. It is truly a historic service to the working class movement of all countries.

On the SWP: If I remember physics right, a vector is a force with direction and magnitude. The SWP is the heir of a great tradition, properly speaking going back to 1848. In recent years, its evolution — on Palestine, on the colonial revolution, and on bourgeois politics in the imperialist countries — has been to the right. Its velocity is accelerating. I would be very surprised if a big section of it turns around. I see no other organized current ready to take ts place. Although this does not sound very political, it saddens me tremendously.

One factor in the recent politics the most thoughtful of the commentators (I would include Gus Horowitz to that list) has not included is the collapse of the workers states in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and China. The Stalinists had long driven the working class out of politics, and had mangled the image of socialism. That is why the bureaucracy had so little difficulty in destroying the material base of socialized production.

Nevertheless, the previous existence of socialized property, and the objective conflict it faced with world capitalism, impelled these states to provide some assistance to the world revolution. It came with political limitations and side effects, to be sure. But could the Cuban been able to turn back the U.S.and its minions without arms? The Vietnamese, without Surface to Air missiles? Not to mention trade arrangements that were, though not exactly just, not as rapacious as those with imperialism?

One of the factors of the SWP decline has been, not only its abandonment of effective tactics in the class struggle in the U.S., but also its telescoping of that approach to its allied Leagues. The CL of Britain, of Canada, of New Zealand, and of Australia have essentially no publications to address the politics and tactics of those countries. It is a difficult question: How would the Canadians develop one — a monthly or two-monthly supplemented by the weekly Militant? I don’t know. But, aside from anecdotal picket line stories, I doubt the Militant has more than three or four articles on Canadian politics a year. I agree with you, also, on the lack of allowance for differences in the class struggles in the variety of countries. This is even true for the five mostly white, mostly English-speaking, imperialist countries of the International Communist League. Take the rest of the world, and situations are vastly diverse.

Walking out of the FI meant avoiding a political discussion of its retreat from the stand of building combat parties. The International Viewpoint. web page chronicles a collection of various organizations (4 to 6 in some countries), which have little in common, except a vague affiliation to the adjective Trotskyist — sometimes not even that. Sometimes there are thoughtful articles, but it does not seem to be in the process of becoming a world party of socialist revolution.

On ALBA and Chile, I probably side more with the SWP/permanent revolution tradition. I just scanned the Second Declaration of Havana for the quote, “either socialist revolution or a caricature of the revolution,” but I could not find it. The concept seems timely, given the crises in Venezuela and Nicaragua. ALBA was an attempt to develop equitable trade, that was largely based on the then-strong oil economy of Venezuela. The Nicaraguan FSLN, in the late 1980s, and Chile’s UP, in the early 1970s, tried to evade a head-on conflict with capitalist property as a whole. Although the pace is a tactical question, the results of their strategies were disasterous.

Once again, I droned on too long. Thank you for what you do, for the CI work, and for the forum of ideas you provide.

The books are not yet online, but we can hope this will be done some day soon, starting with out of print editions.

This achievement of the SWP itself stands up well beside what the SWP’s former members have done on this party’s history. Apart from the comrades you mention (and Paul Le Blanc) we have done few memoirs or historical studies of the party. The SWP itself rarely refers to its past achievements. But its online archive confirms that the party itself remains part of the workers’ movement. The SWP deserves unsparing criticism, to be sure. but in a spirit of courtesy, objectivity, and balance we expect in discussion among workers’ organizations.

The SWP is a deeply conflicted organization. Its members have a profound experience of working with more-oppressed and super-exploited workers, but the Militant rarely comments on the lives and outlook of its members’ co-workers. The SWP supports revolutionary Cuba, when many Socialist do not, but at the same time the SWP harshly undercuts Cuba by opposing its international policies (e.g. ALBA). The SWP remains anti-racist, in a general sense, but is blind to the racism of Trump and co.

I look forward to the day when an honest and open dialogue becomes possible between socialists inside and outside the SWP circle.

For my own comments on the turning point in SWP history, see

https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/the-u-s-swp-attempts-an-outward-turn-1977-83/

and

https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/causes-of-a-socialist-collapse-the-u-s-swp-1976-83/

I do not want to divert this thread from its original course. “What went wrong with the SWP?” has become a massive industry, with most of its product self-sensitive self-important nonsense. Exceptions to this dynamic include contributions by John Riddell, Barry Sheppard, Peter Camejo, and others. I do not agree with all that these folks say, but they are at least food for thought. Objective factors battered the group — the rout of the U.S. labor movement, the stalling of revolution in the colonial world, the collapse of the workers states, etc. But the self-satisfied uber pride of the party — “more Bolshevik than the Bolsheviks,” its narrow interpretation of party loyalty, and its substitution of obligatory unanimity for homogeneity, has led to its tragic deterioration. Today, its turn towards Zionism and semi-Trumpism make the Militant painful to read. As an alternative, you can look up any past issue of the Militant (a very well organized archive) — not just from the relatively well-funded 1970s, but from the years when it ran 4 or 6 pages as well. Sorry for going on so long.