Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 11:57:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Trotskyists and the SP


On Sat, 28 Dec 1996, Jason A Schulman wrote:

> 
> Trotsky can't be wholly blamed for this.  The SP right-wing was just as
> anxious to expel the Trotskyists as Trotsky was to get out.
> 
> Do you think it would have been a better idea for the Trotskyists to stay
> in the Second International parties and "revolutionize" them, Lou?
> 

Louis: I am not sure what you mean by "revolutionize". This type of word
sort of makes my fillings ache nowadays. I advocate LEFT-WING SOCIALIST
PARTIES. To a large extent, the Bolsheviks were merely the left-wing
faction of Russian Social Democracy. So this should not seem as such a
novel idea. The cold split between the SP and the CP has been harmful to
the working-class. Now that the cold-war is over, the reason to have a
"pro-Soviet" model seems even more dubious. A more promising model was the
FMLN in El Salvador in which Shafik Handal, a CP guerrilla leader, and
Guillermo Ungo, an SP parliamentarian, stood shoulder to shoulder. 

> [snip]
> 
> >Soon after the split from the SP and the formation of the Socialist 
> >Workers Party, a fight broke out in the party over the character of 
> >the Soviet Union. Max Shachtman, Martin Abern and James Burnham led 
> >one faction based primarily in New York. It stated that the Soviet 
> >Union was no longer a worker's state and it saw the economic system 
> >there as being in no way superior to capitalism. This opposition also 
> >seemed to be less willing to oppose US entry into WWII than the 
> >Cannon group, which stood on Zimmerwald "defeatist" orthodoxy.
> 
> But the Workers Party ended up being more othodox than the SWP on this
> question, right?
> 


Louis: Absolutely! That is why Trotsky's talk about a scratch turning into
gangrene was so ridiculous. The Shachtmanites raised hell in the
trade-unions throughout WWII and were a model for how revolutionaries
should function during imperialist war.



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