Re: Sol Dollinger again

["Sol Dollinger" <soldoll@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Henny Youngman said. *I enjoyed talking to you, My mind needs a rest.*  Your
wild exaggerations about the Johnson cult is not the object of my  attention
these days.  My book,  Not Automatic-- Women and the Left in Forging the
Auto Workers' Unions will be available May 22. While it does not deal
specifically with the no strike pledge period and the excellent book of
Marty Glaberman who lived and worked with us in Flint, it does document the
history of the Trotskyists in auto.
-----Original Message-----
From: Apsken@xxxxxxx <Apsken@xxxxxxx>
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, April 30, 2000 5:43 PM
Subject: Re: Sol Dollinger again


>Sol wrote,
>
>>  Our Johnsonite friend is very prickly about his ideological leader.
>> Johnson
>>  thought of himself as a Marxist and the Johnsonites held independent
>>  positions in the  1939 Socialist Workers Party, left in 1940 with
>Schachtman
>>  and Burnham after a brief sojourn, returned to the SWP and eventually
left
>>  again.  Johnson was a great writer, a magnificent speaker, a stalwart
>>  defender of Marxism, as he interpreted his writings, but never a great
>>  Trotskyist leader.  His shifts from group to group was an independent
>effort
>>  to build his tendency within the Trotskyist movement.
>
>The last sentence is false. The Johnsonites left the SWP with Shachtman in
>1940 during the fight over the Russian Question. During the war,
Johnsonites
>led the UAW's Rank and File caucus, which mobilized against the No-Strike
>Pledge, and edited the caucus publication. (See Marty Glaberman's book
>Wartime Strikes.) After the war, when the Shachtmanites cast their lot in
>auto with the Reuther group, the Johnson-Forest group negotiated the terms
of
>reentry to the SWP. Under the agreement, specific Johnson-Forest minority
>positions were written and published during an interim period after leaving
>the WP and before rejoining the SWP, after which time they would and did
>strictly adhere to the SWP line publicly, and discipline in action. This
>history is explained in The Balance Sheet of American Trotskyism by J.R.
>Johnson (C.L.R. James). Internally, they did enjoy full minority rights and
>representation, but they did not organize an opposition. When they left in
>1953, they made no internal factional moves, because the decision was based
>on differences over two things, the Americanization of Marxism (an issue on
>which Cochran held similar views), and revolutionary organization (on which
>Lou is hoping I'll stir a discussion, but not yet).
>
>Ken Lawrence
>