Re: The US SWP from Sheppard and Miah, thru to Seigle and Jenness

[Dayne Goodwin <dayneg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

        Some additional materials that are useful in understanding what
happened to the SWP (U.S) over the last 20+ years:

        1) Peter Camejo's "Against Sectarianism: the Evolution of the
Socialist Workers Party, 1978-1983."  Camejo was IMO the most popular
individual leader within the SWP in the latter 1970s and therefore was the
first purge victim (1981) as Jack Barnes began moves to take control of
the SWP.
        "Against Sectarianism" was originally written for the
international leadership of the USFI, the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International (the SWP worked in fraternal solidarity with the USFI;
Camejo still collaborated with the USFI for a while after the end of his
membership in SWP).  _Against Sectarianism_ was also published and
distributed as a pamphlet in the U.S. by the North Star Network.

        2) One of the documents in the published proceedings of the 1985
World Congress of the USFI contains a judgment that the purge of dozens of
SWP members in 1983 - 1984 could not be politically or procedurally
defended and the SWP was advised to reintegrate these members.
        The SWP ignored this advice and severed its relationship of
fraternal solidarity with the USFI in 1990 prior to the next World
Congress.  Meanwhile Barnes had been working to create his own
"International," provoking small splits primarily in USFI groups in
English-speaking countries.

        3) Several central SWP leaders who had supported Barnes throughout
the 1980s were pushed out around 1990-1991 and two of them, Malik Miah and
Barry Sheppard[Sheppard had been a central leader of the SWP since the
1960s], wrote a brief series of articles analyzing and criticizing
the Barnes-run SWP which were published in Socialist Action's same-named
monthly newspaper in 1991 (or thereabouts).

        4)  The Fourth Internationalist Tendency, organized by SWP purge
victims from the early 1980s, IMO carried out the most serious, in-depth,
sustained analysis of what was going on in the SWP throughout these years,
partly because they didn't give up on reforming the SWP (despite being
outside it) until the SWP's 1990 separation from the USFI.  In addition to
the monthly Bulletin in Defense of Marxism initiated in December 1983, the
FIT published a three-volume collection of documents, "In Defense of
American Trotskyism", in the early 1990s:
        -Volume 1: _The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party
1979-1983_ edited by Sarah Lovell.
        -Volume 2: _Revolutionary Principles and Working-Class Democracy_
edited by Paul LeBlanc "focuses on the waves of expulsions which hit the
Socialist Workers Party from 1981 through 1984."
        -Volume 3: _Rebuilding the Revolutionary Party_ edited by Paul Le
Blanc lays out the political views and practice of the FIT in
contradistinction from the theory and practice of the Barnes leadership of
the SWP in the 1980s through 1990.

        Louis (or maybe Jose) would know if any of these publications are
accessible by internet.  I don't know.
        We can now add John Cox's April 15 post to this list sharing his
observations on the SWP from his viewpoint as a member of its National
Committee leadership through the mid-1990s.
        Dayne
 - - - - - - - - - -

On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Jose G. Perez wrote:

> Mike,
>
> You may also want to look at this post, "Ghosts of the SWP Past" and, if the
> archive software allows it, follow the thread.
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg05558.html
>
> I highly recommend Louis's articles also.
>
> Best regards,
> José