[Marxism] SWP offices

[Lance Murdoch <lancemurdoch@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm in the process of writing my first draft of my encyclopedia
article on the US Socialist Workers Party.  I had written from the
1938 founding to the 1965 walkout of the Kirk-Kaye tendency when I got
tired a month ago and went on to other things.  Now I'm completing it,
and am starting with the expulsion of the Proletarian Orientation
Tendency and Leninist Tendency in 1971 and ending with the office
switch - from West Street to Broadway.

Anyhow I have been wrapping it up and got to the 2003 (or was it
2002?) sale of the West Street HQ and the move to the Broadway office.
 After reading through this parties entire history, this denouement of
the legal entity that still calls itself the SWP is comically sad
(although not necessarily comically sad is the legacy of  the old SWP,
and its effects on various things, and the effects of its various
splinters on things).

One of Mr. Proyect's sardonic posts was especially humorous to me:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=un7t9v0gjtksj3ihe92h2t84anu5h78vtj%404ax.com

"Did you go into garment? Recruit any garment workers? From what I can
glean from the newspaper you flood this ng with, not a single
authentic garment worker ever joined, otherwise there would be
Militant articles blaring this fact.

Btw, any idea what Jack is going to do with the 20 million dollars he
got from selling West Street? Is that salted away in some Swiss bank?
If it is, I can completely understand why the membership is being
coerced to cough up the funds for the move out of West Street. After
all, nobody would want to touch the fortune of the Beloved Leader who
keeps most of the financial records of his sect-cult to himself."

It was funny because on the March 20th anti-war march I met my first
real live SWP'er.  She seemed like a nice person, I don't know whether
she or the SWP is having any effect on things though.  Anyhow, she
said that the SWP had just opened a bookstore in the garment district,
and that they were organizing in the garment district.  She made it
seem like every day garment workers would get off work and go up to
the Pathfinder Bookstore and organize/educate/agitate and that sort of
thing while debating the French Turn and the transitional program.
She said the bookstore was open every night so the workers could come
in and do their thing.

The reality, of course, is quite different.  The bookstore (545 8th
Ave, 14th floor, between 37th and 38th Street) is quite near Penn
Station, so it wasn't much of a hassle for me to pop by and see if it
was open after work.  Which I did.  Quite a number of times.  It was
never open.  I would knock loudly on the door - nothing.  I know its
the right office because its on the 14th floor, says Pathfinder and
has some sticker on the door that says something about Iraq or Cuba or
something.  Once two girls from the next office walked by, I asked
them when Pathfinder was open.  She said no one is ever in that
office.  That chat was after my nth visit to the bookstore in however
many months, so I gave up after then.  So much for organizing the
garment workers for socialist revolution.  Hell, how many millions did
they get from selling West Street?  I volunteer at a local radical
bookstore, and we manage to keep open 3-8PM all week round.  Sure, we
sometimes miss a night, but usually we're good.  Revolution Books (the
RCP) is open at normal hours too.  And we're both on the ground floor.
 Bluestockings is open all the time as well.  They've gone from
anarcho-feminist to just generally progressive to try to draw more
people in.

Anyhow, if anyone knows the answer or more about any of this, I'd be
interested.  Actually, this is like a million questions:

What year did West Street get sold?  2003?  2002?

What year did the Weisses leave the SWP?  Did they call themselves by
some tendency name?  Where did they go next?  They had veered off the
line a while it seems but the break seems to have started in 1964/5.

Was the Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency expelled in 1973?
Were they a Spart entry group, or did they start thinking Spartlike
thoughts or what?  I have very little info on this tendency.

In the early 1980s it looks like there were two tendencies - FIT and
what would become Socialist Action.  Then I get the impression that
there was sort of another group that bounced between FIT and SA, and
may have been involved with Socialist Unity as well.  Was Les Evans
part of this group?  What was his deal?  When did he quit the SWP?  It
seems like pre-1983 purge.  How about Paul LeBlanc, he seemed like he
was FIT associated but was he part of this "third" group?  If it even
existed?  And did the Socialist Action people call themselves the
Trotskyist tendency?

What do you call the foreign SWP-affiliated Communist Leagues?  The
Pathfinder tendency?  The International Communist League?  Maybe
that's why the Sparts call themselves ICL Fourth Internationalist,
maybe the SWP calls its international the ICL Pathfinder Tendency.  I
don't really know.

Was there a Communist Tendency purged in the 1970s?  What the heck was that?

Was Camejo purged prior to the 1983 purges?  Was he part of a tendency
or just him?

What was Larry Trainor's affiliation with the POT and Leninist Tendency?

How about the Vern/Ryan Tendency.  That was LA-based?  Early 1950s?
Had different ideas about the Soviet armies in Eastern Europe (along
with Jock Haston and the British RCP)?  And differences over Bolivia?
Did they join the Independent Socialist League (and when did they do
that if they did?)

Also a lot of things seem to have happened in LA.  The Weisses
recruited the future Sparts from the youth group of the
Schachtmanite-entered Socialist Party if I remember correctly.

How did the SWP (or Revolutionary Tendency at least) spinoff Spark
start?  Were Kay Ellens and James Robertson of the SL a couple?  I
don't really care about that, I'm just wondering how the group
started.  Ellens went to the ICFI conference and took a shine to Lutte
Ouvriere.  I wonder how Spark came about after that, when, what their
RT connection was etc.

I've found various things that talk about the Revolutionary Tendency
(mostly from the Sparts, Internationalist Group, IBT or SEP), but
nothing that is very indepth about the whole split.  I mean a very
indepth thing.  Maybe Wohlforth's book would cover this, maybe I'll
read it.  I'm also curious about the Sparts, the early days and
henceforth.

Oh well, back to editting.  I'm probably forgetting some of the
questions I had.  And I haven't even really examined the work the SWP
did yet, just what the splits and so forth have been.  Second draft I
will be looking more at the various lines, the work done by the SWP,
the international context and that sort of thing.

Fraternally,
Lance

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