Re: [Marxism] Robert Des Verney and Peter Camejo (ungarbled-skipprevious)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joaquin says he did not intend to misrepresent the SWP's history in the
1950s, but he definitely did -- as far as  anyone being introduced to his
comments could tell -- the SWP had the FSP position of integration as the
only revolutionary solution (contrary to the FSP the SWP did not oppose
efforts at integration). 

Consistent with this, Joaquin's article clearly creates the impression that
the party rejected rejected the right of self determination FSP-style  UNTIL
1963, when it began in 1939, and continued and even deepened in certain ways
right through the 1950s. Thus leaving the impression that the poor put-upon
grouping that became the FSP was simply speaking for the party's historic
heritage when it talked opposed this. 

I showed the facts are otherwise. Joaquin accepts this (progress) but
insists that the position was not relevant politically or reflected in
activity in any way whatsoever. This is also false. The SWP never became
SEPARATIST but never became integrationist to the exclusion of
self-determination -- which was the heart of the pre-FSP group's position. 

The response to school integration, the murder of Emmett Till, Little Rock,
Montgomery bus boycott, white  riots, troops to the South, were not based on
acceptance of "revolutionary integration" (which was founded on explicit
rejection of self-determination and the party's positions since 1939. And
with the Black masses struggling forward on an integration line, it was not
the SWP's duty to go into these struggles pushing the right to an
independent state as an issue. The emphasis on the such things as the right
to Black organization, independent Black political action, and even from the
late 1950s on, support for Robert Williams' initial fight re the "kissing
case" (a little Black boy had kissed a white girl, and was jailed) and his
initial assertions of the right to self defense.

All this activity deepened the differences with Kirk, Kaye, etc. They were
certainly not carried out on their line. 

I nowhere suggested, as Dave W suggests, that there had been no change in
party position in the 1960s. It evolved in many ways. But the FSP position
evolved only to get worse on its foundation -- rejection of
self-determination and so on and the perspective that the only radical
change possible in race relations was the socialist revolution.

My main point here was that misrepresenting the "enemy" was never good
revolutionary strategy (leaving aside that the SWP as the "enemy" in any
serious sense at any time is a gross exaggeration). It is not party-pooping
on the joy of exposing the SWP to try to get our facts right.

Joaquin also cites the fact that the SWP always advocated subordination of
the national struggle to the class struggle as supporting his case for what
they were doing and saying in the 1950s, but it is irrelevant. This is
directly part of the Lenin-Trotsky position. Neither of them would have
hesitated to say the same thing.

This is one of the things on which I have evolved. If the national question
is part of the class struggle, to what other class questions is it
subordinate. It seems to me what is subordinate and not subordinate can only
be decided concretely, and that a general formula of subordination, which it
tended to become, becomes a formula for missing the many times when this is
definitely not subordinate.

Remember at a certain point Lenin decided that fighting to prevent the
crushing of Georgian communists who were advancing national rights was key
to saving the revolution. 

Of course from our vantage point, it becomes very easy for us to jump and
down on the heads of Lenin, Trotsky, and the SWP for having entertained such
an idea. 

But of course the error in this thinking in the long run hoves much more
clearly into view during a period when the national struggle is the main
channel through which the class struggle is advancing, and when the
organized working class struggle as such (even in countries like Bolivia or
France, and on quite another level in the USA) is not only massively
disorganized but barely self-conscious. (I personally still don't like
"class for itself" philosophic doo-dah, which sets an idealistic and even
sectarian standard for what the working class has to do to be worth relating
to.)

Finally, Joaquin's attitude to the pre-FSP grouping in the SWP reflects the
tendency to treat all oppositions in the SWP as equally correct, at least
insofar as they disagreed with the SWP leadership (which for some ex-SWPers
seems to play the same role as a permanent Principle of Evil as Al Qaeda
does for Bush et al).  

In addition to the big disagreement on the national question, where they
were worse than the SWP stance and activity in both the 50s and the 60s,
they were Maoists, hyper-critics of Cuba, and their slogan for the antiwar
movement was "drive the GIs into the China Sea."  I am sure that their tale
of persecution during their 17-year history --17 years! They sure don't
make-em like that anymore!) in the SWP as a tendency was filled with cruel
and brutal persecution that belongs up there with the Spanish Inquisition at
least but politically they were strictly chopped liver.
Fred Feldman



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