Marxist Bulletin No 3 Part IV
Conversations With Wohlforth
Spartacist-ACFI Unity Negotiations
Seventh Session 23 September 1965
- Present:
- Spartacist: Robertson, Nelson, Watts, Mage (late);
(Harper, Secretary).
- ACFI: Wohlforth, Mazelis, Michael, L.
Meeting convened at 8:30 p.m.
- Agenda:
- 1.Minutes
- 2. Popular Election Leaflet
- 3. American Question
- 4. Next Meeting
1. Minutes: The minutes of 30 July were accepted.
2. Popular Leaflet: The revised leaflet on the NYC
elections was accepted. It will be mimeographed by ACFI, and cost split between
the two groups.
3. American Question:
Wohlforth: The three documents which represent our position
on the American Question (1963 Wohlforth-Philips American Resolution; 1964
Bulletin statement on Crisis of American Socialism; 1965 SWP document by
L.) have essentially the same economic analysis from a world point of view and
lead to the same general conclusions. The 63 document was proposed within
the framework of what a party the size of the SWP would do, 1964 document for
an ACFI-sized group, while L. in 1965 has greater elaboration on the
conceptions of the transitional program and united front. Our position is that
essentially capitalism as a world system is in a period of stagnation and
decline, and that the fundamental character of the post-war period is formed by
the boom and prosperity of capitalism based on the rebuilding and development
of Europe and that the period since the end of the 50s has been one of
decline and stagnation. Flowing from this are profound effects on the work in
the U.S., the rebirth of radical activity, militant struggle among Negroes, and
increased student and trade union activity, all necessitating intervention. In
contrast is the position of the SWP Majority expressed in the 63
political resolution and more clearly in the 65 statement. The 63
resolution views the contradictions of capitalism as external to the capitalist
system, that the shrinkage of world markets creates a crisis of over production
(our thesis is that even if the Soviet bloc didnt exist there would be a
crisis--it is not just a reflection of the colonial revolution), and in
65 they admit they really have no analysis and feel capitalism will be
stable for a long time. In 63 their lack of understanding was especially
revealed in section on Negro question which they saw as a racial struggle
rather than being brought into being by the crisis of capitalism, that the
stagnation of the economy forced those in the weakest economic position out of
the economy. They saw no need for the SWP to do anything, and therefore the
central conclusion and heart of the 63 statement was that the work of the
SWP was to be propagandistic. This is the heart of the SWPs degeneration
and centrism, and this document was the most revisionist ever passed by the
SWP. We proposed a line of intervention, recognizing that we must become
participants in the developing mass movement and struggle. What was central to
our 63 document was to intervene and become part of this new
process. Developments since 63 have borne this out. There is now more
struggle, more ferment, and we have been giving more stress to relating
theoretical intervention (not propagandistic) to actual intervention in order
to give leadership to militants in their struggle. The SWPs position is
not and never was one of intervention. Not a question of counterposed
propaganda or agitation because both are wrong, but seeking to give theoretical
leadership to the struggle as it is, on a higher theoretical level than
propaganda, simultaneously on a higher and lower level than propaganda, the
fusion of theory and practice. SWPs conception of a propagandistic period
was wrong. There is no period in the history of man when you can limit yourself
to propaganda, not even period of greatest reactions and I cant even
conceive of such a period. The 63 Majority resolution was wrong and
incapable of amendment because its fundamental thesis was wrong. The SWP has
implemented this line; this is the reason for its degeneration.
L.: I can summarize significance of my document under 4
headings: (1) political standpoint; (2) general political aims; (3) context
which shapes particular form in which document written; (4) to define practical
political perspectives of the document. (1) Central standpoint is resolution
material from the Third World Congress, the point at which strategic
perspective and method were introduced, and the conception of the
inter-relationship between the united front, workers control, and the
transitional method, and putting this strategic concept and method into the
present world, the nature of the real strategic issues in the world today. (2)
The general aims of the document are to determine what are the tasks of
building a movement in this country. The struggle for ideological hegemony over
the radical vanguard is beginning, and this hegemony is the beginning point for
organizing the vanguard forces into the basis of a revolutionary party. This
standpoint is taken from the 1st section Feuerbach of the German
Ideology, where Marx and Engels summarize their method for the first time,
separate it from any of its Hegelian hang-overs. (3) The context is the
conjunctural pessimism and tail-endism sweeping through the entire American
movement from PL to the SWP. All these movements are Bernsteinist in a
fundamental sense: The movement is everything, the goal nothing. (4) The
perspective of the document is the need to build a movement from scratch, to
recognize that there is no party in this country which today represents the
continuity of Leninist struggle, just a series of groups that can fuse and
build a nucleus cadre which can then start to build a movement from scratch.
The reference point is Lenin in 1910. The economic question is fundamental. The
problem of Marxist economics after we have identified material movements in the
basis of society is to translate these movements into social movements in the
superstructure, and to show how developments in the political superstructure
actually change the course of economic events. Two things are true of this
period. It is part of the epoch of decay in which imperialism can only survive
by resorting to various forms of statism--and we are in a particular period in
which U.S. has established hegemony over the world and has enjoyed economic
prosperity based on credit expansion. Marx defines economic crisis
in Vol. 3 when general crisis emerges from such a period, new 1929 threatened,
and bourgeoisie needs new formula to prevent economic collapse. They can either
squeeze more surplus value out of working class at home which means attacking
trade union movement which means undermining their own base, or finding a
solution in the colonial world. But every bit of colonial world operating at a
deficit and a drag on the imperialist economy. Their solution is to attempt to
establish a viable and productive peasantry in the backward countries and lay
the basis for primitive accumulation to create an internal market and lay basis
for capitalist expansion. Since 1959 U.S. has followed policy of managed social
revolutions, general policy of imperialism to support nationalist colonial
revolutions as long as they remain within control of imperialism. The SWP et
al failed to see this and merely sees U.S. and its allies as conducting
struggle against the colonial revolution ... this is not the case. They are
instead trying to circumvent the Permanent Revolution by sucking working class
and peasantry of these countries into train of Ben Bellas, Nassers, etc., and
to use these regimes to lay basis for reorganization for healthy internal
agricultural development, and in turn the imperialist exploitation of these
countries. Pabloites see this as progressive. If colonial revolution follows
the Cuban-Ben Bella model, ultimate end is victory of imperialism. If
imperialists see they are failing to succeed in this policy, they must confront
the working class in their own country. Therefore main task is to show
inter-relationship of forces on a world scale and show why main question is not
colonial revolution but preparation for conditions for revolution in advanced
countries. American Trotskyist movement has not understood for decades
Trotskys conception of united front, workers control and transitional
method. Trotsky knew he was dealing with idiots and bunglers, so he wrote in
1938 an example of how the transitional method is applied to todays
issues which today SWP tries to algebraically impose on reality. The only way
to build a revolutionary movement in the U.S. is to show radicals there is a
meaningful relationship between their personal existence here and now and
activities they can conduct here and now and with a socialist revolution here
in the U.S.
Watts: Wohlforth noted the relationship between the
superficial economic analysis in the SWP document and their abstentionism.
Their basic flaw is that they make no mention of the declining rate of profit.
However, not this single error that has led to the disintegration of the SWP
but their abstentionism has been reflected in their lack of economic analysis.
One other point, on the meaning of the word propaganda. By this we
never meant that propaganda is the objectivist type of stuff the SWP comes out
with, simply commenting on the various progressive social developments. This is
why we were disturbed by the tendency of your 1963 document--merely widespread
activism as a cure for the basic degeneration of the party. The document that
expressed their real degeneration was the Negro resolution--this was the worst.
Robertson: The 1963 Philips-Wohlforth document ran the
anticipated film of economic development too fast, pointed out a number
of tendencies operating to weaken U.S. economy but projected an immediate
crisis and also implied the economy had been in crisis for several years--an
over-acceleration of time. While forecasting a crisis, the 63 document
also clearly projected a crisis of stagnation, i.e., a drawn-out crisis of some
sort rather than a crisis in the accepted sense of breaking of bubble and
widespread world curtailment of production. Why should the definition of crisis
be changed? An attempt to have your cake and eat it too. This has actually in
terms of the capitalist economy an extremely good period despite the weaknesses
indicated in both your and the SWP document. Philips has admitted this when he
says the crisis predicted in 1963 has been postponed but will come--this is
correct. The 1963 PC resolution stated a fairly correct economic prognosis and
correctly called for a general propagandistic approach (though they were
misusing the term propaganda as Wohlforth has misused it tonight):
Stated generally, the economic trend is one of a turn from relative
prosperity through a process of developing stagnation to a pattern of more
precipitous decline. Their intention was of course revealed for
all to see in terms of para 41 and the substitute para 41 we introduced which
linked up a general propaganda orientation with intervening in movements such
as they are and developing bases within them, that we must intervene or be
condemned to sterile isolation and degeneration during the upsurges of the next
period. The Majority rejected this amendment, and we then voted against the
resolution--without the amendment the resolution was no good.
Propaganda is political education, linking up theory with events in
order to provide orientation in struggle rather than merely offering slogans
for immediate mobilization for action. This is related to our perspective, the
creation through a process of splits and fusions of an effective propaganda
group in this country. We are not presently a propaganda group but something
far less. We want to create an organization that can intervene in struggle in
at least an exemplary way. We want to polarize the ostensible
revolutionary organizations and crystallize out those elements with
revolutionary outlooks. To do these things would be a major victory in terms of
what is now possible in the U.S. We also must do our work and participate as we
are now. We object to propaganda only if it is divorced from action. I really
dont know what to say about a good deal of L.s remarks on
transitional method, workers control, united front, etc. These are tactics
undertaken by a revolutionary party, e.g., United Front. Centrists saw this as
a tactic sui generis, but Trotsky pointed out UF merely that tactic
in the appropriate circumstances which extends the authority of the party over
the masses. Without being linked up and subordinated to the revolutionary
party, the united front is nothing. Another point, it would be a mistake
to simply take the colonial revolution in bloc and suggest that the Bolsheviks
and the early CI were simply interested in turning all eyes to the West. Not
so. Some of the most effective work done by Trotsky was raising question that
not only in advanced but also in backward countries proletarian uprisings could
take place, the emphasis being on its proletarian leadership. They were
prepared to make a heavy orientation toward these struggles as a possible
entrance way into what they at the same time recognised was the decisive
theater in terms of the history of the world--the revolution in Europe and
America.
Mazelis: Robertson does not really come to grips with the
thesis put forward in the L. document. He refuses to see the contradiction
between the Majority line in 63 and our line. It is a matter of the basic
economic analysis which is not in that document and which is in our document
and in the L. document in the most developed form to date. Your incorrectness
is shown by your offering a substitute for one page, then rejecting the draft
when this one page was rejected. We proceeded in an entirely different way on
the Negro question, beginning with an analysis of the Majority document as a
whole. Tonight you have stated again that the economic analysis in the Majority
draft was correct. Therefore you should have voted for it. I would like to hear
tonight a detailed dealing with the L. document, but the points Robertson has
raised are not its weaknesses. I think he misunderstands completely the concept
of the united front as put forward by L. Also your feeling that the document
slights the colonial revolution. One of the strengths of the L. document is
that it sums up clearly why Marxists are opposed to the Pabloite conception of
the colonial revolution, and you are making an artificial distinction when you
say Lenins and Trotskys views were different from those put forward
in the document. Watts touched on the question of mistakes in past documents.
Of course we made mistakes, and let me be the first to admit the 1963 document
is far from perfect and has errors from which we can only learn. But its main
line, the economic analysis and call for strugg1e within the SWP, was correct.
Certainly there are instances of trying to overcorrect for petty-bourgeois
background, etc., and we learned through our own struggle that, e.g.,
colonization is good, but its not an answer to the degeneration of the
SWP.
Nelson: The 63 document has now become a millstone
around Wohlforths neck, and he now feels it necessary to admit the
excesses of the period when he was in alliance with Philips. The basic error of
the 63 document was not its economic analysis but that the main working
thesis of the document is the premise that the party need only be reunited with
the working class to reassume its revolutionary role, i.e., assumes the party
to be essentially revolutionary. The document was not presented then as some
profound economic analysis. Our quarrel with it then was not so much that it
presented a qualitative overstatement economically, but a more serious
misunderstanding of the political sickness of the party. Then you posed as the
immediate task getting back into the trade unions at all costs which at
this stage means going into oblivion. In 63 you stated U.S. was then in
crisis and now 2 years later you say beginning to show signs of ...
. You still dont, despite all your talk about method, understand
the relationship between party and class. The 63 document is
syndicalist--get back to the class and the party will automatically correct
itself. This reflects the simple trade union attitude of Philips. You were
wrong in your analysis of the party, the tasks of the party, the relationship
between the revisionism of the party and projected tasks. The Majority document
was not abstentionist because it had the wrong economic analysis but because it
saw no role for itself in shaping the direction of the political movement in
this country. The L. document might be characterised as Left Freudian. If I
wanted to be quite blunt, I would say it had a crack-pot quality. The United
Front is a tactic of struggle to maximize the strength of the working class
while exposing in practice the defective line of false leaders, not what
you say here:
Trotsky warns that the struggle for socialism must
proceed from demands for the material necessities of life. For example,
struggle in the construction workers industries cannot themselves have a
socialist character since the construction workers, in taking over their
industry could not conceivably solve the fundamental problems of its existence.
However, if slum-tenants, unemployed, construction workers, workers in
construction materials industries unite on a common program of housing,
schools, etc., proceeding from consumption, they have broken the back of
alienation in principle uniting their respective immediate material
interests as labor with their material interests as consumers of the products
of labor. Struggles of the working class and its allies which thus bridge the
division of labor of the working class respecting programs of consumption or
other material and social conditions of life exactly embody the key to the
fundamental change required in the competence, morality and combat capabilities
of the working-class and its allies. Such a political combination for common
conditions of life, material, social, political, is a United Front.
Thats garbage, frankly. This isnt a united front, this
is something else; I dont care what you call it, but it isnt a
united front! Throughout you display this same kind of sloppiness in confusing
the theoretical foundations of the party, transitional program and united
front, in a whole series of peculiar--strange--errors, equating workers
state with socialism, posing as the task of the United Front
determining the Bill of production, the State Budget, etc.
The document as a whole has a strong Economist flavor. It is not a
political document. Comrades of ACFI, if you are 99% in agreement with this
document, as you stated before, then you are in bad shape. On your relation of
size to task, this is not a simple equation. We have been able to make a modest
start on what we proposed in our amendment despite the fact that we are several
times smaller than the SWP.
Wohlforth: There is a recurrent theme in these discussions
which is worth mentioning. We always get to the point where Spartacist comrades
take us to task for some past position we held, claiming it is a millstone
around our necks, while at the same time they consider it a matter of principle
to uphold every position they ever took. In our opinion no position we ever
took is a millstone around our neck and every position you have taken is a
millstone because you have shown yourself critically incapable of examining
your own past and your own development. We are developing and evaluating
our past. The 63 resolution in my opinion on the political level
on how to revive the SWP is not as bad as Nelson says, but it does err in that
direction. Since 1963 we have a conscious record of development on this
question, and we now have clearer understanding of the methodological failure
of the SWP underlying their failure to intervene. You have not developed on
this level. You do not share our method. You have a tremendous millstone and we
dont. In 1963 our essential thesis was American imperialism was in
decline and in crisis, and we were right but we dated it too late. The
prognosis of a crisis of stagnation has been borne out. The central position of
the SWP was wrong and was a reflection of their Pabloism, that the crisis of
capitalism is caused by the development of the colonial revolution. They view
the 1950s as a period of revolutionary upsurge and do not see that the
economic crisis is internal within capitalism itself. They lacked a
conjunctural analysis of the development in the post war period, and to the
extent Spartacist supports SWP position they have no analysis. It is the
process, not the speed, that is important, and we can be off by 20 years as
long as we have correctly analyzed the process. According to our understanding
colonial outbreaks are a reflection of crisis in the advanced countries.
L.s document can be understood on a number of levels. To read a page
which is ABC on the question of alienation and say that this is Freudian is not
to understand Marx and not to understand the essential element of Marxist
analysis. Socialism breaks down the dangers of alienation. Transitional
struggle, struggle posing the question of power, has within it the conception
of a new way of organizing society, and this is what workers councils were--a
way of uniting sections that were divided and reorganizing society in a
different way Its not Al [Nelson]s fault he doesnt
understand. It is Spartacists line that everything is program, no theory
or method. Thereby the United Front becomes a coalition of specific parties in
Germany; the transitional program is a document written in 1938.
This approach is a manifestation of the cause of theoretical stagnation among
Marxists, to know the particulars but not the process that produced it and
adapt it to current reality. Spartacist is a left extension of the SWP, and
will remain so as long as they dont break from the method of the SWP, as
long as they dont go back to the history of the SWP and understand it.
Therefore it is quite natural that you support their 1963 document.
Watts: I have 3 points: (1) You may be correct in saying
the 63 Majority document was deficient in that it had a tendency to
depict the nature of the crisis as stemming from progressive loss of markets,
isolation as the colonial world becomes more and more revolutionary, leading to
political and economic crisis in the U.S. But if on this basis you say it
doesnt matter, therefore, what Philips said in the first 20 pages of
your document, which is what you just said that this was the most
important tactical point, then I see you left without any basic analysis of the
American economy now. (2) L. commented that in recent years the U.S. has
demonstrated, e.g., Cuba, greater tactical flexibility with respect to colonial
revolutions. But this is recognized by everyone, that the U.S. is willing to
support confined movements which could build some reasonable economic structure
in the colonial countries and make them even more profitable fields of
development. However, recently there seems to have been a reversal. One must
realize that the Cuban revolution has been successful in creating a state which
is roughly analogous to that in China. The political and social process at work
in the colonial world must be studied carefully, and this task still remains to
be done. We agree with you that an analysis of the colonial world and Stalinism
is a major task, and we are devoting a good deal of attention to this. (3) I
want to support Nelsons charge of L.s general sloppiness. Take for
example the following quotation from Ls document:
The first practical principle of the strategic
perspective is to rid oneself of all foolish notions about the
nobility of the workers or the claptrap that it is merely necessary
for the workers to seize the factories and elect their own government to set
the world to rights. Unless we begin with the fact of the profound moral
corruption of the workers and their profound incompetence in management, we
shall never discover a solution to these key obstacles to socialist victory.
The first and always the most fundamental task and perspective of the strategic
perspective is to change the human nature of the working class as a whole
entirely.
(presumably before the revolution can be successful, if I
understand this correctly, and I do not believe I am taking this out of
context). If you mean by this the working class must be changed in the sense of
realizing the need for and participating in a vanguard party, we would agree
with you. But if you mean the working class must before it can make a
revolution rid itself of its profound moral corruption and learn how to run
factories, gain competence in management, then this reminds me much more of a
humanist approach rather than a developed Marxist approach. As it is written
this seems to be terribly sloppy and misleading to say the least.
L.: If what Nelson has selected is the prime example of the
poor character of the document, then he is on very bad ground. The concept of
the relationship of the working class to power is from the German
Ideology. If you look this up you will drop your criticism on this point.
If you will refer to footnotes 12 & 13 on the United Front, you will find
that the paragraph you find so objectionable is exactly what Trotsky had to
offer on the soviets being the highest form of united front. The concepts of
united front and soviet are identical. The paragraph Watts cited could be
subject to ambiguous interpretation. The working class as long as it is
alienated, i.e., obsessed with the bourgeois way of existence, is incapable of
taking power. However, once workers see themselves as united, once the division
of labor is broken down, once they see various problems capable of solution in
terms of the labor power that they as a single organization represent, then the
mystery of capitalist production is beaten. The secret of the united front is
that when the working class sees itself united, as Marx points out, there is a
qualitative change in its consciousness. United front by its very existence
creates change in the confidence of the working class, and this causes them to
be attracted to us and not the labor fakers. The UF is a primitive form of
soviet which represents a profound social change in the organization of
society. Only when the workers are organized as a united class for themselves
is there the possibility for workers power. Once the working class is united,
the mystery of production is destroyed and the workers say let us resolve
what we shall produce. On what we mean by economic analysis, not what
bourgeois economists mean. Credit cannot solve any basic problem, only delay
and aggravate it. The capitalist manager must try to solve the basic problem by
confronting the working class and reducing wages. This is what we mean by
economic crisis. The capitalist system must now temporarily create vast amounts
of credit, but eventually must either open up the colonial world for a new wave
of colonial expansion or confront the working class in its own country. Not a
question of picking the date but seeing how the ruling class is compelled to
create a social and political conjuncture. Then comes ferment, motion and
intervention. The working class does not take the road of political struggle by
autonomous means, and this is where Philips wrong, this is Dobbs
position, but is impelled to take a revolutionary road, just as has
happened with Ho Chi Minh, a liberal, in Vietnam. A conjunctural perspective is
realizing the problems posed to the bourgeoisie and how the bourgeoisie are
compelled to create the conditions of class struggle, and ultimately create the
class struggle itself. The document emphasizes from beginning to end that the
only solution to this problem is a revolutionary party, and to say it is
economist is to be merely oblivious. Finally, on the question of colonial
policy which you raise, this is the ABCs of capitalism. How does
capitalism progress -- by expanding production, by realizing surplus value and
profit by employing new labor and new means of production. But this has come to
a halt in the advanced countries, and they expand instead in Latin America, in
Africa, in India. We saw this in 57 in Cuba, how consciously the
bourgeoisie supported Castro revolution. The only solution is to create a
prosperous and productive peasantry and create an internal market for
capitalist accumulation, otherwise will have to confront class struggle in own
country, the last resort. On Robertsons remarks, they are irrelevant to
the whole document and its political purpose.
Mage: I disagree on the last point. Expanded production
does not consist of increasing variable capital but constant capital. Marx made
a prediction which turned out not to be true, that expanded production would
also involve an increase in variable capital. In fact, the statistics of
American economy show very clearly there has been a substantial
decrease; over the course of the century there has been no increase in
number of hours worked, while the population has trebled. It is not then the
problem Rosa Luxemburg saw of penetration into non-capitalist areas that is the
sine qua non for expanded production, but investment opportunities
inside the developed countries which leads us to the nature of the capitalist
crisis. There is only one crisis, the one that became open in 1914 and
continues to this day and will continue until the elimination of capitalism.
All one can discuss are what are the stages and development in the course of
the permanent crisis, i.e., the forces of production have outrun capitalist
property relations and national boundaries and demand the reorganization of
society. The predictions of Marx in the 1870s have become concrete
reality and dominate our epoch. If we discuss political intervention, it is not
at all that capitalism is in crisis--this is what is ABC--but what is the form
the crisis is taking right now, here in our country, the concrete economic
prognosis on which we must base our intervention into the class struggle which
of course goes on independently of whether we or the capitalists want it to or
not. L.s explanation of what he means by united front seems perfectly
orthodox, so it would make much more sense if he would use the orthodox
formulation, that the working class must cease being a class in itself and
become a class for itself. Alienation will be overcome by overcoming the
particular forms of alienation which exist today. A socialist revolution
doesnt solve any problems at all but provides an opening to the future
and the conscious impetus to overcome them further. The revolution removes
barriers to the solution of problems. It creates a possibility and a new
consciousness which can develop or wither. L.s concept of alienation is
too limited; it will continue until we have built a communist society. On
L.s concrete economic prognosis, the question of a crisis of stagnation,
the quintessence of stagnation would be, statistically, the American economy
from 1933-41, and one might argue that the period 1957-1963 is comparable.
Stagnation is above all a relative factor, while the decisive factor of
American capitalism is that there have been revolutions in the world, that the
S.U. has established a non-capitalist economy and that after the Second World
War China took the same path. So the problem of capitalism is not the growth
rate at home but above all the historical context. Stagnation does not now
consist of a growth rate of 1% a year, but of a growth rate 2% a year less than
that of the Soviet Union. Except for the last 2 years the U.S. has been lagging
behind the Soviet Union. The reason for this is the classical one of the
effects of the nearly full investment of the available potential surplus value
which would cause such a vast flood of cheap commodities that the rate of
profit would be completely wiped out and a crisis occur, so that the solution
must be to prevent the consequences of a healthy growth. To keep up with the
S.U. means major crisis in the U.S.--this is the contradiction, while to avoid
a major crisis in the U.S. means to fall slowly and steadily behind the S.U.
The solution must be found militarily. If you can put enough pressure on the
S.U. and China, this will force on them such a heavy arms burden that it will
slow their rate of growth. But these arms would ultimately be used and the
consequences would be self-destructive. At the same time the American economy
has grown much more dynamic than even a war budget can control. There is a vast
potential expansion of productive capacity which means that 1/2 the industrial
working class today is working in obsolete industries and will be thrown out of
work at the next recession. While this recession may be overcome, it means that
the prosperous condition of the working class today is an illusion, based on
expansion and not on the market, so that even a relaxation in the rate of
growth can mean vast increase in the rate of unemployment. This is what I think
is in the cards for American capitalism within the next 2-3 years, and only the
radical extension of the war in Vietnam has delayed it.
Robertson: First, as regards points touched on by Mazelis
and Wohlforth re the Majority 1963 documents on the American and Negro
questions. Wohlforth described the American document of the SWP Majority as
their major document, their decisive document, unlike presumably their
Negro and International documents. We see this in the opposite light, that they
were least interested in the American document--it came in late and
trivially, and since they didnt expect any action over this
were able to write some fairly decent words to cover-up. Their action documents
were their Negro and International documents. The Negro document is in our
opinion truly the worst document the SWP ever produced. It repudiates
explicitly through page after page a revolutionary perspective in the U.S. with
their theory of two vanguards and two separate organizations for the black and
white workers. In our opinion it could not be amended simply with action
amendments, and we were appalled by your attempt to do so. But in the least
active sector, over the American Question document, they were able to allow
words to cover up intentions, i.e., something we have always observed with
Pabloites--the lapse into orthodoxy where there is no challenge. In this area
we were correct in introducing an action amendment, and when they rejected it
we then properly voted against the document because we were then voting against
a significant, vital and declared omission in what would have otherwise been a
sufficiently correct document. On the question of the nature of the
capitalist crisis, I use the term crisis not in the sense of the
crisis of the capitalist order but rather the particular character of the
economic cycle. There has for some time been a revisionist tendency, long
associated with Huberman and Sweezy, to attribute the absence of sharply
defined peaks and bottoms to an economic cycle in the post-war period to the
idea that the bourgeois state has developed a sufficient capacity to intervene
so that the crisis expresses itself in a condition of stagnation. I think that
this vastly overstates the effects of the so-called Keynesian measures, and the
usual arguments that are advanced to support this are
impressionistic--unemployment insurance and the like have very little
effect--and the control measures operate too little and too late.
To expect therefore that the nature of capitalist crisis today centers on
stagnation is a way to say that the economy of the post-war world, which has
generally performed quite well, therefore has another kind of crisis. (In a
sense it does have another kind of crisis, such as Mage took up, a certain
ability to transfer crises within the economic sector into the military
sector.) But to suggest that there is some lesser outcome to contradictions
within the economic sector is wrong and suggests too great a modification of
the capitalist order. In fact, the very thing L. mentioned, the vast inflation
of the credit structure, introduces above all the potential for a sharp crash.
A great deal of what has been raised tonight educationally, e.g.,
that the transitional program is not just a document written in 1938, etc., is
simply beside the point, intended to imply that these things are coming as a
revelation to the other side. On the L. document, Im afraid I must
confess that I too have not understood a word of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky
if this is the ABC of Marxism. In fact, in rereading the document, I thought of
a cartoon that is a favorite of mine. Several workmen have just unwrapped a
very large canvas and the art dealers are looking at it. In the middle of the
large white canvas is a perfect black dot. And one of the art dealers is saying
to the other one, I dont care if he is the worlds greatest
painter, I still think hes kidding--this is the quality I carried
away from reading the L. document. As to whether the aim of the bourgeoisie in
the colonial world is to create a prosperous peasantry in order to find a new
base for exploitation -- I dont even want to deal with this. That is a
very original contribution indeed!
4. Next meeting will be 1 October at Mazelis. Subject
will be the 1962 split in the Revolutionary Tendency, and its continuation in
1963-64.
Meeting adjourned about 11:15 p.m.
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