Marxist Bulletin No. 4
Expulsion from the Socialist Workers Party
Document 5
Motion presented to the Political Committee By Myra Weiss
Nov. 1 1963
MOTION: To reject the report of one elected member of the Control
Commission and a representative as unfair, factionally motivated,
and a violation of the limited province of the Control Commission.
1. Comrades are elected to the Control Commission, not on the
basis of their political maturity, to evaluate political positions and
theories. They are elected as people who can be trusted to be fair, above
temporary factional alignments, and scrupulously attentive to facts and their
verification. This report presumes to examine and evaluate political documents,
thoughts, opinions, and to characterize them as loyal or
disloyal. Such an undertaking is beyond the province of the Control
Commission.
2. The evidence of disloyalty submitted in
the report consists entirely of opinions and no one in the history of the
Socialist Workers Party has ever been punished for thoughts that differ with
those of the majority nor ever can be if we are to remain a
revolutionary force.
3. It is impermissible for a ruling faction to use its majority
power to pry into the written or oral work of an oppositional tendency. Any
faction has the inalienable right to discuss freely and in private its point of
view. Furthermore, the material presented by the report does not consist of
faction decisions, but preliminary opinions expressed by individuals in the
course of preparing for decisions.
To violate the right of a faction to its own internal life is to
destroy the Leninist conception of organization. Democratic centralism not only
places obligations on a minority to abide by the decisions of the majority, but
it places obligations on the majority to protect the democratic right of
organized dissension for minorities.
In an epoch which we have characterized as a crisis of leadership,
in an era when socialism suffers from the monstrous tyranny of Stalinism, it is
unthinkable for us to lower our own high standards of democratic procedures.
The world revolution is united today in the struggle for socialist democracy.
If we are not its champions in our own internal functioning, we have no right
to occupy the revolutionary podium.
4. For two of the comrades cited for suspension by Comrade Dobbs,
we are not even provided disloyal quotes, illegally obtained. Where
is the evidence of their disloyalty? Association? Bourgeois law is
at least formally more democratic.
5. Even with selected quotes of selected documents, the loyalty,
not disloyalty of the minority tendency would be indicated. Surely
these comrades know that the demand to see their internal faction discussion
material is a violation of their democratic rights. Yet they show to a
Commission member documents that member has no right to see. Will the repeated
insistence of the minority comrades of intention to abide by the discipline of
the party avail it nothing? If the majority is so anxious for a split, why not
have the patience to wait for subversive thoughts to be translated
into deeds?
6. If the minority surreptitiously recruits youth to the Party on
the basis of its factional line, what is there to fear? Are we not confident
enough of our point of view, and with full control of the public expression of
it, to be certain that we can win the best to the majority? Since when did
revolutionary Trotskyists have to resort to organization means to protect its
liberating ideas? Are we afraid they will recruit so many that we shall no
longer be the majority? That is unfortunately not very realistic; but if it
were, we can hope that we have set a good example of how a majority should
rule.
7. I propose that we apologize to the minority for the unwarranted
investigation and express our desire to collaborate in comradely fashion in the
future for the building of the Socialist Workers Party.
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