Marxist Bulletin No. 4
Expulsion from the Socialist Workers Party
Document 12
Letter to the National Committee By Lynne Harper
New York November 18, 1963
National Committee Socialist Workers Party
Dear Comrades:
I have received notification of my suspension from party
membership, not for any alleged disloyal acts on my part but on the basis of a
single sentence culled from a document I once submitted to the Minority
tendency. This document was neither discussed nor voted on within the tendency.
The views contained in it are my own personal opinions, and I take full
responsibility for them.
I would like to call attention to certain statements in this
document which the Control Commission did not see fit to quote in its rather
selective report. In paragraph 1 I state that minority orientation,
objectives, and perspectives in youth work must be formulated within the
framework of a primary perspective as a minority tendency in the party.
Continuing along this line, in the second paragraph of the document I state:
The party not only limits us in the discussion of
our politics within the youth, but prohibits us from revealing this limitation.
We are not even able to discuss openly the relation of the party to the youth
organization. In our work in the youth we must act as disciplined SWP
members at all times, even when SWP discipline is counterposed to Leninist
principle.
In the fifth paragraph I make clear that where minority comrades
in the youth ought to consult on questions coming before the youth
organization, that they do not act as a disciplined caucus or faction in
that work. It seems to me that it should be perfectly clear to anyone
reading my document -- that is, to anyone not utterly blinded by factional
prejudice -- that even though I disagree totally with the distorted concept of
party-youth relations currently practiced by the SWP, nevertheless I
unconditionally advocate abiding by these grossly perverted standards because
of the overriding importance we place on carrying out what we consider to be
not only a necessary but an obligatory political struggle within the SWP. And,
if my document alone were not sufficient to make this clear, I also furnished
the Control Commission with a several pages long cover-letter to the document
written to Comrade Freeman in Seattle at the time explaining why I felt the
document was necessary, outlining the youth and tendency situation in New York,
and explaining several parts of the document in greater detail. But the Control
Commission was not interested in this, or in the obvious intent of the document
as a whole, in their search for an individual tidbit which might sound unsavory
out of context. In my whole document they were only able to find one!
And even then the Secretariat in its motion felt it necessary to change the
words of this sentence, which were that we should seek to work where we
are relatively free from the hindrance of large majority
fractions
to seeking to work as free lancers in areas
where they are unhindered by the presence of comrades loyal to the
party.
As a matter of fact, minority youth comrades have had the chance
to engage in just the sort of work I advocated ever since last February. I am
referring to our work on the Columbia campus. There we built a socialist forum,
sponsored two majority-speakers, held weekly sales, and distributed leaflets on
all party-held or supported functions. All views presented by us in the forum
were in accord with the majority line, and no other person we worked with knew
that we were in any sort of minority in the YSA or SWP. In short, our work
there was a model of disciplined functioning which no one can challenge.
How, then, could this sort of work benefit the Minority? Through the simple
fact that anyone won to socialism by our arguments and our work will naturally
have political respect for the person recruiting them. And once in the YSA the
rabid factionalism, constant organizational injustices, and false, slanderous
attacks perpetrated by majority youth against minority supporters will (and
has) only serve to bind most people we recruit closer to us and predispose them
to consider a minority viewpoint during proper discussions. The very
factionalism of the New York youth majority which I have just attempted to
describe (which, in fact, practically defies description) has made it largely
impossible for a minority supporter to function as a political person in arenas
heavily dominated by the Majority; and as a matter of fact, where possible the
Majority has consciously sought to prevent minority supporters from engaging in
normal arenas of mass work (for example removing Shirley from southern SNCC,
refusing to let Edith join CORE, etc.).
One final word, on the Control Commission investigation itself.
This investigation could in no sense of the word be termed impartial, or hardly
even an investigation. The two comrades conducting the
investigation were Comrades Chester and Tabor. The former is the wife of a
leading majority member of the National Committee and both have been years-long
supporters of the central party leadership, incapable of distinguishing between
loyalty to this leadership (a leadership and line we openly state we wish to
replace) and loyalty to the party. If this is not sufficient to establish the
pre-biased nature of the investigating body, there is also the fact that
Comrade Chester remarked to Comrade Harry T. nearly a year ago (months before
the investigation) that we were disloyal! The investigators assumed from the
beginning that we were guilty and even obviously thought that we
also knew we were guilty, and the bulk of the investigation itself
consisted of attempts to trap us into admitting that we were guilty on one or
another point. This is why I say the procedure could scarcely be termed an
investigation. In addition, sadly enough, the complete lack of
understanding of the partys organizational principles and statutes by the
comrades conducting the investigation is revealed in their report itself. This
report was incompetent even from the point of view of the needs of the party
leadership and has placed them in the embarrassing position of having to go
beyond the findings of the Commission (to twist the thoughts and
attitudes cited in the report into methods and
practices) in their final attempt to get rid of us (after having
failed to drive us from the party in 2 1/2 years of ever-increasing
organizational provocation and harassment).
I have nothing more to say than that at all times I have abided by
the organizational statutes and principles of the party as stated in the 1938
convention decision and in the party constitution, and believe that these
statutes are correct and necessary for the functioning of a Bolshevik
organization, and I protest to the uttermost my suspension from the party.
Fraternally, Lynne Harper
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