There have been major changes inside of the US far left over the past year. In particular, we have seen a migration of former members of revolutionary groups into the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). This is not the first time that this type of development has occurred. In 1957, Max Shachtman wrote a major article in which he argued that the place of US Marxists is always inside of the main social democratic organization. Looking at Shachtman’s contentions can be a valuable vantage point to unravel today’s arguments. In this article, which is an edited version of a talk given to an International Socialism Project meeting in Chicago in November, Adam Shils begins that discussion.

Why read an obscure article from sixty-two years ago?

The purpose of the International Socialism Project is to reverse the trend away from classical Marxism in the revolutionary left. One particular form of this trend is the growth of the idea that there is no need for a separate Marxist organization and that joining DSA is the indicated next step. We have decided to open a series of discussions on that topic.

Why on earth would we begin with a long forgotten article from 1957? Aren’t there a thousand more recent and relevant pieces to read? We chose the Shachtman piece for a very definite reason. Antonio Gramsci explained how one should proceed in a discussion. Gramsci argued:

It is not very “scientific,” or it is simply not “very serious,” to choose from among all one’s adversaries the most stupid and mediocre ones, or to choose the least essential and the most occasional of their opinions, and then presume to have destroyed the enemy “completely” just because one has destroyed a secondary and occasional opinion of his—or to presume to have destroyed an ideology or a doctrine with a demonstration of the theoretical deficiencies of its third – or fourth-rate proponents. Furthermore, one must be fair to one’s enemies, in the sense that one must make an effort to understand what they really meant to say and not dwell on the superficial immediate meaning of their expressions. It has to be so, if the proposed goal is to raise the tone and intellectual level of one’s followers, as opposed to the immediate goal of using every means possible to create a desert around oneself”. (Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks:Volume III (New York: Columbia University Pres, 347)

Max Shachtman’s article certainly fits the criteria of a very clearly and carefully written piece, one  that puts forward his view of the relations between Marxism and social democracy in this country.

The structure of this talk is to first look at the context of Shachtman’s article, then to discuss its seven key themes, followed by our response to those seven key themes, and finally our alternative to what Shachtman proposes.

Shachtman’s world

  In the late 1950s Max Shachtman was leading the Independent Socialist League towards fusion with the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas. This was part of a general rightward drift by Shachtman culminating in his eventual support of US foreign policy. During this same period, Theodore Draper wrote his superb book on the history of the Communist Party, The Roots of American Communism. Draper’s work provided Shachtman with the perfect foil to make a theoretical argument for fusion with the SP.

Seven Contentions

Shachtman’s article can be summarized in seven points.

1. There was no continuity between the Communist Party at the time of its formation and the indigenous American working class left.
2. The influence of Moscow and the Communist International was totally negative  from the start.
3. The Communist International was basically a stillbirth.
4. The idea of a separate party is based on the false theory of labor aristocracy.
5. The idea of a separate revolutionary party needlessly isolates Marxists, especially during pre-revolutionary situations.
6. The differences in the socialist movement can be contained inside of one party.
7. All the good mass work done by the CP could have just as well been done from inside the SP.

Based on these findings, Shachtman argues that it was wrong for revolutionaries to split from the SP in 1919, wrong for the ISL to stay outside of SP in1957, and that the ISL should proceed to fusion with the SP (which they did), and in general US Marxists should always be in the main social democratic organization.

The Seven Points Considered

1). There was no continuity between the Communist Party and the indigenous American working class left.

  This is the least important point. Shachtman’s argument doesn’t stand or fall based on this. In a subsequent rejoinder, Draper responded convincingly that Shachtman exaggerates this point and overly stresses the influence of the foreign language federations. Pre-eminent communist leaders such as William Z Foster and James P Cannon certainly had deep roots in the traditions of the American workers movement. Draper speculates that Shachtman probably exaggerates the influence of the foreign language federation due to a need to show the CP as totally extraneous to American radical traditions.

2). The influence of Moscow and the Communist International was totally negative.

This is quite simply wrong. Two examples will bear this out. First, the Black struggle. Prior to the formation of the Communist Party, the best American socialists were certainly anti-racist. But they did not see the profound dynamics of the African American struggle and the centrality of race for US capitalism. The early radicals opposed all forms of prejudice and discrimination, but collapsed the independent black struggle into united activity around economic issues. The Communist International placed the specific struggle against racism front and center in revolutionary work in this country. In this, they were one hundred percent right and contributed a major step forward for Marxists in this country.

Second, ultra-leftism and sectarianism. The early US communist movement was plagued by every form of the “Infantile Disorder” that one can imagine. The International consistently pushed for the legalization of the party, a less shrill tone toward the labor movement, and a general attempt to root the party in US realities. In every dispute on these points, the international leadership backed a serious orientation to the working class movement.

3). The Communist International was basically a stillbirth.

Quite the reverse is true. The period of the first four congresses of the Communist International was a renaissance of revolutionary Marxism. Real developments were recorded in the fields of revolutionary strategy and tactics, on the national and colonial questions, the united front, the ideas of soviets and organs of workers power and the concept of the workers government.

The central leaders attempted, to the best of their ability, to guide and assist the work of revolutionaries around the world. The subsequent decline of the Comintern was due to internal Soviet factors, the road to Stalinism in particular, and was by no means intrinsic in the very idea of a revolutionary international.

4). The idea of separate party is based on the false theory of labor aristocracy.

The theory of the labor aristocracy holds that the super profits of imperialism have enabled the ruling class to have the resources to “bribe” a section of skilled workers with higher wages and thus ensure class peace. Shachtman is right about this theory. It is wrong. There is absolutely no economic evidence that super profits made from imperialist exploitation find their way into the wages of the metropolitan working class. Any attempt to “follow the money’ just doesn’t work.

Furthermore, rather than being inherently conservative, skilled workers can be the most revolutionary. A quick look at Europe at the end of the First World War bears this out. The Petrograd Putilov workers, the Scottish shipbuilders, the Northern Italian automobile and metal workers, and the Berlin shop stewards were at the center of the revolutionary upsurge .

However, the main point to be made here is that there is nothing in the Leninist theory of organization that requires prior acceptance of the labor aristocracy thesis. The concept of the revolutionary party is no way hinged on this concept. Both the International Socialist tradition and the Fourth International have been working to build revolutionary parties for decades without believing in this theory.

5). The idea of separate a revolutionary party needlessly isolates Marxists, especially during pre-revolutionary situations.

Here we are at the heart of the matter. If this is true, then the whole basis of the Leninist scenario collapses. This is the most substantive and serious of Shachtman’s arguments. 

Rosa Luxemburg

Let’s use the example of Rosa Luxemburg to come to grips with this point. Rosa waged a heroic struggle inside European social democracy. For a young woman, at that time, to confront the historic leaders of the Second International, men seen as the direct heirs of Marx and Engels, was an extraordinary act of moral and intellectual courage. She saw the dangers of bureaucratization in the workers movement before Lenin did. She pioneered the concept of the mass strike. But she underestimated the need to consolidate her heroic struggle by organizing her forces. This was reinforced by her desire to avoid exclusion from the SPD, the mass party of the German working class.

Therefore, there was neither a nationally organized left opposition tendency nor a national opposition activist paper nor center. Instead, there was merely control of local branches, such as Bremen, and small circulation magazines. This pattern of very loose and weak organization continued during the war years.

Attempts to right this by the formation of the KPD, the new Communist Party, on January 1,1919 were too little, too late. The KPD entered a period of mass turmoil and ferment without a history of working together, no structure of organized cadre, and no traditions of political education.

Russia and Germany had proletarian upsurges of roughly the same dimensions in the period 1917-1919. One should ask the question: who was better able to navigate the profound crisis in their society – the Bolsheviks or Rosa Luxemburg’s supporters? Just to ask the questions is to answer it. The Bolsheviks organized a monumental working class victory. Rosa Luxemburg had no national lever in the upsurge of 1918. The KPD, from a weak start, was blown by the winds in varied directions. The difference was the prior work and existence of the Bolshevik Party.

Not just is Shachtman wrong that a distinct organization weakens Marxists in a pre-revolutionary situation, the German example shows that the prior existence of a revolutionary organization is the indispensable precondition for proletarian victory.

6). The differences in the socialist movement can be contained inside of one party.

Oh, that it were true! This thesis underplays the constant role of right-wing social democracy in purges and expulsions in the workers movement. One has only to look at the never-ending series of witch hunts in the British Labour Party, such as is going on today against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters ..

7). All the good mass work done by the CP could have just as well been done from inside the SP.

We need a sense of proportion here. Militants in many workers organizations do excellent mass work every day. It is by no means the sole prerogative of Leninists! Many trade unionists would have continued their daily struggles in the workplace regardless of which national party membership card they kept in their pockets. SP members made an honorable contribution to the CIO upsurge.

However, it’s hard to envision the unity of purpose, organization, and discipline that Communist Party militants brought to the CIO upsurge coming from the SP style of organization and work. Furthermore, it’s very hard to envision CP’s pioneering Black work having been done within the framework of the SP. Think of the campaign around the Scottsboro Boys for example.

The revolutionary socialist alternative

We argue that it was right to form the Communist Party. Despite a host of errors, the new organization had a more perceptive view of strategy, a far superior form of organization, much closer ties to the Russian revolution and the great debates and lessons of the Communist International, a much better view of the Black struggle and arguably a deeper orientation to work in the working class.

The crucial point is what is the relevance of all this for today’s struggles?

• We argue that maintaining the revolutionary Marxist tradition is relevant to today’s world. In fact, we would go one step further. It is more relevant today than ever before. The bourgeois state is more violent and repressive and less likely to be susceptible to incremental electoral change than at any time in history. Looming environmental armageddon will be overcome only by internationally coordinated socialist planning.The need for a revolutionary international is obvious in a world where immigration is a daily fact of life for millions, where billions of dollars flow electronically from country to country, and the new social media makes constant global communication the new normal. Following the experience of Stalinism, winning workers to the socialist project requires a clear defense of workers control, workers councils, and proletarian pluralism.

• Differences in the workers movement matter. The debate around the Democratic Party is not an intellectual or historic matter. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the nature of the Democratic Party as the main means by which the US ruling class absorbs and disorients social discontent has changed. This disagreement has immediate implications for our daily activity.

• We continue to see the need for a Leninist organization. One that will advocate a clear position on the nature of the capitalist state, on the need for a socialist revolution, and on the type of organization needed to navigate that struggle against the most sophisticated enemy that has ever existed.

• However these points don’t complete our answer to Shachtman’s challenge. What should be our approach to supporters of reformist organizations? This is obviously one of the most important questions of revolutionary strategy. The centerpiece of our approach is the united front – the bringing together of revolutionary and reformist workers in common struggle against the common enemy. This approach leads to the common experiences and dialogue that will be necessary to change the balance of forces inside the workers movement.

• An independent revolutionary organization engaged in united fronts with reformist workers is not the only weapon in our arsenal. Both the International Socialist tradition and the Fourth International have sometimes found it valuable to work inside broader working class formations and parties. “Entry” is an entirely tactical question that depends on concrete circumstances.

• For us the key point is that revolutionaries maintain revolutionary positions when they join the broader workers organizations. This doesn’t mean shouting “One solution, revolution!” at every branch or cell meeting. It does mean finding the appropriate means to advance a class struggle course in a way that’s understandable to the rest of the activists.

•  One current example can help illustrate this point. We started this discussion by looking at the big move of revolutionaries into the DSA. Our opposition to this course is not the act of joining the DSA. That’s a possible tactical option. Our objection is joining the DSA on the basis on the DSA’s politics on issues such as the “dirty break” and the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaigns. This is where we think that a serious mistake is being made.

The whole of the far left is engaged in discussing these matters and the International Socialist Project intends to make its contribution to these debates.