The problem of the labor party

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The question of the labor party has never been a question of principle for revolutionary Marxists. We have always taken our point of departure from the concrete political situation and the tendencies of its development. Several years ago, before the crisis of 1929 and even later, until the appearance of the CIO, we could have hoped that the revolutionary, that is, the Bolshevik, party would develop in the United States parallel to the radicalization of the working class, and succeed eventually in becoming the head of it. Under those conditions it would have been absurd to occupy oneself with abstract propaganda in favor of an unheralded "labor party."

The situation since that time, however, has radically changed, and it would be inexcusable to close our eyes to it. The powerfully developing trade unions, under the conditions of a deepening crisis of capitalism, will project themselves all the more irresistibly upon the road of political struggle and thus upon the road of crystallization into a labor party.

If the official leaders of the trade unions, in spite of the imperious voice of the situation and the growing pressure of the masses, hold back on the question of a labor party, it is precisely because the deep social crisis of bourgeois society now imparts to the question of the labor party a considerably greater sharpness than in all preceding periods.

Nevertheless, we can with sufficient assurance predict that the resistance of the bureaucracy will be broken. The movement in favor of a labor party will continue to grow. Any revolutionary organization occupying a negative or neutrally expectant position in relation to this progressive movement will doom itself to isolation and sectarian degeneration.

The Socialist Workers Party, section of the Fourth International, clearly realizes the fact that by virtue of unfavorable historical reasons its own development lagged behind the radicalization of wide layers of the American proletariat; and precisely because of this, the problem of creating a labor party is placed upon the order of the day through the whole course of development.

The Socialist Workers Party does not, however, limit itself, as do the Stalinists, Lovestoneites, etc., to an abstract slogan for a labor or farmer-labor party, and still less can it admit unprincipled top combinations to occur under cover of this slogan – it advances a program of transitional demands in order to fructify the mass movement in favor of a labor party.

Preserving its own full organizational and political independence, the Socialist Workers Party carries on systematic and irreconcilable struggle against the trade union bureaucracy, which resists the creation of a labor party, or attempts to convert it into an auxiliary weapon of one of the bourgeois parties. Explaining and propagandizing its program of transitional demands in the trade unions, at meetings, and so forth, the Socialist Workers Party indefatigably exposes, on the basis of the living experience of the masses, the reformist and pacifist illusions of the trade union bureaucracy and its Social Democratic and Stalinist allies.

When and how the labor party will be formed, and through what stages and splits it will pass, the future will disclose. Defending the labor party from the attack of the bourgeoisie, the Socialist Workers Party docs not and will not, however, take upon itself any responsibility for this party. In relation to the labor party in all stages of its development, the Socialist Workers Party occupies a critical position – it supports the progressive tendencies against the reactionary, and at the same time irreconcilably criticizes the halfway character of these progressive tendencies. For the Socialist Workers Party, the labor party should on the one hand become the arena for recruiting revolutionary elements, on the other a transmissive mechanism for influencing ever wider circles of workers. In its very essence the labor party can preserve progressive significance only during a comparatively short transitional period. The further sharpening of the revolutionary situation will inevitably break the shell of the labor party and permit the Socialist Workers Party to rally around the banner of the Fourth International the revolutionary vanguard of the American proletariat.