The Devil that Never Dies: Calumnies in the service of historical falsification

by Alex Steiner

On Sept 27 of this year the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)  published an article with the imposing title, 1982: Marxism, the revolutionary party, and the critique of Healy’s Studies in Dialectics, by Christoph Vandreier, a leading member of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) of Germany. [1]

The article is a transcript of a lecture the author gave at the Socialist Equality Party Summer School of 2023. The lecture included the following diatribe about me and Frank Brenner,

 

North’s polemic against Alex Steiner and Frank Brenner is undoubtedly particularly important. North, in his engagement with Steiner and Brenner, developed further the very conception we discussed during the last hour. The book is a Marxist attack on all the various schools of subjective idealism such as postmodernism, the Frankfurt School, and existentialism. It is a powerful defense of materialism. As David North writes:

The real issue is that you do not agree with the International Committee’s insistence that the fight for socialism requires the development, within the working class, of both a profound knowledge of history—particularly that of the socialist movement itself—and the most precise and concrete understanding possible (by means of ever more exact conceptual approximations) of the objective movement of the world capitalist system in all its complex, contradictory and interconnected forms. What you refer to falsely as “objectivism,” is the Marxist striving to accurately reflect in subjective thought the law-governed movement of the objective world, of which social man is a part, and to make this knowledge and understanding the basis of revolutionary practice. For all your talk about “dialectics” and the “fight against pragmatism,” everything you write demonstrates indifference to the requirements of developing a working-class movement whose practice is informed by Marxist theory.

It is remarkable how in Steiner and Brenner the conceptions of Healy, their theoretical mentor, merge with all the anti-Marxist theories floating around in the universities. This itself underlines once again the importance of the struggle against Healy’s conceptions and shows how important it was to continue this struggle.

Their rejection of the Enlightenment and therefore of reason, their insistence on utopia and a breaking up of the family, etc., are all animated by the same spirit: to detach Marxism from science, from the close study of the class struggle and its history, and to transform it into a beautiful idea that fits the life of petty-bourgeois existence. Marxism is not supposed to solve the crisis of revolutionary leadership, but the sexual problems of Frank Brenner.

We have not had much to say about the WSWS recently. This is not because we think there has been any sign of a positive turn in that organization. In fact its trajectory continues in the direction of extreme sectarianism and open hostility to the working class combined with crude opportunism. This is a combination, a unity of opposites if you will, not as unusual as some may think. As Trotsky wrote of the sectarians in his time, ‘The urge to stand to the left of Marxism leads fatally to the centrist swamp’. [2] We have previously documented the SEP’s occasional prostration to bourgeois nationalism, echoing the opportunist practice of Healy as well as that of the despised ‘Pabloites’. [3]

The reason we have devoted little attention to the SEP and the WSWS in the recent period was because our personal focus has changed from journalistic activity to theoretical and cultural activities, and we saw no reason to follow the twists and turns of this organization. In any case we have said pretty much all there is to say about the WSWS and the SEP and there is nothing more that needs to be said.  But as they say ‘the devil never dies’, and no matter how many times slanders have been responded to, politically and morally bankrupt individuals will repeat the same slanders over and over again.  Furthermore,  the staying power of lies and slanders has grown exponentially with the rise of social media and the world of ‘alternative facts’ they create. Nevertheless the historical record demands a response even if it will only impact that handful of readers who remain committed to the search for truth.

 

Vandreier tosses in his attack on us in the midst of a hagiographic account of North’s battle against Healy’s butchery of dialectics and his “consistent” struggle for Trotskyism.  We debunked this false narrative long ago.

 

I do not have any personal animus toward Mr. Vandreier. I never met him and I have no doubt he is sincere in his beliefs.  He is simply acting on the basis of how he has been trained for political leadership by David North.  The fact that he has allowed himself to be molded into an unquestioning acolyte of North - his lecture is peppered with dozens of quotations from the great man himself -indicates that he is not exactly what one would call a critical thinker. However, while Mr. Vandreier may not know any better,  special responsibility for the evolution of the SEP and its sister organizations into the semi political cult it is today must fall on the shoulders of those older comrades who should have known better. In this connection special mention must be made of Fred Mazelis, David Walsh, Bill Van Auken, Fred Choate, Ulrich Rippert, Chris Talbot, Nick Beams and a handful of others.  Given the absence of any pushback or criticism within the leadership of the SEP and its international partners,  no mechanism existed for correcting North’s errors. Like Healy, he was given a free hand. The result was an abandonment of theory, an unchecked drift toward extreme sectarianism and an organizational structure that does not tolerate any internal criticism.  For decades every National Conference of the Socialist Equality Party approved every resolution brought before it with a unanimous vote.  The SEP is not the only organization on the left that  does not tolerate internal debate, but it is unique in openly bragging about it. [4]

 

The permanent revolution web site has over the years published dozens of essays as well as entire volumes comprising our assessment of David North and the organization he has led since 1975.

 

I am responding to Vandreier not because I care about his personal attacks against me  and Frank Brenner.  Such a personal attack would only concern me if it comes from someone for whom I have some respect. I provide this material rather to demonstrate to those who are able to intelligently reflect on the issues raised, that David North as an essential part of his  gross falsification of the history of his organization, has for decades spread a fictitious narrative not only about me and Frank Brenner, but also about the intellectual history of the Frankfurt School and other philosophical trends of the 20^th century. He has embellished over the years a mythology about his unique role in rescuing Trotskyism from oblivion.  Mr. Vandreier’s lecture, as well as the other lectures of the SEP Summer School are the latest episodes in this decades long disinformation project.  Because some people mistakenly believe that North is a spokesperson for Marxism and Trotskyism, his words and actions unfortunately influence what some people believe Marxism is all about. This constitutes nothing less than a crime against the political and intellectual integrity of Marxism.  

To summarize Vandreier’s allegations against Frank Brenner and me, he claims that:

1.. Gerry Healy was our “theoretical mentor”.

2.  We reject the Enlightenment and reason.

3.  That we “insist” on Utopia.

4.  That we support the breakup of the family.

5.  All the above are expressions of our commitment “to detach Marxism from science, from the close study of the class struggle and its history, and to transform it into a beautiful idea that fits the life of petty-bourgeois existence.”
 

Let’s take a look at each of Vandreier’s claims.

1. What does it mean to say that Gerry Healy was our “theoretical mentor”? Admittedly, when we joined the Workers League in the early 1970’s we were impressed by Gerry Healy’s consistent defense of Trotskyism against opportunism and by his ability to speak directly to workers and convey to them the ideas of revolutionary socialism in a manner they could easily grasp.  David North also commented on this side of Healy in a political obituary he wrote many years ago. To quote North,

Healy possessed an uncanny ability to articulate and convey that conviction, and therein lay his astonishing gifts as an orator. He had the rare ability to move a mass audience. At the peak of his form, he could literally raise thousands to their feet. And this effect was achieved by inspiring his audiences with confidence in the power of the historical principles of the Fourth International and the revolutionary strength of the English working class. [5]

What North wrote here is absolutely true. Practically anyone who joined the movement in this period, including David North, was inspired by Healy.  None of us at that time knew anything about Healy’s abuse of female comrades, something that was only made public in 1985.  This period also predated by several years Healy’s adoption of what he called the “practice of cognition”, the sad caricature of dialectics that became Healy’s focus and which was accompanied by a capitulation to bourgeois nationalism. Is Mr. Vandreier claiming that we were more “influenced” by Healy than David North or for that matter any other comrade who entered the movement in this period?  Is he claiming that we have adopted, and remain faithful, to this day, to Healy’s butchery of dialectics? As a matter of fact we published a critique of Healy’s mangling of dialectics that in every respect is far superior to anything David North wrote. [6] Or is Mr. Vandreier simply repeating the smear campaign against us that David North has prosecuted for the past two decades?

 

2. 2. Mr. Vandreier claims that we “reject the Enlightenment and reason”.   We answered this intellectual slander 16 years ago!  In summing up our discussion of the Enlightenment, we wrote,

…in recent years, the traditional liberal defense of the Enlightenment has been complemented by a distinct form of right-wing Enlightenment boosterism. Proponents of this intellectual trend include such figures as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Harris, in his book, Letters to a Christian Nation, defends a version of Western Enlightenment culture that is distinctly chauvinist and supportive of “humane” imperialism. Hitchens, as is well known, is a former leftist who has become an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush Administration and its “War on Terror”. But Hitchens puts his own spin on his support for the Bush Administration. He claims that the Left has abandoned the Enlightenment (and indeed there is some truth to that statement when applied to most petty bourgeois radical groups) whereas the Bush Administration is defending those very values by exporting the principles of Western democracy to Iraq. In the face of such gangrenous claims to the legacy of the Enlightenment, the task of Marxists, one would think, would be to stake out an understanding of the Enlightenment such that it is clearly differentiated from both the liberal and right-wing narratives. Conversely, an oversimplified and schematized version of the Enlightenment can only lend credence to the liberal and right-wing accounts.  [7]

 

Our discussion of the Enlightenment then, far from rejecting it and  celebrating  irrationalism, was a warning that Marxists must differentiate themselves from the liberal and right wing ‘defense of the Enlightenment’. Failure to do so, ironically, only lends aid and comfort to irrationalism. This is evident on college campuses today where the failure of Marxists to articulate their own narrative of what was positive about the Enlightenment and what was missing in it, is grist for the mill for the rise of “wokeness” and other intellectual rubbish that rejects the Enlightenment and the tradition of rationalism.  Missing a Marxist critique, it is understandable why radicalized college students, who have been taught that the Enlightenment is compatible with and even encourages capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy and racism, would embrace a philosophy of anti-Enlightenment.   This antipathy to the Enlightenment is no mystery when its leading ‘defenders’ are right wing polemicists such as the late Christoher Hitchens and Sam Harris or worse still, the neo-cons in the State Department.  And to be sure, while Marxists should defend the progressive side of the Enlightenment against the “woke” crowd, they should also not forget the various lacunae that characterized the Enlightenment.  It is a fact that misogyny, racism and antisemitism was taken for granted by some of the key defenders of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Kant.

 

3. 3. Vandreier claims that we “insist” on Utopia.  The impression is thereby conveyed that we are calling for a return to the Utopian Socialism of the 19^th century and rejecting the scientific Marxism that superseded it.  All this and related smears by North about our “neo-utopianism” are based on a willful misreading of an essay by Frank Brenner that we published 20 years ago.  The essay is an historical account of the role of utopian vision in inspiring the masses.  Along the way there are discussions of the how the right wing of Social Democracy tried to counterpose utopian vision to scientific socialism, how the history of the socialist movement continues a tradition born in Ancient Greece of  the “good life”, eudaemonism,  how the  role of the family is impacted by changes in the relations of production, and many other issues that should be of interest to Marxists. I would not expect the crude name-callers of North’s entourage to appreciate such a serious intellectual approach to the subject matter – these are after all people who believe that anyone on the left who is not under their control is a member of the “pseudo-left” -  and I have little doubt that Mr. Vandreier never read the essay, but one of the lessons it draws is that the common belief “…that once Marxism had made socialism into a science, utopianism became irrelevant” is mistaken.   Brenner, commenting on this common misconception wrote,

The primary text on which this view is based is Engels’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and there is no question that there, as elsewhere, both he and Marx subjected utopian socialism to a profound critique that was crucial to the whole project of a scientific socialism. But that critique didn’t render utopianism irrelevant, any more than the advent of Marxism rendered Hegel’s philosophy or Smith and Ricardo’s political economy irrelevant. The development of Marxism was a dialectical one, a ‘transcendence’ that terminated the ideologically rooted illusions and limitations of its predecessors, while at the same time preserving – or perhaps more correctly, rediscovering – their positive content. This is widely understood in relation to Hegel, whose influence on Marx was evident long after the latter had settled accounts philosophically with Hegelianism. The utopian socialists, however, have been ignored, even though there is ample indication in the writings of Marx and Engels that the ideas of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen continued to play an important role in their thinking.  [8]

 

To prove the last point, Brenner provides a quote from Marx’s writing on the Paris Commune,

 

From the moment the working men’s class movement became real, the fantastic utopias evanesced – not because the working class had given up the end aimed at by these Utopians, but because they had found the real means to realize them – but in their place came a real insight into the historical conditions of the movement and a more and more gathering force of the militant organization of the working class. But the last two ends of the movement proclaimed by the Utopians are the last ends proclaimed by the Paris Revolution and by the International. Only the means are different and the real conditions of the movement are no longer clouded in utopian fables. [9]

 

4.  4. Vandreier claims that we advocate the breakup of the family.  Such a statement has an uncanny resemblance to the mudslinging of the far right that liberals and socialists are out to destroy the traditional family.  And it has about as much truth value as the ravings of Steve Bannon.

It is but another echo of a gross distortion of our position that North has been spreading for two decades.   The charge is aimed chiefly at Brenner because he has written extensively about the changing role of the family, gender relations and how they are being transformed today. He also discussed the theories of some of the Freudo-Marxists about how the nuclear family structure in bourgeois society becomes an engine of psychological and ideological repression.  Because of his theoretical work in this area, North claimed that Brenner was advocating the dissolution of the family structure and that a revolutionary transformation of society was not possible until a new family structure replaced the one we have.  This is of course complete nonsense.  Brenner was pointing out that it is capitalism, not he, that is responsible for the dissolution of the nuclear family.  What other conclusion can you draw when more than 50% of the population is driven to divorce and break-up, and when birth rates are declining,  as a direct result of economic pressures faced by the working class today? Brenner was also making the point that a fundamental change of the family structure will face a long and difficult path even after a revolution.  It is the same point made by Trotsky in an essay in his anthology, Problems of Everyday Life.

 

In regard to family relations and forms of individual life in general, there must also be an inevitable period of disintegration of things as they were, of the traditions inherited from the past which had not passed under the control of thought. But in this domain of domestic life the period of criticism and destruction begins later, lasts very long, and assumes morbid and painful forms which, however, are complex and not always perceptible to superficial observation. [10]

 

Brenner also recognized, contrary to North’s accusation against us, that revolutions do not and cannot wait for all forms of cultural backwardness to be overcome.  As we wrote 18 years ago,

As for workers being able to make a revolution despite lingering backwardness on matters like the family, there isn’t anything difficult or idealist about understanding how that can happen. A male worker can be a revolutionary and yet abuse his wife. A working-class family can support the socialist cause and yet be homophobic or not want their children to marry anyone from a different race or religion. It is obvious that in any mass revolutionary movement, such contradictions will abound. Of course making the revolution will itself be a transformative experience, but on its own it cannot resolve all these problems.  [11]

 

5. 5. Finally Vandreier concludes that we “…detach Marxism from science, from the close study of the class struggle and its history, and to transform it into a beautiful idea that fits the life of petty-bourgeois existence.”

 

This is an embellishment of another falsehood initially spread by North almost 20 years ago – namely that we have no real interest in the class struggle and the development of concrete political perspectives.  But the record belies this claim.  We have written extensively on a multitude of topics relating to the class struggle in the US and internationally and have often subjected the perspectives of the WSWS to a withering critique.  Any casual perusal of the permanent-revolution web site will bear that out. But this claim made by North about our Ivory Tower indifference to the class struggle was never more than a distraction to turn attention away from the focus of our concern over the years.  And that was our insistence, following in the footsteps of Trotsky, that training in dialectics is essential to the building of a revolutionary movement. We have maintained and still maintain that the abandonment of training in dialectics, and for that matter any education in even the basics of Marxism, is the reason why the SEP and its sister organizations have turned into sclerotic sectarian cults.

 

We anticipated their overt anti-unionism long ago when we undertook a theoretical review of their understanding of unions as part of our critique of their actions during the New York transit workers strike of 2005. [12]

 

The riposte about our being drawn to the comforts of a middle-class lifestyle is one of those afterthoughts thrown in to poison the well against us. Indeed we have had families and careers and enjoy the modest pleasures we are able to afford, but we have never travelled in business class as North has done.  Nor have we had the luxury of travelling all over the world to attend film festivals as David Walsh does.

 

As a parting shot there is the ad hominem outburst by Mr. Vandreier about Frank Brenner’s “sexual problems.”  If writing about the changing roles of the family, gender and sex as Brenner has done, qualifies one as having sexual problems, then one would have to add Frederick Engels  to that category as even a cursory look at his study of the family will bear out. [13]

We will further address some of the more egregious historical falsifications contained in Vandreier’s lecture in a subsequent installment.

 

 

 

 

---

[1] 1982: Marxism, the revolutionary party, and the critique of Healy’s Studies in Dialectics

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/28/heal-s28.html

 

[2] Sectarianism, Centrism and the Fourth International, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2009/05/sectarianism-centrism-and-fourth.html

[3] See for instance our essay, The WSWS as a Left Apologist for Bourgeois Nationalism in Iraq, https://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/mwhh_ch02.pdf

[4] See our essay, Distorting the history of the International Committee, https://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/distorting_history.pdf

[5] Gerry Healy and his Place in the History of the Fourth International  https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/healy/11.html

[6] See A Charlatan Exposed https://permanent-revolution.org/archives/charlatan_exposed.pdf

[7] Marxism without its head and its heart  https://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/mwhh_ch06.pdf

[8] To know a thing is to know its end  https://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/to_know.pdf

[9] Marx and Engels, On the Paris Commune, pages 165-6.

[10] From the Old Family to the New, July 13, 1923, in Problems of Everyday Life, p. 39, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/women/life/23_07_13.htm

[11] Marxism without its head or its heart p. 219  https://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/mwhh_ch08.pdf

[12] Marxism without its head of its heart p. 132-135 https://permanent-revolution.org/polemics/mwhh_ch05.pdf

[13] Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, International Publishers, 1972,

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm

 

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Trotsky’s grandson Esteban (Seva) Volkov

Seva with Trotsky and Natalia Sedova in Coyoacán. [Photo: Museo Casa de León Trotsky]

Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban (Seva) Volkov, died on June 16, 2023 at the age of 97.  I am deeply saddened by the death of Esteban.  He was a remarkable person who maintained the legacy of his grandfather his entire life while also creating a successful career in a new country with a new language and raising a family.  His greatest accomplishment was the establishment of the Trotsky Museum in Coyoacán Mexico and its survival in the teeth of opposition by the local Stalinists and government bureaucrats.

It is difficult to imagine the horrors that the young Seva experienced.  He was barely 14 years old when his grandfather was assassinated. By that time, he had lived through the arrest and subsequent murder at the hands of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, of his father Platon Volkov, a leading member of the Left Opposition.  His mother, Trotsky’s daughter from his first marriage, Zinaida, committed suicide while trying to get medical attention for her depression and tuberculosis in Germany.   Seva was taken in by his uncle, Trotsky’s older son, Leon Sedov.  Sedov was essentially Trotsky’s ambassador to the supporters of the Left Opposition in Europe and was the linchpin for the creation of the Fourth International. Sedov was himself assassinated by Stalinist agents in France in 1938. Seva was reunited with his grandparents in Mexico only after a bitter custody dispute following the assassination of his uncle. For a young child these series of shocks could be nothing less than a holocaust on an individual scale.  It is therefore all the more remarkable that Seva did not grow up to be a bitter and depressed individual whose spirit was broken. Instead, Seva was imbued with the same optimism about the future of humanity that characterized his grandfather.

I was present at a number of conferences in the U.S. where Esteban spoke but I only had one brief personal exchange with him.  That was at a conference on The Legacy of Leon Trotsky and U.S. Trotskyism held at Fordham University in New York in July of 2008. I spoke to him at the very end of that conference and only had time to express my appreciation of the work he had done in keeping the flame of his grandfather’s legacy alive. Even then, at the advanced age of 82, Esteban had the demeanor of a tall and handsome man whose eyes expressed both his resolve and his generosity. He looked far younger than his years. On that occasion my then soon to be partner, Nina, gave Esteban a flower and he graciously kissed her, in the manner of old-world etiquette.

I made trips to Coyoacán on three different occasions.  On one of those trips with my colleague Frank Brenner, we had the good fortune to be escorted by a guide who had extensive knowledge of the background behind the struggle to maintain the museum against continuous attempts by the Stalinists in Mexico to shut it down. 

The last time I saw Esteban was virtually, through a remote video conference at the First International Conference on Trotsky held in Havana, Cuba in May of 2019.  He was interviewed from the Trotsky Museum by Alan Woods, a long-time scholar of Trotskyism, a leader of International Marxist Tendency and one of driving forces behind the new edition of Trotsky’s biography of Stalin.  (See our article on announcement of the publication of the book on Stalin, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2016/08/76th-anniversary-of-trotskys.html and our summary of the last day of the Conference on Trotsky in Havana, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2019/06/first-international-academic-meeting-on.html ).  In addition to the interview with Esteban, the Trotsky Museum was one of key backers of the conference in Havana.

 

An obituary and two interviews conducted by Alan Benjamin with Esteban Volkov on the subject of Trotsky’s assassination can be found by following this link : https://socialistorganizer.org/2023/06/17/esteban-seva-volkov-trotskys-grandson-1926-2023/

Esteban Volkov was the last living witness to Trotsky’s assassination. His presence will be missed.

Alex Steiner, June 18, 2023

Esteban (Seva) Volkov in 2012

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A Celebration in New York

by Alex Steiner

I walked down to the Criminal Court building in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon to witness the spectacle of the arrest and arraignment of former President Donald Trump.  I was wondering how far I could walk before coming up against the police barricades.  I didn’t have to walk very far to find out.  There was a crowd of probably a thousand or so just North of the court house.  Navigating my way to the front I soon ran into the expected police barricades.  No one, including journalists,  who were not on a special list, could get through the police lines.  This crowd, let’s call them the “northern encampment”, there being a similar group south of the court house, seemed to be mostly curious rather than overtly political.  One was a tourist from France who was comparing this event, somewhat dismissively, to the demonstrations against Macron in Paris.   There  were  a good number of people there who were of no strong political persuasion but made the pilgrimage downtown just to see Trump taken down.  I have to admit that I could empathize with them.

Others just came out because it was a beautiful spring day in New York and a great occasion to participate in a kind of street theater that New York is known for.   There were of course a few Trump supporters, but they were a tiny, if very noisy, minority.  The mass mobilization of violent MAGA shock troops in the heart of liberal New York, the nightmare scenario of MSNBC and the New York Police Department, never materialized.  I later learned that Marjorie Taylor-Greene made a brief appearance but left after a few minutes when she realized the expected MAGA crowd never showed up.

I watched a trio of what appeared to be graduates of a Connecticut prep school sitting in a rickshaw, yelling “Trump, Trump, Trump” over and over again.  A single African American protester yelled back, “Fuck Trump, Fuck Trump, Fuck Trump.” A sign peeking out behind the heads of the trio proclaimed them as “EXTREME MAGA”.  It reminded me of the label on chocolate bars that try to distinguish themselves by adding the word “Extreme” to  “Dark Chocolate”. The owner of the rickshaw, an older Asian gentleman, did not look very happy hosting these snot-nosed wealthy kids from the suburbs.

Not making any progress in my attempt to get to the front of the court house from the northern encampment I decided to try the view from the West of the court building. I walked over to a green space called Collect Pond Park which was filled to capacity by a crowd of protesters and onlookers.  This site sits on top of a natural spring and in the 17^th and 18^th century was a source of clean drinking water for the island of Manhattan. It also served as a pristine natural landscape in the middle of downtown Manhattan. Families would come there for picnics.  By the early 19^th century however the pond became heavily polluted and morphed into a disgusting sewer.  In one of New York’s earliest sanitation projects, the pond was paved over and eventually turned into a small park in the middle of Manhattan’s court district.

There was a distinctly festive atmosphere to the crowd in the park.  Even the yelling back and forth between pro and anti-Trumpists had a rhythmic charm to it.  A loud “Free Donald Trump” was immediately followed by an even louder “Fuck Donald Trump”.  A band was performing at the top of the park featuring a chant of “Fuck Donald Trump” in some kind of rap harmony accompanied by drums and cymbals.

There was a view through a metal fence of the entrance to the court house across the street but the only thing one could see were dozens of tents set up directly in front of the court.  These housed the major news organizations that were covering Trump’s arrest, including Associated Press, Eurovision, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. There were in addition to the tents what must have been dozens and perhaps hundreds of news trucks parked in the streets nearby from local radio and television stations all over the country.  It was a mystery to me what they could be reporting on since the only real news that day was the release of the indictment against Trump and his “Not Guilty” plea in court.   Only a few reporters were allowed to enter the court room to view the procedure and no cameras were allowed.  But all these news outfits were in the business of creating their own illusion of “breaking news” by filming a reporter standing in the street and providing non-existent “information” such as by speculating which door Trump will use to enter the building.

 

Political discourse, such as it was, consisted mostly in people holding up posters or giving out flyers.  There were also animated discussions taking place although the ones I heard seemed to have as much content as the “Free Trump - Fuck Trump” dialogue.  There were a few people who seemed to be regulars of the downtown court scene who were giving out their flyers to a captive audience that they rarely get.  One middle-aged woman gave out very tiny flyers, maybe  3 by 4 inches with a hand-written message that had the character of a hieroglyph. The words were so small and in such hard to read handwriting that all I could make out were a few odd words.  I gather she was protesting some injustice either to her personally or to someone close to her that took place across the street.  There were others handing out more traditional flyers, denouncing Trump with the slogan “No one is above the law”.  I saw one hand-written poster that said something like, “Free Julian Assange and Defend Trump against a political witch-hunt”.  The coupling of the demand to free Julian Assange, favored by the left, with the accusation that Trump is the victim of a political witch hunt is typical of those organizations calling for an alliance between the extreme left and the extreme right, a ‘Red-Brown’ coalition. This characterizes, to one degree or another, the recent politics of comedian and podcaster Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal and others.    The irony here is that when Trump was President his Administration went after Julian Assange with the same zeal as the current Biden Administration.

I had an extended conversation with one person in the park whose poster caught my eye, “Indict all Republican enablers, co-conspirators”.  That is exactly right and it is the one thing that the January 6^th Committee completely elided.  Many leading members of the Republican Party in Congress were up to their ears in the conspiracy to steal the election from Biden.  And practically every single Republican in Congress protected Trump and his lieutenants from any kind of accountability for their crimes.  The person holding the poster was a Vietnam War veteran named George Robinson. I got into a wide-ranging political discussion with George and he agreed that not only Trump, but other recent Presidents should be prosecuted.  He also agreed that the rise of Trump was made possible by the Democrat’s abandonment of the working class.

Vietnam War veteran George Robinson

Of course there is no denying that there is a political dimension to the charges brought up against Trump.  But there is at the same time a legal dimension that cannot be ignored.  Were these same charges brought up against anyone else there is little doubt that they would have been brought to trial, convicted and sentenced years ago.  And one can argue that Trump should have first been indicted on the much more serious crimes of tampering with the election in Georgia and of inciting the mob used in the failed coup of January 6.  Those cases have been sitting around for many months, with the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, unwilling to move on the recommendations of the January 6^th Committee.  Finally, one can point to the rank hypocrisy of the Democrats push to prosecute Trump when they are at the same time protecting President Biden and former Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton for their many crimes.  All these facts are true,  but when it comes to shaping our attitude to the arrest and prosecution of Trump, they are somewhat besides the point.  Americans have a right to celebrate the fact that some measure of accountability is finally being exacted on this monstrosity who came out of the sewers of the New York real estate Mafia and who was instrumental in the transformation of the Republican Party into a party of neo-fascism.   So while we work out the broader political context of Trump’s arrest,  give us this moment to celebrate what will hopefully prove to be the downfall of a tyrant. 

 

 

 

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UAW at a Crossroads

Flint sit-down strike

Note: We are publishing a statement by Peter Ross and Steve Zeltzer on the current election campaign for the International Executive Board of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). The statement provides an excellent overview of the history of the UAW from its roots as a militant working-class organization in the 1930's, to its degeneration in the post-war period and its current status as one of the most corrupt unions in the country. We do not necessarily agree with everything in this statement, but it is nevertheless an important contribution to a continuing debate about the future of the American working and its unions.

One issue that we disagree on is the use of the phrase "united front" in the context of building an alliance with other groups in the union. While we wholeheartedly agree that different groups should be able to collaborate on issues they have in common and work together in joint campaigns, calling this kind of activity a "united front" opens the door to theoretical confusion. The "united front" was a very specific tactic developed in the early years of the Communist International and later the Trotskyist movement that called on the mass parties of the working class, particularly the Communist Party and the Social Democrats, to bring together their forces in a joint struggle against fascism and reaction. The slogan had particular resonance in the struggle against fascism in Germany and France in the 1930's. Raising this slogan today when mass parties of the working class no longer exist or have become so corrupted - as for example the British Labour Party - that they can hardly be considered working class parties anymore, does not help in educating the masses about the need for independent political action by the working class. It is even worse when the "united front" slogan is applied in the context of statements signed jointly by several tiny political groups. It sows illusions that such groups have the capacity to become mass working-class organizations. Hal Draper dealt with this particular form of wishful thinking many years ago in his excellent essay, Anatomy of the Micro-Sect.

Given that caveat, the statement by Ross and Zeltzer deserves a wide audience. They point out the significance of the fact that one of the candidates in the UAW election, Will Lehman, has made a powerful impression by calling out the UAW bureaucracy and raising the question of socialism in his campaign. At the same time Ross and Zeltzer point out the schizophrenic position of the Socialist Equality Party which is behind the Lehman campaign. While running a candidate for a leadership position in the UAW, the Socialist Equality Party has very recently called for the destruction of the UAW and urged workers to vote against the union in the recent union organizing drive of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama.

When Peter Ross tried to raise the question of the contradictory position of the SEP in relation to their campaign in the UAW in a comment on the World Socialist Web Site, he was censored by the editors of that online publication. We are adding Ross's unpublished comment on the WSWS in an appendix.

Alex Steiner

UAW at a Crossroads

Peter Ross and Steve Zeltzer

(United Front Committee for a Labor Party)

October 20, 2022

Last Monday, the United Auto Workers began mailing out ballots for the election of the union’s International Executive Board, its highest governing body. This is the first election in the history of the UAW in which every member will be able to vote directly for the leadership of their union.

This historic election comes two months after the UAW held its once-in-four-years Constitutional Convention—the first convention in which rank-and-file members were able to put themselves up for election to the union leadership.

These and other changes to UAW rules were put in place by a 2-1 vote in a union-wide referendum, which was part of a consent agreement with the federal government, after 17 executives were federally indicted for embezzlement and racketeering. The corruption scandal, which began in 2017, has rocked the union leadership, many of whom are implicated in taking company bribes and stealing dues money from the membership. The federal government has also installed a monitor, who in July issued a report on the leadership’s lack of transparency and violation of the terms of the consent agreement.

The imposition of more democratic processes by the federal government has opened up some new possibilities for militant workers, but no confidence should be placed in the capitalist state to democratize the union. The new rules leave the bureaucratic apparatus untouched. It retains its function as a proxy of management, whose role it is to negotiate and enforce concessionary contracts in the workers’ name. The interventions of the capitalist state are not aimed at truly democratizing the union, but at providing its bureaucratic apparatus with a veneer of democracy, in order to preserve its legitimacy in the eyes of workers and stabilize it as an instrument of labor management. That the American government felt the need to intervene in union affairs is itself a damning indictment of the rot at the heart of the UAW and exposes the character of the bureaucracy as a junior partner of the capitalists. The union belongs to the workers! The rank-and-file must demand: feds and bureaucrats alike, out of the UAW!

The Movement for Union Democracy

Only a movement from below can truly bring democracy back to our union. Recent reform efforts have been led by Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a grassroots movement of UAW members from around the country, which commanded substantial influence at this year’s convention. The Administration Caucus, which has ruled the UAW for decades, usually sets the agenda for the conventions in a choreographed series of speeches and Administration Caucus-sponsored resolutions. But at this year’s convention, they were unable to prevent resolutions drafted by the rank-and-file and passed by union locals from reaching the floor for discussion.

UAWD-sponsored resolutions included one to start strike pay from day one instead of day eight, and increase strike pay from $275 to at least $400 per week. The International Executive Board (IEB) voted for the pay increase just prior to the convention, in an effort to take the initiative from UAWD, but convention delegates went a step further, passing the resolution to begin strike pay from day one and increasing strike pay to $500 per week, at the initiative of a striking Case tractor factory worker.

A UAWD-drafted resolution calling for the UAW to amend its constitution to require it to oppose contracts with tiered pay and benefits also made it to the floor and was the subject of extensive debate but was ultimately defeated. The two-tier system has been backed by the Administration Caucus as supposedly the only way to save autoworkers’ jobs in the face of company cost-cutting and outsourcing. It is both a betrayal of the newer members and a weapon against the demands of the more senior members, and it is a wedge which the management and bureaucracy use to divide the union membership.

On the final day of the convention, the Administration Caucus attempted to reassert its authority by forcing a revote on the increase in strike pay. Many of the delegates had already returned home by this point, and the Administration Caucus, working behind the scenes to pressure delegates, was able to rescind the increase in pay. These are the actions of a bureaucracy that is so used to ruling, it doesn’t know how to respond to rank-and-file opposition, and clumsily exposes itself in its efforts to retain control.

Another telling episode from the convention was the refusal of the Administration Caucus-dominated International Executive Board to invite a contingent of GM workers from Silao, Mexico—who recently founded the independent union SINTTIA—to attend the convention. Instead, they invited the so-called Solidarity Center—an international operation of the AFL-CIO—which receives $75 million per year in corporate and federal money from the National Endowment for Democracy. The AFL-CIO has a long history of collaborating with the CIA and American government in suppressing workers’ struggles, propping up corporatist trade unions against independent unions, and overthrowing governments around the world, including in Brazil, Guatemala, Guyana, and the Dominican Republic. They worked to sabotage a peasant movement in El Salvador, supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and participated in backing right-wing unions in Chile prior to the 1973 coup, which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands (see also, the Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations). While the multinational corporations have spread production all over the globe, the AFL-CIO prevents workers from mounting an effective response by organizing internationally. In the age of globalization, the only way to rebuild the labor movement is on an international basis, and this means a rebellion against the AFL-CIO.

The Radical Roots of the UAW

There is a long history of militant working-class struggle in the UAW. Following a long decline of the craft unions organized in the American Federation of Labor (AFL)—long-controlled by their own ossified bureaucracies—the onset of the Great Depression and a wave of militant struggles opened a new era in the American Labor Movement. In 1934, a wave of powerful general strikes in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Toledo, led by socialists and left-wing workers, showed that the organized working class could defeat the employers.

This eruption of class struggle gave a powerful impetus to the development of the Labor Movement. The following year, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded, originally as a committee within the AFL, and then, after it was forced out, as an independent organization of industrial unionists. The UAW, also founded in 1935, was divided from its inception between a group aligned with the radical-led CIO and a group aligned with the conservative, class-collaborationist AFL. Due to the efforts of militant workers and socialists, the UAW followed the CIO out of the AFL, and went on to grow rapidly. The 44-day Flint Sit-down Strike of 1937 forced General Motors to recognize the UAW, and within the next few years, it also won recognition from Chrysler and Ford.

The power of auto workers during the period of the UAW’s founding came from taking direct action on the shop floor to stop production. This approach was successful in protecting the health and safety of workers and also in stopping the firing of union militants and rank-and-file leaders. There was also significant support at this time for the formation of a Labor Party, independent of both the Democrats and Republicans.

The nature of the UAW gradually changed in the following years, as the union became established and took on a dual role as both the negotiator and enforcer of labor contracts. In March 1939, a group of ten UAW locals led by Trotskyists came together to support the formation of a Labor Party and to keep power in the hands of the rank and file. This was opposed by a conservative faction led by Walter Reuther and a faction led by the Communist Party, but the Trotskyists' Union Building Program was adopted, along with a resolution calling for the formation of a Labor Party in the United States. However, the leadership of the CIO remained subordinate to the Democratic Party.

In the World War II era, the UAW’s Executive Board signed a no-strike pledge to assist the American war effort. This was backed by the Communist Party. After the war, communists and class struggle militants were systematically purged from the trade unions. The AFL and CIO merged into a single anti-communist and pro-imperialist alliance, and the labor movement went into sharp decline. The Administration Caucus began its life during this period as an anti-communist grouping founded by then-UAW president Walter Reuther, who remained president until his death in 1970. The Reuther leadership vehemently opposed the militant tactics that had built the UAW, and they eventually signed contracts that ended this power on the job, while solidifying their own leadership.

The UAW bureaucracy became little more than an adjunct of the Democratic Party. At a UAW convention in San Diego in 1995, then-President Bill Clinton, who had been invited to speak, told union leaders that he would support NAFTA whether they liked it or not. After this speech, the craven UAW officials gave him a standing ovation despite his open declaration that he would push deindustrialization via this corporate trade program. The UAW and AFL-CIO tops have been right behind not only Clinton but also Trump, who passed the USMCA, a trade agreement replacing NAFTA that is aimed at further consolidating the North American trading bloc in preparation for conflict with China.

Today, Flint, Michigan—the site of one of the great victories of American labor—is a decaying city in the deindustrialized area around Detroit, known to most Americans as the town whose residents were poisoned by their water supply. Flint is emblematic of the decay of American capitalism and the defeats of the Labor Movement. Yet after a lifetime of rule by the Administration Caucus, which has overseen one concessionary contract after another and helped run the Labor Movement into the ground, rank-and-file workers have shown that there is still a spark of life in the UAW.

Almost a century ago, American Trotskyist James P. Cannon described the Flint Sit-down strike in these terms: “The revolt, which no bureaucracy could contain, was spearheaded by new people—the young mass production workers, the new young militants whom nobody had ever heard of…” The strike was propelled by the “bitter and irreconcilable grievances of the workers: their protest against mistreatment, speedup, insecurity; the revolt of the pariahs against their pariah status.”

Today, after decades of attacks on living and working conditions, there is a new generation of workers who are being driven into struggle against the capitalists and the union bureaucracies. A wave of strikes, unionization drives, and renewed working-class militancy has shown that workers will not continue to accept endless wage cuts, sellout contracts, and attacks on their livelihoods. It is up to this new generation of workers to return the UAW to its radical roots, sweep away the bureaucracy, and turn the union back into a weapon to defend the rights of working people.

Reformism and Sectarianism: Two dead-ends for the working class

The Administration Caucus has clearly been taken aback by the level of support and organization among the rank-and-file for the upstart reform movement. But now that they know the strength of this movement, they will make every effort to crush and disperse it.

Three weeks after the convention, UAW Region 1 “CAP Coordinator” Brian Negovan flagrantly violated the “Official Rules for the 2022 International Officer Election” by attempting to prohibit campaign leaflets from being passed out outside a meeting of a retiree’s chapter. UAW Presidential candidate Will Lehman’s campaign has reported a similar act of intimidation by Local 598 District Committeeman Sean Meachem, who confronted Lehman and a team of volunteers who were leafleting outside a GM plant, took photographs of them, and called GM security to remove them from the premises.

Lehman—the only avowed socialist in the campaign—has rightly highlighted the Administration Caucus’s use of intimidation tactics, something that UAWD has failed to do. He has won a hearing in the UAW for raising issues no other campaign will broach: above all, the need to entirely dismantle the bureaucratic machine and replace it with democratic institutions controlled by workers themselves. He was the only candidate, in the election’s one presidential debate, to speak to the real conditions workers face, to attack not only the current bureaucrats but the bureaucratic apparatus itself, and to call for organizing workers on an international basis.

Lehman’s campaign—conducted by the Socialist Equality Party, which publishes the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)—has centered on “abolishing the bureaucracy” and calls on union members to form so-called “rank-and-file committees” as an alternative. But the SEP’s committees are not broad-based organizations aiming to draw in the widest possible layers of militant workers and educate them in the class struggle. Rather, the SEP insists that the committees must be in full political agreement with itself on all issues. Hence, these committees are typically founded by and subordinate to the party, and generally consist of only a few members.

Workers want and need organizations they control, which give them a voice and allow them to become active agents in fighting for their own lives and livelihoods. The role of a Marxist is to aid the workers in their struggles for political independence and to fight for a revolutionary political perspective. This requires that Marxists immerse themselves in the movement, not section themselves off into isolated committees, which are doomed to sterility and irrelevance. It requires a willingness to build United Fronts, capable of drawing into struggle as many workers as possible, including those who have not yet come to revolutionary conclusions. Marxists must fight intransigently for a revolutionary program, but they do not demand that workers adopt all their positions as a precondition for uniting around common, transitional demands.

The “Trotskyists” in the SEP would do well to recall the 1938 discussion between Trotsky and Cannon on whether the Socialist Workers Party should support the movement in the CIO for the formation of a Labor Party. Trotsky called for the SWP to join these efforts as a necessary tactic for organizing the mass trade union movement politically, while maintaining an independent existence and revolutionary program for the SWP. Trotsky concludes, “To say that we will fight against opportunism, as of course we will fight today and tomorrow, especially if the working-class party had been organized, by blocking a progressive step which can produce opportunism, is a very reactionary policy, and sectarianism is often reactionary because it opposes the necessary action of the working class…”

Indeed, the SEP has long since gone over to an outright reactionary position, attacking the trade unions in general, and calling for workers to leave them for their own committees. For the purposes of this campaign, they now claim that they seek to abolish the bureaucracy, not the union itself, since the latter would make their campaign an obvious absurdity. This is pure sophistry, as a brief look at their past positions makes clear. In a WSWS article, “The middle-class ‘left’ and the UAW-GM contract”, published October 12, 2007, the authors write: “The Socialist Equality Party would advise workers, should the UAW come to their plant, to vote to keep it out. Joining the UAW would not advance workers’ interests one iota.” Elsewhere, WSWS refuse to differentiate between the union and its bureaucracy, calling the UAW an “agency of corporate management” and stating that their task is to “destroy, not bolster, the ‘persuasive power’ of the UAW and to build a powerful political alternative.” Last year, WSWS called for a “No” vote for the unionization of an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Again and again, the website calls for the replacement of the trade unions by rank-and-file committees, i.e., the abolition of the former, even to the point of opposing the organization of unorganized plants—a direct attack on the union and the working class. Such backward positions not only discredit the SEP—they give priceless ammunition to the bureaucracy, which can and will be used against other revolutionaries in the UAW.

Rather than criticizing the SEP on this basis, the left-wing media outside WSWS has instituted an unprincipled black-out of Lehman’s campaign.

In contrast to the SEP, UAWD took the initiative in mobilizing pro-reform elements across the UAW during both the ‘one-member-one-vote’ campaign and the convention. Their platform calls for abolishing the multi-tier system, opposes corruption and the existing labor-management partnership, and has put forward the old slogan ‘30 Hours Work for 40 Hours Pay’ in answer to the mass-layoffs brought about by automation and cost-cutting. However, UAWD fails to even address the issues that Lehman’s campaign has raised and limits its aims to superficial reforms rather than building the organizations the rank and file will need to confront the Administration Caucus. Their presidential candidate, Shawn Fain, attacks individual bureaucrats but scoffs at the idea that the bureaucracy itself must be dismantled. Fain often hails the anti-communist Reuther as representing the supposed good old days of the UAW. While the UAWD platform calls, in vague terms, for “international solidarity” and makes a meek call for a “re-examination” of the UAW’s relationship with the Democrats, they have not pressed these issues in the IEB campaign and have provided little in the way of a concrete program. They have run on the whole, an insipid, pro forma campaign, completely lacking in militancy. It is little wonder that they have proved unable to mobilize mass support in the union after the convention.

Perhaps most glaringly, neither UAWD nor the SEP has publicized the ongoing strike of 700 Case tractor factory workers in Racine, Wisconsin, or attempted to use their campaigns to mobilize workers across the UAW to defend the strike.

Neither of these camps is capable of bringing real change to the UAW. What is needed is a true oppositional caucus, committed to building a mass movement in the UAW that will sweep the bureaucracy out of the union and replace it with new institutions of worker democracy. Until such a caucus exists, revolutionaries should work both in UAWD and outside of it, building United Fronts with the reform forces around certain demands, while openly criticizing reformism and fighting for a revolutionary perspective.

An oppositional caucus can only exist if it is absolutely independent of the Democrats, which led the bureaucratization of the unions, and have spent decades, together with their “Republican colleagues,” dismantling all that is left of the old Labor Movement. The first political task for a renewed Labor Movement will be to carry out a struggle against the Democrat-aligned bureaucracies and pose a political alternative: a mass democratic Labor Party in the United States.

The critical fight is to organize the large number of auto plants in the South, the Midwest, and Mexico. This has been an abject failure by the business-unionist officialdom of the UAW. We need to win these organizing fights by supporting a mass movement of workers in these communities that backs up organizing with direct action. This is how the UAW was built.

The Fight in the UAW in a New Era of Class Struggle

Workers all over the United States are suffering from the same conditions as UAW workers. They are dealing with the same sell-out bureaucrats and the same bosses who want to make profits on their backs. More layoffs and speedups are in store. We have to unite as a class to shut down industry because that is the only way we will win our demands. Negotiations do not result in any victories without militant struggles. When workers see the power they have through mass mobilizations, there is no stopping that power.

Workers must reclaim the ability to take direct action on the job to protect health and safety and prevent contract violations. The NLRB will not help us. The Biden Administration has underfunded and understaffed this agency while the federal government has provided $210 million for so-called “democracy” and "labor rights" union work in Mexico (supplied to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs through the USMCA trade agreement).

The auto companies aim to further gut the auto industry as they transition to the production of less labor-intensive electric vehicles. Auto workers and other UAW members should take up UAWD’s call for equal pay for a shorter work week, so that no one need lose their job, and workers can benefit from the enormous technological advances their labor has made possible.

The union movement must take as its starting point the international unity of the working class against the capitalist class and its political parties. In the UAW, this means building direct international links with other workers at GM, Ford, Caterpillar, and all other auto, truck, farm machinery and parts companies around the world, and taking direct action internationally with our fellow workers when they need it. We cannot allow the bosses to pit workers here against those in other countries or pit our members against each other with two-tier wages and substandard contracts. We need real union solidarity in action.

With no one in Washington representing their interests, many working-class people, including some in the UAW, have turned to the faux populism of the Republican Party, which is now moving toward fascism and dictatorship. The issues of growing racist attacks and the rise of fascism were not debated or even brought up at the UAW 2022 Convention by any grouping, but these issues are critical not only to UAW members and their families but the entire working class. In the past, the UAW supported the struggles against racism and the right to vote in the South, yet the present bureaucracy refuses to support a mobilization against the danger of a fascist coup. Instead, they rely on the Democrats. UAWD should link up with the Vermont AFL-CIO, which is fighting to build a democratic Labor Movement and organize the working class against the threat of another coup by the fascists in the Republican Party. We also need to defend Black, Brown, and Asian members, who face increasing racist attacks in the plants and in our communities.

There is also a growing threat of a catastrophic war between the US and China and Russia. The UAW, as one of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO, has long supported US imperialism around the world. We must end the trillions of dollars that are spent for the war machine while our cities and communities are falling apart and working people don’t have affordable housing, healthcare, or a good public education system. Both the Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan when it comes to more wars and privatization. We need to organize a national fight against wars abroad and privatization of public education, public services, and public lands. The enemies of UAW members are not Mexican or Chinese auto workers and the people of these countries, but the billionaires and capitalist class that are exploiting people throughout the world and use xenophobia, racism, and nationalism to pit worker against worker.

In this time of social collapse, we must rebuild our unions and take the first steps toward a Labor Party, founded and controlled by working people. Only such a party, capable of organizing the entire working class, can successfully oppose the giant transnational corporations and open a new era in the struggle for socialism.

Appendix:

Censored comment by Peter Ross on the World Socialist Web Site

I applaud Lehman for bringing socialist ideas before the UAW membership for the first time in many years.

 

He consistently attacked the bureaucracy and counterposed to it the power of the rank-and-file. He also raised the important question of international organizing several times. Fain’s answers, in contrast, were vague and uninspiring. The idea that the union can be democratized while leaving all the old institutions intact is absurd.

 

But Lehman should have provided concrete proposals on HOW to abolish the bureaucracy and what it would be replaced with, i.e. both immediate and long-term organizing goals for the rank-and-file committees, how they would elect an international leadership and measures for democratizing the union, to include the ability to immediately recall officials, pay limited to that of a skilled worker, open and direct elections, more regular conventions and mass meetings, creation of a union-wide forum to facilitate discussion, etc. Without these sorts of demands, the call to abolish the bureaucracy is vacuous. Also needed is a plan of action to organize the unorganized auto plants concentrated in the southern US and eastern Mexico.

 

If the SEP were serious about building rank-and-file committees, it would pursue United Front tactics aimed at drawing in as many militant members as possible. In practice, the SEP views the committees as proxies for the party, which has the effect of isolating them from wider union politics.

 

Lehman was able to participate in this debate not due to major organizing victories in the rank-and-file, but because of new rules brought about by the intervention of the federal government into the union. His candidacy would not have been possible without the victory of one-member-one-vote, in which UAWD played a key role. Where was the SEP in this struggle? Criticizing the bureaucracy is one thing, but without serious organizing efforts, these are only words.

 

If Greenhouse misquoted Lehman, that is indeed an egregious mistake, but union liquidationism is exactly what the SEP has preached for many years. Does Lehman know the history of his party? In an article by Jerry White and Barry Grey, “The middle-class ‘left’ and the UAW-GM contract”, published October 12, 2007, the authors write “The Socialist Equality Party would advise workers, should the UAW come to their plant, to vote to keep it out. Joining the UAW would not advance workers’ interests one iota.” Elsewhere, the WSWS calls the UAW an “agency of corporate management” and says its task is to “destroy, not bolster, the ‘persuasive power’ of the UAW and to build a powerful political alternative.” Last year, WSWS called for a “No” vote for the unionization of an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Again and again, the website calls for the replacement of the trade unions by rank-and-file committees, i.e., the abolition of the former.

 

The SEP has now opportunistically altered its line for the purpose of this campaign, since to run a candidate for UAW IEB president while calling for the replacement of the UAW would have been an obvious absurdity. Now the WSWS says it doesn’t want to abolish the trade unions — only their bureaucracies. Its demands remain just vague enough that it can claim this is what it meant all along.

 

As Trotsky pointed out, opportunism is the flip side of sectarianism. The SEP has leapt on an opportunity to be heard and has had no trouble adapting its line to whatever was most convenient to the campaign, without really moving away from its sectarian and abstentionist politics.

 

Letter from Peter Ross to members of the SEP and the Will Lehman campaign:

 

 

I am a graduate student worker and member of UAW 2865, and a former provisional member of the Socialist Equality Party.

 

I attempted to post the below comment on September 26 to the WSWS article “The UAW presidential debate: A rank-and-file socialist confronts the apparatus,” by Joseph Kishore.

(https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/26/pers-s26.html) I attempted to post the comment three times, and I don’t believe this was a mistake or technical issue. It’s incredibly hypocritical that an organization that protests internet censorship so forcefully would censor a critical comment, and it shows an incredible backwardness and lack of understanding of socialist methods. Will Lehman and members of the LA branch, do you really stand by this action?

 

I would add a few things to my original comment. I don’t think I sufficiently emphasized that Lehman made many powerful points. He was, as Kishore’s article notes, the only candidate to speak to the real conditions workers face and the only candidate attacking not only the current bureaucrats but the bureaucratic apparatus itself. He also, importantly, called attention to the undemocratic methods of the bureaucracy, including their attempts to intimidate and silence his campaign.

 

But I repeat: For years, the SEP has based its politics on the claim that unions can’t be reformed, yet now it runs a candidate for UAW president and say it wants to abolish the bureaucracy, not the union. To say the abolition of the bureaucracy wouldn’t be a reform of the union is pure sophistry. The party has in the past opposed the organization of unorganized plants. Obviously, this was a direct attack on the union, not its bureaucracy. I am still astounded that SEP members seem not to have noticed this glaring contradiction.

 

If the party had truly reversed itself and was now seriously engaged in fighting for rank-and-file power in the UAW, I would be compelled to support your campaign. But the SEP remains committed to sectarian politics - it refuses to build united fronts and it continues to reject and attack the Transitional Program.

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