The Militant - March 22, 2004 -- How Socialist Workers Party was founded

Vol. 68/No. 11 March 22, 2004

How Socialist Workers Party was founded
(Books of the Month column)

Below is an excerpt from an article by James P. Cannon on the founding convention of the Socialist Workers Party. First published in the February 1938 issue of New International, the article appears in The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party: Minutes and resolutions 1938-39, one of Pathfinder’s books of the month for March. The book carries documents from the convention, which was held in Chicago on New Year’s weekend, 1938. Cannon was elected national secretary by the gathering. The article refers to the fusions and splits that had led up to the SWP’s foundation. The party’s roots lay in the fight by veteran communists against the Stalinist degeneration of the Communist International. Following their 1928 expulsion from the Communist Party they formed the Communist League of America, which became the Workers Party through a fusion with the American Workers Party led by A.J. Muste. Leaders of the party were deeply involved in massive labor battles in the latter half of the 1930s. In 1936 the Workers Party dissolved and its members joined the Socialist Party in order to reach its growing left wing with their communist perspective.

One year later the new party held its founding convention. It reaffirmed the Marxist approach in the fight against the coming imperialist war, the spread of fascism across Europe, and attacks by the bosses at home. Together with other revolutionaries, including Leon Trotsky—a leader of the Russian Revolution and defender of its course against the Stalinist counterrevolution—the new party worked to form the Fourth International. Copyright © 1982 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.

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BY JAMES P. CANNON
All the experience of the class struggle on a world scale, and especially the experience of the past twenty years, teaches one lesson: the most important problem of the working class is the problem of the party. Success or failure in this domain spells the difference between victory or defeat every time. The struggle for the party, the unceasing effort to construct the new political organization of the vanguard on the ruins of the old one, concentrates within itself the most vital and progressive elements of the class struggle as a whole. From this point of view every concrete step in the direction of a reconstructed party has outstanding importance. The convention of the left-wing branches of the disintegrated Socialist Party at Chicago over the New Year’s weekend, which resulted in the formal launching of a new organization—the Socialist Workers Party, section of the Fourth International1—thus claims first attention from the revolutionary internationalists throughout the world. For them—and their judgment is better than any other because they foresee and prepare the future—it marks a new milestone on the historic road of workers’ liberation.

The reconstruction of the revolutionary labor movement in the form of a political party is not a simple process. In the midst of unprecedented difficulties, complications, and contradictions, the work goes ahead, like all social movements, in zigzag fashion. The new movement takes shape through a series of splits and fusions, which must appear like a Chinese puzzle to the superficial observer. But how could it be otherwise? The frightful disintegration of the old movements, on a background of worldwide social upheaval, disoriented and scattered the revolutionary militants in all directions. They could not find their way together, and draw the same basic conclusions, in a day. The new movement is fraught with catastrophic reverses, forward leaps, and deadening periods of seeming stagnation. But for all that, it is a movement with an invincible historic motor force, and it moves along. The Chicago convention, which brought all the preceding work of the Fourth Internationalists in the U.S. to a fruitful culmination, is a forceful reminder of this fact.

The Chicago convention itself was a striking illustration of this contradictory process of fusion and split—and a step forward. It crossed the last t and dotted the last i on the split of the moribund Socialist Party. At the same time, it recorded the complete fusion of the left-wing socialists with the former members of the Workers Party, just as the Workers Party earlier came into existence through a fusion of the Communist Left Opposition and revolutionary militants of independent origin. The invincible program of the Fourth International is the magnet which attracts to itself all the vital revolutionary elements from all camps. It is the basis, and the only basis, on which the dispersed militants can come together and forge the new movement.

This was demonstrated once again at the Chicago convention when the resolution for the Fourth International was carried without a single dissenting vote. The two currents—former Workers Party and “native” socialists, which were about equally represented—showed complete unity on this decisive question. The 76 regular and 36 fraternal delegates from 35 cities in 17 states, who constituted the convention, came to this unanimous decision after due consideration of the question and ample preconvention discussion. Although the great bulk of time and discussion at the convention were devoted to American affairs—and properly so—the great matters of principle embodied in the international question inspired and guided everything.

This significant victory of the Fourth International in America cannot be without far-reaching influence on the international arena. The brief period of struggle as a faction within the Socialist Party comes to a definite end, and the American section of the Fourth International takes the field again as an independent party, with forces more than doubled, without any losses or splits, and with a firmer unity than ever before. Principled politics in this case also have proved to be the best and most effective kind of practical politics.

1Strictly speaking, the SWP was not yet a section of the Fourth International since the latter organization was not founded until September 1938. Both Trotsky and the SWP leaders used this formulation even though technically the SWP was a section of the Movement for the Fourth International (MFI) between January and September.

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