That article summed up his judgment of the Burnham-Shachtman faction as it had revealed itself in the fire of the struggle—when it had become clear that we were not dealing, as sometimes happens, with a mere difference of opinion among cothinkers on a given point or two that might be settled by fraternal discussion and debate. Burnham and his supporters—and his dupes—were moved by a profound inner compulsion to break with the doctrine and tradition of the party. They carried their revolt against the party to the point of frenzy, as petty-bourgeois factionalists always do. They became impervious to any argument. Trotsky undertook to explain the social basis of their faction and their factional frenzy. We must do the same now once again.

The social groupings in the present opposition are not quite the same as in 1940. In that fight it was a case of a few demoralized intellectuals based on a genuine petty-bourgeois social composition of a section of the party, especially in New York, but also in Chicago and some other parts of the country—a petty-bourgeois concentration revolting against the proletarian line of the party.

The social composition of the party today is far better and provides a much narrower base of support for an opportunist faction. As a result of the split with the Burnhamites and our deliberate concentration on trade union work, the party today is far more proletarian in its composition, especially outside New York. Despite all that, the real social composition of the party is by no means uniform; it reflects some of the changes which have taken place in the American working class. This has been strikingly demonstrated by the line-up of the party trade unionists in our factional struggle. The revolutionists among them—the big majority—on the one side, and the conservatized elements—a small minority—on the other, have chosen different sides instinctively and almost automatically.

Since the consolidation of the CIO unions and the 13-year period of war and postwar boom, a new stratification has taken place within the American working class, and particularly and conspicuously in the CIO unions. Our party, which is rooted in the unions, reflects that stratification too. The worker who has soaked up the general atmosphere of the long prosperity and begun to live and think like a petty bourgeois is a familiar figure in the country at large. He has even made his appearance in the Socialist Workers Party as a ready-made recruit for an opportunist faction.

In our 1952 convention resolution, we explained the situation in the American working class as a whole in the two sections “The Causes of Labor Conservatism and the Premises for a New Radicalization” and “Perspectives of a New Radicalization.” In my report at the national convention, I called those two sections “the heart of the resolution” and centered my report around them.

It appears to me now, in the light of the conflict in the party and its real causes, which are now manifest, that those sections of the convention resolution dealing with the class as a whole require further elaboration and amplification. We need a more precise examination of the stratifications within the working class, which are barely touched there, and of the projection of these stratifications in the composition of the unions, in the various inner-union tendencies, and even in our own party. This, I believe, is the key to the otherwise inexplicable riddle of why one proletarian section of the party, even though it is a small minority, supports a capitulatory opportunist faction against the proletarian-revolutionary line and leadership of the party.

This apparent contradiction—this division of working class forces in party factional struggle—is not new. In the classical faction struggles of our international movement since the time of Marx and Engels, there has always been a division, in the party itself, between the different strata of workers. The proletarian left wing by no means ever had all the workers, and the opportunist petty-bourgeois wing was never without some working class support, that is, working class in the technical sense of wage workers. The revisionist intellectuals and the trade union opportunists always nestled together in the right wing of the party. In the SWP at the present time, we have a repetition of the classical line-up that characterized the struggle of left and right in the Second International before the First World War.  
 
 
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