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I'm not so certain that the "French turn" - entering the social democratic parties in the 1930s when they got an influx of young people new to radical politics and turned off by the ultraleftism of the Comintern' s "third period" - was a "sectarian mistake." Trotskyists in Spain refused to enter the Spanish social-democracy, so the Stalinists did and became a major force on the Left. The SWP entered the SP in 1936 - at the invitation of that party's leadership - and recruited its youth wing. The Trotskyists didn't split from the SP - they were expelled, a bureaucratic organizational maneuver to prevent them from politically winning over more of their ranks. John asks - "How did the workers in France, the United States or elsewhere benefit with these weakened social democrat groups facing the fascists?" Let him answer - how did the workers of Germany in the late 1920s/early 1930s "benefit" from a strong Social-Democratic Party (SPD)? How did the working class of Europe "benefit" from their strong and unchallenged-from-the-left social-democrats between the years 1914 and 1918??? Social Democracy after WW1 was not some new organization that sprang onto the scene without a thought-out program. It was a hardened counter-revolutionary force. If Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and all those German leftists murdered by rightists *supported by the SPD* in 1919 were here, they'd testify to that! On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 2:45 AM, John Obrien via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > I recently joined DSA. We do not need a "French Turn" That was a > sectarian destructive tactic that resulted in > only harming any needed effort for a large united left. This is an example > of bad education promoted in the US SWP to justify their wrong approach > that we often see being done by other more recent groups such as the > U. S. Sparticist League. > > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
