Since it is quite likely that the Workers World Party is the largest
"Marxist-Leninist" group in the USA today, it is of some consequence that
its founder Sam Marcy died last week at the age of 86. Marcy's childhood
was spent in a Russian shtetl, where extreme poverty forced his parents to
dress their infant son in potato sacks. He came to the United States in his
youth and became a good student. He entered law school, passed the bar, and
began a career as a labor lawyer. As with so many of this generation, Marcy
became a revolutionary. Unlike others, he joined the dissident Trotskyist
movement during the 1930s instead of the Communist Party.
The world Trotskyist movement had a major faction fight in the 1950s.
Michel Raptis ("Pablo"), the nominal leader of the movement, speculated
that the cold war would drive the Communist Parties to the left. He urged
the Trotskyist parties to enter them en masse to help accelerate the
left-wing tendency. The Socialist Workers Party of the United States
thought this was liquidationism and split with Pablo. About 40% of the
party supported Pablo's orientation and withdrew from the SWP.
The American Pabloite leader was Bert Cochrane, who had led UAW sit-down
strikes in Flint, Michigan in the 1930s. He was also an important Marxist
thinker who understood American society better than any of the "orthodox"
Trotskyists. Shortly after leaving the SWP, he launched what is very likely
the first new left publication in the 1950s. He posited the rise of new
social movements in the absence of a working-class radicalization. He also
urged Marxism to adopt the American vernacular and eschew symbols of the
Russian revolution. Other Pabloites joined the Monthly Review and the
Guardian newspaper and help strengthen the voice of non-sectarian Marxism
in the 1950s.
Marcy, a leader of the Buffalo branch of the SWP, was also a Pabloite, but
had no interest in moving away from sectarianism. Differences with the SWP
over the Hungarian uprising of 1956 led him to split. Following Pablo's
logic to its full conclusion, Marcy argued that if the Communist Parties
were moving in a leftward direction, then the Hungarian revolt could only
serve imperialism.
We should understand that Trotskyist groups often split over how to
interpret events in distant countries, especially all the "betrayals" that
occur with dismaying frequency. Since frequent splits tend to keep
Trotskyist parties small and powerless, it inoculates them against
betrayal. Small propaganda groups tend to betray nobody except their own
members, who, like myself, often leave in disgust after many years spent in
futility.
When I joined the SWP in 1967, I received a crash course in "opponents."
The CP was Stalinist; the Progressive Labor Party was Maoist and the
Workers World Party was a "cult around Sam Marcy." I had never heard the
term cult applied to socialist groups before and tried to imagine what this
meant. Did WWP members keep portraits of Marcy on their living-room wall? I
only discovered years later that nearly all Trotskyist groups were cults.
The explanation for this is not in the psychology of the leaders, but in
the methodology of the groups which they have inherited from Zinoviev's
Comintern. There is a revolutionary program which the party leadership,
especially the supreme leader, has to defend from petty-bourgeois
challenges. There is enormous peer pressure to internalize and agree with
the party line at all times, since nobody wants to be an instrument of
"alien class influences." Thus, the party becomes a cult around the leader,
who is "the Trotsky of today," and can be trusted to keep the purity of the
program intact Trotsky himself allowed cult tendencies to develop while he
was alive and his disciples merely followed his example.
My first encounter with WWP members was at the mass Vietnam antiwar
demonstrations. My own group was in a coalition with the CPUSA and radical
pacifists, which the WWP viewed as "reformist." They regarded mass
demonstrations around the slogan "Out Now" as a betrayal. They brought
their own banners to the march and often forced their way to the front
ranks. The banners had a day-glo orange background you could spot a mile
away, upon which slogans like "Victory to the Vietcong" were printed in
huge block letters. They often sought out confrontations with the cops,
using their banner poles as clubs. Film footage of these provocations often
became the lead-in to the evening television coverage. There is little
doubt that the FBI encouraged such behavior since it made the antiwar
movement look like a bunch of lunatics.
Marcy would need no encouragement from the FBI to stage such
confrontations, since it was an integral part of his ultraleft approach to
politics. The 1960s radicalization had disoriented many Marxists into
thinking that revolution was on the agenda. Many, including Marcy, had
adopted a variation of the "spark" theory. They theorized that bold, even
violent, action by students could inspire the rest of the population to
rise up. The 1968 May-June events in France led many to this conclusion,
but what was lacking in their analysis was the state of the American
working-class. Since there was almost zero working-class sympathy for
socialism, such hopes were a self-delusion.
The other thing that must be understood is that Marcy was in his fifties
when the Vietnam antiwar movement was at its peak. There is strong pressure
on any Trotskyist, or quasi-Trotskyist like Marcy, leader to "go for broke"
when they reach this age. There is the knowledge that they are in the
tradition of Lenin who led the Bolshevik revolution when he too was in his
fifties. The idea that they might let this opportunity escape them is
almost too horrible to imagine. So they take all sorts of gambles. Such
pressures must have weighed on David Koresh, who like Jesus, was in his
early 30s when the Waco confrontation developed.
(What happens sometimes is that when ultraleftism hits a brick wall, the
cult leader will often lurch in the opposite direction. Lyndon Larouche is
one such example. This quasi-Trotskyist attempted a breakthrough in the
working-class with cadre recruited from Ivy League universities, my
employer Columbia University first and foremost. When this failed, he made
his fascist pitch to the capitalist class. This is the only explanation for
Frank Furedi's alliance with right-wing think-tanks after 20 years of
ultraleft obscurity.)
As everybody who reads a newspaper must know, there was no revolution in
the United States in the 1960s. Or 1970s. Or 1980s. Or 1990s. This seems to
have had a sobering effect on Sam Marcy, who dumped the ultraleft approach
long ago.
What took its place ironically was the approach taken by the SWP during the
Vietnam antiwar movement. The WWP mechanically adopted the "united front"
tactic and built major demonstrations in Washington against intervention in
Central America and Iraq. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark works
closely with the Marcyites on these sorts of actions. The SWP had long ago
dumped this type of politics and had sent their membership into coal mines
or garment shops to preach socialism. So the WWP simply dusted off the
tactic that the SWP had abandoned and made good use of it. The problem is
that the coalitions tend to be much narrower than those of the Vietnam
antiwar movement, since the WWP is much more sectarian than the 1960s
version of the SWP or the CPUSA. While the SWP retreated into "workerism,"
the CPUSA has been wracked by dissent and lost nearly half of its
membership when people like Angela Davis launched the Committees of
Correspondence (CofC). Gus Hall had supported the coup against Gorbachev
while Davis and others had denounced it.
Groups like the WWP and the "state capitalist" International Socialist
Organization, a cult around the Englishman Tony Cliff, are now growing,
while nonsectarian formations like the CofC and Solidarity remain stagnant.
The problem is that radicalizing young people are likely to join up with
groups who promise them that the revolution is around the corner rather
than ones that make no such commitment. What "Marxist-Leninist" groups
offer is a crash course in Marxism. Upon entering such groups, you are put
through a whirlwind of classes where you study the basics of Marx, Engels,
Lenin, Trotsky, etc. Within two years, you will be indoctrinated in a
highly one-sided version of Marxism. You will swear that Sam Marcy or Tony
Cliff are the latest incarnation of Lenin or you will simply swear at
having wasted two years of your life.
The other feature of such groups is that they can have an impact on
politics all out of proportion to their numbers. When 1000 people act in
unison around a line that they have fanatical belief in, the results can be
impressive. The style of groups like Solidarity or the Committees of
Correspondence is much more laid-back, as befits the aging membership.
As the American class struggle continues to meander in its lazy fashion, it
is of no great consequence that groups like the WWP are at the center stage
since the audience is nearly non-existent. It walked out after the first
act. However, if in the coming decades there is a sharp rise in the class
struggle, it will be imperative to create an alternative to groups like
these. Young people who demand serious, militant and well-organized action
should be able to learn their Marxist theory and how to organize from a
group that is free from cultism. Looking at the problem dialectically, the
only way such an organization can begin to develop is when the class
struggle is much sharper than it is today. When millions of workers awaken
to the type of militancy that characterized the 1930s, a revolutionary
organization will not just be a good idea but something with enormous
magnetic powers. We are simply in a preparatory period right now and the
only thing we can do is weed out the theoretical and organization dead wood
of the past. For all of Sam Marcy's dedication to the working class and to
socialism, the group he left behind him belongs to this dogmatic and
sectarian past.
Louis Proyect
