Workers Party/ ISL archive

Another Day: British Socialists Meet For European Unification (1949)

The British Center of the Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe, in its London conference, October 22-23, attended by delegates or observers from local Labor Parties, the Independent Labor Party, the Commonwealth and Fabian Societies, as well as several unions and pence organizations, produced a series of resolutions which are of importance to the world socialist movement. The resolution on "Political Relations Between Europe, Britain, the Commonwealth and Empire" point up the independent and democratic program for the unification of Europe as opposed to the "integration" scheme...

What the Workers Party Stands For: Max Shachtman Testifies (1949)

Max Shachtman, national chairman of the Workers Party, before the Loyalty Board of the United States Department of Commerce, on January 14 1949. MAX SHACHTMAN was called as a witness, was duly sworn, and testified as follows: DIRECT EXAMINATION By Chairman Short: Q. Will you state your full name to the reporter? A. Max Shachtman. By Mr. Migdal: Q. Mr. Shachtman, will you identify yourself please, for the Board? A. I am National Chairman of the Workers Party. Q. Do you know T.? A. I met him this morning Q. Had you ever seen him before? A. No. Q. Had you ever heard his name before? A. No. Q. Do...

Third Camp politics from the 1930s to the 21st century: an interview

An interview with Phyllis and Julius Jacobson has just been published on the website of the US socialist magazine New Politics. Click here to read it online . The interview is taken from three taped conversations with Phyllis and Julius Jacobson that the author conducted in November 1992, September 1994, and November 1994. It incorporates, with permission, a small amount of material from an interview conducted by the labor historian Jon Bloom in November 1983. It was previously published in the journal Left History, vol. 18, no. 1 (2014).

Hal Draper on Israel/Palestine (1954)

In the summer of 1954, the American “third camp” Trotskyist group the Independent Socialist League (ISL) invited Clovis Maksoud, a Lebanese-American Arab nationalist and socialist then studying in London, to publish an article in their newspaper Labor Action setting out “the position of the Arab socialists on Israel”. It was published across two editions, on 9 August and 16 August, which can be read online here and here . Maksoud also wrote a report for the paper's 7 June edition, which is online here . Maksoud, who went on to become a distinguished Arab diplomat and who died in May 2016 aged...

"An antidote to Stalinist thinking": in conversation with Herman Benson

Herman Benson was a founding member, along with Max Shachtman, Hal Draper, and others, of the Workers Party, which broke from the US Socialist Workers Party (no relation to the British group of the same name) in 1940 following a debate about how to understand the Stalinist state in Russia. While the SWP majority maintained that the USSR remained some kind of "workers' state", however "deformed" or "degenerated", a large minority, which went on to become the Workers Party, argued that it was a deeply oppressive society based on a new form of class exploitation. They developed their ideas into...

Is Stalinism left wing?

Originally titled 'Stalinism, a Left Wing of the Labor Movement? Its Nature and Role' The labor and socialist movements have had a good quarter century of experience with Stalinism. The experience is not yet at an end, but there is now enough of it to warrant the dogmatic statement that the working-class movement cannot and will not make real progress, let alone achieve its basic aim, until it has succeeded in destroying the incubus of Stalinism. In 1858, Fredrick Engels, disgusted with the direction taken by the British labor movement under the leadership, of former Chartists like Ernest...

Another day: the fight against segregation in the US army (1948)

American capitalism and its democratic pretensions have received a serious jolt from the Negro people in the United States. Following the Czechoslovakian events [The Stalinist Coup of February 1948] . President Truman gave the signal for a leap in war preparations under the banner of “democracy and freedom.’’ At this critical moment for US propaganda, A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds made a declaration to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs that unless segregation in the armed forces was ended, they would summon the Negroes to a civil disobedience campaign on the Gandhi model. They...

1945: the war ends in Europe

When World War Two ended in Europe, 70 years ago on 8 May 1945, the USA came out of it with an industrial and economic dominance such as no power had ever had before. The US bourgeoisie and its allies also faced a surge of working-class radicalism and national liberation struggles which would include, in 1946-7 in the USA, a larger strike wave than any known before. In the end, the US-dominated world found enough elasticity, and enough fear of repetition of what had happened around the end of World War One, to respond by conceding parliamentary democracies, welfare states, and national...

An Eyewitness Account of Norway's General Strike Against the Nazis

We present a day-by-day diary of the greatest strike movement which has yet taken place in the Nazi-occupied countries. It was written by a man who. Escaped from Noray. We think that this diary in its simplicity gives a better picture of Europe than ever-so many elaborate articles.It should be remembered, however, that events like this are as yet the exception and that in general the class struggle has not yet taken on such acute form. Monday, September 8 —The rationing of milk becomes effective. It provides that people will no longer get milk at offices or places of work. Only at retail...

Felix Morrow: "Bolshevik politics versus neo-economism" (October 1946)

The last document of Felix Morrow before he dropped out of revolutionary socialist politics broadened his critique of the "Cannonite" SWP-USA, and also included side-swipes against the "Shachtmanite" Workers' Party and against the SWP minority which Morrow himself had led. Download pdf here .

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