Strategy and tactics in a revolutionary period: U. S. Trotskyism and the European revolution, 1943-1946

Abstract

The outbreak of the Second World War found U. S. Trotskyism divided into two organizations: the Socialist Workers Party led by James Cannon, and the Workers Party led by Max Shachtman. The downfall of Mussolini on July 24, 1943 led to the appearance of a third current: a minority within the SWP led by Felix Morrow, Jean van Heijenoort and Albert Goldman. Confronting the SWP leaders' line, according to which U. S. imperialism would operate in Europe through "Franco-type governments," the minority argued that it would rely on democratic regimes to stem the advance of the revolution, propping them up with economic aid, and that it would be helped in this task by the Socialist and Communist Parties, which would revive the policy of class collaboration known as Popular Front. The task of the European Trotskyists was therefore to wrest control of the masses from those parties through democratic and transitional demands (a Democratic Republic, a Constituent Assembly, etc.) which would help the workers discover the anti-socialist agenda of their mass organizations through their own experience. The Morrow-Goldman-Heijenoort tendency's inglorious ending precluded any serious analysis of the dire consequences of the policies pursued by the SWP leadership.