United States - November 10, 2020   Labor Party or "Third Party" A falsification of the politics of the Fourth International in the '30s in the US   Some North American left currents such as the SWP, Socialist Action or Socialist Resurgence that call themselves “Trotskyists”, or the English SWP, some anti-capitalists from Europe, as well as others from the Río de la Plata such as the PTS, call to set up a "Third Party" or a "workers party" in the US, wanting to let pass that policy as "revolutionary." Let us first clarify that we revolutionaries never call to set up a "Labor" or "Workers" Party. It is not our program. In any case, we intervene within that process to set up a revolutionary nucleus and break up that party. But our program is to set up an insurrectionary revolutionary party of the working class, which cannot be other than the party of the Fourth International in the United States. It is that a Labor Party like the English one, that was administrator of the businesses of the City of London for dozens and dozens of years. The English SWP, now disenchanted, characterized that party, under Corbyn's leadership, as "an anti-militarist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist party." That’s a lie and an infamy, paid by the workers of England today. We insist, the former Marxists raise the call to set up reformist workers' parties as part of their program. Calling for a Workers 'Party in general is to call for a bourgeois workers' party like Lula's PT in Brazil, which saved the dominance of the bourgeoisie in that country for decades. Second, let's clarify that Trotskyism in the mid-1930s in the US refused to raise the slogan of the "Workers Party." The leadership of the Fourth International insisted that our program is to set up a revolutionary party in the USA. Other things are the tactics with which we call, for example in an electoral process, to vote for this or that workers party, to help the working class to break with the bourgeoisie. This is an electoral tactic of class independence, but, we insist, it is not setting up a reformist party. That is what reformists do. By the 1930s, the American SWP had failed to become a masses influence party. The CIO (the trade union center) grouped millions of workers, who came from leading huge strikes and mass struggles. Unions by industrial branches of economic activity were set up. The war was coming. At that time, the economic struggle was pushing the workers into mass political struggle openly confronting Roosevelt government. Under these circumstances, the Trotskyists voted to make A MOTION TO THE UNIONS of the masses, in order to break with Roosevelt and the Democratic Party and to stand up a Workers Party, under the union's control and under a statute of submission of their leaders, to workers' democracy. "Under which program?” the SWP leadership asked Comrade Trotsky. "With our revolutionary program" he replied. He affirmed that "Our proposal in favor of the Workers' Party is a motion so that the unions strengthen our presence as a revolutionary political leadership and unmask their pro Roosevelt leadership."   When the New Left speaks today of a "Third Party" or a "Labor Party" it is not speaking to the AFL-CIO, which does not represent even 1% of the American working class, and which does not represent at all, the 44 million of unemployed. The call they make to set up, is a reformist Labor Party,  promoted by deputies such as Ocasio Cortez, spokesperson for the great Latin bourgeoisie in the United States, or deputies like Sanders, one of the spokespersons of Yankee Zionism. If not, which Labor Party are they talking about? To tell the truth, it is a confession. In the US they are raising their true policy, which is to set up a reformist party, as they are fighting to do so throughout the world. For reformism, its slogan "Labor Party" is nothing more than an effort to set up a worker’s party to transform it into an auxiliary tool of the Democratic Party. What's more, they do it in the Primary elections supporting Sanders. Some of them do it directly like the ISO, and others do it indirectly by painting it as "socialist", like the PTS or the "anti-capitalists". In the current conditions in the United States, the organizations, which bring together the vast majority of the workers and the black movement, are the mass organizations that emerged in the struggle, the assemblies, the barricades, the factory committees, Black Lives Matters Movements, the movement for a wage of $ 15 an hour. These organizations, which are nothing more than direct democracy organizations of the masses in struggle, are true pre-Soviet embryos, which if developed, armed and coordinated at national level, would rapidly advance to set up the workers 'and soldiers' councils. that is, a dual mature power of the revolutionary masses in struggle. The very experience of the American working class today, which enters the mass political struggle in the face of the decadence and crisis of North American capitalism, places at the order of the day the struggle for class independence, which can only be developed by extending and generalizing these dual power and direct democracy of the masses organs. They expelled the Democratic Party mayor of Minneapolis: "Are you for dissolving the police?" the Assembly asked him. "No, I'm about to reform it," he replied. "So, you leave the Assembly then" answered those who were present. That is the struggle for class independence and that is the path American working class has already been undertaken. Reformism sees as inevitable the stage of building a labor party as the only channel for the masses to conquer their class independence. These people remained in the nineteenth century of the emergence of the great mass parties in an era of flourishing capitalism. That makes them reformists. For this reason they transform into a strategy, for a whole period, the struggle for a reformist party, when the imperialist capitalist system is in open bankruptcy, crisis and crash. The veils have to be drawn to see the real contours of policies and programs. Setting up an auxiliary party to the Wall Street regime in crisis is the task of reformism. Setting up and developing the armed revolutionary dual power organizations of the masses is the shortest, most necessary and urgent path that the working class must travel to achieve its class independence and advance to the socialist revolution. But the falsification of the politics of Trotskyism in the 1930s does not end here. Trotsky claimed that if the working class became independent from the Democratic and Republican Party with a labor party based on the unions, which allowed the working class to intervene independently of the bourgeoisie, fascism would flourish like mushrooms in the United States, since the American bourgeoisie would never allow itself to lose control of the working class without sending the fascists to crush the first attempts to break with the democrats and republicans: “The creation of a workers 'party, , immediately expresses a terrible exacerbation of forces . The reaction will immediately be a fascist movement. That is why we must relate the idea of ​​the workers' party with the consequences, otherwise we will appear only as pacifists with democratic illusions” (1938, Trotsky “Conversations on the Transitional Program”). For this reason, the motion of the "workers party" was closely linked to the slogan of the workers' militia. The politics of Trotskyism were demonstrated in the very life, this year in the United States. The revolutionary struggle of the masses in Portland, Seattle, and dozens of cities, where they tended to break with Democrats and Republicans, immediately provoked the resurgence of fascist militias of white supremacists, who even collaborated with the police in attacking mass mobilizations. How can you propose to set up a worker’s party without even talking about arming yourself to defend yourself? The North American left and the PTS, for example, have nothing to do with fighting for the workers' militias ... they are "pacifists with democratic illusions" They know perfectly well that the Labor Party they propose, with Sanders and Ocasio Cortez, with various environmentalists and parliamentary Left does not scare or worry the bourgeoisie much. The reformists know what the Labor Party they are calling to set up is about. It is clear that the renegades of Trotskyism seek to set up a new social containment device in case the working class breaks with Biden. We are not surprised. All of them have placed themselves under the discipline of Havana and the Cuban CP, firm allies of the Democratic Party. They are followers of Jack Barnes, who in the 1980s submitted the SWP to Fidel Castro. We Trotskyists will not let these renegade impostors live in peace. The North American working class needs the SWP of Trotsky and Cannon under the program of the Fourth International, a party which fights for the "Soviets", arming the masses with the workers' and black people's militia, that poses "the enemy is at home" etc .; an internationalist revolutionary party with an independent Soviet strategy. That is the Party we fight for.

Trotsky and Cannon   Minnepolis Police Station burning