Max Shachtman
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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 22, 29 May 1950, p. 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
What is new in American labor politics? The fact that the working class and the organized labor movement support the Democratic Party and its candidates? No, because by and large they have followed that course for years, especially since the first Roosevelt campaign. What is new is that the labor political machines, like PAC, have gone deeper into the Democratic Party or associated themselves more closely with it, the reasons why they have done this, and the way they are doing it.
The politically-conscious unionists, who are the broad vanguard of the working class, are increasingly aware of the tremendous political power of the labor movement. Right now, they are employing this power to maintain the Democratic Party in power against the more conservative Republican Party, and at the same time to maintain the domination, inside the Democratic Party, of the New Deal or Fair Deal wing against the conservative, old-line Democrats. If the support of organized labor were withdrawn from the Democrats, the Republicans would sweep into office; if its support were withdrawn from the Fair Dealers inside the Democratic Party, the conservatives would have no difficulty in recapturing it completely. That is how decisive the organized political power of labor has become.
This power, we are convinced, is being misapplied. The labor leaders claim that the interests of the workers are best served by keeping the Democrats in office and the Republicans out. But even for this policy to work at all, these leaders have found it necessary to intervene directly in the “internal affairs” of the Democratic Party and to act as a faction – or rather, as the ally and supplier of votes – of the Fair Deal faction. Thus they hope to keep “friends of labor” in the important offices of the country.
This policy is a betrayal of the interests of the workers, at worst; at best it is an illusion. Even from the most narrowly practical standpoint, the establishment of the already organized power of the unions as a labor party independent of both capitalist parties would yield ten times more fruitful and durable results. However, those of us who urge and will continue vto urge the formation of a labor party are now limited almost entirely to the numbers and influence represented by the revolutionary socialist movement. Enthusiastically or reluctantly, out of cynical resignation or half-hearted conviction, the bulk of all the other advocates of a labor party in the trade unions of yesterday are today following the official political line and no longer speak of a labor party. And, to the extent that any policy has the support of the workers today, it is the official policy and not that of the laborparty advocates.
The problem is: how to switch the labor movement from its present self-defeating course of serving as voting cattle for capitalist parties and politicians and onto the course of a labor party, of effective independent political action which labor’s power makes possible and labor’s interests make necessary.
The workers have, for the present, turned their backs to the idea of a labor party and there is no significant movement for it right now. But they have not turned their backs on the political fight for their own interests, as they conceive of them, with all errors and illusions included.
No socialist will abandon for a moment the fight for a labor party because of its present lack of support. He is confident that events – the pressure of the class struggle and the irrepressible conflict of class interests – will help the workers find a way out of the blind alley of capitalist politics and onto the road of working-class politics. He is convinced that this conflict of interests will grow, become more apparent to the workers themselves, and lead them to proper political conclusions.
And precisely because this conflict is irrepressible, the policy of the labor leaders injects it, quite unintentionally, of course, right inside the Democratic Party. It takes on a mutilated and twisted form, but it is there! The Fair Dealers and their labor allies rest on mutually "antagonistic social bases” and the split between them is (it has been further explained, and rightly) “even inevitable.” In that case, socialists should do everything they can to hasten that split so that labor can free itself from political dependence.
How? By supporting Fair Dealers in the Democratic Party against the conservatives? That is how the fight in that party usually manifests itself at present and the labor leaders follow that course. We reject it, for in form and substance it remains capitalist politics and keeps the workers politically chained. But what about those exceptional cases where the workers, especially those organized in labor political groups, refuse to accept and support a Fair Deal “friend of labor” from the Democratic Party, and want to put forward their own candidate who. despite formal appearances, is an authentic representative of the labor movement, chosen by it and responsible to it? Should advocates of a labor party turn their backs on such a fight because the workers involved have turned down the proposal for a labor party and accepted a course that looks “more practical” to them?
We say: while reiterating our position in favor of a labor party, we should not hesitate to support this partial but very important step forward. Even if it assumes the form of a fight in Democratic primaries, it represents a break, or the beginning of break, not between Fair Dealism and “Old Dealism.” but between politically-organized labor and the Fair Deal machine, which is an indispensable step toward a labor party. Such breaks should be stimulated; they should be extended and deepened; they should be dealt with sympathetically and not antagonistically. The workers should be told over and over again that while the Fair Deal party and machine needs them and is dependent upon them, they are not dependent upon it; that they should and can rely upon themselVes and their organized labor strength for the defense of their interests; and that the step they are taking – as they took it in the Chicago campaign for Willoughby Abner – is not yet the labor party, to be sure, but is a step in its direction because it represents, not in form but in essence, not in full but in part, labor’s self-reliance and independence in the political field.
What our critics do not see (we refer here only to those capable of seeing) is that in such exceptional cases, we do not, and we do not need to. renounce our position for a labor party, just because the workers’ first steps toward it are halting, half-consciqus or confused. What they do not see is that one of the main reasons why we are still so far a distance from the actual formation of a labor party is that such a campaign as the PAC conducted for Abner and against the Democratic machine in the recent Chicago primaries, IS the exception, and that we would be a hundred times further ahead if there were a hundred times as many exceptions to the official labor policy, occurring not in struggle for minor office but for decisive positions in decisive centers. We count precisely on the class struggle to help make such cases less exceptional. A socialist, however, should remember that the struggle does not do all his work for him; some of it he must do himself.
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