Main LA Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From Labor Action, Vol. 12 No. 29, 19 July 1948, pp. 3 & 4
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The following is the text of a resolution, adopted by the recent plenary session of the Workers Party National Committee:
The National Committee of the Workers Party has taken up and reviewed the position on the Marshall Plan put forward by the Labor Action editorial of May 17, entitled A Statement of Our Position: Socialist Policy on the Marshall Plan. It is the opinion of the committee that:
The following points briefly express what is, in our opinion, essential for consistent opposition to American imperialism on this question.
(1) It is not correct to view the Marshall Plan as being primarily or essentially a plan for economic aid to Europe. Marshall aid is only a by-product of, and incidental to, the main purpose and political character of the program: namely, the implementation of the Truman war doctrine for the mobilization of world resources against America’s imperialist rival, Russia; and, in the course of doing so, the furtherance of American imperialism’s master plan for subordinating the economies of the capitalist world in the interests of Wall Street.
(2) Therefore, the only possible attitude for revolutionary socialists is one of consistent and principled opposition to it. In no way do we identify the interests of the proletariat, American or European, with the Marshall Plan.
On the contrary, we wish our European brothers and socialist workers to know that here in America the Marxist movement stands with them in their distrust, suspicion and hatred of the designs of American capitalism on their autonomy. Any weakening or dilution of this attitude means, in their eyes, and to that extent, an identification with the American bourgeoisie against the interests of the European proletariat.
(3) Although it is essentially an imperialist club held over Europe, the Marshall Plan is put forward in terms of economic aid to the peoples of the continent; but not even the Democratic or Republican spokesmen for the program pretend that this is its aim or reason for existence.
We, for our part, are in favor of a REAL European Recovery Program such as is NOT an American economic weapon in the cold war against Russia. We are in favor of the fullest outpouring of economic assistance from this wealthy nation to the ravaged lands of the world. But we point out that such a real economic-aid program cannot be expected from an imperialist-controlled America or from a plan controlled, administered and supervised by the agents of Wall Street, the present rulers of this country.
The socialist fight for economic aid to Europe means the fight for
a program of relief and industrial reconstruction financed by
America’s wealth but divorced from its imperialist masters,
controlled in every decisive aspect not by the present capitalist
government but by the working class through its own independent
institutions. The. possibility of a real economic-aid program thus is
inseparably bound up, for us, with the fight against American
imperialism as a whole, and is a part of that fight.
(4) The Stalinists, acting as the agents of Russian expansion, oppose the Marshall Plan not from the point of view of the working-class struggle against all imperialism but from the point of view of that war camp against which the Marshall Plan is directed.
In the United States and Western Europe, they are thus enabled to pose demagogically as the champions of national independence from American control and as spokesmen for the masses’ legitimate hatred of Wall Street. Any concessions in favor of “Marshallism” on the part of the revolutionary socialists can only have the effect of further driving the European workers, and also anti-imperialist workers in the United States, into the arms of the Stalinists.
We expose the meaning of the Stalinists’ type of opposition to the Marshall Plan just as we exposed the real roots of their “anti-imperialist-war” line during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact. We condemn their policy of driving the workers of Europe into adventuristic trade-union struggles whose aim is simply to disrupt economy for its own sake, rather than to fight for the masses’ legitimate demands and needs.
We denounce such a policy of economic sabotage and disruption carried on under the guise of fighting against the Marshall Plan. The opposition we propose is a part of our general political opposition to imperialism and its policies.
(5) The question has been raised in the discussion of how a socialist congressman should have voted in Congress on the ERP. Of course, this question is of significance now only insofar as the question of a vote is a means of summarizing our views.
We state unequivocally that a socialist congressman had to vote no on the bill, in order to express the position summarized above, in order to register our lack of confidence in principle in the imperialist aims and motivations of the present government and its utilization of the so-called aid program. A socialist congressman would vote no and propose his own socialist program for sending real and adequate economic aid to Europe divorced from imperialist power politics.
The further question that has been injected into the discussion –
how a socialist would vote in case of a tie vote among the
representatives of American capitalism – is not a meaningful
one in the existing national and world situation. Rather it
automatically signifies a political situation and relationship of
forces with regard to American imperialist policy such as does not
exist and can only be imagined speculatively. Such hypothetical
posers have usually been raised in the socialist movement not in
order to solve a particular tactical problem but in order to open the
door to alien considerations, diluted opposition, and capitulation in
the actual existing situation. In answer to it we stress, in the
light of all that we know now, that our “no” vote
does not depend on the existence of speculative and unspecified
differences within the capitalist class, but stems from our own
anti-imperialist considerations in the real context in which
the Marshall Plan is put forward.
(6) We reject the view that the existence of the Marshall Plan or a similar American “economic-aid” program is a necessity from the point of view of the interests of the European proletariat and the socialist revolution.
These false views have claimed that the Marshall Plan is essential for the “re-establishment of a European proletariat,” which presumably does not now exist because of the state of European economy. They have claimed that the existence of the Marshall Plan (and naturally also its successful imposition and accomplishment) is a condition sine qua non for combating Stalinism in Europe, by at least temporarily re-stabilizing Europe’s capitalist economy. They imply that capitalism’s present throes can redound only to the strengthening of Stalinism and no one else, and that by staving off the worst economic difficulties the Marshall Plan provides an indispensable “breathing spell” during which the forces of socialism can regroup themselves. To this reasoning, which represents the methodology of social-patriotism, it must be said:
In the first place, if the working class challenges the imperialist plans of the American bourgeoisie, an impetus is thereby given to the socialist movement everywhere; if it remains an appendage of American foreign policy, however “critical,” a weight will press on Europe for which no material aid can compensate.
In the second place, it is not true that the re-stabilization of European capitalism strengthens only or mainly the socialist movement; It is not the role of socialists to act as doctors for a sick capitalism but to take the road toward ending it. A program for capitalist restoration is a false substitute for a program to defeat Stalinism – on the contrary, it can only drive all revolutionary elements among the proletariat into the arms of Stalinism more firmly.
The alternatives are not capitalist recovery or Stalinist victory; to decide that this is so is to end any perspective for socialism in our epoch. In the past (in the First World War, for example) imperialist war has had the objective effect of creating the situation in which the imperialists could be overthrown by revolution; but this could be done only on the condition that the revolutionists opposed and fought against precisely that war which, in a sense, gave them their opportunity. So also, Marshall aid may have, as one of its objective results, the weakening of Stalinist influence in Europe; but his weakening of Stalinism can redound to the interests of socialism, rather than solely to the interests of the bourgeoisie, only on the condition that the socialists fight, against and denounce the Marshall Plan in common with the anti-imperialist workers.
Otherwise, the inevitable continuation of capitalist breakdown and
disillusionment with “Marshallism” will only strengthen
the Stalinists in the long run, while weakening the possibility of
counterposing to them a democratic socialist alternative.
(7) Finally, another question has been raised in connection with the Marshall Plan in the following form: Shall the European workers accept or reject the economic aid which comes to them through the Marshall Plan?
A moment’s reflection shows that this question, as stated, is either trivial or meaningless: the real question is a different one. Marshall aid will not be sent to Europe in a package which is to be merely signed for or rejected like a collect telegram. There is no question of the European workers agitating that the goods, food, bread or machinery which is sent to their country be sent back to the U.S. in indignation or protest.
The real question is posed by the necessity which the recipient countries are under to sign a bilateral treaty with Washington which makes them economic dependencies of American imperialism, not to speak of any other obligations which the capitalist governments will be forced to assume which are not made public or which are imposed without treaties in the process of administering the plan.
Shall European socialists support their governments in accepting such economic-political pacts with American imperialism as a necessary evil in payment for the aid? Our answer is a categorical no. This is not a question of “accepting aid” but rather of approving the imperialist deal whereby the recipient bourgeoisie allies itself with the American master.
(8) In summary: the question of a socialist policy with respect to the Marshall Plan cannot be divorced from the more basic question of the socialist attitude toward the third imperialist world war now being prepared.
It is understandable that those who have decided to plump for the defense in war of American imperialism as the desperate lesser evil in comparison with Russian totalitarianism should also see in the Marshall Plan the only effective means of beating back the advance of Stalinism. It is understandable that those who are vacillating on this question should also vacillate or equivocate on the Marshall Plan. At bottom, the questions are the same in both cases.
But the consistent revolutionary socialist policy of the Third Camp, of supporting neither Washington nor Moscow in the pre-war maneuvers now making up the decisive elements of world politics – this likewise demands, as a corollary, consistent and unwavering opposition to the Marshall Plan in the meaning described.
Main LA Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 28 May 2018