Historical
71-656: Historical Historical The Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT) was a public faction of the Socialist Workers Party (US) , formed after the 1983 expulsion from that organization of a group of supporters of the Fourth International . While the SWP was not formally affiliated with the International for legal reasons, it had until that time been in close political relations with it. At
142-551: A vanguard party adhering to "the International Left Opposition , led by Leon Trotsky ." In a detailed statement on general policy issued at the group's foundation, the CLS declared that it "heartily endorses" the concept of the united front and called for the formation of a "mass labor party on a federated basis that will move the working clas of this country to independent political action." The CLS took
213-501: A " workers' state " and should be supported in any war with capitalist states, despite their opposition to Stalin's government. The minority faction, led by Shachtman, held that the Soviet Union should not be supported in its war with Finland . One of its leaders, James Burnham , held in addition that the Soviet Union had degenerated so far that it deserved no defense whatsoever. Like this debate, most later factional disputes within
284-776: A break with the party. Recognizing that the Clarity faction had chosen to stand with the Altmanites and the Thomas group, Trotsky recommended that the Appeal group focus on disagreements over Spain to provoke a split. At the same time, Thomas, freshly returned from Spain, had concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to capture it for their own purposes. On June 24–25, 1937,
355-649: A common orientation with the radicalized Socialist Party in their opposition to the European war, their preference for industrial unionism and the Congress of Industrial Organizations over the trade unionism of the American Federation of Labor , a commitment to trade union activism, and the defense of the Soviet Union as the first workers' state, while at the same time maintaining antipathy toward Stalin's government. Cannon went to Tujunga, California ,
426-407: A harsh rhetorical stance towards the other three Communist organizations that existed at the time of its formation — the official Communist Party USA, Cannon's Communist League of America (Opposition), and Jay Lovestone's Communist Party (Majority Group) , declaring that "it considers the other three groups as 'right-wing' opportunist groups, each differing in form and manner, but each overestimating
497-706: A letter which he carbon-copied to the National Executive Committee of the Communist League of America. Trotsky was harshly critical of Weisbord's decision to strike out on his own with a new parallel organization: "I cannot adopt your standpoint. Your criticism of the American League seems to me one-sided, artificial, and terribly exaggerated. You throw the League and the right wing together, which shows that you utterly disregard
568-667: A meeting of the Appeal faction's National Action Committee voted to ratchet up the rhetoric against the American Labor Party and Republican nominee for mayor of New York Fiorello LaGuardia (a favorite son of many in Socialist ranks) and to reestablish their newspaper, The Socialist Appeal. This was met with expulsions from the party beginning August 9 with a rump meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, which expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by
639-632: A new political organization—the Socialist Workers Party. The October 2, 1937 issue of the Socialist Appeal included a convention call from the so-called "Left Wing" to "All Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party", accusing the NEC of the party of having "betrayed the principles of socialism" by withdrawing the party's candidate for mayor of New York in favor of LaGuardia and for having ordered "the bureaucratic expulsion of all
710-514: A newspaper in Chicago with a Trotskyist orientation, The Socialist Appeal , later to serve as the organ of the Trotskyists inside the Socialist Party. In January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard for their factional organization and alleged "violation of party discipline", James Cannon and his faction won their internal battle in
781-527: A priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba . During the 2020s, the SWP has defended " Israel's right to exist " and "right to defend itself", especially during the Israel–Hamas war . This contrasts with other U.S. socialist organizations, which take an anti-Zionist position and defend Palestinian nationalism . The SWP traces its origins back to the former Communist League of America (CLA), founded in 1928 by members of
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#1732798335944852-659: A reunification of the ISFI and the International Committee of the Fourth International, leading to the creation in 1963 of the reunified Fourth International . Two sections of the ICFI, including Gerry Healy 's Socialist Labour League , rejected the merger and turned against the SWP leadership, working with opponents within the party. The most important faction opposing the SWP leadership's new line
923-550: A revolutionary leader. This faction ended up leaving the SWP in 1958 after supporting the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 , a position contrary to that of the SWP and other Trotskyist tendencies. It went on to form the Workers World Party . Meanwhile, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s the remaining members of the SWP clung to its firmly held beliefs and grew older. Consequently,
994-467: A suburb of Los Angeles, to establish another new newspaper, Labor Action, targeted to trade unionists and Socialist Party members and aimed at winning them over to Trotskyist views while Shachtman and Burnham handled the bulk of the faction's activities in New York. Norman Thomas attracted nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in historic strongholds of
1065-411: A tally of its membership. Given the fact that the Communist League of America (Opposition), the group from which it split, had a membership of "less than 200" during the 1931-1933 period, it seems highly probable that the CLS began with a membership of fewer than 50. The group seems to never have attained critical mass and to have dwindled to a small handful of activists during its final years. The group
1136-521: A vote of 48 to 2 (with 18 abstentions) and ordering 70 more to be brought up on charges. Wholesale expulsions followed, with a major section of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) leaving the party with the Trotskyists. The 1,000 or so Trotskyists who entered the Socialist Party in 1936 exited in the summer of 1937 with their ranks swelled by another 1,000. On December 31, 1937, representatives of this faction gathered in Chicago to establish
1207-558: A wave of revolutionary struggles like those that accompanied the end of the previous war. Indeed, revolutions did occur in Yugoslavia , Albania , Korea and China , to name only those that resulted in the overthrow of capitalism, but contrary to Trotskyist expectations they were headed by Moscow-oriented " Stalinist " parties. The largest strike wave in United States history, involving over five million workers, occurred with
1278-643: A word, that Soviet America will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like. Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America. Trotsky on If America Should Go Communist in 1934. At its inception,
1349-598: Is a communist party in the United States . The SWP began as a group which, because it supported Leon Trotsky over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , was expelled from the Communist Party USA . Since the 1930s, it has published The Militant as a weekly newspaper. It also maintains Pathfinder Press . Until the collapse of the Soviet Union , the SWP was the largest Trotskyist organization in
1420-536: Is not the case. This can therefore be understood only in the sense of a general solidarity of ideas. * * * If the solidarity of ideas with the Left Opposition really means anything to you, you must build a bridge back to the League...." Weisbord was moved by Trotsky's publicized rebuke to enter into unity negotiations with the CLA, although differences in personality and perspective proved to be insurmountable and
1491-623: The 1926 Passaic Textile Strike , a walkout of nearly 15,000 New Jersey workers in the wool and silk mills of the town of Passaic and its environs. Weisbord had been expelled from the Communist Party in 1929, ostensibly for being something of a loose cannon in his activities. Instead of joining with Jim Cannon and his lieutenants Martin Abern and Max Shachtman in the Communist League of America, however, Weisbord had determined to start his own group. The CLS pointedly styled itself
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#17327983359441562-597: The American Socialist Union , which lasted until 1959. That 1953 opposition supported some of the positions of Michel Pablo , the Secretary of the Fourth International, although Pablo disagreed with their wish to dissolve the Fourth International. The next, smaller split was that of Sam Marcy 's Global Class War faction, which called within the SWP for support of Henry Wallace 's Progressive Party presidential run in 1948 and regarded Mao Zedong as
1633-657: The Correspondence Publishing Committee . Dunayevskaya and her supporters eventually formed the News and Letters Committees in 1955 after splitting with James, who was deported from the United States to Britain, where he continued to advise the Correspondence Publishing Committee, which split again in 1962, with those loyal to James taking the name Facing Reality . The brief postwar wave of labor unrest gave way to
1704-482: The FBI during this time, the arrests were made swiftly. The party put into practice the so-called Proletarian Military Policy of opposing the war politically while attempting to transform what they saw as an imperialist war into a civil war. The party lost a number of its members while sailing in extremely perilous convoys to Murmansk. Problems caused by some experienced leaders' imprisonment and many others' enlistment in
1775-636: The Shachtmanites as they joined the Socialist Party of America . Many of the new recruits were drawn from the student movement, unlike those who had led the party since the 1930s; as a result, the party's internal culture began to change. Despite such growing signs of an end to the isolation the group endured during the McCarthyite period, it experienced a new split in the early 1960s. A number of small oppositional groups developed within
1846-642: The Socialist Party of America seeking a united front hunger march of the two organizations followed by a general strike. This suggestion was dismissed as " poppycock " by SP Executive Secretary Clarence Senior , but the seed of the idea of joint action had been planted. Early in 1934, some French Trotskyists of the Communist League conceived of the idea of entering the French Socialist Party (the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière or SFIO) in order to recruit members for
1917-590: The Young People's Socialist League , forming the Workers Party . A number of members were imprisoned under the Smith Act of 1941, under Franklin D. Roosevelt 's administration, including Cannon (see Smith Act Trials ). Those imprisoned included the main national leaders of the SWP and those members most prominent in the Midwest Teamsters. With Roosevelt's decision to increase the power of
1988-552: The " French Turn " and was replicated by various Trotskyist parties around the world. In 1934, the Communist League of America merged with the American Workers Party led by A. J. Muste , forming the Workers Party of the United States . Throughout 1935, the Workers Party was deeply divided over the " entryism " tactic called for by the "French Turn" and a bitter debate swept the organization. Ultimately,
2059-485: The CLA terminated the talks in October 1932. The CLS maintained an independent existence throughout its existence. In 1935 it briefly flirted with dissolving into the Workers Party of the United States formed by the joining of forces of A.J. Muste's American Workers Party with Cannon's Communist League of America, a decision which was ultimately rejected. "We shall not join the Workers Party, but we have no doubt but
2130-543: The CLS were textile union labour leader Albert Weisbord , a former Socialist Party youth leader, 1924 graduate of Harvard Law School and member of the Workers Party of America from that same year, and his wife Vera Buch, an activist in the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party from 1919 and member of the Communist Party of America from 1920. The pair had made names for themselves as leaders of
2201-577: The CPUSA expelled for supporting Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin . Concentrated almost exclusively in New York City and Minneapolis , the CLA did not have more than 100 adherents in 1929. After five years of propaganda work, the CLA remained a tiny organization, with a membership of about 200 and very little influence. The rise of fascism in Nazi Germany and
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2272-616: The International, the rationale for the FIT to exist as an external faction of the SWP was reduced. The FIT dissolved in the period prior to the 1995 world congress . Most of its activists became members of the Fourth International Caucus inside Solidarity . Socialist Workers Party (US) Zionism (since 2023) Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Socialist Workers Party ( SWP )
2343-518: The Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged and tension rose along these lines among the Trotskyists. United action between the Clarity and Appeal groups was not forthcoming and an emergency meeting of Vincent Dunne and Cannon was held in New York with leaders of the various factions including Thomas, Jack Altman and Gus Tyler of Clarity. At this meeting, Thomas pledged that
2414-561: The March convention, the Trotskyist Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937. The meeting organized the faction on a permanent basis, electing a National Action Committee of five to "coordinate branch work" and "formulate Appeal policies". Two delegates from the Clarity caucus were in attendance. James Burnham vigorously attacked
2485-458: The SWP centered on different attitudes toward revolutions in other countries. The opposition faction alleged that Cannon's leadership of the SWP was "bureaucratic conservative" and demanded the right to its own publications to express its views outside the party. The majority faction said this was contrary to Lenin's concept of democratic centralism and that disagreements within the SWP should be debated only internally. Similar disagreements over
2556-421: The SWP followed an internal factional debate over the party's internal government, the class nature of the Russian state and Marxist philosophy and other questions. The SWP experienced many other factional conflicts and splits in its history, but this was the largest and foreshadowed many features of those to come. The majority faction, led by Cannon, supported Trotsky's position that the Soviet Union remained
2627-448: The SWP's internal government have surfaced in most later faction fights, with most later opposition factions raising similar demands and accusations. Despite this, most of these later factions claimed political descent from Cannon and the SWP majority, not from earlier opposition factions and splinter parties. The minority faction led by Shachtman eventually split away almost 40% of the party's membership and 80% of its youth organization,
2698-554: The Spartacist (see Spartacist League ) and the American Committee for the Fourth International , respectively, with the latter becoming aligned with Healy's SLL. Communist League of Struggle Historical Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Communist League of Struggle ( CLS ) was a small communist organization active in
2769-499: The Trotskyists, or so some critics have charged. The group retained its identity as a factional organization inside the SFIO and built a base among the party's youth section, continuing their activity until popular front action between the SFIO and the mainline Communist Party of France made their position untenable. This tactic of "entering" the larger social democratic parties of each country, endorsed by Trotsky himself, became known as
2840-606: The United States during the 1930s. Founded by Albert Weisbord and his wife, Vera Buch , who were veterans of the Left Socialist movement and the Communist Party USA , the CLS briefly affiliated with Leon Trotsky independently of the Communist League of America . It was affiliated to the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations until 1935. The small group dwindled and quietly
2911-696: The United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, the SWP and its youth wing, the Young Socialist Alliance , were the third-largest socialist organizations, after the Communist Party USA and Students for a Democratic Society . The SWP suffered many splits and its membership declined. The modern SWP is smaller than its progeny, such as the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative and the Marxist-Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation . The SWP places
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2982-474: The WP's caution and felt the situation could rapidly become pre-revolutionary. This led them to leave the WP and rejoin the SWP in 1947. This tendency had moved further away from the " orthodox Trotskyism " of the SWP, producing tension. For example, they continued to hold the position that the Soviet Union was a " state capitalist " society. By 1951, their presence in the SWP was ever more anomalous and most left to form
3053-557: The Workers Party to join the Socialist Party, when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry. Negotiations commenced with the Socialist Party leadership, with the admissions ultimately made on the basis of individual applications for membership rather than admission of the Workers Party and its approximately 2,000 members as a group. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper, The New Militant, published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party". They fear, in
3124-566: The activities of the factions at the local level. It also banned factional newspapers, establishing a national organ instead. Constance Myers indicates that three factors led to the Trotskyists' expulsion from the Socialist Party in 1937: the divergence between the official Socialists and the Trotskyist faction on the issues, the determination of Altman's wing of the Militants to oust the Trotskyists, and Trotsky's own decision to move toward
3195-492: The armed forces meant that the editorship of The Militant passed through a number of hands during the war. The SWP was active in supporting labor strikes that occurred despite the wartime "no-strike pledge" and protests against racist discrimination during the war, such as A. Philip Randolph 's March on Washington Movement . The SWP maintained that the Fair Employment Practice Committee
3266-422: The best elements who may have gathered for the moment within the fields of the Workers Party will eventually find themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with us," the CLS declared. The Communist League of Struggle passed silently from the scene in the spring 1937, with no announcement made of the group's demise made in the final issue of its official organ. The Communist League of Struggle (CLS) did not publish
3337-448: The conservatism of the 1950s, the reform of previously radical labor unions and McCarthyism . The SWP's attempt at entryism into the growing civil rights movement, which continued uninterrupted out of World War II, could not fully offset these trends and the SWP experienced a period of decline and isolation. The party also had a number of splits over these years. One saw the departure of the faction of Bert Cochran and Clarke, who formed
3408-418: The crisis of capitalist rule engendered by the war to prosecute the class struggle with the utmost intransigence, to strengthen the independent labor and revolutionary movements, and to bring the war to a close by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of proletarian rule in the form of the workers state. The convention devoted a full day to discussion of the labor movement's problems and
3479-477: The end of the war and the wartime pledge made by many union leaders not to strike for the duration, but this did not mean there were not many strikes during wartime as there were many wildcat strikes during this period as well as strikes officially called by the United Mine Workers of America . There were also protests by GIs demanding rapid demobilization after the end of the war, sometimes called
3550-417: The enemy and underestimating the proletariat." At the time of his group's formation Weisbord brashly announced the birth of "not an isolated sect, but a two-fisted hard group of communists.” Weisbord made an effort to gain the mantle of official sanction from the exiled Trotsky, writing to him in 1931. Trotsky could not be moved from his support of Cannon's CLA organization, however, replying to Weisbord with
3621-471: The entryist tactic was likely made in good faith. Historian Constance Myers writes that "initial prognoses for the union of Trotskyists and Socialists were favorable", but "constant and protracted contact caused differences to surface" later. Party leader Jim Cannon later hinted that the entry of the Trotskyists into the Socialist Party had been a contrived tactic aimed at stealing "confused young Left Socialists" for his own organization. The Trotskyists retained
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#17327983359443692-443: The failure of the communist and social democratic left to stop its rise created a situation where radical parties throughout the world reexamined their priorities and sought mechanisms for building united action. As early as December 1933, a Trotskyist splinter group called the Communist League of Struggle (CLS), headed by former Socialist Party youth section leader Albert Weisbord and his wife Vera Buch, approached Norman Thomas of
3763-415: The fitness of things. You make fun of the publishing activity of the League and counterpose your ' mass action ' to it. Have you any mass activity behind you? Before one turns to the masses, one must construct a principled basis. One begins as a propaganda group and develops in the direction of mass action. * * * "You declare yourself loyal to the International Left Opposition . Organizationally this
3834-470: The going-home movement. The SWP participation in this upsurge led to a brief period of rapid growth for the SWP immediately after the war. The end of the war also saw the reorganization of the Fourth International in which the SWP played a major role. As part of this process, moves were made to heal the breach with Shachtman's supporters in the Workers Party (WP) and for the two groups to fuse. This eventually came to nothing, but some SWP members who supported
3905-516: The majority faction of Jim Cannon , Max Shachtman and James Burnham won the day and the Workers Party determined to enter the Socialist Party of America . A minority faction headed by Hugo Oehler refused to accept this result and split from the organization into the Revolutionary Workers League . The Socialist Party was itself beset with factional disagreements. The party's left-wing Militant faction sought to expand
3976-874: The membership" of important questions. In December 1937, an agenda was published by the Convention Organizing Committee naming Cannon as the primary reporter on the Trade Union question, Shachtman on the Russian Resolution, Goldman on the Spanish Resolution, Canadian Maurice Spector on the International Resolution, Burnham on the Declaration of Principles of the new organization and Abern on Party Organization and Constitution. The gathering
4047-697: The organization into an "all-inclusive party"—inviting in members of the Lovestone and Trotskyist movements as well as radical individuals as the first step towards making the Socialist Party a mass party. Although there were no mass entries at this time, several radical oppositionists did make their way into the party, including former Communist Party leader Benjamin Gitlow , youth leader and ex- Jay Lovestone supporter Herbert Zam and attorney and American Workers Party activist Albert Goldman . Goldman at this time also joined with YPSL leader Ernest Erber to establish
4118-490: The party membership shrank over these years from a postwar high in 1948 until the tide began to turn in the early 1960s. The Cuban Revolution signaled a change in the SWP's political direction as it embarked on pro-Castro "solidarity work" through the Fair Play for Cuba Committee . The result was a small accretion of youth to the party's ranks. In the same period, longtime SWP leader Murry Weiss won another group of youth from
4189-406: The party. One of the key issues was the Cuban Revolution and the SWP's response to it. Cannon and other SWP leaders such as Joseph Hansen saw Cuba as qualitatively different from the Stalinist states of Eastern Europe . Their analysis brought them closer to the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI), from which the SWP had split in 1953. The SWP successfully negotiated
4260-438: The party. Moreover, the party's membership had begun to decline. The organization was deeply factionalized, with the Militant faction split into right ("Altmanite"), center ("Clarity") and left ("Appeal") factions, in addition to the radical pacifists led by Thomas. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to set the party's future policy, initially intended as an unprecedented "secret" gathering. Prior to
4331-440: The political situation in the United States. He declared: It is entirely inconceivable that American imperialism can succeed in resisting the inexorable tendencies that are pulling it into the vortex of the coming world war. If the working class is unable to prevent the outbreak of war, and the United States enters directly into it, our party stands pledged to the traditional position of revolutionary Marxism. It will utilize
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#17327983359444402-408: The revolutionary members of the party who oppose and obstruct this sell-out policy". A convention was called by four Socialist Party State Committees, the NEC of the YPSL and the organized Left Wing organizations of Chicago and New York, originally slated for Thanksgiving weekend, November 25–28, in Chicago, but it was soon postponed until December 31 "in order to provide adequate time for discussion by
4473-400: The role of the new organization in the unions, with Cannon delivering the primary report. While criticizing the "reactionary role which the AFL leadership has played", Cannon declared that "our party...takes a clear-cut position in favor of the earliest and completest possible unification of the AFL and the CIO , and also the hitherto unaffiliated Railroad Brotherhoods". The 1940 split in
4544-450: The time of the expulsions, the SWP was starting to withdraw from relationships with the International. The FIT argued for the SWP to rescind their expulsions and to resume its participation in the International. The FIT's books and publications included the Bulletin In Defense of Marxism , a monthly journal of education and discussion which later became the Labor Standard . After the SWP's 1990 decision to cut its political relationship with
4615-463: The upcoming convention would make no effort to terminate the newspapers of the various factions. There was no action to expel the Trotskyist Appeal faction, but pressure continued to build along these lines, egged on by the Communist Party's increasingly vehement denunciations of Trotsky and his followers as wreckers and agents of international fascism. The convention passed a ban on future branch resolutions on controversial matters, an effort to rein in
4686-411: The views of Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the SWP's ultra-leftist attitude towards revolutionary policies. Eventually, they left the SWP in a state of demoralization and some joined the WP. Meanwhile, a faction within the WP called the Johnson-Forest Tendency , named for C. L. R. James (known as Johnson) and Raya Dunayevskaya (Forest), was impatient with
4757-418: Was insufficient to address racist discrimination. The Post Office refused to mail some issues of The Militant and threatened to cancel its third-class mailing permit, citing objections to its articles calling for violent overthrow of the government. The SWP said it was being persecuted for opposing racist discrimination. After the war, the SWP and the Fourth International both expected that there would be
4828-399: Was severely weakened by the death of one of its leading members, the Polish-born Sam Fisher, of tuberculosis in early 1935, at the age of 27. An expelled member of the Communist Party, Fisher was active in the organization of unemployed workers in New York City and as an organizer for the United Laundry Workers Union and was the New Jersey organizer for the CLS. The primary journal of
4899-424: Was terminated in the spring of 1937. The Communist League of Struggle (CLS) was a factional offshoot of the Communist League of America (CLA), a Trotskyist political party headed by James P. Cannon . The organization was formed on March 15, 1931, owing to what it declared "the principled errors of the other Communist groups" and "organizational violence...within the Communist movement." The leading forces in
4970-423: Was the Revolutionary Tendency (RT), led by James Robertson and Tim Wohlforth , which rejected the SWP's "capitulation" to Pabloism and opposed joining the USFI. It was critical of the Castro government, arguing that Cuba remained a " deformed workers' state ". But a split developed within this faction between groups headed by the two men. Nonetheless, both the RT and the Reorganized Minority Tendency split to form
5041-422: Was to conclude with the election of a new National Committee. On December 31, over 100 regular and fraternal delegates gathered in Chicago, where they were greeted by a speech of welcome delivered by Chicago leader Albert Goldman, a labor attorney. As editor of the Trotskyist movement's ongoing theoretical magazine, The New International , Shachtman delivered the first official report to the gathering, dealing with
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