SOCIAL DEMOCRATS, U.S.A.: LEARNING FROM OUR PAST AND REVIVED UNDER NEW LEADERSHIP TO BUILD FORA BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE WORLD
Contents
Chapter 1 The Anatomy of a Split
Chapter 2 SDUSA & DSOC, Bitter Rivals
Chapter 3 Critical Question No 1.
Why would we want to Revive the SDUSA?
Chapter 4 Critical Question No 2.
Why Should We Trust You?
Chapter 5 The End of One Era of the SDUSA and the Rise of a New Era.
Chapter 6 Critical Question No 3.
What will be The Revived SDUSA’s Relationship with DSA and “SP of the U.S.A.”?
Chapter 7 Critical Question No 4.
Aren’t your efforts a Waste of Time & Money as the Concept of Socialism has been completed discredited?
Chapter 8 Critical Question No 5.
What are the Basic Statements of Principles of the Revived SDUSA?
The Ten Principles adopted by the Party of European Socialism, that was approved by the provisional NC of SDUSA as expressing the Viewpoint of the Organization.
Social Democrats, U.S.A. is the 110 year old organization that was known as the Social Democratic Party of the United States of America from 1898-1901, the Socialist Party of America from 1901-1956, Socialist Party/ Social Democratic Federation from 1956-1964, Socialist Party, U.S.A. from 1964-1972 and Socialist Party, U.S.A./ Democratic Socialist Federation of the U.S.A. in 1972. Social Democrats, U.S.A. is the direct successor of the Socialist Party, U.S.A., the party of Eugene V. Debs, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Jack London, Helen Keller, Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, Meyer London, Norman Thomas, Darlington Hoopes, A. Phillip Randolph, Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin & Frank Zeidler. The Socialist Party U.S.A., at its national convention on December 30, 1972, by a majority vote of the delegates, voted to change the name of the organization to Social Democrats, U.S.A. The organization became officially known as Social Democrats, U.S.A., with the adoption, at its convention, on December 31, 1972, of a new constitution. Nevertheless, the structure of the renamed organization remained the same as it was when it was the SPUSA, with a National Chair or Co-Chairs, National Secretary or Executive Director, National Committee, National Action Committee, State & Local Organizations and the Youth section, the Young People’s Socialist League of America and the internal discussion bulletin. Hammer & Tongs. Social Democrats, U.S.A., uninterrupted, continued to be affiliated with the Socialist International. The International recognized that the SDUSA was the same organization that held that seat under the name Socialist Party, representing the United States, since the SI’s founding in 1952. In addition, the SDUSA’s constitution maintained that “The Socialist Party, by that name, shall continue in association with the Social Democrats, U.S.A.” The constitution also stated that one of the duties and functions of the Socialist Party was “to solicit and receive money for distribution for socialist purposes, including electoral activity, in accordance with the decision of the Board.” This meant that not only was the historic Socialist Party, still alive, despite the official change of the name of the organization to SDUSA, but if the need aroused, the Board of the Socialist Party, whose membership was the same as the National Committee of the Social Democrats, U.S.A., could vote to re-establish itself, again, as a political party, on a local, state or national level, under the name Socialist Party. U.S.A. This Article of the SDUSA’s constitution entitled, “The Socialist Party,” remained unchanged when the governing document was amended on September 8, 1974; July 18, 1976, November 21-23, 1981, December 5, 1982, December 6, 1987, and March 24, 1990. The YPSL’s changed its name to Young Social Democrats in 1976. However, the SD’s constitution included a separate Article in the document that were amended from 1976 thru 1990, under the title, “Young People’s Socialist League,” that maintained, “The Young People's Socialist League, by that name, shall continue in association with the Social Democrats, U.S.A.” Therefore Social Democrats, U.S.A. is the identical organization, and the only historic political entity, that under the name, “Socialist Party”, ran Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas for President of the United States, elected Victor Berger and Meyer London to the U.S. House of Representatives, Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler as mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and scores of mayors, state legislators, judges, and other local political offices holders in the period from 1912 to the mid 1920s.
This paper (booklet or pamphlet depending on where it is being presented) is the official public document announcing the revival of Social Democrats, U.S.A. It directly connects this revised organization to his heritage as the historic Socialist Party of Debs, Thomas and Harrington to the Social Democrats, U.S.A. of Bayard Rustin, Tom Kahn, Carl Gershman, Rita Freeman, Donald Slaiman David Jessup and Penn Kemble. All of the documents of this 110 year old organization are part of our continuing history, no matter how controversial today.
In this Manifesto of a revived SDUSA, we will connect our past to the present, by first looking back at the last 50 years of the SP-SD, beginning with an objective account of what led to the three way split in the Socialist Party in the early 1970s and the change of the Party’s name to Social Democrats U.S.A. and the bitter rivalry that took place between it and one of the organization that evolved from the split, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. Next, this document will directly and critically confront, with a little levity, the questions that our critics on both the political Right and Left will probably raise about our effort to revived the SDUSA, including the charges of being neo-conservative by the Left and the obsolescence of the concept of socialism or social democracy in the 21st Century after the fall of Communism in most of the world, made by the Right and even many moderates and liberals as well. We intend this to be an entertaining and lively response to the many controversies concerning our organization.
We will also tell the complete story of the apparent abandonment of the SD by its former national leadership and how one remaining Local decided that it didn’t want the organization to die. Rather, they started the effort to revive and rebuild the SD under new leadership and a revised political outlook which intends to maintain the best traditions of the last 30+ year history of the organizations, while changing those policies that appeared to place ourselves closer to neo-conservatives on the Right, instead of reflecting our 110 year old heritage on the democratic Left. We will then discuss what our new relationship will be with the so-called “Socialist Party of the United States of America” and the Democratic Socialists of America, and why we believe that it is necessary to revive the SDUSA, rather than have us work in one of the two existing organizations, that evolved from the historic Socialist Party.
Finally, we will conclude with the three complimentary Basic Statement of Principles of the Revived SDUSA, which will clearly show to the public what policies will be continued from the SD of the past 30 years and what will be Different in the Political Positions of the Renewed Organization. The initial shorter Statement that was sent to the Socialist International appears on our website. That Statement and the longer version here are a consensus document that will contain aspects in it that members and potential members could differ on, while remaining united over the majority of its total content. For example, the Statement will directly address the issue of the SD’s continuing strong support for Israel and condemnation of both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism on the Left, and our aim to build a majority Left coalition in this country which would include white, Latino and African American working class social and religious conservatives, who are also economic populists. This is a segment of the population, which was once a central part of the majority New Deal/Great Society coalition, but has been alienated by the social and cultural positions of the Democratic Party and the wider Left since the late 1960s. In turn, the Statement will also discuss how the SD will attempt to reach out to the religious community, while at the same time develop a consensus position on divisive social issues, such as abortion and Gay and Lesbian rights, which will not please everyone, but would enable us to attract a wider area of the entire spectrum of the population of the United States than any other group on the Left, in order to reach our goal of building a majority Center-Left coalition in this country. Our aim in this entire “Manifesto” and in our 3 complimentary Basic Statements of Principles is to present a document announcing the revival of an organization that could be supported by a very substantial section of the democratic Left in this country, as well as reach out to a large percentage of the population of the United States.
The Anatomy of a Split
A, The Socialist Party in the 1960s & early 1970s. What caused a 3-way split in the Party and the change of its name to Social Democrats, U.S.A. at the end of 1972?
In the Socialist Party in the 1960s thru 1972, there were factional differences in the organization between those members, who were organized in the Debs Caucus, who wanted to maintain its traditional role as a political party running candidates for public offices in opposition to the two main capitalist Democratic & Republican Parties, and those members, organized in the Realignment Caucus. The members of this Caucus, while agreeing with their comrades in the Debs caucus over the capitalist nature of the two main political parties, saw that the labor movement, including its rank-and-file and minority members, identified the Democratic Party as their own. These SP members continue to believe that labor was mistaken in trusting mainstream moderate-to-liberal Democrats to represent their interest. But so long as labor, the only mass movement capable of building a socialist society - allied itself with the Democratic Party, the small socialist movement, after almost a quarter of a century of fruitlessly trying to get the labor movement to leave the DP and form a labor party, had no choice but to aid the labor movement in attempting to make the Democratic Party truly its own. In this, labor would form a de facto labor party within the Democratic Party, or if faced with a clear betrayal of workers' interest, it might begin an independent working class party of its own. A major influence in organizing the Realignment Caucus came from those SP members, who had been members of the Independent Socialist League, which was led by Max Shachtman, that merged with the SP in 1958. However, the Caucus also included long time SPers, and Norman Thomas, while maintaining his stand of never joining a fractional caucus, was sympathetic to the strategy of the Realignment Caucus. The Debs Caucus, on the other hand, was primarily made up of long time members of the SP.
Nevertheless, despite these difference within the Party, the SP and other fraternal organizations, such as the League for Industrial Democracy, set the agenda for the American Left for the first time since the early 1930s, eclipsing the Communist Party, in the first 5 years of the 1960s, having a major influence in the civil rights movement, peace movement, labor movement, and in the Democratic Party itself. This would culminate with the SP being the main organizers of the famed 1963 March on Washington for Jobs & Justice. The SP's newspaper, New America, became the cutting edge journal on the Left covering from the inside both the activities of the civil rights and peace movement, surpassing the long time independent Stalinoid weekly newspaper, the National Guardian. We were able to accomplish all this, even though the SP’s membership was still meager in compared to the glory days of its mass membership in the hundred of thousands in the years 1912-1920.
However, in the later half of the decade of the 1960s, the factional differences in the SP, matching the strive that existed in the larger American society of the period, began to tear the party apart. The Vietnam War and the growing New Left movement of young people further divided the SP, not only between the Debs and Realignment caucuses, but within the Realignment caucuses itself. As early as 1964, some former members of the ISL, who maintained that organization’s traditional opposition to both blocs in the Cold War (the Third Camp) and either of the two major capitalist parties, left the SP, believing that it was becoming too tied to the Democratic Party and reformist in nature. Then, in the late 1960s, the factional fight between the Debs and the Realignment caucuses heated up with both sides trading control of the national office and the Party’s newspaper, New America, until 1968 when the Realignment caucuses gain majority control of the National Committee of the SP and the election of Michael Harrington, as the party’s chairman.
The death of Norman Thomas in November, 1968, whom when he was alive served as a unifying force in the party for both factions, helped to further unleash the growing tensions within the party, which would eventually lead to a three way split. First, the members of the Debs caucus, whose major figures were long time SPers David McReynolds and Rob Tucker, supported an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces in Vietnam and the SP working side by side with the mass anti-war movement in the United States. They accused the members of the Realignment caucus of really supporting the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, while hiding its Hawkish position behind bogus anti-war organization’s such as Negotiations Now. Moreover, the Debs caucus accused the SP majority leadership of bureaucratically operating the national office and newspaper, in an authoritarian matter (referred to as Right-wing-Bolshevism) denying equal access for the minority caucus. (Ironically, the members of the Realignment Caucus made a similar charge against the Debs Caucus when the later controlled the national office and newspaper, New America, in 1967-68.) The Debs Caucus also charged that the new Realignment leadership was transforming the SP into a vestige of the Democratic Party and uncritically following the pro-war line of the AFL-CIO under the presidency of George Meany, thereby leaving behind the Party’s heritage as bequeath by Debs & Thomas. Therefore, after their defeat at the 1970 Convention of the SPUSA, McReynold and Tucker, left the Socialist Party, along with many other members of the Debs Caucus.
At the same time, divisions between Michael Harrington and his former mentor, Max Shachtman, were growing within the majority Realignment Caucus. They had differed over the Vietnam War, but these differences had been papered over by the Shachtman & Harrington sides agreeing to a compromise position on the war, similar to the policy of SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), while they all continued to share the Realignment strategy of running with the labor movement in the Democratic Party in order to transform it into a social democratic party. After, winning a majority of the NC at the 1968 SPUSA Convention and the election of Harrington, as Party Chairman, these differences in the Realignment Caucus over Vietnam between Shachtman and Harrington reared its ugly head. Max and his supporters supported then Vice President Hubert Hunphrey in the 1968 Democratic Primaries, while Mike and his supporters backed the anti-war candidacies of Senators Eugene McCarthy & Robert Kennedy. When Humphrey, with the strong support of the labor movement, narrowly lost the Presidential election to Richard Nixon, Shachtman and his supporters blamed the defeat on the New Politics elements in the Democratic Party and the anti-war movement, who had advocated a position of abstaining from voting for Humphrey in protest for his support of the Vietnam War. Therefore, while both the Shachtman and Harrington sides in the Realignment Caucus favored the SP working in the Democratic Party, they now differed over the nature of the coalition that each supported in the DP. The Shachtman side favored a coalition led by the AFL-CIO, minorities, etc, while the Harrington side saw a new coalition emerging from the anti-war section of the labor movement, led by the UAW, the new student and mainstream anti-war movements and intellectuals that came out of the McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns, under the name of the New Politics. After 1971, both sides could no longer work in the same caucus and therefore disbanded the Realignment Caucus, stating that it had achieved its goal now that the majority of the membership of the SPUSA supported its position of working in the Democratic Party. However, a brief period of internal peace was broken over further divisions over the Vietnam War and the makeup of a majority winning coalition in the DP, which led to Harrington and his supporters forming a new caucus called the Coalition caucus. Nevertheless, Harrington remained the chairman and chief spokesperson of the Socialist Party to the outside world, even though he was also the leader of a minority caucus in the Party.
Finally, early in 1972, it would be a unification of the Socialist Party, U.S.A. with the Democratic Socialist Federation, which was the remnant of the former Old Guard faction which left the SP in 1936, which would ironically help lead to the major 3 way split in the Party at the end of the year. Michael Harrington had opposed the early unity with the pro war DSF (whose members consisted of the Workmen’s Circle and the Jewish Socialist Verband, etc.) while the debate over the Vietnam War was continuing in the SP. The members of the DSF would add to the pro-war majority in the Party. Therefore, the NC decided to strip Harrington of his title as sole Chairman of the SPUSA. Rather, he would now become one of 3 equal co-chairmen’s of the new unified Socialist Party, U.S.A. and Democratic Socialist Federation of the U.S.A, with civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and labor leader Charles Zimmerman, from the DSF, as the two other co-chairman. But it would be a pyrrhic unity as the divisions over the Vietnam war and the nature of the coalition within the Democratic Party grew wider between the majority and Harrington’s Coalition Caucus as George McGovern, representing the anti-war –New Politics coalition forces in the DP won the presidential nomination over the candidacies of Senators Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson, who were favored by Shachtman and the majority which followed him in the SP. After the Democratic Convention, SP-DSF debated endorsing George McGovern, as the New Politics forces took over the DP. AFL-CIO declined to support him and was neutral in the race against Pres. Nixon. The SP was divided between following the AFL-CIO’s neutral position, or giving a very soft endorsement of McGovern against Nixon, but emphasizing his supporter's "authoritarian leftist leanings" and "elitists and anti-labor tendencies." Shachtman said McGovern's "foreign policy is a monstrosity, not just as bad as Henry Wallace in 1948 but much worse." McGovern is calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Vietnam in six weeks seemed to be in favor of "turning over all of Vietnam to the Stalinists," according to Shachtman. And Max lamented that the McGovern campaign ran "entirely against the grain of our realignment policy. he wants an anti-labor machine; I want the opposite." Finally, Harrington supported the SP giving a strong positive endorsement to McGovern, praising his support of taxing unearned income and other progressive positions. When the NC voted to give McGovern a very critical soft endorsement, Mike resigned as SP co-chair in protest. He accused his "comrades" of secretly supporting Nixon.
Shachtman died of a heart attack on Nov. 5, 1972. Two day's later; McGovern lost to Nixon in a massive landslide. SP-DSF Convention was held on Dec. 29-31, 1972 (and covered for three straight days in the New York Times). Harrington's Coalition Caucus and the remains of the Debs caucus were defeated on every question voted on by the delegates at the convention. The majority voted to change the name of the Socialist Party to Social Democrats USA, 72-34, thus breaking with the last vestige of the heritage of Debs and Thomas, according to Harrington and his allies. It should be noted that when David McReynold’s angrily quit the SP after the 1970 National Convention, calling the SP majority, the “former associates of Norman Thomas,” then SP Chairman Harrington responded by stating, “I am quite willing to agree that all of us in the Socialist Party, of whatever faction, are ‘former associates of Norman Thomas,’ but I object to invoking the memory of that great man for factional purposes.”
It is important here to look at the rational for the name change. It originated in the discussions that lead to merger of the Socialist Party and the Democratic Socialist Federation. The majority, in the Convention debate over changing the name of the Socialist Party, maintained that the term “’social democrats’ more accurately denoted their political philosophy and that dropping the term ‘party’ had long been overdue. The new name would also “distinguish the organization from its Communist opponents and from the smaller Socialist Labor and Socialist Workers parties, the latter – a Trotskyist Communist organization hostile toward Israel.” National Secretary Joan Suall argued that the name change represented “no substantive change to our commitment to the building of a democratic socialist society in America.” In addition, she stated that “our organization stopped running candidates many years ago. Today we support Democratic Party candidates who indicate a commitment to moving the country in the direction of social democracy.” James Glaser, the first vice-chairman of the newly named SDUSA claimed that the term “socialist” had become “hopelessly identified in the public mind with the Communist world. Our movement, in contrast,” Glaser asserted, “is identified in Europe and elsewhere as social democratic. Essentially, this means we favor the achievement of socialism through democratic, peaceful and constitutional means.” Former SP National Secretary Irwin Suall pointed out that the name change would further the organizations goal to bring socialist politics into the mainstream of American political life. “Far from being a departure from Socialist tradition,’ Suall added, “the name social democratic was first used in the U.S. by Eugene Victor Debs when he called the forerunner of the SP, the Social Democratic Party of the United States of America.”
Michael Harrington, on the other hand, argued that the name change would mean a departure from socialist politics. “I think it could mean not simply the abandonment of a tradition, and in an attempt to become more acceptable to the American people and the American trade union,” he told the delegates at the Convention. “It would result in our giving up our socialist content. I think that the Socialist party should stand forthrightly for socialism.” Looking back, from the vantage point of almost 36 years, at the content of this debate, we can see merits in the arguments of both sides. The contemporary rational for the name change makes sense, even though the organization still held the title to the name Socialist Party. However, Harrington’s warning came true. As the years and decades went by, the SD did increasingly give up the socialist content in its public programs, and eventually managed to also narrow the definition of social democrat and social democracy. This is illustrated in its final public document, “The New Social Democrat,” that was released in May, 2003. The document maintained that “social democracy is not an adversary to capitalism that seeks, however gradually, to do away with it. Social democracy can complement and even strengthen capitalism by helping maintain the framework of rules and obligations that encourage the market to operate with efficiency, vigor, fairness, legitimacy and the fullest possible participation of our citizens. Experience shows that, contrary to both the ideologues of laissez-faire and the dire predictions of the Marxists, a capitalist economy that is complemented by a soundly conceived social-democratic social and regulatory system promotes greater prosperity for both rich and poor.” This statement was, as Harrington warned, a full departure from socialist tradition and the “giving up (of) our socialist content,” including attacks on Marxism, that one would expect to see on the Right. Max Shachtman and other departed SDers, who were advocates of democratic Marxism to the end of their lives, must have been turning in their grave over this statement. It also showed the dramatic shift to the Right, in the SD’s from its initial program, “The American Challenge,” that was adopted at the 1972-73 Convention which defended Marx’s analysis of the capitalist economic system.
Nevertheless, had Max lived, he would have probably opposed a name change and it never would have been brought up, according to some sources. Second, these sources argue that despite his sour relations with Harrington, he never would have allowed the SP to split. In any event, Harrington's caucus began planning to form a new organization at a meeting in Feb. 1973. They began publishing a journal entitled Newsletter of The Democratic Left in March, 1973. Jack Clark was brought in to organize this new group. Mike officially resigned from the SD in July, 1973. The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) was founded in Oct, 1973. Mike Harrington was elected chairman of DSOC at the founding convention. DSOC was form "to create a socialist presence in the United States." They would work in the left wing of the Democratic Party. While socialism was their ultimate goal, DSOC would "work in the liberal, labor, black and women's movement for social change desperately needed now." Their founding statement called for bringing together both the Meanyites and the McGovernites under one roof in the DP. It also stated that Communist countries were not socialist. Its analysis of Communism still held to the Shachtmanite theory of bureaucratic collectivism.
At the same time, the members of the Debs Caucus who had remained in the SP and won 2 seats to the new National Committee of the renamed Social Democrats, U.S.A., also decided to withdraw from the organization, taking with it the state parties from Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Wisconsin, whose historical ties to the SP went back to 1898 and had continue to maintain an office since that time. The Debs Caucus continued to function, along with the above state party organization, outside of the SD, while Virgil J. Vogel of Illinois circulated letters between members of the withdrawn state parties and other members of the Debs Caucus maintained that the SD by transforming the nature of the organization from that of a political party to a political pressure group, and dropping the name “Socialist” from its title, gave up its connection to being the historical Socialist Party of Debs & Thomas. Therefore Vogel called for the Debs Caucus and the 4 state parties to re-establish the Socialist Party under their leadership. They decided to ignore that the SD in its new constitution, in Article XIV, maintained that “the Socialist Party, by that name, shall continue, in association with the Social Democrats, U.S.A.” Rather, the withdrawn state parties and the rest of the Debs Caucus gathered together for a conference, in Milwaukee, in May of 1973, where Vogel made a motion to transform the conference into the founding convention of the Reconstituted Socialist Party of America. The delegates voted to pass the motion and the new Socialist Party was born on May 26, 1973. The national office would be located in the historic Socialist Party of Wisconsin headquarters in Milwaukee. Frank Zeidler, who served as mayor of Milwaukee from 1948-1960, and was the last major office holder elected by the Socialist Party, became national chairperson of the new SP. Sometime later that year, the renewed party decided to again name the organization, Socialist Party, U.S.A (SPUSA) In 1974, however, to avoid a lawsuit with the SD, which still claimed the title to the name Socialist Party, U.S.A, the new party officially renamed itself, Socialist Party of the United States of America (SPUSA), but still went by the name, Socialist Party, U.S.A. in all of its publications and later on its website. In 1976, the new SPUSA, resume electoral activities on a national scale by nominating Zeidler to run for President, with J. Quinn Brisben, as his Vice President running mate.
SDUSA & DSOC, Bitter Rivals
SDUSA and DSOC: They both came out of the Shachtmanite movement. SDUSA was now the Right-Shachtmanite tendency. Those who came out of the SP in DSOC are called Center-Shachtmanites. Hal Draper and the Jacobsons who reject working in the DP and adhere to the Third Camp position were Left-Shachtmanites. (The remnant of the Debs Caucus in the SP that stayed in the Party after David McReynold’s resigned left the SD and reformed the Socialist Party as an independent electoral political party. Though the SD had the copyright to the SP and YPSL name, the new SP stated that it was, and is, the historic Socialist Party of Debs and Thomas.) This is how the SD-DSOC split affected the wider democratic Left in the U.S. in the period from 1973-1980:While both SD and DSOC worked inside the Democratic Party, they supported different camps in the DP. SD formed the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. DSOC organized Democracy 76, and worked to influence the platform at the 1976 Democratic Convention. SD’s activities within the DP and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority opposed what they call the New Politics forces behind Democracy 76. Both groups endorsed Carter. (DSOC might not have formally endorsed him, but Harrington did in an article in the N Y Daily News.) DSOC members are elected to political offices running as Democrats, such as NYC Council member, Ruth Messinger, Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Ca.) & Rep. Major Owens (D.-N.Y.). Democracy 76 became the Democratic Agenda and DSOC achieved its highest level of influence within the DP at the 1978 Democratic mini-convention in Memphis, where it was Harrington vs. Carter at that meeting debating the Administration’s economic policy. Democratic Agenda activities continued in 1979 and 80. DSOC and Harrington supported Sen. Edward Kennedy in the 1980 Presidential primaries. DSOC didn’t endorse Carter after the 1980 Democratic Convention. SDUSA criticized Carter's weak foreign policy. The group had a strong relationship with New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Senator Henry Jackson (D-Wash.). SD formally endorsed Carter, but some prominent friends and members of the SD backed Reagan. Carl Gershman joined the new Reagan Administration as chief aide to UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick, herself had close ties to the SD. Some CDM Democrats and SDers became neo-Conservatives and joined the Republican Party. Gershman had been the executive director of SDUSA from 1974-79. (In fact, Gershman was appointed as Kirkpatrick's aide, not many weeks after returning from the Congress of the Socialist International, as part of the SD delegation. He went from singing the International to serving in the Reagan Administration, just a few short weeks apart.)
Critical Question No 1.
Why would we want to Revive the SDUSA?
This SDUSA has been considered by many observers to be the direct heir of Max Shachtman's final political legacy. Many of the members and the leadership of SDUSA were Max's closest allies in the last 10 years of his life. Therefore Max has taken the blame for some SDers who have become neo-Conservatives and worked in the Reagan (and the second Bush) Administration. He has been called the father of the evil empire theory of the USSR. (This statement, says more about those who are making this accusation.) Are Max's critics correct? Or were his closest allies lost without his guidance, and moved in a direction that Shachtman never would have approved of, especially those who became neo-Conservatives?
A,A frank look at the charges against our past activities under the former Leadership
SDUSA had been charged with being excessively anti-Communist. Its close ties to the former AFL-CIO leadership, particularly in international affairs, have been blamed for the Cold War mentality of the Labor Federation. And the SDUSA have also been charged with having ties to CIA activities in Latin American unions and elsewhere. These charges today affect our renewed effort to revive the SDUSA. Therefore, in our new publication, The Torch & Rose, and in Fist & Rose, our theoretical publication, there will be an objective study of the entire past SDUSA network. This network consisted of the following kinds of organizations and periodicals: (1), groups which have had close fraternal relations with the SD, such as the League for Industrial Democracy, Frontlash and the A. Philip Randolph Institute. (2) Organizations in which SD members played a large and influential role. Examples are Penn Kemble and Prodemca, and Carl Gershman and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Then there was Freedom House. There was also the SD relationship to the American Institute for Free Labor Development in Latin America (AIFLD). Then there was the relationship between the SD and Commentary magazine. Finally, there were those Shachtmanites and SDers and allies who became neo-Conservatives and influence the foreign policy positions in the Reagan and the current second Bush Administration.One of our main goals in taking an honest and objective look at our past activities since 1973 is to determine, once and for all, the charges of CIA and Right wing activity by AIFLD and the NED, and in the SD and its fraternal allies as a whole, which have been widely made by many of the Left. If we find that these allegations are true, we will say so and make amends for them. But if they are "Stalinoid" lies, we will state this fact in our publications. Our judgment will be made on the evidence and not some pre-conceived political bias on our part or influenced by the opinions of other critics or friends of the SD on either the political Left or Right. Moreover, it would show that the new SDUSA is an open and very democratic organization that is not afraid to that a hard look at our own past, and learn the right lessons from them in order to build a better organization.
Here, we will explore in brief, the various topics concerning the SD’s past activities which will be explored in depth in future issues of our new publications. First and foremost, there was the issue of SDUSA and anti-Communism. The SD saw itself as being, except for mainstream labor, the only anti-Stalinists on the Left. It felt isolated. Therefore, articles in our publications will discuss whether the socialist anti-Stalinism of Shachtman's closest allies in the SP, degenerated after he died into an anti-Communism that became almost anti-Marxist and not too different from conservative anti-Communism. Was this factor the reason that some SDers moved into the neo-conservative camp and supported Reagan as the answer to the Soviet threat? On the other hand, was the SD reacting against a "democratic Left" that was moving increasingly away from an understanding of Communism? These are the questions we intend to explore. The SD on the Soviet threat: This was the issue that seems to be the primary focus of the activity in the SD in the 70s and 80s. Were they correct to warn about the aggressive aims of the USSR? Did they overlook the real weakness of Soviet society which ultimately led to the collapse of the entire Communist system and the USSR itself? We may argue that from recent data that the SD analysis was both essentially correct in many aspects of its anti-Soviet position, especially its critique of detente, and completely wrong in its analysis of the military strength and dynamism of the USSR and Communist societies. Remember Jeane Kirkpatrick's article in Commentary in 1979 about the differences in the ability to change authoritarian Right wing dictatorships and the permanence of Communist totalitarian dictatorships that established her fame, and were adopted as an article of faith by the SD? And remember Jean-Francois Revel's book, The Totalitarian Temptation and the charge of the Finlandization of Western Europe? Then, when it came to the Gorbachev period, the SD could not explain him or understand the reality of his reform movement. Another problem was that the SD seemed to shy away from making any criticism of the foreign policy aims of the U.S. in the Cold War, as even Shachtman did in his pro war statement on Vietnam. Here, we will take a second look, in our publications, at the SD analysis of the "detente fraud" in the 1970s and the entire foreign policy positions that were taking by this organization under the former leadership. We will take a very close look at Carl Gershman, when he became the main SP spokesmen on foreign policy and his views of the Soviet threat. Was his influence in the SD, positive or negative to the organization’s future? After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the SD saw the Soviet action as vindication of its hard line policy toward the USSR, and Communism in general. How did this analysis affect the SD’s views of the reforms of the Gorbachev era? Angola and South Africa: The SD championed Jonas Savimbi and his National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA) rebel force, which was also backed by the U.S. and South Africa, against the pro-Soviet government of the country, whom was also being aided by Cuban military forces send to the area by the Castro government. Savimbi, in his public speeches to SD & Freedom House, co-sponsored events, claimed to be a democratic socialist, and that his rebel force was fighting for a free and democratic socialist Angola, against a Marxist-Leninist pro Soviet puppet government. Savimbi, however, turned out to be a violent authoritarian guerrilla leader who would sabotage every peace agreement that would be reached with the Angolan government and murder countless Angolan civilians. Nevertheless, the SD wasn’t alone in misjudging Savimbi and UNITA on the democratic Left. Eric Lee and Alex Spinrad, in their journal, The New International Review, wrote in their important article: “Democratic Socialism: Points of Departure,” written in 1983, “In the impoverished Third World we socialists support all genuine anti-imperialist forces, including the democratic forces in El Salvador; the courageous Afghan rebels fighting against Soviet imperial conquest; the Angolan resistance movement (UNITA) which seeks to drive Cuban and Soviet colonial armies out of Africa; the Black workers movement in South Africa, fighting against the brutality and immorality of apartheid capitalism; the Cuban democratic freedom fighters both those on the island and those in exile; and others. Those who are fighting for genuine national independence are fighting with us – against capitalist imperialism and against totalitarian imperialism. In the period of détente, these movements are fighting with us against a common enemy and toward a common goal: a world of free people and peoples.” This statement, except for the comment about “capitalist imperialism” (unfortunately) and “détente”, is a perfect summary of the foreign policy position of the SDUSA in the 1970s and 80s. SD and the Labor Movement: The SD established very close links to the leadership of the AFL-CIO. The top leaders of the Labor Federation appear at public SD functions. Several SDUSA members held important staff positions in the AFL-CIO and major affiliated unions. This enables the SD to play a powerful role in shaping the labor movement in the U.S. What were the results of their influence in the labor movement, particularly on foreign policy, in particular, the influence of Tom Kahn on labor's foreign policy positions as head of the Federation's international division? We will objectively deeply analyze this questions concerning Kahn, who was a major figure of our recent past in both the SP and SD, in our new publications.
The SD and the Labor Movement's crucial role in supporting the independent Polish trade union, Solidarity. Tom Kahn's critical role in that effort. On this issue, there cannot be any criticism of the SD’s role at all by anyone who considers him or herself a democratic socialist, or on the democratic Left. Rather, the Social Democrats, U.S.A played a central role in backing Solidarity after it was born in 1980. Then, after it was suppressed in December, 1981, when Poland was placed under martial law, the entire SD organization, including half of its national office in New York was turned over to the Committee in Support of Solidarity. Members of Solidarity who were able to flee Poland for the United States came to SD headquarters. They viewed it as their refugee center and home away from home. SD’s pro Solidarity work was known throughout Poland. No one on the Democratic Left, including DSOC-DSA made any kind of effort to support Solidarity that came close to the job done by the leaders and members of the SDUSA. In fact the one pro Solidarity demonstration that was organized by DSOC, was organized by two duel members of DSOC and the SD. Today, these two individuals are officers of the revived SDUSA. Ironically, the only other organization on the Left that made a major effort in aiding Solidarity, were our Left-Shachtmanite comrades in the Campaign for Peace & Democracy, East & West, founded by former YPSL, Joanne Landy. In fact, other than the SD, or the so-called Right-Shachtmanites, and the AFL-CIO, Landy, by herself, did more for aiding Solidarity then any other organization on the Left. In short, whatever the other sins of the SD in its foreign policy, we, old members and new, can hold our head in pride over the effort that our organization, S.D.U.S.A. played in aiding Solidarity in its time of greatest need, that ultimately led to its rise again and democratically defeating the Communist government in Poland in 1989.
SD. labor and Central America, including SD’s support and involvement in AIFLD: What was AIFLD's real role in Latin America? The CIA question. Prodemica and Penn Kemble. Our opposition to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and support for so-called democratic elements of the U.S. supported contras, such as Eden Pastora and Adolfo Romero. These are some of the issues that we will reconsider in our new publications. Frontlash, the labor backed youth organization that was created by the SD, when it was still the Socialist Party in the late 60s. Frontlash was founded to directly combat the white backlash that developed in the 1966 Congressional elections, to register young people to vote and educate them on issues central to both the labor and the civil rights movement. This is an example of an organization that engaged in very positive work in the tradition of the social democratic/democratic socialist movement, and the entire democratic Left, that was supported by the SD and had its office in the SD headquarters. Yet, Left critics of the SD have ignored this aspect of the SD’s domestic activities from the 1970s thru the 1990s. In addition, we will continue to highlight and also have a balance look at some prominent SDers in the Labor movement. For example, Sandra Feldman, who was the president of the AFT.SD on domestic issues: A large proportion of this topic has already been covered in the previous paragraphs. SD and Blacks: Critic of the SD took little notice that our organization had a higher percentage of African-American members than either DSOC/DSA or the so called “SPUSA.” Every convention of the SD had a strong civil rights resolution. However, what was controversial was our anti-quotas position. In our new publications, we will look back on this issue and our entire position on civil rights issues. One major factor for the SD attracting black members was our close relationship to the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which was led by our chairman, Bayard Rustin and NC members, Norm and Velma Hill. We look forward to renewing our relationship with the Randolph Institute, as well as establishing a new relationship with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.
The SD structure and the internal life of the organization, frankly, was a major problem and the central reason why the organization did not grow as it should have, despite its critic on the Left. In many ways, while the organization’s central credo was its advocacy of political and social democracy, at the same time, democracy within the organization became more restricted.
The development of locals around the country was ignored, while control was centered in the national office. The SD’s newspaper, New America, which had been continually published since 1960, when it was the organ of the Socialist Party, suddenly stop publishing without any explanation from the national offices in 1986, after it became more lively and innovated under the editorship of investigative reporter, Dennis King. There were reluctances in recruiting new members in the fear that they may bring some independent thinking to the organization and challenge the long term leaders of the SD.
The elections to the National Committee were as democratic as the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union before Gorbachev. A committee from the NC would select the list for the new NC, which would be primarily made up of members of the old NC, with perhaps several new people who had gained the trust of the NO. Then the convention delegates would vote for a single list containing the nomination for the new NC, just like in the old USSR. In this instance, critics of the SD may be right when they called the leadership, ‘Rightwing Bolsheviks.”
Each time, the YPSL or YSD or the national office did try to bring in new people and try to develop a new leadership with a fresh and open outlook, (I.E. an SD version of glasnost), their efforts would be always blocked by the NC or other long time members in the NO. The new blood would then usually leave the organization, disillusioned with the SD or politics in general.
The reality was that the old leadership ran the SD like a social club. The movement, as they called it, was made up of long time members who came together in the ISL of the 1950s or the SP of the 1960s and worked in harmony governing the SD. New members would first have to gain the trust of these “old-timers” before they could be active in the SD, or be nominated to the NC. They became more and more suspicious of outsiders, and contemptuous of their former comrades in both DSOC/DSA and “SPUSA”, particularly Michael Harrington, with whom they had a very close relationship with in the 1950s to around 1965. (The worse action in this rivalry was the SD’s and Tom Kahn, in particular, trying to sabotage the 1980 Eurosocialist Conference that was held in Washington D.C. and organized by Harrington and DSOC. Belatedly, the new leadership of SDUSA formally apologizes for this inexcusable action to a fellow member of the Socialist International, which was taken by the former leadership of our organization.) At the same time, in a rare moment of candor, they would admit that the SD had never gotten over the loss of Harrington, who had been their charismatic major spokesperson, when they were in the SP. Then, after the resignation of Rita Freedman as executive director, the death of several key members of the NC, and the failure of another attempt at bringing fresh and youthful leadership to the SD, as Rita’s successor, the organization stopped holding its national conventions every two years, and started on a major and almost fatal national decline. We will discuss this further below, and how the almost demise of the SD can & should be transformed to its new rebirth. We are also intending to also revive the League for Industrial Democracy.
Critical Question No 2.
Why Should We Trust You?
A, Why should we trust you? Aren’t you the neo-Conservatives whom were behind the planning for the Iraq War & are now working to begin a new war with Iran? Aren’t you all now Republicans and have repudiated your Socialist and even Social Democratic heritage as illustrated by the book, Heaven on Earth, The Rise & Fall of Socialism, and other writings of former YPSL chairman Josh Muravchik?
Yes, we have to face this critical issue of the relationship of the SD and the neo-Conservatives. What was the influence of Commentary magazine and Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter on our organization? What about the SDers who became well known neo-Conservatives: Josh Muravchik, Linda Chavez and Chris Gerstein, Max and Anne Green, etc.? Then there were the neo-Conservatives who have been close to the SD, such as Michael Novak, Michael Ledeen, Ben Wattenberg and Jean Kirkpatrick and possible Paul Wolfowitz. (Some of these figures spoke at SD functions before they were known as neo-Cons. But Kirkpatrick was never a member of the SD.) Should we formally repudiate and denounce them? On the other hand, shouldn’t we have a symposium in our publications and in public, with our former comrade, Josh Muravchik, reviewing and debating his critique of socialism in his book? This would show that the new revived SDUSA is not afraid to tackle the tough issues, including the issue of the viability of social democracy/socialism itself, even with a critic who was once our close comrade and teacher, when he was chair of the YPSLs. Carl Gershman served as Kirkpatrick's assistant at the U.S. Mission to the UN in the first Reagan Administration. Then he became the first director of the National Endowment for Democracy. We repeat that we will look at the arguments for and against the NED and try to determine who's right in our new publications. Neo-Conservatives dominated the foreign policy of the second Bush Administration. They are accused of being reversed Trotskyists, by their critics, of having a pro-capitalist version of the Trotskyist theory of the "Permanent Revolution." Their position was viewed as being a direct result of the neo-conservatives origins in the Trotskyist/Shachtmanite movement. Is this the final legacy of the Shachtmanite movement and a lasting legacy of our organization, SDUSA? On the other hand, is it a basic distortion of the movement's goals and analysis of world affairs? Yes, this topic and all of the above controversies over the activities of the SD since 1973, and even prior to the split, will be frankly and objectively reviewed in the new publications of this revived Social Democrats, U.S.A.
The End of One Era of the SDUSA and the Rise of a New Era
A, The End of One Era of the SDUSA and the Rise of a New Era, as the SD, seemingly defunct as an organization, as is the concept of Socialism itself after the fall of Communism, arises again, like the Phoenix, to Build a Brighter future for the Organization, under New Leadership and The Social Democratic/Democratic Socialist Movement in the United States & The World along with our Comrades in the Socialist International.The SD lost its vital power base in the AFL-CIO, as SD supporter Thomas Donuhue lost to new DSA member John Sweeney. This appeared to result in the end of SDUSA, as most of its activities appeared to be transferred to a new think tank that was being run by SD President Dave Jessup, the New Economy Information Service (NEIS), in 1999. The NEIS seemed to be close to the "Third Way" concepts of Clinton and Blair. After 2003, NEIS also became suddenly inactive. After 1994, the SD no longer held a national convention, in violation of its constitutional requirement calling for a national convention every two years. The SDUSA did open a website and communicated with its members through the publication, NO Notes. But after 2000, NO Notes was only available on the SD’s website. There were no indications of any meetings of the National Committee since 1994, again in violation of the constitutional requirement for NC meetings every 3 months. There were no public meeting of the SD in the final years of the 1990s and the first 2 years of the new century. Suddenly, on May Day of 2002, the SD had an all day conference exploring the critical issue: “Socialism: What Happened? What Now?” A year later, the SD arose again with a all day conference on the topic “Everything Changed: What Now for Labor, Liberalism and the Global Left?” The National Committee seem to have met before that meeting, because a subcommittee of NC prepared a statement entitled “The New Social Democrats,” which was to be distributed at that conference “for use in discussion to prepare for the adoption of resolutions and an action program at a meeting to be held in the late Fall or Winter of 2003.” It did not represent an official statement by the organization. As far as it is known, that conference was never held. The next and final activity that was held by the former leadership of SDUSA was the conference on October 1, 2005, “Sidney Hook and American Democracy: Current Crisis, Future Challenges.” Sidney Hook, the famous philosopher, and social democratic political activist, who was a fierce opponent of Communism and a very controversial figure in his own right, had been Honorary Chair of the SD from 1978 to his death in 1989. All of the above three conference were organized by Penn Kemble. He also wrote the NO Notes for the SD website. Kemble did not attend the later conference as he was dying from brain cancer. It was Kemble whom was responsible for keeping the SD alive until 2005, despite the deaths of many long time key leaders of the SD and members of the NC. And it seemed that with his death later in October of 2005 (which received more coverage and tributes in conservative publications such as The Washington Times, The New York Sun, and the Wall St Journal.), no one was left in the NO with the will or desire to keep the organization alive. The last items to be placed on the official SD website were the tributes to Kemble. Nothing has been added since October, 2005. Thus, with Kemble’s passing, it appeared that the SD also died as the phone in the national office was disconnected and letters or new membership contributions were returned with the message, “no longer at this address, box closed.” And there was no forwarding address. Nevertheless, the SD’s official website was never taken down and it still lists the address and phone number which are no longer in operation. In addition, the site still asks for donations and for dues from new members, despite the apparent abandonment of the organization by the former leadership and the surviving members of the NC.
And that would be the end of this story, except one existing Local of the SD, refused to allow the organization that they had worked so hard to build, to die. The Western Pennsylvania Local of SDUSA, which was chartered by the national organization in 1981, was the last active local in the SD. It never received any notice from the NO that it was closing shop and disbanding the organization. Moreover, current members of the SD had not received a dues renewal notice for years, since 1998, or any mailing from the NO, including invitations to attend the 3 conferences. It seemed that only NC members and invited guests were permitted to attend those conferences. The former leadership of the SD seemed to close shop without informing the rank and file members of the organization. Therefore, the uninformed members could claim that they had paid dues to the SD for a service, and the SD leadership took their money and then disappeared without a trace. When Jeff Brindle of Pennsylvania send his application for membership to the old NO in order to join the Western Pennsylvania Local, his check was returned.
In 2006, Brindle, a former member of the “SPUSA” founded the Social Democratic Party of Pennsylvania. The Social Democratic Party of Pennsylvania affiliated with Social Democrats, U.S.A. in order to advance efforts to rebuild the authentic Socialist Party of America/Socialist Party, U.S.A. Gabe Ross, a continuing member of the SD since 1972, and one of the leading figures in the Western Pennsylvania Local, contacted other SD members across the country, and they all agree that they wanted the organization to continue in spite of the abandonment by the national leadership of the National office. They decided to re-establish a new national office in Johnstown, Pa., in the headquarters of the Western Pennsylvania Local. Ross, who is also a member of DSA & the “SPUSA” reached out to members of DSA, expelled or disillusioned members of “SPUSA” and activists in other progressive arenas and people who were never a member of a social democratic/democratic socialist organization to join SDUSA and help rebuild the organization from the ground up.
However, in a good faith effort, Ross and some other members, especially, Rabbi Craig Miller, tried to contact the former leadership of the SD to discover why they closed the doors to the organization without informing the membership and invite the existing members of the last elected National Committee to continue on with us in reviving the organization. Our hope was that some of the members of the last NC would continue to function in that position in a revived SD thereby provides an uninterrupted direct connection between the old leadership of the organization and the new NO being re-established in Jonestown, Pa. Unfortunately, what responses we did receive from the former leadership were negative, with the sense that they considered the SDUSA to be their personal property and if they choose to disband it, without any notice to the membership – tough luck. Therefore, while it is still our desire to have members of the old NC join us and renew their work in the SD, the new leadership of the organization contend that the ownership of the SD are in the hands of the remaining continuing members of the organization and the existing active Western Pennsylvania Local. Therefore, a provisional reorganizing National Committee, made up of both the continuing and new members of the SDUSA, began meeting, via conference calls, to plan the revival of the over 100 year old organization, that had been the historic Socialist Party of Debs & Thomas.
The revived organization first began using the working title Social Democratic Party of America/Social Democrats USA/Socialist Party of America and claimed the intellectual property of the Social Democrats, USA including the names Socialist Party of America, League for Industrial Democracy, Young Social Democrats, Young People's Socialist League, Inc., and to the legacy of Debs, Jones, Thomas, Sinclair, Randolph, Harrington, Hoopes, Zeidler, and Rustin. Gabriel Ross was elected acting General Secretary of the Social Democratic Party of America. The Party currently has one elected official: assessor, Richland Township, PA. We established a website in order to publically announce the revived SDUSA.
In the current year, 2008, the Young Social Democrats was reconstituted under the leadership of acting Youth Secretary, Jaime Johnston. Plans were laid with Social Democrats, USA / Social Democratic Party of America for a joint re-foundation convention in Philadelphia on Labor Day weekend. A committee to revive the efforts of the League for Industrial Democracy was formed. It was decided to resume using the name Social Democratic, U.S.A. in all public correspondences, activities and as the official name of our website. We also made a second website duplicating the entire content of the old SDUSA website, but with the new phone number and address of the re-established NO in Johnstown Pa. Unfortunately, the old website is still up with their bogus address & phone number, because the former leadership signed a contract for that domain lasting to 2011! They never bothered to shut it down, as they proceeded in their attempt to secretly dissolve the organization. It was agreed that the revived SD will adhere to the provisions of the last amended constitution of the SD adopted in 1990 to show the continuity of the organization between the old and new leadership until the adoption of a new constitution at the re-foundation convention. The Socialist International was contacted by the new NO and the process was begun to reestablish the SD’s membership in the SI, which the former leadership allowed to lapse by non-payment of dues going back several years. Ironically, the SI, in good faith, constantly tried to contact the old leadership to remind them to pay their back dues or they would lose their membership. But even the SI couldn’t get a response from the old leadership.
In June, the provisional NC elected new officers for the SD, who will be formally nominated at the forthcoming convention. In July, it was decided to postpone our refoundation convention to next year, and concentrate on building our Locals and circulating our publications, with this so-called “SD Manifesto” becoming our official document announcing the revival of the SDUSA. We reestablished our webside on a new domain, with the goal of intergrading our new content, with the content of the old SDUSA website that was set up by the former leadership. The official name of our organization on the new website is Social Democrats, USA-Socialist Party.
The provisional NC has also been debating whether to give up the title to the name, Socialist Party, U.S.A,, as the present organization, which is officially registered under the name, Socialist Party of the United States of America, but publicly uses the name Socialist Party, U.S.A (SPUSA) on its website and all of its public literature, etc. may try to challenge us in court over which organization has the legitimate title to the name Socialist Party, U.S.A. Therefore, some NC members argue that we should reluctantly allow the current organization that calls itself “SPUSA” to claim the copyright to that name in order to save our revived fledging organization from a possible expensive lawsuit, and instead lay claim to the other historical names associated with the Socialist Party, such as the Socialist Party of America, etc.
On the other hand, other NC members point out, that according to the SD’s own constitution, the Socialist Party, U.S.A still existed, alongside the SDUSA, and could be revived for electoral purposes again, by a unanimous decision of its National Board, which consisted of all of the members of the SD’s National Committee. Moreover, it should be noted, for our current debate, that the SD's structure remained the same as it was when it was the SPUSA. All that changed was the name of the organization and that it no longer called itself a political party. However, it was still the same organization. Similarly, in 1944 when the Communist Party voted to transform the organization into the non-party, Communist Political Association, it was still under the same leadership and structure as the CPUSA, except the title of Chairman became President, etc. Then in 1945, the CPA, at a emergency convention, returned back to becoming again, the Communist Party of the United States. Similarly, the SD could have, at any convention, voted to return to the name Socialist Party USA and run candidates for public office. It was still the same organization. That is why it remained a member of the Socialist International. The SD continued holding the seat that it occupied under the name of the Socialist Party. Similarly, when the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) merges in 1982 with the New American Movement (NAM) to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the renamed and merged organization continued to hold DSOC's seat in the Socialist International, despite the more drastic change in the structure and membership of the merged organization. Accordingly, the SDUSA continued to hold the copyright title to the name Socialist Party, U.S.A. and the new organization that was founded in 1973, recognized this when they changed the name in their constitution to Socialist Party of the United States of America in 1974. But they only trademarked that name in 2007. Therefore, we the members and officers of the revived Social Democrats, U.S.A. may decide to officially reclaim our ownership to the name Socialist Party, U.S.A., with the formation of a political action committee for supporting electoral campaigns under the name, Socialist Party, U.S.A. PAC.
Critical Question No 3.
What will be The Revived SDUSA’s Relationship with DSA and “SP of the U.S.A.”?
A, What will be the revived SDUSA’s Relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America & the Socialist Party of the United States of America? And why bother to revive the SDUSA in the First Place and instead work inside one of these Two Established Organization promoting the cause of Social Democracy/Democratic Socialism?
It is well known that the SDUSA, under the former leadership had a very continuous relationship with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which in 1982 became the Democratic Socialists of America, while Michael Harrington was alive. As shown above, they were intense and even bitter rivals in both the labor movement and the Democratic Party and many times on opposite sides on international issues, including inside the Socialist International. SD was also envious of the growth of this former minority caucus of the organization, which quickly grew to pass it in membership. Only with the fatal illness of Michael Harrington in 1988, did a thaw finally emerge between the two U.S. member party’s of the SI, as the SD send and paid for a half page greeting to Harrington in the journal commemorating the large public celebration of his 60th birthday. Then after Harrington died of cancer of the esophagus on July 31, 1989, the SD was one of the many organizations that placed a death notice, in his name, in the New York Times. In the decade of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, several personalities, who were close to DSA, such as Jim Chapin and Robert Kuttner were invited to attend SD sponsored conferences. But there never really was any organizational reconciliation between the two groups.
On the other hand, the SD basically ignored the “SPUSA.” They were considered to be too small and irrelevant to be bothered with. Therefore, when the “SPUSA” took the name, “Hammer & Tongs,” for its internal discussion bulletin, which was the long time title of the historic Socialist Party’s internal discussion bulletin, and according to the SD’s constitution, would continue in the renamed organization, the SD decided that it wasn’t worth to contest it. Likewise, when the “SPUSA,” which didn’t have a youth section until 1989, started its own version of the Young People’s Socialist League, the SD also did not contest it.
1, Socialist Party of the United States of America
The new Socialist Party, itself has hardly made a dent in the political life of the United States since it was founded in 1973, despite running a presidential ticket every four years since 1976. These campaigns were only able to gather a few thousands votes across the country, as the Party was only able to appear on the ballot of a limited number of states. Most Americans, including activists in progressive causes, do not even know that it exists, and believe that the historic Socialist Party of Debs & Thomas died many years ago. In fact, ironically, the “SPUSA” received the most publicity in its 35 year history, during the 2000 election mishap in Florida, where the ballot in Palm Beach, County was so confusing that voters who thought that had voted for Al Gore, ended up voting for Pat Buchanan. When the disputed ballot was shown on television, viewers could see that the “Socialist Party, U.S.A” ticket of David McReynolds and Mary Cal Hollis, appeared next to that of Gore’s and Buchanan, which would probably have been the first time that they became aware of its existence. The limited resources of the Party also restricted its efforts toward running candidates for other political offices around the country. They were only able to conduct a few local campaigns a year, which were mainly for propaganda purposes, without any chance of actually winning a political office and carrying out its program.
Nevertheless, the Socialist Party of the United States of America, when it was under the chairmanship of Frank Zeidler, which lasted until 1984, and for several years after, proudly proclaimed in its public appearance and Party literature, its historic connection to the Socialist Party of Debs & Thomas. Zeidler’s pamphlet, Ninety Years of Democratic Socialism: A Brief History of the Socialist Party USA, was widely distributed and even appeared on the organization’s website, when it was started in the late 1990s by Andrew Hammer. As long as the former members of the Debs Caucus and the four state Socialist Parties, that originated in the SD in 1973, or when it was still the SP in 1970, continued to be active in the new “SPUSA,” the connection to the past was ensured. These long time SP members would include, Zeidler, himself, McReynolds, Rob Tucker, Margaret Phair, Charles Curtiss, Max and Sylvia Wohl, William Douglas, Donald Busky, Steve Rossignol, Ann Rosenshaft, Bill Briggs, and Robin Myers. While the new “SP” was essential pacifist and very critical of U.S. foreign policy, their foreign policy positions were more or less, close to that of Third Camp socialists, and even more anti-Communist than that of DSA in the 1980s. In addition, these comrades who never were part of an organization with a Leninist background and its divisive Bolshevik style of debate, managed to create an internal life in the new Party that was truly comradely and collegial. People, who came into contact with the “SPUSA,” in those days, viewed the organization as consisting of the most decent people on the Left. This decency could have developed in reaction to the harsh and divisive personal abuse that these former Debs Caucus members received in the old SP by the majority leadership in the Shachtmanite Realignment Caucus. David McReynold, in particular, who was responsible for the Shachtmanites coming into the SP in the first place, was the subject of fierce abuse & gay-baiting by the majority.
However, conditions began to change in the “SPUSA” as these “old-timers” retired or died. New members came in, who had no historic ties to the old SP, and quite a few, either came from or brought a Leninist outlook, in what had been a Party espousing democratic socialism. The internal life became more contentious in the organization. The new “SP” had continued to proclaim the democratic and multi-tendency nature that it had inherited from the historic SP. Various tendencies had contested for seats on the National Committee and promoted their conception of democratic socialism that the Party should proclaim in its programs and statement of principles. Some even called for revolutionary democratic socialism. Other supported a feminist conception of democratic socialism. But all of the tendencies were united in stating that their program for the “SP” were written to continue the heritage of the historic Socialist Party of Debs, Thomas, Hillquit, London, Hoopes, Zeidler, etc. In the last several years, this would no longer be the case.
Gabe Ross, the new National Director of the revived SDUSA, had been very active in the “SPUSA,” for over 25 years, and was an eyewitness to the recent decline of the organization, both in political ideology and in its internal life, as it became more sectarian and intolerant of dissenting views, and increasingly doctrinaire in its definition of socialism, to the point that with the sole exception of Debs, the Party and its version of the YPSL, on their respective websites, does not claim a connection to the over 100 year old history of the historic Socialist Party. The historical account written by Zeidler no longer appears on the website. The name and heritage of Norman Thomas, and all the other notables who served in the Socialist Party after the death of Debs in 1925, and even Debs’s contemporaries, such as Morris Hillquit, Meyer London and Victor Berger, have been erased by this so-called “Socialist Party of the United States of America,” similar to the manner that the Soviet Communist Party, under Stalin, erased Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin and other prominent Communists who were purged in the 1930s, from the official accounts of the history of the CPSU.
It should be noted that this has not been the case in the websites of some Locals in the SP of the USA. The new website of the Socialist Party of Central New York, ‘CNY REDS,’ for example, contains the complete historical essay by Frank Zeidler and proclaims on its home page, “Socialism and Democracy are indivisible.” Its chair is Ron Ehrenreich. CNY REDS states, “We are affiliated with the Socialist Party, USA - the “old SP” whose members have included Eugene V. Debs, Mother Jones, Upton Sinclair, Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. DuBois, Helen Keller, A. Philip Randolph, Norman Thomas, Frank Zeidler, and Allen Ginsberg. The SP is a “multi-tendency” party committed to core values of socialism, equality, and democracy, and united by shared principles. Our basic strategy and the socialism that we envision is best described as Radical Democracy, where democracy is practiced in daily life in all aspects of social endeavors, and not merely a hollow choice between two hand picked candidates every two to four years.” The Local’s website also has a clear anti-Leninist declaration. Accordingly, if the Socialist Party of Central New York represented the outlook of the SP of the USA’s national office and it’s NC, there might not have been a need for our effort to revive the SDUSA. Nevertheless, this has not been the case, according to Comrade Ross. Here is his personal testimony:
When I joined the Socialist Party of the United States of America, for the first time, which I believe was in 1976, the SP of the USA was the group that members of the Peace movement with Socialist tendencies joined. There was a close relationship between the SP of the USA and the War Resisters League. David McReyonlds wrote one of the best short pieces on Democratic Socialism I have ever read for War Resisters League Organizing Manual. At the time I was active in two groups based in Philadelphia, Mobilization for Survival and Movement for a New Society. The latter group had a distinctly anarchist bent. I was always surprised when an MNS member mentioned his or her membership in the SP of the USA. The SP of the USA thankfully kept alive the pacifist tendencies of the Socialist Party of America and was probably more averse to Communism than DSOC. The SP regularly sold the pamphlets of S,I, parties on its literature table at NAM conventions.I remember being at a DSOC conference in 1980 when someone asked Michael Harrington about David McReyonlds presidential candidacy and Mike said David was “The best candidate with no hope of winning" Oddly the leadership of the SDUSA respected David while they had no time for his Party. In the late '70 or early "80's the SP of the USA sought membership in the Socialist International. The S.I. discouraged the request according to David. Apparently there were meetings between the leadership of the DSOC, the SDUSA and the SP of the USA about the S.I. membership application. This is what Arch Puddington and Harry Fleishman told me. It is important to remember that many in DSOC held "a plague a' both your houses" view of the duopoly . It is also worth remembering that DSOC seriously considered running Ron Dellums and Mike Harrington for president and vice president in the 1980 Democratic primaries. DSOC pursued a serious entryist strategy to the DP at the national level. The differences between DSOC and the SP of the USA were not large enough to prevent Pat Lacefield an active member of the SP from being named National Director of DSA in the late 1980s.Eric Chester was part of the anti-merger, August 7th caucus in the New American Movement. Oddly, so was future co-chair of DSA Barbara Ehrenreich. After the merger Chester helped to form Solidarity ; A Socialist Feminist Network. According to the Hammer and Tongs that was in our convention packet in 1983, Chester was part of negotiations to merge Solidarity...,; Worker’s Power; and what was left of the International Socialists with the SP of the USA. When we encountered Chester at that convention he was an observer for the I.S, Most of these people, I believe, drifted into the group currently known as Solidarity or the International Socialists. Chester argued that Frank Zeidler, who opened at least the last three NAM conventions would be unacceptable to the membership of the groups he represented as national chair because Frank was personally pro-life. Moving forward to 2005, the International Commission wrote a statement for May Day to be published in The Socialist. By majority vote the commission decided to include a mention of the Second International declaring May first International Worker's Day. The Commission also voted to include an expression of solidarity with the parties of the Socialist International. Chester dissented and argued that such a statement involved “working in the Democratic Party" I still don't know what he was talking about. He took the matter to the National Committee which decided to name Eric the convener and commissar of political correctness for the International Commission. The NC also altered the definition of Socialism to mean a sudden act. While revolution was not mentioned, that is clearly what they had in mind. The NC ordered the Commission to concentrate on minor international parties, who were outside the SI. In response Melvin Little formed the Fist and Rose Tendency. Yes, we knew at the time the acronym was FART. It was play on the idea of a rose and mired in dung. Melvin Little, David Hacker, Susan Ross, and Gabriel Ross wrote the Fist and Rose Manifesto with substantial help from David McReyonlds. David never was a member of the Tendency and never endorsed the Manifesto but offered comradely assistance, The Manifesto is available here on our website. By this time the SP of the USA was polarized into caucuses. There was the Debs Tendency who liked to use the word revolutionary a great deal. They have no other defining characteristics. The Direct Action Tendency was closely tied to the Wobblies and the War Resisters League and supported civil disobedience as a tactic. Most of this Tendency left to join the reformed Students for a Democratic Society. The Grassroots Tendency was composed of members of the Boston and Vermont locals and was very secretive. It was the only Tendency without an open listserv. The Comrades Caucus was mainly the old guard who worked on being comradely while there opponents planned their expulsions. David McReyonlds suddenly was labeled a right winger. This was just nuts. Eventually, nearly all of the Fist and Rose Tendency and younger members of the Comrades caucus drifted out of the Party. The entire North Carolina Party left. We lost about 100 members in Pennsylvania. The National Committee suspended the Party constitution to try to expel me. The only problem being that the Socialist Party of PA predates the SP of the USA and in fact helped to found the SP of the USA. So the NC resolution is just more BS. Now the Oregon SP wishes to expel Michael Marino in part because of his bad hearing and eyesight. Helen Keller must be rolling in her grave. The SP of the USA has gone from being the friendliest most diverse group on the Socialist left in America to being a cadre organization of proclamations from the Supreme Soviet. Had the matter of dual membership in the revived Socialist Party of America or revived Social Democrats USA been put to convention vote, the motion to expel dual members would have failed as badly as the motion to expel DSA members did two years earlier. The pretense that we are a rival party is laughable. .The SP only runs token candidates and discourages those like Karen Kubby and myself who actually get elected to something. Obviously we could have worked out a political nonaggression pact. The leadership SP of the USA desires insularity and they now have it. There are nearly no functioning locals and only a few states that have even the pretense of an actual political party. Now Oregon, one of the few that can actually claim a Party organization is in the throes of suicide. Enough sadness for one post. This is why I became involved in this effort to revive the SDUSA, the organization that actually was the historic Socialist Party of Debs and Thomas.
I call upon my former comrades in the SP of the USA, who originally came from the historic Socialist Party or still proudly adhere to its entire history and heritage, warts and all, to join me in rebuilding the authentic descendent of the Socialist Party. Yes, you who had left this organization believing that it had moved so far to the Right that it no longer seemed to reflect the historic heritage of Debs & Thomas. The internal life of the organization became autocratic and intolerant of dissent. The SP in the late 1960s was isolating itself from, and even opposing the emerging mass movement on the Left, centered in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Some of you, led by David McReynolds and Rob Tucker, felt that you had no choice, but to leave the SP in 1970. Others, in the Debs Caucus left after the majority of the SP voted to change the name of the organization to SDUSA and no longer function as a political party, at the end of 1972.
Now, my former Comrades, aren’t you facing a similar situation in the current SP of the USA, except this time, the organization is moving to a increasingly sectarian far Left position, outside of the heritage of Debs & Thomas. In fact, leading members of the SP of the USA proudly denounce Thomas for being a lackey of the CIA and other sins. Only Debs is worthy of honor, along with contemporaries of his who were in the Left wing of the SP. But one wonders if it is the historic figure of Debs that they are honoring, or an interpretation of Deb’s views made to match their own “revolutionary socialist” political orientation, similar to the manner that his name has been used by the former Trotskyist, Socialist Worker’s Party, when their Pathfinder Press published the book, Eugene V. Debs Speak, and the Stalinist, Communist Party, U.S.A., whose publishing house, International Publishers, in 1948 published ,Gene Debs: The Story of a Fighting American, by Herbert M. Morais and William Cahn. Both Leninist organizations in these books, claimed to be the true inheritors of the Debsian view of socialism. And now the members of the Debs Tendency also claim that they are the only legitimate heirs of his legacy and seek to apply his political strategy for the SP in the first decades of the 20th Century, to the very different social and political conditions that today exist in the United States, in this first decade of the 21st Century.
Certainly, the NO couldn’t ignore the passing of Comrade Zeidler. He had only been the first chairman and presidential nominee of the new SP. Therefore proper respects were paid in the national publication, The Socialist, and then he could be forgotten. The internal life is becoming more authoritarian and now purging of members and state bodies are becoming more common. Moreover, the Party’s position of only working with other proclaimed socialists, means that this version of the SP is acting just like the SP in the late 1960s, but in a Left-Sectarian manner, by isolating itself from the growing, if non-socialist, progressive movement that is active today in various new organizations, publications and blogs.
Therefore, my former Comrades, isn’t it time that you leave this adopted home of yours and come back to your real home in the revived SDUSA. I, as the new National Director of the SDUSA, and your once and hopefully future Comrade, invite you to join us and, in the name of the SD, officially apologize for any mistreatment that you may have suffered in the 1960s and early 1970s, by the former leadership of this organization. I especially send this message to my Comrade David McReynolds, who is really the Mr. Socialism of the early 21st Century in the United States, to accept our apology for your mistreatment by the old leadership, and rejoin us as Honorary Chair of our revived organization, which will be far different in tone and policy then the one that you left in 1970. No, we will still have our disagreements on some issues, and you will resume your honored place as the spokesperson of the Left-wing of our organization. But whenever, there are differences in this organization, all members will treat one another with respect, in the spirit of true comradeship. Perhaps, we will need to earn your trust and you will want to see how we function, before you decide that you could join us. We understand after the bitter experience of the past that you, David and other comrades may feel that we, the new SDUSA, have to first earn your trust. However, you should know that one prominent person from your ranks, has joined us. In fact, he has not only joined our new endeavor, but he has been elected by the provisional NC as the new President of the revived SDUSA. This personage is none other then Comrade Rob Tucker, who with David McReynolds, bitterly left the SP in 1970. Now, he has returned to his real political home. Therefore, in his name, I ask, will you join him and return back to your real political home, the only organization that was, and still proudly proclaims its heritage as the historic Socialist Party of Debs & Thomas.
2, Democratic Socialists of America
In 1982, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) merged with the New American Movement( NAM) to form the Democratic Socialists of America( DSA). On many levels the merger made sense. In cities where NAM was strong DSOC was weak and visa versa. The day to day operation of two groups was similar. Both groups worked in local progressive coalitions around issues of fair housing, safe renewable energy, and worker's, women's, and minority rights. Both were active in local political campaigns. But something went horribly wrong. More than a quarter century after the merger the organization has less members than DSOC did in 1982 and considerably less activism than NAM did in 1982.DSOC and for a while DSA, celebrated its members winning public office. Now there seems to be a fear that mentioning DSA' s involvement will bring red-baiting. This is hardly an unfounded fear as the frequent association of Barak Obama with DSA across the web attests. Rather than DSA publicly endorsing Obama and proudly pointing to Obama's participation in forums held by Chicago DSA, the organization tries to stay under the national political radar. This is long way from days of Democratic Agenda challenging a sitting Democratic president in 1978-1980.DSA, and DSOC before it, relied on the "us too" theory of recruitment. Whatever issue seems popular on the Left at the moment DSA joins the parade. Several DSA Locals and their youth affiliate, Young Democratic Socialists of America are members of United for Peace and Justice coalition despite what some see as the "soft Leninist" nature of the group’s leadership. However, we understand that DSA joined the UFPJ coalition because it was the more moderate anti-war coalition, in comparison to that ANSWER, which was really a front for the Stalinist, Workers World Party. And it should be noted that the century old social democratic Jewish fraternal organization, The Workmen’s Circle invited Leslie Cagan, the National Coordinator of UFPJ to speak at their national convention in June. Nevertheless, we argue that this is a far cry from the organization that was primary force in opposing the re-introduction of draft registration in 1980, and was the main organizer behind the coalition that sponsored the March on Washington against the Draft in March of 1980. The question, then, was DSA too weak to be able to be the leading player behind the anti-Iraq war movement? In other words, why couldn’t DSA have been the main organizers of the present day anti-war coalition against the war in Iraq, etc., rather then become just one of a large number of organizations, etc. belonging to UFPJ, where they have little say over the program and policy positions put out by them?Some of this can be attributed to the lose of Michael Harrington as charismatic spokesperson. There is also the lose of union monies in the national treasury. However, NAM never got union monies; nor was any member of NAM then able to command speaking Honoria that made travel of group spokesperson free. Yet 700 0f NAM's 1000 members made the yearly pilgrimage to the group’s national convention. Interestingly, the convention was opened by with an address by former Milwaukee mayor Frank Zeidler.DSA never developed a strategy. People on the Left often say that DSA works in the Democratic Party when the reality is that on a national level, members of DSA talk about how they wish they could work in the Democratic Party. Usually this takes the form of wanting to be a caucus within Progressive Democrats of America. Unfortunately, that group is essentially an email list and fund raising gimmick. DSA needs to be running its own members for office beginning with municipal elections. DSA supported Bernie Sanders in his run for the Senate and failed to realize the lesson of Sanders victory. Sanders went from mayor of Burlington, to member of Congress, to the U S Senate by building a local coalition that supported him in his electoral efforts. DSA is rightfully proud of the money it raised for Sanders, but it is not looking for the next Sanders.Gone are the days of hard work in local reform Democratic club and the Central Labor Council. Now DSA writes statements that even most of its members do not read. This is not building a "Socialist movement that speaks its own name,” as Mike Harrington used to say. Gone is a connectedness to organized labor on the national or local level. Worse, gone is almost all activism on the local level. There are perhaps six functioning locals nationwide. This can only be blamed on the lack of a local strategy.
Yet, this is not written to condemn DSA and its members and resume the antagonistic behavior that the former leadership of SDUSA had toward its fellow U.S. representative to the Socialist International. Rather, we, the new leadership of the SDUSA, no longer consider DSA to be a rival organization. Instead, we view DSA as our sister organization, sharing the same goals and heritage, but sometimes differing on strategy and public policy positions. We want to establish close and comradely relations with DSA, as we are kit and kin of one another. We want to put the hostile relationship of the past to the dustbin of history, and begin anew. We welcome, and in fact encourage duel membership between our two organizations that stand together for the principles of the historic Socialist Party of Debs, Thomas & Harrington & Rustin. Yes, Michael Harrington is restored to his rightful place as one of the key figures in the history of this organization, Social Democrats, U.S.A., the direct successor of the Socialist Party, USA, which he served as its chairman. We honor and will publicize all of his many books concerning Democratic Socialism. We also honor and celebrate the contributions of all the DSOC/DSA members, living or dead, who were members of this organization when it was the SPUSA. We may, on both sides, still disagree about some of the issues that led to the split of 1972-73, but we shall no longer act disagreeable to one another. In fact, our two organizations, whether on a local level or national, should be able to work together promoting the many issues we share in common, such as single payer national health insurance, in lobbying Congress, writing public statements, and co-sponsoring forums. We can also co-sponsor the Debs-Thomas-Harrington Dinner that Local Chicago DSA organizes each year, since it was run under the auspices of this organization when it was the Socialist Party from 1958 to 1972, as noted on the Local’s own website. In sum, let us begin anew, placing aside the hostility and rivalry of the past, and accept that even when we (The SDUSA) make a critique of DSA such as the one stated above, or vice versa, it is done in the spirit of constructive criticism, and not with the malice that was typical of the former leadership of our organization.
In fact, one of our long range goals is to repair the split of 1973. Instead of one united multi-tendency democratic socialist movement, we separated into 3 organizations. Therefore, in our opinion, that old cliché held true, the whole was greater then the sum of its parts, in regards to our three organizations. The effect of the 3 way split did not lead to a stronger democratic socialist movement. Rather each group was incomplete as each one lacked certain elements that were present in the other group. For example, in DSA conferences, one would see political refugees or activists from Right wing dictatorships in Latin America. But they wouldn’t meet any political refuges or dissidents from Communist countries, such as Cuba, Vietnam, or from Eastern Europe, before the fall of the Berlin War. On the other hand, visitors to a SD convention or dinner, would meet political activists from these “Left”-wing dictatorship, but would not see anyone from the right wing Latin American countries or critics of U.S. foreign policy toward those countries. As a result, DSA members would, rightly, condemn the U.S. for its policies toward Latin America, but be generally unaware of the oppressive conditions in Cuba, Vietnam, etc. SDers, on the other hand, developed their hard line anti-Communist international positions after hearing the testimony of these eyewitness accounts of Communist oppression, but they generally were silent or even supportive of our government’s imperialist policies toward Latin America of backing right wing regimes, because they never heard from their victims, as was the case with DSA members.
Members of both organizations received an incomplete and one-sided exposure to the oppressive conditions that existed around the world and our government’s response to them. The members needed to learn the whole story by meeting and hearing from political refugees from both “Left” and Right wing dictatorships. This would have been done in a united organization. And similar examples can be cited concerning other areas of both domestic and international policy and political strategy. Therefore, we in the revived SDUSA, look forward to working with our fellow comrades in DSA, and building over time, mutual trusts between our members, as we pursuit our common democratic socialists objectives. Our ultimate goal should be the reunification of our two organizations, along with the inclusion of those comrades from the present named SP of the USA, who have remained true to the historic SP heritage of Debs and Thomas, back into one united broad based multi- tendency organization. This was the recommendation of the late John Cort, the founding editor of Religious Socialism, the publication of the DSA Religion and Socialism Commission, before he died, that DSA & SDUSA should reunite with the Cold War being over. Thus, sometime in the near future, we can finally all agree that the sum of the parts of the democratic socialist movement in the United States, should become whole again, repairing the 3-way split of 1973 by uniting back in our historical home, Social Democrats, U.S.A., the same organization and the only historical political body, that was the Socialist Party which ran Eugene V Debs and Norman Thomas for president.
Critical Question No 4.
Aren’t your efforts a Waste of Time & Money as the Concept of Socialism has been completed discredited?
A, Nevertheless, aren’t your efforts a Waste of Time & Money, trying to revived the SDUSA, and ultimately rebuild a united democratic socialist movement, when we all know that concept of Socialism has been completely discredited by its connection to Communist totalitarianism and the collapse of the USSR and its Eastern European satellites? Free Market Capitalism has Proven to be the Superior Economic system and the only one that is compatible with political democracy. Some people in your own ranks, do not want to be associated with the word, “Socialist,” and prefer to call themselves, Social Democrats or even Economic Democrats, though we all know that they are actually still advocating socialism and are trying to hide that fact by using another name they believe may be more accepted to the average American. Therefore, isn’t the concept of Socialism permanently dead and buried in the 21st Century and your attempt to resurrect it totally Irrelevant in Our Contemporary Society?
Our answer is a firm, no. Rather we stand by this statement made by the late James T. Burnett, former chair of the YPSL’s, who was also an activist in the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement, NC member of both SPUSA & SDUSA, and was a mentor to many of us in the revived SD. Burnett was the editor of the Appeal to Reason, named after the famous SP newspaper in the early decades of the 20th Century. The paper was published by the SD Local in San Francisco, beginning in 1974, but became an independent publication in 1982. Burnett was one of the first voices to support a reunification of the democratic socialist movement. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Burnett wrote the following statement that we believe is still the best declaration concerning the issue of the relevancy of the concept of socialism in today’s society and expresses where the revived SDUSA stands on this crucial issue and on the general orientation of our approach toward foreign policy issues:
1, The Relevance of Socialism
“The conventional wisdom these days is that the collapse of the Soviet > empire represents the demise of Socialism. This is ridiculous. We > never believed the identification of Stalinist totalitarianism with > socialism during all of the decades when proclaimed by both > Stalinists and right-wing reactionaries. Why should we believe it now? > We should reclaim the socialist ideal-- a just society, a society not > based on invidiousness and narrow-minded "individualism". This is not > the time for us to become traitors and cowards. The basis of Socialism > -- communism in its unfalsifiable sense -- remains as valid, even more > valid, than ever. We want and needed a society of collective justice > where everyone gets food, shelter, health care, education, and the > ability to actualize his or herself. Why not? We're civilized, aren't > we? We will win our most valuable support by asserting an ideal, not > by ambiguity and misdirected "moderation". We need a cadre before we > can aspire to mass influence and few people of character or > intelligence have ever been able to get excited about moderation. I > want to make a point about symbols. This is hardly something that > would be taken up in an official document, but is important socially, > I do not think we should give up the word "socialist, the term > "comrade", the red flag, or the Internationale. They are symbols of a > commitment and a brotherhood and sisterhood that is invaluable. There > is no such thing as "only" a symbol. Our era has seen many outstanding > champions of equity and freedom not the least have been Karl Marx, > Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Julius Martov, Eugene > V. Debs, Norman Thomas, Max Shachtaman, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard > Rustin, Michael Harrington, and the students of Tienanmen Square. I > stand in their tradition.
2, Foreign Policy
“The collapse of the so-called “Communism” is both a victory and a challenge. It is a victory insofar as it removes (although not completely so far) a hateful and reactionary system that, worst of all, paraded under the name of socialism. Long ago, Max Shachtman, pointed out that if Stalinism was indeed a kind of socialism, then all of the worst criticisms that the enemies of socialism had ever made were true, and a thousand times over.
“How things will settle down in the world is impossible to tell. Who could have told just a year ago how things would be now? Theory is not fortune-telling. It is a set of principles that can be used to guide action under probable conditions.
“The idea that the end of the Soviet empire represents the triumph of capitalism is lunacy – understandable lunacy, but lunacy nonetheless. It is like a hangover. Sooner or later it will go away, probably sooner than later as the peoples of Eastern Europe find out what the so-called free market really means. We should call for what was valid in the basically-flawed communist ideal while inviting the “capitalist” reforms that are in the interest of the people. If we do not do so, others will. They already are.
a, The Importance of the Socialist International and SDUSA’s Membership in that Organization
“The Socialist International is a major organization in which people of our political tendency have exercised surprising political influence in spite of our ridiculously small numbers. This organization represents millions of workers and other people throughout the world. It is, in fact, the largest voluntary organization on the planet. We should be proud that our political comrades were the first to begin a mass-membership international group. Within the International, our main efforts should be:
-To oppose any remnants of romantic attraction to terrorist and totalitarian causes.
-To maintain the democratic socialist ideal.
-To encourage all possible aid to the emerging free labor and social-democratic movements in the former Stalinist countries and the developing world.
-To resolve trade and other economic conflicts on the basis of international labor solidarity.
-To promote greater international cooperation toward the ultimate aim of a world government under world law.
“Above all, we should be proud to be (reinstated as) members of the Socialist International and strive to maintain and expand our influence in it. We should propose that the document, “Aims and Tasks of Democratic Socialism” that was the basis for the re-foundation of the International at the end of World War II, be reviewed to meet the changing realities of the last half century, while retaining its fundamental values and emphases. (Since Burnett wrote this in 1992, the SI has revised this document.) It should become the basic statement of purpose of international social democracy/democratic socialism in the late twentieth century (and now in the early twenty first century). We are entering an era where, with astute leadership, the lines of our anthem could become true: ‘The international working class shall free the human race.’ I even think that the words of the French original will come true: ‘L Internationale serait la genre humaine.’ (The provisional NC of the revived SDUSA has voted to adopt the ten principles of the Party of European Socialism.)
b, How we view the role that the United States plays in the World
“America is not the unique ill-doer in the world. Hardly anything, other than the direct sight of injustice in my own society, infuriates me more than the notion that all of the problems of the world can be blamed on the United States. The US has been guilty of enough crimes. Chief among them are our genocidal campaign against Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans and generations of unspeakable mistreatment of their descendents, our imperialist relations with Mexico. And this is just to name a few.
“The United States has also been a friend of freedom. Without the US war effort, the world could probably not have defeated fascism. We condoned slavery, but we also overcame it, at the cost of much blood. We rebuild Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. It is true that we had ulterior motives – stopping Communism –but who demands pure motives in the real world? Good motives are good enough. Could anybody really say that the US wanted to make Japan and Europe into its most formidable economic rivals now? No, we had altruistic motives as well.
“At the same time, this does not mean that anything any American Administration does is OK. This is especially true now that the overriding concern about the ‘evil empire’ is gone. Incidentally, one of the greatest lessons of the post-cold-war period is that the two exploitative class societies can no longer use one another as excuses for their misdeeds. The eclipse of Stalinism represents a profound crisis for capitalism – a point too little recognized. The relationship between capitalism and the pseudo-socialist despotism and their mutual co-existence and their mutual termination are very important topics to be analyzed.
“Another - actually the same – theme that requires consideration is epitomized by a remark made by a modern social democrat decades ago when he quoted a British Fabian to the effect that the French Reign of Terror and Napoleon had set back reform in England for a hundred years and opined that Soviet “socialism” had at least as reactionary effect in our times. I do not agree about the historic role of the French Revolution, but I do about the subsequent analogy.”
Today, we can add to Burnett’s statement the new threat of totalitarian Islamism exemplified by the September 11, 2001 attack by Al Qaeda on the United States. We believe that only the development of a true democratic foreign policy for the United States can defeat terrorism. In fact, we advocate not merely containing international terrorism, but eliminating it at its roots. However, we maintain that it will only be a government that espouses the values of democratic socialism and the wider democratic Left that can do this. We have seen the failure of the present right-wing American administration, which include some of our own former comrades, who have become neo-conservatives ideologues, in their attempts to diminish and combat this threat. In fact, many of their own actions in the world have served as a recruiting call for totalitarian Islamism.
Specifically, the war on Iraq is an issue that invited dissent and we believed has critically harmed the effort against totalitarian Islamism (which should not be confused with the actual tenets of Islam.) This does not mean dissent about Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and malevolent intents, but about the appropriate means of dealing with him. To say that the “only correct” approach was military intervention or economic sanctions are equally simplistic and sectarian. But the facts were that the sanctions were working and the Administrations rational for going to war have been proven false, while the just NATO conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was neglected, with the effect that the totalitarian Islamists are gaining a resurgence in that embattled country. In the meantime, there has been the loss of hundred of thousands of Iraqis and over four thousand American lives in this war of choice in Iraq.
Moreover, we believe that the Iraqi war and the present economic conditions in the United States have illustrated the bankruptcy of the ideas of the conservative movement in this country. Similarly, as Comrade Burnett pointed out back in 1992, to place “the collapse of the Soviet Union, into some kind of victories for the self-serving reactionary right in the United States would be an indictment of the intelligence of the democratic left in this country. Such imbecility is almost impossible to comprehend, no matter how many Republican press releases are sent out on its behalf.”
Critical Question No 5.
What are the Basic Statements of Principles of the Revived SDUSA?
A, Then, What are the Basic Statements of Principles of the Revived SDUSA, and what will be continued from the SD of the past 30 years and what will be Different in the Political Positions of the Renewed Organization?
It should first be emphasized that we start out as a very tiny and monetary poor organization. We expect to be able to gain many more members as we are able to spread the message about the rebirth of our organization through the web, distribution of printed literature, and public events by our Locals. In fact our aim is not to only reach out to members of other democratic socialist’s organizations, or even the non-socialist progressive movement that is becoming a growing presence in this country. Rather, we hope to be able attract people, who would never consider themselves on the Left, and who do not know that such an organization exists. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t and will not fall into the ridiculous trait of minuscule Left wing sects espousing a position on every domestic and foreign issue. In other words, do not expect to find here the SDUSA’s position on the independence of Abkhazia from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
1, The Internal Structure of the Revived SDUSA
It will be in the internal life and structure of the revived SDUSA that will be radically different from that under the former leadership. Theirs was a top down organization, where the developments of Local and State Organizations were given low priority. We have already described the centralization of the SD in the National Office and the less than democratic way that the organization was run by the former leadership. Membership growth was not emphasized and in fact, even desired. The old leadership was insular and feared a lost of control of the organization if a large influx of new members joined the SD. It was their personal club, and when they got tired of it, rather than trying to recruit new members and develop a new generation of leaders, they just closed the national office, without any consideration for the members around the country.
Our conception of the SD will be totally different and completely in accord with an organization that espouses social and political democracy from the bottom up. We believe that a group cannot advocate democracy until it first practices it in the structure and internal life of the organization. Therefore, the revived SDUSA will be a decentralized organization with the emphasis on the growth of local and state affiliates. Moreover, each State organization will decide where to place its political priorities. The members of one state or local organization of the SDUSA can, for example, decide at their own convention, to re-establish the state body as a political party, using the name Social Democratic Party or Socialist Party of that respective state, to run a candidate or candidates on its own ballot line for local winnable political offices. On the other hand, the members of another State organization of the SDUSA, or Local could vote to work with the labor movement and other progressives in the Democratic Party, carrying out the old realignment strategy. The national office would not be allowed to interfere with the political strategy decisions of the state or local organizations, unless they violate the provisions of the SD’s constitution or Statement of Principles.
The members of the National Committee would meet, between conventions, via conference calls, thereby saving expensive travel expenses and helping in a small way to save the environment. The biannual national convention will continue to be the major meeting place for the members of the organization.
The elections of national officers and the National Committee will be contested democratically, where each candidate will campaign for the position by communicating something about themselves and their program, to the members, via the SD website, some weeks prior to the national convention. There will be term limits for national officers and NC members. But, we must admit, the above will only be possible if and when the SD has a significant growth in membership from his present very modest figure.
However, we believe that we will be able to attract many new members and keep them in the organization, when they see that both the leaders and the rank and file members act decently toward one another. In other words, socialists are really social able. The word “comrade” is not just a political term addressing a fellow member, but also describes how SD members treat one another in a comradely manner. New people will be welcomed when they come to our meetings. They will not be alienated by being ignored and feeling that they do not belong. Moreover, personal attacks will be strictly banned at public meetings and in meetings of the NC.
This was the worse practice of the old leadership of the SD, going back to the days when the organization was still the Socialist Party. A Bolshevik style of debate was brought into the organization, after the merger with the Shachtmanite Independent Socialist League in 1958. This Bolshevik style was an inheritance from Max Shachtman’s early political activities within the Communist Party and was continued in the Trotskyist movement, which the ISL came out of. The tactics of this form of debate would to be to attack your fellow Party member and “comrade” who belong to a different faction of the organization in the bluntest of personal terms, much sharper than one would attack a capitalist enemy. Personal feeling had no place when one is engaged in a political battle, even with one’s comrades. This Bolshevik style of debate had a very detrimental effect on Max Shachtman and the Shachtmanite movement, Right, Center & Left. Later there would be his attitude to the early young New Leftists in SDS where his patient guidance could well have preventing the group from its later Maoist craziness. Rather, he could have help SDS become a radical but anti-Stalinist mass organization that might still be vibrant this very day. Mike Harrington in his angry response to the Port Huron Statement was exhibiting the worse aspects of this Bolshevik style that was an inheritance from Max's early political activity in the CPUSA. And Ernie Erber also became a victim of this "Bolshevik style" during his time in the WP after he wrote his resignation statement. Later, David McReynolds and his allies in the SP would also suffer under this style of debate from Max and his closest allies in the SP. This is why David remains so bitter about his experience to this very day. And it seems that Mr. Chester and company has inherited this "Bolshevik-Shachtmanite" style, in the present SP of the USA, similar to the SDers that they so fervently denounce. But it was the old leadership of the SD that completely practiced this Bolshevik style in their internal life of the organization, which they inherited from Max, even while at the same time loudly proclaiming their devotion to the spread of democracy everywhere in the world.
The revived SDUSA, on the other hand, will firmly reject this debating style. Rather we will have learned from the feminist movement to encourage people who may not be that intellectual or knowledgeable about a subject, shy in public and new to the movement, to speak without fear at our meetings. Whenever difference arise over an issue or strategy, we will encourage an open dialogue in our internal discussion bulletin, Hammer & Tongs and in public meetings of state and local organizations, up to the NC itself. These dialogues would be conducted in an atmosphere that would be respectful of each comrade’s opinion, no matter how deep the difference may be. As a result of the revived SDUSA having a supportive democratic internal life, we believe that we will be able to attract new members who may have been alienated from their experiences in other political organizations. Our goal is to create a multi-tendency, broadly-defined and active internal life and a perspective of a much larger and geographically-dispersed membership. Special emphasis should be put upon bringing about a real and independent youth organization in the YSD/YPSL. Finally, with the revolutionizing of the world scene, uniting with former antagonists is in order. The democratic Left in America needs all the friends it can get.
B. Basic Statements of Principles of the Revived Social Democrats, U.S.A.
This first statement is dedicated to the memory of the late James T. Burnett, who wrote a statement of principles for our movement, entitled, “Who We Are,” in every issue of his Appeal to Reason. It is revised and adapted from his statement of January, 1992, along with the additional contributions of Craig Miller, Dan Frankot and David Hacker. It will be followed by an additional Statement of Principles, written by Comrade Gabe Ross, which complements the first and emphases other values of our organization. Lastly will be the 10 Principles of the Party of European Socialism, which has been adopted by the SDUSA.
Social Democracy comprises humanity's boldest experiment -- an attempt to organize society of collective justice and individual freedom where everyone gets food, shelter, health care, education, and the ability to actualize his or herself. In other words to achieve a truly civil society.To this end:
1, WE SUPPORT A STRONG & DEMOCRATIC AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT. We firmly believe that working men and women organized in their trade unions are the most important force for progressive social change. This has long been a central tenet of the socialist movement. However in the 1960s, radical theoreticians, such as Herbert Marcuse stated that labor was no longer the primary progressive social force in society. The student movement, or Blacks and other minorities, or the underclass ("wretched of the world." according to Frantz Fanon) took its place. In other words, much of the New Left was searching for "substitute proletariats," whether they were peasants, the urban poor, military officers or educated elites to serve in the role that Marx assigned to the organized working class. Such a concept was anathema to Max Shachtman and his close allies in The SP who strictly maintained that "working class socialism was the only kind of socialism there was or would ever be.” Then in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new wave of Left wing activism by students, Blacks and other racial minorities, feminists, and homosexuals, were called the new social movements. Much of the broad Left viewed the new social movements as being the new vanguard for social change in the U.S. replacing the labor movement. White ethnic workers were seen as part of the White Anglo Saxon establishment, having made it into the ranks of the "comfortable" middle class. In any case, this was the fashionable view at the time on the Left, and still is in too much of the Left today. This position is one of the main reasons for the current weakness of the American Left today.This "new social movements" strategy on the Left, in our view, became a form of ghettoization where each separate group made demands on behalf of its specific interest, rather then unifying all these forces behind a common program. Second, they alienated ethnic whites, in fact, pushing them into the laps of the Republican Party. Max Shachtman and his allies in the SP foresaw all this. They predicted the defection of working class whites to the GOP if the DP moved away from economic or class issues and focus instead on cultural and social questions. They were right. The SD continued to challenge this anti labor viewpoint on the Left after 1973. This position will remain unchanged in the revived organization. Rather, we continue to affirm that working class socialism is the only kind of socialism that can or will ever exist.
Nevertheless, it is not enough to merely state that “we support the American Labor Movement,” in a period when the unions in the United States are in a deep crisis. Our members will be active on the picket line aiding striking workers and promoting their cause in our publications and website. However, the old SD became unquestioning supporters of the Meany/Kirkland leadership of the AFL-CIO. This was also the period of the steady decline in union membership in the United States and in its political influence, as well. In 1956, 36% percent of the workforce was unionized. In 1989, that figure declined to 16 % percent of the total workforce in this country. Moreover, in key industries, there was a drastic decline of union membership from 1953 to the late 1980s: Construction from 84% to 22%, Manufacturing from 42% to 25%, Mining from 65% to 15%, and Transportation from 80% to 37%.. In the period from 1971 to the late 1980s, the unionized public workforce declined 10%, while there was a incredable 42% drop of union membership in the private sector. However, the situration hasn’t improved since the election of DSA member John Sweeney as President of the AFL-CIO in 1995, running on a “New Labor” slade. By 2007, union membership had dropped to consist of only 12.1 percent of American workers, with a majority of them being in the public sector. About 35.1 percent of public employees belonged to a union, while a miniscule 7.5 percent of private sector workers were members of a union.
Therefore, something is terribly wrong here and mere cheerleading for labor is not going to help solve the problem. Rather we need to take a hard look at both the external conditions (anti-labor laws and NLRB appointmants, corporate anti-labor campaigns, and restrictions on union organizing ) and internal conditions (corruptions, lack of union democracy and rank & file participaption in governing the union, etc) that are weakening the trade union movement. Today the union movement is divided between the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition. Some on the Left see Change to Win as a new version of the CIO of the 1930s, and as a result are the new progressive sector of the Labor movement. They ignore the fact that the unions that make up Change to Win, have been the most corrupt in the entire labor movement. Then, there is the current internal division within the largest member union, of the new federation, the Service Employees International Union, between its President, Andy Stern, and its largest state affilite in California. At the same time, the SEIU is engaged in a sometime violent turf battle with the California Nurses Association. Thus, if we, in the SDUSA, contiue to merely proclaim, “We support the American Labor Movement,” the question then is, “which movement? AFL-CIO? Change to Win? SEIU? Which side in SEIU? SEIU vs the Nurses?
The time when the SD and DSA received a substanital percentage of their income from trade unions has passed, with labor, itself facing major financial problems that go along with a diminishing membership. At the same time, we no longer have to worry about a union cuting its financial support of us. Therefore we support an open and self-critical multi-racial labor movement. Moreover, we will be independent friends of Labor and also have a open and self-critical attidute toward the union movement in this country. We will have a major priority of recruiting rank and file workers, both union and non-union members. Then we will be able to learn from them their experiences in the union movement. At the same time, this does not mean that we won’t develop a relationship with union officials, especially those labor leaders who are bringing innovatated ideas to advance the working class movement But it will be an independent relationship and not the servile one of the old SD leadership.
While our present membership may be small, the experience of the SP-SD over the last 50 years, showed that our small movement was able to play a major role in shaping the Labor movement. Similarly, we weren’t afraid to tackle the controversal issue of union corruption back in the 1950s thru the early 1960s. Comrade Herman Benson began his long campaign for union democracy in the pages of Labor Action, when he was in the ISL, and then in New America, as a member of the SP. As a direct result of his efforts in the publications of our movement, he was able to organize the Association for Union Democracy, which is still very active today. That is why the revived SDUSA will not be adverse from taking a frank look at corruption in the labor movement, including why union reforms have generally failed.
We are fully aware of what one labor historian calls the “Roach Motel Syndrome.” Socialists go into the labor movement, but they never leave. “They enter as revolutionaries determined to create a social movement. Those who survive the ordeal of industrialization become plain and simple union reformers. But eventually, if they build a base or move up in the hierarchy, its because they’re adjusted pretty thoroughly to the demands of a corrupt patron-client system.” This exactly described what happened to the SDers who became prominent officials in the labor movement, such as Donald Slaiman. They all began as radical rank and file activists. But over time as they rose to higher positions in their respective union, or in the AFL-CIO, they more and more accommodated to the mores of the labor movement. Eventually, they became defenders of the status quo in the movement. Why?
Many on the Left blame the problem on labor leaders becoming bureaucrats and support rank and file insurgencies. But as we have seen, the SD “labor bureaucrats” began as rank and file activists in opposition to the “conservative” leaders of their union. Rather, the revived SDUSA in their publications, will go deeper and ask some hard fundamental questions, including whether it is the internal structure of unions, and the labor movement, as a whole, that has been a central cause of the comparable weak and corrupt trade union movement in the United States, going all the way back to the founding of the AFL itself. Thus, as one former labor activist, and currently a historian of the movement, points out, “the AFL-CIO was not a centralized organization that put a lot of power in the hands of a single leader. The presidency was mostly an honorific position, and the occupant acted as a spokesperson for a collection of completely autonomous affiliates. The affilates, in turn were made up of 20,000 largely autonomous locals The president couldn’t call a single strike or organize a single worker – any rebuilding of the Federations strength had to start at the lower lever, where the money and power were located. It was often not in the interest of these leaders to bring in new members or do much more than perform routine maintenance on the political machines that kept them in power.” Thus, it is “the union institutions that act and have identity, that manage or succumb to trends, and shape the character of their leaders.”
Therefore as an organization whose First Central Principle is to Support a Strong and Democratic American Labor Movement, for without one, the very concept of a viable social democratic movement in this country is an impossiblity, has to have the courage to examine the root causes of its problems, and explore why European unions do not share them. Labor activists, inside and outside our organization, will be free to debate these issues in public forums and in our publications.
2, WE SUPPORT VIGOROUS DEMOCRACY HERE IN THE US AND ABROAD: Social Democracy can only exist in a climate of strong democratic institutions. We support strong voting rights, public campaign finance and equal access to the ballot and the media of all candidates. We look to strengthen the longest and most successful democratic experiment in world history.
3, WE SUPPORT THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL as the society of like minded parties and activists. We stand with the Labour Party of Britain, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the French Socialist Party, and labor, social democratic and socialist parties around the world who are members of the SI. We look to SI members in government for guidance in effective and just government. SDUSA has adopted the SI Declaration of Principles and the Ethical Charter and uses the Party of European Socialists (the SI working group in the European Parliament) as its pragmatic basis.
4, WE EMBRACE THE LIBERATORY POTENTIAL OF RELIGION, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME ARE FULLY COMMITTED TO THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. The world’s sacred texts provide some of the strongest support for the dignity of labor, the need for social fairness and the ability of humanity to achieve its highest aspiration. Nevertheless, religious people have felt alienated from the Left, as their values seem to be ridiculed and dismissed as ignorent, superstitious, and narrow-minded. This is especially true of evangelical Christians, devout Catholics and Orthodox Jews. Too often, as Rabbi Michael Lerner has pointed out, The Left view “religion as just as much a problem in American culture as guns and anti-immigration sentiments,” commenting on the recent remarks by Senator Barak Obama to a prosperous audience at a San Francisco fund raising event for his presidential campaign. There he commented on the “bitterness” he saw among the White ethnic working class and lower middle class voters in Pennsylvania, which causes them to oppose immigration and cling to guns and religion.
According to Rabbi Lerner, “seeing religion as a substitute gratification grabbed on to by people who are otherwise oppressed is an insight that has been part of liberal and progressive culture for at least 150 years. Unfortunately, Senator Obama, like many in the liberal and Marxist traditions of the past 150 years, got it wrong—because he identified the needs that are being systematically denied as purely material, thereby falling into the ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ mistake of the Left.” Rather, Rabbi Lerner continued, “in the research we did for ten years at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health we found that it was not only material, but spiritual deprivation that was at the heart of much of the pain that Americans experience today. That’s why even at the height of American prosperity in the Clinton years, a powerful resurgence of right-wing religious forms was providing an avenue of expression for people whose needs were being ignored by the liberals in the Clinton administration, the Democratic Party, and even in parts of the liberal churches.
Similarly, the revival of a religious Left has not gotten much traction to the extent that it adopts the liberal political and economic agenda and makes it “religious” by finding some useful Bible quotes to back up the peace and justice planks of the Democrats. Valuable as that may be, it too misses the deeper pain that has led people to embrace right-wing religions.”
As a result, these Americans have become prime recruiting targets of the conservative movement, which has resulted in the rise of the Christian Right, who often find allies in supporting various social issues among devout Catholic and Orthodox Jews, who then end up voting Republican in presidential election. The later two groups are often called Reagan Democrats, as they were once a central part of the Democratic Party majority New Deal coalition, but switched over to the Republican Party, when they found their religious and social values to be more compatable with that being espoused by Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
In fact, it was these very groups that was central to the Socialist Party’s success in the first decades of the 20th Century. It was evangelical Christians that form the basis of the Socialist Party mass membership and electorial support in Oklahoma during those years. The SP had its highest percentage of the total vote in that state before the First World War. It was Roman Catholics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that rallied behind the Socialist Party and helped elect two mayors and many city council members in that city. Finally, it was Eastern European Orthodox Jews, living on New York City’s Lower East Side, that elected and re-elected SP candidate, Meyer London to Congress.
Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, these groups were a major segment of FDR’s New Deal coalition, along with Blacks, and white progressives in the North. True, Southern evangelical Christians were the segregationist Dixiecrat portion of the FDR coalition. But White ethnic Catholics form the backbone of the CIO and were central to the New Deal Coalition. And of course, Jews of all denominations rallied behind FDR. The Southern aspect of the coalition broke away after 1948, but the rest of the majority New Deal coalition stayed firm, with the exception of the Eisenhower years, up to Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964. In fact, this formed the basis of the SP strategy, developed by Max Shachtman and Michael Harrington, known as realignment.
Realignment did occur in the US. The Southern Democrats-Dixiecrats did leave the DP and became Republicans. It was assume then that this would assure permanent majority status for the Democrats after the civil rights revolution gave back to African Americans in the South the right to vote. The vision of the Shachtmanites and the SP majority in the 1960s was a Democratic Party and democratic Left made up of the labor movement, including ethnic white workers of both sexes, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, I.E, the entire civil rights movement, middle-class liberal to progressive reformers, the feminist movement, etc. Most of all, White and Black workers would be united in supporting universal programs that would benefit every working class and middle class American. (We hope that you notice that we emphasize ethnic and often devout Catholic white workers of both sexes as a basic part of this progressive coalition, because it has been the loss of ethnic white male voters to the Republicans, and many ethnic white women as well, that has severely weakened the Democratic Party and the desire for a democratic Left majority coalition.)
These “Reagan Democrats” left the DP, when as, stated above, social and cultural issues replaced economic and class issues as core aspects of the program of the DP and the Left, as a whole, after 1964. One of the main issues that have divided working class Catholics and evangelical Christians from the DP and the Left has been the controversial issue of abortion. The SDUSA, did not take a position on abortion until 1991, when the AFL-CIO passed a pro-choice resolution. Prior to that, the SD separated itself from other group on the Left by maintaining that the abortion issues was divisive and would alienate Catholic workers in the labor movement. The revived SDUSA has decided to resume this position that was taken by our organization before 1991. We know that it will alienate a majority of the Left. We specifically understand the objections of feminists, for whom this issue they consider to be central to women rights. We also consider ourselves to be a pro feminist’s organization which is devoted to supporting the reproductive health of all women. But we also recognize that many ethnic white Catholic working class men, and specifically women, who would be attracted to the DP and the wide left and progressive movement, because of its economic positions, have turned away from us because of our position on abortion. As hard as it may be for the majority on the Left to accept, these working class men and women see their pro-life or opposition to abortion position as being central to both their political and religious values.
Accordingly, we want the SDUSA to be the one organization on the Left that welcomes members who are either pro-life or pro-choice and doesn’t interfere with their personal beliefs, or compromise them by making them abide by a public position on the issue. Rather, we want to provide a supportive environment for both sides to finally meet and work on developing social democratic economic programs which would result in alleviating the social and economic conditions of women that cause a large percentage of abortions. We believe that the issue of women’s reproductive health goes beyond the controversial topic of abortion. We must move away from the polarization nature of this debate, which has existed since the 1970s, that has only benefited the political Right in this country, and concentrate on the vital issues of women’s health care that can united moderate elements on both side of the abortion question. These issues are public access to pre and post natal care and maternal health, through universal health care, comprehensive sex education, and equal access to contraceptive devices for women of all classes. Nevertheless, these positions cannot be compulsive as the government doesn’t have the right to interfere with the private religious sentiments of Americans who have different views toward the issue of artificial birth control and sex education in the public schools.
Therefore, to achieve its highest aspirations, SDUSA embraces religious faith not as an “interest group” within a larger movement, but as fundamental to the creation of a better world. It should be noted that our provisional Executive Director is a devout Catholic, while the provisional National Chair of the SD is an Orthodox Rabbi. At the same time, we also welcome secular or non-religious members and share their conviction that that the United States should maintain its tradition of the separation of Church and State. Thus, while we embrace people of religious faith and the libratory message of the mainstream of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Hinduism, etc, we oppose extremists or fanatics of all faiths, who seek to undermine the church/state separation.
5, WE OPPOSE TOTALITARIANISM IN ITS SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS FORMS. Communist (is) a horrible, destructive parody of socialism. For generations, Stalinism, in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere presented an image of the socialist ideal that had as much to do with that ideal as the Inquisition have to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ. All though that period, “Communism” was the most dangerous enemy of democracy and free Labor in the world. We rejoice in its collapse (of the Soviet Union) with formerly enslaved nations now joining the society of democracy. But we also note that not all of the countries of the former Soviet empire have become democratic, including a regression in Russia, herself. SDUSA proudly opposes Communist totalitarianism and opposes religious extremism arising in many religious traditions, with currently the most dangerous being in the Islamic world.
6, WE AFFIRM THAT IN THE 21ST CENTURY THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC/DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST MOVEMENT SHALL ALSO BE A GREEN MOVEMENT DEDICATED TO PRESERVING THE FRAGILE ENVIRONMENT OF THIS PLANET. IN OTHER WORDS, WE ARE ECOSOCIALISTS. We are committed to the principles of the Great Law of the Iroquois that states “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." We believe that the suspicious attitude of the former leadership of the SD toward environmentalists, echoing the opinion of some trade unions, that they represented upper middle class elites who were antagonistic to the needs of workers, is obsolete, in this era of the growing danger of the effects of global warming. Rather both the environmental and labor movements have come to realize that they need one another, and must work in harmony if we want to succeed in setting back global change. The establishment of new industries developing alternative energy sources of solar, wind and geo-thermal will create new jobs for workers. But will they be union jobs? And as socialists, we ask, can we put our trust in the private sector to create these new “green” industries, when they were the original source that produced the environmental crisis that we are in, in the first place?
We call ourselves today ecosocialists because we bring a social ecological perspective that class and ecology are not separate issues, but that they are intimately entwined, there can be no green transformation without a red transformation, there can be no ”divided planet” or divided society that uses poor nations and peoples as garbage polluted dumping grounds of social injustice and destroyed environmental conditions. Also a visionary gradualism means global protection, global social democracy of the social commons (air, water, soil,) that cannot be commoditized an “earth democracy”, over neo/liberal “development” that colonizes life worlds in the name of corporate elites rather than the common good and common prosperity. We call for a new international of democracy and social justice, shared prosperity like post war social democracy and the New Deal that stresses production of use values over exchange values. Just as these earlier social democracies regulated national capitalisms the new social democracies must call for global regulated capitals. This is why the SDUSA support a strong alliance of environmentalists and labor. Together, they can make a difference by saving natural resources, reducing pollution, keeping toxic chemicals out of the environment and making the world a safer place for this and the next seven generations.
7, WE DEFEND THE EXISTENCE OF ISRAEL AS A JEWISH STATE. The fact that we even have to make such a declaration, in our statement of principles, about a independent nation that is a member of the United Nations, is a result of the shameful view in a large percentage of the Left, worldwide that Israel is a product of “racism” or “imperialism,” and therefore illegitimate. We fervently disagree. It is a democratic society, though imperfect, especially in its treatment of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries and the native Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel. Nevertheless, it should also be pointed out that Arabic is one of the two official languages of Israel and that Israeli Arabs, share the same democratic voting rights of all Israelis and also have representatives in the Israeli Knesset. Similar examples of democratic rights are denied to the citizens of most Arab countries in the Middle East. Israel’s (Labour) movement, the Histadrut, is lead by Social Democrats, with the Red Flag of the international Socialist Movement proudly flying above its headquarters. During the first decades of its existence, Israel was founded and governed by a Social Democratic Labour Party. Then, what is the source of the hostility of much of the Left to Israel, in the last several decades, which goes so far as to question its very existence as a sovereign state, rather then focus its criticisms on the action of its government, as it does in the case of every other country in the world?
A little historical background is necessary here. Up to the 1967 war, the Left was generally seen as pro-Israel and Israel, under the political domination of a socialist party, Mapai, in alignment with an even more Leftist Zionist party with Marxist-Leninist roots, Mapam, plus the Histadrut Labor Federation and the Kibbutzim movement, was viewed as being on the Left and building a true democratic socialist society. The radical, independent pro-Soviet weekly newspaper, The National Guardian, was sympathetic to Israel from its first issue in 1948 till 1967. The CP Sponsored Anniversary Tours would advertise tours to the USSR, Eastern Europe and Israel. In 1948, the most pro-Israel candidate for President was Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party, which called for full de jure recognition of the State of Israel and an end to the arms embargo that the U.S. placed upon it, in its platform. In fact, the champion of Israel and the Zionist cause in the UN from 1947 to 1949 was the USSR and its Eastern European allies. A pre-state book that illustrates how anti Cold War progressives in the immediate post war years were devoted to the cause of Jewish statehood and self determination in Palestine was Behind The Silken Curtain: A Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and The Middle East by Bartley C. Crum. Crum later became the attorney of the Hollywood 10. Even when publications like the National Guardian were critical of Israeli actions, such as in the 1956 Suez War, the critiques were written with sympathy for Israel's dilemma of being surrounded by hostile Arab nations devoted to its destruction, and without any denouncing of Zionism, much less questioning the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
Suddenly, groups like SNCC and the Youth Against War & Fascism attacked Israel, after the 1967 Six Day War, in almost identical language as the racist Right-wing National States Rights Party. They, and the Socialist Workers Party, the Guardian (which purged the original founders of the newspaper and drop the word "National" from its name), and most of the radical or socialist Left, did not merely criticize Israel's action in the war, but went on to deny its legitimacy as a sovereign state. Zionism became a new epithet on the Left. The exceptions to this anti-Israel position on the left were the Socialist Party and the two Jewish publications that came out of the CPUSA, Jewish Currents and the Morgan Freiheit. Similar reaction occurred in Leftist groups and journals around the world that were outside the social democratic movement. Did the breaking of relations with Israel of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, with the exception of Rumania, help spark this anti-Israel sentiment on the Left? Certainly, from that time, to the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union conducted a crude anti-Zionist propaganda campaign, that was actually, pure anti-Semitism, in the state-run media. Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank after the 1967 has been cited, by its critics on the Left, for the hostility toward it. The international dimensions of this campaign became so strong that the United Nations General Assembly, on November 9, 1975, passed a resolution which called “Zionism, a Form of Racism.”
Thus, forgotten was the fact that from 1949 to June 1967, Jews were barred from the Old City of Jerusalem, including the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall. Now imagine how Catholics would feel if they were to forbidden to visit Vatican City and Moslems were banned from their sacred cities of Mecca and Medina? Also forgotten were the 100,000 Jews living in the Arab world, many for 1,000 years, who were forced to flee after the establishment of Israel in 1948. When Egypt occupied Gaza from 1949 -1967 and Jordan, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, during the same period, there were no calls from anywhere for a Palestinian state to be create in that area. Where were the criticisms of those occupations? In fact, from the late 1950s to the 1967 Six Day War, the call in the Arab world was Pan Arabism, the unification of all the Arab states into one central country. That is why Egypt under Gamal Abdal Nasser was called The United Arab Republic. His plan was for Egypt to be the center of a united Arabia. It was only after 1967, that Palestinian nationalism arose and replaced the cause of Pan-Arabism.
Accordingly, we are unconditional advocates of Israel’s right to exist, and that our support does not depend on its being “nice” in order to deserve our defense. But that doesn’t mean that we are never uncritical of its governmental policies. We opposed the Settlement policy of the Right-wing Likud government. We support Israeli democratic ideals and those who work for them. Whenever those ideals are compromise, we will vigorously protest because we are pro-Israel. Sometimes, being pro-Israel means being critical of the policies of its government. Rather our slogan is Israel is here to stay and also Israel must be saved. But at time, we could add, Israel must be saved from itself, if we believe that some governmental policy or action that it is engaged in would be detrimental to establishing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc.
Moreover, our support for Israel’s sovereignty does not mean that we are anti-Palestinian. Rather, the question of when a Palestinian national consciousness developed among the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza, and in the Diaspora, (a name taken from the Jewish experience in exile) doesn’t matter, it has been a reality for the last 40 years. We support a just resolution for the Palestinians that grant their legitimate national aspirations without fatally compromising the legitimate security concerns of the Jewish State.
SDUSA, being a democratic organization, its members will have differing views on how the above can be accomplished, in establishing a two state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Their opinions range from the right wing of the Israeli Labor party, leftward to Meretz/Yahad, Peace Now and Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc. These differences will be freely debated in our publications and in public meetings. At the same time, we are proud of our fraternal relations with the Israeli Labor party and Meretz/Yahad party, who represent their nation in the Socialist International. We are also allied to organizations and publications of both the Jewish and non-Jewish Left that strongly defend the existence of Israel, no matter how critical they made be of its governmental policies.
Some of our members also come from a pro-Palestinian background. And we welcome members of the Arab-American community. However, all members must agree to the proposition, whatever our difference over how to achieve it, that a just resolution for the Palestinians that grant their legitimate national aspirations can only be accomplished without fatally compromising the legitimate security concerns of the Jewish State. Moreover, many members of the SDUSA view that the final resolution toward a two state solution of Israel living in peace and harmony with a united sovereign state of Palestine, over almost all of the territory that Israel occupied in 1967, while sharing a capital in a united Jerusalem, will only occur when they both have a commitment to a secular, democratic and social democratic future, in their respective states. This means Israel as a Jewish state, that in the words of Rabbi Michael Lerner, is “a state that gives affirmative action in regard to immigration to Jews who have a reasonable claim to fear of persecution where they are currently living-but not a state that is run by Jewish religious law except in the cultural sense that Jewish holidays are given the same official public priority in that state that Christmas is given in the United States.” And a Palestinian state that is govern not by Islamic fundamentalists, such as Hamas, but secular and moderate Palestinians, both Moslem and Christian, which also embraces a pluralistic democratic social and religious policy that respects and defends the holy sites belong to Moslems, Christians and Jews, alike.
8, WE REJECT THE IDEOLOGIES OF OPPRESSION. The SDUSA is proud to adapt Point no. 8 from Eric Lee’s and Alex Spinrad’s indispensable article, “Democratic Socialism: Points of Departure,” which appeared in Volume Three, Number Four of their journal, New International Review in our own Statement of Principles: “We believe in the equality of peoples. Chauvinism and racism are obstacles to the achievement of our ideals to the extent to which they permeate the working class and socialist movements.” We are proud of the SP-SD’s long heritage of involvement in the civil rights movement from the 1930s, through the sit-ins, freedom rides, voting rights campaigns and many demonstrations, including being the central organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice. “Yet, even today, sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism thrive and flourish inside socialist parties (and in the Left in general), like a mold growing on overripe fruit. There is no place inside the socialist movement for such ideologies.” Yet, one of the issues that critics of the SD have accused us of being weak on, has been Gay and Lesbian rights. Are our critics correct?
We have to admit that the Left in the United States, specifically regarding Gay and Lesbian civil and human rights generally shared the hostile attitude toward homosexuality of the general population for a majority of the last century. Gay and Lesbian members of both the Socialist and Communist Party had to hide their sexual orientation from their fellow members. The SP practiced a form of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward homosexual members. As long as they kept private their sexual orientation, they were tolerated and left alone. However, we must honestly report that Gay-baiting did occasionally erupt in the SP toward homosexual members. One of the most shameful aspects of the late Max Shachtman’s political life, were his offensive homophobic attacks on David McReynolds in the factional debates in the SP in the 1960s, while at the same time also defending the public reputation of prominent Gay members such as Bayard Rustin and Tom Kahn.
The Communist Party and other Leninist/Stalinist and Trotskyist groups were militant opponents of homosexuals and homosexuality. The totalitarian and authoritarian Left viewed homosexuality as a deviant behavior that was caused by capitalism, and would be alleviated and disappear in the healthy climate of Communist society. An outed Gay or Lesbian member of the CPUSA would be immediately expelled from the Party for practicing deviant behavior and for being a security risk, being vulnerable to pressures from the FBI to name names, or face public exposure of their aberrant sexual orientation.
It was only in the later decades of the 20th Century did the Left slowly moved to a more positive view of Gays and Lesbians. The democratic Left added Gay and Lesbian civil and human rights to its political agenda opposing racism and sexism in this country, while the antidemocratic “Left” continued, until very recently, for the most part, their hostility to homosexuality. The democratic Left welcomed Gay and Lesbian members and added specific Commissions devoted to Gay and Lesbian issues and culture. This was the policy that existed in DSA.
The SD, on the other hand, did not take an official position on Gay and Lesbian civil rights until the 1990s, even though our leadership included two prominent Gay members, Bayard Rustin, our National Chairman, and Tom Kahn. But it was only in the last year of his life that Rustin publically discussed his homosexuality, and Kahn kept his sexual orientation private, working as a high official in the macho homophobic environment of the George Meany/Lane Kirkland AFL-CIO. We specifically rejected erecting special quotas or caucuses for special interest groups in the SD, including homosexuals, and electing the NC by dividing separate voting list for males, females and minority males and minority females.
The issue of homosexuality and Gay and Lesbian civil and human rights is still a controversial issue in this first decade of the 21st Century. Similar to the issue of abortion, working class and low income people of various religious faiths have divergent positions on homosexuality. The more liberal churches, and Reform, and Reconstructionist Synagogues accept homosexual orientation as being a separate normality, different from heterosexuality, but just as natural for an estimated 10 percent of the population. Both Gays and Lesbian can enter the clergy, and marriages are even approved between Gay and Lesbian couples. However, the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism, and evangelical and other orthodox Christians still condemn homosexual behavior, while having different views toward protecting the civil rights of Gays and Lesbians. They all agree, however, in opposing legalizing marriage for Gay and Lesbian couples.
Therefore, the SD is facing the same dilemma that exists in the case of the issue of abortion. How do we maintain our principle of opposing all the ideologies of oppression, including homophobia, without at the same time offending and alienating religious conservative working class and low income people whom we want to reach out to? The answer, we believe is not to turn our backs on the rightful human-rights demands of the GLBT community, including more federal money for research toward a cure for AIDS. That would be a betrayal of principle, for an organization that celebrates the life and work of its late Chairman Bayard Rustin, and also Tom Kahn, who tragically joined the many tens of thousands of Gay men who have prematurely died from AIDS... However, it would be equally wrong for the SD to base a specific political strategy toward Gay and Lesbian issues in order to attract them to the SD. We must understand that not all Gays are Leftists, although most of the more visible ones may be. Many Gays are well-off entrepreneurs who would favor Republican economic policies. On the other hand, many Lesbians suffer from the feminization of poverty. But it is certain that there are quite a number of Lesbians who would join other women in stating that they want to make it on their own without the paternal help of the government. What ties them to the Democratic Party and the Left are the homophobic positions of the leadership of the Republican Party, specifically the influence of the Christian Right. However, if the Republicans and the conservative movement should change to a more friendly approach on issues that concern Lesbian and Gay men, there could be a significant move to the Republican Party by affluent members of the Gay and Lesbian community.
Accordingly, the SDUSA will support women’s and Lesbian and Gay Rights because they are basic human rights. We support equal rights for Gay and Lesbian couples and civil unions. However, we will leave it up to the members of our individual state and local organization to decide the controversial issue legalizing marriage for Gays and Lesbians couples. Locals made up of a predominantly religious conservative membership, which reflects their community, shouldn’t be forced to take a position on this issue, while at the same time respecting the individual civil rights of Gays and Lesbians. On the other hand, Locals which have a high percentage of Gay and Lesbian members would want to be free to actively support legalizing Gay and Lesbian marriages, and other issues of concern to their community. The national organization will try to attract women and members of the GLBT community to the SDUSA, but without setting up special quotas or caucuses.
9, WE INCLUDE AMONG THESES IDEOLOGIES OF OPPRESSION, ANTI-ZIONISM. Like its predecessor, anti-Zionism aims to divide the Jewish people from other peoples of the world. Anti-Semitism denied that Jews were human beings with all the rights of human beings. Anti-Zionism denies that Jews are a nation with the right of national self-determination. We are deeply concerned by the rise of anti-Zionism and even open anti-Semitism within the socialist parties (and in the wider Left) and favor an aggressive and spirited campaign to drive anti-Zionism from our ranks (This statement also came from “Democratic Socialism: Points of Departure” by Eric Lee and Alex Spinrad.)
10, WE, IN GENERAL, WORK WITHIN THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES, BUT WE ALSO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIALIST/SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAMPAIGNS BY OUR STATE AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS IF THEY ARE FOR LOCAL PUBLIC OFFICE, AND THERE IS A BETTER THAN EVEN CHANCE THAT THEY MAY BE WINNABLE. The realities of American Politics make running independent Socialist candidates for public office (frequently) a gesture in futility. It was around this issue that divided the Socialist Party in the 1960s into two factions, The Debs Caucus, supporting traditional independent Socialist campaigns and the Realignment Caucus, which supported the SP working with the labor movement in the Democratic Party in order to transform it into a real social democratic party. The revived SDUSA will continue to ally ourselves with the pro-labor forces of the Democratic Party and work to strengthen Social Democratic ideals in the DP. Nevertheless, when appropriate, individual Locals or State Organizations, may run third party candidates (or fusion) candidates, under the name Socialist Party of (state name), or Social Democratic Party of (state name). The SDUSA is willing to experiment with different democratic processes on the local level. As a result, both sides of the old political strategy debate of the 1960s can reunite in harmony in the revived SDUSA, as they will be free to pursue their separate tactics, determining which approach is the best, while working toward the common goal of building a stronger democratic socialist/social democratic movement in the United States.
11, “WE STILL HAVE OUR DREAM OF THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST MOVEMENT OF THE NEAR FUTURE AND OUR VISION OF THE SOCIALIST SOCIETY OF THE FAR FUTURE, BEYOND OUR LIFETIME AND OUR CHILDREN’S LIFETIME,” again quoting Comrades Lee and Spinrad from a different article in The New International Review, concerning the future of the democratic socialist movement in the United States. “We dream of a democratic socialist movement in the U.S. which is deeply rooted in the labor movement, and is therefore genuinely multi-racial. We dream of a socialist movement with a militant commitment to anti-Stalinism, a movement which finds allies among millions of Americans of Eastern European, Cuban, Chinese and Indochinese extraction who fled Communist regimes. We dream of a movement with a vivid theoretical life. We dream of a movement which inherits not only the tradition of Debs and Thomas, but of A. Philip Randolph and Max Shachtman as well.” We also dream of a movement that will reunited the survivors and descendents of the three faction that split the historic Socialist Party in the early 1970s, including the Third Camp Left Shachtmanites, who share our militant opposition to Stalinism or so-called “Communism.” They would still be free to pursue their independent political strategy in the new SDUSA. We dream of a broad based multi-tendency democratic organization whose members would range the social democratic/democratic socialist spectrum from the Third Way Blairites on the Right, to the Left-Shachtmanite/New Politics Third Camp Left. However, we will also be an organization that will say “no” to viewpoints that are contrary to a social democratic/democratic socialist orientation. People who call themselves socialist have the free speech right to develop broad conspiracy theories about AIPAC or 9-11, and condemn Zionist imperialism, while praising the development of actually existing “socialism” in Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea, but not in the SDUSA. We want to be a true democratic and multi-tendency organization, which is why our prospective broad based membership, ranging from Third Way to Third Camp, will be united in their common opposition to authoritarianism and totalitarianism on both the Right and the so-called Communist “Left,” and in extreme fundamentalist religious movements.
Finally, while we are concentrating on developing social democratic programs for the here and now, this doesn’t mean that we in the SDUSA, have given up our dream of the vision of the new socialist society that the incremental change we are currently seeking, would eventually lead us to. We fully understand that we must have some idea of where we want to go, if we want to succeed in attracting idealistic young people to this organization. At the same time, we reject the false messianic vision of Totalitarian Communism of a new “Soviet Man” and socialism as a replacement for religious faith that will cure all the ills of society. Neither do we accept a vulgar interpretation of historical materialism that claims the inevitability of history moving forward to a socialist and communist future.
Nevertheless, our short term goal, as spelled out by the late Michael Harrington, in one of the most moving speeches of his entire career, delivered at the joint celebration of DSOC’s 5th anniversary and Mike’s 50th birthday, back in December, 13, 1978, “to once more make socialism a presence in this society, in the mainstream. To take it off the margin.” Our aim is, in the revived SDUSA, “is an America, in which it will be as ordinary, as normal to be a socialist as it is to be a liberal or a conservative or a Democrat or a Republican.” We reluctantly note that we are still as far from this goal in 2008, after the fall of Communism, as we were 30 years ago, when Comrade Harrington made these remarks. But that makes it even more essential that we once again set upon achieving this goal, in his memory. The SDUSA, will operate as open social democrats/democratic socialists, in a broad predominantly non-socialist progressive coalition.
Yet, Comrade Harrington reminded his audience, hearing his address, that evening, “that we are not simply people who play a valuable role in a coalition, but also people who have a vision.” And 30 years later, with all the changes in technology and in world affairs, Mike’s vision of socialism is still as fresh and vital today, as it was then:
"We are people who understand that for the first time in the history of humankind, it is possible that there is enough to treat everybody in this world. That the limits that we face today are not economic limits. They are not resource limits. There’re political limits. There limits of our will. But we really could have brotherhood and sisterhood. It is now possible. …We socialists have the vision that for the first time in human history, for the people of the world to have a decent life. And secondly, we understand that the reason why people do not have that decent life is because there are profound structures which keep that possibility from coming to fruition.
“We understand that the choice before the world today is not whether we are going to have planning. It’s not whether we are going to make economic decisions political. The choice before the world today is what kind of planning are we going to have. What kind of political making of economic decision making? For whom, what decisions are they going to make? That’s the real agenda. Not only is there the statistical possibility of enough. There is a struggle against the bureaucratic institutions, against the elites, against the ruling classes, be they corporations or commissars, which want to inhibit that possibility of a true fraternity and solidarity. And what we say ultimately is, that it is no longer necessary or tolerable that people be programmed. That throughout most of human history, most of the people of this world, the overwhelming majority, their entire lives were determined by the accident of their birth. And that we have a vision of a world in which through political and economic struggle, we will not end evil, we will not end death, we will not end unhappiness. But at least, we will make it possible for people to choose their own lives to the fullness of their potential. We have a vision that it is no longer necessary or tolerable that children should be born on the streets of Calcutta. That it is no longer necessary or tolerable that a social disease like Leprosy should exist in the Third World. That it is absolutely obscene and outrageous that in the United States of America, the richest society in the history of humankind, that there should be poor people and that there should be slums and ghettos. We have that vision. We are about freedom. Planning, collectivization, all of these things are means to an end of deprogramming humanity. Of allowing people to choose.”
Comrade Harrington closed his vision of a future socialist society with his favorite parable about dessert societies: “Politically, we are on the Left wing of the possible. We try to change this society within the limits that are impost upon us. But we have a vision. In dessert societies, water is something that is so precious, that people fight over it and wars are fought over it. People get married and people get divorce because of water. And it is well know in dessert society that it is human nature to covet water. And if you bring someone from a dessert society to the United States of America, and you show then a public water fountain, they will say to you that cannot be. It is human nature to go and get as much water as they can. And the people have come out at night with their cups and buckets and take the water and take it back to their rooms and hoard the water. And you say to them, no that’s not the truth, because we have enough water for everyone and people no longer covet water. But what then about medicine? What then about food? What then about housing? Is it only about water that we can do it here?
"That we can envision a society that which will not exist in our lifetime, nor our children’s, but which is possible where the basic necessities of life are free for all, collectively provided, and where humankind for the first time, where people for the first time could be decent to one another.”
Thus, we have a vision of our immediate struggle, and a process, which Harrington called in his final book, Socialism: Past & Future, “visionary gradualism” of taking the first step of a journey of ten thousand miles. Then, we pause, and revived and rebuild the Social Democrats, USA / the original Socialist Party, together with old and new comrades from every sector of American life, and go on to take the second step of our journey of ten thousand miles in order to come closer to that vision of our ultimate goal of the socialist society for this country and the world, that was so elegantly stated 30 years ago by Michael Harrington.
WE STAND FOR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND EMBRACE THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF SOCIAL DEMOCRATS, USA. We fight for a democratic socialist society, which is the extension of democracy into all aspects of society. We view the terms, social democracy and democratic socialism as being interchangeable and standing for the same values. This means that we support not a government dominated social system, but a democratic non-sexist, un racist, welfare state with a mixed economy in which the people and democratically-responsible representatives will have the maximum feasible influence in setting economic priorities. Social Democrats, USA (SD,USA) is the successor to, and the same organization that was, the Socialist Party, U.S.A., whose past and present leaders include labor, civil rights, and humanitarian leaders, such as Eugene V. Debs, Norman Thomas, Victor Berger, Meyer London, Kate Richard O’Hare, Mother Jones, Helen Keller, A Philip Randolph, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Reinhold Niebuhr, Darlington Hoopes, Samuel H. Friedman, Katharine Smith, Max Shachtman, Rob Tucker, David McReynolds, Deborah Meier, Rochelle Horowitz, Erich Fromm, Murray Kempton, Frank Zeidler, Michael Harrington, Tom Kahn, Bayard Rustin, James T. Burnett, Ernie Erber, Rita Freedman, Sandra Feldman, Donnie Slaiman, and Penn Kemble. We fully embrace the different streams of the SP and SD, USA’s history. We welcome a wide range of the Social Democratic/Democratic Socialists from the Third Way to the Third Camp, members of the Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Party of the United States of America who share our commitment to Democratic Socialism.
We are committed to the revival of SD,USA, because we share the view that was expressed by historian William O’ Neill, in the conclusion of his book, A Better World: The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals, published by Simon & Schuster in 1982. On pages 383-384, O’Neill writes the following: “Although the old left deserved to fail, we do need a left wing of the proper kind. A left rooted in anti-Americanism and dedicated to the interest of foreign countries, which is what we had for most of the last half century or so, benefits no one, not even itself. An ethical left that regarded the well-being of the United States as a legitimate concern would be valuable as a counter to the right – always more powerful in this country than its opposite. – and as a way of making responsible dissent effective. Had there been a genuinely independent and democratic left of consequence in the 1960s, the worst national misadventures might have been avoided, or at leased scaled down. That the Michael Harringtons and Irving Howes are so few is a problem that has defied the best efforts of socialists since World War I. But whatever the solution, experience makes clear that going the other way, as both the old and new lefts did, is not it. A Strong Left, if there is to be one, will have to be an American Left, democratic, loyal, and with no compulsion to admire or emulate foreign tyrannies. Anything less would be flawed and, the record indicates, futile too.”
This is the American Left that we want to build. One that would proudly flies both the American and the Red Flag. We are patriotic and love our country to such an extent that we are willing to take the time and effort to make it truly into a shiny city on the hill. We are Social Democrats/ Democratic Socialists because we are committed to the future of the United States and the American people. That is why we think that America needs a stronger voice for our kind of program. We may be not for everybody, especially those who want to continue the domination of the country by corporate elites and those who adhere to both the political Right and the authoritarian Left. On the other hand, maybe we are for you who represent the hard working middle income, low income and unemployed majority of the citizens of the United States of America.
As socialists of the democratic left, we wish these truths were self-evident:
First, that the workers of all nations share more in economic interest with each other, than the workers of any nation share with the political and economic elites of their own nation.
Second, that governments derive all just power from the consent of the governed. That governments exist for the benefit of the governed and not the reverse. Therefore, it is the duty of the governed to alter and abolish all forms of domination, political, economic, cultural, and religious, that would seek to deny the governed full and complete access to the power, which belongs to them alone.
Third, that war is, by its very nature, a crime against humanity. Occasionally, it may be necessary for a people to defend itself from attack. This is never an excuse for the imperial acquisition of resources, territory, or an attempt to establish military or ideological hegemony.
Fourth, that the rights of humanity as set forth in the United Nations International Declaration of Human Rights, may never be transgressed by any party no matter how imperiled or aggrieved that party believes itself to be. Torture, the deliberate targeting of non-combatants with anti-personnel devices (regardless of whether the bomb falls from fast moving airplanes, or is carried in backpacks aboard public transportation), or the deliberate imprisonment, starvation, or displacement of massive numbers of people for political gain is now and will forever be WRONG!
Fifth, that human kind has a right to be free from persecution because of ethnicity, gender, age, religious preference, sexual orientation. The peoples of the earth are entitled to national self determination within political boundaries that respect for the sovereignty of others and real concerns for self protection shall allow.
Sixth, we social democrats will never be cheerleaders for the slaughter of any group of people no matter what the ideology of those pursuing the massacre may be. We will never apologize for tyranny or injustice no matter what grave exigencies the tyrant shall claim.
Seventh, while people are hungry, homeless, poorly clothed, and without the basic necessities of life, there can be no democratic process.
Eighth, people have an inherent right to worship God or participate in spirituality as their conscience dictates. The state must never be the arbiter of religious thought. Instead, it is the people who must instruct the government as to spiritual and moral precepts. Therefore, it is the right of each person to disagree vehemently with others in their society upon the nature of what is moral. A democratic government cannot take sides. This does not mean that the individual members of an elected government cannot and should not be guided by moral precepts No one seeking election in a democratic society should be asked to divest him or herself of whatever spiritual and moral precepts he or she holds.
Ninth, while governments have a right to maintain the security of their borders, they do not have the right to harass those forced to cross a particular national frontier in order to find gainful employment or shelter from the ravages of war, famine or natural disaster.
Tenth, human beings are the stewards of the earth, not its masters. No generation has a right to pass on a polluted or degraded planet to the generations that follow.
Eleventh, that in any prosecution brought for any crime a defendant shall have a right to be heard by himself, and/or through counsel and shall have an absolute right to examine all evidence, to face all accusers, to call all material witnesses and to make whatever representations to the tribunal which he or she faces, which may seem to the defendant to be exculpatory. The judiciary of a democratic nation must be independent and separate from that nation's legislative and executive branches of government.
Twelfth, there is only one cure for the ills of democracy; more democracy. Free people will build a wondrous and diverse culture that will express what it is to be truly human.
Submitted with a due appreciation to the sources from which I borrowed, i.e., the Gospel of Saint Matthew; the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as amended; the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson; Common Sense and The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; The Four Freedoms speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Pacem in Terra, by Pope John Paul II; the Euston Manifesto, and the odd reference to Voltaire, Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Peter Goodwin, Robert Owen, John Stuart Mill, G.B. Shaw, G.K. Chesterton, Victoria Woodhull, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, and George Orwell.
Respectfully submitted for comment and amendment by Gabriel Kierran McCloskey-Ross, acting general secretary of the Social Democrats, USA. Many thanks to my collaborator Jaime Johnston. Thanks to Don Busky for doing the proof reading that I should have done and to Rob Tucker for Encouragement and inspiration.
The Ten Principles adopted by the Party of European Socialism, that was approved by the provisional NC of SDUSA as expressing the Viewpoint of the Organization.
1. "Rights and duties for all": Outlines that PES does not wish to leave society tobeshaped by market forces, but instead advocates rights and duties to hold together a modern welfare society. Government has a duty to ensure citizens have access to public services and to protect their rights. In return, government expects citizens and other actors to contribute to the welfare society. Businesses have a right to fair competition in a transparent and stable environment. Their duty is to contribute to public finances, aid full employment, increase skills in their workforce and aid society through corporate social responsibility. As for the individuals, they have a right to participate fully in society and the workforce while their duty is to advance through education and training.[9]
2. "Full employment": Realise full and high quality employment in the context of a modern welfare state. Labour markets would be made more dynamic though inclusive polices of security and support, including fighting age discrimination. The EU and its member states would have to provide conditions for "smart, green growth and the EMU would be geared towards coordinated economic polices of high growth and job creation.[9]
3. "Investing in people": Focus on improving the abilities of low-skilled workers rather than just concentrating on opportunities for the highly skilled. Education, training and social tools would be used, not just to improve the skills of citizens, but to fight social exclusion and reach full employment - PES state that "Those who need high quality education most – the poor and disadvantaged – are still those who receive it least in many European countries."[9]
4. "Inclusive societies": Policies at all levels to aim to tackle the exclusion of groups such as the elderly, ethnic minorities or those from poor communities. Provisions for healthcare, social services and childcare would be provided with new legislation examined for its social consequences rather than a strictly economic outlook.[9]
5. "Universal child care": Provisions for high quality, affordable, child care to be made available to ensure children have a good start to education while freeing parents to enter paid employment. This would also be helping equal rights for men and women and help the EU deal with its demographic changes.[9]
6. "Equal rights for women and men": Greater gender equality to improve women's status in the workplace and their pay. PES sees this not just as a "moral imperative" but as a "key to solving the demographic challenge, to strengthening democracy and ensuring higher welfare for families"[9]
7. "Social dialogue": Maintaining the presence of organised labour, seen as "invaluable". PES wants to encourage social dialogue between employers and employees to help rights, employment and economic growth. This to make a more inclusive and dynamic workforce.[9]
8. "Making diversity and integration our strength": Fight all forms of xenophobia and encourage tolerance to people, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. Sustainable migration policies and a respect for diversity are seen as contributors to economic and social goals such as integration and anti-discrimination. PES sees the EU having a huge responsibility in managing migration and its causes abroad.[9]
9. "Sustainable societies": Fighting climate change to assure social justice, environmental protection and economic progress. Rising energy prices would hit the poorest hardest and PES state that the EU should take a leading role in a post-Kyoto Protocol agreement.[9]
10. "An active Europe for people": PES see the EU as more than just a market place but rather something that can bring "greater shared prosperity for people, stronger social cohesion and social justice." This would be done through competition, but not between member states, cooperation, but not against social protection and solidarity through the EUs cohesion.[9]