Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line

—Socialist Workers Party [US] Education for Socialist Bulletins—

Part I. The Antiwar Strategy of the SWP and the YSA

2. The Antiwar Movement

Excerpts from a Discussion in the SWP Political Committee, June 25, 1965 [The following remarks by Farrell Dobbs, Jack Barnes, George Novack, and Carl Feingold, are reprinted from SWP Discussion Bulletin , Volume 25, No. 5.]

Dobbs: In discussing the strategy and tactics of the present antiwar campaign it seems useful to review the proletarian military policy adopted at the party’s September 1940 plenum-conference held in Chicago. Those of us who participated in the decision need to refresh our recollections about it, and comrades who have since come into the party should find it helpful to have the decision reviewed in its main lines. If we also recall the historic setting in which the policy was adopted it should aid us in determining what parts of the 1940 tactical considerations remain applicable today and what parts require reevaluation in the light of present objective conditions.

The 1940 resolution on military policy was adopted after leading party comrades had discussed the subject with Trotsky during a visit with him in Mexico and after the draft resolution setting forth the policy had been discussed for two months within the party in advance of the plenum-conference. The resolution made clear that it maintained uninterrupted continuity with long-established Marxist principles in the fight against capitalist militarism and imperialist war. At all times we maintain irreconcilable opposition to imperialist war. Our war is one of the workers against capitalism, ours the concept of an uninterrupted struggle to win leadership of the working class, carry through a fight for power, and establish a socialist society. Toward that end we stress at all times the importance of building a Leninist-type party, and our military policy was viewed as one which applied those principles under conditions of World War II.

The resolution, as Comrade Cannon pointed out to the party at the time, represented a continuation; but not a mere repetition, of Lenin’s policies during World War I. It signified further development, deepening and sharpening of Leninist strategy and tactics. Taking the totality of the existing world situation for its point of departure, as Trotsky had taught us, the plenum-conference undertook to chart a strategic and tactical course in military policy commensurate with the needs of the day.

In September 1940 World War II had already been raging for a year, peacetime conscription had, been introduced in the U. S., and this country was only a little over a year away from entry into the war. It was a time of great change in the world, a time in which we saw capitalism entering into a state of permanent crisis which heralded an epoch of uninterrupted militarism and war. No peaceful solution could be seen to any social problem. All great questions would have to be decided by military means. Capitalist militarism had to be taken as an established reality which we were not strong enough to abolish. We had no choice but to adapt our strategy and tactics to the existing reality and to shape a course which took its start from the facts of capitalist rule over the working class. Our object was to counterpose a working class program to the imperialist program at every point.

In its origins, unfolding and outcome World War II was basically an inter-imperialist war. The Nazi-Soviet conflict and Japan’s invasion of colonial China were extremely important but subordinate to the overall character of the global struggle. The characteristics of World War II were in the main akin to those of World War I and much different from those of imperialism’s present assaults on the colonial revolution and its antagonistic military postures toward the workers states. Even though the Stalin-Hitler pact was still operative in September 1940, we already saw signs of the coming Soviet-German rift and the Soviet shift to the anti-Hitler side, which did occur in June 1941. Our policy decisions therefore assumed that U. S. armies would not be fighting the Soviet Union, at least until after Hitler had been defeated. We expected that the U. S. conscript army would be fighting in an essentially inter-imperialist war and would not in the immediately foreseeable period become involved in a military attack on the Soviet Union. Under those conditions we applied strategic and tactical concepts which brought up to date the policies of Lenin during the inter-imperialist war of 1914-1918.

As revolutionary optimists we challenged any notion that U. S. imperialism would succeed in its ambition to dominate the world.. We visualized social revolutions erupting directly out of the inter-imperialist war and our policies were oriented toward such an outcome. Only with the masses would it be possible to conquer power and, in those times, it appeared that the masses in the military organizations were destined to play the decisive revolutionary role. To meet the anticipated course of history, we developed the proletarian military policy.

A massive force of young workers was to be drafted into the U. S. army. We knew they would enter it with anti-Hitler patriotic sentiments, but we also took into account the struggle potential they brought with them in terms of their own class interests, especially from their background of militant labor battles during the thirties. Our military policy was conceived as a bridge toward these worker-soldiers, designed to protect and develop their class independence in the capitalist military machine. It was viewed as a military transitional program supplementing the political transitional program adopted in 1938.

Starting from the fact that the workers were for compulsory military service, we counterposed to the capitalist draft policy the concept of conscription by the workers organizations to form well-armed and well-trained labor detachments. We called for compulsory military training under trade union control with the capitalist government paying the bill. Stressing the class need, we called for election of worker-officers by the worker-soldiers. The aim was to build in the army a class-conscious workers movement capable of defending working class interests under conditions of capitalist militarism and war.

We thought that revolutionists should be prepared to go with the masses, become soldiers with them, and go to war with them. In doing so we felt it important that revolutionists strive to become the most skilled among the worker-soldiers. Military skill was looked upon as a necessity since all great questions were up for decision by military means. As skilled hands at the military trade, revolutionists would be so much the better able to win the confidence of worker-soldiers and influence them with socialist ideas. Such influence would help to lead them in a revolutionary direction and to advance the leadership role of revolutionary socialists.

It was deemed necessary to work toward these objectives in stages as the anticipated social crisis began to unfold. It was considered important to begin in a careful, cautious way, making no premature moves that might separate the socialist militants from the masses. At all stages, however, the aim was to participate in the military machine for socialist ends, seeking to win a majority over to the idea of transforming the imperial- ist war into a struggle for socialism.

Today, no one needs to be reminded that the unfolding world revolution took a. different course than we had expected. World War II did not lead directly to social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. Instead an expanding wave of colonial revolutions developed and a combination of historic factors postponed the coming workers revolutions in the imperialist strongholds. Capitalism has consequently been able to mount a sustained cold war offensive against the workers states and it is carrying out brutal military interventions against colonial uprisings. With these changed circumstances in the permanent crisis of capitalism, we still face the problems of capitalist militarism and imperialist war.

Starting from the totality of the world situation that results from these basic objective conditions, it is necessary to think through the policies required at the present conjuncture. As in the 1940 decisions, the aim must be to maintain the uninterrupted continuity of Marxist-Leninist Trotskyist principles in the fight against war; to counterpose a working class program to the imperialist program at every point; and to shape current strategy and tactics with a view toward a struggle for workers power and the creation of a socialist society.

The political criteria for current military policy are qualitatively different from the considerations that were applicable in 1940. Today the U. S. armed forces represent a counterrevolutionary dagger aimed directly at the colonial revolution and the workers states. The present conscript army is growing, but it is not yet one of the massive proportions attained during World War II, and it does not have the decisive mass weight considered so important under the conditions of 1940. The ranks of the present army do not tend so much to consider themselves a crusading force, as did the conscripts who thought the country went to war in 1941 to rid the world of fascism. There are numerous signs of the present conscript army becoming a disgruntled army, as revealed by reports in the daily press, an army that can be expected to share in increasing measure the sentiments of the growing antiwar movement here at home.

In view of the changing conditions which led to the general situation prevailing today, we dropped the slogan of military training under trade union control back in the early fifties, and there is no basis at the present conjuncture to contemplate its revival. In recent years the approach to the question of the military draft has been one of stressing opposition to capitalist conscription, with no mention of conscription into workers military formations. The plank on military policy in our election platforms has set forth such slogans as full democratic rights for the military ranks, election of office trade union wages for servicemen, etc.

Policy on the draft remains unchanged in the sense that revolutionists do not as individuals refuse conscription, as do conscientious objectors, and thereby isolate themselves from the stream of life while serving a term in prison. Revolutionists exercise their constitutional right, however, to refuse compliance with the loyalty oath procedures attached to the present conscription process. If conscripted, it is also one’s constitutional right to express one’s views in the armed forces. It is simply a matter of using good judgment in the exercise of that political right. For instance, citizen-soldiers are under no obligation to accept uncritically the biased imperialist propaganda presented by brass hats in the guise of “political orientation.”

In exercising the constitutional right to political exression inside and outside the armed forces, opposition to capitalist militarism is only a point of departure toward larger questions. Serious thought must proceed from there to an analysis of militarism’s parent, the imperialist foreign policy. That in turn leads to questions about the basic characteristics of capitalism, about the need to abolish capitalist rule and reorganize society on a socialist basis.: The application of revolutionary strategy and tactics in a transitional approach to if basic questions, especially as required in the main arena of struggle against war which exists today outside the armed forces, will be taken up in a separate presentation by Jack.

Barnes: First it might be a good idea to review character of the movement we are dealing with. In a certain sense it is a pacifist movement, a general revulsion against war. On the other hand, (1) it is not led by professional pacifists, (2) it is political, and (3) it is more antiwar than it is pacifist in the general sense. It focused on a specific war, the war against the Vietnamese revolution waged by the regime in Saigon and the Johnson administration.

It is a movement which thus far has utilized direct action. Its tactics were learned in the civil rights movement and in various student actions of the last decade. For example, there is now a lot of talk about direct action in the future with large elements of civil disobedience. You have to watch carefully the language that participants in this movement use. The terms “civil disobedience” and “nonviolence” are often used in a different way than we have been used to using them. Some people in the movement considered the March on Washington an act of civil disobedience in which certain small rules were broken. When someone suggests any kind of action, they will often speak of it as a “nonviolent action.” Because the civil rights movement is the only mass movement the students in the antiwar movement have known, they copy its language and tactics.

I think what Farrell said in his report is striking: The young people involved in this have never seen in their lifetime any example of the working class as a class in motion. Unless they are historians or members of the radical movement, the modes of struggle and types of organization which are characteristic of the working class are unknown to them. The lessons and backlog of understanding of those who were conscripted into the army in the early forties are totally absent in this generation.

The traditional peace organizations and the Communist and Socialist parties are not in the leadership of this movement. New student forces and new student activists are in the leadership and dominate it at this stage. These activists are in no way oriented toward the Democratic Party nor do any of the movement’s leaders propose taking it in that direction. Quite the contrary, one of the searches on now among the left wing leaders is for an alternative of some sort to political subordination to the activities of the Democratic Party.

The ad hoc committees which have been the main organizing centers for the movement have been non-exclusive. The protest has taken on a quasi-united - front character from the beginning. The main layers that are involved are four. The first is the students. They are the largest and they are in the leadership. Second, a surprisingly large number of young professors, instructors, and teaching assistants are involved. Third, a lot of those who have been in the peace movement are taking part even though their leaders are dragging their feet and often even opposing the more militant actions. Fourth, of course, are the radicals: members of the socialist organizations.

The antiwar movement began, has its roots on, and still has its major strength on, the campus. It is very new. The first teach-in was March 24, the first major demonstration, the March on Washington, took place April 17th. Right now it actively involves more people than the fight against the Algerian war ever involved in France. That gives you something to compare it to in our own decade. It is bigger and larger and deeper at this stage than any other American antiwar movement in the past.

Along with the movement have come some surprising developments. You have such things as the court martial of the lieutenant, for refusing to be reassigned to a more dangerous area in Vietnam. You have the spectacle of the governor of New Jersey saying that an open Marxist [Eugene Genovese] has a right to teach, has a right to take part in the teach-ins, has a right to say that the Vietcong ought to win, and still be a professor. Far from bowing to pressure from the administration, so far, the young professors as well as the students have stuck to their guns, refused to capitulate and to see their colleagues victimized.

What are the circumstances under which this movement has arisen? There is the dual character to the war threat which we face today. First, there is the threat of nuclear annihilation. That is, the fact that at any time a conflict in the world can lead to a nuclear showdown. While this has not been the major propellant of this movement, it has been in the background continually, and is often referred to. The fear of nuclear war has helped give a sense of urgency to the movement.

Second, is the type of war that is actually going on the anti-guerrilla, counterrevolutionary war. In Vietnam there is the fear of escalation of the war to the scale of Korea. The generation that, is protesting this was not politically conscious during the Korean War. They were 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 years of age at the time of Korea. They can hardly even remember it. This is their first conscious war and it is their first confrontation with their own government as world policeman.

The war is taking place after five years of a slowly maturing and growing radicalization of the American students. It takes place when there is a thin layer of organized socialist youth. It takes place after a half decade of growing sensitivity and opposition to antidemocratic moves by the federal government in the South and North. The various protest actions ’and characteristics of the student movement which have developed in piecemeal fashion; the protest against restrictions on campus, activity in the civil rights movement, and sympathy to the colonial revolutions have merged in this fight against the Vietnam war.

It takes place under the protective umbrella of a split to one degree or another in the ruling class over the Vietnam war. The newspapers, the columnists, the cartoonists, and commentators on radio and television are by no means unanimous in their support to the Johnson administration and the war. While they don’t take the radical positions that the students do, they still raise a lot of questions, and it is obvious that they are deeply divided over the questions of whether Vietnam should become a Korea-type conflict and whether Vietnam is worth the chance of a nuclear war.

The question of democracy, the question of how the decisions on war are made, the question of why people aren’t told the’ truth, these questions are almost as important to the movement as opposition to the war in Vietnam itself. Protest against the falsehoods and the lack of democratic decision making are important themes of the teach-ins and the protest literature.

Much of the antiwar activity is being organized by the Committees to End the War in Vietnam which have proliferated since the March on Washington. These are non-exclusive committees in which the organized radicals and the unaffiliated antiwar students can come together. The committees have generally been campus-based but they haven’t been restricted to the campus. There are at least two places, Los Angeles and New York, where there has been significant adult involvement almost from the beginning. In L. A., a high percentage of the committee which organized support actions around the March on Washington, the cavalcade to Berkeley, and the city-wide teach-out was made up of non-student forces.

The committees against the war usually stress education and action. There has been no tendency thus far to carry on blind activity, or picket lines as ends in themselves. There has been a heavy emphasis on what we would call propaganda. There has been the idea that the movement should try to involve more students, through educational campaigns using teach-ins, street meetings, discussion groups, rallies, and literature. In the New York committee, the Minneapolis committee, and probably many others, much of the summer activity revolves around arming the antiwar people with more literature, information, and education.

The fact that the radicals have not been excluded and are an accepted part of the movement represents a complete about-face in the relation of forces and the attitudes that dominated the “peace movements.” Always before we found ourselves having to prove that we belonged in such groups as Student Peace Union. These anti-Vietnam war committees have been just the opposite. The burden of the proof has usually been on the Americans for Democratic Action, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) types, the right-wing Socialist and Communist party members to prove why anyone should be excluded. The third camp and exclusionist stands of the right wing liberal and SP elements have tended to force them to exclude themselves from the protest. They have nowhere been successful in excluding the radical forces. In Los Angeles, the Women Strike for Peace was split on the question of whether or not SWP member Theodore Edwards should have equal time at the teach-out to speak. He ended up getting time to speak and those others who wanted to exclude themselves did so.

Most of the youth locals were deeply involved with the March on Washington Committees, and remained active in the committees which came out of the March activity. We’ve been the firmest supporters of the non-exclusive basis of the committees. The youth have had a campaign around the antiwar movement since late January and have tended to tie in their other activities around their participation in the antiwar campaign. In the future they will be trying to relate their election campaign activities to the antiwar movement.

On the war question itself, we should continue to emphasize three major points: First, is the demand for withdrawal of American troops as the central slogan as opposed to any other formulation, especially negotiation. A surprising number of: the students involved in this movement will support the basic concept of immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the American troops. It’s not ordained beforehand that a majority will go along with the idea of negotiations as a basic plank. It’s really important for us to be very clear on the question of negotiations. We do not put down any absolute rules for a liberation movement, for a revolutionary army, that they cannot negotiate. In point of fact they do have to negotiate. But it is the responsibility of those in this country to oppose the American intervention and demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and to do nothing to suggest any legitimacy for unilateral imperialist actions.

Second, is the absolute character of the right of self-determination for Vietnam and for all nations. People of all nations have the right to determine their own destiny regardless of their size or military strength.

The third point is basically educational. It is the fact that not only are we for the withdrawal of American troops, we’re for the victory of the peasant guerrilla forces in the Vietnamese civil war. We applaud those professors like Genovese who come out openly not only for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, not only for the ending of moral injustices, but for the victory of the forces of the peasants and the workers of Vietnam who are fighting against decades of oppression. While this is not something that is being raised or can be raised as a central point in the committees, it is something that in conversations or in our press we can discuss openly, frankly, clearly. In a war against a colonial revolution, there is a thin line between being opposed to the war itself and being favorably disposed to the guerrilla forces fighting against the American army as a reactionary army.

We are in favor of deepening the teach-ins, not as a substitute for protests, demonstrations, and rallies against the war, but as a justifiable mobilizing educator in and of themselves.

We should continue to take advantage of the strong attitude against the antidemocratic character of the Johnson administration’s running of the war, by raising the concept of the right of the people to decide on war. When I joined the movement the slogan “no secret diplomacy” seemed to me to be a way-out slogan. I didn’t really understand what it meant. It has a more concrete meaning now when the administration spokesmen put forth ideas like “well, we can’t tell you all the details of this, because we’ve been negotiating secretly, we’ve been talking to the French and they’re talking with the Swiss and they’re talking with North Vietnam and your knowing what is being said would jeopardize the negotiations.” When Arthur Schlesinger tried this approach at the national teach-in, he was attacked.

Many students are saying, “It is not secret negotiations which are needed, but an open decision by the American government in the full view of the people to get out or to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. Everything should not depend on a small coterie, representing a small layer of American society, making secret undemocratic decisions affecting the lives and deaths of everyone.” We educate about the need to get rid of the warmakers as the ruling class and simultaneously while propagandizing for this, we do everything possible to support every popular initiative toward making it more difficult for the ruling class to make war behind the backs of the people. We should do everything possible to tie the hands of the ruling class until they are replaced.

The question of community work has come up. By that I mean simply the desire by layers of students involved in the protest not only to educate and agitate against the war on the campus, but to involve broader layers of the American people. We should support this as long as it doesn’t involve them in adventures (as did a couple of years ago when students passed out leaflet demanding that workers not go into a war plant for some moral issue) and so long as it does not become a substitute for continuing work on the campuses.

One of the things that’s different about the “new left” and the “old new left” is that the attitude and mood of the students involved in this movement is the opposite the elitism which Comrade Novack pointed out lurk behind C. Wright Mills’ concept of the professorial new left. Their desires to organize the broader community are healthy although they may be intertwined with social work attitudes and with attitudes having to do with saving their own souls as opposed to organizing a change in society. It would be a big error for us to put ourselves in opposition to the desire to turn to the community. We should look for realistic ways to help the antiwar movement do so. The naiveté of many of those involved can easily make any turning to the community either adventuristic or demoralizing.

On the question of civil disobedience: It’s important to remember that we’ve no principle whatsoever against civil disobedience. We have been very cautious and careful, consciously so in the past period, not to let our small forces get involved in actions which would involve heavy fines and heavy court battles for which there is no preparation. We avoid actions which merely involve the victimization of a handful. What we may see in the future though, unless the antiwar mood declines, is large scale, almost mass acts of civil disobedience of one kind or another. Such large scale actions have little in common with the actions of a handful of pacifists who sit down in the streets and get arrested and heavily fined and accomplish nothing. We should avoid the acts of civil disobedience which will be proposed by professional pacifists which substitute individual or small acts of civil disobedience for acts of education, propaganda or meaningful action. At the same time we must take each act of civil disobedience, just as we take each rally or picket line or teach-in, as a thing in itself, recognizing that tactical decisions have to be made.

The same type of thing faces us on the whole question of the draft. Right now there is no large scale movement in the antiwar, movement to burn draft cards or to refuse to serve, but it’s not out of the question that there might be in the next school year a significant opposition to the draft and to ROTC on the campus. It could take the form not of individual pacifist acts but of large scale organized acts against the war.

Since the March on Washington the proposal for a national mobilization that has generated the largest acceptance in the antiwar movement has been the idea of a Continental Congress. It provides a focus for the next large-scale mobilization in the nation’s capital of thousands against the war. It raises at least indirectly, the question of power, not in the sense of dual power as we know it, but in the sense that it is based on the concept that one way or another must be found to get around or to replace the “decision-making apparatus” of the American rulers. The call for the Continental Congress also makes an explicit attempt to mobilize layers of the American population outside the students against the war in Vietnam who also are not “represented” in any real way in Washington.

There seems to be no reason whatsoever not to give the idea of a Continental Congress support. Quite the contrary, it has the potential for being the best forum thus far projected to exchange ideas. It comes from within the movement and has been proposed by those who are in the radical wing of the movement, from those who are the firmest and strongest supporters of a non-exclusive approach to demonstrations and rallies against the war. The call for a Continental Congress and the discussion engendered by the antiwar movement raises a question that we didn’t expect to be dealing with a year ago: That is the turn by a section of this movement, outside of ourselves, away from the Democratic Party and its rejection of Democratic Party politics. This turn has not taken the form of a proposal to form an alternative political party. To the contrary, it has taken the form of an attempt to (using their language) find and organize “an alternative apparatus,” that is, alternative organizations which will eventually make the decisions and run the country.

The most important statement since the SDS March on Washington call, (which helped to set the tone for the first stage of the antiwar movement) is an article by Staughton Lynd, the young Yale professor who was the head of the Freedom Schools in Mississippi in 1964 and who is one of the leading young spokesmen for this movement. It is an article in the June-July 1965 Liberation entitled, “Coalition Politics or Nonviolent Revolution” which all comrades should read. It opens up a polemic against Bayard Rustin, and against those who would side with Rustin, on four major counts: (1) It attacks the idea of working in the Democratic Party. It points out that the Democratic Party not only is not the way to progress in the future, but that the history of the past has shown that it never has been. (2) It attacks openly. and explicitly third campism and social-patriotic pacifism in the antiwar movement. (3) Lynd attacks those who seek to castrate new movements, such as the civil liberties movements, Negro movements, and the antiwar movement by tying them to the Democratic Party. He compares this to the way the labor movement was politically castrated in the thirties. (4) Lynd attacks coalition politics. He writes, “Coalitionism is also elitism. Its assumption is that major political decisions are made by deals between the representatives of the interests included in the coalition. Negro protest, according to the Rustin formula, should now take on the role of such an interest. And men like Rustin will become the national spokesmen who sell the line agreed-on behind doors to the faithful followers waiting in the street.”

The article represents more than the opinions of Lynd. In the article he refers to Bob Moses [Robert Parris] of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and to Tom Hayden, leader of the Newark SDS community project, as two of those who helped formulate these ideas. The mood and attitude of the article reflects in many ways the current mood of the antiwar activists.

In describing a view of “nonviolent revolution” Lynd writes, “Robert Parris has sketched out such a scenario as a possibility in Mississippi. What, he has asked, if Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party voters elected not only legislators but public officials as well? What if the Negroes of Neshoba County, Mississippi began to obey the instructions of the Freedom Sheriff rather than Sheriff Rainey? What if the Freedom Sheriff impaneled a Freedom Grand Jury which indicted Sheriff Rainey for murder?”

The worst possible approach we could take to those people with this attitude would be to begin by berating them for not seeing that they should be for a labor party or for not proposing an alternative socialist party. We begin by wholeheartedly supporting their rejection of the Democratic Party and support them against the Bayard Rustins and Norman Thomases. We should see any rejection of the Democratic Party as a very significant thing, something we have had a monopoly on for decades. We should stress first those things we have in Common with the radical youth in the antiwar movement; the common rejection of secret diplomacy and the elitism of the ruling class, the common rejection of the idea that Congress is representative of the great mass of people in this country, and the common rejection of any attempt to tie the Negro movement and the antiwar movement to the Democratic Party. And we should help push these common ideas in the movement itself and win new people to them.

It is within this framework that we should put forth our view that it is only through the organization of a new party with a socialist program that any real alternative can be given to the political apparatus of the ruling class.

An understanding of the class character of society will be one of our contributions. For example, we will be pointing out to the movement that those people that they call the poor, the disenfranchised and the disinherited, and the Negroes are part of the working class. We can point out to them why it is that “the system” which they speak of which is carrying out counterrevolution around the world is capitalism.

There are all kinds of contradictions in the positions of these radicals. Lynd thinks that Bayard Rustin just came to his conservative ideas in the last two years. He points out that to really understand Rustin’s position now you have to look at what Bayard Rustin has done in the last year: his selling out the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, his recent statements in favor of coalition politics, and his attacks on the March on Washington. Lynd and the others in the movement have not begun to grapple with the political roots and antecedents to the policies of the social patriots, social democrats, Stalinists, and coalition politicians. That is our job.

We can and should support unconditionally the building of a Continental Congress. Such a congress could be a forum for our ideas and we should consider what kinds of proposals we would. want to put before such a gathering. First, we would want to put forth our ideas on the war itself: the withdrawal of troops, the rights of referendum, the right of-self-determination for nations, and our opposition to militarism. Second, because of the character of the antiwar movement and the attitude of those involved, we can raise sections of our transitional program that tie together the interests of the Negroes, the poor, the working people with the antiwar protests. The desire to tie together the interests of all the “unrepresented peoples” is a dominant one and should be taken advantage of.

We should pay close attention to the cleavages which are taking place within the left and within the antiwar movement. They’ll be over the question of exclusion versus non-exclusion and the question of unconditional opposition to the war. They’ll take place over the question of subordinating the demands of the antiwar movement to the demands of “progressive” politicians.

The role of our press is of crucial importance. The paper is the organizer and educator for our own ranks as well as our vehicle for bringing our ideas to those outside our movement. The press should raise the questions I’ve raised today. It can help to educate our comrades on how to best present our ideas to the antiwar movement and thus take part in the programmatic debates that are taking place. It is important for our press to take on at every opportunity the social democrats, the Stalinists, the coalition politicians, and the professional patriotic pacifists. We must hammer away at our opponents at every opportunity, hammer away at the false conceptions and misleading programs within the antiwar movement.

At the same time we should approach in a different way the militants and leaders of this movement like the Lynds, embracing and developing the ideas which they put forth that are correct and discussing their contradictions and our proposals for solving them. When we discuss our views in the press or in conversation within this movement it’s always much better to find a concrete illustration, a statement by a professor at a teach-in, an attack by Norman Thomas on the movement, an article by Staughton Lynd, or a statement by George Meany to use that as a polemical peg or an educational peg around which to develop our ideas.

Activity in the antiwar movement must not be confined to the youth. The youth cannot have one campaign orientation and the party “adults” another. How large the movement can become remains to be seen. We have no way of predicting. But we must (1) participate in the movement fully, (2) join the debate in the movement by supporting the rejection by the movement of those things we’ve been opposed to and within the framework present our program, and (3) present our general ideas on socialism and talk over which of the points of the transitional program we want to present and translate them into the language of the movement -- just as we have done with our participation in the Negro struggle.

Novack: We’re confronted here with something new in American history of the Twentieth century. That’s the emergence of defeatism at the beginning of an ongoing military action. Wood correctly said this antiwar movement is not predominantly pacifist; i.e., I believe it is an embryonic defeatism in its implications and ultimate direction. When a professor like Genovese, who represents its extreme left wing, says he’s for the victory of the Vietcong, that’s about as defeatist a political stand as you can take. This is something quite different from World War I or World War II. I recall reading about the history of Russia in 1905 and 1917 and wondering what it was like to live in a country with powerful defeatist sentiments in the midst of war. In the two wars our generations went through, we never saw any defeatist sentiment on a large scale. Opposition to the war was confined to a handful of revolutionaries Now we’re experiencing the beginning of a political phenomenon formerly reserved for other peoples.

This is a new and higher stage in the reaction to imperialist war making in the postwar period. What came forth toward the end of the Korean war now makes its appearance in the first steps of the Vietnamese conflict. Although this is not yet called defeatism even by the war hawks that’s what it is, although of course it’s still in a budding stage. This is a development of considerable portent. The bulk of the participants in the antiwar forces certainly don’t grasp its significance and consequences. They’re fresh, unsophisticated, unpoliticized, like all new generations and new layers of the masses that. enter the arena to challenge the ruling powers. In a way it is good they don’t really grasp what they’re engaged in or it might deter their initial audacity. But the more advanced will come to understand the implications more and more as the war costs and casualties mount. Proceeding from this definition of its potential character, what we’re trying to do is to extrapolate the lines of development and comprehend the entire prospective course from its very first steps. Defeatism starts as a mood and an attitude and then passes over into other and higher forms of action. We must foresee more anti- government acts as the logical consequence and manifestation of this budding movement.

This is a political issue of the utmost gravity in which every word and action has to be carefully weighed and plumbed to its foundations This position we’re working out here ought to be seen in its connection with the resolution- on organization. If any comrade takes a frivolous attitude toward the question of organization, I think that consideration of the new phase of antiwar sentiment apparently ahead of us is an additional argument for the type of organizational resolution we are presenting to the convention.

Feingold: I think we have all the conditions developing for the first time in many years for the rise of a mass movement in this country around the opposition to war. Now it takes the form of radicalizing students, but it can go onto the Negroes who have less to gain from a war than anybody else, and eventually the mass of the population, the working people of the country. The conditions that exist, which show the possibility of a mass movement against war developing for the first time in so long, are a lot different, as a number of the comrades have pointed out. This is not the Second World War. There’s no patriotism in this country for the war. It’s not the same situation as that of the Korean war which was a very unpopular war. Comrades who were in the army during the Korean war are aware that there wasn’t a great feeling of opposition to the war in a political sense. It just was an unpopular war that people felt was a dirty war. Much of the opposition to the -war came from those that returned from Korea. If you could talk to any of those, they were very much against the war. But there was a big political obstacle. There was McCarthyism, which swept right into the army. You don’t have that today and it loosens up the whole situation both outside among the intellectual community and in the army.

Also different today from several years ago are the conditions affecting pacifist organizations which have been mainly in the leadership of these antiwar movements. People who have mainly a fear of the bomb tend to develop pacifist attitudes toward the bomb scare. But today you have a revulsion toward the war, toward American foreign policy, that should have profoundly revolutionary implications. There’s less of a tendency to move in a pacifist direction in that kind of revulsion against the policy of your own country, and you have the possibilities of developing a revolutionary approach toward the war These conditions are different from the past wars, and from the peace movements of several years ago which were under pacifist influence, even though the majority of the people involved in those movements were not pacifists. There were young people involved, but the leadership was controlled by these pacifists. That no longer holds today. It puts us in a position of making a central turn of the party at this coming convention, a turn toward a central campaign, an antiwar campaign, wherever possible The party and youth can provide leadership. I’m not talking about leadership in the sense of mass demonstrations, but leadership in the sense of a propaganda and educational campaign, using the press and, of course, actually participating in and where possible leading, actions in opposition to the war. Now we’re for putting an end to the imperialist foreign policy, and that’s the mood and the idea that we have to get across wherever our comrades participate in the developing movement. Another thing we have to popularize is recognition that the main, enemy is at home, that its political representatives are also in the Democratic Party. Nat Weinstein made an important point that in the election campaign we can challenge the whole imperialist political structure. There are many forms the effort could take.

We have to begin approaching two audiences. Those not yet in the army, that is the young people mainly, and those who are in the army. Among the students it can develop into a propaganda campaign aimed at millions of people. We’ve never had in this country such a large student community as has developed in the past several years. Out of these millions, hundreds of thousands of them will be going into the army. The elections in this country give us a way of pushing for independence from the capitalist politics. On the campuses themselves, elections take place. The youth can promote antiwar slates running in the campus elections. Elections of this type, and proposals and referendums on the campus can- then be aimed at the National Student Association, which has national conferences where big discussions, can -take place on the war issue For the first time in many years, teachers are involved in this movement. Traditionally teachers have been a brake on the student movement in this country. Now the teachers have a great deal of influence all over the country. Such moves can be considered as demands for a referendum vote, say like the case of the Ludlow amendment that came up in Congress before the second world war. One other variant. The election campaign also gives a vehicle to approach people in the army. One of the things people don’t lose in the army is their right to vote in elections. If they don’t lose their right to vote, then political parties have a right to talk to them about election policy. One other point to raise is that the 18-year-olds, who are old enough to be soldiers, do not have the-right to vote. -

- What comes clear to me is that we’re in a situation where the party has to begin a major turn, so that we can begin playing a leadership role, especially in a propaganda and educational sense, in the antiwar movement.