December 1938 issue of NEW INTERNATIONAL

FOOTNOTE FOR HISTORIANS
by Max Shachtman

   We do not envy the future historian of the American
revolutionary movement when he faces the problem of tracing the
course of the ephemeral sects.  Out of consideration for him, we give
here a brief factual outline of at least those sects that broke away
from our movement.  We preface it with the fact that in virtually
every case, those who split away proclaimed themselves the only
"genuine Trotskyists" and unlike us, whom they doomed to
disintegration, the possessors of sure-fire recipes for "mass
activity."
   Not falling into the above-described category, but first to
separate from us were three Italian followers of Bordiga, since
constituted as the New York group of the "Italian Left Fraction of
Communism."  Like their separation from us, their subsequent
existence has been quiet, dignified, passive, fruitless and unruffled
either by the departure of an old adherent or the acquisition of a new
one.  Score:  no hits, no runs, no errors.
   Next, chronologically, was Albert Weisbord, upon the size of
whose hats the Passaic strike of 1926 had a most distressing effect.
Although he never carried out his threat actually to join our
organization, he broke conclusively all relations with it on March 15,
1931 -- the historic date of the formation of his Communist League of
Struggle.  In the heraldic announcement of its birth, he wrote:  "Not
an isolated sect, but a two-fisted hard group of communists is what
we are forming."  Its seven years of existence were all lean; each one
ended with the loss of another member, the last to go joining the
Marxist Workers League (q.v.), leaving Weisbord in unchallenged
charge of what he now calls the "Friends of the Class Struggle."
The plural of "Friends" has the same numerical significance as the
imperial "We."  Rewards offered by relative for information leading to
the whereabouts of the Weisbord group having gone unclaimed for
years, the money has recently been placed in escrow.
   Of the 8 original founders of the Field group, only 3 are left.  It
would be an exaggeration to say that B.J. Field has been strikingly
successful in his favorite activity:  uniting with other groups.  In
May 1933, the Workers Communist League was formed by Ben Gitlow
and Lazar Becker, two Lovestoneite dissidents.  Immediately after
the New York hotel strike in 1934, the Fieldites had their first unity
-- with Gitlow et al. (et al.=Lazar Becker), under the name of
"Organization Committee for a Revolutionary Workers Party."  The
two ex-Lovestoneites did not tarry long in the O.C.F.A.R.W.P., but
sped to the greener pastures of the Socialist Party, where Becker
became a henchman of Altman and from which Gitlow retired later to
voice his unique theory that "Lenin was the first fascist."  A sadder
but not wiser Field thereupon reduced the length of his group's name
to "League for Revolutionary Workers Party" and proceeded to
"unity negotiations" with Weisbord.  These broke with Field
concluding indignantly that "it is imnpossible to see how such a
group with such policies and leadership can contribute anything
toward building a revolutionary International."  Weisbord
reciprocated with a description which only further reduced the
latter's faith in the sweetness of the former's lacteal glands.
Whereupon Field tried his luck again, this time with the patient
Bordigist trinity, themselves worn out by just finished luckless
unity negotiations with Weisbord.  In January 1936, Field titteringly
announced that he had "held a series of joint discussions with the
Italian Left Fraction of Communism during the month of November.
Eight fundamental questions of the revolutionary movement were
discussed and complete political agreement has been arrived at."  It
goes without saying that just because the two groups were in
"complete political agreement" does not mean that there was the
slightest reason for uniting.  Nor did they.  Two months later, that
man was at it again, announcing that "negotiations have been
proceeding between the Oehler group (R.W.L.) and the L.R.W.P. of
the U.S. and promise to result in the fusion of the two
organizations."  Naturally the promise was not kept and the fusion
died in the egg.  But as the old adage says, unlucky at fusions,
lucky at splits.  The last fusion attempt broke down right after the
May 1936 split of the Field group in New York, when a majority of the
membership outvoted the leader and joined with us.  Since then,
Field's first lieutenant succeeded in effecting a fusion of a more
personal kind, the fruits of which he has been enjoying in a Greek
villa overlooking the restful, jewelled Mediterranean.  Sadder than
ever, considerably aged, but not yet wiser, Field sends periodic
letters to us for more "unity negotiations," which we are deterred
from entering into by his none-too-alluring experiences.  Ditto for
his counsel on how to win friends and influence masses.
   Originally the most numerous of the sects, the Oehler-Stamm
group broke from the then-Trotskyist Workers Party around
November 1935 because of chaste opposition to our proposal to enter
the Socialist Party and unite with its revolutionary wing.  The
splitters formed the Revolutionary Workers League whose dire
predictions of our impending degeneration and absorption by
reformism all but frightened us.  Differing only in degree of
virulence, the R.W.L., all its offspring, and all its predecessors
have decayed to the level of Trotsky-baiting sects, hurling at us all
the imprecations familiar since the days of "Third Period" Stalinism.
That so far as their political evolution goes.  Organizationally, a no
less dismal picture of splits and disintegration must be painted.
   Barely split from us, the New York Oehlerite caucus chief, a
turncoat named Mendelsohn, left his friends, joined the S.P., and in
it became the right wing's anti-Trotskyist finger-man.  A few months
after his defection, a whole series of leading Oehlerites, typified by
Gordon and Gunta, returned to our ranks.  In the period following,
one Oehlerite after another came back to our movement, was expelled
by Oehler for one heresy or another, or retired completely from
activity (Kogan in California, Giganti and Garber in Chicago, Pierce
in Cleveland, Hirsch in Philadelphia, Gaynor in Newark, Simmons in
Kansas City, etc.).  In addition to individual defections, the last
three years have seen one splitlet after another.
   First, early in 1936, came the "Marxist Workers League" in New
York which, after a sensational existence of both its members for 19
days, rejoined our movement.  Then the RWL recorded the loss of its
trade union "specialist," Joseph Zack, who openly abandoned
Marxism to form a new sect, or rather two at a clip:  the "One Big
Union Club" and the "Equalitarian Society"; in the latter enterprise
he is associated with the eminent scholar, S.L. Solon, whose
theoretical innovations have thrilled the readers of that political
parasite's paradise, the Modern Monthly.  Following this it lost a
group around its theoretical Nestor, Paul Eiffel, adventurer in the
movement and dubious figure in general, who advocated the sabotage
of the Loyalist struggle against Franco.
   Then came a dramatic breathing spell in the series of splits.  An
Oehlerite stooge group was formed in our ranks in Chicago by a
young man named Beckett, who discovered that we were capitulating
to Norman Thomas just at the time we were being expelled from the
SP.  He called himself the "Marxist Policy Committee."  After making
his bow with an apostolic denunciations of another ultra-leftist in our
ranks, led by one Joerger, he announced to a trembling world, in his
August 24, 1937 bulletin:  "Salemme-Joerger group fuses with MPC
on Marxist basis," adding that "in the course of negotiations the MPC
found that the S-J group did not hold the position criticized in MPC
Bulletin No. 2."  Hardly had the proletariat finished cheering itself
hoarse at the momentous news, than it learned from Beckett, on
October 1, 1937, that Salamme-Joerger were knaves after all and
their line was "not in essence different from that of Cannon,
Shachtman, Abern, Glee, Glotzer, Goldman, Heisler, Most, Curtis,
and all the other herdsmen of Khvostism."  The tragically
disconcerting atmosphere created by this declaration was only partly
cleared by the heartening communique that Beckett -- after the
proper and necessarily exhaustive negotiations -- was joining the
Oehler group.
   The RWL, meanwhile, had not stood breathlessly still while
waiting for its first recruit.  Alarmed at the prospect of the resultant
over-expansion, a furious struggle broke out between Oehler and
Stamm, perhaps the greatest dispute since the churchmen gathered
for the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to work out what became the
Nicean Creed of Catholicism.  One faction held that the description of
Christ, or God the Son, should read "homo'ousias," or a being of
identical substance with God the Father; the other faction held that
the Greek word in question properly had another letter, making it
read "homoi'ousias," or a being of similar substance with God the
Father.  Result:  the split between the Roman Catholic and the
Eastern (Greek Orthodox) churches.  Of no less importance was the
fight between Oehler and Stamm, the former holding, at the RWL's
historic 3rd Plenum in October-November 1937, that Trotsky, "after
a sojourn of 17 years in the Marxist movement, reverted to
Trotskyism" and degenerated in 1934, while the other insisted that
Trotskyism degenerated along about 1928 (month not given).  It
seems that Oehler won, after assailing the rebels for their "false
position on democratic centralism [which] has its leader in Stamm,
who combines errors of bourgeois democracy with bureaucracy," to
say nothing of "his ultra-left and false evaluation of Marxism."  But
when he sought to put a cap marked "Heresiarch" on Stamm's bloody
but unbowed head, Stamm promptly upped and formed his own
group, using the old name but with a new little paper which, if it
does not differ from Oehler's organ in committing just as many sins of
lese-sanity, at least is not as guilty of lese-grammar and lese-
syntax.
   The idea of the schismatics proved contagious and the splits
began all over again.  First came another "Marxist Workers League,"
led by a young soloist named Mienov, who announced in the initial
issue of his inevitable bulletin that "to be wrong on the Spanish war
means to open the door wide open to social-patriotism in the coming
world imperialist war.  That is exactly what the Oehler group is
doing. . . . We are proud that we split from such a centrist group."
All is not, however, what it should be in the MWL.  Although the
majority of the leadership, in its resolution on The Party, writes
(Sec. VIII, Part D, Point 1a, #e):  "Trotskyism cannot be reformed
but must be smashed," we learn that there is a minority of Stonne
and Spencer, which replies, "In 20 years of history, these comrades
of the majority have learned nothing," to which the majority
annihilatingly retorts:  "We were just informed that Spencer has
joined the Trotskyists.  Truly, there is no limit to degeneration."
   Second Oehlerite split-off (Series II) is the Leninist League, also
formed at the beginning of the year.  It is lead by George Marlen and
is unique also in other respects.  While definitely anti-gynaicocratic,
and taking no formal position on exogamy or endogamy, it is based
fundamentally on the primitive gens in so far as one must be a blood
relation of the immediate family, or at least related to it by marriage,
in order to qualify for membership.  This has the unfortunate effect
of somewhat reducing the arena for recruitment, but it does
guarantee against contamination.  Marlen is so exhausted by his
literary efforts to prove that Trotsky is an agent of Stalinism, that
he is able to do nothing else.  His cool, balanced judgement is
sampled by what he says of Field:  "The LRWP is an enemy of the
international working class.  It is a sabotaging agency in the
struggle of exposure and destruction of the Stalinist reaction."
Oehler, Stamm, Mienov, Smith, Jones, and Robinson -- all are
contemptuously and severely dismissed as "left Trotskyists."
Reminding one irresistibly of the story of the monkey and the
elephant is the report current that Marlen is writing a book that will
annihilate Trotsky politically.  Sic itur ad astra!  Or, freely
translated, that's as good a way as any of getting into the headlines.
   The last Oehlerite splinter to pierce the surface is composed of
the remnants of the RWL in Philadelphia, led by a lad named Fleming
who is followed by a membership not exceeding one.  After a self-
imposed novitiate in a "Social Science Circle," it climaxed its
liberation from what it calls "ululating Oehlerism" by proclaiming the
"Revolutionary Communist Vanguard" -- not of Philadelphia, not of
the United States, not of the Western Hemisphere, but of the World.
It statutes insist on it.  No new members, unfortunately, can be
admitted, for the statutes require a two-thirds approval of
applications and there are but two members now; however, a
congress of the organization is possible, even now, for it "can be
assembled by determination of at least half the membership."  The
RCV is the reductio ad absurdum of all the absurd and infantile
ultra-leftist sects.  The boys are having a fine time playing
Revolution.  They write in their bulletins (naturally, they have one)
under ever so funny pseudonyms:  Don Quickshot, Obadiah Fairfax,
Robin Redbreast, Jerome Rembrandt, and Esther Paris.  Just like
Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn playing Pirates.
   Finally, simple justice requires mention of the latest and most
ferocious group, founded, built, and staffed by the somewhere-
above-mentioned Joerger.  His public name is the thumping
"Revolutionary Marxist League" and he announces bellicosely in his
initial literary production:  "We cannot emphasize too much our
position that we have nothing in common with the Trotskyite brand of
Stalinism or any other inverted form of Stalinism.  The various types
of Trotskyites (Oehler, Field, Marlen, et al.) ... "  Stamm, Mienov,
et al., to say nothing of Robin Redbreast, are apparently to be let
off with a lighter sentence.
   There are undoubtedly others, which have not come to our
attention, but these will suffice to focus the ludicrous picture of
sterility and futility to which ultra-leftist sectarianism condemns
itself.  In making the record, moreover, we have the feeling of pious
satisfaction with a good deed done in easing the research pains of
tomorrow's biographer of the movement.