Shachtmanism: Unity Caucus, Know Your Roots

Al Shanker's long-time secretary was Yetta Shachtman, Max Shachtman's wife. Almost all the early leaders of the UFT were members of Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) and in fact it was well-known you could not rise in the UFT without being a member.

In 1976 Al Shanker tried to push the UFT into supporting Henry Scoop Jackson for president. I was the opposition speaker at the DA and in probably my best moment in those years raised the guns/butter argument as we were right smack in the midst of the massive 1975-76 NYC budget crisis with 15,000 teachers laid off. I was really astounded at Shanker's brazenness.

Note this interesting 2003 item talking about Shachtmanites in the Bush White House.

Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House

Influence on Bush aides: Bolshevik's writings supported the idea of pre-emptive war 

www.prisonplanet.com/trotskys_ghost_wandering_the_white_house....

Shachtman had a legion of young followers (known as Shachtmanites) active ... When the Shachtmanites started working for Senator Jackson, they forged close ...

Really fascinating stuff and maybe a hint of why the UFT/AFT are closet neo-liberals. Or maybe not so closet. I didn't read it all yet but intend intend to.

Randi was never outwardly known to be a member of SDUSA but some people think she would not have been let in the door if she wasn't, at least in her early days. Some think she would have joined whatever they wanted her to to serve her ambition, that she is agnostic on these issues. I am not sure. But given the fall of the iron curtain before Randi took over and the UFT initial support for both Bush wars, despite the fact it was clear they would decimate education budgets, someone has to show me where she has strayed from basic Shankerism/Shachtmanism.

I'm putting this up front since it has the most application to the UFT:

Social Democratic Shachtmanism

Social democratic Shachtmanism, later developed by Shachtman and associated with some members of the Social Democrats, USA, holds Soviet Communist states to be so repressive that that communism must be contained and, when possible, defeated by the collective action of the working class. Consequently, adherents support free labor unions and democracy movements around the world. Domestically, they organized in the civil rights movement and in the labor movement. Social democrats influenced by Shachtman rejected calls for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, but rather opposed bombings in Vietnam and supported a negotiated peace that would allow labor unions and government-opposition to survive. Such social democrats helped provide funding and supplies to the Solidarity, the Polish labor union, as requested by the Polish workers.

Sounds simple when the say "free" labor unions. In fact "free" means any union free of left influence. They spent money undermining left-leaning labor unions around the world, most notably in Chile (see George Schmidt's late 1970s pamphlet in this issue which I can send you upon request.)

Thus the Unity Caucus MUST prevail against any opposition because by nature any serious opposition will have left influences or it wouldn't get anywhere. Some people on the left view New Action, which has/had a left base, as selling out any chance for a real opposition to get a foothold by making a deal with the devil for a few Executive Board seats.

Here is the full wiki piece and links to other info:

Shachtmanism

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Shachtmanism is the form of Marxism associated with Max Shachtman. It has two major components: a bureaucratic collectivist analysis of the Soviet Union and a third camp approach to world politics. Shachtmanites believe that the Stalinist rulers of Communist countries are a new ruling class distinct from the workers and reject Trotsky's description of Stalinist Russia as a "degenerated workers' state".

Origin

Shachtmanism originated as a tendency within the US Socialist Workers Party in 1939, as Shachtman's supporters left that group to form the Workers Party in 1940. The tensions that led to the split extended as far back as 1931. However, the theory of "bureaucratic collectivism," the idea that the USSR was ruled by a new bureaucratic class and was not capitalist, did not originate with Shachtman, but seems to have originated within the Trotskyist movement with Yvan Craipeau, a member of the French Section of the Fourth International, and Bruno Rizzi.
Although Shachtman groups resignation from the SWP was not only over the defence of the Soviet Union, rather than the class nature of the state itself, that was a major point in the internal polemics of the time.

Currents influenced by Shachtman

Regardless of its origins in the American SWP, Shachtmanism's core belief is opposition to the American SWP's defence of the Soviet Union. This originated not with Shachtman but Joseph Carter and James Burnham, who proposed this at the founding of the SWP in 1938. C. L. R. James referred to the implied theory, from which he dissented, as Carter's little little pill. The theory was never fully developed by anybody in the Workers Party and Shachtman's book, published many years later in 1961, consists earlier articles from the pages of New International with some political conclusions reversed. Ted Grant has alleged that some Trotskyist thinkers, including Tony Cliff, who have described such societies as "state capitalist" share an implicit theoretical agreement with some elements of Shachtmanism.^[1] Cliff, who published a critique of Shachtmanism in the late 1940s,^[2] would have rejected this allegation.

Left Shachtmanism

Left Shachtmanism, influenced by Max Shachtman's work of the 1940s, sees Stalinist nations as being potentially imperialist and does not offer any support to their leadership. This has been crudely described as seeing the Stalinist and capitalist countries as being equally bad, although it would be more accurate to say that neither is seen as occupying a more progressive stage in the global class struggle.
A more current term for Left Shachtmanism is Third-Camp Trotskyism, the Third Camp being differentiated from capitalism and Stalinism. Prominent Third Camp groupings include the Workers' Liberty grouping in Australia and the United Kingdom and by the International Socialist predecessor of Solidarity.
The foremost left Shachtmanite was Hal Draper, an independent scholar who worked as a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, where he organized the Independent Socialist Club and became influential with left-wing students during the Free Speech Movement. Julius Jacobson and the New Politics journal continued to develop and apply this political tradition.

Social Democratic Shachtmanism

Social democratic Shachtmanism, later developed by Shachtman and associated with some members of the Social Democrats, USA, holds Soviet Communist states to be so repressive that that communism must be contained and, when possible, defeated by the collective action of the working class. Consequently, adherents support free labor unions and democracy movements around the world. Domestically, they organized in the civil rights movement and in the labor movement. Social democrats influenced by Shachtman rejected calls for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, but rather opposed bombings in Vietnam and supported a negotiated peace that would allow labor unions and government-opposition to survive. Such social democrats helped provide funding and supplies to the Solidarity, the Polish labor union, as requested by the Polish workers.

References

• Kahn, Tom (2007) [1973], "Max Shachtman: His ideas and his movement" (pdf), Democratiya (merged with Dissent in 2009) 11 (Winter): 252–259

1. ^ Ted Grant: "The Marxist theory of the state (Once more on the theory of 'state capitalism')", Appendix to Russia: From revolution to counter-revolution.
2. ^ Tony Cliff: "The theory of bureaucratic collectivism: A critique" (1948) at Marxists.org.

External links

• The Lubitz Trotskyana.Net - biographical sketch and selective bibliography
• Collection of writings by and on Shachtman on the Workers' Liberty website
• Max Shachtman Internet Archive at Marxists.org
• New International Archive (1940-1946) & (1947-1958) in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)

The Fate of the Russian Revolution, Lost Texts of Critical Marxism Vol 1, edited by Sean Matgamna: Max Shactman, Hal Draper, CLR James, Al Glotzer, Joseph Carter, Leon Trotsky, a.o [Phoenix Press, 1998]