The Progressive Labor Movement/Progressive Labor Party does not have along history. It is still less than a decade old. Yet in its few years of existence its actions have provided several nearly classic examples of theoretical bankruptcy, political adventurism, and even downright dishonesty. Their numerous irresponsible attempts to manipulate and use genuine and serious struggles across the country for their narrow sectarian purposes have resulted in local movement activists running them out of places like Hazard, Ky., and Monroe, N.C., and won the organization the condemnation of militants like those in DRUM.
The story of Progressive Labor really begins with the disintegration of the Communist Party during the decade of the 1950s. Under the pressure of the post-World-War II prosperity, the cold war, and the witchhunt atmosphere of the McCarthy period, the American Communist Party lost tens of thousands of members in the first half of the decade. Then, in 1956 came the revelations by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, enumerating a fraction of the horrors of the Stalin regime. Close on the heels of that shock, came the crushing of the Hungarian revolution, in October-November 1956.
Under the impact of those two events, thousands more left the CP, most to disappear from politics altogether.
It was during this period of the late 1950s that most of the founders of the Progressive Labor Movement broke with the CP, feeling it was either too undemocratic or too politically bankrupt to ever recover. Many of them had devoted their lives to building the Communist Party. For instance, Joe Dougher, one of the contributors to the early issues of Progressive Labor, who left the CP in 1956, had been an organizer for the United Mine Workers in Pennsylvania, for the textile workers and for the United Steel Workers. He fought in Spain with the International Brigades.
Lee Coe, the west coast editor of PL, was a former editor of both the Oregon state CIO paper and the northern California CIO paper. For a period he was the labor editor of the west coast CP paper, the Peoples World.
Even from a personal point of view, to say nothing of a Marxist approach to politics, one would expect men and women who had devoted their lives to the Communist Party and then come to the conclusion that it was totally bankrupt, to try to analyze what went wrong, and why. One would expect them to begin by examining their origins and evolutions, explaining the reasons for the crisis of the Communist Party, and defining themselves in relationship to the various political tendencies in the working class movement.
And for an organization this is even more true.
No serious political organization in the mid-twentieth century can simply state it is “for socialism” and not state where it stands on the major issues that have divided the socialist movement for over a century. If it does not define itself theoretically and ideologically, it will define itself in action over time.
Members and supporters of PL never tire of repeating Lenin’s statement “without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” But what has been their record in this respect?
The first issue of Progressive Labor appeared in January 1962. It was devoted almost entirely to an analysis of the American labor movement, a critique of the Meany-Reuther policies and where they had led the trade unions. “In practice,” said the editors, Milt Rosen and Mort Scheer, “the ’unity’ of the labor movement was built around support of the cold war abroad and collaboration with big business at home.”
So far so good.
At the conclusion of their editorial entitled “For an Alternative Labor Policy: A Statement of Policy,” the editors state: “This new magazine has one main purpose: to assist, in whatever way it can, the forward progress of the American labor movement. To this end it will expose the policies of the American monopolies, and lay bare their consequences. It will try to present pertinent information that can help trade unionists in their struggles with the companies.
The editors feel that one of the basic weaknesses in the labor movement today is the virtual absence of a Socialist outlook. Without such an outlook, it becomes much harder to successfully challenge the policies of the monopolies.
We believe that a Socialist economy is the fundamental answer to the problems of the American workers . . .
Still, okay for a beginning. But that is as far as they go! It was not until one year and four months later, in the first issue of Marxist-Leninist Quarterly, that the leaders of Progressive Labor even attempted to deal with their political origins and inheritance – a rather poor theoretical beginning for a group that wants to build a new Marxist-Leninist party in the United States.
Not to be stopped by the absence of historical analysis, no less a thought-out program, steps were taken toward the formation of a new organization. The July-August, 1962 issue of PL reports that a conference was held in New York on July 1 of that year which adopted a report by Milt Rosen, outlining two central tasks. “1) to develop as far as possible a significant Marxist-Leninist program for the new party; and 2) to organize a collective organization of leaders and members.”
If there was any basic political discussion at that PL conference, the editors certainly did not see fit to reflect it in the pages of the magazine. Instead they projected the publication of an additional magazine, the Marxist-Leninist Quarterly, as a theoretical discussion journal. Originally scheduled for publication in September, 1962, the first issue did not appear until late Spring, 1963.
The lead article in that issue, “Where We Stand,” is a statement of principles by the editors. It begins by stating that there are three related crises facing American radicals–the general crisis of imperialism, the specific crises facing American capitalism (e.g. capitalist competition with Western Europe), and the crisis within the American left which “is exemplified by its failure to take advantage of the other two crises.”
Exactly what this crisis within the American left is, what its origins are, and why– these are questions never answered by the editors. As a solution, they pose the “organization of a vanguard party guided by Marxism-Leninism that can coordinate and direct a many-sided struggle for a socialist democracy.” But again, even a partial program for such a party is not enumerated. It’s still one of the things that needs to be worked out, say the editors. The editorial instead concentrates most of its fire on various liberal illusions about the classless nature of the state and the myth of an enlightened imperialism.
The main new element in this article, however, is a short paragraph attempting to deal with the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party. The attempt is so pitiful, though, and leaves so many questions unanswered, that it does little more than point up –to use the most charitable terms–their lack of political seriousness and their dishonest attempts to cheat history.
For example, the editors of MLQ state that they believe “the CPUSA has long been shackled by the liberal illusions of which we have spoken; that it has abandoned the fight for socialism, which is ostensibly ’not on the agenda’; . . . that it is no longer willing to undertake uncompromising, principled struggle against class collaborationists in the labor movement and against liberal imperialists in the Democratic Party . . .”
But how long has the CPUSA been shackled with these illusions and why? What is their origin? When did they abandon the fight for socialism? Was it revolutionary in the 1930s when it supported Stalin’s frame-up purge trial of the Old Bolsheviks? When it backed Roosevelt’s capitalist “New Dear and derailed workers and black people into the Democratic Party? When it supported US. imperialism in World War II, going so far as to enforce a no-strike pledge in the unions?
Not only did PL skip over any serious analysis of the reformist degeneration of the American Communist Party, but it ducked completely the relationship of that degeneration to the rise of the “peaceful coexistence” bureaucratic gang in the Kremlin for whom the U.S. CP leaders had become blind apologists.
To attempt to analyze the degeneration of the American Communist Party in isolation from the forces in the Kremlin that shaped it is like trying to understand the mechanisms and workings of a puppet without taking a look at the puppeteer. Yet that was precisely the issue that the founders of PL did not want to come to grips with. They were ready to speak out against the reformist hacks who headed the American CP, but they were not ready to take on their masters in the Kremlin. (This insistence on an uncritical attitude toward Moscow paved the way for the later unthinking obedience to the Peking line.)
Similar problems are raised by the critique of the SWP. MLQ’s editors say that “the Trotskyist SWP is dangerously wrong in its hostility to the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc and ... its position is harmful to the struggle for a socialist world. We recognize that the SWP has generally defended the socialist bloc against the attacks of imperialism, but the extent and nature of its criticism has often done far more damage to our cause than its support could offset.”
But which of the Trotskyist criticisms of the Soviet Union do the editors of MLQ consider harmful? The criticisms of the frame-up trials and the forced labor camps? Criticism of the illusory attempt to build ”socialism in one country?” Criticism of “coexistence” with imperialism? Criticism of the crushing of the Hungarian revolution? Not unimportant details.
Such were the political origins of Progressive Labor. On some questions their position evolved, or became clarified later on. Yet the lack of political clarity exhibited during the first year and a half, the unwillingness of the PL founders to honestly come to grips with their own past and political roots, to analyze the origins and history of Stalinism, the degeneration of the Third International and other phenomena of critical importance to a revolutionary party– all these failures left their indelible imprint on the later course and politics of PL.