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From Labor Action, Vol. 12 No. 33, 16 August 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Two weeks ago, Labor Action dealt at length with the contortions of the Socialist Workers Party in its attempt to wriggle out of the theoretical difficulties in which the Tito-Stalin rift had involved it. Among its squirmings, we indicated the ambiguity of the SWP editorial on its attitude toward Tito. We said that the editorial seemed to support Tito and yet at the same time managed not to say so explicitly. We pointed out that the editorial practically identified Tito with the masses of Yugoslavia and had just about baptized the new Yugoslavia as a Workers’ and Peasants’ State. Just about ... but not quite, we thought.
The SWP has now come out from under its bushel and it is only proper to record the fact. There can no longer be any question of ambiguity or vagueness about its attitude toward Tito. Two weeks after the editorial, there appeared in the Militant a letter written by the International Secretariat of the Fourth International to the “Central Committee and to all Members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.”
Fittingly, it opens with the salutation of “Comrades.” After pointing out to “Comrade” Tito and the rest how they have been insulted and slandered by the Kremlin and how they are now in a position to. understand the real meaning of the Moscow trials, the letter says: “You hold in your hands a mighty power if only you summon enough strength to persevere on the road of the socialist revolution and its program.” The letter urges Tito to “Keep up your fight!” It advises: “Establish a regime of genuine workers’ democracy in your party and in your country!” Since this is “our first message to you” (apparently, a long and rich correspondence is being initiated) the letter does not choose to be critical of the past of Tito. “We wish rather to take note of the promise in your resistance – the promise of victorious resistance by a revolutionary workers party ...”
In this note, we wish only to record the fact of the SWP position, not to dwell on it. Tito is now a “comrade” to the secretariat of the Fourth International, his party is a “revolutionary workers party,” he is on the “road of the socialist revolution” and need only “persevere” in it, and since even these zealots recognize the undemocratic character of Tito’s party, he is advised to change that forthwith.
Clearly history has wasted its time on the secretariat of the Fourth International. It is as if the last twenty years did not happen and a left opposition to Stalinism was still trying to change it from inside the party, as loyal members, critical of the leadership and full of sound advice. That is the SWP today, moving fast on the treadmill of its own program which has been carefully immunized from contamination by history.
P.P.S. We learn that in a long letter to the Congress of the Yugoslav party, the Fourth International has asked to send a representative to that congress. In the miraculous event that the letter were read and the invitation accepted, it is ironical to reflect what would have been the last words of the representative as he lay in “Comrade” Tito’s concentration camp. Perhaps they would have been: “Keep up the fight! Persevere on the road to socialism!”
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