Security and the Fourth International 2023

Security and the Fourth International 2023

Socialist Equality Party (US) sold assets to and worked for business linked to the "Chicago Outfit" 

Suspect

In the wake of the scandal that broke out in the aftermath of the leaking of the ownership of a multi-million dollar printing company, Grand River Printing and Imaging (founded in 1978 by David North) by leading members of the Socialist Equality Party, David North and Barry Grey (or to be precise, their wives), and also likely due to the economic crisis of 2008 and the general decline of the printing industry, Grand River Printing and Imaging (GRPI) appears to have begun liquidation in 2013. [0] [0.1]

Before the final auctioning off of the remainder of it's assets, likely worth millions, certain assets of GRPI had already been sold in what was itself certainly a very lucrative sale to the printing business American Litho, lead by executives connected to the mafia and union "strongmen." [1] [see below] 

SEP members continued working for American Litho in executive positions, praising it publicly in the press, and continue years after information about its executives connections to the mob came out in high-profile court cases. [1.1]

What happened to all of the money from the sale of GRPI's assets to American Litho and others? Was it used to build the SEP? Were comrades that had contributed decades worth of work towards building a printshop rewarded? 

The extremely under-developed "marketing apparatus" of the SEP indicates that the answer to these questions is no. One thing is known: some of the money was invested into a new venture - a marketing company, the latest major commercial front of the Socialist Equality Party, which harnesses the talents of writers attracted to the WSWS to produce "copy" for a much more developed and lucrative marketing operation, one directed not towards any useful production for the Party, but private profit. [2][2.1][2.2] 

Clearly, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. We say: Oppose the conspiracy to defraud the members of the International Committee! This large accumulation of wealth must be used to build the World Party!

Most importantly: does the SEP have connections to organized crime? 

Addendum: 

We solicited comments from several people who study the mafia that we consulted in regards to the situation outlined above. Below we report some of their comments:

The first said that if members "actively helped it by running [American Litho] then there is no innocent explanation... that's pretty sketchy and I think its harder to explain continued employment with the firm."

A second person we consulted suggested it could bear the marks of a government operation. They said that "Maybe they [SEP members] [were] approached by law enforcement." "There was a Colombo bust around a decade ago, it sort of involved something like that... when the FBI was looking into the crew, they went to these [business] partners and were able to get them to provide information on the mobsters. If I recall correctly, they even wired up to record stuff." 

The others speculated that if American Litho is a criminally connected enterprise, that would indicate that "there's no innocent explanation and at that point they're criminals helping further the criminal activities of a criminal organization" and that "the[y] know" what they are involved in.

Further information on American Litho and its mafia connections:

1. After the selloff of assets to American Litho, members of the SEP became employees at American Litho, including a leading member who took up a position as a sales executive.

2. Ex American Litho Vice President and Co-Owner M. Dziuban conspired with the mafia to extort money: [3]

3. The American Litho salesman approached by Dziuban in the early stages of his conspiracy is identified as a "soldier" in the Chicago Outfit. 

4. The mob muscle selected for the extortion scheme was a former union bodyguard, G. Brown.

5. Carol Stream, a village where American Litho is headquartered, is in an area home to many other mafia run operations.

6. The President/owner of American Litho is married into the family of the Chicago Outfits "caporegime."[4][4.1]

7. Along with Brown, Dziuban, an owner at American Litho, "works for" Mob Lieutenant P. Carparelli.[5]

From this it appears that American Litho is almost certainly a commercial front of the "Chicago Outfit."

The Palestinian

 

https://t.co/FY0LBfps1Z

The Palestinian (Al-Falastini) 1977

— ICFI (1953) Supporters (@1953Icfi) April 5, 2023

Why Tyler Attacked The Workers League

Why Tyler Attacked The Workers League

Note: The thoughts first articulated here some 50+ years ago, in inimitable style, appear to have defined David North's political trajectory, particularly in the most recent decades. The observation - formally correct - that the universities and the educated middle classes are the source of the ideological diseases attacking the working class, lead to the conclusion that the struggles amongst this sector were the "frontline" of the fight for a working class perspective, and the idea of a "student intelligentsia" with "the responsibilities of leadership." The conclusion, properly drawn, is the need to fight to build a cadre of worker-intellectuals capable of serving as an alternative pole of attraction to the middle class intelligentsia, into which the "student intelligentsia" will enter as a subordinate part.

By David North

At first glance, I was somewhat surprised to find myself the object of a polemical attack that appeared in the March 2nd edition of the [Paper]. I simply shrugged my shoulders and assumed that there lives on this campus someone named after this country's tenth president who hates me. But after some though I decided that John Tyler's article could not be dismissed so lightly. His attitude toward me had not developed out of personal contact; I have not met the boy, and until his article was published did not even know that he existed. The campus directory states that John Tyler is a sophomore; therefore I hope to find a copy of last year's freshmen handbook so that I may at least know what this lilliputian looks like. As neither of us know each other, it became clear to me that his attack against me was essentially political. The fact that it was phrased with the language of insults can be attributed to vulgar manners. 

The fact that his article was written to settle political - as opposed to personal - accounts can be gleaned from a consideration of its contents. The setting for Tyler's assault was a little piece on apathy: the common theme of ageing adolescents who in their days of high school glory tirelessly promoted football games, cheerleading, assembly programs, sophomore hops, junior proms, senior balls, honor systems, traffic squads, and all other activities recommended in eighth grade civics textbooks. Such sanctimonious bores remain forever anxious to organize indifference under Roberts' Rules; for they never doubt the world-historical role played by student councils in forging those Democratic virtues found in successful insurance salesmen. 

Traditionally, such types found their comfortable niches at college. Richard Nixon - we are assured by Life Magazine - was the pride of Whittier. But our times are somewhat more difficult: the indifferent are reluctant to submit to organization. John Tyler consequently feels estranged from his contemporaries. Not only have they failed to appreciate his splendid qualifications for the position undergraduate secretary-treasurer, but also have gone so far as to abolish the position altogether. 

Tyler attributes the apathy of the undergraduates to their grave character faults. He accuses them of "hypocrisy," "egocentrism," "cynicism," etc. Entirely preoccupied with the problem of organization, he defines apathy as a problem of inertia rather than consciousness. Therefore, Tyler feels that apathy can be overcome by compelling students to move rather than think. He has not the slightest interest in what he is organizing. Guided by his belief in activity as a fine way to pass the day, it is likely that Tyler would most enjoy supervising a watertreading marathon in which questions relating to purpose and goal would be of no consequence. 

A natural companion to Tyler's devotion to organizational activism is his hostility to the raising of political issues before the student body. Throughout his article Tyler associates apathy with political diversity and suggests that the function of organization is to smash independent political thought. Above all, Tyler wishes to organize the campus against politics. For example, he asserts in the seventh paragraph that "The absence of any institutional structure of college governance has led to an anarchy where the power of special interest groups holds away (sic). Widespread apathy has all to frequently allowed a small radical directorate to speak for the entire student body." 

It must be understood that in posing the issue of apathy, Tyler does not hope to encourage political awareness and social action. It is his intention to destroy whatever tendencies students may have in that direction. 

Having exposed the nature of Tyler's concern with apathy and its profoundly reactionary implications, it is possible to comprehend the significance of the attack launched against me in his article. 

The careful reader should not make the mistake of assuming that Tyler haphazardly inserted a paragraph which laments the continued presence of my "tired face" in the midst of an article ostensibly concerned with apathy. Similarly, Tyler did not denounce my "radical chic" efforts in behalf of the "greening of Trinity" merely to playfully regurgitate the titles or bestsellers that he hopes to read. Within the rickety framework of his essay, it is quite natural that there be found a slander against my recent activities as a representative of the Workers League. 

Tyler recognizes instinctively that the Workers League, a revolutionary Trotskyist party, threatens to turn students toward the question of a theoretical and political struggle against the bourgeois state. It is not my tired face that offends Tyler. Rather, it is the fact that the distribution of the Workers League Bulletin is part of an effort to raise the political consciousness of American students to the level at which they will be able to understand the political tasks required by the class struggle, the Workers League is not merely a new political organization that draws its motivation from the need to regiment apathy. The Workers League promises to combat the lethargy of students by having them confront the historical roots of their current - and temporary - dysfunction. 

The immediate task of the Workers League is the development of a revolutionary working class party. It does not attribute to the students of this country a revolutionary role disconnected from that of the American proletariat. Nevertheless, the Workers league must bring the struggle for consciousness into the nation's campuses, for it understands that students - the heirs of a bankrupt society - are wavering in their allegiance to the state. At the same time, in the course of their struggle to liberate themselves from their ossified and strangled political development, students are susceptible to the most vagrant political tendencies. It is on the campuses that reformism, communalism, stalinism, and other forms of revisionism are most flagrantly exhibited. Once infected, students do not linger quietly, but carry their plague-bacillus into the working class. And it is there that the revisionist disease has its most virulent consequences. 

The Workers League is not attempting to organize students as volunteers for the class struggle; for this conflict history has automatically recruited them. Nor is the Workers League interested merely in winning the passive support of students for the cause of the proletariat. A revolutionary movement thrusts upon the student intelligentsia the responsibilities of leadership. In posing the theoretical and political issues of the class struggle before students, the Workers League is drawing them into the fight for a revolutionary consciousness within the proletariat itself. 

At some point in his article, Tyler spoke of my contempt for the "working classes of Middle America." Marxists do not consider the proletariat to be citizens of that geographical figment of the bourgeois imagination. And even if they once were, the intensification of the class struggle - as expressed in the actions of the Newark teachers, the Des Moines construction workers, the New York police - has forced the workers to embark for more revolutionary shores.

What we think: Pacifist blind alley

What we think: Pacifist blind alley

From the Workers Press, February 1, 1972

In preparation for the inter-party talks on Ulster and the completion of a political deal between premiers Jack Lynch and Edward Heath, the British army is carrying out a policy of selective and premeditated provocations.

They are arresting and interning the nationalist and working class opposition’s most militant supporters, while leaving the reformist leaders free to pursue their collaborationist policies.

This is the sinister meaning of the deployment of 2,000 police and troops in Dungannon and Londonderry over the weekend.

In Dungannon on Saturday CS gas and rubber bullets were used extensively to prevent civil rights marchers from breaking Faulkner’s ban on parades.

In Londonderry, the Protestant Loyalists threaten to stop the civil rights marchers if the army doesn’t. At the same time Lynch’s garda [police] obligingly round up IRA Provisionals who only recently escaped from the hell holes of imperialism.

On both sides of the border imperialism and its agencies are working concertedly to isolate and repress the militant opposition to leave the field clear for negotiations to continue towards a "federal solution."

So the pacifist civil rights leaders’ policy and tactics play dangerously into the hands of the army and administration. By separating the issue of civil rights from the vital questions of wages, employment and the issue of forcing the Tories to resign, the NICRA [Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association] leaders are taking their supporters into a blind alley.

Furthermore, by tying the civil rights movement to the objective of a "negotiated political solution" with the Tories in Westminster and Dublin, NICRA leaders perpetuate sectarian divisions and lay the basis for a colossal betrayal of the national struggle in Ireland.

Predictably the NICRA leaders are backed up in this bankrupt policy by the Ulster Stalinists who see in the present crisis an opportunity for implementing their Popular Front policies.

This is the reactionary logic of the so-called "political solution" postulated by Stalinism and petty-bourgeois pacifism in Ulster.

We are not opposed to marches and demonstrations, but we are opposed to a policy which subordinates workers’ militancy to reformist middle-class demands and allows the army to pick off the best leaders at will.

The only way forward for the Ulster and Irish working class is the construction of a Marxist leadership independent of Stalinism and pacifism which will integrate the democratic demands of the oppressed minorities with the struggle to overthrow British imperialism and establish a socialist republic in Ireland and the UK.

The Abandonment of the Fight for Workers' Defense Guards/Committees - A Dangerous Error

The Abandonment of the Fight for Workers' Defense Guards/Committees - A Dangerous Error

History

As the educated Trotskyist will be aware, the demand for Workers' Defense Guards/Committees occupied a central place within The Transitional Program. To quote a large excerpt from that document, from the section titled The Picket Line, Defense Guards/Workers’ Militia and The Arming of the Proletariat: 

"In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-defense. [emphasis added] It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary wing of the trade unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning with the youth groups, to organize groups for self-defense, to drill and acquaint them with the use of arms.

A new upsurge of the mass movement should serve not only to increase the number of these units but also to unite them according to neighborhoods, cities, regions. It is necessary to give organized expression to the valid hatred of the workers toward scabs and bands of gangsters and fascists. It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia as the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers’ organizations, meetings and press. 

Only with the help of such systematic, persistent, indefatigable, courageous agitational and organizational work always on the basis of the experience of the masses themselves, is it possible to root out from their consciousness the traditions of submissiveness and passivity; to train detachments of heroic fighters capable of setting an example to all toilers; to inflict a series of tactical defeats upon the armed thugs of counterrevolution; to raise the self-confidence of the exploited and oppressed; to compromise Fascism in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie and pave the road for the conquest of power by the proletariat.

Engels defined the state as “bodies of armed men.” The arming of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle for liberation. When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and the means to arming. In this field, also, leadership falls naturally to the sections of the Fourth International."

Following the publication of The Transitional Program, the demand for Workers' Defense Guards/Committees occupied a significant place within the work of Trotskyists for decades. However, the growth of opportunism within the movement has at various times undermined and distorted this demand. Central texts of the modern Trotskyist movement, such as The Heritage We Defend and How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism, took up the question of the failures of movements during periods of political backsliding to properly raise or defend this demand. 

Workers League leaflet calling for the organization of defense guards to protect the Poor People's March, 1968

In relation to the SWP in its period of political retreat, David North wrote in The Heritage We Defend that "The SWP did not raise the demand for the formation of defense guards among the black population to fight back against the racist thugs functioning under the protection of the state government." 

In the same book, this time concerning the WRP, North wrote: "When pressed to explain the WRP’s official programmatic call for workers’ defense guards, the News Line reported the following opportunist testimony: 'Mr. Redgrave said that the party called for workers’ defense guards to protect immigrant areas where fascist attacks occurred and the police on the ground were unable to give protection. The police themselves admit they cannot cope with the situation, he said.'

In other words, Redgrave’s testimony presented the workers’ defense guards not as organs of defensive struggle against the violence of the capitalist state and its agents, but as an auxiliary force to supplement an inadequate police force!"

Touching on this same issue in How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism, North wrote "Redgrave went so far as to suggest that workers’ defense guards were only necessary where there weren’t sufficient police to patrol the areas!"

The demand for workers' defense guards, properly raised, therefore occupied a central place in the Trotskyist movement in the years following major struggles against opportunism. Several examples from ICFI materials available online from between 1986-1992 make this clear concerning the period following the split with the WRP:

Labor Must Act on Iran-Contra Crisis, 1986:

“Mobilize the strength of the labor movement against racist and fascist attacks, establishing workers’ defense guards against Klan and neo-Nazi activities. Abolish the FBI, state and local police, and establish a workers’ militia to defend the working class.”

Workers League 1988 Election Platform: 

"Form Workers’ Defense Committees: Against the armed violence of the capitalist state, the army of hired security thugs, scabs and police, the working class must form its own self-defense groups to protect its picket lines, demonstrations and meetings."

The World Capitalist Crisis and the Tasks of the Fourth International, 1988:

"Even the specific “transitional” demands which Trotsky proposed—the sliding scale of wages and hours, factory committees, abolition of business secrets and workers’ control of industry, expropriation of private banks and nationalization of the banking industry, the formation of workers’ defense guards, the establishment of a workers’ and farmers’ government—retain their vitality as practical levers for the revolutionary mobilization of the working class." [emphasis added]

On the Assassination of L.W Panditha, 1988: 

“Without delay, the working class must build its own militia against the bourgeoisie’s, not to defend the bourgeoisie or the bourgeois state, when it is preparing the counterrevolution and discarding bourgeois democracy. A workers’ defense militia should be formed to defend the organizations of the working class, its newspapers, and all the gains of the working class in the previous period.”

The Case of Patrick Slaughter, 1988:

“In other words, workers should deal with trash like Brown and Slaughter by building defense guards that will acquaint their faces with the pavement and send them on their way.”

Long Live the Memory of Comrade R.A. Pitawala!, 1988:

"The only way forward for the working class is to form its own defense committees to safeguard its organizations and protect its meetings, demonstrations and leaders. A catastrophe threatens the working class unless it repudiates the parliamentary cretinism of its reformist leadership and undertakes practical measures to organize its own defense."

Repression and the State in Sri Lanka, 1990:

“This urgently raises the issue of forming defense committees and defense squads under the leadership of the working class, involving the rural poor and the youth for self-defense. It is of prime importance that these defense committees organize their own independent investigations into the murderous conspiracies and activities of the state forces and the goon squads in order to raise the consciousness of the masses about the necessity of fighting for the overthrow of the capitalist state.

The demand for arming the workers must be raised within every working class organization”

Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism and the Working Class, 1992: 

“As far as racism and xenophobia are concerned, we are also for concrete action, but we place no trust in a government and state which provide a breeding ground for the brown plague. We call instead on the working class itself to become active and to build defense committees.”

Modern Day

Of the material available on WSWS as of the time of writing, founded in 1998, since 1992 the demand for some similar kind of "defense committees" appears to us to have been raised only eight times, and only on a few occasions in which it is clearly used in the same manner as Trotsky used it.

One instance, which also appears to be the only time in which workers' "guards" are called for, is a recent statement from 19 May 2022, Sri Lankan workers and rural poor must mobilize against the Rajapakse-Wickremesinghe austerity agenda! There it was said: "Defense committees and guards must be established in the face of government-organized goon squads." 

Two recent articles concerning Chile raised the idea of "defense-committees" in connection with the fight against fascism and authoritarianism, for example the article Chilean government mobilizes police and military on anniversary of social revolt from 18 October 2020 which said: "What must be prepared is the fight to establish a workers’ government where delegations of factory committees, neighborhood committees, production and distribution committees, communications and civil-defense committees composed of workers and youth take the lead."

Another article, Political issues in the struggle against the threat of fascism and dictatorship in Greece from 28 September 2013 said that "It is necessary to form self-defense committees in neighborhoods and factories to protect workers and immigrants from the fascist gangs and their police accomplices, and prepare strike action."

Of the remaining material we found, the demand is raised, not for workers' defense committees in general, but specifically "immigrant defense committees." The nature of these committees is not specified, and since the SEPs have formed "defense committees in support of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning around the globe" which are clearly of a different nature than those discussed by Trotsky in connection to the arming of the working class, the mere invocation of the words "defense committees" in combination is not at all necessarily an application of the ideas that Trotsky fought for.

From the usages above, the exceptions that prove the rule - namely that the demand for workers' defense committees/guards has been all but abandoned - we can determine the limited circumstances in which these rare instances are manifest: Only when the forces of fascism and authoritarianism have already mobilized their own goons.

This is approaching the positions expressed by the WRP as criticized in How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism: "The possibility of resorting to arms was limited to struggle against the fascist state - that is, until after the defeat of the proletariat."

Similar positions to that adopted in practice by the modern ICFI were subjected to withering criticism by Trotsky, including for example in Whither France? against l’Humanité: "At the present time, according to this paper, it is inadmissible to advance a slogan which is only opportune 'in a full revolutionary crisis.' It is dangerous to load your rifle, says the 'too-prudent' hunter so long as the game remains invisible. But when the game puts in an appearance it is a little too late to load the rifle. Do the strategists of l’Humanité really think that in 'the full revolutionary crisis' they will be able without any preparation to mobilize and arm the proletariat? To secure a large quantity of arms, one needs a certain quantity on hand. One needs military cadres. One needs the invincible desire of the masses to secure arms. One needs uninterrupted preparatory work not only in the gymnasiums but in indissoluble connection with the daily struggle of the masses. This means:

It is necessary immediately to build the militia and at the same time to carry on propaganda for the general armament of the revolutionary workers and peasants."

As one member of the SEP put it in describing attitudes amongst elements of the present-day leadership: "You mention the need to approach the subject, crickets. You call the secretary and talk to him, he politely deflects and crickets. There's not even a desire to approach the topic."

The virtual abandonment of this critical demand by the Trotskyist movement is part of a generalized turn towards opportunism that has been underway in the 21st century, reflecting the growth of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois social and ideological influence within the movement. This opportunism can only be defeated through the fight for genuine proletarian internationalism!