Workers Party/ ISL archive

The “Third Camp”: Hal Draper debates Ignazio Silone

The debate that follows occurred in the weekly paper of the Independent Socialist League of the USA, Labor Action, in January and April 1956. Click here to download as pdf Ignazio Silone (1900-1978) is best known today as a novelist, author of Bread And Wine, Fontamara, and other books. He was a founder member of the Italian Communist Party (in 1921); he broke with Stalin in 1931, speaking out for independent working-class politics, and moved to the right in the 1940s and 50s, contributing to the famous anthology The God That Failed (1949). Recent historians have found evidence that he was...

Matt Merrigan on Ireland in Labor Action, 1955-7

Matt Merrigan was a member of the small Irish Trotskyist group in the 1940s, and a socialist all his life. He eventually became president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and died in 2000. ( Click here for a short biography .) In the mid-50s, for a while, he wrote reports on Ireland for Labor Action, the paper of the Independent Socialist League of Max Shachtman, Hal Draper, and others in the USA. Matt Merrigan's first article on Ireland for Labor Action was on 19 September 1955. There had been nothing in 1954 Labour Action. His reappearance coincided with an obvious quickening of links...

For or Against The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba 1961: Max Shachtman Debates Hal Draper

The dispute over attitudes to the "Bay of Pigs" invasion was the first sharp break on a big world-political issue which separated the ageing Max Shachtman from long-time co-thinkers such as Hal Draper and Julius Jacobson. This pamphlet, published by Draper in May 1961, presents the dispute. Click here to download pdf (which includes excerpts from the contemporary press not transcribed below, giving factual background on the invasion). Contents and note Max Shachtman. Speech on the Cuban Invasion Hal Draper. Comments and Criticism Supplement: Hal Draper. Public leaflet on the invasion The...

Democracy in crisis

Democracy in crisis: the independent socialist view Labor's struggle is key Capitalism's threat to democracy The "mistakes" of the Bolsheviks What to learn from Stalinism For a democratic foreign policy! Democracy and revolution Democracy under socialism From 1950 to 1957, each May Labor Action , the paper of the "Third Camp" Trotskyists, the Independent Socialist League, gave over a week's publication to a special "pamphlet issue" on a big political question. This is the May 1953 special.

Democracy in crisis: The independent socialist view

“The fight for democracy and the fight for socialism are inseparable. There can be no lasting and genuine democracy without socialism and there can be no socialism without democracy.” - from The ISL Program in Brief. The statement quoted above is, in very condensed form, one of the fundamental conceptions on which Labor Action and the Independent Socialist League base themselves. In it are contained a view of the world in which we live and a general strategic guide to action which distinguishes Independent Socialism from all other political currents in America. To American particularly, it may...

Labor's struggle is the key

RICH and poor alike are forbidden to sleep under bridges. The writer who coined this biting aphorism was reminding us of the great gulf between noble proclamations of equality before the law and the annoying fact of economic inequality. This ironic equality pervades political life under capitalism. Democracy gives rich and poor the right to enter the polling booth and cast equally weighted ballots. Each has the same right to free speech; the same theoretical right to publish a press, to establish parties, run for office; and out of it all, governmental power hypothetically emanates as a “will...

Capitalism's threat to democracy

POLITICAL democracy and capitalism were never synonymous. The rights of the individual for which early capitalism fought were mainly rights for itself. The assumption of the intelligence and rationality of man and his inalienable right to act according to the dictates of his own conscience was the basic philosophy of the theorists of political liberalism; but these concepts were never broadly applied voluntarily by the bourgeoisie. The democratic rights acquired by the mass of people under capitalism had to be won from the ruling class, frequently after years of bitter struggle and sacrifice...

The Irish Trotskyists of the 1940s condemn "Irish only" trade unionism

A leaflet produced by the small Irish Trotskyist group in the mid 1940s, after nationalists split the Irish trade union movement. This is a leaflet produced by the Revolutionary Socialist Party, which was then the (small) Irish section of the Fourth International, some time soon after the splitting of the Irish trade union movement (Irish TUC) by Irish Transport and General Workers' Union leader William O'Brien and his allies. Protesting against alleged "British domination" in the Irish TUC, they formed a separate Congress of Irish Unions, made up solely of Irish-based unions, and rejecting...

What to learn from Stalinism

Whoever cannot learn from history is doomed to repeat it. We Independent Socialists of today have only two advantages over the great socialist leaders and thinkers of the past: we stand on their shoulders, and we have lived longer. In our generation the colossal event which has tested all socialists' ideas - shattering some and affecting all - has been the rise of a completely new social phenomenon, Stalinism. Whoever has not been able to learn lessons of the greatest importance from this, whatever movement has not been able to assimilate and readapt its conceptions to this, is doomed to...

For a democratic foreign policy!

THE foreign policy of the United States is a disaster. It was that under the late Roosevelt's War Deal, it remained that during Truman's Fair Deal, and it has gotten worse in the first 100 days of the Eisenhower administration. Every thoughtful reactionary has known this for years, for he cannot blind himself to the big fact: in the course of the Second World War, the Stalinists succeeded in conquering and consolidating their totalitarian power in a dozen countries of Europe and Asia. It is hard to recall another example in history of the establishment of an empire of comparable dimensions and...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.