Movement History
Socialists and the
Antiwar Movement
by Gus Horowitz
This is the text of a
speech that was printed in The Militant, the newspaper of the U.S.
Socialist Workers Party, on October 10, 1969, shortly before the massive
antiwar demonstrations scheduled to occur in mid-November of that year. Gus
Horowitz was the SWPs national antiwar director during that year and through the first half
of 1970. Minor spelling and punctuation changes have been made in the text
reprinted here. The introduction was by The Militant.
Introduction
On Labor Day weekend
[September 1969] in New York, the Socialist Workers Party held its national
convention. One of the central points on the agenda was a resolution assessing
developments within the movement against the Vietnam War and the role of the
SWP within that movement. Discussion on the resolution was initiated with a
report by Gus Horowitz, a member of the partys national committee and its representative to the
New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Gus Horowitzs report offers an outline of the
political development of the antiwar movement. We present it here with the
thought that it will illuminate why and how the antiwar movement has been able
to make such an enormous impact on us policy and, equally important, what a
vital contribution a revolutionary Marxist force like the SWP can make to the
development of such a movement.
Report on Socialists and the Antiwar Movement
The history of the
antiwar movement has been not only one of demonstrations, teach-ins, rallies
and hundreds of other actions; it has also been a history of continual and
turbulent internal struggle over political line over how and for what purpose
to mobilize the mass sentiment against the war in Vietnam. The Communist Party
and the liberals have persistently tried to draw the antiwar movement into
class-collaborationist politics, to use it as a means of pressure within the
Democratic Party. At the same time, various pacifists and ultralefts have tried
to divert the movement into ineffectual acts of individual witness and small
adventurist actions, which would isolate it from masses of people.
In contrast, the
Socialist Workers Party has consistently fought for massive demonstrations,
politically independent of the ruling class, which could express the sentiment
of the tens of millions of people who are opposed to the war. Within the
broader antiwar movement we have built the militant left wing, centered on the
demand for immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all us troops from
Vietnam. Although the antiwar movement has suffered many temporary setbacks in
its history, the policy we projected has been able to win decisive influence
over the long run. Opposing lines have been strong on occasion, but never
strong enough to divert the antiwar movement permanently from its independent
axis of mass action.
The basic character
of the antiwar movement did not emerge fully developed. It was won in struggle,
in large part due to the efforts of the revolutionary party. In this room are
seated not only organizers, builders, activists and participants in the antiwar
movement, but also and most important its conscious political leadership.
At each stage in the development of the antiwar movement, it has required the
conscious intervention of the revolutionary party to win a course that would
indeed deal blows to the imperialists. Although we are small in numbers, our
conscious leadership has been required to move the struggle forward, to project
each succeeding series of actions and to drive back threats to anti-imperialist
mass action as the axis of the struggle. It is this essential continuity of our
line and the struggles for it that this report will undertake to describe.
To see how much has
been accomplished, we need only contrast the present movement against the
Vietnam War to the old peace movement of the early 1960s. The Militant,
in April 1963, described a typical Easter peace march in Chicago, where a few
students-among them, YSAers [members of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), the
youth organization in political solidarity with the SWP] carried signs against
the war in Vietnam: Some self-appointed officials tried to have these signs
removed. But the Northwestern [University] students insisted on carrying them.
One argued, If you are not against the Vietnam War, you are not for peace. A
leaflet distributed by the Young Socialist Alliance called for nonexclusive
picket lines. It also explained the socialist position that capitalism causes
war. That was a peace movement in which we had to fight to carry signs against
the shooting war in Vietnam. And, excluded from the meetings which planned the
demonstrations, we had to argue for political non-exclusion by distributing
leaflets to the demonstrators.
The new antiwar
movement was born in a break with the policy of the old peace movement. This
was most evident in the first national demonstration against the war in
Vietnam, the April 17, 1965, mass march on Washington called by SDS [Students
for a Democratic Society]. In calling the march, a section of the SDS
leadership broke with the League for Industrial Democracy, a social-democratic
relic which at that time was the official parent organization of SDS. The march
was not for peace in the abstract; rather, it was directed against the
specific war in Vietnam. In a break with cold-war liberalism, it characterized
the Vietnam War as a civil war and called for self-determination for the
Vietnamese people. The march was organized on a non-exclusionary basis; in
particular, the SWP and YSA were welcomed to participate on the ground floor.
And finally, the nature of the action was that of a militant mass
demonstration. It was independent and did not support any capitalist
politicians.
The social democrats
and sections of the old peace movement waged a bitter struggle against that
march on Washington. They exerted all the pressure they could to tone down its
political line and impose the old exclusionary anticommunist norms. They
demanded complete bureaucratic control over the action and, failing to achieve
that, even tried to have it called off. On the eve of the demonstration they
issued a public statement denouncing it. But the march occurred. Some 20,000
came to Washington more than twice as many as had participated in any of the
old peace demonstrations which proved the feasibility of organising militant
mass actions against the war.
It was this
demonstration that established many of the basic political characteristics of
the then new antiwar movement that remain to this day: non-exclusion,
self-determination, and mass action. The SWP and YSA played a large part in the
struggle for the march on Washington. The issue was settled, not simply in
meetings between SDS and the Cold War social democrats, but in battle in
actually building the march on the basis on which it had been conceived. We
recognized that this demonstration was a test. It was a means of establishing
the new antiwar movement along the lines that we had fought for earlier. And so
we plunged into the work of ensuring its success. The YSA endorsed the march.
We sent speakers touring the country to build it and distributed literature on
a far wider scale than had ever been done before. We took the lead-much more
than SDS itself-in establishing non-exclusive, ad hoc committees to
build the march, to explain why it was important and to argue for the policy of
self-determination for the Vietnamese. By getting the ball rolling, by
convincing the activists, it was assured that the march would occur. That was
how the issue was ultimately decided. So when Bayard Rustin, the social democrat,
demanded that SDS call off the march, they had to answer, in effect: We cant. It has wide support. The
Trotskyists are going ahead and building it. And theyll carry it off without us.
Following the march
on Washington, two aspects of the present antiwar movement remained to be
established: (1) a national coalition to coordinate the much more massive
actions that were to come; (2) popularization of the demand for immediate
withdrawal of us troops from Vietnam. The next stage of struggle in the antiwar
movement took place over these questions. In 1965, hundreds of teach-ins and
antiwar demonstrations occurred all over the country. They were organized
primarily by ad hoc, non-exclusive, campus Committees to End the War in
Vietnam (CEWVS). High points included a national teach-in in Washington which
was broadcast to 100,000 students on more than 100 campuses; a 34-hour marathon
teach-in in Berkeley, attended by 15,000; and local demonstrations on the
International Days of Protest in October, which involved many tens of
thousands. A new challenge was thus posed to all tendencies in the antiwar
movement. How would they orient to these action committees to end the war? This
really boiled down to the root questions of independent mass action and
withdrawal. From the first, the SWP and YSA helped to build these CEWVS in a
totally nonsectarian way. We sought to bring together all political tendencies
opposed to the war around the single issue of action in the streets. At the
same time, we argued for immediate withdrawal and were able to convince many
antiwar committees of this perspective. This left wing formed the backbone of
the antiwar movement. The leadership of SDS drew back from the antiwar movement
almost immediately after the successful march on Washington. And that has
remained the policy of SDS nationally to this day. Needless to say, SDS turned
its back on the CEWVS and counterposed itself and its line to them.
The Maoist
Progressive Labor Party was, in its own way, equally sectarian. Wielding
control over a group called the May 2nd Committee, PL proclaimed it to be the
exclusive agency through which all antiwar actions must be channeled. This
factional, ultimatistic policy did not work. Isolated from the real, rapidly
growing antiwar movement, PL dissolved the May 2nd Committee to enter SDS, an
SDS that had also abandoned the struggle against the war. Shake-ups occurred in
the old peace movement. These groups faced the alternative of cooperating with
the CEWVS or standing aloof and trying to organize the old-style peace actions,
a perspective that was none too promising, given the temper of the new
militants. Under pressure of the mass actions, many groups in the old peace
movement felt compelled to align themselves with the new antiwar committees. This
laid the basis for the broad mass-action coalitions that were to develop later.
The Communist Partys basic line was essentially the
same then as it is today. The CP supported the mass actions only intermittently
and always with the intent of using them as a means to draw antiwar activists
into capitalist electoral politics. To avoid collision with liberal capitalist
politicians, the CP pushed a negotiations line and opposed withdrawal. The CP
persistently counterposed a respectable, multi-issue program of social reform
and community electoral organizing to nationally coordinated antiwar
demonstrations. The mass action and withdrawal perspective of many CEWVS
hampered the CPs ability to implement its popular-front line. Accordingly, the CP took
a hostile and sectarian attitude to the antiwar committees and worked mainly
through the old, broader peace groups which supported negotiations. Among the
students, they tried unsuccessfully to counterpose the [W.E.B.] DuBois Clubs to
the CEWVS.
The struggle between
these contending political lines reached its first climax at the convention of
the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam (NCC) attended by
1500 in November 1965. There the CP and SWP positions met in head-on collision,
the first of a series of national political encounters, which were decisive in
determining the future course of the antiwar movement and in helping to change
the relationship of forces on the left. At the NCC conference, the central
battle over mass action and withdrawal took an organizational form. We argued
for a national organization of CEWVS based around the withdrawal demand, to be
a part of a broader coalition to organize national mass actions. The supporters
of negotiations, with the CP in the lead, tried to block this perspective. We
were in a minority. The relationship of forces was still unfavorable, and it
wasnt until a year
later that these organizational forms would arise. But the vigorous struggle we
waged was crucial in preventing the CPs multi-issue, anti-withdrawal line from dominating
the broad movement, even though they held decisive influence over the NCCs apparatus. Under pressure of
the political battle, the CP was reluctant to try to block a call for the next
mass actions.
A second
International Days of Protest was set for March 1966. In these demonstrations
the battle was joined once again. The withdrawal-based NCC convention minority
formed a caucus and published the Bring the Troops Home Now Newsletter.
This grouping of CEWVS, with our aid and support, took the fight to the ranks
of the antiwar movement and waged an intensive and successful educational
campaign. By the March demonstrations, the central demand was Bring the GIs
Home Now, and that has been the norm ever since.
Most of the original
opponents of withdrawal have in the meantime changed their position. The NCCs political perspective, set by
the pro-CP elements in its leadership, was not geared to organizing the March
mass action. So we threw forces into that task as well. Travelers toured the
country to build the action. Literature was published in quantity. In every
city the militant CEWVS, mostly student based, spearheaded the action. These
CEWVS eventually became a key ingredient in the formation of the Student
Mobilization Committee [to End the War in Vietnam SMC]. Then, as now, the
militant, withdrawal-based youth section of the antiwar movement has been the
decisive factor in pushing the other sections of the movement along. Thanks to
this effort, the NCC was unable to divert the whole movement away from militant
mass action. Although some antiwar committees destroyed themselves trying to
carry out the NCC line, others switched their course. The majority of the
antiwar movement was won to the line we fought for. But the antiwar movement
lost precious time because the first attempt at forming a national coalition
was aborted. A gap existed between the objective possibilities of the antiwar
struggle and the formal organization needed for it.
It was to be a year
before the next major action could be mounted, on April 15, 1967. But this
action was to be a qualitative leap forward. While the NCC declined in 1966,
the process of building antiwar actions led to the creation of broad-based
local antiwar coalitions on a fairly permanent basis. The most important of
these was the New York Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, which
brought hundreds of organizations together for the demonstrations it organized.
The Parade Committee was central to uniting the forces that eventually formed
the new national antiwar coalition. Smaller demonstrations in August and
November 1966 set the stage for the conference which called the huge April 15
demonstrations in New York and San Francisco and formed what was to become the
National Mobilization Committee, the national antiwar coalition for the next
period.
The Student
Mobilization Committee was formed soon after, at a conference which was to be
the second round in the series of confrontations between the SWP and CP in the
antiwar movement. It was initially a narrow conference called and controlled
top to bottom by the CP. But we had won enough support for our line to be able
to turn it around and form a united front of students, based on the withdrawal
demand. With that, the line we had fought for at the NCC convention a year
before had won out. The relationship of forces in the antiwar movement had been
reversed.
The political
struggles of 19651966 were necessary to organize the great mass demonstrations
of 1967 and 1968. On April 15, 1967, half a million people marched in the
streets of New York and San Francisco. On October 21, 1967, 150,000 marched on
Washington in a direct political confrontation with Johnsons war policy. And on April 26,
1968, the SMC organized a remarkably successful nationwide student strike. With
close to a million participants, it was larger than any of the student antiwar
strikes of the 1930s. The following day, mass demonstrations were held in
cities all over the country, the largest in New York some 200,000 strong.
These historic actions illustrate the power of the tactic of the united front
and its particular application in the form of the antiwar coalitions. No single
group acting alone could have organized such large and militant demonstrations.
In those united fronts, the left wing, the SMC, was the best builder and the
militant spearhead of the actions.
These actions also
helped solidify the international antiwar movement, which also developed
independently of the Stalinist and social democratic parties and to the left of
them. This had been a key factor in developing a renewed spirit of
internationalism, militancy and anticapitalist consciousness, especially among
the youth. This shakeup and realignment of class forces has in turn opened
expanded opportunities for building the Fourth International.
But the struggle for
our antiwar line was far from over. The most recent period has seen the
continuation of the struggle in slightly different form and under slightly
different conditions, but showing the same basic characteristics. These
struggles arose out of the need for the antiwar movement to mount an effective
response to the tactical maneuvers of the ruling class. American imperialism
faces a dilemma in Vietnam. Its central strategic objectives remain the same. It
still aims to crush the national liberation struggle in South Vietnam and deal
a major setback to the socialist revolution in Southeast Asia.
For the imperialists
to withdraw from Vietnam in defeat would contradict this strategic goal. The
struggle of the Vietnamese has already given great impetus to revolutionary
developments in other countries. A definitive revolutionary victory would
magnify that impact manifold. But two factors have caused the American ruling
class to adjust its tactics. The first is the fact that the US has so far been
unable to win an outright military victory in Vietnam despite a massive effort.
Though imperialism has by no means been totally defeated, its inability to win
a victory is in itself a tremendous setback.
The second factor
compelling a tactical shift by the U.S. ruling class is the growth of the
worldwide opposition to the war, in particular the mounting protests in the
U.S. itself. For, to carry on the war in Vietnam, the American ruling class
needs social peace at home. Unable to win wide support for the war, it needs at
the very least a disoriented and disarmed opposition. For this reason, the mass
mobilizations strike blows at the ability of the ruling class to wage the war.
The capitalists face the threat of an intolerable growth of class conflict as
the mood of protest and opposition spills over and exacerbates social tensions
on all fronts.
In 1968, Washington
responded to this threat with a major diplomatic and propaganda offensive.
First, the talks were set up in Paris. Washingtons aim in these negotiations is at a minimum a
Korea-type settlement that would mean the derailment of the Vietnamese
revolution. As we know, the Paris talks did not signal a significant slowdown
of the war or a genuine move towards peace. While there was a pause in the
bombing of the North, the same high level of bombing continues, all of it now
concentrated in the South. Orders to the Pentagon called for bringing maximum
military pressure on the liberation fighters, and the level of fighting stays
high as they try to force the Vietnamese to capitulate.
At the same time a
slick propaganda offensive was mounted to dissipate the antiwar sentiment of
the American masses. The Paris talks and the pause in the bombing of the North
were demagogically portrayed as steps towards a speedy peace. The token troop
withdrawals are just the latest such maneuver. The hated President Johnson
withdrew as a candidate for reelection. Nixon, portraying himself as an
alternative, won a temporary respite from the wrath of millions of people. This
was all compounded in 1968, when the [Democratic Party Senator Eugene] McCarthy
campaign was mounted with the stated goal of getting the antiwar movement off
the streets.
But although the mass
antiwar sentiment was temporarily diverted and confused, the ruling class had
also paid a price. All the talk about de-escalation raised the anticipation and
desire of the mass of people for a quick end to the war. Antiwar sentiment grew
considerably. It was only a matter of time before there would be another wave
of indignation and hundreds of thousand would once again take to the streets
and tear away the faηade of lies and illusions.
The propaganda
maneuvers of the ruling class posed another major test for all tendencies in
the antiwar movement. How to respond? American imperialism was in deep trouble,
and the situation cried out for keeping on the course that had put it there.
The class collaborationists, full of illusions about the Paris talks, abandoned
mass action. They turned to the elections, with the aim of using their
influence in the antiwar movement to drum up support for McCarthy and the
pro-capitalist peace candidates.
As a result of these
defections, many of the local antiwar coalitions tended to fall apart. On a
national level, National Mobe [the National Mobilization Committee to End the
War in Vietnam] lost its broad coalition character. The old Mobes apparatus came to be dominated
by frustrated ultralefts who saw no future in mass action. And in the spring of
1968, the Communist Party and pacifists in the Student Mobilization Committee
split from the organisation, in retreat from mass antiwar action.
In contrast to every
other political tendency, the SWP and YSA put forward a line that encouraged
the independence of the antiwar movement from the capitalist parties in the
elections. It was a line designed to maintain the perspective of reaching out
and drawing larger numbers into action. It was designed to maintain the
position of immediate withdrawal and to puncture the illusions about the Paris
talks. And it was designed to lay the groundwork for building even larger mass
mobilizations than those which had already occurred. That is what we argued
for, and-most important-that is what we were able to carry out in action.
The SWPs approach to the 1968 elections
differed from the class collaborationists in two important ways. First, we ran
our own candidates. We did not abandon the field to the pro-capitalist
candidates, but counterposed our revolutionary socialist program to them. By
waging an all-out campaign effort, we were able to win considerable support
from antiwar militants. But that was only one side of our approach.
Our policy in the
antiwar movement was completely nonsectarian. The supporters of Halstead and
Boutelle [the SWP candidates in the 1968 election] continued building
demonstrations during the election period. We did not make the mistake of
withdrawing from the antiwar movement in the illusion that we could then allot
added forces to make greater gains for our [election] campaign. On the
contrary, revolutionaries always gain when the mass movement is built
effectively.
One of the precedents
that we had fought for previously in particular, during the 1966 elections
was that the antiwar movement, as a movement, should not get involved in
electoral politics, but should rather continue to unite everyone possible,
regardless of divergent political views, for antiwar actions during the
election periods. That precedent made it exceedingly difficult for the class
collaborationists to scuttle the antiwar movement in 1968. And we stuck to that
policy.
Even in those antiwar
organizations where our campaign had considerable support, we resisted attempts
to put them on record for the Halstead-Boutelle campaign. There were many
antiwar activists who did not agree with the program of the SWP, but wanted to
engage in antiwar actions, as we did. It would have narrowed the scope of the
antiwar movement to make agreement with any full political program the basis
for antiwar action.
The antiwar movement
did suffer a setback in the 1968 election period and immediately afterwards.
But it was a temporary setback. The movement was not scuttled. A series of
demonstrations even though they were generally smaller than before continued
the mass-action perspective that we had fought for.
In that period
ultraleftist adventurism also exerted considerable influence over many antiwar
militants. Frustrated because the war continues despite the mass opposition to
it, the ultralefts aim at shortcuts through the isolated acts and adventures of
a few, which renders impossible the arduous but solely effective path of
winning over the masses of the people. The actions of the old National Mobe,
SDS and some smaller groups tended to project this disorienting line.
In recent months the
ultralefts have had less influence, but they continue to pose a problem for the
antiwar movement. Some of them have even degenerated to the extent of
introducing hooligan methods into the movement. The low point was reached in
New York, when a small group was able to take over the rally platform on August
9.
The key to combating
ultraleft adventures lies in the scope of the actions themselves. In the recent
past, smaller antiwar mobilizations gave the hardened ultralefts the
opportunity to exert disproportionate influence over impatient and
inexperienced activists. Now, however, the possibility exists to mobilize
hundreds of thousands. A political line geared to involve such numbers of
people will be the single greatest deterrent to isolated adventures. They tend
to become simply lost in the crowd. In addition, we must wage an educational
campaign in the antiwar movement to explain the need for preventing hooligan
disruption of the demonstrations. It will then be possible to organize adequate
marshalling to ensure that the decisions of the antiwar coalitions are carried
out.
This is particularly
important because of the GIs. Once Washington launched its propaganda
offensive, with its continual talk of peace, the average GI naturally
questioned the need to risk his life, especially in a war which he was most
likely opposed to or had serious doubts about. As a result, there has been a
big increase in GI antiwar activity, and this will be a permanent feature of
the antiwar movement from now on.
The importance of,
and potential for, reaching GIs is something we have long emphasized. We
pointed to the powerful social weight that the GIs would bring into the antiwar
movement. Our basic Marxist approach has always stressed reaching the socially
decisive sectors of society.
In 1965 we published
our pamphlet on the Bring the Troops Home Movement of World War II. In 1966, we
went on a campaign to defend the Fort Hood Three [soldiers prosecuted for
antiwar activity] and publicize the case to the movement. In 1967, Howard
Petrick [an SWP member conscripted into the army] was an important model in the
fight for GI rights. In 1968 and 1969, the vindication of our line was apparent
in the wide circulation of GI papers, the big jump in GI participation in the
demonstrations, and in the unprecedented fights for GI rights, particularly
those of GIs United at Forts Jackson and Bragg.
It is not surprising
that the political differences that exist in the antiwar movement extend to its
GI sector. Most other tendencies project a line which would be ineffective or
lead to defeats. Such proposals include individual acts of conscience, such
as draft resistance or desertion; underground organizing; and GI union
organizing which emphasizes issues other than the war in Vietnam.
The threefold
approach to GI work which we have supported has proved most effective. It may
be summarized: (1) for collective action, rather than isolated individual acts
of conscience; (2) emphasis on the legal rights of GIs as citizen-soldiers; (3)
opposition to the Vietnam War as the central issue of concern to GIs and around
which they are utilizing their civil liberties.
The past period, to
repeat, posed a major challenge to the antiwar movement. To counter the
maneuvers of the ruling class required the conscious leadership of the
revolutionary party. We were the ones who fought for continuing on a course of
effective action that could mobilize masses in independent antiwar struggle.
The key to this fight
was the Student Mobilization Committee. It was the militant, withdrawal-based
student wing of the antiwar movement that backed the perspective of mass
antiwar mobilizations. As always, it took a political struggle, and there was a
major fight in the SMC over this perspective. The CP and pacifist section
walked out. In so doing, they tried to brand the SMC as an impotent, paper
organization, containing no one besides the SWP and YSA. They were proven dead
wrong. We had-and have no interest in paper organizations or in capturing ourselves.
To the contrary, our approach has always been one of building broad united
fronts for mass action. Those who quit the SMC were splitting from this line,
from what the SMC had stood for all along, and from what it stands for now. The
needs of the antiwar movement required the maintenance of the perspective of
mass action. The SMC stood for that, and we backed it to the hilt.
The SMC called for
antiwar demonstrations in August 1968, and October 1968, and it initiated the
conference that called the demonstrations on April 5 and 6, 1969. These
demonstrations laid the groundwork for remobilizing the entire antiwar
movement. Even though there were considerable difficulties in convincing others
to act in that period, we avoided any temptation to go it alone by substituting
the vanguard of the struggle for the movement as a whole. We sought to find
every conceivable way to involve other groups in united fronts for the mass
actions. The payoff came with the April 56 demonstrations.
The second Tet
offensive in Vietnam and the high rate of battle casualties began to destroy
the illusion that the war was coming to an end. There was a shift in mass
consciousness. The April 56 demonstrations, organized by united fronts, were
able to mobilize tens of thousands across the country 100,000 in New York
alone with a larger turnout of GIs than ever before. The SMC seized the
opportunity offered by April 56 to emerge as the authoritative national
organizer of the antiwar youth. In many local areas, the April 56 demonstrations
also enabled us to rebuild the antiwar coalitions. This set the stage for
calling the next national demonstration, one with a potential of being more
massive than any previous one, at a time when that is of central political
importance. All that was needed was the conference to call it and a new
national coalition to organize it. And that occurred on July 4 in Cleveland,
when the national antiwar conference called the November 15 march on
Washington. Here again, the SWP and YSA played a central role in ensuring that
the antiwar movement would take the next necessary steps forward. It took a
political struggle to win the conference, and it took a political struggle at
the conference to win the call to the demonstration.
The key again was the
SMC. The SMC took the call to the conference and publicized it far and wide.
The SMC pushed and prodded others to come along (and more than a few came
somewhat reluctantly at first). The SMC made the conference a representative
gathering of the antiwar movement with the authority to call the march on
Washington. After a thorough political debate, there was a highly favorable
response to the idea of November 15, and a new national coalition was set up to
organize it. The next day, an SMC conference called for a student strike on
November 14, which can involve hundreds of thousands and build wide support for
the march on Washington.
We must see the
importance of the November 15 demonstration in the context of the overall
political situation. American imperialism is in deep trouble in Vietnam. It
hasnt been able to
win. And its strategic goals make it shy away from withdrawing in defeat. It
hopes to force the Vietnamese to capitulate in Paris. But that is a
questionable proposition at best. And it needs time for that anyway. It needs
time above all. But the U.S. is running out of time.
The crux of the
matter is this: The strategic objectives of American imperialism do not allow
it to scale down the fighting to any significant degree. Their Achilles heel is
that as the war continues, the death toll mounts. More and more people will see
through their lies and duplicity, be outraged and demand a halt. And now is the
time that they can be brought to Washington to say, No! Stop It! Bring all of
the GIs home now! All indications, including the polls, show that there is
deep and growing impatience with Nixons war in Vietnam. The demonstration on November 15
can be both massive in size and devastating in its political impact.
The antiwar movement
must set itself the task of preventing American imperialism from gaining the
time for maneuver that it so desperately needs. The November 15 demonstration
must aim to involve new sectors of the population. Last April 56, significant
number of GIs and high school students demonstrated. Their numbers can be
increased.
Now, there are new
opportunities to draw in sections of the trade-union and Black and Brown
movements. Every effort must be taken to make this a political reality. Make no
mistake about it. The main spokesmen for the ruling class are worried. Just
listen to what James Reston had to say in his New York Times column on
August 27, shortly after the protests by the GIs of Company A, who refused to
obey battle orders: For the more the President says hes for peace, the more troops he
withdraws from Vietnam and Thailand, the more he concedes that Southeast Asia
is not really vital to the security of the United States, the harder it is to
ask for the lives of the men of Company A. They may not be typical, but they
are a symbol of his coming dilemma. He wants out on the installment plan, but
the weekly installments are the lives of one or two hundred American soldiers,
and he cannot get away from the insistent question: Why? To what purpose? The
breaking point comes in politics as it came to Company A, and it is not far
off.
Finally, if there is
one point that should be emphasized, it is the importance of the Student
Mobilization Committee. This fall, through its November 14 student strike, the
SMC will be the central organizer of the student antiwar upsurge that will
surely take place. The objective situation on the college campuses has never
been more favorable. Antiwar sentiment is no mere majority view. It is
overwhelming.
The wave of protests
against ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] and campus complicity that shook
the campuses last spring is but a preview to the action this fall. The same
holds true in the high schools. All indications point to a highly favorable
objective situation, one in which the SMC has already registered impressive
gains.
One of the most
important features of the SMCs approach on the campuses will be its efforts to build united fronts to
wage the most effective and militant struggles. This is particularly important
in offering an alternative to SDSs political line and methods of organizing. Last
spring, SDSs
sectarianism, exclusion, ultraleft formulations and adventurist tactics led to
many a setback. But this fall, the faction-ridden SDS, continuing on its course
of political degeneration, will find it increasingly difficult to win antiwar
students to its insane adventures, and increasingly difficult to organize
anything at all. The SMC has a unique opportunity to win over, not only non-SDS
antiwar activists, but also the many SDS members who are fed up with the SDS
national office either one. It can involve them in the student strike, in
November 15 and in all related antiwar actions.
Our perspective, in
short, is one of expanded and powerful mass antiwar action. The march on
Washington on November 15 will deal another major blow to American imperialisms war in Vietnam. Our role in the
antiwar movement is a powerful example of what even a small party can do in
taking our revolutionary program and applying it in life, in being able to
gauge accurately the objective situation and pose the next necessary steps
forward for the mass movement. In the process we have grown, and the struggle
for the international socialist revolution has taken steps forward. As the
resolution before this convention states: Our central tasks in the antiwar
movement are to continue to build the mass mobilizations that are dealing
hammer blows to American imperialism and to recruit from the growing numbers
that have begun to move in a radical direction as a result.
Postscript: I hope that todays readers will not be too critical of the heavy dose of jargon in the
speech, although I think that it suffers less from this fault than many other
documents of the time. Bear in mind that the speech was delivered to a
political convention of like-minded party activists rather than to a general
audience. Readers today may find the speech of interest because it offers a
fairly thorough presentation of the SWPs political approach to the antiwar movement, as we
saw it. I hope that readers today will also find the speech of some merit as a
shorthand history of the antiVietnam War movement up to that time. The best
full-length history, in my view, still remains Fred Halsteads book Out Now!, first
published in 1978.
The speech was
printed only a couple of weeks before the tremendous October 15, 1969 Vietnam
Moratorium demonstrations held in many cities throughout the country. These
demonstrations are not mentioned in the speech, which was delivered in the
first week of September, before the size and scope of the upcoming Moratorium
had become apparent. But by the time the speech was printed, the SWP was on a
campaign footing to build both the Moratorium and the November march on
Washington and San Francisco.
The period from
October 1969 through April 1971 marked the high point of the antiwar movement,
gathering the largest numbers of people in any protest demonstrations known
until that time. The marches in Washington and San Francisco in November 1969
and in April 1971 each involved about a million people, concentrated in two
gathering spots. The Moratorium in October 1969 had a comparably large turnout,
and the student upsurge in May 1970, after the invasion of Cambodia and the
National Guard killing of four students at Kent State University, involved even
larger numbers in total, but these actions took place throughout the country.
March, 2003