Report on the Antiwar Conference, December 1965

Announcer: James P. Cannon, remarks on the fall 1965 convention of the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, at the Los Angeles branch meeting, December 15th, 1965.

A new kind of antiwar movement

I presume the assumption is that I was only 3,000 miles away from Washington, so I know all about it. [inaudible] I knew very little about the events in Washington, just enough of the general reports to make me curious about what had happened, and to want the picture of the whole situation and the forces at work before coming to a conclusion about it. That's the best way to proceed.

I would begin by saying that what happened in Washington two, three weeks ago has to be regarded as an incident in a long, drawn-out struggle in which we're going to be participating from now on. The struggle goes on under conditions of constant urgency, the like of which has never been known by our movement or any other movement before. What's new and different above all, as almost everybody understands, is that the bomb hangs over the world. And the war we're talking about, the war we're trying to head off, is an atomic war, which would not be just another war, like the last two world wars in which America got sacked [?] and prosperous, but a war that could very well mark the end of the adventure of the human race on this planet, and nothing less. I recall that when the formula for the production of the H-bomb was perfected and had been tested, Einstein wrote a memorandum to the president in which he said that it is now theoretically possible to destroy all life on planet Earth. That seemed like a far-fetched assumption at that time, but it's been repeated by practically all disinterested scientists since.

And the movement against the war, what is sometimes called the peace movement, rather incorrectly, that's grown up out of this new situation, must be recognized also as a new phenomenon, a new movement, which is taking forms and intensities that we have not known in previous wars. I'm talking now about the war in South Vietnam. It's the first time in the knowledge of the present generation that there's been an open, active protest movement against the war in wartime. During World War I there was a tremendous opposition to the entry of America into the war, but when the shooting started, the movement evaporated. There was nothing left of it except the socialists, the IWW, the anarchists, and they were ferociously persecuted and suppressed from the very beginning. In the Second World War, there was no vocal opposition at all, except for some conscientious objectors in our party. In the Korean War, which I'm sure most of you can recall, as far as I know ours was the only party, and our press the only press, that attacked America's action in the Korean War. Now we have a very widespread and diverse protest movement against the war while it's going on. That, I say, should be recognized as a new phenomenon.

And another new thing is that the dynamic, militant action and even the leadership for the opposition to the present war comes from the campuses, from some professors but primarily from students. And that, as far as I know, is something quite new in this country. The academic world never led anything in this country that had any social consequence, to my knowledge. We have not had, as the other advanced countries had in Europe, a radical and socialistic student movement, as we now see developing in this country.

There's also a new type of pacifism. The classic pacifism we know, which Lenin and all others denounced as worse than useless, was a pacifism that denounced war until it started and then rallied around the flag. I don't know whether many of you present here have seen that characteristic of the old pacifism, as I recall it, especially from the First World War: a tremendous movement of opposition to America's entry into the war, so strong in popular sentiment that Woodrow Wilson was re-elected to the presidency primarily on the slogan that he kept us out of war. Many public speakers, politicians, and of course preachers and others were against the war, and I can't forget the effect it had upon us militants. We thought we had a population with us in our opposition until the declaration of war, and then everything went out of the mood. And the loudest pacifists became the loudest patriots right away. You don't fight the government when it's in war. So the pacifism had simply led the people up to the expectations of opposition and then led them down immediately. We have a sort of pacifism today that still operates after the shooting has started. We have been in active, escalating war in Vietnam, especially since last February, since it began bombing right and left. But still there's a considerable segment of the pacifist movement that does not cease to protest. That's new.

The components of the movement

Now this peace movement, as I have undertaken to examine it, has many components, and it behooves us as Marxist revolutionists to analyze the different segments of this movement and see which are useful, which can be considered as possible allies of ours, and which are not, and not to confuse the one with the other. At first glance, it's a very heterogeneous assortment of all kinds of people. You have even people who are part of the political establishment in this country, like Senator Morse and a few others, who are against the war in Vietnam, not by any means as opponents, but as advisors, on the ground that it's not a profitable war for us. There is even, in my opinion, a considerable segment of the ruling power that has grave doubts about the wisdom of the policy of the administration in Vietnam on the same grounds: that it's the wrong war in the wrong place. Not that they are against the government or against American imperialism, but on the grounds of tactics, maneuver, time and circumstance, they think this is not the way to begin the big showdown. You may say that's the real official segment of the power structure of this country.

Then there's a big assortment of others, like the SANE-ites. Is that the right word for them? The people who make up this respectable body of middle-class people who held the march on Washington a few weeks ago, who want to make it clear that they're not against the government, and they're not in favor by any means of the revolutionary people of South Vietnam, but would like the government to negotiate and get out of the situation through negotiation, which implies that America's got a right to be there in the first place, and it's just a question of bargaining back and forth as to how long they stay and how much they keep of that country, how much of it they destroy. Now, I don't consider these people allies of the revolutionary workers. Quite the contrary. [?] years ago, they conducted an enormous witch hunt in their organization to drive out everybody suspected of being reds. The Communist Party people had been sneaking into their local assemblages and calling themselves SANE-ites. And all that was needed was for a Jim Crow senator to get up on the floor of Congress and denounce one of the people they had in their organizing committee in New York, to just scare the lights out of them. And they started a wholesale purge of their organization.

And the march they held in Washington a few weeks ago was a very polite affair. They had some trouble with the people who wanted to carry genuine antiwar slogans like the central slogan, "Bring the troops home now," and even some of them wanted to carry the flag of the National Liberation Front. [inaudible] whether they should call the cops or counterbalance this scandalous performance some other way. So they worked out a system of surrounding the flags of the National Liberation Front with little American flags, to make it clear to the President that they were with him and not with them.

The Social Democrats and the Stalinists are also negotiators, not real opponents of the war. There are some independents, and these are perhaps some of the most important people in the movement, new people, especially new young people, who have never been a part of the traditional radical movement in any of its sectors, and who are sincerely opposed to the war and want to do something about it, but have not formed any definite political ideology. And then, of course, you have the revolutionary socialists, represented by our party.

"Bring the troops home now"

Now, I think the party is proceeding correctly in its attempt to cooperate in action with anybody who will help to make a demonstration against the war, while at the same time making clear they stand for a certain definite slogan which really means opposition to the war, which means that America has no right whatever in South Vietnam. And that is the slogan "Bring the troops home now." In my opinion, that is the correct slogan. I don't see how any revolutionist could oppose it. It's a revolutionary slogan, and it's one around which the party and the YSA think it is proper to try to rally the really militant and earnest opposition to the continuing war.

Now, this slogan appealed to me right away, partly nostalgically, because this is not the first time it was raised by the socialist movement in this country. When Wilson sent American troops across the Mexican border in the period just before our entry into the First World War, that's 1915, the Socialist Party held an emergency meeting of its national committee and adopted a manifesto which bore the title "Withdraw the Troops." That was the essence of the demand upon the government: get out of Mexico and stay out of Mexico. And that was all the situation called for. It created a basis for the broadest organized opposition of people who were really against this monstrous attack on the Mexican people, and at the same time made no concession whatever in principle, because the withdrawal of the troops would signify the victory of the Mexicans.

Now, when we entered the Korean War, as far as I know, the only paper in the country that came out with a forthright denunciation of the war and a demand which incorporated all that was necessary from a revolutionary point of view was our paper, The Militant. And I was appointed by the Political Committee to write an open letter to the president and the members of Congress. And this letter contained its demand: to bring the American soldiers out of Korea and let the Korean people alone to settle their own affairs. And it never entered anybody's head, as far as I know or as far as I heard, to consider that this was not fully adequate as an expression of our support of the Korean people and our opposition to our own government. So I think that slogan, which our comrades have settled on as the central motivating agent for the building of a genuine antiwar movement, stands up both historically and for the needs of the present day.

I don't think that's the object of the political elements in the so-called peace movement beside ourselves, except for an element of the pacifists and the independents. As far as I can make out, both by past experience and the present operations, the Stalinists and the Social Democrats are primarily concerned to steer the so-called peace movement toward the next election campaigns for peace candidates. And a peace candidate will be any kind of a politician who will say he's in favor of negotiations under certain conditions while the troops are still there and still bombing people. And it's a political problem whether they will be able to maneuver this inchoate and not clearly defined pacifist [?] peace movement down that blind alley of coalition politics, or whether a big section of it will respond to a different slogan and a different line of action.

What the Washington conference taught

Now, I was greatly impressed by the reports that I got from the Washington conference. I'm not speaking now of the march organized by SANE, but of the conference called by the National Coordinating Committee, of delegates of the various elements of the peace movement and others. I was impressed by the feeling that this was a new political experience for the younger generation of revolutionists. This is the first time they have had a serious confrontation with political opponents on the national scale. That marks, on the one hand, the emergence of our small party and youth movement from its previous complete isolation toward the center of what radicalism there is in the country, and the first opportunity that they have had to learn at first hand what it means to deal with political opponents who are presumably all united in the same wonderful thing, but in reality have entirely different objectives, and how to handle themselves when they meet these opponents at close range. That I consider a great victory for our young comrades, that they were an active part in the preparation of this gathering and that they participated in it as revolutionists and learned something that could not be learned fully out of books. Some things have to be learned in experience, although the books help to prepare you for it.

I recall talking with Trotsky, a delegation that went to see him in 1938, preparing for our Foundation Congress of the Fourth International. We had just finished our experience in the Socialist Party. We were a few months drawing the balance sheet of what had been achieved or not achieved and so on. He wanted a very full and detailed report. And I recall his remark, he was well pleased with the practical results, the recruits, the fact that we kept our own forces intact and gained. He said the principal gain is the experience. Those who have been through this experience of direct confrontation with right-wing socialists have acquired something that can't be lost, that is necessary for the full development of a revolutionary political leadership. I think that's the big gain out of the Washington conference, if nothing else. And even mistakes that could have been made, or defeats suffered, can be turned to good account. It's all part of the experience if they're understood and assimilated.

So what really happened at Washington? We had conflicting reports. I was surprised to hear, at first, that our delegate came back and thought we had done very well there. Then I heard other reports that some comrades thought a terrible mistake had been made, even a catastrophe had overtaken us because we ran head-on into a battle with the majority of the steering committee and others there. So I thought the best thing I could do, being like the rest of you, I knew very little of the inside dope. I hadn't been a part of the preparations, and at the time Pete Camejo was here, the impression seemed to be that everything was going smoothly and they expected to have a successful conference and no trouble was anticipated. SANE [?] was apparently in disarray and was paying no great attention or was not even much in favor of the conference, so that we and the independents who really wanted to do something to promote the antiwar movement would have things our own way. But it didn't turn out quite that way.

In my attempt to inform myself about all aspects of the event, I studied the National Guardian. I studied The Militant, The People's World, and the New Republic. I read the reports of Comrade Darrell [?], and I read the account of the conference in the newsletter of the National Caucus for an organization of independent committees united on the slogan of "Withdraw the troops." And I also read, you don't know how thorough I am when I'm looking to find who really hid the body, I even read this circular letter distributed by a united combination of two people here, the Spartacists and the Wohlforth people [?], was it, I forgot? [inaudible] I even read a couple of copies of the Bulletin of the Fourth International, printed by a couple of other people in the dark. And everything I read except The Militant seemed to point directly at the Trotskyites in Washington as the people who had committed the crime. And I was just about to say it looks like a perfect case because it was so unanimous, until I remembered that I'm a Perry Mason fan and that I have often noticed that the one who's accused of the crime turns out to be innocent, and the dirty dog that really did the job fixed things so as not only to clear himself, but to throw suspicion on an innocent man.

The minute I read The Guardian, being a politician, and knowing what The Guardian is and how it's been evolving, I knew that was a poisonously slanted article aimed with deadly malice to compromise what they refer to, quoting others, as the Trotskyite splitters. That put me on guard. Then I later got hold of The People's World, published up here in San Francisco. And I read there that everybody was for unity except some disgruntled and disruptive minority that they didn't even dignify by naming, although The Guardian did. The Guardian said we had been denounced as Trotskyite splitters. The People's World informed me that Dave Dellinger and Professor Staughton Lynd of Liberation magazine worked with Communist Party delegate Arnold Johnson [?] and others to find a common ground for agreement.

Now, the minute I saw just that paragraph, which informed me that Arnold Johnson was working down there for agreement and unity, and that he was backed up by Bain [?], I knew there was something crooked going on, because I know who Johnson is. He's the organization secretary of the Stalinist party. I know who Bain is. He's the ex-Cochranite who has been making a profession of attacking Trotskyism ever since he got kicked out of the party twelve years ago. I know that he's identified not merely with The Guardian, but with the right-wing group which has recently conducted the swing of The Guardian to the right in the operation to remove Russ Nixon and so on.

Then I read the newsletter printed by the caucus, supporting the slogan for the immediate withdrawal of the American troops from South Vietnam, their account of the conference. This, plus the reports given by Comrade Darrell [?]. Another report I got by accident of a meeting down in Houston, Texas, I believe it was. One of our comrades by accident attended and discovered they had received before the conference a letter from the SDS office in New York tipping them off about the Trotskyists and preparing them for the fight. So out of all that, a clearer picture emerged.

Ambush, and the "splitters"

And if I would criticize our comrades who were in charge of the fight down there, it would perhaps be for a fault that's hard to avoid in the absence of experience of this sort: the underestimation of political opponents, the assumption that everything is going to be on the level, which is a very bad assumption when you've got Stalinists and Social Democrats to deal with. They may possibly have been caught by surprise. But they went into an ambush, I don't doubt for one minute. I didn't doubt it after I heard what had happened, and then I heard that two weeks before the conference was called, the Daily Worker and The People's World suddenly began to promote the conference in high gear. I know what that means. I don't have the slightest doubt that they stacked the convention with every kind of delegate from every kind of paper organization they could mobilize. That they stacked the steering committee. That they rigged the agenda in such a way that when our people there, the delegates of most of the independent committees who ran the war in Vietnam [?], and our own people, ran into a prepared fight in which there was room for everything except the one thing they were most interested in. That was promoting the real slogan of the antiwar movement, "Bring the troops home now," and the right and necessity of the independent committees organized under that slogan to unite themselves nationally. This was called a splitting move. If you examine the evidence of that convention, that's the most fantastic accusation imaginable.

Every tendency represented in this convention had its national organization: the Du Bois Clubs, the SDS, the Women's Strike for Peace, how many others there are, the Committee for Nonviolent Action, the Communist Party. But the independent committees, who are the real dynamism of the movement, who have adopted the central slogan which tests whether you're serious about opposing American imperialism in war or not, to demand the immediate withdrawal of the troops, were denied the right to organize themselves. And there was no provision on the agenda or any of the workshops outlined in it to even discuss that question and take it to a vote.

Then, I'll admit my ignorance, I ask, what is this National Coordinating Committee anyhow? By the reports we got about split, split, split, I thought there was maybe a national organization and we were breaking it up. It's not a national organization at all. It's just what its name says, a National Coordinating Committee. And where did it come from? Where was it elected? It wasn't elected anywhere. It's a self-appointed committee, constituted in Washington a few months ago at the conference, what do they call it, the Congress of Unrepresented People. It has its headquarters in Wisconsin. And it has as its chairman a man named Emspak [?]. Now that rang a bell, Emspak. I've heard that name before. It isn't the same Emspak, I'm told. He's the son, and from all accounts a chip off the old block. Emspak was the Stalinist hack. He was the secretary of the United Electrical Workers Union. Emspak was the central figure in 1941, when we came to open warfare in Minneapolis in the split with Tobin, who blocked the issuance of a CIO charter to the Minneapolis local of the Teamsters, who wanted to join the CIO.

And you perhaps all have heard we did join the CIO. We called the union, we set up, after the split with the Tobin Internationals, Local 574 CIO. But the charter was issued to us not by the CIO. There it was blocked by Emspak and the other treacherous Stalinist hacks. It was issued by District 50 of the United Mine Workers. So in order to get into the CIO in the days of Stalinist heyday, the Teamsters had to join the miners. So all that aroused this natural suspicion, which proved to be a reality, that the National Coordinating Committee is in fact stacked and rigged and controlled by Stalinists, and it's not an organization. It's a committee, an unelected committee. It's not like a union or a political party or a cooperative or a fraternal order. It's just what its name says, a coordinating committee to coordinate the activities of other organizations in the peace movement. And all other tendencies have a right to have their own national organization, but the independent committees to end the war in Vietnam, who have adopted the fighting slogan "Bring the troops home now," when they asked to have a gathering to discuss the proposal that they should organize themselves nationally, they were denounced as splitters.

Well, I think that's crooked. I think the slogan "Bring the troops home now" is an absolutely correct slogan, the one on which you can organize an antiwar movement that really means business, and anybody that will not adopt that slogan isn't really fighting the war. Because if you will agree to leave the American troops there with all their equipment, there's never going to be any peace or independence for the Vietnamese people. I think our comrades were correct to adopt that slogan, and their militancy at the conference and their refusal to be bluffed or bulldozed is quite admirable, all the more so that they were taken perhaps by surprise and hadn't had previous experience of what the perfidy of Stalinism and Social Democrats is really like. I'll guarantee you they'll never be taken by surprise again. I'll bet you that every one of our delegates who attended that experience will never be fooled by Stalinists or Social Democrats again. And these are permanent assets which speak well for the future.

Whether some error or misstep of a tactical nature was made in the actual heat of the fight, I personally wouldn't feel competent to judge at this distance. But even so, tactical mistakes or setbacks or defeats can be corrected, as long as the principled line is correct, and as long as we don't get stubborn if we make a mistake and try to rectify it by doing the same thing over again with greater ardor and intensity.

Nothing definite, as far as I know, was settled at this conference. No policy was adopted. No slogan was approved or rejected. They just met. They talked. And they attacked the Trotskyites. And the only motion of any consequence that I could discern from what I studied was to call some new demonstrations in March and to support the demonstrations in the South in February. I presume we will participate in that. No formal organization was constituted. So how can you split the NCC? It's a committee. And it was not elected when it was first constituted, and was not even elected at this conference. It's rigged and stacked with representatives of God knows what kind of organizations, with an Emspak [?] at the head of it. Anybody who put any confidence in the fairness and justice and [inaudible] of such a committee has my sympathy. He badly needs attention, not the kind that I can give because I'm not what they call a head shrinker. No definite program. Anybody that's for peace is entitled to be represented on the committee. No formal organization. All the local organizations have their own autonomy. No elected national officers, just a national coordinating committee.

Where the movement goes next

I wouldn't worry about accusations that we tried to split that outfit, because our people didn't split. The accusation was false. They stayed in the convention to the end. And they openly announced that they were organizing a caucus of people who stood for the slogan "Bring the troops home now" and the right of these independent committees operating under the slogan to form a national organization of their own, which would affiliate to the National Coordinating Committee like the other national organizations, such as the Women's Strike for Peace and others. And they formed the caucus. Now, I read the first newsletter. I thought it was well written, very intelligent, and I'm sure an honest report of the convention. Their proposals looked sound to me from a revolutionary point of view. It remains to be seen whether they'll be successful in their endeavor to create a national organization of independent committees on this slogan, or whether they'll receive another setback. Experience will tell us about that. But if there's a defeat and a setback, I think our comrades will know how to recuperate from it and find another tactic. Tactics can be changed. If you've got the right line and know how to be a little flexible in your tactics, you're not so easily destroyed as they tried to destroy us there in Washington and have done in many other cases.

The whole antiwar movement is, as I see it, at a very critical stage, as is the case also in the civil rights movement, which is related in many ways. The same people who carried through the free speech fights up in Berkeley and the civil rights struggles are more or less identified with the antiwar movement. The question confronting both of them is, what do we do next? Because the war is escalating. The more the war escalates, you can expect the more will be the pressure upon the movement to conform, and the weaklings, the negotiators, and all the others will talk in softer and softer voices until you can't hear them whisper anymore. And the militants will get hardened, and they'll get new recruits, because every time the word comes out of another soldier killed, his family and his friends hear about it, and a public opposition to the senseless slaughter will grow up and there will be new recruits. And the trend of the movement, as I can see it, can only be toward more militancy and more assertion of themselves of the type shown by our caucus and our associates in Washington. And they'll have to seriously look also from the campus, where things started, to the sources of power for the social struggle, among the less privileged workers in the first place and eventually toward the organized workers.

And out of that I think we can see the beginnings of a new radical movement which raises great perspectives. It's of tremendous world-historical significance that America, the most backward of countries in all things that concern culture, intelligence, social awareness, and so on, that America finally is producing a revolutionary and radical grouping on the campuses of this country. But that happened everywhere. From the beginning of the socialist movement, we have understood, and our fathers before us, that the power that can change society is the working class. But it understood also that from other classes could come what the Communist Manifesto calls elements of enlightenment and progress. We shouldn't forget that Marx and Engels began as students. We shouldn't forget that Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky and practically all the leaders of the Russian Revolution began as students in the colleges. And it really almost takes your breath away, the prospect that we may be on the verge of [inaudible], when a new elite is taking shape among the student bodies across this vast country, that they'll find their way to collaboration with the working class in this country and bring with them their talents and the benefits of their education, perhaps new thinkers, new writers and orators and agitators who will know how to identify themselves in the working-class movement. I think we'll not neglect that field. I think we've made a good start already with the organization and development of our Young Socialist Alliance, and that on the whole, the experience in Washington, regardless of what mistakes in tactics here and there might have been made, has to be regarded as a great achievement for our movement.