Shachtman in the Socialist Party

Shachtman in the Socialist Party

In 1958, the ISL merged with the Socialist Party, which from its height in the 1910s had fallen in strength to approximately 1,000 members. In Breitman's opinion, the ISL had simply dissolved. Shachtman helped pressure the SP to work with the Democratic Party in order to push the Democrats to the left. This strategy, known as "realignment", proved to be somewhat successful. With the eager participation of the Shachtmanites, the SP took an active role in the civil rights movement and the early events of the New Left.

During this time, Shachtman started the research for a major book on the Communist International. Although the book was never completed, his views were collected in a working paper prepared for a 1964 conference of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Shachtman's vast research notes for the book are held at the Tamiment Library.

Organizational and programmatic disputes in the group caused a number of splits, most notably by Hal Draper, who left and formed the Independent Socialist Club in 1964. The Shachtmanites eventually became irreparably divorced from the New Left because of their unwavering support for the Vietnam War (1957-1975). In 1972, Shachtmanites supported Democrat "Scoop" Jackson's presidential primary bid, as Jackson was by then the only major candidate who favored a continuation of the War. When George McGovern was nominated instead, the Shachtmanites chose not to endorse him.

Following the 1972 convention of the SP, Shachtman's followers, organized in the "Unity Caucus", gained control of the SP's leadership. After Shachtman's death on November 4 of that year, the Shachtmanites reconstituted the SP as Social Democrats USA (SDUSA). Harrington and the bulk of the party's membership soon left the organization, many going on to form the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which soon merged with the New American Movement (NAM) to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

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Influence on others

For a full discussion of the currents influenced by Shachtman, see Shachtmanism.

Individuals influenced by Shachtman's organisations have evolved in three principal directions, each sharing his distinctive opposition to Stalinism.

• Marxism. A number of political organizations have emerged from the Trotskyist movement which have considered themselves to be Marxist. This broad tendency is described as "Left Shachtmanism" and arguably includes followers of Tony Cliff such as the International Socialist Tendency[9] though this was denied by Cliff himself.
• Social Democracy. After Shachtman's death in 1972, many democratic socialist Shachtmanites rose to prominent positions in government and organized labor. Supporters of Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) in the labor movement included Albert Shanker (president of the American Federation of Teachers), as well as AFL-CIO presidents George Meany and Lane Kirkland.
• Neoconservatism. Some conservatives such as Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Sidney Hook, were around the Shachtmanite milieu in the 1930s and 1940s. Jeane Kirkpatrick was a member of the Shachtmanite-dominated Young People's Socialist League as a university student. In the 1970s Paul Wolfowitz was a speaker at SDUSA conferences ^{[citation needed]}. Joshua Muravchik, Penn Kemble, Carl Gershman, and Max Green, leaders in the Young People's Socialist League, became right-wing think tank insiders.

Glotzer argues that Shachtman's theory of bureaucratic collectivism has also informed unorthodox approaches within Marxism towards the class nature of the Eastern Bloc.

• The approach of Isaac Deutscher and Marcel Liebman leads towards Shachtman's theory.
• A former leader of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas' book, The New Class, also views the USSR as a new class society. However, there is no evidence that Djilas was aware of Shachtman's work.
• Marxist economist Paul Sweezy, whose familiarity with the Fourth International would certainly have informed his view of Shachtman, also concluded that the USSR was ruled by a new type of ruling class.