A report on the third convention of the C.L.A., which would be its last as fusion with A.J. Muste’s American Workers Party was agreed to creating the short-lived Workers Party of the U.S. The debate over the ‘French Turn’, where Fourth Internationalist joined leftward moving Socialist Parties, that would split the new party already begun.

‘Third Convention of Communist League Draws Balance Sheet of Six Years’ by George Clarke from The Militant. Vol. 7 No. 48. December 8, 1934.

Bringing the Third National Convention to an end, the delegates of branches of the Communist League of America from coast to coast, and a packed visitors gallery of members of the New York, branch, sang with a solemnity arising out of deep conviction the classic chorus:

“The International Soviet shall be the human race.”

Comrade Max Shachtman announced the adjournment of the Third and last national convention of the C.L.A. There penetrated everyone present a profound realization that a period had ended and a new one begun. The Convention had unanimously voted to disband the C.L.A. by merging it with the American Workers Party in the Workers Party of the United States.

Six years of successful activity as a propagandist group came to an end. The balance sheet was written:

The ideas of Marx and Lenin, the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the theory of the permanent revolution, had been kept alive and vital in the U.S. by the League. Cadres had been built, armed with the intellectual weapons that alone, when combined with organized proletarian masses, can bring capitalism to an end and introduce the communist order of society. The groundwork had been laid for the country’s sole revolutionary proletarian party–the Workers Party of the United States, a current in the international movement sweeping toward the foundation of a new, the Fourth International.

The Third Convention reported substantial gains over the Second League Convention held in October 1931 in New York City. Three years ago the Communist League (Opposition) was a skeleton organization with branches in only a few major cities. The report of the national secretary, Arne Swabeck revealed that the membership had been doubled and that there existed 21 branches in the major industrial centers from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These branches were represented by forty-three delegates. Four delegates from four mid-western cities were unable to be present because of financial difficulties. Six fraternal delegates came from the Workers Party of Canada.

A large proportion of the delegates had been in the C.L.A. since its inception, others had been in the Communist Party many years before they joined the League. Still others had come from various sections and tendencies of the labor movement. The composition of the delegates was overwhelmingly proletarian, many being deeply rooted in the trade union movement.

Second of the achievements recorded at the convention was the maintenance of the Militant as a weekly paper. In six years the Militant had gained the respect of the entire revolutionary movement of the world for its honesty, its clean methods and above all for the clarity and correctness of its policies.

The New International is the third stone in this mosaic of accomplishments. Although still very young, it has already made a name for itself as the outstanding theoretical review in the revolutionary labor movement.

The Minneapolis strike, symbolizing the truth that sound theory merged with sound practice can bring victory to the working class, stood out among the achievements of the League.

The League convention was no solid monolith artificially held together by a bureaucratic whip, but a genuine Communist gathering. It had been preceded by three months of free, untrammeled discussion in branch meetings and internal bulletins. Minorities were accorded every democratic right provided in the constitution and given proportional representation at the convention. The debates and discussions at the conference, often sharp but always comradely, were many-sided and thorough.

The convention was absorbed with two major questions. The discussions centered on the report by comrade James P. Cannon on the international question, primarily the recent Plenum of the International Communist League to which he was a delegate and the so-called “French question”. The other report was by comrade Max Shachtman on the question of fusion with the American Workers Party. International and American, two sides of our struggle, these questions were indissolubly connected.

Comrade Cannon reported on the events in the revolutionary movement since the triumph of Hitler: the declaration for the Fourth International, the Pact of Four, the changes and the crises in the par- ties of the Second International since the Austrian events, the imminence of Fascism in France and the deep ferment in the S.F.I.O., the entry of our French comrades into the S.F.I.O., and the road to the Fourth International.

This, he pointed out, could not be stereotyped or blue-printed. Different roads would be taken according to conditions in each country. In the United States and Holland by the independent road— the merging of revolutionary groups into new parties. In France, on the other hand the road to the new Communist Party leads through the Socialist Party. Intransigence of principle and flexibility of organization policy was the keynote of comrade Cannon’s speech in pointing the road to the new revolutionary international.

Serious disagreement arose on this question. A minority of comrades maintained that it was neither necessary nor correct to enter the French Socialist Party, that this road was full of pitfalls and would lead to international disaster for the organization. The discussion on this question lasted two full days and concluded with an overwhelming majority of the delegates voting for the policy endorsed by the international plenum.

Following this was the report by comrade Shachtman on the policy in America for the new party. Beginning with its declaration of a year ago for the new party, in which the C.L.A. set as its goal the founding of this revolutionary instrument by fusion on a revolutionary basis with other groups independent of the Second and Third Internationals.

The bulk of his speech dealt with the negotiations with the American Workers Party and the joint draft Declaration of Principles. Barring minor differences on past methods and tactics and secondary corrections on the Declaration of Principles, the convention was unanimously for merger with the A.W.P. The Third and last convention of the Communist League, marks not the end of its struggle for Marxism, not the revision of its ideas, but the shifting of its field of activity from that of a propaganda group to mass work, to transformation into a political party based on the tried and tested ideas of Marx and Lenin. The convention came to an end, after an all-night session, with ringing cheers from the delegates:

Long live the Workers Party of the United States!

Long live the Fourth International!

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1934/dec-08-1934.pdf