James Robertson (Trotskyist)
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James Robertson (1928–2019) was the long-time and founding National Chairman of the
Spartacist League (US) The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping which is the United States section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves ...
, the original national section of the International Communist League. In his later years, Robertson was consultative member of the ICL's international executive committee.


Biography

Born in 1928, Robertson joined the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
in
Richmond, California Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was municipal corporation, incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a Richmond, California City Council, city council.
, in December 1946. He was active in its youth organization the
American Youth for Democracy The Young Communist League USA (YCLUSA) is a communist youth organization in the United States. The stated aim of the League is the development of its members into Communists, through studying Marxism–Leninism and through active participation ...
. While studying chemistry at the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
, he left the CP to join
Max Shachtman Max Shachtman (; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany. Beginnings S ...
’s Workers Party shortly before it changed to the Independent Socialist League in May 1949. He was active in the WP/ISL’s youth organization, the Socialist Youth League, and its successor, the
Young Socialist League The Young Socialist League was a British radical political youth group founded in 1911. The group was mostly active in London, where it also had the majority of its members. According to the ''Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organiza ...
(YSL). Max Shachtman and his supporters then considered themselves Trotskyists, though they had broken with Trotsky’s
Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of wor ...
in 1940, abandoning the Trotskyist program of unconditional military defense of the
USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
as
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
began. According to Robertson, the Workers Party gave up any perspective of reuniting with the Fourth International in 1948 and moved to the right under the pressure of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. Robertson fought what he considered this rightward course, co-authoring his first oppositional document in 1951. Along with
Tim Wohlforth Timothy Andrew Wohlforth (May 15, 1933 – August 23, 2019), was a United States Trotskyist leader. On leaving the Trotskyist movement he became a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented non-fiction. As a student, Wohlforth joined the ...
and
Shane Mage Shane may refer to: People * Shane (actress) (born 1969), American pornographic actress * Shane (New Zealand singer) (born 1946) * iamnotshane (born 1995), formerly known as Shane, American singer * Shane (name), a masculine given name and a sur ...
, he was a leader of the Left Wing Caucus which developed in the YSL in early 1957 in opposition to Shachtman's plan to liquidate the ISL into what had become the
Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America ...
. Under the impact of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...
, members of the Left Wing Caucus became convinced that the Stalinist bureaucracy was not a new ruling “
bureaucratic collectivist Bureaucratic collectivism is a theory of class society. It is used by some Trotskyists to describe the nature of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and other similar states in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere (such as North Korea). ...
” class, as Shachtman had insisted, but instead a brittle and unstable caste, as Trotsky had argued. Wohlforth, Mage and Robertson launched the Young Socialist in October 1957 and founded the associated Young Socialist Clubs; they joined the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In response to the formation of a Tibetan Brigade at the University of California at Berkeley in 1959, Robertson wrote a leaflet enthusiastically supporting the Chinese state’s suppression of what he considered to be a CIA-backed uprising in Tibet, reflecting the Young Socialist Clubs’ adoption of unconditional military defense of China, which they regarded as a
deformed workers state In Trotskyist political theory, deformed workers' states are states where the capitalist class has been overthrown, the economy is largely state owned and planned, but there is no internal democracy or workers' control of industry. In a deforme ...
, qualitatively similar to the USSR after it underwent its bureaucratic degeneration. Robertson was a leader of the SWP’s youth group, the
Young Socialist Alliance The Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) was a Trotskyist youth group of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United States of America. It was founded in 1960, although it had roots going back several years earlier. It was dissolved in 1992. The ...
, when it was founded in 1960. Robertson, Mage and Wohlforth opposed what they considered to be an uncritical embrace of
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
by the SWP leadership, which declared Cuba to be a
workers state A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term ''communist state'' is oft ...
on a par with the early USSR. Facing a hostile SWP leadership, they founded the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) in 1961. The majority of the RT—which went on to found the Spartacist League—came to regard Cuba, like China, as a deformed workers state, qualitatively similar to the degenerated USSR. The RT considered what they perceived as the SWP’s abandonment of a revolutionary perspective reflected not just in their uncritical support to Castro, but also in the party’s uncritical enthusing for the existing leadership of the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
. Robertson co-authored several of the tendency’s documents calling for the party to fight for
Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...
in the civil rights movement. The SWP was then a member of the
International Committee of the Fourth International The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revo ...
(IC), which organized the orthodox Trotskyists internationally, including the British
Socialist Labour League The Workers Revolutionary Party is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name. The Club The WRP grew out of the faction Gerry Healy ...
led by
Gerry Healy Thomas Gerard Healy (3 December 1913 – 14 December 1989) was a political activist, a co-founder of the International Committee of the Fourth International and the leader of the Socialist Labour League and later the Workers Revolutionary Part ...
. The IC opposed the revisionist Trotskyists led by
Michel Pablo Michel Pablo ( el, Μισέλ Πάμπλο; 24 August 1911, Alexandria, Egypt – 17 February 1996, Athens) was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis ( el, Μιχάλης Ν. Ράπτης), a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin. Early activism ...
, who were organized in the International Secretariat (IS). When the SWP declared its intention to reunify with the IS, the RT opposed this. Under Robertson’s leadership, the majority of the RT came to the conclusion that the SWP leadership had become
centrist Centrism is a political outlook or position involving acceptance or support of a balance of social equality and a degree of social hierarchy while opposing political changes that would result in a significant shift of society strongly to the l ...
, but Tim Wohlforth, at the behest of Gerry Healy, split the tendency, claiming the SWP leadership could be won back to authentic Trotskyism. Wohlforth went on to lead Healy’s American organization (until he was purged in 1974). The RT majority was expelled by the SWP beginning in December 1963, just as the SWP’s reunification with the International Secretariat was being consummated. Robertson was the editor of the journal ''Spartacist'', which began publication in early 1964. Spartacist supporters looked at first to the IC, which was now under the leadership of Gerry Healy. However, Robertson’s experiences at the IC's 1966 London conference led to a definitive break. Robertson was elected founding national chairman of the Spartacist League/U.S. in 1966. When the international Spartacist tendency was formed in 1974, he was a member of its leading body and the author of the draft of its founding statement, "Declaration for the Organizing of an International Trotskyist Tendency." The iSt changed its name to the
International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), earlier known as the International Spartacist tendency is a Trotskyist international. Its largest constituent party is the Spartacist League (US). There are smaller sections of the ICL ...
in 1989. Robertson's position as National Chairman of the Spartacist League/U.S. became consultative in 2004. He became a consultative member of the International Communist League’s executive committee in 2007. He died in April 2019 at the age of 90.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robertson, James 1928 births 2019 deaths Politicians from Richmond, California American Trotskyists University of California, Berkeley alumni Members of the Communist Party USA Members of the Socialist Workers Party (United States)