Jack Barnes

For other people named Jack Barnes, see Jack Barnes (disambiguation).

Jack Whittier Barnes (born 1940) is an American Communist and the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Barnes was elected the party's national secretary in 1972, replacing the retiring Farrell Dobbs.^[1] He joined the SWP in the early 1960s as a student at Carleton College in Minnesota and quickly became a leading member of the party's youth wing. From the 1990s to the present, Barnes has directed his party to support the governments of North Korea and Equatorial Guinea; has instructed the party to abstain from antiwar or anti-racist activism; and in January 2016 lent his support to the occupation of federal lands, in Oregon, by white supremacists.^[2] Barnes was a key advocate of the party's "turn to industry" in the 1970s, its exit from the Fourth International in the 1980s and its orientation towards the Cuban Communist Party in the 1990s.

Socialism in the United States
Part of a series on
History Utopian socialism New Harmony Brook Farm Oneida Community Icarians Bishop Hill Commune Progressive Era St. Louis Commune 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike Labor unionisation Women's suffrage Haymarket affair May Day Green Corn Rebellion Repression and persecution Espionage Act of 1917 First Red Scare American Defense Society American Protective League Seattle General Strike Communist Party USA and African Americans Communism in the Labor Movement 1919–37 Communism in the Labor Movement 1937–50 McCarthyism Smith Act / Smith Act trials John Birch Society Civil Rights / anti-War movements COINTELPRO New Left Great Society War on Poverty Poor People's Campaign Black Power movement
Active parties and organizations Black Riders Liberation Party Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CDCS) Communist Party USA Democratic Socialists of America Freedom Road Socialist Organization Freedom Socialist Party Industrial Workers of the World International Socialist Organization Legal Marijuana Now Party New Afrikan Black Panther Party New Students for a Democratic Society Party for Socialism and Liberation Peace and Freedom Party Progressive Labor Party Revolutionary Communist Party Socialist Action Socialist Alternative Socialist Equality Party Socialist Organizer Socialist Party Socialist Workers Party Spartacist League Workers World Party World Socialist Party of the United States
Defunct parties and organizations American Labor Party American Workers Party Black Panther Party Communist League of America Communist Workers' Party Democratic Socialist Federation Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee Farmer–Labor Party Maoist Internationalist Movement New American Movement Proletarian Party of America Puerto Rican Socialist Party Social Democracy of America Social Democratic Federation Social Democratic Party of America Social Democrats, USA Socialist Labor Party of America Socialist Party of America Students for a Democratic Society Weather Underground White Panther Party Workers Party of the United States Youth International Party
Literature The Jungle Appeal to Reason International Socialist Review Looking Backward The Other America Daily Worker Monthly Review Why Socialism? Voluntary Socialism Monopoly Capital
Related topics American Left Anarchism Anarchism in the United States Socialism Utopian socialism Scientific socialism Marxism Marxism–Leninism Labor history Labor unions Libertarian socialism Labor laws Minimum wage
Socialism portal United States portal

Turn to Industry

Barnes was one of the central organizers for the idea that the party should "turn to industry". In 1978 the party's National Committee approved a report by Barnes which argued that "we must subordinate everything else to immediately organizing to get a large majority of the membership of the SWP into industry and the industrial trade unions". SWP members took up union jobs in basic industries such as meatpacking, steel, mining and textile industries.

Work within these industries became a condition of membership in the SWP, as the party attempted to penetrate the portions of the working class that it feels will be most combative and open to communist ideas in the future: those unionized in basic industries. Party members organized within these unions form factions within the party. The SWP asserts that this course follows the continuity of the communist movement from Marx and Engels to Lenin's time, which stresses a party based in the working class.

Break with FI and Permanent Revolution

Barnes's article "Their Trotsky and Ours" also underpinned the party's decisions in the 1980s to abandon its support for Leon Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, and its withdrawal from the world Trotskyist movement and the reunified Fourth International. Barnes repudiated the traditional Trotskyist understanding of Permanent Revolution in favor of Lenin's pre-World War I position of "democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry", and a highly sympathetic view of the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada.

The change prefaced the expulsion of more than a third of the party's members in 1983 and 1984, and was regarded by the opposition as a complete break with the party's traditions.^[3] As national secretary, Barnes played a key role in the expulsion those who supported the USFI. In 1990, he wrote on behalf of the SWP to withdraw it from close relations with the Fourth International and to recognize the reality that it was now part of a "Pathfinder tendency" consisting of the SWP and several Communist Leagues in other countries.

Orientation to the Cuban CP

Barnes has encouraged the SWP's growing interest in the Cuban Communist Party. In the 1960s he was a leader of the Fair Play for Cuba movement. This interest continues, and he wrote a 2001 book titled Cuba and the Coming American Revolution. The SWP views the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Communist Party more sympathetically than do some other currents of the Trotskyist tradition, stressing the alleged vanguard role of Cuba's foreign policy and what socialists can learn from Cuba about building a socialist society.

Works

Jack Barnes is the author of political books and articles including:

Capitalism's World Disorder
Cuba and the Coming American Revolution
Their Trotsky and Ours
U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War
Capitalism's Long Hot Winter Has Begun
The Lesser Evil? - Debates on the Democratic Party and Independent Working-Class Politics.

References

↑ Hadjor, Kofi Buenor (1995). Another America: The Politics of Race and Blame. South End Press. p. 318. ISBN 9780896085152. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
↑ http://www.themilitant.com/2016/8003/800303.html
↑ See George Breitman in the introduction to Don't Strangle the Party.

External links

Their Transformation and Ours from Capitalism’s Long Hot Winter Has Begun 2005.
Barnes and Waters sell condo

Party political offices
Preceded by Farrell Dobbs	National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party 1972 - present	Succeeded by Incumbent

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 1337170 ISNI: 0000 0000 3005 5652 SUDOC: 060392460

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.