Jack Barnes
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Jack Barnes (born in 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. He had 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. Barnes was one of a group of members, many of whom also attended Carleton College or other universities, who joined the SWP shortly after the Cuban Revolution.
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.
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[edit] Turn to Industry
Barnes was one of the central organisers 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". Socialist Workers Party 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 with the exception of top leaders such as Jack Barnes. Party members organized within these unions form fractions within the party that meet and plan all of their union activities down to the smallest details. Under the leadership of Jack Barnes SWP members are not allowed to run for union offices, accept union posts, or criticize the top union leadership in any meaningful way for their failed class collaborationist policies and support for the Democratic Party. This is a complete break from the traditions of militant unionism that characterized the Trotskyist movement that led the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 and founded the Socialist Workers Party. The Jack Barnes alternative to leading today’s unions is pointing to the workers and saying that they need to lead the struggle, forgetting the fact that SWP members are themselves workers.
[edit] Break with FI and Permanent Revolution
Barnes' 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, the reunified Fourth International. As national secretary, Barnes played a key role in the expulsion of more than a third of the party's members in 1983 and 1984, those who supported the USFI. In 1990, Barnes wrote on behalf of the SWP to withdraw it from close relations with the Fourth International and to recognise the reality that it was now part of a 'Pathfinder tendency' consisting of the SWP and several Communist Leagues of co-thinkers in other countries.
[edit] 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 authored a recent book titled Cuba and the Coming American Revolution. The SWP views the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Communist Party more sympathetically than do other current from the Trotskyist tradition, stressing the vanguard role of Cuba's foreign policy and the ability of socialists to learn from Cuba about building a socialist society.
[edit] Works
Jack Barnes is also 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.
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