Volume 2

  • Section I The “Interim Period,” 1947

    The Johnson-Forest Tendency left the Workers Party in July 1947. In September they entered the Socialist Workers Party. During the interim period the Tendency issued 12 Internal Bulletins as well as separate publications. Freddie Forest (Raya Dunayevskaya) undertook a trip to Europe to represent the state-capitalist position at the Fourth International Conference.

  • A. F. Forest’s 1947 trip to Europe as representative of the state-capitalist tendency

    In the late summer and fall of 1947 Forest traveled to Europe to establish relations with European comrades and to present the state-capitalist position to the conference of the Fourth International. She met with British Marxists; representatives of a German Marxist group; and Chalieu (later known as Cardan and Castoriadis) who founded Socialisme ou Barbarie in France. She debated the question of state-capitalism with Ernest Mandel. She also met a Cameroonian, and that dialogue anticipated the whole Third World founded in the 1950s.

  • B. Freddie Forest’s Commentary on Lenin’s Selected Works

    In 1947 Forest undertook an abbreviated commentary on the 12 volumes of Lenin’s Selected Works for the use of comrades in the Johnson-Forest Tendency.

  • C. Conversations and Correspondence with Natalia Trotsky

    Raya Dunayevskaya visited Natalia Trotsky in the 1940s and 1950s. Natalia Trotsky’s position evolved in such a manner that she officially broke with the group claiming to be Trotskyist in the U.S., the Socialist Workers Party, in 1951. Her letter to the SWP was reprinted in News & Letters, Feb. 1962. Also included in the Archives here is Dunayevskaya’s “In Memoriam” article on Natalia Trotsky written in Jan. 1962, and subtitled “Role of Women in Revolution.”

  • D. Separate publications of Johnson-Forest Tendency

  • (1) Essays by Karl Marx selected from the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts.

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/745.pdf

    First English translation, by Ria Stone (Grace Lee Boggs), of “Alienated Labor,” “Private Property and Communism,” and “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic.”

  • (2) Trotskyism in the United States, 1940-47. Balance Sheet, The Workers Party and the Johnson-Forest Tendency

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/788.pdf

    by J.R. Johnson, F. Forest, Martin Harvey, August 20, 1947. Appendix: “Conversations with Trotsky on the Transitional Program,” 1933.

  • (3) World Revolutionary Perspectives and the Russian Question

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/820.pdf

    issued Sept. 1947. Contents: A new essay, “Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity,” by Johnson; reprints of “Historical Retrogression or Socialist Revolution,” “The Nature of the Russian Economy,” and “After ‘Ten Years” (a review of Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed).

  • (5) The American Worker

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/908.pdf

    by Phil Romano and Ria Stone, 1947. First appeared as articles in the Internal Bulletins of the Johnson-Forest Minority. It was published as a separate pamphlet after entry into the Socialist Workers Party.

  • E. Internal Bulletins of the Johnson-Forest Minority

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/948.pdf

    Upon leaving the Workers Party in July 1947 the Johnson-Forest Minority applied for entry into the Socialist Workers Party. The Internal Bulletins were one result of that interim period. Twelve Bulletins, July 17, 1947 to Sept. 29, 1947.

  • Section II In the Socialist Workers Party, 1947-1951

  • A. The existing state-capitalist tendency within the SWP

    In 1945 John Fredericks, who had been away in the military, returned, and within the SWP began to develop a state-capitalist tendency. He sought out the Johnson-Forest Tendency and began to collaborate with them for a brief period before they re-entered the SWP.

  • B. The Johnson-Forest Tendency within the SWP

  • (3) A Bureaucrat’s Fate

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/1322.pdf

    by F. Forest, in Fourth International, June 1949. A review of The Economy of the USSR During World War II by Nikolai Voznessensky, former Chairman of the State Planning Commission of Foreign Affairs in Russia.

  • (6) State-Capitalism and World Revolution,

    link to PDF file: http://rayadunayevskaya.org/raya/ArchivePDFs/1333.pdf

    by “Johnson-Forest,” Aug. 4, 1950. First published as Discussion Bulletin No. 4, Sept. 1950, of Socialist Workers Party. Written by Johnson, Forest and Ria Stone, the document has been reissued by various groups. Other authors have been added to new editions, who had nothing to do with the original document.