Masters Thesis

American Trotskyism and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party from origins to 1936

The American Trotskyist movement was founded in part on proletarian class opposition to all capitalist parties, including two-class “farmer-labor” parties. While they had incompletely assimilated the fundamental difference between a “labor” and “farmerlabor” party, they effectively treated the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party as the class enemy during the 1934 Teamster strikes. However, in late 1934 they began an opportunist adaptation toward the FLP and joined a class-collaborationist bloc with FLP politicians and local union leaders. In the spring of 1935, the Trotskyists gave the FLP critical electoral support and simultaneously launched the Northwest Organizer, the mouthpiece of the bloc. In return, the bloc supported the Trotskyists’ continued control of Teamsters Local 574. Within a year the Trotskyists’ opportunist trajectory led them to enter the FLP and begin an unprincipled struggle against Stalinists and conservative Farmer-Labor politicians for control of this regional bourgeois party.

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