Saturday, July 06, 2019
On the Revolutionary Suicide of the ISO.
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On the Revolutionary Suicide of the ISO.
The following is written from a
perspective that is sympathetic to the revolutionary project of the now
dissolved ISO. It is written from within the IS tradition(s) and is based on
the contributions made to Marxist theory and practice by that now
disintegrating current. Perhaps more fundamentally it is written from a stand
point which argues that the IS tradition(s) represent(ed) a development from
and partial break with the Marxism of the Fourth Internationalist movement, as
it became ossified after World War Two, in an effort to return to the Classical
Marxism of the revolutionary period of the Communist International.
What follows is an outline
attempt to explain why the ISO collapsed as a result of its isolation from the
working class which deformed it politically and organisationally. To which must
be added the point that the organisational and political deformations that were
present at its birth tended to isolate it from the working class. Only a thorough
historical account of the history of the ISO could fully explain how the
organisation developed and why it disintegrated with such rapidity. Certain footnotes
have been provided for those readers who wish to explore that history in more
detail than the current essay can easily supply given the constraints of space.
The prehistory of the ISO.
The political roots of the ISO
can be traced back to the split in the newly founded Socialist Workers Party in
1940 led by Max Shachtman which was based to a considerable degree on the youth
only recently won from the reformist Socialist Party of Norman Thomas. There is
no need to detail the decline of the newly minted Workers Party, its
transformation into the Independent Socialist League and subsequent merging into
the, you guessed it, Socialist Party in 1958. No need either to detail the
formation by former WP/ISL militants, most prominently Hal Draper, of the
Independent Socialist Committees and their evolution into the International
Socialists from which the ISO was to emerge fully formed in the manner of
Pallas Athena in 1977. No need because accounts of these developments can be
found in books and articles by Milton Fisk[1],
Martin Glaberman[2]
and Peter Drucker[3].
It is worth saying a little as to
the nature of the perspectives of the WP and why they were abandoned by the
ISL. In short the WP took from Trotsky the concept that the world war would
lead to an intensification of the class struggle and that revolutionary
opportunities would develop. Such a scenario demanded that the tiny forces of
the Fourth International, with which the WP identified itself, had to develop a
cadre that could in the near future lead mass parties as the followers of the
Stalinist and Social Democratic parties rallied to Trotskyism. Given the
urgency of the situation the young militants of the WP industrialised
themselves taking jobs in factories with bulging order books due to war
production. Unlike many revolutionaries who simply ignored reality when the
much hoped for revolutionary opportunities did not materialise the WP
transformed itself into a propaganda group that pioneered a number of
developments of Marxist analysis, for example the theory of the Permanent War
Economy, but slowly shed members as the class struggle gave way to class peace
and left the Marxist cadres of the ISL isolated. The tragedy of the ISL was
that despite the appearance of standing against the current given in its paper
Labor Action it had adapted to the pressures of the Cold War in an attempt to
remain relevant and able to influence the labor bureaucracy. But in so doing it
abandoned everything that defined it as a revolutionary socialist tendency
eventually abandoning even its political independence of the boss class by
advocating a realignment of the Democratic Party which then as now meant in
practice becoming supporters of the liberal Democrats of the day.
The history of the ISC and IS contains
a number of features in common with that of the WP/ISL. Formed by former ISL
militants and a small number of younger comrades the ISC initially saw its
purpose as defending the revolutionary politics of the WP/ISL while making
socialist propaganda in available forums. At first this meant participation in
the famous Free Speech Movement in Berkeley where they were based and later
involvement with the then new Peace and Freedom Party. As a tiny group of young
white mostly student radicals the emerging IS had little option but to take
advantage of such opportunities as they came across them but even in this early
phase they made few political concessions to the rising tide of Black
Nationalism and the Black Panther Party, then as now extremely popular with
starry eyed white student radicals, identifying nonetheless the vital
importance of the struggle against black oppression in the USA.
The rapid growth of labor
militancy in the 1970s was the making of the IS as a coherent national tendency
advocating Socialism from Below and its militants took full advantage of the
opportunities to intervene in the living class struggle. The result was a small
but viable organization of perhaps some 300 members spread across the continent
with growing connections to numerous rank and file initiatives in the unions
and workplaces. Politically too it presented a picture of growing maturity
until its development was stopped short with the slowdown in labor militancy
after the impact of the oil shock of 1973. The result was an increased stress
on the importance of reform movements, rather than rank and file organisations,
together with a development of a voluntarist practice at the behest of the
erstwhile National Secretary, an import from Manchester, that can be traced to an
infatuation on the part of a section of the leading elements of IS (Britain)
with the politics of the Italian workerist groups. When a pushback developed against
the voluntarism which was being advocated by the leadership a pushback
developed in a section of the organization. This would lead, together with
serious disagreements over the course of the Revolution in Portugal, to the
group splitting into three distinct tendencies. In the immediate aftermath of
the destruction of IS three tendencies would develop which had their roots in
whole or part in the experiences of IS from 1964 to 1979.
The formation of the ISO, Solidarity and Labor Notes.
Founded in 1977 the ISO presented
itself as returning to the rank and file perspectives of the IS as opposed to
the adaptations of the IS leadership to reform caucuses in the union bureaucracies.
As such it was attempting to repeat the strategy of IS by developing an
orientation on militant workers organised in rank and file movements. As we
shall see blow it was a strategy that was no longer applicable in a changing
world.
While the ISO stalled its parent
organization split a second time with one group taking the name Worker Power[4],
from the name of the IS paper which they had control of, while the other
continued to call itself IS. Within two years WP had given up the ghost and led
by Steve Zeluck[5]
its remnants began publishing Against The Current[6] as
a non-organizational journal aimed at regrouping revolutionaries in a
multi-tendency group. An endeavour that led to the founding of Solidarity a
couple of years later when IS fused into the new group along with Socialist
Unity a splinter of a split from the SWP (US). Since then Solidarity has
continued to publish Against The Current, which has often run some very
interesting material coming from a variety of political standpoints on the
revolutionary left, but it has not managed to develop a cadre able to intervene
as a body with a single political line. Nonetheless despite having long held
the line against liquidationism many if not most of its active members are now
being absorbed by the reformist DSA.
Meanwhile another leading member
of IS, Kim Moody, founded Labor Notes the title being taken from a column that first
appeared in Workers Power. First published in 1979 this was a monthly magazine
aimed at rank and file trade unionists in order to assist them in the struggle
against concessions. Having parted company with IS the latter fused with
Workers Power forming Solidarity[7].
The first Labor Notes conference followed in 1982 and a series of books and
pamphlets on labor issues began in 1983. Labor Notes has not hesitated to take
openly political positions, for example it adopted a position of opposition to
NAFTA, and has not been an advocate of a narrowly conceived project centered on
union reform.
By the early 1980s then the three
children of IS had developed different aspects of their parent group. The ISO
had developed as an interventionist self consciously Leninist group that saw
itself as belonging to international tendency led by Tony Cliff and the SWP (Britain).
Solidarity, with its more ideologically mixed heritage failed to develop as a
cadre organisation but did publish an intellectually adventurous magazine.
Finally Labor Notes developed the union work that IS had carried out but with
none of the baggage that goes with a membership based organization.
A leadership is formed.
In its first few years the ISO
floundered about seeking a clear orientation and perspective as its hopes for a
revival of class struggle and the building of a rank and file alternative to
the union bureaucracy and Democratic Party hucksters left it high and dry. The
result was a reversion to making broad socialist propaganda and increasingly
looking to the SWP (Britain) for both political guidance and organizational
models. This led to a somewhat mysterious faction fight between the original
leadership around Barbara and Cal Winslow which centered on their autocratic
style of leadership although it is also claimed that their Marxist feminism was
an issue if the few sources I have on this episode are to be believed.[8] The
real problem however was that the perspective of the ISO did not fit the
changed realities of the early 1980s as the number of strikes fell year by year
meaning that advocacy of rank and file movements became abstract as such
movements dissolved nationally and locally. Nonetheless the new leadership team
gathered around Ahmed Shawki, Sharon Smith and a number of talented young
recruits to the organisation were content to follow the advice of the SWP and
use any argument they could against the founding leaders of the organization.
Organizationally this meant not simply ousting the Winslows from leadership but
pushing them out of the organization as a whole for fear of factionalism. The
single tendency model previously unknown in IS was now an established fact and
would in time have dire consequences.
At this point in time the
connection with the SWP through Ahmed Shawki in particular was far from being
negative and it began to deliver results with the modest growth of the
organisation. With a newly established and unchallenged leadership the ISO
could emulate the techniques of the SWP as best it could. In practice this
meant making Socialist Worker a place of serious coverage of labor and American
politics with increasingly confidant commentary as comrades became more
knowledgeable and developed the skills of their revolutionary trade. A heavy
emphasis on education, at one point the ISO was selling a quarter of the print
run of the British International Socialism Journal for example, and the annual
Socialism conferences helped form a layer of highly if sometimes almost
academically educated Marxist cadres. Such techniques found their audience on
the campuses of many universities across the USA which in turn reinforced the
orientation on education and in the medium term built a slim base in a number
of educational unions.
The Other International Socialists.
As has been mentioned above the
relationship between the Independent Socialists (USA) and the International
Socialists (Britain) was always important for both groups. The latter, founded
in 1950 as the Socialist Review Group,[9]
had from its earliest days an ambiguous relationship with its American
counterparts both drawing on ideas developed by the former and at the same time
expressing hostility to their understanding of Stalinism in power and out. A
full account of that, sometimes subterranean, relationship has yet to be
written but with the formation of the ISC and extended visits to London by a
number of American activists during the 1960s it was renewed on a basis of
healthy if loose collaboration.
In his history of IS (Britain)
Ian Birchall details the perspectives that guided the organisation through the
1960s in a period that was characterised by the Long Boom and relative
prosperity for most workers combined with growing sectional industrial
struggles as well as active mass movements in the form of CND and the Labour
Party youth group the Young Socialists. IS aimed, with some success, to build
its influence through and in these mass movements with the ultimate aim of
developing roots in the industrial working class. 1968 changed these perspectives
and IS was transformed into an independent organisation that doubled in size
over the course of the year.
Through the early 1970s IS built
a small base in industry and gained footholds in white collar areas too as
students took jobs in the civil service and local government. In all areas of
its activity from the weekly Socialist Worker to its branch meetings and
interventions in other areas the main thrust of the organisation was that rank
and file groups needed to be built in the unions and a revolutionary
organisation built alongside and through the movement in general. Strategy was
generally ignored except when internal dissidents and opponents raised the
question of the so called Transitional Programme of 1938,[10] which
was only ever raised in the form of a touchstone against evil with ritual
invocations of its method, despite its advocates rarely if ever explaining what
they meant by method. When a programme was drawn up by IS it was swiftly forgotten
as the organisation descended into its worst internal crisis and lost a
sizeable layer of industrial militants and a number of long term leaders and
senior cadre.[11] Although
the roots of the opposition within IS to the right to form factions at any
point had been laid some years earlier, due to a destructive experience with an
apolitical sect which had ‘entered’ IS, the split with the International
Socialist Opposition in 1976 redoubled the feeling that factions were always
destructive and so to be avoided.[12]
With its perspectives no longer
valid as the power wielded by unofficial rank and file bodies in the workplaces
waned due to the employers offensive the IS that emerged from the crisis of
1976 turned left. A forced march to the left that would in time lead to the
abandonment of the rank and file strategy as retreat turned into a full scale
downturn in struggle and a left turn became a holding operation. But initially
the downturn in industrial struggle was accompanied by an upturn in political
engagement on the left with the second Cold War bringing CND back to life as a
mass movement, the rise of the fascist National Front caused numerous local
anti-fascist campaigns to be launched, unemployment too saw many local
initiatives and the Labour left enjoyed its day in the Sun too.
To some degree IS, now to be
rebranded for no good reason as the Socialist Workers Party, took part in such
campaigns on a principled basis but a tendency developed to ignore local
initiatives especially if they had links to the trade union bureaucracy or were
in whole or part state funded. Having founded The Right to Work Campaign,
originally as an offshoot of the Rank and File Organising Committee,[13]
the leadership soon found it congenial running campaigns that were in effect
fronts for the SWP rather than having to deal with irritating allies in the
labor movement. The RTWC, regardless of its political irrelevance beyond the
far left, became the blueprint for a series of ‘United Front’ campaigns run by
the SWP over the years.
The big campaign and the one that
had a major impact on national politics was the Anti Nazi League. Despite the
ecumenical national steering committee the ANL was from the start completely
controlled and staffed by the SWP in every locality and nationally. It was a
massive success driving the National Front back into the gutters from whence it
crawled but it was too big for the SWP the cadre of which often functioned as
ANL activists rear guarding the revolutionary organisation. It was also the
case that most of the tens of thousands who took part in ANL actions of one
kind or another were politically a long way from revolutionary socialism being
more aligned in general with the politics of Tony Benn and the then buoyant
Labour left. Another innovation for the SWP was the first Marxism conference
held in 1977 which then developed into a major feature of the groups calendar throughout
the 1980s and beyond.
By the early part of the 1980s a
pattern of SWP activity and governance had formed that was to all intents and
purposes a blueprint for its co-thinkers outside Britain especially the ISO.
But it was a blueprint that the group was capable of breaking away from when
events in the class struggle dictated the need to do so as with the Miner’s
Strike of 1984-85. And crucially it was a blueprint that the leadership of the
ISO successfully imported to the USA or so appearances would suggest. And for
all its limitations it was a blueprint that served the ISO well enough in a
period when the working class was in retreat and all that could be done was
build a small pre-Leninist propaganda group.
Size as we know has advantages in
revolutionary politics in that it allows for specialization and the development
of a radical democracy from below. Small groups dedicated to producing and
distributing propaganda tend, if successful and the ISO was successful in this
period, to produce generalists lacking specialist skills but possessing some
ability in many fields. Such groups also tend to operate on the basis of
consensus within an informal grouping regardless of formal structures. Such
features are of course characteristic of most if not all pre-Leninist sects
whatever their formal politics and structures. It is enough to glance at the
history of the Socialist Labor Party[14]
for a rather interesting confirmation of these arguments. Such parties also
tend to be very centralised politically with a formal program and frequently
have formally very democratic regimes. One might even describe them as
democratic centralist but not in the Leninist sense!
Building through campaigns
and on the campuses.
This section must be short as it
is not the purpose of this article to provide a detailed history of the ISO.[15]
Suffice to say that between the early 1980s the ISO was built through an
orientation on the campuses, often the campuses of the more prestigious
universities, on the basis of a sometimes abstract dedication to socialism and
workers power. That said where and when it was possible the ISO did a first
class job of supporting workers struggles as for example with the Illinois War
Zone 1983-85 and the campaign around the Charleston 5 in 2000. The organization
was also capable of taking the initiative in anti-war and civil rights
campaigns having their greatest impact perhaps with the Campaign to End the
Death Penalty. In a hostile period it is to the credit of the ISO that it went
from 150 members in 1990 to 1,000 or more a decade later. It certainly built a
cadre but only very rarely a cadre of activists rooted in working class
struggles and one might ask could that have been any different in light of the
low level of workers struggles in that period?
Despite swallowing in one gulp the SWPs organizational
blueprint in one area they did not emulate that groups structures. In the early
years of ISO it appears that a specialist Industrial Department, to use the vocabulary
of the SWP, was not required so small was the group and limited its labor
movement work. In later years labor work had a low priority with a low level of
workplace and union struggles and few members working union jobs. When the
opportunity presented itself to carry out strike support work a specialized
Industrial Department was superfluous and the existing structures and
leadership adequate to help local branches. In fact the IS was able to carry
out exemplary strike support work through the Staley Workers Solidarity
Committee in the 1990s and later in 2001 played a leading role in the
solidarity campaign with the Charleston Five. But such work, which had much in
common with early twentieth century campaigns run by the Industrial Workers of
the World, did not and could not build a base within the ranks of labor for the
ISO.
The only way to build a base in the workplaces and unions
is through a long term orientation that concentrates on the systematic
recruitment of militant workers and the formation of a militant minority
organised in a rank and file movement. Which is easy to write about but far more
difficult to do especially in a period of retreat or defeat. But it is a task
that can be hastened even by a small revolutionary organization if it has the
ability to share, generalize from and learn the lessons from the experiences of
those militants it does possess. Which is why the experiences of the ISO in the
education industry are indicative in illustrating the limits of the groups
leaders and politics. If only because this is the only industry where the ISO
had a concentration of members in a few key cities where the group had an
infrastructure that could support some degree of political and organizational
specialization on Leninist lines.
Having recruited successive layers of party cadre on the
campuses it was natural that some of these well educated young militants would
gravitate towards careers in verdant groves of academia and as teachers in the
high school system. (The same tendency could be observed in Britain where
comrades recruited at university moved quite naturally into the teaching profession
or took jobs in the ranks of the Civil Service.) Despite the lack of an
Industrial Department to develop this work the young militants of the ISO were
able in a number of cities to make serious inroads in building the unions they
worked in and as a result some won union offices and were involved in leading
disputes. In contrast to Britain it was far more complicated a matter to draw
lessons from unions that in practice corresponded to individual colleges or
universities rather than being branches of a single union that negotiated wages
and conditions at a national level.
It is a given that comrades elected to union office are
under considerable pressure to conform to the normal practices of the union
bureaucracy. Individuals in such a situation could only obviously require both
support and advice or they run the risk of being absorbed into the union bureaucracy.
The ISO leadership was of course well aware of such pressures and placed labor
work under the direction of Lee Sustar a member of the SC for many years. In
Chicago where ISO members were influential in building a militant oppositional
caucus and played a creditable role in leading the 2012 strike Sustar simply
ignored the political opportunism of ISO member and Chicago Teachers Union Vice
President Jesse Sharkey. Sharkey was not disciplined in any way when he publicly
endorsed Chuy Garcia on behalf of the CTU as a Majoral candidate for the
Democratic Party.[16]
That Sharkey was able to get away with such an openly class collaborationist
policy and not be questioned is proof of the lack of Leninist practices on the
part of the ISO leadership.
The break with the SWP.
In 2001 the famous teamsters and turtles
demonstration took place in Seattle. Across the world it was hailed as the
beginning of a new anti-capitalist movement combining old social forces, such
as trade unions, and newer movements like the youthful green movement. That
this diverse and more often than not disunited loose coalition of social forces
had been gathering strength for some time was of little importance to the
leadership of the SWP which condemned the ISO for failing to be enthusiastic
about the Seattle demonstration and not mobilising its forces for the
demonstration. That Seattle is hundreds of miles from the otherwise closest ISO
branch and that the group had put a lot of effort into building for the event
was of no interest to the leadership of the SWP. A bitter row erupted between the
two leaderships that would lead to the expulsion of the ISO from the
International Socialism Tendency a worldwide network of groups that were based
on the politics of the IS tradition and was led by the SWP. In what was its
first and thus far only public decision the ISO was unceremoniously expelled
from the network.[17]
To a considerable degree the
dispute between the ISO and the SWP leadership had little to do with politics
or perspectives but was far more focused on the intention on the part of the
SWP to retain the ISO in a client relationship where all major decisions were
made in London. The ISO by contrast understood that the SWP was not growing and
were increasingly confidant as a result of their own increase in membership and
influence. It should be noted that similar disputes had already taken place or
would in the near future in Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece and
South Africa sometimes resulting in splits as a result of heavy handed
interventions by the SWP.[18] In
some ways the most damaging being the split in the International Socialists
South Africa as to whether they should call for a vote for the popular frontist
ANC or for the new small Workers List Party. Disgracefully they chose to
support the ANC which has since proven to be the best defender of capitalism
and therefore of racism in South Africa. With its expulsion from the IST the
ISO was subject to a factional struggle as the SWP encouraged a small group of
comrades to build a faction in opposition to the national leadership with the
predictable result that the comrades were in their turn expelled forming for a
brief period Left Turn a small group of their own which disavowed the SWP as it
developed movementist positions.
A leadership ossifies.
The forced emancipation from the
tutelage of the SWP was an important moment for the ISO and its leadership. It
came at a time when the group was growing, its new magazine the International
Socialist Review, first published in 1997, was rapidly finding itself a place
and Haymarket was being launched as a publisher of new books. Crucially the
more cautious perspectives of the ISO were soon proven to be far closer to
reality than the pious delusions of the SWP. All of this opened up the
opportunity to break with the past practices inherited from the SWP[19]
and many comrades were in time to question the Janus like inheritance with some
encouragement from the leadership. This process of questioning received
political positions was most successfully pursued with regard to women’s
oppression and over the course of time important work was carried out in
relation to Social Reproduction Theory and the concept of inter-sectionalism.
The years from 2001 to 2009 were not
unsuccessful for the ISO although the high turn over of members was not solved
by adopting a far more selective approach to recruitment and higher levels of
activity than was typical of the SWP. The work done on SRT and
inter-sectionalism continued, deepened and served to differentiate the
organization from the IST although more recently and more cautiously the SWP
too has begun to take SRT seriously. The downside of the ISO in this period
however was that its organizational forms became rigid and to a considerable
degree clientelist. That is the small core of comrades around Ahmed Shawki and
Sharon Smith, recruited in the early 1980s, functioned as the core leadership
of the ISO and as such as an undeclared faction protective of its position and
privileges. This group was however becoming more detached from the work carried
out by the cadre as a result of the leadership roles coming to be seen as
theirs by right of being the founders of the organization. Distanced from the
general membership a process of ossification was now impacting the leadership but
at the same time the membership too was increasingly distanced from new layers
entering into revolt who were far more plebeian than the highly educated
graduate members of the ISO. The ability of the ISO to intervene, recruit and
root itself in the working class was now adversely affected by the class background
of a majority of the organizations leading members in stark contrast with the
self conception of the organization as the best fighters for socialism within
the workers movement. Crucially however it was not the social position of both
leadership and members as such that kept them outside the newly emerging
struggles but the false perspectives and false orientation of the leadership.
Those not busy being born are busy dying.
The economic crisis of 2009 hit
the USA hard and continued attacks on the working class led to a series of
revolts against capital. To its credit the ISO intervened in all of these
struggles but without any obvious major success in terms of winning influence
or recruits. In fact the membership of the organization stagnated and began to
fall in this period precipitating a series of local crises within it that would
reach a false crescendo in 2014, with the formation of the Renewal Faction, only
to reappear at
the final Convention in 2019. Time does not allow for detailed discussion of
each local crisis, nor do they merit such treatment, but there is value in
briefly looking at them as they allow us to identify a number of common
features which cannot but be understood other than as morbid symptoms with
regard to the body politic of the ISO.
Among the earliest such localized
crises was that of 2010 in New York City where a document concerning the
recruitment and retention of members of color was attacked by the NYC District
Committee throwing the district into crisis and leading to the direct
involvement of the Steering Committee. An attempt to reconcile those involved
would again surface in 2013. Also in 2010 an expulsion in Washington
DC led to the resignation of eight other members a majority of the
branch’s members of color. As in NYC the SC was directly involved and acted in
a heavy handed manner from all accounts. If the experiences of NYC and
Washington DC were the result of asking why the ISO had problems recruiting and
retaining people of color, itself a symptom of a more general malaise, local
crises in the Bay Area, Chicago and New England addressed that malaise more
directly.
One such incident was that as a result
of political disagreements
in the Bay Area between 2009-11
six experienced members left the organization but remained in touch with each
other in an informal grouping. As is common with such only partially developed
critics of an established leadership having published their criticisms of the
ISO leadership they dissolved and went their different ways politically.[20]
Another which was in many respects similar to the case of the Bay Area Six
concerned seven comrades in Chicago who after leaving the ISO formed the short
lived Socialist Outpost group. Little more than a now defunct website Socialist
Outpost did at least post a document that raised some legitimate criticisms
concerning the perspectives and organizational practices of the ISO. The last grouping to develop criticisms of
the ISO in this period did so from within the organization, which formally
constituted itself as the Renewal Faction, appears to have made attempts to
form links with other dissidents but they too, having been expelled as a body,
fell apart leaving only their website as evidence of their existence.[21]
It is far from unusual that when small socialist groups fail to
grow as expected that some members will search around for explanations as
happened in the ISO at the beginning of this decade. In such circumstances some
comrades will develop criticisms of the revolutionary organization to which
they belong which appear to be very leftist or radical but enable them to move
to the right politically once the threads connecting them to the organization
are severed.[22]
This would appear to be the case with the comrades from the Bay Area, Chicago
and I would presume of the majority of former Renewal Faction comrades too. It
is only proper then to examine their declared positions regardless of where
they as individuals stand today or the actions of individuals at the time of
these disputes.
All three groups raised similar arguments and criticisms of the
ISO. To be brief all argued that the perspectives developed by the group were
wrong and did not even come close to describing the current period. In addition
to which the group was accused of pandering to liberals while ignoring more
radical elements. Moreover much was made of the weaknesses of the groups
internal regime and it is on this point and only on this point that they scored
a direct hit. Each of the three groups made further points which the others
tended to endorse later. We might mention in this respect the accusation by the
Renewal Faction that CERSC,[23]
the tax free body associated with the ISO, was a source of corruption and of
the NGOization of the organization. Which is a real problem for the left and
not just in the USA but it cannot be shown that CERSC is a cause let alone the
cause for the problems of the ISO. All of the groups tended to locate some or
all of the ISO alleged weaknesses in its former links with the SWP (Britain) or
in Trotskyism which was for the Bay Area comrades mired in an idealism which
they traced to the Transitional Program of 1938. We shall return to this point
later.
Having developed a set of criticisms of the ISO it is striking
that none of the critical groups saw fit to put forward any kind of political alternative
other than to declare that the crisis in the organization was one of a lack of
theory, in the case of the Renewal Faction, or that a number of organizational
changes were needed. Some of these suggestions, made by the Bay Area group in
their article The Theory and Practice of Idealism in Trotskyism and the ISO,
merit further discussion in part because the answers to these points made in
the internal Pre-Convention Bulletins of the ISO are at best partial and
sometimes wrong if the past practice of the Marxist movement is taken as our
reference point. One such point being the call for the right to form permanent
factions. A nonsense given that a faction is by definition a temporary body
within a larger body which seeks to revise the perspectives or the theoretical
foundations of the latter body in part or full by replacing or convincing the
existing leadership of its case. As for the demand for Elected District Organizers the
real question here is not the assertion of the elective principal but rather
the belief on the part of the dissident comrades that District Organizers will
act as representatives of a disliked Steering Committee. While this can be true
it misunderstands the proper role of both the leading committee and the
appointed organizers that they defend the groups politics, some might say
program, and perspectives not their personal whims or fancies. Both the
dissident comrades and the representatives of the leadership who did their best
to refute the propositions of the Renewal Faction reveal here their lack of
comprehension as to the role that a program plays in building the revolutionary
movement. This is also true of the demands that the slate system of election
for the Steering Committee be abolished and that body be elected anew. Only the call
for debates to be aired in public in the Socialist Worker comes close to
understanding that the revolutionary group can only develop healthily if its
periphery is party to the debates within it. With each of the demands and the
rebuttals made in the Pre-Convention Bulletins organisational fixes were made
to substitute for lack of political answers to questions only hinted at.
A Return to the Status Quo Ante Bellum?
Having devoted a
considerable amount of effort debating their dissidents in Socialist Worker and
more so in the Pre-Convention Bulletins the leadership of the ISO and the
membership settled down to more positive discussions and implementing the
campus perspective. The discussions centred for the most part on how to make
the ISO better relate to, recruit and retain members from specially oppressed
groups. To some considerable degree this was the result of the leadership being
alert to the nature of the ISO being unrepresentative of the working class and
the organizations periphery. Despite itself in some ways the long established
leadership around Shawki and Smith had endeavoured, since the break with the
SWP and IST, to develop new theories in areas where they felt they were weak.
For example the rejection by the SWP of Marxist feminist analyses and positions
was firmly jettisoned and replaced by a more nuanced thinking which placed a
heavy onus on Social Reproduction Theory. SRT was supplemented by
Inter-sectional theory, although less successfully in the opinion of this
writer, and a more open approach to identity politics. On the other hand the
leadership remained committed to maintaining its own position and the sometimes
harsh regime that had long characterised the organization appears to have
remained unwelcoming for many especially members of socially oppressed groups.
It is a dangerous
moment in the life of a state when a hitherto authoritarian regime attempts a
process of democratic reform and liberalisation. The same is true of small
revolutionary groups dominated by long established leaders. Yet in a halting
sometimes contradictory manner this appears to have been one of the tasks the
leadership of the ISO seems to have been rather blindly groping towards after
breaking with the SWP. In this they were at times supported and at times pushed
forwards by a part of the membership concerned as to the relatively stagnant
development of the group. Such was the level of concern at all levels of the
organization that even members of the sitting SC began to consider the need for
a change in the organizational structures of the group and a change in
orientation. Initially however the leadership was able to retain its positions
despite limited organizational changes at the 2018 Convention but as we know
this gathering served to set the scene for the more dramatic changes that took
place at the 2019 Convention.
The Leadership Fractures and Falls.
The groundwork for the ouster of
the hard core of the Ahmed/Smith leadership team had been begun in earlier
years with the most important constitutional change being the move to the
election of leadership bodies by voting on individual candidates rather than on
a single full slate of approved candidates. The moral prohibition on factions
was also greatly relaxed and the convention delegates were faced for the first
time with the choice of four competing platforms putting forward candidates on
clear if limited political platforms. The four platforms in question being in
the first instance the Minority of the outgoing SC led by Ahmed/Smith which
stood on the basis of their record; the SC Majority which had at its core much
of the historic leadership of the ISO and called for a reorientation, or
retooling as they put it, that would make the ISO more interventionist; the
Independence and Struggle platform based on a number of district leaders which
called for further democratization of the group and in common with the SC
Majority a more interventionist orientation and finally there was the Socialist
Tide Revolutionary Current platform which agreed on the need to face outwards
but also argued for making use of the Democratic Party ballot line.
Dramatically not a single member
of the SC Minority Platform won a place on the incoming SC. Take together the
SC Majority and the Independence and Struggle Platforms won a plurality of seats.
Given the large areas of agreement between the SC Majority and the Independence
and Struggle Platforms, not to mention Socialist Tide and the independents, it
should have been a reasonably easy task to beginning working on the much talked
about retooling of the ISO in order for it to become a more interventionist
organisation. Given the degree of agreement a new majority leadership could and
indeed should have been forged around the coming together of the SC Majority
and the I&S Platforms but in the few weeks that the organization had before
the crisis broke no one from either Platform attempted to bring them together. Within
a few weeks the ISO had dissolved.
It could be argued that had the
Former Member letter not unleashed all of the various problems the ISO had long
harboured that the incoming leadership would have weathered the storm. Such a
scenario rests on the probability that the SC Majority and the I&S Platform
would have been able to find enough common ground to allow the organization to
reorientate itself by means of democratic reform and by turning outwards
towards the class. This writer finds this possibility to be doubtful given the
generally rightist politics of some members of the SC Majority and the
involvement of some in the previous regimes leadership methods. The probability
is that at least part of the older cadre would have fought above all else for
the preservation of their own positions regardless of the needs of the
membership. Given the tendency of much of the older cadre to seek agreement
with the right wing this could easily have led to a fudged position with regard
to the Democratic Party being adopted at the projected Special Convention that
was scheduled for September. The result would have been either a renewed
factional struggle or an organization burdened with perspectives on labor and
the Democrats that were in contradiction with each other. For revolutionaries
political clarity is a positive just as it is a massive drawback for centrists.
The Revolutionary Suicide of the ISO.
The events that followed the
Convention can easily be summarized. Not long after the Convention a
communication was received from a Former Member which recounted an alleged
sexual assault by a member of the ISO and more damningly the efforts made by
the former leadership to conceal it and protect the alleged rapist.[24]
The case was not new and was well known both within the ISO and amongst the
wider left. Within the ISO the question of how members could be protected and
how such incidents should best be dealt with had been a major subject of
discussion for a number of years. The so called Delta Affair in the SWP where a
leading member had been protected by his allies in the leadership of that
organization only made the letter from the FM more explosive. What was new in
that letter was the revelation as to how great the efforts of elements of the
former leadership had been to protect the alleged rapist. It was also a massive
shock when it was revealed that the alleged rapist had been elected onto the
incoming SC as a supporter of the Independence and Struggle Platform. Another
communication coming only four days later from a leading figure revealing her
knowledge and participation in the affair served to deepen the shock many
comrades were now experiencing and set in motion the dissolution of the
organization already demanded in the FM letter.
From this point a tidal wave of
expulsions, suspensions and resignations decimated the incoming Steering
Committee and National Committee leaving surviving comrades reeling and
emotionally battered.[25]
The calls to dissolve the organization grew ever louder and more insistent
until it was resolved to hold a ballot to decide the issue. The ballot was held
after a very short discussion nationally, not a single bulletin was produced
for example indeed there were no written documents other than hastily written
resolutions, with many branches not having the opportunity to meet. With the
leadership buckling under pressure, none of the members of the new SC had been
elected to that body before 2014, it is significant that at no time did the
Crisis Leadership Team – which consisted of surviving members of the SC and NC
plus a number of other comrades – take any kind of initiative or make any
proposal as a collective. That each and every member of the CLT acted properly
and as best they could in dire circumstances is not in question what is vital
is that as a leadership they took no responsibility for proposing a way forward
that is to say leading the organization. It was then all but inevitable that little
more than two weeks after the FM letter appeared the membership of the ISO
voted to dissolve the organization. More hopefully it was also resolved that
the CLT remain in place, if only to manage the remaining tasks to ensure an
orderly dissolution, and that in the future a new model organization be
founded.
The act of revolutionary suicide
had then been taken to its logical conclusion: the ISO had dissolved so that a
new revolutionary organization might be born. But how?
What Killed the ISO?
What killed the ISO is not an
easy question to answer as it cannot but be the case that a considerable number
of factors played a role. It is certainly true that the nature of the
organizations internal culture and the bullying that was a part of it was a
major contributory factor. The regime however was not evenly experienced in
every constituent part of the organization with smaller branches, especially
those distant from the center, being far less affected. It would appear that
the positives of belonging to a sizeable national organization far outweighed
the minuses for the smaller branches. By extension the same considerations
apply in full force to the treatment sometimes meted out to POC and other
specially oppressed comrades. Nor can it be said that the legacies of the SWP
are what brought the ISO down unless one wishes to ignore the fact that it was
the theory and politics taken from the SWP that played a massive role in the growth
of the ISO from at least 1983 onwards. These related criticisms have more than
a little justification it must be said but rather than address such problems
politically it is observable that the solutions typically proposed tend to be
organizational in character.
Some critics wind the clock back
further by arguing that it was the original sin of Leninism or Democratic
Centralism that destroyed the ISO but this argument is almost invariably a
rationalisation on the part of those using it to allow them to move towards a
reformist vision of socialism. The rapid growth of the DSA has proven to be a
magnet for such comrades. As a rationalisation it is rarely necessary for such
comrades to examine what Leninism or Democratic Centralism means in the context
of an advanced country in the neo-liberal world. Another related argument is
that it is the Transitional Program of 1938 that distorted the Marxism of the
ISO and caused it to develop elitist and substitutionist tendencies. These
latter arguments contain a germ of truth but are not developed by those
deploying them if only because discussion of Leninism and transitional politics
was not an area that was paid any consistent or systematic attention in the ISO
or for that matter any IS tradition group.[26] It
is to these questions that our attention must be given if we are to understand who
killed the ISO.
Transitional Politics.
As we have seen the ISO can trace
its political origins back to the Fourth Internationalist movement led by Leon
Trotsky an ancestry it shares with the every one of the 57 varieties of
Trotskyism today. Regrettably this also led it to share some of the weaknesses
that stem from the development of Trotskyism as a faction of the Communist
International that was forced to transform itself into a tiny palimpsest of
what was a mass movement. All too often this has led the various organizations
that claim to be Trotskyist to ignore or treat with contempt figures from even
the early days of the Comintern that did not join the Trotskyist movement. The
only major exceptions to this rule being Gramsci and to a lesser degree
Mariategui indeed some Trotskyists appear to make it a point of honour to be as
hostile as possible to any Marxist thinker or activist who was not a disciple
of Leon Trotsky. Finding any discussion of figures as important as Korsch or
Thalheimer in the publications of the Trotskyist groups was until recently as
rare as hens teeth. Even a figure as important,
although rather problematical, as Lukacs is only rarely discussed in the
publications and on the websites of the various groups.
All of the groups which emerged
from the political destruction of the Fourth International after World War 2[27]
were isolated from the working class and could do little more than attempt to
defend the politics and perspectives which they had inherited. For most groups
this led to a failure to understand the changed political landscape and total
confusion as to the class nature of Stalinism. The upshot was that only a tiny
number of groups tried to develop their understanding of contemporary
capitalism rather than simply rely on outmoded formulas. Some of the tendencies
which did seek to deepen their understanding of capitalism would depart from
the framework of Trotskyism entirely, as with the Johnson-Forrest Tendency and
Socialisme ou Barbarie, while contributing considerable insights in a number of
areas self-consciously broke with Trotskyism. Those few groups that exhibited
an ability to evolve invariably lost or forgot crucial elements from the
theoretical and political armoury that they laid claim to.
This forgetfulness led to
distortions and lacunae, in both IS traditions, when they began to grow from
the early 1960s onwards. Both groups stressed the centrality of the working
class to the revolutionary project and the need for a revolutionary socialist
party but neither group did much to elaborate revolutionary strategy[28]
and tended to treat talk of a program as being a slightly shoddy legacy that
could be easily discarded. As the orthodox Trotskyists tended to use Trotsky’s
Transitional Program of 1938, the central purpose of which was to map out a
viable revolutionary strategy for the Fourth International, as a kind of
shopping list from which slogans would be extracted and used as substitutes for
developing strategies based on the struggle in the real world IS might be
forgiven for forgetting the purpose of a program to a party building project.
Worse than this the very idea of transitional politics was forgotten due to its
being associated with sectarian tendencies. That the development of program and
revolutionary strategy, based on the use of transitional politics, was
foundational to Leninism and the early Comintern[29]
was also forgotten at least for most of the time.
Typically when Trotskyists
discuss the concept of transitional demands or slogans reference is made to the
discussions with members of the American SWP that took place in 1938 around the
time of the foundation of that party and of the Fourth International. In those
discussions Trotsky makes many excellent points but it is significant that his
arguments bear considerable similarity to those of Thalheimer made earlier in 1928.
The arguments made by Thalheimer are superior in their greater clarity and
explain how transitional slogans are to be used by revolutionary communists. In
the first instance he differentiates between transitional measures and
transitional slogans in the practice of Marx and Engels a point which has often
confused later commentators. He then discusses how in Marx’s work transitional
slogans are not just used, as they were in Russia in 1917, as mobilising
slogans prior to the workers taking hold of the state power but are also to be
used to educate the workers after a defeat in order to prepare for the next
revolutionary offensive. He describes how this concept of a transitional
politics can be found in the famous Circular of the Central Committee of the
Communist League of 1850 and in doing so links transitional politics to the
concept of permanent revolution although this is not explicitly brought out in
his comments. Thalheimer continues by citing the practice of the Bolsheviks
before the October Revolution and cites Radeks speech concerning The These on
Tactics passed by the Comintern at its Third Congress in 1921. He notes how
transitional slogans were to be used not only immediately prior to the seizure
of state power but also in preparation for that moment as their use would
educate the party cadre and the working class masses. Crucially for today he
notes how the general crisis of capitalism means that transitional slogans
retain their importance even in periods that are not revolutionary. And was it
not noted as far back as Clauswitz that a successful defense can be turned into
a successful offense if the army has been prepared for such an eventuality
before the moment of decision arrives?
An IS Program?
Discussion and debate in the ISO
over questions of political strategy was restricted to discussions over
individual tactics only. If the Transitional Program of 1938 was mentioned it
was only in reference to the work of Trotsky and it was left unexplored. The
wider question as to whether or not the ISO needed a program of any kind was
largely left like a red haired stepchild ignored in a corner. To return for a
moment to the prehistory of the ISO we know that when Shactman formed the
Workers Party in 1940 it took as its own the Transitional Program and adopted a
number of resolutions that modified the perspectives of that document in the
light of developments and their changing theoretical assessment of the world.
In this revisionism they were acting in an entirely orthodox manner – the SRC
would act in a similar manner when founded a decade later – which approach
changed when they dissolved into the Socialist Party. In the meantime they drew
up and adopted The Fight for Socialism[30]
as their program which in its turn was modified as events dictated. When the
socialism from below tendency was refounded as an independent body however it
was to lack a program.
Across the pond in good old
Blighty the SRG/IS also lacked a program but as a small group lacking the
attributes both good and bad of a Leninist group its members were, at least until
1968, relatively homogenous politically and did not require the adoption of a
formal programmatic document as a lode star. With the transformation of IS into
a formally Leninist organisation and its growth in numbers the question did
arise a number of times during the 1970s in part due to the efforts and
influence of more orthodox Trotskyists but more one suspects as a result of
inexperienced but clever comrades reading the freshly republished collections
of Trotskys writings from the 1930s.
Historically the Trotskyist
movement in Britain had been almost totally working class in terms of its
social composition with intellectuals a rarity. This had changed, reflecting
the growth of working class youth attending universities, with a steady
recruitment of students throughout the 1960s. 1968 enabled IS to double its
size and for a brief moment become an overwhelmingly student based
organization. Due to the theoretical work done before 1968 it remained an
organization intent on building itself within the working class movement
particularly among shop stewards who led the then and often powerful unofficial
Joint Ship Stewards Committees in the factories and workplaces. After further
growth IS began a Turn to Industry, rejecting the idea of colonising students
by having them take jobs in factories, it systematically built itself and
strengthened the stewards movement by selling copies of the weekly Socialist
Worker at factory gates and union meetings. At the same time a natural drift of
former students into white collar jobs, primarily teaching and the Civil Service,
enabled IS to build a small but real base in many economic sectors. This in
fierce competition with the then still powerful Stalinist Party and the far
more numerous but unorganised left-wing members of the Labour Party in the
union movement.
1972 was the highwater mark of
workers power in Post War Britain[31]
and IS too reached its high point at this time. Temporarily stalled, as they
thought, IS spent some of its energies engaged in a series of internal
discussions on numerous questions. One question raised by various internal
critics concerned the need for IS to adopt its own program which position was
also endorsed by various members of the leadership. The debate on the question
was of a poor quality if only because the internal critics were of far less
ability than the leadership who would appear to have been of the opinion that
although a program might be a good idea it would be better to concentrate for
the moment on other matters. Nonetheless sections of the membership continued
to press for such a program and it was agreed to draw such a document up.[32] The
most extraordinary aspect of what was a comprehensive but poorly elaborated
document was that it was forgotten as soon as it was adopted, unamended, at IS
Conference. Not long afterwards in a bout of vainglory IS would be relaunched
as the Socialist Workers Party without a founding conference or a program in
stark but uncommented upon contrast to all previous practice in the
revolutionary movement. It was a major step backwards towards a sectarian
understanding of the vanguard party.
Since the 1970s there has been no
explicit discussion as to the need for a program or transitional politics in
and around the SWP but for one rather peculiar exception. In 2003 Alex
Callinicos, the best known theorist associated with the SWP, published his
Anti-Capitalist Manifesto.[33]
The book is one of his more accessible works but appears to have provoked very
little debate or controversy it did however deserve far better. If only because
in his book Callinicos essays a rare contemporary attempt to describe
transitional demands and to elaborate his own personal program using the method
of transitional politics. It is the opinion of this writer that he failed but
it is telling that even in his own organization the book appears to have sunk
with but little trace ironically only a few years before the current revival of
discussions concerning socialist strategy now underway.
It is perhaps a little more
surprising that IS (US) never saw fit to draw up a program of their own given
that a number of its founders had been members of the SWP when it supported the
Transitional Program and later when the WP adopted Shachtman’s The Fight for
Socialism as its program in 1946. As with the IS in Britain the organisation in
the USA was far more concerned to build a group based in the working class even
if it meant forgetting the centrality of a program in developing and anchoring a
political strategy. It is notable that when the strike movement that IS had
hitched itself to and the social movements went into a decline this lack of
strategic vision was a major cause of the disintegration of IS into three
organizations IS, Workers Power and the fledgling ISO.
The ISO Without Strategy or Program.
The ISO inherited its blindness
to questions of revolutionary strategy and transitional politics from both of
its parents. Which was not a problem when the organization was too small to do much
other than make socialist propaganda and engage in the primitive accumulation
of cadre. But once Third Party initiatives began to appear, with Nader’s run in
1996 being the first, and when more recently a reformist organization of modest
scale, the Democratic Socialists of America, developed the ISO simply did not
know how to orientate itself to these new political phenomena. But these were
not new problems for Trotskyists in the USA which had faced the challenge of
the Henry Wallace[34]
presidential bid in 1948 for the short-lived Progressive Party which the
Stalinists and radical liberal types backed with great enthusiasm. The basis of
the case made against joining the Wallace movement was that it was a campaign
not for a workers party, could not be converted into a labor or workers party
and reduced those workers who did join it to mere foot soldiers in a third
bourgeois party.
At bottom the same is true of the
Green Party today for which some members of the ISO have not only been enthusiasts
for in the past but have also run as candidates on its ticket. At the time of
writing the Green Party is beginning the process of selecting a candidate for
the 2020 presidential election. Without a shadow of a doubt the best candidate
declared thus far is Howie Hawkins.[35]
But despite declaring his politics as being based on working class
independence, by which he means from the twin parties of capital rather than
independence from all wings of capital, he has a record of supporting bourgeois
Third Parties. Were it not for the far greater gravitational pull of the
Sanders campaign one cannot but wonder whether the ISO would have developed a
crush on the Greens this election cycle.
The root of the problem posed by
giving electoral support to the Green Party or to Third Parties in general is not
the problem of revolutionaries being drawn into electoral adventures as such
but that of substitutionism and the lack of an independent strategy. Electoral
work as such always runs the risk of not only degenerating into reformism but it
also tends to elevate the candidates and elected delegates above the class
which they represent. This is a particularly dangerous tendency where there is
not an established reformist party that is organisationally independent of and
counter-posed to the more open bourgeois parties as is the case in many
developed countries. Where such a party does not exist there cannot but be a
danger that the elected representatives come to be seen as a substitute for the
self activity of the working class and its own independent party. Without such
a party participation in electoral work potentially becomes a substitute to the
struggle for a workers party independent of all factions of the ruling class
which must be at the centre of any revolutionary strategy in the USA today. If
only because the formation of such a party however it might come about poses
the question of which class must rule which is the question that any program
based on transitional politics raises as its central thrust.
The Last Supper of the ISO.
It is no great revelation that
the ISO killed itself but at the moment of its suicide declared that a new
revolutionary organization would be built using a better model of organization.
But revolutionary suicide, which demands that others take the place of the
fallen in the revolutionary struggle, cannot be reduced to organizational
models but must be firmly based on a revolutionary politics or rather on a
revolutionary program. The suicide of a revolutionary organization is also an
admission that the organizations leaders have become convinced that they
cannot, as a collective, offer any kind of leadership in terms of offering an
alternative strategy that can triumph in the struggle between the classes. Such
an organization once it has dissolved cannot be recuperated regardless of
whatever organizational forms it might adopt without a deeper analysis of why
it failed in the first instance. One must stress that those who have led any
such organization to even consider revolutionary suicide are not fit to play
any leadership role in any new organization.
The irony of the revolutionary
suicide of the ISO is that it need not have happened as it was contradictory to
the aims it was meant to accomplish. This is best understood if we take a short
look at the events that led to the dissolution of the ISO and ask at each stage
what its political meaning was. The first stage of the final act of the ISO
cannot be dated, other than by participants, but it is possible to assert that
from roughly 2008 onwards some members of the ISO were concerned that the
orientation of the group to the campuses was not enabling them to build either
roots in the working class or to recruit young people. This in turn led to a
questioning of the democratic structures of the ISO and its long established
leadership. Regrettably some of the comrades raising such concerns acted in a
destructive and overly factional manner, as discussed above, with the result
that they were expelled from the ISO.[36]
As the leadership doubled down on
the campus orientation and that orientation still did not yield the desired
results more comrades became critical and ominously divisions began to open up
within the core of the Steering Committee although these divisions did not
appear until discussion before the 2018 Convention. That Convention did however
lay some of the groundwork for the contested Convention of 2019 and saw the
leadership openly challenged as to the importance of the organization being
implanted in the working class by a number of district level cadre. When a year
later the ISO met again in Convention it would prove to be the last the
organisation would hold.
For a small organization the
members of the ISO wrote a prodigious quantity of material in the
pre-Convention Discussion Bulletins that prepared the 2019 Convention with a
total of 10,143 pages being published in 45 bulletins. Before taking a brief
look at the political contents of the bulletins this writer cannot but comment
that, other than in conditions of illegality, revolutionary communist
organizations historically conducted their discussions in their public organs
in full view of the working class. It is to the credit of the ISO that in
recent years some of their discussions, both internal and with other
socialists, have taken place in Socialist Worker and the International
Socialist Review. Why today small revolutionary organizations still persist in
the outmoded practice of restricting their internal discussions to the chosen
few belonging to the group and those who know where to look for such material
baffles this writer. Do we not trust our allies in the movement and those we
wish to recruit?
As one might expect the subjects
covered in the bulletins vary from the mundane but important, finance for
example, to questions concerning revolutionary strategy and discipline. The
last named will not be discussed in any detail here as it is the opinion of
this writer that small revolutionary organizations are not able to treat this
question properly when the full cooperation of all parties concerned is not
forthcoming. In such circumstances where serious offences against a person are
alleged we cannot proceed but have no other recourse than to recommend that the
matter be subject to the usual legal process and where a comrade is alleged to
have offended that a court of honour be convened consisting of respected
individuals who are not members of the organization in question. Neither
recourse can be considered satisfactory but are there any outcomes that would
be satisfactory to all concerned?
The main areas covered in the
discussions were internal democracy and related to that organizational
functioning, work among and aimed at the recruitment of oppressed groups and
the groups perspectives. While many individual documents and statements were
published the discussion centered around positional documents produced by four
Platforms representing four very different ideas of the way forward for the
organization. These Platforms being the outgoing Steering Committee Minority,
the Steering Committee Majority, the Independence and Struggle Platform and
finally the Socialist Tide, Revolutionary Current Platform. For the first time
in the history of the ISO all leading committees were to be elected on the
basis of individual candidacies not on the basis of a recommended list. This
change a result of the previous Convention would result in an internal
revolution. None of the contending platforms would over more than a partial
list of candidates and a number of other members stood as individuals.
The first of the Platforms, the
SC Minority, represented the historic leadership of the ISO around Ahmed
Shawki, Sharon Smith and a small number of their closest associates stood on
the basis of a deepening of the campus orientation and other than producing or
rather republishing a number of documents from the ISO’s founding presented no
new arguments in favour of its perspectives. Despite their pre-eminent place in
the group’s history not one person on its list was elected. The second
platform, the SC Majority, was also formed by long standing leading members of
the ISO who until only months before had been closely associated with Shawki
and Smith. Like many converts to a cause they had once opposed they argued
forcibly for a greater democratization of the ISO and for a more
interventionist stance in social movements and the unions. It is interesting
that one of their leading figures, Todd Chretien, also argued for support for
independent socialist candidates in elections.
Based more on experienced cadre
at branch and district levels the Independence and Struggle Platform also and more
convincingly argued for a greater democratization of the ISO, and a more
interventionist stance. It was the core of the I&S Platform that had been
pressing, with increasing support from much of the group’s members, for such a
change of regime and perspective for some years. The fourth platform, Socialist
Tide Revolutionary Current, made similar arguments but also added arguments for
using the ballot line of the Democratic Party in elections. This last position
cannot be interpreted as anything other than a timid move towards open support
for Bernie Sanders run for the Democratic nomination for President and a move
towards membership of the Democratic Socialists of America the fake socialist
auxiliary to the Democratic Party. It is indicative of the confusion in the ISO
that a proposal from Socialist Tide for a Special Convention to decide the
groups attitude towards Sanders and the Democrats was passed.
The result of the election for
the senior committees was that the SC Minority was left without even a single
supporter on those bodies and its leadership of the ISO since 1984 ended. The
SC Majority and the I&S Platforms emerged with roughly 40% of seats with
the rest split between Socialist Tide and a number of independents. A workable
majority leadership should have been able to coalesce around the shared aims of
a more democratic regime and a more interventionist stance towards the
movements. To speculate for a moment it is also more than possible that debate
around the projected Special Convention that was planned for September 2019
would also have won for the group a far greater degree of clarity as to the
position to be adopted towards bourgeois political formations such as the
Democratic Party. That this might have led to the loss of a numer of cadre although
regrettable would have been a price well worth paying. As to whether such
clarity could have been extended to smaller bourgeois formations, as for
example the Green Party, or to the Janus like role played by the DSA is to be
doubted given the vacillating position of some long-standing leaders of the ISO
as for example Todd Chretien.
The Revolutionary Suicide of the ISO.
Whatever might have happened we
cannot know because within a few weeks of the Convention it was sunk by the
weight of its own weaknesses. It is important to understand that after the
Convention the small apparat of the ISO continued to work as if nothing significant
had taken place and given the continuity of leading figures in a certain sense
nothing of importance had occurred. Socialist Worker continued to appear, ISO
Notes an internal newsletter was distributed as usual and some of the branches
met to conduct business. Others, mainly those based on campuses, were not to
meet again until the ISO had dissolved. On the surface everything appeared to
be normal as ISO members and members of the radical public waited for reports
of the Convention to appear.
Then in early March a document
was presented to the incoming leadership that came to be known as the Former
Member document. The FM document detailed, from the point of view of a former
member of the ISO National Disciplinary Committee, how an investigation into an
alleged rape years earlier had gone terribly wrong due to the direct
intervention of members of the Steering Committee. Full details of the case
cannot be given here as it is the contention of this writer that it was not the
undoubted miscarriage of justice that took place that destroyed the ISO but
rather the arbitrary and bureaucratic practices of the leadership that led to
its indecently swift collapse. Suffice it then to say that as a result of their
alleged involvement in the case Ahmed Shawki and Sharon Smith were suspended
from membership of the ISO. The alleged perpetrator, a member of the I&S
Platform, was summarily expelled and a close friend of his, both newly elected
to leading committees, was suspended as were other senior figures including
Joel Geier a nominee of the SC Majority but also known to be a backer of the
I&S Platform.
Such a dramatic blow to the
incoming leading committees could not but have serious repercussions but it is
doubtful that had there been an established or determined leadership in place
that the organization needed to collapse at this point. Nonetheless the
internal distribution of the FM Letter and its call for the dissolution of the
ISO found an echo among the shocked members of the group. Most strikingly the
call in the FM Letter to dissolve the ISO was taken up by many comrades who now
resigned from the organization. As events began to unfold further revelations
deepened the sense of moral outrage that many rightly held leading to a
spiralling of despair and disillusion. On the basis of personal communications
I would go as far as to say that some comrades experienced clinical shock,
others were panicked by events and all of the active members were thrown into a
state of despair.
As the leading committees discussed
the situation they found that events dictated that yet more of their number be
suspended from their roles as when Alan Maass and Joel Geier came into conflict
over conflicting interpretations of the role of the latter in the cover up of
the scandal discussed in the FM Letter. Once that dispute came to light both
Maass and Geier were suspended the latter resigning from the ISO soon after. A
letter received from a long time organiser detailing her affair with Shawki and
alleging abuse by him further damaged the new leadership as younger members
like Akua Ofori resigned taking the time on the way out to raise the call that
the ISO dissolve. One of the earliest resignations being that of Keeanga
Yamahatta-Taylor who resigned from the SC and the ISO. A collective resignation
letter was drawn up by members of the Socialist Tide Platform and other
comrades, including Tithi Bhattacharya, who shared their liquidationist
positions. A small number of branches disaffiliated with Berkeley dissolving
itself. Meanwhile a small grouping around Ahmed Shawki also resigned their
membership further increasing the sense of crisis that now swept through the
organization.
So sudden was the momentum of the
crisis that on 3/13/19 a letter from the SC to the ISO membership was discussing
the next steps for the organization in the light of the FM Letter. A week later, 3/22/19 to be precise, the
surviving members of both the SC and NC again wrote to the members this time to
notify them of a national call on which a number of propositions were to be
tabled for discussion preparatory to a vote. Ominously dissolution, in a number
of forms full and partial, was suggested as an option. It is important to
realise that at this point, despite the loss of a number of members of the SC
and NC as well as members of the groups apparatus, that the organization was
continuing to function except where branches had disaffiliated and even they
were still holding meetings! Despite the depth of the crisis which was sucking
all life out of the organizations new leadership the smaller branches and twigs
were less affected with the crisis most intensely felt in the larger districts
such as Chicago, New York and the Bay Area. It was of course in these areas
that the arbitrary hand of the old leadership had been felt most leading to
recriminations and bitterness as members of the new leadership, especially
those affiliated with the SC Majority, were implicated in the heavy handed
leadership style of the old regime.
The national call took place as scheduled
and a number of propositions were voted on subsequent to it. Even before the
call took place a call to dissolve the ISO and form a new revolutionary
organization based on an unspecified new model of organising had been
circulated winning over one hundred signatures. Whether the drafters of the
propositions that were to be adopted realized it at the time there was a great
deal of ambiguity even when all the propositions were considered as a whole. The
discussion revealed that the surviving leadership was completely disunited with
many members in shock expressing doubts about any of the options presented to
them. At the same time differences of emphasis were revealed in the comments of
the comrades speaking on the call. One comrade commented that not all of the
branches had been able to meet since the Convention despite which the members
were asked to vote without face to face meetings as is the democratic tradition
of the revolutionary movement. In another breach of tradition comrades who had
resigned from the organization, thereby expressing a lack of confidence in the
politics and remaining members, were to be re-enfranchised!
The result was a forgone
conclusion with an overwhelming decision to dissolve the organization,
liquidate its assets and construct a new revolutionary socialist organization
on a new organizational model. Of the 474 current and past members who voted
245 voted to construct a new organization with 63 voting to table major
organizational decisions until Socialism 19 in July. In the short period
allotted to winding up the ISO the Crisis Leadership Team, the survivors of the
wave of resignations of the elected leadership bodies, carried out its mandate
to dissolve the organization and then disbanded itself. As far as this writer
is aware no actions were taken and no discussions took place concerning the
decision to found a new revolutionary socialist organization on the basis of a
new model. One cannot but ask why it did not fulfil this particular part of its
mandate?
Conclusions.
The attempt of the ISO to commit
revolutionary suicide failed, as it was proclaimed but not attempted, with the
upshot that its constituent parts are now little more than soldiers from dismal
defeated army wandering the battlefield looking for something living to follow.
Former officers wonder where their erstwhile followers are to be found and the
most dynamic elements are those that have abandoned the social revolutionary project
in a quest to win an audience or become integrated into the Berniecrat swamp
that is the DSA. Meanwhile on the fringes of the battlefield lurk carrion crows
looking to pick up those looking for a comfortable home safe from the
contradictions between a living movement and dry arid dogma. As we know a
corpse cannot be reanimated, except as a mindless zombie, but new struggles are
forced on the working class and other oppressed groups as capitalism twists
into ever more parasitic arbitrary forms under pressure of a worsening economic
situation. The question then is how are the remnants of the ISO to construct a
new organisation to fight for socialism and on what political basis can this
struggle take place?
Zinovievite and
libertarian digressions.
The original model for the ISO,
both organizationally and politically, although the former should always be
regarded as an expression of the latter, was as is well known the SWP. Scaled
down from the model provided by the SWP it more or less fit the ISO during a
period of retreat when the group was small and the level of open class struggle
was low. As a result of the modest growth of the group in the 1990s its
drawbacks began to negatively impact the functioning of the group and became an
impediment to recruitment and retention of members. From 2008 onwards with the
leadership becoming increasingly conservative and bureaucratised the
arbitrariness of decision making and functioning was the key cause for sections
of the membership to become oppositional seeking ways to reform the group and possibly
remove the leadership. As forms of organization have not been unique to the SWP
and ISO however and can be easily, all too easily, observed across a range of
Trotskyist groups with sometimes very different politics to those of the IS
tradition. Historically this form of bureaucratically centralized politically
arbitrary organization has been dubbed Zinovievite[37]
as it has similarities with the forms adopted by the mass Communist Parties in
the first phase of the degeneration of the Communist International under the
aegis of Zinoviev. The argument that this form of organization is either an
inheritance from the SWP or a variant of the Zinovievite model must be rejected
as it can be observed in a series of revolutionary groups which lack any roots
in the Fourth Internationalist movement of Leon Trotsky. It is only as a result
of the dissolution of almost all of the soft Maoist groups of the early 1970s
and the minuscule size of the Left Communist organizations that gives rise to
the belief that bureaucratic centralism is a form unique to organizations
derived from the Fourth International of Leon Trotsky.
Rightly many revolutionaries
including many from the IS tradition have in recent years jettisoned the
bureaucratic centralist model common to the SWP and ISO preferring to
substitute looser study circles and editorial collectives. Such forms of
organization have great advantages for participants in that they remove the
burden of having to follow a democratically agreed upon course of action and
leave decision making to the individual militant. As such they have a very limited
capacity for collective functioning especially with regard to intervening in
struggles and providing newly recruited revolutionary socialists with a basic
education in Marxism. Such loose organizational forms are also easily assimilable
to mass reformist organizations and academia where a veritable archipelago of
journals and conferences allow prominent intellectuals to become stars without
the burdensome responsibilities incumbent on elected leaders of revolutionary
socialist organizations. Working class leaders, especially emerging leaders at
a rank and file level, are in this way placed at a disadvantage denied equal
status with those who already possess a developed knowledge of Marxism, often
gained during a period of membership in one of the disdained sects, effectively
ensuring that younger workers are excluded from leadership for lack of the
proper qualifications. In a period characterised by increasing levels of social
and class struggles such loose forms of organization can only inhibit the
growth of a revolutionary communist current and elevate professional ideologues
over workers.
If the choice is between
bureaucratic centralism or a looser grouping the social revolutionary project
might well not have a future. Or at best a future that is limited to the
campuses drawing in only those rare workers who have developed a revolutionary
consciousness apart from the struggles of the mass of workers. Such a future
would condemn those who advocate it to a political life permanently on the
margin with no possibility of connecting to wider and larger layers. Another way
in which such sects survive is as a grouping of advisors to forces more
powerful as is the case with many leftist sects which function in practice as a
cross between a think tank[38],
albeit one with grand pretensions, and a band of mercenaries dedicated to a war
lord lacking principles but replete with pleasing rhetoric[39],
such groups cannot thrive. This adaptation is usually accompanied by the sect
becoming an organic part of a reformist party or where such parties do not
exist integrating their own organisation into the body of a left nationalist or
populist party.[40]
Such adaptations have been common in countries as diverse as Argentina, South
Africa and Pakistan and have always led to the defeat of those who utilise such
tactics. Something similar can be observed in those countries where Trotskyist
sects have attempted to become part of broad left parties to the left of the
traditional reformist party of any given country.
A Revolutionary
Program is the Keel of the Revolutionary Organisation.
The key to the construction of a
revolutionary socialist party must then be a consistent orientation on the
working class given our understanding that it is the self-emancipation of that
class which can achieve socialism. Any strategy or tactical turn must place
such an orientation at its centre even if the revolutionary organisation
consists of no more than a handful of comrades. Such an orientation to be
effective must be expressed in the form of a transitional program that summarises
more expansive and detailed theoretical explorations of bourgeois society and
the struggle of the classes within it. At all times it must be kept in mind
that such a program is not a substitute for the historic program of the
Communist Party.
In short a transitional program,
which is not the program of the party but rather a time limited supplement to
our program, can act as the backbone around which the body of a revolutionary
organisation can be grown. Within its pages there must be a short explanation
as to the revolutionary nature of the imperialist epoch, our understanding of
the period and the basic long term perspectives that flow from this
understanding. It follows that a transitional program would then describe the
balance of class forces and draw up in outline form the strategic aims of the
workers movement and the tactics required to achieve those aims. Such a program
would then be an action program to be placed before the class and other
oppressed groups.
A transitional program also
provides a reference point for party members and their periphery to hold the
party leadership to account. Alongside a revolutionary organizations constitution
and rules, which exist in part to limit the rights of the leadership not in
order to provide them with a cudgel with which to bludgeon factional enemies,
such a program can enable the party to take stock of its losses and gains over
a given period of time and assess whether or not the party is functioning in a
healthy manner. By healthy we mean is the party democratic and making its best
efforts to orientate on the more politically advanced layers of the working
class and oppressed. As a constant reference point for militants the program
also removes the false alternatives posed by many of either a broad party that
contains a number of tendencies and is as a result politically heterogenous or
an organization that is built on a single tendency by allowing the utmost
internal democracy for all comrades and tendencies that accept the program of
the party as binding on them.
In a sense this is the essence of
a Leninism that is based not on the forms of a long passed moment in history
but is rooted in the needs of working people today. A transitional program and
the maximum of internal democracy that does not inhibit the activity of the
organization in the class struggle. Exactly what such an organization might
look like tomorrow we cannot know today as it must be built in the struggles of
tomorrow. But we do know that an organization with the maximum of internal
democracy will be one that allows the formation of tendencies and factions, of
caucuses, of specialist affinity groups, and which demands the formation of
specialized committees at every level above that of the branch that direct the
work of party militants in a variety of areas. A party if not of leaders but of
those socialist militants who aspire to lead the class from within its ranks
not from above.
An Open Party is
needed.
In the last few years a new
radicalization has developed across most of the developed countries. Generally,
as a consequence of the retreat of working class consciousness and as a result
of that the marked decline of working class organization, this new
radialization has been ideologically shallow if widespread. In the USA this
radicalization is to some considerable degree canalized within the Democratic
Socialists of America and the related electoral campaigns centered on the
personalities of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and a small number of
local electoral campaigns. Although still small by historic standards this
movement can be fairly said to represent the consolidation of a reformist
socialist tendency in the bowels of the Democratic Party a development most
unexpected in light of the death of so many insurgent movements at the hands of
that party. It is also related to a significant if small rise in the level of
strike activity generated from the workplaces especially the ongoing teachers
revolt. All of which makes the DSA a very attractive bolt hole for long
isolated socialist veterans and refugees from the implosion of the ISO.
The growth of the DSA has proven
to be very attractive to a number of small isolated socialist tendencies in the
USA most prominently Socialist Alternative currently the American franchise of
the Committee for a Workers International. Similarly the DSA was more and more
an attractive prospect for the right wing of the ISO prior to the collapse of
the group. Even before the collapse a small number of leading ISO members had
resigned in order to militate within the larger organization and have since
been followed by a layer of the group that goes far beyond the old right wing.
It can be predicted with absolute certainty that none of the tendencies
currently lining up with the DSA will win anybody to revolutionary socialism as
a result of their liquidation into class collaborationist reformism regardless
of their formal politics and any number of articles published in Jacobin.
The comrades now making a home in
the DSA have lost confidence in revolutionary socialism becoming an attractive
force within the working class as a result of the defeat visited on them and some
have also overestimated the possibility of the DSA breaking with the Democratic
Party in order to form a new socialist party. We can also project a deepening
and development of the current radicalisation bringing new layers into play and
providing a new audience for revolutionary socialist politics as a result of
the impact of the unpredictable economic position of capitalism. In such
circumstances an open revolutionary socialist organization could find a new audience
that would substantially enlarge the weight of our tendency in the working
class. But this can only be done if comrades begin the painful process of
rebuilding an open organization that is based on the principle of working class
independence from all wings of the bourgeoisie especially the Democratic
Partgy.
Baby Steps.
It is the belief of this writer
that the comrades in the USA must begin the process of constructing a
revolutionary socialist organization immediately. The aim must be the
foundation of a national individual membership organization within a set period
of time be it a year or a lesser period. That organization must be constructed
not on the basis of a series of federated discussion groups lacking a common
platform and discipline but on the acceptance by all of a political statement
in lieu of a more developed program. The comrades in those still functioning
local collectives that were once ISO branches and the many scattered former
members, especially those in NYC, Chicago and the Bay Area, must begin a
discussion as to what must be done immediately.
It is not the place of this
writer to suggest what must be done concretely but it would be remiss no to
point out that the IS tradition, considered in the loosest sense, developed a project
that came far closer than any other Marxist current to developing a revolutionary
understanding of contemporary class society in the post 1945 world than any of
its many rivals. To a considerable degree the problems that caused its
implosion and attempted revolutionary suicide are also to be found in the ranks
of the so called orthodox Trotskyists often with additional problems unique to
them. That said there are many fine revolutionaries to be found in such
organizations some of whom might find their way into a new organization if the
will is to be found for such an eventuality on both sides. It would then be
foolish of this writer to make concrete suggestions as to a course of action of
which he can be no more than a concerned and sympathetic observer from afar but
comrades at very least call a meeting, set up a discussion bulletin, get some
money together for a war chest, but whatever you do start the process now.
Neprimerimye.
96/07/19
[1] Milton Fisk, Socialism From Below in the United
States, The Origins of the ISO, 1977, http://www.marxists.de/trotism/fisk/index.htm
[2]
Martin Glaberman, Wartime Strikes, The Struggle Against the No-Strike Pledge in
the UAW During World War 2, 1980, https://libcom.org/files/Martin_Glaberman_-_Wartime_Strikes_1_2_0.pdf
[3]
Peter Drucker, Max Shachtman and His Left; A Socialist's
Odyssey Through the 'American Century' Humanities Press, New Jersey 1994.
[4] The journals published by IS, including Workers Power,
can be found here https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workerspower/index.htm
[5] Steve Zeluck obituary by Sy Landy, Proletarian
Revolution No. 24, Summer 1985; Steve Zeluck – Revolutionary Marxist by Charlie
Post, Against the Current No. 65, November-December 1996.
[6] Against the Current can be found here https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/index.htm
[7] This was a period of demoralisation that led to
numerous splits across the far left it is to the credit of the ISO that it was
unique in that it laid the foundations for its later growth at this time.
[8] Since writing the above lines I’ve been able to read
the Internal Bulletins IS published in this period and my remarks appear to
bear some resemblance to the facts of the case.
[9] Ian Birchalls history of the SRG, IS and the early
years of the SWP, Building the Smallest Mass Party in the World can be found
here https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/birchall/1981/smallest/part3.html
[10] See Daniel Gaidos important essay The Origins of the
Transitional Programme, Historical Materialism, 26.4, 2018.
[11] An account of this factional struggle and an
alternative account of IS history, to that of Ian Birchall, can be found in Jim
Higgins book More Years for the Locust; The origins of the SWP, 1997 which can
be read here https://www.marxists.org/archive/higgins/1997/locust/index.htm
[12] Details of this episode can be read in The Making of a
Party? The International Socialists 1965-1976 by Martin Shaw, 1978, Socialist
Register, file:///Users/michael/Downloads/5423-Article%20Text-7320-1-10-20090318%20(1).pdf Which won a reply authored by Duncan Hallas, The Making
of a Myth, published in the 1979 edition of the annual Socialist Register https://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1979/02/myth.htm
[13] The rank and file strategy in Britain grew out of the
historical experiences of the shop stewards movement and its fusion with the
Communist Party of Great Britain in its revolutionary period. See for example
Ken Appleby’s essay The Rank and File Movement: Yesterday and Today,
International Socialism (Old Series), No. 83, November 1975 for a typical IS
take on the R&F strategy.
[14] See The Socialist Labor Party 1876-1991 by Frank
Girard and Ben Perry, Livra Books, Philadelphia, 1993 for details.
[15] At the time of writing there is very little to be
found concerning the history of the ISO. A short series of articles by Todd
Chretien, a former leader of the organization, can be found on his blog
Revolutionary Socialist which can be found here https://revolutionary-socialist.org/
[16] Sharkey was, to the best of my knowledge, an appointed
Vice President of the CTU. Historically revolutionary socialists have argued
that union organisers must be elected by the membership not appointed by union
bureaucrats except when organising non-union workers. https://www.ctulocal1.org/posts/ctu-house-of-delegates-endorses-jesus-chuy-garcia-for-mayor-of-chicago/
[17] It should be noted that rumours that the real reason
for the expulsion of the ISO was a result of Ahmed Shawki’s drinking or was the
result of a dispute over money have circulated for many years. Whatever the
truth of such claims it is indicative of the internal culture of both groups
that such rumours have been allowed to circulate to ‘those in the know’ but
have not been discussed in front of the poor bloody infantry.
[18] There is no single account of these disputes extant
and few of individual episodes. This is in part because of the practice of the
SWP of denying their members such information unless forced to do so. The
leadership of the ISO behaved no whit better in this regard.
[19] A persistent rumour, which the present writer cannot
verify, is that Chris Harman the most authoritative leader of the SWP remained
in contact with the leaders of the ISO providing them with advice until his
premature death in 2009. By contrast Alex Callinicos would use the example of
the ISO to illustrate how a group can degenerate into sectarianism without
guidance from the World HQ in London.
[20] The Bay Area comrades published a document expressing
their views on Counterpunch which can be found here https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/08/theory-and-practice-of-idealism-in-trotskyism-and-the-iso/
[21] Contrary to the rules of the ISO the Renewal Faction
set up a website, External Bulletin, on which they posted documents that
belonged to the internal discussions then taking part in the ISO. This writer
is strongly of the opinion that such materials should be open to the radical
public but the RF had no right to breach the rules of the ISO and were rightly
expelled for such breaches of basic discipline. Their website can still be
found at https://externalbulletin.org/
[22] For example one Bay Area comrade who was a signatory
to the Theory and Practice document which expressed considerable doubts as to
the validity of any and all forms of Trotskyism. Nonetheless the comrade in
question later became a member of La Voz a small Trotskyist group aligned with
an Argentinian tendency. Does this suggest that the comrade was acting in a
politically dishonest manner earlier? Not in the least ideas, especially
those of individuals, develop like the economy in a combined and uneven manner
which can even express itself in a retrograde fashion with regard to specific
ideas.
[23]
The Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC) is
a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization which published Socialist Worker and
International Socialist Review on behalf of the ISO among its other sponsored projects
the most important of which is Haymarket Books.
[24] This article does not deal with the sexual assault
that gave rise to the FM letter or to a number of other misdeeds that took
place in ISO spaces. Nor does it deal with the badly flawed disciplinary
process that was the immediate cause of the ISO implosion. Not because such
matters are not important, to the contrary they are of considerable importance,
but rather because it is the contention of the author that the ISO collapsed as
a result of its political failings. It follows that such events were symptoms
not causes of the malaise of the ISO.
[25] Even before the crisis broke, before receipt of the FM
letter, a tiny number of supporters of the position that the ISO should seek to
use the Democratic Party ballot line had resigned. When the implosion happened a
number of supporters of the Socialist Tide Platform, together with a number of
other comrades who held a similar liquidationist position, collectively
resigned from the ISO. As the last Convention had agreed to hold a Special
Convention later in the year to decide on the organizations orientation to the
Democrats and the DSA one cannot but believe that the Socialist Tide grouping
were always going to resign given their open renegacy as to the principal of
proletarian independence from all wings of capital.
[26] This was partially rectified with the debates that
took place in 2012 around Leninism which involved a number of ISO members and
more recently by the production of an essay, authored by Joel Geier, which
differentiates between the Leninism of Lenin and that of Zinoviev. Leninism vs.
Zinovievism, ISO Pre-convention Bulletin 1, October 2013.
[27] Duncan Hallas, Fourth International in Decline; From
Trotskyism to Pabloism 1944-1953, International Socialism (1st
Series), No. 60, July 1973.
[28] An exception to this general rule would be Chris
Harman’s discussion of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci as a revolutionary
in which he reclaimed Gramsci from the then fashionable Euro-Revisionists.
Gramsci versus Eurocommunism, Part one International Socialism (1st
series), No. 98, May 1977, https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1977/05/gramsci1.html and Part two, International Socialism (1st
series), No. 99, June 1977.
[29] That the single most important text describing and
analysing transitional politics and demands was written by August Thalheimer, a
Right Oppositionist, and therefore beyond the pale for orthodox Trotskyists
only partially explains why this work was almost unknown in the Anglophone
world until recently. August
Thalheimer Strategy and Tactics of the Communist International: What are
Transitional Slogans? https://www.marxists.org/archive/thalheimer/works/strategy.htm
[30] The Fight for Socialism, The principles and Progam of
the Workers Party, 1946, New International Publishing Company, New York City. https://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1946/ffs/index.htm
[31] An excellent account can be found in Ralph Darlington and Dave Lydon,
Glorious Summer, Class Struggle in Britain, 1972. London: Bookmarks, 2001.
[34] For a fierce denunciation of the Wallace presidential
run James P Cannon, On the 1948 Wallace Campaign, ‘A Diversion and an
Obstacle’. https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1948/02/wallace.htm
[35] On his website Hawkins boasts of his involvement with
not only the Green Party but in the past with the Peace and Freedom Party,
People’s Party and the Citizen’s Party all attempts at forming a bourgeois
Third Party. https://howiehawkins.us/about-howie/
[36] The reference here is to the Renewal Faction but
similar criticisms as to the behaviour of the groups that quit the ISO in
Chicago and the Bay Area can be found above.
[37] A first class discussion of Zinovievism by Joel Geier
can be found at https://isreview.org/issue/93/zinovievism-and-degeneration-world-communism
[38] In Britain the supporters of Counterfire play this
role while staffing the campist anti-war Stop the War campaign largely financed
by the bureaucracy of the Unite union.
[39] The Right Opposition group of the 1930s specialized in
the technique of using a revolutionary phraseology while steadily moving
rightwards finally making their peace with capital by dissolving their
organization having enrolled in the imperialist war effort. The American
Exceptionalism of Jay Lovestone and his Comrades, 1929-1940, Dissident Marxism
in the United States, Vol. 1, Edited by Tim Davenport and Paul Le Blanc,
Haymarket, Chicago, 2018.
[40] Those former revolutionary socialists who advocate
working in the Democratic Socialists of America represent a specifically
American form of this tactic.