Unity - A constructive thread

[blackwave]

So, we appear to have fairly regular threads, to which I have contributed, from people calling for unity among the anti-capitalist left. The problem is that such threads always seem to break down into a back and forth between people who say, 'I agree', and those who say either, 'this will never work', or, 'I will never be united with a [insert tendency here]'.

This thread is intended ONLY for those who are genuinely into the idea, and want to take it forward as a group. So let us first brainstorm a name, and then come up with some basic starting points.

So I, in another post, recommended the name 'United Anti-Capitalist League', but few seemed to be drawn in by this. I like the word 'solidarity', if that can be worked in somewhere. I also wrote a little draft mission statement:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=461

Uppercut, on the other hand, came up with a list of uniting principles, which I think need closer scrutiny:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1743236&postcount=12

I suspect this will probably fade away like all the other posts, or never get off the ground, but I'll be damned if I don't continue stirring until we get somewhere. I am so desperate to make some headway that it hurts. Perhaps those who feel my pain will join me.

[chegitz guevara]

The truth is, unity is being built on the ground, by comrades genuinely interested with working with other comrades. This is not, however, being done in any organized fashion, but in location by location, across the world, in a piecemeal, ad hoc way.

The leadership of most organizations, for various reasons, are opposed to this trend, and until their followers demand their leaders lead the direction we want them to go, they will hold back.

There are some very real differences between organizations, but the growing necessity to stop capitalism from destroying the ecological basis of civilization requires we figure out how to overcome them and overthrow capitalism.

[Astinilats]

There are already two different groups who see their primary goal as creating some sort of broad Left Unity: the Right Opportunist FRSO/OSCL and the Trotskyite Solidarity group. They have had several conferences/meetings with each other and can't even formally unite. What makes you think the entire Left will do this?

[Atlee]

In order to first work on unity the terms/words in definition must all be agreed to i.e. solidarity: Is this organic or mechanical (Durkheim) and is it positive or negative in nature? The concept is not always the group or the tendency per se.

[Q]

In order to first work on unity the terms/words in definition must all be agreed to i.e. solidarity: Is this organic or mechanical (Durkheim) and is it positive or negative in nature? The concept is not always the group or the tendency per se.

I have no idea what you just said.

[Stand Your Ground]

To be honest, I support just about any communist/anarchist work toward a revolution, I would rather have communism over anarchy, but if anarchy came to be, I wouldn't fight it.

I hate the fact that we're divided by tendencies. If communism works the way I understand it, the ways things should be done would be decided by the people anyway, so tendencies seem to be pointless to me.

[blackwave]

Why do we have to make something so complicated which is actually so simple?

[chegitz guevara]

I have no idea what you just said.

Don't bother trying to figure it out. Atlee Yarrow speaks his own language, which no one really understands, but most people find highly amusing. He often tries to pretend he's someone else, but he has his own unique way of writing which gives him away, always.

He's also a neo-confederate, a racist, but claims to be a social democrat and a conservative. He's one of the people who helped refound Social Democrats USA. He has no business on RevLeft.

This is the guy that led Brian Moore to try and act against the majority of the Socialist Party of Florida leadership, and the guy whom Brian destroyed his membership in the party to aid.

[Q]

I could start a new thread, but I guess this could fit inhere. Louis Proyect wrote a blogpost titled "Why are there so many socialist groups? (http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/why-are-there-so-many-socialist-groups/)". Perhaps it deepens this discussion:


Why are there so many socialist groups? (http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/why-are-there-so-many-socialist-groups/)

Filed under: Australia (http://en.wordpress.com/tag/australia/),revolutionary organizing (http://en.wordpress.com/tag/revolutionary-organizing/),sectarianism (http://en.wordpress.com/tag/sectarianism/) — louisproyect @ 5:46 pm

Two years ago there was a split in the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in Australia. Without getting into the questions of who was at fault, I would say that the minority that went on to form the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) was true to the traditions of James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, while the majority was moving away from those traditions whether they would admit it or not. Cannon’s ideas on party-building have achieved a kind of cult status in the English-speaking Trotskyist world that is lost on me.

The other day an article by RSP member Allen Myers caught my eye. Titled Why are there so many socialist groups? (http://directaction.org.au/issue22/why_are_there_so_many_socialist_groups), it encapsulates many of the ideas associated with Cannonite (Canonite?) orthodoxy. It is a polemic against the former members of the DSP who have thrown such orthodoxy overboard and are emulating the bold new initiative of the French Trotskyists of the LCR reconstituted as the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), a group shorn of vanguardist pretensions. In Australia this meant building the Socialist Alliance (SA) rather than the DSP. While the SA might not be guaranteed of success in the long run, this much can be said: the old model is guaranteed to fail. Over 70 years of the Fourth International and its various fissures is proof of that.

For those of us reared in American Trotskyism, the French were always seen as anti-Leninist liquidationists. In my view, the French were a lot closer to the Bolsheviks on at least one basis. The Bolsheviks were constituted on the basis of a revolutionary socialism that had little in common with the rather encyclopedic “program” advanced by the typical English-speaking Trotskyist group. Such a program amounted to a kind of catechism that pivoted around a correct understanding of the “Russian questions”. To my knowledge, Lenin never asked people to become Bolsheviks on the basis of how they understood the Jacobins.

In some ways, Myers has exactly the right credentials to defend a Cannonite perspective since he was a member of the American Socialist Workers Party around the same time as me. Myers earned some fame as an antiwar GI who was court-martialed for distributing leaflets at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Eventually he relocated to Australia for personal reasons where he worked to build the Australian party along the same lines as the SWP. Jim Percy (who died in 1992) and his brother John founded the group that would eventually become known as the DSP.

One can understand why the Percy’s would want to build a party along Cannonite lines since the SWP was growing rapidly around the time that they visited the United States to learn about the group first-hand. Eventually, to their credit, they broke with the SWP when it began to dispense Comintern-like advice about what they should and not be doing. It would seem that they did not make the connection between that kind of interference and the SWP’s adherence to the Comintern model. As I have explained elsewhere, the resolutions of the 1924 “Bolshivization” conference of the Comintern that set the pattern for this kind of hyper-centralism was supported by James P. Cannon who always considered himself as a disciple of Zinoviev, the fountainhead of these bad organizational methods.

Myers’s article was prompted by a leaflet put out by the SA in Victoria promoting left unity. Myers says this is a mistake because:


The fundamental reason that there are many socialist organisations is that there are many different ideas about how to achieve socialism. At first glance, it might seem a reasonable idea that everyone who shares the goal of socialism should unite in a single organisation. But what could such an organisation do in a united way? Some members would think that socialism only requires electing a majority of socialists to parliament while others might think that socialists should run in parliamentary elections only to propagandise their ideas of the need for socialist revolution. Some members would consider the ACTU and other union chiefs potential allies; other members would regard them as part of the problem. Such an organisation would contain all sorts of ideas even about what the organisation itself should try to be — does it seek to build a leadership for the working class, or is its aim only to unite various existing struggles as much as it can?
This is a much less offensive way of putting things than did Morris Stein, one of James P. Cannon’s top lieutenants, at the 1944 SWP convention:


We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can’t stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution. Isn’t that a fact? This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretense of being a working-class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery. We are monopolists in politics and we operate like monopolists.
When I joined the SWP in 1967, I was puzzled by all the groups representing themselves as Trotskyist to one degree or another. What was up with that, I asked a more experienced member—probably Les Evans, the ex-member turned Zionist/Eustonite. He recounted an anecdote that impressed a new member since it originated with someone like Lenin or Trotsky (I can’t remember who.) He said that the experience of observing the left from afar is a little bit like looking a man in the distance whose image is cloaked by fire and sparks and the violent strokes he is applying to an unseen object that result in harsh clanging sounds. From afar, he looks like a madman engaged in some bizarre activity. But when you come close, you can see that he is the village blacksmith simply doing productive work. That is exactly what polemical struggle on the left looks like to the neophyte. Frankly, I am at the point in life where the neophyte seems to have gotten it right.

In contrast to the SA, the RSP will stick to tried-and-true Leninist principles:

The task for socialists today is not to pursue imagined short cuts to mass influence, but to gather the cadres and political resources that will be needed when objective circumstances push masses of working people into struggle. As history has shown repeatedly, such upsurges can occur very quickly.
This is what I would call the “nucleus” theory of party-building. You develop a case-hardened “cadre” that is like the nucleus of some element, like carbon or uranium. When a catalyst is applied, like heat or the class struggle, the masses will accumulate around the nucleus just like electrons. That’s the theory anyhow.

It has been tested time and time again and revealed to be false. Genuine mass revolutionary parties have never been built this way. Instead, they grow out of a mass movement that is rooted in the experience of the given country. The Bolsheviks, for example, emerged out the Russian social democracy—a current that was a reflection of widespread support for the Second International throughout Europe and that was primarily fueled by a desire to rid the country of Czarist absolutism. It followed very few of the “principles” of Zinoviev or James P. Cannon who thought that Bolshevism could be turned into a template for parties everywhere. The chief goal of Australians, or Americans for that matter, would be to look to the real history of Lenin’s party rather than latter-day versions of that history that superimpose schemas of small groups trying to vindicate themselves as truly “Leninist”.

To start with, the Bolsheviks were not at all ideologically homogeneous as is the case of most “Leninist” groups today. To cite just one example, Bukharin had a totally different analysis of imperialism and the national question than Lenin and was not shy about defending it in a newspaper he edited. This did not prevent the two leaders from collaborating closely. In the “Leninist” world of today, such analyses constitute a kind of intellectual property that the party jealously protects against all rivals, like the formula for coca-cola.

As might be expected, the RSP is just as determined to stake out its turf on international questions as it is on the historical questions of the 1920s and 30s such as when the Soviet Union became (you fill in the blanks). Myers views Cuba as a kind of acid test for the left:


According to the Victorian leaflet, the SA believes that “the differences which do exist [among socialist groups] can be contained within a single organisation”. This ignores reality. For example, the Socialist Alternative (SAlt) group while formally opposed to US threats against Cuba, considers Cuba to be a capitalist state and advocates a mass armed uprising to overthrow the Cuban government. The SA has policy of solidarity with Cuba against US threats, but it hasn’t adopted a position on supporting Cuba’s socialist revolution. Perhaps, therefore, the SA could co-exist with SAlt in a united organisation in regard to its policy toward Cuba. But how could the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), which regards the Cuban Revolution as an inspiring example to the working people of the world of socialist politics in action, get along in the same party with socialists who advocate the overthrow of the Cuban government?
This debating point seems utterly academic considering the fact that the Socialist Alternative (SAlt) has about as much interest in left unity as the RSP itself. In fact, despite its origins in Tony Cliff’s state capitalist dogma, the SAlt has the very same “nucleus” theory as the RSP. Sometime back, I wrote a critique (http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/mick-armstrongs-little-things/)of SAlt leader Mick Armstrong’s party-building ideas that are virtually the same as Allen Myers’s. Here’s an excerpt:


The key to success is building “cadre”, a term that Bruce Landau (now known as the Civil War historian and tenured professor Bruce Levine) once told a gathering of the SWP in the 1970s comes out of the military. A cadre is like an officer who can lead the masses when the time is ripe. SWP leader Tom Kerry used to pronounce this word as “codder” which only enhanced its in-group mystique for a rank-and-filer like me. Here’s Armstrong describing the cadre-building process:


This cadre, this “solid core”, is just as important in times of retreat, when workers suffer setbacks. In order to hold a revolutionary organisation together in times of defeat theory is even more paramount. When the going is tough a much higher level of theoretical agreement is necessary to hold a propaganda group together because a small group without roots in the working class is inherently more unstable than a mass party. You can’t survive on the basis of a few slogans, you need a more sophisticated analysis. The cadre has to be steeled.

I just love the way that Armstrong uses the term “steeled”. It is just so evocative, like one of those New Yorker cartoons of a bunch of Bolsheviks or anarchists gathered around a candle in the sewers. Only those who are truly “steeled” have the ability to lead the masses to socialism unlike the flaccid, unsteeled elements who will turn into Karl Kautsky the first chance they get.
As I said before, the Socialist Alliance is not guaranteed of success. In revolutionary politics, you have to take a somewhat pragmatic approach even though the science underlying the party-building effort is Marxism. I genuinely hope that the comrades stay on the current course since it is truly in the spirit of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, no matter what their detractors say. These are the same detractors who tend to look at “What is to be Done” as a holy writ when Lenin himself said only five years after it was written that it was obsolete.

[Atlee]

Don't bother trying to figure it out. Atlee Yarrow speaks his own language, which no one really understands, but most people find highly amusing. He often tries to pretend he's someone else, but he has his own unique way of writing which gives him away, always.

He's also a neo-confederate, a racist, but claims to be a social democrat and a conservative. He's one of the people who helped refound Social Democrats USA. He has no business on RevLeft.

This is the guy that led Brian Moore to try and act against the majority of the Socialist Party of Florida leadership, and the guy whom Brian destroyed his membership in the party to aid.

Excuse me? :confused: That was very hateful. :(

[Atlee]

I have no idea what you just said.

Terms or words we all use daily, but on the Left "jargon".

Example: solidarity

There are two main forms of "solidarity", organic and mechanical according to Durkheim who wrote the Division of Labor. Under both organic and mechanical we have more conceptual divide being positive or negative.

Explained:

What we need is more detail as isolation and technology requires greater details as a must if unity is every to be achieved. Just using a word and assuming everyone knows the connotation is false. We all think and act differently for many variable factors.

[Atlee]

Why do we have to make something so complicated which is actually so simple?

As people or individuals we are not perfect. In the culture that is the majority of the USA we are taught individuality while i.e. Latino cultures are ethnocentric and/or faith based around family. Trust is a hard thing to earn an once broken it spreads. The key phrase I read on the Left is "Question Authority" everywhere and with good reason. Families in the USA have record number of broken homes, children have no one at home after school, dropout rates are again on the rise, jobs are shipping overseas so parents are working more and bringing home less income. This is like a return to pre-industrial revolution except that we are current Information Society and technology and intellectual property is the major export... next to weapons.

Anyhow, think about trust and then awareness and education. Where are you at? Where are those you know at? Now think about why they are not here with you or why the different factors have not been broached to bring them to the Left in general and unity. Only by looking inward can we see outside the box.

[chegitz guevara]

Excuse me? :confused: That was very hateful. :(

Says the man who refuses to leave alone an organization which wants nothing to do with him, who has devoted half a dozen blogs and websites to his hatred of us, and how tricked Brian Moore into attempting to use a defunct anti-communist law against me.

Still, it remains the point that according to the forum rules, you're only allowed to post in the Opposing Viewpoints forum, cuz you're an anti-socialist scumbag.

[Atlee]

Says the man who refuses to leave alone an organization which wants nothing to do with him, who has devoted half a dozen blogs and websites to his hatred of us, and how tricked Brian Moore into attempting to use a defunct anti-communist law against me.

Still, it remains the point that according to the forum rules, you're only allowed to post in the Opposing Viewpoints forum, cuz you're an anti-socialist scumbag.

You are more than entitled to your opinion. I am not what you are writing. It appears you are looking for some flame thread? :unsure:

I read the policy and even gave a donation when joining. I am where I should be.

I am sorry that is what you believe. :mellow:

[Wanted Man]

This thread is intended ONLY for those who are genuinely into the idea, and want to take it forward as a group. So let us first brainstorm a name, and then come up with some basic starting points.

Well, I must admit that I don't really agree with the idea, at least not the way it is framed here. Sorry to intrude in your thread, but perhaps a more "restricted" discussion should be done in a user group or something. People will inevitably post in threads in the normal forums, regardless of such requests.


So I, in another post, recommended the name 'United Anti-Capitalist League', but few seemed to be drawn in by this. I like the word 'solidarity', if that can be worked in somewhere. I also wrote a little draft mission statement:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=461

Uppercut, on the other hand, came up with a list of uniting principles, which I think need closer scrutiny:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1743236&postcount=12

I suspect this will probably fade away like all the other posts, or never get off the ground, but I'll be damned if I don't continue stirring until we get somewhere. I am so desperate to make some headway that it hurts. Perhaps those who feel my pain will join me.

The thing is, I just don't get it. What is this trying to accomplish? Seems to me that it's just an attempt to get a bunch of inactive people on the internet together to continue to do nothing. This is particularly clear from the group's description, which does not contain any concrete proposals, just a bunch of empty claims.

The basic reality is that in many cases, left-wing groups already work together, involving thousands of people. It's a bit ridiculous when a few guys on an internet forum come up with a very loosely-defined "anti-capitalist league" that doesn't do anything, and pretend that they are the united left and that the others are sectarians.

You say that it's "so simple", but it doesn't seem that way at all. I don't want to sound offensive, but if you're so desperate and in so much pain, why not start doing something already?

[Atlee]

Well, I must admit that I don't really agree with the idea, at least not the way it is framed here. Sorry to intrude in your thread, but perhaps a more "restricted" discussion should be done in a user group or something. People will inevitably post in threads in the normal forums, regardless of such requests.

To have a closed group would imply there was already a sufficient number of persons to have a conversation, there is not. This might be a step two, in that, RevLeft has brought us all here on the general concept to share ideas first and not ideologue. Step two is recognizing and finding respect for the ideologues among us and those who are just socialist or those learning more about an idea they liked. This is step three, "Hello, I have an idea." We are now looking to create this group on conceptual unity to work out what a restricted group would do, a think tank per se.


The thing is, I just don't get it. What is this trying to accomplish? Seems to me that it's just an attempt to get a bunch of inactive people on the internet together to continue to do nothing. This is particularly clear from the group's description, which does not contain any concrete proposals, just a bunch of empty claims.

Why or how would inactive people join? Inactive people do not come together because they are inactive. Unity implies coming together because of activity. The first step is in finding out willingness or ability of those active to join.


The basic reality is that in many cases, left-wing groups already work together, involving thousands of people. It's a bit ridiculous when a few guys on an internet forum come up with a very loosely-defined "anti-capitalist league" that doesn't do anything, and pretend that they are the united left and that the others are sectarians.

I can understand where you are coming from and what you are saying. There are many do nothings out there and many have come and gone over time. BUT every so often a good idea sticks. The basis of this website was once an idea, a new website, had no one on board and yet here we ALL are today. When those handful of revolutionaries were jailed by the Tsar and cut off from the world did they give up, die, or "go away"? If they had we would not be here. We might be ruled by a King or Queen. Democracy might not even be a word except to say, "Look what failed in Greek mythology." After all, if no one did anything this website, RevLeft would also be a myth.


You say that it's "so simple", but it doesn't seem that way at all. I don't want to sound offensive, but if you're so desperate and in so much pain, why not start doing something already?

I find the older I get the less simple the simple once was. Things now take effort. When I was 18 I knew it all and was immortal. There is nothing offensive about saying "do something" as we are. In an instant world of gratification we as individuals have come to expect great things in a timely manner. That is due to pollution of the capitalist exploitive nature of American culture (Max Weber) but we as socialists need to make generational trends to have lasting power over our own world. A five year plan is always great, but is the cost too high? Given today's nature and technology we do more damage in five weeks. It behooves us all to gather details and numbers. Time is something we cherish as socialists immortal and something crunched, crush, and exploited by capitalists.

[Q]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the article from Louis Proyect I posted earlier?

[blackwave]

Q, I found it an interesting article. What particularly jumped out at me was the implication of 'ideological hegemony', that people will staunchly try to protect their chosen ideology, and impose it on others. I have written about such practices in my essay, 'The Other', in case anyone should like to read it - http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-other-an-essay-on-finitude/6407235