International Socialist Organization?

[RadioRaheem84]

Wondering if I should join the ISO branch here in my city, but I've been reading up on what they stand for and it seems like they're a bit too dismissive of past socialist regimes, almost liberally dismissive. Their stance on Cuba is almost gusano-like. They do publish the ISR Magazine, so I guess they're a good organization, but I just haven't decided yet.

Any info on this group? Thanks.

[blake 3:17]

Go to some of their events and see what the branch is doing in terms of movement work. Since the ISO has been cut loose from the British SWP it seems a lot more dynamic. The magazine is good.

Their stance on Cuba is just weird, but whatever.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Since you're leaning more towards Maoism, I'd say no.

I would suggest, however, the SP-USA or PSL for you.

[KC]

Well you're obviously going to get ISO supporters telling you to and those opposed to them telling you not to, so this thread isn't going to be very productive.

I'd do whatever you want. Why don't you just work with them for a while before actually deciding on whether or not you want to become a dues paying member? There's no need to make that decision right off the bat, and I highly doubt they'd expect you to; I know that for Socialist Alternative at least they prefer prospective members stick around as just supporters so that both themselves and the prospective member feels out the fit before sealing the deal.

Also, I've found that the ISO is sort of a toss-up when it comes to their membership; I've met a ton of ISO members that were really cool, really smart and really respectful, but I've also met a bunch that were just the opposite, so don't base your view of the whole organization on the members you meet.

[ckaihatsu]

Since you're leaning more towards Maoism, I'd say no.

I would suggest, however, the SP-USA or PSL for you.


Ever since DNZ was a little kid he *knew* he was going to be an independent revolutionary political consultant....


= )

[A.R.Amistad]

I was a member of ISO once. Don't join. Sure, they have a good magazine and even a decent newspaper, but they're a liberal, not a Marxist group. They refuse to call themselves "communists." They denounce every worker's movement beyond the Paris Commune and Russia 1917 as "State-Capitalist" and refuse to work in any United Front activities. They're also quite pretentious, since in name they claim to be international, yet they're international relations to other comrades in the world are minimal at best. I have nothing against youth or students, and I am in a party where 70% of the membership is under 30, (I think) but they base theirself too much in the universities and not enough in the entire working class and therefore hve too many petty-bourgeois elements (probably the source of their liberalism.) They also abuse party membership requirements and stretch it out way too far to be a Leninist party.

I'd advise you not to join but thats just me. If you do get in contact with them, please tell them to get active in United Fronts and stop being sectarians and refusing to work with other comrades. They need to stop being solitary fighters.

[ckaihatsu]

Yeah, for a, ah, how shall we say it -- more *emphatic* version of this, ask any Spart...! (!!!)

[A.R.Amistad]

Yeah, for a, ah, how shall we say it -- more *emphatic* version of this, ask any Spart...! (!!!)

OK, so I'm a Spart now for criticizing the ISO?

They also lack a youth league, which is a big no-no for revolutionary socialist parties.

[ckaihatsu]

OK, so I'm a Spart now for criticizing the ISO?


Uh, dunno -- ya *wanna* be...??? Did you receive the mailing?

[A.R.Amistad]

Uh, dunno -- ya *wanna* be...??? Did you receive the mailing?

I'm afraid i don't follow...

[ckaihatsu]

I'm afraid i don't follow...


No prob....

[A.R.Amistad]

No prob....

OK, so you won't respond to my criticism. Glad to hear it.

[28350]

Gentlemints, I do believe there here has been misunderstand.

[ckaihatsu]

OK, so you won't respond to my criticism. Glad to hear it.


Uhhhhhhh, what is it you'd like me to say??? If I had a comment to make I'd have made it.





Gentlemints, I do believe there here has been misunderstand.


I tend to agree here.

[RED DAVE]

I was a member of ISO once."Those were the days, my friend, we though they'd never end." :D


Don't join.Well no one can accuse you of being wishy-washy.


Sure, they have a good magazine and even a decent newspaperNow we have to find out how an organization can have a good magazine and newspaper but not be a decent group.


but they're a liberal, not a Marxist group.Which should mean, if true, that they advocate the reform of capitalism but not its overthrow. Say it isn't so, Moe!


They refuse to call themselves "communists."Oh sin of sins!


They denounce every worker's movement beyond the Paris Commune and Russia 1917 as "State-Capitalist"I assume that in this confused statement you mean that they're not particularly cozy with Maoists or Stalinists.


and refuse to work in any United Front activities.Could you document that, especially since the definition of "United Front" is up for grabs.


They're also quite pretentious, since in name they claim to be international, yet they're international relations to other comrades in the world are minimal at best.Unlike other groups, that think that a website = international relationships.


I have nothing against youth or studentsThat's big of you, Comrade. Frankly, I can't stand 'em, but I'm a teacher.


and I am in a party where 70% of the membership is under 30, (I think)So what's your point?


but they base theirself too much in the universities and not enough in the entire working class and therefore hve too many petty-bourgeois elementsConsidering that every left group I know of in the US is predominently petit-brougeois, what's your point?


(probably the source of their liberalism.)Again, you haven't documented "liberalism."


They also abuse party membership requirements and stretch it out way too far to be a Leninist party.How far is that?


I'd advise you not to join but thats just me.Indeed.


If you do get in contact with them, please tell them to get active in United Fronts and stop being sectarians and refusing to work with other comrades. They need to stop being solitary fighters.And give my regards to Broadway. :D

Seriously, Comrades, there's lots to criticize about the ISO, Solidarity, etc., but this kind of criticism is irresponsible rumor mongering.

RED DAVE

[graymouser]

I spent some time in the ISO. Can't really recommend the organization. I mean, the whole "state capitalism" line gives them distorted politics as it is, but what bothered me more was that they had no concept of a transitional program. And politically that means they are a left social-democratic organization, no matter how much they talk "Leninism." Without a transitional program you have minimum demands for the present, maximum demands for socialism, and they only meet in the sweet by and by. Their ideas are also very boiled down. Trotskyism is the Permanent Revolution, Leninism is the paper, democratic centralism, imperialism and the national question.

Organizationally, it's screwed up too. The ISO is a fusion of a youth group and a cadre organization, which was the model that Tony Cliff managed to create in the British SWP. What I mean is that the ISO recruits like a youth group, where anyone who liked this evening's talk is pressed to join, but contains within it a nucleus of cadre. Now in terms of internal democracy this is a problem because the large majority of the organization is younger folks who don't really have the theoretical backing to shift the line, and they cycle out frequently. The cadre can pretty much do what they want and the majority of the group, convinced of the leadership's wisdom, votes for it.

Internal life is not that interesting. They put a lot of emphasis on frequent meetings and paper sales, and contact work, and general organization building. It means that political education gets filtered down into learning a set of sort of pat formulas. To get an idea of what I mean, ask five ISO members to explain the Cuban revolution to you and you'll probably get three to five repetitions of the same formula, probably including the line "The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself." Paper sales and interventions in meetings all train you to sort of be a record player for what the ISO thinks. This isn't how a group should function, but when the majority of your human power is student based, it happens. Oh, and Socialist Worker is an absolutely terrible paper. It doesn't get to you at first but week in and week out I started to dread the thing.

Seriously, there are a couple of good things about the ISO. The ISR is a solid magazine that has some good articles in it. And Haymarket Press puts out some really necessary books, relatively few of them by members. (I will say that Dave Zirin's books are great, but that's about it.) But taken on the whole, I have to recommend not signing up for the ISO.

[redasheville]

I was a member of ISO once. Don't join. Sure, they have a good magazine and even a decent newspaper, but they're a liberal, not a Marxist group. They refuse to call themselves "communists." They denounce every worker's movement beyond the Paris Commune and Russia 1917 as "State-Capitalist" and refuse to work in any United Front activities. They're also quite pretentious, since in name they claim to be international, yet they're international relations to other comrades in the world are minimal at best. I have nothing against youth or students, and I am in a party where 70% of the membership is under 30, (I think) but they base theirself too much in the universities and not enough in the entire working class and therefore hve too many petty-bourgeois elements (probably the source of their liberalism.) They also abuse party membership requirements and stretch it out way too far to be a Leninist party.

I'd advise you not to join but thats just me. If you do get in contact with them, please tell them to get active in United Fronts and stop being sectarians and refusing to work with other comrades. They need to stop being solitary fighters.

This is insane.

First, on the question of "International". Anyone with a remotely passing understanding of the history of Trotskyism knows that "international socialism" refers to a distinct set of politics, which the ISO has historically "upheld". It might be a silly name, that is certainly up for debate but it is beyond ignorant to say that the ISO has little international links. We are not a member of a formal international organization (which I think is a good thing). However, we have links to the FI, as both an international body and with individual organizations in countries such as India, Pakistan, France, and Great Britain (which Socialist Action is nominally a member of, though it only seems to participate during the international congresses). We also have links to various "Morenoites" in Latin America (especially Brazil and Argentina), as well as groups with members that are also formerly a part of the IST (International Workers Left in Greece and Socialist Alternative in Australia, among others). And, despite previous political bad blood, we have begun to mend our relationship with the SWP in the UK. Members of the New Anticapitalist Party from France, the Labour Party of Pakistan (who are members of Socialist Action's international, btw), comrades from Venezuala, and elsewhere are coming to our conference this summer. Please don't talk out of your ass.

Secondly, as to the question of not working in united fronts...what you have stated is completely false. I personally have worked in a united front formation, to prevent the deportation of immigrant workers, with MEMBERS OF YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION*. The ISO is working closely with Socialist Organizer, Solidarity and Freedom Road Socialist Organization in the Bay Area budget cuts fight. Not to mention countless unaffiliated radicals and activists that we have close relationships with in our movement work. Again, please don't talk out of your ass. It is unprincipled, IMO, for a member of an organization which the ISO has worked with in the past and will hopefully work with again to level unsubstantiated claims about the functioning of our organization.

I could go on and elaborate if you wish to discuss this further, send me a PM.

*For whatever reasons they may have had, it was Socialist Action and not the ISO, that withdrew.

[redasheville]

By the way, I am a communist.

[Jimmie Higgins]

As an ISO member, I'd recommend just meeting up with local members in your area. If you support Cuba as socialism rather than as a form of state-capitalism, maybe it's not for you, but we are putting a greater emphasis on people really taking some time before jumping-in (um, not literally - there's no beat-down to join:lol:) so that any politically differences can be looked at in the light of day before you make a decision to make a commitment.

If you hear what we have to say and don't agree, fine, but I hope you would still be open to work with us as an ally because particularly at this point in the class struggle, the important thing is that radicals are out there and getting involved in concrete things and helping to win more workers to a radical working class understanding of society and how to change it collectively as a class.

[RadioRaheem84]

As an ISO member, I'd recommend just meeting up with local members in your area. If you support Cuba as socialism rather than as a form of state-capitalism, maybe it's not for you, but we are putting a greater emphasis on people really taking some time before jumping-in (um, not literally - there's no beat-down to join:lol:) so that any politically differences can be looked at in the light of day before you make a decision to make a commitment.

If you hear what we have to say and don't agree, fine, but I hope you would still be open to work with us as an ally because particularly at this point in the class struggle, the important thing is that radicals are out there and getting involved in concrete things and helping to win more workers to a radical working class understanding of society and how to change it collectively as a class.

Cuba is probably the only old guard socialist nation that I defend and it's not unquestionably either. I acknowledge a lot of faults on it's part but I take a more Monthly Review style critique of it rather than just pinning it with the other regimes.

Since I live in a state with next to no real socialist organization ( a lot of progressive and liberal ones though), I wanted an organization to meet other socialists in my town. The ISO meets at the local university and I thought I would give one of their meetings a try.

Most of the info I gathered on them was from the Columbia/Barnard website.

[Barry Lyndon]

The Marxist blogger Louis Projeyct made the interesting point that the ISO, until recently, wrote considerably more articles attacking Fidel Castro then Barack Obama. Very odd for a so-called 'socialist' newspaper.

Something else that annoys me about the ISO is that I was at one of their academic reading groups, and instead of discussing Karl Marx's 'Manifesto', parts of 'Capital', 'Critique of the Gotha Program' and/or other original works of his, we were all supposed to discuss Paul D' Amato's(some ISO hack) interpretation of Karl Marx's work. The presumption seemed to be that lowly workers and/or students were too stupid to understand Karl Marx in his own words, so it needed to be properly divined by ISO seers. There is no excuse for that. With the exception of the itty bits of 'Capital' I have unsuccessfully tried to plow through, Marx is very readable, remarkably so for someone writing in the 19th century. He really is not that hard. This was just another example of a self-important organization that was so full of itself it feels it has some sort of right to define for everyone else what is 'true Marxism' and what is not.

I'm not saying their aren't people in the ISO who do good work-their are. But so are some members of the Sparts and the RCP(although the latter, I think all the better members eventually left, I'm friends with a few of them). But that says nothing about the overall organization.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm not going to respond directly to any of the criticisms here, but there is a lot of Fox news shit going on in this thread: "Hmm, Obama criticized a white cop, but not the Black professor, very strange for someone who claims not to hate white people".

As comrade Dave said, if people think that the ISO secretly supports Obama or are liberals, then make an argument with evidence to prove it - otherwise, just be honest and say: "I don't think you should join the ISO because they different political positions than I have"... and then explain why you think your position on Cuba or the revolutionary party is better.

People who have different political positions than the ISO are never going to like what the ISO does - some can be reasonable about it, others stoop to making accusations and trying to hint that we are secretly liberals or in league with the cops as the Sparts claim. All this innuendo just serves to make people not trust left groups and it's a dishonest way to go about discussing our political differences.

[graymouser]

As comrade Dave said, if people think that the ISO secretly supports Obama or are liberals, then make an argument with evidence to prove it - otherwise, just be honest and say: "I don't think you should join the ISO because they different political positions than I have"... and then explain why you think your position on Cuba or the revolutionary party is better.
The ISO is a left social-democratic group that recruits left liberal college students and gets them to sell papers and contribute dues for a while. That the politics are social-democratic is really in the question of program. Tony Cliff and his followers (including Duncan Hallas, whose book "Trotsky's Marxism" was reprinted by Haymarket a few years ago) distort and lie about the Transitional Program, saying that it was a purely conjunctural program based on the perceived inability of capitalism to absorb social reforms at the brink of World War II. This is false. Trotsky was talking about creating a program that is a bridge from the current consciousness to the understanding of the need for socialism - the specific demands in "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" are for 1938 when it was written, but the Trotskyists were supposed to create new programs for new periods. Cliff lied about Trotsky's method and went back to the social-democratic "minimum program" of immediate demands and "maximum program" of socialism, which history tells us never actually meet up at any point. I am not throwing around "social-democrat" as an insult but as a programmatic characterization.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Also ex-ISO. I'd recommend giving it a look even though I think their political line is bullshit. They are very active and offer fairly sophisticated Marxist education and are not over the top cult-y. The confluence of those three factors is rare enough that it's worth taking a serious look, even if it means biting one's tongue when certain topics come up.



Since I live in a state with next to no real socialist organization ( a lot of progressive and liberal ones though), I wanted an organization to meet other socialists in my town. The ISO meets at the local university and I thought I would give one of their meetings a try.

Go for it! Getting active in a Trot/liberal scum group is better than not being active at all.

^^comrades note sarcasm

[NoOneIsIllegal]

I have mixed feelings, they do seem more liberal then socialist. However, I do enjoy Haymarket Books. They put out some good stuff.

[eyedrop]

Something else that annoys me about the ISO is that I was at one of their academic reading groups, and instead of discussing Karl Marx's 'Manifesto', parts of 'Capital', 'Critique of the Gotha Program' and/or other original works of his, we were all supposed to discuss Paul D' Amato's(some ISO hack) interpretation of Karl Marx's work.


I don't really see this as a bad thing. If I want to learn about evolution or general relativity I don't go to the library to find those old books of Einstein and Darwin. I would find some newer books that explains it with more modern language where the connotations are are roughly the same as mine, examples are modern and relevant for me.

I can't think of another science than marxism where you are constantly recommended to read 100 year old books. Are today's writers incapable of writing as good as that archaic language, or is it some of the cult-like tendencies of marxists?

I can understand that that particular ISO fellow may be distorting marx's "holy work", but I don't see the need to pre-emptively disregarding any modern writers explanations of communist theory.

[Palingenisis]

They have a rep for being ultra-opportunist. My experiance of working with them is a nightmare. Also in England and to a lesser extent in Ireland they tend to be well cold to people who dont have university degrees and live on council estates if they are white and condescending to them if they are coloured.

[Palingenisis]

Since you're leaning more towards Maoism, I'd say no.

I would suggest, however, the SP-USA or PSL for you.

Are there no activist networks in the USA for people who arent happy with any of the Parties?

We have the Republican Network for Unity here...They do a lot of good work around workplace and community issues but maybe they are a bit to focused on the national question and arent explictly Marxist.

[RadioRaheem84]

I don't really see this as a bad thing. If I want to learn about evolution or general relativity I don't go to the library to find those old books of Einstein and Darwin. I would find some newer books that explains it with more modern language where the connotations are are roughly the same as mine, examples are modern and relevant for me.

I can't think of another science than marxism where you are constantly recommended to read 100 year old books. Are today's writers incapable of writing as good as that archaic language, or is it some of the cult-like tendencies of marxists?

I can understand that that particular ISO fellow may be distorting marx's "holy work", but I don't see the need to pre-emptively disregarding any modern writers explanations of communist theory.


Really? I cannot even stand the jargon of today's economists. Marx is the only thing that helped me fully understand economics in the first place. I majored in Econ in college and faked understanding half the material and worked solely on memorization. After Marx and certain lucid adherents to Marx (Monthly Review crowd) and Anarchist writers (Chomsky, Anarchist FAQ) totally blew the lid off the conflated crap that is academia today. Neo-Classical crap doesn't intimidate me anymore, and I found out why it was so hard for me to grasp the concepts; they were bullshit to begin with.

I am very thankful for the old Marxist writers and new ones today.

[Chimurenga.]

Well, what interests you about the ISO?

[RED DAVE]

They have a rep for being ultra-opportunist. My experiance of working with them is a nightmare. Also in England and to a lesser extent in Ireland they tend to be well cold to people who dont have university degrees and live on council estates if they are white and condescending to them if they are coloured.Frankly, this strikes me as a bunch of slanderous, undocumented rumors.

Why don't you start by documenting your first assertion, that the ISO(US) is ultra-opportunist? It's a heavy charge, and you should be able to back it up easily.

RED DAVE

[Saorsa]

Cliffites are just angry liberals who never had the guts to stand up to their high school history teacher. They use their Trotskyism as a shield so whenever communism is slandered and demonised by the ruling class, they can say "don't look at me I'm a Trotskyist!"

Their politics are shit, their analysis is weak, and they don't have a snowballs chance in hell of ever having anything to do with a genuine revolutionary movement.

That said, for the first year or two of my political activism I was the only member of my party in a town where the New Zealand version of ISO dominated (they have one branch, but that branch is the only show in town). I went to most of their meetings for about a year and got to know them all pretty well, we had some good times and they're a good bunch of people.

I'd suggest you take this approach. Don't get sucked into their Trotskio-liberalite politics, but if ISO is the only show in town it won't hurt to hang out with them at their meetings and/or afterwards at the pub.

[RED DAVE]

Cliffites are just angry liberals who never had the guts to stand up to their high school history teacher. They use their Trotskyism as a shield so whenever communism is slandered and demonised by the ruling class, they can say "don't look at me I'm a Trotskyist!"

Their politics are shit, their analysis is weak, and they don't have a snowballs chance in hell of ever having anything to do with a genuine revolutionary movement.

That said, for the first year or two of my political activism I was the only member of my party in a town where the New Zealand version of ISO dominated (they have one branch, but that branch is the only show in town). I went to most of their meetings for about a year and got to know them all pretty well, we had some good times and they're a good bunch of people.

I'd suggest you take this approach. Don't get sucked into their Trotskio-liberalite politics, but if ISO is the only show in town it won't hurt to hang out with them at their meetings and/or afterwards at the pub.One more example of slander no political content with regard to theory or action, especially with regard to the ISO(US).

Can't you all do better than this? I mean, where's the accusations of the ISO being a front for the CIA, or responsible for the reversion of Russian to corporate capitalism, or for the existence of neocons, opr for the pimple on your nose? I mean Comrades, time it was when Stalinists and Maoists could really sling it. You guys are really slipping.

RED DAVE

[Saorsa]

I don't know anything about the ISO in the US. I'm talking about Cliffite politics in general from the time of Tony Cliff onwards.

I thought my post was quite nice to you guys. I even suggested the OP go along to your organisations meetings and learn for himself. What more can I give you damnit! :(

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Like several other posters, I was in the ISO for a time. I have mixed feelings about the ISO organizationally. Their pub. house, Haymarket, puts out some good literature and I've learned a lot.On the other hand the organization works their members very hard. In the branch I was in there were 2 required weekly paper sales (each w/an hour prep meeting), a weekly 2 hour branch meeting, a fraction meeting. This is in addition to other political work. Admittedly the required attendance wasn't strictly enforced but I felt it was odd. Related to this the ISO has a very high turnover.(They never seemed to make the connection).The sad thing about this is that people who've burnt out of ISO work often leave activism altogether.

I've mentioned this on another thread. A few years ago, after the anti-immigrant ICE raids, and when I was still a relative newbie in the ISO, there was a large immigrant rights rally a few hours from my city. I originally wasn't going to go but a friend then in Socialist Alternative invited me to come along w/some of her comrades.I went. A large number of ISOers were there. I talked with them and hung out a bit but I wanted to spend time w/my friend.

My fraction leader spotted me. She took me aside and roundly scolded me for "violating party discipline". She wasn't angry at me for not hanging out w/the ISO but for going to the rally itself. It wasn't my assignment. Instead I was (seriously) supposed to stay home and study "The Meaning of Marxism". I wasn't supposed to think about anything but follow orders. I thought this was insane.There are other stories like this, they would take pages to explain.I didn't leave the organization over theoritical disagreements but over what I thought was the odd internal dynamics.

This is purely anecdotal but after I dropped out of the ISO I heard a number of horror stories about weird internal politics, people being purged left and right (bad pun, I know).

Having said this I think they do have some good activists. Red Dave and Jimmie Higgins are among my favorite posters on Revleft. Their arguments are among the most cogent and well thought out. I find it difficult to reconcile the fact that they are in the ISO with my own experiences of that outfit.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Can't you all do better than this? I mean, where's the accusations of the ISO being a front for the CIA, or responsible for the reversion of Russian to corporate capitalism, or for the existence of neocons, opr for the pimple on your nose? I mean Comrades, time it was when Stalinists and Maoists could really sling it. You guys are really slipping.

RED DAVE


Naw, man. RCP is a front for the CIA. I'm a connoisseur of conspiracy theories and I've never heard one about Tony Cliff or the Cliffites. (Which either means they're clean or just really fucking good.) And ISO wasn't at all responsible for the reversion of Russia to corporate capitalism. They were cheering when it happened, but they weren't responsible for it.



I wasn't supposed to think about anything but follow orders. I thought this was insane.There are other stories like this, they would take pages to explain.I didn't leave the organization over theoritical disagreements but over what I thought was the odd internal dynamics.

This is purely anecdotal but after I dropped out of the ISO I heard a number of horror stories about weird internal politics, people being purged left and right (bad pun, I know).

This is lame, and I could trade similar stories from my time in the ISO. But I doubt there's any major far-left group where nonsense like that doesn't happen; and ISO is by no means the worst offender.

[RadioRaheem84]

Revolutionary Communist Party is CIA? :confused:

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The now defunct MIM (Maoist International Movement) as part of their idiosyncratic spelling and their rivalry for the Maoist franchise would always write "RCP=CIA".

[Homo Songun]

I'm pretty sure the Maoist franchise was taken by PLP before they went over the top and then the October League later on. Were the RCP ever the McMaoists?

[Chambered Word]

Cliffites are just angry liberals who never had the guts to stand up to their high school history teacher.

I stand up to my high school teachers whenever necessary, thank you very much.

[Palingenisis]

Wondering if I should join the ISO branch here in my city, but I've been reading up on what they stand for and it seems like they're a bit too dismissive of past socialist regimes, almost liberally dismissive. Their stance on Cuba is almost gusano-like. They do publish the ISR Magazine, so I guess they're a good organization, but I just haven't decided yet.

Any info on this group? Thanks.

A lot of so-called Left-groups basically are for the power trips of alienated individuals who cant get a chance to flex their egos out in the real world (this especially goes for Trotskyite groups). Instead of looking for a "revolutionary group" to join (lets face it the USA is far from a revolution) I think more of getting involved with local campaigns or if they arent any around try finding a pressing local issue and starting one yourself.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The ISO is a left social-democratic group that recruits left liberal college students and gets them to sell papers and contribute dues for a while. That the politics are social-democratic is really in the question of program. Tony Cliff and his followers (including Duncan Hallas, whose book "Trotsky's Marxism" was reprinted by Haymarket a few years ago) distort and lie about the Transitional Program, saying that it was a purely conjunctural program based on the perceived inability of capitalism to absorb social reforms at the brink of World War II. This is false. Trotsky was talking about creating a program that is a bridge from the current consciousness to the understanding of the need for socialism - the specific demands in "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" are for 1938 when it was written, but the Trotskyists were supposed to create new programs for new periods. Cliff lied about Trotsky's method and went back to the social-democratic "minimum program" of immediate demands and "maximum program" of socialism, which history tells us never actually meet up at any point. I am not throwing around "social-democrat" as an insult but as a programmatic characterization.

Thank you for the second half of this post which I think is the only real attempt at making a political argument against the ISO. I'll just say that you are correct that we see fighting for immediate demands as an important part of helping to build for working class revolution. We see these reform struggles as a way to link radical politics to the struggles on the ground and thereby help build working class and socialist consciousness. But unlike democratic-socialists (I'm not sure where you are getting "social-democrat") we do not think the reforms themselves will gradually build socialism out of capitalism but that working class struggle will organize and teach large numbers of workers how to take matter in their own hands and fight collectively for their own class interests. So it is a question of how reforms can help workers build for a revolution, not how capitalism can be reformed into socialism. Of course every movement and strategy has to be looked at in regards to what we think will best radicalize people in the social and political context, we do the best we can at looking at the situation we find ourselves in and trying to see what the next best step in rebuilding working class struggle would be.

As for the first part of your post, we recruit students and workers in order to try and organize in our schools and workplaces and we don't want paper-sellers and dues payers who are simply followers, we want people who will be dedicated leaders and organizers who will be able to provide radical politics, understanding, and strategy when their co-workers and fellow students come into conflict with the capitalist society and want to fight back. It's about rebuilding a militant left rooted in the working class with radical politics at it's core - I would think that we would want more people recruited for that purpose.


A lot of so-called Left-groups basically are for the power trips of alienated individuals who cant get a chance to flex their egos out in the real world (this especially goes for Trotskyite groups).How politically insightful Dr. Phil - sorry to single you out comrade, your post was just the most recent example of a non-political post, but you're not alone.

Comrades should go back and look at the thread started by someone who was thinking about going to a PSL meeting - the response was the same kind of a-political arguments - except made mostly by anarchists in that example. I think comrades should have a little more respect for people who are interested in learning and talking to other groups. By all means lay out your political or organizational differences, but resorting to broad characterizations and myths about other groups doesn't do anything politically constructive.

If someone was thinking of joining the RCP, I'd definitely lay-out why I think that's a dead end and why I think their politics leads to some bad organizing. But if I told the potential RCP recruit that they shouldn't join because the RCP is cult-y and creepy, then I'm not doing much to make an argument for a more bottom-up form of socialist politics, I'd just be smearing the group like I might smear a clique of goths or something.

Outline the political differences and let the comrade decide for him or herself if X group has the right ideas and organizing or not. Honestly when I hear someone say: "Oh the ISO is just full of young people" or "they are just trying to take dues" my hunch is that they are really saying - "I can't make a convincing argument for why North Korea is the kind of society we should fight for -- so I'll just call the trot a liberal instead".

[blake 3:17]

If one felt sharp differences from an ISO line, I'd ask the branch or organization representative what that meant in terms of membership, movement participation, and whether points were open to debate or when they'd be open to debate. I'd also ask myself how important certain lines are. I find their stance on Cuba quite weird, but from everything I know the ISO and IST groups would oppose imperialist attacks on Cuba. From the ISO site:
We oppose U.S. intervention in Cuba, the Middle East, and elsewhere. We are for self-determination for Puerto Rico.


China and Cuba, like the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, have nothing to do with socialism. They are state capitalist regimes. We support the struggles of workers in these countries against the bureaucratic ruling class.




From Paul Le Blanc's Why I'm Joing the ISO:


There is a tendency in the ISO to depict the current regime as a variant of "state capitalism". I don't agree with that, nor do I call for the revolutionary overthrow of that regime by the Cuban working class. My own views are similar to those developed in the US Socialist Workers Party by such comrades as Joseph Hansen and George Breitman -- involving critical support while calling for radical reforms to institutionalise workers' democracy. Indeed, my adherence to that position after 1980 (when the SWP's new leadership developed a very uncritical attitude and broke from Trotskyism) was one of the causes for my expulsion. The positions I share with all ISO comrades -- favouring workers' democracy in Cuba, insisting that the Cuban people themselves must have the decisive say in such matters, and absolutely defending the self-determination of Cuba in the face of imperialist hostility and aggression -- provide ample common ground on which to stand. The kinds of thoughtful evaluations I have heard from some ISO members and supporters in regard to the legacy of Che Guevara and regarding current struggles in Latin America -- Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil and elsewhere -- also provides much common ground on which to stand.
It is not the case that ISO comrades with whom I have differences are inclined to sweep these under the rug, or to shrug off their own particular theoretical traditions. But neither are they inclined to establish a sectarian Orthodoxy with which to prove their own superiority to all others. Another way of saying this is that the ISO does not see itself as "The Revolutionary Vanguard" -- although it is very much committed to helping create a genuine revolutionary vanguard, that is, an actual layer of the working class having revolutionary class-consciousness that would be the base for a genuinely revolutionary party. It seems to me that ISO comrades are generally inclined toward a serious, and therefore open and critical-minded, approach to the interplay of revolutionary theory and political practice. This makes it possible for us to come together. And it helps the ISO play a valuable role in the struggles of our time.


Whole thing here: http://links.org.au/node/1323

[syndicat]

I would agree with ISO that there is a dominating, exploiting class running Cuba. I don't call it "state capitalist" but that's not important. What is important is understanding that the working class is not in power there. To support a dominating, exploiting class is class collaboration. That said, it is true that the bureaucratic class in Cuba is more intelligent in its policies than in the other so-called "Communist" countries.

But if you want to know about the fate of working class Cuban radicals in the revolution in late '50s-'60s period, I highly recommend Victor Alba's History of the Labor Movement of Latin America. (He was a POUM exile.) That said, it's also important to oppose imperialist attacks aimed at Cuba such as the embargo. The embargo actually strengthens the burreaucratic class and its more authoritarian factions. The USA is no friend to the working class of Cuba or any other country.

I guess I'm willing to keep an open mind about ISO. I was almost recruited to ISO's predecessor IS in the '70s and have sort of followed their career. In the end, I didn't join IS because I can't stomach Leninism. I was a libertarian Marxist and so I went in a revolutionary syndicalist direction.

In regard to the issue of "transitional program," I think that Trotskyist approach was based on a rather mechanical way of looking at class formation. I would agree that a bridge is needed from the more conservative or mixed consciousness in the class at present to mass revolutionary consciousness, but I would see that bridge being the development of mass social movement or worker organizations controlled directly by their members. Organization based on working class self-activity is needed for the development of consciousness as this grows through struggle and through the experience of controlling your own organizations, and developing skills and knowledge in the process. So if ISO doesn't have a "transitional program" I don't think that is a problem.

On the other hand, they don't clearly advocate the development of autonomous self-managing mass organization. Like a lot of Leninist groups they're still stuck in the "boring from withing" approach to the labor movement, as taking power by gaining control of the bureaucratic apparatus.

They also seem to have a very uneven level of understanding in members of the group. I've had ISO members swear to me that Lenin and Trotsky advocated workers self-management...whereas in fact Lenin & Trotsky were opposed to this in the Russian revolution and its inconsistent with the statist central planning the ISO advocates. That said, internal education is also something that my own group struggles with.

As to not publically using the term "communist" that's a pretty silly criticism. What's important in terms of mass work and organizing is the content, not your nostalgic attachment to certain historical icons. We have this same issue, by the way, among social anarchists. Altho a majority of the members of my group identify personally as "anarcho-communist" we don't use the "C" word, but other social anarchist groups (such as NEFAC) insist on it.

[KC]

How politically insightful Dr. Phil - sorry to single you out comrade, your post was just the most recent example of a non-political post, but you're not alone.

Comrades should go back and look at the thread started by someone who was thinking about going to a PSL meeting - the response was the same kind of a-political arguments - except made mostly by anarchists in that example. I think comrades should have a little more respect for people who are interested in learning and talking to other groups. By all means lay out your political or organizational differences, but resorting to broad characterizations and myths about other groups doesn't do anything politically constructive.

I don't see anything wrong with his post at all; it's pretty spot on. That goes for most left groups, including ISO and PSL.

You keep criticizing people because their criticisms aren't politically based, but you don't realize that these "apolitical" criticisms are pretty important. I know that if I was in complete agreement with a group politically that did some of the weird shit that's been laid out in this thread I definitely wouldn't want to join them (not that I'm saying any of it is true or isn't because I really don't know much about the ISO). Moreover, these "apolitical" criticisms are directly bound up in the political issues because party structure and organizational methods are inseparable from the political issues.

You're just assuming that because people politically disagree with them that they're attacking them, when that isn't the case at all.

[graymouser]

Thank you for the second half of this post which I think is the only real attempt at making a political argument against the ISO. I'll just say that you are correct that we see fighting for immediate demands as an important part of helping to build for working class revolution. We see these reform struggles as a way to link radical politics to the struggles on the ground and thereby help build working class and socialist consciousness. But unlike democratic-socialists (I'm not sure where you are getting "social-democrat") we do not think the reforms themselves will gradually build socialism out of capitalism but that working class struggle will organize and teach large numbers of workers how to take matter in their own hands and fight collectively for their own class interests. So it is a question of how reforms can help workers build for a revolution, not how capitalism can be reformed into socialism. Of course every movement and strategy has to be looked at in regards to what we think will best radicalize people in the social and political context, we do the best we can at looking at the situation we find ourselves in and trying to see what the next best step in rebuilding working class struggle would be.
When I use the term "social-democrat" I am purposefully hearkening back to the pre-World War I left wing of the mass Social Democratic parties in Europe, which developed a divide between "minimum program" of immediate demands and "maximum program" of socialism. By returning to this method and rejecting the transitional program that Trotsky and the Fourth International developed (itself a further elaboration of the program that had been worked out by the Comintern, and based on the program of the Bolsheviks in 1917), Tony Cliff simply repeats in a "left" form many of the errors of the past. The social democrats had a robust left wing and many considered themselves to be revolutionaries, but when put to the test by the war, the vast majority of them failed. In practice, this split of minimum and maximum program means that day-to-day demands do not look beyond the horizon of capitalism to workers' power, while propaganda for "socialism" of an extremely abstract and diffuse form is carried out. The ISO doesn't participate in the kind of bizarre adventures that the British SWP does these days, but its lurches and lack of strategic foresight are tied intimately to the question of program.


As for the first part of your post, we recruit students and workers in order to try and organize in our schools and workplaces and we don't want paper-sellers and dues payers who are simply followers, we want people who will be dedicated leaders and organizers who will be able to provide radical politics, understanding, and strategy when their co-workers and fellow students come into conflict with the capitalist society and want to fight back. It's about rebuilding a militant left rooted in the working class with radical politics at it's core - I would think that we would want more people recruited for that purpose.
The ISO's revolving door is infamous. It can't help but be tied to the left-liberal type of student to whom the ISO appeals most directly. Attempts to turn these students into cadre mostly fail, with the exceptions being consolidated into the hardened layer of the organization.

As for what it's about, I disagree. I think the task today isn't to build a "militant left" but the core cadres of a Leninist-Trotskyist party. The student revolving door is great for helping to run a magazine and book publisher though.


How politically insightful Dr. Phil - sorry to single you out comrade, your post was just the most recent example of a non-political post, but you're not alone.

Comrades should go back and look at the thread started by someone who was thinking about going to a PSL meeting - the response was the same kind of a-political arguments - except made mostly by anarchists in that example. I think comrades should have a little more respect for people who are interested in learning and talking to other groups. By all means lay out your political or organizational differences, but resorting to broad characterizations and myths about other groups doesn't do anything politically constructive.

If someone was thinking of joining the RCP, I'd definitely lay-out why I think that's a dead end and why I think their politics leads to some bad organizing. But if I told the potential RCP recruit that they shouldn't join because the RCP is cult-y and creepy, then I'm not doing much to make an argument for a more bottom-up form of socialist politics, I'd just be smearing the group like I might smear a clique of goths or something.

Outline the political differences and let the comrade decide for him or herself if X group has the right ideas and organizing or not. Honestly when I hear someone say: "Oh the ISO is just full of young people" or "they are just trying to take dues" my hunch is that they are really saying - "I can't make a convincing argument for why North Korea is the kind of society we should fight for -- so I'll just call the trot a liberal instead".
The ISO's organizational structure is terrible, for the reason I laid out in my first post on this thread: it's a fusion of cadre organization and youth group. You have hundreds of students who come in, sell the paper, read some books, and cycle back out naturally. And then you have a hard core of members, who are a distinct minority, who form the cadre backbone of the group. There can be no democracy as such in this kind of organization, because the students don't know the ins and outs of revolutionary politics well enough to participate meaningfully so they go along with the leadership, and no opposition among the cadre can ever get up a following. This is why the Communist tradition is to have a separate youth group, which is looser and allows more people in with more raucous debate, and those youth who are cadre material "graduate" into the party. Cliff's way leads to some pretty fuct up internal functioning.

[redasheville]

I would agree with ISO that there is a dominating, exploiting class running Cuba. I don't call it "state capitalist" but that's not important. What is important is understanding that the working class is not in power there. To support a dominating, exploiting class is class collaboration. That said, it is true that the bureaucratic class in Cuba is more intelligent in its policies than in the other so-called "Communist" countries.

I agree 100%



But if you want to know about the fate of working class Cuban radicals in the revolution in late '50s-'60s period, I highly recommend Victor Alba's History of the Labor Movement of Latin America. (He was a POUM exile.) That said, it's also important to oppose imperialist attacks aimed at Cuba such as the embargo. The embargo actually strengthens the burreaucratic class and its more authoritarian factions. The USA is no friend to the working class of Cuba or any other country.


Again, I agree.


On the other hand, they don't clearly advocate the development of autonomous self-managing mass organization. Like a lot of Leninist groups they're still stuck in the "boring from withing" approach to the labor movement, as taking power by gaining control of the bureaucratic apparatus.


We clearly argue that our conception of socialism, in the final analysis, is workers control over production. We clearly advocate that the road to socialism lies with the self activity of the working class. You and I probably have differences over the relationship of revolutionary organizations to the class as a whole, but lets not extrapolate that difference any further than necessary.

We also clearly advocate a labor strategy based on rank n file power. You and I have already discussed our views on strategy and tactics within the labor movement, so you know it is not true that we advocate for the strategy of "seizing power of the bureaucratic apparatus". Sometimes we run in internal union elections (as a TACTIC) but that is hardly the same thing as infiltrating the bureaucracy.

[redasheville]

@Syndicat

I don't really have any interest in debating Trotsky and Lenin and the Russian Revolution so I'm not going to respond to that part of your post.

You might be able to convince me after a few beers at Toronado, however. :)

[RED DAVE]

The ISO's organizational structure is terrible, for the reason I laid out in my first post on this thread: it's a fusion of cadre organization and youth group. You have hundreds of students who come in, sell the paper, read some books, and cycle back out naturally. And then you have a hard core of members, who are a distinct minority, who form the cadre backbone of the group. There can be no democracy as such in this kind of organization, because the students don't know the ins and outs of revolutionary politics well enough to participate meaningfully so they go along with the leadership, and no opposition among the cadre can ever get up a following. This is why the Communist tradition is to have a separate youth group, which is looser and allows more people in with more raucous debate, and those youth who are cadre material "graduate" into the party. Cliff's way leads to some pretty fuct up internal functioning.This is a pretty serious charge. I'm not asking for statistics, but you will have to do better than assert what you are saying.

I'm not a member of the ISO, but I have worked with ISO comrades for many years, and I don't see what you are charging to be the case.

RED DAVE

[syndicat]

we run in internal union elections (as a TACTIC) but that is hardly the same thing as infiltrating the bureaucracy.

but what's the strategy for transformation of the labor movement? what's the vision of how worker mass organizations are to be run?

for decades Leninist groups (with the exception of Sojourner Truth Organization) have rejected any idea of mass organization being built independent of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, other than trying to transform that union, as "dual unionism" which is anathema. for decades "boring from within" has been the operative strategy...with little in the way of results.


We clearly argue that our conception of socialism, in the final analysis, is workers control over production. We clearly advocate that the road to socialism lies with the self activity of the working class. You and I probably have differences over the relationship of revolutionary organizations to the class as a whole, but lets not extrapolate that difference any further than necessary.


"workers control" is a very weak and ambiguous phrase. Lenin's "worker's control decree" of Nov 1917 only authorized workers surveillance of management, opening of the books, and vetoing of management. He overtly opposed workers taking over and directly managing workplaces. Workers direct management is not consistent with the statist top down central planning instituted by the Bolsheviks in Nov 1917, and is inconsistent with central planning in general. if the planning authority decides everything, all that's left for workers is to obey.

there can't be liberation from class domination and exploitation without workers gaining complete authority to manage collectively the workplaces and industries where they work. Retention of a managerial hierarchy and the hierarchical division of labor is insonsistent with this. It would mean a continuation of alienated labor.

[redasheville]

"workers control" is a very weak and ambiguous phrase. Lenin's "worker's control decree" of Nov 1917 only authorized workers surveillance of management, opening of the books, and vetoing of management. He overtly opposed workers taking over and directly managing workplaces. Workers direct management is consistent with the statist top down central planning instituted by the Bolsheviks in Nov 1917, and is inconsistent with central planning in general. if the planning authority decides everything, all that's left for workers is to obey.

there can't be liberation from class domination and exploitation without workers gaining complete authority to manage collectively the workplaces and industries where they work. Retention of a managerial hierarchy and the hierarchical division of labor is insonsistent with this. It would mean a continuation of alienated labor.

This is a strawman. You are taking your own understanding of what happened 90+ years ago on the other side of the planet and arguing that down.*

You write "there can't be liberation from class domination and exploitation without workers gaining complete authority to manage collectively the workplaces and industries where they work. " I agree! I would only add that they would have to do this as a CLASS and not as workers at individual work places. Anyway, what is your point?

*You and I can debate this or that action of the Bolsheviks during and after the Russian revolution. Personally, I'm not that interested in doing so. I am much more interested in debating how to rebuild a workers movement in the HERE and NOW.

[syndicat]

You write "there can't be liberation from class domination and exploitation without workers gaining complete authority to manage collectively the workplaces and industries where they work. " I agree! I would only add that they would have to do this as a CLASS and not as workers at individual work places. Anyway, what is your point?


well, this is also ambiguous. the working class has to take over all the means of production, has to remove the capitalist and bureaucratic classes from their power over production. but it is a mistake to counterpose self-management of the economy as a whole to self-management of the various workplaces. If decision-making is concentrated into some single economy-wide body, I can guarantee you workers will be subordinate to a bureaucratic class. there has to be meaningful sphere of control that people can directly decide themselves, both in the places where we live and in the places where we work.

This is why I think that the concept of participatory planning is so helpful. it shows how it is possible to have a non-market non-profit planned economy where the planning for particular workplaces and industries is done by the workers there, and then there is a process to adjust to the plans of others, in regard to what communities want produced for their benefit, and what other production groups have planned.

re what the bolshviks did:

This is a strawman. You are taking your own understanding of what happened 90+ years ago on the other side of the planet and arguing that down.*


then why do you identify with the bolshevik legacy? why are you a leninist? if what they did, their actual practice, isn't a model, what's the point? just to talk about Lenin's writings, as a contribution to "theory", such as "State and Revolution", is not sufficient when abstracted from what was done in practice. In that case it becomes completely meaningless.

Moreover, in "The Case for Socialism" that is not what Alan Maass does. He defends the practice in the sense that he defends the claim that after Oct 1917 there was something where workers were ruling...a claim I would dispute. but it makes sense for Maass to make that claim becuase to NOT defend the Bolshevik practice makes the claim of Leninism incoherent.

[RED DAVE]

but what's the strategy for transformation of the labor movement? what's the vision of how worker mass organizations are to be run?

for decades Leninist groups (with the exception of Sojourner Truth Organization) have rejected any idea of mass organization being built independent of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, other than trying to transform that union, as "dual unionism" which is anathema. for decades "boring from within" has been the operative strategy...with little in the way of results.I think you are misrepresenting the strategy of "Leninist groups." (Solidarity, which follows this strategy, is not Leninist in the sense that you are describing it.) What you are characterizing as "boring from within" is not, at least as far as the political tendency represented in the US by the ISO (and Solidarity), a tactic for taking over the bureaucracy of the unions. It is a tactic of workplace struggle, which involves, primarily, the rank and file of unions, and its purpose is to engage in struggle to raise the consciousness of workers towards a revolutionary consciousness. I am summing up, briefly, a fairly complex, multilevel strategy, of which "boring from within" is one tactic.

On tlevels other than intra-union conflict, this strategy involves organizing workers to engage in all kinds of conflicts, including union organizing, non-union and extra-union struggles, alliances with mass movements (immigrant rights, etc.) and much more.


"workers control" is a very weak and ambiguous phrase. Lenin's "worker's control decree" of Nov 1917 only authorized workers surveillance of management, opening of the books, and vetoing of management. He overtly opposed workers taking over and directly managing workplaces. Workers direct management is not consistent with the statist top down central planning instituted by the Bolsheviks in Nov 1917, and is inconsistent with central planning in general. if the planning authority decides everything, all that's left for workers is to obey.

there can't be liberation from class domination and exploitation without workers gaining complete authority to manage collectively the workplaces and industries where they work. Retention of a managerial hierarchy and the hierarchical division of labor is insonsistent with this. It would mean a continuation of alienated labor.Sigh!

Vladimir Ilyich has been dead for, I believe, 87 years (and the IWW was crippled at more-or-less at the same time). Whatever he conceived of in the heat of revolutionary struggle during and after a civil war in an undeveloped country, with regard to workers control, may or may not have been right. (I think they were wrong.) However, his dicta, strictures, notions, ideas, what-have-you, are not holy writ. I believe that the International Socialist tendency, which includes ISO and Solidarity, have gone a bit further than Lenin in their ideas, strategy and tactics towards the working class. Believe when I say that "managerial hierarchy and the hierarchical division of labor" is far from what they are fighting for.

RED DAVE

[graymouser]

This is a pretty serious charge. I'm not asking for statistics, but you will have to do better than assert what you are saying.

I'm not a member of the ISO, but I have worked with ISO comrades for many years, and I don't see what you are charging to be the case.

RED DAVE
Wait, are you asking about the ISO's revolving door recruitment (google "International Socialist Organization" "revolving door" as I can't post links right yet), a well known fact on the left, or the organizational summary that is derived from it? The latter is based on observation and discussion with other leftists. The last time it was well demonstrated in the ISO was in the Left Turn split, which like every Cliffite dispute got a handful of long-timers but none of the large student base. The British SWP demonstrates it every few years, most recently in the Rees/German split.

As far as general organizational fuct up-ness goes, the "Joy of Sects" is probably the classic documentation of it.

[redasheville]

re what the bolshviks did:


then why do you identify with the bolshevik legacy? why are you a leninist? if what they did, their actual practice, isn't a model, what's the point? just to talk about Lenin's writings, as a contribution to "theory", such as "State and Revolution", is not sufficient when abstracted from what was done in practice. In that case it becomes completely meaningless.

Moreover, in "The Case for Socialism" that is not what Alan Maass does. He defends the practice in the sense that he defends the claim that after Oct 1917 there was something where workers were ruling...a claim I would dispute. but it makes sense for Maass to make that claim becuase to NOT defend the Bolshevik practice makes the claim of Leninism incoherent.

You're missing the point. I do "identify with the Bolshevik legacy". We stand in the tradition of revolutionary Marxism, including Lenin and Trotsky. I think the October Revolution was awesome, and by that I mean I think the Bolsheviks were awesome. However, I am not interested in debating the Russian Revolution on an internet forum, because it'll be and endless back and forth and it will be far less productive and interesting than our discussion on unions a few weeks ago (sorry for the snark, BTW).

I do think that workers seized power in 1917. You, as you've said, dispute this. Not to paper over our differences as irrelevant, because they're not, but these are hardly the crucial debates of our time.

[syndicat]

but what we are for, what the replacement for capitalism is, is crucial. state socialism has been discredited for good reasons. and part of the reason it has been discredited is the dismal bureaucratic class regime in the USSR.

thus i believe that we have no choice but to be clear about what it is we are for. we can't ask working people to buy a pig in a poke.

for example, part of the reason for a syndicalist strategy is that we see workers self-management as a necessary condition for workers liberation. part of the reason we...I mean my organization and similar libertarian left orgs...advocate for prefigurative politics, building movements controlled by their members, is that this prefigures a system of generalized self-management in which society is rebuilt on the basis of direct democracy and self-management.

[syndicat]

dave:
What you are characterizing as "boring from within" is not, at least as far as the political tendency represented in the US by the ISO (and Solidarity), a tactic for taking over the bureaucracy of the unions. It is a tactic of workplace struggle, which involves, primarily, the rank and file of unions, and its purpose is to engage in struggle to raise the consciousness of workers towards a revolutionary consciousness. I am summing up, briefly, a fairly complex, multilevel strategy, of which "boring from within" is one tactic.


Well, I've read thru the "Rank and File Movement" strategy document on the Solidarity website. Maybe it isn't stated clearly enough to avoid what you say is a misunderstanding.

Solidarity does advocate for the eventual formation of a "revolutionary party" and presumably for that party running a state. if it's a new state, then this would be a Leninist -- or at least partyist -- strategy. i'm aware that Solidarity is a multi-tendencied organization.

my own organization's views since the '80s, in regard to the bureaucratic business unions, is to work to develop rank and file organizations independent of the bureaucracy. This is to encourage rank and file self-activity and involvement in struggle. So, thus far, we would seem to be in agreement with what you said. But I know that for example in TDU there is an emphasis for example on "going for power", that is, for electing leaders to run local unions, and also sometimes bylaw reforms. But this seems to me to be tied in with some vision of changing the existing unions into the kind of mass fighting class struggle organizations of the class that we want.

My sense is that it would be unrealistic to suppose that the AFL-CIO national unions will ever be changed in that way, tho it might happen in isolated cases. If we look at past upsurges, such as the 1880s or 1930s or the world War 1 era, we see that what was characteristic was the emergence of new organizations. it's true that in some cases these have emerged from fragments of the existing labor movement breaking away.

And we believe that there are advantages in building new organizations from scratch in that we can set them going with a certain spirit and vision and self-managed character, and work to keep them developing that way. But Leninist organizations, as I said, all pooh-pooh that as "dual unionism."

our view also that the aim should not be to develop simply the political consciousness of the "vanguard" layer, so that it can act as a "revolutionary party" to take power for the class. we advocate that the coming to power has to be the work of the mass organizations of the class, both labor and community organizations. so maybe, in the case of Solidarity anyway, it would be more accurate not to describe the difference as syndicalist versus leninist but syndicalist versus partyist.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't see anything wrong with his post at all; it's pretty spot on. That goes for most left groups, including ISO and PSL.So you honestly think people are motivated primarily by personal deficiencies in character than by say class realities or political consciousness and understanding? When the mainstream media tries to claim that people turn to Marxism because they are unhappy personally or turn to Anarchist thought because they were spoiled as children, do you think that is also spot on?


You keep criticizing people because their criticisms aren't politically based, but you don't realize that these "apolitical" criticisms are pretty important.Fair enough comrade. I don't mean to dismiss anyone's personal experiences or whatnot, but I brought up the PSL thread because I see the lack of politcal arguments while there is a wealth of sort of vague charges about untrustworthiness or claims of the opposing group as secretly being liberals, or inauthentic/insincere in some way is an unconstructive way of discussing political differences.


I know that if I was in complete agreement with a group politically that did some of the weird shit that's been laid out in this thread I definitely wouldn't want to join them (not that I'm saying any of it is true or isn't because I really don't know much about the ISO). Moreover, these "apolitical" criticisms are directly bound up in the political issues because party structure and organizational methods are inseparable from the political issues.Well that's the problem - I have been an ISO member for 8 years and the only person "purged" in any of the 4 branches I have been in was a "mactivist" who was making unwanted advances on fellow comrades.

Yet someone in this thread says:

after I dropped out of the ISO I heard a number of horror stories about weird internal politics, people being purged left and rightHeard from who and if it's true what was the circumstance? I don't know, it could be true, it could not be... it could be justified or it could be that there were some problems with a particular branch or it could be some systemic problem.

Since you know nothing about the ISO, you now "know" that this person claims that some other people they know claim that something happened in a branch somewhere... but in your mind it becomes: "I heard about some shady shit in a branch somewhere". It's the same kind of thing that Republicans and Democrats do to each-other - they don't want to raise the political differences between the other candidates largely because the differences are usually just surface. Also they have no interest in clearly explaining politics to the public, in fact they have an interest in keeping the public in the dark and so they cast doubts on the trustworthiness or character of their opponent.

On the other hand we should be trying to make things more clear to people we deal with - so sectarian rumors or vague slanders do not help us.


You're just assuming that because people politically disagree with them that they're attacking them, when that isn't the case at all.Again, fair enough - I don't know where people are coming from politically - it's just the tendency on this website (and in the left in general) that I think is not constructive for the left and only creates mistrust for all left organizations, not more political clarity.

[KC]

So you honestly think people are motivated primarily by personal deficiencies in character than by say class realities or political consciousness and understanding? When the mainstream media tries to claim that people turn to Marxism because they are unhappy personally or turn to Anarchist thought because they were spoiled as children, do you think that is also spot on?

I think that some people are motivated more by personal issues than they either know or would like to admit, and I think that there are quite a few people that turn to Marxism and socialist organizations and the culture they foster because of personal issues that they have such as alienation on an individual level.

It's quite a well known fact that extremist politics attracts extremist people, and Marxism is about as far left as one can go. To deny this is silly, especially because this problem is so prevalent in the United States.


Fair enough comrade. I don't mean to dismiss anyone's personal experiences or whatnot, but I brought up the PSL thread because I see the lack of politcal arguments while there is a wealth of sort of vague charges about untrustworthiness or claims of the opposing group as secretly being liberals, or inauthentic/insincere in some way is an unconstructive way of discussing political differences.

Maybe people aren't actually attempting to slander the ISO and instead are voicing their own personal experiences and their own legitimate opinions about those experiences, which means that you as an ISO member should be taking these much more seriously instead of trying to dismiss them as slander. There's a lot of people saying that they've had weird experiences with ISO in the past, so it's obviously not confined to a small group trying to slander ISO or a few isolated incidents.

[RED DAVE]

I think that some people are motivated more by personal issues than they either know or would like to admit, and I think that there are quite a few people that turn to Marxism and socialist organizations and the culture they foster because of personal issues that they have such as alienation on an individual level.

It's quite a well known fact that extremist politics attracts extremist people, and Marxism is about as far left as one can go. To deny this is silly, especially because this problem is so prevalent in the United States.[/quote}Who's denying it. The point is: what political conclusions can we draw from this? In my opinion and experience, none.

[QUOTE=KC;1756808]Maybe people aren't actually attempting to slander the ISO and instead are voicing their own personal experiences and their own legitimate opinions about those experiences, which means that you as an ISO member should be taking these much more seriously instead of trying to dismiss them as slander.The problem is, as Jimmy Higgins pointed out, most of these opinions and experiences are vague and unverifiable.


There's a lot of people saying that they've had weird experiences with ISO in the past, so it's obviously not confined to a small group trying to slander ISO or a few isolated incidents.The only people so far who have made some legit points with some kind of political back up are, in my opinion, graymouser and syndicat.

RED DAVE

[blake 3:17]

On the other hand we should be trying to make things more clear to people we deal with - so sectarian rumors or vague slanders do not help us.

And the gossip is often motivated by anti-communism. I have found the Canadian IS to seem to swing from very rigid discipline to being fairly laissez faire without it seeming to make much sense on a local level. I work closely with a few ISers and a lot more ex-ISers and I have found a number of quite brilliant people not very able to work through pretty common personal conflicts that then overlap with political disagreements.

The only pattern I can think of is an overreliance on voting as the principle decision making method. Consensus decision making can be frustrating but it does force people to talk through issues.


I think that some people are motivated more by personal issues than they either know or would like to admit, and I think that there are quite a few people that turn to Marxism and socialist organizations and the culture they foster because of personal issues that they have such as alienation on an individual level.


Absolutely. The reasons for joining a group that espouses very unpopular ideas, is in opposition to both the market and state and provides no real opportunity for material gain are signs of both craziness and total sanity. Most of us involved in this stuff have good measures of each. This is especially true when our movements seem so far away from achieving their goals.




It's quite a well known fact that extremist politics attracts extremist people, and Marxism is about as far left as one can go. To deny this is silly, especially because this problem is so prevalent in the United States.

It's usually a sign of vitality, but not always.


Maybe people aren't actually attempting to slander the ISO and instead are voicing their own personal experiences and their own legitimate opinions about those experiences, which means that you as an ISO member should be taking these much more seriously instead of trying to dismiss them as slander. There's a lot of people saying that they've had weird experiences with ISO in the past, so it's obviously not confined to a small group trying to slander ISO or a few isolated incidents.

It seems like a bit of both. A lot of Far Left meetings and events can be really bewildering to someone unfamilar to the culture. The Marxist Left is so often so cerebral that going to a meeting can feel like being part of some oddball chess game.

Does (or did) the ISO go on recruitment binges?

Sensible folks can also be put off by people who have all the answers but haven't done or don't do a heck of a lot. I think we can be equitable about this and say that pretty much every current represented on this board has its more than fair share of adherents of this kind.

[Die Neue Zeit]

When I use the term "social-democrat" I am purposefully hearkening back to the pre-World War I left wing of the mass Social Democratic parties in Europe, which developed a divide between "minimum program" of immediate demands and "maximum program" of socialism. By returning to this method and rejecting the transitional program that Trotsky and the Fourth International developed (itself a further elaboration of the program that had been worked out by the Comintern, and based on the program of the Bolsheviks in 1917), Tony Cliff simply repeats in a "left" form many of the errors of the past. The social democrats had a robust left wing and many considered themselves to be revolutionaries, but when put to the test by the war, the vast majority of them failed. In practice, this split of minimum and maximum program means that day-to-day demands do not look beyond the horizon of capitalism to workers' power, while propaganda for "socialism" of an extremely abstract and diffuse form is carried out. The ISO doesn't participate in the kind of bizarre adventures that the British SWP does these days, but its lurches and lack of strategic foresight are tied intimately to the question of program.

You really need to re-examine what kind of minimum programs exist.

[graymouser]

You really need to re-examine what kind of minimum programs exist.
Why on earth would I want to do that? A minimum program has the historical tendency to mire workers in the day-to-day struggle and never get to the next part of the struggle, the fight for socialism. Fighting for minimum demands rather than transitional demands creates a right wing which is committed to the reformist politics of the minimum program and is the basis for all kinds of reactionary acts, such as was seen in the European social democratic parties during and after World War I. I'm not saying the ISO are traitors in this sense, mind you, but that it's one of several real dangers with the minimum program.

[chegitz guevara]

OK, so I'm a Spart now for criticizing the ISO?

They also lack a youth league, which is a big no-no for revolutionary socialist parties.

The ISO is a youth league.

[redasheville]

The ISO is a youth league.

Better than a group full of old cranks, like every other group on the US left (except PSL).

[syndicat]

Better than a group full of old cranks, like every other group on the US left (except PSL).

i think that generalization is a bit extreme. I don't think my org or several others I can think of off hand are reasonably described as "a group full of old cranks". this is the sort of triumphalist braggadocio i used to associate with the sparts.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why on earth would I want to do that? A minimum program has the historical tendency to mire workers in the day-to-day struggle and never get to the next part of the struggle, the fight for socialism. Fighting for minimum demands rather than transitional demands creates a right wing which is committed to the reformist politics of the minimum program and is the basis for all kinds of reactionary acts, such as was seen in the European social democratic parties during and after World War I. I'm not saying the ISO are traitors in this sense, mind you, but that it's one of several real dangers with the minimum program.

Um, there are also minimum demands for the conquest of political power:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_programme

[redasheville]

i think that generalization is a bit extreme. I don't think my org or several others I can think of off hand are reasonably described as "a group full of old cranks". this is the sort of triumphalist braggadocio i used to associate with the sparts.

Yes, I was exaggerating.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yes, I was exaggerating.
That's good because I love our old cranks:lol:.